Secret Research Facility, Minntooine


Jasper quietly waddled behind the silver protocol droid. But the Confederate scientist barely noticed his guide. Instead, the man from Almas glanced around the transpirasteel tube into the oceans beyond, noting several fish swiftly swim past the hidden research facility. I don't care how vaunted CSIS has said they have become, they would have never found this place. Nearly sixty, Jasper Linne had spent much of his career studying the terraforming of Almas, and then helped terraform the world's moon into its present watery form. Yet he could still hardly believe how hard the Confederation had been willing to work to get results. Someone, nor, some people in the Council must really want this really bad to join our own resources with those of the Coalition, and this new Alliance. But if we can put this together, perhaps we can all alter some galactic fates in ways only the Empire was capable of by destruction. He blinked in realization. Perhaps that's why they want this so bad. It may not destroy planets or armadas of enemy ships, but this could be a potent political tool...


He shook the thoughts away from his head as they cleared another blast door as they strode deeper into the facility. Several more Confederate scientists and engineers awaited them at the next set of doors. , including a stocky droid engineer from Uffel, E4-2F, silently eyed them with his bright blue photoreceptors. It almost unnerved him. But an older woman from Thomork wearing a gray confederate naval uniform quickly walked up to him and shook his hand.


“Doctor Linne, it's good to finally meet you.”


“Doctor Surhum,” replied the man, shaking her hand, “they finally got you out of the shipyards. But I suppose that's not terribly better than your world...”


She snorted in mock derision, “I'll let you know, that's probably the only reason they let me off. Maybe we can finally fix it once we're done here.”


“Give a few decades,” replied another man, younger than both of them by a few decades. Jasper struggled to put a name to the face. The man in front of them stood nearly a foot taller than Jasper, and like him wore a white lab coat. He glanced at the insignia and name embroidered next to it. Duh. The cloning specialist that wanted to talk about how we introduced the fish to Dorumaas...wait...did he know about this in advance?


“It's nice to finally meet you in person, Mister Knut.”


“And you as well doctor.”


“Well,” said Linne, “Shall we go meet our Coalition and Alliance counterparts in the conference room?”
 

Secret Research Facility, Minntooine


Amarata the Ryn was fidgeting with her new uniform. The Ryn Fleet had been going through all sorts of changes recently, not least among them was the formation of a substantial, permanent senior staff. Modeled with Ryn wanderlust in mind, it was a versatile command structure that allowed a great deal of mobility for its members while nevertheless establishing a permanent command hierarcy for the core of the Fleet.


That was all well and good, but for Amarata, it didn't mean much more than that she'd have to get used to a new uniform. Every time she turned her head, the yellow Engineering markings on the shoulders of her dull gray coveralls would catch her eye, diverting her attention from . . . whatever it'd been on before. Every time she reached for a pad or a tool, the little bands of yellow at the wrists would do the same. Usually she'd try to pick at the seam between the two colors of fabric, forgetting there wasn't one, forgetting that the stitch of the fabric was so tight that it just looked like there was a hard line separating the two colors.


“Captain Amarata.” The voice from behind startled her. She jerked around reflexively, the flash of yellow on her shoulder frustrating her even though she'd only just been considering it. It was one of the Quarrens, the tall, dark orange important one with all of the titles. Her name was . . . Karl? Kemp? It definitely started with a “K”.


“Khelk,” she offered, apparently picking up on Amarata's uncertainty. “I was hoping to speak with you earlier, but other matters delayed my arrival. You'll need to read quickly.” She extended a datapad to the Ryn engineer.


Amarata crossed her arms and turned away, toward the transparisteel wall holding back the ocean. “Yeah, so I'm not going to help you build a superweapon,” she said defiantly.


“A superweapon?” Khelk asked.


Amarata couldn't tell if that was amusement or condescension she was hearing. She'd never been very good at that kind of thing. “Yes, a superweapon. This is a Cone Wars era military research facility, hidden in the oceans of Minntooine. That means there's about a . . .” she tapped her fingers on her arm as she worked out the problem in her mind “. . . ninety seven percent chance that this is the very facility where the Subjugator-class was designed. And if half the stories I've heard about . . .” she trailed off, transfixed by bubbling gas on the other side of the tansparisteel. She hadn't even been looking at it, really; her eyes were just turned that way, and then she saw them and now . . . and now she was trying to figure out if they were naturally occurring, or coming from some exhaust vent on a lower level of the facility. If the latter were the case, it represented a terrible design oversight that . . .


And then she remembered her outrage, spinning back to face the Quarren and pointing at her threateningly. “And if half the stories I've heard about the schemes you've been hatching with the Cooperative are true, I'll have you know I consider it my sworn duty to find something big around here, break it, and drop this facility to the bottom of the ocean hard.”


Khelk tapped the datapad against the frenzied Ryn's outstretched hand. “We're designing a terraformer,” she said, and Amarata picked up on the Quarren's tone just fine that time. It was the exact same one she'd heard from every supervisor she'd ever had, always after she'd over thought a problem and gotten the wrong answer.


