EG 3 Ch 8 (Patreon)

Lily's mass pumped away as she drained the headquarters of its nutripaste stores, but there still was a lot of food to drain. And I wasn’t sure if we would have the time needed for her to finish feasting. Soon, they would start to bring bigger reinforcements. 

Alarms were going off throughout the station, and more and more soldiers were pouring in from the city. It seemed Violet had done a decent job distracting them, but whatever had happened, they had begun to turn their attention back to our group. That I couldn't allow, not if we wanted to do this as quietly as possible. And so I was left with little choice other than turning my gun toward the encroaching soldiers and feathering the trigger, sending a tight cluster of bursts to keep them away.

Some were able to dodge out of the way, though the auto-aiming feature did its job and made my shots a deadly enough risk that the targets were ducking for cover, and thankfully no longer rushing straight at us.

"I can’t cover us for much longer," I shouted. "If you could hurry it up, it would be best."

"It's not like I'm slacking here," Lily snapped.

"Didn't say you were. I'm just saying that speed is the preferable route at present. Crack that whole tank open and let it spill out if that’d be faster."

"I will endeavor to hurry, Captain," Lily said, and there wasn't so much as a trace of bite to her words. Which somehow made it far worse.

I decided to focus downrange, picking off several more of the continually growing problems, only for one of them to stick out. One kikai darted over the barrier, and I managed to lock on with the auto-aiming feature, clipping him in the shoulder. Yet that kikai barely flinched at the hit and kept plowing forward, completely ignoring any damage I might have done.

It was immediately apparent just how problematic that kikai might be for us when he juked to the side, and it was obvious that his shoulder had healed just as quickly as it had been damaged.

I cursed under my breath. "Lily, we have a divine coming on quickly."

Lily spun from where she had been keeping her focus on the task at hand. "How many?" she snapped, her eyes glowing bright pink as she registered the threat.

"Just one. At least for now." I told her.

"I dare them to try and hurt you again," she snapped, and I realized immediately that it was less a problem that there was a divine kikai en route and more of a problem that Lily was now aware of his presence. The way she held herself, she was ready to go to war. Lily was absolutely fuming at the divine kikai's presence.

"It's fine, Lily." I tried to dial her back.

"It is not fine," Lily retorted. "After what they've already done to you, I will not allow another of those monsters to get close to you."

"Then maybe we should focus on wrapping up here," I suggested.

Lily sent a forlorn look at where she was devouring an entire contingent's worth of food. "We can go now."

But I only shook my head. "We need enough to keep all of us fed for an indeterminate amount of time. Keep pumping. I'd like you to drain this place dry. I can keep them off a little longer." I sent another burst of fire into the divine and those hunkering behind it.

A small whine escaped Lily's lips.

"Eat to your heart’s content Lily," I told her.

“I must agree with the captain.” Brick said sheepishly through the communicators. “We don’t know the next time we’ll be able to stock up.”

"All of you are such weak creatures," Lily snapped in a moment of frustration.

"Yes, how dare we need sustenance to survive." Brick didn't seem upset at Lily's outburst.

I smiled at Lily. "Just go as fast as you can," I reassured her.

She whined again, but I saw her connection to the structure spread out as various webs of her mycelial network latched onto the wall, cracking it and trying to draw even more, spilling some in the process but nevertheless significantly increasing her speed.

"That wasn't so hard now, was it, Lily?" I said with a small smirk on my face.

"We need to get you out of here as quickly as we can, Captain. I will not have you risked for any reason." She responded.

Somehow the presence of a divine kikai had sent every single one of Lily's protective and possessive instincts into complete overdrive.

"Anything from Violet?" I asked with the sudden realization that if they were sending a divine after us and not Violet, then we might have a very real problem on our hands.

"No word from Violet," Melgara reported. She was still on the ship, keeping an eye on comms.

"Well, I have to say the presence of a divine here is concerning." I offered.

Thankfully, the rest of my crew was intelligent enough to pick up on the issue immediately.

