“This has to have been made by a chef.” Neya gestured at Alex over the table with a half-eaten sandwich, a slice of tomato threatening to come loose over the fries. She had taken her sigil off before eating and tucked it away in her jacket, a move that seemed to relax Deno sitting next to her. The almost panicked tone she had now was not doing the poor guy any favors. “It is not possible for a machine to make something so refined.”
“I’m telling you, it did. A Berkmann is just built different, and I mean that very literally. Do you want to go print another one off so you can see for yourself?” Alex, for one, found the sandwich to be very good. The batter had just the right crunch, the chicken within juicy and flavorful. Accompanied by a single leaf of lettuce, a slice of tomato, and pickles, all tucked into a buttery griddled roll with a smear of something between mayonnaise and aioli. A solid eight out of ten, but still resting in the shadow of the one he was trying to replicate. The sauce was off, not enough heat and spread a little too thick. The onion rings, though? Those were the closest to perfect he’d ever had.
“It is... It is unacceptable.” She put a lot of emphasis on that for someone who immediately went back to eating the very thing that was unacceptable, crunching away in a strikingly morose fashion.
Every now and then someone would appear from one of the multitude of doorways that lead out of the common area, usually carrying on about their day. This time, the motion over Deno’s shoulder that got Alex’s attention was someone he actually recognized. He waved Carbon over to them, not like there was a big selection of Humans having lunch to pick from right now.
“It smells good, what are we having?” She slipped her jacket off and hung it from the back of the chair before slipping into the seat beside him, giving the rest of the table a friendly smile and nod.
Alex gave her a brief rundown on the spread and made note to just wait next time this happened so he wouldn’t have to keep explaining what the food was. Though, with any luck, this entire situation wouldn’t be happening again at all. “How’s your day been going?”
“Well. The test needle printed without issue and allowed us to refine the design, we have enough for your hardware being printed now.” She wasted no time in getting her own food, piling some of everything onto her plate as Alex poured her a tea. “The driver unit is being printed elsewhere on the ship, but should be here within the hour. The design was very straightforward, likely mass produced.”
“Yeah, sounds right. They’d need at least one for anywhere you were going to put enhanced pilots or folks with military hardware.” He inhaled a smaller onion ring, crunching on the perfectly fried breadcrumb coating. “Probably other uses too, but those are the ones I know about.”
Carbon hesitated when he mentioned enhanced pilots, dark furred hand stopping over the wrapped sandwiches. “The red wrapper means they are hot? Spice hot?” She said, a little faster than necessary in a casual conversation.
“Yup, right on.” Despite having made extras, he was waiting for everyone to have taken their first before he went back for seconds. Alex opted for a regular one this time and was sufficiently distracted by this that he didn’t notice Carbon had changed the subject.
Carbon plucked a red-wrapper out of the tray and set it on her plate, leaning in to Alex as she watched Neya sullenly eat her own sandwich. “What has happened to her?”
“Crisis of faith in her world view.” He said around a bite of the second sandwich, exactly the same as the first save for how much spice had been spread through the batter. Neya had perked up when Carbon arrived, appearing very much normal if not subdued, though that gave way to melancholy quickly. He did feel a little bad, as Neya was clearly taking this hard... but she was taking finding out that an absurdly expensive food dispenser made excellent food way too hard. “She thought I had this catered somehow, but everything here came out of the Berkmann.”
Neya heaved a forlorn sigh, easily close enough to hear them talking about her. “It is delicious.” She said as she turned her attention to the fries on her plate. “It should not be, but it is.”
“Ah.” Carbon’s reply was kept very short and tightly controlled.
When Alex glanced over, there was a hint of a smirk on her face, though she was doing a good job keeping it from being obvious. Neya’s previous assertion that she could tell dispenser made food from the real deal seemed to have annoyed Carbon a little at the time, and maybe it did a little more than annoy her. “Like I was telling her, a Berkmann isn’t the usual food dispenser. Way more power built in, a lot more complexity. It was made for rich people to have all their favorites at their fingertips.”
Carbon started with an onion ring, running into an issue common to the novice: not biting cleanly through the onion and pulling the entire thing out of the crunchy shell. This did not deter her at all as she simply slurped it up like a noodle. “It is a step above what I expect from a machine, yes. The separation between the vegetable inside and the crust is unexpected - is that intentional?”
He’d give her credit, that was a smooth recovery.
