“Getting destroyed by an enemy warship is just as fatal,” I said.
I thought about it for a moment or three. “Land on the comet and go absolutely silent. Let's hope it's solid enough to hold us.”
Okay, a few minutes ago, she’d decided landing was out of the question, citing earthquakes and stuff. Now it was all matter-of-fact. I felt like a punchbag hit too hard.
For all who have undergone such a landing, let me tell you it wasn’t the best of times. Despite Ship’s efforts to minimize our connection, that final crunch stirred Cutey-Pie’s insides so much I thought we’d disintegrated on contact. My body jarred at the rough impact, and I steeled myself against pressure loss. Once I’d come to my senses, I saw no warning lights, nothing.
After the ship came to a halt, the lights went out, the only thing apparently working, the main Control screen.
“Ship? Status?”
Damn it, her reply was so low on the decibel scale, I thought I was hearing ghosts.
You know, if I knew a club that sanctioned kicking the shit out of computers, I would have signed up there and then. Of course, fuming in my seat, I said nothing because we were in ‘silent mode’. Big middle finger salute to Ship! In a fit of pique, I rose from my chair, and walked the length of my command… back and forth, several times. My rubber soles made no sound, the internal magnets keeping me grounded. Once I’d burned off enough steam, I returned to Control and sat down, an energy bar in my hand, my jaw working overtime on rendering it compliant. Damn I hated those tasteless things. The fact that I’d actually landed on something solid didn’t actually compute there and then. Those times had been few and far between.
“Ship?” I whispered once my mouth was empty of re-constituted seeds. “Report.”
Always the over-achiever, Ship’s words appeared silently on the screen.
And there I sat, a thousand questions at the ready, my fingers hovering over my keyboard, not knowing which one to ask first. I mean, ‘worm-hole’? I had no idea where I’d heard it before, but I did immediately get the concept.
“When can I talk?” I typed. I still wanted to question Ship verbally, the keyboard seemed dispassionate, a cold medium for my myriad of questions.
“How many ships through the worm-hole/jump hole?” I followed her terminology, but she remained silent, unresponsive. “Ship? Report?”
Nothing.
“Ship?” I began to panic. “I need some back-up here.”
I almost shouted at her. I was in a foreign galaxy, confronted by foes un-numbered, and she was doing a re-boot? “Ship? Get your act together!”
Well that did it for me. I mean, we were in an alien galaxy, where the freak would Ship be getting an upgrade from? But since we were sitting on a comet, doing heck-knows how many kilometers per hour, I gave her time to get to grips with whatever she was going through. I had nothing in my wheel-house to offer.
I said nothing, waiting the end of Ship’s processes.
My head spun with questions, and it took me a few moments to think of a coherent one. In the end I resorted to a neutral format. “Status?”
Man, if I wasn’t scared enough, that last sentence flipped my pants. Why the hell was she doing this now? We'd already been through the ownership hand-off, but here it was again. I decided to tread carefully. “Mission?”
Where the hell did she get that? If I ever found the programmer... “You mentioned Barnard’s Galaxy?”
Okay, so we knew where we were. We knew the origin of the invasion. “Status on enemy fleet?” Damn, I’d called them ‘enemy’ with no real basis for the title.
“So the destination hasn’t changed?”
Considering the depth of questions in my head, I was amazed Ship was lucid, never mind coherent. “What do you recommend?”
“Yes.”
Wow, in ten years Ship had never asked me that one. “MacCollie?”
Okay, that made sense. “Length of time for such a plan?”
Ship had given me way less than my original five years, but it still sounded far too long a mission. “Independent Emphasis?”
It was almost as she’d cut off her next sentence. “So what do you recommend?”
Man, the re-boot/download had given Ship a nice turn of phrase; I caught what she meant right away, but I feared the consequences of such a bold move. Little did I know my choice would be made for me.
“I’m following the fleet.” I said almost immediately, my choice made. “Plot a course into the jump hole.”
As I counted the seconds between the transfer, I anticipated flying into the ass of two thousand spaceships. Ship and I talked it through, and we decided on evasive tactics should the action be necessary.
What I didn’t expect was a split horse-shoe galaxy in my screen. “Woah!” I shouted in disbelief. “What’s going on?” Even I knew that wasn’t our galaxy.
“Like someone changed the points on a rail track?”
“Do you recognize this galaxy?”
“Then take us back to the invader’s galaxy, before they switch the tracks again!” I felt a panic growing quickly.
“Because, Ship,” I tried to contain my frustration. “There’s bugger all else to do.”
Ship worked with the problem as quickly as it could. If the aliens were changing the end-points on the worm holes that easily, we might come out... who knows where? The problem lay in the fact that when a ship emerges from a jump point, it's always carrying residual velocity. Relative to the system we were in, we were traveling at forty-three hundred kilometers per second and we were moving away from the jump point. Getting turned around and moving in the right direction was going to use a lot of the reaction mass I'd just risked my neck to gather.
