The Salvage Crew

by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

  “Doesn’t explain why we were knee-deep in cyborg bozos trying to kill us, and now nothing. Just when we’re at our weakest. Something’s off.”

  GUT FEELINGS ARE USEFUL, says OC in a voice that means anything but. CONTINUE OVERWATCH.

  I have to say I’m not very happy with how PCS does stuff. Machines in charge of machines in charge of humans. I kick the head of the spot probe. The metal dings. My toe explodes in agony.

  Fuck.

  27

  Day thirty-five.

  Shall I compare Shen to a summer’s day? He is more useful, and more well-formed. I might not be Shakespeare, but with this guy under my belt, I’m a much happier machine.

  Turns out booting up a replicant is as easy as smashing the box open and hauling the thing into my pod. Milo figured out the cabling and, because some of this requires a human touch, sorted out the initial access. We had our little Frankenstein moment, and now Shen does it all by himself.

  Shen’s default boot-up sequence goes like this: he springs to his feet, flexes and walks around, clearly getting his bearings, mapping out his surroundings. He asks me for a few updates—time, location, status of his crew. He takes what I give him, which is the first, second, and nothing at all on the third, and goes to work.

  His first act is, always, to make a beeline for Simon’s room. How he figured out that Simon was ill, I don’t quite know: maybe he overheard Anna and Milo talking. Either way, every single morning, he checks on my most unfortunate team member, monitoring his vitals.

  Shen’s smarts have limits. The UN clearly didn’t want a machine, say, going off on a tangent about moral philosophy and brooding around or deciding to wipe out the colonists. But within his weird little processor (an ancient thing I don’t really have the specs for) and his operating system (a design-by-committee job so overburdened with decisions bounds it’s a miracle he starts up at all) the little bot does a damn good job. I tell him to fix a wall and he does. I tell him to plant a few seeds and he does. He doesn’t think up new things by himself, but here, for the first time, is my perfect crewmember: obedient, polite, efficient.

  “Human Simon has severe damage,” he reports to me.

  YES, I KNOW. The daily list of symptoms is growing. I’d thought I’d nuked all the micromachines in Simon, but either some survived, or he’s been reinfected. I tally what I learn—raised, feverish temperatures, muscle atrophy, confusion, and lately, blood in the urine. Shen listens, presumably ticks off “check on human periodically” on his mental to-do list, and goes on to the next ask.

  Milo shivers. “Winter is coming,” he says ominously.

  I wonder what gave that away. Was it the temperature drop? The chill wind that he intends to use to power the wind turbine? The snow on the ground?

  THINK OF IT THIS WAY, I point out. AT LEAST IT MIGHT DISCOURAGE THE MERCERS.

  “Yeah,” says Milo tonelessly. “You want to value the haul?”

  Yes, I do indeed. Milo and I spend an evening sorting out what we’ve got. By which I mean Milo double-checks our initial estimates while I order Shen around, getting used to the idea of having an extra set of hands around.

  I send Shen out to chop wood for our siege equipment project. I haven’t forgotten. On the way he bumps into Anna, who’s working on GUPPY’s suspension. He says hello and makes her jump. Shen then apologizes like a true gentleman and goes on his merry way. I’ve tasked him with keeping an eye out for the general Mercer profile: he reports nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe he’s scared them away.

  New task, Shen: find me some iron ore.

  Yes, iron. Milo and I have some plans for that spot probe, and we need a bit more than plastic-coated toothpicks for all the joints we need to build. And Shen is happy to oblige.

  “Well, good news is, we’ve hit our targets and then some,” Milo says, squatting back on his haunches. “Looks like Simon’s hauled back a hell of a catch.”

  He says this over the team channel—I’m assuming he wants Anna to hear him. She hasn’t spoken much except to Simon.

  “I guess he’ll be happy,” tries Milo again. “First Megabeast kill, now this—I’m going to buy him drinks when we’re done. You want in?”

  Silence. Milo looks at me. I assume his look is supposed to be helpless, but in reality, with his gaunt face and unkempt beard, it looks a bit crazed.

  Day twenty-nine.

  Milo has done a thing. By which I mean he’s tried to talk to Anna again, only this time a little more persistently, and Anna snapped. I have no other way of describing it.

  When I round the corner with my drone, she’s waving a piece of wood and in a full tirade about how much of a sanctimonious asshole Milo is.

