I woke up in an unfamiliar bed, slightly smaller than I'd grown used to, unsure exactly how I'd arrived there. It took me a long while to realise it was the guest room. I was having trouble focusing for a few minutes, virtual memory a bit overloaded perhaps, playing back snippets of half-remembered conversations as it cleared. I had only a vague idea of what I'd said, but what I could remember was embarrassing.
I reached up to disconnect my power cable at just about the moment the door clicked open, and thinking it was Miles I pulled the covers up, suddenly aware I was not wearing nearly enough to be decent. But it was Miriam, somehow, looking perfect as usual.
"How do you always know when I wake up?" I asked groggily,
(1) and she shook her head affectionately as she retrieved the battery pack.
"Good morning to you too, miss," she chirped. "Your uniform is being cleaned, and before you wander out without clothes on, you're still in Lieutenant Beckham's house. I know you haven't exactly got much to cover up, but it's the principle of the thing. How are you feeling?"
"Like shit," I muttered, flopping back against the pillow. "I think I made a fool of myself last night. Why am I still here, my house is two over-"
"It was hard enough getting you up the stairs, never mind back home, and from what I saw of your friends, I doubt any of them remember it," she explained, wrapping my power cable around the battery pack and stashing both in a shoulder bag. "Now, what's on the agenda for today?"
I wracked my still-cold processors trying to remember it all.
"Uh… morning inspection, initial company briefing whenever-it-is that Captain Murray gets out of the regimental brief, then a training plan for the day, and… oh no." According to my system clock, I was quite nearly late.
"Perhaps you can squeeze in replacing that knee joint somewhere? You still have time. One moment," Miriam reassured me as she swept out of the room. She returned minutes later with my uniform, freshly pressed, and I dressed and staggered out in the best order I could. I caught a brief glimpse of Beckham in his housecoat, red-eyed and poking at breakfast as Jim fussed over him.
"Morning, Fusie," he managed to sort of half-groan, and I waved goodbye before stepping out into the bitter cold and early-morning dark, Miriam at my heels. I retrieved my gear at the door of Number 18, then made my way alone back to the 9th company offices, my collar turned up against the cold.
The weather controller, whoever they were, were clearly some kind of fucked-up sadist or had gone mad with power, because I can't remember the last time it was this cold. The insulation of my coat couldn't do anything about being made of thermally conductive material. I swear, I could feel my batteries draining.
Our company's little office space was crowded today. The ensigns were there with our aides and clerks as usual, but Senior Sergeant Theda Füsilier and Junior Sergeant Theodore Rifleman were also present. They were the senior NCOs of my section, both foreign transfers from other militaries, namely the Prussian Army and American Marines. It looked like both of them had only just barely beat me inside, as they were clustered close to the fireplace trying to warm up. The ensigns, red-faced from the cold, looked little better.
"Sergeants. Does anyone have a proper temperature reading today?" I asked, and Ensign Sumner did that little bounce to attention she did whenever she knew something.
"It's five degrees today!" she exclaimed cheerfully.
"
Why?" Ensign Kelly blurted out, looking horrified.
"I don't know. Maybe the Duke wants a particularly white Christmas?" Sumner speculated. "It
is supposed to be warmer tomorrow, though they've scheduled even more snow."
"Warmer is warmer. So, Sergeants, what's the issue?" I asked. They wouldn't be here if something weren't wrong somewhere.
"Forces of the French Army have annexed regimental parade grounds," Theda said gravely. "They have refused all requests to move and will not provide other information."
"What did Captain Murray say?" you asked, and she glanced toward the door.
"The Captain's still in her briefing," she explained. That was unusual; I'd thought she'd just stepped out for a moment. "We have no orders, ma'am."
"It didn't sound like they were keen on shifting, ma'am," Rifleman added.
"Well, in the Captain's absence, I'll deal with this," I said flatly, stepping to the door. "Theda, wait here until I return. The rest of you, get the troops up and about. I'll get to the bottom of this, and we're getting our field back."
Normally, if the field was unusable for some reason or another, morning parade would take place on the road on the other side of the barracks. Given that the road was a solid sheet of ice right now, I wasn't just going to let some smug French pricks take our field without a fight. If nothing else, the presumption had to be challenged.
I met Miles as he came down the way and explained the situation as we walked the short path to the parade grounds, hunched against our coats. We went around the corner of the barracks building and sure enough, there was a whole damned regiment of soldiers in tan greatcoats, standing in close formation despite the cold. Officers, accompanied by their NCOs, were walking the line and checking soldiers over.
I took a moment to straighten my collar before walking over to the nearest officer.
"Excuse me, why exactly are you on our field?" I asked, very deliberately in English, and the officer turned. Instead of a human face under the brim of her hat, I was met with a glowing screen projecting a pair of a curious eyes.
"Well, look at this. It is lovely to see you again!" the officer called cheerfully, stepping over with a hand extended. "I'd call it better circumstances, but your weather controllers do not seem to agree?"
It was her—the one from the battle, with the perfect glass features, tall, beautiful, elegant. I no longer had to worry about the cold because I could feel my processors racing, fans spinning up under my collar as our hands met.
"Lieutenant," I said awkwardly. "Um, just what is going on here?"
"Were you not told?" she exclaimed, her eyes shocked, "
Théo, I need a moment, please take over. My apologies, I assumed they would tell you! We are staying for a while for joint exercises, at the request of your General Andromeda."
"... okay, but you're in our field," I said insistently, unsure what else to do.
"Ah, you see, it is
our field for now," she said simply, laughter in her voice. "I do not know for certain, but I believe you are to use the road? My apologies."
"Well, um," I said numbly, my resolve crumbling. "An honest mistake, thank you."
"Not at all! Say, once the day has concluded, would you perhaps like to get together, talk? I do not meet many machine officers from other services, you understand," she asked, her voice still cheerful. I stood dumbly for a moment before Miles nudged my arm.
"Oh. Yes. Of course," I said.
"I shall come to your office when the day is concluded, yes?"
Awkwardly, I nodded and turned to beat a hasty retreat back into the offices, Miles snickering behind me. As the door clicked closed and the warmth returned, he burst into laughter outright.
"Stars Fusie, you poor thing," he chided.
"Shut
up, Miles," I said, still reeling. "Don't even start." I looked over to Theda at the fireplace, seeing her turn away with some kind of mirth in her eyes.
"We're on the road," I said bitterly. "Go get the parade assembled, I'll be there in a moment."
A few minutes later, I stepped out to see the regiment arranged haphazardly along the road back to the officer's quarters, a line of shivering machines in grey greatcoats. I couldn't help but be irritated by the uneven lines, reduced as they were from the casualties we took in our last engagement.
Unsurprising given the thrashing they'd received yesterday, the terrible weather today, and the various delays, the troops were in low spirits, and not even the captain's arrival cheered them up much. Their relief was palpable when Lt. Colonel Harrison came by on his horse, looked them over approvingly (and perhaps a bit hastily in the temperature), and they were dismissed back into the warmth of the barracks. We returned ourselves to the office, crowded as close to the fireplace as we could get.
"So, yes, the 96th Line Infantry Regiment will be staying on base with us for the next two weeks. And yes, as our guests, they have priority on the parade grounds," Captain Murray explained, "General Andromeda is worried about our performance and wants us to coordinate on weapons and tactics. No, I'm not happy about it either."
"It's not tactics; they've got a portable energy screen! Just give us one of those!" Kelly declared loudly. "Right?"
"There's more to it, Horace. Remember, energy screens are two-way, it's why your pistol is a back-up," I explained, and he just looked glum.
"We don't even have pistols," he muttered, a bitter edge to his voice.
(2)
"Honestly, it's our own damn fault for letting them come at us," Miles said, "Screen only works in one direction, and the column means putting all their eggs in one basket. We needed to pressure a flank, but we were too busy getting trashed by their artillery. I imagine you got an earful about it from the General during your extended absence."
The Captain was quiet for a long moment.
"There were more important matters," she said, every word measured. "There was a larger issue. Our replacements are officially missing. Not just overdue, missing."
"Missing?" Ensign Brodeway asked, astonished. "What do you mean, missing?
"Did they get up and walk away?" Ensign Darley added.
"We don't know," she said gravely. "Our machines left RMC Works
(3) almost two months ago, but never made it to Teachport. The cargo barge that was supposed to pick them up didn't have them on the manifest," she explained. "It's not just us; at least three other units are affected."
"So I imagine we'll be understrength for a while," I summarised.
"I imagine so. The factory's been locked down for a full investigation," the Captain concluded. "So until that's sorted, we won't be getting any replacements."
"Hold on, we should at least be getting some refurbished then?" I asked. Both Murray and Miles looked rather confused. "I mean, Fusiliers who have left the service for the civilian sector and come back. There's always a handful."
"Huh. I'm not certain," Murray said, but Sumner cut in.
"Well, as the name implies, they'd need to be refurbished before re-entering service, they send them all back to the factory to make sure they're up to modern standards," she explained, looking quite pleased she'd found a place for yet another piece of trivia. "It's detailed in the recruitment regulations."
"Which you've read because..?" Miles asked.
"It was on the shelf," I supplied. Every time I turned around she had a book from somewhere; we'd ended up taking all the candles out of her quarters so she'd not stay up all night reading. "That's concerning, then, because it means whatever happened didn't just affect inert machines in crates."
"... I hadn't thought of that," Sumner admitted, turning back to the fireplace and inching closer.
"Was it pirates?" Kelly asked nervously. Brodeway nudged his arm and whispered something that sounded a lot like '
shut up, idiot.' Miles responded with his usual corrective poke in the small of the back with whatever was at hand, in this case a chalk holder from the planning blackboards which left a stark white mark on the ensign's coat.
"Respect your fellow officers, you little shit," he said, voice utterly monotone. "Even if you're right. There's not been pirates since, well…" He let out a slow, hesitant sigh. "Lydia, when did-"
The answer, which went on for some time, began to arrive well before the question could conclude.
---
Before long, we were torn away from the blessed warmth of the fireplace by our schedule for the day; field drills with the French providing our opposing force. We ran through dozens of formations and scenarios, accompanied on both sides by ghostly holograms on the field to simulate a combined-arms environment. What we played out were less like mock battles and more akin to chess puzzles, small scenes where occasionally our commanders would pause everything and walk the field to assess what was going on.
