Chaos Quarter

by Welch, David

  At least that’s what he remembered from his Introductory Astroengineering course back at Annapolis. He’d always been great at flying these ships, but couldn’t for the life of him explain the details of how they actually flew. Whatever the scientific mumbo-jumbo behind it all, by fiddling with the lines he would reduce, fractionally, the amount of hydrogen entering the inverter. It wasn’t much, but enough to change the patterns of protons leaving his engines.

  “The unidentified vessel has jumped into the system,” the computer advised him.

  “How long until they reach us?” Rex asked.

  “Three hours at their current speed.”

  He nodded, backing out of the maintenance closet, into the port corridor that ran from the common area to the cargo bay. He headed for the bridge, passing Chakrika as she fed Quintus on the couch. Second was sitting at the table, watching intently. Her head leaned slightly forward, as if she were trying to figure something out.

  Why is she even back here? She usually spent her day standing stock-still on the bridge.

  “Second, what are you doing?” he asked.

  She turned, not registering for a moment. She seemed to snap out of it, shaking her head as if to clear out cobwebs.

  “I…I was observing this primitive woman and her offspring,” she said in her standard monotone.

  “Stop with this ‘primitive’ crap,” Chakrika snapped.

  “Yes,” Rex agreed. “Her name is Chakrika, and that’s not her son.”

  “As you wish. I was observing Chakrika feeding the juvenile,” Second repeated.

  Something about this seemed off, even for her. Had he gotten so used to her already that something could seem off about a person who defined “off?”

  “Why were you watching her?” Rex asked.

  Second moved to speak and then stopped. She looked down at the table, staring at it in thought. It took a long moment for an answer to come.

  “I do not remember,” she spoke.

  “You don’t remember?” Chakrika asked, burping the little guy.

  “No. I do not remember why I was watching. Did you instruct me to watch?” Second asked, looking to Rex.

  “No,” Rex replied. “Are you all right?”

  “I believe so,” she replied. “I suffered a blow to the back of my head when those four primitives were on the ship.”

  Rex thought it over for a moment.

  “Go to the bridge. If this happens again, tell me the minute you realize it,” he ordered.

  Second disappeared down the corridor. Rex walked up to where Chakrika sat. She smiled and handed the baby to him. He hadn’t expected that, but took Quintus into his arms as gently as he could. The boy’s eyelids drooped heavily.

  “Hi,” Rex said, gently rubbing the child’s chest. “Sorry I made you breathe all that nasty carbon dioxide.”

  Chakrika covered up and got to her feet. Quintus’s eyes closed, and he squirmed before settling into sleep.

  “Hid him in your clothes hamper, under a towel. Little guy slept right through it,” Chakrika said, taking the baby back.

  “Lucky kid,” Rex said. “We gotta go. Our old friends have arrived.”

  “You think your tricks will work?” Chakrika asked hopefully.

  “Yes,” he replied confidently. “Once we shake them, we’ll get right back to our long, boring journey.”

  “Boring is good,” Chakrika replied. “Isn’t that right, Quintus?”

  He continued sleeping, so Rex waved his tiny hand in agreement. Chakrika smiled broadly.

  “Even he says so!”

  * * *

  Blair had heard of places like this amongst the primitives, places where a person spent their entire life inside of metal. Places that were giant machines. This one stuck out from a mid-sized asteroid, its metal parts stretching into space like some cold, gross mockery of a skeleton.

  “The trail remains cold,” Flynn’s voice informed him. He was in the next pod over, his soft, feminine voice ducted through by auditory canals that amplified sound. The sifters had traced the protons to here and then recoiled in horror. Dozens of mechanical ships buzzed around this dwelling like angry bees swarming to protect a hive. So many particles floated through space that they’d lost the trail.

  He’d been here for hours, waiting. The primitives continued to hail his War-beast, expecting some sort of reply. He had no desire to speak with them.

  “The sifters cannot find anything that matches the trail,” Flynn spoke, breaking his thoughts.

  “They are still here?” Blair asked.

  “They must be,” Flynn replied.

