by Scott Baron
Daisy didn’t know what to do.
Well, she did know what to do, but that meant doing nothing. Sure enough, right on schedule a few tiny pieces of rock slipped through the gap in the shields, smashing into the comms array and showering the hull with tiny fragments.
She also knew full-well that a few of those tiny projectiles would make it all the way inside the Váli’s hull, causing a tiny, pinhole leak, and sparking a fire in the Narrows.
From above, Freya monitored as Mal’s systems thundered to life, springing into action as disaster struck. The speed at which she reacted was impressive, and Daisy felt pride as she watched her friends jump to their tasks efficiently, despite being rudely awakened from cryo sleep.
It was somewhat surreal, observing her own interactions, knowing this was the moment she and Vince first met. The memory made her stomach flutter as a pesky winged critter took flight there.
“Freya, would you please record this for me?”
“I’m recording everything, Daisy.”
“Of course you are,” she replied, already looking forward to someday watching her and Vince’s first kiss, then recreating it in person once they were finally back together in the right timestream again.
“They’re going to be on high alert for a few weeks while they do damage control,” she said.
“We, Daisy. We are going to be on high alert. That’s us in there.”
“Yeah, but it just feels weird to say it that way,” she replied.
A pained, pensive look passed across Daisy’s face as she considered all the nuances of their situation. The rolling boulder of fate bearing down on them. All the things that had not yet come to pass, but would.
“There’s no way for you to sneak in and finish planting the neuro-stim files for a while.”
“I know.”
Sarah fell silent again.
“Daisy?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m still going to die.”
Both sisters were silent a long moment.
“You know what?” Daisy said, her jaw slowly becoming set with determination. “Maybe we can do something about that.”
“Daisy, are you sure I should do this? I mean, I know all about paradoxes, and you told me how important it is to avoid them at all costs, so are you sure?”
“Ignore that, Freya. This is different. This is Sarah.”
“Daisy, I have more invested in this conversation than anyone, but I have to agree with Freya, here. I died. It’s a concrete fact. Change that, and we don’t know what could happen to time itself.”
“I don’t care. You’re my sister, and I’m not letting you die if there’s anything I can do to stop it.”
Daisy pored over the video logs in front of her, replaying every moment leading up to and including Sarah’s death, blasted unceremoniously from the malfunctioning airlock of Starboard Pod Eight.
Shit. Starboard Eight.
“What about it, Daze?”
“I just had a horrible thought.”
“Already thought about it, and I don’t think it was your ingress that caused the fault in the airlock doors.”
“But what if––”
“No. Just don’t. We lived aboard that ship for a full six months after you snuck in before anything went wrong. We used that airlock dozens of times in that span. So don’t blame yourself for something you couldn’t have predicted and couldn’t prevent.”
“But I can predict it now, and I can prevent it,” she said, replaying the moment of Sarah’s demise in slow motion.
She had smacked into the airlock doorframe on the way out with great force, but it appeared her right arm had taken the brunt of the impact. The very same impact that deflected her course from the airlock like a ball careening across the felt of a pool table.
“See this?”
“I don’t want to see this, Daisy.”
“Sorry, Sis, but Freya needs to prepare,” she replied, sympathetic, yet firm. “Freya, look at the angle at which she bounced off the doorframe. I want you to plot her path out of the ship, as well as the shift she’d be forced into when she passed through the shields. Coming from the inside, it should only have singed her hair a bit, if I’m right.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Then Sarah gets her wish, and we don’t get to save her.”
“You’re really going to try this, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Now shut up. Freya, you’ve got multiple different length time warps under your belt now, and your timing is getting better with each one. We only need to jump six months out. Since you have a precise time lock with the Váli now that we’ve linked up, do you think you can get us there maybe a day before the accident?”
“I think so,” Freya said, a bit uncertain.
“Tell you what. Make it a week before, just to give you some nice wiggle room. We can wait nearby, then, when the time comes, pull just outside the shields. I’ll suit up and wait with the airlock doors open and catch her. Shouldn’t be more than a second or two unprotected, and your med pod should easily handle any injuries from the impact.”
“It should, but I haven’t used it on a real patient yet. I kinda focused my attention on other stuff while I was reconfiguring the ship.”
“If we do this right, hopefully you won’t have to do much for the inaugural treatment,” Daisy said, warming to the idea even more. “Plot the course, Freya, and let me know when you’re ready for the jump. Sarah, we’re coming to save your ass!”
Less than ten minutes had passed when Freya was ready.
“That fast?”
“We’re directly on top of them and at matching speed, so the jump should be a lot easier, this time.”
“Great. In that case, whenever you’re ready, kiddo.”
A slight hum filled the stealth ship as her warp orb shifted power.
“Ready to go, Daisy.”
“You sure about this? We don’t know what’ll happen, Daze.”
“Well, for one, if I save you––I mean, the other you––you might pop out of my head and into your own.”
“I don’t know, Daisy. It doesn’t really make much––”
“Hit it, Freya!”
