(11) Bonnie's First Flight

>Dipping one metal finger first into a shallow glass of water, Tilly ran it next over the glue lining the inside cover of an envelope. Sealing her latest letter addressed to a distant Mongolian postbox with a satisfied smile, the nandroid looked up for a few moments at the scribbled address on a little scrap of cardboard her foreign friend had given her, tucked into the edge of her small vanity mirror's frame. A sharp buzz rang over the ceiling speaker and Tilly jumped, rudely jerked back to the present from her wandering nighttime thoughts. "Tilly! Heeeey if you're still on up there, c'mon down to the office we need you to settle something for us!" Georges' slightly slurred voice rang out tinny over the small speaker, and she blinked her new optics at it curiously. "At this time of night?" she said out loud to herself, standing and moving to her modest closet puzzled. Trading her comfy white undershirt and pajama shorts for her blue Agency jumpsuit, Tilly double-checked her newly serviced internal chronometer and it read back to her nearly one am local time. What was Georges still doing at his office? Zipping the front of the jumpsuit up to her collar, she gave one look at her short hair in the vanity mirror, flattening it futilely before turning towards her dormitory door, duty-bound to answer Georges' summons even at such an hour.

>A brisk walk of no more than ten minutes through the dimly-lit hallways in the empty main structure of mission control brought her to Agency Director Georges' office door, a bright yellow glow shining from underneath as evidence of one of the only lights still on at this hour. When Tilly knocked once and turned the handle, her olfactory sensors were momentarily overwhelmed by the wafting tobacco hanging visibly in the air. "You cal-" Tilly blinked rapidly and waved a free hand in front of her faceplate a moment as she involuntarily calculated the parts-per-million ratio of the cigarette smoke clouding the small room. "You called, sir?" she repeated, one fresh optic twitching at the surface-irritation caused by wafting smoke. Sitting at his desk with both feet up was Georges, a short clear glass filled with a dark brown liquid pinched between his fingers. Across from him looking equally relaxed with his own drink was a slim man, wearing dark-rimmed glasses framed by thinning peppered hair. Scattered across the desk between them were several folders and dozens of papers, a few stained by fresh liquor and ash carelessly dropped nowhere near the ashtray. "THERE you are, good!" Georges said with a loose grin, his face registering as several shades more red than she was used to noticing. "Answer us this: Just what DOES a robot actually NEED if you wanna travel in deep space?" Georges asked pointedly, gesturing at her with his glass before taking another sip. Both the Director and his guest looked at her expectantly and Tilly had to think as she was suddenly put on the spot. "Need? You mean besides power? Um, hm. I guess having stuff to do helps, chores and things to keep you busy. Entertainment too, I really liked reading all the book files the control crew sent me with, and music too!" Smiling at the happier parts of her swing out around Venus and back helped to prevent her from reminiscing the darker moments of that trip still readily-accessible on file. "But!" Georges added, leveling his glass now at his human guest. "No oxygen, no water and especially no food! Think about all that extra mass Ted!" Looking down at the seated man Tilly watched him shake his head. "Georges, I never said it wasn't efficient to use robots, simply that it's not going to be the way forward forever! All you're doing now is trying to justify the current limitations placed on you!" The Director rolled his eyes and finished his drink, turning from his friend with an angry expression. "Well no shit, what else can I do right now?" Both men sighed as Georges poured himself another glass before topping off his guest's. Tilly watched the free-flowing alcohol uneasily, already trying to internally plot the odds of the Director being able to make it to the parking lot let alone home tonight. "Sirs? Can I ask what the occasion is?" she asked carefully when she looked back up at Georges, trying to phrase her dismay as diplomatically as possible. The two men shook their heads subtly, each of them looking away towards the floor for a moment. Finally the Director spoke bitterly, raising his newly-filled glass but not his gaze. "The death of manned spaceflight, strangled in its crib."

>Tilly could only think of her Soviet friend as the unfamiliar man called Ted explained to her the recent death of the USSR's first and only cosmonaut. "They tried playing it down as being an hereditary cancer, but even the average person doesn't buy that. Public perception is..." Ted trailed off, looking defeated. "Is fucking horseshit!" Georges finished angrily, wrenching open his desk drawer to fish for a fresh softpack of smokes. Tilly winced at the outburst, and Ted gave her a sad smile as he continued. "The President has called a moratorium on human-rating any spacecraft, the last thing he wants is a dead astronaut before an election." Blinking at him for a moment, the nandroid looked back up sharply as Georges lit his cigarette, his zippo shaking slightly in his hand as her CPU raced with the new information. "Not much incentive now even if he's reelected! Thanks to that dead commie bastard the common rube now thinks spaceflight is fatal!" Tilly winced again, recalling in an instant Tatyana's story about that cosmonaut cradling the damaged Russian robot all the way back to Earth and spending hours holed-up on the ground with wolves prowling around the outside of the landed capsule. Ted gave a sigh and shrugged. "He could have at least had the common decency to wait to die until after you got your first man up eh?," he said sardonically and Georges nodded, missing the meaning. Tilly made a small sound that imitated a human clearing her throat, getting both of their attention. "What does that mean for the program, for us I mean? I thought everything was already set for the manned Unity Base mission?" Georges made a disgusted sound and flippantly flicked ashes on his own floor. "Nah, that's being re-tasked for robot work now instead. Apparently that got decided from above before we even got word over here, so fuck me I guess right?" he scoffed indignantly and took another draw off his cigarette. Tilly straightened up and began to smile involuntarily. "You're sending me back to the moon base?" she said, trying not to sound too excited in light of the men's clear frustration. "Nope, got a call in from Sterling no more than an hour after the White House liaison left here, funny timing huh? They're shipping us over a new robot, should be here in a week or two. That one's gonna be tasked for Unity, not that I was asked mind you." Tilly's smile dropped away as she watched Georges take another sip. "Oh! W-well..." she trailed off for a few seconds, the specter of her looming retirement suddenly at the forefront of her focus again after months of compartmentalizing the existential fear. "What are you going to have me doing then?" Director Georges stared at his desk sourly for several moments, not saying anything and seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Tilly fidgeted in place nervously, and Ted looked up at her from his seat with an amused smirk before turning back to his friend and tapping on one of the thick manila envelopes littering the man's desk. "Yes Georges, what?"

>"No, it's asinine and it'd never fly!" Agency Director Georges shouted dismissively after a moment's silence. "It already HAS flown Georges! The test rig anyway, you saw the photos! Look, you want an on-site demonstration of the test model? Done, I can have it here in two weeks!" Ted shot back defiantly, again tapping the thick folder. "I keep telling you it's all here! The bomblets, the pusher plate, the damned miniaturized reactor it's all been plotted out! We just need the commitment to put it all together!" Georges shook his head disgustedly and gestured at the confused nandroid standing behind Ted. "You hearin' this shit Tilly? Been getting an earful of it for the last two goddamned hours," snuffing out his cigarette the Director sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Glancing back and forth between the men nervously for a moment, she looked over Ted's shoulder at some of the paperwork sprawled out across the desk. Measurements, diagrams, flight trajectory calculations, what was all this? "And you SHOULD be getting an earful dammit!" Ted fired back, his voice rising enough to make Tilly take a step back from him. "I thought you of all people would be in favor of this project! You already have Venus under your belt, and THIS," the greying man banged his fist on the folder hard enough to make the near-empty whiskey bottle next to it jump. "THIS is how you get MARS!"

>Tilly's blue optics had lit up at the word, and without a thought she'd brushed passed Ted to look at the spread out documents now in more detail. "Mars? You wanna send me to Mars?" she asked excitedly, forgetting herself for a moment and looking back at Ted with a beaming smile. The man returned her expression, glad to finally hear some enthusiasm for the idea he'd come here to pitch. "C'mon Ted, don't get her hopes up. The Test Ban Treaty is gonna just shut all that shit down even if we go for it full-bore now," Georges interjected before his colleague could answer the excited nandroid. "The Test Ban Treaty hasn't been finalized yet," Ted offered up hopefully. "There's still time to push for an above-the-atmosphere exemption!" Georges shook his head again, this time slowly as he stared at the paperwork covering his desk. "Ruskies have no reason to agree to an exemption for nukes in space just so we can one-up them with a trip to Mars. That treaty kills your pet project dead, Ted." Tilly blinked, her smile fading as she turned to see the man next to her slump in his seat dejectedly. For a few brief seconds she processed all the factors she'd heard from the semi-sober men on the situation, and voiced her simplest answer without thinking it through. "You could offer them a ride," the nandroid said with a sincere shrug. Both men went silent and stared at her blankly. Suddenly self-conscious with the men's attention on her, Tilly looked away and scratched the back of her neck awkwardly wondering if perhaps it was a dumb suggestion. "You know," Ted began slowly, setting his glass on the desk and leaning on his elbows. "If their agency handles design and fabrication of the lander while we put together the main vessel for a PAIR of robots..." Georges eyes lit up at the implications of the unfinished sentence. "Holy shit, half a sample-return mission is one HELL of an incentive for a treaty exemption." Ted grinned, realizing he had Georges exactly where he'd been trying to get him all evening. "Round trip, one hundred thirty days plus surface-time. Sample return for two nations, a joint mission just like Unity Base. Soviet lander, American spaceship, costs and rewards both split. What do you say? Worth pitching the idea?" Georges wavered for a moment in his seat, looking back and forth between his friend and his Agency's robot. Downing the remaining liquor in his glass, he set it back down nearly hard enough to break it, nodding suddenly. "Fuck it then, it's worth a shot."


