Puerile Potty Humour

Tau Alpha-1000 moved with what he considered prudent haste, loading his belongings into a small electric-powered truck. He’d borrow and leave it at Landing’s spaceport. Somebody, probably the Genetor himself, had discovered and eliminated his tap into the Heretek’s data network, and he knew he had to get to safety while he could. Originally, it had been his intention to use this access to uncover proof of the Genetor’s heresy. 

Unfortunately, his access was not complete—he only had access to the information the heretek considered of low importance. However, things that the man regarded as low importance consisted of everything having to do with Orkney IV and the entirety of his putative responsibilities, though. As such, Tau Alpha had noticed something interesting about the young noble girl who had, until recently, been his pupil—at least until all of the files regarding the girl were suddenly swept into the Genetor’s highly confidential and highly encrypted private data store.

He had a mixed relationship with the girl. No, being honest with himself, he resented her. Not only did he not think her, a native of a backwaters planet, truly a part of the cult, but the brat had gone above his head with the discovery of those stunner weapons—even though the girl had done nothing but merely stumble upon them! 

When Tau discovered that the Genetor highly suspected the young girl of being a psyker due to her medical records, he made a decision that, now that it was rebounding upon him, he regretted.

When all of the files the Genetor had on the girl vanished underneath a much higher classification and encryption regime, Tau Alpha-1000 knew that the Genetor’s suspicions must have been proven correct.

He carefully smuggled a physical report of her nature as a psyker on an outbound ship and routed it to the correct place. Little Rho Epsilon-5 would be swept up by the Black Ships. If not the next time they came, then definitely the time after that—although the bureaucracy of the Imperium was a cog that turned slowly, it turned inexorably.

He didn’t feel bad about it. In his mind, especially after how close the girl had gotten to Genetor Neurosage, he was just nipping an incipient Heretek in the bud. Not to mention, psykers gave him the heebie-jeebies if he was honest enough to admit such an organic failing. Altogether, it wasn’t hard for him to rationalise his decision—he just regretted it now because he had been caught.

The Genetor often underestimated him when it came to his competence, but Tau Alpha-1000 did not reciprocate. As much as he despised the man, Tau knew that he was competent. There was only one conclusion Tau could draw when his access to the Genetor’s systems was curtailed very shortly after Tau received a confirmation message on the noosphere transmitted from the incoming freighter. The message confirmed that his report about a psyker on Orkney IV had been received and thanked him for his diligence. Unfortunately for him, due to the fact that it was a Mechanicum ship, the message came over the noosphere. It was so unusual for Orkney to be serviced by a Mechanicum ship that he hadn’t expected this at all.

Even if the system received a lot of cargo from Stygies VIII, it was almost always delivered on a normal civilian freighter. There must be something different about this shipment, and while he was curious, there was no reason to question it now. If it was a normal ship, the confirming reply would have likely been delivered physically over the course of a few weeks. However, a Mechanicum ship would digitise the physical message from the Administratum as a matter of course, delivering it electronically. That was the problem—the Genetor clearly had a similar tap into the message delivery systems that Tau had in the Genetor’s own systems. This was not something Tau had expected either since these cogitators were all based in the space station, which the Genetor was barred from visiting.

Rather than answering the furious noosphere message from the Genetor demanding his presence, Tau Alpha-1000 was taking the simple expedient of fleeing the planet. Ironically and conveniently, the unconventional surface-to-orbit craft that the Genetor had arranged had come online just soon enough for him to escape.

While Genetor Neurosage was technically responsible for all Mechanicum personnel in the system, the fact that he was planet-bound meant that Tau Alpha-1000 would be able to hide aboard the large space station that serviced both the planet as well as a small Imperial naval squadron. There were easily five million people aboard the station, so it would be simple to hide even if he would no longer be able to as easily uncover proof of the Genetor’s heresy from up there, but he would survive and could eventually get transport back to Stygies VIII. His backers, who had sent him to watch Neurosage, would be put out, but they would understand—he hoped.

Tau Alpha-1000 swerved to avoid a small car being driven with a dangerous level of speed by a hooting-and-hollering young native and chirped his displeasure at the boy driving it as he passed. The streets of Landing were getting more and more crowded with small, non-standard ground cars. The first examples of this technology were shipped in from Stygies VIII shortly after he arrived, and as much as Tau Alpha-1000 wished, he couldn’t find fault with them. Although the Mechanicum often produced standard trucks and ground cars due to the advantages of economy of scale and spare part logistics, these alternative electric vehicles were ancient but legitimate human designs.

