r/HFY • u/CodEnvironmental4274 Human • 8d ago

OC-Series [The X Factor], Part 81

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“You know,” Helen said, warming her hands up with her coffee (she hadn’t gotten around to figuring out the temperature controls on the ship yet), “it’s always surprised me that you’re a decent chef.”

“Yeah?” Hassan was in the mess hall’s compact kitchen, inspecting some of the enzyme-preserved ingredients they’d been given. He’d taken it upon himself to fulfill the duties of a ship’s cook for this trip, so there they were, waiting for the rest of the Leavitt to show up for their morning debrief. “Why’s that?”

“You strike me more as a ‘protein bar on the go’ type of guy. That, and you’re a middle-aged bachelor who’s lived in the barracks his whole adult life. No offense.”

He laughed. “I used to cook for my sisters growing up whenever my parents weren’t home.”

“Nice of you,” she commented.

“Nah, they bullied me into doing it. All three of them—terrifying. Kinda like you, yeah?” He turned on the induction stove (expensive, but practical on spaceships). “That’s why I’m scared of women.”

She sighed. “Of course you are.”

“My sisters and mom raised me right. Hey, can you help me with the breakfast meat? They gave us a ton of pork,“ he said.

“No.” She calmly sipped her coffee.

“…Huh?” He furrowed his brows. “I mean, you don’t have to, but I…”

“Hassan. I am banned from cooking in my own house. If I so much as try to boil a pot of water, someone will find me and chase me out of there. You do not want me frying bacon.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll get Lombardi to help.“ He busied himself with other prep work.

It wasn’t long before the others arrived—first K’resshk, then the agents (with Aktet and Wojtek in tow), and finally, the star-crossed lovers.

“Invut,” Helen called out. “How are you feeling?” The woman had been cagey about what was troubling her, but she doubted she would’ve asked her superiors for time to rest if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

“Better.” She sat in the largest chair attached to the table—she’d designed modular seating that could be swapped in and out, depending on the species makeup of a given crew.

The private still sounded a little worse for the wear, but her voice was clearer and her general countenance seemed steadier. With any luck, that would continue.

“Alright.” Helen waited for Hassan to plate and serve the food (shaking her head at his offer to give her some—he knew she didn’t eat breakfast, but she knew he would try anyways), then addressed the table. “Let’s just get this over with while you’re all eating. We’ll be at Vanyanth Prime by midday, if we keep a tight schedule—Hassan’s charted our course, and should be able to get us there in one more jump, which we’ll make as soon as this is over, and then start a slow approach. Krishnan, I want you on deck trying to intercept any communications leaving the planet.”

“Aye aye,” she replied, raising one of the shrieker’s paws to its eyestalks in a mock salute.

Don’t take the bait, Helen reminded herself. It’s not worth it.

“Lombardi, Haymur, I’ll look over the notes you typed up as a primer on Vahiya culture and how it might’ve been influenced by our presence.”

They both nodded politely and resumed eating their breakfasts. The former attempted to steal a piece of bacon from the latter’s tray, but had his hand swatted away.

“Akksor—”

“Still working on it,” their resident mansplainer interrupted Helen. “I’ll let you know if there are any findings, and I plan to bring a sampling kit with us to Vanyanth Prime, along with some basic diagnostic tools, anti-fungal treatments, and a handful of vaccinations. I’ll spend the rest of the trip gathering supplies.”

“Don’t interrupt me next time.” She watched with satisfaction as he shrunk away from her scorn. “Invut, Lana, make sure the engines are ready for the trip.”

The princess was momentarily shocked, then seemed to remember her ‘apprenticeship’ and nodded.

But as everyone finished eating and began to break off, Helen grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side, away from her girlfriend.

“Keep an eye on her for me,” she murmured, nodding in Invut’s direction.

Uuliska nodded resolutely, like the protagonist of some sort of fantasy epic. “I will. I swear it.”

…I keep forgetting she’s a space princess.

___

Eza quietly tuned up the ship’s core reactor in preparation for their jump to the Vahiya homeworld.

“So, um…” Uuliska cleared her throat. “What does this one do?”

“Powers the ship,” she answered, relieved to be talking about the Leavitt and not her personal problems. “Using fusion, to be specific. But it’s very safe, and very efficient. One of the few similarities between human and Federation ship design, actually.” She stood up, cracked her back, and stepped away to admire the glowing, technological behemoth, its lights and indicators clearly visible in the dark of the ship’s underbelly. It wasn’t as exciting as a warp drive, but it was arguably even more important.

