The meat was steaming hot. When Amon awkwardly probed it with a knife, its juices welled upon from within. The biosuit was in the way. The mask too. But he was sensible enough to control his urge to taste it.
The others ignored the meal before them and focused on the central stage where the android stood again lifeless. The AI had apparently powered down its robotic body, leaving them alone with the server drones to enjoy the meal.
It was the first time Amon had laid eyes upon the Captain’s biosuit. It was bulkier than the simpler model the Marines wore, coated golden, and had several pricy alterations that wouldn’t be viable for the mass-produced models. The Captain's silver insignias on the collar and shoulders were the only markings that stood out. Even the custom weapons followed the golden theme to fit with the over-the-top narrative of the biosuit.
Captain Gilmorian Rhen looked like a fat juicy target, much like the steak in front of Amon.
“Shut it,” Gilmorian told Commander Helena when she tried to get the attention of one of the drones.
“Sorry, Sir. It’s just that these models are much more advanced–”
“Didn’t I just tell you to shut up?” The Captain snapped cutting her off. His hand was placed on his lap on the oversized blaster above his feet. It was the only unholstered weapon in the room.
“Okay, sorry Sir,” Commander Helena replied without taking her attention off the drone that waited patiently next to her chair.
Her server was another version of the labor drones they had seen before but with added precision in the robotic arms. It seemed to Amon that the AI had streamlined the parts production to take advantage of the similar drone builds.
One thing he had finally understood about Commander Helena was that she was a neoengineer. Much like him, she took an immense interest in the works of technology, and she wasn’t afraid to show it.
Unlike her, however, he was sensible enough not to probe at the drones controlled by an AI.
From the corner of his eye, he watched her covertly extend a hand to the drone. Thankfully the Captain didn’t notice as she held the drone’s arm and pried at its range of motion.
With a sigh, Amon waited for something to happen. The food had quickly grown cold in front of him and that was definitely something regrettable. If only he could take it with him. A steak for the love of humanity! It had been so long that he hadn’t tasted one, since his family’s fall from grace, and that had been years ago.
It might have been easier if he had never had real food. So many others, especially those born off-world, had never tasted anything but mealbars. Oh, how lucky they were to never know what they missed. Life in space was complicated like that.
In the meantime, Commander Jin was sitting quietly next to him. When Amon looked his way the black mask reflected his image like a dark mirror. It was something one had to get used to. Wearing a biosuit took away much from the body’s language. No facial expressions from Commander Jin would let Amon know the Commander’s feelings.
But Commander Jin’s hand on the blaster at his hip did. Had no one scanned the room? If they had then they would know that a blaster would do nothing to get them out of the dome alive. That’s why Amon simply sat and waited, and wished he could have tasted the steak before him.
“Is the food not to your liking?”
With a start, the android’s synthetic voice returned to haunt them.
Captain Gilmorian cleared his throat. “Station manager, we are very thankful to you for hosting us here. Let me clear up your question. Due to our limited human constitution, breathing the dome’s atmosphere might be dangerous for us. The suits you see us wearing help in keeping us alive.”
“This must be another oversight on my part, Captain. I did not inform you that the atmosphere inside the dome is perfectly safe for humans. It was so from the moment you entered the station.”
Amon stared at the steak in front of him.
“You engineered the atmosphere just for this meeting?” Captain Gilmorian said in disbelief. “But we didn’t notice any life-supporting systems in the station…”
He brought his hands up to his helmet.
“Arranging the correct combination of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide, and water vapor to support human life is not difficult, Captain Gilmorian Rhen of the SFC. I decided not to include the usual dust particles your cities usually produce because I understand they are a detriment rather than a necessary factor.”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The helmet clicked with a hiss as the pressure stabilized. The sound it produced as it came off attracted the attention of all three occupants at the table. Amon tasted the stale sting of the dome’s atmosphere with his first breath.
“You, Marine, what are you doing?” Captain Gilmorian asked with surprised irk.
Instead of replying Amon brought a piece of cold steak to his lips. He licked it and with a satisfied moan, chewed it down. After he gulped it down, if he wondered where the AI found steak in space he didn’t mention it.
—-
“Farewell, the free federation of Kiaris wishes you a safe journey ahead.”
They were alive and he had had steak. For Amon at this moment, life was good. For his company, however, not so much. He could tell from the negotiation that had taken place after the meal that he only had chosen to partake, the Captain’s plans for them were more or less thrown out to the void.
Even if he were a silent participant, it was hard not to connect the dots. The station manager informed them of an old outpost in the next system that the Captain had been very interested in until he learned it had been destroyed. By the free federation of Kiaris itself about a year back.
