Flight of the Outcast

by Brad Strickland

  But there were plenty of diversions: she could watch holos of music, drama, history, or science; the gym was always available for a workout; the ship library was extensive and varied. She could occupy herself and put her worries way in the back of her mind, at least temporarily.

  Kayser had the same schedule that she and Dai had. He seemed to want to be friends—but Asteria could not bring herself to trust him. They talked occasionally, but they never played games together or shared any secrets. She couldn't allow herself to open up to him; she could barely allow herself to open up to Dai.

  Seven days after they had disembarked, the captain warned that the ship was about to jump into FTL drive. It was toward the end of Asteria's watch, and she sat in the observer's seat and saw the switchover to FTL drive occur just before that wrenching sensation of being stretched and turned inside-out made her involuntarily close her eyes for an instant.

  And when she opened them, it was over. The ship had popped back into normal space and was angling in for the approach to Theron. The visor display showed the visuals: there was the familiar daystar of the system, and three pinpricks of bright light that had to be the system's three gas giant planets, icy worlds with moons that were large enough and barely warm enough to provide havens for Raiders. Theron itself was too dim and too distant to show up in the display.

  Asteria studied the readouts. It would be another ten days before the Pax could insert into orbit. A few minutes later, her watch ended, and she surrendered the observer's chair to another midshipman. She walked through the corridors stretching and flexing, working off the stiffness of ten long hours in the seat. To her surprise, she saw Dai coming the other way, excitement on his face. "Come into my room," he said, dissolving the door.

  "I don't think that's permitted."

  "No one will find out. Come on. I've got something important."

  Dai was neater than Asteria. His room was spartan, neat, and so tidy that it hardly looked used. "We'll have to sit on the bed," he said, extruding it from the wall. "Listen, what do you know about Cybots?"

  They settled down, side by side. "Cybots?" she asked. "What everyone knows, I guess. They're mechanical, except they're run by neutralized nervous tissue from human donors."

  "Neutralized," echoed Dai. "Exactly. They don't retain any memories of when they were alive. No personality. No emotions, because parts of the limbic system are deadened. So Cybots have a kind of human brain, but it's more like—like—"

  "A meat computer," Asteria said.

  "Uh—yeah. Okay, but sometimes, right, a Cybot has ghost memories. One of the bots on this ship does."

  "It remembers its human life?"

  "Partial memories. You know how I came aboard at the last minute?"

  "Sure."

  "Okay, I have a confession. I was able to get a Cybot to change my orders. It had some memory of its former life, and I found out about it. It acknowledged that it had the ghost memories, and it didn't want to give them up—it would be like dying again, I guess. So it agreed to help me—"

  "Dai!" exclaimed Asteria. "You blackmailed a Cybot?"

  He shook his head. "You make it sound bad! It wasn't like that. When I found out about its memories, it was willing to help. And it did more than get me aboard. It managed to put itself into the rotation too, and it's on the Pax now. It's a lifesupport systems monitor. You've got to talk to it."

  Asteria shook her head. "I don't understand. Why?"

  "Because it wants to talk to you. It needs to talk to you."

  "What do you mean?" Asteria was having a hard time wrapping her mind around that. She thought of Cybots as machines… not as, well, people. "Why?" she asked again.

  Dai had been speaking softly; now he dropped his voice to such a soft whisper that Asteria had to lean close to hear his answer. "Because he was on the Adastra. Because he knew your father."

  * * *

  I'm not sure about this.

  But here Asteria found herself, forward on B deck, in the lifesupport control center of the ship. At first, she did not recognize the device in front of her as a Cybot. It had been…dismembered, stripped of arms and legs. It was essentially a quicksilver-shiny torso and egg-shaped head with no features. She could see her own distorted reflection in its face.

  Dai was speaking softly into his wrist transceiver. "All right, thanks," he said. He nodded to Asteria. "We're all right. Kayser's in the library. Nobody's monitoring sounds here. We're alone."

  The Cybot did not respond, and Asteria licked her lips, which felt dry.

  "Speak to him," Dai said.

  "I—I'm Asteria Locke," she said hesitantly. "My father was Carlson Locke."

  "I served with your father," the Cybot said in its uninflected voice. "I was alive then. Your father was a weapons specialist. I was a weapons engineer. I do not remember my human name."

  "I—I'm sorry," Asteria said, feeling the prickle of goose bumps on her arms.

  "That has no meaning for me." The Cybot waited silently.

  "He can't initiate conversation," Dai said. "You'll have to ask him. Want me to leave?"

  "No—no, that's all right. Uh, what did my father do when the Tetraploid attack hit?"

  "We operated the weapons. Captain Kyseros was caught without a plan. It is my presumption that the captain panicked under the pressure of the attack. His orders were neither clear nor effective, though he was a princeps of the Aristocracy."

  "We've seen how Aristos are always cool under pressure," Dai said sarcastically.

