Federations

The music died down. “Cadet Kav,” Morgana said to one of her crew, “I thought you said the data indicated no prior contact with the United Planets?”

“It did,” said a gender-neutral voice from within the crowd of perfect, unitard-wearing specimens of U.P. standard, a/k/a homo sapiens. “But I also told you, Captain, that the probes picked up signs of U.P. technology shortly after nanoassembly completed.”

I took note of the gender neutrality and mentally raised an eyebrow. A neuter, in the U.P. Corps? Half the fun of joining up was getting to fuck and suck the natives into conformity. I tagged this bit of information as “weird, possibly useful.” Whoever this Kav was—ne hadn’t been in Lewyana’s crew back in my days aboard the Jolly Happy Fun Time—ne was also the first U.P. citizen I had any interest in speaking with in several years relative. I didn’t want to think about how long it had been in real time. Numbers that big made my hardbrain throb.

“Looks like we have an expat on our hands,” said a sneering voice I recognized as Adam Kilkeny—a waste of memory storage if ever there was one. He had taken up as Lewyana’s boy-toy and second-in-command shortly before I had jumped ship. Which, I would like the record to show, had nothing to do with my defection. Mostly.

My swarm informed me that Lewyana’s swarm was politely querying for an ID and not so politely backing up the request with a threat of nano-anhiliation if they did not comply. I toyed with letting the little bastards have at it, but Lewyana would figure me out soon enough. I gave them the go-ahead.

The crew became immediately silent. Adam began to laugh, and Lewyana’s eyes widened, then narrowed.

“Bertie?” It was a pointless question. My swarm had already confirmed my identity with zero chance of error. I pointedly ignored it.

Data began to fly back and forth between the swarms of the crew, but I was able to pirate a few bits. The neuter wanted to know who I was, but nobody was telling nim. Lewyana instructed the semi-sentient Redshirts to take me captive, but to go easy on me and not damage anything, and Adam sent the U.P. backdoor codes necessary to shut my swarm down to only the most basic functions, against which I had no defense.

They could have hurt me in a million ways and not wounded me as badly as that. My emergent AIs were wiped out of existence in a flash. I had coaxed them from the chaos of the Swarm. They were the closest things I had to friends.

Now I had another reason to add to my klicks-long list titled “Why I should murder Lieutenant Adam Kilkeny the first chance I get.”

“Bertram Kilroy, I hereby put you under arrest as a most wanted sentient, for the crimes of datatheft, attempted thought-pattern murder, and nonconformity,” Adam said, voice oozing with pleasure.

“You forgot treason,” I said.

With my swarm incapacitated, I didn’t bother to struggle as a couple of the meatpuppets took hold of me and dragged my Humpty body into the welcome shuttle. The actual sentient crew conferred on a secure signal I couldn’t infiltrate with a crippled swarm.

Yep. Fuxored. Nothing to do now but wait for my trial. Or possibly find a way to subvert the crew’s conformity, escape the shuttle, and kill Lieutenant Adam fucking Kilkeny in a very messy fashion along the way. Even the condemned have dreams.

• • •

The Redshirts tossed me in an empty cargo container previously used for incubating celebratory champagne and shut the lid. One plopped his barely sentient, well-toned ass down on the lid, as if I was going anywhere on my stumpy humpty legs.

And so to my first order of business. I struck up a conversation with my swarm. They were crippled in a dozen ways, but medical features remained online, which gave me all the functionality I needed at the moment. I scrolled through my library of body shapes and idly considered a berserker model of some sort, but ultimately decided, given the available mass and time, that I should probably stick with U.P. homo sap standard for now. The homo sap frame had done its fair share of murder and mayhem in the million and a half or so years of its evolution. I had to remind myself of a central tenet of the culture archivist code: it’s not the size of your tool, it’s how you use it that ascribes certain cultural and moral values to a people and social group.

My nerve cells began to ache, so I shut off pain for the duration of my transformation. Swarm noted that it would take half a Terran standard to complete the process given the Humpty frame as a starting point and allowing for available carbon. Half a day of agonizing pain while my organic bits reshuffled? No thank you. I blissed out instead.

• • •

Voices shook me from my daze. I focused long enough to hear the neuter order the Redshirts to leave, and my half-human, half-Humpty eyes blinked in the harsh white light of the shuttle bay as the lid slid aside and revealed the androgynous face of an angel.

“I’ve been instructed to give you a thorough bio examination,” ne said. “My name is Cadet Kav.”

“Wouldn’t want me keeling over before the trial,” I said. My vocal systems were slowly coming into a shape more compatible with Lingua Franca.

“I think Lieutenant Kilkeny would prefer it, actually,” Cadet Kav said absentmindedly. Ne had the half-focused eyes of someone sorting through a stream of data coming in from its swarm.

“No surprise there, but I doubt the Captain will let that happen,” I said, shrugging, not realizing until that moment that I was starting to have shoulders again. I had actually missed shrugging. The humpty equivalent of a shrug was a tortuously long rhetorical device involving subtly belittling the idea in question without outright calling the sanity of the speaker into question. Say what you will about the Fuck U.P.s, their language afforded a certain efficiency. Which was, of course, part of the whole damned problem. Efficiency wins out too often in the end.

The neuter’s eyes snapped into focus. “All done. I’ve instructed my swarm to facilitate your carbon acquisition to speed your morphing along, by the way.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, suspicious of why the cadet was being so friendly, but its next question made the reason plain enough.

“So who are you? I’ve never see the Captain surprised by anything, and you must have done something interesting for Adam to hate you so much.”

Ahh, gossip.

“I was your Captain’s second-in-command, once upon a time,” I said, being honest for once. “You’ve really never heard of me?” I wasn’t sure whether I was pleased or hurt by nis ignorance.

“I only joined the crew of the Jolly Happy Fun Time a couple of relative months ago. This is my first assimilation mission.”

“Yeah, about that. Why are you in the Corps, being a neuter and all? No offense, but there aren’t a lot of you sort interested in this line of work.”

It was the neuter’s turn to shrug. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” And that was all ne said. Fair enough, and it gave me an opening.

“At the time, huh? Not so happy with the state of things now?”

Ne paused. “I am a little surprised at the lack of respect for non-assimilateds in the delivery of welcome kits.” By which Cadet Kav meant the exploding capsules of doom raining down on the Humpty planet as we conversed.

“You’ll get over it,” I muttered.

“You didn’t,” Kav pointed out. “I don’t know who you were, but I know what you are now. A deserter. An expat.”

“The least of my crimes,” I said, preening not just a little bit.

The neuter tried to stifle a grin and failed. “I’ve only heard stories about people like you. What’s it like out there?”

“Where?”

Ne waved nis long, thin hands. “Out there. Outside of the U.P.”

“Oh. You wouldn’t like it. You can’t buy anything on credit. The food is too rich. The languages are too complicated. The sentients are barbaric and they practice the most obscene customs. Horrible, truly. Every day is a struggle to survive.”

“You’re making fun of me,” the neuter said.

“He’s very good at that,” Captain Lewyana said from the bay door. She was wearing her hair down, long and