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How had this happened?The scraping of torn graphite-reinforced hull plating singed Orla’s ears, ripping through her mind as she tore to the left down a somewhat-intact appearing hallway, refusing to look back as the floor she had clawed her way through just moments before disintegrated into the vacuum.Checking her uplink for any vague signal remnants, all she heard was static. Her handler was still far out of reach it seemed, so much for a quick pickup. Banking hard to avoid a flimsy chunk of ceiling panel nearly colliding with her face, she saw a small sign of possible safety, the reinforced door to some kind of bridge-room a few meters ahead of her.The shifting of the seemingly failed-attempt at a warship she was currently fighting her way through slowed as Orla made her way to the door. The artificial gravity still holding the reinforced pads of her suit to the cold plastisteel floors, at least that’s one thing they got right, she thought.The control systems for this door, however, were not so resilient. Metallic claws made short work of prying the edges from the already-damaged panel, exposing a bundle of wires that were similarly easy to tear through, granting the beleaguered mutt access to what must have been one of the only intact rooms on the ship.Readouts showed no breathable atmosphere once the thick plated door finally creaked open, predictably so, she chided herself, given the massive rotting tears that failed jump attempt left in the alien ship’s hull. Forcing down a familiar panic fighting to escape from her gut, she started to wonder if maybe she should have taken Elae up on that offer of her class F bullshit before the mission. “Well too late now,” she said to the empty room, at the same time making uncomfortable eye contact with a very-much-deceased Ureth flight engineer, still tied into a sparking nav station. Still, once she was able to glance past what she was sure would become a mind-numbingly traumatic scene, she was able to parse a small piece of why they’d been so much more of a challenge than her handler had expected, especially for what was supposed to be a simple pacification boarding.Mixed amongst the distinctly Ureth designed interface of the panel, still somehow far more advanced than anything Orla had seen on a Terran ship before the war, were telltale pieces of plant matter, haphazardly grafted into the existing systems with a mixture of what she assumed was xeno-ducktape™ and hope. And if the sparking was anything to go by, whatever attempt they’d made to integrate Affini tech with their systems had not ended well when put under stress.As her adrenaline-induced fugue state wavered, Orla tried to take note of her surroundings, looking for anything remotely recognizable as a comms system. Dirt, she thought, maybe she should have paid attention during Elae’s lectures on these systems afterall. Still, after an uncomfortably long search she was able to find something that she thought looked kind of recognizable as a communications terminal. Clawing her way onto the strangely shaped support rig, she mentally fiddled with her interface’s translator systems, watching as an intensely rough overlay took shape over the display, providing her with enough of the character’s meanings to figure out which large-blue-virtual button she needed to press to send out a distress signal.If it was even able to reach her handler’s shuttle before her oxygen ran out, a small but very loud part of her brain told her.There was that panic again. Ever-presently worming its way out of the stranglehold two years of plant-enforced therapy clamped down on it with.She’d never been this far out before. Not for a very long time.Nor had her communications ever been cut this irreparably.She felt her ears fold at the thought, even as she attempted to shake it loose.Deep breath.Take stock.Where am I?She pushed through the anxiety to work through how she’d gotten there, the standard boarding procedure, weapons, stronger than they’d been ready for, the shuttering of the ship as she tore her way (non-lethally, of course, she wasn’t a monster… anymore) through an Ureth soldier trying to stab through the armoured plating covering her haunches, the feeling of air rushing out of the torn hull as a failing jump drive tore its way through the bowels of the ship.Elae hadn’t even had time to get off the shuttle- at least she was okay, she hoped.“I will get out of this,” she told the blank face of the engineer to her right, “she will find me.”Now if only she could convince herself to believe it.
Fighting her mind’s attempts at stress-induced paralysis, she ran a paw over the interface, feeling a light jolt of hope as the screen indicated a successful transmission. Now she just had to hope she got a response.Hopping down from her perch, Orla winced as a sharp pain tore its way through her hind limbs, so much for the newly grown augments being ready for a stress test, she thought. She could feel the lingering sharpness of a fracture somewhere in her leg, not to mention uncountable aches and burning feelings too numerous to single out.Well, nothing she could do about it now, not without exposing herself to the soul-sucking void of space that is, which, she decided, likely wouldn’t be a winning approach.Without anywhere to go, all she could do was wait. Curling into a half-formed ball as best as her fractured anatomy would allow, she tried to rest, better than running out of oxygen hyperventilating, she thought.With the slight hiss of her suit’s bio-systems her only company, Orla did her best to ignore the stars-forsaken hellscape around her.≈≈Orla started awake, a loud buzzing vibrating its way through the walls and floor, joined in succession by the flashing of her interface’s oxygen monitor, warning her of dangerously low gas levels. Doing her best to ignore her suit’s dire warnings, it took her several seconds to fight through her stupor and search for the former stimuli’s cause. Looking behind her, she quickly realized what it was, as a hard vibration ripped along the floor, the freshly-closed bridge door warping under an impact of incalculable strength, its reinforced edges bending under the stress, blue warning lights flashing throughout the room alerting a non-existent crew of the intrusion.Unfortunately for Orla, whatever clarity of thought she’d been able to possess hours earlier was lost to a flood of panic-induced endorphins that had failed to clear in her fitful sleep, more than enough to force her into fight or flight. A state in which, knowing her own mind, Orla always picked fight.Wincing through the pain, she clumsily lifted herself up, feeling a silent growl building somewhere in her chest, and as the doors' damaged hinges finally gave way, Orla resolved with what little logical processing was left in her panicked mind to, at the very least, go down swinging.After all, everything else on this rotting, shitwaste of a ship had tried to kill her, she had little reason to doubt that whatever was forcing its way through the door had motives that were any different. She just hoped that Elae wouldn’t find whatever was left.A vaguely defined, seemingly tentacled silhouette pried its way through the fractured remains of the entry-way, obscured by the dust and smoke floating into the empty space from torn wires and pipes stringing their way through the bent metal plating surrounding the door. There was something oddly familiar about it, but Orla took no time to address that thought, throwing herself with what she imagined to be crushing force against her perceived attacker, her suit’s claws finding firm grounding as they sliced through countless alien limbs.≈≈Desmanthus Elaeagnifolium, third bloom, was worried beyond belief. Her pet’s comms had gone dead mere minutes after those rotting ferals tried to activate their hastily pieced together jump drive, and now here she was, left frantically searching half the frost-wasted quadrant, hoping her partner had somehow survived the blast. Not to mention being thrown into a direct vacuum with nought but her boarding armour on.Logically, yes, her Orla was a veritable machine of war, her augments would only add to that. But even still the pup was fragile, no amount of claws or armor could fix that.Two Terran years. She'd only had a floret for two Terran years and she'd let her fall into danger. She was starting to see why some of her friends drugged and pampered their sophonts into a confining, but safe existence. On the front lines of this pacification campaign was too dangerous for most.But everbloom she'd never be able to do that to her Orla. To silence that flame inside her… it would tear out her core. Still, those doubts persisted. And in times like this, even one such as Elae could feel the pull of those instincts. Anything to protect her.Yet, such thoughts did absolute rotting dirt to bring her closer to finding her. So here she was, left pacing as the shuttle's AI scanned every single particle within range for any signs of life. And while she did so, her mind raced faster than the sublight drive could ever hope to go.She must've done something wrong. There must've been some sign.How did those ferals even get a hold of Compact technology? It shouldn't’ve even been possible.By the stars if her Orla was so much as scratched by one of them- she dared not take that thought further.Tearing away a cold-damaged, spine-coated bloom from her body, she stared at the ship's aft display panel, searching every millimeter of space for some variance in the scanners, some tiny sign of a distress signal, life sign, anything.Everbloom, she'd wilt if this kept up much longer. She'd only been exposed for a few seconds after the shuttle detached, just until the hatch slammed itself shut. But still, along with the damages she'd sustained when they hit her with that stolen weapon, it was a miracle she wasn't reduced to a dormant core by now. And her fractured emotional state was far from helpful.≈≈Elae threw the controls into manual faster than she was sure the safety systems would allow, her girl had done it, she hoped. Her biorhythm had fallen out of tune the second she saw the readings shift, they were rough, but they were coordinates. They were something she could track.Ureth distress signals were stranger than most Elae had heard, a thin, barely perceptible thrum through hyperspace channels, so faint you'd doubtlessly miss it if you didn't know what you were looking for.Warlike species, she sighed, always making it so hard to help them. And now making it even harder to track down her sophont. But she found it, and she'd move the stars themselves to pull her Orla from that wreck, regardless of what got in her way.The shuttle groaned, superstructure straining as she pulled it out of a jump as close to the signals coordinates as the nav unit would allow. And sure enough, the hulking two kilometer form of the Thlethyrab drifted aimlessly past the view screen, it's two meter thick plating torn in a dozen places, simply ripped to pieces by the force of an escaping jump drive.After several more stem-tearing minutes of frantically searching the entirety of the ship's length for any signs of her partner's signal, finally, the faint, damaged output of her implant was picked up by the ship's sensors, nestled within the remnants of the forward bridge.Elae turned the shuttle towards the nearest hull opening, silently begging something, anything to let her make it there on time.≈≈-Elae felt her vines straining as she pushed herself against the door, the artificial gravity was beginning to fail, leaving her scrambling to find purchase, rooting herself against the ruined surfaces surrounding her.Thud.Thud.Thud.Finally the metal creaked and bent away from the shattered hinges, she felt the blaring of the bridge alarm coursing through the floor beneath her, and finally she laid eyes on her query. Orla was hard to make out, the ear and tail covers of her armor barely visible through the free-floating debris surging from the ship’s shattered internal systems. But she was there, and if the shaky movement from her hunched form was any indicator, she was alive.Before she was able to so much as connect to her interface, Elae knew something was wrong. Her partner’s movements were shaky and tense, and through the static emanating from her damaged coms, she could hear a deep, throaty growl emanating from the girl. Elae knew she was in shock, and sooner than she was able to react, she was proven correct.Augmented claws scraped deep into the floor, slower than their peak outputs, surely injured, yet still unnaturally fast, Elae tried and failed to ensnare her, feeling the collision in full force as those same claws singed their way through the vines and silver-green leaves that made up the external skin of her form. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt this. Her sparring sessions with her feral had proven her danger before, but never had she seen her in such a panic.Her mind raced, fighting through burning pain trying to find any way to end this without hurting Orla, or, Everbloom, herself.She gripped her partner’s forelegs with any remaining strength she had in her forward vines, feeling the desperate attack slow and weaken. It was only then that she noticed the oxygen readout from her interface, dangerously, fatally low. Using all of the force she could muster, she pulled the girl towards her core, not bothering to think about the risks, and rocketed back towards the shuttle’s entrance, still embedded a few hundred meters behind them.
The airlock slammed itself shut with a deafening slam, as Elae desperately repressurized the compartment as quickly as she was able. With half her vines focused on the nav console, steering the ship into a jump as close to the Arelae as possible, the other half laid her now unconscious sophont on the bench at her side, removing her helmet as soon as the cool atmosphere flooded the shuttle.She desperately felt for any sign in Orla’s rhythm, a hint of a heartbeat, a thought, a breath. There was nothing.Reaching for the medical kit on the other side of the compartment, she frantically began to administer emergency treatment to restart her heart, praying to whatever forces were out there that she wasn’t too late. Wincing at the still-fresh wounds on her vines as she worked, the darkest parts of her mind told her they would be her last living memory of the girl she held in her vines.≈≈Orla had no blasted idea where she was. She couldn’t even open her eyes past the haze her thoughts were under, well, she thought, at least it doesn’t hurt anymore.Wait. What happened? She’d attacked that… thing coming for her on that bridge, she barely remembered her oxygen running low, the strength leaving her body. Was she dead?Well if the blurry, bright light that surrounded her was any indication, she'd guess yes. Try as she might, her eyes seemed to refuse her commands to focus, as did her limbs to any attempts to properly move them.I'm all likelihood, she should be terrified right now, why wasn't she terrified? Somewhere outside the scope of her vision, was a weakened, but familiar rhythm, calmingly pulsing throughout her body.Wait.She recognized that rhythm.Putting as much effort as she was consciously able into the inhumanly difficult task that was moving her head, she finally managed to catch the sight, however unfocused, of its source.There was movement in her vision, as a lythe masse of silver-green leaves and vines shot across the small shuttle more quickly than physics should have allowed.Orla felt the familiar, inexplicably soft and spiny texture of the one damned xeno in the entire universe she bothered to care about.Elae was saying something, so frantic and soft that even Orla’s modified hearing could barely understand, and even then, piecing together the muffled-affini was largely beyond her mind's semiconscious ability. Still, she was able to connect a few of the simpler words, cracking and splintering with the energy of a forest succumbing to rot, filled with a pained relief she could only begin to feel.“My thorns and blooms-”“Alive-”Finally, it hit Orla's mind, she was back. She didn't know how. But she was back. And for the first frosted time in what felt like years, she cried. Tears of relief or fear or something else entirely, she couldn't tell, but they came regardless, and with them went any hope of maintaining whatever shreds of resolve she'd yet retained.She was safe.She was safe.