But they always kept her around despite that.


She snatched the pad from the Quarren's hand and started reading, passively following Khelk further into the installation. As she read, going faster and faster through the pages of data, absorbing schematic drawings with a glance and then moving on, a picture began to form in her mind of the true scope of this endeavor. She kept going, digging deeper into the information, all thought of yellow striping, exhaust bubbles, and superfluous political titles falling away, and as her mind turned wholly to the problem at hand, a smile began to creep across her face, displacing the lines of intense focus and determination.


They always kept her around, because when she over thought the problem and got it right, she changed worlds.


The distinct sound of a door hissing open registered dully on the edge of Amarata's mind, but the flood of inane chatter that spilled out of it shattered her concentration completely. She looked up, disoriented and a little bit frightened, to see about fifteen people in a kaleidoscopic array of uniforms and lab wear engaged in what seemed to be a dozen different conversations at once, each involving a different random assortment of the room's occupants.


It was too much. It was all entirely too much. Amarata could feel herself losing her balance, could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, could feel her fingertips stinging with a thousand pinpricks that couldn't possibly be there. It was all even more entirely too much.


“Ladies, gentlemen, and other honored guests.” The voice was firm, loud but not too loud, the kind that caused emperors to pause in deference but without that tinge of command or threat. And it was accompanied by a reassuring hand on Amarata's shoulder.


Her shoulder . . . yellow-on-grey . . . new uniform. Amarata breathed a sigh of relief; she was back. Safe. Okay again.


Wow, this Khelk lady was good.


“As Secretary of Foreign Affairs for the planetary government, a member of the Dac Council, and Minntooine's official liaison to the Cooperative, among other things, I welcome you all to Minntooine. Instead of trying to sort through which of those titles in what order would be appropriate here, how about you all simply call me Khelk, yes? While I have no expertise in related fields, I do hold the proverbial keys to the kingdom around here, so I'm going to do my best to keep up and give you fine people whatever you need to make this project a success. Shall we?”


Khelk pointed Amarata to a seat on the left side of the table, with the rest of the Coalition team, and the Ryn started awkwardly, sliding into the end chair and accidentally bumping elbows with the droid next to her. She thought it probably had a Shard inside, one of those fantastic creatures from Orax who seemed to be more naturally occurring computer than any kind of life form any of the rest of them would recognize. Its natural capacities for data integration must be phenomenal . . .


Amarata suddenly realized most of the room was staring at her. “Oh, uhh, hi.” She waived sheepishly. “I'm, uh, Amarata, a captain in the Ryn Fleet, Engineering Division,” she pointed at the yellow coloring on her coveralls' shoulder. “Obviously. I've been working out of Glee Anselm.” She stopped, but they were still staring. She wondered if they were expecting something else, if she should say more. “I achieved a . . .” she tapped her fingers on the edge of the table, “. . . twenty-seven to twenty-nine percent reduction in the projected completion time for total atmospheric restoration, depending on which of the preliminary reports you read.”


That seemed to impress quite a few of them, though she really didn't like the way that Confederate droid was staring at her. It didn't help that she knew it didn't have a Shard inside it. Regardless, she found herself smiling broadly at the approval of so many fancy scientists with their fancy uniforms and fancier qualifications.


“So, any chance we can get this party started?”

Dr. Jasper Linne raised an eyebrow at the Ryn's comment. Well, not exactly what I had expected from her credentials. But Gunther was saying that the Ryn have less protocol than most of us are accustomed too. He spared a quick glance at E4-2F, who seemed to have momentarily made eye contact with the Ryn, if such a thing was possible between a droid and an organic. But the offspring of the utopian mechanical society paid him little attention in return. But Dr. Sorhum leaned up against his side.


“He's been checking her out since she entered the room,” murmured the woman.


“Perhaps he has a crush.”


The woman from Thomork wryly smiled. Linne snorted as the Alliance delegates began to introduce themselves. He recognized several of the names, mostly from their time with various universities and research companies; yet few of them seemed to have ever been affiliated with any sort of government agency, which struck him his odd. Yet he found his mind wandering to E4-2F's strange behavior. Well, unlike the rest of us, he could probably identify and recall the identity of all of the scientists without having them to introduce themselves; the benefit of an artificial mind with flawless memory recall. He kept his eyes focused on an alien with a motley green and tan skin speaking about the Alliance's dedication to the project. Yet his mind continued to wander. Why keep those eyes on her still? Could it be that perhaps he's recording her? The Empire used to convert droids, any droids, into unknowing intelligent agents...has CSIS perhaps done the same thing here? It may not even be CSIS, it could the local Uffel government itself. It is not as if they would not have the same ability to do such a thing in one of their own creations. Those around him began to clap and stand. He joined them, not really sure why he was applauding. I'll have to keep an eye on him. We don't need the intelligence and military establishment muddling this one up, creating another international incident...


