It Takes Time <To Be Properly Taken Apart> - Chapter 01
Summary:
Set in the year 2560 of the Terran Protectorate calendar:
A xenosophont from an undomesticated species steals a spaceship and travels to Compact space in search of a partner. After accidentally kidnapping an affini, shenanigans ensue as the not-so-feared pirate captain and the much-more-feared space plant each try to navigate their numerous personal and cultural differences as they form a relationship together.
A xenosophont from an undomesticated species steals a spaceship and travels to Compact space in search of a partner. After accidentally kidnapping an affini, shenanigans ensue as the not-so-feared pirate captain and the much-more-feared space plant each try to navigate their numerous personal and cultural differences as they form a relationship together.
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you definitely do not need to read all of these before reading this one though lol; this is just me wanting to shout out my inspirations Obviously, I can't stop you from ignoring everything I just said and reading this as your first HDG story; but like, please don't. It will make not just me, but all the other authors who've worked hard to make this setting into what it is today feel sad.
Content Warning
This story contains a lot of very upsetting/miserable content; the specific nature and scope of which varies wildly by chapter. Generally speaking, our protagonist is going to have a pretty hard time of things; and while a lot of what she goes through is going to be fun, equally as much is going to be the exact opposite. I mean this very sincerely: If you are uncomfortable seeing characters suffer, this story is not for you. The story does have a happy ending, but it is going to take a very, very long journey before we get there.
The most important CWs for the story would be: Psychological self-harm, discussion of suicide & depictions of (unsuccessful) attempts, plurality-related trauma, gender & species dysphoria, indirect mentions of rape and sexual assault & associated fears surrounding them (though no actual depictions of the former at least), gore & body horror, internalized ableism & in-depth depiction of persecution against minorities, toxic and/or abusive relationships, unethically inconsistent chapter lengths, mention of g*mers. You know; all that good stuff.
Book 1: The Rending Talon
Chapter 1: Visitor From Far Afield
Chapter Length: 13,000~ words Gemirina Aceylia, Seventh Bloom, had about one second of warning before the projectile impacted with her ship. She felt the impact more than she saw it. Her connection with the ship fed low-level sensory input back to her as something akin to a worm began to ravage its way through the decks of the Longbough, tearing apart system by system as it grew and expanded impossibly fast. Within three seconds, it had eaten through half of the non-critical systems in the first third of the ship. In another seven, she felt feedback telling her the protrusions had reached the stern of the ship. Then, the feedback suddenly stopped; the room around her going dark for a moment as primary power failed, only to light up again a moment later as the backup generator kicked in. Even then, the shaking continued for another few moments, before the ship finally fell still. She turned towards her command console. Several of the camera displays were inoperable, and the display was littered in errors. A vine shot out from her body to the button that controlled comms. "Status report!" "Capture vines and engines are down!" The voice of her lieutenant, Leillanduna Miraeum, Fourth Bloom, reverberated through the loud-speaker in response. "Main power is down. Most of the ship's systems- almost everything is crippled! I don't know what the frost hit us, but it damn near took us out in one shot! We're sitting horses now!" Her eyes flickered over readouts on the console. It was as Leillanduna said: almost every primary system on the ship was disabled. The Longbough did not have weapons, but its closest equivalent - their capture vines - had been rendered inoperable, and it could not even turn on its engines to escape. They were, in a word, helpless. A terrible thought ran through Gemirina's mind, and she felt her core tightening. With shaking vines, she pressed down on the comm button again. "Casualties?" There was a long moment of silence. With the extent of damage that had been done to the ship, Gemirina expected deaths in the hundreds; if not the thousands. The destruction of the Longbough would be a catastrophe on a scale unseen among the Affini Compact within this galaxy, surpassing even the greatest disasters they had borne witness to since their entry into the milky way- Her subordinate's voice began to resound through the speaker. Gemirina expected her to sound horrified, or distraught; but as the sound reached her ears, she sensed something else all together. "Um," Leillanduna began, voice hesitant. "I- Freinhya, there is no way that can be correct. I- I don't- I know what the readout says, I can see it too-" Gemirina slammed a vine against the console. "Leilla! Answer me! How many casualties?!" "T-That's the thing, captain," the voice replied, hesitation turning to utter confusion. "It seems that, according to our crew call-ins... No one was killed? Or even injured, for that matter. I'm getting reports from all across the ship, including right next to the impact location, and we don't have a single report of anyone with so much as a scratch." Gemirina's gaze went blank. "What?" "Yeah, I-" Her subordinate continued to stutter. "I'm honestly not sure either, but I don't think this is wrong. The ship's ruined, but somehow, everyone onboard is fine." The Longbough was a relatively ordinary ship by affini standards. It was a research vessel, with its hull measuring a little under 3 kilometres in length, and it was equipped with no weapons whatsoever. In another culture, for a civilian ship to be disabled in a single hit by what was clearly a very powerful weapon would have seemed reasonable enough. For the Affini of the milky way, however, this was virtually unprecedented. The milky way at large had so far proven devoid of any civilisations with the technology to even remotely threaten their ships; save for a tiny handful of exceptions, such as the Xa'a-ackétøth. These instances had at times required the dispatch of some weapons-possessed ships, but even then the ways in which they had been utilised could rarely have been described as 'combat'; usually more akin to cleanup duty of automated weapons or other problematic installations. In their entire time within the galaxy so far, the number of ships that had been noticeably damaged beyond simple scratches to the outer plating had not exceeded two digits. The amount that had been destroyed by enemy action was zero. This was why the present state of the Longbough so thoroughly vexed Gemirina. There simply were not any forces in this galaxy that had the capacity to maim her ship the way it just had been. None, that was, except for the Affini themselves. With a slow, sinking feeling in her stomach, Gemirina brought up a 3D render of the inside of the Longbough. An impulse from her vines changed the display to show the ship in its original state, with a secondary map of the damage caused by the attack overlaid on top of it. She programmed it to depict the spread of the damage beginning from the time of impact, and charting its course until the strike had concluded, then set the hologram to animate. It began with a single red dot, near the lower level of the ship's midsection. From there, corridors and systems diagrams began to turn red a dozen at a time as a wave of destruction spread outwards from the initial impact. To her surprise, it did not follow any kind of natural course: instead seeming to spread outwards at completely random angles, splitting off into further chains of devastation in a pattern that almost resembled the