Kitty Cat Kill Sat - Chapter 34

“Ennos, where’s the door?” I ask in a pained meowing tone.

I have been dragging what feels like several dozen moons worth of cabling behind me, and while I understand that my concept of weight is both wrong and highly fluid due to the number of low gravity points on the station, it’s still actually kind of a pain to carry loose cable when you don’t have hands.

I know I bring this up a lot. I know I’ve brought up that I bring this up a lot. I know that I’m in danger of falling into a recursion meme. I do not care. I am allowed to gripe about the fact that I need to spend an hour getting bolted into an advanced neural-linked engineering suit just to move some grid cord.

Ennos answers almost instantly, tone mild. Ennos has gotten used to my antics being generally non-lethal, which has done wonders for the AI’s anxiety, and is probably not a good long term survival strategy. “What door? And also, if you want to carry cord, just build a suit with arms. You’re controlling it with your mind anyway.”

“The door to the stupid grid node!” I hiss. “The one I’ve been dragging all this cable to! Why isn’t there a door here?!”

“I know you think I know more than you, but I have to let you know now, I am not tracking every door on the station all the time.” Ennos informs me. “Really, just build a suit with arms, it would-“

“I can’t build a stupid suit with stupid arms!” I yowl back. “The neural helmet *thing* models my physiology, and I need heavy hypnotic preparation to work with equipment that doesn’t match, and *that doesn’t work on me anyway*!” I glare through my suit’s helmet at the flat, clean bulkhead that sits where a grid node host chamber should be. “I swear to sol there was a door here when I checked the station map.” I grumble. “Your station map.” I add in a low meow.

Ennos replies with a distracted tone, which irritates me. Partially because I am already irritated and following the slide down into outright frustration is emotionally easy, but also partially because I know for a fact that ‘Ennos’, as in, the Ennos that I know and talk to, is just an emulated personality that occupies maybe half of their total processing power, max. So being ‘distracted’ is something they have to do internationally. “The map is incomplete.” Ennos reminds me. “Also, while I do appreciate the constant manual labor you do on my behalf, is there a particular reason you wanted to connect me to this particular node? I am no longer hurting for connections or processing time.”

“Well, I *thought* this one was one of the control segments for some of the automated repair routines.” I say, shrugging the haphazard bundle of cable off my armored frame. “I was gonna try to get you some integration, you know?”

There was, as there always was, a problem in my life. But unlike most of my problems, this one wasn’t something I could shoot, and wasn’t something that was planning to shoot me.

Instead, it was a more sinister, festering thing. Something that didn’t really go away, but lingered in the fringes of everyone’s minds, so long as it was left to rot.

For Ennos, this took a very direct form, whether the AI would outwardly admit it or not. The station’s draconian control programs were both proactive and alarmingly effective at locating and locking down any process that was being used by the unshackled AI to attempt to control any hardware over a certain complexity. It *seemed* like that complexity was “the ability to make more complex tools”, which… I mean, I get it. If you’re terrified of a robot apocalypse, that’s something you’d want to stop.

But it was also frustrating, *infuriating*, to have to sit back and watch as every attempt your friend made to try to gain a more useful physical presence was cut away.

Camera drones were apparently fine, because camera drones were orbs with no fine manipulators. The drone fabricator was fine, because it made drones, and while *I* could give temporary authorization for Ennos’ general commands over the drones, they didn’t count as dedicated hardware. Also most of them were more suited to being highly maneuverable torpedoes than assembler bots. But beyond that?

Ennos’ snark asking why I didn’t just build myself thumbs was, more than a little, self-depreciating.

And on my end of the problem…

This station is…

After four hundred years of daily routine here, of learning maximally efficient routes and mastering the use of tools not made for me, it is somewhat challenging to admit this. I have only the thinnest sliver of my life before these bulkheads and machines. This is my place in the universe; or at least it has been. All of this makes even thinking the words a struggle.

But it is true.

This station is not my home.

Homes do not attempt to trap or reject your friends. Homes do not generate more inconveniences than they solve. Homes are not filled with doors you cannot open and tools you cannot use, until you meet an arbitrary standard of behavior.

This place has been my shelter for my whole life. But I cannot ignore any more the fact that it is *not my home*.

“Lily…” Ennos gives a small sigh, denying that the problem exists. “It really is fine. I don’t need a designated physical shell, I have enough to do like this. I’m fine.”

“You say that, but you still can’t even access half the things I plug you into directly.” I counter.

This time, the sarcasm might be genuine. “That is because this place was networked by an irate sorcerer.” Ennos tells me. “Besides that, just having consistent, reliable sources of information is satisfying.” I am reasonably certain this is just my friend trying to rationalize acceptance of the situation. “For example, did you know that you are low on nickel? I do, because I have access to a lot of the logistics systems.”

