Spaced

by Greg Curtis

  It was a crime so horrendous they couldn’t walk away from it. They would all be put on public trial, found guilty and locked away or executed.

  So a coup had been hastily launched. It had nothing to do with the mute threat but it had everything to do with saving themselves. Because sooner or later they knew, they were going to be exposed. They had to be above the law before that happened.

  As Aquaria fell into chaos so too would the rest of the Commonwealth in time. A coup was underway, one which couldn’t possibly succeed, especially when half their own forces were against it. There were reports that many were refusing to obey their orders. Carm guessed most of the Navy still had no idea what had occurred on Aquaria. They still thought this botbrained coup was only about the fraud and the exposure. And they could live with whatever punishment was handed down to the admirals for that. They didn't know what Naval Command knew.

  What would happen when it came out Carm couldn’t know. But he was determined that it would come out, and hopefully it would end the lies and the cover-up. That in turn might end the violence.

  If for no other reason than that somewhere in that unfolding disaster was his family. Carm didn’t know where they were or how they were surviving or even if they were still alive. He couldn't find them – he had never felt so helpless in all his life.

  But, Carm knew there was one thing he could do. That he had to do. There was only one ship in the entire system which could carry word of this back to Earth, and he was sitting in it.

  “Ship –.”

  “No! Not again!” The ship interrupted him, obviously guessing what was coming next. “We did it. We did everything you said. We got the word out and nearly blew apart in the attempt. And now look what's happened! The damned thing’s gone nova!”

  “Ship, we have to. You know that.”

  “Of course I don't know that! Your mush brain is full of malware! We can sit and watch, and eventually this will sort itself out. We don't have to do anything.”

  “And how many will die before then? What happens if this thing blows up into a full-scale civil war? If we can do something to stop that happening we have to.”

  “But you promised! You said no more jumping! You said we could sit here and let my new bot do a proper overhaul.” The ship sounded almost like a child about to throw a fit.

  “I said I had no plans. And I wanted to do nothing. But look at what's happened. We have a duty.”

  “You want to jump again, risk an even bigger mess coming out at the other end. And all while the new hyper-cooling system has still not been properly tested. Just how defective are you?!” But it was the ship that was starting to sound defective. There was a touch of hysteria in its voice.

  “Ship we'll let the drives cool completely before we jump and the new bot can analyse them to its heart's content. You know there hasn't been a single temperature spike anywhere. The cooling system and the new hyper-cooler are working faultlessly. Besides we have to jump sooner or later. We can't just stay here. Eventually the Navy’s going to spot us and come calling. And they'll do so with weapons. So why not go back to the Mars jump point? It's as safe as anywhere else.” Carm tried reasoning with the ship, but he knew it was angry. The Nightingale had been through a lot, and no doubt it had hoped it was over. Carm had hoped the same.

  “And we can't possibly make things any worse. Look at what they're already doing! Think what more they have to be planning. More murder? Massacres? Genocide? The end of Aquaria? The end of the Commonwealth?”

  “You're defective!” The ship raised its mechanical voice, sounding a little shrill. Could ships become hysterical? “Your sharding processor has finally turned to mush!”

  “You know I'm only telling you the truth. We're standing on a precipice. The entire Commonwealth is on the edge and leaning over. And you know what has to be done.”

  “Like shards! You need counselling! I want a full psychiatric evaluation on you! There's got to be something wrong! You're deliberately trying to get us killed!”

  “And we both know where my last counsellor ended up and what she tried to do!” Carm snapped at the ship and then regretted it. It was only doing its job. And it had a point.

  “We'll get a better model!”

  “I'd rather get a cat!” That at least was true. There would be no more androids for him. Ever. “And I'm not trying to get us killed. I'm trying to keep everyone alive.”

  “Oh sweet circuits!” The ship sounded as though it was about to burst into tears. “Why did I have to end up with an organic defective like you?!”

  It was then that Carm knew he’d won the argument. His ship might be a little upset – something an AI simply shouldn't be – but it had to obey its programming. And its programming said it had to obey the commands of its Captain, unless he was incapable of performing his duties. It didn't matter what the orders were.

  “Just do what you have to. Get us ready for the jump back to Mars. And get that new damned bot working overtime.” Carm gave up on reasoning with it and settled for simply commanding it. It had clearly moved beyond the stage where reasoning could help. From now on he knew it was going to be a matter of giving orders and hoping that the ship accepted them.

  But he’d been put on notice. His ship was not going to take much more from him.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  The jump back to Mars was uneventful. Nothing went bang, no sirens sounded, no lights flashed. That was good. But even as his nerves eased Carm was still worried. They’d been gone eight hours, and the stars alone knew what the Navy had been doing in that time. They could be anywhere, doing anything. They could be right on top of them.

  It was a nervous few minutes for him waiting for the systems to come back online. Every one of those minutes he was half expecting to be fired upon.

