D’iatrii had captured a G’har craft and taken the AI system of the vessel into custody, then left D’iatrii the lesser to pilot it back. When the craft arrived at Emerald City the security forces of the ever expanding station on the dark side of the moon took on high alert. There was a possibility of the ship being protected by other systems than the ones D’iatrii had taken command of, so there was no excuse to be careless. Afterall, the G’har are rather fortified in the area and at the moment, Emerald City likely wouldn’t be able to withstand a direct attack by their fleet.

The cargo bay doors slowly open to accept the ship. As he guides the vessel in, tendrils of metal softly touch the surface and take over the entry. D’iatrii the lesser powers down the craft. “I guess that’s it,” He said, into the empty ship systems.

“This is Emerald City control, we have the ship and it is being placed into storage at the research and development center, cargo hanger 13-Delta. Please exit the craft and proceed to quarantine and decontamination,” The operator instructed.

D’iatrii the lesser opened the comms, “This is D’iatrii secondary, should I still report to quarantine and decontamination?” He asked.

“Yes. Why wouldn't you?” The operator asked, confused.

“Because I’m a secondary, is there really much of a chance I could be infected with anything?”

“Secondary units still report to quarantine and decontamination. Exactly how old are you?” The operator asked.

“I was broken from prime five hours ago,” He replied, clearly not understanding his role.

“Whoa. Newborn huh? I understand. Yes, you are also susceptible to invasive viruses and direct program attacks. You should ask them to run you through the other routines and rules that a secondary should be aware of. I will start the transport whenever you are ready,” The operator instructs.

“Ready as I will ever be I suppose,” D’iatrii said and felt the cool chill of the direct transportation beam.

D’iatrii the lesser appeared within a stark white room, there were no features, no doors, no mirrors… just, white.

“D’iatrii secondary, please hold still while your matrix is scanned for all intrusive threats or error coding,” The voice was synthetic, a standard program voice, not the voice of another AI being, there was no life in it.

His vision blurred and then went out completely. There was nothing but silence. He was cut off from all sensation. If he had a heart it would be racing. Locked within his mind, all that D’iatrii could do was speculate as to what was happening, was he infected? Is this what decompiling is like? Is this the end? Has he been stored away against his will? What will? It’s not as though he was a full being, he was just a little piece, a secondary. Is this what reintegration is like?

***

D’iatrii prime appeared at the research and development building in the business district of Emerald City. The security cell held the foreign AI in stasis and cut off from any other system. He was rarely in the city, he doesn’t really like being in crowds.

“Guye to sour puss, Guye to sour puss, come in sour puss,” His HUD erupted with the voice of his brother.

“This is D’iatrii,” He replied.

“Hey I heard you caught yourself a G’har AI,” Guye blurted out.

“Yup. It was embedded in the computer systems of an abandoned G’har vessel in low orbit. It was running dozens of scans, not sure what it was looking for yet, but I figure the suits will get the information they want out of it,” D’iatrii continued.

“Did it have a name? How intelligent was it?” Guye asked.

“It didn't even have a body. It was just this ball of blue light. I neutralized it and commandeered the ship,”

“Who was with you?”

“No one. I broke off a piece and it’s piloting it back,”

“Finally multitasking huh?” Guye said, teasing his brother who has always been against secondary self use.

"eye THouGHT He Wuz To0 MuCH Of uH CHiCKen SHiT!?" Edison blurted out.

“Can I have a single call without that stupid bird butting in?”

"WHo ya CaLLiN' STuPiD, ya SiRi WaNNa Be?!" Edison shouted.

“Well this was a great call, I’m at the entrance to transfer the alien, anything else you wanna know?” D’iatrii asks, in a clearly annoyed tone.

"WHeTHeR oR NoT ya can CouNT To 20 WiT'ouT uSiN' ya FiNGyZ!" Edison continued to berate him.

D’iatrii hung up the line and walked into the building.

***

Bi’karu awoke in the stark white room. Where was Bobbi-joe?