root network of a plant. It continued 'growing' in this way until it had reached the back of the ship, passing through and disabling every single combat-relevant or defensive system, while entirely avoiding the hab areas and any manned portions of the vessel. "Captain!" She was shaken from her reverie by a transmission through the command console. "We've gotten a read on the ship that attacked us. I'm sending the hull composition through now. You're- you're gonna want to see this." A vine tapped a glowing button on the command console, and the holographic display of the Longbough vanished; replaced instead with an image of another ship. It was unlike any that Gemirina had ever seen; shaped nothing like the Terran Accord warships she was most familiar with, nor any of the Rinan craft she had seen pictures of- nor any Affini vessel. It was clearly a rather small ship; the hologram did not include precise measurements, but it was evidently little more than a speck compared to the Longbough. The ship was shaped something akin to a large rod with two round ovoids on either side of it, and appeared to be constructed from some kind of blue-grey material that resembled a mixture of Terran plastic and metal. It had no rings with which to create gravity, and seemed instead to be spinning lazily in space; perhaps in order to achieve that effect. One of the ovoids, however, was not like the rest of the ship. The blue-and-grey chrome exterior was interrupted by dark green growths of plant life, stretching out from a point near what seemed to have once been a cargo bay, and having spread to cover almost that entire third of the ship. Individual tendrils stretched at uneven lengths across the bridge that connected the two ovoids, the longest of which having made it half way across to the other side; while most still protruded only a third or so of the way down. The readout highlighted the organic growths upon the ship. A matter readout displayed the following information: "Remarra-Encelium Biomatter." In other words: a type of Affini biotechnological matter. At that exact moment, the emergency lighting in the command deck began to flicker, then dulled and fell to nothing. The entire room was shrouded in darkness, and for a moment, Gemirina could see nothing at all. Then, an instant later, a hologram flared to life in the centre of the command deck. The hologram coalesced into a vaguely bipedal shape, recognizable easily as belonging to one of the many kinds of two-legged species commonly referred to as humanoids that existed within the milky way galaxy. Its clothing initially suggested that the creature being displayed may have been a Terran - a humanoid species notable for having been the subject of a recent domestication by the Affini Compact - but this impression fell short the moment Gemirina's eyes made their way up to the sophont's head. Where an ordinary Terran ought to have had furless and largely rounded ears, this xeno instead possessed long and pointed ears that curved almost past the back of its head and were covered in a type of dark blue-green fluff; somewhat similar to the down found within a bird's feathers. The similarities to avians did not stop there; for where there should have been mammalian hair atop its head, its scalp was instead covered in long and ornate feathers, similar to those of a Terran bird known as a peacock. They extended from the front of its head and draped down over to the back, fanning out from the top of its head to its shoulders in an expansive ponytail. Even the slightest movement of the sophont's body sent waves of feathers flickering; deep blue-and-gold irises in the middle of each feather catching and reflecting the light in a way that was almost mesmerising. The sophont's face, as well, was unusual. Two electric blue eyes stared through Gemirina, small black pupils ringed by not one, but three rings of separate shades of blue; giving their eyes a uniquely piercing quality. Black lines were present around their eyelids that drew further attention towards their pupils, curving outwards at the edges and then pointing back in on themselves. Even more eye-catching, though, were the teal-blue markings that seemed to frame the upper-third of their face; painted as an additional line around their eyes that helped draw one's gaze in, but continuing over their nose to meet in the middle, and then slowly fading out into a row of painted lines on their upper cheeks that gave the appearance of spread out birds' wings. Two lines of jet black feathers, identical in colour to the lines around the sophont's eyes extended from the base of their forehead where a Terran's eyebrows should have been. "Crew of the affini warship Longbough." An androgynous voice began to emanate out from the hologram, speaking what was clearly Terran; albeit in a dialect unlike any Gemirina had ever heard. The voice itself was smooth and clear, devoid of any of the imperfections or roughness that were common in speech; bringing to mind visions of water running down from a brook. It bore no characteristics which pointed towards either masculinity or femininity, creating an almost strange effect in which the words spoken seemed to simply exist; devoid of any quality which would provoke a particular sensory response in the listener. "I am Raqi Marr the Simurgh, captain of the Rending Talon." Yet despite this clarity, there was an undeniable harshness present within their tone; the voice of a domineering conqueror speaking to one whom they had just defeated. The figure raised one hand to their side, a golden bangle shifting lightly on their wrist. A long black dress with green affectations shimmered faintly in the light that reflected upon it by the change in angle, epaulettes akin to those of a military commander being paired with an embroidered skirt upon her lower half. "It is I who have crippled your vessel and left you dead in space; just as all those of the Compact who have stood in my way before. Had I wished to do so, I could have shredded your puny spacecraft into subatomic particles; but I have chosen - benevolently - not to do so on this occasion." They took their raised hand and let it slowly guide to the opposite side of their chest, before pulling it back in a swift cutting motion; sending their dress fluttering in the air for a moment. "Consider this a warning! As long as you and the rest of your kind continue to engage in your imperialistic, colonial ways: I will continue to stand against you! I will tear apart your ships, one by one, until not a single vessel remains in the so-called Affini navy!" The figure began to smirk. "It is not within your capabilities to stop me. As such, I advise you to convince your leaders to cut their losses, and surrender now; before I am forced to wreak more havoc upon you." The moment the figure finished speaking, the hologram fizzled out and disappeared. A few seconds later, the lights turned back on, and Gemirina was left alone. For around half a minute, every vine on her body sat completely still on the ground around her. Then, slowly, she raised one hand up towards her face. "Oh," she exhaled. "It's her." "Er, captain?" The voice of her subordinate echoed throughout the command deck once more. "What was that you just said? We, uh- I don't know if you saw it, but we just got a transmission; apparently everyone on the ship saw it. Do you know that woman?" "In a sense." All of a sudden, the anxiety seemed to have vanished from Gemirina; instead replaced with an ineffable weariness. "Not personally, merely by reputation. Suffice to say we are far from the first to suffer this humiliation." She groaned. "Taking what I know of this woman into account: I believe your earlier comment that we have suffered no casualties ought to indeed be accurate." "Ah, yeah." Her subordinate sounded uneasy all of a sudden. "About that: Some more reports came in, and we've got just about everyone accounted for now. Well... Everyone that is, except for..."
