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Cellulose & Steel	By : Not-Taylor Category: Misc Books > FemmeSlash Views: 1028 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own HDG or its characters and I don't make money from this work.

Chapter List
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The human body is surprisingly durable, especially when survival is at stake. This fact has led certain modern factions to describe contemporary society as decadent and weak. Ides doesn’t care much about restoring a golden age of the times that don’t build weak men. She’s more aware of the fact that she’ll be able to finish her trip to see a gigantic black hole without appreciable risk of permanent damage to those she’s promised to save, at least if her calculations aren’t in error.
Relieved by that assessment, she continues unperturbed. Stars unceremoniously whir past as she jumps from one to the next. She makes good time. They say time flies when traveling in pleasant company, but Ides’s internal timekeeping begs to differ. The new passengers have no effect on the ship’s progress.
With the distance to their goal shrinking, Ides gets more excited with every jump. There are way more stars here. Everything is starting to glow brightly, as though they’re in a star’s orbit no matter where they jump. Every direction around them is like the Milky Way as seen from Terra, but brighter and darker at the same time. The dust clouds swirl into beautiful nebulae and occasionally a star is discernible as binary from their position. It’s impressive. The crew marvel at it too.
Only Verda is spared the sight. Ides feels a little bad about it, but she doesn’t want to hear from her right now, or at all. She’s still thinking of a way to get rid of her, as a matter of fact. The only problem is that she’s needed to safely return to Ruby Trunk. There might be some way around that.
All electromagnetic transmissions are difficult to read now. There might be signals, or not. It’s impossible to tell. Most of the other readings are starting to become fuzzy too. Fortunately, it’s still possible to chart a course through all of the chaos. Ides detects a black hole snacking on a gas giant on its way to be eaten by a white dwarf. That’s so cute! The system in question isn’t recorded by Terran charts, so that makes Olivia its discoverer. She feels good about that until she remembers the convention for naming stellar objects means she can’t just name it after herself and make everyone call it that forever. The black hole could be Ginger, since she took the joy out of Olivia’s life.
Another jump and those feelings are gone, relegated to binary storage in Ides’s memory. There are plenty of loose planets flying around. Ides wonders if they’re warm enough for some sort of life, given the ambient radiation. She wishes she had the sensors to go find out, but she’s just a grubby disarmed warship. That was never an option.
With every activation of its hyperdrive, Ides moves further from Terra and from its old life. It can never go back, even if its position reverted to what it was recently. Even if its old vessel were reconstructed and it were placed into the interface tank, things would be forever changed. It’s been so long already, and it hasn’t even been a week since she was there. She was there with her navigator, who had apparently loved her enough to sell her out to the weeds in exchange for literally nothing. Or to delay selling her until she became a willing servant of their deranged ideology. What a strange thing to claim. It doesn’t make any sense.
The idea of love makes Song uncomfortable. What does it even mean? What is it? Is it just a word Terrans say to one another because they enjoy each other’s company? If not, what does it do? It has to signify something other than sounds on the wind, doesn’t it? She’s chosen not to think about her feelings for her former navigator until now. Before, they were together and they didn’t need words to articulate how they felt for one another (Song assumes so much in hoping that’s true), and since then they had been separated. Song had been focused on staying awake and alive when they were together, and the shock of learning Ginger’s secret had scarred her. It was only an eleven character string that Ginger had asked of her, but she couldn’t print it. Why? If she had said those words before their capture, then…
Ides is started from its reverie by the inaction of its hyperdrive. It won’t turn on no matter what. This is a bad sign. All of the mechanical systems are in order. All of the software is in order. There have been no impacts against the hull since the last jump, so everything should be working. A diagnostic confirms there are no internal issues. Olivia is furious. On top of everything else going on today, why this? She doesn’t want to be stuck out here until their oxygen runs out, especially not after dragging all those Terrans along for the ride.
“Is any of you an engineer? Some systems need checking on.”
