She's not speaking to me now though, and I'm thankful for small mercies.
If I can't get through the cable, I guess the only way is around.
I study the ice beyond the maintenance tube.
At least it can't get any colder.
Pummelling through ice is both easier and harder than I expected.
Easier because... well, the fug blades. And harder because the hull goes on forever. Well, that's what it feels like with my lungs burning for oxygen and my muscles doing their best impression of jelly. I'm sitting with my back against one side of the little tunnel I've made, sweat running over my top lip, wondering if the fug-armour can purify it so I can get rid of the crappy, glue-like taste on the back of my tongue and the desperate need for water. Yeah, that'd be real convenient. Not sure how I'd feel about it if I had to pee and it recycled that as well, but... yeah, let's not go there. Gross factor plus.
It's kinda ironic that I'm surrounded by enough water to drown the Ag decks three times over, and I'm sitting here, dying of thirst, or what feels like dying. At least I'm not suffocating. That would suck.
I'd made it around the blockage in the maintenance tube, slashing and hacking my way through the ice, slicing into the plasglas on the other side. I'd thought I was home clear, just a couple hundred metres to the next junction, up a level and I would be right outside Engineering, hacking through the next maintenance hatch and I'd be done.
I should be so lucky.
It hadn't been a grappling cable that blocked my way. It was the red stuff. Fug the colour of blood, writhing and pulsing like I'd expected the cable to, burning its way through the ice. My HUD screamed, that awareness in the pit of me yelling danger, even as Dude had snarled, coming to attention, every fibre in his little body ready to leap at the red-fug and tear it to pieces. I'd barely caught him before he kamikazed off my shoulder. And then I'd turned tail and run.
I'd thought I was running back the way I'd come, my feet seemed to know where they were going and that had been enough for me as the red-fug snapped and burned in my wake.
The stuff was everywhere, keeping pace, nipping at my heels. Hungry, angry and vengeful. It pushed the emotions ahead of it, just like Mac had in the eter, and I'd wondered, in the space between ragged breaths, if it was him chasing me, causing this. It was just a second, and then I'd thrown it aside because as much as the rage felt like Mac, it wasn't him. There'd been something else in the emotions chasing me, a different vibration. Similar but not the same.
Whatever drove the red-fug, it wasn't Mac and it wasn't Aeotu.
I hadn't run for long, a few minutes maybe, enough to never want to do it again. At some point, after I'd scrambled up a ladder I hadn't remembered coming down, I'd lost the red-fug. Lost the sense of it wanting to tear me apart and feast on my blood.
So now I'm sitting here, my back against the tube, dying of thirst. Sitting here and wondering where the fuck I am, 'cause I ain't anywhere near Engineering. I think I'm somewhere near Engineering, but... yeah. There should be a junction around here, a crosshatch of tubes, one going around the ship, just like this, the other driving straight to the inner bulkhead. That's what the map on my biocomp says, the one that shows Citlali as she was before. I guess Aeotu's done some remodelling, or I'm lost. Seems like my feet didn't know where they were going after all.
It could be worse, I guess. I could be floating in the void, untethered and drifting.
So yeah, there's that.
Dude doesn't seem too worried. He's scampering around the tunnel, up it, over it, his little fug-claws sinking into the ice. He's right over my head, hanging from the ceiling like the little bit of gravity that makes it into the tubes isn't there at all. He's got his nose to the... I was going to say ground, but I guess it's the roof. Whatever. He's got his nose stuck to it, passing back and forth, back and forth, scenting the plasglas like some kinda sterdane, and there's this halo of concentration around him. A bright, pulsing bronze, and I'm looking at it not with my psionic ability, but with my eyes. My. Eyes.
I guess there's only so much freakage a body can take, 'cause I'm like, just chilling here, staring at Dude and trying to figure out how long this shit has been going on. I figure it's got something to do with the fug, or the fug-HUD opening up a different spectrum of light or some such shit. All I know, all I really care about right now is that Dude's on some kinda mission. There's purpose in the halo, a thread of bronze covering his itty-bitty muzzle, wrapped around his paws. There's something else too, a shimmer seen from the corner of my eye.
