Federations

“Wouldn’t be a bad idea on an otherwise dull day, would it?” Though his fingers flashed across the pressure plates of the pilot’s console, it was she who did the actual mechanics of altering their direction. But then, she would have done that anyway. Niall didn’t really need to, but it pleased her to give him tasks to do. He’d often railed at her for finding him the sort of work he didn’t want to do. And she’d snap back that a little hard work never hurt anyone. Of course, as he began to fail physically, this became lip service to that old argument. Niall had been in his mid-forties when he became her brawn and she the NH-834, so he had had a good long life for a soft-shell person.

“Good healthy stock I am,” the hologram said, surprising her.

Was she thinking out loud? She must have been for the program to respond.

“With careful treatment, you’ll last centuries,” she replied, as she often had.

She executed the ninety-degree course change that the control panel had plotted.

“Don’t dawdle, girl,” Niall said, swiveling in the chair to face the panel behind which her titanium shell resided.

She thought about going into his “routine,” but decided she’d better find out a little more about the “invasion.”

“Why do you call it an invasion?” Niall asked.

“That many ships, all heading in one direction? What else could it be? Freighters don’t run in convoys. Not out here, at any rate. And nomads have definite routes they stick to in the more settled sectors. And if I’ve read their KPS rightly . . . ”

“ . . . Which, inevitably, you do, my fine lady friend . . . ”

“Those ships have been juiced up beyond freighter specifications and they’re spreading dirty stuff all over space. Shouldn’t be allowed.”

“Can’t have space mucked up, can we?” The holo’s right eyebrow cocked, imitating an habitual trait of Niall’s. “And juiced-up engines as well. Should we warn anyone?”

Helva had found the Atlas entries for this sector of space. “Only the one habitable planet in the system they seem to be heading straight for. Ravel . . . ” Sudden surprise caught at her heart at that name. “Of all places.”

“Ravel?” A pretty good program to search and find that long-ago reference so quickly. She inwardly winced at the holo’s predictable response. “Ravel was the name of the star that went nova and killed your Jennan brawn, wasn’t it?” Niall said, knowing the fact perfectly well.

“I didn’t need the reminder,” she said sourly.

“Biggest rival I have,” Niall said brightly as he always did, and pushed the command chair around in a circle, grinning at her unrepentantly as he let the chair swing 360 degrees and back to the console.

“Nonsense. He’s been dead nearly a century . . . ”

“Dead but not forgotten . . . ”

Helva paused, knowing Niall was right, as he always was, in spite of being dead, too. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, having him able to talk back to her. But it was only what he would have said in life anyhow, and had done often enough or it wouldn’t be in the program.

She wished that the diagnostics had shown her one specific cause for his general debilitation so she could have forestalled his death. Some way, somehow.

“I’m wearing out, lover,” he’d told her fatalistically in one of their conversations when he could no longer deny increasing weakness. “What can you expect from a life-form that degenerates? I’m lucky to have lived as long as I have. Thanks to you fussing at me for the last seventy years.”

“Seventy-eight,” she corrected him then.

“I’ll be sorry to leave you alone, dear heart,” he’d said, coming and laying his cheek on the panel behind which she was immured. “Of all the women in my life, you’ve been the best.”

“Only because I was the one you couldn’t have,” she replied.

“Not that I didn’t try,” the hologram responded with a characteristic snort.

Helva echoed it. Reminiscing and talking out loud were not a good idea. Soon she wouldn’t know what was memory and what was programming.