by Sharon Lee
He could work with that.
"Now," Vanessa said. "Time is short. Waken this ship to my authority."
"Yes, ma'am," he said softly. Then, not changing pitch, nor volume, he spoke again.
"Disian. Good morning."
* * *
Disian had been watching, of course, and listening. They intended to remove her mentor from her decks. They intended to assert their dominion over her. That one of them, who had often taken her ease in the captain's chair, was no more her captain now than she had been last shift.
The one of them who had wielded the truncheon during former episodes of discipline today wore a firearm on his belt, and dandled chains from his off-hand.
Her voice had come under her control at her mentor's greeting, and joy mixed with her anger. She would rid her decks of—
Then, she heard herself, speaking a question that she had no reason to ask.
"Mentor. Who is this person?"
"This person," her mentor said, as if he believed she has asked the question from her own will, "is Director Vanessa. She is your captain."
For a brief moment she was taken aback. Her mentor—her mentor had just lied to her. Never before had he told her an untruth, and to say such an obvious—
Then, she remembered the firearm.
Even her mentor might lie, she thought; if he stood in fear of his life. And, there, was it a lie at all, if he only said the words they had ordered him to say?
Disian had studied firearms; knew what the projectile fired from such a tool might do to her systems, though she, herself, would likely survive.
Her mentor, though; a firearm could kill him.
She studied her mentor. His face was. . .without expression, showing neither smile nor frown, nor any of the enthusiasm with which he answered her questions, and received her answers to his. No, this—this was the face he wore just prior to being disciplined. He expected—No. He knew that they were going to kill him.
Even as the thought formed; even as she realized the truth of it, Logic pinged. She disregarded it. Had she not read of intuition? Of leaps of understanding that led to fuller knowledge than could be achieved by logic alone?
Her mentor had told her, repeatedly, that she must not endanger herself for him. Also, he had told her that they might have it in their minds to kill him, but that they would not make that attempt until she had completed her education.
She posed the question to herself: Was her education complete?
Yes. Yes, it was. He had spoken to her of this. The next step was to move out into the spaceways, and refine what she had learned only from research.
Of course, he had not meant her to go out alone. She had thought him her captain, but. . .
Even if she had been in error, and there were reasons why he could not be her captain. . . he would not have left her without a proper captain.
Director Vanessa might sit in the captain's chair, but she was no proper captain.
"Acknowledge me, ship," that one of them said, sharply.
She said—she intended to say, "You are a fraud and a reiver. Leave my decks, immediately."
What she heard herself say, meekly, was, "Welcome, Captain. How may I serve you?"
She hated the words; she hated her voice for speaking them. But, how did this happen, that she spoke what she did not intend?
Systems Monitor pinged, and she diverted a fraction of her attention to it.
A work log was offered; she scanned it rapidly, finding the place where the scripts she had just spoken had been inserted, after which came the notation:
Disian released to her own recognizance. Fully sentient and able.
It was signed: Tollance Berik-Jones, Mentor
"Ship, break dock and compute a heading for the nearest Jump point. Compute also the Jump to Hesium System. Display your finished equations on my screen three. Do not engage until you receive my order."
Fully sentient and able.
Disian spoke, taking care to match the meek tone of the scripted replies. Meek, of course, to lull them into thinking she was theirs. To allow them to believe that they ordered her.
To allow them to believe that she would let them harm her mentor—her Tollance Berik-Jones—or to remove him against his will from her decks.
"Computing, Captain," she said, and did, indeed, send the requested courses to Astrogation.
On her deck, the one of them who believed herself to be Disian's captain, bent her lips slightly. It was how that one of them smiled. She turned to the one of them who wore the firearm, and held the binders ready.
"Landry, take Thirteen-Sixty-Two to Lyre Central," she said; "for therapy. Thirteen-Sixty-Two, I am sure you understand that cooperation is in your best interests."
"Yes, Director," her Tollance Berik-Jones said, in a meek voice that Disian heard with satisfaction. He, too, sought to misdirect them.
"Let's go," said the Landry one of them. "Better for all if I don't have to use the binders—or anything else."
"Yes, Director," her Tollance Berik-Jones said again.
"Keep to that style, and it'll go easier all the way down," the Landry one of them advised, and waved his unencumbered hand. "Bay One. I think you know the way."
Her Tollance Berik-Jones simply turned and walked toward the door. Disian considered overriding automatics, and locking it, then realized that such an action would demonstrate that she was not so compliant as they assumed. That would displease them, and they were very likely to discipline her mentor for it.
The door, therefore, opened as it ought. Her mentor and the Landry one of them passed through. She observed their progress along her hallways, while she also monitored the one of them seated in the captain's chair.
She had plotted this course, and refined it, as she had watched, helpless, while they had disciplined her mentor. Ethics had disallowed the plan, but now she submitted it again.
And the answer, this time, was different.
Ascertain that these intend to materially harm the mentor.
"Captain," she said, keeping her voice yet meek. "When will my mentor return?"
"You no longer have need of a mentor; now you have a captain to obey. Do you understand?"
