Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer)

by Hechtl, Chris

  Any resistance was put down hard and fast. “Isn't this well, a little overkill for you admiral?” Sprite asked as a plasma bolt tore a bot apart. The organic sentients had been cowed by his display and quickly quit the area. Now whoever was trying to stop him had started using bots.

  “Overkill? No, I think it's about right,” Irons snarled. “Got a problem with me defending myself all of a sudden commander?” he asked, blowing an alien away with a shotgun blast from the armored gauntlet on his left arm. He'd seen the damn raptor on his HUD hiding behind a crate. You'd think the Dilgarth would have realized by now that going up against him at all was a losing battle. Apparently this was a different pack or something.

  “Since I'm in the body in question, no not really,” Sprite said. “But I do question your mindset and your motives. And your plan well... stinks. It needs work. It isn't you admiral.”

  “Simple, direct, and to the point. The best plans sometimes are. Rule one of an engineer Sprite, if it doesn't work, use a hammer. If it still doesn't work your not using a big enough hammer,” he said slamming a gauntlet fist into an armored door. The shock of the impact made a loud thunderous bang. Puffs of dirt and dust danced around the door. It vibrated and dented but held. Three more hits and it still held. He stepped back and kicked it. Hard. The door crumpled inward. He used his hands to wedge them in and then pull the door halves apart far enough so he could climb in.

  “You aren't even bothering to hack the doors admiral?” Sprite asked. He was in an anteroom less than two hundred meters from central admin and the computer core now. He looked around, scanning with his energy enhanced senses. Or cores he thought reading the reports as they came in, he wasn't really sure what he was going to find in the other room. It was Faraday shielded for some reason.

  “Just getting some mad out Commander,” Irons said. Most of the resistance had faded. He still had the occasional suicidal alien or bot, but they were now passing the word that crossing him was a terminal decision.

  “Admiral... it's not their fault things are they way they are...”

  “Oh no?” He looked up furious. “Whose fault is it? Can you tell me that? Mine? I was asleep damn it. I did what I could. I damn well know I couldn't have done anything in stasis. No, you ain't layin that on me. So, whose fault is it commander?”

  “I think you have the answer for yourself.”

  “You're damn right I do. The people,” he snarled. His nostrils dilated in rage. He turned and paced for a moment. “You think I don't see it? They could have done something afterward. Anything. You think they just what? All died out? All the people who know how things work? How to fix them? Build others? Yeah we used replicators but we had other technology! You can't wipe out a civilization completely? Spirit of space knows we've tried it on ourselves often enough! What the frack were they doing? No one taught their kids what to do??? No theory, no foundation! It's like apathy set in and no one gives a damn anymore! Oh well, we can't fix it, might as well just live with it. Oh well, someone else will come along and save us.” He threw his hands up in mock disgust.

  “And look at me, running around trying to save them like some stupid hero. Do I get any thanks? Precious little! Usually it's a kick in the teeth and a go along we don't want you interfering with us anymore! Remember Pyrax? Hell, Destiny? Kiev? And here we are on a fracked up station. And damn it is a fracked up station. And why is that?” he demanded sarcastically throwing his hands up in the air.

  “The people trying to kill us had parents. Those parents could have done something about the fracken situation. It's instinctive of most parents, to want the next generation to have it better than they did. To make it easier on them. They did nothing!” he screamed, bellowing it out and balling his fists. He lashed out and smashed a cabinet into ruin. “Not a damn thing! They let this station die around them a little at a time. They let it die! They left their kids to wallow in the dark, to play Lord of the flies! What the hell was wrong with them???!”

  “Sometimes I ask that question myself,” a new voice asked behind him. Irons turned, angry. He was now angry with himself for not noticing the new person. Then the lack of a heat signature on his HUD made him pause.

