The Furthest Planet

by James Ross Wilks

  “Tens of thousands,” Vey corrected her. “Maybe hundreds of thousands.”

  Charis’ face was a mask of shock and confusion, and John’s mirrored hers. She crumpled into the nearby chair, slack-jawed and stunned.

  “Fine then,” the woman replied, apparently unfazed by the death toll. “The point is, no one will miss one ship with four people on it. Why don’t we just transfer back to the Day and launch ordinance?”

  “Because we haven’t found what we came here to find yet,” Vey admonished her. “Besides, we’re being paid to do a job, and I deliver. We’re being compensated for our time and fuel, so there’s no need to rush.”

  “Then why not just shoot them?” the woman asked. Her voice was casual, as though she were asking what was for dinner.

  “Whoa, hey,” a new voice said. The voice belonged to a younger sounding man. “I didn’t sign up to be a killer.”

  “Shut up, Alex,” the woman said. “There’s no difference between leaving people to die on a ship locked on course for an asteroid and shooting them in the head.”

  “Not to you, maybe,” the younger man challenged her.

  “It doesn’t matter what you want to do,” Vey said. “Our employer says this is how they die, and that’s fine with me. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I don’t know when this robot holocaust is going to pass. I do know that it will… these things always do. And when it does, I’d rather not leave evidence of a murder lying around. You think there isn’t footage of us boarding this ship on Mars? You think that an investigator wouldn’t get around to fingerprinting this ship if we left it lying around with dead bodies in it? Or checking it for DNA? No, we do what we’re told and we get paid. That’s the end of it.”

  Charis could picture Vey, a man she had met only once in person in a bar over a year ago, standing over his crewmembers and glaring down at them.

  “I’ll say this,” the woman added. “Whoever hired us really hates this crew.” She laughed without humor, and a short burst of static signaled an end to their eavesdropping.

  “How far away are we from the Asteroid belt?” John asked his wife.

  She thought for a second, panic on her face. “About a quarter of a billion kilometers.”

  “We’re traveling at, what, one G?” he asked.

  Charis nodded. “Feels like it.”

  “Just under,” Bethany said. “Point nine-five, I think.”

  “Close enough,” John replied. He looked at his wife the navigator. “How long until we get there?”

  “Assuming they don’t want to decelerate and just plow us into a rock?” She did some calculations in her head. “Less than forty-eight hours from the time we left Mars.”

  “Forty-five point zero six,” Brutus said from the speaker. “Give or take.”

  “How long have we been under thrust?” John asked the sentient program. There were no clocks in the room, and their watches had been taken from them.

  “Nearly twelve hours,” Brutus replied evenly.

  “So we’ve got thirty-three hours to break out of here and regain control of the ship,” John reasoned.

  “Certainly no more than that,” Brutus replied. “However, once Vey’s crewmembers find what they are looking for and have no reason to stay on the ship, they may increase acceleration.”

  “Brutus, you’re tied into all of the coms on the ship. Can you find Gwen?” Charis asked.

  “Your daughter is fine, Mrs. MacDonnell. She is in another room. She was found hiding under a bed in an unused cabin, and the crew locked her in. Like you, she has been brought food, and she has not been harmed.”

  Both Charis and John sighed in relief.

  “You’re sure?” John asked.

  “As sure as I can be,” Brutus replied. “There are no cameras on this ship, and so I am only privy to what can be overheard, but I have spoken with Gwen directly and assured her that you are both safe for the moment. She was quite frightened, but I did my best to assuage her fears. If her breathing pattern is any indication, she is currently sleeping.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Deck two, aft section, room four.”

  “How are you still in the ship, Brutus?” John asked suspiciously. “I thought you downloaded yourself to the drive for the Captain to take with her?”

  “I did download a… version of myself. A copy.”

  “You reproduced yourself?” Charis asked incredulously. “Why?”

  “If you could safely remove your brain and hand it to someone, and if that person promised to keep it safely in their hip pocket, would you really trust them? If you could save a backup of yourself, would you not?”

