Chapter 032: Prejudice

Frigates are the smallest warships capable of independent operations. According to the standardized ship classes roster of the Confederation of Mankind (used by its numerous organizations, and by the overwhelming majority of its members), frigates have a tonnage of between twenty thousand to thirty-five thousand tonnes, forty to sixty meters of length, ten to fifteen meters of height and twenty to thirty meters of width. They also have a crew of five to fifteen people.

It is the smallest ship class capable of housing a hyperdrive, however this is done at the expense of armor. Frigates lack even a single armor layer, meaning that every hit (direct or glancing) is typically fatal. On the other hand, they have an excellent ratio of thruster strength for tonnage and powerful inertia dampeners, meaning that they are capable of high acceleration.

The combat usage of frigates is typically accidental. The military uses them almost exclusively as reconnaissance and courier ships, though they are also used as the interstellar equivalent of shuttles (and a space equivalent of private jets). Occasionally they are also seen in underequipped navies as cost-efficient corsair ships (as while underarmed and not armored, they are still stronger and much deadlier than civilian transport vessels).

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 9, Page 756

***

EGS Echo, Medbay

09:35 18.07.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

Lena Drathari spent the entire shift watching the slowly changing situation in the system on the display. The fleeing fleet of the Echo was about to jump into Hyperspace and depart from the Lyria system - unfortunately towards Tyra, where the Echelon base was located. The Seekers fleet did its best to cut them from going in any other direction.

When the shift ended, Lena was finally ready to start her plan. Soon she found herself standing in front of the ship’s hospital. The personal realm of Lieutenant Commander Athalia.

She didn’t have to enter the hospital to start having doubts about the whole affair. The large ‘NO TRANSHUMANS ALLOWED’ sign on the door was a clear indication of problems. A slightly smaller text underneath told all transhumans in need of medical care to proceed to the dedicated infirmary, about thirty meters to the left of the main hospital entry.

Dedicated infirmaries made perfect sense. The large ‘NO TRANSHUMANS ALLOWED’ label instead of ‘Transhumans in need of medical care please proceed to...’ was much less sensible.

She walked through the entrance, confident in her rank. The lobby looked exactly as she imagined a lobby of a small hospital. Fully automatic reception, several doorways leading to rooms tailored for different forms of medical services (from an operating room to a room labeled as ‘geriatric care’, for some reason), Lieutenant Athalia hanging from the ceiling, spacious corridors allowing easy transport of the wounded and…

Lena’s mind almost overlooked the most important part of the decor. Lieutenant Commander Athalia was hanging in the middle of the hospital, upside down, with his legs on a beam passing through the room right under the ceiling.

He looked like some rainbow coloured and gender-ambiguous parody of a bat. A bat wearing a parody of a nurse outfit straight from some Yalka store. The last remains of decency were saved by the miniskirt actively defying gravity and covering all the things Lena wasn’t interested in seeing.

“Welcome to my hospital.” Athalia spoke with an almost mechanical tone. His eyes remained closed. “Do not mind me, I’m meditating about the nature of the universe. And on how I could get rich off it. Please proceed to the reception or, if your request is urgent, speak to me.”

“I came to speak to you. About the Captain.” There was no one else in the room, so she could as well ask the question here.

Lith Athalia opened his eyes and looked at Commander Drathari. His face was neutral, but in a cold way.

“I thought there was no ‘doesn’t include officers’ note under the ‘no transhuman allowed’ banner.” He answered. Once again, Commander Drathari was surprised with the scale of contempt everyone aboard the Echo had towards rules. And, occasionally, simple manners.

“My rank is higher than yours.” She reminded him, trying not to escalate the growing argument too much. She was more than used to such people.

There was a lot of hate towards transhumans, and it was a lost cause when you were facing a crowd. But in a one-on-one situation, there were ways of defeating lots of prejudices. All you had to do was to just act normally. Simple as that.

When people expected you to be some terrifying monster or other freak of nature, the best way of proving them wrong was to not abandon your strangeness, but to act normally and indistinguishably from them aside from that one thing.

Nothing disarmed people more than the object of their hate being so similar to them. They then had a choice of persisting in their hate while hating something which was like them, or to start slowly changing their outlook on life.

