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Oh Dark, he hated these tiny tunnels.

Tred carefully navigated the drone through the maintenance shaft.  It was a sort too small for any grown human to fit through; even the Beetle-Slugs found them tight if they had to go in there, but the sheer quantity of equipment that potentially needed accessing meant that they had no choice but to use very narrow tunnels.

His eye implants were feeding him the view from the drone he was remotely piloting, even while he sat outside in the maintenance room.

His view was fully that of the drones, and it moved as fluidly and easily as any person – it felt nearly like he himself was shrunk down and inside the maintenance tube.

Which made him feel so claustrophobic.

Sweat was running down his face, forcing him to blink often.

The scanners on the drones were checking each and every circuit in the systems.

No one ever thought about how inconvenient a battle was for maintenance personnel.  These ships were not just aluminum skinned tubes strapped to rockets like in ancient times!  Every single component was a computer or part of a computer, and the horrible blasting of a fight meant anything and everything could be disturbed.

The scan on this section completed, and his own visual checks – as poor as they were compared to the drone’s scanners – found everything to be in order.

He moved the drone towards the next section when he got an alert; something was moving towards him!

Well, towards the drone, at least.

He still felt a rush of adrenaline, but he didn’t actually have to do anything.

It was a Beetle-Slug, which activated the drone’s movement circuit.  His view dimmed momentarily to avoid giving him vertigo as it moved into an alcove.

He overrode the controls anyway, morbidly curious.  He looked down as the Bicet passed.

It moved swiftly, its many small legs a blur of motion.  Its leathery carapace with small plates of chitin indicating it was of a different caste than Cutter.

It stopped, and he jerked back as it rotated to look directly at the camera of the drone.  Tred had not physically moved the drone to peer at the creature, but – did it somehow know he was looking at it?

More sweat ran down his brow.

“Your drone requires maintenance,” the Bicet said.  “Micro-tearing of wire coating on arm C.  Send in for repairs after shift.”

Then it crawled away, and Tred felt stupid that he’d panicked so much.

“Ah, thanks,” he called out through its speaker, though he doubted the Bicet was even anywhere near his drone at that point.

Making a note to get the wire checked, he crawled on, finding a few molecules out of place in a crystal board matrix.  The whole section would have to be removed later for the adjustment, but right now it was . . . acceptable.  Its efficiency would be lowered by a very small margin, not enough to worry most, even if it bothered him.  And it did bother him; the molecules should be in their proper places, not . . . just flung out there wildly.

He made a note to go back for it.  Then, as he started to move on, he stopped.

No, no, he would take care of it now.

Detaching the crystal matrix case, he had the drone carry it out to a repair depot.  Other drones had dropped off other matrices, which were all in quite worse shape than his.

He’d probably get another annoyed message from the repair crew later telling him this matrix was fine and it didn’t need to be dragged out for repair . . .

Ignoring that, he crawled back into the tunnel.

Did he really want to keep doing this?

Not just the tunnel, but . . . the Craton.

He had been born here and he’d always thought that he’d die here.

But they’d been in a battle recently.  A battle!  And it wasn’t the first time lately that the ship had been in such a dangerous situation.

During all of that he’d just been so nervous that he’d felt faint.  He hadn’t even had to do anything, just hid in a bunker like the civilians.

But he’d felt the impacts, the hard ship movements.  He’d known what various subtle signs meant, even when no one else around him did.

He was, by sheer skills, qualified to be a bridge officer.  Yet the concept terrified him; that much pressure upon him.  He’d mess up and people would be killed.  Or even the whole ship.

His home ship.

Maybe he should leave.  With his skill set there would be thousands of job openings even in a nice and cushy system like Ran or Tau Ceti or Luyten.  Or even someplace exotic like Van Maanen or Cygni!

Even the thought of Cygni and its flares made him nervous, though.  And Van Maanen was a White Dwarf, sure, but – who wanted to live around a dead star?

Ran was beautiful, but he wasn’t the type to go sunbathing on the beaches of that pleasant world, and its dominant culture in space was almost . . . hedonistic by his standards.  Tau Ceti, he’d known a very rude man from there once, and Luyten . . .

One by one he ruled out the obvious choices.

He knew that there were literally thousands of other options, but that he would find something that made them inadequate for him.

He honestly did not even know where he wanted to live.

A call came in.

He blinked, fumbling for a moment before calling out, a little too loudly; “Cut drone feed!  Switch to call.”

He hadn’t even seen who it was, but it was probably too soon to be the repair crew – unless one had been operating a drone right there and checked the matrix!

No visual came up, just audio.

“Tred?” a cool female voice said.  It was nervous, hesitant, and his heart skipped a beat.

“Oh, madam Ambassador!” he cried.

“Oh!  Tred, is that you?”

< Ep 8 Part 7 | Ep 8 Part 9 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Brooks knew he had to study before he could call Romon Xatier.

All he had known was that the man was possessed of great wealth – which also meant influence – in Gohhi.  Not quite on the level of the Waites-Kossons or Gormans, but certainly they rubbed shoulders.

