Krile groaned. Despite her deep desire for rest, consciousness was returning to her.. 

Her eye squinted against the harsh light.

Her head was positively spinning.

The right side of her face was numb. 

She looked around, finding ridiculously tall counters on either side of her, and herself in a…hospital bed? 

Something was covering her right eye. 

The memories started coming back to her, making her bolt upright. 

She was- 

she wasn't in- 

A machine in the corner started beeping incessantly at her. As she turned to see what it was she noticed she had been strapped to the bed, the machine started beeping even faster. She was starting to feel the panic rise up, calling to her, demanding to her that she needed to get out.

Something sharp poked her wrist under her restraining cuff. The sound from the machine slowed down and then stopped. Suddenly the colors in the room swam as her head fell back to her pillow. A brown shape entered the room, Krile had to blink a few times before her vision cleared up and she recognized it as an Affini. She knew that she should be afraid of the alien but for some reason the emotion just couldn't make its way past a theoretical.

“Hello Krile '' The affini spoke to her in a low, even measured rumble, it was exactly how she imagined a tree would speak if it could. Most affini she had seen were mostly green with their earthy colors being in the minority, but for this one it was the opposite.The counters suddenly clicked for her. She must be in some part of the city they’ve already destroyed and made their own homes in. He seemed to be waiting for her to reply.

“Hi? What do you want?” Her voice wavered. She understood she was just hit with a sedative, but it felt like nothing she was familiar with. Certain thoughts just couldn't make it past the beginnings of their formation.

It smiled, it felt a bit weird to see the bark that made up its face contort so fluidly like flesh. “To help you little one, my name is Gaentus Pyre, Third Bloom. He/Him. You gave us quite the scare a few days ago.” He sat down on a rolling stool and scooted up to her. “Before we go any further would you like to talk about the last few weeks and whats led up to this? If you feel more comfortable discussing this with a human I can get one for you.”

Krile considered her options. Maybe it was the near death experience, maybe the isolation, but she was desperate to talk to someone who was willing to listen. She considered asking for a human, but decided it wouldn't matter. The only humans here would be steadfastly loyal to them anyways, so it's not like they would help her leave or something. She thought back to one of her wife’s lectures on war history. She taught her about something called the Dreadnought Effect, named after the ship that transformed naval combat in the 19th century. When advances in technology culminate in something that changes the way war is fought. The HMS Dreadnought had by its very existence made every other ship on the ocean obsolete. It happened with the Dreadnought, gunpowder, and the chariot. you could either embrace the new, adapt and survive, or cling to the past and die. The Affini were a cultural dreadnought. Kicking and screaming with them wouldn't get her anywhere, and the cauldron of emotions that lead to her trying to take her own life was long since out of her system.

She knew what Juno would want. She chose to survive.

“I’ll talk with you” He nodded for her to continue. “I, um. I haven’t been doing well since my wife left for the war. I was worried for her but she sent messages to me weekly, it didn't feel like she was so far away. But last month after you occupied earth I stopped getting anything from her and- Could you please just tell me if she's dead or one of your slaves or, or-” 

The doctor shushed her, patting her hand gently. “Krile, you have been deeply misled by the former Accord on what we’re doing here and what we want. We are here to make your lives better. In your former government you were exploited for your labor and service to it. The Affini Compact is a post-scarcity society, we do not ask you to perform any labor for us in order for your needs to be met and the only humans that died during the pacification effort were the ones that we could not protect from harming themselves with their own unsafe technology.”

Krile thought on the words. She had never expressed them in fear of retaliation against Juno but she had her moral objections to the Accord. Especially with what had happened to the Rinans. Had the threat of the extermination of the human race been leveraged by the Accord for popular support? She imagined she would have woken up in the affini mines had they existed and- wait what would a post scarcity society need with mines anyway? Maybe she wasn't as immune to propaganda as she liked to think.

