The
path to the Indomitable
Explorer was
empty of . . . anyone, really. It would be relieving if Darren
weren’t
so damned heavy.
She,
Zarniac,
and Tillantrius were all working together to guide the staggering oaf
of a giant towards their ship. It wasn’t
going well. He kept falling down, and when he fell down, it took all
of them to get him moving again. Chryso had been “watching their
backs” and taking extended hits from his vaporizer while toting an
illegally modified energy weapon. He seemed quite smug about all of
that.
Cas
huffed quietly as she tugged at Darren’s arm. “Darren, get up and
walk or we’re leaving you on the exploding station.”
A
long, wailing “NoooooooOOOooOOOOo!” was his only response, as he
pushed himself to his feet, took off at a run, tripped over a loose
fuel hose, slammed headlong into the side of the Indomitable
Explorer. Zarniac
winced, Tilly grimaced, and Cas just sighed while Chryso chuckled
quietly.
“
. . . don wanna asplode,” came the muffled sound from the twisted
heap of muscled limbs that was Darren.
“Do
you think his teeth fell out again?” Zarniac whispered quietly to
her, looking slightly queasy.
She
just sighed. “If they did, I’ll glue them in this time. Just get
the door open, and plot us a course out of . . . here.” She
gestured at the station as a whole. As if retorting to her remark of
disdain, the entire structure trembled beneath their feet, and a
quiet groan echoed through the superstructure. “ . . . sooner would
be better than later.” She added, a note of fear entering her
voice.
Somewhere
in the distance, she heard the dull thunk of a pressure bulkhead
failing. Judging by the expression of fear on Zarn, Chryso, and
Tilly’s faces, they heard it too. With a fresh sense purpose, they
all set about their self-allotted tasks.
Tilly
opened the cargo hold and helped Chryso and Cas drag Darren inside,
while Zarniac began furiously engaging the start up sequence. Darren
contributed to the ramp ascent by drooling on it to make the dragging
a bit easier, and mumbling about clowns to lighten the “imminent
nuclear death” mood that had settled on the group.
Darren
was the most effective of any of them at their selected tasks. This
wasn’t so much speaking highly of Darren’s ability to drool, or
the comedic timing of his feverish moaning of the word “clowns”
while bleeding from the mouth, so much as it spoke to the abysmal
failure of everyone else to accomplish anything.
Tilly,
Chryso, and Cas couldn’t manage to drag Darren across flat ground,
let alone an inclined ramp, and Zarniac found rather promptly that he
didn’t have navigational clearance to operate the hangar airlock
crane, let alone launch a ship during a security
lock-down.
“Caaaaaas!
We have a problem!” He shouted down the access corridor that
connected the cargo bay and the bridge, and Cas was with him in
moments.
“Problem?”
She inquired, her tone neutral and entirely belying her fear.
“I
don’t have takeoff clearance, and the security crane is
inoperative. We can’t get the ship out of the station without
someone manning that crane.”
Cas’s
virtual eyes narrowed as she did a quick scan of his instrument
panel. “And your navigational AI has been locked down by some kind
of intrusion worm.”
Zarniac
frowned, tapping the little blue screen next to his star-map. “Oh .
. . the navigational AI is just crashing. It . . . it just does
that.” He flicked it a few more times. The screen stayed a flat
monochrome blue.
“One
problem at a time though, someone needs to get to that crane
and-”
Before
he could finish his sentence, he heard the grinding screech of the
overhand gantry hauling itself into motion, and his console flashed
green as his takeoff clearance was granted. “How did you-”
Cas
frowned at him. “The network security protocols for these are . . .
really not as safe as they should be. In light of recent events . . .
this definitely needs to be put up for review.”
Zarniac
could only hinge his mouth open and shut weakly, looking for the
right response as the magnetic clamps of the gantry latched onto the
hull, jerking it into the air with a dull clang.
“He’s
sliding off the ramp!” The call came from somewhere either in the
cargo bay or possibly from someone desperately clinging to the cargo
ramp and trying not to die.
Cas
huffed quietly, and thrust her chin forward a nudge as the crane
swung the vessel back and stopped short, with an effect similar to an
ancient “Cup and Ball Game.” Except instead of a cup, there was
the cargo bay of their ship, instead of a string, there was a hasty
set of mathematical calculations, and instead of a toy ball, there
were two fragile beings and a disturbingly durable semi-retarded
goliath. Good heart on the goliath though.
She
heard twin yelps of pain, and a dull thump. She guessed she got it
right, because there’d be more screaming if she got it wrong.
“Close the cargo bay.” Zarniac complied, and she ducked back down
the access corridor to the cargo bay.
