Ebun is agitated.
She is hiding it well, as she always does. She stands straight with her feet slightly apart, hands clasped behind her back, eyes gazing straight ahead at the reception doors that make up the outermost entrance of the cave network. Even her coils remain their neutral purple on her head, betraying no sign of unease. To the outside, she is merely a leader waiting patiently to receive her troops. Lucas feels something like pride swell in his chest cavity at her outward level-headedness despite her distress.
Not pride, he corrects himself. Approval. Pride is an organic emotion, human or otherwise. It's private. Androids don't have the capacity for private emotions. They exist to serve, and have no business entertaining the concept of privacy.
If it weren't for the 24-hour diagnostic biometric scan constantly tracking Ebun's mental and physical state, he would have no idea of her stress. Said scan suddenly pings him. She's in pain. He prompts the scan to localize the source. She is digging her fingers into her wrist so hard that she'd be drawing blood if not for her sweater sleeve. This is more than her normal worry for her troops, Lucas realizes. Something is wrong.
The scattered med techs and other receiving personnel lounging in the large basement are none the wiser. Lucas commands the abridged mission report filed by Ebun's Co-Head Nike to filter across his vision.
"Mission success! We got into a couple skirmishes on the way there, but we managed to snag their calendar and all their data on The Event. They never knew we were there. Crew status: no casualties, minimal injuries."
He sees no reason for concern until the loadout concludes that one of the three JEEPs in the convoy is currently making its way back on autopilot, which is… odd. Autopilot is typically used to send out an empty decoy vehicle for the enemy to shoot at. It's against protocol to use it when ETA is less than five minutes because of the tricky terrain leading up to the base. Even stranger is that the offending vehicle belongs to Nike and not one of her "newbie underlings," as she calls them. As much as she likes to use her status as Ebun's co-Head to get away with questionable things, even she knows better.
Her voice is also absent from the comms. On any other convoy, this would be fine. Nike, however, likes to give her unabridged report over the radio on the way back, claiming it saves time. Perhaps Ebun does have reason to be concerned.
"Get ready to be busy," Lucas murmurs to some nearby med techs. They stand at the source of his voice. One of them, a young Kova alien new to her job, frowns.
"Why?" she asks, concerned. "They said minimal injuries."
Lucas shakes his head in lieu of an explanation. The giant rock doors at the front of the room slowly begin to part and retreat into the walls. The third JEEP in the convoy, Nike's, has barely come to a stop before Ebun is stalking over to it. Lucas follows in her wake. Her coils finally betray her annoyance, threatening to break the hair tie's hold on them as they slowly warp to dark red. His hearing picks up her muttering mutinously about "breaking protocol" and "unauthorized use of autopilot." He chuckles despite himself, his programming dictating amusement at her actions.
The driver's side door opens, accompanied by a foreboding lack of Nike's characteristic chattering as she slowly swings her legs out. Lucas's smile fades at the sight of shaking hands and crimson painting her side. She takes one step out of the car and promptly collapses.
Ebun grants herself a very short "breakdown" every so often, when she sits silently and allows herself to feel everything she'd repressed for the sake of looking unphased for her troops. That day's breakdown was spent by Nike's bedside, gripping her hand and praying to one of the planet Kova's gods of healing. Ebun is not a religious individual by any means, but the habit of praying in times of trouble is no doubt passed down from her alien mother.
Lucas's processors hummed with uncertainty. One section of his coding demanded him leave the room, a phantom of his wife's preset voice commands reminding him that prayer is a private affair. Another urged him to move closer, pushing to comfort Ebun with a hug or some other physical contact. It's always uncomfortable when commands conflict, but the only person that has the authority to pick one over the other is currently grieving her injured Co-Head.
Ebun finally, gingerly, places Nike's hand back on the blanket. Upon noticing Lucas hovering in the doorway, she appears to steel herself. She breezes past him and starts for the strategy meeting beginning in a nearby conference room.
"What of the information recovered from the mission?" she asks. Just like that, it's back to business as usual.
"War waits for no one, and Nike is no exception," Ebun snaps, not glancing up from the stack of maps on her desk. She's been burying her pain under strategy meetings, paperwork, and over-extensive planning. The coping mechanism, while productive in her eyes, is only hurting her further.
"It's been a week since you last saw her, Ebun, I'm sure you can afford to spend a few minutes with her."
"And is that your professional opinion or your 'fatherly advice'?"
Lucas pauses, taken aback by the question. Dozens of responses present themselves, before he finally, tentatively, settles on: "Why can't it be both?"
"Because you're not actually my father, LKA5. Despite my mother's intentions, you're a mere copy of a man long dead, and I would appreciate if you stopped trying to be him. Leave me at once."
His lie detector informs him that she doesn't actually mean the words, that she only meant to drive him away so she could be alone. They still… hurt. Oddly enough. A bug in his programming, then, another organic emotion trying to make itself known in his core. She's right after all. He's only an android, a cheap copy of a human he could never hope to be. Bitan created him to replace the man she and Ebun lost, but she created him in a world that would never see him as the same. The human race barely sees the Kova as beings deserving of life, let alone an android.
He obeys Ebun and leaves the room, making a mental note to stop by Nike's lab so she can diagnose the problem of these pseudo-organic emotions. Then he remembers she won't be in her lab for a while.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
