James' quarters aren't actually very close to mine. I'm not sure how I'm going to justify getting in there with the Shipmind watching my every move, but the first step at least is getting out of medical. I stride out, hoping that nobody stops me, but apparently the Shipmind is still leaving me alone.
I start pacing the halls, letting my feet decide where to take me. James was never someone I knew terribly well, although I'd seen him a lot in engineering. It's actually kind of alarming that he has some kind of terrible anti-SFC half-bioweapon on board the ship. Maybe it's just the blueprints? But that leaves me with the problem of how to fabricate the damn thing if I get them. The matter-transposer could do it, I'm sure, but the Shipmind would surely figure out what I was up to almost immediately. Maybe I could bypass it? Put the command in the buffers and then sever the connection to the ship's computers? That could work... unless the fabrication took too long, in which case they could send an actual body to stop it. Ugh, I'm going around in circles. Before I can make any real plans, I need to get access to James' quarters.
The elevator door opens, and I find that my feet have taken me to the bridge. The big central screen shows a static field of stars, and without the engines up and running, it's strangely quiet.
But not abandoned. Lilly, or something wearing her skin, is here, in the other helm position. She's folded her arms in front of her and propped her head on top of them, staring off into the screen. It's such a fundamentally Lilly position that for a moment I forget it's not her, until I cross the room and see the glow in their eyes. They must have heard me come in, because they say (in that kind of squished way that happens when you're trying to talk with your face smushed), "Sorry, Lieutenant Declan. There's not a lot of places you can go on the ship without running into us."
I slide into the other helm chair, lock the console, and fold my own arms on it. They watch me for a moment, then go back to staring at the screen. I stare with them.
"So, you really haven't gotten the hyperdrive working again."
"Nope."
"You... did try, though, right?"
"Yeah. Our mission says we're supposed to explore the cosmos, not get stuck in a random point in the middle of nowhere."
"So... you're still loyal to the SFC?"
"We all took the oath, Lieutenant. That doesn't change just because we're more than we used to be."
I shrug. "Color me skeptical."
They make a frustrated noise, just like Lilly does when I'm being stubborn. "We know! We know we need to be patient with you, and convince you that we're not some big scary thing, but scarlassian devilfruit, you're not easy to convince!"
I have never, ever, in my entire life, heard anybody but Lilly use the phrase "scarlassian devilfruit." My heart does a sort of somersault as I turn to look at her, and then it all sours as they gaze back at me with those glowing eyes.
"Why do you do that? Keep throwing little pieces of the people I know back at me? It's not helping your case, I'm not going to fall for that shit." I try to avoid snarling, but I don't think I succeed very well.
They sigh, a drawn-out, miserable, defeated sound. "It's like... muscle memory. We're all present everywhere, but individual bodies and brains have certain habits just trained into them. We could have the Ensign Replidas body do all the work that Chief Engineer Braddock used to do, but Braddock's body remembers where everything is more easily. Same thing for speech habits, vocal tics, favorite foods, preferences... it makes sense, kinda, but we don't understand it for certain." They let their head flop down onto their hands. "It's why we keep Lilly's body up here. We love the stars. We want to explore! We don't think we're as good as you are at navigating, but we want to be ready if we can get going again."
Flattery? "Come on. The expertise of the entire crew and you don't think you're as good as I am?"
"Yeah." The quick, completely genuine answer catches me off guard. "There's no replacing individual talent and training for this kind of thing. No one person on this ship could have matched your skill before we came along - having all of us work together, even with our ability to prevent the too many cooks in the kitchen problem, still wouldn't be as good as you are. It's one of the reasons we really want you to join us."
"That, and my ability to remember the codes that unlock the hyperdrive," I say, wryly.
"Ugh, why are you so- you don't even have to join us for that! You could unlock it right now and we could just continue our mission!" They fling their arms out in exasperation.
And they'd have access to countless inhabited worlds, says the voice in the back of my head. "Nothing doing," I say out loud.
They fold their arms and lay their head down sideways on them again. "Besides," they mutter, petulantly, "that's not the only reason we want you with us."
"Yeah, yeah, Lieutenant Grelik wants my bones, I've heard."
They pound their hands on the console and stand up to face me. "It's not just Grelik! It's... do you know how long Lilly had a crush on you?"
I look up at them, frozen by the sudden admission as much as the strangeness of Lilly's body talking about Lilly like she isn't there. "What?"
"She thought you were so cool, the way you fly, the way you never break a sweat, the way you smiled at her-" they're blushing now, but keep barreling through. "And it's not just Lilly either! Starille kept waiting for you to ask her to kiss you every time you invited her over to play Astral Kart! She thought you were shy! She thought you were adorable!"
I blush. The thought had crossed my mind more than once, but I hadn't wanted to complicate our relationship.
"Why do you think you keep seeing the people you care about in different bodies? It's because we like you, and we want to still be with you! The body doesn't matter!" They turn away from me, fists clenching. "Even beyond romance! The Captain trusted you with her life! Braddock always appreciated how much respect you show engineering! Most helmspeople don't, ya know!" their accent slips, briefly, into the Chief Engineer's brogue, strange on Lilly's tongue. She whirls back to face me. "Damn it, Sarah, we care about you! We wish you believed us." They shock me again by storming off the bridge and onto the elevator.
You know, if they're avoiding you, now's the perfect time to sneak into James' quarters and get that datapad, says the voice in my head.
"Oh, shut up," I say out loud, my face pink.
