AUTHORS NOTE: These are slow going, but I'll do my best to get the next chapter out ASAP. As always I'll communicate any difficulties or changes.
Tess came awake all at once. Something was glowing in her vision that hadn't been there when she'd fallen asleep.
She bolted upright and immediately regretted it.
Pain lanced from the base of her skull up through her temples. She caught herself on one hand, rode it out, and sat very still until the stars cleared. That's what concussions do.
"Tess." Bee's voice came through the room speaker. "Do not move quickly."
"Little late," Tess said. She pressed two fingers against the back of her neck and waited. The pulse of it faded to a throb. The display in her vision didn't.
She looked at it.
·········································CLASS REGISTRATIONOrigin: CORE-0091-TERTIUS-PRIME-BClass: MECHANICIANStatus: CENTRAL OVERRIDE·········································
"Bee," she said. "I have a class?"
"It would seem so."
Tess swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Mechanician?"
"The term does not appear in my current class database."
Tess rubbed her face. "I've never heard of it either."
"I am attempting a broader search." The lights in her room came up to half, slow enough not to spike the headache. "You should drink the water."
She reached for the glass.
The moment she moved, [EVALUATE] woke up without her asking—without permission—and she felt the ship.
[Drinking Glass — Functional]Composition: Standard Silicate · Condition: Nominal
It was reading her the glass. She turned her head, and the bedside shelf lit up in her vision, one seam pulsing a soft highlight.
[Storage Shelf — Degraded]Composition: Composite LaminateHairline Fracture Detected: Left Mount
Blinking multiple times didn't seem to help, so Tess clenched her eyes shut, only to open them to a wireframe of the entire ship around her broadcasting everything that needed to be fixed.
She drank the water. It helped with the headache less than she'd hoped, and [EVALUATE] stayed on.
A knock came at the door.
"Everything okay in there?"
It was Marcus.
"I'm fine," she said. Then, because lying to Marcus Rivera had roughly a thirty percent success rate: "I got a class. I think."
A pause from the corridor.
"Can I come in?"
"Yeah."
He opened the door and stood in the frame, one hand on the jamb, the way she'd watched him do since she was small, using the door frame as a lean while his leg decided how cooperative it was going to be. He'd pulled on a shirt and trousers over what he'd been sleeping in. His hair was sleep-flattened on one side. He looked at her sitting upright in the dark with the wall lights at half, and sighed.
"I think you were Null or whatever? Notification wake you up?"
"Crazy thing to wake up to." She gestured at her own head. "Went well with the concussion."
Marcus came in and sat in the chair he'd used since she was a kid. He lowered himself into it with the care of a man acquainted with his own hinges.
"Bee," he said. "You want to show me?"
"One moment."
A gentle ping came from the terminal next to him and he dragged it closer, examining it. [EVALUATE] decided to feed her more about the terminal, too.
[Portable Terminal — Operational]Battery: 19% · Charge Cycles: Degraded
"Mechanician?" he said. "Huh."
Tess took another sip of water. "You've heard of it? Bee says she doesn't have any records of it."
Marcus chuckled. "You remember that old holo we used to watch when you were... maybe five? The guy with that hair?"
Tess raised an eyebrow. "Maximum Max? The cartoon?"
Marcus snapped his fingers. "Yeah! That's the one. Wasn't he a Mechanician?"
Tess levelled a blank stare at Marcus. "The guy that hacked robots while combing his hair? I don't think this is that."
"I have found nine episodes on public channels," Bee interrupted through the speakers. "They are definitely... unique. But the class name is correct. It is highly likely this is a coincidence."
Tess rubbed her eyes, trying to block out the input from her skill along with the mild concussion. It was a brutal combination.
"You okay?" Marcus asked.
"My [ANALYZE] skill evolved into [EVALUATE] but when the class registered, the skill doesn't seem to want to turn off. I can see systems in the walls, and it's disorienting."
"That sounds both handy, and terrible at the same time. If it doesn't shut off, you think you can get used to it?"
Tess nodded. "Probably, it's just like [ANALYZE] but I don't have to point it at anything. Instead, I just know that my door needs lubrication and see the servo that needs it most."
"Servo D1," Bee said. "I have a constant stream of information from Tess now, too. Like I can see what she sees all the time."
"Huh." Marcus said. "Think you can make it to the kitchen for breakfast?"
Tess checked the time on the wall, trying to ignore the scan telling her that the internal timekeeper was drifting.
"It's 1AM"
"Got anything better going on? Let your ol' Dad make you a celebratory meal for reaching level 10!"
Tess laughed. "Fine, but I'm going to need more ice for my head."
