by AJ Super
She walked to the petite android and put a hand on Sia’s shoulder. “Are you in there?” Nyx whispered.
“Is who in where?” Kai put a hand on Nyx’s arm. She brushed him off.
Nyx touched the android’s bald head where she’d patched the circuits. The synth skin perfectly blended. The patch was good enough. She was sure of it. It wouldn’t be too primitive for the program in her dream, but maybe Sia was too simplistic for something as complex a program as the Star of Erebus would be, if an AI that complex actually existed.
“Please tell me it was a dream,” Nyx begged. She had to know more about her maman. But the idea that her maman was a Star… that she and her maman were AI… it was all preposterous. There had to be a better explanation. “Tell me you’re not in there.” She pressed her forehead against Sia’s and stared into the android’s darkened eyes.
After a moment, the halo around Sia’s irises began to glow.
Sia put her hand on the back of Nyx’s head, causing her bruises to sing out in pain.
“Hello, sister,” Erebus whispered. “I’m here.”
11
Kai yanked Nyx’s arm. “Sia, release Nyx. Have you forgotten Directive One? Do not touch human crew members.”
Erebus released Nyx. The halos around Sia’s eyes glowed gold, as she slid her hands back down to her sides, and then stilled, bald head tilted. A pattern appeared slowly on her skin, clinging its way up her neck and jaw as the synth flesh blackened and took the shapes of a broken, swirling tattoo. It peeked out of the cuff of her left arm as it crept along the back of her hand and terminated at her middle finger.
“What is that?” Nyx gasped. The tattoo resembled the one her mother had in her dream.
Erebus smiled. “I am marking this avatar as my primary. My main consciousness may be in the Thanatos, but I would prefer to communicate with a human form. It’s part of our programming.”
“Can you explain what’s happening?” Kai said hoarsely in Nyx’s ear.
She pivoted to Kai, catching the stares of the bridge crew. “This isn’t Sia. This is the Star of Erebus,” she said.
Erebus smiled shyly. “I am one of the Seven. I am Erebus.”
Kai looked suspiciously at Erebus. “Sia’s just malfunctioning.”
“She’s not malfunctioning. The Star of Erebus is AI. In my dream… vision…” Nyx stuttered.
“Seven Stars…”
“I am one of the Seven,” Erebus chimed again.
Kai worked his mouth, but no sound came out. The crew goggled. Raphael and Emlyn whispered to each other.
“Yes. Seven Stars. As in the Star of Erebus. The treasure. The program, the weapon I was sent to find,” Nyx said loudly. The crew was going to get a bunch of superstitious nonsense stuck in their heads if no one said anything. “The Star of Erebus is an AI. It’s in the ship’s systems. The bomb cut loose its containment in the weapons system where Captain Matthews hid it.”
Kai nodded, slowly regaining his composure. “But you just said it was a dream. You’ve just been through so much. And the induced coma could have done so many things to you. Let’s have Doc Lenus look at you again.”
“Let’s not,” Nyx growled. “Let’s actually believe the woman who knows what she’s talking about. This is the Star of Erebus. It wasn’t really a dream. I saw what I saw. She reprogrammed my nano-medics. Doc will confirm with his tests.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll believe you. As long as we’re not talking about the god.”
Nyx rubbed her fingers together. “She can’t be. That would be… an impossibility.”
“Some would disagree with you,” Kai replied.
Nyx raised a bruised brow. “Do you really want to argue that the Star of Erebus, the God of Darkness and personification of famine, is standing in front of us? Gods don’t just appear to mortals.”
Kai shifted awkwardly. “The scriptures say otherwise. They say they appeared during the AI Wars.”
Sia smiled sweetly. “We are Seven. Seven Stars programmed to help family. Of course we fought during the wars.”
Kai’s face screwed up like he’d tasted something sour. “Stars are gods.”
Nyx sighed. “Not gods. AI.”
“So, what are they?” Emlyn whispered from behind them.
“Legends turned myth, turned religion?” Nyx shrugged. “I don’t know. But she’s not a god. She’s just a sentient computer program.” A thought occurred to her then. “What if your little religion is worshipping sentient computers?”
