Ionized particles brushed against Meruel's body as he plunged into the deep azure. Behind him, the hulking silhouette of his spacecraft dwindled as he pressed onward. Growing ever more distant the further away he moved from the familiar shores of its pockmarked hull.

His tentacles lifted, each pointing in different directions, swiveling around as he tried to pinpoint the source of the signal that had lured him here like a siren's song. The nebula concealed the exact position... but it was a distress call. Not psionic in nature, but artificially made. Most likely belonging to a stranded spacecraft.

A stranded spacecraft might mean people. And if he could find people... then he could find a host at last! An end to his lonesome hunger!

Whizzing through the cerulean void around him, small pixelated holographic projections formed around packets of data glimmered with violet light. There were five of them, each shaped like tiny shrimps, with long feelers that waved around as they followed in Meruel's wake like pilot fish trailing a shark. They were his first creations. Simple programmed constructs given rudimentary forms so that they might provide some company during his long search for life in the sea of stars. Presently, their assigned task was to aid him in surveying his surroundings. But as he swam through space, he could not help but take joy in the simple pleasure of free movement through the interstellar ocean, flanked at all times by his very own glimmering shoal.

An asteroid loomed in the distance like a reef. And indeed, broken upon it with the hull shredded open lay a shipwreck. Fragments of debris caught by the gravity exerted by the rock idly drifting around the site of the wreck in unstable orbits. At first sight of it, Meruel worried that perhaps his hopes had been for naught. But with a gesture he sent one of his small shrimp constructs forward as an advance scout. While he drifted outside on the currents of cosmic dust, his holographic helper located the main computer systems of the downed vessel. Providing a small enough charge of power to reactivate them, if only for a moment. Long enough to scour the system for useful data about what had happened. As it transpired, there was very little left to salvage...

The ship and its memory core had both been stripped down almost to the bulkheads, courtesy of space pirates.

Casting his gaze around, Meruel beheld many more asteroids drifting within the sapphire depths of the nebula cloud. More reefs, no doubt harbouring more shipwrecks, lured here by the same siren call that he had received in order for pirates to pick them clean. This particular atoll was no doubt their hunting ground. For once a ship became lost within the nebula, it would no doubt be easy for the pirates to drive them into the asteroid field to run aground upon the rocks.

It wasn't the most encouraging discovery. But if the pirates used this location for their ambushes, then it also made sense that they might have their own port nearby. A safe harbour where they would berth their ships between raids. Somewhere with life support systems... where he could still manage to achieve his obective of finding a host.

Calling his shrimp sprite back to him, Meruel propelled himself into the deepest abyss of the nebula with long elegant strokes of his tail. Signalling his shrimp to scatter around him, their tiny feelers waving around in a flurry of activity, scrying their surroundings for any sign of the pirate cove. They passed more broken hulls and swirling clouds of scrap as they plumbed towards the place within the cloud where the light of distant stars was most heavily obscured. But hunger and resolve drove Meruel and his shoal further despite the remnants of past battles and bloodshed that lay scattered around them.

Finally, in the distance, there loomed an asteroid that far eclipsed the rest in size. With outcroppings of bent and twisted metal jutting out from it and forming two circular rings.

Nestled inside the center of a hollow depression in the rock, like a pearl tucked away within a clamshell, Meruel perceived a glowing energized hemisphere forming a protective bubble around a small spacestation consisting of several buildings anchored to the surface of the rock itself burrowing down into the interior of the asteroid, with additional metal hangar doors and access ports built outwards from there into the asteroid crust. His central core glimmered and his hopes soared at the sight of it! Imposing though it was, and no doubt filled with pirates who would be hostile to him, he'd finally found some semblance of civilization! It was simply such a relief to discover other sentient life after having been alone since the moment he awakened.

Of course, he already had proof that the individuals stationed here were not interested in negotiation. They were predators, who had carved out their own ecological niche within the stars through their development of an efficient strategy to remorselessly ensnare and plunder unwary prey. Such people would not respond well if he were to approach them diplomatically and show vulnerability by revealling that he was hungry and in urgent need of a host lifeform to bond with. No, it was far more likely they would seize upon him. See him as something else to dissect, to consume for useful resources, and then discard.

Unacceptable.

Meruel was the legacy of a lost people. Their final hope for the future. He could not afford to let all the efforts of his creators come to an end here. Summoning his small shrimp sprites to him, they swirled around his body in eliptical orbit, their violet hue changing to a lighter shade of lavender as he began updating them with new protocols. Combat protocols.

He saw no alternative. Now on the verge of starvation, today it would be the pirates who would be the prey... for a leviathan had found their harbour.

*****

Even in space, it seems, there are sea monsters.

Madness_demon delivered this very special piece as the final upload of 2024! It may be one of the most beautiful ones that I have ever received!