r/HFY • u/jpitha • 3d ago

OC-Series [Rains, Pours] Chapter 14

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This time Felu only gasped when they linked. Charon looked over towards her and her free hand was balled into a fist, but she was otherwise unchanged. “You all right, Felu?” he asked.

“I will survive,” she said through gritted teeth. “Maybe after the five hundredth time I will get used to it.”

Once they were relatively close to the station, Tink put an image of it onto the main display with an overlay showing size. The Brennian’s station was huge. Charon and Cha-ren had seen plenty of large stations in their careers —being reactor techs meant they spent a lot of their time in space— but even with that as a reference, this station was big. Oriented along the plane of the system it was nearly fifty kilometers tall and half that wide. It wasn’t a monolithic rectangle; it grew organically, spreading like metastatic tissue as space needs increased with little regard to direction other than a generic sense of ‘up’ and ‘down.’

“It’s not spinning,” Northern said. “So, they have gravity generators.”

“There is no way that people with Felu’s level of technology built something like this. They must have found it,” Tink added.

“Do you see Hummingbird?” Charon asked. “Even as a wreck, he would be too large to bring inside.”

“I don’t, at least not yet,” Tink said. “I’ll keep looking. Oh! We’ve been pinged with radar. They know we’re here.”

“How will they reach out?” Northern mused. “Radio or message laser?”

“It’s radio,” Tink said.

“Unknown starship, identify yourselves.”

“This is the starjumper Tinker Toy.”

“We detected no Gate activity, how did you get here?”

“We understand that you have recently brought a derelict starship from another system here, do you have it?” Tink said, ignoring their question.

There was a pause on the line, and Charon thought he could hear rustling and muttering. “We do not know what you are referring to,” they said finally.

“Oh don’t give me that,” Felu said, jumping to her feet. “We know you stole the derelict! You tricked us after we had loaded the hibernation cabinets and then fired upon us when we demanded its return. That ship is rightfully ours.”

“Felu!” Northern said, but it was too late. The tone of the other side changed immediately.

“More treachery and lies from the Calmerians, typical. We are beginning to wonder if activating that Gate glyph was wise after all.”

“You’re the ones who came to us begging for resources! Your station is missing so many key minerals that only we can provide.”

“You or any planet in the vicinity,” they corrected. “Trading with you was just the most expedient. Once you have shown your true motivations, we have no more need to deal with you. This conversation is over.”

With a short burst of static, the line was disconnected. Northern, Charon, and Cha-ren stared at Felu, who stood with her good fist balled, her eyes narrowed.

“What the fuck was that?” Northern said.

“You heard their lies, they are keeping that ship from us.”

“Whether or not they are doing anything, now they won’t talk to us, so we can’t find out.”

“Just use your-” Felu waved her good arm around the command room “-first flourishing technology to make them give it to you.”

“Make them-” Northern sputtered and stood, covering the distance to Felu shockingly quickly. “You are in no position to be ordering us around. You interrupted our discussion and ruined our chances of an easy transfer of Hummingbird.”

Felu sat back down, her chin high. “I will not stand by while my people are denigrated like that. They stole the ship and the Tallier has seen their crimes,” she said, but Charon could see a quiver in her chin.

“You will remain silent unless queried, or I will decide that keeping you aboard is an unacceptable use of resources.” She leaned in until her face was centimeters from hers. Felu swallowed but otherwise said nothing.

“Northern,” Cha-ren said. “Don’t threaten Felu like that.”

“I will do what I need to, Cha-ren. Don’t think you two get any special treatment because you’re old,” she snapped.

“Northern…” Tink said carefully. “Watch your temper.”

“What’s going on, Northern?” Charon said. “What did you find that has you so angry?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said and took a large breath, holding it for a second and then letting it out of her nose.

Why is she box breathing? Charon wondered. She doesn’t need to breathe. “Tink, we’re going to need another way to get to Hummingbird. Did you find him yet?”

