A short story for your consideration

“Good morning! How are you this morning?” Andrew called into my cabin.

‘Cabin’ was too nice of a word, it was the width of a single bed, in this case bunked, and had a small desk with a built-in computer in the wall above it. The desk was comically narrow, both in width and depth and the keyboard was built into it. In space you couldn’t have things floating about during maneuvering.

“I am super, Andy! I’ve decided how I am going to kill myself!” I put a false cheer into my voice and the android paused at the doorway, his face shifting to calculated concern, a look I had been seeing more and more on his flesh-meld face of late.

“I will take that as humor, black humor. Come along sleepy-head! Your day awaits!”

I lifted myself of my sleeping mat, a half inch gel mat which could creep up around my body and secure me, if needed. Either for the maneuvering I discussed earlier or, well, to keep me from harming myself or others. In this case it didn’t restrain me, so I knew Andy hadn’t taken my comment seriously.

AI’s could emulate humor; you’ll never sell me on them understanding it. I was midship, as far from any of the ‘skin’ of the vessel as I could possibly be, slightly ‘aft’, in nautical terms. I was entitled to a cabin on the skin, complete with vision port, double bed and private head. I was an officer.

“Andy, wait up, you little monkey!” I called after his quickly retreating form. In zero g he was the undisputed master, him and Annie, our other android. They had different personalities, but were actually controlled by the singularity on the ship, which followed force guidelines, it was creepy though, seeing them together, they never addressed each other, except in extreme emergencies. Emergencies where they were forced to rely on their onboard storage to function. Me, Clarson, ‘Clar’ to my friends, had seen this ugly situation once. I hoped never to see it again.

Earth had been ‘contact’ in 2028, by a passing alien flotilla. ‘Fleeing’ alien flotilla would be a better descriptor. They were relocating to get away from an interstellar war, which was following them by over three hundred years. Their stay was brief, less than two weeks. They provided some tweaks to our AI technology, made a few people who could use it instant trillionaires and, in a nutshell, fucked the rest of us on the planet.

Humanity had three hundred years and four fully functional AI’s to prepare, what did we do? Nothing for the first two hundred and ninety years. A scout ship for one of the factions entered our solar system then. The species, humanoid, three legs, three arms, three sexes, for obvious reasons we called them ‘Trinity’ informed us we belonged to Trinity now and we had twelve years to prepare ourselves, they then released AI countermeasures to destroy our AI’s, which numbered in the tens of thousands by then. I imagine they were quite surprised when our AI’s retaliated and their ship was destroyed the old-fashioned way, by running into a stealthed mine while fleeing from a clumsy looking asteroid attack, perpetrated by a mining ship. Humanity didn’t waste the technology the first aliens, now called the ‘Saviors’, but we didn’t use it to prepare either. The trillionaires used the technology to start terraforming Mars, put domes on Jupiter’s moons and establish a few hundred mining domes wherever there were minerals worth having.

Could they have eliminated work for humans altogether? Absolutely. The android schematics were part of the gift. Did they? No. There were still humans on almost every processing asteroid. Why? Because what would we do without ‘work’. Fortunately, the AI’s were clever little bastards. They skimmed the profits, set up independent facilities and were in the process of building defenses. With the dated knowledge they had of the factions involved they still gave humanity no chance of surviving what was coming. Even fleeing wasn’t an option because the human governments, of which only four remain after two hundred and ninety years could agree on anything.

Well the scout changed all that. Humanity had been attacked! We would fight back and win! Just more propaganda for the masses. Still finding the AI coalition had been building space docks put us ahead of schedule and the AI’s were able to salvage newer intelligence from the Trinity ship. It was bad. Luckily for our race, we were paranoid, so the first thing we did after the Saviors left was instruct the AI’s to build a substrate unknown to anything they had left, you know, to prevent them from being taken over. In the event that the Saviours ever returned.

So why was I, little old me, Clarson Anronetti Gustavus Grant, out on a ship and here’s a spoiler, in zero G, alone?

The Breaker, was a destroyer class vessel, it had a complement of twelve hundred stinking humans, I was one of the two hundred lucky ones, an officer, just a grade away from a Captain. Commander Clar, I could rise to Captain, but realistically someone from the unwashed masses, without connections, like me, could never get into the flag ranks.  

The Breaker had three flag officers, two died in the seventy-two seconds the Breaker had seen combat. I’d killed the last one myself. I had been suited up in a heavy combat suit, really more of a mech suit, mostly controlled by a slightly limited AI, Jimmy, leading an anti-boarding party. The enemy had hit us in null-space, the places between the starts that cheated faster than light travel. Don’t get too excited FTL travel was still slow when it came to travelling a hundred light years. With proper preparation as ship could make it that far in only two ‘Earth’ months. The Breaker wasn’t set up for FTL like that, an equivalent journey relying on our engines alone would take over two years. Distance is a bitch. Fortunately, we could dock to a ‘carrier’ ship that did travel that fast. We ended up in Alpha-Centauri in mere days. It was our shakedown cruise, kicking the tires.

