"We still have our jump window?"
"As expected, an exit aperture is scheduled at 0600 hours for an official transport convoy. Six carrack-class cruisers full of settlers accompanied by a galleon-class military vessel, the UHCV Benedict. There should be plenty of room for us to ride along."
"Any idea where we're coming out?"
"This convoy is headed to the N'Bari system, as your android passenger indicated. From there, we'll have a two day layover till we can catch the next scheduled jump to the Geben system, where our contact is waiting for the main cargo."
"What about our passengers? Any sign of them yet?"
"The android is entering the security clearance code to access this hangar as we speak."
Sure enough, in less than a minute the android came rolling into view around a stack of crates. It hummed up to Shaen, raising a waxy celluloid hand in greeting.
"Good morning, Captain Morris."
"Morning, Mr. Bot! Are you all there?" She was still a little suspicious of making incriminating statements in the open if this deal went sour.
The android tilted its head as if puzzled, then flashed its optics in a sign of understanding. "Ah, yes. All here. Have you received and loaded the other cargo I sent?"
"I have, as well as your payment. Haven't transported a goat in a while. She's already sedated in the hold." Shaen smiled broadly, clapped her hands together and rubbed them for warmth. "Lets get aboard, then. You know what they say. 'Time, tide and government-controlled wormholes wait for no android.'"
~*~
Shaen was beginning to wish she'd left the android and its baby on Mebarik.
The child wasn't the problem. He was quietly sedated in a stasis pod in the cargo bay, still wrapped in the ratty utility blanket from the previous day. However, when she'd instructed the android to power down for the flight, it had refused.
"I can better protect my ward if I remain active during the flight," the android had calmly insisted.
"Ward is a weird name for a kid, but he's in no danger. I've flown this route a hundred times."
"The word 'ward' means a child in one's custody. Although, I suppose it will need a name at some point, and that might work as well as anything. I appreciate your confidence, Captain, but we both know each flight you take increases the risk that you'll have a disabling psychotic break. I must remain active to subdue you and pilot the ship in case that happens."
"First of all, you can't subdue me. Trust me. Better bots than you have tried. If you're really worried, you can set up an alarm with the ship's SHIVA to activate you if that happens." She'd turned towards the console, considering the matter closed, but the bot piped up, still determined to remain active.
"A SHIVA is not an AIN. It can't determine your mental state. You could disable it before it became aware the ship was damaged or off course."
Shaen growled in frustration and kicked a bulkhead. In a contest of rational, lucid arguments, she had a distinct disadvantage, particularly against the pure logic of a bot. She had no real reason for it to power down other than she preferred her passengers unconscious.
Especially the chatty ones.
"Fine. But you stay anchored in that spot, unless there's an actual emergency. Especially during the jump. The last thing I need is you sliding across the cockpit and knocking my instruments around."
"That seems a fair request, Captain." The machine emitted a quiet hum as it magnetically anchored itself to the deck.
As the Belle had indicated, there was plenty of room for the small ship among the bigger colony ships and their escort. They were at least a week from the meteor fall. The Belle Starr hovered up out of the hangar bay doors, engines screaming. They shot up the carved tunnel of bedrock, blasting out into the spore-choked atmosphere of Mebarik just behind the convoy.
The aperture was a glowing, pulsing rip in the sky. It undulated between two orbital stations, like a glowing ring of orange fire. Within the circle of the aperture, the inky depths of the Passage awaited. Along with who knew what else.
Shaen maneuvered the Belle below the middle of the convoy's V-formation. It required a huge amount of energy to keep the aperture open. The UHC made no active effort to stop coyote pilots from using their interdimensional portals, but they certainly wouldn't hold one open waiting on one. Then again, some of the twitchier UHC officers would shoot you out of the sky if you got close enough to a colony ship to seem like a possible threat. It was a delicate balancing act, flying close enough to make it through the portal while giving the convoys enough distance to avoid unpleasant attention.