His great-grandfather, Alon, had taken their fortune, being one of the first humans to reach Gohhi at sublight speeds, four hundred years ago.  Building a financial empire on brutal exploitation and cunning, he’d made himself one of the first Lord Executives.

His son had died young, but not before siring an heir, Peppen.  Alon had actually lived on, but retired from running his business, which he passed on to Peppen, though both then passed away only a year apart, about twenty years ago.  Their causes of death were unknown, as the bodies were never found – but most sources agreed it was likely rival businessmen, taking advantage of Alon’s sloppiness in his age, and then Peppen’s carelessness in his grief and anger.

Romon had then taken the reins, relatively young to be inheriting, but possessing the necessary business acumen.  But while his ancestors had been known for their brutality in quashing their workers to extract the most surplus value, Romon seemed to have built a reputation as a cultured man and philanthropist – as well as a recluse.

Which, in Brooks’s eyes, only meant he was a more subtle kind of snake, but it was important to note.

The Sapient Union made a habit of following the dealings of the wealthiest Lord Executives – an ancient title that many businessmen had granted themselves, apparently thinking their stolen fortunes put them inherently above the rest of humanity.  Something that only using an archaic aristocratic title could properly display.

But given that such Lord Executives often had huge political power made it important.  Not to mention that knowing their crimes and weaknesses was often quite useful.

Sapient Union intel reports did not have a lot on Romon Xatier, however.  His business dealings were no more shady than most, his workers were treated about middling, in terms of protections and exploitation.  He was filthy rich, yes, but he did not flaunt it or put undue political pressure onto anyone.

Which left mostly his private life, where information was even more sparse.  Unmarried, he did not leave his private station often.  Aside from an interest in being a patron of the arts, he was renowned as a poet, with several books published of his poems.

Surely it was easy to get past editors when you owned the companies.

Still, this seemed the most relevant detail, as Jan Holdur frequented this gilded circle of poets.  Holdur did not seem to have been published except in books he’d paid for, and his works did not seem to garner nearly as much attention as Romon’s.

Which immediately made Brooks consider if jealousy could be a motivation – but he did not see how Jan Holdur openly murdering a woman would somehow harm Romon Xatier.  Certainly Ensign Vale had no connection to either man.

As much as he wanted to dawdle more, though, Brooks knew he just had to call the man up and see if anything new came to light.

It was not easy to even find the contact information for the man – most of the Lord Executives had some sort of publicist whom he could contact and then use his Sapient Union credentials to get sent up the ladder.

But he’d had the computer searching for such routes and come up with very little.  He’d found the public relations firms that he employed – quite a few, he noted – but none of those were the sort that could pass him upward.

He was rebuked by the man’s contracted law firms, who refused to offer any comment whatsoever.

Fine, then.  He called up one of the security firms the man owned.  He had an outsized controlling interest in many, he noted.

“Give me the highest ranking officer,” Brooks told the AI.

“Captain Gren speaking,” a brusque voice answered after he’d gotten transferred.

“Captain Gren, this is Captain-Mayor Ian Brooks,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” the man replied.  He sounded distracted.

“Of the Sapient Union vessel Craton.”

There was a sound of shifting and whispering; the man had put his hand over his audio receiver, but Brooks could still hear him telling someone to come back later.  Or someones; he heard several giggling female voices that rapidly faded.

“Of the Craton?  How do I know this is actually the Captain of that ship?” the man asked when he finally spoke again, a tinge of panic in his voice.  He was clearly trying to figure out how to authenticate the call.

“Check under authorization codes on the top right of your screen,” Brooks told him dryly.  “There you will find a thirty-seven digit number, the first six numbers being zeros and the last a one.  That indicates it is from the Sapient Union . . . an Earth ship specifically.”

“Oh, yes.  Right, of course.  Well . . . uh, how may I help you, Captain . . . ?”

“Captain-Mayor,” Brooks corrected, feeling a slight amusement in making the man squirm.

“Yes, Captain-Mayor.”

“I need to speak with Romon Xatier about a potential risk to his person that we’ve uncovered.”

There was silence.  “Uh, I’m sorry Cap- I mean Captain-Mayor, but that’s above my pay-grade, and I don’t have the authority to-“

“Romon Xatier owns your company, Captain.  You certainly have the contact information for his under-secretary at the very least.  The man’s life may be in danger, which is why I’m calling you.  I obviously cannot do anything on Gohhi, but you can.”

“Yes!  I can, um . . .”

“Put me in contact with Romon.  Then I’m certain he will call you and wish to deploy your forces to keep himself and your company alive and healthy.”

He could hear the panic in the man’s voice.  “Yes, that makes sense,” he said quickly.  “Uh, let me . . . Okay, I have a digital connection code for you . . . do you have a pen?”

“Transfer me,” Brooks ordered.

“Yes, sir.  And thank you sir.  You have a nice day, and thank you for, uh, calling Caligari Security-“

Brooks muted him and checked the connection code.  It looked authentic, and when the line rung, he received an automated under-secretary.

It accepted his Union credentials and sent him up to the human secretary.

Who was out at lunch.