E4-2F finally turned his squat head towards the two other scientists. Linne plastered a smile on his face, though he wasn't so sure it would fool a droid with intelligence-gathering software installed on it. Surhum edged herself next to the man and cleared her throat.


“It would appear that we are all going to head out to our subcommittees to get a state of the technology that each of us can contribute. So I will see both of you later,” said the woman, idling away to join the rest of the naval design crew.


“I should depart too,” decided E4-2F, rolling away to join the cluster of automation specialists in one of the upper conference rooms.


He watched the strange droid roll away.


“Something is bothering you,” noted a familiar voice from behind him.


Jasper spun on his heels to face Mr. Knut. I had nearly forgotten about him. The terraforming specialist briefly glanced at the ground.


“It's probably nothing.”


“The droid seems strange to you?” said the younger man, “I must admit that there are a lot of interesting specimens here, many different behaviors among those of us here, and probably equally different motivations for this project. But none of them seemed as personal as E4-2F's towards that Ryn woman.”


The two began to amble towards the biology and environment groups based further on the outer edges of the facility. Linne glanced around them; but few of the other peoples seem to pay him any heed. He leaned in somewhat closer to the cloning and replication researcher.


“I noticed it too. I suppose you know something about deviant behavior, given its prevalence in clone subjects.”


He nodded, “But that only shows up when they are not cloned correctly. If he was organic, and a cloned individual, I would be wondering right now if he some sort of fixation with her based on a memory encoding error.”


“Would it be possible for an AI do something similar?”


Knut frowned, “I'm not an AI specialist, but I don't see why not. The real question would be why. It's not as if she should be in any of his memories at all. She's never had any affiliation with the Confederation or anything he'd be particularly interested given her line of work. They're not even in the same fields...”


“Yes, I suppose you're right...”


“Tell you what, Dr. Linne. I'm a betting man. I propose a wager to see which of us can figure out our droid's behavior, say 200 credits?”


“Oh, I don't know about that. I'm not much of a gambler, though I admit that understanding and guess probabilities intrigues me. How about dinner? Somewhere back in the Confederation...”


“A dinner? Are you going to offer me a holo vid too?” quipped the man, “I'm not looking for an excuse to have a date with you doctor, no offense...”


“Make it 100 credits.”


“You're on.”
 

Of all the “experts” assembled by the Mid Rim Alliance for this project, Doctor Drake Drake was the only one with any actual expertise on the "Reclamator" Mobile Planetary Terraformer. Their credentials were all real, of course, and any number of them might prove valuable to the overall project here, but as far as the thing that got them in the door in the first place was concerned, Drake Drake was the man who made that bargaining chip worth the plastene it was stamped from.


Most of them didn't even know who they were really working for. Most of them didn't even suspect who among them were not all that they seemed.


That didn't matter much to Doctor Drake Drake, though. He was here for the science of it all. More than that, he was here for what could be done with the science of it all. Next-generation terraforming could change the face of the galaxy. If they could do it, if they could crack the safety and efficiency barriers that had held up terraforming technologies for centuries, they'd collectively have a tool more powerful than any weapon ever devised.


Or so he told himself. It helped him sleep at night.


The Confederate woman . . . what was her name? It was probably important that he remember her name. Anyway, the Confederate woman was heading for the naval design group. Should he follow her? Was that where they wanted him?


Which “they” was he thinking about, anyway?


Right: focus. Was there anything more specific, technical engineering perhaps? There looked to be some sort of terraforming theory team, but that sounded too abstract for his skillset. And naval design seemed too . . . mundane for his towering intellect.


He caught another Confederate's attention and asked where he was going, but the man said “bioengineering,” which was both too specific for his liking and out of his field of expertise.


Ah, there it was: practical mechanics. That sounded like his domain . . . and then he caught sight of that crazy Ryn wandering in there, and suddenly naval design wasn't sounding too bad.


What the hell, it wasn't like they were going to write him up for skipping class if he happened to pick the “wrong” group.


“Naval design it is, then.”


Doctor Drake Drake had already forgotten about the motivations and agendas of the rest of the Mid Rim Alliance's “team”. He couldn't have told a casual questioner where any one of them had gone, except for the one or two who ended up in naval design as well. Did that second one come in with him, or was he one of the Coalition's folks? Was there a fourth group here?


Ugh, when were they going to get started already?

One of the Confederates was arguing with a Coalition technician about optimal positioning of a secondary capacitor for some nonessential stabilizing feature of a system whose primary function would better be achieved as a byproduct of a separate, as-of-yet undiscussed piece of equipment. Two Alliance personnel had given up on the argument and were debating the relative merits different superconductor candidates for a tangentially related issue.


Amarata had tried to insert herself into the debate a few times now, but everyone was so eager to push their own clever solution that nobody was interested in any ideas other than their own. The only problem was: Amarata was right.


