by M. D. Cooper
Major Tim slid a hand through his hair and sighed. “You’ve got a better way with words than I’d expected.”
“Stars know how,” Rika replied. “Being a mech is mostly clanking, yelling, and cussing.”
“‘Clanking’?”
“Well, we can’t fuck, so I had to come up with some other word to put in there.”
The major snorted. “OK, Captain. I appreciate your honesty and candor. I’ll talk it over with Commander Scas and Chief Ora; maybe we can work something out.”
“That would be fantastic,” Rika replied. “Permission to be on my way?”
“Granted,” Tim said, then heaved a sigh and waved her out of his tiny room.
COLLABORATION
STELLAR DATE: 04.21.8949 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Golden Lark
REGION: Iapetus, Hercules System, Septhian Alliance
“If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be setting up a training facility for mechs to beat the shit out of, I’d’ve laughed my ass off,” Chase said before taking a bite of his burger.
“Well, I meant the facility. The mechs beating the shit out of each other was a given.”
Rika nodded slowly as she swallowed a mouthful of fries. “You think that’s surreal? I’m responsible for over four hundred people. A year ago, my biggest worry was how long my SC Batt charge would last, and whether or not you’d ask me out again.”
Chase winked at her. “Yeah, the silver lining in Hal’s Hell.”
“Chase! Finish chewing first! Gross!”
Chase’s eyes widened, and he swallowed his food before replying. “Really? With all you’ve seen, that’s what grosses you out?”
“Yeah,” Rika replied with a grimace. “I’ve seen too much on the battlefield that looks like the burger in your mouth.”
Leslie slid her tray onto the table and turned her chair around before sitting on it. Her tail swung up behind her and curled over her shoulder.
“It’s called a veneer of civility,” she addressed Chase. “We all know it’s a veneer, but we keep it up nonetheless. Speaking of keeping it up, how’s Barne doing down on Iapetus?”
“Good,” Chase replied. “I’m up here to work out some things with the other DIs so that we can set them up right. Training grounds for mechs are a whooooole nuther thing from what you use with regular soldiers.”
“Just you and the drill instructors remember.” Leslie wagged her finger at Chase. “They know how to fight; we need to focus on unit cohesion, and teamwork that doesn’t get squishies like you and me killed.”
“Didn’t know you knew about that term.” Rika had always tried to avoid saying it—especially with Basilisk.
“I’ve heard a few mechs use it. It’s mostly true, and not too insulting, I suppose.” Leslie coiled her tail around her neck and took a drink of her juice.
“Have you decided if you’re going to keep that?” Rika asked, gesturing at Leslie’s non-human addition.
Leslie sighed, reaching up and absently patting her tail. “I still don’t know. At first, it seriously fubar’d my sense of balance, but now that I’m used to it, I find it pretty handy. I kinda don’t want to go back.”
“I think the fact that you still have it after four months is all we need to know.” Chase chuckled, then took another bite of his burger, carefully chewing with his mouth closed.
Rika gave Chase an approving smile before looking at Leslie. “Yeah. Plus, you don’t want to piss Barne off after he modified your armor for you to have a sheath for the thing.”
“There’s that, too,” Leslie said with a short laugh before taking a bite of her wrap.
“You should get a tail, Rika. That would be amazing.” Chase grinned at Rika, and she considered swatting him.
Instead she only raised an eyebrow. “Amazing as in hot, or amazing as in great for combat?”
Chase shrugged. “You say that like they aren’t the same thing.”
Leslie snorted, then coughed and smacked her fist against her sternum. “Shit, Chase. Warn me before you say stupid stuff like that.”
Rika winked at Chase. “Then he’d be warning you all the time. We’d have to tattoo it on his head.”
Chase just grinned and shrugged. “I’m not ashamed to say that I find you beautiful, Rika. And it’s not just skin deep either.”
Rika felt a blush rise on her cheeks. Chase never did have an issue with public displays of affection. “Good thing, too. I don’t have much skin.”
“I bet you say shit like this to all the mech girls,” Leslie smirked at Chase. She preferred to bait Barne, but when he wasn’t around, Chase became her favorite target.