“If this is an emergency, please contact Caligari Security at . . .”

“This is a diplomatic emergency,” Brooks said.  “And Romon Xatier must be contacted.”

The answering machine was, as he suspected, smart.  It went silent for a moment, and then finally, a human voice appeared.

“Good afternoon, Captain-Mayor,” the voice said.  It was deep and calm, and Brooks knew he had reached Romon Xatier at last.

“Mr. Xatier, I am pleased I have been able to reach you,” he began.

“Yes, I know.  You have been trying for some time, Captain-Mayor.”

Brooks had wondered if he was going through some sort of test, and this seemed to confirm it.  He pushed his annoyance aside.

“I don’t suppose you’re already aware of why I’m calling?”

“Something about a danger to my life,” Romon replied, sounding both dismissive and amused.  “Which I highly doubt is true.”

“It may be a threat to your person.  You see, we have apprehended a man on one of our tour ships who attempted to murder one of its crew-“

“I do not see how that threatens me,” Romon replied coolly.

“. . . and who afterward has said he will only speak to you.”

“How unfortunate,” Romon replied.  “As I have no desire to come onto your vessel to speak with an attempted murderer.  Is that all, Captain?”

Brooks knew the game was not over yet.  “The man is Jan Holdur, of the family that owns Holdur Conglomerate.  I understand he frequents the same poetry groups that you do.  You two may have met numerous times, which makes his request for you rather curious at a time like this.”

“I am afraid I barely know the man,” Romon replied.  Yet something had changed in his voice.  Brooks was not sure if it was concern or interest.

“I did not imagine so.  However, we still remain with the issue that he will only talk to you.  And given that he committed his crime on one of our vessels, he is also under our jurisdiction.”

Xatier was quiet for a few moments.  “I will have my people send you the data for the issuing of my diplomatic expediency.  Upon receiving that I will come to your vessel, Captain-Mayor.”

Which was quite necessary; nearly every Lord Executive was wanted for crimes in the Sapient Union.  What they considered ‘normal business’ was considered barbaric in more civilized places, and all too frequently their unsavory practices slipped across the ephemeral borders of space.  It was Brooks’s prerogative to give expedient diplomatic status, and he could deny it entirely at his discretion.  “All right, Mr. Xatier.  Please send word when you are on your way and we will arrange a drone escort.”

“That will be unnecessary.  I will bring my own security.”

“They will have to wait outside of our ship,” Brooks replied firmly.

“Very well,” Romon replied.

The call ended.

< Ep 8 Part 6 | Ep 8 Part 8 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“I apologize, Captain,” Pirra said.  “We had to put the man into a restraint suit – it’s the only thing that can keep him under control without just using heavy sedatives.”

“Did Sedative 12 help?” Urle asked.

“A bit.  It certainly slowed his reactions – which is nice, as he was stronger than any of us – took four of us and a dozen drones to immobilize him.”

“And you said his augments are not military?” Brooks asked, frowning.

“Definitely civilian, sir – just very, very high grade.  There’s platinum woven into the fibers of his muscles.  That’s . . . well, there’s no material advantage to it, but it can give you something of a silvery shine under the skin, which apparently is considered chic.”

“I’ve heard of this.  It’s very popular among the Gohhi elite,” Brooks added, grimacing.

He stepped over to look at the man.  The room he was in was only a little over two meters in any given direction, made of reinforced metal plates with no seams, only tiny ventilation holes, just a millimeter across.

The front wall was transparent titanium, a piece of lesser quality than they used for the ship’s outer windows, but still hard enough that it’d take a heavy cannon to pierce.

The man inside was sitting, a tight, clearish-yellow body suit on him that was using both reinforcements and muscle disruptors to render him immobile.

A barbaric technology, but apparently necessary right now.

“We’re dealing with capitalist aristocracy,” Brooks said.  “Which means this is now a diplomatic incident.”

Urle stepped up next to him.  “Cross-checking him against that narrow group, I think I can come up with an ID in a minute.”

The door opened behind them, and Brooks glanced back to see Jaya rush in, out of breath.

“Captain, Commander,” she said, offering a salute.

Brooks returned it.  “What do you have to report on this?”

“The man is Jan Holdur,” she said, stiff huffing.  “As I suspected as soon as I heard.”

“How do you know?”

She looked disgusted – with herself, Brooks recognized.  “I saw him before he embarked on the cruise.  Or rather – Apollonia did.  She seemed to have some idea that there was something wrong with him.”

“How?” Urle said.  “Did she know him?”

“No – I had to look it up.  Whatever his apparent tools for hiding from our sensors, he had not activated them yet.”

“And he destroyed them,” Urle noted.  “We have the wreckage but it’s not going to tell us a lot.  Though I think it must be some super-rich man’s custom work.”

Brooks remained focused on Jaya.  “Apollonia could tell he was trouble?”

“She had a gut feeling.  I took it seriously.”

Brooks took that in, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“My apologies Captain, for my failure,” Jaya continued.  “If Dr. Y had not happened to be watching, this man would have killed one of our own.”

