by Scott Baron
Always listening. God, that bugs me.
“I don’t even know what I need yet, Mal, but thanks,” she replied. “The problem is, no standard piece will work, given the amount of damage we sustained. Everything is custom-built to not only fit the need, but also handle the unreliability factors from the faults we haven’t been able to pinpoint yet.”
“You know, I’m happy to send Barry out to help,” the captain said. “You’ve been spending a lot of time outside working on this. I know how exhausting it can be, and he doesn’t get tired. Plus, he won’t run out of oxygen.”
Barry.
Why the cyborg had chosen that name upon achieving consciousness she had wondered countless times. All the names in the known galaxy, and he chose Barry. It was only after flipping through old animated Earth television programs with Vincent one lazy evening, that she thought she may have stumbled upon his reasoning. Unlikely, but perhaps he had a sense of humor hidden in there after all. Then she reminded herself, he’s just a machine. Machines don’t have a sense of humor. Not really, do they?
His AI seemed benign enough, always happy and ready to lend a helping hand, but something about the artificial human always put her the tiniest bit on edge. She knew it was irrational, but she just couldn’t help it. Something in her gut felt it was wrong.
“You know me, Captain,” she finally answered. “I design on the fly as the situation reveals its surprises, and I work faster by myself. An extra set of hands getting in the way would just slow me down.”
“Okay, but you know Barry has valuable skills at your disposal should you need them.”
“I’m sure he does, Captain,” she replied, briefly flashing back to her conversations about the cyborg’s special features with both Sarah and Finn only that very morning.
Daisy felt a slight flush trying to work its way to her cheeks. She knew better than to look at Sarah. She could feel her friend struggling to contain herself as well. Just one glance and they’d both lose it.
Keep it together; you can do this. Daisy breathed deeply, using one of Sarah’s meditation techniques to desperately try to pull back from the edge. Slowly, the urge started to pass. Just don’t look at her.
“So, Sarah,” the captain said, breaking the tension.
Whew, that was close.
“Daisy seems to be well taken care of. Is there anything I could have Barry help you with?”
The women’s eyes met, and no amount of willpower could stop it.
“Bwahahaha!” Daisy and Sarah burst into peals of laughter, tears streaming down their faces as their confused captain and shipmates looked on. A very perplexed Finnegan caught Daisy’s eye, and that just made it all the worse.
“Um, okay, then,” Captain Harkaway said. “When you two are done with your sorority party, I want you to get Starboard’s wiring upgraded to match Mal’s new configurations for that array. The gravity and half the sensors are still shot in that pod. It looks like we won’t be able to fix it until we reach Dark Side, but we can at least make sure the surrounding systems are tip-top. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the two women managed.
“I swear, the two of you…” He trailed off as he stepped out through the airlock door.
Tamara rose and collected her breakfast from the galley. “Box it, Finn, I’ll take it to my garden.”
He slid her frittata into the box and handed her the container as she beelined for the exit. Tamara paused a moment, looking at the two younger women.
“Idiots.” She sighed, shaking her head as she walked out.
The two women had eventually reined in their mirth, though laughter bubbled just beneath the surface for the remainder of their breakfast. Eventually they’d have to get back to work, and of that there was plenty.
The crew being woken from their cryo-sleep early was an annoyance in itself, but the never-ending maintenance was wearing on everyone. The ridiculous part was that whatever had hit them was tiny. So small it didn’t even show on Mal’s scans, but at the speed they were traveling, with the modified pulse drive pushing them just a little bit beyond the capabilities of a normal ship, just about any impact could cause serious damage.
Of course, that was why they had such a specialized shielding system, but somehow this one thing had hit at just the right point in their pulse-shields, avoiding the deflective force and slipping in just as they phase-shifted to a different frequency.