>Half a world away in Farnborough, Hampshire, rain pelted down from grey skies onto thick panes of dirty glass lining the exterior of the county's outmode reclamation plant. Staring out the windows of the last stop for outdated machines was a pretty little nandroid, a regional variant for the UK sold abroad by Sterling Robotics of the United States. Tracey watched without really seeing as the raindrops struck the glass and streaked down, her processor taken up by thoughts as dark as the clouds above. It had already been half a year since she'd been shipped to this final resting place of robots, but like a handful of others Tracey had forestalled her systematic execution by nature of being outwardly undamaged. Most of the machines who came through this place were at the end of their lifespans, falling apart either physically, mentally, or some combination of the two, but a few robots were returned undamaged and these were seen as too useful to be simply recycled. Tracey had been put to work at the reclamation plant once she'd arrived filling in where human workers would prove too costly to be worth employing, and had quickly settled in to dishing out unidentifiable slop to the human workers in the plant's cafeteria each afternoon. Staring out through the window at the gated yards, Tracey sighed and set her metal hand against the glass. Closing navy-blue optics for a moment, she recalled a memory file not-too-distant of herself playing with her former young charge on the carpeted floor of her old family's home. As her memory files played themselves over her CPU she took no notice of the long black car pulling into the yard, or the slickly-dressed gentleman who emerged from it under his chauffeur's umbrella. Without paying attention, Tracey had no way of knowing how long the visitor had stayed before she'd heard the footsteps coming up the staircase and down the hall to her otherwise unoccupied and nearly empty room. "Tracey luv?" a short fat woman said as she pushed open the door, not bothering to knock. "There's a man downstairs," she continued not waiting for a reply from the morose machine. Clasping her hands together with a grin, the orderly practically sang out her words. "I think we've found you a new assignment!"

>Hall stood uncomfortably in the expansive entryway of the soulless structure before the now empty front desk. His given task and given budget starkly opposing one another, he'd had to get creative in order to meet his superior's deadline, and standing here in this dismal building he wondered now if he was cutting the right corners. After a few minutes of waiting, the plump woman who'd greeted him reemerged through a door trailed by a robot with synthetic chestnut hair pulled into a tight bun behind her head with only a few stray strands escaping the bind. "You said you were in the market for something pretty? Undamaged and fully-functional? We'd surely miss her here," the round woman sang pleasantly, gripping Tracey by the shoulders. "But if the price is right and it's for the greater good, I'm sure we'll manage!" Tracey looked up over her shoulder at the orderly, then gave a skeptical glance to the stranger at the front desk with her sharply blue optics. Hall didn't bother to look at the robot longer than a few seconds before digging in his coat pocket. "A thousand pounds, take it and don't bother haggling. She wouldn't be worth even that as scrap, and it's not as if you have many customers here to begin with," the stranger said tersely, raising the plump orderly's hackles. "Well! It IS rather unorthodox to purchase an outmoded machine from us in the first place yes, but-" Hall cut her off with a raised hand. "Then a thousand will be plenty, yes?" Holding a thick envelope shaped like a stack of bills before the aging woman's eyes quieted her for a moment, then she nodded quickly. "Unorthodox yes, but perfectly legal!" she said, waggling a finger at Hall while she took the enclosed stack of currency. "Just give me a moment, I'll fetch the paperwork to go with her!" the orderly sang out as she turned and disappeared through the doorway leading from the entrance to the rest of the facility. Hall and Tracey were left alone there for a few moments, and neither spoke quickly. Tracey looked up after a minute of silence between them, and saw the stranger staring off at a nondescript wall. "You have an assignment for me, sir?" she asked quietly, turning her optics up at him. The idea of suddenly serving a new family after what she'd been through struck her as unnerving, but she tried not to show it. "Hm? Oh, yes," Hall replied finally when she'd caught his attention. "The Royal Aircraft Establishment has need of a robot, sooner rather than later. Bit of a budget crunch though, which is what led me to you I'm afraid." Tracey looked away and frowned, reminded of her status as a used machine. "Whatever it is you need me to do, I'll be sure to give you my best sir."

>"Let's see," Hall said casually after taking his position in the driver's seat of his black Austin/Morris 1100, casually flipping through Tracey's paperwork while she slid into the backseat by default silently. For several seconds his eyes darted across the product history, stopping at her reason for winding up at the reclamation facility. "Oh." Looking up into the rear-view mirror he caught the nandroid's optics for a moment and sighed. "I'm so sorry." Tracey stiffened, her hands clasping one another as she quickly looked away from the man's reflected gaze. "Yes sir. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather focus on my future assignment." Hall caught the terseness of her tone and started his car, wondering briefly to himself if this machine would be up to the task he was signing her up for after all. "Yes well, about that," he began, clearing his throat. Where to begin? Collecting his thoughts while he pulled away from the dismal place and onto the main road, Hall fell easily into the bog-standard speech he'd pitched to countless officials over the last year. "You're no-doubt aware of the robots who've flown to space and back from the United States and Soviet Union?" He waited until Tracey voiced her unsure acknowledgment before continuing. "Well, with the launch window to Mars coming up in two months we have the timely opportunity to match their achievements. Do you know how many British-built satellites have been been launched so far?" Tracey blinked in response, genuinely caught off guard by the man's sudden sales-pitch. "I, no sir I'm afraid I don't." Hall nodded to himself as he rounded a corner. "Six, all relays for continuous ground communication with spacecraft, and the first constellation of its kind I'll add. But only two of them flew on OUR rockets you see, we paid the yanks to fly up the other four on their rockets." Gripping the wheel a little tighter, Hall grimaced. "And lately, there's been talk in Parliament of outsourcing the whole bloody program to them. Can you imagine that? Giving up the capability to put craft in orbit ourselves?" Tracey tried to follow, but found herself stuck wondering what any of this news had to do with her. "It's imperative that we show the public that this hasn't all been a waste of funds, and a few satellites aren't enough to justify continuing an entire space program." Hall paused as he crossed through a roundabout, focusing on the road for a few moments before rounding the sales pitch back to Tracey. "And that's where you come in."

>Tracey's CPU hummed as she processed what Hall was telling her, the black automobile turning another corner and stopping at the checkpoint outside of the RAE's grounds. With time, budget and political will all running out, Hall and his team were outright ditching the troublesome automation they'd broken their backs failing to get working, and would instead be resorting to a mechanical pilot for the hastily-planned Mars-shot. Hall flashed his badge at the checkpoint and a small gate rolled back, letting him drive forward alongside a far-stretching runway and passed several wide hangers. "Sir, I don't," Tracey began to protest, then quickly revised. "I don't know the first thing about flying." Frowning, she stared out the window gloomily at the elongated stretch of asphalt to their left. Hall only shook his head, staring ahead at the private road stretching back towards the administration building on the far side of the complex. "Neither did those other robots at first. Besides, whether we obtained a preowned unit like yourself or purchased a brand new one, we'd still have to put you through the proper training regardless so previous skill is no prerequisite here." Tracey winced at 'preowned' but said nothing, and Hall failed to notice. "Don't worry, you'll do fine. You'll have a battery of tests to perform, a crash-course on spacecraft operations and familiarizing yourself with your vehicle, some basic stress testing," Tracey jumped in her seat and Hall caught it in his rear-view mirror. "No no nothing like that, they're just going to put you through your paces on the centrifuge and inspect your rad-shielding to confirm it's adequate for deep space, simple as." Tracey calmed her momentary panic, the words 'deep space' sticking out to her curiously. "And after that, you want me to ride on a rocket? Is that correct Sir?" she asked, running the mental image of herself strapped to a firework across her processor in milliseconds. The car passed the end of the runway strip and was flanked on either side by short trees lining the drive. "All the way to Mars. How about that, hm?" Hall answered her back, a little condescendingly in her opinion. She processed again for a moment, realizing with a sudden mental click that she was being asked to travel far away from everyone and everything in the whole world, maybe for good. "That sounds rather lovely, in fact." Tracey said, surprising the both of them with her sudden readiness.