"Hahahaha, yes!" Raqi Marr stood cackling at the main console of the Rending Talon, watching the last moments of the holo-broadcast play out before the transmission ended. The moment it had finished, she began waving both arms around frantically. "Eat fertiliser, you stupid plants! I can't believe I pulled it off again!" She began prancing around the command deck, alternating between skipping and twirling; letting out a series of mischievous giggles all the while. "Oh Inos, they're going to be so mad. They are going to be so mad. I cannot believe they let me get away with it again." She ran a hand through her feathers, trying to calm herself. "Seriously, this is what happens when you get too complacent, you idiot weeds. You think that just because you have a multi-galaxy spanning empire that you're somehow impervious to attacks? This is why you don't leave your conquered territories completely unguarded by any actual warships, dumbasses!" She leant back against a nearby wall, letting out a noise that was half-sigh-half-laugh; but decidedly more nervous than her last moments of elation. Her heart was beating about as loud as a jackhammer, and she figured the adrenaline running through her system was not likely to come down any time soon. She took a glance out of the window of her ship at the still-crippled Affini vessel. She felt safe enough here in her ship, where none of them could reach her; but she was keenly aware that it would be a very different matter were even one of them to come face-to-face with her. The thought sent a shiver down her spine, and for a moment, she hesitated. You know, I really hope they don't take this personally, she thought to herself. Everything I've heard about them suggests they're not that fussed about destruction of property. I figure this should be at the level where they're just annoyed, rather than actively vengeful. Some of the elation faded further. If I so much as scratched the paint on one of the Mobile Fleet's ships, I would've gotten thrown out of the airlock. Part of me still keeps expecting them to be the same, but... If she did turn out to be wrong about the affini, getting thrown out of an airlock would be the least of her concerns. While much of what she had heard about the Compact painted it in a positive light, there were also stories - primarily about what they did with dissenters - that painted a vivid enough picture to put them smack bang at the top of the 'do not want to mess with' list. Which made what she was doing right now all the more worrisome: if she did turn out to have misjudged the affini, and this was enough to actually upset them... She gritted her teeth, a nervous smile forming. "Let's hope not, huh?" With that, she raised her hands up and lightly clapped both sides of her head. "Okay, probably time to get moving. Their response times are terrible, but that doesn't mean I should overstay my welcome. Can't be getting caught before it's time; that'd ruin the whole thing." She took a breath, and then spoke aloud. "He-llo Straessa." Immediately, a synthesized digital voice replicating the sound of a landamaeri woman began to speak. "How may I help you, captain Marr?" "Please get us the fuck out of here. Destination: The I don't-give-a-shit-as-long-as-it-isn't-here system." There was a very small tactile sensation at the back of Raqi's neck, as the implant that enabled her to communicate directly with the ship's onboard computer scanned her thoughts for the actual directions that she intended to give the ship. The words that she used to address the computer were largely meaningless; nothing more than a vestigial habit born from a lifetime of linguistic communication. Better methods were available to her now, but it was hard to unlearn old behaviours. "Acknowledged," came the ship computer's reply. "Beginning warp drive charge sequence. Estimated time until jump ready: Two minutes." "Nice." She nodded with satisfaction. With that out of the way, it was time to get on with her mid-morning tasks. Raqi made her way down to the back of the command deck. She traveled first through one door, which lead her into a short, miniature corridor, then took a left turn at the second door and began making her way towards her quarters. The Rending Talon was relatively compact: it was only roughly as large as a single hab-block back on one of the ships in the Landamar Mobile Fleet (which made the fact that it had been able to disable an affini warship, despite being less than a hundredth of its size, extremely funny to her,) and was divided into two halves split down the middle by a long bridge. The stern, where she currently was, contained all of the facilities that Raqi actually cared about: places like her room, the bathroom, kitchen, command deck, and the various leisure facilities that she'd had the spare mass to create. The aft, on the other hand, was relegated to storing the various ship-critical systems and pieces of engineering that actually powered everything and made the ship livable, plus took care of all the other things necessary in order for it to be able to continue flying and for her to not run out of oxygen or recycled water or some other essential supply. It was configured this way in order to limit the need for her to walk to the other ovoid, and the shape in general was a necessity in order to allow the ship to have gravity; since Raqi absolutely hated existing in zero G. The ship's dumbbell shape was a little unorthodox, but it wasn't beyond the realms of the slightly stranger designs you saw in configurable vessels. What was noticeably less standard, however, were the various locations at which vines that had begun growing, spread out all across the interior of the ship. Very few had actually made it as far as the hab ovoid just yet, but they continued to advance day by day at a slow but inexorable pace. This had been, frankly, a little concerning at first; but Raqi had eventually gotten used to it. They didn't seem to be doing anything immediately dangerous - beyond being kind of ominous in how fast they grew - and she figured they were probably just a side-effect of the fact that she had grafted living technology to her ship. Chimera modules tended to produce weird quirks even when utilised on regular old non-bio tech: all things considered, that the affini tech she'd stolen was only growing across the ship like a spaceborne wall creeper was remarkably fortunate. At the end of the day, a plant was still a plant; and she had learned that this particular spaceborne one could be dealt with the same way as any other weed. Upon reaching her quarters, she stopped just outside of the door and made her way over to a nearby shelf; taking from it a pair of compiled secateurs that she had left there earlier. With her weapon of mass deforestation in hand, she went about pruning any of the vines that she deemed to have gotten too close for comfort; snipping and clipping away at them until the encroaching plantlife had been driven back an acceptable way down the hallway. Once she was satisfied that her floral foe had been sufficiently beaten back, she placed the secateurs back on the shelf and then made her way inside of her room. The portion of the ship that Raqi took as her personal quarters was a rather different affair to the other parts of the Rending Talon. Where most of the ship's hallways were undecorated and coloured only by the blue-black material that comprised the ship's hull, the interior of Raqi's room were a cream white and covered in dozens of posters. Printed images decorated almost every inch of all four of the room's walls, each depicting characters from various movies, animated cartoons, video games, stories, and other types of media which Raqi liked. The vast majority were highly colourful - with only a few consisting of characters upon blank backgrounds - and they each contrasted starkly against each other, giving the room something of a jarring visual aesthetic. The furniture in the room consisted of an old-fashioned bed, notable for having a frame made out of wood rather than plastic or another type of synthesised material, a tall black cabinet with two frontal doors, a second cabinet in which Raqi stored all of her clothes, and a number of other miscellaneous storage boxes. Beyond the bed, the most immediately eye-catching feature of the room was the large antique computer sat in one corner, next to which was positioned a large and comfortable-looking chair, as well as a desk covered with all manner of clutter; ranging from temperature-reading devices, to various tubs of cream and other ointments, to a water glass, empty pill packets, scissors and a pair of tweezers, and other assorted bits and bobs. It was the kind of location that immediately told anyone who looked at it that its owner spent the majority of their waking hours situated there. "Daily routine check," Raqi announced. Her implant buzzed. "You have completed nine out of nine of your daily tasks," the voice spoke. "Take attention regulators: Complete. Take hormones: Complete. Take supplements: Complete. Do