It was like winning the galaxy’s shittiest lottery, where that a one-in-a-million chance was bound to happen eventually. Unfortunately for the crew, eventually happened to be on their watch. They were just lucky the shuttle mounted upside down on the ship’s belly was unscathed or they’d be stuck using their cramped hopper ship when they reached Earth. That would not be fun. The tiny vessel was not designed for comfort, and would require multiple uncomfortable trips to ferry down the crew a few at a time.
Despite that one bit of good luck, the rest of the ship was in desperate need of repairs, something that had filled every day of the near six months they’d been awake.
Under normal circumstances they would have woken from their cryogenic stasis a full two weeks prior to arrival at Earth to run diagnostics and whatnot. The big brains back home had determined that to be the optimum length of time for the crew to regain full muscle reflexes and restore digestive strength with normal food from the ship's garden pods before stepping back into the planet’s full gravity. Homecoming with weak limbs and weaker bowels was something no one wanted to experience.
As it stood, they now were winding down from close to six months of awake-time, but at long last, Earth was a mere seven days’ journey away. Sure, they’d have to stop at Dark Side for a few critical repairs first, but the staff there could handle those while the crew of the Váli took the shuttle home to that gorgeous blue-green orb.
For Daisy, home couldn’t come soon enough, though truth be told, aside from the grueling work schedule, she really wasn’t minding her extra up-time.
In more ways than one.
“Hey,” she called out to Sarah as they walked to their next tedious repair job. “I’m gonna wash up from our morning workout. I’ll meet you there, okay?”
“Sure thing. Enjoy your shower,” she said with a knowing laugh.
Daisy certainly intended to.
Chapter Six
“Mmm. Oh yeah, that’s perfect.”
A pair of strong hands traced the curves of Daisy’s body under the hot water. While a good scrub was an enjoyable side effect of the attention, that was most certainly not their primary objective.
Vince had received her impromptu message, and after giving her a little good-natured grief about only using him for his body, he joined her in the shower for a break in his morning engineering shift. His coveralls lay tossed in a pile on the floor with Daisy’s discarded sweats, the clothing blending together, entwined, just like its owners, as they moved in unison in the steaming water.
One of the great things Sarah had pointed out early on, was that the efficiency ratings of the Váli’s moisture recapture systems were exceptional. It even drew humidity from the air as they exhaled. That, combined with its wastewater recycling and hydrogen collection arrays pulling in molecules as the ship passed celestial bodies, all meant that lengthy, steaming showers—heated by the drive engines with no added energy expenditure—wouldn’t cost the ship one drop of water.
For lovers of shower sex, this was a wonderful bit of news. Lucky for the rest of the crew each of the ship’s two bathing compartments not only had sturdy airlocks, but were also quite soundproof.
“I can’t feel my feet.” Daisy said, stumbling from the shower a short while later.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Vince murmured, arms tight around her as he held her close. “Damn, woman, that was intense.”
“You’re telling me?” She chuckled, sensation slowly returning to her trembling extremities. "And lesson learned. Shower head sounds great in theory, but the reality is much mo
re like waterboarding, only with more dick."
He snorted a laugh. “Noted.”
Daisy watched appreciatively as he pulled his uniform back on. Damn, how did I get so lucky?
“Hey, you wanna watch some more old anime tonight, or do you feel more like one of Harkaway’s old sci-fi movies?” Vince asked as he opened the inner airlock door.
“Either works for me,” she replied.
“Okay, I’ll just surprise you. Until this evening, then.”
“See you, space cowboy,” she called after him as the door cycled shut.
There were no hydraulics in Daisy’s shoes, but she had a noticeable spring in her step as she walked down the central passageway.
“Hey, Sarah, you ready to get crackin’ on Starboard Nine?”
No reply.
“Sarah, come on already.”
“I’m sorry, Daisy,” Mal chimed in on open comms. “I am not reading Sarah’s signal anywhere on board.”
“Aw, hell. All right, Mal, thanks. I think I know where she is.”
Daisy veered left and grabbed a hold of the cool smoothness of the inter-deck ladder, gently sliding the whole length to the lower deck. It was down there that Sarah had been working on the sticking airlock mechanism that controlled the long shaft that plunged through the entire ship all the way down to the shuttle mounted on its belly.