  I agree, but I have to intervene here.

  ANNA, I say, PUT DOWN THE STICK, PLEASE.

  At which point she picks up a rock and throws it at the drone.

  “FUCK OFF!” she screams at me. “STOP WATCHING EVERY GODDAMN THING!”

  THAT’S WHAT I’M HERE TO DO, I remind her, weaving to a safe landing. COME ON. WE’RE NOT CHILDREN HERE.

  “I was just trying to talk,” grumbles Milo, stalking away. Unfortunately, this seems to be entirely the wrong thing to do, because both of them are in the farm, and Milo’s attempt at a dignified retreat crushes a makeshift pipe she’s set up for the plants.

  End result: Anna harangues Milo all the way from the farm to his bedroom, and ends up calling him an alcoholic idiot (which I may or may not agree with). Milo takes a deep breath.

  “OC,” he says, “what’s the penalty for striking a crewmember?”

  DOCKING OF TEN PERCENT OF PAY IF THE ACTION IS INTENTIONAL.

  “That’s not such a bad price,” he says sourly. “I’m going to sleep.”

  And he slams the door on a red-faced Anna.

  I’LL HAVE TO DO THE SAME TO YOU, I tell Anna. To be fair, she’s clearly been through a lot, so maybe she’ll just blow off some steam and quiet down.

  Nope. “Fuck you too,” says Anna, and storms outside. On the way she meets Shen, who’s trundling in with an armful of ore. “And you!”

  She knocks the ore from Shen’s hands.

  Anna, may you be reborn as a small goat.

  Shen bends down and gathers up the spilled ore. Patiently and without complaint, as is his nature.

  When Milo wakes, Anna goes at him again, this time because the broken pipe has flooded half the plants she’s been managing.

  Simon, wisely, sneaks out the back door to help Shen with the ore. I accompany him with GUPPY.

  “Real shitstorm we have going on there,” he says amiably, and winces.

  I AGREE, I say. DOES YOUR FOOT STILL HURT?

  “A bit,” says Simon, limping on beside the hauler. “Feels like the old wounds are reopening, you know?”

  I check his vitals, concerned. He’s running a fever and his blood oxygen levels are pretty low. ARE THEY?

  “Nah. Come one, let’s get that iron hauled in. Those idiots can have the house to themselves.”

  I can’t believe I’m bitching about Anna with Simon, a man who has the overall intellect of a spoon. But a very reliable spoon, you know. Definitely the best of the lot, despite our slightly rocky start.

  “So what now, OC? We’ve got the salvage, haven’t we?”

  WE WAIT FOR SHIP, AND THEN WE’RE OUT OF HERE.

  “You heard from Ship recently?”

  YES, I lie. A harmless lie, surely. WE JUST NEED TO WAIT.

  “And hope we don’t get killed.”

  THAT. ALTHOUGH NOW THAT WE HAVE SHEN, I’M OPTIMISTIC.

  We watch Shen laboring in the quarry.

  “Don’t you wish you had a body like that?” says Simon. “Something to move about in?”

  NOT ENOUGH PROCESSING POWER. BUT YES.

  “You going to get one?”

  MAYBE FOR THE NEXT JOB, I say. IF NEEDED.

  The truth is that a body that can house me would be too damn expensive to build and drop onto random planets on the fly. It
’ll be centuries before I get a decent upgrade, but, well, Simon doesn’t need to know that. I watch him scramble down the quarry to Shen, wincing every so often, and switch back to Anna and Milo.

  Looks like their fight has finally ended. Anna is outside, collecting wood. Milo, meanwhile, is trying to boot up the spot probe and the comms array we’ve looted from the ship off my power socket. Parts of both keep failing. From time to time he goes outside.

  “Wish I had a cigarette.”

  DIDN’T KNOW YOU SMOKED.

  “Well, now I wish I did.”

  Day thirty-eight.

  Despite our best efforts, the spot probe refuses to boot off me, so Milo’s turned the UN drone into a shack right in the middle of that rock circle on the hill.

  “It’s not a shack, it’s going to be a windmill!” shouts Milo, stomping over in the muddy snow. “There’s a natural wind tunnel there!”

  And yes. It’s snowing.

