Chapter 16

Welcome to my little corner of the interworldwebz! No job too big or small. I'll drop it, lock it, pack it in or load it out, and my bite's as bad as my bark. Watch this space for more adventures!

~ First glog post attributed to Fionn

Pouting only lasted about an hour. Pit grew bored of listening to his tail swish across the heavy plastic, and the dark, quiet cave of his box grew inviting instead of humiliating. Eventually, he heaved to his feet, whirled in three successive circles, and plopped down again, asleep almost immediately.

A grinding sound from one of the engines brought him out of a restless dream. His HUD told him he'd slept for about six hours, late into a Certainty standard night cycle. He raised his head and listened hard, outwardly focusing all of his senses, both natural and enhanced. After a moment, he realized he was hearing nothing, and that's why it was so strange. Certainty didn't seem like the type of ship that could fly on zero power.

The lights were still on and Ravenna wasn't in her crate, so Pit took the silence as permission enough to chance a private tour of the ship. He pressed his cheek against the right-hand wall, satisfied to see he left a trail of drool on his quest to thoroughly smell everything on board. Every two meters or so, a bulge in the wall would push his head out a few inches and the wall would warm slightly against his cheek, but otherwise his path around Certainty was unobstructed.

Certainty's interior didn't include many features of note other than the deceptive blacker-than-black surfaces. Pit sniffed his way through many small, odd-shaped closets with boring supplies: medical products, small replacement parts for the ship, equipment for water landings. He snuffled through several waste rooms, some meant for humans, others for bags of garbage, and one of a more canine nature. He left the latter in a hurry, unwilling and not yet forced to accept that part of his new reality.

The sound of Horus's nails click-clacking on the floor haunted him as he went.

He came to several closed doors. A thorough olfactory investigation led him to believe they were bedrooms or private studies. They smelled very strongly of Fionn and heavy masculine emissions. Pit left these alone in an even greater hurry.

He avoided the bridge entirely.

He sniffed the lengths of the long hallways, trying to ascertain how all of the seemingly wasted space was used. His engineer-brain kicked in and ticked off possibilities: secret storage, a weird waste system, a weird heating or cooling system, or a second story. Or secret passageways, perhaps. He tossed his big head, then went back to smearing his cheek on the right-hand wall.

A shock of electricity passed without warning through the wall, down the dangling trail of spit, and into his face. Pit shot straight up into the air, his fur standing on end and his limbs stiffening instantly. He crashed down hard on the side of his face and lay stunned for a moment, his brain and HUD firing coordinated light shows.

When his vision finally cleared, Pit raised his wobbly head and stared at the spot on the wall where his saliva abruptly stopped. Impossibly, the pitch-black wall blinked brightly in the same place, like a single eye winking at him.

Pit narrowed his eyes at the light. His paws ached as if he'd stepped on a bed of needles a few hours before, or sat on them until they'd fallen asleep. His HUD had finally reengaged, and he mentally flipped through performance logs to try and figure out what the hell had shocked him.

"Godsdamn bugs," someone said as he was pulling up records of contact points with outside objects.

Pit swiveled and rolled, lumbering to his feet to face Ravenna. She was staring at that spot on the wall, her look one of pure disgust.

"I hate bugs," she said without looking at him. "I hate them so much. I have chased them up and down this ship and eliminated almost every single one of them, but this one-this one is a persistent fuck."

Hearing the word in Ravenna's refined, imperious voice almost made Pit laugh before he remembered the rift between himself and present company. He set his brow into a glare instead. "Bugs? Insects, or-"

"Software bugs," Ravenna said with a long-suffering sigh. "Certainty runs on a number of programs, several of which are...pioneering. Unsanctioned. Not exactly thoroughly tested. So sometimes there is a system malfunction, or something slightly less malicious, like this thing."

Pit raised his front paw and rubbed at his cheek. It still burned from the shock. "This thing isn't malicious?"

Ravenna turned her dark gaze on him. "To be blunt, had it wanted to, the bug could have triggered a pulse in the security walls that would have burned you to an unrecognizable crisp. No. It is not malicious. It is mischievous."

Both daugments stared at the light for a while.

"Can we get rid of it?" Pit asked.

Ravenna narrowed one eye to a slit. "Hmm. I have tried a significant number of fixes, restoration points, and work-arounds, but this bug is more resilient than most. However..." Her soft tail rose and whisked curiously back and forth, just once. "All of my fixes so far have been one-woman jobs. Perhaps..." She regarded Pit with the same one-eyed stare. "There may be something we can both do."

"What about Fionn?" Pit asked.

"We are in orbit around Miranda. Didn't you hear the announcement two hours ago?" Her tail went back between her legs. "Fionn went down by himself to visit the terminally ill children. And take pictures."

"I-ah. That makes sense." Pit wanted badly to scratch his ear, but wasn't sure of the canine protocol around conversing and scratching. "I actually meant, what about Fionn to help you get rid of the bug?"

"Ah, of course, my misunderstanding." Ravenna swept her forepaw in front of her in a grand gesture. "Fionn would, of course, be willing to assist me, but he is unable. We have to catch this in a web of its own material so it cannot pass through and therefore cannot escape. That means interfacing with Certainty directly, both of us at once."

Pit could have sworn she smirked wickedly at her own words.

He shuddered, the idea of plugging in to yet another foreign body nauseating him. "I'd rather not-" He swallowed hard, and tried to think of what he would have done in his own skin. You'd godsdamn well try, that's what you'd do. "What exactly does interfacing look like?"