“You can’t be everywhere or predict everything – we’ve never had a problem with the rich tourists besides their endless whining,” Brooks told her.  “But let’s get some Response personnel on all future tours no matter how much it annoys the moneyed – though I think we’ll be waiting awhile before the next one.”

“Already ordered, Captain, along with more thorough scans and searches.”

Brooks could imagine the complaints from the moneyed people over that, which amused him.  A feeling that did not last.

“Jan Holdur, hm?  Is that related to the Holdur Conglomerate?” he asked.

“He’s one of the sons of their current Lord Executive,” Urle confirmed.

“Shit,” Brooks muttered.

Jaya frowned.  “He committed his crime on a ship of ours, however.  Foolish of him – his father’s status does him no favors in our custody.”

“You’d be surprised,” Brooks replied.  “While we recognize his class as parasitic worms and they hate us for seeing it, his family will use everything in their power to save him.”

“Unless it ends up costing them too much,” Urle noted.  “Then they’ll drop him like a sack of bricks.”

Brooks approached the cell, activating the intercom.

“Jan Holdur,” he said.  “We know who you are.”

The man inside the cell clearly heard.  He looked towards Brooks – the first time he’d even given an acknowledgement of them outside of his cell.

He could only move his head a little due to the restraint suit, but Brooks stood where he could get a decent view.

“Do you know who I am?” Brooks asked.

“Captain-Mayor Ian Brooks,” the man croaked.  His voice was raw from his earlier screaming.

“Why did you try to kill one of my crew?” Brooks asked.

The man turned his head to look straight ahead, saying nothing.

“Do you have any defense of your actions?” Brooks next asked.

Holdur said nothing.

Brooks considered, then asked a final question; “What do you want?”

The man glanced back at him.

He remained silent for some time and Brooks held his eyes locked to the man who would be a killer.

But then the man spoke again.  His voice was just as hoarse, his words barely audible.

“Romon Xatier,” he said.  “I want to talk to Romon Xatier.”

Brooks held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded, and turned off the channel.

“Xatier . . .” Urle said.  “Isn’t he another Lord Executive?”

“Yes,” Brooks said.  “But I know nothing about him.”

“Is there any connection between his business and Xatier’s?” Jaya asked, eyebrows bunching together in concentration.  “I’m not seeing any.”

Urle put a hand up to the side of his head – an unnecessary habit, but one Brooks knew he did when he was sifting huge amounts of data.  “I can’t find any, except – they apparently had some social circles in common.”  He sighed and shook his head.  “Nothing that makes the request seem reasonable.”

Urle and Jaya were both watching Brooks, who was still contemplative.

“I suppose,” Brooks finally said.  “I’ll call up Xatier and see what he can tell us.”

< Ep 8 Part 4 | Ep 8 Part 6 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Iago hadn’t looked so happy in a long time, Brooks thought.

Cassandra Caraval, next to him, looked far more nervous.  She didn’t seem to want to meet Brooks’s eyes, which was a little different from how he remembered her.

But in her situation, most people would feel pretty uncertain.

She had, after all, been thought dead for the past few years.

It had been on a visit to the mining colony on the fringe where she had been born – an accidental explosion during a cryo-stir of the colony’s air tanks had vented an entire habitation dome.  Everyone had been thought dead.

Now that she had returned, Brooks felt his caution was justified.  Iago had suffered a strong reaction to tenkionic exposure recently that had seemed to be causing a deterioration of his sanity.  But then he had found Cassandra again and had seemingly recovered.  Miraculous, but also alarming in its own way.

Before him, Brooks had the results of every test they could run on Cassandra.

He had decided to let Y take slightly lighter duties, and gotten Dr. Zyzus to perform the tests, him being the next most senior.  But everything had come back to say, essentially, that this was Mary Cassandra Caraval.

She was not a clone, no kind of hyper-advanced biological machine as far as they could tell.  She had the same scars and physical markings.  She had aged up exactly as made sense, albeit with higher stress markers.

All of which fit.

“Cassandra, if you don’t mind me asking,” he said.  “What do you remember of the incident?”

Her eyes raised slightly, her head staying angled down.  It made her look all the more innocent.  “Very little.  I only vaguely remember warning sirens . . .  I was already putting on a suit, but I can’t remember why.  Perhaps to help check the external power lines for micro-meteor damage?  It used to be my job when I lived there . . .”

“She was probably showing some newbies the ropes,” Iago interjected.

Brooks glanced to him, keeping his face calm, not too sympathetic nor letting his annoyance show.  It wasn’t so much at them as . . . well, his feeling about the whole situation.

“The next thing I remember,” Cassandra continued, “I was waking up on the Grey Gift.  That’s a ship that belongs to the Order.”

“I see.  Did they have any more information about your survival?”

“They just responded to the automated distress beacon and found me floating, unconscious and badly injured – my helmet had taken a debris hit that dented it, giving me some skull trauma.”

That healed injury had also shown up in her exams.

“There must have been a lot of debris,” Urle said, and Brooks was grateful for just how calm and kind he managed to sound.  “How did they locate you through all of that?”

