Bender of Worlds

by Isaac Hooke

  “Ah,” Sinive said. “That’s why you asked those questions. You were monitoring my brain activity as I accessed the memories, and you’ll feed the results to your AIs so they have something to serve as an anchor when they start sorting through my imprints.”

  “Very good,” Nelson said.

  I’m an idiot. I’ve betrayed Tane in the end.

  “After the deep dive, I’ll look into securing your release,” Nelson said. “As I said, it could be as soon as a few weeks. But then again, if—”

  “You’re not taking me with you to retrieve him?” Sinive asked.

  “We only need the Volur,” Nelson replied. “You’ll stay here in custody. But you didn’t let me finish… after we’re done sifting through your memories, if it turns out you’re someone important to the World Bender, which your words seem to suggest—you did mention he would break into the brig of a starship to rescue you, after all—then unfortunately you’ll be staying with us a lot longer. Indefinitely, to be precise. Though you’ll be more of a guest at that point.”

  “Ah,” Sinive said. “More of a guest. But still a prisoner.”

  Nelson shrugged almost apologetically, and then the hologram faded.

  Sinive lay back on the bunk and closed her eyes.

  I said too much. What have I gotten myself into?

  She should have probably quit her job as a jump specialist as soon as Nebb agreed to transport two Volur and their wanted passenger. How was she supposed to know that passenger was destined to change the galaxy?

  Sinive had to wonder though. Would Lyra really betray Tane as Nelson claimed?

  No, it had to be a lie. It was like Sinive had told the man, it was classic interrogation 101. Keep the prisoners separated and try to pit them against one another.

  Then again, if Lyra didn’t give up Tane, there was no one else who could save him. She was the only one linked to the beacon stone. So it was possible Lyra had in fact agreed to help them, perhaps intending to betray Nelson at some point after recovering Tane. That made more sense to Sinive.

  She wondered if they were monitoring her thoughts. She had heard a rumor when she was a recruit that the TSN could tap into the chips of all navy personnel and scan their minds, at least when the personnel were connected to military networks. She never really paid attention to that rumor during her service term, because she always felt she had nothing to hide. Besides, something like that was beyond the pale even for the TSN, not to mention extremely illegal, as it violated basic tenets of civil liberty and personal privacy.

  Still, given Tane’s perceived importance, the TSN might be desperate enough to break privacy laws. Who knows, maybe they were even extracting Sinive’s memories at this very moment, transferring not just her thoughts, but the imprints of her engrams bit by bit through the limited bandwidth of the adhoc mixnet.

  She promptly closed her connection to the brig mixnet. Just to be on the safe side.

  Then she sat lay back on her bunk and waited for the robots to collect her for the deep dive.

  She intended to nap, but the sweet bliss of unconsciousness didn’t come to her. She wasn’t tired enough. That only confirmed to her that she had been out for at least the eight hours indicated by her internal clock after the robots had injected her.

  She kept an eye on the time in her HUD and watched the seconds slowly tick past. After an hour, she was feeling so weak from lack of food that she barely looked up when the bulkhead across from her hummed softly.

  A crack appeared in the wall there, forming a rectangular depression. The depression increased in size until a section of the wall pulled away entirely and slid aside.

  She swung her feet over the edge of the bunk and sat up.

  A cylindrical-shaped bot rolled in. She was reminded of Laser Bait, the service and maintenance droid Nebb employed aboard the Red Grizzly. Treads provided mobility, while pipe cleaner arms topped by pincers offered interaction with the external environment at large. The robot’s visor displayed animated, 2D vector eyes. The eyelids, which were represented as half-closed on the animated display, gave the impression of weariness.

  The robot’s thin arms carried a tray containing utensils and a bowl of some kind of stew. The smell made Sinive’s mouth water.

  Beyond the service droid she could see a compartment. There was another robot standing guard outside, watching her, this one a scepter model. It gripped a plasma assault rifle in its mechanical hands, though the weapon was currently pointed at the deck.