“I- I’m willing to trust you enough to cooperate. For now.” As soon as the words left her lips she clenched her jaw to stop herself from speaking further. Why was she honest about her distrust? Surely there were ways to phrase that differently that would have been more advantageous for her. It must be the sedatives she reasoned, being out of it is making it difficult to be tactical about the conversation.

“I’m glad, I know it must be a lot to adjust to but I promise if you give us a chance to earn your trust you won’t regret it.” He gave her another reassuring pat on the hand. 

“Now about the injury you sustained” her stomach gave a weak willed churn at the reminder of what brought her here. “Your caseworker Acicularis saved you from hurting your brain, but the bullet still hit your face. While we were able to heal the flesh would, we were not able to save your eye”

The doctor paused for her to have a reaction but nothing came. It wasn't just whatever they had pumped her full of to calm down this time. She felt a familiar sort of numb at this news. Confirmation of her uselessness, the burden she put on others. She couldn’t even kill herself right. All these years alone made her used to suffering quietly and hurting herself with her own words.

After a few moments of silence she pushed the feelings back down with the rest, her voice croaked out “Can I see?”

Gaentus nodded and pulled down a frosted screen that was attached to some sort of beam arm. It reminded Krile of a similar sort of contraption you would find at a dentist.

“I’m going to turn on the mirror and while you take a look I’m going to release your restraints because of how cooperative you’ve agreed to be, alright?” After Krile nodded in consent he flicked the device on with a vine and leaned down towards her hands. Another poke and her head was starting to clear up again.

An eyepatch covered her right eye. Thinking back to that moment she felt around the bottom of her mouth with her tongue before finding a small divot with far more sensitive flesh in the impression. They had just…regrown her flesh? She flicked her tongue to the roof, a little further forward and to the right, the second hole. Now too with flesh. She imagined the bullets' remaining journey through her head. They had done a major reconstructive surgery on her in… did he say a few days?

She moved her hand to her face, relieved that she had that freedom again. She paused, noticing that the cuff that restrained her was still on her wrists. Looking down she saw matching divots in the bed. Must be some electromagnet thing she thought. Gingerly she pulled the eyepatch up. Sure as shit, that was an eye socket all right. All the flesh looked good as new, at least as far as she could tell. She pulled the eyepatch back down and looked past the mirror, Gaentus was looking at her expectantly.

“We have the ability to replace your eye but I understand if you’re not comfortable with having affini technology implanted in you at the moment. The option will always be there for you.”

Krile sat up again and crossed her legs into a seated position. She felt like she knew where the catch was. “And what is this all going to cost me?”

The doctor sighed and gave her a warm sympathetic smile. “It hasn't stopped hurting to hear humans ask me that. Your health and wellbeing are not being used as leverage against you Mrs. Feydeau. This is freely given.”

That certainly sounded too good to be true. Krile frowned and raised up her wrists. “Why am I still cuffed then?”

“We worry that you are still at risk for further attempts at self termination. In the interim your caseworker will be taking care of you. Speaking of which, Acicularus would still love to be the one to help you but understands if the situation has caused you to want to have someone else be looking after you.”

“I can look after myself, I appreciate the offer but I truly will be fine on my own.” She slid off the hospital bed and stood up. Was it her sudden lack of depth perception or was this affini suddenly much taller than he seemed when she was laying down? “This whole experience was really enlightening. I’ve come to realize the value of my own life. I’m a new person, really.”

She moved to go around the affini but he put his two simulacra hands down on her shoulders, forcing her still. He leaned down so he was eye level with her. Krile saw the same sort of blue scattering across his eyes that she had noticed in Acicularis’s “I dearly hope that is true little one. But until we all know for sure someone will be helping you take care of yourself. Are you comfortable with that someone being Acicularus?”

