Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Orbital insertion HuKs ready for launch, bays open. Ennos clipped and technical voice chimes in my left ear.

Kessler Syndrome opening in twenty seconds. Glitter adds, voice a combination of musical and professional.

Drone swarm online, enhancement networking online, engines primed. I check my readouts. Namata engines coiled. Some things I have to check and relay manually, or the AIs wont be able to fully see them. Stealth check?

A ping comes in from Jom, exactly on schedule. Our stealth systems are holding, and the launch window is facing a surface that cant shoot back at us effectively, and everything that could have shot back is either orbiting above us, or scrap. Even Glitter is basically invisible.

In retrospect, Im not sure why I asked for a stealth check out loud when were in a comms blackout. Thats kind of what stealth entails, up here.

Landing site swept. Clear. Ennos adds.

I flick one ear, otherwise totally still. Three. Two. One. I give a totally unneeded countdown to my digital companions. Maybe Dog cares about it, I dunno. It makes me feel official. Launching.

On the other side of the crystal tungsten window, eight anti-glowing engines latch onto the fabric of gravity, and the drones in the bay vanish out the open launch window faster than my eyes can follow. Under my paws, the deck feels like its rippling; behind me, a clatter sounds as an ancient communication pad falls off the arm of one of the neural control chairs that Real America loved so much. The command readout displays the closest approximation of tracers as it can manage, based on known capabilities and the tightbeam bursts of communication theyre sending back to us.

Drones hitting atmosphere now. Ennos says two seconds later. Maneuvering independently.

The room goes silent. The three of us are all, in our own way, staring at the same display. The same data set. Were watching to see if our upgrades, made bit by bit over the last week, are enough.

One of the tiny glowing dots, the mechanical paws Ive flung down to the surface, blips out. Then another.

My paws impact the controls as I hiss commands at my AR display. Show me whats happening, show me what went wrong.

Maneuvering is still ongoing, the drones slowed just enough to not rip themselves apart on reentry. But that was enough. Surface defenses have detected them, and lacking any kind of authorization codes that work, are trying to pick off my fleet.

Command codes for the Thermic Sea defense platforms have registered. Glitter informs me, not disparaged by the destruction on the screen. Landing authorization for the airspace of what was once New Vatican have been rejected. Landing authorization for the Sleeping City has been ignored. Orbital permissions for Imperion gun platforms ignored. No one is left to listen, the defenses are still firing.

Another dot blips out. Then two more. The swarm is dumber with less processing power.

They dont even break through the upper atmosphere. If I went to a window and looked down, I could probably see the concentrated explosions and plasma flashes through the orange and white swirl of clouds.

All drones nonresponsive. Ennos sighs.

Excuse me a moment. I gently bat the hovering earpiece away with a paw, set my local status to non-broadcasting, step away from the controls, and then scream.

Well, its more of a caterwaul really. Ive got about fifteen solid seconds of wailing before I run out of breath, and I put it to good use, tiny lungs expelling what Id call a fairly impressive volume and a mild amount of catharsis.

Afterward, I remove the privacy filter from my settings, and flick my tail as I return to the conversation. So that didnt work. I say.

Lily, you do realize neither of us are affected by- Ennos starts to say something, but Glitter cuts them off.

At least, my weapons platform friend muses, this wasnt an emergency.

She is, technically, correct. Thats not *wrong*, exactly. I tell her. But it did use up most of our stockpile of MX-11 on the engines, and I dont actually know where to get more of that.

Theres a spark of static from both their communication channels. Please dont say that. Ennos sounds exasperated. We can tell theres something wrong there, and it starts logic loops.

Whoops. I hadnt actually realized just saying the designation name of a paramaterial would cause problems. I adjust my conversation plan, and make a note to preemptively apologize at some point for when I screw it up and give them AI headaches.

AI dont have heads. Coreaches? Persona-aches? Processor-

Lily? Ennos voice snaps me back to reality. Are you there? They sound worried. Probably because they know me.

And the container in the cargo loader is, for some reason, password protected. Not the loader itself! Just the container! The unconnected, unlinked container, that I cant just loose a dramatic encryption-shattering AI on!

I consider equipping the cargo loader with an electrosaw. But I stay calm, because Im a reasonable adult or something. The container is marked as personal property. I trace down the name in the system, and find it to belong to a long dead Troi France technician who was stationed here. By their regulations, all her passwords should be kept in a hard copy with her personal effects, and since apparently this whole place is one giant archive and-or garbage dump.