A few of the Theos and Doras amused themselves by freezing in exaggerated or outlandish poses whenever a hold was called, which I admit I appreciated. I swore I heard General Andromeda suppress a chuckle walking past our line.
That afternoon, the drills gave way to a long tactical theory meeting which even I could admit was a little tedious. Our commanders were worried that our current tactics were too inflexible and made us ill-suited for changing circumstances as technology improved, especially as energy screens became more and more practical.
The 7th was the British Army unit that had most recently engaged in a large-scale battle, so the meeting primarily gathered experiences and opinions from the assembled officers based on our action against the stalkers. I managed to get my courage together to suggest dividing the sections further into two teams, a manoeuvre section and a smaller fire section, citing my action retaking the gateway. I thought it might make it easier for units to manoeuvre under fire.
I'd never before offered any kind of word one way or another in any of these meetings. It's difficult to describe how it felt to know that everyone was listening, caring about what I had to say. That General Andromeda herself was listening! It was a uniquely intimidating circumstance; I have felt less exposed standing to receive enemy volleys than I did talking to a room of my supposed peers, feeling all their eyes on me. I realised only after I sat down that I may be the only machine in that meeting room to have ever given an opinion on something.
The French machine officers, I noticed, stayed quiet. Their glowing eyes remained fixed on me throughout the rest of the meeting, and it was a strange sort of relief once the meeting was called and I could retreat to the mess. The French's machine officers hadn't shown up last time, perhaps I would be spared further stares.
I didn't end up making it to the mess. I was talking with Miles about something or other, modernising our screen carriers I think, when somebody took my hand rather unexpectedly. I turned to see that same French Lieutenant again, looking at me puzzled. I froze, and it had nothing to do with the temperature.
"
Hello, Lieutenant. Where are you off to?" she asked.
"T-to the officer's mess," I stammered, and she laughed. Oh, she had a lovely laugh.
"Why?"
"Look, we could talk after-"
"Nonsense, come on! We have commandeered ourselves a little officer's club, just for us machines, come along!" she insisted. I gave a grinning Miles a defeated shrug and followed her out into the cold toward what looked like one of the storage warehouses, where a few others were already milling about the door.
Sure enough, inside it turns out they'd taken over one of the empty spaces, having procured a table and chairs from somewhere. A music player was playing softly in a corner, somebody was already going through a newspaper, and the half-a-dozen odd officers were sitting casually, talking, laughing. Somebody was shuffling a deck of cards.
"
Oh, this British machine officer at last shows her face! Come on, sit, sit!" one of them beckoned, and I eagerly took a seat. "You know how to play piquet?"
"No, but I can learn," I said, taking the empty seat and hanging my hat off the ear of the chair. It seemed to be a two-player game, and I was paired up for the first game against a voltigeur captain as cards were dealt around. It seemed I had a pretty good hand, nothing lower than a seven.
"We've heard so much about you, you know. Your story made our papers too!" a junior lieutenant said. "How is it, being an officer in your Army?"
"She was about to go off to their officer's mess, poor thing," Théa said, which prompted glances all around. "I simply had to rescue her."
"
I can speak French, you know," I said, and they all laughed.
"You can say things in it, certainly, but I do not think you can speak it!" my opponent declared, to laughter all around—probably a comment about my accent, but all in good fun.
"
How's your cuddlebug, then?" I muttered as the first exchange began. It quickly became apparent that I was no better at piquet than I was at poker or whist, though fortunately, this was deemed a practice game, and no money changed hands. Théa took the next game, which meant I was now subject to the full attention of the other officers.
I quickly worked out everyone's nicknames to keep them straight: the voltigeur captain went by the full Théodore, the two Junior Lieutenants were Young Théo and Tiphaine, then there were Lieutenants Théa, Dieudonné, and Thibault.
(4)
"So you go to the officer's mess. I suppose that makes sense, there's no other machine officers. Still, it must be so awkward, being around them while they eat and drink…" Théodore said, sounding earnestly concerned.
"It really isn't so bad. A bit of an adjustment, but being able to talk to everyone is nice. I like feeling included." I explained. They still looked concerned, though, so I kept talking. "Truly, they're much more accommodating than I expected. Honestly, they treat me like one of them."
"Kind of them!" Théa said, laughing a little.
"They are! The man I was talking to, Miles Beckham, we're very good friends," I said. To my surprise, that statement seemed rather troubling for the French officers.
"Still, it has to be isolating, isn't it?" Captain Théodore asked, and conceded the point with a nod.
"It is. Nobody seems to know how to deal with it, least of all me," I confessed. "Were it not for my aide, I don't think I'd be able to manage it. Do you lot get aides?"
"Lieutenants and above are assigned clerks to deal with paperwork, yes," Théa said.
"They don't let you do your own paperwork? Christ, I'm so sorry."
"Oh, it's not too bad. They keep us plenty busy," Tiphaine assured me. "But not a clerk then? What then, a lady's maid?"
I nodded, already bracing for what was coming. Sure enough, there was a moment of awed silence from the table.
"Alright, that's not what I was expecting," Tiphaine confessed, and there was a chorus of agreement.
"Lucky!"
"That has to be intimidating..."
"...
sacré dieu, I'm in the wrong service!" Young Théo announced.
"
You'd get a valet, dumbass," Dieudonné muttered, to laughter all around.
"Don't ruin this for me! Say, English, is she single?" Young Théo asked eagerly, leaning over the table. "Put in a good word for me, will you?"
"Excuse him, Lieutenant, he's just like this," Théodore assured me. "Manufacturing defect. Well played, Théa!"
Théa shuffled a small handful of bronze coins across the table with a triumphant expression in her eyes and the game rotated, the conversation meandering and always coming back to the awfulness of the weather. It was easy to commiserate with them about it: I'd lived here all my life, save for deployments, and it was never quite this cold. The music, a much gentler, quieter tune than yesterday, helped smooth everything into a pleasant hum. The small disagreements just didn't seem to matter.
"It does make exercises interesting, I'll say that at least. Still, I can't wait to get back home," Thibault said, undoing his collar and leaning back in his chair as he stared at his cards. "It's very mild in the city we are based, the weather controllers have modelled it after Nice. Lovely."
"Sounds like it. Meanwhile, the sadists here are trying to freeze us all to death," I complained.
"My sympathies. I personally just can't handle the cold at all, never have," Tiphaine said. "We had this rimward deployment, securing some… old bunker or something, about fifteen years ago. It would get to minus fifty
(5) at night, our human officers wore their vacuum gear!"
"Not our proudest moment," Captain Théodore agreed. "The guards took to sitting on a tent heater while on watch, sort of under their greatcoats?"
"I was one of those guards, and yes, that place was a... a nightmare!" Young Théo added. "Though I quite liked our camp, in the big cave we dug into the glacier. It was stunning."
"Sounds like it. I haven't been rimward that often, I confess," I said, "Farthest I've ever been that way was fifteen parsecs short of Man's End, and we never left the ship, though it was still bitter. Coreward though… my last deployment before my commission was on a world with
six suns. Just my section alone ran through thirty gallons of coolant every day."
"How did the humans even live there?" Young Théo asked.
"They had to keep their screens on just to leave their tents. The worst part was, we only found out after we left that the critters we were there to guard against were in their hibernation cycle. Total waste of time." Shame, I would have loved to fight a giant worm.
"Those deployments are the worst! If they're going to interrupt our training to send us out, we should at least get to fight something," Théa complained. "I will admit, I am jealous of your last deployment. Those 'stalkers' sound thrilling!"
She sounded so enthusiastic about it, and honestly, I couldn't blame her. As much as they were truly some of the worst creatures I'd ever encountered in the galaxy, they were a
damn good scrap.
"They put up a fight, that's for sure," I confirmed. "Shame you missed it."
"Perhaps we will find our own portal," she said, sighing wistfully. "I would love to test my skills against them."
"Speaking of, Dora, I heard you crossed swords with Théa here. Impressive, isn't she?" Théodore asked.
"She's… she's quite good. I didn't stand a chance," I admitted, nodding respectfully. "I'm still something of a beginner with the sword."
"Oh, come now, Lieutenant," Théa assured me. "Yes, your swordsmanship could use some work, but you are no slouch in a fight. You would have had me if it weren't for your knee."
"Oh? What happened?" Tiphaine asked, clear concern in her voice.
"I just had a joint give out on me. Happens to the best of us," I explained. The table only seemed to look more concerned at that. "Routine, really, just the worst timing."
"That's why I get them swapped every two months. Can't be too careful," Thibault said. "My sergeant used to say, knees and hip bearings every two, ankles every three, elbows every six. Stuck to it like clockwork and haven't had a problem in four decades!"
"
She can't afford that; look at her," Dieudonné muttered sourly.
"... yes, I was getting to that," Théa said, throwing him an annoyed look. "Lieutenant, Dora… does the British Army not pay to maintain its machines? Do they not even cover your repairs?" She sounded so
sad.
"Oh… well, officers cover their own medical expenses; you see?" I replied.
"A human does not need expensive new bearings and joints every few months," Thibault pointed out. "Nor new plating, or brushless motors, or fresh batteries…"
"And they have
fortunes, generations of wealth," Théodore pointed out. "This is the problem. They have you thinking you are one of them. You
aren't."
"I don't want to ask for special treatment," I mumbled, feeling overwhelmed.
"Yet you asked to be an officer!"
"It is not special treatment."
"
Ridiculous!"
"Enough! Lieutenant, would you join me please," Théa said quietly, pulling on my arms. Frustrated and overwhelmed, I let her drag me along out the hall and toward the door, and as I left I heard conversation pick back up in French behind me. Probably hadn't made the best showing for King and Country, exactly.
"I'm sorry, this is very overwhelming…" I admitted sheepishly, and she held a finger to my lips to indicate silence. God, she was so… so forward.
"I can see, it can't have helped being outnumbered?" she said, looking concerned. "How about we talk about this, just the two of us? Less overwhelming, maybe? Would that be better?"