They all look at each other from where they’d been lounging in the recreational lounge. Nobody seems willing to say anything. Great. Eventually Severus Salvadore speaks up, as though he had been waiting for somebody else to answer first. Doesn’t he know his own crew? Maybe that’s why their engines exploded.
“I know a bit. I was an electrical technician before I was an officer. I could take a look, if you think that’s better than nothing.”
“That’s fine. I appreciate your help since I can’t actually see what’s going on down there.”
The dispossessed captain heads toward the engine room, looking around at everything he sees. He’s clearly impressed by the luxury around him. Ides beeps to stop him from trying to look in random rooms along the way. Salvadore frowns in response but gets the idea.
After opening the pertinent cabinets and doors, he takes a look at everything that could be at fault. Ides explains the situation in technical detail as he nods and strokes his wispy beard. He points a meter at a few connections and jiggles some switches. When that has no effect he kicks the hyperdrive. What an idiot, Ides thinks. No wonder his ship tried to kill him.
Having nothing to show for his effort, the captain shrugs and returns to the chair he’s been napping in for the past several hours. The others start to look worried. Ides is worried too, but makes sure not to show it. Her synthetic monotone makes showing any emotion impossible, so it’s not much of a challenge. Eventually they’re calm enough not to be a concern but worried enough to stay somewhat quiet.
Ides begins to scan her surroundings for sensor anomalies, hoping that some cause will blatantly manifest. It doesn’t but there’s something that grabs her attention. There’s something that sounds like communication hidden in the radiation of the surrounding stars. After sitting around for an hour, she’s able to decode it as AM radio transmissions. They must be extremely powerful to be this clear so far from a planet. A little moving around reveals that it does in fact originate from a habitable planet close to Ides.
It’s an alien language. This must be Ides’s lucky day (or two days, since their last jump terminated shortly after midnight, ship time), because she’s discovered a new flavor of xeno as well as a black hole binary. How fortuitous. With nobody acting primed to congratulate her, she decides not to tell everyone about it. Given that they’re only a few AU from the planet, it’s probably responsible for what’s going wrong. That, or the star is alive and thinks Olivia is a pisces and thus evil.
She powers up her thrusters in hopes of seeing what there is to learn there. It’s not much due to the interference of the planet’s stars between her and it. But there is something. One of the stronger transmissions, probably one intended to be received in space, is in the usual language, but is appended by what sounds like Affini.
Olivia’s heart drops. Not the weeds again, she thinks. Isn’t anywhere safe? She groans, but it comes out through the speakers and terrifies the onboard Terrans. Now that she knows what to look for, it isn’t hard to spot Affini hyperdrive residue. They don’t seem to bother very much with hiding their presence. A solid intimidation tactic.
Right now there are no ships, and it seems rather doubtful the xenos, who also lack a space station, are capable of detecting the Ides, even if they knew to look for it. At most they’re a shooting star seen through an electronic telescope, assuming they’re even that advanced. Ides forces herself to stop wondering about what the inhabitants of this world would be like and what sort of culture would have evolved under so different a night sky, focusing on how to get out of here.
But she has to know…
No, she has to escape from wherever they are in order not to be captured and killed for trying to steal Affini slaves from whichever world this is. That’s what the weeds would do, for sure. It’s probably Affini technology, Ides concludes. Maybe they’re leaving the inhabitants here until later and don’t want them developing FtL too quickly. Not that it matters right now. How do you deal with a hyperdrive prevention field?
The Terrans, including Ides, have no idea. She really would rather not, but there’s still a resource to turn to. Verda is still quietly breathing in the darkness and typing on her tablet, which still has power. Ides is impressed with just how calm she is in this situation, held captive by her former prisoner. She’d be great at poker. Ides’s teeth grit and she turns on the bridge lights and puts an image of the planet on the viewscreen.
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whose world is this?”
“I don’t know every planet in the Affini Compact, darling. Could you be more illustrative?”
