by Scott Rhine
“Do you really stay awake for so much time?” She asked Omar.
“Yes. There is a simple gene treatment which adjusts your daily cycle to match metric standard. You’ll adjust to it quickly enough and wonder how you got along on such a short day before. In any event, you came up here to see the ship, not to play with gadgets. Let me give you the tour.”
The next hour was the most exhilarating experience of Sasha’s young life. All around her was the humming, clanging, hissing cacophony that was life aboard a carrier class ship. From rooms bigger than buildings filled with machines of unknown purpose to small gardens spaced at regular intervals with plants unlike any she’d known, the ship was a wonder. Omar knew many of the people they passed and while he greeted them with friendly waves she could see wariness in some of their eyes, then curiosity as they saw her trailing behind him.
It gradually dawned on Sasha that she was the youngest person onboard by at least a few years. Living in the city of her birth one couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a child and the lack of them now seemed telling. What kind of people never married, never had children to carry on their line? Sasha started to feel like the alien in their midst, the gap in her age seeming smaller than the gulf between their cultures. Even the aliens that passed were greeted with more indifference than the sight of a young girl.
Sasha counted seven different kinds of aliens mixing among the humans. One had eyestalks and a dozen quivering tentacles, another was covered with blue fur and looked at her with warily with its six compound eyes. She had thought Pulan was unusual but some of the alien species looked more cobbled together than the ships themselves, a mishmash of the familiar and the grotesque. Omar greeted them much the same as any human he passed.
As they passed the different sections of the ship he told her what function they served. The words meant little to her at the time but Omar assured her that it would all become commonplace soon enough. She did understand however, when he brought her onto the bridge of the ship that this was where decisions were made. The men and women in the room sat with an air of formality and purpose. Omar stopped in the entrance and whispered something to an armed guard who stood by the door. The guard then stepped to the center of the room and spoke to a man seated there. The man nodded and the guard in turn nodded to Omar. They were led across the bridge to an adjacent room.
Walking in, Sasha could tell this was the captain’s office. There was little to distinguish it from innumerable other rooms but the air held a tension that was palpable. Perhaps it was the way Omar’s posture straightened slightly, or maybe it was the way everything in the room was angled slightly toward the single desk mounted in the center. Seated at that desk was a woman who looked no older than thirty. Sasha recalled Bella’s explanation of how appearances could be deceiving and a quick look in the woman’s eyes made her feel that this woman could be much older than she appeared. Her upper torso was encased in a shell of red metal which extended up her neck like a strange collar. Sasha could see the wiring running from that collar into the base of the pale woman’s neck, mostly hidden by her dark hair. Sasha thought she was beautiful in a severe way, like a freshly sharpened quill.
The woman looked up from her desk as they entered. Her eyes fixed on Omar for a moment before settling on Sasha, who withered before the intensity of her gaze and started to look away.
“Look at me.” The woman’s voice was quiet but carried in the still air. It was the voice of someone who was used to her words carrying the weight of an order. Sasha returned her eyes to the imperious woman and she stared for what seemed like an eternity.
“What is your name, girl?” The woman asked.
“Sasha.” Sasha whispered in reply, her voice trapped in her throat. “Sasha Fion…” She stopped there, uncertain how to continue.
“Trouble remembering your own name?”
“My kin are known as Fion-Wae. It reflects the family we are bonded to. I have broken that bond this day so my name should reflect this decision but I don’t know Omar’s surname.” Even as she spoke, that lack of even such a basic piece of information and the rashness it implied in her actions terrified her. Omar laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Hadi.” He said softly. “It is a name I have not used in a long time.”
“Not since you convinced that woman to buy you the Moving Finger.” Captain Kharzin replied.
“It was a decision she made freely.”
“Indeed? So, Sasha Fion-Hadi, you consider yourself bonded to this man now? Has he extracted some kind of oath from you?” Sasha looked to Omar for an answer but he remained silent, his face impassive.
“Not in so many words, no. It is implied though by my accepting his invitation to join his crew.”
“And if I offered you the same? Would you forsake him as you did your previous master to join with my crew? I can offer you much more than he ever could, Sasha Fion-Kharzin. I won’t even plug dangerous and potentially lethal technology into your skull.” Omar stiffened at this.
“I don’t think I could do that in good conscience. My oath to the Wae family was a familial obligation, taken many years before my birth. My agreement with Omar is my own.”
“But can you even take such an oath? You are, by your own admission, just a child in your culture. How can a child take on such an obligation, much less abrogate one made by her parents?” Sasha knew that she should not be surprised that this woman knew about her already but she still chafed at feeling talked down to.
“I may be young, but it is my decision to make.”
“You are young and the young make rash decisions. It might be years before you truly understand what you are giving up. You will never see your family, your friends again. You will be adrift in the stars with only the few members of your crew to sustain you. You will likely die on a world unknown to you at this time, possibly for no good reason. Is this truly what you wish?” The woman’s voice remained soft but it was getting Sasha angry. It seemed like everyone she met was pushing and pulling her, sometimes both. She had had enough.
