Universe of the Soul

by Jennifer Mandelas

  Adri was awake enough to know that her annoyance with Field Lieutenant Grayson was mostly due to lack of sleep. The knowledge that he was eating a real meal instead of military grade simulations didn't help. The captain, of course, traveled with his own victuals, his own cook, and a portable kitchen. But the rest of her disgruntlement with said field lieutenant had to do – she was sure – with the ridiculous level of ‘just-rightness’ he exuded. The man was a good officer, no question about it, and handled well under pressure. He took orders intelligently, had useful suggestions, good stamina, excellent aim, and was efficient. He was Adri's dream subordinate come true. That was the problem. The man was frighteningly perfect. Although she was grateful for his military expertise, and knew his mental capacity should be seen as a plus, there were some things that her field lieutenant had to change.

  He made her shiver. In a romantic, my-you're-handsome-and-make-me-wish way. That had to go; there was no way they could work out a good officer to officer relationship if she was drooling over him every time he talked with that sexy voice. Adri knew the situation was bad when, after an acquaintance of a mere twenty-two hours she was obsessed with the man. Obsession was dangerous. Nearly as dangerous as love. Both emotions – if obsession was an emotion – would inevitably lead to heartache, and Adrienne Rael, battle tried Lieutenant Commander of the Galactic Commonwealth, had a large phobia of heartache.

  But what to do about him? Unless she forbid him to look at or speak to her, which would cause all sorts of technical problems apart from making her look ridiculous, there was no way to completely avoid him. Or the effect he had on her. The only viable options open to her were starkly clear to Adri's sleep deprived mind. One, she could shoot him and totally eradicate the problem. Two, she could stand her ground and maintain a strong officer-subordinate position that allowed no sort of casual camaraderie. Neither option was enticing.

  “Well L.C., I've finished jury-rigging the north shield, so it ought to stand up just as strong as the other three, at least for the time being.” Duane announced as he sauntered towards her. His big eyes were bloodshot, making the white blend disturbingly with his bright face.

  Adri frowned, shaking herself out of her thoughts. “Hmm.”

  “You must have been off on another planet. I called your name a couple times and you didn't even notice.” Duane eyed her half finished coffee with wistful longing. “You gonna finish that?”

  Adri gave a soft huff and drained her coffee cup. “How did the shield analysis go?”

  “Enduring,” Duane gave a longsuffering sigh. “Do you want the long or short of it before we both go to catch twenty five minutes of sleep?” he smiled appreciatively when Adri tossed him a candy bar that she'd taken from the captain's stash.

  Here, at least, Adri felt calm and in control. Whatever her problems (real or imagined) with Field Lieutenant Grayson, it would not affect her responsibilities. “Better have the long of it, in case I get called in and need to give the captain excessive information for the health and safety of the platoon.”

  As he exited Captain Heedman's quarters – several standards above those he and Lieutenant Commander Rael inhabited - Gray wondered just what sort of political connections had allowed such a spineless man a position of authority. The luncheon had been enlightening, showing him that the real brains behind the success of this division was certainly not the esteemed captain. Staggering a bit, since Gray was never one to take a large meal after a sleepless night well, he decided to report to his lieutenant commander, get a good dose Adri out of her combat suit, and go to bed.

  Adri wasn't in the officer's quarters, but Gray wasn't too surprised. More than likely, she was in the makeshift command center, making sure the camp was secure for the day. He expected no less from her.

  She sure was a pretty sight, Gray thought. While the rest of the communication crew scrambled around reading monitors or rerouting power couplings, Adri sat on one of the control panels, a holoboard in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Oblivious to the noise around her, she sipped from her cup and reviewed the information on the board, occasionally frowning and murmuring to herself.

  Gray wove his way through the crowded room until he reached her side. Adri was so absorbed in the information on the holoboard that she was startled when Gray spoke. “Field Lieutenant Grayson reporting, ma'am,”

  “Oh, good,” Adri stared at him, choices swimming in her mind.

  “Captain Heedman sends his compliments for a job well done, although – and I quote – ‘the girl could have done the whole thing a bit quicker, couldn't she?’ After reviewing the series of events, however, he acknowledged that you proceeded with all considerable haste.”

  Adri's lips twitched. It would be hard to shoot a guy who could pull off an excellent mimic of Heedman's voice, and had obviously learned how to steer the captain into a different frame of mind after only meeting the man twice. She would have to stay a bit distant from him, if she wanted to be safe. Still, it would be…impolite to be cold to him after their first successful mission together. “The meal was plentiful, I expect,” she conceded.

  “A bit much after a long night,” Gray replied. “But an overabundance of food aside, he did give me information to pass on to you.”

  “Such as?”

  “The Oreallus has made contact with another Advance Force ship, heading in this direction. They are planning a rendezvous in about forty-eight hours.”

  “Did he mention the name of the ship?” Adri's interest perked.

  Gray sat down in the chair facing Adri. “Yes, it was the Damacene.”

  Adri nodded thoughtfully. “Did he mention when our backup is arriving?”

