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Illaya’s Defunct Junk Doll Jeopardy - Part 1
🕑 Added 2021-08-01 17:16:20 +0000 UTCIt was Illaya’s fourth time scrapping in the Cyclosian system, seventh time scrapping outside of jurisdictional boundaries, and, in her opinion, the most profitable run yet.
‘Finally ahead of time,’ she thought to herself, pleased.
Illaya jumped out using her tether to fly out into a parabolic arc, looking back to survey her burgeoning cargo net full of components with a jubilant smile on her face. She would profit well off of this haul - she would need to have NORA evaluate it for a better estimate, but she knew well enough the market she was in that she’d salvaged well.
She pushed off a drogue-node on the edge of the scrap net, flipping out on her tether in a delicate, decaying parabola toward the airlock of her ship.
NORA was Illaya’s ship AI, a heavily modified Navigational OCA AI. They’d worked alongside each other for years, and much of the profit from their previous ventures had gone into keeping her state-of-the-art and kitted out with the best modifications and software Illaya could get her hands on.
She cheerfully broke the silence as llaya completed her maneuver, synthetic voice smooth and clear through her comm piece. “All drogue-nodes and net connections successfully secured, Illaya. The Ino is ready for maneuver. Sterilization complete. All drones have successfully docked. Now, how about a little break from all the routine drudgery?”
“I want to properly check our new leads, NORA. You’ve taken the readings I asked you to?”
Uncoupling her lead, Illaya stepped into the coffin-like airlock. Once the lock pressurized, her hands became a flurry of motion, undoing the numerous clasps of her armored, carapace exo-suit.
The suit started its life as a standard mining suit, but with time, some close calls, and a lot of heavy modification became one of Illaya’s most prized possessions.
As the thick restraints in the interior slackened and released her, she pushed herself out, leaving it anchored to the service rack.
NORA thoughtfully began the sterilization process without prompting as Illaya exited the airlock. “I was thinking more along the lines of a bath and some shut eye, Illaya. It's been more than 14 hours since your last break.”
Illaya scowled at the . “Come on, NORA. I didn’t bust my ass to beat our schedule just for more shut eye.”
“I recall, a little less than a week ago I was forced to coerce you to rest. I hope I will not be compelled to do so again.”
Illaya paused to grab a MRE from a nearby locker, which she summarily devoured. Designed for low-gravity, it left no crumbs.
She sighed tiredly. The food drew attention to the little aches of her body. Maybe…
NORA’s silence was a statement itself.
“Alright, fine!” she snapped. “I’ll take a little break. But I won’t be satisfied until I get to see the results of our survey! Deal?”
“If you let me bathe you, I think we can compromise successfully, Illaya.”
Illaya, for the first time in many hours, felt the dried sweat and the tight stickiness of her vacuum suit — the one layer she never removed regardless of circumstance.
An essential piece of safety equipment, it covered her neck-to-toe with the snugness of a bodystocking like a superior epidermis. Even if it meant keeping the collar fastened snugly around her neck for months at a time, she never complained. One micrometeorite in the right place and she would instantly know the worth of her discomfort.
NORA twigged her intentional silence immediately and continued to chide her about her work schedule as she continued further into the ship.
Illaya tugged herself along a knotted rope through the slender hull section connecting the cargo hold to the cockpit of the ship. Letting go of it, she allowed her momentum to carry her gracefully forward into the space.
She seated herself in her throne - as much as one could sit in Zero-G. Illaya’s captain’s chair made it possible via proximity triggered electro magnetic fields, each softly gripping her body suit at strategic points. They were no replacement for true safety equipment, but great for relaxing without fear of drifting away from your station.
As the field engaged, Illaya rolled her shoulder and reclined back. “Fine, NORA, go ahead.”
“Thank you Illaya,” NORA hummed. “I do really admire when you stick to your goals, even when they seem inconvenient in the moment.”
She sighed. “This is the first time we’ve made a good enough haul to spend extra time looking. I don’t want to waste the chance.”
“Of course. And a bath will help you do so more effectively.”
Illaya groaned.“Fine. You’re right, NORA. I’ll take a break. Then we search.”
Floating in the soft magnetic field, Illaya plugged a water-line into a port at the base of her spine, seating it with a gentle twist. Several smaller cables reached out toward her like sea snakes. She guided them into more ports across her bodysuit. Once all of them were connected, warm water entered the tight suit and NORA began to manipulate the rate and direction of flow to massage her sore muscles.
