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“Wait,” said Shou Yuing. “You’re serious?”
Kate gave her a look that suggested she was a moment away from murdering someone. “Overtime and hazard pay. Doubled.”
“Jesus.” She grabbed a napkin and wiped her face, standing up. “I’m all UNIT’s, then.”
“Good.” Kate turned on her heel and strolled away. After a moment, Shou Yuing picked up her tray and put it away, then went through to the main control room.
Shirley, Mel, Ruby, and Rose were already there. Given the way the former two were huddled together, and the latter trying to listen in, Shou Yuing could easily guess who had and had not also been approached by Kate.
“Alright, you two, off you go,” she said, and, with slightly indignant looks, they both left.
“Oh, let them have a little fun,” said Mel half-heartedly.
“I am,” said Shou Yuing, “but they need to earn it. Which is why I haven’t told them off for trying to listen through that door.” She grinned, and walked over to where Shirley had a screen, leaning down over the desk next to her. “I suppose you know everything that’s going on?”
“First contact,” she said, and leant back to let Shou Yuing have a good look at the screen, which was displaying a form coming closer to Earth from outer space. “It only came in recently. Unknown sender. Kate’s got full permission to handle it.”
“Hm.” Shou Yuing leant back. “You’re sure whoever this is isn’t trying to take us over?”
“If that was the case, why not hack our systems, or take control of all our nukes, or just wipe us out? No, there’s nothing but peace messages.” Shirley tapped the screen to open up a plaintext window. Rapidly scrolling by were paragraphs, in different languages and fonts. “Every language on Earth. They’re still being loaded. But all with this message.”
The screen paused, then English text came up.
The spacecraft currently nearing your home planet, named in your language Earth, is one belonging to and being operated on behalf of the Ruling Powers of Svartos. Please prepare for a diplomatic meeting between you and the ambassador chosen to represent Svartos to your planet and people. Contact will be made shortly.
“Vague.”
“I know. Mel’s got a program running, trying to glean as much information as we possibly can from the different languages, but it’s not very successful. They’ve somehow avoided giving us any more information than in the English version.”
Shou Yuing frowned, then stood up properly. “So what am I doing here?”
“Kate wants you in case we need a chemist.”
“Right.” Shou Yuing looked around. “I would’ve thought she’d bring her boytoy too.”
Right on cue, Christofer and Kate walked in, and Shou Yuing straightened.
“Right,” said Kate, as Christofer moved to lock the door. “I have a diplomat specially trained for extraterrarian situations driving over right now, and we’ll just have to hope she gets here in time. Donna’s on holiday - again - but that’s no matter. I hope you all know how important this meeting might be for humanity’s future. Shirley, how long till the craft enters Earth’s atmosphere?”
“Just a few moments.” She tapped the screen, and suddenly its contents were projected onto the screens at the front of the room. “Hang on, it’s stopped.”
Kate stepped over, and Shou Yuing moved obligingly out of the way. “Are you certain?”
“Hey,” said Mel, in the distance, “can anyone else hear humming?”
Shou Yuing blacked out.
She didn’t quite wake, but she did return to consciousness. She was in some sort of void, dark only by an absence of light. She could breathe, but there was no oxygen, something that didn’t seem to harm her. It took her a moment to realise that she didn’t need to, which discomforted her greatly. Then, in a moment, there was real oxygen in this place, and she breathed in deeply.
With that out of the way, she tested her environment. Its temperature was not cold or hot enough to register against her skin, and she could not hear, see, feel, smell, or taste anything. She was obviously standing on something, given that she wasn’t falling, and there was some sort of gravity, given her hair was still hanging down, but she couldn’t feel her weight on her feet.
Then, abruptly, something shifted. Shou Yuing was not sure what had shifted, but something clearly had, and then in front of her, the nothingness seemed to condense into a physical form.
#Kate opened her eyes slowly. She remembered a void of some sort, but now she was back in her body, lying on the floor. She got up, looking around. Everyone had fallen around her but Shirley, and the diplomat she’d called for was just coming in through the door.
“What -”
“Contact,” she mumbled, and reached out a hand to pick up Christofer from the floor as her employees started slowly waking around her.
She looked around, doing a headcount, then saw Shou Yuing on the floor. She stepped over and knelt down by her.
“Hey, Shou Yuing.” She tapped her wrist lightly, then a little harder. “Shou Yuing?” She looked up. Shirley, the only one of them not to have banged her head, was looking at them both with concern. “Shirley, get the med bay. She’s not waking up.”
The nothingness took on a human appearance. It became, first, her brother. Shou Yuing would have stepped back in surprise. Then it changed to a woman - her mother. Seeing her reaction, it changed once more, and then for a few moments after it cycled through appearances, till a woman Shou Yuing’s age stood looking out at her. She was pale, brown-haired, with clever green eyes and a little bit of a smirk. She was wearing a simple blazer over a white shirt, unbuttoned at the top. She looked like a troublemaker, which, admittedly, Shou Yuing liked.
