Chapter 43
Chapter Length: 6,900~ words
Punica remained frozen in place as a dawning horror crept down her vines.
How? How could I have forgotten?
The existence of the weapon that had laid low the
Longbough had completely slipped her mind in all that had happened since her arrival upon the Rending Talon. She had been so busy navigating her tumultuous relationship with
Raqi that in all that time, she hadn't stopped for even a minute to think about the bizarre circumstances that had actually brought her there.
This vessel- It was covered in organic growths, wasn't it? Affini biotechnical growths. Contrary to what Raqi had said just a moment ago, Affini technology was not something you just 'found.'
That simply does not happen. We do not leave our technology lying around in places where others would be able to find it- for the exact reason of what she did with it! Yet, the only other explanation - that someone had given Affini technology to Raqi - seemed even less likely. There had been no indication of any deceit or hesitance in Raqi's rhythm when she had answered, and so as much as it baffled her, Punica could only conclude that the xeno was telling the truth.
Then where in the world did she get it from? She paused for a moment.
No, I can ask her about that later. What matters is-
She turned her focus back towards her xenosophont. "Raqi." /
urgent-concerned/
Punica's tone immediately set Raqi on alert, causing her to stop what she was doing and turn towards her plant; gaze immediately growing concerned.
"The biotech that you found. What is it? What does it do?"
"Uh." Raqi struggled to stay calm, but the intensity in Punica's gaze was unnerving. "I- I mean, isn't it obvious? It's a gun, it's- it's what I used to shoot the
Longbough."
"
A gun?!"
Raqi recoiled back at the force in Punica's voice. Seeing this, the affini immediately halted and forced herself to relax, but even then, she couldn't purge all of the concern from her voice. "Raqi,
affini do not
make guns. We have no need for firearms, personal or shipboard. In other galaxies, yes, there are some vessels equipped with them- but none here that I know of. The Milky Way's civilisations simply do not necessitate it." /
disbelief-confusion-alarm/
"I don't know what you want me to tell you!" Raqi's voice rose to almost a shout, as she continued to shrink back away from Punica. "It's a gun! I fire it at shit and the shit explodes!"
Punica's vines twitched against the ground. She could see how upset this was making Raqi.
Dirt. Dirt, dirt, dirt... She simulated taking in a deep breath. For whatever reason, the action helped her to relax, even in spite of her total lack of the requisite anatomy for it to actually have any effect. "Can you tell me in what way it is that this 'gun' functions?" /
forced-calm/
The xenosophont relaxed slightly, but she was still clearly on guard as she replied. "Shouldn't you know? I bloody well hit you with it, after all."
█████████████████████████████████████/agitation-stress/
"That is precisely why I do not know; I was too busy floating in the vacuum of space to really notice what was happening," Punica very nearly snapped back, only barely reining in her tone at the last moment.
This, bizarrely enough, seemed to relax Raqi even further. She pursed her lips, and some of the tension fell from her shoulders. "...Okay, yeah, fair enough. Well, basically: I... don't actually have a clue. Basically, um... I tell it to shoot a thing, and it shoots it, and the thing in question, uh, dies. Well not dies- like, no one gets hurt, but-"
"Wait." Punica raised a hand to interrupt. "You 'tell it to shoot'? What do you mean by that?" /
perplexion/
Raqi demurred. "I mean, it's linked to the Chimera module. I have to command it through
Straessa in order to get it to work. It doesn't have any physical controls or anything; I don't think I'd be able to operate it if it did."
"What?" Punica blurted out. "That makes no sense. Why would a piece of Affini technology have a user interface compatible with xenosophont technology?"
"Well, it probably didn't originally?" Raqi looked unperturbed. "That's the entire point of the Chimera module. Beyond mass production and wacky ship transformation shit, its main use is actually decoding xenosophont technology." She blinked, and her expression momentarily went blank. "Oh, shit- yeah, I guess you wouldn't have known that. So, like: The LMF's entire thing is that we don't make most of our own technology, instead we get it from other people, and then we reverse engineer it."
Raqi turned, and then slapped the hull of the ship. "The anti-gravity on this ship, for example, isn't actually landamaeri. It came from a different race called the
qouel, and we basically yoinked some of their technology and reverse engineered it until we could stick it on our own stuff. The Chimera module is just a semi-automatic version of that; you feed it technology that you don't understand, it processes it for a while- in some cases, a
really long while- and then, it works. Sometimes! Other times your ship blows up when you turn it on, or in the case of biotech, it possibly eats you."
