Cosmic Savior: (A Space Opera Adventure) (Interstellar Gunrunner Book 3), page 7
“Is this your way of sucking up?” Chaska asked her. “Because we’re more than happy to vent your ship right now.”
“Oh, you two!” I said, trying in vain to lighten the mood. “I’m sure we can all banter later.”
Just then, a tingle passed through my bones—I would later find out it was the aforementioned IOCD scan, and not just butterflies in my stomach.
“Let ’em in!” Gadra called. “I wanna show Bodhi what I’ve painted! Oh, and the tattoos I did!”
I frowned at Chaska. “She made tattoos?”
“Times have changed,” Chaska said softly. Then, after consulting her wrist implant, she nodded at us. “Looks like you’ve come up clean. Step back so we can drop the field.” She regarded Amodari from head to toe. “I hope you won’t mind if your Gnosis hounds stay on board, princess.”
“Threatened by the presence of dignity, are we?” Amodari prodded.
“If I were, I wouldn’t let you in.” She scoffed. “Always time to reconsider even that.”
Amodari gave me a pointed look. “Yes, there most assuredly is.”
I opted to do the smart thing and keep my mouth shut as Chaska’s team went about shutting the repulsor field down. Sure enough, after a few tense seconds the blue wall vanished and I was within hugging distance of my beloved. But I didn’t act on my impulses. I just stood there, still sensing another field between us—one more subtle and harder to circumvent.
This was illustrated plainly when Amodari eased a step forward, only to be halted by Chaska’s gloved palm.
“Hold it right there, Amodari. If it’s all the same to you, my people and I have some questions about how you two ended up here.”
The inustrazan offered an amiable nod. “But of course. My, how I’d love to enlighten the ignorant.”
“Then I suppose you wouldn’t mind submitting to said questioning over a cup of coffee. Just you and me, nothing painful involved. Except hearing your voice.”
“The sentiment is mutual.” Amodari grinned at me, which I could only take as a sign of simultaneous victories.
The first victory was getting to annoy the hell out of Chaska with constant barbs, knowing full well that if the insurgents harmed a hair on her pretty body, she’d call out the troops. Her second victory was separating me from Chaska.
Brutal, but it was what it was. And besides, I got the uncomfortable sensation that Chaska also wanted some time away from me.
I was happy to oblige, of course. Provided she eventually ran back into my arms.
“Well, if we’re finished making veiled threats,” Ruena said, “I believe Bodhi’s long overdue for a tour of our fine facility… and a reunion with his baby, Stream Dancer.”
“You can say that again,” Gadra chimed in, squeezing past Chaska to grab my hand. “C’mon, Tusky’s been waitin’ to talk with you. I mean, I have too, but Tusky’s first.”
I scrunched my eyes, not sure who or where to look for answers on that one. “Tusky? As in, sloth-bear-thing, metal-chewing Tusky? Talking? With me?”
“You heard that right,” Ruena said. “He’s quite the conversationalist nowadays.”
On any given day, my mind would’ve been working overtime to figure out what had gone down with that creature in the past two months. But as Gadra dragged me down the corridor, I found that I didn’t give much of a damn about Tusky or the war or acronyms like IOCD.
All I cared about was Chaska watching me go, not a hint of warmth in her stare.
Five
So there you have it, an apt demonstration of the human condition. I had (almost) everything I treasured back on the masterpiece that was my life—my crew, my ship, my freedom—yet I was missing the one color to tie it all together. That color, naturally, was the searing red of Chaska’s love. And because of its absence, the entire work felt lifeless and uninspired. Less a masterpiece, and more a cheap reproduction you can buy from any fabrique with an image-cloning algorithm.
But enough of my moaning. It was an ever-present backdrop of experience as Gadra pulled me through the facility’s dingy, prefab corridors, prattling on about this and that battle, who’d died, who’d gone where… who cared!?
Ruena, who either foresaw my approaching meltdown or just read it on my face, stepped up to the plate. She put a hand on Gadra’s shoulder and said, “Gad, why don’t you run ahead and make sure Tusky has the lab ready for visitors? Bodhi and I have a few things to discuss.”
