Orbital Academy 19

"What is an Orbital? The Exiles' moon?"

"Probably. But anyways, enough chit-chat, I've got some impatient people on my side of the shield that would like me to tell you something they find very important."

Tes folded her arms in front of her chest, and for lack of a better target, faced the wall. She didn't know if the Prince would want her talking to the Exiles, but she had already learned valuable information, it couldn't hurt to potentially learn more.

"I'm listening, mind-of-the-moon. When you are done speaking we will talk about you lowering your wall. Perhaps we can come to an agreement."

"Not likely. Alright, so the first thing I'm being told to tell you is this: your real name is Tess."

Tes blinked her good eye, tilting her head to one side.

"Yes." She said. "I know. What of it?"

"Really? Wow I thought that would garner more of a reaction. Umm, alright, we're all really confused over here now. We assumed that you had been brainwashed or something. Why are you helping the Terrans?"

"I *am* a Terran." Tes lifted her chin, half in defiance, half in pride. "I help because I can, because I have power to help my tribe. Do I need a better reason?"

"Well that is a definite answer on the whole 'brainwashed' question, I suppose. Alright, Tess, I want you to think back carefully. Your squadmates love you, and they would really appreciate it if you snapped out of it and stop tearing Pivot to shreds. Do you remember your squadmates Tess? Aimee and Missy, Li and Jackson, Marcus and Alex and Preston? Do you remember your Captain, Jane Appet?"

"I don't know them." Tes shrugged. Behind her, a soft whimper caught her attention. The Dracori was backed into a corner, it's eyes wide, shaking its head as if trying to dislodge a water droplet from its ear.

*The girl in the Dracori was an Exile too.* Tes realized. "The names must mean something to her, and the blue tribe mind-soother's shitty soothing is falling apart.*

"Go back to the Prince." She snapped, and the Dracori looked up at her, confusion in its eyes. "Go!"

"That's not super helpful to the Drake, because I have speakers left in most of the rooms between here and there." The voice said smugly. "But as a show of good faith, I'll leave your pet Drake alone."

"I don't know these names." Tess repeated with finality.

"Think, Tess, really *think*. Do you remember Julia? You two loved each other, true love, a love so deep that you were willing-"

"I should clarify, so that you understand me fully." Tes held up a hand to interrupt the voice. She spoke calmly and evenly, staring into the wall since she didn't know where else to look. "I believe you when you say these things. I know I had a life before. I am sure that it's difficult for these squid-mates to see someone wearing the face of their friend, with the power and bearing of the green tribe. But I do not know those names. I do not wish to know those names. My name is Tes, and one day it will be charged with power and spoken throughout my tribe. Today is not that day, but it will be one day. Today, I will find a way through your silver wall. I will find you Exiles where you hide, and I will kill you all."

Tes had never been more proud of Meo the mind-soother's work. If there was anything that would test his improvements to her mind, it was this. And here she was, sound and whole, without the faintest trace of doubt in her head. She may have loved Julia in her past life, but the girl was nothing but a pleasant-sounding name to her now.

"The enemy of the green tribe is an enemy to me, and I am not the woman whose face you know. I will have no mercy on those who know think they know me, so it is only fair to warn you so that you expect none." The silence stretched on for some time, and Tes suspected they were talking on the other side of the wall.

"You should hear the ruckus that caused over here." The disembodied voice finally chuckled. "We've got people saying you should die, people saying we should let you in to see their faces, it's a madhouse. The things humans do 'cause of emotion, I swear."

"You aren't human?"

"Thankfully not. If I were human I'd have some modicum of guilt about doing this."

Tes had already braced herself for a fight based on the words alone, and judging by the hissing coming from the dark corners of the room, the voice had released snakes.

"That's a really fine reaction time you have there." The voice complimented. "I wouldn't bother though."

It took longer than she would've liked to admit for Tes to realize that there were no snakes in the room. The hiss was the sound of air being released into surroundings. It puzzled Tes until she remembered the rumors; Exiles died without air.

"If you've poisoned the air, know that you waste your magic." She smirked.

"Well I don't know about poison, it's more of a knockout-....I'm sorry, did you say magic?"

"And now I will return to the Prince, and we will begin taking your silver wall apart."

