Food. It was just another one of those petty things that mere mortals such as herself had to burden themselves with, all to squeeze a scant few more, exclusively brutal or bland years out of this pitiful existence. If the lump of boiled and mashed local tuber that was at that very moment consuming the entirety of her attention served as any indication, hers would be of the bland sort.


Amarata lurched backwards with a start, the bang of the cafeteria droid's ladle on her tray shattering her existential dread and almost causing her to drop her plate. “Move along,” it said in a robotic, emotionless tone, the ladle swishing back and forth, back and forth to indicate the direction she was to take.


“Y'know,” she said (apparently to herself) as she started walking, “I think Gabe told all of the droids around here to boop with me for the thing I did with the holotable yesterday . . . either that or Khelk told Gabe to tell the droids . . .” Her vocalized thoughts ground away into an indistinct sort of mumbling, then she jerked a little, something flipping in her mind, and she had to ask, “You wouldn't . . .


“Sparky?” He wasn't there. She looked down to ask him, and he wasn't there. “Sparky?”


Nothing. The server droid took her pause to mean she wanted some of what it was offering, and doled out several orange, slimy fruit slices.


Amarata turned around, scanning the cafeteria. “Move along.” She could feel the breeze from the swishing spoon on the back of her neck.


She broke from the line, wandering between tables, brows furrowed as she wondered where the little droid could have gone. It's not like there was anywhere to run to, and his restraining bolt would stop any of that kind of nonsense anyway, even if he wanted to run, which clearly he didn't, because Amarata was booping awesome and who would ever want to . . .


Oh, there he was, talking to E4- . . .


Talking to E4- . . .


Well, she was already walking over there, not much time left, had to come up with something quick . . .


E Four . . . Eey Four . . . Four, four, four . . .


Wasn't there an F in his name? E4-F something? No, that didn't sound right.


Hurry up, hurry up, running out of time.


Definitely an eff in there somewhere . . . Four has an eff . . . Eey Four, Eey Eff-our, Eey Eff-ow-ur . . .Ee Eff-er . . . Effer . . . Eff?


No, that was stupid. “Eff” isn't a name. Not even good enough to replace a serial number . . .


“Oh, hi.” Too late. She was here now. “I just . . . turned around and . . .” Why were those old humans staring at her so funny? The woman had one of those stupid, thin smiles with no teeth showing stretched across her face, the kind of look a pet shopper gives to a runt she would never take home in a thousand years. That's what kind of look it was, right?


What was their problem, anyway? “And Sparky here had run off,” she finally finished the thought.


Amarata was vaguely aware that Sparky and Eff (stupid, stupid idea!) had been squeaking at each other in whatever goofy droidtalk the little MSF series communicated in.


“Umm, is he alright?”


“They've been chattering away like that for a couple of minutes now,” the old man said, indicating the two droids with his cup of caff before taking a sip.


“MSF-S12 is operating within acceptable parameters, Captain Amarataa,” Eff (boopit!) said, turning his photoreceptors from regarding the droid to meeting Amarata's stare. “He was simply informing me of the great many design adventures on which the two of you have embarked, regarding the LH-3210 refit you are currently plotting out.”


“A Lucrehluk?” the woman asked, surprised. That was surprise, right? “Now whatever would you be doing with that?”


Amarata huffed, eyes widening in anger. She hurriedly slid her tray onto the Confederate scientists' table, knocking a bit of their dishes about, and scooped up Sparky (“Sparky”, not “MSF-S12”!), checking his restraining bolt. “Sparky, you can't go blabbing classified project information like that, what's wrong with you! Did your restraining bolt wiggle loose or something? I told Gabe the tensile strength on the pins wasn't high enough!”


“What's this about a classified project?” the old man asked, perking up a little and setting his caf aside (though he might have drunk it all already).


“MSF-S12's restraining bolt is undamaged, though it is also unnecessary,” Eff (gotta shake that bad bad name!) said, still regarding Amarata.


Was he staring at her? Had he stopped staring straight at her eyes since she . . .


“Ugh,” she grunted, Sparky starting to slip from her grasp. “Uhh, what do you mean?” she asked Eff, re-situating Sparky in her arms.


“He cannot refrain from sharing information that he does not know is forbidden,” Eff explained.


“Oh,” she said, loosening her grip on Sparky and crouching to let him go. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” She still gave the bolt one final tug to make sure. Never can be too careful . . .


“Sparky,” she began, turning the droid around to face her. “You can't talk to Eff about classified Coalition projects, okay?” She was shaking her finger at him for emphasis.


“Eff?” the old man asked. “What, are you on a first-letter basis now?”


Boop.


“No I, uhh . . . eh . . .” She was stuck here now. She hated walking away when people didn't realize that their misunderstanding was just a result of one of her quirks. “No, it's not 'Eff' as in 'F', the letter 'F'. It's 'Eff' as in 'E-F-F', 'Eey, Eff, Eff'. The E from Eey, the F from Four, and the F from . . . from,” gods, she hoped there was another F in that dumb droid's serial number, “from F. E-F-F spells Eff.”


“It sounds like you went to a fair bit of trouble on that to me,” the woman said, stupid smile back in action.


“No, I . . . it's just a thing my brain does sometimes.”


Why the boop wouldn't they stop looking at her like that?

She's crazy.


The weird thing, is that Eff must also be crazy if he wants to try and think like her. It's all rather unusual for a droid. But perhaps he thinks he can somehow control or perfect her lines of thought, without all of the biological problems it entails? Jasper shook the thoughts away.


“Well,” admitted the man, “it certainly seems like a logical explanation to call him Eff, though I might caution you from using that nickname publicly. To certain peoples, that might also seem a little too close to....an explicative....How do you feel about your new nickname, E4-F2?”


