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2022-02-15 00:54:38Like a shuttle revving up for takeoff, the dome filled with a loud hum, shaking the table on which Tejeda and Shayla were leaning. Their growing uneasiness was worsened by the steady increase in volume and tone.
Shayla pressed her hands over her ears as the continuous noise scraped at her brain. The commotion died down just when she felt she couldn't stand it any longer. She opened her eyes and took her hands away from her ears just in time to hear Uni1 speak.
"L-403 is now ready for action. We are not a tolerant race in general. But our curiosity for the Nubilae compels us to be lenient this time. We are scientists at heart, and we like knowledge. One of our deepest desires is to capture a Nubilae while he is still alive. I will give you two minutes to consider your surrender. We will even think about letting your companion leave."
Shayla wanted to decipher what was beneath the smirk on Admiral Vologorn’s face. He had a plan now for sure, but was that for the better or worse?
“I suppose you want the Oculus Grandi as well, right?” Tejeda yelled to Uni1.
The latter responded unaffected. "Not necessarily. Our primary objective is to obtain you. For the Universal Consensus, you are far more important than the Oculus Grandi. That is a mere weapon of mass destruction, while a Nubilae is something far greater than that. With you, our research will advance several centuries ahead of time."
Tejeda stared at his feet, wishing to overcome the ensuing silence. He shook his head, making his silky black hair flutter. When he turned to Shayla, his glare was clear. A purple spark danced around his grey irises. The madness was there, barely kept in check.
His hand reached into his pocket and took out a small black box. "Shayla, take it! Keep it safe. Inside is the Oculus Grandi. I know I messed things up big time. I just want you to trust me for one last time. First, we will switch weapons."
Tejeda took her laser gun and shoved Carmen into Shayla's palm, forcing her to clench her fist around the spoon. "Please look after her for me. You run when I signal, take E00, and don't look back. After you leave the dome, don't stop even for a second. Simply keep running. You will be able to tell when it is time to stop."
When he tried to rise, Shayla grabbed him by his collar, pinning him under her dark green stare. “What do you mean by one last time?”
The purple hue was more obvious by the second while his gray gaze appeared amused. That was how madness, bloodlust, and amusement looked like combined?
“Just run and don’t look back. Don’t come after me. When everything is done, leave with the shuttle and forget I ever existed.”
Shayla couldn't identify his normal sense of humor and carefreeness in his speech. Was this the same individual that impersonated Karl and Kalden Deltak? Was he the same person who had been on the dance floor?
Shayla couldn’t tell and that revelation made her heart skip a beat. That happened again when he raised his hands above his horns and shouted. "I will come out. Uni1, make sure none of the novices have a cramp in their finger on the trigger."
Once he was up, Tejeda could see L-403. It was a sublime piece of tech for any enthusiast. Too bad that he didn’t like such things. That was the reason why he always avoided taking over the bodies of engineers. Too much headache to impersonate one.
The L-403 particle cannon stood atop an antigrav platform, as it was too heavy to be moved about. It was spherical in shape, with three curving arms positioned equidistantly around the main gun assembly. The cannon could fire a concentrated stream of negatively charged ions that could kill everything in its path.
The morons had L-403 fully charged even though it was highly unstable after the energy build-up. That made Tejeda’s upper lip curve into a perverted smile. Everything was going according to his plan.
“I will come to you while you let the woman go for the exit. We have a deal?”
Tejeda lowered his focus on Shayla, guiding her to the door with a tilt of his head, and Uni1 nodded in accord. She dashed up to E00, grabbed his robotic arm, and began pulling him toward the exit. Shayla returned a brief glance as she passed through the doorway. She couldn't see the enemies since they were hidden behind those extremely broad shoulders that covered everyone else. His hands were tucked behind his head, concealing the gun.
Shayla threw away her high-heeled shoes and continued running alongside E00, who was considerably slowing her down. The air dislocated by her body's rapid movement made her dress entangle around her legs and took away the tear from her cheek.
