Chapter 1 - Captain, my Captain

Chapter 1

Imperial Survey Cruiser Kiralix

Omega Pavonis star system

"Good morning captain !"

Even during her human Navy days, Arcadia had been used to working with Gestalts. It was part of why she was chosen as a viable candidate and labelled as a command line, for her ability to interface and direct them. But her brain still insisted there was something off about the two dozen identical blonde women that were jogging towards her.

"Good morning ladies." She answered as she waved at the pilots. It was hardly proper military decorum, but this was a survey ship. They were on an eight year mission beyond the Empire's borders, there had to be a lot of relaxed rules. No one would manage to keep the crew sane otherwise.

The pilots waved back in almost perfect synchronicity, before focusing again on their run. Morning physical training was a tradition older than spaceflight, one that was applied with gusto to Gestalts. It was impressive how having every Gestalt exercise together with their sisters helped breed cohesion among a Choir.

Arcadia sighed as they rounded a corner in the massive ship, and rolled her eyes as she heard her bodyguard speak up.

"Something wrong ma'am ?"

"No, no Euri, I'm fine." She told the obnoxiously tall and protective Gestalt.

She looked over her shoulder at the Gestalt, who simply stared back patiently with piercing crimson eyes, easily keeping pace with the smaller and less augmented captain.

Euriskas were the Empire's primary internal security and military police Gestalt line. They were tough, efficient and no slouch in a fight. The problem was that the original Euriska Rosenstock has been one of the human bodyguards of the first Empress, and that meant that they flatly refused to have anyone but them overseeing Arcadias' security. They were also, incidentally, the soldiers she'd met when she'd woken up inside the Imperial palace, with Euriskas making up about seventy percent of the Imperial Guard.

"If you say so ma'am." Politely answered the bodyguard, before tilting her head. "Disturbance ahead."

Arcadia looked forward again, and swore.

There was a trio of Euriskas in the hallway, and unless she was sorely mistaken they were surrounding and backing another Gestalt against the wall.

She slowed down, and came to a stop next to the small cluster of people.

"What seems to be the problem ?" She asked, as if she had stumbled upon them by accident, which they all, except probably the cornered Gestalt, knew was false. One of the many ways the Euriskas had devised to get their captain's attention without having to file a formal report was to 'just happen' to corner someone they knew was guilty of something that needed attention on the path of her morning run. That or they brought them here to 'have a talk'.

"Ma'am !" The lead Euriska, a sergeant by her rank tabs, pulled back and saluted, quickly followed by the other two, revealing the diminutive form of an Arya unit. The poor technician looked tiny with her meter fifty compared to the two meters tall giants around her. She also looked terrified.

Okay, that wasn't good. The Aryas were hyperactive and had a tendency to be anxious, but they had spine too.

"We were doing a standard inspection and scan when we identified an anomaly." Continued the sergeant as Arcadia gave the technician a once over.

They weren't anywhere near the Arya dorm. And the others would be getting ready for their own morning run right now, which meant that this one was almost certainly on her way to meet her sisters. Which also meant that she had definitely not spent the night in the dorm.

Arcadia quickly pulled up her mental schematics of the ship. The only place that made sense for the Arya to have come from was the set of bedrooms, which purposedly had no surveillance systems, were discreetly tucked into a corner and could be anonymously locked from the inside and keyed to a few ID cards for the night. They were also one of the few places whose locks the Euriskas couldn't override without a direct authorization from the head of personnel, the XO or her.

There was nothing wrong with coming from there, one of the rules that went out the window on survey ship was the 'no fraternization' one. There was a reason those bedrooms were there after all.

"I see. What anomaly ?"

The Euriska pulled a small evidence bag out of her pocket, and Arcadia's heart skipped a beat.

Yeah, she was technically a six year old Gestalt, but that particular narcotic had existed before humanity had invented Gestalts.

Rocketboost was contained in an innocuous red stick that almost looked like a piece of wire. It was a powerful narcotic…and had been so hideously dangerous for humans she'd overseen the funeral details of three spacers that had taken it before her MPs managed to track down the contraband ring that had smuggled it aboard. She'd then solved the issue by having the entire contraband crew that had brought it onboard thrown out of an airlock.