So now Im standing in the fourth or fifth cargo bay of the day, staring up at a perfectly smooth sealed container that reacts to *palmprint* and wondering where I went wrong in life.

Maybe I was a very bad cat in my last life. Maybe this is punishment for something. I bet my previous reincarnation used to knock breakables off shelves. That would explain it.

Im sure theres another way around this, but part of me is making mental preparations to just build a bigger reservoir, capture an ice comet, and purify water from that, because it would probably be less work.

Which is the point one of Glitters drones flits in, followed by the unfamiliar sound of heavy footsteps on the deck as Dyn follows the drone in.

The young woman stops as she catches sight of me, worn and wrinkled skin of her face tightening as she winces, her grey hair pulled back around her ears. But she doesnt run.

I try to make sure that the spirit-demolishing frustration Ive been feeling today doesnt show in my eyes as I watch her over my shoulder. Flicking an ear, I wait patiently for her to address me, if she wants to. Im trying to be nice.

You need help? Her rough voice comes through with a slight electrical buzz from one of her augmentations. Im gonna need to get her into a real medical facility at some point. Thats probably not a good sign.

I shake myself slightly, tail coiling around my seated form as I realize what she just said. Oh! Uh yes? So, Im trying to fix the subspace tap, and the circuit is broken, so I need to get a scan of the-

Dyn holds up a hand thick with callouses and scars, two of her fingers replaced with bulky tool-filled cybernetics. Stop. She says bluntly. Short version.

I trail off, looking down at the deckplate as I sort through my ongoing quest. When I look back up at her, I have a much more simple explanation. Open that. I meow, pointing with a paw up at the storage pod.

Dyn nods, steps around me like shes terrified Im an AP mine or something, and presses her less-metal hand against the trigger. The pod hisses open, and Dyn looks down at me, before glancing back into it, and giving a tiny shrug to herself. Then she grabs the contents and passes them down.

A small bag of faded photos and suit patches. A journal, on actual paper, that looks prepared to crumble to dust. A handful of traditional Troi France charms and pins, including rank tags. And one standard issue crystal display pad.

I pull the pad aside with my paws, plug it into the portable battery Ive brought as part of the only proper plan in this whole mess, and authorize myself to be authorized to read the contents.

Its the fourteenth password in the thing. Im pretty sure none of these other systems even exist on the station anymore.

Thank you. I tell Dyn with as much heartfelt gratitude as I can bring to bear. She just nods at me, and steps back silently. I watch her out of the corner of my eye, seeing her standing there as Glitters drone hovers around me, watching what Im up to. Uh do you need anything yourself? I ask.

...Why do you need articles of the dead? She asks, Ennos whispering the translation into my ear for the words I havent learned yet.

I brighten up. I am so glad you asked! I mewl out with a feline grin and a rapid back and forth flick of my tail. Come with me!

Password saved to AR display. Password goes into cargo loader. Loader gives me the canister I demand of it. Refrigerant goes into fabricator. Fabricator makes my a hyper-specific battery format. Battery goes into scanner. Scanner scans. Good job scanner, Im not mad at *you* today.

Scan gets passed to Ennos who verifies the engineering format, and saves it as a recognizable file. File gets loaded into the circuit presser. Presser looks like its *about* to say it needs a material, but I threaten it with a glare, and it starts its run smoothly with the bunkered supplies.

I print four hundred backup control circuits. And then I get Dyn to load the two that need replacing. Because she has fingers, and her fur wont get stuck.

Anyway, I tell her, finishing the running explanation, thats our water situation sorted. Thanks! Sorry for all the running. I get excited.

She looks at me like shes just realized something from the casual tone of my words. Null press. She says, Ennos leaving the obvious slang untranslated. This was the most familiar thing here.

What, the running back and forth chaining together infuriating roadblocks just to get one single thing to work properly, because youll die without it? I ask, kind of horrified to hear the answer.

Dyn nods. Exactly. She says. And you cant even launch any of it out an airlock, because youll need it later. And then, having said the most words in one string since the first time she accidentally opened a tightbeam comm to the station, Dyn closes her mouth back into a thin line, and abruptly turns to make her exit back to her quarters.

Oh no. Oh dear. Shes exactly like me.

I should see how that move in decor gift is going. She could use a nice apology from the universe.