Star Force: Cascade (SF73) (11 page)
Read Star Force: Cascade (SF73) Online
Authors: Aer-ki Jyr
Am I wrong?
No…just
reckless. As usual.
For all of us.
Shut up and
focus. I’ll make sure they have a regenerator standing by.
Don’t use it
unless I ask for it.
Gonna
try and stick this out the
hard way if I can.
Alright. Do what
you need to do. If you want help stabilizing I’ll be here poking around in your
head.
That’s
comforting.
Sorry, no hot
chicks available this time.
On that note…
We’ll deal with
the dream later. Get this thing now.
I intend to.
Paul let their conversation end there and stayed with
him through the latter stages. He did ask for help then, trying to ride out 4
red for a while longer in the hopes of minimizing the pain to come. Eventually
Rio warned him off and Paul broke the link, then his biomonitor started
flashing red and he saw Rio’s body wriggle around a bit like he had an itch
running down his back that he couldn’t scratch.
The holographic monitor off to the side displaying
Rio’s body exploded with fireworks that showed the flash tissue growth inside
of him over the next few seconds, with all of the medtechs going wide eyed when
they witnessed just how fast and widespread it was. While his mass didn’t
change, only repositioned within his body, it looked like he gained over a pound
and a half of tissue, accounting for .9% of his biomass…which was insane,
judging from
Vortison’s
expression.
Soon the fireworks settled and Rio slumped over,
leaning a hand on the table for balance.
“How bad?” Paul asked.
“Not as bad as last time, but it still hurts like
a...I don’t know. Get the regenerator.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t as bad?”
“I can’t train like this, and I want to get started
tomorrow.”
Paul nodded and turned to Vortison. “Get the
wuss
his binky.”
Rio’s lip curled in a snarl that was fueled by the
pain washing through him. “I hate you.”
“Kerrie’s not here to say it, so I did.”
“She probably would,” he said, leaning back and half
falling as his left arm collapsed down to where his elbow hit the tabletop.
“Ok, maybe this is as bad as last time.”
“It’ll be over in a few seconds,” a medtech said,
bringing the regenerator over to him.
“Wait!” Vortison yelled, and the assistant froze in
place a few inches away from making contact with the trailblazer’s body.
“I hate you too,” Rio added.
“I just need a few seconds,” he said, reconfiguring
one of the sensors. “If we monitor what the Kich’a’kat repairs then we’ll know
how the cascade is damaging you and may be able to create a dampener of sorts.”
“Worth,” Rio said, looking at Paul and adding in a
whisper, “Give him 60, then smack that thing on me.”
“Just a moment more,” Vortison said, punching keys and
swiping touchscreens in a fury. “Ok, do it now.”
The medtech set the regenerator against Rio’s bare
neck and it clung there, melting against his skin and diving into it with tiny
tendrils that looked oh so torturous, but Paul knew from experience that he
couldn’t feel them, for they were numbing everything as they went. On the
monitor the tendrils spread throughout the interior of Rio’s body but didn’t
linger for long, eventually pulling back on their tiny paths and healing the
microdamage
they created during the withdraw. When the tiny
bits of machine pooled into globs on the surface they melted back into their
original rigid form and the device fell away from his neck with the medtech
catching it before it could land in his lap.
“Damn, wish I’d used that last time,” Rio said,
flexing his jaw and blinking several times.
“You were right to come here,” Vortison commented, his
eyes on his consoles and not the pair of trailblazers. “We’ve got a slew of
information to sift through that we’ve never had before.”
“Come on, Gumby,” Paul said, pulling Rio off the table
and holding onto his arm knowing that his legs were going to be a bit weak with
his first steps. “Nap time for you.”
“No arguments there.”
“Later, fellas,” Paul said as the medtechs were
gathering around Vortison and largely ignoring the two Archons.
“Ingrates,” Rio muttered as they left the lab and
headed back to their turf inside Atlantis.
Half an hour after Rio hit the pillows and passed out,
his mind became blocked to outside vision and he slipped into the recurrent dream
again, working his way through a process that he had never recalled before, but
when he woke some 13 hours later he gathered his thoughts and found he was able
to remember a few new details…or rather details that he hadn’t been able to
recall previously. The places he had been, including that particular sky with 4
suns in it, were now almost recognizable, but still just out of mind’s reach,
as if he had a word on the tip of his tongue and couldn’t remember it.
What he did remember was a short sentence that he’d
constructed while in the dream itself. Something that he had done many times
before but failed to remember. He had been trying to send his waking self a
message, and this time enough of it remained to survive the passage between
dream world and real world.
Indiana Jones
find
the
idol.