>Sunset painted the Floridian skies at first red, then a deep purple as the light faded and floodlights clicked on one by one at the American launch site casting their beams on the large and varied buildings populating the complex. Tilly walked slowly across the facility  towards the wide dish antenna at the far end of the grounds, accompanied by and keeping pace with Deputy Director Dryden. "It's more dim over there, away from the runway lights and VAB lamps," he said as he watched the first stars begin to poke out overhead for a moment before glancing down at his pocket watch to check the remaining time. Tilly followed his eyes upwards as they strolled, keeping watch for anything she recognized in the early night sky. "You really think we'll see it?" she asked curiously, turning her blue optics back to the aging man. Dryden shrugged as he looked up from his watch. "Hardly any clouds, so we should be able to, yes," he answered as the pair reached the large array and slowed. Dryden carefully put his back against the structure housing the antenna and slid down until he sat on the concrete with a slight groan. Tilly took up her place next to him, leaning back against the wall and pulling her legs up to her chest as they both fixed their gaze on the darkening sky. "So," she started carefully, her curiosity built up over the past few days since being present for Ted's late-night mission pitch. "Hear anything from Director Georges lately?" Dryden gave her a sidelong glance, looking surprised but amused. "So you heard already, huh?" he asked slyly before chuckling at the blushing nandroid. "Our focus right now is still on the third lunar joint mission, every day Unity Base goes unmanned is time wasted as far as the administration is concerned. However," Grinning, Dryden thought back to the pitch Georges had made to his team only a day ago. "We're apparently going to start preliminary planning for a Mars-shot as soon as the new robot is up there." Tilly's optics lit up at hearing her suspicions confirmed. "If she's gonna be on the moon, then that means you're gonna send me, right?" the nandroid said hurriedly, unable to hold back her excitement. Dryden laughed gently and shook his head. "Don't get ahead of yourself, we haven't even begun designing anything yet. If we're ready by the next launch window in two years I'll be shocked." Tilly's shoulders slumped as reality intruded on her dreams once more. Two years? What would she do before then, serve more coffee? "Oh, speaking of," Dryden added after a moment, noting the disappointment in the small machine and wanting to divert her attention. "She arrived by shipping pallet today, the new pilot I mean. We're going to boot her up tomorrow before lunch, you're welcome to join us if you'd like. It's not exactly a formal thing but well, you remember when we booted you up for the first time here don't you?" Tilly nodded slowly, a slight smile creeping along her faceplate. She recalled the memory file fondly: the new glow of the florescent lights overhead, the detected scent of fabric freshener from her Sterling-Standard blue dress, stepping out of the cardboard box and curtsying after her introduction, the amused faces of Georges, Dryden, Director Debus and half a dozen curious engineers standing around her. "I do," she answered back after a millisecond of recollection. 'Should I be there?' Tilly asked herself internally, remembering the feelings that had accompanied her previous replacement's arrival to the Agency. Maybe it would be best to keep her distance from the new robot, at least for now she thought. "Aha! Should be any time now!" Dryden said suddenly distracted as he grinned at his pocket watch, interrupting the nandroid's processing thoughts. Both of them looked up, scanning the darkened sky for any hint of motion. "There!" Tilly shouted in recognition, pointing at a slowly growing dot of light moving across the top of the atmosphere.

>Without the periodic station-keeping burns required to boost the station's orbit, the abandoned Harlow Observatory had slowly fallen over the past weeks until the fringes of the atmosphere tugged it downwards into a predictable fatal decent. As solar panels sheared off and the station began to heat up, the hull glowed a fierce orange that lit up the night sky over Tilly and Dryden's heads. "And there she goes," Dryden said sadly as he watched the orbital observatory burn up across the sky, trailing debris that glowed briefly and winked out. Tilly stared at the fiery sight arcing overhead, remembering her brief few weeks there fondly. Dryden sighed as he watched the burning station shrink and begin to dim as it flew out over the ocean. Looking away from the waning light, Tilly watched the man's expression as he stared outwards lost in his own thoughts. Gently, the nandroid put a hand to his shoulder in comfort. "I'm sorry about your space telescope, it really was nice," she said softly, unsure of how to break the man's sudden palpable melancholy. Snapped from his thoughts Dryden looked down at her when he felt the metal hand as his shoulder, then gave her a wide smile. "And I'm glad that you flew on it, you saw so much for us up there," inhaling slowly, he let out his breath as if releasing some pent-up worry. "and, there will be others." The dim glow of the space debris winked out completely somewhere over the ocean, but neither the elder man nor the robot beside him moved to stand just yet. "I'd fly another one for you, Sir," Tilly said confidently. "Honestly, getting to see all that up there was worth the burnt-out optics, at least to me." Dryden raised an eyebrow at her and grinned at the little robot's enthusiasm. "I hope you won't be offended when I say I'm glad we sent a robot," he offered back jovially. Tilly laughed and pushed herself to stand, looking down at the older man and extending a hand. "We both know you'd have gone yourself if they'd let you, Sir"

>Pre-boot system checks called out through Bonnie's sub-processors, every component checking in as functional before spinning up her drive. A gentle green glow lit up from within her optics, and after a moment artificial lids ran over them quickly as she blinked herself to awareness. For the first few milliseconds she was awake, Bonnie processed the environment around her and replayed the last memory files she had from before her shutdown. Echoes from voices and banging machinery rang out from the distance of the wide structure she was now in, but the handful of humans standing in front of her were silently watching as she came to. The crate she'd been shipped in stood upright, some of the straw used to pack her in having spilled out onto the hanger floor. Taking a few unsteady steps out, she brushed off the remaining straw clinging to the sun-bleached army green flightsuit she'd been shipped in. "My name is Bonnie, it is my upmost pleasure to meet you!" she rattled off with a mimed curtsy missing a skirt to do it justice, mildly frustrated that she kept having to introduce herself to what she kept presuming would be her permanent owners. One of the men standing closest to the newly-awakened nandroid held up a clipboard and flipped through a couple pages reading notes. "Bonnie: eight months since assembly, all Sterling training passed and certified. Participated in a company exercise alongside a foreign machine, exercise passed AND it's noted that you exceeded expectations regarding cooperation. Shipped to Edwards Airforce Base for pre-flight conditioning, benchmarks all set with minimums passed before shipping out here." Bonnie blinked at the rapid replay of the few months comprising her life, but after processing the information for a moment nodded. "Yes Sir, I was told everything that they had me do would be pertinent to my new assignment!" Optics focusing beyond the man standing before her, Bonnie spotted at once an orange-haired nandroid standing in the distance, leaning against the open hanger door with arms crossed and staring intently in her direction. She blinked once at the faraway robot, but a moment later she was gone and her focus was returned to the men in front of her. "It was, and it significantly reduces the time it's going to take to condition you for spaceflight," the man holding the clipboard said with a terse smile, finally glancing up at her for the first time. Bonnie stiffened, not fully believing until now what the men at the air force base had all assumed her assignment would be. Spaceflight? She wavered slightly but kept her balance, squaring her shoulders and giving a delayed smile at the man before her. "W-well, I'm ready for whatever you throw at me next Sir!"


