First Contact

You'd be surprised how many men coughed out their lifeblood onto these milkers and still couldn't take their eyes off them. - The Detainee, Matron of the Damned and the Lady Lord of Hell

I just want left alone. - Daxin Freeborn

They just won't leave us alone. Not as long as they think we exist. - Legion AKA Vat Grown Luke

The fire crackled as the Matron of the Damned dropped some logs into it. It was burning away merrily in a fire pit she had dug with a collapsible shovel that she kept in a case on her belt. She had lit it by using the string and sticks method, using friction to cause the fire.

Daxin sat and watched, drinking a fizzybrew. His legs hurt, his hips hurt, his back and shoulders ached.

He watched as she set up the two tents. Primitive affairs of two pieces of rectangular canvas with pointed ends that snapped together along the top and were held in place with wooden stakes, ropes, and wooden poles. Both were barely wide enough to allow them to sleep, alone, in the small shelter.

The Matron of Hell heated up cans of pork and beans, some vegetables, and put them in the camping meal kits that she had on her OD green pack that was strapped to a frame.

"You're industrious tonight," Daxin said.

The Matron of the Damned just shrugged. "I enjoyed camping. I was allowed twice a year, two weeks, desolate places where I could camp," she said. "I went alone, most times, if you don't count the rapid response team that was never more than ninety-seconds away, satellite overwatch, and a counter-strike team no more than thirty minutes away."

Daxin frowned. "That's... different."

The Detainee sat back, picking up her metal meal kit and digging into the pork and beans. "Death Valley and some of the bigger National Parks were my favorite. The rest of the time I worked and lived in an underground facility. My very existence, toward the end, was need to know only."

She stared at the fire as she ate a few more mouthfuls of pork and beans. She pointed at Daxin's empty meal kit with her fork, then toward the stream. "Go clean your kit. You'll attract ants and run the risk of bacterial cultures."

Shaking his head, Daxin got up, grabbed the kit, and moved to the creek. He washed it quickly, swinging it a few times to throw the water off, then went back in time to see the Detainee flick a chunk of canned corn bread, one end sopped with pork and bean juice, to FIDO, who snapped it out of the air, wagging his tail.

"So, new body for me but not him?" Daxin asked.

Dee nodded. "He's fine with that body and, to be honest, the work on him would be more delicate and I'm not comfortable with it," she shrugged. "It's one thing to use genetic engineering to xenocide the Atrekna, it's another thing to use it to try to save someone whose just fine."

**FIDO like clanky clanky body**

Dee nodded. "That too."

Daxin put the silverware in the tray and folded it up, locking the handle across to keep the kit closed as Dee went over and washed her kit and came back. She took both and put them in the canvas cases on the side of her backpack.

"I'll bury the fire tomorrow," she said. She got a beer and sat down. "How's the body?"

"Muscles and joints ache," Daxin admitted.

"Yeah, figured. I made the body, but didn't do electrostimulation or flexibility movements. It's basically a body straight out of the plastic packaging," she said. She shrugged again. "Few more days of hiking and you'll have hardened the muscles up and lubed up the joints."

"What's your angle here, Dee?" Daxin asked.

Dee stared at the fire. "I needed a Hell Knight and thought you'd make a good one," she said. She looked up at the stars. "You refused, so now we're going somewhere else where you'll have choices to make."

"You don't seem to be trying to convince me to be a Hell Knight," Daxin rumbled. He finished the beer, tapped the bottom so the bottle turned to sand, and got another one.

"I already made my spiel. I'm not going to hound you like a vacuum cleaner salesman at your door. Besides, that was the SUDS version of me. This is the real me. Just me," the Matron of the Damned said. "I figured I'd give you a while to think about things while we hiked."

"Where are we going?" Daxin asked. He looked up. "Where are we?"

"Where doesn't matter. Suffice to say, if anyone even does find the system in the next ten thousand years, the automated defense systems will prevent any kind of landing or interaction," the Lady Lord of Hell said. "I made sure of it."

"Out of the goodness of your heart?" Daxin asked, raising one eyebrow.

"Don't be stupid. Pure self-interest, I assure you, Mister Freeborn," she said. She cracked open another beer after throwing the empty in the fire, where it hissed and burned different colors. She took a long drink and stared at the fire. "I know you would never come after me. There's too much stuff going on in the universe and I'm not that important."

Daxin just nodded. "What about my doppleganger trapped in the Sol System?"

The Detainee looked up. "I killed him already."

Daxin blinked. "You what now?"