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Danger.She was in danger.Orla was running.They’d tracked them somehow, and she couldn’t fucking believe she was going to die with these half brained idiots that called themselves rebels. She didn’t even know how the damned weeds found them! They’d covered their tracks, scrambled outgoing signals, jumped so many times the damned drive had nearly imploaded! Yet somehow, they’d jumped out from behind a gas giant, perfectly lodged in their ship’s blind spot until it was far too late to get away.Not that any of that was her fault, for once. She’d done everything she could, trained those idiots in any kind of combat they could stomach. She’d re-engineered half the weapons locker at this point, and had the most semi-decent technician she could find reconfigure every ranged weapons system they had for maximum efficiency. And in the end, none of it had mattered. Everything, the rail guns, the plasma bolts, every weapon they tried simply bounced off the xeno’s hull like it was nothing.As her ill-fitting boots slammed into the worn, dimly lit floors with every step, she fumbled with her pack searching for a fuel cell. Hoping that a flamer would at least slow the bastards down. Hooking a sharp left down a maintenance corridor, the exhausted terran almost dived into the first access vent she could see, she could hear the thumps, screams, and gunfire as the boarding party broke its way through the outer hull.She almost wished she cared about her ‘comrades,’ no doubt being annihilated in the brutal custom of the weeds, at least if the dogshit propaganda was anything to believe, but she struggled to find sympathy for the rebels who’d half-pressured half-forced her into their stupid rebellion in the first place. Sure she hated the Compact for everything they were worth, but she was starting to realize she hated the Terrans just as much.Why should she care which imperialist empire was breathing down her neck? She would bite, claw, and burn her way through them all the same. Species didn’t matter much when all that remained was ash.So there she waited, mask on, not daring to so much as breathe too deeply as she did. Slowly, the screams died off, and the air became thick with some sort of gas. And after what felt like hours, she heard the telltale sound of footsteps echoing along the narrow hallway just beyond her hiding spot. They were heavier and more numerous than any human’s, with a rasping, scratching tinge just below the sound of their impacts, like thorns tearing through flesh.Well, Orla thought, at least it’ll be an interesting way to die. She readied the nozzle of her small, rifleman’s issue flame thrower, throwing it into the highest range and heat it could handle, and broke through the thin metal grate separating her from certain doom.The sight before her was more eldridge than she could’ve possibly imagined. Thorned branches and gnarled, spiny leaves shimmered in the eerie red glow of the emergency lights, unfurled into a thousand impossible knots and combinations, each acting as if it had a mind of its own. As soon as her foot touched the cool metal tiles, lightly skidding in the unstable gravity of a broken ring, each and every vine seemed to tense, as if every surface on the xeno’s body could see her in its own right.Not taking the time to think, Orla pulled the trigger, sending a mass of flame jetting across the creature even as it began to throw itself towards her. Leaves and thorns singed and burned, curling and flaking into the air as it moved, whole vines were marred by scorch marks slowly encompassing their writhing mass. Orla almost laughed, she’d hurt it, how had no one else tried this? Throwing herself backward, using the ever increasing microgravity to her advantage, she released another barrage of flame, failing to notice in her elatement that the burning leaves and limbs seemingly had no effect on the creature’s speed. Finally watching as several vines broke through the wall of smoke filling the corridor, Orla panicked. She released a final burst of flame from her weapon, spraying wildly in a vain attempt to repel the oncoming attack. After a few seconds, the fuel cell sputtered and shook, and before she had time to react, it exploded in her hands.Not that she had time to feel it, as vines ripped through what was left of the damaged weapon, wrapping around Orla’s waist and legs with ungodly force. Struggling against her newfound bonds, she scrambled for the knife stashed somewhere on her belt, when she finally felt the cool steel of its handle against her burning skin, she blindly swung it with all the might she could muster, feeling the barest hint of sensation ache through her palms as it dug into hard, woody flesh.Her attack lasted less than a second however, as a charcoal covered vine, partially severed and marred with scratches, latched onto her arm, now pulsing with stinging pain as hundreds of spines dug their way beneath her skin. Quickly matched by a white-hot pain coursing its way through her neck and face, thicker thorns pressing deep beneath the flesh, leeching a warm, stinging feeling for just an instant before everything went black.—Struggling to open her eyes, the first thing Orla saw was green, silvery, faded green. Experimentally flexing the artificial muscles embedded beneath synthetic skin and fur, she stretched a paw out in front of her, wincing slightly at the hint of aching pain shooting through her foreleg. Foreleg. Paw. This was real. Her mind reminded itself, the dull ache a reminder of her growing consciousness, pain always felt different in those dreams. Worse. Sharper. The muted edge of the pain coursing through her veins was a signal she’d healed.Wait.Elae was here. She could see her, smell her, feel her. Fuzzy memories edged their way back into her mind, as her eyes glanced across some of the freshly healed plant matter now embedded in the formless coil of vines that made up her partner. Dirt. She’d done a number on her, she hadn’t put wounds this deep on her owner since… Oh. She thought. That explains the nightmare.She was never going to hear the end of this.—After what must have been hours, Orla felt her xeno move, the loose coils of laxed vines tightening around her body for an instant, beginning to form the vague shape of… Something. Orla had given up trying to guess the source of her handler’s ever-changing forms years ago. As they did so, the barely showing underlayers beneath her ‘skin’ shook in a manner that Orla knew to interpret as the affini’s strange equivalent to a stressed yawn.“Oh, you’re awake-. FUCK YOU’RE AWAKE! Rot and frost you’re awake! Thorn, are you okay? How do you feel? Everbloom, don’t ever scare me like that again or I’ll throw you out the airlock! FUCK!”Orla couldn’t help but feel the barest hint of a chuckle pass through her aching lungs, watching her invincible warrior stumble over her thoughts in a form more reminiscent of a tumbleweed falling down a hill than any stream of coherent speech.“Hello to you too, El,” she croaked, not noticing until then just how painful speech was passing through her marred throat. “What in the stars happened back there? Why does every bone in my body feel like it's stabbing me?”“Okay okay, one thing at a time, pup.” Elae groaned, shaking out the stress in her leaves, “You got absolutely hammered by something after the drive went up, not to mention you seemed to be doing your very best to kill yourself from lack of oxygen when you jumped on me like a horse out of hell back there.”The Captain pulled her vines underneath the girl, carefully threading them around the most damaged portions of her body, and lifted her from their shared bed to pull her closer to her core. She could almost feel the pain in her vines, whether from the implants or her own recovered wounds, she didn’t know.“You hit me hard back there though, I’m surprised, never thought I’d see a sophont as quick as you under half a rotation of hypoxia. Either way, thorn, after you were done using me as a scratching post, I pulled you back to the shuttle, it took ages to even find you through that floating junk heap. How much do you remember?”Orla reluctantly leaned in to her partner’s touch, ignoring the aches that tore through her nervous system with every movement, she didn’t have the energy to put on a show of independence right now. “I- I think I remember finding the console, turning on the distress signal. Aside I- don’t think much. I remember feeling scared, running, but there’s rotting nothing past that.”“I found you lying on the floor of that bridge, pet.” Elae shuttered at the memory. Three blooms of feral breaking and war, you’d think she’d be numb to it by now. But not this. This was different. A kind of fear she didn’t care to even try and remember. “I thought you were- your readouts said your oxygen was empty… I thought you were gone, Thorn.”Orla said nothing, just squeezing tighter against Elae, closing any remnant of distance between them as her breath and heart rate increased.“I was angry, Orla, when I entered that ship I- I was glad there were no survivors. Because I don’t know what I would’ve done after finding you like that.”This was a side to Elae Orla had scarcely seen before, she’d seen her Affini scared, of course, but the flaky, slow tone in her rhythm, the words almost seeming to fall before landing on the ground with a deafening thud, shaking her body as they came out, this was a different level than anything she’d seen before. And Orla just wanted to make it stop.“I helped you as much as I could, but there was only so much on that shuttle. The vet says you’ll make a full recovery but, Thorn, it was bad.” She ran a vine down the length of her partner’s leg, coursing over it as lightly as she would a piece of broken china, after a minutes long pause,she spoke. “Thorn… Orla. Tell me something.”“What, El?”“I- are you sure you want to stay in this fight? There is so much you’ve never seen- you could be so much safer-”“El. Stop.”Elae froze slightly, “I know- just. Pet. You could’ve- is it even right for me to keep you in this?”“Who gives a damn if it’s right. You think I give a rotting damn about being safe? El. I’d rather’ve died on that bridge than get stowed away as some gentle weed’s drooling, mewling house pet.”“Orla. You could’ve died out there. And you may not care but I would’ve! I’d kill half the damned compact just to bring you back! Wouldn’t it be better if you weren’t at risk of dying or hurting every frosted, dirt-filled day??”“No. It wouldn’t.” Orla flexed her rear paw, digging a claw ever so slightly into the vine that engulfed it, “I don’t give a damn if I get hurt! Stop pretending like all of this is some sufferable sentence for me that’s somehow all your fault! I fucking chose this! I told you I wanted to fight with you. I told you I wanted that danger because every day I’d be trapped in that boring, safe horseshit your species calls bliss I’d ache. I need this, El. I need you. I refuse to be coddled as if you didn’t personally turn me into the deadliest stars-damned creature this side of the milky way! Rotting trust me Elae. I can feel every thought going through that thick core of yours and it’s irritating how little credit you’re giving me. Giving yourself!”“What if I want you to be safe!? What if I’d rather wither than bloom into a universe without you in it?”“Then wither with me!” Orla pushed her claw deeper, stopping Elae without a word. “I’m sorry, El, but you were right, we’re the same. Neither of us could leave this if we tried. Everbloom, we have! This is what we’re for. And I don’t give a single fuck if you’d rather me be safe than either of us happy. You gave me a choice. And I made it. I’m not giving up that choice for a gilded hell.”Shifting to better look up at the shaken affini’s eyes, Orla gazed deep into the four, now deep blue and yellow points of light near the center of Elae's mass.“You could never make me, El. I love you, you know that. But you told me you’d never take my choice, and I'm holding you to that, until the day we're wilted and gone.”Her captain didn't respond, moving the bundle of vines that nearly functioned as a face into an almost imperceptible nod. She pulled her floret closer and the pair fell into a tense, but amicable silence, neither daring to break the embrace.—Daybreak came far too early for the exhausted pair. The previous night had been… tense, to say the least. Still, neither had left the other’s side, at some point, unknown in specificity to either one, they'd come to a truce. Orla had made her choice, and Elae knew far better than most to avoid attempting to change that. Her girl was a force of nature rivalled only by the affini herself, and the important thing now, was letting themselves both time to heal.Outside the confines of armour or subconscious shaping, the pseudo canine's body seemed, looser. Still there in essence, each main feature where it ought to be, but it appeared almost melted. The substructure of biotech supporting and making up her outer dermis hinting at its inherent, shapeless nature when unbound. A few instants after the hab’s ai flicked on a near-noiseless alarm, the fibers of hyper-modified plant matter began to stir, millions of almost imperceptibly small vines pulling taught around subdermal augments, stretches of sinewy fibers standing on edge to form a crimson, autumn-red coat, finally closing in to form the fine details of Orla’s features.This transformation would, without a doubt, be a terrifying sight for any layman. To Elae, however, it was hard to find such a transformation uncomfortable when it was followed by the crankiest groan she’d ever heard from a sophont.“Urrrrff shut the fuck up Cael, five more minutes!”Unfortunately, as much as the affini would appreciate the extra time in bed, fourteen-straight terran hours of sleep, in addition to several days of hardly moving from their dark, cut off corner of the hab, was far from healthy, even for a pair as reclusive as them. “Sorry dearest, we’ve got to actually go take care of ourselves.”Everbloom, her vines still ached as she lifted herself out of bed, they’d healed, sure, but she was certain to be feeling those aftershocks for a while afterwards. Behind her, the exhausted mutt she loved so dearly seemed to be having a similar time.