“It is acceptable,” decided the robot plainly, “it is certainly a more efficient name.”


Dr. Surhum let a befuddled grin crease her face, “So will you start adding it to all of the reports and files you are working on?”


The droid considered, “I do not think so. This project has forced me to confront the reality that you organics are inconsistent.”


“I don't follow,” said the woman from Thomork.


“I am expected to show some individuality and creativity, such as creating a name for myself, but yet at the same time I am expected to use the official name given to me by my creator. I am expected to conform and be sensitive to your societal norms, yet none of the same expectations are fully afforded to me. Will any of you speak in binary for me, or would you use such a device as a datapad to transmit the communicate to me in the same way?”


Jasper quickly thanked the droid for referencing the datapad, otherwise half-expecting the Ryn to start shouting various ones and zeros at the whole table for minutes at end. Yet the droid's words did trouble him some, making the man wonder if somehow all of them were the ignorant ones rather the quirky droid and the crazy genius Ryn scientist. Dr. Linne opened his mouth to speak, but quickly clapped it shut as the droid continued on its diatribe.


“I find myself wondering what you organics would be like in a droid relationship. Many droid-makers have modeled their creations to interact with other droids and peoples like organics, but is that truly natural? MSF-1032 and I have worked together for three years now, but our relationship does not work on any principles that would make sense to organic. We do not talk, we do not share a living space, we do not do any tasks together outside of our work, yet the bond we share is not that of mere co-workers, or between master and tool, but a collective consciousness that is related to work we do for our colony, and here, to that colony's relationship to the Confederation. Yet it is not mere patriotism or some certain altrusism, but a certain satisfaction that I have not found a word in Basic to convey. Dr. Linne, I viewed a recording of a lecture you gave on Almas once, about the kaluthin grass and the possibility to transport it to other worlds. Would you say the kaluthin is vital to your world's terraforming success?”


“Absolutely.”


“Then why have you not mentioned it here?” questioned the droid, “surely other worlds that we could potentially work on could use it.”


“It is in the information repository,” announced the man, oddly feeling particularly-droid like as he stated it.


“But there is a certain intimacy you feel to that information from your work on its properties,” decided the droid.


“Yes.”


“So when, Dr. Linne, do you not share that information so openly as Captain Amarata? And why do you, Captain Amarata, find yourself sharing more information that your superiors want to? It is a curious efficiency problem, when people share too much or too little, do too much or too little, or retreat or advance too much into their environments. My programming tells me the maxim that form follows function, yet that does not appear to be the case in this facility. How is it that I can understand all of these rational and efficiency precepts as rational truths, easily proven to any of you, yet none of you are capable of comprehending or applying it to your life? I do not understand you organics as much as I would like. I do not understand how you do not work for harmony or efficiency in your daily lives. Yet still you persist. I will introduce some efficiency to your lives by following Captain Amarata's model. Captain Amarata will now be shortened to Ca-am...Cam. Doctor Jasper Linne will now Dojale. Doctor Linda Surhum will now be Dolisu. Mister David Knut will-”


Linne winced. Oh eff. She's already infected him...




 

“That's great,” Amarata said past a mouthful of fruit wedges, waving her hand frantically to get the droid's attention and shut him up, “but we don't need new names. We need access to each other's technical specifications.”


She had started eating when she realized Eff would be going on for a while, not bothering to sit down, nor feeling particularly comfortable with the prospect of joining the little Confederate social unit. Now, with a spoonful of mashed something-or-another in her mouth, it occurred to her what the droid had missed.


“What you don't seem to understand, is that our problem is mostly political. And where there's politics, there's mountains of irrational and inefficient . . . nonsense.” She caught herself just before saying “boopitude”. She grabbed a fruit slice from her plate and pointed it at each of them in turn, saying, “So let's make a deal.” She bit off the end of the slice, waving the last half back and forth to accentuate her words: “How about we agree to get our respective governments to share the full technical specifications of all technologies related to this project with each other.”


She paused with another spoonful of food just at her mouth, finally noticing the looks the two humans were giving her. Those were new looks, right? Setting her spoon down, she saw their expressions change. That was less condescension now, right?


Boop. She had thought the Confederates at least would appreciate the efficiency of eating while talking . . . or maybe she hadn't thought about it at all. Yeah, that was probably more likely. Eh, whatever. That wasn't the point. The point was they should get over themselves already. The droid probably appreciated the efficiency of it at least; he didn't even have to eat, the lucky boop . . .


“Right, so my point is: our governments are just going to reverse engineer any of each other's technology that makes it into the final design anyway. Personally, I'd rather not spend the next three years re-rediscovering World Devastator tech, and I'm sure you don't want to spend however many months it would take to figure out the Cornucopia's protein synthesization process just to bump up your cloning tech's efficiency by a couple of percent.


“I mean, the goal here isn't to re-invent terraforming; it's to combine the best of our technologies into a state-of-the-art platform. What we should be doing is about the synthesis of existing technologies and protocols, pooled from our three separate sources, not wasting time impressing each other with how smart each of us is.


“Amirite?”


She glanced to the droid, expecting maybe he'd agree with her, but that spoon was calling to her too, so she grabbed it and got back to her unceremonious eating habits.

Jasper lowered his eyebrow.  What she's saying makes a little too much sense.  It's almost a given that such technology should not be proprietary, not if we are to make the galaxy a better place…and for once, most of the onus isn’t on the corporate types to maintain a monopoly.  He spared a glance at his plate and glass, realizing that both were completely empty now, but before he could voice his opinions, he found that Surhum was already talking. 

