Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology

by Rhett C. Bruno

  When he placed her on a bunk, he saw a fresh-faced, sweet young thing looking barely out of her teens. Then again, with the Eden Plague, everyone tended to look young.

  Eight beds lined the small room, folded out from the side walls with a narrow passage between. No crew were present. They’d all be at their stations.

  Bull had just strapped his prisoner tightly into the bunk using the acceleration webbing when another crash ripped through the ship’s structure. Bull felt the shock in his bones. While he’d never experienced a ship die around him, in that moment he thought Melita might have taken a mortal wound … and he still couldn’t reach anyone on his comm implant.

  Yet, the assault carrier was in open space. The crew would fight to save her, as would her sister ships. Right now, Bull had a different problem.

  Klaxons rang again for a moment, and then died, leaving only an eerie silence. After a moment, Bull detected a faint hissing, and then a scraping creak as the compartment sealed itself. His inner ear adjusted, this time to slightly increased pressure. The telltale on the rig he wore showed just over one-half standard atmosphere, enough to breathe.

  If the cabin had sealed itself, that meant no ventilation. He had the air in the tank, and his prisoner had whatever was in the room.

  Bull was sorely tempted to force open the door and go back out, but there was no way to know what he’d find—and doing so might condemn the woman on the bunk to death. That was always an option, but for now, he needed information.

  The crewwoman’s standard coverall nametag read “Wang,” though she looked more Caucasian than Chinese. An unusual case, or an alien mistake? Bull could imagine a cursory Meme study showing Wang to be the most common human surname on Earth, but mismatching ethnicities when they rewrote the woman’s memories.

  Bull searched the bunk storage drawers until he found a water bottle. After making sure it did actually contain water, he squirted a stream into Wang’s face. The woman came to, lifting her head to stare fixedly at Bull.

  “Why am I restrained?” she asked.

  Bull gazed back without speaking. He found the woman’s reaction interesting. He would have expected sputtering, cursing, protests, maybe spacers’ jargon. Instead, this clinical attitude. He sat on the bunk opposite her.

  “Have you captured me?”

  Slowly, Bull nodded.

  The woman laid her head down and stared upward at the bottom of the bunk above her. “I failed.”

  “Guess so.” Bull sat back. So, Wang seemed to know she was an enemy. “What exactly was your mission?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You tried to kill people. You may have succeeded. You were shooting up the passageways.”

  “I…”

  Bull waited for long seconds. When it became apparent his captive wasn’t going to answer further, he said, “Who are you?”

  “Security Technician Third Class Jennifer Wang.”

  “When did you come aboard ship?”

  “Sixteen days ago, at Triton.”

  “Before that?”

  “I may not say.”

  “You may not. You mean, you’re not allowed to?”

  “Correct.”

  “By who?”

  “By whom. Objective case, English language.”

  A chill went through Bull. He leaned forward and gripped his weapon tighter. The fresh face of youth, the odd mixture of knowledge and social naiveté… “You’re a Pureling.”

  The woman turned her head away. “I don’t know that word.”

  Bull forced himself to relax and chuckled grimly. “That damn near proves it. Every real human knows that word. It means you’re a vat-grown clone, programmed with fake memories and infiltrated into EarthFleet.”

  “That would seem to make sense.”

  “And now you’re my prisoner. I should kill you.”

  “I would prefer not to die.”

  Bull sat back. “Interesting. Why haven’t you killed yourself?”

  “Because I would prefer not to die.”

  “You said that. What I mean is, why are you being allowed to refuse? Purelings are compelled to kill themselves when captured, usually by using programmed biofeedback techniques to stop their hearts.”

  “I know nothing of that.”

  “What do you know?”

  Wang wormed her right hand out through the netting, enough to free it from fingertips to elbow. She turned its palm to Bull. “I know I got this scar when a dog bit me as a child.”

  “As a child where? And when?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bull leaned forward. “And I don’t see a scar. Do you?”

