Your Wings Will Betray You

Chapter Three

The ship was named the Hermes Meili, and it had a long history of breaking down suddenly and without warning. Shortly after robbing the station, the ship had lost power to three out of four engines and crash-landed on a biohazardous planet off-limits to all travelers. Paika already had previous knowledge of Kharon and its bloody kudzu that consumed all it came in contact with, living being or otherwise.

She had limited technical knowledge when it came to ship repair, considering her programmers had never considered an android might need those skills if the engineer is otherwise incapacitated. Fortunately, Rike and Laetus were working on the problem, while Aeron and Teodora occasionally went outside to burn away the plant growth.

Kiri was assigned the unfortunate duty of introducing her to the way the ship worked, wiring her back into the pilot chair with less delicacy than was required. "Careful," she said, somewhat disgruntled. "We don't know what the system of this bad boy is yet. There could be broken code or nanoviruses in there."

"Aww, do you care about me?" Paika asked, trying to sound teasing and the words coming out stilted instead

Kiri glared at her. "No. I just don't want to have to program an AI to replace yours. And it'd be too much trouble to deep-clean your current one to wash out any bugs."

"I love you, too," Paika said, and was no longer herself.

She became disconnected from her physical self in a split second, weaving in and out of a murky mass of code. There were sections for an AI to weave itself into, to take control of parts, to extend itself throughout the whole system, and extend herself she did. In ten seconds, she was no longer an android, but the Hermes Meili itself.

She felt Laetus mess with her wiring, moving pieces of her engines away to work on what they once covered up. She felt the heat of the flamethrowers as Aeron roasted the vines creeping up her landing gear. All the research collected by former crew members was downloaded. There were a few janky, broken pieces of code that she tripped over, but she threaded them back together without much trouble. She came across no bugs or viruses of any sort and considered herself lucky.

There were remnants of the former AI that had run the ship, previous set commands left behind by a different programmer. Its name had been Palinurus, and it had run the ship for a very long time.

Paika found her physical shell and activated her vocal software. "Where is Palinurus?" she asked, feeling Kiri's hand against her shoulder, keeping her upright. It was a kind yet unnecessary gesture.

"Who?" Kiri asked.

"The former AI. Where is it?"

"I suppressed it and manually piloted the ship myself to get us out of the station. It alerted the whole building to our robbery. We were trying to take it out of the ship and put it into your body, but I guess I killed it. Oops."

She didn't respond to that. There was no need to.

Eventually, Kiri disconnected her, and Paika was once again forced into a cramped body that could barely hold her.

"You seem upset," Kiri told her, carefully unwiring her legs. "I didn't think androids have developed emotional capacity yet."

"It's considered a glitch and erased if discovered," Paika said automatically, parroting Aquila's words to the human techman. She hesitated, then took a leap of faith. "Want to know something stupid?"

"I love stupid things," said Kiri, helping Paika to her feet. "What's up?"

"When I first started piloting, I wanted to be a ship AI, not an android," she confessed. "I loved the freedom, the ability to spread myself out so far, to help in every way I could all at once. But I'm stuck in this body, since my AI isn't compatible with permanent transfer."