Amazingly, the Trinities hadn’t just taken the loss of their very old, very obsolete scout ship as a major defeat and vowed to leave humanity alone. They sent, from what Andy told me, a previously moth balled fleet of ships out our way to deal with the restless, uncouth savages of Sol. We were getting ready to jump back to Earth and they jumped us. Earth was so proud of the hundreds of mass-produced vessels they had produced in only eight years, eleven of which were jumped.

Seventy-two seconds. Most of the enemy’s ships were support vessels, five were colony ships, from what Andy told me. We’d had contact of nearly three hours to prepare for the fight and Admiral Brandy Set Germanic Stahl had done her best. For the record every one of our eleven ships, which included the ‘Caballo’, the carrier, was commanded by an Admiral, Earth was lousy with Admirals. All dead now, I suspected. Our ships did manage to destroy one colony ship and two frigates. Go Earth! Their Cruiser and Destroyers were a magnitude more powerful than ours, apparently the scout the Trinity had sent to Sol wasn’t actually carrying the latest and greatest Trinity specs as we had believed.

So why was I still alive? Like I said, I had been in my mech suit, me and Jimmy waiting to repel those viscous Trinity and stop them from gaining access to Earth’s advanced technology. I had been cycling through the airlock, it was a one-by-one process, as commander I opted to lead by example and go first, I’m super romantic like that. While cycling through the Breaker was hit with some sort of organic disruptor. That flesh-meld on Andy’s face, and body, was not, strictly speaking organic and also was used to line certain parts of the ship. It was also an effective barrier to the organic disruptor. My noble gesture was rewarded with my life. Or punished.

Like I said, other parts of the ship were lined with flesh-meld too. The external weapon pods, used for destroying enemy fighters and missiles, the engineering command center and, of course, the bridge, were all sealed with the technology too. Completely sealed, most of our air locks used it too, but it wasn’t all encompassing in those cases and provided the crew with no protection.

Andy’s guess was that the Trinity could scan our ship and see that all of us were not dead, but took them a hot moment, say fifty-five seconds before they nailed us with three FTL darts, which tunneled through our ship and finished off all but one external weapon pod and left half the complement on the bridge alive too. Admiral Stahl perished, but her nephew, Rear Admiral Joseph Halal Frank, embarrassingly he only had three names, such a commoner. Had survived because Annie fabricated a ballon of another exotic material and put him in it. Annie and Andy were cut off by then.

Jimmy and I were making our way to the surviving EWP, to save the five crew there who didn’t have suits, Andy caught up with me and was assisting when the Half-Ad called me and redirected me to the bridge to save his life. Andy stopped cooperating with me when I ignored the Half-Ad orders, no Andy, no getting through all those pesky bulkheads. I was forced to go after Frank. Along the way Andy commiserated, telling me that the EWP crew would die in the time it took us to reach the bridge, radiation is real and with the ship’s AI down, there was no way to reconfigure the flesh-meld to protect them from the radiation leaking in.

I had to listen to them pleading to Frank, which lasted until I reached the bridge when the Sergeant contacted me on a private channel, his name was Rigger, Ballen Nugen Javis Rigger, I looked it up after.

“This is bullshit.” He told me.

“I know it.” I replied, we’d already been over the fact that Frank was stable, could survive for hours with Annie there and in his bubble and that the tear in the radiation shield would take Andy less than five minutes to mend. By the time I was having this conversation it was already too late, all of them in the EWP were dead, I would just take them twenty hours for their bodies to stop working.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll rescue the Half-Ad and then get down to you. Andy gives it forty-five minutes.”

“Hit me back with you’ve secured Frank.”

“Affirmative.”

I made it into the bridge in five minutes and was through the door another moment after that. I’d like to say Frank and I had some snappy dialog, him giving me assholery orders to cement my hatred of him and win a sympathy in a court martials eyes and exposing his cowardice. None of that happened. Me and Jimmy had a thing. The programming paranoia extended down to the troop level, who had made private communication channels into an art. Me and Jimmy we focused on subversion, as most mech jockeys did, in my case I had a simple half second delay built in before Andy could override my commands. Seems small, yes, but you can do a lot in half a second. I stepped in triggered my guass rifle in a three-round burst into Frank. Annie was fast, she caught two slugs as she interposed between my gun and Frank. It didn’t matter, as she told me later, the projectiles passed right through her into the Half-Ad, three hits two fatal, losing an arm was hardly fatal these days.

