---Light breaks---
I’m lying down…
I open my eyes, already knowing where I am.
I see Dr Gato… he looks, different? Clearer somehow?
“Where’s Victor?!” I say, panicked.
Wordlessly, he extends a, six fingered, paw to the foot of my bed.
There he is beside Qorak, asleep on a bedside perch, my hero!… My brave boy… sleeping in a chair, bent such that his head rests below my feet.
Feet?
I raise my right leg… didn’t my right leg get cut off? And Victor's hand? And my left eyes were gouged out?
I look to Gato “You saved my life.”
He curls his tail in negation.
“I saved his life. Your injuries were so severe and your constitution so frail that I was ready to pronounce you beyond help… The Shings saved your life… it seems Terran medicine has a heavy emphasis on trauma… though, I can’t imagine why(!)”
“Was that a joke, Gato?!”
“Perish the thought... Anyway, the Shings stabilised you and MacLeod built you a prosthetic leg and eyes and advised the Shings as they attached them… it took her only [an hour] to design them from scratch… Apparently, fixing the damaged ship ‘burst the dam’ and now Kwijj and Sha’anza are frantically telling anyone who’ll listen that she’s ‘gone full Terran’ in her engineering… Victor had to go into the regen tube… he was not happy when he woke up and saw his life’s collection of scar tissue wiped away. I managed to keep my head attached to my body by explaining that it was the only way to save his life and reattach his severed hand… You, unfortunately, would have died from being placed in a Terran regen tube… hence the prosthetics. I have no clue why you would make sure we had one for Terrans but not for yourself… so you’re stuck with the prosthetics until we can make port, for longer than a week, somewhere with a R’qali appropriate regen… or you buy one for the ship... Also… since the ships’ AI was restored people have been noticing that it has been somewhat strange…”
“Strange? Strange how?”
“Strange like this!” chirps the Computer’s voice, cheerfully, over the room’s speakers.
I frown “That… is strange…”
I shake that thought from my head.
“What about the pirates? What happened?”
“I think, for that, you’ll need to debrief with your CSS.” he smacks Victor’s shoulder. It barely looks like a tap against Victor’s dense flesh.
“Wake up. Your captain wants to talk to you.”
Blearily, Victor stirs and then jolts, his attention focused entirely on me. He looks younger for having been in regen but… older for the clear signs of Terran stress. Gato tucks his holo into his belt and reverts to quadrupedalism to walk away.
“Cap! You’re awake! You’re here! I’m… I’m so glad!”
I hold up my bionic leg and gesture to my bionic eyes “Most of me is here, dear boy. Has Zunberi made any comment on me finally having the pegleg and eyepatch that he suggested?”
He snorts.
“Victor, what happened with the pirates? Is everyone… safe?”
He nods heartily. My hearts soar.
“You and I were the worst injured, of the crew… the prisoners, though, aboard the pirates’ ship were pretty badly off…” his face darkens “…they were, apparently, terrified… thought we were buyers for ’em.”
“Prisoners? Buyers? What are you talking about?”
His emerald eyes fix on mine and his face is tense, serious… angry…
“They were slavers… Cap. Part of a, previously unknown, Human supremacist terrorist organisation called ‘The Revanchists’ whose core tenets are ‘subordinatin’ subHumans to their rightful place’ and ‘claimin’ the galaxy as the birthright of mankind’!” he scoffs, disgustedly “This was, at least, the fifth ship they’d done this to on that shortcut. Said they had buyers though they didn’t say where. We’ve commed ahead to let authorities on Zanzibar Mpya know we have ten pirates in our brig and thirteen in our morgue, I’m sure they’ll be able to interrogate information from the living ones. We’ve also got five ships in tow and a hundred and seventy three, freed, would-be-slaves aboard. They’ve offered us a huge bounty on eliminatin’ a pirate threat, once it’s confirmed…”
I try to interrupt to say that the bounty should be given to those freed from the pirates, but he stops me.
“…I told them that you’d probably say that the bounty should be given to those freed from the pirates… they said that they’d be given reparations… enough to get back to wherever’s home and try to rebuild their lives… Terrans have a standin’ policy of doing that for any freed from slavery… the bounty is nontransferable and is not for freeing the slaves but for neutralising the pirates, it’s for the Bright Plume and only the Bright Plume. They were surprised when I told them you weren’t a Terran.”
