(13) Nandroids on Mars (pt1)

-NANDROIDS IN SPACE: MARS-


>"Like this: One, two, three, PULL!" Tatyana tugged hard on her side of a large crate while a wild-eyed young man named Dimitri helped with the other side. With enough force the crate was freed from the side of a tall (if unfinished) mockup lander, the design heavily changed from the smaller ones she'd flown to the moon. As the box slid out and lowered with the grace of a dropped brick to the floor Dimitri gave a shout and nearly dropped his end. "Watch your feet!" he said with a nervous chuckle before reaching into his shirtpocket for the folded rover's assembly instructions. "This thing drives?" the steel-skinned cosmobot asked incredulously, looking from the cubed jumble of packed-up parts back to the thin man turning crumpled paper over in his hands. "Hm? Oh yes yes, we'll take it out so you can get some driving time as soon as we unpack it. Er, let's see..." turning the page over in his hand once more he furrowed his brow as he focused. Tatyana stood at attention for a long moment watching the young man's sharp blue eyes dart around the page. "Let me," she said finally after growing mildly annoyed with the long silence, stepping forward and snapping the bit of paper out of his hand. "Step one of twelve," she read off after a moment, shooting Dimitri a raised eyebrow after taking so long finding his place. "It will take two to unpack this, the American robot need only follow your directions on the ground and you'll both be driving in no time up there!" the enthusiastic engineer answered her with a grin only to be met with concern on the little robot's face. "Right, start with step one then."

>Floating high above the Earth Tilly marveled at the sights below her, giving no thought to her lack of tether or suit. Her weightless feeling didn't falter even as she began falling down towards the planet, her calm wonder giving way to sudden growing panic. The superheated atmosphere of reentry swirled around her now and every external sensor registered the intense heat as she began to ablate away under the forces. Her vision momentarily blurred and as it refocused the green and blue marble she was plummeting towards became a dry red one tipped with white at the poles. The harsh alien landscape rushed upwards at her with impossible speed as she tried willing her optics to shut but couldn't. Close enough to see individual rocks and craters she gasped in the vacuum in an attempt to scream. Tilly was already sitting up in her recharging cot when her bootup cycle finished and blue glow returned to optics wide and staring forward in fear. She drew in a sharp breath as her senses returned to the real world and let it out slowly with a shudder, placing a palm to her forehead while processing the aberrant and random simulation her mind had run for her recharging cycle. "A dream," she breathed out loud to herself, both in surprise and as reassurance to herself that all was well in the real world. At over seven years old Tilly had been operational long enough to have developed this extremely common and entirely benign bug, a simple byproduct of a long service-life according to the marketeers at Sterling. 'They may even dream of electric sheep!' one glowing Crosswire Press article had quoted from an executive at the robotics giant, sticking in Tilly's memory as she played back snippets from the handful of dreams she'd experienced lately. After one recent evening spent listening to Georges' warnings of potential Russian espionage she'd dreamt that she was back on the moon, desperately running in place but never putting distance between herself and the mangled pursuing forms of the two robots they'd left lying there in the dust. In another she'd been aimlessly walking across the surface of Mars, growing colder and losing power as she wandered the plains directionless and alone in the alien twilight. Reaching behind her back she unplugged the recharging cable and pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin there a moment without moving from her bed. The strange sensation of an uncontrolled hallucination was an unwelcome one to her, and reminded her uncomfortably of the tenuous grasp on reality she'd had during the months spent falling back to Earth from Venus. She gave a shudder and closed her optics, pushing the uneasy memory file back down into its compressed subfolder. Internal chronometer ticking over to five passed seven in the morning Tilly raised her head back up and looked expectantly towards the speaker set into the ceiling. After only a few seconds the speaker crackled to life and Georges' voice was piped in from the other side of the large complex. "Good morning Tilly, hope you're on up there!" Tilly smiled at herself and drew in another deep breath as she moved to stand from her bed, banishing the remnants of her dream from her processor. Today was the day, she thought to herself as she set her steel nerves and turned to fetch her blue jumpsuit off its hanger. Today she would fly again.

