- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, I like Miriam already!
Lieutenant Fusilier in The Farthest Reaches
- Thread starter open_sketch
- Start date
- Original Mature
- Location
- Somewhere.
You and me both.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Thank you so much for the positive comments. Especially especially when people quote bits and discuss it? It not only gives me the energy to press on, but that stuff very often gives me ideas. Like the comment about Dora and the 'how did I get these scars' monologues immediately turned into a huge behind the scenes reserve of jokes for an increasingly weary Dora to answer with as I realized what power it would have as a running gag.
I mean, this is the first time I've written any real amount of fiction that hasn't been interactive in like a decade, so like... like this isn't a quest, but I'm basically taking snippet votes because if you ask me a question about the setting or characters, or tell me what you want to see, you will get me thinking about it and talking it over with @Jeboboid ...
I mean, this is the first time I've written any real amount of fiction that hasn't been interactive in like a decade, so like... like this isn't a quest, but I'm basically taking snippet votes because if you ask me a question about the setting or characters, or tell me what you want to see, you will get me thinking about it and talking it over with @Jeboboid ...
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, hm. Are there no positions where a machine would need assistants, so that there's precedent for Miriam to use here? I assume there wouldn't be in the military, and the whole M series seem pretty oriented towards human needs, but you'd wonder if the french factory bosses might need help or something?
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
That's a good question I don't have an immediate answer to, so I shall do a ponder and a talky!
On this point, in Maids we did see like, "manager" robots, didn't we? Because it seems hard to imagine that the robots are maintaining an industrial civilization without any kind of...management. They don't seem to have a collective hive mind; they'd need some kind of group/entity/class that acts as management/supervisory/organizational/communicative. Even if it is just sort of... union politics, robot style.
That's actually an interesting idea, actually - sort of a Tammany Hall-style politics for robots. Behind the scenes, the robots are sort of, trading favors between each other in exchange for their humans support for various things. Some robots might not even realize it's happening, but every robot household/family/work group has its own "fixer", who isn't exactly a *boss*, but more like a conduit for getting things done for its fellows...
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Stiff necked prussian blackguard!
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
This story continues to be amazing. It's just so... sweet.
For some reason I'd thought that they had mechanical eye-bits, not digital displays.
...Do robot eyes glow in the dark? That must be either fantastic or really annoying when robots are snuggling in bed. On the one hand you can see their eyes and they're super cute, on the other hand it means you always have a light shining in your eyes.
That's super handy, pun totally intended. Does that come built-in, or did Maria have to learn it? Hmm. Now that I think about it, how are languages handled in the first place? Does everyone speak The Queen's English with Funny Space Accents? Do robots learn languages by studying them the way humans do? Do they come out of the box with just one language, or with three or four languages they could potentially encounter? Or do they just slot in a new language module when necessary? Is Fyodor's fun-etik aksent an affectation or just How It Is when a robot is speaking a language other than their language of manufacture?
Wow, Maria's choice is amazingly apropos for Dora.
What a bitch. The robots were made to help humans. Following orders is a common way to do it, but at the end of the day, it's like they forget that the robots actually do everything. The noncoms are the ones that actually direct the units. The regents' assistants are the ones that make the decisions. The ladies maids strongly nudge their charges around. And so on and so forth.
pfft. Maria's sense of humor appears to fit well with Dora's.
Ooh, anime eyes!
For some reason I'd thought that they had mechanical eye-bits, not digital displays.
...Do robot eyes glow in the dark? That must be either fantastic or really annoying when robots are snuggling in bed. On the one hand you can see their eyes and they're super cute, on the other hand it means you always have a light shining in your eyes.
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- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Re: Languages, we've agreed that robots can speak a large number of languages for sure, right out the box. Personally, I think robots all have one or more primary languages they speak completely fluently, and they *can* speak basically every other human language but at reduced clarity the farther it gets from the ones they were programmed as primaries. I think their language centres are hardwired, so they can't learn new languages with practice, they'd need to have it programmed into them by a mechanic.That's super handy, pun totally intended. Does that come built-in, or did Maria have to learn it? Hmm. Now that I think about it, how are languages handled in the first place? Does everyone speak The Queen's English with Funny Space Accents? Do robots learn languages by studying them the way humans do? Do they come out of the box with just one language, or with three or four languages they could potentially encounter? Or do they just slot in a new language module when necessary? Is Fyodor's fun-etik aksent an affectation or just How It Is when a robot is speaking a language other than their language of manufacture?
For some reason I'd thought that they had mechanical eye-bits, not digital displays.
...Do robot eyes glow in the dark? That must be either fantastic or really annoying when robots are snuggling in bed. On the one hand you can see their eyes and they're super cute, on the other hand it means you always have a light shining in your eyes.