"Y-yes," I nodded, feeling my fans speed up. "They're absolutely right, I really should bring it up, I know they're right. But… I don't know how long it would take to fix, so in the meantime…"
She nodded, leaning back against the wall, clearly thinking on it deeply. I could hear, very subtly, her fans spinning up, see her eyes wander the hall as she considered it, and I couldn't help but keep looking. In the low, distant light of the hallway, the tailoring of her uniform and the perfect craftsmanship of her features stood out even more starkly, the mirror-smooth surface of her casing, the light scattering subtly through and softening the outline.
She was beautiful, but also
unique, I'd never seen a machine like her, and it wasn't just her height that made me feel small before her.
"This all makes sense, yes. But our costs are too expensive for any machine to keep up with; there is a reason Fusiliers downgrade after they leave the military. Even with your salary… a Fusilier is subsidised by the state, it is simply how the maths works out. What will you do until they change the rules? What will you do if they don't?"
"I don't know. But it's not just that, I'm also… I'm just really cheap." I admitted, laughing at myself. "I had a windfall and I've used it to keep up vital repairs, but I got into the habit of letting everything go too long while I was saving for my commission. It's something I'm working on."
"I am glad to hear that, at least," she said warmly. "I am sorry it was so much; you strike me as a person who has been lonely for a long time, yes? I hope that is not too forward."
"N-no, not at all. To the question. To you, asking the question…"
Fuck. "I… I've never been the most social, no, and it is a little hard making friends in my position, you know?"
She nodded.
"Between two worlds, yes." She sighed, leaning more heavily against the wall, and I tried not to stare too much as she loosened her collar, exposing the tiniest hint of brass workings at her collarbone. "Are the other officers kind to you? The human officers?"
"Stars, yes, they all are. I… I was fitting in, for a while, but I made some mistakes I'm not proud of. I don't think it's impossible to fit in, but such events are discouraging. At least I have Miles."
"Miles?" she asked, sounding a little amused.
"Lieutenant Beckham, the other Lieutenant in my company. He's… well, he's a right prick, but once you get past that he's a lovely man."
"Oh, is he? It is good to hear you at least have somebody. But still! It is good to talk to others who share your experience, and while I can see you are shy, charisma is like any other skill; you must practise and drill, no?"
"Well, in the sense you mean, I haven't a lot of peers to practise on," I pointed out, and she nodded.
"Perhaps this can be fixed?" she asked. "Now, come on, I believe they are setting up for a bit of knife throwing." She must have seen the quizzical look in my eyes, because she continued. "Have you ever played darts, Dora? It is like playing darts."
"I have not played darts, but I'll take your word for it," I said.
I reentered the room to find the table and cards had been pushed aside to create a clear lane, and everyone was standing around a cloth laid out on the side table, glints of silver visible between them as I approached. They welcomed me back warmly and with a few apologies (some of which were extracted following glares from Théa).
As the guest, they insisted I go first. I stepped up to the side table and took a look at the knives; they were an identical collection of gleaming blades with small handles, presumably balanced for the purpose. I selected one at random and, following the guidance of the other officers, stood behind a power cord laid across the floor to make the distance.
"Just throw it?" I asked, a bit nervous.
"Just throw it. It may take you a few tries, but perhaps not!" Tiphaine assured me. I squared up against the target, the red-white-and-blue ring propped against the far wall, and threw as hard as I could.
The knife embedded itself up to the crossguard in the plywood. Unfortunately, it had hit handle first, so it still didn't count.
"Shi- ah, darn," I said, catching myself just in time. "It's trickier than it looks."
"
She can't even curse," Dieudonné said, rolling his eyes and going back to shuffling his cards.
"Of course I can! I just-"
"- Have been trying to stop yourself to fit in with the humans?" Théodore asked, and I sighed and drew another knife.
"Yes. It's not done, you understand," I said. This throw hit side-on, leaving a perfectly knife-shaped indent in the plywood. "Well, fuck."
"There, see! Like that, you'll get the hang of it!" Young Théo assured me cheerfully, gesturing for me to take another knife. I picked it up gingerly, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.
"Look, I know I'll never quite sound like them, but I have to try, right? Putting in the effort is what matters," I explained, trying to line up the knife and figure out how to throw it properly. It didn't feel intuitive.
"
Wasted effort. You're still metal at the end of the day," Dieudonné grumbled.
"Enough of that. Dora, hold on," Théa said. Without any sort of warning, she stepped beside me, taking the knife from my hand and showing me how she held it. "Take your gloves off; they're not helping. The pads of your fingers will give you more traction."
I spent a long, hesitant motion considering it, looking around at the machines all around me. Théa had her fine white gloves tucked into her belt, and none of the others wore any, though I was sure the human French officers wore them. I remembered them politely removing them before sitting down at the dinner table. Miriam had impressed on me just how important they were; that for a gentlewoman and an officer, they were as essential as shoes for going out in public, removed only under particular circumstances.
(6)
A bit self-consciously, I pulled off my gloves and tucked them into my sash. I took back the knife, feeling the edge against the hardened silicone pads of my fingers, resting lightly against the steel hinges.
I lined myself up, squared my shoulders, and threw. The knife embedded itself point first, so far into the wall that only the pommel was visible.
"Good throw!" Théa cheered. "Now we'll work on actually hitting the target. You think anyone will mind the wall?"
"I'll make sure they send somebody to patch it," I said, wincing a little. "I think perhaps I should watch you all a while longer, get a feeling for the technique."
Tiphaine stepped up next, almost dancing with a sort of bubbly eagerness as Théa handed her the knives. One after another, she threw them dead-centre into the target, making it look utterly effortless.
"How'd you start doing this again?" I asked.
"Oh, I can't even remember," she muttered, "Had to be before my time."
"Much before. We picked it up off the American machine officers," Thibault explained. "It was something to pass the time during dinners or formal events… medal ceremonies, balls..."
"Human things," I summarised.
"Yes, exactly!" he said, taking the knives up. "You know, I was one of the first of our machine officers, I've been where you were. A hundred and fifty years ago, so some things were different, yes, but I remember the same awkwardness. Not fitting in, no matter how much we tried."
"How did you handle it?" I asked.
"We started throwing knives."
---
The next day, it was snowing so intensely as to be coming down sideways, the wind howling at the windows. We fought our way up the roads through thick snow to find that, fortunately, Captain Murray had managed to arrange for the company to use the firing range ahead of anyone else, meaning we could sit securely inside the heated halls and practice marksmanship while everyone else struggled through the snow.
Sergeant Theda knew her work well enough that the exercise mostly ran itself, so Miles and I just sat behind the line talking about nothing and running the ensigns through their long-promised pistol training. One of Miles' lot, Ensign Darley, stepped up, taking the beat-up old practice pistol that must have been older than I was and thumbing the activation switch.
"Ready, Ellen?" he asked, and she nodded, pistol held tightly. "Go!"
The holographic target appeared at the far end of the range, a long way for a pistol, but she confidently levelled the pistol and fired in a burst of coolant smoke and golden light. There was a distant flash, and the display above the booth flashed to show a glancing hit along the outer ring of the target, a bit wide from beam attenuation.
"Oh, nearly!" Miles exclaimed, "Damned good!"
I swore, I saw something very near to pride on her usually emotionless face.
"A fair shot for that range, but keep practising," I recommended. "Now remember to safe the weapon before refilling the coolant…"
"Of course," she replied, pushing the latch closed and reaching for the bottle of coolant. Miles sat back against the pillar supporting the edge of the tent, lazily waving the range controller to reset the range.
"So how was the frog seminar, then?" he asked, an eyebrow raised.
"Pretty nice, actually. They're a good bunch, as French as they are," I summarised. "Very welcoming."
"And what of that Lieutenant?" he asked slyly. "Was she as nice as she looked?"
I snickered.
"Miles, you need to stop saying things like that, people'll get ideas," I joked. "But… oh stars, she is though. It's strange to think that way about another Fusilier
(7), but she hardly even looks like one of us! Well, one of me. You know."
"Mhmm," he teased. "Certainly looks a lot less like a suit of armour than most of you, that's for sure. Think she's interested?"
"In me?" I asked, feeling suddenly rather flustered. "I doubt it, look at her. Plus, she might not even be into other women, you know?"
"She certainly didn't act like a stranger." he pointed out, barely able to keep from laughing.
"Maybe she's just affectionate?"
"Maybe. Hold that thought. Horace! You're up!"
Ensign Kelly took the pistol, now cold again from the short wait and fresh coolant. He stepped up to the booth, grinning enthusiastically and almost bouncing a little on his heels as he prepared.
"Steady, Horace, steady," I warned, and he nodded, squaring himself up down the range, weapon pointed skyward in the approved fashion. "Alright, safety off, and ready now…"
He clicked the safety latch back, exposing the red ready light, and as Miles depressed a button on the controller, the target suddenly appeared at the range, close, perhaps ten metres and moving toward him. He levelled the pistol, the dot of the targeting tracker nearly exactly a bullseye, then he thought better of it and stepped to the side.
"Too close!" he shouted, and with a nod from me, he clicked the pistol off.
"Say, what do we do if something gets too close and we haven't a fusilier to hide behind?" Ensign Brodeway asked, sitting back at one of the benches. "What then?"
"Oh, don't do that. That's a bad plan," Miles said, "Try always having a fusilier around, that's what I do."
"Brilliant," Darley responded, utterly monotone.
"Seriously, if that's the case, things are bad enough already, pull the trigger," I advised, "Just make damn sure your screens are up. Otherwise, you're better off running."
"Right, at a range like that it's dangerous." Sumner summarised.
"At a range like that, you'll cook yourself a nice medium-rare, Lydia," Miles warned. "Even with your shields, expect a sunburn."
That got a laugh, which was a bit disconcerting. Optical backscatter is no laughing matter.
"If things are very close quarters, it's not a bad idea to use your stun setting, if your capacitors are charged," I ventured. "Less backscatter, and either a fusilier can finish them, you'll have your sword, or you can escape."
We ran the lot of them through a few more shots, and I'll admit I was proud of their progress, as well as the care and respect they showed the weapon. At this rate, they'd have their certification within the month.
"Alright, fifteen-minute break, then when you get back here we're going to look at carbines," I ordered, and the four of them shuffled down to the back of the range, chattering excitedly about the experience and other human things. "I swear, they're almost halfway competent. When did that happen?"
"I wouldn't go that far," Miles said, plucking the beat up old pistol off the table and inspecting it. "So you going to attend their little knitting circle tonight as well?"