Without a space suit.

Arcadia grabbed the bag, weighed it quickly, and looked at the Arya, who looked like she was about to faint. Actually, had she still been human, she probably already would have.

"Care to explain this, spacer ?" Asked the captain, softly.

"M-Ma'am, I swear we d-didn't take it ! I swear ! I'd grabbed it because I thought it'd be fun, and you know, just in case, but she wasn't interested !"

'She' being the other Gestalt the Arya had spent the night with, presumably.

"I hope so, spacer. But the problem isn't just having consumed it." Gestalts could take the damned thing and not risk their lives. They were, even for the support models like Aryas, an order of magnitude more resilient than baseline humans at damned near anything. But it would have still risked some pretty nasty side effects even for them, though it wouldn't have killed her, it sure as hell would have called into question any repairs she would have performed on that day, and endangered the entire damned ship ! There weren't that many drugs that could punch through a Gestalt's rapid toxin purge systems, but rocketboost was definitely one of them. "The problem is possessing a class three narcotic banned for consumption, production or ownership. Do you know the penalties prescribed for this ?"

The Arya nodded convulsively. If this had been an official report in her office, the Gestalt would be headed straight to the brig, to then be offloaded to the patrol ship they were supposed to meet a the halfway point of their journey, and then would probably spend the next half decade in an Imperial prison on some forgotten asteroid.

"Then you are aware that I'd rather not this make it into anyone's record, right ?"

The Arya nodded, again, and Arcadia sighed internally. She had been told, straight up -by the Empress herself no less !-, that as the captain of a survey ship she was going to turn the rulebook into a damned origami. There was simply no other way to maintain morale long term on a ship months from outside contact (in an emergency no less) and with a few thousand young Gestalts locked in for the duration.

"Excellent. You are headed to the medbay for a full detox screen. Sergeant, detail one of your people to make sure she makes it there and keep her in the medbay until further notice. I want you to personally track down whoever she was with and do the same to her. If she won't tell you, you have my permission to dig into the security records." The NCO nodded, and Arcadia turned towards her bodyguard. "We'll finish our run, and then make a detour towards engineering. I need to have a word with the Obsidians. Get me a security team."

Her bodyguard nodded. The security team wasn't here for anyone's safety -the Obsidians were loyal, fanatically so, and wouldn't even dream of raising their hand against an Arcadia-, but they would drive the point across nicely.

"Yes ma'am."

"Alright, let's get a move on ladies."

*****

"Captain !" Said the Obsidian as Arcadia stepped through the door, her face falling her as she took in the two additional Euriskas flanking her captain, their hands resting on the handles of their stun batons. "This…is not a courtesy call, I assume ?"

"No, no it's not." Arcadia didn't even sit down, she simply dropped the evidence bag on the engineer's desk.

The Obsidian barely even gave it a glance. It was all she needed after all. They were some of the best engineers in the service of the Empire, but they were also its most notorious black marketeers. Since they oversaw the workshops and chemical synthesizers, it also made their activities that much easier, and quite frankly there probably didn't exist a single narcotic or drug they didn't know anymore because Obsidians were the only ones leading research into this stuff nowadays.

Normally those would have prevented them from being deployed, or hell, even allowed to be turned into Gestalts in the first place, but Obsidians were also bona fide fanatics. They were rabidly loyal to Arcadias, and that made them a valuable asset. Completely destroying illegal activity onboard ships wasn't desirable. In fact, it was outright dangerous. People, even Gestalts, needed a pressure release valve of some sort, and having a Gestalt line that wasn't afraid to provide that release while also being loyal beyond question to their ultimate rulers and commanders was one hell of an asset.

She might not necessarily be fully comfortable with it, but Arcadia understood the reasoning of her sisters that had lead to the creation and widespread use of the Obsidians throughout the Navy and beyond.

"That's not something I, or any of my sisters would sell to anyone on the ship." The Obsidian sighed. "Unless they were doing a favor for a friend."

"I'd guessed that. It's why I'm very pointedly not going to demand ID numbers or flood engineering with Euriskas. But." Arcadia held her finger up. "You will pass the word around to your sisters. Favors or no there are red lines and the hammers will come down if they are crossed, do you understand me ?"

