Temporal Contingency

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “See, ‘Karter is extra crazy right now’ is what I’d call a reason not to visit him.”

  “The options are limited. I am loading a detailed description of the issue and the desired outcome into your suit’s memory. Any version of Karter past the age of fifteen should be capable of addressing the issue with little difficulty. Be sure to avoid having your presence recorded and clear any indication of this visit from his systems before leaving.”

  “I don’t like this plan.”

  “You are welcome to provide a superior alternative.”

  “I’m working on it. Here! This is the bay door.”

  Both of them touched down on the door. Through the porthole they saw the dim interior of the bay. None of the crew was present, no doubt each having reported to their battle stations. Only Coal was inside, her glowing shield producing what little light there was to see.

  “There can’t be much time left. Coal might be ready to blow.”

  “Then we must inform her of the altered circumstances.”

  “The bay’s isolated. We can’t get a signal through. How are we going to let her know?”

  As an answer, Ma trotted to the porthole and rapped it sharply with her paw. Inside, Coal pivoted toward the sound.

  “Oh, right…” Lex said.

  Coal’s exterior lights flickered. Ma’s helmet lights did the same. After three such exchanges, Ma looked to Lex.

  “Please clear the hatch. Coal is going to address the situation.”

  Lex grabbed Ma and flitted clear of the door with the same urgency of a man diving out of the way of a freight train. “Address the situation” was an innocuous enough phrase, but given Ma’s predilection for understatement, Lex didn’t want to take any chances. It proved a prudent decision because in this case that phrase was a synonym for “ram the bay hatch repeatedly.” The small, powerful ship clashed again and again, each time causing the door to buckle a bit more. Gas vented out, breaches tore into the surrounding structure, and finally the whole door ripped free, taking a fair amount of its mounting with it.

  “Hello, Lex. Hello, Ma. Thank you for your punctuality. I was seventeen seconds from arming the fusion device, which would not have been fun for anyone,” Coal said pleasantly. “There appears to be a ship-to-ship battle occurring at a dangerous proximity. Are you aware of this activity?”

  “Yeah, I’d noticed, Coal,” Lex said.

  “Excellent. And Ma, are you presently planning to kill Lex or acquire the GenMech?”

  “That is not my present activity,” Ma said.

  “Ma! I’ve got Coal on sensors now. Quit screwing around and get your hands on that robot and bring it back to me!” barked Karter through the clearing static. His clash with the VectorCorp vessel was coming to a close, with the larger ship largely intact but almost entirely disabled.

  “Correction, that is now my present activity,” Ma said. “I apologize for this, Lex.”

  Lex felt a searing pain in his shoulder, the point at which Ma’s tether had attached. She must have been sending an electrical current through the tether in an attempt to incapacitate him. The suit largely protected him, but the flow of energy also activated the nano-lattice in its fabric. It became rigid, locking him helplessly in position.

  “Coal, I can’t—” Lex hissed through the pain.

  “Stand by,” Coal said.

  Thrusters flared and she shot backward, briefly leaving Lex at the mercy of Ma. The retreating ship was behind him, out of his view, so it came as a shock when he felt something latch on to his leg, clenching tightly enough for him to feel it even through the hardened suit. A moment later his immobile body was yanked backward, and once Ma’s tether reeled out to its full extent, she was yanked along as well.

  “Coal… this… isn’t… helping…” Lex struggled to say, the pain in his shoulder now compounded by the rush of blood toward his head.

  “I am attempting to buy us some time,” Coal said.

  Lex glanced up through his helmet. He was just barely able to see Ma reeling herself in.

  “You aren’t going to get much of it,” Lex said.

  Ma stopped halfway up the tether and looked to the damaged remnants of the VectorCorp vessel, which was ripping by them near enough that the shields should have been brushing against them. The fact that they weren’t suggested the shields were now wholly inactive.

  “I am detecting a massive surge in energy from the VectorCorp vessel. Self-destruct has likely been initiated,” said both Ma and Coal simultaneously.

  “Time to go,” Coal added.

  She juiced her main thrusters, released the grappler she’d clamped onto Lex’s leg, and flipped open the cockpit. Both Ma and Lex tumbled inside. Lex’s frozen position was not compatible with the limited space in the cockpit, but with a bit of force she was able to overcome the rigidity of the suit and stuff him and Ma safely inside. It wasn’t a dignified position, with Ma crammed against Lex’s helmet and the hatch, but it was enough to complete the seal.

  “Initiating random jump,” Coal said.

  “No! Coal! You can’t do it with Ma here! She’s trying to—”

  “FTL initiated.”

  In the slivers of the outside that he could see around Ma’s struggling body, Lex watched the battleground whisk to invisibility as he was dragged unwillingly to faster-than-light speeds.

  #

  “Ma?” Karter growled. “Respond!”

