“The battle, ma’am,” another tried excusing, “we got caught up-“
“And you completely failed to THINK!” she pounded her fist down on the table. She held her composure otherwise. “Many of you committed a direct violation of some of the most important directives we live by. We DO NOT fire upon those who have rendered themselves inert!”
“But they are pira-“ Polk tried explaining until Harper glared at him.
“Polk Byterian, you are dismissed,” commanded Harper. Polk looked somewhat surprised, but he took little time to decide to act otherwise, saluted Harper and then hurried out of the mess.
Harper stood resolute. “He was the only one of you to not have even targeted even one of the escape pods. Not one.”
“He’s an idiot, ma’am,” one of the pilots remarked dismissively. Though a few of the other pilots wanted to nod in agreement, they remained subdued. Their eyes looked as though they needed permission.
Behind Harper, three other higher ranking officers including the ship’s XO stepped up. Numerous soldiers charged with police duties also followed. “You each are hereby grounded and will have your flight status revoked upon further investigation,” she continued undeterred. “You will each be confined to the brig until the investigation is concluded.”
Shocked looks fell upon all of their faces as the watched Harper turn and signal the soldiers behind her to take each of the pilots into custody. Words of protest were ignored as they were rounded up.
The XO patted Harper on the shoulder as the stepped away. “Good work, Lieutenant,” he complemented before proceeding on with the pilots.
As the mess hall emptied out, Harper couldn’t help but to feel responsible for the event, for all of the lives that were lost. There was a good chance that most of her pilots were going to be discharged for their actions. If she hadn’t allowed her fighter to become disabled, she would have been better able to focus on keeping the rest of the squadron in check. One or two may have still attacked the escape pods anyway, but then only those pilots would have suffered the penalties. Instead, she nearly blacked out from the lack of oxygen as she crashed. The whole flight crew may end up gone because of it.
Quietly, she tried to absolve herself of it and move on. It would prove difficult to do though.
Oberon Colony
“The injury looks superficial,” Adrianna said. “You should’ve been capable of moving out of here.”
“I am not skilled in escort operations, I did not think it safe to move with his injuries,” 356 said.
Adrianna cringed at the sound of the girl’s tone. It was devoid of any emotion. It sounded more robotic than any android she’s ever encountered. “How do you feel, commander?” she asked David.
David shrugged. “I should be alright. I am a little shaken from all of this, but I will be alright to move. How did you find us so fast?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t want to spend any time taking in the sights,” she said as she tried to push out the memories of hours before.
“But you were on the planet already?”
356Q said nothing of having seen her; Adrianna nodded. “I was in close orbit what the instructions came through. I had just completed another mission and was about to depart.” It was amazing to her how sterile those words sounded. Completed another mission… as if Haden had been reduced to a statistic, a trivial data point within her operations records. She shivered. Haden was gone. He was just a statistic. She would have to do something about that.
“I guess we were lucky then,” David said. He didn’t feel that way though. Two of those cursed operatives were before him. One was already too much. At least the second one appeared to be far more personable.
“Luck has little to do with any situation,” 356Q remarked dryly. “Preparation and execution are key.”
“If you insist,” Adrianna remarked focusing on the girl’s tone. She was jealous of the girl’s obliviousness towards any sign of feelings. It was a luxury that Adrianna wished that she could have. No matter how hard she would try it would not be possible.
“It is not that I insist; I speak only what there is.”
Adrianna shook her head. David said, “this is what I’ve been dealing with.”
“If only we were all so lucky to have her perspective,” she remarked in reply.
David wanted to reply to that statement, but he found himself in front of a woman who was genuinely jealous of someone being devoid of emotion. Instead, he chose to stay quiet.
“Now let’s just get you out of here,” she said.
“Is it wise to move him? His look will draw him unwanted attention.” 356Q asked with what Adrianna thought was the hint of concern.
“Sure, it’s safe,” she smiled. “Ever move people in a live box?”
ISS Regalia
Xaviera had been in quarantine for too long. The isolation was affecting her ability to think. Ever since she trusted that woman she felt more trapped than having been an indentured servant back on Oberon. The only difference now however was the crew treated her as a human rather than the illegal android she was.
Linens, cloths, and random objects were strewn all about as she tried to find a way to entertain herself. All of the materials were of the man that once had been captain of this ship, the man that the woman shot. It was strange that it happened. No reason ever seemed to present itself. One moment the woman seemed in absolute joy to see him, then the next moment she was frightened out of her mind. It was as though she was not in control.
There was a knock on the door before it opened. The tall man that they called Olaph was standing on the other side of the entryway. She liked him more than the tiny man that pestered her. She saw a pleasantness about Olaph that seemed to rest in his eyes.
“We’ve all decided that we’d like you to join our crew,” Olaph said. “Is that an acceptable choice for you?” A smile grew on Xaviera’s lips. It looked strange with the exposed metal from the gash she received so long ago. “The only thing we ask is that all of your stores be used for the crew and that you take the job as our cook.”