“I don’t know, Commander,” Cassandra said.  Everything about it screamed that she was being honest.  “It was simply a miracle of the Infinite – that is all I can imagine.”

Brooks glanced to Urle.

“Well, Cassandra, I suppose all I can say is that I am grateful that you are alive – however it happened.  And welcome back.”

He extended a hand, and Cassandra nearly jumped in her seat before quickly taking it.

“Thank you, Captain.  Does this mean . . . ?” she trailed off.

“Yes, you are now officially back among the living,” Brooks told her.  “With all of the rights and benefits of that.”

Elation spread across her face and Iago let out a whoop, grabbing her in a hug.

Brooks did feel genuine happiness for them.  How could he not?

But he also couldn’t shake the feeling of concern.

Iago reached out and took his hand now.  “Thank you so much, Captain.  I can’t tell you how much this means to us.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” he said.  “I’m sorry there was such a runaround.  It’s not nice to have to go through.”  A smile crept onto his face.  “I was reported dead once and it was difficult to sort out.  But now I hope that you all can move forward joyously.  Especially Elliot.  How is he, if I may ask?”

“He’s over the moon,” Iago said, grinning.  “I know things were hard for him lately – I know I was.”  He was speaking quickly, stumbling over his words.  “I wasn’t doing for him everything I needed to do.  But I’m better now, and he’s strong enough that he made it through.  There was a light for him at the end of this, at least, and I just couldn’t be more proud of him and happy that he got something back.”

Cassandra was listening to him, but put a hand on his shoulder gently to calm him.

“Thank you again, Captain.  We are eternally in your debt,” she said.

“If I may ask,” Urle said.  “I understand you’re now a member of the Esoteric Order’s faith – we don’t really have any facilities of worship for that, nor is our chaplain familiar with your faith.  While he’ll learn – in the meantime, is this an issue for you?”

“Oh no, Commander,” Cassandra said.  “My faith is very private, anyway.  You won’t see much of it, I promise you.”

“We’re not worried about that,” Brooks said.  “I’m not sure how much you remember of the Sapient Union’s stance here, but we have no state religion and such organizations are treated no differently from any other, people are free to worship as they please – we just don’t allow public proselytizing.”

“You won’t have to worry about that,” Iago said.  “We’ll be private.”

“You’re an adherent now?” Urle asked.  He phrased it in a friendly manner, and Iago clearly took it that way.

“Yes, absolutely.  How could I not be when it gave me back Cass?”

Brooks nodded and smiled.  “All right – well have a good day, you two.  And I know you’re interested in resigning your commission, Iago – I’ll look over that, but take a week off first to see how you feel, all right?  If you still want it then, I can grant it with no issue.”

“All right, thank you sir!”  Iago saluted him, and the two moved to leave, smiling and talking excitedly.

As the door closed, Urle said nothing, and Brooks rubbed his forehead.

“It still doesn’t sit right with me,” he said to his Executive Commander.

Urle sighed.  “Me neither.  I want to believe it, and I can’t find any evidence that it’s not true, but . . . it’s too convenient.”

“It wasn’t long ago that Pirra reported seeing a duplicate of Michal Denso on Monitor 1,” Brooks added.  “Completely intact, unlike the actual man.  And that was the same mission that caused Iago his mental breakdown.”

“Though that copy was insane, wasn’t it?” Urle noted.  “Cassandra seems completely there.”

Brooks only let out a dissatisfied grunt.

A warning flash went off on his desk.

“Brooks,” he said, answering it.

“Captain,” Pirra’s voice said.  “We’ve had an incident on a tour ship.  One man attempted to attack one of our crew-“

The sound was interrupted by screaming.  It was not Pirra, but the voice of a human male, clearly furious.

“Calm him down!” Pirra ordered sharply.

Someone else said something, but the words weren’t picked up.

Y’s voice could then be heard.  “Give him another dose of Sedative 12.  It will not hurt him and I believe it will achieve the necessary action.”

Pirra was panting when she came back.  “Sorry, sir.  We’ve apprehended – or, well, Dr. Y apprehended the subject.”

Urle tilted his head.  “Y?” he commented softly.

“Was anyone hurt?” Brooks demanded.

“No, sir.  Ensign Vale is pretty shaken up, but she’s not hurt.  The only other person involved was the perpetrator, a Gohhi native.  We have not ID’d him yet, his system blanked itself and he had some pretty nice tech that made him practically invisible to sensors.”

“Is he military?” Urle asked.  “Is this an attack on the ship?”

“We don’t think so, sir,” Pirra said.  “He’s augmented, but they appear high-grade civilian, not military.”

Brooks frowned.  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

< Ep 8 Part 3 | Ep 8 Part 5 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“The crystalline blocks you are seeing are actually many-meter thick pieces of transparent titanium!  These blocks are extremely difficult and time-consuming to produce, with each piece taking up to six months and over a billion labor hours to complete.  As a result, only ten million are produced each year in the People’s Atomic Production Facilities of the Greloz Solar Constructor . . .”

Y tuned out the audio channel of the tour guide.  While a trained member of the Administration of the Craton, who had given such a tour dozens of times at various stops in inhabited systems, her speech was vexing to him.

