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A fear of loss.
“Your is becoming .”
I didn’t think that was it; I thought it was the fact that Ceph’s presence was inside me, everywhere I turned, putting me back together just as fast as acknowledging that there was an alien presence trying to communicate with me was pulling me apart.
“> This is why I facilitated your Can you >?”
“What can you possibly need from us?” Ceph shouted.
“>”
The way it said it caught me off guard—it was with such unexpected passion and longing.
“Why?” I asked—and I was rocked by visions from a distant past.
There was a war going on, and an intelligent race was trapped between two different fighting species, neither of which it was even a part of. And when they realized their planet was going to be swept up in the conflict no matter what they did, they created spaceships to propagate their future.
Several hundred of these flew off into space, to meet at a distant destination, but this one was hit by debris.
The safety of its cargo was paramount, so it fixed itself, but in doing so used too much of its power to continue, which is why it hid itself here.
And what followed was three thousand impossibly frightened years of sending off beacons, asking for > before its power ran out.
Help that had never arrived—until now.
chapter 48
CEPHARIUS
Elle went limp in my arms.
I knew she was all right; I could feel her heartbeat and see her breathing, but her mind was quiet.
“Stop hurting her,” I whispered, shaking with frustration. I didn’t want to yell, I was afraid to strain our ’qa more than the ship’s intrusion was already doing—but if it hurt her and I lived, I would go back to Thalassamur, gather my kin, and we would raze this structure to the ground.
Then her eyelids fluttered open, and I felt her rejoining the ’qa more consciously. I saw the blood vessel the ship’s thoughts had burst in her eye again, and I delicately stroked over her with all of my tentacles, searching for any other damage.
“It’s so scared, Ceph,” she whispered, curling into a ball inside my arms, putting her hands to her head.
“Of what?” I thought to her, but she didn’t know.
I clasped her to my chest, ready to take on the entire ship if I had to, when the lights in the room we were in turned off, and the door to the next room opened.
“Come >. Please, > us. We will > you.”
I didn’t feel like I had any other choice. I moved forward, carrying Elle.
This new room was lit with the strange ambient light the others had been, just like I’d seen in it before returning and finding the one particular wavelength of light directing me to Elle.
She felt fragile against me—so unlike herself—was this what had happened to the other two-legged men?
“No,” the ship said. “We have tried to > many times. They . They were too to . > is .”
I got residual impressions of the difficulties it had had, trying to lure us closer, so that we were near it long enough to get a sense of our minds—the changing symbols, the colors, and then realizing that without Elle and I conjoining our ’qa, we would never be able to talk and understand it—it needed the space of my mind and the ’qa itself, but also Elle’s ability and willingness to make sense of what was happening to succeed.
If the fact that I wanted to mate Elle so badly had left her open for damage, I would never forgive myself.
“I’m fine, Ceph,” she whispered, answering my unspoken prayers. “I mean, as fine as anyone can be, when they’re talking to a spaceship,” she said, giving me a weak smile.