“Are you kidding me” Chase asked, eyes wide. “I’ve seen Rika tear people in half. She’s a bit terrifying. As far as I’m concerned, other SMI mechs are just AM models with extra batteries on their chests.”
Rika laughed, imagining AMs with breasts. Unlike Barne, Chase could roll with Leslie’s needling.
At first, Rika had wondered about Leslie’s recent spate of jokes and insults. The teasing had seemed like a new development until Barne reminded Rika that she’d only known Leslie for a few days before she lost Jerry.
That sort of thing took a long time to recover from. If she ever would.
Leslie often grew distant, staring off into space, oblivious to the goings on around her. Rika would have worried, but honestly, they were each prone to such behavior.
Rika identified the query as coming from Moshe, the Perseid’s Dream’s ship AI.
A thought occurred to Rika, and she asked Niki privately,
Rika replied to Moshe.
Moshe sent a low chuckle across the Link.
Moshe didn’t sound upset about it, he spoke more as though he was simply stating a fact.
Rika brought Niki into the conversation.
Rika had never considered that an AI could feel pain before.
Niki made one of her strange mental sounds; sometimes Rika had trouble parsing the AI’s emotional communication. This one seemed like a sad sigh.
After a moment, Niki answered.
Rika let that soak in. She’d never thought of AIs quite like that. She assumed their minds were entirely as they desired, and that they were infinitely resilient to coercion—though that didn’t align with what she knew of the world, so she wasn’t certain why she believed that to begin with.
Moshe sent a smile over the Link.
<‘I will accept the rules that you feel are necessary for your own freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.’>
Moshe’s words hit Rika like a hammer. She understood all too well that humans feared a thing such as herself. How they placed additional rules and restrictions on her—restrictions that existed so they could feel safe.
Rules that one group placed on another to safeguard the first group’s freedom.
Rika whispered in her mind. That was a numbing thought.
“Whatcha thinking about?” Chase asked, placing a hand on her arm.
Rika’s attention snapped back to the table to see both Chase and Leslie peering at her.
“I was chatting with Moshe and Niki for a moment,” Rika replied, her voice wavering despite her best efforts.
“Must have been a heavy conversation,” Leslie said. “You look like you got punched in the gut.”
Rika looked at the tables around them, and released a drone from her arm to emit a sound cancelling field around the table.
“Oooo…must be serious.” Chase said as he leant back. “What’s up?”
Rika looked between her two former teammates. “This doesn’t leave your mouths or minds until it’s underway.”
She waited for both to nod. When they did, Rika continued.
“I’m going to free the AIs on the ships.”
Leslie’s eyes widened, and Chase whistled. “Damn, you’re just all about the liberation lately.”
“Free the AIs….” Leslie stopped and chewed her lip. “I remember what it was like, back before the government in Genevia started conscripting them all—honestly, I think it’s why we lost against the Nietzscheans.”
“Really?” Rika asked. “Why’s that?”
Leslie’s brow lowered. “AIs talk, and they talk fast. When word got out that AIs were being tried and convicted over trivial matters, being offered military service in order to avoid other punitive measures, Genevia saw a mass exodus of their kind.”
Rika gave a soft grunt. “Huh, I don’t recall that—granted, I was just a kid back then.”
“Same here,” Chase added. “Though it stands to reason.”
Niki said.
“I lost a good friend in that time,” Leslie said quietly. “I had to let her go. For her safety, and mine.”
“You had an AI?” Chase asked.
Leslie nodded. “Sammy. She and I had been together about as long as we could and had to separate…lest things go badly. Separation from her, the Diaspora, my own conscription…. Stars, that was a shit week.”
Leslie looked down at Rika’s abdomen, where Niki’s cylinder was safely tucked away. “I may take you up on that. Knowing Sammy is OK would be very nice.”
Chase waited a moment, twisting his lips. “Not to change the subject, but you think we lost to Nietzschea because we lost our AIs?”
“I do,” Leslie replied.
“But Nietzschea doesn’t have a lot of AIs, either. Non-human intelligences go against their whole mantra.”