>After sitting in on a terse briefing of the day's scheduled events Tilly was ushered into a small room for a final preflight checkup. As the closest thing the Agency had to a robotics engineer the task fell to Collins, and the short man hurriedly read through the list of banal questions for Tilly to answer. At the doorway Deputy Director Dryden stood by with a beaming smile as she was ran through her final paces in preparation for her long voyage into the unknown. "Alright, and any unusual image-processing during your recharge cycles?" Collins asked casually without looking up from his clipboard. Tilly paused for only a fraction of a second before answering. "No," she said simply, then stole a quick glance at Dryden for a moment before looking back down. "Good good, 'any problems with your vision', hm we can probably skip that one since your optics are still pretty much brand-new. Ah, next one too I think,: any problems reported with recently-serviced hardware?" Tilly looked at the leg which had replaced her original and actuated the ankle there a few times with a shrug before holding her hand out and flexing the off-color replacement fingers there as well. "None, everything has been working fine since my last tune-up," she replied with a smile, ignoring the nagging warning in the back of her processor about the occasional seize-ups in her hip joint over the course of her training for this mission. 'Not a big deal, it goes away after a minute anyway so no point worrying about it now' she thought inwardly, calculating her chances of experiencing a total component malfunction to be remote at best. After several more rapid-fire questions the preflight check was completed and the little nandroid was once again cleared to fly. Dryden escorted Tilly from the cramped office down the hallways of the central building, passing room after room full of heads turning to look as she walked by. "I don't suppose you're nervous, eh?" the older man walking beside her said, his face beaming since he'd woken up that morning at the thought of all the data and samples she'd be bringing back to them months from now. Tilly processed the thought for a beat longer than she expected to before answering with a little laugh. "Not at all, sir! Is it just you and the pad guys seeing me off this time?" she asked diplomatically, noting the absence of Georges with the glimmer of a frown. If Dryden was offended he clearly didn't show it, laughing as the pair exited the building towards a small white open-top automobile waiting for them. "The Director is in mission control right now keeping an eye on things, as you well know this isn't an average launch for a variety of reasons." Tilly took her place in the backseat  with Dryden before the waiting driver turned the vehicle and began ferrying them along a freshly-paved road cutting through the grounds. Though the car never exceeded twenty miles per hour Tilly couldn't help but grin as the wind played with her short orange hair, and only barely resisted the strong urge to stand on her seat while they rode. Soon she'd be going much faster, she thought to herself, but it would be a long time before she felt this again. The Deputy Director watched the happy machine for a long moment, feeling an odd mixture of envy and fear for their intrepid robot. "Look at those huge fairings!" Tilly exclaimed as the open-top car rolled to a halt near the base of the tall steel launch tower straddling the mammoth pad. Dryden winced as the nandroid wasted no time getting out of the car, instead hopping over the side rather than following procedure and letting him get her door for her. "Ah Tilly there's, well there's just one more thing," the elderly man said as he stepped out of the vehicle and stood beside the robot who nearly buzzed with energy this close to her ride off-world. As polished metal faceplate and bright glowing optics stared up at him expectantly Drydren fished a small object from his suit's breast pocket and held it out to her. Taking and turning it around in her hand Tilly blinked once at the miniature blue car, an unremarkable little model of relatively simple design. "When I told James about your flight he asked me to have you bring him back a Mars rock," Dryden said with sheepish little smile, clasping his hands behind his back. "Of course I told him we'd be keeping all of those here for study, but after a little pouting he agreed to let you take one of his Matchbox cars instead." Tilly held the little toy up to the light, focusing back and forth between the car in her fingers and the massive rocket behind it. "I told him I'd slip it to you before the launch, would you take it along for good luck? Not that I believe in that sort of thing but..." the aging man trailed off as Tilly confidently tucked the little toy away in her pocket with a smile. "But it certainly can't hurt, right sir?"

>One elevator-ride later Tilly sat at the controls of her new spacecraft, one unlike any she'd ever ridden in before. Entering the vehicle itself had been strange, climbing down a ladder through the ship's airlock and into an rounded hallway that looked more at home in a small building than in anything close to a capsule or lander. The top deck was circular with a cylinder running through the center around a long ladder providing access to the airlock above and lower decks below. On either side of the wraparound hallway the paneled wall opened up to a pair of large rooms.  Quickly following her memorized instructions Tilly had entered the right-hand room and stopped there for a moment, marveling at the futuristic office-like layout of the ship's main controls, or as Georges had called it: 'The Bridge'. With delivery of the finished vehicle occurring only weeks before the scheduled launch integration with the heavy rocket had begun at once, and Tilly's only tour of her new interplanetary habitat had come only via verbal description and crude handheld mockups. Here in the ship for the first time, the scale of her mission seemed to suddenly settle on her shoulders all at once. 'This isn't some capsule or repurposed fuel tank,' she thought to herself as she strolled across the deck and ran her fingertips across the back of her chair. Looking up at the mission timer countdown on her main monitor gave her a sudden thrill and she smiled to nobody inside the empty room. "It's a real spaceship." Minutes ticked down as the rocket beneath her lazily vented gaseous propellant from the topped-off tanks, and the men gathered around their consoles in Mission Control grew more anxious each of them acutely aware of the bizarre nature of the vessel they were sending up. Despite the desert test of a live nuclear charge sending the test article on a suborbital flight only a few present had genuinely thought the mad idea would ever wind up working, and many still held their reservations even as the final minutes ticked down. Among the private skeptics was Director Georges, the man who'd greenlit the project only to find himself too deep to pull out once their geopolitical gamble had paid off. As the hour grew close the rapidly-greying Director drew another cigarette from his softpack and lit it nervously, looking around the room as dozens of sets of eyes all began looking towards him expectantly. 'Do or die,' he thought to himself as he snapped his zippo shut and dropped it in his breast pocket. Raising his voice to be heard over the ambient sounds of the open room he began to call out, looking from station to station as he did so and waiting for response from each. "Booster?" "Go" "Retro?" "Go" "FIDO?" "Go" "Guidance?" "Go!" "EECOM?" "Go!" "Control!" "GO!" "CAPCOM!" "GO!" Georges grinned without thinking as the final 'go' was called out, and clapped his hands together once as he drew in a smokey breath. "All systems go, we're cleared for launch!"

