Page 110 of Stripped By the Alien

Every instinct in my body wants to countermand myself, to tell him to give chase, to put every eye of the Beast on that speck and not look away until I have her back in my arms.

I could do it. I could throw away the Harvest, the Queen's trust, everything Sris just finished admiring me for, and go get her instead.

I don't.

I stand very still, and I let her go. Something in me understands that she was right to leave. She told me she couldn't watch me weigh her friend's life against four planets.

I stare at the speck as it grows smaller and smaller and then vanishes among the lights of the Gzet planets.

She left. She left alone.

And that means that she’s gone forever.

All the power leaves my body and I feel numb all over.

For the first time in my career, I don’t know which order to give.

32

One hour earlier

- Nora -

The passage the Beast has opened for us is nothing like the tunnels Krix'vorr and I crawled through to find the memory chamber. Those felt old and set. This one is raw. The walls are wet and unfinished, still faintly warm from having been grown only hours ago, and in places my hands sink into tissue that hasn't fully hardened yet.

"She made this just for us," Lucius says from behind me, his voice hushed in a way I've rarely heard from him. "I find that remarkable. I didn't know she could produce new structures this quickly."

"Or at all," I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.

“Oh, I knew she could,” the drone chirps. “She keeps changing herself and growing. But not nearly this fast.”

“It's very kind of her,” I reply, my mind full of other things as I slowly separate alien spaceship tissue so I can move through it.

“It's not from kindness,” Lucius tells me cheerfully. “She just wants to get rid of you. And when I suggested this, she was as enthusiastic as I've ever seen her.”

“How did you know this was possible, anyway?”

“I went through her memories, and I found one that was really strong - Krix'vorr allowing her to have a calf. So I asked her where the calf was now, and she proudly told me. The Beast and I are on quite a friendly basis now, Nora.”

“Okay.” I stop moving. Just for a second. Behind me, down the passage, is the way back — back to the cabin, back to the flower still sitting where I left it, back to a version of tonight where none of this happened yet. There's still time.

I don't move that way. I make myself keep crawling forward.

The passage opens into a chamber unlike anything else I've seen inside the Beast. It's small, compared to her. Small enough that I understand, all at once, exactly how big a thing I'm about to do.

The calf hangs in a cradle of tissue, and it isn't sleeping.

Its many eyes are set along a skull that must be a miniature echo of the Beast's own. They're open and moving, tracking me, tracking Lucius, tracking everything at once.

Its body is the size of a bus. It trembles, a low continuous shiver that I feel more than see, like a sprinter waiting for the starter's gun. It radiates something I have no trouble reading at all, alien as it is: eagerness. Pure, uncomplicated, straining-at-the leash eagerness, the kind I only remember from a few times in my life. Some very recent.

Three horns the size of lampposts protrude from the head, and I can see how they would be deadly weapons.

A black, hard-looking beak the size of a big traffic cone protrudes from the fur.

"Oh, this is wonderful," Lucius breathes, circling the creature in a tight, delighted loop. "Do you see the propulsion nodes? Already mature. She's been growing this for... Captain, this must have taken years."

I'm less enthusiastic about trusting my life to this thing. “Mhm. Can it fly? In space?”