If that was true, then . . . scud. I might have to give that boy a little respect.
Not much, mind you. He’d still aggressively and maliciously branded me a coward in front of the others. Arturo, Nedd, FM, and even Bim trod more softly around me, peering at me out of the corners of their eyes. It didn’t seem to affect our training, but during our breaks everyone was dancing around the news. They asked me about other things, then exited conversations quickly.
The only one who didn’t act odd was Kimmalyn. That didn’t mean she ignored what had happened, of course.
“So,” she said, hovering beside my seat as I rested and drank from my canteen, “is that why you’re always so bellicose?”
“Bellicose?” I asked, unfamiliar with the word.
“So willing to seize the stars with one hand and shove them in your pocket,” Kimmalyn said. She leaned in, as if the next part were somehow naughty. “You know. Heated.”
“Heated.”
“Maybe even . . . once in a while . . . cross.”
“Is my father why I’m such a mess of anger, bravado, and temper? Is the fact that they call him a coward the reason I walk around with my sword in hand, screaming that I’ll make a pile of everyone’s skulls, then stand on that to help me behead the people who were too tall for me to reach?”
Kimmalyn smiled fondly.
“Bless my stars?” I asked her.
“Every single one of them, Spensa. Every single bouncing star.”
I sighed and took another drink. “I don’t know. I remember liking Gran-Gran’s stories even before he was shot down, but what happened certainly didn’t help. When everyone looks at you as the coward’s daughter—not a coward’s daughter, but the singular Coward’s Daughter—you develop an attitude.”
“Well, bless you for standing up straight,” she said, then put up her fists. “Pride is a virtue in those who make it one.”
“Said the Saint.”
“She was a very wise woman.”
“You realize none of us have any idea which Saint you’re talking about.”
Kimmalyn patted me on the head. “It’s okay, dear. You can’t help being a heretic. The Saint forgives you.” From someone else that might have been offensive, particularly with the head pat. From Kimmalyn it was just . . . well, somehow comforting.
By the end of the day, I was feeling a ton better. So much so, in fact, that I felt only mild nausea when they left me for dinner. So that was good.
Outside, I spotted Jerkface getting into a long, black hovercar that had a driver wearing white gloves. Poor boy. Looked like he had to get a ride home now.
I walked back to my cave with a spring in my step, chewing on some smoked rat. I would eventually have to pay some kind of vengeance bill to Jorgen, but I could do that. Bring it on. For now, I appeared to have gotten away with a serious crime. One starfighter-size power matrix, ready to go.
I grinned as I arrived at my crevice, then lowered myself on my light-line into the cavern. It was a silly thing to have risked my future over; this ship was so old, it wasn’t like getting lights working was going to do any good. But it was also my secret, my discovery.
My ship.
Broken, worn out, with a bent wing . . . it was still mine.
I hauled the matrix into position beside the ship’s access hatch. The plugs were the same, so I didn’t have to worry about hot-wiring it. I glanced at Doomslug—who inched over along the wing toward me—then grinned and plugged it in.
The lights sprang to life on the diagnostic panel and—judging by the glow from up front—on the dash inside the cockpit. The low humming tone from before started up again, then sped up, warping until it . . . until it became words.
“。 . . MMMEERGENCY BOOTUP PROCEDURES INITIATED,” a masculine voice said from the cockpit. It spoke with a strange, old-timey accent, like I’d heard on the broadcasts of famous speeches from the days before we’d founded Alta. “SEVERE DAMAGE TO STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY AND DATA BANKS DETECTED.”
Was it a recording? I scrambled over to the cockpit.
“Hello!” the voice said to me, growing less . . . mechanical. “I assume from your clothing and attitude that you are a native of this locale. Would you kindly categorize yourself—stating your national affiliations and the names of your ancestors—so I might place you in my data tables?”
“I . . .” I scratched my head. “What in the stars?”
“Ah,” the voice said. “Excellent. Minimal linguistic deviation from Earth Standard English. Forgive the slowness of my processing—which doesn’t quite seem up to normal benchmarks—but you are human, yes? Could you tell me . . . where am I?”
The words were lost on me. I simply knelt there, on the wing by the cockpit, trying to put together what was happening.
My ship was talking to me.
17
“My designation is MB-1021, robotic ship integration,” the ship said.
It didn’t just talk—it seemed to have trouble stopping.
“But humans prefer ‘names’ to designations, so I am commonly referred to as M-Bot. I am a long-distance reconnaissance and recovery ship, designed for stealth operations and unsupported solo missions in deep-space locations. And . . .”
The machine trailed off.
“And?” I asked, lounging in the cockpit, trying to figure out what in the stars this thing was.
“And my data banks are corrupted,” M-Bot said. “I cannot recover further information—I can’t even retrieve my mission parameters. The only record I have is the most recent order from my master: ‘Lie low, M-Bot. Take stock, don’t get into any fights, and wait for me here.’ ”
“Your master was your pilot, right?” I asked.
“Correct. Commander Spears.” He summoned a fuzzy image for me, which briefly replaced the scanner display on his dash. This Commander Spears was a clean-cut, youngish man with tan skin and a crisp, unfamiliar uniform.
“I’ve never heard of him,” I said. “And I know all the famous pilots, even from Gran-Gran’s days in the fleet. What was up with the Krell when you came here? Had they attacked the galaxy yet?”
“I have no recollection of this group, and the word Krell doesn’t appear in my memory banks.” He paused. “Reading the decay rate of isotopes in my memory core indicates that it has been . . . one hundred seventy-two years since I was deactivated.”
“Huh,” I said. “The Defiant and its fleet crashed on Detritus about eighty years ago, and the Krell War started some distant time before that.” Gran-Gran said the war had been going on a long time when she’d been born.
“Considering human life spans,” M-Bot said, “I must conclude that my pilot has perished. How sad.”
“Sad?” I asked, trying to wrap my mind around this. “You have emotions?”
“I am allowed self-improving and independently reinforcing memory pathways, for the simulation of organic emotions. That allows me to have better interaction with humans, but I am not actually alive. My subroutines for emotional distress indicate I should feel for the loss of my master, but the memory banks recording his appearance—and our history together—are damaged. I remember nothing more than his name and his final command.”