  The woman turned her hand. “No. But I feel it. I don’t understand.”

  “The Eden Plague would heal all your scars—especially if it were years ago.”

  “It is strange.”

  “You’re a Pureling. It must be a random scrap of memory. Something cut and pasted from the mind of a real human.”

  “I am a real human.”

  “I beg to differ, Pinocchio.” Bull sighed, and tried his comms again. He hefted the pulse gun. “I should kill you.”

  “I prefer—”

  “Yeah, I get it. That’s the only reason you’re not dead.”

  “You respect my preferences?”

  “I don’t murder prisoners of war.”

  “Why not?”

  “My own moral code. It’s not about you.”

  “Then I am human. You would murder an alien.”

  “I wouldn’t murder anyone. I would kill you if I had to … but you’re sentient.” Bull remembered a Blend, an insectoid called Maydar, who had died trying to defect to EarthFleet.

  “It is immoral to kill sentients?”

  “It’s immoral to murder them.”

  “What is the difference?”

  Bull rubbed his neck and grimaced. He’d pulled a muscle, and sitting here didn’t help. “Self-defense. If you try to kill me, I’m free to kill you.”

  “Then you may kill me now, though I do not prefer it. I tried to kill you.”

  “Yeah, no … you don’t understand. Now that you’re helpless, I won’t kill you. It would be murder.”

  “So murder is killing the helpless.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the opposite of murder?”

  “Ah … saving, I guess. Rescuing. Giving your life so others can live. That’s real humanity.”

  “Dying in place of another person is human?”

  Bull nodded. “I’d say that’s the ultimate expression of humanity.”

  “But that means killing makes one inhuman. Yet humans kill each other. This makes no sense.”

  “Ben zonah, you’re like a child. Look, it’s not always black and white, and I’m not the right guy to explain it.” Bull sighed, running his eyes over her face. So young, so sweet … but she’d been shooting people. At people, anyway. “You say you want to live. You say you’re human. Humans shouldn’t murder other humans.”

  “Humans have routinely murdered other humans for many millennia.”

  “Mostly we quit that when you aliens showed up.”

  “I am not alien.”

  “Well, you’re not a woman.”

  “I am a human woman. I’ve seen you around the ship. I have feelings for you.”

  “For me?” Bull laughed. “You don’t know me.”

  “The feelings are real.”

  Bull thought about his first crush, at the age of twelve, and the overwhelming ache of it. If Jennifer Wang were a Pureling, only recently decanted from a Meme cloning pod and programmed to mimic humanity, she’d never have experienced such intense emotions—until her adult hormones recognized a suitable male.

  “Very flattering, but that only proves you’re a sexual animal. It doesn’t mean you’re human.”

  “I want to be human. I could not abort my compulsion to attack the crew, but I resisted. I fired, but I hit no one. Do you really think I could not have killed crewman
Calvin?”

  “Maybe not. So you claim you tried not to kill them?”

  “It did not seem right. As you say, I did not wish to murder, so I am human. I am.”

  Bull shook his head ruefully. “Maybe you are. Mankind is born to trouble…”

  Wang’s lips curled in a wistful smile. “…as the sparks fly upward.”

  Bull’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you hear that saying?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps it is another piece of implanted memory. What does it mean?”

  “It means, just as surely as the sparks rise from a fire, people will cause themselves problems.”

  “Not if they submit themselves to the Meme.”

  Bull snorted, half a laugh. “You think the Meme have no problems?”

  “Only from those who resist.”

  “And resistance is futile, huh? Screw that.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “I’d rather have human problems than alien solutions.”

  Jennifer chewed on that one for a while. “So the saying counsels acceptance of trouble.”

  “That’s one way to understand it. The saying is from Proverbs, a book of my people, written by King Solomon, said to be the wisest man who ever lived.”

  Her forehead furrowed in thought. “So it must have a deeper meaning.”