The girl stopped and spun around, grimacing. “Adult things, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’m almost an adult, too. So I can hear it.”
“Gad.”
“What? He just got back from his vacation.”
“I’ve told you already—it wasn’t a vacation. He was imprisoned.”
“Uh-huh, sure… imprisoned, vacation… what’s the difference?”
Ruena’s four-eyed glare seemed to do the trick, however.
Gadra let go of my hand, gave a defeated huff, and started down the corridor without us. “Don’t be too long, or I’ll start playing around with my tattoo gun again.”
Once the girl was sufficiently out of earshot, Ruena looked sidelong at me. “She’s certainly got your spirit.”
“You say that like she’s my child.” I mulled that over for a second. “Did you run a DNA test? Because honestly, I don’t think I can take that right now. And the backpay on those child-support payments would be—”
“Easy, Bodhi. Just saying… she’s got grit. The war hasn’t done that any favors.”
“For anybody, it seems.”
“Ahh, now I get it. You’ve got a case of Chaska on the brain.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“To me, you are.” She offered a pitying smile. “Don’t take it personally. She’s been under a lot of pressure.”
“Any new men in her quarters?”
“Not that it’s one iota of your business, but no. She’s been too busy running a regiment.”
Well, that boosted my spirits a tad. Not enough to make me overcome my lingering dejection, but enough to take some of the sting away. At least until I got to the bottom of the drama barrel with the lady in question.
“How was it in there?” Ruena asked seriously. “I mean… how are you?”
“Let’s just say my pain was Kemedis’ gain.”
“Do you, uh, wanna talk about it?”
I shook my head. “Not right now. Give me a few drinks and I might gush about the first couple of disemboweling millennia.”
“Noted.” Ruena gestured forward, and we resumed walking at a slow, deliberate pace. “How about explaining your daring escape? I bet you’ve been holding that one back since you landed.”
“More of a daring rescue, actually. But yes, it’s a phenomenal story. It’s going in my memoir.”
She laughed. “Better start writing that thing soon. Your potential readership is getting mind-melted by the day.” Although I found the humor in that remark, she evidently didn’t. She was quick to clear her throat and muddle on. “We missed you around here, you know. And Chaska did, too. Even if she doesn’t come right out and say it.”
“Huh. Could’ve fooled me, Ru.”
“Look… do you want the honest truth?”
“Always.”
She rolled her eyes. “Bodhi, I’m used to the way you disappeared. Seen it a million times. Plus, you hauled me back onto that ship when you could’ve turned tail. What you did was honorable—shockingly honorable—and I appreciated it. Still do. And more than that, I knew you’d pop back up eventually. But Chaska doesn’t know you like that. When you went off the radar, she thought you were gone for good… so after a while, she wrote you off as another casualty. It’s not easy rekindling how you feel about somebody you’ve already grieved.”
“Damn, Ru. I wanted something pithy, not a therapy session by proxy.”
“Always happy to help.” She stopped at a bulky-looking door marked by the signage Sir Tusky’s Laboratory, knocking twice on its central chrome plate.
“Sir Tusky?” I said. “How did a massive krutharan animal receive an honorific before me? And who handed it out?”
Ruena smiled as the locks began to disengage. “Ask him yourself.”
By now, all this talk of a talking Tusky was growing unbearable. I wasn’t certain if I was about to face a language-wielding beast or the crew’s first (and decidedly unfunny) practical joke.
My answer came a moment later, when the doors parted to reveal a still-massive Tusky… standing upright… wearing a lab coat… sorting chemistry beakers… amid a tangle of decanters, tubes, pipes, and terminals. He was encircled by a gaggle of hair-twirling, blushing young insurgent ladies.
“What the hell is all this?” I blurted out.
Tusky gingerly set his equipment down on the table and clapped his hands together. “Marvelous! It appears the infamous Bodhi Drezek has decided to grace me with his presence at last!”
I just about fainted.
