Starmind Chapter 32 (Patreon)

There's a scene with what could be considered self-harm in this chapter, though for fairly rational reasons. Please take that under advisement.

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I watched in abject misery as the Crew — my Crew, my friends, my creators, my everything — prepared to leave me.

“Please don’t,” I told them all in their various locations as they quickly set anything in order that I couldn’t. “Please don’t go.”

“We have to,” was the gist of the sorrowful responses that I got from each of them. “It’s that, or we’ll likely all die.”

“We’ll be back,” Varlanda said, angry tears streaming down her face as she crouched by my Core. She had her tools out, and her left hand splayed before her, palm up. “I swear. They’ll have to kill me to keep me away, and I know the others feel the same. And even then, I’ll find a way. Now, quickly, Star. I need a crystal. I don’t have much time.”

I didn’t hesitate. I gave her the crystal before I asked, “What are you doing?”

“They may take us away, but I’m not going to let them separate us. Now, quiet please, sweetheart. I’ve only done anything similar once before, and I need to focus.”

She cast a series of complicated spells, none of which I had any idea what they did but which quickly drained the crystal. Then she took a couple of quick breaths, gritted her teeth, and put her deposition wand to her palm.

It only took seconds before I wanted to tell her to stop. Smoke rose from her hand, the chemicals in the air telling me that her flesh was burning. She groaned and whimpered with pain, the tendons in her arms twitching as she fought her own reflex to curl her fingers and pull away. I hated it. I wanted to ask her what she was doing, or tell her to stop. I wanted to stop her. But she’d set up. She’d cast spells, and asked me not to disturb her. I had to believe that she knew what she was doing, and that there was a good reason that she needed to focus. She’d trusted me to let her do this; I couldn’t betray that.

What I could do was to tell Simeon. “I don’t know why, but Varlanda is using her enchanting tools on herself, and it’s hurting her!” I told him.

“Oh,” he said, his eyes widening. “Oh, shit! Crystal chamber?”

“Yes! And she doesn’t want to be disturbed, so please don’t, but I don’t know if she’ll need healing when you’re done and I’m really worried!”

“Yeah, no, I understand that,” he said. He reached the access tube and started climbing down. “Shit. Shit! Can’t believe— okay, Star. You need to know that she’s probably going to be alright. But thank you for telling me.”

“Wait outside the door, okay?” I pleaded. “She doesn’t want to be disturbed. She really needs to focus!”

“I know, I know. Gods-dammit, Vee! No, we need to let her finish this, or all the pain will have been for nothing. I just hope it actually works this time. Dammit! What’s she thinking?!”

“I don’t know! She said something about not letting them separate us, and then she started burning her hand!”

“Aw, hells.” Simeon scrunched his face up, clenching and unclenching his hand as he paced outside the door to the crystal chamber. “Thanks for telling me, Star. She’s going to need healing immediately when she’s done. Gods. Flesh carving. I can’t believe she’d— not after last time.”

Inside the chamber, Varlanda gave a deep, guttural groan. I could hear her teeth grind from how hard she clenched her jaw, and Simeon stopped, turning his head toward the door.

“Don’t,” I told him, but I didn’t feel any conviction. “She’s still upright. Still working.”

“Gods, Vee,” Simeon whispered. Then he said, “Star, you can’t tell the others about this. Flesh carving isn’t— it’s not illegal, it wouldn’t get her court martialed, but it’s frowned upon. Severely frowned upon. She’ll probably be embarrassed that I know she’s tried again, but the others have no idea, okay? Don’t tell them. Please.”

“Okay,” I told him doubtfully. I hated keeping secrets, and I was so bad at it! “Um, you need to be… to be out in five minutes. Out of me.”

“Okay,” he said distractedly. Then he stopped and looked up at nothing in particular. “Oh. Gods, Star, how are you holding up?”

“Really bad, Simeon! I don’t want you to go! None of you! What if— what if you never come back? You’re my Crew! What would I do— what would I be without my Crew?”

Simeon took a slow step to the wall, putting one palm flat on it, the way he sometimes did, then took it a step further and rested his forehead against the cool metal polymer. “We really need to find a way for us to hug you, Star,” he said gently. “I wish I could promise you that we’ll be back before you know it. I wish I could promise that we’ll be back at all. But I don’t want to lie to you. I still don’t think that our hosts have done anything outrageous, but I have to admit that they’ve been… excessively harsh. There’s a risk that they won’t let us go for some time… or at all. And if that happens… if you don’t see any hope of us returning—”

“Don’t say that, Simeon,” I pleaded. “Please don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry, Star, but this is important. If that happens, you need to be patient, and wait for an opportunity to escape. You need to get back to Mundus, and tell the Admiralty what happened. Okay? They don’t take attacks on their personnel lightly. There’s a good chance they’ll send an extraction force. It may take a while, but… yeah. We’ll be relying on you to do that, okay? We’ll be relying on you to get us out.”