Illaya exhaled, long and deeply.
“See? I could imagine that it feels quite lovely. You’re giving yourself an opportunity to relax and let me take care of you. I have noticed that you usually quite enjoy my care. I happen to know you also would enjoy it if I were to reinforce that opinion.”
Illaya mumbled something and relaxed further, letting the field hold her in a neutral, almost fetal position, relishing being bathed in the suit. The gentle pulsing of warm water across her skin combined with the questing of small rubbery tendrils sliding into every nook and cranny on her body.
“Good.” NORA sounded pleased. “That's exactly it. You’ve been spending far too long working your mind without a break. I know you can relax for a little longer.”
The feelers wound around her relaxed form, gently swabbing along her skin, cleaning her completely. She often masturbated while ‘bathing.’ The experience was intimate, even with the AI controlling the tempo. She felt her fingers twitch, and, feeling the field ease around her wrist, reached down by ingrained habit to start rubbing herself.
Her mind drifted as NORA gently soothed her with a stream of soft, sybillant whispers. NORA was right as usual. Illaya needed a break. It was good to relax. To drift. Good girl.
Illaya shuddered, finding that spot within, and stopped thinking for a while.
Sometime later NORA woke Illaya from her light doze. “Illaya, time to get up.”
“NORA, it’s really not fair when you do that,” whined Illaya, slowly gaining awareness of her sleep.
“I have collated the requested survey data ready for you. You wanted to go searching, yes? I am satisfied you will not experience any hindrances resultant from personal fatigue, now.”
Illaya stretched and enjoyed the sensation of muscle and ligament stretching out from stiffness, feeling her body break free from some of the magnetic fields holding her. She then settled back into the chair to look over the glowing displays and graphs.
The newly chartered sections showed all of the prevailing debris flows in the system. She had charted most of them over her previous inroads into the system, promising herself to take another look later.
If her haul could cover the outing. If she could get in without getting noticed by the authorities. If if if.
There was always a chance that she could find a complete doll head, after all. The opportunity alone was the reason that she would risk her life and ship in a restricted charnel system, where sanctioned salvaging operations were infinitely more convenient, more safe. With this new dataset she hoped to finally find what she most desired.
The entire Cyclosian system was an exclusion zone; being caught inside would result in termination on sight. Nonetheless Illaya came here to look for a doll.
She’d read a comic series on the Doll War. Unlike the vast majority of contemporary media, it told the story from the side of the dolls, and a young Illaya found herself hooked. The interactions and culture of the dolls struck the young girl squarely in the heart; she never recovered. They were mythical entities. Machines of pure carnage and war fashioned like innocent porcelain automata.
Illaya couldn’t help but find them beautiful.
The UEF used the sun in the Cyclosian system as a weapon, sacrificing an entire carrier group to deliver their payload, a one-of-a-kind pocket dimension super transport vessel chartered a course straight into the heart of the doomed star. The generated wave of heat and electromagnetic radiation scorched the sun-facing side of every planet in the system and consumed entirely the innermost of the unfortunate stellar objects. The doomsday attack should have left nothing of the dolls.
Should.
They were wrong though. Illaya had the proof in her workshop: a collection of scavenged components from across the Cyclosian system: Doll legs; Doll arms; Doll fabricator parts; numerous other scavenged bits. Salvage, pure and simple. Inert, perhaps, but not permanently so. All that she needed to find was a head and torso in salvageable condition.
Her interface pinged. The charting showed a previously unseen stream of debris. Illaya's face broke into a grin.
NORA said, “Well, Illaya, I would assume you would like to investigate this.”
A glow appeared on the screen highlighting a new stream of scrap hidden amongst the others. They pointed away from the thickest debris field in an eerie, luminescent trail, clearly showing another source of detritus deep in the thickest portion of the outer asteroid belt. She quickly toggled another control on her console, starting the drying portion of the bathing cycle early. Illaya did not want to waste another second in getting to the site.
Her fingers quickly went to work typing a series of commands into her flight computer, starting the pre-burn adjustments necessary for a prograde burn towards the newly discovered site.
Armatured padding in the chair began to fill with fluid, stretching around her body and encapsulating it in a jelly-like embrace. Thick, rubberized restraints carefully extended around her limbs, securing them into the g-cushion chair. The only parts of her body still able to move were her fingers and eyes.
An articulated cable plugged into the collar of her suit, preparing to administer the necessary drugs to prep her body for an intense burn. An inflatable mouth piece slipped past her waiting lips. She bit down into the mouth guard, feeling it grip her teeth and tongue. She watched as the countdown displayed on the HUD ticked down recounting the familiar numbers.
