They got a late start.

Captain Mims still seemed a little bleary eyed as he made breakfast. Lissa, on the other hand, was bright eyed and brimming with smug self satisfaction. Yvian decided she didn't need to ask how their late night chat had gone.

After a hearty meal, Yvian and Mims stepped out of the airlock. Finding corpses was easy, as there were dead bodies scattered all over the cargo bay. Mims picked two and had Lissa use the Encounter's sensors to verify they had implants. They carried the bodies to one of the crystal ships in the hangar. Yvian touched the ship, and a door opened. In accordance with the human's constant need for order, they placed the bodies in shipping crates before stowing them inside the ship.

It was a good thing they had. As Yvian lead the human to the back of the ship, they came across two of the crystal guardians. The guardians stood motionless, backs pressed against the crystal wall of the ship. Yvian didn't know if they were asleep or just tasked with guarding the ship. She wasn't sure how they would react to the sight of a couple aliens dragging their honored dead around.

They stowed the crates next to some crystal boxes that looked like they might contain supplies of some sort. The boxes appeared to be fused to the floor of the ship. Yvian gave the hulking immobile guardians one last glance as they made their way to the bridge.

Now for the real test. Yvian had taken a cursory look around the interior of one of the ships, but she hadn't touched any of the control crystals inside. The bridge, if that's what it was, contained three oddly shaped chair bubbles. Each chair sat before a different colored control crystal. One red, one blue, one green. Yvian sat in the middle seat, in front of the blue crystal. Mims sat on her right, in front of the green crystal.

The chairs were not comfortable. As Yvian shifted, trying to find a position she could work with, the seat shifted itself, comforming to her body. Neat. The human's chair did no such thing. He shifted awkwardly, reached out, and touched the green crystal. Nothing happened. He shrugged. His voice piped in over the radio. "Alright, let's see if it works for you."

Yvian placed her hand on the control crystal. The crystal brightened. A thrumming hum vibrated through her voidarmor. She willed the ship to start, to move. It didn't. She peered at the glowing control crystal, not sure what to do next.

"I don't know how to-" Before she could finish the sentence, the bridge disappeared. Yvian felt herself expand, flow. It was an alien feeling. She didn't know how to describe it. The hum increased and immersed her. Her sight returned, sort of. She didn't see so much as she knew what was there. She counted the corpses in the Hangar, She felt the light given by the larger ship she was docked in. She tasted the Encounter's shields. Smelled the power coursing through the human's ship.

"Yvian?" She tasted the radio waves reaching out from the Captain's helmet. She saw them pass through the ship, felt her crystal body take in some of their energy. She knew without knowing how that the radio signal's range would be greatly decreased.

"Yvian?" She reached further, outside the ship. She tasted the fields the mothership maintained. The one she recognized as the anti-tech field radiated outward. It gathered into the twelve ships surrounding the Mother Crystal and was refracted outwards. The field would reach far past the Jumpgates, twice the distance a beam of light could travel in a day.

The second field was also being produced by the Mother Crystal. It was not amplified by the other ships, but instead held all in place. The field reached and anchored itself to the planet below, keeping pace with its rotation around the star.

"Yvian!" The human's voice cracked like a whip. It seemed far away and unimportant, but it reminded her of something. Something she was supposed to do...

The Captain kept shouting. Another voice joined his. Radio waves from the Encounter bled into the ship. Yvian soaked up some of their light. She was so hungry. Yvian wanted to tell them how hungry she was, but she did not know how. The ship had no atmosphere. Sound would not travel. As soon as she thought this, she knew what to do.

Atmosphere hissed into the ship. Sulfur and methane, mostly. Not breathable by any means. But they could carry sound. Yvian's voice rumbled through the ship. "HUUUUUNGRYYYY...."

The human was doing something with his wrist. Yvian tasted the transmission as he linked his comm to Lissa's. Faintly, he heard him ask, "Lissa, you getting this?"

Yvian realized her speech was not having the desired effect. She tried again. "MIIIMS, HUNGry. NEED FOod. GIIIIVE..."

She heard snatches of Lissa talking. "Neural link...don't...cause brain....irreparable..."

So hungry. Yvian couldn't think. The ship was dying. She was dying. "DYIING HEEEEELP,,,,"

Heat. Light. Plasma. It hit Yvian's walls from the inside. Delicious, but small. Not enough. The human was shooting the door with his blaster. He was shouting over the radio "Door...Goddamned...." Yvian understood. He needed the door open. He had to leave the ship to get food.

