The palace, it transpired, had a guest wing, presumably for when their lords and such made the long journey across the sea. The halls were enormous, and the rooms moreso, and we were assured by our hosts that it was the absolute finest accommodations on this side of the world, fit for the rulers of their Empire themselves. It would have to do for the likes of the galactic peerage and their loyal soldiers, I supposed.
Almost immediately, though, we ran into our first major cultural clash, as the wing consisted not of small private rooms, but about a dozen chambers lined in doors for servants, clearly designed not for individuals but for dozens living and sleeping in close proximity. For families, or at least a significant parts of them. Their smallest rooms would be comfortable for perhaps a dozen, while the largest could fit a hundred, at least.
Rather than beds there was a large pit lined with cushions and pillows in the centre of each room, around which the rest of the amenities were arranged, including what looked like a line of showers against one wall with a sloped floor. The material was, overwhelmingly, stone and concrete, with wood in limited use, and there was little decoration. Privacy was apparently not even remotely a consideration.
At least the everpresent servants were familiar.
I inquired, once we'd toured the first few rooms, if there were individual accommodations the humans could use, and our guides (yet more members of the South Hunter family, these clearly junior) seemed frankly horrified by the idea of anyone sleeping alone.
"Surely you don't all need individual rooms, do you?" one of them, I had lost track of which, asked, wide-eyed and shifting uncomfortably.
"Oh, uh… no. It would be for only some members of our party." I explained, and they nodded.
"The, uh… humans?" they asked, taking their best run at the word with their alien mouthparts. Honestly… better than most so far. Better than a human could do with the name of their species, I was sure.
"... the officers." I corrected nervously.
"May I ask a question? Are the humans your queens? Do they build your kind?" another member, clearly the youngest, asked, rushing through the words with obvious curiosity. The other members of our escort shot them a withering stare and they shied away, but the question was asked.
"Not exactly. We are not like that." I explained, cautious. I didn't exactly want them to have an awareness of how important the humans were to us: they might try to turn it into leverage. However, the inference was likely not hard to work out just given the composition of our force.
I turned to Kennedy, who was smiling politely as Milly translated for her.
"So, this is awkward." I said, laughing a bit.
"I'm noticing." she said, sighing and leaning against the wall. She was doing an admirable job, but she was clearly quite worn out. "I say we give a room each over to the artillery and infantry, one for our guides, and then grab one of the small rooms each for officers and aides. That makes sense, right?"
"My worry is that if we do that, we're basically asking for them to try and jump our officers through the servants doors or similar." I said.
"Dora… that sounds a little paranoid." she said. "We're their guests."
"I- well, yes, it is, but these people… their whole society is built around making hostages out of people who the rest are driven instinctually to protect. They're going to work out how our society works in short order, and…" I leaned in close and lowered my voice, despite knowing they couldn't understand a word of English, "They're probably already thinking about it. I told them we weren't allowed to fight for them outright, but you and I both know if they had a gun to Sumner or Kelly's head the machines would storm any fortress they asked."
"Would you?" she asked pointedly, and I felt cold wash through my circuits.
"God… I-I don't know. I don't." I said. "I want to think I could weigh it but… I don't know."
With a pained smile, Kennedy put a hand on my arm, shaking her head slowly.
"We'll post them with guards, and maybe… consolidate things a little? Put the ensigns in a single room so they're easier to protect." she proposed.
"That's just not done." I said automatically, and she waved it off.
"They'll be well chaperoned by their aides, Dora, honestly. They can use their tents for dividers when they need privacy. Besides, it'll give them somebody to talk to, that'll be something. Keep them from getting in too much trouble."
I didn't like it, every part of my programming balked at the idea of unmarried young people in mixed company like that, but it was clearly the best option.
"What about you?" I asked, and she responded by pointing at me.
"Me? What about you, lieutenant? You're in charge, they're just as likely to come after you." she said.
"I'm made of titanium steel, Diana. I doubt they could kill me if they had hours to work at it." I replied, a bit smug. "But you're just as much at risk as the ensigns. More, I'm afraid…"
"I'm nearly recovered." she insisted.
"You're nearly falling over." I countered, "They've noticed, they likely think you're wounded. You might well be their favoured target."
"I don't exactly like how little credit you're giving our hosts, but I see your point." she said, "So what if we did the same?"
