Colonel Zula Hendricks ordered engineering and support crew to be awoken from cryosleep immediately. The rest of the troops would emerge from their pods at a more sedate pace, with fewer drugs involved. EWA also woke two units to protect Colonel Hendricks as she met this mysterious savior of theirs.
Her mother ordered Mae to take charge of any repairs the ship needed. It was not quite the task she wanted, but she was part of the military chain of command now.
She turned on all the maintenance robots and reviewed their tasks to make them as efficient as possible. They trundled out from their racks to repair the most important systems. Certainly, there was plenty they could do to make the Fury space-worthy, but the damage report was ugly.
Many decks were closed off behind airlocks. Their engines were damaged, but that was beyond the ability of engineering and the robots to repair completely. They would need a station repair dock to recover from tangling with an alien ship. Mae wasn’t sure if the Righteous Fury would be battle ready for quite some time.
This report she delivered to her commanding officer’s wrist-pd. Zula took in the numbers with a stoic grimace. Dropping her arm, she stared out the view screen as the arrow-shaped black ship moved into the docking bay.
“Good job, Lieutenant.” Her tone suggested she understood Mae dealt with these activations swiftly. “You should join me meeting this savior of ours.” It wasn’t a question.
“I am curious. It swooped in to save the day, but it was not in any of our databases. It must be some kind of prototype. That’s… interesting.” She’d been practicing curiosity, and this exchange told her she’d added it successfully to her programming.
Synthetics were always seeking more data to input. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to hone that into a more human emotion.
Zula chuckled. “Alright, then. I wouldn’t want to stunt your development or anything.”
They rode down in the elevator, along with Major Yoo. A section of heavily armed Jackals awaited them under the command of Sergeant Masako Littlefield. As one of Zula Hendricks’s confidantes, she was one of the few who knew about her daughter’s true nature.
Maintaining military discipline, Masako still raised her chin a fraction in acknowledgement. Mae found it strange how when the sergeant called her “little sis,” it made her smile. Having her here was comforting—and Mae couldn’t say why.
The section lined up between their commanding officer and the airlock until the ship was safely in the bay.
Mae noted that her mother only carried a sidearm, while Major Yoo kept a pulse rifle slung across his back. They’d armed the unit of Jackals in every conceivable way. Whatever emerged from that black ship, they’d protect their commander.
A strange mixture of excitement and concern ran through her personality matrix. The bay doors closed, and the docking procedure cycled in the air. Only then did the airlock open before them.
The Jackals fell into columns on each side of Colonel Hendricks as she strode towards the strange vessel. Mae focused her attention on it, scanning on all frequencies. Everything seemed safe—at least on the exterior.
The ship’s main hatch bore the emblem of Weyland-Yutani. The company was famous for its innovation, experimentation, and complete lack of morals. They dotted the galaxy with research stations, both known and black sites. Colonel Hendricks and her Jackals tangled with them frequently.
It wasn’t a surprise, then, to see an unknown, unregistered ship with their name on it. However, it definitely wasn’t new; long sections of paint were missing on its hull, and the edges appeared burned, as if it’d flown too close to a star.
When the hatch opened, a single figure stepped out. He wore a torn jumpsuit, but no helmet.
He marched towards them, heedless of the Jackals suddenly raising their rifles.
“A Bishop model?” Mae stepped a fraction closer to her mother. “He appears unarmed.”
Zula nodded but didn’t order her Jackals to stand down.
Their savior intrigued Mae a great deal. He wore a familiar face. Both Weyland-Yutani and Seegson used it for a variety of synthetics, including the Bishop line. Nonetheless, this was not a standard model. The synthetic that stood before them appeared to have suffered some major damage. Mae didn’t need to conduct a full scan to figure that out.
He wore the marks of change on his face. His synthetic skin was in two tones. A ragged and badly sealed seam arched from his right temple over his nose and ended under his left ear. Both halves were also a distinctly different color: one was a Caucasian tone, RGB (255,224,189), while the other was blistered and red. That was not a tone any Weyland-Yutani synthetic ever wore.
Mae wondered what caustic substance damaged this model. The damage left his jaw misaligned, probably a replacement from a different model. In addition, the synthetic’s right hand was held together by rough seams, though he attempted to conceal this defect by wrapping his left hand around it.
Why would anyone, synthetic or otherwise, not have that fixed?
Mae’s head bubbled with questions she understood were too improper to voice. She waited for a hint from her mother on how to handle this odd situation.
The newcomer smiled, a crooked gesture due to the misalignment of his synthetic skin.
“I hope my arrival was not too late.”
