I sent them a message requesting an urgent appointment and got an immediate confirmation. My door is open.
As I walked, I thought about the patient who shared O’Mara’s title—Dwayne Carlos, the master pipefitter. I sent a note to Rilriltok while I was thinking about it, asking that—if Sally was in port—I be allowed to be present when he rewarmed Helen’s crew members. I felt like I owed them that, having brought them in from the cold. If they lived, and considering where they came from, it would probably be comforting if the first face they saw on wakening was a human one.
O’Mara’s office was centrally located in the ox-sector Emergency Department, and Sally had come in on one end, so I had some traveling to do. It wasn’t quite far enough away to catch a lift, but it did take almost fifteen standard minutes of weaving through my fellow professionals and their patients in corridors to arrive. When I did, the door was standing open, though there was a sound-dampening privacy field in place.
I ducked through quickly—nobody lingers under a decompression door—and was surprised to find that two members of my crew had beaten me here. And additionally surprised that neither one of them was Loese. I’d come here without discussing it with any of them, O’Mara hadn’t mentioned their presence, and if anybody was consulting with the master chief, I’d expect it to be the person who had been most involved in investigating the sabotage.
Tsosie nodded in greeting as I entered, and Dr. Rhym wriggled their tendrils. O’Mara waved me to a seat. They were a blocky medium-complected human with cropped graying red hair. A pair of positively prehensile eyebrows were the only thing at odds with the general squareness of their face, features, and their massive squareness of frame.
They looked like a retired prizefighter. They were a retired prizefighter—Judiciary zero-G boxing subchampion three years running, before I’d worked with them. They were also the person who kept the ox-sector Emergency Department of the largest hospital in the galaxy purring like an only slightly dyspeptic cat.
“Are you here to report the sabotage, Dr. Jens?” they asked, when I’d settled.
The faint hum of the privacy barrier reassured me. What did not reassure me was Tsosie’s expression of shock. I assumed the sudden retraction of Rhym’s tendrils also indicated surprise, but I wasn’t certain.
I looked at Tsosie. “I assume from the look on your face that you hadn’t gotten around to telling them yet?”
Tsosie looked over at O’Mara. “We’d barely sat down when you walked in. Loese got here first?”
I rubbed my hands until I caught myself. O’Mara’s brain was as sharp as their physique was lumpish. I was too late: I saw their eyebrows flicker as they looked down. They didn’t say anything about it.
O’Mara shook their head.
I said, “That’s not like you. You’re not surprised. And you’re not angry.”
O’Mara rumbled, “Well, there’s no point in trying to hide any of this from you. The grapevine will fill you in before you get the first scuff on your station shoes. We’ve had some… odd occurrences in your absence. So when all three of you showed up needing to talk urgently…”
“Odd.” Tsosie wasn’t really asking a question. He wasn’t really not asking one, either.
“Environmental leaks. Contaminated medication. Nobody’s been harmed yet, but if it keeps up it’s only a matter of time.”
“And you think this is intentional.”
“I do,” O’Mara said. “Unfortunately. What happened on Sally?”
“Coms failed.” I looked at Tsosie.
“Coms failed while Llyn and I were on the generation ship.”
“Basically the worst possible moment,” I agreed. “If Sally and Loese hadn’t managed a patch job, Tsosie and I might not be here, because the situation over there got dicey very quickly.”
“Tell them about falling through the hull,” Rhym suggested.
“What?”
I held up my hand. Knuckles swollen. I put it down again quickly. “It’s all in my afteraction,” I said. “Which is already filed, and I bet Tsosie’s is, too.”
Tsosie studiously examined his fingernails, hiding a smile. Nobody wants to be the bad kid when O’Mara’s at the head of the classroom.
“How are the Darboof patients doing?” I asked. As a section chief, O’Mara would have access to that information. And I wasn’t changing the subject or being nosy. They were my patients, too, and I cared.