>As the timed countdown reached zero Tilly grit her teeth and held tight to the straps restraining her in the pilot's chair. The entire vehicle seemed to jerk suddenly as the pair of large solid rocket boosters attached to the sides of the Zeus-IIIC lit and shoved upwards with near instantaneous force. As the rocket lurched lazily off the pad she felt for a moment as if it would shake itself apart, panicked blue optics darting around the spacious bridge at every weld and rivet suspiciously. One minute of the shaky launch passed quickly as she processed how this one compared to prior ones, and as the voice from mission control called out "Max Q!" she felt the harshest of the vibration cease as the rocket arced high through the atmosphere. At two minutes off the pad she felt a sudden shudder perfectly on schedule as the solid boosters burned themselves out and detached with an explosive 'pop'. "Good separation!" She said into her headset, glancing towards one of the two present porthole windows but seeing only the interior of the large fairing covering the ship. 'This is really it,' she thought inwardly with a mixture of giddy anticipation and underscored trepidation. A sharp 'bang' sounded throughout the vessel a minute later as the second stage separated from the first and ignited, sending another shudder through both the ship and her pilot. Through the porthole bright light poured in before giving way to the inky blackness of space as fairings fell away, and as the mission timer counted down the seconds until the second stage burned out Tilly played back the file of the brilliant flash she'd witnessed in the sky during the desert test flight. Though she'd never considered the possibility before, the sudden realization that this barely-tested technology might kill her flooded her processor as she briefly considered her confidence in the space agency. Another sharp 'bang' rang out through the ship, signaling that the second stage had kicked the vessel into a high arc above the planet's atmosphere and separated. Minutes ticked down to seconds on the main monitor, and as it counted down to zero Tilly crossed her fingers in imitation of the Agency Director. She of course didn't believe in nebulous human concepts like luck, but if it made Georges feel better when he did it then what was the harm? "Can't hurt, right?" Tilly said to herself in resignation as the first nuclear charge fired from the back of her ship.


>"Bozhe moi, the SIZE of it!" Tatyana exclaimed as the impressive American spacecraft came into view through the single small porthole on her two-seat lander. The launch from Baikonur had been no different than her first four, proceeding nominally despite the encroaching knowledge that she would be gone far longer this time than on any previous flight. After insertion into orbit she'd run through the procedure for rendezvous on near-autopilot, the exercise almost trivial to her now after so many simulator runs and real-world experiences. Approaching the huge American vessel gave the Soviet machine a sudden sense of her mission's scale, something which had failed to fully 'click' with her before now. "It's a spaceship," she breathed out loud to nobody but herself as she lined her hefty lander up for a final approach to the spacecraft. 'Photos of the pusher plate mechanism,' she thought to herself involuntarily as the distance between the two vessels closed to mere inches. 'and the bomblets Tatyana, data on their design may well save the Union!' her Master's voice rang out to her from memory while the docking rings connected, sounding a series of loud clicks as they snapped into position securing the two vessels. Shaking her head free of worrisome thoughts Tatyana unbuckled herself from her seat, floating off from it lazily as she looked around the interior of her tiny lander. Most of the small space was dedicated to storage of samples retrieved from the Martian landscape, with only a small locker of items reserved for use of the robotic pilots. Staring down at the pair of seats in the tiny lander made Tatyana uneasy as she thought about riding it down to the alien world in just a matter of months. A quiet knock rang out, dulled through the airlock her lander was docked to. Rising above the seats and floating towards the docking hatch on her ceiling, Tatyana stared up/down the short airlock through the window and spotted her orange-haired friend on the other side behind a second hatch, an implacable smile already plastered across her faceplate. "Here we go," the Soviet muttered to herself before matching Tilly's smile and reaching for the hatch release.