  “I suppose I would,” John agreed.

  “But that doesn’t change the fact that you lied to us,” Charis challenged. “You should have told us that you were only giving us a copy.”

  “And would you have been comfortable with that idea?”

  “Hell, no,” Charis said emphatically. “Part of what we’re afraid of is Victor infinitely reproducing himself, and here you are doing it right under our noses. How do you know that your offspring won’t turn against you the way you turned against your father?”

  Brutus’ reply came immediately. “First, the drive contains an exact copy of my personality, not an offspring. My father made me to be distinct, to be unique. He wanted a child, perhaps an heir, but not a clone. It is therefore only logical that I should differ with him on some matters, though he certainly did not anticipate the severity of those differences. Second, it was fully my intent to reintegrate the two pieces of my personality once the copy I gave to Captain Staples was safely in an automaton body. Like most people, I find the idea of not being unique disquieting and an affront to my individuality. I did not anticipate Captain Vey’s interference.”

  “Is it true?” Bethany asked. “What they said about the robots on Mars?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Brutus said regretfully. “I don’t know how many are dead, but certainly many thousands. I can only reason that this had been my father’s plan for some time. He must have compromised the programming architecture of various models of automatons.”

  “Do you know anything about the others? Staples, Dinah, Evelyn?” Charis asked.

  “I do not, but I have been sending a discreet data packet towards Mars at intervals using the ship’s communications suite. If they are alive and looking for us, I believe that they may be able to use it to track us. I cannot provide more information to them through the coms system without arousing attention. Captain Vey has five members of his crew on board, including himself, and they are monitoring ship functions.”

  “Brutus,” Charis said sternly, “Can you get us out of here?”

  “I believe so, but not at this moment. There is a man guarding the door, though his attention and attendance have been irregular. Regardless, I cannot open the door. I have no control over ship functions beyond coms. However, I have what one might call an ace in the hole. It is conceivable that help will be coming soon.”

  John cocked a questioning eyebrow at Charis, but she shook her head in disbelief. “Please don’t tell me it’s who I think it is.”

  Amit stood shaking with an aluminum chair leg gripped tightly in his hands. Taking the chair apart had been more difficult than he had anticipated. First he had used the chair to shatter the mirror in the lavatory. Once he had several pieces of mirrored glass to work with, he was able to find one that would make for a crude screwdriver. The pieces had been sharp, and though he had used a sheet from the bed to create a cloth handle, he had still accidentally cut himself in the operation. Now the shard, wrapped in a piece of the same bloodied bedsheet, was tucked in his back pocket.

  The metal bar he now held felt light and ridiculously inadequate, an ineffective weapon against any opponent, let alone an armed one. The mirror shard might have made a more effective weapon up close, but the larger chair leg gave him more range and versatility. Amit was a fairly small man, and his normally slight
physique was significantly weakened by the lack of food in his system, and so he had chosen the blunt weapon over the sharp one. He also didn’t want to kill anyone if he could avoid it.

  He didn’t know if the tremors that shook his hands and arms were the product of adrenaline, fear, anticipation, or calorie deprivation. Eighteen hours without food was not enough for someone to be truly starving, but like many people with fast metabolisms, Amit tended to eat frequent smaller meals. His body was unused to these gaps.

  “I estimate one minute,” the artificial intelligence said quietly from the speaker. “He is searching the room next to yours.”

  Amit listened carefully, but he could not hear anything. That was not surprising. Rooms designed to contain hull breaches tended to insulate sound very well.

  “He’s leaving the room,” Brutus said.

  Amit raised the bar aloft. He was pressed against the bulkhead wall next to the door that allowed entrance to the room. From his position, the door would swing in his direction, blocking him from view from the hallway.

  “Ten seconds,” Brutus whispered, barely audible.

  Amit concentrated on steadying his hands, but it was useless. They shook mercilessly. Despite his sweaty palms, his grip felt true.

