Chapter 16: Uninvited Guests

And like that the tendrils released him and Morigin felt breath hit his lungs and the air was so crisp, so inviting that he sat up straight from the dead and screamed.

But even that was too much energy for him to handle, so he fell back down in the pod, asleep – absolutely worn out from screaming to life.

“Morigin?” Jade’s sleek, female metallic voice whispered into his ear. “They will be back soon. You must wake up. The mission is lost if you don’t get up. They need direction. They need guidance. They are so young and both need you. Please wake up, Morigin.”

Opening his eyes, Morigin saw the ceiling grates of the Jade Tendril…home. He remembered installing those panels and the complex wiring and piping beneath them. He remembered screaming. Explosions. Plasma. A TON of plasma being volleyed around. He remembered holding the laminate cube under his arm, then scorched earth and the two thuds of the plasma bolts searing into his chest.

Then death.

But he was not dead. He clearly was in his ship, in his clothes, save for the nasty plasma burns through them. Reaching out of the medical pod, he slapped the cool plastellic shell of the device. It felt real. But maybe in death you live forever where you most desire? He sat up and looked around. If this was where death brought him, he was elated. A smile spread across his face. “Happy to be alive…again?” asked Jade.

Morigin twitched and then reached to his neck and pinched the skin around it. “Ow!” he wailed. “I guess I am alive. But if I’m alive, where are those two dingy sods that don’t have a mind between them? And where is my cube?!”

“The cube was taken,” Jade said.

“By whom?”

“Your killer.”

“I’ll kill him for that,” Morigin said. “And the others?”

“Taking Odiacz back to her hovel.”

“Ah,” Morigin said. “That explains my aliveness.” Morigin reached to the side of the pod and attempted to get out. “No haste makes waste and all that. Time to get to work again.” And as he pulled himself up, he fell crashing to the floor, unable to stand.

“Captain,” Jade said. “You need to rest. You need to regain your strength.”

Morigin sat on the floor and said, “So we lost the cube then?”

“Yes,” Jade said. “But it was a fake. Odiacz confirmed it.”

Morigin looked about the cabin and tried to get to his knees. “That is a master stroke from Telo, if there ever was one.” Morigin pulled himself up the back of a cabin chair and added, “What else did old squidhands have to say?” “She said if she knew Telo well enough, that he hid the artifact in the last place anyone suspicious would look.”

“In plain sight,” Morigin finished. “Well, pray I find it before those other two. If you are not willed to the armor by the creator, then die when you put it on. Sounds like something Palo would do.”

Another blast rocked the ship, knocking Morigin off balance at the console.

Slowly getting up, he said, “Great! Caught in a fight and both of my wingmen are taking naps! Jade, patch a COM through letting them know we don't have the conduit.”

“You do realize that they probably traced her,” Jade said. “They're not going to believe it.”

“Just send it!” Morigin growled. “It might buy us some time.”

“Message delivered,” Jade said. “We're tracking four Karridan class Slavo fighters forming a perimeter around the ship. Perhaps we should think about a trade. You did have her upload Telo's memories back to my database. She no longer has any value.”

Morigin rubbed his face and thought about it. He didn't want to show it, but he felt something different for the conduit. She saved his life, carried him out of that fray. Had she not, he might still be dead. Having a conduit around – a loyal one – would come in very handy in a tight spot.

“Incoming COM,” Jade said.

“Foolish, man,” the Salvo said. “All conduits are installed with tracking beacons. We know she is aboard your ship. You have lied to us! Prepare to die!”

'Wait!” Morigin yelled. “Tell them I'm bringing her out.”

Morigin turned around and walked to the washroom. His arms and legs tingled with exhaustion. He wouldn't be able to carry her for too far. Probably just enough to dump her down the ramp. He knelt down by her and gently patted her cheek. No response. Out cold. Morigin didn't want to do this. He reached down and picked her body up in his arms.

As he walked through the annex toward the ramp, he whispered in her ear, hopeful that something deep inside her would spark. “Don't know if you're listening, little thing. I know you've had a new lease on life, much like what you gave me, but I have no choice. So I'm hoping, beyond all hope, by the time we get out there that you can get in your conduity thing. You know kicking tailwise. I'm hoping it just kicks in, but to help it along, think about the Palo kid. I've seen the way he looks at you. He's got the butterflies for you. Plain as day on his face. And remember me, I'm not all that bad. I have some redeeming qualities...I've decided not to hook you up to that machine. And quite frankly, you could come in handy in some tustles.”

Morigin made it to the top of the ramp and looked outside. He could see two of the fighters keeping vigil outside. He leaned in to Vaga's ear again and said, “Lastly, don't let them take back what they already stole from you. You got your life back. Fight for it now!”

Morigin kneeled down and rolled Vaga down the ramp, cringing with every thump her head took on the way down. Then he slid his finger down his ear and activated hi COM. “Jade,” he said. “Get ready on both cannons. Target the fighters behind us first.”

“What about the front fighters?”

