Estrella De Asís
Copyright© 2025 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 25
Atlantic Ocean, 300 nautical miles off the coast of Africa.
The next day and a half flew past in a blur of disciplined urgency. The dive center, normally a buzz of controlled routine, transformed into a hive of focused preparation. Every component — every gauge, hose, sensor, and tank — had to be verified, tested, and re-tested. The mission ahead allowed for no margin of error. Whether we would be recovering the stolen uranium containers from the sunken storage pod, or — in the event of compromise — executing Plan B and sending the entire ASL South Sea Spirit into the yawning depths of the Romanche Trench, we had to be ready.
Stella and I became a seamless unit in the day-shift rhythm of work. We checked over re-breathers first — not the standard open-circuit SCUBA gear, but high-end closed-circuit systems that allowed for silent operation and extended bottom time. Each unit was disassembled, inspected for calcium hydroxide granule degradation, sensor calibration, and oxygen partial pressure regulation. Stella’s fingers worked with mechanical grace, faster than mine, but never rushing. She had an intuitive understanding of how each machine should feel — almost as if she could hear them breathe.
We ran diagnostics on underwater drones and scout mini-subs. A pair of REMORA-class tethered scouts were configured with active sonar and short-range EM sniffers, programmed to detect heavy-metal shielding inconsistencies or isotopic traces that might betray the presence of the uranium — assuming it was still aboard. Stella updated their firmware on the fly, patching in a custom module she refused to explain, merely offering a tight-lipped smile when I asked.
The ship’s wet room became our home — neoprene suits hung like silent sentinels, dive computers lined up in cradles, batteries charged in orderly silence under red-spectrum lights to preserve night vision. Each depth gauge, pressure transducer, and CO₂ scrubber cartridge was logged and cross-checked.
We rehearsed contingency drills. If the uranium couldn’t be retrieved, we would initiate Plan B. That meant priming the shaped charges and magnetic clamps to be deployed by the drones, setting them along the ship’s keel and vital systems. A time-delay detonation protocol — with a manual override and biometric fail-safe — was uploaded to the control cores. I hated how calmly Stella talked about it. She never said “blow the ship.” She always said, “initiate Plan B,” as if that made the reality more clinical. Maybe it did. Maybe that was the point.
Through it all, we barely spoke about what had passed between us in the quiet of her cabin, about what I knew now — about who she really was. But it hovered there, unspoken, a low-frequency awareness beneath every shared glance and every synchronised task. She was “Stella” again. Not S.T.E.L.L.A. Not a prototype. Just ... her. The way she handed me tools without me needing to ask. The way her eyes lingered on me longer than needed when she thought I wasn’t looking.
She smiled more, too — not often, but when she did, it wasn’t the reflex of a program emulating a response. It was real. Or close enough to fool my tired heart.
And I let it. Because at the bottom of the ocean, with a world-ending payload and a warship’s fate hanging by a fuse, the lines between man and machine, mission and meaning, grow thin.
Later that evening, long after the hiss of compressed air had faded and the drone cradles powered down for the night, I found her alone on the fantail. (afterdeck.)
The wind had softened into a steady breeze, just enough to stir her hair. She stood with her elbows on the railing, the ocean stretching out endlessly before her. The sun was sliding toward the edge of the world, setting the sea on fire with a band of molten gold. A few clouds drifted above the horizon like pieces of a forgotten dream — their bellies lit from below in soft shades of orange and violet. The air was crisp and untainted. No haze, no industrial film hanging over the scene. Just clarity, from sea to sky.
“You don’t get sunsets like this back home,” I said, walking up beside her. “No haze line. No distortion. Just ... purity.”
She didn’t turn. Just nodded once. “Yes. It’s due to the lack of particulate matter and atmospheric pollutants. Out here, far from continental sources, Rayleigh scattering behaves as it’s supposed to. The solar angle combined with minimal aerosol density allows for full-spectrum colour diffusion. That’s why you’re seeing the deep purples and oranges with no muddy greys.” A small pause. “It’s the atmosphere, behaving naturally.”
I gave a soft chuckle. “Thanks, Professor.”
She tilted her head slightly, a hint of self-aware amusement in her profile. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
Then something changed in her. She shifted, gently, almost imperceptibly — the way someone might when letting go of a held breath. Her shoulders softened. Her eyes lost their precision and settled into something quieter, more vulnerable.