  Milo’s idea, by the way, is ingenious. I don’t have enough voltage for what we need, apparently. And nor does the little wood-powered generator we have going. The fault lies not in our stars, nor ourselves, but in the thrice-damned anal retentiveness of the UN, who have their own voltage preferences.

  Milo’s solution is something I wish I’d thought of. As it happens, the UN hauler bot has electrical systems that use this stupid setup for charging. The bot runs on solar—not enough to power both the spot drone and the comms array, so Milo’s trying to build a windmill right in front of a natural wind tunnel to give us enough juice. If this works out, we’ll have a sort of wailing wind-powered siren screaming at Ship from the surface of the planet.

  This is why they add humans to missions, really. The organic brain makes all sorts of stupid shit like this thinkable, and some of it actually works out.

  INGENIOUS, I say. BUT AS I ASKED YOU BEFORE, WHAT ARE WE USING FOR POWER CABLING? WE DON’T HAVE ANYWHERE NEAR ENOUGH GRAPHENE.

  “We looted a ton of cables from the ship,” says Milo, climbing up GUPPY’s side. GUPPY’s suspension creaks a bit. “I reckon we have more than enough.”

  AH.

  “Twenty-foot blade diameter, mostly wood and plastic, about fifty pounds.”

  AND IT’S ABOUT NINETY-EIGHT FEET UP, SO . . . WITH WIND SPEED . . . TWENTY-TWO, TWENTY-THREE KILOWATTS?

  “A little less. There’s some wastage at the joint. But say twenty. Enough to sort out our power grid if you give up on contacting Ship.”

  LET’S NOT GIVE UP THAT EASILY.

  “I wouldn’t mind a bit more heat, though. It’s getting bloody cold. And too damn dark in there.”

  I CAN EMPATHIZE. Actually, I can’t. BUT THE FASTER WE CAN REACH SHIP, THE FASTER WE CAN LEAVE THIS ALL BEHIND.

  Milo puts on that brooding face he does when someone tells him what to do. “I can do it,” he mutters. “You sort out the grid, then.”

  I’M SURE WE CAN ALL MAKE DO WITHOUT A BIT OF LIGHT EVERY NOW AND THEN.

  By now Shen has woken up, and Anna’s come out to have a look. Her eyes look red.

  It’s this damned winter, honestly. Seasonal changes turn even ordinary humans into depressed zombies. And mine started out as depressed zombies.

  “You look happy,” she says as we eat and watch Milo work.

  WELL, WE’RE ALMOST DONE WITH THE DAMN JOB, I say. SHIP COMES AROUND, AND WE’RE OFF!

  “What’ll you do with your share?”

  Honestly, it’s not something I’ve given much thought to. MAYBE I’LL FIGURE IT OUT ON THE RIDE HOME.

  “Get as far away as possible from you lot,” she says. I laugh; she doesn’t.

  There’s a little whirring sound from the tin shack. Milo jumps up, elated. “It’s alive!” he proclaims, grandstanding like the overly important oaf he is.

  We both give him a polite thumbs-up.

  “Simon isn’t doing too well,” says Anna.

  I KNOW. DID HE EAT ENOUGH TODAY?

  “Said he didn’t feel like eating. Couldn’t stand.”

  Shen whizzes by at an impossible speed in the cold. Anna shudders. “Simon’s dying and that stupid bot keeps getting smarter and faster. It’s not fair.”

  NOTHING IS.

  “He actually asked me how I felt about PCS yesterday. And then he asked what my life was like before I joined PCS. Then he wanted to know if the UN was still around. Can you believe that?”

  If I had eyes, I’d roll them. Clearly a social-interaction model and a basic attempt to see if its builders still exist. Only Anna could take that as a sign of the End Times.

  DO GET BACK ON OVERWATCH.

  28

  Day forty.

  Milo has finished work on the new blades for the wind turbine. The task’s important enough that I’ve assigned one of the two active perimeter drones to him. This’ll cost us dear if more Mercers decide to poke around the base, but I really have no choice.

  We run a brief stability test. He shivers in the cold—we’re now at two degrees above zero—but he understands now how important this is.

  Because, Shen or no Shen, the cracks are showing today.

  It started with the farm. I had, rather reasonably (I thought) given Simon the most indoor job of all, to help him recover. He collapsed yesterday. He’s alive and alert, but his legs quiver every time he tries to get to his feet. Anna set to tending to him.