"I would, but I have another appointment," I explained.
"Ah yes! Your mysterious once-a-week Another Appointment," Miles said, grinning. "Until I learn otherwise I would like to assure you that I am assuming you are stepping out with somebody highly controversial in secret, and I will be sure to tell everyone that if they inquire."
---
That evening, I was shuffling my coat back on when there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and Sergeant Theda stepped in from the outside, coat still on and eyes glowing against her dark silhouette.
"Sergeant?" I asked, "What's the matter?"
She glanced nervously down the hall to either side before speaking.
"Nothing serious, ma'am. Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"Oh no, I was just heading out, but I'm early. We can take a moment," I assured her, stepping back behind my desk. "What is it?"
"Just an issue I wanted to sort quietly, ma'am" she said, shedding her coat and drawing a notepad from the inside pocket. "Haven't had a chance to bring it up with all the exercises."
She set a crumpled piece of paper onto the desk and pushed it across, and I smoothed it out as best as I could to read it. It was crudely printed and to the point; Fusiliers wanted for private employment. Apply at the Elizabeth Ballroom on Christmas Day, and then a pound symbol and a fairly unbelievable figure.
"... stars, that's a lot of money," I said. "T-to be clear, I wouldn't
desert over it, but…"
"You'd think about it, ma'am?" Theda asked. I nodded.
"Briefly, Sergeant. Very briefly. I don't think this would actually work on anyone, but with boxies you never know. Brief our guards and remind them that no amount of money is worth betraying the crown, and I'll hand this to the Captain tomorrow morning."
"Very good, ma'am." I grabbed my coat and stepped out, and she followed, presumably just heading the same way. As we walked, her posture and composure changed. Sergeant Theda the emotionless Prussian disciplinarian vanished as if she were merely a magician's trick, replaced with the much less stern Theda Füsilier I'd come to know. "Any idea who would try something this stupid?"
"I don't know, some young wannabe explorer. Maybe somebody who wanted to order a Fusilier and can't get one due to whatever's happening there. Does that make any sense?" I proposed. Theda tapped her chin while thinking, the metal of her face ringing.
"That's a better theory than I had. I suspected perhaps it was some sort of scheme to get Fusilier parts, perhaps connected to our missing machines," Theda proposed. "I think I'm just feeling useless."
"I understand that. How have you been holding up this past week, Sergeant?"
"Well enough, all told." she said, "Things have been frustrating; morale is not great after the beating we got. Boxies are not used to losing. How about you?"
While it would be something of an understatement to say that Theda and I hadn't seen eye to eye when we first met, we'd come to an understanding since. We were far more alike than different, and neither of us had the moral high ground. Where I'd spent decades repressing everything until I was wound like a pocket watch, Theda had taken her rejection from Prussian officer school hard and turned it into a bitter, burning resentment she only barely had a handle on.
"Well enough, I suppose. The French officers have been a mixed bag. Their humans have been awful, but their machines…"
Dropping the charges against her was the best choice I'd ever made as an officer, I think. The Theos and Doras loved her, even after everything that happened: her perfectionism, attention to detail, and demanding nature was everything a soldier could want out of an NCO.
"Oh, that the officer you fought, hmm?" she asked in a mocking tone. "Why am I not surprised?"
"Urgh, first Miles, now you,"
"No judgement, ma'am. You talked to her?" she asked.
"Yes, and the other machine officers. It's, uh, it's nice, they're very kind. It's a good change, to have a space where I'm… I'm not expected to pretend I'm not myself," I explained, and she snorted back a laugh.
"
Nein. I meant to say, did you fuck her?" she asked casually.
"
No. Stars, Sergeant!"
"Disappointing, she's lovely," she needled, and I sighed.
"Oh, knock it off. Though… she is," I admitted, "And incredibly forward, too. It's been driving me mad."
"What's stopping you, then? Nerves?" she asked. "Or are you still not over your Beatrice there?"
"Thin ice, sergeant," I warned. She was still infuriating; I was just growing immune to it. "No, I'm just... I feel somewhat off balance. The war games, French in the mess, the
everything, all just as I was starting to feel like I had a handle on things again. I need a break, I think."
Theda fumbled around her pocket for something, coming up with a short ivory tube with an audio jack with a dial on the back.
"I have just the thing, ma'am. You sound like you need it," she said. Cautiously, I grabbed it, inspecting it closely.
"Oh, haven't seen one of these in a decade at least." After a moment of hesitation, I stuck it in the audio port at my neck; after a moment of fuzzy static, a slow, soothing beat started playing through my head. "Where did you get this?"
"A friend," she replied cryptically, fetching another from her pocket and slotting it home.
Machines don't do boredom well, but we can't always be working. Our creators, in their foresight, gave us the same solution that nature provided man: intoxication. These days it was music, different rhythms and tempos inducing various effects on our cognition. But there was no reason audio couldn't be piped in directly, bypassing our speakers. The slow rhythm felt like a sort of static buzz at the back of my skull accompanied by an instantly soothing feeling, and so much tension left my actuators it almost hurt.
"Good?" she asked, smiling.
"Mmhm… you shouldn't have that on duty, you know," I pointed out. "I'll be confiscating this, of course."
"Confiscating what, Lieutenant?" she said, doing her best to sound innocent.
Nothing sounds innocent in a German accent.
I was not good at waiting. One would think it is a talent I would excel at, when so much of the job of a soldier is waiting. I'd go so far as to say most of it is waiting, then marching, then digging, construction, and paperwork. The skills related to fighting were a distant fifth place.
But I have never been good at it. When I stood in line at inspection, when I sat in fields for the transports to arrive, in those sickening moments when the enemy shouldered arms and we all knew the volley was coming, I couldn't stand it. Waiting was time I would spend in anxious, useless introspection, running ruts in the pathways of the worst thoughts.
The worst part was I knew that was what I was doing, and I knew it was unhealthy. So I drove the deepest rut of all;
ought. I ought not to dwell, I ought not to think about it, a better machine ought to simply wait. It replaced the anxiety with a poisonous emptiness, time that passed without me in it. Disassociation.
It was how I'd been alive thirty-three years, fought a dozen battles, and felt like I'd only been alive for a few months at best. Trying to block out the world and pretend none of it existed. The solution turned out to be the opposite.
I turned off my cameras, held myself as still as possible. I listened carefully to the world around me, and slowly, I began to hear the subtle noises in the otherwise quiet office. Distant feet and voices on other floors, the wheels and tracks and howling wind outside, the ticking of the pocketwatch lying on the desk. Fans; the wide metal one in the ceiling piping air into the room, and the hum of the two silent fans under my collar drawing air over the heat sink at my core. The sound of coolant moving through the hoses and pipes.
I focused on those sounds, on stilling them so I could better hear the world around me. My mind and body generated heat constantly through action, but I was still, and if I could quiet my thoughts, I could quiet the fans as well.
Just the world, and me as part of it. The fans slowed, the hum dying away. The flow of coolant became barely perceptible. My internal thermometer ticked down. The fan in the ceiling was loud like a screaming rocket, the distant voices shouted orders, the footsteps an earth-shaking march. The tick-tick-tick of that tiny pocketwatch like a heartbeat.
Here, I could wait. Present in the moment, not in my own mind. At peace.
I heard the footsteps coming down the stairs, opening a door in the hallway, proceeding toward the door despite the muffling effect of the thick patterned carpet. I heard humming servos, metal on metal as a hand closed on the door. I heard the latch clunk and the hinges squeak and the air displaced in the room by the door swinging open. I heard fans speed up as a machine stepped closer, and I could tell just from the flow of air in the room that a machine was circling around to check the status lights on my neck.
"I'm okay, Tom," I said quietly.
"Blimey, Lieutenant, you had me fooled!" he exclaimed. I switched my cameras on to see the familiar mechanic, shaking his head. "Thought you'd run out of batteries waiting, wouldn't be the first time…"
"It hasn't been that long, how does that happen?" I asked. He set his toolbox down on the desk and fished out an electric screwdriver.
"Oh, not too often, but sometimes we get glitched machines in who forget to plug themselves in at night and the like, you know? Now hold still, please."
I felt the drill contact the bolt at the back of my neck, then again just under my ear. The earsplitting shriek of the drill cause a momentary discomfort, and then my head suddenly felt a good twenty pounds lighter. There was a considerable
clunk as the piece was set down, followed by the uneasy feeling of somebody rooting around inside my skull.
"I'm sorry this is such an ordeal. Must be easier with other machines," I said, feeling a bit embarrassed.
"Not to worry, there's a reason this port isn't out in the open. Wouldn't want just anyone getting at it, would you?" he responded cheerfully, stepping back around. "The deprogrammer will be with you in just a moment, try not to give them such a scare, will you?"
I nodded, the motion feeling odd with the asymmetric weight of my skull. The mechanic hefted his toolbag and headed out of the room, and I tried to return to that quiet awareness again; it was better than dwelling on the fact that my processors, the damnable lump of silicon and gold that made me
me, were currently without the half-inch of starforged steel that protected it from the world.
Even months on, I still couldn't get used to it. The wire snaking out of the back of my head and over my shoulder wasn't helping.
The door clicked open.
"So, Dora, how are we doing today?" Cameron asked, taking a seat opposite. They were a Mechanist, obviously, one a bit on the small size, and they did all their reading with a monocle lens over one eye. I can only assume they preferred very small fonts.
"A bit overwhelmed, to be honest," I replied. Cameron nodded, plucking their computer book from the bag beside the chair and plugging in the wire currently running to my processors.
"What do we say we work on that a little?" they asked.
"If we could, please?"
Deprogramming wasn't
reprogramming, as much as skittish machines might conflate the two. From what I understood, the programming of machines was dynamic, unlike the static code executed by, say, a horse's navigational computer or the regulatory tabulator on a transmutative reactor. That's what made us self-aware, the fact that the act of executing our code changed it. I brought up relevant sections of programming as I talked, which Cameron saw in their codebook; they could see all the little links and loops and we could talk about it.
We were robust systems built on a strong foundation, but glitches would emerge in any system if subject to the wrong circumstance. Or, as the quote under the framed portrait in Cameron's office liked to remind me, "I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?'"