Krile furrowed her brow and looked away. She wasnt getting out of this, that was clear. She at least knew a little about Acicularis, enough that she didn't want to test her luck with a new one. “Yeah, I’ll stick with her”

A loud thwack from a door being opened far too forcefully came from the room next door that made Krile almost jump. A second later Acicularis poked her head in the doorway that Gaentus stood in front of.

“Thank you so much little flower! I promise promise promise you won't regret this!”

Had she been listening this whole time?

Gaentus held up a hand. “Before I release you into Acicularus’s care we need to talk about your medications. For your surgery and recovery we’ve been using affini created xenodrugs. They work better and faster than terran pharmaceutical technology, but if you’re not comfortable with that we can give you terran medicine going forward.”

Krile thought for a moment. If the affini wanted to do something to her via their drugs they’ve already gotten their chance. The only thing she’d be giving them is the chance to keep doing those things. Which if their meds are as powerful as they say…she doubted they would need more than one dose to accomplish it anyway. If they were weaving a web she was already in it.

“I’ll take your xenodrugs.” She said a bit meekly.

“Wonderful” Gaentus clapped his hands together and rose back up to his full height. Krile had to step back a few feet to maintain eye contact. “We have replacements for your depression and ADHD medicines as a class-E but as far as replacing your HRT, affini pharmaceuticals are able to provide a much wider and more exact array of changes to your body. What do you want these drugs to do Mrs. Feydeau?”

She looked down at her body. She could think of a great deal of things she would change if she could. “Wider and exact how? Can I get examples?”

“Anything the human physiology can natively support, with some room beyond that. Bioluminescence, fur, changes of color not found naturally; to name a few examples”

“Could it…make me less fat?” She hated herself for even bringing it up. She winced, preparing for his dismissal, or even a laugh at her expense.

“Of course” Gaentus replied. She blinked at him, a bit dumbfounded. “Anything else?”

She didn't think she’d get this far “um, I don’t want my breasts to get any smaller from the weight loss so something for that please?” The doctor simply nodded, made a note and looked back to see if she would continue. How far could she push this? “Something to remove scars? And soften my skin? Remove body hair? A vagina? And I want my irises, er, iris to be bright pink”

After every request Gaentus simply nodded and took it down.

“I’m going to get these filled for you, just a moment” He gave her one last smile and flowed out of the room. Krile felt rather dumbfounded at the exchange. All those changes from what? Some pills? An injection?

Acicularus leaned a bit further into the doorway with a pleading look on her face. “Can I give you a hug? You look like you need a hug.”

Krile froze. She was still a bit instinctively afraid of such an intimate touch with an affini. But she considered that if her doctor was telling the truth then she had just tried to kill herself in front of this social worker, which wasn't fantastic of her. And truth be told she could really use a hug. She nodded. 

The affini flowed in and almost tackled her with affection. Before she knew it she was lifted off the ground so she could be better hugged. For what she assumed was a mass of vines foliage and flowers Acicularis was surprisingly soft and nice to bury her face in. She tried to return the hug but she wasn't really sure how to go about it, so she grabbed what amounted to the front of her torso and as much of her vines as she could and squeezed. Her face was now buried in the array of flowers that covered the affini’s body and she could finally notice how nice she smelled which seemed a bit obvious in retrospect. She is basically a giant rosebush.

Krile lost her sense of time but was eventually put down when the doctor returned with her new prescription in tow. He placed three large multidose vials and an injector on the counter, picked up the first one, and looked down at Krile.

“This first one is a Class-E, its a mood stabilizer and will help with your sense of focus” He handed the vial to Acicularus who took it with a vine and stuffed it into her torso. Krile still wasn't used to seeing that.

“Next two are Class-Gs for the changes you requested. The weight loss drug is compounded separately because it's the only one that wont stop itself when the changes are through. Acicularis will be monitoring and tapering you off of that once you’re happy with the results.” Again the vials and next the injector were handed over to her caseworker who stored them somewhere in her torso beneath the wreath of flowers.

