Pylo had never met the species before her, but this Gastronomist was very polite and even better knew how to treat a lady siren right.

“You of course are not really in my usual clientele, not being jawed in the conventional sense or properly part of animalia. But with our sparse population of eager to please Siren refugees it is best to have the necessary vittles on hand”

She could only nod as she swallowed up a delightful concentrate that simultaneously strained the tissues and yet also discorporated into readily accessed components. Including several supplemental vitalloys that Pylo did not strictly need but gave her an eased pressure all the same.

It was honestly down right delicious!

“Thank you, it is truly an excellent strum for the membranes! But I am here on rather important matters of course”

“Of course trade mistress and daughter of the clan of courts. This is about my most recent clients? The ministry were rather upset but as I said to them there was no fault in my diagnosis I proscribed a schema of nutrient complexes tuned to correct specification for my clients. And I will vouch on the honor of my colleagues that they worked to the desired sensoria requests dutifully”

Pylo nodded, but she was here to look out for the well being of her passengers. And so she could not afford to give in at the first exclamation.

“Of course, but did you account for all the literature related to the terran species? I had extensive records of their various feeding practices and medical treatises? I provided them to the port authority for their use in facilitating your services but perhaps they were not made available to you?”

The Gastronomist rippled and fixed several eyes on her in a friendly manner. Attentively looking at her with just enough eyes to show she took this seriously without being confrontational.

“I did indeed, I also ratified their records with my own samples and evaluation techniques. My proscribed complexes and their specified dose limiters are utterly safe and even vitaly nourishing! There was nothing within my proscription that could be viewed as toxic or subversive in the designated quantities to a your passengers.”

Pylo sighed, she could feel how the ideas formed and fomented in the gastronomist. It was honesty and truth. Not even circuitous and it was not even rehearsed despite the fact he had probably told this same report to several individuals with the local government already.

“Thank you for your time, I suppose I will go to talk with your colleagues?”

“Those that remained uninjured, I’m afraid your charges punctured one of them when they left very abruptly. He is being treated for partial ecocosm collapse from internal vacuum exposure”

Pylo nodded and exhaled the cloying atmosphere before moving along to exit the nice professional's workspace.

It was not very far to travel by the local transit hoops to the next site. Her local tail from the Ministry of External affairs busily rushing along with her.

“It really is not necessary at all dear Trade mistress pylo! We just needed a confirmation via your local manifests... this is all greatly out of proportion! Please! There is no need to interrupt your scheduled maintenance work. Or for you to have broadcasted your displeasure to all other trade ships...We are sorry for our impolite language it is just that the damage is disproportional for what your records indicated and we wanted an internal review of the original docume-”

“I’ve had port cities try to board and lock down Tunie under more legitimate and less disgusting reasoning then you implied in your missives. Some of them even gave me a drink before trying to take my ship... I’ve had them try and do it for and I quote “ my and Tunie’s own good “... Your whole bloody habitat and polis is fortunate I’m not half of what you accused me of being or your entire dockworks would be a rapidly expanding cloud of dust”

She lashed out a fore-distal limb to grab a anchor hold and yank herself along to the bubble habitat that had been set up to treat one of the Gastronomist’s colleagues the sensoria experts.

“Yes I apologize for the offense, our wording was not meant to be so rude but surely you must understand the danger a plague insertion would mean?! We do not have the facilities or the experts to quell a full eco-attack of that nature”

Pylo huffed and shook her head.

“And you said you had Sirens living here? Let me guess none of them from a single proper family? Yeah thought so, this is what you get for just keeping a bunch of stone-borne-line orphans. They probably don’t even speak with proper genomic grammar...”

The unfortunate clerk rushed up with her sweeping wide arms. Pylo had met her species all over. Common kind of people. Usually working as farmers or laborers.

Probably either a savant or some low level assistant if Pylo had any guesses.

“I do apologize but really... this is an ongoing internal affairs and health and safety investigation and triage center... It is not appropriate for you to be he-”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Pylo had enough and stopped paying attention to the way the words were barely geling together in her ‘attendant’s neural spool.

