No Shade For Travelers

By K. E. MacLeod

"I had come to accept that I cared for him but I still deeply resented the fact that I did. I didn’t come aboard the Cado to develop a crush on the Captain. I came to fix a computer problem, to save the universe. Ok, honestly I didn’t know why I had come – maybe just to escape prison..."

So far, nothing has gone the way it was supposed to after Len Scherwitz was recruited from her federal prison cell by the CIA to save the universe.

First off, she was never supposed to fall in love with the Captain, a sadist who enjoys making her life a living hell. Then, she was never supposed to end up making friends with the rest of the crew of the Cado, the space-yacht with a history of bad luck endings for its past occupants. She wasn’t supposed to land on a dirt hole of a space-port, get kidnapped, fall into a hole, learn to use a gun, fight the bad guys, figure out everything she’d ever known was a lie, become a leader and then get betrayed in the end. Oh yeah, and all this while trying to keep her shameful past a secret from her newfound friends.

None of that was supposed to happen but it did and now Len has to learn that, above all else, she must always remember that she’s only human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K. E. MacLeod
• Release date: Aug 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476345918

K. E. MacLeod

K. E. MacLeod is an award-winning author who currently lives in Europe.

Book preview

No Shade For Travellers

By Kiley MacLeod

Copyright 2012 Kiley MacLeod

Cover image by neonNINJA_stock

Smashwords Edition

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is dedicated to – well, you know who you are.

I win.

The author would like to note that although this is a work of science-fiction, it's entirely possible that a good majority of these events may have happened somewhere, in some galaxy, in one form or another, and, really, who's to say they didn't, or haven't, or will?

Handwritten note from Len Scherwitz, found in the official document report:

"Look, most of this stuff I experienced first hand but some of it, for obvious reasons, I didn't. So for all that kind of stuff I based the dialogue on reports and first hand accounts. Just deal with it."

Chapter 1

I remember it was quiet.

And blue.

But not a dark blue...

...and actually, truth be told, I think it was mostly white.

I remember sitting alone at the cafeteria table and staring out at the prison walls around me, completely unaware of anything beyond the confines of my own thoughts except for the hum of the electric lights overhead.

Blue...

I swallowed another bite of the bland, tasteless food from the bland, tasteless tray before me. I remembered once eyeing the boxes that the prison food was shipped in and seeing them marked with the phrase, Fully nutritional across their sides.

Fully nutritional...I laughed shortly and poked at my stomach. I then sighed as the finger sunk into soft, mushy flesh.

Once I had finished what I could of the yellowish slop, I stood up from the table, making sure to scrape the metal legs of my chair as loudly as possible against the shiny, grey-flecked tiles of the floor beneath them. The sound of my every movement was amplified against the cafeteria’s bare walls, which was glaringly apparent in the grimace that fell across the guard’s face just a few feet away as a smile erupted from my own.

My smile, which by that point resembled more of an impish grin, remained in place as I passed by the guard and tossed the lunch tray's leftovers into a giant, plastic trash can. I placed the tray in the drop off station and slid it across the threshold of the stainless steel opening.

After wiping my hands on my khaki-colored uniform, I made quick, fleeting eye contact with the guard, who in return failed to make eye contact with me. I glanced down at my feet and sighed again, but this time contentedly - happy for the break in the monotony of the long day but equally relieved to be returning to the solitude of my cell. I watched as my prison issued plain, grey tennis shoes plodded along the floor making muffled taps with their rubber soles.

I’d already been there in the Bryan Unit for two years but it felt like a lifetime when I thought about it. So far I had served out my time segregated from the other inmates, forbidden any use of technology and under heavy guard. To be honest, I don’t know why. They said I was a threat to the sense of civility of the prison and that I was a master manipulator - especially to those of lesser intelligence.

Pfft, I disagreed. I hadn’t manipulated anyone, nor would I ever intentionally hurt anyone. Unfortunately, it was pointless to argue with people who had based their opinions solely on blanket statements scribbled into my files by others who had never even met me in the first place.

In addition to the justice system, friends and family had long abandoned me as well - not that I had had much of either. Of course, that fact only served to add to my confusion when a guard stopped me just outside of my cell to state, very simply, You have a visitor.