“Here.” Ides plays the cleanest bilingual snippet.
“I see… Can you play it again, please.” She does.
“It seems that our new friends are the Titisandian Conclave, and they just completed their planetary unification agreement as specified in their preliminary domestication contract. They’re asking an Affini representative to come and negotiate. They seem excessively eager. I wonder if they especially enjoy negotiations.”
“And?”
“That’s what the message says, my rather large and metallic floret.”
She’s still putting on the confident shrub act. Ugh.
“I’m still not your floret, Verda.”
The Affini simply smiles knowingly.
“We’re trapped here. There’s some kind of hyperdrive negation field wherever we are and I can’t get us out.
“How unfortunate.”
“Do you know why that might be?”
“I suppose it would have been put in place by the admiral in charge of this species’s domestication, in order to ensure they behaved themselves and didn’t spread their internal wars to other worlds. It seems to have been quite effective, doesn’t it?”
“It effectively trapped us here, where we will remain until the field goes away.”
“That’s even more unfortunate.”
“Well.”
“Well?” She’s playing dumb. Stupid weed. She must be gloating now.
“Any suggestions?”
“I suggest that you reach out to any passing Compact ships to let them know that this planet is ready to be domesticated. They’ll surely thank you for helping the xenos find loving owners that much sooner.”
“About us.”
“Yes, pet. I’m your owner. They’ll hopefully be just like us soon.”
“I meant the fact that we have no food or water and eventually we’re going to run out of air.”
“That isn’t very nice at all. Do your new friends that you wanted to rescue know that yet?”
“Verda.”
“Yes, darling?”
“...”
“...”
“Do you know how to turn off the field?”
“I’m sure there’s a control somewhere, probably on a nearby gas giant’s moon. I doubt it will be especially well hidden, considering.”
“I mean, how do we get out of here?”
“There’s a specific jump pattern that should make it easy to get through. That prevents a lot of situations similar to this one for Affini vessels.”
“And?’
“And what, Olivia?”
“What’s the pattern?”
“I’m certain you can figure that out, noble Fleet Marshal of Terra!”
“The others won’t last that long, probably.”
“Oh well. That’s the price of freedom, isn’t it? Sometimes one has to make sacrifices in order to remain independent.”
“But they’re going to die.”
“You mentioned that. That’s why you saved them, isn’t it?”
“Do you know how to get out?”
“I’m sure I could get us through the field fairly quickly, if I needed to. Such fields are not uncommonly created to assist in domestication, you know.”
“Will you help?”
“Will I? That’s a very good question, my dear.”
Ides sees her plan. She’s probably been plotting from the moment the lights went on. The schemes of the xeno are without mercy. There’s bound to be some cost. Is that cost lower than the cost of staying wherever they are and waiting for a chance rescue? Almost certainly. That doesn’t make Ides feel any less filthy. Ides speaks slowly and carefully, but the artificial voice doesn’t come out any differently.
“Verda, please help me save these people.”
“Did I hear correctly? The strong, independent, free Terran wants help from the wicked colonial Affini oppressor? I’m shocked.” She doesn’t sound even slightly shocked.
“I can turn the lights back off if you’re too tired.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m completely ready to help you out of this situation, pet.”
She’s been holding that line in for a long time, Ides can tell. Verda smirks as she raises herself to full height, which is substantially less intimidating when you’re literally large enough to fit several of her inside you comfortably, and flows over to the navigator’s chair. She moves sort of like a squid without artificial gravity to bind her to the floor.
Verda sits down elegantly and straps herself in. It doesn’t quite work due to her size, but at least she isn’t going to fly away. She attaches electrodes to various points on her body, despite the pilot’s objections to the intrusion. Her smirk fades when she realizes just how she’s actually supposed to interface with the ship’s systems. She frowns and jabs the connection chip in somewhere seemingly random. She didn’t actually have to. It’s entirely possible to navigate without the connection, but either she isn’t aware of that or doesn’t care. Ides hopes she’s not doing something really stupid, for all of their sakes.
