Day: 3

Year of event: 22+ 10^(10.1395)

Notes: n/a

After several hours of unsuccessful interrogation by the American girl, Re’A passed out from exhaustion on the pilot chair. She had gotten up at one point, to use the bathroom and then to explore the “sleeping pod” she’d been assigned, but she had decided that the only way she’d sleep in that thing was if someone physically forced her to.

She was woken up, some time later, by the noise of footsteps within the ship.

“Do you want a meal pack? We have peach, cherry and roasted fish flavours.” A voice came from the corridor behind the main deck.

“Yes mam'.” Re’A replied, imitating the words of the American.

She wasn’t yet fully set on the correct nomenclature and hierarchy aboard this ship, but she had no doubts the Human would explain it sooner or later.

“How long have we been in orbit Cassie?” The human asked as she entered the piloting room.

She handed Re’A a thick, palm-sized, sachet, with a straw poking out of it. Bold white letters in its front indicated that it was cherry flavoured. Re’A wasn’t sure if she’d ever had cherries, or if they were a natural or synthetic flavour additive. All she knew was that this meal, so to speak, was of the liquid kind, and probably tasted as bad as its packaging looked. But she wasn’t about to complain about food she didn’t have to work for.

“We’ve been in orbit for just over five hours. 0521 to be precise.” The American reported while Re’A was examining the food pack.

“And fuel-wise?” The Human asked.

“All set and good to go. Two jumps, or a looooooong voyage. What will it be hun?”

The human slurped her food packet instead of answering.

Re’A finally decided to try that thing herself. She brought the straw up to her mouth, and sipped just a little bit of it, just to see how bad it was. Surprisingly enough the taste was far from foul. Although it wasn’t exactly nice either, as far as human food went, it was quite passable. The texture, and the lukewarm temperature at which it was served were the main factors that made it so. Had it been a solid block of rations, Re’A wasn’t sure she would have been able to stomach it.

“If you want seconds, there is plenty in the kitchen.” The American said, noticing that Re’A had almost emptied the packet.

“There is.” The Human agreed. “It’s because of some protocol about rations and food to engine weight ratio.”

“Protocol delta-alpha-12-c. In case an expedition gets lost in dead space, they need to have enough rations for 50 percent of their crew to survive out of cryosleep for a period greater or equal to the maximum time their engine can stay running without refuelling.” The American explained.

“Oh, now that we have the time, I guess I should introduce myself.” The Human said, as she finished her own meal, and briefly got up to cross the few meters that separated her from the kitchen. “I’m Dorothy, but you can call me Dot. I’m a space-craft technician, so like an engineer, but without all the paperwork. And this," She gestured around, towards the front screen-display panel, “is Cassie.”

While holding the empty meal pack in one hand, Re’A pointed towards the screen with another. She thought for a second how to politely formulate this question.

“Cassandra doesn’t seem like a navigation officer. What is she?” Re’A asked.

“What am I?” The American asked. “That is an exce-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l--ERROR- ERROR- user input not-defined -ERROR-”

A bold warning message appeared over the display panel. Re’A raised her arms up in a guard, clearly having done something wrong. The lights in the cabin shifted hue, as the American voice continued to repeat that one word. But the Human didn’t seem alarmed.

“Cassie, stop this.” The Human sigh.

Dorothy then turned towards Re’A with an apologetic smile.

“Cassie is an AI, an Artificial Intelligence. She is the body and soul of this ship. Cassie stands for Covert Stealth Something Something.” She explained, with the tone of an adult who wanted to seem patient when explaining very obvious things to a child.

“That would spell Csss, you silly.” The American said as the lights in the cabin returned to normal. “Cassie stands for Covert And Stealth System Intelligent Engagement.”

“Someone on the Marketing team decided that this ship would be called Cassie, and hence it makes no grammatical sense.” Dorothy nodded with an amused smile painted over her face. “All that aside, what should we call you?”

While Re’A thought about how best to answer this simple question, the Human sat back on her chair, putting a leg over an armrest, so as to face the screen and Re’A at the same time. The Faklar came to the conclusion that giving her name to the Human couldn’t hurt that much, considering that the latter would switch to slurs at one point or another anyway. Re’A also decided to use this opportunity to learn more about the strange ship, about which she was starting to form theories.

“You can call me Re’A,” she introduced herself, repeating the same formula Dorothy had used earlier. “And I wanted to ask, since before, what kind of ship is this?”

Dorothy had opened her mouth, probably to say some pointless polite formula, but closed it shut and looked at Re’A with a perplexed expression. Thankfully Cassie seemed to have understood the meaning of the question.

“We are a Silver-Ray 1947 Blue Falcon, named so after a made-up WW2 event. The best, shiniest and fastest shuttle you can find this side of Askwherby. Siver-Ray, faster than a ray of sunshine.” The American recited the well-known commercial jingle.

Re’A’s mandibles twitched again. She could bear direct insults, but she hated it when others, Humans particularly, treated her like an idiot. Somehow it hurt her more when others around her assumed she was too stupid to pick up on their verbal or physical cues. But every time she tried doing something about it, she had ended up on a shuttle to somewhere else. Because if there was one thing people hated more than a Faklar, it was a clever one. So Re’A slowly nodded and said:

“That makes sense.”

Dorothy raised an eyebrow.

“Does it though?” Not waiting for a response, she continued. “Look, I appreciate your, let’s call it cooperation, so far, but I think we are beyond the point of playing it dumb. So how about we help each other out, I’ll answer your questions, and you’ll answer mine?”

“That sounds like you have a plan, Captain!” Cassie agreed.