Tejeda smirked as the Alpha Pirates and Unis closed in on him. His eyes were totally purple now, and he was in full crazy mode. He used his thumb to set the required wavelength for the laser beam. He pulled the gun from behind his head quicker than a cowboy in an old western and fired right through the L-403 orifice.
The laser stimulated the particles to vibrate, causing them to release electromagnetic waves, in this instance gamma rays. The gamma rays, in turn, created additional electron-positron couples, and so on, culminating in a particle and radiation avalanche. The photons were powerful enough to cause atomic nuclei to get excited. Tejeda was curious about Uni's expertise in nuclear photonics, or the use of strong light to regulate nuclear processes.
Shayla was far enough away that the blast that demolished the dome merely threw her a few meters into the air. Her fingers dug into the ground, and dirt got under her fingernails. Her jaw ached from gnashing her teeth so hard. Shayla's gaze was drawn to the spoon that had fallen next to her. "What did he do, Carmen?"
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The Space Spoon 16. Idiosyncratic Beings
Shayla and E00 sat and looked into space while the wind died away. She stroked her index finger between the fingers of her other hand, rubbing harder and harder until the agony forced her to concentrate. Her tired mind fought to form logical ideas, to focus on something, to devise a strategy. Her mind was plagued by images of the purple eyes.“Shayla, I know what you are thinking, but you can’t simply stroll in that area,” E00 stated, his robotic voice disturbing her train of thoughts. “There are beta and gamma radiations that can harm your body irreparably.”“I have to. I need to see with my own eyes that there is nothing left, that his existence has ended.” Shayla paused, gasping for air. “He's reckless, sure, but I can’t believe he would throw his life away. At some point, he mentioned something about a self-preservation instinct embedded at the core of his species.”Shayla came to a complete stop. E
The Space Spoon 17. Evolution
Billions of years ago, a life-supporting planet imploded from its very core. The civilization that used to inhabit it developed weapon technology way above their intellect levels. I say this because technological advancement should be as high as their level of understanding of how to preserve their planet, especially before the process of colonizing other worlds.The debris left after the destruction of that planet, its name lost in time, scattered in multiple directions as the explosion threw them in a perpetual motion. Without friction forces, they kept moving through space. Some were simple masses formed from frozen water from the seas and oceans of the destroyed planet. One of these crashed on Nubilonia.It contained marine diatoms, carbon-based organisms, more specifically microalgae. When the ice melted under the perpetual sun of Nubilonia on the side where it was forever shining, those diatoms extracted silica from the sand in that desert and incorporated it int
The Space Spoon 18. A Messed Up Team
The small shuttle took off the moment Shayla inserted the trajectory vector. E00 positioned a hand over the interior hull and leaned in. His energy extended around the vessel, giving it a steady forcefield. “I am ready to absorb anything that comes our way,” he said, sensing Shayla’s readiness as well.“Here goes nothing,” she replied when the ships of the Universal Consensus came into visual range.Tejeda limped to the chair and sat on the chair next to Shayla, studying her dress. “Who am I?”"Ugh, I don't have time for this," she grumbled as she tossed the spoon onto his lap, her gaze fixed on the screen. "Take Carmen and deal with your own shambles as usual."The Nubilae took the spoon and, out of habit, searched for his shirt to polish it. Nevertheless, he hadn't had any since he was naked. Tejeda leaned down and used the hem of Shayla’s dress to make Carmen shine.With a glimmer of delight in his
The Space Spoon 19. Chauffeur C1313
A silver sky hovered over Sphitt, with shades of grey, orange, and cream lining its high-density rings. The three planetary rings were formed from dust, gas, and ice. I will let you guess which substance created each hue.The Interplanetary Police Headquarters towered over the entire city of Hitarra and beyond. In fact, the building was a town all by itself. The one thousand floors housed all the branches of the police. Also, high-ranking officials lived there with their families and, thus, certain levels were designated for schools, parks, and shops. One could stay there for a lifetime without leaving the Headquarters. The admirals did. Perhaps this was why they were so disconnected from reality.“Beautiful on the outside and wretched on the inside. Exactly like the people living here,” Tejeda whispered to himself as he reached the glass doors.In the color of the Interplanetary Police, the walls were all metallic blue, so polished that Tejeda could