  When they did finally get the sensors up, no naval ships were bearing down on them. They were somewhere near as Carm could see their signals clearly covering the Mars jump point. It looked like the Navy had set up a blockade. No ships in or out. Civilian vessels were stuck around the point, hoping they’d be allowed to leave at some time. It was busy above Mars, but there was no sign that anyone had seen them. Going dark had kept them safe. The algorithms had also kept them secure as they'd allowed them to arrive some distance away from the jump point.

  “Ship, get those coolant systems working at peak. We need to be able to jump again as soon as we possibly can. And bring the EM drive online. We need to be able to run until then.” Looking at the gauges and readouts he knew they were running well. But they were still much too hot to risk a second jump.

  “You know I am a sophisticated state of the art AI! I deserve better than this, being thrown into danger again and again or being ignored. And then being given unimaginative and obvious instructions as if I was some sort of defective organic with a putrid processor! I'm already doing all those things and a thousand more that you aren't even aware of!”

  The ship was still angry with him, and eager to tell him so. Carm knew it had good reason for everything it was saying. It was right. It was just that events were conspiring against them. He wasn't really guiding their course so much as reacting to a storm. Doing what he could to survive and protect those he cared about. There was no point in defending his decisions anymore. The worst of the ship's tantrum had passed and it knew the reasons behind everything he'd done. Still he did think the AI needed some attention – the very fact that it could throw a tantrum was evidence enough it had problems.

  “I know and I'm sorry. But you know I'm running on desperation here. I don't want to die either. So can we just get underway and do this please.” He tried placating the computer – it was the only thing he had left to try – and all he got back was an electronic grumble. He hadn't known that computers could grumble.

  For the next ten or twenty minutes they made slow progress away from the naval vessels and towards the Interlink Satellite, keeping every erg of power they could inside t
he ship. All the while Carm kept a close watch on the translation drive temperature, desperately wanting to see it dip low enough so they could jump again, even if it wasn't safe. If the worst happened they could repair whatever went bang as he kept telling himself, and they had spare coolant. That overpriced sharding bot was going to earn the credits it had cost him, every single one of them.

  “We're close enough,” the ship announced abruptly and that was the moment Carm's heart stopped. They were still too hot to jump. But even as he looked at the gauges and saw the temperature dropping, he knew it wouldn't be for long. The new hyper-cooler system was working well. It would only be a matter of half an hour before they could jump again without risking something failing.

  “All right then, begin transmission and keep watch on those sharding naval vessels,” Carm gave the order that could get the ship destroyed and him killed, and then thought about praying. He wasn't religious but just then he thought they could use whatever help they could and it was the only thing he hadn't yet tried.

  At first everything went much as it had before. Nothing happened apart from his fingers cramping up from gripping his chair so tightly and his having to rub his palms to wipe sweat off. He watched the chronometer counting down and the progress bar the ship had flashed up, knowing the information was getting out. Naval Command hopefully wouldn't be able to stop it. He’d made sure that the message was going to a hundred different private channels. They couldn't possibly be watching them all. The mesh was too big. But at fifteen minutes his heart jumped into his mouth as it seemed he was to be proven wrong.

  “Movement!” the ship yelled at him making him leap out of his chair and almost careen into the steel ceiling high above his head. And when it flashed up the plot Carm knew exactly what it was talking about. One of the naval vessels had changed its course. It could be a coincidence. But it could be that it had got word of what they were doing.

  “Any scans?” Carm asked, his voice much thinner and higher than normal.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Then carry on.” Carm wished the ship hadn’t added the last two words. From this point on they needed to watch for two things: first the spybots as the Navy’s computers attempted to crack the interlink satellite's security to find out who was sending the message and from where. The second were the scans from the naval vessels when they figured out that there was an unseen ship nearby. And while the ship scanned for those he kept a close eye on the temperatures. They were finally within an acceptable range for an emergency jump. It would still be dangerous and there would probably be repairs needed after. But they could do it.

  The next few minutes continued with nothing but silence from the space around them. Then the ship made the announcement he'd been dreading.

  “Spybots.”

  Carm's heart stopped beating. The Navy had detected the transmission and now it was tracking it to its source. Everything from this point on came down to time and how good the Navy’s spybots were as they broke through the basic code of the mesh. How soon after that they would realise that the message was being sent from space he didn't know. And how long after that it would be before their ships began searching he didn't know either. In fact Carm had no idea how much time he had. The chronometer was telling him that they were twenty-one minutes into a twenty-nine minute transmission. And with every second that passed the translation drive was cooling further.

  “They've hacked the basic encryptions,” the ship announced a fraction before the chronometer hit twenty-four minutes.

  The spybots were good Carm realised. Less than three minutes to break through the encryptions. It would only be a few more before they found details of the sender, realised they had no physical location, and then sent word to their ships to start hunting for another ship somewhere near the interlink satellite.

  “They're scanning!”

  As it turned out it was only another minute before the ship told Carm the bad news. And their message still hadn’t been sent. But that had always been likely. Now he knew, everything came down to how long it would take them to spot the Nightingale. The interlink satellite could tell the Navy the message wasn't being sent from a physical address on Mars, but it couldn't give them a specific location. There was a lot of space to check, but they had three vessels to scan it. The Navy had been prepared. They'd obviously worked out how the first message had been broadcast and gambled that whoever it was might try the same thing again. He should have used the Jupiter jump point.