Of course, there was also Lith Athalia.

“And I’m an expert in killing people and masquerading their death as an accident.” He replied casually, while Lena froze. “Even Immortals and Virtuals can be killed, if you are tricky enough.”

Even in the Guild, such an almost-direct threat against your superior was a new low.

“I’m willing to work with you.” Athalia continued. “If you were a Mechanist with your biological components failing rapidly and the transhuman infirmary was closed or was overflowing with patients, I’d do my utmost to help you. When we were forced to stand close to each other due to our work, I tried my best to act normally. However, you are a Virtual, and you came to talk. You are currently violating my comfort zone merely by being in close proximity. That’s why I’d like to ask you to leave.” He closed his eyes and returned to his ‘meditation’.

Calm yourself, Lena. You’ve seen similar behaviour lots of times. Be persistent, but do not escalate.

“I’m yet to hear your footsteps disappearing in the background.” Lieutenant Commander Athalia interrupted her thoughts. “Ten seconds and I’m going to show you the most devastating ‘accidental discharge’ of a pistol you have ever heard about.”

“Have you ever seen Captain Keller terrified of something?” Lena said. Lith opened his eyes again and looked at her for a while in complete silence.

“Continue.” He took the bait.

“During our flight towards the Tyria system we detected a Ghost in the Hyperspace.” Lena spoke. Confidently, but concisely. She managed to get his attention, now she had to keep it. Without making his apparent hatred towards transhumans get the better of him. “Keller spilled his juice and almost broke his favourite cup when he saw it. He has been acting weird ever since. During the engagement with the Truthseekers fleet he looked like he was about to crap his uniform. That’s…”

“... new.” He interrupted her. “And let me guess, he keeps being dodgy on the subject, claims everything is ok, and has both Innocent and Eva back him up?” She nodded.

“All I got from him was some mention that Christopher’s ‘angels’ were correct in their claim that seeing a ‘ghost of his past’ would make him understand his role.” She shook her head. Athalia’s eyes were shining with interest at this point.

“Ah, yes. Stubborn oaf. Show me the Ghost.” Medic said. “Since I assume that you came here to use my fabulous memory for your own gain.” She knew of his anti-technological approach to life, so she prepared herself appropriately.

Going around the ship with a print of a sensor display was almost insulting to her nature as a Virtual.

Athalia’s face clouded when he saw the frigate. The reaction was much weaker than the one on Captain Keller’s face, but it was still noticeable. Then he sighed loudly.

“That’s not something that I saw coming. But also not something that is very helpful in deciphering his secret.” He obviously recognized the ship. Lena could only hope that his prejudice wasn’t strong enough to hide the result from her just out of spite. “Did Innocent look for it in the database of ships lost in the Hyperspace?”

“Yes, but he found nothing.” She replied. This time Athalia was genuinely surprised.

“That’s much more strange than the ship in question.” He shook his head. “Seriously, this is where my beef with you, cybernetics hails from. You are so busy with your beloved circuits that you fail to see…”

She let him talk. She had time. Almost twenty-four hours according to her timetable. And after a few minutes of his little rant he finally got tired of it, and moved to the point.

“I’m surprised with the lack of it in the general database…” Athalia said. “Because it’s one of the most common designs of civilian frigates since the birth of Mankind’s interstellar empire. This, my dear little tin can pretending to be human, is the Discovery. Gabriel Newman’s magnum opus. The first Hyperspace-capable vessel of Mankind.”

“Wh...what?” This was an unthinkable, unbelievable and impossible answer. “Wasn’t it destroyed in Luna’s orbit?”

“The original was, indeed.” He rolled his eyes, doing his best to appear as a wise teacher talking to a particularly dumb kid. “Newman was really pissed off with the mess of the Fourth World War’s aftermath, so he sat there with the World Forge, the Gene Artificer and Hyperdrive schematics, threatening to blow up the ship with them aboard if Mankind doesn’t create some sort of unified, pan-governmental organization that will be able to lead the resulting interstellar exploration. So the countries that had some presence in space quickly added some numbers on their little calculators, decided that it’s worth the costs, and created the Solar Commonwealth.”

