Only Human

The rest of the meeting was somewhat boring compared to the start. It was mostly bringing up issues, addressing important matters, and an early schedule for some drills before the ship officially left port for Unity. Alwen did her best to focus, but once Heizer began to rattle off reactor numbers and percentages she felt her attention drift away. She had heard about the last ‘Beachhead’ protocol from Alice, and just about everyone else. It was a monumental moral victory on the Hellworlders’ part, and was now one of the legends often told at bars and other gatherings. Along with the Battle for the Confederacy, the time Marines from the Lucifer and Astaroth held a zero-g football match with EM thruster packs, and the day Limey had worn a pink frilly dress to a joint training session between all the Hellworlder ships.

During the last ‘Beachhead’ protocol the Station Security of Femeri station tried to detain the Astaroth under suspicions of smuggling. The result was a legal bitch slap from the whole fleet that cost Femeri several million credits, and got most of the senior staff of the SS canned. The memory of the last legal beat down was so potent that even after Ah’ared began a full on gang war in the streets of Femeri station, the local SS could do no more than posture as the Astaroth sailed away.

But Unity would be a different beast all together.

Alwen’s early studies into the Union had left her awestruck after hearing the size and intensity of the Union’s three super-stations. They were massive constructions of steel and titanium, with populations in the half billion range, and GDP’s in the upper ten percent of settled worlds. Built in the center of pivotal trade lanes and strategic star clusters, they had grown constantly over the long history of the Union. This would be far more dangerous than flying into the Confederacy after being ambushed by one of the most powerful pirate factions.

Which was why Alwen was glad to hear that their strategy was to go in modestly and to quietly begin their investigation, at least until First fleet returned from their mission in the Wrethren sector. Still, there was no quiet way to fly an unknown warship into the heart of the Union.

After an hour the meeting was brought to a close, with each division given their marching orders for the week. Alwen was about to follow the Bosun out when a hand on her shoulder held her back. Alwen turned to see Astarte looming over her.

“Mind if I borrow you for a moment” she asked softly, the tone of her voice letting Alwen know this was a friendly talk, and not a Captain speaking with her Chief Medical Officer.

“Of course,” Alwen said with a shrug.

The room emptied until it was just Alwen and Aster standing there. “How are things going on your end?” she asked casually.

Alwen had already given her official report as an officer, but that wasn’t what Aster was getting at. “Fine as they can I guess, its going to take some time before I’m really comfortable being in charge.”

“It’ll come sooner than you think. Are your old classmates giving any trouble?”

“No, not really. Its strange, I’ve changed so much in the year and half since I left home, but they’re mostly the same.”

She nodded “After I left Greyson’s crew and founded the Hellworlder fleet I had a single chance to speak civilly with my old crewmates. They were all still the same people, but I had grown in my time away. It’s just a part of growing up and getting stronger.”

Alwen nodded, she used to be so afraid of her older sister Toray. But when Alwen returned home Toray just looked small and petty, nothing worth fearing. Not like Kazlum, Domnall, or Astarte. “I assume you wanted to talk to me for other reasons than catching up right?”

Aster grinned “Yes. I’ve been having an issue I was hoping you could help with.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Alwen looked her up and down, her gaze eventually settling on her left eye. During Ah’ared’s ambush on Femeri a grenade had taken out Astarte’s eye and left a huge scar in its place, it wasn’t until the Captain had dragged Alwen into the lowest parts of New Mombasa’s dark warren of subterranean tunnels that she met an inventor called the Toy man who had crafted a new cybernetic eye to replace her old one. At the time Alwen had been too flustered about performing brain surgery in a basement to ask all the questions she wanted to. But in the months after she had done her research into the eye, and other cybernetics like it. “Let me guess, you’ve been having headaches?”

Aster blinked in surprise before nodding.

“Feels like a vice-grip around your head?” Alwen continued.

Aster nodded again.

“Gets better when you close your eyes?”

She nodded again then looked suspicious “Yes, have been reading my diary?”

Alwen felt her eyebrow rise “You keep a diary?”

Aster shook her head “no, that’s why I’m concerned how you knew about my headaches?”

Alwen rolled her eyes “I made an educated guess. I didn’t get much time to properly research cybernetics, especially experimental ocular ones. But now that I’ve had more than five minutes to look over the Toy man’s notes I’ve identified a few issues with his work.”