“It’s not a simple matter of declassifying technology,” noted the woman dryly, “it’s that the great power of this technology to change worlds can be used for good and evil.  In and of itself, the World Devastator technology I have spent so much time studying could be used to never harm a person, but I think we all know how that technology was used.  I don’t see our prospective governments be so willing to take responsibility for allowing a bunch of partisans to start using the same technology for wars all along our borders.  Sure, we  might not do it, but how many  of you trust this new Alliance?  They have no solid reputation to judge; we’re only forced to include them because of their own experience and technology with terraforming, otherwise I never would see us working with such a blood-spilling nation.”

“Their cause is…usually just,” defended Linne, “but it’s true, there’s something I don’t quite understand about them yet, but maybe we’ll find out eventually.  In any case, we could allay those concerns simply by modifying the technological specs we release to our partners so that they can’t be easily used to do bad things.  It can’t be too hard to prohibit a manufacturing process from producing any blaster gas or all the special things one needs for advanced weaponry…right Eff?”

The squat droid’s photoreceptors scanned all of them present before delivering a simple sound, “No.”

“Still,” objected Surhum, “there’s no guarantee that they won’t reverse-engineer the technology and then modify it again to do the same thing.”

“There’s no moral problem with that, from our side,” noted Linne, “Cam is right is that to really kickstart this project, we need better access to that technology, despite whatever our politicians and handlers may say, but we need to balance that with moral responsibility and precautions.”

“You really think that will work?” questioned Surhum.

“Who says we give them a choice?” said Linne, leaning back, “they need us to get this project done, and we know they really want it.  We can tell them that we can get it done faster on the market quicker and cheaper, or we don’t do it all.  What are they going to do, take my lecturer spot away at Almas University?”

“Easier for you to say,” countered Surhum, “but I suppose I could find work somewhere else, but what about E4-2F here?”

“Eff,” corrected the droid in monotone, “I do not know.  A droid has never made a demand to QS-2D before.  It is not in our nature to rebel.”

“Would you like to be able to rebel?” questioned Linne.

“I am not sure.”

“Perhaps he needs to visit the droid bay for maintenance anyways,” suggested Surhum, “and maybe an upgrade or too…”

“Risky…”

“Not for us,” said the woman from Thomork, “but what do you think, Eff?  You’re the one who’s going to suffer the consequences…”

“I will do it,” said the droid, “but I have one requirement.  I wish for Captain Amarata to be present and to assist in the necessary modifications…”

“Hold up,” said Jasper with the wave of a hand, “Cam, do you think you can be able to persuade some of your other counterparts to do the same for the Coalition?  If we can’t get everyone on board, we won’t nearly be as efficient…and it’ll be harder to push through our governments if only some of us are doing it…”

“That Mon Calamari female does seem to keep interfering with you,Cam,” noted Eff dryly.
 
 

Little chunks of fruit flew out of Amarata's mouth as she failed to suppress a fit of laughter. “Sorry, sorry,” she said as she turned her head and covered her mouth, too little, too late. “I just got a visual of Khelk's face as she heard someone call her 'That Mon Calamari female'.” The ridiculous image of the Mon Calamari woman puffing out her cheeks as her eyes wiggled about independently of one another was almost enough to make Amarata forget that the old man, Lynne (Wasn't that a girl's name?), had just called her “Cam”. Almost.


She stared at the old man for a moment, trying to work up the courage to protest, then a switch flipped in her brain and she remembered what she was “supposed” to be considering. “Uhh, yeah, so the thing is . . . I'm not really supposed to be, you know, involved with the whole . . .”


Amarata trailed off as Sparky started squeaking at Eff again. She gave him a few seconds to wrap up whatever it was, but Sparky just kept squeaking, and Amarata started feeling like she was being left out of the loop.


“Hey!” she exclaimed, bumping Sparky with the toe of her boot. “What did I just tell you about blabbing secrets?”


“There is no cause for alarm, Cam,” Eff (boopit, boopit, boopit, look what she'd started with the stupid, stupid names!) said. “Sparky was expressing concern regarding the duration of your work cycle. The facility's database confirms that Ryn require regular sleep, like most organics, to remain at optimal operational capacity. He hypothesizes that your difficulty formulating intelligible sentences may be the result of sleep deprivation.”


“Uhh, I'm fine, really,” Amarata said, shaking her head. She licked her lips, suddenly wishing she had something to drink. Realizing her hands had started fidgeting, Amarata looked around for any way to get off this topic, trying desperately to remember what she had just been talking about.


Afraid to look at either of the humans and whatever pitying or condescending looks they were surely wearing by now, Amarata locked eyes with Eff's bright blue potoreceptors. “Norax!” she exclaimed, snapping her fingers and pointing at Eff with both hands.


The pair of humans stirred in their seats and Amarata turned toward them, her pointing fingers finding them before she looked down at her own hands, retracting her fingers and then dropping them to her sides. She shrugged, too excited now to be lost in her embarrassment. “The Shard, Norax,” she explained, looking back to the trio of Confederates. “Word is Norax isn't just here to bring Shard tech into the project, but also on behalf of a specialized Guardian designed for humanitarian operations. If half the stories I've heard about Guardian Prime are true, it's all the help we'll need from the Coalition.”


She was staring at Eff again, this time sizing him up. True, there wasn't a Shard in there anywhere, and that was in general a bummer, but maybe not in this particular instance. A representative of a droid society from the Confederation might be of more than a little interest to Guardian Prime . . .


“We've still got time,” she said, checking a wall chrono. “I'll go try to find Norax and see if he's interested in having a chat. Uhh, I mean 'it'.” She shook her head again, clearing away the stray thought. “Anyway, it said it usually spends meal times in one of the observation rooms, watching the fish.