"If they send a divine here, then they're not worried about Violet," Melgara reasoned for all of us.

"And if they're not worried, we have to ask why," I said, so that we were all on the same page.

"Which means either they have someone competent enough that they believe they have Violet well in hand, or potentially already solved." Melgara thought out loud.

I nodded along with Melgara's logic, even as much as I hated it.

"But it doesn't matter, Captain," she challenged instead. "Regardless of Violet's current status, our job doesn't change. We push forward and simply trust that Violet can handle her end without any further assistance."

I didn't like her words one bit. As the captain of this ship, of this crew, and part of the one making the plans for this wild ride, I felt a responsibility for all of them.

"Someone try and get through to Violet," I said, and we all knew I meant Melgara.

"On it, Captain." She sounded none too happy with her orders, though she was professional enough that it wasn't going to be a problem.

"Captain, we've found the goods," Tiri reported, and I couldn't help but smile at that good fortune.

"Don't dally. Get them on board," I said, without a touch of fanfare.

Everyone present had no issue carrying out this operation at top speed. I heard the shearing of metal and saw our resident dragon of the void grabbing one of the containers and swinging it hard enough that the metal cried out at the rough handling. She tossed it into the back of the Griffon like a soccer mom might throw a bag of smelly gym clothes.

Meanwhile, I couldn't pay attention to anything save for the divine kikai that was rapidly closing in on my position. He pulled up a pistol and began firing off wildly accurate shots, even as he ran at what would be a dead sprint for anyone else. My own shots continued to pelt the kikai, but he didn't seem to care as he went to leap the final thirty feet with a strength that belied any he should have had given the size of his body.

"Captain!" Lily shouted at the top of her lungs, and her fruiting body closed the distance faster than the kikai. Her body warbled in place for a moment before her arms stretched out, sharpening like two large knives. She swung for the divine with the kind of strength I knew would most likely wreck any living organism.

The divine twisted, underestimating Lily and meeting her arms with his own hands. The kikai likely was not used to such a mistake. His skin was tough enough to resist her for just a moment before Lily put an iota of extra effort in and cut the kikai's hand in two at the palm.

It was an impressive sight, to be sure, but like the other divine kikai we'd encountered, this one was barely fazed by the wound. In fact, if I didn't miss my guess, the brutal attack might have even made him happy. A big grin splitting his face and an almost ecstatic look at the pain Lily caused. He twisted, his tails churning and changing his direction midair as a beam saber came to life in his other hand and tried to slice Lily in two.

She twisted out of his reach, glared at the divine kikai, and swung with enough force that the air almost seemed to ripple. Lily was more flexible than he could have imagined, swaying out of the way with a body that moved more like water than flesh in the moment.

While they fought, I prepared. I knew Lily would have wanted me to get to safety, but I had other plans. I pulled the trigger, and a beam fired off the front of the rifle, right through the kikai's hip.

While he healed quickly, not having a hip for even a moment was enough for Lily to whip back into shape, her hand flinging forward as she grabbed the kikai's skull. With a twist of her hips, she flipped into the air and smashed him down onto the concrete with a devastating force that split his skull in two. Meanwhile, Lily's mycelial network snapped out and wrapped the divine kikai in a cocoon.

His body was clearly trying to restore the damage done even as the black mycelial network wormed deeper inside of him, tearing him apart on a cellular level. He thrashed, struggling in her grasp, but Lily clearly had zero intention of letting him up.

Other small-arms fire rained down on Lily, but she completely ignored it with an almost zealous display of anger, as her hand intertwined with the kikai's head rose up and slammed down repeatedly.

She was going overboard, his healing and her digestion were locked in a hellish deadlock. It was to the point that I wasn’t sure if Lily had enough sense to stop and keep going with the mission.

While she digested him, I lowered my rifle a hair and skimmed a beam off the divine kikai's back, severing both tails.