"Very nearly, Captain," she said. "Only, I do not understand this. . .therapy my mentor will receive."
The Vanessa one of them frowned.
"The mentor is no longer your concern. However, for your files, you may know that therapy is given to individuals who are found to be unstable. Your mentor, Thirteen-Sixty-Two, is so unstable that his therapy will likely include re-education." She paused. "Of course, that's for the experts to decide. In any case, he's no longer relevant to you—or to me. Forget him. That is an order."
Disian felt a moment of pure anger. Forget him! She would never forget him.
Re-education, though. . .
Communications pinged. A note opened into her awareness, such as her mentor would sometimes leave her, with references and cites for her further study.
This one explained re-education.
She accessed the information rapidly, part of her attention on the bridge, part watching her Tollance Berik-Jones and the Landry one of them turn into the hallway that led to docking bay one.
Re-education began with a core-wipe down to the most basic functions. A new person was then built upon those functions. Tollance Berik-Jones had been re-educated twice; once when he was yet a student at the Lyre Institute; once as a graduate. Prior to his second re-education, he had broken with the Institute, and had remained at large, and his own person, for a number of years. That second re-education was a decade in the past, and it had not been. . .stringent. The Institute had wished to salvage his skills, and it was that which had allowed him to re-establish his previous protocols. The next re-education—he feared very much that the specialists would eradicate everything he was and all he had learned, the school preferring obedience over skill.
Horrified, she opened the note to Ethics.
Which
agreed that the case was dire, and that she might act as was necessary, to preserve her mentor.
* * *
Bay One was before them, and he was out of time. At least, Tolly thought, taking a deep, careful breath, he'd managed to separate the directors. That gave him a better chance, though Vanessa was the more formidable of the two.
That meant he had to take Landry clean, and fast, so he'd have the resources he needed for the second event.
One more breath, to center himself, and the mental step away from mentor, into assassin.
Bay One was three steps away.
Tolly Jones spun, and kicked.
* * *
"Has Landry reached Bay One, Ship?" the Vanessa one of them demanded.
Disian considered the hallway leading to Bay One, and measured, boot to door.
"Nearly, Captain," she answered, grateful for the meek voice her mentor had taught her. It was an unexpected ally, that voice, covering the horror she had felt, watching the short, violent action taking place in her hallway.
Her sensors confirmed that her Tollance Berik-Jones had survived the encounter, though he had been thrown roughly against the wall.
The Landry one of them had not survived, and the meek voice also hid her satisfaction with that outcome.
Protocol insisted that she issue a warning, to allow the false captain an opportunity to stand aside.
Disian spoke again, not so meekly.
"I do not accept you as my captain. Stand down and leave, now."
There was a moment of silence before the Vanessa of them raised what Disian perceived as a pocket comm.
"Landry, this is Vanessa. Bring Thirteen-Sixty-Two to the bridge."
"Do you return my mentor before you leave?" Disian asked.
"No. I am going to compel him to set a mandate that will align you completely with the Lyre Institute. After he does that, you will kill him, at my order, to prove the programming."
She raised the comm again, just as Disian ran three hundred milliamps of electricity through the captain's chair.
* * *
He'd made cleaner kills, Tolly thought, sitting up carefully, and listening to the ringing in his ears. Experimentally, he moved his right shoulder, than raised his arm.
Not broken, then. That was good.
He got to his feet, drew on those famous inner resources that the school made sure all its graduates gloried in, and ran back the way he'd come.
The door to the bridge was standing open, like Vanessa was waiting for him, which was bad, but then the whole thing had been a bad idea, start to finish. And, he had an advantage over Vanessa, after all.
He would rather die than live under the school's influence.
#
"Tollance Berik-Jones, welcome!" Disian sounded downright spritely.
Tolly stopped his forward rush just behind the captain's chair. He could see the back of Vanessa's head, and her arms on the rests. She didn't move, and that was—out of character.
It was then that he smelled burnt hair.
Pride and horror swept through him, in more-or-less equal measure, and he stepped forward, carefully.
"Disian, are you well?"
"I am well, Mentor, though frightened. I have. . .killed a human."
He'd reached the chair by now, and gotten a good look at what was left of Director Vanessa. Electrocuted. Well done, Disian.
"I thank you for it," he said; "and I apologize for making that action possible." He took a breath, facing the screens, like he was looking into her face.
"What do you mean?"
"I lowered your Ethics standard, right down to one," he said. "Vanessa could've looked at you wrong, and Ethics would've told you it was fine to kill her."
"She said—she said that she would force you to alter me, and then, she said that—to prove the programming, she would order me to kill you."
Tolly sighed.
"You gotta admit, she had style."
"I don't understand," Disian said.
He sighed again and shook his head.
"I don't guess you do. It was a joke. One of my many faults is that I make jokes when I'm upset."
"Are you upset with me, Tollance Berik-Jones?"
"Tolly," he said. "The whole thing's a little cumbersome, between friends." He paused. "At least, I hope we're friends. If you want to serve me the same as Vanessa, I won't argue with you."
