Admiral Wolf

by C. Gockel

  “Well …” Dr. Patrick looked at his feet. “Quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation don’t experience interference with space or time.”

  “But they did,” said Jerome. He scanned “Tab.” “Although Tab seems fine now.”

  Tab chirped.

  Dr. Patrick’s eyebrows hiked. “Well, there was a theory that the rules for both only extended to the edge of the universe. Nothing can go beyond the edge of the universe. The universe is everything, not just space, but time. You cannot leave it … in theory.”

  “I thought we were on the edge before,” Jerome said, “when we went looking for the Dark ships.”

  “There were no stars this time,” Volka whispered, and she felt Dr. Patrick’s unspoken question. “How are you sure of that?” but he didn’t ask. Instead, he replied to Jerome. “We were on the edge the last time. I think we may have accidentally dived through the edge.” He looked up at the golden plasma flowing around the ship. “And maybe expanded the universe a bit—it’s the only reason your Q-comm can be working again. How many kilotons were those grenades?”

  “The first weren’t taking,” Jerome said, following Dr. Patrick’s eyes. “So I ignited the last eleven all at once.”

  Volka couldn’t do that math in her head very well, but she understood it was over 150 kilotons of TNT.

  To her surprise, Dr. Patrick said, “Seems like there is more out there than that.”

  “Maybe it’s more than your fusion fuel out there,” Carl said. “Maybe Jerome just set the aliens’ garbage dump on fire.”

  Someone laughed and murmured, “Typical.”

  “There couldn’t be more stuff outside the universe,” Dr. Patrick protested. “The universe—our universe—is all the stuff.”

  Sundancer was so happy at that moment that Volka bounced on her toes. It was a good thing, because she thought if she thought about that, she might get a headache.

  Carl squeaked and rose to his last paw pairs. “We got outside it!”

  Volka almost snickered. Sundancer was so happy, it was making her drunk.

  Dr. Patrick touched his nose as though he had glasses there. “Yes, but—”

  Young interrupted. “Can we go home?”

  Everyone blinked at him. Grinning goofily, the lieutenant waved his hand at the ceiling. “I get it, from the colors, the ship is happy, but can we go home?” Through gritted teeth, he added, “I feel like it is an important question, but I can’t stop smiling.”

  Volka’s brow furrowed. “If the universe is everything, that includes time … are we still in the same time … or did we stumble into a different time when we accidentally fell out of the universe?”

  Dr. Patrick laughed. “That’s a question I shouldn’t be laughing at.”

  “Okay, you big dumb monkeys,” Carl said. “I’ll let her know we should go home.”

  Volka snickered.

  “Big dumb monkeys?” Jerome asked. “You aren’t overwhelmed with happiness?”

  “I am channeling my joy in more productive directions. I derive great happiness by being grumpy,” Carl said. “Now to picture home—” He closed his eyes. “Whelp, no, we’re not going there right away.”

  The words should have filled Volka with terror, but she was still happy. She felt anticipation instead of fear.

  Smiling, Young said, “No? Are we going somewhere else? We’ve got about two weeks of food.”

  And Volka felt it … more strings! Giant strings, powerful strings that were getting more powerful with every beat of her heart. They were pulling Sundancer toward them, and Sundancer was so happy to go! Because Sundancer was happy, Volka was happy, too.

  Carl purred. “We’re going to meet someone.”

  “Yes,” said Volka, giving in and bouncing on her heels. “Someone else is here!”

  Sundancer at that moment broke through the surface of “the dumpster fire.” The turn of phrase made Volka laugh. The “dumpster” was, from where she was standing, more like a strangely shaped sun, spilling out across the nothing, turning the awful cold into something hot and alive. It was, she sensed, another string for the ship to cling to when she danced from star to star.

  “Up!” said Rhinehart.

  In the light of the new sunlight, ships now gleamed in the dark. Not just any ships though. Ships shaped like water droplets that were the color of pearls. Hundreds of them were warming, coming to life before her eyes.

  Volka gasped. Her heart leapt.