"Had the Immortals System kill, destroy, and recall him, then interrupted the process for that one, excised the memories, did a file merge where you overwrote everything on him. Poof. Gone. Easy-peasy. I did it over a year Galactic Standard ago. One of you is enough, I don't know if the universe can survive two of you," the Detainee said, shrugging again. "I didn't want him somehow overwriting you."

Daxin nodded. "Yeah, thanks for that."

"No charge," the Detainee said, still staring at the fire.

"Well, I'm going to bed. This body actually gets tired," Daxin said.

"Rest well," the Matron of the Damned said, still staring.

Daxin glanced back once and saw that she hadn't moved, the dancing firelight reflected in her gunmetal gray eyes.

-----

Dee looked over the edge of the cliff, her black hair stringy with sweat. "Don't hurry, you big lug. That's why you slipped."

Daxin just snarled at the plump woman who had scaled the cliff faced without anything more than crampons and a rope and vanished over the lip almost twenty minutes before.

It wasn't that he didn't know how to do it. It wasn't that he hadn't done it before.

It was that his body was still weak, the reflexes not quite burned in.

FIDO, of course, had just climbed up like it was no problem, his claws allowing him to easily scale the cliff so he could bark and chase the local equivalent of birds.

Finally, he got over the edge, rolling over and staring up at the sky.

"Retrieve your pack," the Detainee said.

Daxin sat up, grabbing the cord from his hip and pulling his pack up the cliff.

For almost an hour they sat at the edge of the cliff, the Detainee smoking cigarettes and staring at the sky. Daxin willing his aching muscles to stop hurting.

"How are you still a chubbo when you do stuff like this?" Daxin asked.

The Detainee shrugged. "Some tweaks here and there I did myself. Better nutrient deficiency at a cellular level, better fat to energy conversion, stronger and more efficient musculature, redesigned cartilage, stuff like that. Took some stuff from apes, sharks, pigs, and a type of bear."

Daxin shook his head. "Why?"

The Detainee exhaled smoke. "Because I could."

Daxin didn't expect her to say anything more and so he wasn't surprised by her silence.

"Did you modify me?" he asked.

"Nope. Just used your baseline genome like it was recorded by the SUDS when you were dropped off at the creche by your mother," the Matron of the Damned said.

Daxin was silent.

"I know a little about your origins, if you care," the Detainee said. "Your mother. What happened. Why she dropped you off at the creche."

"I don't really care," Daxin said. "It doesn't matter, it was a long time ago."

"Are you sure? I even pulled some holopics of her out of the system," the Matron of the Damned said.

"I'm sure. She made her choices, no sense in crying over it," Daxin replied.

"Not even interested in what happened to her afterwards?" the Lady Lord of Hell asked.

"She died. Like everyone else. What else is there to know?" Daxin said.

The Detainee nodded. "I figured as much." Her voice got quieter. "I asked thrice."

FIDO ran by, chasing the equivalent of a squirrel, barking happily.

After about fifteen minutes the Detainee stood up, picking up her backpack and shrugging into the straps attached to the frame. She waited for Daxin to get his backpack on before moving into the woods, lighting a smokestick and walking through the cloud of her exhalation.

Daxin was surprised, to be honest. He had figured the Detainee for more of a talker, but it wasn't uncommon for her to go hours without saying a single word. Before she'd looked over the edge of the cliff, she had not said a word in almost two days.

It felt odd to Daxin. He had gotten used to his brothers and sisters, his fellow Apostles, and the constant talking. He was used to The Detainee chattering.

This version of her seemed to be fine without talking at all.

It made him nervous, slightly. It was new, and new meant bad, and bad meant deadly.

When night fell and the Detainee was staring into the firelight, a cigarette in one hand and a fizzybrew in the other, Daxin tossed a pebble by her foot to get her attention.

"What?" She asked.

"Why are we doing this?" Daxin asked. "Just get on with whatever it is."

"You have somewhere to be?" Dee snapped. "Got a full appointment, ya big thug?"

Daxin opened his mouth to answer but she kept talking.

"About eight more days, you'll get to make another choice, Mister Freeborn," she said, still staring at the fire.

"I'd rather you just got on with whatever it was. Whatever game you're playing, I'm not interested," Daxin shot back.

"You're about an ungrateful motherfucker, you know that?" Dee said. She took a drag and exhaled smoke.

"Ungrateful?" Daxin asked, standing up.

"Yes, ungrateful," Dee said, standing up herself. "You're fucking ungrateful."

"I didn't ask you for anything," Daxin snapped. "I didn't ask for this new body, for whatever bullshit you're pulling."

"A dog doesn't ask for the sun to shine on its ass, but it's grateful all the same when it happens," Dee snarled. "You have very little gratitude in you, Freeborn. I could have left you, that idiot brother of yours playing rooster and you having to play frog to his orders to jump, but no, I sent you here, to me."