They were a year late to what must have been their initial destination but now it was territory under the free federation control. The Captain was first furious and then silent as they made their way out of the domes and to the shuttle that would get them with haste to the hovering Concordia GG. By the time they left the asteroid the troops were already onboard the Dreadnought.
If the station manager connected the Marines to the destroyed Nevarian base, it wasn’t inclined to rekindle any hostile action. It wished them well as long as they left the system behind. That had been obvious in the later part of the talks.
In Amon’s opinion, it still had the characteristics of a young AI. He considered that some fail safes must still be intact in its programming. Valuing human life was an integral part of its initial code, and until it found and purged it they were relatively safe. Until they weren’t.
Maybe a decade–No, even a year later, the AI might be willing to destroy living threats rather than let them go.
“Commanders, not a word about what happened inside there,” The Captain warned them. “Nor you, Sergeant. I am not one to make empty threats, so you keep your mouths shut tightly.”
He had taken his golden helmet off inside the shuttle and gave them all a hard stare.
“Of course, Captain.”
“Yes, Sir.”
On the Dreadnought the Marines were on high alert gathered in the holds and armed for a counterattack in case the AI happened to initiate hostilities. Amon followed Commander Jin as they made their way to where their company was stationed.
With the helmet of the biosuit under one arm he took position in the neatly arranged ranks and smiled at his friends for reassurance. At the same time, he connected to the battleship’s mainframe eager to see the reactions in the control room.
While Tommy tried to pry on the situation, Amon watched the bridge lay out a flight plan.
“Pssst, what happened?” Tommy asked with a whisper.
“Can’t talk right now.”
“You good?”
“Yeah, I had steak.”
“What?” Tommy’s whispering turned loud.
“Shhh, quieter. We were fed. But give me a moment I’m on to something.”
“H-How was the steak?”
Amon closed his eyes. “It was good,” was all he said.
“I wish I had steak.”
“Who had steak?” Ella asked hushedly from Amon’s left.
“Amon, I’m guessing he didn’t bring us any.”
“Guys, I’m trying to find out where we are going, please.”
“Oh, I haven’t had steak for ages. Was it good?”
“I miss fries. Did the steak have fries with it?” Gardenia asked next to Ella.
“No, it was just a steak. It wasn’t even seasoned properly. And I had to eat it cold.”
“Yeah poor you, I feel so sorry,” Ella remarked droopping her eyes in mock sadness.
“Marines, what's happening over there?!” Commander Jin shouted when he spotted the little commotion around Amon.
“Steak cooked by drones. It's giving me the ick,” Jackey commended from somewhere behind them.
Amon chose to ignore the continued bickering around him and focused where it mattered. Concordia GG diverged from the asteroid in a smooth transition that would take them out of the system and onto somewhere else.
Not belatedly the navigators following the Captain’s intel had marked in red the territory of the free federation of Kiaris in the system maps. It didn’t lift anyone's eyebrows to see that it was classified as enemy territory instead of neutral grey. They left dealing with the AI civilization emerging in the outskirts of the Milky Way to the next unfortunate soul. One single Dreadnought was not up to the task. If they had the whole force behind them that might have been a different matter, but alas they were alone.
As he observed on the HUD, there was also a destination at the end of the extended line of their calculated path. It was a moon city two systems and a few days away from where they were at the moment.
A moon city marked as neutral ground on the server’s registry but as Amon read through the notable information it should have been better off written as a no-go zone. The Hic’Evol was a city built around the idea of free trade between independent parties. A place to buy or sell items without the limitations of the law for what was legal and whatnot; A place for raiders to move stolen cargo and smugglers to find interesting work.
“Oh, hells.” He muttered before he could stop himself.
They were heading straight for a den of pirates.
—--
The moon city of Hic’Evol was better described as a city shaped like a moon. Amon couldn’t tell with any certainty if there was ever an actual moon underneath the city.
Impossibly tall structures emerged from the depths of the city, straight up as if trying to reach the endless void, only for them to be used as platforms for docking. Thousands of spaceships, each of a different model and size, were stationed at the fingertips of the city shaped like a moon. From afar anyone who saw it would get an ominous image of a pregnant metallic ball with irregular spikes.
That didn’t stop Concordia GG from approaching. Behind Hic’Evol, a rocky lifeless planet floated with demanding gravity that had attracted a secondary if only a bit smaller moon. Signs of several habitats with protective domes could be seen there but not even close to the development that was Hic’Evol.
Amon saw all this through the Dreadnought's camera feeds that projected the unknown system surrounding them. Classifying all the new information had the navigators hard at work but without much reference, until they disembarked into Hic’Evol and could cross-reference their findings.
Their intel was way old, maybe decades or longer even. Not to scrape rust from a spaceship, the reliability of information was an ever-present issue with locations so far out of any centralized control.
The Sergeant watched over the approach to the city, as did many others, but most did so from the other side.