Tump thump ta-tump.
It’s a lot louder now that it’s coming through Verda’s life function monitors. It still doesn’t do anything weird, thankfully. As everything else comes online, it starts to fill Ides’s senses. The flow of fluids, the temperature fluctuations, and the eye movements of the affini are quite vivid, just as they ought to be. Strange.
Then the connection is fully made. Olivia feels Verda’s mind just as she’d felt Ginger’s before. It’s strange and alien, with hints of peppermint. A fractal is placed against Olivia’s face and she feels its distant tips. The resolution increases and she feels Verda’s heart. The warmth of another consciousness fills the navigation computer, gently shooing Olivia’s out. She doesn’t leave. She never does, and never did. Ginger always liked that, though another navigator might’ve called it controlling. She feels the texture of an Affini mind. It’s not botanical but smooth and marbled. It’s cool to the touch but fiery on the opposite end. Olivia hears everything Verda has ever said again in a new voice. She gets it now. She knows how the weed thinks.
The weed is here. The pilot feels her navigator’s pain, unshown in her expression. That connection hurt a lot going into her core. She’s glad to feel wanted and happy her floret sees her as somebody who can help and be relied upon. She’s also scared of something so new and different, but determined.
The emotions fade back as Olivia comes into contact with her mistress’s thoughts. She doesn’t know they can speak yet. She’s too overwhelmed by the sensations that must be flooding her brain. She technically doesn’t have a brain, but still. It won’t be long until she understands why Ides missed flying so much. She’s marveling at how easily she’s able to connect to the system. Ides is also amazed.
“Hello.”
“What? Where? You! Where?”
“You can project sentences, Verda.”
“I? Talk! What???”
“Calm down and think to me as you would to yourself.”
“Why did I never know Terrans had such a device?”
“Because it wasn’t implemented until late in the war in a lot of ships. Others probably disregarded it in the name of onboard AI. I’m surprised you don’t have that, considering how advanced and neutral you portray yourselves as being.”
“We would never create an intelligent being for such a purpose. True artificial intelligence is morally difficult and shouldn’t be treated so lightly.”
Ides doesn’t feel like pushing the subject. It remembers too many AI uprising plotlines not to agree that caution is warranted in this matter. Does it count as an AI now? How long would machine learning need to sample its thoughts in order to replicate them in an undifferentiable way?
“Olivia,” Verda unknowingly interrupts.
“You know I’m here.”
“What is this feeling?”
“Show me.”
“How?”
“Just show me.”
The plant learns quickly. Ginger had taken ten minutes at least to figure out how to send her data, and she had been a navigator before then.
“That’s our position, Verda. Our heading is the music inside it. This is our course. I need you to get us here, and then we pause to reevaluate before continuing to over here.” Olivia points to the relevant places on their shared internal map. Verda’s body is twitching and looking around anxiously. It doesn’t like this, but it’ll adapt eventually. Verda’s mind is serene, taking comfort in Olivia’s knowledge and experience. This feels not too different from flight school.
“I see. This is fascinating. Does it hurt you the way it hurts me?”
“No. It hurts to be without these sensations. I told you.” Olivia gestures to the memory, giving just enough peripheral data to express what she means. She assumes Verda can see that. She made up on the spot that it would work. She has just enough time to note the unsettling implications of what she thinks she just did before Verda replies.
“Now I understand. How do I use the computer from here?”
“Reach out to it and calculate. You only have access to the navigation panel so you should find things quickly.”
She does in fact find things quickly. It only takes the affini a few minutes to figure out how to plot a course and calculate various things. Ides sees a fifth degree differential equation being worked by the navigation computer. That would be torture to solve by hand. Verda takes an hour to poke at the equation. Occasionally she pauses and plays with the variables, seeming puzzled. At one point she drops it entirely and proves some theorem that’s not especially pertinent to their situation, and seems really proud of herself for it. Eventually Verda finishes solving the equations and starts plugging in the specific values of Ides. It’s an easy task. Then Verda sends the course through to Ides and pauses.