Dorothy remained silent, waiting for Re’A to make a decision. This time, the Faklar didn’t need to think about it. She had nothing to lose, and getting free information out of the Human was actually something she was after.

“Alight.” She agreed.

“Good. So long story short, Cassie has a camouflage system, hence her name. She is a more advanced version of the ships you are used to, and that’s a general you,” Dorothy gestured about, “not you as an individual. We travel by harvesting exotic material from stars, and use them as fuel to compress space and basically railgun ourselves in a given direction, disregarding gravitational wells and other spatial anomalies.” The human paused, as if wondering if she was going into too much detail.

Although Re’A appreciated the explanation, which she didn’t fully believe, that wasn’t what she had meant by her initial question.

“Do you transport drugs or expensive information?” She asked, before Dorothy had had the time to continue her lecture.

The other woman gave her another weird look.

“No love, the only thing I am transporting is miss Sanders,” Cassie said. “And now you.”

“We don’t exactly…” Dorothy trailed off, with a thoughtful expression. “Where we’re from, we don’t have a culture of smuggling drugs or weapons, or anything, especially to the Onshore. How to put it…”

“Please don’t say that you’re more culturally advanced.” Cassie interrupted. “That’s not a nice thing to say love. Plus, we do transport drugs and weapons on occasion, sometimes even through the Onshore.”

“Medicine and military supplies, Cassie, that’s not the same thing.” The Human rolled her eyes.

“But you know what smuggling and drugs are?” Re’A asked, not fully buying this ‘pure persona’ the Human was trying to put on.

“Hey, just because I didn’t go to university doesn’t mean I’m uneducated.” The woman smirked, feigning offence. “Although you do raise an excellent point, why is that you’d expect us to smuggle goods around?”

A silence fell over the room once more. This was one of those questions Re’A could not answer even if she wanted to. Her knowledge of Standard English was good, but not good enough to go into details about the intricacies of illegal trade between the inner and outer rings.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” The American tried to comfort her, “Dorothy is a meanie for prying like that.”

Dorothy didn’t respond, and Re’A was starting to pick up on a behavioural trend, one that she had very rarely seen in Humans, and had never seen in someone without an army to back her up.

“My English is bad.” She said. “But I will try to explain if you answer one more question.”

Dorothy nodded, encouraging her to go ahead.

“Which ring are you from?”

The Human glanced at the screen then back at Re’A, as if not sure what the question meant.

“Or are you from one of the kingdom-colonies?” The Faklar quickly added.

“I’m sure Cassie can answer this one-”

“Go on honey, you’re the expert on lying-”

The two women said almost simultaneously.

That was all the information Re’A needed. This meant that they were either on some research mission from the very sheltered inner communities of the inner ring, or indeed from one of the independent Human kingdoms which were scattered just about everywhere outside of the UE. Neither of the possibilities was good news to Re’A since she didn’t want to end up on a dissection table or as a ritual sacrifice to the star gods.

Before either of the other women had had the time to speak, Re’A made that last point clear by saying:

“It doesn’t matter to me. The less I know the better.”

“That directly contradicts your desire to ask questions pumpkin.” The American noted.

“It is what it is.” Dorothy said as she waved in the air, as of telling Cassie to shut up. “Now, my main question is the following; where it is that you’d like to end up?”

The phrasing of that question wasn’t lost on Re’A. With just a few words the human had made it very clear that she’d overlook any inconsistencies, or lapses, in her answers as long as she’d answer honestly to that which the Human actually cared about. Furthermore, Dorothy wanted to know Re’A final destination, but made no undelaying promises of getting her there. In other words, what the Human was truly asking was if this’d interfere with her own plans.

“Mirthville, or thereabouts.” Re’A said. Then, noticing the lack of recognition on the Human’s face, she elaborated, “I aim to go to the west-southern end of the middle ring.”

“South-west. That’d be sector 27-tau, ages away from where we’re headed.” Cassie said.

Re’A anxiously awaited as Dorothy took a few seconds to process that information.

“We can work around that later.” The Human decided. “I can’t guarantee we’ll get you there, but I can promise to do my best if you help me out in turn.”

“I will.” Re’A blurred out, in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. Any hope of getting to her homeworld was worth latching onto, and with all the strange events of the past few days, she was starting to believe that she might just get there.

“Good, then I’ll give you some more details on our voyage,” The other woman said with a smile.

She then proceeded to explain to Re’A what it was she did for a living, and where it was that she was going. The whole speech was coated in a thick layer of technical jargon which Re’A didn’t understand, despite Cassie’s frequent ‘helpful’ comments. Dorothy had to repeat what she wanted from Re’A twice, before the Faklar understood that her new job would be that of a navigational aid, as she had been tasked with plotting the best route to some unnamed star a few systems form here.

Re'A wasn’t sure why the Human had decided that she, of all people, was a trustworthy expert on the subject of interstellar navigation, but she wasn’t about to question it, as she hardly ever did with direct orders.

Cassie showed her a projected map of the surrounding stars, and after a few visual adjustments, Re’A successfully proposed a few routes that fulfilled the Human’s criteria of ‘being where trouble isn’t’.

Re’A knew her hard work hadn’t been in vain when she’d been rewarded with another meal pack.

Notes:

After some internal restructuring and a bit of extra organisation, I am happy to announce, on the behalf of the ETHC that those of you with social credit will be able to access entries of this report one week in advance through a preform called ‘Patreon’.

However, you can also access said advanced entries by filling in the ‘Freedom of Information’ form 148003 which you should have received a print of digital copy of alongside the first entry of this report.

Current year: 22+e^(23.347)

Redactor signature: E.E. Shwartz