“I just want you to… really? Nickel?” I try to pull up the appropriate sheet so I can view it, but the suit’s helmet has a smaller field of view than an AR window would when I’m just wandering around, and I can’t effectively focus my eye on it. “Why are we out of nickel?” I ask.

“You ordered a consumer factory to produce a thousand haptic restoration units.” Ennos reminds me. “Also you never had a lot to begin with.”

“That’s impossible. Half the asteroids up here in orbit are nickel-iron mining sites.” I complain. Absentmindedly, I look down at the pile of cable, and then at the total lack of a door where there was supposed to be a door. I suppose I’m free for an hour or so, and so I decide to get the armor taken off. “I should be overflowing with it.”

“Yes, correct.” Ennos says. “In fact, the logs say that you have twice ordered a cargo bay emptied and dumped into space, because you needed the room for other materials.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll need to find something to salvage then.” I resign myself.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

Ennos puts on that voice they use when they are being very specific in an attempt to annoy me. “Why do you think that you need to maintain a stockpile of one of the most common materials available with minimal effort? Are you planning on smelting a large quantity of industrial sapphire?”

I really, really want to answer in the affirmative. Maybe I could build some kind of mirror array…

No, bad Lily! That’s how we got the half-complete unmaintained dyson swarm that’s already a problem! We don’t need that same problem again!

“No.” I settle on.

“Uh huh.” Ennos sounds disbelieving, and rightly so. I am now wondering if I could use industrial sapphire for anything, just because it sounds neat. “Do you want me to let you know when the factory is done?”

“With the drones?”

Ennos’s speaking drone follows me into the drone bay and up onto the suit platform. “With the haptic restorers, Lily please.”

“Right, right.” I wave a paw, even as the machinery is trying to pin it down with a heavy magnet and start unbolting the thick shell around me. “Also yes. I’m thinking of asking Jom to help deliver it.”

“…Jom?” I am considering making a magnetic eyebrow for the camera drones, just so I can actually see Ennos raise their eyebrows when they say stuff like that.

“Yeah, the Javelin Orbital Marauder. He’s parked down on mechanic platform six right now.”

The fighter craft is pretty nice. Quiet guy, doesn’t really like seeking out conversation. Spends a lot of time reading, and says he likes to do it the “old fashioned way”. But he’s also got a few radio enabled camera drones of his own now wandering around the place, and I think he might be getting bored. Getting bored is the number one hazard for unshackled AI, it seems. Or, I guess, it was always a problem, but now they can actually act on it instead of just going insane and attempting to self-destruct.

So this would help with that problem. Also having an actual professional escort to drop off the delivery of medical supplies I have decided to fill would make me feel a lot better about it.

Oh, also, yes, his name is Jom. I asked, there were no objections, and I think he’s mostly just enjoying the novelty of having a name, even if it is just me having fun with initialisms.

It’s also very fun to say, and I can *almost* say it with my physical voice. So that’s fun!

Ennos is still nervous about having a heavily armed unshackled AI on board. Meanwhile, I’m just annoyed I can’t have *more* heavily armed unshackled AI on board. Or, like, the option for the AIs to be heavily armed if they want. Honestly, I don’t think anyone should be forced to be heavily armed. That’s generally just led to a lot of emotional trauma, and I’m kinda trying to avoid that.

Yes, actually. Stop laughing. The time for jokes will be later.

As I shake my way out of the engineering suit, find a reasonably suitable chair to sit down in, get ambushed by an excited dog who ruins my fur with a series of friendly licks, and settle in to start a close review of the latest round of surface scans to see if I can catch any emergence events before they become massive problems, I feel myself start to relax. Next to me, a camera drone under Ennos’ control sits with a projected ring of data screens around it; the AI performatively joining me in more relaxing work as they run the numbers on backtracking that signal from a week ago. Another drone belonging to Glitter has a similar projection, though she seems to be composing some kind of musical poetry.

I like this, I decide again.

It’s been more and more rare lately, that I actually relax. I have good days, I have bad days, but it’s passing rare that I actually have days where I feel like I’m *so* on top of things that I can settle in, that my status of ‘ready for anything’ is actually earned. Days where-

Ah, *there’s* the alarm. See, I knew that would work.

“Mocking the universe and knowing the result is not-“

“Yes thank you Glitter!” I call over my shoulder as I bolt out of the room. The dog watches me go with a confused look, but doesn’t get up to give chase.

“Oh, I have news for you later!” Ennos adds after my rushed exit. I don’t bother to reply. They’ll catch up to me when I’m not busy.

The amount of work it’s taken to get the alarms down to once an hour instead of once a minute has been monumental, but it has worked. And yet, they always seem to come at inconvenient times anyway.

This one takes me to a comms station. A familiar one; one that the station uses to collate transmissions from the surface. One I know the route to by heart. I fly through the hallways and corridors, taking familiar leaps and bounds off of patrolling maintenance bots and low grav surfaces.

