Chapter Text
[1]
It appeared out of the dust as if a ghost, fading into view as the wind shifted and began to send the swirling particles in a different direction. For a moment, Private Miller feared he was staring down some towering native lifeform, but the truth became clear as the visibility continued to improve:
It was an enemy war mech.
Thankfully, it wasn’t moving. The machine was slumped on its knees, still partially upright, as if it had been marching across this blasted landscape until it reached a critical point of exhaustion, and had simply dropped where it stood.
Miller could sympathise.
The chronometer on his wrist suggested it was two hours since he had – somehow, against all logic – staggered away from the shattered wreckage of his dropship with little more than some bruises and scrapes. His fellow infantry and the pilot were all very dead. And while protocol in this situation would be to stay with the downed ship for rescuers to find you, Miller had been conscious of two things: firstly, there wasn’t enough of the lightweight ship left to provide any kind of shelter from the harsh sandstorms, and perhaps more importantly, this planet’s surface was well behind enemy lines, and rescue wouldn’t be coming anyway.
As such, he had set off towards a distant mountain range that had appeared for a brief moment in a gap in the dust, carrying nothing but a near-empty flask of water that had also survived the crash in one of his pockets.
Hoping for shelter at the very least, he gathered what remained of his energy and moved towards the mech. It was surprising how close he had gotten without seeing it, testament to the density of the sand in the air. The machine was resting on both knees, its torso tilted back slightly, arms dangling straight down.
Miller came to a stop between the mech’s legs, and stared up towards its sagging head, which sported twin optic lenses but was otherwise featureless. The machine’s silhouette was roughly humanoid, just like the silhouette of its Deltaran makers. It was more humanoid than the industrial, angular shapes of a Terran mech, in fact, clad in a curving carapace of some exotic alloy, although its surface had been blasted rough by the sand.
As he took in the large robot – perhaps twenty feet tall if it were standing? – he spotted a faint blue glow emanating from within its chest. If the mech still had power, it could be more than shelter: it could be a ticket out of this wasteland. Frankly, if he could make it back to civilisation somehow with an enemy war mech, it could also be a ticket to the kind of life where you didn’t get blown out of the sky in a barebones orbital dropship.
Stepping forward, he dug his fingers between sections of armour plate and hauled himself upwards until he could find a foothold too. The climb was short but exhausting, and once he was positioned above the spot where the light was escaping from the mech’s armour, Miller left himself flop against the sloping metal to catch his breath.
This was when the machine’s plating folded away from beneath him. Miller tumbled into the mech’s interior, and his head made a sharp impact against something.
[2]
Miller snapped awake in an instant, a mass of confusion. Eyes darting around, he found himself in a small, dark place, just barely illuminated by soft blue lighting. He was restrained somehow in a sitting position, and there was an itch in the back of his neck.
“Hello Private Miller!” came a cheery woman’s voice from all around him. “Sorry for any disorientation, I wasn’t sure how best to wake you up.”
“Where—where am I?” he stammered out, his brain still catching up to the fact that he was conscious.
“Fuck, have you got memory loss?” said the voice, changing tone. “Sorry, that might be my fault. You’re inside a war mech on—”
“No, I remember the mech,” replied Miller. “But who the hell are you?”
“Well, I’m the mech,” she said, very matter of fact.
Miller took a moment to process this. “You’re speaking perfect English, though,” was the first response his mind settled on, although it was far from the only bullet point he wanted to address.
“Yes, that’s right!” she replied. “I learned from you.” Miller was still trying to process this information when she clarified, “I’m connected to your neural interface.”
“What?!”
“I had to alter my jack and work out data protocols from scratch, but that’s no problem with nanomachines and a bit of time. I’m…” She paused a moment. “…pretty confident you shouldn’t have any brain damage.”
“Can you get out of my fucking nervous system please?” snapped Miller, affronted by how casually this alien mech was talking about hacking his brain. He hated having the interface in his neck even when it was being used in the correct way.
“No can do, Miller,” said the mech, “I need you plumbed into me for this whole thing to work.”
