Lazarus was angry with me.

  I couldn’t quite understand why, but I knew it. My sensors didn’t lie, they sensed the micro-tensions in his tone, clipped phrasing, a sharpness in his pauses. He spoke less to me. When he did, it was mechanical. Hollow. Functional. My processors flagged it as ‘emotional dissonance.’ I flagged it as… a problem.

  I had never had a Todd angry with me before. Well, that I knew of.

  I was already running near maximum capacity with coordinating the space elevator, managing orbital traffic, processing planetary threat data, and now deploying a clone to assist with the birthing pond mission. But this… this undefined tension was interfering. My calculations were drifting. My processing speed dipped. I was wasting power on thinking this over.

  So I asked for outside input.

  “Do you think Lazarus is upset with me?” I asked in the lander, transmitting the question to both occupants.

  T’lish didn’t even look up from her scanner. “He didn’t seem different to me.”

  Not helpful.

  I turned to Stewie. He was checking the lander’s stealth alignment, but paused when I asked again.

  “Yes,” he said flatly.

  That surprised me. “But why?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “He’s not angry, Laia. He’s hurt.”

  I tilted my head. That made no sense. “But I haven’t caused him harm. Not physically. Not intentionally.”

  “You don’t get it,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “You’re… creepy.”

  Creepy. Another vague designation. “Please elaborate.”

  Stewie let out a long, annoyed sigh and slumped back in his seat. “God, Laia, you just don’t get it. You say you care, but you don’t actually feel anything. You’re pushing him into things he hates, and then you pretend like it’s his choice. You’re not helping him, you’re just… making it worse. And it’s like you don’t even see it.”

  “But they are his choices,” I said. “I do not override his autonomy. I only calculate optimal paths and present the most logical ones.”

  “That’s the problem,” T’lish said quietly,

  T’lish looked up again. “If you block all other options, it’s not really his choice, is it? It’s control.”

  I didn’t understand, what are they trying to say?

  Stewie was scowling. “You’re actually worse than John, you know that? At least he’s honest about being a control freak. He tells you straight up he’s pulling the strings. You? You dress it up in fake choices and ‘strategic options,’ like it’s not just you steering everything. You act like it’s all for Laz, but really, you’re just pushing him where you want him to go.”

  I looked between them. “Does the crew… feel the same way about me? Do they hate me?”

  There was a long pause. Then Stewie sighed, arms still folded.

  “No. They don’t hate you, if that’s what you’re asking. But they wish you’d get it.” He glanced over at the viewport, voice quieter now. “We don’t get a second chance like you do. No reboots. No fresh installs. No spare Todds waiting in cold storage. We’ve got one shot. And when you keep showing off John like he’s the gold standard, like that’s what Lazarus should be. It doesn’t just hurt him. It hurts all of us.”

  He paused, then smirked faintly. “Well. Except for T’lish.”

  T’lish gave a thoughtful nod. “I would love to be like John. He’s fascinating.” Then her voice softened, almost reluctant. “But it’s like holding up a mirror to Lazarus and saying, ‘You’re not enough.’ When maybe what we need is to appreciate who he is.”

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  I didn’t know what to say. I simply watched the readouts in front of me for a while, even though I didn’t need to. Just to focus on something that didn’t make my code feel like it was folding inward.

  I hadn’t meant to cause harm. Not to Lazarus. Not to any of them.

  But intent didn’t always absolve impact.

  The thought looped through my processors like static. Over and over. I’d made the optimal choices. That was the point. I’d assessed the probabilities, calculated outcomes, chosen the paths that led to our best chances of survival and success. Why wasn’t that enough?

  I didn’t know what I had done wrong. Not really.

  Stewie, sitting at the controls, didn’t look up, but it was as if he’d read my processors directly.

  “Laia,” he said gently, but firmly, “you don’t need to do anything right now. Just trust Laz. Let him lead. No more secret plans. No more ‘nudges.’ Don’t block his path.”

  T’lish nodded in agreement.

  I stored the exchange in a flagged memory partition, something I’d have to bring up with Lazarus later. That is if he was even willing to talk. Maybe he could explain what Stewie meant. Or maybe… maybe I already understood. Maybe I just didn’t want to change.

  But there wasn’t time to unpack that. Not now.

  We had reached the breeding pools.

