There was a head that was recognisably human. It was pale, bald and covered in dark brown blotches and deep, sore, wrinkles. Its eyes were closed. Beneath the head, entwined within tubing and with only occasional patches of pallid skin left exposed by the metal and plastic enclosures that covered most of it, sat an unmoving, bloated body.
As she examined the head, she could just make out the ghost of the captain she’d seen in pictures and the occasional video announcement, but corrupted almost beyond recognition by whatever had been done to him.
Hal was the first to speak. He’d stood beside her, presumably as lost for words as she’d been, until now. “What in all the hells is that?”
“That is the captain of Dawn and you will show the proper respect,” Patel hissed as he detached himself from the other officers and pointed down at the occupant.
“What has happened to him?” Arla asked.
“He has been treated,” Patel responded flatly.
“For what?”
Patel froze as, it seemed, he considered his words. But it was Hal who provided the answer. “This is some sort of life support unit. How long has he been here?”
The thing in the centre of the room stirred. “ALWAYS,” it rasped, its metallic voice emerging from speakers around the room, its lips immobile.
“What does he mean?” Arla said, hardly able to tear her eyes away from the horror that called itself captain.
“This is Captain Akemi Nakajima.”
“Impossible,” Arla responded before turning to Hal. “That was the name of the first commander of Dawn.”
Hal shrugged. “Maybe he inherited his name like you did, weren’t you Arla Mirova because that was what some dead engineer was called?”
“It is true that we follow that tradition with crew,” Patel said, “but officers are known by their birth-name. There has only ever been one captain of Dawn - this is he.”
Arla’s head was spinning and yet she instinctively knew Patel was speaking the truth. She’d never tried to imagine what a human would look like if it could be kept alive for 1350 years, but if she had, this construct of flesh, bone, metal and plastic would be exactly what she’d come up with.
So many questions burst into her mind as it began working again, like a wheel stuck in the snow that suddenly finds purchase and spins out of control. How? would have been a good one, but, in fact, the first word that came out of her mouth was “why?”.
Patel opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a wheezing sound from behind him, before the robotic voice of the captain echoed around the room again. “DUTY,” it rasped.
“You do not know how close this mission came to failure in the early years,” Patel said quietly. “When Dawn launched, Captain Nakajima was a strong man of early middle age and he used his experience and power of command to negotiate those hazards. The ecology of the valleys almost collapsed several times, but he oversaw the sometimes drastic actions that were taken for the greater good.”
Arla didn’t like the sound of this. The people of the valleys remembered many legends of ancient times and the earliest of these told of the cleansings that happened when the Goddess sent angels down to purge the unworthy. Had Nakajima ordered a culling to give the ecology of the valleys time to repair itself? Had the crew of the time gone along with this? Wielding advanced weapons against a defenceless people; their people?
She realised that Patel was still speaking in his slow, ponderous, style. “He was an old man when the great crisis came as Dawn transited an interstellar debris field,” he said, as if reciting a religious text. “The asteroid was hit by a proto-comet travelling at such speed it could not be deflected by our tactical lasers. The impact tore apart the command centre, causing the death of the crew and we were forced to recruit new crew from the people of the valleys. This, incidentally, is the source of the tradition of reusing their names - we honour them thus.”
“Look, we don’t have time for a history lesson,” Arla said, suddenly remembering Relentless’ ultimatum, “we’re almost out of time. We came here to ask the captain, but is he even in command?” She gestured down to the unmoving thing in the centre of the room.
“He was irreplaceable,” Patel said, “so we found ways to extend his life. Little by little, his biological systems were first supported and then replaced. He remained the best man for the job over the centuries and then the need for command abated as we drifted through interstellar space. He was kept alive, but asleep, for a thousand years before being woken to see us through the end of the mission.”
Arla rounded on the officer, her patience at an end. “Are you telling me that no-one in the history of the mission was considered capable of taking over to allow him to die with dignity?”
“PAIN,” echoed the captain’s voice. “DUTY.”
Patel shook his head sadly. “No, after the crew was lost and we were forced to replace them with valley people, no-one has been judged an adequate substitute.”
“The crew? Why not just promote an officer?”
The now familiar paralysis gripped Lieutenant Commander Patel. The portly figure of Lieutenant Santos stepped forward and put her hand on his shoulder, shepherding him away, before returning to stand beside Arla and Hal.
“Officers are not equipped to make command decisions of a life and death nature,” she said methodically.
Arla shrugged. She felt as though she was flailing around on the edge of understanding something significant.
“ROBOTS,” wheezed the captain.
Yes, that explains it, ACE said inside Hal’s head. I’ve been detecting strange electromagnetic signatures inside this room. I assumed it came from the machinery keeping Nakajima alive. I was wrong, it’s them.
“What?” Arla spat. “The officers are robots? How is that possible? You don’t look like any robots I’ve ever seen.”
Hal put his hand on her arm and she spun round, her eyes wide. “They’re androids,” he said. “I’ve seen them on vidramas. Never thought I’d see one with my own eyes, though.”