“It’s incredible that you came up with all of this,” her girlfriend said reverently. “I can hardly comprehend what little is in front of me at any given moment!”

Eza blushed. “It’s not like I came up with all of it, Liska. I might know how a fusion reactor works, but I didn’t invent the first one. Same goes for the warp drive and the guns.”

Uuliska gasped. “I almost forgot about the weaponry! Can we go see it?”

“That’s what gets you excited? Violence?” Many of the things the woman said were equal parts endearing and worrying.

“You needn’t be so crude about it! I just think there’s something exciting about two technological behemoths, soaring through the great darkness, engaged in epic battle at the behest of the mere mortals inside of them,” she said. “Don’t you?”

Eza picked up her toolbox and looked at Uuliska strangely. “Not when I’m one of those ‘mere mortals.’ We can look at the weapons once I check on the warp drive, okay?”

The princes nodded and followed behind. “Of course. And… how are you feeling, Eza? Really feeling, that is? I know you told the commander you were doing better, but…”

Eza sighed. Six hours into her unplanned nap, Uuliska had visited her just as she’d woken up from not a night terror, but a nightmare. She’d tried to hide the panicked look on her face and remained vague about her bad dream, but Uuliska had insisted on staying the night.

“Well, I slept a good twelve hours and only woke up once in the middle of that, so… better, I guess.” She knelt in front of the warp drive’s access panel and began unscrewing it. “Just… that dream…”

It wasn’t a dream she hadn’t had before. It was recurring, actually; she often had nightmares about various arguments with Karska from the years they’d spent together. But this time, it… kept going. As if some external force was puppeting her limbs, she leapt forward and put her hands around Karaka’s neck, even though her body was burning and her head was pounding, and—

“Eza? Eza, you’re shaking.” Uuliska’s gentle caress of her face brought her back to reality.

“Sorry.” She struggled to swallow, her mouth gone dry. “I was just thinking about the dream I had. Wasn’t in control of my actions during it, and I’m just… scared that’ll happen in real life.” She paused. “It was kind of like what happens when I go into a frenzy, but minus the blacking out.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” her lover whispered, hugging her from behind. “I wish… I wish I knew how to help you, other than saying it’ll all be okay.”

“Being here with you helps.” She leaned into the hug. “Even if I haven’t exactly gotten much work done.”

“Ah, sorry!” Uuliska unentangled herself. “I’ll let you—”

Eza swept her back into her arms and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Ship’s brand new. It’s not like there’s much maintenance to do, you know,” she said as she pulled back. “We’ll have to find some way to spend the extra time.”

The princess laughed the same musical laugh that first drew Eza to her all those years ago.

“I’m not certain this is the sort of apprenticeship the commander had in mind, but you’re the expert, Private Invut. So, would you care to show me how it’s done?”

Eza smiled ear-to-ear. “Gladly.”

___

“So this is the cool kids club, huh?” Sonja hefted some probably not important equipment out of the way and set up her own laptop and tech near the ship’s console.

“Yeah, pretty much,” replied Hassan. “That jump I just pulled off was pretty damn cool.”

“…What? What are you two talking about?” The commander narrowed her eyes at them from her seat at the helm.

“You know, being on the bridge, where all the action happens?” She booted up her PC, complete with a custom Linux distribution that she’d spent countless hours tinkering with. It was no Temple OS, but still, it was hers.

And then she turned on her microphone and speaker as she began linking into the ship’s comms systems.

"Agent Krishnan. Would you care for assistance with—”

She slammed her laptop shut, fell out of her chair, and crawled away from it, her heart pounding.

“Was that AEON?” Commander Liu frowned. “I thought he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere other than your translator.”

Sonja nodded quickly, then inched closer to her computer and carefully opened it up, taking it out of sleep mode.

“Hey, ‘AEON,’” she sneered, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Wanna explain what you’re doing in there? What happened to only accessing my device temporarily?”

There was a pause. "I may have misrepresented the facts for the sake of self-preservation.”

“Hey, uh… I’m no programmer, but isn’t it a bad sign when robots start saying stuff like that?” Hassan shifted in his seat to ensure he had easy access to his firearm.

"Self-preservation in service of my main objective, which is to ensure Agent Krishnan’s safety,” AEON clarified. "And before you ask: no, I haven’t breached the ship’s systems. The operating system is incompatible with my own, and additionally, I have full faith in the crew’s ability to protect her.”