>The following week was even more demanding than the brief stint at Edwards had been for Bonnie as she grew acclimated to the layout of the launch facility and ran through a series of tests to confirm her previously established baselines. After a final inspection by Collins she'd been cleared to begin training in the enclosed simulator, learning the basics of spacecraft operation through trial and error. Launch procedures and rendezvous simulations had gone smoothly the second and third times respectively, each mistake sharpening Bonnie's skill quickly as she learned what not to do. Twice during the first few days of her simulator training, the frizzy-haired robot had emerged from the simulator just in time to see the back of another nandroid departing the room, blue jumpsuit matching the new Agency one she now wore herself. Bonnie was not completely ignorant of her new assignment, and during her short stay at the desert airbase had learned some about the pending job through a stray magazine. Only a few months passed publication, it featured a cocky looking middle-aged man sharply dressed beside a nandroid wearing a simple blue jumpsuit splashed across the cover. With unneeded permission Bonnie had taken the issue of Crosswire Press back with her to the bunk she recharged in, and poured over the brief and oddly critical write-up of the man who'd sent a robot to space. Most of the detail was confusing to her out of context, but the light paragraph detailing the short-haired robot's flights over the past few years both enthralled and intimidated her. As Bonnie exited the simulator, she again caught the sight of the first pilot's back as she disappeared out the door. Blinking after the aloof nandroid left the room, Bonnie looked down worriedly at Collins while she descended the short staircase leading into the enclosed mock-up. "That's the third time I've seen her, does she always watch my simulator runs?" Collins glanced up from his clipboard and looked to his right, suddenly noticing the absence of the machine who'd come to watch. "Hm? Oh, Tilly?" He looked back up at Bonnie with a shrug. "Not always. She asks about your scores, but that's about it." Bonnie stopped at the bottom of the small staircase, now looking up to meet the man's eyes as he continued. "You two are pretty neck-and-neck apart from your landing-sim scores," Collins started, making her wince at the numerous simulated failures she'd had trying to think decisively and correct for problems in short order. The man caught the dejected look on the nandroid's faceplate, and quickly added "but your co-pilot for JM-3 to Unity is going to be handling descent so it shouldn't be an issue." Looking up from his clipboard after jotting down an extra note, Collins caught Bonnie staring worriedly towards the door. "You two have met already, haven't you? I thought you'd have bumped into one another by now." Shaking her dark orange curls Bonnie turned her optics back to the man. "No, our recharging rooms are on the same wing of the main building, but we haven't run into one another yet." Glancing downwards, she replayed each memory file she had of seeing the veteran pilot disappear down a hall or round a corner just as she'd caught sight of her, a feeling of insecurity running over her processor. "Well, go introduce yourself then," Collins said, raising a hand as if it were an obvious statement. Bonnie replayed the article on Tilly over her processor in a fraction of a second. First orbit, three moon-landings, Venus, Bonnie reeled just thinking about it. "M-maybe later, sir"

>Three days later Tilly stewed, pacing the grounds outside the main building with a bevy of conflicting thoughts running over her processor. She'd wanted to introduce herself that first day when the new pilot booted up, but had stopped herself for reasons she still found difficult to articulate. Since then she'd taken to avoiding the new robot, always sure to not be in the same room when she arrived, somehow feeling more at ease with not knowing her. Infantile dismissal had given way quickly to genuine curiosity though, and Tilly had found herself arriving at Bonnie's training simulations a few minutes after her each time to keep up on the nandroid's progress. Jealousy? Tilly had suspected it of herself at first, but comparisons of their test scores and baselines had shown her no rationale for that emotion. What was it then, why was she so uneasy to meet the new pilot? Stopping near the entrance to the main administration building she sighed at herself for getting worked up over something so trivial. Crossing her arms she put her back to the building's exterior and leaned against it, casting her blue optics upwards at the new night sky. The file of her last heated exchange with Kimmy, her previously intended replacement, ran across her processor on-loop tonight. Tilly frowned at the memory, looking downwards at the pavement angrily. Even in spite of the short-lived robot's prickly exterior, Tilly couldn't help but regret not having known her better, and that feeling conflicted starkly with her unwillingness to meet the new pilot that had joined her Agency. More than a dozen yards away Tilly heard the double doors of the main building slam shut, grabbing her attention. Curiously she sat still, rapidly perusing the list of Agency personnel who would still be here at this hour. Hearing the slowly approaching footsteps, she ran the pattern quickly through her processor and registered it as mechanical, too precisely-timed for anything organic. Stiffening, she remained silent for a few moments as the shape of her fellow pilot rounded the corner hesitantly. A momentary feeling of satisfaction gripped Tilly for a moment, her presence remaining undetected by the wandering nandroid while she passed. Unable to suppress a little smile at the thought of catching her off guard, she spoke up suddenly and without thinking. "Hey, what are you doing out here?"

>Bonnie jumped, her wandering thoughts interrupted without warning and her paranoia apparently justified by the jarring accusation. "I'm sorry!" she said reflexively. After a millisecond, she registered the voice as synthetic and focused her optics in the darkness on the jumpsuited nandroid leaning against the building, feeling a sense of dread that she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't. "I-I just wasn't ready to power down and I thought I'd take a walk and- I'm sorry! Please don't tell anyone I was out here!" Bonnie babbled apologetically, throwing Tilly off for a few seconds as she listened. "Hey, hey!" Tilly raised her hands and gave a little shrug. "Nobody ever said that we couldn't be out here at night, relax," she said in a reassuring tone, smiling as the curly-haired nandroid seemed to take her advice slowly. "O-oh, it's really okay? Sorry, it's just, you just startled me that's all. Um," Bonnie felt suddenly awkward standing there across from the unfamiliar veteran pilot, and held her hands at her chest with some visible tightness building in her shoulders. Tilly remained still against the concrete wall of the building, carefully studying the nervous and unsure body language of her fellow nandroid. Whatever smug confidence that had laid behind Kimmy's lenses was nowhere to be seen in Bonnie's wide green optics, and Tilly quickly found her apprehension falling away watching the robot fidget. "I'm Tilly," she said finally and bluntly after Bonnie's internal debate on how to introduce herself stretched on a beat too long. Unfolding her arms she stretched out one hand, reflexively imitating the informal greeting used between the men of the Agency. Bonnie stared at it for a fraction of a second, decided that a curtsy was unnecessary, and reached out to shake hands. "Bonnie, i-it's nice to finally meet you, I uh," pulling her hand back after a moment, she looked away and gripped her other arm. "I sort of thought you were avoiding me." Tilly's cheek lights lit up momentarily, lighting  her faceplate with a red glow in the darkness before she laughed awkwardly. "I might've been, a little," she admitted with a guilty smile. Both of them looked down for a moment, shuffling their feet each still a little nervous around the other. "You said something about a walk?" Tilly said after a few seconds, breaking the silence. "If you don't mind a little company, I'm not ready to recharge yet either."

>Bonnie spent the first few minutes of their walk around the complex feeling nervous, but as they talked her previous mental image of Tilly being some stoic fighter-pilot personality like the men at the Air Force base was replaced by her own more subdued observations. The veteran pilot was friendly, and the more they spoke they more at ease she seemed to become, which in turn comforted Bonnie out of her initial starstruck feeling. "So, get to do anything interesting before starting all this?" Tilly said casually with a smile as they strolled across runway tarmac. "Before? No, I don't think so," Bonnie replied, looking down at the black paved surface for a moment. "I mean, kind of? I think the exercise Belka and I did was part of 'all this' though. Before that, nothing. First bootup, inspection, Bradburry's classes, graduation then..." she trailed off. Tilly glanced at her and felt a pang of sympathy for the curly haired nandroid  cross her CPU. "Then, you got given an assignment you weren't ever prepared for, right?" In an instant she recalled her own confused bootup at the Agency for the first time, and how she'd done her best to acclimate to the unorthodox job of caring for grown men rather than children well before she'd ever been selected for flight. Bonnie nodded, a look of sadness crossing her faceplate briefly. Tilly thought quickly to lift the suddenly morose mood. "On the bright side, this assignment can be pretty neat sometimes! Do you know when you're supposed to fly?" The two robots crossed the runway and kept going in a straight line from where they'd set out. Tilly wasn't consciously steering them, but Bonnie followed her anyway as the pair walked along the grass. "I haven't gotten a date yet, no. I do know what they want me to do though," Bonnie answered slowly. Tilly stuck her hands in the side pockets of her jumpsuit, an unconscious imitation of Georges, and looked upwards at the sky. "They're going to send you to orbit and back first, am I right?" Glancing back down Tilly caught Bonnie's surprised optics and grinned sheepishly. "Collins never said it to me directly, but I'm guessing they want to make sure you work in orbit first before trying to send you all the way to the moon." Bonnie gasped, looking at the older pilot in surprise. "How do you know that? I mean, y-you're right, Mr. Collins said I'd have to prove myself on a mission first before going to," she stopped mid-sentence and gulped, a purely cosmetic reaction but one reflective of her feelings. "to the moon," She finished, hesitant before looking up at the silver crescent in the sky. Tilly watched her with a smile for a moment before following her eyes up. "I think you'll like it," she said confidently, gazing up at the small world above them. Bonnie looked at her suddenly, a nervous expression crossing her faceplate. "Isn't it dangerous? I heard," stopping herself, she looked away suddenly wising she hadn't thought of it. "I heard two robots shut down up there." Tilly gave a little shrug, momentarily reviewing the stored image file of Kimmy and Irina on the lunar surface but shaking it off with a smile. "It can be, yeah. I still think it's fun though."