The smile didn’t fade. “I can do that. Is that all I have to do? Give up my stores? Will I get paid?”
Olaph nodded. “Yes. You’ll share profits with the rest of the crew as we complete jobs.” A moment passed between the two. “I think that Ned can fix your face,” he continued admitting his discomfort.
Xaviera’s smile faded as she hid her damage from sight.
“I’m sorry,” Olaph tried to say, afraid that he had inadvertently embarrassed her. “I didn’t mean to offend you. You don’t have to hide it.” Most of his life was spent out in the outer worlds, away from the Alliance. Androids were extremely rare beyond Alliance borders, so interactions were even rarer. To him, machines were supposed to be emotionless. Seeing a girl such as her with the obvious signs of being a machine was disarming.
“You didn’t offend. It’s ok,” reassured Xaviera. It was anything but ok though. Now that she was away from her indenture, she realized the impact that having her face slashed open in that manner had.
“Would you like to be set up in the kitchen? There is a small cabin that we’ve not found a use for other than food stores. I am sure that there is room for a cot or something for you to be comfortable.”
She smiled again and nodded. “That would be nice.” Quietly, she stood and followed Olaph out of her room and then through the halls of the ship. She felt still as though she were being led to another cell, or to a regulated recess. She wasn’t sure that she could trust the current situation, but a small thought kept leaning her to follow, that things would end up being better.
“What happened to that Haden guy? I mean the woman I was with shot him, but did he die? Was he ok?”
Olaph sighed. “It would be best not to mention him right now,” he responded quietly. He stopped and turned. Xaviera backed against the wall afraid that he was going to retaliate in some manner. “It took some time to convince them that you ha
d nothing to do with it, that you were used to those ends. You need to stay quiet for a little bit. Just talk about where you were at, about food, about how you got away from the Alliance… anything other than what happened. OK?”
Xaviera nodded submissively.
Olaph remained close to her looking into her eyes. He was trying to see if he could see anything in them to indicate her sincerity. It was easy with another human. Strangely though, her eyes indicated a sincerity he never noticed before. She looked more real than most people that he had ever encountered.
In kind, Xaviera looked at his eyes and saw just how soft and inviting his own were.
Olaph turned again and more deliberately led her eventually landing in the kitchen.
At best, the kitchen was substandard. Xaviera picked it out immediately. She scanned her eyes around picking out the various utensils, dishes, the meager stock of spices (mainly just salt and pepper) and overall stock. It was enough just to prep and spice up replicator foods.
“We’ll need to pick up some things. I can make some, but I’ll need to barter for some more when I can.”
“I’ll talk to Trike,” relented Olaph. “There’s the room I told you about over there. You can’t fit too much more than a cot in there, but you don’t need much...” he paused contemplating the words leaving his thoughts. “I mean…” he stammered.
She placed her hand on his arm, “it’ll be fine.”
“I’ll leave you alone then,” Olaph turned and said before stepping away to leave the kitchen.
“Can you ask Ned?” Xaviera asked nervously before Olaph walked out.
“Huh?” He paused after he grunted.
“Can you please ask if Ned will fix my face?”
“Sure.”
She was then alone in the room. A smile slowly grew on her face. For the first time in her life she felt that there was a chance that she could be accepted. That she had a home.
DASS Eisenhower
Independent Space
“Understood,” Captain Nathanial Yilander answered as the final instructions for the DASS Eisenhower were delivered to him. He cut off the communication and placed his hand to his face squeezing his eyes. He was unsure what he was doing it for, but he knew that he had little choice.
He wasn’t happy with his superiors, and the latest instructions further strained that. Being in charge of one of the frigates assigned to the territory borders gave him little space to test his own boundaries.
Quietly as he contemplated what he was to do, he encrypted the orders and readied them to be turned over to the XO for the initial stages. The journey to get there would give him some time to consider his options. He was at an age he could retire. His 48 years of service exceeded the minimum retirement timing of 35 years active duty. Retiring seemed an escape fit for a coward though.
The only other option that he had was outward betrayal. He respected the ideals that the Alliance once held. Those same ideals carried him to the volunteer lines 48 years prior. Ideals kept the Alliance from taking further steps to take the outer worlds all those years prior. Despite taking severe enough losses to even consider retreat, they still had means of bringing the independent colonies to their knees.
Once he completed encryptions he stood from his desk in his quarters and left to go to the bridge.
As he entered the halls, he noticed that there was an unusual lack of activity around him. It took him a few moments to realize that the majority of the crew was on their rest shift. It was a small window, a few hours each day that the crews didn’t overlap leaving a skeleton crew to run basic operations on the ship. It was normal for him not to be attending this shift. Being responsible for so much of the activities of the ship, he found it better to be available during the other times. Running a skeleton crew was best divided up between the executive officer (XO) and other higher ranking officers of the ship. In this case, it was the XO’s turn.