O’Mara unfocused, refocused, frowned. “Stable,” they said. “A team’s working on them, and the AI team is running a core-out diagnostic on Afar. Did any of the ancient humans make it?”
“We don’t know yet,” I answered. “Dr. Rilriltok is the physician in charge. It’s scanning DNA so we can have spare parts ready before we thaw them out. The peripheral is being treated by Zhiruo. Master Chief, I have some… social concerns.”
“Your patients are nasty atavistic humans full of nasty atavistic ideas?”
I nodded. “The AI is also kind of nasty and atavistic.”
“Is that going to interfere with treating them? Or hypothetically doing a turn-and-burn to get another batch, if we need you to?”
“Master Chief,” I said, wounded. “I’m a professional. And I care about their well-being. They’re sentient creatures, after all.”
O’Mara sparkled with humor, a disconcerting expression on such a solid lump of a human form. “Perhaps even sapient?”
I laughed. It eased the tension. “Given time. So, about the sabotage—”
“Ours or yours?” O’Mara asked.
“Ours, for the moment.” Even my forearms ached. It was unfair: I’d been getting enough rest and eating carefully, dammit. Well, I’d have a dia or two off before the next run, per regulations. I could spend it floating in a nice warm neutral buoyancy saline tank. “You’re going to investigate?”
“We’ve got a Judiciary security team on the way to Sally now. I want to look at it before I put her back to work on researching the… thing you found inside Afar.”
“Yes,” Tsosie said. “About that—”
“Yes,” O’Mara interrupted, as if they were agreeing. “Why don’t you and Dr. Rhym go supervise that? Or, even better, get some rest and exercise. I’ve got some catching up to do with Llyn here.”
Tsosie shut his mouth. He might argue with O’Mara. But the stakes would have to be a lot higher, I think.
So he got up, and as he got up he winked at me. I rolled my eyes. We both knew O’Mara was not my type.
I didn’t miss that, as Tsosie and Rhym left, the door that had been open irised shut behind them. O’Mara watched them leave so intently that I turned my head, too. Just in case there was something interesting or edifying going on. I heard the click of the air seal before they turned back to me and spoke again.
“Well,” O’Mara said. “Why don’t you look into it for me?”
“Me? The sabotage?”
“You.”
“Yours or mine?” I answered, risking teasing them a little.
“Both. What are the odds they’re not connected?”
I stretched my legs out and leaned back in the chair, trying to make it look like I was relaxing.
“I’m not a detective.”
“You’ve got a decan of Judiciary experience. I know you and trust you, and you can talk to the medical staff as an equal without putting their backs up or making them feel like they’re under suspicion, which is a feat no Judiciary personnel can manage. Also, I’m not the boss of any of the Judiciary personnel. I’m your boss. And I’m telling you to.”
“And I’ll be going back out on Sally as soon as she’s resupplied. And repaired.” My face got warm. I’d forgotten that she needed repairs. I guess that “hypothetical” turn-and-burn had indeed been strictly hypothetical.
Then I put my left fingertips against the center of my forehead and pushed gently. “Aw, Well.”
O’Mara steepled their hands on their desktop and watched me, head cocked. Waiting.
“What do you think of your new pilot?”
“I like her,” I said. “Don’t know her very well yet. But she does her job and fits in.”
“Hmm,” they said. “And the rest of the crew?”
“Solid. But I just told you that.”
“I’ve known you since you were an ensign.” O’Mara got up and walked to the dispenser. They printed a cup and filled it with water. I expected them to knock it back, but they brought it to me along with two white tablets. “If you weren’t beam-straight, Llyn, I’d have noticed by now.”
“Have I told you about my ex-wife?”
They laughed. O’Mara had a good laugh, when you could pry it out of them. “I’m not talking about your romantic proclivities. You believe in this place. We’ve got a pretty decent Goodlaw, but it’s first loyalty is to the Synarche. Yours is to Core General. Why wouldn’t I use you?”
