“Fucking hell Lanis, are you ok?” Lanis barely hears Mirem as the neural net lifts and Lanis staggers back into herself, her mind aching with the echoes of Ether’s voice.

  “Yeah, fine. Water, please,” Lanis mutters. Sander quickly hands her a glass of some infused concoction that she takes with both trembling hands, drinking it in grateful gulps. She’s not sure if she’s shaking from exhaustion or some strange exhilaration.

  “Thanks.” She takes a deep breath, blinking away her blurry vision. It’s only then that she realizes that everyone in the room is quiet, and watching her. She turns, slowly, finally meeting the eyes of Ash, who is gaping at her, and Henrich, who is slowly rubbing his stubble.

  “What? Is everything ok?” Lanis asks.

  Henrich finally breaks the silence.

  “Well, ah… technically, we’re the ones who should be asking you. The data spike you just exchanged with our AI was… highly irregular. It should have triggered an auto-disengage. But that was overridden. Error cascade. We ah, overrode the override, so to speak, but, about thirty seconds after it was… too late.” He trails off, still stroking his face.

  “You should be fried,” Ash says, a hint of awe in her voice.

  “Oh. That. I’m fine.” She gestures toward her own head. “It’s the Fleetware.” She doesn’t mention the residual psychic ability of her Navigator training, or the walls within walls that she was trained to mentally construct against such cascades to keep herself safe and sane when interfacing with Ship-level AIs. Not to mention Warp jumping; compared to that, interfacing with AIs is a lark. She looks at their concerned faces.

  “What? Really, I’m fine. I’m sorry I yelled earlier; just, out of practice. It’s amazing how quickly it all atrophies.” She clears her throat. “I think I got along well with your AI though. Ether. I like her.”

  Heinrich and Ash exchange quizzical looks. “That’s what it told you its name was?” Ash says.

  “You mean she hasn’t given you a name? And Fornis and the other pilot didn’t get a name out of her either? God, no wonder your interfacing is terrible,” Lanis replies, rubbing the neural shunt on her temple. Even unused, it feels slightly warm. She shakes her head, and wonders at just how much more advanced Fleet AI integration training actually is. They didn’t even know her name…

  “I imagine you don’t know that Mirakata-Heisen AI’s name either, then? Well, add that to the reasons it doesn’t like you much. I’d try to work with it too, but I think I need a break,” Lanis admits, an understatement if ever there was one. She glances at Heinrich.

  “So, when can I work with Ether again? I’d like to load up some simulators, if you’re able. I assume you have some kind of test cockpit?” She stands up slowly from the pilot couch, then stretches her arms out to the ceiling, feeling her joints pop.

  “Ah…right… well first we need to go over these readings with the team,” Heinrich says slowly, casting a grave look at Sander and Mirem.

  Sander clears his throat. “Mirem, why don’t you take Lanis for a bit and meet me in the conference lobby after we discuss things here?”

  Mirem nods, her face still pale, but regaining color. “That sounds like an excellent idea. Let’s get some fresh air,” she says, putting a hand on Lanis’ lower back. With the touch, Lanis suddenly realizes that her shirt is damp with sweat, and clinging to her skin.

  “Right, sure,” Lanis says, giving a little wave to the dozen or so technicians, feeling suddenly awkward, her awareness of the tension in the room growing as her mind shifts fully back into this reality. “Thanks everyone, it was nice to meet you all. Pretty impressive outfit you have here…” She trails off, and then looks at Ash. “Pass on the situation to Ether, will you?”

  Ash slowly nods, her eyes refocusing on her internal feed. “It—I mean, she—already asked about the training schedule. She… sends her regards.”

  Lanis smiles, gives another awkward wave, and then leaves with Mirem, feeling a dozen eyes boring into her back. She hears a chorus of raised voices just before the door closes, quickly muted as it hush-clicks behind them.

  Mirem is broodingly silent as she takes Lanis down a hallway adjacent to the hangar. She scans her badge at a door that clicks open heavily, and they come outside into an empty quarter acre lot, ringed by walls. There’s been some money and tasteful effort expended to give the area a park-like feel with plants and benches, but the space is still essentially a small concrete pen where team members can grab a moment of fresh air before getting back to work.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Mirem turns to Lanis as soon as they come outside. “Why didn’t you tell me it would be like that?” Her voice is tight with emotion, and her face, before pale, is now flushed.

