Session 2 Briefing Pt. 2
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September 24, 2198 Coral Harbour Base
You stand in perfect darkness. The kind of darkness you imagine exists only in the womb of the Earth, deep underground when there are no lights, no breath, no sound. Perfect and undisturbed stillness that can make a house sized cavern into a simultaneously infinite and claustrophobic space. You cannot see, but you know that you stand beside your own body in this darkness. You cannot see, but you know your hair is longer than it should be, and that you have freckles, even though you ordinarily do not.
You become aware that you stand in a body not your own. It was the beautiful Harpy that was the core of Lychgate, only now she was not crying.
The pure dark is disturbed by a comet skittering across the ceiling of this space like a rock skipped across a lake, tailed by a furious flame. You see now that you stand on the surface of a vast, still sea. You look to your right, where you were standing next to yourself just a moment ago, now K-2 stands there and you are yourself once again. It touches your face, caressing gently with rough fingers, and you feel yourself fall back onto the surface of the water, cool waver lapping at your skin. Its face is like it was when you were in Edmund’s cockpit.
K-2's expression begins to disintegrate, muscle melts and skin shifts into a kaleidoscopic chorus of strangers, Girls you do not recognize with fury in their eyes. They do not say it, but you can hear them screaming for you to, ‘Remember!’
As you sink under the waves, their hands around your throat, the comet comes into view behind their faces and explodes, and for a just a moment, in the deep red light that halos their face, you can make each one out clearly. Perfect strangers, a kind of family.
Later…
K-9 sat on one of the many gray boulders that dotted the pebbled shore of Coral Harbour. The Sun’s rays flooded from the East to make the shallows all around the island sparkle, and it could feel that warmth on its face, but it did little to undo the chill from the coarse coastal breeze, and it wouldn’t last. K-9 could already see the mass of gray clouds that would blot it out. This far North, you needed a jacket this time of year, but K-9 hadn’t brought one. It liked the cold prickling of the wind on its skin.
From its perch here, it could make out the flooded ruins of the settlement that had predated Coral Harbour Base, a handful of structures that hardly resembled whatever they had been before climate change took its toll. If the water weren’t so frigid, K-9 might think about trying to swim to those ruins. It wondered what was left inside.
Its thoughts turned to what was left of the island, it wasn’t much now. Rocky, flat, wet, the only living thing it ever saw besides humans were Geese passing high overhead. Nowhere to hide, nothing to eat if you weren’t on base. Coral Harbour felt like a world apart from the Earth. It was bitter at the thought that it was its home world. It sat and soaked in its unwelcome thoughts and in the sensations of the world around it.
It was going to be late to the briefing if it didn’t get up now. It thought about letting the moment pass, about waiting here to be dragged to a briefing by K-2’s firm grip. Tennyson more likely. Could K-9 manage an excuse or a lie right now? A convincing one? Could K-9 take the punishment? It thought about diving into the frigid water and swimming south and seeing what happened to it. Would freezing feel as pleasant as the biting wind? It would miss Lychgate.
It pushed itself off the rock and turned back to face the imposing gray structure of the Base, an interconnected complex of layered cubes and rectangular prisms. Same color as the stone all around, but shackled by a rigid geometry. It began the short trek back to the nearby hangar.
Last one to arrive again. Another march down the line, this time K-2, standing at attention where K-1 usually did, very specifically not looking at K-9, then K-1, wearing some new hardware on his face, and then K-10, its usual fidgety air replaced by one of concern directed at K-1. K-9 planted at the leftmost end of the line, faced forward, and waited.
None of them spoke.
They stood together in that silence. K-9 felt as though it ought to be feeling something right now, something the others were feeling, but it didn't. Then again, it only suspected the other Girls were feeling anything at all. Tennyson finally arrived and broke the silence. Click clack, click clack, the sound of the Junior Handler’s heels hitting concrete. No medical staff this time.
“Kaveliere Cadre,” Tennyson needed no warming up, her voice was already firm and crisp as she spoke, “the Foundation has located a Class III Gorgon East of Base 12-E-5” She paced before the Girls, inspecting them as she did, “You will be deployed to neutralize the threat, and Doctor Korsen has commanded that it be preserved for dissection.”
Tennyson’s attention snapped to K-9, “Kaveliere-9,” she declared, K-9 startled to something approximating attention, grateful that it managed to make eye contact with the Junior Handler, “state the defining feature of a Class III Gorgon.”
K-9 swallowed hard before its attempt, “Erratic.”
Tennyson, satisfied with the clipped answer, returned her attention to the others, "We are unable to share much of what we know of the target, but know this;" her pacing ceased and she stood before the Girls to deliver her final command, “it will try to get away, you cannot permit that. Go!”
K-9 noticed that while it and K-1 shot off toward their frames, K-2 seemed to intercept K-10. It told itself it was none of its business, but it felt like its business.