“I know that.” She sighed. It was common knowledge, she simply didn’t recognize the design. The Discovery’s hyperspace signal wasn’t part of her education, mostly because there was nobody to observe it back then. “But why is it here if it was destroyed?” Thank Rethan it happened after Newman and all the goodies left the ship. Then again, people to this day were curious over why he blew Discovery up.

“You’re not the sharpest of the shovels pretending to be humans out there, hmm?” She was incredibly irritated, and his attitude wasn’t helping. “Didn’t you hear me saying ‘it’s one of the most common designs of civilian frigates since the birth of Mankind’s interstellar empire’?”

“Oh.” She had to concede - asking why the original Discovery was in Hyperspace wasn’t the brightest thing she could say. He could still say that in a less abusive way.

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“Yes, oh.” Athalia nodded with satisfaction. “I know of at least forty Discovery’s that are or were actively used. Speaking about the present moment alone, three of them are used as private passenger ships for the highest leadership of the Solar Republic. Nine more do the same for the Supreme Council of Mankind. Three more are used to carry investigators of the Supreme Tribunal of Mankind around.” That was a lot of identical ships, she had to admit.

“This design is symbolic to the point of being a running trope of Mankind’s ship design for centuries.” Athalia continued. “I know of something like three hundred more of them being used as museum pieces, their interior recreated as closely as possible. Some of them are actually capable of hyperspace travel.”

“And that’s why you were surprised that there were no mentions of them in the official databases!” It made perfect sense now.

“See? Good enough teacher and even a toaster will speak with some sense.” He was obviously trying to provoke her. Alternatively he was simply pathologically unable to avoid insulting every transhuman in the area. “Yes, that means that whatever the problem is, it’s serious enough that he went through the trouble of thoroughly purging all data recording every single Discovery from the ship’s database.”

“Or… maybe he is just so traumatized by something related to a ship of that design that he made sure he wouldn’t have to see it no matter what?” She decided to try interacting in any way with the medic one last time. To her surprise, the hit connected.

“Hmm…” He spent a while contemplating the issue. “That would make sense. Sounds a bit cheesy, like something from a videogame, but it makes sense. Now that I run a query through my brain, he seemed to avoid having a shift on the bridge on the two cases when the Echo was in a system with a ship of a Discovery-related design. How strange. Innocent treats any sort of traumas almost routinely.”

For as far as she was aware, the only way to remain traumatized by something was to either be born to a truly extreme poverty (or slavery) or willingly decide to keep the trauma. Some people seemed to enjoy collecting the strangest things.

It wasn’t the age when you accused videogames of stuff like this. Instead she accused long lives, wars and people who had too much free time and wealth despite said wars.

“Oh well.” He shrugged. “If you find anything, feel free to share it with me. I’ll do the same.” She would have been less surprised by Innocent converting to the Plesjan faith.

“You… want to work with me?” She could scarcely believe it after his obvious display of anti-transhuman beliefs.

“Yes. Because I’m currently more curious as to what the Captain’s hiding than I’m disgusted with the idea of working with a Virtual.” He closed his eyes again. “Give me a call when you find out something interesting. In the meantime, leave this place.”

Well. It still went better than I expected.

***

EGS Echo, Enviro Deck

04:12 20.07.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

When Tiriel said that she forgot something in her workplace and asked him to accompany her, Christopher initially wanted to refuse. After thinking it over, he decided that denying such a request to play a computer game would be a repetition of his old self’s social mistakes. So he agreed to it, however reluctantly.

The fact that they were approaching whatever place the Seekers were shepherding them into was another thing. He had to find something to do instead of getting worried. Two more days until the Tyra system exit - and who knows what awaits them there?

He left his spot in front of the screen in the living room - not without some internal ramblings - and began his long walk through the corridors of the Echo. With Tiriel at his side. Tiriel wore her favourite humble light green dress covering everything from her neck to her knees. Together with tight-fitting white gloves, high boots reaching above the ankle, and a flowery circlet on her forehead.

Compared to her, Christopher’s clothes were painfully plain. Just a T-shirt, trousers and boots. He felt a bit out of place, as if they were characters from completely different stories.

“This reminds me of our walks on Texia.” Tiriel commented after a while.