“Look,” she finally said loud enough for everyone to hear, though only as an accompaniment to climbing atop the large holotable they were using for virtual prototyping. She crawled on hands and knees past a few passive members of the engineering crew, right into the middle of the argument, until her face was inside the outermost segment of the full-color hologram in question.


“You've got it all wrong,” she said, stripping away huge sections of the meticulously assembled virtual representation. She could feel the micro tensor fields reacting to her fingertips, registering her movements and converting them into meaningful computer instruction for modifying the holographic image. “First of all, configuration matters.” She moved several remaining pieces into new orientations, a number of red and purple patches appearing on them to denote improper connections or critical systems failures.


“It won't work like that,” a tech complained, reaching up to fiddle with the display.


She slapped his hand away. “I'm not done yet. Now we open up the catalog and pick the optimal necessary components available, as stand-ins . . .” she added an array of coolant and exhaust systems, power relays, focusing apparatuses, and the like, more red and purple indicators flashing on. “And there you have it.” She leaned back, still sitting on the holotable with her feet pulled under her legs.


The image was a mangled mess of warning notes and error indicators.


“But it doesn't work!” a Confederate yelled at her, clearly angry that she'd scrambled their previously pristine design.


“Well of course it doesn't,” she replied, unfazed by his anger. “I put it together out of catalog pieces from two dozen different ships. It's a proof-of-concept, that's all.”


“I don't think you have a single valid connection anywhere in there . . .” one of the Alliance professors mused, sounding almost impressed with how totally she'd failed.


“It's not about the parts,” she said, exasperated. “It's about the synthesis of the parts. A molecular furnace isn't a ship; it's just one piece. This . . .” she grabbed an exhaust assemblage and pulled it out of the design, “isn't a molecular furnace; it's just a part. We run this process . . .” she returned the assemblage to the design, prompting several errors to refresh “. . . on every piece, at every scale of manufacturing, and we get the . . . we get the . . . the synthesis . . . what the hell?”


Amarata was trying to open the virtual component and get a catalog of its constituent parts, but every time she mimed the appropriate command, she got an error message.


“The components aren't in the catalog,” a Confederate piped up. “We're not putting classified design specifications into your on-site computer.”


“Well then of course I can't make it work!” Amarata yelled, too loud for how close she was. She ran a hand through her hair, mussing it up considerably. “How are we supposed to build this thing out of parts some of us are never going to be able to look at?”


“Amarata!” Khelk's voice filled the room, demanding attention. “What are you doing?”


Amarata shifted her legs under herself to turn partway toward Khelk's voice, looking over her shoulder until she spotted the Mon Calamari administrator. “Huh?”


“Get off that table!” Khelk demanded.


“What?” She looked down at the holotable she had turned into her seat. “I recognized the design; it's a sturdy model . . . What?”

Khelk was still looking at her with that stupid, disappointed stare. “Come here, please,” the Mon Calamari said firmly, but not as harshly as her previous outburst.


Amarata slid down the table until she was free of the other crew members, then slid off of the side and walked toward Khelk. “It's just data integration, guys,” she called back over her shoulder. “Calculate the total error values, approximate efficiency savings from optimized components, it'll work out. Check it and see.”


Khelk was walking back out of the room before Amarata got to her. The Ryn kept following, completely confused now. Was she really this mad about the holotable? And even if she was, what was going to do about it, give her a timeout?


Khelk turned to enter a room Amarata hadn't seen inside yet, and the door didn't open automatically upon her approach. “Gabe, could you open the door please?”


“I'm sorry, but I'm going to need your companion's vital statistics before I do that,” a jovial, unfamiliar voice answered from overhead. It must have been a Guardian, one of the newer versions that customized its personality for optimal synergy with its organic crew or, in this case, staff.


“This is Amarata, female Ryn, Engineering Captain of the Ryn Fleet,” Khelk said, pausing for a moment before adding, “is that sufficient?”


“Yes it is, thank you Miss Khelk.”


The door opened in front of them, revealing a smaller version of the room they'd just left. A holotable with an octagonal top sat in the center, powering up as they entered. “What's this about?”


“What do you think of the project so far?” Khelk asked.


“It's like I said ten times in the first five minutes,” Amarata began without further inducement, “the ship design team is way off on scale. They're wanting to recycle military designs of about a kilometer in length. It's too small, it's the wrong shape, it's not versatile enough.”


“Their intending the vessels to be deployed in groups,” Khelk reminded her.


Amarata nodded. “And that's great, that's just what we need: a fleet of ships that size, for mid-scale work. But we're supposed to be remaking whole planets, here. We're going to need something much, much bigger. And if we're stuck to military designs, then we're talking Super Star Destroyer scale, though I'd much rather have a Mon Cal star defender to work with. The length-to-volume ration is way better for our needs and they're already designed for a high degree of customization, so redesigning isn't going to risk nearly the strain on . . .” Khelk was walking away. Was she even listening to her?


“You know that's absurd and out of the question,” the Mon Calamari said eventually.