“Intentional, to make it appear more natural. Some of them stick better than others, just like you’d get from handmade. Berkmann Company is not messing around. I’m sure there’s a setting somewhere to ensure that you only receive perfect copies, but the experience of eating that would be so weird. Imagine a plate with a stack of exactly the same fry, down to the molecule.” Alex picked up two fries, feeling a little philosophical. “Both of these are the same cut, about the same size. Both have imperfections. None of the four ends are the same angle, and there’s a little divot in the side like something had been cut out. There has been no small amount of effort put into making this look like it’s fresh out of a kitchen.”
Stana leaned forward and looked down the table at both of them. “I can’t tell the difference.”
“Right? If they weren’t so damn expensive I’d probably be happy eating out of one of these for the rest of my life.” He returned to his sandwich, unable to tell the tomato from ones he’d had growing up that he knew were from a hydro farm.
“How expensive are they?” Carbon enquired as she unwrapped her own sandwich.
He shrugged at that. “I dunno.”
Deno came out of his shell for a moment, no small amount of confusion in his voice. The translator was still dialing him in, his speech apparently a little off from what Carbon and Neya spoke. “Then how do you know that they are expensive?” The nurse had been doing a good job of being less and less visibly anxious. He was nowhere near Zenshen’s comfort level, which was unsurprising given what she’d been through and her extensive experience with Humans and high ranking military.
“I’ve never asked.” Alex stopped before he could cram more chicken into his face, holding a single finger out as he thought better of that rather threadbare answer. “I don’t even know who I’d ask to find out pricing on something like that. I do know that they don’t advertise their products. I’ve seen the yachts that do advertise having them installed as an option, and they are well outside my price range. One of those ‘if you have to ask, you can’t afford it’ kind of items.”
“Oh.” Deno appeared utterly mystified by the idea that things like that existed. “That is interesting.”
“Forgive me, I have lost my manners.” Carbon had switched back into Tsla as she looked to Deno, addressing him directly. “Carbon Sorenson. You would be?”
“I am Deno Mosa. I am the nurse that was working with the Prince.” He bowed a little bit, as much as he could while sitting at a table, caught with a spiral of curly fry halfway between plate and mouth.
“Thanking you for watching over him. That is a western name?” She inquired, keeping things very informal by continuing to eat.
“It is, yes. I hail from Ladanse, by the Southern Sea.” Deno took his cues from her and continued eating as well, though he sat up straighter now that he was part of the conversation.
Alex wasn’t sure, but he might have caught some pride in Deno’s voice, too. The western part of their main continent - it had been named in the primer, in a section he had skimmed and immediately forgotten. That was going to be something he looked up tonight on his own - had come up a few times. Once as ‘the western tribes’ that Carbon had compared him to when Eleya unveiled their arranged marriage, and then later as where the Keslon Shen had taken root.
Carbon continued asking questions as she picked through her fries. “Is your family well?”
That struck Alex as a bit of a sensitive question to be asking someone who’s family may well be stuck on the planet, though it was couched in such a casual tone that it must not have been. Or Carbon was really twisting the knife in the guy.
“My great-grandparents and grandparents have all been evacuated and relocated to the Lightining’s Repose. My nephew and his father have been taken off world as well - they are on board, as it is.” All this information spilled out of Deno without hesitation, leaning in as he spoke, a hint of a smile on his face for the first time since he’d taken the protective mask off. That did cool down as he continued. “My parents and sister are still there in the mountain. They are all in the medical field as well, and so believe that they should be among the last to leave.”
“Hang on.” Alex paused, holding up a finger again as he finished off the slice of tomato that had slid out of his sandwich. “In the mountain?”
“The Southern Sea has a particularly bad storm season, and the Ladanse mountains protect the rest of the western lands from them. The rest of the year it was a valuable port, even after the advent of flight. So the mountains were initially tunneled through, and a large cavern network was found, which people moved into when the storms came.” There was an eagerness in him that had been absent until now, getting to share this information - while it was Alex that asked, he was looking between everyone at the table as he explained it. The unmistakable excitement of being able to share something he was proud of. “It has grown quite a bit since then, built into a true city beneath the mountain. The unique construction means that little has changed there since the disaster, as there is no threat of a shield wearing down and collapsing.”
“Huh. Sounds good.” It was exceedingly weird finding out that there was a city under a mountain. He was sure Humans had done that on at least one planet, so perhaps that was not the oddity here, so much as actually meeting someone from there. “How are your brother and nephew doing?”
“They have taken to life aboard faster than I did.” Deno laughed softly, glancing down at his plate. He inhaled slowly and sighed with a slight smile. “Aeno is a maintenance engineer, and Tona is a five year old. Not much in the way of job prospects at his age.”
“They live in the community towers?” Carbon asked between bites, bright blue eyes keen on this line of inquiry.