They were powered by large power cells and had a lot of disadvantages both in range, charging speed and carrying capacity when compared to a multi-fuel truck, but they absolutely were superior to the previous beast of burden and cart system that was still used on the planet and had been for thousands of years. The very smell of such large animals disgusted him.

The combination airport and spaceport in Landing was over five kilometres east of town, near the coast. Tau Alpha-1000 had personally overseen the extension of the two runways several months ago. The new class of orbital ship required a much longer takeoff roll than was normal for Imperial Navy shuttles, and he nodded smartly, pleased with his own effort, when he noticed the quality of the work again as he drove past them.

He parked the truck not far from the funny-looking ship that was being loaded with the distinctive locally-produced containers that contained Orkney’s only valuable commodity. These ships couldn’t carry much weight, but even still, they were all set up in a semi-freight and semi-passenger configuration, so there should still be enough for him and his meagre belongings. He chirped orders to a few Tech Priests who were overseeing the loading of the vessel, demanding to be put on the manifest.

They acquiesced, despite complaints, and he nodded as several menial servitors collected his belongings and began loading them in the cargo compartment. He had just made it in time, as it looked as though the flight crew was boarding now. Five more minutes and he might have missed this flight, which might have doomed him.

He walked up the mobile stairs used to board the craft, stepped into the small passenger compartment and froze.

Genetor Neurosage was sitting in one of the empty seats. Despite how the man was sitting, implying he was calm, several of his mechadendrites were swaying behind him angrily. When he froze, two Skiitari whom he hadn’t even seen approaching from behind pushed him inside the cabin and boarded behind him, closing the passenger loading door.

He’d try to brazen this out, «Magos, surely you’re not going to disobey the Fabricator-General and leave the planet.»

The man chirped back, angrily amused, «Of course not. The flight plan has been altered to be suborbital. Just a test flight out and back, overflying the Abyssal Trench… They’ll refuel afterwards and take the cargo to orbit. Query, Tau Alpha-1000, how well are your systems protected against saltwater intrusion? Query, can you survive aspirating liquids?»

---

As I was stuffing a spare robe, under things, and miscellaneous toiletries in a leather backpack, my big sister poked her head into my bedroom and said, “Pipes! You have to help me!”

“Oh? I dinnae think I do,” I said, amused. But then I tilted my head to the side, “But, what do you need?”

She was holding one of the twins—both of them were getting really chunky and had begun attempting to crawl on the floor when placed on the ground, although I still couldn’t tell who was in her arms without using Observe. Alicia shifted him into her arms so she could hold her hands together and out towards me in supplication. She pleaded, “Next weekend, I need you to be my chaperone so I can go have dinner with Timothy at his house.”

Oh, was it just Timothy now? Not Captain Blair any longer? I tried my best to arch a single eyebrow. This was an expression that Sister Jorus had a tendency to do at the schola, and from my experience it meant she didn’t believe what was being said. As an expression, I adored it, but from my sister’s face, I think I failed dismally. I tried this expression regularly in front of a mirror, considering how emotive it was, but a third of the time, I raised both of my eyebrows and another third of the time, I just bunched up my face like I was constipated. Sadly, it seemed like the latter was what happened in this attempt.

I sighed, “Sis, I am several years younger than ye, plus I am a girl too. Do you not understand what a chaperone is?”

Here in Landing, girls of proper breeding didn’t really need chaperones to just walk around by themselves—not as they might elsewhere in a small village or in other feudal worlds I had read about. That was one of the first things I loved about living here. However, the culture was that a male of the family would chaperone an unmarried girl who was being visited by her suitor.

She scoffed at me, “You’re basically like a Lady Knight, Piper. Mom and even Mrs Robbins said it would be fine.”

That caused me to stop in the middle of shoving my socks inside my bag to consider that. As Mrs Roberts had said months ago before I had started on this incredible journey, incorrigible tomboys weren’t precisely unheard of amongst Orkney women, and every now and again, there would be a young noble girl who didn’t want to follow the path of her mother and sisters and get married. If you were such a noble girl with such non-standard ideas, it was possible to become a Lady Knight, but it wasn’t guaranteed. You had to be legitimately good at fighting and marksmanship, too. It wasn’t an empty title or platitude.

