Spaced

by Greg Curtis

  “I'm just eating my lunch and doing my work quietly.” Perhaps after finishing eating he'd head to the lab and continue there in peace. The ship wouldn't allow food or drink to be consumed in a lab filled with toxic chemicals – but at least it was peaceful; one of the few places where he could be by himself.

  “For three hours!”

  “I'm not needed on the bridge.” He could have said not wanted, which felt more like the truth, but she'd only mock him.

  “So you're reminiscing over your bangbot instead?” She looked at the holo in front of him which was busy showing Kendra's details. “You know your ship is going to be upset about that. It really will try to have you locked up.”

  “I'm not dark side. And I'm not obsessing about her. I have a reason for studying her. In fact when we get to Eden I'm going to want to interrogate her.” He assumed Kendra was somewhere on Eden, unless they'd left her on the dock at the outlier base. He couldn't imagine that though, not when she had the precious algorithms locked away in her neural cortex.

  “Interrogate her? Why?”

  “Because I want to know what else she was doing on the Nightingale aside from betraying me and smuggling you.” And luckily while he might not be a roboticist or synthetic engineer like his parents, he did have some of their analytical software. The ALEB had thoughtfully sent him a few boxes of items which had survived the fire in the family home. And one of them was filled with holochips.

  “You think she was doing more?” Del looked at him enquiringly.

  “I didn't. Until White showed up trying to gain passage. That led me to wonder – why? He's still alive. Somehow he's talked his way out of being shot. Presumably he’s still rich and can hire the best lawyers. And if the Navy was willing to release him to your people, he presumably wasn't being charged with anything. If he has all that going for him, and he also has the algorithms as he must, then in time he'd get himself free.

  “So why make his way to Eden? He’s classed as a rogue there, no better off than a mute in the Commonwealth. He has no company and no apparent wealth. And everything you lot do seems to be about law and order. So on Eden he'd almost certainly find himself back in trouble with the authorities, but without his fleet of high priced lawyers.”

  “It's ironic, but for him Eden is potentially a worse destination than the Commonwealth. Yet he was so determined to go there.

  “And then it occurred to me – was he so determined to go to Eden? Or was it to get on the Nightingale?”

  “Your precious command codes again?” Del became a marshal instead of an annoying passenger. “I thought you checked them out.”

  “I did. The ship assures me that Kendra never gained access to its programming. It might be less than observant about many things bots and androids do, but no one and nothing accesses its program without it knowing and paying careful attention.”

  “Then?”

  “Then there are other things Kendra could have been doing. I don't know what. But I mean to find out.” That was his plan, but thus far it hadn't been going well. The ship still hadn't found any useful records on what she'd been doing before she'd tried to kill him. In fact it hardly had any records at all, which left him analysing her systems to see what else she was capable of. And from what he could tell it was a lot. He hadn't realised that she had such advanced manual dexterity or precision calibrated senses.

  “Unless of course your scientists have found out how to reprogram her?”

  “They hadn't last I heard. They weren't even sure if it was possible. They don't think the android was reprogrammed at all. It was built from the ground up with a divided loyalty or, rather, with one loyalty to White and the ability to pretend a second one. That bangbot of yours is amazingly advanced, more so than we'd guessed. There were at least a dozen breakthroughs in android design that as far as we can tell no one in the Commonwealth has yet achieved. And it had files on you that were incredibly detailed. Our scientists studied it in depth looking for everything it knew about us.”

  “I know. It was designed to counsel as well as please me. Keep me on the path of sanity.” Until its true programming had overridden that and the damned thing had tried to murder him.

  “Hardly, that bangbot was designed to control you, to make you completely dependent upon it psychologically. To let you substitute its thinking for yours. Given enough time it would have had you running around on a leash like a dog.”

  Carm guessed he was lucky she didn't suggest Kendra had already got him to that stage. But maybe she was right. It was embarrassing but that didn't mean it wasn't true. And worse if there were thousands of android companions out there, how many others were like her? How many spacers were already under their control? How many had White almost have in his bag? And how had he managed to mess everything up? It was that last bit which troubled him. The man, for all his arrogance and lack of self-control, was incredibly intelligent. He should have known better than to let himself get caught.

  Unless... and it was a possibility which kept haunting him – the rogue had wanted to get caught. Carm just had to put it out of mind while concentrating on the problem at hand. And that was Kendra – or had been until the implications of what Del was saying hit him.

  “Built from the ground up rather than reprogrammed? As in it's not just a few that were reprogrammed but the entire line which was corrupted from the design phase?” That Carm hadn't thought of. It was important – it changed everything.

  Del nodded.

  “Shards! That means that White had access to potentially thousands of ships through his android companions, practically every deep spacer vessel. So why did he choose the Nightingale to smuggle you? Or is it that the others are all carrying passengers too?” After all there was nothing special about either him or the Nightingale. But if every deep spacer vehicle was loaded up with coffins, that changed things. It meant they'd been picked not for a specific reason but rather chance.

