# Desynchronization

Author: Losstride
Tags: Blood, Cyborg, Death, Feline, Gore, Human, JumpShip, Komodo Dragon, Lion, Lioness, Mind Control, No-Yiff, Reptile, Sci-Fi, Snuff, Space, Violence, nonsexual, parasites

I actually wrote this a long time ago, but I just now got around to uploading it. I'm rather proud of it, to be honest. Even without knowing much about the backstory or canon, readers elsewhere commented that it was easy to infer how things functioned just by how the information was presented.  
  
Remember to rate it and leave any comments that you have.

Janna stared at the scanners on her dashboard; they had detected motion out there in space, but the signature had simply disappeared. Glitches did not normally happen with bioships, especially with HardLinked ones like her precious Purr. This called for a cautious investigation.  
  
The brunette pilot brushed back her long hair, leaned back in her chair, and melded her senses with her lifelong partner. She was greeted with a warm rumble from her Leonine bioship, but she mentally shushed Purr. "Not now. You know we may be in danger."  
  
Purr's external cameras became Janna's eyes; triangular motion sensors became her own ears. Pressure plates and livesteel became her own feeling flesh. Everything was shared between the HardLinked pilot and her lion-themed bioship.  
  
They swung their head around to visually scan the seemingly empty patch of space. The nearby planet had long since been mined out of its resources, and only a decommissioned orbital station remained. The massive metal bulk was their original objective; the Tribunal had wanted them to nudge the metallic superstructure towards the distant star by reactivating its auxiliary engines in order to dispose of potentially hazardous materials left behind.  
  
"There." A quick slip of motion betrayed another bioship's presence. It had hidden itself under one of the station's huge solar panels, but part of it showed through a hole in the structure.  
  
"Identify."  
  
There was no response. The communications system validated that the message had been sent and received by the other ship, though.  
  
"Identify yourself", Janna said again. Purr sensed imminent danger and deployed her limbs in preparation for combat. The sleek vessel unfolded to morph into a vaguely feline anthropomorphic shape. Electromagnetic tendrils deployed from her head and neck; their shape vaguely resembled a proud mane. Plasma carvers in the hands unfolded into "claws", powered on, and tensed up in a ready position.  
  
A shape partially crawled out from under the panel. The mass of a Komodo ship stared at the pair with a cold gaze, darted its sensory tongue out, and then revealed the rest of its muscular frame by slithering into the open.  
  
Janna's heartrate shot up, and Purr hissed at the sight of bloody, red tendrils crawling across the reptilian bioship's body. "Crimson! It's infected! Open fire, Purr!"  
  
Their mane's flowing lengths whipped forward. Multiple threads pointed at the beastly ship; an electric charge had been generated by the motion of the tendrils rubbing together. The electricity was discharged in multiple arcs of directed lightning towards the enemy.  
  
The Komodo slithered along the length of the panel at a fairly impressive speed; the smaller photosynthetic plates were blasted off behind it. Hatches opened on its back to launch decoy flares that absorbed the closer blasts.  
  
The duo activated their small jet nozzles to blast themselves towards the beast. They knew that the Komodo had them beat in raw physical strength, but Crimson infections greatly slowed down infected pilots' reaction times. The Leo ship would win through speed.  
  
The distance closed quickly. Plasma flared and sparked as the claws went to full charge. Janna let Purr take over the body; the bioship had better reaction times at close-range. Their target did not move, as if it did not sense the danger.  
  
Purr roared in rage and swung their left arm in a wide swing. The Komodo blasted off a second barrage of flares at close range to blind the pair. Janna felt her physical pupils dilate and saw the camera feed white out from the intensity of the lights.  
  
Purr backpedaled to blindly avoid any counterattack, but none came. Triangular sensor arrays swiveled around in an attempt to find the large, lizard-like ship.  
Janna cursed: "Damn it... where'd it go now?"  
  
The joined pair searched frantically for the hostile bioship. Tiny jet nozzles positioned across the body helped them orient and turn in the vacuum of space to find their quarry.  
  
Feline camera eyes scanned the surface of the solar array; the beast had already hidden under it once...  
  
Purr and Janna alighted on the surface of a burned out panel. Magnetic paw pads locked them to it. A few steps brought them to the edge. With a graceful, natural motion, Purr took them from one side to the underside. With the planet now overhead and the rest of space underfoot, the view would be disorienting to anyone who had not spent many months in space.   
  
The other panels seemed to be devoid of the Komodo's presence. Janna briefly contemplated the possibility that it had willingly entered the planet's gravity well, but that would be a fatal move for all but the largest bioships; the Komodo would not survive reentry, and even Crimson strands were aware of that.  
  
The panel vibrated. Purr started to spin around. They saw what looked like a floating piece of debris, but it was moving directly towards them at high speed. Avoidance was impossible at this point; damage control was the only option, so Purr twisted to minimize the contact zone.  
  
The metal pierced into their side just above the hip. Oils and partially synthetic blood sprayed into the vacuum of space to float away. Pain sensors flared up for both Purr and Janna. Inside the skull-based cockpit, blood leaked through Janna's uniform as a similar wound opened on her physical body.  
  
The duo reached down to remove the debris, but were launched back by a sudden impact to the chest. They slid backwards until Purr dug her uncharged hindclaws into the panel.  
  
A visual distortion occurred where they had been stabbed. The Komodo shimmered into view; somehow, the pilot had acquired a cloaking unit from somewhere. Janna did not care where at the moment, as this ability had just significantly lowered her and Purr's chances of victory.  
  