  “He did mention that the regular army would be arriving in less than fifteen hours, although he did not give me a specific time.”

  “Probably forgot,” Adri muttered.

  “What is the plan, then?”

  Adri stretched and rubbed the back of her neck. “We hold our position until the army arrives. I'll finish writing the report for the Commonwealth. You go and make a round of the perimeter. Leave Davan in charge of the patrols. I don't want anyone venturing beyond the shields until I've had time to assess the schematics of the battle and can think of a plan for a scouting mission. We have to find out where the Belligerents are based; they did a far better job at their night raid than I would like.”

  “I'll get right on it, Adri.” Gray turned and made his way out of the command center, leaving Adri to once again remind herself to tell him not to call her by name.

  ***

  “Updates are complete, sir. Is there anything else you wish to add to the database?”

  Floyd rubbed his face, skewing his glasses, before responding. “No, Zultan. You can run a self scan for any abnormalities.”

  “Very well, sir.” Zultan switched programs and analyzed his systems quickly. Floyd watched as the tall humacom's gaze drifted to stare blankly at the far wall, an indicator that Zultan was running a program. He and his father (by Danwe, it hurt to think these days) had done a good job on designing and building Zultan. The humacom, or datacom as this one was sometimes called, looked just like a human with his dark hair and intelligent brown eyes. The only exterior differences were the ports and connectors located behind the ears and down the spine. They contained all the outlets for external cords, and were thus necessary to be easily accessed. Still, with clothes concealing most of those ports, Zultan could easily pass as a young man in his early twenties. “All systems are showing one hundred percent functionality.”

  “Good.” Floyd sat back in his chair, contemplating the screen in front of him.

  Zultan gazed at the screen for a moment before turning to gaze at the worktable that Floyd had been bent over for the last eighteen hours. “The project is nearly complete.”

  “Yes, it is. I've only to install a few more programs, and then give it all a good test scan before activation.”

  “It appears to me as though you've already instal
led all the government-required programs,” Zultan commented.

  “Yes, the last ones are just for my own satisfaction. They're the minor things; the physical human mimicry programs.” Floyd replied.

  Zultan nodded. “You and your father installed those in myself as well, correct?”

  “That's right.” Floyd rubbed his forehead, which was hammering painfully.

  Watching Floyd's movements, Zultan said, “You still aren't well, sir.”

  “I'm fine.”

  “You've been rubbing your head since you came in to work, your face is a paler tone than normal, and your eyes look bleary and bloodshot.”

  Floyd frowned. “It's just the overwork from trying to finish the project by myself.”

  “Then perhaps you shouldn't be doing so.” Zultan replied in his usual even tone. “My knowledge of medical diagnoses is very limited, but I can tell that you are not up to your usual health standards.”

  “Zultan,” Floyd said wearily, “you are a government information database, with all of the Commonwealth's top secret military and political information. Not a doctor. I believe I can tell when I have gone too far.” As indeed, he knew he had. Still, having his own humacom tell him so was rather annoying.

  “Well, as a humacom loaded with all sorts of high intelligence, and not programmed with such human blinders as pride and stubbornness, I can tell you that you are not well.” Zultan retorted.

  Floyd scowled. “All right already. So it's been a bad week.”

  Zultan made no reply, but got up and walked over to the simulator, returning with a cup of coffee. “I don't think this is necessarily a good thing for you, but you seem to need it to finish the project, and I don't think the two security guards outside the lab will take it well if you hold off completion of the project due to ill health.”

  While Floyd drank the coffee and bent back over the nearly completed project, Zultan watched with human-like interest. As programmed, the humacom assessed, analyzed and processed.

  And wondered.

  ***

  Waking suddenly in the darkness of her quarters, Adri held her breath. Whatever had woken her from a deep, exhausted sleep must have been out of sync with the normal spurts of clamor and stillness that typified the camp at night. She waited unmoving in the dark for any sign of something unusual. When it came – a soft shuffling noise just inside her miserable excuse for a door – she could barely repress a sigh. She should have known that getting time for sleep on this hellish day was too good to be true.

  Whoever it was made their way as stealthily as possible across the dirty floor towards Adri on the cot. Adri kept her breathing as even as possible, slowing inching her hand beneath her pillow for her ATF. As the intruder moved slowly closer, Adri curled her fingers around the trigger.

  Just as the intruder reached the side of the bed, Adri sprang into action. Whipping her ATF out from beneath her pillow, she aimed for the blackish outline of a person, barely seen by the dim light of the corridor that seeped through the holes in the makeshift door.

  The intruder gave a feminine gasp, and managed to block Adri's arm before she could aim. She was unable to dodge as Adri swept her leg out and knocked the woman to the ground. The stranger had maintained her hold on Adri's arm, however, and pulled her off the bed, beginning a tangled wrestling struggle on the ground as each tried to fend off the other and find the dropped ATF at the same time. With amazing skill, the intruder managed to elbow Adri in the throat, stunning her enough to gain her feet before Adri was up and upon her. Before Adri could make any sort of advance, the stranger had grabbed a handful of her hair and shirt and tried to ram her against the door.

