Akemi’s brain had only been installed on the alien space station for a few months, but she was already having a blast with it.

For instance, she’d recently realized she could wink her lights at people on Earth when they waved at her. Only a few people knew about it to begin with, but word was getting around. More than a hundred people had now waited on their roof or their front lawn and watched the blip of light sail across the sky, and (wondering if their friends were only having a good laugh at them) they'd waved. And Akemi, who could now process all kinds of satellite data simultaneously, made sure to wink at them in appreciation.

Only weeks ago Akemi had been just another Japanese girl living in the preserved section of New Tokyo, but now she was cutting-edge, alien technology. She’d even begun hosting the first alien fashion blog, as she got to see all the visiting aliens when they came to the station.

The Spo space station had been orbiting Earth for nearly seven years before she ended up with it, of course, but humans hadn’t paid much attention to it until now.

At first, of course, Akemi and the rest of humanity was far too occupied by the cataclysmic explosion of the Large Hadron Collider, and the alien invasion that followed, to give more than a cursory look at the sky - except to note its changing hue as the dust of northern Europe entered the stratosphere.

In the next few years, Akemi and her family had more important things to think about, as the Spo aliens ruthlessly took control of the planet and occasionally (against vigorous outcry) conscripted groups of young people for training on their homeworld. They would have taken Akemi, but she was too ill and they took her sister instead.

Ironically, it was when the humans won their sentience trial and her sister was finally home that Akemi lost her frail body and was installed in the Spo space station.

And sadly, the secret of her new existence was still so little known that no eyes were turned towards her when she streaked across the sky for the final time, blazing with enemy fire.

***

The escape pods burst out of Akemi’s skin like boils, and smoke roiled through her halls, blinding her view from the cameras.

She frantically monitored water systems and airlocks, trying to isolate the fire from the few people still aboard; but so much of the space station had been damaged in the initial explosion that her options were limited. Most of the station’s protections were automatic as well, so there was little to do but watch and wait. The station’s heat censors (which usually would tell her where people were located, by body heat) were overloaded with fire, and told her nothing. The video monitors were obscured by smoke, so all she had were the escape pod records to calculate how many aliens and humans should be left. So far there were 21 of 22 pods away, and nearly 150 souls accounted for. But the two souls she cared about the most were still on the space station. Nat and Sam were trying to get to Akemi before the biobank computer that housed what was left of Akemi’s brain went up in flames. Nat was Akemi’s older sister, and sadly this wasn’t the first time she’d had to risk her life to save her little sister.

Akemi knew they were coming for her because she had a direct link to their computerized glasses, and from the tiny camera embedded in the frame she could see that they were both still stumbling through the smoke filled halls.

She couldn’t see much else, but she knew they were getting near the engine room, where the computer that housed her brain was located. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of Nat’s ashy face when Sam glanced at her, but that was all she could see. Now she heard Sam’s hacking cough over the whine of warping plastic and the wail of alarms.

Are you breathing through your shirt? Stay low.Akemi put the words in the heads up display on Sam's glasses where they transparently overlaid his vision.

“I know, I am low,” he said. But she saw him crouch lower still and put a hand on Nat’s back to push her lower as well. “We’re almost there. Don’t let the last pod go,” he added.

Akemi wouldn’t. Half her attention was on that last escape pod. There were four people on board already, she wasn’t sure who, and they were pounding on the release button. It was like a fingernail on a chalkboard – release, release, release – scratching each time they whacked the button. But the pod wasn’t going anywhere yet, she’d put an override hold on it. Whoever was inside surely thought it was broken, and must be panicking. Unfortunately there wasn’t a computer display in the pod, so Akemi couldn’t explain to them why it wasn’t responding.

She felt bad for their undoubted terror, but there were two more people to get on that escape pod (three counting her), and there was no way she was letting it go without them. And, not to be selfish, but she didn’t want to die here either.