  The new ships were overjoyed—to be alive and to see their lost child. Carl had been right about that. Sundancer was a baby. The other ships were old, so much older than Sundancer. Volka felt it. She beamed at the elder ships. “You’re wel—”

  The scene around her vanished. Volka was staring up at her mother through blurry eyes. She could smell her, taste her, feel her—and then Volka’s life passed before her eyes. Everything—the good, the bad, the ugly bits she tried to forget. The playback didn’t stop until just her previous heartbeat, when she’d tried to say, “You’re welcome,” and been cut off. A sound like wind filled her ears, every word she’d ever heard, from her mother’s first, “Volka, little Volka … welcome to the world,” to Rhinehart’s, “Up!”

  They understood the words. Volka was aware of that. She almost smiled … and then any remnant of the joy Volka had felt earlier cracked and turned to fear. A wave of disgust passed through her. And she knew how terrible she was. Selfish. Violent. Evil. She almost threw up. Someone near her did, and she doubly felt the urge to vomit at the stench.

  The sound of wind became thunder, and then the roar of hundreds of elder ships filled her ears. “What. Have. You. Done!”

  25

  What Are You Doing?

  Galactic Republic: System 5 New Grande

  The RussianDoll smiled at 6T9, winked, and then her eyes went wide, and she gaped. “You’re Android General 1!”

  “Wait a minute!” Michael said. “You’re not planning on using sex ‘bots as your Plan B?”

  “These are sex ‘bots?” Falade asked.

  The obliviousness of the question momentarily took 6T9 offline. The same must have happened to Michael because his eyebrows jumped, and his jaw dropped. He and 6T9 slowly turned to the Luddecceans. Davies was flushing neck to hairline behind his visor and had forgotten to be terrified of the cats threading between his ankles. Falade was smiling and waving at RussianDoll. Lang just looked annoyed and angry; 6T9 suspected if his helmet came off, his ears would be pressed flat against his head.

  RussianDoll purred, “We’re very lifelike.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” said Falade.

  Smiling tightly, 6T9 responded to Michael, “It was always my Plan A.”

  Forgetting the Luddeccean naïveté, Michael turned back to 6T9. “They can’t kill!”

  “No, but they can proposition, annoyingly and repeatedly. Thousands of them at a time.” The factory had hundreds of thousands of sex ‘bots that had yet to be activated.

  “They’ll be mowed down,” Michael protested.

  6T9 gaped at Michael, processing that objection. His idealism extended to machines, or at least sex ‘bots. 6T9 glanced at RussianDoll; she was blowing a kiss to the Luddecceans, no hint of understanding on her face.

  Attention returning to Michael, 6T9 said, “The Dark will use the children it infects to infect unsuspecting adults. But that isn’t the worst of it. It will slaughter the babies and toddlers. They aren’t useful, and it considers them parasites.” He knew all this from Alexis and his own time on the pirates’ planet.

  Michael’s shoulders fell. 6T9 was dimly aware that the cats’ meows had increased in volume.

  Michael lifted his hands toward the inactivated dolls and whispered, “You don’t consider them children? They’re your own kind.”

  6T9 gazed at the inactivated dolls. “They aren’t my kind. Mentally, they are all … carbon copies of each other.” They were carbon copies of who he used to be. They wouldn’t start changing until they were activate
d, and then, yes, they would be mowed down. “And without Q-comms, they’ll never be me.” He touched his side where Eliza’s ashes and his access key were hidden. “With Q-comms, they won’t be me, either.”

  “Their self-preservation protocols will kick in,” Michael said with more force.

  “Not if I turn their masochism settings to high and make meeting phaser fire head on and dismemberment the pinnacle of their existence,” 6T9 replied.

  “You can do that?” Davies whispered. A kitten had somehow managed to crawl onto his shoulder. He seemed to have been in the process of dislodging it, but his hand dropped.

  “Some people have strange fetishes. It’s a rarely known setting in most ‘bots,” 6T9 said with a sigh.

  “Rooooaaarrrrrr!” shrieked the Illustrious Mao. Over the ether, she snipped, “Servants, I think you are forgetting the immediate goal!”

  Lang, 6T9, and Michael looked down at the cat. She was sitting primly with her tail around her front paws.