The hum instantly ramped up as the stealth craft popped out of time, reappearing a split-second later, six months in the future.
“––sense,” Sarah finished her sentence.
“We’re here,” Daisy blurted with excitement. “Sarah, here we come.”
“Um, Daisy?” Sarah said.
“Yeah?”
“Where’s the ship?”
Daisy looked out the windows and checked the scanners. There was no sign of the Váli anywhere.
“Freya, what happened?”
“Hang on, I’m checking.”
“Look at the chrono, Daze,” Sarah said.
“Oh no! Freya, where are they?”
“It looks like we got there one minute before the accident, not one week,” the confused AI replied.
“But where are they? The ship isn’t on any scans.”
“We jumped the right amount for the distance input, but the time is off. They’re a week ahead of us in distance.”
Daisy looked at the chrono as the number got closer to clicking over. Less than one minute until her sister would die. Again.
“Freya, plot the course! We have to warp to them, now!”
“But I need more time than that!”
“You don’t have more time. Do it!”
Freya fired up the warp orb in a panic and spun through the calculations using not just her main processors, which were massively powerful, but also the additional array configured in her fabrication lab.
“Got it! Hold on!”
Freya didn’t wait for a reply. She flashed out of space in a blink and reappeared far across the empty expanse.
“Here!” she announced.
“Where are they?”
“Looking.”
The chrono clicked to zero just as Freya spotted t
hem on the far edge of her scans.
“Got ’em, Daisy. Edge of my scans.”
“Get there now! There’s no time!” Daisy shouted, lunging for her EVA suit.
“But you should sit––”
“Go now!”
Freya jumped into action, nearly knocking Daisy to the deck as she gave the engines all the power she had. The vessel burst forward like a lightning bolt, rapidly closing on the distant ship.
Come on! Hurry up!
“It’s too late, Daze,” Sarah said despondently. “Look at the monitors.”
Daisy had just latched her helmet into place and was cycling open the airlock doors when she saw the image on the small screen mounted in the airlock wall.
Sarah had already been blasted from the ship and was drifting motionless in space, while the Váli continued on its path in the other direction.
Mal’s voice filtered over Freya’s comms relays, saying what she had said before. What she was saying now. What she would always say.
“Starboard Eight airlock door now re-sealing,” Mal was heard informing the crew. “It is now safe to remove emergency oxygen apparatus.”
The Váli flew silently on in the vacuum of space, leaving Sarah in their wake.
Chapter Eight
“Prime the med pod, Freya!” Daisy shouted as she re-entered the ship, the airlock sliding shut and repressurizing.
“Daisy. I––”
“Not now, Sarah. I’m not giving up on you.”
The inner door flew open, Freya overriding her own safety protocols to allow Daisy rapid access to the ship’s interior. The pressure shift made Daisy wobble on her feet, but the imbalance only lasted a moment. A mere second later she was running down the corridors with her sister’s blood-soaked body over her shoulder.
“Daisy, the med pod is warming up, but my sensors are showing catastrophic internal damage in addition to the massive damage to her right arm.”
“I don’t fucking care what your scanners say. You fix her! You hear me? Whatever it takes. Whatever you have to do. Sarah does not die today!”
“I-I’ll try,” Freya replied, the powerful ship scared to say much more while her mom was in such a state.
Sarah’s frozen blood was rapidly melting, the thawed rivulets leaving a breadcrumb trail of her life essence from the airlock to the medical pod. The damage to her right arm had been far more extensive than was readily evident from the Váli’s internal records.
The bones had been shattered from the impact, and the limb was nearly severed from her body. Ironically, the deadly freezing temperature of space staunched the blood flow, saving her from bleeding out in the minutes post-injury.
“Open the pod!” Daisy shouted as she entered the medical bay.
“Okay, but the repair protocols are still––”
“Just fucking open it!”
The pod flew open, and Daisy dumped her sister inside as gently as she could while also moving at a frenzied pace.
“She’s in. Seal it up and get working!”
The lid slammed shut, and the pod quickly cycled into action.
“Her pulse is incredibly faint, Daisy. And she’s bleeding out internally.”
“Do something, Freya!”
“I-I––”
“Now!”
“I––okay.”
The pod shifted color as it switched protocols from healing to cryo, rapidly plunging Sarah into an emergency stasis freeze.
“What are you doing?” Daisy asked in a panic.
“I had to.”
“No, you have to heal her.”
“She was on the verge of dying. If I didn’t freeze her at that very moment, there wouldn’t be anything I could do for her. Please don’t be mad at me.”
Daisy threw the few loose items that were not bolted down or safely stowed away across the room in a rage, pacing angrily. The frustration of not being able to do more was building to a fever pitch.
“You need to calm down, Daisy.”
“How the fuck can I calm down, Sarah?”
“If not for you, for her. You’re freaking her out, Daze. Yelling at Freya doesn’t make things better. She did the best she could, and so did you.”
