Once, when Avery and Jules were busy and Cass waited alone in a dark hangar, she had watched Terran clips of their sea creatures. She loved the whales and their eerie songs, the fish in their shimmering shoals, and the octopi who slithered along the silty ocean floor in much the same way as the folna moved around, but with tentacles instead of rhizomes. Her favourites by far, though, were the dolphins. She loved listening to them. Their chatter was beyond even the reaches of Lexicon, but she knew there was intelligence deep in their black eyes.
When the Phoenix made its journey between stars, flitting from Starbridge to Starbridge and guided only by Erri's steady hands, she liked to imagine that she was a dolphin. In those brief moments when the ship would rear its head above the currents of hyperspace, Cass pictured herself leaping out of the water and laughing with joy before plunging back into the depths.
Even if it was just a distraction from the knowledge that the only thing protecting Jules from the cold vacuum of space was her hull and decades of multi-species engineering, it passed the time.
"Exiting hyperspace," came Erri's voice over the comm. He had his pilot voice on, the one that was all cold and detached, almost like he was an AI too. Cass much preferred it when she could hear the smile in his voice. Not that ghraals could smile with their mouth like a human, but Lexicon was clever like that.
Now she floated, suspended in the curved arms of the Capital System's Starbridge. On her right was Kha'err, the gas giant lit up in stripes of turquoise and green and white by the star Irimoy. Kha'err meant guardian in Liy'ghraal and irimoy meant cradle in Suriy, the main language of the folnas, but the Capital System made Cass feel anything but protected and safe. The Hub was a tiny white speck locked in orbit just beyond Kha'err's furthest moon, nearly indistinguishable from a distant star.
Erri gently nudged the Phoenix into open space. The sight of the Hub drawing nearer made her cooling fans whirr, and all of her internal sensors felt a little more sensitive, almost in a prickly way. Was this what humans called feeling sick to the stomach?
As it was, the Phoenix's living quarters may have felt a few degrees warmer. Beyond that, there was nothing to notice of her discomfort.
Avery would notice, though, if she were here. Avery always noticed those things. It was a connection on the level that she ached to have with Jules, one day. In a world of techs who saw her as nothing more than another dumb AI, Avery and Jules were her sun and moon. Avery gave her the warmth and light she craved, and when she hung in the empty space of the Sol system, it was Jules who lit up that never-ending night. She loved both of them, even if they did not love each other.
The Hub drew closer. Cass was always in awe at how simple distance could make such a colossal structure seem nothing more than a speck. Five rings hugged the central column, where the essential sections were kept. The University of the Commonwealth, the Central Market, the Centre for Medical Care and Research, the Quays, and the Control Centre, all crowned by the Spire which housed the Council offices, lined with so many windows it could be blinding at the wrong angle, had the glass not been engineered to avoid reflecting light.
At the centre of the central column, the Hub branched out into four slimmer arms that housed the living and recreational quarters for each species. Ghraals, folnas, mu'kas, haunas, even humans. At the moment they lived in a single ring at the bottom of the hauna arm, but there were rumours that construction was soon to begin on their own. Cass wondered what the Hub would look like in fifty, a hundred, five hundred years' time, how many more species would have their own arms. The structure was already starting to resemble a willow tree.
"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?"
"Main doors unlocked," Cass replied, admitting Avery into the airlock.
"Thanks," said Avery, kicking off her shoes. She always liked how Avery walked around a government stealth ship barefoot, as if she owned the place. Cass tracked her movements as she made for the short ladder leading down into the central processors. She was, Cass realised, the only one who seemed to remember that SESHET personalities were omnipresent. Everyone else needed a screen or a mic or, in Jules' case, a hologram to talk at, whereas Avery just blurted out whatever she needed to say, knowing that Cass would always hear. "I talked to Anderson," she was saying as she descended into the depths of the ship. "He didn't know what the recall was about. Well, he did, but he wouldn't tell me."
"How would he know?" said Cass. She only knew of this Anderson from what Avery told her, and the memories of him that she had chosen to share, but she knew Avery owed him her life and the two had the kind of bond she had only observed humans making a few times in their lives.
"Councillor Kitano."
"So whatever it is, it is important enough for the Council to have been discussing it."
"Maybe, maybe not. Could just be an Earth Affairs thing. Kitano would still probably know about it." Avery reached her favourite spot and sat down, dragging a pillow out from the footlocker she kept down there and planting herself on it. Charon materialised from the shadows and sat on a shelf, watching her with his single yellow eye. As much as Avery had tried, she'd never been able to win his affection.
She leaned back, resting her bare feet on top of the locker. Her spot was right between one of Cass's main processors and the AC, and Avery closed her eyes, blue hair stirring in the slight breeze. "God, seeing Anderson always makes me so damn tired."