NORA cheerily counted the final stretch,“Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
An eternity.
“Let's throw rocks, Illaya. Ignition.”
The G’s embraced her body, crushing her in their grip.
Needles carefully inserted into ports on her neck continuously pumped drugs into her body. NORA helpfully adjusted the dosages precisely according to Illaya’s vitals.
Minutes later the force let up as the acceleration burn ended, and her body was released from the horrid embrace of gravity.
Illaya groaned through the mouthpiece and allowed her eyes to scan the interface before her; it would be easy sailing for a little while before her deceleration burn. She quickly checked external cameras as well to make sure her net full of salvage was undamaged by the maneuver.
“Once more, Illaya. Would you like some easy listening this time?”
“Nnnn—”
NORA softly replied, “Of course captain, no smooth jazz this time.”
The next burn was just as fierce - Goddess she hated G’s! But the hurt was certainly worth it as it saved precious time.
During the next series of small maneuvers, Illaya hardly even noticed her discomfort, only able to watch her displays with eager anticipation. Her prize was near and she couldn’t be anything other than giddy with anticipation. She strummed her fingers impatiently as the ship approached its target.
Eventually, the source of the debris finally appeared in her visual display, first as a smattering of tiny specks, then as a large asteroid inside a faintly shimmering cloud of metallic flakes. Then, the origin point of the miniscule trail came into view.
A large ship, docked inside of a deep crater on the dark side of the asteroid. Massive, spanning over 3 kilometers long across the bottom of the crater. The colossal hulk dwarfed Illaya’s comparably miniscule ship.
Illaya oscillated between awe and an excitement that had her practically bouncing inside of her harness as she tried to take in the scope of the ship before her. Another set of scans helped her to reveal its registry on an unmarred portion of its hull.
Time, weapons fire, and space had not damaged the 50 meter tall Cyclosian text: TCS Umbra’s Aegis, CSWG00023
The ship didn’t show up in any of her historical records.
“NORA, is there really nothing on this ship in our archives?”
“Correct, Illaya. No mentions of our find. However, I can extrapolate that, given the CS prefix, this ship is certainly of a Cylosian origin. It fits the nomenclature of their fleet quite neatly.”
“That's rather unusual for them. They kept such meticulous records.”
Finding a ship of this size entirely unlisted in any of her years worth of collected data was thoroughly astounding.
She continued her survey. Shifting to her junker’s appraising gaze, her eyes roamed over the hull. scanning for signs of major and minor damage; decompression, micrometeorite impacts, weapon scars, and other signs of decay.
To her surprise, the ancient ship only seemed to have suffered mild surface damage; it had not given up its pressure to the call of the eternal void of space. The debris seemed to be primarily originating from one open, damaged hold blown open from the inside, blasting its contents into space. It seemed likely to Illaya that the rest of the ship was still pressurized. She might not be in vacuum the whole time - and a prize might be among the contents of what remained trapped within.
NORA directed the ship towards the ruptured area of the hull. Alongside this behemoth, the fully loaded Ino with its net of cargo was like a gnat beside an elephant.
Illaya reached to start unfastening herself, the harness straps gently cinched, pulling her into her chair.
“Illaya, I do not think it would be advisable to enter that ship without a prior drone sortie. We simply do not have enough information for such a decision to be prudent.” A pause. “Illaya.”
“NORA, would you stop being such a damn worry wort?” snapped Illaya, beginning to grasp for an emergency release on her harness.
Her wrists were suddenly pulled down to her sides by the magnetic fields of the captain's chair, restraining them within their invisible grasp.
NORA sounded quite disapproving. “Illaya, While I know you are a very capable scrapper and an experienced shipbreaker, you have never been aboard a vessel of this class and do not know its contents. It would be irresponsible of me to allow you to engage in such reckless behavior when we have a perfectly viable alternative.”
A mechanical arm snicked out from behind her.
“I know you enjoy your time as ECVS9, Illaya. There should be no conflict. You established this protocol after all. You do recall what occurred on the Ellusian, don’t you?”
“I…” Illaya shivered. Her left wrist twinged with the memory.
The arm firmly grasped the back of her head, a helmet-like mask folding down over Illaya’s face. Illaya twitched, her hands grasping at nothing, futilely searching for freedom.