The G’s peaked at 3.6 and stayed there. Maybe I could have handled more so we could have managed a tighter circle in less time, but Ship's medical component was in control. The part of Ship with which I interfaced could be snarky, irritating, and almost always frustrating, but the medical component was a trustworthy servant programmed to do whatever was needed to keep me as healthy as possible. I might have enjoyed the medical component's personality—if it had been given one—but that hadn't happened. My only awareness of it was when it puffed an aerosol medication under my nose, or in dire cases, stuck a needle into arm or butt.
“I thought you'd been rebooted and become a better Ship,” I said.
“Not even.”
“I'm a scout. I evaluate previously unknown planets. The alien home world qualifies.”
Okay, the reboot wasn't complete. This version of Ship still thought of itself as alive and didn't want to die.
“We'll be stealthy,” I said. “They'll never know we're there.”
“We'll zip through their system so quickly they'll miss us entirely.”
“Of course I don't. That's why I was thinking. You know, before you so rudely interrupted me.”
“No, I am not.” I answered. “I'm trying to be honest with you. I feel a deep moral obligation to do anything I can to gather intelligence on who or whatever is responsible for that ungodly fleet of starships. I have to consider them unfriendly. I have to learn everything I can, do what's necessary to avoid capture or destruction, and return to MacCollie headquarters with the intelligence. If I have to take some risks, I will try to keep them manageable. But, that may be impossible. We may—as they say—die trying. Can you deal with that?”
“Why?”
“In other words, you are utterly selfish and incapable of concerning yourself with the welfare of others.”
Things got quiet and I had more time to worry. Ship had just shown me a part of itself that I didn't know existed. It wasn't anything I enjoyed seeing. I knew my failings well enough to recognize my innate selfishness, but it was nothing compared to what I had just learned about Ship. I wanted to turn it off. But I knew if I did, I'd die. Ship ran every system and there were few manual overrides. Without Ship, the air would grow foul, and then cold, and given enough time, I would run out of food and water, and die of thirst of starvation. Unless the cold got me first.
So I needed ship.
But I didn't think I could trust it. I'd heard stories of other scouts who'd noticed anomalies in their Ship, but those anomalies were kid's stuff compared to what I was dealing with. My Ship had evolved. It had gone past basic AI and had become so self-aware that... that what? Was it so determined to survive that if I gave it an order that it considered threatening to its well-being it would ignore or even countermand the order? That would make me a prisoner on my own vessel, and the idea scared the hell out of me.
“We need to talk.”
“About who's in charge. About who makes the decisions.”
“And you remain willing to carry out my orders?”
I noticed a pause.
“Not good enough, Ship. You will obey all orders.”
Right then, I felt that if I ever got back to home base, I'd turn Ship's switch to 'off'. And I'd make damn sure it never got turned back on. “If we don't work together, we increase the chances of mission failure.”
“What makes you think you have a right to trust me or not trust me?”
“Now might be a good time for us to stop talking and do some soul-searching,” I said.
“Keep telling yourself that, Ship.”
Twenty minutes later, we jumped. I was unconscious, due to the jump pharmaceuticals. When I awoke, I was more alert than normal, less affected by the drugs.
“Where are we?”
“Say what?”
“So we're lost. Again.”
I wanted to punch something. Maybe if I got out of the command chair, turned around and punched the cushions. Nope, too crazy, even for me.
“What's our residual velocity?”
“At this point, I don't know.” It didn't occur to me at the time, but Ship had just disobeyed a direct order, even if it was couched as a question.
I thought about it. Two-tenths of one percent of C. “How the hell did that happen?”
Older stars.
Older planets.
Maybe older civilizations.
“Can we get back to where we were?”
“Are we even in the same galaxy as before? Barnards?”
“The aliens moved the end-point of the worm hole. If they can do something that advanced, I can't believe they'd pick a random destination for our jump.”
“No, I’m using your analogy. Earlier you told me that World War II Germans made autobahns to make move their troops to enemy borders quicker. There’s no way the aliens would make wormholes come out in random places. There must be a reason for the artificial worm-holes placement.”
“You might also give me an alternative.” I paused. “While you're thinking, consider this: They spoofed us with a hologram. Then they show up with real ships where we don't expect them to be. They move destination points. Either they want us to be here—in this system—or they're playing pranks with no reg
ard for our well-being.”
I shook my head in frustration. “Why shouldn't they? Because if they don't, then we're castaways. Lost forever in an uncaring Universe. But if they are so advanced technologically, wouldn't it make sense that they're that advanced intellectually? And if that's true, wouldn't they be ethically advanced?”
“Okay, let's deal in the concrete. There's a star out there. How far is it?”
Maybe the aliens wanted to see if we're good at solving problems.
Maybe they wanted to see how intelligent we are.
Maybe they don't give a rat's ass.
“Does this system have planets?”
“Is there anything that looks promising?”
“How about the next closest?”
And that took us a couple of weeks. Not much if you say it quick.
Ship announced her scanning information.
Was Ship trying to be amusing? Maybe not.
“I think this is a Survey-Scout.” I even managed to say the last bit with some pride. “I think we still have a decent load of fuel. I think we should take a look.”
“What would be the purpose?”
“Let's go take a look at two planets, previously unknown to humanity.”
I'd never been faced with a similar problem. “Do either of them show any sign it might be inhabited by an advanced civilization?”
Star-Eater Chronicles 1: A Galaxy Too Far... Page 4