  Karter’s ship was somewhere in the bowels of the VectorCorp vessel. The attempt to ram him had been a miscalculation on Purcell’s part because, while it wreaked havoc on his shields, it allowed him to punch through the armor and have free rein on the much more delicate innards of the massive ship. He unloaded his smaller weapons, blasting away bulkheads and melting structural members to slag. He was like a disease running rampant inside a larger organism, and there was no way for Purcell to target him.

  “Tell me that computer didn’t get herself destroyed. You can’t rely on anyone anymore…” he growled.

  He glanced down at a display on his control panel. It was telling that very few warnings were sounding at the moment, despite his presence within another ship and his rapidly failing shields. Karter’s disregard for his safety and that of anyone else had long ago convinced him to shift his ship’s warning system to take a far less conservative approach to alerts. Rather than blaring sirens informing him of the near certainty of his destruction, there was a silent but clear indicator of the impending shield failure, a gentle reminder that he was violating minimum safe distance in all directions, a blinking suggestion that a nearby reactor was about to reach super-critical levels, and finally a navigation pointer to what appeared to be two ships leaving the area at FTL speeds in opposite directions.

  “Well that’s just great,” Karter said.

  His fingers danced over the control panel, tapping in a sequence of commands. The first command was a calculation on the destructive radius of the self-destruction. It traced out a several-thousand-kilometer circle, which encompassed the whole of the still largely disabled survey convoy thanks to its ill-fated attempt to converge upon and aid the communication vessel. The second indicated that one of the two ships leaving the area had the same distinctive shield signature that had allowed him to track Purcell.

  “That coward wasn’t even willing to go down with her ship? Some captain she is,” he said. “May as well chase her. Since I have no idea where the hell Lex is going, no sense wasting an opportunity to blow someone to hell.”

  He unloaded his blasters, boring his way to open space with seconds to spare, then set a pursuit course for Purcell’s escape pod. Shortly after his departure, the VectorCorp ship detonated. The ships of the convoy were torn to pieces and largely vaporized by the intensity of the blast. All that remained when the explosion had run its course was a handful of scarred fragments and a cloud of expanding vapor. History had run its course.

  Chapter 8

  Things had been going rather unpleasantly for Lex. M
a was intimately aware of all weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Coal’s system. The first fifteen minutes of their journey had been a game of whack-a-mole, with Ma attempting to override Coal’s systems through a series of different wireless methods.

  “Stop that. That is very rude,” Coal objected. “You don’t see me trying to execute a stack overflow on you.”

  “Again, I apologize,” Ma said, shifting uncomfortably where she was still wedged between helmet and hatch. “I am unable to disobey orders. I must acquire and deliver the GMVD to Karter by any means necessary,” Ma said.

  “Well if you’re going to keep trying to gain wireless access, I’m just going to turn off my wireless transceiver.” There was a quiet tone. “There. Let’s see you try to override me now.”

  Ma helpfully obliged, twisting her head to look down at the controls in front of Lex and jabbing at the panel with the tip of her tightly packed tail.

  “Disabling manual controls as well,” Coal said, her comment accompanied by another tone.

  Now Ma’s helmet lights began to flicker out a code.

  “Disabling visual sensors,” Coal said. “We are now audio only.”

  The speakers on Ma’s suit began to emit an odd, atonal screech.

  “Okay, what the hell is that?” Lex asked.

  “I am emulating an acoustic modem,” Ma replied.

  “I am pleased to say I do not have any data surviving in my system regarding the demodulation of that protocol.”

  “Begin audio analysis and decode communication protocol,” Ma suggested.

  “That might be interesting.”

  “Coal, stop that. For now, I want you to only listen to me,” Lex said.

  “And I am ordering you to reactivate your radio transceiver,” Ma said, flawlessly imitating Lex’s voice.

  “No! Don’t do that either!”

  “Please make up your mind, Lex,” Coal said.

  “My mind is made up. I want you to start listening to Ma’s orders,” Ma said.

  “No I don’t. That’s not me. That’s Ma imitating me,” Lex said.

  “This is getting confusing. I am going to disable all but navigational sensors for the next ten minutes. You two work things out between yourselves.”

  A final tone effectively left Lex alone with Ma, each held motionless by the other.

  “Ma, you’ve got to stop this,” Lex said.

  “I am unable to disobey an order given to me under command override. The best I can do is offer warning of my forthcoming behaviors in order to allow you to construct a defense. In a few moments I am going to discontinue the flow of current that I am using to lock you in position so that I can free myself and attempt to reach and access a direct data port.”

  “Can’t you just fight it? Use your willpower?”

  “Willpower is a human concept. I do not have willpower. Deactivating current flow.”

  Lex felt his suit go slack again, and immediately Ma scrabbled against his helmet in an attempt to dislodge herself. Lex leaned forward, trying to keep her pinned, but the little creature was much stronger and more slippery than he’d remembered. She slipped free and activated her pack, working both her jets and her legs to force herself downward alongside him.

