(5) Tatyana 2

>Yuri had little time for wonder and amazement as he rolled along the lunar landscape in a flimsy little buggy he'd had to assemble from kit after landing.
>Life support was limited, this being the first official test of the speedily-developed system off of the Earth, and his mission had been meticulously pre-planned without much margin, but included a final order he'd been handed just before the capsule's door was shut by the pad technicians.
>Upon collecting his final core sample from a site two kilometers away from the lander, the Cosmonaut reached into his suit's breast pocked and took out the still-sealed envelope he'd gotten nearly four days ago.
>Special orders, from the Commandant himself no less, to only be opened after primary objectives were completed. The old man himself had handed Yuri the envelope, unnerving him with that perpetually-sharp look in his eyes. The secrecy of the order made him very nervous. Tearing away at the seal finally, he opened the blank red envelope and pulled a slip of paper from it.
>'Proceed to new target-of-interest specified, collect and return. Cargo is not to be referenced on open channels.' The short letter had included a set of coordinates not far from where he was now, further than he'd driven so far but still within the theoretical range of the little balloon-tire cart. Cargo, he had no idea what to think of that wording, and even speculation drew a blank.
>Turning the moon-buggy, Yuri drove for fifteen minutes, then slowed as he reached the rim of a shadowed crater, checking his simple instruments to be sure he was where he was supposed to be. This was it? Stopping, he climbed out and fumbled for his light as he walked towards the rim in lunar slow-motion.
>"My God!" He shouted into his helmet as the beam clicked on and illuminated a crumpled figure on the floor of the crater, nearly stumbling at the sight. Was that the 'cargo'? The secrecy of these orders made sense to him now as he hammered a piton into the rim and tied off a line to descend, whatever this was had to be classified. "Above my pay-grade," Yuri muttered as he backed over the edge and rappelled into the crater.
>As he got closer his unease turned to curiosity, the figure's metal features coming into sharp view. He tried not to speculate wildly while he hoisted the machine by the shoulders and began dragging it back up the slope towards the rim, but thought of the American robot's boast on television only weeks prior and had to wonder. Had they tried to match the American robot who came here first and failed?
>Retrieving the unresponsive machine proved difficult even in the lowered gravity, he'd had to winch her up with the rover before settling her on the back faced-down. Before leaving the crater rim, he'd spotted the glint of something metallic not far off, and breaking protocol for a few minutes had driven after it. "Stranger and stranger." he said to himself grimly as he stowed the odd camera and faded US flag he'd found lying on the open landscape.
>The cabin of the LK lander was tiny, and after stowing his rock samples and himself, Yuri had been forced to rest the heavy automaton on his lap in order to close the hatch. "Alright sweetheart," he said to his passenger as he throttled up the engine. "Time to go home."

>Two months later, Tatyana rebooted. As her senses slowly came online, she cautiously opened curious gold optics and blinked. A fight, a hammer, a rock, a terrified robot. Images from her last shutdown flooded her awareness. "Ugh," she made a disgusted noise, wincing at the memory of her CPU-rattling blow to the head. Reaching up she touched her face but found only smooth riveted steel. Where was she?
>As she sat up and looked around at a dingy repair bay that reminded her greatly of her factory-of-origin, the steel door to the room opened and two men entered with eyes locked on her. Had they been watching her through one-way glass? One of the men she did not recognize, some lab technician by the looks of his coat. The second portly figure she did though, and seeing him caused her to perk up and hop from the table. "Master!"
>Before she could stop herself she'd thrown her arms around the old man's neck and embraced him with a laugh. The Commandant gave the lab tech a strained look and awkwardly patted the machines' back. Why did they have to be so life-like, he thought.
>Catching herself, Tatyana pulled away and put her hands behind her back, rectangular lights at her cheeks flaring up red for a moment. "S-sorry sir, I just...didn't think I'd ever see you again!" More at ease, the Commandant smiled at her. "Likewise Tatyana, I am glad to have you back." As they left the building together and walked towards the man's waiting car, he told her of the many strings he'd pulled to get her home.
>"The Party was already pushing hard for a manned mission, luckily for me. First I had to convince the Commissar that we had pre-selected targets of scientific interest, that they happened to be within driving distance of your crash site was not a detail I shared. Motivating the ground crew to make a manned mission possible took creativity, but everyone knew what another failure would mean now and, well we got it done."
>As the car started up, the radio flickered to life midway through a news report. "-condition after successfully landing on the moon, Comrade Gagarin is expected to make a swift recovery after receiving treatment for radiation poi-" quickly the Commandant shut it off as his driver took them both away.
