The Android's Dream

by John Scalzi

  Jensen’s digging revealed why: Creek and his female friend were wanted in connection with a shoot-out in a DC area mall, which left four men—men with interesting police records—dead and another couple injured. Creek’s friend also appeared to be named in some sort of legal suit by the Nidu government; Jensen didn’t go into it but offered the opinion that the two were con artists of some sort. By the time Jensen caught Lehane up with all this, they were already under way to Brjnn, and their schedule was too tight to accommodate an emergency stop to have the two removed. Lehane instructed Jensen to alert authorities at Phoenix colony, their next UNE destination; the two would be discreetly removed from the ship then. Until then, Lehane didn’t see why they shouldn’t enjoy their vacation. Lehane told Jensen to keep an eye out to make sure the pair didn’t try to con any of the passengers, but otherwise let them be.

  Lehane hadn’t given the pair any additional thought until the Neverland popped out of n-space and discovered a Nidu gunship waiting for them and jamming their communications. Lehane immediately locked down the bridge, sealing the bridge crew in with airtight blast doors. The commander of the Nidu ship sent a message demanding the surrender of Creek’s friend Robin Baker (with whom the nation of Nidu was enigmatically at war), the location of her cabin, and that the Neverland open its shuttlebay to allow a squad of marines already en route to the Neverland to retrieve her. The failure to perform any of these would result in the gunship opening fire on the Neverland. Lehane complied, sent Baker’s room information and ordered the shuttle bay to begin its cycle.

  “If we let them take these two, do you think that’ll be the end of it?” Picks asked Lehane, as they watched the Nidu shuttle enter the Neverland’s bay.

  “They jammed our communications as we entered normal space,” Lehane said. “No one knows we’re here. I don’t think they plan to let anyone know we were ever here.”

  Then he was on the communicator to Creek; the Nidu were jamming outbound communications but personal communicators had a short-distance peer-to-peer protocol that operated on a separate frequency. It was thankfully unjammed. As Lehane and his crew watched Creek and Robin evade the Nidu marines (or not evade them as the case was on three occasions), Lehane thought mirthlessly that his security chief was dead wrong. Whatever Creek and Baker were in trouble for, simple con artistry was not part of the equation.

  “Elevator’s at the Promenade Deck,” Picks said.

  “Here we go,” Lehane said. “Let’s see if this guy’s luck holds out.”

  “There’s one,” Robin said, pointing at a lit path on the otherwise dim Promenade Deck that led to a lifepod door. “Now all we have to do is get to it.”

  The two of them emerged from the elevator in a corridor behind the kitchen of the Celestial Room, the Promenade Deck’s restaurant. The Celestial Room was constructed on a platform that stood above the rest of the triple-height Promenade Deck for what the brochures for the Neverland promised was a “delightful dining experience, floating among the stars.” At the moment, however, it just meant that Creek and Robin had a flight of stairs to get down.

  Creek poked his head up over the railing and spotted three Nidu marines in front of them, walking in the direction opposite of that he and Robin needed to go. The marines Creek had seen were working in pairs. That meant there was one missing. Robin tugged on Creek’s shirt and pointed down the stairwell they needed to walk down. The fourth Nidu marine had just appeared in front of it.

  Creek and Robin flattened down to avoid being seen, but the Nidu marine wasn’t looking in their direction anyway. As they watched, the marine scratched himself, yawned, and sat on the bottom stair. He reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a silvery object, then peeled the silver skin, letting it flutter to the ground, and bit off part of what was left. The marine was having a snack.

  In spite of everything, Creek felt bemusedly offended; apparently this marine thought so little of his quarry that he could take a meal break. Creek pulled out the Colt .45.

  Robin’s eyes widened. What are you doing? she mouthed to Creek, silently. Creek put his finger to his lips as a warning and then crouched up and looked down the Promenade Deck. The three other marines were still out there, facing away from Creek, Robin, and the fourth marine. Down the deck Creek saw little shops and kiosks that would normally provide passengers with all manner of goodies to stuff themselves silly upon. He focused on one he remembered sold soft drinks, about 60 yards down the Promenade and just slightly ahead of one of the marines. Creek raised his gun, steadied his aim, and shot at it.

