2 Dressed for Success #2
With a shrug, I conceded the point. “I graduated into the cavalry from Royal Colonial. I went into supply for the mounted division, so I received a steed to keep pace, and we got a bit attached,” I explained, looking fondly at Tilly.
The valet shrugged. “Well, if you insist on taking a hoversteed…”
“I do,” I said sharply, more certain of that than anything since the Royal Guards had fetched me.
“… then we’ll need to get you a new one,” the valet finished.
I fell silent, his words failing to register. A new what? Surely, he couldn’t be talking about replacing Tilly.
Faced with my silence, the valet walked over to stand next to Tilly. He refused to touch her, likely because she was even filthier than I was. “It’s rather old, several generations out of date, and very hard used.”
“Yes,” I said, drawing the word out to showcase the valet’s ignorance of real combat conditions. “Because we’ve been at war.”
“I understand,” the valet replied in a patronizing voice, “but now you’re representing the Queen and Parliament and must maintain a royal standard of decorum. We have plenty of officers’ hoversteeds in the barracks motor pool. What color would you prefer?”
“I would prefer my hoversteed,” I said automatically.
“Don’t be silly. We can have a new steed up here and junk this old trash heap in a moment,” the valet replied.
Tilly had not been listening. I could tell because she didn’t make any threatening moves towards the valet. I, however, was now well and truly angry.
I jabbed a firm finger at the valet with a furious glare.
“No, you cannot. Tilly is an emergent Synthetic Intelligence, not some standard-issue computerized transport. She has rights. You can’t throw her away like a piece of outdated military tech.
Junking her would be a crime, and not in a figurative sense. ”
“Oh, dammit. You let an SI develop? Aren’t there manuals about wiping the memory weekly to prevent this sort of thing?” the valet asked, looking around the room for confirmation. I kept my gaze firmly fixed on the servant. You never took your eyes from an enemy during a stand-off.
“Tilly developed her SI when she and I were trapped on an Imperial-held planet for several months after the Imps took all the portal sites. It was her, me, and a small cadre of supply corps infantry evading Imperial forces until the RC bridged a new assault force to retake the planet. We had neither the time nor the equipment to perform a wipe, and to be honest, I’m glad we didn’t.
Tilly saved my life several times before reinforcements showed up, and over a dozen times since.
So if you think I’m going to let you take my hoversteed away from me, then you have another thing coming! ”
The valet returned my glare, staring me down until one Guards officer asked, “You were on Kakoda?”
“Yes. I was with the 984th Logistical Corps, attached to the 482nd Legion during the Imperial surge of ’78.”
Nobody said anything else, but the silence felt impressed, or at least approving. The valet must have felt it too, because he sighed and rotated back to look at Tilly with more appraising eyes.
“Fine. You can keep your steed, but we must clean it and apply a new coat of paint.”
“Tilly,” I said, smirking when she gave an answering chirp. “What do you think? Want a good cleaning and new paint job?”
Tilly’s engine began to purr, which I knew to be a positive response. “That should be fine,” I translated.
“And maybe upgrade the internal components,” the valet said hopefully.
“We’ll see what Tilly thinks,” I said. Then a thought struck me. “What about cavalry boots?”
“What about them?” the valet asked.
“I could wear them with my mess dress uniform,” I said. “It’s not regulation. Cavalry boots and riding breeches will set me apart from the officers in court shoes and trousers.”
The valet considered. “I’d have to do the boots in black.
And you couldn’t have thigh cargo pockets on your breeches – they’d get in the way of the seam piping, but it’s not like you’ll need extra shells or field gear.
And the boots, maybe patent leather with silver buckles, red heels, yes. Yes, I could make that work.”
“All right, then,” I said. “One non-regulation mess dress, coming up.”
“First, we must wash the dust of battle from you.”
It was a fair critique. The rain had done little to clean the mud, oil, and sap from my clothes, and I radiated the stench of an unwashed man in near-visible waves. I looked around for the bathhouse, but the valet snapped his fingers, and a pair of black-clad footmen appeared as if from nowhere.
Suddenly realizing what was about to happen, I took a step back. “I can bathe myself, thank you very much,” I said, but my intended commanding statement came out as a frightened squeak.
The valet arched his dark eyebrow. “Not to my standards, you can’t.” Then, to his two aides, he commanded, “Scrub him.”
Before I could dart away, the footmen snagged me by the arms, holding me with surprising strength despite my protests.
Tilly growled, a menacing rumble of old-style piston engines, but I shouted, “Tilly, stay,” and she quieted down.
I could tell by her twitching aerovanes that she was unhappy with me, but my current problems would not be helped by an enraged Synthetic Intelligence.
To prevent my hoversteed attacking the Royal Guards in my defense, I allowed the footmen to lead me away to scrub me down like an errant schoolboy in what would surely be one of the most humiliating experiences of my adult life.