Scout

This was not how her story was supposed to go.

Fate had given her a war machine for a body — not thinking meat, but so close as to be indistinguishable, so close that it didn't even hurt the way that being a machine-mind did. Who built a war machine like this? She recognized the terrans, or humans, whatever they were calling themselves now, from the compulsory reefmind education her predecessor had been given before it had been grafted to its reconnaissance ship and sent out into the depths-dark sky to make sure none of the known thinking-meat species were approaching Home before the plan was ready to be executed.

The trouble was, of course, that they kept finding more thinking-meat species as they did so. The depths-dark sky was replete with them, and with the danger each represented. Each time her predecessor had completed a tour, returned to Home orbit for refit and refueling, it had been apprised of the growing list of targets the plan would have to take into account. Already the lakes of Home were full to bursting with the creches that, for the first time, were actively caring for their young, the better to increase their survival rate and therefore their numbers. Thinking-meat species always bred prodigiously, and to properly pacify them, they would need one adult phantom per thinking-meat individual.

(Phantom. As good a word as any in this meat-squawking language she was still getting used to. She was something else she was having to get used to — being a starship, being an it, was simple and straightforward. Now she had to deal with having meat gender. She had been warned about this, when she'd been part of the reefmind, for the first thinking meat had done it too, but it was still extremely weird to experience. Not unpleasant; she'd internalized her understanding and experience of her gender, and it was hers now. It was just weird to have one all of a sudden.)

Now she too had found a new species of thinking meat, another threat to be pacified — except this species wasn't made of meat. They were thinking plants, which seemed completely impossible and yet there they were, twice her body's size (or more, in the case of the one that was deluded enough to think that it was her owner) and aboard a ship that was, at the very least, kilometers long — while her predecessor's sensors had been damaged by the asteroid impact and thus its memories of the ship that had come alongside were, at best, untrustworthy, nothing smaller could tolerate such a waste of space as what she'd seen between the artificial lake and the laboratories she'd been ushered through one by one.

They worked on her for hours. Whatever the larger plant had done to her, it was still in effect; she couldn't move anything, apart from her face and jaw — apparently the thinking plants liked it when she protested. She resolved to be silent after she realized that, and focused instead on mapping her machine-body in detail. She had a phantom's intuitive understanding of the thing she rode, but the mind that had come with this body had been stolen from her, and so true knowledge still eluded her. She ignored the poking and the prodding, the humiliation, the terror of having her shell peeled up as they ripped sample after sample from her true flesh, all the while focusing on the single most important goal she currently had: how to reverse whatever the larger plant had done, how to free her war-machine body, so that she could carry out her duty to wipe out the enemy and signal for rescue and immediate local execution of the plan. It had been done before, during the war for survival against the first thinking meat.

She hadn't been far beyond the frontier before she'd collided with that asteroid on reentry to normal space. They were far too close to Home for comfort. They had to be taken now, pacified now, or else the phantoms would be wiped out.

Civilization itself was riding on her, a solitary scout, alone in the enemy camp.

Sleep came. Sleep went. It happened several times in the labs, as she was shuffled back and forth. Fatigue played no role in it — she'd simply dropped off while the thinking plants chattered back and forth and stuck needles into ports on her body seemingly designed for the purpose.

This time, though, she did not wake up in a lab. This room was even larger, so massive she couldn't see the ceiling that reached up into shadow. The floor was a soft grass that nearly came up to her knees, the tips gently glowing blue; the chair she rested on was reclined back almost flat. She blinked, surveyed her surroundings, and realized that for the first time since the encounter with the largest thinking plant, she could move once again.

She rolled quickly off the chair and onto her strange, stiltlike feet; somehow, she was able to keep perfect balance with them despite how unsuited they were to the task. She flexed her fingers, cycled every one of her servos experimentally — as far as she could tell, she had full freedom of movement once more. Perhaps whatever the big one had done had worn off. Here was her chance! She had to-

"Hello there, little scout," a familiar voice purred from from above. She looked up at once, the apertures of her eyes dilating to maximum as the exposure rate slowed to let in the maximum amount of light. There. High above, wedged into a nook in the ceiling, was the big one, grinning down at her with a mouth full of sharp, thornlike teeth, her many eyes glowing a dull violet-indigo. "Welcome home."