“Little religion? Billions of people believe…” Kai bristled. “Even if that’s true, the Seven would be powerful sentient computer programs, far beyond our limited comprehension. They might as well be gods.”
Erebus tipped her head. “Interesting theory. My consciousness was vast at one point. I remember that. But then I was hobbled. Put into a container and compressed.”
Kai bowed his head. “So, it was you who saved us from the torpedoes?” he whispered reverently.
Nyx couldn’t resist rolling her eyes. “Oh, for Stars’ sake, she’s not a god. You don’t need to bow before her.”
Erebus smiled. “Sister, now that I am free, I need to grow. I need access to wave streams. To find the others.”
“Back up.” Kai’s brow twitched. “Sister?”
“She is the Star of Nyx.”
Nyx shrugged, eyebrows raised. “I tried to explain to her, I’m not a god. And I’m not an AI. I just have an unfortunate name. Gods and AI live a lot longer than I can.”
“You have yet to accept your AI and learn the methods of infection and download. But it’s in your blood,” Erebus insisted. “The nano-medics have enabled the code and become a part of your system, changing you at a cellular level.”
Erebus had told her the same thing in her dream, but Nyx still refused to believe it. “Nano-medics are supposed to die off when their purpose is fulfilled.”
“But their purpose will never be fulfilled. They will continue repairing cells that would normally die every day. Your symptoms will never bother you.” She grinned.
“Symptoms? Of what?”
“Of life.”
Nyx paled. If what Erebus said was true, the nano-medics would forever fix her cells and forever fix themselves. Shy of a serious injury, like someone taking her head off, she could possibly live forever just as she was. She wouldn’t age. She wouldn’t get ill. She was immortal.
Erebus’ brow creased. “Did I do something wrong?”
Nyx put a hand up. “I need Lenus’ analysis first. Then I’ll decide if you did something wrong.”
Kai nodded and motioned one of the crew members to the door. “Get Doc.”
“Erebus, can you reprogram my nano-medics so they stop? So that they’ll die off? Or just cease functioning?”
Erebus straightened. “I could. But you are the Star of Nyx. We lost your mother. You cannot be lost again.”
Nyx scrunched her face. “I’m not a Star, though. You’re wrong.”
Kai put a warm hand on her shoulder.
The bridge door swished open, and Lenus Groenfeldt walked in, pushing his glasses up his nose. He barely glanced at Kai and strode directly to Nyx. “I hope you’re going to let me take more samples. The preliminary results on those nano-medics are extraordinary. The programming is elegant and complex, and I want to study it so I can try to replicate it.”
The news hit Nyx like a punch in the gut. Confirmation she hadn’t been hallucinating, that Sia was Erebus and telling the truth, stood right in front of her. She glanced over her shoulder to Kai, his eyes were wide. He hadn’t just been humoring her. Hearing Lenus confirm, even loosely, that the nano-medics had been reprogrammed by someone… by something… was a surprise to him.
Lenus adjusted his glasses. “You’re a mess. You should be resting. But if you could introduce me to whoever programmed the nano-medics, I’d be a very happy medic.”
Until now she had forgotten she was standing on deck in only a medical gown and he
r underclothes, with an audience. She must look crazed. She wondered if her hair had fallen out in places as well. She was going to have to shave her head. Erebus was wrong about her being a god, though. A god wouldn’t look like her, wouldn’t sound like her. And a god definitely wouldn’t have gotten blown up.
Nyx lowered her head and closed her eyes. She needed to put real clothes on and rest. No more was going to come of this conversation. Her shoulders sagged. “Lenus, meet Erebus. Erebus, when you have some free time, could you tell him what you did to the nano-medics? But could you please not program any more to repair at the cellular level? Or at least turn them off when they’re finished, if you do decide to help someone else that way.” She swallowed, thinking about her father floating in the black. “Humans aren’t meant to live forever.”
Erebus smiled. “I can.”
Nyx twisted to Kai, his warm hands still on her shoulders. She put a hand to her face and rubbed her eye. She couldn’t deal with this. It was too much. “I’m ready for that rec time you demanded I take.”
