Stargazers: Federation Cruiser Siegfried

Federation Cruiser Siegfried

            Arthur wakes first, his head ringing and his body sluggish.  He had been sedated before being brought onboard the ship and now finds himself at rest in an infirmary.  The interior is a soft, washed pink.  The lights are dimmed.  He has a curtain pulled for privacy and can see shadows cast along it.  A nearby monitor shows his heartbeat.  He sits up before help can come.

            A nurse meets him, a short, stout man with dark hair wearing red scrubs with black clothes underneath.  He has an identification badge that Arthur only glances at.  This man is a member of the Federation military, and that is all Arthur needs to know about him.  He doesn’t like the scrutiny or the mistrust, but he had been trained for a long time not to trust a Fed, and he can’t bring himself to betray the notion now.

            “How are the girls?”

            “The Commander will be here soon,” the nurse says coolly.  He has a clipboard and flips over its holographic interface.  “Your injuries were largely superficial.  We pulled your records, those that were public.”  The nurse looks at him.  “You know how to roll with the punches, don’t you?”

            Arthur goes quiet.  He retreats back into his head and watches from there.  It is instinct to him, his military training kicking in.  They are not interrogating him yet, and he finds it unlikely that he will be tortured again, but he feels less safe here than he did on Lancelot’s ship.  At least there he knew who the enemies were.  Here, they will hide their blades behind a smile.  It is all politics until the first bullet is fired, and then it is war.

            The nurse takes Arthur’s vitals and records them before leaving him behind his curtain.  Arthur hears a door slide open and close.  A short time later, the door does this again, and a man enters.  This man is tall and strong.  His jaw is pronounced, his body long and powerful.  He wears an officer’s uniform with a series of badges pinned to his chest.  Arthur doesn’t know enough about the Federation military to discern their meaning, but they are impressive none-the-less and tell him what he needs to know—this man is the Commander.

            The Commander regards him quietly.  He stands tall, back straight, arms folded behind him.  They make eye contact, and the Commander does not look away.  After a lingering silence, where Arthur is quietly appraised, the Commander says, “You seem in good health.  I trust that my people have been taking care of you.”

            Arthur stays quiet for a moment and weighs his every action.  He allows a nod.

            “That is good.  You might be wondering where you are—though I have some idea that you might have figured it out already.  This is my ship, the Federation Cruiser Siegfried.  It is newly built and still getting its kinks worked out, but it is a fine ship that runs smoothly, and it will take you wherever you might need to get to, but we before we discuss where you need get to, I have a few other questions.

            “You may or may not know—though I am assuming that you do—but the Federation military does not visit Hades often.  No one does, really, except for criminals.  We fly the boarders, for various purposes, but we keep clear of this area.  A war would erupt—could erupt now—should we be seen interloping in such criminal business.  The atmosphere is tense on Hades, which raises the question as to why we stepped in.”

            The Commander pauses.  He gives Arthur a moment to speak.  Arthur stares fixedly at the ground, so the Commander continues.  “We’ve heard some interesting radio traffic, and it led us there.  Military involvement on the planet Hades is peculiar, almost unheard of, but strange happenings call for strange responses.  Would you like to tell me, Captain Jameson Arthur, formerly of the Republic Military’s Centurion program, what it was that you were doing on Hades, and what had brought so much firepower down upon you and your friends?”

            Arthur keeps a wary silence and watches the Commander as he does.  They already know his history—they know about Centurion—which likely means that they suspect him already.  Silence could be incriminating, but the wrong words could find him dead.  He chooses carefully what he will reveal and what he won’t.  The Three Army Accord would see a war break out over what was brought onto this ship.

            “They were pirates,” Arthur says.  “We were on a research facility—I don’t know what they were researching—and we got hit by random.  They were taking anything they could salvage, metals, electronics, people.  I was doing guard detail, but they caught us by surprise.  In remote places, it can be hard to be kept in the loop sometimes.  I managed to escape when they docked in Charon, and I brought those two with me.  They were chasing us down with everything they had.”