Regarding eyes, yep, they glow in the dark. 'lights on' and 'lights out' are machine slang for being awake/alert/alive and asleep/dead respectively. The reason is they are actually screens with cameras behind them: their pupils are the actual physical camera lense, and around them is projected an image of an eye and eyebrows to various levels of stylization so they can emote to humans and each other. The equivilent of closing their eyes is the camera lense retreating back and the light turning off, leaving the eye blank and dull. Their eyes are oversized and expressive because they typically can't move the rest of their face: some machines get lips that can move slightly to convey expressions, but one of our hard rules of robots in the setting is they can't have mouths that open.
Dora, an older model of robot at 33 years old and unupgraded, has these screens set into individual lenses with rims on her face, while those staying on the cutting edge (which Lady's Maids certainly due, seeing as being pretty is part of their job) have screens that blend seamlessly with their faces. As you go back, the machine's abilities to emote get cruder, and some machines maintain older parts as an affectation. Amber, Miss Polestar's housemaid, has century-old big yellow square eyes which are literally a camera set inside a headlight housing (she thinks its cute and endearing, and she's right).
Robots also sometimes have supplimentary ways of expression emotion. Marie can blush, via two soft pink lightbulbs under the translucent glass of her cheeks. Dora, whose cheeks are steel alloy, very much cannot.
As an aside, all the robots have speakers on their throats that their voices come out of, though some have resonance chambers and stuff in their face to make their voices louder or more natural.
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Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Oh my god that's adorable.
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
Don't think I didn't notice that you classified the ensigns as pets, Thea! Now I can't shake the image of a red-coated ensign wailing as their machines try to make them take a bath and eat their medicine.
Ouch. This is often how real discrimination works. Less a rule that says you have to sit at the back of the bus, and more a...statistical weight that drags down on your interactions.
Miriam is a very nice person to have around.
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
The author drew art, too: Maid to Love You - A Clockwork Romance Original - Mature
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
Humans certainly seem to be making decisions in certain capacities (it helps to read Maid to Love You, where we see the civilian society). To be sure, the robots are clearly acting as "guard rails" for humanity both on a collective and individual level, preventing them from making certain categories of choice (e.g. human-on-human wars).
And yet. And yet.
...
Think about it.
How did Theodora screw up deployment of her troops, even slightly?
If she were accustomed to being the real platoon commander (but called 'sergeant') while a largely epiphenomenal "officer" ('lieutenant') effectively cosplays being in charge, then putting her into the lieutenant's slot shouldn't change anything. She should still know precisely what to do, as well as she ever has. She certainly should have no trouble styling all over a bunch of human officers who, when you get down to it, were never in charge and always let the robot sergeants do the real decision-making on the battlefield.
I don't buy it.
It honestly seems more likely if to a large extent the sergeants really ARE sergeants and the human officer corps really IS doing many of the duties of real officers. Because while it's a truism that the noncoms really run the military, the officer/noncom divide isn't that simple in real life. They're two very separate tracks of responsibility and activity, both involving significant managerial skill requirements and high competence, but, importantly, focused on very different things. When taking into account the existence of senior noncom ranks who are responsible for more troops than a lieutenant (e.g. sergeant-majors) but in a different way, it's arguably a sort of matrix management.
...
And in that case?
The fact that she is even capable of screwing up during an exercise intended to be remotely passable for human officers of only a few years' experience suggests that there are are important aspects of how to handle her own soldiers that Theodora never worried about much before. Or not at all. Except perhaps in the unlikely event of her human officers being out of action, in which case, well, things get simple enough for Theos and Doras. To quote Kipling, in a passage applicable in broad if not in detail what with laser muskets and all...
"If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier..."
[though that doesn't necessarily end well, as the previous and next verses of the poem suggest]
...
But if all that's true, humans are, in fact, making some relevant decisions.
To be sure, humans are to some extent the bio-trophies of the rogue servitor robot civilization, subject to mandatory pampering in an adapted version of the highest and finest lifestyle the robots know (that of 19th century gentry). But that doesn't mean that humans aren't doing anything relevant, or that there isn't a symbiotic 'counterpart' aspect to the relationship.
And that casts the friction Theodora's facing with her own command into a different light.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Indeed, Dora's made decisions before, but she generally hasn't made plans. That's very much where the fuzzy line is drawn.
Dora's probably done this exact exercise with human lieutenants who've done this thing, or not done this thing when she thought they ought to. If back then she recognized the emergency need to clear a line for the gun to fire, she might make the decision to get that done (probably by physically pushing some Theos out of the firing arc), but she's still trusting an LT and the web of officers above them to have a plan for the most part. And if she has to take control of a section, what she's going to do with it is focus on keeping it together, following ongoing orders, making moment to moment decisions for preserving her troops, and watching what the other sections do to keep up with the line of battle.