“Who are you to ask?” Sasha replied, her voice booming in the metal room, surprising her a little. She was not deterred though. “Whatever agreement I make with Omar is between us and the crew of the Moving Finger. Why should you care one way or the other? For that matter Omar, why did you bring me here? What business is it of this woman how you manage your ship?” There was a long moment of silence in the room before she heard the woman begin to chuckle lightly. A glance at Omar showed he was smiling as well. It made her even angrier and she was about to tell them so when the woman raised her hand lightly.
“Enough, peace. I concede the point. I heard what Omar has planned for your future and I asked him to let me examine you. He agreed because he trusts my opinion and he knows how dangerous this choice may be.
“Everyone in the Fleet can recall the last time we faced an enemy using the technology Omar wishes to give you. Believe me when I say that on that day the Fleet was nearly destroyed. Someone with a weak will could be overcome by them, driven mad by the visions they give. Someone who cannot be trusted would be even worse, having such power and no qualms about using it; that would be even more dangerous. Omar chose well, I think. Only time will tell if you are going to be an asset or a painful mistake. As you say though, it is his risk to take.”
“I don’t understand. How can these implants give me that much power? Its just information, isn’t it?”
“Information is power. Both myself and Omar are augmented to better access the networks. It is quite common in the Fleet to improve oneself with cybernetics and genetics. There are always limits to the access gained. The world where Omar acquired this technology no longer exists. The citizens lived a life beyond anything we can imagine. It also made them very dangerous. I sometimes think it was for the best that their world burned. Unleashing power like theirs on an unsuspecting galaxy…” Captain Kharzin shuddered. “I fear what you might be capable of one day, little Sasha Fion-Hadi, but I
do not fear you. Perhaps that will be enough. Dismissed.”
They left Captain Kharzin’s office quietly. Omar had stopped smiling and looked thoughtful. Sasha thought she probably looked much the same. They walked for a while in silence while she considered what the woman had said.
“Is it really that dangerous?” She said at last.
“No tool is dangerous in itself. It is the hand that guides it which can be a threat. The nanocytes can help you become something greater than you can imagine. Whether you will be able to handle that power, only time will tell.”
“I’m scared, terrified really. I don’t think I even understand what you’re offering.”
“I’m not really sure I do either.” He sighed. “It’s not too late. We don’t leave for a few days yet. We can ferry you back down to the surface and no one down there will ever know.”
The thought of returning to her life made Sasha’s throat tighten. That world seemed so small now, so primitive. She knew she could never go back there and be happy. A small part of her though remembered the warmth and stability of that world and wanted it. She would never run through those open fields again, never see her parents. She thought of the long winter nights when her family would sit by a fire reading books written by the hands of their ancestors. It felt like a sin, cutting the bonds which tied her to her old life. It felt scarier than the endless depths of space, more terrible than the offered power of the implants.
Omar let her walk in silence, not demanding an answer to his offer. He led her to a small room, quarters leased to the crew of the Moving Finger aboard the Sikorsky. She was surprised to see it furnished already with someone else’s life. Omar toggled a display on the wall. A man appeared there, one whose body was shrunken and deformed. His face, however, was filled with intelligence and life.
“A former crewmate.” He said in answer to her unasked question. “He was a good man and he died saving our lives. I’ll clear out his things later today.”
“No. I don’t mind.” It was the most personal place she had seen in the fleet. This was someone’s home. It didn’t matter that the man was dead, buried trillions of clicks away. The room felt warm, inviting. As Omar left the quarters, Sasha began to explore. Tentatively she picked her way across the room, examining the detritus of another’s life. Whoever the small man was he had a broad range of interests. Electronics parts in the process of being assembled sat in one corner of the room, held in place on a workstation by nearly invisible tethers. Another corner held a covered canvas and a slew of paints. Sasha lifted the corner and peeked at the unfinished work. Bella’s face peered back at her, softer and more feminine than the woman she knew.
Sasha prowled through the other man’s life for a while, her curiosity causing her to try to reconstruct this fallen soldier’s life in her mind. In the end she decided than he was a curious man, as driven toward new ideas as she was herself. She wondered if he had joined the Fleet because his need for the new was as great as her own. When the time came to return to Lanis, Sasha nearly hid.
The thought of facing her family, trying to decide what to tell them, filled her with fear. Omar offered to speak to them on her behalf but she decided to face them alone. She told her parents that she had spent the night at a friends house. She was grounded, a punishment that pleased her to no end. It gave her just the excuse she needed to remain home.
Sasha spent the next days around her family, trying to take her fill of them. Each night she felt more empty of them than before, as though she had only made their presence larger in her mind so that the lack of them created an even larger vacuum. She nearly changed her mind about leaving every night. In the morning she would resolve to tell the captain that she was declining his offer. The moment the ships came into view, the giant machines of a bygone era, her heart flipped and she became more certain than ever that she must leave with the Fleet.