“I remembered the landscape a bit differently.” Christopher replied. His tone came out a bit colder than he wanted, so he quickly corrected himself. “And there was probably a river instead of some pipes.” It wasn’t a good joke, so she didn’t laugh. But she did smile.

She has a pretty smile.

“Well, that’s the closest equivalent achievable aboard the Echo.” She considered it for a moment. “If we could use the overlays, we could at least make it look like a long and moss-filled cave with some rare holes in the ceiling allowing some meagre surface plants to grow here and there. Instead, here we are. The techno-mechanical hell of our own making.” She smiled wryly, making Christopher wonder whether or not she meant it.

I have no idea what she’s thinking. And I refuse to use my meta-empathy on friends. Why are people so damn complicated? Would it kill her to just say what she wants?

“Ok, so what is it about?” Christopher rushed head-on. “Because I’m not blind and I know you have some nefarious, prankish agenda in inviting me for a walk. You certainly didn’t do that because of my sense of humour or impeccably manly beard.”

“It’s just something that a ‘perfect candidate for a wife’ would do.” She gave him her most mischievous smile. It took him a few seconds to recognize the words as his own. Once he did it, his jaw dropped.

“Wait, how did you….” She interrupted him mid-sentence.

“Next time you decide to have a talk like that, you should check if there’s someone in the kitchen.” She grinned, which managed to calm Christopher’s internal panic. She certainly didn’t feel insulted with what happened. “I was preparing a batch of cookies to celebrate Kivanna’s one year anniversary of getting out of that disgusting Plesja. And you were pretty loud.”

Christopher chastised himself for not even noticing that such an anniversary was happening. He was her direct superior, wasn’t it sort of his job to remember? Instead Tiriel was doing that, once again without him even being aware of the situation.

He felt like he was doing much better with the boys’ side of the team, while Tiriel was an expert in handling the girls.

“Oops.” Christopher scratched his head. “I know this wasn’t…”

She interrupted him again. “There is nothing to apologize for.” She said. “In fact, if there is someone that should be apologizing, it’s me for eavesdropping on a private conversation. I listened only for a very short while, mainly when I started hearing names of myself and other girls of the team. So I apologize.” She was always impeccably kind. Except when she was teasing him.

“Besides, what you said about me was actually rather flattering, and the fact that you weren’t aware of my presence simply means that you were speaking your mind. I’m starting to see a pattern there, you cheeky peasant.” She added. Christopher sighed, though only internally. Was he going to remain a ‘cheeky peasant’ to her forever?

“Your assessment on Nekia and Kivanna is, as far as I’m aware, factually correct.” Tiriel continued. “And when it comes to boys talking about the girls…” She shrugged. “Boys will be boys. Besides, we girls had a similar talk about the other half of the Echo’s crew, so it goes both ways.” She winked to him, leaving him painfully curious as to what conclusions the girls arrived at.

He looked away from her. She took advantage of that to reposition herself closer to him and lean towards his ear. Without interrupting her graceful walk forward for even a second.

“For your information.” She whispered. “The ‘marital sexlife’ with me could be better than you think.” When he looked at her, shocked by her statement, she had already backed away. There was no indication of her saying something outrageous barely a few seconds ago.

“So… why did you decide to bring me for this walk?” She had an agenda in teasing him like that, Christopher was sure about it. She wasn’t randomly inviting people to accompany her for long walks with no other reason.

“Who knows? Maybe I’m just trying to find a way to reward you for your kind words?” Her grin was truly impish. Her words gave him an idea on how to get back to her for her continuous teasing.

“If you wanted to invite me for a date, they were simpler ways of doing this.” His counterattack succeeded. Tiriel went silent for a few steps, with a complicated mixture of emotions on her face. Most of it was a surprise.

“That’s… extremely cheeky, even for you.” She replied finally. “Not exactly possible, but you definitely got me with that riposte. I admit that much.”

“Not exactly possible?” If she doesn’t swing that way, I’m going to look at her relationship with Nekia in an utterly different light.

“Uhm, I’m part of a nobility? And my family has a landed title?” She replied, her face returning to her typical, slightly mocking look. “It’s not like we, nobles, do not go on dates. But with other nobles or commoners with notable achievements. And always with some family-paid background checks, to ensure that the other side isn’t a douche that would then ruin your family’s honour and reputation with their action.”