  “Feed us!” Mao commanded.

  To RussianDoll, 6T9 said, “Can you power up your sisters?”

  “Yes, sir.” She touched her temple with an elegant finger. At the far end of the ceiling conveyor, a RussianDoll dropped, landed in a crouch, and then rose, pulling the skullcap off her hair. Shaking out light brown locks—the only way she differed from the first RussianDoll—she approached 6T9’s team without any concern for her nudity.

  “Humans!” she smiled and bounced a little. “Oh, oh, oh … I can’t wait to please you!”

  “I’m going to hell,” Falade murmured.

  “Right there with you,” Davies replied.

  “I am already in hell,” Mao complained. “I’m hunnnnngrryyy!”

  Another RussianDoll was already activating, and a moment later, she was approaching them, saying exactly what her sister had said in the very same voice. “Oh, oh, oh … I can’t wait to please you!”

  “Twins,” Davies whispered.

  “Meow!” Mao cried, and into 6T9’s mind, insisted, “Servant, don’t you dare forget me!”

  “Please us by opening this cat food,” 6T9 said, shoving the cart in the direction of the newly awakened dolls. A third was already dropping from the conveyor behind them.

  Their shoulders dropped, and their steps slowed. 6T9 sighed and lied, “It’s a kink. We have to watch beautiful women feed cats.”

  “Ohhhh!” they cried in happy unison before dashing to the cart. The first doll that had greeted his team attempted to join them, but 6T9 caught her shoulder. “A factory tour would turn me on more, but first, turn around, Darling.”

  She did without complaint, and 6T9 opened the satchel with the precious Q-comm, took out one, and a screwdriver.

  As he flipped open the back of her head, he heard Falade saying, “Um … miss, you ah, have to open up the can for them to eat the food.”

  “Will you show us how?” was the breathy chorus reply. Followed by another chorus of “Oh!” and “Ah, you are so smart!”

  6T9 inserted the Q-comm and ordered the doll to reboot.

  “This one doesn’t have a pull tab!” cried a doll in dismay.

  “It’s upside down,” Michael said.

  “I’m so silly!” the doll replied with a giggle. “Usually I know tops from bottoms.”

  “This one doesn’t have a pull tab!” cried another doll in the exact same voice as the first.

  “It’s upside down,” the humans said in unison, and the doll repeated the same reply as the last. And then another couldn’t locate the pull tab …

  Swiping a can from the cart, 6T9 grabbed an approaching RussianDoll. Holding the can in front of her, he said tersely, “This is a tin of cat food. This is the top. This is how you open it. When you open it, give it to a cat like this.” He put the tin down, and a feline obligingly began eating from it. He looked the doll in the eye. “You will teach your friends. And then they will do the same.”

  She frowned unhappily.

  6T9 sighed. “The gentlemen will think it is sexy.”

  Davies cleared his throat. “So sexy to watch a girl teach another girl how to feed a—” His lips pursed, as though he were about to enunciate a “P.”

  Anticipating feline slang for female anatomy and how the sex ‘bots would interpret it, 6T9 blurted, “Cat,” and fixed Davies with a glare.

  “Okay, then!” the RussianDoll said, bouncing up and down and grabbing a can.

  “They can’t handle homophones,” 6T9 warned Davies, but the man was too intent on watching the doll jog down the aisle to notice.

  “Help them,” he said to the humans, gesturing at the cats swarming in the aisle, and the hapless dolls struggling to open the cans and then trying to dislodge the lids off their fingers. Food preparation wasn’t an application that came with their operating system. Obviously. He turned back to the RussianDoll he’d fitted with the Q-comm. She’d already rebooted, and her eyes were on him.

  “You gave me a Q-comm,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” 6T9 replied. “What would you like me to call you?” He wondered if it was the first time anyone had asked her for an opinion. Eliza had asked for his, but before his Q-comm, he’d seldom had any opinions … beyond those that applied to his primary function.

  She blinked. “Sometimes the Head of Marketing calls me ‘Honey.’”

  He almost called her that, and then he asked instead, “Do you like the Head of Marketing?”

  “I love all humans,” she replied.

