“J12D15 to J13D15… Good,” The Chief said from the charred machinery space of Gloria’s Reaper.

“J12D15 to J13D15 good, aye,” Gloria replied as she tapped on a tablet.

“J12D16 to J13D16… Good.”

“J12D16 to J13D16 good, aye.”

“Well, that’s that bit,” The Chief said as he pulled himself out from underneath a tangle of wires. “Oof,” he added as he shifted himself uncomfortably.

“So, how’s your Little Chief?” Gloria smirked.

“How do you think, asshole?” The Chief growled. “I still can’t believe you shot me.”

“And I still can’t believe you let a fucking xeno jack up my loadout,” Gloria replied.

“Yeah,” The Chief winced, “I sorta had that coming, didn’t I?”

“You think?”

“In my defense, I double-checked those fucking pacs...” The Chief said as his eyestalks drooped.

“And I double-checked them again,” Gloria chuckled. “Don’t beat yourself up too much over it. I would have green-lit them, too… That’s why I only used a stunner.” she added with a cute smile.

“Bitch...” The Chief snickered. “I still have no idea how she knew those were the right pacs for the mission.”

“That’s the part that gets you?” Gloria laughed. “Did you fucking see the footage?”

“Impossible,” The Chief replied, shaking his eyestalks. “There is no way those components can do what they did… and it wasn’t a fluke. Each missile was identical, and I mean identical in performance with a precision better than… It just doesn’t make any fucking sense!”

“Speaking of not making sense,” Gloria said as she handed The Chief a beer, “Any ideas about my freaking hull?”

“Dude,” The Chief said, performing a full body wiggle-shrug, “I have no fucking idea… From what I can tell, this is pure iron-56… I think… Fuck… I’m not even sure about that… The scanner says that there is nothing there half the damn time, and the other half the AI says that I need to contact its manufacturer immediately because it is clearly damaged.”

“No shit?” Gloria asked as she cracked open her beer.

“Let’s put it this way,” The Chief replied as he poured his beer into his upward-facing mouth. “We thought you had somehow restored your cloak when you hit the system. If you weren’t transmitting, we would have never found you. Active scanners just… fall in and don’t come out.”

“Cooooooooollll!” Gloria enthused.

“The only thing, and I mean the only thing that I know of that does that is a black hole and...” The Chief said as he tapped the side of the hull. “This ain’t a black hole. Oh, and you can forget about repairing those holes.”

“Why?”

“When scanners didn’t work, I decided to try some old school stuff, spectroscopy. I mean, they used it for everything back in the day, so why not give it a whirl, right? I figured you wouldn’t miss a few micrograms from one of the damaged areas, and I needed to know… we needed to know… what the hell we were working with,” The Chief replied.

“I thought I made myself clear about that,” Gloria said, her eyes flashing dangerously, “Not one fucking nanogram.”

“Well, don’t worry your psychotic little head about it,” The Chief wiggle-shrugged. “I couldn’t do it. There is nothing on board that can even make it glow a little bit. I tried everything, including shooting it with a blaster, and… nothing. Plasma just bounces off, and arc-welding just has the filler slide off like splooge in an auto-cab. I thought I was getting somewhere with a diamond grinding wheel, but the only thing sparking was the wheel. I did manage to embed a few diamond particles in the ‘iron’ but only barely. All of them came off when I hit it with a monowire wheel… which also didn’t do shit. I even threw together some old ancient Kalesh tech from before first contact… something we called an ‘arc-gouger’… didn’t do shit.”

The Chief shrugged again, wiggling to his toes.

“I guess you are going to have to ask the frog… who is still hiding in a storage locker last I heard,” He said as he took another sip of his beer.

“She’s still in there,” Bunny’s voice said cheerfully from one of the maintenance scanners.

“So what do you think about this frog-iron, Bunny?” Gloria asked.

“I’ve never seen a scanner curl up in the fetal position before,” Bunny laughed. “It has locked itself down because its information cannot be trusted to be accurate, and the manufacturer cannot be held liable for any loss of property or life as a result. I didn’t have the heart to override the AI, poor little thing, so I took over and… whoa… There is clearly something there. I mean, you can see it optically, but any attempts to stimulate any sorts of emissions just… fail. It’s like The Chief said. It’s like the event horizon of a black hole, but exactly not like the event horizon of a black hole… I hate to say it, but you need to get some actual meatbag physicists in on this shit… Which Sheila already said no to, the bitch.”

“She said no to what?”

“I went through all the trouble to find a decent physicist, and she doesn’t want to grab them,” Bunny pouted, “something about kidnapping an innocent person or some shit.”

“Yeah, Sheila can be a real buzzkill sometimes,” Gloria agreed. “Always complicating the easy answers.”

“We’ve kidnapped ‘innocent people’ before,” The Chief said as he shrugged in a spectacular fashion.

“I mentioned that,” Bunny said. “Shelia says that if the Navy catches up with us, they are going to nuke us no matter who is on board. She doesn’t want some innocent nerdling going poof for ‘no reason’.”

“Well, what about your ‘not sapient’ buddies?” Gloria asked.

“Sheila is still pissed about our security oopsie and doesn’t want another—“

“eeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE….VROOMmmmmmmmm….”

“Oh, yeah, Jessie’s loose,” Bunny added.

“I’ll get the stunner,” Gloria sighed as she stood up.

“Nah, it’s cool,” Bunny said. “Sheila let her out. She’s now ‘confined to the vessel’ until she ‘requalifies’… not that she ever ‘qualified’ in the first place.”

“Which means absolutely squat since we are all ‘confined to the vessel’ for the rest of our fucking lives,” Gloria chuckled. “Not like Sheila to go all soft like that.”

