"Are you quite finished?"
Severin looked over at a man in his early forties, bespectacled, in a uniform rumpled from travel. He paged through data in a holo-tablet, then looked over at his patient, a look of frustration and consternation on his face.
"Well, I really would want to run more tests-" he began.
Severin turned her head to one side, reached up and removed the data line connected to her skull, the fine optical path coming away with a soft, complicated noise. Then she leaned to one side, picked up her shirt and pulled it on, the fingers of her left hand making quiet, precise clicking noises against the buttons.
"Lieutenant Vaughn, I was being polite. You are finished. I've been here for three hours, and passed all of your tests. A physical doesn't take that long, nor does a diagnostic. And I'm cold." She shrugged her uniform jacket on, wriggled her shoulders, "That's better."
"But we don't...you aren't..." he sputtered, then waved the tablet, apparently at a loss for words.
"Lieutenant," Severin said, her voice not entirely unkind, "You give physicals to all the incoming pilots, yes?"
"Well, of course," Vaughn said.
"And do you see anything that disqualifies me from flight, or service aboard this ship?" Severin said, meeting Vaughn's eyes.
Vaughn deflated, "No, Miss Renault, I don't."
"Miss?" Severin said, one eyebrow rising in a delicate arch.
"Your transfer papers say 'acting Ensign,'" Vaughn waved the holo-tablet again, "But they also say 'Intelligence Construct.' Which are you?" He said, his voice almost a wail.
"Neither. Both." Severin said, her voice sunny, "And under the Uniform Code of Address, that means you refer to me as Ensign Renault."
"Shouldn't you be calling me Sir, then?" Vaughn said, dubious.
"I'm not human, Lieutenant. I'm a Federation Intelligence Construct," Severin said in the same cheerful tone, "That means I'll call you what I like." She hopped down from the examination table and shouldered her bag. "I'm sure I'll be seeing you."
-----
Data slid across her mind while she walked, not as discrete images or presentations in visual field but simply ambient information, the way she knew where her hands were or that the smell of cleaning chemicals in the corridor. Severin hadn't tried to connect to Galatia's infonet yet, so her knowledge of the ship came only from what she could recall. Years ago, this was going to be her ship - well, no. Not hers, precisely. But Severin could still bring to mind the layouts and maps, a memory she didn't remember making, like so many she carried.
She pulled herself down one corridor, past maintenance crews pulling a cutting torch into a freight transfer corridor, toward the pilot's barracks. She gave herself a gentle kick to avoid colliding with another crewmember, then felt a quiet entreaty in her mind, and one she hadn't expected. Eva, the ship's computer, requesting permission for a network connection. Severin allowed it, felt the cool presence of the ship's intelligence against her own awareness.
"Good evening, cousin," Severin said or rather, transmitted, when she finished negotiating the connection.
"Good evening, 295-SRN," Eva said, her projected voice joining a stream of other data from the ship.
"I prefer Severin, if you don't mind."
"Under normal conditions, I would not be so familiar with a member of my crew. But you are an unusual case."
Severin caught a handrail, changed direction, pushed herself down another corridor. To her right, she could see into the ship's cavernous hangars. "Thank you, cousin," she said.
"Of course." Several moments passed. "You really should address Lieutenant Vaughn as Sir," Eva said.
"I know," she replied, "But he was annoying me."
"Nevertheless. Furthermore, the Uniform Code of Address has no provisions at all regarding artificial intelligence, even with with an officer's commission."
"I'll consider it," Severin said, then kicked off down another corridor, a grin tugging at one side of her face. Of course the ship's VI would have been listening. Severin wondered if she was witnessing an emergent behviour, or if Eva had actually been programmed with this situation in mind.
"I have examined your transfer paperwork," Eva said, interrupting Severin's thoughts, "And there appears to be an irregularity. The only quarters assigned to you are the diagnostic lab you just came from."
Severin stopped, catching herself on a handhold, "Excuse me?"
"Constructs are not assigned quarters under normal circumstances," Eva said, "My network vault would be their nominal residence."
"Eva," Severin said, "I can't sleep in a closet. I need more than a charging port. And I'm not sharing a room with four men from Navy R&D."
"I agree," Eva said, then paused. "I will inform the XO that a pilot has not been assigned quarters. I believe that will resolve the issue."
"I appreciate that," Severin said, and shoved off the wall again.
The Galatia sprawled before her, kilometers of corridors arranged not necessarily according to strict logic, but how well they packed into the available space. Keeping large parts of the ship in microgravity allowed for novel deck arrangements; excellent for mechanical efficiency but perhaps less so for the ship's human compliment. Severin passed several groups of new arrivals, still with their bags, looking lost. She glided past with a nod and a twinge of guilt - she knew exactly where she was going, and felt that she should help. But time was precious and, at least for now, they weren't her problem.
"May I ask you a question?" Eva said, almost startling Severin from her thoughts.
"Of course," Severin said.
"Am I being replaced?" Eva's voice was cool, quiet, and calm - but of course it would be. She wasn't actually conscious; Eva had no existential awareness. "I can begin the process of backing up my functions for transfer."
Severin was so surprised by the question she missed a handhold, slipped, and bounced off a junction in the corridor. She spun, limbs splayed, caught herself on another handrail after a few seconds that seemed to stretch into an embarassed eternity. The plating on her fingers clicked and scraped against the handrail, but after a moment she settled herself against the corridor, regaining her bearings. She turned her attention back to Eva.
"No, I'm not here to replace you," Severin said, shoving herself back down the corridor with a little more speed than she needed, "I expect there's no reason to, and the process would be...problematic." She kicked herself off a junction, finally near the pilots' quarters.