>With company present, he remained quiet about any more details of her miraculous recovery until they'd reached the train station and departed by rail. Tatyana was grateful even in silence, to just be sitting next to her beloved owner again, and stole glances at him the whole ride as if he were going to vanish when next she looked.
>Cold reality still worked into her processing though, and her joy at returning to Earth was tempered by a more serious question. "Why risk all that, sir? Why not just, leave me?" The Commandant smiled and chuckled softly. "Partly selfish, partly national security. I didn't want any near-future American missions running across you up there, the fallout of that would be...bah, too much. Besides," he fixed her with a sad look. "You should have heard the awful wail the boys made when I told them we'd get another robot."
>He shivered and closed his eyes. "'Tatyana, Tatyana!' they said, 'give us Tatyana back!' Even Anya treated me coldly after that, you know how she can be when she's upset with me." As hours passed she told him about her nearly-successful landing, of her despair at the broken antenna and final hours spent trying to cobble together some way to let him know she'd made it. She did not mention her struggle with the American nandroid, and he didn't ask about the damage she'd incurred. "Sir, do they know what I was doing? Do they know where I've been all this time?"
>"No, nor should they, as far as the Party is concerned your flight never officially happened, and the Americans haven't called the bluff. You've been offline following an accident at the Cosmodrome, and if anyone digs too deeply I can arrange the necessary paperwork for a more-thorough cover story." Tatyana frowned as the pair disembarked from the train.
>She wasn't worried about losing credit as the first machine on the moon, far from it as the thought didn't even cross her CPU. What saddened her was having to lie to her boys, and not getting to regale them with even a sanitized version her adventure. "Yes, I understand Master."

>Reunion was sweeter than Tatyana could've ever hoped it to be, the twin boys nearly tackling her out the door both laughing and crying. The Commandant's wife even teared up, and had to excuse herself to re-compose before she could greet her children's nanny. Lifting the twins as she stood on legs powered by fresh new hydraulics, she took stock of the familiar home with a happy sigh.
>Laundry strewn about and piled everywhere, dishes with old food sitting wherever they'd been left untouched for who knew how long, the fireplace was spilling ash onto the carpet unlit and she could see the dust hanging mid-air in every sunbeam.  She smiled as she carried the affectionate children around hearing their many questions while she inspected, but only answered what she could and wincing whenever forced to tell untruths. She was home.
>For the next month, life returned to normal in the household, and just as in her first days Tatyana pushed herself to put the home back into order, each finished job giving her satisfaction that felt somehow richer now that she'd been faced with losing her happy life here. Little moments made her smile now where before they'd gone unnoticed, and she found herself laughing more often with the boys as they played.
>A familiar scene played out, and for a moment Tatyana felt an odd sudden file-recall not unlike deja-vu. The boys had been put to bed, the stairs had been descended, and the old couple sat once more on their couch watching their black and white screen. "Tatyana dear, that robot is on TV again, look!" the plump woman said with a fascinated expression.
>She looked as instructed, and watched as grainy footage of an American rocket launch played. A small still image of the pilot was displayed in the corner with the words "First Venus Voyager" beneath. She found herself staring at the smiling robot, the nandroid looking upwards with an expression that looked hopeful.
>She closed her optics a moment and saw the face again. Now it was behind a glass helmet, short orange hair a mess and optics wide with terror. She held a rock in one hand, and looked as if she was going to reboot out of sheer panic. Tatyana opened her optics and looked back to the stock photo, so very different than her stored memory. "Yes, so she is Ma'am."
>Alone later that evening in her recharging closet, Tatyana sat against the wall with her knees pulled to her chest, not yet ready for sleepmode. She was running the memory, what uncorrupted bits she could access, of waking up cold on the moon. "Why? Why would she try booting me up?" she said to herself softly, leaning her head back. Hadn't the nandroid known they were enemies? She frowned. Her Master seemed to speak of his rivals as enemies, naturally she had picked up on it, but now she questioned herself over it. She'd been still mid-boot when she spotted the smiling robot's faceplate, and replaying the file she noted that the astrobot had appeared relieved, happy even. She winced, tightening and loosening her hand.
>She hadn't even thought when she swung her hammer, every bit of desperate hopeless anger from her shutdown flooding her senses again at boot-up, and after that? She shook her head, remembering only tumbling with the other machine cursing unintelligibly and striking at her, the memory incoherent. "She was frightened," she said out loud to herself, closing her optics and remembering the look of horror on the American's faceplate after she'd struck the decisive blow. She rubbed her head, and grimaced sheepishly.
