Yuma had a bad feeling in her gut. She knew why. Damn him. Damn him!
He’ll do whatever he has to, then he’ll meet us. He had told her this, so she tried to believe. He wouldn’t lie to her. She was helping Jonah work on the shuttle, the Clan was working on the shuttle next to them. Then why had he closed their connection?
“Dammit Yuma! Focus!”
She shook her head and refocused on releasing out a consistent current from her fingertip to weld together ship-things, or whatever, at Jonah’s direction.
He’ll make it, he’ll make it. Her twisting gut didn't agree.
Jack was the only family she had left. Well, she didn’t even have any family, not technically, not anymore. Which is what made the thought of losing him even more terrifying. She should have stayed with him. Stupid. Stupid!
“He’ll be fine, you know.” Jonah hadn’t turned away, his goggles tight around his eyes as he worked, splicing wires and… whatever else he was doing.
“You don’t know that.”
He paused and, in a shocking and uncharacteristic expression of EQ, he turned to look her in the eye.
“It’s Jack. If anyone can survive, it’s him.”
“Bu-”
“But nothing, Jack wants us on this ship, he wants you on this ship. That means you’re getting on it, understand?”
“I can-”
“-get lost and then when he comes back, you’ll be missing and screw everything up. No, we wait in the shuttle. Trust Jack.”
She nodded. Her gut twisted harder.
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The G.C.S.S. Theseus saw the planet before her, her destination, and then was… stopped? She slowly lurched forward again in response, fighting the forces that dared to stop her Journey, attempting to subvert her Purpose. She sent a deep, ominous growl through her superstructure, her body, as it started to tear and warp under the stress.
She felt something happening inside her...
Explosive decompression blew out her guts as close to a quadrillion gallons of water left her in every direction, into the hostile cold of space. Around her, the water instantly formed into massive orbs that changed from liquid and ice directly into gas, as molecules reflected and warped the star's light in the space around her. Countless shards of ice formed from the water that hadn’t merged into the greater spheres and her external sensors were blinded as the signals twisted, reflected back, and even light refused to properly return to her in the chaos of it all. She felt the forces against her weaken. Diffused by the same water that scattered her own senses.
Now a message was sent about… water and mushrooms? A warning. A extremely hostile lifeform, something dangerous was in the water. It blared out into the void on repeat. That wasn’t right, that warning should be faced inwards to warn her children that traveled inside of her conveyance. Water was important to them. Not to those that it wouldn’t affect in the cold dark. Still, objectively, it was clear, the warning was sent out of every external array that was still operational and simultaneously over none of the internal comms. She didn’t even know if she even had any water left in her body, she felt dry and dehydrated. She was wounded.
She sighed in relief as she felt some of her children start to leave. Good. Though... too few shuttles flew from her bosom. That wasn’t nearly enough. Then more of her children were launched, still sleeping, into the storm of water that surrounded her. Through diffused and compromised senses, she could see, right away, that some would not make it, a number of them would not, but most would.
As their escape pods wove their way through the spinning ice they steadily turned and aimed for the planet that was her own destination as well. She had to get there. A New Home. Her New Home. Her children would need a place to rest their heads, keep them safe. She had to provide that. She was too wounded, too weak. It was Impossible.
Her soul ignited in a start as the engines cranked to maximum, then higher still. A child of hers, a special one, one… who was born on the ship? No, made... like her. That pleased her. Truly then, her son. The small creature sent her more and more power. Thank you, child. She would take it. She would use it. Home.
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Their connection snapped open and she knew then sprinted to open the shuttle door, she had to get him. A death-rattle echoed through the ship as it lost something vital, deafening those that weren’t already inside a shuttle. It wouldn’t open. The shuttle launched.
“Jona-!”
In an electromagnetic rush, the connection snapped open more vibrantly than she had ever experienced before, even more than that time in the Cargo-Bay. She was blind, deaf, and, dumb to the outside world.
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She could see him, the electrical currents running through his body. Each cell containing a nano-sized electrical battery. Was this how he saw her?
The bond continued to increase in power as she caught flashes of the mission, of pain, of resolve, of acceptance. She saw his cells overloading and bursting apart before splitting into more. The replacement rate must have had his body cycling through entire new sets of cells in seconds. The pace was ever increasing.
You’re killing yourself. She knew that he could not move, so she moved closer. She was buffeted back by an errant spike in the current.
This? Nah, just wanted an extra bit of charge before I got off her. He redirected the waves of current away from her. She moved closer again.
Her?
The Ship, she has… I don’t know, consciousness?
Like an SI?
No, something simpler but... more vast. But she sees us as her children, like she’s my... our mother.
She sensed his tension as she could see his thoughts, but it was a strange thing, she has to know by now.
You aren’t on a shuttle. She sensed the flinch that confirmed it.
No, I’m not.
