26. Obila Part VII Exodus

The human world smelled—andtasted—disgusting as Ophion emerged from the airlock. He'd been busying himself learning to utilize the ship's onboard fabrication technology when he'd been interrupted by a commotion outside. He'd watched curiously through the ship's cameras for hours as the seemingly hostile humans had tried to force their way into the vessel to no avail. He'd bided his time to react to the intrusion.

Ophion stepped out of the Fortunato and began to murder.

The micro-missile launcher's holo-reticule immediately calculated firing trajectories for each hostile he swept it across. Along his weapon's firing cone, the silos of its projectiles twirled open as volleys of doom screamed out of it like enraged insects.

"What in the void!" someone cried out.

One of the mercenaries had turned to locate the source of the whistling, ceasing to exist before actually doing so. The only evidence that the man had ever been was a smoldering little crater and specks and splats of guts that the micro-fusion missile hadn't entirely denatured.

All across the plaza, each of his enemies had similarly just disappeared in synchronized doom, save for the one nearest the flying vessel Ophion's abominations had just arrived in. That particular hostile was too close to use such an imprecise weapon and hadn't yet had time to react to what had just happened. Ophion threw his missile launcher onto the ground and charged the man. His talon was at his throat in less than a second, and he pumped him full of an adaptive poison that killed him instantly. Ophion turned off his mantle and hissed a greeting to his allies. He threw the corpse aside and performed a bow.

"What in the ever-loving fuck is he?" gasped a man Ophion didn't recognize from within the craft.

The stranger was being helped to his feet by the smaller abomination—Auren—and Ophion learned his taste as they emerged onto his battlefield.

"It's a long story. He's a friend. Obviously." Lupo was smiling at Ophion, his synthetic version of blood smeared across his skull where he'd received an injury.

It unsettled Ophion to watch the unnatural being's skin stitch back together so readily. It was wrong. An aberration. And it triggered a deeply embedded unease within him—as though there were something fundamentally verboten about such a technology… as though there were an unspoken reason it had been outlawed or forgotten for the million-year reign of the Keth…

They were almost back at the airlock when a whirring erupted across the plaza. A series of armed drones had swarmed in from above, and Ophion wasted no time grabbing his missile launcher back off the ground.

"Inside, now!" Lupo cried out as the first of the drones' munitions rained across the plaza.

Bits of debris and rock exploded across Ophion, gouging into his scales and nearly blinding him as he desperately tried to target the attacking craft before they damaged their ship. More shots. More chaos. And then he fired.

The booms of this series of explosions dwarfed the prior ones as fusion ignited with whatever powerplant the human craft relied on. Lupo surprised him by grabbing his taloned hand and pulling him into the Fortunato. His touch was warm and odd, and Ophion recoiled from it as he followed the others inside.

As the airlock slid closed and the trio of men began to laugh inextricably, Ophion couldn't help but feel an odd sensation of relief, or belonging, that he hadn't experienced since his lovers had been murdered by the Pirate King all those years ago.

It was the relief of kinship. And he realized that he had somehow bonded with the alien abominations. Despite everything, they were his. And he, theirs. Ophion realized he was rattling, and the human tittering redoubled as he joined them in their anxious relief.

He was finally part of a crew once again. He belonged.