Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
MARIA
Filaments shot out from the walls, the familiar glowing white, wrapping around the Calicium, lashing it like a sea monster rising from the depths to embrace the wooden planks of a pirate ship.
The Calicium's body crumpled in places, metal crunching, denting as the filaments wrapped tighter.
It let out a scream, and there was a burst of blue light from its arm, severing several of the filaments.
I rushed over to where my weapon had fallen, dodging under more filaments as they shot out of the walls, trying to grab his arm, as he fired repeatedly, severing filament after filament, breaking himself free as he severed them even as they fought to strangle him.
I lifted my gun and pointed it at him.
The filaments pulled back suddenly, wrenching him off balance, opening him up.
I triggered my weapon, and the red light stabbed into him. It hit him, and he staggered backward, off balance, his arm lifting to point his built-in weapon at me.
Then his back brushed against the peach colored wall behind him.
The filaments there surged forward, enveloping him like mud, sucking him in as his scream vanished into the beautiful white filaments.
There was a horrible sound, like lettuce crunching over and over again, and magenta blood oozed out from between the filaments.
Then there was silence.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the wall, feeling the horror of it all, the bruise on my chest, the knowledge that I was in part responsible for the ending of another life.
There was a numbness to that thought, an acceptance that fit neatly into the category of things that I would do over again.
The glowing white filaments reached out, one of them stroking my hair, the others brushing over my body with a gentleness I knew deep down in my heart.
Even so, I focused on where the other being had died, and I whispered a soft prayer that my grandmother had taught me.
"Diosa Segadora, que ya lo reclamaste con tu guada?a, no permitas que su alma encuentre descanso; júzgalo con tu frío eterno y arrástralo a la oscuridad donde no exista el olvido," I said.
"That is harsh," the Vaurelcar said. "You wish such a thing on someone following orders?"
"Anyone following the orders of evil is just the same as the person making the orders," I said.
"Obedience to evil isn't a virtue; it is a sin of the darkest kind, because it is the sin of compliant cowardice.
There is always a way to fight back, whether it is directly or with malicious compliance. "
"Malicious compliance?" the Vaurelcar asked.
"It is when you comply, but you do so with a broad interpretation of what that means," I said.
"In my culture, there is an idea that if you make a deal with the devil, the devil will always interpret the deal in the worst possible way for you.
Say you wish for your body's weight in gold, the devil will kill you and turn you into gold.
When you maliciously comply, you go along with the oppressor's orders, but always with the deliberate intent to mess things up and deliver an outcome they don't want.
Obedience to evil is evil itself, but the appearance of obedience while destroying it from within is good. "
I felt a tug on the gun in my grip, and I looked down to see a peach neuro filament wrapped around it.
Lyrien's filaments trailed down my hand, and as they brushed up against the peach one, it flinched away, keeping the barest grip on the gun.
"Let go," the Vaurelcar said as it tugged on the gun. "Please."
For a moment, I didn't want to.
But I was in his center, and he was vulnerable.
So I let go of my defenses.
There was a soft sigh of relief from the body that lay prone on the table as he pulled my weapon away from me.
He was afraid of me, afraid of what I might choose to do with my weapon. Even though I had freed him, that wouldn't be enough to heal him from the fear.
One wall of the room opened up, a corridor of white glowing strands appearing, sliding on top of the peach ones, a tunnel within a tunnel.
"Go back to Lyrien now," the Vaurelcar said. "Thank you, but please leave."
I stepped out onto Lyrien's filaments, walking away from the center of him without another word.
As soon as I was fully inside, the wall closed up behind me, blocking my access to his main vulnerability.
Part of me had wanted to stay, to introduce myself, to learn his name.
He owed me a thank you at the very least. But my needs weren't more important than his.
I had no idea how long this creature had been kept in captivity, forced to do things against his will by the small parasites that had invaded his system.
The best thing I could do for both of us in this moment was to respect his wishes and take myself back to the ship, which would find a way to take me home.
The leviathan who had become my home.
As I walked, the corridor began to move under my feet.
Lyrien didn't grab me, a fact I was grateful for.
I had had enough grabbing for the moment.
After being crushed and prodded by the other Vaurelcar, the thought of any filament holding onto me made me shudder.
I would need a hot bath and some care before I could handle that again.
Instead, Lyrien made himself into a moving walkway that carried me faster than if I had moved myself.
"I'd like to take you to my medical bay," Lyrien said, his voice suddenly appearing out of the air. I must have finally reached a place where he had audio and visual sensors. "I need to know how badly you're hurt."
"I don't think I am," I said. I rubbed my wrist gently. "Maybe my wrist, but other than that, I think I'm fine."
"I'd like to scan you, just in case," he said.
"He grabbed you very roughly, and smaller species can incur invisible injuries inside of them from rough treatment that can lead to sudden death.
He removed your helmet. Did he put pressure on your neck?
Blunt force to the neck can cause tears in the lining of the arteries leading to the neck, which can result in clots that travel to the brain.
I need to make sure you're okay. Please let me scan you. "
My heart ached for the panic in his voice. He was frightened, more frightened than me.
This massive leviathan, this monstrous space whale who was able to rearrange his insides and create an entire world for me to enjoy, was afraid for me.
I reached out and put my bare hand on the wall, and his filaments immediately reached out and entwined with my fingers.
I continued walking, and those filaments slid along the wall with me, holding my hand.
