026: Subspace Reminiscing – Thirteen
"And thusly our paths converged." Pryseia finished as they all arrived on the bridge. Though the rest of them were no longer bound by Thalatte rule and regulation, old habits died hard, the crew of the Pelekys found themselves falling back into the routines of their duties. As the only pilot aboard, Nevara spent her days guiding the ship through the stars, while the others would work on retrofits in whatever way they could.
As an excuse to try and break the routines drilled into them for the past several decades, they always began working on projects on the bridge in order to spend time with one another, eventually working their way across the ship. As of late, Viatrix had been taking over piloting duties, allowing Nevara to join the others as they worked, the AI's presence throughout the ship's systems allowing her the chance to socialize no matter how far apart the rest of the crew was.
"How did you manage to get into that tournament in the first place?" Elytra asked as she sat down at the gunner station she'd occupied during their escape. Breakfast had her feeling better, but not quite back to normal, "Don't tell me you just walked up and volunteered?"
"Nothing quite so simple, alas." Pryseia laughed, though with the way she flopped down into her seat with more exhaustion than casualness, Elytra could tell that the deupazing was feeling just as rough as she was, "We tracked their ship movements for a time, discovered when the transports holding captured aliens would make landfall, and then made a ship to ship transfer without the participating vessel noticing our presence."
"She's underselling the danger of it," Rhea cut in from where she was leaning against Pryseia's seat, "We were keeping pace with the other vessel in flight - sublight, sure, but still stupidly fast - and Viatrix hacked the other ship to open a hatch that this one leaped into. One wrong move and-" She made a horrible squelching noise with her mouth, scattering her fingers apart to illustrate just what could have happened to Pryseia if their plan hadn't panned out.
"It was the most expedient way to get myself into their clutches," Pryseia argued, smacking Rhea in the leg with her tail, "Once I was aboard the transport, I hid myself within the crowd of captives. Thankfully, there were enough of my own people that my presence raised no suspicions, and they were more concerned with the overall volume of captives, not their precise number. I was limited in terms of my normal capabilities, which made me far less stealthy than I normally would be. And on that note, I humbly request to be restored to my full capabilities!"
This last part she outright whined, flopping her left arm in Rhea's direction. The doctor rolled her eyes as if the request was the greatest of inconveniences, but this was undercut by the bloom of fondness Elytra could feel from her.
"I want you back to full health before I swap your prostheses. With how rough you were this morning, I'm worried it'll be especially shocking for your system."
Pryseia sighed dramatically, but she didn't press the issue further.
"What would you have done if I hadn't been among those pulled from stasis for this tournament?" Elytra couldn't help but ask. So much had been riding on finding her, it seemed, something that was in no way guaranteed with how the leaders of that world had been running things.
It was Malakh's turn to laugh, sharp and humourless as she pointed a finger in Pryseia's direction, "She'd have won the tournament, failed to awaken your Storlayacas, then been shipped off to one of the armoured units they had stationed on their moons."
"After which point she'd fight her way out with the rest of those escaping - of which there were dozens of every day - and she'd find some way to sneak back into the tournament and do the whole thing over again until she found who she was looking for." Nevara finished.
"The necessity for so many unwilling participants, fresh and frozen alike, was due to their high attrition rate in regards to personnel," Pryseia explained, "The systems and structures of Iromay were lacking in all aspects. I'd not be shocked if the ruling body of that world was overthrown within the decade."
"Luckily for us, you were pulled from storage at just the right time." Viatrix said from her display on the console in front of Nevara.
After everything that had happened to her over the course of the last month - unknowingly over the course of her last eighty odd years - the serendipity of events wasn't as shocking to Elytra as they should have been. Looking around at the gathered aliens, organic and digital alike, she voiced the question that had been lingering at the back of her mind ever since she set food inside Lianshae.
"So what now?"
"Now it is time for you to decide," Pryseia said, sitting forward in her seat, "For the rest of us, we shall seek out the rest of the Storlayacas. Their call tugs too profoundly to ignore. But you have been united with the machine that sang for your soul, and so your compulsion has been fulfilled. We would take you along with us on our quest, readily and happily, but should you wish it, we will make port for whatever destination of your choosing, and stand aside while you embarked upon your own path."
Elytra sat back in her seat, her entire future yawning open before her, somehow more and less full of options than at any other point in her life.
