Page 33

LOHR

I t wasn’t every day that a xenobiologist was able to document a new species. Excitement burned in me, driving my short stubby legs to easily keep up with the rest of the squad as we moved closer to the cliff behind the house and the ocean beyond.

Technically, the KORE were known to DSC but they’d suppressed all information about the massive inter-dimensional beings. Likely because they were the antithesis to all Sirian technology. If the syndicate’s enemies discovered how easy it’d be to send the KORE to implode any DSC facility…

:Speaking of imploding,: Snryx said on the grid. :Shouldn’t you eject that Sirian crystal you ingested?:

:By my calculations, as long as I expel it before it reaches my intestinal tract, I should be fine. Stomach acid won’t affect it. They need pressure to explode.:

Swiping her drenched hair back off her face, Natalie straddled Kroktl’s back, ducked down to keep the rain out of her eyes. Her voice was drowned out by the wind, so she switched to the grid. :Those poor whales. I feel so badly that they came here to die.:

The pod of Balaenoptera lay scattered across the lawn in various stages of destruction. Most were simply chunks of charred or shredded clear, jelly-like flesh. Their bones glowed with pearly bioluminescence in the darkness. Sadly, they’d completely dissolve once the sun rose.

Reviewing Rizan’s logs on the grid, I noted it’d only taken two pteron-class dyni to cause such wide scale destruction.

They’d slashed the lead whale’s head off together, leaving its carcass mostly whole on the very edge of the rocky cliff.

With her dispatched, the rest of the pod began to disperse in a wider array.

Their remains scattered for hundreds of meters as the Pterons simply tore them apart.

Nearer the house, the Incendiary Sauropod had attempted to burn the carcasses. While incineration was standard operating procedure for mrion contamination, the sheer amount of mrions and adult drones concealed in the pod made clean up impossible. We were all dusted with glowing purple particulates.

Correction, not the other humans. A stark reminder that Natalie commanded the mrions. Even broken fragments settled on her squad rather than the surviving military man or the other female, driven by her will to come to our aid.

We’d only been released a few minutes from the jump ring, and I already felt changed.

Mrions sank into my shell, absorbed into my scales, and flowed into my nasal passages with every breath.

I lifted some of the particulates along with a sample of Balaenoptera into my sensors.

Sirian and mrion cells merged seamlessly regardless of my original heavily engineered and altered DNA programming.

:I’m sorry,: Natalie whispered to me, to all of us. :I should have asked if you wanted to absorb the Myrm contamination. You should’ve had a choice.:

:Your apology is not required, nor was our consent,: I replied. :We’re becoming what we always could have been without DSC’s intervention. They sliced and manipulated DNA for millennia for profit. What you give us is original, natural creation.:

:No,: Axxol said. :What you give us is love, and I’ll gladly devour every scrap you offer.:

A statement made even more impactful by who delivered it.

She flashed a smile up at our alpha. :Maybe I’ll manage to make you beg again.:

He brushed his massive skull gently against her cheek. :You’re welcome to try.:

:Time to impact?: I asked Rizan, eagerly scanning the ocean below. Though my inferior eyesight saw little in the darkness.

:Now,: he replied in a hushed tone.

Pummeling wind and blowing rain suddenly stopped as if a giant faucet suddenly turned off the deluge.

In the eerie quiet, the dark waters below swelled.

Rising ten, twenty, then thirty meters high until ocean water spilled over the edge of the cliff.

Streaming water poured over the rocky edge and splashed over my limbs.

I sampled the water, enjoying its salinity, while analyzing for even a trace of KORE.

A broad hump loomed like a darker shadow, cresting into a wave. Black flesh exposed to the air gleamed with an oily, luminous sheen. Then a dorsal fin sliced up out of the water like a tall sail.

:Megalodon,: Axxol barked out. :Take Natalie and Akylla to higher ground and stay out of the water.:

Kroktl was already sprinting away from the rising water, though his youngling trotted backward so she could continue scanning the incoming creature with her red, glowing eyes.

The other human female raced after them, throwing scared glances over her shoulder.

I felt a moment of pity for her. With such a frail body, she wouldn’t survive much of an attack, and our priority was Natalie’s safety.

I certainly wouldn’t cause harm to befall her friend—yet neither would I do anything to protect another, which might put our mate at risk.

The KORE surged up out of the water, revealing more of its broad body and long tail.