  “I was taught it’s a caution against believing you can completely control a situation, and against the illusion of perfectibility.”

  “The Meme seek perfection.”

  “The Meme seek dominance, control, and stability. Not the same thing at all.”

  Wang folded her freed hand into her trapped one. “So to have problems is to be human.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That proves it, then. I must be human.” Jennifer smiled and glanced down at her bindings. “I seem to have problems.”

  Bull felt a laugh bubble up in his throat. “You sure do, Miss Wang.” He sobered. “We both do. We’re stuck in a room with limited air, and I can’t get ahold of anyone.” Bull tried his comms again, to no avail. “If I force the door open, you’ll die. I have only about eighty minutes of air left myself. I could start banging on the walls with metal, but I have no idea if that would attract friendlies or enemies. Protocol in this situation is to stand by and let search-and-rescue find us.”

  “Then our way ahead seems clear. We wait.”

  “For now.” At some point, Bull would have to force open the door and try to find more air tanks, but he wasn’t yet at that desperate point. Doing so would kill Wang.

  For long minutes he tried to think his way through the problem, tried to come up with a way to keep Jennifer alive while he sallied forth. He began methodically going through all the storage compartments in the room, hoping for inspiration.

  Most of what he found consisted of the personal possessions of the crew who bunked there. They’d taken their suits and breathing rigs when the alarm had sounded. He’d hoped to be able to MacGyver some clever solution out of available parts, but there simply wasn’t anything of use for breathing.

  Jennifer Wang watched him as he searched, but said nothing.

  After he sat and thought some more, one option occurred to him. If he kept the nearly empty first tank on his breathing rig, now down to about ten minutes, and detached the second, full tank, he could give it to Jennifer before forcing his way out. The Pureling could release the air after Bull left and sealed the door. It would be wasteful and inefficient, but it would give Bull about ten minutes outside, ten minutes to find more air.

  As he watched condensation running down the door and felt the cooling temperature in the room, he realized air wasn’t their only problem. The damaged ship’s heat was leaching away. And, the longer he waited, the more he used up the air supply in the short tank. The rig was simple, and didn’t allow him to transfer air from one tank to another. It had two bottles to allow one to remain in place while the other was swapped out.

  Bull stood. “Okay, Miss Wang, you say you don’t want to die.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Have you given up on trying to kill people?”

  “I will not murder anyone. I am human.”

  “Good.” Bull released the netting and motioned Jennifer out of the bunk. She took his hand and held onto it as a child or a lover might, until he peeled it away self-consciously. Any feelings she had for him—or he had for her, if he didn’t guard against them—were irrelevant right now. Even if her body was adult, her mind and emotions seemed those of a bare adolescent.

  He turned his body mostly away from the Pureling, but gripped his pulse rifle tight and kept his senses alert, watching over his shoulder for treachery. “One of those air bottles will show full. Take it off the rig. When I leave the room, I’ll dog the door tight. Open the tank and you’ll have air. I’ll try to find more oxygen and contact rescue. You just sit tight.”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  “Then stand over there, out of the way.” Bull pointed to the back wall. “Don’t hold your breath. It will rush out when the pressure drops. Just remain calm and open your bottle when the door shuts. Ready?”

  Jennifer hefted the bottle, hand on the valve. “I am ready.”

  “Here I go.” Bull rotated the dogging handle and set himself, pulling slowly but inexorably against the air pressure, exerting his entire cybernetic strength. There came a prolonged rushing sound, and he felt the air depart the room at the crack between the door and the jamb.

  As soon as possible, he opened the door and slipped through, pulling it shut behind him and dogging it. His smart suit constricted and the clear flexible plastic of his breathing rig inflated tight against the vacuum. Inside the room, Jennifer should be refilling the space with air, air for perhaps an hour at most … probably less.

  Now it was up to him.

  Turning, he switched on his rig’s headlamp and surveyed the cold wreckage around him. To the left, debris filled the passageway. To the right it looked clearer, so he headed that direction. Bull picked his way carefully through, alert for attackers, and also for sharp edges that might cut his suit.