"How do you mean?" I asked, knowing the answer but needing to hear it to make sure.
"I'm saying maybe we should be roommates." Kennedy said, "If you're okay with that."
I looked to Milly, who looked away strangely, mirth in her eyes.
"I suppose that's a good idea." I conceded.
With nearly all of us out of charge by this point, we retired for the night soon after, despite the relatively early hour. There was no invitation to dinner or the like extended to us, and I was starting to get the impression that there was not a great deal of socialization between families expected. This society, for all that it had seemed close before, was remarkably insular.
Frankly, that suited me just fine. While they were nothing but polite to us, every time I saw the representatives of the South Hunter family I couldn't help but continually remind myself that they were kidnappers and colonialists, that the wealth around us wasn't the result of collective effort and joyful work but theft and slavery.
I didn't hate them, though, I couldn't. I knew well enough that who they were as people had very little to do with the suffering here. These things were bigger, they were systems which the likes of the South Hunter family was just a small part of. Their queens were hostages too, after all, they lived at the edge of the same precarity as their victims, if farther from the fall.
And, of course, but for the grace of God went we!
Sumner was clever, hardworking, and eager to help. Kelly was conscientious, brave, and kind. They were a credit to humanity. But that wasn't innate, it wasn't genetic, they were able to be so good because of the society around them. If they were placed in circumstances like this, raised like this, positioned like this…
I didn't have to speculate what they might do. We had history books full of it.
Our main problem for the night was that nearly all our machines were out of charge, so there were not enough to manage a watch over the rooms, our vehicles, the ensigns, and the teams running batteries to and from the power station, but I reasoned there was little risk to our machines directly and we were able to scrape by. We ensured everything was in place and that our wagons were under guard by taking the rather power-intensive route of hooking stationary guards up to batteries to maintain charge as they were on watch, then the officers retired to our rooms.
The long day was wearing on me, emotionally if not in my batteries, and it wasn't helped by the rather grim task of retrieving Miriam from the back of the casualty wagon and carrying her to the room I'd be sharing with Lieutenant Kennedy. I laid her carefully at one end of the pit and plugged her into the field battery, then, still alone, I allowed myself to flop down into the pit of cushions, finding a pleasant bounce to the mattress-equivalent lining the bottom. I was reminded, absurdly, of my giant bed back at number eighteen, and it was strange how that already felt like home.
I heard the door open and shut again outside the pit, and Lieutenant Kennedy entered, pulling a confused looking Milly by the hand. The poor thing was so low on charge she looked on the edge of panic, and Kennedy helped her down into the other side of the pit of cushions and rushed off, returning a moment later with a field battery.
"No… supposed to be helping you…" Milly slurred, and Kennedy shushed her. "Lemme brush your hair, can't go to bed all tangled…"
"Stop it, you silly machine, you need to sleep." Kennedy insisted, plugging her in and flipping the switch on the battery. Milly looked as though she wanted to disagree, but then she shifted a bit in place to rest against a pillow and was asleep in an instant, still in her uniform. "There you are… oh, you're still in your boots..."
Self-consciously, I pulled my boots off and threw them up out of the pit as Kennedy unlaced Milly's carefully.
"Oh, how the tables have turned." I joked, and Kennedy rolled her eyes.
"I told her to go into standby on the way over, but she was quite insistent she stay awake to help me with the language file. Helpful to a fault, of course." she muttered, lining Milly's boots up carefully at the edge of the pit. "How's your aide?"
"She's charging. I forgot about her boots." I admitted. "It's strange. I was worried I wouldn't be able to find her anything to do when she first arrived, and now I've missed her terribly."
"That's kind of sweet, honestly." Kennedy said, starting at the buttons at the top of her jacket. "Urgh… you think their showers are safe?"
"I don't even know if it's water, or what temperature it might be." I said, "Nevermind if there's something horrible in it. Let Doctor Zsanett clear it in the morning before you risk it."
"I'm just… I'd love to have something better than a field shower." she said, pulling loose her jacket and boots. "Can never get the water hot enough."
"Never had that problem." I said stupidly, and she laughed.
"Lucky." she said, reclining onto the pillows next to me. "And you don't sweat either, so staying clean probably isn't too much an issue for you at all. This'll sound strange but… I'm almost jealous."