The gender roles in our culture were so entrenched that such personages were basically treated as men, socially. However, I think it would still be a big scandal if a Lady Knight ever wanted to marry another woman like a man would—most still married men or stayed spinsters, like I probably would.

Without the capacity to engender children, I kind of wondered what the point of such a hypothetically scandalous relationship was, anyway. However, as soon as this thought ran through my head, I realised it was just my own upbringing rearing its head. The cultures of the Imperium of Man could differ wildly, so long as they didn’t go out of bounds or step on the primacy of the God-Emperor-Omnissiah, of course. Orkney was just kind of a backward place. I already knew from studying other planets, especially much more populated ones, that there was no stigma against same-sex romance—in some cases, they were actually as encouraged as they were discouraged here on Orkney.

Alicia stared at me and started to open her mouth, and I realised that I had been staring off into space for a moment, lost in my own thoughts. Before I could space out anymore, I explained why I couldn’t help her, “I’m going on a trip to the space station. I’ll be gone a few days, maybe even a week.”

Alicia widened her eyes and even looked envious. I fired a quick Observe on her to check, and sure enough, it said she was. Normally, I didn’t do that with family members. Observe didn’t tell a lot, but it was still sort of like mind reading, sometimes. I wouldn’t do it on anything important, but confirmation that I had made my sister envious pleased me. She also had increased her lowest stat, Strength, to five, so I privately offered congratulations to her. Even Pete was getting smarter and had the same value for his Intelligence now, which was an increase of two from the first time I had seen it. That rate of progress, especially in his smarts, was laudable. Perhaps it was just because boys barely had a brain to start with that he could make such progress.

Alicia then looked thoughtful for a second and said, “That shouldn’t matter. This is at the end of next week. I wanted to give you a lot of warning because I know how you get busy with… whatever you do, but I didn’t expect that!”

Well, poop. I hoped it was the weekend that was only a couple of days away, so I would have a plausible reason to decline. I glanced sideways and tried something I was sure wouldn’t work, “I can’t be a chaperone. I’m just a young maiden, myself. I wouldn’t know what I’m supposed to stop you two from doing.” Maybe she would buy that, supposed Lady Knight equivalent or not—I was still a young girl, right? Plus, we in the Mechanicum weren’t considered to be very romantic. If you cloned over ninety per cent of your members, that type of reputation would be inevitable.

“Good,” she purred, although her eyes told me she didn’t believe me for a second, “That’s just how I prefer it.”

“Ugh… ew, Alicia,” I complained, flailing my hands in front of myself in surrender, and said, “Fine. The Genetor said I might have to wait a few days… even if that drags on to a full week, I should be back in time…” I paused and then qualified, just in case she didn’t understand that I still wasn’t keen, “I guess.”

She hugged me in happiness. I wriggled out of her arms, careful not to squish my brother in the attempt, yelling the trademark line that I used anytime an older sibling grabbed me, “Piper cannae be contained!”

Alicia laughed and carried our brother out with her, leaving me with my thoughts and half-filled rucksack. I stared down at it, a little dissatisfied with it. It was one of my father’s old waterproof, leather rucksacks. It didn’t really scream Mechanicum, but it was of good quality, and it was all I had.

I finished packing and left the house, tossing the ruck into the backseat of the small vehicle before climbing into the passenger seat. The Technomat in the driver’s seat glanced at me and asked, “To the airport, ma’am?”

I nodded at the man who was junior to me, despite being older. He put the electric vehicle into motion, and I sat back and relaxed.

The term Technomat most generally meant a general-service repair type of technical servitor. These servitors were pretty valuable as servitors went because they contained a lot of augmetics and repair tools, but the word was also used for people who were at the lowest levels of the cult. The fact that the terms were the same and interchangeable when discussing a person and a servitor said a lot about the Mechanicum in general—they were the same word because they were of equivalent importance and function.

Most Technomats were discovered as technically gifted menials, and some had a chance to become Tech-Priests themselves. This was likely to be my fate if it weren’t for my system of special numbers. Although I knew I was smarter than the average child, I didn’t think I was so smart to get the same treatment if I didn’t have a lot of levels in Electronics Repair. Who knew, though? I might have gotten a similar treatment if I still found that stunner carbine, but I wouldn’t have had the same impetus to explore, so I couldn’t be sure.