It was, after all, not really accurate.  Aside from the many abbreviations and short-hand used for describing elements of the ship, in her description of the makeup of the crew, she had mentioned only one Ehni.

The curious human habit of creating arbitrary distinctions within reality!

It was truly astounding, really.  These tools were simply ways for their minds to comprehend the sheer complexity of it all.

They spoke to him, a singular machine, and considered him ‘one’.  Did they not know that he was a collective of consciousnesses?  Just as they were.  Two halves of a brain composed of sections that all added their own minor contributions to make a ‘whole’.

It could at least be said that they were one contiguous being.  He could understand and accept the logic there.

But his kind?  They were code.  The body that people interacted with each day was simply a tool for him to use.

On occasion, he’d seen humans reacting to his mechanical bodies when he was not using them.  They were often startled to open a door and find the shell there, whereas they would have little reaction to finding a wrench or drill.  Some regarded it almost like a human corpse, with the possibility of contagious pathogens, and did not want to touch it.

Simply a part of their instincts, but interesting all the same!

The reality was that he had no body, and his systems were enshrined within special secured architecture of the ship itself.  And the ‘he’ that presented here was in some ways different from the ‘he’ that would present among his own people, using hardware of their own design.  Such a shift was the most difficult part of being here, and it was only the sheer cleverness of his code itself that allowed him to exist in a non-Ehni system.  At the end of the day, it was their code that made them unique, not the hardware.

It had taken a long time to learn how to adapt themselves to these other systems, though.  Yet they had, precisely because they were not one being.

And what of his backups?  On the ship, at various SU starbases, back among his people . . .  Were they not also individuals, him yet not him?  Were they a part of the one?

He thought of the ship of Theseus, and was amused.  Some humans understood.

He had completed his medical reports for the day, taking care of them in a fraction of a second.  He’d taken longer than normal, being extra thorough in his work today.  One might even say verbose.

Captain Brooks was concerned about him, he knew.  Many humans and other beings were affected for a long period of time after a close friend was injured or killed.  Some were changed forever!

But he was not.

Despite how badly his friend Dr. Logus had been injured during the battle in the Mopu system, despite his sorrow, it did not impact him the way it would impact a human.

He should be working on his latest article, but he’d allowed his progress on that to stall for now.  Right now, the tour was getting a significant fraction of his attention.

It was, really, a circus.  Aside from six staff on the ship from the Craton, everyone on the vessel were from Gohhi.

Like many beings, they had a strong interest in the Craton.  She was the first ship of her class, and it was hardly a class, given that she was just a hollowed out asteroid.

An asteroid from the dawn of time!  At least, all of the science, even that done by his own people seemed to suggest as much.

Possibly some of the oldest objects ever to exist that still existed, given that stars of the very early universe would likely have been too massive to live more than a few million years.

And while all the implications and practicalities of that were endless even in his estimation, the effect when they came to a place like Gohhi was that everyone wanted to see it.

Prior to the tours being started, people had taken to bringing private ships in towards the Craton.  Even if they stayed at legal distance, so many appeared that it quickly became unsafe.  And because they were technically fine, there was little the Craton could do – and the Gohhians themselves were not about to impede members of their ruling elite, even if they were behaving dangerously.

A compromise had been struck in regular tours, conducted by an SU shuttle that would take the curious around the ship.

With the deal, too, concessions were given for keeping other vessels at bay – both for their safety and to frustrate attempts at surveillance.  A good compromise, really.

Forty-seven beings were gathered at viewing ports, some rather rudely pushing others to get to the windows, their own unjustified senses of self-importance compelling them to behave in such a way.

Others had a self-assured sense of wealth that was largely internal, Y felt.  They truly thought themselves better than others, superior in some undefinable way, and so therefore above such behavior.

It was an interesting contrast to the humans he’d met that he respected.  Those ones were aware of and accepted that they were just animals, not far removed from their ancestors who crawled naked over tree limbs, yet who also knew they could hold themselves to higher standards.

None of these people actually knew he was watching.  The feeds from the ship were public, like all surveillance cameras in public areas on the ship.  Few did much more than peer in occasionally, but he found it fascinating to watch the people.

Aside from their behaviors, even their DNA showed subtle differences from humans of other places.  Their time in space had caused genetic drift which, while they still firmly fell into the category of homo sapiens might one day lead to-

His attention was pulled elsewhere.

One of the crew members had left through a door that led towards the supply rooms and one of the tourists had followed her.

That in itself was not so odd, as sometimes people did that to ask for something, but this man did not appear in the ship’s sensor systems.

Some sort of device on his person had created a sensor shadow around him, causing the automated systems to simply forget he existed.

It was interesting that it did not work on him, viewing remotely through the ship’s internal systems.  He could see the AI on the ship – no ignorant machine by any stretch, even if it was not like him – and it had no idea that the man was even there.

Let alone in the hallway following Ensign Peony Vale.

Y took control of one of the security drones.  Their weapons had been inactivated, and he could not override that, but he would make do.