“How are you feeling, by the way, Thorn?” Elae said, busying herself with the arduous task of dragging her unfurled form towards the hab’s compiler. It was not the kind of day to be cooking.“I’m… I don’t know, El.” Orla shook out the sleep from her fur, willing a pair of thumbs to push their way out from the lattice beneath her skin, using them to aid in her half-assed drag across their sheets to the bed’s edge. “I’m here, my wounds feel stiff, but better. But I’m not sure I’m still fully back.”After a prolonged effort from the both of them, they sat at the somewhat usable table in the corner of their small kitchen, hemmed in by wooden shelves and a dim, almost firelit light that bathed the entire hab, matching the rest of their home’s rustic, somewhat organized chaos, it was almost enough to lull Orla back into sleep. Cozy as it was, however, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand, scarfing down the strange, but tasty egg-filled-lump of food on her plate.Their hab was definitely a strange one, with its starkly terran appearance, partially designed by Orla during her first months on board the Arelae, it was one of the few places that brought the pair any sense of comfort. Simply furnished with dark wooden and plush furniture, and cluttered far beyond the usual affini standard for organization with knick knacks and the various pieces of household debris that accumulated throughout their daily routines, it was home. Every object, every piece of clutter and furniture, they all smelled of the two of them, scents mixing in a dance too complex for even Orla to articulate.As the pair finished their meals, Orla her eggy lump, and Elae the water and raw meat mixture she was still digesting in purpose made reservoirs somewhere within her thicketed body, the affini couldn't help but feel her mind pulled between two overwhelming streams of thought. The strange disaster aboard the Thlethyrab and the source of that affini technology, itself the only thing in two blooms that had truly threatened her ship and crew, and the state of her partner, better yet physically shaken by the events of that day, both complexly, and inextricably connected, she struggled to stay focused on anything in the present.Everbloom, was she glad her ship-mind was willing to handle most of the day to day after such a traumatic experience. She wasn't sure she could take such a strain on herself after all that. Unfortunately, her responsibilities still called, and both her and Orla were trapped by them that day.That didn't mean they couldn't escape them for a little longer, though.Her rhythm wavering for a moment, in and of itself enough to rouse Orla through their shared connection, Elae attempted to compose herself.“Thorn… I meant to say- I mean. Rot why is this difficult? I'm sorry, Orla, I should have respected your choice last night, and I pushed that. I'm sorry.”“I- Thanks El… That means a lot. It's water under the bridge. But-”The captain felt her rhythm wholly freeze for what must have been microseconds, “But- what, my thorn?”“But,” the canine started, still lapping the remnants of breakfast off of her fangs, “if you ever pull something like that again I will absolutely kick the sense right back into your spiny ass.”“Ah, well that's fitting then, I guess,” Elae said, feeling the tension pull from her leaves at her Thorn’s usual asinine tone returning, “Because if you ever scare me like that again, jumping out from the shadows like a monster from my nightmares, I will not hesitate to rip the legs off of your annoyingly adorable body.”“Heh, you could certainly try. I happen to know the sophont who designed this body, she's quite the genius, I don't think her work would falter so easily.”“You're an absolute root you know that?”“Always, and you love it.”Packing the remainder of their meals into the decompiler to be recycled, the pair made quick work of procrastinating their leave just a few minutes longer, before a tone from the hab’s com system indicated they were due.Slowly, the pair ambled out the door, heading for the bridge
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The captain and her charge certainly made for a strange, but not unfamiliar sight crossing the threshold of the ship’s main bridge. They were both given a wider berth than would’ve been standard for a crew as close as theirs, not out of fear, but a certain respect for space that tends to develop when the crew in question had seen their way through many, many altercations in their early days over the lack of such a presumption.That didn’t mean it was entirely absent, however, especially with the slow, reluctant gate the two had taken to the helm with, simple nods and unspoken questions gave way to the intertwining of familiar vines, and slight pats on Orla’s back and head. Each one a wordless acknowledgement and signifier of worry, such things were best left to the less overt methods of communication they had found over the years.Pulling herself along the overhead vine-holds, Elae took her place at a modest input console towards the center of the small bridge. From there she could see the state of every system and outer surface of the Arelae; it seemed the ship hadn’t imploded in her absence, not surprising but a reassuring note to her anxiety, to be sure. Looking to her side, she watched as Orla eased her way into the familiar platform to her side, the girl’s station itself displaying weapons systems and defensive information from a dizzying number of relays, all blissfully listed as inactive for now.Elae’s ship was far from a large one, at only 1100 meters in length, it hardly met the classification for a warship by the Compact’s standards, but what it lacked in hulking mass it more than made up for in elegance, it was an older ship, almost as old as the affini herself, yet it was outfitted with the most advanced defensive systems and amenities available, stretched between her four slender hab and command rings, twisted around the ship’s central core in a screw like pattern of vines and reinforced bioengineered hull plating. To Elae, the Arelae was home, and so long as her partner and trusted crew remained aboard, it would remain so.Throughout the morning’s flurry of research meetings, navigation updates, system checks, and recovery efforts following the events of the previous week, Orla found herself remarkably present, more so than she would have expected at the very least. On the bridge, she was able to let herself sink into the familiar routines of being the Arelae’s defence officer, the affini and various other sophonts that she interacted with, were among the few beings she shared a sense of comfort with, they didn’t look at her with that disparaging, sickly sweet look so many gave, they wouldn’t talk down to her or act as if she wasn’t in the room, which was in itself a far and above improvement from her last post. And over the day, she could feel the remaining stresses hammering her psyche slowly start to flicker out, reducing the once mighty blaze in the back of her mind to a smouldering collection of coals.Besides, right now she had more important things to worry about. Now that she and Elae were back to (mostly) regular functioning, they could no longer put off the obvious. Isolating the source of the stolen compact technology was the head-ticket item they had all been avoiding among themselves and on in-ship communications since the day began, but barring an act of the void itself, affini bureaucracy could not be stopped, and by the time lunch rolled around, a committee had been formed, distilled itself down to two investigative subcommittees, forms had been filed, and experts dispatched to the Arelae’s part of the ureth front, all with an almost godlike level of speed and efficiency. And amongst all of this, Orla, as the only sophont left on the ship following the drive’s detonation, found herself a principle figure laid squarely in the committee's crosshairs.Which, she’d learned that morning, meant she’d have to interact with multiple new faces, both affini and otherwise, who would doubtlessly lead on treating her as if she was an abandoned newborn left to the side of a transport track.Yay.The comfortable atmosphere Orla prized so much about her bridge seemed to change near instantly, as a new shuttle docked a few decks below, carrying a few of those aforementioned faces the committee had selected, an unwelcome interruption to routine Orla loathed, but begrudgingly admitted was necessary. Stars forbid they didn’t fix this, the damage those feralists could inflict upon their forces in the region, and upon themselves–Elae was quick to point out–was unimaginable, the powers they were toying with were far more dangerous than they could possibly understand.She had to give that to the compact, she mused, they were among the only species in the universe that had stumbled upon almost godlike influence, and had used it almost purely for altruistic pleasure, almost. Which was more she could say about the ureth, or stars forbid the Terrans.The bridge door sliding open, combined with the rhythmic equivalent of a grunt emanating through her and Elae’s connection, roused Orla from her thoughts. She’d been reviewing the infuriatingly boring logs from the ship’s staff that day, among which the most urgent happening had been a floret-affini pair being spooked out of their minds by a malfunctioning viewscreen, and as such, had found her mind wandering, not that such an occurrence was unfamiliar on days like this. While her occupation had many perks, and was of enough import to keep her invested in its upkeep, these monotonous tasks were far less engaging to her than the more active parts of the job.Today, however, the monotony was something she was loath to part with, and the reasons why were approaching along the now wide open entryway to the bridge’s command section. Their eyes locked firmly on her handler.“Hellooo!” The front-most affini sang, her deep, tropical green leaves all but swaying to their rhythm as it did so. “You must be Captain Desmanthus! Pleasure to meet you! I am Merra Dodecapatela, 11th bloom, they/she.”Elae felt her vines tense at the intrusion to her space, she’d been given a week’s notice, made arrangements and filled out the forms, been a part of the meetings, yet still, much like to her partner, the change in atmosphere had been jarring. “Yes, of course, welcome aboard, I’m sure you know by now, but for the sake of formalities, I am Captain Desmanthus Elaeagnifolium, Third Bloom, and these are my bridge crew,” she said, gesturing broadly across Orla, Ang, and Sol, “Take leave wherever you’d like, I have to finish running some nav documents through Aster, our ship-mind, then we can get to work.”The bubbly affini moved out of the entrance, making way for two others, one nearly as short as Orla, glistening with iridescent, serrated leaf structures, and the other closely mirroring Elae in size, thin and lythe with an outer coating mostly analogous to pine needles. Both of whom moved into the space with far less flamboyant demeanors.“Oh and who's this cutie? Hello, darling! Are you helping your owner at work?” Merra said, silken words flowing off of her tongue as sickly sweet as corn syrup, eyes lighting up like a sproutling receiving a new present upon seeing Orla, still sat at her station. “What’s your name petal?”The sound of a throat clearing came from the comms station, curious for a creature with no real vocal chords, but effective all the same. The broad, short affini the sound came from swivelled in the bridge’s microgravity to face the new arrivals, his sharp, angular leaves and branches shifting slightly at the effort, “That’s Orla, the Arelae’s defense officer, and she’s far more likely to nip you than say hello if you talk to her like that. As for the rest of us, I’m Jarna Angustifolia, Third Bloom, He/Him, communications, and that lovely flower over there is Sola Chilopsis, Tenth Bloom, navigation, They/Its.” Across the room, a flowing mass of false-willow flowers and rough, limber branches shifted in their direction, a change in the room's rhythm indicating an affirmative, a silent acknowledgement, but effective nonetheless.The bubbly affini’s demeanor changed only slightly at the unanticipated interjection, “Well, it’s nice to meet you all, I hope we’ll have a lovely time working together, and might I say, your defense officer is the most precious I’ve ever seen.” Reaching a vine down to pat Orla’s head, she found herself interrupted by a thumbed paw gripping it firmly.“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t touch me, thanks.” Orla twisted from her station, fighting through the barest sense of hesitation from her gut at doing so, meeting Merra’s cyan gaze with her own, definitely not fighting back a growl from somewhere deep in her throat as she did so. “Orla Lenah-Elaegnifolium, First Floret and Defense Officer for the Arelae, She/They. Ang was correct, by the way, I’m an officer on this ship and I’d prefer you talk to me as such.”“Oh! But of course, petal! My apologies, you must understand how difficult it can be when a sophont is as precious as you! But it’s very nice to meet you, Orla.” Merra said, a tinge of something in her voice that Orla couldn’t begin to identify, as she did so, the affini gave her paw a gentle shake.This was going to be a long meeting, the now freshly irritated canine thought to herself. Avoiding any further eye contact, she turned back to her station, now far more invested in the monotonous manifests in front of her, anything to avoid more of that. Gently, she felt a presence reaching out through her connection with Elae, matched by a lone vine coming to rest on her paw. The wordless exchange bringing her more comfort than anything else that day.—The journey to the ship’s small conference room was a short one, up a zero-g vertical hallway only a few dozen meters from the bridge doors. Orla, Elae, and their bridge crew made the short haunt upwards less than an hour after their lovely introductions, followed shortly by Merra and her posse, and of course the bureaucratically-mandated assistants and assistants-for-the-assistants, all clambering around the long, dark wood table situated in the middle of the room.Once everyone had gotten settled, the affini, one ureth representative–whom Orla had come to understand went by the name of Læøtgë (they/he)–and two sophonts of species the canine didn't yet recognize, took their seats, with Orla taking her place by Elae at the head of the table. Paperwork, only fifty percent of which fell under the tab of “redundancies,” was distributed, and the shorter, iridescent affini from earlier was the first to speak.