She dipped her face into the permeable membrane and wrinkled her lips a bit at the flavor of exposed ripe ecosystem. Tasting a dozen medicinal transfusion spores for the ‘patient’ within.

Some clouds of medicinal ecologists fluttered and squawked indignation at her disrupting the sanctity of their practice but she shoved her credentials through their distributed pheromone readers and even added a few puffs of her own (but properly sanitized and neutured) polen for emphasis.

That got them mollified and panicked in equal measure screeching about contamination of a full ecocosmectomy and replanting.

But Pylo had things to find out and this was the only person who had last coherent contact with her passengers before they apparently ‘went on a vulgar and horrible rampage of indecent memecology and terrible violence’.

So what if they were unconscious?

So what if they were having vital life supporting symbiotes restored after apparently the idiot humans had managed to shove a leg of their mobility prosthesis through their internal reservoir chambers.

Pylo could talk to a corpse if it was mostly intact.

She just needed to work a little bit harder at it.

“Hey! You! I have some questions you need to answer!”

[https://i.imgur.com/kj0Tm6t.png]

The branching multi faceted and self curving inward organelles that the patient used for thinking and the long light broadcasters they used to speak with others both flared up. Although the broadcasters seemed to be be unable to properly fire, it was enough for Pylo.

Apparently they were aware and awake, just quite distressed and in pain from losing their internal balance of ecologies and symbiotes.

Highly traumatic stuff that she had read. Which made the tone kind of surprising.

“Excuse me... Could this not have waited? Maybe until I was not PUNCTURED open and having to be recolonized?! Stupid pushy siren parasite-bitch-whores reaching in and talking you up! I don’t care what you’re selling, or what deal or political party you are trying to leverage. Or about starving swappers in the foundations! I am not interested! I can’t even properly send a broadcast without you molesting my outflow signal! Leave me in peace and SILENCE to recover!”

Pylo was a bit taken aback.

Usually her status as a Siren or a trader worked to her advantage mosts places. Okay some places it lead to horror and fear and an inability to get an honest fact out of them out of worry of offending her. But it never made her feel like a nuisance or vermin.

Just what were these orphans doing here to tarnish the good name of whatever poor family blood line spilled them loose here?

No distractions! She would find out just went wrong and the person who knew was right here and Pylo was going to talk it out of them!

“What? No I’m not one of those motherless tramps! I am Pylo the shipminder of the vessel Tunie and I am here to investigate what you did to my PASSENGERS”

That got a mortified jumble of reactions from the branching nerves of the specialist laying split open in the cloud of spores and chattering medicinal symbiotes screeching at pylo to leave in their tiny little voices.

“Your passengers? The Hooligans that broke me open and massacred my ecocosm with vile vacuum exposure?! That RUPTURED me?! And you are blaming me?! I followed exactly what they asked for as their preparation and sensoria profile! It did exactly what they asked for!”

It couldn't move because all the necessary fluids and glands for that were depopulated. But the nerve sapling was quite indignant anyway.

Pylo swallowed a mouth full of the donor flora to settle her temper and feintly contemplated how her enzymes wrestled with some of it. It was zesty and a bit refreshing.

Naturally the little medical symbionts yelled at her even more shrilly for doing that.

“What exactly did they ask you for?”

The tangle of thoughts buzzed and trembled to itself even as they could not make their own body move. Trembles of sudden fear and horror.

The realization of exposure and the slowly dawning terror that Pylo was right there and she had effectively just eaten PART of them already.

“I... They said that good nourishing food made them happy... So I just mapped the sensoria to what made them happy. Then they were fine and said it was fine and then they just went crazy and rushed off and punctured me!”

Pylo sighed and pulled her face out of the membrane much to the shrieking relief of the medicinals and idly sucked the lingering dregs of various spores and fluids down to clean her inner crevices out.

This had not been anywhere near as helpful as she had thought it would be.

Now what?