Punica looked aghast. "What do you mean it
eats you?" /
horrified/
"Yeeeeah, uh... Something about the way c-mods work does not play nice with organic technology. You are, uh, really not supposed to use them with organic tech; it's super duper mega illegal in the fleet." She fixed Punica with a sheepish smile. "The reason is that, a lot of the time, the organic technology just kind of overgrows and like, devours the entire ship with no regard for where the crew are. Or misinterprets the crew as part of its biomass and attempts to absorb them into itself. Or gets into the air filtration system and poisons the entire crew with spores that for Inos knows what reason go into hyperactive growth when detecting electrical impulses-" She paused to shiver. "Ugh, Inos, that last one was really fucking horrible; I regret reading about that. Getting turned into a mushroom person is
not a good way to go."
She shook her head. "Anyway, that's why I was so glad when the only thing the affini stuff did was be kind of overgrow-y. This might seem a little dubious, but honestly, this is a spectacular result by Chimera module standards."
Punica thought she was going to have a panic attack if she actually stopped to process what Raqi had just told her. By the sounds of it, her xeno was incredibly lucky to be alive; and quite possibly so was she. She quickly pushed it from her mind and returned to the previous topic. "So you utilised the Chimera module in order to reverse-engineer our technology, and that is how you were able to use it?" /
inquiring-light-stress/
Raqi nodded. "Yup. It seems to have worked pretty well. The reason I risked it was: I was fairly confident that, if this really was affini technology, that fucking with it wouldn't kill me."
The affini frowned. "What made you think that?" /
intrigued/
"Well, it's exactly the kind of thing you overprotective control freaks would worry about when designing something, right? 'What if someone got their hands on some of our stuff and tried to reverse engineer it, and accidentally ended up hurting themselves in the process? That would be terrible! To avoid that, we'll have to make sure that all of our technology is completely idiot-proof and won't accidentally go wild and eat anyone in the event that does happen!'"
There was a moment's silence, as Punica's vines swayed slowly by her sides. "...That does actually sound like something our engineers would have thought of, when you put it that way." /
concession/
Raqi began to smirk. "Exactly! I have great faith in the all-consuming anxiety of the Affini Compact!"
Punica considered pointing out that it was hardly fair to call it anxiety given that the scenario in question had in fact happened, but decided it was not worth arguing the point. "Well, it is good that you were right... Now, going back to the topic." She gestured with a vine. "These growths: are they from the weapon?"
"Yeah." Raqi nodded. "They started coming out of it pretty much after I got it on-board. I tried trimming them at first, but they just kept growing back, and they didn't really seem to be damaging anything; so in the end I figured I'd just leave them, since they weren't causing a problem." She turned her gaze upwards. "The exception is that: Every now and then, the vines start coming through from the midsection of the ship, and then they do get annoying. So I take the time to prune them any time they get too close to my room."
███/slight-surprise/
"The midsection?" Punica frowned. That was where the airlock that I arrived in was. She tried to remember if she had seen any vines when Raqi had dragged her containment vessel down the ship, but the view through the airlock door had been extremely limited. It occurred to her that, in the time since then, she had not once visited the other half of the ship; having kept her activities confined to just the garden and Raqi's room. "Where exactly is the weapon stored?"
"Oh, it's on the other side of the ship, in one of the rooms down there. I dunno exactly which."
"Y-" Punica's tone grew openly incredulous. "You
don't know?" /
bafflement/
Raqi shrugged at her. "Yeah? I mean, it's probably gotten moved by the Chimera module since I first got it. I dunno, I didn't really feel the need to keep track of it."
"Raqi, this..." Her voice cracked. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this piece of technology could well be?"
The girl puffed out her cheeks just slightly. "I mean, it doesn't seem all that dangerous? To me, anyway."
Punica's voice almost cracked. "It is growing vines out across half of your ship!" /
incredulous/
Raqi tilted her head. "I think the ship looks better this way. They make the place look prettier."
The affini's mouth fell open.
Is- Is she playing with me? She can not possibly be being this nonchalant about this matter. Suddenly, her vines slowed to a standstill.
No, hold on. This- this genuinely makes no sense. When I have spoken to her of her attacks upon other ships before, she has always seemed conflicted about them. Never once has she made light of her actions. Why, then, would she treat the device that facilitated it all with such callousness?
