by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Nexus Nine. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.
Omoleura heard Neera’s sad song, and zhe dragged zirself, limping and in pain, out of the barracks and toward the front of the shuttle. Quincy hopped after zir, gallumphing about how the insect was supposed to stay still until the medical foam on zir talon hardened. The frog had replaced his expensive color-changing shirt with a simple synthesized one in plain, bright green.
But Omoleura couldn’t stay out of the way when zhe could hear in Neera’s voice that something was so clearly wrong.
“What happened?” Omoleura said to the backs of the two cats, the bear, and zir beloved bird.
Neera was apparently too sad to hold her grudge against Omoleura, because she turned to zim and said, “The Unhatched have abandoned us. The Sky Nest won’t open.”
Omoleura’s three hearts opened to her.
“We can’t get home if the nexus won’t open,” Mazel added, glaring at Omoleura. “And I can’t get back my memories until we get home.” The calico cat’s ears flattened. She looked angry, but also adorable.
Omoleura wondered how much Mazel remembered. Without being Rheun, she might not remember anything about why she’d cared enough about the nexus to have thrown herself across the universe into an entirely different and unexplored galaxy. She probably didn’t remember that the Rheun chip was still storing a firewalled vision from their earlier passage through the nexus.
Omoleura wondered if the vision could possibly contain anything helpful for understanding why the nexus wasn’t working. Zhe knew that the rest of the team wouldn’t let zir download and watch the vision in private right now. None of them trusted zir anymore.
And zhe also knew that Mazel Rheun — and Darius, and many of zir other past selves — had cared deeply about controlling the information that might be in the visions. Zhe still remembered the discomfort of watching the previous vision with Shep and worrying that zir old friend would treat zir differently if he knew about zir past lives as a human. As a god.
But Omoleura Rheun was a god already. Zir subjects had been bowing to zir and planning to commit atrocities on zir behalf only a few hours ago. One of zir acolytes still lay in the barracks, suffering and praying to zir. Omoleura had been listening to 59-4’s babbled troths and pleading for favors until the sound made zir vibrate with anger.
If Shep couldn’t handle the news of zir past lives better than the mewling sycophant 59-4 handled the fact of zir current life, then perhaps it was not a friendship worth saving.
Of course, it was easy for Omoleura to believe that — no matter how strong zir memories of friendship with Shep were, the truth was that the strongest bond of friendship zhe felt in zir current form was to Neera Jerysha. And zhe was in no danger of discovering — and inadvertently revealing — that zhe was actually a bird deity, older than time itself.
Powdered eggshells. Mazel had shot off zir foot. The calico cat could deal with the consequences of whatever happened here when she got her memories back. Besides, she might never get them back if Omoleura didn’t share what zhe knew.
“I’ve had a vision,” Omoleura said.
All of them turned to look at zir; skeptical, with uncertainty in their eyes.
“Remember in the Temple of Yunib?” Omoleura asked. “How Shep — Captain Bataille — had a vision, and I — uh, Mazel — didn’t?”
“Yes,” Neera agreed.
“I think I was learning about the bonsai trees at that time.” One of Unari’s black ears skewed to the side. She looked curious.
Mazel just looked surprised. Her ears had perked up though. She must be curious where this was heading too. “I… remember being there,” she said. Then a moment later, after her ears flicked, threatening to flatten again, she added, “Yes, I remember that. I think.”
“Except,” Omoleura said, “we did have a vision, but the Rheun chip firewalled it.”
If Mazel’s memories had been more complete, her ears would have flattened here. She would have known that Omoleura was sharing their secrets. But right now, their secrets were secret even from her. She might remember the fact of watching the vision with Shep, but she must not remember the emotional significance.
“We were able to download the memory of the vision,” Mazel said. “And watch it. On a video screen.”
“That’s right,” Omoleura agreed.
“Why does this matter?” Mazel asked, clearly unaware of how close Omoleura was treading to revealing things that she wouldn’t want revealed… when she was complete again.
Or maybe… maybe she wouldn’t care anymore? How much was Rheun being changed by the experience of being Omoleura? When they went their separate ways, would Omoleura believe in the Unhatched again, and would Rheun feel shattered by having the full history of itself revealed? Or would their effects on each other be permanent?
Usually, the changes to Rheun’s personality caused by living as each of zir hosts were permanent. But usually Rheun lived with a host for a lifetime, not a day.
