Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
LYRIEN
I reached out to grab the ship as it drew closer to my dock, dragging it inside.
“I’ve taken over, now get out of there,” I told Maria
She opened the door leading from the control room, and stood there, staring out into the cargo hold of the small ship, a room that took up most of the entire space of the ship, a size that had just become wholly inadequate.
I could see through the optics I installed in her MECH suit.
It was exactly what I thought would happen.
“That is envelopment,” I told Maria. “She is in the middle with his core.”
I triggered the door to close.
She wasn’t going out that way. He was in a full shelllocked rapid growth state, and would remain a liminal state of consciousness, aware enough to keep who was most precious to him safe with his core while his neurofilaments expanded rapidly outward with the sudden flux of calories.
He would likely fully envelop the small ship before his growth slowed and needed more mass, something I would not provide him until he regained full consciousness.
“Should I try to cut her out of there?” Maria asked, worry thick in her voice.
"Don't," I replied as I brought over a tool kit and began peeling open the front window of the control room so I could lift her out of there. "You won't get in, and he will instinctively retaliate against damage. He isn't conscious."
I reached in with one of my larger neurofilaments and wrapped it around her waist, lifting her up through the opening I’d just created.
"But Leija!" she said. "She's trapped in there! I couldn’t even see her."
"It is the safest place she could possibly be," I said.
"He was eating people!" Maria said. "How can she be safe there? I didn't know you guys could grow that fast! He completely filled the cargo hold."
As she spoke, Eun's neurofilaments burst through the sides of the small vessel, clawing and grabbing as he clutched the ship around himself, using it as a framework for his growth as he wrapped it up entirely in a ball of filaments. My connection to the ship’s systems flickered and then cut out as he took over.
I already had the inventory log, and knew exactly how many calories were on board and how much growth he would be able to get out of them.
He shouldn't get much bigger, not unless I give him access to more supplies.
Just in case, I began shifting things around, moving my gardens and farms to the other side of me so that he wouldn't be able to reach them and eat my birds.
"Eun isn't going to hurt her," I replied. "He reacted to her as if they were mated, and in periods of sudden trauma, it is normal to drag those who are most precious to the center. She is in his center right now. He should let her go once he regains full consciousness."
"When will that be?" Maria asked.
He should be more responsive than he was, so I reviewed my copy of the inventory logs. All of the meat on board was from the local planetary system, which meant only one thing.
"I'm not sure," I said. "He just ingested a large quantity of toxin and went into a shell-locked growth spurt. The state he is in is a liminal one, and will likely last until he filters out the poison."
"What toxin?" Maria demanded. "What poison?"
"All of the species in this planetary system have an element in their flesh that is addictive and damaging in large quantities," I said.
"The amount in the vegetative matter we purchased is trivial and easy to process out with leaching, but it can become concentrated and potent in the flesh of those who live here, as they don't follow practices like that.
The meat on that ship was all sentient beings who had had a lifetime of buildup, and he absorbed it all at once. "
"That's horrible," Maria said.
"Yes," I said. "It is not a pleasant system, which is why we are already on our way out of it."
"I'm still worried about Leija," Maria said. "I know you said she is safe, but if he is unconscious because of poison, won't that make it harder on his instincts to tell what is what? He could hurt her by accident."
I pressed a neurofilament against one of Eun's exposed ones, and I got a sudden flash of territorial encroachment.
The communication was vague, emotional, and reactive more than fully responsive, as I would expect from a Vaurelcar in his state.
Instead of trying to speak with words, I sent an image of his mate smiling as she stood in the center of a room, accompanied by a detailed diagram of a human-appropriate living quarter.
Hostility was replaced by curiosity, so I began gathering materials to match the diagram to pass over.
"He's already responding to some of my prompting," I replied. "I believe he will build her living quarters inside so she will be comfortable, but we mustn't do anything to try to get her out until he wakes up. He will fight that, and it will be inconvenient."
"But you can take him, in case she needs us to," Maria said. "Right?"
"Yes, but in this case, fighting is the worst thing I could do right now.
If it were just him, I could toss him out, but I can't eject him into space without Leija dying.
He's damaged the structural integrity of the ship he took over and won't be able to maintain an environment for her if I pitch him out, nor do I think he would be able to get to a habitable planet in time," I said.
"Even if that wasn't the case, I don't want to fight him.
Maria, he has been severely abused. Cutting off a Vaurelcar's neurofilaments like that... It's horrific. I want to help him."
"Then we will help him," Maria said. "But I'm not leaving her in there alone. She's already been alone for months. She doesn't even know I'm human."
The tremble in her voice stopped me in my tracks. I had been about to say that she hadn't been alone; she had her mate with her, but the worry cut into Maria's face spoke volumes. I was used to being alone. I choose not to have a crew.
Maria chose none of this.
She decided to open up to me, to mate with me, to care about me, but that didn't mean that she was choosing to be alone.
Her species might be one that needed groups or same species companionship to connect to.
Suddenly, I became aware of just how fragile our relationship was.
I couldn't be her everything if she needed others of her own kind.
If she needed that, I would need to change, to open up further, and let others in.
Or I would have to let her go.
"I can likely get a communication device passed in with the rest of the materials I'm passing in," I said. "So you can contact her directly and make sure she is alright. If she wishes for us to attempt to extract her once she knows what is going on, we will."
Maria's shoulders relaxed, slumping with the weight of the tension that had begun to build up in her body.
"Yes, please," she said, rubbing her arms as she hugged herself. "It would make me feel a lot better about all of this if I could just talk to her."
"Why don't you go rest?" I told her. "I'll let you know once you can contact her."
My own tension didn't abate even when she finally left Eun to his slumber, removed the suit and went deeper inside me.
Once she had gone to sleep, I slowly shifted her quarters farther away from the loading bay as well.
She could still get there; I didn't block the path, but I needed to make sure I had a warning if she was planning to go within reach of a traumatized, sleeping Vaurelcar.
She rested and we continued to head towards Shek’invitali space, this time with two more passengers in tow.
The only problem was that there was a familiar flicker on my long range scanners.
Someone was stalking after us.
And I didn’t know what he wanted.