The next day, awakening in a private room on a soft bed, felt utterly surreal. I unplugged, wet a rag in the adjoining room sink for a quick clean, and found my uniform carefully hung for me in the bedroom, boots polished and gloves spotless. I dressed, put on my sword, and wandered downstairs.
It was early still, very early, I wasn't due anywhere for an hour yet, so I decided to explore the space. I counted the rooms as I went: the main and spare bedroom, a kitchen and pantry, a room with chairs and couches, another room with a larger table, and a room with a writing desk, bookshelves, and good lighting. There was also a second room with a bath and such, for some unfathomable reason.
I noticed that despite how fancy everything seemed, the panelling and wallpaper and lights, that things seemed rather bare compared to the other human spaces I've found myself in. I realized after a moment it was because while there was furniture, there was no furnishings, no decoration. No paintings, no portraits, no flowers, clocks, or vases. It was an empty shell, waiting for personalized touches I could neither afford nor understand.
Behind a door was a small, plain room where the two housemaids were sitting together, playing cards. Further doors beyond presumably lead to servants quarters.
"Can I help you?" Abby asked, sounding a bit annoyed, and I shrugged.
"Sorry, just poking about the place." I said, backing out rapidly. I shut the door, but I still heard what was said behind it quite clearly.
"She's on the wrong side of that door, I'm telling you." Abby commented, and I froze to listen.
"Poor thing. Must be so overwhelming." Gail responded, and I heard the sounds of cards being set down.
"I'll bet, but I've no sympathy. She did it to herself, ungrateful bitch." Abby snapped.
"Come now, that's-"
"I won't! It's an insult. To us, sure, and poor Peter's basically out of a job now, but moreover... I don't understand how she thinks she can just throw everything she's been given back in their faces. It's not enough to have good work, apparently, she has to take one of their vacancies too."
"It is a little disconcerting…"
"It's selfish, is what it is."
I felt a chill go through me, and stepped away as quiet as I could. There was a part of me that wanted to open the door and defend myself and my decisions, but instead I just stalked off toward the door and left. The whole way to the offices, I ran the conversation back in my head, imagining my response.
I wasn't being selfish, I was just trying to serve in the way I thought was best. Being productive didn't have to mean being directly subordinate to all humans, or always giving up space and labour for them at their slightest whim, or even their imagined whims as seemed to be the case here. I was doing important work, I was going to be a good officer, I'd make the galaxy safer and keep the centuries-long peace, vanquish monsters and clear the way for explorers.
I wasn't selfish. I wasn't.
I arrived back at the 9th company office, finding Captain Murray and Lieutenant Beckham with a pot of tea and and sat back down at my seat from earlier. The remaining half-dozen sheets taunted me, and I plucked a pen from its charger eagerly.
"So, what is on the schedule for today?" I asked.
"Pen down, Lieutenant. Before you do anyone else's paperwork, get your own sorted with administration. I don't want you putting off drawing your pay and such." Captain Murray said. "After that… well, we're officers without a company right now, so not much. The ensigns got delayed until tomorrow."
"Oh?"
"Nothing serious. Signal lights say they're becalmed moving up the Rho Ophiuchi, because of course they are." she explained.
"Their ship has the regiment's new flying guns too, which means we're not going to hear the end of it from Lieutenant Kennedy." Beckham grumbled.
"Oh, I was looking forward to seeing those." I said, a little disappointed.
"So, yes, not much at all. Light day." Murray concluded.
"Fair enough. Um… are there any non-scheduled duties I could take on?" I asked.
"I mean, I have all of this you could do." Beckham said dryly, indicating to his half-finished pile of paperwork. "If you're still in a tabulating mood."
"Oh, alright. I'll get it done after mine." I knew he was being a bit of dick, but if I was going to be sitting around the office, I'd want something to do. Beckham chuckled, and Murray just looked at me incredulously.
"You realize he's messing with you, right? Like, that's meant to insult you." she said.
"Ah, yes, I understand. Just as I'd insult a human by offering them assorted chocolates and expensive wallpaper." I retorted playfully.
"Very funny, but no. Miles, do your own damn paperwork. Dora, it's not your job to do your fellow officer's work. If you need something to do, go do some sparring or shooting practice or something. Read some manuals, I don't know..."
---
"And sign here and here."
I did, somewhat proud of how in the last few weeks I'd gone from never signing anything to having developed what I thought was a fairly classy little looping scrawl.
"Still want your pay deposited in the Bank of Antares? Alright. There we are. You'll be paid from time of commission, dated from 27th July 2168, and you are now, officially, no longer a sergeant either."
"Wait, does that mean I collected both a sergeant's pay and a lieutenant's pay for three days?" I asked, and the secretary shrugged helplessly.