  The man was there, a woman was hiding behind him. He realized at once it was a holographic projection. They were both dressed in formal green business suits. Their images glowed slightly in the dark. “We obviously screwed up. We know. I've known for centuries. Spirit of space I've known. And yes, I could have done something about it. I didn't. That's on me.” His eyes closed for a long moment. The woman reached out and tucked her hand into his and gave it a squeeze.

  “You are an AI?” Irons asked. That didn't feel right. They reeked of old, of age and something else. Ancient. Ancient and lost.

  “No. I'm a cyber,” the man said. He looked in his prime but there was something about his eyes. Something old. Old and tired. His image was ghost like, ethereal. The projector was barely functional. There was also something about the image that was off, the details weren't there. There were no folds, no creases in the virtual cloth; the hair was more like a hair helmet. That was odd.

  “My wife and I have been in this station net trying to keep it together for the past seven hundred years. Until you showed up we had given up trying to do anything beyond staying alive.”

  “Worried I'll shut it all down?” Irons asked. He was near the admin complex it would be dead easy for him. All he needed to do is get in there and he could purge the entire system and take control with his implants. The cybers added a new complexity to the already convoluted situation.

  He wasn't on board with cybers. Oh he jacked in to a system of course, but to permanently jack in? To give up your body to become a meat AI? Living in a cyber world? Dependent on a machine to keep him alive? That argument always had him going in circles. To be a spacer you had to be dependent on a computer to manage your habitat. And he was a cyborg; he had to have artificial implants to stay alive... but to do it like that? Give up a sense of touch, taste, smell... all physical contact with your friends and family? Give up eating a steak? Sure a virtual one tasted okay... but it still wasn't the same. He couldn't wrap his head around that sort of dedication or insanity whichever it was. He was just glad that the military had never allowed it. At least not in wide spread practice.

  “It's a thought. And sometimes I think you should. We deserve it. We've just sat here. Trying to...” he shook his head. His image wavered.

  The pair talked with Irons for several minutes. Eventually they introduced themselves, Sid Berkheart and Emily Berkheart. They were permanently hooked up to the station's computer net. They were old, very old and barely sane he realized. There were eighteen sane cybers and three sane AI in the system. They relied on the solar panels for power. There were about a hundred or more other people on the station divided into three tribes and about sixty surviving Dilgarth.

  The cybers have built their own virtual world when the station had been in its prime. They had retreated into it during the fall, only venturing out when they had to do something. Some have gone insane over the years. Four cybers and one smart AI were insane and homicidal. Two other cybers had retreated from the others, they no longer communicated with them. The smart AI is rampant, usually sulking and it only became active to defend the insane cybers when they were in trouble.

  “Lovely,” Sprite said. “That explains the lock out.”

  “No, we thought you were him,” Sid said tiredly. Apparently the first time they had docked the other cybers had been slow in noticing their arrival. It wasn't until the admiral had fired off his plasma weapon did they know that something interesting was going on in the real world. When they had escaped the cybers had retreated into renewed apathy. That was until he'd barged in and torn the place apart. Now the cybers were terrified of him.

  “Oh.”

  None of the remaining sane cybers were programmers. The husband and wife talking with him were human resource managers. They had managed to slice off par
ts of the net from the insane cybers and AI. The AI Draco was an engineering AI; it had been responsible for a lot of the day to day managing of the stations systems so it had control of most of the station. Fortunately it seemed to ignore them as long as they stayed in their virtual world. That had forced them into a sort of isolation which had deepened their depression and paranoia.

  The other cybers had been a different story. A large part of the damage and destruction in the station had been at their hands. They had tormented the survivors in the station, haunting them and killing any that they could. The station was falling apart faster now, past the point of sustainability for the net.

  “Why didn't you send a bot in and kill them? Just walk in and smash their feeding tubes?” Irons demanded when he heard the story. It was enough to turn his stomach. The insane cybers had been allowed the run of the net for too long, killing hundreds of people over the years. Cyber serial killers. They had to be stopped.