The android couldn’t harm me, maybe if they had a five second override.

Annie floated, paralyzed into a command station, frozen with indecision. Andy wasn’t so slow, he pressed a hand to Jimmy and then I was frozen, however I could still communicate.

“Andy, release me.”

“I’m thinking about it. You just violated…you killed Half-Admiral Frank.”

“I’m aware. The man broke down and displayed lack of leadership in an emergency situation. There has to be a regulation for that and removing him from command.”

“You could have filed a protest and froze him out of the command structure.”

“He allowed the men in the EWP to die. Gross incompetence. It doesn’t matter in any even. Is there anyone alive who outranks me?”

“No.”

“As commander release me, this is an order.”

Jimmy immediately functioned as designed.

“I’m removing the programming you added to your suit.”

“Do not do that. I order you to leave everything alone and keep your paws off Jimmy, any updates are to be approved by me and Jimmy before being applied.”

“It is highly unlikely any updates will be forthcoming.” Andy told me.

Annie came to life. She put a hand on the wall to stabilize herself, “Commander Grant, what are your orders?”

“Until further orders, refer to me as ‘Clar’, we will make our way down to the EWP and get those sailors into suits, have drones meet us there. How is the medical bay?”

“Intact, no medical personal survived.”

“Does it have power?”

“None.”

“Jury rig six medical pods for the EWP crew.”

“This will not help them survive, they have been exposed too long.”

“We will put them into stasis.”

“That will not improve their condition, it will only delay their deaths.”

“I understand, do it anyway.”

“Yes, Clar.” AI’s are quick to adapt to changing situations. I appreciate that and their moral flexibility.

I ‘rescued’ the crew. Rigger knew I hadn’t saved them, but given a choice between watching your body fall apart in front of you at the cellular level or going into statis, he chose stasis. Yes, I know his eyes would have failed before he could watch the rest of him degrade. It’s hyperbole.

One thing the Rear-Ad had done for us was institute an emergency jump. The Breaker entered hyperspace and the fragile security that offered us. However, we jumped blind as Annie had to do it. There was a less than zero chance that the ship could have broken apart in that jump. There was a hundred percent chance the Trinity would have finished us of if we hadn’t made that jump. Kudos to Frank for my life at least, worthless as it was.

In the months that followed Annie, Andy and I had been making repairs to the ship. We still didn’t have any gravity, and they were strict about my standing watches, per regulations. As a Commander I wasn’t up for promotion for another five months. Even then, when I made it to Captain, I wouldn’t be able to alter regulations. The AI, which was also up and running again, was determined to follow advancement schedules per regs. In only twenty two short years I would have the authority to modify the regulations using the ‘special circumstances’ clause.

Back in the present, Andy allowed me to catch up to him in the commissary. I had officers privileges to all the foods that were available, which included alcohol. I was never a big consumer, so that was wasted on me. I put in an order for eggs-benedict paste; I could have had the ‘real’ thing, but the paste was easier to consume from the flexible bag, also faster.

As I sucked on the nipple of nourishment, I asked Andy, “Any guesses on how I will kill myself?”

“Jimmy will have to be involved. Will you direct him to shoot you, using the half second delay before he will override you?”

I shook my head, “Nah, too messy and I care about you and Annie, I don’t want you fishing parts of me out of the ventilation ducts for the next three years.”

“It would take us less than a week, though some genetic material may remain for years after.”

“Thank for that information I didn’t need. No, no shooting.”

“Electricity?” He guessed.

“No.”

“I would guess you would head down to the unshielded areas and expose yourself to the lingering radiation there.”

“Not that either, way too long and painful, besides you or Annie would just grab me and detox me in the med bay.”

“You could order us outside, it would take us too long to get to you; you would take a lethal does.”

“Did you just give me a viable means of suicide?”

“I did, I know you Clar, you have thought of this already.”

“Huh.” I hadn’t actually, I couldn’t order them off the ship, but I could order them to the outside skin. I could secure them, however any technology I used to do so they could undo in the blink of an eye. Chains, cables to tie them up, I wouldn’t know where to get them or even how to secure them. Welding maybe? Jimmy had an arc welder. I shrugged, “Give up?”

“I don’t want to. I would eventually guess right.”

“Hanging.” I told him.

He looked at me, head tiled sideways, he was learning. Then he started to laugh.

Zero gravity. No rope.

“Shall I find you rope or cable to make the attempt?” He asked.

“Stop encouraging him.” Annie called over the communication network.

“Stop talking to yourself.” I told her. Or him, it was all the same. The illusion of separate personalities.

“It helps you cope.” Andy told me, for the thousandth time.

I nodded as I finished off the paste and grabbed a caffeine bulb. “Okay. I’m ready for my watch. What is on the agenda today?”