Page 5 of Leviathan

Then I opened the inner door, and as she stepped out into my warmed-up, newly air-conditioned hallway, I rolled one of my drones up to her.

She clutched the data device to her chest, holding it up as if she were afraid I was about to try to wrestle it from her.

"I'm not handing this over until we have a clear written agreement to the trade," she said. There was a nervous tremor in her voice, but her brown eyes stared at my drone as if she were challenging me. She had no weapons, no authority, and with that collar around her neck, had clearly been in a position where she was in no control over what was happening to her. She was inside me, and if she knew what I was, then her bravery was even more astonishing.

But I suspected she didn't know what I was.

After the Caliciums, my species was more careful about interacting with unknown aliens.

"That is acceptable," I said, modulating my vocal tones to be soothing. I could see her shoulders relax just slightly in response. "Please allow me to remove the device from your neck. It is in violation of the Alliance Accord on Sentient Custody, and I would like to take it off of you and store it with the rest of the evidence."

Her eyes widened. "Yes, please."

I extended the manipulator on the drone and made a connection with the collar. In a few moments, I hacked it and triggered the release safely. I extended the drone's storage compartment and dropped it in, logging it into the report as physical evidence.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I am ship classification XTRA0354, but you may call me Lyrien," I said. "What is your designation?"

"You can call me Maria," she said.

"That is a remarkably short name," I said. "Do you not have titles or family identifiers? I've never seen one of your species before."

Her eyes widened, and there was a shimmer in them, like liquid gathering in the corners.

"Dr. Maria Pilar Cortes," she said. "My name is Dr. Maria Pilar Cortes. No one on the station cared about that."

"Would you prefer to be called by your full name?" I asked.

"Maria is fine," she said, her voice hushed. "Am I talking to a computer or a crew member?"

"I am the ship," I said. "I currently have no crew members on board. You are the only mobile sentient inside of me."

It limited me to a certain extent from hosting a crew. There was a great benefit to having mobile crew members that more than made up for the additional resource generation required to care for their needs. At the same time, it was a huge risk, especially because I was shellbound. Crew could defend you, but they could also betray you. It was a massive risk letting her on board, especially when she had Calicium tech around her neck.

I was vulnerable.

But I couldn't leave her behind.

"What did you mean by evidence?" she asked.

I thought about what I should tell her. I didn't know what species she was, or why she was there. The language she was speaking was loaded into the linguistics database, but it wasn't assigned a planet of origin, just a species name, which was extremely strange. Stranger yet, the language was flagged with a request to report any speakers to the Shek’invitali and was accompanied by biological care and medical data, so her species was known even if its origin was restricted. After loading her biological data from the file, I took a moment to adjust the air composition in the ship to include more oxygen as was required by her species and increased the temperature a few more notches.

She understood the Alliance standard, so she either learned to understand it without speaking it or had a translation implant. Translation implants allowed the owner to understand any of the known languages, but not speak them. The collar she had been wearing, and whatever physical conditions that might show up on a detailed medical scan of her, would be evidence that would be logged into my report.

But she was also a sentient being, and if I told her any details about myself or my mission, it could put her at risk if she were recaptured by the Taygetans. Given that it was their research station and their violation, it was important that they not know where I was heading with the evidence.

"That is classified," I said.

Her face fell, a bitterness crumpling in on the soft hope that had appeared when I removed the collar.

"Of course, why tell the lab rat anything?" she muttered under her breath, the notes of anger unmistakable.

I wanted that hope to reappear on her face, and there was some wiggle room in how the information could be shared.

"If I answer questions such as those, then I will have to limit your autonomy in specific ways to protect the mission," I offered.

"What ways?" she asked.