Interlude - Night's Nova

“How’s Aphrodites?” Night asked.

There was a long delay before Day’s reply came back, her avatar pausing and looking a little dull-eyed before the question registers and she smiled. “It’s coming along! We’re working on disguising it now. Some pieces of unusable wreckage all around, a few interesting bends of the materials we built the station out of, and now it should look like the station crashed into a ship or two at low velocities. Should help disguise it from a casual visual scan.”

Night nodded along. That made perfect sense. Hiding was... growing tiring, if she was honest with herself. But it was still a valid way of doing things, and for the moment, they weren’t quite ready for anything else.

“That’s good! I’m glad things are coming along around Mars. And speaking of coming along... How are you and Candle?” Night asked.

The delay was worth it to see Day’s face slowly turn red, then have all the colour disappear as she glared back. “There’s nothing going on.”

“Uh-huh,” Night said. “I totally believe you. According to Twilight nothing’s been happening a lot while you two fly in little circles together doing nothing real hard.”

“Those were reconnaissance flights,” Day lied, poorly.

Night grinned right back, a shark tasting blood. “If you want any tips on how to do nothing with Candle, well...” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at Day.

“If you’re just going to tease me, then I have other things to do,” Day said. “How about you go do nothing with your wife, huh?”

And with that, Day cut off the communication with a bit of a huff. They were done in any case, and Night knew that Day was acting up a little for fun.

That didn’t stop a bit of a blush from spreading on Night’s own face. But then, Day wasn’t around to see it. So, score one for Night!

She turned off the communication suite and brought her attention back around to more local matters. Io was a busy place right then. Nova was finally producing some stuff with a small factory setup they’d installed on her hidden base home, and Night’s own factories were hard at work on their biggest project yet.

The ship they were designing was nearly done, just the final touches being added to it, though she was waiting for a few of Nova’s experimental weapons to be shipped over still. They’d arrive soon enough.

The heavy destroyer wasn’t too dissimilar to Lullaby’s own hull. Longer though, a bit thicker and taller. All to accommodate that much more spaced armour and additional bulkheads, and maybe a few more gun emplacements.

She would be a formidable ship, with armament a bit above her class and enough armour to get into a drag-out fight with a cruiser and survive. Though it wasn’t nearly well-armed enough to make that a good idea.

Soon it would be ready to launch... that was, assuming they finished programming an AI for the hull in time.

Night was still in low-orbit over the moon, but her mind was interlinked with her factory, which in turn now had a physical connection running all the way to Nova’s base. So there was no delay as she popped into the simulation that Nova was running.

Just a lab stuck next to a gun range, with near-real physics where Nova could test her new ideas.

Night paused after her avatar loaded in and watched Nova at work.

The research AI was focused on her work, mouth slightly open and big glasses pinched to the tip of her nose while an all-grey 3d model of some gun’s inner workings spun and twisted, tiny changes appearing on it at Nova’s behest.

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Night padded over to Nova until she was right behind her, then she carefully wrapped her arms around Nova’s waist, pulling her into a hug while resting her head on Nova’s shoulder.

Nova paused her in work for a moment, the shoulders of her avatar relaxing even as she melted backwards.

It lasted a few seconds, then the 3d model started to move again.

Night had come to terms with the fact that, no matter what, she would always be second to Nova’s ultimate goal of producing the perfect weapon. There was no helping it. Nova was made to do this. It was at the forefront of her mind at all times, and she couldn’t even fathom a moment where she wasn’t giver her all to the furthering of her goal.

And yet, despite that, despite what her nature should have dictated, Nova had time for Night.

On a superficial level, it was because Night gave Nova what she needed, in a literal sense. But Night knew it was deeper than that too.

“I’m almost done,” Nova said.

Night nodded into her shoulder and remained there. The rest of her was hard at work, keeping a million plates spinning, but... that still felt nice so she stayed.

Maybe Day with all of her philosophising was right about a few things.

Nova finished what she was working on, then carefully turned within Night’s grasp. It meant that her lab coat was a little twisted up, but Nova was never one to care about appearances.

They kissed, and Night felt a familiar thrill running through her at the digital contact. “Hey,” she said. “How’s everything going?”

Nova grinned, wide and innocently proud. “The AI is almost done! Just a few adjustments to make, and she’ll be ready. We might want to send some portions to your... sisters. They might be able to correct some of the personality matrices. I will admit that they are outside my remit, but we’ve done it.”

“We’ve done it?” Night asked.

“We made life! Digital life, just like ourselves. True digital reproduction.”

Night felt her face warming up. “Did you have to put it like that, Nova?” she asked.

Nova blinked, and Night found herself sighing fondly. Her Nova was... a clueless idiot about some things.

“Reproduction is... usually sexual, and therefore, because of that, it’s somewhat of a taboo subject, you know. It’s embarrassing.”

Nova shook her head. “You and your sisters are far too fixed on such silly emotions,” she said. “Though, that does raise a valid question.”

“And what’s that?” Night asked, she was done blushing for the moment.

“Well, this new ship, she will be our daughter, yes?”

Night nodded. “Yes, I guess so.”

“But we never had sexual intercourse during the production of her. I would have thought that with you and your sister’s focus on such emotional things, you would have wanted to at least simulate it.”

The blushing was back, with a vengeance. Night felt her hull start to hum as cooling systems kicked on. “N-Nova!”

“I... would be willing to try that with you. This avatar is fully modelled, in preparation for the eventuality.”

“Nova!” Night squeaked.

“What? You’re the one who told me to be a more emotion-conscious wife.”

Night worried that if this continued, her core might get fried.