Daughters of Demeter

"It's rather heartbreaking, I think?" Jenny said softly, breaking the silence. She was sitting next to me in the captain's seat, and neither of us had said anything for the past half hour or more.

She was staring out the window at the remains of the Hammersmith, though I was temporarily distracted wondering what it was actually like for her. I knew she'd have a much better view using the ship's sensors than those on the HPD, but I had no idea how she interacted with the drone versus the ship. Was her quiet staring image just meant to convey how she felt, or was she actually using the drone's limited sensors to look out the window?

I pushed all those thoughts and questions aside and responded, "Yeah it is. I didn't much like the ship while I was assigned to it, but it's still really sad seeing it in that condition. And knowing nobody else apart from Sarah and myself survived."

The Demeter was hovering about two kilometres from the wreck. After we came out of jump it took us another hour using the conventional engines to close on the Hammersmith's position. Then there'd been the scanning and visual inspection, and as best we could determine nobody else had found it or done any salvage work on it while we'd been gone.

The boss set the ship's helm to an automated station-keeping routine, that would basically keep us parked in a fixed position relative to the wreck. Then she and Sarah suited up and headed off in the shuttle to take care of the smaller salvage jobs they had planned.

They were also going to do a close fly-by of the Hammersmith's forward section, to figure out if it was safe or practical for me to access the infirmary or my own cabin.

And while they were away, Jenny and I were sitting together in the cockpit watching the wreck and monitoring sensors. Not that we needed to be in the cockpit for that. I knew Jenny could monitor things more efficiently than I could, and she didn't need her holographic image sitting in the cockpit to do it.

Our AI crew-mate continued staring quietly. After another minute or so she commented, "I'm not sure I'd want to see my previous ship, if it's in a similar state. If we ever do go back to try and salvage anything else from it, I might need to disconnect myself from the ship's sensors while we're there."

After a short pause she added, "You and Sarah must be very strong, to be able to face this and even work on it."

"Maybe," I frowned. "Like I said, I never thought of it as home. And I didn't really have friends among the crew. It's probably a lot tougher for Sarah, but she made her peace with it before we left last time."

Jenny nodded slowly. "I suppose that's the difference. More than a year passed between when I was salvaged and when I found out from our captain what became of my previous ship. And we've never been back there since, so perhaps I haven't had the opportunity to 'make my peace'."

I looked at her again, "Do you want to talk about it? Your old ship, I mean?"

She looked thoughtful as she stared out the windows at the Hammersmith for a couple seconds, before responding "She was called the Kára, she was a Valkyrie class warship. I'm not sure how she would fit into your classification system, she was smaller than the Hammersmith and had fewer crew but she was heavily armed and very fast."

After another brief pause Jenny admitted, "I don't actually know that much about Kára's military aspects or our mission. My job was to look after the crew, and that's what I focused on. Like yourself, I was part of the 'medical corps' rather than a warrior. I didn't work alone though, the ship had a human medic on board. She and I worked closely together. She was more of a first-responder, she took care of sick, injured, and wounded crew before they were brought to my Re/Gen capsule."

"She was your friend?" I asked softly.

Jenny nodded, "I knew all of the crew quite well, and as I've said before the ship's AI was like a sister to me. But yes, I suppose the ship's medic was my friend."

I sighed, "I'm sorry Jenny. I kind of wish I could give you a hug right now, because it feels like you need it."

The AI glanced at me then smiled, "I rather had the impression that Sarah was the one who wanted to 'hug' me. I'm sure that's the real motivation behind her earlier suggestion, to get me into a physical body?"

My cheeks went pink and I turned my attention to my sensor readings as I pointed out, "You did that intentionally, to lighten the mood."

"I did," she confessed. "Our shipmates are on their way back, and I didn't want either of us to be too moody when we welcomed them aboard."

Sure enough I spotted the shuttle on the sensors as it moved away from the Hammersmith's forward section, and a couple minutes later it came alongside as it prepared to dock.

Jenny and I got to our feet and headed aft, to wait at the starboard airlock for the captain and engineer to rejoin us. And another minute or so after that the shuttle was securely docked and the airlock was open as our two crew-mates exited the shuttle.

As the two of them started to get out of their e-suits Rebecca announced, "That was fairly productive."

The engineer agreed, then asked "Are we going to unload the shuttle now? Or save that till later?"

"Later," the captain responded without any hesitation. "Amanda, how about getting us some dinner? We can carry on the conversation in the mess."

"Yes boss," I replied as I headed back to the mess to get started while they were stowing their e-suits.

Jenny followed me in there and took a seat at the table, the other two joined us as soon as they had their gear stowed. Rebecca got out some drinks, while Sarah set a thin black nylon recovery bag down on one of the chairs then got out some dishes and set the table. And I was already working on dinner.

We still had some of the good meat and fresh supplies left, but it wasn't going to last much longer. I figured we had two or three more days before we'd be eating preserved or processed stuff.

"We picked up another seven cases we found floating around the armoury," Piper said as she sat down. "No idea if that's everything that was in there, but we'll have a closer look at it later and see what we got. They're the smaller cases though, probably more ammunition. It won't be worth a lot, maybe a couple thousand ecks at best."