“Well, I don't suppose there's a reason we shan't simply get right to business!” She spoke, vines placed in the form if grands resting lightly on the table, “As you likely already know, I am Sentria Machtaneria, 15th Bloom, She/Her, and I am the lead liaison for the Ureth Domestication Initiative, and here with me is my lovely ward, and cultural aid, Læøtgë.” She gestured to the ureth sat beside her, who trilled an affirmative through a series of orifices on their neck. “And what we're here to accomplish, I'm sure your lot are aware, is to track down the source of the… incident which occurred during an attempted pacification boarding some 5 days ago. I do not believe it will come as a surprise to anyone in this room that solving this issue is of grave import.”The initial stages of the meeting followed a predictable pattern, isolating the order of events, going through mission recordings, and debating the potential origins if the stolen weaponry, all of which proved strangely tolerable for Orla, it certainly beat the awkward anger that had built up in her gut during their earlier interaction.That was, until they got to the worst part of their little recap, the review of Orla’s experience on board the Thlethyrab.“Now, Orla.” The taller, pine-needled affini–whose name, Orla had learned, was Copsis Cederensis, 2nd Bloom, (He/She)–began, voice turning just a tad lighter, not quite to the disparaging levels Merra had reached earlier, but certainly as if he was aware of the subject’s soreness, “Can you please give us, to the best of your ability, your recollection of the mission.”Orla felt the physical effects before the mental ones, the sheer shift in communications through her and Elae’s implants, the intrusive knot forming in her stomach, rot and frost! She’d only barely begun to parse through what that question meant! Shit. Pushing through it, and mentally requesting a dispensation of some sort of panic medication through her interface, she began to shakily move through her memories.“I- Excuse me, I um.” The girl inhaled briskly, willing herself even the smallest modicum of calm, “It was a standard mission. Get in, break through any weapons or resistance that could pose a threat to sophonts on board, two terran minutes of break from the first entry team.”“They- Fuck.” Orla froze, ever so slightly, catching her breath at the memory of the first attack, the knife, glancing off her armor, the deep bruising from kinetic weapons pinging off of its plating, the weapons of such force she knew they couldn’t have been ureth.“My- Language, petal!” Merra quietly exclaimed, only to be met with a look that could only be described as borderline murderous from the captain. “I- Apologies…"Well at least the annoyance was something the canine could focus on. “They came at us harder than we expected. I guess the other two managed to get back to the shuttle before… I was separated, on my way there when.. There was shaking… and an explosion… I- barely remember anything past that.” The officer slowed her breathing, feeling the attack abating as meds bled into her bloodstream through her central implant, still far too slow for her liking. “They were firing at us with augmented kinetic weapons. Had to have been our tech. Rotting things bruised the dermis under my suit.”Yep, still definitely not enough. Orla felt her heart rate increasing steadily, small warnings seeping in through her interface. Reaching a paw for Elae, she felt a similar response tinging her rhythm.“I- I’m sorry I can’t.” Turning to her partner, she sent a silent plea through their connection, “I need… time.”The captain, in turn, moved a series of vines up from the table, gesturing unsteadily to the rest of the room, “I believe my officer and I… Need to take our leave for now… We can finish this meeting later.” Without another word said, Ang and Sol began the slow task of delineating end-of-meeting discussions, drawing the committee’s attention while Orla quickly felt herself swept up into Elae’s vines, the pair making a swift exit towards the nearest private room they could find.As Elae pulled them out into the access hall, her thoughts pulled her in every conceivable direction, unable to find purchase in anything for more than a few microseconds. The one thing that, after some effort, managed to break through, wasn’t a thought of hers at all.It was Orla’s, barely readable, but there, worrying about her. Stars, she thought, in the middle of a panic attack and she’s still worried about her weed. That was enough, even in the barest amount, to force her back to a very limited state of control, she needed to get the two of them alone, they couldn’t be around others like this.—That space turned out to be the small lunchroom just to the aft of the bridge doors, securely locked via a quick command to the room’s control system. The pair quickly fell into an old rhythm, something that had become a mainstay from the day they met. Elae, sinking to the floor in a corner, careful to give a clear view of the door for both of their paranoid minds to find some ease, and bundling herself around Orla’s torso, leaving her forelegs unrestrained. And Orla, resting her head as close to her handler’s core as she could manage, both of them trying their best to sync their rhythms together.As thoughts and memories hammered through her mind at a breakneck pace, both her El’s and her own–one of the negative drawbacks of a mutually responsive implant, they’d found–Orla forced herself to the back of her mind, letting her automatic functions break their way through keeping her mostly lucid. The only thing either of them could do was wait, and send whatever tiny pieces of calm emotion they could muster through their connection.Some part of her was pulled back to the first day by everything, it wasn’t uncommon, to be fair. Makes sense when such a deeply seeded, if not deeply emotionally taxing, routine finds its place as a regular response to either of their, frankly absurd amounts of trauma,But still, she found a small comfort in the familiarity of the memory, the small piece of herself she’d lost that day, and the piece she’d gained. The stressed parts were still there, of course, the fight, the moment she found herself held securely in the vines of the only damned xeno to ever treat her as a real threat, but there was a solidity to them. A knowledge of where they led. Her first nonviolent conversation with Elae, the mutual understanding they’d come to, the pain in her captain’s voice telling her she may never be free again, and the realization she may have found the one affini in the sector who would’ve refused to just drug her into submission, just another rowdy feral.There was pain there, but like now, she felt a very new, and very small part of herself say, it passed, it would pass. Not that the rest of her mind felt the same in the unending storm a traumatic flashback had brought, but still, it was the smallest piece of driftwood, with which she might just manage to stay afloat.Still encircled around her, Elae felt the barest beginnings of relief begin to drip from her partner, in turn, giving her a point on which to focus, the danger could wait, as could meetings, for right now, her thorn was there, she wasn’t alone, and that was something she could cling to.How long they stayed like that, was a mystery to both of them, huddled in their corner of that quiet, dark room, warm air flowing around them, nothing but a shared presence between them, the divisions slowly melting away until one, connected soul was left, breathing in tune, trying their best to push back against the darkened corners of their unified mind.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Sola Chilopsis, Tenth Bloom, was fed up. Its days were generally no more eventful than it allowed them to be, and yet, here it was, trying to take dictation and communicate with the most boisterous, dare it say overwhelming sophonts it had dealt with in two blooms. The worst part of which, was that it just, for some reason, could *not* bring itself to hate them.At the very least, it'd finally received notification that the ship's most prominent disaster-couple had managed to make it back to their hab safely, and with that, it was sat compiling the navigation logs of captured ureth ships in the quiet solace of its office.A slight chitter from its left roused the affini from its thoughts. Well, mostly quiet solace.Læøtge had been, in exception to her own experience with interacting amongst strange sophonts, a remarkably understanding and productive partner in her efforts. He had been among the only members of the committees representatives to not jokingly try to coax it into talking, and had made leaps and bounds in Sola's understanding of the ureth’s navigational systems–which were, at least by xenosophont standards, complex enough to provide them with a legitimate challenge when trying to pull data from their circuits.If anything, it shocked Sola that they hadn't become enamor-, ehem, professionally interested in a member of Læ’s species, with their nonverbal communication range and Lae's, frankly, overwhelming skills in the realm of data analysis, they were a match pulled from the everbloom itself.In this case Læ had taken to Sola’s unusual communication methods almost intuitively, and they had managed, within the course of the afternoon, to triangulate twelve known feral ureth vessels, and run the possibilities of stolen affini tech on each of them. It was far more than even an officer of Sola’s age could do in similar time. Between their newfound productivity, and the practically mouthwatering mountains of data they'd received from the boarding team, the pair had finally managed to make some headway with the investigation after what seemed like an eons-long drought in leads.They'd managed to track some of the spliced affini weapons technology on the Thlethyrab to an older warship, theYthes Euphrates, which had supposedly been decompiled and refitted some four terran years prior. That, in itself, was baffling. The lengths to which they had to have gone through, just to hide those few parts from inventory scans, were borderline impossible, it was mind numbing to even consider. Not even to mention the jump drive components, or even the half-baked attempt at a compiler they'd found in the remnants of the mess hall, (which they'd found to only be capable of dispensing large amounts of literal mulch), it was difficult to even begin to trace where many of them had come from.This was going to be an incredibly long investigation, one which they could only hope would find something before another situation like Elae and Orla’s could occur.Though, Sola hoped, the new attention brought in by the events of days prior would be enough to break whatever veil of silence the ferals had managed to construct around their operations.—Walking through a wide corridor leading to the ship's arboretum, Elae felt her spines loosen in their stiff defense of her core for the first time in days, the ordeal of the day before had been drowned in a torrential downpour of cuddles, dubiously medicinal intoxicants, and plenty of time spent as far from the bridge as she and Orla could manage. Obviously, that didn't last long, they'd reemerged to do their daily rounds and visitations, both on the bridge and throughout the ship's various rings and industrial sections, just enough that they both could manage to beat back the all encompassing aura of worry that seemed to follow them like smoke.Finally, however, they had a few hours before their next meeting, Orla was off with one of the sophonts she'd recently attempted, and despite her own expectations, succeeded in befriending, and Elae was. Well Elae was walking to the arboretum because she had no idea what to do with herself. In between her constant worried checks through her link to Orla, she'd managed to convince herself to eat some semblance of a viable lunch, but to the aside couldn't seem to make herself do. Much of anything, to be honest.Her attentions continued to be divided between worrying her own lingering sense of oncoming dread, and the anxiety surrounding the lack of progress in their investigation, combining with her attentions for Orla to leave little room for anything else in her core.Frost. Maybe she did need therapy. That was later Elae's problem.Still, walking this familiar path was, at the very least, able to loosen some of the stiffened sections of emotional armor fixed to her mind. It was one of the few places she knew would be borderline deserted at this hour, with most other sophonts opting to take the much more oft travelled avenue in. And with the addition of the light, artificial breeze blowing in from its exit, and comforting memories from her first days onboard, this desolate corner of her ship had become her favorite pacing ground in her short tenure on the Arelae.Attention on her ship was usually cause for concern, whether it was the peculiarities in her crew structure, the particulars of her and Orla's contract–which had earner her many a “are you sure this amount of autonomy would be best for her?”