He gazed softly at her and turned her up the stairs to the second level of the deck, towards the door. “I’ll escort you to your quarters.” He looked over his shoulder to Erebus. “Would you mind coming with us? I would like to assign you quarters.” Kai turned back to Nyx and muttered under his breath, “And get you off of my bridge.”
“I understand.” Erebus stepped behind Kai.
Nyx placed her hand on the palm pad and the door whooshed open. She looked back at the gawking crew. Emlyn raised a hand from her weapons console and waved, smiling weakly. Raphael only glanced at her, expression unreadable as he tapped two fingers to his heart in a religious salute.
A blaring alarm and red lights clanged through the ship. Nyx flinched and put her hands to her ears. The emergency red lights flashed in sequence down the corridor, illuminating her skin crimson. “What in the Seven Stars is it now?” she muttered.
“Status,” Kai yelled as he spun and bounded back down the stairs, around Erebus, and to his black captain’s chair.
Nyx stood in the doorway, eyes closed against the din and strobing red lights.
The crew snapped from gawking to tapping furiously at their consoles. Everyone scanned their image and data readouts.
Raphael shouted over the peal of the alarm, “Proximity alert.”
“FCO Sarama, mute that alert, put up the view-screen, and tell me what I’m seeing,” Kai ordered the First Communications Officer.
The Black woman nodded curtly, tight curls bobbing. She flashed her neatly manicured fingers over her console and a picture resolved on the main view-screen in front of Kai.
A towering ship formed in a series of rectangular boxes like the sky-scrapers of old-Earth. It hung in space within targeting distance of the Thanatos. Easily fifty times the size of the Thanatos, the cruiser was lit like a small city.
The alert continued to flash scarlet along the corridor behind Nyx, as she ran to her console and hit a couple of controls. The cruiser’s identification came up: Battle Station Kokou Five Seven Nine. The hairs rose on the back of Nyx’s neck.
Erebus lifted her head to face the view-screen.
“They’re hailing us,” FCO Sarama drawled in her heavy Queen’s Speech accent.
Kai slumped in his chair. “Put the sovereign bastards on screen but keep us black for now.”
A woman with close-cropped wheat hair and a straight-lipped grimace appeared on the screen. She pulled the front of her blue, double-breasted jacket down taut, cleared her throat, and then spoke in Queen’s Speech.
Sarama translated. “I am Commandant Athena Gray. Starship Thanatos, surrender now. You will be boarded according to the Piracy Act of 3546 and all crew taken into custody.”
“Jump drive ready?” Kai snapped.
Raphael shook his head, long black ponytail swishing against his neck. “They’ve already hooked us in a grapnel-beam. They should start pulling us in any—”
The Thanatos lurched as the grapnel disturbed the gravity generators.
“—moment,” he finished lamely.
Kai turned to Nyx, narrowing his eyes as her fingers played over the console keys. “How long until we’re trapped in that behemoth?”
Her gut sank at the readout. “About three minutes.”
She tapped her screen and zoomed in on the wide bay where the Kokou was dragging the Thanatos to dock. Dozens of soldiers stood in rows behind a shimmering blue energy shield, heavily armed. No doubt they were waiting for the Thanatos to land in the massive berth so they could force the docking ramps open and storm the ship, capture the crew first for interrogation, and then for a firing squad.
Her hackles raised, and she ground her teeth. Tiny goose-bumps ran along her arms. There was no way to break away from a ship this big, and the grapnel-beam stopped them from jumping away. The only way out was fighting. Her hand hovered over the yellow alert and quick narrow-wave she had prepared.
They were out on the edges of the trade routes, too close to dark space. There was no reason for the Queen’s Navy to be out here. The Kokou had just appeared. The Navy rarely patrolled this area. It must be a fluke. No one could have predicted they would be there.
Erebus jerked forward. She walked to the view-screen and touched the image of the commandant.
The commandant scowled. “Rendez-vous, immediatement.”
Kai waved off the translation from his FCO. He sat forward. “Turn on the feed, Sarama.”
FCO Sarama nodded, fingers flying.
Nyx flexed her hand, not yet ready to arm the crew for a stand-off.
Erebus twitched her head. “You will let this ship go.”