“Sir” Tusky’s voice was a smooth, deep baritone, more suited to radio announcements than his former pastime of devouring fabriques. Weirder still was the very human expression on his face… snout… whatever you’d like to term it. He looked genuinely pleased to see me. And that, my friends, is a rare thing when I enter a room.
“Wha—?” I stared wide-eyed at Ruena, then at Gadra, who was swinging her legs over the side of an alloy crate, then at Tusky himself. “Did you just speak to me?”
“Oh, I did,” Tusky said. “Come, old friend. We have so very much to discuss!” Then, turning to his groupies, he said in a rather apologetic tone, “Might we continue this at another time?”
With a few parting flirty remarks and giggles (and not a glance in my direction), Tusky’s fan club departed.
The man of the hour then hastily packed away a few of his in-progress gadgets, capped vials, and centrifuges before dragging a stool out from under his worktable. He gestured for me to sit.
I did.
“Whaddya think?” Gadra asked. “Pretty good alltongue, huh?”
“Pretty… good…” I mumbled.
“Ah, but all thanks must go to my tutor,” Tusky said, bowing humbly and sweeping his paw-hand-thing toward Gadra. “She’s been most patient with my questing.”
“Questions,” Gadra corrected.
Tusky nodded, beaming. “Touché!”
In case you’ve forgotten some pertinent details here, I’d last seen Tusky as a gargantuan animal with an iron stomach. He hadn’t shown even the slightest ability to vocalize anything beyond grunts and growls. Sure, he’d accepted a few commands from Gadra—his supposed handler—but this was far, far beyond the pale. He was probably the most eloquent being in this facility. Aside from myself, of course.
“I’d imagine you’re rather perplexed right now,” Tusky said, settling his bulk onto the tabletop and meshing his claws politely.
Only then did I notice that each hand had been outfitted with a mechanical thumb prosthetic. An opposable mechanical thumb, no less.
“That’s one word to describe it,” I said quietly.
“We’ll give you two a few minutes to get acquainted,” Ruena said. She nodded at Gadra and pointed toward an adjoining door. “Now show me that tattoo gun, Gad.”
The girl complied, though not without a copious amount of sighs and grumbles.
When they’d both exited and the door swished shut behind them, Tusky grinned.
“Can I offer you anything?” he said. “Tea? Coffee? A honey-maggot kombucha?” He appeared to think on that briefly. “Forgive me for the latter offering, Bodhi. I’ve been told that humanoids don’t much care for it.”
“How… are you talking?”
“Ah, yes, that. I’d be delighted to explain, but I must preface in saying that much of this is hearsay delivered by Gadra and the others. You see, prior to the arising of my self-awareness, I didn’t develop a spot of memory.”
“Go on.”
“Are you familiar with sentience tonics?”
I racked my brain, trying to recall the concept. Last I’d checked, “sentience tonic” had been a theoretical concept dreamed up in black-market clinics. It was a colloquial term for a very long and confusing process that involved artificially “nourishing” a non-sentient creature’s brain until it developed sentience… or some twisted form of it. I’d heard of a socialite named Lady Gu’jork who’d managed to give her pet lizard, Hup, the curse of self-awareness. This tale had ended in abject misery.
See, things without consciousness don’t know it themselves, but they’d prefer to stay in their ignorant slumber. Once you give something the ability to look in a mirror and exclaim, “Hey, that’s me!” you’ve started that critter down a very dark road. It’s good and well to know you’re a conscious being, sure, but it also comes with a host of problems.
Take existential dread, for example. Once you know you’re alive, you inherently also know you could not be alive someday. In other words, you become aware of death. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Poor Hup now had to contend with a chain of unanswerable questions, such as, “Who am I? What am I? Where did I come from? Why am I in a cage? Why do I need to eat living things?”
It goes on and on and on. No wonder Hup had eventually gone on a hunger strike and smashed his tiny lizard brains against the inside of his glass prison.
Anyhow, all of this is a truncated way of explaining that I did, in fact, know what Tusky was referring to with “sentience tonics.” But the chasm between making a lizard have a psychological breakdown and allowing a sloth-bear-thing to develop a robust vocabulary and scientific understanding is vast.