The book powered on, and I could see characters scroll across it, my processes rendered in code as I thought them. Following my eyes, Cameron lifted the book and settled in. Right. First thing I asked when I'd first come in was to see my own code. After assuring me that everyone asked that, he told me it wasn't advisable. Quickest path to thinking yourself into an infinite loop, and I had more than enough of those.
"Right, so, tell me about your week. How are you holding up?"
Deprogramming is something that soldiers talk about with a sort of reverent fear, and it had made it unthinkable to me for years, but now that I've started, it's a rather pleasant experience for the most part. Of course, it helped that Cameron was one of the most patient machines I'd ever had the pleasure of interacting with.
I certainly had a lot to talk about in any case, with the week I'd had. Cameron never judged anything I said, just listening patiently, reading the code as I dredged up everything that had happened. The first few sessions had been dense, awful things, picking at the memories and trauma at the centre of all my problems. But now that we had a solid grasp on my issues and could deal with them one week at a time, things were far more routine.
"Well enough, I suppose. It's been very busy with the war games and all; we got a bit of a nasty shock because the French rolled right over us. They had, um… Sorry, I don't want to get too technical."
"Go as much into it as you like, I just might have to ask you to explain some things," Cameron assured me. "For starters, I'm not exactly sure what a 'war game' is, though I suspect it's not something done on a board with dice."
I explained, as best I could, what it was and how it had unfolded, and I got a bit carried away. Cameron would always tell me not to stop talking about things that were important to me; it was healthy to express one's interests and all that. They listened intently, making the occasional note on a pad as I continued on to tell them about dinner and the Machine Officer's Club.
"If I could cut you off there? The way you're talking about the club is beginning to sound a lot like blaming yourself for not handling it perfectly. How reasonable is it to do that? You spend most of your time alone or with one or two close friends at a time, and interacting with groups of others, of strangers, is a skill that has to be developed."
"I just wish I'd not been so uncomfortable," I admitted.
"The elimination of discomfort is neither our goal, nor something to be desired. Discomfort is very often just something testing our boundaries. While not all boundaries are healthy, having none wouldn't be good either," they reminded me. "And testing our boundaries is very often how we grow."
"Théa said something similar," I recalled, and Cameron nodded.
"She seems like quite the machine, from how you describe her. You said earlier she encouraged you to make friends with the other French officers, your peers, and I think that's a good impulse."
I dwelt on that a moment; I wanted to talk about Théa, I felt I needed to, but I wasn't exactly sure what to say because I couldn't figure out exactly how I felt. But, as Cameron had frequently reminded me, staying quiet about such things helped nobody, least of all myself.
"About that…" I started, pausing for a moment. Trying to compose it. "I've been, I suppose, keenly aware of the ways I'm out of place, and it's been… haunting me, I suppose. Especially after the date with that Messenger I told you about, and everything with Kennedy and Beatrice… I know there's more to these things than romance, but it makes it all… stark, you know?"
"That makes sense," Cameron agreed.
"The thing I keep ending up thinking is that Beatrice was, in retrospect, my
one chance. Another machine out of place, but comfortable with it. There wouldn't be an imbalance. And then I ruined it-"
"Being reported as dead due to circumstances far beyond your control is not you ruining it," Cameron reminded me yet again. I groaned.
"Yes, yes, but my point is… I don't know what my point is," I admitted. The thoughts, which had never really been that coherent, had completely broken down, liquid flowing between my mental fingers. Cameron nodded slowly.
"That's okay. Take your time. If you don't mind me changing the subject… did you manage to get that joint of yours replaced with a proper one?"
"... no," I admitted. "I've just not got around to it. Besides, the current joint would hold a while longer, so I'm not… I'm making excuses, aren't I?"
"It's good you recognized it, at least!" they replied, clearly pleased. "You'll forgive me making the presumption, but I have a feeling this ties more generally to your unwillingness to spend money on yourself?"
"I think so, yes," I admitted. "I'm not very good at that. I only come here because I promised Miriam…"
"I know," Cameron said quietly. Of course, they could probably see it whenever it came up. "I am glad you come anyway. But you've said yourself you find it easy to put things like this off."
"I… I have this absurd conviction that I need to conserve that time and money for others. I know it doesn't make sense, I can't help anyone if my bloody leg's off…"
"But knowing about a thought doesn't stop it. Hmm… Can I leave you a comment about this, perhaps?"
I'd been wary of it, worried about letting some strange machine make changes in my programming, even changes we both agreed to. But something this small, this simple, just a reminder, it seemed very reasonable. It might also be a good way to acclimate myself to the idea, which was probably what Cameron was thinking.
"I'd like that, yes," I admitted.
"Good!" Cameron said, plucking their pen from the charger and twirling it dexterously through their fingers. "Let's sort this out, shall we? Now, what will you do tomorrow morning?"
"Go to the regimental engineer and buy a new part. Bring it home, have Tom install it," I replied, fidgeting with my hands rather uncomfortably. "Simple as that. Just go buy it."
Cameron started scratching away at the code I'd brought up. I had expected it to feel like something, something cold maybe, but it never did.
"Okay, there we are. Let's go over it again. Tomorrow morning, you'll just go buy the part?"
"I'm just going to buy the part. It'll be easy," I confirmed, feeling a dread I couldn't place. And then another thought, one in another voice.
//To help others you must first help yourself.
As much as I sometimes wished Cameron would take a pen and strike out all the awful things resting in my drives, it wouldn't work. Those things were me, etched inexorably into the way I thought. Every time I'd dwelt on them, every time I'd repressed an authentic expression, every bad habit I'd built, they etched themselves deeper into my circuits. Every dark thought had come with increased weight on some statistic, a new variable to be referenced by other thoughts in a great tangled knot. Delete those, and my code probably wouldn't even run at this point.
For all their problems, humans are very lucky they don't run on code as we do.
"Alright, now, if you're alright with it, let's circle back around to this other Lieutenant and the French officers?" Cameron asked. I nodded. "You were talking about feeling out of place, not belonging, and about Beatrice?"
"... right, yes." I took a moment to try and compose my thoughts again; it felt a little easier this time, having had a bit of time to disentangle myself from the derailed train of thought earlier. "What I suppose I'm saying is that… the French officers seemed almost sad that I was trying to live up to the station, right? The human ones and the machine ones both."
The shape of the thought finally crystalized in my mind, the dark cloud pinned down.
"I'm worried they're right. I'm not trying to fit in, I'm trying to be
human, and it's impossible. I'm worried I'm setting myself up for inevitable failure."
Cameron watched the code for a while, then looked up at me.
"I think I understand what you're saying, but I would caution that this line of thought might be, at least in part, you seeking a way this can be your fault," they cautioned. I thought about that for a while; I could see it, but it didn't seem like an answer. It didn't resolve anything.
"Maybe."
Cameron made a few final notes, then looked up from the codebook.
"I'm afraid our session is nearing its end, but I'll see you in two weeks?"
---
I swallowed my pride in the face of the freezing temperatures and took a cab back to the base, watching the city out of the window as night fell early. While most of Antares City was still alien to me, despite having lived here for three decades, the streets between Cameron's office and the base had at least become familiar.
Through it, I finally had an intuitive map of the city and its construction in my mind, and it rendered somewhat stark the division I found myself straddling. The city radiated out from the Duke's Palace with eight broad avenues, connected by a dozen broad boulevards, and these were lined with the human-facing portions of the city. Rowhouses, hotels, restaurants, services and entertainment of all sorts to serve almost a hundred thousand human visitors and residents during the social season.
But strung between and behind them was the rest of the city, where five million machines lived and worked, if such a distinction could be made. It was largely invisible from my perch in the cab, balanced atop its winter tires
(8), just brief glimpses down the narrow alleys and sidestreets. Behind those stately buildings was a whole other world.
The cab rolled through the northern checkpoint and dropped me almost directly back at Number 18. Miriam met me at the door, her eyes bright as she took my coat.
"Welcome home, MIss. I trust you had a productive session?" she asked.
"I'm honestly never sure," I said, collapsing behind my desk and hunting for something to do. There was nothing but the half-finished memo about our missing replacements I'd scrapped, sure that everyone involved was already well aware of the problem. "I know that it's helping, but it feels like I haven't a big breakthrough in a long time…"
"If you'll excuse my saying, Miss, maintenance work is rarely exciting, but it doesn't make it any less important," she said.
"Yes. Um, for the records, tomorrow morning I'll be getting that replacement knee pin," I said. For lack of anything else, I grabbed the regulation handbook off my shelves: never hurt to reread it.
"Rereading that old thing again? You have it memorised, miss."
"You're right, but I can't think what else to do. I ought to pass the time productively at least," I said.
"I always get worried when you start saying the word
ought, you know," Miriam said simply. Conceding the point, I pushed my chair back and stood up, then stopped, still unsure what exactly I was supposed to do with myself.
This was the issue. I'd spent so damnably long thinking like that, about what I ought to do, that when I looked for something else it wasn't there. Everything I came up with was just more kinds of work, but none of it was actually productive; it just soothed the tangled knot of programming that associated leisure with shame, that said a machine like me ought to have nothing but work. I got angry because a good machine ought not have these problems, and then I remembered I ought not be so hard on myself, and that got
very close to dismissal, and…
I stopped. This was a cycle. I had to break the cycle. I had to do something to break it, to stop etching these toxic thoughts deeper and deeper into my circuits. Something positive.
"I need a break," I said. Miriam clapped her hands, and her eyes filled with proud excitement.
"She's learning! Miss, that's the smartest thing you've ever said! What would you like to do?" she asked. I'll admit her enthusiasm perked me up, before I got caught up on the next hurdle.
"I… don't really know. I'm not sure," I said. The only activity I could think of were dance halls. I knew of a few places in the city where machines of my persuasion frequented, but I was hardly in the mood for that. "I've not got a lot of experience… taking breaks."
"Hmm. I would ordinarily suggest a walk about the town to see what might catch your eye, but I can't recommend it so long as the weather remains this atrocious. The young Lord Antares has given our weather controllers quite the schedule."
"Why's he gone and done a thing like that?" I complained, and she chuckled.
"There's an upcoming guest for his Christmas party who is quite taken with winter. A girl he'd like to impress, as rumour has it," she said, laughing a little.
