Page 45 of Leviathan

Horror rushed through me, pushing aside the pain for a moment of clarity, my own fragile mortality flashing before me in a sudden rush of terror. I didn't want this to be the end. I wanted so much more from life. Everything that I had heard so far about what it would be like being a captive of the Calicium sounded like a fate worse than death. It would be more experimentation, more torture, a short life lived in a lab as a captive of a race that saw me as a means to its own improvement.

But captivity was still life.

And as long as I was alive, there was a chance to fight.

"I have superior synaptic latency," I blurted out, selling out my entire species to buy some time.

The blue light winked off.

"How superior?" it asked, its tone still deadpanned and completely uninterested.

"I'm the reason the incoming Vaurelcar was able to dodge your missiles," I said.

"Lies," it said, the blue light reappearing. "It would retain a valuable asset. There is no reason to risk loss by sending it to the center of an opposing ship."

Then its eyes widened, a fraction of a movement, a subtle thing made that much more extreme by the fact it had no expression to give at all.

There was a loud click, originating from where the Vaurelcar lay still.

But it was too late.

SEVENTEEN

LYRIEN

No, no, no, no, no.

I tore away at the other Vaurelcar, ripping his weakened filaments and pinning them down. No matter how fast I moved, how vicious I ripped away at him, I couldn't get to the center fast enough. He hadn't just let her in the way I'd hoped, the way he would have let a Calicium in, by opening up a tunnel for her to walk through. Instead, he'd taken her, grabbing her like she was an object instead of a person, smashing my com connection the moment he had a hold of her. I couldn't reach her. I didn't know if he had hurt her or killed her.

This was a horrible mistake.

I shouldn't have let her go.

I should have fled, taking her and all her bravery with me.

She was willing to risk her life for another one of my kind, and he didn't deserve it.

Fuck this other guy, I didn't owe him anything. I didn't owe him the life of my love, the light of my future. He didn't have to sever my connection to her. He didn't deserve this chance to be saved, a chance handed to him by the bravest woman I'd ever had the privilege of meeting. My life before her had been so empty, and I hadn't been able to see it until she brought her fragile warmth on board. I thought I would be able to have a satisfied life with just my birds for company, never risking betrayal or heartbreak, but then there she was, needing me.

But it was I who needed her.

And I had let her walk into the den of a monster with just her wit for protection.

"Let me in!" I screamed at the other ship as I grabbed a main stalk of his filament, wrenching it to the side, barely holding back the words I wanted to shout at him. Give her back, I wanted to say, but I couldn't. He needed enough room to believe that she was a Calicium in disguise. If I removed that possibility, by desperately begging for him to return her, a thing a Vaurelcar would never do for a Calicium but would do for a crew member they cared about. The Plexus command would hear my pleading, flag her, and he would be tortured if he didn't comply and crush the invader. Their control chips didn't work on my kind as they did on their own kind, so they had to use the collars instead. Instead of triggering immediate direct action, it would instead only have the option of inflicting pain until he complied.

Better to not provide any reason for it to trigger.

That same device was the reason my demands to be let in went unanswered.

It was why he would fight me, to the bitter end, to protect the core and the placement of the control system that kept him a slave to a race of mindless automatons.

Even so, I tore at him, trying to follow her deeper, even as every single bit of his neurofilaments moved to block my path, to slow my progress. I couldn't just focus on them. The Calicium were trying to get on board. I could feel them cutting into me. But I was strong. Every slice was an itch that told me where the little bugs were crawling, so I could smack. Some of them I crushed, others I simply tore free and tossed out into space. It didn't matter where they dug; there wasn't a single part of me that was numb and listless like they expected. Normally, the contaminant would have given them a path in, a way they could go that I couldn't feel, that I couldn't react.

But Maria had saved me, freed me with her touch.

I would have taken the informational cube on board, whether or not she came with it, and it had been coated in the contamination. Without her, I would have been weakened, fragile, and waiting for them to cut into me.

Instead, I was a monster, whole and hale, and despite all of their weaponry, they were unable to cut into me more than a few layers before I vented, tossed, or crushed. Yet even with all my strength, the other Vaurelcar was large, and even if he was weak, he still had layers to defend himself. He wasn't attacking me, which made it simpler, just blocking my progress to his core, the absolute bare minimum that he would have to do. In my progress into him, I encountered more little bugs to crush.