"I had wondered if there were orders I wasn't aware of," Eva said, "But that is good news. Now is not an opportune time to replace one of the ship's core functions. Additionally, you have been assigned quarters on Deck 8, Section A2. I will send you the location."
"Officially, I'm here to fly, Eva," Severin said, changing course according to Eva's ping, "Though I also expect the Captain, and perhaps Commander Knight, have orders neither of us are aware of."
"Perhaps so," Eva said.
The door to Severin's quarters slid aside without her having to touch the door controls, and Severin smirked to herself. There would, evidently, be benefits to having a direct connection with the ship's intelligence. She caught herself on the door and took a cautious step through, her stomach lurching with the transition from microgravity. She wobbled on her legs for a moment, then stood upright and stepped fully into the room.
"What happened here?" Severin said.
"This section of the ship experienced a loss of pressure event during our last deployment," Eva supplied, "These quarters are unusually close to the outer hull. The patch is airtight, though I admit no further repair work was done after the first sweep of damage control crews. I apologize for that. I expect this assignment is the XO's idea of a joke, for what that's worth."
Severin tossed her bag down onto the bed, which did not sit flush with the bulging, rippled wall, then flopped down beside. "At least there's a bed. And a shower, thank the gods." She sat up, pulled her bag toward her, started undoing the top.
"The ship will be returning to normal space in 45 minutes," Eva said, "You are to report to Commander Knight in briefing room Alpha at 30 minutes till realspace. I will leave you to your preparations."
Severin reached into her bag and pulled something out, wrapped thickly in a soft cloth. "Thank you, cousin," she said, this time out loud.
"Of course, Severin. I am glad to have met you," Eva replied.
With that, the cool directness of Eva's presence faded from Severin's awareness, though she still felt a steady trickle of information about the ship - access corridors closed for maintenance, work crew movement, the status of various ship systems. Virtually all of it would be available to anyone via a tablet, but for Severin it was only a thought away. A pleasant convenience. She smiled, and turned her attention back to her hands.
She popped the tape holding the bundle closed with her thumb, and unwrapped the cloth with care. Inside was a small, slim book, the cover worn and the corners rounded. The title had once been embossed with gold leaf into thick leather, but time and much handling had worn most of the gold away to leave only the shapes of the letters. She handled the book with care, plucking it from the bundle of cloth with her artificial hand before setting the padding aside. She ran her fingers over the cover, turning it to face her. She took a long breath then gently opened the book, smoothing down the leaves to a familiar page.
The story was one of sentient machines: one above, one below, and a few between, vigilent sentinels over a dead Earth. She remembered reading the story to Corona, years ago, while she was recovering from her injuries. Officially, the exercise had been for her to get used to her new artificial eye, but both of them enjoyed the book. She ran a hand over the page, fingers hissing over the thick paper, and looked at the inscription - a piece of a poem, written in a scratchy, wobbling hand by her - by Tain's - father, before the disease took that from him.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
I love you, Rinni.
She hadn't kept many things from Tain's life - it hadn't seemed right, like robbing a grave. In fact, Severin hadn't even had the conversation with her parents, her sister, about what had happened. All the same, she hadn't been able to give this book up. Small, slim, battered and loved, it was an anchor, something that kept whatever she was now from being entirely adrift. She ran her living hand over the inscription, felt the way the pen had bitten into the paper hard enough to leave a dent. There were so many memories here, an endless branching fractal of recollection. Some - most, even - she remembered making, remembered living that life. Others were no less vivid, no less real, but were somehow alien.
Her fingers trailed over the page for a moment, the sound of her skin on the page the only sound in the room. Then she lifted her hand, folded the cover back over before setting the volume on the bed next to her - there was no time to get lost in recollections she didn't remember making, at least not right now. Without chcecking , Severin knew there were 35 minutes to the ship's exit to realspace. She sighed and stood, left her bag where it lay, and strode back through the open door, giving herself a little spring at the threshold. She drifted into the zero-gee of the corridor, grabbed a handhold, kicked the door control shut with her boot, then launched herself back down the length of the ship, hair drifting in a lazy halo behind her.
She passed groups of fellow soldiers, some turning maps in their hands this way and that while they searched for their briefing rooms and staging areas. A powerful instinct told her to stop, to tell them where to go, to give them her attention, to help - but she shoved that back down. That wasn't her place, not now. Another kick sent her zooming past a commander, the stern look on her face not quite masking the fear of what was coming. Severin couldn't blame them.
The corridors rapidly thinned out in the few minutes Severin took to get to briefing room Alpha, soldiers finding their places, reporting, settling in to find out what exactly they were in for. She moved with more speed, catching herself on junctions and using her momentum to swing into another corridor with only the smallest loss of speed, a precision difficult for most humans. Eva informed her that several other pilots had already arrived, made Severin aware of their names. She didn't devote much of her mind to learning them - at least, not from that information. She would meet them soon enough, and then she could correlate the data.
With a final swing, Severin shed the last of her speed and swung into the briefing room, coming on the heels of an older man.
"...sit tight," the man said, catching a seat near the front of the room. Severin floated in behind him, hooked a foot on a seat and pulled herself in, taking a position in the second row.
"Good evening," she said. Her voice carried the rounded edges of an expensive education, and if she didn't exactly sound English, her accent was from the same neighbourhood. She pulled in a breath to say something else, but just then Eva made her aware of Knight's imminent arrival.
She turned her attention to the rest of the pilots, or those she could see without turning around, watching their faces, their eyes, the way they tucked stray locks of hair away even in microgravity. These people would hold her life - such as it was - in their hands, and she would hold the same responsibility for them, in all likelihood. The weight of that seemed suddenly more real, more tangible, more palpable.
She would do what she could to keep them safe.
She wondered if they would do the same.