  “They... admiral they are our friends. Or were. Could you do that?” Emily asked, hand going over her husband's arm.

  The admiral's eyes narrowed. It was a deceptively easy question to answer. They just weren't prepared to make the hard decisions. That explained part of why they were in such a situation in the first place. He wondered how and why they could have become senior managers of a station this size by avoiding the hard decisions. “Could I sit back and watch a friend go insane and take everything they and I had built down around me? Watch them go on a killing spree for how long? No. I would make the hard decision. Living with the decision,” Irons looked away in pain. “That would be hard.”

  “That makes you different than us I guess,” Sid said sadly. “We... all of us are pacifists admiral. We can't, we won't kill. No. Not now, not ever.”

  “Your friends can though.”

  “Yes. We... we try to limit the damage.”

  “I'd say killing someone is sort of hard to undo,” Sprite said dryly. “I sensed a powerful AI in the net just now as well.” Now that they were introduced the Berkhearts had opened a port for Sprite to access what remained of the station's net. She was poking around as they talked.

  Sid nodded. “There are several AI in the system as well. One of which went rampant and is allied with the insane cybers. I guess you could say we have a civil cold war going on in here. Unfortunately the computer core is failing so...” The man shrugged helplessly.

  “I wish we had engineers. No one does,” Emily said sadly.

  “Which makes me wonder why,” Irons said. It didn't make sense that all the engineers died out. Not without passing something along to the next generation. And what about the engineers and techs on this station? Surely they could have kept it up and running!

  Sid sighed, shoulders slumping. His image flickered as his virtual eyes closed. “We lost ours in the accidents. And over the years they just sort of gave up. They tried to keep the station up but all the problems got ahead of them.”

  “And we the council made mistakes. We should have listened to them. We should have swallowed our pride and sent a shuttle to the planet for help. We didn't and we've paid the price,” Emily admitted.

  “I'd say the people on this station did that for you,” Irons said.

  “True. But there we are. It's hopeless without an engineer. Perhaps you are doing us a service by killing us. Ending our misery.”

  “I am an engineer,” Irons said.

  “I thought you were a marine?” The wife asked surprised. “You act and dress like one,” she said. She first indicated the destruction Irons had caused and then his armored suit.

  The admiral looked down at the suit. They really were pacifists and pathetic in engineering if they thought this improvised suit was marine issue. “What this? Easily fixed. The suit? No, it's something I had on hand. It's actually army issue that I adapted,” he explained.

  “Oh. I was sure you were a marine.” She looked at her husband uncertainty.

  “No, hardly,” Irons laughed. “I know the first rule of ground combat as far as the navy is concerned, send in the marines. In this case I didn't have any to send. My name is John Henry Irons. Fleet admiral of the Federation Navy.” He straightened to attention.

  “Accessing...” The man looked left and right and then his eyes widened. “Are you...”

  “Where are you getting the information?” Sprite asked.

  “News archive. That still doesn't answer my question,” Sid said.

  Irons nodded. “Yes I am that Irons. I was lost in a stasis survival pod up until a few years ago. I've been bumming around the sector trying to restore order and generally running into trouble.”

  “Which we have here. I thought... according to this you are an engineering admiral,” the man said sounding excited for the first time since they met. For the first time in apparently a long time. “But you were destroying...”

  “I lost people,” the admiral said tightly, eyes glittering.

  “He sort of lost perspective,” Sprite said as way of explanation. Irons grimaced. The AI was right. Sort of.

  “No, I decided the shortest path in is brute force. It's the only thing the degenerates apparently understand and respect. Fear is a great motivator to stay the hell out of my way. Which makes me wonder, if you are in here, why aren't you helping them?”

  “We do,” the wife said. She looked uncomfortable.

  “We try to you mean,” her husband said with a sigh. “If they see or hear us they run. The holograms I mean. They think we're ghosts.” His image flickered again.

  “Ghosts in the machine,” Irons said with a nod. “I can relate.”