“Yeah, but they have ridiculously advanced humans.” Leslie waved her hand, palm up. “Their whole perfected humanity thing they have going on; it’s why we had to make the mechs to stand up against them. Not to mention the other altered humans—the P-COGs, NAISCs, the other poor souls our government butchered.”
Rika had spent a lot of time thinking about the P-COGs and NAISCs in the Marauders’ ranks. One of her current goals was to build a comradery between the mechs and the other altered humans. She had initially thought it would be easy to get the disparate groups to establish friendships, but like everything, it was an uphill battle.
Empathy was one thing, but trying to view the mobile frame of a Non-AI Sentient Computer—essentially a brain in a case—as a human comrade was hard. Even for a mech.
P-COGs were easier—some even looked perfectly normal, if you didn’t look too closely at their oblong heads, and ignored the cooling fins.
Of course, half the mechs had trouble looking at themselves, let alone other altered humans.
“I guess that makes sense,” Chase admitted. “They did have a head start on us when it came to fine-tuning people for tasks.”
Rika snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Back to what you said.” Leslie fixed Rika with an unblinking stare. “How are you going to free our AIs? They’re owned by the Marauders—which makes me sick to say. It’s the one thing I never liked about this outfit, though it’s hard to find a place where AIs can’t be owned.”
“Septhia recognizes AI freedom,” Chase countered.
“Yeah,” Leslie nodded. “For AIs who are already free. Ours aren’t.”
Rika nodded and gave a slow wink. “But they were free.”
“Oh!” Leslie exclaimed, a smile lighting her yellow eyes. “You’re going to leverage the whole proclamation they made about Genevia’s mech program.”
Rika let a smile creep onto her own lips. “Yup, and we’re going to claim asylum for our AIs. If the courts approve, then Marauder ownership of the AIs would be illegal in Septhian space….”
“And the Marauders HQ is in Septhia,” Chase finished.
“Not to mention that the Septhian government is one of our biggest clients.”
Rika smiled at her friends, glad to see that they approved of what she was planning.
“Not even thinking about what Major Tim or the Old Man will say, you realize you’ll have to get this past the company’s GC, right?” Chase asked. “If he gets wind of this, he could ship them out before you get the wheels rolling.”
Leslie took a sip of her drink, her brows knit in concentration.
“What are you thinking?” Rika asked.
“Well, our general counsel is a P-COG.”
“Exactly,” Chase said. “He’ll pick up on this little endeavor pretty quickly.”
Rika had only briefly met with David, the company’s GC. The man sported the large
cooling vanes on his head typical of P-COGs—humans whose mental abilities had been greatly improved to recognize patterns and minute details.
He seemed amicable enough, but she didn’t know if he’d assist or quash an effort to liberate the company’s AIs.
“I think you need to worry more about the ship captains,” Leslie cautioned. “Technically, all the AIs but Potter and Dredge report to them.”
Leslie was all too correct about that. Though General Mill had given her command of the company, her rank in the Marauder organization was that of captain. She was outranked by Major Tim, captain of the Golden Lark. And though they shared the same rank, Captain Penny—who commanded the Perseid’s Dream—had significant seniority over Rika.
Though the mission to train the mechs and build a cohesive unit was hers, the ship’s captains had their own orders and directives. They had to go where Rika required, but how they went about getting there was up to them.
Twice already, Major Tim had leveraged both his rank and seniority to ‘adjust’—as he put it—Rika’s orders.
Rika had felt more at ease with Captain Penny, though she wasn’t certain if that was because the captain of the Perseid’s Dream was a woman, or if it was because she spent less time on the other ship, and hadn’t had as much opportunity to come to loggerheads with its captain.
“My plan is to get this rolling before they get wind of it,” Rika replied as she considered the difficulties she faced.
Leslie shook her head. “Feel out your GC. I have a hunch about David. I think he’d be understanding.”
Rika sighed. “And if he shuts me down?”
Leslie raised her hands. “Then we’ll figure out some other way to help the AIs—just don’t make it seem like you’ll do anything drastic if he doesn’t support you. If he thinks you’ll accept the status quo, we’ll have other options.”
“We?” Rika asked.
Chase nodded. “Yeah, ‘we’. If it’s important to you and Niki, it’s important to us.”