Chapter 5: In a Bottle Part 4

There had indeed been an invitation: something akin to a hyperlink that, upon accepting it, sent me an overlay for my sensory data. I materialized above my Greater Self: a giant machine with twelve massive curled petals at the front, coils in the middle, and a bundle of exhausts in the stern. That is, I added the appearance of my Prime Avatar to the shared sensory data stream, making it look like a little six-armed robot girl stood in the center of my petals. In a way it was like an elaborate conference call for Ships. I was a Ship.

A Ship.

As the other four were all sitting down I decided to kneel down and fold my legs under my thighs and placed my hands—five of them—on my lap. I held Hekkamuk with my remaining hand and looked down, eyes hidden behind golden tresses.

A Ship.

Silence. I wasn't going to be the first one to say something.

A Ship.

"Ah, are you all right?" Like mine, it was another young sounding voice.

A Ship.

Someone was trying to hold in their laughter at our little meeting, but it was easily figured out who it was because her iteration in my command center was laughing into my secondary's face. The image of the horned robot girl retreated down to a point and vanished in the blink of an eye and disappeared. It had been a holographic projection the whole time.

A Ship.

"I know what's up with our youngest sister," her voice at the meeting said, "Ragni just told me." I glared at my Captain who had seemed a little absent-minded these past few seconds. A reassuring smile was the only response I got.

A Ship?

Someone prodded my flank. It was the speaker, mocking and teasing with a tinkling of gold particles. "Hey, Shishi? Is it true that you didn't know? You really were unaware that you're—"

"A Ship!" I jolted upright to the sight of surprised faces and their petals spiking yellow bristles. "'Vugni' in classical Mezhained: wandering sun." My lip trembled and my voice began to waver. "I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from."

"That would be your knowledge tree, Shishi. It was a bother at my launch, too, but I know you'll get it under control," Vumunognan Elanansur—the horned girl—said. No doubt it was this same knowledge tree that had put her full name into my conscious thoughts. I was a tiny bit happy that I had heard Trurl and Velteragni mention her before. It made things start to click.

Finally I noticed the waves of red pulsing over my petals, a grand display of shame. I reached my imaginary hands down to cover up my 'blushing' to no avail.

"Wind down the stride of your thoughts." This voice was older but not fully adult. It belonged to the only one of us whose avatar didn't look like a prepubescent girl. If I had to guess I'd say she looked like she was seventeen. Like the others she was a mechanical girl with obsidian skin and gold hair. From her temples sprouted antlers decorated in filigree. Her Greater Self was gargantuan and had five complete cylinders and one incomplete one under construction. That was familiar. "Listen to what I say and try to follow the branches of knowledge as I speak. I'm Vuzhezhmagnan Namamiluma, the Great Home Ship of the Golden Fleet's Mezhained. You can call me Luma. It was at my docks where you were built." Golden rings rolled over her hulls in what I thought was reassurance. Even though it wasn't much, her instructions were helping me understand this strange new life.

"I remember," I said, yellow bristles of surprise dying down into a light blue fog of recognition, "You're the one who shared her sensory data with me."

"So you were aware after all?" It was the first voice I had heard earlier, the one who had asked if I was all right. "We thought you were too deep in your dream after you failed coherence twice." Sitting in the middle of a spiraling pattern of pink particles she looked younger than I and had long straight hair that parted in the middle, showing the third eye on her forehead. Her ceremonial weapon appeared to be a sword small enough for the hands of a child. She wore it on a beautifully patterned belt—all in obsidian and gold, of course. On her hands were quite a few rings and some arm bands made in materials of refreshingly different colors. I figured these were gifts like the hair ornament Velteragni had given.

"Don't mind Velramuran here. She may be a stickler for the rules—even if there aren't any—but she was just as excited for your Launch as the rest of us."

"But it's so peculiar, to not be fully enmeshed with the systems of one's Greater Self until after the blood oath," Velramuran said. "Whoever heard of such a discrepancy?" A violet light started dancing over the black and gold paint of her petals and with a creeping horror I realized what emotion this display represented: suspicion.

My mind reeled. None of them had showed any signs of remembering a previous life. If they found out I had the memories of a trash human from a deep past they would surely dismantle me and shake their heads at the foolishness of their mistake. I would die because I was a failure, a fraud, a fake. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake. Trash. Fake. Fake. Fake.