Her level of authority has not changed very much with the promotion (indeed, it's effectively *dropped* because of the politics and cultural aspects), but what she has to consider is different. She's not Sergeant Dora making sure her Theos don't get mulched by their own guns and keeping things moving if the officer freezes up, she's Lieutenant Dora having to think beyond the immediate. It's new to her, she's got learning to do, even if she's coming in with more experience and knowledge than average.
Like, she made a mistake that most novice officers doing formation training would not know enough to make, basically.
Dora's probably done this exact exercise with human lieutenants who've done this thing, or not done this thing when she thought they ought to. If back then she recognized the emergency need to clear a line for the gun to fire, she might make the decision to get that done (probably by physically pushing some Theos out of the firing arc), but she's still trusting an LT and the web of officers above them to have a plan for the most part. And if she has to take control of a section, what she's going to do with it is focus on keeping it together, following ongoing orders, making moment to moment decisions for preserving her troops, and watching what the other sections do to keep up with the line of battle.
Her level of authority has not changed very much with the promotion (indeed, it's effectively *dropped* because of the politics and cultural aspects), but what she has to consider is different. She's not Sergeant Dora making sure her Theos don't get mulched by their own guns and keeping things moving if the officer freezes up, she's Lieutenant Dora having to think beyond the immediate. It's new to her, she's got learning to do, even if she's coming in with more experience and knowledge than average.
Like, she made a mistake that most novice officers doing formation training would not know enough to make, basically.
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Yeah, that makes sense. I stand corrected.
Does that general principle hold all the way up to the regents and their assistants?
Do different kinds of music have different psychoactive effects, or does everything produce the kind of clumsy blissed-out detachment that we've seen so far? How about thing that are adjacent to or restricted subsets of music, like poetry or drum line?
Does that general principle hold all the way up to the regents and their assistants?
It's not just image of it, it's that Marie's designers decided that the single emotion she needed to be able to express better than she could with her eyes, ahead of smiling or frowning or wrinkling her nose, was the ability to blush. It's great. And it fits Marie perfectly!
I was about to ask about robot singers, and then I realized that singing probably has implications in this setting. Are robots capable of making music themselves at all? Or does an attempt just get the music too close to the robot's core processes and they conk out instantly?
Do different kinds of music have different psychoactive effects, or does everything produce the kind of clumsy blissed-out detachment that we've seen so far? How about thing that are adjacent to or restricted subsets of music, like poetry or drum line?
Tiny_Dic
Superreasonable Asshole Centrist | McSimp
- Location
- My Room
I just discovered this new story a few days ago, and I've been enjoying it a lot.
It's interesting that in the past two chapters you chose to present the officer corps as more accepting of Dora than her own subordinates. Her peers see and treat her as a peer, while the Theos and Doras don't see her as someone worthy of respect yet.
It's appropriate in hindsight, but it the moment it really conveyed that sense of 'the thing I feared didn't happen like I thought it would'.
She's clearly overwhelmed by all this - the alienation, the stress and inexperience, the toosy-turvy role reversals- and yet she perseveres, with the help of Marie (and isn't it cool how her assistant isn't just a maid or batman but also helps her cope with stress and gives advice while their relationship developes?)
The way you have these deeply human characters live that combonation of 19th Century Imperial aesthetic and upbeat futurism is- wow. And thatvs pretty good.
It's interesting that in the past two chapters you chose to present the officer corps as more accepting of Dora than her own subordinates. Her peers see and treat her as a peer, while the Theos and Doras don't see her as someone worthy of respect yet.
It's appropriate in hindsight, but it the moment it really conveyed that sense of 'the thing I feared didn't happen like I thought it would'.
She's clearly overwhelmed by all this - the alienation, the stress and inexperience, the toosy-turvy role reversals- and yet she perseveres, with the help of Marie (and isn't it cool how her assistant isn't just a maid or batman but also helps her cope with stress and gives advice while their relationship developes?)
The way you have these deeply human characters live that combonation of 19th Century Imperial aesthetic and upbeat futurism is- wow. And thatvs pretty good.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
We decided early on that robots who are producing music are immune to its effects, in a "you can't tickle yourself" sort of way. a machine symphony still works out.Yeah, that makes sense. I stand corrected.
Does that general principle hold all the way up to the regents and their assistants?
It's not just image of it, it's that Marie's designers decided that the single emotion she needed to be able to express better than she could with her eyes, ahead of smiling or frowning or wrinkling her nose, was the ability to blush. It's great. And it fits Marie perfectly!
I was about to ask about robot singers, and then I realized that singing probably has implications in this setting. Are robots capable of making music themselves at all? Or does an attempt just get the music too close to the robot's core processes and they conk out instantly?