I stood there for a few extra seconds, not entirely sure they actually meant me until I looked around and saw no one else. I had never had a visitor in my time there and didn’t foresee ever having one. I was further baffled as another pair of the generic, cookie-cutter guards began to lead me down strange hallways, deeper into the prison to an unfamiliar part of the Unit. I had never ventured much out of the way of my cell except to go to the cafeteria - mostly because I hadn’t the freedom to but also partly because I had no reason to.

As they walked me farther and further down, we passed other women in khaki jumpsuits walking to and from various locations and duties. I eyed them curiously, wondering what it was that made them so different from me. They looked back at me, equally curious, I’m sure, of the girl in perpetual Solitary. Their expressions made me wonder what sort of reputation I had among my fellow inmates, if any at all.

After a few more twists and turns down different colored hallways, the guards stopped outside of a set of large weathered double doors. Their abrupt stop jarred me from my thoughts. I cleared my head by shaking it and inspected the entranceway of the new location before me. The doors had been weathered by time and clearly touched by many hands as the silver plates that opened them were covered in several layers of fingerprints. The guard to my left pushed opened one of the doors with a hard shove and they led me inside. This room was blue - but had an odd hint of black to it, despite having large OptiWindows that took up most of the far wall.

So, this was the Visiting Room.

I silently scanned the groupings of orange chairs and long, rectangular tables that stretched out before me. My eyes floated throughout the room and landed on the 'visitor' that had come to see me. Though, to say I had a 'visitor' would not be entirely correct, or rather, it would be wholly inaccurate; I had three. Three men in dark suits.

The guards sat me down roughly in one of the orange chairs opposite the three men at one of the tables and stepped back in disturbing unison, giving us the illusion of privacy.

Instead of acknowledging my well-dressed visitors right away, I found myself momentarily distracted by the table's veneered surface. I examined the wood-grained pattern printed within it and ran my fingers over its cold expanse, tracing the lines. Why bother? I thought. Why go to all the trouble to make it look like wood when it very clearly wasn't? Hmm, I examined further, reading the various tenets carved into it: 'Jane was here' and apparently 'gives good head'...I snorted and found myself smirking. I looked up, and also found myself being examined intently by the stares of the three men in black before me.

What? I exclaimed, incredulous.

The men continued to sit quietly looking at me, apparently completely disinterested in the simple act of blinking.

It was at that moment that I quickly decided beneath the voluminous weight of their stares that being on the defensive was probably not the most effective course of action. I glared back at them as I changed tactics, "Wait, no - better yet, who are you and what do you want?"

The man sitting in the middle, the only one not wearing sunglasses, cleared his throat, We are from the I.S.A.C. He looked as if he were attempting to be stiff and imposing and, much to my dissatisfaction, he was succeeding.

Despite this, I pretended to be unimpressed, "I-S-A-C? Why is that not familiar? As in: at all?"

International Space Advancement Coalition -

I rolled my eyes and expelled a puff of exasperated air at the realization they were from the government, I leaned back in my chair, slumping as I did. Well, at least it wasn't the RI-doubleA, I thought.

The one in the middle, whom I decided to designate Middle Guy, chose to ignore my distinctly unsubtle exasperations and continued on, "We're here on the behalf of a request that was made by the U.S. Government, in regards to you."

I glared, then frowned, almost bit my lip, and then frowned some more, "What the hell could they possibly want with me? They got their 'justice,' I spat out the last word like bad whiskey before continuing, yep, when at long last a horrible and feared criminal was put behind bars, never to steal music or movies again! Huzz-freakin-zah...." I began to pick at the cracking veneer of the table.

Middle Guy waited for me to finish speaking, then grunted his condemnation, "You are not here because of digital theft; none of us are under that illusion."

It was true. Ok, fine I hadn't been just a simple 'pirate.' No, by their standards, the government had proclaimed me a hacker, even though I hadn't accepted the moniker. The archaic word conjured up images to me of pre-teens firing DDOS cannons at anyone that refused to give in to their childish demands or spoiled brat mentality. I wasn't one of those. I was seeking a greater prize: weaknesses in infrastructure and creative solutions to get me into places that the common man was forbidden to enter. My mouth salivated at the thought. No, I was no hacker – I was an artist. The problem was, at least according to the law enforcement officials who had caught me red-handed, I wasn't very good at it.