My fingers dug into my thighs and I almost stopped my breath when I spotted movement from the corners of my eyes. Arrows of searing hot blue raced away from me down the curves of my petals. I was projecting my anxiety for all the world in a light show and had to stop it. They couldn't be allowed to know if I didn't want to die for the crime of being a fraud. My thoughts raced as they were led over my knowledge tree. These lights were caused by the interaction between the field projected from my coils, the hard light projectors in my petals, and my emotions. If I changed one of these it would stop. Mentally I reached for the easiest option and forced my hard light projectors to emit standard weapon configurations that required minimal hull shifting, rapidly cycling through them. Short range gravitational beam emitters, particle beams, high energetic mass drivers...

"I did not give you permission for that." The words, simultaneously spoken out loud and projected into my mind, cut harshly through the murmur of the command center's feast; not a direct order but the implications were there. "Now is a time for celebration not dry firing sequences." This was the closest I had seen Velteragni—my Captain—get to anger and I couldn't get myself to stand down fast enough.

"Aye, ma'am," I said softly.

She gently placed a hand on my head. "You spooked your crew." No further elaboration. "Don't forget to eat that before it gets cold." She moved on to others vying for her attention and I silently took a bite of the stew I had skewered on a two pronged fork-like utensil while I observed my crew from my 60 points of experience. There was consternation all around—poor Enlisted Nandilukka was quaking in fear—but some deck crews showed no signs of ever having noticed anything. In my Arboretum, with its silent rain of flower petals, I even got offered what looked to be a slice of chocolate cake by the Head of Agroforestry and Biosphere-Expression: Ozhomannel. I accepted it with hidden shame. Hidden from him but not my sisters and anyone who had a view of my petals where waves of red washed over them again. At least the emotional death spiral no longer had me in its grip.

Elanansur's hull was alight with golden fireworks of laughter while Velramuran and Luma looked at me with suspicion and concern respectively. I took a deep breath of virtual air and—through sheer tyranny of will—stilled the lights on my hull. "I'm fine," I croaked.

"It looked like you were being overwhelmed," said the teenage goddess of the cylinders. "Whatever your worries, you can share them with us."

"Maybe it was the same thing that caused me to fail coherence."

Velramuran perked up, chains of indigo cubes arcing around her. "Do tell." Was that curiosity?

I pondered in silence for long seconds. "I was afraid to live?"

Some of Velramuran's indigo cubes made way for that violet light again. "Afraid to live..?" Her face looked contemplative. Perhaps I had been wrong earlier and that light had a more nuanced meaning.

A friendly hand touched my shoulder. Elanansur had snuck up on me without making me jump. "Don't let life bother you, littlest sis," the horned girl said, there were still specks of gold coming off her hull that quickly turned into rings of reassurance. "I'm Ela, by the way. Short for Elanansur if your knowledge tree hasn't already told you. That there—" She pointed at the final member who had not once spoken, nor expressed herself the entire time. "—is Dainonsaa, or Dai. She talks when she wants to."

I looked over at the girl, maybe a little younger in appearance than I was, the bangs of her short hair neatly trimmed. She had fierce golden claws and a bony tail that swayed behind her. Her eyes were large and felt like they pierced right through me as she sat there without a word on her lips. I was certain she didn't like me. Shaking off my suspicions I tried to introduce myself. "Well, I'm Shissurna, or Shishi, but I guess you all knew that before I did."

"Yeah," Ela butted in, "You're the fifth Warship of the Golden Fleet and the youngest of us all! The Vulilognan!"

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That had to be the cherry on the pie of my rebirth's shock and confusion. Though, it shouldn't come as a surprise what with all these weapons systems built into me. "W-warship? Are we at war then?" It sounded like a stupid question and it probably was but I had only just been born into this strange future. Please forgive an ignorant newborn.

"Heheh! You couldn't tell?" Of course she read the emotions on my hull. "Luma here is not built for fighting. Not that she doesn't have any weapons, but she's the home for all the families for our crews. And, yeah, you were built because we're at war. The Illustrious Siblings even call you a miracle because they finished your construction just in time for an important battle."

"J-just in time..?" Doubt showed itself as green triangles and I wanted to protest. Becca had learned to avoid confrontation from a young age and here I was just told I was literally made for it. But I couldn't possibly argue based on the memories of a long-dead human in front of these Ships.

"According to outsider sources Shadowstar Company is planning to ambush us during our traversal of Erlkandr system to its outgoing tunnel," Velramuran said, "A number of them are already there with many more jumping in from surrounding systems. They will overwhelm us unless Father Dzayiss' device really works."

You would really call that man Father? I wondered quietly before Ela took over.

"Well, it's working so far, right? We've been in this tunnel long enough to build Shishi and a ton of mines and missiles."