–or the way florets and sophonts were treated under her jurisdiction, there were many inquisitions on the Arelae that had proved a threat to her Captain's chair and her independence. So, the fact that she, of all affini, was being selected to run point on an operation of this magnitude, was more than a shock, it was a different level of unfiltered anxiety at the stakes that lay before her. There were… Questions. Ones she'd developed in her time with Orla. Questions she'd hoped she could sweep under the proverbial rug before the ureth decided to abuse her… Managerial oversight of their little pan-galactic escape plan. And at a time like this, with all that had happened, the lies told, and the sophonts hurt and killed, she felt adrift.What could she do? Who was she to question the ways of a universe spanning, hundred thousand year old civilization, because of an ex-feralist she'd met less than fifty cycles into her third bloom? Yet still. The hold that the former rebel held on her was one that would rival the gravitational pull of a black hole. There never was a choice then, her actions were obvious for the sophont she loved. But now. There were no allies. Orla, of course, maybe her bridge crew. But. Really. What could she do? Sacrifice the one chance of hope she'd given in the hopes of creating peace, a reprieve to give time for things to change, for revenge? To save her own roots because of pain and a broken word? What was merely a collection of the rotting things, broken words and unchecked ambition.Stars, was she tired of having to play god.For now though, her main focus had to be far closer to home. That realization at least gave her a focus, a pinprick of light she used to anchor her thoughts. She'd have time to panic later, for now, she had sophonts and secrets to protect. Starting towards the exit of her sanctuary, she forced those broader concerns to the aft of her mind. For now, for the first time in days, she had the barest idea of a plan. A good plan? No. A well thought out one? Absolutely not. But it'd be a chance to keep this weird sanctuary she'd built from the broader universe, and more importantly, her Orla, safe.Rot and Dirt she hoped this worked, because, if she was being honest, it wasn't the ureth she was afraid of.—Orla was… Happy? Pleasant? Not bad, at the very least. Yenna was a surprisingly nice companion for a captain-enforced recovery day, even if she was frustrated at her inability to fulfill her usual bridge duties. The terran had proved eager to spend time with the officer, a rarity amongst the newer independents on board, still though, ice cream and good company did little to dilute the whispers of the sophonts around them. The concerned stares she could deal with, but the air on board seemed to have soured during her time away, an uneasy energy resting over the other sophonts like a dense fog.Unfortunately on such a small ship, only holding a compliment of 983 passengers and crew, information and rumor spread fast, and news of the captain and defense officer/bioengineering experiment taking multiple days off, after everything that had happened, was not the kind of thing that avoided attention. Still, she did her best to ignore the stiffened energy that filled the small cafe, willing her implants to quell the uneasy thoughts that it spawned.“Orla- Orla? Are you still there?”Oh. Conversation. She forgot about that. “Sorry, it's… been a long week, got lost in thought there.”“Ah I see, one floret any floret huh?” Yenna chuckled, speaking in a tone Orla's interface helpfully labeled as sarcastic-light hearted.“Oh my goddess no. That's, really not the kind of thing I'd let Elae do.” A tone of slight unease creeped into the canine’s voice as she spoke, small enough she hoped it wasn't noticeable. “I'm actually- I don't know the word. I don't really react to normal xenodrugs anyways, a product of the whole, 90% biotech thing…”“Oh- sorry. That didn't, that didn't hit a nerve did it?” Yenna shifted her hand slightly closer to her new friend’s back, that all too familiar look of worry on her face.Great… very much not subtle then.“No no it's fine. Just, it's just been a long week. Anyways um, where did we leave off?” Orla said, hoping to lead the conversation anywhere but there. “How've you been acclimating to the Arelae? Must be a lot different than the midsize you came from.”Yenna relaxed slightly, taking the change of tone in stride, “Oh! Yeah, it's been strange, there's so much less oversight here. Stars, I don't think I've even gotten a visit from the wellness bureau since I arrived. Not to mention how strange it is not having kilometers of ship to roam through every day. It's, kind of nice though, everyone knowing everyone, it's a kind of community we didn't have back on the Tillandsia.”Orla finished scarfing down the annoyingly delicious steak she'd ordered with their desserts, ear twisting slightly to let Yenna know she'd been listening. “You’re definitely not wrong there. Such a tight knit community can definitely be a double edged spade. Just be glad you were never trapped in an old OCNI bucket. Goddess I'll never miss that stars forsaken cupboard they called a bunk room.”At that, Yenna nearly tilted her head, attention obviously grabbed. “Wait. You were with the Navy? I didn't really figure you to be the patriotic type.”“Oh rot and frost no” Orla laughed, “I got stuck on some backwater frigate when the treaty was signed, bastards went rogue and decided they'd space anyone who disagreed. Wasn't much of a fan of the affini but then, who was back then, wasn't dumb enough to think we had a damned chance though.”“So that's how-” the terran quirked an eyebrow, “All of that happened huh?”“How what- Oh.” At least this one wasn't an entirely bad flashback. “Yeah, technically, Elae told me later on I probably would've gone free but, I decided to go all Astra Sennek on her with a modified flamethrower when they boarded the ship.”“Wow, love at first sight then, huh?” Yenna said, twisting a fork into her own meal as she spoke. “She got whacked with a flamethrower the first time you met and she still decided to give you, all that.” She gestured vaguely towards Orla's entire body.“Well. Decided is a stretch. More like caved after three months of being stuck in a hab with a master of persuasion.” Orla lilted, a tinge of smugness pooling in her voice.“So you bitched at her for three months until she made you a dog? Hah, bitched”The officer feigned dramatic offense, “How dare you! That is incredibly specist of you! But… Yes that pretty much sums it up you insensitive prick.”Yenna cackled, half eaten bite abandoned to it's fate in her bowl. “You love it. And hey, at least you got something out of the ordeal, hells, I'd be lying if I said the way the compact won me over wasn't by telling me I could get these.” She said, pointedly waving her hands towards the antlers poking out of her wavy brown hair. “So I can't say I blame you.”“You’re not wrong… I wasn't all that happy beyond that to be honest, but it was the first real taste of autonomy or respect anyone had paid me in years. It wasn't much but, it meant a lot, even then. Plus, turns out I have a much easier time trusting someone after they've willingly given me the tools to tear them into wood chips” Orla said, a nostalgic grin building somewhere behind her eyes.Yenna turned her head towards the officer, a grin far past building taking over her face. “Oh I see, and here I thought I'd made some progress the last few days. Sorry I haven't given you the makings of my own destruction yet, I'm more of a third date kind of gal I'm afraid.”“I- Hm.” Orla made a noise that sounded like some equivalent of a throat-clearing, a sudden burst of, something, coating her thoughts with an unbreakable flow of molasses. “Well, I'd hedge my bets now if I'm being honest, but sure, I'll give you that oh terran of lofty ideals.”“Whatever you say, pup.” Yenna smirked, “I take it this place will be getting more of our business then? I'll hold you to that.”“You're insufferable”“Almost as much as you!”—The rest of the evening went oddly well, it had been a long time since Orla could surely say she'd been comfortable around someone other than her partner or crew, and she didn't quite know how to feel about that. Currently, though, she did know how she felt about the day at large.The pair had finally left the cafe after a few hours of mindless teasing and conversation, and as Orla walked with her new friend towards her hab, she almost marvelled at how quickly such a new face had managed to work its way past her barriers.“Alright, I guess this is my stop,” Yenna said, hand lifting from its place at the base of Orla's neck, “thanks for good time, I almost daresay I enjoyed tolerating you for the afternoon.”Orla was surprised to feel the slightest droop in her tail when she felt the terran’s hand lift, well that was concerning. “Oh of course, my day's sentence of community service was, surprisingly fun.”“Mhm,” Yenna said, giving the officer’s head a final teasing ruffle, “see you around, yeah?”“It's too small of a ship not to.” Orla chuckled, “ But yeah, thanks again, today was fun.”“Anytime pup. I'll see you later, then.”“Of course, ‘night Yen.”“Night, dork.”With that, the terran disappeared behind her hab’s door, and Orla made her way down the hallway towards her own. Letting the still-fresh pleasant feelings linger in her mind for just a bit longer.As she approached their door, though, she felt something through her strengthening connection. Oh stars. Her captain was plotting, which meant… something. Something Orla dearly hoped was good, but the feelings pulsing through her interface lent little credence to that theory.—The energy inside their cabin was unusually active for such a late hour. The lights in the library were still on, and Orla could hear the sounds of rustling papers emanating from across the room.“Um. El? I'm home, everything all right in there?” She said, voice raised just enough she knew it would carry.“Pet! Orla, welcome back!” Elae intoned, zipping from her work-platform to meet the girl just before the library’s door. “I can feel that fluster behind all that worry, I take it you had a nice time with Yenna?”“Yes I did, actually- but. Hold on. No changing the topic, I can feel you scheming from here, what in the states are you doing?” Even as she pushed a slight feeling of annoyance through their connection, Orla let up no resistance to the vines encircling her in her xenon's loose equivalent of a hug.The affini noticeably slowed in her movement at her partner's words. “I- This isn't going to work is it?”“Nope. Never has ya weed.”“Fine. I've been putting together the information we've been sent from Sola. There's- I feel like there has to be a pattern in there somewhere. And I just don't want all of this to turn on its head.” She waved a vine between the two of them. “There's too much attention on this ship. And I- I'm worried about the wider bureau getting involved if I can't figure this out.”Orla nodded slowly, while normally she'd chastise her mentally ill houseplant for this kind of late-night fever pitched work session, she could feel the concern dripping off her spines. “Okay. That's, regrettably understandable. Is this about your experiment with the resistance? Or with the power dynamics on this bucket? Because I don't think there's any way they'd catch wind of the first one, and the second should hardly be grounds for trouble… right?”“I don't know, Or. That's the problem. I just. don't. Know.” The tenseness built within her silver-green leaves, reverberating off of the firm base of Orla's outer fur. “With how… unorthodox this ship is… the things I've started feeling since meeting you… I just don't know. I don't regret a frosted thing but, I can't take any risk of this falling apart. And now those damned rebels I tried to help almost killed the one rotting thing that actually matters to me- There's so much, pet. So much. Dirt, I tried to convince you to give up the one damned thing I promised I'd protect I-”“Elae. Stop.” Orla grounded a claw deep into the protective spines lining the affini's outer shoots. “Listen to me. You're spiraling. Bad. Goddess, you haven't even eaten have you? Stars, keepers of the universe, my tail, come on. Yes, this is important. But no amount of freaking out in our library in the middle of the night is going to reign in loose ferals or protect us.”“Orla, this cannot wait.” Elae said in a timid voice, “There's no time, I need to-”“No.”“What?”“No.” Orla slowly pulled the vine attached to her claw towards the kitchen, “You, are going to get some food in you before you wither a hundred years too early, and I'll take a look at the data. If it's that urgent I can take care of it. Now go.” She punctuated her words with a deeper hook into the captain's vine, not enough to hurt, but just enough to leave no room for argument.“Fine.” Elae started, her rear vines reluctantly pushing her towards the compiler “Just please tell me if you find anything, okay?”“I will, flower, I promise.”—Checking though their connection to ensure her stubborn partner was still working her way through the compiled chunk of beef leg she'd compiled for herself, Orla began shifting her way through the mountain of loose data they'd been sent by Sol and it's ureth counterpart, most of which would have been incredibly valuable, if they'd been able to track more than 1% of the source information. Goddess she prayed they'd find something soon.But still, as she pushed further through document after useless document, something managed to catch her eye. Or her augmented pre-frontal processing center, if she was being pretentious. A tiny piece of data that stood out from the rest. It could just be a random blip the automated parts of her implant mistakenly latched on to, but, the more she looked at it, the more pieces seemed to latch into place. Goddess, El was right. There was a pattern there, now all she could do was hope that her interface had the bandwidth to piece it together.Because, if she wasn't mistaken, that piece of data matched something very familiar to her; the targeting codes for a warship’s jump jammer. Why the frost the ferals would want one was beyond her, but it was at least something recognizable. Turns out the plants were on to something after all. As long as they were using the systems she knew, she could figure out where in the thousand hells they'd come from, and maybe have a chance to get the compact off their back for a bit longer yet.Relaying the revelation through her uplink, she turned off the display. This was a lot. But stars be damned if she was going to deal with it tonight. The self-righteous empires of this galaxy could wait a few more hours. For now, her weed was done with dinner, and she wanted one more night of peace before all of this went to hell.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Two and a Half Years Earlier
Orla woke up gasping for breath. Clinging for the torn, rough sheets of her tiny bunk, yet her hands found nothing. No wall. No edges anywhere. Only the vague sensation of a too-soft blanket beneath her.
