SWNOVELS Mandy and the Tentacle Monster: Chapter 29
I am very uneasy. Tiny is on the Medbay table while I instruct the AI on the surgery we are requesting. I have been trying to skip the first part, which is the knock-out gas, but this step cannot be overridden. Apparently, the ethical code governing the AI classifies surgery without anesthesia to be torture, which is against their medical directive.
Baht offers his opinion that venom will inhibit the knock-out gas’s nauseating effects, but he admitted that he cannot be certain.
Tiny offers to hold her breath, which is adorable. She can hold her breath for maybe ten seconds, and even if she could go longer, the AI would not be fooled and wouldn’t proceed with the surgery.
I suggest that we should do a test run. Have Baht envenomate Tiny and then she could breathe in knock out gas and see how the two interact. Both Tiny and Baht objected to this. Tiny, because she does not want to be bitten more than once. Baht will not explain his objection to a test run. It could be that he is being supportive of Tiny.
After much discussion, Tiny loses patience and demands that we move ahead with the surgery. She would rather get it over with, even if the gas makes her sick.
“Where are you going to bite me?” She asks Baht.
“Wherever you like, Snackling.”
“Yeah but, where’s the best place to bite? Like the least painful?” She presses.
“It will not be painful. Quite the opposite. Any spot you pick will serve.”
Tiny huffs in annoyance at his non-answer, “Ok, You pick.”
Then she lays back and closes her eyes.
Reaching inside his cloak, Baht pulls out a weapon and hands it to me, “Hold this,” he says, “keep it in your hand.”
I barely glance at the thing. It is some kind of disrupter. I do not care. I am worried about Tiny.
He shrugs out of his cloak, which he folds and lays at Tiny’s feet. Stretching his legs, he stands up taller. And taller still.
Suddenly he lunges, biting the top of Tiny’s shoulder before I even register his movement.
Startled, I take a moment to calm and reconnect with the med-bay AI. I am ready to initiate the surgery, as soon as Baht moves away. he is still hovering over her.
“Mmmmm,” Tiny makes an inarticulate noise and blinks open her eyes. She looks very inebriated. Her eyes are hooded and there is pink color in her cheeks. She is stretching languidly and relaxing all ofher limbs as though she doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Baht,” I draw his attention and an immediate shiver of unease moves along my back as he trains those glowing red eyes on me, “you must move away.”
He doesn’t move away. He draws nearer to her. Did he plan all this for some dark purpose? Why is he not speaking?
He is leaning over Tiny now and I do not know what to do. I am no match for him and I do not have the element of surprise.
“You’re a big scary spider, aren’t you?” Tiny addresses the Arana-Vora in a sing-song voice, “Who’s a scary spider guy? It’s you!” She pokes him right on the forehead with a delicate little finger.
Since I cannot move Baht, I try another tactic, “Tiny, can you come over here?”
“But I’m hanging out with Baht,” she pats him on his chest, “He’s my creepy friend.”
“I know, dear one.” I placate.
“He saved me you know.”
I nod in agreement. This is true.
“He saved you from the octo-jail,” then she giggles, “Get it? Octopus plus jail.”
I do not get it but I nod anyway, “He has been a very good friend to us.”
She nods, “Yes. He is my very best spider-friend.” She wraps her arms around his torso, embracing him in a squeezing hug. Baht trills a chittering purr that my translator interprets as deep satisfaction and hunger. He nuzzles the side of her face.
“You should come away from him right now though,” she looks over at me her eyes glassy and her round pupils expanded, “I think he might be about to eat you.”
She swings her gaze back to Baht, “Really, You would eat me? I’m your best friend!” He nuzzles her some more, “Or are you trying to eat me? Because I’m not that kind of girl. I don’t go around getting eaten by any spider who comes along.” More giggles and then she touches his nose as though she’s pressing a button and says, “Boop! That’s what you get! Friends don’t eat each other.”
“Tiny-“
“I have a question,” she interrupts me, “Can you build a web?” She asks Baht, “Spiders who build webs, the silk comes out of their butts. Can you spin silk from your butt?”
“Tiny!” I scold, aghast at the question.
“What? I’ve seen it! Spiders pull silk right out of their butts! I’m not making it up!”
The awkward discomfort I am feeling makes me hang my head, forgetting the danger that Tiny is in, that I’m trying to protect her from. It is then that I see the weapon that I am still holding. It is the sort that you can just point and shoot, so I do. I shoot Baht and he falls over on the floor of the med bay in a tangle of long limbs.
“You killed him,” Tiny does not sound concerned.
“I may have,” I hedge. I can not actually tell what the weapon did. It took out an Arana-Vora though, so it must be very powerful indeed.
I will not check on him, Tiny is my only concern right now.
“Now I’ll never know!” She whines at me.
I look at her quizzically.
“About the silk!” She lays down and stares at the ceiling, “Where will I ever find another spider friend?”
I step over Baht’s still form and stand next to Tiny.
“I am initiating the procedure,” I warn her.
“Oh,” she sighs, “good.”
Two hours later I have four translucent purple eggs in our mobile tank, Tiny is in regen and Baht is definitely not dead. He twitches all his long legs every ten or twenty minutes. I had him scanned and he is almost recovered. He could wake up at any moment.
For the past thirty minutes, I have been thinking about throwing his prone body out of the airlock. Or putting him in an auto drone and delivering him to the furthest distance I can coordinate.
But then I think about the weapon. I do not recognize it and I have traded in weapons dozens of times. This unknown weapon can fell Arana-Vora. They have no known weaknesses. I have heard stories of an entire space station decimated by one. All the sentient life was consumed and then the creature laid in wait for unwary travelers to board. Surely this weapon is a closely guarded Arana-Vora secret, or else situations like that could not occur.
If I can fabricate more, I would make a fortune selling them.
So, Baht entrusted me with this weapon. Why? Did he know how he would act after biting Tiny? Perhaps that response was involuntary. Does he trust me to incapacitate him, but not kill him when he’s vulnerable? Or does he not care whether he lives or dies?
So many uncertainties are pinging around in my brain that I cannot make a decision, I just remain to guard Tiny our offspring. The eggs are a translucent gelatinous lavender. I can watch our fledglings moving about in the confines of their eggs. I am transfixed. Only one of them resembles a Homeworlder fully. The other three are strange amalgamations. There is one that has ears like Tiny. Little delicate shells on the sides of his head. Another has a thick mane of dark hair on its head, exactly as humans do. And the most surprising of all is the one that does not have any tentacle arms, but two human legs.
I had thought that Homeworlder offspring always took after their sire. All of the people on Homeworld Two look roughly the same. Humans must have very dominant genes.
I look at Tiny, floating in regen goop. I hope she is pleased with our offspring. I fervently hope that she was correct when she pledged that her feelings toward me and our spawn were true and not caused by hosting hormones.
“By the Void!”
“Gods be merciful!”
There is a cacophony of yelling at the medbay door from people that I did not even hear approaching.
Shafeenah, Oh’Tech, and Ken are looking at the scene with wide-eyed surprise.
“Seven, what goes on here? Is that an Arana-Vora?” Ken demands.
“How in the name of Chaos did you best an Arana-Vora?” Shefeenah wants to know.
“Are those Homeworlder young?” Ken immediately inserts.
“That thing is stirring,” Oh’Tech points at Baht, “We should space it while we can.”
I rub my palms across my face. I do not know where to start.