  It was a good hit. The bullet hit the kiosk and tore through the aluminum drink dispenser, dislodging the fiber hose inside that connected to the CO2 canister. The hose flailed back and forth in the drink dispenser, rattling and hissing. The marine closest to the kiosk barked in surprise and opened fire on the drink stand; the two other marines, hearing the commotion, rushed to their comrade’s location and pumped bullets into the kiosk as well.

  The noise was deafening—loud enough that the three marines could not hear when Creek turned, ran halfway down the stairwell, and shot at the fourth Nidu marine, who was already standing and turning toward Creek; he’d heard the shot being fired above him. Creek’s shot was badly aimed and went wide, the result of trying to run down stairs and aim at the same time.

  The marine was surprised but competent; he raised his rifle and let out a short burst. Creek saw the rifle lift and moved to avoid fire. He didn’t. Creek felt shocking clarity of pain when one bullet of the four glancingly tore through pants and connected with the communicator in his pocket, exploding the communicator and sending its shrapnel into his leg. Creek stumbled but fired again, hitting the marine in the hand. He roared and raised his hand in pain; Creek, steadier now, shot him in the throat. He went down.

  Down the Promenade Deck the three other Nidu marines stopped their firing and examined the wreckage of the kiosk.

  “Robin,” Creek hissed. “Let’s go. Now.”

  Robin came down the stairs and saw Creek’s leg. “You’ve been shot,” she said.

  “My communicator was shot,” Creek said. “I was just a bystander. Come on. Our chariot awaits.”

  From down the deck they heard bellowing in Nidu.

  “I think they just noticed their friend is missing,” Robin said.

  “Go get the pod opened,” Creek said. “I’ll hold them off.”

  “What are you going to do?” Robin said.

  “Something messy,” Creek said. “Go.” Robin went toward the pod. Creek took the marine’s knife from its sheath, and then searched for which of the marine’s hands carried the network implant that allowed him to use his weapon. It was on the marine’s right hand, disguised as a decorative appliqué on the outermost finger. Creek put a knee on the hand to pin it down and then severed the finger with the knife. He dropped the knife, grabbed the finger and the rifle and then jammed the finger into his right palm, pressed up against the rifle stock. The implant had to be within a few centimeters of the trigger or the rifle wouldn’t work. It was painful to leave the Colt behind; it was a beautiful weapon. But it was down to four bullets and Creek didn’t think his aim was that good.

  “Harry!” Robin said. She had wrenched down the manual bar to open the airlock door that would let them into the lifepod.

  “Coming,” Creek said, and started walking backward to the lifepod, limping from the communicator fragments in his leg, rifle up and sighted in toward where he knew the other Nidu marines would be coming.

  The first came around the corner in a rush and screamed when he saw the marine on the floor. A second later he appeared to notice Creek. He bellowed and raised his rifle; Creek, who had sighted him in, let out a burst of fire to his chest. The kickback of the rifle was impressive and caused the last few shots of the burst to miss; the first three, however, connected just fine. The marine flew back to the ground, twitching and bellowing. Creek turned and hobbled quickly toward the lifepod. He was pretty sure t
he downed marine would keep the others from rushing down the deck long enough for him and Robin to get on their way.

  The lifepod was a compact ball designed to do exactly one thing—get passengers away from a broken ship. The inside held ten seats: two levels of five, arrayed in a circle, each emanating from the white plastic molding that formed the inside shell of the lifepod. Each seat had four-point belts designed to keep people pinned to their seats while the pod fell away from the ship. Save for a porthole on the door, there were no windows, which would have compromised the structural integrity of the pods. Save for the door sealer, which also served to begin the launch sequence, there were no controls; the pods were programmed to hone in on pod beacons when they were in UNE space or to preassigned locations in other worlds. When you entered a lifepod, it was with the recognition that to do otherwise would be to perish. That being a given, you didn’t get a choice where you got to go. It was survival at its most minimum.

