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I adjust the sling of my automatic shotgun, and grab onto one of the handles lining the wall of the residential tunnel. The wall-mounted phone is clunky, and my grip on it feels clumsy through the thick material of my armored space suit. The keypad does away with anything but bare utilitarian function, and i press the button for military HQ.
"This is Lieutenant Jonas Templeton, calling from block 7. We finished the evacuation. "
I can imagine the operator on the other side checking a spreadsheet and marking off the relevant data.
"Copy, Lieutenant. Move your unit to pillbox 116, and standby to repel boarders."
The phone clicks back into the receiver, and I sigh, and kick off the wall. I'd been in the infantry since the revolution, and the whole time we had known that our duties would be useless against any proper enemy. No matter how fortified we made the outer layers of the asteroid city, the Terran Accord or any corporate security force wouldn't bother with boarding. They'd just destroy the asteroid.
But the Affini are different, at least according to the intel passed down from command. The fact finding mission had returned with data from their trip to the Affini, and just days later, hours ago, the Affini had come, and command had declared war.
Pillbox 116 is little more than a fortified checkpoint watching over a major hall junction, fitted with a control panel for all the halls it overlooks, and a hardline back to HQ.
The radio crackles with the interference of whatever is going on outside.
"kssht— Exit Velocity just cut its engines, an Affini ship is moving in on us too… This is the PDCS Starbound, we’re being boarded! We can see pods headed for— kssht"
impacts reverberate through the entire asteroid, as several large objects hit the outside. I look up, and see dust floating through the dim light.
"Seal the hatches between here and the outer section, and then every hatch other than along access route T27. Leave that open. Collun, prepare a bounding strategy to withdraw along T27, sealing as we pull back."
"Yes sir"
The soldiers snap to action, typing away on consoles or delivering orders. I unsling my shotgun, and peer out the slot in the pill box. Outside, hatches slam close down hallways. The platoon lines up at the slot, shotguns ready. None of them were much of professional soldiers, just miners who had taken up arms before. I had myself been caught up in the revolution, and had been part of the force that had stormed the corporate security headquarters in the gravity block.
There’s a building rumbling, and the sound of shearing metal and stone out in the external facing block.
Then it stops, its absence somehow causing even greater anxiety in the pit of my gut. In the microgravity, sweat beads to my skin, the slightest movement breaking it off and sending it tumbling through my helmet.
The door immediately opposite the firing slot makes an odd noise, and the burning arc of a cutter carves a small circle in it. A cylinder of metal slides out, back into the mysterious space beyond.
"Here they come, people, weapons free."
I click the safety off on my shotgun, and hold my breath in anticipation.
A small cylinder shoots thought the hole, lined up perfectly to pass through the firing slot.
I duck down with a yell that makes me cringe, my noise joining the cacophony of yells, as the canister shoots out a spray of thorns. each thorn seems to curve towards its target, punching through the weak points in the combat space suits.
I catch one on the thick kevlar of my gauntlet, and a handful more on my backpack. I uncurl from my position, and freeze when I feel a sharp poke on the underside of my arm. Looking down, I see that one thorn had pierced the soft material under my arm. Most of the platoon had not managed to avoid the darts, and are floating still in the air.
I pull the dart that had hit me out, and realize that I'm seeing after-images of my movement. The tip of the dart is covered in a pink sheen that shimmers in the dim light. The thought that it must be drugged manages to worm its way up through the fog filling my head.
I stumble-float to the window in time to see the hatch open. My shotgun floats off to my side, but I can feel my dexterity slipping away. The plant-like body of an Affini enters the hall junction, and heads straight for me.
The drug seems to be doing something to me, dragging up old memories, flashing through my head. I shouldn't be like this. I should be fighting, doing something to protect my home.
But as the Affini squeezes its form down, vines worming their way into the pillbox, all I can do is feel small and alone, and remember how the corporate enforcers came to my house, and told my mom and I that he had been caught smuggling fertilizer from his job in the ag block to the rebels.
I had felt small, helpless.
I blink in surprise as I feel tears welling up in my eyes, joining the sweat beading inside my helmet.
The Affini fills the small space, vines swirling out every way to check the other soldiers around me.
Vines curl around me, and three large, glowing eyes turn to face me.
I can feel myself shrinking down, both inside and out. I shy away from the mass of plant, but the drugs coursing through me keep fear away, and I can't feel any anger or hatred from these eyes.
I look back up, and find only a deep, familiar, warmth. Looking down at me, not like the security officers, but the father they took from me.
A vine wraps around the rim of my helmet, and removes it with a hiss.
I can't help but stare up into His eyes as he wipes away one of my tears.
"I-i… I'm sorry."
The tears are flowing harder now, and I don't know why. It's hard to think of anything, except the point where His vines curls around my cheek.