Disclosed to me after the fact, the court documents, which had been sealed to the public, stated that out of boredom one Saturday I had attempted a nice little cyber handshake with the Pentagon. I had done it just to see if I could - only to find out that the Pentagon didn't take kindly to strangers trying to shake hands with them. In addition to my alleged fumblings, I had also forgotten to hide behind an IP proxy, which would've masked my computer's identity. That meant that in less than twenty minutes after I had begun my little meet-and-greet with the Pentagon's computers, several uniformed federal agents were standing on my front door step.

The aftermath was swift and somewhat brutal: no trial, just a plea agreement of ten years for admission of guilt. I took it. Why not? I thought, I’m not doing anything else.

Back in the prison, I bent forward, tired of the hassle of my interrupted daily routine, and laid my forehead down onto the table. What, I felt the vapor of my breath hit me back in the face - it was minty fresh, do they want then?

...your help...

That got my attention. I crooked my head over to the side and rolled my eyes up toward Middle Guy's, "My help, ya say?"

Yes, he didn't flinch, nor offer any further advancement of his intriguing ideas.

The now-deemed Left Guy spoke, his voice higher and his demeanor younger, We need you to go ‘white hat’ on this one. White hat meant working for Them, the government, going straight. Left Guy continued as I mulled over his previous statement, Apparently one of our space stations' computers has been, his head shifted closer to mine over the table while his voice quietened, "....compromised. But we don't know by whom, or by what."

I sat up, and cautiously asked, What do you mean 'what'?

Well..., he chose his next words carefully, "we suspect a virus was uploaded to the central core computer that controls everything on the space station Demeter. But...we don't know the origin of the virus. If it's, he hesitated, man made or..." I couldn't see his expression behind his dark sunglasses, but imagined his eyes were shifting from side to side as he fished for the words to complete his sentence.

Out of impatience, I did it for him, "Alien...made."

Precisely, Middle Guy spoke up again.

I ignored him and continued on with my line of questions, So are there people currently on the space station?

No, it was evacuated as soon as we learned of the virus' existence.

"Ok...so why is this a priority then? Why not just blow the station? And what are you wanting me to do exactly?"

The three men took turns looking at each other. Finally, Left Guy found his voice to speak, "It appears to have...well, it appears to have mutated rather quickly and hooked into ISAC's main software infrastructure. All our bases here on Earth, as well as any of our settlements out there that are networked and use our technologies, are now at risk of being wiped out and destroyed, including our life sustaining technologies like rainmakers, breathers, etc. If this virus is allowed to continue, to-to mutate, we are at risk of losing a million or more lives and we want you to get rid of it."

Welll..., I exhaled, drawing out the word and making a church steeple of my pointer fingers beneath my chin as I attempted to hide any anxiety that I felt over what he had just told me. Unfortunately, my foot began to tap quickly against the floor, giving my nervousness away, If I agree with whatever it is you're asking me to do, what does that mean in terms of my sentence?

It was Right Guy's turn to at last croak out an answer, Your sentence will be commuted to time served. Of course, time served includes your travel time out to the space station.

I blanched, And how long is that?

Three months.

Ok, so three months, prisoner on a ship. On lock-down? I raised a questioning eyebrow towards them.

Precisely, Middle Guy answered again.

So confined to my cell, on a ship with a crew I assume…? I shot a look to Middle Guy, but he remained silent.

Left Guy spoke instead, Yes. The ship is a Travel Class C. He opened a black tablet that he had apparently been carrying and pressed the screen to bring up pictures of the travel ship from various angles. He touched the main image and spun it 360 degrees.

Wow, nice, a luxury yacht..., I nodded in appreciation at the photos on the tablet before me.

"It's the smallest of the fleet, and quite new, only about four months old: The Cado."

Seriously...? I looked levelly at him. My Latin may have been a little rusty since high school, but I definitely remembered the word meaning ‘to fall.’ I sighed, "They couldn't call it the Brevis, it had to be Cado?? Great...a ship with a sense of humor...’cause that's where I want to be..."

Do you? Middle Guy quipped.

I pulled the tablet towards me and dragged my fingers over its interface as I scanned the information on its surface. After a few minutes of study I sat back and pushed the tablet back towards Right Guy. "Ok, ok...so prisoner on a small yacht whose name in Latin means ‘big giant hunk of metal that’s going to fall outta the sky,' flying to an abandoned space station whose on board computer has been infected with a virus that may in fact be an alien made virus that is threatening the global space program and life as we know it? A virus, that I assume, I’m supposed to outsmart, quarantine and somehow possibly eradicate?"