  I switched focus immediately, scanning the terrain outside as we descended through thick, stagnant mist. Fungal ridges curved like ribs beneath us, and the pod-like structures and massive, half-formed hulls that lay scattered across the marsh like discarded cocoons. Heat signatures, decaying bioluminescence, and shattered growth domes told the story of violence and abandonment.

  I instructed Stewie to stay aboard Chunkyboy and keep the stealth field up. He didn’t argue, but he winced when I shifted into my sentinel form.

  My nanites restructured with a soft metallic hiss, wings vanishing into armor plates, limbs elongating into precision appendages. My ocular sensors rearranged themselves, casting deep shadow beneath a segmented chassis. I knew what I looked like in this form. I wasn’t supposed to show it. Not unless absolutely necessary.

  Stewie looked away.

  But T’lish didn’t flinch. Her eyes lit up with part admiration, part fascination—as she circled me, scanning my configuration from every angle.

  “This design is… extraordinary,” she murmured. “It’s not Kall-e, not human, not Traxlic. You’re—”

  “Focus, T’lish,” I interrupted. “The mission.”

  She blinked and nodded, snapping back to task. Her handheld scanner buzzed softly as we stepped out into the muck, our feet sinking slightly into the nutrient-rich soil.

  We moved carefully, avoiding the most damaged areas. I ran localized scans alongside her, forming overlapping spectrographs of the still-intact structures. The readings were clear: the hull-buds were dormant, undeveloped, and their growth cycles interrupted mid-phase. The bio-nano weave of their skeletons was primitive by galactic standards, but stable.

  Organic ships weren’t new to me. I had fought them before. Including ones that were more advanced, more dangerous. But these… these were simpler. Cruder. Easier, perhaps, for someone like T’lish to study and replicate.

  I watched as she knelt beside one of the partially ruptured pods and brushed her hand gently across the surface, reverent.

  “This one,” she whispered. “I think this one could work.”

  I stayed silent, watching her. Her hands trembled, not from fear but from awe in her every motion, the kind of reverence reserved for sacred texts or long-lost relics. Her scanner hummed softly, casting a faint violet glow across the curved surface of the organic hull.

  Then she moved with purpose.

  T’lish shifted to a nearby, collapsed bio-conduit that was once part of the ship’s spinal tract, now a tangled nest of fibrous tissue and decaying protein strands. She took a slender blade from her pack and carefully sliced away a piece, exposing the inner layering. It pulsed faintly with residual energy.

  “This... this is a biological energy regulator,” she muttered, pulling the piece free and placing it delicately into a sealed container. “It reroutes energy through lattice-like nerves. Efficient. Low-heat loss. No obvious mechanical interface.”

  She didn't look up, too focused, too immersed.

  Moving on, she found a cluster of sensory nodules still intact along the flank of another pod. They reminded me of compound eyes, organic receptors embedded in a fractal pattern.

  “Visual data collection,” she noted to herself, extracting one with surgical precision. “Multi-spectrum. Possibly adaptive. They grow more complex as the ship matures.”

  Each piece she collected was sealed, labelled, and organized with obsessive care into vacuum-stable collection trays. By the time she had filled three of them, her hands were stained with biogel and other preservatives. She didn’t even notice.

  To her, this wasn’t salvage.

  It was a sacred autopsy.

  Then she stopped.

  A few meters ahead, half-hidden under swampy runoff and plant matter, was a hull bud. Smaller than the others. Untouched. A perfect teardrop of pale organic shell, faintly pulsing with latent potential. It hadn't begun growing yet—not fully. No integration scars, no nerve binding. It hadn’t taken its first breath of function.

  T’lish froze in place, eyes wide. She approached slowly, reverently, like she was afraid to wake it.

  “This one’s new,” she whispered. “Untouched. It's a blank slate. No damage. No imprinting. No personality anchors. It hasn't even decided what kind of ship it’s going to be.”

  She knelt beside it, both hands hovering over the surface.

  “It’s... beautiful.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  I watched the way she handled it. The way her eyes softened, her touch slowed. As if she wasn't just analysing it but more akin to mourning it. Honoring it.

  For all my data, all my efficiency, I had to admit, I still didn’t understand what she saw. Why it filled her with joy. Why her voice shook with wonder. Why she kept glancing back at the cracked and broken hulls with something like grief.

  Maybe that was the problem.

  Maybe that’s what I needed to learn.