exercises: Complete. Shave: Complete. Shower: Complete. Apply retinol: Complete. Apply serum: Complete. Apply moisturiser: Complete." "Excellent." She nodded. With that, it was time to chill. Outsmarting the evil empire was hard work, and her severely neurodivergent brain could only do so much in a day before it needed a very long rest. Said rest, she had decided, was going to consist today of playing retro video games on her digital-era computer. The piece of archaeotech - literal centuries old, she was fairly sure - had been refurbished and was capable of playing classics such as Terra Universalis XXII; a game which was objectively terrible in almost every way, but that her brain found bizarrely compelling for whatever reason. Something about watching places on a map change colour was just... really gratifying, she supposed. Brains were weird like that. She settled down on the equally-vintage chair that she had secured alongside the device, tucking her knees up to her chest. She began to reach for the power button, but then halted for a moment, as a faint beeping light caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see a notification on the shipboard communications system. "Huh?" She mouthed, in an intentionally funny accent. She tapped the notification to bring it to full size. "Caution: 1 foreign object detected on ship hull" She blinked. "Huh?" This time it was entirely without humour. "Foreign object? The fuck does that mean?" She'd never seen this message before. Presumably, it meant something was stuck to the outside of the ship. Had a piece of debris from the affini warship gotten stuck there, perhaps? She was fairly sure she had calculated all of the blast trajectories from her weapons to avoid any such thing, but maybe she'd made a mistake. "Yo, Straessa," she called. "How may I help you, captain Marr?" The voice sounded once again. "Can I get a visual on the, uh, 'Foreign object' attached to the hull?" "Displaying hologram." Raqi lurched backwards, very nearly falling out of her chair. "Oh FUCK! What the hell?!" In an instant, she scrambled up from her chair and took a step towards the hologram projection, eyes widening to their full size. "Oh shit. Is that a-? Oh SHIT. Oh shit oh shit ohshitohshitohshitohshit-" Her voice trailed off as she stared wordlessly at the projection for a moment. "What the fuck is that doing there?!" The holographic projection provided a clear view of the port side of the ship, nearby to the airlock and a short distance from the engines. Attached to the outside of the ship was a wriggling, squirming mass of vines and tentacles; one that was very much alive, and seemingly, clinging on for dear life as the ship was rapidly accelerating. "Oh Inos, FUCK!" Raqi exclaimed. "C-computer! Stop thrusters! Full stop; now!" She blinked. "WAIT DON'T DO IT IN A RUSH! Full stop slowly!" She brought a hand up to her face, gripping one cheek tightly. "Oh shit!" The thing clinging onto her ship was undoubtedly an affini. It was currently in the form that the plants took when not around any other species; resembling little more than an amorphous puddle of vines, tentacles, and other flowery appendages. As Raqi watched, various parts of it were detaching and flying off to space; presumably being pulled off by the immense forces at play on the hull's exterior. "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit." She could feel panic starting to set in, even as the ship began deccelerating. This was bad. Not just bad: this might actually be the worst possible case scenario. Somehow, an affini had gotten stuck to her ship. What the hell was it doing there?! Had it latched onto the Rending Talon on purpose? No, there was no way- It must have somehow ended up there on accident. "How, though?!" She blurted out, equal parts exclamation as question. "I checked the location of every crew member before firing! I didn't vent a single one of them! So what the fuck are you doing there?!" She bit her lip. This was really bad. Disabling Affini ships was one thing, but if she had accidentally killed one of them? That would actually piss them off for sure; and not in the good way. That would elevate her from a nuisance to an enemy. That all but guaranteed getting dosed with The Bad Drugs, or having her ego and personality removed- or Inos only knew what else. She NEEDED to avoid that. She could feel herself spiralling as she stared at the screen, but she was equally aware she needed to not do that. Okay calm down, calm down Raqi, she told herself. The affini is not dead yet. They're supposed to be near-immortal; this- this *probably* won't kill one of them. Uh. As long as it doesn't get left out there for too long anyway. Shit. It might be able to survive in hard vacuum for a while, but indefinitely? She didn't know, and that wasn't something she wanted to take bets on. She needed to stop the affini from dying. But how? She couldn't very well send her back to the ruined warship; she had no capability to do that even if she wanted to. She could probably push her off from the hull, but then she'd be sent floating through space. Would she survive long enough for the others to rescue her? Again, Raqi didn't know. Even if she did, that was a remarkably hostile thing to do to someone. She couldn't afford to send that message to them. With those options discounted, there was only one thing she could think to do. Raqi scrunched her eyes closed. "Fuck." "Straessa!" She shouted. "Activate Chimera module! Cannibalize any unnecessary decks; construct an airlock around the foreign object! Clearance: big enough to fit all of it inside!" "Attempting Chimera module activation..." The voice spoke. "Error. All existing decks are marked as Important. No spare material is available on the-" "Oh, for fucksakes!" Raqi shouted. "U- Use whatever you want! Anything that isn't ship-critical!" "Acknowledged. Beginning construction." Raqi did not have time to contemplate what parts of the ship the computer might have chosen to cannibalize. Instead, she watched with bated breath as the hull of the ship began to come alive. A series of technologies she frankly did not at all understand kicked into motion, rapidly deconstructing several of the ship's decks down into their constituent parts, and then shifting the matter elsewhere and recomposing it. The process took the appearance of the outer hull of the ship - as well as presumably various other parts of it that she couldn't see right now - essentially melting, transforming from a solid into something akin to a solid-liquid, and then beginning to change. Walls began to spring up from the surface of the ship in a square formation, rapidly assembling a new portion around the still-flailing affini. In mere moments, the alien passed out of sight; its form engulfed in the new airlock that had been built all around it. A few seconds passed, and Raqi let out a breath. Her plan seemed to have worked. Nowhere had she seen a vaguely plant-like form go flying off the spaceship, or get caught in the engines and reduced to ash. The affini, it seemed, was now inside of the ship. "Warning." She suddenly heard the ship's computer speaking. "Foreign object previously detected on ship hull has now entered the ship." The affini, Raqi suddenly realised, was now inside of the ship.
Punica Granatum, First Bloom, was having an even worse day than her captain. She had picked quite conceivably the worst time possible to take an unscheduled break from her work synthesizing new medical compounds in order to visit one of the ship's gardens. This time had just so happened to coincide with the exact moment- or more specifically, around six seconds before the Longbough was struck by enemy weapons fire. In her defence, the idea that a hostile vessel would promptly materialise into existence and then rain fire upon her ship had not really crossed her mind. She was after all stationed in a fully pacified and integrated portion of space near the centre of the milky way: quite possibly one of the safest and least incident-prone places in the entire galaxy to work. This was exactly why she liked it, and why she had worked very hard to get stationed there. While some of her kind were the bold and adventurous type, thrilled by the possibility of bringing new species into the Compact's loving fold, Punica was much more interested in her research. While she thought it was all well and good to bring utopian living standards to new corners of the galaxy, some parts of the process bothered her. She specifically disliked how the vast majority of species that were assimilated into the Compact were downright mortal when compared to the affini. Only a small number of their sophont species possessed the ability to regenerate, and of those, all but a handful still eventually died of old age. It was that last part that really irked her: There was nothing worse, in her view, than being bound by the constraints of a finite lifespan. And so one day, she had decided that her contribution to the Affini Compact was going to be to find a cure for mortality for as many of their