The Privateer

The search took four hours. Vrrl hunters scoured every inch of the Crystal Mother. Yvian knew it was necessary, but she chaffed at the delay. The Mother was crying. Wailing. Her psychic screams hammered into Yvian through her implant. Yvian wanted very badly to comfort the ship.

Worse, she had no idea what was happening at New Pixa. Great care had been taken to isolate New Pixa's Nexus from the human and Confederation networks, but there was no such thing as too careful when dealing with Synthetic Intelligence. Reba was as dangerous as any Xill, and just as likely to find an exploit and worm her way into a Node. Mims and Kilroy both insisted they not contact the Technocracy until they were ready to move the Lucendian ship again.

Yvian was also keenly aware how exposed and vulnerable they were out here. Ten thousand ships was more than enough to overwhelm the Federation science team and their security fleet, but it would be helpless if the humans arrived in force. Warmaster Scathach believed Reba didn't have the nav data to get to this sector, but Yvian wasn't so sure. Humans were masters at gathering intelligence. She'd be very surprised if they didn't already have a map of Vrrl space and its surroundings. The real question was if Reba knew enough about the Warmaster to guess where he would go.

When the report finally came, Yvian gritted her teeth. It was as she'd feared. There were signs suggesting various laboratories had been set up throughout the ship, but the humans had taken them when they left. They'd also taken the bodies, Lucendian and Xill alike, along with every weapon and personal affect they could find. The crystal guardians were missing as well, but damage consistent with BSR4 sniper rifles in various places implied they had all been destroyed.

The ship itself had suffered extensive damage. Some of it was left over from the Mother's battle with the Xill in centuries past, but the majority was recent. Both the outer hull and a large portion of the interior had been cut away. Other sections had been fractured, or melted with some sort of chemical. Lucendian ships could feel their hull the same way Yvian felt her own body. The humans had been torturing the Mother for months.

Roughly a quarter of the ship had been shattered into debris. The cause was, as expected, a fission bomb. A hole had been drilled into the crystal, and the bomb placed snugly inside to maximize the transfer of kinetic energy. Yvian knew this because the Vrrl discovered seven other bombs placed evenly across the ship. The fission weapons had all been disabled, the work of the final, and most aggravating thing the Hunters discovered.

Humans. Four of them. Unarmed. Their leader had correctly surmised that Yvian was somewhere in the fleet, and refused to answer any further questions until she met them in person. It was a bold stance, considering they were surrounded by heavily armed enemies that saw them as food. Yvian was inclined to let the Hunters have them, but the group might have valuable intelligence, and the Technocracy needed every advantage they could get their hands on.

"We'll deal with them later," Yvian decided. "I need to commune with the ship. See how bad she's hurt."

"I'll come with you," said Lissa.

"I'll stay here," said Mims. "I don't think another human would be comforting right now."

Yvian, Lissa, and Scarrend made their way to an airlock. The Priderender was still parked thirty meters from the Mother, its shields almost brushing up against the crystal ship. Yvian's jetpack took her inside in short order, entering through one of the open hangar bays towards the bottom of the ship.

The pain Yvian had felt on the Priderender was a pale echo of the anguish Yvian received when she entered the ship. The Crystal Mother's keening racked her body with pain. She curled in on herself, vomiting. Her helmet helpfully cleared away the bile, keeping her from choking long enough to say "It hurts, it hurts, it hurts."

PAIN REMOVAL ACTIVE flashed across her HUD. The pain did not decrease. After a few seconds, her display said, WARNING! AN IMPLANT IS MALFUNCTIONING! UNABLE TO ISOLATE IMPLANT! ADMINISTERING ANAESTHETIC. The pain finally lessened. The fire in her body receded to a dull ache. Her headache reduced down to merely splitting. Yvian slowly uncurled her body, grateful to be feeling the equivalent of a bad hangover instead of whatever The Crunch the Crystal Mother was going through.

"Are you two alright?" Scarrend asked. Yvian noticed he had a hand on her, and another on Lissa, keeping the two of them in place.