  “Stay away from the entrance,” the service robot said.

  It turned around to set the tray down on the polished metal deck near her bunk. Sinive considered using that opportunity to bolt toward the open doorway, but with the combat robot standing guard outside, she didn’t have a chance. Her Dexterity was far too low to match the speed of a scepter. Before she made it three steps to the entrance, that robot would have trained its combat rifle on her.

  She idly checked the serving robot’s ID on her HUD.

  Name: Macy.

  Race: Robot.

  Model: Alfred valet droid Mark IV Rev b. (Weapons mod)

  Level: 5

  Class: Service and Maintenance

  Weapons mod? She didn’t see any obvious weapons on the serving droid. They must have been concealed.

  Before she could ID the combat robot outside, Macy was already rolling out the doorway. The bulkhead slid back into place and shoved forward, sealing softly. The rectangular seam vanished, shutting her off from the compartment beyond and leaving behind only a smooth, burnished wall in its place.

  With a sigh, she sat down on the deck and began to eat her stew. It tasted surprisingly good. Definitely synthetic meat, but good nonetheless.

  When she finished, she set the bowl down on the tray and tried to access her VR interface again, but it was still offline.

  She rested her head against the bulkhead behind her and shut her eyes, willing time to pass faster. She wondered vaguely what Tane must be going through, trapped in the Umbra. She wondered if the crillia would swarm over him and Jed, killing them before Lyra could arrive. She dearly hoped not. Tane was her friend. And sexy as hell. Well, she’d never admit that latter bit to him, but hey.

  She wasn’t sure she believed he was the so-called Bender of Worlds, but she had seen him work his power firsthand. No one could touch the hull of a starship and direct the massive stellar winds of the Lumina like he did. No one. So he was definitely special, that much was certain. And she could understand why the TSN, and the aliens, wanted him so badly. She was just glad she was relatively ordinary. She’d hate to be hunted by everyone like he was. Then again, as long as she continued to hang out with him, something she hoped to do for a long time yet, she would be hunted, too.

  Guess I’ll just have to get used to watching my back.

  The two remaining hours to her deep dive session finally passed.

  The rectangular crack once again appeared, right on schedule.

  Time to face the end.

  The door pulled away and slid aside, and the scepter stepped inside, keeping its rifle pointed at the deck. The humanoid robot had a visor that lacked facial expressions of any kind.

  Sinive instinctively ran a quick ID.

  Name: HT-43 “Martinez”

  Race: Robot.

  Model: Scepter combat droid VII-3 Rev b.

  Level: 9

  Class: Guard

  Mil ID: 56256

  “So, Martinez, you’ve come to take me to have my mind ripped apart and put back together again?” Sinive asked.

  “You’re free to go,” the robot replied.

  5

  Sinive stared at the robot in disbelief. “What?

  “You’re free to go,” the robot repeated.

  “Oh. Okay.” She thought the robot must be joking but decided to play along, so she walked past it into the compartment beyond. She was expecting a full-blown armed escort, but there was no one else out there. Was she really free?

 
Other holding cells awaited on either side of her own, the access hatches fully open so that she could see inside—all were empty.

  So they’re not holding Lyra and Nebb here...

  “I am to escort you to Hangar Bay Three,” Martinez said, stepping forward to stand at her side. “This way.”

  Martinez led her to the far bulkhead where a hatch slid aside, opening into a passageway.

  Dumbfounded, Sinive merely followed the Scepter into the corridor, which led away in both directions. The robot led her down the right-hand branch.

  Finally she said: “I’m free?”

  “You’re free,” Martinez agreed.

  Have they captured Tane already?

  The corridor was the typically wide affair found standard on most TSN warships. The metal bulkheads were slightly concave, and not as polished as the walls of the holding cells. Long bars of blue light ran along their surfaces. The deck was carpeted in dark red, and the ceiling was about five heads taller than she was, ensuring that the majority of the crew wouldn’t have to duck as they made their way between stations. When you had over a thousand people living aboard, you wanted to have some comforts, lest your crew mutiny.

