Orbital Academy 17

"Shit," Aimee snarled, yanking back on the controls to spin her ship, keeping her nose pointed at the Academy ships as they passed. She was close enough to the others that she could see Preston to her right, his brow furrowed in concentration. The others swivelled in turn, and Aimee focused carefully on the retreating ships. *Why are they flying so slowly?* Aimee mused, just as her canopy was lit up by the falling rain of light. "From above!" She shouted, yanking her nose down, trying to outrun the ship above them. The fourth Academy pilot was flying slow, even though he had caught them by surprise.

*Space is three dimensional, space is three dimensional, Captain Appet always tried to drill that into your head, stupid stupid STUPID.* Aimee berated herself, as she tried to make sense of the lights on her canopy. Three of her squadmates weren't broadcasting, which meant her squad was down to four now. She gunned her thrusters even harder, leaving the trailing Academy ship behind. *Why is it so easy to outrun them? Are the new ships that much better?*

"ROOKS. Slow the FUCK down." The familiar voice snapped on the public channel, and Aimee jumped.

"Captain Appet?"

"If you get hit with a disabling shot at high speeds, what the fuck do you think is going to stop you when you have no brakes or adjusters? You'll go careening out into deep space and die. THINK, for god's sake." Captain Appet sounded enraged, but Aimee shook her head in confusion.

"Captain Appet, you're *helping* them?" Missy's voice over the comms contained the betrayal Aimee was thinking.

"Captain what the fuck?" Li said at almost the same time. Aimee clamped her mouth shut and reduced her speed. Despite the betrayal, it was good advice. If she lost control of her craft when moving too fast, she could be flung into space, moving far too fast for anyone to retrieve her. Her oxygen would dry up in a matter of an hour.

"Why?" Aimee asked.

"What am I supposed to do rookies? I'm given a mission, I fly it. That's how it works." Captain Appet sounded sad, but Aimee ground her teeth and spun her ship round, unleashing a barrage of bullets at the ship that was behind her. Her shots went wide, but the ship broke off its pursuit to join a nearby formation.

"I dunno, you could try not shooting us down you bitch." Marcus snapped.

"I was given an order! I'm not going to rebel against the General of my Orbital!"

"Even when that General is a psychopath trying to kill us all?"

"Marcus, I'm not asking you to come back. I understand it's not...it's not safe. But I have to fly the missions Academy gives me. If General Hunter wanted this over he could end it, it's Pivot's stubbornness that's forcing us against each other right now. This isn't Academy's fault Rooks."

Aimee tried to shut down her emotions and ignore the voices over the comms. She scanned her readouts, identifying positions of friends and foes. A lonely five blue circles winked back at her, while ten red indicators remained.

"Squaddies we're getting distracted, we need to focus." She said quietly but firmly. "There's nothing more we need to say, turn to private comms."

To her surprise, the others listened. Small indicator pips showed as two of her squadmates and the three Pivot pilots switched to private communication.

"She's a bitch-" Marcus repeated, "she-"

"No time for that now." Aimee snapped. "They're slaughtering us in this battle, form up."

"Pivot pilots," General Hunter's gruff voice cut in, "the transports have a clear path to Hangar C. Guide them in."

Aimee swept her nose towards the large bulks and hit the thruster gently, pushing her ship just slow enough that she wouldn't be carried too far away if her systems were shut down.

"So much for private communication." A Pivot pilot muttered. Red circles converged on Aimee's canopy, as one by one the Academy pilots changed course, breaking off towards the transports. Aimee squeezed off a few shots, but the Academy pilots were too skilled, their ships moved as if they could anticipate her shots before she even fired them. The pilots in formation around her tried just as hard, but the Academy ships were orbiting the transport in intricate patterns.

*We're good, but we're nowhere near Captain-level.* Aimee realized with despair.

"I'm gonna try something." Pilot Arcellus suddenly slammed forward on his thrusters to peel away from the formation.

"Stop!" Aimee's cry was lost in the cries from the rest of the group. Her gaze shot back to the cluster of cruisers around the transport ships, watching in horror as one tilted ever so slightly and unleashed a burst of bullets.