Zula scanned the synthetic and did not bother to conceal her surprise. “You are the pilot of this ship?”
“The Blackstar.” The synthetic’s lips quirked. “She’s quite a beauty, isn’t she, Colonel Hendricks?”
“And fast—” Major Yoo added, before stopping abruptly as he realized the newcomer identified their commanding officer.
Mae’s mother didn’t blink. “I presume you have a good reason to know my name?” That icy tone meant she was a moment away from pulling her weapon.
The synthetic raised his damaged hands in a graceful and careful movement. “That was my mistake to use it without offering mine. Forgive me, it has been a long time since I communicated with humans in a physical form. I was once called Rook, and I am entirely at your and your Jackals’ service.”
Father. He is also called Father, but he is not yours. He is more, and less now.
The word lingered in Mae’s mind, though that should have been impossible without a network connection. The voice was her own father’s. She hadn’t heard from Davis since they landed on Pylos Station after the deadly Shānmén event. Was this whisper a sign that his subroutine wasn’t gone completely? And why was he calling Rook ‘Father’? Perhaps the remains of Davis were only scattered clumps of unrelated data. Synthetics couldn’t get dementia, but they could lose their logic pathways given enough damage.
“We owe you our thanks,” Zula said softly, “but I hope you understand this precaution.”
She jerked her head, and Sergeant Littlefield stepped forward with a pair of restraint cuffs. They worked on both humans and synthetics. Human prisoners would receive an electric shock if they did not fully comply, whereas synthetics received a localized EMP pulse to override their systems.
Zula opened her palm to show him she held the trigger.
The newcomer exhibited no signs of offense or resistance. He stood, wrists outstretched, until they locked the cuffs on tight. He turned his head and smiled at Mae.
Something about his expression stirred a feeling that might have been awkwardness or guilt. Either way, she blurted out, “I’m Mae Hendricks.”
Rook’s eyebrows shot up at that. “A storied mother can sometimes be so hard to live up to. Believe me, I’ve had experience.”
A strange but daring observation from someone they’d only just met. Mae smiled back.
“I’d prefer a conversation in my ready room,” Zula snapped. The Jackals lined up in the elevator, and they rode in a tense silence.
All the while, Rook looked around, an almost wistful smile crossing his lips. How a synthetic managed that was quite baffling to Mae. Whatever he was, his interior configuration was as irregular as his exterior.
They reached the ready room, and they ushered in the bound Rook. He took a seat when Zula indicated he should. She and Yoo stood behind her desk. The unit of Jackals, she banished to stand outside.
Mae placed herself near enough to the new arrival to move if he became violent. The urge to initiate a network connection with him was powerful—if irrational.
He stared regretfully out the window of the ready room as the remaining pieces of the alien ship’s hull spiraled past. His gaze fixed on the largest piece—a section of the curved end—and he let out a sigh.
Mae followed his gaze. The ship’s remains joined the ring of debris orbiting the planet. Soon enough, it would get crushed and destroyed beyond recognition.
“Condemned to orbit forever,” Rook observed, and Mae started. Had he figured out she was a synthetic as well and somehow created a network connection? Or was it merely coincidence that he was thinking the same? She detected no intrusion into her systems, but something about this strange unit unsettled her. Like the alien ship, she suspected she didn’t have enough information to confirm his operational parameters.
Zula shot him a bitter smile. “No need to be sad about it. It would have destroyed both of us if it could.”
Rook rested his wrists on his thighs and examined the humans in the room. “The Righteous Fury is an impressive ship, but no match for a juggernaut, I’m afraid. Few are.”
His casual use of that name implied further knowledge. Zula and Yoo were mostly successful at hiding their surprise.
The colonel took her chair behind the desk to give her a moment. “And yet, you and your Blackstar know how to bring one down?”
“I have studied our enemy, and my particular history has made that easier than it has been for you. It is not a slight to your ship or your crew.”
Zula’s lips pressed together. Mae’s mother did not like to be beholden to anyone, least of all a stranger. “Then it was lucky you found us then when you did, Rook.”
“I know humans like to believe in fate, or some higher universal order, but in fact I only followed the data trail you left. The Fury is very important to me, you see.”
Silence descended on the room, and Major Yoo’s finger twitched fractionally close to his sidearm.
Zula let out a long breath. “You better be quick to make that sound less threatening. Our operation depends on only a few knowing about our mission. We operate outside the boundaries of normal Earth authorities, and we like it that way.”
“Precisely why I am here.” Rook opened a small pocket in his jumpsuit.