The galley was maybe thirty feet from her room, but [EVALUATE] narrated the whole walk.
[Overhead Conduit — Degraded]Coolant Line: Micro-Fracture Detected · Section 3
She noted it the same way she'd note a loose panel—filed, not urgent—and kept moving. This is fine, she told herself. This is just [ANALYZE] with better resolution.
In her head, not quite apart from her own thoughts and not quite indistinguishable from them either, she was aware of Bee. The [PRIMARY_LINK] ran constant now—a kind of background warmth, like a light left on in another room. Useful. Also never entirely off.
Cici was already in the galley.
The dog looked up from the corner where she'd been charging, ears swiveling forward. Her tail started, a fully autonomous process.
"Hello. I detected a commotion." She tapped over and pressed her head against Tess's hand, without apology. "I am glad you are here. This room is much better with people in it."
"Were you waiting for someone to wake up?" Marcus asked, pulling eggs from the cold unit.
"I was in standby. But I was also paying attention." She turned a dignified circle and sat at Tess's feet. "These are not mutually exclusive."
Tess sat at the galley table and let the familiar sounds settle around her—the cold unit sealing itself, Marcus's movements, the soft percussion of prep. [EVALUATE] flagged the light fixture overhead.
[Overhead Fixture — Operational]Lens: Micro-Debris Accumulation · Non-Critical
She decided not to mention it.
"So," Marcus said, cracking an egg. "Level 10."
"Level 10."
"And a class."
"Technically."
The egg went into the pan with a soft hiss, and [EVALUATE] put the burner up alongside it.
[Galley Burner — Degraded]Heat Regulator: Misaligned · Coil Draw Uneven
She tried to file it next to the fixture. It wouldn't go. The fixture was a smudge on a lens forty feet up. This was right there, under the food, running wrong, and the eggs were spreading thin and slow across a pan running cooler than it should.
"Move," she said, and got up.
She hipped Marcus a step sideways—he gave way the way he always had, surprised more than anything—and dropped down to a crouch in front of the stove. The multi-tool was already out of her pocket. She didn't remember reaching for it. Under the burner housing the regulator sat exactly where the wireframe said it would be, the coupling a quarter-turn off true. She reseated it, felt the small click of it sitting right, and the hiss in the pan changed pitch.
[Galley Burner — Operational]Coil Draw: Nominal
The eggs caught the new heat and started cooking like they should.
"Huh," Marcus said, looking down at his own stove. "Pretty sure it was fine."
"It was gonna bug me." She stayed in the crouch a second longer than she needed to.
"The regulator was off by eleven percent," Bee said.
"I keep telling you that you're good at this," Marcus said, mild, turning back to the pan. "One of these days you're going to believe me."
"Yay Tess!" Cici said, delighted and a quick victorious jingle played through whatever speaker she used to speak. Everyone froze, and stared at the mechanical dog.
"I was not aware I could do that!" She said.
Tess laughed and sat back down, examining her hands to keep her vision off of [EVALUATE]
Marcus glanced over his shoulder, sliding back into it. "If you're going to be Maximum Max, you might want to do your hair."
Tess threw a napkin ineffectually at Marcus.
"Bee confirmed that it's purely coincidence."
He grinned. "Well we get to see what you can do either way. You said you even had your stats increase?"
Tess nodded slowly. "I felt a little different yesterday... but whatever the class did, I feel a lot different now."
"A lot has happened since yesterday." Bee spoke through the galley speaker. "Floor 1 and Floor 2 are stable. Network blind on both." A pause. "Growth is halted."
Marcus paused, spatula in hand. "That's the good-news version."
"It is. The full version has one item that is less good."
"What is it?"
"The eastern quadrant has been quiet overnight." Bee's voice was even. "The Alpha has pulled its drone patrols into a fixed ring around the node. Every unit that was ranging has repositioned. The formation has not moved in seven hours, even during the overnight delve window."
"Patient," Marcus said.
"Very." Tess turned her water glass between her hands. "It dug in when FCN-2B came online. Knew we'd be coming for the node eventually."
"So... we need the node," Marcus said. "And for some reason, it needs us to not have the node."
"Pretty much."
Cici's ears tracked between them. "I can go look at it," she offered. "The drones don't see me as a threat. And I'm small!"
"You are," Tess agreed. "But we're not sending you to look at a Level 19 mechanized weapons platform."
"I could be subtle."
"You are the least subtle thing in this room right now."
"That is fair," Cici admitted, and laid back down.
Marcus slid eggs onto a plate and brought it over, the second plate following a moment later. He sat down across from her with a mug of terrible instant coffee. Tess took a sip and scrunched up her face.
"You know we can afford real coffee now," she said.