  The Cybot seemed to miss his tone completely. "My experience has not shown that to be invariably true. At that time, however, I did place great confidence in our commanding officer. Captain Kyseros did not perform according to my expectations. Even so, and even though we in the weapons crew had to ignore most of his orders, our people fought well. We destroyed seven of the nine attacking Tetra ships."

  "Only nine?" Asteria asked.

  "Only nine. Very small ships, attacking at extremely close quarters. Nothing like all of our battle simulations. Yet we managed to destroy seven, as I say. The eighth actually impacted the bridge of the Adastra. The ninth penetrated the hangar deck where we carried fighters. The enemy ship came apart."

  "So it was destroyed too," Asteria said.

  "Negative. The ship was not destroyed. It came to pieces and then reassembled as thirty-three spider warriors. They breached the air locks and began an internal assault. Carlson organized a defense, and we defeated the spiders, though we took heavy casualties. Deep scans showed more Tetra ships at a great distance but locked onto us and coming toward us fast. We were receiving no orders. Carlson ascertained that the captain, three of the mates, and most of the bridge crew had been killed when the bridge was destroyed. We could raise no surviving officers on the comm. Therefore, Carlson took command, rerouted navigation and control to his own station, and ordered a retreat. His order was countermanded by…I cannot recall his name…the security officer, a lieutenant and the only officer of rank not dead or badly wounded. He had been hiding. He came out just as Carlson engaged the ion propulsion preparatory to FTL insertion. That officer asserted command, but he was too disorganized to be obeyed."

  "What?" Asteria asked, shocked. "I never heard that! I thought my father was the ranking officer when he took command."

  "Negative, Asteria Locke. The security officer had not been engaged in the fighting. When he emerged from hiding, he was irrational. He gave Carlson an order to surrender command to him. He wanted to turn and fight, though from the damage we had already sustained, it was clear that the ship would be lost, and the Tetras would then have a wedge into Empyrean space. It was an impasse until I shot the security officer."

  "You—shot him?" Asteria swallowed hard. Even touching a superior officer was a court-martial offense.

  The Cybot's strange, unemotional voice went on: "Affirmative. I shot him with a stunner. He fell, but as he fell, he hit your father with a neural disruptor set at high power. That destroyed th
e nerve structure in his arm and leg. I tried to apply restraints on the security officer, but a Tetra spider burst into the weapons center. It killed the lieutenant before we could stop it. And it wounded me so severely that Carlson put me in a stasis field to save my life. I remember no more until we reached an Empyrean world and I was removed from the stasis field."

  Asteria felt sick. Her father had been part of a mutiny!

  "He had to do what he did," Dai said, putting his hand on her shoulder. "By ordering the withdrawal, he saved hundreds of crewmen on the dreadnaught, and by reaching friendly space, he alerted Empyrean forces to the Tetra invasion. But now you see why the Fleet didn't allow him to remain on duty."

  Asteria wasn't sure that she did. "Because he didn't surrender command to the lieutenant?"

  "Negative," the Cybot said. "Because he knew how ineffective our captain had been. Because he was a Commoner and in time of crisis led the crew better than the Aristo had done. These are facts."

  "And your injuries were so bad that they made you a Cybot," Dai said.

  "Negative. I was not mortally injured. When I came out of stasis, I told the interrogating officers of what had happened. I mentioned neutralizing the security lieutenant. His family demanded my death. I was killed at their request, and my brain was harvested for Cybot creation. I do not know why all my memories were not purged."

  "That's horrible!" blurted Asteria.

  "That has no meaning to me," the Cybot said.

  Appalled, Asteria thought: It doesn't even resent the terrible things that were done to it—to him! It can't feel anger or resentment. Its humanity has been stolen.

  And the same thing could have happened to her father. She turned and blundered out. Behind her the Cybot hummed softly, probably monitoring air quality. Dai hurried after her. "I thought you should know," he said, sounding upset. "The new Governor we're taking to Theron is in the same branch of the royal family as the captain of the Adastra was. Of course, there are about a million in the Kyseros branch, so—hey, come on. What's the matter?"

  "I don't—I never thought—I'm sorry. I want to be alone," Asteria stammered.

  The Cybot wanted to tell me, she thought. It has nothing human left to it—nothing but a few scattered memories. And if the memories die, the last connection of that mind to its old life dies. It told me because it wanted to show that it still had that one shred of humanity left.

  And because I'm my father's daughter.

  She felt too nauseated even to think of eating. There had been times at the Academy when she had questioned the privileges claimed by Aristos. Now she'd learned the awful truth about an incompetent Aristo captain and an irrational Aristo lieutenant who had tried to prevent Carlson Locke's saving the survivors of the Adastra. The Fleet's judgment was that the incompetent and the irrational should have been obeyed—they were Aristos, and Carlson Locke had been a Commoner. Just like his daughter. And like Lieutenant Skarne, she could never hope to make Admiral.