“I'm just telling you what I need.”


Khelk clicked a button on the holotable's main control panel, causing an image to coalesce in the holofield. “This is what you have.”


Amarata stared at the image for several seconds, the fingers of her right hand eventually tapping against her thigh with no apparent pattern. At length, her lips curled down into an unflattering frown and then the tapping stopped and she nodded her head.


“It'll do.”

Dr. Linne watched as a Ho' din from the Alliance debated a green and brown mottled Ithorian about the use of micro-organisms to break down waste to fertilize a world's soil. The first being quickly flicked through the efficiency statistics about combining artificial waste from the terraformers and other nearby outside influences with the natural materials to quickly make a large amount of fertilizer. His coalition counterpart quickly made a counterpoint about introducing foreign substances and genes into an ecosystem, particularly in one that people were going to attempt to tightly control. Jasper made a mental note to take a look at the Alliance's practical research on bio-engineered bacteria that the Ho'din was constantly, and then let his mind exit the world of bio-engineering.

If I were a droid, what would I find so fascinating about a Ryn? He conjured up the image one of those aliens, with their prehensive tails and unusually bright fur. Even for an alien, they were relatively exotic-looking, but he saw nothing particularly interesting about them to a droid. They did not possess any particularly unusual traits related to engineering, such as Entmyal's aptitude for spacial reasoning or the unusual biology of an Uugo'cor. So it almost has to be because of the something of the individual itself...by what? It frustrated the old man, knowing volumes of work on terraforming and complicated environmental science and biology, but who was otherwise duped by the workings of an artificial mind. I've have to see what I can look up on her...but if CSIS is monitoring any of this, or maybe even the Coalition, I'll be just as suspicious...it's almost just tempting to ask the droid and see if he has any social engineering programming built-in, besides the basic functional parts.

He quickly shelved the thought of confronting the suspicious droid. But perhaps I can arrange a meeting of the two. That could be...revealing...But how could I go about that? E4-2F is at the automation conference, and the ryn...she went with Dr. Surhum to do ship stuff...hm...maybe later on tonight we can arrange something...
 

Amarata the Ryn stepped delicately down the stairs, like they were made of glass and her shoes of sonic resonators. She'd spent a good two minutes arguing with “Gabe” before she finally convinced him to open the door slowly, reducing the hiss of its actuators to near-silence so the team on the other side wouldn't be alerted. No one seemed to have spotted her yet.


If she went around the right side of the table, that big spider-thing from Cestus Cybernetics would probably give her good enough cover that no one would notice her for another . . .


“Amarata?” Oh, boop. “What are you doing here, Amarata?”


It was the Shard, the one she'd bumped elbows with at the initial meeting.


Caught red-handed, half-way down the stairs into the room, everyone was staring, pinning her in place with their accusing eyes.


“Uhh . . .”


She could feel her temperature rising, her heartbeat quickening, the first pinpricks peppering her fingertips.


Stop.


Think.


How would Khelk handle this? How would she take control?


Take control . . .


Boop it.


Amarata shot straight for the nearest of the smaller holotables set around the room. “I can't . . . I can't . . . It's not like I can just stand by and watch you all bumble around this for the next three hours. We've got work to do, people!” She was already accessing the virtual catalog, navigating its nested categories until she found what she was looking for. “Feethan Ottraw Scala . . . Feethan Ott . . .” It wouldn't open. Another security lock to protect classified data.


“Gaaabe!” she yelled, answered immediately by what was surely designed by some overly complex behavioral analytics program to be the optimally soothing tone.


“I'm sorry, Captain Amarata, but those specifications aren't cleared for display on this terminal.”


“Override the lockout.”


“I don't think that would be appropriate, under the circumstances.”


“Gabe, I've got authorization to access these schematics, and I'm accessing them. So open the booping files!”


“Under the circumstances, I think it's best that I check with Miss Khelk before proceeding.”


“Don't check with . . .”


“Too late, it's already happening.”


Too angry now to be terrified, Amarata stormed for the central station, her tail whipping wildly after her, arms pumping despite the incredibly short distance she had to cover. She squeezed between the pair of Confederates who happened to be in her way, pulling a hydrospanner out of a pocket and getting to work on the main control panel of the holotable.


“Sorry,” she said, accidentally elbowing the human to her right in the ribs. “Oops,” she added, her tail slapping against the back of the Confederate droid as she pulled back from the first unintended physical contact.


“Arrgh!” She grunted in a mix of frustration and determination as she pulled the control panel free of the table. “Hold this,” she said absently, handing the panel, still attached by various wires to the internal guts of the table, to the Confederate droid.


“Amarata, this is really out of line,” the Shard warned. She was already elbows deep in the guts of the table.


“There!” she shouted in excitement, pulling her arms free, her spanner in one hand, a loose cable in the other. “If it's not plugged up to the network, Gabe can't shut it off.”


