Scarlet Steel

We don’t even say goodbye. Juno stands up, shares a nod with the Mnemosyne, and walks out the door. I glance between the two of them in disbelief. I must have missed something. I just stand up and awkwardly follow Juno out into the street.

The AI who brought us in is waiting in the street.

“Upload all the information you’ve got to my ship, and get started now.” Juno orders. “If the Mnemosyne know it, I want it. The name, or at least description of every person they’ve seen in military compounds. I want every last relic and piece of technology the Mnemosyne have, regardless of if they’re willing to give it up. I want every human in Mnemosyne space accounted for, alive and especially dead. And come back to the ship with me, I want you on hand for more information as needed. Janus, Elara, you’re with me crunching data. Everyone else, we leave in 24 hours. You’ve got shore leave, use it. Exa, Scarlet, get the ship resupplied before you relax. And I want a vat of Mnemosyne biomass. A years’ worth, I’m not going to have this thing starving to death if things go wrong.”

“Confirmed.” Exa and Janus both respond simultaneously.

“We’ll take care of it.” I add.

“See that you do.”

It’s a short walk back to the airlock. Still, none of them glance at us as we pass. They just silently part for us.

The airlock feels strange from this side. The chitin gives way to steel, perfectly melding into each other. The human door opens and we pile inside.

“Stand by for decontamination and deodorizing." The room fills with the same dense yellow gas as last time. And like last time, it shifts to green before disappearing completely.

The door to the human half of the station opens and we step though. It's nice having people actually react to our presence again as we head back to the dropship, although most of their reactions are disgust for some reason. I don’t have anything on me, right? No, my survival suit is clean. The suit isn’t reporting any errors either.

It’s just a short walk before we reach the dropship. I’m not spending my day of shore leave in my compression suit. A soon as we’re back in the dropship I twist my helmet off and-

“Oh God.” It feels like raw sulphur is being rubbed into my sinuses. I wretch, desperately trying to clear it out, but all it does is go down my throat.

I rush for the power shower and strip as quickly as possible.

“Andromeda, please help.”

The shower hits me. Maybe if I open my mouth it’ll get rid of the sulphur in my throat? Oh God no, soapy sulphur is so much worse. Why did I do that?

When the shower finishes I still reek. Ughh. Whatever. It’d take all the water in the ship to get me clean, and everyone else needs to clean off too. I open a compartment built into the wall, throw on some clothes, and open the door.

It smells so much worse out here.

“I thought they deodorized us!” I complain.

“You were basically swimming in sulphur a minute ago.” Exa’s out of her suit and has left it piled up in the corner. “There’s only so much they can do.”

Graff and Xenia’s suits are piled in the corner as well, but they’re nowhere to be seen. I guess we’re all just going to reek. Juno and Janus, on the other hand, left theirs on. They’re huddled around the holographic table alongside Xenia and the AI who helped us. They’re all flicking through files as quickly as their muscles will let them, and I can see their mouths moving, but I’m not involved in their conversation. With how fast they’re all moving, I’m not sure I could keep up anyway.

“What do you want to do, Kid?” Exa asks.

“How much does a brain chip actually do?” I lead the way out of the ship.

“A lot, assuming you’ve got a few years to adapt. Sorry, but you’re not getting surgery if you want to be in this op.”

“No, no. I was just wondering. Could be useful in the future.” The smell isn’t as strong out here at least. I’m not sure if I’m just getting used to it, my sinuses are clearing out, or if I’m actually not smelling as strong as I was. People aren’t reacting like they were, so I hope it’s not too bad.

“You want to get work done first? Or you want to relax?”

“Let’s get supplies. Where do we go?” I ask. Exa leads the way without a word. “So we can just buy Mnemosyne food in the human half of the station? I feel like we should be getting the AI we worked with to deliver it.”

“Biomass, not food. They don’t eat in the same way we do. And he’s busy helping Juno, so we’re taking care of it. We’ll figure it out.”

“If you’re sure.”

The entrance to the station proper is covered in cameras watching each and every person who enters and leaves. We walk straight in, alongside a small crowd. 

Unlike the last station, this one opens directly into a compact city. The center of the roads are conveyor belts with moving rails that people are stepping onto and off of. At regular intervals, small platforms are lifting into the ceiling and reappearing a few seconds later on the other side of the belts. Few people are using the rest of the street for anything other than stepping into shops or houses.

Exa doesn’t hop on to the moving pathways. Instead, she leads me into one of the first businesses.