            The Commander listens quietly and without judgment.  His face remains passive until the end.  Then, he rubs his chin.  “All of that firepower for escapees?”

            Arthur shrugs.  “Who knows what those sorts of people are thinking? If they were rational, they wouldn’t be doing pirates in the first place.”

            “You and I, sir, have different opinions of rational. That sort of freedom can be appealing to some and isn’t lightly given up for a handful of slaves, not if they have a ship full of supplies.  Who were you doing research for?”

            Arthur pauses heavily.  “I don’t know,” he says.

            The Commander lifts his eyebrows before smiling.  “You don’t?”

            “I worked for a private military contractor.  To my knowledge, the research station was private as well.  They didn’t fill me in on details, and I didn’t ask.”

            “With your history, you might find yourself more cautious.”

            “I probably should have.”

            The Commander laughs.  “Your records list you as Olympic, so we will see you back if you were taken by pirates or slavers.  We’ll reach out soon.  Until then, you’re welcome to mess and the infirmary, but we’ll be keeping you in the hold with the girls. We’ll call on you if we need anything.”

            “Thanks.”

            The Commander nods and leaves.

 

-Stargazers part 1-

 

            Arthur is returned to the hold, escorted by three guards, each carrying automatic rifles at the ready.  The safeties are kept on, but their presences are made known.  He keeps his eyes down but remains ready as well.  Though they are at a relative calm, it is a calm within an enemy vessel, and Arthur is trained to stay primed for combat even when at rest.

            He waits in the hold while the nurses onboard continue their examination of the others.  Chastity is injured, but the damage is superficial.  Lancelot is a skilled interrogator and a master at torture.  He did nothing to her that couldn’t be set right.  It was his intention to break her mind and not her body.  Too much duress can get false confessions or, in the case of death, nothing at all.  He wanted her exposed, not gutted.

            Lady is unharmed, though the examination is short.  Arthur worries most over what was found in that time, but the guards betray nothing to him when they drop the others off.  Chastity falls asleep beside Arthur on the cot where he sits.  Lady stands at the doorway, vigilant.  Restless, Arthur stands and leaves to walk the hallways while their movement isn’t restricted, to get a feel for the atmosphere of the ship and how it might have changed following the Lady’s examination and interrogation.

            Arthur walks the halls unattended.  He walks lightly with his head down.  Soldiers pass him, their eyes lingering.  He stops by a holographic window and stares out into sea of stars that surround them.  Hades glimmers in the fore, the long, steel tether of Charon catching the light of the star.  By itself, the planet looks almost like a constellation of stars.

            “Arthur.”  Commander Blake approaches him from behind.  Arthur turns to meet him.  They stand together in silence, Blake with his arms folded behind his back, Arthur with his hands at his side.  Siegfried remains in orbit, drifting silently around the planet.  The light side of the planet comes into view.  Charon remains in sight no matter where they go.

            “Stretching your legs.”

            “Need to make sure they haven’t fallen off.”

            Blake smiles.  “I can understand.  Things were bad down there.”  They speak without making eye contact.  There is a wall between them.  Blake is fishing for information, and Arthur remains unwilling to give it.  “I trust that your friends have been returned to you.”

            Arthur nods.

            “Good.  And they are in good health?  I must ask to keep my crew honest, you know.”

            “We’re all being treated well.”

            “That is gratifying to hear.  Though, I must ask, I believe my medical staff is playing a trick on me.”

            “Oh?”

            “The tall one, she has no records, military or otherwise.  It could be she’s undocumented, but that is a problem in itself, isn’t it?”

            Arthur remains quiet.

            “What did she do on your base?”

            Arthur pauses, shrugs.  “Not sure,” he says.  “I mean to say, she wasn’t there.  She was already on the ship.”

            “And you found her?”

            Arthur nods.

            “She seems quite protective of the girl, of Ms. Clarke—Ah, Dr. Clarke— to have only just met her.”

