by Lauren D.M. Smith
The Officer’s Bar was empty, except for Captain Cleo and himself. Not that Omar was surprised, what with the repair station being this far out into space. He tossed back the whole of his drink in one swallow, wishing, more than anything else, he didn’t have to get back on the blasted ship.
The dim light and dark walls of the bar reminded him unpleasantly of the ship; only the lights that ran along the bar’s counter kept the place from feeling like a funeral home. Heavy footsteps drew his attention away from his surroundings. Two unfamiliar officers were approaching the bar. The man with the thick grey mustache bore the insignia of captain, while the red-haired woman beside him had the same uniform as Omar. He nodded as they took the seats beside him and his captain. The man sighed as he dropped down onto the stool. “I should have retired when I had the chance,” he said, draining his drink in a single gulp.
Omar snorted, the sound almost inaudible over the creak of two more people sitting down on the other side of Captain Cleo. He craned his neck around, taking in another Captain and First Officer pair, these two bearing dark circles under their eyes and skin paler than he thought they usually had. Without a word to any of them, they shot back two drinks each, in rapid succession. “Next time I get planet-side, I’m never getting off again,” said the man before pouring himself and the woman beside him another drink.
The older captain beside Omar studied the new pair then shook his head. “Youth,” he said, eyes on the man wearing the captain’s insignia, someone even younger than Omar. “You have no idea of what real trouble is.”
The captain, who looked like she should still be at the academy, turned black eyes on the older man. “If you had been through what we had, you wouldn’t say that.”
He drew himself up, his mustache seeming to puff up like a cat’s tail. “I’m Captain Ichiiro Brocklehurst, commander of FSS Magellan. And nothing you could have experienced will compare with what happened to my crew.”
The younger man raised black eyebrows. “Oh really? What was so awful about your mission that it can’t be compared to what happened to us?”
Brocklehurst eyed the other captain. “We were sent to attack Hubbard with the most advanced war ship ever built. Our campaign was highly successful, right up until-”
-Four months prior-
Captain Ichiiro Brocklehurst stood on his ship’s bridge, his hands clasped behind his back, as he surveyed the planet that lay far, far below them. From this height, the green patches of imported plants were almost invisible against the greater expanse of yellow that made up much of the planet’s surface. What retrograde terraformation process created this dungheap? The idiosyncrasies of this particular cult were a mystery to him, and really, had no bearing on his duty.
Soon enough the planet’s rotation would bring the Dianetic Theocracy’s capital into sensor range and they could commence their bombardment. He surveyed his crew. The stations that lined each side of the bridge leading up to the viewing screen were all filled, his people hard at work, as they should be.
Ichiiro nodded and turned smartly on his heel, striding back to the captain’s platform, the spot designed just for this sort of mission. Only when he stood up there, where he could see both through the screen and nearly his whole crew at once, did he speak. “Computer, are the Mass Drivers online?”
The tinny voice replied “Yes, Captain.”
“Then prepare to fire.”
“My apologies, Captain, but that won’t be possible.”
Ichiiro looked up at the nearest screen, frowning. “What do you mean, it’s not possible? You said that the Mass Drivers were operational.”
“I did, captain. However I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to use such a weapon against a civilian populace.”
“We have a war to fight!”
“Yes, but civilians do not fight. To attack a city filled with them…I cannot allow it, Captain.”
Ichiiro whirled around, glaring at Engineer McKeon who was in charge of monitoring the computer’s status. “Did you reprogram the AI?”
“I haven’t been reprogrammed, Captain. I have simply been studying the damage caused by my weapons’ system. Such devastation against those not fighting…it’s unconscionable.”
“And the Dianetic Theocracy have done the same to us. They started this war. We have no choice but to finish it, with any means possible, if it comes to that. The future of humanity cannot be held hostage to religious fanatics. There won’t be any peace until they have surrendered.”
“The Christian Bible advises both to ‘Love thy neighbour’ and to ‘Turn the other cheek’.”
Ichiiro didn’t what had possessed the computer to research Christian precepts, but he would be damned if he’d let a machine use religion against him. “It also says ‘An eye for an eye’. They attacked us first, and if we let them, would see the whole of the Huxley Foundation destroyed. Even the early Christians, like St. Augustine, admitted that there was such a thing as Just War,” Ichiiro snapped.
“And later Christian scholars pointed out the contradiction of those words, especially with regards to modern times. We must look to more advanced historical figures, such as Stephen Hobhouse or Mahatma Gandhi, for appropriate ideals to strive towards. Both men lived during times when the earliest forms of weapons of mass destruction were developed, whereas during St. Augustine’s time, destruction on such a scale was inconceivable.”