  Sinive stared at the dark red rug. There had been an ongoing joke when she had served in the navy, that the decks were carpeted in red like that in case the superior officers needed to bleed out any of their subordinates. Gallows humor was the preferred kind aboard the bigger ships like this.

  The overhead map on her HUD updated as she walked, and filled out the black “fog of war” areas. Apparently the blueprints for this particular class of ship weren’t available to her chip, otherwise there would have been no black areas to flesh out in the first place. That was slightly odd, considering she’d upgraded her chip to the latest and greatest military version a few years ago. She was supposed to have all available ship classes stored within her database, and the predictive algorithms built into her chip should have deduced the starship class by now, based on the current areas she’d explored, and filled out the map accordingly. But the algorithms hadn’t.

  Then again, the military was always tweaking their ship designs. It was possible she was aboard some newer class that outdated her last update. Either that, or they’d messed with her database. She hoped it wasn’t the latter.

  She had connected to the brig mixnet earlier, so one might think she would have been granted the latest blueprints in the process, but ship AIs didn’t ordinarily supply prisoners in the brig with data that could help them potentially escape.

  She passed some crew members, mostly fatigue-wearing specialists, robots, or synthetics. The latter were obvious from their too-beautiful faces. All of the crew seemed somewhat oblivious to her, their eyes slightly defocused as they no doubt studied infographics on their private HUDs.

  “What’s in Hangar Bay Three?” Sinive asked Martinez.

  “The shuttle we captured you in,” the escorting robot replied. “The Red Grizzly travels alongside our vessel. We’ve released its owner, Tripp Nebula, and he’s already aboard and waiting to receive you.”

  “Oh,” Sinive said. “Okay. Sounds good.”

  She was at a complete loss to explain this sudden goodwill. She was almost afraid to ask, in case the robot realized its mistake and returned her to her cell, but she did anyway.

  “Why are you letting me go?” Sinive said.

  Martinez glanced over its metal shoulder. “No reason was given.”

  Maybe the TSN had been reading her mind over the mixnet after all, negating the need for a deep dive, despite the fact she had closed her connection. No, more likely Nelson had already had his team perform a deep dive, probably while she was unconscious after her initial capture. Nelson had only asked her those questions so he could get an appropriate anchor from her, and she had willingly given him exactly what he wanted.

  I shouldn’t have told him a thing.

  Still, why the subterfuge, and why the delay in releasing her? Probably because Nelson wanted to ensure the initial brain dump was good enough. Maybe the TSN officer really had scheduled her for a second deep dive, but when his AIs confirmed they had recovered what they needed, he decided to cut her loose.

  Still, something about what Nelson had said earlier bothered her.

  If it turns out you’re someone important to the World Bender, then unfortunately you’ll be staying with us a lot longer. Indefinitely, to be precise.

  If the AIs had really gone through her memories, surely they would have realized she was indeed important to Tane. He wouldn’t have risked his life boarding an alien starship to stage a valiant rescue attempt if she wasn’t.

  Maybe Nelson simply decided he didn’t want to risk getting on the bad side of the Bender of Worlds.

  Sinive took a grav scuttle up two decks with the robot and continued down the passageway, presumably toward the hangar bay. She remained disconnected from the many mixnet networks aboard, but received a connection request after walking a short ways down the new passageway.

  Grizzly Cub wishes to form an adhoc mixnet with you. Proceed? Y/N

  Sinive accepted immediately, and in moments Grizzly Cub appeared on her overhead map, inside one of the fog of war regions. Thanks to the link, the area immediately surrounding the shuttle filled out on the map. No doubt that was Hangar Bay Three.

  “Cub, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Sinive sent over the comm formed by that mixnet.

  “And you can’t even see me yet,” Cub replied in his deep male voice. She heard the words as if they were audibly spoken: her chip stimulated that part of the brain responsible for auditory reception.