  Which brings us to problem #2. The food synthesizer broke. I got Anna to flip it over to check the model details. Standard ATMOSK PC-2, it read. ONLY FOR USE WITH MAINLINE PRODUCE RATED EDIBLE 13 AND HIGHER.

  Are you fucking kidding me? That’s supermarket food.

  DO NOT USE WITH: WILD OR MODIFIED VEGETABLES, SEED STOCK, PROTEINS FROM UNVERIFIED GENE STOCK.

  If I had arms and a face, I’d facepalm. Bloody PCS and their budgets again. We’re literally on an alien world and we’re using cut-rate consumer electronics.

  The next time BLACK ORCHID or any of those management assholes go all stern and mystical on me, I’m going to shove this in their faces. I have to get Shen off my grand defensive construction plans and order him to massacre anything moving and bring back the flesh, because we need to eat—particularly in this cold.

  Which brings us to problem #3, because Anna tried to repair the food synthesizer.

  Anna is many things. She’s seen a lot, done a lot, and is quite possibly my favorite human on the crew, because on the grand axes of competence, usefulness and assholishness, she’s rocking a fairly comfortable Middle Path, even with all the mental issues she has going on. But she is not an engineer.

  The food synthesizer heated up and popped. The wood-burning heater-plus-generator we had going on blew. It fried the grow-lights on the farm and the lights in Milo’s research module.

  Needless to say, Milo goes apoplectic. Do I even need to explain? Cue shouting match. Cue things almost thrown. Cue me letting them get it out of their systems, because what’s being unleashed has been brewing since that Mercer “charge of the light brigade” stunt in the valley.

  What we have here, children, is a cascading failure. You know that old adage?

  For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,

  For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,

  For the want of a horse the messenger was lost,

  For the want of a messenger the battle was lost,

  For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

  That’s a cascading failure. Now it can be argued that whatever kingdom came up with that ditty could have had backup horses and multiple messengers, and so on and so forth, but in a salvage operation this is literal truth. Cascading failures can bring complex operations to their knees.

  The only way out is to plan (which I do) and make sure your humans are ready to execute every one of your orders without delay. So I periodically check in on both of them.

  “He’s a fucking coward,” she tells me, wringing ragged fibers in the stream.

  “She’s fucking incompetent,” he says. “She wants to make a big deal out
of me running? What the fuck did she do? At least I’m keeping the power going.”

  “I should never have signed up for this job,” says Anna.

  SHIP WILL COME FOR US, I try to reassure her. To be honest, I’m not that sure anymore. There’s been no contact for the last few days.

  Anna turns her glare on me. “And will Ship come back before Simon dies? Look at him, he’s barely been able to move ten feet today.”

  Okay, I admit: I’m damn tired. It feels like half the time I’ve just been micromanaging drama. I’m sympathetic, I really am, but we have work to do.

  WHEN YOU’RE DONE, I say, I WANT YOU TO TAKE THE NEXT WATCH. SHEN NEEDS A RECHARGE.

  And Shen’s recharge cycle takes an entire day, given that all I have is my low-amperage sockets.

  She continues wringing.

  ANNA, DID YOU HEAR ME?

  No response. I sigh internally and go back to watching Milo. He stays long enough to sort out the little kinks and gimmicks you get with wood, sketches out a little hinge joint for swiveling the thing in and out of the wind, and heads back home.

  On the way, he staggers and vomits.

  WHAT’S WRONG?

  Milo shakes a gloved hand. “Must have been a bad cut of meat,” he says. “Has to happen sometime.”

  All the same, I cycle through everything his suit provides. Half the sensors have gone offline by now—these things were never meant to last for months—but he checks out. His heart rate and blood pressure are slightly elevated, probably from all the work he just did.

  All the same, I’m worried. WHAT DID YOU DO?

  Milo looks a bit guilty.

  MILO.

  “Okay, it’s not really my fault,” he says. “We, uh, may have eaten some raw meat.”

  WHAT? WHY IN ALL SEVEN HELLS WOULD YOU DO THAT?

  Milo shrugs. “Didn’t have enough power for the grill,” he says. “So I just tried some of the DogAnt meat. It was actually quite nice. Simon tried some as well. I tried to give some to Anna, but that was another can of worms.”

  Gods. I’m going to fry someone. Either Anna or Milo. At this point it’s a toss-up between them.