As her vision adjusted, she found herself in a massive, darkened room, a level of mess detectable in the dim light that reminded her of her own trashed cabin. “Okay. Take note of your situation, Orla. Where are you? What do you remember?” The Terran mumbled to herself. “No visible windows. Movement feels like I'm tearing my nerve fibers out with tweezers, so probably no running for now. Fuck. Fuck. Okay. No sign of whoever took her here. Wait. The weeds. The gods damned weed. I guess at least it didn't kill me-”
A rustling from across the room halted her thoughts. She went still, her panic response only stifled by the intense pain still addling her brain. Carefully, she tried to control her breath as the movement increased. As it turned out, that wasn't an easy feat when half of your body felt like it'd been thrown through a simple bake oven™ by an overzealous fourth grader. As a result, predictably, her breath hitched, and she heard the movement pause.
After a few moments, it was followed by a strange, almost musical sound, like wind through leafless trees, and it sounded… hurt? Goddess if she knew how she could tell, but somewhere beneath her panic, she could almost
feel
a sense of pain emanating through the strange rhythm. Along with something else she couldn't quite place. Stars, she hoped it was another Terran. But somehow she knew the universe would never bless her with such luck. Plus if the strange, disjointed sounds coming from what had to be half the room now we're any indication, whatever this was, it was big.
As the noise continued to cautiously move closer, she felt herself instinctively holding her breath. At least if she was going to die, every bone in her body would stop trying to inform her of her unfortunate fate. Yet, somewhere along the line of her doomed goodbye's to the parts of herself she didn't despise, she noticed that the noises had stopped. Furthermore, nothing was jumping out to eat her, rather, something was watching her.
Honestly, she didn't know if that was better or worse. At least if she was eaten she wouldn't have to deal with these unholy levels of anxiety.
“I- I um, are you awake?”
English. The damned thing spoke English.
“
Yes
I'm awake. Who the fuck are you!? Where the fuck am I!? What did you bastards do to me?”
Another sense of pain echoed through her mind as the creature moved closer.
“I'm surprised… I thought you'd recognize me.”
The lights clicked on to reveal the exact, last possible thing Orla wanted to see. The wicked outward facing spines, silver-green leaves mixing with vines the color of poison ivy, all pockmarked with the tell tale burns and freshly recovering scars, that told her exactly who this weed was.
“Is this some kind of sick fucking joke!? What, come here to gloat before finishing me off you cunt? At least I get to know I kicked your fucking ass before I die.”
“I- You are more insufferable now than when you were trying to kill me! Now. If you'd give me a rotting chance in the dirt to
explain
to you. You'd know I'm not going to ‘fucking kill you’. Now. Are you going to let me explain? Or are you going to keep screaming at me like you're not halfway to your death bed?”
The exhausted captain was met with silence, somehow paired with a glare that would have been enough to give her pause, were it not for the deliverer’s fragile condition. Painfully, she refocused her vision on her charge, still freshly recovering from a round of bio-nanite treatments that would
hopefully
save her limbs.
“You're on board the
Arelae,
a warship of the Affini Compact. I'm Desmanthus Elaeagnifolium, Fifth Bloom, the
Aralae’
s captain. You're in my quarters because, for some rotting reason, you've been designated as my charge. You're here at least until your injuries from that poorly designed excuse for a weapon have healed.”
“They made you the warden of the prisoner that almost killed you?” Orla chuckled for the first time in weeks, “Your superiors must hate you more than we do.”
Easing her amorphous form onto the plush, velvetine surface of her bed, Elae let out a hissing tone that
somehow
read as annoyed. “First, I have no superiors. I am the captain of this rotting ship. But yes, the committee thought it would be…
helpful
for us to ‘work out our differences’ via a wardship, before you're no doubt turned into some sophont’s beloved pet.”
“Pet!? Okay. You are insane.” Orla shifted her aching legs as fast as she could manage, buying herself an extra few centimeters between herself and the xeno. “Just fucking space me. I'll do it myself before I ever become one of those sniveling, mindless husks for you sick fucks.”
“Unfortunately you'll find that's not an option, as I no doubt will by the time your empty threats drive me to insanity.”
“Heh. What, afraid of the ‘little terran' you fucking weed?” Orla strained her muscles trying to pull herself up, anything she could do to accentuate her threat. Stars damnit, whatever they'd done to her had left any movement save for slight shifting nearly impossible. “Give me a chance and I'll end your
terrible suffering
before it can.”
“Look, pup. There's not a chance in the stars you'll ever be able to do something like that again. And even if you could, I wouldn't let you off so easily a second time.” Elae's eyes flashed to black for a split second, just long enough for Orla to understand the seriousness of her threat. “Now. Rest. Because if you don't silence yourself before long, I'll do it for you.”
—
Elae spent the rest of her sleepless evening attempting to arrange her hab into some semblance of a presentable state, an endeavor which she was miserably failing at. She couldn't frosting believe the lot she'd been thrown. Here she was, recovering from what seemed to be the one nearly successful attack on an affini from a feralist throughout this entire campaign, and the domestication committee decided
she
should be the one to rehabilitate her deranged attacker.
And worse still, for some reason, she couldn't even bring herself to hate her. After all, she'd have done the same if out in the terran’s shoes, no matter how aggravating being on the opposite end was. And something,
something
about her seemed to make her biorhythm waver.
That, she decided, was the worst part. The rotting saps’ theory about “compatible rhythms” seemed far more than just a theory. Why her? Why in the stars did it have to be her?
Stealing a glance back at the wayward sophont still taking up precious space on
her bed
, she felt the whispers of an emotion she had yet to feel since her time as a young bloom, anger, mixing with something new, something she could barely start to grasp. Fear. The fact that she’d been forced into this enraged her, it pushed her to the limits of her already tenuous sanity, challenged the ingrained instincts within her to a breaking point.
She could see this sophont was hurting. She could see she needed help. And she, despite every piece of her biology telling her otherwise, could not give a rotting care in the drought-cursed dirt. She felt no pity for the creature at all, the only emotional tie she could find within herself towards her circumstances was pure and simple self preservation. And, Everbloom, for some unknowable reason beneath the stars it was
relieving
. She was always worried about the safety of every sophont on her ship, every living thing under her purview took precedence over herself, and finally, for once in her century spanning existence, she wasn’t worried in the rotting slightest about anything but herself.
“I guess I have something to be grateful to you for afterall, you bastard.” She thought to herself. “I’d be withered before worrying if you could stand on your own.”
Tossing a weathered fur haphazardly onto her semi-passable excuse for a couch, the captain unfurled the exhausting facade she’d shaped herself into for her unwelcome guest’s benefit, falling into an amorphous pile of spines and sharp leaves. This was going to be a long three months.
—
[Dirt. Has the poor dear even left your hab yet?] Sola signed, half its vines moving rapidly as the rest found their places at its still unfamiliar station. [At least she's up and moving, or so I hear?]
Elae shivered her spines, placing her tab back into its slot in the command console. [You hear correctly,] she signed, [Her treatment finished up a couple of weeks ago, though, with the way she's treating that body of hers I wouldn't be surprised if she's running phytotech by the end of the term.]
Releasing a vine from her signing cluster, she began firing off a collection of frustrated messages, each reply, in one way or another, somehow relating back to the deranged Terran in her quarters. [She's probably better off not leaving for now. Maybe I'll reconsider making her once she stops posting ways she'd kill me.]
[Aren't you supposed to be the one… removing those tendencies?] Sola intoned, motions taking on a slower, almost rhythmic path through the air. [I haven't been here for long but, your ship seems to have a problem with, feralist behavior doesn't it? Shouldn't we be doing something about your ward’s little power trip?]
[I'm not going to take that to offense because you're new, Sola, but I'm not particularly… fond of forceful methodologies. They're still thinking creatures, Chilopsis. No matter how infuriating they can be.]
Sola paused at that, turning its attention back to its station. That was certainly a first, no less from the captain of a forward defense ship. [Don't tell me you've gone feralist, captain. I just mean, perhaps it would be best if she underwent some… mild conditioning. It worked wonders with my first floret.]
[She's not my floret. And I don't know.] Elae's body language turned stiff, almost nervous. [The girl is terrified of xeno drugs, and frankly, I've started to find the whole practice off-putting. I've seen so many new species broken under them, it just doesn't feel right. And I'm going to be honest, Sola, I hope your time on my
unconventional
ship will change your opinions.]
Now
that
fully pulled the Tenth Bloom’s attention.
[You mean a ship where xenosophonts seem to run essentially unchecked? I haven't seen a single leash since I arrived here, Desmanthus. What I
have
seen, is dozens of terrans, khetari, and everbloom knows what else, running among affini who seem to be so declawed they won't even correct a swear.] It shook a bit of the stress out of its leaves, trying to find some sense of grounding to relieve its frustration. Returning to its work with only a vine or two drifting behind it to sign. [I would be remiss if I didn't say I am skeptical of a youngbloom at the helm, making such drastic changes to a ship's structure.”
[I didn't come here to argue, Sola. You're allowed your opinion the same as anyone else,] Elae forced a breath of air through her stomata, [but all I'm saying is, give us a chance. We've been out here for the whole of my third Bloom, and they didn't take me by surprise by electing
me captain
for no reason.]
[Fine. Even if I do think you're insane for it.]
[Most do.]
Going back to her console, Elae was at least thankful that they were mostly free of compact space by now; the boarding for her new officer's arrival had been tense, to say the least. Then, boardings always were, especially so since her small group of sophists had decided to, as Sola so eloquently put it, allow the xenosophonts on board to ‘run amok’. At the very least, she thought, it seemed her voters had been right. Despite the additional thorn on her side's best attempts to show her otherwise, the sophonts on board had taken to the relaxed system like horses to water, both affini and otherwise.
And either way, far be it from her to leave and experiment unfinished.
Pulling herself from her thoughts, she began sending info sheets to her new bridge-mate, might as well get her acquainted with the way things ran on board the
Arelae
.
—
Victory! It wasn't much, but movement was movement, Orla had long ago decided. After multiple weeks trapped in this oddly comfortable prison, she'd finally managed to make her way across the unnervingly large room on her own legs. Well, what was left of them, that is. She'd been ready to bite her jailer's head (… vine?) off when she'd been told the strange, plantlike material supplementing half of their length was some advanced kind of prosthetic. At least they didn't hurt, she supposed.
Despite their intensity, her efforts so far had lent little to her understanding of whatever ship the plants had her trapped on. And despite her warden's insistence that she was free to spend as much time as she liked “as far outside the hab unit as possible,” Orla had yet to actually leave. Unfortunately, with her newfound progress being met without the faintest opportunity for escape, excuses for her self imposed isolation were running dry, and goddess she was loath to spend any length of time amongst the xenos and their doe-eyed ‘pets’.
Moving to the small, strangely human-sized kitchenette that had appeared, much to the bemoaning of her enforced roommate, the week before, Orla made a mental note to maybe, possibly venture out on her own terms before Elagant-folium
, or whatever her name is
, decided on a forced outing, because stars damn her if she'd ever hear the end of that. She just hoped her roommate’s musings of her fate as some ‘mindless, doted-on pet,’ once she came into contact with another affini, really were just empty threats.
As she began pouring a somewhat decent cup of coffee for herself, (another of the things her captor seemed to loath), she hobbled back towards a tall, spindly barstool that had found its home near her little counter. If she was going to attempt to leave the limited safety of her semi-willing residence, she was going to need a game plan. She already had no idea what the compact was trying to accomplish with her, obviously they weren’t going to drag her to the ‘mulch mines’ or turn her into fertilizer, she hadn’t been dumb enough to fall for
that
propaganda, at least. Yet, even if every piece of weed propaganda she’d seen was right, unerringly so, that still meant a significant chunk of the species she loathedly associated herself with was reduced to literal, if not seemingly content, property.