"All of that will be for naught if we don't arrive before their reinforcements."

"You've run the simulations just like everybody else. We'll be fine!"

I raised an obsidian and gold hand. "Uhm, should I ask what this is about, or can I look this up in my knowledge tree?" Any explanation seemed like it would be too long for normal conversation.

Luma giggled with golden sparks. "Never mind their bickering and look it up if you want."

And so I did. The Bojanowski-Dzayiss manipulator—as mentioned by Elanansur—allowed for the manipulation of travel time in tunnel space. As it was configured now it slowed down time locally while doing the opposite from the perspective of normal space, requiring over two thirds of my power plant's constant output. My power plant's constant output. "Hey, wait a minute," I cried out, "That thing is built into me!"

"Yes," Velramuran said calmly, "Please do not disrupt its operation. It might possibly destroy us all if you do."

Messages that denied me access sprang up when I even merely tried to investigate the thing, so I stomped over to the man responsible with my nearest avatar. "Trurl!" I spat.

The officers in polite conversation with him fell silent, confusion clear on their faces. He didn't even turn around when he assuaged them. As if I was a nuisance. "She was supposed to be a masterpiece. Alas."

"Don't be an ass, you put that thing inside me." I was glad that insult existed in the Mezhained language.

The officers stiffened entirely for a moment then nervously tried to look away, even Trurl had straightened his spine. "If I recall," he said, "That type of business in regards to Ships is not discussed in polite company, or any company for that matter." What? No!

"That manipulator," I hissed.

"Oh that," he twisted his neck just enough to show me his unconcerned smile, "I did not put that in you, I built you around it. Had been planning to for the longest time, actually, and then a good enough excuse presented itself. You'd think there was enough political will in a society such as this one to expand their navy without a direct need."

"You know what I mean..."

"No, I do not." He finally turned around. That dark green gaze from upon high fueling suspicions about why he gave Warships lolibot avatars. I certainly felt as small as this body was despite the enormous size of my Greater Self. "What exactly is your problem with it? I designed and built every other part of you. Why should the Bojanowski-Dzayiss manipulator bother you above all else?"

A good question. Something in the back of my mind had unnerved me about it. "I..." This was strangely difficult to articulate. "I can't control it accurately. I can't control it because I don't have the right accesses to it?"

"It's experimental. You're not getting full access to it in the foreseeable future as you're quite liable to screw it up, 60 cluster mesh or not. Now—" He emphasized this next sentence, raising its profile over the previous for a forcible change of topic, "How was the stew? You did eat it, right?"

"It was fine," I said bitterly. "They used the cow's blood, didn't they?"

"That's ritual for you. The Mezhained have many regarding your kind. Do not screw those up either. Now if you'll excuse me." He turned around to apologize to his previous conversational partners for my admittedly rude behavior. I shrugged and savored the chocolate cake through my avatar at my arboretum.

"So," I asked my fellow ships back at the conclave to get my mind of the debacle with Trurl, "This is a tunnel?"

Luma nodded, accepting this change of topic as if she knew what was going on. "This is the tunneled space between two points in regular space." As I expected, this was what scifi novels in Becca's time would've called a wormhole. "We're sorry you couldn't be born in regular space and experience the light of life properly."

"I'm sure I'll be fine once we get out. But, ah, we're gonna be busy fighting right after that?"

"The battle plan's details are being worked out as we speak," she said.

"We'll surprise them with you and a whole lot of mines and missiles," Ela was eager to explain.

"Do I really make that much of a difference?" I was acutely aware of my firepower but had no idea what our supposed enemy would bring to the table.

It was Velramuran's turn to speak again. "Simulations consistently show that we'd be unable to break through their blockade before their reinforcements would arrive, even if we used the Bojanowski-Dzayiss manipulator to arrive before them. But with one extra Warship and a supply of mines they didn't count on—" Her expression gained a ferocity where those teeth didn't look out of place. "—we'll restrict their movement while we fire fire fire until they're obliterated."

I heard a noise: a furtive little sound of anticipatory pleasure. Turning my head answered me with Dainonsaa's large eyes. Her expressions betrayed nothing but I knew it had to be her. I looked back at the other two Warships. Their hulls were engulfed in blazing orange while their faces showed eager grins. I snapped my line of sight back to the stable Namamiluma as if to beg her to let me out of this loony bin. Probably not a sentiment I should let them know. "H-how m-many are they with?" I asked instead.

"Not that many," she said with a smile befitting a big sister reassuring her confused younger sister, "Only 142."

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