The Deadliest Lifeform in the Universe Loves Me

Volume 5: Gamma-20, Chapter 5.25

Since so much of the day had already passed, the crew decided to put off the work until tomorrow and headed to grab some food after the makeshift funeral, followed quickly by going to the robot bar to drink their sorrows away.

For the first time since we’d come aboard Jessipie-90 people split off into groups instead of everyone heading to the media center together. One group did go to watch a movie while another went to the gym to work out their frustrations, and then the rest of us just hung around the lounge in the bar.

It was me, Zyno, Reim, Lummy, Num and Zemman—our bunkmates who stayed at the bar, nursing our horrible tasting drinks mostly in silence. Occasionally the crew members would ask me a question about the Predazoans or how we were expected to fight against such an elusive enemy, but that just seemed to further depress Zemman who was grieving over the death of his lover, and I instead tried to shift the topic to happier things, talking about my favorite media from my home planet, Earth, and asking the others what all they enjoyed from theirs.

Conversation was still tense and awkward and dulled rather quickly, so instead we just focused on our drinking.

After another hour or so everyone was properly drunk and exhausted, so we decided to call it a night. It seemed like pretty much everyone else was winding down then too and we learned they shifted around the rooms to compensate for all the dead or missing people, spreading us out in only three different crew quarters now; we ended up with Vola, the red female glizreks.

When everyone was resetting how the mattresses were all organized, Reim took down the privacy screen, saying she would actually be more comfortable knowing I was in their direct eyeline, just in case anything happened.

It was definitely a change from how Reim originally acted around me, distrusting me as some shady mercenary. Now she seemed convinced her life was totally in my hands; like Zyno, she believed the safest place would be near me.

They weren’t totally wrong, but I worried they were vastly overestimating my abilities.

The next morning when everyone got up it was time to head to the communal showers, gathering the toiletries we were offered and heading over to the gym, splitting up from the girls at that point.

After re-wearing the only outfit I had a few days in a row—and considering I had some blood and ooze on it, I was given a spare crew uniform, same as everyone else on my team. I was sad I no longer looked like a cool space badass, but at least I was totally clean.

Once everyone cleaned up we all headed to breakfast together, afterwards we were rescanned with Zyno’s device as per the new daily precaution, and then it was time for Gadow to confirm everyone’s work for the day. Initially, the Jessipie-90 crew needed to perform routine maintenance on the vessel, but when that was done the engineers would all split off to work on the warp reactor. Zyno of course would be working on the sensor to confirm Gamma-20’s location, so a small group would stay with him to keep him safe, including myself, Willa, Brunt, and Reim who seemed insistent she wanted to stay with us.

We split apart from the main group then to escort Zyno to the engineering bay so he could get to work while we were all there to support and defend him.

“You know it’s kind of putting a lot of pressure on me, everyone hoping I can get this sensor working so we can find Gamma-20.” He admitted.

I shrugged, “I feel like everyone’s got pressure on them for the work they need to do now; can’t dick around with our current situation.”

Zyno nodded quickly, “I know, I’m not saying my work is any more important, but I still wish I wasn’t the only Predazoan researcher available.”

“You mean if Hennor was still alive he’d be able to help?” I asked.

“I didn’t know his technical expertise, but surely having another person who’s studied the Predazoans would help.” Zyno reasoned.

I quirked up an eyebrow, “You didn’t know him well?”

Zyno turned to me, almost looking surprised, “When would I have time to get to know him? He came from The Judicator, then promptly went on the Vyrane mission; I don’t think I said two words to the man until we joined this mission together.” He admitted.

I turned to Willa behind us while we walked through the hallway, “Willa, you’re from The Judicator, did you know Hennor at all?”Willa shook her head, “No, I was newly recruited on The Judicator, and they kept us pretty separate from all the researchers.” She gestured with her face tentacles towards Zyno, “Same as him, first I ever talked to Hennor was on this mission.”

Zyno waved to me, “If anything, you would’ve known him best since you were on the Vyrane mission together.”

I crossed my arms as I thought over our time together, “Yeah, but he was pretty timid and stayed as far away from the action as he could—you know it was a warzone down there. I knew him in passing, but I certainly didn’t get to know him personally—no idea what he could’ve done to help you out with your device.”

“Um, exactly how big is your mission team to get to the point none of you knew the man who rode in a lifepod out of void space with you?” Reim inquired.

I shrugged, “Lot of moving parts, a lot of threats we’re keeping our eyes on, so I would have no idea exactly how many teams we’ve got working together.”

Reim’s eyes grew wide, “There’s multiple teams out there?”