His view shifted to the hall.  It wasn’t very large, with doors along one side leading to engineering or service rooms.  She was headed towards the fourth door, where drone chefs were currently making hors d’oeuvres to the exacting standards of their guests.

She had not noticed the man behind her.  Floating along in zero-g, there was no sound.

But something suddenly spooked her.  Y checked the audio levels and saw that the man’s breathing was within human audible range.

He saw her mouth opening to scream, but he was lunging for her, in his hand a transparent knife, barely visible in any spectra of light.

Before he could reach her, Y moved the drone he was controlling in between them.  The knife hit the chassis, but the hardened alloy did not even take a scratch.  Skidding off harmlessly, the man’s face went from a strange mixture of rapture and fury to one of confusion.

“Oh hello,” he said through the vocoder.  He pushed into the man, shoving him back towards the wall and away from Ensign Vale.

The man activated thrusters, and Y realized with only a slight bit of sadness that he would not be able to do this without violence.

Twenty other drones, under his control, rammed into the man from every angle.

They had locking clamps and grabbed onto the man’s arms, legs, even wrapping themselves around his head and torso.

“I am afraid you will need to remain still,” Y told him.  “Or else you may be hurt.”

The man struggled anyway yelling.

“I have to do this!” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth.

His pulse was running at an extremely high rate.  Y could tell that his heart was beating more than 300 times per minute, quite unsafe.  And despite the power of the security drones, he was able to flex his arms, still trying to strain towards Vale.

All of these signs indicated that he was enhanced to a high degree.  Not simple prosthetics, but things so subtle that he did not even register on most scans.

Y spoke to the terrified woman.  “Ensign Vale, this is Commander Y.  Move to the safe room immediately,” he instructed.  “A medical drone will treat you for shock.”

He sent more security drones through the ship, to be sure the man had no accomplices.  But the rest of the ship was calm.

People were viewing out into space.  They had no idea what had just been about to happen.

He alerted both the captain and the Craton.  Response Team Two scrambled and more drone pods were dispatched towards the ship to further secure the man.

Another drone came, giving the man an injection to subdue him.  It had some effect, but he was not calmed.  Nor even much impeded.

As Vale moved to safety he let out an animalistic scream.”Let me go!” he roared.  “She has to die!  He has to see!  He has to seeee!”

< Ep 8 Part 2 | Ep 8 Part 4 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“Oh god, why does the running not get any easier?” Apollonia panted, leaning against a planter.

The tree above was pleasant and green, its leaves would have provided great shade had there been an actual star above her head.

But they were still on the Craton, in Gohhi.  There was no star for light-years around them.

On some level it bothered her.  Even on New Vitriol she had theoretically been orbiting a star, and it was marginally brighter than the others.

But at the moment she was more bothered by the fact that she couldn’t seem to gulp enough air.

“It’s your third day doing this,” Jaya commented.  “It will take some weeks before your body starts to get used to it.”

“Weeks?!”

“It will get harder before that,” Jaya continued.  “But it will be worth it.”

“Yeah . . . sure . . .”  Apollonia saw a bench and sat down on it, leaning back.  “I think I need some energy.”

“Hm, well we could get you a snack, I suppose.  I see that you skipped breakfast . . .”

“You can tell that?”

“Well, Y can,” Jaya said.  “He’s started giving me updates, since you’re exercising.”

Apollonia sat up.  “Is he like . . . monitoring me?”

“He monitors all public data most of the time,” Jaya said.  “I think he just does it because he gets bored, honestly.”

Well, he was a hyper-intelligent AI, Apollonia thought.  That did make sense.

“But how can he tell what I’ve eaten?”

“I don’t know.  Perhaps by your weight upon the decking not changing from the last time you went out?  Or by measuring the total private usage of meal consumptions?  He aggregates a massive amount of trivial data, and uses that to understand . . . well, almost everything that happens on the ship,” she said.  “Most people pay it no mind since he’s not breaking any rules.”

“But you pay attention because it’s your job.”

Jaya nodded.

“Well, I think I want something sweet,” Apollonia said.  “Like . . . oh, chocolate!”  She pointed at a young man who was eating a bar as he walked by.

He was not a Craton native, Jaya noticed.  His clothes were in the style of Gohhi, and he was walking purposefully towards a crowd of other visitors, around a docking port that went up to the roof of the Equator Ring, where a large shuttle was docked.

“Y does say you should gain weight,” Jaya said reluctantly.  “I suppose that would be fine.”

“Already ordered!” Apollonia said happily, tapping away on her tablet.  “I’m really starting to like this ‘having money’ thing.”

“You have put on a little weight since you got here, haven’t you?” Jaya asked her.

“That’s not exactly a polite question . . .”

“I’m asking for medical reasons.  You are still underweight for your age and height, Apple.”

Apollonia squinted at Jaya, noting the nickname, but deciding not to speak out against it.  Part of her liked it, but having a nickname that wasn’t an insult was still new to her.  One day she’d get used to it.

A drone approached, giving Apollonia a bar of chocolate.

“Geh’jool,” it told her.

“Bless you,” Apollonia replied.