Just then Sam and Nat came out of the thickest smoke, and Akemi got a better view. They were at the engine room. They stumbled across the room to the biobank, the portion of the computer that connected to the biological operating system (in this case, her brain). It had a small door, like a microwave oven, and Sam jerked it open.

WAIT WAIT! Akemi shouted into his glasses. When you take me out I'll be disconnected from you.

I’ll leave the hold on the escape pod, but you have to know how to release it...

Akemi told them both exactly what command to use, once they reached the escape capsule.

THAT’S IT. HOPE THIS WORKS... :-/

Akemi knew she could still exist without connection to a computer. It had happened twice now, and she’d stayed aware the whole time. However, both those times the shutdown had been done carefully, with a slow, sequential process. There was no time for that now, and Sam unceremoniously yanked the spherical biobank out of its sophisticated housing.

Akemi felt a flash of nerve tingling pain. If she’d had a mouth she might have cried out. With a sizzle and a flash of light, she lost consciousness.

***

星

Moon. I see the moon.

Akemi slowly became aware again, like a computer rebooting without enough RAM to hold its whole operating system.

For some reason, the only thing that filled her muddled mind was a poem.

Holding back the night

with its increasing brilliance

the summer moon.

Earth orbit, she finally thought. The space station ejected us in a stable earth orbit, roughly a fourth of the way between Earth and the moon’s orbit. She realized with a shiver of unease that the poem in her mind was a jisei, a death poem, by one of her mother’s favorite artists.

“Akemi, can you hear me?” Nat’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“Is she responding to you?” Sam’s voice. “I’m not getting anything.”

“- and why in hell you had the gall to hold my escape pod? I could have you court marshaled for risking the lives of everyone on this pod, and yourselves too, just to retrieve a computer!” An angry voice.

“Oh, shut up.” That was Sam again.

It’s laright. Alright. I’m here. Akemi sent the message to their display.

“Akemi, please respond if you hear us.” Nat was starting to sound frantic.

Can’t you see this? I’m fien. Fine.

From the camera on Nat’s glasses, Akemi could see Sam fiddling with a large black sphere the size of a basketball. There were thin power cords running from it to the capsule’s rudimentary computer system. Sam held up the sphere to look on the bottom, running his fingers over several small inlets there.

“It doesn’t look damaged,” he said.

Her brain was in there. For all intents and purposes, that black ball was her. Unbelievably creepy. She knew it, of course, but being joined with a ship or space station was one thing. Seeing the tiny container holding the remains of her real body...

You can’t see my words?

But Akemi realized what was wrong. The capsule computer was extremely simple. It could hold them in a stable orbit until it got within proximity of a Spo ship. Then the capsule computer would automatically slave itself to the ship, which would handle docking and extraction of passengers.

In other words, she was lucky she could think at all, or receive anything from their glasses. She certainly didn’t have the capacity to send data to them.

She was trapped. That was unfortunate, but once a real ship picked them up, she’d be able to explain.

Nat was running her hands over the cords, probably checking for breaks. “I don’t know. I don’t want to unplug and replug her more than I have to. It could cause errors.”

Errors, indeed.

Angry voice again, "I don’t appreciate you mucking around with the controls! How do I know you won’t make our capsule spin into the sun?”

Sam and Nat both finally looked at the man, and Akemi saw that it was Senator Fontley – one of the newly elected representatives of humanity. He took himself very seriously, and had already rubbed up badly against Sam and the Spo. He didn’t look very imposing at the moment, with his clothes thrown on in the middle of the night and his knees black with soot from crawling through the halls.

Sam rolled his eyes. “We can’t spin into the sun; it’s hundreds of thousands of miles away. If we spin into anything, it’ll be the Earth.”

The Senator’s hand twitched, like it was just itching to slap someone. “Well, then –”

“We won’t do that either,” Sam said firmly. His voice was still rough from the smoke. “This capsule couldn’t go off course if it tried. We’re trying to save our friend, so if you could give us a minute– ”

“Watch it, Sam. The Spo may think you’re an adult, but you’re not. This only proves my point...” He went on, but Sam and Nat had turned away from him.