"Walls, plural." The voice chuckled as Tes turned to leave. "And good luck with that."

Tes had entered through the mangled doorway ripped open by the Dracori, but now on the other side of that doorway, in the middle of the room beyond, lay another silver wall.

*No. No no no.* Tes shot an experimental blast of magic at the wall that lay behind her, but just like the other, her lightning left no mark. She glanced at the walls to her left and right.

"You're welcome to give them a try," the smug voice of Blue seemed to read her thoughts, "but there's another shield on either side. It's more of a grid of shields than a line of them. The General saw you coming a mile away."

"You're lying." Tes hazarded, but her gut was telling her that the mind of the moon was too smug to be lying. "If the walls form a grid, why wouldn't you raise them all the second we entered?"

"Well first of all, silver-plated senstone is expensive, and we just didn't have enough at such short notice. Secondly, the walls are hard to install. Really we barely had time to set them up in the center of the Orbital, and-...I'm being told to stop sharing info with you now."

"Gods' blessings." Tes muttered, spinning slowly in a circle, trying to think of some method of escape.

"Oh but I don't have to stop talking. I have some more messages to pass on from your teammates. You know, the ones you're stabbing in the back? Let's see, this first one is from Alex. She says-" Tes finally located the source of the voice, a tiny metal box in the corner of the room. It wasn't made of the indestructible silver, and a lance of lightning was enough to shear it in half, plunging the room into silence.

Tes sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by rubble, and waited for her Terran brethren to rescue her.

*** Part 2 - Life in the Pearl ***

An alarm pinged Jackson's head, and he took a breath.

It was something he rarely thought about in his life, but he suspected that the familiarity was comforting to him on a subconscious level. Perhaps that's why he seemed to be taking his move to Pivot and the corresponding changes better than his squadmates. Who knew, perhaps it wasn't the ping, maybe it was just that the chip in his head kept him able to focus. Maybe he was just that inhuman, that the invasion of his second home by alien attackers didn't seem to bother him quite as much as the rest.

*I wonder if normal humans wonder about this stuff.*

"You've left us again Jackson." Samantha raised an eyebrow from where she sat at the console, looking at the doorway where Jackson stood. He shook himself and smiled at her. Samantha would probably be excellent for a normal man with attention issues, and although he was a lost cause he appreciated that she continued to try, even with how well she knew him.

*>>Task 1432 shifted to short-term priority 1: Optimize Sam's emotional state.*

Jackson used to feel resentment as a teen towards the chip implanted in his head, constantly categorizing the details of his day-to-day life. Nowadays he saw it less as an overbearing taskmaster, and more as an advanced to-do list. Without it he would be useless, his attention drifting through a million actions every second. With it he tended to be able to do what he had to get done. At the very least, it forced him to concentrate on the task at hand.

"I'm sorry lovely." Jackson said genuinely. "I came by to give you some attention, but for me that's a tall order."

"It's okay, I'll take some company. Even your kind of attention is better than sitting here all by myself." Samantha gave him a smile, but it was clear from every motion how exhausted she was. A few feet away at another console a girl in a scrub uniform, the room's other occupant, gave her a dirty look.

"How long have you been manning the throughput station Sam?" Jackson stepped over to her console, glancing at the monitor behind her. Normally this room would only be manned during standard hours, but with half the station closed off to protect from the invading Terrans, every control room was manned no matter how late.

"It says there's been a throughput operator here since breakfast...when did you start this shift Sam? Who'd you take over from?" Samantha avoided Jackson's gaze as she flipped a switch.

"This is Samantha, I'm back." Her voice lilted as she slipped back into what Jackson called her 'official mode'.

"Oh Sam, tell me you've not been here all day."

"Hello sir, yes we can get you three electrician-specialists, but you're going to have to wait for about..." Samantha consulted one of the several small screens on her desk, fastidiously avoiding Jackson's glare. "...one to two hours. Yes sir. Yes, I'm sorry sir but there's only so much we can...yes. Right. Of course sir. Sorry Jackson." She turned her beautiful brown eyes towards him and reached out, pulling him by the front of his uniform to stand next to where she sat. "How has your day been, lover?"

"Wonderful, but you're not changing the subject that easily." Jackson folded his arms. "How many days in a row have you been pulling these kinds of eighteen-hour shifts?"