Neera flapped her wings impatiently. “It matters, because every vision from the Unhatched is a gift. If we’ve rejected their gift by leaving it unopened in some computer chip, then no wonder they won’t let us return to the hallowed ground of their sacred temple!”
“So… we should download the memory and watch it?” Grawf asked. “And then, magically, a hyperspatial portal between galaxies will open up for us and let our shuttle fly through?”
Omoleura snapped, “Your people believe in a god made from a swarm of bees and a sentient honey golem. Don’t be so superior.”
Grawf blinked in surprise. And then the bear broke into deep belly laughter. “You are different with an ancient computer chip in your brain! I like it.”
Omoleura felt a weird warmth towards the bear and vaguely, distantly remembered that when zhe’d been a small calico cat, she’d been attracted to the brawny brown bear. At least, a little. Perhaps only subconsciously. Omoleura wasn’t sure zhe’d noticed the attraction when zhe’d been Mazel and experiencing it directly, but now she could tell the attraction had been there, because zhe was keenly aware of its sudden absence.
That poor calico kitty, fighting to get back this mess of confusion. Hey, Omoleura thought, that’s me that I’m thinking of as a mess of confusion… no it’s Rheun, and it will be gone soon… except… not if the “me” that’s thinking this is Rheun…
Omoleura shuffled zir wings and shifted zir injured foot talon. The shock of pain in the stump of a blown off foot focused zir. Zhe needed to get back to Nexus Nine Base where that chirpy, over-eager squirrel doctor could heal zir foot properly and do some desperately needed brain surgery.
“Let’s look at the vision,” Mazel said. “It can’t hurt, and I haven’t heard any better ideas. Besides, the longer we sit here doing nothing, the more likely the Hiviiarchy is to find us. And if they find us, we have to play chase until we can shake them off of our tails — if we can ever shake them off of our tails. Because we can’t go home with them watching.”
“Agreed,” Omoleura said. “The Hiviiarchy is my own people… and I would not inflict those maniacal insects on the Aviorans or the peoples of the Tri-Galactic Union, even if protecting the birds, mammals, and others of our galaxy meant my own death.”
Neera tilted her head. Omoleura hoped she was reconsidering her claims that their friendship could never be repaired. But even if she never forgave zim, zhe would protect her and her world from another subjugation. And based on the squads of Carapids practicing martial arts and the Hiviiarchy’s overall callousness towards life — even the lives of their own — possibly a much worse, longer lasting, and wider spread subjugation than the Aviorans had suffered under the scaly claws of the Reptassans.
From what Omoleura had learned during zir hours as a fledgling god, the Hiviiarchy controlled most of this galaxy. Few habitable planets had escaped their reach. And they’d eagerly, hungrily take over any new galaxies made known to them.
With a twinge, Omoleura wondered if the octopuses who had brought zir Rheun-self through the nexus so many eons ago had been fleeing the grasp of the Hiviiarchy. Had the remnants of the society who’d originated half of zirself been destroyed by the society who’d originated zir other half?
Unari arranged for one of the computers to scan Omoleura’s brain and download the firewalled memory from the Rheun chip. The memory began playing on the shuttle’s main view screen, replacing the empty star field with the strange, pixelated colors of a heat map — lime green, magenta, mustard yellow, indigo, and fiery orange. This time, instead of a shuttle full of zir past selves, the vision showed only one face. A canine face with large triangular ears, and its muzzle moving like it was speaking.
With the colors skewed, it was hard to be sure, but Omoleura thought they were looking at Shep.
“Is that the captain?” Neera asked.
The canine face kept speaking, saying something over and over again. When the sound finally finished processing, the shuttle’s speakers played the words, “Bring the Apex. Bring us the Apex. Bring the Apex to us.” Over and over.
“Well, that’s helpful,” Unari said wryly, black tail lashing irritably behind her. “The captain’s on the other side of the nexus! If these nexus-dwelling god-things wanted us to bring him to the nexus, they’d have to let us back through first.”
“Not necessarily,” Mazel said, distractedly. The calico cat was already busy checking something on the computer panels around her. “I think, we might be able to send a subspace message through the nexus, even if the passageway won’t open wide enough to let our shuttle through.”
“You mean, it’s open a little bit, even though we can’t see it?” Unari asked.
“It’s a rip in the fabric of space-time,” Mazel said. “There’s a limit to how tightly it can close without ceasing to exist altogether.”
“Or to have ever existed,” Grawf added.
The calico cat looked at the bear in surprise. “You know about the physics of nexus passageways?”