There were three other Spo with them in the capsule. Akemi recognized one of them as a kind of handyman on the space station, the other two she didn’t know. They were visiting the space station from the Spo planet and didn’t speak English.

Sam had come to the same conclusion. He spoke in Spo, briefly. “I apologize for delaying the capsule. It is our responsibility to preserve this computer. Our capsule should be retrieved as soon as possible.”

They flushed a neutral gray. “We understand,” said the oldest Spo. He gestured to Nat and the sphere. “Responsibility calls.”

Nat had taken off her glasses and was examining them.

Sam was fiddling with the ports in the wall of the capsule. “I think I should rewire her to this port. See this here? It should have at least half again as much capacity... I should have thought of that originally, but I didn’t. That might work.”

Akemi did not want him to rewire anything. She still felt rattled from the last cold shut down, and if he did it again she might be seriously compromised. But she had no way to tell him to leave it alone.

Almost all the equipment in their glasses was for her to monitor them – she could see their temperature, their head and eye movement, speed (if they were in a car or something), and of course, see everything they saw. The only way she communicated with them was with the data display - and she couldn’t use that.

Oh, she mentally kicked herself, except for the anti-theft protocol. She could overheat the glasses so that they would burn whoever tried to wear them without permission.

Sam’s glasses were still on his face, so she focused on Nat, who was holding hers in her hand. Normally Akemi’s output to the glasses was as easy as talking, but now she had to focus. The capsule computer was so slow. She painfully made the connection to Nat’s glasses and sent the heating command.

Nothing happened.

Nat frowned and put her glasses back on her nose.

Even in Akemi’s weakened state she felt a flare of pride at the glasses she’d chosen. They were designer frames, and they looked incredible on Nat, highlighting her high cheekbones and perfect Japanese facial structure.

“Ow!” Nat flung her head forward and the glasses flew across the capsule. Akemi got a whirling view from that camera.

“What happened? Are you alright?” Sam was bending over Nat whose hands covered her face.

“What is it?” the Senator said.

“Injury? Assistance?” from the Spo.

Shoot, shoot, shoot! Akemi had never tried the anti-theft device before (which now seemed like a major oversight), and now she’d burned her sister.

Nat sat back, touching her nose gingerly with her fingers. “It’s fine. Ow. Yeah, it’s okay.”

From the camera on Sam’s glasses, now very close to Nat’s face, Akemi could see a ridge of red across Nat’s nose, and two red ovals on each side from the nose-piece. The skin around her eyes was tight and pink, like a bad sunburn, and the whites of her eyes were a little bloodshot.

Nat started to laugh with relief. “Seriously, Akemi! Watch it. That might leave a mark.”

Sam took a second.

“Oh. Anti-theft. Well, I guess we know she’s okay.” He laughed somewhat shakily. “That was unnerving."

Sam relaxed for the first time since they’d gotten in the pod, leaning his head back against the wall and rubbing his eyes. He tried to stretch out his legs, but the center of the capsule was largely taken up with all the Spo legs. Each Spo had four legs, like a praying mantis, and in close quarters that made for a lot of limbs.

Nat quietly explained to the Spo what had happened.

Sam tapped his own glasses. "Akemi, I gather you can’t send data at the moment? No need to reply. We’ll get you all ship shape as soon as possible. I’ll have them bring a mobile unit to the capsule, and we’ll make sure you’re squared away with that one before unplugging you here.”

Nat’s glasses were still on the floor, so Sam leaned over and touched the edge with his finger. “Just warm now.” He handed them back to Nat who folded them up and slipped them in her shirt pocket.

“No offense, Akemi,” she said. “My nose is a little sore.”

Sam looked at Senator Fontley, who was staring at them.

“She’s not alive anymore,” Senator Fontley said. “That’s a hunk of meat in that black ball. You can pretend otherwise, but it only shows that you deal better with wishes than reality.”

Nat frowned. “There’s no need to be rude. I know you were frightened, but we all made it off the space station. She’s a valuable computer, you should be glad we salvaged her.”