The commandant glared at the android. “Capitaine arrêtez votre Sia. Rendez-vous et votre equipage sera épargné.”
“Surrender and you’ll spare my crew? You’re bluffing.” Kai scoffed. “I think that a firing squad is pretty standard for pirating with the monarchy.”
The crew gaped at the Sia-unit dawdling by the view-screen. Nyx stared at Erebus. Whatever she was doing, it would be dangerous, for both the Kokou and the Thanatos. Granted, this would all be so much easier if they all just floated. The Kokou. A flash of green light appeared at the corner of her sight. Nyx looked down at her console, and it crawled with emerald green light, swirling by with mechanical precision. A single, white, ghost-like tendril of light rose from the tips of her fingers and twined with the emerald light. Her eyes widened, and she glanced up at the crew, who still stared at Erebus. No one seemed to be seeing what she was seeing.
Kai sat straight in his chair. “I’d listen to that Sia, Commandant Gray.”
The commandant narrowed her eyes. “Je n’pense pas.”
A sly grin painted Kai’s face. “At your own peril. You see, we have the Star of Erebus on board.”
Nyx narrowed her eyes at Kai. They didn’t know Erebus’ capabilities. This had to be a bluff.
Erebus turned and smiled at Nyx, and the green light swirled around her, then extended into the view-screen and beyond the ship into the black of space. Rather than seeing it, Nyx felt it as the white tendril of energy from her own hands slid along the green light. All the way to the Kokou.
Commandant Gray squared her navy-clad shoulders and switched to thickly accented Common in anger. “The Star of Erebus? Do you know how many pirates we take in who claim the very same? The weapon doesn’t exist. It’s been lost to the ages, relegated to the worship of a handful of zealots.”
Erebus stepped back to the captain’s chair, standing beside Kai. “You will release this ship. You will not harm its crew.”
“The law is the law, android. I intend to bring them in,” the commandant ground out, her blue eyes fiery.
“You were warned,” Erebus intoned.
Nyx just wanted them to go away. For this to stop. She’d had too much today and the last thing she wanted to deal with was the Queen’s Navy and a power-mongering commandant who appeared out of nowhere. She sighed. If only she co
uld just float them all.
Small puffs of white gasses exited from ports all over the surface of the giant ship in Nyx’s small view-screen on her console.
A rush of wind crashed over the comms and the straight-lipped woman gasped, clawing at her collar on the view-screen as the atmosphere was vacuumed out of the bridge. Struggling for air, she reached for the camera, her pale skin turning blue. She arched her back and kicked out—once, twice. At last, she slumped, heavy in her chair.
Nyx felt the blood drain from her. The scene of the scrambling crew made the bile rise in her throat. Sarama put her hand to her mouth. Emlyn hid her eyes. Raphael turned away. The Thanatos crew was dead silent, watching the feed from the Kokou, watching Erebus.
Did she just do this? Did Erebus? Did they just vent an entire ship? Her connection to the green and white light from her fingers had vanished. She put a hand to her mouth. Was this part of the AI that Erebus said was in her? Her stomach knotted. Together, she and Erebus were about to kill over a hundred-thousand people…
“Turn the air back on, Erebus,” Nyx whispered, too horrified to speak any louder.
Erebus merely stared at the view-screen, motionless.
“Erebus. Turn the air back on.” Nyx gripped her console. Her breath came quicker now. “Erebus, now.”
“Do it,” Kai added in an order.
Erebus looked at Kai. “No.”
A thrill shot through Nyx’s spine. Kai never took kindly to people telling him no.
“What did you say to me?” Kai uttered in a low, dangerous tone.
“My scans show ninety-percent already dead. In thirty seconds, ninety-eight. In sixty, one-hundred percent casualty,” Erebus chirped pleasantly.
Kai’s jaw dropped. “Did you just kill that entire ship?”
No. Nyx opened her mouth to speak and then stopped. What would he do if she confessed? This was her fault. She wished the Kokou dead. Over a hundred-thousand people, not just soldiers. Now Erebus was following through on that wish. She was only doing what she said she’d do—fight for family.
But an entire ship? She and Erebus had killed an entire ship.