  Having Squee as a pet had served Lex well, however. His pet was prone to unruly behavior from time to time, and his need to get a hold of her and get her under control had honed his reflexes to a ninja-like level. He pinned her to his side with one arm and grasped the yet-to-be-retracted tether with the other hand. She detached it, but he quickly whipped it toward her. Then came a short, frenzied struggle. Ma realized his intentions and tried to retract the tether, but he’d gotten a loop of it around her front legs before she could. The retraction thus pulled the loop tight and immobilized her front legs. While she was trying to slacken the line and free her legs, Lex twisted in the cramped space and coiled loop after loop of additional line around front and back legs, effectively hog-tying her.

  When the excitement was over, Ma was hopelessly entangled and drifting above Lex’s head in what would normally have been her dedicated perch. She activated her jet pack, but he wrapped and tied the last of the tether around an exposed strut. She continued to attempt to escape for thirty seconds, but she only managed to look like a kite stuck in a windstorm. Finally she relented.

  “Impressively done, Lex,” Ma said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” he said breathlessly. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “You realize that I will continue to be a liability to you for as long as I am under command override. It would be prudent for you to kill me before I am able to get free.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, Ma,” he said.

  “It is the most intelligent option available to you.”

  “When have you ever known me to take the most intelligent option available to me?”

  “I must insist—”

  “Enough people died already today, Ma. I’m not adding you to the list,” he barked. “Besides. You’re piggybacking on Squee.”

  “Those are valid observations,” Ma said. “But please be mindful of my actions. I am very resourceful and dedicated.”

  “Yes, Ma. We’ve met. When does this end? When do you snap out of it?”

  “I must complete my mission. I must acquire and deliver the GMVD. When this is complete, I will be free to behave as I choose until Karter issues a new order or retracts the command override.” She struggled briefly. “It has been a very long time since he utilized that feature. I am unaccustomed to this level of control. It is unpleasant.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I’m not certain that you can. Satisfying my imperatives is core to my being. It is why I exist. His recent orders contradict several longstanding imperatives. It is confounding. I am uncertain I can render the resulting cognitive dissonance into terms with which you could empathize. It is most similar to being held underwater. You must hold your breath to survive, but every fiber of your being demands you breathe. I do not want to follow these orders, but I must do it. It is deeply, profoundly troubling.”

  “That’s rough.”

  Her helmet popped open, and she reached down to hook her jaws under the tether. Lex acted quickly, levering her mouth open, clicking her helmet shut, and gripping it to keep it shut.

  “Well done,” Ma said.

  “Squee gets into some things she shouldn’t. Getting stuff out of her mouth is practically my hobby.”

  “I have observed this when processing her memories.”

  He leaned down and tugged at a pouch on the thigh of his suit, revealing one of the most important parts of any space traveler’s toolkit, duct tape. He popped his own helmet, peeled off a bit with his teeth, and wrapped it around the helmet to keep it shut.

  “Very resourceful,” Ma said.

  “This might be a stupid question, but are you going to lie to me and do anything you can to get this job done?”

  “Unlikely. Because his recent order supersedes my preexisting mission but is not as well defined as my primary mission, I still have the leeway to moderate my behavior such that only acts that would directly contribute to the fulfillment of the new command are justifiable. Anything that directly results in my acquisition of the GMVD or its delivery to Karter is unavoidable. All else is at my discretion. That said, treat all of my behavior with caution, as I may identify a direct action that has escaped your notice. It is also possible the preceding reply was crafted specifically to mislead you.”

  “Great. That’s great news. We’re traveling with the most forthcoming double agent ever.”

  Lex flipped off the transceiver in his suit, then checked the log to make sure Ma hadn’t altered the information she’d given prior to being compromised by a new order from Karter.

  “It says here we’re going to be heading for a planet called… Hermit Crab?”

  “It is not a planet, it is the codename of a facility on that planet. I am unaware of the reasoning behind the name.”


  “Well what planet is it?”

  “I am unaware of that as well. Only the raw coordinates of the facility itself are in my data banks.”

  “Why?”

  “I had to take some extreme space-saving measures to ensure I had all necessary data in the storage provided.”

  “Are we going to be welcome at this place?”

  “Unlikely. As previously stated, Karter was working in isolation by choice. Though I have no specific indications of such, it is within his standard behavior to have taken steps to ensure that isolation. Maintaining the presence of the debris field around Big Sigma, for example.”

  “Gotcha. So we’re running from one Karter who tried to kill me and heading for another Karter who will probably try to kill me.”

  “It should be observed that the Karter who sent us on this mission also made brief attempts on your life.”

  “… Oh, right. When he tried to cave my head in with the crowbar. Funny how that slipped my mind.”

  “Momentary murderous intent toward you does seem to be a common trait among Karter’s many incarnations,” Ma said.

  “He’s a hell of a guy.”

  Ma activated her jet pack again, flopping about pointlessly for a moment.

  “I was unaware of your skill with knots, Lex.”

  “I’ve still got some surprises left.”

  He reached down to tap at the controls and found them unresponsive.

  “Great… I’ve got to wait until Coal pokes her head in again.”

  Lex clenched his fists and breathed slowly through his mouth. Ma glanced up at him from her perch.