"Our system isn't really set up for this, you know. Buy yourself something nice, I guess." she said. "Still… 9 shillings a day, that's a fortune. What are you going to do with it all?"
I almost answered save for captain, but to be honest, I wasn't sure.
"Well, some of it has to go towards my fees, right?" I asked.
"Right, about that. I've sent a letter inquiring about it, but for now you'll be paying for meals too. And, uh, I imagine you don't have a lady's maid willing to accompany you, do you?" she asked, pausing to push her glasses up her nose.
"Trust me, I'd love to be accompanied by a- oh. That joke has some unfortunate implications now, doesn't it?" I said, suddenly feeling rather gross. Maria's were hot, but just the thought of the power imbalance inherent in my new circumstance immediately swept away a lifetime of fantasies of that nature. That'd just be wrong.
"Oh… yes, sort of." the secretary winced, "Right, so I'll put in a requisition."
I almost protested, but then I paused a moment. This was part of being an officer. A part I hadn't considered, but it was. Being an officer wasn't just a job, it was also a station, and I had to meet the expectations.
"I hope she doesn't mind." I muttered, and the secretary gave me a puzzled expression before returning to her forms.
---
I went back and completed my paperwork for the last few soldiers in my section, then took my sword and pistol with me to the private range. This place was very familiar to me, I'd spent long hours of my off time practicing her, running bayonet drills and practicing my marksmanship. In all honestly, I'd likely spent more life in this exact spot than anywhere else: I'd switched barracks buildings, but I always came back here.
It was midday, so it was empty but for the armourer, who perked up when he saw me. The only soldiers not on duty training properly right now were either on leave or on light duties, both of which meant they were unlikely to come here. I'd spent many of my leave days here practicing, but I didn't know anyone else who did.
"Dora? 552?" the armourer said, lifting the brim of his forage cap in awe. "Stars, I'd heard rumours, but… lookit you!"
I realized now that this was the first enlisted machine I'd interacted with since getting my commission, other than the runner who'd probably been spreading the word. That was odd.
"I know, I can scarcely believe it myself. Though, uh, I am an officer, so…"
"Right! Sorry ma'am." he corrected quickly, "You want the range or…"
"Some holographic training I think? Pistol and sword?"
The pistol and sword were both unfamiliar to me. I'd never had a chance to practice with either, seeing as I'd never be expected to use them in the field when I had my musket and bayonet. Terry came out from around the desk to operate the panel, and I stepped down into the sparring ring. With the touch of a few buttons, there was a static crackle in the air as the forcefields came on, and the foggy swirl of activating holographic systems.
"Um, ma'am? Weapon's check, please ensure your sword is set to level zero, and your pistol is set to simulation safe. This force field is tough, but we'd rather not take risks." Terry called over the desk, only the top of his cap visible. I'd heard it a thousand times, but that was good, because he was required by regulation to say it.
My sword, a hilt with a curved framing shape at the blunt side, had four settings, plus off. I pulled up the tab on the side of the hand guard with my finger and twisted until it clicked from off to zero. Zero was 'active safe', where a strike with the blade would merely produce a momentary tingling numbness to prove a hit. The other settings were level one, where the energy discharge would cause pain and paralysis, level two, a dueling setting which made the blade sharp but prevented it from cutting deeper than an eighth of an inch, and level three, where the full energies of the blade were freed. There were some materials such a blade couldn't effortlessly cut, but not many.
That done, I thumbed the activation switch, and the blade flared into view in its default white, a dancing curve of light that crackled with the energies within. Everything in order, I deactivated it a moment and turned to the pistol, turning it over in my hand. Engraved on the left side was Theodora Fusilier, rendered beautifully amidst a framing of artfully done gears and circuitry. I wondered a moment what the machine who decorated it thought, putting that name into an officer's pistol, but I appreciated the thought behind the design.
I pulled the frizzen open to check the ignition chamber, a complicated array of lenses surrounding the primary focusing crystal, and I ensured it was set properly in the jaws and the screw was tight. Crystals could burn out from the stress of repeated firings, so my cartridge pouch had spares. Behind it went the dry battery, still snug in place, then I checked the coolant chamber running along the bottom of the barrel.
"One second, corporal, I've just realized I forgot to put coolant in it." I called out, tucking the pistol under the crook of my arm and retrieving the vial of coolant, pressing the spout to the port above the trigger. A tiny bit dribbled onto my thumb, beading on my glove as the hydrophobic coating rejected it.
The coolant would evaporate as the weapon was fired to keep the lenses from cracking, faster the more power was used, which is why battles against dangerous foes tended to quickly become choked with a cloying haze of the stuff. Finally, I ensured the latch under the barrel for the emergency cooling system was securely shut. The coolant could only do so much, and in the event of overheating you could pull the entire cylindrical heat-sink out and replace it.
Finally, I flipped the firing mode to practice, and the weapon hummed in my hand.
