So, yeah. M.L., you called it first. :3
Not that I was being particularly subtle, mind you.
So now we have the second interlude with which to tease you.
Next chapter'll be up later today, mah people.
Enjoy.
Wall-E is © Pixar
Vox (and the actual Captain Vescuya) are © me.
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Ex Machina
Second Interlude
--
The machined threads of the heavy steel bolt gleamed softly in the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent lights as the redhead in the Captain's quarters carefully worked the gooey, lead-gray anti-seize compound into them with a small acid brush.
She eyed the coating for any thin spots, then gently threaded the bolt into its proper hole in the cylinder head. A moment to peer inside the grease-smudged technical manual that lay to one side, then she dialed the proper setting into the torque wrench, set its socket firmly upon the bolt head, and began to turn. Several seconds later, a quiet click issued from the Geiger-esque snarl of electrical equipment and disconnected mechanical parts. She backed the bolt out about a quarter-turn, then furrowed her brows and tightened it back down.
The woman felt her lips curve upwards into a slight smile as the bolt traveled almost a half-turn further than before, by the time the click came again.
Perfect.
She straightened, grimacing as her back told her in no uncertain terms what it thought of people who spent hours hunched like Quasimodo over greasy lumps of cold metal. The redhead stretched, then wiped her hands on a bit of an old washcloth as she turned to survey the web-like mass of wiring that spread itself across the majority of the floor of her room, rolling her shoulders back as she did so. That little project was going to take a while to finish; luckily, she was going to have all the time she needed. And then some.
In fact, time was all she was going to have in the foreseeable future, during her tenure as Captain for this cockeyed project of her superiors. Not that she knew very many details other than what they thought she needed to be aware of: the redhead was under no illusions that she'd been assigned to this ship for any other reason other than she knew how to operate it and she was fully capable of dealing with any problems that might arise.
Had the Absconditus been fully devoid of any other sentient presence, as had been many of the vessels she'd piloted in the past, Lenne might have been concerned about how the following years were going to wear on her. She knew all too well how isolation could affect the human psyche: it was a standard part of training for space travel, when the only human presence a pilot had might be the thin, unreliable transmissions from Ground Control. And that was only for a maximum of six months or so. By comparison, this assignment... well. The mind boggled.
Luckily, she wouldn't have to worry about going completely stir-crazy this time around: the people in charge of the Absconditus's construction had installed a sophisticated AI unit up on the flight deck. It wasn't Lenne's first choice of a companion, but it was better than nothing. At least now she'd have someone to talk to.
Speaking of...
The soldier ran both hands through her short, bowl-cut hair, realizing that even though they were only about half a day into the flight she hadn't come up onto said flight deck save for a perfunctory inspection of the electrical systems and to set up her terminal. It had been three in the morning, granted, and the flight over from HQ had been draining -since most of it had consisted of being briefed on what her duties were- but she supposed she might as well go up there and make nice. The system hadn't even been activated when she'd gotten in.
How she had managed not to wake up during the countdown and liftoff, Lenne still wasn't sure... but, hell, her commanding officer had always said she could sleep through anything if she put her mind to it.
Good old Mark. He would have gotten a real kick out of something like this.
Lenne started toward the elevator, then stopped, and looked down at herself: clad in nothing but a standard short-sleeved top and the wrinkled bottoms of her deep crimson dress fatigues, stained with grease and sweat and probably looking as though she had been dragged through a trench after a heavy rain.
Right.
Shower first, then making nice. Yeah. That'd do.
--
There were about five seconds of coherent thought available to the female soldier when she stepped out of the elevator onto the bridge, and then her mind reasserted itself to a comfortable blank. She was used to short expeditions out into space, just a short orbit around Earth and back again, but those brief little trips out of atmosphere had done nothing to prepare her for the view out of the deck's transparent protective screens.
There were so many stars. So close she thought she could reach out and touch them if she were to attempt it; not cold and distant as in those forays around the planet's orbit. There, they had been like a handful of jewels flung out at random on the cloak of night. By contrast, this... this was an almost interrupted swath of glowing... something, sometimes so dense she couldn't make out where the stars ended and where galaxies or other celestial bodies began. To the left of the ship, she could see that they were passing unusually close to some glowing sweep of luminous gas, not quite a nebula, its shifting colors reminiscent of the Northern Lights.