  “Don't know,” Del shrugged, but her brow was furrowed while listening. She was beginning to see where he was going. “We don't know how many of us there are or how many were seeking transport to Eden. And there's a lot of deep spacer vessels unaccounted for.”

  Of course there were. Carm had forgotten that. It hadn't seemed so important in the midst of everything else, not when there were only a few reprogrammed android companions out there. But what if it was all of them? And they were on every ship? Potentially murdering his friends or doing who knew what else? That was bad. They had to find out what those androids were doing, and he said as much to Del.

  “Can't the ship tell you what she was doing?”

  “Tried that. Computers, robots and androids don't watch each other. They barely notice one another. Lights won't turn on for a bot, nor will doors open. Automatic controls don’t work either. Everything relies on the principle that everything else is working exactly according to its programming. So the ship didn't record her activities. I only found you because the ship was able to backtrack her movements by the manual controls she’d activated over time. When I realised that she was in the reserve hold so much, a place she had no reason to be, I had the ship do a search.”

  “That's—”

  “—A gigantic security hole,” Carm finished her sentence. “And one that I'm guessing our android maker has been exploiting for years. He doesn't need to just use android doubles or a few reprogrammed units to do his dirty work. Any one of his company's androids legitimately in the right place at the right time will do his bidding just as happily. They're all his to command and no one would think to check them because, as far as they’re concerned, they're all loyal to their owners. He's built an entire cadre of agents and spies. This guy is smart.” Which brought him back to the obvious question once again – how in space had he got himself caught?

  “Then he—”

  “—could do a lot more than just shuffle a few work orders around to smuggle a few people off-world,” Carm finished her thought ag
ain, mindful that it was rude but still unable to help himself. “We already know that through his androids he was able to modify the programming of the police and Navy bots. Anything which had his company's parts in it. But I doubt it stopped there.”

  “He’s greedy.”

  “Greedy?” Carm stopped for a moment. A sudden thought occurred to him, a brand new one. That it wasn't about greed at all. White was a rogue and from everything he'd been reading about him, he wasn’t actually motivated by a desire for credits. He liked them he assumed. But everything he'd read said that he wanted one thing more - power. So what if it wasn't all about credits after all? What else could White do with that sort of power? He turned his attention away from the holo for a moment.

  “According to the historical accounts mutes like White – the rogues – they all wanted one thing. Power. That was why wars were fought and millions died. Right?”

  “Yes?” Carm said as Del stared back at him, obviously wondering what he was thinking.

  “Why change a motivation that's hundreds of years old? Why assume that this whole thing is about the credits he could get from smuggling? Why not think bigger? That the credits are only the means to an end? And that end is power.”

  “And, while we're at it, we know White was able to use his company to produce a few parts for the policebots and warbots. And that through them and the androids he could reprogram them. Why assume that it stops there? How many other parts did BLS make, and for how many other series of bots? Kendra was the only android on the Nightingale. But the ship, like every other, is worked on by bots at every space-port. Machines which no one monitors because they're just bots doing their jobs.”

  “Ship, bring up the work order history for the ventral stabiliser.” In the rush of events he'd never thought to wonder about that mistake. But fitting the wrong, undersized unit was a bizarrely stupid error to make. But what if it hadn't been an error?

  Moments later he was studying a series of work orders showing the entire history of the change. It noted the item numbers of the hydraulic actuators being changed. Though the original order had been for a particular actuator, the unit which had been procured and fitted was a completely different model. And yet someone had signed off on the repair – looking at a holo showing the two different item numbers side by side and yet approving it. An engineer who simply wasn't very observant? Or one of White's androids? Signing off on a job done by bots it had controlled?

  And even before that the work had to be done. Someone had to fit an undersized unit, something that would have required quite significant alterations to be made to the housing. No one had asked the obvious question. Why? Because the machines which had been doing the work had been made by White. It was the only explanation. What else had they done? The one thing he was suddenly acutely aware of was that while the ship had its own bots, all directly under its control, they mostly dealt with the internals. External repairs were handled by space-port bots. And while they could do a complete inspection of the ship looking for contraband as they had, they couldn't inspect the outside of the ship.

  “Carm to bridge.”

  “Yes Captain,” one of his new crew answered him immediately.

  “I want you to contact the space-port before we land and arrange a full external inspection of the ship the moment we're down, in particular looking for non-standard parts. The ventral stabiliser was altered. I suspect it was done at White's command. And the only reason I can think for fitting a smaller hydraulic actuator is to save space so that you can put something else in there as well.

  “If that was done once, it may have been done more than once. Also advise whoever your equivalent of Naval Command is.”

  “Yes Captain.” The man didn't question his order in the least even though it had to be an unexpected command.

  “Ship.”

  “Yes Carmichael.”

  “You've been listening I assume.” Actually he knew the ship had been doing so. It might not pay much attention to bots, but it listened intently to organics.