  What's the point? Asteria knew how good she was—and knew, too, that no matter how hard she tried, there would always be someone like Kayser in her way. With the money on deposit for her, she could find something to do. Commercial piloting, maybe, or even farming. She knew farming. Despised it but knew it.

  Her father had never intended her for the Academy. He had wanted to send her cousin instead.

  He must have known. Any child of Carlson Locke would be marked. Aristos who knew the truth would have it in for her.

  Kayser had said that the new governor of Theron was an old family friend. And his uncle, Admiral Vodros, was close to the new governor's father.

  No wonder Vodros had tried to get her thrown out of the Academy. Asteria began to feel as though she were caught in a web. And the spiders were Aristos.

  She pondered for far too long, got far too little sleep, and the next watch found her groggy and inattentive. Skarne took her aside and asked, "Are you sick?"

  "No," she said. "Just tired."

  "Take off, then," he said. "It's just ion running, and there's nothing much to it. Get some rest. That's an order."

  She shambled away, still feeling disoriented and off-kilter, and found herself wandering to the nav center, where she studied the display. The Pax had penetrated the Theron system, and now the outer gas giant showed clearly as a planet, its pale yellow disk streaked with red and orange lines. A few more days and then they would be at the High Docks. As soon as she got shore leave, she would arrange the final transfer of the credits she had inherited, and then if she chose, she could announce her resignation from the Academy and set about finding some place for herself.

  But she wouldn't. It didn't matter if the whole Aristocracy stood against her. She had something to do, something to prove, if only to herself.

  Asteria entered her room and instantly felt a jolt of energy.

  The belt pulsed, shocked her into heightened awareness.

  There—on her bunk—

  It swooped into the air and dived toward her, a machine, a little maintenance bot—

  She sidestepped and ducked, and it crashed into the bulkhead just behind her, hard enough to have fractured her skull if it had hit. It whirred angrily and rebounded from the wall. No room to fight, too tight in here—

  She elbowed the door control, but the door remained solid. The bot, the size of her head, sizzled toward her again.

  She raised her arms in an X block, knowing she'd probably suffer cracked bones—

  The belt somehow had flowed upward, had coated both of her arms in metal—she saw her silver hands—

  In slow motion, the bot hurtled toward her—

  She locked her hands and brought them down hard in a double-hammer blow.

  This is crazy, I'll break every bone—

  She struck the bot, and it smashed to the floor, dented and disabled. Smoke curled out of it.

  Asteria dropped to the floor, grasped the bot along a seam, and ripped. Her silvered fingers had enormous strength. She peeled back the metal cover, reached in, and smashed the activator circuitry. The bot died.

  Breathing hard, Asteria stood on shaky legs. The bot, now just a small chunk of wreckage, sent a last wisp of smoke into the air.

  The door vanished, responding late.

  Asteria raised her communicator and said, "Security!"

  No response. The flowing metal from the belt had coated the communicator—

  The bot crumpled in on itself and fumed away to nothing.

  No evidence.

  Asteria quickly inspected her room. No other surprises.

  But someone had programmed a repair-and-welding unit to attack her. Someone wanted her dead.

  Kayser?

  Who else could it be?

  Asteria closed and sealed the door and then sank onto her bunk. The silver ebbed from her fingers as the belt reabsorbed the coating of metal.

  So, she thought. The Tetras weren't the only enemy. Or the Raiders.

  And who could she tell? Not Security—she had no proof that anything had happened. The bot had not even dented the tough bulkhead. Not Command—the captain was under the direct supervision of Princeps Kyseros, a high-ranking Aristo. Not even—not even Dai.

  Because if he knew, he could be a target too.

  She would have to go it alone, trust only herself, and be vigilant, if she wanted to graduate, if she wanted to become a pilot.

  If she wanted to live.

  sixteen

  The Pax could not raise the High Docks on communica

  tions. Nor could it reach any transmitter on the surface of Theron. "Something's interfering," Asteria heard a communications officer say in the mess room. "Maybe it's solar activity, but I've never known any this bad."

  The engine crew seemed worried. Following the captain's orders, they dropped into unusually high orbit, fifty kilometers from the docks. Under visual magnification, everything looked intact—but there was no space traffic at all, unusual for a docking station. No ships orbited near, no large
craft were visible in the three big docks.

  In Engineering, Skarne said to Asteria, "The princeps wants to be ferried down to the surface in a lander. I don't think that's wise myself—not without communications. But he wants to assume his post. The captain wants him to have an honor guard, so we're sending six fighters to accompany him." He tilted his head. "Want to be the seventh?"

  "Me? Pilot a fighter?"

  "I thought you'd like to try a real ship after those trainers," Skarne said with a grin. "If you'll promise not to accidentally discharge your weapons, you can fly as the rear guard. You are not to land on the surface, though; once the others have safely landed, you are to return to post. Clear?"