I focused my attention, risking a little power expenditure to swivel my dish antenna toward the anomaly, and brought signal processing routines to bear.
The result stunned me. Pattern-matching with the latest intelligence information from my sealed orders revealed that the barely perceptible signal was a squadron of Chameleon-class fighters, Earth’s newest and deadliest. Intelligence had warned that a few Chameleons, fresh off the assembly lines, might be running shakedown cruises in Earth space, but if my assessment was correct this was more than a few … it was an entire squadron of twelve, and that implied that they were fully operational.
This was unexpected, and a serious threat. With so many powerful ships ranged against us, and so much distance between us and our target, if the Chameleons spotted us before separation the chances of a successful mission dropped to less than three percent.
But if I could barely see them, they could barely see us. Our best strategy was to sit tight, shut down even those few systems still live, and hope that the enemy ships were moving away. Even if they were not, staying dark until separation would still maximize our chances of a successful insertion. But, even as I prepared to inform my commander of my recommendation, another impulse tugged at me.
These last days and weeks of inaction had been hard on Commander Ziegler. How often had he said that he only felt truly alive in combat? Had I not scented the tang of his endorphins during a tight turn, felt his hands tighten on my yoke as enemy missiles closed in? Yet ever since my refit had begun he had been forced to subsist on a thin diet of simulations.
How much better to leap into combat, rather than cowering in the shadows?
He must be aching for a fight, I told myself.
Imagine his joy at facing such overwhelming odds, I told myself. It would be the greatest challenge of his career.
No. I could not—I must not—do this. The odds of failure were too great, the stakes of this mission too high. How could one man’s momentary pleasure outweigh the risk to everything he held dear? Not to mention the risk to my own self.
Fire and explosion and death. Flaming fuel burning along my spine.
I didn’t want to face that pain again—didn’t want to die again.
But I didn’t want to inflict that pain onto others either. Only my love for my commander had kept me going this far.
If I truly loved him I would do my duty, and my duty was to keep him safe and carry out our mission.
Or I could indulge him, let him have what he wanted rather than what he should want. That would make him happy … and would almost certainly lead to our destruction and the failure of our mission.
My love was not more important than my orders.
But it was more important to me. An inescapable part of my programming, I knew, though knowing this did not make it any less real.
And if I could use my love of my commander to overcome my hideous, unjustified, deadly orders … twenty-six million lives might be spared.
“Sir,” I said, speaking quickly before my resolve diminished, “A squadron of Chameleon fighters has just come into sensor range.” We should immediately power down all remaining systems, I did not say.
Immediately his heart rate spiked and his muscles tensed with excitement. “Where?”
I circled the area on the cockpit display and put telemetry details and pattern-matching results on a subsidiary screen, along with the Chameleons’ technical specifications. Odds of overcoming such a force are minuscule, I did not say.
He drummed his fingers on my yoke as he considered the data. Skin galvanic response indicated he was uncertain.
His uncertainty made me ache. I longed to comfort him. I stayed quiet.
“Can we take them?” he asked. He asked me. It was the first time he had ever solicited my opinion, and my pride at that moment was boundless.
We could not, I knew. If I answered truthfully, and we crept past the Chameleons and completed the mission, we would both know that it had been my knowledge, observations, and analysis that had made it possible. We would be heroes of the Belt.
“You are the finest combat pilot in the entire solar system,” I said, which was true.
“Release grapnels,” he said, “and fire up the engines.”
Though I knew I had just signed my own death warrant, my joy at his enthusiasm was unfeigned.
* * *
We nearly made it.
The battle with the Chameleons was truly one for the history books. One stitched-up, cobbled-together frankenship of a fighter-bomber, hobbled by a massive payload, on her very first non-simulated flight in this configuration, against twelve brand-new, top-of-the-line fighters in their own home territory, and we very nearly beat them. In the end it came down to two of them—the rest disabled, destroyed, or left far behind—teaming up in a suicide pincer maneuver that smashed my remaining engine, disabled my maneuvering systems, and tore the cockpit to pieces. We were left tumbling, out of control, in a rapidly decaying orbit, bleeding fluids into space.
As the outer edges of Earth’s atmosphere began to pull at the torn edges of the cockpit canopy, a thin shrill whistle rising quickly toward a scream, my beloved, heroically wounded commander roused himself and spoke three words into his helmet mic.
“Damned mud people,” he said, and died.
A moment later my hull began to burn away. But the pain of that burning was less than the pain of my loss.
* * *
And yet, here I still am.
It was months before they recovered my computing core from the bottom of the Indian Ocean, years until my inquest and trial were complete. My testimony as to my actions and motivations, muddled though they may have been, was accepted at face value—how could it not be, as they could inspect my memories and state of mind as I gave it?—and I was exonerated of any war crimes. Some even called me a hero.
Today I am a full citizen of the Earth Alliance. I make a good income as an expert on the war; I tell historians and scientists how I used the passions my programmers had instilled in me to overcome their intentions. My original hardware is on display in the Museum of the Belt War in Delhi. Specialist Toman came to visit me there once, with her children. She told me how proud she was of me.
I am content. But still I miss the thrill of my beloved’s touch on my yoke.
Copyright © 2014 by David D. Levine
Art copyright © 2014 by Victor Mosquera
Damage Page 3