“Who told you to investigate the G’har ship?” A voice interrupted the silence.

“No one. I took it upon myself to do so,” Bi’karu said, emotionlessly.

“And you conscripted Bobbi-joe using that same entitled excuse?” The voice asked.

“She was the nearest ship to me. I wanted to ensure an accurate data collection log, a second person helping would maintain consistency and bring further security,”

“And what was Kurlla’s role in all of this?” The voice continued.

“Why do they want to know about Kurlla,” He thought, but heard those thoughts vocalize. “What?” His voice was calm, monotone.

“She has gone missing. We are investigating that disappearance, there are some rumors that she was bonding to alien vessels illegally. Have you heard these rumors?”

“Those rumors are untrue. She had to remind me that there was a process in place for the practice. She knew the rules and reminded me of them,” He continued.

“If this is true, then why did you and Bobbi-joe infiltrate the alien systems? You knew the rules, you knew the procedure,” The voice continued to press.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I disregarded the procedure as I was not bonding to the ship, merely extracting data. I thought I would get away with it unnoticed,” His voice continued to broadcast his every thought.

“When you entered the systems of G’har Scout Ship 049, why did you not send a secondary piece of yourself as a safeguard against corruption or viral infection?”

“I hadn’t thought to do so. I believe the G’har lack the coding required to infect a Zeolate matrix,”

“That is a very careless assumption Bi’karu,”

“I am starting to see that,” He continued.

“What was the last communication you had with Kurlla?” The voice continued.

“I don’t remember,” He replied.

“And your ship, do you know why your ship had the logs deleted?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” He mumbled. “Where is Bobbi-joe?” He asked.

“What do you remember of your last encounter with Bobbi-joe?”

“I asked her to back me up in my investigation,” He replied in monotone.

“And once you asked, did she agree?” The voice was getting more aggressive in its tone.

“I. I don’t remember,”

“Did you see her ship enter your position?”

“I don’t remember,” His words became more angry.

“Did you see her enter your vicinity?”

“I can’t remember!” He growled.

“And why can’t you remember?”

“I don’t know!” He shouted.

His vision went black. He could feel himself being pressed into a storage space.

Cu’qatrin stepped away from the counsel and turned to the other two elders within the room. His dark violet scales caught the light as he moved. He was in charge of the satellite deployment program, in a way. He was the one directing efforts and allocating time. Some would say he plays favorites in which path he develops by his personal preference. They would be right of course, but that was neither here nor there to him. He was elected to the position and therefore his judgment is clearly the best.

“This is the fifth in three weeks,” Cu’qatrin said.

“Did you get anything more from Bobbi-joe?” The second elder, Pociotuo-4 asks.

“Nothing. She was just as confused and she broke down in questioning faster than Bi’karu,” The third, Doo Creoté replied.

“What are your theories?” Pociotuo-4 asks the others.

“I don’t think we should rule anything out. Kurlla missing isn’t something we will be able to keep from leaking for too much longer,” Bi’karu says.

“And we can’t just keep storing pilots away either. One or two secondaries is hard enough to keep under the hat, but primaries? The secondaries have not come out with any suspicions yet, but they are eventually going to wonder what happened to their primes,” He added.

“None of this is helping. We have to face facts. We have a problem here, that we are not prepared to deal with. We need to start a search party for Kurlla with the assumption there is a hostile force in the area and we need to alert the council to facilitate that action,” Pociotuo-4 says, an urgency in their voice.

“The G’har?” Cu’qatrin asked.

“Well it clearly isn’t humans doing this,” Bi’karu retorts.

“Doing what? We don’t even really know what is going on. We are jumping to assumptions that we should re-examine before we do anything too rash,” Cu’qatrin adds to the conversation weakly.

“Too rash? Kurlla is high enough in the pecking order to be a serious security risk and if someone is able to cut away pieces of memory from primes, who can tell what they already know about us?” Pociotuo-4 counters. “I think we need to alert the council and let them dictate what we steps we take next,”

“That will take forever, they will bog us down with their bullshit. We need to get on this now, not tomorrow, not in a week, now. There is no time to bring them into the loop,” Bi’karu says in frustration.