This honestly sounds like feudal-era marriages, just with a spin to focus it on meritocratic achievements and non-douchebagism rather than pure pedigree, huh.

She glanced at him and sent him a wide grin. Someone was a happy noble elf, although Christopher had absolutely no idea what it was all about. Was she just that happy about being complimented?

“Of course, trying to check your background would require finding you in the historical records of the 21st Century. And I don’t think that you achieved something important enough to be remembered. Peasant.” She chuckled. Before Christopher managed to answer her, she ran, forcing him to exhaust himself in futile attempts to catch up with her.

Ten minutes later they arrived at the large set of doors signed as ‘Enviro Section’. Tiriel looked flushed. Christopher felt like he was about to die. His lungs were burning. The elf had kept sprinting with a maximum speed for ten minutes straight. Even with his supposedly improved body, ten minutes of constant sprinting as fast as possible was a lot.

“Now that’s what I call a warm-up.” Tiriel said while doing some light stretching exercises, simply to salt the wound on Christopher’s pride. Although while also offering him some interesting views, even if he wasn’t in shape to be happy about that.

“I’m… not… answ...answering that.” The petty officer managed to utter. He was bending forward, his hands resting on his knees, while he was still trying to catch his breath. Tiriel waited long enough for Chritopher to recover before entering the Enviro section.

The second he stepped through the door, an overlay installed itself on his UI. The smooth, black floor was replaced with grass, the walls with fences, and the ceiling disappearing. Instead, there was an open sky above them, with a sun hanging in the middle of it.

“Err, Tiriel?” The elf looked at Christopher questioningly. “Isn’t that… sort of, you know… illegal?”

“You mean the overlay outside of the quarters?” She replied with a question. “Yes. Yes it is. Unless you get an acceptance from the Captain or the executive officer.” She beckoned him to follow her, and walked deeper into the Enviro Section.

The fences were see-through, naturally. The space behind them was filled with trees, bushes and other Earth plants, making the sight rather familiar to Christopher. You could see through them, too, which allowed Chris to see the contents of the rooms they passed by.

“Wow, I feel like a Superman.” When she looked at him and he saw her brow raising, he decided to clarify. ”A fictional superhero with like every possible superpower, including X-ray vision that lets him see things through walls.”

“Spraying X-rays everywhere with your eyes doesn’t sound healthy at all.” Tiriel replied. “And the name somehow reminds me of transhumanism. Or the Reich’s ubermensch experiments.” It seemed that Superman wasn’t a cultural thing anymore, unless it was now something typically American.

She just had to ruin my mood. I’m ok with the former, but reminding me that there is an unironic neonazi country that’s counted as a powerful and influential one is the mental equivalent of a groin attack.

“Well, he’s technically an alien.” He replied, receiving a much more cryptic stare in return. “What?”

“Nothing.” She returned to looking towards the direction of their walk.

The rooms they were passing by were full of plants. Each had a frame of several layers in the middle, each layer filled with plants in various stages of growth. Christopher recognized most of the plants, though not all of them.

“So… hydroponics.” He said. He remembered that was the place that Tiriel worked in while aboard the Echo.

“Officially, it’s the agriculture department of the enviro section.” Tiriel replied. “Also we’re doing aeroponics instead of long outdated hydroponics. But for some reason lots of people are still calling it hydroponics.” She sighed. “People are so unreasonable sometimes.”

“Err… aeroponics?” Christopher asked about an unfamiliar word.

“Hydroponics means growing plants without soil, by using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent.” Tiriel replied with an official tone. “In short, you keep the plant in a tank of mineral nutrient-rich water. With aeroponics, you keep the plant harnessed and hanging up in the air, but you spray its roots with water and a carefully tailored combination of nutrients. The biggest difference is that aeroponics require several times less water than hydroponics, which in turn requires several times less water than traditional agriculture.”

“Oh. Now that I think about it, I might have seen a documentary about it.” The fact that agriculture seven hundred years in the future used the perfected form of a technology already available in his time really drove the ‘Wall of Reason’ nail in.

A woman left the room ten meters ahead of them before turning in their direction. Tiriel nodded towards her.

What now?!