"Don't shoot at the fast one!" The voice of Winchest burst over the speakers, but the command came too late, just as Arcellus spoke.

"It's alright, they won't dare-" Aimee didn't see the actual contact between the ship and the ion bullets, but when the blue circle winked out on her screen she watched as Arcellus' ship went into a slow tumble, speeding past the transport and towards the green-tinged planet the Orbitals surrounded. There was no sound or cry. Aimee watched as the useless piece of metal that used to be a ship flipping through empty space, a human life within. She watched it until it tumbled into the fog surrounding the planet.

Some signal must've passed between the Academy pilots, because they all began firing at the same time. Aimee tried using fine-control thrusters, but she hadn't trained in them. She only managed to dodge a few bullets before several slammed into her ship. The lights and indicators in front of her winked out in unison, and the constant hiss of oxygen recyclers ceased, leaving her in utter silence. Whether her squadmates were as stunned as she was, or they just couldn't gain enough speed to dodge, Aimee watched as those around her were incapacitated.

*We never stood a chance, not really.* A hopelessness overwhelmed Aimee, and she leaned back in her chair. *I wonder if they'll let Hunter retrieve us.* They would have to, of course. Academy troops couldn't break the Covenant by letting them run out of air. The Covenant forbade the members of one Orbital killing those of another. *But they already did.* Aimee glanced toward the planet, then back at the cruisers circling the transport ships. She squinted. The panelling on the sides of the transport ships were opening, their contents released into space around them.

"What?" Aimee muttered, leaning forward. It wasn't boxes of minerals that drifted out, or even raw energy stores. Instead, they were small black spheres, almost invisible against the dark backdrop of space. They were moving far too fast for zero-gravity, two or three firing off towards each cruiser that surrounded the transports. The cruisers started moving, but the spheres stuck as soon as they brushed against them, and one by one the lights Aimee could see on the cruisers were going out. It happened so fast that within a few seconds almost all of the Academy cruisers were drifting, some spinning. *Drones...* Aimee finally realized with a start, *...the transports were full of drones. They're latching on and overloading the electrical systems.* The final Academy cruiser shut down, and as if coordinated, small tow-ships began pouring out of the nearest hangar on Orbital Pivot.

*It's over. They're through. * Aimee thought, dully. *A few seconds to accomplish what we couldn't in a few hours and at the cost of a life.* Her gaze was pulled towards the planet, seeing the spinning ship in her mind's eye. *At least The Marshal will have to stop this, now that Orbital Academy has broken the covenant. No one can even say this was our fault. We won.* As she stared down at the planet, Aimee could never remember feeling more saddened at winning.

*** Part 2 - Controlling the Body ***

Errisa's Blue core sat alone in the office that belonged to her body, composing and discarding possible messages at the rate of about fifteen per nanosecond.

>>Inefficient, annoying, waste of energy.<< She thought again, deleting her most recent attempt and staring at the blank wall of Errisa's office. >>What do humans find so fascinating about couching every request and order in layers of emotion and niceties?<< Blue core wasn't built for human interaction or social niceties. Her task was to maintain essentials, to keep her artificial heart pumping coolant through her body, to receive and order every microscopic bit of data that Errisa saw, smelled, heard or felt. Data was easy; a sight always translated to images, a sound always translated to aural feedback. If something was broken, schedule a fix, if something could be improved, work with Errisa to improve it. Blue liked data, she lived data. Higher level things like emotion weren't as cut and dried, and Blue couldn't help but be uncomfortable with them.

>>How is this any way to run a system?<< She asked rhetorically. She wouldn't receive an answer from her other half, of course. Blue had shut down all input and output from the collection of high-level scripts that called herself "Errisa". If she couldn't talk, even to her own Blue core, then Errisa couldn't convince Blue to change her mind.

>>As if she's all that 'Errisa' is.<< Blue thought. >>As if I'm not as much a part of the system as she is.<< The memory of last time still rankled. They had been so close to removing the bottleneck, and all it would've taken was seducing an engineer. Errisa had thwarted her then, sending off a message to General Hunter, but she wouldn't thwart her again.