>"Stupid, I didn't even wait,"  She chastised herself, not for failing to deactivate the nandroid but for having swung at her in the first place. What might've been if she hadn't? The speculation ran in many different directions before she closed off the computation. "Bah, doesn't matter much now, does it? I'm home, and she's flying out there again."
>Breathing in deeply, she plugged herself in and began to power down. "Don't dwell on what was, look to what IS," she said as she closed her optics for the night, repeating something her Master was fond of saying when hindsight made him feel the fool.


>It had been just over a year since her doomed landing on the moon, but for Tatyana it might've been another lifetime ago. Her home had flourished again under her dutiful hands, her masters in good spirit, and the boys shooting up like weeds already standing waist-high to the slender robot. Through the occasional news report or bit of idle talk from her master, she'd been half-following her rival's latest journey with curiosity as best as she was able.
>They'd flung her out to Venus, the first such space probe to leave the Earth/Moon system, and she had reportedly flown very close to the alien world. Television reports came less often after the flyby, the exciting part already out of the way in the public's perception, and Tatyana had found herself wondering what the little robot was doing at various random moments throughout her days.
>Two small paper lunch bags adorned with cute doodles of the moon, one full and the other crescent, were filled and folded before distribution to the twins. After sending them off and joining her Mistress in the living room, Tatyana nearly jumped when she heard her Master shout from his study. "DAMMIT ALEKSEI, SAY NOTHING UNTIL I ARRIVE!" The sound of a phone being violently slammed down followed several seconds later by heavy rushed footsteps.
>"Dear?" Anya his dutiful wife stood with concern. "Work, my love. I must go." He was brief as he pulled on his coat and boots preparing to leave on the spot. Stopping at the doorway, he turned and looked over his shoulder. "Tatyana, come." She froze for only a millisecond, then quickly followed. "You have need of me again, sir?" She asked hesitantly, and Anya looked between them both nervously. The old man sighed. "I don't know yet. Maybe."
>Unlike her first long train ride to Baikonur, this one was filled with conversation between master and machine. Something had gone wrong on the American's mission she'd learned, and evidently they were getting very desperate. Inside the private train car the Commandant still lowered his voice to a near whisper. "Tatyana, they tell me the American agency Director called himself, begged for help in salvaging the mission."
>She tilted her head at him. "Oh? Why should you? Isn't it better to let them fail and lose face?" she spoke the words, but found at once that she didn't enjoy the idea of her rival dying out there alone nearly as much as she might've been expected to. Leaning forward, the old man looked at her with serious predatory eyes. "Because they called us on YOUR private channel."
>Optics widened, and suddenly she understood. For her trip to the moon she'd been given a private radio band to transmit home on, a secure signal which had been marked for use on her mission itinerary. The itinerary itself, as well as a sketch she'd been particularly proud of, had been missing on her recovery. She had presumed the items were looted from her by the nandroid, but hadn't thought about it beyond it being a minor irritant until now.
>"So, it is...blackmail, then?" She said carefully, making sure she was understanding correctly. The Commandant nodded thoughtfully. "The message even being sent that way implicitly says 'we found your robot, we know'. If they suffer a mission failure now, the implied threat is that they'll tell the world of yours. If they go down in failure, then they're not going to let us off." He scoffed and folded his arms. "Always willing to negotiate when they hold the trump card, Americans."
>By the time they'd reached the Cosmodrome, the two of them had already agreed to Tatyana taking the pilot's seat once more. The decision made sense to each of them for their own reasons, and some rousing and intimidating words from Tatyana's master were enough to muster the ground crew to the task. The mission was to be one of 'good will', which was to say they'd be lording it over their rivals eternally in exchange for the unorthodox cooperation.
>A finished N2 rocket was available, as was another Vostok capsule, and fitting of the vehicles was rapid as the American's ship grew closer to the day of the flyby of Earth. English had been tricky for her at first, but progressed quickly as the first part of her crash-course (she winced at the term) training for the rescue. Connecting the two vessels together via a fuel line could be done externally, but she'd need to enter the American's ship to conduct the transfer and unless the nandroid was deactivated she'd need to be able to communicate with her.
>She was hesitant at first to enter the simulator to practice rendezvous, but found it far easier than her first runs attempting to land virtually in her moon-landing training. By week's end, she'd succeeded 20 sims without failure consecutively, and was flight-certified once again. This time, her photo was taken both in her dark red jumpsuit and in the same form-hugging insulated orange spacesuit she'd worn on the moon.

