Empyrean Iris Story Collection

The Wrath of Conn

The ship was a strange place now, months had gone by without his presence, and without his connection to their thoughts, and in that time, things had changed. Conn wasn't entirely sure he appreciated it, but only because that meant he had to re-gather all the information he had originally collected on his human crew members to begin with.

It had been a difficult few months, the most difficult the ship had ever experienced. Conn wasn't exactly displeased at that fact considering that it was the collective fear and horror from the Cannibal incident that had finally broken him out of his Coma, but he was also displeased to find that things had changed somewhat. Conn didn't lie change, especially the change that he saw within the Commander. The only person aboard the ship that he could actually communicate with mind to mind.

Well actually scratch that, there were a few others he could speak with, but currently the weighed about fifteen pounds and had language ability so rudimentary it was like trying to talk with the dog.

Regardless, the last few months had absolutely ruined what tentative trust the two of them had garnered.

After returning to the ship, and after putting the Commander into a sort of psychological coma to deal with shock, a HAZMAT team from earth had been called to deal with the issue. Ensuing autopsies had proven that the crew had, in fact, been eating each other despite their being plenty of food left in storage. The remaining survivor, who the commander had been forced to kill in self defense was one Captain Everett Malaney Ex UNSC officer and current freelance ship contractor for both tourist and colonist divisions. By all right he had been an upstanding decision.

His autopsy had shown that advanced scurvy including kidney failure was the main reason for his monstrous appearance, bruised skin, thinning hair, infected gums and so on. As for the behavior of the crew, it could only be put down to some sort of exaggerated mass hysteria when people realized they would likely die alone in space billions of miles from home in the blackness of space.

Commander Vir had been..... Ok at that point, but the subsequent venture into a border-world prison had shattered his already cracked composure.

Conn was the only one who had been able to experience the fall from the man's own perspective. Watching inside his head as he careened into a psychological spiral that had eventually brought them to the earth for treatment.

Generally conn would have said that he totally didn't care about anyone's mental status, and he still would say the same upon being prompted, but this was something that needed to be taken care of and it needed to be done quickly. It wasn't his fault he was the only one who would truly be able to handle it.

So there he floated in the darkness of early morning, down the hall and towards the mess hall, a ghost town in the early morning devoid of both the sleeping crew-members and the skeleton crew who were off working at their perspective jobs.

He could sense five minds on approach to the room. Three rudimentary and childish minds, and one completely alien guided primarily by smell and hearing. She was the one to sense his first, with that powerful nose of hers. She didn't like his smell, it was a burning and caustic thing that made her uneasy, and generally caused her to sneeze.

The next to notice were the spiderlings underdeveloped noses that were already almost as good as the dogs. They were strange creatures to be sure and Conn wasn't sure how he thought about them.

Tendrils billowing at his back he floated into the room.

With a whine of agitation, the dog lifted her head from where she had been grooming one of the spiderlings cradled between her two forward paws. Her tongue was still out from where she had been dragging it down the monstrosity's back. Finally recognizing that he wasn't going to leave she went back to her grooming. The soft scritch scritch scritch sound of her tongue on fur echoing around the room. She hadn't originally known how to feel about the spiderlings, but they did smell oddly like Adam, and they looked enough like puppies that she could almost ignore the fact that they had extra legs.