"So I went back down to check on something and then bam! Electromagnetic pulse waves punched straight through my android."

The group gawked at Levi.

"If I didn’t just observe it myself," Kiernan said, "I would be as flabbergasted as you. But it checks out. It also means that we only have three of these android bodies in top shape right now."

"How long would it take to replace one?"

Shuffled feet and downward-looking gazes brought my ire.

"Well? Eric, you're in charge of the printer?"

Killmonger didn't meet my gaze.

"It will be another month. I was reconfiguring the printer for a print run of a larger item."

"...the drop ship."

"You guessed it," Killmonger said, "so you have the decision to make here. And yes, printing more printers would alleviate this situation."

I would have liked a drink in this situation.

"Nobody thought that we should make a spare on the initial run?"

Now the eyes of my team were all over. I knew that they were mentally trying to pick who the fall guy would be. I didn’t particularly care. Either way, we would still have to make the trek down the gravity well to the center of the system. That would eat up a substantial amount of time. I pinched the bridge of my virtual nose, one of those tics I had as a human that proved to be quite ingrained.

"The broken android, can we use it again?"

"It's scrap. We can use it as the interior lining of the drop ship if needed. The resources well... the internal battery alone is going to require a lot of work," Killmonger said.

I knew he had already done the math of a side-by-side comparison with several courses of action. It was probably in some spreadsheet somewhere that he would be glad to show me and explain at length. I didn’t generally need the explanation, but his reasoning was always spot on.

"I have a spreadsheet all prepared to show Stevie that won't take long to explain."

I swear that my virtual eyes glazed over.

"But I don't really have to."

Kiernan and Levi snickered.

"That's a good plan," I said, "As it will probably leave you alive longer. What part of not doing PowerPoint and spreadsheets on this mission was I unclear about?"

"I think we are missing the bigger issue here," Stevie interjected, "It seems like there is still some latent self-defense that if you hit it with a stick will cause the station to defend itself."

"It wasn’t a booby trap, I swear," Levi said, "It really looked like a system glitch."

"Play the tape," I said, "that won't lie to us."

I swear that there was no physiological reason that I felt the need to pinch my nose again, but there were a ton of reasons for me to punch Levi's nose. What if instead the limited range of the pulse had gone out like a wave? That could have disrupted one of us! I couldn't imagine trying to fix someone who has been destroyed as such.

The video showed the perspective from his view as he moved around from building to building. Sometimes he would try to open a door, and most of the time the door would be locked. That was when he brought in the stick.

Most of the area next to our tethered 3dPrinter had been scrapped for parts and floated bit by bit up to join the rest of it as a recycled dropship. We did love to reuse what we found- it was part of the pirates' code to take everything not nailed down. Team Owl lived by the code. Even the stuff that very clearly had been screwed together was getting repurposed.

So by the time we got to Levi opening a new door and the door unfurling to attack him, I was properly over it.

Then Kiernan froze the frame as the attack began.

A small wave of what looked like electric energy discharged from the middle of the door, creating a bubble of golden red briefly then it enveloped his android. The video stopped with the android a twitching mess on the ground. The door stayed up.

"More than anything I feel like this one door was a big fuck you to whoever did this to the donut," Levi said," they must have known or anticipated..."

Levi brought up his corgi and then started working on some of the screens in the air.

The other three of us watched.

"The probability that this person knew that there was an attack or would be an attack had to be high. Whoever lived here or owned this place wouldn't have set this up. Because from everything we can glean from this xenoarchaeology, this points to one conclusion. Whoever lived here knew a lot and was hiding something."

He was about to ask to go back in. I could see it in his eyes.

"So can I go back in?"

"Levi, you already broke one of our hard-won androids. You said yourself that the internal power source alone would win you international accolades. Do you really want to risk it with another top-of-the-line body?"

Levi looked depressed at the thought of losing one of his minions.

"We have smaller drones..." he said, but I could see the sadness in his eyes.

Nobody wanted to be told to use the forklift when they had a sports car lying around. Especially when your close friend made sports cars and had three just sitting around.

"Please use them."

I gave him the motherly look that told him all he needed to know: That this wasn't an option. He didn't get to break three out of four of our sports cars.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

As with any military operation, especially one where Stevie was in charge, we practiced. We played through a simulation of the three of us flying down the gravity well to the planet a few times.

In a few of those we took on oncoming enemy fire and Killmonger, then Stevie piloted as Levi worked as the red team. After simulating air defense, we learned that it would be prudent to land a little farther than was generally thought necessary from the colony. After all, it was hard to hit what you couldn't see.

We even ran a few simulations where it became a fistfight. Many of those had us fighting other androids of our same model. It became apparent that such a turn would be greatly problematic and dealing with that issue might justify close air support.

I fabricated some binoculars for the androids as well as clothing that seemed to match what we could glean from the media we were able to crack into. It wasn’t going to win any awards but if you squinted from the right distance you could get by.

It became apparent that I was trying to disguise the androids in some way from a potential situation. A situation that screamed Murphy to me.

We would train.

We would be prepared.

We still would find some way to fuck it up.

There were no weapons for the androids. We hadn’t found any small arms on the donut at all. The dropship being printed was a higher priority anyway. Our androids were far from defenseless, what with punches that could easily drop a tree down a notch. Not that I thought we would have to fight. This would be primarily a scouting mission.

This was odd. Because of the way it must have broken there could have been a weapons station somewhere else on the station. On the other hand, they might not have had any weapons for a different reason.

Culture, maybe?