Precisely.

But, one question then: why me? You guys said I suck at this stuff. Don’t you have some sort of special forces or something that deals with these kind of cyber attacks?

I guess you could say that we do, but we can’t risk them.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

He continued, calm and cool, You’re expendable.

I flipped him off and exhaled again. I suspected he was right, but still had my doubts as to why they were asking me with my well-documented, limited skill set. Maybe they had asked others but I was the only one stupid enough to consider agreeing. I closed my eyes and sunk further down into my chair. ...Ok, yeah, ok, whatever, you know what? Yeah, I’ll do it. Why not? It'll probably be my only chance to see the inside of a luxury travel class C ship anyway, right? So, I threw up my hands with a sigh, Where do I sign?

Right here.

* * * *

The inside of the SUV was hot, and stifling. It smelled of cigarettes, or rather, it smelled of cigarettes that had been attempted to, and then failed miserably at, being scrubbed from the interior. The stale soap and nicotine stung my nose, giving me an annoying headache and a touch of nausea.

I leaned my head against the tinted window and watched as my breath splattered onto its cold surface and then immediately disappeared. I reached down and flicked a nearby piece of balled-up straw-paper towards the opaque acrylic glass divider that separated me from the driver. The straw-paper ricocheted off of the glass and bounced down onto the floor next to my foot.

So far my trip out of the federal prison system had been uneventful. It seemed promising at first when they let me change into my old clothes, but I was quickly disappointed afterward to find that the faded pair of blue jeans and black t-shirt were tighter than they had been when I'd first entered the facility.

I crossed my long, solid legs and brushed off a piece of errant lint that was stuck to my jeans. I was a tall girl equipped with a sturdy figure and an ample chest, which back then I had never failed to hide self-consciously under a ubiquitous lime green hoodie. Most of the time, because of my height and build, I felt very large and unfeminine and often tried my best to be invisible when faced with sizable groups of people. It was probably yet another reason that prison agreed so well with me.

While I may have held deep seated insecurities about my physical appearance, anyone that spoke with me for longer than five minutes could see that I more than made up for them by having a somewhat over-inflated confidence in my intellectual abilities. Branded a ‘gifted’ child at an early age, I quickly learned that solving anything that required the use of a critical thinking skill came to me rather easily. Unfortunately, my 'gift' offered no actual real world benefit other than giving me the dual ability to be both gratingly cocky and extremely lazy.

I blew the fringe of my brown bangs out of my equally brown eyes and tucked a few messy strands behind my right ear, as was my usual habit. I eyed the scenery outside of the tinted window as the SUV reached its stop at a small airport. It was desolate and empty, so I assumed that it must have been a private airstrip used solely by ISAC. As the vehicle slowed its movement, I slid across the seat and looked out of the window to stare up at the interstellar yacht that loomed before me.

It was easily the size of a 737-passenger airplane and had the name 'Cado' in plain, white, Helvetica font etched across its rounded, red-hued bow in large unwelcoming letters. I noted that its bulbous front looked very similar to a bullfrog that was in mid-croak, while its back end resembled a fish tail.

As I inspected the ship further from my vantage point inside of the SUV, it became fairly obvious to me that the ship wasn't as luxurious as a civilian yacht was supposed to be. Instead, much to my disappointment, the ship had been stripped of any opulence and retrofitted into a military vessel. I frowned at the sight as even I had secretly wanted a small taste of luxury after my time in the spartan living conditions of the prison environment.

It took a few silent moments for me to realize that the driver wasn't going to come around and let me out. I frowned again as I heard the electric locks release, figuring that the ‘hissing’ sound they made was my cue to exit the vehicle and head toward the docked spaceship.

As I got out of the SUV, a rush of cool, fresh air blasted me in the face in a harsh welcome upon arriving at the airport’s tarmac. I grabbed my one piece of luggage, a black messenger bag with neon pink and green paint splatters, from the vehicle and headed toward the set of stairs that lead up to the Cado's entrance hatch. I heard the SUV leave behind me but didn't look back as I chose instead to peer up at the black void that was the ship’s open and waiting door at the top of the stairs.

I cautiously stepped onto the first metal stair.