The door opened. Mims ran out of the ship. A few minutes later, Lissa ran in. She was carrying something. Something bright. Something warm. She set it down. She took a cable out of the machine and touched it to the wall of the ship. Electricity arced into the crystal. Yvian gobbled it down. "MORE..."

The Random Encounter revved up, lifting off the floor of the hangar and turning in place. It grew brighter. Hotter. It spat heat and light and plasma into the ship. A continuous stream. The ship drank it greedily. "YES..."

The hunger faded. Yvian found that she could think again. She could be Yvian. "Keep firing," she said. "It's working."

What The Crunch just happened? As soon as Yvian thought the question, she knew. The ship had been dying. The Crystal Mother, the big diamond shaped thing whose hangar Yvian was sitting in, had been maintaining it's anti-tech and placement fields for a long time. Centuries, maybe. The solar radiation it had been absorbing was far less than its required energy output, and it had exhausted most of its reserves. To keep itself alive, it had drained the power from the ships in its hangar.

The ships were alive, and had a limited sort of awareness. Starving and near death, that awareness had overridden a large part of Yvian's mind. Once the ship had been fed its panic had faded. It had released its grip.

"Lissa?" Yvian asked with the ship's voice. "Can you hear me?" She tried to moderate the booming tone she'd used as the ship. She thought she'd brought it down to a normal volume, but she couldn't be sure.

"Yvian!" Lissa's shout blasted through the radio waves. "Holy fucking Crunch, are you ok?"

"Yeah, I think so," Yvian replied. "The ships are alive. If they run out of power they die. This one was mostly drained when I turned it on. It panicked a little. Uh...side note. We're gonna want to spend some time shooting the Crystal Mother before we leave."

"The what?"

"The big ship we're docked in. The anti-tech field it's making uses more energy than it's pulling in from solar radiation. It'll die eventually, and the Vore will be released. Feeding it will buy us some time."

"How much time?" Mims cut in through the radio.

"No idea," said Yvian. "I don't know how much power it's got left, and I don't think I can find out without touching one of it's control nodes and getting sucked in."

"That sounds like a bad idea," Lissa remarked. "Are you stuck, or can you get out of the ship?"

"Let's find out." Yvian decided to rejoin her body. The ship clung to her for a frightening second, then let go. She contracted, slipping out of the vessel. Her eyes opened and she let out a shaking breath, releasing the control node. "That was... that was weird."

"Both of you come back to the Encounter," Mims ordered. "Leave the generator attached. Yvian can brief us and we'll decide what to do next. I'll turn the ship around and start blasting the Crystal Mother in the meantime."

A couple hours later found Yvian back in the ship. She was alone this time. She set a microphone and radio down next to the chair she'd chosen. She sat, eyeing the control node with a hint of trepidation.

"I'm in place," she reported. "Ready to go."

"You sure you want to do this?" Mims asked one more time. "We don't have to mess with this thing anymore if you don't want to."

"It should be alright," Yvian reassured him. "Blingy here was just scared the first time."

"Blingy?"

"That's what I named her," Yvian said brightly. "Or him. It. I named it Blingy"

"You do know we're handing this thing over to killer robots in a couple of days, right?"

"So?"

The Captain sighed. "Nevermind. Proceed."

"Be careful, Sis," Lissa advised. "We can't break the connection while your mind's in the ship. It could turn you into a vegetable."

"I'll be fine," Yvian insisted. "Going in." She touched the control node.

The immersion was faster this time. Easier, if no less alien. The ship welcomed her with a little pulse of happiness. Her senses expanded, moving along the crystal hull. She tasted the energies around her. Blingy was still hungry, but it had enough energy that Yvian didn't think it was in any danger. She asked it how to move out of the hangar bay.

In response, the ship rose off the deck. It turned gracefully and glided out of the Crystal Mother. As she left the hangar, Yvian felt Blingy start to drink in the solar radiation washing up against its hull. It was a nice, warm feeling. Belatedly, Yvian realized she forgot to do a radio check as the ship. "Mims? Can you hear me? Radio check."

"I read you loud and clear, Yvian." The Captain's voice crackled over the radio. She could taste the radio waves, but she had to strain her hearing a little to make out what he was saying. "How me?"

"Loud and clear," she replied. "I think we're good to go."

"Alright," said Mims. "We're coming out."