“A little,” Grawf rumbled, grudgingly. “I like to study ahead about every aspect of the assignments I take on. And the nexus is a big aspect of working on Nexus Nine Base.”
“I like to do that too,” Mazel said. “You can never be too prepared.” The calico cat stared at the large brown bear for slightly longer than was strictly necessary before turning back to her computer consoles.
Omoleura felt a complicated mixture of revulsion and sweet anticipation for the romantic possibilities zhe could foresee for herself with Grawf when zhe returned to being Mazel.
“Can you turn that off?” Omoleura gestured with one of zir wing-arm limbs at the looping vision. There didn’t seem to be any more to it than Shep asking for zir to bring the Apex, presumably to the Sky Nest. And zhe didn’t need to see that particular image any more.
Omoleura wondered if Shep would still call zir “Big Dog” in this form. Zhe hoped zhe’d get a chance to find out. The look on that German Shepherd’s face when he realized his old friend Darius was now Omoleura would be priceless. Almost worth the extra brain surgeries. Almost. But not quite.
Grawf turned off the looping image on the viewscreen, and the black sky, lightly dusted with sugar crystals of stars, returned.
“What message are you planning to send through the… nexus?” Neera asked. The bird must be feeling really lost and frightened, and totally dependent on the Tri-Galactic Navy scientists running this mission, if she was calling her people’s sacred temple of the gods by its secular name.
“Plain text is the lowest bandwidth style of message we can send,” Mazel said. “So I’m sending a simple explanation of our situation — trapped in this galaxy with a non-responsive nexus and an enigmatic message telling us to “Send the Apex” — in an ancient binary Earth language called Morse code.”
Neera’s feathers ruffled when Mazel called the Sky Nest “a non-responsive nexus,” but she didn’t say anything. She kept the objections in her heart. Omoleura had seen the bird react like that to many things that bothered her over the years; usually it meant she was saving her objections up to tell zir about them later, venting and ranting until Omoleura vibrated with amusement. Then they’d both break into laughter.
Omoleura hoped they could have that conversation later. When they were back in their own galaxy, and this chip was out of zir head.
Contrarily, zhe also didn’t care at all about having that conversation, and hoped it wouldn’t happen until zhe was back in Mazel’s head, where zhe belonged.
“There,” Mazel said. “The message has been sent.”
Omoleura imagined zhe could see a sparkle of color in the blackness of the sky, a faint glimmer of the Sky Nest’s usual glory, but it was probably only an illusion caused by staring at the empty sky too hard.
“Did the message go through?” Neera asked, nervously shifting her weight from one talon to the other and repeatedly re-folding her wings behind her back, as if she were ready to fly away at any moment. The bird might have been trapped inside a shuttlecraft, but if willpower alone could have let her wings carry her through the vacuum of space and into the Sky Nest, Omoleura had no doubts she’d have done so. “How long until we know if the Unhatched allowed the message through?”
While waiting for the answer to her question, Neera clacked her beak in a motion that Omoleura recognized as a form of unvoiced prayer. Zhe’d seen whole rooms full of Aviorans clack their beaks in the same way while listening to a Vee preach. Zhe’d also seen Aviorans who’d been thrown in the brig during Reptassan rule clack their beaks in that way for hours, alone in their cells.
Omoleura remembered all too vividly that their prayers had often gone unanswered. At least, as far as zhe knew. At least… in this physical world.
As Omoleura watched Neera pray silently to her gods, zhe felt a strange sense of responsibility tug at zir three hearts. And zhe limped zir way back down to the barracks.
59-4’s antennae waved wildly with excitement as soon as it saw Omoleura. The Mimminoi had fared far worse during the battle in the death row holding cell than Omoleura had. Zhe had lost a foot; 59-4 had lost an entire limb. And before Quincy had foamed over their wounds with medical gel, the Mimminoi had lost a great deal of blood. Omoleura wasn’t sure it would survive.
“My Eminence,” 59-4 sang in a faint voice. “You have returned.”
“Yes,” Omoleura said, unenthusiastically but trying to hide zir lack of enthusiasm. “I’ve returned.” Zhe crouched down on the bunk opposite the one where the Mimminoi was spread out, legs dangling off the edge of the cot and wings squashed beneath itself.
But the Mimminoi’s multi-faceted eyes glittered, and Omoleura could see zirself reflected in every silvery facet. The expression on 59-4’s demure triangular face seemed to take on a more beatific, peaceful expression now that it could see its god. Its whole body relaxed and lay more easily on the cot.
