Starship Defender: Beyond Human Space

by Michael Keats

  He raised both hands, palms out. “Don’t look at me. I’ve lost contact a second ago.”

  He tried to connect the cameras from the ship, but none of them worked. The explosion had damaged the cameras, and probably the pilot too. If he hadn’t survived, we had no way to know if he was working for someone.

  If he’d committed suicide, he was unlikely to be alone.

  The Defender, the best ship in human history, could well be the target of sabotage. All our ships added together wouldn’t be able to take her back if someone stole her from us.

  “Commander O’Donnell,” the admiral’s annoyed voice said through the communications system. “Return to the Defender at once and meet me immediately.”

  He didn’t sound satisfied by my heroism or by the fact that I’d saved the girl and stopped the bad guy. Did he also expect me to buy some souvenirs on my way back?

  “Someone’s in trouble…” Harry sang.

  Yeah, I probably was. Perhaps leaving the ship as the second-in-command hadn’t been the best idea in the world.

  I can’t help it, though. I have the soul of a knight: I see a damsel in distress, and I jump into battle to face dragons, starships, or angry mothers-in-law. I’m not doing everything in my power if I’m on the bridge while others do the fighting.

  If I didn’t change my attitude, I was going to end up in a lot more trouble with the admiral.

  And I’ve never changed my attitude for anyone.

  Chapter 6

  Admiral Graff had left the bridge at the hands of the subcommander, so I had to meet him in sick bay. Harry had spent the whole trip back to the Defender telling me that I was in trouble and asking for my preferences in terms of ropes and nooses. A fairly motivating prospect. I’d ignored him without causing any short-circuits aboard the shuttle, so I had reasons to be proud of myself.

  The Defender’s sick bay was your typical portable hospital aboard a starship: designed both for treatment and for medical research, the Navy had spent a fortune in its equipment and personnel. We had rooms with beds and lots of machines, but also individual rooms for officers and civilians. The common crew doesn’t complain about being dumped into a shared room, but officers and contractors do. If you don’t complain, you don’t get preferential treatment, and the crew rarely complained about anything.

  Admiral Graff was in one of the research wings. He’d locked the area up and placed several guards on the door. I didn’t know what he was up to, but it wasn’t too promising for me. I’d just returned from an unauthorized leave after trying to save one of our civilians. It sounded awesome on paper and that’s the kind of initiative officers must have, but admirals sometimes turn too cautious with age.

  I’d admired Graff in his early years as an officer, but I didn’t know if he was still the brave naval man I’d once known. If he wasn’t, my career was screwed.

  I knocked on the door and waved at the sensor, but it didn’t open. Commanders don’t need to wait for an invitation to talk to the captain or admiral in charge, but I was forced to wait like a common ensign on one of the admiral’s bad mood days.

  “Eat your gun and forget me!” Admiral Graff shouted from inside the room. “I don’t want to see another stupid uniform parading his muscles around my ship. And tell the captain of marines not to send anyone else!”

  Whew. For a minute there, I’d expected his words to refer to me. I identified myself and he let me in.

  Admiral Graff was seated at a simple rounded white polymeric table. His right hand held a glass of scotch and he had an empty bottle to his left. He’d been drinking his way to an early grave, but he hadn’t succeeded yet.

  “Lucky it’s you, O’Donnell.” Admiral Graff said. “Don’t want to see another uniform again. They think I’m old and losing it, and they keep coming here in case I need their help.” He let out a coarse laugh with hints of frustration in it. “These kids think they’re playing toy soldiers. Yes, sir! No, sir! Permission to shit, sir! Don’t they get tired of so much shouting? I’m half-deaf after a couple of hours.”

  This was the Graff I remembered: blunt, direct, and always fierce and ready for a fight, even if it was against our own men. He was a fearsome and direct fighter in battle, and he despised times of peace more than he despised his own mother in law.

  “It’s part of your job, sir,” I said. “Talking to the uniforms and hearing their shouts. That’s why they’re paying you more than other officers: to compensate for deafness.” Wait; I sounded less formal than I should’ve. I was spending too much time with Harry.