“Let me just say I sent up a little prayer,” he told her. “Wait for Vaga's move.” Behind his back, he detached two blasters from their wall mounts in the annex.

At the bottom of the ramp, Morigin saw two dozen Slavos approaching Vaga's crumpled body. He had Slavos before at a distance, but up close, he understood why every species feared them. Hideous amalgams of interspliced species – multiple eyes, tentacles, claws, hands, teeth, spines, armor plates all assymetrically fused together. He tried to imagine the genetic processes within their DNA, how they consumer their enemies and absorb their characteristics. He tried to see how the biology worked, but it was beyond his knowledge.

They approached Vaga's body and a handful of them picked her up and started to shackle her up. Morigin took the safeties off his blasters behind his back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vaga's eyes open to pure white and the lighted squares down her arms and legs lit up.

“Show time,” Morigin said to himself.

But before he could even draw his weapons, Vaga spun out of their grasp in a flurry of kicks and jabs. Morigin watched in amazement as she tore into the Slavos outside. Every move had the quickness and precision of battle foresight. The Slavos opened fire on her, but in a flurry of cartwheels flips and twirls, Vaga dodge every plasma blast. She had taken out five Slavos already, when she stopped and out of her fingers sprung her nanfibers. They whipped out and grabbed attackers and flung them away. Some of the fibers strnagled the thick necks of the Slavos, while others penetrated their nasal passages and other orifices, yanking out brain matter, eyes and vital organs.

That was his cue, Morigin stood at the top of the ramp and fired volley after volley at the attacking Slavos. From behind the Jade Tendril, he heard tw explosions and knew Jade had opened fire on the flanking fighters. Most of the attacking Slavos were down. Vaga retracted her fibers and leaped at one of the approaching fighters. Scampering to the top of the fighter, she interfaced with the fighter and before long it spun out of control. That's when Vaga leaped from the crashing fighter and pulled herself onto the wing of the other fighter.

Morigin fired at the other fighter, but it fired back at him and it took all his energy to leap back into the annex of the ship. Lying on the cool floor grates, Morigin saw Vaga flip ont the back of the fighter and instead of interfacing with it, she reached down and tore the canopy off the cockpit, then hurled the pilot out of it. As the ship coasted in to a crash on the surface, Vaga rode it all the way down to the ground, where she flipped off and landed on the ground in front of the Tendril. Behind her, the fighter skidded into a building and exploded.

“By all the blackness!” Morigin muttered. “Having a conduit on board is definitely a plus!”

As Vaga stood there, a violent wind kicked up above her as a massive Slavo carrier ship hovered above her. A bath of lights snapped on and three different laser reticles targeted Vaga.

“Enough,” a voice boomed from the carrier ship. “We didn't think this would be easy.”

Morigin leaned into the cabin of the Tendril and said, “Can we do anything?”

Jade piped into Morigin's COM and said, “Our shields can't defend against that ships power. There is nothing we can do, Morigin.”

That's when Palo strode past Morigin and walked down the ramp. Morigin couldn't help but look at the dark gauntlet stretching over Palo's right arm. It made him shiver. And a devastating thoguht ran through Morigin's mind and he yelled, “Palo!! No!!!”

But it was too late. With his right hand directed at the carrier ship, Palo yet out a great yell and thick tarry rope of viscous blackness sprung from the gauntlet and enveloped the hovering ship. Palo screamed in pain as more thick tarry ropes wrapped around the ship, constricting it. The ship wavered, covered in the black ropes. Then in a planet crushing sound, the blackness flared around the ship, as tons of phalanx iron crumpled, creaked and imploded into sudden non-existence.

Palo collapsed in exhaustion as Morigin yelled, “Get in the ship!! Now!! Jade? Fire up the boosters and program a jump. We have to get out of here now!!”

Vaga helped Palo into the Tendril as Morigin watched where the ship once hovered. There in a tiny unseen point, dust and debris from the ground began swirling up into it and he could feel a slight tug to the air toward that unseen point. Even his sash wavered gently toward that point.

“What have we done?!”

Morigin retreated into the ship. In the cabin, the viewscreen was calculating the jump. Palo screamed in pain on the floor. “It burns! It's burning me!!”

“Strap in you two!” Morigin ordered. “If we don't get out of here now, we'll all meet our maker tonight.”

“Why is this thing burning him?” Vaga asked at Palo's side.

Morigin wiped his face with his sash and said, “It isn't burning. That's the pain of all the lives he just killed. Jade, we need to send an encrypted message to the GSA and warn them. Cilbuper has over ten billion citizens that will need to be evacuated immediately.”

“What's going on?” Vaga pleaded.

“Palo just unleashed a black hole on that carrier,” Morigin said. “It's only a matter of time before it absorbs the mass of the planet.”

“I did what?” Palo asked. “That can't be?! I just wanted to save you guys.” He began pulling at the gauntlet, digging into his skin, trying anything he could to remove it. “It won't come off!”

“Of course it won't come off!” yelled Morigin. “Once you put it on, you can't take it off unless your dead or you have the entire set of armor on.”