  Creek entered the pod and threw his rifle (and its attendant finger), into the closest seat. “Sit down,” he said to Robin, who took a seat on the other side of the pod from the rifle and began to strap herself in. Creek grabbed the door sealer and yanked it down; the door vacuum-sealed itself with a hiss.

  Creek glanced through the tiny porthole and saw the other two marines finally creeping past their downed teammates. One of them saw the outside door to the pod closing and raised his rifle to fire. The airlock door, which sealed the pod from the ship, slammed shut, blocking Creek’s view; as it did so Creek heard the dull thunk of bullets striking its other side.

  “What do we do now?” Robin said.

  “Lifepods automatically start a countdown once you seal them,” Creek said, strapping himself into his seat. “We should be launching any second now.”

  “Good,” Robin said. She sat back, closed her eyes, and waited for the launch.

  A minute later she opened her eyes again. “Harry,” she said. “We’re still here.”

  “I know,” Creek said.

  “I thought we were supposed to launch,” Robin said.

  “We were,” Creek said.

  There was a very loud bang on the other side of the door.

  “What was that?” Robin said.

  “I’m guessing it was a grenade,” Creek said. “They’re trying to blow their way through the outer door.”

  “What do we do now?” Robin said.

  “I don’t know,” Creek said. He reached over and collected up the rifle and the Nidu marine’s finger. If any of the other Nidu marines had noticed that both of these objects were missing, there was a reasonably good chance that the rifle had already been disconnected from the network and would be useless as anything but a club. Creek didn’t see much point in passing on that bit of information to Robin.

  “They’re in the pod,” Picks said.

  “Stop their countdown,” Captain Lehane said. “But program in their destination coordinates.”

  “Done,” Picks said, after a second. “Now what do you want to do?”

  “Ready the other pod launchers to go,” Lehane said, and glanced back down to his monitors, where he could see the Nidu marines congregate around the pod airlock. “And wait for the flies to come to the honey.”

  After a few seconds Picks glanced over at the monitor. “Those two must be going bugshit in there, wondering why the pod hasn’t launched.”

  “It won’t be long now,” Lehane said. Four more Marines showed up on the Promenade Deck, and then another two. Four more and they’d be ready to go.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Picks said, as he watched the Nidu marines scurry to take cover from the grenade they’d placed by the airlock. “You’re not the one on the other side of that door.”

  “There,” Lehane said, and pointed to one of the monitors. The final foursome of Nidu Marines had come up the stairs and were making their way to the pod. “That’s all of them. Confirm that for me, please, Aidan.”

  Picks bent over the monitors and did a count. “Looks like twelve of them to me,” Picks said. “That’s all that are left standing.”

  “Aidan,” Captain Lehane said. “I do believe there’s been a catastrophic hull breach on the Promenade Deck. Bring the ship to emergency status. I authorize you to section and seal the Promenade Deck. If you please, section and seal the aft left quarter first; that’s the site of the breach.”

  Picks grinned. “Yes, Captain,” he said, and went off to deliver the orders.

  Promenade Decks are both a blessing and curse to commercial cruise liners. They are designed to accommodate huge windows that allow passengers to oooh and aaaah over starfields, planets, and all other manner of celestial phenomena, and make for fabulous brochure pictures to sell Midwest housewives and their cheap husbands on the idea of an interstellar cruise. The curse is these windows make Promenade Decks inherently far less structurally sound than any other part of the ship. A good random smack by chunk of rock or debris into a window at cruising speed runs the statistically extremely small yet not entirely trivial chance the window will buckle or shatter, sucking its fragments and any poor passengers nearby into the blackness of space.