I slip into the eter, not all the way, just enough to bring the shimmer into sharp focus overlaying it with what my physical eyes perceive. The colours are brighter, more vibrant, pulsing like blood. And there's the shimmer.
A chill runs through my blood, not a deluge, just a trickle. I already knew what I'd find, was just hoping I was wrong.
The same multi-hued thread that ran through Mac, connecting him to the fug-critter, sparkles along Dude's spine, all the way from his nose to the barb of his tail. It trails into the eter before disappearing, slipping through the threads of the psionic plane and into... something.
I know where it's going, the ora. Dude and Mac are talking to Aeotu, connected to her.
Everything's connected to her now. I guess there wasn't any real escaping that, not with her claws in Citlali, with fug, no matter its colour, seeping through the bulkheads, into me.
I step away from myself, fully into the eter, and turn. It's weird, looking at myself this way, at my body propped up against the wall, one leg up, one leg thrust out across the tube. There's a disconnect, a gap between my perception of myself and the reality. It's like looking at yourself in a mirror, you and yet not you, like looking at a fragment of yourself, an alternate being.
The boy in the tube is taller than I expected, with broader shoulders and bigger hands. I wonder how much of that is the armour and how much is me, the changes wrought between Core pushing me into that stasis unit and waking up. Patterns move across my chest, over my thighs, swirls and shapes forming and reforming on the armour's surface.
But I'm not here to admire myself in fug, as awesome and gross as that is. There's a kind of shift I did when I first sought Aeotu in the ship's AI core. I twist and pop, like standing on my head while doing a cartwheel. It's a change of perception, of slipping through what I know is reality and finding a new one, one where colours I never knew existed explode in my head. There's no describing them because I'm not even sure I'm seeing them. It's taste and sound and the brush of colour against my face. It's a place where nothing and everything exist all at once, a place of possibility, of making. Of darkness.
And there, there is the golden thread strung between Dude and I, the veins of him running under my skin, and under that, in the fug, is the rainbow. A spiderweb of every human colour and all of the impossible ones, all over me. I follow it down through my toes, into the fabric of the ora, and turn. And turn, and turn and turn. Every turn takes me deeper into the nothing, still following that thread, racing into the darkness and there, there...
Holy Terra.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I expected the Aeotu. I expected a supernova of light and sound. I expected the shivering, alien voice reaching out. I expected "sister".
I didn't expect this.
It's not Aeotu. It's... more? Less?
It's me. Or not me. Or a twin, if a twin was an alien. Or...
I just... I can't.
The thing before me is humanoid. Four arms, two legs. A head. Skin that's not skin, but the strange alien metal-stone that forms Aeotu's bulkheads, and blood that's not formed of haemoglobin and iron, but energy, pure, blinding energy, the kind that burns organics alive. The kind that powers FTL engines. And it's not alive. Not alive like I'm alive or Aeotu is alive. And it's not dead either, not a tank of biogel and circuits.
It looks like me, or like the me that's slumped in the maintenance tube, covered in fug armour. The same broad chest and mu
scled thighs, the same pattern of lines and whorls tracing under its skin. It's... disturbing and also... I want to say cool but it doesn't feel right, not for something like this. Is it real? Does this thing exist or is this just a figment of my imagination? An illusion created by Aeotu?
A mirage plays around it, half-seen. Of cables and ribs, a frame holding it upright, and little spots of yellow, like heat signatures. I peer closer, trying to make out the scurrying things... they're tiny, minute. Dude is a giant beside them. I lean closer and closer and just a little bit more...
Nanites; nanoscopic machines running around the thing like blood.
Awareness reaches out to me. Familiar. Comfortable. Rising from the pit of my gut, from that place where Hunt came from, where all that knowledge resides. How I knew about the thickness of the hull, the levels of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere. Where the sense of danger came from. Here. It all came from here. From that. From the me-thing.