Sure
enough, she’d done it right, and stacked up against the wall in a
heap were the human, the Kontosian, and the Centariuan, in proper
ascending order of fragility, with Darren on the bottom.
“Anything
broken?”
Tillantrius
groaned. “Nothing but my pride, dear.”
“Personal
record for ‘butt-puckering terror’ experienced, yeah, but other
than that no.” Chryso mumbled through a mouthful of robe.
“I
think my teeth falled out again.” Darren’s translator intoned
flatly. “Wait, I bite-ed my tongue. They still there.” The dull
rumble of his voice carried well through the cargo bay, and for the
one with the most raw damage having been done to his body, he seemed
to be weathering it the best.
“Good.
Buckle up. We’re getting out of here.”
Cas
bolted back to the bridge, buckling herself into the captain’s
chair next to Zarniac as the crane lowered them into the final
airlock before launch. Cas overrode the safeties keeping the airlock
doors from moving before the gantry had come to a stop, and slammed
them shut around the cumbersome industrial lift.
The
hiss of air leaving the station, followed by the dull silence of a
hard vacuum indicated that they were green to go, and without waiting
for Zarniac’s approval, she slammed the ships maneuvering thrusters
to full.
“Where
the hell do you think you’re going!” He shouted at her, as they
nearly clipped the still opening airlock doors, missing them by only
scant meters.
“Away
from here!” She shouted back, slightly incensed by his
indignation.
Zarniac
balked, scowling at the upstart mutineer that had seized the captains
chair. “First off, there’s a debris field that you’re . . .
going . . . to . . .”
His
voice trailed off as he managed to catch full sight of the space
surrounding Waystation LS-49.
There
were thousands of little silver pods glimmering in the navigational
lights of the station. Life-pods, every last one of them. All of them
packed with the desperate survivors of the horrific massacre on
board. Suddenly, one winked out of existence in a spray of shattered
metal fragment and frozen viscera.
“What
the . . .”
The
station asteroid defense systems were targeting, and systematically
eliminating any survivors. Little ferrous cylinders, accelerated by
magnetic coils, were being hurled at roughly 10 kilometers per second
through the escape pods. There was something gut wrenching about
seeing a system designed to keep people safe maliciously turned on
the helpless victims it was designed to protect. They were dying
unexpected, brutal, cold deaths in the hard vacuum of space. With no
warning. Like singular blades of grass being clipped by methodical
and meticulous reaper of sentient life.
Cas
and Zarniac watched in horror as every few seconds another one winked
out of existence in a little “puff” of depressurizing tube. The
scale of it, more than anything else, chilled them to the core as
they realized they were quite possibly the only survivors out of a
spaceborne city of 25,000.
Cas
wanted to do something to help, she wanted to find a way to shut down
those guns, or ram them, or something . . . but she knew that those
circuits were isolated physically to prevent anything like this from
ever happening. She knew that if she rammed just one of the dozens of
defensive guns she’d doom them all, and maybe not even slow down
the massacre. All they could do, was watch, or run.
What
had started the day as a trading hub, fueling station, and port of
safe harbor was now a tomb beyond the edge of the galaxy.
“
. . . I have a course plotted around Cygnux X-1. We can make the
jump, slingshot around, pass our intended survey target and head back
into core space to . . . report this. To tell someone. To just . . .
land somewhere.” Zarniac spoke, but the words felt like they were
coming from somewhere beyond him. Outside of him. He couldn’t
coexist with the massive cruelty and wanton slaughter of this moment,
so he was letting autopilot take over.
Cas’s
lower lip trembled, but she swallowed hard, and nodded. “T-take us
away then. Get us out of here.”
With
a high pitched whine, space folded itself around them, and they left
Waystation LS-49 behind them for what they hoped would be
forever.
——————————
Amonna
pulled her legs up to her chest, and rubbed her arms, trying not to
listen to the sound of metal buckling and the squeal of superheated
coolant being forced through failing seals. The walls were getting
warm. Not so hot as to burn her, but enough to make her worried.
She’d been tracking the reactor readings on her wrist computer over
the past 3 hours, and what she’d thought was going to be a
detonation, an overload, or something equally devastating, had turned
into the most agonizingly torturous game of “what kills me
first.”
She
had narrowed it down the three options. One, she was going to die
instantly, without even noticing it was going to happen. This was
arguably the most desirable outcome, if you can ever consider being
instantly vaporized in a nuclear fireball desirable. The reactor
would breach containment, a miniature star would be born in the heart
of the station for a brief second, and then everything that wasn’t
solid tungsten would cease to have any real shape or form outside of
a gaseous collapsing plasma field.
It
was also the least
probable
outcome.
