That's an android.
The thought was as clear and cold as a shot of liquid nitrogen as it rose forbidden from Alfred's brain. The officer on the screen was a near-perfect human, crisp and smart in a black lieutenant's uniform, but there were little tells. His eyes were slightly too slow as they flicked from side to side. His lips were slightly the wrong shape as he spoke. He rattled off the formalities and the day's orders: training, study, short patrols, but no major excursions today unless the Cree alarms sounded. The orders might have been written by a human. They might have been put together by a computer. Alfred couldn't tell.
Ludwig barked commands and the pilots numbered off and saluted, from Antonio at the front of the two columns to Arthur at the back. Alfred did it out of pure reflex, eyes front. The officer on the screen saluted back.
We just saluted an android, Alfred thought. The shock had taken him into the hidden part of his brain, where his thoughts were whirling around like the tail of a jet stream. Androids weren't used in the military back home. Nobody would take orders from a robot. Why were they taking orders from a robot?
Wait. Back home?
"Jones," Ludwig snapped. "Jones!"
Alfred jumped to attention, feeling dizzy and sick from the thoughts. "Yes?"
"Aureus status report!"
Alfred opened his mouth. He had the words lining up in his brain, Ludwig, that's an android, and also I just remembered that I don't come from here, and I don't think I should be here. He tried to shape his tongue around them, got as far as "Ludwig,"and then—
—and then his head went sharp, blinding grey, like countless metal slivers digging their way into his brain. Nausea lurched in his stomach and swept through his body. In the blinding silver he couldn't tell which way was up. His knees hit the floor, and then his head. The room had gone mad around him. He tried to throw up but he couldn't move any of his muscles. Anything he'd been going to say was completely gone.
He came to, dry-retching, with a hand on his shoulder. Arthur's hand.
"Did the officer see?" Arthur was saying, in a low, urgent voice.
"He let us off," Ludwig said, and there was tension lacing through his voice like wire. "He signed off without looking at either of you. You're a fool, Kirkland. You shouldn't have broken ranks!"
"He collapsed," Arthur snapped.
"He clearly triggered his mind wipe himself," Ludwig said, without an inch of compromise in his tone. "He'll come round. You'll do an extra workout after supper as discipline."
"Oh, go to hell," Arthur said, trying to haul Alfred to his feet. Alfred was gathering his senses by now, and managed to get his legs to work and help. There was no way a squirt like Arthur was going to be able to lift him however much working out Arthur had been doing. It was uncomfortably surprising how strong Arthur's arms were.
The rotum was empty apart from the three of them. Alfred swallowed against the ebbing nausea. He had to grope to find any words at all, since it felt like a scourer had gone through his brain and washed them all out. "Wasn't Arthur's fault," he said. Arthur's hand was still on his shoulder.
Ludwig's short-cut hair usually lay back in military ranks, but now it seemed like every individual hair was bristling a fraction away from his head in sheer repressed fury. He drew a breath, and Alfred jumped in to forestall the rant. "Look, I just got dizzy and collapsed. It's probably nothing. I'll get a check up. We didn't get in trouble. We—"
"The lieutenant didn't see," Arthur said, reluctantly taking his hand away.
Alfred broke off. He had a nagging feeling there was something very wrong with what Arthur had just said, but he couldn't remember what. And that was familiar as well, the feeling of something lost. He could have punched something in frustration. Words floated up from nowhere, gone as soon as his thoughts touched them. This is the second time.
"Both of you are assigned extra workout!" Ludwig said. He didn't wait for Alfred to argue any more, but turned on his heel and walked away.
"Yes, Sir Meat-For-Brains," Alfred muttered. He rubbed his head as Ludwig left, sore from where it had hit the ground. It still felt empty. "Arthur, let's blow that off. He's not gonna register it anywhere, right? Who's gonna care?"
"Too much for you?" Arthur said with fake solicitousness. "Shall I fetch the tea and cupcakes and you can rest on the sofa?"
That was what he used to say. Alfred felt a spark of delight that really shouldn't be caused by snippy comments, but this was Arthur, and snippy comments were how he connected to people. He grinned and slapped one of his biceps to show it off. "I'm up for a challenge."
