by S. A. Lusher
And that was tough.
Unfortunately, there were some fringe groups, radicals, terrorists, wayward warriors, they had many names in the media and labels given to them by the government and military, but what most of them amounted to were a lot of nuisances.
But not this new group that had been popping up recently. Information was sketchy, mainly because they were so damned effective. They'd been wiping out fringe colonies and military outposts wholesale and stripping them of basically everything: tech, weapons, vehicles, fuel. Anything. And although it was obvious that fierce firefights had gone on, they never left any of their own fallen behind. They were also quite thorough when it came wiping out anyone they came in contact with. There weren't many survivors.
The few survivors that there were gave scattered reports. The only thing that seemed solid was that the enemy soldiers were heavily modded with technology. So, Jennifer had to admit, it was a mystery and it was interesting, and it was definitely important. Someone should be dealing with this. She just wasn't sure if it was an Anomalous Ops job.
Neither did Hawkins.
He'd been complaining about it for a little while now but, well, one of the problems was that weird ass situations tended to be few and far between.
Right now, they were coming back from their third time investigating one of these sites. It had been pretty fruitless. No survivors, no data, no real evidence. One of the three Raptor class speedships that the Dauntless was equipped with had whisked them out there and was now was whisking them back. They should be not very far from the Dauntless itself by now. Jennifer was looking forward to taking a nap and a shower, then getting some more training in. That was what her life had been pretty much been since she'd signed up.
Training and working out and preparing herself.
Although her experience with the strange entity on the asteroid hadn't been what she considered a full mission, it had definitely primed her for the realities of going up against something that was utterly, wholly alien. And although she was sure there were some situations that couldn't be tackled by strength or speed or really, really accurate gunfire alone, she knew that these things would definitely help her survive, and so she she trained.
Despite all this, Jennifer felt fairly taxed. The investigation had been a long one. She realized that Allan hadn't wandered off.
Which was good, she supposed. There was something she'd been meaning to ask him.
“So, I'm a little curious,” she said, prompting him.
“Yeah?” he replied.
“Your open relationship with Callie. How, um, exactly, does that work?”
“It's pretty basic. It's like a normal relationship except that sometimes we have sex with other people. Sometimes both of us at once, sometimes we go spend the night in someone else's cabin.”
“So, it's just sex? Not like...emotional?”
“Well, I mean, it can be. Both of us have been in open relationships before this, so we're a little more experienced. But that's what it is for us. Although...”
“What?”
“I think she's been getting kind of serious with Greg. Which isn't a problem. We all trust each other. Trust is a big thing to take into consideration when you go into this. Anyone in an open relationship has to completely trust their partner and vice versa.”
“This is so...interesting,” Jennifer said. “I don't think I could do it, personally, but then I haven't had many relationships.”
“Yeah, I guess the whole 'no sex' thing would kinda make that difficult.”
“Yep. It sucks but, well...I dunno, I mean, if there's one thing I've figured out, it's that if you're going to be good at something, I mean really good at something, a lot needs to go on the chopping block. Free time, hobbies, habits, sleep, relationships.”
“That's true,” Allan murmured.
“So, in a way, it's kind of paved the way for me ultimately getting this job. I've got good habits, I train up a lot, I'm...well, I'm hoping I'll be more ready when something weird and freaky shows up again,” she said.
“I'm not sure we can ever really be ready. I've seen some weird ass shit and I wasn't ever really ready for any of it,” Allan replied.
A long moment of silence hung in the galley between them.
Before they could fill it, the intercom clicked on and the pilot informed them that they were a minute out from docking with the Dauntless.
They left the galley and made for the airlock.
CHAPTER 02
–Life on the Dauntless–
“I got you a present.”
“You did?...what is it? I'm genuinely curious because I'm not sure I've ever heard about a human buying an AI a present.”
Eric grinned. Sierra had a point.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small data storage device. He held it up in front of the camera mounted on his laptop. It was connected to a larger external data storage device that Sierra currently resided in.
“What is it?”
Her voice came to him from the speakers that he left constantly powered on and plugged into the same device. Same with the camera. It never went off.
“I've loaded it up with five, pre-rendered virtual reality landscapes. I remember you telling me about your collection of pictures and I figured, why not take it a step further? I had Vetra rig it so that you can upload yourself into this unit and walk through these landscapes. I took a few trips myself in a VR goggle rig with headphones and it's...pretty real. There's a forest and a-”
“Don't tell me!” Sierra replied. She gave a small laugh. “I want to find out for myself. And...thank you. So much. This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. And that's saying something, given all the other nice things you've done for me.”
“I want to make you happy,” Eric replied.
“I'm going to go into it right now.”
“Perfect. I need a shower anyway.”
“Okay. Be back in a bit. Thanks again!”
Eric couldn't help but smile. Especially when, as he tried to make for his dresser, Luna darted out from beneath his desk and began twining between his legs, meowing intently at him. “Hello, little one,” he said, crouching and petting her.