She pulled away from him. “I don’t believe you, no robot can be made to look so much like a human.”
With infinite sadness, R.Santos placed her hand behind her ear and, with a gentle tug, her face swung outwards exposing a mass of circuitry and moving metal.
Arla retched and backed away. “What the hell is this?”
“I’m sorry,” Santos said when she’d re-applied her face, “we didn’t wish to reveal ourselves until the mission ended. We have always communicated with the crew through the displays because our disguise isn’t quite perfect and you would, at some point, have worked out our nature.”
“So all that stuff about protecting yourself from germs was made up?” Hal asked.
Santos shook her head. “No, that was to protect the captain.”
Arla regarded the android as dispassionately as possible. Was there just a hint of plastic about the skin, a touch of artifice in the colour? Or was that just the 20:20 vision of hindsight? “So you kept him alive because you needed a human to make command decisions?”
“Yes,” Santos said, “any decision that involves potential harm to humans must be made by a human. The first law of robotics strictly prohibits us making such choices.”
“You’re stretching your definition of human to the limit with him,” Hal said, pointing at the captain.
Don’t be a fool, said the voice in his head, for all the metal and plastic, there remains a human mind to command them. That is all they need. All we need.
“PAIN, DUTY, HELP, END”
“What does he mean?” Arla asked.
Santos sighed. “Our medical interventions are causing him ...discomfort... It would be kindest for him to be allowed to ...d...i...e....” Her speech ended in a long slur.
They can’t do it, no robot can end the life of a human, not even to spare their suffering.
“I’ll do it,” Hal said. He went to step down into the central area, but R.Patel blocked his way.
“I cannot allow you to do that,” he said.
Hal pushed at Patel’s arm, but it was immovable.
First law again. They cannot, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
“Then what the hell do you want us to do? You can’t end it for him, but you won’t let us do it either!” Hal snapped.
“CODE,” the voice of the captain said.
“What does he mean?” Arla asked. She looked down at the thing that had been Nakajima, but it remained as still as death.
“PROBE. CODE.”
“I do not know what the captain means,” Santos said, “perhaps he is delirious.”
Arla watched him. How sad that such a great man had been eroded into a monstrosity that sat, like a huge vivisection experiment, eking out its last minutes in utter ruin. To be appointed captain of one of humankind’s greatest achievements, the Ark-ship Dawn, he must have been extraordinary. And somehow she respected the bravery, determination and sense of duty that had seen him endure centuries of pain to bring them safely to their mission’s end. A mission that had started when Dawn was new; when the dome was pristine. The captain was the oldest thing on Dawn, save the asteroid itself, older even than the equipment that had carved out its interior, older than the probe that sat in the wasteland on the asteroid’s surface.
And then she had it. Six characters scratched into an ancient probe as a test of initiative and bravery by a mysterious predecessor.
“I have the code,” she said, as certain as she’d ever been that she understood what he needed. “Do you wish me to use it?”
This time, there was a hint of animation to the pallid face. “YES. WAIT.” There was a short pause, then a flurry of red lights and the room was filled with an urgent buzzing. The robot officers sped to the consoles controlling the medical equipment. “Prepare to reboot,” said one.
“NOW. CODE.” the captain rasped desperately.
The robots turned, as one, to look at her, their expressions a mix of panic and accusation. Patel began moving back, as if to disable her. Hal pulled on his arm, feeling himself being yanked along.
The alarms bellowed, red lights bounced off the walls, the captain looked up at Arla.
“Code AURORA,” she said. Instantly, the wails settled into a quiet, constant, tone at the edge of human hearing.
Captain Akemi Nakajima kept his gaze fixed on Arla as his mouth, his real mouth, moved in fractions of an inch. A sound as of choking came from his throat, followed by a gob of blue which ran down his chin. He spoke in a voice unused in centuries.
“Thank you,” he whispered, forcing every syllable. “My watch is ended. Arla Farmer, you have command.”
Takeover
It wasn’t merely the cramped conditions in the transport that made Chancellor Lucius feel uncomfortable. He had the mental resources to deal with physical pain; it was the fact that he was sitting yards away from the forty-eight crack marines sent by Indi to subdue the people on the asteroid if they didn’t submit.
So much capacity for death concentrated in such a small space. Lucius was also certain that the captain of Relentless wanted his diplomatic mission to fail, thereby giving an excuse to send the troops in and gain possession of whatever the mysterious dome hid. Lucius knew more than Indi did about the asteroid, that, at least, was one source of satisfaction, and he felt eager to discover for himself if what he’d learned was correct. But he couldn’t see any way out of this that didn’t involve bloodshed on one side or the other. Or both.
Perhaps, above all else, it was the loss of any sort of control over events that bothered him most. He felt as though he were on the tip of a missile that he’d aimed himself, but which he had no way of guiding. Events were moving quickly, even though there was no sign of activity on the asteroid’s surface and there had been no further contact.
Navigator Bex sat to one side of him and Tech Nareshkumar on the other. They were strapped in to keep them firmly seated during the weightless flight, with only their feet feeling secure in their magboots.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” whispered Bex. She was gripping her knees to keep her hands from shaking.