"Alright Terry, let's get started!" I called.
"Targets and intensity level?" he called, and I thought a moment. I usually practiced on an 8 or 9, and I'd sometimes turned the machine up as far as 12, but I was unfamiliar with these weapons, so I should go easy on myself.
"Let's say peer humanoid, level six?" I called, and Terry punched it in as I set the pistol to simulate firing at quarter strength. I could do level six in standby mode.
"Alright, ready? Mark!"
The holographic systems came to life, and suddenly I wasn't standing in a sparring ring, I was on a flat plane on some dry, alien world. The illusion only extended about eight feet off the ground, the sky fading out to the ceiling of the range, but it was there. All around me were the fuzzy, indistinct shapes of a line of Theos and Doras, uniforms slightly out of date, firing into an onrushing column of enemies. They were shaped like a man or machine, moved like them, but the details were fuzzy and indistinct, just shadowy greyscale images. The only thing clearly visible was their eyes, you could see where they were looking to follow their motions.
I locked eyes with one of them thundering towards me, longarm in hand, tipped with a white blade. I snapped my pistol up and squeezed the trigger, striking down the shadow to his left in a burst of fog, and the light on the firing lock winked out, slowly recharging. Not enough time for a second shot, I put forth my sword.
Behind this program, I knew, was the captured motions of soldiers and swordsmen, or carefully orchestrated versions of enemies historical or fantastical. This one was a soldier like me, and I easily anticipated his plunging strike toward my chest and tried to knock it aside with my sword, the way I would lock barrel to barrel and push the enemy's weapon aside.
The flat of the blade, light and without leverage, bounced ineffectually off the side of the barrel. The holographic bayonet, undeterred, plunged through my chest, and a sharp, involuntary chill went through me from the buzzing energy as the scene faded.
"Okay, maybe something more basic." I said, feeling a bit embarrassed. "Can we do fundamentals?"
"Alright, baby's first swordplay, coming up. Let's see if you can beat Ensign Monaghan's first time high score, ma'am!"
"How'd he do?" I asked.
"He made it nearly forty-five seconds without vomiting!"
---
A few years ago, Captain Enright took leave to have a child, and when I found out she'd be off for a full year, I found myself asking what would take so long. Sure, the process of somehow crafting a child using the vagaries of icky human biology was probably an involved enough process to require time off (I'm still not clear on all the details), but I didn't exactly understand yet why she couldn't come back when she was finished. In the process of an older machine explaining it to me (fucking gross, by the way) a fact stuck out which I always sort of intuitively understood but never actually knew.
See, when human children are born, they don't know how to walk. They actually physically can't, they have little noodle legs and trouble supporting their giant melon heads. But once their legs can, they actually need to work out, from first principles, how to walk, which when you think about it is the act of throwing yourself forward and catching yourself with feet. Put like that, it's basically orbital mechanics, which makes it pretty impressive that beings whose brains have yet to be able to understand language can manage it at all.
The reason I'm saying this is because I imagine this is what it must feel like to be a tiny human baby, having to learn how to use your own fucking feet.
The training programs went through a variety of extremely basic principles of how to stand, how to hold your sword, how to read your opponents, all of which read as subtly wrong to me, a being who literally came out the box with a decent understanding of bayonet drill. That stuff made sense, it was all about reach and a strong, grounded stance, using the end of your weapon to point away the end of theirs before overpowering them and giving them a poke. Simple.
But an infantry sword like this is designed to be used by a squishy human officer who was a third as strong as your average Dora, which meant it wasn't made to lock close to push people over. It was essentially a big scalpel running with energy, and you used it like one, moving, threatening, and feinting until you saw an opening to dart in and carve a chunk out of the foe.
At one point, I got so frustrated with all this dancing about that I just smashed the hand guard of my weapon into my holographic doppelganger's face, dropped my sword as I kicked through her knee joint, and then I pulled off her arm at the shoulder. Fortunately, the program counted this as a pass.
I was midway through my eighth attempt at not getting my hand chopped off parrying incoming blows when I heard somebody calling. I glanced over the holographic haze to see Lieutenant Beckham staring in, chewing his way through an apple.
"You know, usually we like our fighting machines to know how to fight." he observed, which was about the time the holographic swordblade I was no longer watching sliced through my shoulder.
"Ughh… Yeah, well, we all start somewhere." I retorted, "Difference is, it didn't take me a whole year to figure out how to walk, so I do have a head start."
As I said, it was on my mind. I heard Corporal Terry suppress a chuckle behind the controls.
"You have got me there, I suppose. Try not to stand with your leg so far out, though, rather hard to walk at all without one." he said, stepping away and disappearing behind the haze. Self-consciously, I adjusted my stance, leveling my sword against the flickering holographic foe.
"Alright Terry, one more time!"