  “We do not have many projectors in the station. They tend to avoid the areas where we can talk,” Emily replied frowning. “The others, the insane ones, they drove them away. Terrified them.”

  “They are savages,” a Chinese male said. The two cybers turned as an Asian male and female were projected. The quality of the projection of all of them noticeably degraded however. Irons grimaced. The Chinese couple were dressed in conservative Chinese mandarin outfits. Brown suits, with white hair. The male had a flowing white beard and hair. The woman's white hair was done up in a bun held there by a pin or some other object. For some reason their images seemed better than the Berkhearts. He was surprised by their appearance.

  “Uneducated. They refuse to be educated. They need to be eradicated or relocated. Savages,” Fu said stroking his beard.

  “They are people. Fallen people. We can help them if they would let us,” Emily said, turning on Fu.

  “Which they won’t.”

  “Whoa. Just a sec. I'm getting a vibe that this is an old and well worn argument,” Irons said holding up a hand. So much for pacifists. Fu didn't appear the type. “One I've apparently missed. I thought this station didn't have food for so many. I mean two or three hundred people? That you know of?”

  “The Dilgarth prey upon the others,” the mandarin said. He flicked his hand as if it didn't matter.

  “Ah. I bet they eat vermin as well,” the admiral replied thoughtfully.

  “They are all vermin,” the mandarin said. Irons saw holographic eyes floating around him. Apparently the other cybers were checking in now. He wasn't sure if it was out of maudlin curiosity or what. Maybe the Berkhearts had called them? Or perhaps they had been there all along hiding, watching, and waiting to see his reaction?

  “They were people once. They can be again if we can get through to them,” Emily said softly.

  The admiral nodded but shrugged. He was all for helping people if they would help themselves. “Do they do anything for themselves? Farm? Repair things?” The admiral asked.

  Emily shook her head sadly. “They have a large stockpile of preserved food. When... admiral you have to understand. When we were isolated out here some of our people went... mad.”

  “I see,” he replied thoughtfully. He had pretty much concluded that already.

  “We were also beset by pirates,” the mandarin said with a sne
er. “Which you should have kept at bay,” he said, turning an accusing eye on the admiral.

  “I was asleep at the time,” Irons said dryly. “You survived though.”

  “Yes, no thanks to the navy.”

  “The navy isn't what it once was. It was fighting the Xeno's remember? Most of civilization has fallen. There are small pockets but they have degraded to early steam powered industrial technology in most star systems. I'm not sure why.”

  “Which is something we were debating about when you first came in,” Sprite interjected.

  “An AI?” The mandarin asked, eyes coolly studying the admiral.

  “Commander Sprite. Adjunct to the admiral. With me are Defender and Proteus. We are Trinity.” Sprite's holo appeared beside the admiral. She was in full formal uniform. Her cover was tucked under her right arm.

  “Three in one. Interesting,” the mandarin said hand coming out of the folds of his robe to rub him chin and goatee once more. “In a human no less. Impressive feat of engineering.”

  “What can I say? Milspec is the best there is,” Irons said with a satisfied shrug. It was an old dig, civilians hated that difference.

  “What is your intention here admiral?” the mandarin finally asked.

  “Secure the station. Then decide from there. The people on the Kiev 221... The people who came with me were hoping for salvage or a new home. I was considering more.”

  “More?”

  “Rebuilding the station,” the admiral replied. He looked around to the other sets of eyes.

  “Impossible,” the mandarin said, hand going into his sleeve once more. “This station is dying.”

  The admiral frowned. “It is repairable.”

  “You've done enough damage,” the mandarin said.

  “I am an engineer. We're good at both blowing stuff up and fixing or building things,” Irons said looking at his path. “It's what we do,” he said. He reached out to a broken holo projector with his right hand. A mental command sent nanites into it. After a moment the nanites withdrew and the projector came to life stabilizing their image somewhat.