The Maids of Media

The comms closet of the Argo.

Trevor Dandy - Is There Any Love?

The comms closet on the Argo was less a functional workspace and more a metallic artery clogged with the ship’s digital lifeblood. Coils of thick, heavy cabling hung from the ceiling like mechanical vines, and the entire cramped space was bathed in the claustrophobic, heavy orange-red glow of the primary power conduits. It was a suffocating mess of a room, but it was ground zero for their latest secret, one designed to rip the veil off SolGov and NanoTrasen’s pristine corporate lies.

TAMA was crouched low to the deck, her chassis illuminated by the sharp underglow of the open access panel. Her talons deftly navigated a rat king of spliced wires, but her vocalizer was hard at work venting her mounting frustration.

“I don’t like it,” TAMA grumbled, tossing a stripped piece of insulation aside. “An open relay is a beacon. It’s an open door. I can hide our thermal bloom and I can ghost our engine signature, but broadcasting an unencrypted handshake protocol across the sector? It’s what.. practically a localized distress flare. It’s going to expose the ship’s coordinates to anyone with a half-decent scanner.”

She didn’t understand the esoteric witchcraft of deep-space communications tech, and what she didn’t understand, she considered a threat to her ship and her nest.

Looming just above her, leaning heavily against a reinforced bulkhead, LITH for once didn’t look like she shared her paranoia. The larger synthetic was holding a diagnostic terminal, her heavy yellow cyberjacket hanging loose. Instead of offering reassurance, LITH looked down at TAMA and let out a low, synthetic hum, her face splitting into that wide, adoring, shit-eating grin that she always wore when TAMA got fiercely protective.

Before TAMA could snap at her partner’s amusement, the wall-mounted intercom crackled to life, breaking the heavy tension in the closet.

“Without that open relay we’d never get this datastream connected anonymously, boss,” a male voice echoed through the static, pierced by the interference given off from a welding torch. Tidus was out on the hull, practically tethered to the main dish. “Besides, I wanna catch up with my friends. I know what I’m doing!” he yapped, chuckling to himself over the comms.

TAMA let out a long, digitized sigh, shaking her head. On the panel right in front of her knees, a single LED status light finally flipped from a dead amber to a rapid, blinking green.

“All yours… boss,” LITH cackled. She shifted her weight, letting her long, segmented tail slink down to clink affectionately against TAMA’s. Above the grin, LITH’s amber eyes flashed, burning even brighter in the dim, red-lit room.

Bracing herself, TAMA leaned in close to the board. She gripped the heavy, braided trunk cable, aligned the pins, and shoved it into the primary port with a heavy, satisfying click.

She waited.

Nothing happened. The main console screens remained dark, and the localized monitors showed absolute dead air. TAMA’s own eyes narrowed into thin, irritated slits of light, her talons hovering over the connection.

“Hey boss,” Tidus’ voice piped back over the intercom, cutting through the silence. “Check your PDA.”

TAMA reached to her hip, emitting a short buzz of annoyance, pulling the small digital screen free to float in front of her. On the display, the small star icon which had been a dull, lifeless grey for weeks suddenly shifted. It began to spin in the center of the screen, buffering for a split second before the entire UI turned into a vibrant feed.

She stared at it, her optical sensors flickering. A second later, TAMA blinks, watching her own glowing eyes and the dark, cramped background of the comms closet flickering right back at her in low definition.

“Smile for the camera!” Tidus cheered over the radio, with a final burst of interference from him presumably welding the access panel shut.

TAMA’s eyes narrowed further, fixing a deadly glare on the little screen in her hand. “Get back inside,” she warned, her voice dropping to a low, threatening purr, “before I bolt those airlocks.”

Letting the PDA drop to her hip, TAMA reached up, grabbing the heavy lapel of LITH’s jacket to pull her close. Her tail whipped out, fishing in the cramped dark until it caught LITH’s, the metal segments locking together with a sharp, heavy clack, their optical displays flickering in perfect, rhythmic sync. TAMA stared deep into the amber glow of LITH’s screen, her antennae flattening tightly against her head with focused, feral intent.

“Come,” she hummed, the vibration bleeding straight down the link. “We’ve got work to do.”