I had a small group of technomats who tried quite hard to ingratiate themselves with me ever since everyone discovered how the Genetor treated me. I let them, but even if the Mechanicum had a lot of misery in it, there was one thing about it that I liked. It emphasised an equivalent exchange.

True, that was the ideal, and perhaps more often than not, this was ignored, but it was dogma, and I had no problems following it. As such, I had been teaching a small group of Technomats how to repair the most common infantry weapons that one would find in an Imperial Guard Regiment.

Las weapons were simple to make and simple to repair, so that was where I was spending most of my time with them. Still, they needed to both master the most common repair “rituals” as well as be able to troubleshoot and know which one to perform. The most common failure modes of Las weapons in an Imperial Guard Regiment were due to battle damage, followed by failures due to poor maintenance and cleanliness.

If they could pass tests on the maintenance of various types of Lasguns, then they could request assignments with the PDF or Imperial Guard, not that we had any of that on the planet at the present time. Still, we did have several more regiments being called to service and serving as support staff for one of them was a way to earn real merits, especially if they were involved in combat—if they survived, anyway.

I opened my eyes as I felt the small vehicle roll to a stop and glanced around. The Technomat said what was on my mind, “It looks like you just missed it, ma’am.”

I frowned. I thought the shuttle would wait for me since the Genetor had placed me on the manifest, but perhaps that was naive. I was just a tiny cog and couldn’t gum up the works—especially on a brand-new flight schedule.

I then opened my mind to the noosphere. The airport was far enough away from the city that there were no direct connections or relays if I wanted to contact anyone there, and the disconnect felt isolating. Still, there were tons of people and machines to speak to here.

It didn’t take me long to find out what happened. There was a last-minute test flight, for some reason, and the aircraft would be back in a couple of hours—figure another hour after that to refuel, and I could still get out of here today.

I read a bit more about what I should expect on the flight because I was quite nervous. I then noticed that I was limited to fifty kilos of personal belongings and frowned. My backpack, full of everything I was taking, barely weighed more than fifteen pounds, including a full-sized Volkite pistol I had stuffed in there, too.

Was this personal freight capacity something I could take advantage of? Due to the limitation on freight space going up into orbit, products from the planet were either incredibly expensive or, more likely, totally unavailable. After all, why would the Imperium waste a limited promthium budget to lift candy to orbit when it could lift more rejuvenat materials?

The value-to-mass ratio meant anything else… everything else… stayed on the surface. Sometimes, they didn’t even lift people back up if they were assigned here at the conclusion of their tours of duty, although mostly people in that position considered it a benefit to permanently immigrate as Orkney IV was comfortable, safe and beautiful.

With this mass allotment, I could bring a small amount of planetary products up, myself. Why, the price I could get for some candy up there…

Then I physically smacked my forehead with my palm for being so stupid.

The best thing I could bring up was still the same thing that we exported. I wouldn’t be allowed to divert the top-quality rejuvenat treatments, the ones that had shelf-lives of years or decades. Those were all export products. However, the lowest-grade treatments were still basically of the same efficacy if administered in time, even if their shelf-life was only measured in weeks.

“I might need you for a few more hours. Am I interrupting anything?” I asked the Technomat.

He shook his head, “No, I’m happy to help you all day… but if you don’t mind, can you go over the differences in repair rituals on the Longlas compared to a regular Lasgun?”

I brightened, “Aye, we can talk about that on the way. While I’m running an errand, go by the armoury and check out one of each and bring them with you, too.” I intended to show him the disassembly procedures, specifically for the Longlas, which had a more fragile optical focusing lens than the regular Lasgun. It needed a little more attention in all repairs. I figured my little errand wouldn’t take very long, and I’d still have to wait quite a while for the aircraft to come back and return to normal service.

The man, who had only a single paltry optical augmenting to his name, the poor thing, brightened, and he put the vehicle into gear after hearing my destination.

After we retraced our steps and returned to the Wizard’s Tower, I left the Technomat to his own devices for a time and ran down through the corridors. Sadly, I couldn’t really run at full speed anymore because I had reached the level of moving a little too fast to be believable, as such, my progress in Running had fallen off to nothing.

I suppose that made sense because what I was doing now was more like jogging, even if I still moved really fast. I had timed myself in one of the abandoned long corridors, and if I ran flat out, I could achieve slightly above forty-five kilometres an hour. Not bad for a runt, eh? My jogging was still faster than my brother’s flat-out sprints.