His voice reverberates when He talks, and I'm reminded how much he fills the pillbox.
"Oh, darling. You have no reason to be sorry."
Something moves in my field of vision, sending ripples of pink afterimages through the haze of my vision.
The needle pierces my chest, and darkness presses in around the sides of my vision.
My vision splits, three eyes become six. Vines coil around me possessively, and I can't help but sink into them. Something feels so deeply familiar about the warmth, and i whimper out one last word before the darkness takes me.
"D-dad.."
~
Wakening comes to me with a pink hue. I'm alone, a fact that makes me upset much to my own confusion.
The room is large, and round. The walls are covered in light pink drapes, and light emanates from somewhere beyond them. There's a haze between my brain and the world, and it's hard to string more than two thoughts together.
I'm not in my combat suit, nor the undersuit. Instead, I'm in a loose top thst barely brushes my navel, and a similarly loose pair of short-shorts that have a closer effect to a skirt. Some shadowy recess of my mind informs me that this cut of shorts is called a culotte. There's a band around my neck.
Its vaguely feminine, and far worse, its downweller attire, completely lacking in any sensible features like pressure suits or a single patch of velcro. My skin is completely hairless, which is a little odd but feels nice to rub against he soft fabric of my bed.
Eventually, my memories filter back, and I feel a jolt of urgency poke through my haze like the needle through my chest. I had been captured by the Affini, and am now their prisoner. With more intel on their culture and more command over my brain cells, i would be able to determine the reason I'm in a room like this, and dressed this way but a solution yet eludes me.
More light seems to filter through one particular patch of curtain than the rest, and I think I can see a slight gap denoting a door.
I crawl to the edge of my bed, and look down. Its tall, maybe my own height. Luckily, i spot a place where there is a step about half the height of the bed. Still waist high, but more manageable to get down. I make my way across too much far-too-smooth green carpet to reach the door. I can hear a basey hum on the other side of the curtain, vibrating through me. I also pick up the smell of something tasty.
I push aside the curtain and step out of the bedroom.
The main room is laid out in an open spiral, patterns in the carpet wrapping around and terminating in the middle in an open kitchen wrapped by a table and seats. A few other curtains set into the wall around the perimeter.
The Affini looks up from His place in the middle of the kitchen.
"Good morning kiddo. Did you sleep well?"
His voice sends shivers down my spine, and I cross the open space to stand closer. He towers over me as much as he did last night, if not more, allowed to stretch out.
"W-where am I?" I think I should be more scared, but He just feels too warm, too familiar.
"Our house. If you meant more generally, we are aboard the Cornucopia, docked outside Bandur City, in the Alumnus system of the coreward region of Terran space, in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. I could keep going but I can see that your eyes just glazed over more than they already were."
I make a small noise, and He reaches out with a vine to pat me on the head, before guiding me over to one of the low seats surrounding the kitchen.
"I'm making you breakfast. I didn't want your first morning to bee… too abrupt so I'm making something off of the local dining center menus. Potato pasta with a silk tofu based sauce."
The smell of hot peppers steeping in sauce triggers a burst of memory.
"Da-" I barely know this man, this plant. I don't even know His name, or that he is a 'He'. I'm presumptive. He attacked me, I woke up in his house and I feel like a kid because he reminds me of my dad. That's all.
Something in his demeanor shifts. "I think I got a little bit ahead of myself, dear. I'm Vredefort Sagaria, 5th Bloom. He/Him. You are my floret. Typically, the dynamic between owner and floret is that of a pet. Though, given the way you reacted to me, analysis of your internet history, and how susceptible you are to regression, I felt making you my daughter would be more appropriate. To that end, you are on a permanent, low-level dose of a re—."
He keeps talking, but it sinks to a lower level of my processing. Despite it coming from Him, its boring. His daughter. so He is my dad, that makes sense why I feel the way I do about Him. But, daughter?
"But I'm a boy!"
Dad chuckles, and runs a vine through my hair. "Not anymore."
I sit and think for a moment. "Oh, ok." If Dad says so, then it must be true.
There's a clink as He sets a plate of steaming pasta in front of me.
"Lets hurry up and eat, I want to get you all dressed up for the surrender ceremony, and then your implantation later today."
That sounds important and fun, but my attention is focused more on the food He's piling onto the fork in his hand.
Some part of me, deep down, writhes in discomfort. Like a part of me, the part that would lash out and feel upset or embarrassed has been erased. But that too is buried under the fuzz and innocence that seems to permeate my new world. Things just make sense now. I don't have to question things, because somehow I know that He is always right.
He indicates for me to open my mouth, and when I do, He slides a fork loaded in delicious food into my mouth. I have nothing to worry about. I don't have to be a big girl anymore.