“Why would he?” One of the Alliance folks asked. "Uhh, I mean it? Or . . . he? Gabe?"


There was no reply.


Amarata was already sketching something out manually. “As I was saying before, Feethan Ottraw Scalable Assemblies developed a self-retooling assembly line compatible with their self-assembling factory technology.”


“Amarata, please don't do this,” Gabe began.


“Too late, it's already happening.”


Done with the critical bits of the schematic, Amarata made a circling motion with her extended forefinger, prompting the Confederate droid to rotate the control panel around until she could utilize its various bells and whistles.


“It's a rough approximation,” she began, moving the image to the center of the table and enlarging it. Smaller copies sprouted up in front of each person at the table. “But it gets the vital technical bits across.


She started drawing something else. “With this tech, you can half the size of your machine shops . . . or double their productivity, which ever you want, though if you've seen the tiny tiny little thing the folks over in starship design are wanting you to cram all of this tech into I don't see how it's going to be very likely that you -”


“Amarata, you're rambling.”


Her hands froze, eyes cut to the Shard. “Right. Sorry. Multitasking is hard.” She started back on the drawing. “So that's the boring part. This . . .” She reached over a hand, blind, to find the controls again, still putting the final touches on the drawing with her other hand.


She cranked the widget on the control board and the new picture replaced the old one. “This is how we make history by changing the future.”


It was a rough picture. She was better at technical drawings than concept art, but it got the idea across.


“We turn the whole outside of the ship into the machine shop. Or not. It's self-retooling. We'll make it whatever we need it to be, in whatever proportions we need, from each day to the next.”


“Is that even doable?” a rough-looking Duros from the Alliance asked. “Is that even a thing we can do?”


“That . . .” Amarata drummed her hands against the edge of the holotable . . . “is a question for starship design.”


“And for the CIB's counter-intelligence division,” the voice of Khelk came from the edge of the room, “given the classified nature of that technology.”


Amarata's shoulders slumped. The old fish had finally ruined her fun. Again.


“Captain Amarata, I believe you're needed elsewhere.”


Head bowed out of embarrassment, she gave a few shallow nods before turning around to face her boss/taskmaster. One step into shameful submission, a thought crossed the clever Ryn's mind and she flicked her tail, deliberately bumping it into the Confederation droid's leg.


She turned as she continued, walking backward toward Khelk as she flashed the droid a mischievous smile. “I showed you one of my side's clever gadgets; don't you think it's your turn?”

The two Confederates shared the end of a table in the facility's cafeteria. This late at night, the room was barely inhabited; there were a handful of other engineers and scientists drinking caf and discussing parts of the project, as well as several other researchers, who in their passionate pursuit of science, had forgotten to eat dinner earlier. Dr. Jasper Linne stewed his spoon in his chocolate-caf pudding and glanced up at the woman from Thomork.


“So do you think there is something going on between them? It certainly sounds like something was...”


She hesitated, “This Ryn is unhinged. Seriously, had I known that the automation and naval design teams were collaborating for the whole day, I would have given myself the day off. She's disruptive and hardly conductive to the hardest part about this project, and that's building a consensus and pooling all of our knowledge together. Personally, if CSIS is behind our droid's behavior, I would say it's entirely understandable. I half-hope CSIS somehow sidelines her out of this before she completely destroys our operation.”


“She's that different then, huh?” noted the terraforming specialist, “well, they say those with genius seemed to be touched by a certain amount of insanity.”


“She's got a lot of both,” blurted out Surhum, “I don't want anything to do with her. I kind of hope she just disappears for a bit. I finally got both our naval architects and the Alliance people to accept my proposal to use the Nebula Star Destroyer of as a base. Now if I can just consolidate the other Coalition people onto that...I suppose I can always threaten a democratic vote with them...wait, don't look now...our droid is back...with another one...”


It took Linne not an inconsiderable amount of effort to not abruptly turn around to see what E4-2F was doing. It struck him as fairly odd that a droid would visit cafeteria, especially in the company of another droid. There weren't that many droids present who worked by themselves as full-fledged researcher. Most of the droids present were either attached to the Coalition base, including what many whispered was a version of Smarts, or were “owned” by other researcher's present. Linne focused himself to meet the gray eyes of the naval architect across from her. She blushed and looked downward, struggling to keep a wry grin from creeping across her face. The mechanical grind of E4-2F's treads announced the droid's presence behind the man from Almas, but the Confederate droid kept on driving past them. Well, he never was very social...As he watched the backside of E4-2F, he noticed a little boxy droid hovering close alongside the other droid. Surhum turned and glanced at the pair of droids before turning back to the man.


“That's a weird little droid next to him,” noted the woman, spooning out the last of her dessert.


“It's actually really common where I'm from...I mean in the Cularin system itself,” noted the man, “it's probably the most exported droid of Uffel, a MSF-series. Remember all of the mouse droids the Empire used to use on their ships to guide people around? Yeah, it's basically an updated version that's specifically designed to do a little bit of technical work...”


