“Ship!” barked the captain, for once not subvocalizing.
Text filled their eyeglasses:EASY, CAPTAIN ABEL. WE’RE MAKING HISTORY, REMEMBER?
“They used magic,” said Gita, her amber skin ashy with fear. “Look at how he moves that arm—that’s not possible without a chip. It’s magic, Captain.”
A glance over at the drone wrangler brought no relief. His shock of red hair, grown overlong in a rebellion against space-faring standards, lay plastered against his skin with sweat. Their assigned ambassador had not yet cleared them for landing, so the ship hovered in an isolated patch of space over Mare Cognitum, the Sea That Has Become.
“They’re working on the leg now!” Gita spoke with a near-hysterical edge, also abandoning subvocal communication. “We’ll feel it again!”
IF I MIGHT INTERJECT????scrolled the ship, and the captain felt relief at the prospect of submitting to a stronger will.THE BOUNDARY IS GONE. MAGIC IS NOW A PART OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. WE’RE IN A NEW ERA! LET THE DRAGON CAST HER SPELLS, WHO CARES? THIS IS ALL SO MUCH FUN!
The engineer began to weep, fat droplets dripping off her chin onto her sari.
CAPTAIN ABEL,flashed the ship across their eyepiece,WHY DON’T WE LET GITA COMMUNICATE WITH OUR GUESTS DIRECTLY? SHE’LL SEE THEY’RE ONLY HUMAN. IT MAY HELP WITH HER FEAR.
The captain slashed dissent with a hand—but too late, the cabin’s broadscreen minimized all visuals, upscaling a med-bay feed. Three Terran faces looked in sudden alarm at the camera.
“Ship, are you projecting us to them?” the captain subvocalized, tilting their head meaningfully toward Gita.
“I’ve added a filter to give you all friendlier smiles,” the ship whispered in their ear, “and erased the tears. That seemed appropriate.”
“Did it?” They tried a real smile; it felt as stiff as cheap plastic, and as likely to crack.
“Hello?” said the golden-haired man. The captain knew this wasn’t his true voice, only a simulation playing translated words in real time, but it surprised them, nonetheless.
“Greetings!” they replied shrilly. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’ve all been wondering. How is it your companion is harnessing his prosthetics without a neural chip? Is there an alternate technology, perhaps, that you’ve made use of?”
“Uh . . .” The man side-eyed his companions, who stood staring into the transmitter with predatory intensity. “This might be a long shot, but have you heard of ‘magic’?”
Gita shrieked. Frantically, the captain gestured at the air. “Cut it off, cut it off!”
With a wink, the faces disappeared.
“That did not,” breathed the captain, “help.”
CHAPTER 59
In Which the Crew Is Obviously Having a Bad Time, and I Feel for Them, Absolutely, but It Honestly Is a Bit of a Bother.
Oh, come on. Your captain shouldn’t have said all that. Of course you helped. Everything you’ve done has been perfectly civilized!” I petted the nearest floating machine in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. After our brief communication with the crew had gone so disastrously, the poor ship needed a shoulder to lean on—metaphorically, as the sheer weight of it would likely crush me into jam.
“Must you always be blabbering?” said Merulo, his new eye blazing. The ship had set the dragon siblings up with projected displays in the med-bay, which, given the reduced number of the buzzing machines, now seemed pleasantly spacious. I didn’t think he should be standing, let alone absorbing all this new, sharp-edged information, but he and Hydna were pawing at the displays like kittens at yarn, scrolling through dizzying arrays of text and photographs.
“Mustyoualways be . . .” I couldn’t think of anything appropriately cutting, nor did I really want to. “Mean to me?Anyways, you just came back from being three-quarters dead. At least sit down.” I patted a space on the operating table next to where I sat, feet swinging.
“He may feel perky now, but once my drugs wear off, he will crash,” the ship agreed in my ear.
Merulo’s look of attempted menace was undermined by his dress; the shift tied about his neck flapped open at the back, exposing bony white butt-cheeks. “This is information I would tear my remaining arm off to access. And you’d have me, what? ‘Take a load off?’”
Their assembly had taken mere hours compared to the intense days of labour and study he and Hydna had poured into his previous limbs, but Merulo’s arm and leg now moved smoothly enough to be mistaken for flesh. The polished black plastic was all that gave them away. Burnt blood flaked off the limbs as he moved, having served its role as fuel for the spell.
“Honestly, Merulo, it’s like you enjoy shedding limbs.” I lay flat on the table—which had been sprayed clean of fluids by the floating machines—and felt warmth radiate through the muscles of my back, unknotting them. “Come on, Hydna, talk some sense into him.”
“Hmmmrgh,” Hydna grunted, absorbed in a display of tiny humans on a screen. “Not now.” She hulked over the display, her tunic and breeches looking oddly rough in the smooth, oyster-dome room.
“Lunatic Freak?” I rolled on the table to give my front a turn with the heat. “Before we meet the people from space, could you please give Merulo some clothing? It’s just, we can see a rather lot of him right now. Particularly in the rear.”
“Would that I had my magic,” the sorcerer seethed. Ihad to swallow a peep of joy as he turned from a projected display to direct dark attention my way. “Perhaps the vulture was too generous a form for you. Yes, how about one of those scurrying rodents that you so liked to prey upon? Hydna?”