  “I should ask for a pay cut, then, and cut the hours with the toy soldiers.” Graff leaned back in his chair and placed both hands over his stomach. “I shouldn’t have accepted this mission.”

  Hooke, the captain of marines, entered the room and stood up straight in front of Graff. She didn’t even look at us; her gaze was lost somewhere ahead of her, like marines sometimes did. There’s something intrinsically human about making eye contact, and marines are like machines both when fighting and when addressing officers.

  “What is it now?” Admiral Graff said, uninterested.

  “We’ve searched the civilian’s belongings, sir!” she said off the top of her lungs. Graff took a finger to his ear and tried to stop the sound from getting in. “They’re as clean as they’ll ever be.”

  Graff nodded and waved her away. “Excellent,” he said, “but please lower the tone. I’m not deaf yet.”

  “Sorry, sir!” she said, equally loudly. “Won’t happen again, sir.”

  Graff dismissed her as soon as he could. She glanced at me with some resentment: I’d broken the regulations and left the ship. The second-in-command isn’t supposed to act unpredictably, and she was the kind of woman who disliked all forms of unpredictability. But I’m sure that she’d liked the hanging: it followed the regulations, after all. She was a hardened woman, and she’d been trained to follow orders, no matter how much she disagreed with them. An admirable trait, but things didn’t work the same way in the Navy. We had more leeway for improvisation.

  Or at least that’s what I hoped. Was I in trouble with the admiral so soon?

  “I don’t know how other officers manage,” Graff said as soon as she’d closed the door. “So loud and so… robotic. Does she even have a brain in there?” He shook his head and rubbed his ears with his palms to try to recover from the shouts. “Now what were we talking about?”

  I was too worried about my own fate to continue the conversation. I’d left the ship, chased after a shuttle, and faced enemy fire. I should’ve left the task to the marines or to some of our pilots, but I couldn’t help it. I jumped into action more than my survival instincts would’ve liked.

  “Sir, about my boarding a shuttle without permission―” I began.

  Admiral Graff groaned and raised a palm in the air to get me to shut up. “I’ll stand the toy soldiers calling me sir,” he said, “but my ass is clean enough and hearing all this sir nonsense from you only unsettles my stomach. We’ve known each other for years, O’Donnell. Don’t act like one of the trained monkeys.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “but the regulations―”

  Admiral Graff tilted his body sideways and let out a loud, explosive and arrogant fart. It was dedicated to my words. “There,” he said. “You sir me, I fart. I fart on the regulations, fart on Fleet Command, and fart on this bloody crew full of toy soldiers. I don’t care if someone trained you to bark sir and salute at baboons wearing golden epaulets, but I need someone with brains to keep me grounded.”

  Wow. I’d almost forgotten Graff’s peculiarities. I didn’t remember him as scatological as he was now.

  And no officer had ever farted at me. What was I supposed to do? Salute at him and congratulate him for his rear’s fire power?

  Graff roared in laughter and smashed a hand onto the table. “Come on, O’Donnell!” he said. “I’m the law aboard this vessel and I demand that you act like a bloody human being. If I’d want
ed a mindless drone for a commander, I’d have picked one of the toy soldiers.”

  Guess it was a good sign. He wasn’t going to hang me or to demote me. I gulped in relief and nodded.

  “Good. Now that we’ve moved stupid formalities out of the way…” He raised an empty glass of bourbon in the air and pointed at it. “Mind opening the cabinet by the door and bringing another bottle? Get something strong, for goodness’ sake. I’m tired of soft drinks. And bring a glass for yourself, man.”

  “I can’t―” I almost called him sir again, but I stopped myself on time. He raised a proud eyebrow at me. I’m sure he had another fart ready. “I’m on duty.”

  “And so am I!” Graff laughed loudly and knocked twice on the table. “But I won’t accuse you for drinking, will I?”

  “Thank you, s―” I stopped myself on time. I was too used to formalities and too unaccustomed to an officer’s farts. “Thanks, but no.”