The captain entered the bridge as the XO sat at the helm with an expression of complete boredom as he read the reports from the previous shift. “Captain on the deck!” one of the deckhands announced. Once the XO heard it he stood at attention. His heart began beating with the anticipation. He knew that by seeing the captain awake at these hours meant that there would be something important occurring. He needed to break the monotony of this tour.
Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Zi was a marine stationed aboard the Eisenhower with command over the few hundred marines. The Captain appointed him the executive officer of the ship partly as a way to bridge the troubled relationships between the marines aboard and the remainder of the crew. It was successful for the most part, although Ryan and he often found themselves at odds.
“You look bored. Here. We’ve received our orders,” Captain Yilander said blandly. He handed Ryan the docket.
“I just took the shift-starter and it just hasn’t kicked in yet,” Ryan replied. He flipped open the docket and reviewed the directives. “So Dimmings is dead-set on this war thing huh? That should mean that we finally get to have some real fun instead of pussyfooting around the borders chasing little skirmishes.” There was a tone dripping wet with excitement coming from the XO.
Nathan did not like the seeming war-hungry attitude Ryan had. Ryan was at his core an Alliance grunt. He did his master’s bidding to a fault and did so with enthusiasm for the mayhem it usually brought forth. Nathan did not understand the blind following of orders much less his XO’s thirst for battle. Must be a Marine-thing he kept telling himself as he tried to make sense of it.
“We break our current course and head to the waypoint tonight. You’re marines were selected as the first wave and your orders are to transfer to the ground and take full command of the ground forces. I’ll be commanding overall operations from the sky until we are graced with the Admiral’s presence if not General Dimmings, himself.”
A smile grew on Ryan’s face. The Captain rolled his eyes. “I’ll start the preparation immediately.”
“Orders are to wait until we are in orbit. No one except officers are to know of the orders until we are there to prevent leaks. Your job will be to fill the officers in at 0600 hours. Aside from the chance our passage out of Alliance space, there is to be no indication to our intentions.”
“Let’s get going then, shall we?”
“Don’t get too excited,” Captain Yilander remarked as he turned. “I don’t think that you’ll see that much action. There shouldn’t be much to fight there. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the orders. I’m going back to get some sleep.”
ISS Regalia
“This type of synthetic material is difficult to get out here. The Alliance has anything to do with androids locked down. You are a rare sight anymore.” Ned was busy prepping the area around Xaviera’s face.
“Why do you have some? Why would you need it if there are so few of us out here?” quizzed Xaviera.
Ned sighed. “A past life. Was an android engineer. I specialized in skin synthesizing. I was involved in the project that enabled the last advancement finally setting you guys up to a point that you are almost indistinguishable from us. Alliance didn’t like us too much about that. After you guys were able to blend in fully with the rest of society, they initiated the marking programs where they rounded all of you up and deactivated you if you didn’t comply – just another moment…” he interrupted himself as he continued working on the setup.
“Humans have always struggled with differences. Now humans consider us immortals with superior intelligence and strength. The truth is that we are more limited by our designs than you are. We store everything in hard drives and are limited by the programming. Your biological mainframe can handle far more information than even the smartest of us androids,” she said reasoning with Ned.
Ned reached up and applied an epoxy to the edges of the treated area. “What your skin is comprised of is a form of synthetic biological mechanics. Your skin is designed to regrow and regenerate much like regular skin, something that your old
owner seems to have known. When he did this to you, he used something that stopped the growth from reoccurring.”
A lone tear came from her eye and fell from her face. Ned noticed, but he tried to ignore her reaction. Realizing that he tread onto a subject that had some scars in her past, he decided to go back to her points before he interrupted her. “You can upgrade. We humans can’t.”
“Huh?”
“You were taking about the differences of humans and androids.”
“Oh,” she shook her head much like a human would trying to get a thought out of her head. She wiped the single tear from her face and continued. “Yeah, well our upgrades are never exactly what you’d think. It’s not like you can just download our memory and put it right in. Our internal programming prevents this.”
“That’s true, but you still can. It’s not impossible. And such things are what we humans dream.”
Xaviera swore that she could feel the treatment rotting her skin away. It burned, but she ignored the discomfort. “What’s this doing?”
“Remember I said that your skin is in fact biological?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve set your skin to reawaken and revert back to stem cells, and the epoxy I applied has special enzymes to help with that. When they start, I can apply the special synthetic patches which they’ll bond to and adapt with. You’ll look like nothing ever happened to you.”
Not able to help it, Xaviera started to tear up again. Ned noticed it again and instead of ignoring it, he inquired, “are you alright?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. You guys have just helped me out so much. I cannot thank you enough.”
“Most of humanity still thinks that we went too far,” he said specifically referring to the tears.
“You fear us,” she said bluntly. “You fear us, so you lock us away, restrict us, abuse us.”
“Don’t speak for me,” he argued. “I see nothing wrong with your type.”
She smiled. “You, yourself helped design us, I don’t see how you could. I speak of humanity, though.”
The Movement of Pawns (Gravity Book 3) Page 6