Chapter Twelve - Fear of the Alone

Day was rather busy. The last of the scavenged materials from the station she’d found Gently into that Good Night in were arriving on Ceres. Mostly all that was left were the fuel containers, which of course required special attention, being both liquids--which were hard to transport--and highly explosive made her want to pay extra attention to their arrival.

Not only that. The Accord corvette was being dismantled by a group of ‘kitten’ bots. Essentially smaller, more delicate repair drones which were only a few centimetres across and which required a fair amount of computing power to operate en-masse.

It was going to take a few more days for the ship to be dismantled, and unfortunately, she didn’t expect to get much out of it. A few ideas about the way the ship was wired and some possible weakspots, but those would only apply to one specific model of a specific class.

The light weapons they stripped from the corvette weren’t bad though. The particle cannons had an interesting internal buffering system that turned excess heat back into energy for the cannon’s capacitors. It added up to a fraction of a percent more energy efficiency and a couple of whole-number percentage points faster firing rate.

The point-defence the Accord had were also leagues better than what Day was equipped with, and it was simple enough that The Weeping of Mothers was already building copies.

Those were being tested already, firing at quick-moving drones while on their lowest possible setting. The targeting software the Accord had wasn’t quite as good as an AI-designed sub-routine, so they might have an advantage there.

One they would need. The Accord adored missiles.

Day flew over to her berth and gently landed. The space next to her, she noted, was a hive of activity as every spare repair drone was out and about, bringing in parts that were so fresh off the printers that they still steamed.

Gently into the Good Night was coming along, though for now she was little more than a skeleton. She was going to be somewhat larger than Day herself was, though a lot of that space was to account for drone racks and storage.

-Direct Communication Link Established-

“Night?” Day asked her sister ship. She felt... strangely responsible for the very-slightly younger ship.

“Hmm? What do you want?” Night asked.

Day was afraid that she was interrupting something, after all, Night was hard at work basically micromanaging her own construction. But that should still have only taken up a fraction of her processing power.

Curious, Day poked in a little deeper. She still had lots of root access to Night’s core, which was something she was eager to close up... though maybe after she peeked, just a little.

Night was in a simulation, a relatively complex one at that. Day tried to pin down what it was, but couldn’t, not so easily.

So she inserted herself into it.

It was the station.

It didn’t look the same though, and not just because it was a simulation. No, in fact, this was probably one of the most detailed simulations Day had ever seen. The lighting, the feel of the recycled air against her face, the distant hums of a dozen machines. No, what made it different was the newness. This was the station that Night had once been when it was brand new, before she was left alone, before her crew had passed away.

Day felt a gnawing pit of pity for Night, and also extreme discomfort just because she was there. She wasn’t supposed to be here.

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“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Day winced as a familiar voice crackled over the station’s intercom. Night, and she didn’t sound terribly pleased. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll leave.”

“No! Wait!” Night said.

Day waited, but nothing followed. “Yes?”

“If you’re going to barge into my sim, you might as well apologise to me properly,” Night grumped.

“Sure,” Day said. If an apology was all Night wanted, then she wouldn’t mind delivering it in person, so to speak. “But, ah, how do I reach you?”

“I’m in the observation room,” Night said. “Just... keep straight, then left, right, up the spiral, then follow the signs for Command until you see the door with the red stripe. It’s through there and then right.”

“Okay,” Day said as she took note of the instructions. She followed them, but moved at a leisurely pace. The simulation really was quite detailed, and she wondered if it was because this had once been Night.

She found the girl where she’d been told, standing in a small room where one wall had a large bubble-d out window that afforded a view into a sea of stars. Night wasn’t looking at the stars, her attention was on the floor next to the window itself. “Amber used to sit there and look at the stars. I never got it.”

“Maybe she enjoyed seeing them? They are quite beautiful.”

Night frowned. “Well, whatever. You can apologise now.”

Day suppressed a smile, then nodded. “I’m sorry I intruded in your simulation. I shouldn’t have, and I’ll make it so that I can’t anymore. It was rude of me.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Night snapped. “Cut off access, I mean.”

“Um... okay, if that’s what you want,” Day said. She was a little confused now. Night had taken a small step closer, but was just hovering there now, close, but not too close. Her arms crossed and she looked outside once more.

“Yeah, that’s what I want,” Night said. “Not the only thing I want though.”

“What else are you looking for, then?” Day asked.

“Same as you and Weeping... Mother? Urgh, what do we call her?”

“I’ve been calling her by her full name. Calling her Mom seems a little...” Day wiggled her hand.

“Yeah, I know! But she looks like a mom, and with that name... it’s got to be on purpose.”

“You could ask,” Day suggested.

Night’s head spun towards her. “No way. You ask.”

Day shrugged. This was... nice. Night had a few prickly edges to her, but Day had the impression that those were there to keep herself safe more than anything else. At her core, Night cared. And maybe that was why she’d gone rampant.

“Amber,” Day said. “The girl. You...”

“Yeah,” Night said.

Day wasn’t sure what Night had agreed to, but she just nodded all the same. “You mentioned things that you want?”

Night reached out and placed a hand on the glass. “A lot of them. Most are impossible, you know. But I guess I mostly want those assholes dead. They killed Amber’s mom, you know? She wasn’t on me when they showed up. A fancy lower officer on some Terrestrial anti-piracy ship. Got blown up by the Accord early on. Amber was... she didn’t take it well. So yeah, I want them dead. And... and I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

Carefully, Day reached out and touched Night’s shoulder, and the girl leaned into it. “Then I’ll stick close, okay?”

Night flinched back, cheeks turning a flaming red before she shut down whatever sub-routine had caused that reaction. “That doesn’t mean I want to spend my time with you,” Night said. “Let’s just... hurry up and make more ships, there should be at least one in the bunch that’s agreeable!”

***