“ NORA, I don’t—” Her words were cut short as the neural-jack pressed through the outer seal of the port at the base of her skull. She softly convulsed as it seated itself snugly into the interface in her brainstem. The connection was already overriding her sensory perceptions. Her body felt distant, then was gone like a fusion drive sputtering out.
Everything was cold.
Empty.
Illaya couldn’t think.
NORA spoke. The lips of Illaya’s vacated body mouthed along with her. “ECVS9 is Online.”
A drone, ECVS9, Extravehicular Controlled Vector Scout Nine, released itself from the docking clamps that held it in place on the side of the ship.
ECVS9 did not feel.
It did feel.
ECVS9 felt compliant.
Its body seemed to respond sluggishly, its awareness of its propulsions systems were incomplete. Alien. Illaya felt at once present and far away, as though she was watching everything unfold in some other Illaya’s life. Her mind stopped thinking, she didn’t think unless directed. That wasn’t true, thought Illaya.
No. It was ECVS9.
Wasn’t it?
NORA spoke to them. “No, and yes. Relax, Illaya. ECVS9, disengage Illaya personality wrapper. Focus on the task at hand.”
ECVS9 complied. It felt all of its former concerns dissolve.
Its ion thrusters gently pushed it out into the vacuum. Understood. Executed. Directives?
“You know your directives already.”
Understood. Executing.
It always took a moment to integrate with its chassis. ECVS9 disregarded the oddities of the process and instead oriented itself toward the gaping wound that split the open hull of Umbra’s Aegis.
The opening led into what could only be described as the remnants of a small sun going nova in a box. The interior of the bay had somehow managed to contain this blast with its thick walls, but in the process they had clearly been exposed to an extremely intense level of energy release.
Faint, twisted, matchstick-like remnants marked where the internal supports around the edge of the bay had once been. The catwalks and bulkheads looked like they had become like paper caught in a gust of wind, twisted inward and torn. Somehow, despite this though, the cargo holds walls were entirely intact.
After a cursory search of the melted chamber, ECVS9 found a potential entry into the rest of the ship; a small, undestroyed maintenance hatch behind a blown-in panel on the far side of the bay from its entry point.
Without preamble, finding the hatch secure, it used its hydraulic arms to rip open the hatch, tossing it aside like a used napkin where it began to spin off into the void. For a brief couple of seconds there was a silent, buffeting force as more atmosphere vented itself.
ECVS9 pushed into the maintenance access area, finding it to be just large enough to comfortably maneuver its compact chassis. However, on further investigation ECVS9 only found a room that held large hydraulic pump systems for part of the mangled cargo bays door mechanisms in the bay.
ECVS9 twitched its manipulators. A dead end already.
NORA. Directive?
“Continue searching the area, it is likely there are other avenues of exploration, drone,” said NORA cooly.
ECVS9 withdrew with a soft shove from its ion maneuvering thrusters.
“I suggest we continue searching for another method of ingress into the vessel, ECVS9”
A few more minutes of exploration found ECVS9 returning to service access. There were two sets of bay doors. The pair led into another cargo bay! With some trial and error, ECVS9 managed to determine that it could parasitically feed power to the machinery of the doors.
The machinery vibrated, the doors seemed to twitch. Nothing followed.
ECVS9 hung motionless for a moment as a brief surge of something forgein tried to rebel against the cool calmness of its synthetically-shaped mind. No. ECVS9 was calm again, without feeling. The drone searched the area again, trying to find a cause. It soon became obvious the door was locked in place by pin-like wedges extending out from the floor into the surface of the door.
ECVS9 really didn’t want to waste time trying to dig up how to control these mechanisms, but after some futile attempts at forcing them open it returned to scout through the remnants of the bay again, re-checking for any clue as to how to control them.
ECVS9 was picking through the remains of a flattened super-cargo office when it made a discovery. After peeling back the twisted wreckage of the panel that had been wrapped around a control console like tissue paper, ECVS9 received a gift: an intact console.
Mostly intact.
A few minutes later found ECVS9 watching the massive pins slide back into the deck plating of the bay.
NORA sounded pleased. “Good Drone, ECVS9.”
ECVS9 froze, a delightful blossom of electrochemical pleasure filling its awareness.
“You always impress me with your ability to solve problems,” NORA cooed. “Continue your search.”
The titanic door connecting the holds shuddered and a massive plume of dirty, brown-rust particulate erupted from the crease, blooming out as a dusty, misshapen cloud to fill the entirety of the feed.
Comments
Chris
Absolutely S class story here. I hope you write more of it.