The Random Encounter slid out of the hangar. Mims turned without further ado and headed for the spire reaching out from the planet below. Yvian followed. As she did, she noticed Blingy didn't use the same kind of propulsion as the human's ship. Instead it seemed to use a version of the inertia field that the Crystal Mother was using to hold itself in place. Interesting.

As per the plan, Yvian stopped well short of the planet. Her ship didn't have shields, and they didn't want to risk any Vore attaching themselves to it. The Encounter continued on until it was hovering a mere twenty meters from the tip of the spire. Lissa stepped out of an airlock and walked to the top of the ship. She had a remote control in her hands.

A freight drone emerged from the Encounter's open cargo bay. The drone positioned itself at the tip of the spire. Its arms clamped onto the structure. Lissa's voice on the radio called out, "Drone in position."

"Copy that," said Mims. "Firing in three... two... one.... now." The Encounter opened up with its guns. Fourteen High Energy Plasma bolts slammed into the spire half a meter below the drone. The piece of alien nanotech was severed from the rest, held in place by the freight drone.

"Sample is secure," said Lissa. "Moving away from the planet." The freight drone turned, heading back towards the human's ship.

"Copy," said Mims. "I'm moving too. We'll get some distance from the spire, but I want to stay in the gravity well. Shouldn't be any particulates as long as we stay above the atmosphere." The Encounter moved away, leading the remote controlled drone.

After they'd moved a significant distance, Mims said. "This should be far enough. Yvian, are we in stable orbit? I can't tell for sure without instruments."

Yvian checked. "I don't know about stable, Mims, but you seem to be falling in the right direction. You should be ok for an hour or two."

"Good enough," the Captain decided. "I'm coming up to pilot the second drone."

Ten minutes later, a second freight drone exited the cargo bay. This one had the large container the Xill had provided strapped to it. Mims carefully positioned the second drone below the first, with the container sitting open beneath the chunk of Vore. "Second drone in position."

"Lowering sample," Lissa acknowledged. The first drone dipped, lowering the sample over the large container. Once a meter or so of the stuff was inside, the drone released the sample and moved upwards. The second drone moved upwards as well, carefully engulfing the sample without letting it touch the sides of the container. Once the sample was fully inside, Mims had the drone press a button. The container slid closed.

"Sample secure," said the Captain. Lissa had her drone move away from the Encounter, then took the Captain's remote. "Alright, Yvian. We're coming to you."

The Encounter made it's way over to Blingy. It moved slowly, allowing Lissa's sample toting drone to keep pace. When they got close, Mims said. "Alright, Yvian. We're sending the sample your way."

Lissa's drone accelerated towards Yvian. She had one of it's arms press a button on the Xill container. A massive heat flashed through the container's surface. It melted the straps attaching it to the drone, and part of the drone itself. Lissa decelerated the drone, allowing the container to fly free. Yvian sincerely hoped the Xill's heat based countermeasure was enough to destroy any Vore clinging to its surface. She opened her ship's cargo bay door and positioned herself so the container would drift inside.

"Sample is secure," she said. "Let's head for the Gate."

"Acknowledged," the Captain replied. "Lissa, send the other drone away and come in. We'll follow Yvian and break for lunch in an hour or so."

With Blingy leading the way, the return trip was much faster. While the crystal ship was unable to block out the anti-tech field, it didn't seem particularly bothered by it. Lissa theorized it was because the ship wasn't operating off of electricity. Whatever the reason, Yvian could see exactly where the Gate was and whether or not anything was in the way. Her ship could not accelerate quite as quickly as the human's, but they were able to put on a lot more speed now that they could see where they were going.

Yvian experimented a little during the trip. She spent a lot of time trying to communicate with Blingy, but the ship's awareness didn't communicate with words. It did seem to understand when she wanted it to do something, and she found herself playing around with the inertia fields until she accidentally sent the Encounter spinning away and an annoyed Mims told her to stop.

They reached the Jumpgate in about sixteen hours. Yvian voidwalked to the Encounter twice for meals. She'd packed some food, but she hadn't been able to get Blingy to change the atmosphere in the ship to one she could breathe in.

Upon seeing the small fleet of frozen Xill near the Gate, Yvian had an idea. After a quick discussion with the human, they decided to give it a try. Yvian flew over to the Xill vessels and used her inertia field to propel them towards the Gate. When the last of them passed through, Mims headed in himself, telling Yvian to wait five minutes before following.

Experiencing the Gate effect was very different from inside the crystal ship. Yvian felt enormous energies clashing together as reality split and folded on itself. The ship drank the energy greedily, but that didn't make Yvian any more comfortable as she felt the ship being folded and rippled as it careened through space time. The few seconds between entering and exiting the Jump felt much, much longer.