Marcus shrugged. "I like this stuff,"
Tess took a bite of her eggs. "Bee, can you take it over? The Alpha."
"Not without the Alpha Spawner and I cannot locate it."
"Could it be dug in with the Alpha itself?"
"Probability is high, though I have no sensor data from that section. The eastern quadrant is mostly blind to me."
She chewed that over along with her eggs. The Alpha's position, the node it guarded, and Bee locked out of the quadrant. It was a tidy problem—one she couldn't reach from any angle she currently had.
"Then we need a new angle," she said.
"Or better information." Bee paused. "Speaking of which..."
Marcus pointed his fork at the speaker. "I know that tone."
"Hang on. Tess, I would like to perform an experiment with your permission."
Tess looked up. "What?"
"[EVALUATE] is a skill in my databases that suggests an advanced decryption mode on top of scanning. I would like to see if you can both receive data from my connection, and decrypt it."
"Is this going to hurt?"
"If it does, I will terminate that attempt immediately."
Tess looked across the table at Marcus, who shrugged the shrug of a man who fixed things for a living and respected the value of trying. She looked down at the plate in front of her, set her fork down, and nodded.
"Do it."
Just like that, data flowed into her skill, whispered directly into the base of her skull.
·········································DECRYPTION SUCCESS:TK-11 SHOCK FRAME COORDINATION SYSTEMS[DUMMY_ALPHA_OVERRIDE] ......... Active[DRONE_OVERRIDE]............................ Active[SPAWN_RESONANCE] ..................... ERROR (No Spawner Present)·········································
Tess yelped and grabbed the edge of the table.
"Tess?" Marcus was on his feet, his words echoing Bee's through the speakers.
"I'm..." She blinked. The block was still sitting there in her vision, perfectly legible. "I'm fine. It worked." She pressed a hand flat against the table and breathed out. "That was... a lot more direct than a passive read."
Marcus sat back down slowly. "On a scale of 'power surge' to 'touched a live wire'..."
"Somewhere in the middle."
"I can see the output," Bee said. "This changes things dramatically. The packet I sent through was an encrypted signal that was picked up before the Alpha started destroying sensors. Your skill decrypted it effortlessly."
"How is it that an Alpha has no spawner?" Tess asked, and Marcus raised an eyebrow. "It looks like..."
"Based on what was discovered in the tunnels and the systems displayed in this package," Bee paused, running numbers. "The TK-11 Shock Frame is not the original Alpha for Floor 2."
Marcus looked at the speaker, then at Tess, then back. "How is that even possible?"
"We're going to have to find out," Tess said, picking her fork back up.
"And I will tell Yuki," Bee started.
"About what?"
"That is is not a TK-9 Assault Frame from Season Four of Starfall Protocol." A pause. "The TK-11 was from Season Six."
Tess sighed. Of course it was.
Eventually the plates were clear and the mug was empty and the ship settled into the quiet that came after 2AM with nothing pressing on it.
"There is one more thing," Bee said.
Marcus turned his mug in a small circle. "There usually is."
"The registration. The CLASS REGISTRATION block." Bee's voice stayed level. "The downlink pathway it arrived on. I have been trying to identify it."
Tess waited.
"I cannot. The original request, and the response came through something that shouldn't exist. Like it was transmitted on pure Aether." A pause. "And CENTRAL OVERRIDE is not a status field in any database I have access to. I do not know what it means."
The galley went quiet.
Marcus set his mug down.
"So," Tess said, "whatever Central Override is, probably isn't the Network?"
"That is correct. I can dismiss the notification for you, if you'd like."
The block hadn't moved from the lower edge of her vision. MECHANICIAN. CENTRAL OVERRIDE. Persistent and politely uninformative.
She could sit here and turn it over until her head really did split. Or she could do what she actually did with problems that didn't have handles on them yet.
"Yes please," she said. "We'll add it to the list right under having the same class as Maximum Max."
Marcus huffed a laugh and picked up his mug again.
"Our todo list is getting very big!" Cici observed.
"Yep." Tess pushed back from the table. "And we're on a timer with the Network arriving." She looked at the speaker. "I need more ice and about six hours of unconsciousness before I can tackle it."
"The ice maker in Bay 2 is functional," Bee said. "I checked when you stood up."
"Of course you did."
Marcus stood with her and picked up both plates.
"Go sleep," he said. "We'll figure out the rest in the morning."
She grabbed an ice pack from Bay 2 on her way back down the corridor, [EVALUATE] noting the condition of the ice maker's coolant line as she did.
[Ice Maker BM-2 — Operational]Coolant: Nominal · Output: Standard
At least the ice maker's fine, she thought, and went to bed.