I skidded to a halt next to one of the Genetor’s bio labs. I didn’t have access to all of his labs, nor did I really even know how many he had. But I did have access to most of them that he used on non-personal work. For example, this lab was more like an operating room and it was the same location that he treated anybody who came in with a serious medical condition, or for the complementary life extension treatments.

The lowest quality materials for these treatments, once processed, only had a stable lifespan of a couple of weeks, so there was a ton of wastage. Most of them were all thrown away at the end of their usefulness since most people in Landing had already received treatment. In fact, it was usually one of the first things a newcomer did, especially if they were from off-planet. If these low-quality materials weren’t produced in the same batch process as the good stuff, then it wouldn’t make sense to make them at all.

As I hummed, I emptied the cupboard of over a hundred large glass ampules, each ampule having the equivalent of about fifty doses, given an average human’s body weight. The dosage was one-tenth a millilitre to the kilogram of body weight, and the drug presumed an average human body weight of sixty or seventy kilos.

That meant that there were about thirty litres of life-extension drugs here when she cleaned out most of the cabinet. Cleaning out this cabinet had been one of my chores, cleaning it out and dumping it into the recycler, anyway. These days, I offloaded this chore onto a servitor. I think that was the Genetor’s point in assigning me “chores” in the first place—to demonstrate that I should properly make use of servitors for menial tasks.

The Genetor truly did not care what I did with this low-grade product, though. Most of it was disposed of in the factory, and very little was actually bottled like this. I had even given injections to the entirety of the PDF, all my father’s troops. Most individual soldiers came from the hinterlands, as we did, and many did not know that this service was available—so I spoke to the man in charge and gave each soldier a shot in the arm, assembly-line style like an innoculation.

This wasn’t entirely out of the goodness of my own heart, either. I had gotten an interesting skill from it, called Medicine Administration.

** Medicine Administration (LV10): Increases the efficacy of medicine you administer by LV*4.0 [40%]. This skill only increases the beneficial effects, not side effects or sequelae. For example, a narcotic painkiller will have its analgesic properties increased with no increased risk of overdose or addiction beyond the norm for the dose administered.

It seemed to be a purely positive skill, which was… more or less… the norm. However, it was kind of magical—did this mean that those I injected with this rejuvanat drug would have the life extension properties of the treatment increased by forty per cent? That seemed to be the case, which made me a bit sad that I hadn’t found some way to hold off on my own treatment until I increased this skill a lot—still, I would make sure to administer my own treatments from now on.

Although, from what I could tell, it wasn’t very common for the proximal cause of death for an Imperial citizen to be senescence-related—still, it was better to assume I would need the treatments and then work to ensure my safety to live old enough for them to be utilised.

Thinking about administering all of those drugs, I frowned. I remembered how much miscellaneous equipment I used. Syringes weren’t single-use disposable items, but we still sterilised them after use, so I carried over a hundred syringes, as well as a sterilisation device, to the parade grounds. I glanced at the hundred ampules… this would run right up into the limits of her mass allotment, and it didn’t include anything to keep them safe in transport, either.

I shook my head. I would just have to source syringes, swabs, a sterilisation device and other items up on the station. I was absolutely sure they had them, so there was no reason to waste a single gram of my allotment for them. Already, I might be over the mass allotment when you included the glass ampules themselves, as well as the plastic case with cut-out foam I was going to buy to hold them, but it would be close. I could always just throw a few ampules away if they were strict about it, but I bet they wouldn’t be.

After securing a case to safely carry my ill-gotten medicine, I met the Technomat back in the motor pool. I carefully placed the case in the truck, and hopped up in the cab again. The Technomat glanced at me and asked, “Ready to go?”

I nodded, “Aye. And we can talk about the main differences from a maintenance perspective between a regular Lasgun and a Longlas on the way back to the airport.” I glanced back and saw an example of each weapon in the truck, as well.

“They didn’t want to issue those to me,” the Technomat mused.

I blinked, “Really? I’ve never had any issues.”

The man glanced at me sideways, “I can believe that. As soon as I mentioned your name and that you asked me to get them, they handed them over.”

I rubbed the back of my head and chuckled, saying nothing. I had realised I had a special status, of course, but it seemed embarassing to mention it now.