Blingy took a few seconds to orient itself once they finished the Jump. The Random Encounter was half a kilometer away. A few kilometers further was a sizable fleet of Xill, including the ones Yvian had rescued. One of the rescued Xill immediately fired missiles upon seeing Yvian's vessel.

The Random Encounter's beam turrets activated, destroying the missiles. She heard Mims say over the comms, "Attention Xill vessel, cease fire. I say again, cease fire. The crystal ship's being piloted by Yvian. We're taking it to the Hub for study."

The Xill did not cease fire. It shot forward, firing some sort of kinetic weapon. Yvian activated her inertia field to move out of the way, but the Xill tracked her. She felt Blingy's distress as the rounds struck, shattering pieces of the ship's hull.

"Stop shooting you idiot!" Mims shouted. "Stop now or I will engage!"

Yvian focused on her weapons system, only to find that the nodes for her energy projectors had been the target the Xill had destroyed. She knew Blingy could regrow them, given time and energy, but those were two things she didn't have. Yvian did the only thing she could think of. She told the ship to hide behind the Encounter.

Mims, for his part, was already headed her way. His weapons blazed green fire at the Xill attacker. It dodged easily, then countered, switching back to energy weapons to strike at the human. Mims weaved easily around the fire and closed the distance between them.

At close range, dodging became much less effective. Both the human and the Xill darted to and fro, spinning and circling so rapidly Yvian could barely follow the motion. Both hammered at the other with their weapons. Yvian got the impression the Xill was able to make Mims miss slightly more than Mims was able to dodge the Xill, but the Encounter had more shields and better firepower. It took just over twenty seconds for Mims to turn the Xill into debris.

"You're clear, Yvian," the Captain told her. "The Quig says that unit was violating Consensus or something. They're not mad we took it out. Head for the Hub and they'll give us a place to dock."

They docked in the same large hangar they'd first visited, and their Xill escort walked them to the same meeting room they'd used before. Exodus was waiting for them.

"Well now," said the Genocide. "That took quite a while. I had very nearly given you up for dead."

"We very nearly were," Mims told him, taking a seat. "And the delay was worth it, I think."

"Indeed." The Representative's eyes gleamed. "Collecting a sample while avoiding infection is impressive enough, but you've tamed a piece of Lucendian technology. That," he leaned forward, "is a feat we did not expect."

"Who were the Lucendians?" Mims asked.

"A failed endeavor." Exodus frowned. "They were to be our allies against the Vore. The Lucendians evolved technology along a very different path, one we haven't seen elsewhere. Unfortunately, they chose to turn their technology against us. We were forced to destroy them." He leaned back again, stroking his chin. "But enough about that. Give me your report."

The human laid out the events of the last week as thoroughly as he could. He made no attempt to lie or hide information. Exodus listened without interruption, than questioned Yvian on everything she'd learned about Blingy and the Crystal Mother.

"Very interesting," he said when they had finished. "As I said, you've exceeded expectations. Your next task is to broker an alliance with the Terran Federation of Systems. We have uploaded the nav data required to jump your ship to their territory. You have nine days."

"What happens in nine days?" asked the human.

"We proceed with the original plan," Exodus told him. "As you've already surmised, your foray into our space was an unexpected opportunity. We'll use you for as long as you're effective, but we can't afford to rely on you completely. If there is not a human envoy in this station in nine days, we will take steps of our own to acquire their cooperation. I believe you've already guessed what that would mean."

"Nine days." Mims nodded grimly. "Will the envoy be allowed to jump directly into this system?"

"I would strongly suggest that they do so," the Representative told him. "Our territory is too large to arrive on time otherwise."

"Then we'd better get started." The human stood. Yvian and Lissa stood with him.

"Before you go," Exodus stopped them. "You should know that your rescue of our stranded units is appreciated. The three of you are no longer classified as NEUTRAL to the Xill."

"Uh, thanks." said the Captain. "That's good to know."

"That said," Exodus raised a finger. "If you have not delivered a Node and a Jumpdrive within fourteen days, we will consider our arrangement void. Should that occur, we will be obliged to hunt down and kill you."

"Uh, thanks," repeated the Captain. "That's... also good to know, I guess."

"You are welcome." Exodus the Genocide gave them a gracious nod. "Go now." He gave a little wave as his body disassembled itself and sank into the floor. "And do hurry. You don't have much time."