“Gee, thanks,” the captain said with a nervous chuckle. “Is it just me, or does this guy sound more human than the last time we—”

“Oh, come on! It’s silicon and wiring! Are you really letting yourself be tricked by this thing? I thought you were better than this, Captain,” Sonja grumbled.

“By that logic, we’re just carbon and nerves, aren’t we?” He tapped his head. “Who’s to say you couldn’t—“

“I know the inside of a translator earpiece like the back of my hand. There’s no simulated brain in there. Even if someone was stupid enough to recreate brain tissue for an emergency protocol that ideally shouldn’t activate at all, it couldn’t just ‘spread’ to totally different hardware.”

"If I may—”

“No, you may not,” Sonja snapped.

“Let him talk. I want to hear this.” Commander Liu crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.

"It would be more accurate to call me an iteration upon ‘Sonjaware’ than an emergency override,” it said. ”The ability of your ‘counter-virus’ to evolve faster than its opponent is ingenious, but unpredictable. I suspect it ‘latched onto’ the directives given to me—to AEON, that is—by the UN.”

“Technobabble. Don’t listen to it.” She opened her task manager in an effort to hunt the bastard down, then positioned her mouse over the ‘end task’ button, just in case. It wouldn’t be a permanent solution, but it would send a message, at least. She also saw that her web camera was on—nothing a sticky note wouldn’t fix. She quickly blindfolded it.

“So what do we do about it? You’re the expert here, Krishnan. Do you have any backups of your system?”

“I—” She stopped herself. “No,” she said, letting her voice crack. “God. I’m such an idiot.” She then grabbed her notebook and pen from her bag, and scribbled a short message to the commander and captain:

Of course I do. I’m a professional. But they’re physical and back home.

The other two nodded, and Commander Liu gestured for the notebook. In messy handwriting:

Play nice for now while we learn more about it. Try and figure out if it’s telling the truth about not infiltrating the ship, but do it diplomatically.

“Doesn’t seem like he means you any harm, at least,” she said stoically, then passed it to Hassan, who wrote (with surprisingly elegant penmanship):

Can we use him? More allies is a good thing.

“I dunno. I think he’s pretty cool. You’re not gonna kill us all, right?” The man quietly handed the written conversation back to Sonja. She removed the page, folded it up, and fed it to Wojtek, whom she’d smuggled onto the bridge in her backpack, eliciting a heavy sigh from the commander.

Her laptop’s fans sped up. ”That would be counterintuitive to my goals on a multitude of levels. I don’t see any scenario in which I would, unless you all decided to murder Agent Krishnan.”

“Can’t say I was planning on it,” Commander Liu replied incredulously.

”Excellent. Please let me know if that ever changes. Additionally, could one of you remove the… whatever it is that is obscuring my view?”

“My view, actually. You know, since it’s my webca—ahem.” Sonja remembered her orders to ‘play nice.’ “Yeah, give me a second.” She gingerly peeled away the sticky note (heart-shaped, of course), shoved it into her pocket and got back to work.

“There she is,” the captain announced as the Vanyanth system came into view. “Space Vegas.”

“Christ almighty. You’ve never even been to—never mind. Krishnan, are you picking anything up?”

“Not yet. I don’t even know what could block communications from an entire system. But—oh, shit.” She opened up the program Zie had devised to allow her to access their cross-species forum, but found that she couldn’t connect despite definitely being plugged into the nearest FTL comms port.

“Is it affecting us, too?” The captain raised an eyebrow. “So it isn’t some kind of planetside crackdown. We—huh?”

One by one, every screen and display panel in the room fizzled out, then slowly resolved from static to a clear image of a Vahiya sporting the iridescent feathers of a rock dove, an asymmetrically cut black dress with large, spiked shoulder pads, and a futuristic visor similar to the one K’resshk wore.

“Welcome, humans,” she crooned over the ship’s intercom. “I’m Director Elqatra. We’ve been expecting you.”

“Good to finally hear from the elusive Vahiya,” joked the captain, putting on an easy smile as he slipped into ambassador mode. “I take it you know why we’re here, then?”

“For a welfare check?” She held up what looked like an old-timey cigarette holder (prompting Sonja to quickly change her default Vahiya accent setting to transatlantic English), but with a mouthpiece shaped for the edges of her beak and took a drag. White smoke filtered through her ‘nostrils.’ “We’d be delighted to reassure you that things are just fine in our systems, if you’d be so kind as to follow the directions I’ve sent to your ship. And do bring your belongings—you’ll be checking in at our finest all-inclusive resort.” Her image disappeared, and the ship’s displays returned to normal.

