Everything that could have been going wrong for Salyx Choleri, 2^nd Bloom, was.

 

The original assignment was to assess the condition of a piece of the scuttled Illios, which had been lost in a gravity well before it could be properly processed. It was expected to be a one-Affini job: just a fraction of the total mass of the light cruiser had been lost to space.

 

The Compact wasn't completely naive to the presence of sophont activity in this part of this arm of the galaxy. There were energy readings for at least one space-faring civilization of regional power. They appeared to be bipeds, with two limbs used for locomotion and the other pair for grasping objects.

 

They seemed to be able to fashion tools, and they had some flexible outer covering that might either be a protective carapace or a pre-manufactured material. They had some sort of luminescence, be it biological or artificial, coming from behind their protective covering up top.

 

Their behaviour suggested that they were trying to establish contact, what with the light-projection they displayed through one of the tools mounted to one of their arms: a series of geometry, and some figure which Salyx inferred was likely to be what they looked like under their covering.

 

They could not have arrived at a less opportune time. The derelict was in worse condition than anticipated: several of the fail-safes were malfunctioning, and parts of the entire structure could collapse out into space, or worse, detonate. Such had been the case on one part of the Illios, and Salyx had been forced to enter a premature bloom and scavenge around the vessel for nutrients to recover.

 

These creatures were in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm, and there were no other means to quickly establish communications.

She would have to isolate one of them, and establish a cognitive channel.

Dirt.

 

She was inexperienced, just finished her 2^nd bloom, and, sure, she knew theoretically how to do it. She'd practiced. In simulations. This was the real thing, and she had to do it to an organism of unknown behaviour and physiology. The process -if it didn't kill- could easily leave permanent damage, significantly impairing their ability to return to their vessel safely. She would have to bring one of the aliens back and make a cotyledon out of them.

 

But, she had a duty to ensure to the best of her abilities that any life on the wreck was kept as safe as possible. That meant being able to communicate with them.

 

Her auditory organs picked up the sounds of tearing metal. Dirtdirtdirtdirtdirt please don't let that have been due to one of the organisms, she did not want to have to deal with a death or injury already. She quickly scuttled her way through the various vents and corridors throughout the ship, following the source of the noise.

 

Her rush came to an end on Floor 6. Directly beneath, at Floor 5, she could detect the movement of the sophonts. Two of the aliens were surrounding a hole that had collapsed through what remained of Floor 4, one of their own having fell alongside. The organism seemed unharmed and fully mobile. Good.

 

The other members of its... herd? Pack? They were heading down to other floors of this part of the derelict, unable to extract their conspecific from the hole. The hole wasn't impossible for an Affini to crawl through, though. It was alone, but its companions would be rapidly closing in on its location. She'd have to act fast to make this count.

 

Salix muttered a quick prayer to the Everbloom and headed down the elevator to Floor 5, and slowly crept her way up to the hole, unfolding a flower out from one of her vines. The flower glistened with spiraling patterns, the standard for pacifying creatures with visual sensors. The patterns were usually sufficient to glamour organisms with or without colour vision.

 

She poked the flower slowly down into the hole and watched the organism's movement carefully. The creature responded immediately with a tenser posture, pointing upward at the hole with its forelimbs with some tool in hand that Salix inferred to be a defensive weapon. She watched carefully, with the rest of her body hidden from view, as the creature's features gradually slackened.

 

She swayed the flower gently back and forth, a test of its vestibular system. Its upper part, predictably, turned back and forth in the direction of the flower. "There were are..." She muttered to herself. She slowly inched forward, pulling more of her form down through the hole, keeping the flower in front of the creature.

 

The creature took a few shaky steps backward, before its back reached the wall. It slowly slid down the wall, sitting down with its lower limbs splayed out in front, the flower always in its sight.

 

Salyx's vines reached the creature's body, feeling along the surface of the outer covering, looking for a means to safely penetrate through. Finally, she found a panel and the means to pry it off and- oh, good, the alien was already leaking from one of its orifices. She hoped that was normal.

 

At least she could get a good look at the creature, now. The uppermost part of the organism tapered into a bulbous protrusion, attached to the rest of the upper part of the body through a thinner segment.

 

Mounted near the center of that part, there were a pair of forward-facing masses, within sockets of depressed tissue. The masses responded to movement, their direction still pointed towards the flower, and appeared to have a gelantinous texture. These were surrounded with bristles, attached to flaps of tissue.