He smiled unpleasantly. “It’s not a she. It’s a thing, and I’m not convinced that it’s safe. It came from alien scientists, and you blindly believe it’s your sister. Frankly, I would have been happy to see it burn.”

Sam sighed and rubbed his eyes again. “I won’t say this again, and I only say it now to clarify for the final time – neither you nor the Human Coalition Committee have the authority to tell us what to do with the computer. It is technically Spo property, and they have leased it to us personally. Plus, you don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about.” Sam took a deep breath. “However, as we’ve agreed before, I’ll try not to undermine you in public if you’ll keep that in mind.”

The three Spo looked on with interest and one was flushed with a color of amusement. That one clearly spoke English, Akemi thought.

***

They were picked up less than two hours later by a rescue ship, just as Nat had repeatedly assured the Senator would happen. They were treated for smoke inhalation and minor burns, questioned exhaustively, and eventually Nat was allowed to shower and change out of her uniform that still reeked with smoke.

When she was clean, Nat put on an ill-fitting uniform that had been found for her, moving slowly and deliberately as she adjusted each button. This was the time when shock might set in, and she needed to stay alert and sharp. Her chest ached with every breath and occasionally an explosive cough ripped its way out. That was a small price to pay for surviving the explosion, though. When she'd first felt the shock of the explosions tearing through the space station, she'd been jolted out of a deep sleep. It had only taken moments for her to process what might have happened, and by then Akemi was commanding an evacuation.

Nat shivered at the memory, and used one of the rough Spo towels to dry her dripping hair before it drenched the back of her uniform. When she'd realized the space station was going, Nat's first thought had been to get to Akemi.

She'd stumbled into the loud, smoky hall and only made it a few feet before Sam flew around the corner. His black eyes looked wild until he saw her.

"I was afraid you were caught in the first explosion," he yelled over the blaring alarm. "Let's go."

"Akemi! We have to get her!"

He hadn't argued with her. He probably realized at once that there was no way she would leave without her sister. That frantic scramble to the engine room and then to the escape pod had been the most awful twenty minutes of her life. And that was saying something. The station had burned with a ferocity that amazed her.

Someone knocked at the door and Nat jumped out of her painful reverie. "Who is it?"

"It's me," Sam said. He opened the door, and slipped inside, letting the door slide shut behind him.

He also wore a badly fitted uniform. It stopped several inches short of his ankles and wrists, and he'd left it unbuttoned around his neck. Sam's hair was growing back from when it had been shaved several months before, and it was finally starting to lie down on his head instead of standing straight up.

She and Sam had been working closely together since the trial, but they'd had very few private conversations. They talked constantly about humanity's future, the Rik's future, and the cadets' future, but never theirs. They’d been in countless meetings and press conferences and negotiations. But they hadn't had a real conversation about themselves.

That first day she'd been so relieved the trial was successfully over, she didn't even mind that she had no time to talk to Sam.

She’d been whisked away to the Spo medical quarters as soon as the trial was over. A failed Rik procedure, a desperate fight, and oxygen deprivation had not left her in good shape. Plus, the Spo had wanted to do quite a few diagnostics, to make sure the Rik hadn't irrevocably screwed up her brain when they tried to take her body. Her time in the infirmary stretched out and then Sam had had to go back to Earth to calm the situation, and she'd needed to stay with Akemi in the space station...

What with one thing and another, it had been two weeks before they really got to see each other, and when they did meet again, there were twelve Spo, three Rik, and thirty members of the press there as well. Not exactly a private reunion.

She had been alone with him since then, but there'd been a restraint between them. He'd been friendly, and he'd been available, but he hadn't tried to be more. Nat had wondered if he was waiting for her, or if he wasn't sure of his feelings anymore.

When she'd seen him fly around the corner of the burning space station, panic on his face.... But that brought her mind back to the explosion and the fire, and Nat tensed up again.

"Come here," Sam said, and gently pulled Nat into a hug.