/ Chapter 3 /

The godling examined the integrity of its isolation shell, then peeked outside. Wow - they both made it? She thought the human would likely burst, but apparently they were both good. What a pleasant surprise! Hopefully this host wouldn't immediately expire and put a damper on her good mood. Maybe she could do something about that? But then the outside Universe might catch her. She wasn't really supposed to trespass. Well, for now she'd just go dormant and maybe casually observe a bit. The human looked like the type who could wiggle her own way out of trouble. 

–o–

The workers were eventually sent back towards their quarters under escort by the Guardians, giving 722 time to mull over the incident in the dock. She had picked up a few obvious clues – such as the woman's blatant counting error and her querying attention towards one of the bewildered workers in a brown top. Seeing how that woman had apparently just arrived on the station and then immediately expected one worker to be missing, it followed that worker was likely the woman's contact and perhaps 722's assailant. But what could 722 do about it in this situation? She couldn't just make a break for it and run, right? She needed a way to slip out undetected.

It wasn't long before the guardians had herded everyone back to the worker quarter section and shut the worker constructs into their respective quarters. 722 had entered a small room with just a few square meters of floor space, flanked on each side by three stacked bunk beds. She habitually climbed into the topmost left bunk as three other workers similarly fell into theirs. At the far end of the aisle there was a small shared storage cabinet doubling as a desk with a flip out seat. 

She eyed the closed door. Even though 722 strangely hadn't been held for questioning, surely trouble would come knocking soon. 

Technically the door couldn't easily be knocked as it was both sound proof and air tight – the quarter's air supply could even be sealed off in the case of a station breach. Under such conditions each of the worker quarters could ignite a small oxygen candle which provided up to 5 hours of hope while the Guardians attempted to patch any breaches.

Her particular quarters would last a bit longer though as only four out of six bunks were currently occupied by worker constructs due to a reshuffle – 722 hadn't seen the two missing ones since. She had heard gossip about worker constructs being "moved" to the Outside. Had it perhaps happened so long ago that she wouldn't even recognise the workers even if they were still around? It was rather difficult to remember people without much personality. Maybe they had just changed their hair. At any rate, there wasn't much to friendships on the platform.

722 briefly sat tailor up on her bed, but the posture put a dangerous strain on her tight panties so she shifted into a geisha position. Stuck on the adjacent wall she noticed a flip page calendar with her private schedule in an absolutely tiny font.
While the current her didn't really care about the two missing workers or when they had been moved, she still began flipping through the pages to refresh her memory of past events. However, her attempt at sherlocking was dashed by illegible high density clutter, and the calendar stretched back over ten thousand days – three decades – without much change.

Hold on- decades? How old was she? 

Thinking about it, her body was a construct and her work environment was incredibly monotonous. The perception of time might indeed appear very different under such conditions. No vacations, news, or much of anything happening, just the same day repeating over and over again.

Suddenly a red head popped up from the bunk just below.

– "Hey, Teu!"

Oh, that was a coincidence – her friends called her Teu just like in her last life, though her full name was actually Teurana Zlayne then. That said, she had used over a dozen aliases and had as many infamous nicknames. Here 722 was just called Teu, or sometimes Zetutu. Nicknames were technically against regulations but it still happened in private.

– "Hey! Pssht!", the girly looking woman hissed trying to break the spell of Teu's space-out.

Right, it was her spunky bunkmate, 505, or Firefly. 722 and the others never had any conflicts, but 505 could evidently be a bit noisy at times.

– "PSHT! Has your momentum wheel gotten stuck or something, Ze-tu-tu?", the girl hissed again, supplementing the query with three finger stabs before fully climbing into Teu's bunk like some monkey.

Firefly was the kind of troublemaker who always managed to dodge consequences and instead end up with a privilege boon, like getting the white thigh highs she now wore. She had even managed to get a hair dye kit. Though hairstyles here varied a bit, all workers originally had a black-brown, coarse and vaguely wavy hair type, and for tool compatibility reasons worker construct bodies only varied slightly in height.

The administration would hand out special yearly privileges for good conduct and performance, but when Teu thought about the triviality of it now she could only sigh – the original 722 had actually tried hard to get them, but a recent series of red slips had instead cost her her socks.

– "Un?", Teu responded to Firefly, preemptively blocking a "psht" possibly strong enough to draw spittle.

– "What do you think the Outside People want?", Firefly leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. 

She sat across Teu on the bed with an obliviously wide spread of her legs which immediately derailed Teu's focus on coming up with a plan of action.

Supposedly at some time in a distant past five pages of printed images of Outside People had appeared on the platform before getting lost again. The few workers who had seen them formulated a number of competing Outside People theories.

