Yeah, that's right people. I am throwing the goat right now, and it is too metal for one hand.

...That made no sense at all, did it?

Ah well.

On we go to chapter nine.

(Also, to forestall any possible comments on the subject... no, Lenne is not, in fact, related in any way to FFX-2.)

Whee!

Wall-E is © Pixar

Lenne and Vox are © moi.

--

Ex Machina

Chapter 9

--

"-Vox, you have got some 'splaining to do."

All three of the Absconditus's unauthorized visitors gaped at the person standing well back into the corridor, then glanced back at the albino in front of them, who -by the look of his silhouette- had gone completely rigid at the sound of the strange voice. Whoever-it-was didn't sound angry so much as extremely confused, and even the confusion was flavored by a hint of what might have been concealed laughter. The last words were spoken in strident tones, laden with some unidentifiable accent that was probably affected rather than the stranger's own.

Her demand for appraisal of the situation was not responded to immediately, though WALL-E did peek the very edge of one eye out of his box when he was certain no one was going to make an attempt on his life. The action was followed soon thereafter by a low sigh and the sound of shifting feet.

"Why are we all standing around in the dark?" the unseen newcomer wondered aloud, and there was a sharp slapping of flesh-against-flesh: clapping, as McCrea did whenever he came up to the Axiom's bridge in the morning. There wasn't any reaction for about two heartbeats, and then -one after the other- overhead circles of soft yellow light hummed into existence. The eyes of EVE, WALL-E, and Captain McCrea went (respectively, and not necessarily in that order) to first the lights themselves, then to Vox, and finally to the person standing behind him.

The former looked, frankly, like someone who had just swallowed a tack, and seemed to be working up to a response when he was suddenly elbowed to one side by the source of the prior questions.

Short, alarmingly red hair, dark skin, and eyes that were so vibrantly green as to seem almost luminous: an odd combination of colors to be sure, and quite distinctive when paired with the ghostly man standing next to her. Her head barely came up to his shoulder, as well, and she was considerably stockier in build than the albino... though not so heavyset as any of the Axiom passengers. She looked... hard, maybe that was the word; uncompromising. But the creases around the corners of her eyes, clear enough in the sudden light, were laugh lines, so she couldn't have been as severe as her physical appearance warranted.

Her attire consisted of dark, loose-fitting clothing that had an oddly mottled appearance to it, a thick, beaded metal chain sporting a pair of finger-length steel rectangles hanging around her neck.

"Who... what?" Captain McCrea garbled, as confused as she was and then some. "What?!"

'Where did you come from?' was what he would have liked to ask, but his vocal cords didn't seem to be working properly for some reason. WALL-E just hid behind EVE, peeking out around one side of the reconnaissance probe as if he fully expected to be lashed out at. He wasn't as terrified as he had been, but he also wasn't willing to get one step closer to the male-female duo.

EVE was, in keeping with her nature, the boldest of the three (four if you counted Hal), and was keeping each of the aforementioned duo in her gun sight, more willing to be safe than sorry. "Who are you?" she demanded, slurring the words together into an electronic scale that sounded more closely related to 'whooaoo'. She stabbed her gun at the woman in a pointing motion for emphasis, just as she had when she'd met WALL-E near the piles of used tires, way back during their first meeting.

The lady in question just folded her arms across her chest, and leaned back, one side of her mouth twisting in a wryly speculative expression. She wasn't armed herself, EVE could tell, and neither was Vox, but that didn't mean they weren't dangerous. Just... slightly less likely to cause trouble.

"Major Lenne Vescuya," the woman replied after a moment, poking herself in the chest with a finger. "Acting Captain of the Absconditus, which is, as I'm sure you're aware, the ship you are on." And which you just blew a nice gaping hole in, she thought, but did not add. It was usually not a good idea to direct snark at someone aiming a gun at you. Her eyes flicked to one side at WALL-E, then up at Captain McCrea. "Who the hell are you?"

EVE did not appreciate this "Captain's" tone, a reaction which displayed itself in a further downturn and narrowing of her eyes. Captain McCrea, on the other hand, pointed one stubby index finger in disbelief at first Lenne, then at Vox, and back again. "Captain Vescuya?"

"The one and only." She spread both arms out to her sides, briefly, fixing McCrea with a toothy smile.