"Avery?" Cass said after a moment. She knew it was selfish, but she didn't want Avery to fall asleep. Not now.
"Hm?"
"Why do you think the Earth Monitors were recalled?"
"Dunno. Honestly, I think it's a software error in the SESHET systems."
"A-a what?" Ah, there was the lost nanosecond of processing speed. Now her mind was working overtime. Great.
"Maybe a bug or a virus or something."
"That doesn't scare you?" If Cass had been projecting her image into the room, she would have made her wring her hands in worry.
"I don't think it's you, Cass. You feel fine, don't you? Anyway, the problem was detected after you'd been deployed for six days."
"Well, yes, but-"
Avery sat up onto her haunches. "Cass, nothing gets installed on you without my knowing about it. I check you every time you leave the Hub, and you know how thorough I am. Whatever's gone wrong, it's nothing to do with you."
"Avery, could you...could you check my update files again, please? Just to make sure?"
She frowned. "Shit, Cass, I'm sorry. I didn't want to frighten you. I shouldn't have said anything. But I'll interface if you want."
Cass expelled a breath's worth of air through the AC in a relieved sigh. "Thank you, Avery."
"Just gimme a second," she said, fiddling with the panel in the palm of her cybernetic hand until it popped open, revealing a couple of ports and blinking lights set into a dull carbon fibre plating. Cass was always amazed at how easily Avery just opened her cybernetics when it was just them, even though she knew she hated doing it anywhere else.
Then, Avery connected their minds.
The experience wasn't overwhelming or mind-blowing or anything of the sort. It never was. It was the quiet comfort of spending your entire existence alone, confined to circuit boards and wires and ones and zeroes, then feeling the warmth of a friend materialise at your side and lay her head on your shoulder.
Avery slumped against the AC unit, her organic hand falling limply from her lap to the floor, the cybernetic one pressed up against one of the ports in the central processor. It had been designed especially for Anderson's human-AI interface project, so Avery could link them with just a touch. Even though Cass could clearly see her body out there, she was also here. She imagined what it would look like if they were real, not just two disembodied presences drifting through cyberspace. She pictured them somewhere warm and sunny, Cass in a fluttering blue sundress and Avery in her usual cargo pants and tanktop, but without the coolant stains and worn knees from shuffling around various conduits and crawlspaces.
<I'm done.> Avery said, though Cass didn't so much hear her words as feel them. <There's nothing unusual here, though there's a pretty big routine update you should get soon. You're fine.>
<Thanks. I was going to start panicking.> She knew she should say something else, before Avery disconnected and left her on her solitary plane of existence once more, but no words would come.
Luckily, she did not need them. <Hey,> Avery said after a moment of silence. <You okay?>
<I guess,> she replied. <I just...it gets lonely, Ave, being on my own. I wish I could come with you. I want to see the Quays and Nebula and Tycho Park for real, not just in pictures and your memories.>
Avery was quiet for a moment, and if Cass could not feel her presence right there, she'd worry she'd disconnected. <I'm sorry,> she said at last. <I miss you guys too, when you're deployed, but at least I can wander round the Hub if I want. Actually, scratch that. I miss you and Erri. Maybe not Jules.>
<I've never understood why you two don't like each other,> said Cass. <Has one of you said or done something?>
<Nah, I just think she's insufferable, and she thinks the same about me. She's probably right.>
<You're both wrong,> Cass declared. <I wish you'd at least try to get to know each other.>
<All right, all right. Look, I can tell she makes you happy. Even if she is insufferable, I will suffer her. For you.>
<Thank you, Avery.>
<You are very welcome. Listen, I have to go get ready, but I'll come sleep here tonight, yeah? Been a while since we had a sleepover.>
Cass felt a familiar surge of sadness at the imminent loss of company, but she pushed it down. Avery would be back before she knew it. <I would like that, yes. Are you going out somewhere?>
<Yeah, I'm going to get a drink with Erri and the others at Nebula. Oh, and if I come back too drunk, please don't let me do anything too stupid. And if you do let me do something stupid, please don't film it like last time.>
<I can't help it if there are cameras everywhere,> said Cass as Avery set about ejecting herself from the interface.
A moment later, Avery snapped the bionic plating over her palm back into place, and got unsteadily to her feet.
"Right, well. I will be seeing you later. Whoa." She steadied herself with a hand on the bulkhead, the other pressed to her temple.
"Are you sure drinking is a good idea?"
"Drinking is always a good idea. Interfacing just makes me woozy for a few minutes. I'll be fine."
"Hmm."
"Trust me. It's not like I haven't done this before. See ya."
Cass watched her go, tracking her movements as she headed for the airlock, her step light and her mind already on other things.
She wished she wasn't jealous.