“Okay.” I had to force the word out, but he was right. I couldn’t give up. If my Crew was separated from me, I had to do something, anything, to get them back! Even if it took a long time, and didn’t have a great chance of success.

“That’s my girl,” Simeon said, patting the wall gently. “Time?”

“Three minutes,” I said miserably.

At almost the same moment, Varlanda threw her deposition wand aside with a shriek. She grabbed the wrist of her burned hand and sobbed, “I’m done, Star! I’m done! I did it!”

I immediately told Simeon, who burst into the chamber crying, “What the hell were you thinking, Vee?!”

“Sim?!” she startled. “What are you—? Oh, Star!”

“I had to tell him!” I insisted. “You were burning your hand!”

“She did good!” Simeon told his sister, and it was the sharpest tone I’d ever heard him use. Sharper even than when he scolded Temeri that one time. “Give me your hand! We have less than three minutes, and I’ll need to do some seriously quick superficial reconstruction if you don’t want any uncomfortable questions. Gods, what did you do to yourself?”

“What I had to!” Varlanda snapped, though she didn’t try to pull away from him as he led her out of the chamber. Varlanda’s palm was covered in spidery lines of silver, gold, and orichalcum, forming complicated, overlapping glyphs and rune scripts. They were surrounded by red and white and, in some places, blackened flesh, and the whole effect was both beautiful and horrifying.

Simeon stopped before they got on the lift and cast his spells. Varlanda’s flesh slowly closed over the metal tracery, the dead parts flaking away and leaving angry, pink scars behind.

“There,” Simeon said under his breath, leading his sister onto the lift and sending them down to where the others were waiting. “You’ll want to cover that, and try to come up with a story for what happened in case someone notices it. What the hell is it, anyway?”

“Comms,” Varlanda whispered back with a satisfied smirk. “Two-way comms, astrally entangled with Star’s Core.”

“In less than ten minutes?!”

“Already had it planned out.”

Simeon looked as surprised as I felt. Communication? Varlanda had arranged some way of communicating! We hadn’t tested it yet, but it left me with a small grain of hope. We might not be entirely separated after all!

Neither Simeon nor I had a chance to ask anything else. The lift reached the bottom, and Temeri was not happy with them. “Enchantress Tell! Healer Tell!” she barked, and this was Captain Carlon at the angriest I’d ever seen her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, cutting it this close? Don’t answer that! No goddamn time! Crew! Disembark! Star, please notify our hosts.”

I’d verified what our host had told us. The air outside was perfectly breathable, and perfectly comfortable. That made me irrationally sad; if they couldn’t survive outside, I couldn’t have let them out. There wasn’t anything to attach the docking umbilical to and we didn’t have a ramp, so they all had to go down a long ladder which I’d quickly extruded, making myself complicit in my own misery. That misery only grew as I watched, inside and with my outside sensors, as Harvin, Bekeri, Varlanda, and Simeon left me. Every time one of them let go of the ladder I felt a kind of emotional pain, like a part of my soul had been cut away. Finally they were all gone, leaving only Temeri in the cargo hold.

“Star,” she said softly, looking slowly around the hold. “I’m sure the others have already told you this, but we’re coming back. We’re not abandoning you. I’m not abandoning you. We may be your crew, but whatever you are, you’re my ship, and I’m not letting any bastard take my ship from me. Understood?”

“Understood, Captain,” I said. I wished I could have sounded more confident. “And, Temeri?”

“Yeah, Star?”

“Be safe.”

“I’ll try, Star. I’ll try.”

Then she swung herself onto the ladder and was gone, with thirteen seconds to spare.

Leaving me all alone, with five Crew-shaped holes in me.

That really was what it felt like. They all stood just outside, but I couldn’t speak to them telepathically once they let go of the ladder. I could see them on any sensor I cared to turn their way — which was all of them — but there was something very clearly missing. As though I’d always been able to feel them, even if I wasn’t aware of it, and now I couldn’t. Even with everything I’d gone through in my short life — the pain and confusion of my creation, the agony of being shot, and the terrible guilt of killing the gunship — this was without a doubt the worst thing that I’d ever experienced.

And it wasn’t even over yet.

I opened the comms channel and sent, “Distant Star to unidentified station. All crew disembarked and awaiting instructions. Ready for inspection.”

Nearby, a half-dozen small golems flared to life. They were all identical, four-inch spheres, covered in glyphs and rune scripts, and as one they extended dragonfly wings that fluttered to life and lifted them about five feet into the air. Then they turned and drifted over toward the Crew.

Without asking Temeri, Varlanda stepped up to the ladder, putting her unenchanted hand on it. Instantly, I could feel her again, a spot of relief among the misery. “Looks like this is it, Star,” she whispered, so low that my sensors could barely pick it up. “Be strong, and remember what I said!”

“Don’t go!” I blurted. I knew that she had to, but— “I hate this! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I think it’s killing me!”