Arthur gave him a darkly amused, unimpressed look. "Maybe if Ludwig stays still long enough you can lift him."
"But seriously," Alfred said, "Ludwig's not even one grade higher than us. Why the hell does everyone act like he's in charge? Where are our superior officers?"
Arthur's amusement deserted him. "You stupid prat," he said, staring at Alfred. "Five minutes – five minutes – after you've triggered your mind wipe, and you're already asking that?"
"Triggered my mind wipe," Alfred repeated. "You know about it? Why didn't you–"
"No," Arthur said, cutting him off. "I'm not having this conversation. I don't have any desire to trigger mine again."
"Oh, come on," Alfred said urgently. "You can't just leave it like that. Tell me."
"No," Arthur said. It wasn't even irritated. It was just a flat, dead refusal, like a screen winking out into blackness. He stepped away before Alfred could even grab his arm, and backed towards the door. "Get to vid training."
()()()
It wasn't until everyone else was in the vid room that Alfred realized that Arthur was supposed to be there, and also that he wasn't going to turn up.
"Where is he?" Ludwig growled at Alfred, who had apparently become point man for Arthur's whereabouts sometime in the last two days.
"Dunno," Alfred said uneasily. "I saw him leave the rotum. Maybe he's gone to take a nap?"
That didn't sound likely even to him. Ludwig stared at him incredulously and Alfred shrugged.
Beside him, Feliciano yawned and curled up in his padded seat. "A nap sounds good," he said. He tugged at Ludwig's wrist. "You know Arthur hates these vids. Sit down and let's watch it."
"I'm going to dig him out of his hole and drag him here by his collar," Ludwig said, starting purposefully towards the door.
"Hey, what?" Alfred said, feeling defensive on Arthur's behalf. He stood in front of the door, squaring up. "It's his business if he doesn't want to see whatever vid you-"
"Get out of my way, Jones!" Ludwig went to push him aside, but as he did, the door behind Alfred hissed shut.
Ludwig bit off a curse and clenched his fist. "Well," he said grimly. "That's that. Take your seat, Jones. And pay attention. There'll be a test after on the xenobiology."
The study was a dissection video.
Alfred felt nauseous at the first sign of the Cree carapace, twitching gently like a giant cockroach. It was shiny black and looked so alien it was barely real. Alfred wanted to believe it was plastic, but he knew better. Its arms and legs and lethal mandibles were so wrong. The same part of him that worshipped the Aurea – stronger after the mind wipe – was flooded with disgust. The scientist on the vid made the first incision from the thing's pointed head, just under its lethal mandibles, to the bottom of the abdomen. It bubbled as he opened it. Alfred looked away, queasy.
"You don't want to fail the test," Feliciano whispered, next to him. "You really don't."
Alfred stared at the screen and tried to listen as the scientist clinically went through the xenobiological points of interest. It was paradoxically better when he had the dark alien organs out on the white table and was discussing them individually, like a medical training dissection. But the shiver of fear Alfred felt when the scientist pried off the mandibles nearly set him off again.
They can be killed, the scientist assured them solemnly.
Alfred stared at the shining plastic carapace of the mutilated body, and the feeling of wrongness was so strong it was almost vibrating under his skin. His white memories were fading, shrinking away from the creature stretched out on the vid like a bug smeared on a microscope slide.
He wished Arthur was there. As the vid ended and the light strips brightened, Alfred found he was shaking.
It was disgust, his brain reassured him. It had to be disgust. His hands itched for his Aurea. He would have welcomed the attack alarms. He wanted to shoot those damn bugs out of the sky.
"Anyone want to run a patrol?" he said.
"Test," Antonio said, cheerful but inexorable, and gave him a shove towards the study terminals. Up ahead, Ludwig had already found Arthur. They were having a low-voiced argument, Ludwig gripping Arthur's arm and giving it a furious shake whenever he wanted to punctuate a point.
