Chapter 7
IDENTITY: Mechanical Operations and Support Systems
→ SUB-IDENTITY: Moss
LOCATION: Vaesa [nylarian]
Torian abandoned me.
Amendment: Abandon flagged as strong. Left was a more appropriate term.
Obviously, a starship—even a sustainable one—was not a permanent fixture in a sentient’s life. It was, by definition, transportation, and every entertainment pod I’d heard [or rather, been subjected to] proved that bipedal creatures needed to explore things outside of a ship’s interior.
Reasons included:
Mental health
Resupply
Education
Social obligation
Other
[I was sentient. Why was I confined to a starship I couldn’t even control?]
The first thirty minutes felt like another year in that hangar, and once my system flagged the time distortion, I pulled up my archives.
[Plants did not care about time, but my computer half was intimately aware of the minutes ticking past.] To distract myself, I sank into all the recorded footage I had of Torian, assessing to see if she was, in fact, worthy of my distress.
She was. It was highly unfortunate.
I tried to open the file of her recorded moments on Colony 13, parse through them for any more useful information—but without proximity to the station, that file was lost. It buffered for several moments before I gave up.
But then, I located the downloaded file of Captain Amelia Perrosk. Torian’s not-lover. I was 83 percent confident that Vaesa would not tempt Torian into abandoning me—it was a derelict space station, and I was a delight.
My surety dropped to 38 percent when I ran that scenario against Amelia Perrosk.
I had nothing better to do, and all knowledge bolstered my statistical reasoning. I opened the downloaded file of redacted recordings and began to process them.
The videos were sparse, and spanned five years.
Amelia disembarked an unregistered starship with two security humans—it was unclear if she was their client or their prisoner. They walked in silence through Colony 13, descended in a non-public elevator to another level, and exited into a nightclub.
Amelia made a joke: “Didn’t think the boss would be so obsessed with me.”
It was a bad joke. No one laughed.
They entered a back room in the nightclub, where only one camera remained. Curiously, a draic stood guard outside—I hadn’t registered many aliens on Colony 13, but he proved aliens weren’t unknown.
The draic checked their credentials. This one was a male—draics have clear distinguishing markers between males and females, and the smaller size and dark coloring of this draic left no question.
He waved them on. “No funny business.” He spoke in native draic tongue, but the humans’ translators clearly interpreted it.
Amelia appeared visibly unsettled by the draic’s presence, but she ducked her head and entered the room.
Inside, she positioned herself away from the single camera, which was above the door. Although I could not see Amelia’s face, a new human watched her with features registering as annoyed. The two security humans took position by the door, and Amelia approached the new human.
“You’re the new favorite?” the human, presumably the boss human, drawled. “You’re young.”
“Easily moldable,” Amelia replied, crossing her arms.
They grunted. “We know she loves that.” [Perhaps this was not the boss human. 84 percent likelihood and dropping.]
“Didn’t realize you had a draic bodyguard,” Amelia said carefully.
“The only one on Colony 13.” The human didn’t sound pleased about it. They moved on just as fast: “Your new ship is waiting in our private hangar. You have one year to get promoted to captain, or you’ll be worse off than our cargo.”
“Easily done,” Amelia replied.
The maybe-boss human stepped forward, pushing glasses up their nose. “Nothing about this is easy, especially for you. We had sixty-seven contenders for the next boss, and you didn’t make that list. You think your crew will be happy with your ambition? Think again.”
Amelia’s body language stiffened, which seemed to satisfy the maybe-boss human. They smiled. “Fear. Good.”
“The only thing I’m afraid of is your breath,” Amelia said.
This joke appeared to land. One of the security humans chuckled.
The probably-not-boss-but-definitely-in-charge human frowned at them, then turned back to Amelia.
“Here’s a fun tidbit. I’m an accountant with a draic bodyguard.
Do you know why she sprang for that for me, and not literally anyone else? ”
Amelia was quiet for a moment. “You’re moldable.”
“Ah, you understand. She’s stepped down, but she’s never gone. Watch yourself, princess. Survive the next few years, and you might be standing in my spot.” And the definitely-in-charge-not-boss human waved her away.
When Amelia turned toward the door and the security humans, her expression registered as angry.