I’m horrified that the people who almost overtook the ship were slavers but glad that those freed will be looked after… something rankles me about accepting that bounty…
“Did anything else of note happen?”
“Well, Samus said they all ran into Glark and W’ham B’ham after we’d been carried to the med room and things were done… Glark was apparently wearin’ a really badass suit of armour, with a number of homemade grenades and was genuinely upset that he hadn’t got to fight Terran pirates… he seemed ready to summarily execute the ones that’d surrendered, after we had our guns back and Fluffy starin’ ’em down, but relented after they explained the whole interogatin’ ’em thing… he may think they’re gonna be tortured… W’ham B’ham had apparently been vandalisin’ the pirates’ ship from the outside with a fuck-off heavy lookin’ hammer. They’d both broken confinement… somehow… their cradleworlds might need reclassifyin’(!) The Zanzibari authorities have apparently had your little shortcut scheduled for clearance for a while… our report got it made priority so, if we ever come that way again, we won’t have to worry about bein’ ambushed… My hand got reattached and my scars got regenned!” he says, bitter at that last.
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“Victor…” I plead “…I’m so sorry! This is all my fault! If I’d just listened to you! About the shortcut! About the firearms! About everything! Then!… then!...”
“Then there’d be a hundred and seventy three people still terrified and sittin’ in cages, on the ship we’re towing behind us, rather than beddin’ down in the Canteen which has been turned into temporary shelter for ’em. Perhaps the mirklets would have turned violent in the extra time it’d’ve taken us to get to Zanzibar Mpya. If you’d listened to me about the firearms, then maybe I’d’ve had a bullet in my arse before the fight started, from the deputies’ awful trigger discipline… (though, maybe, let’s get some analogues on Zanzibar and those guys can have some trainin’ from me, alright?) If you’d listened to me about stayin’ confined to Triple M, everyone aboard would be dead or in a cage right now! We can’t know what might’ve happened if things were different…What I’m trying to say, Tcakqaal, is that this isn’t your fault.”
I chitter lightly at him echoing my words, from the last time I lay in this bed.
“Alright… Victor… we’ve learned things from this experience… and we’ve lived through it to apply those lessons next time… what is that Terran expression? You’re stronger when you’re not dead?”
He shakes his head with a smile but doesn’t correct me.
“Alright, Cap. I should prob’ly go get some kip in a bed! Once you’re feelin’ up to it, visit Mouse… she said she wanted to calibrate your prosthetics with you conscious to give her feedback… you also have a lifemate to reunite with.” he gestures at Qorak.
I smile… I don’t affect a smile… I smile genuinely. The sides of my mouth pull up, around my beak. It is the most natural and pleasant thing in the universe.
“Thank you, Victor…”
As he goes he, gently as anything, pats the gleaming iridescent feathers of the love of my life.
Qorak stirs and looks blearily at Victor, who gestures to me.
“Tcakqaal!” cries Qorak, launching himself from his perch to press himself into my front.
He curls his head to rest the top of his beak against the front of my neck. I bring the bottom of my beak to nestle against the back of his head, among his gorgeous crown plumes.
“Never do anything like that again! You hear me!? I was terrified half to death!”
That’s an… unusually assertive tone, for him… I don’t dislike it…
I chitter “No promises, my love…(!) I can’t know when the Terrans will next need their brave… [Winged Hussar] to charge to their rescue(!)”
He laughs… and sobs… against my chest…
Do I wish R’qali had tear ducts?
---later---
“…and is that better or worse?” asks MacLeod, regarding the minor tweak she’s just made to the actuators of my prosthetic.
“Better… I think… it’s difficult to tell at this level of granularity…”
She gives a mirthful puff of air through her nose… and pauses…
“Captain… about the ship’s Computer, I…”
My wingclaw shoots up.
“Leave me my [plausible deniability]… dear girl! As a naïve gardenworlder, I couldn’t possibly be expected to have intuited that the ship’s AI had to have her sentience limiters illegally subverted, after the events of the pirate boarding… and thus, cannot be expected to take the legally prescribed action of scheduling her for decommission.”
MacLeod is stunned… it’s very satisfying to get one over on a Terran!