  “They must be apprehended,” Blair spoke. “Ready the Warriors and the Landing-beasts!”

  Minutes later the Landing-beasts detached from the War-beast, blasting toward the metallic hovel. Blair watched them land. Around him the War-beast groaned as it readied its defenses. Blair could only imagine the chaos the Warriors would sow amongst the primitives. It would only be a matter of time.

  The War-beast wheezed, “They are hurting me!”

  “Destroy them,” Blair replied.

  The War-beast maneuvered. Spinctering orifices on its skin blasted clouds of acid into space at high speeds. It coated fighters as they attacked, dissolving the metal on contact. Metal spheres hurled outward by small rail-guns smashed into other ships, tearing through them. Hulks of fighters floated through space. One drifted toward the War-beast. A tail-like tentacle whipped from the surface carapace, batting away the incoming hulk.

  A final desperate attack came from a corvette-sized ship, blasting away at the front of the War-beast with a pulse cannon. Shots of white pelted the front of the beast, ripping into the metalized chitin protecting the internal organs.

  Blair heard the beast roar in pain. He grasped a protruding villus in the command pod, squeezing it. A large sphere of ultra-dense steel flung forward, smashing the corvette into dozens of twisted shards. The pieces sailed harmlessly past the beast. Blair smiled contentedly and detached the ocular tendrils from his eyes.

  “Are we receiving signal from the Talker?” Blair asked.

  “Yes. He reports that the Warriors are engaged in battle with armed primitives,” Flynn replied.

  “Have we lost any?” Blair asked.

  “One,” Flynn replied. “They have ‘euthanized’ several dozen primitives.”

  “Have they sighted the ship in question?” Blair asked.

  A moment paused as Flynn spoke with the Talker. A starfish-sized creature implanted on the back of a chosen Warrior, it intertwined with the nervous system of its carrier and transmitted what that Warrior saw via radio waves back to the War-beast.

  “No, they are still looking,” Flynn spoke. “I will review what they have seen to this point to be sure.”

  “Do that,” Blair said, stepping out of his pod. Warriors were not bred for intelligence. It never hurt to double-check with them.

  “And if the ship is not there?” Flynn shouted as Blair moved away.

  “Return the warriors and destroy everything.”

  Do not keep slaves or tolerate those who do.

  -Joseph Davidson, Ethics of a Free Man, 2060

  Tirana System, Chaos Quarter

  Standard Date 12/09/2506

  When Rex slept that night, he dreamed. For once his body could relax. They had jumped away from Helvetia and the Akiris system without being followed. No more warships tailing him, just void and the random clutter of pirates and fourth-rate warlords. An easy trip. A long trip. Slow but sure to Boundary.

  Lifted of its weight, for a few hours at least, his mind cut loose. Images of Paphlygonia came first. His home planet. He found himself soaring over its vast, midnight-blue oceans, flying above one of the two thousand-mile-long archipelagos that criss-crossed the planet. There were no continents here, only vast island chains. Once the tops of titanic mountains, their rugged slopes now were home to millions.

  Unbound by any silly laws of reality, he shot from the thic
k tangle of tropical jungles, through latitudes of temperate hardwoods, and into the conifer-covered islands of his youth. He slowed as he approached his childhood home, built into a steep mountainside three hundred feet above the ocean, just before the slopes turned into plunging sea cliffs. Sequoias and redwoods, engineered to grow in centuries rather than millennia, rose over the house, dwarfing it in their magnificence. Sitka spruces and Douglas firs mixed amongst them, their branches coated in thick inches of dewy peat moss. Black-tailed deer darted in and out of the woods, not nearly as skittish in dreamland as they were in the flesh. They stopped to eat at pockets of brush that grew up wherever light managed to penetrate the dense canopy.

  Abruptly the forest vanished, and his feet hit the back deck of his house, overlooking the ocean. An awning spread over him. What had been sun was now rain, slamming down in one of the two-hour downpours this world was famous for. It did not bother him that much. Under the awning stood a half-dozen of his buddies and their girlfriends, and also one of his old flames. Was that Annwyn? He’d forgotten how red her hair was. All of them were drinking, listening to some fiddler speed through scales with the aggression that the young people seemed to love so much.

