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“We can >. This one is willing to stay > to satisfy your mutual desires for >, if you will but save the other >”
Ceph was awed by this reveal—but not horrified. “It is still a child. I can tell,” he said, sending it to me on our ’qa.
“I know,” I said, kicking forward to put it back into its chamber. “And too young to volunteer for anything.” I bit my lips, watching the glass close and become opaque again. I couldn’t help but feel like I was sealing away the only chance he and I would have for offspring.
Because there’d been a moment when I’d been holding it, when it’d felt so right.
So real.
“Elle,” he said, his voice low, reaching for me, thinking the same thoughts. He pulled me into his arms and held me close. “I am sorry.”
“I know,” I said, nodding into his chest.
One of his tentacles pushed my chin up so I was looking at him. It slid up my cheek, to catch an errant tear from my eye before it joined all the other water.
“We have nothing else to >,” the ship began, interrupting our moment.
“That’s okay,” I said.
“My mate is right. Of course we’ll help you.” Ceph swam us forward to touch the outside of the glass briefly, before returning his attention to the ’qa. “How long do you have? And what do you need, precisely?”
It took a lot of thinking for the three of us to understand one another. The ship was convinced it only had one day before the >.
“Why did you let us sleep, then?” My life would’ve been a whole lot easier if I didn’t have to rely on Marcus or Donna to operate my cable—what if once I returned the habitat, they didn’t want to help me come back out?
I could sense the ship’s frustration. “We couldn’t > you. If your minds > like the others, everything would be >”
I winced. I didn’t want to think about Haberman’s mind “exploding” but here we were, and after the ship had first slammed knowledge home inside mine, if I hadn’t had the ’qa and Ceph to balance against, I could see how it could happen.
I also had to sit still while the ship went through my mind and showed me what it thought would work—ALRI was powered geothermally, which meant its power was somewhat infinite. The problem would come in bringing enough of the power out for the spaceship—and that was what I realized had happened to the ROVs.
It hadn’t killed them; it’d drained them, looking for enough > to survive.
The ship had identified what it believed to a spare battery in my memories from walking through the engine room, even though I hadn’t realized what it was I was looking at, at the time.
“But even if she comes back with the habitat’s extra battery,” Ceph began, his confusion at how to merge my two-legged technology and alien technology coming through clearly on the ‘qa.
“We will >. But >. >>”
I put out a warning hand as things got sharp again inside my skull. “At least you’re polite. But for my sake—less yelling?”
“And how will she return?” Ceph asked, making my safety paramount.
I thought I felt the ship considering, then a wall in the back of the room opened up, revealing my pressure suit floating in it like a diver in a restaurant aquarium, with its cable now intact.
At seeing it, Ceph and I both paused.
I wasn’t ready to leave him yet.
“Nor I, you,” Ceph said, in response to my thoughts, as his tentacles wound around me.
“>” the ship thought at us—and I didn’t want it panicking.
I was strong. I’d been through worse before. I knew I would survive, but I flung myself against Cepharius, and he wrapped around me, both of us placing all of the contact we might never have again into that moment.
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” I thought at him, as he swam us closer to my suit.
“I know, my pearl. I know.”
