Star Covenant

Chapter 3: Cloned Embryos and Tentacle Shackles

Erin's iris scanner finally gave the green light on the seventh verification.Kane's spinal tentacles wrapped around her waist and hoisted the two of them into the Alliance's gene vault thirty meters underground.Three hundred embryos soaked in a blue nutrient solution slowly emerged from the cryogenic white mist-each face mirroring Kane's.

"Are these your spare parts?"Erin's quantum wedding ring scanned the Vesta branding on the back of the embryos' necks.Kane's mechanical prosthetic eye suddenly exploded into an arc of electricity as tentacles violently ran through her left shoulder pinning her to the metal wall, "You have no right to question the Commander."

The excruciating pain caused Erin's bioluminescent particles to erupt out of control, her amber pupils reflecting the second mouth that split open at the back of Kane's neck.It was a sign of the hybrid genes going berserk, the quantum entanglement effect forcing a confluence of memories between the two as the fangs sank into her collarbone-

She'd seen ten-year-old Kane retrieve his mother's blasted knuckles at the execution site, and he'd tasted the fishy sweetness of Erin's scalpel slashing through the genetic locks at the orphanage.When storming Kane ripped open her protective suit, Erin suddenly grabbed his writhing tentacles and inserted the wedding ring chip into the neural interface.

The lab's quantum field collapsed in a shrill whine.Erin's blood flows backwards down the tentacle into Kane's heart as the cloned embryos collectively open their eyes.The time rift flashed to a future image: white-haired Kane kneeling in the wreckage of a starship, holding in her arms the frozen corpse that shared her features.

"You killed me four hundred and twenty-one times."Kane suddenly regained his clarity while his tentacles strangled her throat, "I repeat this scene in my visions every time my genes go berserk."

Alarmed, Kane used his tentacles to curl up Erin and leap into the sewage pipe.As they floated in the viscous genetic waste fluid, Erin realized that Kane had miniature holograms embedded in his spine - projecting a missing area of the interstellar map that was matching her dream symbols exactly.

"The Commander needs to remove the instability."Before Kane crushed the hologram, Erin glimpsed the map labeled name: Isabel Vista.The woman who should have died for treason twenty years ago was currently blinking at the coordinates of some stray planet.