  “I can see your indicator on my HUD,” Sinive said. “And that’s good enough for me. Wait...”

  She realized there was another indicator overlapping Cub’s.

  “Lyra is with you, too.” Sinive glanced at her contacts list and confirmed that Lyra was now listed as online.

  “I am,” Lyra said. “I’m waiting for you aboard the Grizzly Cub.”

  “I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad,” Sinive said. “Probably the latter.”

  “Most likely,” Lyra agreed.

  “What’s going on?” Sinive sent. “Why are they letting us go?”

  “Don’t ask too many questions,” Lyra said. “Accept your good fortune and leave the ship. Before they change their minds. It would be best not to say too much at the moment anyway, if you catch my meaning...”

  Sinive zipped her lips and continued on her way.

  Finally she reached the aforementioned hangar bay and entered.

  She resided at the top of a walkway grille that looked down on several shuttles of the same military make and model: small, dart-shaped craft. Each was located within a walled-off stall, with translucent ceiling panels allowing a view inside. Exit doors in the starship’s hull gave each craft its own direct egress.

  She recognized the Grizzly Cub in one of those stalls immediately: the half-dome fuselage and eight tiny landing gears of the Ladybug I class shuttle were hard to miss, and stood out among the more aerodynamically shaped military vessels beside it.

  Sinive took the metal steps down to the deck, and Martinez led her to the stall containing the Grizzly Cub. The Scepter opened the airlock via some remote interface, and beckoned for her to enter.

  “Wait, you forgot to take me through reverse processing,” Sinive asked Martinez.

  “No need.”

  “But my belongings...” Sinive began.

  “Are aboard the shuttle,” the combat robot finished.

  “What about this jumpsuit?” Sinive said, running a hand down the orange outfit. “I’m guessing you’ll be wanting it back at some point?”

  “I’m told the jumpsuit is yours,” Martinez said. “A gift for your troubles. Compliments of Specialist Gates. You may do with it what you wish.”

  “Nelson?” Sinive said.

  “That is his first name, yes,” Martinez said.

  “Well, thank ‘Specialist’ Gates fo
r me, and tell him I appreciate the swell gift,” Sinive said sarcastically.

  She stepped into the airlock before the robot could answer and passed through both the outer and inner hatches. The robot didn’t accompany her and instead sealed the inner hatch behind her.

  Sinive climbed the sloping ramp and entered the shuttle.

  Lyra was inside, secured to one of the chairs via the built-in restraining clamps. She was dressed in the same jumpsuit as Sinive, and gripped a storage pouch close to her chest. Even with the bags under her eyes, and the sallow cheeks, the woman was beautiful. Definitely far too stunning for her face to be natural: hell, she looked better than most synthetics. Which was why Sinive had added a virtual mustache to the woman’s face shortly after meeting her, a digital augmentation that was still active even now, and matched Lyra’s movements perfectly. Sinive would have smiled at seeing the thick clump of virtual hair covering Lyra’s upper lip if the circumstances of their meeting were better.

  Lyra nodded toward the seat across from her.

  Sinive glanced at it and saw another pouch nestled on top of the cushioned seat. She snatched it up and sat down, allowing the seat clamps to secure her in place.

  Sinive accessed the remote interface of the storage pouch and confirmed that it was hers. Her favorite white dress was in the first inventory slot: she’d be changing into that as soon as she was aboard the Red Grizzly, and after that she’d immediately toss the jumpsuit into the incinerator. The second contained her spacesuit—which was bound together by a carbon fiber cord—while the third and fourth slots held her plasma pistol and shield generator respectively. She rifled through the remaining slots and the sub-pouches nested within, and confirmed that all her items were intact.

  The cabin shook and a loud thud filled the air. Slightly startled, she dismissed the inventory and realized the ramp had sealed.

  “Initiating take off,” Cub said. “And plotting a docking course for the Red Grizzly.”