I tilted my head back and forth, wanting to move on from the conversation so I didn’t have to lie too much to the poor girl who relied on me for her safety, “I mean yeah, of course, all manner of different threats out there, each team trained for different ones.” I gestured to Zyno, “We’re from a vessel called The Radiance.” I waved over to Willa, “Willa and some others are from The Judicator, and our mission commanders brought us together for this threat.”

Reim cocked her head to the side, “Does that happen often?”

I sighed, happy Reim seemed to be in a better mood than yesterday, but annoyed her good mood was so inquisitive.

“Dunno, first time it happened for me.”

Thankfully, Reim seemed to finally grasp I wasn’t interested in playing 20 Questions, so she let the conversation drop.

We arrived at the engineering bay and Zyno got to work right away on his device, pulling out all the tools and supplies he brought from our lifepod.

Zyno might’ve been a huge dork, but he was my dork, and I thought it was awesome he was so tech-savvy along with all his biological knowledge; I would want him to be on my team any day.

Still, after watching him work for a few minutes, I got incredibly bored and realized I didn’t have anything to preoccupy my time while I was there to support and protect Zyno.

I hadn’t been trained as some royal guard after all—hadn’t defended anything in my life at all really. Even on Vyrane it was mostly just fighting and running, something to do.

I was starting to regret being part of the security detail.

Not one to just sit around, I started looking around the engineering bay, hoping to find something I could play with, looking through some of the upturned desks and cabinets from yesterday.

I heard Reim laugh from her spot in the corner and looked over at her, and that just made her laugh again.

“Bored?” She asked.

I looked over to see Willa and Brunt standing stoically at the doorway like this was no big deal, then turned back to Reim and sighed, “Yeah, that obvious?”

Reim rolled her eyes and got up from her seat and headed towards me, “Here, play with this.” She offered, handing her tablet to me.

I moved it around in my hands, “Got games on it?”

She laughed again, “Of course.” She confirmed, then pulled up some menu and loaded up a hologram game that looked like a mix between Missile Defense and Pong.

“Oh shit, this looks cool, thanks.” I quirked an eyebrow at her, “But won’t you be bored now?”

Reim smiled and shook her head, then pulled out a smooth, blank black rectangle, “Don’t worry about me, I’ve got plenty to read.” She said, then opened the rectangle as though it’d been a book, and a digital screen with scrolling text lit up before us.

“Nice, let me know if you wanna trade back at some point.” I offered, and she just smiled, nodded, then returned to her spot in the corner.

I held the tablet up so Zyno could see, “Look Zyno, games!” I announced.

Zyno shook his head, but refused to look away from his work, “Wonderful, now will you please keep quiet with them? I don’t need you distracting me right now.”

I rolled my eyes, then sat down against the wall, “Yeah yeah, asshole...” I grumbled, then resumed my new holographic game, content to stay there all day if I had to.

***

That first day Zyno worked on his scanner was rather uneventful, and it turned out it would be the start of a pattern. We all met up for lunch, resumed working on our various projects, met up for dinner and then ended the night relaxing together usually in groups with our bunkmates before heading off to bed.

The days continued like that, having breakfast and being rescanned, the Jessipie-90 crew doing regular ship maintenance while Zyno worked on his sensor, then the engineers would all work on the warp reactor, and then we’d have our shared breaks with the rest of the crew for lunch and dinner, and finally we’d try out different recreational activities with our new roommates before restarting the pattern the next day.

It was nice we were starting to get to know our new people, befriending them even, but I was still on edge with the lack of progress on the warp reactor and sensor projects—not like I could do anything about it though.

Worst of all the collapsed warp gate seemed to be growing, causing Zyno and I to worry our time would be running out soon. Zyno showed me the progress of the strange spatial crack every day, and while it looked like a long, squiggly line at first, there seemed to be weird reflective cracks forming around it—looking like strange, shattered glass.

After five full days of seemingly no progress, I had to ask Zyno what was going on with his project.

“Before you acted like this would be no big deal, so what seems to be the problem?” I asked Zyno while we were all in the engineering bay.

Zyno glared at me, “Oh, I’m sorry, do you know how to create a scanner that can detect creatures who don’t generate normal heat or energy signatures—that can only be tracked through specialized equipment that reads their unique biology?”

I sighed, “You know I’m not trying to criticize you, Zyno, obviously I have no idea what any of this shit is.” I waved to his cluttered work desk that had piles of screens and sensors I couldn’t even begin to guess what all they did, “I’m just wondering if we’re using our time wisely now.”

Zyno continued glaring at me, “Why don’t you head down to the warp reactor, complain about how they haven’t fixed it yet.”