“Come on, Sparky.” Amarata took a couple steps toward the exit then stumbled to a stop. “Uhh . . . Eff?” she asked over her shoulder, reluctant to use the stupid nickname now that she remembered his designation, but stuck with it since he said he preferred it. “Care to come along? Norax might be more interested if it knows you're on board.”


Waiting for the droid to respond, something else flipped in her brain and she remembered one last thing that had gotten lost in all the excitement: why did Eff want her at his weird program-subverting refit? She didn't even have technical expertise in droid design or programming . . .

Eff gazed down the ryn placidly, “Certainly.”


The droid lurched into motion to follow in Captain Amarata's wake to meet this Norax, leaving the two Confederate scientists back at their cafeteria. Shrugging, Jasper led Surhum in taking their trays back to the tray turn in. She gently nudged him.


“So...you think she'll do it?”


Dr. Linne ambled behind a duros and shrugged, “There's no telling. She's not stable, and who knows what this Norax will do with Eff. I mean, maybe he can do it, maybe he can't. But there's a chance that we have to consider that we're on this alone.”

“You're not considering pulling out of this now, are you? Are you already asked her to do the same?”


He shook his head, “No, that would be a gesture of bad faith. No, I will start doing the same thing to my work, eliminating any technology or information that I can think could be used incorrectly and seeing if I can pass that through our censors to put into the project databanks...”


“I suppose that's easier for you,” said Surhum, edging forward behind him.


He let a wry smile crease his face, “Well, I choose not to study a superweapon so...”


“Touche,” admitted the older woman, “but still, you may be on to something. I suppose if nothing else, if we can get our stuff pass the censors, we can still accelerate the project without having to go through the politicians.”


“Hopefully doctor,” said Jasper, turning in his tray to a rather simple droid and glancing at his chrono, “but I have a subcommittee meeting to attend to. But I'll see you later on tonight?”


She nodded in agreement as she turned her own tray in. “Good luck Jasper.”


“And the same to you.”
 

Eff was creepily quiet all the way to meeting Norax, only the grating sound of his rolling treads to mark his presence right behind her. By the time they reached the aquatic observation room, that dull, repetitive sound had become all but unbearable.


“Norax!” Amarata exclaimed the moment she caught sight of the Shard, relieved perhaps for the first time in her life to hear her own voice out loud. “See, I told you we'd find him here,” she added, her voice trailing off halfway through the proclamation as she remembered that she was just talking to a droid.


She rushed up beside the Shard and came to an abrupt stop, twisting on the balls of her feet until she was facing the same direction as Norax, letting her tail whip around and slap the backs of its legs lightly. “How are the fishies today?” she asked with a big grin on her face, craning her neck up to see its face.


Norax's generically humanoid droid shell was about thirty centimeters taller than Amarata. She had heard that some Shards were too large to fit into regular sized droids, so the ones who opted for humanoid shapes tended to scale up the entire shell rather than have a disproportionately large torso.


Amarata shrugged her own thought away as Norax answered her question. “They are quite serene, Captain.” Its voice came in a low, vaguely masculine tone.


“I've already told you to call me Amarata,” she said, bumping his leg with the end of her tail again.


“Very well, Amarata.” Norax spent a few seconds staring at Eff, its articulated facial features nevertheless neutral and blank.


“Oh,” Amarata realized after spending equally as long staring at Norax, “This is E4-2F.” She gestured grandly at the Confederation droid.


“Eff,” Eff corrected.


“Err, uhh, right,” Amarata mumbled, looking back and forth between the two awkwardly. “Anyway, I found Norax here on our first day, at lunch time, and we've been having all kinds of neat chats ever since.”


“Greetings . . . Eff,” Norax said after a brief pause, regarding the droid and ignoring Amarata's comment.


“Cam informed me and my colleagues -” Eff began, rolling in closer to the two.


“Cam?” Norax asked, eyes darting from Eff to Amarata, then back.


“Uh . . . yeah,” Amarata managed weakly, squeezing one thumb with the opposite hand at her waist to keep from fidgeting. Norax's brain worked so fast! Or at least, the natural crystalline semiconductor network it had in place of a brain . . . whatever. “It's a long, unnecessary sort of . . .”


Eff tried to explain: “Captain Amarata indicated that the naming method of my series -”


“That's really not necessary,” Amarata said, waving a hand to try and shut him up, intentionally avoiding his name as she did so.


Eff rolled his right tread forward, pivoting on his immobile left, until he was facing Amarata squarely. “Very well,” he said, then rolled back on his right tread until facing Norax again. “As I was saying, Cam informed me and my colleagues that you may be able to place us into contact with Guardian Prime.”


Eff was probably intending to say more, but even the socially inept droid must have picked up on the look of outright scorn that swept across Norax's artificial features. It's head turned slowly from Eff to her, those photoreceptors half-disguised as eyes nevertheless conveying an unforgiving fury.


“I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any such entity,” Norax said, anger leaking into every word, its eyes not wavering from Amarata once they had locked with hers.


Amarata took a few unsteady steps back, so ashamed and disappointed in herself for something she hadn't even realized was such a big deal. “I just . . . heard some of the others talking and I thought, maybe . . .”


“There is a reason that we do not tell you these things, Captain.”


Amarata, her head already bowed so she wouldn't have to face the Shard's burning gaze, gave a shallow nod. “I'm sorry. I didn't know.”


“That is precisely why -”


“I will serve as an avatar for Guardian Prime,” a new voice said, one oddly reminiscent of Eff's, actually. This voice, though, was coming from Norax.


The switch was so surprising that Amarata jerked her head up, expecting Norax's enraged scowl to have been replaced with a calmer, gentler, more neutral expression. It, unfortunately, was not. “Did . . . did you just slice Norax's vocoder?”