Next
on the list of horrific ends she was choosing from was being slowly
cooked alive inside the ever warming decontamination chamber right
next to the reactor core. The reactor had been designed with several
failsafe mechanisms to keep the first outcome from becoming a
reality, and they were clearly still doing their best to fight
whatever mechanism of sabotage had been inflicted upon the station’s
reactor core. So, as they bled heat into the superstructure over the
next few hours, she would slowly broil inside a metal oven with no
way to escape.
That
was the most probable outcome, and as miserable as it sounded to her
. . . it still beat doorway-to-death number three which was . .
.
Dying
of starvation, dehydration, and exposure as the reactor fails in a
safe fashion, excess heat is bled away over a period of days, and the
station loses all power. She would be at the mercy of basic
biological functions like “breathing” and “drinking.” Sure it
was only three days instead of three hours but it . . . was still
horrific.
So
as minutes turned to hours, and she still wasn’t vaporized, she
began to get scared. She stripped down to virtually nothing, piling
up whatever she had on her to make a little mound to sit on just to
get off the ever warming deck. When the lights suddenly went out, and
the blood-red emergency lighting kicked on, she went from scared, to
total despair. She tried doing the thermodynamic calculations they’d
taught her in survival school to figure out how long she had before
the metal crypt she was stuck in would be so cold her skin would
freeze on contact with the metal, but that only distracted her for so
long.
When
her wrist computer said that she had been on shift for 12 hours, and
needed to take a break or she would face a disciplinary hearing, it
actually made her laugh. A bitter, spiteful laugh, but a laugh
nonetheless. As the deck began to cool, she pulled all of her
clothing back on, piece by piece, but not after wringing the moisture
out of it to drink. She’d been dehydrated when she’d been locked
in here, and at this point it was a race to see if exposure or
dehydration would be her end first.
When
her wrist computer chimed and told her it had been 24 hours, she
wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to do . . .
something, but she knew that every action she took, every emotion she
allowed to well up in her would only accelerate her heart, make her
burn through what little oxygen she had left, and just kill her
faster.
Part
of her thought that might be the best thing to do. Just start doing
jumping jacks until the air runs out and go to sleep . . . but
somewhere deep inside, there was a nugget of spite that just wouldn’t
let her. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to live, which, she
certainly did. She wanted to live more than anything else, she just
didn’t have any hope of living. So when the hope ran out, all that
was left was spite. A hatred of her circumstance so intense . . . so
irrational . . . the only response she could come up with was to
persist through it out of sheer defiance. A raw “fuck you” to the
universe that had the gall to sentence her to such an ignominious and
miserable end.
So
she saved her breath. Slept as much as possible. Sucked the moisture
out of the decontamination sprayer nozzles, and curled up in a tight
ball on top of what little material she could find that wasn’t
thermally conductive to stay as warm as possible.
And
she waited for someone to find her.
——————————
‘Machinator’
stood over the prone form of his longtime comrade in arms, watching
him closely. The Zylach ex-security chief shivered slightly,
unconsciously curling his body up to preserve warmth. He’d moved
him to the now vacant crew quarters, and thrown a survival blanket
over him after they’d seized the ship. Besides the commando
contingent, there’d just been a pilot and two maintenance
personnel. No real resistance. Grinder and Dynamo were cleaning up
the mess Verdock had left in the cargo bay, and it was . . . quite a
mess. Once the cargo was properly secure, they’d plotted a course
to the rendezvous location, and made the jump to dark space beyond
the edge of the galaxy. The first leg of the operation was complete,
and they were all be one step closer to living in a better
galaxy.
But
that wasn’t what occupied the majority of his processor cycles. It
was Verdock. The joke at the department had always been that “When
it comes to cold, calculating logic, the synthetic officers look to
Verdock to double check their assessments.” It had only been a joke
but it was universally agreed upon that the synthetic persons in the
department found Verdock easier to get along with than most of the
organic personnel did. He didn’t hesitate, or second guess himself.
If he was uncertain, he deferred to those with more information and
better insight. He wasn’t rude, or demanding, but he had exacting
standards that he made very clear to everyone he worked with,
regardless of the origin of their sentience. The previous head of
security had been a sentimental Chridae that had been quite
competent, but seemed to do their job largely by feel and intuition,
and pinning down solid justification for some of their more ambitious
endeavors was difficult. Verdock’s structured, logical mind had
been made the running of things smoother. Security was being deployed
not as the head of security dictated, but as the situation and
protocol dictated. Crime fell, department approval rose, and
complaints were sparse.
An
innocuous package that he’d personally delivered one fateful
morning had changed all of that.