He turned his attention to her specifically. “Yes, they share an apartment in Leeward with another parent and child.”
They talked about his brother living in the towers embedded within the carrier, the accommodations were good but the kitchen was small. Deno himself had been working on the Sword of the Morning Light for some time and had his own quarters in the ship he shared with another nurse. He had aspirations to becoming a doctor - Tsla’o medical personnel all started as nurses, a word that Alex realized likely wasn’t an exact translation - and specialized from there.
Carbon in particular had lots of questions about the living situation in the community tower, which Deno was pleased to be able to supply information about. Alex figured she was just fishing for details without actually having to go digging around, and seeing as how everyone but Carbon had stopped eating, he excused himself to get dessert.
Donuts, of course. Cake style assortment, a dozen. Catering style pink box. Keeping it simple.
He stopped short of entering the order, finger hovering over the screen, and then upped it to two dozen before hitting the start button.
While it compiled the sweets he bussed the table, combining the leftovers into a single tray while they talked about working on board. Neya reached out to stop him, already sliding her chair back before Carbon clicked her tongue and shook her head, speaking to her in Tsla. “He is the host. He chooses how to distribute labor.” It was a very gentle reprimand. Barely even that, Carbon’s sounding more like she was just giving Neya a reminder.
Neya stopped immediately. “Of course.” Her sullen disposition after finding out the food wasn’t real by her standards stayed put, as she turned back towards the conversation that had nearly lifted her out of that peculiar despondency.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Alex slotted all the dirty dishes and empty serving tray into the recycler slot on the side of the Berkmann and waited out the last minute. He was glad to do it. Carbon knew him well, knew that he preferred to take care of things himself when he could. It was how he’d been raised, though they’d never spoken in depth about that. It was good for him, simple as these tasks may be, to keep that portion of himself safe.
The Berkmann dinged and he returned with yet more fried foods in hand, the conversation having shifted to Sergeant Zenshen retelling the fight against the tkt for Carbon and Neya.
The first box was set down in the middle of the table, the second deposited directly in front of the Sergeant. Alex was not above bribing the people who were doing things for him, given that he was now extra work for her it was also a bit of a peace offering. He trusted that Zenshen was familiar enough with Humans that she’d understand exactly what he was doing. Sure, she knew where the Berkmann was now and could get whatever she wanted out of it, but it was the thought that counts.
The sublime smile as she opened the box said that she got it. “I can’t help but notice there’s a few that aren’t chocolate in here. For future reference.”
Everyone else liked the donuts as well. The chocolate was a hit, and he did not once panic about them eating it because food compatibility had been one of those things he double and triple checked the first time it was his turn to do a dinner exchange on the Kshlav’o.
Carbon’s comm went off, a quick glance telling her what she needed to know. “The PINs are finished, the driver units are on their way. We have a team from Electronic Warfare that should be here with them, as well.”
The Sergeant’s story got cut short as they put lunch up for now. There was a stasis store in the corner that all the food got put away into, and the group dispersed. Carbon went back to the lab to get the PINs, Stana left to get the Administrator from his nap. Alex, Neya, and Deno all returned to the surgical suite which was still very much empty.
It didn’t stay that way for long. The E-Warfare team showed up next, clad in a dark version of the military tunic, still gray but just a step away from being black. They acted cagey about every single word that they thought was in earshot of Alex, and were very protective of the crates they brought with them. Administrator Amara was next, the Sergeant following along behind him. Carbon and one of the researches she’d left with arrived not long after that, each carrying a small box.
With their blessing, Sergeant Zenshen departed. This wasn’t her only job and as no one had expected this day to turn out as it has, she still had a large number of tasks related to the artifact expedition that she couldn’t delegate.
“Apparently the Electronic Warfare team from Imperial Intelligence is only answering to me right now, so with Amara’s blessing I am pretending to lead the operation.” Carbon leaned in to talk to Alex, who had been ushered away from the surgical table after a long and somewhat heated discussion between the newcomers and Amara. The robotics tech was finally getting the PIN drivers installed now, a fairly simple looking procedure of swapping the tool heads out.
“Why are they here?” He asked, keeping his voice low. One of the Intelligence agents had left with Neya before this argument started, carrying the smaller of the two crates. The remaining four had done a good job of actually not being overheard, and the translator did not handle fast, argumentative Tsla very well so he was very much in the dark about what was going on.
Carbon sighed. “They have a copy of the software used to operate the keyed PINs, and they consider it and the emulation hardware too important to have loose around so many people with low security clearances.”