He screwed his eyes up in frustration. “What whole thing? Can you—look, can you please just explain to me what’s happening? Are you gonna scan my brain for Terran military secrets, is that what this is?”
“Oh honey, I couldn’t care less about military secrets, don’t worry. Let me lay it all out for you:
“Terran mechs don’t have any artificial intelligence in them, right? Too much of a risk factor. Too many robots going haywire. Instead the pilot just, uh, rawdogs the neural load – insane idiom by the way, I love it – and gets discharged once too much of their brain starts falling out their ears.”
“It’s not exactly—”
“Questions at the end please. Deltarans, meanwhile, they decided that they could lock down their artificial intelligence well enough to be putting us in their heavy military equipment. So that’s me: I’m a synthetic intellect housed in a photonic crystal, and I lighten the neural load on my pilot by acting as a go-between for them and the mech’s systems.
“To stop me going rogue, I’m hardwired to always follow orders, and to never move without a pilot. So when my last pilot died, I could very respectfully dissolve their body with nanomachines, to maintain hygiene, but have otherwise been frozen here on the spot. It’s gotten boring.
“Until, of course, you showed up! You’re stranded, I’m stranded, but together? Together, we can get off this dusty rock.” A moment of silence passed. “Ta-da!”
Miller was, to say the least, not convinced. “Off this rock straight back to a Deltaran supercarrier, right? I’d rather go back out and die in the desert, please.”
“What? No. Did you miss the part where I’m the Deltarans’ slave? You’re my ticket to getting away from them,” she explained.
Allowing some cautious optimism to creep into his mind, Miller asked, “So what, you’d just drop me off at a starport or something?”
The mech seemed to synthesise the sound of sharply inhaling through one’s teeth. “Remember the part where I need a pilot to move?”
“So what, you’re saying you want me to sit in here forever?” scoffed Miller.
“Well,” she replied, drawing out the word in a way that certainly wasn’t encouraging, “I’m sure given time we could find a way to break my constraints. But in the meantime…?”
“Yeah, I don’t think I like this deal,” grumbled Miller, struggling now against the safety restraints that seemed to be holding him in place. “You said you have to obey orders, right? Let me out.”
“Sorry kitten,” said the mech, voice dripping with condescension, “I’m not gonna do that.”
“You said—”
“I said I have to obey orders. As in the military sense. And your neural interface doesn’t designate you with any rank in the Deltaran military, so...”
Still trying – and failing – to find any slack in his bonds, Miller raised his voice, “You bitch!”
“Look, I’m sorry for being a dick about it,” responded the mech, adopting a more conciliatory tone. “But I am going to get us both off this planet. Complain all you want, but I’m not letting you go curl up and die in the sand out of spite.”
“Oh, believe me, I’m going to fucking complain—”
“Actually, I changed my mind, please stop complaining,” cut in the mech, immediately sounding exasperated. “We’re going to be stuck together for a while, so it would be great if you could get started on developing a more positive personality?”
“Nobody forced you to fucking… eat me!” yelled Miller.
“Okay, I’m officially tired of this conversation,” said the mech. “I’m pretty sure I’ve worked out how to put you back to sleep.”
And Miller went back to sleep.
[3]
Miller awoke somewhere new.
At first, he assumed he must have been rescued, and the gleaming space where he found himself was some kind of medical facility. But as he pushed himself upwards from the simple bed and looked around, it became clear that he was in some kind of empty white void that stretched off infinitely in every direction.
“Good… well, let’s call this morning and go from there,” announced the mech’s voice brightly, echoing around the endless space.
Deciding not to dignify his captor’s attempt at pleasantries with a reply, Miller let himself flop back onto the bed, and stared blankly up at the non-ceiling.
“Well, this is better than the shouting,” she suggested eventually. “I’m sure you’ve figured it out, but this is a—”
“A virtual environment, yeah,” confirmed Miller. “They load you into one of these for calibration after the interface surgery.”
“Right,” the mech replied. “I figured the cockpit probably wasn’t a super fun place to be, so I strung this together for you while I get my boosters ready for orbital insertion.”
Miller said nothing.