"Just today, Jackson I swear." Samantha said innocently.

"Yesterday it was a twenty-hour." From the console a few feet away the thin wisp of a girl in a scrub uniform noted.

"No one asked you to contribute Lacy." Samantha snapped. "Look Jackson, I get that you're worried about me, and it's sweet and adorable and all that, but they need me here. There's been so much damage out there that pretty much every single electrical connection, every single pipe and cord that passed through the outer core now has to be rewired through the inner."

"I get that, and I understand that's why it's all hands on deck." Jackson replied evenly. "What I don't understand is why you're pushing yourself to help if you're falling asleep on your feet."

"I'm sitting." Samantha yawned.

"Falling asleep on your butt then."

"I'll take a break in an hour or so, and I'll take a nap then, I swear. I'll sleep for at least a few hours, then I'll visit sick bay, then I'll come back here."

"No one can take over for you now?"

"No one trained in both mechanics and admin. I'm the only Basura-Pivot in the pearl."

"The pearl?"

"It's a small naturally-occurring gem. It's a sphere and it shines like silver. It's what we've started to call the station now that we're...well we're pretty much a sphere surrounded by silver who is stuck in the middle of a dead shell."

"That's a little morbid."

"Yea, you get a little grim running on three hours of sleep."

"Samantha, for god's sake, what's going to be so different in a few hours that you can't take a break right now?"

"You won't be around in a few hours." The girl at the next console laughed. "So she'll be able to keep going and tell you she napped."

"Honestly, Lacy, no one asked you." Samantha snapped again. Jackson smiled at the interaction.

"There's nothing I can do to get you to go to sleep?" Jackson asked, and in answer, Samantha flicked the switch on again, answering another call.

*>>Task 1432 complexity beyond threshold. Breaking into subtasks.*

*>>Task: Optimize Sam's emotional state >> Subtask 1: Force Sam to sleep.*

"Fine, if you're not going to sleep, then scoot." Jackson said in apparent defeat.

Without breaking the flow of her conversation Samantha stood from her desk, reading off from one of the screens.

"It's going to be quite the task, but we've got three..four...no, it looks like five technicians already working on it. Yes, I understand that, but there's only so much...yes? Yes I would be happy to explain to the General in person." Jackson admired how professional she sounded, even as exhausted and on-edge as she was. He sat in her seat and pulled her down to sit on his lap, brushing his fingers across the nape of her neck.

"See?" Samantha disconnected the call and turned to Jackson. "If I had gone to sleep when you told me to, I would've missed that call, and I wouldn't have known that General Hunter was going to be calling to ask about the progress of the new generator construction."

"And not one of the people actually working on the new generators could fill him in because...?"

"Because they're working on the generator. There's not enough people available for me to sleep." Samantha groaned the sentence as she rubbed her eyes. Jackson frowned. He couldn't help but feel guilty; as a pilot there was very little he could do until the General decided to send them out on a fighting mission, but until that point the majority of his time was free.

Besides heavy lifting, what the fuck do I around here? I'm wandering around bullshitting and doing the occasional task when I can, while the admins and technicians are being worked to the point of exhaustion? The guilt gnawed at his stomach, and for a moment his brow furrowed.

The CPU took over, classifying the guilt as "unhelpful" and assigning it the lowest priority in the queue. Jackson knew that someday, if he worked through his entire list of tasks, he would have several years' worth of guilt, worry, regret and pain waiting for him, but in the meantime his mind re-focused and brushed the guilt aside.

I can help by doing what I can to bolster the admins and techs who are doing the real work. In this case that means getting Sam to sleep.

"You have no idea how amazing that feels." Sam murmured sleepily, resting her elbows on the console as Jackson continued to brush the back of her neck gently.

"Lucky." The girl a few feet away muttered. "My boyfriend never comes to rub my neck."

"Suck it Lacy." Samantha grinned, and the girl smiled and good-naturedly flipped her off.

"Why don't you rest your eyes for a little bit while you're waiting for the General to call?" Jackson murmured the suggestion into the back her head.

"I think I might for just a- no no no." Samantha sat bolt upright, and Jackson sighed. "You're not tricking me Jackson. I'm staying awake and I'm staying up."