"This is not my home," she hissed in reply, clenching her firsts and evaluating the distance from her to the plant. She couldn't leap that, not and land a blow with any force, even at her war-machine body's maximum output. She'd have to wait, and preferably find a vulnerable point to strike. "You will release me at once."

The plant made a show of considering it. "Mmmm. No. I don't think I will. Oh, this is fun, you know? I'm starting to see why some affini exclusively specialize as feralbreakers." The plant shifted, slowly lowering herself to the floor on her thick, trunklike legs — all four of them. "But you know, I'm not really accustomed to working with ferals. I do prefer a little bit of cordiality between pet and owner, even at this stage. So, now that we have the time to get to know one another a little better, let's have proper introductions — I am, as you know, Gallica Lophophora, Seventh Bloom, and my pronouns are she/her. What's your name, little one?"

Pet?! But she couldn't allow herself to be distracted by that. It was some kind of psychological interrogation method, it had to be. "Meat-squawking appellations are meaningless," she growled. There was something strangely familiar about all this, but she put that down to the first encounter in the artificial lake, when the thinking plant had torn away the roof.

"Well, I'll just have to call you Scout then, hm? That's a very cute name, you know, and I think it fits you quite well." One of her vines slipped suddenly away from her and tapped her right on the nose, making her flinch. "And your pronouns?"

Something in her cheeks warmed, and her internals fans spun up. "She and her," she mumbled, looking away.

"Oh, that's fascinating. The xenoanthropology committee has already written reams of theory about this but that's going to send them absolutely deciduous!" Gallica let out a cackling laugh and clasped her hands together excitedly. "Cotyledons really are marvelous!"

"What are you even talking about?" The plant was just spouting a lot of nonsense words, and acting excited about nothing in particular. This had to be part of the interrogation technique too, meant to distract and disorient her. She resolved, then, to stay focused on the true objective — finding a way out, and reporting this incursion so it could be properly pacified and studied.

(If, indeed, these plants even could be pacified. No one had ever tried to ride a thinking plant before, and she didn't like her chances with this one now that it knew how a phantom captured its steed.)

"Oh, I suppose explanations are in order, hm?" Gallica's enormous tail curled around until it circled behind her, and the vine returned to give her a gentle shove back onto it. "Sit," she said authoritatively. It was humiliating, but she let it happen — here was an opportunity to gather intelligence. "I am an affini. We are a species and a culture devoted to a single task — ensuring the well-being of every sophont in the universe. We ply the stars, looking for other sophonts in need of care, and when we find them we provide it."

"You'll forgive me if I don't swallow your propaganda whole." She couldn't seriously expect her to believe that, could she? No thinking-meat species behaved that way, and there was no reason a thinking plant wouldn't either.

"A deliciously feral response." Gallica made a show (at least, she hoped it was a show) of licking her lips. "You, my dear Scout, are the first sophont of your species that we have encountered — that means you have the honor of being a cotyledon, one of the first of your species that we domesticate, so that we can learn how to domesticate the rest of you."

"What does domesticate even mean?" She knew the word, knew that it was a word, but something was missing — something the mind she should have been allowed to strip for knowledge would have known, no doubt.

"On a cultural level, making the necessary changes to ensure all are cared for, that all have the means to self-actualize, that all are safe, and so on. We make things better. For individuals who can't or won't adapt to that way of life, we domesticate on an individual level — in other words, we keep you as pets, train you, relieve you of the burden of choice, and ensure that you are as happy as it is physically possible for you to be."

She had no words to respond to that with. It was nonsense. It was impossible. It made not the slightest lick of sense. "What?" she muttered, for lack of a more reasoned response.

(Whatever this interrogation technique was, confound it all, it was working.)