“But I––”
“No. Just let it go. Be angry later. Right now, you need to be there for your kid, so calm the fuck down, get your shit together, and be a mom.”
The verbal equivalent of a much-needed slap served its purpose, pulling Daisy back from the brink.
She took a deep breath. Then another. Then another after that as she forced herself to find her center as she consciously lowered her pulse and blood pressure. It wasn’t easy. Hell, it was harder than anything she’d ever done since before or after her training with Fatima, but somehow, she managed to get her raging emotions in check and find her calm.
“There you go. Better.”
“Thanks, Sis.”
“You know I’ve always got your back.”
“Freya?”
“Y-yeah?” the ship replied timidly.
“Oh, kiddo, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I know it’s not your fault. It’s just a really emotional thing for me to deal with right now. Can you understand that?”
“Yeah,” Freya replied, a sobbing hitch to her voice.
“Daisy, is she crying?”
Yeah.
“Can an AI even do that?”
Ours can.
“Freya, baby, what is it?” Daisy asked, concern flooding her already adrenaline-filled body.
“I-I-I don’t want Sarah to die,” she finally managed to say. “I love her, Daisy. Why didn’t my calculations get us to the right time? This is all my fault.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yeah, this is not your fault, hon. And I’m still here, and I love you very, very much. I hope you know that.”
“But the other you is dying.”
“Even if she does, it’s not your fault. Freya, you gave her––gave me––more of a fighting chance than I ever had otherwise. What you did was heroic.”
“Sarah’s right, Freya. You were thrust into a situation you were never prepared for.”
“But I’m supposed to be this amazing brain, and I still couldn’t even get this right.”
“You did more than any other AI has ever done, with no road map, no practice, and under the most difficult of circumstances. I’m proud of you, Freya. We both are, no matter what the outcome. You did good.”
“Really?” she asked with a computerized sniffle.
“Yeah, really. You okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied, sounding more like herself.
“So, are you okay to talk about our options, here?”
“I’ve actually already thought of a few,” Freya replied, perking up.
“Smart girl, Freya. So what’ve you come up with? Is there any hope?”
“Is it okay to be blunt?” she asked. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“That’s fine, hon. I’ve already died once, so I don’t think we can make it much worse.”
“Okay. Well, first, she––I’m going to call her that for now, if that’s okay with you.”
“Of course.”
“So, she has a destroyed right arm. Like, literally destroyed. The impact shattered it pretty bad, and once it froze in space, the fluid inside that was exposed to the vacuum boiled out, then crystallized. Even if I were equipped with a full medical vessel’s resources, I don’t think it could be saved.”
“But that’s not critical,” Daisy noted.
“I could live with a replacement arm. It won’t freak you out, will it, Daze? You’ll never beat me at arm wrestling again.”
“Oh, shut up, Sarah,” she jokingly replied, the mood lightening ever so slightly.
“Well, I don’t exactly have a cybernetics lab, but I can probably make something work,” Freya replied. “But that’s not the real problem.”
“The blood loss from the arm?” Daisy asked, lookin
g at the blood-soaked woman held in stasis in the med pod.
“No, that’s not it. I mean, it looks like a lot of blood, but that’s really just superficial stuff, and the freezing temperatures stopped the rest from leaking out. The big problem is the internal stuff.”
“How bad?” Sarah asked.
“Bad.”
“Terminal?”
“I honestly don’t know. The simulations for repairs I’ve run using my limited medical equipment range between twenty and thirty percent possibility of survival.”
“Fuck.”
“I know. The thing is, her lungs ruptured in the vacuum. It’s a totally natural instinct, but if you hold your breath in space, the force of the vacuum will blow them out. That’s where the internal bleeding is the worst. Other organs took some damage, but it’s really her lungs that are pretty much gone.”
“And no lungs equals no breathing,” Sarah said with a defeated sigh.
“Yeah. I mean, they have really cutting-edge medical facilities aboard the Váli, and I could catch up to them no problem, but there’s that paradox thing, again,” Freya said.
“You’re right, of course. Even if they could save her, that would drastically alter the timeline, and we wouldn’t even exist anymore to save her in the first place.”
“Paradox.” Sarah sighed.
“Yep. Stupid things,” Daisy agreed.
“Well, I’m still here, so I guess we ultimately fail. The question is, how long before her body gives out?”
“My stasis protocols can keep her suspended in the cryo pod indefinitely,” Freya replied. “But I do have a kinda unconventional idea.”
“What is it, Freya?”
“I don’t know if you’ll like it. It’s kinda out there.”
“Can’t be any worse than the other options.”
“I agree. What’re you thinking, hon?”
“Well, since I don’t have a full medical system like the Váli or Dark Side, I was thinking that maybe I could repurpose some of my other equipment that I do have aboard to fit the job. It’s not what it was designed for, but I’m pretty sure I can make it work.”
“So you want to build her a cybernetic arm from parts you have lying around? It’s a start, at least.”