“How did they get that?” It was a little unsettling, yes, that the Tsla’o Empire’s Intelligence community had the programs that they needed. Very useful, as there would be no reverse engineering needed, but unsettling. He hoped the answer was not ‘well we stole it’ but honestly at this point he wouldn't be surprised.
“Amara’s program has been involved with secretly purchasing Human ships and salvage for some time. I do not have the exact details of such, but one of the ships had a partially destroyed Interface arm onboard, with the software to run it left in the databank. That is how we cloned the parts so quickly.” Her reply was a little agitated, a small amount of worry clear in her voice.
“Ah, well... Like I was saying, the military in particular goes through a lot of them. Most soldiers get a Whisper nowadays, even if they have it removed after getting out. A larger ship probably has dozens of them operational because they don’t have any wireless, or even near-fields. Security and all that.” Alex kept it nice and casual, trying to present a calm façade for her. Internally he was roiling again, the fears about being used to carry some sort of spy equipment for his government front and center once more. “Sometimes things get legs and get stolen, or maybe some surplus slips through without the fancy parts taken off. A surgical arm can still do a lot if you can’t get a mediboard.”
“I suppose that would be true.” She sounded distant as she watched them work, all the arms now loaded up with the cloned driver units.
The technician looked over at them and gestured.
Alex quickly found himself back on the table, staring at the deck plate again. They restarted where they had left off, sliding the basic PIN deep into his ribcage. It had been unpleasant when they had only had two ready to go, but now six were operational and the surgeon was running them all. Yes, it did make things go faster. But there was a much shorter break between having all that metal run through him.
While Intelligence was rifling through that portion of his wetware, Neya returned. She took up the role that the Sergeant had before, though without the need to translate now.
Each item that passed muster made his anxiety worse, which was really not how these things were supposed to work. It would have been annoying if it had been something in one of his translator nodes, but that would have been more limited in scope. With each possibility of that put away, the idea that it was one of the cranial implants was made more and more likely. Those had access to all his onboard systems. There was more power there and the fact he didn’t know how it could be used let his mind run
away with worst case scenarios.
The Whisper was next to be inspected - only two ports, and the first implant to use a keyed port. The way it pressed through his scalp and then vibrated slightly was familiar, despite being such a strange sensation. His Amp had been adjusted a few times after his first install for calibration, and it was effectively the same process.
“They said the needle’s contacts rotated properly and made a full connection.” Even though she did not need to, Neya was translating for him. To avoid a repeat of the last time she had seen a needle and passed out, she had moved to the floor, laying there staring back up at him, tail curled over her abdomen to keep it out of the way.
“Yeah, I got that.” With the arms pressed to his head now, he found the anxiety doing its thing in a new, annoying way: he could not stop thinking about music, particularly upbeat songs. It was currently on “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire. He hadn’t thought of it in years, and had probably never heard it in its entirety, but damn did it make him want to bob his head along to the beat right this very moment.
Carbon was pacing slowly back and forth outside the sterile field, continuing to pretend to be in charge while monitoring the folks from Intel. She stopped by the surgeon, immediately to Alex’s left, and he could hear them confer before she spoke loudly to make sure he could hear. “Pulling from the number four translator node. Once the needle is swapped we will move ahead with the second Whisper port.”
He gave her a thumbs up.
It wasn’t long before they were plugging PINs into his Amp proper. First needle into the number one, then the number two, so on and so forth.
The Whisper came back clean. Nothing unusual as far as the Intelligence boys and girls were concerned. This wasn’t surprising, as he’d only ever used it to check calibration and then left it turned off. The Amp was giving them a bit more trouble, just on the basis of capability. There was objectively so much more going on with it than the comparatively simple Whisper implant, it was just going to take longer. Everyone was very glad to finally have all six ports underway.
When that sixth PIN rotated into place there was a brief, very intense outburst from the technicians. “What was that?”
“They said there was a number. Two numbers - no, eight numbers?” Neya cocked an ear to hear them talking better as her answer rapidly turned into a question that really didn’t make things any more clear.
“Each port transmitted a single byte of data in binary when the sixth one came on line.” Carbon clarified from over on the right side of the room, where more of the individual workstations were. “We are discussing the meaning.”
That was weird. It was a behavior he wasn’t familiar with and he’d been trained in the use and care of Amps as they were integral to being a pilot in the Civilian Pilot Program. Hardware level maintenance was beyond him, he supposed, always handled by a certified technician. The techs usually only had one arm to work with, though, and dealt with one port at a time. “Alright, let me know what’s up.”
No response as Neya sat up and looked around. “They’re all gathered around the main holo.”
