Chapter 38

Chapter 38

It is cherry day!

I am so stupidly excited, I barely register the frustration of having to manually guide a small flurry of micromissiles to take out a macromissile thats trying to kill the spy satellite thats still following the station around.

That spy satellite is growing on me. Its almost slapstick comedy in how it tries - and really, really fails - to infiltrate the station with baffler code, or camouflage itself behind debris thats a completely different material makeup. And also Im using it as part of the expanding communications net that Ive been working on for the last century, so myeh. No one gets to shoot it down.

Whats not growing on me is how many macromissiles Ive had to shoot down lately. This is the third one this week. I think something woke up a factory somewhere, and theyre just getting fired off on a timer now. Either that or a volley from an old war is finally looping back around on an off kilter orbit and crossing the plane of Earth and its debris swarm.

Whatever it is, I wish they werent so stupidly huge. They dont even have explosive payloads, except for the fuel cells. Just an engine and enough mass to demolish a fortified station on impact.

And now theres one less of them.

I run a check on ammo stockpiles. Which requires a weird trick.

This trick is one of those few things where it doesnt matter if I can talk or not, its just as dumb either way. See, the way the station shares information is erratic, and also unpredictable, and while it technically knows everything and knows Im allowed to know everything, it sometimes requires weird hoops be jumped through to get specific answers.

In this case, the hoop is, I *suspect*, just a trick to get me to do a small chore.

Any check on a weapons ammo stockpile returns the available number of projectiles for that weapon. Like, specifically the one that youre using, wired into, connected with, whatever.

Unless you properly retract, disarm, and stand down the weapon. Then it shows the total stock across the station.

I cant prove it, exactly, but I am *almost certain* this is something that only started happening in the last two hundred years or so, after the station got sick of me letting bombardment rails stay loosely deployed for months at a time.

Were low on micromissiles.

Sometimes, replenishing my stockpiles is very, very easy. A flick of the paw, and materials get transferred to the machines that turn them from raw resources into slightly less raw bullets. I understand the process involves a lot more melting, shaping, pressing, molding, and treating than I made it sound, but its all handled by equipment thats basically impossible for me to replicate on an individual level anyway, so while I *do* understand an alarming amount of it, Im not gonna go into the details of why I know individual metal galvanization temperatures.

Sometimes, though, its not so easy. Not that I have to make stuff myself, oh, heck no. Really the only thing I ever have to assemble by paw is the chainbreaker node, and then the process of installing it in a custom missile also has to happen by hand. Ive got two of those in reserve, and I dont have the mental focus to make more for at *least* a few more crises. But thats an exception. Theres a lot of stuff thats complex to *make the station produce*, I guess I should say.

Like micromissiles. Though the problem there is more administrative than anything else. Because theyre classified as anti-ground-personnel weaponry for some reason, I need to get specific authorization from an ethics committee to manufacture more. But since there isnt one of those, I just have to wait for the timer to run out, and the default judgement of go ahead to come back.

I dont use these a lot, because I always forget to queue up making more, and then they run out and I just look, Im bad at forming good habits, okay?

So I figure I can get it started, and go get lunch. Delicious lunch. I queue up several thousand, and get informed that there isnt enough uranium to make that many.

Ennos! I call in a familiar tone. Are you busy? I havent seen one of their drones around all day.

My AI friend replies after a short pause. I have found a nest of pseudo-organic code. They say quietly through the stations audio system around me, as if afraid theyll spook something. I am not busy.

Werent you looking for coordinates or something? I ask, distracted.

I found those yesterday. They are pinned to your AR display so you cannot forget them.

Is *that* what that is. I had forgotten to ask. I decide not to tell Ennos that, and instead focus on my immedient problem.

Actually, no, hang on.

Pseudo-organic code? Sorry, did you say nest? I ask.

I allow myself to put that on a future to-do list, and start crawling through air vents and maintenance shafts to drop the ten decks needed to get to my lunch faster.

Three minutes and one small mishap with an intake fan later, I slide myself across the deck plate in front of the small auxiliary cafeteria where Ive consumed a dozen lifetimes worth of ration paste. The dog is already here, wagging tail going a parsec a second as he excitedly growls and chomps at the cloud of cleaner nanos that surround me like a halo after my aforementioned mishap.

Glitter is also here, in the form of a pair of camera drones that light up as I come near.

Lily! She sounds excited. Which she *should* be. It is, after all, cherry day. I am happy shes excited too, and become more excited with her. I have good news. The satellite says.

Yes. I agree, ears standing straight up on my head. It is cherry day.

I what? Glitter pauses. No, Im sorry, Im sure this is important. I can interrupt you later.

Im mostly joking. I tell her as I enter the galley. Whats the news?

The news, as Glitter spells it out in a more long winded form, basically boils down to her getting bored and wanting to do more. And so, as everything on this station seems to go when any of us want to do anything, she exploited a small loophole.

The station wont let anyone who isnt properly assigned access the comms stations, for basically any reason. And AI dont count, because the station is racist, and I hate it.

But it turns out, most communications arent subspace links, and actually have to travel through space. And while the station alerts me - loudly - to anything that it decides is an emergency, theres a *lot* of outside chatter that I just dont have time to look at.

Glitter, though, isnt *on the station*. She can listen to whatever she wants. And, as she has decided to do, theres no rule stopping her from listening to everything she can, and sorting it out to report to me.

Apparently, Glitter has decided I need a secretary.

Personally, I thought she was already busy enough what with the shared responsibility of melting hostile surface targets. But I guess Glitter doesnt need to worry about that awful feeling when one of her extended claws catches on the firing trigger and pulls out of her paw just a little too much and then it hurts all day. So maybe its easier for her. Its probably easier for her.

I sit upright in a chair that Ill never grow enough to fill out properly, waiting for my lunch dessert, while Glitter tells me about her attempts to start cataloguing everyone out here with us in the space close around Earth.

Its a nice afternoon.

My dessert is too sweet, overwhelming my technologically enhanced sense of taste. The lack of other ingredients aside from berries and nutritionally balanced hydrocarbon ration make the small collection of fruit tarts the galley serves me neither tart, nor particularly fruity either.

Its still something different. Four hundred years of this, and finally, I have food. Real food. All I needed was enough help from my friends to take the pressure off, start a garden, carefully cultivate a number of different crops, not let a corporate war mimic satellite vent them into space, and then harvest the fruits of my labor.

Easy. So easy.

I enjoy my tiny tarts. I share one with the dog, who doesnt seem to appreciate it the way I do, but still makes it vanish with a toothy chomp.

Our orbit takes us over an ocean. Due to current circumstances and some light maneuvering to avoid an active wrath field, well be over this ocean for about six hours, with nothing but water underneath me.

Its a perfect time for a nap.

Stomach full, problems solved, I settle into my dog shaped pillow. Reflected light from all three moons lines up through the windows of the exolab, this lower deck still undamaged after all Ive been through.

I close my eyes, and allow the feeling of a warm hand on my fur to lull me to sleep.

The dog ruins the moment by trying to eat whatever is petting me. Loudly, and vigorously.

Dont be rude. I mutter from the indentation in the couch where the hound has vacated the area to dash off down one of the hallways.