 

These were the likely candidates for the organism's eyes. The direction and spacing of the organs suggested strong depth perception: perhaps a predator in its native environment. Salix slid some vines slowly towards the eyes, then quickly retracted them. Upon nearing contact, the flaps of tissue folded over, then quickly returned to where they were. Fascinating! Salyx was looking forward to studying these creatures further. Later. In a more controlled environment. One which she dearly wished she had now.

 

Above the eyes, there were a pair of ridges, covered in soft bristles, that seemed to be the same composition as the ones found further above. Beneath the space between the eyes, there was a fleshy protrusion, with a pair of orifices beneath which were filled with the same sort of bristles. Further below, there was a larger orifice, surrounded by fleshy tissue. On the sides of the top part of the creature, there were a pair of additional orifices, surrounded by fleshy disks with symmetrical indendations.

 

Salyx's vines slowly explored along the lengths of the creature's body, both around and beneath its outer covering. Her electroreceptors detected activity all across the surface and interior of the organism's body, concentrated the most within the bulbous extremity. Salix hoped that it contained the center of the creature's nervous tissue.

 

Testing the orifices directly beneath the eyes, she tasted the air coming in and out from them. The organism was primarily inhaling a combination of oxygen, nitrogen, and methane; and exhaling carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds, water vapour, and hydrocarbons. She should be able to synthesize enough gases to sustain the organism long enough to prevent tissue degradation.

 

She slid the vine deeper into the larger of the orifices, scrutinizing the texture and space within. Inside the space, there were a pair of calcified growths extending out from the outer part of the space, one up top and the other below, and a soft, wet and flexible extremity from which the fluid she spotted flowing from before. That part was doing its own work of exploring the texture of the intruding vine, in a way that Salix could find sort of... cute.

 

Her vines tasted the fluid, detecting enzymes suitable for breaking down organic compounds. Ah-ha. This orifice was likely the mouth. The calcified growths were probably used to crush and chop food items, the fleshy extremity to guide it deeper into the digestive system, and the fluid to break it down further.

 

There were two tubes leading down from the probable-mouth, one from which the most air was flowing. She branched out with the vine and prodded down both, quietly hissing as the creature made a noise from its breathing tube. She branched out with another vine and wrapped it gently around the connective tissue between the upper extremity and the rest of the organism, in case she needed to constrict and artificially induce unconciousness.

 

As the vine down the inhaling tube expanded, it opened up to act as a pump through which gasses could be produced and absorbed. The organism's struggles for air quickly subsided as the fleshy sacs leading out from the tube began to pump in tune with the vine.

 

She slid a pair of her roots down the length of the creature's body, testing the orifices closest to its lower limbs. Exploration provoked additional vocalizations, muffled by the obstruction in its vocal apparati. These sounds had a different timbre from the last, and were accompanied by slight deviations in the organism's breathing pattern.

 

One of the orifices exuded a minute trace of fluid, with a slight acidic content. Both contained traces of substances which, judging from their direction, were flowing out from the orifice. Excreta, perhaps, to sustain homeostasis.

 

The orifices which were aligned at the sides of the organism's upper extremity were too soft and narrow to safely continue exploration with vines, but a few filaments were able to proceed. They carefully threaded through the interior, feeling their way along, until they reached a small bundle of electric activity which connected to the central hub within the rest of the structure. Good. She could use that to enter the nervous system.

 

Salix carefully pierced a filament beneath the skin and threaded it within reach of one of the creature's nerves. This was the hard part. It wasn't enough for her to detect the signals: she also needed to be able to interpret them. She would need to encircle multiple sections along the circuit between the nerve and the central hub, and compare the signals and connections to get a reading.

 

That needed to be done very carefully. Interfacing with the nervous system could pose numerous risks: trying to mimic signals could risk sending false signals throughout the body, causing potentially painful spasms. Threading the filaments in and around the nerves could damage them.

 

She carefully wound through and around the nerves, her strands tingling with the electricity running across. The creature's ears were ringing, and its eyes were beginning to twitch. She was then at the stem of the nervous organ. The creature's breathing slowed, and she pumped more air through her tendrils to match. Gradually, her filaments reached up into the upper part of the organ.

 

It was then that the creature started to shake, and vocalize. Violently.

 

"Oh! OH NO! Please calm down, please calm down..." She wrapped herself around the creature to restrain it, pinning its limbs to its body, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I know, you're scared, I'm sorry! It'll be over with soon, I promise, just please calm down..."