I crossed my arms and fixed him with a level gaze, “Come on, don’t be a baby about it.” I nodded to him, “Really, what do you think’s holding you back?”

Zyno harsh gaze continued for a few more moments until he finally sighed and shook his head, “It’s just hard to calibrate the readings since I don’t have a proper Predazoan sample; if I had any access to their unique DNA or some scrap of biomass, the sensor would be working no problem.”

To illustrate his point, Zyno flipped a switch and several screens on the tablet lit up to show a complete mapping of Jessipie-90, he then turned a dial so the colors on the map shifted through different filters, looking like heat signatures, ultraviolet and even infrared scanners. I could see the rest of the crew and where they were obviously on his map, but nothing else—nothing by the crystal storage tanks.

I shrugged, “What about the ooze from the dead drone forms? Can that help?”

Zyno shook his head again, “Afraid not, the dead drone is completely inert—no energy signature to trace at all, that’s why it dissolved in the first place.”

“So you’re having to just guess at like the energy signature of the Predazoan or something?” I asked.

Zyno shrugged, “That, or try and rebuild it from memory.”

I pointed over to his personal tablet, “Don’t you have notes on the Predazoan energy to help with that?”

Zyno’s eyes narrowed into a glare again, “I should, but my data banks were wiped with The Judicator’s restructuring. Remember how they compartmentalized the Predazoan research data? Their energy signature wasn’t part of my research department, so my access to that information was withdrawn.”

My jaw dropped then, “Are you fucking serious? Really? Things have gotten that bad?”

Zyno sighed again, “Why do you think we were all complaining? We’re working with our hands tied behind our backs like this; if I had all my old data, a sensor like this should’ve only taken a day or so to calibrate. Now, it’s like I’m just shooting in the dark, trying to guess the DNA signature through millions of lines of codes, hoping I memorized enough to at least kickstart something we can trace.”

I couldn’t believe how stupid those Lord Generals were; time and time again they crippled our capabilities, all while expecting unrealistic results. First it started with them containing Eve, limiting their strongest asset, and now they were even preventing their researchers from being able to work in the field—couldn’t even track their targets.

They might’ve gotten away with it after the last mission, but once we were finished here, there was no way I’d let them stop me from speaking my mind—I would demand a meeting with the Lord Generals to let them know just how stupid they’ve been and would insist something needed to change.

“You really don’t think we’ll be able to track the monster hiding on the ship?” Reim asked from her corner, always in our company now, usually quiet and out of the way.

I turned back to Zyno, “Yeah seriously, what are you thinking?”

Zyno scratched at the top of his tentacles, “I dunno, it could end up taking me a while, or I might get lucky and crack the code in a matter of hours.”

Reim looked quite disheartened then, “We’re relying on luck?”

Zyno shook his head quickly, “No no, just a matter of time.”

I sighed and leaned against his desk, “Think we have the time to spare?”

Zyno looked down with a thoughtful frown on his face, “Not time so much, but maybe if the other team could spare an engineer or two, I’m sure we could crack the code much faster through trial and error.”

I shook my head, “Same as you said you aren’t an engineer, those people aren’t biologists; you really think they could help that much? More than that, considering the project they’re working on, would it be worth the risk of slowing it down?”

I could see Zyno knew he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. One on hand, without the sensor, we’d probably never know where Gamma-20 was hiding, but on the other hand, if we didn’t get the warp reactor fixed, we’d be totally stuck and screwed—and with the warp gate collapsing and possibly turning into a singularity, which was the bigger threat?

Then a thought suddenly struck me, and I realized there would be a way we could start searching the storage tanks without Zyno’s sensor, and without putting our people at risk.

“Hang on, let’s put a pin in this project for now, we should go see Gadow; I have an idea.” I announced.

Everyone turned to me, looking more than a little surprised.

“You’re not thinking of having us search through the storage tanks, are you? Not only would that be beyond dangerous, but Gadow said he didn’t want to break protocol and risk losing their contract profits without concrete proof first.” Zyno reasoned.

I smiled, “Right, but we don’t need to search through the storage tanks, they’ve got someone who can do it for us.”

Reim looked like her green skin paled a little, “You don’t want us searching for your monster, do you?”

I shook my head quickly, “Not at all, but you guys still have four robots left, right? Why not put them to work?”

Zyno eyes grew wide when he realized what I was planning, “Oh shit yeah, why not use all the resources we have now.” He turned to the chaotic work pile on his desk, looking quite disappointed with it, then turned back to me, “Yeah, let’s go see if Gadow will let us use the last of his robots for a suicide mission.”