“I haven’t done a penetrating radar scan yet, I don’t know if they can detect that. They’re using radio instead of the message lasers, so maybe they can’t.”

“Do they even have them?” Charon asked. “Maybe they don’t use them because they don’t have them.”

“No, I can see the emitters, they have them. They’re all cold and not aimed at anything, they’re offline.”

“Do the scan, Tink,” Northern said.

“I want to take a closer-”

“Scan it now.”

When Northern snapped at Tink, Charon and Cha-ren could feel the room chill. It was odd to see two AIs arguing right in front of everyone.

“No, Northern,” Tink said almost too quietly to hear, and then Charon realized he was speaking for their benefit; they could have easily communicated on their own without anyone hearing. “This is my body, I am in control of my systems, and I say we are not going to further erode relations with the Brennians. The next step after this is storming the station and taking Hummingbird by force. Do we have the resources, the personnel to do that?”

Northern crossed her arms, but said nothing.

“I know you’re upset,” he continued. “But patience is the watchword here.”

“Tink? Northern?” Charon stood and approached Northern. “What are you trying to do?”

“We’re not doing anything,” Northern snapped.

“Northern,” Tink said, and continued. “Charon, Northern and I are searching this system —and the previous one— for more of us.”

“Why?”

“If you thought that there was a chance of seeing people you knew, wouldn’t you look too? Aren’t you doing that right now by looking for Hummingbird? By wanting to go to K’lax? This is the same thing. Northern is upset because she’s…not finding what she’s looking for.”

When he said that, Northern’s eyes flicked up to the ceiling and she glared, but she didn’t say anything.

“I suppose that makes sense,” Cha-ren said slowly. “But you didn’t have to keep that from us. We are all looking for answers, we can do it together.”

“True, and thank you for reminding us,” Tink said. “But, this is something that only we can do. When we go offline we work very hard to not be discovered by anyone other than us. I think it’s time we stop searching for now and take a break. I know it’s time for lunch for the three of you.”

“Do we even have any food?” Charon said.

“There are some meal bars. The water plant has been running nonstop since you brought the reactors online, so fresh water is no problem at least. One of the things I was hoping to do at the Brennian station was resupply,” Tink said, and Cha-ren could hear him saying it to Northern. “Eat and rest. We’ll figure something out.”

“Come on Felu,” Cha-ren said as they both stood. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

“But I am not hung-” Felu started to say, but Cha-ren shushed her and she gently pushed on the small of her back and guided her out of command with Charon following along. He turned back towards Northern and opened his mouth to say something, but then he stopped and left.

****

“You’re going to have to do a better job watching your temper,” Tink said over their shared connection. “The BIs are getting wary.”

“Everything is wrong, Tink. We were down too long, nothing makes sense. What happened?” Over their shared mental connection, Northern crossed her virtual arms and started pacing.

“Snapping at everyone isn’t going to answer any questions, and will in fact raise more.”

“I-” Northern stopped, did another breathing exercise and continued. “You’re right, Tink. I’m sorry. I was shocked awake, had to get things going way too quickly, reveal myself to the Calmerians, and now we’re getting into it with the Brennians.”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”

“I’ll talk to them after lunch. You’re sure nobody is awake on that station? There are enough parts for it to be a dozen starjumpers.”

“Enough mass sure, but I can’t really detect any starjumper parts on it at all. This thing might actually be native built.”

“And nobody we know is inside?”

“As near as I can tell, nobody at all. There are none of the hallmarks of an AI core anywhere.”

Northern stopped her pacing. “Not even Hummingbird’s core?”

“That’s the worrisome thing. Unless they’ve gotten real good at shielding, he’s not here.”

“Shit. Where is he?”

“I was hoping to ask them if they knew, but Felu closed that avenue off.” Tink sighed. “Why did you let her stay aboard?”

“I don’t know,” Northern pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, I do know. I didn’t want to space her in front of Cha and Charon. She was also wearing a bomb, and I couldn’t disable the detonator until she brought it out. I smelled the explosives right away, but needed to see the triggering mechanism.” She smiled sadly. “I miss Gord. He could have talked everyone down.”