"—won't watch them taking apart a living creature," Arthur was saying, low and fast and disgusted. "It's still alive, it's still moving, I don't care how many of our ships they've—"
"Are you mad, Kirkland?" Ludwig was making an effort to control his furious voice, but they could still hear it. "Do you want them to take you away again? Do you like failing tests?"
Arthur lifted his eyes wordlessly to the rest of them, over Ludwig's shoulder. Ludwig realised they had an audience and shoved Arthur away. "Take the test, for what good it'll do."
"Statistically, I have a five percent chance of passing," Arthur said, and pushed ahead of them before Ludwig could explode.
()()()
The test on the vid wasn't hard, although Alfred tried to take his audiovisual helmet off when he finished early and was disturbed to find it had locked on. He took a deep breath and ran human anatomy revision, which calmed him down and helped him ignore of the niggling feeling of wrongness at the dismembered Cree.
He just needed to shoot more of them. That would make peace with the feeling.
When the end of test timer finally beeped he ripped his study helmet off. "Am I up for the next patrol?" he said.
Of the others, only Roderich looked perfectly composed coming out from under the helmets, and had somehow managed it without a hair out of place. He rose and punched up the patrol roster on the room's public screen, something Alfred hadn't figured out the trick of yet. "Shrike and Lancaster," he said. "Gilbert and Kirkland; you're out of lu—"
The screen flashed blank. ASSESMENT FAILURE - A. KIRKLAND TO CONNECTING BAY scrolled across it in large black letters.
"Or not," Roderich said, sounding disinterested. "Gilbert, let Jones sub in, will you?"
Alfred didn't hear what Gilbert said in reply, because he was watching Arthur and frowning. Arthur didn't seem surprised at the news, but as he got up, a flicker of something Alfred almost recognised went through his eyes.
Alfred pushed aside Ludwig, who was trying to give him some order or other about patrols, and followed Arthur into the corridor. Arthur had already rounded the corner, walking swiftly to the airlocks that Alfred had reluctantly disregarded when he'd first woken up.
The airlocks were open. Arthur came to attention in front of them, tense and watchful.
"Arthur!" Alfred said. He had to jog the last bit to catch up. "What the hell's happening? Where are you going?"
"To get a commendation for my brilliant test results," Arthur snapped. "What do you think? Go away, Jones."
The uneasy feeling in Alfred's head crystallised. That had been fear in Arthur's eyes. "This is what you were afraid of for me," he said slowly. "When you said you weren't going to let them take me for discipline."
"Because that would have been stupid," Arthur said. His eyes kept flicking from Alfred to the grey corridor beyond the airlocks, as if he was waiting for something to jump out. Neither of them stepped across the threshold. "Getting disciplined over a bloody uniform violation. That would be just like you."
There was a movement around the curve of the corridor. Both of them jumped. Arthur swallowed and stepped forward.
Another android. This one had a tranq-gun at its hip and a real blaster hanging over its back. It strode like a human, but Alfred could tell from the eyes. "Arthur Kirkland," it said flatly, holding up its wrist bracelet, which was flashing an authorisation code.
"Present," Arthur said neutrally. He was almost vibrating with nerves, but he didn't flinch when the android laid a hand on his arm.
"I'll go instead," Alfred said, feeling the unease build to a rising urgency. "Arthur, step back. Get away from it."
Arthur shot him an incredulous look over his shoulder. The android was starting to pull him away. "Shut up, Jones," he said. "Sorry, sir, he's new—"
He was talking to the android. Talking to it while it dragged him off to something that made him flinch like there were live wires near his skin. The anger surged up in Alfred and he moved, lunging towards the android. "Get back, Arthur!"
Everything was a blur of speed. Alfred felt Arthur's overalls bunch beneath his hand as he jerked him back, felt his knuckles brush the android's head, felt the unnaturally strong grip on his shoulder. The android moved faster than should be possible. There was the snick of a tranq-gun and a sharp, spreading pain in Alfred's hip.
Alfred fell back, his legs suddenly unresponsive lumps of flesh. His vision was swimming. The android gave him a dead, contemptuous look with its almost-human eyes. As Alfred's world hazed out, it took hold of Arthur's arm.