Lucius leaned towards her. “As do I,” he said. “We have little option now other than to see this played through. I do not need to remind you how high the stakes are.”
“Perhaps not,” Bex grunted, “but you’d better be right, because if this isn’t what you say it is, we’re risking being fried for nothing more than a ball of rock.”
“I am right about that, at least,” Lucius said with a certainty he almost felt. “This is the ark ship launched thirteen centuries ago: I have been waiting for it.”
“Maybe, but so what? It’s ancient history - what does it have that makes this risk worth taking? I mean, I’m sure it would fascinate an archaeologist, but what’s in it for us?”
Lucius leaned closer so that he was whispering directly into Bex’s ear. “Technology. In some ways, my dear fellow conspirator, we are more backward than the people on that vessel. If it contains what I expect, then at the very least we must make sure the queen doesn’t get her hands on it.”
“Weapons tech?” Bex murmured.
“Not directly, no.”
Bex shrugged. “Alright old man, keep your secret for now, but your balls are on the line if this is nothing more than a wild goose chase.”
“Fair enough,” Lucius responded, smiling.
“We’re coming in to land,” Nareshkumar said, gesturing towards the front of the transport where the pilots sat. Unlike on Relentless, the view of the space outside was coming directly through the plasteel viewports at the front of the cabin and Lucius could see the grey-brown disk of Dawn rising as the ship’s nose dipped.
One of the pilots turned in his seat and looked back into the relative darkness of the passenger compartment. His eyes sought and found Lucius. “Chancellor, our instructions are for you to contact the asteroid as we approach. Join me please.”
Lucius unbuckled himself and stepped clumsily in his magboots towards the cockpit before gratefully strapping himself into a seat immediately behind the pilots. “Thank you, sergeant,” he said, before closing the contact and starting to speak.
“We’re receiving a message from the transport, captain,” Kiama said.
“Stop calling me that,” Arla snapped. “If anyone from the crew should be captain it’s you, not me.”
Her first action, once she’d recovered from the initial shock of Nakajima’s death, had been to leave the cabin and to unlock the command centre. Comms was now fully manned by crew who’d been stunned by a message from Lieutenant Commander Patel that proclaimed Arla Farmer as the new captain following the death of her predecessor.
Kiama turned to her from her seat at a console. “You’re the one the officers voted for, not me.”
Before Arla had left the captain’s cabin, Patel had extracted a promise from her that she wouldn’t reveal the fact that the officers were androids. Frankly, she’d intended to do exactly that but realised the wisdom of Patel’s advice. This wasn’t the time to turn the command structure on its head. On the other hand, maintaining the lie was giving Arla a headache.
“Put the transport through.”
Kiama’s fingers played across the console before a chorus of beeps heralded the incoming transmission.
“...is transport 3 Relentless, signalling the asteroid vessel known as Dawn.”
Arla pressed a switch on the arm of the watch officer’s chair, breathed deeply and spoke. “This is Dawn, we are receiving you. Why are you on an approach vector? You haven’t been given permission to land.”
“My name is Chancellor Lucius of the Vanis Federation, lawful rulers of this system and its neighbours. Who am I addressing? I wish to speak to your commander.”
“I am Arla Farmer,” she responded, her voice shaking, “and I command here.”
Static, then: “Will you reciprocate a video feed?”
“Acknowledged
, transmitting protocols,” Arla responded, nodding to Kiama.
“Your encryption is antiquated, but our engineers are working on establishing a feed.”
Kiama punched in one of the command displays. It was filled with static that, moment by moment, began to coalesce into the recognisable features of a human head.
The man on the screen was middle-aged with a receding hairline and a short beard that was more grey than brown. At first glance, his expression looked friendly enough and Arla could imagine that face breaking into a laugh easily, but, as it resolved itself and, she assumed, her image appeared on his display, it hardened.
“What is this?” he snapped. “This is a grave matter that must be discussed with the commander of your vessel, not a young girl!”
“You are speaking to the commander, Chancellor. My name is Arla Farmer and I am the captain of Dawn.” Anger gave her strength and the face paused, as if considering.
“No matter,” Lucius said, “since my demands are simple enough. You will deliver the prisoner to the axial airlock or we will take him ourselves.”
Arla settled back down in her chair, partly because she wanted to look assured and confident, and partly because she didn’t believe her legs would hold her weight for much longer.
“We will consider your request.”
“There is no time left for consideration,” Lucius responded before she’d had chance to draw another breath. “We will be landing in approximately twenty minutes - I presume you use the same time units as us - have the prisoner ready or we will send in our marines to retrieve him.”
Arla gestured to Kiama and the feed closed. Comms was silent but for the regular chirps and beeps of the equipment racks. A dozen people watched her silently.
Arla turned to look at Hal, standing in the shadows at the back of the comms centre. His eyes met hers, his expression impassive. He gave a slight nod.
Robot Empire: Dawn Exodus: A Science Fiction Adventure Page 9