The last night before the Fleet was to leave Lanis Sasha ate quietly with her family, letting them talk unhindered by her expectations. Her parents discussed the new lines of research offered by the information the Fleet had given them. Her brothers, one older and one younger, were kicking each other under the table. Sasha found the moment so beautiful she thought she might cry. Knowing it would break the moment she held back her tears, holding onto the moment for as long as she could.
That night she gathered the few belongings that mattered to her and snuck back to the Moving Finger. The crew met her at the entryway. She thought it odd that each of the crew faces mirrored a piece of the conflicting emotions in her own mind. Zane seemed happy, welcoming. Bella’s face was filled with concern. Sasha could see herself as Bella did, a small girl clutching a single bag running in from the darkness. Omar looked apprehensive, hesitant while Pulan looked like Pulan, inscrutable. In many ways his almost face was the most important, the unknown that drew her from her home.
Sasha cried herself to sleep that night, surrounded by a dead man’s life aboard a starship headed forever away from her home. The next morning she woke refreshed and resolved to put the past behind her.
Sasha expected something to happen as the ships began the long jump to their next destination. When it happened it was almost anticlimactic. There was a slight thrust, barely perceptible and they were off. Sasha asked Omar about it when she next saw him.
“I’m no expert.” He began. “The technology which creates the jump drive is way beyond me.”
“I thought you were a pilot.”
“A fighter pilot. Navigating between the stars is a whole different thing. Besides, all this science I don’t understand, it’s just my job five days a week.
“In layman’s terms however, the jump drive isn’t really thrust at all. Trying to get from one star to another via thrust would take forever. Instead the jump drive warps space, contracting the distance between the stars. Then the ships simply engage their standard drive to move through this shortened space.”
“So it’s really two drives working in unison?”
“I suppose you could say that. It’s the first drive that people believe caused the catastrophes in the past. Space that has been warped takes time to return to normal. Too much activity in a short period of time can cause stellar instability.”
“So the drive is responsible.”
“No more than a gun is responsible for a murder. I have good reason to believe that it is very unlikely that even one star could rupture as they have much less the number that have in fact done so. I believe some outside agency deliberately caused the stellar collapses. You’re going to help me prove that.”
“That’s what the nanocytes do?”
“Indirectly. They will expand your mental abilities so that you can analyze the data and get to the bottom of this. Maybe then we can discover who is responsible and why they would do something so reprehensible.” Sasha thought on this for a long while. It seemed like a lot for a young girl to take on, even if the nanocytes did as advertised.
Except for some dark hours in the nights that followed, Sasha leapt into learning about her new life with fervor. Omar wanted her to have a chance to adapt to the Fleet before injecting her with the nanocytes. A few days later though, and nature conspired to accelerate his plans.
Sasha knew that she needed to have the nanocytes implanted while she was still physically a child. What she had not accounted for was how much better the Fleet’s diet was than her own. Her system, long dormant due to the low nutritional quality of her previously agrarian meals, began to awaken. When she realized a week into the flight that her symptoms were not due to being in space she told Omar and he had Pulan set up the injections.
The procedure itself was painless. Sasha was surprised that it was simply a matter of introducing the nanocytes gradually into her system. Pulan procured a dispenser from the Sikorsky which strapped to her wrist. It would inject small quantities of the tiny machines into her bloodstream until either it ran out or she turned it off. Omar told her that she would have to be confined to the Finger
until the process was complete and they could convince Captain Kharzin that she posed the Sikorsky no threat.
Trying to sleep in the barren confines of the Moving Finger was nearly impossible. Sasha settled on a kind of deep breathing while her mind raced. Her whole body itched as her mind created the sensation of millions of tiny machines permeating her body. Though she knew they were far too small to feel it didn’t stop her skin from crawling.
Access, when it came, was full and immediate. One moment she was idly thinking about her homeworld, wondering how much the arrival of the Fleet had changed it. The next and she was running through thousands of possible variations simultaneously. The transition was seamless, an extension of her own thoughts. It was simply as though the problem had gotten smaller, easier to calculate.
Sasha turned her attention to her current surroundings. Even as she wondered how she could use the nanocytes to interface with the Moving Finger as Omar did a part of her felt a ghostly limb extending from her to the mainframe. She knew instinctively that she was releasing a swarm of mobile nanocytes to infiltrate the system. She wondered how she could know such a thing and found herself possessed of a large and growing understanding of the tiny machines. It was as though she had always known how they worked.
As the swarm contacted the data nodes of the Finger she could see the remains of the previous times it had been operated in this way. Without a directing force those nanocytes that had existed before had been reduced to a dormant state. At her direction they woke and joined her. Sasha felt a rush as they added their processing power to her own. She felt the mainframe as a separate organism, something to interact with but not completely subsume as she had the extra nanocytes.