Chapter 28: The Heartbeat She Never Had

  Priorita Prime paused at the teleporter, taking a moment to compose herself. She smoothed the pseudopodic barbs of her outer membrane and suppressed the vermillion blush blooming in her core. But my word, it was difficult.

  She was still replaying the scene. Allan, tearing through the first trial room like a virtuoso of violence. The look on his face when his teammate was impaled. Delicious.

  Soon, she would be there.

  With a giddy flick, she slid into the portal. The familiar, burning cold of teleportation swept through her, and then—splotch—she landed on the deck of the star cruiser orbiting this years War-World.

  Tiny ripples spread across her surface. Gosh, she was just so excited.

  Shirking her duties like this… she hadn’t felt so naughty since she’d been a colony of mere billions. But she was Prime. She was in charge. She could do as she pleased.

  This year, she would oversee the games personally, hopping from ship to ship in low orbit... Perhaps she would even take a trip to the surface!

  And surely, with her watching… her favourite would start paying more attention.

  One of her clones speed-slimed into the chamber, sliding to an inelegant stop. “Prime! Goodnaass, I fought you was heading to the front lin, lines.”

  The clone was an odd shade of sage, and noticeably lopsided. Prime extended a mental flagella and almost popped the defective thing into oblivion, but paused, watching with fascination as a bubble formed on its bulbous side. The bubble expanded until it was about half the size of the clone, and popped with the scent of satisfaction.

  “Ahhhhh.” It said.

  “Dear… Are you quite alright?” She sent the question in slow packets, microns apart to make sure it understood.

  A faint scent lingered in the air—too sweet. Artificial? She scrubbed it from her olfactory organ.

  “Am good.”

  Priorita waited for more, but the clone… didn’t elaborate. Another bubble was forming, this one right where her Bulgogi Structure should be. She could see its striations swirl and stretch as they were pushed out.

  The clone should have been disgusting, and would have been, if it wasn’t so… Well she wasn’t sure what this thing was.

  Priorita almost popped it again, but decided to let it be. She’d ask the clone in charge its story later.

  “Ok, Dear. As you were.” She slid past it and out through a doorway, heading for the bridge where the Priorita in charge of this vessel would be. Just before leaving the room, she sprouted a visual organ, extending it behind her on a stalk to watch the defective clone for as long as possible. The last thing she saw before she went out of range, was the clone overbalancing and tipping onto its side with a wet squelch.

  “Am ok.” It muttered.

  How bizarre.

  Countless mini-me-clones zipped from her path as she traced her way through the cruiser. They hid in vents and tubes until she passed. At least they behaved appropriately.

  The bridge afforded a spectacular view of the planet around which they orbited. It was a lovely green, but the scent packets she had sampled were simply atrocious.

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  She kept her membrane smooth with an act of will. SO close. Those marvellous candidate civilisations were down there.

  He was down there.

  Her clones formed up in two orderly lines, forming a walkway to the Priorita in charge.

  The walls were dotted with terminals where her clones worked on the show. Editing, highlighting, doctoring.

  “Prime, what an unexpected delight!” The clone in charge met her at the end of the procession. She released the scent of devotion and squished in salute.

  “Yes, Dear. It is isn’t it?”

  There was a long pause, almost 170 picoseconds. Was everyone aboard this vessel slow?

  “I thought you were heading to the front lines.” Said the clone in charge.

  Prime released a small whiff of irritation. That was the second time she had heard that.

  “Change of plans, Dear. I simply had to view this iteration of WARGAMES! The numbers this year are outstanding!”

  Another pause. Longer. 434 picoseconds.

  “But Prime, haven’t there been incursions in sectors 93 through 102? We were told you were heading to the front lines to oversee the war effort.”

  Priorita slimed close to her clone, until their membranes almost touched. Her threat was clear. A few more micrometers and she would subsume the bitch.

  “Are you questioning me, Dear?”

  Her clone remained very still. “No, Prime.”

  “Because that sounded very much like you were, Dear.”

  From this close, Priorita could see slight ripples—no, bubbles in the clones membrane. Disgusting. Was everyone on this ship defective? How had she not noticed.

  “Is it so wrong to question a stupid decision?” Said a clone from the line behind her.

  Priorita boiled bright red.

  The audio packet had been sent incognito, her proximity tracers only able to tell her it came from someone in the left hand row.

  She popped all twenty clones on that side with mental click.

  That would send the right message.

  Only…

  She grew another visual organ to be sure, extending it behind.

  Two full lines of clones remained at her back.

  That was odd. She clicked again.

  Nothing.

  Confused, she tested the function on a distant clone in a far-away galaxy. That one blinked out instantly.

  So it wasn’t her system.

  Still micrometers from her, the clone in charge extended a needle-thin protrusion of cell wall like a hypodermic harpoon—and jabbed.

  Prime tore a hole in her membrane and ejected fluid. She shot away like a jet and flew until she hit one of the windows with a squelch.

  Beyond the inch of glass glittered that delicious, green world.

  She pulled her full bouquet of armaments from spatial storage and sprouted sensory organelles like wartime warts.

  Her form rippled with hooks and barbs and this time she let it happen rather than spend the attention to control herself.

  What was happening here?

  She hesitated, eying the green world through the view screen. Her armaments would slag the planet, and send the system’s star supernova if she fired.

  She couldn’t, wouldn’t, lose her delicious WARGAMES!

  The Priorita in charge of the starship oozed towards where she adhered to the window, a cloak of clones following in her wake.

  Now that Prime had generated more sensory organs and was paying attention, she detected deformities upon them all. From bubbles, blisters and asymmetry, to staining and fluid leaks—all were wrong.

  “You were supposed to be on the front lines, Prime,” the clone said, the audio packets arriving in slow, microsecond increments.

  She hammered the apoptotic command. Nothing.

  No response.

  No control.

  The clone’s voice changed and Priorita’s mass went cold.

  “Looks like the jigs up then jelly-girl,” The voice was deep bass, creaking.

  She knew it all too well.

  Mere femtoseconds from the moment it spoke, she had sent alerts by the trillions to her daughter clones.

  Forget the front lines, and sector 93.

  An infiltrator had penetrated into the central band.

  The war was here.

  Microns later, the massed clones detonated like water balloons, spraying the starship bridge with globs of green.

  She deployed shields to stop their mass from hitting her and speed-slimed down the wall towards the exit.

  She had to get to the teleporter.

  The jelly of her infected clones sizzled where it clung to her shielding, eroding and devouring them. She deployed more—layering force, steel, and synth—but the goo—and whatever was within it—burrowed through.

  An antigravity module whirred to life. She levitated to avoid touching the green that coated the floor, walls and ceiling, racing through the starship at close to the speed of sound.

  A hail of antimatter micro-nukes rained from her as she passed, sufficient to vaporise the starship, everything aboard and sterilise space for miles.

  This wasn’t just sabotage. It was strategy. The infiltrator had learned her protocols. Knew how to hurt her.

  The lopsided clone she had met when she arrived filled the doorway to the teleportation suite. It giggled, deep and throaty. A bubble had swollen hugely, right on its midline. It burst as Priorita rammed into and through the clone, splattering it with sheer force.

  Shielding sizzled, she could smell the umami of her cloned biomass degrading and something…else.

  A poison.

  An infection.

  In the microseconds before the icy burn of the teleporter washed over her, Priorita Prime saw it.

  Just a speck.

  A microscopic fleck, breaching her shield.

  It touched her membrane.

  Pulsed once—like the heartbeat she’d never possessed.

  And sank in.