According to one theory the Outside People populate a world of colour and strange shapes just outside the hull of the platform. Some are covered by a lot of clothes while others laze around completely naked on yellow dust. They are very beautiful and all have a different type of bush shaped more like a bar than a triangle. Firefly had fully bought into the legend of the Outside People, as evidenced by the neatly trimmed two finger wide landing strip rising out of straining thin panty fabric.

Teu grabbed Firefly's knees and slowly closed them with a serious look, afraid the struggling over-taut panty would give out and snap right off. The 722 part of her knew better though, being intimately familiar with the quality and limits of the product.

– "What's up with you?", Firefly grinned, her legs gradually beginning to fall back open again.

– "Aren't you curious about the..."

–"Actually I think they're here to kill me.", Teu admitted.

– "Whaaat?", two voices exclaimed almost in unison, 731 having joined in.

731 – also known as Braids because she wore braids – had finally gotten interested. Long hair was of course a huge no-no for workers dealing with spinning machinery, but Braids worked in packing and had gotten special permission for the braids. She was one of those workers with a rather blank character, so the braids were her only outwardly identifiable characteristic.

Even the silent and shy 601 looked like she was now paying attention, because her head of short curled hair peeked out from the bottom left bunk where she normally holed up under a blanket with something she was working on. 722 had suspected 601 might be an "eccentric" and at risk of being "moved", but 601's normal operation was apparently stable enough to be unremarkable to the Grand Supervisor. She hadn't even gotten a nickname – there were already a dozen "Curly" among the workers and nicknaming creativity wasn't exactly abundant on the platform.

Firefly had scrunched her forehead up in confusion.

– "Kill you? Why would the Outside People want to do that?"

Teu figured that since the situation was about to get messy, she might as well warn her bunkmates and get them onboard with her slowly developing plan. But before she could prepare them the door opened without warning.

A woman in black entered the room – without knocking. The woman ordered a nearby Guardian to remain outside with a simple "Stay", then she firmly and ominously closed the door.

Firefly and the others just gaped at the Outside People person as she reached into her jacket, pulling out an elegant silvery gun with an oddly ridged silencer.

Teu had two advantages in this situation. She was in the upper bunk and not directly in line of sight, especially not with Beutraze's rimmed hat blocking the field of view. More importantly though, she was also not 722 in this moment, but Teurana Zlayne – a world class assassin.

She simply reached down with an arm and grabbed the base of Beutraze's skull just below the ears, pinching hard and precise, feeling something give. Teu then slid down the bunk without letting go, following Beutraze's body as it slowly sunk onto the floor. She squatted by the body for several more seconds before finally loosing the iron grip.

– "What the heck did you do?", whispered Braids, hanging out from the opposing upper bunk with her two black braids dangling.

– "Hmm, what's this thing?", 601 voiced more to herself as she grabbed the silvery gun and waved it around dangerously.

Everything happened all at once. Before Teu could react Firefly had hiked Beutraze's skirt up. 

It was a reasonable action for an agent who wanted to check for hidden weapons, but that was probably not what was happening here. Teu saw that the woman just wore a pair of normal skin-beige shape briefs underneath.

– "What the hell is this? It's so big and ugly."

– "What's with the strange colour?"

– "I don't even understand what I'm looking at."

– "This is nothing like the stories."

– "Is- is she just going to sleep here?"

Teu snatched the gun from 601.

– "Yes, she's going to sleep here, permanently."

Teu deftly took off Beutraze's uniform, shoes, hat and glasses. Beutraze body looked slightly taller than 722's, but part of that was her office heels. Thankfully they both had a similar near black hair colour, but Beutraze's was straight and glossy. Teu addressed this with a comb and some machine oil found in the shared desk. The face she would hide under the hat and fake glasses. 

– "Now, listen closely,", Teu said in a serious tone looking at her bunkmates in turn, "you can either stay here and probably get in trouble, or you can go...", she paused for dramatic effect, "Outside, on an adventure!"

This was the most exciting thing that had happened in ages, so everyone chose the so called "adventure", affirming it with silent obedient little nods which had a certain innocent giddiness to them

– "Good, pack up what you can't do without, then I need you to move with me, looking like you're dutifully following a Guardian. Try to cluster a bit behind me as we exit the room. And make sure to shut the door as you exit."

Braids covertly leaned towards Firefly and whispered in a tiny voice. 

– "What's an adventure?"

– "I... I don't know!",  was the excited reply.

Teu actually only needed the extra bodies to use as cover to block line of sight, and if she headed out alone she'd attract a lot more attention if her manner of walking wasn't quite right. Fortunately, walking in heels wasn't any issue for Teurana Zlayne and these heels were quite low and wide, like something worn for daily work. 

601 scooped up some private things. Braids grabbed a compact box with 100 spare panties. Priorities... Firefly just snatched up all of the socks. Teu sighed, then ignored their rummaging.

Her eyes grew sharp, then she bent over Beutraze's body.