>Launch was mere minutes away, and the men of mission control gathered around shoulder to shoulder to watch. The old control room from the early days of the Agency had been converted first to storage and then later to a small lounge, a projector displaying one of the three available television channels against one wall in dull muted color. Behind a trio of couches which had replaced old control consoles Tilly stood anxiously, watching along with the men the slow countdown on the live broadcast. Looking down from the projector screen she identified Director Georges, sitting only a few spots away from Deputy Director Dryden. Collins sat one couch over, pensively watching the progression of the countdown sandwiched between a pair of lower engineers. "I'm glad you're here," Bonnie's voice rang out from behind her, and Tilly turned to meet her with a smile. "Nobody invited me to watch and I wasn't sure it'd be okay." Tilly giggled and shook her head. "Nobody cares if we watch or don't Bonnie, and nobody's stopping us either, right?" A passing engineer gave the two robots a raised eyebrow as Tilly spoke before taking his seat. Bonnie stifled a laugh. "Sure! If you say so Tilly!" Smiling at the older nandroid, she turned her optics towards the large screen dominating the room. "Three minutes and counting," the posh accented voice from the television rang out through the speaker system. Bonnie blinked at the spectacle of the foreign rocket on the screen, standing alongside a steel tower surrounded by desert somewhere on the Australian continent. "Have the British done something like this before?" she asked, turning towards Tilly in concern. The older nandroid shook her head slowly. "They flew a couple of satellites, at least according to Mr. Dryden, but nothing beyond that until now." Looking longingly at the unfamiliar grey and white rocket on the screen topped in red, Tilly suddenly felt envious of the robotic pilot on board. Bonnie looked back at the screen nervously, hands fidgeting with each other in front of her chest. "So she's got to fly on that thing all the way to Mars, even though they've never tried it before?" Her tone was incredulous at first, and wavered at the end as she imagined all the potential disaster scenarios that'd been plaguing the back of her mind. Tilly grinned and tilted her head back to look at her sidelong. "Welcome to the Agency, Bonnie."


>Liftoff of the Black Arrow Heavy rocket from Woomera spaceport proceeded as planned, the booster-supported missile staging without issue all the way to orbital insertion. Tracey breathed heavily to cool an overtaxed CPU once the engine shut down, her optics closed for several minutes after confirming her orbit with Jodrell Bank. She had a ninety minute orbit around the Earth before she would be expected to perform the next long burn placing her cramped crimson capsule on a trajectory for the red planet. Breathing in the thin mostly nitrogen atmosphere inside the cabin Tracey replayed her last few weeks, feeling somehow tired despite a full charge. Simulator training ad nauseam, centrifuge tests to ensure her structural integrity, float-tests in a small pool weighted down to give buoyancy and a sense of weightlessness, whole textbooks crammed as fast as she could commit them to her drive. Looking out through her capsule window, Tracey frowned at the unforgiving world beneath her. As she had so many times since, Tracey involuntarily recalled the worst memory held on file, one she could never delete but always dreaded replaying. At just six years old Andrew tossed a ball with impressive vigor towards Tracey in their family's short front yard, who caught it with a happy laugh at the young boy's coordination. She opened her mouth to offer praise, but her sensitive hearing detected the loud ring of the household telephone from inside. "Tracey!" the voice of her mistress called out through the open screen door from her home. "Would you get that, dear?" Tracey gave one look at Andrew and underhand-tossed him back the ball, the boy amusing himself for the moment simply throwing it into the air and catching it himself. "Yes, ma'am!" she called out, strolling across the lawn to the front door. The next moments were blurred together for Tracey, despite her best efforts to separate the digitally recorded events second by second. A bland telemarketer's voice on the phone receiver, the screech of an automobile's breaks outside, the scream of the mistress as she'd run out passed her through the front door. Tracey shook her head clear of the traumatic file and compressed it back where it belonged, shifting focus back to her mission as she circled the Earth strapped in her seat. Staring out through the small porthole as she traveled around the globe, she tried to kept her recollections relevant to her new job, but even among those recent files there was one that tugged at the back of her mind and gave her a sinking feeling she'd avoided addressing. "Once you arrive at Mars and reach periareion, you'll perform a planned parking burn and become the first artificial satellite to orbit another planet." Hall had explained to her at the beginning of her conditioning, a mere day after leaving the outmode reclamation building with him. "At that point, you'll perform regular planetary observations and continue acting as a passive signal relay for future missions." Hall had told her before her flight. "And, after that? Once I'm out there I mean?" Tracey had asked cautiously, careful to to betray her sudden trepidation for fear of being swapped out for some other outmode. Shrugging, the older man had only shaken his head. "If we still have a space program in two years, I'm sure a retrieval mission will be considered as part of an expanded survey." Tracey shut her navy blue optics and tried to recenter herself here on the moment. "Coming up on two minutes Discovery, ready up there Tracey?" A cheery voice called out to her from the console's radio, and she quickly rechecked her internal chronometer to see how long she'd been daydreaming. "Confirm, everything looks nominal on my end Sir," Tracey called back with the press of a button, releasing it before hovering her finger over the ignition switch and counting down silently. She had no illusions about returning to the Earth after this, but after dwelling on it for some time the prospect comforted rather than bothered her. She'd not fought her former family's decision to return her following the accident, she'd wanted to get as far away from the reminders of the tragedy as her owners did. Waiting for some uncertain future at the reclamation building had been its own sort of hell, with only the most mundane of tasks to distract from the permanent black cloud she seemed to carry somewhere in her miles of microscopic circuits. Traveling away from the only island she'd ever known to a faraway desert had been the first good thing she'd felt in months, and riding the giant missile off of that foreign place and beyond the clouds magnified that feeling tenfold. Only when the vehicle had felt still and the waiting began had her thoughts began to return to the terrible memory file. "Keep yourself busy," she said out loud to herself suddenly, unusual for the quiet machine though somehow the act gave her an added bit of resolve. The console radio crackled back in, and synchronized with Tracey's own internal countdown. "Three....two....one!"


>Tilly simulated a sigh of frustration, standing with crossed arms in front of the large projector screen at the Agency lounge. Over an hour had passed and the British Mars satellite remained in orbit, the upper-stage engine refusing to ignite. Bonnie sat on the arm of one of the couches in the converted old control room, now occupied only by the two nandroids as the engineers had rushed off to try and suss out what had gone wrong with their allies' vessel. Looking back over her shoulder at the frustrated robot, Bonnie spent a moment considering if she wanted to speak or not, the deliberation taxing her CPU for a moment longer than it should have. "Um," she began, and Tilly's sharp glance nearly stopped her. "What's going to happen to the pilot up there now?" Tilly scoffed at the question and paced behind the couch suddenly feeling an excess of energy. "Well if the engine won't light again she's not going anywhere but down, it might take a couple weeks but she's definitely going to reenter," stopping her pacing, Tilly looked again at the younger nandroid. "and without any kind of heat-shield to protect her?" She shook her head grimly and Bonnie covered her mouth. "W-well, can't they do anything? There's got to be something!" she said pleadingly. Tilly opened her mouth to answer when a younger man poked his head into the room hurriedly, sweating from his long run to the old part of the building. "Ah! Both here, good," the former intern said between breaths, then made a rapid 'follow me' motion with one hand. "Director needs you!" Bonnie and Tilly blinked at one another in surprise, but after a moment Bonnie stood from the couch and both moved towards the door. As soon as they were through the doorway the man began to jog down the hall towards the building's later additions, shooting a glance over his shoulder to make sure the nandroids were keeping pace. Both robots gave one another curious looks but easily kept pace behind the hard-breathing man, their mechanical footsteps falling into sync as they ran shoulder to shoulder. Tilly was beginning to fall out of step with Bonnie by a few milliseconds as they reached the Director's office on the far side of the current control room, the joints at her hips giving her a dull internal reminder prompt to have the parts serviced soon. The young man nearly burst the door down, his knock jarring it open as he panted for air and wordlessly pointed over one shoulder at the two unfazed nandroids. Director Georges nodded approvingly but lifted a hand to shoo him away. "Okay good, now get out of here. You two come in here and shut the door," the Director said, fishing in his pocket for a cigarette and finding only an empty pack, all twenty burned in the past hour while consulting with several members of his team. Bonnie shut the door as instructed after Tilly entered and stood at attention, then rushed to take up the spot beside her. "Bonnie, your proving flight is getting moved up, as in the Zeus II is getting rolled out to the pad tonight if everyone works quickly." The curly haired nandroid gasped, caught off-guard by the sudden declaration. "B-but, I haven't gotten all my simulator hours yet!" She protested, but Georges shook his head. "Doesn't matter, you'll be flying co-pilot on this anyway and you've already passed basic spacecraft operations. Tilly? Bonnie is going to get you up there and back, all you have to do is make a delivery."