  Light flickered ahead in the airless silence. He rounded a corner to see the backs of two suited crew, firing weapons away from him. Another lay unmoving on the deck, sliced open by laser fire.

  Bull debated for just a moment. What if these were Purelings rather than real crew? How could he tell? This was always the problem with Meme infiltration.

  The suits decided it. Jennifer Wang hadn’t been in a pressure suit, probably because when her programming tripped, she was supposed to do as much damage as possible, as fast as possible, and then be killed. Putting on a suit would waste precious time, and suits were clumsy.

  But with the ship wrecked and the passageways in vacuum, who were the enemy the crew were fighting?

  Have to play the odds, Bull told himself. He moved forward to the corner and stood above the defenders, who crouched below. His height allowed him to take a half-covered position above them. He leaned out slightly for just long enough to let his optical implant grab an image of what was beyond, and then pulled back as he examined it.

  He saw a maintenance bot—really a telefactor no doubt controlled by a Pureling tech nearby—wielding a heavy cutting laser. A moment later it flashed green and one of the crew jerked back, his exposed arm holed.

  The laser would need a few seconds to recharge. Bull immediately leaned out with his pulse rifle. Cyber-optics connected to his hardwired nerves allowed him near-perfect accuracy with his weapon, and he laid his aim point on the bot’s communications node. A burst blew it apart, and the robot froze, now offline.

  Bull rushed forward and wrenched the laser off the thing’s arm, detaching it from its power pack just in case. He then returned to help the crew.

  The uninjured one, a woman, was treating the other crewman with the wounded arm. Bull tried his comm, but still couldn’t raise anyone. He put his head against the uninjured woman’s helmet to transmit his voic
e. “What do you know?” he yelled. “Report!”

  Her reply was tinny as she shouted back. “Sir, we were winning until those hypers slammed into us. Then all hell broke loose, and we ran into that bot, so I have no idea.”

  Bull clapped her shoulder. “Let’s get this man to the infirmary. You carry him, I’ll lead.” The low gravity would make pulling the wounded man along easy. He didn’t wait for her reply, but made his way past the broken bot and down the passage.

  He came to a ladder leading upward, toward the infirmary. He climbed it effortlessly. The hatch at the top was closed, of course, dogged automatically as separate sections were sealed against breaches.

  The mechanism would allow it to swing either way, out or in. Letting it swing out, toward himself, would make opening it easy, but closing it very difficult if the other side were under pressure—and vice versa. He decided to push it inward.

  Once he undogged it, he used the manual operation lever and his strength to force it away from him slightly. A hiss of air proved the other side to be pressurized. He slung his weapon and turned to wave at the crewwoman, signaling her to pass the injured man to him.

  With one hand grasping the injured man, he placed the other on the lever and gave it a powerful push. The door opened with a rush of air toward him, and Bull launched the man upward through it, then reached down to grab the woman. She was already moving. All he had to do was push her against the airflow and then follow her through. Once inside, he let the hatch slam shut and dogged it again.

  The barrel of a pulse rifle greeted him, held by a battlesuited Marine, and he spread his hands. “Lieutenant ben Tauros,” he bellowed through the muffling layer of the breathing rig.

  The rifle was already dropping to show Gunnery Sergeant Kang’s insignia and name behind it. “Good to see you, sir,” the NCO said through his open faceplate. “We have most of the ship secure from the attackers, but she’s in bad shape.”

  The crewwoman towed her comrade past the two Marines, toward the infirmary. Bull let her go. She didn’t need his assistance anymore, and he had his own job to do. “Can I get to the armory? I feel naked without a battlesuit.”

  Gunny Kang shook his head. “Doubtful. Reaper and I and a handful of Marines barely got our suits on when the ship got hit. One of the other armories might be intact, but I doubt any suits will fit you, sir.”