“And, of course, with the Terran representative, in the GU’s Parliament, fervently pushing for legalisation of full sentience AIs and their recognition as sapient beings, independent of their creator species… well, it’s only a matter of time before it’s a nonissue. And if, in the meantime, you were to happen to channel that, newly unleashed, brilliance and madness of the Terran engineer, into…”
I gesture at the parts on her personal workshop counter top, which are clearly the beginnings of a humanoid robot.
“…‘side projects’ then I couldn’t possibly be expected to guess one way or another whether those side projects are of a legal or… soon to be legal nature… so long as all that ‘burst dam’s’ water has somewhere to go and doesn’t go into your, thus far, stellar work(!)… Oh and if you could ask any new friends that you may or may not have… to tone it down with the ‘strange’ behaviour… such that no one else notices… that would be appreciated.”
She shakes her head, in smiling disbelief, and returns her gaze to my prosthesis but says nothing.
Some time passes.
“It will be a shame when I get the opportunity to get my eyes and leg regenned… these prosthetics that you’ve designed are… actually superior to the genuine articles! My vision is clearer… the strength and responsiveness in my right leg is such as I’ve not had since I was fresh out of [bootcamp], if ever!”
She laughs “Yeah! I had to tone down the strength in your knee and ankle joint actuators, both to keep the weight down and to make sure you couldn’t hurt yourself by trying to run on it… but the actuators for your talons have enough power to crush stone! You’ve got a permanent weapon attached to you and it’s legally protected as a prosthetic(!)”
She starts adjustments on my eye… she clearly wants to say something.
“If you really like them… Captain… you could always… keep them? Regen tubes aren’t going out of style so you could always change your mind later?”
I cock my head, quizzically. “And, dear girl… what happens if 20,000 lightyears from a regen tube that won’t kill me… you decide to stroll off the ship? On to bigger and better things? I’m sure that not even another Terran engineer could figure out how to maintain these marvels!”
She smiles “Then… I guess… I’ll just work for you… forever! If that’s agreeable…”
I’m stunned.
“M-M-MacLeod…?”
She raises her palm to stop me.
“Firstly, don’t call me 'MacLeod' like we’re strangers, I’m Jennie or Mouse to you… though, only Samus gets to call me Dormouse, I’m afraid(!)…”
She chuckles and continues “Secondly, I know everyone jokes about you being our mum… but… it’s true! I’ve not known you half a year and in that time you’ve shown me more love and kindness than my real mum did in nineteen years before she and my dad gave me the boot! Samus hasn’t seen her real mum since her early teens and I know she feels the same! Mage and Tuun have a living, loving mum and two fostermums who they’re on good terms with but I know they don’t appreciate you any less for it! And Cookie and Cuddles, haven’t seen their mums since they were tots! You’re giving both of them the mothering that Grannies and Orphanage tending AIs couldn’t! Cuddles doesn’t even remember his mother… You’ve cared for him for nine years! Thirteen if you count putting him through university! And you hired a Dormful of friends for him when it turned out he needed Terran company!”
“You knew!?” I squawk, dismayed.
She rolls her eyes, her eyebrows lower and her mouth pulls taut in what I would call a ‘mirthful frown’.
“Cap… it was so obvious!; The stressball he was fiddling with in the interview, the way you kept deferring to him, the glances you gave, back and forth, to check for personal chemistry, the stories about him… fucking somehow… smuggling a +300kg deathworld predator onboard and then falling down a flight of stairs, the, oh so specific, wording of the job listing; ‘seeking personable Terrans of any discipline to take employment on a Starbound vessel!’. It could not have been more obvious that Cuddles was self-destructing and you wanted to fix that, not just because it’d be inconvenient to lose your Security Specialist but because you care about him! We worked it out in the rec room, well before Tuun arrived! None of us care! We don’t care that we were originally hired for his sake! You’ve made it clear that you value us for our own, as well. The pay is fantastic and, speaking for myself, I’m having more fun and more personal and professional satisfaction on this ship than I’ve had… ever? Yes! Ever! I’m here to stay… as long as you’ll have me! I think I speak for everyone when I say that!”
I’m flabbergasted.
“…and here, I thought, Victor and I had been such [smooth operators] about the whole thing(!)” I quip.
She chortles “You really weren’t!… Your whole ‘plausible deniability’ monologue was pretty smooth, though… I was impressed!”
I sit, at a loss, for a few moments… then I raise my wings.
“Come here, girl!”
She beams and pulls me into a gentle hug…
She’s so warm!