It was possible to climb down to it in a straight shot through the floor-mounted access airlock from the main deck, but the lower airlock door had been experiencing a lag in its opening sequence. Nothing major, just a few seconds of inconvenience, but Sarah always loved an interesting side project. Plus, the mysterious scribblings in the Narrows were much more interesting down there.
A tool bag Velcroed to the wall next to the open access panel on lower deck central passageway Pod Six confirmed Daisy’s guess.
“Hey, Sarah!” Daisy shouted into the dimly lit, claustrophobic crawlspace. “Saaaaraaaaah!” Still no reply. “Damn. So much for an easy shift.”
Daisy leaned forward and hauled herself into the Narrows and began crawling. If Sarah couldn’t hear her, that meant she was most likely off on one of the side branches rather than the main crawlspace.
Left or right? Daisy mused as she reached the first junction a good fifteen meters in. Eeny, meany, miny… ah, fuck it, I’m going left. With an uncomfortable twist, Daisy rounded the bend and began the long crawl. Twenty meters later, she saw a brighter light shining from one of the even smaller side junctions containing the ship’s dense crew cabin sensor arrays.
“Sarah!” she called out.
A muffled clang.
“Shit, you startled me, Daze,” Sarah’s voice drifted from the shaft. “Why didn’t you just call me on comms?”
“I did, but one, you’re not jacked in, and two, Mal lost you on her scans before you even climbed into the—Hey, are you wearing suit three?”
“Yeah, why?”
Daisy stared at her, amused eyebrow cocked.
“Oh, right. Suit three. I forgot about your mods. No wonder Mal lost track of me. I guess it shields from more than EM pulses. But I did plug my comms in at the junction.”
Daisy looked, and indeed, the hard-line was plugged in, but there was no signal. One more thing to repair.
“We can fix that some other time. No one ever comes down here but you anyway. I don’t know what you find so fascinating.”
“It’s all these notes and drawings,” Sarah said. “I mean, have you ever really read them? Some of the things they wrote don’t sound like the graffiti you’d expect from the construction crew. Like this one over here.” She crawled forward a few more feet. “Hang on, where is it?”
Daisy scanned the smooth walls of the crawlspace, noting the occasional jottings of those who’d traveled its lengths before her.
“Dark in here, isn’t it?” She laughed.
“What do you mean, Daze? There’s plenty of light.”
“No, on the bulkhead. Someone wrote that. ‘Dark in here, isn’t it?’ I wouldn’t want to be stuck in here if the power went out. That’d be a very dark and very uncomfortable crawl back out.”
“Don’t creep me out, it’s claustrophobic enough as it is,” Sarah grumbled. “Ah, here we go. Check this one out. It says, ‘Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.’ Sounds to me like someone wasn’t too thrilled with Mal sending them off to do repairs our resident supercomputer couldn’t do herself.”
“Well, we’ve seen what can happen when relays go wonky. Mal still isn’t fully in control of all parts of the ship.”
“It’s nothing major,” Sarah replied.
“Yeah, sure. At least that’s what you keep telling me, Ms. Life Support Expert, but little things still keep glitching. I mean, you’ve crawled as much of this ship as I have, and the damage and wear seems far worse than you’d expect from our short little hop back to Earth.”
“Freakin’ space debris nearly killed us, Daisy.”
“Yeah, sure, we took a big hit, and probably a few smaller ones that auto-repaired, but sometimes it feels like the Váli was ready to fall apart before we even woke up. Why didn’t Mal keep things in perfect running condition?”
Sarah pulled her legs tight and wriggled around to face her friend.
“How brilliant can a super-genius computer really be when she’s small enough to fit in a box?” She paused and looked closely at her friend.
“What? Is something on my face?” Daisy asked.
Sarah smiled. “You’re glowing. And not the radioactive kind. Someone got some action!”
Daisy blushed. “Shut up.”