“What?!” Palo said. “I wouldn't have put it on if I knew that!”

Morigin just shook his head. “Jade how are we doing on the jump?”

“We're almost out of the atmosphere,” she said. “Once we're safely out of turbulnce we can make the jump.

Morigin stepped back and sat down in the captain's chair, where he pulled over the shoulder straps and locked them in. “Get strapped in!!”

Palo and Vaga scrambled to their seats and strapped in.

Morigin looked behind him at Palo's dark, armored arm. “It's not your fault, Palo. It's mine. I didn't warn you about it. There's no way you could have known. What's done is done. Going forward, remember that it reacts to your state of mind. You need to control yourself, otherwise you'll rip the galaxy apart.”

Sitting in his captain’s chair, Morigin thought long and hard what was about to happen to the planet of Cilbuper below them. Granted, Palo only opened a micro black hole, but Morigin knew of the ravenous appetite it would have. Within in a month, everything in that industrial park will have been sucked into it, generating more mass to collapse. After six months, the city itself would be consumed. A year from now, Cilbuper would be uninhabitable, the atmosphere swept away into its dark maw. Then the planetary matter would succumb next – the crust, the mantle, the core – like a great vampire the black hole would suck it all in.

Morigin thought about his dear friend Odiacz beneath the city’s surface. How her existence not only made believers out of Palo and Vaga, but himself too, years ago, when Telo brought him to visit her. After he witnessed her healing powers, he knew his life could only serve one purpose – the Gardaan and its recovery – the reclamation of belief systems and faith again, all the species of the galaxy united in harmony under one god. The thought of it was so great, he still had trouble fathoming it. He closed his eyes and focused his thoughts in prayer, searching for that connection, the feeling of a great listener far, far away. When he felt it, he passed on a prayer for Odiacz, a warning for her to leave the only home she’d had for over 103 years and find a new one.

Morigin had forgotten he left his COM on from the battle, but it served him well as Jade had a private message for him. “The boy,” Jade said. “Seems to be a bit of a loose cannon.”

Morigin looked up to the green laser actuator at the top of the viewscreen and talked silently, knowing Jade would analyze his movements and successfully read his lips, “I know. That’s my fault. Will work with him. Did you send out the All Distress Signal to the GSA?”

“Yes,” Jade said into his ear COM. “They’ve assembled a team and have begun evacuation procedures. They’re projecting a 91% success rate.” “Good,” Morigin mouthed back. “Where exactly did you plot a course for?”

“An out of the way system called Tropocco,” Jade said. “Very backwater. Primitive races once lived there, but they have all but died out. Wonderful beaches. Teeming jungles. Brimming with life.”

Morigin smiled and mouthed, “A vacation it is then. We could use some down time.”

“What about Vaga’s beacon?”

“I’ve thought about that and think I have an idea. Are we past the initial jump phase? Don’t want to fall on my ass, if I get out to early.”

“We’re in phase two,” Jade said. “No need to be strapped in again until phase three.”

Morigin released his harness and said, “We're clear. Vaga? I need you at the console.” The others unstrapped, but Vaga hesitated.

“For what?” she asked.

“We need to take care of that beacon of yours,” Morigin said. “Don't want another batch of your friends to rain down on us.”

Vaga cocked her head and looked suspiciously at Morigin

Exhausted, Morigin grabbed Vaga’s arm and lead her to the console. “I need you to hook up with Jade.”

Vaga pulled her arm back. “You’d have to open up my head and undo everything they did?! No way!”

Morigin grabbed her hands and stuck it on the console. “Remember, I said I wasn’t going to hurt you,” Morigin said. “Jade, after she’s hooked in isolate the frequency, then implant that frequency in a homer, only pitch it so that the new frequency is timed at the opposite of hers.”

Jade chimed in and said, “I think I know what you have in mind. It’s okay Vaga, go ahead. Interface with me.”

Vaga finally listened, her eyes rolling white and the squares down her arms and legs lit up red. It only took a moment for Jade to isolate the signal, create it’s opposite and set the homer. A compartment in the console opened up with a small, button that dimly blinked red. Morigin, grabbed it and lashed it to an old piece of banya twine in his pocket and then turned around.

Vaga stepped forward to receive the homer, only Morigin stopped her. “It can’t be on you,” he said. “It has to be in close proximity but it won’t cancel out your signal if it’s directly on your person.”

He turned toward Palo and strung it around his neck. “That should do,” Morigin said.

Palo looked at it, then looked at Vaga and lastly looked at Morigin. “Why me?”

Morigin smiled and said, “You think she’d rather spend all her time with me? Remember, I was going to kill her. No one can live with that. But you two will do just fine.”

Palo and Vaga exchanged an awkward, coy glance. Together they

all looked at the blackened gauntlet on Palo's arm. as if death itself had latched onto him. As the Jade Tendril rocketed toward Tropocco, they all sat down and closed their eyes. They didn't know what was going to happen now, but they knew one portion of the galaxy would never be the same again, thanks to their mistakes.