That was a little beyond what she’d been able to consider ethical and reasonable. And if Elae-
whatever her name is
-was telling the truth, that seemed to be the path she was trapped on, though why wasn’t she there already? Why in the goddesses stars-damned mind was she not already a drooling imbecile playing the part of the family cat? Something was going on, and before she interacted with whatever lay beyond that door, she needed answers. After all, the plant had yet to throw her out an airlock, despite her constant annoyance at the terran’s presence, so at the very least she wasn’t in any immediate danger.
Her pondering was broken as the door cracked open, almost causing her to drop her mug to the mossy-wood floors below her rickety perch.
—
Blight and flame, the new arrivals were going to be more of a headache than her ward, weren’t they? Elae muttered to herself, a loose vine dragging itself towards a familiar door at the far end of the hab ring. Creaking her way through the half opened doorway, she found herself locked in direct eye contact with her ‘roommate’, herself halfway through an infuriatingly pungent cup of bean-juice, some kind of stimulant that somehow made Orla much more tolerable, despite its rotting scent. “Since when are you moving about on your own?” The affini asked, doing her best to lighten the tense energy radiating from the terran, “Good to see you’re taking to your new limbs, at the least,”
“Cut it, plant.” Orla said, voice far lighter than she had intended, “I need some answers.”
Everbloom, so much for an easy evening. “I’ve already told you, no I am not going to kill you, despite how tempting a choice you make it seem.”
“I know you’re all talk anyways Elaeg-whatever. I’ve been stuck here for weeks now and you have yet to send me off to whatever the fuck a ‘domestication center’ is. Now, are you going to help me or not?”
Elae sighed, pushing a loose mixture of gas through her stomata, “Depends on how much of a root-end you are going to be, pup.”
“Don’t fucking call me that.
You
do not get to call me that you fucking bastard!” Orla felt the fibers of her composure begin to wear thin, they knew far more about her than she could even fathom allowing, and that was one thing they
couldn’t take from her.
“That is too fucking far. You do not get to rip that from me too! You don’t have the stars damned right-”
“Everbloom, why do you care so much??” Elae sensed where that word had pulled her now that she was lucid, their rhythms falling fully out of sync for an imperceptible short moment. She’d dug too deep. “You seemed to like it with that net history of yours.”
“That wasn’t for you lot to know!” Orla braced herself on the bar ledge, willing herself not to snap. “You don’t just get to root about in my personal fucking secrets without even bothering to ask! And if you try to use them against me one more
fucking
time, Goddess help me. That word isn’t yours to sully. Stay out of my shit.”
“I- did not realise it was so sore…” Elae mentally burned herself, of course she’d gone about using the one teasing term that would make her charge even more angry with her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Not like that, at least. What- What answer did you want?”
“Sorry doesn’t fix you rooting through my past like its some dossier marked your eyes only! Leave. My shit. Alone.”
“Fine. Your file will be sealed aboard this ship. Happy?” Elae couldn’t help but feel slightly exasperated. But, regardless of her reservations, the less anger from her violence-inclined habmate the better. “No one will see it. No one will know unless you want them to. Now please stop screaming and
tell me what you want.
”
“Fine!
Thank you
.” At least that’s something, Orla thought, releasing her white knuckled grip on the counter. “And I told you what I want. Answers. What’s really going on in this stars-dimmed place? Why the hell am I still here and not in some drugged out haze? What the
fuck
do I have to do to get myself out of being some mindless pleasure slave!”
Well, so much for the usual feral breakdown questions. “Fine. You want an honest answer? Fine! I don’t know! You’ve been on board this ship for several weeks and the sector's BXSW committee is intent on you remaining under my care. And personally, I am regrettably okay with that. I immensely dislike their insistence that I should put you under enforced domestication–which would mean making you a, ‘drugged out pleasure slave’ as you so helpfully put it–so despite your incessant annoying threats and violent actions, you’re being kept here until I can convince them to move you to some other poor bastard on board my ship.”
Orla’s head cocked slightly at that, that was the only time she’d heard anything remotely positive from this affini since she’d been captured, despite how terrifying the undertones were. “Why in the goddess’ name do you care? Why not just ship me off? That’s what I can’t understand. Why can’t I just leave!”
“Because they’ll domesticate you either way, Orla!” The captain’s demeanor changed rapidly, undertones of anger and even
worry
showing under her cold exterior. “And I don’t want to see another fighter turned into some mindless husk! You’re too dangerous for them to let loose, Terran. You injured an affini. They’d never let you off a leash no matter where you went. At least here I can prevent you from being drugged out of your mind! Even if I wouldn’t trust you unsupervised if the stars themselves commanded it.”
“Careful, affini. It’s starting to sound like you give a shit.” Orla hid her shock beneath a thin veil of sarcastic offense, that was far more–
genuine
–than she’d ever expected her captor to be. “So your solution is to make sure I’m just a
lucid
pleasure slave? Thanks but I’d much rather my freedom back. Can’t you just kick me onto some deserted planet? I didn’t want the bullshit of the accord, and I don’t want the afini’s either. I just want to be left alone!”
“They’d find you, terran. They always will. You can’t willpower your way out of an intergalactic civilization. And besides, I may disagree with their methods, but you almost killed me
and
yourself the instant you saw a non terran xeno. That’s not exactly the kind of action that incites faith in your abilities to function independently. At least here you’d have the chance to undo that damage, and I’d be the only one you’d need to convince.”
“I hate you.” Orla's stubborn insistence began to break down. “But I suppose I don't have much of a choice in the matter, do I?”
“So am I to take that as understanding?” Elae felt a bit of her anger break into a smug pull at the edges of her leaves. “Look. You don't like me. I don't like you. But if it helps your strange anxieties at all, if you ended up being shipped off to some other ship, I'd end up under some scrutiny myself, and that's not exactly something I want on my ship. We've both got something to lose.”
“So I'm just supposed to, what? Wait around and hope you figure this shit out? Pray to whatever mulch-god you people worship that I somehow convince the xeno I tried to kill that I can be
trusted
?? I don't have much of a choice, plant, but just know if there's even the slightest sliver of hope I get out of here on my own, I'm taking it.”
How did Elae know she was going to say that? Predictable, she thought. Despite the fact that it implied she didn't hold the slightest hint of faith in her words, whatever made the terran less likely to snap was for the best, she supposed, even if it was a false hope.
“Fine. You won't, but I certainly won't be the one to stop you, so long as my own roots aren't on the line.”
“Good.” Orla said curtly, polishing off the rest of her coffee, she relished the familiar buzzing rushing throughout her body, you didn't get shit like that in the resistance. “Now. If I do drag my ‘sorry hide' out into the rest of the ship, your comrades aren't waiting to rip away my sanity the second they see me, are they?”
Now
that
was actually funny. The affini sensed a tiny bit of fear bending the terran's words, at least one of her threats seemed to have made their mark. “No, Orla, they won't. You're under a wardship with their captain, and this is a small ship, they'll know. Besides, the community here is far more similar to myself in regards to their opinions on
certain
practices, so you'll be fine. Now, please get the rot out of my cabin so I can have some
iota
of peace.”
Strangely reassured, Orla stood from her perch, pointedly avoiding eye contact with her warden as she made her way to the door. “Fine, I certainly won't complain. Also El–I’m gonna call you El–since the horse’s apparently out of the bag, there's one more thing.”
“What's that, Terran?”
“Don't fucking call me terran again, or I'll burn those pretty little flowers off your horrifying ‘head’.” With that, she passed through the now open door into the waiting hallway, letting the automatic closure slam behind her.
Note taken, Elae guessed. Stars, that girl had more problems than the captain herself. And wait, she thought her blooms were pretty?
That
was most certainly a problem.
—
“Okay, so you're going to look me in the eye, and tell me it was
my
fault!?” Orla nearly screamed, thanking the stars for the hundredth time that their hab’s patronizingly puritan ai had been deactivated. “Tell those bastards to keep their fucking hands off me! And the next person to call me ‘cute’ is-”
“Yes, yes, I know, they will meet some vague and terrible fate that the depths of your diseased mind will cook up out of nothing, and will doubtlessly fail to actually enact.” Elae felt almost amused at this incident, and if it weren't for the fact that one of the new arrivals had threatened to take it off-ship, she might have actually laughed. “I'm sorry they didn't take your emotionally repulsive energy as a warning, Orla. But that's not an excuse to
bite at their face
like a rabid dog! You took out an eye! Do you have any idea how difficult that is to manage!?”
The day had been going surprisingly well, or as well as Else could imagine it going. Her charge had actually begun to acclimate to the environment of her ship, arguments had been scarce in the last few weeks, and the girl was almost entirely healed from her compatriots’ insanity ridden facsimile of a plasma battery.
That was, until earlier that day. In another one of her self-loathed attempts at forcing
herself
to acclimate to her new living situation, she had dragged a half asleep Orla to their ship’s miniature version of a market street for breakfast, and the pair had actually made some progress in tolerating each other's presence. Though Elae suspected Orla's end was mostly due to her stifled paranoia of forced domestication when the captain wasn't within sight range, despite the affini’s repeated insistence that she wasn't exactly the type to allow such behaviors on her warship. At the very least though, her presence made the girl feel safe, which drastically reduced the risk of any unfortunate outbursts or self defensive incidents occurring during their outing, which was, of course, a massive boon in itself.
The tense peace had been something Elae had wearily begun to notice as they spent more time together, their rhythms continued to fall further into sync with each other, and they’d begun to form some semblance of camaraderie now that Orla finally understood the precariousness of her situation. Hells, she’d actually managed to convince the bureau to back off before they take notice of the recent closures of the
Arelae’
s compulsory domestication office; an action of itself which Elae refused to admit was for her new charge’s benefit. Surely she’d been planning to do that all along, right? The timing in relation to her breaking the grim reality of Orla’s situation to the poor girl was… purely coincidental. And anyways, it wasn’t as if they had enough ferals in this sector for the compact to notice a few more wardships than normal.
Unfortunately for her, however, this particular blissful break had been broken by one of the newcomer engineers from the drive-core decks, as they had whisked their way directly past the singular barrier that had prevented Sola from doing the same a few weeks before, and immediately gushing about the cuteness of ‘such an adorable little terran’. And before Elae had even realized what had happened, she saw that same visceral discomfort from their argument a few days prior completely boil over, notably upon the contact between the engineer’s vine and the top of a very uncomfortable Orla’s head. And in less time than either affini had to react, the girl had pushed the limits of her new phytotech limbs and nearly healed hands to claw directly into the well-meaning assailant’s face, managing to dislodge an eyespot while hurling a flurry of expletives in a language Elae didn’t understand.
Despite the number of times the captain had fantasized about pulling the exact same maneuver as her charge when she was a sprout, this was the exact wrong time for this exact thing to happen. Drought, she couldn’t have waited until they were out of the inhabited systems?
“You have to admit, you were a bit impressed,” Orla said, a smug grin appearing at the edges of her mouth, even through the anger that predictably drowned it out, “so you have no room to talk.”
“Do not try to pull that ‘terran pack bonding’ maneuver on me! You may not be one but you’ve certainly picked up their rotting tricks! You could have blown whatever modicum of security I’ve spent the last forty ship cycles building up for your shallow-rooted tail! What you
should
have done is out the frosting airlock at this point. No matter how much your infuriatingly compatible rhythm tries to sway me otherwise, this is the second time you’ve damaged an affini since contact, that is a fast track to forced domestication whether I allow it or not! You’re just lucky I was able to convince that engineer not to tattle on us to the committee, lest the both of us end up drugged out of our minds!
“They- fuck. I'm sorry, okay‽” Orla said, the frustration clear in her voice. “But you should keep a closer eye on your fucking subordinates! They just walked up to me and you didn't so much as say a word! What else would you have me do? Because stars damn me if I'll be talked to like that.”
Orla sped up her gate slightly, putting some distance between the pair. The journey back to their quarters long abandoned by then. Their argument had taken them through the arboretum and halfway through its adjacent hab-ring without either of them seeming to realize it, and Orla was increasingly weary of another sophont coming across them in such a state.
