Dauntless: Destiny Remade

1.2 To Obey

The dream came to Keith again—he would've traded a hundred days in solitary penance to be rid of it and get a solid night's sleep, but he had no choice but to relieve the brief yet taxing experience. Why it exhausted him and pierced his mind like a blade, he didn't know, but what the dream lacked in intensity it compensated for in severity.

Hairless Keith squatted behind his cover, and Keith strained for any more detail he could glean from his surroundings. He'd come here on a hovering, open-topped ship of some sort. The dome and its hairless guards remained wholly unfamiliar. They weren't Galra, and he couldn't place their uniforms—he'd looked into the Blade's databases on his own time, but none of their records matched the olive uniforms of the hairless humanoids. The symbols—a language?—never stuck in his mind.

Yet, Hairless Keith—whom he couldn't quite square with being himself yet he knew that that was unquestionably true—recognized who these people were. He needed to get into the building. To do that, he'd have to get past those guards.

Once again, Hairless Keith put down his binoculars, and Keith wordlessly seethed in frustration. If he'd only put those binoculars back on, he might see another clue. He needed to know who those people were, he needed to get inside of that dome—they had something he wanted.

No, not something...someone.

Keith jolted awake and passed out again from his swirling headache.

When his eyes blinkered open again, he fumbled for his ice tabs and placed them on his forehead. Only then did he risk a tiny, half-choked laugh. He'd broken through and learned something new about his dream. The hairless humanoids had a prisoner, and Hairless Keith needed to rescue him. Without a doubt, Keith knew it would be the most important thing Hairless Keith had ever done.

How do you know what? Keith wondered. He kept his eyes closed to ease his headache, but that allowed him space to think.

He and Hairless Keith shared...a bond of sorts. This felt less like a dream now and more like a message—one that traveled between minds. How real Hairless Keith might actually be...another matter. He'd certainly never seen an alien lifeform that matched his appearance, but there were billions of lifeforms, and he was hardly a xenobiologist.

But Ulla was.

Keith's eyes popped open, and he winced, closing them again. He'd rest first and then pay Ulla a visit.

When Keith entered the medical bay, it appeared empty. That made sense—no one was injured, so Ulla wasn't actively involved doctoring one of the Blades. Keith stepped around the floating medical beds and stepped into the next room over, which included Ulla's massive research panel and screens. A holographic anatomical model of something with entirely too many legs hung suspended in mid-air like a ghost. Keith glanced at it before proceeding to the next room. Fully enclosed in a hazard suit, Ulla stood in a sludgy, green tank. Through the murky water, a creature that looked like the nightmare hologram squirmed under Ulla's grasp. She stuck it with a needle, extracting fluid from a sac on its stomach.

"Oh, Keith! Do you want to meet Tickles?" Ulla asked.

"Is this thing—"

"Tickles," she corrected him promptly, "is giving me some of his valuable bladder secretions. They heal burns marvelously."

"I see," Keith said, eyeing the squirming creature in the tank. He'd rather face an entire platoon of Galra than go near that thing.

After extracting another syringe of secretions, Ulla released Tickles and stepped out of the tank before sealing it. She turned on the anti-contamination shower, cleaned the suit, and then joined Keith, who still gazed suspiciously at Tickles.