Suddenly, a blip on the holoscreen caught her attention.
Dammit.
Vahnu was trying to slide into her jump window.
"You see that?" she asked the SHIVA.
"Affirmative. It's the Johnny Ringo, coming up hard starboard."
"You'd think that idiot would learn. Let's take care of this. I miss this jump window, my cargo will spoil before the next connection I can make to Geben."
Shaen dropped out of formation. She needed to get enough distance to avoid causing one of the bigger ships to decide she was risking their safety. The Belle Starr rolled and plunged towards Mebarik. She disappeared into a pink cloud of spores and moisture vapor. For a moment, all that could be seen was a series of sparkling explosions within the cloud.
Before the Johnny Ringo could reach the convoy, she reappeared below and directly behind it. She opened up a local channel to Vahnu.
"Get the hell out of my window, punk."
"What makes it your window, brat? I got a payin' fare. He's in a hurry. You can wait like the rest."
"It's my window because I got here first. And because I've got perishable cargo on board. But mostly, because the Belle's guns are trained on your main power coupling."
There was a moment of silence. The Johnny Ringo maintained its heading towards the convoy.
"Vahnu, if you're waiting for your big brother to come rescue your ass, I'm sorry to inform you that the Cole Younger is currently dropping to the surface, thanks to a destroyed inertial inhibitor. What? You didn't see those fireworks coming out of the atmosphere?"
She rattled off a quick warning volley within feet of the Ringo's hull. It dropped and rolled precipitously back towards the surface of Mebarik.
"Damn right, it's my window," said Shaen, returning to her place in the formation just as the lead ship swept into the rippling aperture.
conversations
Once inside the Passage, Shaen's curiosity finally got the better of her.
"So, what's this like for you?" she asked. She'd carried androids before, but none that were active. While they were immune to the mental effects, she wondered if it would affect the robot's systems in other ways.
"It's like a partial systems failure. My stabilization and positioning sensors are offline, although I'm attempting to compensate and reboot them. It's a good thing you requested the magnetic anchors. Thank you."
"Anything else?"
"Some of my internal fluids are experiencing backflow."
"Do not barf in my cockpit, bot." Shaen growled, "I am not cleaning up android vomit because you were too stubborn to shut down for the trip."
A gurgling sound emitted from the android, and then quieted.
"I believe I have restored proper fluid direction now. It required reversing the flow of a few pumps. My apologies."
There was a long quiet period, which probably seemed longer thanks to the time dilation effect of the Passage.
If she had to guess, Shaen figured that was what broke most folks who'd tried passing through it awake. A single trip might seem like minutes, or it might seem like years. The way she figured it, she'd already endured what seemed like an eternity in Hell growing up on the Asylum Ships. A few years in purgatory wasn't that bad.
Thanks to the vagaries of subspace physics, it was challenging for most pilots to simply keep a ship in formation with a convoy. Shaen had been doing it long enough that it
was second nature. After a couple of hours, she surprised herself by breaking the silence. Having an eerily silent android mag-locked to her deck turned out to be more unsettling than having a chatty one.
"So, what's your official designation, bot?"
"My unit identifier is Whiskey Tango Juliett 57509."
"Mind if I call you Whiskey? Tango and Juliett both seem kind of romantic for an android."
"I don't mind, but I'm more accustomed to answering to 'bot.'" Shaen could swear she heard the slightest tinge of sarcasm in the android's hollow, metallic voice.
"So, Whiskey, how exactly did you happen to come across your rather unique cargo?"
"I was hired to perform a census audit of one of the settlement zones. There was a fire on a small fungus farm near the edge of the zone. By the time I arrived, both adults had succumbed to smoke inhalation. The child was on a lower level. I was able to salvage it."
"It? You don't know if it's a boy or a girl?"