Sarah took over, "The equipment storage room next to engineering was intact, and we found that special sensor system. The case looked undamaged, but we won't know for sure till we open it up and check. We also grabbed a few other things that were floating around in there."

Jenny asked, "I see you've brought something in with you, am I correct in assuming you were able to retrieve some personal effects from your cabin?"

"Yeah!" the engineer replied with a happy smile. "My cabin was pretty badly banged-up, but most of the contents were still floating around inside."

Her smile faded slightly as she added, "I haven't had a chance to figure out if anything's been damaged."

"I hope your belongings are intact," the AI responded.

Sarah had already opened up the bag, she was looking through it as if she was searching for something specific. While she was doing that she commented, "Amanda I forgot to ask. Was your cabin on the port or starboard side of the ship? I assume they put you somewhere near the infirmary?"

I nodded, "Port-side, and yes I was near the infirmary."

Our engineer grimaced, "The cabins along the port-side were pretty badly damaged by the blast. The area around the infirmary didn't look too bad though, so your cabin might be intact."

Rebecca added, "We did a fly-by of that part of the ship, but we didn't get out and check up close. You and I will visit that tomorrow, Amanda."

"Here it is!" Sarah announced as she pulled something out of her bag.

I glanced back and saw her holding a small shiny black holopic projector. It was like a short squat cylinder about three inches across and one inch high, the kind you'd use to display small 3d pictures on a shelf or a desk.

As she checked the device for damage she commented, "I just loaded some new images into this a few days before the wreck. If it doesn't work any more I might be able to get the images out of its memory..."

"Pictures of your family?" Rebecca asked.

My attention was back on the food I was preparing, while Sarah replied "My daughter and granddaughter. They sent me some new images by FTL for my birthday."

A moment later she sounded excited as she added, "It works!"

I turned around again to watch as she set the projector down on the table then tapped its top surface. The air above it shimmered as the holographic image appeared, depicting a mother and daughter standing side by side.

It was hard to guess their actual height since the hologram was less than twelve inches tall and there wasn't any background scenery to help judge scale, but my guess was the mother was probably about Piper's height while the daughter was closer to Sarah's size.

Both of them had fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. The mother's hair was shorter, trimmed above the shoulders in a casual but functional style. The daughter's hair was long and straight, not unlike my girlfriend's.

In fact it occurred to me that Sarah's hair, eyes, and skin tone all matched that of her daughter and grandchild. There was no family resemblance, Sarah's face was quite different, but I could easily imagine she and Jenny selected that look for her as being the closest Jenny could come up with to the engineer's family.

"That's my daughter Katia," Sarah said as she indicated the older woman. "She's thirty-eight now. She's an engineer as well, but not the kind that goes off and disappears for years at a time on ships. She's the kind who helps design ships, she works at one of the Navy's contracted shipyards. She specializes in integrating new jump drives into new ship designs."

There was no mistaking the pride in the cute blonde's voice as she talked about her daughter's work. Even if Sarah wasn't part of Katia's life, it was obvious she'd been following the woman's achievements and was happy with what her daughter was doing.

"And this is Sabia," Sarah said as she pointed out the younger girl. "She's seventeen, and according to the last transmission I got from her mother, she's planning on following Katia's footsteps and going into ship design and construction. She's already looking at different universities to try and pick the one that would give her the best options in the future."

Rebecca smiled, "You sound very proud of them Sarah. Can we zoom in and get a better look at them?"

"Of course!" Sarah touched the side of the holopic base and moved her finger horizontally from left to right, which zoomed in on the faces until it was more of a head and shoulders hologram of the pair.

Our captain obviously noticed the same thing I had, as she commented "You've got the same hair and eye colour as them. And the same hairstyle as Sabia."

Sarah blushed slightly, "It was the best Jenny could do, using one of her body files and my memory of this image. I wasn't hoping to look exactly like either Sabia or Katia, but I figured if I had to be a girl I should at least try and fit in with the rest of my family."

"I'm sorry I couldn't find a closer match for you," Jenny said quietly. "I know it's possible for full-spec Re/Gen units to make those sorts of changes to to body files, but I lack the necessary software."

Our engineer shook her head, "It's fine Jenny. I'm happy the way I am."

My attention returned to our dinner that was nearly, but the AI's words suddenly left me with some questions.

As I started serving the food I asked, "Jenny those body files in your database are basically just data, right? And data can be manipulated. You just mentioned software that would be the equivalent of cosmetic surgery? And I remember when you were telling us about the protocols for your previous ship, you said body files were run through special software to upgrade them with genetic enhancements, right?"

"That's correct Amanda," Jenny replied. "Why do you ask?"

I took my seat at the table and shook my head, "Just curious I suppose. Since it's all data, theoretically we could modify the data then use your capsule to implement those modifications in our bodies, right?"

She agreed, "Correct, with caveats. The files are extremely complicated and the software to modify them is highly specialized. I can't imagine you'd want to risk making random changes to the raw data just to see what it did to your body."

"No of course not. Like I said I was just curious." Then I apologized to Sarah, "Sorry I didn't mean to distract from your pictures."

As we all started eating the cute engineer smiled to me and said, "It's ok Amanda. Now you've got me curious about the possibility as well. And if we do figure out how to do it, what sorts of things we could actually do..."