The inside is cramped. Terminals have been piled haphazardly across the floor with just enough space to squeeze by people working at them. They’re obviously pilots, most of them proudly displaying scars beside an AI partner.

Guess I fit in now. I roll up my sleeve as we enter.

Exa makes her way through the floor and instead of stopping at one of the terminals, we continue on towards a manned desk.

“How can I help you?” The person behind it asks.

“I need a year's worth of Mnemosyne biomass.”

“Uh.” The worker freezes in surprise.

“Can you do it or not?” Exa asks.

“I suppose I can send a request?” They say slowly. “I don’t think that’s a request they would accept, but-”

“It’s from Apollo, they’ll accept. We need it in our dropship in 24 hours. Send me a message if there’s a problem.” Exa reaches into her pocket and slides a small slip of paper onto the desk.

“I’ll get right on that.” Their eyes slightly unfocus in the same way that Janus’ do when he gets distracted. The worker’s jaw slightly twitches as they communicate with someone else.

Exa doesn’t stick around to hear their response. She just heads for the nearest terminal and gets to work.

“Want anything special?” She asks.

“The fruit bars were good. Do they have any of those here?”

“They have something close enough.”

“Get a bunch of those then.”

“That’s it?” She glances at me momentarily with a small smile on her face.

“Yeah? Pretty much.”

“Alright.” Exa works quickly getting us resupplied, needing only a few seconds. “That’s easy when Juno’s out of my hair. Her and Elara have to go over every last piece of food. I swear, the two of them math out every meal to make sure you, Graff, and Janus are never left wanting.”

“At least I make it easy.”

“True. So what sounds fun?” She starts back towards the streets. “Not sure when we’ll get another day off.”

“Do they have another electronics store?” 

“Looking to pick up a second girlfriend?”

“Tera’s not my girlfriend.” I roll my eyes. “It’d be weird to ask her out over a letter. But I do have something in mind when we’re back in that area again.”

“Right. Of course.”

“And if we’re going to be out for a while, I want parts to tide me over!” I quickly add. “I’m already missing parts for my scale model project mech.”

“Alright, if you’re going to keep breaking the delicate parts, we’re getting you a permanent solution.”

“I haven’t broken that much!” It’s just a few supports, diodes, sensors, struts, motors, circuit boards, I blew up a battery once- “Ah crap. Stop being right.”

“Don’t count on it.” 

Exa steps onto the conveyor belts, and I stumble a little following behind her. These things are faster than they look. 

Intersections are busy. The station opens up into a large dome, the floor of which is rotating. It’s easy to tell who lives in the station and who doesn’t. Most people make the transitions easily, stepping onto the platform and being carried down another hallway. I don’t have any time to prepare. Exa steps on easily, and I’m clearly a tourist. At least I stay standing. And I don’t even need Exa to catch me! That’s better than some people I’ve seen.

We make another interchange, and Exa steps off in the middle of one of the hallways. I’m carried a few feet away from her before I finally get off safely.

She leads me into a shop.

“Oh.” This place isn’t anything like what I imagined. Everything's orderly. Sure they have parts, but they’re all in boxes, taking up way more shelf space than they need. And just a glance makes it clear just how much less variety they have. I step towards the nearest servo and pick it up. The prices are so far beyond what they should be. “Is this really the best place this station has?”

“Not for parts. But that’s not why we’re here.” She walks towards the far wall where rows of machines are working quickly. Small nozzles are extruding molten metal that quickly cools. A second is laying down the substrate for a circuit board, automatically cutting traces into it as it goes. A third is laying down what I’m pretty sure is magnetic material, creating a little motor.

“Oh! Why didn’t we buy one of these before?”

“Because the printing material is horribly expensive and the quality is less than perfect. It’s always going to be cheaper to buy pre-made parts. But what’s the point of making money if you don’t spend it?” A terminal stands in front of the printers. “How about we drop 10k into this? It’ll get you a decent printer and material for a few hundred hours of printing.”

That’s a two-hundredth of my project mech. It sets me back by a fifth of an average mission. Although, no. I don’t need to measure myself by that anymore. After this mission, I can just put it all into Hoppy. I only need her. The printer is going to be incredibly helpful for that anyway. Every last bit of her is going to end up being custom.

“Yeah, we can do that.” I nod.

“Sounds good.” Exa pokes at the terminal for a few seconds, until it’s replaced by the outline of a hand print.

She steps to the side, and I press my palm into the screen. It flashes green.

“Delivery’s in two hours.” Exa says. “Now how about we go find some hole-in-the-wall selling boxes of old junk parts?”

“I’d love literally nothing more!”

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