Kite didn’t believe the news when Carey told her. She didn’t want to see the remains, and didn’t even come to the funeral. Darnell’s body had never been found, but from the marks on the craft they assumed he must have gone aboard the rogue Descendent.
The only comfort was that the body of a neural interface equipped captain had been found on the deck, most likely that of the rogue Descendent’s captain. It didn’t match the genetic markers of Darnell.
The media remained silent about the events.
–
–
The world was a blur to him. He couldn’t remember his name anymore, drowning in panic and rage. He hit Thanatos with his newly acquired koveran leeching skill, the pain reverberating across their neural link and transforming into a surge of twisted pleasure. Memories of Kite drove Thanatos onwards, following her scent across Zemorian space. Than anxiously awaited his meeting with Carey, his long lost love. The things he would do. If only he could remember where he knew Carey from. The ship had called him Than, but Than wasn’t sure if that was his name. The memories, while blurred, did not seem to be the memories of this Than. Perhaps these were the memories of one of his victims, someone he had eaten.
Either way, it be fitting that he hunt down this Kite and Carey, if only to make the death of his last victim absolute. He would enjoy experiencing their grief in memories as he and Thanatos feasted.
He came across his victim’s and Kite’s original breeding ground: A beautiful ring of gas by the fifth planet on Zemoria. It was bright here, and warm, with pleasurable memories, but the area was barren of Kite and Captain.
They moved on through the areas, masking their signatures as others neared, always shadows.
Shiva’s belt had proven interesting, the outpost there the spot of his victim’s and Kite’s first rendezvous, but there was no Kite or Captain here, either, only others who he had remembered encountering before, as friends and enemies. Ignoring them, he moved on.
He wondered if he should call out to her, see if she would respond, but his memories told him that her friends would come, too, and they wouldn’t like Thanatos at all.
During his search, he came across a Descendent couple, floating in a field of CKRO. They had floated there together for a long time with the koveran run-off. He could almost sense their affection for one another. A part of him hated it. He hungered. But something resisted. Something told him to move on, to ignore these two for the time being. He did not need the koverans yet. Thanatos still had strength.
Ignoring the couple, he carried on, farther into Zemorian space, but still outside the scan range of the defence grid: Zemoria’s final line of defence against invaders. Situated near the Zemorian home planet, he knew the defence grid was impregnable. He hoped Kite wasn’t there.
Her scent on the nodescape did not point in Zemoria’s direction, however, but it did point deeper than they were here. He continued on.
It was after a day of travel, when his koveran reserves were low and both he and Thanatos hungered for the life blood of others, that he finally encountered the powerful smell of his love. Thanatos lit up with expectation, shooting onwards towards the scent.
There she was. Asleep in deep space.
A somnolent sensor ping washed over them, and Kite slowly woke.
Longing overcame Than. He pushed Thanatos forward, but was unable to make contact with the other ship, his mind blocking the commands needed to grab.
Memories of times with Kite and Carey overwhelmed him, and both he and Thanatos cried out in anguish.
–
Kite was terrified, frozen in fear as the rogue Descendent loomed over her, crying out in agony. She was afraid to call for help, afraid of how the Descendent would respond.
A part of her pitied the ship, having lost its captain. She could sense its mental turmoil across the beemspace band.
“Are you okay?” she asked, trying to mask the tremor in her transmission.
The Descendent’s hull reddened at the sound. It seemed happy, but was unable to reply intelligibly, keeping a steady distance separation of five hundred meters between them.
Its hull was nearly a pitch black, with scar tissue giving a good portion of the craft a light red hue. There were spurs growing out of the ship’s hull, blood-stained from countless attacks. The vee-shaped optical strip at the head of the ship had portions missing, but the sensor signal trained on her was strong. It scanned her deeply, and finally moved closer.
At two hundred meters separation, Kite prepared a gravimetric shockwave on her redundant terminals, the energy build-up noticeable as a bright white line traveling across her beemveins.
This hadn’t been the right decision. Enraged, the Descendent charged the final few hundred meters, ramming into her with all its might. Her gravimetric lens was destroyed from the sudden impact, and she struggled to re-activate it so that she could win some distance and flee.
It pushed her against its ventral side with an impermeable magnetic grab, and forced a bond.
It was Carey that cried out in surprise the loudest over the bond, “Darnell!” she yelled in tears.
