She glared at me again, the moment of vulnerability vanishing behind a commander’s iron will. “You are dying, David.”
I sighed, the sound ragged. “I know. I was actually surprised I made it this far. The shadowstep transport here was a calculated risk; a proper node shift would have scrambled what’s left of my synapses into paste. And if the travel doesn’t kill me, the deviation will, and soon. I am so packed with necrotic aura, it’s a wonder that the air doesn’t curdle around me. The plants in the hydroponics bay probably sing dirges when I walk past.”
“She can fix your caliban.”
I nodded. “Yes. And I intend to ask her to do that the second I finally track down my wayward goblin in this… overly luxurious killing yacht. But then what? What’s the next move on your grand board, Commander?”
“Then you bond her,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe. “She’s practically begging you to, on a primal level she doesn’t even understand. Your auras are so perfectly matched it’s less a resonance and more a singular harmonic. And then, poof, most of your quest is complete. She’s happy, you’re happy, both of you massively spike in power, and then we rip our way across the galaxy on a divine mandate, getting her to Gold Core and me my prize.”
I shook my head, a bitter laugh escaping me. “I think you are the one who isn’t using her brain this time. You’re so focused on your carrot, you’re missing the cliff it’s dangling over.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am DYING, Commander. The caliban is a stopgap, a faulty regulator on a failing reactor. Fixing it won’t stop the core breach. All it does is help me simulate intact meridians and transfers a small amount of the necrotic essence buildup into fake channels where it can hopefully dissipate without eating my soul. I am literally half the paladin I was meant to be. I have almost as much metal and synth-flesh as I have original equipment. I am on my way out. Do you know what happens when a Maenad’s bond deviates?”
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She shook her head, her expression now carefully neutral.
“They go irredeemably, catastrophically insane. Not ‘lock her in a quiet room with soft pillows for the rest of her life’ is insane. More like ‘unleash her latent potential as a wave of psychic and spiritual evil that could engulf an entire stellar sphere’ insane. You haven’t seen what she can do. She BEAT the Kobayashi scenario, Taera. She didn’t fight it to a standstill, she didn’t cheat it or find an exploit or use any of the other traditional methods of surviving it… she WON. Just using ONE of her affinities—consciously blocking out the others or having them stripped by the tech-heavy nature of the sim—she ripped apart a Titan-class void predator. As a Tin tier. With nothing but her pod and a clever use of a giant pile of Sargasso space debris. And do you know what she said afterward?”
“What’s that?” Taera asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“She said she felt guilty about exploiting its programmatic bugs, because she knew that in reality, the Titan’s aura would have killed her before she got close. I checked her logs. She was three astronomical units away. Even if it had a simulated aura with falloff, she still would have killed it."
"Sure, the sim isn’t perfect reality, but it doesn’t have to be. The potential is there. So when she fixes my caliban, I will be… functional. For a while. And then the necrotic energy I’ve been stewing in for years is going to finish the job and force me to deviate. And if I’m lucky, and I manage to put a bolt through my own head before some horror from the deep warp moves in and uses my body as a welcome mat into this reality, then she goes catatonic or her heart simply stops from the feedback. So no, I am not going to bond to her. It’s too dangerous. I will find another way. Or I won’t.” My resolve was a lead weight in my heart, but it had kept me alive at least this long.