He frowned as the pair of droids met a furry humaniod who seemed to be talking to herself at a table in the corner. Linne just shook his head. Raising an eyebrow, Surhum spun around in her seat to look at the droids, and quickly turned back with a full-fledged smile across her face.


“Maybe he needed the moral support of a friend to get the guts to talk to her...it's almost cute.”


“Ha ha,” snorted Jasper, not even attempting to conceal his interest in the odd trio, “what are they up to?”


“Oh, it's probably something innocent, give it a rest Jasper. Besides, I do hope we were going to do more than talk here, besides, it looks like your problem of getting them to meet together is over. It's done, let's get out of here.”


“Yeah, I would, but it looks like he's giving her the other droid.”


“What? Awww...a present from her future soul mate, a classic case of courtship behavior. I wish you'd pick up on that sometimes...”


“What? Sorry...I got distracted. You're right, we should get going...” said Jasper regretfully.

“What if I need help?” she'd said.


“Oh, you need help,” the other woman had replied. “But since when have you needed technical help?”


How about right now, huh?


It was late. Too late, she knew. But she couldn't sleep. She'd tried, of course, but there was just . . . too much. Oh so incredibly too much.


And now she was stuck. And she needed help.


Her eyes were burning from however many hours of staring at the multilayer full-color oversized hologram, her feet were killing her (something about the floor, built for squishy aquatics' feet?), and her brain . . .


Her brain was stuck.


“What if I need help?” she'd said.


“Oh, you need help,” the other woman had replied. “But since when have you needed technical help?”


Everyone else was asleep by now. Even the handful of nocturnal folks on the project, this far underwater, having just arrived from who-knows-where and suffering space lag, were sure to be tossing and turning in their beds/nests/crypts, whichever was required by their particular physiology.


There was one option, though. Not that option, of course; that option wasn't even an option. That booping droid, what was his name? E4-something? Not even a name, really, just another serial number. C'mon, get creative! Sparky, or something. Or Smarts; now there was a name for a droid who wanted to get noticed!


But no, not him, not the Confederation's brightest droid, who couldn't even parse a simple figure of speech said to him in the dominant language of the galaxy! Sighing heavily as she resigned herself to the task, Amarata grabbed the little widget Gabe had sent her earlier and headed for the exit.


“Open up!” she grumbled when the doors didn't part for her automatically.


“Of course, Captain Amarata,” came Gabe's sickeningly sweet reply. She heard the sound of the holotable powering down its projector as the door opened: couldn't have a casual passerby catching sight of her work.


Just outside, sitting crooked on the floor, was a little toaster of a droid she'd powered down before heading in. Amarata's eyes narrowed to slits: did somebody kick her droid? She shouldn't mind, she supposed. It was just some slightly-less-stupid Mouse barely sophisticated enough to make a tolerable pet, given to her by only a moderately-less-stupid E4-something that didn't understand “clever gadget” meant “classified and subject-related technology”.


But she did mind. Somebody had kicked her droid!


She shrugged and bumped its activator with the toe of her boot. It sputtered to life on its little repulsors and she dropped down to one knee. “Gabe!” she said entirely too loudly, fiddling with the little gadget in her hand. “Send the surveillance records for this hallway to my table,” she jabbed the restraining bolt into the port on the little droid, “and clear Sparky here for access to my lab.”


She twisted on the balls of her feet as she stood up, walking back into her room and waving the droid to follow. The little droid sputtered after her, then stopped at the threshold of the door, wiggling back and forth and making indistinct squeaking sounds.


“Gabe!”


“One moment, please. I'm just completing my security scan of little Sparky's systems.”


Of course. Of course the restraining bolt Gabe had sent her was also a remote uplink to . . . how about that: Gabe! Amarata tapped her foot impatiently, swaying her head back and forth as she waited for that booping Serenity Now ding.


Ding. Sparky shot forward, sliding to a wobbly stop on its repulsors right by Amarata's feet. She took a step and it sped forward, jerked to a stop as soon as it was all up in her business again.


“Back off, Sparky! Not so close.”


Sparky squeaked a sad, pitiful squeak as it puttered backwards a few centimeters.


“Argh, fine!” Amarata reached down and scooped it up, Sparky's repulsors shutting off automatically. “Come on, I just need a little help.” She set it on the edge of the holotable, calling up the projection now that Sparky had been cleared to see it. “Jack in.”


Sparky tweeted happily and extended its universal plug, accessing the technical information attached to the holofile.


“There's this power drain I've got marked, but I can't find the source. See if you can back-trace the load on the circuit and identify . . .” The words “Lucrehulk-class LH-3210 cargo freighter” flashed over the hologram in a pulsing, vibrant rainbow display of shifting spectra. “Yeah, I know what I'm looking at, Sparky. Khelk's got me designing a refit for . . .” The words “LH-2980 Refit Module” flashed underneath the first message in equally extravagant coloring.


Stupid.