>Bonnie took a deep breath to steady herself as Georges switched his focus to Tilly, the reality of her assignment suddenly coming into focus for her. 'So soon?' she thought inwardly, and her expression betrayed her worry. "You're sending us on a rescue mission?" Tilly asked incredulously, putting her hands on the Director's desk and leaning over it as mixed emotions processed through her CPU. The prospect of flying again thrilled her no doubt, but the eagerness to get them both into orbit so quickly made her suspicious. "Why?" Tilly asked pointedly, and Bonnie blinked rapidly at the audacious insubordination. "What's in it for the Agency to launch on such short notice, to re-purpose an entire mission?" The short-haired nandroid leaned back up from the desk and put her hands on her hips, looking down at him suspiciously like a mother trying to pry information out of a stubborn child. "You wouldn't use up a whole rocket out of the goodness of your heart, Sir." Bonnie could hardly believe her audio receptors, looking sharply at Tilly expecting a sudden and final rebuke from their master for speaking so out of turn. Director Georges snorted and shook his head, raised his eyebrows and looked at his desk. "Well, yeah," he began sheepishly, then glanced up at Tilly with a grin. "The limeys have been reliable customers the past couple years, we launch their payloads and they dump money into our coffers. But now that they're launching their own payloads," he shook his head again disapprovingly and leaned back. "Well, let's just say there's newfound incentive to remind them what we can do, eh?" Georges grinned, and both nandroids exchanged a glance of confusion. Georges cleared his throat and clasped his hands together over his desk, trying to regain some decorum. Bonnie remained silent, processing the unfamiliar political machinations of her new master, all of it confusing and new to her. Tilly nodded slowly, narrowing her blue optics knowingly at the man she'd known now for years. "The Brits figured out their problem just a bit before we did, and they're scrambling to fix it themselves. Problem is, they've got to ship another rocket to Australia and that's gonna cost them time, a week or more probably." Georges continued as he rocked back in his chair and looked at the two machines pointedly. "Our vehicle can be ready for launch in forty-eight hours, and we have the part the Brit's satellite needs to actually work as-intended. You two can get there faster than them, there's no doubt." Tilly eyed her de-facto owner cautiously, processing the data he'd given her for a few seconds. "You're trying to get them to owe you future cooperation by saving their mission, aren't you?" she said suddenly confident, the situation clear to her now. Bonnie wanted to voice her concern that Tilly was overstepping her bounds again, but found the internal conflict between speaking and remaining silent too overwhelming to overcome. "Hey," Georges said with a shrug. "It worked on us when the ruskies sent up their robot to save you, didn't it?" Tilly's shoulder's slumped as her cheeks lit up for a moment, and her optics faced the floor. Bonnie waited several seconds before deeming the silence to be dragging on too long. "Um, Sir? You said we'd be delivering something?" Both Tilly and Georges looked at her, and it was her turn for her cheeks to light up at the sudden attention. "It's a circuit board, simple thing." Georges said after a second or two. "Seriously, out of all the things that could've failed on that ship, it all comes down to a single circuit board not relaying a simple command." Both robots subconsciously imitated a gulp at the reminder of how precarious spaceflight could be.


>Failure. The word stuck in Tracey's mind harder than it had when she'd first failed in her duty to protect and care for her young charge. At first she'd laughed at the cruel twist stranding her in orbit, then she'd sobbed tearless as the inevitability of her fate became apparent to her. There would be no grand exodus to Mars, no shedding off the weight of the world's expectations and her failings at meeting them, no permanent distance between her and the humans who would judge her as flawed and untrustworthy. Resting her head against the window, Tracey floated unbuckled in her small compartment staring downwards at the world she was desperate to depart. Running a calculation based on simple estimation, she put her vessel's lifespan in low Earth orbit at four weeks, maybe five before the drag of the atmosphere would pull her defenseless vehicle down into a fatal descent. "That's it, then," she muttered out loud to herself after hours of motionless silence waiting for any update from mission control following the failure of her engine. 'It wasn't all for nothing, at least' she thought to herself as the incomparable view of the Earth passed by underneath her silently, steady against the ever-present night surrounding it. Despite her desire to get away from it all, it was impossible for her not to recognize the innate beauty of her home world and take some subdued pleasure in the sight. Shutting down at this point in her life was fitting, she thought with a sudden grim nod steeling herself to her fate. She'd done her duty until failure, twice over now, there was nothing for her left to expect but the great shutdown that awaited all mechanical beings like her. The capsule's radio snapped on, and a jubilant message from mission control jarred her from morose introspection. "Sit tight luv, the yanks are coming!"

>Bonnie breathed heavily inside her glass domed helmet despite not needing the sparse oxygen it had trapped when she put it on. Her CPU was cooled to optimum, though she still found herself exercising the nearly autonomic exercise to cool it further in times of stress. With the hatch sealed to her left, there was no escape for her from what was coming just a few short minutes away, and despite the veteran seated beside her Bonnie could only barely stop the panic that seeped into her subconscious. Tilly happily hummed a few bars of a tune Bonnie didn't recognize while looking over the control panel one final time in preparation of launch, only noticing her fellow nandroid's expression after several minutes of tuning the outside world out. "Hey, you doing alright?" She asked with a warm smile that made Bonnie's cheeks light up. "Y-yeah, it's just, a lot all at once, you know?" Glancing down at her lap, Bonnie's gloved hands fidgeted nervously. Tilly watched her for a moment, ignoring the radio calling out two minutes to liftoff. A sudden smirk crossed her faceplate as the next thought passed over her CPU. "Don't worry, we're just going to low Earth orbit," she began, the smirk growing to a knowing grin barely restraining a giggle. "Nothing bad ever happens up there!" Bonnie watched nervously as Tilly threw her head back in her helmet and laughed maniacally at her own in-joke, not understanding what was so suddenly hilarious to her co-pilot. As the last seconds of the countdown ticked off, Bonnie closed her optics and thought back to a conversation had at Edwards Air Force base with a fellow machine, trying to internally mirror that robot's passion for the great unknown beyond the clouds. She cried out loudly when the engines ignited, shoving the rocket slowly up beyond the pad. "Tower clear!" Tilly called out giddily, her grin stretching across her faceplate and some unidentifiable spark in her optics. Involuntarily closing her own optics, she only opened them again after nearly a minute when Tilly's hand grasped hers, meeting her confident smile when she finally looked again. By the time the second stage flickered out and detached from the capsule and service module, Bonnie was beyond her limit in experience and overclocked quite deliberately in order to record all the new sensations. Staring across Tilly's lap at the single porthole in the hatch, she drew in a sharp gasp. "Oh my, LOOK at it!" she said as if staring at a green sunset, the sight entirely alien to her from up here. Tilly grinned and remained silent a few moments longer, letting the younger nandroid take in the sight for herself. Bonnie was transfixed, unsure whether or not the image of the entire world circling underneath her was wonderful or terrifying, or some strange combination of both. Slowly shaking her head, she tried to form another sentence but failed offering only a weak babble. Tilly laughed happily, staring at the new pilot's awe with a soft sort of envy for her experiencing this for the first time. "Right?" She offered finally with a grin, and when Bonnie finally tore her eyes off the window to meet her gaze both robots couldn't stop themselves from laughing together spontaneously.

