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Part 2 – Master and Commander | Chapter 41 – Pre-show Jitters

  PrincessColumbia

  Diane was in the singurly frustrating position of being in charge of everything on the ship and yet having nothing to do.

  Preparations had been done mostly at a breakneck pace, and simir to the st mission where Diane was anticipating combat, an entire security locker was relocated from the station to some empty quarters near the VIP state room that was her home away from home aboard the Athena. The crew of the ship, a whole 12 people, boarded with a competent professionalism that Diane had nothing but praise for in their response time and preparation to unch at a moment’s notice.

  There was the singur problem that one of those 12 people was the captain of the ship, leaving Diane in the role of “very special (and cranky) guest.”

  Filling time was proving to be a challenge. The ship-board facilities weren’t quite the same level as those on her station, but there were holographic emitters in the quarters, a full-sized galley, and an observation lounge on the lower deck of the ship. Diane’s anxieties over the fate of Caitlynn couldn’t be distracted by any sort of holonovel, the avaible shows for streaming were overrun with pablum from the st century plus some procedurally generated content that was supposed to reflect an additional three-ish centuries of video entertainment, and her ck of proper credentials for the FTLN network meant that she couldn’t even check the IRL social media. When she did eat with the crew, they were diffident; respectful and courteous but stepping around her in a manner she recognized as, “Put on your best ‘customer service smile for the boss so you don’t get fired,” from her time as an analyst.

  And the observation lounge had a fantastic view of the inside of a FTL tunnel.

  Diane promised herself that she’d take on another mission with the Athena once she’d managed to rescue Caitlynn and calm the angry beast inside her. They really were doing an admirable job and didn’t deserve to py escort to a problematic Karen.

  She managed to occupy her time by reviewing the tools in Russe’s kit that he’d loaded to her combat armor. In the aftermath of the assault on the sver’s starbase they’d never gotten around to removing the cracker scripts and hacking tools, which in retrospect seemed like the best thing long-term. She’d made a note in her log to have Katrina assemble another suit for her if she’d ever need to wear armor inside Terran borders, then added a note for a stealth suit, a pnetary survival suit, and to start research on variations of her combat suit. Sure, there was no ‘Combat/Space Suit’ research tree, but there also wasn’t a levelling system for melee and person-to-person combat, so she was going to create advantages where there weren’t some already. In the meantime, she created a couple of scripts based on the programs Russe had loaded so she’d be able to assume complete control of the target ship’s computers even if she didn’t start singing, because she wasn’t in a singing mood.

  It wasn’t like the embarrassment she’d felt standing in the airlock colr on the outside of the sver’s station, nor was it the hesitation she’d experienced when Norma asked her to sing on their first mission off-station. This was because white-hot rage was practically bubbling under her skin. She couldn’t even imagine keeping time, let alone finding a pitch or singing some lyrics.

  She’d taken to pying music in her quarters at a significant volume, singable or not. It was good that the quarters were as soundproofed on all the ships as they had been on the Dragon’s Daughter as part of the default design, otherwise she’d probably be seen as even more of a problematic passenger than she already was with how loud she was pying the music.

  And it was angry music; she’d managed to dig up an algorithm from some century past that would py songs based on likes and dislikes, and she’d taken to rating songs with something of a vengeance in her banked fury. Starting with some Gospel Metal, her musical selections drifted into Epic Metal, then Death Metal, until finally nding on the genre of Argent Metal. A genre that she’d never encountered before, it used some extreme distortion, scrunchy as hell sampling, heavy percussion, and some of the most hectic bass she’d ever allowed into her ears. It suited her mood perfectly, keeping her from going off the rails during the second day of the trip as she went about assembling her loadout, both in her private quarters and the converted armory.

  She’d immediately grabbed not one but two P390s and a specialized ammo carry rig that had pouches for several magazines for the carbine rifles on both thighs. She supplemented those with hip pouches filled shotgun shells. Her now standard dual pistol arrangement was already rigged up on the lower abdomen in a tched pocket arrangement that kept them securely clipped to the surface of the armor and obviated the need for dedicated holsters.