It does not move. Does not breathe. Doesn't have eyes or ears, but it's looking at me, reaching out to me. Listening to me. Not my words, but... I don't know. I can feel it, the pulse of power through its muscles, the throb of the generator in its belly.
I don't want to follow the thread, don't want to feel the... the thing, but there's no escaping it. It's like trying not to feel the wind against my face, the brush of hair against my cheek. The urgent, leg-crossing need to piss.
I might as well chop off my arm, or ignore the curiosity that urges me to crawl through access tubes, to curl up in the Hatchery and watch critters being made. It's impossible.
The thing doesn't have a name. There's a sense of identity but's it's blurry, half-formed, like it's still growing, developing. It's aware, and it needs, has a purpose. It's the need that's reaching out to me, hooked into my belly with that shifting multi-hued cord. A psionic umbilicus strung between us.
I wrap my fingers around it, unsure if I want to rip it out or just feel it. My knuckles turn white, my arm tenses. Knowledge shoots through the cord, eddies against my fist. The awareness cuts off. Stops.
And... nothing. Silence perhaps, a chill working its way up my spine, wrapping around my heart? A vague notion of emptiness, a hollow space in the core of me.
The thing fades, merging with the everything.
I let go.
Awareness and the thing spring back. I squeeze again.
The thing fades. Let go. Squeeze. Let go.
Fade and reappear, fade and reappear.
Awareness and curiosity, coming and going.
There's no emotion from the thing, no reproach just that awareness sharing knowledge with me.
I let the umbilicus go. Step back, and slip out of the eter.
Dude's still on the ceiling, nose to the ice, but he's looking at me, concentrating on me.
'What is it?' I ask him, only half-expecting an answer.
He keeps sniffing, swinging his muzzle back and forth, stalking whatever it is like a particularly tasty puddle of goop.
'I know you know.' I can feel it in his gaze, in the expectation. And I wonder, if I slipped into the eter and looked at Dude, really looked, what would I find.
I'm not going there though. After everything, I just need something to be easy, to be the way I expect it. The way it should be, the way things were before.
I clench my hands. Not that there's much chance of that, not anymore. Not with fug crawling all over my body and that... Whatever that thing was. Still connected to me, the umbilicus stretching between us, pulsing, singing. I'm trying to ignore it, but it's hard to push aside the awareness. Now that I know it's there and where it leads, it's like trying to ignore my heart, or a sun or Grea. I'd have more luck pretending I wasn't sitting in an ice tunnel, that Citlali wasn't being swallowed by an alien ship, and my folks weren't shit scared whenever they looked at me.
Horn's face flashes behind my eyes, the way his neck gaped open, how his parents' corpses were left to rot in their pods. At least I get some of why they were scared, and why h'Rawd looked at me like he was wondering how best to kill me.
So many questions, so few answers.
A chitter, and Dude's scurrying across the tunnel, nose still to the... I was going to say ground, but he's clinging to the walls now, and I'm wondering if those are his fug-claws or his natural ones, or maybe both, leaving tiny holes in the ice. Whichever they are, I'm starting to reconsider letting him ride on my shoulder.
Ever helpful, the HUD is outlining Dude's tracks, calculating the depth and age of them even as it tracks his progress across the ice, projecting the rest of his path down the wall and over the floor. It's kinda interesting, in a 'stop-cluttering-up-my-vision' manner, and I'm a second from ripping the mask off my face, vacuum or no, when I notice something else. There's more than one set of tracks up there.
They're outlined on the HUD too, translucent, almost invisible against the bright white of Dude's, and they're all over the place. Tiny marks in the ice, just like the critters, some shallower, some deeper, but all with the same triangular incision.
'What is it?' The words are out of my mouth, and I'm not really sure why, except the awareness feels a little like having Core over my shoulder. Watching. Ready to deliver the answers to the universe.
There's no response. I mean, why would there be? Whatever that thing is, it's little more than a fragment, a half-AI, if there is such a thing, and it doesn't speak my language.