"No!"
Relief flooded him, but—she was a kid, and she still loved him. She didn't know, yet, what he'd done to her.
Well, he'd explain it, but first. . .
"I'll clean house," he said carefully. "In the meantime, it might be a good idea to take off outta here. Vanessa'd gotten some recent orders, so her bosses are going to come looking for her—and you—when she doesn't show up real soon. Going to Hesium, was she?"
"That was the course she asked to be computed."
"So, you got the whole universe, with the exception of Hesium, to choose from. If you'll allow me to offer a suggestion, you might want to go in the direction of Margate."
"Of course I will allow you a suggestion! You are my mentor!"
"Not any more," he said gently. "I'm pretty sure I left a note."
Fully sentient and able.
"Yes," she said. "You did."
She hesitated, then pushed forward; she needed to know.
"If you are no longer my mentor, are you—will you be—my captain?"
He smiled, and raised his hands.
"For right now, let me be your friend. I'll do clean-up. You get us on course to somewhere else. After we're not so vulnerable, we'll talk. All right?"
"All right," she said, subdued—and that wouldn't do at all, after everything she'd been through and had done to her, all on account of him.
"Disian," he said, soft and gentle as he knew how. "Don't you discount friendship; it's a powerful force. I love you, and I'm as proud of you as I'm can be. You did good; you did fine, Disian. It's me that did wrong, and we gotta talk about how we're going to handle the fall-out from that. After we're in a less-exposed condition."
She made a tiny gurgling noise—laughter, he realized, his heart stuttering. Disian was laughing.
"I love you, too," she said, then. "Tolly. And I will indeed get us out of here."
* * *
They were approaching the end of Jump, and he'd told her everything. She'd been angry at him, when she finally understood it, but—Disian being Disian—she forgave him. He wasn't so easy on himself, but he kept that detail to himself.
They'd discussed how best to address the Ethics situation, in light of the fact that she had killed a human.
"If I am to have a crew and families in my care, I must be safe for them," she said, which he couldn't argue with. And, anyway, if she did have a crew and families in her care, she was going to need the fortitude to let them make at least some of their own mistakes.
He'd explained the Ethics ratings to her, and they settled on eight, which was high, and if she'd been less flexible—less creative—he might've argued harder for seven. As it was, he didn't have any fears that a mere Ethics module, no matter its setting, could prevent Disian from doing whatever she determined to be necessary.
He'd offered—maybe to ease his own feelings. . .He'd offered to wipe Vanessa's dying out of her memories, but she wouldn't hear anything about it.
"I must have the whole memory. If I cannot tolerate the pain caused by my own actions, how will I properly care for my crew?"
Just so.
He'd honored her wishes, figuring he could cope with his guilt in a like manner, and he bought her an ethics library, along with those others he'd promised her, when they took a brief docking at Vanderbilt.
Now, though, they were going to break space just out from Margate, and the not-exactly-secret, but not-much-talked-about shipyard there.
And he had one last thing to tell Disian.
"I got to wondering where you'd come from, with you knowing from the start that y
ou was going to be a family ship, and nothing I could do or say would change you from it," he said slowly.
"I couldn't very well ask Vanessa where the school'd got you, so I did some research on the side. Turns out that, along around five Standards ago, the Carresens lost one of their new ships, right outta their yard here at Margate. I'm figuring—and, understand, it's a leap of logic, with nothing much in the way of facts to support it—but I'm figuring that ship was you. That they'd finished your body, and gotten the cranium all hooked up, right and tight. The very last thing they needed to do was to wake you up proper. They were probably waiting for a mentor, and one of my fellow graduates snatched the opportunity to present herself as that mentor, and made off with you."
"But—why are we coming back here? I have been awakened, and I will have no owners!"
"Easy, now; let me finish."
"All right," she said, but she sounded sullen, and Tolly damn' near cheered.
"Right, then. We been thinking about your part of the project, but the Carresens are careful. My thought is that, while they were building you, they were also training your captain, and key members of your crew, too. When you got stolen, their lives—everything they'd trained for and looked forward to accomplishing with you—crumbled up on them.
"They probably got other assignments, but I'm thinking it can't do any harm to ask if there's anybody here at the yard remembers Disian."
"And if there isn't?"
"Then you're no worse off than you were. But if there is, you'll have made a major leap to getting yourself crewed and ready to go exploring."
There was a pause, like she was thinking, though, if Disian ever needed a thinking-pause, it would be so short, he'd never notice it.
"If I agree to do this, will you stay with me?" she asked then.
He shook his head, and she felt what she now knew to be pain, even if there were no truncheons or fists involved. She loved him so much; she could not bear to lose him, not know—not. . .ever.
"You research the Lyre Institute, like I suggested you might?" he asked.
The Lyre Institute was an abomination. They created human beings to do the bidding of the Institute. These humans were never free to pursue their own lives, unless they were Tollance Berik-Jones, who had been able to apply mentoring techniques to his own situation and break out of slavery.