Do different kinds of music have different psychoactive effects, or does everything produce the kind of clumsy blissed-out detachment that we've seen so far? How about thing that are adjacent to or restricted subsets of music, like poetry or drum line?
yep, different music has different effects. in maids, marie goes to a robot party, and the music there is fast and intense, and which i imagined personally as being late 90s EDM sampling classical music because i'm a weird nerd. it makes her excited, impulsive, and giddy, with a bit of the implication that this was a rave whose music was also the ecstasy.
i'll get back to you on drumline and poetry. i've been trying to figure out regimental music and such myself.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Highlander robot regiments fight to the sound of the pipes.
After discerning the effect of the pipes on Theodores, the Highland regiments have been formally placed on the "In Case Of Emergency Break Glass" planet, never to be deployed for anything short of a cosmic catastrophe. They are well past the Godzilla Threshold.
Ultima ratio Regency.
After discerning the effect of the pipes on Theodores, the Highland regiments have been formally placed on the "In Case Of Emergency Break Glass" planet, never to be deployed for anything short of a cosmic catastrophe. They are well past the Godzilla Threshold.
Ultima ratio Regency.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh to be the spreadsheets-maid to a dashing robot lady officer.
I could see this as a wrinkle of Prussian made military robots and their culture honestly? If I remember right, there's a bit of a napoleonic era reckoning with their fixation on exceptionally drilled infantry, but if you give them robots, they could very well decide that lower level initiative stops right at the officer/noncom line, and all an NCO's initiative is to be used for is executing the officer's orders promptly and exactly.
Sort of the other end of the spectrum from the French and Americans.
Undead-Spaceman
Skeleton Supreme
- Location
- Somewhere in Orbit
Looking over the precious chapters, this line has got me thinking. Is this an actual thing that can happen? Like, are full conversion cyborgs an actual thing here?
I get that the whole statement was a joke but prostethics alone are probably phenominal and if I'm remembering right, the original machine processors came about by creating an exact replica of a human brain out of circuitry and that was centuries ago.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
I imagine it's no longer terribly common, seen as a bit old-fashioned, because I think cloned & grafted tissue, limbs, and organs are probably preferred. Humans ought to be human, you know? It's more comfortable given the way society is stratified than to start blurring the lines too much. And it fits the casual, low-level genetic engineering that's happening in the setting: you didn't think Miss Polestar dyed her hair, did you?
In some of the behind-the-scenes writing (a huge part of what inspired this was the fact I was already writing @Jeboboid fics in the universe) I've outlined that humanity knows about DNA as 'Punnett Strands' and they can edit it fairly casually. I very much think this is a setting with vat-grown meat, gene-tweaked crops, life extension technology, etc, but you won't see it talked about that way simply because its so normalized, and also fairly minor compared to the mechanical stuff.
Chapter 8 - Shooting High
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
"Ensign, your cuff is for displaying rank, not wiping brows."
"Sorry, it's just so hot…" Sumner muttered back, blinking the sleep from her eyes. It really was: either the weather controller was in a sadistic mood today, or something on the station had broken and we'd all be overheating to death in an airless void in short order.
"Have you forgotten your climate control? Just… tap your cuff button, subtle like. The CO is coming." I whispered, and I I could see her fidget trying to get her hand to the controls without looking like she was moving too much.
Getting the unit in position had, fortunately, not been overly difficult. Though I fully expected Sergeant Theda to be scheming to find ways to sabotage me and get me replaced with a proper human officer, I had confidence that she'd never tolerate ill-discipline or sloppiness in the unit as part of that process.
Thankfully, inspection and CO's parade went off without a hitch beyond that. Despite our insufficient numbers, our Theos and Doras made a fine sight lined up with the rest of the regiment in fresh new uniforms and shiny weapons, particularly the two beautiful revolver cannons on their tripods. Lieutenant Colonel Harrison gave me a small nod as he passed on his horse, which filled me with a giddy pride at a job well done.
The days orders that followed saw the 9th Company going through more basic drilling, including the first proper musketry drills. Soldiers came out of the box knowing how to point and shoot, and with a fair intuitive understanding of the timing and action, but many of the subtleties were lost on them, and in any case, practice made perfect.
I'll say this for Sergeant Theda: she absolutely knew how to lead a unit through a relentless pace, and she had an attention to the smallest mistakes I could only admire. She ran troops through numbers drill, where each step called was a motion or stance in readying, firing, reloading, or cooling weapons, and she'd walk up and down the line between integers correcting the smallest deviation in posture from the arms manual, which I could only presume she stayed up reading.
"Say, Fusie, you quite alright?" Beckham asked, shading his eyes as he watched his section fire another volley into the target wall. "Blast it, is 6.2 a good enough average deviation at three hundred paces?"
"It is if we're fighting something twelve feet five inches tall." I said. Either our guns weren't calibrated properly, or our machines weren't.
"Well, I'm optimistic. I'm sure they can find us some particularly towering buggers out there in dire need of a good lasering." he said, "You know, I would have thought new machines came out the box better than this."