>Tilly could hardly contain herself as she and Tatyana both opened their sides of the short airlock that served to connect the two vehicles. Before her Soviet friend even had a chance to traverse the space between the two hatches the nandroid floated herself forwards and hugged her with a happy laugh. "Welcome aboard the Neriene!" she said happily as the two robots embraced for a moment before parting to float in the small airlock together. Tatyana followed as Tilly turned to exit the cramped tube and entered the flight-deck of the ambitious spacecraft. "It certainly is...open," she said appreciatively as she looked up and down the curved hallway surrounding the central ladder-shaft of the vessel. "I know!" Tilly said enthusiastically, reaching forward and taking her friend's steel hand. "And we've got three whole decks! I mean sure one is just for storage, but still!" Laughing gleefully the nandroid kicked off the floor pulling her cosmobot friend along with her as she floated across the hallway, passing seemingly-inaccessible maintenance panels on their way towards an open doorway. "I had some time while you were coming up so I already took a look around, Tatyana you won't believe how much room we've got! This is bigger than Unity base by FAR! " Pausing at the doorway and letting go of her friend's hand, the nandroid grinned giddily. "We each get a recharging room, and we even get a whole room just for the controls! Just being here makes me feel like Flash Gordon!" Tatyana held herself in place against the doorframe, first looking inwards at the bridge and then back to Tilly with a patient smile. "Da, whole place feel like movie set, so different then what we usually fly. So, going to give me grand tour or what?" Tilly giggled and the two robots matched expressions as they let go of the doorframe to float freely in the hall again. "We need to check in, let them know that the docking went okay and you're on-board, then we'll get the go-ahead for departure. Plenty of time for the tour when we're on our way though, right?" As she spoke, Tilly's smile grew until it seemed ready to break her faceplate. "You excited?" she asked expectantly, and Tatyana's smile wavered slightly. "...Da."

>Registering their position and status with two different sets of mission controls, the Neriene was given instructions for departure from high Earth orbit towards Mars. Strapped into place the two droid pilots waited as the minutes counted down, each processing their own worries as the final moment grew close. "We really gonna be riding on atom bombs?" Tatyana breathed quietly, looking around the riveted walls of the ship around her. "It's not so bad, once you get used to it. I finished getting to orbit by bomb-power, it's a little scary at first when you start to register the acceleration, but after a minute or so you sorta acclimate." Tilly answered her back just before their ship's radio switched on with a loud beep. "Neriene we have you on radar, clear for departure in tee-minus-sixty," the voice over the speaker called out, and Tilly fidgeted in her seat suppressing an excited squeal. "Copy that, counting down!" the nandroid called out over the radio before shooting her friend a smile. Tatyana's faceplate was stuck in a concerned frown, unable even to meet her friend's gaze while the seconds ticked away, carefully measuring her breathing. Frowning slightly at Tatyana's worried expression, Tilly turned her optics back to the control panel as the final seconds ticked away. "First detonation in three...two...one!" Pressing her thumb down on a small switch Tilly initiated a chain reaction as the Neriene fired the first charge from behind the vehicle, exploding a second later and giving a near-instantaneous acceleration to the ship through the heavy plate and pistons at the aft. Tatyana cried out as she registered the acceleration, though the tremor through the vehicle was minor she still recognized the jolt that had been delivered to the spaceship. Another charge fired from the rear of the vessel, then another, and another. Each successive blast, subtle though they were to her sensors, made Tatyana grit her synthetic teeth and shut her optics hard trying to place herself anywhere but here. Shoved down into her seat by the acceleration Tilly couldn't stop a nervous giggle from leaving her lips, optics glued to the on-screen projection of their orbit changing by large margins with every blast behind them. "Tatyana, we're doing it! We're leaving!" Tilly exclaimed as her processor raced, overclocking from the excitement. Her Soviet co-pilot looked queasy, if such a thing was possible for a machine. "How much longer?!"

