Battery

     Battery was an exceptional crewmate. She always did her tasks on time and beyond, and kept her spaces pristine. Every gun was cleaned, every blade recharged. When the captain needed help at odd hours of the recharge cycle, she was the first to take up the job. Aside from, perhaps, his conjux. That was a given. Those two were so affectionate. Call her old-fashioned, but Battery found it disgusting. 

     Tonight was an odd one. An anomaly had been detected in deep space dead ahead of the Bisector’s route, and Echo needed an extra processor to determine if it was dangerous enough to waste the fuel going around. It was.

     After concluding their course of action, they spent the rest of their time rerouting and re-navigating, before it was safe to go back to recharge. Shrapnel and a couple others would be up if anything went wrong. By the time they were done, it had all been resolved in a mere few hours.

     “Thanks, uh-- thank you,” Echo stammered.

     Battery sighed. “Just call me Battery, captain. I don’t care, it doesn’t offend me, cross my spark.”

     The captain sucked in a breath. It made her metal prickle. She hated that he always had to act so offended on her behalf. 

     “I’m-- I’m just not comfortable with it. You know that.”

     “And you know that that’s my name. What the hell else are you going to call me, anyway? What if we’re on the field and you need my attention, huh? Going to try ‘hey, you’ maybe?” She bristled, turning to face him fully. 

     “I know it’s not your name. I might be one of the only ones on this ship that knows what that means. I’m not going to call you that, okay? I can’t.” Echo let his words linger before thinking twice about them. “End of discussion.”

     Echo then began to leave. Battery wasn’t going to let him get away with that, though. Not on this one.

     “No, captain, I don’t think it is.”

     “Please--”

     “Listen!” Battery stomped her pede. “Quite frankly, Echo, I don’t care what you think about it! Battery is the name I choose to call myself. You think I don’t know why I was called that before? You really think I’m that ignorant?”

     “Of course I don’t--”

     “Then you’ll use my name! You want to make it up to me so bad for being a Disposable, Echo? Then just call me what I want to be called!” 

     It was often hard to read Echo, his body language was always reserved and his face covered by a mask. However, the way his dome tilted down and his movements stilled, Battery knew that the captain wasn’t happy. Even still, Battery didn’t care.

     “I’m sorry,” he said, before following through with his earlier escape. 

     Battery huffed in frustration. The now-empty navigation room left her with familiar whispers that she was too mean, too cruel. They reminded her of the way she felt empty when she failed again and again to connect with any of her crewmates. But why should she have felt bad for that? Was it so wrong for her to want to be called by her name? Of all things she could choose to stubbornly care about, was her name really that bad? No. No, if there was one thing Battery resolved to keep true to now, it was that she had agency, and she would protect that.

     And what of the end of the war, the whispers asked, what then? Battery walked over to sit in front of the massive windows that drew a line between her and the sprawl of outer space. She thought about how alone on the Bisector she was. She thought about Voidstorm. She remembered that she couldn’t care about much anymore.