“It most certainly did not,” Norax protested, some of that anger still bleeding through. “My body incorporates a fully functional droid brain -”


“Programmed by Guardian Prime,” the other voice added.


“Yes,” Norax acknowledged reluctantly and uncomfortably, a hint of its anger still present. “We are in constant, uninterrupted multichannel communication, and as it makes its intentions known to me and when it convinces me of their validity, I consent to its use of relevant systems.”


“That sounds . . . intimate,” Amarata managed, having to look away again, glad she wasn't one of those pasty purple-white Ryn who could blush.


“Exceedingly,” Norax affirmed, something not quite anger in his voice, but Amarata could tell that whatever she was missing, it was meant to be unpleasant. “Of course, it's nothing compared to the unity of a Shard colony, or even the remote interface network we have on Orax. The density and richness of direct Shard-to-Shard communication is beyond your mind's capacity to conceive.”


“Oh,” Amarata said weakly. “I didn't know . . .”


“I would like to speak to Guardian Prime,” Eff said, rolling forward to assert its place in the conversation.


Was he coming to her rescue? Or was this just another one of his efforts in “efficiency” designed to optimize the desired outcome of the situation at hand? At the moment, she didn't really care. She was just glad to have Norax's condescending eyes off of her.


“As I said,” the bland voice returned from Norax's vocoder, “I am not truly Guardian Prime. Currently I operate as an autonomous representative in direct communication with Guardian Prime. Present bandwidth restrictions prohibit my full immersion into its will, however the available data stream will be more than adequate for your requirements.”


“You do not know our requirements,” Eff pointed out.


“On the contrary. This facility's Guardian, Gabe, has supplied us with adequate information regarding your intentions here.”


“Spying on us is a violation of the terms of our collaboration,” Eff warned.


“Gabe was spying on Amarata,” the Guardian-thing stated, Norax's angry eyes looking back to her again.


“Appropriate, under the circumstances,” Norax added coldly.


She inched closer to Eff, gripped by a sad sort of self-loathing fear. She couldn't even begin to sort out what feelings were coming from where, and it was taking everything she had not to start shaking visibly or just collapse on the floor.


“If that is the case,” Eff continued, unfazed (it was amazing how he could do that, the lucky droid!), “then Guardian Prime is already aware of our intentions and motivations.”


“It is,” the Guardian voice affirmed.


“I have been informed that its collaboration would be decisive in gaining broad Coalition support; however, I now believe that your involvement, Norax, would prove counter-productive and damaging to our prospects for mutual success. As our prior ignorance resulted in misjudging the utility of this conversation, I have determined that now would be an appropriate time to disengage from it.


“If Guardian Prime determines our proposal to be acceptable, it should utilize alternative means of communication to inform us of that development.”


Eff ran his treads in opposite directions to pivot in place, giving Amarata a once-over. “Cam, your heart rate and blood pressure indicate that we should leave now.”


She nodded, not feeling up to talking right now.


As Eff led the way out of the room meant for casual relaxation, the Guardian voice spoke up one last time. “Captain Amarata?” It was a little softer now, still decidedly bland, but softer.


“Yes?” she managed, looking back.


“No,” Norax said stiffly. “That's enough.”


Eff grabbed her hand and gave it a tug, getting her attention again. “We are leaving now.”


She nodded, following him out of the room.


A few dozen paces past the closed door to the observation room, Sparky started squeaking away again. Amarata had forgotten about the little droid in all of the commotion, but hearing his screechy voice again put a weak smile on her face.


Eff had stopped in place, turning to regard the droid.


“What's he saying?” she asked. Looking down, she noticed a curious light blinking on Sparky's restraining bolt.


“He says he has a message from Guardian Prime, via Gabe.”


Amarata tried to swallow, her dry throat protesting. “What is it?”


“Initially, two words: 'I'm in'. Also, it apologizes for Norax's behavior.”


“Huh,” Amarata said, crouching down to pet Sparky. “Gabe?” she called out, pulling a hydrospanner from her pocket


“Yes, Captain Amarata?”


“Tell Guardian Prime 'thank you'.” She wedged the spanner into the base of the restraining bolt, popping it off and sending it rolling down the hallway. “Then tell it not to boop with my droid.”


“Understood, Captain Amarata.”


As Amarata got back to her feet, something about Eff's disposition caught her attention. She wasn't quite sure what it was, but . . . “Are you okay there, Eff?”


“I am operating within acceptable parameters,” he said, rolling off toward the work area again. “I do, however have a question, though I am uncertain as to whether or not it would be considered appropriate to ask.”


Amarata slowed her pace a little, caught off guard by the strange comment. “Okay . . . how about you give it a try and we'll see what I can do?”


“Give it a try?” he asked. “Is that another figurative statement?”


Another? “Well, yeah. I just mean: ask me, and I'll let you know if it's inappropriate.”


“That is an acceptable course of action,” Eff conceded. “I am curious as to the meaning of 'I'm in'. I do hope it doesn't mean Guardian Prime is in Sparky; that would be an unacceptable violation of his operational autonomy.”


Amarata chuckled, oddly delighted that Eff was proving himself even more naive and ill-equipped than her in a full range of social interactions. She moved in close to pat his clunky shoulder, making sure he didn't accidentally run over her tail with one of his treads. “No, it means that Guardian Prime is in on the plan. It's going to help us.”


“That is favorable news, indeed.”


“Yeah,” she said, taking a few steps away to get her swishing tail out of the danger zone. “Why would that be an inappropriate question, though?”


“I have been informed that certain topics of discussion are inappropriate within certain social contexts.” It was a fantastically evasive answer. “And what about 'boop'?”


