Star Assassin

by D. R. Rosier

  Ann cut in, just inside my head, no one else could hear her.

  “Your position has been approved, standby for download.”

  “Just a second, guys,” I tilted my head, “Download?”

  Ann said, “Yes, downloads for education cost credits, but the one that covers your job is free. It will also show you the layout of the ship, except for some grayed out areas where you will not have access. It also shows you how to use the equipment and how to swap out parts.”

  “If it’s just a download, why do the humans that do subsystem repair need to be very intelligent.”

  And why hadn’t she told me about it before, she’d implied that she’d be helping me learn my job, and I suppose that technically she was, but she was also being deceptive.

  Ann said, “One moment.”

  Then my brain seized, and my hands gripped the table as information poured into my mind. It was a rush. EPS conduits, internal sensors, external sensors, artificial gravity, inertial dampening, reclamation, life support, shield emitters, airlocks, and other minor systems. It wasn’t about how they worked, it was simply about running diagnostics, interpreting the data, and how to replace the failing or failed components, including how to get the components from the cargo holds.

  I also got a list of toys I could buy, and they were all ridiculously expensive.

  The map came in too. The ship was about a quarter mile long, between two hundred and one hundred yards wide, and had sixteen decks. There was a large grayed out area for the bridge and engineering. There were also grayed out areas along the sides of the ship on decks four and twelve. I speculated that was where the weapons systems were, since that information wasn’t in the download at all. They probably wouldn’t let slaves repair those.

  There were also several grayed out rooms throughout the ship, I guess that they were probably arms lockers, or other extremely sensitive storage areas.

  The devices I’d use were in a storage compartment outside of engineering, and the engineers would give me my assignments through Ann. She’d report when I had a system back on line and was ready for the next task.

  I shook my head, as the knowledge settled. I still felt a bit shaky, it had been intense. I couldn’t even imagine how much a full science course would rattle my brain.

  “You alright there darling?”

  “Fine,” I rasped at Emil.

  Ann said, “I thought it wise to answer your question after the download was successful. The reason it’s important is because if a download contains information too complex for a human mind, it can cause mental instability. I was ninety six percent sure you were intelligent enough to handle this job.”

  Shit. So, if I hadn’t been smart enough, I’d have gone nuts? Good to know.

  Joseph shook his head, “Make sure you ask lots of questions, the assistant will leave out some details sometimes that are rather important to know. Especially risks. You must be a smart one, hardest job and it only took you twenty minutes to come out of it.”

  I laughed, “I see that, and thank you. Wait, twenty minutes?”

  It’d felt like a few seconds.

  Ann said, “As I said, I feared if I told you that beforehand, you would resist the download out of fear and hurt your mind. Both intelligence and cooperation are required for success. Now you know it’s intense, but nothing to fear.”

  I neither agreed or disagreed, I didn’t like that she’d hidden the truth, but I could also see her point.

  There was a small package on the table.

  “What’s this?”

  Emil said, “Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, darling. You were still absorbing information when the steward came through. You should eat fast, we start our shift in ten.”

  I opened the package, it looked like a granola bar.

  Joseph laughed, “You look disgusted, get used to it. One of those bars has enough calories and nutrients for twenty-four hours. It’s been specially designed for humans. It tastes good too.”

  I took a cautious bite and chewed, and then glared at Joseph.

  “Liar,” I accused, it tasted like… I didn’t know. Something bad. Tire tread came to mind, but I’d never chewed on a tire so couldn’t really say. I also noticed a lot of the new scared people like me were watching the three of us. Was no one else brave enough to talk to the old-timers?

  Emil laughed, “It’s an acquired taste, it’s also the cheapest food option. You can buy regular food once you have the credits for it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Pinch every credit darling, and find a partner to share the things necessary to maintain a balanced mind. Food isn’t one of those things.”

  I sighed, “No coffee? Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.”

  Joseph snickered, “The health nanites, and that food bar, will make sure you have plenty of energy.”

  I nodded, and finished the bar. I still wasn’t sure if there was a way out of this, but I wasn’t about to give up. Not yet. Still, the more information I gained, the less likely escape seemed. I was on a damned alien space ship, escape might even be easy, but there was nowhere to go, and no way back to Earth. There were a lot of obstacles in my way, not the least of which was a security system that was sentient. How could I hack or beat a computerized security system that could reason and make judgements of its own? I didn’t like the answer my mind provided at all.

  Emil said, “Good luck on your first day darling. Time to work.”

  Chapter Five

  In the first few hours, I swapped out two worn power couplings, and an atmospheric internal sensor which tied into life support.

  It was weird, because everything was new, but I knew the ship layout as if I’d been walking its corridors and decks for a lifetime. So far, I’d only run into another human slave twice, but the damned Stolavii were everywhere. I wondered if the ship was really that packed, or if they were just keeping a close eye on the new slaves.

  Every deck was made of the same metallic alloy as my room, and the ship had no… style. It was uniform, regimented, and purely functional. Even the diagnostics device I picked up, was an ugly metallic square, with some kind of touch display that I doubted was anything like Earth’s.