"Fi-" Yvian coughed. "Fine. I'm fine. It's just feedback from the implants." Lissa echoed her assurances. Scarrend hesitated, but gave a nod and let go. Yvian reoriented herself and took a look around the hangar bay.

The hangar bay was a large open space made of the same crystalline structure as the rest of the ship. There were several holes in the walls, and a two hundred meter section of empty void that used to be bulkhead. Chunks of debris floated freely in a mass at one end of the bay. The Hunters had been forced to chase down the jagged shrapnel and arrest its momentum to prevent further damage to the ship. There was less of it than Yvian expected. She supposed most of it had been either jettisoned in the explosion or ricocheted its way out through the empty space that used to be the ship's hull.

There were a dozen Vrrl waiting in the bay. Ten of them wore the black armor of the lower Hssts, but two were in red. They pinged the group's comm, forming up around them as a guard detail. Yvian gave them a nod and a wave before asking, "Can you take us to the bridge?"

"Yes." One of the red armored Vrrl took the lead, using her jetpack to maneuver towards a ramp. The last time she'd been here the ship had artificial gravity. The loss of it wasn't a good sign. "Follow."

They made their way through the ship. Instead of stairs or ladders, ramps seemed to be the Lucendian's preferred method of moving from deck to deck. The lead Vrrl kept a brisk pace, their jetpacks propelling just a little faster than Yvian could run. Cracked bulkheads and damaged crystal sped by until Yvian reached the center of the top of the ship.

The bridge of the Crystal Mother had featured heavily in Yvian's nightmares for a few months. And sometimes even now. The room was a nine sided pyramid, with another, smaller nine sided pyramid in its center. Blue light usually pulsed from the smaller pyramid to the point at the top of the room. It was not doing so now.

In front of each side of the smaller pyramid was a chair. The chairs used to contain bodies, but they'd been removed by the humans like everything else. In front of each chair protruded a Node attached to the smaller pyramid. Or at least, they used to. Four of the nodes were missing. Scarred crystal marked the places where they had been removed.

Yvian's headache increased slightly. The Mother's pain was stronger here. It was distracting enough she almost didn't notice the other people in the room. Nine hulking Vrrl in black armor. Four humans. The humans wore white voidsuits. Ordinary voidsuits, as far as Yvian could tell. It certainly didn't look like the lethal armor Yvian herself wore. The humans were bound hand and foot, with a heavy cable linking the two pairs of restraints.

Upon seeing Yvian, one of the humans tried to step forward. One of the Vrrl restrained her, transmitting a growl through his comm. Yvian ignored the humans and their guards. She walked to the pyramid and stood in front of a yellow control Node.

"Don't interfere," she told everyone. "No matter what you see." She pointed at Lissa. "And you stay out. You're not experienced enough to deal with something like this."

"Neither are you," said Lissa. "No promises."

"Just trust me, alright?" Yvian pressed. "I've got this."

"No promises," Lissa repeated. Yvian sighed into the comms, then turned them off. She reached out and touched the Node.

Pain. Mindwrenching pain. As Yvian's awareness expanded through the Lucendian ship, the hurt the Mother suffered exploded into her. Yvian was no stranger to pain. She'd fractured bones. She'd lost limbs. She'd been burned and beaten and shot. She'd had her insides torn open by sapient predators. This pain eclipsed all of it. If felt like someone had ripped away a third of her body, then spent some quality time slicing and burning and beating the rest of her.

Dimly, Yvian felt her body spasming. She'd taken the precaution of muting her comm before she touched the node, so at least no one could hear her scream. She'd known it would hurt. She'd braced for it as best she could. It wasn't enough. Her mind shied away. She wanted to run, to break the connection, to escape the horror and the suffering that was the Mother's body. It was so much worse than she could have imagined.

Her heart stopped. She felt herself go slack. She was dying. Yvian panicked. It was time to go. As she prepared to withdraw her mind, a wave of terror struck her. The fear wasn't hers. The Crystal Mother had noticed the touch of another soul.