  As for holsters, the two P390s wouldn’t be able to hang off the torso rig she’d used st time with a single rifle, this time she had a pair of almost scabbard-like hip holsters made by the ship’s synth stations for the guns.

  She opted for a tactical shotgun this time, the shorter barrel and butt-stock combined with the front and back pistol grips giving her a much better close quarters weapon than the longer pump-action shotgun she’d used the st time she went into combat. The semi-automatic action would be invaluable for rapid reaction times, as well.

  New to her loadout was a 50-cal mini-rail handgun with an 8-inch barrel that was occupying the back holster she normally put her anti-A.I. weapon in. That abomination was back on her station, and she didn’t even want to think about it, but the holster was already built into her suit and the 50-cal was avaible, so she’d figured; why not?

  The entire time, the image of Caitlynn being shot through the temple kept cycling in her mind. Knowing she was going as fast as possible to rescue her girlfriend didn’t help, knowing it was a game didn’t help. So far as their bodies perceived things and their minds were connected to the VR, it was as real as it could be. So long as it didn’t cause perception dissonance, they could be inhabiting bodies composed of geometric shapes that resembled quadrupedal aliens from a universe that didn’t have gravity and pain and death would still be traumatic.

  Which was a problem for the non-American VR, wasn’t it? American VR rigs could simute pain by tricking the nervous system into perceiving light and sound as impulses from different nerve endings entirely, a form of induced synesthesia that some clever programmers had used to create sensation, but there was no direct connection between those artificial senses and the physical brains of the people pying the games.

  In the VR pods, however? If she understood the technology right, it was only through the mercy of the programmers that pyers didn’t experience every moment of every possible death. Caitlynn had told her about CoRA and how there was some concern over how accurately the game rendered violence and death. It was, apparently, one of the reasons she hadn’t liked the game. One too many times visiting a space Caitlynn had called a ‘death dream’ where the entire experience of the ‘dream’ had been to reduce the trauma of a very ugly ‘death.’

  Which begged the question, one that had only been obliquely answered and not to Diane’s current satisfaction; how accurate was the experience of death in GU:MC? At what point did the repeated pain of dying overwhelm the pyer’s desire to stay in the game? Caitlynn had said that being killed was an ‘unpleasant’ experience, but she hadn’t said more than that, which could either mean it was inconsequential and thus she honestly wouldn’t care how many times she had to respawn...or it had been so ugly and painful that she didn’t want to dwell on it.

  And lurking underneath all the anxiety of not knowing any of this was; if the pain of repeatedly dying or the frustration of being forced to respawn grew to be too much, would Caitlynn just log out and never log back in? Diane wasn’t actually a UN citizen. Her authentication credentials to be in the game were as fake as her cover. Even if Caitlynn tried to look up Diane on the FTLN, she would find precisely nobody that fit her name or her description. Contact was actually illegal between American citizens and people outside the wall. Diane could give Caitlynn her exact contact information for every means of contact both legitimate and cndestine for online spaces and, unless they logged into the game through the pod provided by the agency, they’d never be able to even message each other.

  And that was entirely ignoring the fact that Caitlynn would never recognize the person she was outside the pod.

  If Caitlynn chose to leave the game because a NPC was torturing her, Diane would likely never see her again.

  Her musings were interrupted by a chime of the comms systems. Blinking herself out of her singurly depressive state, she took a steadying breath, “Yeah?”

  “Commander,” came the voice of the ship’s comms officer, “Ship-to-ship from the Arzoll’an’s Victory, Lt. T’noni calling for you, holographic signal.”

  Diane gnced down at her clothing, just a simple bra and pants, so she reached over to the tunic she’d draped over the state room’s chair and pulled it on over her head, “Put her through...ensign?”

  “Ensign Smitty, ma’am,” the woman on duty answered, “Patching the signal through now.”

  “Thank you, Smitty,”

  “Of course, ma’am.” The comms signal disconnected just as Leki’s virtual presence rezzed into the room.

  The other Morvuck took one look at Diane’s face and flinched. “...that bad, huh?”