Lily shifted, seeing the tails plucked off by my shot, even as fleshy tendrils spread out like little fingers, trying to reconnect the tail to the body. She snatched the tail out of the air, the fleshy bits trying to burrow into her own arm, only for Lily to make a face of pure disgust and rip the tail in two, which seemed to stop its incessant attempts to come back together.

"Good riddance," Lily spat, and tossed it to the side as the divine kikai beneath her crumpled to dust. With its tail removed, it was no longer able to hold itself together.

"You would think that the divine had done something horrible to you," I said as she straightened up.

Lily scowled. "Who says it didn't?" She stared at the body that was fading away with a complicated expression.

I didn't have time to worry about her too much, though, because while we had dealt with the divine many of the other soldiers had taken the opportunity to close the distance.

"I have information on Violet," Melgara said over the communicator as I shouldered the rifle and turned off the automatic aiming.

"Yeah?" I asked, feathering the trigger and letting the red light of the rifle wash over me.

"She's rushed back out into the wastelands. Given the speed she's moving, whatever is chasing her must be fast."

I looked at the soldiers in my crosshairs. "Fast enough that they left all of the mundane soldiers in the dust," I interpreted. But if she was still running through the wastes, then she was still alive.

"Unless they've got a ship chasing her," Melgara said.

"I think divines are like rats," Lily said, standing up. I shot her a look for those words.

"Where there's one, there's probably more," she added with a small smile filled with hidden meanings.

"We finish up here, and we rush to go help her." I made the decision for the rest of the team. We needed to get out there. "Tiri, how soon can you be done? I think Violet's in trouble."

"We'll be done in five," Tiri said. "We might leave some stuff behind, though."

"Is it enough to get whatever contact you had in mind interested in working with us?"

"Absolutely," she said. I would take her confidence at face value.

"Then you have five. Lily," I gestured for my helivore lover.

She turned to the wave of soldiers with the kind of savage grin that sent a chill down my spine. "I'll be done in just a minute, my captain."

Rather than stay behind and protect me, Lily jumped forward. She threw her fruiting body straight into the mass of soldiers, each of her limbs becoming a deadly tool as she slashed, stabbed, and tethered herself amongst the soldiers. Her body swelled as she consumed as much mass from that group as possible.

It was a horrific sight, to be sure, but I watched on impassively. For a while, Lily's dissection of the enemy forces had seemed gruesome. But at the end of the day, they were still soldiers who had come looking for a fight. And these soldiers had been picking on the local populace and making a general nuisance of themselves. So watching their limbs being scattered to the wind only seemed fair.

Seeing that my own actions were unnecessary, I held the communicator up to my mouth. "Violet, we are coming your way as soon as we can," I spoke calmly.

There was no response on the other side, but I hadn't expected one. If she were running for her life and unable to respond to Melgara, I wasn't going to be much different. But that didn't mean she didn't have at least enough attention to spare to listen.

"We'll be done ahead of time," Lily said quickly, and I glanced back.

Between my ship and the station, there were no fewer than a dozen of Lily's tendrils, each and every one doing its absolute best to rip the resources from inside. There wasn't a peep from the building, and that's how I knew Lily had gone all out.

She turned back, rushing toward the dock that the rest of her crewmates were working on.

"We've got several more containers identified," Tiri said, seeing Lily rush back.

The soldiers she had stopped tearing through seemed to have no inclination to continue chasing after her.

Putting my rifle over my shoulder, I supposed they would get lucky. I had no great enmity with them that I would waste time finishing the rest of them off.

"Mark them," Lily demanded, her fruiting body rushing up to the ship as tendrils of her mycelial network snapped out of the cargo bay, only to start dragging the crates back to the ship.

Minnie paused her casual disregard for both weight and physics and her manhandling of the crates to watch Lily work.

"Effective," Melgara said in a dull monotone. "Lily is quite industrious when she puts her mind to it." You would have thought Melgara was praising her daughter the way she spoke.

"Clearly," Minnie said, watching everything with the faintest of smiles on her lips.

"Don't just stand there," I said, doing my best not to sound snappy. "Wrap everything up. We are moving and we don’t want any of these ships following us."