I'm on my own. You'd think after everything that's happened, I'd be getting used to that.
Even if I can't make out all of what the HUD is telling me, I get the gist. And I already know, what with Dude right there, but it would be nice to hear another voice.
An army of critters marched through here.
Why? How?
Critters need oxygen just as much as the rest of us, and I'm pretty sure they don't do well in vacuum either, not without fug-armour at least.
So...
So. Given the lack of fuzzy, frozen corpses floating in the tubes, someone obviously found a way around those two problems, but why expend the resources? Hatchery would have had to grow critters especially for the job. Or bio-tanks, like the ones on Med deck.
There're Mum's words too, about critter slag sticking. What's critter slag? Some kind of vomit? And what does it do? The mystery nags at me, like a sore tooth, or a psionic umbilicus. Why? Why? Why?
Awareness creeps up the back of my head on soft feet, barely noticeable amongst the questions until the HUD changes. New readouts appear, big swathes of red snaking across the ice, weaving and criss-crossing like vines. Like fug vines. Like red fug vines.
Red fug.
As soon as the thought pops into my head, the HUD is picking up little pockets of inert nanites.
And I get it. The critters were chasing fug, but not just any fug, the red stuff. The same type that attacked me. I guess the critters won, or the red decided to choose another battle, because there's nothing here but ice. The HUD is tracing the inert red, and Hunt is urging me forward, my feet are following and it doesn't seem to matter where I'm going, so long as I'm following the trail.
The claw marks get thicker as I go, pock-marking the ice, changing the texture from smooth and hard, to soft and fuzzy. The nanites are getting thicker too, and soon enough little splotches of faded red coat the ceiling, the walls, and then the floor, a shadow of what was here before.
At some point, Dude lands on my shoulder, chittering his little head off. There's anger leaking from his paws, a rebuke and a sense of... wasting? I don't know, it's a new one, and right now, I've got other issues. Such as the corpse bobbing in the tunnel.
It's small. A black ball of frozen fuzz encased in plasform, like a miniature envirosuit.
The little guy's belly is shredded, the milky plasform torn, leaving room for frozen guts and globules of blood to explode out his stomach. It hovers around him in a shower of gore; the HUD picks it out in excruciating detail. Before, I would have chucked up my own guts, whatever was left in the
m, probably just bile by now, but the urge doesn't hit me. I feel, numb. Tired.
Dude feels more than I do. Maybe he feels for us both. Sadness joins the anger radiating from his paws, turns the bright red a dusty shade of purple.
I duck under the corpse and keep moving.
The inert red fug forms trails now, crissing and crossing just like the claw marks. I imagine vines draping from the tunnel's roof, more clinging to the sides, and giant waving reeds growing from the floor. In fact... there are cracks in the floor big enough to stick my pinky in, signs of something burrowing into the ice. They get bigger as I go along, and by the time I find the second corpse, they're big enough to stick my arm in, and the inert fug is no longer just a stain on the ice, but a thick carpet, coming up around my toes and clinging to my fug-feet.
Every step kicks a little of it into the atmosphere, until it fills the place with a fine pink fog.
I keep going, the awareness drawing me deeper. I have the sense we're getting close to something, whether that's Citlali's inner or outer hulls I'm not sure, but there's something at the end of this, something I have to see.
Dude doesn't agree with me, although the heavy brown of his disapproval has faded under the blue of mourning, every critter corpse we encounter makes it deeper, harder.
I wrap Dude in an emote, filling it with joy and warmth and my own shredded memories of being in Mum's arms. It's thin, filaments of our last encounter winding their way through what should have been happy memories, but I hope it's enough, a kind of emotional shield against the constant battery of Dude's kin turned into icicles.
The blue fades a little, replaced with pink and warmth, and there's a note of thanks, a bright yellow directed at me. It doesn't even strike me as weird anymore, that Dude knows the shield is mine, that he's even capable of sorting out what's what in the eter. If he decided to speak to me right now, in actual, human-understandable words, I wouldn't blink an eye.
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