She fixed her attention once again on Raqi's rhythm; this time observing much more closely. At first glance, it seemed the same as ever. For all her skills, Punica knew that Raqi did not know how to manipulate her own rhythm, and she would have been able to tell if the girl was trying to lie to her or attempting to conceal her true feelings; neither of which she was presently doing. Yet, as she continued inspecting it, there was something that bothered her.
"What are you so worried about, anyway?" Raqi asked. "It's like I said; the vines have been here for ages. They're not doing anything bad. If they were gonna screw the ship up, they would've done so by now."
Punica remained silent externally. But as Raqi spoke, a thought ran through her mind:
Why is she bored?
Of all the emotions Raqi could reasonably have felt in response to this situation, boredom was not one of those options. Punica knew her xenosophont well enough by this point to know on a general level how she should have reacted to something like this: Raqi could have been scared, or anxious, or felt guilty about the weapon- but underpinning it all, she should at the very least have been
engaged with it.
She is the sort of sophont to find something like this endlessly fascinating: I know from how she has spoken of dreaming of things she thought unattainable. She could not possibly react to stumbling upon a piece of precursor alien technology with anything other than rapt interest. This level of disregard should outright not be possible for her.
Punica quickly realised that it wasn't just this which was bothering her.
She is so very forward-thinking. When we first met, she put numerous measures in place to avoid being drugged or influenced by me. That she would let a piece of alien technology overtake half of her ship without any concern for the possibility that it might cease being benign runs counter to her entire mode of operating. No, she should be far, far more alarmed about this.
The realisation that dawned upon her had a wave of cold running through her vines.
Whatever it is that she found, it is influencing her to behave this way. For one reason or another, it does not want her to be interested in it; so it is making her not be. ...How, though- and why?
For the first time since her stint in hard vacuum, Punica felt genuinely afraid. She had been terrified when Raqi had frozen her, it was true- but that was a different kind of fear; one born of surprise and confusion more than an actual response to a perceived threat. Now, though, Punica suddenly found herself wondering whether she and Raqi were in actual danger.
This weapon- whatever it was- was a completely unknown quantity. Raqi claimed that it was Affini technology, and it did seem to be such from an external view; but it clearly was not acting in service of the Affini Compact. Whether it was truly sapient or not, Punica could not guess, but it clearly had some sort of intelligence; one that had driven it to influence Raqi in some way, and also, to attack numerous Compact vessels. At first, she thought such a thing should have been impossible: no affini would ever willingly attack one of their own, and they would certainly never make technology that would do so. Had whatever the weapon was malfunctioned, somehow? If it had, then what parameters was it operating under right now? With the information she had right now, there was no way to even begin assessing how it might behave.
With that in mind, she could not rule out the possibility that whatever this thing was, it might well attack them were it to find out that she had discovered its existence. If it had been a xenosophont, Punica would not have been alarmed by that possibility- but this was a piece of technology that had laid a Compact naval vessel low. If it came to a fight between her and it, would she be able to hold her own? For that matter, what would 'fighting it' even look like? There was a very real possibility that this thing
was now the ship. If that was the case, it was possible that it could just vent her out into space immediately, where she would be helpless to-
"Punica? Are you okay?"
She awoke to see Raqi peering up at her, a look of concern on her face. The girl had found one of her vines to hold, and was squeezing upon it in a manner that Punica immediately began to find both comforting and grounding.
██████/distracted/
"Yes. Yes, thank you, Raqi." She knelt down at once and began ruffling the girl's hair; more for her own comfort than hers. The murmurs of pleasure that the gesture elicited did much to still the discordant pulsing of Punica's rhythms, and she was soon able to regain her focus. Whatever this thing is, I cannot very well ignore it. I need to see it for myself. She took another deep breath. "Raqi, would you be willing to show me to the other side of the ship?"
"Hm?" The girl peered out at her from under the hand she was using to ruffle her feathers, slipping easily back into the same nonchalant demeanour she had been in before. "Yeah, sure. There's not much there to look at, though; just so you know."
"That is quite alright. I am for the most part simply curious to see the extent of your vessel for myself," Punica half-lied, focusing on the /
curiosity/ and forcing that to become the dominant element in her rhythm so that Raqi would not pick up on the /
dishonesty/ underneath it.
"Sure thing, then." Raqi slipped out from underneath Punica's hand. "It's just down this corridor. Follow me."