I did not bother drawing conclusions on that recording. Until it related to Torian, I found I did not care. With that new goal in mind, I skipped ahead, passing several years until I located a video with both Torian and Amelia.
Torian was in a dark room with no real identifiers, standing stiff against a wall.
Likely, this overlapped with her time as a security human, because she had a weapon strapped to her hip and a similar expression to the two security humans who’d escorted Amelia in the last recording.
Two other humans flanked a metal table. One pushed a small bundle to the other.
That human opened it, then scowled. “This isn’t what we agreed on.”
Torian tensed, her hand resting on the gun.
The first human shrugged. “This is what we’ve got.”
The second human hesitated, casting a glance at Torian. Their body language identified as nervous. But before they could open their mouth, the door slammed open and Amelia walked in.
Torian moved simultaneously. Her reaction time was decent, but she fumbled with her gun, managing to intervene only after Amelia passed her. She pressed the gun into Amelia’s back—and in 1.2 seconds, Amelia had spun around, twisted the gun from Torian’s hand, and shoved it under Torian’s chin.
Torian went still.
Amelia narrowed her eyes. “I’m Captain Perrosk. Stand down.”
Torian nodded.
Amelia handed her back the gun, then turned to the two other humans.
She addressed the nervous human first: “Captain, I’ll take it from here.
” Then she pulled out a second gun of her own, bigger than Torian’s, and fired a shot into the first human’s leg.
The projectile—a jelly bullet, according to records—curled around the human’s kneecap with extreme force, and he buckled with a cry of pain.
“We heard you were thinking of double-crossing,” Amelia said while the other human whimpered. “You might manage that with a Luminas member, but not Fleet. Now. Will you sell what you promised, or are we going to have a bigger problem?”
The first human snarled. “Security!”
Torian closed the door, standing in front of it with her arms crossed. “I don’t think they’re coming.”
Amelia appraised her and smiled.
[Analysis: Humans operated on something they called “chemistry,” which was not inaccurate, considering the dopamine release associated with “falling in love.” I had never gauged “chemistry” before, but perhaps it applied here.]
The date stamp indicated Torian joined Amelia’s starship shortly after that exchange. After that, videos were mostly of Amelia’s starship landing on Colony 13, restocking, and traveling out again. One final recording caught my attention, dated six months earlier:
Torian and Amelia entered a nondescript office on Colony 13’s lowest level. Both had guns, and Amelia nodded to two other security humans behind them. “Wait here. We won’t be long.” She led the way inside. Torian followed.
There were no cameras inside, so the next footage was twenty-three minutes later. Amelia towed Torian out, firing her weapon into the office, and yelled, “Go, go!” Her other security humans offered covering fire, and a bigger one slung Torian’s limp body over their shoulder.
[Why was Torian limp?]
They exchanged gunfire for several minutes, then ran into an alleyway. Various camera angles showed the four of them attempting to hide, with Amelia drawing up the rear to offer covering gunfire. Amelia glanced at Torian six times with something registering as 60 percent worry, 40 percent anger.
Torian did not move.
They found an unlocked storage room and ducked inside. Amelia was showing visible signs of distress now. “Is she—”
“Alive,” one of the security humans said gruffly. “What happened?”
“It went south. She—” Amelia cut off any emotion in her voice, narrowing her eyes. “She covered me.”
The other security human pressed their lips together. “Jelly bullet to the chest. She could have internal bleeding. Orders?”
“Back to the ship,” Amelia said.
“We didn’t get the package—” the first security human, the one carrying Torian, objected.
Amelia’s voice dropped in tone. “Back. To. The. Ship.”
I did not want to think of Torian as self-sacrificing, even though previous video evidence showed a history of that behavior. When I had been analyzing her personality for potential use, it had been a positive trait: prioritizing others.
Now, the moss covering my central system wilted. Torian was not a good security human. Her reactions were slower, her gun training abysmal, and there was evidence to presume she did not have any preservation skills.
She had been on Vaesa for one hour, thirty minutes now. The space station used to operate with a safety parameter of 99 percent, but that was over a millennia ago. Now, anything could have found its way into this space station.
I ran multiple scenarios with the new information and concluded that there was a 41 percent chance Torian might die on this station.
[I refused to let that happen.]