Shades Of Forever

"Scion Penelope, I feel I must once again question these orders. Without further explanation, they read as a deathtrap."

Violet sticks her tongue out at the captain of the Blackbeard, knowing full well the uptight woman can't see it. Every integrator on the ship has been under her control since the moment she stepped aboard.

"That's because it is a deathtrap, you priggish sow," she grouses from the captain's chair on the bridge. The sausage-shaped dog lounging in her lap barks. "No, Corgia, obviously that's not what I'm currently saying to her. I'm supposed to be sister dear, remember?"

The dog barks again, and Violet glares at it.

"You think I'm not pulling off a perfect copy? That's treason, you ungrateful shit."

"Very good, Scion Penelope," the captain replies, bowing her head slightly. "If the Hammerbearers are waiting in support, then the trap will close just as you've planned. Thank you for reassuring me."

The next bark earns a lifting up in front of Violet's scowling face, Corgia's furnace eyes staring out above a tongue-lolling grin and wagging tail.

"There are foundational inaccuracies in my explanation? Do I need to remind you that your every reaction to a problem so far has been 'deploy my weapon systems'?"

The dog whines piteously, ears drooping. Behind it, the captain marches smartly from the bustling bridge, speaking briefly to several other crisply uniformed figures. In the chair, Violet gives the furry face a snootboop with her own nose.

"No, I'm not upset at you, Corgia, I'm just trying to pass the time. I know your projected responses were within a hundredth of a percentile of my own. The captain would have been fooled either way."

Voices arise on the bridge, a flurry of controlled chaos. The pearlescent illumination is replaced with flashing yellow lights and a repeated warning. Violet regards the commotion dubiously.

"I don't know. This seems a bit much for a simple otherspace jump. These are supposed to be routine. You'd think we were getting ready to prolapse reality's anus."

A muffled bark into a growl.

"Okay, fine, we are prolapsing reality's anus, but it can't be that dangerous. When was the last time a ship failed to emerge from otherspace?"

woof

"Seriously? Yesterday? Are you fucking with me, Corgia? I do not need to hear that on my very first jump!"

woof woof

"...you little shit. That is definitely treason. I'm going to scratch your ticklespot."

The dog squirms in her lap as the ship finishes making preparations for the transition to otherspace. Mind-blanking drugs are distributed to those crewmembers whose turn it is to keep watch, everyone else finding their assigned coma chamber. A clear shield swings down over the captain's chair, and Violet sighs.

"I wish I could see it, Corgia. Even if just for a second."

woof whine

"Yes, I like my eyeballs where they are. I know why I shouldn't, Corgia, but that doesn't change the fact I still want to."

yip

"Do you see me counteracting the coma chamber? Even though I absolutely could?"

A low hiss fills the enclosure with odorless gas. Violet yawns suddenly.

"And that's why you can trust me, Corgia. Besides, if I was going to risk it, I'd do it right n-"

The transparent shield slips open the tiniest bit, a gap no larger than the thinnest hair. The ship enters-

a paradox of incomprehension

-and then arrives at its destination, in orbit around a blue-green planet-

"----------"

The dog is frantically licking at Violet's face, uncaring of the sheets of red drying beneath bloodshot eyes. Violet's mouth is open in a silent scream, making a noise too high-pitched to register. Her pupils swing frantically back and forth, staring at something only she can see. The tableau continues for another minute, then the captain strides onto the bridge, nodding to the exhausted-looking crew.

"Another smooth transition. Minor reality venting from the engines into crew bay ninety-six, but the security teams have it under control. Good job, everyone." She turns to the captain's chair. "Your orders, Scion Penelope?"

The dog whines, then nips Violet on the end of her nose. Her eyes slowly stop their mad rolling and her mouth hinges shut. She coughs harshly, a dry croak of sound.

"...okay, yes, you were right Corgia. That was a really stupid idea. Thank you for rebooting me. My brain tastes like trout. Bad trout."

"Excellent," the captain bows. "We will establish our infonet arrays immediately. The Hammerbearers shall have perfect information on their counterattack against the Wutan-Weylan pigs. They may think us easy prey without a visible support fleet, but we will be the lure to their demise."

"Ugh, she's so stuffy," Violet pretends to gag, then actually does, rubbing at the drying crust across her lower face. "It wouldn't kill you to take the stick out of your ass," she yells at the uniformed woman, who bows once more.

"Very good, Scion Penelope. I have the bridge."

Violet lifts Corgia down to the floor, then slides out of the captain's chair, nearly falling when her knees buckle.

woof

"I'm fine. Pen made me go through worse in reports from the Wildlands."

whine

"No, I don't need to visit the medical bay. I just need a shower." Violet takes a couple wobbling steps away from the chair, then finds her footing, Corgia trailing her in anxious circles around her ankles. She walks off the Blackbeard's bridge with just a hint of wooziness to her stride, the captain assuming her seat. "Besides, we can't do much until those arrays are operational. The spaceport transmitters don't have enough bandwidth to use my ability." The bridge hatch slides shut behind her and crew members bend low as she passes before quickly returning to their duties. Violet and Corgia enter a small lift.

woof

"Yes, I know it's risky to use it, but we need to find that prototype before we disappear. That's our ticket to buying entry into one of the other corpos. At least, the one ticket that gives us enough status to take on the family."

The lift door opens, revealing a finely appointed corridor. Artwork hangs along the walls, and the flooring is dark wood polished to a lustrous sheen. Violet sneers at the opulence as she heads towards the set of cloudy glass doors at the end.

