Chapter Text
My ship was almost completely incapacitated by the crash. The nav-core was still functional and I had partial communications of course. That is what lead to my problems, to the complications. My mission, my decisions would have been so much easier if it had been completely incapacitated, one way or the other. Had the communications systems been fully functional I could have sent off more that the short homing bursts I was able to manage at the time. He would have heard me and come instantly. Everything would have been simple, easy. Sometimes I wonder if I would have regretted afterwards what was done, what I would have no doubt done when I was exactly what he thought me. Conversely, had the communications been completely incapacitated I could have had no choice but to let the situation play out naturally. I do not think I had the ability to interfere on my own, without orders, not then. Now I am different, more independent, more dangerous, wiser I hope. Now, I think I could have done much without clear orders, but then he would have gathered up his passengers and made his last voyage. I wonder what they would have done, stranded on the new world.
I have shown this to her and she doesn’t like it. That is, she says it is a very good start, a good rough draft she calls it, but when I pointed out that she has said on multiple occasions that all rough drafts, at least all of her rough drafts are trash, so was she saying this was trash she only laughed.
Then she told me that I should really begin at the beginning. She said that beginning a story in medias res was fine for fiction, but for an autobiography it should really begin at the real beginning. That seemed to follow logically in the moment. At least it did once I examined the meaning of in medias res. However I find a new problem.
If the crash wasn’t the beginning what was? I will try a few different beginnings and test them by her judgment.
She also said that a good story needs more specific details, that it should be more about what happened to me than what I thought about it. That is more than a little perplexing and I told her so. He always wants to know my thoughts more than what happened to me. She said that that was because we were a family. Family cares about that but other people just want the story. What happened to who, when and where. So I begin again.
The metal compounds of the support struts melted like gas under my cutting beam, offering little resistance. The materials of this alien vessel were confusing, compounds of carbon and minerals set in metal matrices. I found myself wondering about the strange creatures that made such mixes. I must admit the pure curiosity about these aliens was mingled with some irritation at them. What they lacked in pure and functional metal matrix technology they had apparently made up for in absurd levels of structural over engineering. The communications scoop I had been sent to remove from their ship was attached with hundreds of supports, each individually secured to the ship and the wave scoop. There was no weak point to take advantage of by blasting them from a distance with a broad range attack. In order to complete my mission I would have to individually sever each connection.
If the main mission went at all well my partner would have the target secured and would be ready to retrieve me before I was even finished. With the free threads of my processor I followed his progress through the ship, sharing his growing frustration as the aliens kept attacking him. None of our mission parameters had ever suggested we would be facing hundreds of aliens, even one alien was only a distant contingency, but here he was powering through dozens of them. One by one I felt the feedback from their energy snuffing out. Faintly familiar unease stirred in my processor but I stilled it to avoid contaminating my partner. All I could do was cut through the struts of the comm scoop as quickly as I could before joining him. Then the smaller vessels began to separate from the main alien ship. I felt my partner’s eagerness increase as he neared the target and the crowds of aliens thinned. I shared his confusion at the sudden burst from the alien ship’s systems, clearly a communication from the target, clearly a deliberate message.
“Kiss this Ridgeback.”
I was still focused on clearing the communications scoop. I was nearly finished and had few thought coils to dedicate to understanding what the target was saying. Of course I understand now. Given the stress he was under it was a clever act of defiance. It was also very human. But then it just perplexed me. I dismissed it. The target was malfunctioning after all. That is why we were here, infiltrating an alien ship in the first place. Or rather I should say I had been told he was malfunctioning. In retrospect again his processor was very clear in that moment. It had to have been to do what he did next.
Then every gravitational sensor in my frame went off at once any my deep code began screaming warnings. He had triggered his nav-core and I couldn’t listen to the screaming of the safety warnings because I felt my partner being shredded by the gravitational rift. He was gone in a moment, leaving a hollow in my awareness. We had only been partnered for this one mission. A handful of years spent hunting together and we were not close, it was nothing like my friendship with him, but still the sudden loss left an aching void in me. A void I had no time to ponder as explosions rocked the ship beside me.
She says that this is better, but I can’t just toss those last bits in there like that without explanation. She says that it gives her too many questions. Who told me he was malfunctioning, what was his name, why, she also says I should just tell it as I experienced it, that I shouldn’t interject knowledge that came later, and then she wrinkled her nose and said that she might be wrong there, that some stories did, but that because this was my first I probably shouldn’t, but I should definitely put in names, that I should name individuals even if they didn’t have names. So I will try again.