  “I didn’t know it would be like that; or that it would be such a big deal!” Lanis says, her own voice rising a pitch in defensiveness.

  “You must have had some inkling. Fleet tech,” Mirem responds, the words curdling in her mouth. She shakes her head. “You broke the goddamn failsafe hardware, and then didn’t suffer any effects? Fornis is an ass, but he’s been interfacing with AIs since he was a kid. You made his interface look like… like crap smeared on a wall.”

  Lanis spreads her hands, her own face now flushed. “What do you want me to tell you? I spent nearly eight years of my life training for the chance to integrate with AIs that fight fleet engagements and compute Warp jumps—do you know what kind of egos they have? What exactly did you expect?” Lanis says, puzzled. “I didn’t know I would redline any hardware, but you must have known it would have been different for someone like me. Wasn’t that the whole point of all this?”

  Mirem sits down heavily on one of the benches. She opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it, considering Lanis, standing there, her shirt still damp with sweat. When she opens it again, it’s with a catch in her voice, as if she can feel the world shift slightly.

  “Lanis, what exactly did you do in Fleet? How far did you get?” she says, trying to hold Lanis’ uncertain gaze. “I understand that maybe you can’t talk about certain things, or that it brings up memories you’d rather avoid. But, at a certain point, we’ll need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  Lanis tries to smile, but it’s an awkward thing. “We?” she says.

  “Yes, we. For better and worse this now affects me professionally,” Mirem says, a tinge of resignation in her voice.

  Lanis breaks Mirem’s gaze and stares at the concrete ground for a few long seconds, her face pinched. She imagined that this was bound to happen sooner or later, but she feels too mentally drained to have this conversation now. Anyway, once she starts speaking, she’s not sure when she’ll stop. At least Mirem will believe her now. Maybe. That’s a comforting thought.

  Another thought suddenly strikes her, and she glances around the small courtyard. “I assume this place is monitored?”

  Mirem shrugs. “Probably.” She sighs. “Look, you don’t have to tell me right now, but you need to understand something. If… when… one of the other corps finds out what you can do, they’ll rush in to try to recruit you. And the others won’t want that. It would be too much of a competitive advantage. Shit, maybe this was stupid,” she groans, as much to herself as to Lanis.

  “What are you saying?” Lanis says, baffled. “That now I’m going to be some kind of target, just from one trial interface?”

  Mirem gestures fruitlessly. She stares up at the sky to a distant maglev gently drifting upward, considering for a moment, before responding.

  “You just stunned a room full of AI experts in silence. Competitive disadvantage is taken seriously, Lanis. Very seriously. I’m not saying that you’ll be in danger, but I’m also not ruling it out, eventually. I just, I don’t know.”

  She grimaces, and continues. “Those are Versk technicians. They’re company men. They’ll keep their mouths shut. That’ll buy us time, but eventually word will get out. It always does, especially if this was just a taste of things to come. If you sign a corporate contract, then you’ll be afforded corporate protection, if deemed necessary. Even though Versk is a relative lightweight, they have allies, especially with the recent Murkata-Heisen share purchase. So other corps will think twice about trying to pull anything.”

  Pull anything? Lanis thinks, but decides to leave that unwelcome thought for another time. “So you’re saying if I sign, then I should be safe?”

  Mirem laughs with a tinge of disbelief. “Lanis, you had never set eyes on a Suit until an hour ago. You hadn’t tried integrating with an AI since—” she waves her hand, “—since whatever happened out there. You’re still recovering—” she says, but Lanis interrupts her.

  “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I’ll be the judge of my mind.” Her voice is suddenly hard, and Mirem withdraws from the bite in her voice, surprised, nearly as if she had slapped her. Lanis continues, more softly.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that when integrating with Ether, that’s the first time since my injury that I’ve felt… whole. That I’ve felt normal. It’s… it’s a little like being with you. But different, of course.”

  She spreads her hands, uncertain if she’s expressing what she means. “Fleet was my entire purpose. You’re right, it’s soon, and I don’t know much. But you, and Versk, it feels right. And I need this,” she bluntly states, her voice firm.

  Mirem is silent, her face indecipherable to Lanis. Slowly, she nods.

  “Ok. Ok,” she says, softly.

  “Now, do you think they’ll have me back? Even though I’ve never piloted before?” Lanis asks, uncertainty creeping back into her voice.

  Mirem smirks.

  “Oh, they’ll have you back. I’m certain of that.”