Before he could even get his hand down to her, she leaped up onto her back feet and pushed her head into his palm. He laughed and began petting her. Luna was driven apparently by one thing: the quest for pets. When she wanted them, she wanted them desperately and would do absolutely anything to get them from him and him alone. Although he didn't have many visitors, Luna didn't seem to like other people.
He continued petting her, tossing a glance over at her food and water bowls. They were still decently topped off, as he'd filled them both this morning when he'd woken up. He glanced into his closet at her litter box. It was fine. As he sat there petting her, Eric reflected briefly on his guilt at keeping her cooped up in such a small space. Over the past month, he'd done everything he could think to liven the place up for her, going so far as to never close his bathroom or closet, to give her the maximum space.
But it was still a pretty small amount of room, perhaps half the size of a studio apartment. He'd gotten her a climbing post with three platforms at different levels on it and stuck it in one corner. It went almost to the ceiling. She seemed to love perching on those platforms and he remembered learning earlier in life that cats liked being in high places, so he'd installed three shelves on the walls that existed solely to service Luna. And she liked those, too. She was often perched on them. There was basically nowhere that wasn't open to her.
Still, it was a small place.
Unfortunately, it wasn't like the Dauntless was a place for a cat.
The only thing that assuaged his guilt was that she seemed happy and healthy, and she didn't really ever try to escape his room.
Eventually, Eric decided that Luna had had enough pets. He ceased the petting, stood and moved to his dresser, at the back of his closet. He'd been on his way back from a three-ho
ur workout session when he'd stopped by Vetra's office to check on the man's progress. Eric had picked up the programs and the storage device during his last visit off the Dauntless a week ago. He'd asked Vetra about the process of giving Sierra access to it and the man said it was possible with a few tweaks to the programming.
Eric finished gathering up boxers, socks and another black jumpsuit. He had to admit, he liked the attire they wore in Anomalous Ops.
He moved into the bathroom, set the clothing on the counter and began getting undressed. As he finished up and got into the shower, turning on the water, he found his mind drifting back over the past thirty days.
It had been quite a month.
After surviving the horror of Theseus Station and getting offered a job by Hawkins, it hadn't taken long to get all his affairs in order. Two days after he'd accepted the offer, he'd been transferred to the Dauntless and a handsome, dark-haired man named Drake was showing him around. Apparently he was one of the founding members, the guy who had been there from the beginning and who had taken down the big bads known as Rogue Ops. Drake had filled him in on some of the more interesting points of Anomalous Ops' history.
The first week, he'd spent really just settling in. He'd been given his own room, shown around and had been introduced to the crew. He was surprised that it was such a small operation. There were perhaps thirty or forty people onboard the Dauntless. Most of them were support staff: technicians, medics, specialists of some kind. All of them seemed to be highly trained, seasoned veterans that were extremely qualified in their various fields and almost everyone had ties to Special Operations. Eric felt more than a little outclassed.
He'd made a few friends, though.
Jennifer was the one he'd bonded with the most, probably because she was in such a similar situation. She'd been brought in only a month before him and she'd basically been working corporate security. Not that he doubted her credentials. She'd survived some serious shit. Greg and Allan were nice enough, but they both seemed a little distant in their own way, wrapped up in their own problems. Really, he'd been spending the most time with Drake, who seemed to be on the road to recovery from his own personal tragedy.
Eric was remembering what it was like to really have friends, something he realized he hadn't truly done for a while now.
He considered Sierra a very close friend now, something that, despite his positive attitude towards AIs, he hadn't really known was possible before this. But she was there for him a great deal and she didn't have to be. Although she technically 'lived' in his personal dormitory, Eric had negotiated with Hawkins to let her help run the Dauntless. Once she'd been checked out by Vetra, one of their resident tech geniuses and she'd gotten the okay, Hawkins had let her plug into the Dauntless and help manage a range of things from duty rosters to inventory management to supply restocking. She didn't have access to any of the sensitive information involved in their operations, but that never bothered her, she was more than happy with this set-up.
In return for this, Sierra seemed intent on helping Eric out any way she could. She was always there to talk with him or share interesting information with him she found on the ultranet. Eric had an idea that he was using both Sierra and Luna to kind of keep him in check. Luna was simpler. She was a cat and she basically needed him to continue her own existence. He fed her, got her water, flushed her 'toilet', and kept her company. Having a pet to require your attention daily seemed to be a good way to ground oneself, bring oneself back to reality. It gave him a simple kind of focus, something he needed to do every day not related to himself.
What Sierra offered was different.
She watched him.
Basically all the time. He'd been initially uncomfortable with the idea, when he'd sat down with Sierra and asked her, flat out, if she would accept this responsibility, but he knew it was something that needed to be done. He was too...unstable. Thankfully, she'd said yes, and so now he never turned off the camera or the speakers, her eyes and her voice in his world. It was helping, though he wasn't sure how much. He still had nightmares and he still found himself drifting uncomfortably close to suicidal thoughts.