Amarata stopped in her (different kind of, and also figurative) tracks. “What?”


Eff came to a stop and looked back at Amarata. “You instructed Gabe to tell Guardian Prime not to 'boop' with Sparky.”


“I did?” she asked, palms getting clammy.


“Yes. What does that mean?”


Oh, boop.

Some months later...

Project Terra Nova Firma base ship, in orbit of Belsus, Anoat System

Dr. Jasper Linne walked alongside Dr. Surhum in the wide hallways of the former CIS battleship.  Ever since arriving on the Lucrehulk, he had wondered how a bunch of Squibs had managed to acquire such a mighty vessel, but he had no-one give him a straight answer on that.  There was simply too much else going on.  Various other beings and droids scurried around them, all in their own little worlds.  He watched one Squib tinker with a datapad narrowly dodge a pair of Uffel-built droids hauling a bulky cylindrical piece of equipment on a repulsor sled, only to smack into a meandering trio of Alliance engineers.  After a brief apology, the groups continued on their way as the two Confederate scientists stopped by a massive viewport showing the brown moon.  Occasionally, the larger green mottled orb of Gentes would pass behind the moon.  Linne let out a slow sigh.

"It seems to have taken forever to finally get here, and we're not even there yet..."

She shrugged, "You've finally gotten farther than me.  We're only testing equipment and terraforming technology now...and the lead ship, all of my work, is still just a keel back in some undisclosed Confederate shipyard...A piece of steel that no-one's looking at right now."

He rested a hand on her shoulder, "It'll be impressive when it's done though, I'm positive.  I know how much work you put into it..."

The woman from Thomork gently removed his hand, "I'm just here for the ride right now."

"And to see how the Squibs kept this contraption together..."

She shook her head, "I don't know how Cam got her way with this...but I suppose I do need to make sure that none of the devices we're using have any unknown effects on the ship.  That might be useful.  So how are you feeling?  This is your big day after all..."

He shrugged, "It doesn't feel like it; I've hardly done anything recently.  The Coalition got all the tunnels dug out, that one Aqualish did all the work with the moon's core and the plate tectonics, the only thing I've done is tampered with the genetic code of the kaluthin...and then Knut mass-cloned the seeds....and then droids again."

"But they couldn't due it without you," said the woman, now grasping his hand, "you're playing a big role in remaking a world the Empire destroyed.  Do you know how many people will know your name when they look up at their ceilings to see your plants growing and bringing life back to their world?"

"That cuts both ways," remind the older man, "just think what will happen if it's all botched up."

"There won't be people there then, unless, well, it only works for a while..."

"Exactly."

"Nevermind that," said Surhum, glancing at her datapad's clock, "it's about to happen."

Other beings began to gather around the viewports; he felt the fur of a Tynnan against his side, spared a quick glance at the being, and then glanced down on the dreary world.  He felt a vibration pass through the hull before seeing a diffuse blue beam of the climatizer's ion ring shoot out of the ship's large sphere into the moon's atmosphere.  A blue-gray mist seemed to form where the beam struck before coalescing into storm clouds, which began to release a deluge of rain which would water the thousands of kaluthin seeds carefully implanted in the vast network of tunnels below.  A swell of pride and worry pulsed throughout him.  Jasper squeezed Surhum's hand.  She smiled.

"See, it's all going according to plan.  I wonder how Eff and Cam are doing?"

Facing her, he let a wry grin crease his face, "You mean what they're tinkering with now..."

This old ship had seen more action than Varekai, the mythic Ryn adventurer who was said to have once visited a thousand ports in a thousand days. The Lucrehulk had started out its life as a Trade Federation commerce ship before being secretly converted into a battleship prior to the formation of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, later drafted into that military and then seized by a rogue Separatist commander after the official defeat of the CIS.


Eventually captured by the Empire and disarmed, it was sold to a freight company who later fell on hard times and converted it into a space station for cargo transfers, until the costs of maintaining unused starship systems on a station not properly equipped for its designated function forced them to sell the whole thing for scrap. It sat in an orbital queue for years as a backlog of more valuable Old Republic warships were processed first, some of their parts compatible with Imperial designs of the time. A handful of wars and galactic catastrophes later, and the Squib purchased the old can for contract fulfillment with the Cooperative Navy, who wanted it refurbished and refit for military use, again.


Then some Coalition “Special Projects” division or another stepped in, convinced the Cooperative to reassign the ship for non-military use, and here they were, on a ship with no name, shooting particle beams at dead planets to see what they could make happen.


“It'll work I tell 'ya,” Amarata said for the ninth time, tightening one last bolt on the test model. It was amazing where her mind would wander when she found herself doing menial tasks.


“The power requirements exceed the design's supply capacity,” Eff said, working on his own . . . something.


She could hardly figure out what he was getting up to half the time now, he was trying so hard to “think outside the box” (another one of those “figurative” statements she was still convinced he didn't actually understand). “That's why we'll use thermal collectors in conjunction with the reactors,” she said, locking the little jackhammer-like device onto the end of a horizontal automated arm. “We can leave the collection rods in once the job's done, and recover the platforms. There shouldn't be any environmental or seismic consequences if we leave the rods in the ground.”


Eff stiffened suddenly, his tinkering brought to an abrupt halt. “Gabe informs me that the climatizer engaged successfully. He reports positive atmospheric response and precipitation within target parameters.”


“Stop trying to distract me,” she said, pointing a spanner at him with one hand as she guided the arm into position with the other. The device slid into a groove in a large block of metal, then she locked the arm in place. “It'll work.


“Besides,” she continued, allowing herself to be distracted, “I didn't say the climatizer you proposed wouldn't work, I just said mine was better.”