"How well do you think you could fire a musket if all you'd done is read about it?" I pointed out, "More or less the same thing. We'll just have to have it drilled out of them."
B-section crackled off another volley, and a giant spectral 6.0 floated into existence down the field. These were snap shot drills, shouldering and firing in a half-second as one would do from the march or after working the action, but it was still dire.
"And to think, that's with the seasoned machines bringing the average down." Beckham said, frowning. "I dread to think what it would look like without them."
Well there's a thought.
"Sergeant, halt a moment!" I said, walking out toward the line. The muskets raised skyward, and I walked up to the unit, staring across the kilometer of well-trodden grass at the target zone, a floating line four feet off the ground. Theda gave me a look that was very much why are you meddling with my machines, but she said nothing.
"I want to conduct an experiment quickly. Theos and Doras who came out the box yesterday, step back and shoulder your weapons. Everyone else, close up, up front here."
The machines shifted, slowly at first before Theda repeated the order in a bellow and they raced into position. There were now a dozen machines forward with weapons at the ready, and about twice that standing back watching.
"Sergeant, run the drill three times with this lot, and then switch." I said, taking a step back. "I want a proper assessment of the damage."
"... yes, ma'am. Make ready!"
Two minutes later, I had two new averages. Our experienced soldiers were shooting at just 2.1, evenly spread above and below the targets. By contrast, the newbies were, for the most part, consistently shooting high, on the order of about nine feet or more. I wondered if it was maybe something about the design of their shoulders or something, biasing the spread consistently above the line instead of more evenly inaccurate when they snapped the guns to their shoulders.
"There you have it, we have to work on aiming lower. Sergeant, you have to work cut out for you." I said, indicating. "Carry on."
It wasn't a huge thing, it would have been worked out once we got to individual shooting drills that this was a problem, but catching it here in the formation drills meant we had a head start on correcting it, which mean the unit would be ready for action fast. Which meant we'd be more useful sooner in case something happened.
I walked back to Beckham with a spring in my step. Feeling useful.
"Your new Theos and Doras are aiming high. I think it's something in their shoulders. We're going to have to train them out of it."
"Well, that's a problem. Should probably tell the manufacturers, right?" he said, drawing forth an apple from his cartridge pouch and polishing it on his jacket.
"We all have habits we need to break." I said. I felt a strange pang of envy for a moment, to have something like that to do with my hands while we stood and talked. "Beckham, you've seen any action yet?"
"Depends on what you mean by action, I suppose." he said, taking a bite. I waited patiently for him to swallow. "I was in garrison in the coldest icebox they could find rimward after somebody thought he saw an Invader and caused that big panic a few years back, and then they had had us culling this awful critter at Vobion or somesuch, helping the Australians. Great big tripod bird things, nasty stuff, but that went south before I got there and we just huddled up at the fort walls and took potshots for two months."
Wait a tick, I recognized those deployments. Only one unit was at both.
"... Beckham, were you in the Coldstream Guard?" I asked, and he gave an affirmative sort of shrug. "Bullshit. I don't believe it."
"Dad's a major there, legacy pick. Generations back at this point, I don't even remember." he said casually. "Big family thing."
"Why the hell'd you give that up and come here?" I asked, flabbergasted. Was it money? I'd looked it up, I knew the commissions for Guards regiments were as much as three times more expensive than elsewhere, and it was extremely exclusive.
"Because vacancies in the Guard are once in a bloody epoc." he said, looking over his half-eaten apple as though trying to determine where best to bite it next. Satisfied, took another chomp out of it, talking around chewing. "Spent six years in ensign, missed out on the total of two vacancies in all that time, and I told my dad the family tradition could jog on and bought the first Lieutenant commission that came up."
"Stars. I had no idea it was that bad." I said.
"It wasn't all that. It's just cluttered with all the richest and most connected sorts, not much different from other regiments other than that, and they stay in forever because nobody wants to give up a chance to rank up." he said, "Used to joke with my mates that the purpose of the Guard regiments was to get the real smug pricks away from the regular Army. Been a while since they were really an elite of any sort."
"Sure, but what about the ranks?" I asked, and he shrugged.
"Theos and Doras." he said simply, as if that were all there was to it.
I wanted to argue with him, because getting into the Guards was a big deal for a machine, you needed to apply with an exceptional service record. There was a Theo from the 7th who managed it when I was five, and the others threw him a going-away party that basically became a spontaneous, leaderless midnight parade through the city.
(Or so I heard. I'd taken advantage of the empty base to get some range time on a revolver cannon.)
But Beckham really didn't seem to see a difference. He must see us as totally interchangeable, and I wasn't sure how to feel about that. Ideally, we would be, wouldn't we?
"Can't imagine your father is too happy about it all." I said instead, and he gestured vaguely, taking a final bite from his apple.