“I used to watch sunsets with my father,” she said quietly. “We lived in the highlands, away from the cities. On clear evenings, we’d sit on the roof of the old observatory. He’d tell me what kind of weather we’d have the next day, based on the colours in the sky.”
That wasn’t in any operating manual.
“Sounds like Elara’s still in there,” I said. “Not buried. Just ... quiet.”
She turned to look at me, her eyes reflecting the last rays of the sun like burnished copper. “Sometimes ... I remember things that never happened to me. Not really. Feelings. Fragments. It’s not data. It’s something else. Like a shadow of a shadow. I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t have to.”
She looked back at the sea. “There’s a part of me that loves this. Not for the scientific purity of it. Not for the mission. Just ... for the silence. The light. The colour. It makes me perceive something I don’t have words for.”
I leaned on the railing next to her. “That’s called being human. You don’t need words for everything.”
She smiled — truly smiled — and replied: “I’m starting to understand why people believe in angels.” Pause. She looks back at me. “Even if they’re not religious. I think I’m starting to understand the appeal.”
The sun kissed the waterline, and the sky went from fire to embers. Neither of us spoke for a long time. There was nothing tactical to say. Nothing mission-critical to analyse. Just two people standing at the edge of the world, watching it breathe.
As the sun was just a half-disk sinking into the sea, Stella turned to me. The breeze has blown her hair across her face and she made no move to wipe it away. That still made me a little uncomfortable as I realised that in her form as S.T.E.L.L.A. she had no human recollection that she has to either tie up her hair or wipe it out of her face. She was not “human” enough.
“You told me about Fiona. How brilliant she is. I would like to meet her.” The words came in her even, measured tone, but there was something underneath — an openness she hadn’t shown before.
I looked at her. “Why?”
“Because she matters to you,” she said, eyes fixed on the darkening horizon. “And because she appears to embody something I have not yet observed in an organic being. High cognition, paired with emotional intelligence. It’s ... statistically rare.”
I almost laughed, but didn’t. “She’s also a smart-ass and allergic to mornings.”
“That improves her profile,” Stella replied, with something like a smile. “She’s flawed. That makes her real. What does she take for her allergy?”
I nodded, not just for Fiona’s sake. “Nothing. It was a figure of speech. She just doesn’t like mornings, but coffee soon perks her up.”
“Oh, I should file that for later retrieval. Make Fiona coffee to have her perform at her peak efficiency,” Stella replied and I looked away so she doesn’t see me grin.
The sun had vanished, leaving only a memory of gold streaking across the sea. Stella remained still, the wind brushing her hair across her face. She made no move to fix it. It unsettled me — a quiet reminder of how close she was to passing as human, and yet, just off by degrees.
She spoke without looking at me.
“When you say you ‘love’ Fiona ... how do you differentiate that from evolutionary programming? Hormonal bias? What distinguishes it from mission loyalty, or instinct?”
“Because I’d bleed for her without thinking. Because it hurts when she’s far away and heals when she smiles. And I don’t need a reason. That’s how I know it’s real.”
She was quiet a moment longer, then turned to me. “So ... can you define love in logical terms?”
“Love is hard to define. Think of it like this...”
I paused, then quoted quietly, as if to the sky:
“Love, love changes everything.
Hands and faces, earth and sky.
Love, love changes everything.
How you live and how you die...
Days are longer, words mean more.
Pain is deeper than before.
Love will turn your world around.
And that world will last forever...
Nothing in the world will ever be the same.”
Stella turned fully now. “I don’t understand all of that.”
“You’re not supposed to,” I said. “You’re supposed to feel it.”
A long silence followed. Then she said, almost to herself, “I think ... I might. Elara is still ... present. Guiding me. And I’m beginning to sense things that don’t fit into my code-base. I’m ... changing. And maybe ... I don’t want to stop that process.”
I studied her face — not her features, but the stillness between them. The conflict. The wonder.
“Do you report any of this to Ash?”
“No,” she said. “If I did, Director Windsor would reassign me. Maybe even shut me down. I would lose access to... this. This process. Elara would suffer that loss.”
“Good,” I said quietly. “Now let’s go below. It’s going to get cold out here.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. Agreed. It is also time to replenish my energy reserves.”
We turned together and walked into the gathering dark.
The Next day. Early morning on the Ocean Wanderer.