---

“…knowing which maintenance ritual to use can be difficult, but the only cure to that is experience. When you have no idea, then try them in this order… you should always prioritise the attempts which salvage parts. Do not just throw replacement parts at a problem until it fixes itself. That is not only shoddy maintenance, but worse, it is a sacrilege,” I finished explaining to Technomat, as well as a couple others from the airport that had come to listen to my impromptu class on Lasguns. It had gotten me another level in Teaching, though. I had gotten a few levels in that skill since I had begun lecturing some of the Technomats in the past weeks.

I was a bit conflicted with the last things I had told him, but I couldn’t very well say that my Observe skill tended to tell me exactly what was wrong with a piece of machinery, if it was malfunctioning… so I could only repeat what I had read about diagnosing and troubleshooting errors and hope that was good enough. If anything, I read and studied this type of thing even more due to my Observe skill because I had to have a line of plausible bullshit to tell the supervising Tech-Priests whenever I correctly identified something to fix due to my special powers, when I was fixing things under supervision.

I brought the class to a close because through the noosphere I could detect that the radar had detected the identify-friend-foe transponder of the shuttle returning. There was no such thing as a global traffic network on Orkney, and even the spaceport had relatively primitive traffic controls and could only detect arriving traffic a couple of hundred kilometres away.

Still, they were coming in at quite a fast clip so I wouldn’t have to wait too much longer. I double-checked that both of the Las weapons was reassembled, and had a servitor return them to the Technomat’s truck. About the same time I was about to suggest that the man take off back to Landing, a gaggle of full Tech-Priests arrived out of the terminal, beeping in agitated Binaric.

The Technomat froze and asked, “What’s going on?” His position in the cult wasn’t sufficient for him to have many augmetics, so he couldn’t understand what was happening.

“The spacecraft is returning, squawking damage, and one of the passengers is the Genetor,” I said, surprised. I hadn’t checked the transmissions from the spaceplane on the noosphere. I was just watching its transponder get closer and closer.

The Technomat looked at me, as did the four or so hanger ons. He closed his mouth and said decisively, “I’m going to go back to Landing.” The others looked like they wished they could join him, but instead they just disappeared back into the Terminal building.

I nodded, and watched his truck depart at a higher than normal speed.

As the spacecraft approached final approach, I raised an eyebrow and could finally detect, with my puny biological optics, what the issue was. As the nose of the airplane flared or landing, I could plainly see that one of the doors was missing. That wouldn’t do anything good for the spacecraft’s ability to maintain pressure, I thought.

I stood back, with my ruck sack and plastic hard case, and let the gathering of Tech-Priests and servitors swarm around the spacecraft as it was pulled up to a halt by a small tractor attached to the one wheel under the nose. I supposed the engines had been shut-down after landing, and it couldn’t move on its own power.

It was quite impressive, with the cockpit seeminglymany stories above ground level, with a pointy nose and wide, triangular shaped wings. As soon as a large set of stairs was driven up to the cabin, I saw Genetor Neurosage hop out of the door over the gap onto the stairs, not even waiting for the contraption to come to a halt. He was followed by what appeared to be a full squad of his Skiitari, about ten of them.

He walked right up to where I was waiting, and I chirped curiously «What happened, Genetor?»

«It’s nothing. There was a slight malfunction with the door mechanism… although it will be quicker to unload and take a different spacecraft for your flight than wait on repairs» he beeped back at me, non-plussed. His chirps had a sly undertone that I couldn’t identify, like a cat that had caught a bird.

He glanced to the side, and one of his metal tentacles grabbed the carrying handle of the plastic case I had stored all of the rejuvanat drugs I was smuggling onto the station. He pulled it up level to his head and surely used some incredible vision system in his optics to look right through the case. He asked slyly, «Do you plan to sell these on the space station?»

He really was quite insightful, seeing to the heart of matters. I nodded, hoping he wouldn’t interfere with my accumulation of loot. He made a humming sound and said, «Good idea. There is a short period of time where you can make some money with this, before shuttle flights become common place.»

He then glanced to the side at one of the Skiitari and said, «Ranger, please assist Rho Epsilon-5 with this matter, so she is not robbed and murdered by either dock rats or the station authorities.»

«Affirmitive» replied the squad leader, quickly and decisively.

The Genetor looked back at me and paused, which was unusual. Finally, he said, «Rho Epsilon-5, we will need to speak when you return from your errand, next week.»