I set the tablets on the desk and sipped the water.
They sat back down, extending one thick finger to point at the pills. “As a doctor, I’m prescribing those.”
“You’re not my doctor.”
“Your hands look like you’ve been at the heavy bag. I assume you haven’t been at the heavy bag. I’d fiddle with your tuning if I thought Linden would let me. Since I can’t, take the meds before your joint capsules explode or something.”
“Supervisory abuse,” I said, but I swallowed the tablets. They were bitter. “All right, I believe in this place. Do you know why I don’t think it was anybody on Sally’s crew?”
“Hit me,” they said.
I looked down at my knuckles, flexed my free hand, and got a second guffaw. “Somebody set a device on a timer, and then somehow hacked Sally so that she didn’t notice the device, didn’t notice the timer, and couldn’t remember the sabotage had been done after it happened. If Loese hadn’t figured it out and routed around the damage old-school, I’d be drifting along in the wake of a slowly accelerating generation ship for a really long time.”
O’Mara sucked their lips for a long moment. “You’re saying an AI was involved, to be able to hack Sally’s programming.”
Hands wide, I shrugged. The water in my cup sloshed but didn’t spill over. “I’m saying we’ve got an awful lot of damaged shipminds all of a sudden. But Sally—that was set up before she got close to the other two.”
We contemplated each other in silence. Rogue AIs were the stuff of scary three-vees, not real life. I was the first one to crack and change the subject.
“While we’re on the topic of shipminds, who sent Afar out there?”
The master chief, if possible, looked even grimmer. “Judiciary is trying to find out. There was no filed flight plan. Or if there was, it’s been deleted, but the military archinformists think they’d be able to spot that.”
Sometimes, you have to break the tension. “Hey, can I get one of those antigravity belts like Rilriltok is wearing? Taking the pressure off won’t hurt my pain levels, either.”
“I’ll put you on the list,” they said. “We’ve mostly gotten through the staff whose lives would be in danger if they caught a full g, so it should happen pretty quickly. Oh, that reminds me. You need to talk to the Administree as soon as possible. They would like a personal visit, please.”
“O’Mara!”
They busied themselves with the displays inside their desk. “I’ve got another appointment in three minutes.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
They shook their head. “Starlight doesn’t confide in me. So, as I mentioned before, I’m going to ask Sally to take the lead on investigating the object in Afar’s hold.”
“Yes, that puzzled me.” I shook my head. “She’s not an engineer.”
“No,” they said. “But she’s been exposed to whatever Afar and”—they got the unfocused look people get when they’re consulting their senso—“Helen were exposed to, and I want her in port where she can be kept under observation for a while. And where her crew”—they poked a finger at me and waggled shaggy eyebrows—“are safe. The repairs to her coms system are going to be a little complicated, you understand.”
“I understand we’re being grounded, and you’re fibbing to my ship about why.”
“Good. You’re paying attention.” They settled back and folded their arms. “Llyn. One old military mammal to another. I’m worried about the sabotage. I’m worried about Sally. I’m worried about this weird ancient AI and its weird ancient peripherals and its ten thousand corpsicles. I’m worried about why there’s a thing that might be a warbot in the cargo hold of a methane fast packet without a filed flight plan. I’m worried about why Afar isn’t talking to anybody, and neither is his crew. I need you here.”
I chafed, and they knew it. I also owed them, and they knew that, too. And the pills were working, which made it hard to stay as grumpy as I wanted.
“All right,” I said. “But you owe me, this time.”
“Saving your life was all in the line of duty,” they said, mildly.
“What about taking a kid from a backwater world and giving them a chance at their dream job?”
“You’ve been a commanding officer,” they said.
“Under very limited circumstances.”
They smiled. “Well, as you will learn if you continue to advance, identifying and nurturing talent is all in the line of duty, too.”
I could have pointed out that nurturing anything was not my strong point. But it seemed like a good exit line, so instead, I left.