 

This was terrible. She was going to cripple or kill this poor creature, and completely sabotage the Compact's first contact with this civilization and-

 

Salyx realized that the creature had started settling down, and that she'd been vibrating her vines, as she usually did whenever she was agitated. It seemed like the creature was responding favourably to it, or at least it wasn't shaking as much, and the pitch and volume of its vocalizations had simmered down. Interesting.

 

With the organism somewhat calmed, she could proceed with the probing. The filaments branched out and slowly wound their way between the connections in the organ, and...

 

Yes! A language! They had a language! That was what she was hoping to find. With some additional stridations of her filaments, she should be able to establish connections which could be translatable.

 

The sophont was called a... human, in its own language. The human was a bipedal organism from a planet that they called Earth, or Terra, with a moderate climate, orbiting around a yellow main-sequence star. They were mammals and vertebrates, heterotrophs defined and distinguished by sophisticated locomotion, an internal frame of calcium and metals called a skeleton, divided into units called bones, with a pair of frontal mounds of adipose tissue and skin called mammary glands.

 

Its name was... Cassandra Veldar. First name used to indicate the individual, the second to indicate genetic affiliation. It was an egg-carrier, assigned to a cultural role, influenced by sex, called a woman, and she was sexually attracted to other women.

 

Salyx had another gander at the woman. By the human's culture's classifications, Cassandra would probably be categorized as South Indian. Her ancestors had Anglicised their names some number of generations ago. Her dark-brown hair, nearing black, was kept short with a buzz-cut. Her skin was light-brown, with cool undertones, and her dilated eyes -still in the direction of the flower- had deep brown irises that shone brilliantly in what little light remained.

 

Her expression was impassive, and her body was slack, save for the occasional involuntary movement in her eyelids, lips, and tongue. Drool trickled slowly from her mouth, her breath was steady, and there was a contented sigh in her throat.

 

Salyx wanted to see what Cassandra's smile looked like.

Roots. She was already starting to get attached.

 

She continued the reading. Cassandra first bloomed in- no, was born in April 17^th of 2511, from the soil in- no, on the ship the Krysanthos- no, the Adamant. Salix really needed to concentrate before the poor human started to forget something, like the time she was on board the Sequoia, listening to-

 

Salix suppressed the urge to scream.

 

She'd just transplanted some of her own memories into the human, and she didn't remember how to remove them. That was a mistake that they used to JOKE about, back in their Introduction to Xenopharmacology classes!

 

Whatever. That was fine. It was fine. As long as the human didn't notice that the stars weren't in the right places, and didn't pay too much attention to the sound, there should be nothing to worry about. How much output from Salyx's senses could she really expect the human to detect, let alone comprehend, anyhow?

 

The fluid output from the human's eyes was intensifying, and was accompanied by short, low intensity utterances. She was crying. She was scared, and needed comfort. Salix gently wrapped around the human, redoubling the vibrations that seemed to work before, and branched out with one of her vines to stroke the stop of her hair. "Shh..."

 

Cassandra's crying gradually slowed down. She breathed out and relaxed into Salyx's grip, her head sinking to the side as much as the binds would allow.

 

Overall, the diagnosis for the human was bleak. Based on her memories, she was barely meeting nutritional needs, experiencing minor sleep deprivation, and was suffering from neurological imbalances which were only being sporadically accounted for.

 

"Poor thing..." Salyx whined. She really just wanted to wrap Cassandra up tightly in her vines and take her back to her ship. These creatures were definitely in need of Affini stewardship, and the leaders of this 'Terran Accord' were going to have some questions to answer. She would note that in her report, might have to invoke some clauses and personally intervene on behalf of these sophonts, worst comes to worst.

 

For now, though, she had a job to do. There were an abundance of entrances to the circulatory system within the brain, but crossing the blood-brain barrier could be hazardous to Cassandra's health. Better to find a safer point of entry, such as one of the vessels in the earlobe.

 

Salyx carefully slid a thorn into the human's ear, with small ridges at the back of the thorn acting as a plug to prevent bleeding. Through the thorn, she inserted another filament to taste the blood for compounds. This would provide her with hormonal data, essential to tailor xenodrugs to this species.

 

Now that she'd translated some of the human's experience, Salix had slightly more theoretical knowledge of her physiology: three broad segments, the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. Two limbs, the arms, were attached to the thorax, ending in five digits -fingers- each. The other pair of limbs, the legs, were attached to the abdomen by the hips, and each ended in five digits, called toes.