The Space Spoon 20. Up for Promotion
The conference room on the 777th floor didn’t impress Tejeda. It wasn’t his first time being there. Even though the white minimalist decor with a long and narrow table and chairs on each side had an interesting ramification pattern etched on its surface that he loved to explore, nothing could change that the humans there soiled the room with their presence.Grand Admiral Darren Kyel presided over the meeting as usual. He left his spot at the head of the table and extended a hand to Tejeda. The Nubilae looked at it for a few moments before reluctantly shaking it.When the admiral’s other arm stretched and wrapped around Tejeda’s shoulders, the first instinct the Nubilae had was to step back, but the handshake kept him in place. Darren Kyel smiled and turned to the five Interplanetary Police admirals.“For those of you who haven’t met him yet, let me introduce you to Colonel Tejeda Hajar from the Surveillance Unit.”
The Space Spoon 21. The Second in Command
The Interplanetary Police Headquarters on Sphitt went up through the clouds and pierced the sky. The building also had another part that the citizens of Hittara couldn’t see. Beneath the ground, hundreds of other floors awaited, all the way through the planet’s crust. Most of these were the prison and the interrogation chambers.The heat from the planet's molten core infiltrated the walls, which the higher-ups appreciated. The increased temperature loosened the tongues of the prisoners, unsettling them during the questioning.Shayla sat on a plain metal chair, her wrists bound behind her and her back straight. Because of the dazzling light coming from a crack in the wall, she couldn't see anything in the room. She was tired of answering all the questions they hurled at her.The whooshing of a paper sliding across the table had a nice ring to it. Anything was better than the sound of the voice asking questions all the time. Her fingers touched the doc
The Space Spoon 22. Jackeye
With the light shining on them, Steffen's golden eyes gleamed into a vortex of despair. He had been interrogated extensively, and his responses were essentially the same each time. "Allow me to connect to a console, and I will provide you with any information you require."That didn’t work out well for him. The inquisitor was relentless and didn’t want to make things easier for Steffen Madigan, who would rather be called the Jackeye.The prisoner's wrists hurt. His mind searched frantically for the virtual world to which he was used to. This world had no meaning for Steffen. But he realized that in order to go where he wanted to go, he needed to collaborate, at least to some extent.“Listen, we will consider your release if you tell us how you hacked into our database.”“Ok, I will tell you. However, this won’t solve the issues you have,” Steffen shrugged, his blonde curls glued to his cheeks. The scorching heat m
The Space Spoon 23. A Ship with Personality
“Home, sweet home!” mocked Tejeda as he entered the meeting room on SCF1.The admirals let him take his own spoils of war, meaning this old junk. The Nubilae thought he would forget the scent of mold and the patched-up walls. This was what he deserved for hoping. Well, he just had to shut off his smell receptors during his next shift.He jumped onto a chair and spun about, waiting for everyone to come in and take a seat. There was only room for seven persons at the table, so one place remained vacant. Tejeda had picked up E00 from the scrap metal junkyard, and their team was nearly complete.Shayla, C1313, Jackeye, E00, and the Interstellar Police officer who had passed Tejeda’s test were all in the room. The hacker and the energy being remained on their feet while the others sat at the table."I don't enjoy speeches, so I will keep this brief," Tejeda said, without pausing the spinning. "This ship is a total wreck. We need to make some
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104. Meat Suit Part 2