I sat with that for a while, unsure what to say.
"Jealous?" I asked, trying to buy time by asking her to clarify.
"Of machines, I guess." she said, "You'll never grow old, never want for much, always know what to do… always know who you are."
"I suppose." I replied.
"Sorry. I'm not thinking clearly, I shouldn't be saying this."
"It's alright." I said uselessly, "Do you want to talk about it?"
Her turn to be silent, turning the question over as she leaned back against the pillows, her arms crossed tight across her body.
"I'm not looking forward to having to pay for all this." she said, clearly changing the subject. "I don't want to be party to this… this crime. You said you have a plan?"
"The inkling of one." I said, "They said one of their leaders would patrol the gatehouse, out of range of their guns, right? Perhaps not out of range of ours."
"You're not thinking of an assassination, are you?" she asked, horrified, and I put a hand on hers to reassure her.
"Of course not! We have stun rounds, but they don't know that. Imagine, we get some of their observers lined up, we knock over their hated enemy, they keep giving us power until our forces open the gateway." I explained. "And whatever resistance fighter or whatever gets to take a nice little nap. Everyone wins."
"That won't trick them for long." Kennedy said, sounding skeptical. "Maybe a few days, or maybe even a few hours."
"Sure, but we just say, you know, oh the poison didn't take or such." I replied, "It will have bought time to figure something else. That's all we need, time."
"... have you given any thought to-" She paused, clearly hesitant, "Intervention?"
Oh.
"I have." I said stiffly, waiting. She said nothing. "We can't. We don't have a good understanding of the situation worldwide, nor the ability to make widespread changes. We can knock over these particular imperialists, but we can't prevent more from taking their place. We can't dismantle the hostage system. If we try… I imagine we'll just make things worse."
"I know." she replied softly, "Of course. But it's on my mind."
"I'm sorry." I said, "We're just fifty machines, and we're not… we're not useful machines. We're soldiers. We can destroy, but we can't build."
"I wish we could at least leave them with machines of their own, you know? Get the ball rolling, start their own industrious revolution." Kennedy said, "Do we have anyone who might know how?"
"If we had an engineer, maybe." I said, "I… It's miserable, we machines were made to help in this exact sort of circumstance, but we've just not got the resources. It's more reason for us to play it safe and get home. We can leave the gateway open and let others figure it out. Smarter people."
Kennedy reached over, grasping clumsily for her jacket, listing heavily as she did. I reached ahead for her, grasping the epaulet and pulling it to her, and she fished around for the inner pocket and came up with a small flask.
"I hate this." she said, unscrewing the top and taking a quick swig. "I'd offer you some, but…"
"Oh, just pour it into one of the vents." I said, dropping back against the pillows and undoing my top button. "Ought to have some effect."
"I doubt it." she said, taking another, longer pull. "Fuck, I just want to get back on my feet. I hate this so much."
"Should you be drinking while you're recovering?" I asked, and she waved dismissively and took one last short sip before screwing the cap back on.
"Who cares?" she said, leaning back again. This time, I couldn't help but notice, quite close to me, shoulder to shoulder. So close that when she looked over at me, I could feel her breath against the steel of my skin. "I'll be fine. Tougher than I look."
"Yeah?" I asked, feeling… strange. Conscious of the tension in the room. Of her rolling over, getting even closer. Of her hand on my thigh.
"Yeah." she said, grinning at me, eyes half-lidded. "Maybe not as tough as you, but I can hold my own."
"... Diana, are you…" I leaned back, suddenly a bit nervous, "Are you alright?"
Her expression changed, embarrassment flashing across her face, and she shrank away, leaning back against the pillow. The tension was let out all at once as she seemed to have second thoughts.
"No. Wish I was." she groaned, face down in the pillow. "Sorry."
"Um… it's quite alright." I said. I wanted to ask her what was happening. I had my suspicions. But thankfully, she'd had the good sense to back off, and I shouldn't bring it up again. Shouldn't embarrass her.
I climbed out of the pit and doused the lights, then slipped back into the pit a ways away from her. She was already snoring gently, arms curled around a pillow. Despite myself, despite my better judgement, I felt a pang of something, a desire to get close to her.
But thankfully, it passed. I set up my battery, plugged in, and went to sleep.