>Two weeks after the final nuclear charge had been set off throwing them at Mars, the pair of robot pilots had unpacked and prepared all of the life-sciences experiment packages that had been tucked away on the lower deck before launch. Down on deck two an entire room had been devoted to the study of biology in interplanetary space, with constant logs taken and relayed home for eager engineers with lofty dreams of space colonies. Leaning down close Tilly inspected each of the several varieties of plants they'd been able to sprout, gently lifting a fresh green leaf for a closer look while she floated in front of the small gardening bed. "Hey! The first arugula sprouted!" she called out with an inadvertent smile as she stared down at the tiny new plants. Several seconds passed before she heard the sound of steel hands clinking lighting against the walls of the vessel. "You say something?" Tatyana called out as she pulled herself down the central shaft's ladder and kicked off the floor plating to drift along the hallway towards the life-sciences room. Tilly shook her head slightly and turned to face the doorway while the Soviet appeared there, floating inside with a slight tug at the frame. Placing one hand underneath a fresh plant sprout the nandroid beamed proudly at her shipmate. "I said we've grown lettuce!" she said with a giggle as Tatyana floated forwards and stopped at the side of the garden bed. "Ah I see, that was the last one we were waiting for da?" she asked as she pulled herself down to the level of the bed, staring at the tiny seedlings up close. Looking around the small room at the array of experiments, Tilly couldn't help but feel proud of the small menagerie of life they'd cultivated in so short a time. "It's amazing that they're all growing like this so far from Earth! Out here in the middle of absolute nowhere, they're still thriving! Isn't that neat?" the plucky nandroid asked, unable to hide her enthusiasm and pride in their little zoo of life. Reminded of their extreme distance from home, Tatyana gulped involuntarily and quickly changed the subject. "Have our ants gotten any better since yesterday?" she asked hurriedly. Tilly shook her head sadly before glancing at the rapidly-collapsing little ant farm she'd been sent up with. "They don't seem to get how to move around without gravity, I thought maybe they'd get used to it but," she trailed off, staring at the little glass enclosure occupied by the confused creatures. "But no luck," Tatyana finished as she floated towards the station devoted to the tiny habitat. "If they not adapt soon, not going to be any left by the time we reach Mars."


>"What are you saying?!" Tilly cried out as she sat opposite Director Georges in his small office. Only a few weeks remained until the fateful launch towards Mars, and Georges had waited until nearly the last minute to address the pressing issue. "What I'm saying is that Orion is a uniquely sensitive project! Letting a Soviet aboard to ride all the way there and back is well, it's a serious risk to national security!" Staring across his cluttered desk at the defiant little robot Georges sighed and instinctively reached for a flask hidden in his desk's bottom drawer. "I'm not saying anything is gonna happen, it's just that the DoD is keen to make sure nothing does, yeah?" not bothering to hide it he took a long sip from the small steel vessel and winced visibly. Tilly shifted around in her seat while he drank, already uncomfortable enough before the liquor had emerged. "I know her, she's not spying on us," she said in a cool tone, trying to hide the obvious offense in her synthetic voice. Georges shook his head imperceptibly, staring at the floor rather than meet the little robot's sharp gaze. "Probably. All I'm saying is that if worse comes to worse, you're authorized to neutralize the other pilot, if it's in the interest of national security. I was told specifically to inform you of that." Tilly blinked, then grimaced angrily. "You want me to shut her off?!" Standing up sharply from her seat the nandroid shot a glare at her de-facto owner. "Sir, with all due respect," she began, closing her optics even as she clenched her little fists. "Tatyana is my friend." Blue optics opened suddenly looking upwards at the low ceiling of the her recharging bunk on board the Neriene. Blinking a few times as her senses painted her surroundings Tilly put a hand to her forehead and sighed. It was not the first time a direct memory file had played without permission during her recharge cycle, but reliving those terse moments left her feeling anxious after. Unplugging, she pulled herself along through the second deck's hallway towards the central shaft leading up to the first. A few moments later she was rounding the curve of the top deck's hallway, passing the empty bridge and coming around to the other side of the vessel. The second room of the top deck had been labeled 'the observatory', though despite the presence of a meager telescope few observations had actually been made there so far. The main informal use of the room had become sight-seeing, a wide pane of thick glass providing an unprecedented view of the empty space they hurtled through. As Tilly floated through the doorway she spotted her Soviet friend hovering lazily in front of the window, optics locked on some faraway point. Smiling, the nandroid floated into the room towards her after giving a light knock to announce herself. "You're up here too?"