“Issues like-?” she asked curiously.

“Issues like the fact that the implant is sending information faster than your brain can handle. Not only that, but it’s also sending more data than your normal one sends.”

“I don’t follow, it’s just a few headaches, not my brain is getting fried.”

“Those are tension headaches, stress headaches. Your brain has to constantly work harder than normal to process the information being sent its way. That’s why it gets better when you close your eyes.”

She frowned “I thought I was just stressed from all the paperwork and meetings.”

“That may have exacerbated the problem.”

“So it’ll get better from here?” she asked hopefully.

Alwen gave her a flat look “You’re a space pirate, your life is never going to be stress free. This is something we need to take care of sooner than later.”

Aster scowled “I don’t think we need to do anything so drastic; I just need time to adjust. The Human brain can handle a lot if given time.”

“Yes, I know all about the legendary Human neuroplasticity.”

“Best in the galaxy, even compared to the Uplifted.” She said proudly.

Alwen nodded “Right, best, not limitless. It can accomplish a lot, but it has some pretty hard limits. The eye is sending signals to your brain far faster than your nerves can replicate, and they’re sending a much denser package than what your built for. That puts a burden on your brain that isn’t going to go away. Soon you’ll start to get nosebleeds, then you’ll feel irritable, start forgetting simple things, you might even faint.”

Alwen saw as Aster began to mentally plant her heels, determined not to have her opinion changed. “Its not my first implant, I can handle this.”

“We’re not talking about artificial tendons or skeletal reinforcements; this isn’t like the others. Those are comparably dumb implants compared to this one, they’re the kind you adjust too since they just let you lift more, or handle crushing force from a nine-meter alien warlord.” Alwen took in a deep breath as she felt her frustration grow “I’m not suggesting we remove it, I just want to dial it down to human levels.”

“That’ll take away my visual advantage, it could mean the difference between life and death.”

“No more than before the grenade.” Alwen saw that Aster wasn’t going to budge so she pulled out her trump card “Please, your only human. It might put you above ninety percent of the galaxy in terms of capability, but you still have hard limits.”

Aster looked on the verge of agreeing, but then her jaw set and her left eye went red. “That’s where your wrong doctor. I’m only human, and I’ll never let that hold me back. I refuse to let that be what keeps me from doing what must be done.”

Alwen saw that the conversation was over, so she dropped the matter. Knowing that it would come up again sooner or later.

~~~*~~~

Astarte let out a breath as she let the bars of exercise machine fall back as she completed another rep. The grav-plating around the machine was set to only 1.2 g’s and the pull of the weight was almost too hard to push against. But she forced herself to do so anyway.

She had slowly fallen behind on her physical conditioning as the mundane workload began to overwhelm her. But what Alwen said had reminded Aster of something very important, it reminded her of her oath to never let being ‘only human’ slow her down. Sure, humans were deathworlders, and Earth was pretty high up there in terms of the Union’s deathworld classification. There were only a few super gravity worlds that outclassed Earth’s rating. But that didn’t mean humans were the strongest species out there. Nor the fastest. Nor the smartest.

The Uplifted Mammaloids naturally outperformed in every physical metric, with only a few exceptions. And among other deathworlders the Kaydic were stronger by leagues, they were practically walking, talking, sentient, tanks. Their era of great wars didn’t have armored motor divisions, just heavily armored warriors wielding cannons. The Balikstro could run at an easy 50 km/h, fade into darkness like they were never there, and know everything about you from a single sniff of their powerful nose.

What humans had was adaptability, dexterity, and a much higher threshold for artificial augmentations. Part of the reason her whole crew wasn’t sporting enhanced muscles and reinforced bones was that they were too expensive to research, but the reason they were so expensive to research was because humans could handle the change much easier than an Uplifted could.

In a life as dangerous as hers she couldn’t let herself be satisfied with having an innate natural advantage over a majority of species. She had to strive to be the deadliest thing that ever walked the stars. She did that by honing her skill with the blade to its peak, and by never being ‘only human’. She had to be more than human to cut it in a life like hers. What was a little pain when weighed against such goals. she would tolerate the headaches, just like she tolerated the aches in her muscles.

She would never be too weak to do what must be done.