“With that settled I can release you into Acicularis’s care, don’t hesitate to come back down if anything comes up” He looked over at the other affini, and said something in what Krile assumed must be the affini language. He led them out to the front desk to file some paperwork and before she knew it she was back out on the city street. Had this breakdown of hers happened a year ago she would have been institutionalized after being saddled with two lifetimes worth of debt by now. She was becoming more and more willing to accept that the affini were telling the truth. Acicularis stood next to her typing something on the tablet. From the glace she could catch Krile suspected she was messaging somebody.

Now that she was on the outside she could truly appreciate how massive the hospital was, and how pristine. The other buildings around her were similarly grandiose and massive. Even the street was far different than she had ever seen. It favored foot and bicycle traffic, and there were plants everywhere it seemed they could fit them. “Where are we?”

“We’re still in the Bay Area Metro Complex, though hopefully we replace it with a nicer name soon. I brought you to a xenovet near your home but the damage was so extensive we had to bring you to a more suitable hospital.”

“Xenovet…” Krile supposed it made a bit of sense that an alien species would use such terms for another species, especially one they considered lesser. An important thought brought her back out of her thoughts.  “Back when you were in my home you said that my wife was alive, that was the truth?”

“Yes!” She stowed the tablet and leaned down to her “Your wife was stationed and as far as we can tell still aboard the The Mother of Invention, which was spotted just a few days ago. We’re on her trail and we will find her and bring her back to you, this I promise. Also you may call me Cici if you would like to.”

The affini offered her hand to Krile. “We have a meeting with a dear friend of mine to attend and it's not too far away! After that we’ll be getting you settled in at my habitation unit.”

Krile looked at her hand and back at her. While she wanted nothing more than to run back to her home as fast as she could, she couldn't deny that going back to doing what she had been doing for the last 4 years would do nothing for her mental health. Despite the feeling in her gut telling her that she wasn't worthy of it, that she would just be wasting everybody's time, if she wanted to stay alive long enough to see Juno again she needed help. 

She took the affini’s hand.

Juno stared out of the window of her quarters into the hazy reds and purples of the nebula that surrounded their ship. The gasses here were thick enough to present some serious hazards to the teams she had sent to scour the hull for any plant tech. Her paranoia was validated when a team returned with what she could only describe as a wooden octopus. It was the color of soft sandalwood and lights shone up and down its body, with the biggest light show being a small bulb in its center. The team described the laborious process of removing it from a crevice between two of the ships ion thrusters. At that angle, it could only have come from the Harvest’s Bounty when it had slowed down to inspect the debris. From their tale it had apparently even tried to burrow itself further into its hiding spot when their search lights had shone on it. When she saw it however it was long since inert, she ordered it immolated and the dust spaced without a second thought.

Juno sighed, she hoped that she either caught it before it transmitted or that if it did, that the nebula would do its job and garble the connection enough to make location data useless. Regardless, she had them jump to the other end of the nebula while they planned their next move just to be safe.

She closed the shutters on the window and took a seat at her desk. She couldn't afford to be running her mind ragged during her off time too. Her captain's quarters were still small compared to planet side living standards but she did have her own space to herself which was not something most people on this ship could say. She woke up her computer so that she could look at her wallpaper. It was a picture from her wedding. Juno had worn her ceremonial officers uniform and Krile was in a beautiful gown the color of lapis lazuli. They were dancing together in the tiny venue they could afford for the afterparty and during a rather audacious dip of her new wife Juno’s hand had slipped for just a second, causing Krile to make the sort of face as if she were in a chair falling backwards. Krile’s mom had managed to catch the moment in a photo. Krile always complained whenever she saw it, saying how ugly she looked. But it always made Juno smile. 

She wished, so desperately wished that she could be back with her now. By the time she had the means to send her anything to tell her that she was alright the mutiny was complete, radio silence was established, and she had become a rebel without even realizing it.