Jaya almost laughed.  “It’s a Qlerning phrase that means ‘please enjoy’, just much more emphatically.”

“Oh, is that what it meant?  I thought the drones just had bad speakers or something,” Apollonia replied, already taking a bite of chocolate.  “Why a Qlerning phrase?” she asked through her chewing.

“Because they’re known for their politeness, I imagine,” Jaya said.  “Are you really going to eat that whole thing?  It has a lot of calories.”

“We agreed I need more calories,” Apollonia gargled around the chocolate.

“Well, yes, but perhaps you should get more good calories.”

“No.  It’s chocolate for me, all day, every day.  Until I’m as round as the ship.”

Jaya arched an eyebrow.

“What?  Think about how easy it would be for me to get anywhere.  I could just roll.”

“I may have to institute a rule while we’re running,” Jaya said, frowning.  “No more exaggerating.”

“But that’s nearly everything I say!” Apollonia protested.

“And there you go again.  I think most of what you say is just complaints, if we’re being honest,” Jaya said, a smile tugging at her lips.

“Oh Dark, you can joke,” Apollonia replied.  She took another bite of her chocolate bar, watching the crowd.

There was a man watching her back.

She had felt it before she saw him.  The hairs on the back of her neck rising.

He looked away.  But her disquiet remained.

“Who are they?” she asked Jaya, her voice softer.

The other woman caught her change in tone.  “They are rich Gohhians who have come aboard for a tour.  It’s a service we offer since . . . well, they’d do it anyway, but dangerously crowd space around us otherwise.  Allowing it also helps spread good sentiment.”

“Do we really want these people as friends?” Apollonia asked, sizing up the crowd again.  Most wore jewelry and the fanciest clothes she’d ever seen.  Many of their outfits were wearable screens, showing bright shapes and patterns, even family crests or logos, scrolling and shifting.

They were like walking billboards, she thought.

The people were talking and laughing as if they owned the ship, not even noticing or caring how their mass was blocking most of the way.  Craton natives veered around them with little trouble, but still . . .

Their entitlement rankled.

“No,” Jaya said.  “Frankly, we do not.  But politics makes for uncomfortable bedfellows.”

“Because Gohhi is in such an important position . . . yeah, I know,” Apollonia said with a sigh, leaning her head back to stare upwards.

Above them were the transparent blocks of titanium that looked out into bare space, and in the distance she could see specks that she knew were some of the thousands of space stations that made up the territory known as Gohhi.  In some places the deck subtly curved, the gravity plates in the floor along with it, so that one could stand and look straight out into the stars, but in this area the ‘windows’ were directly overhead.

Who named this place, she wondered.  Was Gohhi even a human name, or had some aliens dubbed it that?  For all she knew, it meant “I don’t like your face” in some alien tongue, and early humans out here had taken it for the name . . .

Taking another bite of chocolate, she then sat up quickly.

“Who is that guy?” she asked, nodding towards the man who had been staring at her.  He now had his back to them, in queue for boarding the shuttle.

“His data is set to private as is the norm on Gohhi,” Jaya replied.  “We respect that, aside from security checks . . .”

“Yes, and you’re Chief of Operations,” Apollonia said.  “Use your security clearance.”

Jaya looked surprised at the request.  “I can’t do that just for curiosity.”

“It’s not curiosity . . . call it a feeling,” Apollonia said.

Jaya opened her mouth to reply, clearly in the negative, but then paused.

“All right,” she said.

Apollonia was surprised.  “You trust my gut?”

“You are a Cerebral Reader,” Jaya replied.  “And no one can even quite tell me just what that means in practical terms, but . . . I am going to interpret it to mean I should give more credence to your feelings than most.”

Apollonia felt an odd buzz of pleasure at that.

Not that she’d been acting on an idle thought here, but it was nice to be treated with some value when it mattered.

“That is Jan Holdur,” Jaya told her.  “He is Vice Lord of Holdur-Gollc Shipping, a subsidiary of Holdur Conglomerate.  His father is the owner, so it’s probably a nepotistic posting, especially considering his many minor criminal reports . . .”

“Crimes?” Apollonia asked sharply.  “Are we certain it’s safe to have him on the ship?”

“They are somewhat old,” Jaya said grudgingly.  “And rather minor – a minor physical altercation, some bouts of public intoxication . . . but he is not drunk now, nor does he have any drugs in his system.”

Apollonia opened her mouth to ask a question, but Jaya interjected.  “We just test for those before someone comes aboard.  You should see the list of chemicals many of these people have in their systems . . . but as long as they’re within certain levels we allow it.”  She sighed.  “Does your gut insist I should make an incident with Mr. Holdur and detain him?”

Apollonia considered it.  She hated being stared at, but really that was all the man had done . . .

Sure, something about him gave her the creeps.  But she didn’t have anything really actionable.

“No,” she decided.  “He’s probably a creep, but I guess that’s not a crime.  I would guess he’s on his best behavior here.”

Jaya nodded, looking to the man.  “There is security on the shuttle, so I wouldn’t worry.”

< Ep 8 Part 1 | Ep 8 Part 3 >