  I also asked Ann endless questions. I learned the ship was an armed cruiser, with both plasma weapons, and missile systems for long range attacks. There were smaller ships, scouts and destroyers, and one larger class of ship which was a dreadnought class. I was learning a lot of information, but nothing that could help me escape, the Stolavii were ugly, but they weren’t stupid. I imagined after kidnapping and enslaving humans from Earth for two centuries, they probably had the system down well.

  I wasn’t dejected yet though. There was always a way, I just needed to find it.

  When those three hours were up, there was an announcement we were entering subspace. That did hurt a bit as we left Earth far behind, and raced through the void between stars faster than light. Emil was right about the food bar, I was full of energy, and I felt great, which perversely made me a bit sad.

  Regardless, the only way home for me now was to hijack the ship, and I didn’t see that as a real possibility. I could probably take out a bunch of the enemy, but even if I somehow got onto the bridge, all the systems would be locked out. Even if they weren’t, I didn’t know how to operate it. In the end, I’d be caught and killed.

  So, I did what I had to. I asked questions, learned, and lied to myself. I told myself it wasn’t a futile effort. It was a long fourteen hours, and then we returned to our quarters…

  “Ann, I need the sonic shower, and what about clean uniforms?”

  A square near the ceiling came out of the wall.

  “Stand under that while dressed, it will clean you and refresh your uniform which is made of a material that will absorb and later excrete your sweat or any stains.”

  Right, one body hugging uniform per slave. Figures.

  I stepped under the device, and it turned on. I could sense a tickling vibration, but it didn’t hurt. When it st
opped I felt clean, but not refreshed. Even my teeth. It obviously wasn’t as good as a hot shower on my sore muscles from the day, but it was good enough to get me clean. I imagined though, that it would cost me a year’s worth of credits for enough water to make a hot shower, so I needed to suck it up.

  I was truly scared as I laid down, I didn’t think I had the personality type to repeat my day over a hundred thousand times. More than that actually, the count would be closer to a hundred and ten thousand days, just five hundred short of that. Three hundred years, it was insane. Finding someone to sleep with, and be with so I didn’t go insane, suddenly sounded good. I hated that. Still, I could’ve used the stress relief of good sex right then.

  I wanted to find someone, have a relationship, but on my own terms, not to stave off insanity. I didn’t feel up to talking to anyone that first night either. I’d sleep first, and then have a couple of hours to talk to people in the morning before shift. Hopefully there were others that would do the same thing.

  The most ironic part of this insanity, was that I’d given up one form of slavery to another. My handlers back home had me on a tight leash as well, the bars of the cell just hadn’t been as obvious. Still, I’d had a better chance of figuring out the drug than figuring out how to break out of here.

  Now that I was free of them, free to pursue connections with other humans, there was a part of me that felt like that would be giving up in this situation. I couldn’t win if I gave up and accepted my place here.

  I closed my eyes, and it was quite a while before the turmoil and questions in my mind settled, and I found sleep…

  The ship shook and vibrated, which woke me up. It wasn’t that violent, I wasn’t tossed out of the bed, but something was going on. The ship shook again.

  “What is that?”

  Ann said, “Slaves are not cleared for tactical data. All I can tell you is we are in a battle of sorts. Please remain calm, and complete your sleep cycle. You’ve only rested for three hours.”

  Right, could be blown up any second for all I knew, and the crazy assistant in my head wanted me to sleep? The battle, or whatever it was, only lasted another seven minutes. No matter how I asked, I couldn’t get any more information out of Ann. Did it happen a lot, was it the Isythians? She had told me the Stolavii were mercenaries, for all I knew they’d taken out an enemy battleship, or maybe they’d just taken down a trade ship of some kind, like pirates.

  There was no way to know, and Ann had a point. It worried me, not knowing, but I also had no control over the outcome, or what happened, so worrying about it was a useless emotion. That wouldn’t stop me though, I might have been raised as a ruthless assassin, but I was still human.

  I tried to get back to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t shut off. It was a serious risk to life that my psyche hadn’t come to terms with yet. Finally, I decided to rub one out, and that relaxed me enough to allow further sleep, although I missed my vibe. I just hoped there were no cameras in my cell. I snickered at the idea of the galaxy net having voyeuristic peep alien slave porn. It sounded ridiculous, but I knew if humans were in charge, that would so happen.

  The next morning, I tried to make a few friends, but there were a lot of depressed and apathetic people in the room. I didn’t want to bother Joseph and Emil again either. I’d like to say I wasn’t as out of it as they were, and I didn’t think I was, but I was hardly burgeoning with hope either.

  At least it was a start, there were fourteen males, and nine females in our section including myself. I wasn’t sure if there were other slaves or slave quarters on the ship or not, or if there were other species present on the ship. So far, I’d only seen the Stolavii and humans aboard ship.

  From what I could work out, Joseph and Emil had been slaves for over two centuries, and they were the sanest two in the room. Nine of us had just been taken, the other eight looked shell shocked still. The other twelve had been here more than five but less than fifty years, and looked haunted. Tomorrow, I’d make more of an effort to get to know them, but there was a part of me that didn’t want to bother. None of them would try to escape, and they had no knowledge I needed, which was the knowledge to escape. Even if they did, they couldn’t share it without getting caught by our assistants, who no doubt reported every word spoken.