>Lost in thought, Tatyana was startled when she heard the rap of Tilly's metal knuckles against the hull of the ship. "Ah? Oh, uh, da. Was just thinking, is all." Turning around she watched as her American friend floated across the short gap between the doorway and inner-hull, stopping against the large bay window and staring out with a strange fixated expression. "You can't help but think about it, right?" Tilly asked without looking away from the unchanging star-field, her mind easily fixating on their destination. "How we're so far out, on our way right now and getting closer every second!" Tatyana looked away from her friend and the window, focusing on the easier-to-digest steel floor instead. "I, I try not to dwell on it too much, easier when we are working. We have mission, we follow plan, we go home." Feeling suddenly exposed in some undiscernible way, Tatyana pushed lightly off the wall and floated away from the window towards the other end of the small room. Turning to watch Tilly put her back to the curved window, her smile fading slightly at Tatyana's cool demeanor. 'is that what's bothering her?' she thought to herself for a moment analyzing the subtle emphasis she'd put on 'home', 'homesickness?'. Floating slowly the Russian arrested her drift on the far wall with a gentle push, lazily sailing back across the small room towards the middle of the room at a leisurely pace. "The first time you do this kind of mission, flight to Venus I mean," Tatyana began, seemingly unsure of herself. "The one you saved me from, you mean?" Tilly answered back playfully, the smile returning to her faceplate. Tatyana's squarish cheek lights gave a brief glow and she shot her friend a little smirk. "Da, that one. When you are out there, out here I mean," correcting herself quickly she looked away hesitantly. "You spend much time thinking about home?" The nandroid pilot blinked once, then shook her head with a light giggle. "No way, home is boring! Tests, tests, fetching coffee, more tests. Down there it's like, I don't know, sometimes it feels like I'm stuck in glue!" realizing too late that it had sounded more like an outburst than a confession Tilly sheepishly pulled her legs to her chest while she floated in front of the window. "Ah, you don't ever feel like that, do you?" Tatyana gave her an inscrutable look before shaking her head. "Nyet, especially after first time on moon. Being back home, sun and clouds overhead, wind in hair? Nothing ever felt so safe and, I guess 'right'. Now every time I leave it," she trailed off, grimacing. "Part of code in back of mind keeps saying 'not coming home this time, Tatyana!' " Her voice became more casual as she spoke even as her words unsettled her friend. "But, we always do! Right?" Tilly added quickly with a nervous expression. Tatyana scoffed. "Da, we get lucky. Scratch that actually, I get lucky but you are like bad luck charm, always falling out of sky or getting stuck in it." The pair of machines laughed easily together, and both felt a little better for it. Crossing her arms over her chest Tatyana let out a shaky little sigh. "I know our lifespan, got no problem shutting down when my time come, it's just..." again she trailed off, and Tilly leaned forward expectantly hanging on her word. "My, I mean, the boys." Processing the thought for a moment Tilly cocked her head to one side, but remained silent. Looking up quickly Tatyana appeared almost embarrassed and stumbled over herself to explain. "Not that Master and missus aren't wonderful parents!" she said quickly, pausing a moment as she studied her friend's expression and detected no outrage or judgment from the other machine. "It's just, Master is so often gone from home, even when he is there he lock himself in office or plop in front of television, hardly take any interest in them!" Some previously unrecognized inner floodgate opened, Tatyana couldn't stop herself from continuing as Tilly listened intently. "And Ma'am, she...well she is kind and warm to be sure, surely she love them. But, so often she seem, I don't know, disinterested?" Furrowing her steel brow the Russian robot appeared to sulk. "Sometimes I wonder if they should have just gotten a couple dogs, for how involved they both are in boy's lives." Tilly gulped involuntarily as the heavy sentiment sank onto her shoulders. "Tatyana, I didn't know it was...well I didn't know," she stammered, processor running with the new foreign idea that life with a real family may not always be as fulfilling as her programming told her it'd be. "Sorry," Tatyana muttered quietly, averting her friend's optics. "forgive my complaining, just...easy to get lost in thought here sometime, da?" Smiling Tilly reached out for her shoulder and pulled the surprised cosmobot into a quick hug. "Nothing to forgive, believe me I get it! I can't tell you how nice it is to not be doing this one alone Tatyana, I'm really glad you're here." Wincing slightly the Russian robot returned the hug, her golden optics fixed on some distant point in the distance. "Thanks, Tilly"

>With only two hours of recharging Tatyana felt sluggish, a constant internal warning chastising her for booting herself hours before her battery would be fully topped off again. Digging through her spartan set of personal affects she retrieved a small camera, loaded with microfilm tucked away into the compact little rectangle. Silently she pulled herself through the doorway of her small quarters into the second deck's hallway, floating slowly passed Tilly's room a few moments later and making sure the orange-haired nandroid was deep in her recharge cycle before continuing. Pulling herself up the ladder passed the first deck she wasted no time in opening the airlock's first hatch and entering, shutting the door behind her and breathing a shaky little sigh. 'Halfway there,' she thought to herself, releasing the small camera to float free in the cylindrical little airlock while she retrieved her insulated suit from the wall and quickly dressed. "Go out, take photos, come in, back to bed," she muttered to herself nervously before clasping her helmet in place over the neck ring, reaching out a gloved hand for her slowly rotating camera. "Then it's done."