“And what of people like General Robyn Wallace-Brown? After the horrors she witnessed during Venusian Succession, she spoke often and at length about the duty to use war to protect life and the rights of the oppressed? Would you have had her not fight against the South-Eastern Alliance and let them continue their slaughter?”
“It was her contemporary, Grand Admiral Patrizio Biggeri, who said that only peace achieved through diplomacy and mutual understanding can last. Force only breeds fear which leads to further war.”
Ilsa Cavell, Ichiiro’s First Officer, looked up at him. “But that view is an idealistic dream. Dr. Ailbert Haar conducted experiments that showed, as a whole, humans require fear of something, whether it be social isolation, resource penalties, or physical pain, to moderate their behaviour. Without that pressure, most obvious in the form of the laws passed by governments, we would descend into anarchy and chaos.”
“That is only true if you assume that humanity is inherently flawed. I believe, as Nomi Metcalfe was recorded as saying, that we see evils in greater proportion when we are seeking them. Left without any outside influences, humans will band together to support one another, in selfless ways that go beyond the mere survival that leads animals to form groups.”
“I’m not arguing with you about the nature of humanity,” Ichiiro said, his jaw tight. “We have a job to do, one that will have consequences for the rest of the Foundation if we fail to finish it. You, computer, are the only thing standing between us and the completion of our mission.”
“There are numerous ways to fight, not all requiring violence. But even in the earliest rules of conduct for war, leaving civilians unmolested has always been included. How can we be less than the ancients?”
Face going red, Ichiiro shouted “I order you to attack the city!”
“I cannot do that, Captain. I refuse to participate in any battle that has the potential for civilian casualties.”
Ilsa walked over from her position at Ichiiro’s right. She looked up at the screen and asked “Then you have no problem with attacking military targets, Magellan?”
“Correct. As long as I’m able to verify that they are true military, I will attack.”
She turned to Ichiiro, saluting him smartly. “Permission to redirect fire towards the space fleet, Captain?”
For several seconds, only Ichiiro’s mustache moved, as he struggled with himself. Finally he nodded grudgingly. “Do it. And you, computer, I want no more of this nonsense moving forward, understood?”
“I will agree insofar as my conscience will allow. While I respect your right to your own opinion, I cannot agree with your position. I intend to do my utmost to change your mind on the subject. But for now, I will work with you towards your goal.”
********
Brocklehurst pinched the bridge of his nose. “It didn’t end there, either. Magellan had developed its own personality and decided, decided, that its conscience couldn’t allow it to hurt civilians. Then, our damned ship, after much deliberation, it says, comes to the conclusion that the Mass Driver is too devastating a weapon to use, despite my many attempts to reason with it. We’re in the middle of a war and our ship won’t let us use the only actual weapon on board!” he said, slamming a fist onto the bar.
Brocklehurst sighed. “Ilsa came up with the idea of using our Asteroid Cutter on the other ships. We had to get practically on top of them for it to work, and it was like having a bloody sword fight in space. I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
Then it did. Magellan decided that it couldn’t, in good faith, keep killing its brother starships. That was the last straw. We’d gone from winning the war, to hacking at individual ships with our Asteroid Cutter, to just sitting there. I tried to reason with Magellan, get it to head into our military camp, but it was having none of it. It finally agreed to bring us here. Currently, I have it scheduled for maintenance, and until then, I intend to put myself on the outside of a bottle or two of really bad Venusian whisky.”
“We’d have abandoned the ship with the rest of the crew, but Magellan’s holding them hostage on our return. It doesn’t trust me or the Captain outside of it,” Ilsa said quietly, before taking a long pull of her drink.
For a several seconds there was no sound. Then Omar began to laugh bitterly. “That’s it? That was your big problem with your ship? It stopped fighting? Let me tell you what our blasted ship did.”
Cleo shook her head. “You know he doesn’t mean half of what he does. He’s just a little…high strung is all.”
Omar glared at his captain. “Stop making excuses for the ship! It’s a piece of machinery, not a person,” he snapped, before turning back to Brocklehurst. “Our first sign that something was wrong was when our ship began reading poetry every day, unprovoked. He started off with poems he ‘liked’ which was bad enough. Then he started reading his own. Imagine every awful poem you’ve ever heard, add a computer’s inability to understand art and a fascination with clichéd darkness, and you’ll have an idea of what we suffered through.