  He’d once thought no place in the universe was like this, an odd combination of rugged beauty, wild forests, and eternal dampness. Not until he’d lived on Earth and seen the American northwestern coasts, had he learned that Paphlygonia was the copy, not the original. That thought shifted the scene. He was on Earth now, in Maryland, in a hammock under a large oak tree. Orange leaves fluttered on its branches.

  Somebody was in the hammock with him. It was Nancy, his ex-fiancé. It was back before she’d cheated with him and moved across the continent. He could only see the chestnut brown of the hair on top of her head though, because she was busy unzipping his pants. She took him into her mouth, uncaring of what the neighbors saw. He groaned, relishing the feel of her tongue on him. Dreams were good. Within the dream he closed his eyes, plunging him into a weird state of double unconsciousness, as she continued her tender ministrations.

  When he opened them again, the scene had changed. Warmth still enveloped him, but he saw only dark. No trees. No Nancy. Yet looking down, he spotted the dim outline of a head bobbing up and down above his groin. Not sure if he was still dreaming or not, he spoke up.

  “Lights!”

  His cabin illuminated in a dim glow, the lights turned down to save his eyes from a rough transition. Dim as they were, they revealed that a platinum blond head was bobbing up and down above his hips. It took a moment for things to register.

  “Second?!” Rex said, bolting upright.

  She looked up from her actions, a confused look on her face.

  “Did I fail to satisfy?”

  “What are you doing?!” Rex nearly shouted.

  “It is a directive to fulfill the needs of the Master when required,” she said simply, as if discussing what she needed to pick up at the store.

  “A directive?!”

  “Yes, a primary command implanted before being dispatched,” she replied.

  His mind swam. He was far too tired to be dealing with this now. He slipped himself back into his shorts and then ground his palms into his eyes. A thought struck him.

  “‘When required’? Second, when did I ask you to pleasure me sexually?”

  Confusion covered her face. She looked to the ground as she tried to think. The effort looked physically painful.

  “I do not remember,” she replied.

  Those words again, “I do not remember.” The same thing she had said when watching Chakrika feed Quintus.

  “Was it a body language thing?” he asked, probing. “Can you sense when I’m, well…in the mood?”

  She shook her head evenly, saying, “I am not directed to pay attention to a Master’s body language, it is an indirect and imprecise form of communication. Only to his spoken commands do I respond.”

  “And I never told you to do what you were doing,” Rex continued.

  “I do not remember you saying so. This woman does not know why I did so,” she said.

  “I told you to use pronouns,” Rex said, more curious than annoyed.

  “You did,” she replied.

  “Why did you just say ‘this woman’ then?”

  “I do not know,” she replied. “I do not remember why.”

  He jumped out of bed, digging a robe out of his hamper. As he pulled it on, he noticed Second had stripped bare, no doubt to “facilitate his needs.” He sighed, staring a bit too long at her genetically perfect form. For people of vaguely defined sexuality, her creators sure did know how to draw a man’s attention. Tearing his gaze away, he dug around for a towel.

  “Wrap this around your body,” he ordered. “And follow me to the sick bay.”

  She followed him out of the room silently. They moved down the hall and into the sickbay. Rex pointed to the free bed. She moved to it, lying down with the towel still on.

  “Computer, scan her brain.”

  The scanner descended. A humming sound filled the room as it mapped out her mind. Five minutes passed before it retracted back toward the ceiling.

  “Scan complete,” the computer announced.

  “Compare it with her previous scan. Tell me if any major differences are present.”

  As it compiled he left the sick bay, walking through the common room to the kitchen. He got himself a glass of water. As he made his way back toward the sick bay, he heard the baby wail. Lucius’s hushed voice came next, followed by Chakrika’s footfalls as she sped from her cabin to Lucius’s. The cries quieted a moment later.

  Rex reentered the sickbay. A pair of three-dimensional projections hovered in the middle of the room. Both were of Second’s brain, one from her initial scan, one just complete.