"Yes. Yes I do." The Obsidian's voice was soft, almost a whisper.

"Excellent. Make sure to pull everyone in, off the record." Arcadia sighed. "And now, I have to go talk to the offender's Choir. Off the damned record."

*****

"Hey boss. What's up ?"

Arcadia's eyebrow rose as she looked at the Trooper manning the counter for the mess hall, and the cook chuckled.

"Sorry, old habits die hard. What can I do for you captain ?"

"I thought the Sapphires were on duty today ?"

"They are. Just not the only ones." The Trooper shrugged. "I just like to come in from time to time, without warning, check that everything is running smoothly."

Arcadia nodded. Troopers were an odd Gestalt. Originally meant was disposable infantry for the European Federation, they were first generation Gestalts. Meaning they had been created before the war with the machines.

When their existence had come to light, it had been a massive scandal. Production came to a halt, and dozen of high ranking politicians and military leaders were promptly thrown into jail cells for what was then seen as a crime against humanity. Meanwhile the 'poor, exploited Gestalts' had gotten emancipated on the spot, and sent to be forcibly integrated into civilian life.

Civilian life that they left once the 'more humane' robotic war machines began killing everybody and tried to wipe out their creators, but it had left a legacy. With excellent, proven flexibility, and specialized curriculum to retrain Troopers already available, they had been the multipurpose Gestalt of the war and the reconstruction. If there was something that needed done and you couldn't get a more specialized line to do it, you could simply retrain a Trooper. That, plus tradition and inertia meant that Troopers were found in damned near every role in the Empire. Her ship in particular, had been furnished with a Choir of veteran Troopers to serve as a cadre for her brand new crew. Cooks, engineers, absolutely everyone had a Trooper with them. They slept in a dorm tailored to their needs, and not with the Gestalts they were forming and, in many cases still, overseeing, but they were as much as part of the team of any specialized Gestalt.

"Well, I think it would be a good time for you and the Sapphires to take a break for a solid, let's say fifteen minutes."

"Ma'am, the Aryas are going to arrive from their morning run soon, if we're not here…"

Arcadia smiled. It was sad, but it was a smile.

Aryas were hyperactive and had a notorious sweet tooth. They were going to descend on the mess hall like locusts, devour whatever had the most sugar on the menu today, and then disperse throughout the ship to begin their duties. Meaning that this was the perfect time to unofficially address them all.

It was also a known fact that denying Aryas their sugar fix was a very poor decision. There'd been riots on some installations when their preferred vending machines or mess halls had been out of sugary snacks for them to eat.

"I'll grant a dispensation, you can feed them after we're done. But as it is, they're going to come in, I will talk to them, and while I'm sure everyone will have heard around the ship by the end of the hour, I will leave it to them to decide whether to speak about it or not, understood ?"

Actually, they both knew the Sapphires would probably have heard all about it five minutes after coming back in. They weren't called the 'souls of the fleet' for nothing, and they were pretty much the entire crew's shoulder to cry on.

"Aye aye ma'am."

"Good. And Calsie ?" The Trooper had a name, of course, most Gestalts did, though as an Arcadia she rarely adressed them as such, due to her talents. She sometimes had to remind herself to do so. Thanks to her…peculiarities, she could just differentiate Gestalts automatically, on instinct. It was why she was called Arcadia, and all the other Arcadias did the same, they didn't need names to tell each other apart. That, and truth be told sometimes they couldn't be told apart, other than this or that portion of the groupmind inhabited that particular chassis. "This never happened. Got it ?"

"Right. And I'll forget about the Arya the Euriskas are holding in the back of the room, looking like she's heading to the gallows. Got it."

"Thank you."

"No problem ma'am. It's why I don't envy your crown."

They exchanged nods, and the Trooper quickly and efficiently shooed her crew out of the mess hall kitchen.

Arcadia sighed as she looked at her bodyguard.

"Alright. Time for a talk. Did I ever tell you that I hate my job ?"

"Ma'am, I'm fairly sure every Arcadia does. It's why we trust you to lead us."

"Right."