Chapter 6
SIX
SUNSHINE
The scream of metal bursting free was my only warning.
It was enough of a warning that I could have jumped forward, avoiding the blow.
That was what my control chip insisted on.
But in the heartbeat between the flash of its order as it tried to take over my body, to force me to abandon Lyssa to her fate, something in me resisted.
Something inside of me broke.
Instead of saving myself, I put a hand in the center of Lyssa's chest and shoved her, hard enough to knock her out of danger.
The metal wall panel slammed into me like a battering ram and sandwiched me against the opposite side of the hallway.
It crushed against me, the metal warping as the neurofilaments pressed against it and the metal behind my back groaned.
I could see the edges of my attacker, the soft pink hue of the neurofilaments that were kept contained within the rigid Calicium structure imposed on it, and tentacles emerging from the cage we'd kept it in.
I pinged Plexus command again, just to be sure.
Plexus command unavailable, my control chip reported. Control discrepancy detected. Seek immediate repair.
Those orders were loose and ill-defined, lacking the specificity my control chip needed to compel me to act immediately, even if I was able to move.
The control chip was not autonomous enough to issue strict orders without Plexus Command to refine them into actionable steps.
If there were any deployment shuttles still on board, it would force me to go to one, but there weren't. Until I had enough information on how to reach another Plexus cluster or another Plexus command came into range, it would remain in a basic operating mode.
I was as free as I ever was going to be.
But that didn't matter as much as the implications of the destruction of Plexus command.
The ship was free.
The wild Vaurelcar had managed to reach the core, and instead of killing it, it released it.
My ribs ached as warnings rushed through my mind. The pressure was immense. It was going to crush me.
Out of the edges of my vision from what I could see beyond the panel that pressed into me, I could see the dross that had been following me fleeing down the hallway, unharmed and untouched by the disintegrating walls.
There was nowhere they could run, nowhere they could go to escape the awakened nightmare that this ship had become.
Freed ships were known to kill all the Calicium inhabiting them.
Yet, the wild Vaurelcar had protected the human women from the escaping ship's engine blast. A newly freed ship would be furious, determined to fight and kill to keep its freedom, but the human dross were docile. They posed no threat to it.
Maybe they would survive this.
My ribs cracked, and I turned my pain sensors off.
Extreme damage detected.
Emergency repair shutdown recommended.
An inarticulate scream filled the air, and suddenly the pressure was gone.
The metal plate fell to the ground, and I landed next to it.
I looked up to see the end of the severed neurofilament thrashing in the air and Lyssa backing away from it, a jagged piece of torn metal in her hands, blood dripping down from where the edges of her weapon had sliced her fragile skin.
Lyssa hadn't run with the others.
She saved me.
Gratitude and horror, unfettered by my broken biological suppression, mixed together in my gut as I ignored the flashing damage reports that let me know I was reaching my limits and staggered towards her just as the severed neurofilament slammed down in the empty space where she had been, trying to swat at the small critter that had bitten it.
The floor thudded with the impact, and it missed by a wide margin, which only meant one thing.
It didn't have her on its optical sensors.
We had a chance, a brief one, a moment as the behemoth shook off its chains and remembered what it meant to be free.
As a ship in the Calicium fleet, a host for a Plexus command, a Vaurelcar was more dangerous than any other ship in our fleet, but the captivity diminished it from its true capacity.
It was confined within the boundaries of what Plexus command wanted it to do, formed into a functional structure to house the expansion of the Calicium.
Free, it had no restraints.
Soon, it would remember it didn't have to squash the little bugs running through its tunnels individually.
It could just collapse all of the tunnels.
The clang of metal brought me back to the moment as Lyssa dropped her heavy, makeshift weapon on the ground on her way over to me.
"Are you okay?" she asked. She put her hand on my shoulder, her blood dripping down into the tears in my own skin.
It didn't matter that there was no chance of fighting off this behemoth.
It didn't matter that I thought the behemoth was in the right, that it should slaughter each and every one of my kind that it could get a hold of.
It was the smart thing to do. If another ship with another Plexus command came in range, I would be ordered to try to retake the ship, to return it to its limited existence of controlled captivity.
I was an evil to be fought against, a risk to be eliminated.
Yet the touch of Lyssa's hand on my shoulder flared up a need I never knew I could experience, a raging inferno of desire to protect her, to keep her safe.
The ship would kill anyone who attacked it, but it didn't have the ability in this hallway to see her, to see what she'd done to it.
It could sense me. That is why it attacked in the first place.
Just because it had broken Plexus command didn't mean the ship had destroyed all traces of Calicium technology, and it had the ability to track and monitor all the Calicium units still left alive on board.
Her best chance at survival during this maelstrom of transition from captive to free was to get away from this spot, to get away from me.
"Run," I said. "Leave me."
Then I manually triggered my repair shutdown.