PWUPP! PWUPP!

She put one shot in the back and one in the head. Then she stood up, straightened the suit, and opened the door. Head down she quickly strode past the Guardian outside.

–"Stay.", she imitated, not looking back.

She felt her bunkmates clustering up behind and the Guardian didn't seem to have reacted. Fortunately their quarters had been close to the machine hall, and soon the entourage passed by the miscellaneous shelf and Teu quickly grabbed the small cardboard box not containing any screw drivers, but perhaps a method for screwing someone over.

The factory was unusually silent with the only rhythmic clacking being that of her heels. Each step felt like a deafening countdown as they approached the dock hosting the wing ship. It was shaped like a big gray rectangle some 14 by 5 by 2.5 meters, and stood on retractable landing legs. At the top was a small cylindrical gun turret which immediately made Teu nervous. On the short sides were articulated flaps, like that of a box opened on the sides. Coming around to the rear they saw a tubular central engine sticking out three meters, and there were a flanking pair of big vertical flaps, making the whole thing look a bit like a ancient Wright plane with an enclosed space between the wings. It was probably only meant for use in vacuum as it didn't look at all atmospherically streamlined. When they got close a man poked his head out of an open boarding doorway, looking like he was about to curse her. And he did.

– "I'll have you know I have just filed a report on you Beutraze!"

Teu just continued walking, keeping her head down.

Naxxel frowned and leaned out further.

– "What are you bringing over? More of your nonsense?"

At 4 meters distance she reached into her jacket.

Just then Naxxel looked a bit startled.

PWUPP! PWUPP!

She closed the distance and scooped the body up before it even had time to fall out of the doorway. Within seconds the entire group were already inside the ship. She didn't know how to fly it, but also couldn't risk the man shouting and alerting the Guardians which were probably bullet proof against small arms. There were no other people on the ship even though it could likely hold a crew of ten without it getting too crowded. This one seemed like it had been configured for two person VIP travel though, and not troop transport. The air smelled lightly of perfume.

Fortunately the technology in this universe was in some ways very primitive and mechanical, at least judging by the factory environment. Here there weren't any finger print scanners, touch screens, miniaturised PDAs or tricky surveillance bugs.

Moving into the cockpit area, Teu instead saw levers, pedals, a type writer-like thing, analog gauges and meters, blinking bulbs, valve wheels, and a few cathode ray tubes. She had flown all sort of vehicles in her past life but was temporarily overwhelmed and froze up for a while. Worst case she could hole up here and perhaps learn how to operate the turret, which should be able to deal with the Guardians.

She sunk into the pilot seat slowly and stretched. Her hand bumped into what could be an overhead glove compartment. Flipping it open she found a few pilot reports, repair logs, a smelly cardboard pine tree, a moderately naughty magazine, a cooking - celebrity - crossword combo magazine. Then underneath it all was a rather thick yellowed booklet titled Mark 6 Wing Courier - Operators Manual. It was 200 pages.

She sighed and engaged her speed reading skills. The magazines she had tossed to her friends to keep them occupied, but immediately regretted it when they became noisy, all busily commenting on the completely alien contents. She had to shut them into one of the cabins – the one which looked like it had belonged to the woman.

15 minutes later a light on the console started flashing and buzzing. Fortunately Teu had already skimmed over the "Basics" section of the manual and saw that the light indicated a local comms request . But who was phoning? 

She somewhat nervously held down a response button.

–– "WC6-901-CU Beutraze.", she replied in a neutral voice, keeping it dry by using the serial number stamped on page one in the manual.

There was a seemingly long pause. She was hoping the audio signal carried some distortion helping to mask her voice, so she didn't raise any suspicions.

–– "This is GS-8790-4040.", a robotic voice replied, "On behalf of the platform's Overlord Machine, model OMP-80, this unit must request clarifications regarding recent activities, for purposes of log keeping, inventory, and continued action."

It sounded like it could be the Grand Supervisor. Inventory? Was that the workers? What was the most natural and advantageous response here? She thought for a while before speaking.

–– "Resume normal operations. The inspection is over. Keep quarter 12B sealed and guarded. De-docking request to follow along with a report."

Beutraze's corpse would start to smell she supposed, but by that time they would hopefully be long gone. She wasn't sure what to do about Naxxel's corpse as throwing it out into the docking hangar was... probably not a good idea.

–– "Requesting communications with Inspector Naxxel at that time.", the Grand Supervisor droned on, making it hard to tell whether it was suspicious or not.

Damn.

–– "Negative, Naxxel is in a bad mood.", she responded, then added, "Comms out."

She fell back into the pilot seat again, breathed out, then resumed speed reading, flipping to the 45 pages detailing de-docking procedures, skipping over the little footnotes which were probably just edge cases. Probably.

/ End of Chapter /