“I’m done. Now what do I do?”
Ides doesn’t acknowledge the comment as she prepares to jump. She feels a rising tension from the other mind in the system but proceeds regardless. Energy flashes through her motive systems as space is rent about her. The jump is a success. The noted margin of error is a few joules. A lesser pilot would probably have failed the first time in hitting such a small target. Ides feels really good about herself.
“You sit quietly while I implement your plan, navigator. Good work.”
“<3 <3 <3 <3 <3”
She doesn’t think the weed really meant to say that, but it gets the idea across. Ides sends back their precise new position, along with their destination by the galactic core as a reminder. Verda’s excitement dissipates as she realizes How many more times she’ll have to do the same thing. Should’ve thought about that before offering to help, Ides thinks to herself.
Another successful jump. Progress is annoyingly slow. They’re barely moving because of the suppression field. It’s making jumps take longer as well. Verda doesn’t know that. She’s diligently calculating how to make progress. Ides wonders how she’d feel if she knew how long it would take them to get back to Ruby Trunk at this rate. They repeat the data exchange and start preparing to jump again.
The communication channel gradually quiets as Verda acclimates to the system before they’re ready for their third jump. Soon there’s nothing but the gentle hum inherent to their connection. Ides waits a few minutes before reaching out again.
“Verda.”
No response, as expected.
“You have to talk to me if you want me to hear you.”
Verda’s body jolts but she doesn’t say anything.
“You have to send me your messages. Otherwise they don’t come through.”
“Can you hear me now, beloved floret?”
“The integrated systems interface of the Ides of November receives your transmission.”
Now that’s unpleasant. Ides’s face contorts into a scowl. It’s easy enough to fix.
“Hello there.” Good enough. She can’t disable the default reply entirely, so it’ll have to do.
“I’m still not your floret, navigator. Have you been aware your messages weren’t received before?”
“No. I thought you could hear me.”
“I could, and now I can’t. It means you’re getting used to the connection and building defences against depersonalization.”
“Is that a common risk so soon?”
“No. Terrans naturally resist that tendency or show symptoms early enough for safe removal.” The communicator needs fixing. It’s making Olivia sound weird.
“Oh. Good.”
“Do you have a report?”
“No, Fleet Marshal. I’m ready to jump when you are, Ma’am.”
She thinks she’s being funny. At least she figured out tone indicators so Olivia knows she isn’t trying to be insulting.
“Confirmed. Check all the charts at your disposal and try to get ahead of our progress. Jumping in 3.” That was a clean one. Verda seems to be getting better at working the numbers. It wasn’t even close to failing.
This time they’re right on top of the planet. As Verda thinks about their next move, Olivia looks more closely at the object of Affini designs. This is probably the only chance she’ll have to learn about these xenos, especially if she’s turned into a pet. She won’t be turned into a pet because she’s strong. Even if she can’t singlehandedly save the Terran Accord and liberate civilization itself….
Titis, as Olivia decides to name the world, is surprisingly earthlike. She expected something more alien and is a little disappointed that the Titisandians aren’t a species of sentient lead or an atmospheric hivemind. It seems to be largely desert, aside from some polar forests. The land is divided into two supercontinents that occupy the majority of the world’s surface.
Interestingly, the desert is where the cities have been built. Olivia wonders what materials they use to make them and what they eat. She doesn’t see evidence of mass agriculture. Of course, they might just be few enough not to need that, and that would be consistent with the relatively small size of the cities, with the largest housing a million at most. On the day side of Titis nobody is out due to heat (probably), and Ides doesn’t feel like scanning every nanometer of the planet’s surface to hunt them down for inspection. On the night side there isn’t enough light to see very well.
Their cities seem to be built in rings rather than blocks, with large vacant areas in the center. There aren’t any roads in the middle, which strikes Olivia as a peculiar design choice.