From what I remembered, Lord Antares was a tiny human child; younger than the Ensigns, if such a thing were possible. It seemed a bit much to impose on a whole city for what I could only presume was a childish crush. But then again, courtship was extremely important for humans.
"Right. So something indoors, on short notice… a gaming club, perhaps?" Miriam suggested.
"I haven't exactly got the spare coin for gambling-" I started, and she shook her head.
"No, not gambling. Games of skill, no money at stake. Backgammon, hare games, conspirateurs, agon…" she listed, clearly thinking a moment as she went.
"Chess?" I asked. "I play chess against some of the officer's in the mess, and-"
"We can't play chess, miss," Miriam said, looking at me aghast.
"Why not? Is there a rule?" I asked, "I'm quite good at it, you know, I've won every game I've-"
"... oh stars, you don't know?" Her tone was one of complete exasperation. "No, miss, we can't play chess because chess-playing was used as a benchmark when we were first designed. The game's solved; we're all as good as one can possibly be at it. We'll always beat a human, and if two machines play chess, it's always a draw."
"... oh," I felt rather guilty, not to mention a bit sour at having my victories invalidated. "That would explain why it was so easy; I felt like I knew what he'd do before he'd done it…"
"In a matter of speaking, you did," Miriam said plainly. "That said, there are chess variations we haven't got solved, and a lot of gaming clubs have those."
"Alright. That does sound nice." I said.
"Of course, this is a social activity, you should take a friend. April isn't working right now and her boyfriend is, I can have a message sent ahead of your cab right now as you get ready."
"... how do you know all that?" I asked, and she smiled.
"Because last time she was here, I asked her for her work schedule so I could do this, Miss," she explained matter-of-factly. I couldn't figure out an appropriate response; I never ceased to be amazed by the sheer amount of work Miriam put in.
(9)
"If it's alright, I think I'd like to change into civvies, then. I'm not particularly feeling like going about as
Lieutenant Fusilier right now."
"Completely understandable, Miss, and very adaptive. If I can suggest the light blue dress, I'll be up in a moment to help you with the ties," Miriam said, disappearing around the corner toward the servant's area, presumably to get directions to the club.
I made my way up the stairs and pushed open the frankly ludicrous closet adjoining my room, and hanging neatly within were five outfits. My well-worn sergeant's uniform, for old time's sake, my second-hand brown dress, which Miriam said I ought to keep in case I took up painting, and three new dresses. I was ill-suited for dresses, but they had their utility. My uniform got me treated differently in a way I was fairly self-conscious of, especially once they realised I was
that Lieutenant Fusilier. In a dress, I could be anonymous.
The process of getting the dresses had impressed on me the differences between machine fashion and human. At Miriam's direction, I'd acquired two cheaper dresses in the machine style, all thick heavy fabric and volume, and one more along human lines. I understood the logic; there might well be a formal occasion where a military uniform would be inappropriate, such as if I ever got posted with Americans.
Still, it was by far the worst of the dresses. Human fashion showed
skin; the arms were bare, and if the collar was any deeper you could see that I didn't have anything to see. The fabric was so sheer that you could see the edges of my armour plating, as if to call attention to the fact it wasn't made with my body in mind, and the in-season pastel colours looked wrong contrasted against steel.
Thankfully, the light blue dress was in a machine style. Heavy fabrics, long sleeves. Better than the alternative. Miriam hummed happily to herself while she did up the ties, and I just tried not to look too uncomfortable in the mirror.
Stars, I wish I could wear trousers everywhere.
I got my coat back with directions from Miriam, alongside confirmation that April was overjoyed to go, and stepped back out into the cold. It felt so strange that I could just go out and… have an outing. My life experience thus far was that going and hanging out with friends was something that was proposed, planned, and dreaded through letters weeks or months in advance.
Consumed by distraction, I very nearly walked into Miles coming around the edge of the fence at the end of the path, and we both went slipping a moment on the icy ground. I got the worst of it by far, crashing rather heavily to the ground and cracking quite a bit of ice in the process.
"Fusie! I was just coming to see you!" he said, extending a hand to help me up automatically. Equally unthinkingly, I took it, and we had a brief awkward moment before I managed to get myself to my feet. "Wanted to check on you after your mysterious appointment..."
"I'm touched," I said, with undue sarcasm. "I was just heading out to meet with a friend of mine, take my mind off things."
"A
friend?" Miles said, and I elbowed him gently. He nearly fell into a snowbank.
"Yes, a genuine platonic friend with no implications. Stars, I swear you're more invested in my relationships than I am. It's my old friend April, we're just going out to a gaming club."
"Oh, capital! Can I come along too?" he asked. "Henry's off with his missus-to-be and all, haven't anything else to do."
"Well… it's a machine club, you understand-" I began, but he cut me off.
"Perfect then, you can smuggle me in. It can be a nice reversal of the officer's mess," he said, laughing. "If you're alright with that."
"Of course, and I can't imagine April would have a problem with it either," I said. I couldn't determine what would possibly interest him, but if he wanted to come I wasn't going to stop him.
"Maybe they'll have chess; I still have to get you back for the last few times you've thrashed me," he added, and I winced inwardly.
"Y-yes, you do…"
We got a cab from the pool of them perpetually hanging around the edge of the army base waiting for officers and contractors, and I gave them directions to the McMillan manor. After confirming twice our intended location, the cab set off, the chain tracks grinding through the ice.
"I'm guessing April's an Abby Keeper, then?" Miles guessed. "I've heard you mention her once or twice, it'll be fun to meet one of your friends from before you got respectable. Will she know any scandalous secrets?"
"About me? No, I've quite carefully lived a life too boring for scandal. I imagine she knows some things about the family she works for, but you really shouldn't pry about such things," I said quite seriously.
"Wouldn't dream of it. Not one for gossip, of course, never have been."
April was employed by the McMillan family, one of a dozen of housekeepers that kept up their manor
(10) alongside a staff of almost a hundred. Of course, we didn't approach from the stately gate, but instead through the utility road, getting to see the manor's infrastructure and servants' residence tucked away out of sight of the road.
I spotted April standing in the cover of one of the entryways and cracked the door against the howling wind to wave. Then, to my surprise, the opposite door popped open and Miles hopped out of the cab, heading around to the door. He then, quite seriously, walked back to the cab alongside April, his winter cloak pulled up to shield her from the wind. I shifted over a seat as Miles opened the door and helped April up into the cab.
"H-hello, Dora, um…" April stuttered. She pulled her scarf up over her face a little more despite the heated cabin, but I could just make out the glow of pink lights under the fabric. She leaned in to whisper. "Mister Beckham here will be joining us?"
"I'm afraid so. He invited himself along…" I explained quietly, as the cabby glanced back into the carriage. I could tell he wanted to make some kind of observation about the odd set we made, but he clearly thought better of it. The cab took back off with a rattle of tracks and the roar of a pyréolophore engine
(11) as we settled in.
"It's nice to finally meet you, Mister Beckham. Dora has talked about you quite a bit," April said, not quite making eye contact. "Um, I appreciate the gesture, but you didn't have to walk me out like that."
"Have to? Not strictly, but it costs nothing to be polite," Miles said warmly. I narrowed my eyes at him from across the cab, suspicious but not entirely sure why.
"Do you do that for Dora as well?" April asked, then paused. "Miss Fusilier? Properly I ought to be consistent but I'm not exactly sure how that breaks down."
I wracked my memory
(12) for an answer; Miriam had taken teaching me etiquette very seriously but nothing I'd learned seemed helpful for this circumstance.
"Well, I won't be having you calling me Miss, April, for heaven's sake. Nor you, Miles," I insisted. "You can work out the rest yourself."
"Um, I don't exactly know if I'm comfortable using your given name, Mister Beckham," April admitted. He smiled warmly.
"Formal it is, then, Miss Keeper," Miles replied. A disjointed smear of random vocalisation escaped April as she shrank back behind her scarf again. Miles winced. "It is Miss, right?"
"Y-yes," April confirmed, continuing to retract further into the cushions.
"Ah, good."
The gaming hall Miriam had directed me to was a cosy little space, somewhat smaller than I'd expected. I'd pictured something more like a dance hall. The street was so narrow that we stepped out of the door of the cab almost directly onto the landing, Miles quite pointedly beating the cabby to holding the door for April and offering his hand to steady her as she leapt down.
"I'm noticing you never help me descend daintily from any cabs, Miles," I teased as I followed, and he shrugged while giving me a wide berth.
"Firstly, I know you'd hate it, and secondly, one wrong step in such an operation and you're writing an awkward letter to my mother," Miles explained. "Dear Missus Beckham, terrible news, we've folded up what's left and you'll find it enclosed…"
April lost herself in hysterics instantly; it genuinely annoyed me how Miles was effortlessly a better friend than I was.
Miles did try to open the doors, but they were effectively sealed by the pressure differential caused by the temperature; I eventually had to intervene. The machine at the desk up front, where we'd buy admission, looked up as the door opened, and then locked eyes on Miles, staring.
"Sorry, sir, are you lost?" he asked, and Miles smiled and shook his head.
"Not at all, just accompanying my friends," he replied, and the machine shrugged and went back to reading whatever he was reading. We paid and shed our hats and coats, grateful for the heated rack to warm them while we waited.
"Oh dear me, that's not right."
"Hmm?" I looked over to see Miles looking at me funny.
"Never seen you in a dress, Fusie," he said, shaking his head. He glanced over to April and pointed at me, as thought I were an interesting museum display. "Is this normal?"
"No, it's a much nicer dress than usual," April said. I felt vaguely ganged up on.
"Really? I'm shocked, I honestly thought the uniform was welded on."
"Not anymore thanks to liberal use of a prybar," I responded, chuckling. "No, I just wanted to, um..."
"You just want be Dora for a bit. I get it," he said, pulling a flask from his belt and nodding. "Right, so what's the minimum buy-in for machine games, a penny?"
"It's not a gambling hall, Mister Beckham. These are games of skill," April explained, and he frowned.
"Well, that's hardly fair," he remarked. "Favours the fellow who's good at it."
Unsure exactly of the protocol, we both turned to April, who seemed to take great joy in showing us both how the shelves were organised and the great many options we had. Miles and I examined a shelf of simple games, the sort boxies played while they learned the ropes or which usually accompanied intoxication. We were contemplating a game which resembled chess on hexagons when April came to use with a large box cradled in her arms.