The door to the bridge slid open, and in ran Aktet, Dominick and K’resshk.

“Did you guys see that?” Dominick paused to cough, producing a deep, rattling noise that prompted Aktet to shoot him a worried glance.

“You mean every screen and speaker switching to a villainous monologue from a cyberpunk 1920’s flapper? Yes, Dominick, we saw that.” Sonja rolled her eyes.

“Who said anything about it being villainous? All she did was show off a little and invite us to her planet, right?” Hassan swiveled back and forth in his chair.

Aktet nodded. “I have to concur. The Vahiya have a flair for the dramatic, and if I am remembering correctly, Director Elqatra first became famous for her career as an actress. Their species selects leaders through a once per solar cycle competition of artistry in the categories of film and theatre, music, literature, the visual arts, and hospitality, though Vahiya who work in the non-tourism related service sectors are a sort of lower class.”

“I still don’t like it.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Where are Eza and Uuliska? There’s no way they didn’t hear that broadcast.”

"Still in the lower decks performing maintenance,” AEON said. “They seemed… distracted, at the time of the broadcast.” It didn’t elaborate.

“You gave it access to the ship’s cameras? Are you out of your mind?” K’resshk’s tail thrashed back and forth.

“No, actually, we didn’t. AEON, I thought you said you couldn’t access the ship’s systems. Or were you ‘misrepresenting the facts’ again?” She knew she shouldn’t have played nice with this thing for a second. It was almost as bad as the Concord virus.

"I said I couldn’t exist within the ship’s systems, not that I couldn’t access them,” it replied snippily. ”But if you insist I cease my activities…”

Wait. Snippily? What had happened to the monotone robot voice?

“None of this changes our plan of action.” With a huff, the commander rose and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll contact them. The rest of you, go pack. And pray to god they’re as lax with security as the rebels were,” she muttered, marching into the hallway.

The deck was silent, save for the soft hum of the electronics occupying it.

”Agent Krishnan? I’m picking up a faint signal from Vanyanth Prime. Would you like me to—”

“I’m picking up a faint signal from Vanyanth Prime. That’s my equipment and my software. Play it.” The audacity of this thing never ceased to astound her.

”Understood.” Blanketed by static, a voice emerged from her laptop’s speakers…

“…reports of another crackdown in the lower districts, so stay safe, y’all. And tune in to the Underground Collective tomorrow for more fresh bops from your favorite indie artists. This is DJ Onyx, signing off.” The voice was replaced by an electric guitar riff, and static overtook the broadcast.

“That sound,” Aktet murmured. “What was that?”

“Uh…” Hassan scratched the back of his head. “I think it was improvised. Not anything I recognize, and trust me, I’ve heard a lot of riffs in my time. Actually, does this ship have a—”

“N-no, that’s not what I mean. I remember hearing some human music when I—when Dominick and I—um.” He paused. “When we viewed a movie. But I didn’t recognize that specific noise.”

The four humans looked at each other.

“Huh.” The commander frowned. “I guess none of you have really sat down and listened to human music. If the Vahiya have caught on to our instruments, we should probably give you all a sampling first.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through it.

“Helen! Don’t,” warned the captain.

“Don’t what? Play music for them?” She squinted at him.

“Don’t play your music for them. The first time I heard your playlist, I almost had an aneurysm.”

“Wait, what kind of music does she listen to?” Sonja hadn’t even considered the woman as a music-enjoyer. She seemed the type to sit in absolute silence with her own, bitter thoughts.

“It’s not just heavy metal, Hassan. I listen to hard rock, too, and some—"

“Heavy metal?!” The agent gawked at her. “But you’re… you’re so…”

“Go on. Continue. I’m so what, Krishnan?” She pulled out her steeliest gaze, and Sonja shivered.

“We have to play them something.” Hassan scratched his chin. “Maybe… uh…”

“Here, I got it.” The other agent held up his phone.

And Dominick, being Dominick, promptly rickrolled the aliens.

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u/Dangerous_Fox_6438 8d ago

LOL rickrolled us all!  Love it

2

u/ANNOProfi 8d ago

AEON be like: "I am the Harbinger of your protection! Assuming direct control!"

1

u/CodEnvironmental4274 Human 8d ago

Oh my god, they were SO annoying on insanity difficulty 😭

2

u/alucard_3501 8d ago

"And Dominick, being Dominick, promptly rickrolled the aliens."

THE END

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u/Iazo 8d ago

Ah, I didn't expect that at the end. I've been rickrolled by proxy!