"It's a lot, so you don't have to decided right away," Rhea cut in softly before Elytra had the chance to speak, "Take some time to rest, to think. We're still running scans for another Storlayacas, so we're more or less just spinning our wheels as far as a destination goes. You've got plenty of time to decide."
Elytra had ended up retiring to her quarters not long after the discussion on the bridge, her body's need to recover pulling her back to sleep almost as soon as she'd had her blankets pulled up around her. She didn't bother trying to stay awake, to mull over everything the others had told her, because she knew the answer to their question before she'd even left the bridge.
She was sticking with them to find the rest of the Storlayacas.
The empathic connection the Hyttan mech had forged between the lot of them aside, Elytra knew that travelling the stars with these women was something she wanted for herself. As she'd told them before, her life back home had been stable to the point of dissociation, days blending endlessly into one another. She'd had her family nearby, but connections with others were fewer and farther between. While her peers had all seemed to fall into fulfilling careers and life paths, Elytra herself had been left treading water, just getting through the days for the sake of getting through them, and nothing more. No drive, no passion, and the familiarity of comfort so stifling that she didn't realize how hollow her life had become.
But now the stars lay open before her, she was surrounded by people who had genuinely enjoyed her company (something she could quite literally feel), and a machine that predated the birth of her species had chosen her for some nebulous quest.
Did she wish that her family was still alive? Without question. Did she wish that she hadn't been locked away for nearly a century? Of course. But these were issues she had no way of changing. Grieving the loss of her past and home was something she would probably be doing for a long time, but she was going to have to get on with actually living her life to do that, and what better way to start by accepting a position on the crew of the Pelekys?
And what better time than to start now.
Rolling over in bed to face her dimly lit room, Elytra called out, "Hey, Viatrix? Are you there?"
A moment later Viatrix's floral avatar popped up on the comms display by the door. "I can be summoned with a call of my name, but rest assured I'm not listening in on everything you say within the confines of your cabin. The others were adamant I learn the value of privacy."
"Oh, that's- I appreciate you telling me," Elytra said as she sat up, "Would it be an invasion of privacy if I asked where they are?"
"Only if they swore me to secrecy. As it stands, Nevara and Malakh are gutting the former captain's quarters, Rhea is continuing her optimization of the medbay, and Pryseia is preparing dinner in the mess hall."
If dinner was being worked on, then she must have been asleep longer than she'd expected. Elytra swung her legs out from her bed, idly thinking about asking for some type of timepiece with numbers she could actually read, when the entire vessel shuddered underneath her.
"What was that?!" She squeaked as she got to her feet, another jolt through the ship almost sending her toppling.
The swirl of colours in Viatrix's avatar grew frantic, her tone alarmed as she said, "We've just been engaged by a Leviathan."
Elytra had no idea what that was, but with how the Pelekys was being thrown around, it couldn't be good. She made a bolt for the door, Viatrix helpfully opening it for her, before she dashed down to the bridge.
Nevara and Malakh had entered it just before her, the latter leaping into one of the gunner stations, while the former took control of the ship, swinging it around to get a better visual of what was attacking them.
Whatever Elytra had been expecting to see when the view screens flickered to life across the interior of the bridge, it most certainly wasn't the nightmare that loomed before them.
At first she thought there was something wrong with the display, that it was showing a close up of some strange fern-like plant instead of whatever was going on outside of the ship, but then Nevara threw the thrusters in reverse, and the thing before them moved.
Off-white segmented tendrils filled the screen, the protrusions Elytra had mistaken for the leaves of a fern reaching out towards them as they fled, looking for all the world like endless rib bones descending down spinal columns the size of tree trunks. The thing swayed like it was underwater, a clump of seaweed buffeted by a current, but with a speed something its size should lack, it lunged for them again, Nevara dodging the ship out of the way in the nick of time. The scope of it was so alien that Elytra could barely believe that this wasn't some bizarre dream conjured up by her exhaustion.
Malakh opened fire as Nevara swung the ship around to face the thing, and Rhea tore into the bridge a moment later, in the other gunner station and firing before Elytra could even think to move.
That changed when the massive shape of Zaanlaa crashed into the thing on screen.
Pryseia was fighting. Elytra had to help her.
She was halfway to the cargo hold before she realized it, skidding around a corner and charging towards the chartreuse pattern on the ground that denoted the dematting zone.