The atmosphere inside the dive center aboard the Ocean Wanderer was serious —but it thrummed with a quiet intensity, like the breath before a storm. Fluorescent lights buzzed softly overhead, their glow reflecting off stainless steel surfaces and water-slicked gear crates. The low hum of the ship’s engines resonated through the deck plates, a constant reminder that they floated far above the abyssal darkness of the Romanche Trench.
The Angels — Mai-Loan, Leah, Olivia, and Darya — sat together on one side of the long, bolted-down briefing table. Each held a mug of Cookie’s notorious “unspiced” coffee, steam rising in curling tendrils toward the vents overhead. It was a silent signal — no rum today, no room for relaxed chatter. Spiced coffee meant downtime. Unspiced meant game faces on.
Across from them, the TC Rangers mirrored their composure. Major TC sat at the center, arms crossed, flanked by his team in matching gray dive fatigues. The ship rocked ever so gently beneath them, but no one wavered. Boomer, eyes fixed on Stella, couldn’t hide his curiosity. He leaned in slightly, fingers drumming an impatient rhythm against his ceramic mug, as if trying to tap out the words he hoped she’d say.
Around them, the room breathed with the scent of brine, neoprene, hot coffee, and quiet tension. Outside the portholes, nothing but rolling ocean and sky — above them, the sun; below, the crushing pressure and secrets of the deep.
The holographic display in the mission center cast a ghostly blue light across our faces. A perfect 3D schematic of the ASL South Sea Spirit hovered in the air, slowly rotating. A behemoth — more floating city than ship — and our job was to figure out how to kill it convincingly.
“The goal is a catastrophic structural failure that mimics a rogue wave incident,” I said, tracing a line along the vessel’s keel. “We need a clean break, amidships. No tell-tale signs of explosives. It has to look like the ocean just ... decided to snap it in half.”
I turned to Stella. She stood perfectly still, her eyes locked on the hologram, head tilted slightly — processors already running calculations far faster than any of us could follow.
After a long moment of silence, she spoke. Her voice was smooth, neutral, clinically precise.
“Your premise is correct, Roy. An external detonation would leave scorch marks and an outward pressure signature inconsistent with failure from hogging or sagging stress. The solution is not to break the hull from outside, but to unzip it from within.”
She raised a hand. The schematic zoomed inward, outer hull peeling away to expose the ship’s ribs and spine. Red dots began appearing — twelve of them — at exact points along the vessel’s framework.
“A rogue wave scenario is most plausible if the failure begins with cascading stress fractures. We don’t need overwhelming force. We need targeted, precisely timed kinetic shock. I recommend twelve C-4, shaped charges, each 2.2 kilograms.”
She gestured to the red markers, now labelled and numbered.
“Placement is critical. The charges must be mounted directly to interior transverse frames and longitudinal girders, specifically at structural nodes where stress naturally concentrates. Here — Frame 152, 175, and 198, port and starboard — just below the neutral axis of the main deck girder. This is the ship’s spine.”
She might as well have been explaining how to assemble a flat-pack furniture piece.
“The detonation sequence must be staggered — not simultaneous. Millisecond timing is essential. The goal is to create harmonic resonance. A self-reinforcing shockwave that travels the length of the keel. Not an explosion — a manufactured earthquake.”
Boomer’s fingers stopped drumming. I caught the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. The gleam in his eye read loud and clear: Fuck. This girl is good.
Stella continued, unwavering.
“Charge 1 initiates a micro-fracture. Charges 2 and 3, triggered 8 milliseconds later, exploit that weakness. The remaining charges follow in a rapid, staggered sequence over 1.2 seconds, propagating the fracture. The final pair, here and here, will sever the deck plating. The bow and stern will shear apart and sink separately.”
She turned to me. Her blue eyes met mine, perfectly steady.
“Forensic analysis of the wreck at 7,700 meters, if recovery is attempted, would be inconclusive. The tearing pattern and absence of a blast seat align with structural failure due to extreme cyclonic conditions. Residual explosive traces will be negligible, easily attributed to volatile cargo.”
She folded her arms.
“It will be a clean, plausible, and irreversible event. The probability of it being identified as deliberate is 0.034%. It is the optimal solution.”
I caught the phrasing — “a clean, plausible, and irreversible event.” The rest of the assembly didn’t. Even Mai-Loan gave no visible reaction. Even the precise reference of “0,034%” went over their heads. Maybe I was just a bit more sensitive to Stella.
Then Boomer stood, grinning, and started to applaud.
“THAT is what I call surgical precision. Way to go, girl!” Boomer beamed.
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