Between Riz’s aerial view and Akylla’s scan, I ran analyses on its probable make and anatomy.

:I don’t believe it’s otodus megalodon though I can’t be sure without a sample.

Its head is too elongated and narrow. Perhaps Livyatan or some other species of sperm whale, though none are documented to approach one-hundred meters in length. It could be…:

The creature sprouted four short legs rather similar to mine.

They literally pushed out of its shark body, lifting its belly off the ground like a crocodile.

It moved with surprising agility over the rough terrain.

For the moment, it headed away from us, though I wasn’t sure what its target might be.

:Recommended attack pattern?: Axxol asked. :Lohr? Hello? Earth to XLT?:

Shaking out of my fascinated stare, I replied, :A megalodon-crocodylomorph species has never been documented. Not even DSC could perfect such a splice.:

:Tell me where the fuck its heart is so we can fucking kill it!:

I dropped diagrams of known megalodon and crocodilian anatomy on the grid. :It’s inter-dimensional so it may not have a similar circulatory system as a DSC counterpart.:

:Meaning what exactly?: Rizan asked as he passed closer to the giant beast. It seemed unbothered by his passing, though perhaps its eyesight was as ineffective as mine.

It hauled its long, heavy body across damp ground to the lead Balaenoptera’s carcass.

I’d thought it a massive beast—until it was dwarfed by the KORE.

:It can control and pass through the space-time continuum like our jump technology, though it does so naturally.: Snryx replied. :Which would support Lohr’s assumption that it may not have standard biological systems.:

:It has gills,: Axxol said. :If it can fucking breathe, it must have a heart.:

“Oh my god.” The surviving human male said into a phone clutched against his ear. “Ready all nuclear weapons. We’re going to have to throw everything we’ve got at it.”

I’d forgotten the general was even present. :Someone needs to tell him that deploying a thermonuclear weapon at the KORE is an ineffective defensive strategy which will very likely only madden the beast. It may even feed it and make it larger.:

:It eats nuclear missiles?: Natalie asked. :Are you sure?:

:I found a fragmented research log from a century ago where DSC reportedly employed a variety of technological strategies against a KORE-infested planet known on Earth as K2-18b, including a fusion bomb large enough to destroy the last landmass above sea level with no apparent effect against the creatures themselves.

Though less than one standard year later, they noted the KORE population had become so large that the planet’s sea could no longer support its life despite nearly covering the entire surface.

The following year, there was no trace of KORE to be found remaining on the planet. :

:Focus,: Axxol growled. :Someone eat the human and shut him up too.:

:He didn’t directly hurt me,: Natalie said. :Maybe we can use him instead.:

:As bait?: Rizan asked hopefully. :I disconnected the call. He was contacting a submarine in the bay, not a ship. I disabled their navigational and communication systems. They’re not going anywhere or shooting anything.:

:Bait won’t be needed,: I replied. :It isn’t here for us or even the humans.:

:Why the fuck is it here, then?: Axxol demanded.

The KORE locked its long crocodilian snout on the whale carcass’ tail and started to drag it back the way it’d come.

:It’s hungry, Daddy,: Akylla said. :Me too.:

Kroktl’s raptor let out several short barking coughs. :You’re always hungry, baby girl.:

Without even acknowledging our existence, the KORE dragged its food back over the rocks like it was as light as one of Rizan’s feathers. Retracting its crocodilian legs, it floated off the edge of the cliff as the water began to sink back to normal sea level.

:What the fuck,: Axxol grumbled as if disappointed we didn’t have to fight off the massive KORE. :Don’t tell me Balaenoptera are its primary food source.:

:Well, actually, we don’t know for sure what the KORE’s diet consists of,: I admitted.

:However, the incomplete study I found from K2-18b suggests it prefers magnesium-rich silicate.

Since Balaenoptera ingest sea plankton commonly found in asteroid belts, which often contain such silicate, I hypothesize the KORE was compelled here by the large pod it sensed in the area, knowing its skeletal structure would be laced with high amounts of MgSiO3. :

Axxol heaved out a disgusted sigh. :I’m sorry I even asked.:

“Hello?” General Waverley yelled into his phone. “Seawolf, can you hear me now? Stand down, I say again, stand down!”

Rizan circled overhead in a slow spiral. :What I want to know is when this gets made into a movie, do we call it a crocoshark or a sharkodile?: