Kitty Cat Kill Sat - Chapter 28

Of all the things I expected to hear today and be excited about, “Your bloodwork came back.” was not one of them. Mostly because I had forgotten how long the medical analyzer could take on some things.

Sometimes, I think the machine is calibrated to go slower so that whatever people installed it didn’t get freaked out by how rapidly technology had outpaced their frail meat brains. I… have a lot of free time to think things, sometimes. Look, it’s been years since I’ve had proactive projects to work on, don’t judge me.

I’m in the middle of trying to figure out why a repair drone isn’t sealing a breach in the deck. I’ve got one of those really uncomfortable hard light rebreathers on, just in case there actually is an atmosphere leak here, but it seems like it’s just a regular hole between two decks. I’ve tried giving the drone explicit commands, I’ve tried giving the broad command through the station maintenance authority, and I’ve tried doing it myself. That last part did not go well, because I can’t figure out what button to push to turn off the gravity here, and I am far too cat to lift the six hundred kilo enhanced metal plate into place to activate the clamps and weld it down properly.

So I’m back to trying to diagnose errors in code that is honestly really far beyond me. Most of the stuff on this station I can reprogram pretty easily, especially now that I can narrate instead of typing. What used to take a year now takes a day or two. It’s nice! But sometimes you get stuff like this weird drone, which I *think* is from an Ado Iroquois reclamation team, where the code was produced by so many layers of machine learning that it’s almost organic.

To be clear, by ‘almost organic’, I don’t mean it’s a living person. I mean it’s a heuristic mess that doesn’t make a lot of sense, and pretty much only works by random chance. But it works enough that I can leave it alone and let it do its thing.

“Okay, let’s try again.” I lazily mewl out. “Assess and repair the designated area.” I flag the damaged hull section and file the request both manually, and through the station’s command structure.

Almost right away, I get a return code of ‘job assessed, work finished’.

I crane my neck back to look upward, feeling the bones creak uncomfortably as I strain to look at the ceiling.

Nope. Hole’s still there.

So, the process goes, I make a couple edits to the code, and try again. And again, and again, and again.

It’s been a long day.

It’s not even a high priority hole. I don’t honestly *care* if the courtship chamber on deck N2 is roughly connected to the lateral hallway on deck 19. I don’t *use* either of these. No one does. But it’s the principle of the thing; someone put holes in my home and I’d like it looking nice in case I ever have guests.

Still, when Ennos interrupts me, I jump at the chance.

“Lily, I have-“

“Yes! Thank you!” I yowl, scrambling backward and nearly slicing my paw open on the exposed circuit board in the back of the repair bot. “I’ll take it!”

Ennos pauses. “Do you even know… no, nevermind. I’m glad your repairs of our home continue apace.”

“Oh, uh. Yes.” I nod energetically, bobbing my whole body to agree. Yup. Actual repairs happening, right here. “How’s the grid doing?” I try to tangent away.

My AI friend practically snarls at that, and I know I’ve got a good distraction for the future. “This station’s digital landscape is a shambles. Overloads have claimed a number of connecting nodes, and reestablishing those links to other segments will take time, and physical interaction. I am making progress, but it is frustrating, and I am trying to not bother you unless I actually know which button to push.” Ennos says. “On the sharper side, I seem to have been cut off from a few of the more worrying specters wandering around in here. So that’s nice.”

“I’m glad to hear you’ve gotten more cavalier about impending death.” I joke as I close the ‘repair’ drone back up with my forepaws, and start making a wandering line toward a nap spot. It’s time for a break or something.

“Death? What?” A note of terror reenters Ennos’ voice. “I thought you said they were harmless!”

“What? Uh… yes! Absolutely! I’m just kidding!” I scramble to undo my blunder. “They’re just misunderstood, and shy! I’m sure!”

“Lily, I’m going to need you to install a new proton reactor to power the firewall I’m going to design.”

“I’ll consider it.” I concede graciously. This is probably my fault, anyway. “Also, what did you come down here for originally?”

One of the weird quirks Ennos has is that they will pause to ‘check’ things like this. I *know* they don’t need to. It’s just an affectation. But they seem to like it, and it does give a more casual feeling, so I don’t complain. “Oh, your bloodwork came back from the medlab. You aren’t allergic to any-“

I am already moving. Coiled muscles propel me, reflexes humming as I fling myself down the hall. I know the exact route I need to take; the station is huge, but my mental map of it is perfect in one regard. I know exactly where the galley is, and where I can see just how badly the station’s personnel file has been ruining my life for the last *several hundred years*.

Ennos’ voice trails behind me. I don’t think even the sharply intelligent unshackled AI was expecting just how fast I can move when motivated.

They catch up a minute later, spinning words out of the walls to sound like normal conversation to my ears. “-thing. Though there was a note about you having some kind of residual radiation damage, and-“

I take a corner sharply, leaving Ennos sighing behind me.

“Lily, you can’t keep-“

I am up an access shaft, scrambling up the ladder that I have wrapped thick cloth around the rungs of so my claws can dig in properly.

Food. Potentially, maybe not. But *food*! If the galley doesn’t think I’m allergic to everything that isn’t beige nutrient paste, maybe it will make me *actual fucking food*! All I have to do is make it to the galley, and-

A klaxon sounds. It’s one I’m familiar with; something is on a collision course with the station.

Okay. This is fine. I divert course, heading toward the magweb control station. Normally I’d just use the grapples, but they’re four decks up and I don’t feel like climbing and I *still* haven’t figured out how to reenable the lift shafts yet.

The thing about to hit us was a lump of melted plastic moving at plus a hundred miles an hour relative. The plastic itself I feed into a recycler, which will slowly use vacuum difference to grind it down to something I can later use in manufacturing. What’s really interesting is the chemical that was melting the plastic, even in the depths of space still doing its work; slowly but surely. I carefully have that isolated and moved to an organics analyzer for… analysis.

Look, sometimes the tools just do what they say they do. Don’t judge me.

There’s also a problem with the recycler unit not actually having any kind of logistics connection to the fabricators or manufactories, and that’s just a pain, but whatever, I don’t need a lot of plastic for what I do *anyway*. Either way, I’ll deal with that *later*, because right now, it is time to try my paws at lunch.

My detour didn’t actually take me farther away from the galley by raw distance, but unfortunately, I can’t actually tunnel through solid metal unless I’m starting at the metallurgical tunneler, so I’m stuck taking the long way.

I don’t know if I say this often enough, but I love my home.

This station is a winding maze of halls and doors, and while I’ve only recently gained access to a good two thirds of them, all these familiar spaces are still so comforting to me. I feel *safe* here, wrapped in warm metal arms in this spinning metal habitat so far above the sky. Every little cut and scrape I can see from this latest round of damage just makes me love it more; all that, and it still kept me safe. Still kept the ghosts away long enough for me to do my part.

And now, with more and more of it opening up to me, the future here seems so bright. So full of ideas and options. And, I would like to remind everyone as I step onto an access shaft gravplate and launch myself straight ‘up’, full of *food*.

Naturally, I am only a couple hundred feet from the galley when Glitter calls me.

“Excuse me, Lily.” The ever proper AI greets me with a pair of camera drones that perform what I can only describe as a formal bow. “You seem busy, so I regret that I require some of your time.”

The majority of me is glad that Glitter is up and running again. Glad that she’s undeterred about engaging with the world. I am less glad that she’s still really ritualistic in her behavior sometimes, and also that she is now keeping me from my lunch, but I’m not gonna be the one to discourage her.

“Sure, what’s up?” I meow, trying not to let the rapid flicking of my tail give away my impatience.

“I have been studying the surface cities, now that I have a better vantage point, and some free time with my repairs complete.” Glitter explains. “And I have noticed one, which I wished to ask you about. I cannot find anything on your public grid about it.”

“Oh, our grid is all messed up right now.” I explain, passing on what Ennos told me earlier. “Do you have coordinates?” She does, and I pull up what sensor records I can access from here in my AR, looking over the area.

It’s a fairly small spot, all things considered. About fifty square miles in a strip along the eastern edge of one of the islands in the Atlantic Archipelago. It takes me a little while to try to sort out why Glitter is focused on it, and eventually, I *don’t* sort it out and just ask instead.

“Pull up the heat signatures, if you can.” Glitter says. “I wish I could share more simply. Heat, life signs, perhaps power draw or signal maps would also help?”

I have all of those. I layer them while I consider getting some kind of big five mile long hardwired cable to plug Glitter’s grid into ours. “Okay. So what am I… oh.” The city, under these lenses, is instantly obvious.

Nothing organic living here. Unshielded power lines that are way too well laid out, regimented trace signals in the air, massive imbalances in construction analysis. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, and luckily, Glitter caught this infection before it spread beyond its current size.