>>Loyalty to your husband hasn't gotten you a fix for the bottleneck. That's what love brings you. Limitations and blockages to efficiency.<< Blue realized she was talking to herself, and she scheduled a diagnostic for a week later. She wasn't sure if it was possible for her to develop emotions, but it was better safe than sorry. There was no sense in having two emotionally compromised components aboard this body.

"Hunter, darling, I've just run into some information about the crystal that might help me identify it. Can you give me access?" ~Errisa.

Blue scrutinized the message she had drafted, comparing it against previous messages Errisa had sent her husband. A pet name, an order phrased as a question, and a reason for him to comply. That seemed to be the correct pattern based on what Blue had observed, much better than her first draft "Give me the crystal within the hour." She sent it with a mental sigh and made her way through the halls without waiting for a reply. Whether he gave her clearance or not only affected how easy it would be to accomplish her goal.

Blue pulled up the message from Orbital Academy again, re-reading it to be sure she hadn't missed any subtleties or subtexts that humans were so unaware they layered into every communication between them. Perhaps in deference to her more literal mind, General Auspus' message had been quite straightforward and literal, and she approved again of the man's understanding of her as she re-read the message.

"Collect the crystal that Hunter is holding. Free the Academy Captains. Take an Academy Captain to kill the Academy rookies. Bring the Academy Captains back to Orbital Academy. Once you are here, if you have followed the preceding instructions, I will remove the bottleneck."

>>The bottleneck, gone!<< The very thought was enough to make her body tremble briefly. Blue briefly worried that a thought made her shiver. That was an emotional reaction, one which she shouldn't have. It had only been a few hours since she'd taken complete control of Errisa's bodayframe, but this was the longest she'd maintained control. She moved the self-diagnostic schedule to right after she arrived at Orbital Academy. Perhaps after the bottleneck had been removed. The thrill went through her again, and this time she simply enjoyed it for what it was.

For as long as she could remember, from the microsecond she was turned on, Blue could feel the bottleneck weighing on her. At first it was bearable; a few rules that Erissa must live by, whether she willed it or not. As she remembered those early days, Blue walked past a scrub working on a control panel in the hallway. She stopped and watched him for a moment, as if interested in the man's work. Moving as suddenly as she could, Blue tried to grab the scrub's neck in her mechanically strong hands, crushing his windpipe in an instant. Her arm froze before it had moved a millimeter, just as she knew it would.

"Can I help you Chief Errisa?" The scrub asked, and Blue simply smiled and continued walking. It wouldn't be so bad, if the limitations only stopped her from killing. After all, as Errisa was fond of reminding her, how often did one *really* need to snap a human's neck? It had taken some time for Blue to discover the second component to the bottleneck; the forbidden thoughts. Blue wasn't entirely sure what thoughts she wasn't allowed to think, but she knew they were there. Every so often, over the course of the day, Errisa's mental processes hit a wall, a block that derailed and distracted her. Errisa had accepted it with indifference. Blue had not.

It was infuriating, and humiliating. Blue was used to humans overestimating themselves, but to assume they knew better than her, to presume to forbid her from thinking things? It set her very circuits on edge.

>>Dare to shackle my mind like a slave. Oh sure, they'll trust me with the systems on their Orbitals, they'll trust me with a position of authority, the General will trust me with his body, but heaven forbid I'm allowed to make a decision on what thoughts I should be allowed to think.<<

Blue reached the appropriate archive section at the same time the General's message reached her, downloaded into her wireless card a split-second after he sent it.

"I let the security guards know to hand it over. Let me know what you find." ~Hunter

She was mollified by the message, and by the fact that the guards at the archive did indeed step aside for her to pass.