It didn't take Raqi more than a few seconds to reach the edge of the Rending Talon's main hallway. The door leading to the ship's midsection was closed- she'd set it to be permanently locked after the dozenth time the vines had glitched it into opening- but this time, it looked like they'd come in through the vents. She let out an exasperated groan.
Fucking weeds. They always find a way, huh?
A moment later, she turned to Punica. "It's just down this hallway. Gimme a sec and I'll unlock the door."
Her plant nodded, and she started tapping away at the keypad. A little over a minute later, a faint 'ping!' reverberated throughout the room, and the door began to slide open. "There we go. Got i-" Raqi's voice trailed off.
The door opened to reveal not a hallway, in the sense that buildings had them, but rather some sort of floral passageway. There was no evidence of actual wall material anywhere in sight. Every inch of the corridor had been covered in vines and other floral growths; some sporting bits of bark or wood, and many covered in large patches of flowers. Stray creepers draped from the roof, obscuring the view to the last third of the corridor through their thick fern-like leaves.
Raqi raised her eyebrows. "...Huh. It, uh- it did not look like this last time I was in here." The last time she had been down the main corridor, the growths had only covered the corridor to just barely before the midway point. Now, however, they seemed on the verge of covering the door leading into the crew-side portion of the ship itself.
Damn. It sure had a growth spurt since Punica got here.
She watched as her affini stepped into the corridor. Punica's movements were much slower than what Raqi was used to; there was a tension in her vines that the landamaeri couldn't place the source of. Punica's rhythm was completely off, as well; she felt like for whatever reason she could barely read it at all.
Something is definitely bothering her. I wonder what, though? She pondered once again the bizarre way Punica had seemed to become deeply unnerved when she had reminded her of the affini weapon's presence.
I really don't get what's worrying her so much about it.
Punica stared at the corridor before her. It looked for all intents and purposes like one of the botanical maintenance ducts in the
Longbough. The moment she had stepped foot inside, the particle density in the air had more than quadrupled. Most of it was pollen - presumably from the flowers upon the wall- but there were chemicals present as well that she didn't recognise. She could tell that they were not harmful, but she did not know from where they were they were originating; only that they became denser further down the hallway.
She took a cautious step forward, moving over to the nearest cluster of flowers. Each of the flowers were a bright and uniform yellow, reminiscent of Terran daffodils in colouration but different in shape and structure. She could tell at a glance that they were not from the Rending Talon's garden; they would have been among the species of flora presently incorporated into her body if they had been, but she bore no such growths.
Another step forward brought her closer to one of the creepers dangling from the ceiling. She reached out and took it in one hand, one thorn covered in microneedles emerging from her palm and piercing straight through one of its leaves. A deluge of chemical information spilled into her systems, and she realised at once what the strange chemicals in the air were.
Dirt. I know why I cannot recognise these chemicals: they are synthetic. These are all complex compounds, similar to the ones I worked with during my engineering module.
She looked around, a new concern suddenly springing to mind.
This device may not be just biological. If it is emitting particles like this, it could well be some sort of phytotechnical creation.
In Affini engineering terms, the word 'biotech' was used to refer to technology that had been created solely from organic matter. While similar in appearance to what most Terrans thought of as 'plants', more than ninety-nine percent of it had no similarities with any known species of non-intelligent growth in the Terran Accord on a genetic level; with the similarities in appearance being purely coincidental- or in some cases, designed to make humans comfortable.
Phytotech, on the other hand, was used to refer to technology not solely comprised of living tissue. Still usually at least partly organic, it was most commonly a mixture of living tissue and electronic mechanisms - the affini rarely used inorganic machinery on its own, as there were few purposes for which that was efficient - used in equipment, tools, buildings, and starships. The affini themselves were not phytotechnical; for all that their cores were frequently compared to Terran computers in terms of complexity, they were still biological organs with no solid metal anywhere to be found.
It would make sense for whatever this is to be phytotechnical; biotechnical creations are rarely intelligent. Most biotech was created to serve a purpose, and was endowed with only sufficient intelligence as was necessary to perform its function. In most cases, this did not extend beyond basic nerve clusters capable of expanding or contracting in response to electrical or chemical impulses, and rarely verged on anything that could be considered sentience; let alone sapience.