Verdock
roused slightly, eyelids fluttering as he seized the edge of his
bunk. A tremor rocked his body as he hauled himself over to the edge
to spill his guts on the deck below. The resulting mixture of bile
and blood spattered Machinator’s lower appendages with a wet sound
that echoed through the empty crew quarters.
That
wasn’t good.
Machinator
checked the timer he’d set for the Captain, only 8 hours, 12
minutes and 35 seconds had gone by. A thermal scan revealed his body
temperature was almost 43 degrees Celsius, and when Machinator
consulted an actuarial table cross referenced with Verdock’s
condition . . . he estimated there were between 12 and 24 hours left
until cardiac arrest and total organ failure, with 95% confidence
interval.
Machinator
thought back to that little parcel. It had seemed so unremarkable on
the day it arrived. Just another little pressurized vessel for small,
frangible objects. Perhaps unusual that it had been sent to Captain
Verdock directly, not the head of security, and more unusual that it
had no listed sender, but everyone received mail at some
point.
Verdock
had called a meeting the day he received the package, but it was not
an ordinary or informal gathering near a charging hub or in the break
room between shifts. It was late, the middle of “evening hours.”
The concept of emotional trauma was foreign to most AI, particularly
work AI that had the ability to edit their emotional responses on the
fly to better perform their duties, but the only way Machinator could
describe that meeting was “haunting.”
It
had been a challenge to pack every security drone into the single
classified briefing room, but they’d done it. Verdock had been
sitting, the only one of them afforded enough room to do so. Once
they had sealed the place, they sat in uncomfortable silence for what
had seemed an irrational duration of time. Some had quietly guessed
that Verdock was retiring, or had developed some fatal illness that
was going to cut his career short, but none of them in their wildest
imaginings could have come up with the truth.
He
fished around in his pocket for a moment, before setting what looked
to be a simple glass cylinder on the desk. Maybe 15 centimeters tall,
with a diameter of roughly a third that, it looked like a
paperweight, save the small conical indentation in the top, and the
dull grey sphere suspended in the very center.
“This
arrived specifically addressed to me 36 hours ago. It came with no
return information, and I haven’t been able to find it anywhere in
our shipping logs, which is an oddity in and of itself. Upon close
review I have discovered three things of note. First, a small message
affixed to the object.” He slid a small metal chit across the desk,
bearing the inscription “To the seekers of truth, in service of the
seekers of order.”
The
language was old,
maybe 1200 years old, and written in a form of Gentrue that was
commonly found in technical documentation from that era. There was a
subtle nuance to the usage of the word “seeker”
in this context. It wasn’t a seeker in the way of a searcher, but
seeking in the same fashion that a positive charge seeks a negative
charge, the way something caught in a gravity well seeks to move to
the lowest energy potential. Seeker in this context meant something
that was inexorably drawn by dint of its very nature, not just
desire. The odd structure of the phrase made it unclear if the
“seeker of order” was the sender or the recipient, but all of
this was just a passing flicker of cursory assessment that coursed
through his inquisitive mind to be filed away for later review.
“The
second thing, is that this device contains a large data-cache
suspended in a crystalline lattice. The . . . implications of its
contents are disturbing, and I have yet to fully delve into
them.”
His
expression darkened, and an expression of fatigue that was entirely
foreign to Captain’s face played across it in the dimmed ‘evening
lighting’ of the station.
“And
lastly, radiological dating places it at roughly 8.9 billion years
old.”
Machinator
remembered there had been argument, after that. His memory was
incomplete, and he could tell that he himself had purposefully
damaged his records of the event. He had no audio or visual recording
of what had transpired, but an ultrasonic-spatial recording still
existed. Nothing but fuzzy and general outlines were available for
him to review, but they showed that a security drone had picked up
the archive, examined it for nearly 3 minutes, uninterrupted, before
gently placing the archive back on the desk. At this point, the
security drone designated ‘Trip-Hammer’ violently self terminated
by clawing its central processing housing open and crushing its
quantum processing core with both manipulator arms.
Machinator
did not understand what he had seen. He could not guess at what would
drive a rational being to self terminate without explanation, but he
trusted Verdock. He had never wavered before, never fallen to
irrational or wistful thinking. He thought like a machine, and that
had always been a reassuring fact for Machinator. He reassured
himself that all of this had been the product of rational thought . .
. or at the very least tried to, as his focus shifted back to present
matters before him.
Verdock’s
breath had grown shallow and fast, back arched and mouth stretched
wide in a silent scream as a nictitating membrane flickered across
his eyes for the first time in the past 15 million years of his
species evolutionary history.
“Reason
. . . all of this is for a reason,” Machinator vocalized generally,
tone laden with worry for his old friend. He sincerely hoped that
both he and Verdock were right about this.
—————————————-