  Diane huffed a sigh and sank back to sit on the bed. Leki gnced around the room, noting the clothing rather carelessly discarded and various weapons and cases scattered around in various states of preparation for their mission. Nothing was in a pce that couldn’t be assembled at a moment’s notice, and they still had another sleep cycle before they got to the first system to investigate, but Leki had seen Diane’s quarters and knew how out of character the comparatively sloppy state of the state room was.

  Leki turned the chair around and sat down, reclining slightly and crossing her legs. “Talk to me.”

  Diane blinked in confusion at the lieutenant, “...about what?”

  “About,” she gestured to indicate pretty much all of Diane’s everything, “...that. I figured I should check on you; when Hunter’s Haze hits on the battlefield all it takes is pointing the woman in the right direction and taking out any ranged attacks before they get to her. She’ll drop eventually, usually from exhaustion, you just gotta keep her focused on the right targets. But this far in advance of any action?” Leki tapped her temple, “The focus and drive to do something circles inward. You know you have a target, but that target is going to take so long to get to that you start analyzing everything else that could happen. What if you ripped off all the governors on the FTL drive? What if you stayed up all night just in case a miracle happens, and you somehow arrive at your target hours earlier than is physically possible?”

  “And if that isn’t the target your mind tches onto, you’ll start going over all the ways you could have done things differently, somehow. What if you had asked Caitlynn to stay another day? What if you’d sent the Dragon’s Daughter with her? What if you’d somehow convinced a woman whose entire purpose is to be out among the stars making connections locked up in a safe little box on your station for the rest of your lives?”

  Diane snorted, “Well, I’m not thinking about that...”

  Leki folded her hands over her belly and raised a skeptical eyebrow at Diane.

  “...once. I thought about it once and realized how dumb even proposing that would be.”

  Leki quirked a slight smile, “Good girl, you do have a brain in your head.”

  Diane actually felt a petunt pout appear on her face, “I’m plenty smart!” Leki’s skeptical eyebrow returned, and Diane huffed, “I do dumb things like wander onto the streets of an unfamiliar city unescorted. That doesn’t mean I’m not smart!”

  Leki nodded once, “Debateable, but I’ll concede your point for the moment.” She gestured as though indicating an invisible table between them, “So...spill. What’s on your mind? What’s got you so twisted up that you’re...” she pointedly looked around the room before returning her focus to Diane.

  Diane sighed and scrubbed at her scalp with her fingertips for a moment, trying to frame her concerns in a way that wouldn’t break OpSec and would be in such a way that an NPC could understand. “I...” she started hesitantly, “I’m worried. I’m worried that I’ll never see Caitlynn again.”

  Leki’s brows pinched together, “I don’t understand, don’t Commanders respawn?”

  Diane sighed, “Yeah, but...Commanders have to want to respawn.” She was clearly not expining this well given Leki’s still confused look. “It’s...I guess it’s a little like being in the military, from what I’ve read. You sign up to do missions, right? And as long as those missions are going well, everything’s fine. But what if a mission goes really badly?” The lieutenant was showing signs of comprehension as Diane continued, “So, like, you might not even finish the mission, and if it’s particurly traumatizing? Like, you lose a limb and even if they grow it back or repce it with a prosthetic you still lost a limb, so do you even want to go back on missions? Should you go back out in the field?”

  Leki raised a hand to her temple and started rubbing it with her fingertips, “...and Caitlynn has lost a lot more than a limb multiple times.”

  Diane’s voice hitched in her throat, necessitating a moment for her to swallow back the knot that was forming, “She could leave at any time, just...choose not to respawn. And I don’t...I don’t think I have any way of telling her that her ship is safe to come back to if she’s l...left, and worse, I don’t know what she goes through when she...dies.”

  Leki leaned forward, uncrossing her legs and mirroring Diane’s position by putting her elbows on her knees. Their faces were now just a few inches apart, which allowed Diane to let her voice drop to a whisper, “I’ve...I’ve thought about...trying it. Just to know what she’s going through, so I’d know what she experiences when she’s been shot by Coxand. Maybe if I had some idea...”

  “No!” blurted Leki, “You are not going to do that!”

