The man's clearly synthetic mustache twitches as he looks at the blue screen in front of him, suspicious of Tyrving’s information, despite how perfectly done it is. Perhaps it’s perfection is why the guard is suspicious.

Or perhaps he’s just a toolbag.

“And you said you’re bringin... drone parts?” he asks, tapping the screen with the back of his hand.

“That’s correct. My old man manages one of Pantheon’s subsidiaries; we fix up the stuff that gets too messed up for standard repair.” Tyrving answers, lifting his hat slightly to adjust his now curly hair.

Sizing up the agent, the guard insists, “I’m gonna take a look, if you don’t mind. Go ahead and setter’ down.”

“As it happens, I do mind. I am legally contracted by both Pantheon and Mascodia’s government to ensure these robotics remain sealed and unseen by the public. In fact, stopping me at all is technically a violation of that contract.” He retorts, grabbing a holographic file in front of him with three fingers before flicking it towards the guard tower, instantly transmitting it to his “captor.”

A puzzled scowl comes over the man's face, though he remains still until he’s—as far as Tyrving can tell—skimmed the document. “Let me just..." he mumbles before clicking off his microphone and speaking to someone else through his wrist.

His eyes widen before immediately narrowing, a whole slew of emotions crossing his expression. Fear seems to be the prominent one as he pulls his wrist from his face and turns his mic back on.

“Ahh, yeah. You’re all good to go. Sorry for the trouble, sir.”

“Even’s breaks, mate.” Tyrving responds good-naturedly, tipping his hat as he pulls his ship into an aerolane generated for him.

He keeps his persona up a bit longer, ensuring there’s enough of a recorded loop to trick anyone watching before releasing control to the Trembler’s autopilot. A minor hitch wobbles the cabin as the ship corrects its path to be just slightly more accurate.

“Shipment 14498 approaching dock Pan3. Can I get a confirmation?” He asks, speaking over the open coms.

The voice of an older woman answers him, but he’s done this enough times to recognize it as Tuna changing her voice. “Pan3 is good to go. Welcome back, Mitch.”

A thin smile creeps onto his lips at the hint of disgust with which she said his new name. She’d much preferred Frederick Plinth—and so had he—but with the last mission's results, it had to be burned.

The Trembler hisses, using blasts of pressurized air to park itself into the perfectly sized slot it’s been assigned. Tyrving, or, for the moment, Mitch, gathers his scant belongings and throws them into his bag before opening the bay doors with his foot.

“Welcome back, Fred!” Don, one of Pantheon's civilian workers, calls through the bay doors.

Tyrving quickly throws his extra coat over the grotesque ice bucket, leaning through the door of the captain's cabin. Don looks up from where he’s helping one of the droids collect one of the shipments, surprise washing over his face.

"Wha—you're not Fred! Who’re you?” He hollars, surprised enough to almost tip over one of his droids.

Holding out his unoccupied hand, Tyrving puts on a slightly ashamed face. “Names Mitch, I’ll be takin’ over for Frederick.”

Don shakes his hand, but doesn’t let go as he furrows his brow. “Might I ask how that came to be? The fella was good people.”

Averting his eyes, Tyrving takes a breath before looking back at the worker. “My old man runs the bot-shop these come from. Saw I was having trouble and offered me a position.”

“Mmm Nepotism.” He growls, but softens his expression after a moment. “It’s frustrating, but it also ain't your fault. I forget how bad it can be out there sometimes; It’s real fortunate Pantheon took someone like me on. Good to meetcha, Mitch.”

He gives the agent a clap on the shoulder and a nod, walking away with his bots a bit more melancholy than before.

“Do you come up with all your sob stories on the spot?” Tuna asks from inside his neural interface.

“Most are pre-made. I spend a lot of time alone in Trembler; what else am I supposed to do?. Also, they’re not sob stories. You can’t tell someone that the person they grew fond of is gone without being either callous or compassionate about it.”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Trembler's bay doors shut automatically after he steps clear of them, making his way to the metal catwalk stairs to his left.

“You say that, but I think you missed your calling as an author. Tragedy has been trending recently.” Tuna mocks playfully from her spot above him, leaning on the catwalk railing.

Tyrving glances to the door Don disappeared into, making sure they aren’t being overheard. “I hope that isn’t the case; there’s plenty of tragedy abound as it is. Spare me it in my pastimes.”

Tuna looks at him meaningfully, their eyebrows rising to hide behind pale-pink hair. “Perhaps they simply want to dream of adding some romanticism to their own tragedy. Would you begrudge them that?”

“Them? No. You? Certainly. Take the head, you can just throw the jacket out.” He says, rolling his eyes and pushing the ice bucket into their arms.

“Gross. Thanks for the jacket though.” Tuna says, grinning far too broadly for someone holding a decapitated head. They speed up their pace, trying to keep up with him.

“Throw it away. It’s soaked in nanofluid.” He commands, giving Tuna a look as he opens the thick, DNA-secured door for them.

“I will handle this dangerous item with the utmost care, I assure you.”

“Don’t be vague on purpose; I know what you’re doing.” He sighs, pointing at the hallway with the disposal room. “Deal with the head, throw away the jacket, and meet me and Odin in her office. No detours.”

Tuna’s salute is perfect, but their half-lidded expression gives away their unseriousness. “No detours," they say, walking down the hallway and turning into the wrong room.

“Unbelievable,” he huffs, giving his head a shake as he walks down the tile floor leading to Odin’s office.

