String Theory_ Fusion (Book 2) - Kirsten Beyer [1]
But Klyrrhea had never been asked to witness the senseless death of her people in a matter of days. She hadn’t been forced to watch the fear and anguish in the eyes of their loved ones, as the first of her brothers and sisters who had explored the city had succumbed to the slow, wrenching death that those creatures had inflicted upon them. She had not stood by, helpless as they fell, one after another, silently infected by the parasites. These instinct-driven, nonsentient life-forms should have died out centuries ago, when their makers or keepers had abandoned this place she had mistaken for the promised city of Gremadia.
But the parasites had been only the first assault her people had faced. As the nightmarish days had passed, another threat had made its presence known to her and the few who managed to avoid infection. They were invisible, but their presence was powerful and terrifying. Their chaotic thoughts and feelings, inarticulate and constant, reverberated within the part of her mind that had been reserved for the unique and sanctified connection between the rih-hara-tan and her tribe. Her people knew this connection intimately. They experienced it within the safety of their hara. What separated a rih-hara-tan from any other Monorhan was the ability to extend that connection to include the entirety of her people. This made her mind more vulnerable than her children to the frightful intense need of the invisible presence.
She had attempted once to open herself up to the presence, in hope that some form of communication might be possible. But that first attempt had been such a brutal and violent sullying of the most sacred spaces of her mind that she had abandoned all thought of the presence or its needs. That door within her mind was shut and sealed. But there was still the vulnerability of her body to the inevitable and inexorable approach of the parasites that remained.
My rih? Naviim’s thoughts interrupted her own…. danger… She did not hear the rapid patter of his lower tongue muscle against his palate, but the vibration entered her mind at the exact same second as his greeting. He is terrified, she realized, almost tasting his fear.
I am here… her mind answered, as she did her best to distance herself from his terror, knowing as she did so that he did not deserve the brusqueness of her tone.
They have breached the inner hull at deck nine, section twenty-one, he began, the feelings interwoven among his words threatening to drown her in a surge of cascading waves of anger and fear.
“Enough,” she barked aloud, silencing him. She knew his last memory of her, proximate mother of every member of the Fourteenth Tribe, would be of an impatient, brisk crone, but she didn’t care. If she could trade her name and reputation, the way in which she would be remembered for all eternity, for even a fraction of the numbers of her children already dead, she would gladly have given her own life in peace.
There was no more time for pleasantries. No more time for pride. There was only this one desperate chance that she could transfer her consciousness into her ship’s organic circuitry. The telepathic gifts of her tribe had been tested in the past, though she was certain a transfer had never been attempted, let alone completed between a living, breathing Monorhan and an organic construct like the Betasis. She knew it was risky. But she also knew it was possible. To succeed, she would first have to recall the wisdom of the ancient schools she had been raised in from infancy to completely separate her mind from her body. It required absolute peace and internal harmony. And it would be shattered completely if she had to hear one more time about what “they” were doing to her ship.
Secure the memory core and get to your preservation pod, she demanded of Naviim, careful to add as much… peace… and… safety… as she could to her thoughts. And then she was