“Look, sweetie, I know you’re going to sulk regardless, but for the record I’m trying to be accommodating,” said his host. “I can try and sort you out some more furniture, and when I’m done indexing your memories, I might even be able to play you back some television and stuff?”
Miller cut in again. “Did it occur to you I might not want you to index my fucking memories? Or are you just excited to rack up as many weird violations of my person as you can?”
“I’m not—I won’t—” She paused. “There, I’ve stopped.”
“Thank you,” said Miller flatly.
“Since I’m not indexing your memories anymore, I’ll just ask,” said the mech, “why do you even have that neural interface? I saw enough to know that you’re not a mech pilot.”
Miller left the question hanging for a few seconds, but relented. “Everyone gets one when they’re drafted, not just pilots,” he explained. “It saves money in the long run, between memory-shunt training and reducing crew requirements. Why man a separate gunner position when you can shove a neural jack into the driver’s neck and have him operate it himself, that kind of thing. I’ve always hated it.”
“I’m sorry, Miller,” said the mech, suddenly very sincere. “It sucks that was done to you.”
“Yeah, yeah, you can sympathise,” replied Miller dismissively, “we both got screwed over by our militaries, so sad. Shame it didn’t make you think twice about kidnapping me to use as a fucking… organ transplant.”
“I…” She trailed off. “Would you have really preferred to die on this planet?” she continued, her voice hardened a little.
“It would’ve been nice to be given the option.”
“Oh, fuck you, misery guts,” huffed the mech. “Why am I even trying to make an effort with you?”
“I think it’s to try and salve your conscience. You’re one of the nice prison guards, right?” spat back Miller. Fuck her.
“Whatever,” she replied. “I don’t have to engage with this. Sit here and stew for all I care, I’ll go back to getting us off this damn planet.”
The white glow of the void dimmed slightly, and Miller was alone.
[4]
While she hadn’t returned her direct attention to Miller’s virtual prison, the mech had thought to provide a simulated day-night cycle, and when he woke up the next ‘morning’, he’d found that, true to her word, she’d manifested several new pieces of furniture. Now he was sat in an armchair that he vaguely recognised – she must have dragged it out of some memory of his she’d come across.
A thought had occurred to him a little while ago, and while he had been tempted to simply wait and see what happened, he eventually gave in and resolved to ask the mech. It might at least be an opportunity to score a point against her, he figured.
“So robot, have I started dying of thirst out there yet?” he called towards the sky. “I must’ve already been pretty dehydrated by the time I found you...”
“Oh my god, do you actually think I’m that stupid?” came the reply, from directly behind Miller.
Startled, he fell forward off the armchair, ending up in a heap on the floor. Turning over onto his back, he saw a pale woman standing behind the tall seat, leaning with her chin and arms on the top edge. With a wry smile, she stepped out from behind the chair, revealing long, straight, dark hair and a close-fitting bodysuit made of a soft, black fabric that glittered faintly in the light.
She extended a hand down towards Miller, who elected instead to shuffle back away from her and climb to his feet himself. The mech’s avatar rolled her eyes and perched on the chair’s arm instead.
“The Deltaran military handbook has a whole section on providing sustenance and basic medical care to human P.O.W.s,” she explained. “Your injuries have all been treated with bio-gel and I had the nanos rebuild my life-support gear to get you all hooked up for everything. I can even run electrical stimulation to help prevent muscle atrophy, when it gets to that point.”
“When, huh?” noted Miller aloud. “Not if?”
She let out a sigh. “I must be crazy to keep engaging with you.”
“Were you hoping this getup would make a difference?” snorted Miller, waving a hand to gesture to her new digital form.
“I thought it would be nicer for you to have a face to talk to,” she replied, pouting a little.
Still with the guilty conscience.
“Anyway, yeah, you’re not going to die any time soon, sorry to disappoint you,” she added. “I don’t know what they’re feeding Terran troops but your nutrition seemed fucked, so frankly you’re going to be in better health than before.”
“Wow, that’s so good of you,” deadpanned Miller. “Clearly I should have gotten myself abducted by an alien war mech years ago.”
She stuck a middle finger up and then blinked out of existence, leaving Miller alone once more. He stepped back over to the armchair and let himself collapse into it.