sophont species as possible. Of course, that all mattered very little now that she was floating through the hard vacuum of space. At first, she wasn't entirely sure what had actually happened to her. It had taken her several seconds to realise that she was no longer inside of the Longbough; around the time it had taken for her to feel her weak exterior growths start dying en masse. This had, of course, immediately sent her into a panic. She rapidly withdrew her tendrils in on herself as tightly as she could, reinforcing her outer layer with more durable vines in order to shield herself from vacuum. Space wasn't specifically a dangerous place for her to be, in and of itself; it was just one that needed certain preparations in order to responsibly navigate. Vacuum, for example, couldn't kill her: the worst it could do was wreck some of her precious growths, as had just happened. What was substantially more of a problem, however, was the fact that she seemed to be drifting further and further away from the Longbough. To her knowledge, the Longbough was equipped with scout craft that could be used to rescue her in such a situation. But as she glanced back at the vessel, it occurred to her that there was no guarantee they were in any operable state right now. The same likely applied to the ship's capture vines, as well as anything else capable of catching her before she floated off into space. That was probably okay as well: It meant she was likely to be stuck here for a while, but that still wasn't dangerous, just mildly inconvenient. No, as long as she wasn't at risk of falling into a planet's orbit, or coming too close to a star, or getting hit by an asteroid, there really wasn't too much to worry about- It was then that Punica saw the ship. Directly ahead of her, in the exact same direction as the trajectory in which she had been flung away from the Longbough, was an utterly alien looking space-craft. It was little more than a speck in comparison to the Longbough, sitting at around the size of an affini lander vessel, but its design was unlike anything she had ever seen. She was only passingly familiar with the different varieties of spacecraft employed by the various Compact races, but from what she understood, most of them made an effort to look at least somewhat aesthetic; or in lieu of that, tended to resemble large floating bricks. This vessel, however, looked like someone had taken one of the exercise weights she sometimes saw xenosophonts on the Longbough using, scaled it up several hundred times, and then set it to spin rapidly around in the void. Its exterior was made of a kind of sleek dark metal that looked much more reasonable than the shape did, and part of it was covered in what seemed to be... plant matter? At this point, she started to seriously freak out. Having absolutely no idea what this craft was, how it had gotten here, why it was here, or how it had seemingly stolen affini technology, she started desperately flailing her vines in a feeble attempt to steer herself away from her collision course with it. Of course, without any matter to push off of or any other way to generate thrust in vacuum, her efforts were entirely futile. A few moments later, her form slammed into the ship; the impact reverberating throughout her body. For a moment, she was disoriented- she felt her body turning, and then- a remarkably strange sensation traveled through to her core from the sensory appendages she was using, as she felt herself beginning to slow down. After a moment, her tailspin came to a halt. Tentatively, she poked an optical flower out from the safe interior of her vine cocoon, and used it to attempt to assess her current situation. It soon became clear that she had come to a stop upon the hull of the unknown vessel; her various tendrils now splayed across its surface in an uneven mass. Why she had stopped, she was not entirely sure; but this was an excellent opportunity. From here, she could push off from the hull of the ship, and send herself back towards the Longbough. She wasted no time in doing so, extending some of her strongest vines while pulling her others in. With a mighty heave, she pushed off from the surface of the ship- -only to find that she did not move so much as an inch. The strange sensation that she had felt just a moment ago was revealed to be a kind of stickiness. Large swathes of her body appeared to have become stuck to the craft's surface, and she could not move as a result. All but the strongest of her vines with which she tried to dislocate other parts of her body just ended up getting stuck to the ship's surface, and flail as she might, she could not pull herself free. It was then that, to her horror, the ship started to accelerate. Sublight engines blazed to life at what she assumed to be the back of the ship, and the entire vessel began to slowly pick up speed. The situation was now dangerous. If this craft were to perform a hyperspace jump while she was attached to its an exterior, even a fully-grown affini such as herself would not be able to survive that. The ravages of space-time would shred her core like seeds through a sieve; damaging her in such a way that even reblooming would not be able to fix. For a moment, Punica wondered if she was about to die. Yet even as fear narrowed her vision down to a pinprick of awareness, there was something else at the edge of her mind; a sense of wonder, and of curiosity. Was this what it was like to be one of the affini's sophont races, for whom mortality was still a pressing concern? She recalled tales of certain rebel elements from the Terran Accord. Many of them, she had heard, had been mistakenly terrified by the coming of the affini; falsely lead to believe that their lives were at risk, rather than about to be saved. Such terror had, she had heard, driven many of them to great extremes in their pursuit to do what they believed was protecting themselves. For just a few seconds, Punica felt as if she could sympathise with how the Terrans felt. Then, just as the ship had reached a velocity at which the space-particle friction had begun to tear some of her weaker tendrils off, it began to decelerate. Several moments later, the ship's surface within which she was embedded began to bubble. The metal shifted, and four new grooves began to emerge around the edges of her form, pushing upwards from the ship's surface. As she watched, the grooves grew into ridges, and then into walls, and they quickly expanded over her head. Seamless black metal shifted in front of her eyes, growing cables, walls, and doors; almost as if it were itself a piece of biotech. Before she knew it, she was no longer outside of the ship: instead, she was now inside. Suddenly, she felt the pressure of vacuum dissipate, and oxygen began to fill the space around her. After a few moments, she tentatively released part of her outer vine shell, and was surprised to find there were no adverse effects. What in the stars had just happened?
After ensuring that the affini stuck to the ship's hull had been taken onboard, Raqi had hastily finished the rest of the preparations to jump the ship, and departed from the system; plotting a course to the nearest uninhabited star sector so that she could collect her thoughts and try to figure out what to do next. After a half hour or so of doing that, she was now staring very, very nervously at the newly added airlock door in her ship. She had specified that it be entirely airtight, and that the wiring and other design elements comprising it have absolutely no open space whatsoever that lead back into the rest of the ship; nothing that a vine - no matter how small - could theoretically get through in an attempt to infiltrate the ship. Even then, she was still terrified. It had been a little over ten minutes since she had 'rescued' the affini stuck to her hull, and she'd made no attempt to contact her as of yet. "Shit," she murmured, for what was probably the seventieth time now as she paced slowly up and down the corridor outside the airlock. What do I do? ...What do I do? Finally, gritting her teeth, she swallowed and drew herself up to her full height. She'd had time to agonize over this thoroughly. Regardless of whatever long-term choice she wanted to make about what to do with the plant, she needed to at least ascertain that it was still healthy. Saving it from the vacuum of space wouldn't be worth much if she let it bleed out - chlorophyll out? - in the airlock. There was also the fact that, well, she would feel kind of bad if she let it die. That thought sat slightly ill with her: morality and Raqi Marr had a complicated relationship. She was willing to do an awful lot of things that the vast majority of 'ordinary' people would take issue with; such as, for example, opening fire unprovoked on a docked and largely defenceless affini cruiser (multiple times in fact.) Generally speaking, she considered herself to be quite good at fabricating justifications for things when she needed or wanted them. But outright murder - even if merely by negligence - was still