“Cityseed.” I grumble. “Guess I didn’t get the last of them after all.” I hiss slightly as I remember my last fight with one of these. The cityseeds were one of the few ground based threats that could actually *fire back* sometimes. Not enough to do anything, but enough that they were real threats and not just stationary targets. I mean, they *were* stationary targets, but not *just* that.

“You know it to be an enemy?” Glitter sounds almost sad, through the drones.

“Sorta, yeah.” I meow in exhaustion. “They’re like a less granular gray goo problem. They just consume and spread. I’m not even sure *why*, all I know is that they seem to be able to pop up anywhere.”

“But why a city?” Glitter asks. “Is it building for anyone?”

“Not that I know.” I answer grumpily. “I don’t even know if they’re full AI. They’ve never answered me when I tried to talk. Though, granted, there wasn’t a whole lot I could *say* at the time.”

Glitter’s drones hover around each other in an idle orbit while she composes her reply. Ennos does strategic pauses; Glitter does political word work. “Would you be offended if I attempted to speak with it?” Glitter asks me. “I do not mean to disparage your diplomatic ability…”

“Oh, disparage away.” I stroll under the drones, trying to contain myself from sprinting off as I answer. “I’m still new at talking! Say hi, make a friend! Let me know if they launch anything at us!” I take a corner, her drones lagging behind as Glitter turns her digital mind to the task she was most interested in. “Please don’t get too attached.” I whisper, mostly to myself. “Just in case.”

The cityseeds I’ve known were… I’m not going to say ‘evil’. I don’t think they were alive enough to be evil. But they were toward the start of my era of guardianship, and before I flattened their cities and bombed out the roots, they had cut the world’s population in half.

Part of me, the part that’s always angry, wants to just launch something dangerous and overwhelming at the surface target, and write it off. But the rest of me, the part that’s been making friends, and maybe doesn’t have to be so angry all the time, wants to see where Glitter can take this.

I pull up an AR display with a constant map to the closest gun station though. Just in case.

I am almost right outside the galley when Ennos interrupts me to tell me that there’s signs of weapons fire on the surface of the primary moon.

I am so tired. I just wanted lunch.

The moon is far away. And it might be a local issue anyway. From what I understand, the undercities and their republics war with each other constantly, and there isn’t much I can do to stop them from where I am. But maybe there should be some kind of break from that on the surface.

I give the okay, and Ennos deploys some of our drone fleet, taking command for this one. And then, with that out of the way, I *finally* hop up onto a chair to be served lunch.

No allergies, no problems, just one hungry cat. The grid is connected here, the galley knows I can eat anything. Just give me *anything*. Please.

My meal arrives.

Ration.

Ration in the shape of a caduceus. Cute.

Well. At least I know now that it wasn’t the allergies. And that the galley has a sense of humor.

“Lily…” one of Ennos’ camera drones floats nearby. “I’m sorry…” Their voice sounds worried about me.

“Ah, it’s fine.” My ears flick back as I lick at the back of one of my paws before hopping my forepaws up onto the table to eat. “Nice design on the snake. Good scale work, galley.” I say out loud to the possibly haunted, possibly non-sentient machinery.

“You’re taking this gracefully.” Glitter’s smooth voice joins Ennos from her own drone. “We were worried for you.”

I try to make a derisive noise, but it doesn’t work too well when my mouth is full and I end up spraying ration crumbs onto my plate. “I’ve been eating, and complaining about, this stuff for centuries.” I say. “One more week or two for the strawberries to come in is *nothing*.” I scarf down the rest of the ration, and use my paw to wipe away what’s left on my muzzle.

Then I take some time to check on the garden. The greenery is starting to come in; tiny sprouts and little leaves poking up through nanoenhanced dirt. The room smells like growth and life. It’s beautiful.

I sit and watch a cucumber vine grow for maybe a little too long, trying to convince myself that eating the greenery isn’t worth it. My thoughts are eventually broken by another alarm sounding, jolting me out of my meditative fantasy about what actual fruits and vegetables will taste like. I could have waited out the entire duration in here, but no. Something had to interrupt me.

The updates flow in from the station and Ennos as I am updated on what’s gone wrong. There’s a missile from some ancient war headed our way from above the elliptical, stealth systems having failed to solar radiation and its fifty year orbit finally bringing it too close to an actual target for safety.

I swear I’m not mad about the ration thing.

It had nothing to do with why I fired so many different point defense guns at the missile.