"But I... you..." He stopped, collected his thoughts, and finished with, "You said you were Captain Vescuya!" His words, and his finger, were directed at Vox, who had obviously been trying to fade into the background up until that point.

The redhead turned to look up at the albino, astonishment replacing chagrin in terms of facial expression. "Excuse me. You said what?" she asked him.

"Actually," Vox interjected, visibly uncomfortable with the direction this whole scenario had taken, "I said nothing of the kind." He blinked, once, and then went on. "You assumed I was the Captain. I was not thinking clearly when you pulled me from the wreckage, and was trying to piece together a working idea of the situation."

"You could have told me!"

"You did not ask if I was the Captain." His head tipped slightly to one side in what passed for a shrug.

"So then if you're not the Captain, who-?" McCrea pressed both sets of fingertips against his temples.

"What," EVE corrected, pointedly, not taking her eyes off of her potential targets.

"-What are you?"

Vox hesitated, and looked at the redheaded woman next to him with something that was about as close to a look of pleading as his nearly expressionless face was liable to go. "I-"

Lenne smirked, and pointed at the albino with her far hand. "Stoic; humorless; doesn't talk much; too formal for his own good. Can't you figure it out?"

McCrea grabbed the sides of his head as if trying to hold it together as the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. "Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that he's the Autopilot?"

The redhead clapped her hands once, then flinched when the sharp sound drew a warning whine from EVE's firearm. "Bingo." There was a brief, charged silence, and then she leaned forward, crossing her arms again in a posture that EVE knew meant trouble. "Now, would one of you fine people kindly care to tell me what the hell is going on?"

--

"...and that's pretty much when you showed up," McCrea finished, his summary interspersed with clips from EVE's security camera and minor additions by Vox from time to time. Although the tension had lessened slightly, the confusion had not, and EVE was still sticking like glue to WALL-E. Both robots, for good reason, shared a deep mistrust of AUTO units, and it didn't particularly matter to the former that this one happened to be person-shaped. He was still a taser-happy steering wheel, as far as she was concerned.

"I see." Captain Vescuya -the real Captain Vescuya- was half-leaning, half-sitting on the prow of the Stinger (which didn't look any less menacing under strong light), chin propped on the backs of both hands. Her elbows were planted firmly on one knee.

She glanced up at Vox, who was standing pointedly at attention to one side of her, then sighed and pressed her index and center fingers to her forehead, in between her eyebrows. "It looks like we owe all of you an apology." EVE blinked at that, and WALL-E, who was much too friendly to stay frightened for very long (it was too much effort doing something he didn't like) lifted his head a little bit more out of his box.

The red-haired shoulder propped the side of her jaw against one fist, drawing circles on her cheek with the index finger of that hand. "I have to hand it to you," she said after a moment's silence. "You've all done way more to take this planet back than anyone... in my day... was willing to. Very impressive."

"Uh... thanks." McCrea looked embarrassed, still not used to people actually congratulating him, "but it was really these two more than anyone that brought us back." He pointed at EVE and WALL-E, the latter of which waved his hand in acknowledgement. Lenne's eyes flicked down at the compactor robot and his glossily white guardian, eyebrows lifting in surprise.

"Really?" The eyebrows rose a fraction more, and then she smiled, delight stealing into her husky voice. "Ha! That's brilliant! If the programmers could see them now... man, what I wouldn't give to see the looks on their faces..." She trailed off, realizing that the posse in front of her was now staring in her direction to a one, apparently waiting for her to stop talking. "...What?"

"You," EVE replied, pointing up at the redhead intently. She meant to ask what the soldier was doing there, and more to the point, where she had just come from. As far as EVE knew, there wasn't any way (or reason why) she could have stayed down here the entire time without somebody noticing. At least her life sensors would have picked up body heat on board... she hoped.

Frankly, McCrea's thoughts ran along much of the same lines. "Uh," he began hesitantly, running a fingertip along the brim of his hat in a self-conscious manner, "how come you've been down here the whole time? Why didn't you come out?" It wasn't like anyone was going to hurt her; that was the last thing the colonists had in mind. They would have welcomed newcomers with open arms, even if they were... well, to be honest, really strange.

Captain Vescuya didn't answer him at once; merely regarding the heavyset man with hooded eyes. She seemed to wrestle with some internal argument for some moments... then sighed, glanced at Vox, and pushed off from the Stinger.