* * *
I reached out through the senso to my ship as I walked around the wheel, dodging systers of every conceivable size, ox-compatible physiology, and morphology. Hey, Sally I heard they have you investigating the craboid.
As long as I’m stuck here, she said. It keeps me out of trouble. You know what they say about idle hands turning to farming drama.
I don’t think they say that about AIs.
It’s true, she agreed. Because when we don’t have enough work to do we generally wind up creating a more logical and egalitarian system of governance and resource allotment, or something similarly boring. Anyway, I’ve been working on getting some access to the craboid’s systems, and I think we can probably use electromagnetism to manipulate its superstructure.
You’re going to try to move it?
We are, she confirmed. Want to come and help? You might have some insights. We might all learn something.
My other duties weren’t currently pressing. Sally was grounded; the archaic humans were frozen solid; Helen was getting care from the best cyberdoc in the hospital. Tackling the job the master chief had given me was going to require sitting down and focusing my concentration to read a lot of case reports, and I didn’t want to tackle that until I’d had some time to process our conversation.
Am I avoidant? Very well then, I am avoidant. Also, sometimes I contradict myself. I contain multitudes.
Sure, I said. I’ll bring some EM induction patches.
Afar was docked in the methane section, which meant I had to suit up to get there no matter which way I went. I returned to Sally to pick up my own hardsuit rather than choosing from whatever was in the lockers. She seemed eager, and bored, and not too distracted by monitoring her own repairs.
She was empty of our team except for Hhayazh, the current duty officer, who was backup-supervising the crew of repair bots. Sally usually would have done it alone, but since Sally’s memory and perceptions were going to be in question until the repairs were complete, Loese and Hhayazh had decided to take turns sitting with her.
Just to make sure nobody snuck any more unauthorized aftermarket modifications into our ship. Such as bombs. Or Trojan horses.
Hhayazh followed me to Sally’s rear airlock and helped me into my suit. I didn’t need anybody to spray me with additional insulation todia, because I wasn’t going into the methane en
vironment, and the irradiated vacuum of Core space was significantly less hostile than a balmy beachfront property on Darbo. I seemed to recall, now that I was thinking about it, that there were some methane-breather colonies on a major moon in Terra’s system. I should look into that; maybe Afar did have a reason to be on that vector. If he could have reasonably run across Big Rock Candy Mountain by accident while dropping out of white space to check and adjust course, that was one less intractable mystery to worry about.
The archinformists had said that it was likely Afar’s flight plan had not been deleted, or they would know. I would have to talk to O’Mara and ask if it was possible that Afar’s flight plan had been filed and had gotten lost somewhere, or was hung up at a packet beacon somewhere out in the galactic halo, waiting for the piggyback that would bring it to us in the Core.
It made me feel better to contemplate that there might be an easy explanation. Whether that was denial and self-delusion or refusing to fall prey to conspiracy theories, only time would tell.
Hhayazh finished my precheck and patted me on the shoulder with a bristly appendage. “Be safe out there.”
“I’m just going for a little walk around the wheel. Nothing to it.” I stepped into the airlock, and in a matter of moments I was looking at the outside.
This time the jump down to the surface would have been only a couple of meters. Rotational force would tend to fling me off the side of the hospital the instant I let go, however, so rather than waste maneuvering fuel, I climbed down a ladder. Space is a much better place for being cautious and pragmatic than flamboyant, even if it isn’t nearly as much fun as what you see in the three-vees.
Having reached the surface of the docking ring, I clomped across it until I got to a lift branch. It angled sharply, but my magnetic boots made it easy to walk right up the inside, and spin helped to hold me there. The farther I got up the arch, the heavier I was, because the structures farthest from Core General’s hub were spinning the fastest. Every so often, a lift zoomed past beneath my feet, shivering the whole tube. Above my head, crystal panels showed green and greeny-violet leaves outlifted toward the light of the Core.
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