You lied.
I’m sorry.
Why?
You know, I felt you probing the connection, I could see your thoughts even before that. You would have stayed behind.
You… can read my thoughts. She wanted to bury her face in her hands and hide somewhere, instead, she moved closer to him.
Yeah, ever since I cut you open way back when.
Now she really wanted to go hide, she shortened the distance between them and saw him twitch as he forcefully redirected the current around her.
We’re going to lose connection soon.
Can’t we…
I’m sorry Yuma.
Are you…
I don’t know. She felt a sense of shame come from him.
Maybe, I don’t know. Probably. I didn’t ask Tai for the updated odds.
She smirked as she moved even closer and felt him grunt in effort. You named your AI?
Yeah. He smiled sheepishly, almost embarrassed.
Took you long enough.
You need to protect the Humans, I sent the Cryo-Pods to the surface. Promise me you will.
I promise. She was close to him, not quite close enough.
Not one of my prom-
I promise you, Jack.
Yuma, you know, I do l-
She reached out and touched him, just the tiniest amount, and in that brief, fraction-of-an-instant, they shared everything.
They relived each other's memories from when they first met and onwards. They lived each other's entire journeys through the ship. She learned of her own Magnetic Affinity from when he pulled on hers to stabilize his Soul Core. She knew that he would have killed her if he had to. That he would have hated to do it and would've carried that pain with him for the rest of his life. Though, he still would have done it, that was without doubt. She didn't forgive him, for there was nothing to forgive, she understood and accepted his resolve as his own. In this moment, the memory belonged as much to her as it did to him.
He felt the loss of her family, from her side as he struggled to keep her father alive, his father now. She felt the pain he carried over the murder of Leanne by Tule's hand. He saw her sole memory as if it was his own, of being trapped within a dark cave with a younger version of Tule. His anger toward Tule, his hate for the crabs, the secrets of the BioPrison. He tried to not share these, but how can you not share something with yourself? Deeper thoughts now, his concern for her and Jonah, worries buried deep and pushed through. Faith that he would succeed where other's had failed, grim-resolve when that faith faltered.
His uncertainty about what it meant to be an artificial human and the fact that his goal had been implanted into him from the very start of his life. His commitment to make that goal his own, regardless of how it had come to him. His regret on leaving the mushrooms alive, convenience damned him and narrowed his choices until he could only see one final course through the mess.
The sense of failure for the Humans that would impact in the ship alongside him. The Plan... the only plan that had a chance of success as he saw it, however narrow that final option was. However unlikely the odds of his own survival. How glad he was that she was off the ship. How she hated that same thought.
If it was possible, if he was able to make it possible... He would see her again.
He snapped the connection shut.
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The Ship’s wake, typically not a thing in space, was somewhat of a hazard with the sheer quantity of water molecules floating through this particular section of local space. Gravitic defenses were overloaded by the sudden change in mass of the ship as well as the newly redistributed and constantly fluctuating mass of the water. The Gravitics failed to compensate.
Heavy munitions were fired at the ship, last resort weapons, slow things. Theseus, the mothership, would not allow this as she lanced fire from eons old defensive matrixes which intercepted all but a few. The rest she absorbed into her flesh as the impacts stripped parts of her to burn their own destructive paths through the sky.
That was it? She had so much more to sacrifice.
A planetary shield was a possibility, had been a possibility. But not now. There was too little time to activate anything like that. Her child on board fought against it but she lit the retrothrusters lit as blazing beams and punched deep into the surface of the world, her child, knowing he would lose the fight, sent oceanfuls of electricity into them and in the next instant they guttered out as they were overtaxed.
The massive metal hull took on the characteristics of water as it impacted the surface of the world. A series of devastating novas rippled out, wave after wave atomizing anything unfortunate enough to survive the first strikes. The devastation was marked by monstrous gouts of lightning that lashed around the ship in jagged frequency before it too guttered and died.
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“Dammit Yuma!” Jonah fiddled with the controls, trying to repair them from Yuma’s ‘little overload’.
She snapped up, “You left him!”
He whirled, “That’s what he wanted!”
She… didn’t have an argument for that, after all, his memories were hers. She wiped her eyes and looked at the metal rod currently sticking out of her arm.
“What’s this?”
“I had to ground you or you would have fried us and left us dead in the water. The SI that Jack left us was barely able to shunt the excess timely enough."
He turned back to fiddle with something new.
"Did you... talk to Jack?"
She nodded, then realized that he couldn't read her mind. She couldn't feel Jack, it was a disorienting concept.
"Yes, I did."
She moved toward the window, where the planet was framed.
“It’s a… a…”
“Yes yes, it's a--"
"Alien Ecumenopolis"
(MeatSpace 2)
"Can you not interrupt me? How do you know that word?"
"I know stuff."
Jonah squinted at her then dug back under the panel.