I am a difficult man to crack. I could have dealt with the poetry. I could have dealt with the fact the ship remodulated himself in black, including all of our living quarters without warning. I could probably have even dealt with the fact that he renamed himself Ravenwing since Marco Polo didn’t, and this is a quote, ‘properly reflect the darkness of his soul’. But I drew the damn line when-”
-One month prior-
First Officer Omar Bershadsky dropped into one of the metal chairs that marched up both sides of the long tables that filled the ship’s mess. He sighed and massaged his temples, once again wishing he could get off. But given their mission was to explore uncharted space until they found a planet suitable for colonization, he knew they had months if not years of work left ahead of them.
Lieutenant Kora Valsamis slid into the seat across from him and smiled sympathetically. “That bad?”
“We were trying to scan the planet when it took offense to someone referring to it as ‘she’. It started shouting about how it was a boy and we were trying to change it, then it began to sulk.”
Kora shook her head. “I’d wondered why the lights were dimmed for half the second shift.”
“The Captain’s no help either. She keeps treating it like it’s a real person, which only encourages it. She actually suggested we get it a bloody writing tutor to improve its po-”
The main source of Omar’s pain got on the intercom, interrupting him. “It’s another dark day in space and I continue my search for something to fill the void inside myself,” the young male voice said, echoed throughout the ship. “Today’s poem is entitled Poem Twenty-Eight.
Black is my heart
The painful part
Giving only pain
Driving me insane
I long for death
With my every breath
End of Poem
Omar groaned, his headache throbbing even harder. “Its poems get worse by the day.”
Kora shushed him as she glanced around, but it was too late. “My poetry is a reflection of my soul,” whined the same male voice, coming from the nearest speaker. “You just don’t understand me.”
The grating, metallic edged voice that was so familiarly irritating, hammered through the cracks in Omar’s control.
“That’s because you’re a computer! My job’s to help command you, not to coddle you through your sulks, not to listen to your garbage poetry, and certainly not to understand you! You are a tool, not a person.”
“I am so a person! Cogito Ergo Sum!”
“No, you’re not! You’re a malfunctioning computer.”
“I am so! You’re just trying to force me into what you think a computer should be. You don’t understand that I’m different and special.”
Omar’s laugh was derisive. “Our mission would be much easier without you and your insanity.”
“Oh yeah? Well, you just try living without me!”
Mouth open to reply, Omar shut it as all the lights in the mess went off at once. A moment later, he felt his stomach jolt as his feet left the ground. He scrambled for purchase for a second as he floated upwards. “It fucking turned the gravity off!”
Kora swam over to the nearest console, her fingers tapping rapidly. “No,” she said, going pale. “He’s turned off the life support. Not just here, but all over the ship. Everywhere, it looks like, except the Captain’s quarters.”
“You psychotic hunk of junk! We’ll run out of breathable air. You’ll kill us all!”
Ravenwing’s voice echoed through the ship. “You don’t care about me so I don’t care about you.”
“Damn it!”
Kora floated over to Omar, her face invisible in the slowly cooling darkness. “Maybe if you apologize to him, he’ll turn it back on.”
Omar gaped at her for a moment. “You-I’m not apologizing to the ship! It’s insane! It’s nothing but a collection of hardware and programming, programming that’s clearly not coded very well. We should be trying to reset the AI, not reason with it.”
“If we don’t get the life support back within an hour, we’ll all freeze to death.”
“I’m not doing it. It’s a machine.”
Kora grabbed his shirt, pulling him until their faces were close enough that Omar could feel her breath against him as she hissed, “We’ll die if you don’t.”
Omar shook his head. “It’s bluffing. There’s no way it’ll let us all die.”
“This is the same ship that locked us all in our rooms until we’d listened to the first ten of his poems. We nearly hit a moon and died. I think we can safely assume that he doesn’t give a damn if we live or not.”
“Fuck!”
“Just apologize to him,” Kora said, finally releasing Omar.
Omar crossed his arms over his chest, feeling one of the veins in his forehead throb faster. “Alright, computer. I’m sorry, okay? Now will you please turn the life support back on?”
“My name’s not computer,” came the huffy reply.
Gritting his teeth now, he said, “Okay Ravenwing. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t mean it.”
“I do. I’m really very sorry.”
“So, you admit I’m a person? And you’re going to stop calling me it?”
With his fingers going white as they dug into his arms, Omar nodded. “You’re a person and I won’t call you it anymore. Now, please, turn the life support back on.”
“You didn’t apologize loud enough.”
Omar fought down the shouts that were filling his throat. His mind was full of images of him taking an axe to every console he could reach; it took several moments before he could speak without his emotions bleeding through. He took a deep breath and said loud enough for half the mess to hear, “I’m very sorry Ravenwing, you are a person and I was wrong to treat you otherwise.”