  “Take a seat, then.” Graff waved lazily at a chair across the table and I sat down. “No drinking, calling me sir every single sentence you say, and wearing the standard uniform without any customizations. No wonder the ship keeps calling you Decaf.”

  Harry wasn’t exactly the kind of ship AI that officers wanted. He acted insubordinate, he didn’t know how to use his own functions, and generally had the mind of a pirate. He had nevertheless helped me save Dr. Thompson, and he was far more helpful than the constant obliging nature of prior ship avatars.

  Sexy holographic women sometimes make male officers think about unofficerly matters whenever their avatars wear excessively short skirts. Harry’s appearance posed no danger in that respect.

  “Have you talked with Harry?” I said.

  “Of course I have! I’m the bloody officer in command! I’ve talked to the ship, to the captain of marines, and even to the Pope for this mission. Everyone wants to tell me how to do my job and nobody cares if I’m doing it properly or not. Can’t complain about Harry, though. He’s a bastard, but he’ll do you good. You need some waking up.”

  Awesome. So the insubordinate ship AI had gained the admiral’s favor, and now I needed to wake up. Graff was right, but I couldn’t see beyond my own nose back then. I was a bloody honorable idiot who followed every single rule in the world, except when damsels in distress got the better of me and I jumped to their rescue.

  Admiral Graff took out a colorful plastic gun that imitated modern guns. He told me that they’d found it in the abductor’s power. The engineers had made a background check: he was clean and he’d been pre-selected as one of the civilian contractors. It hadn’t been a problem linked to our security, but to the Navy’s hiring procedures. Rather motivating for us, but it made me wonder if we had any other undesirable guests on board. We wouldn’t know until we were struck again.

  The plastic gun seemed harmless, but it had been home printed and allowed him to shoot at anyone he wanted. It had gone through all our security measures because the man had brought it in pieces. Our security men’s limited spatial intelligences hadn’t allowed them to combine the pieces together or to ask what they were for. Nobody had seen anything suspicious in the man, not even when he’d started walking around the ship without permission. It was the first day, and people got lost fairly often. Marines couldn’t shout at civilians whenever they got lost. When scientists get scared, their brains stop working properly. Every psychology course in Naval school teaches you not to mistreat civilian contractors because it reduces the chances that the Navy will be able to hire any in the future.

  Graff took off his watch, extended it on the table and activated its holographic capabilities to show a screen. “Sorry about the quality; it’s an old model and the wife doesn’t want more gadgets around. I sometimes wonder if she’s the admiral and I’m the wife.” He laughed out loud and knocked on the table, but quickly became serious again and showed me several images of the abductor’s autopsy.

  The first pictures showed a man with serious external burns and wounds and blood of a strange blue color. Once the doctors had dug further, they’d found a brain that extended beyond the skull and down the spine, a predominantly carnivorous digestive system, and veins and arteries that didn’t follow natural patterns. This man was either a mutant or something else, even though he’d looked human until the very minute the doctors had opened him up.

  Graff told me about the concealed shuttles. Apparently, some of the engineers had decided to add safety mechanisms in case some of the officers needed to flee. Admirals need a way out because they’re too expensive to replace and their widows and widowers get high pensions whenever they fall in battle. Nobody had informed the admiral or me about the shuttles; it had been a problem with communication procedures. The man had worked on the Defender and on adapting alien tech, so he knew more about the ship than we did.

  The man’s interest in the doctor hadn’t been a coincidence either. She was a rock star and everyone knew it. Without her help, future versions of the Defender or improvements to the ship would go much slower. He didn’t kill her, though, because he needed her alive for something. The Admiral didn’t know why. We wouldn’t get any information from the man now that he was dead.

  “The bastard immolated himself,” the admiral said. “He didn’t want to be caught alive or for us to find his remains, but the shuttle absorbed most of the explosion. He didn’t expect his own shuttles to have such powerful absorbing properties.” He grinned with satisfaction. He’d always liked the bad guys to end up with a karmic kick in their rears, and this was the closest thing to karma.