 

Between the hind limbs, there were a pair of medially-oriented excretory orifices, the anus and urethra, one of which was located next to the reproductive opening. Terrible place for a reproductive tract. Evolution was such a clumsy craftsman.

 

These organs were typically kept covered, due to cultural taboos, and individuals of the species seldom bred unless they had already established a pair bond, though conspecifics might try to engage in intercourse by more aggressive means. There was this other memory of another woman, one hand on Cassandra's mouth and another down her-

 

Oh.

Oh no.

 

She quickly retracted the roots and filaments from Cassandra's lower parts. Salix knew her behaviour towards Cassandra was invasive, but the additional context from the human's mind brought a new and horrifying viscerality.

 

She slapped a vine against herself. "Horrible," she muttered to herself, "You're absolutely horrible. Look what you've done..." How was she going to fix this? Should she just wait for the next time they saw each other and try to explain 'Hey, sorry for violating your mind and body, but I had to do it. For research. Oops! Horrors beyond your comprehension!'?

 

With a low growl, Salyx pulled herself together and continued the search. There was one particular cluster of connections in Cassandra's memory, all centered around another human woman, with a melanistic phenotype and ample adiposity, by the name of Neveah Williams. There was an amourous connection between the two: a mate. Very cute together.

 

She raked her thorns with indecision. There was obviously a strong attachment between these two. It could be useful for her to try to mimic Neveah's appearance, to try establish a positive rapport with Cassandra. Then again, the human could just as easily interpret that as a ploy to exploit her further.

 

That was a quandary to settle another time. Ten minutes of probing was not nearly enough to gather enough information to establish a working vocabulary of more than a few hundred words, but it was all that she would have to work with, for now. She did what she could to thread together the marks she left through Cassandra's brain before she was forced to depart.

 

A whine welled up from Cassandra's mouth as the vines and roots retreated, and Salyx softly reverberated through her body to calm her. "I'll come back for you, Cassandra."

 

She could sense the other humans making their way down the corridor. If she tried to establish contact now, it was likely that they would leap to the conclusion that she was trying to feed on Cassandra, or something worse. But if she left the human be, they could attack her.

 

Salyx reached back the hole in the floor above and pulled herself up and through, and from there, she pulled herself up to the side of the floor above, peering just out into the hole that she could monitor their behaviour from afar, and intervene if necessary.

 

The two other humans approached at a steady pace towards Cassandra. Salyx unsheathed her thorns and brandished her vines, ready to pacify them if they were to take out their guns. They squatted down in front of their crew mate, their faces obscured and their voices muffled by the suits.

 

"...breathing...?"

"...zoned out..."

"...fuck did it..."

"Should we...?"

 

One of the reached for Cassandra and shut the visor to her helmet back over her face. Oh, dirt. She'd forgotten to close Cassandra's helmet. Such a careless mistake.

 

"Oh..." Cassandra finally surfaced from her stupor, "Hey, guys..."

"Cass? Can you hear me?" Hadane -That was the Captain's last name. Hadane.- put a hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah?"

"Cass, you just had an alien in your mouth. Are you okay?"

 

Salyx pulled herself inward. Yes. Just the mouth.

 

"Oh... is that what happened? Yeah, uh... I think I saw something scuttle. Heh..." Cassandra seemed to lean forward slightly, only to wobble unsteadily back into the wall, "Scuttle. Fun word."

 

"She's probably got a fucking egg inside her, now." Alexandra -the other human- turned to the Captain.

"Yeah, you should probably space me, or something..."

 

"Do NOT do that..." Salyx muttered under her breath.

 

The three continued conversing, and the two helped Cassandra to stand. Her posture and motion was shaky. Salyx raked her thorns together. She could only imagine now what kind of damage she had wrought on her brain, and only pray that it wouldn't progress.

 

She watched the humans help Cassandra up and lead her out from the hall, tried to relax and turn her focus to the next task at hand. It seemed that all was clear, for the time being. She had just one thing left to do: send them the warning.

 

She rustled through her branches for her radio: she had the code to Cassandra's wrist-comp, and all she would need to do is to input the coordinates of the structural hazards in the derelict, and send the signal.

 

 

The message had been sent, and she could detect that the crew was responding. There was no way that they could send a message back, but she didn't need them to. The last of her tasks to them was done, for now.

 

"Krysanthos, I have made contact with a new sophont civilization in this sector on the derelict piece of the Illios." She dialed the nearest ship from her comm, "Endonym: Terran Accord. I'm tracking three individuals, one of which may be in urgent need of care. I need backup..."