"I'll activate it, go!" Viatrix called out, and Elytra leaped forward, the cargo room appearing before her an instant later. She tore up the walkway to Lianshae, throwing herself into the cockpit which closed up the moment she was seated, restraints and controls snapping over her with all the urgency she felt bubbling up within herself.
She blinked and was once again looking at the world through the Storlayacas' eyes, Viatrix's voice calling out, "Towards the back of the room, I'll send you out."
Another chartreuse pattern on the ground, Elytra had no sooner stepped onto it than she suddenly found herself freely floating in the void between stars.
The Baithaizan training sims couldn't compare to the actual, physical sensation of hanging in space, but Elytra pushed such thoughts aside. Instinct had her thrusters firing, her blade coming to life in her hand, and her target located in seconds. The audio emulators filled her ears with the scream of an energy sabre meeting resistance as Pryseia pushed the entity out of its pursuit path of the Pelekys, while her empathic senses were filled with a hate so ancient that she physically had to hold herself back from vomiting in fear.
This thing was alive, and it wanted them dead.
Instinct had her in motion before thought could, and she was close enough to start taking swipes on the creature in moments, her exhaustion forgotten as she laid into each swing.
"Thrilled at your inclusion! Distract it, if you could?" Pryseia called out to her from across the void, her excitement bubbling over the line.
Elytra threw the mech backwards, batting away the tendrils as they followed, a forest of claws trying to ensnare her. Though no sounds could travel through space, the audio emulators groaned to life with the subsonic bellow of the bone white monstrosity before her as it gave chase. The base, animal part of her brain shut down at that, the fighting skills the baithaizans had implanted in her the only thing keeping her in motion.
It was eons or an instant later before Zaanlaa appeared in her line of sight on the opposite side of the creature from her. Thrusters flaring behind her as she charged, Pryseia lunged forward, her sword arm leading as she vanished behind the creature. Its entire body convulsed at the impact, a terrible screeching coming through on both the audio emulators and Elytra's empathic senses as it gave vent to its death cry. A shudder ran through its every limb before the creature fell still, and the loathing that had been frothing off of it dissipated like dust in the wind.
All that remained was the winter keen howling of pride coming from Pryseia.
Elytra did not recall how she returned to the cargo hold of the Pelekys, her faculties coming back to her as she stumbled out of the cockpit and onto the walkway, her knee plates cracking painfully as she fell on all fours. A moment later and a shadow fell across her, dark hair filling her vision as Rhea leaned down in front of her. It took Elytra a second to notice that the human was speaking to her.
"I'm okay," she eventually got out, her voice shaking, "I'm okay. I'm… what was that?!"
"A Leviathan." Rhea's voice was pitched soothingly low, "They're spaceborne animals, incredibly territorial with some psionic capabilities. Not intelligent enough to communicate, but smart enough to know how to cause harm. How are you actually feeling?"
With Rhea's help, Elytra was able to stand, and she drew in a deep breath as she took stock of herself. She still felt awful due to the lack of suppressants in her system, and she could feel a headache blooming behind her eyes, but the overwhelming fear that creature had stirred in her had ebbed away with its death.
"I've a headache coming on, but I don't feel any worse than I did before that thing showed up." She replied honestly.
Rhea sighed, shooting her a small smile as she rubbed her shoulder. "I can get you something to take care of the headache."
All of a sudden the presences of Zaanlaa filled the cargo hold, and the pair of them watched as it came to rest in the clamps next to where Lianshae stood, the cockpit opening and Pryseia leaping out a moment later, her grin blinding as she came running up to the two of them.
"Phenomenal! I've fought with veterans half as effective in the presences of such wretched beasts! You handled yourself admirably!"
Glancing between the two women, Elytra said, "Good. If I'm going to be part of this crew, I don't want to drag the rest of you down."
Like the light of a snowy forest at dawn, Pryseia and Rhea's elation at that announcement washed over her in a warm glow, banishing the last of the unease the encounter with the Leviathan had filled her with.
"That is cause for celebration if ever I heard one," Pryseia said as she clapped a hand on the shoulder Rhea wasn't still holding, "Thankfully I was only in the preparation stage when that fell beast struck, so our menu for the evening won't be damaged by this interruption. And with your inclusion in our ranks, there are matters of the future it would be best to discuss."
Elytra had no idea as to the form her future was about to take, but as she dematerialized back into the Pelekys with Pryseia and Rhea by her side, she found herself looking forward to forging the shape of it herself.