Daxin balled one fist, staring at her.

"Instead, I brought you here, to make offers to you. I took time out of what I was doing, because, surprise, other people have shit they have to do too," Dee snapped.

"I didn't ask you to do shit," Daxin said. "I could do just fine on my own."

FIDO had jumped up and was growling at Dee, his tail tucked and his lips lifted off of warsteel teeth.

"Oh, like you have so far, Freeborn? You forget, I've seen your memories. You fuck up by the numbers, then growl you want left alone, and walk the fuck away. The Combine, the Imperium, the Martial Orders, the Digital Omnimessiah, every time it gets tough, you walk away because you can't be bothered to see shit through."

Daxin frowned at her. "That's not true."

"Isn't it? Tell me one fucking thing you've stuck with to the end, you sorry sack of self-pitying shit," the Matron of the Damned snapped. "One fucking thing."

"Nakteti. The War in Heaven. The Mar-gite. The Clone Worlds Crusade," Daxin shot back, clenching his fists, his shoulder muscles bunching up with the tension.

The Detainee suddenly sat down, taking a drag off of her smoke stick. "Fair enough."

Daxin blinked at the sudden release of tension. "What?"

"You could remember. Good," the Detainee said. She kept staring at the fire. "I've been worried I fucked up your personality transfer."

Daxin sat down, patting the ground so that FIDO sat down. He reached out and scratched FIDO's petting nerve, staring at the Detainee.

After a long while the Detainee looked up. "I"m going to bed. We've got an early day tomorrow and a long way to walk," she said. She stood up and moved over to her tent and sitting down, facing it. She crushed out the cigarette then lifted herself up slightly by her hands, going feet first into her shelter. She climbed in, pulled the sleeping bag up, then rolled and pulled the flap down.

"Try to get some sleep, you big thug," she said, buttoning the flap from the inside.

Daxin just sat, staring at the fire, lost in thought.

-----

The Detainee had badgered him whenever he slowed down, whenever he tried to dawdle, for almost a week before she went silent again. She would just wait for him to catch up, or hurry to keep up with him, rarely speaking.

He counted four days that she did not say a single word.

Finally, he followed her out of the brush and into a clearing.

A massive ship sat in the clearing. Black warsteel, dings, scrapes, dents. A Facey McFacepunch class Adaptus Cruiser. He looked at it and saw the name on the prow in ornate letters.

The Abithica.

"That's my ship," Daxin said.

"Yup," Dee said. She sat down on a fallen log and pulled off her boot, turning it upside down and shaking it. "I killed your doppleganger, kept the ship."

"And FIDO?" Daxin asked.

"He didn't have a FIDO with him. That's how I knew you were the real one," she said, pulling her boot back on. "There it is. Jump in and take your ungrateful ass out of here, you big lunk."

"And you'll just hand it back?" Daxin said, his voice clouded with doubt.

"Yup," Dee said. She shrugged. "If you're not interested in what lies at the end of the path, or if you ever decide it's too real for you, you can always just take this and run away like you always do."

Daxin held back a groan and his temper.

Gods, you're infuriating, he thought.

"And if I take the ship?" he asked.

Dee shrugged. "What do you care what happens next to someone who isn't you? It's none of your business if you leave," she said. She pointed into the woods. "Our next stop is about a week that way, but if it's too much for you, well," she pointed at the ship, then lit a cigarette. When she exhaled smoke, Daxin noted she was doing the trick where all he could see was her gunmetal gray eyes. "Then jump in the ship and leave and what happens next doesn't concern you. Go ahead, take it and leave, you big ungrateful fuck."

Daxin stared at the ship for a long time.

"No. Whatever lies at the end of the Nature Trail to Hell, it must be important if you'd try to get me to leave with something like this," Daxin said.

"Doesn't matter to me," Dee said. She stood up in a cloud of smoke. "If you're sure, Mister Freeborn."

"I'm sure," Daxin said. He glanced once at the ship as he walked toward her. "Let's go."

"Take the ship. Why involve yourself in my plots and machinations. Take the ship so you can just be left alone," the Matron of the Damned said.

"No," Daxin said, stopping next to her.

"Asked thrice and denied thrice, Mister Freeborn," the Detainee said. She motioned and FIDO ran up next to Daxin, who reached down out of habit and scratched between his ears. "Let's go."

Daxin looked back, once, as they left the clearing.

The Abithica sat in the dewy morning mist, in the middle of the clearing, scuffed and battered.

The branches snapped back to where they belonged and it was gone.

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