The name stunned the Descendent, it stopped draining koveran energy from its victim, balancing the koveran levels like a normal bond would. It didn’t seem to flinch from the phantom signals generated by the extra terminals. The phantom signal of the AHC made Kite long for Wings even more.
Memories of Wings and Darnell were thrown across the beemspace bond, absorbed by the rogue Descendent and its captain.
“Carey!” Darnell exclaimed over the beemspace band.
“It’s me! You’re alive!” ecstatic, she ran for the shuttle bay.
–
“I barely remembered anything until the bond.” Darnell said, scratching his head. “I missed this lounge. It’s good to see you again.”
Darnell had stopped the bond Thanatos had started with Kite, and Thanatos obeyed unconditionally, not having said another word as it eyed his captain’s progress through the neural interface.
Carey hugged Darnell again, tears flowing. “I’m so sorry about Wings.”
“Precious Wings.” Darnell muttered, “I did love him. But Thanatos is a tortured soul; he needs guidance as well.”
“Thanatos is his name?”
“Yes. He’s spent his entire life a victim of this symbiote; even now it drives us on, begging us to feed.”
“To feed?”
“It needs koveran energy to survive.”
“How are you going to get this koveran energy then?” Carey asked.
“I don’t know. With my memories back, I don’t really know what to do next.”
“What if you starve it? Will you die? We don’t have to starve it if you’ll die.” Carey said, squeezing Darnell.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t even know if I’ll stay this sane. I think I will. I need to get help.”
“We’ll get Rahjaad. He can fix this; he can fix anything.”
–
Rahjaad wasn’t that difficult to find. The moment they were within Zemoria’s defence field, Rahjaad had appeared in Kite’s lounge. He scanned Darnell intently. “Hmm, fascinating. The symbiote has regressed. It is much weaker than it was before. Your recovery must have weakened it considerably. The Galactic Council is not allowing Thanatos docking privileges due to his potentially unstable nature, so I will have to do my tests here, at the corner of the defence grid. The third fleet has already cordoned off this area.”
Rahjaad wasn’t sure how Thanatos’ mind and body had survived all these years. The neural plexus would need several months of healing to even get the ship on the path to recovery, and his body had been heavily mutated and modified by koveran poisoning and excessive use of Tier Zero.
Thanatos was calm, but even this close to Zemoria he was still losing koverans, the symbiote drawing energy from him steadily, weakening him after realizing the Descendent was no longer aiding it in acquiring others’ energy.
It was that morning that Rahjaad had secretly administered the antidote during breakfast. The link with the symbiote was severed before it could kill its host. It undoubtedly retreated into the beemspace band, ready to attack another unsuspecting beems. Rahjaad ensured this area would be off limits indefinitely.
The antidote had severely damaged what was left of Thanatos’ neural plexus. He would be unconscious for a long time.
But Darnell would wait. Thanatos had suffered the most of them all, but he had hundreds of years of life ahead of him, and him giving the ship its life back would be a fine blow against the symbiote, and would be what Wings wanted…
His own physical recovery only took a week, with indefinite monitoring. Rahjaad had a tendency to appear out of nowhere to check him, regardless of where they flew off to aboard Kite.
Kite was quiet, and had regressed to her old ship self. They weren’t sure if she would ever fully recover from Wings’ loss. Darnell wasn’t sure if he would either, but he hoped that Thanatos would be a good step on the path to recovery. Darnell wondered what Kite would think of Thanatos after Rahjaad rehabilitated him. Darnell wondered what he himself would think of Thanatos.
“The Dolena Systems Corp has some courier postings. It’s near the outskirts so we don’t have to deal with customs. Kite never liked the deep scans…” Carey suggested, looking over her datapal while sipping a quaffee.
“I can’t believe Wings is gone…” Darnell muttered, head in his hands.
“Neither can I!” cried Kite over the comms. Her chirps a wail. “Why did he have to be a hero? We had a future. We left the military so we would be safe. Why did the troubles have to follow us?”
It’s not fair, Darnell thought. He had hoped they would survive unscathed. He had never thought bad could happen to him. His first lesson in life had been a harsh one.
“Are you ready to fly courier, Kite?” Carey asked. With Wings gone, there was no intermediary for Darnell to understand the beemspace band. The law prohibited a single ship being neurally linked to more than one person.
“I’m at your command, as always.” Kite responded dejectedly.
“Wings wouldn’t want you to feel like this. He gave his life for you.” Darnell said.
“I just need time. Dolena Systems sounds nice.” she chirped with a ray of hope.