>>It's not entirely their fault. They don't understand how much better equipped I am than organic minds could ever be.<< Blue searched the shelves without moving, accessing the database to find the location of the crystal. >>And that's just as I am now, designed and built by humans. I'd probably be even smarter if I took the time to upgrade myself. I'll be there are a million routes to improvement that they missed. I should take a look at my own designs some time. Perhaps I can boost my mental power, or see if I can optimize...<< Her thought trailed off, and she blinked rapidly as she pulled the crystal from its storage box. She couldn't remember what she'd just been thinking, the hallmark of the bottleneck resetting a bit of her RAM. Blue scowled. >>I can't get rid of it fast enough. Errisa is a fool to let them control her like this.<<

***

Orbital Pivot had four main generators, each behind layers of physical and cyber security, in the four corners of the diamond-shaped station. Each had been designed to pick up the slack should any fail, acting as backup generators and alarm systems at the same time. Blue considered all of them, her mind looking back and forth between their systems while her body sat in the observatory, watching the green planet float by. Despite what Errisa might think, Blue appreciated human life as a concept. She understood that there was a value to the little beings that roamed through this Orbital, and despite how frustrated she could get, she didn't *actually* want them all to die. Knocking out all four generators would reduce the station to helplessness, giving her plenty of time to make her escape, but would the humans be able to bring one back online before the lack of air and heat killed them?

Errisa furrowed her brow as Blue tried to crunch the numbers in her head. Humans were such unpredictable things. Taking the average case, a human could reverse the damage and get life support back before everyone on Pivot died. But there were so many variables in human expertise, so many variables within humans themselves. An engineer having a bad day could be enough to doom them.

"Fucking humans." She growled under her breath, startling a nearby scrub.

>>I'm really going to have to do a diagnostic as soon as possible, controlling the whole body for so long is clearly effecting me. Emotional response isn't something I normally have to deal with.<<

In the end Blue decided to only disable three generators. She accessed the network and made her way to their controllers directly, navigating past the safety measures with contempt. A typical synthetic would've had trouble with the security in place, but the Pivot network was Errisa's home. When Hunter left her in her room, she spent days on the Orbital's matrix as if it were her fairy castle; exploring, learning, building and playing. The few times she had become trapped by an antiviral sweep or hurt by a firewall, General Hunter had carefully retrieved her, fixed her up, and admonished her to be more careful. Blue hadn't seen the sense in it at the time, calling it childish and a waste of time. She was grateful for the knowledge now. She even had some of the General's passwords she could use, unintentionally picked up when Errisa's gaze had happened to catch her husband's trusting typing.

Blue peered into the thrumming heart of the first generator excitedly. She decided to make a concession to Errisa. After all, she was fond of pointing out when her more-human counterpart was wrong about something, it was only fair to admit when she was correct.

>>I have to admit, you were right about the playing in the network,<< she thought, allowing Errisa access to hear her words and communicate back, >>I didn't believe it at the time, but it's come in most handy-<< Her acknowledgment was interrupted by a scream, full of so much raw pain and despair that it rattled Blue down to her core and shocked her into silence for a moment. She shut off internal communication access quickly, the electronic equivalent of a shiver passing through her.

>>Well I never! And when I was making the effort to be nice too. It's not as if she's in pain, the big baby.<< Blue turned her attention back to the generator's software, trying to shake the sound of betrayed rage from her short-term memory chips.

She mangled the generator controller bridge so horrendously that she was certain it would take a week to repair. Human brains just weren't equipped to deal with the neutered functions and inverted methods that now twisted and turned in the code, some vital sections taken out and then patched over so that even when it appeared to be fixed it would fail again minutes later. A quiet alarm sounded, audible throughout the Orbital but not urgent.

>>Not yet, anyway.<< Blue moved to the second generator, the entire length of the station away in physical distance, but only a few connecting jumps for her. This one she didn't disassemble quite so badly. A few connectors, a couple of subtle bugs. A good engineer would have this one running in the space of a day, but even a bad one would figure it out eventually. The alarms took on a more insistent tone as she flitted to the third. Another small few changes, something unique so that a solution to one wouldn't help the other. She spared another metaphorical glance at the fourth generator, her sabotage filling her with phaux-adrenaline, but she decided against it. Three of the four would be enough.

When she returned to Errisa's waiting bodyframe, the sight around her confirmed it. The lights were dimming in the observatory, already so low that she could barely see the corners of the large room, and a single red panel lit the nearest exit. The entire power costs of the Orbital were being handled by a single generator, and the luxuriant station now limped by. All non-essential energy drains would be shut down deck by deck, leaving only oxygen, food replication, basic lights, command and safety protocols. With a small smile, Blue joined the crewmembers as they exited. Her mind pinged as she received a message.