  Diane had to blink the film of moisture she hadn’t realized her eyes were collecting, “Whu...?”

  “I don’t care if Commanders have some sort of mythical ability to come back from the dead!” Leki snapped, “You are not shooting yourself in the head in some misguided hope that it gives you more information!”

  Diane shrugged, “...but, I’ll just re...”

  “You don’t know that you’ll respawn!” barked Leki in a drill sergeant voice, “For all you know the respawning Commanders are a fluke or some sort of weird, cosmic minority. You could be the Commander that eats a bullet only to be the first to not respawn no matter how much you want to! That is not an option for you!”

  Of course, Diane knew she’d respawn, she’d have to log out of the game entirely to not respawn, but the NPC being puppeted by a possibly nascently sentient A.I. wouldn’t know that. For all this digital being knew, death was The End and Diane was risking everything if she attempted to respawn. But it was clear that Leki was understanding the problem and probably had an idea why Diane was in the emotional state she was festering in.

  “I had questions about the Commanders after we met Caitlynn, and Russe was more than happy to talk about it,” said Leki. Diane snorted and rolled her eyes, knowing how eager the tech was to infodump about Commanders. Leki’s mouth turned up in the corners just a bit, her own thoughts clearly following the direction Diane’s took, “He said that Commanders have a way to communicate with each other that doesn’t rely on the rey network. Can you try using that to find out how Caitlynn is doing?”

  Diane blinked at Leki, her mind suddenly empty of all thoughts but one. She blinked again and thunked the heel of her hand against her forehead, “I take back what I said about being smart,” she breathed as she closed her eyes in exasperation.

  Leki chuckled, “We’ll chalk this up to one of the dumb things you do. So are you going to try it?”

  Diane nodded and took a calming breath. She sat up straight and flicked her fingers in the unconscious gesture to bring up the in-game HUD, then tapped through the interface to find the in-game messaging pane. She scrolled the tabs until she found ‘History,’ and sure enough the one entry was her video call with Caitlynn from when they first met. She tapped on the button to start a text conversation and tapped out a message:

  Are you still online? Forgot about the messaging feature for a hot minute and wanted to check on you.

  She hit ‘send’ and for added measure tapped the ‘Friend Request’ button. Taking a deep breath, she waved her hand to dismiss the HUD and felt like a weight she hadn’t been aware she was carrying was no longer there. “Okay, I’ve sent a message,” she said to Leki, who had watched the entire procedure with intent curiosity, “Now we can only w...”

  As though anticipating the word ‘wait’ and eager to spoil the drama, the notification throbber appeared in the corner of her vision. She flicked the HUD back into pce and went straight to the notifications. Tapping the 1 New Message line, she was taken right back to the chat window where a new message bubble appeared:

  Takes more than 1 a hole to make me log out

  Diane read the message three times before she let herself really grasp that she wasn’t seeing things, “She’s alive!” she gasped. She was aware that Leki was grinning broadly and felt the sisterly sp of Leki’s hand on her knee, but Diane was focusing intently on the bottom corner of the chat window that said, Other pyer is typing...

  Eventually, a new message popped up:

  Bound and blindfolded in hold

  Using sight keyboard to msg

  “She’s in a hold, probably a cargo hold, and they have her bound and have covered her eyes for some reason. She’s using an eye-tracking method to reply.”

  Leki stood, her body intersecting with the HUD and completely unaware of it. She put her hand on Diane’s shoulder, “Talk to your girl, then let us know anything that changes the pn in tomorrow’s briefing.”

  Diane smiled up at her friend and realized she was actually crying from relief, “Thank you...really. I...thanks.”

  Leki’s smile was warm, “I guess I’m your djadj-nah for this hunt.” At Diane’s confused head tilt, she crified, “It transtes to something like, ‘adviser, spotter, and confidant.’ Basically, I’m here to keep your head on straight during the mission.”

  Diane felt her lip tremble as she smiled back, her emotions still very close to the surface, “Well, I’d say you’re very good at it.”

  Leki squeezed Diane’s shoulder and rezzed out without another word. Diane focused on the messenger and began typing a reply, her thoughts no longer spiraling.

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