something she very much wanted to avoid, if possible anyway. Taking several steps forwards, she made her way over to a comm relay on the wall, and pressed a button that opened a channel to the airlock. Breathe, Raqi. You can't show any fear here. You aren't just Raqi Marr right now... You are the Simurgh, and she's your prisoner. She took a deep breath, and began to speak. "Greetings, affini," she began; doing her best to affect the same tone she had used in her broadcast to the warship earlier. "I am Raqi Marr, the Simurgh; and I am the captain of this ship." She hesitated: not from nervousness, but from a lack of certainty as to how to actually describe the present situation. "You are..." She had to stop herself from 'uhm'ing. She was less than half a minute in and it was already difficult to keep acting like she had planned this. Shit, she thought. I'm not enough of a hardass to pull the 'evil space captain' thing off in real time. She shut her eyes for a moment, then steeled herself. "You are, frankly, an unanticipated guest. I had no plans to take one of you aboard my vessel." There was a pause. Raqi hesitated; she seriously had no idea where she was going with this. Improv wasn't one of her strong points, especially not in a situation as delicate as this- "Is that so? I very much appreciate your bringing me aboard, in that case, captain." The voice that emanated from the speaker was unlike any Raqi had ever heard before. It was odd: there was a quality about it that she couldn't tell whether was from distortion caused by the speaker, or just that the affini's voice was... different, somehow, to normal speech. All that aside, though, it was a very pretty voice; even when bitcrunched by low quality audio. Raqi opened her mouth to begin saying 'You're welcome,' but then stopped abruptly; mere moments before the first vowel could leave her lips. She took her finger off the 'send' button and swore. ...So they really are like that, then. This affini, who had just had her ship shot at, been blown into hard vacuum and then kidnapped, still had the wherewithal to be polite to the one responsible for all of it. She suddenly remembered why they were considered monsters by just about every race that hadn't yet joined their Compact. Several more seconds of hesitation passed as Raqi planned her next remark. Once she was ready, she placed a hand on the comm button and began to speak. "I understand that affini are exceptionally durable. However, a stint in hard vacuum is quite something for any living thing to bear." She was intentionally vague with her wording. "Do you require medical assistance?" The reply came quickly. "I am quite fine, captain. I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing. Am I to presume that you are responsible for the damage inflicted upon the Longbough?" Raqi's face hardened. "That's correct." "I see." The affini's tone of voice remained difficult for Raqi to process through the layering effect, but she thought she heard a hint of recognition in it as the alien continued speaking. "You said that your name is Raqi Marr, I believe? ...Are you the sophont who has attacked and disabled six of our ships in the past two months?" Several emotions played across Raqi's face, but smugness won out. "Seven, actually; counting yours." "That is very impressive. It is a rare thing that a sophont who tries to fight us succeeds in disabling one of our ships; let alone seven of them. You must be a truly exceptional pilot in order to have accomplished such a feat." A mixture of several more emotions ran through Raqi. Bewilderment, surprise, amusement, and a small amount of fluster. Wh- What the hell is with all the compliments? Is- Is she flirting with me?! Oh, Inos- She bit back a swear. So they really *do* do that, then. This was at least marginally helpful. Though the affini's flirtatious ways might have worked on many sophonts, Raqi was pathologically adverse to any implication of superiority by another living creature; a fact that, for once, was to her benefit. Right now, it provided a much needed reset to her emotional state, and she felt the grit that she needed to deal properly with her captive coming to the surface. "I'd ask that you refrain from any flirting, lest you want to go back outside," she said, her voice cooling. "You are, for the time being, my prisoner. I will provide anything that you require in order to eat and to stay healthy, but I will not permit you to enter any further into my ship." "Flirting? I assure you that I did not intend my words to be perceived as such. I was merely providing what I considered to be sincere praise. Regardless, I will respect your wishes." The speaker fell silent for a moment, and Raqi felt her concentration wavering. Had she misinterpreted what the plant had said? No; much more likely that she was lying in order to try and make her put her guard down. Seduction, she knew, was one of the main tools in the affini's arsenal; she absolutely could not let herself be swayed towards forming a positive opinion of- "I have a great many questions that I would very much like to ask you. In turn, if there is anything you would like to know in regards to me or the affini; I would be happy to answer you." This threw Raqi for a loop. "What makes you think I have any questions about the affini?" "It was merely an assumption, based on the fact that the vast majority of sophonts who have encountered us would, I suspect, know that hard vacuum does not pose any meaningful threat to us. It is common knowledge, even among Terran feralists, that an affini's core is nigh indestructible and cannot be damaged by void exposure. Therefore, the fact that you expressed concern over such a thing suggests a noteworthy level of unfamiliarity with my species." Raqi's heart skipped a beat. Bullshit, she thought. She was bluffing; there was nothing that could survive in hard vacuum for any serious length of time. She'd watched her flailing on the exterior of the ship, that wasn't the behaviour of someone or something that was only 'minorly inconvenienced'- "I assure you that, in spite of the circumstances of our meeting, I have no desire to retaliate against or otherwise do harm to you." Raqi let out a low tut. Fuck, she was letting herself be read like a book. She needed to put a stop to this, before she gave away anything more. She pressed down on the transmit button and gave a curt response: "I'll be back later. In the event that you do actually need food, I'll produce it for you then." Before the plant could respond, she forcibly shut the comm channel, and then turned and began making her way back to her quarters. Upon arriving, she sat down heavily in her chair, swivelling it around to face the wall. She sat there silently for several minutes, mind processing the events that had occurred in the last half hour. Her mission, which up until now had been going downright swimmingly, had suddenly turned into an absolute catastrophe. Having an affini stuck on board the ship was just about the worst thing that could have happened beyond being caught outright. The main issue wasn't the affini itself: it was what Raqi could - or rather, couldn't do with it. The central problem was that she had no way of getting rid of it. She couldn't vent it out into space: Even if the creature wasn't bluffing and that did in fact not kill it, it now knew she existed. It had also been inside her ship, and seen at least some of what it was capable of. If she let it go back to the rest of its kin, she was pretty sure they would be able to come up with a countermeasure to her raids fairly promptly, and that would mean game over. Killing it was also not an option, nor was stranding it anywhere. And so that left her with one conclusion: She was, at least for the time being, stuck with it. Flipping the power on on her computer, Raqi waited until it had booted up and then entered her login credentials. Once she had done so, she navigated to her documents folder and opened a file called The Plan.vodf.