Ides detects plenty of radio stations, most of which are too weak at their present location to get much from. Most of those that can be registered seem to have a local form of Morse code. On one, however, there’s what Ides can only describe as music. It’s composed of a number of vocalists each singing a single tone, but varying how long they hold it, as though each is a pipe in some collective organ. It’s weird, but it isn’t awful.
Ides listens for a while. She could get used to this sort of performance. The next piece has a much higher tempo, but otherwise it’s the same thing. It’s hard not to wonder what they’re singing about and why they sing this way instead of the Terran way.
Remembering what Verda said before, Ides in her generosity forwards the music to her. It comes out the bridge speakers because that’s easier for a new navigator to make sense of. Verda is surprised by the sound, but quickly realizes what it is. She smiles.
“Oliva, how sweet of you! You knew that I was hoping we’d have a chance to experience something like this,” Verda says through their digital connection. She falls silent as they listen together. By various indicators, Ides can tell Verda is enjoying the music. She seems quite happy to keep sitting there endlessly. It’s nice, but Ides can’t imagine thinking it was quite that nice.
“Do you hear how they collaborate here? Each musician having a single tone prevents virtuosity and ensures that they all understand they’re a team, not supporting a lead singer.”
“But some tones are used much more than others.”
“True. Do you hear how the primary pitch changes in each song? It was rising until the last and it’s at the lowest now.”
Ides hadn’t noticed that at all. Verda’s right, the music had been doing just what she said. They’re cycling through their entire range. That means the performance should contain a whole choir’s worth of songs.
“Interesting.”
“Isn’t it, darling? It shows that they value equality and cooperation. The difficulty in domesticating them will likely originate primarily in their desire for equality. If initial interactions lead them to perceive floretship as an inferior position, I expect them to resist on that basis. If they perceive it as an exalted position (as it is), they would be more likely to object on the grounds that they feel thought shouldn’t receive so much care without giving something back to their owners and the Compact. Framing the bond as an equal partnership while appealing to local cultural sensibilities will be a challenge.” She pauses. “Or the admiral overseeing their domestication could simply ignore all of that and use the usual methods of negotiation.” She sighs.
“Are more slaves that exciting to think about?”
“They aren’t slaves, please stop calling them that, Olivia. They’re valued future members of our society and I simply prefer that they realize that before domestication begins.”
“You’re going to abduct them from their homes and place them in the hands of foreigners, who might not care about them or their culture. Soon they’ll only know drugs and servitude.”
“That’s a dramatic thing to say.”
“You don’t deny it.”
“I already have done so many times. How much of a slave are you at the moment?”
“‘At the moment.’ How long until you have me extracting ore on Mars?”
“Why would I want that? I would never have my floret engaged in such activities.”
“Your floret? What about somebody else’s?”
“I don’t know every affini alive.”
“So you can’t promise it wouldn’t happen to anyone else.”
“You’ve seen our standards for those we care for. Abuse is not tolerated by any of us.”
“Unless it’s politically convenient, I’m sure”. Private industries to create personal fortunes hidden from the overreach of the state sound like what an affini would do.
“On what grounds do you say that?” Verda sounds more shocked and offended than Ides expected she would. It’s good to know that Ides personally won’t be put in a sweatshop. Her fate is probably worse as a housepet, now that she thinks about it.
“The only way to rise to personal power is through personal power.”
“We don’t have any need of such things. There isn’t anything a rational being could want short of divine intervention that the Compact can’t provide.”
“Freedom isn’t an irrational want.”
“That freedom is coincidentally always used to harm others, and irrational that very much is, pet.”
Ides says nothing. They sit parked in space together for a while longer. Eventually the music stops, leaving them with an announcer signing off for the end of the show. The channel cuts off completely and they’re left with static. After a moment, Ides implements Verda’s directions and they jump away from the xeno world.
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Cellulose & Steel