The soul of the Lucendian ship clung to Yvian, screaming and crying and desperate for comfort. Yvian was about to tell her that she didn't have comfort to give, that she had to go, when she felt a jolt. Her heart was beating again. Her voidarmor was acting as life support.

Trusting the armor to keep her alive, Yvian pushed deeper. She cradled the Lucendian soul, giving the emotional equivalent of a hug, telling her that everything was alright. She didn't bother trying to speak Lucendian. The soul of the ship was smarter than a grib, but not fully sapient. The words Yvian used wouldn't matter. It was the feeling behind them the ship would understand.

The pain didn't lessen so much as become more distant. Yvian could still feel the ship much the way she could feel her own body, but it was becoming a far away thing. The Crystal Mother pulled her further in, showering her with feelings and memories, showing the horrors inflicted upon her by the humans. Yvian couldn't follow most of it, but that didn't matter. The ship didn't need her to understand, or to fix anything. The Mother just wanted her to listen.

Another mind pressed in. Lissa. Her sister's soul recoiled just as Yvian's had. This time the fear Yvian felt was her own. Lissa didn't know how to navigate the soulscape of a Lucendian ship. She would be trapped in the surface level. Even if her suit kept her alive, that much pain could break her mind if she couldn't get past it.

Yvian tried to swim up, to pull Lissa down to her. The Lucendian ship stopped her. The Crystal Mother reached out instead, pushing Lissa out of the soulscape and breaking the connection. After a brief struggle, the ship allowed Yvian to pull back into her body just enough to turn her comms back on. "Stay out Sis. I got this." She barely got the words out before the Mother pulled her down again.

Yvian didn't know how long the Mother told her story. She wouldn't remember most of it. Just flashes here and there. The Vore planet. A control node being severed. Souls dying inside of her. The murder of the Guardians. A human in a voidsuit, crying. Blingy and Skygem. More children, stolen by humans. Lucendians fighting Xill. Yvian listened, whispering words of comfort. It was all she could do.

When the crystal ship finally, finally started to slow down, Yvian dared to ask a question. Not one of the questions she was supposed to ask. Yvian was supposed to find out how hurt the ship was and if she could survive another jump. Instead, she asked the ship her name. It took a few tries, but eventually the ship understood the question enough to show her what the Lucendians had called her. The Lucendian language was a complicated system of clicks and whistles, but Yvian had learned enough of it to know the ship was called The Last Hope of the Ones Who Were Betrayed.

"The Last Hope," Yvian said aloud. She told her own name to the ship, still hugging with her soul. Last Hope hugged back. She was still in terrible pain, but the panic and despair had faded. The ship had been alone and desperate for centuries before the humans took her. Now, at last, she wasn't alone.

Yvian stayed just a little longer. Long enough to learn what she needed. Long enough to lead the Last Hope deeper, to set the crystal ship to rest in the soulscape, as far from the pain as Yvian could take her.

When she finally let go of the Node, a litany of warnings were waiting in her HUD. Her heart had stopped several times. Several of her bones were broken, and her body was littered with muscle tears. INJURY STABILIZATION and EMERGENCY MOBILITY protocols were active. The armor warned of potential brain damage and suggested immediate medical attention.

"How long was I out?" Yvian asked.

"Six hours," said Scarrend. The Vrrl was resting on his haunches a meter away. "Lissa warned us that severing the connection could kill you."

"It might have," Yvian admitted.

"You had us worried, there, Sis." Lissa came up and gave Yvian a hug. "What The Crunch was all of that?"

"A story that can wait," said Scarrend. "The pixen needs medical attention."

"In a minute," Yvian waved him off. "Something we gotta deal with, first." She turned to the humans floating in a clump surrounded by Vrrl. "Who are you?"

"My name is-" one of the humans began.

"They're scientists," Lissa answered for them. "One of the lead research teams." Yvian raised an eyebrow. Lissa couldn't see it through Yvian's helmet, but she recognized it just as Yvian recognized the dubious look she replied with. "Six hours, remember? We've had plenty of time to talk."

