"I…I don't want to be…all alone. Gunzou!"
Iona knew that she computed in a minute what a human did in a lifetime. She also knew that humans were mortal, far more fragile than a Fog processor. Yet at no time in the past two years she had spent with this man lying barely alive before her had she ever run a simulation for life without him. It was an obvious oversight, but although she had known of the possibility of her outliving him…something…had held her back from running those numbers. Now all her vast processing power was absorbed in nothing else but those simulations. The result…terrified her.
Fear, much less terror, was an alien concept for her, as it was for all her kind. She knew from her database that fear was an autonomic response in mammals including humans. Pulse and respiratory rate would race, blood pressure would rise, pupils would dilate, and awareness would improve at the expense of fatigue later. Iona possessed no heart nor a circulation system, but her awareness, her sense of the here and now, was as sharp as it had ever been. She could hear the drip…drip…drip of condensation falling from the bridge bulkheads surrounding her mental model and the sheen of dew along her mental model's skin in the now 4'C and 100% humidity. Although she no longer controlled her vessel's skin and therefore the surrounding ocean was beyond her awareness, she could feel the currents of cold seawater flowing through her body , impinging on the last bastions of free air remaining within her vessel and presaging the end of her captain.
"Cut life support," Gunzou had told her. Her simulations had already informed her it was the logical course. Gunzou had minutes left to live in his current environment. She lacked the resources now to provide him an environment more conducive to survival even though she wanted to. Maintaining his life within her current vessel was going to be impossible in 5.27 minutes.
"My sisters have been very thorough," she grudgingly admitted to herself, in a manner that would have been called 'under her breath' had she breathed. Her twins, I-400 and I-402 had indeed done their job well when they had caught her helpless after her sprint from Kongou.
Deciding that her simulations on life after Gonzou were providing no utility since she now dismissed the relevance of such a concept, she instead directed her resources into finding a way out. In 0.43 minutes she had determined there were no viable options left within Gunzou's orders, and therefore the one order that underlay her very existence. The order she had awoken with.
"Find Chihaya Gunzou and follow his orders."
There was absolutely no way to reconcile Gunzou's continued existence with her orders. She must allow him to perish.
But she couldn't.
She had heard Iori speak of hearts before as she had experienced what the engineer called "girl time" in her quarters along with Shizuka. She had examined her databases and recognised quickly that what the women referred to was a figurative heart, a sense of emotion, rather than the pump that drove the human circulatory system. She'd never been able to grasp the concept of love…placing someone else's well being above one's own self or above any sense of duty.
She understood it now.
She would not…could not…allow Gunzou to die.
With a start she realized 1.06 minutes had passed as she contemplated the extremely little data involved in sacrifice. She couldn't account for it since there had been almost no computation involved. It made no sense, but she dismissed the phenomenon given how little time remained for her to act.
Drawing on the paltry remaining nanoparticles still unquestionably functional and undeniably under her full control, and which weren't necessary to maintain the physical integrity of the bridge itself, she fashioned a life capsule to hold Gunzou. She reinforced it to ensure it would be able to survive the depths far longer than Gunzou would be able to remain alive under her most optimistic simulations.
As part of her efforts, she ensured ample lighting and a beacon to call Takao, Haruna, or Hyuuga if they came within 30 kilometers. She even fashioned a window, despite the weakening of the structure, to ensure Hyuuga or Takao would be able to verify immediately that Gunzou was alive. When all was right she carefully lifted Gunzou into the capsule before crawling in beside him and drawing the capsule closed.
Her last command to her vessel was to dissolve the remaining particles under her firm control to further reinforce the capsule. As things stood, the object could likely survive a direct hit by a corrosive torpedo, although the occupant would likely be turned into tomato paste by the g's incurred. She chose not to ponder that since she couldn't affect such an event anymore.
She felt the water surrounding her now as the skin of the capsule was her vessel. All that remained of her, other than her mental model. It was time for her to perform the last step to ensure Gunzou's continued safety.
"Gunzou," she whispered to the unconscious man before her, breathing laboriously but still alive in his now 24'C environment. "I'm sorry, but I must disregard your orders. You will live. And if you do not, then we'll sleep together…my captain." With that she leaned forward in the manner Iori had described and placed her lips over Gunzou's own. She then dissolved her human form, directing her mental model's nano-materials to form a replacement oxygen recovery and atmospheric sustaining unit, a miniature of the one that had dissolved with the aft section of her hull.
She would be his life now…for as long as life remained within him.
***Author's Note***
I've been enjoying Arpeggio of Blue Steel a lot. I was challenged by a fellow forum-goer to write a Kiss scene for Episode 10 of AoBS. Consider it a drabble, but I thought it was good enough to open an Arpeggio section here on FFN. :-)