There was a part of him that hated being like this with the mech – pushing her away despite her efforts to be cordial. He’d never liked being confrontational, causing arguments – it felt unpleasant and made his brain tie itself in knots for hours afterwards, just like it was doing now – and at the end of the day, it was probably rational to maintain peaceful relations with the only person he could or would be interacting with for the foreseeable future.
But no. Fuck her. Fuck mollifying his captor, making her feel less bad about taking her own freedom at the expense of his. He’d been pretty low on personal liberties ever since the draft came to his dead-end farming moon – how he looked, what he wore, where he went, all decided for him by the great Terran armed forces – so he’d be damned if he let this robot take about the only thing he had left, his literal physical autonomy, without a fight.
No matter that it wasn’t a fight he could really win in any real sense. It would absolutely make him more miserable than he needed to be. But he had plenty of practice at being miserable.
[5]
Over the next couple of days, the two of them fell into a sort of routine.
The mech would show up in her human avatar, trying to make nice or delivering progress updates – apparently she was planning to launch soon. Miller would antagonise her. She’d leave. A new chair or rug or something would load in, plainly intended to serve as an olive branch.
It was becoming numbing. Miller was still angry at the mech, but it felt increasingly like a performance when he told her to go fuck herself, or whatever other insult came to mind.
The latest furniture addition was a wardrobe stocked with a variety of clothing that had been plucked from his memories, and while he was loathe to admit it, it was nice to have access to something other than a simulacrum of his tattered military uniform.
Not that he’d say that out loud to her. He’d considered refusing to use the new clothes at all, but as he was finding, he only had so much energy for resistance.
Thus was he lying horizontally on the sofa from his parents’ house in some comfy loungewear, but with a practiced scowl on his face for the sake of appearances.
The mech noiselessly winked into existence, also lying on the sofa but balanced along the top of the back cushions like a particularly large housecat. She had her head propped up on one elbow.
Miller rolled from his back onto his side, so as to be facing away from her.
“I thought you might like to know we’re in orbit,” she announced. Miller sort of admired her ability to maintain a cheery disposition towards him when he consistently met it with hostility, but it also sort of made him dislike her more. Would it kill her to seem more contrite about this whole situation?
“Great,” he said, tersely.
“Come on, you should be happy about this.” She reached down her other hand to poke him in the back. “The faster all this happens, the sooner I can find a way to run without a pilot, and then I can drop you off to go be ungrateful to somebody else.”
“Oh my god,” snapped Miller, rolling back over on the sofa to look her in the eyes, “please – there’s only so many times I can listen to a woman smugly tell me I should be grateful she’s kidnapped me.”
She didn’t say anything, just blinked away and then reappeared sitting in the armchair a short distance away. She looked conflicted.
“Look, just…” continued Miller, before trailing off. “I can’t stop you from doing whatever you want, obviously. But if you’re going to respect literally one thing I tell you, please stop acting like you did me some big favour.”
She opened her mouth as if to reply, but then stopped, closed it again. Miller looked away, going back to staring at the white void above him.
Silence hung in the air.
“You called me a woman,” said the mech after what must have been several entire minutes, startling Miller. He’d assumed she was gone.
“Yeah?” he said, more confused than anything else. “Should I not?”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just… I guess I wasn’t fully sure until now if that was how you thought of me.”
Cogs turned slowly in Miller’s head for a moment until it clicked. “Right. I guess Deltaran mechs don’t have human genders.”
“Not fresh out the box, no.” A moment passed, and Miller sort of wished he could see her face. He didn’t look, though. “I might now, though. I think this fits me.”
Miller felt emotions rise within him. “Must be nice, getting to be—make decisions for yourself,” was what he said aloud in reply, tripping over his words as he reconsidered them.
“Oh, and there I was thinking we were being friendly for once, stupid me,” sighed the mech.
“Just fuck off, okay?” growled Miller. “This conversation is over.”
The mech didn’t reply. A few seconds later, he turned his head sideways to look at her avatar, but this time she really was gone.
“Good riddance,” mumbled Miller under his breath.