  “Prepare to engage the EM drive. We break and run the instant they spot us,” Carm ordered. It wasn't courageous and maybe they should have risked staying longer to complete transmitting. But he wasn't feeling that brave just then and he thought they'd done as much as anyone could ask of them.

  “Not jump?”

  “No. We run for as long as we can before they catch us while staying within our extended jump point. Give the translation drive as much time as possible to cool down.” It might only be a few extra minutes – the naval vessels would be fast and they were close too – but every minute they gained was an advantage when it came time to jump.

  “You know sometimes I almost think that that organic pile of mush you call a neural processor has some working parts left after all!”

  “Thanks. And sometimes I think that the reason I bought this ship so cheaply wasn't because of the annoying AI!”

  After that time slowed, with the seconds crawling by until finally at twenty-eight minutes the ship made the announcement.

  “They've found us.”

  Carm would have said something, or given an order, but when he felt the EM drive kick in he knew he didn't need to. The ship was already taking care of business. Instead he glanced at the progress bar and saw that ninety seven copies of their message had gone out and then spent his time looking at the temperature gauge.

  “We're being hailed.”

  “Hailed?” That Carm hadn't anticipated. He'd been expecting a chase and finally a desperate jump. But even as he was wondering about it and noticing that the three naval vessels hadn't budged a single millimetre he realised that it was an opportunity. It was more time. “Flash them up.”

  “Carmichael?” The ship sounded surprised.

  “We need time to cool as much as possible and the time for hiding has passed.”

  “Alright then.” Immediately after it spoke Carm was treated to the sight of a naval captain sitting on her bridge surrounded by her officers. She looked somewhat less than happy to see him.

  “Identify yourself.”

  “Certainly. I am Doctor Carmichael Simons. Extra-solar geologist. And this is my ship the Nightingale.” Carm managed a polite smile, though he was uncomfortably aware that the ship had once accused him of having an unerring ability to annoy women to the point where they wanted to kill him. And she already looked distinctly unimpressed. She looked as though she'd just eaten a particularly sour lemon. Maybe it would have been better if it had been a man he was dealing with.

  “Well then Doctor, stand down and prepare to be boarded and taken into custody.”

  “I'm afraid I can't do that Captain…?”

  “Captain none of your damned business!” she snapped. “Just do as you're told and respect the uniform!”

  “Respect the uniform Captain?” Despite knowing that he had to remain calm, Carm lost a little self-control. “After what the Navy has done? What you're still doing? I don't think so. You have disgraced yourselves thoroughly.”

  “There will be an investigation and those who have knowingly hidden the truth of the mute origins will be disciplined. We are the Navy after all and we have rules. But we still have to defend the Commonwealth against all threats, and there is a mute threat. It doesn't matter where they came from.”

  “You mean you don't know?!” Carm was surprised, and yet he knew he shouldn't be. Not everyone in the Navy could know yet what had happened on Aquaria. It was quite likely that Naval Command had kept everything
quiet. Then again he realised, she could simply be pretending ignorance, not wanting to admit her crimes.

  “Perhaps you should look at the transmission I just sent. I just came from Aquaria. And I have seen the evidence of the massacre your people carried out two days ago. Mute threat? Huh! You gunned down a thousand police officers!”

  “That's a lie!” It was the Captain's turn to lose control and yell at Carm. “And you can't have come from Aquaria. It's completely dark.”

  “It's not a lie at all. Watch the transmission. And then ask yourself why the instant it happened Aquaria went dark and Naval Command started planning this coup.”

  “It's not a coup! This is simply a military emergency. We are expecting a mute attack.” She gave Carm the official line. And by the looks of things she almost seemed to believe it. Almost.

  “You don't believe that Captain. No one believes that.” And strangely as he said it Carm knew he was right. That was why she was so angry. She didn't know what was going on and she was simply desperate to maintain the fiction she believed in, that the Navy were the good guys. “Watch the holos. In a matter of hours it'll be everywhere anyway. And you may as well know who you're defending, who you're disgracing yourself for.”

  He shouldn't have said that. Carm knew it instantly he saw the fury grow in her eyes. But at least she didn't have a weapon in her hands or him in her sights.

  “Surrender Doctor. You should know that the Mars jump point leads to seventeen Commonwealth worlds and eight outlier bases and every one of them has already had a probe sent. Even if you somehow reached this jump point in a matter of hours ships would be at all of them and you'd have absolutely nowhere to run to. You will be caught.”

  No wonder she wasn't chasing them Carm realised. She thought she had them trapped. The three ships were holding the jump point, and they had no idea that, thanks to the algorithms, the jump point for the Nightingale was much larger than just the part of it they were covering. So she was expecting him to make a run for the jump point, heading straight for them of course. Then they could blow the Nightingale out of space. But then if by some amazingly good fortune the Nightingale made it and jumped, they had all their destinations covered as well. In short they were in the teeth of a trap. At least as far as the Navy thought.