“Gabe, are you giving Sparky advice or something?”


“Sparky queried my public databank, Captain Amarata, but I have not interfered in his internal decision-making processes. That would be a violation of my programming.”


“Yeah, whatever.” Huh, so so Sparky was a “he”, how about that? She turned to look at the droid who'd solved her obvious, glaring, work-stopping conundrum.


She was a genius. A stupid genius, apparently, but a genius. She should have realized right away. The Cooperative was the only Coalition government acquiring Lucrehulks for use, which meant this one had almost certainly been salvaged and refurbished by Squibs, who would have refit any older models they got their hands on to the 3210 standard. And there's always one or two quirks to a refit, duh.


But this droid . . . this droid was way too stupid to know to look for something like that. Except it . . . uhh, he . . . wasn't.


“What if I need help?” she'd said.


“Oh, you need help,” the other woman had replied. “But since when have you needed technical help?”


Amarata smiled as she petted the little toaster's casing, eliciting a happy squeak from the droid. Maybe E4 knew what a “clever gadget” was after all. She leaned down toward him and used her best pet-talking voice: “Let's get you an arc welder attachment for that unused port of yours, Sparky.


“Oh, and Gabe? Give Sparky here access to those hallway records.”


“Might I inquire as to why he needs them, Captain Amarata?”


Amarata stood up straight, her eyes narrowing and her lips curling into a devious grin. “Somebody booped with the wrong droid.”

The next day…

Jasper hobbled into the cafeteria, still wiping sleep from his eyes.  He thanked his maker that his lab coat concealed the many imperfections of a not-so perfect morning: there were probably smears of shaving cream somewhere on his undershirt.  There was also the welt on his upper leg just above his knee where he had managed to smack a durasteel railing in the shower.  He estimated that it would take a day or so before the ache would go away: after all, he was only getting older.  A familiar female voice called out to him from a nearby table.

“Jasper, look who’s here for breakfast,” smiled Surhum, gesturing at the treaded droid next to her.

His eyes quickly dilated before he began to supposedly shake his sleepiness off, “Good morning, doctor, E4-2E.”

“E4-2F,” corrected the droid in his characteristically monotone voice.

“E4-2F,” mumbled the man back, “I should get some breakfast.  I’ll be right back.”

He stumbled into the cafeteria line and picked up a tray before glancing back at the table at the other two Confederates.  Odd that such a bland droid can attract so much of our interest…shouldn’t it be the other way around, naturally?  But perhaps CSIS was planning on using that blandness as cover…who would pay attention to an engineering droid with all of the personality of a rock?  He half-shook his head as he began to pick out his food and place it on his tray.  After grabbing two cups of almost strong enough caf, the man strode back over to the table and sat down next to Surhum.  The older woman smiled.

“E4-2F, you should really talk to Dr. Linne here.  He can tell you the better part about how to seduce a woman.”

“Wait…what?” questioned Jasper, turning to eye the cyan-blue photo-receptors of the droid.

“The subject of my pursuit is Captain Amarata of the Coalition.”

“Well, that’s nice,” managed Jasper, stuffing his face with some sort of scrambled eggs.

Surhum let a smile crease her wrinkled face, “Oh, come on Jasper.  He’s better intentioned that 90% of the male population out there.  He wants to really get to know her.”

“Her propensity for developing new theories and practical designs is intriguing,” stated the droid, “I wonder how she operates.”
Jasper hesitated as he set down his fork, “Like her operating system?”

“Affirmative.”

“Jasper, he even gave her a gift last night, his spare MSF-series droid.”

‘Affirmative,” stated the droid engineer, ”Mister Knut told me that gift-giving is something biological specimens perform in order to ensnare people into their life.”

“Why was Mister Knut talking to you?” asked Jasper.

“Mister Knut talks to me every night to upgrade my performance in acquiring Captain Amarata.  He diagnosises and analyzes my behaviors at 2100 in the rec lounge.”

Jasper downed a couple gulps of his caf.  Knut really wants to win that bet. But it makes me wonder though…He set his cup of caf down.

“So once you fully understand how Captain Amarata’s mind works, what will you do with her?”

The droid hesitated, “I do not know.  I hear that organics keep their’s around for sentimental value.  Perhaps I will do the same.  Or I could experiment on her.”

Surhumn eyed the droid, “That’s not quite how it works, E4-2F.”

“I am positive that it how it works.  I hear that people use contracts to keep them.”

“Yes,” noted Jasper wryly, “that is true, but contracts can be broken…”

“I will design an ironclad contract-”

“First you have to win her over,” stated Surhum, “you have your err…chassis in the door frame.  Now you have to drive further into her heart-”

“My chassis is 5033% too large to fit into her heart-”

“She meant figuratively…err…not literally,” clarified Jasper.

"What does that mean?"

He quickly grabbed his cup of caf and began to quaf it own.  Well, I'm almost 100% positive that he's not a CSIS spy now...or at least, not a very good one...