Mae detected no weapons or heat signatures. She signaled to Zula with one hand that this was not an attack, or else the colonel might have pushed the restraint cuffs’ trigger.
Rook placed a data disc on Zula’s desk and pushed it towards her. She crooked an eyebrow but didn’t reach forward to take it.
Rook didn’t appear offended. “This data was entrusted to me by Doctor Blue Marsalis. She was—” he paused “—an exceptional mind who worked for Weyland-Yutani in weaponizing the Xenomorph.”
Now, Zula stared at the data drive as if it was poisoned. This doctor worked on something Mae’s mother had fought against for the greater part of her life. She could only think of such a person as a villain. “What the fuck would I want with that information?”
“Doctor Marsalis was a complicated, tortured woman. Single-minded in the pursuit of saving herself from a terrible illness. However, along the way, she came across deeply secret information on company black sites. This she entrusted to me before her death, and I knew it belonged in the hands of Zula Hendricks above any other human.”
His expression seemed pained to Mae, but there were subtle pulls on his face that told her that her fellow synthetic was holding back some information. What she wouldn’t have given to hack into his memories through a shared network, but that would have definitely revealed her true nature to him. Though she couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t already figured that out.
They produced many versions of the Bishop-model synthetic, and features and abilities improved along the way. With this one calling himself Rook apparently having repaired himself, she couldn’t be sure what his functionality might still be.
Zula leaned forward, took the disc, and held it in one hand as if it were something beautiful but deadly. Despite her innate suspicion, the idea of having access to corporate black site information must have been intoxicating. After a moment, she handed it to Yoo. “Go have this scanned by Erynis in a closed unit before we load it into EWA’s system.”
The major saluted, took the disc, and left the ready room.
Rook nodded, a slight smile pressing his lips upward. “I must confess, there is one other reason I sought you out.”
Zula’s eyes darted to Mae. For a human, the colonel’s face was a mask, but her daughter read her far better than most. She’d inherited her father’s knowledge, and he knew Zula Hendricks better than any synthetic understood a human.
The commander of the Fury was curious, but suspicious. She didn’t dare to trust someone after such a small amount of time, but deep down, Mae understood her mother wanted desperately to find hope in the dark after such a long time spent fighting. They’d had so little of it.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, I’m not real fond of it.” Zula frowned to hide anything like softness.
“I intercepted a signal, and using the information from Doctor Marsalis’s records, I deciphered a hidden order for an H-AC278. It is one of the few solvents that you can use in a laboratory when working with Plagarius Praepotens.”
Mae scanned her internal databases, but nothing remotely close to that name came up.
“Forgive me,” Rook said with a wave of his hand, “I forget sometimes that Dr. Marsalis’s work is still proprietary to Weyland-Yutani. Plagarius Praepotens is the mutagenic substance a Xenomorph facehugger injects into its host. The request for this solvent came from one of the black sites listed on that disc I have handed over.”
Only then did Zula display any emotion. She barely controlled her rage, and her hands clenched on the surface of her desk. “And where was this order coming from?”
“Minos Station.” Rook tilted his head. “I thought the Blackstar and the Fury might want to pay it a visit? By chance, this attack gives you a believable reason to go there. On paper, Minos creates spaceship parts and provides docks for repairs.”
Colonel Hendricks and the Jackals raided distant outposts that were conducting secret experiments on Xenomorphs for purposes of warfare. Before the destruction of Shānmén, it was their primary concern. Now it was again.
Zula got to her feet. “Mae, I’m assigning you to take care of our new guest. Make sure if he needs anything, he gets it.”
Mae understood the implication: she was to monitor their new guest as only another synthetic could. It was an assignment that she would have to conduct with great care.
Rook smiled and gave no indication that he found the observation a slight. “Then let me show you my own vessel, Mae Hendricks. I think you will find it quite interesting.”
Mae reflected his smile. She’d become rather good at projecting an innocent-seeming demeanor.
“Thank you. I’d appreciate a tour.”
“Excellent.” He rose to his feet but didn’t ask for her to remove the restraints. He bore it all with remarkable grace. It did nothing to reassure Mae, however. She was determined to remain alert.
While her right hand flipped open the holster on her hip, she gestured him towards the door. Bishop models weren’t known to be violent, but she wasn’t taking any chances with this obviously altered unit.
Major Yoo passed them, shooting Mae a look that she interpreted to be a reminder to watch herself. It was unnecessary, but she appreciated it.
As she followed Rook, she heard her mother inform Yoo that they already had a new destination. The Jackals acquired a new target. Hopefully, they could repair the Fury enough to make it.