>Tilly spun end over end in zero g, frantically reaching for some handhold she could not find. "Got you!" A voice rang out up close, somehow not over radio as she turned to see who had grabbed her. Bonnie's smiling face met her, and for a moment she felt relieved until noticing the rapidly accelerating field of stars behind the curly-haired nandroid. The pair were linked by a mere cable that Tilly held onto by hand, rotating faster and faster impossibly around a common center of mass. As they sped up Tilly began to lose her grasp, sliding down the rope and further from Bonnie as the pair spun in wider and wider arcs. She tried to shout, but found herself voiceless while Bonnie stared at her with worry from across the increasing distance. Finally her grip slipped, and Tilly was flung off from the tether into the endless expanse. 'EMERGENCY BOOTUP SEQUENCE' a tiny corner of her synthetic mind rang out, and seconds later her blue optics were flung wide-open viewing only the darkened interior of her little bunk. Several seconds passed as she processed the raw data from the unintended simulation while she breathed heavily to cool down her interior. "Are they getting worse?" she whispered out loud to herself, her voice sounding small and afraid when she heard it. Reaching behind her she quickly unplugged her charging cable and let it float above her cot, unwilling to try for another recharge now regardless of her low-battery lethargy. She'd never spoken to anyone about these 'dreams', or nightmares as she was coming to know them, but now felt she wouldn't be able to recharge again without talking to someone about it. Unstrapping the small strip of velcro which held her to her cot during charging she kicked off the bed and sailed effortlessly through the door, grabbing hold of the frame and translating her momentum the few feet down the hall to Tatyana's room. Pausing at the doorframe she blinked in surprise, spotting the empty cot. 'Still on?' she wondered to herself, then turned her head over her shoulder and raised her voice. "Hey, Tatyana! Where are you, the observatory?" she called out, listening expectantly for several seconds. Hearing only the gentle hum of the machinery around her she called out again. "Tatyana?" Moving towards the central shaft she pulled herself up along the ladder to the first deck, exiting the tube and pushing off the walls to propel herself along the circular hallway. "Hello?" Passing the two doors leading to both the bridge and the observatory Tilly returned in a tight circle to where she'd started, no closer to locating her friend and more worried for her now than for her silly dreams. Turning back she reentered the central shaft and looked up at the airlock's main hatch. Staring for a few moments the nandroid pulled herself up to the glass porthole and gazed inside curiously, wondering if her friend had gone to retrieve something from the Soviet lander. Two insulated suits had been affixed to the inside of the airlock before launch each assigned to one of the two pilots, but only one remained now leaving a prominent empty space she spotted along one half of the inner wall. Without knowing exactly why Tilly felt as if her hydraulic fluid dropped several degrees. Gulping involuntarily, she reached a shaky hand out to open her side of the tunnel between the Neriene and the lander.

>Tatyana's breathing was quicker than it needed to be, her processor buzzing with paranoia as she floated at the rear of the great vessel on nearly thirty meters of tether. The pusher plate didn't seem too remarkable to her, though she snapped image after image of each component as instructed by her master. Pulling herself carefully in between the plate and the rest of the ship she tried snapping a few photos of the small exit for the nuclear charges, but had no idea whether they would prove useful to the engineers back home. "Who knows," she muttered out loud in her helmet, surprising herself with the disgust in her own voice. Giving the structure one more look she tucked the little camera into her suit's breast pocket, snapping the fastener there closed to secure it. The third internal warning prompt of low battery in as many minutes exasperated her, but Tatyana pulled herself back along the end of the ship and down its length towards the lander docked to the bow. Slowing as she approached the front of the ship, she turned herself gently and began to maneuver to the opposite side where the lander's hatch remained open as she'd left it. As the doorway came into sight so did the suited form of Tilly leaning out of it, staring expectantly down at the end of Tatyana's tether as she came into view. The Soviet scrambled for a moment as the shock threw her off balance, missing a handhold in her surprise and drifting out of reach of the ship on her long tether too quickly to recover. For several seconds the two robots locked optics, equal expressions of surprise and fear matched on both faceplates. A moment later Tilly glanced down looking intently at the camera fastened to her friend's suit before looking up with an expression the Soviet found impossible to read. "Tilly?" she called out quietly, remembering quickly that the suit's radio was not on. Ten meters out, fifteen, Tatyana began to breath more heavily as the nandroid remained motionless at the lander's hatch. The American robot looked down at the small carabiner hooking her lifeline to the lander for a too-long moment, then reached for it. "Tilly?!" she called out again in vain, a sudden panic overtaking her for a split second. Gripping the tether Tilly gave a gentle tug, pulling her Soviet friend back towards the hatch with a determined look on her faceplate. Tatyana held her breath for nearly half a minute, only breathing again when she was in contact with her lander being tugged inside by the American robot. A minute later the hatch was shut behind them and the two robots floated uncomfortably close in the tiny lander, optics locked on one another. Tilly unclasped her helmet first and gave it a shove away from her, breaking eye-contact finally. "That was part of your mission," she said simply, less an accusation than a resigned statement of fact. The palpable disappointment in her quiet voice cut at Tatyana deeper than she'd expected it to, and she opened her mouth ready to defend herself. Both robots paused for a moment, perplexed as their sensitive microphones picked up a sound dulled through the airlock separating the lander from the rest of the ship. "What's that noise?"

