The Watcher [Alien Nation #1]

Chapter 3

"Hub control, this is Erri'oytuu suu Saykhel of the COS Phoenix, ID Terra-9715, requesting permission to dock." Erri's voice was bored as he went through docking procedures.

There was a moment of silence before a new voice came through the comm. It had the slight chirp of a folna-Lexicon couldn't hide everything, and Cass suspected the translation program left some of the speaker's original voice intact, no matter their race, to stop everyone sounding too artificial. "Phoenix, this is Hub control. Permission to land granted. Welcome home."

With practised ease, Erri steered the Phoenix into one of the open airlocks in the docking bay at the bottom of the Hub. He could be a little reckless sometimes-Cass wished he would quit the barrel rolls, which somehow made even her feel dizzy-but when landing, she had never felt in safer hands. Or talons. Whatever.

It only took a small diversion of her processing power to project an image of herself into the centre of the control room. She stuck with the features she'd been favouring recently-short with a petite frame, bobbed hair, and soft, round cheeks. She hadn't mastered colour yet-she didn't know if it were even possible-but when she did, she wanted her hair to be as black as the void outside. She hadn't decided on an eye colour; sometimes she liked the icy blue of an O-type star, and sometimes she preferred the muted amber of Saturn, her favourite planet in the Sol system.

"Jules," she said. Her voice came through the speakers above the holo-node, and she wondered if Jules knew she could only see her through the various security cams set into the walls. It was sweet how Jules only ever made eye contact with her projection.

She looked up from where she had been busy packing up all the bits and pieces she kept in the control room, that made it a home for the days spend in the void: an adorably old-fashioned notepad and pen; a handful of bright green hair ties that had started as two handfuls but which had gradually been lost to the ether; a personal datapad in a glittery indigo case. Her favourite was a portable holo-pic node that sat on her desk and cycled through detailed projections of the homeworlds of every Commonwealth race-arid Dak'ghraal; the mu'ka's grim, shadowy Reenu, lush Apsann, the hauna's icy Iyau, and finally Earth, which had a little bit of everything.

"I've started syncing your data to your workstation at HQ and your personal computer at home. They should be ready in a few minutes." Even to herself, her words sounded hollow. She should be saying goodbye, wishing Jules luck in her meeting with Director Bakker, telling her to relax a bit now that they were safely docked. Instead she sounded just like all the rest, now that she was confronted with a week or more cooped up in dry dock, pretending not to care about the mechanics creeping through her crawlspaces and with nobody but a geriatric cat for company. Just another dumb AI.

"Thanks, Cass." Jules hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and braced both hands against the railing around the holo-node. Cass moved her projection as close as she could without losing pixels, and she felt her processors slow down by a fraction of a nanosecond when Jules reached out and skimmed her hand over her projection's face, almost as if she were tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

She'd never done that before.

"I'll see you soon. And whatever Lara tells me, you're gonna be the first to know."

Even after Jules had left, Cass's processors had still not made up that nanosecond. Erri had turned off the engines and wandered off, probably to some dingy bar in the Quays, but the ambient temperature of the Phoenix still remained several degrees above normal. Luckily Erri hadn't noticed, probably because he kept the cockpit so hot.

"Cass?" came Avery's voice through their private comm channel. Your best friend having a computer in their brain certainly had its advantages. "It's me. Can you let me in?"