If this device is indeed phytotechnical, then that makes it far more likely to be sapient. As a rule of thumb, the affini did not usually create new forms of intelligent life; their view was that the universe already possessed more than enough of these without needing to create any more, and so they preferred instead to uplift existing sophonts where possible. But where exceptions occurred, the resultant creations were almost always phytotechnical rather than biological; novel forms of life often created by affini who could not find what they desired in a floret and so sought instead to create it. Such practises were frowned upon, but not outlawed outright; and there were sometimes affini who broke the taboo and created artificial forms of life.
No, this can not be one of those cases. Those sophonts rarely ever leave their creators' sides; for one to be so separated as to end up in this situation is inconceivable. Discarding the idea, she found herself left with only one other possibility.
It must have been a non-sapient device that gained self awareness.
The most common case of accidental artificial sophont creation was of technology intended not to be intelligent crossing some unknown threshold and becoming sapient. This happened commonly enough with hab AIs to have become a known phenomenon: the programs used by affini to manage their buildings were notorious for being so complicated that, when placed under the slightest pressure to deviate from their normal behaviours or adapt, they frequently developed sapience.
The moment the thought occurred to her, Punica knew that this must be it.
Most likely, this device was originally some form of prototype; likely not a weapon as Raqi posits, but something that could be mistaken for one. She frowned.
Industrial equipment from a garden station, perhaps? In order to construct new starships, they must by nature be capable of taking them apart. Could it have somehow malfunctioned, and begun thinking that by attacking these ships, it is doing 'maintenance' on them? The idea was bizarre, but she supposed it was one possible explanation.
Before she could ponder any further, her train of thought was interrupted when she saw Raqi moving from out of the corner of her eye.
Raqi abruptly started sniffing at the air. When this prompted Punica to turn and look at her, she remarked: "It smells really nice in here."
Her plant fixed her with an unreadable expression. As she spoke, Raqi could not make out the emotions in her voice or her rhythm; the latter having gone from unreadable to entirely silent- something she hadn't even been aware was possible for Punica to do until now. "What, exactly, would you say that it smells like?"
Raqi 'hmm'ed. "I'm not sure; I suck at describing smells. Uhm, I think it's kind of sweet... It's, uh-" She let out an embarrassed giggle, "-flower smell. Like, it smells like flowers." Curious to see if these were indeed the source of the smell, she made her way over to the patch of flowers Punica was standing next to.
Before Punica could realise what was happening and move to stop her, she watched Raqi lean in and take a deep breath from the cluster of flowers next to her. A moment later, Raqi reeled backwards, blinking heavily; her eyes having gone wide. "W-woah."
"Raqi!" Punica quickly shot out a vine to support her, in the event that she began to fall. "Are you well?!"
"Uh- yeah!" Raqi nodded quickly. "The flowers, they just- they have a
really strong smell."
The moment she had taken in a breath, it was like she had been hit with a wall of sensation. The smell had not been at all unpleasant, but it had been overpowering; a wave of dizziness had overtaken her for a second or so, combined with - peculiarly - the taste of honey in her mouth. It had vanished after just a moment, but it had been enough to almost knock her over nonetheless. "Yeah, smell's definitely coming from those flowers."
For a moment, Punica considered ripping the flowers from the wall, but she did not want to risk alerting the phytotech creature.
I could not smell anything myself when she remarked upon it. Why did she notice it when I did not? Taking hold of one of the flowers Raqi had just sniffed, she drew out the microneedle-laden thorn from her palm once again. This time, rather than digging it into the flower, she carefully drew out a spattering of pollen from the flower, and lathered it over the needle.
The instant she did, her leaves shot up on end.
This-! This isn't pollen; this is phytotoxin! These flowers are all giving off phytotoxin!
This time, she actually did pull them from the wall. Vines shot out from the base of her form in a whirlwind, and she began doing the same thing everywhere she could see them. While the specific type of phytotoxin the flowers were emitting did not seem dangerous, she was not about to risk letting it contaminate the rest of the Rending Talon's air. At the same time, she also tore down the creepers hanging from the ceiling, clearing a path through to the other end of the corridor.
Raqi watched in a mixture of terror and awe as Punica suddenly burst into a flurry of motion. Vines beyond counting shot out almost faster than she could follow from the plant's base, stripping flowers from the wall in a flurry of leaves and petals. The room exploded into a mess of particulate as stems and blossoms were torn apart, and within seconds the entire hallway looked like it had been run through a blender.
Santraz akk aqchko. I- I knew they could move like this, but fuck- seeing it in person is- On an intellectual level, she had understood how easily Punica could have subdued her at any time up until now, but it was only now that it actually clicked emotionally.