The air around me was quiet and still, so much so that I could hear my heart as it thumped against my chest and echoed loudly inside my head. The step beneath my foot seemed structurally sound as I bounced on it a couple of times, testing it for stability and strength. Relieved when it didn’t break beneath my weight, I confidently made my way up towards the entrance.

Once I reached the top of the landing, I eyed the entrance of the ship carefully. It's exactly like boarding an airplane, I thought to myself – well, more like tried to convince myself. I tugged on the strap of my messenger bag, pulling it forward and making it only slightly more comfortable on my shoulder.

A blond, buxom pre-flight hostess stood in an alcove across from the hatchway and stepped forward smiling upon my approach. I tried, unsuccessfully, to force a smile back. I was surprised to see her. Usually airline companies, not government space agencies, hired hostesses. The hostess spoke with a light, trilling voice that fell against my ears like a slightly out of tune flute. She also seemed to be reading from a script as she spoke - badly reading from a script, You must be Len Skirtwitz? I blanched at the mispronunciation of my last name but said nothing as she continued, I am here to direct you to the right place to go and ensure your pre-flight comfort is ensured.

I buried a snort.

The hostess made a check mark on a nearby clipboard and looked skywards as if trying to remember the next words of what must have been a newly learned routine. The hostesses were known for their beauty and after making sure customers felt welcomed and comfortable in their new surroundings usually disembarked the ship for the next one. They usually had the routine down pat so I figured she must've been relatively new.

She looked back at me, spoke woodenly and held out her hand, awkwardly indicating the corridor behind me, You may go in now - I believe the crew is waiting for you on the Bridge. She smiled the sort of smile that people like her practiced in the mirror every morning.

"And that's...where...exactly?" I prompted.

Go down this hall, and take a left and you will see a large waiting-slash-reception area. That is the Bridge.

Thanks, I smirked at the hostess' use of the word 'slash'. It reminded me of people who used air quotes – I was both equally amused and annoyed by them.

My shoes clomped onto the metal corridor floor, echoing hollowly around me. The inside of the Cado was actually not much different from the way I'd imagined it would be. My assumption, of course, was based solely on the old twodie standard-vision shows that I'd watched throughout my life. Its corridor was grey and black, lined with large rivets. Red crossbeams that looked like giant metal girders made a lattice above my head and lined the walls at approximately 4 to 5 feet intervals. I wondered, as I walked, what the Cado's interior must've looked like before the military had gotten hold of it. I tried to imagine rich wood-grained paneling and plush thick carpet surrounding me instead of the endless supply of drab metal that was currently in its place.

Finally, after a few more moments of walking, I reached the waiting-slash-reception entrance that was to my left. The room was dark as I peered in, but I could hear voices chatting pleasantly from somewhere inside. I crossed into the threshold unnoticed and spotted four people, two of whom were sitting on a set of perpendicular red sofas in the middle of the room while the other two stood beside them, engaged in their own conversation. A single potted palm sat to the side of the couches, and a glass cube that rested in the middle of them served as a coffee table.

My stomach twirled. I hated meeting new people but I hated meeting new people in new places even more. I took a deep breath and mustered up the biggest scowl that I could display on my face. My plan was to hide the fact that I was actually anxiously chewing a hole into the side of my cheek by feigning immediate disdain for my new crewmates. I shakily began a not-quite-all-that-stealthy approach, tripping over a shoelace as I did, while my footsteps made the occupants of the room turn and stare at the sound of my advance. I stifled a terrified squeal.

The taller gentleman, who stood to the left of one of the sofas, was dressed in a white military uniform. Around him hovered an air of authority, which he clung to desperately like the cephlopodic tentacles of a needy girlfriend. He’s gotta be the Captain, I thought subconsciously with a silent disdain that I felt for all authority figures.

He stood stiff and tall in his starched whites with a blue-brimmed cap sitting perfectly balanced atop his neatly trimmed head. His face, I noticed, was handsome and angular as he stared me down, his own expression of a scowl a near exact match to my own - though I imagined, unlike mine, his was probably authentic.