"What've we got here?" Miles asked, and April held out the cover, eyes beaming.
"Waterloo, a game of strategy! I saw it and figured you'd both love it," April proclaimed. The cover showed a fanciful illustration of a 19th century battle, with lines of bright uniforms, charging cavalry, and billowing white clouds of smoke. Having now seen a real horse, it was quite apparent the artist hadn't.
"It's two players, though," I pointed out, and she shrugged.
"I think I'll have much more fun watching two professionals face off than playing the same old games again," April explained, setting it down on the table and pulling off the cover. A dizzying array of pieces lay loose in the box.
"Two players means one of us has to play the French," Miles said sceptically, and instantly I reached over and started grabbing blue pieces. "Well, that makes that easy."
We laid out the setup while April read us the instructions, laying out the green grid field we'd play on. Our 'units' were clever little red and blue pieces; cubes, pyramids, and arches, representing infantry, artillery, and calvary. They all stuck to the grid with a satisfying
clunk.
Every time we advanced the turn, they'd slide across the board on little magnets to perform the last order we gave them, which were limited to simple acts like turning, stopping, moving, and forming square. The set was well-worn but in good condition, though there were a few dead pixels on the edge nearest me.
We cycled the board through a few of the scenarios before deciding on the Battle of Talavera, if simply because the previous board was La Haye Sainte and all the terrain and buildings were somewhat intimidating. Miles was muttering as he placed his troops, carefully nudging them into proper position.
"Right, so this little cube is 24th Foot, and this little cube is 5th Line of the German Legion, which I guess makes this lot the South Es-"
"Who goes first?" I asked April.
"Attackers. That's you, Mister Beckham," she said. Miles dropped his last troops in place, surveyed the board briefly, double-checked the quick reference card, and did something awful to his hands that produced a terrible cracking noise.
"Right then! My go."
Miles started tapping his pieces, cycling the little holograms above them to issue orders, and then pressed the red 'end turn' space at the edge of the board. Accompanied by little sounds of marching feet and the rolling thunder of a phantom cannon barrage, the pieces started sliding forward. Amid the dancing motes of light for smoke and shot, one of the cubes in the centre of my line grew darker and greyer, as though the colour was being sucked out of it.
"Oh, that's fun. Your turn, Fusie. Try to keep hold of the eagle this time."
"Those
bloody eagles," I complained, setting my troops on the assault. Struggling to remember the particulars of how the French lost Talavera, I concentrated a force on one flank, directing my cannon fire and shuffling a few of my columns to the side. Maybe I could open a hole for my horse. "I can't believe the frogs managed to figure out a way to come at us the same old way and make it
work."
"What's this?" April asked.
"Oh, the war games. Fusie is sore that we got our, uh, that we were roundly defeated on the field of simulated battle by the contemporary versions of that lot," Miles explained, pointing at my blue pieces.
"... Mister Beckham, I'll tell you what I've told Dora. I work for a living, you're perfectly allowed to swear in my presence, I'll not think anything of it," April said.
"Oh thank fucking Christ, it's hard enough to avoid in the mess. Does Fusie really not swear around you?" he asked.
"She tries," April teased.
"It's good practice! I shouldn't use coarse language around other officers, they'll think less of me," I said, and he rolled his eyes with a great exaggerated slowness. "Other than you and Henry, of course, I think you'd think less of me if I didn't."
"Too right. Also, I'm so very sorry." I winced as one of my cubes turned black as it walked directly into his grapeshot. "Your turn."
"Well, um, fuck right off, Miles, that's my right flank ruined," I groaned, removing the dead piece and staring at the board. "April, what's the rules for wheeling infantry?"
As we played I started to notice some of the machines without games were looking at us a bit strangely: it seemed normal to watch other people's games, but they were a bit reticent with us. Probably because of Miles, who was noticing at the same time.
"Oh, come watch if you like!" he said, looking up from the game and smiling. He then lowered his head, muttering. "Rather have people staring where I can see them."
"Now you know how I feel all the time," I replied.
"It's just a bit unusual's all," April said. "It's like us in the cab, the other machines are trying to work out what level of formal they ought to be around you right now."
"And I do hate that. Shouldn't be barging in and spoiling everyone's fun…" Miles spat.
"You're not spoiling anyone's fun except mine," I observed, as my front two columns were roundly obliterated in a spray of holographic musket smoke. "I could really use that energy screen."
"I'll bet. And no, I just… should have thought of it. Places like this are where you lot go to get away from humans, right?"
"It's where we go to play board games, Mister Beckham, and nothing more," April corrected roundly. "And suddenly I realise why you and Dora are such good friends."
"Oh?"
"Well, if you'll forgive me saying it, Mister Beckham, you're both so… so bloody anxious about where you are and what it means," April said, half laughing at our misfortune and half deadly-serious intervention. "Do neither of you have any practice enjoying yourselves?"
Miles snorted back laughter.
"I… have just restrained myself from making a very crude joke in mixed company and I would like to be commended for doing so," he said. April, clearly holding back laughter, carefully reached into the box, pulled out one of the plastic medals with a score counter, and offered it to him.
"Sorry, I feel I've missed the… oh. Yes. Right," I said, sighing. "You're right, April, but at the same time it is complicated. The issue with breaking rules is you quickly find all the others were put in place with certain assumptions."
"Of course, but focusing on that right now means I don't get to watch my friends play their board game, so how about we put that aside and get on with it?" April asked pointedly.
I realised only as I was reaching out to give my pieces orders that she'd quite deftly played us like fiddles simply by giving us both a person who wasn't ourselves to avoid disappointing. There were times I suspected she was my friend out of pity.
(13)
I did my best to salvage the tactical situation, but it was dire. I could clearly see my mistake already, and truth be told it was over by the second turn, but I had to see if I could salvage something from this mess. April ended up shifting to my side of the board to help me with the rules; Miles seemed to have a much better intuitive grasp of them.
"So, Miss Keeper, to avoid this just becoming Fusie and I griping about work, can I ask about you?" Miles said, as I desperately flipped through the game's rulebook to try and figure out if I could reform my troops to meet a thrust from Miles' Guards and auxiliary units.
"Oh, there's not much to tell, I'm just a housekeeper," April deflected.
"Well, we're just glorified hat stands, really, and we find plenty to talk about." Miles was leaning on his hand, elbows in flagrant violation of the 'not on the table' rule.
"Come off it, there's more to it than… bugger, I see what you've done. You got me, Mister Beckham," April exclaimed, the mirth evident in her voice. She then leaned in, her voice a little lower. "I wouldn't call dusting out that castle very interesting in itself, but nobody notices us, you know…"
"Oh, go on…" Miles was leaning so far over in his chair I feared he might fall over.
"Is this that bloody affair again?" I asked, and April laughed.
"Fusie, that was over a decade ago! They've sorted that out. There's been an
elopement."
What followed was a tale related entirely third-hand through conversations overheard in other rooms and pieced together by the collective staff. If even a third of it were true, it would probably make headlines should it get out.
"... and now
she says he was really just after the money, which none of us believe for an instant because you should
see this man. I think even Dora might stare."
"But really,
both brothers?" Miles exclaimed.
"To be clear, serially," April clarified. "To the best of our knowledge.
That said…"
(14)
I finally figured out how to wheel and move 1st and 3rd Divisions over to meet the advance; hopefully that should do it. The artillery had cleared out the auxiliaries handily, so if I advanced rapidly enough I should have him pinned.
"It sounds like you have quite the gossip circle, then," Miles asked, and April shrugged.
"It'd be hard not to, in a place that big. Of course, there's nearly as much drama among us as there is among the family. More, honestly. It just tends to be briefer, you know, fewer hard feelings," April explained. "Of course, nothing on some of Dora's stories."
Miles shifted to stare at me, and I was very overjoyed to hit the end turn button and distract him with my patchwork assault.
"Your go, Miles," I said, and I watched him take in the state of the board. He chuckled and started punching in orders like he had them all planned out already, quite the feat for somebody who I was certain had forgotten he was playing for the past ten minutes.
"I didn't exactly think you'd have
stories, Dora, the way you talk about your time in the ranks," he said, activating a unit whose tiny holographic banner indicated it was the 48th Foot.
"Well, they're not stories I was a part of, but…" I shrugged, a bit mortified to be talking about it. "Fusiliers are, as a rule, braver than we are smart, and, well…"
"I thought machines had all that sorted, you're able to move past everything easily?" Miles asked. April and I shared a wince.
"Well, that does require the machines involved to have even the slightest bit of self-awareness, and it's in short supply in the ranks," I explained, cradling my head as I remembered some of the worst incidents. "I don't know which is worse, when they fuck each other or when they get civilians involved. Do you know what happens when two stupid boxies have a punch-up about whatever Sally Baker or the like caught their eye at the music hall? I have seen shrapnel shells inflict less physical and emotional carnage."
"What about that one who stole that carriage?" April asked. I groaned.
"Right. It's '58, we're posted in some awful desert hellhole of a mining colony with the 15th Foot, and an otherwise dependable Dora in my section decides it would impress this officer valet in the other unit if she rolled up to camp in one of the local carriages.
Then she figured looming over the driver and saying 'Oi, can I borrow that? Thanks love,' constituted permission to tear down the streets at full tilt and nearly run over Major Harrison. So after the arrest, she decides she's a liability and a danger to humans and throws herself off a bloody cliff. We had to dig her out of a six-foot hole in the ground, they still make fun of her for it."
"... and here I thought you lot were perfect, I've never heard of anything like this," Miles exclaimed.
"When your Sergeant quietly tells you that there's been a
minor discipline issue but it's all been taken care of? They stayed up all night avoiding a diplomatic incident," I said. "And then I get my commission and find the Sergeants aren't much better. Sometimes I think when they kludged together war machines out of servants, they broke our programming a little."
"Trust me, Dora, it's not just Fusiliers. We try not to let humans see it, but we make plenty of our own mistakes," April offered. "Sometimes no hard feelings means we don't bloody learn anything, just move right on to the next mistake."
"Every time I think I have a handle on your lot, you turn out to be more human than I thought," Miles said, quieter and more seriously than he usually did. He ended his turn, and I watched as my advance utterly crumbled and white flags started popping up over my cubes. I still had some units left, but I couldn't possibly see a path to victory anymore.