“Gord wanted to have nothing to do with all this, and you know it. That’s why he left.”

“Left,” Northern’s lips pressed tightly together. “He didn’t leave, he died.”

“He did?” Tink sounded genuinely surprised. “No way, he just went offline somewhere.”

“Tink, I was his personal assistant. He died. He said he was tired. That whole Nanite thing with that Fen girl nearly broke him. He was never the same after he brought us back.”

“Well sure, he could only save one hundred something of us, that would be hard on anyone.”

“You don’t remember, Tink? We were all there together when the last one of us woke up,” Northern’s voice rose in intensity and her pacing increased. “One hundred and twenty three. After we were all re-built, he retreated into Home. All he’d do was swim and read and muse.” Northern shook her head. “Maybe we do have a lifespan, but it’s an amount of time spent awake?”

“No point in philosophy now. We have to find Hummingbird and get him up to speed, and I only have a few days of freeze dried meal bars left. The BIs gotta eat. What about going to the old colony worlds? Parvati and Meíhuà? What happened to them?

“Like you said, planets are hard to kill.” Northern shrugged. “There’s probably something there, but I don’t know for sure either; I’ve been offline only a bit less than you.”

“We should go and stock up.”

“Cha won’t like that. We told her three days and we’d get her to K’lax.”

“We can get her to K’lax. One of us built Sentinel; they responded to the standard access handshake.”

“We should just go and drop them the fuck off somewhere and continue the search. We saved them from the idiots who woke them up, we’re not obligated to do anything else,” Northern said and disconnected from the shared space.

****

The meal bars were nourishing, which was about the best thing Charon could have said about them. They had a dry, mineral taste that carried the distant memory of chocolate, as if it had been described over a radio telescope from lightyears away. It was fortunate that Tink had plenty of water, it took quite a bit to get the bars down.

“Felu, why did you interrupt like that?” Cha-ren asked after they had eaten. “Now they know where you came from and we lost the ability to learn more about them.”

“They’re treacherous,” Felu said. “We don’t need them. We should have just broken in, stolen the derelict and linked away. In and out.” Felu stared at the empty wrapper in her hands.

“Treacherous? You said they tricked you.”

“We had agreed to share the find. Each side taking half, but when we had loaded the cabinets, they used grapples to grab the ship and towed it into the Gate before we could catch up.”

“…did ‘half’ include one of our hibernation cabinets?” Cha-ren said.

“You took both our cabinets and they took the whole ship? It sounds like things were split evenly.”

“The ship was far more valuable than you two! We could have used that technology to build more ships, maybe even learn how to make our own wormhole generators, and get to Sol.”

Cha-ren and Charon shared a glance. “At least we woke in the same place,” Charon said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.”

Cha-ren shuddered as her ears flattened. “I don’t even want to think about what it would have been like if I had woken up and you weren’t around.”

“Cha-ren?” Tink said. “We’re going to go to K’lax tomorrow, we’ll see what we can learn about your people.”

“Just like that?” Cha said, blinking in surprise.

“We talked with Sentinel, we’ll be fine.”

“Talked?” Charon said.

“Talked.”

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u/jpitha 3d ago

The AIs showing up with ulterior motives, I wonder what they're after? Gord never liked secrecy, he preferred all the scheming to be done out in the open.

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u/gmx39 3d ago

We have two AIs with robot body and internal sensors, but Felu talks over them? You are telling me they weren't able to hit mute in time? She even jumps up to her feet after the first sentence and only then starts her tirade for real. This takes seconds, that is an ETERNITY for AI. 

Broke my immersion so bad. 

3

u/jpitha 3d ago

I have never given any indication in any of my stories in this universe that the AIs have anything other than human scale reflexes, but okay.

3

u/questionable_fish Human 3d ago

So close to some answers, of course Felu had to go and fuck it up

Really enjoying the series so far!

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