Then she shook herself, and tried to concentrate; tried not to be totally overwhelmed by the prospect of being so far away from the planet she had grown up on. Just in time, too, for at the same moment she stepped a little more solidly onto the bridge, there was the overhead sound of shifting gears, and something sitting placidly at the exact center of the room turned to look at her.
Oh yes, she remembered this from the little whirlwind tour the day before: it was one of the BnL Autopilots, the same model they'd chosen as standard for the star liners... possibly for their other ships as well; Lenne honestly wasn't sure. Funny, though: she was used to their paint jobs being simple black-and-white. With this one... Well, they'd gotten the white down, sure enough, but where the black patterning should have been the machine was instead painted a sort of misty gray. It might not even been paint: possibly they hadn't had time to complete the job to specifications, and that was the base color of the... whatever it was they used as a protective covering.
If that was the case, she hoped the design was the only thing that hadn't gotten finished on time.
"Well hey there," she said, moving in the AI's direction and looking it up and down with a critical eye. Efficient design- sleek, elegant, not a single extraneous design or out-of-place equipment. Very nice. She had to hand it to whoever designed these things: they knew how to please the crowd.
The single crimson eye in its center, though. That designer obviously had a warped sense of humor; she could practically hear Stanley Kubrick rolling in his grave right then and there. If the machine noticed the not-so-subtle once-over, it declined to comment on it, instead rising (apparently through the ceiling) until it was at roughly eye level with its human counterpart.
"Good morning, Captain Vescuya."
Lenne couldn't suppress a startled jerk, surprised by the rough-edged, masculine voice that came more or less out of nowhere. The next moment, she felt like kicking herself: well of course it would be able to respond to verbal stimuli. Deep and inflectionless, its speech patterns were much more robotic than, frankly, most AI units she'd come across.
The redhead cleared her throat, awkwardly, then shrugged and attempted a smile. It came out feeling slightly crooked. "You can call me Lenne, if you want," she remarked. She was only a stand-in, after all; being called 'Captain' seemed -to her- both faintly pretentious and inaccurate. One eyebrow rose as a thought occurred to her: possibly it was programmed to respond to formal titles. "Or Major."
"Understood, Captain Vescuya."
Lenne sighed, although she refrained from pinching the bridge of her nose in between her thumb and forefinger, as she sometimes did when something exasperated her. "D'you have to be so formal? We're the only ones around to hear it."
"Affirmative, Captain."
It'd be programmed in, then. Damn. Well, there was nothing she could do about it at the moment; she might as well just go with the flow. One hand reached out to pat the AI on the curve of its spokes, as she might do to the shoulder of another human. "Well, all right then." A pause, followed by a slight dip of the head. "So! What's your name?"
The Autopilot looked down at the human standing in front of it, neural processors carefully acquiring and cataloguing new information. It had already been provided a description and voice recognition with which to identify the captain of its ship: Vescuya, Lenne, military engineer, a former Major in the BnL Air Force... that was to say, when the BnL Air Force had actually existed.
She wasn't particularly tall, as humans went; no more than 5' 4", and at least half an inch of that was due to her thick-soled footwear. Her skin was nut-brown under normal light; registered by its red-lensed viewing apparatus it seemed darker still. And there was something strange about her eyes.
It zoomed in slightly, perplexed, on a pair of almond-shaped eyes whose irises were decorated by what looked like the notches on a camera lens, designating millimeter-marks at regular intervals. Unlike the other humans the Autopilot was programmed to identify, the Captain's pupils weren't rounded. Instead, they were vertical slits, the lenses reflectant for use in low-light settings.
A combat cyborg.
Now that was hardly SOP.
But- it would have to look over her file later. Right now, the Captain had put a question to the AI, and it was programmed to answer all queries posed to it as soon as possible. So.
"I am designated Autopilot A778," it replied. Then, almost as an afterthought: "AUTO."
"'AUTO', huh?" Lenne rubbed her chin with one hand, a slow, smoldering smile that had an almost sadistic edge to it stealing across her face. "That's hardly original."
The Autopilot didn't respond, either because it couldn't think of anything that would serve as a proper comeback or because it didn't think the comment warranted one.
"Yeah..." Lenne mused, tilting her head in first one direction, then the other. "I think you need something more unique. Something with a little more pop to it." She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling as if seeking divine, inspiration- then abruptly snapped her fingers, recalling how he'd startled her when she'd first heard him speak: that voice, sounding like it was coming practically out of the walls.
"Ah. I know," she said, her smile widening: "I'll call you-"
--
SOP- Standard Operating Procedure