Page 3 of Mutiny

"Guess what I just did!" Andrea said.

"What did you do, Andrea?" Mei asked, impatience heating the edges of her words.

"I just gave the Big Guy a blow job!" she said.

"Congrats, I guess?" Mei said, a strained note in her voice.

"It was so good that he passed out," Andrea whispered, but the whisper was at a slightly louder volume than her normal speaking voice.

"I'm happy that you're happy about that, Andrea," Mei said. "Maybe you should go check on him to make sure he is okay."

"I can wake him up with another one!" Andrea said. "I wonder how long it takes his species to get ready for another round?"

"Only one way to find out," Mei said.

The two women parted, and I heard Mei enter the maze, along with the sound of Andrea's door opening and shutting again.

I heard Mei's footsteps approaching, and I remained where I was, hidden in the shadow of the storage room. I'd disabled the lighting and broke the door in the open position, so the room was dark and had a view of the spot she had picked out for her plot. I'd done it a while ago, once I realized the location she was going to execute her plan, so she wouldn't find the open door suspicious.

She had scouted the location several times, each time using the first device she assembled. It took me a while to get a good look, and when I realized what she'd put together, I was impressed. She had made a directional bio-magnetic triangulator.

I peered out of the darkness.

She lifted the triangulator she had built from parts intended for other machines and pointed it at the wall across from my hiding place.

"Now or never, Mei," she muttered to herself. "The signals are coming from that direction; you're ready to do it, just do it."

She tucked the triangulator back into the torn-up blanket she was using as a bag, then pulled out the latest device she had been working on and slung it over her shoulder, pointing it at the wall. I finally got a good look at it.

"The missin…" I started to say as I stepped out of the darkness behind her, but she reacted faster than I imagined, letting out a yelp and spinning in place to face me.

"How long have you been hiding there?" she shrieked, and my ears rapidly folded to protect me from the sound.

"The missing atmospheric shield also operated as a heat director." She needed to understand. "Not only will it consume the local oxygen, but it will also cause severe burns to your body."

Mei lowered the cobbled-together device from her shoulder and stared at it.

"Damnit," she swore.

"Even if it did work and didn't kill you, and you were able to cut through the wall and the subsequent neurofilaments, the ship would react with violent force," I said. "You would be killed before you could reach the core."

"The core, is that where you can control the ship?" she asked.

I heard the optical and audio sensors in the walls around us suddenly swivel and adjust, signaling that the ship had been clued into the conversation and was paying attention. It must have coded a subroutine to monitor audio and flag certain phrases so it could focus on higher-risk conversations.

"I would never attempt to control the ship," I said. "It is the only one who has the right to control itself."

"You talk about it like it is alive," Mei said.

I had overheard several conversations where the humans spoke about the ship in strange ways, but Mei made the pieces click into place. The humans didn't understand anything. They didn't understand what the ship was.

They needed to understand.

But before I could explain, I caught the slightest of noises: a familiar footstep, a brother who was similar and yet different, the programming designed to allow the unit to blend with a particular species rather than move with maximum efficiency.

An infiltrator unit approached.

Mei's forehead was creased, and her mouth parted to speak.