"I'm okay," I told him. "I'll go to medical to get checked out, but you don't have to worry. I'm okay. Are you okay? Is it over?"
"I took minor damage," he said. "The Calicium were not prepared at all for us to charge and grapple them like that.
The other Vaurelcar is mainly equipped with long-range weapons, and none of its short-range weapons hit us.
Their tactic is usually to chase my kind down, repeatedly damage it, and then board.
They were unable to do more than minor damage in their attempts to fight back against me.
The other Vaurelcar is finishing up cleaning out the ones in his system.
At least he won't have to worry about the contamination.
The Calicium wouldn't allow that substance on a controlled Vaurelcar. "
"What is his name?" I asked. "The other Vaurelcar?"
"He doesn't know," Lyrien said. "The control collar does more and more damage to long-term memories the longer it is in control.
It may come back to him, it may not. I'm providing him with directions to safe spaces.
My kind offers rehabilitation programs and support for recently freed members, but they may not wish to take advantage of them.
The most important thing is that he can choose where he goes and what he does. "
"Has he at least said thank you?" I asked.
"I did a lot of damage to him, and he is in shock," Lyrien said. "He's not the most talkative right now, especially since I haven't disengaged yet."
"Why not?" I asked him.
"I'm making sure all of the Calicium are dead first," Lyrien said.
"Recently freed ships have a risk of keeping a few of their captors alive because of a desire for revenge.
They think torturing them will make them feel better, but that puts them at a high risk for recapture.
I'm not going to allow that risk. Once I'm done, I'll disengage, and then he can do whatever he wants, and we'll be on our way.... except... hold on...."
"What is it?" I asked.
"There are humans on board," he said. "I don't have sensors in all of my intrusion points, but during my attack, several humans touched my filaments."
He went silent for a long moment.
"Lyrien," I said, stopping suddenly as a thought occurred to me, sending anxiety spiking through me even as the words rushed free from my lips. "Is there a woman who looks like my species, similar height, with much darker skin and hair?"
"The other Vaurelcar has confirmed that there was," Lyrien said. "She made it into the deployment shuttle and fled during the attack. We can go recapture it after I disengage."
Fear and rage spiked through me, overwhelming everything else.
"You can track the shuttle?" I asked.
"Yes," Lyrien said, a note of hesitation entering his voice. "But Maria... the other Vaurelcar said she is a Calicium, not a human like the others he has on board."
Fury overrode my reason, blocking out the rest of his words.
Fucking Evangelia, the bane of my existence.
When I had woken up, covered and goo, she was there all soft and sweet and caring, with an entire script about how she was here to help me, how we were in this together.
She kept me compliant. She led me to and from my abuse like a lamb to the slaughter, pretending to comfort me when it hurt, telling me not to fight it.
The moment I had started to question, she had dropped the act, and the true knowledge of how alone I really was nearly killed me.
I hated her so much because I needed her so much, and the illusion of her support had crumbled the moment it no longer got me to do what she wanted.
This was my chance to confront her, to face her down, to look her in the eye and demand that she see what she did to me.
"Shoot it," I said. "Destroy the shuttle. Don't let her get away."
I didn't need to forgive her. I needed to make sure she would never do that to anyone ever again.
I felt a soft vibration through the filaments.
"Consider it do... oh... hold on," Lyrien said.
A filament shot out from the wall, grabbing me around the waist even as the hallway suddenly lurched to the side.
"He's panicking," Lyrien said, his voice strained. "He thinks I mean to shoot him."
The hallway lurched again and then spun around me, Lyrien's filament around my waist keeping me steady even as everything else went wild around me.
"What happened?" I asked as the movement of the world around me slowed to a stop.
"I had to disengage," Lyrien said. "Activating my weapon made him panic, and he managed to tear free of me before I could release him. He's gone."
The filament set me back down on the moving corridor, which opened up into a familiar hallway. The medical room was right there.
"What about Evangelia?" I asked.
"I lost the shuttle," Lyrien said after a pause. "I can find it."
"But it isn't near you?" I asked, another flutter of panic. "She didn't board, did she?"
"It wasn't anywhere near me. The trajectory was heading deeper into the asteroid field, and she wouldn't have had time to turn around and come back to us in the confusion," Lyrien said.
"There are likely possibilities of where we can search, but it will take time to find her.
There is a chance she could call for help while we are searching for her. "
I wasn't going to risk both of us for a chance at revenge.
To save someone from a horrible fate, yes.
To satiate my need for vengeance and prevent unknown harm to others in the future, not worth it.
My safety and happiness took a higher priority.
"Let's just go," I said. "We don't need to hunt her down. We need to get out of here."
"I agree," Lyrien said. "Plus, we have another problem.
When the other Vaurelcar disengaged, he managed to punch a hole into one of my flora farms. We can't head directly for Shek’invitali space.
I won't be able to grow enough food for both of us for the long trip.
We will have to make a detour to resupply on food and seed stock. "
Guilt rose up in me. I had been so focused on Evangelia that I hadn't fully listened to what he was saying about the other humans, and now they were lost to us, too, as a traumatized Vaurelcar fled blindly through space.
"We should get more than we need," I said. "Just in case we are able to find the other Vaurelcar. He'll need supplies to take care of them."
"He should have more than enough, but I agree, stocking up is a good idea," Lyrien said, his voice becoming more serious. "Though we have to be careful with what we get. The closest location has... issues."
"Where are we going to stop?" I asked. "Will it be safe?"
"Not for you," Lyrien said, his voice grim.