To the right of him and standing about his same height was a very strange looking man in a long, black heavy jacket. Upon first, furtive glance he appeared to be mostly machine, though not entirely. I didn’t mask my stare as I tried to piece together what little I could see of his face into some recognizable, familiar combination of human features. Of course, it didn’t help that his eerily pale face was mostly obstructed by the shadows of the dark room

My eyes eventually grew tired of their futile quest and moved on towards the smaller of the two sofas setting behind him. Sitting on the one that was farthest away, tucked into a corner, was a young woman who appeared to be roughly near my age. As I squinted in the half-light of the room, I could see that the girl was pleasantly pretty, and based on the way she was curled up on the sofa, was also petite and quite...flexible. I felt an instant pang of envy. Had they only hired attractive people for this flight?! I squinted harder to try and get a better view of the girl’s features, hoping desperately for a scar of some sort to appear out of the shadows, but failing to find one, I simply resorted to scowling again.

Across from the girl, sitting on the other sofa with his feet propped up on the glass cube coffee table, was another guy that also appeared near my age. His back was to me but he was craning over his shoulder to see the new visitor. He wore a pair of round glasses on his nose, which reflected the light that came from the entranceway behind me. He also bore a thoughtful look, a crisp yellow shirt and had a warmth about him that radiated past the shadows of the room and drew me in towards him.

I forced a loudly exhaled breath, pretending to be annoyed and bored to keep up the illusion that I was, in fact, not absolutely terrified. What do I do now?? my mind screamed at me, demanding an answer in the spotlight of their stares.

But I had no immediate answer. I knew I needed to distance myself from them as soon as possible or I would be stuck for the rest of the flight with whatever impression they were about to make of me. I only had one role that I wanted to play during the next six months of travel: acerbic, angry loner whom everyone hated and left alone.

In truth, it wasn't just that I was terrified to be standing there on the Cado, meeting new people. I also, quite simply, wanted no part in the complex relationships of others as I had never cared much for any of the drama that usually accompanied such things. I also had no desire to be sucked into the cycle of feeling anything for these people. It had been my experience that such things never ended well. So, I took the messenger bag off of my shoulder and dropped it solidly to the floor.

Really? I spat out as I walked forward, examining closer the people before me and trying to infuse my voice with as much pre-judgmental disgust as I could muster for one sentence. "Really?! You have got to be kidding me! This is the crew they stuck me with?? You guys are, like, the worst rejects from every clichéd science fiction story I have ever seen! I sighed and crossed my arms in front of my chest, bolstered by their speechless expressions, Yeah, I can tell this will be an adventure filled six months..." They were completely thrown off-guard with my introduction just as I had wanted them to be - I was now in my element.

The Captain opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off quickly with an overly pretentious wave of my hand. I gathered every ounce of sarcasm in my body that I could, "Let me guess, this is your ship. You’re Mr. ‘By-the-Book’? No cursing, no lip and no disrespecting your authority, right? I rolled my eyes. As I'm sure you’re well aware, people like us don't normally get along and I don’t figure this experience will be any different. That is, I’m sure, until we reach a begrudging respect for one another on some obscure common ground. So, in the meantime, you’ve probably developed some sorta underlying sexual tension with someone else on this ship to keep things interesting. Hmmm, let me guess, I pretended to elaborately look around the room and eventually settled my gaze onto the girl on the sofa. On closer inspection, I noted with an even deeper resentment that she was indeed very cute with a scar-less face, with her."

The man before me had a strong jaw, which pulsed in and out as his neck turned a clearly visible scarlet color in the unnecessarily darkly lit room. Perhaps I mistook his anger for embarrassment but either way it encouraged me to continue on, You're probably hiding some deep dark secret that will cause you to betray us all at the end, right?! I asked pointedly and then dismissed him with a short puff of air before turning to the cyborg-man that was standing next to him, and you? You’re some sorta half roboty android-

Ehh, transhuman, ma'am, he said in a very polite, calm voice, bowing slightly as he did.

Fine, whatever, I said, unconcerned. "A T.H. then, but I bet you, I pressed an overly dramatic palm to my chest, the man who is more machine, teaches us all a little bit about our own humanity through some great act of heroism and sacrifice. I threw up my arms, and looked at the ceiling, It's all been done before, you know?"

Well, I-, the T.H. started to calmly and politely protest but I had already moved on to the young woman on the couch. "And you, I motioned offhandedly as I perched myself atop the sofa arm, I bet you're head of Engine Repair or something else ironic. You're a whiz with machines and feel that you know them better than you could ever get to know any human man - that is, until you met Captain O'Captain over here."

The girl paled then blushed. Well, not exactly-! she, too, began to protest as she sat up on the couch.

Oh? I scoffed arrogantly, standing back up and