Savage Stars (Free Worlds Book 5) by Anderle Michael & Mclaughlin Kevin

Author:Anderle, Michael & Mclaughlin, Kevin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dane tried to call Carlos as he ran toward the lab, but the doctor did not pick up. Come on…come on… Dane repeated in his head. He practically skidded to a halt outside the labs, then walked inside.

But instead of finding someone in an MRI or waiting to be injected with something, or worse, he found Dr. Alvarez and three Centauri scientists all huddled around the table. Their backs were to him, but all the same, Dane could tell they were in a good mood. They were laughing and chatting instead of arguing or crossing their arms in silence, two poses he found them in plenty down here.

Dane couldn’t see a body on the table in front of them, which gave him an immediate sense of relief. Yet when he took a few steps closer and saw a cage, his old doubts about Carlos arose. Had he gone off and caught some creature to use in a treatment? Had he found a new species and tried to study it? Dane knew people reacted to stress in all kinds of ways. It wouldn’t be unthinkable for Alvarez to have gone down a rabbit hole of research only to come out the other end with an obsession with some alien creature that could not possibly help them.

But it was not an alien of Varuna in the cage before the scientists. It was a cage of rats.

“Where in the hell did you catch those?” Dane yelped. Rats had once made it aboard the rock-dropper he’d been in charge of. Those had not been his proudest days. They had been on a shipment of food, nestled into a box of protein bars. By the time Dane’s crew had found them, the rats’ broods were nearly full-grown and spread out all across the ship.

Instead of being hampered by the lack of gravity, they had adapted quite well to it. Dane still remembered the way they’d hop across tunnels. Flying rats, the crew had cursed them. Everyone complained about the smell of rat pee far longer than the rats had actually been there. Dane still had little love for the creatures.

“Some were on the Centauri ships when they fled. They are resourceful, but I do not think they could have made the passage from Earth to here without warp.”

“And you caught them all?”

“We hope so,” Alvarez advised. “It’s hard to tell with rats.”

Dane suppressed a shudder. “What are you doing with them?”

“Experimenting! These are escaped descendants of some of the lab rats on the Alpha Central station. People have been using them for experiments for thousands of years. I was hoping they might eventually be useful in our studies of the Augmented.”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm for rats, Doctor, but I can’t help but think this is not the time for this. We need solutions—”

“And the rats have given us one!”

“The…rats?” Dane had to be sure he was getting this right. He looked at the other scientists. They wore expressions of jealousy, pride, and eagerness, odd emotions to feel toward rats.

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