At Hawkins' suggestion, he'd started seeing one of the three on-staff therapists and was now taking a mood stabilizer, and that had helped too, but he had the idea that a great deal of damage had been done over the course of his life and it was going to take quite a while to fix it all. If fully fixing it was even an option.
But with Sierra watching him all the time, he felt more...accountable. He was less likely to do something stupid, like if he was by himself all the time.
Eric finished up in the shower and pushed his thoughts more towards his job. In the three weeks after that first week spent settling in, he'd gone on a handful of missions. Milk runs, really, as Hawkins called them. They were hunting down some kind of rogue military faction that sported heavy body mods with technology, but so far there hadn't really been much to go off of. He'd just gotten back from one such mission with Drake a few days ago and he knew some of the others were off on a similar assignment right now.
After drying himself off, Eric pulled on some boxers and stepped back out into his bedroom. Being naked in front of Sierra was still a little weird for him, even if she reassured him that it wasn't strange for her, and he believed her. It was strange for him though. He thought it was a little silly, honestly. He had no problem walking around in boxers, which hardly covered up much of his body, just apparently that one portion of his body that he felt bizarre about exposing. He supposed it was some kind of evolutionary reaction.
Almost everything was.
“How are those landscapes?” he asked, pulling his clothes out with him and setting them down on his desk. He sat down on his bed and grabbed a battered pack of Solar Flare cigarettes from his nightstand, as well as a thin silver lighter. It was a habit he'd had off and on throughout his life since before joining the Marines. He'd picked it back up since he started hanging around Drake. The man smoked and offered him some cigs and Eric figured why the fuck not? They at least wouldn't cause lung cancer anymore, not since they'd unfucked the formula. Well, that and they'd basically cured cancer by now.
“I've been exploring the forest region and it's beautiful! But I had a request,” Sierra replied.
“And what's that?”
“I was hoping you'd be willing to go in and make some edits to the landscapes. Add things in, like, I don't know, perhaps 'events' or unique features or something.”
“Huh...interesting idea. I suppose I could do it. Although I'm sure Vetra could do a much better job if I could convince him to spend some time on it.”
“I'd prefer it if you did it. At this point, you know me more than anyone else in the galaxy does. And I like not being able to predict what will happen, and I think your touch could help with that,” Sierra explained.
Eric grinned. He already had a few ideas. “Okay, yeah, I could look into it. It shouldn't be too difficult, I've taken a few programming classes in my time. So you like it?”
“I love it. It's a wonderful gift. Now...you want to talk to me about something,” she said. A statement, not a question.
Eric grinned around the cigarette. “How could you tell?”
“Call it intuition.”
“AIs don't have that.”
“Don't we? Come on, spill it.”
Eric sighed. “It's...Drake,” he muttered.
“What about Drake?”
“I've kind of got a thing for him, but...” he shook his head, took another pull on the cigarette. “I dunno, it might be too early. For either of us. He hasn't really gone into detail but I know something really bad happened to him kind of recently. I can just tell and the others kind of hint at it, but I haven't asked him directly. And then I'm still dealing with what happened to Autumn...I get the feeling I'll be dealing with that for a long time. But it's like my brain doesn't care, I'm still get the 'I want to date this guy' signals...I don't know what to do.”
�
��What would be the cons of pursuing this?” Sierra asked.
“He could say no and it could ruin the friendship potentially. I mean, we're kinda stuck with each other, you know? Also, maybe he says yes and one or neither of us is ready for a relationship and we fuck it up.”
“And the pros?”
“The pros...well, it could all work out and we'd be happy. I hope. Maybe I'd feel better in the long run.” He sighed again. “I don't know, this is all so complicated.”
“If you think it's worth pursuing, then you should ask him. I believe that you believe that it's better to ask and receive a no than not ask and not know. If he rejects you, well, I also believe that both of you are mature and professional enough to handle that. It's ultimately a question of: are the potential benefits worth risking the potential loss?”
Eric heaved a third sigh, spewing out a cloud of smoke. “I can't really argue with that,” he muttered. “It's annoying that you're so good at this.”
“I have less emotion clouding my judgment.”
“Do you have emotions?”
“Hmm...that's a good question. I...prefer things. I have what you might call empathy. I...enjoy things. But it's really hard to say with nothing to compare against. I can look up the definition of happiness or depression or rage, but I don't really know...and based on my study of humanity, I'm not convinced I actually want to know. Given the alternatives, I rather like my life of vague feelings that might be called emotions.”
“I suppose you have a point,” Eric murmured.
He looked over at Luna. She was perched up on one of the platforms of her cat tower, staring at him with slit-pupil, knowing eyes. She was, as he liked to call it, cat-loafing. All of her limbs were tucked up beneath her, her tail wrapped tightly around her, rendering them all functionally invisible. She looked limbless and silly and content.
The intercom by his bed, built into the wall, suddenly clicked on, startling them both.