There were a lot of clouds, woulds and shoulds floating around. Far too many for me to feel at ease about it. I suppose whoever decided to leave this place hanging probably looted whatever they deemed to be useful. Could they have had a martial culture, one that relished in battle and war, but this one habitat was a bastion against such things? Would they have left the station unarmed? Should they have, given the current situation?

I had several debates planned for when it was just the three of us on ground because they would be the best kind of audience. A captive one.

It was only when Stevie gave us the go-ahead that we finally packed up to go.

We had exhausted every single scenario that her brain could think up and most of mine, although she thought the whole black hole opening up in the middle of a planet was a bit far-fetched. That one and the Ragnarok one both got shot down before I’d even programmed them as simulations.

Stevie got her long-term backup wish and transferred over to her android first. I followed suit, then Kiernan, working one at a time out of an abundance of paranoia.

Levi pulled her memory and then cloned himself into her probe.

The new guy, Ip, was excited to start working with us and almost more excited about the possibility of going after another system, with a new team.

I wasn’t sad about losing my hull, but in transferring over to my android I was going to be losing a lot of situational awareness.

I spent all my spare time comparing the writings we found and cross-referencing everything. We hadn’t been able to find or play any video media or audio media, so we hadn’t yet been able to compare their speech with their writing. Without the ability to hear anything it was going to be difficult to start to understand the speech. We resolved to study whatever we found before making the first contact. Whether that would work or not we weren’t sure. We could resolve to be emperors of the known world, but really who would make that real? My team, probably.

Mercy and Martin joined us when Malcolm and I transferred over to our androids. Mercy chose her name as some sort of inside joke. I’m sure that she wouldn’t show any Mercy to anyone ever.

Martin chose his name after MLK as a nod to the great civil rights leader. I considered giving him the Wakandan greeting that I was given when I first got cloned, but thought better of it. He got the toned down version of the ragnarock and we played at that for a bit while we hurried up and waited to go.

Before long though, it was time to split up, and I had to say goodbye to myself again for what I was now seeing as a recurring theme in my life. Clone self, have a bit of fun with self, then split up. Repeat. I was fairly glad to have drawn the ground mission at that point, even if I was the designated red shirt of the crew.

Mercy flew as an escort. Martin went ahead to scout our location with Levi.

Ip stayed behind to work with the factory. He said something about bootstrapping up more printers when he was out of reach of our grubby paws. I believe I heard the word ‘my precious’ in there once or twice. I liked his enthusiasm for Tolkienism. I hoped that his idea of rehabbing the ring to our purposes would work out.

“I’m thinking that between the three of us, we’ll head to another system after this is done. Or we can split up and get to three times as many systems.” Mercy was brimming with the possibilities as we started our flight.

She had the dropship slaved to her so it moved when she moved and would follow her commands. I was in her VR often because we were close enough. She’d even partook in the Ragnarok simulation once or twice.

"Don't get too excited too fast. You still need to convince your team to be on board," I told her.

When Levi designed the face of the android, he alternated between making it look human-like and making it look more like the bodies we found. After some back and forth he settled on a human design. We would not be able to hide that we couldn’t speak the language, so if we did make contact, I wanted there to be a clear separation between us and them. What I didn’t understand was why he gave Malcolm retractable hair.

I wanted retractable hair! But of course, I had to deal with my decision to make my android look a little more like a bald huntress.

Hair could come later.

“I don’t know where you’d go that would be reasonably close.”

I hadn’t studied a star chart since we left, really. There are a few candidate systems that we could go to if we ever decided to wrap up this system, but I thought that I had my hands full with the present situation.

“I’m looking at a few options. Epsilon Indi, Epsilon Eridani…. there are a few farther afield.”

“I would have thought that Ip would be the one narrowing down the list.”

“I wanted to make my own list and I’m going to go to all of them if I can.”

“Big plans! That is very interesting. I think I’d like to see another star system when I’m done here as well. If I ever leave. Did you guys think about a Team name?”

“We’re deciding between making a team that starts with the letter A or picking whatever word we feel. Now the three we like the most are huntresses or hunters, but we already have Honey badgers; and the other two are pathfinders or wayfarers.”

“I really like Huntress, especially if we ever form an all-female team.” I smiled at her.

I might steal that one if I ever leave Team Owl. I could clone my own team and leave the system with them when my curiosity was satisfied here. Or stick around. Yeah, I would probably stick around, but it would be good to have the options open.

“Lady Steelheart’s ship, once a pirate flagship, is now in your possession. Your days of finding targets have changed, and now another pirate fleet has you in their sights,” our dungeon master intoned.

“Now we can see if our plans will come to fruition,” I said.

On the virtual tabletop, Levi had a large battleship setup that we’d all loved. A line of ships around our little pirates base gave us the opportunity to fine tune our defense. It wasn’t really much of one, as half of the hulks were a part of the fake defense that we had set up. Decoys would project a large fleet, twice as large as we’d intended.

Levi had to set up a whole separate system for overseeing naval combat just so we could get this in before all of our planned shenanigans down the gravity well. The one thing that they didn’t see coming?

A small golem arriving in a rowboat.

Revenge was sweet.

----------------------------------------

We reached orbit. Ip and Levi had been flying maneuvers for days waiting for us. They projected four landing spots within 500 kilometers of our intended target zone, as well as some flight paths.

“Good job guys. We’re ready for insertion now, Mercy. I’ll take over piloting from here.”

We did not have any need for air or creature comforts. Besides a few marked crates, the cockpit of the dropship did not have any seats or even any flight instrumentation. What it did have was a heavy link cable that I connected to my left arm port. I was able to know a lot about the dropship all at once, from available batteries to cruising altitude and speed. Other things I would have to bring up.

I turned the nose towards the planet and started our descent.