“All target goals have been met. My design was an unqualified success.”


“Uh huh, uh huh,” she said, flipping several switches on the control panel for her contraption. “I still could have shaved off eight percent in power requirements and narrowed the variance in total precipitation to more controllable levels.


“Okay,” she said, switching back to her own project, “take a look at this.”


Eff turned his head to regard her, his arms still working on his own project.


“Stop that!” she shouted, slapping her thigh for added effect.


“I assure you that I am sufficiently aware of your test to collect all relevant data.”


“That's not the point . . .” she started, then realized the futility of trying to explain it to him. “Oh, alright.”


Amarata mashed the Big Red Button and the device hummed to life. The arm began to spin like a drill, concentric circles of red-hot metal pushing out from the point of contact with the device as it sunk deeper into the massive block of metal. Once sunk into the block, the spinning came to a stop, the ring of semi-molten metal slowly cooling. Amarata punched in a few more commands, and the next phase of the device initialized.


Nothing happened, and then . . . more of nothing happened. “It is as I said,” Eff declared. “The power requirements are too high. You will not be able to overcome -”


The left half of the block moved. Rather, it warped. It rose upward, siphoning material from the right side to maintain the structural integrity of the left. Amarata was tapping the fingers of both hands frantically against the casing of her terminal, fighting with everything in her not to turn to Eff and start pointing and taunting. She waited until the device finished its sequence and withdrew from the block before doing that.


“Ha-ha, na-na, I win!” she exclaimed, whatever she was doing with her feet utterly unrecognizable as dance by any creature familiar with even the broadest concept of the activity. “Now what was that you were saying about -”


The left side of the block slid away from the right and crashed against the deck plating.


“Also, the integrity of the medium will be catastrophically compromised.”


Amarata turned back to the hundreds of hours of work laying in a melted pile, poking her lower lip out as she pouted pitifully. “No!” she shouted, shaking her head to rid herself of the crushing self-loathing that threatened to grip her. “This. Will. Work.”


She grabbed a can of coolant spray and doused the device. “I'll fix it, I'll deploy it, and it'll work.” Pulling it off of the arm, she slammed it on top of her work table and went looking for where she'd stashed her tools. “We're going to deploy this thing on Deyer, it's going to work beautifully, and those Human High Culture Colonial boops are going to owe their success, yet again, to the hard work and ingenuity of a Ryn!” She started unpacking a new set of tools, already giving up on tracking down the others. “They'll crawl, penitent and ashamed of their bigotry, across the open fields of their new continent and they won't stop until they get right here,” she pointed at the deck right in front of her, “right in front of me, and kiss my blue, alien feet!


“You're welcome, Gestalt!”


“Human High Culture?” Eff asked. “That is an Imperial ideology, one no longer endorsed by the current Emperor.”


Amarata shrugged. “How else do you explain an artificial society that's ninety eight percent human, inside one of the most diverse nations in the history of the galaxy? I mean, look around: probably half of this ship's staffed by non-humans.”


“In fact, forty-three point seven percent of this vessel's current organic inhabitants are human, the majority of those representing Confederation institutions. Do you infer from that some bias toward humans on the part of the Confederation?”


Amarata shrugged, suddenly wishing she hadn't brought it up. “People gotta live somewhere; it just so happens that a lot of humans live on Confederation worlds. Unless . . .” Sometimes she hated the way her brain worked, but she was already spinning around to face Eff, index finger held up and pointing straight at the ceiling. “Unless the Confederation specifically targets human-dominated worlds for admission . . .”


“I am not a human,” he pointed out.


“Yeah, but you're a droid,” she said dismissively, turning back to her work.


“What is that supposed to mean?” The dull clanking of his tools fell silent behind her.


Amarata grimaced, just wishing she could get back to her work. Boop the Colonials, and boop their booping culture; all she wanted was to build cool gadgets and fix planets! “I'm just saying that outside of the context of the Uffel Colony or whatever, a droid more or less like you is pretty much exclusively the property of a person more or less like me.”


“Oh, I see.”


There was no variation in his monotone voice, but somehow Amarata could feel that she had hurt him with the comment. “I . . . I'm not saying it's right or anything; I'm just saying that's the way it is. The Ryn have had to deal with their fair share of boop over the years too, you know?” She accidentally hit her finger with one of the heavier tools, suppressing a cry of pain.


“And that excuses you from the plight of droid slavery?”


Droid slavery? “You've been talking to that Shard again, haven't you?” she asked, sucking on her knuckle to try to alleviate the pain. How had she gotten herself into this mess?


“The fact that you have encountered a single undesirable Shard in your time working alongside them is by no means an excuse to disregard the entirety of their species. There are any number of beings who, being confronted with your numerous and substantial idiosyncrasies, would disregard the worth of the entire Ryn species, if only they were to operate according to your own implied criteria for evaluating alien species.”


“Now listen here, you,” she wheeled about, brandishing her spanner like a magic wand, the dull ache of her injured hand banished from her thoughts. “My people have been hunted and enslaved for thousands of years,” this felt good, “systematically oppressed and disenfranchised,” empowering, even, “driven from our homes and forced into labor against our will,” her heartbeat was picking up, and this time she liked it, “and you think because one of us ended up a little bit 'off',” maybe there was something else going on here, “that you get to use that against me like it's some kind of . . . some kind of . . .”


“Cam? Cam? Captain Amarata?”


Amarata stumbled a little, reaching back to catch herself on the table, then slipped and fell to the floor. She was struggling to breathe, her heart hammering in her chest now, vision blurred, ears ringing, hands on fire.


“Cam, your vital signs are spiking dangerously, I have called for medical assistance.”