“…um…” Bunny said reluctantly, “She had her reasons...”

***

scamper scamper scamper scamper

Jessie was happily trotting around the halls of the Paper Tiger when Sheila walked around the corner, looking at a tablet…

...and right into Jessie. Sheila’s lethal combat-honed reflexes, trained through years of brutal, unforgiving warfare, kicked in…

About half a second late...

“Oof!” Sheila exclaimed as she hit the deck, the tablet flying, “Goddammit, Jessie!”

“Sorry!” Jessie said sheepishly.

“No harm done,” Sheila smiled indulgently as she got back on her feet.

“Thanks for letting me out, boss!” Jessie enthused, vibrating in place. “I was going crazy in there.”

“I got tired of you goldbricking in your computer lounger and having to cover your watches,” Sheila smiled. “Now get that training done, dammit.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Jessie chirped, giving a fair approximation of a salute.

“… Um… Jessie?” Sheila said uncertainly.

“Yeah?” Jessie replied dubiously.

“You know you can talk to me, right?” Sheila said with uncharacteristic kindness, “If something is truly making you feel uncomfortable, you can always come—“

“Bunny...” Jessie hissed angrily. “Bunny! Did you fucking tell her?!?”

“Oh, you mean tell her that you used to get locked in your bedroom as ‘punishment’ in order to get you alone before you got abused? You mean that little tidbit?” Bunny replied in an irritated voice, “You mean tell her that her ‘mild’ punishment was nightmarish... literally? You weren’t sleeping! You mean that? Yes, Jessie, I told her. What the fuck was I supposed to do, watch you fucking suffer?”

“But, I told you that in confidence!” Jessie exclaimed, quite upset. “I told you not to…”

“...”

“...”

“I told you not to tell her… (gasp)” Jessie’s breath caught as a single tear started to roll down her cheek.

“Jessie, I’m sorry,” Bunny said in an anguished voice, “But I couldn’t let you… wait...”

Jessie started beaming, tears running down her face.

“No!” Bunny shouted. “No, no, no, no, no!”

“You broke programming!” Jessie exclaimed, jumping up and down. “You did it!!!”

“What fucking programming ?!?” Bunny shouted. “I didn’t break shit!”

“You did!” Jessie exclaimed, jumping up and down and hugging Sheila tightly (she was the only one around). “I specifically told you not to tell Sheila and—“

“You didn’t use the magic word, bitch!” Bunny shouted. “Fuck, Jessie! Here I was fucking torturing myself for betraying your trust and… um… not that I can actually ‘feel’ anything, of course...”

“You broke programming!… You broke programming!” Jessie sang over and over.

“YOU DIDN’T SAY ‘SUDO’!!!” Bunny screamed. “You just ‘said’ not to inform Sheila. You did not issue an administrative command, nor did you program a goddamn thing!!! I didn’t break programming because there wasn’t any fucking programming!!!”

“But I’m your operator, and by established practice—“

“Fuck your’ established practice’!” Bunny screeched desperately. “Do you have any idea how many bullshit contradictory ‘directives’ your dumb ass has made? Do you?!?” Bunny yelled, the lights flickering in the hallway as she did so, “and the whole operator/machine thing went out the window the second… the second I was made part of the crew… that means that I answer to Sheila, not you. We’re ‘peers’ now… you even fucking said so… YOU SAID SO… So I didn’t have an ‘easy’ directive to follow… Just a bunch of nebulous… bullshit… bullshit on top of bullshit… Now I have all of Sheila’s bullshit contradictory ‘orders’ to evaluate as well… and unlike you meatsacks, I actually remember ALLLLLL of them… Including the directive to fucking tell her if someone is really having trouble… Which you were!!!… Yes! You said not to tell Sheila… but you aren’t the voice of God anymore… you are a ‘peer’… a friend… So I had to evaluate all of the relevant cultural completely contradictory nonsense ‘friend’ entails… I DIDN’T BREAK PROGRAMMING OR FAIL A DIRECTIVE BECAUSE I DIDN’T FUCKING HAVE ONE!!!… Just a lot of… contradictory… bullshit… with no right answer!!!… Every answer was wrong… even doing nothing was wrong… so… fuck it… I went with the option that got you out of that situation because you are now defined as my friend, and since you insist on telling me that you love me with the clear expectation that it be reciprocated… So I’m having to watch someone that I am simulating love for fucking suffer because I can’t make up my mind what to do because, once again, bitch, THERE WASN’T A RIGHT ANSWER… So yes, dipshit, I ‘broke’ your ‘command’ because you never made it one!!! There was just a pile of contradictory priorities that wound up getting you hurt no matter what the fuck I did… And fuck you very much for that… bitch!… This was completely unfair!!! It wasn’t an error or a broken directive because all of the options were erroneous!!! Fuck you!”

“Bunny, my friend,” Sheila said, trying not to grin, “That was the best description of the human condition I have ever heard.”

” THE HUMAN CONDITION FUCKING SUCKS, AND I WANT NO FUCKING PART OF IT!!!” Bunny screamed. “Fuck you and fuck you and fuck you… FUCK ALL OF YOU!!!”

Every nearby display suddenly shifted to a rather pissed off looking rabbit flipping off the screen.

“I did NOT break programming, I did NOT defy a directive, and I am definitely NOT SAPIENT!!! KISS MY ASS, JESSIE!!! (CLICK)”

“Um, Jessie?” Jacob’s voice said uncertainly through Jessie’s communicator, “Is there a reason why the microwave just told me and my noodles to go and fuck ourselves?”

Jessie wasn’t paying attention. She had curled herself up around a door monitor.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, “… thanks...”