"You got that right. Really hoping I fall into the lap of a beautiful woman with a lovely bank account sooner rather than later, because right now… how long was it to make Captain on our salary?"
"Discounting our mandatory expenses, nineteen years and two hundred and sixty-three days. Provided we save everything else." I said.
"Right, well, lemme just do a quick bit of my own math given my expenses… mhmm, carry the one… ah yes. I ought to make captain by the time I'm a brisk six hundred and a bit, I think." he said. "Can't wait."
"Wait, what? I thought human families, like, pooled money. Or something, I'm not clear on the details." I said, confused.
"It's called disinheritance, Fusie. He's a right prick, what can I say? I've got aunties I can probably call on for a few thousand pounds in a pinch, but I'd rather not bother the poor dears."
"Why didn't he just refuse to pay?" I asked, and he chucked.
"Oh, he did. My ensign's commission in the Guards was worth more than my lieutenant's commission here, and I had enough left over for my pistol, a small yacht, and a respectable liquor cabinet."
The sheer scale of money that humans dealt in casually never ceased to amaze me.
"Well, I'm sorry to hear about all that." I said. He waved it off, and then, with a few steps to get leverage, threw his apple core far out into the field.
"Say, if you pop your clogs, who gets your stuff?" he asked.
"A Theo or Dora's personal effects get auctioned off to their unit if they haven't left it to a comrade or sweetheart." I explained. It was weirdly solemn for something that sounded so callous, basically a way for friends to get mementos of the fallen machine.
"I wonder if they'd auction your commission to your mates, then."
"Huh." Hadn't thought of that.
I looked back over at my unit, watching another ripple of laser fire pulse out.
"Good news. We are now qualified to fight things eleven feet two inches tall." I drawled.
---
The next morning at breakfast, Lieutenant Kennedy joined rather late, looking somewhat rough.
"You alright, Diana?" I asked, as she accepted an enormous cup of tea from her aide and blinked stiffly.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I slept terribly's all." she said. "Insomnia."
"I don't know what that is." I said simply.
"I'm bad at sleeping."
I wasn't aware that was a thing humans could be bad at. From my experience with ensigns, sleeping was a default human state from which wakefulness was a deviation.
"Well, keep practicing, I suppose." I said neutrally, not sure what else there was to say. Kennedy, in the midsts of drinking her tea, made a very funny sound and began patting at her face with a napkin.
"Oh my God, Dora, I was drinking!"
"... my apologies. Did anything happen to prompt this insomnia?" I asked, as she patted the front of her uniform to chase away the beads of tea rolling down it.
"I guess. Oh, you would have missed it, the Duke's extended an invitation to the officers at his end of summer thingy again."
"Thingy?" I asked.
"Ball. Biggest social event of the season in this sector, great big party, dancing, dinner, so forth. We knew he was going to, this was just a formality."
"Is that what has you… insomnia-ed?" I asked,
"I guess? I didn't have a great time at the last one. My date abandoned me to talk to another girl, and I got lost in the palace trying to find the way out. Nightmare." she explained, sprawling heavily against the table. "Complete nightmare."
"Do you have to go?" I asked, and she nodded against her arms.
"Yeah, it'd be a huge insult to turn him down. He's the duke, and the base is kinda technically his? We gotta keep him happy." she said, "It's mandatory."
"... does mandatory include me?" I asked, dreading the answer I knew was coming.
"Machindatory?" she offered, and when I chortled she continued, "Yeah, I think it's also machindatory. It's on the 15th, you have to be there by 1600, which means you ought to arrive either fifteen minutes before or after but not at 1600, okay?"
"Wonderful." I said, trying not to externalize the screaming.
"Sorry, it's just so hot…" Sumner muttered back, blinking the sleep from her eyes. It really was: either the weather controller was in a sadistic mood today, or something on the station had broken and we'd all be overheating to death in an airless void in short order.
"Have you forgotten your climate control? Just… tap your cuff button, subtle like. The CO is coming." I whispered, and I I could see her fidget trying to get her hand to the controls without looking like she was moving too much.
Getting the unit in position had, fortunately, not been overly difficult. Though I fully expected Sergeant Theda to be scheming to find ways to sabotage me and get me replaced with a proper human officer, I had confidence that she'd never tolerate ill-discipline or sloppiness in the unit as part of that process.
Thankfully, inspection and CO's parade went off without a hitch beyond that. Despite our insufficient numbers, our Theos and Doras made a fine sight lined up with the rest of the regiment in fresh new uniforms and shiny weapons, particularly the two beautiful revolver cannons on their tripods. Lieutenant Colonel Harrison gave me a small nod as he passed on his horse, which filled me with a giddy pride at a job well done.