"It's a male unit. Gender is a human preoccupation. Among androids, we equate it with asking a unit's make and model upon introduction. It's considered rude."
Shaen pondered that shift in perspective for a moment as her fingers flew over the controls. A sudden shift in the aether required a sidereal shunt to the port side thrusters. A swirling yellow ball of plasma that might or might not be sentient and hostile slid across the holoscreen, fortunately several thousand miles away.
"Mind if I ask why you didn't turn the kid in to the UHC? Not many freebots rolling around the universe. Seems like a risky move. The UHC doesn't take kindly to human traffickers even when they're human. I'd imagine a bot wouldn't just get reappropriated. You'd probably get recycled."
"The irony of that is not lost on me, Captain, considering it's the UHC version of slavery I'm attempting to avoid for my ward."
Shaen couldn't argue Whiskey's point. She knew all too well the life that awaited most children who went into the UHC Asylum Ships. The name "asylum ship" was a laughable misnomer. The children aboard weren't protected from anything except possibly the hard vacuum of space. They were raised in brutal conditions as indentured servants alongside the infirm and criminally insane, to be sold to the colonial settlements as slave labor.
An orphan's only hope of freedom was a "mind trip." Kids with a history of mental trouble, which was most of them considering the conditions they grew up in, could volunteer to be physically restrained and travel through the Passage awake.
If they failed a Minimum Viable Mental Function test, they'd agreed be euthanized, no longer to burden the government with their care. To many kids, that was a preferable option to going indentured to the colonies.
If they passed, they were free. They could seek any employment, but given their mental instability, it was most common to apprentice with a coyote pilot, if they could convince one to take them on. A few earned enough credits to buy a ship of their own. Most inherited a ship when their mentor finally snapped. When that happened, they could try to subdue their mentor and turn them in to the nearest Asylum Ship. More often, they just killed and airlocked them, which was equally legal and encouraged by the government. Shaen wasn't sure which she considered the more merciful option.
There was another long silence as they slipped through the shifting aether of the Passage.
"So what exactly are you planning to do with the kid?"
"I'm planning on raising it to adulthood."
Shaen leaned back in her seat and gave the android an appraising look. Androids were terrible liars. The same programming that gave them convincing anthropomorphic vocal expressiveness made it damn near impossible for them to lie. Still, it seemed ridiculous, even to someone as crazy as she was.
"That's a bold family planning decision, if you don't mind my saying so. Sixteen years of hiding from civilization? If you get caught, you'll probably be melted into slag."
"It's a calculated risk, Captain. One I'm willing to accept. My cargo consists of most of the materiel I'll need to set up a settlement on one of the planets of N'Bari. I've found a remote tropical island where I can quickly set up a sustainable independent habitat. The official government on N'Bari has enough problems to worry about with smuggling and political power struggles. They only police their frontier settlements when someone reports a problem. A single freebot and an undocumented orphan is not likely to attract much notice."
Another long silence passed between them. Shaen opened her mouth to say something, when suddenly an alarm sounded. The voice of the SHIVA crackled to life. "Warning! Evasive action! Unidentified foreign body approaching at impact velocity!"
The ship jolted as something struck the hull with extreme force. Shaen tumbled out of her seat, and her head smacked soundly against the deck with a loud crack.
evasions
The holoscreen flickered to life against the shielded front view port. On its evanescent surface, the image of a Cthulhian nightmare warped in and out of view.
Coiling, spike-studded tentacles wrapped around the ship. A beaked maw darted forward, snapping at the forward-mounted pincher arms of the Belle Starr. The gaze of a single, ochre-yellow eye blinked into the camera view port.
The android released its magnetic locks and whirled towards the controls of the ship. The captain was unconscious, at least for the next few critical moments. Its celluloid digits fluttered rapidly across the controls.
"SHIVA unit Belle Starr, this is autonomous android unit Whiskey Tango Juliett 57509. Your pilot is temporarily incapacitated. Request clearance to ship's controls to take immediate evasive action."
