Wolf of the Emperor

Wolf of the Emporer

Chapter 1

Seth woke and slowly inhaled as he listened for any noises outside the capsule.  The scents that played past his nostrils were what he had expected, the tinge of vanishing cold air, the scent of medical, and the scent of his symbiote.  As he listened no sounds could be heard but that was to be expected due to the sound proofing but it was a habit from years of being a soldier.  Once he had verified with his nose and ears that everything seemed to be normal he opened his eyes.

When he did it took a few moments for them to adjust to the light level in the room the capsule was in.  Once his eyes did adjust he glanced around and then frowned.  This was not the sleep chamber room that he had been expecting.  It looked like one of the escape pods used for the sleep chambers which indicated something happened to the ship.  He closed his eyes for a moment as he went through his most current memories but there was nothing about any emergencies.

Now that he was awake his implants started coming online and booting up.  While that was happening he tasted the link with his symbiote and frowned.  All Seth was getting from the link was a very low level connection which usually indicated his symbiote was still under.  That most definitely wasn’t normal since both halves of a symbiotic link were wakened at the same time.  If one or the other wasn’t woken at the same time it could lead to catastrophic results.

When the human woke and the connection wasn’t there they would do anything to find their symbiote and the emperor help anyone in the way.  If the symbiote woke it was similar but they tended to just go nuts and try and claw their way through anything between the two of them.  That included people, buildings, walls, and vehicles.  Considering the symbiotes weighted close to eight hundred kilo’s and were all muscle, teeth, and claws that could be an impressive rampage.

The only reason the symbiotes existed was because they made one hell of a team as warriors.  The only ones allowed to have symbiotes were the Emperor’s own regiment.  They were known as the Emperors wolves for some reason.  That he didn’t get since the Gudag looked more like a cross between a feline and bear only with six legs. 

Seth shook his head since he was woolgathering which could be a symptom of symbiote deprivation.  “Computer report status of the chambers in the pod.”  Frankly he wasn’t really worried since anything that could damage a pod tended to destroy everything around it.  They were built like vaults with a thin layer of collapsium on the outside and battle steel inside.

“Status of chambers one through three is within normal limits.  Chamber four is not connected to the life pod and unable to verify operational status or survival of occupant.”  Now that Seth had spoken the computer was starting to bring systems online and run diagnostics to check the statuses.

Seth frowned since that wasn’t a good sign.  The chambers they used did have an internal power supply that was good for quite some time for just such an event.  “Provide identities of the sleepers in the other chambers.”  He knew that his symbiote was in one since he could feel her but in emergencies sometimes it was first come first serve.

“Chamber one is yours Captain Harlown, chamber two is your symbiote Kletharl, chamber three is Kletharl’s mate Cleasal, chamber four is Lieutenant Mc Murdock, Cleasal’s host.” 

Seth relaxed some since that was a good thing.  It was rare for the Gudag to end up mating away from their home planet but rarely it happened.  In this case it had happened fairly recently since the symbiotes were somewhat older.  When linked with a host symbiotes never mated till they were at least 40 turns old and both were close to 50 turns.  If one lost a mate it wasn’t nearly as catastrophic as losing a symbiote but was still very hard on them.  If it happened the team would normally go back to the Gudag’s homeworld to the symbiotes family clan.