  It wasn’t that I viewed them as pathetic or not worth the trouble, even the ones that seemed to have completely lost heart, I couldn’t really blame them. I refused to go that way, if it came down to it and I lost all hope of escape, I’d commit suicide by homicide, and take as many of the fuckers with me as I could. It was just that getting to know my fellow human captive slaves, and forging connections, felt too much like giving up.

  Then I ate my wonderful breakfast, lunch, and dinner bar, and started my shift.

  The first job I got was replacing a data node on the life support network. In short, it was responsible for controlling and communicating with internal atmospheric sensors throughout most of deck four. I interfaced the portable diagnostic tool, and ran the most thorough diagnostic, which would map out part of the system, not just diagnose the failing node itself.

  Ann said, “That level of action is not necessary.”

  I frowned. The truth was I’d planned to do this a lot, to learn how the ship worked. A download cost a lot of credits, but learning the hard way by studying schematics and how the systems worked and interacted on the ship would help me learn it the hard and long way, just like back in a school with a lab, or the way I’d been studying chemistry in my basement.

  My goal was simple, learn enough about the ship to figure out what I could do. If not escape, then to do as much damage as I could to these kidnapping bastards before I died. I already knew I couldn’t handle doing this for three hundred years, it would break me. Oh, the human will to live could take a lot, and at least I wasn’t being tortured, but if I gave up I wouldn’t be me anymore. I’d be a shadow, like the people I’d seen this morning. Figuring out a way to sabotage life support seemed like a good goal toward that end.

  Of course, I couldn’t exactly tell Ann any of that, she’d report my ass and I’d get spaced.

  “Is it forbidden? Humans are curious, the intelligent ones even more so. Learning the science behind the systems will keep my mind engaged, and keep me mentally healthier. Sure, it isn’t as fast as a download, but its free, and it isn’t like I don’t have the time to learn things the long way.”

  All of that was true, I’d long figured out that Ann would be able to detect even the smallest of lies, I imagined that the millions of little Nano-bot health machines in my body could easily track my pulse, respiration, perspiration, blood pressure, and other indicators of lying. I’d have to be very careful.

  She replied, “It is not forbidden, but you will be watched closely for any attempts to subvert the ships subsystems.”

  I asked in a surprised tone, “I thought I already was?”

  Ann didn’t answer, which was answer enough for me. I finished up, and it looked like the last person to replace this node didn’t lock it down properly, and it was shaken loose in the battle enough to cause the connector to have intermittent problems. I took care of it, and then logged it in the computer. I hoped I didn’t just get another slave into trouble. High technology or not, it was still electronics, and sometimes you just had to reseat the card so to speak.

  I spent the next five minutes while waiting for my next assignment, studying the circuit layout. It was triple redundant, with the nodes in separate sections and far apart, which would make any kind of attempt at sabotage very difficult from a hardware standpoint. Of course, I didn’t have access to engineering, or the software, so it was all I had to work with. I was determined to learn the other systems too.

  Perhaps more importantly, I needed to get to know the Stolavii, social engineering had its place, and I’d be a fool to treat them like dumb red apes.

  It was several hours later, when I got a job in one of the large cargo bays that had an external loading doo
r. Like a landing bay but smaller, meant to take crates and shipments directly into the ship from the outside. One of the power couplings had died.

  I went down to deck thirteen, and over to the port side. There were two Stolavii on either side of the door. Unlike the others, these wore some kind of metal armored suits, they also had side arms on their belts, and rifles over their shoulders. Except, I didn’t think they fired bullets. Probably lasers, plasma, or some other high-tech shit.

  One of them held up a hand as I got close, and I stopped.

  “What are you doing here?” the Stolavii growled out.

  I said calmly, even if I was shaking on the inside, not only with fear, but with an unreasoning anger. I needed to get it under control, before the bitch in my head ratted me out.

  “Engineering sent me, bad power coupling.”

  It/he/she growled. I couldn’t really tell beneath the armor. I’d learned Stolavii females were a little bit thinner than the males, but that was the only real difference I could see. I was sure there were other indicators if they were naked, but I wasn’t eager to find out. Point was, in the metallic armor I couldn’t tell the sex, only the ones in uniform could I perceive the difference.

  It looked away and said, “Engineering, this hold is designated off limits to slaves temporarily, why did you assign the human to repair the power coupling?”

  Whoever it was in engineering said, “All my crew are on damage repair, the captain demanded we restore full weapons and shielding capability as soon as possible. I can’t spare one of them right now, did you check its access authority?”

  It? I ground my teeth angrily, even though I was guilty of the same damned thing in my head just a few seconds ago. So, sue me, I wasn’t perfect. Hypocritical thinking was the right of every human after all. Still, it made me modify my thoughts a little guiltily. I’d think of the Stolavii as a guard until I knew the sex, or some other neutral term that wasn’t the word it.