"I guess there's just no way around it, AUTO," she remarked, folding her hands behind her head and interlocking her fingers. "You can color our cover blown."

"Indeed, Captain."

"Right." She took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly, heading back down the corridor the way she had come. She paused after a few steps, and then looked back, her face unreadable. "Follow me. I'll show you what this ship's real cargo is."

--

The three visitors to the Absconditus stood and stared at the long, narrow corridor- or, more specifically, into the ranks of cryogenic chambers that lined its walls and the people within. Young, old, male, female: every shape and size, every color available to humanity, all lined up neatly in their protective containers, pale and still as death. Frost coated the faces and clothing of most, obscuring details that would have given their observers a better clue as to the identities contained within. Each was carefully labeled by a numerical sequence below a small round of light, and all the lights were red- save one, which glowed green.

It was witnessing these frozen humans that had petrified WALL-E, for he -along with anyone else that didn't recognize a cryogenic chamber when he saw one- had assumed that they were all deceased. It might have been strange for a robot who had spent seven hundred years alone to be afraid of a dead body, but then, a lot of things in the world defied reason these days.

Lenne walked slowly down the hall, touching each chrysalis lightly with the tips of her fingers. "Power brokers," she said. "Researchers. Accountants. Executives. People that BnL wanted to have ready and waiting for the return to Earth, when and if the day came that they could recolonize." She paused, then turned on her heel to fix the three behind her with a level stare. "The Absconditus is a flagship; it's the advance guard, not the whole show. My-" she cast a quick look over at Vox, who was loitering in the entryway "-our assignment was to wait until we got conformation that the planet's toxicity levels had been reduced far enough to warrant our return, then send out the order to all the rest of the ships that were part of this mission. It just took a lot longer than anyone ever predicted."

"Then..." Captain McCrea pulled his head back, baffled. "You're-"

"Seven hundred years old?" Lenne laughed. "Not likely! Do I look like I'm seven hundred?"

No, she didn't, in fact. Rather, she looked about the same age as Vox's body: thirty-something, more than one but less than five.

"I've been frozen too," she explained, jerking a thumb at the chamber with the green light,"for most of the time. I'd just wake up for about a half-year every so often. Started as every couple of years... then, after Forthright canceled Operation Recolonize, it was more like once every twenty. Or more... I kind of lost track of time after a while." Her lopsided half-smile turned wry and faintly self-depreciating. "Technically I should have been awake before this, but with the damage to the computer systems-" She shrugged again. "The cryogenic chambers run independently of the rest of the ship, so Vox couldn't override it and haul me out himself- he had to wait until the computer could switch over to emergency mode."

"Stinger," EVE put in, accusingly, pointing back down the corridors in the direction of the hangar. Lenne glanced down at her, and for the first time, the dark-skinned woman looked sheepish.

"Oh. That," she admitted. "That's mine. Can't blame me for being sentimental, huh? It's not armed," she added, reassuringly. "Check it for yourself if you want."

They already had, actually, and she was telling the truth: though there had been very obvious storage areas in the vicinity of the wings for missiles, and a spot beneath the prow where some type of automatic weapon should have been mounted, there were no actual items of war on the Stinger.

Captain McCrea looked up from where he'd been staring into the face of one of the passengers, unnerved by the cold sleep of suspended animation. Something had been nagging at him for a while, and now he finally had a chance to voice it.

"Er," he hazarded, unsure of how to proceed tactfully, glancing sidelong at the redhead. Her uniform's sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and he could see what looked like plugs or rivets on the outside of her arms, a quartet of them punching through skin clear down to what had to be bone. There was the matter of her weird eyes too; the way they shone in the half-light every time she turned her head. "So what happens now?" he asked her, and then, unable to resist: "And I don't mean to be rude or anything, but why-"

Lenne followed his gaze down to her forearms and let out a short bark of laughter.

"Never seen a cyborg before, have you?" Well, there was no reason why he should: executive starliners housed people, or rather the descendants of people, that would never have even gotten close to a battlefield. Most of their ancestors would have been in good health, also. Those with artificial addenda would have been few and far between. "Mmh. I'll tell you later. Right now..." She looked back up at her audience, and favored them with a wicked smile. "Right now, the real party begins."

--

AN: Awuh yeah, bebeh, partay tiem. XD