Punica's vines combed the interior of the airlock meticulously. They had been doing so for the last hour, searching for any nook, cranny, or crevice which could possibly be exploited to gain entry further into the ship. Unfortunately for her, as the name 'airlock' suggested, the room she was presently confined in appeared to be entirely air - and vine - tight. She had also considered the viability of using brute force to escape, but this struck her as a poor idea given the ship's demonstrated ability to change shape at will. Were she to anger her captor, there was a very real possibility that they would simply return her back to the vacuum of space; and right now she did not want to needlessly risk that. Oh, Everbloom... She pulled the last of her vines back to her main mass, combing several of them over others nervously. What in the cosmos have I gotten myself into? She really had very little idea at all what kind of a situation she had found herself in. The ship's captain- the self-titled Simurgh- was something of an enigma; both to her, and to her former crewmates. Her first recorded appearance was a little over two months ago, when her ship had been detected abruptly appearing - with no hyperspace signature or other travel marker to identify its presumed descent into realspace - right next to one of their scouts. Apparently somehow equipped with one of their own weapons, it had disabled the ship in a matter of moments; but done so in a way so as not to kill or injure any of the crew or passengers. This first appearance marked the start of a pattern. Roughly every week, the Rending Talon would abruptly appear next to a lone or unprotected affini vessel, and then disable it in a single volley of fire. Each time, the strike was incredibly precise: targeting vital ship components such as the engines, weapons, or power lines, in such a way as to cripple the ship immediately. At the same time, every attack had also been planned in such a way as to avoid harming any sophonts onboard. The level of calculation required to achieve such a feat was, frankly, baffling. It was the kind of thing that would have taken a crew of affini perhaps a few moments to figure out, while working together and actually focusing on the task. For just a single xenosophont to be able to perform a feat of that caliber, though- let alone a Terran- should have been impossible. It was already rare enough for the Affini to suffer any kind of meaningful damage in combat within this galaxy, and so tales of an actual defeat in the milky way were all but guaranteed to start circulating; but the fact that it had been orchestrated by a lone xenosophont had lent the whole affair an almost mythological quality. Punica hadn't really paid any attention to it for that exact reason. She had presumed that the story was likely made up; perhaps an in-joke between a couple of florets that had gotten out of hand, or some other kind of galaxy-wide prank. That captain Raqi Marr was not only real, but that Punica seemed to have now (potentially accidentally) become her captive was proving difficult to wrap her core around. Blight... She had been going over options for what to do ever since finding herself in the airlock, but had yet to come up with any kind of feasible plan whatsoever. Where everyone else on the Longbough would probably have already come up with a way to domesticate her feralist captor by now, she could barely get her leaves to stop shaking over the thought of how she had very nearly been torn to pieces when the ship jumped. Why is this happening to me, of all affini?! I am the least qualified affini on the ship to deal with such a thing! W-why couldn't this be happening to Ithris, or Suzamiya?! Her vines whipped around in an anxious frenzy. I have barely even spoken to xenosophonts; let alone a feral! I have no idea what to do in this situation! After several more minutes of similarly unsettled flailing, she eventually realised that blaming the universe for her bad luck was not going to help. However unlikely and unfair it was that she now found herself here, she was indeed here, and she couldn't just pretend not to. Oh, frost and flame... She decided the first thing she ought to do was check on her form. Her grafts, it seemed, had taken quite a beating from her stint in vacuum. Like most other affini, she did not bother equipping herself with cold-resistant outer flora, and so roughly a fifth of her foliage had died or was in the process of dying. The remaining four fifths were all damaged to some extent or another, and her vines felt raw and uncomfortable in a number of locations; as if she had been out for an entire night on a barren moon. Fortunately, there was more than enough matter left for her to assume a humanoid form, and so she began the process of knitting her vines together to create a humanoid-standard body plan. It took some doing, as she had to move some vines around to replace others that were no longer functional; but she figured it would likely be worthwhile to have in future interactions with the ship's captain. When she was done, she had transformed from an amorphous blob of vines and leaves into something that at least vaguely resembled a humanoid standard body plan. While many affini chose to cultivate bright and eye-catching appearances, the better to captivate xenosophonts with, Punica preferred to be as bland and uninteresting as possible for the exact opposite reason. She had no open flowers anywhere on her body, and her form was comprised of largely monocolour vines and leaves; with colour variation only in what shades of green they were. The only other colour on her body was found in her hypnotic centers - those organs which Terrans mistook as 'eyes' - which were a dull, intentionally-understated amber-brown, and devoid of the intricate fractal patterns that gave them their name. At the very least, for all that she attacked the Longbough, she does not seem openly hostile to me. She thought back on the words which the captain had spoken; the ones about her being an 'unanticipated guest.' By the sounds of it, she did not intend to capture me. From what I remember, there was no mention of her ever taking any prisoners in the past; so that would seem consistent with her earlier behaviour. The idea that her current situation was genuinely an accident, rather than any kind of prior planning, made her feel even more frustrated at the universe for doing this to her. Yet at the same time, it also prompted her to wonder. What kind of feralist attacks affini ships but does not kill any of the crew, then moves to save one of us when they would otherwise be killed? ...If she is indeed a Free Terran, then why go about things this way? For that matter, what are even the odds of a Free Terran not only remaining undomesticated, but finding success for the first time; three-odd years after the last of their rebellion was pacified? The more she thought about it, the more she began to realise that this situation fundamentally did not make sense when viewed from the context of Raqi Marr being a Free Terran. The plant let out a low, contemplative rumble, and her vines knotted together. But, if she is not a Free Terran, then what is she?
Raqi Marr slept poorly that night. As she lay down to sleep in her bed, she could scarcely close her eyes without the thought of creeping vines pushing in through the door towards her. The information which she possessed about the affini was a patchwork at best, as her interaction with the one she had stuck in the airlock yesterday had shown her. What she did know about them for certain, though, was that they as a race had very little interest in the concept of 'consent.' The affini, it was said, had a mission to do something which they described as "bringing happiness" to the entire universe; one species at a time. This project, which they referred to as the Domestication Initiative, was not voluntary. You could either join peacefully, or be made to become a part of it. The philosophy underpinning this initiative was why she had been so intent on staying as far away from physical contact with any of the affini as possible, because it was said that one touch from them was enough to drug you to the point where any objections you might have towards their system were rendered completely irrelevant. They were well aware of this, and apparently were not inclined to honour any requests for them to refrain from sending individuals to the vaporwave dimension. As such, any attempt to negotiate with an affini first required placing it on a playing field where it couldn't simply make you agree with whatever its position was. This was why up until now, Raqi had only ever intended on communicating with them through long-distance means. Contact poisons, airborne toxins, and other physical methods of distribution weren't much use if she was talking to them from half a lightyear away, after all. The problem now was that the affini she had on her ship was less than a hundred meters away from her. Raqi really, really just wanted to vent her out of the airlock and leave. The anxiety she had developed from coming face-to-face (or, voice-to-voice; whatever, close enough) had gotten bad enough overnight that she was seriously considering abandoning this entire venture and just turning her ship around and going home. Potential murder became a lot more palatable when you were scared enough, unsurprisingly. She gently placed a hand on her face. "If this is all it takes to scare me off of this project, I never should have come here in the first place." This wasn't just a matter of practicality. There were other things at stake here: parts of her identity, of the woman that she viewed herself as. If she turned tail and fled now, at the very first sign of danger, she would be unable to continue pretending to be the person she wanted to be. That thought filled her with more fear than the affini did. In an instant, her mind was made up. "If leaving is the same as dying, then I might as well take my chances with the plant." She drew herself up to her full height. "Straessa. Turn on the Chimera module. Safety overrides: Medium."