The hallway is well maintained. Floors are swept, walls are clean. Some of the upper corners do look a tad dusty, telling Tyrving that Nanna is off on a mission and the bots have been cleaning instead.

His footsteps slow as he approaches a section of the wall covered by a large, yellowing whiteboard. Its age is apparent enough, but more so to Tyrving than anyone else.

He’s the one who put it up, after all.

Synthetic skin caresses the dusty authorization key of an old fighter ship. The ship itself was recovered and repaired, but the flesh and blood of the pilot weren’t so easy to put back together. Flipping the card to show the bold text reading “RICKSHAW,” he lets it go, the hard plastic clicking against the board as it stills.

Half a dozen more tributes rest along the board, little trinkets magnetized into shallow representations of those who passed while part of AESIR. Two of them were lucky enough to pass from old age, but for some reason, those make him feel the loneliest.

He doesn’t touch the other memorials, wiping the dust on his pants as he continues on.

“Should I move my office? You being melancholy every time we see each other can’t be great for our relationship.” Odin asks, leaning against her door frame.

Stuck in an admittedly retrospective mood, Tyrving can’t help but see her as the seven-year-old version of herself from back when her father—the previous Odin—first introduced her to all of them. It’s been something like forty-six years since then, but they’re so similar it still catches him off guard once in a while..

“Our relationship? How scandalous," he returns with a smug grin. “Your father would never have approved.”

Her bark of a laugh is coarse, probably a little too coarse for someone barely fifty-three this cycle. “Anything that makes that old bastard roll in his grave thaws my frigid heart. Now get in here; you’ve got a lot to explain.”

Her office is surprisingly decorated; holo-frames hang on the gray-black walls, playing their three-to-four-second video’s whenever you look at them. A tattered flag and hunk of sheet metal hang just behind her desk, trophies from victories only we know about.

Tyrving sits on the couch adjacent to her desk, letting out an altogether unnecessary sigh from lungs that are mostly for display. “Did Mugen pull anything up on him?” he asks, glancing at her eyepatch.

“Yes, but only what he spoon-fed us through the feds. Everything up to his deep files says he was an unremarkable old shit before his death to a virus four years ago, but it’s all way too perfect. I know what government work looks like. This isn’t it.”

A light knock shifts the room's attention to the doorframe, revealing a notably jacket-free Tuna leaning into view. “I passed off the head and the [ICE] pick to Rodney, he’s nowhere close to as fast as me, but he’ll pry the data out while I’m with you guys.”

Scooting over to give the younger Daemon some room to sit, Tyrving leans onto the couch's armrest. The faintest whirring sound exits his open mouth as he massages his jaw, preparing to speak.

“This whole debacle might be my fault, if I’m being honest.”

Odin’s face hardens slightly, her expression wordlessly demanding an explanation. Even Tuna pauses a bit, quietly settling down on the couch's opposite arm.

“The full story would—and will—take quite a long time to go over, so I’ll hit the main points.” Tyrving says, displaying a hologram from his right eye. “I joined up with AESIR some sixty-odd years ago, but even before that I was doing a lot of the same thing I am now. Just with more flesh on my bones.”

The hologram writhes, printing a three dimensional image directly from his memory. Eight shins and a set of wheels become visible, their details fuzzy but growing clearer as more of the memory prints.

“There were five of us at the time, less of an organization, more like a group of gray’s tired of being stepped on. That’s only partially relevant, but—yes, Tuna?”

Lowering their raised hand, Tuna shoots the question: “What’s a gray? Some kind of old gang name?”

His face contorts as if pained, Tuna’s question hitting a nerve. “No, it’s—you wouldn’t—”

“It’s an old term people used to describe the lower class back when I was a brat. It’s pretty much obsolete since chits are all digital now, but before we swapped our smallest denomination was this depressing gray color.” Odin supplies, twisting her monitor towards the two of them and displaying a picture of the round, plastic currency. “But I’d prefer if we stayed on topic, considering the situation.”

Nodding, Tyrving continues, his hologram fully rendered at this point: “Right, well, the only other person on the planet who should know what ‘orange break’ means is this guy here.” He says, pointing to a pair with their arms on each other's shoulders. “Marcus Gardner. There’s no way he’s going by that alias anymore, but that’s probably for the best since he couldn’t raise plants worth a shit.”

Odin's fingers race across her keyboard, a light glow emitting from behind her eyepatch. “That’s not the name you gave me before, why did your answer change?”

His fingers steeple dramatically, but he still responds normally, “Other than the fact that I don’t trust our long distance communications to be impenetrable, this name, as I’m sure you’ve just discovered, has absolutely nothing on it anywhere. No ID, no records, not even a birth certificate.”

“That’s pretty dumb, it’s a lot easier to notice a bunch of missing information than it is noticing inconsistencies in false ones.” Tuna states, squinting as they try to make out the hologram's fuzzy faces. “This lady on the left looks familiar.”

Tyrvings lip twitches upward at their second comment, but he doesn’t address it. “You’re right, it was dumb. It was also sixty years ago and we were the ones pioneering that sort of technology, so dumb was what we had to work with.”

A noncommittal hum is all he gets in return, their focus entirely on the hologram.

“What I’m getting at is that me and Marcus had an agreement before our differences in ideology split us apart. This is, if I had to guess, him fulfilling that promise.”

Massaging her quickly forming headache, Odin asks the question anyone would. “And what was that promise?”

He doesn’t respond right away, but it isn’t because he forgot. He could never forget. It just felt like it should have taken so much longer to happen.

“We promised… to stop the other if they went too far to achieve their goals. And I guess I’ve crossed that line.”