The days orders that followed saw the 9th Company going through more basic drilling, including the first proper musketry drills. Soldiers came out of the box knowing how to point and shoot, and with a fair intuitive understanding of the timing and action, but many of the subtleties were lost on them, and in any case, practice made perfect.
I'll say this for Sergeant Theda: she absolutely knew how to lead a unit through a relentless pace, and she had an attention to the smallest mistakes I could only admire. She ran troops through numbers drill, where each step called was a motion or stance in readying, firing, reloading, or cooling weapons, and she'd walk up and down the line between integers correcting the smallest deviation in posture from the arms manual, which I could only presume she stayed up reading.
"Say, Fusie, you quite alright?" Beckham asked, shading his eyes as he watched his section fire another volley into the target wall. "Blast it, is 6.2 a good enough average deviation at three hundred paces?"
"It is if we're fighting something twelve feet five inches tall." I said. Either our guns weren't calibrated properly, or our machines weren't.
"Well, I'm optimistic. I'm sure they can find us some particularly towering buggers out there in dire need of a good lasering." he said, "You know, I would have thought new machines came out the box better than this."
"How well do you think you could fire a musket if all you'd done is read about it?" I pointed out, "More or less the same thing. We'll just have to have it drilled out of them."
B-section crackled off another volley, and a giant spectral 6.0 floated into existence down the field. These were snap shot drills, shouldering and firing in a half-second as one would do from the march or after working the action, but it was still dire.
"And to think, that's with the seasoned machines bringing the average down." Beckham said, frowning. "I dread to think what it would look like without them."
Well there's a thought.
"Sergeant, halt a moment!" I said, walking out toward the line. The muskets raised skyward, and I walked up to the unit, staring across the kilometer of well-trodden grass at the target zone, a floating line four feet off the ground. Theda gave me a look that was very much why are you meddling with my machines, but she said nothing.
"I want to conduct an experiment quickly. Theos and Doras who came out the box yesterday, step back and shoulder your weapons. Everyone else, close up, up front here."
The machines shifted, slowly at first before Theda repeated the order in a bellow and they raced into position. There were now a dozen machines forward with weapons at the ready, and about twice that standing back watching.
"Sergeant, run the drill three times with this lot, and then switch." I said, taking a step back. "I want a proper assessment of the damage."
"... yes, ma'am. Make ready!"
Two minutes later, I had two new averages. Our experienced soldiers were shooting at just 2.1, evenly spread above and below the targets. By contrast, the newbies were, for the most part, consistently shooting high, on the order of about nine feet or more. I wondered if it was maybe something about the design of their shoulders or something, biasing the spread consistently above the line instead of more evenly inaccurate when they snapped the guns to their shoulders.
"There you have it, we have to work on aiming lower. Sergeant, you have to work cut out for you." I said, indicating. "Carry on."
It wasn't a huge thing, it would have been worked out once we got to individual shooting drills that this was a problem, but catching it here in the formation drills meant we had a head start on correcting it, which mean the unit would be ready for action fast. Which meant we'd be more useful sooner in case something happened.
I walked back to Beckham with a spring in my step. Feeling useful.
"Your new Theos and Doras are aiming high. I think it's something in their shoulders. We're going to have to train them out of it."
"Well, that's a problem. Should probably tell the manufacturers, right?" he said, drawing forth an apple from his cartridge pouch and polishing it on his jacket.
"We all have habits we need to break." I said. I felt a strange pang of envy for a moment, to have something like that to do with my hands while we stood and talked. "Beckham, you've seen any action yet?"
"Depends on what you mean by action, I suppose." he said, taking a bite. I waited patiently for him to swallow. "I was in garrison in the coldest icebox they could find rimward after somebody thought he saw an Invader and caused that big panic a few years back, and then they had had us culling this awful critter at Vobion or somesuch, helping the Australians. Great big tripod bird things, nasty stuff, but that went south before I got there and we just huddled up at the fort walls and took potshots for two months."
Wait a tick, I recognized those deployments. Only one unit was at both.
"... Beckham, were you in the Coldstream Guard?" I asked, and he gave an affirmative sort of shrug. "Bullshit. I don't believe it."
"Dad's a major there, legacy pick. Generations back at this point, I don't even remember." he said casually. "Big family thing."
"Why the hell'd you give that up and come here?" I asked, flabbergasted. Was it money? I'd looked it up, I knew the commissions for Guards regiments were as much as three times more expensive than elsewhere, and it was extremely exclusive.
"Because vacancies in the Guard are once in a bloody epoc." he said, looking over his half-eaten apple as though trying to determine where best to bite it next. Satisfied, took another chomp out of it, talking around chewing. "Spent six years in ensign, missed out on the total of two vacancies in all that time, and I told my dad the family tradition could jog on and bought the first Lieutenant commission that came up."
"Stars. I had no idea it was that bad." I said.