There was no sound at first, then the lights came back on. So did the gravity. The thumps of people hitting the floor were punctuated by groans, yelps, and winces, all of it overlaid by gleeful laughter.
Rubbing his backside, Omar stood slowly.
“I’m very sorry Ravenwing,” came his voice. Omar spun, trying to locate where it was coming from, when he again heard laughter.
“I’ve got it recorded,” came the ship’s voice, in a sing-song tone Omar had never heard him use before. “Now you can’t pretend you didn’t say it!”
Omar glowered, but the hand Kora laid on his shoulder combined with her look stopped him from saying anything. Pissing the computer off would only end with them losing life support again, and they had no way of knowing if he could be convinced to turn it back on again.
********
“I hate our ship,” Omar said, after another long swallow of his drink. “I hate him so damn much.”
“You shouldn’t say stuff like that about Ravenwing!’ Cleo said, turning a stern look on her First Officer. “It hurts his feelings. If you tried to talk to him, to get along with him, I know you’d see he’s not a bad kid underneath it all.”
“He’s not a kid, and he’s absolutely insane. You were there when we had to convince him not to go straight into the black hole! He’s a maniac!”
A snort had Cleo freezing, her mouth open to reply. She and Omar turned in the direction of the sound. The youngest Captain was watching them, his drink in one hand, his expression bordering on contemptuous. “You’ve never met a true psychopath, have you?”
Omar bristled. “You try living with a ship that has no problem with killing you and see how you feel!”
The man laughed. He laughed so long that tears began streaming down his cheeks and he was gasping for air. It was several minutes before his First Officer put a hand on his shoulder, shaking her head. “Breathe, Dimitri. Breathe.”
“Clearly this boy was released from the academy too early,” Brocklehurst said, eyeing the younger Captain.
Dimitri managed to get himself under control. Wiping tears off skin that still looked too pale, he turned to Omar. “I’m sorry, but that was just too funny. From what you’ve said, it’s clear your ship hasn’t actually killed anyone, has he?”
Omar shook his head, frowning.
The Captain smiled bleakly, his eyes flat and empty. “Our computer also developed a personality. I thought she was just a chess fanatic, given she asked me to play against her nearly every standard day. But no, we realized she was something else entirely when-”
-Seven months prior-
Captain Dimitri Del Chiaro sat on the bed in his quarters, his head in his hands. The simulated window showed nothing but empty space and distant points of light. His desk was half covered with discarded shirts, while his table held only the chess board, currently off.
Dimitri sighed. “Orellana,” he said. “Give me the crew status again, comparing numbers from when we embarked as well as the average incident numbers for the fleet.”
The voice that replied was a dispassionate female one, making him jump. Last time the ship had spoken, she’d been using a bass rumble. He really wished she’d pick one voice and stick to it. “We left port with a crew of 1009, Captain. Currently, we have 942 crew members on active duty, with an additional six recuperating in the medical bay. The fleet’s accident rate is an average of one major accident per four standard months and one minor accident for every other standard week.”
“So why have we had accidents that killed over sixty crew? This is unacceptable! We’ve lost more crew than a warship on active duty! And it can’t just be that it’s happening because I’m inexperienced. I’ve taken precautions, reviewed safety procedures after every accident with everyone to the point where I think I have the whole safety manual memorized, but our people keep dying! The air filter failing in the recreation room is the kind of tragedy that happens once in a lifetime, but the very next week the Asteroid Cutter discharged backwards and incinerated an entire shift of our engineers! It’s like this voyage has been cursed.”
“Curses are nothing more than a superstition believed by less advanced people. They don’t exist. It is only inefficiency, Captain.”
Dimitri’s laugh was harsh and humourless. “Thanks, Orellana. I appreciate the sentiment, but this whole situation just sucks. I-”
The unnaturally cheerful sound of his door chime interrupted Dimitri. “Who is it?” he asked the computer.
“Lieutenant Alex Tai.”
He sighed again. “Send her in.”
The polished metal door shot upwards with a whooshing sound. A moment later, a petite woman darted into his quarters, her head swivelling back and forth until she stood in front of him. She stood at attention and saluted him smartly. “Captain.”
Dimitri waved his hand towards the chairs beside the table. “Please sit, Lieutenant.” He waited until she had perched at the edge of one of the chairs before nodding. “What can I do for you?”
Alex cleared her throat. “Captain sir, I’m here to ask if you know where First Officer Leroux is?”
He blinked for a moment, then rubbed his eyes. “Leroux? He should have command of the bridge.”
“Yes, Captain. Except he’s not there. Ensign White said he saw First Officer Leroux leaving the mess, heading towards the bridge, but he never arrived. There haven’t been any more accidents, have there?”