“Thanks.” He mumbled, wanting to shrug but avoiding it even though they were done with his back. Instead, he settled on a weary sigh. Alex cleared his throat and spoke up. “Do they look like they’re doing anything?”
“Talking and pointing in a very animated fashion.” Neya deadpanned as she glanced back up at him.
“Yeah, that... That’s what I expect.” Any time something happened the Intel team would require a little break to talk it out. This was definitely something happening.
Carbon came back a few minutes later, “we’re going to try something with the order the pins were inserted in.”
“Oh well, knock yourself out.” He was a bit peeved at that. He wanted answers, not to be a fun pincushion for them to try things out on. Not that he had much of a choice at the moment.
“All right. Start the process.” She came through digitized that time, speaking in Tsla to the rest of the crew.
The needles all retracted, in reverse order from most recent to first, going through the same little dance to clear the keyway and giving him a headache as his skull was tugged on. “The retraction on those is very sticky, by the way.”
She was back to speaking English, but very distracted. “I will keep that in mind.”
Once cleared, they started driving the needles back in. There wasn’t a pattern he could discern this time around, one starting just after the previous one finished. Definitely made his headache worse. The last pin slid back into place, the armature spinning the contact points around. Nothing happened, not on his end, nor was there any commotion like last time. “So uh, did anything interesting happen?”
“Perhaps.” Carbon had wandered off, voice getting softer.
“What’s that mean?” He waited, fighting the urge to get up and go look for himself. Minutes went by with no response and even Neya started to look a little concerned. “Hello? Anyone?”
“They have found something. Not the program that attempted to send the data, but some kind of restrictor.” She was yelling at him from across the lab. “They will excise it from your Amp and then initialize it in safe mode.”
“Oh, good.” It wasn’t good at all. His fears were coming to fruition, lips pulled thin and staring into the distance as Neya laid back down.
Alex had chosen a guitar being strummed as the startup sound for this Amp way back when he got his first one, and the second one retained that as part of the calibration settings. This time it was the default three notes on a xylophone. The progress widget spinning in the center of his vision took maybe a second to finish before warnings about changes to his software and hardware loadout appeared.
Last time he started it, it had taken almost four seconds.
The hardware change was no surprise, just his IT being unavailable. The software, on the other hand, that was all new. He flicked the menu open and poked through its contents. ”So we’ve got VM_ASoren, ARGUS, and return_data_probe. No information on what they do, but I’ve got some guesses. Give me a moment here, trying the first one.”
“The one that started with VM?” Carbon was much closer this time, back by the workstations.
“Yes.” He activated it. Just about four seconds later, his preferred guitar strum played, and a second window warning him of hardware - but no software - changes popped up. “Fuck. My Amp has been running on a virtual machine.”
There was a brief pause before the Intel team got that one translated and started talking very emphatically about something that got Carbon’s ire up. She switched back into Tsla and let it rip, shouting them down. “Lieutenant! You will mind your tongue when you speak about my husband. If you find you cannot, you will find yourself assigned to an automated listening post on the far side of the Empire.”
They settled down very quickly.
Alex closed out of the virtual machine, disgusted by it. So much effort put into getting one, and now its very existence was tainted by the ONI. “Turned that off. I’m going to check ARGUS next.” The lack of emotion in his voice surprised him, and when he made eye contact with Neya she looked worried. That didn’t last long, his gaze easily settling back into the middle distance.
Alex activated ARGUS and nothing obvious happened. There was a spike in processor usage as the subdermal microphone network came online. “Huh. Well, that was- What the hell?”
“What is it?” Neya peered up at him, still very worried despite a veneer of curiosity.
Alex couldn’t see much from where he was sitting, but the ARGUS produced an overlay in his vision that made everything very clear. Hard object edges were given a digital outline as it used the echolocation from his voice to map his surroundings. Neya was highlighted a faint green, a box hovering next to her with her name in it. “There is... a lot going on here.”
His gaze settled on Neya for a moment and the box expanded to show relations, possible job functions, and some minutiae of her life that might be handy to know off the cuff. His blood ran cold when he realized all of the information were things he had learned from Carbon or Neya herself. But that would mean... “Neya. When is your birthday?”
“It is tenth week, day three. Why do you ask?”
A moment later the box was updated. Birthday: May 11th. “You have got to be shitting me.”
She shook her head. “I do not think that I-”
“Sorry, it’s a turn of phrase.” He sighed and closed his eyes, the overlay refreshing with every sound he made, and staying bright as the world went dark. “I compromised the ship. I have been spying on everyone.”