The door closes after the last man leaves the pub. Tejeda resumes his previous position and finishes his drink. By now, we are both soaking wet, but neither of us seems to care. My reason is the seven beers. I wonder what his is."Apparently, you're not leaving, and we've run out of time," he says as he turns to face me. His purple eyes sparkle. A chill goes down my spine. "These guys aren't going down without a fight. I might have to die to quench their hunger for vengeance. But the crystal I took is far more significant. It must be safeguarded."Tejeda leans forward, his hand reaching over the bar for the knife the bartender uses for the lemons. He sits again in his chair, gripping the handle with both of his hands, the pointy tip toward his stomach. I have seen this stance before in movies when someone performs seppuku.Filling his lungs with air, his chest expands, and he thrusts the knife right into his belly. I cover my mouth with a hand but not my eyes. I need to see what happe
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103. Meat Suit Part 1
A/N: A Halloween special side story, Meat Suit shows the events through the eyes of a normal, human nerd. Enjoy!***Halloween, the greatest night of the year. The time when I can go out with friends and be awkward as usual without getting a stare.I look in the mirror and see the dashing vampire I transform into every time I put on this ancient outfit. With extreme care, I place a black handkerchief in my pocket, covering the hole that reveals the lining. This year, I intended to get a new costume, but the latest game in the R****** E*** franchise and H***** 3 prevented me from doing so. They were released this year, and I had to get them, and then some.Sorry for not disclosing their names, but even in my diary, I avoid needless advertising. And don't make fun of me for keeping a diary in my thirties. Many people keep diaries, but they call them journals to appear more sophisticated and mature.The black costume’s collar is up to my ears, letting everyone see the red embroidered int
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102. Monster Within Part 2
Rayna followed him through dark alleys, avoiding the city's main thoroughfares and heading for the city's outskirts. There weren't many other people around since it was late and freezing. The two veiled shadows of the night were easy to miss. Illuminated figures appeared randomly through the windows of dimly lit houses.He stopped in front of a derelict house. The sculpted archway stood crooked above the entrance, but he went beneath it without a second thought.Rayna stared at the white structure enveloped in moss to make sure it wouldn’t fall on her head. When the Bralxoid disappeared inside, she swallowed hard and followed him.Doctor Iadfoc invited her into a small, dark room with a single goose-neck lamp illuminating the top of a large table filled with glass vials. He gestured toward a threadbare sofa against the wall. He grabbed a simple wooden chair and sat facing her. For once, someone wasn't looking at her with meaningless pity, for which she was grateful.Iadfoc had a scann
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101. Monster Within Part 1
A/N: Monster Within is a side story taking place about a thousand years or more before the action in the novel. Enjoy!***Rayna sat in front of the mirror, removing her makeup. Who would she discover underneath? Foundation applied in triple layers, contact lenses, even a wig to make certain no one would see her change.Skin patches of different complexions stretched across her face like puzzle pieces jammed together into a chaotic pattern. Some parts of the jigsaw had wrinkles, while others were as smooth as a baby’s skin.Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge of the mirror. Her heterochromatic eyes were both different colors than before she wore contact lenses. And her hair... Well, the hair looked more like a wig than the one she threw on the floor. Honey-blonde hair tumbled in waves over her right shoulder. Ruby-red hair, spikey like a hedgehog’s, pointed toward the ceiling from the top of her head. Black, curly strands went down to her chin from her left.She was a mo
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100. Sunsetrise Part 4
Time passes differently on Yacleemb. I can’t say it’s the 56 hours days, the peacefulness of the Spreahs, or Lyam’s company. What I do know is that I’ve lost track of time. Every day, he builds things for the village; he’s happy, full of smiles, and I’m drunk with his genuine blissfulness.Unfortunately, I still have memories and can’t help but feel guilty for not contacting our friends. Wanting to know how things are working out for our crew, I stroll through the forest to the shuttle. After it powers up, a small blinking red light appears on the console. A message from E00.“Shayla, I hope you’ve found Tejeda by now. More than two months have passed, and no news from you. In the time you've been gone, things got worse around here.“Since the day you left, Jackeye has been trapped inside his virtual reality. I can’t say if it’s a voluntary decision or not. He cut me off completely.“Cato took a shuttle and left the Space Spoon about a month ago. The Interplanetary Police files show t
