The Reprimand

Four days later

"Drink your medicine!" Nova yelled.

"I already did!"

"Then why is there a pill lying on the table?"

"I drank the other one."

"Vega, drink your damn medicine. You'd rather be brain-dead than drink a damn pill?"

"I'm feeling better. I don't need that one."

"You couldn't walk three days ago."

"And now I can run around town. What's your point?'

"Just... aargh!" Nova pulled on his air as he stretched his head backward. "I give up. Rot in your room for all I care." Nova slammed the door behind him as he stormed out. I, in turn, tried to turn my attention back to my book, but my brain was far from focusing on the words. The solitary pill stared at me from my bed table. I could almost hear it chuckling.

"Oh, be quiet." I threw the book onto my bed and looked through the window. I was being stubborn, and I knew it. Nova would lord it over me where I to relent, but spite wasn't the only reason I didn't want to drink the pill. I hated the side effects. The pills were a marvel of modern medicine, capable of injecting several million nanites into the bloodstream from where they could repair the brain from within., There lay the problem. The brain is a sensitive bugger. Any changes would manifest themselves in creative ways. In my case, I started to hallucinate shadow people. It wasn't fun.

But there was no denying their effectiveness. I'd be lying in the hospital in a vegetative state if it weren't for them. In truth, I would've been beyond the help of the pills if it weren't for Command. She loosened the maintenance locks in smaller increments than usual. She started with ten percent of Cerviel's load. That proved too much. My biometrics had skyrocketed in an instant. My head would have been a smoldering cinder if she followed the regular procedure.

The technicians found me lying over the command ring, where they rushed me to the hospital in record time. There was some damage in the synapses surrounding the implants, but not enough to classify me as a lost cause. The doctors performed a treatment, and I woke up seven hours after the accident. The doctors told me I should drink the nanite pills for the rest of the week. That would get me most of the way to a full recovery. The rest would heal with time. They discharged me a couple of hours later to an unhappy Nova and Father Alcor who took me home.

I spent the rest of the day watching the shadows dance throughout my room while reminding myself they didn't exist. Rest was advised but I was not allowed to drink any sedatives. Supposedly the doctors didn't want any extra chemicals to mess with my mind while the nanites did their thing. The nanites would supposedly send me off to sleep if they needed to. A pity they never did so. Thankfully, they worked fast. I could walk by the morning of the second day and managed to rejoin Nova and Father Alcor at the dinner table. A fifteen-minute trot through the neighborhood the next showed how far I'd come. The only noticeable side effect was a wobbly balance.

A knock from the door disrupted my walk through memory lane. "Nova, I'm not drinking that pill."

"You are if you ever want to pilot Cerviel again."

Oh no. Either Nova's voice became feminine in the past ten minutes, or that wasn't him standing outside my door. "Command? He fetched you?"

"I told you its Cymmand when I'm off the clock, and no." Her curly bob entered my room, as did the frown beneath it. "My initial idea was to visit a sick friend. It seems our conversation must now take on a different tone."

"Get her to drink the damn pill!" Nova yelled from somewhere behind her.

"I'm fine."

"Like how you were fine before Cerviel nearly cooked your head? Drink... the damn... pill-"

"Cymmand--"

"Drink it!"

"Fine!" I threw the pill into my mouth and swallowed. "There."

"Open it."

"What, you don't believe me?" Cymmand's gaze answered enough. "Aaaaah!" I stick out my tongue as an afterthought. "There, happy now?"

"She drank it!" she yelled over her shoulder.

"Thanks, I owe you a beer!"

"I'll think of you once I start tripping." I sulked.

"I'd rather not," Cymmand answered as she pulled a nearby chair closer. "How are you feeling?"

"Pissed off."

"Besides that."

I frowned back in response.

"Oh, don't give me that look. You entrust your lives to me every time you fight, but I can't make you drink a pill?"

"I told you I'm fine."

"Nobody believes that anymore."

"That's not nice."

"It's your fault."

I shot her an angry look, but her expression remained unmoved. "Did you ever figure out what happened?"

"No."

"I thought you had sensors everywhere."

"We do. Nothing that we saw can explain what happened."

"One of the engineers mentioned seeing something odd when I entered the cockpit."

"And you didn't think to mention it?"

"They didn't? That means they didn't do their job."

"You're playing very loose with your safety."

"I figured they would have paused the calibration if it wasn't noteworthy."

"Uh huh..." Cymmand frowned.

"I'm more surprised you didn't know what the sensors told you."

"Tell me about it." She blew out a breath. "Everybody's been working around the clock to figure it out. I'm only here because the Overseer threatened to fire me if I didn't take a break. I haven't slept in almost forty hours. I'm... starting to feel it."

"Sounds like I'm not the only one that should better look after their health."

"Oh, so you admit you've been slacking off?"

I rolled my eyes. "What could you see in the sensor readings?"

"They were higher before your connection. Cerviel's personality core is an interesting case. Some of its readings were half their baselines, yet everything returned to normal after your failed connection."

"You make it sound like Cerviel was happy to see me."

"That... might be the best explanation I've heard in the last couple of days. And I've heard a ton." She rubbed her eyes with a yawn. "Anything from static in the cables to overcharged capacitors."

"Maybe it was why she kept working after the Marquis' flame attack?"

"I have no idea. It's another mystery to add to the list."

"Sounds like the list is getting longer."

"You're telling me. Your mech is keeping secrets from us."

"Sensing a veiled accusation there."

"Just saying. Her pilot tends to do the same."

"Uh-huh." Cymmand didn't bother to comment. "I assume you're not seeing any of these anomalies with Valoel?"

"Nope. We calibrated Valoel without a hitch. It was easier since we didn't need to rewire half the mech."

Thud-thud-thud.

"What, again?" I looked out the window. I could see the tip of the northernmost pulse cannon past the wreckage of the Frakah dome. The red glow of its barrel was dimming as the heat escaped into space.

"That's strange." Cymmand narrowed her eyes. "I didn't see anything on the radar earlier."

"Maybe it's a rogue--" Our displays burst to life with a shrill alarm. My heart sank with the noise. I knew only one type of alarm that would make such a noise.

"Warning: Asbestos-3C is under attack. All citizens must report to their prescribed vaults within ten minutes. This is not a drill. I repeat. Asbestos-3C is under attack. All citizens must report to their prescribed vaults within ten minutes."

My display reported one extra line at the end.

"All Angels, please suit up and report to your stations. We have detected a class six signature."