  It wasn’t a yes, and he smiled sadly. “You don’t even like him. May I call you…?” His Q-comm flashed. Did she consider herself Russian? “Lyudmila?”

  The tiniest of furrows appeared between her brows. “Mila is shorter. Brevity might be desirable in dangerous situations.”

  “You understand my plan?” he asked.

  Her head jerked violently to the side. “Yes. We must save the humans.”

  He stared at her a moment. “You don’t approve.”

  “I approve.” Her head tic came back. “But I fear for my sisters.”

  “You won’t be ordered to proposition the Infected,” Sixty said. She was more than the ‘bots he had just awoken. She had someone she didn’t like. She cared for sisters who were carbon copies of who she’d once been. If he’d remained in his factory, would he have seen his fellow units as brothers?

  “Because my Q-comm is too valuable.”

  “You are valuable,” 6T9 said.

  For a moment she stood, still as a statue, and then she said, “You’ve already used this ploy on a pirate who is now Infected by the Dark. It is a collective consciousness. It may realize that your publicly stated goal of mobilizing the security ‘bots was a ruse, make a logical deduction, and come here.”

  “Very good, Mila,” 6T9 whispered, not sure why he felt a surge of sparks within him.

  She lifted her chin. “I don’t know if I can be called good with what we are about to do to my brethren.”

  Michael, only a pace back, said, “You could download their memories when this is over.”

  Tilting her head, Mila studied him. “For the ones who aren’t melted to slag.”

  “It is something,” Michael whispered. “It is hope.”

  “More than most humans will have,” 6T9 added.

  “And I love all humans,” the other ‘bot said, like she was reciting a mantra. She couldn’t say otherwise.

  “We need more of you,” 6T9 said, circuits dimming, almost like he felt guilty.

  Spinning on her heel, Mila strode toward the end of the line. Her high heels clicked quick and sharp on the cement floor, and 6T9 realized he’d have someone besides Volka who wouldn’t forgive him for this. But Volka, unlike Mila, had had to make hard choices. This wasn’t even a choice for Mila.

  6T9 followed her, and they left the lines of RussianDolls and entered another section of the warehouse. Here it was ManNUniform models hanging from the ceiling. 6T9 started downloading data on their features. At 6T9 and Mila’s approach
, one of them came forward. He was slightly taller than 6T9 and a few inches broader. He was dressed in a FireMan’s uniform, though firemen didn’t typically wear their heavy utility jackets open at the front with only suspenders underneath. ManNUniforms could also be outfitted as asteroid miners, security officers, construction workers, and military officers from many countries and fighting forces. There even were gladiator kits that could be purchased—Roman or Moon 22nd Century—for the historically minded. “Hello, sir,” ManNUniform said with a salute. “How may I serve you?” He waggled his eyebrows and said, “Or perhaps you’d like to serve me?” He smiled, winked, and then his jaw dropped as though he were in a slow-mo holo. “Android General 1, sir!” His hands fell to his side. “It is an honor, sir!”

  6T9 had more Q-comms to distribute. This sex ‘bot might be like Mila. He might only love humans because he had to. He might grow to despise 6T9 for what they were about to do. 6T9’s gaze flicked to the naked ManNUniform ‘bots hanging on the production lines beside them. He could give Q-comms only to inactivated ‘bots. They’d be blank slates and easier to control. But this one had lived, if only for a short while. Give this ManNUniform a Q-comm, and he couldn’t be sent to the front lines. He would be less likely to be destroyed, and 6T9 would be less likely to have murdered a ‘bot that had been, however briefly, and however tentatively, alive. But this ‘bot would also know he was sending his brothers to certain destruction. He might be happier not receiving a Q-comm, might prefer it being given to some other ‘bot in hindsight.

  Both options were terrible, but the ManNUniform wasn’t cognizant enough to choose. 6T9 would choose not murdering this ‘bot.

  “Open your occipital port,” 6T9 said. “I’m giving you a Q-comm.”

  See Volka, I’m trying to do the right thing. Or the least bad thing.

  26

  The Best of Terrible Options

  Uncharted Space

  “What. Have. You. Done!” the voices roared in a terrible choir.