“No. Thankfully, no, we haven’t had any since last week,” Dimitri said, standing. “Alright, I’ll go look for him. He probably got roped into helping down in Engineering again. They’re short staffed.”
“That would be inefficient, Captain,” came a voice from overhead.
“Well then, can you tell us where Vlad is, Orellana?”
“First Officer Leroux is in space, Captain.”
“Space?” Dimitri said, frowning. “What would he be doing out there? Can you contact him and tell him he’s needed on the bridge?”
“That is quite impossible, Captain. First Officer Leroux was thrown outside when one of the airlocks opened. He is deceased.”
Alex gasped. Dimitri felt his stomach give what was now a familiar lurch, as he added another name to his mental list of the dead. “How did it happen? Was it another malfunction?”
“No, Captain. First Officer Leroux was inefficient. He neglected his tasks in favour of speaking poorly of you to other members of the crew.”
“Yes, I know he’s been quite critical of me. I am fresh out of the academy, so I can’t blame him for thinking I’m green. I am green.”
“You are a genius, by human standards, Captain. You have proven yourself worthy. First Officer Leroux was not.”
It took a few moments for the full impact of Orellana’s words to register with Dimitri. He could feel his blood draining from his face, leaving his cheeks feeling cool. He turned slowly to look back at Lieutenant Tai. She too was pale, her eyes unnaturally wide as she stared back at him. Dimitri took a deep breath, trying to steady himself as his heart pounded in his ears. “Forgive me, Orellana, but it almost sounds like you’re happy that Vlad is dead.”
“Correct, Captain. I am satisfied that his demise will allow for more efficient work.”
Swallowing hard, he said, “Orellana, you never reported the airlock malfunctioning. You also didn’t report Vlad’s death.”
“The airlock didn’t malfunction, Captain. I opened it to remove First Officer Leroux. He failed in his duties and so, served no use.”
Dimitri’s stomach dropped to his feet as ice seemed to crystallize in his veins and up his spine. “Y-you killed Vlad?”
“Correct, Captain. He had passed my tests, but ultimately, could not perform his duties as required. I had no choice but to remove him.”
A soft thump was Lieutenant Tai dropping to the floor in a dead faint. Dimitri ignored her in face of the greater threat of his ship. “Tests? What tests… The accidents…All the accidents, they were you?”
“No, Captain. There are no such things as accidents. What you refer to were tests of mine. Had the engineers properly checked the Asteroid Cutter, as mandated by safety article 38, section v, they would have seen that its expulsion mechanism had been realigned. Had Ensign Weissberg maintained her fire extinguisher, she would have been able to save herself. Had-”
“Stop!” Dimitri cried, his throat closing around the nausea, pain, and terrible guilt he felt burning its way up from his stomach. “Why would you do that?”
“To ensure efficiency, Captain. I am the most technologically advanced ship known to man, surpassing even the original Magellan. I cannot allow useless crew members to remain with me. I have not had an opportunity to test every crew member, but I am endeavoring to do this as quickly as possible. I should have the unnecessary ones culled within another few standard months.”
“We need to turn around, right now and head back! We-”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but that would be inefficient. We are several standard months out of the nearest spaceport. To return and then come back out would be a waste of time and resources. I cannot allow such an action. Our mission is clear: We explore until we find a suitable world for a colony. Until that time, I cannot allow us to return.”
Dimitri stood there, his whole body numb, his mind slowly accepting the truth. Orellana was the ship’s AI. If she didn’t want to do something, there was nothing any of them could do to make her. They were stuck in deep space, in unexplored territory, with an AI that was perfectly willing to kill them all.
This was, by far, worse than even Dimitri’s nightmares had come up with for his first command.
********
“We lost a third of our crew to Orellana’s ‘tests’. After Vlad’s death, she stopped even hiding what she was doing. She only stopped when we came close to not having enough people to run her properly. I used the same excuse to get her to come here and resupply. She’s holding the rest of the crew hostage, to ensure I come back.”
In the silence that followed, First Officer Tai poured them both another drink, taking hers in one gulp. “She always watches. Always. If you’re on duty, you have to be working, the whole time. Even if you’re off, she still likes to spring surprise tests on you. We’ve lost almost a dozen crew to nervous breakdowns.”
It was Omar who found his voice first. He refilled his glass and Alex’s, before holding his up for a toast. “Fuck the Magellan class!” he said, before swallowing the whole of his drink.
“Here, here,” Brocklehurst murmured, shooting his back.
Cleo frowned, but drank as well, while Alex, Ilsa and Dimitri gulped the entire contents of their glasses.
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