The buzzer on her door rang, startling her out of her headspace. Suddenly she was quite aware of the tears that had been forming in her eyes that she quickly wiped away as she floated over to the door to answer. It was her least favorite person on the ship, director Abigail Steele of the OCNI. Her salt and pepper hair was slicked back and wore a simple black suit.

“Hello Captain” Her voice was a warm tenor that dripped with superiority. “A talk?”

Juno said nothing but let the door swing open and floated back to her desk. She watched the director get situated across from her, her lack of gracefulness in micro betrayed her persona of a consummate professional.

“The infosec team is drooling over the affini computers. They’re still familiarizing themselves with the tech but if my faith in them isn't misplaced we’ll have a half competent E-War team the next time we need them. Our slipspace scientist has also found out that at least a portion of the affini’s ability for accurate slipspace maneuvers comes from their software. The catch is that they’re pretty sure the hardware is what scales up the effect. Wouldn't do much of anything besides on something like a gunboat, which would also need an affini computer aboard and well, we don't have enough of them to start handing out.”

Juno opened her mouth to speak but was quickly interrupted.

“Every tracking device and software we’ve found has been burned and vented or deleted. The compilers have a few problems however. One is that they require a tremendous amount of power, we’ll need to borrow the main reactor to produce anything. Two is that beyond foodstuffs and emergency supplies the machines are locked behind a requirement for a sample of an affini biorhythm. Spoofing it hasn't had any luck but now that we have the processing power and capacity we’ve learned that affini media files capture and transmit a much wider array of information. It can just only be accessed using their own tech. I hope you can tell where I’m going with this.”

“Yes I-”.

“Good, once we crack them we’ll be prepared to start producing our own jailbroken compilers that we can distribute to Free Terran cells. It may seem like a backstep but turning to an insurgency model of warfare is our best chance of survival and success. I have a few planets picked out as our final stop.”

While she was fishing out her phone to pull up a map Juno finally had the chance to speak. “Final stop? What do you mean?”

“What? You didn't really think we could continue like this did you? Do you not look at your own logistics reports? Even with the food the compilers can generate you’ll be out of exotic matter in 3 weeks, out of ships to sacrifice for your insane stunts in 2, you don’t even have a second SHIVA to nuke the next ship that comes looking for you. The survival of Free Terrans depends on us getting this out there. You’re not a Captain, Juno. You’re a weapons officer that got lucky. Are you not loyal to Terra?”

“I’m loyal to my crew” She rose back up to her full height. “And my crew elected me to give them a win. I am not relinquishing command of this ship until I have provided them that.”

Steele narrowed her eyes at her. Juno guessed she must be calculating the risk reward on spacing her. The math must have come out bad for her as she sighed in defeat.

“What would satisfy you then? What sandcastle do we have to knock down? Do you even have an idea what you’re asking?”

Now that made Juno smile.

“I do actually” She waved her hand over her desk and the projector shifted from her computer to a map of former terran controlled space. She poked her finger at one of the far edges. “To supply new vessels to our region of space the Compact has built a shipyard in the Nyrina system. They use the same tech there, atomic compilers. We can’t harm affini ships in any meaningful way with terran technology. So let's take theirs.”

She had to stop herself from grinning when she finished with “I hope you can tell where I’m going with this.”

Steele stared at the map for a few moments before pushing herself up and around back towards the door.
    “I’m going to talk with the eggheads, see if it's even plausible. And then maybe we will talk about doing this ridiculous idea.” As quick as she came she left, floating out the door and slamming it behind her.

Juno relaxed back in her chair satisfied that she had somehow won that verbal spat. She thought over the useful bits she got out of Steele. The developments with their tech. A spark of inspiration caught her and before she knew it she was sending a message to a new group chat with her jump engineer and weapons officer.

[Cpt. Juno Feydeau]: Would you two lovely ladies like to make some modifications to the MAC cannon with me?