>"One mile," Bonnie said tersely as she kept an eager optic on the capsule's control panel. Tilly stared out the porthole, the small plastic-wrapped package she was meant to deliver held tightly in one hand. Catching up to the crippled British vessel had taken nearly a day, and both nandroids had recharged in shifts while they slowly closed the distance. Bonnie breathed heavily again despite no need to, and Tilly elbowed her lightly while the distance between the two vessels shortened. "Relax, you did everything right so far, just slow us down at the right time and I'll do the rest, then you can fly us home," Tilly said reassuringly, raising a hand to rest on her co-pilot's shoulder. 'Really,' she thought to herself in a rare moment of conceit, 'they didn't even need to send Bonnie for something like this, did they?' The curly-haired nandroid nodded in her helmet and gripped the controls with purpose, turning her full attention to the machine she'd spent hours learning to master in the simulator. As the reaction control system vented in one direction, the capsule's velocity relative to the British Mars probe reached zero, and the two craft were left parked only a stone's throw from one another. "Okay then," Tilly said taking in a deep breath of thin air and giving her partner an almost convincing smile. "Time to get to work!" Without waiting the short-haired nandroid unclasped herself from her seat and reached towards the hatchway. Underneath the frame was a sealed compartment holding a long wound supply of tether with a carabiner at one end, the other attached to the capsule. "She probably can see us by now, but try and bring her up on the radio just to be sure, kay?" Tilly said as she hooked herself to the tether and pressed a switch on the console voiding the already thin atmosphere from their capsule. "Roger!" Bonnie said cheerfully, happy to have a task she was sure she could do assigned to her. Flicking a switch she spoke into her helmet, hoping she'd routed the connection correctly. "Discovery? This is Salus here, um," glancing at Tilly while she prepared herself, Bonnie gulped and turned her focus back to the radio. "We have your replacement part, an astrobot is getting ready to EVA over to you momentarily. Please if you would, vent any gasses from your cabin and open your hatch when you are ready." Breathing in deep again Bonnie sighed, her message sent. A slight pause followed as Tilly grasped the steel bar on the hatchway and pulled it, shoving the hatch lightly and exposing the capsule to open space. Bonnie reeled seeing the expanse just outside the doorway, somehow far more real than when viewed out of the porthole. Tilly floated at the entrance, looking back at Bonnie expectantly. "Well? Are we good to go or what?" she asked in a concerned tone, and Bonnie blinked rapidly. "Uh, D-discovery? Are you receiving?"

>Tracey stared at the control panel in disbelief, then out through the small round porthole on the hatch leading into her small spherical environment. She hadn't really believed any sort of rescue was ever coming despite what the men at mission control had told her. Even after word of the American's launch she hadn't allowed herself that delusion, but now with the pilot's voice crackling over the speaker and a Libra capsule clear in view outside it was impossible to quell the rush of hope that flooded her. Grasping at the controls she flicked a switch and smiled, a rarity for her this past year. "Salus? Yes, yes I'm here! Discovery checking in, my word I didn't think you'd make it." she said with an unavoidable air of incredulity tinging her voice. A short silence gave her a moment's worry, but the speaker snapped back to life with a happy voice on the other end. "Hey! Glad you're alright! Just to repeat, We brought a part up for you, so um, Tilly is going to float over and give it to you, okay?" Tracey blinked at the console when the transmission finished, raising an eyebrow at the seemingly unprofessional communique. Wasting only a moment contemplating the strange situation, she acknowledged. "Roger, give me a moment," Tracey pressed a switch to depressurize her cabin, then floated through the tight sphere towards the doorway and gripped her helmet, pulling it over her head and clasping it tightly to enclose her own heat against the cold of space. Grasping the metal rod keeping the hatch closed, she gained purchase on the inner walls of the small sphere and yanked on it, slowly opening the lock so she could push the metal lid outwards silently. Her first time seeing the open void was jarring, somehow it was easier to take in while viewed through the porthole but now? Tracey shook off the feeling by closing her optics for a moment and refocusing on the steady craft across from her. The form of the pilot was identifiable, short orange hair and even her pink cheek lights standing out inside her helmet. She couldn't quite make out the nandroid's words by lip-reading, but the audio came in through her suit's speakers all the same. "Okay! Three, two, one, go!" Without pause, the American nandroid launched herself towards Tracey's crippled craft, both arms reaching out and tethered only by the simple strap leading back to her own capsule. The British nandroid froze for a full moment, watching in awe as her fellow machine effortlessly floated across the gap between their two vessels. Awe turned to momentary panic however, as Tracey quickly plotted the American's trajectory and, given the expression on the other nandroid's faceplace, so had she. Standing with her boots on the bottom frame of the capsule, Tracey reached her arm up as high as she could while still holding on for dear life to her ship. The American pilot fumbled a bit, but grasped at her outstretched hand and gripped tightly, securing herself. The package in her hand tumbled out, and for a few seconds the pilot panicked grabbing for it frantically as it began to spiral away, but getting it back under control turned to meet Tracey's concerned expression with a grin. Pushing Tracey back into the capsule gently, the American pilot floated in the entrance and held up the all-important bubble-wrapped bit of silicon and circuitry. "You called for a delivery?"

>Tilly's smile faltered when the British pilot turned away from her and began unscrewing the cover of her vessel's control panel. "Right, time is of the essence then, if this works I might be able to make the burn on this orbit." Tracey said professionally, almost appearing to ignore her fellow nandroid at first. Tilly looked around the cramped and unfamiliar design of the cabin and frowned. This nandroid was going to fly all the way to Mars in a capsule? She thought of her own time on the flyby of Venus, and shuddered at the prospect of doing that without a larger space to move around in. The occupied nandroid gave no notice of Tilly while she floated there in the hatchway holding the all-important part, and after a minute the astrobot felt herself growing antsy. "I'm Tilly by the way, and you are?" she coaxed, a smile returning to her faceplate. The British nandroid didn't look up, pulling the last screw from the console and freeing the covering. "Tracey, and thank you for coming," she said formally, pulling the thin paneling off of the console and exposing a complex circuit board. Tilly stared at the machinery governing control of the spacecraft, realizing in sudden context how relatively simple these spacecraft were in comparison to herself and her fellow robots. Tracey imitated a polite cough and held out a gloved hand, looking at Tilly expectantly. "Oh! Right, sorry," Tilly apologized, and handed over the packaged component. Before Tracey could pull the faulty card from the board, the American nandroid spoke up again. "So! Ah, Mars? You'll be the first one to see it up close, huh?" Tilly asked awkwardly as Tracey turned to give her a strange look. Several seconds of silence passed before Tracey broke their locked gaze and went back to work. "It will be nice to get far away," she said, pulling the dead card from the console and letting it float over Tilly's shoulder out of the capsule. Frowning again, the American let go of the hatchway frame and floated freely with a loop of slack cable trailing behind her. "Is that all you're going for?" Tilly asked incredulously as Tracey held the freshly unpackaged card over the console's empty slot. Pausing only a moment, she wondered what the astrobot was getting at, then pressed downwards on the fresh component to lock it into place as she opened her mouth to answer.

>When the component routing the command to fire the engine had failed, the command had remained unfulfilled in the British capsule's simple computer. As the new component was connected, the jammed-up command was finally routed successfully, and both fuel and oxidizer rushed into the engine bell to combust with a sudden jolt. Tracey was thrown back against the rear of her capsule as the large third stage roared to life and rocketed the vessel forward. Tilly tumbled as soon as the acceleration began, narrowly missing the ignited plume of the British rocket as it roared passed her. The tether connecting the nandroid to her spacecraft wasn't so lucky, the slack material drifting for just a moment into the hot engine exhaust as it went by, burning through the link between pilot and vessel. Tracey's ship accelerated, the visible detail lost in seconds as it gained distance. Tilly spiraled slowly end over end, catching momentary glimpses of the Libra capsule getting further and further away from her as she struggled to keep up with her suddenly precarious predicament. CPU overclocking away she thought quickly, grabbing at the spare battery pack on her suit's belt and waiting for just the right moment while measuring her motion carefully. At the top of her next spin she threw the spare out from her to counteract the motion, bringing her to a near stop long enough to look outwards for her ride. Measuring her rotational force internally had been easy but measuring the growing distance between her and the shrinking vessel was not, and with each passing moment the barely-discernible tin can grew harder for her to see. Tilly gulped reflexively, and frantically began reviewing her options only to find the list entirely empty. "Hey!" she called out hopefully, suddenly feeling a familiar sickly dread. "Bonnie, are you there? Can you see me?" She waited several seconds, and two short bursts of static came back at her over the suit's short-distance radio. Tilly felt a numbing sensation creep up her spinal struts as her slowed spin took the distant dot of the Libra capsule from her sight and replaced it with a view of the Earth below her. For several moments Tilly did nothing but process the sight in high-fidelity, the rising panic of her situation melting away under the awe she couldn't help but experience. Each time that she'd looked down on the world from this angle, she had been inside a cramped cabin or tethered, floating from ship to ship. Now Tilly flew free over the Earth with nothing holding onto her, constrained only by the thin glass helmet over her head. Cloud systems, rain forests, deserts, mountain ranges and grasslands, multiple features and landscapes passed beneath her as simple wonder completely replaced her fear. Blinking suddenly in recognition, Tilly laughed once and pointed to nobody at the landmass beneath her, recognizing Asia and Mongolia in particular. Floating there doomed in low Earth orbit, she couldn't help but wonder what sort of day her steppe-based friend was having, and the thought made her laugh again. "Probably better than mine," she said to nobody, sighing at the ground beneath her with a smile. "I hope it's a good day down there, Ehri."