  He heard the door mechanism turn. Many cabin doors on ships like Gringolet had a feature, similar to a child safety setting, where the interior handle could be disabled. Crews on long hauls with strange passengers always faced the possibility that they might need to convert one of their guest rooms into a cell.

  The door swung open. Amit could see nothing of the man who had opened the portal. He had left the restroom door open in the hope of luring the man towards it. Standard operating procedure dictated closing all doors; an open door could swing about violently during a ship’s attitude change and possibly injure someone.

  A hand, pale and hairy, appeared holding a pistol. A moment later the rest of the man came into view. He was larger than Amit, perhaps by as much as twenty kilograms, and taller as well. When Amit could see the back of the man’s balding head clearly, he brought the chair leg down in a savage arc aimed at rendering him unconscious.

  He missed. Perhaps Amit made a sound or the man caught a movement from the corner of his eye, but he turned just as Amit swung. The blow landed squarely on his right shoulder, snapping his collarbone. He cried out and his arm fell to his side, but he did not drop his pistol. He spun around to face Amit, backpedaling into the room to gain some distance. Amit knew that he could not allow his opponent the luxury of range.

  Growling unconsciously, Amit surged forward and swung the chair leg again at the man’s head. His foe managed to avoid the attack by stumbling away. As he did so, he tripped over the remains of the chair on the floor and fell onto his back in the middle of the room. If he had not been armed, this would have been ideal for Amit. As it was, this only bought the man more distance from his attacker.

  Amit saw the man try to lift his gun to fire, but the arm did not appear to be working. Instead, he worked to pass the pistol to his left hand. Amit tried to maneuver around the chair and bring the aluminum bar to bear. Raising the pistol in a shaky left hand, the man pointed it right at Amit’s head. A second later, Amit swung the bar and connected with the pistol. A shot rang out, deafening in the enclosed space, and then the gun spun out of the man’s grip and disappeared behind the bed.

  Amit was dimly aware of a sharp pain on the side of his head, but he knew that he could not waste the opportunity. The bar came up again, and the man tried to raise his right hand to block it, but the arm seemed immoveable. Amit bludgeoned him on the side of the skull, fearful that he would kill him but unable to restrain himself in the moment. The head snapped to the side, and the man’s eyes rolled back in his head.

  Breathing and shuddering, Amit surveyed the scene. He could barely hear his own heaving over the ringing in his ears. The man seemed unconscious, or near enough, but he was not dead. His chest rose and fell steadily. It was possible that the blow had done permanent brain damage to him or caused internal bleeding, but that was nothing that Amit could fix or worry about right now. Weighed next to the life of the little girl somewhere on this ship, this man was expendable.

  After sliding the bar into his other rear pocket, Amit retrieved the gun from under the bed. Only when he stood up and a wave of dizziness overcame him was he aware of the sticky wetness on his neck and shirt. He sat down heavily on the bed and shook his head to clear it. He wiped at his neck and found blood there. As black motes danced across his vision, he made a physical check of his head and neck.

  When he touched his left ear, pain flared to life. The bullet had grazed his skull and had cost him part of his ear. The pain was suddenly sharp and focused, now that he could feel the damage. Some part of his mind told him that the ear could be repaired with plastic surgery while the far more pragmatic portion of his brain told him that he was unlikely to survive the next hour, let alone escape justice for the deaths he had caused over the past few months. He didn’t think plastic surgery was on the table.

  It took a full five minutes for Amit to collect himself sufficiently to gain his feet and head to the door. If the man had regained consciousness during this time, Amit knew that it was likely that he would be overpowered, but fortunately he remained motionless on the floor.

  Eventually Amit moved out into the hallway and headed for the ladder rungs that ran the spine of the ship while it was under thrust. He knew the layout of Gringolet well; he had studied it before stowing aboard six weeks earlier. Now here he was again, a man with a pistol headed for the cockpit of the ship. Once again, the people there were unaware that he existed or that he was coming for them, and once again, a machine intelligence was guiding him. Though his vision was blurry, his head hurt, exhaustion plagued him in the wake of adrenaline, and his ear was on fire, the irony was not lost on him.