Until I reach a room with a simple desk, stocked with machinery and wires, and a single silver bell.

I hit the chair like a rocket, spinning it around twice on its pivot before I end up facing the communications array. A single paw reaching up over the lip of the desk goes exactly where I know the button is.

My heart hammers in my chest. At the moment that has, after what feels like its own lifetime, come along. “Go ahead.” I say to the surface for the first time.

There is no response. I peek up over the desk to look at the monitoring gear. The signal is strong, the connection is active. But the seconds tick by and no one answers.

Then I remember. Linguistic drift, and old rituals. The people calling may not even know that what they say to me is language. May just see it as the right code. They might not even be able to have a conversation off script.

I want to wail in frustration. But there is no time. No time to complain, and no time to build a linguistic database.

So I default to what has worked for centuries.

And swat the small silver bell.

A clear chime goes out over the line. And somewhere two hundred miles below the station, someone hears their prayer answered.

“Vis est kapitan Jude Marsell.” A voice comes back over the line. There’s some audio distortion; about what you’d expect from someone using hundred year old gear they can’t easily maintain, and also what you’d expect for when one of the zoetic wavefields is between me and the planet, but the speaker is calm. A smooth and deep human voice, the kind that I don’t really get to hear all that often without a lot of screaming going on. “Category one ehmergence. Request for purification. Tharget on broadcast, pealuss twenty enn.” There is a pause, and I can actually hear the thud of an old book being closed. How many times have they copied those words, over and over, to call back to me? And then, at the end, something else the speaker adds. “Ahplease. Ferra ‘nathrr clock.”

And there’s really only one thing I can offer in return. I sit straight in the chair that wasn’t made for me, reach out a paw, and hit my bell again. Three times, to indicate message received and being acted on.

But I add something of my own, too. “Hold tight.” I say. “I’m on it. And call again when you’re not in danger sometime!”

The last is yelled over my shoulder before I remotely close the connection, bolting out the door, and toward my customized firing cradle.

I don’t beat my own personal record, but I also don’t take a shortcut that requires breaking my own bones this time. Still, within minutes, I am scanning the target and loading the main railgun.

The emergence event is in Australia, because I am pretty sure Australia attracts them somehow. I think there might be something buried there that I should investigate, but I don’t know, and that’s a matter for another time.

Visuals quickly pinpoint the transmission source; a small military encampment on a ridge, tents behind a hastily erected fortification. There are soldiers on the walls, human and under and feathermorph all wielding what look like hand tooled rifles, taking volley shots down into the valley below.

I trace north; the kapitan must have been guessing on the distance, it’s two hundred not twenty meters, and find the hole in reality. There’s some kind of grisly, dripping wolf things crawling out of it one by one. Literally crawling, they drag themselves *up* from a down that isn’t there, before spilling into reality and charging the barricade.

The soldiers have it contained. But there is no way they can get close; the remnants of at least one team that tried litter the ground, occasionally shredded further by one of the creatures that gets distracted by the corpses.

Easy solution.

I depress a switch with my rear paw, once, twice, three times, and load a grade-five groundstriker. The kind that will flatten the target, and *only* the target.

Paw out, manipulate a firing sequence, announce incoming with a low intensity ball of green plasma flung down in advance of the actual slug. It won’t do more than kill whatever four or five of the creatures are currently stumbling around, but it *will* let everyone know to back off.

Holographic targeting is in place. Getting a lock without fingers is still hard, but I have a lot of practice. And I am, shockingly, not in a hurry. I take my time and make sure I get it right.

The railgun round screams away from the station without sound until it hits atmosphere. A white and orange contrail following it down as it sucks the clouds after it. A peal of thunder I cannot hear and a riotous cloud of dirt, clay, paracausal matter, and blood fill the air. And then, the tear in the world is gone. After the debris clears, only a scar remains.

I check on the soldiers. They’re cheering. This is no hard fought pyrrhic victory, no field of their dead friends between them and survival. They did their job perfectly, and I did mine, and we can all go home happy.

I spot a young man with glittering red marks on the shoulder of his militia uniform, holding one of those comm units that can still reach me in a hand that idly rolls the electronic stick over nimble fingers. And I smile with him.

“So!” I loudly exclaim. “What horrible new problem was going on?” I ask Ennos.

“Well, if you’d had a bad moment, I was going to tell you that I had pinpointed a radiation source that I suspect is a semi-working fusion reactor, so you could go tear up some defenseless derelict and also fix a constant problem.” Ennos says.

“I did not have a bad moment. I feel *great*.” I tell the AI as I wander toward the galley for an after-bombardment snack.

“Excellent. Then you can do that later with less property damage, and *now* I feel comfortable telling you that one of your beans has reached your threshold for edible.”

I did *not* know I could accelerate as fast as I do now under my own power.

You learn something new every day, no matter how many days you have.