"Of course," the gothic dragon said, grabbing a crate that hadn't been marked and lifting it onto her shoulder like it was a shot put. She then gunned it only for the crate to blow straight through several of the nearby ships. Even after we left here, there wasn't going to be anything for the soldiers to use to chase us.

I blinked at the casual destruction of a spaceship, my heart bleeding slightly for the captains that had just lost their wings.

"We are ready," Lily said, and I was already running up the cargo bay ramp, my boots clanking with each step. Tiri and Brick were right behind me. Lily and Minnie simply leapt over the dock and into the cargo bay, even as the hydraulics whined and the massive bay door closed.

"Taking off, Captain," Melgara reported.

I glanced at Lily. "Secure the cargo, if you will."

Her mycelial network was already stretching out of the walls to catch everything in the cargo bay up in a massive net of the black, tough material before I gave her a concerned look.

"You are substantially sated?" I asked, trying to delicately ask a woman if she'd had enough food.

If Lily was concerned, she didn't show it. Instead, she grinned wide. "I might have put on a little extra weight, Captain." Lily reached down and grabbed her butt, even as she inflated it. "Hopefully it doesn't look too bad on me," she teased, and I could only shake my head in response.

"I'll take that as you've fed enough."

I glanced over at the other occupants of the cargo bay. Brick was hurriedly getting away from the boxes that began to shift. Tiri's two helpers had rushed out to try and assist, but Brick waved them off, a gesture I had to agree with. We didn't need any redshirts of ours getting squished by the shifting of a container, which was already happening as Melgara tilted the Griffon and the crates all began to ominously creak, even while Lily was reinforcing her hold on them.

There was the trill of the Griffon’s weapons firing and explosions in the distance as I rushed through the ship to the bridge.

"Captain." Aikari popped into existence beside me, a big grin on the AI's face.

"Good news, I hope?" I asked quickly, only for the AI to hold in her hands a projection of the nearby region.

"Violet is here, and we are here." Two dots appeared on the map, as well as a dotted line from our position to one that was ahead of Violet. "The goal right now is to swing by, pick her up, and then get out of here?" She asked.

"No need to tempt fate more than we have already," I confirmed, staring at the map with a look of concern. Violet could definitely handle herself, but it certainly left me curious as to what was causing her to run.

My eyes flicked from the plotted line back up to deal with everything else that was happening on the screen before me. Our ship was rapidly heading on a collision course with the kikai ground defenses. Batteries from the city peppered our shield, but Melgara didn't even initiate evasive maneuvers, instead just plowing through them.

"Lily, do me a favor and absorb some of that," Melgara hissed.

"What does that mean?" I asked hesitantly, only to see the shields go down from the assault of the ground battery. Yet the ship didn't rock so much as the shots registered, only to fail to find purchase on the hull.

“Deploying water bubbles.” Lily spoke calmly. “But we are taking heavy fire.”

“Almost through.” I said, 

"Out of range in three," I called out, reading from the screen attached to my chair. "Two. One…And we're through!"

"Three hundred sixty gallons of water lost," Lily reported, and I blinked, suddenly realizing that she was using the same method she often used against anti-personnel weapons, at a ship level.

"There's no way that's healthy," I said, glancing at Lily.

"I wouldn't have done it if I was still significantly in need of food. But as it stands right now, I can bear the cost easily enough."

I squinted at her words ever so slightly before I nodded, conceding that she knew herself best. "We'll have to discuss this new method you've developed while I've been indisposed."

I glanced back down at the screen. "Lily, we're coming up on Violet, and I think she could use your help down below."

Lily grinned. I knew she would get significant pleasure from being the one to help Violet rather than the other way around. And while in many situations I'd work to keep the peace between the two of them, this was most assuredly the kind of time to just let the two of them work it out.

"Prepare to drop on whatever situation we have below," I told Lily, and then spun around to Tiri. "Get the weapons ready. Hopefully we can end this quickly, but I'm not above dropping Lily on them if it's going to need a more delicate touch."