Echo-1 The Whale

29: Don't Do Drugs in Space

I met up with X later in the hanger. Mox was still reporting to his government superiors. 

"Is Mox a spy or what?" I asked. 

"Unclear. But we discovered a few things. The Vedma know their light ray weapon doesn't work on diamond ships. Probably why they never attacked Varan. And we think they're some kind of shape-shifting space cuttlefish." X smiled at this.

Nidi came running up from behind some crates stacked in the far corner of the hangar. She jumped up on me, growled, and barked. I went to pet her and she snapped at my hands. 

"They had a whole bunch of questions about her." 

I gave X a look like I did too. 

"I was cruising through different parts of the Vedma ship. You know, trying to find out what they are up to and I found this lab. And there was something odd about it. It was like, just because I went in there, no one followed me.

"There were dead wolves on operating tables. Strange genetic experiments going on. Messing with the Mega Therion DNA. Attempting to breed them into obedient, super wolves or something. Initial Varan reports suggested they took a hundred thousand year evolutionary jump in just a couple generations. There were puppies connected to wires and machines and some were in a kind of incubation chamber. It was creeper city.

"There was a small room off to the side of the lab and Nidi was locked in it. I was alone in the room and she was barking and growling and whining. Jumping frantically against the glass door. I looked at her and she looked at me. I knew instantly. I smashed my bike through, opened the top, and she jumped right in." 

Nidi circled around X. 

"She wanted to get out of there. It was obvious. So I took her." 

X ruffled the fur of the little pup. 

"A group of robots found me in the lab and fired on us. I drove off and as soon as I left the lab section, there were wolves on my tail again. It was pretty clear that area was off-limits. The Varan suspect that the Mega Therions are being manipulated on all sorts of levels by the Vedma. And you know what? I agree with them. Look at her, she's not an evil creature." 

We walked toward the Brick. Nidi ran ahead of us. She tore across the hangar, her nails scratching the floor as she attempted to make high speed sprinting turns. She ran into the Brick. 

X was keeping her, that much was for sure. As synthetic life forms, we couldn't reproduce, but I could see a motherly instinct shining through my naked tattooed friend. She loved the little wolf already and would raise her as her own. No one was going to stop that.

On board the Brick, Werner and Forklift were busy fussing with the whale tanks, dumping a crate of ice lobsters into the tank for the whales to eat.

Dr. Death had finally come around and apologized a million times to everyone for breaking codes of conduct that no one else lived by. He'd given an extremely serious and detailed report to the Varan. 

"Look, off the record, I know I said it once, but I'm sorry about my performance on this mission. I broke protocol and I know it. It could have killed us all. I let down the team." 

The big guy was really beaten up about it. 

"Well, we'll see if Uzi wants to court-martial you when we get back. It might do you some good to bust you down to private." 

X punched him in the stomach and he didn't have to feign injury. He looked worried, the big lug. He probably thought he would get court-martialed. I'd never seen this side of him. His sense of duty and pride was shattered by his falling under the Vedma spell.