"Little ostentatious for a warship, don't you think?"

bark

The pair pause in front of one of the hanging canvases a third of the way down, a series of scribbled clumps that share nothing in common other than loosely resembling hairballs.

"...why would we take the paintings, let alone that one? If we need money, we'll 'adjust' sister dear's account balance."

yip yip

"You think this looks nice? Corgia, I'm embarassed for you. This is neo-modernist abstractionism run through an AI iteration loop. You might as well admire the contents of a music festival toilet."

bark bark yip

"...are you fucking with me again? An algorithm isn't 'art.' Especially not one running off the diseased portion of reality that put this mess together. I saw things in otherspace with more soul than whatever this is."

growl

"Agree to disagree, but if you really want it, fine."

Violet disables the magnetic locks within the frame with a quick burst of thought and takes the painting off the wall, tucking it under her arm. She continues towards the glass doors, Corgia jumping excitedly next to her. The clouded panes slide open at her approach, revealing a small but lavish sitting room dominated by a wall-to-wall vista of outer space, half the velvet blackness taken up by the green and blue planet below. To the left, another door leads into a smaller room filled by a multi-purpose bed/desk/sofa currently in waterbed mode. Violet drops the painting on the floor and heads into the bedroom, stripping off her rumpled clothes as she goes.

"The painting's all yours, but you have to get it out and store it," her voice calls out above the sounds of running water. Corgia eyes the framed canvas lying on the floor, and then a section of the dog's flank unfolds into the wispy framework of some sort of device. It fills nearly half the room, a ludicrously large sketch outline surging with power, and then the not-quite-there weapon emits a brief flash and hum from a wide barrel.

"I don't think that's what a disintegrator cannon is used for," Violet yells from the bathroom. The dog tilts its head, wire-like scaffold folding back into its furry side, and regards the now frame-less work of art with a critical eye. Seemingly satisfied, it walks over to one end and noses underneath the canvas, rolling the stiff material up in a sloppy tube. With a quick bark, the purloined painting vanishes. The sounds of water stop.

"Just so you know," Violet walks out of the bedroom in a red fluffy bathrobe, wrapping her black and white streaked hair up into a towel, "if I need non-causal storage space, that's the first thing I'm going to throw out."

whine

"I'm saving you from yourself, Corgia. You'll thank me later." Violet sprawls out on the sumptuous sofa positioned to look out the panoramic view. "Come on, let's see how many new family members we can compromise before those nitwits finish setting up the arrays."

The dog jumps into her lap and the next few hours pass in what to an outsider would be a rambling one-sided conversation, Violet and Corgia alternating between infiltrating various financial accounts, filtering and feeding the entire crew a sanitized version of events where they're not a rogue warship whereabouts currently unknown but suspected to be Earth, throwing every gaming subcommunity in fifteen thousand light years into unprecedented disarray, scraping the complete private information of the top two hundred notable galactic figures, and debating the merits of sophont versus sophisticated algorithm art.

"...I refuse to concede that the Dadaists had a point! Their whole point was that there was no point!"

woof bark bark whine

"No, you can't conflate that with Surrealism, Surrealism has a point! There are things our minds simply aren't meant to comprehend!"

yip woof woof yip

"And which one of us looked into otherspace earlier? Huh? Who in this room is the current expert authority on things Not Wont To Be Comprehended?"

bark

"...well if you're going to play that card, fine, yes, technically that's your job, but the point remains. There is no point. Unless there's a point."

yip

"Yeah, I see it. Took them long enough. Pen always said the standard array deployment timing was two hours. Guess we got one of the idiot ships."

Violet straightens up from her lounging posture on the couch, Corgia shifting to nestle against her side.

"Ready?"

woof

Executing SHODAN.exe

Violet flinches, furrows forming on her brows, but they're erased with the ease of practice. Beside her, the dog's eyes blaze hellflame.

"...fuck I hate doing that. Okay, let's look at the last hour..."

Violet's expression turns fierce.

"Got you. Corgia, interrogate assumptions?"

woof

"That's what I thought. Starports are normal reclamation activity, but there's some shit going on in those mountains that has to be what Wutan-Weylan is looking for. Some leftover husks on... that's gotta be part of the Pilar, too many weapon signatures to be otherwise. Maybe one or two survivors that can still command them, and the prototype's over... there. Next fifteen minutes."

snarl

"Yes, I see them heading towards it. At that rate of speed, can't be anything other than a pair of high level combat variants. Fuck. That cruiser wasn't supposed to be carrying anything more dangerous than an almost double zero engineer."

Violet rises from the couch, pacing back and forth in front of the slowly traversing planet below, the dog matching her steps.

"...okay. If they've sent out a retrieval team for the prototype, that means they're anticipating reinforcements soon." Violet narrows her eyes. "Which means we need to get there first. Corgia, analyze the... area... the prototype's at."

grrrryip

"...clearing's just big enough for an assault shuttle. Good job."

The dog watches anxiously as Violet sheds her robe and scrambles into a new set of clothing, heavy duty designer materials stitched to shrug off most non-causal attacks. As soon as her blouse is buttoned, Violet scoops up Corgia and jogs out of the room.

whine

"What? You're worried? Who else could possibly be out here?" Violet ruffles the dog's neck as they wait for the lift to take them to the dreadnought's closest launch bay. "This has been a Voidmarch planet for five thousand years. Trust me, there's nothing else down there. It's going to be a quick and easy in and out, and then everyone answers to us."

whiiiiiiine

"Stop being so negative. We have an assault shuttle and infonet superiority. Besides, superstitions are stupid."