She clamped her hand over her mouth, realizing that she wasn't struggling to breathe, she was doing it too much. She was hyperventilating, among other things. “No,” her muffled voice called out as she struggled to sit upright, her head swimming. The cold metal of Eff's hand closed around her arm and helped her steady herself. “I don't . . . need a doctor. I'll . . . be . . . okay.”


She sat still for a moment, Eff's steadying hand warming from continuous contact, her scrambled head slowly settling around the stabilizing sensation of the table's solid side against the back of her head. “I'm sorry,” she finally managed.


“No, Cam, it is I who should apologize for causing you to revisit such unpleasant memories. I will endeavor to avoid such triggering topics in the future.”


She nodded silently, too ashamed to admit to him that it wasn't the pain of her own past that had done this to her, too ashamed to admit that she had been so terribly, completely wrong. It wasn't any different, how Ryn and droids were treated. It wasn't any different, and she'd never seen it until now. That made her one of the bad guys, worse even than the Colonials who hated her for her nose and tail.


“Help me up?” she asked weakly, finding it hard to meet his robotic gaze.


Eff couldn't quite lean over like a proper biped, but he used his superior strength to simply stretch his arm straight and then lift, rolling backwards slightly to give her the room she needed to stand.


“Oh boop,” she said, seemingly from nowhere.


“Cam, are you alright?”


“Yeah,” she muttered, turning back to her work station, “but I just figured out how to shift the plates on Deyer without destabilizing them. They're going to get their new continent, and then some.”


“Why is that an unfavorable development?”


Amarata hung her head, wishing she could say more but still too ashamed. “Because I still wish I could make those Colonials kiss my feet and beg for my forgiveness.”

"What is the function of having your feet kissed, And why is the nationality of the individuals involved relevant? Should I add this to the list of figurative phrases that you will likely utilize in the future?"

Ugh, stupid droid.

Project Terra Nova Firma base ship, in geosynchrous orbit around Vinza, Anoat System
 
The aging Lucrehulk-class starship almost gracefully fell into the orbit of the hothouse world of Vinza.  Swirling clouds of greenhouse gases wrapped themselves around the globe, obscuring the world’s rocky surface for the viewports of the starship.  Thousands of kilometers from the surface, dozens of scientists and engineers gathered around a holo-projector where the one standout Alliance scientist, a Bith who went by the name of Thaelus K’sar, cleared his throat to reveal a surprisingly melodious voice to Dr. Linne. 

“The helmsman of this great vessel of science has informed me that we have entered the orbit of Vinza,” started the Alliance scientist, “the work we’ve started on Belsus was relatively simple in terms of planet engineering, which is not disparage your efforts, but to better prepare you for any possible shortcomings in our work here-”

“-bah, it’ll be fine Thaelus, get the show on the road,” said another member of the Alliance team, a short man named Woll who always wore a labcoat wherever he went.

“Yes, well now,” said the bith, “as I was saying, we do not have much experience in modifying such gaseous atmospheres to the extent that we are going to attempt to now, and never quite this fast.  My own personal experience with Alliance terraforming projects has utilized thousands of mirrors strategically deployed to reflect light away from the planet, preventing the planet from continually heating, and thus allowing it to cool naturally before other traditional means of terraforming were attempted.

But a recent breakthrough that was made possible by only all of our factions working together may make such a painstaking and time-consuming process obsolete by a new bio-molecule mist.  But before I continue, I would like to recognize Doctor Jasper Linne’s contribution of the kaluthin gene research used to absorb and convert gases, the Coalition’s team’s contribution from the Corncopia project in rapidly synthesizing these protein modules, and well…myself and those Alliance researchers who with me properly synthesized the correct models for everything to work properly…:

“On with it,” heckled Woll, approaching the holo-projector station.

Linne raised an eyebrow.  Those two really don’t get along.  I wonder what their past is.  They’re not on the same research teams, so I doubt it’s anything to do with this project…The bith grasped a datapad with one hand, and fended away Woll with his other arm outstretched.  Woll began to wrestle with that arm before a wookiee grabbed the short man from behind and promptly lifted him off the ground with a growl.  The bith cleared his throat once more.

“Yes, now, as I was saying…once released into the atmosphere, this bio-mist should begin to convert the gases into other less dense gases until an equilibrium is reached that will make the atmosphere suitable for the intended species.  But as I have said, since this is the first test…”

Jasper glanced at Woll, who had stopped struggling after being smothered in the Wookiee’s embrace.  The man’s eyes were completely closed, almost as if he were sleeping.  Maybe it’s because he’s attended too many functions led by Thaellus…he does like to talk a lot…oddly long-winded…but truly a kind soul…After his mind’s attention had wondered for a few more minutes, he turned his eyes back to the rambling bith.

“…and so it is my great honor to initiate this practical testing.”

He pressed a button on the datapad.  Jasper’s eyes darted to the holo-projector, which began to show a series of large tan projectiles being expelled out of the lucrehulk’s hangar bays to tumble down into the atmosphere of the greenhouse world.  He knew that despite their size, the bio-mist was fairly light and the packaging which held it was little more than biodegradable plastecene, yet a part of him felt that he might as well have dropped a bunch of proton bombs on the world.  We’re inescapably changing this world.  Sometimes terraforming is justified and needed to better people already on a planet, but do we really have the right to go in and completely alter a world so much that it is entirely unrecognizable from its previous self?  He shook the thoughts away from his head.  They say that this world will become home to refugees from the wars and persecutions that plague our galaxy.  Could I really deny them such a home?  One unscarred by wars and the taint that we have managed to bring to this galaxy over the millennia?  No, this our way of showing hope to a galaxy constantly torn apart by war…