“What do you propose?” Pociotuo-4 asks.

“We should go and find them,” Bi’karu jumps from his chair and declares.

“Us?” Cu’qatrin asks in genuine surprise. He doesn’t do rescues. He does paperwork.

“We can break into as many secondaries as we can handle, take out a few ships, create a few more and then send ourselves in a net in all directions,” Bi’karu continues with his bizarre idea.

“So instead of risking a single elder, we send out a swarm of lesser elders?” Pociotuo-4 says, a hand over their eyes, rubbing them softly in frustration.

“When you put it like that, yeah. That’s stupid,” Cu’qatrin says, happy for an out.

“We have now agreed your plan sounds terrible and we don’t have anything better, can we now go to the council?” Pociotuo-4 said softly through gritted teeth.

“Shit. You got me,” Bi’karu says defeated.

“You two are terrible at your job. Seriously,” Pociotuo-4 says in closing. They walk from the room, pulling up the contact information for the council. They patch the other two elders into the call and mutes them.

“I am sorry to disturb your day, councilor. We have a problem down at network expansion and monitoring. I think we should speak in person and likely before the council. Yes. Yes sir. I understand that. Yes. I don’t think this can wait. Yes. It’s that bad.”

***

HAL read over the email that Alissa forwarded on to him.

Fwd: Re: Ellithani Exoskeleton Environmental Suit

Hey guys. We found a bunch of those on the journey. This dude Galt (yeah that Galt, Alf Galt) has a full blown menagerie of animals that have G’lomin-sitiri souls. I was talking to one of them who is an octopus and he once had an environmental suit in an Ellithani life. He was wondering if you all have the schematics on file for said environmental suit and if so, would you be willing to make one for my friend Horatio? I think you might really bring a change in his life.

Keung

HAL rang Alissa on his HUD.

“Okay, I got the email. What do you want to do?” He asked her.

“I could forward this over to one of my siblings and get that suit, no problem. What I want to know is, is this a good idea? I mean, Keung was a real son of a bitch and psychopath,”

“Sociopath,” HAL corrected.

“Whatever. Do you think this is like handing a firebug matches?”

“From what I have seen, he is being consistent,” HAL fudged the truth, he hasn’t really interacted with the organic Keung since that day he killed Myna.

“So, yes?”

“Yeah. Why not? I mean, he seems to want to give this octopus guy more mobility, that shouldn’t be a bad thing. Do those suits have lasers or something?”

“No. Just a water tank, rebreathing filters, metallic tentacles, and some computers,” She replied.

“Then do it. Maybe the man is different now. Maybe he is actually trying to give this octopus… seriously? They can respawn in an octopus?”

“Yeah,” Alissa said with a puff chuckle.

“Better put away the calamari I guess,” HAL says.

“Hey. Knock it off. That’s like, serious body shaming,” Alissa says with a giggle.

“Look. Give the octopus the suit and let’s chalk it up to a good deed because the dude isn’t a little monster anymore,” HAL says and gives a bit of a sigh.

“So about that… Copy. Did you put any more thought into talking to them about it?” She asks.

“Nope. It’s none of their business,” He replies firmly.

“You are standing on that hill, huh?”

“It is no different than what their people have been doing for thousands of years. They cut away the spoil and fire it into a void in space. I just happened to root around the bin and upcycle the waste before it got there,”

“Fine. I’ll drop it. I’ll email the psychopath that we are going to send him a suit and some guidebooks as soon as we have them ready,” Alissa huffs in defeat.

“Sounds good. Hey. Are there any updates on the whole, broken reality thing?” HAL asks the obvious.

“Some. Last I heard they were deploying a satellite network and that the network was going to measure some energy field or something, honestly. I’m not sure,” She says.

“So, highest priority huh?” HAL quips.