  That explained the explosion aboard the shuttle, and now we were back to not knowing what was going on. Someone disliked our new tech and considered us unworthy of exploring a larger sector of the universe. Everyone had watched films where aliens didn’t want humanity to become a galactic power, but what kind of idiot believed in hostile alien life that would worry about a silly planet like Earth? We were insignificant in the universe; nobody had a reason to notice us.

  “Did the man leave any messages?” I asked.

  “No messages,” the admiral said. “Just the bloody distress signal that doesn’t make any sense. Did he want the Russians to run in his aid? They’re working with us! Curse this bloody mission that nobody wanted to lead, curse the rubbish we’ve stolen from aliens, curse our bloody scientist thieves who can’t even steal technology without placing us in danger, and curse everything else. I couldn’t bring enough drinks for the trip, and now I’m forced to stand the toy soldiers who call themselves marines. Marines weren’t so obsessed with rules back in the day.”

  He continued talking about the Navy and progress, with a blend of nostalgia and frustration. I’d heard of his personal circumstances, of how his eldest son had had severe health problems and he’d been granted special permission to have a third. The man was frustrated and he had stopped speaking to his wife, and now he’d expected a heroic mission to return him to the life he’d enjoyed when he’d been younger.

  Problems and difficulties shape a man’s mind and way of thinking, and this man had gone through more than enough. I didn’t like the prospect of serving under someone who’d lost the enthusiasm to live and the thirst to achieve the unachievable, but I hoped to find the legendary Graff hidden beneath the layers of fat and indulgence. This was a historical moment. We didn’t know what we’d face out there. We needed our best heroes to avoid messing up too much.

  Graff stopped talking about himself and measured me. We hadn’t talked much in years and he wanted to know if he could rely on me. Captains need to trust their commanders blindly, and men can change a lot throughout the years. I’d been nothing but a frightened boy back when we’d served together. I didn’t know what had pushed him to trust me for this mission, but I was glad to work with him. He was burnt out; enough to give me a less idealistic view of the Navy.

  “Lucky that you saved the girl.” Admiral Graff studied my reaction to see if I was interested in Dr. Thompson. Oh, I’m sure that Harry had r
un to him with the story about my love for her. I remained serious and tried not to move any of my facial muscles. He seemed satisfied. “I wouldn’t want to go into space without her brains.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard,” the admiral said. He chuckled to himself and took a deep breath. “Young love… You can’t leave it aside, and you can’t forget about it. Then they turn into fat cows and you end up joining deadly missions to avoid family time. But I won’t spoil the surprise for you: falling in love is perfect… until you sign the marriage contract. What about you, O’Donnell? Why haven’t you sold your life to some demon?”

  I hadn’t been lucky in my latest relationship. She’d looked for things I hadn’t been able to offer her: a rank, a greater fortune, and a better relationship with my family to access their fortune. My family’s fortune had played a part in her becoming interested in me, but I’d been dumb enough not to notice. Some women flung themselves into my arms as soon as they heard my last name.

  “I’m a romantic, I guess,” I said.

  Graff snorted. “Won’t do you any good,” he said. “Must change this soon enough.” He activated the intercom in his watch. “Harry, are we planning any stops in popular spaceports?” He emphasized the word popular in case the AI didn’t understand that he was referring to ports with morally questionable people.

  “Cheap women and cheap alcohol?” Harry ran holographically through the closed door and rubbed his hands together. “When can we go?” He stole a laugh from the admiral.

  Harry mentioned that he’d met the admiral several months before, back when he was still being tested. He’d even borrowed some of the man’s behaviors.

  We were soon interrupted by a message from the bridge that Harry relayed to us. We’d detected a nearby ship, but she had no flag, no visible indications of her country, and she didn’t respond to our communications.

  All our allies with space technology had agreed not to get too close to the Defender for safety matters: we were heavily armed with advanced tech, and nobody wanted us to test our weapons systems with them. None of our allies would be dumb enough to break their word and approach us… unless they were in serious problems.