“Have we been rescued yet?” 59-4 asked. The way its antennae kept waving, moving independently of each other, looked uncontrolled. The Mimminoi might not last much longer at all.
And so Omoleura had to consider zir answer carefully. Zhe didn’t like lying. But zhe knew that sometimes, there was no reason to share a harsh truth. “I’ve taken my proper position aboard this shuttle,” Omoleura said.
Both antennae pointed at Omoleura for a moment, but then one strayed away until it lay flat on the cot above 59-4’s resting head. “My Eminence, I always had faith in you.”
Let the Mimminoi believe what it needed to, Omoleura thought. What zhe said was, “We will be returning to the new galaxy shortly. At least, that’s the plan. Would you like to be my deputy there?”
“Deputy?” 59-4 asked. Its other antenna had lain down now too, at an angle to the other one, but its tip also rested on the cot.
“My most important assistant,” Omoleura said, telling zirself that the offer wasn’t a lie. If the Mimminoi survived, it couldn’t be allowed to return to the Hiviiarchy after visiting Nexus Nine Base. But perhaps it could find a place for itself on the base. With the right training and the right re-socialization…
It was a dream, but it was a nice one. Omoleura liked the idea of the green praying mantis working beside zir. Another insect. Another outcast member of the Hiviiarchy.
“Yes, my Eminence, I would like to be your deputy.”
59-4 didn’t say anything more, but its breathing grew loud and labored. Omoleura listened to it breathing.
After a while, the Mimminoi said, “Perhaps, it would be best if you hatched a new egg in my line. I think… I am too tired to be your deputy myself. But another in my line…”
“I’m sure your line would serve me well,” Omoleura said. Zhe was saved from having to say more by Mazel bursting into the barracks.
The small calico cat had a uni-meter in her paws, and she held it up to the side of Omoleura’s head, right beside the eyespots of darkened fuzz. “Hold still,” she said.
Omoleura held still, but zhe asked, “Why?”
“If you have another vision, I want to know about it right away,” Mazel said, uni-meter blooping and flashing lights in her paw. “So, I’m turning off the firewall inside the Rheun chip. Or trying to.” Mazel placed her other paw on Omoleura’s folded wing, steadying the insect.
“I miss being you,” Omoleura said.
The calico cat stopped, statue still except for the very tip of her tail which twitched.
“This was the only way.” Omoleura stared at the cat. Her splotches were backwards — the way they’d looked to Darius. By now, Rheun expected to see those splotches reflected in a mirror. They were supposed to be zir own. “Your splotches look backwards to me,” zhe said. “I expect to see them in a mirror.”
“I miss you too,” Mazel said. “At least, I think I do.” She lifted her paw from Omoleura’s wing and placed it on her own head, like she was fending off a headache. “I feel like I can’t see… like I should know so many things… but I can’t remember any of them. I feel useless this way.” Her paw slipped from her forehead down to the back of her neck, close to where the Rheun chip should be. But wasn’t.
“I know you wondered why Darius chose you,” Omoleura said, reaching with a talon to take hold of Mazel’s paw, and then ease the paw away from the void in her mind. “You are glorious. Brave, creative, full of life, and unstoppable. There is no one else I’d rather be.”
The calico cat and the insect stared at each other. Omoleura looked strange to zirself, reflected in the cat’s golden eyes.
“Except…” Omoleura said, “…maybe myself without this plummeting chip in my head…”
Mazel laughed.
“By the grace of the Unhatched, I swear,” Omoleura said, “I cannot wait to give my Rheun-self back to you, and would never have taken it if there had been any other way.”
“I believe you,” Mazel said.
“Do you think Neera will forgive me?” Omoleura asked.
“That I don’t know,” Mazel said. The uni-meter blooped and blipped a few more times, and then she slipped it back into a pocket. “The firewall should be off now. I… will speak to Neera on your behalf. After everything is over. Okay?”
Omoleura waggled zir antennae in acknowledgment. The gesture felt right, even if the cat probably wouldn’t understand it. Zhe didn’t feel like trying quite so hard to pretend to be something zhe wasn’t anymore. Zhe liked taking on the form of the Aviorans. But zhe was not Avioran. Perhaps, it was time for the people around zim to meet zir halfway.
Mazel left the barracks, leaving Omoleura alone with the fading Mimminoi.
Omoleura still reflected in the Mimminoi’s multi-faceted eyes, but the glimmer of life was nearly gone. Zhe waited with zir acolyte in silence.
Continue on to Chapter 11…