            “People get strange when they’re put into difficult situations like this.”  Arthur pauses thoughtfully, and when Blake doesn’t speak, he says, “They’re not soldiers like we are.”

            “Like you were,” Blake says.  “But you’re right.  It is easy to forget that civilians aren’t trained for such things.  Still, there is something else that baffles me about their report.”  Blake pauses now to see if Arthur responds.  “Surviving a crash like that without injury.  We found her unconscious, but…”

            “She got lucky.”

            “Very.”  Blake shifts his weight and taps his boot against the floor.  “I’ve gotten lucky before, you know, a bit like you.  You suffered, what, one lasting injury in your time as a soldier?”

            “My knee,” Arthur says.  He knocks his right knee with his knuckle and announces the metal plate used to replace it.  “Got it injured on my last mission, actually.  Pure luck.”

            “Bad luck.” Blake smiles.  “Lost a part of my left leg,” he says.  “Got it replaced with synthetic bits, all of them meant to make me stronger and faster.  Damn thing aches when it rains, though.  You ever get that?”

            “A little stiff when I wake up, but nothing when it rains.”

            “Lucky.  Keeps me spaceborne, honestly.  I read that you forewent any modern prosthetics—just a plate.  May I ask why?”

            “Didn’t need it,” Arthur says.  “I don’t see the reason to ever be more than human.”

            “Then tell me your secret, because it seems to me with how people walk about, always expanding into the stars, we do nothing but look for how to be more than human.”

            Arthur shrugs.  “For me, I saw war, and I realized that nothing else we do will ever make us more than what we are.  Everything good or bad about us is stuck right here.”  Arthur taps his chest.  “Machines, prosthetics, synthetics, none of that will make us less of this.”

            Blake nods.  “That’s one way of looking at it, but it does raise a question.  If nothing will make us more than we are, then I have to ask, that woman traveling with you and Dr. Clarke, do you happen to know what she is?”

            Arthur goes quiet.  A hundred answers pass through his head, but none of them are real enough to say aloud, so he doesn’t answer.  Instead, he asks, “What do you mean?”

            “The medical examination, the x-rays, they all told us something very peculiar.  At a glance, it seems entirely human, but when you look on the inside, there is nothing but steel in place of bone, like a robot from science fiction, like a miniaturized Gigas suit.  Ring any bells?”

            “Maybe extensive medical replacement?  What did her file say?”

            “I told you, no file.”

            Arthur goes quiet, pausing as if he is considering it but really searching for something else to push it aside.  In escaping Hector to Siegfried, he jumped from an open flame to a nest of vipers: it is better only in that he can fight death this way.  “I see,” he says, “I forgot.  Well, I don’t know much about her.  She doesn’t talk, so I don’t know what I can tell you.  Like I said, we were all picked up for slaving and…”

            “Yes, you had said.”  The warmth has left Blake now, and he is foregoing an attempt at charming the information out of Arthur.  “Well, thank you for the chat, Captain.  It has been a pleasure.”  He nods and walks away, leaving Arthur alone with his thoughts and with the stars.

 

-Stargazers part 1-

 

            Chastity wakes to find the Lady at her side. The Lady is awake and watching her with impassive stoicism.  Chastity sits up and rubs the sleep from her eyes.  She looks the Lady over but finds no obvious harm done.  Her own body, however, is covered in scrapes and bruises.  She puts her back to the cold steel of the holding cell where they are.  Her memories are foggy at best and things best left unsorted.  She doesn’t want to remember Cipher dying in her head, nor does she want to remember anything that happened after.

            She starts speaking only as a way to distract herself, saying, “We’re lucky to be alive, huh? Any idea where we are?”  She is surprised when she hears the Lady answer.

            “Siegfried.  Federation Cruiser, Federation Space Fleet.  Commanding Officer Commander Robin Blake.”

            The voice is synthetic but nearly human and feminine in tone and timbre, but the inflection is not natural.  Chastity stares for a moment before she responds.  “Did you—you just spoke, didn’t you?”