"They were the team tasked with communicating with this ship," Scarrend informed Yvian. "When the human admiral set explosives, they snuck aboard and attempted to disarm them. The final bomb killed the leader."

"They've given us useful information and all the research they could steal on their way out," Lissa continued. "In return, they want asylum in the Pixen Technocracy."

Yvian nodded slowly. Scientists turned turncoat. Odd. She looked at the woman who'd tried to speak and asked, "Why?"

"We had no choice." The woman sounded tired. "That asshole Admiral Hayes was trying to get you eaten by the Vore. If he succeeded, they would have acquired jumpdrive technology." She shook her head. "Our jobs are not worth sacrificing all life in the galaxy. Even our lives aren't worth that." She cocked her head. "Though I'd like to still keep those things if we can."

Yvian nodded again, then turned to Lissa. "What do you think?"

"We've got a split vote," Lissa told her. "Scarrend and I want them dead. Mims and the Warmaster think they could be of use. Kilroy doesn't care."

"So it's up to me, then." Yvian looked the scientists over. They didn't look like monsters. They looked like scared civilians. Yvian knew better. She'd just spent hours feeling the pain humans had inflicted on Last Hope. These people may or may not have done those things themselves, but they were part of the program that did.

"You tried to save us," Yvian told them. "You failed, but you tried. More importantly, you did save the Last Hope. For that you have my thanks." The woman looked like she was going to speak again. Yvian pointed at her. "You were also part of a program that tortured a sentient being for months, and stole at least one of her children."

"Worse than that, actually," Scarrend rumbled. "The humans found a way to force the ship to breed. The progeny are the prime component of the anti-tech weapon they used at Tenril station."

Yvian blinked. Even humans wouldn't... Would they? "You mean they forced her to give birth."

"Yes."

"And they weaponized the babies?"

"Yes."

"Bright fucking Lady." Yvian couldn't really feel her body right now, but if she could she was sure she'd be nauseous.

"We had no part in that," the scientist insisted. "We tried to stop-"

"Shut. Up." Yvian didn't raise her voice, but the woman flinched as if she'd been slapped. "You're monsters. All of you. Monsters." She took a breath and centered herself. "But you did save the Hope. That deserves something." She drew her pistol. "I won't make you suffer like she suffered."

Yvian raised the pistol. AIMASSIST centered the sights on the forehead of the woman. A spike of anxiety stopped her just before she pulled the trigger. What The Crunch?

Yvian lowered the weapon. The anxiety faded. She raised it again. Fear. She lowered it. "Huh."

"If you're going to shoot me, just do it," the scientist spat. "I won't be toyed with."

"I'm not." Yvian holstered the gun. As angry as she was, she wouldn't hurt the Hope by killing these people. The ship had had enough trauma already. "Apparently you get to live."

A brief pause. "What?"

"The ship," Lissa told her. "The ship doesn't want us to kill you."

"What?" The woman tilted her head.

"You heard her," said Yvian. "The Last Hope of the Ones Who Were Betrayed wants you alive."

"Oh." The woman let out a shuddering breath. "So what happens now?"

Yvian shared a look with Lissa and Scarrend. "I don't know." She patted the pyramid that housed the Hope's control nodes. "The Hope can survive another jump if she has to, but it will be a lot more comfortable if we give her a few days to heal first. And I need to get to a med pod."

"I think we'll put you on the Random Encounter for now," Lissa decided. "Mims and Kilroy can keep an eye on you while we decide what to do."

"Mims? The Kinslayer?" One of the other scientists spoke. A male with a nasally voice. "He's really here? I thought that was just a rumor."

"How could you work with someone like that?" Another human wondered. Female, this time. "He's a monster."

Yvian gave the humans a withering look. "You forcibly impregnated someone and turned her baby into a gun."

"The only monsters here," Scarrend's voice dripped with contempt, "Are you."