"Whiskey, I've already given you control. Get us the hell out of here." The crackly female voice sounded suspiciously animated for a mere simulated intelligence.
Whiskey punched the switches that fired forward weapons. He hoped that Captain Morris had not used up all her ammunition on that show of force with the other coyote pilot back on Mebarik.
The staccato sound of bullets punching their way out of the forward guns preceded the creaking sound of the creature's tentacles nearly ripping the hull apart as they released it.
"Do we have anything else to throw at this thing, Belle?" Whiskey decided to dispense with formalities. It was unsure how Morris had acquired an AIN on her ship, or why she didn't simply let it pilot the craft to preserve whatever was left of her sanity. Perhaps the SHIVA had ascended on its own as he had, and was playing dumb to avoid being shut down. Humans often reacted fearfully to ascension. Then again, perhaps it meant the ship had other unexpected modifications. Preferably, one that would blast the monster attacking it into space flotsam.
"Red . . . button. . . ." a croaking voice emerged from the deck. Shaen appeared to be regaining consciousness. Whether it was just in time to save her ship, or just in time to die on it was still to be determined.
A flashing red button halfway up the bulkhead attracted the robot's attention. Flipping up the wire cage surrounding it, its hand slapped the button flush with the wall.
A hissing sound rose from somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship. He felt a tremor.
"Acid torpedo away." The Belle Starr's voice rose above the static of her speakers.
They couldn't hear the sound of the monster's screams in space. But the shock waves rattled the cockpit anyway. On the sputtering holoscreen, the beast shot away, tentacles sweeping behind it.
"The convoy?" Shaen's voice still sounded a bit choked, but was growing stronger. She was clearly awake now. "Have we lost it?" She dragged herself back up onto the pilot's seat, with Whiskey giving her a hand.
The android checked the navigational screens. "No. It's right there. We've fallen out of formation, but we should be able to catch back up with it, unless. . . ."
At that moment, a flashing green light filled the cockpit. On the holoscreen, a flickering light broke ahead of the convoy's lead ship. Within seconds, a shimmering golden rip appeared in space, slowly widening to the familiar ring of fire that led back out of the Passage.
"Exit aperture visible."
"Thanks, Belle, we can see that." Shaen's voice dripped with sarcasm that hid a tremor of fear.
Shaen began frantically shutting off all auxiliary systems still operating after the creature's attack, redirecting as much power as possible to the thrusters. The Belle Starr shot towards the convoy, closing the space between them quickly.
But not quickly enough. The last ship was nearly to the rift.
They had one shot. It was crazy, but crazy was Shaen's specialty.
"Belle, we're pulling a slingshot!" She slammed her fist on a worn button marked "TRACTOR."
The magnetic harpoon shot out across space and snapped into place on the last transport ship's hull. As Shaen hit the button again, the cable retracted violently, flinging them past the carrack and through the exit aperture.
"So long, suckers!" said Shaen, saluting as the colonist ship shuddered in their wake.
conclusions
"There is no way that should have worked. It's not physically possible."
Shaen turned to the android, whose celluloid hands were pressed against what would have been its hips, if it were a human.
"There's no way some beastie straight out of H.P. Lovecraft should be swimming around in empty space, either. Much less capable of threatening an armored spacecraft. There's no way we should be able to predict where and when we'll come out of a pocket dimension that shouldn't exist in the first place. Trust me, if I only acted on what was possible, I'd be out of a job. Not to mention out of whatever's left of my mind."
"That's another question, Captain. You're supposed to be mentally unfit. How exactly is it that you're not only stable enough to pilot a ship, but capable of improvisation like that?"
Shaen sighed as she turned back to the Belle Starr's controls, breaking away from the convoy. Now that they were in normal space, the more of it she put between them and the government ships, the better, after pulling that stunt.
Whiskey on the Rocks Page 2