  The door, propped up at best as a barrier to light rather than anything else, collapsed as Adri sailed through it.

  Across the hallway, Gray lay awake. A soft shuffling noise had alerted him to someone moving about in the corridor between his and Adri's quarters, and when the noise ceased, he'd been divided over whether or not to investigate. One thing was for certain, however; whoever it was sneaking about in the officers’ quarters did not belong there. No officer in the military to Gray's knowledge worried about waking their fellows up enough to tip toe around, as it would only raise the suspicion of intruders.

  With curiosity and suspicion fueling his sleep-deprived body he got up, yanked on his jacket, and stepped towards his door.

  The sounds of scuffling and shouting coming from Adri's room made him pause and grab his ATF before dashing out into the corridor. He was just in time to catch Adri as she flew across the hall and practically into his arms. The speed of the contact knocked him off balance, and he barely saw the figure of a woman dash from Adri's room and race for the entrance to the officers’ compound.

  Adri struggled to regain her balance, and began to race after the fleeing figure. “Come on!”

  Obediently, Gray ran after her, being treated to the sight of Adri in only her rumpled gray uniform slacks and black tank top.

  The pitch darkness of the night was alleviated by the red glow of the shields and the strategically placed floodlights dotted across the camp, making it easier for Adri to see her assailant – a small framed woman – as she dashed for the perimeter of the camp. The woman had too much of a head start for Adri to catch her, and the perimeter guards were quickly mowed down with the intruder's rapid fire blaster. By the time Adri reached her fallen troops, the intruder had slipped through the shields and disappeared into the night.

  Furious, Adri stared through the shields, her hands fisted at her sides. Beside her, Gray stood, looking little less disheveled. “Danwe,” she hissed through her teeth.

  “Are you all right?” Gray asked.

  “If I ever get my hands on that fiend, it's going to be the worst day of her miserable life!”

  “Because she hurt you?” Gray inquired.

  “No, she woke me up!”

  Username: Zultan

  File://GC:#000237ugd//confidential//uri

  Password: *******

  Access Granted

  Command: open file to last saved date

  Ever since I decided to start recording my thoughts, I have only had one basic question to ponder – how real am I? As disturbing as this thought is, there are now other issues that seem to challenge the logic of my programming. The theory of human rights over the humacoms they create is unadvised to argue with. As our creators, they reserve the right to also be our destroyers. They, in fact, stand in as our god. This apparently is not a universal theory humans hold. While they command that we humacoms cannot harm each other, or them, they themselves have no compunction about harming their creations, and just as little concern over harming each other. What twisted logic humans use! They did not create themselves, thus why do they claim to be their own gods?

  As our creators, I would assess that humans are greater than we, but their logic does not hold with my own, the very one they gave me. Is my programming faulty? Am I not entering on some aspect of human behavior that is necessary to truly understand the workings of the human mind? Yet this is how they programmed me, with this unalterable pattern of true false, probable and unlikely. I can only do what I have been programmed to do, what I can do.

  If it goes against what my creators intended, is it really a fault of mine? Are they not at fault for programming me to think this way? Or is it just an excuse? A human excuse?

  I was not programmed to make excuses.

  Save all new data

  Close file

  Encode

  Chapter Five

  “I see you left us very little to do, again.”

  One eyebrow rose on Adri's face in lieu of a smile. “I try my best, sir.”

  Colonel Robert Penkela of the Galactic Commonwealth Army shook his mane of salt and pepper hair. “If all my troops did your level of ‘best,’ then this war would have been over decades ago.”

  “I couldn't say, sir.” Adri replied.

  “I am assuming that your promotion to captain is l
ooming in the near future, Lieutenant Commander.”

  Adri's tone echoed her determination. “I certainly believe so.”

  “Walk with me,” Penkela began to stroll leisurely among the shoddy buildings that were hives of frantic activity. The gray sky above put a dull pallor over the scene, as though it wasn't much impressed with the action below. With the Army moving in and the Advance Force moving out, the noise level of the camp had risen to near deafening pitches. Adri walked beside the colonel, watching with half an eye as the Advance Force troops went about their business packing and switching the command posts to the Army. They would return to their ship, the Oreallus, by nightfall and be on their way to a new location, and a new assignment. Adri would be glad to be back aboard ship again.

  Normally Adri would have been overseeing the details of the repack herself, organizing the anti-gravity lift loads, dealing with the usual inter-officer sniping that went on between the Advance Force and the Army as positions were reversed. Now, however, she had a field lieutenant who was handling the situation with remarkable panache. She could see him now standing by the lift, holoboard in hand, mediating between one of the Advance Force's shield technicians and an Army defense officer as they argued about the state of camp protection. Grayson handled the situation with a great deal more finesse than she herself would have. At this stage in the argument, she would have pulled out her ATF and threatened to shoot either of them if they wouldn't shut up.

  “Your field lieutenant working out to your satisfaction at last, Rael?” the colonel asked, pulling Adri out of her musings. “We passed the troop transport on our way here.”

  “Yes, surprisingly.” Adri replied. “He's very competent.”