“Hello?” Nothing. Did this… whatever this woman was representing, did they speak English? Perhaps, as the Earth’s most-spoken language, they expected Mandarin. “Nín hǎo?” Best to be formal, probably, but she was given no response. “Bonjour? Hallo? Néih hóu?” Still nothing. Well, her Canto was abysmal, to say nothing of her German, so small mercies. “Look, I don’t understand what’s going on.”
At that, the woman rearranged her face, as if having one for the first time, into a smile. “I am making contact.”
“This is contact?”
She tilted her head. “It is. I am in your head as a psychic projection of my chosen avatar, all based on your subconscious preferences.”
Shou Yuing realised after a second that the woman had a little more than a passing resemblance to an ex or two. “Are you making contact with Kate? Mel, Christofer, Shirley…?”
“I was, till I chose you.”
“‘Chose’ me?” She wondered if she was dead.
“You’re not. And I did. I chose you to imprint upon me, to design myself based on you. You’re now the link between our species.”
Shou Yuing could only stare at her. “I don’t understand you.”
The woman made that strange smile again. “I’ll explain.”
Kate watched the reading spring up on the screen. Both Shirley and Mel were with her, Mel perched by the bed.
“Strong psychic interference,” noted Shirley. “But her vitals are completely normal. It has to be that craft.”
“It still hasn’t moved,” said Mel. “I’ve tried contacting it, but I’m getting absolutely no response. I don’t know if it’s even receiving the messages.”
Shou Yuing leant back dizzily in the air. She struggled to parse through all the information that had been put into her head for several moments, then felt a presence come and start picking through it for her. She breathed in deeply.
“Then I welcome you, on behalf of Earth and its people.” She probably didn’t have the authority to do this. Then again, this woman had specifically chosen her. Was it a bound-to-Shou-Yuing’s-will kind of thing? The presence in her head brought something to the front of her mind, and she noted it wasn’t. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t have one,” she answered. Her speech had grown less formal, which made Shou Yuing feel a little more at ease. She probably knew that. “None of my lot - synthetically engineered Svartans, that is to say - have one. Typically, we’re named by the imprintee or relevant authorities on their homeworld.”
Shou Yuing studied her, but nothing came to mind. She thought of the woman’s life before that - designed and created for the sole purpose of being an ambassador. No self before meeting with Shou Yuing, not a day old, though she knew more things than a human could learn in a hundred years. “You can name yourself.”
The woman smiled. “I knew I liked you.” She was quiet for a moment. “Your first girlfriend was called Queenie.”
Oh god, don’t name yourself after my ex.
“A queen’s a playing card. Another playing card’s an ace, which is also what you call someone who’s brilliant, which I am. Exceptionally so, compared to the average human.” She grinned. “I’ll be Ace, then.”
Shou Yuing wondered if she had a pattern of dating egotists. She also wondered why the woman - Ace - was basing herself so heavily off of her ex-girlfriends. She decided it didn’t much matter. Perhaps Ace had just seen that she’d been thinking of downloading Tinder again.
“Exactly.”
Shou Yuing breathed in deeply. “Please get out of my mind.”
“Entirely?”
“You’re up in that ship, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then come down.”
“You don’t wish to ask anything else?”
Shou Yuing hesitated for a second. “Alright. Why me? Why did you choose me to talk with?”
“I’m excited to find out.”
And just like that, the world ended.
“Kate,” said Shirley suddenly. She blinked heavily awake. “Kate, the psychic interference is stopping. Shou Yuing? Shou Yuing, can you hear me?”
Kate turned to see Shou Yuing twitching on the bed, before her eyes opened. She rolled onto her side before sitting up, rubbing her head. “Woah,” she mumbled to herself, then rose, barely even putting on her shoes before she was out the door. “Come on. She’s arriving.”
Kate glanced back at Shirley. “‘She’s arriving’... What’s that about?”
Shirley turned her screen around. The craft was now entering Earth’s atmosphere.
“Oh, shit.”
Shou Yuing reached the top floor of the building. A few moments later, something landed, shimmering with a cloak, and then slid through the doors into the main control room, revealing its true form. It looked almost like an igloo, though a little less evenly rounded. She leant against a desk, watching it cautiously.
She heard Kate swear behind her. “Shou Yuing, what have you done?”
“I don’t know yet.” She watched as the door opened. “But she’s peaceful, believe me.”
There was a slow hiss, then, out from the craft, stepped the woman. Ace. Exactly as she had appeared in Shou Yuing’s head. She looked around the room for a moment, and Kate stepped forwards.
“My name is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, commander of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. On behalf of them, and all the people of Earth, I welcome you to this planet in peace.”
Ace smiled briefly, but her eyes still searched. Then, finally, they landed on Shou Yuing. She stepped forwards, and Shou Yuing moved forwards too, drawn together like magnets. Finally, Shou Yuing stood before Ace, lifting her hand to place it carefully against hers. And just like that, she was complete.
She turned back towards Kate. “This is Ace,” she said. “Sent by Svartos to be their ambassador.”
Kate’s eyes darted back and forth between them. It was a very short distance. “Shou Yuing,” she said, slowly. “I see you’ve gotten to know… this person.”
“Yes.”
“Who is she to you?”
Shou Yuing looked at Ace. There was a look in her eyes, something like burning. She grinned.
“I’m excited to find out.”