  After a few high-profile incidents of this, including the unfortunate incident of the Hong Kong Star, in which the parents of the First Husband of the UNE were popped into cold vacuum like two immensely politically connected corks, every space-going cruise liner with a Promenade Deck registered for service by the UNE had to be able to lock down the entire deck at least and preferably the deck in sections, to insure a hull breach on the Promenade Deck did not threaten the integrity of the entire ship or expose any more passengers than absolutely necessary to the risk having their blood boil into nothingness as they unexpectedly toured the cosmos without a ship.

  In the case of a catastrophic hull breach (according to UNE regulations on the subject) a ship the size of the Neverland must be able to seal its Promenade Deck in no more than 15 seconds. In tests, the Neverland could seal off its Promenade Deck in 12.6 seconds. Sectional seals took even less time: between 5.1 and 7.8 seconds. Of course, that was before the Neverland had been entirely furnished and put into service. Captain Lehane wondered idly if the presence of carpeting, lounges, and potted palms would have any effect on the final numbers.

  “Sealing now,” Picks said. There was a shipwide wrenching and an immense noise as Promenade Deck vacuum doors, cleverly disguised as floors and walls, sprang up and out and connected together with an alacrity that made Lehane want to track down their designer and send him or her a congratulatory fruit basket. The carpets, lounges, and plants didn’t seem to slow down the doors, although they catapulted quite nicely. On his monitor, Lehane could see some of the Nidu marines firing at furniture in surprise as it was flung around them.

  “Done,” Picks said. “thirteen point two seconds. Not bad. And all the Nidu marines are in the aft left quarter.”

  “Excellent work, Aidan,” Lehane said. “Now, if I recall correctly, the hull breach occurred in that section of the deck.”

  “I believe it did,” Picks said.

  “That means one of the panorama windows has been compromised,” Lehane said. “I order you to clear out the rest of the window, in order to seal the breach.”

  “Yes, sir,” Picks said. “Does the captain have any particular window in mind?”

  “I leave it in your capable hands,” Lehane said.

  Although the Haysbert-American cruise line was a low-to-mid-price cruise line, it nevertheless had one of the best reputations for ship safety in the entire UNE commercial fleet; the Haysbert-American executives believed that such a reputation would be a selling point to the previously mentioned Midwest housewives, and indeed it was. One of the more obscure safety touches was that every window on a Haysbert-American ship, from the smallest porthole to the largest dome, was a single transparent crystal grown into its setting during ship manufacture. The crystal’s shearing angle—its “weak” angle—was along an axis secured by the setting;
the axis describing the surface of the window was remarkably resistant to collision. If something cracked a window on a Haysbert-American cruise liner, it was indeed a hell of an impact.

  The drawback to growing one’s windows into place was if one was cracked or broken it was difficult to extract it. Haysbert-American solved this problem by constructing tiny shaped explosive charges into their window settings which would drive chisel-like planes of metal into the crystal’s shearing angle, shattering what remained of the crystal and allowing deployment of the emergency vacuum door hidden within its retaining wall. This deployment occurred automatically unless overridden by the bridge.

  “Clearing debris,” Picks said, and shattered the panoramic window closest to the lifepod.

  From his monitor Lehane saw the long, curving window suddenly appear to go opaque as millions of hairline cracks accelerated through the crystal lattice. The Nidu marines visibly jumped at the sound; one of them wheeled around and raised his weapon at the window to fire at the noise.

  “Jumpin’ Jesus,” Lehane said. These had to be some of the most jittery military personnel Lehane had ever seen.

  The Nidu marine didn’t get a chance to fire his weapon; the cracked window exploded outward, sucking the marine out with it. Several other marines followed in short order, some knocked out the hole by flying debris, others simply pushed out by the hurricane force of the air escaping into space and seeking equilibrium with a vacuum countless millions of kilometers on all sides. Two marines managed to keep themselves from being launched into the darkness, which merely meant they spent their last few seconds vomiting their lungs out onto the Promenade Deck. Death relaxed their grips and the two of them collapsed onto the floor, the very last of the air in the section ruffling their uniforms as it whistled past.