  “To your admission that you brought a tin-plated pile of used floater parts on board and then let her do whatever she wanted to me? Of course I've been listening.”

  Carm's head fell as he heard the ship's accusation. And it didn't help that Del was trying to cover her own sudden burst of laughter with her hands and failing.

  “Let's not linger on past mistakes—”

  “Past mistakes?! Linger?! Do I need to remind you that when the stabiliser failed on Bounty I nearly rolled one-eighty? And spaceships don't fly upside down! The only reason your organic heart still beats at all is due to some stellar piloting – but I'm not sure that's a benefit to anyone!”

  “Yes, you did a stellar job, and I am grateful. But now let’s hope that we don't have to do any more piloting like that. Let's see what else could have been tampered with. Does that sound like a good idea?” Carm didn't wait for a reply. He knew that whatever response he got would be bad. “Every work order carried out on the ship for the last three years. Go through the entire history of them. Look for any and all discrepancies, Parts ordered not matching what were fitted. Too many bots working on the ship for too long. Any access of panels or sections that were out of bounds. Any tools used that shouldn't have been. Draw up a complete list and get it to the bridge then have it sent to the space-port. Can you do that?”

  “Yes Carmichael.”

  “You think there's more?” Del asked.

  “I think we have a very, very smart enemy, one with plans that we haven't yet seen. One who allowed himself to be caught after killing his partners because it served his plans. And I think he's been working on this for years.”

  “He let himself be caught?” That quickly stole the mirth from her eyes.

  “He has what, two thousand of his android companions perfectly placed on two thousand ships, slowly twisting the thoughts of their captains, or even plotting their deaths. He has I don't know how many more androids out there in pivotal positions, carefully and quietly rearranging things. Androids I might add that have very advanced programming. A dozen breakthroughs you said. White is obviously very intelligent, I doubt he made all the advances himself. So he has a team behind him.

  “A man with those resources behind him doesn't simply get caught unless he wants to be.”

  “I think we have a genuine interstellar conspiracy. In addition, given that White's motivations are likely to be power, I very seriously doubt its well intentioned. And I don't think it's designed to bring in credits either.”

  He would have added to that, but just then the ship flashed up holos of all the discrepancies it had found, and Carm saw he had a problem. There were so many. Fifteen of them revealed that the wrong parts had been fitted. Those were the ones he had to start with. Especially the ones where the new part was physically smaller than the one it had replaced, and the ones on the outside of the ship.

  “Shards!”

  Carm didn't answer Del as he went through the list. He agreed with her. Accidents and mistakes happened. It was only human nature. But bots, AIs and androids should all have been there to catch those mistakes. Fifteen incorrect parts fitted was far too many. And then after he’d decided to go further back thinking that three years wasn't enough, he found more of them. White's plan had been in action since the day he'd bought the ship.

  It had been in existence for far longer than that. But it hadn't involved him or the Nightingale. Because the one thing he’d purchased when he'd bought the ship was an android companion – and she wasn't the first of her kind.

  Kendra had been the key that had allowed so many of the changes to be made. No doubt she'd distracted him at exactly the right moments to allow each alteration to go through unchecked. As embarrassing as it was he knew there had been times when he’d simply pressed the holographic okay or given his assent instead of checking it as he should have, simply because she'd been there. She might also have approved actions without his knowl
edge, assuming privileges she had never had. And undoubtedly she had given away engineering codes to various panels that she shouldn’t have had.

  It hurt to realise it, but the ship was right. This failure was his.

  “Alright ship, get the new bot to run all these alterations through its engineering design programs, looking for weaknesses, reliability issues, effects on structure and function of the ship, and expected lifetime of the parts. Send the results to the bridge. We aren't going vertical in the atmosphere again.”

  “Then have it calculate the sizes and shapes of the empty spaces left behind so we have a clue what's in them. Send that information to the space-port. We might as well know what we're smuggling.”

  Truthfully he thought as he drained the last of his coffee and thought about chasing after the new bot as it went about its work, he didn't want to. He just wanted to sit and feel sorry for himself. Maybe scream to space about the inequity of it all like some holodrama actor. Or perhaps just shoot White. He wasn't a violent person, but just then it was looking like a good option.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Carm, standing on the space-port landing field, watched as yet another massive container was pulled out from the housing of a landing strut. It was a bad sight to have to see. But it was worse to have to listen to the ship as it saw the same thing.

  “Sweet circuits! How could you let that walking malfunction do this to me?” The ship was unhappy, and had been for the three long days ever since he’d discovered the problem. That unhappiness had only grown when the space-port's engineering bots had started work and all his worst fears had been proven correct. “Don't you care at all?”

  “Of course I care. I care very much. I just didn't notice. You didn't notice either.”

  “Of course you didn't notice. All you were thinking about was fornicating with that treacherous short circuit! Don't you have any self-control over that fleshy joystick in your pants?”

  “Apparently not ship. I was depending on you to find any problems. But you failed me.”