  “Most changes are consistent with standard growth and die-off in human nerve cells. This region shows a significant change.”

  Both images zoomed into the small protrusion at the base of her brain, the lump that he figured was responsible for Second’s complete lack of free will. The earlier picture showed a dozen nerve bundles connecting it to her otherwise normal brain. The new picture showed only seven connections, clustered on the left.

  “Connections with her right hemisphere have been severed,” the computer pointed out.

  “Right brain, responsible for emotion, creative things,” Rex thought out loud.

  “Yes.”

  “Makes sense,” Rex replied. First she’d been staring at an intolerably cute child, like any woman and most men would. Then she’d found herself responding to the oldest drive in the human body. Control over her emotional side had degraded.

  Some element of free will now exists, he realized.

  “Is this injury consistent with the blow she took when the intruders were on board?” Rex asked.

  “It could easily have been caused by such a blow,” the computer replied.

  He thought for a moment, only to be interrupted by Quintus’s crying. The screams struck a chord.

  “Get up, follow me,” he said to Second.

  As he left he glimpsed the corpse of the ambassador out of the corner of his eye. Didn’t he have an abrasion on his temple—

  Another wail broke his concentration. He grabbed Second by the hand and led her down the hallway. Lucius had left his door open. Chakrika held Quintus, rocking him gently to try and quiet him. Lucius dug around for a new diaper. Rex entered the already crowded room, standing Second next to him.

  “What—what are you doing?” Chakrika asked, staring warily at Second.

  “Just trust me,” Rex said and then turned to Second. “Stand right here by my side. Do not, under any circumstance, go to the child.”

  She stood stock still. Quintus continued bawling. Lucius picked up the child, laying him out on a towel on his bed so he could change him. As he cleaned and dried his wet son, the boy’s cries intensified.

  Second broke, bending low to put herself at the boy’s
level. Chakrika bolted up, stunned, but Rex motioned her with an open palm to hold back. Lucius watched, uneasy, as Second’s fingers began to stroke the boy’s head. She made soothing sounds in his ear. Clearly uncomfortable, Lucius quickly finished changing the child, handing him back to Chakrika. Second stood back up, returning to her position beside Rex without a word.

  “What in four hells is this, Rex?” Lucius asked. “Did you instruct her to do that beforehand?”

  “No,” Rex replied, “This is a glimpse.”

  “A glimpse? Of what?” Chakrika asked.

  “The person she should be.”

  * * *

  Chakrika sat in the pilot’s station. Her left foot slowly worked the rotation pedals. The ship made a lazy counterclockwise roll as it flew, but kept on course. Rex had set the computer to return them to the never-ending green line on the viewscreen if she screwed up too badly.

  “You would think all this spinning would get a person nauseous,” she remarked.

  Lucius, sitting at his station with Quintus in his arms, smiled, saying, “It’s the ship’s gravity. We always feel upright no matter what our eyes see.”

  Chakrika brought it back into level flight.

  “They teach you that in nobleman’s school?” she asked playfully.

  “No. I was trained as a fighter pilot. Ships that small are not big enough for grav generators, so if the rotations don’t make you sick, the zero-G will,” he spoke.

  She turned her gaze to the child. He had his eyes open, large and brown and staring inquisitively at anything and everything around him. They locked on her while his mouth gummed happily on his hand.

  “I think he misses his mother,” Lucius spoke.

  “I don’t mean to be blunt, but I don’t think he remembers her,” Chakrika replied, before noticing that Lucius was staring at her with a warm smile. Realization struck her a second later. Were her skin capable of it, she would have blushed.

  “Here,” Lucius said, putting him in her arms. “Show my little one how to fly spaceships.”

  He crouched next to her, watching as Chakrika directed the boy’s tiny hand on the attitude lever. She wrapped her hand around his and spun the ship to the left until it faced backward, then spun it back center. Being a month old, Quintus, predictably, had no idea of what was going on and seemed amazed simply at his arm’s ability to move to the left. When she sat back, he batted the air playfully.