Dustin disconnected from the computer and made his way as quickly as possible to the exterior hull. Taking a moment to prepare himself, he changed himself to be able to handle the cold, then began eating through the hull. The vacuum sucked him out, far from the ship, and he allowed himself to drift farther and farther away. Changing himself here and there, to deal with the cold vacuum of space, he wondered what would happen if he just allowed himself to drift forever.
He thought about Kit, the other Uz'En, and Granny with her Gooblens, and wondered what would happen if he just stopped trying so hard. This AI was impossibly difficult. It had even infiltrated his hive mind of nanobots. While he didn't know why it wanted his body, he knew that as long as he was missing, it wouldn't kill any of them with the kill switch. They were too tempting to use as hostages. Then Olivia popped into his mind.
Why did he try so hard after she left him? It didn't make any sense. Anyone else would have just given up and moved on. Why did he even bother to try and save her so many times? There really wasn't a logical reason for him to go to so much effort time and time again, to save her. He had thought at one point he loved her, but now he wasn't so sure. She obviously didn't love him. So, what was it?
Granny had mentioned something to him once that what Olivia had done shouldn't have been possible. They even had a kid between them, so why did she leave? She had told him that Olivia would come to her senses, when she left to find the rest of her people, and he had believed her because she was so confident of it.
When the ship exploded, and debris flew past and through him, he snatched it and stored it inside his slime body in order to dissolve and eat later. He was preparing to shut himself down and sleep for however long it took for him to drift in space, when he felt a nudge. Something was actively trying to get his attention.
Forming an eye in the middle of his body, he looked at the creature that was nudging at him and was surprised to see behind it, a ship far larger than any he had ever seen before in his life. It was the size of a small planet.
The space creature was translucent, with a long slug-like body, that had six appendages spreading out on either side, waving in the energy of space. It looked at him out of a face that had large blue eyes and a small circular mouth. It nudged him again, with its nose, away from the ship, and turned to see how close the ship had gotten. Apparently, it had gotten far closer, because the creature seemed to panic and nudged him more urgently.
The next time it touched him, Dustin borrowed some of its genetics, and changed himself to look like it. It watched the entire time, then sped off, far faster than the space worm had ever traveled, away from the incoming ship.
He had no idea what was going on, but for a lack of other options, he followed it, amazed at the difference in speed he was able to achieve. Each little fan of his appendages caught minute particles of energy, and enabled him to speed up even more. Soon they were zooming through space, distancing themselves from the ship very quickly.
As they pulled around a field of asteroids, the creature slowed down, and checked on the ship again. Dustin pulled up next to it, noting that he couldn't see the ship anywhere. It turned, satisfied, and waved a fan at him to follow it. He almost didn't. This was just too weird, but again, a lack of options presented itself, so he followed.
It headed deep into the asteroid field, dodging them as they moved slowly. Taking a quick turn at a particularly large asteroid, it slipped into a crack and disappeared. Dustin paused for only a moment before joining it inside the asteroid. There sat a small ship, pieced together with random pieces that didn't match.
Dustin followed it, suddenly very interested, as it flew to an open hatch and went inside. He followed it, and the hatch closed behind him.
XxxxX
Olivia sat in her ship, cloaked, watching the group of hunters swarm over the station. She wasn't sure how to find where Dustin had been taken, and was hoping that one of these guys would be able to take her there. But choosing which one to follow was going to be difficult. There were easily fifteen different aliens, all looking to cash in on Dustin's misfortune.
Granny sat next to her, watching as well, waiting for her to make up her mind. The ship was full of Gooblens, sleeping off the feast they had just enjoyed. Apparently, none of the emergency protocols had been functioning when Dustin made a hole in the side of the station, so no one had noticed there was an air leak until it was far too late to try and fix. The entire atmosphere in the station had been bled out.
"What are the chances that the AI is watching us, right now?" wondered Olivia out loud.
"The AI?" asked Granny, looking away from the screen.
"This AI has itself entrenched into every nanobot Dustin ever made. It could probably kill the entire Uz'En race whenever it wanted."
"Then why hasn't it?" asked Granny.
"What does Dustin have that it wants so bad?" Olivia mused, watching the ships start to pull away from the station.
"Let's think about this for a moment," said Granny, "The Uz'En, as a race, only has the ability to change themselves into anything else that they want, except Dustin has the ability to tinker with electronics. He's single-handedly built the nanobots, the nanobot hive mind, and jump gates for instantaneous travel. That doesn't include all of the other stuff he did as a kid before he was captured. There's no telling what else he might be able to pull off, the more time he's allowed to tinker with things."
Olivia glanced over at Granny thoughtfully. It almost seemed like there was more to what she was telling her. "What else?"
Old Motha leaned forward, waking briefly from her nap, "Don't forget to tell her about the king, what's his name?"
Granny looked uncomfortable, as if she wasn't really wanting to talk about that.
"The king?" asked Olivia. "You mean Kit?"
"Yea! That was it! Kitteral," said Old Motha, leaning back in her chair. "Now he was an impressive fella."
Granny sighed as Olivia whipped back around to look at her again.
"Granny, you have some explaining to do. If you haven't seen your mom in a really long time, and we were in storage for almost 200 years, then the timing of Old Motha knowing about Dustin's dad, doesn't match."
"It is incredibly rare among the royal line, but it has been known to happen that they can stop aging. One of the reasons why I tried so hard to keep you and Dustin safe as kids, was because his dad was one of those people."
"So, wait, you mean that Dustin's dad was super old?" asked Olivia.
Granny nodded.
"When I first found the Uz'En on your original home world, Kitteral was a young boy."