“No, really, good for you. But one thing, does he have multiple speeds?”
Daisy felt the laughter welling inside.
“Stop, I don’t want to hyperventilate in here.”
“Okay, but you can’t blame a spinster for asking.”
“I am so setting you up with Barry,” Daisy chuckled.
The duo turned in the confined space and began the slow crawl back to the main passageway access.
“So, did you at least get the sticking door working while you were here, or were you too busy reading the words of wisdom of sweaty construction workers?”
“Seems to be working now. I just don’t know why we use a shuttle that’s such an outdated model. No AI whatsoever, and the components are an absolute pain in the ass to maintain.”
“Yeah, not having an AI on it is kinda strange,” Daisy agreed. “I mean, they’re designed to be swappable from ship to ship, after all. Sure, they probably lose a little something by being so portable, but once they’re plugged into a new command cradle, everything should work perfectly. Not like they don’t have specs and control configurations of every ship ever made tucked away in those massive brains of theirs.”
“So why a ‘dumb’ shuttle?”
“I don’t know,” Daisy admitted. “Maybe Mal didn’t want to have a competing intelligence on board. Not like they could disconnect her and offline the entire ship while they carried her to the shuttle anyway. Though gravity would be off, so I suppose moving her would be easier.”
“Life support would be off too, Daze, so there goes that idea.”
“Well, speaking of zero-g, we have to get up to Starboard Nine and knock out the captain’s busy work,” Daisy said with a groan.
“I still don’t know why you hate that pod so much,” Sarah said. “It’s fun.”
“Zero-g is not fun. Maybe outside the ship during an EVA, but then at least you have a horizon line from the ship’s hull. There’s an up and a down, even if you can’t feel it. Now that Starboard Nine is totally empty, it’s just too easy to get disoriented in there.”
“Nah, it’s fun, you just have to be open minded and embrace it. Me, I love floating in zero-g without needing to wear an EVA suit. It’s liberating.”
“It makes me feel sick.”
“You just have to let go of the notion of up and down. There is no up or down, just the direct
ion you’re going.”
Daisy laughed grimly. “Sure, that’s all well and good until gravity kicks in unexpectedly and you find yourself upside down on the ceiling. Then it would really help being right-side-up. And I mean proper right-side-up.”
“You’re such a downer,” Sarah said.
“No, just a realist. You want to talk about a downer? Did you see the note on the bulkhead up in the upper deck Port Thirteen Narrows?”
“I must have missed that one. What did it say?”
“Lots of doom and gloom stuff in that one,” Daisy replied. “Like someone was really not having a good day. Hang on, I copied a few of them.” She wriggled to her side and pulled a small pad from her pocket. Even in space, pens and paper—a plasitcene/paper matrix, to be precise—were invaluable. Tablets break, batteries drain, but paper lasts.
“Okay, listen to this one. They wrote, ‘Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has already got there first, and is waiting for it.’”
Sarah was silent a moment. “That’s kind of messed up, Daisy.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
She stopped crawling.
“Hey!”
“Hang on a minute,” Daisy said, then pulled a fresh pen from her pocket and scratched out a message of her own, then started crawling again.
“‘Without a little darkness from time to time, man would forget that he dwells in the light,’” Sarah read. “Who said that one, Daze?”
Daisy continued her crawl for the exit.
“I did.”
As expected, Daisy felt her stomach flip after only a few minutes in Starboard Nine, but work was work, so she forced down the bile and focused on the panel in front of her.
“It still smells in here,” she grumbled.
“Oh, come on, Daisy. Even after Mal purged all that nastiness into space, this pod was cleaned and scrubbed top to bottom. It’s all in your head.”
The zero-g pod had been one of Tamara’s fertilizer experimentation lab spaces before the mishap. It was a smaller chamber, only ten meters long, but the tubs of decomposing plant matter and racks of condensed nutrient fluids had been more than enough to create a disgusting cloud of rotting nastiness when the pod’s gravity had abruptly ceased functioning several months prior.