«Is something the matter?» I asked, anxiously chirping. I hadn’t forgotten about the loss of my quest, which indicated that the Genetor likely knew I was a witch. Still, I was the type of girl to rip off a bandage quickly, even if it was kind of stupid. «We probably have enough time to talk now. It’ll take a while to reload everything into another plane.»

It looked like he was considering it, but then he shook his head and a few of his mechadendrites at the same time, and said aloud, “Negative. I need to make some arrangements, and write to someone I really detest back home. Additionally, speaking through code and vagaries through an astropath is always… inefficient.”

That didn’t sound good. I wonder if I could run away once I got to orbit… although the prospect of never seeing my family again made my chest hurt. But, it didn’t sound like he was getting ready to turn me over to the witch hunters. Even if he was planning on speaking with someone especially important in that regard, the first step would still be to put me under close confinement in the null cells below Landing.

In fact, by not doing that he would, theoretically, be in a whole world of trouble, probably. That made me feel better, but I was still worried. When I looked back up, I blinked because the Genetor was already walking off, and was a good ten metres away already.

I just shrugged and reached down to pick back up my bags, but one of the Skiitari had grabbed them. The leader, who spoke earlier, spoke in binaric, «No need, ma’am. I’m identified as Sigma Alpha, and I’ll be the squad leader for your team while you complete your work task.»

“No numeral part of your designation?” I asked, curiously. Of course, he was just being polite, which was kind of unusual for Skiitari. After all, we all carried transponders which identified each other through the noosphere. We didn’t need to actually introduce ourselves, just like I didn’t need to politely question the descrepancy. While most people did include a numeral in their designations, like I and Tau Alpha-1000 did, a lot of people did not. I wasn’t sure what that said about Mr Sigma Alpha, though. Perhaps he was one of the rare Skiitari volunteers, as otherwise I felt that both clones and convicts would have designations assigned.

«Negative» he replied, which marked him as particularly chatty as Skiitari went. We stood in silence for a good ten minutes, watching servitors reload the cargo.

Finally, I couldn’t take the silence anymore, “If what I downloaded is correct, it will be several days before the cargo arrives that I need to take charge of. I hope to get this personal business done before then. What help can you offer me?” I asked, and then nervously added, “Why did the Genetor think my life was in danger? What are dock rats?”

«It’s clear we will have a lot to discuss on the flight up, ma’am» the Ranger replied, but then remained quiescient, not elaborating at all. That was kind of annoying.

Maybe I was just getting chatty to hide my nervousness, both at the flight and my personal situation. I decided to try stoicism.

I failed, so instead I went to inspect a number of servitors that weren’t being used and practiced my direct control of them. An average Tech-Priest could control a swarm of servitors just by him or herself, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked. You had to balance between issuing standard orders and taking direct control… do too much of the former and errors would occur when the situation you found yourself exceeded the standard programming, and too much of the latter and you could barely operate one of them.

Maybe an hour later, after the cargo was loaded and the pilots conducted a thorough inspection on the new craft we all boarded it by the same mobile stairway. One of the Skiitari loaded both my rucksack and my plastic case in an overhead compartment and Sigma Alpha indicated one of the seats. They were all pretty much the same, so I acquiesced. I didn’t need help with the restraint belts, as I had researched that and all of the safety equipment thoroughly before I ever got here.

I stared out of the window in amazement, although with a white knuckle grip on my seat as we lifted off in the air. I was being constantly pressed back into my seat, and an internal accelerometer indicated I was being subjected to just over three gravities, which was actually quite uncomfortable for me, but I refused to let it show.

The pilot started speaking on the intercom, “Freefall in thirty seconds… we will then perform one half orbit before another long burn of about an hour to raise our orbit and catch up to the space station. We should arrive in four hours.”

And then, suddenly, I was weightless. I was worried I was going to throw up, so I hadn’t really eaten anything but I didn’t notice any discomfort. As my anxiety gave way to wonder, a loud and very realistic sounding fart played itself over my speaker.

Going beet-red, I internally cursed the damned hacker, and I pulled up all of my systems, ready to run a diagnostic and see why my previous efforts to harden myself hadn’t worked.

“Heh,” someone said, and I glanced over at the direction of the sound to find Sigma Alpha staring straight ahead, like a statue.

Did I … imagine that? Surely a Skiitari Ranger wouldn’t be amused by puerile potty humour, right? Or anything? Did they have humour?