"It wasn't all that. It's just cluttered with all the richest and most connected sorts, not much different from other regiments other than that, and they stay in forever because nobody wants to give up a chance to rank up." he said, "Used to joke with my mates that the purpose of the Guard regiments was to get the real smug pricks away from the regular Army. Been a while since they were really an elite of any sort."
"Sure, but what about the ranks?" I asked, and he shrugged.
"Theos and Doras." he said simply, as if that were all there was to it.
I wanted to argue with him, because getting into the Guards was a big deal for a machine, you needed to apply with an exceptional service record. There was a Theo from the 7th who managed it when I was five, and the others threw him a going-away party that basically became a spontaneous, leaderless midnight parade through the city.
(Or so I heard. I'd taken advantage of the empty base to get some range time on a revolver cannon.)
But Beckham really didn't seem to see a difference. He must see us as totally interchangeable, and I wasn't sure how to feel about that. Ideally, we would be, wouldn't we?
"Can't imagine your father is too happy about it all." I said instead, and he gestured vaguely, taking a final bite from his apple.
"You got that right. Really hoping I fall into the lap of a beautiful woman with a lovely bank account sooner rather than later, because right now… how long was it to make Captain on our salary?"
"Discounting our mandatory expenses, nineteen years and two hundred and sixty-three days. Provided we save everything else." I said.
"Right, well, lemme just do a quick bit of my own math given my expenses… mhmm, carry the one… ah yes. I ought to make captain by the time I'm a brisk six hundred and a bit, I think." he said. "Can't wait."
"Wait, what? I thought human families, like, pooled money. Or something, I'm not clear on the details." I said, confused.
"It's called disinheritance, Fusie. He's a right prick, what can I say? I've got aunties I can probably call on for a few thousand pounds in a pinch, but I'd rather not bother the poor dears."
"Why didn't he just refuse to pay?" I asked, and he chucked.
"Oh, he did. My ensign's commission in the Guards was worth more than my lieutenant's commission here, and I had enough left over for my pistol, a small yacht, and a respectable liquor cabinet."
The sheer scale of money that humans dealt in casually never ceased to amaze me.
"Well, I'm sorry to hear about all that." I said. He waved it off, and then, with a few steps to get leverage, threw his apple core far out into the field.
"Say, if you pop your clogs, who gets your stuff?" he asked.
"A Theo or Dora's personal effects get auctioned off to their unit if they haven't left it to a comrade or sweetheart." I explained. It was weirdly solemn for something that sounded so callous, basically a way for friends to get mementos of the fallen machine.
"I wonder if they'd auction your commission to your mates, then."
"Huh." Hadn't thought of that.
I looked back over at my unit, watching another ripple of laser fire pulse out.
"Good news. We are now qualified to fight things eleven feet two inches tall." I drawled.
---
The next morning at breakfast, Lieutenant Kennedy joined rather late, looking somewhat rough.
"You alright, Diana?" I asked, as she accepted an enormous cup of tea from her aide and blinked stiffly.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I slept terribly's all." she said. "Insomnia."
"I don't know what that is." I said simply.
"I'm bad at sleeping."
I wasn't aware that was a thing humans could be bad at. From my experience with ensigns, sleeping was a default human state from which wakefulness was a deviation.
"Well, keep practicing, I suppose." I said neutrally, not sure what else there was to say. Kennedy, in the midsts of drinking her tea, made a very funny sound and began patting at her face with a napkin.
"Oh my God, Dora, I was drinking!"
"... my apologies. Did anything happen to prompt this insomnia?" I asked, as she patted the front of her uniform to chase away the beads of tea rolling down it.
"I guess. Oh, you would have missed it, the Duke's extended an invitation to the officers at his end of summer thingy again."
"Thingy?" I asked.
"Ball. Biggest social event of the season in this sector, great big party, dancing, dinner, so forth. We knew he was going to, this was just a formality."
"Is that what has you… insomnia-ed?" I asked,
"I guess? I didn't have a great time at the last one. My date abandoned me to talk to another girl, and I got lost in the palace trying to find the way out. Nightmare." she explained, sprawling heavily against the table. "Complete nightmare."
"Do you have to go?" I asked, and she nodded against her arms.
"Yeah, it'd be a huge insult to turn him down. He's the duke, and the base is kinda technically his? We gotta keep him happy." she said, "It's mandatory."
"... does mandatory include me?" I asked, dreading the answer I knew was coming.
"Machindatory?" she offered, and when I chortled she continued, "Yeah, I think it's also machindatory. It's on the 15th, you have to be there by 1600, which means you ought to arrive either fifteen minutes before or after but not at 1600, okay?"
"Wonderful." I said, trying not to externalize the screaming.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Good ones do!
Another great chapter!
Extra points for the TERRIBLE PUN :B
I suppose there probably isn't much in the way of prize money, when you're fighting aliens?