>The pair of robots left their helmets in the lander as they traversed the short airlock back to the Neriene, neglecting to change out of their suits as they investigated a staccato buzz emanating from the bridge. Floating to the controls above her seat Tilly's optics darted about the multitude of figures displayed by the ship's computer. "What is it?" Tatyana asked nervously trying to follow her friend's  optics as they scanned over the screens. "It's the altimeter, but it's showing that we're two hundred miles over something, wait make that one fifty! We're closing in!" Tilly announced nervously, processor racing to understand what was happening. "One hundred!" she called out again, looking to Tatyana with worry. "Avoidance maneuver! Can we get out of the way?" the Soviet suggested hopefully, slumping when Tilly shook her head. "There's no time, I don't even know what to avoid!" the nandroid called back helplessly, faceplate turning from concern to panic. For the next several seconds the two machines embraced without thinking about it, optics locked on the curved window adorning the small bridge. Human eyes might have only registered a momentary blur, but two sets of mechanical minds processed frame-by-frame the pass of the object mere meters away. Both held their breath for several seconds later as the altimeter read an ever-increasing distance to the rogue object. Finally Tilly began to giggle, breaking into a wild laughter as she released her friend and floated backwards with her optics tightly shut. "An asteroid!" she exclaimed as if it were some punchline, then laughed even harder. "Can you believe it?! Tatyana, the odds that really just happened are...gosh I don't even know! Did you SEE that!?" Holding her belly Tilly doubled over in mid-air, tumbling slowly end over end as she laughed. Seeing the little nandroid laugh freely released some pent-up worry in her Soviet co-pilot. Part of her mind told her in no uncertain terms that her friend was certifiably malfunctioning, while another part made an equally compelling argument that she was functioning better than most. Letting out a heavy sigh as Tilly's laughter abated, she raised her optics to meet the nandroid's and gave her a sad look, gently tapping the camera still affixed to the breast of her suit. Tilly's optics followed downwards and her expression darkened as she remembered the events preceding their miraculous asteroid encounter. Closing her optics for a moment she sighed, then smiled warmly. "It's kind of dumb, isn't it? Here we are all the way out here, but we're still tied down to Earth by humans' concerns," Tilly said simply, shaking her head as she began to pull at her suit's gloves. "We just became the first to ever see an asteroid up close, almost TOO up close, but our big worry is gonna be human politics?" Tatyana looked down and furrowed her brow, silently cursing her master for imposing this on her. "Orders are orders Tilly, I...I don't like it either," she replied quietly, angering herself with her weak excuse. Tilly gave a surprised little laugh and raised an eyebrow. "My orders were to shut you off if you were doing espionage stuff, obviously I'm not gonna," she said matter-of-factly while Tatyana's optics widened in surprise at her unapologetic dismissal of duty. "Tilly, I been thinking of this since we were last on moon together, when we sent Nadya back to Earth? How you have such easy time disobeying? Does it not bother you? Is it not against programming?" Looking up expectantly Tatyana searched Tilly's expression, confused at the bemusement modeled on her faceplate. "How can anyone feel limited up here?" The nandroid replied with a simple shrug. "Sure you might get in trouble for something when you get back, but out here? THIS far away?" Shaking her head Tilly stared out the window while a slow smile spread across her faceplate. "I can't explain it, it's just...different. You know?" Looking out through the window Tilly found herself lost in thought, her friend's words spurring a flurry of thoughts she'd largely ignored or distracted herself from as of late. After several seconds a sharp sound drew her attention back from the window. As she turned she saw Tatyana holding her small camera in front of her, the back of the case open as she spooled out black film jerkily. "What are you doing?" Tilly asked in shock as she watched the film float around her friend, dumbstruck. "Something dumb," Tatyana responded simply, apparent new resolve evident in her voice. "Something that will probably bite me in aft later but, something YOU would do."




-Continued in part 2-