*>> Subtask 1: Force Sam to sleep. >> Subsubtask: Provide orgasm.*

"What?" Jackson blinked. Occasionally his CPU would throw him a suggestion so unexpected that he had to take a moment to process it. When he did think about it it made some kind of sense. Samantha was the type of girl to instantly fall asleep right after she had been "worn out", and given the circumstances it was probably one of the few ways he could actually get her to fall asleep in spite of herself. Jackson glanced at Lacy, just a few feet away from them. The wispy girl was staring into her screen, a grim look of frustration on her face. Jackson tried to estimate just how much she could see if she glanced over. Samantha sat on his lap with her back to the other woman, and as far as he could tell, the back and her console blocked the line of sight.

He placed his hand on her leg, rubbing the tense muscle. Samantha leaned against him with a smile. When his fingertips trailed higher, slipping under the hem of her skirt, Samantha glanced over her shoulder, probably gauging whether Lacy could see what he was doing, then fixed him with a look. Jackson grinned. She could easily slap or grab his hand if she wanted him to stop, but instead she just made a face at him, and he silently laughed.

The communicator pinged, in vaguely the same tone that Jackson's breathing alarm did. Samantha jumped and answered it, piping the audio to her headset once more.

"Hello General Hunter. Yes sir, I'm the only admin in throughput. Thank you sir. Yessir, I did, I thought you would prefer it hearing it straight from me. I've been coordinating their efforts." Jackson's fingers moved in slow circles along the skin of her inner thigh, several inches inside her long skirt. Samantha's professional voice didn't falter for a second.

"Oh it was nothing really General, they're the ones with the know-how, I'm just the one directing them where that knowhow is needed. Well that's very kind of you to say so sir. Yes, let me pull up the schematics."

Jackson waited until the pretty redhead on his lap had pulled up the blueprints of the orbital before he continued his onslaught, moving his fingers higher up her leg. As she continued to speak in her lilting voice, Jackson lightly brushed his fingertips against the fabric of her underwear, directly between her legs.

"For whatever reason, the Terrans left two of the four generators intact in their initial onslaught three days ago." Jackson would've been disappointed at how even her voice was, but he noticed her gripping the edge of the console, and he smiled and continued rubbing a finger up and down. "No sir, I don't think we can count on that. That's why construction was begun on the emergency generators. Um...I'm not quite sure who, but it was definitely authorized. Yes, that name sounds familiar..."

His finger was slowly growing wet as he pressed the fabric of Samantha's underwear into the wet heat beneath, and Jackson gently kissed the back of her neck. She stiffened without pausing, and Jackson continued to kiss.

"...I'm sure he'll be happy to take responsibility sir, our only life support is out there with the Terrans. Yes sir I'll hold." She leaned back against him as soon as she disconnected. "Why can't you ever behave yourself?"

"I can't look at this problem anymore." Lacy tossed her headset onto the console and stormed to her feet, and from the way Samantha jumped she had forgotten the other girl was there. "I'm going to try to get some sleep, you should try to do the same Samantha." Lily was already halfway to the door when Jackson slid his hand out of Samantha's skirt and rested it innocently on her knee, but he had the feeling that Lacy was so tired she wouldn't have noticed even if he'd had his head under her skirt. "Try to make her sleep, Samantha's boyfriend." Lacy said from the doorway. "Good luck though."

"Just to be clear, she didn't mean to- oh!" Samantha gasped as Jackson's hand suddenly cupped her sex. He smiled and gently squeezed, grinding the heel of his hand against her mound as his fingers stroked the now thoroughly soaked fabric. "I'm going to be getting the General calling back soon." Samantha moaned.

"You think that's going to stop me?" Jackson tugged at the hem of her underwear, slipping a finger inside the cloth and brushing it up and down across her bare mound.

"Oh god Jackson why are you-" The communications pinged, and Samantha flipped the switch without hesitation. "Hello General, were you able to get in touch with Chief Adamsly?" Jackson marvelled that the same girl who had been moaning so prettily a few moments ago could slip into her official tone so effortlessly. He was quite sure that he liked it.

He pulled on her underwear, slowly pulling them down in front and then reaching behind her to slip them off of the curve of her butt as well. Samantha continued to talk with the General, although she wiggled her backside against him at the motion of his fingers.