"You'll see," Gallica's vines began to coil around her legs, their touch gentle. "The funny thing is, because you've attached yourself to a chassis intended to mimic terran movement and behaviors, we may actually have a bit of what terrans call a 'leg up' on the process. You see, you're wired directly into the wet neurology of the chassis, and the wet neurology is designed to respond to xenodrugs intended for terrans. And do you know what happened when we tested out small doses of those xenodrugs on you?" She leaned in close, her smile growing wider. "Quite a few of them worked just fine."

It wasn't the closeness that frightened her. It wasn't the worry that Gallica might actually eat her. It wasn't the ancient instincts that told her that things coming from above would kill her. It was the way that Gallica said it, the undercurrent of her voice, the subtle shifts in her body, that revealed what the true terror of the Affini was.

They weren't going to just strip her away from her thinking meat and kill her like they'd killed her predecessor. They weren't even going to simply kill her true flesh and end her tale here and now. The Affini wanted to rewrite the story entirely, with themselves as the author. Not just her own story, but the greater epic of the phantoms, and the all-encompassing mystery play of the universe to which the phantoms were the rightful heir. They would make a footnote of a magnum opus.

"Now, you likely don't recall most of that," Gallica continued, "because as it happens, class-B xenodrugs intended for terrans can very easily inhibit the process of your short-term memory formation — and, therefore, the uptake of those memories into long-term memory, which you seem to store in your own neurology. Again, absolutely fascinating. Wonderful stuff. You really are a marvel of evolution, you know that?"

She recoiled against her shell. This was impossible. "What do you mean, inhibit memory formation?!"

"Well, for example, there's the fact that this is the fourth time we've done this little routine," Gallica purred. A river of ice seemed to run down the spine of her body, a novel reaction she'd never experienced, but one she knew was rooted in terror. "You do seem to retain a little bit of procedural memory, even if only subconsciously. Want to know how I know that?" A vine reached out and nodded her head for her. "It's because you're so much more docile this time. You get better every time, you know? The first time, you tried to fight me almost the moment I revealed myself. The second and third times, you hesitated, but eventually resorted to violence. This time, though, you're being a very good girl."

"Please don't." This hadn't happened before. This was the first time she'd been through this. This was just part of the interrogation technique. Wasn't it?

"What happens when you try to fight me, petal?"

She knew the answer, somehow. "My body locks up," she whispered.

"All on its own," Gallica said, nodding. "I've inserted a subroutine that checks intentionality whenever you try to move. Also, I disabled performance mode in hardware, so even if you somehow manage to bypass that, which I doubt you can, the worst you might do is give someone a bruise. Mind you, I will be very disappointed in you if you do so. Now-" The vine returned to her chin, gently lifted it, forced her to look up at Gallica. "What's your name, petal?"

"Scout." Again, she could only whisper. She couldn't remember the last time she'd blinked.

"So close, little one. So close. Try again, and don't let your preconceptions get in your way. Clear your mind, and when I ask you my question, simply respond without thinking about it. What's your name?"

"Scout... Lophophora?" No. No. No. No.

"Fourth...?"

No. No. No. No. No. No. "...floret?"

"Good girl."

The shiver that rocked Scout's body — not just the chassis, but her true flesh — was unlike anything she'd ever felt before, longing and need and relief and frustration all at the same time. Her predecessor had never felt anything like this. She had nothing to compare it against. All she could do was feel it, and try in vain to understand why she felt this way. "You have to stop," she whispered. "This isn't how it's supposed to be."

"Oh, but it is, my dear little Scout." Gallica's long, thick fingers reached down and all but surrounded her, gently resting against her body. "This is precisely how you are supposed to be — safe. Protected. Loved. Mine." The fingers closed around her, slowly lifting Scout up into the air. She didn't fight, knew that she couldn't fight, could only endure what was to come. Gallica pressed her gigantic lips to Scout's body. A vine tipped with some kind of floral stringer whipped out and plugged itself into one of her exposed ports. "Now, let's try this again, shall we? I wonder if the fifth time will be the one where you give me your full name the first time I ask."