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99. Sunsetrise Part 3
Shayla Bale's POVOnly Tejeda Hajar is capable of disappearing and leaving me with an ambassador’s corpse. Once again, I had to assume the role of acting captain and evade the Interplanetary Police. We are all renegades once more, as we were before Tejeda found us.The crew needs me to steer the ship in the right direction, but my thoughts are far away, following the faceless Nubilae who left us. I lean against the wall and stare at his empty chair, wishing he will appear there, smiling without giving me any explanation as he always does.“Thinking about him won’t bring him back,” E00’s voice echoes from the ceiling speakers. “If you want him here again, you must go after him.”“Don’t get me wrong, E00, I want to. But it was his choice. He left us. Even if I go after him, he may not come back.”“If there’s anyone who can shake him out of the state he’s in, you’re the one.”“Why must you torment me?” I slump in Tejeda’s chair, rubbing my eyes to forestall crying. The gesture is pointle
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98. Sunsetrise Part 2
Reaching out, Carmen’s hand brushes against mine. Even though I’m mad as hell, a rush of electrical discharges takes over my core. That happened every time she touched me since the moment we’d met. Every fiber of my body, carbon and silica alike, crave to have her again by my side.“I tested the spoon. All the results said the same thing: it’s Nubilae. Who was it?”“My sister, Celia.” For the first time, a vein throbs on Carmen’s forehead. But she regains the glazed look. “She died during Iadfoc’s experiment. Many did. The rest went insane. Only I, you, and Rahul remained true Nubilae. Well, now only you and I since you killed Rahul.”“He had multiple run-ins with me and my crew. If I let him continue, surely one of my men would have died. I had to do something.”“No,” Carmen shouts, showing the anger hidden behind her previous blank expression. “I sent him to see how you are and test you. Well, you failed. No Nubilae should value the life of a lesser being over one of his brethren.”
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97. Sunsetrise Part 1
A/N: Sunsetrise is a short story I've written before even starting the novel. It holds the ending of the first volume and is made up of 4 parts. The first 2 parts are from Tejeda's POV and the last 2 parts from Shayla's. Enjoy!***Tejeda Hajar's POV“Happy birthday, Shayla!” I invite her to sit on the blanket next to me with a pat.It took me about a week to create a perfect replica of Genoria Prime inside Jackeye's world.Once every two thousand years, Genoria Prime, a water planet with just a few stretches of land covered in sand, is perfectly aligned to get the ultimate romantic view. One of its suns sets while the other rises, a phenomenon called sunsetrise.To recreate it from my memories inside Jackeye's virtual world involved a few setbacks. But that isn't important anymore.Shayla takes one of the glasses of red wine and fixes her dark green eyes on me. “Whose body are you wearing now?”“You know bodies are just meat suits for me.” I give a sly smirk, looking her over. “Well,
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96. His Blade
Tejeda's lips moved as though they were not his own. “Who’s she?”Shayla placed a hand on his back, touching for the first time the sludgy skin he had in this form. “Tejeda, stop. He’s dead.”Tejeda lifted his head to look at the sky. He remained like that for a long while before murmuring, “Why did you kill him?”"Sorry! Next time," Shayla murmured, sheathing her scimitar, "I'll kill the other guy after he kills you."“How did you know which one was me?”“Really? Is there another idiot who would risk dying for a spoon?”She observed how he flinched but said nothing. There was something wrong with him. Nonetheless, Shayla didn't believe she had the authority to inquire. In any case, she didn't expect a fair answer from him."Did you bring any DNA for me?" Tejeda asked without turning around. "As you can see, I’m in bad shape."Shayla hurled a vial toward him, and he grabbed it with one of his two remaining tentacles.“This is the last one holding the blood of King Astin. Enjoy!”Tejed