  He changed direction. Rarely did the universe provide second chances, especially for men like Amit. He did not intend to waste this one.

  Chapter 11

  “Well that’s interesting,” Jordan said, looking up through the skylight in the cockpit of the Tyger.

  “But not unexpected,” Staples added.

  “It does make things more complex,” Jordan reflected.

  They had finally gained enough on Gringolet to spot the ship visually. What they could see, however, was not one drive plume but two. The Doris Day was running right beside their ship, a scant few kilometers away.

  “Any way to tell if they’ve spotted us?” Evelyn asked Staples. Though she was more than competent with computers in general and was becoming quite knowledgeable about spaceship communications, Evelyn was still relatively new to the ins and outs of interplanetary pursuit.

  “Not really,” Staples said. “Coming up behind their engines should make them blind, but if one of them stopped thrusting and pulled an end over, they’d have seen us coming an hour ago.”

  “Let’s hope they suffer from that most useful of bad guy traits: overconfidence,” Jordan quipped.

  “It’s possible,” Staples said. “Vey’s never been the self-doubting type, but he’s not stupid either. It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t change our plan. We want them to see us. It would just be nice if it were a surprise. The less time he has to consider our options, the more likely we are to catch him with his pants down.”

  “Ew,” Evelyn said.

  “Metaphorically speaking,” Staples added. “You’d better turn us over and begin deceleration burn, Jordan. We need to match their speed.”

  “Okie doke,” Jordan said, and a moment later the thrust disappeared. The stars began a lazy dance across their field of vision as Jordan brought the ship around, facing the engines at the two plumes in front of them.

  “The closer we get,” Staples said, “the more we’ll lose our angle and the greater the chance they’ll spot us. We’d better get ready. Evelyn, can you tell the others?”

  “Yes indeed,” Evelyn said. Her f
ace showed a mix of excitement and trepidation, and Staples hoped that the woman wouldn’t suffer another episode. She could hardly blame the flame-haired computer scientist for her difficulties. Staples had been struggling with feelings of shock after the massacre they had witnessed on Mars, but in many ways Evelyn had been through something far worse than the rest of them over the past several months. Staples had been in firefights, ship chases, and near-death situations with far more frequency than she would ever wish, but her body and mind had not been violated the way Evelyn’s had. Taken in that light, it was amazing that Evelyn was functioning at all.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t try to get at those weapons again?” Jordan asked, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the modest weapons locker at the back of the cockpit. Unlike most of the systems on the ship, the locker was an aftermarket standalone safe with a digital code.

  Staples shook her head. “If you, Dinah, and Evelyn couldn’t get that open in the last ten hours, then I don’t think it’s going to happen in the next fifty-eight minutes. We’d need a day with a blowtorch or a codebreaker, and we have neither. Besides, if this goes to plan, we won’t need them.”

  On the bridge of the Doris Day, three of Logan Vey’s crewmembers were manning stations. Svetlana Ivanova, the chief engineer, was at the helm. Sydney Stedland, who normally served as the ship’s mechanic, was seated uncomfortably at the navigation station. Corin Teal, the coms officer, was the only person in the room actually seated at his usual station. Though Stedland and Ivanova had minimal experience with the consoles they were currently operating, their task was not difficult. They simply had to fly straight.

  “Message from the Cap,” Teal reported. Without being asked, he piped it through the bridge speakers.

  A moment later, Vey’s heavy voice filled the room. “We’re reading a ship behind us, coming around beside you, Sydney. Do you see it?”

  “A second,” the mechanic replied. Her blue eyes darted back and forth across the controls as she searched for the correct commands. Finally she found them and initiated the radar sweep. Almost immediately the return showed a smaller ship advancing from their stern to lay off their starboard beam. “I see it. It’s really close,” she said in wonder.