“Look. I'll do better. I promise. But you have to do the same. I'm sorry I let them get that close to you, but at this point Orla, you're going to end up being domesticated one way or another. I don't want it to happen. You know that. But when you do I don't want you off my ship, and that's a feat that is getting increasingly harder to accomplish the more you act out.”
“Fine. I fucking get it. I won't do it again.” Orla sighed, attempting to breathe the last chunks of anger free from her mind, as the reality of her situation once again set in. “Just please. Desmanthus. Promise me something. You cannot let me become one of
them
. I'd rather be spaced than lose myself. That's never going to change.”
“Everbloom, I know you're serious when you remember my name. But yes. I promise. We've made a lot of those today, but I won't break it. I'll do whatever I can. Just please.
Please
stop being a rootend about everything I do. I'm not your enemy, Orla, despite how much I sometimes wish I could be.”
The affini found herself taken aback by her ward's candor. That was a far quicker break than she'd expected, even after so many times. Perhaps, she allowed herself to think, some progress had been made after all.
Orla sat for a moment, letting the meaning of her warden's words fully wash over her. “Good. I- um- thank you.”
With that their walk took them back towards their hab, as a slow silence fell between them. Both sophont’s lost in their own thoughts and worries. And as they walked, some deep part of Orla began to slightly–
just slightly
–she swore, accept the genuine concern that she'd felt in the xeno’s words. Maybe she did have an ally in this after all.
—
Orla looked up from her bowl of cereal with a start, there was rustling from the other room. From Elae's room. It was the telltale sound of the beleaguered captain reluctantly pulling herself from her bed. In the four months since her capture, the girl had never seen Elae up this early, though the sense of urgent anxiety that filled the room soon after hinted at the cause of such a rarity. Goddess, she thought, how in the hells had she forgotten the date. Soon, that nervous vibration had more than doubled throughout the small hab.
Placing her spoon down, she turned her attention towards the rapidly compiling shape of Elae beginning to emerge from the doorway, somehow exuding the exact energy of a sleep deprived lower decksman from Orla's old ship, despite her inhuman appearance. “I forgot what day it was, didn't I?” Orla asked, some small part of her brain hoping to the gods she was wrong.
Elae buzzed with a measured exhaustion, met twice fold with a nervous tilt to her spines as she ambled slowly from her room. “Yes, Orla, you did in fact. Hurry, we should do our best to get this over with as quickly as possible.”
Groaning and tossing her bowl, still half full back into the compiler, where it landed with a loud shatter before dematerializing a nanosecond later, Orla half-rushed back to her small room on the opposite side of the cabin. Running through her morning routine with
almost
record time, she threw on the nearest set of clothes she could find, a tight fitting shirt and pants combination that reminded her of her old uniform as little as possible, and took the small blue pills her warden had provided her once she had finally been convinced they weren't a psychoactive trap. Walking back towards the door, she met Elae's gaze, slowly taking in the gravity of that day, as much as her mind would allow, that is, for some reason the weight of the occasion had yet to penetrate her mind’s trauma defenses, and she wasn't entirely ungrateful for that fact.
Shaking her head at Elae's offered vine, much more for appearances than either of their benefit, she walked a few, tentative steps forward and pulled the cabin door open. And the pair started their tense walk to the committee’s impromptu meeting room, a few dozen meters to the rear of the bridge.
…
The meeting room was tense as the pair glided in through the access tube, loosely maneuvering themselves to the center table. Elae herself tried to control the uneasy tilt to her rhythm, knowing it would doubtlessly run off on her charge, not to mention the other affini.
They were surrounded on three sides by the committee's representatives, who had themselves come aboard only a few hours later to deliver the verdict on Orla's case. Of the three, two were young blooms, a fact which surprised Else, and gave part of her core the faintest hope of a positive outcome. The one who sat in the center, however, was over fifty blooms her senior, and stars did she know how hardline many of the older blooms in this sector could be.
“Despite how fun all of that paperwork
would be
, we should fall directly to the pursuit, as it were.” Said the aged affini, who had introduced herself earlier that day as Yenactia Sorthis, 57th Bloom, ruffling her long, willow-like branches as she spoke. “The cutie before us is no doubt a wonderful case for compulsory domestication, of this I am sure every sophont here is aware. This committee has been tasked to assign a permanent owner to this precious Terran, and that is precisely what we have done.”
Orla swallowed the building lump in her throat. They'd known this was coming, Elae had told her dozens of times, and yet somehow it still shook her composure. And to her counterpart’s credit, the girl couldn't pick up the slightest piece of smugness in her aura, only the barely prickling sense of stealy nerves and budding worry.
“As you've no doubt been notified, captain Desmanthus, your first navigation’s officer, some seven blooms to you senior, was a wonderful candidate, but unfortunately, we have decided on another sophont to care for your charge, though we wanted it to remain a surprise until now.”
“Who?” Else asked, unable to mask her apprehension, at least if they'd given Orla to one of her officers, even one as stubborn as Sola, she would have been able to prevent exactly what he knew was going to happen. “I'll need time to complete preparations for the cutie’s transfer to their quarters, of course.”
“You truly have no idea, do you, you adorably dense captain.” The affini to their left chuckled to themselves, their rubbery tropical exterior rippling to the rhythm. “She's yours Desmanthus, despite the… misgivings of her first few months under your care, and your unorthodox methodology, you've been granted a full Terran domestication license! We have no doubt that she's become incredibly attached to you, why, just look at the way she's clinging to you!”
The vine that had subconsciously made its way to a protective stature in front of Orla suddenly piqued Elae's focus, at least the death trip the girl had on it wasn't showing it's innate, protective aggression to the sophonts a few meters away.
“I am not- oh yeah… I just can't imagine being without her.” Orla said, gently releasing her stranglehold on the wayward vine that had threatened to invade her space, trying incredibly hard to smother the pained clench on her jaw that emerged at her own words.
“I- I never even filed an intent form! But-” Else paused, both thankful and simultaneously uneasy about the prospect that had just been laid before her. Certainly she could decline. It was within her rights. Maybe she'd get taken in by Sola after all. But then, as much as she told herself she wanted her solitary existence back, there was no way she could throw the poor girl to chance. Drought, she cursed to herself, the one thing she promised would never happen. And yet, here she stood, bonded to a rotting feral that had tried to kill her. “I- I'm overjoyed, thank you for such a welcome surprise. It will certainly save me the trouble of moving her items, she's so touchy about them, after all.”
Orla made a mental note to add to the list of terran swears she'd hurled in her roommate's general direction once they returned home. Unfortunately though, she had little choice but to play along. Moving slightly behind the affini, she half-heartedly nudged the vine closest to her, trying to will the xeno to keep talking.
“My, so shy now, isn't she?” The leftward affini chuckled, “Well she's all yours captain, if you both will simply sign the forms and transfer them for review.”
“Yes… something like that. I suppose there's no use in waiting.” Elae intoned, moving a fuming Orla towards the stack of papers placed on the tack-board in front of them. “Just sign here… petal…”
—
The walk back to their hab had been long abandoned following the day's meeting, the pair stopping somewhere around halfway along the route, still trying to process what had just happened. Orla plopped herself onto the infuriatingly soft, y'all grass that made up the back portion of the open corridor they say in, not saying a word as her… goddess her
owner
. What the fuck. What the fuck. Sat next to her, reassuringly just as angry as she was.
“There's no going back from this, is there?” She asked, already knowing the answer that was to meet her. “I'm fucking stuck here. Fucking trapped all over again.”
Elae unravelled the exhausting form she'd pulled together for the meeting, stunned air whistling through her leaves as they fell in messy piles along the ground. “Not that I know of- I'm sorry, Orla. I didn't want this. And I know you didn't either. For once, I don't have any answers for you.”
“I guess at least you're not gonna start drugging me out of my mind now… right?” Orla joked, an unspoken fear punctuating her words.
“... No, Orla. At the very least, I'll make sure you're free. As much as I can. You've changed me, Orla, and I don't think I could go back now if I wanted to”
A slight smile rose across the girl's lips, relief mixing in with the shock. “Does that mean I win? At least that means I'm not trapped here with you. You're trapped here with me, affini.”
Elae couldn't frosting believe it, her life had been signed away, and yet this woman was still an insufferable, smug, annoying bastard. She had to admire that, she supposed, the rootend had grown on her, whether she liked it or not. “You're unfortunately correct, Or, six terran months and I have yet to find a way to be rid of you. You're lucky the others think you're so precious, the second they sour of you, I'm dropping you into a nebula.”
“I'm sure, big bad xeno and all, you don't have the guts- er, stems.” Orla laughed, some of the existential dread falling from her conscious mind, at least the bastard she'd been stuck with wouldn't alter her deal… wait… oh my goddess. “Wait, Elae. Didn't that bullshit contract say you could modify our terms?”
Almost instantly, the affini sensed the switch in her charge's demeanor, picking up the building energy of her mind working through a plan. Usually a very bad thing, here though, she supposed she could stand to hope a little. “Um, yes, it's a right given to all owners under the compact. I don't need input to change the terms of your wardship. What use could that possibly be to you?”
“Maybe. Just maybe. We may not be so stuck.” Orla quietly said, the gears in her mind already turning. “How interested would you be in seeing how far we could push those terms? Even out the scales of power, maybe even enough to avoid driving both of us mad.”
“That’s… actually an idea, wouldn't be the first time I've pressed a contract.” Elae slowly rose on her vines, already calculating the language she'd need to break the thin walls of their domestication agreement. “We might be able to do something with this after all”
Their trek home started again shortly after, Elae trying her best not to overblow her hopes. But stars, this could actually be something. Maybe, just maybe, she could let herself hope, just this once.
Once they arrived home, Elae swirled her way to her small, crowded office, pulling a stack of fresh papers from the compiler and laying them next to her freshly detached tablet. She wasn't the best at legalese, but she knew she could make some of this work. First off, the dynamic requirements, then, legal standings for both of them. Hopefully, just maybe, she could bend the rules enough to break their stranglehold.
The editing phase, even split between the two, took most of the ship's artificial night cycle, only abating once the new terms had been copied, signed, double checked, and signed again. It wasn't perfect, but they'd managed to accomplish most of their intended outcomes, so long as the committee approved the new terms, which, luckily, this far out into the sector wouldn't be a massive challenge.
“Alright, ready?” Else asked, handing Orla the pen.
“I guess as much as I can be,” the girl intoned, dropping the pen to paper, and scrawling out a rough signature that felt like the thousandth that day. “Definitely better than where we started, so I'll take it as progress.”
Taking a look down, she ran back through the final page of terms one more time, checking and rechecking for any holes in their formula.
Above all else, you, Orla Lenah-Elaeganifolium, are held under the care of your owner, Desmanthus Elaeganifolium, and of yourself, and both parties will be responsible for your well-being, and continued happiness under the purview of the Affini Compact ☐
Your Owner, Desmanthus Elaeganifolium, Third Bloom, is held as your partner and caretaker, and care, for no less than one subsequent bloom, and shall respect and defend you to the very limits of her ability. ☐
You are hereby granted a portion of the rights, protections, and responsibilities of a compact citizen. And are held subject to all regulations and limitations applicable thereof. Your status as a floret will not be compromised by these statutes. ☐
Desmanthus Elaeganifolium will be held under the responsibilities for her care, and you will be held to the same in all areas barring the interference of your rights as a floret. ☐
Desmanthus Elaeganifolium can modify these terms at any time given your prior consent. ☐
Your full name is Orla Elaeganifolium from this moment forward. The title of “First Floret” is hitherto bound to your name. ☐
Below this line are additional terms that your fellow signatory, Desmanthus Elaeagnifolium, has stipulated. Your corresponding stipulations will appear on this document’s parallel. ☐
You will continue your pursuits and research, and meet me as an officer of the Arelae for the continued safety of myself, and the others aboard her. She will become your ship, as she has become ours. ☐
You will be respected, and your consent will never be violated under this agreement, nor will my own. ☐
Sign here to acknowledge your understanding and acceptance of these terms
It wasn't perfect, but it would do.