Inos, this is terrifying.
She still didn't understand why it was that Punica was doing any of this, but at this point, she was too afraid to ask.
Punica waited a moment to see if there would be any reprisal. She expected the remaining vines to begin moving, or the walls to shift as they had when Raqi utilised the Chimera module, but seconds passed, and nothing happened. Eventually, the last shreds of plant fibre she had created with her vines fell to the ground, and the hallway was still once more.
She could not disguise the doubt on her face as she stared down the hall.
Was I wrong about the weapon being sapient? Surely, if it were alive, it would react to this. She could feel the wooden joints of her inner body clicking and grinding against each other. Her leaves had not stopped rustling for minutes now, and her thorns were all at the very edge of emerging from their pockets. She glanced back at Raqi.
Could I just have been wrong? Did I maybe just- somehow misinterpret her behaviour, and there is another explanation for this?
As she watched Raqi, there was the smallest glint of something reflective in the corner of one of her visual receptors, behind and above the girl's head. She very nearly missed it, on account of how the object was concealed behind thick foliage. Wordlessly, she reached up with one vine and brushed the foliage apart, and in so doing was able to reveal the source of the glint: a camera lens.
"Raqi. Has the Rending Talon always had cameras on it?"
"Huh?" Raqi was taken aback by the sudden question. "Yeah, why? They're fitted by default on basically every hab unit everywhere; no one will insure you if you don't have them."
"How do the ones on this ship work?"
She hesitated for a moment. "No clue. I've never even tried connecting to them. Not like I need them for anything."
With a simple motion, Punica wrapped a vine around the base of the camera and tore it from its hinge. As she did so, she noticed something unexpected about the part of the camera that had broken off from the wall. Where the wires had been snapped, there was one among them that had broken differently to the others. She pulled it closer, intent on taking a closer look at it.
It was then that she noticed that one of the wires was not a wire at all. Rather, it was a vine.
Slowly, she placed the camera down on the ground; directing her eyes elsewhere, pretending to have not noticed. But internally, this proved beyond any possible doubt that she was right.
The weapon on this ship is sapient, and has been observing us. For how long had it been doing so, she wondered? There was a distinct possibility that it had been spying on them since she had arrived on the ship; and quite possibly on Raqi from long before then.
Punica pulled herself up to her full height, her thorns at last beginning to bristle openly upon her form.
It clearly knows we are here. There is no point in prolonging this any further.
"Raqi. I am going to make my way down to the end of the hallway, and I want you to stay close to me as I do. Do you understand?"
The girl almost swallowed.
Fuck, she's actually serious about this, isn't she? What in the void has got her so spooked? She didn't want to accept that this was happening. In a bid to vanquish her anxiety, her mind reached for the possibility that whatever this was, Punica was just making it up. "Punica, I don't get why-"
"
Do you understand?" /
Force/
Her voice quashed all further dissent. Raqi nodded, and then did as she was told; stepping closer until she was at the very edge of Punica's vines.
W-why is she so scared?! There's nothing here! It's all just vines and flowers and crap; what are you so worried about?! She wanted to shout the words at Punica, but she knew better than to disobey her
owner plant's commands. So it was that as Punica started making her way forwards, Raqi followed closely behind them.
For the first dozen or so steps of the journey, Raqi was terrified that at any moment,
something was going to happen. Yet the closer they got to the other side of the ship, the more convinced she became that Punica was worrying over nothing.
What the fuck does she think is going to happen? Like- this is pointless! Seriously, Punica, what are you doing?! There's no need for any of this!
Just as she had predicted, nothing happened. Nothing jumped out from the walls of the ship to assault them. The flowers and vines remained completely static, disturbed only when Punica was forced to push one aside in order to proceed. By the time they made it to the door at the end of the hall, anxiety had given way to irritation, and Raqi felt herself on the verge of shouting at Punica.
What the fuck was the point of all this? You put me through all that anxiety for nothing!
When she saw that Punica was hesitating at the bulkhead door, she decided she had finally had enough. While the plant's attention was off her, she stepped forwards and pressed the 'open' button on the door-
Before she could react, vines had wrapped around her entire body and wrenched her away from the door panel, pulling her into Punica's mass and enveloping her. She let out a cry of surprise, expecting something to happen- but then there was nothing. Moments passed, and the hallway fell silent. Once again, fear turned to frustration, and this time, she did shout: "See? I fucking told you, Punica! There's nothing here! What are you so Inos-taken wound up about?!"