Purr was unfettered by such worries; her feline mind was fixed upon survival and how to attain it. With that in mind, she flicked her tendrils forward into an attack array. At this range, the Komodo could not possibly dodge every blast.  
  
Arcs of projected electricity launched out. The Komodo went down into a slither towards the firing feline ship. Some of the shots missed, but several hit the enemy ship. Burn marks and occasional tears appeared wherever the lightning made magnetic contact. Infected with Crimson, the pilot probably could not feel the pain of the open wounds. At least, that is what the Tribunal had told pilots in order to assuage feelings of guilt when executing them.  
  
Closer... closer... Purr's electric charge was almost gone, and the Komodo was almost upon them. Janna silently shared a plan with her ship. The hindclaws released their grip on the torn panel, and plasma jumped across their cutting surfaces. Janna left the final moments to Purr; her own reaction time would not be sufficient for this attack.  
  
The Komodo leaped into a tackle, large arms outspread to grab the Leonine. Purr responded with a quick flip upwards.  
  
They kept their hindlegs together, creating a glowing row of plasma carvers. They felt a minimum amount of contact as the tools turned weapons raked across the Komodo's upper body.  
  
Now above the creature, they righted themselves and pushed down to assault its back. Claws swiped at the hatches that normally housed flares, pods, or missiles. There would be no more tricks if Purr had her way.  
  
If sounds could be heard, then Janna knew that the screech of tearing metal would be sickening. Small tendrils of torn Crimson floated off of the flailing Komodo. The fungus strands died quickly without a physical connection to the host.  
  
Purr lifted an arm to stab it directly down into the enemy cockpit: kill the pilot, kill the established infection. Her finishing blow was interrupted by something, though.  
  
They turned their head to look at the obstruction; the Komodo's tongue had wrapped around their wrist. It flicked its head to slam the surprised pair down onto the panel beside it.  
  
Purr was dizzy from the impact, but Janna was still conscious. She moved their free arm to slice at the tongue, but she was too slow. A larger, stronger reptilian arm grabbed the slowed hand, and squeezed it until the claws shattered.  
  
With a vice grip on them, the Komodo stood up partially. Purr came back online, and attempted to scratch at the beast. A heavy foot stomped onto their stomach. Janna grunted in pain, and Purr continued her desperate writhing.  
  
The Komodo ignored the light scratches from the hindlegs that could not reach its main body. The thrashing of the arm held only by the tongue was more of a threat, anyways.  
  
The reptilian leaned away and put more weight onto the pinned pair's body. Its tongue started to retract, still holding the arm in its grasp. Purr and Janna attempted to resist, but they just were not as strong as the bigger bioship.  
  
Janna cried out as the enemy yanked harder and harder; Purr screeched in an animalistic rage. The Komodo pulled until something snapped.  
  
Inside Purr's cockpit, something else thumped to the ground. Blood jetted across the dashboard, windshield, seat, and wall. Janna screamed endlessly without pause for several seconds, until she mercifully fell unconscious.  
  
Purr writhed in her own sort of agony on the panel for just a moment before she attempted to crawl away. A difficult task with only one arm and an unconscious pilot. Oil and machine blood oozed out into open space from the removed socket. Some splattered onto the panels to paint a grisly picture.  
  
The Komodo slowly strode towards the damaged feline. It discarded the removed limb to float uselessly into space; reattaching it would have been impossible anyways, not that it mattered to Janna and Purr at the moment.  
  
Purr looked back at the approaching enemy ship. Her animal mind registered an innate fear while her gaze passed over the fungal pustules on the Komodo's carriage. At this distance, she could see the unnatural throbbing of several that were ready to burst.  
  
The feline had only another few seconds to decide what to do. With her unconscious pilot's shared thoughts and memories, she knew what would happen upon infection. A "life" of killing and spreading further misery. The beastly bioship knew what she had to do to decrease the danger to others.  
  
The plasma carvers on her remaining hand sparked and fizzed. A moment later, they turned on. She stared at them with overwhelming fear, and then turned them upon herself. Purr jammed the claws into her own head; plasma ate through her metallic skin and into the cockpit. Memories and emotions began to die immediately as she eviscerated her own partner's body. Fear was replaced by sadness and crushing loneliness. These sad emotions drained away as well once the HardLink ended. Purr would spend her final moments as a mindless beast.  
  
The Komodo, not understanding, grabbed Purr's neck from behind. It yanked her against its own body, and crushed several pustules. The ruptured fungal pods released spores and tendrils to creep across her torn flesh. They dug in, searched for wounds, and invaded her systems. The feline bioship's tail and feet twitched in a hanged man's last dance. Errors cropped up in her neural systems as they were replaced by the fungal network.  
  
The tendrils found what was left of Janna's burnt corpse. A leg and part of the torso were far from sufficient for the Crimson to combine with. The parasitic fungus did not know disappointment, but it did know anger.  Without a pilot's advanced brain, tactics and planning were impossible. This new host would be little more than a dumb puppet to be directed on a suicide charge.  
  
The Komodo released Purr. Her body floated slowly away as the red stain of infection spread over her corpse. The reptilian creature turned its head towards a distant star, and launched off from the cracked panels. It shifted form into a streamlined ship, engaged its magnetic warp engine, and aligned its nose with a distant Anchor. It warped away from the system, no longer interested in a completed hunt

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Source: https://sofurry.com/s/yndRORZe