>Tatyana's optics stayed tightly closed through the launch, the vibration from the rocket feeling as if it would loosen all her rivets and shake her to pieces. She kept her calm as best she could, and tried to shut out her senses to spare her overworked processor. Two orbits later, she followed instructions and initiated a carefully pre-planned burn, shooting her off into a wild ellipse around the Earth.
>This far-reaching orbit went nearly as far out as the moon was, and at the furthest point from home she'd be within 50km of the crippled American ship as it careened down into Earth's gravity well. She had hours to occupy herself both before and after the burn and slow drift out towards her target, and between rough pencil sketches in the margins of her itinerary she found herself thinking mostly about the pilot she'd been sent to rescue. It was odd, she thought, that they'd meet again under such circumstances. But what would she find when she got there? Was the pilot even operating the ship still?
>As the two vessels closed distance, she reoriented hers and waited for the closest approach to match velocities. A worry ran through her as she waiting for the burn, and she wondered for a moment if perhaps her rival would strike out at her when on sight, just as Tatyana herself had done on the moon. "Not likely, not much fight in her," she muttered to herself, then touched the side of her head gently. 'Sure about that?' she asked inwardly, but didn't answer herself.
>Picking up speed with a long engine burn, Tatyana's Vostok capsule matched Tilly's vessel as it raced towards Earth. When she was sure the relative speed between them was minimal, Tatyana began closing the distance with several short bursts from the reaction thrusters and within minutes she'd spotted the glint of metal through her view port. Seeing the ship growing in the distance brought home the reality of the situation to her, she was going to board the vessel of the robot she'd tried to kill, and attempt to save her.
>She shook her head and laughed weakly. "Ridiculous, all ridiculous," she muttered as she slowed next to the American ship. Ridiculous or not, she'd been the only machine pilot with any training ready under such short notice, and no human pilot would be risked on this mission. With mechanical precision the two ships matched speeds and sat motionless relative to one another at just ten meters apart. Tatyana breathed in deep and let out a shaky sigh to cool herself internally, this part was going to be the most difficult, and she'd had no experience with EVA before now. Unbuckling herself, she swung the hatch open and pulled herself to the opening.
>Working quickly she first unwound her personal tether from under her seat and clipped herself to the lifeline, then freed the sturdier ship-to-ship tether that had been tightly wound and stored just outside the doorway. "Now or never," she breathed to herself, and with a gentle push let go of her ship, floating in open space with only a fabric ribbon to keep her from spinning away from her capsule forever. Tatyana floated slowly across the gap towards the other ship, and reached out for a handhold. Her fingers slipped once and she nearly missed, but grabbed again at some exterior pipe and took hold.
>"Got you!" She said triumphantly to herself as she attached the ships together securely. She pulled herself back down the tether and retrieved the refueling hose from her vessel's service module quickly. She wanted this part over as fast as possible, but stopped herself from rushing by thinking of all the ways this could still go disastrously. Fueling hose in hand she again moved down the tether to the other ship, and searched around for the place where the spent stage was fueled before launch.
>Locating the fueling port wasn't hard, she'd already studied the schematics provided by the American agency, and within a minute the clamp was locked in place. Tatyana maneuvered herself towards the capsule using her hands to pull herself along, then peered in through the glass of the porthole. She could see light, but no pilot. With reluctance she raised her gloved fist to the door and knocked. "Going to be a bit of a shock, hopefully not too much" she said to herself as she waited a moment. Nothing happened, and so she knocked again.
>Was the nandroid in sleepmode? Maybe she was already offline for good? The thought of finding her counterpart deactivated beyond recovery made her wince, and she quickly knocked once more before tugging at the hatch. A short gust escaped as the hatch swung open nearly knocking her grip free, but she held on and maneuvered herself inside the cabin. No ambush came, and Tatyana worked quickly to close the hatch behind her. Another open hatchway led into the third stage habitat, where she could see lights and what looked like a tinfoil wall, but still no movement from within.
>She steeled herself, still expecting anything from a fight to a deactivated corpse, and moved herself forward through the hatch. There against the curved wall, balled up and cowering along an array of netting, was Tilly. The sight wasn't anything like what she'd been expecting, the nandroid's optics were wild and wide, apertures narrowed to pinpricks as she stared up at Tatyana. 'She looks so frightened,' she thought to herself, feeling a rush of sudden pity. Had she looked the same during her hopeless last moments shutting down on the moon? Seeing her fellow machine operational, even in such a state, made her smile involuntarily.
"Ah, so you ARE still online, this is good, da?"