“So… you got a sentience tonic treatment,” I said, trying to grasp Tusky’s tale.
He nodded. “More precisely, the crew got it for me. The first true moment of ‘my’ life began in an underground clinic on one of Tarquro’s moons… what a blessed day. One moment, a stream of meaningless sensations… the next, alive!”
“Right.” My brain was still thoroughly scrambled. “No offense, but, uh… why?”
“Who can say, Bodhi? Why did your parents elect to bring you into the maelstrom of existence?”
“I think they forgot to use protection.”
Tusky clapped an enormous—and painful—hand on my shoulder. “A natural comedian! To answer you directly, I’m unsure why I was given this gift. Gadra has explained that she desired a friend, a companion. I’d like to believe we’ve fostered such a bond.”
“That’s good. I think.”
“The underlying message here, Bodhi, is that I owe to you so very much. Without you, I would have languished in mindless oblivion forever.”
“Don’t mention it. I have a habit of giving out self-awareness like candy.”
“You must be referring to Center, your esteemed artificial intelligence-turned-deity.” Tusky smiled wider. “When I heard the long and winding tale that led to the moment of my awakening, I was shocked. Your bravery is limitless. You and Chaska are, for lack of a better term, my parents.”
“That’s a bit far…”
“Is it? You gave rise to the mind I now inhabit. After all, it was your bux that funded my journey into awareness of my own being.”
“My bux?”
“Yes!”
I felt the blood drain from my fingers. “How much did this sentience tonic cost?”
“I believe it was approximately half of your fortune! A very sophisticated procedure, I’ve been told!”
Trying not to fall off my chair, I took a deep breath. “Well, that still leaves half…”
“Ah, it did, until the insurgents used your remaining bux to purchase this facility, a complement of weapons and armor, new vessels, a—”
“I get the picture.”
Hearing I was broke again should’ve slapped me upside the head, but it didn’t. Mostly because I knew the universe was ending, and any hope of making another sale, let alone living in luxury, was firmly out the airlock. And besides, being tortured for eternity after raking in the largest windfall of your life teaches a firm lesson: things change. A lot.
“So,” I said, trying to switch gears from my newfound poverty, “I gather you’ve been quite busy around here.”
He pulled on a humble smile. “I’ve attempted to make the most of my sentience. Astrophysics, chemistry, philosophy, economics, geology, and xenobiology have been of particular interest for my studies. Though I fear I’ve fallen behind on contemporary findings in most fields…”
“You’ve been ‘thinking’ for two months, no?”
“Yes, yes, I’m aware that I could’ve done far more with my time,” he said, sighing. “But as you might have gathered, an inordinate amount of time has been spent trying to investigate a pressing matter… that of Kruthara.”
Tusky’s nonchalant humble-brag remark set the wheels of my memory turning again. Kruthara. Slugs. Tusky eating said slugs.
“We need to talk about that,” I said with a sudden gust of urgency. “Back at the Promised Place, I saw you chow down on—”
“A piece of Kruthara’s tissue?” Tusky finished.
I nodded.
“Yes, well, it was rather impulsive of me, wasn’t it? Ah, the follies of non-sentience…”
“That’s not what I meant. We could engineer some kind of… I don’t know, vaccine. A weapon. Right? I mean, if that thing couldn’t infect you, you’re a walking miracle. Or a sale. Same thing.”
“So it was theorized!” Sensing my confusion, Tusky went on. “You see, Bodhi, the crew eventually spotted this curious incident while reviewing Stream Dancer’s surveillance footage. They were trying to determine if Kruthara had managed to infiltrate the vessel.”
“And?”
“And, accordingly, they began trying to collect and study my DNA.” He lowered his voice to a strangely human conspiratorial whisper. “Now, they’ve never said as much, but I gather that my sentience was granted partly to speak with me about my biology. After all, most of their ‘non-humanoid’ candidates ended up being susceptible to Kruthara’s infection. They hypothesized that humanoid DNA was spliced, at least partially, into most species’ genes at some point in the last few millennia.”