            The Lady turns to her, eyes faintly glowing.  “Yes.”

            Chastity smiles for the first time in days.  “You’re talking, you’re actually talking.  I’m talking right now with a Guide.  Unbelievable.”  She meets the Lady’s gaze and finds it far-off, still distant, like the Lady is watching something else entirely while in the room with her, and Chastity marvels at what she sees.  “How long have you been able to speak?”

            “I could always speak,” the Lady says, voice and eyes equally distant.  “I had no words.”

            “And you have words now?”

            “Yes.”

            Chastity looks at the Lady and wishes that Cipher were still there.  For years, she had an extra mind inside of her own, and while she now has theories, she hasn’t the tools to build on them.  Out of desperation to learn, “Your eyes are glowing.  I saw them do the same when we were on the last ship, and also when we were on the planet’s surface.  Is that a normal part of your function, or does it signify something else?”

            “I am learning.”

            “Learning?  Are you, by chance, interacting with the ship’s extra-net connection?”

            “Yes.  There is so much,” the Lady says. “I have been asleep for so long.”

            Chastity smiles and presses her fingertips together.  She looks at the scaffolding of her fingers and then between them as she thinks.  “How long were you asleep?”

            “Unclear.  There is no basis for comparison between our two calendar systems.”

            Chastity laughs.  “That’s probably true.  Do you remember anything from before you were asleep?”

            “I remember you.”

            Chastity blushes and looks away.  She is just about to speak again when the doors slide open with a rush of air.  Arthur enters.  He looks healthy save for the bruising across his face, and he carries himself not with a limp, but showing care on his left side.  He joins Chastity on the cot.  “Are you well?”

            Chastity nods.

            “Good, and how is,” he looks to the Lady.

            “She’s speaking.”

            “She is?”  They look expectantly at the Lady, who continues to stare at the distant wall.

            “Jameson Arthur, former Republic Military, Special Operation: Centurion.  Public data is limited due to the program’s clandestine nature.  However, parts of it were made public following…”

            “Please, don’t.”

            The light in the Lady’s eyes fades as they make eye contact.  The Lady nods.  “Understood.  I do speak.”

            “I’ve noticed.”  Arthur rubs his chin and sighs.  “When did that start?”

            “Only moments ago,” Chastity says.  “Maybe something in the car crash jarred her memory.”

            “No, I’ve merely amassed enough words in your language to comprehend and express.”

            Arthur looks between the two of them and sits back.  “Right.”  He rests his hands on his knees to keep his back straight.  “Well, that’s interesting, I suppose, but it makes things harder.”

            Chastity’s brow knits.  “What does it make harder?”

            “We’re aboard a Federation cruiser who has made contact with the Olympic fleet.  They’re taking us back to them.”

            “That’s good news, isn’t it?”

            “The Commanding officer has made a log.  They are suspicious as to my origins,” the Lady says, eyes alight and gaze distant.

            “Exactly.”  Arthur sighs.  “Which means that this is a play of some sort.  I am just trying to figure out what.”

            Chastity curls up on the cot.  “They won’t hurt us, will they?”

            “Not if they’re contacting the Republic.  That would be far too dangerous to treat us like that, especially following the attention they would have garnered at Hades.  No, they’re not going to hurt us, but they might use us as a bargaining chip once the Republic gets here.  Either way, we need to tread carefully.”   He looks to the Lady and says, “And you should keep your voice off for now.”

            “Affirmative.”

            They settle in, Arthur’s back at rest against the wall.  Chastity looks between them and wrings her hands.  “One more question, though, if I can impose.  Lady, do you have anything that we should call you?  What is your name?”

            The Lady looks toward her.

            “I mean, should we just keep calling you the Lady?”

            The Lady nods silently.

            Chastity nods.  “Then, I guess, we should introduce ourselves.  Lady, I am Chastity Clarke, and this is Jameson Arthur.  It’s nice to meet you.”