Page 21 of Leviathan

"I've upset you," Lyrien said. "I can see that. I should have asked before I carried you over here. I apologize."

"It's fine," I said. It was more than fine. It felt amazing. I just wasn't prepared for it. "It was just..." What word could I use to describe the unescapable awareness of the fact that he could make me cum without even intending to do it?

"It was just overstimulating," I finished.

"I thought your clothing would minimize touch," Lyrien said. "For me, it felt like carrying any other textured object around. Much different than touching your skin."

"My skin might be a little more sensitive than that," I said, grasping on to a more polite explanation. I did not want to talk about how incredibly good that had felt, or why. "I can feel touch through fabric with great detail."

"I won't move you again like that without asking first," Lyrien offered.

"That is for the best," I agreed.

I didn't know if I could bring myself to ask him to move me like that, given how much I enjoyed it. He was an alien artificial intelligence. Even if he wasn't, I couldn't let him touch me like that without explaining what he was doing to me.

Even if he was just software.

The thought repeated, catching in my mind, a thorn in a place it shouldn't be. He was software right? I'd said it, and he hadn't corrected me.

"Your skin feels much nicer to touch than your clothing," he said. "Perhaps if I were to move you again, it could be without clothing?"

My thoughts screeched to a halt, and I heard my mouth answer before my mind had risen out of the gutter to intercept the answer.

"Sure," I said. "That would work for me."

SIX

LYRIEN

It was too late.

I'd lost sensation in several of my weapons systems. I’d studied the contaminant in my lab, and what she had brought on board was a new strain, and it had been bioengineered to be attracted to my most efficient weaponry. I'd already isolated the filaments heading to those systems, and we were defenseless.

I had to be careful to isolate the movement of filaments until full sections had been cleared. Our best chance of salvation was staying hidden until the hunter lost the trail or Maria was able to help heal the damage that had come on board with her.

I had changed trajectory, heading for a densely packed uninhabited system with multiple asteroid-wrecked moons and a thick asteroid field. I needed as many potential hiding locations as possible to interfere with the tracking signal so that when the trail went dead, the hunter would have to search for us slowly and methodically.

More than anything, we needed time.

An alert grabbed my attention, refocusing on the outside of Maria's bedroom door. There had been a noise, enough to trigger the sensors. I listened for a moment. There it was, a soft moan.

Was she in pain?

Making low sounds to accompany physical distress was common for several species. I reviewed the medical files that I had for her kind. They were a noisy species, and vocalizations could be made for a wide variety of reasons, from celebratory to extreme distress.

She moaned again, and I captured the sound byte and ran a quick analysis through my medical data unit. The likelihood of it being pain signaling came back at around seventy percent.

It wasn't high enough priority to turn on my visual units to check on her. When I became aware of the contaminant, I paused all construction and rearranging. It was uncomfortable to keep my filaments from moving freely, but it was essential to limit the spread of the contaminant. That meant that I'd left my visual units in place, instead of removing them fully, choosing to put them in a dormant state.

She wanted them removed, and even though I wanted to provide the best possible environment for her healing, I wasn't going to endanger myself any more than I already had in bringing her on board in the first place.

I made up my mind to chime her door instead and politely inquire after her condition. If she didn't respond, then I could escalate from there and turn on my visual units to check on her.

But the next sound that escaped her lips derailed that plan in a heartbeat. "Lyrien," she gasped out, calling out my name like a prayer to summon me from the depths of my isolation.

She needed me.

I felt a tremor run through my core, the center of my being, the part of me that I ignored except for the regular maintenance tasks.