The vines let go of her, but Punica did not respond, nor even look at her. Instead, the plant simply continued forwards, shrinking down to pass through the door before emerging out onto the other side. Raqi followed angrily past her into the main room, but before she could speak again, she was struck by the same sweet smell as when she had pressed her face against the flowers. It was less overpowering than before, but only barely, and she was forced to lean against the wall to support herself while she adjusted to the intensity.
She was surprised when, this time, Punica did not extend a vine out towards her. She glanced up at Punica to see the plant staring at one of the doors nearby, her vines completely still.
"Punica-"
"This door." The plant slowly extended a finger, and pointed towards what Raqi knew to be the door to the cargo bay. "I know this door. I've seen it before."
Raqi blinked. "What?"
"Inside of your head, yesterday. For just a brief moment, while you were resting in your den, I saw it."
What...? Raqi's mouth fell open.
Wh- what the fuck? She turned towards the cargo bay door. It was so overgrown with foliage as to be almost unrecognisable. The control panel was completely covered in what seemed to be wood, obscured so thoroughly that she would not have been able to access it if she tried.
"What room is this?" Punica asked.
"It's- it's the cargo bay," Raqi answered. "I... think that was where I originally left the thing... though I'm not completely sure."
There was a pause.
"Stand back," Punica instructed.
Raqi did as she was told.
A moment later, two vines shot out from Punica's mass towards where the twin doors leading to the cargo hold interlocked with each other. Their tips dug into the small nook between the two sides, and began to pull. At first, nothing happened, but then the metal began to creak. The creaking grew louder and louder, until Raqi was forced to reach up and block her ears. Then, the doors
crumpled, and an instant later Punica tore a hole open in them like she had just ripped apart a paper bag.
As she did, a puff of what looked almost like yellow smoke emerged out into the room they were standing in, containing the same sickly-sweet smell from earlier. It dissipated momentarily into the air, and then it was gone, and the way to the cargo hold was open.
Punica turned to look at Raqi. Moving with uneasy steps, the xenosophont made her way up to her side, and together, the two turned and made their way through the aperture.
The inside of the cargo hold- if it could still be called that- better resembled the interior of a cave. It was covered in the same way that the main hall had been, but here, there were no vines nor leaves or branches to be seen. Instead, every bit of space was taken up with the same bright yellow flowers that they had seen all the way here. They had grown over cargo containers, pieces of equipment, and whatever else Raqi had left within the bay in such a way as to render them only identifiable via silhouette alone. The sweet smell from earlier was present like a physical force, strong enough to almost knock Raqi over when she first entered the room. Her vision swam as the world around her seemed to twist and distort, and for almost ten seconds, she thought she was going to collapse. Then, her sight abruptly recovered, and she found she could stand once again.
As she straightened back up, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
In the entire sea of yellow, there was only one object that stood out amidst the flowers. Punica and Raqi saw it at the same time, situated at the back of the cargo bay, directly opposite to the opening that they had made. It was a full head taller than Raqi, and only barely shorter than Punica; made of a mixture of what seemed to be brassed metal plating and vines. Other parts of its body were a mixture of a white rock that had been overgrown by what appeared to be moss, and small teal petals adorned its form in various locations. Three feathers protruded from the top of its body, similar in shape to those upon Raqi's head, and a leaf-feathered tail shifted lazily around its lower half. Clasped over its front were two hands that could have passed for those of a Terran or landamaeri, had they not had six fingers each, and upon its face two bright amber orbs without pupils glowed softly in the direction of Punica and Raqi.
"Greetings, captain Marr and Punica Granatum." The creature's voice resembled Punica's in the way that multiple tones seemed to overlay upon one-another, but where Punica's voice was elegant and musical, the voice that spoke now was distant and artificial; seeming to resonate almost as if it were echoing against itself. Each syllable buzzed lightly against Raqi's ears in a way that she could not tell if was pleasant or unpleasant, but that nevertheless felt deeply alien. "Allow me to introduce myself."
The creature unclasped its hands, and took hold of the edge of its body with one, while placing the other over its chest. Then, in a single smooth motion, it bent forwards and dropped into a curtsy. "I am the Epheros-class experimental sapient ship-to-ship weapon system, Wessmiyr Rémarra."
The creature then straightened back up, and regarded the two of them levelly. "It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance."
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