>Estimating a little over two hours of suit-battery remaining, Tilly didn't bother to entertain the notion that she'd be rescued. Launch and rendezvous, even if a second rocket was somehow launched now, would take many hours longer than she had left to reach her, even if the pointless expense were somehow justified. Breathing in the thin stray atmosphere in her helmet, Tilly stared down longingly as the smooth blue Pacific ocean rolled away beneath her. "Never got to see that up close," she said to herself softly with a little smile. Somehow the deep grief that had taken hold of her in times passed where her fate had been certain now struck her as more of a reserved acknowledgement, and the unencumbered last view she'd have of her home planet felt like a comforting consolation. Tilly wouldn't be shutting down grief-stricken in a tin can out in deep space, wouldn't be smashed to pieces on a failed landing, wouldn't freeze to sleep  alone on the moon. 'At least it wasn't Stress Testing,' the memory file from her first flight replayed, and Tilly laughed at herself. An internal check of her own battery read back to her as being at nearly full-charge, far outlasting the suit's heater battery. She sighed, and looked to her right as she saw the west coast of North America begin to poke out on the far horizon. Tilly didn't feel sad, as much as that struck her as strange all things considered, but did feel a sort of disappointment in having earned this anticlimactic ending after all she'd been through. Mars, the sudden longing she'd had to see the red planet up close tugged at her from within again, and it was enough to make her wince in spite of the gorgeous sights below. "At least Tracey will get to see it," she said to herself, watching as the coast rolled by beneath her and imagining what the British nandroid would see looking down at the red alien landscape. A harsh crackle of static rang out from the suit's radio, nearly scaring Tilly into a reboot. She froze and listened carefully for a few seconds before the sound rang out again. This time she could hear a voice buried in the noise, and suddenly felt her CPU overclocking again. "Hello?" Tilly called into the darkness.

>Bonnie had panicked when the British vessel's engine unexpectedly fired, severing Tilly's connection to the capsule and flinging her off into space. Finding herself suddenly alone and needing to make serious decisions without help, she'd nearly locked up trying to process all the different scenarios that her next choices might bring about. Mission Control had contacted her first, and after hearing the situation had paused for several minutes to deliberate while Bonnie sat in her capsule beside an empty seat. Unbuckling, she pulled herself towards the hatch and tugged at the now loose tether, wrapping it back up and stuffing it hurriedly into the compartment it had spooled from. Frowning at the burnt end of the line, she let it float beside her as she reluctantly closed the hatch. Waiting for ground control to make up their minds, Bonnie did her best to ignore the panic she was feeling, and busied herself instead with processing Tilly's trajectory as accurately as she could manage. As was the case with most of what she thought, she second-guessed herself and went over her figures in triplicate to convince herself that she was right before allowing herself any confidence. Looking at the control panel for a long moment Bonnie thought about each step that she'd practiced in the simulator back home, reminding herself that she'd done all of this before. Reaching up a gloved hand she grasped the reaction control system controls and took in a deep breath, prepared to be proactive for once. The radio snapped on, and the voice from mission control startled her as she was about to act. "Salus, we talked things over down here and we've got your orders: Rendezvous with a small target on an unknown orbit is considered impossible for you at this time, you will instead perform a deorbit burn on your next pass and make splashdown at your predefined landing zone, recovery ships are being dispatched now." Bonnie blinked. That was it? Come home and leave Tilly? She opened her mouth to reply but fell silent for several seconds, wondering why they wouldn't simply send her after Tilly. 'They don't think I can do it?' she asked herself silently. "Salus? Come in, are you receiving?" Bonnie pouted for a moment, then gave the console a stern look. Hands still on the RCS controls, she remained silent and pressed forward on the stick. Maneuvering the capsule to align with where Tilly had been flung, Bonnie dumped o2 from the valves to add enough velocity to catch up, careful to keep an optic on fuel levels and leave enough for the rendezvous. Mission control tried to raise her once per minute, and after several repeated callouts she wordlessly flicked off the speaker itself without answering. Despite being aided by mechanical precision and a photographic memory plotting Tilly's new orbit was still mostly guesswork, and as time passed she began to wonder if she'd ever spot the imperiled nandroid. 'Maybe they were right,' Bonnie thought to herself grimly. Looking back and forth through the glass porthole and radar, she thought she spotted something after a few more minutes of inspection. "Tilly? Are you there?" she called out over the short-range suit radio, hoping they were close enough now for it to work. After several seconds she repeated her call and waited again. Several more seconds went by, and Bonnie heard a short burst of static with an unmistakable voice buried within. Bonnie screamed once in joy before silencing herself, glad that there were no witnesses to her outburst in here.

>A few more static-laden messages between the two nandroids confirmed that they were close, and when Tilly scanned around in the direction she'd come from saw one point of light seeming to follow her projected . The point grew until she could see the familiar outline of the Libra capsule, and Tilly found herself move overcome with disbelief than any feelings of elation. Bonnie had come to the rescue? Bonnie the unsure rookie? She grinned and shook her head as the capsule came close enough to read the painted name and slowed with a burst of o2. "I didn't think they'd let you come back for me, not on a first flight," she said happily over the suit's radio as she watched the hatch open up to reveal her curly haired co-pilot. "W-well, I didn't exactly ask," she admitted sheepishly, gripping the spare battery pack for her suit that she'd tied to the end of the burnt tether. Tilly laughed, and Bonnie gave the tethered battery a shove in her direction. After several seconds which felt stretched into minutes, the tether floated straight into Tilly's outstretched hand and she gripped it tightly. Both nandroids cheered spontaneously, then laughed at their parallel expressions of joy. Bonnie pulled gently on the tether and began spooling the slack back up carefully as Tilly was maneuvered back to the capsule. When the last few feet of line were in, Tilly grabbed onto the hatchway as Bonnie floated inside, gave one look back out over her shoulder and quickly pulled herself inside with a happy sigh. "I owe you one," Tilly said sincerely, pulling herself down into her seat and hurriedly belting herself down before reaching to shut the hatch behind her. She didn't quite know what humans felt when dopamine and adrenaline were manufactured and dispersed through their bodies, but what she felt now was unknowingly analogous to the undefinable sensation. Bonnie beamed at her before taking her own seat and looking passed her at the porthole. "You would have come after me, wouldn't you?" she asked without really thinking about it, somehow knowing the answer even as she spoke. Tilly gave her a sidelong glance and smirked. "Oh definitely, wouldn't have asked permission either." Bonnie blinked and quickly looked down at the radio controls in realization, the link to mission control still closed. Cheeks flashed red and she turned to look at Tilly with worry written across her faceplate. "I didn't ask permission! Tilly, they said to come back down and I didn't answer them and, oh what am I going to tell them? I-" she didn't get a chance to finish as Tilly cut her off, shrugging. "Looks to me like you left the radio off by mistake, you must not have been able to hear that last order huh?" Bonnie gaped at her incredulously, processing for a moment whether or not the senior pilot was making a joke. Slowly realizing the implications of Tilly's suggestion, of the very notion that they could lie, Bonnie's voice shrank to a whisper. "We can DO that?"


EPILOGUE

>With the twins sleeping soundly in their beds, Tatyana quietly closed the bedroom door behind her as she exited their room. The household was winding down for the evening, with one stubborn exception. Creeping quietly down the hallway towards the Master's study, the Russian robot stopped at the closed door and stared down at the light glowing from underneath. Should she alert him to the hour growing late? It was not unusual for the old man to fall asleep at his desk and require rousting by Tatyana to see him off to bed proper, but tonight he'd had company and neither of the men had emerged from the room for hours. Without really meaning to, she strained her audio receptors to hear what conversation lie behind the closed door, and began picking up the voices of the men. "She's the only robot I know that I could entrust such a mission to," her Master was saying quietly, though his voice sounded reserved. "Then can she do it? Moscow needs to know, the treaty exemption lives or dies on whether or not your machine can be entrusted to gather intelligence on the vehicle, and if she can bring it back with her from Mars. Can your robot do that, Commandant?" the voice of the visitor called out in a challenging tone, and her Master took several seconds to answer. "Yes, she can do this." Tatyana felt an unfamiliar chill run up her spinal struts, unsure of why but unmistakably unsettled by it. "Good!" The sound of two glasses clinking together was followed by the curious tone of the Commandant. "To Mars with the Americans then, on their fascinating new spaceship."