Nobody's Servant 1.0

Attack

We'll pick up where we last found me.

That being the floor, off to the side of Yhana's room, rubbing my freshly smacked skull and moaning loudly, pitifully, because dignity be damned, you're the only witness to this. It was a nice few days but I guess I've entered that stage of my life in which that's as long as I can go without being shot at, and it's not just bullets and fireballs this time. My complaint, directionless as it is, has been justified well in advance.

Yhana is quick to reenter the room, taking me for being in a state of half-consciousness and shaking me by my shoulders vigorously, as if the room didn't seem to spin enough.

"I'm okay, I'm okay!" I protest, batting her away and standing up. I can't tell if my legs are wobbling or the ship is still swaying from the force.

"You know something about necrotech, right?" she asks urgently.

"I hope so, I only dedicated my life to it," I respond.

"Great, we need you below," she says, dragging me by my wrist out of the room as quickly as I can manage to snatch up my macana. "They've broken our forcefield, and Jori's out cold."

"Oh, lovely," I grumble, following her through the twists of ship's interior. I just needed a ride, that's all it was, but circumstance has to make me its victim even now.

The domestic veneer immediately below deck isn't present further down. Pipes and wiring coat the walls and ceiling, all unevenly sprayed off-white a la the landlord special. Guiding me through the narrow corridors I'd surely get lost in on my own, Yhana bursts into a circular room with minimal lighting, save for the diodes set into the walls next to sealed, cylindrical tanks. The department my father and I worked for— nepotism-free I'll clarify; on our little island chain there were only a few places the directorate could place us —had an array similar to this one, preserved brains and spinal cords, rune-etched and hooked up to a computer to delegate commands to them. Each nervous system retained a small bit of soul, but lacked the complexity to redevelop identity, allowing them to be used to cast spells from a terminal in an almost completely ethical manner. Back home we mostly used it for fabrication purposes, but it's clear to me this array is a defense system.

I move along the walls, drawn to the literally-panicked flash of diodes by a couple of the tanks. Despite having only the barest amount of person left in each brain for casting, it's just enough in there that something like an anxiety attack or a deficiency of some kind is enough to render them defunct until taken care of.

"Alright, these two are breaking down, I need—" I don't even get to finish before Yhana stuffs a couple of capped syringes into my grip. "...Yeah, these."

"I've watched Jori enough to have some idea of what does what down here," she explains.

"Good, this place is a mess; we'd be in deep shit if you hadn't," I reply, pulling the cap off of one and jamming it into a port. Almost at once, the lights slow in their flickering, responding well to the sedative. I repeat for the next one; it's more resilient than the first but it settles down just the same.

"That was easy enough, what did you need me for?" I ask.

"Because my room's a dead end," she responds, running over to begin engaging every lock the array room has. "The ship that came up on us is big; there's no way we can hold them off, and when they come looking for us, we don't want to be cornered."

"So... you ran?" I raise an eyebrow; for as tough as she acted when she was in a position to exert power over me, she was quick to tuck tail.

"Oh, like you're a fighter yourself," she retorts, picking up on my tone. "The people I deal with usually don't come leaping onto the deck brandishing swords as big as a human. Besides, this is good for you."