Punica felt something. By the time she had noticed it, it had already begun expanding in scope. It was a subtle sensation; a light vibration emanating from the walls and floor of the room she was contained in, but it grew stronger by the moment. Curious, she began to inspect the cell: wondering what was happening. The first thing she noticed was when her perspective from the airlock, from which she had been able to see out into space, began to subtly shift. It was a hard thing to be certain of at first, but it became much more pronounced when the edges of the black void began to fill in with the colour of the ship's metal. A moment later, the hole closed entirely, and she found herself staring instead at a presumably new portion of the vessel. Yet the vibrations still did not stop. For a moment, she wondered what the source of them was as she continued to peer out of the glass in the airlock door. Then, she noticed something. Her eyes narrowed; she wondered if it was a trick of her visual receptors. She blinked. The airlock was moving. Second by second, the newly formed wall was moving further away from her. As she watched, the airlock capsule was seemingly traveling down some kind of hallway; numerous doors, side-passages, and other receptacles passing by a short distance from the outside of it. The corridor itself seemed to be changing shape, she noticed: It appeared to expand to make space for the airlock, then contract whenever it had moved past. The process hadn't become noticeable until she had moved further down the corridor, but now that she could see it, she was entranced. This sort of rapid disassembly-and-reassembly of a ship's interior was beyond that which even their own biotech could perform; which was usually limited by the time it took to grow new portions of a ship or alter existing ones. Here, the process was complete in a matter of seconds. "What fascinating technology," she murmured. As the airlock's travel continued, it eventually entered what appeared to be a relatively large and open room. There, its movement came to a stop, and Punica felt herself grow stationary once more. For several long moments, it seemed to her as if nothing was happening. Then, the airlock began to dissolve. A hole opened in the roof and began to grow outwards, until the roof had dissolved entirely, and then the walls started to melt from the top downwards. The process did not resemble any kind of organic visual so much as what Punica could best describe as reverse-3D printing. It was as if layer after layer of the material was stripped away, and seemed to simply vanish afterwards. It was not long before the walls had disappeared entirely, and Punica found herself out in the open within the large room. "Greetings, affini," said a voice from behind her. Punica turned to see a lone figure standing atop a raised podium at the back of the room, clad in an emerald-and-black dress. Two neon blue eyes stared unflinchingly up at her, the humanoid figure's arms resting calmly by their side. The added height from her perch allowed her to stand eye-to-eye with the affini, who ordinarily would have had several feet over her. "I am, as you have likely presumed, captain Raqi Marr," the woman continued. Her voice was steady and unflinching; betraying no trace of any emotion she might feel. "I've brought you here so that we could speak face-to-face, without the need for a comms system." Punica's gaze ran up and down the xeno's body. On the holovid recordings, she had looked very much like a particularly well-dressed up Terran; but in person the impression she gave was rather different. Her hair was not, as the plant had initially suspected, some kind of wig; it was in fact comprised of feathers growing directly out of her head. Her ears were also completely unlike those which she had seen in other Terrans, and the structure of her eyes was markedly different. Incredibly heavy biomodding? the plant wondered. I have never seen a Terran with such severe genetic alterations to their body. I did not know they possessed this kind of technology. If she hadn't known better, she would have been inclined to think this woman was not Terran at all; but if that was the case, then why was she speaking to her in the language of the Accord? "I'm pleased to meet you, captain," Punica replied, genuinely. "I am Punica Granatum, First Bloom, of the Affini Compact. Resident generalist-xenobiologist and xenosophont longevity researcher upon the science vessel, Longbough." She wanted to make a joke about how that had been her position until just yesterday, but didn't want to risk it being taken poorly by her interlocutor. "I am pleased to be able to finally speak to you face to face. I confess to a fairly significant degree of curiosity about the circumstances that have lead to my..." She placed a bit of emphasis on the next word, just to see what reaction it would provoke. "Unintentional capture." Raqi's demeanour did not seem to change. "I assure you that your capture was indeed accidental. I had no intention to abduct a member of the Compact, nor otherwise to cause any harm to the inhabitants of the Longbough. Your being vented into space was accidental-" Punica noticed a slight lapse in the mask, for just a moment, "-and very surprising." It seems that something about the circumstances that had brought Punica onboard was bothering the captain. Which part, though, she was unsure. Was it because she felt as if she had nearly hurt her, or merely because it had disrupted her otherwise carefully orchestrated plan? "It was quite a surprise to me, as well," Punica replied jovially. "I normally prefer to prepare far in advance before venturing into deep space. Still, the experience of being transported there abruptly was... novel, to say the least." The mask cracked further. For a moment, Raqi looked downright perplexed at the response she had received; but it quickly vanished. "Well, I'm glad it wasn't entirely unpleasant, in that case," she said; sounding transparently unconvinced by her own words. Sensing an opportunity, Punica quickly responded. "As I mentioned to you before, hard vacuum is not an overly dangerous environment to an affini. We're quite capable of protecting ourselves, even in extreme environments such as that. Were you to have hit one of us with a blast from your weapons system, that might have been a different matter; but you seem to have been exceptionally careful not to do so." She watched as Raqi's face grew ever so slightly more tense. She had struck a nerve by pointing out the inherent contradiction in the events that had occurred. Here, she could begin to push. "Truth be told, it does strike me as something of a contradiction," she continued. "You speak of having no hostile intentions towards us, but you've disabled seven of our ships so far. Unless your species follows a moral compass that is very much unlike those I am familiar with, I believe most people would agree that is generally considered hostile?" Raqi didn't respond. She broke eye contact. Punica could feel herself gaining ground. "Of course, we haven't failed to notice the fact that you've continually avoided actually injuring any of our crew during these," she put the next word in verbal quotation marks, "'attacks.' It's very much appreciated, to be clear." She continued to keep her tone light, almost friendly as she spoke. "But it does very much give the impression that, unlike what you've said in your broadcasts, you're not really trying to 'destroy' us." It was time for the finishing blow. "Rather, it seems - at least to me - as if the purpose of these attacks has been more to get our attention. Would that be correct?" She watched as Raqi Marr closed her eyes for a moment. She could barely make out the small heave of her chest that indicated an exhaled breath. Then, the woman met her gaze once more. "Yes, that is correct." Her posture, which had been slowly drooping over the course of the conversation, suddenly seemed to strengthen. She drew herself up to her full height, the tip of her feathers protruding just above the top of Punica's form. "I have come here," she said, "because I want to assess the Affini Compact." Punica was taken aback. The sense she had had, that a game was being played here between the two of them, suddenly vanished; replaced instead with a sense of surprise and confusion. "Might you explain what you mean by that?" "I have heard a lot of things about your civilisation," Raqi continued. "From some, that you are monsters and slavers. From others, that you are benevolent creatures which wish to bring prosperity to a cruel and disordered galaxy. From you yourselves, things that seem a mixture of both." She began to step forward, descending the podium with each stride and moving closer to Punica. "I want to find out which parts of what I have heard are true, and which parts are false, so that I might arrive at a decision as to the nature of the affini and your Compact." She stopped a short distance away from Punica, and the two locked eyes. Even a bit over two feet down compared to the affini, she did not show so much as a hint of fear as she met the alien's gaze. "And for what purpose would you do this?" Punica asked gently, voice full of curiosity. There was a pause. "I want to know if there is any one among you who has the potential to be a suitable partner for me."
A L E R T : : t h o u g h t f o r m s_d e t e c t e d
I D : : TerraTranslate :: Raqi Marr :: Punica Granatum :: Previous Chapter
Story Recommendation: Divaricated by Annabool Divaricated is the story which got me into HDG as a setting. It might actually be the most praised story in the entire setting - for very good reason - and so I don't honestly feel like I have that much new or interesting to say about it. It is perhaps 'the' quintessential HDG story: exploring the relationship between affini and non-affini, going into the philosophy of owner-pet relationships, doing most of the heavy lifting for the setting's tech and internal mechanics, and also still holding the #1 spot in my head for the hottest kink scenes I've read in any HDG story. The first 100,000 words of this story were written in a frenzy while I was still finishing Divaricated. The content in the story evoked within me such a vivid desire to do my own take on this fascinating universe and the issues depicted in it that I couldn't physically wait until I'd finished reading the story to start writing, and so I began work on this story while still reading. The first chapter I wrote was when I was at around chapter 16~ of Divaricated, and from that point onwards, I continued to write at a ratio of roughly 2 words written per 3 read (yes, I sat down and calculated it.) For that reason, the influence of Annabool's writing on this work and this author will probably shine through quite clearly to anyone who has read the story which inspired it. Final Summary: Put me in a chokehold and forced me to write my own multi-hundred thousand word fic on pain of having my brain explode otherwise.