After I cut the Queen's head off, something I had to spend a moment bottling up before I started moving again, I awkwardly lifted the misshapen corpse and carried it back toward the shelter I had been staying at. Hopefully the Wardens of Life would appreciate what I had done in the name of all sentient life.
As I walked Cai made a few attempts to raise my spirits and remind me about how I would soon be leaving this planet and probably going home. I wish I could say that his attempts helped me come to terms with having killed an unborn baby, but they didn't. In fact, the fact that I had killed a baby was all I could think about, for some reason at that time it didn't matter to me that the baby would have gone on to completely destroy so much more than I could have concieved of, it was a baby and I had always believed that life, no matter what kind it was, deserved a chance to grow beyond what others thought it would grow up to do.
Once back at my camp, it wasn't long after I settled the Queen's corpse in my shelter that the bombs went off. I was standing by the shelter, looking toward where the clearing they had been placed in was, when they exploded. You'd think that from almost twenty-six kilometers away, I wouldn't see the cloud or feel the blast wave, but I guess together they all made a bigger boom than I had expected. The mushroom cloud shot over a thousand feet into the air and was visible for at least 55 kilometers, Cai told me that stuff, and the blast wave nearly knocked me off my feet. I was only able to keep my balance by grabbing onto the shelter's frame and using it to steady myself.
"Rickshaw, I calculate that Warden shuttlecraft will make their way toward our position within the hour," Cai told me. "Let us go home."
"Yea, let's," I agreed, looking at the massive cloud that was just starting to disperse and fall back to the ground. This hell I had been thrown into was almost over and soon a new kind of one would begin.
"I must confess something to you," Cai said after a while of the two of us sitting in silence.
"What's up?" I asked, curious and afraid.
"It is about the Queens you have killed while on BS-HP-003," he began. "The Wardens of Life Commanders with the highest clearances and powers have mandated that any who succeed in slaying a Queen are to be rewarded with a promotion to the rank of Captain of a Galaxy-Jumper class starship. These starships are capable of moving between galaxies within the wider universe and are capable of holding in their shuttlebays and cargoholds entire fleets of starships. Their sheer size has been likened to small planetary objects such as large moons and dwarf planets."
"What are you trying to tell me Cai?" I asked, interesting as I found what he was telling me, I wanted a straight answer about what he meant.
"After you killed the young Queen over three weeks ago, you were immediately labelled as a Warden Galactic-Jumper Captain. An Admiral of your own fleet if you will. When you killed the elder Queen nearly thirty minutes ago, your achievements compounded together and you were named Admiral of a second fleet and the Galaxy-Jumper class starship that came with it. By bringing the body of the Queen back for study and the nearly-born embryo with it, you have likely achieved a third admirality. No Warden Commander has ever been able to lay claim to a Galaxy-Jumper starship without at least two other Warden Commanders backing them and they must still allow other fleets of starships within their Galaxy-Jumpers. You have complete command of two Galaxy Jumpers and will likely be allowed to claim a third in addition to the fleets of starships that will be berthing within the Galaxy-Jumpers. This means that you and your race will in effect, whether you stay with the Wardens of Life or not, have enough starships to evacuate your homeworld and ferry your people to a galaxy far beyond the reach of the Scourge."
While I processed what Cai had just told me, I felt all the pieces of my plan finally come into place. What the Wardens needed, from my perspective anyway, was a race of soldiers that could face the Scourge on all their worlds and had the biological and technological means to face them and win. They needed a race that wasn't beholden to the ideal of taking a specific world back from the Scourge but all worlds across the known Universe and even beyond it wherever the Scourge might run to and hide from them. That race would need some way to move around without fighting the politics that the Wardens were no doubt filled with and all them demanding one course of action that would benefit them. I could give the Wardens the race of soldiers and they now owed me the means of travel that race would need.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
"Cai, do you remember when I asked you about any races that were good with genetic engineering?" I asked.
"Of course I do," he said. "It was on your first full day on this planet and it was just after you had woken up."
"Yea it was and you said that there were races like that, right?"
"Correct."
"Well then that, and the bomb about me having these Galaxy-Jumper starships, means that I've got an idea that's crazy but maybe might be doable."
"Please go on," he urged me.
After I had told Cai the broadstrokes of my plan, which he agreed was something that hadn't been done, which shocked me, we spent the rest of our wait time discussing smaller details of the plan and putting it all together in a neater package to present to the Warden Commanders. My peers in political power and name it seemed.
As the shuttle descended, I was able to get a good look at it and I was weirded out at the way it looked. Blocky and cubish, it reminded me of the description of that old Star Trek enemy, the Borg; everyone I knew who had seen that show said they had giant cubes for spaceships. Unlike all other depictions of spaceships and the shuttles that went with them, I couldn't make out any communication antennae or weapon mounts or even see any missles hugging the sides and waiting for the chance to fly off and explode some poor Scourge's day.
The shuttle touched down with a thump in front of me and the side that was facing me slid upward to reveal a group of creatures wearing armored suits like I did and carrying spears and shields. From what I could see of them, they had three fingers on their hands and their legs were as thick as tree trunks with no foot at their ends.
"I will translate anything that they say to you in realtime and afford them a vocal pitch that mimics their natural tone and any emotional distress or excitement that may be occurring," Cai told me. "This race is Tar-en-fil."
"Thanks, Cai," I whispered before raising my voice and addressing the Tar-en-fil soldiers pointing their spears at me fearfully. "Do you guys have some sort of body bag or box? Maybe a coffin? I'm bringing a package with me for the scientists and my fellow commanders."
"What are you bringing?" the voice came from behind the shieldwall that had appeared when the shuttle doors opened.
"I have killed two Queens on this planet and have recovered the body of the second one. It appeared to be close to birthing a third Queen, so I killed it quickly and was able to transport it here," I told them. "It's in the shelter if anyone wants to look."
"Cul-mek, Jel-num, Rin-tat, you three go and check," the voice ordered. "Identify yourself, soldier."
"I am Rickshaw James," I told whoever it was while fingering my sword's hilt and eyeing the three aliens that began to shuffle their way off the shuttle. "You might know me better as, what was it Cai, HW-99-SM?"
"Correct," Cai answered.
"You are the only survivor?" the voice, likely the commanding officer for the squad that had been sent down here, asked. "How do you claim to have killed not one but two Scourge Queens and prevented the birth of a third without any aid?"
"That's for me to know and you to learn through the grapevine," I told the officer. "Now, are you going to let me on the shuttle or not, cause I've been looking forward to leaving this rock for a few weeks now."
"Sergeant! The Human does not lie!" one of the three that had been sent to check the inside of the shelter called back. "There is a Queen's corpse in the survival shelter and it appears to be with child!"
"Be welcome on the shuttlecraft, Dawn of Stars, Human Commander Rickshaw James," the officer in the back of the shuttle said finally, bowing his head toward me and indicating his squad move aside. "We will be honored to escort you to the Last Life of Cal-nok."
"Thanks," I said making my way up the ramp. "Don't forget my corpse."
That shuttle ride was worth every jolt of turbulence because it meant just one thing to me. I was leaving and had the chance to go home; even if I might not take it.