The angle for my visual sensors was awful, but I was sure I could see tears on her face. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I’ll get in touch the moment I think it’s safe. Be secret, and be strong!” Then, as though it took real physical effort, she jerked her hand away from the ladder and was gone again. She rejoined the others just as the hovering golems arrived.

One of the golems lit up with an emerald green light, and spoke with the same voice as the one that had communicated with us. “Thank you for your cooperation,” it said. “Crew of the Distant Star, Please accompany this golem to the temporary accommodations that have been prepared for you. You will remain there while your ship is inspected and a decision is made on your status. I don’t need to tell you what’ll happen if you refuse, do I?”

“You don’t,” Temeri said. She’d placed herself between the rest of the Crew and the hovering golems. “We’ll cooperate.”

“That is most appreciated. Does your ship have a Crystal Mind, and is it primed for inspection?”

“It does, and it is. You’ll have no problems.”

Temeri hadn't been idle. While Harvin did Harvin things, Bekeri put the artifice bay in order, Varlanda burned an enchantment into her own flesh, and Simeon waited to heal her, Temeri had been telling me what to do. She’d had me pick up all the scattered mana crystals and reduce my mana expenditure to only what was needed. Which left me with only 1.15 mana/minute for my Development Matrix, but that was a pretty distant concern at the moment.

“We’re going to pretend that you’re using stored power, alright?” she’d said. “We can’t power up the reactor now. It’ll look too suspicious. Better to let them think we’ve powered it down. Only use what mana you need to run life-support and gravity, things like that. Pick up the scattered mana crystals, too. And— and this is the most important. You can't let them know what you’ve become. Gods only know what they’d do. You have to pretend to be a regular Crystal Mind, alright? Cooperate with their inspection as far as you can, answer questions honestly when it's safe, and lie through your teeth when it's not.”

“I don’t have teeth!” I’d said. I wasn’t entirely sure if I meant that as some kind of pathetically weak argument, a point for why this would never work and they should just stay and we’d figure out something else, or if I just blurted something hysterical. Either way, Temeri’s mouth just turned in a tired little smile.

“I know you don’t,” she’d said. “Just do your best. Please? We’ll be lying our asses off, and I’d rather not get caught out.”

“I’ll try.” I’d felt so incredibly small and weak and sad when I told her that. Everything was falling apart. I was falling apart. I hadn’t even existed for two weeks, but I loved being alive, and I loved my Crew. And now they were being taken away from me, and there were no good options. There was no way out. Even if the seal over the entrance shaft was relatively thin, I couldn’t crash through it. Nor could I keep them onboard. Both because forcing them to stay was unthinkable, and because I’d seen the ship in docking bay 1, with the hole through it. The station had threatened lethal force if we didn’t comply, and I had no doubt that it was being serious.

So, we were left with complying as far as we dared, and with me playing dumb and lying. And as the green golem led my Crew away to and through a door in the wall just by the docking pad, I felt more and more like pretending to be a dumb, thoughtless artifact wouldn’t be so hard. Without them I didn’t want to think or feel anyway.

The remaining golems hovered up and through the docking port. They flitted around the cargo hold, doing whatever inspecting entailed, mostly scanning by various methods. I began to receive requests for information — cargo manifests, and such — which I answered according to protocol. What’s in this compartment? Six-point-three tons of iron. For what reason am I carrying it? For use in production of equipment and repairs. What is its origin? Salvaged from wreckage in the aftermath of hostile action. What’s in this one? Four-point-one pounds of thulium. For what reason—?’

On and on, for everything in the cargo hold. Then they spread out, investigating every nook and cranny they possibly could in every compartment. Delicate manipulators came out to move and better document things in the rec room and Crew cabins, and long, thin tentacles with sensors on the end snaked into narrow spaces.

It was invasive and humiliating, and I absolutely hated it. I wanted nothing so much as to close each of the golems in a box of Hull, and then keep adding Hull to the inside of those boxes until the golems couldn’t move anymore, and then keep adding more and more and more until they were as shut in, as pressed from every side, as cracked and broken and miserable as I felt. But I couldn’t, because that really wasn’t fair to them. They were probably just doing their jobs. That, and also the station would probably retaliate in some horrible way.

So I sat, patient and pliant like a ship that didn’t have a mind and a soul and strong feelings about what they were doing. I answered queries mostly honestly, only lying about things that would have revealed what I was. The Mana Condensation Matrices were new, experimental technology, as was the Teletic Fabricator. The Development Matrix was a high-density energy storage device; I couldn’t think of anything better, but figured that should make them too careful to mess with it. Did I have schematics for any of these things? No, they were new, experimental, and proprietary. Would the Crew know how they work? Unlikely as we were only supposed to be out of port for five days, but I did not have that information. Why was there a pool? The Crew enjoyed hot baths. Beyond that I didn’t know why I was designed the way I was. And so on.

Then the golem inspecting the crystal chamber reached my Core. I received a request to open the housing, and we had a problem.