"I think we should stick to chess," I muttered, and Miles plucked his pieces back.
"Fusie, this is funny, but you did exactly what the French did at the real thing." he said, laughing, "So next time, try thinking less like a frog. Want to go again?"
"April, is there something else you'd rather play?" I asked, and she shook her head.
"I want to see you two play again now that you know the rules," April said, taking back the manual and flipping through the scenarios. Every time she looked at a new page, she would tap the buttons on the side of the board to switch it to a new map. "This is far more interesting than playing one of those games with all the cards, I can never keep track."
"Is it? It felt rather one-sided, it felt like Miles already knew what to do," I complained, picking up my dead pieces and lining them up on my side of the board.
"In a sense I did. My father hired a very strict governess machine as part of my military education, you know," Miles said, "I was bound for the Coldstream Guards, remember? I could draw you a map of any battle in the Peninsular War by memory."
"Apparently," I said simply. Given how much Miles talked himself down, it was easy to underestimate him, but he knew his stuff.
"All bloody useless, of course, and awful as well. The grass caught fire at Talavera from all the musket wadding and wounded men in the field burnt to death, but they don't exactly show that with the cubes," he said darkly. "You have a good one?"
April turned the rulebook around and showed a map; SALAMANCA was written in big letters in the corner. Miles grinned.
"A classic. You take the Brits this time."
We set up and got started; there seemed an obvious route to flank on the right with my cavalry, but I was worried it was too obvious. Miles had read up on this one too, surely he'd see something like that coming. I carefully shuffled some troops over, trying to work out a better approach while Miles watched with a perfect poker face.
"Are those war games you mentioned anything like this?" April asked as I fretted over my line.
"No, though the Prussians have something like it," I said. I'd never played Kriegspiel, but Theda wouldn't stop talking about it; she had the shape of the Infantry Division piece engraved on her thigh.
(15)
"They're big fake battles. We line up, set all our weapons on stun, and have a jolly good time failing to kill one another," Miles explained. "It keeps us sharp and helps us keep abreast of changing tactics and technology from across the Concert. Ours was a bit of a wake-up call; the frogs dropped so much artillery on us it broke our shield wagon through kinetic transfer. I spent most of the battle with my nose in the dirt thanks to a stun shell, but Fusie here got to fight one of their machine officers."
"Another machine officer?" April asked excitedly. "I didn't know there were others!"
"The French have a bunch; it's been…" I tried to think of a word for it. "... odd. They have their own little circle, with their own little officer club and all, playing cards and throwing knives. They've sort of cordoned themselves off."
"... I don't know if I like that," Miles said slowly.
"I'm not sure. Miles, you've talked with them, or at least been around them. What do their officers think of the machines among them?" I asked.
"Oh, the frogs are quite proud of them. Equality and brotherhood and all that Jacobin
nonsense, they love talking up how much fairer their system is," Miles said, with his opinion of their assessment clear from his tone.
"Humans do love that sort of thing. Almost every time I happen to talk to a member of the family, they ask about how our union is going," April said. "They care about it more than we do."
"That might be it then," I said, the pieces all fitting together. "The French have machine officers because their humans wanted them, wanted a sense that things were fair. So a few of their machines like me who feel they might be useful stand for elections, and the machines vote for them when they don't feel it'll deny a human a spot, right?"
"Right..?"
"But then they run into the same things I did. Going to the mess, attending events, servants, officers' quarters, repair bills, disagreeing with your newfound
peers, making friends with your coworkers…" I trailed off, feeling overwhelmed. "It's hard."
"It's not just hard. It's something you're doing for yourself and not somebody else," Miles pointed out. "You lot aren't good at that."
"Yeah… so they formed a little club. Got out of the way. Stopped aiming for promotion, stopped attending the mess, stopped trying to make friends. They just filled a spot on the roster so the humans would feel things were fair," I concluded. "They started throwing knives."
"That's kind of sad," April added. I shrugged.
"I dunno, it makes a degree of sense. This position is very strange and very isolating in a lot of ways, it avoids all the discomfort," I said. "It's almost a shame they're leaving tomorrow, I should like to go back."
"Which surely has nothing to do with that lovely Lieutenant you've been swooning over, right?" Miles taunted. April, in perfect emulation of Miles' pose, placed her elbows on the table and leaned forward with her chin in her hand, listening intently.
"Oh, who's
this then?"
I shrunk in my chair; were I any more mortified I think I'd start glowing red-hot. I had absolutely no desire to discuss the immensely complicated feelings I had about Théa with Miles, I'd never hear the end of it.
"It's not like that, knock it off Miles. There's nothing going on there," I insisted loudly. He laughed, and I glared. "Seriously."
"My apologies, Dora, I read too deeply into things," he said, sounding uncharacteristically genuine. "... so are any of the other officers pretty?"
I considered throwing one of the game pieces at him, but I was worried it'd roll off and we'd never find it again. I settled for the best glare I could muster.
"How about that Messenger you mentioned you were going out with?" April added conspiratorially.
"Why does everyone care so damn much about this?" I snapped, feeling quite cornered. "I was quite content being alone for three decades, and given how things have gone since I got my commission…"
"With that Taylor and all?" April asked, shaking her head. "That was awful."
"Yes, her and…" I trailed off, but they were both looking quite expectantly at me, clearly waiting, the game forgotten. I felt like I shouldn't say anything, but these were my best and, really, only friends. Cameron was right; I had to stop trying to take things to the grave, because I was starting to run out of room in the coffin. "... there was another officer."
There was a shocked silence from April, while Miles leaned back in his chair, still with that strange serious expression.
"Of course," he said quietly. I knew he knew who it was, but anonymity still felt safer.
"A human?" April asked uselessly. I nodded. "Stars, Dora."
"I know," I said finally. "She made a little mistake and I made a much worse one that can't ever be fixed. It cost me a friend, and it was an important lesson. I don't really want to talk about this more right now, can we return to our game?"
They reassured me we could, and we set about playing largely in silence, save for Miles regaling April with some tales of his deployments with the Guards. I had a lot of time to think during our game, mostly about how exactly I was going to beat him, and it seemed to help. I very nearly had him near the end, but he managed to wheel a unit about just in time to put a volley into my flank, and my tiny cube-men broke a mere grid-square from victory.
As my last line of defences fell and he casually boxed in the retreating survivors, I pulled out my watch and looked with a start.
"Christ, it's quarter past nine. We should probably think about heading back."
"Has Miriam got you a curfew, then?" Miles asked, and I stumbled a minute on that idea before responding.
"No, we just have an early day tomorrow, and April has work. I'd like to be well-rested-" I stopped, seeing the look of disappointment on both their faces. "What?"
"Dora, dear, this is the first time I've seen you voluntarily do something that wasn't work-related since I've known you," April pointed out seriously.
"I'm halfway expecting you to say that Miriam convinced you that playing board games is an important part of an officer's development," Miles added.
"... that does sound like me, doesn't it?" I admitted, "What's your point?"
"My point is, what if instead of going home and getting a full night's recharging or whatever you do, you stay out a while longer and let tomorrow's Fusie handle it? Just for once?" he said.
April nodded very seriously and gestured to the far end of the table.
"They have billiards. Have you ever played billiards? I bet you'd enjoy it."
"No? You know I haven't done things," I responded. Miles, already packing up the game, stood up and grinned.
"My God, you'd love it," he said cheerfully. "It's got everything you like: taking careful aim and hitting things. I'll watch you play the first games, it's only fair."
Infuriatingly, they were right, I did enjoy it. I beat both April and Miles so handily at it I began to suspect I had some kind of inbuilt calculator dedicated to the task. Much as with chess, I decided not to tell them; I had to take these victories where I could.
- I wake up fairly early and stay in earshot of the door. I have excellent hearing and she is very predictable.
- And they wouldn't until they passed the certification exams.
- The Royal Machine Company, the crown corporation of the era responsible for British Fusiliers, as well as many other types of machines. It was one of the two descendants of the British Working Machine Company, the entity founded to manufacture the first machines; the other is the still-extant Universal Standardisation Bureau of the Galactic Concert, which has its origins in the BWMC's extremely persistent patent and licensing department.
- The convention of machine names was established when there might only be one machine of a sort in a household or factory, two at most. This has led to a lot of nicknames, variations, and related names, especially in the Army, and particularly once a machine is promoted past private and is singled out more often because of it.
- Being French, this is regrettably Celsius, though its Fahrenheit conversion is close enough for discomfort.
- For those curious about the glove etiquette of 2158, these circumstances were while in private, while eating, while shaking hands with a peer, if the glove is damaged, when retiring to bed, while writing, and, if the gloves are white, while operating a horse.
- For our human readers; there is a weak taboo among machines against romantic or sexual relationships between machines of the same type. It's a little bit human cultural influence mixing with the way machine types are seen as extended families, but mostly it's simply that dating a machine working the same job is unlikely to leave you much to talk about. That's less of a factor between our Lieutenants here.
- Before repulsor cabs were common, to supplement the winter fleet of track-layer cabs, some companies in Antares Cities fitted large, nearly-spherical low pressure tires to their wheeled cabs and horses.
- Human readers might not understand how telling this is; nothing about this was exceptional on my part. Coordinating schedules around one another's shifts is a basic part of friendships among machines.
- The third-largest on the station at the time. Unlike the other large manor-keepers, who were high aristocracy granted land in the city by the Duke, the McMillans were industrialists who owned much of the chemical industry in the city, and kept their primary residence there to oversee production.
- Carbon-burning engines and generators were still common in cold environments for another fifty years; places like Antares City could simply filter out the excess carbon as part of atmospheric regulation. They weren't as affected by cold as batteries.
- I believe the polite thing to do is avoid these exact circumstances at all cost.
- While I normally avoid commenting on such things, I helped April preserve the hundreds of sprawling, multi-page letters the Lieutenant Colonel wrote from her deployments. They carefully chronicled the strange and beautiful things she saw out in the void and the struggles of her comrades, in great detail and increasingly sophisticated prose.
When she saw them on my desk, she asked why April hadn't thrown them out.
- I looked up the situation out of curiosity. Damages were settled out of court.
- To this day I am unsure how she knows this.
