by Rich Larson
“But a mining ship freethinker?” Silas was still stuck on the previous revelation. “No way could it go sapient. Not nearly enough codespace. AIs cross the Turing Line in mega labs, not on a rig financed by Dronyk fucking Orbital.”
“He explained that, too,” Cena said wearily. “A metal ship, no. But a bioship, yes. The freethinker was already tapped into a crude nervous system. And at some point she started growing gray matter. Hardware to wetware processing.” Cena encompassed the bioship with a wave of her arm. “She has all the codespace she needs, now.”
Silas rocked back on his haunches. “Shit,” he muttered. “So this isn’t even a freethinker running a ship anymore. They really are one big borg.”
“Pierce called it evolution.” Cena laughed again, the same ugly sound. “He had been talking to her for six straight months. Docked in, you know. He was losing his fucking mind.”
Silas felt like he was losing his. He could picture pulsating flesh all around him, but now peeled back, exposing the filigree of neurons, sodium and crackling potassium, neurons swimming up and down a vast lattice of canals. As much space as any mega lab. Enough space for a self-aware sapient intelligence.
“He used up all the food,” Cena said. “Feeding her. He hacked into all the supply rooms. We still had the hydroponic garden, but he’d stripped most of that, too. And we were still six months out from the alloy belt. Omir and Slick Jack wanted to feed him to the ship.” She paused, then gave a sickly grin. “He beat them to it. We had him locked in a store room until we figured out what to do. Argued all nightcycle. And when we went to get him in the morning, he was gone.” Cena’s black eyes seemed to glitter. “Anastasia let him out. Stupid of us not to have someone watching him. But we were upset. Scared. We checked the cams. They weren’t wiped. We saw Pierce sneak out. He went to the equipment hold first, to get a slicer.”
“Slicer?”
“Cutting tool. Uses superheated plasma.”
Silas thought of the sharp glinting shapes they’d passed in the dark, the rotary saws and line cutters. He was not enjoying this story. His skin was crawling with it.
“And then.” Cena paused, frowning, her tongue sliding along her yellow teeth as she shook off Silas’s interruption. “And then, after he had the slicer, he went and set it up by a cluster of nutrient tubes. Anastasia sealed off the corridor, I think, so we wouldn’t hear it. He cut off his legs.”
Silas had known it was coming, in the back of his mind, but he still flinched.
“The stumps cauterized clean, and I think he must have shut off his pain, or something, with one of those stacks in his skull,” Cena mused. “Otherwise I don’t see how he could have managed to get the second one off. He shoved them into a nutrient tube. Did his right arm, after, wriggling around on the floor like a worm. Shoved the arm in. Then it was just him. Inching. Got in headfirst, but by the way his stumps were twitching, I don’t think he was dead for at least a half hour. Anastasia took him nice and slow.”
Silas hit the release on his hood and gave up a thin, bubbly vomit his stomach had somehow managed to churn together.
“Don’t worry,” Cena said, as it spattered the floor. “Anastasia can clean that up, too.”
“Why the fuck would he do that?” Silas rasped, once he’d resealed his hood. The bioship’s atmosphere was obviously breathable, but with a dank rotting taste. He would take recycled any day. “Did she get into his implants, somehow?” he asked. “Did she puppet him?”
“It was voluntary. Judging by the audios he left for us.” Cena grimaced. “He was in love with it. In love with her. He was docked in every day for six months, but you’re a technician. You know how time perception gets. For him, it could have been years. Decades. He wanted to be with her forever. Full upload, he called it. Sick fucker had a prong the whole time he was cutting himself up. Didn’t go flaccid until Anastasia ate his spinal cord.”
“And then?”
“We were scared. Made a course deviation to get into orbit here, sent out emergency frequencies. Figured we might be able to get the bioship to go dormant until some trained technicians could come in and wipe the freethinker.” Cena shook her head. “And once we were in orbit here, no food, minimal water, no way of knowing when help would arrive, the only thing we could do was go back into cryo.” Cena wiped at her emaciated cheeks and seemed disappointed to find them dry. “We thought Pierce was the crazy one,” she enunciated, staring at her fingertips. “We thought Anastasia was still obeying her programming, sapient or no. So it should have been safe. To go back into cryo. It was the only thing we could do.”
She stalled out, so Silas prodded. “The pods were empty when we came in.”
“Yeah.” Cena stared at him. “I woke up twenty-one days ago. Wasn’t supposed to. Some kind of glitch. And the other pods, yeah. Empty.” She snarled. “She was heating us up one by one like fucking sausages. I didn’t understand what had happened at first. You know how your head gets right after the thaw. Thought I was hallucinating. Especially when I found half of Ahmed.”
“Half.”
“Top half. Grafted to the corridor wall. Being . . . absorbed.” Cena’s shoulders slumped. “He couldn’t talk anymore, at that point. I don’t think. She already broke something in his brain. He just stared at me. Then, when I tried to pull him down, he screamed. Loud, so loud. Anastasia must have heard it, or felt it, because she started sprouting those tentacles.”
Silas remembered the feel of them coiling around his ankles and shuddered.
“I screamed, too,” Cena said. “So loud. I know I should have stayed. I should have bashed his skull in with my boot. I think I could have done it quickly. Quicker. But I ran.”
Io and Yorick, left alone with no howler to face the bioship’s army of spiked tendrils. Silas’s stomach turned again at the thought of them writhing on a wall.
“I hid here, in engineering. Anastasia doesn’t have so much body down here. I tried getting into the system for days and days, but she shut me out of everything. Couldn’t flush a fucking waste unit, much less launch the lifeboat.” Cena gestured towards the blinking control panels. “She’s been hunting me for three weeks. Can’t see me when I wear her own skin, though, and when she goes dormant I burn out sensors and nerve bundles wherever I can find them.” She pointed to the mass of flesh she’d shed and it wriggled sluggishly. “Found out that if you slice it and mold it, it grows back together. Useful. Can even eat it when you’re done.”
Silas couldn’t hide his disgust and Cena spotted it.
“I always wonder who it is,” she said. “Ahmed or Omir or Su or whoever. I’m eating the crew. Just like she did. Maybe I’ll eat you, too.”
Silas stiffened. “I’m stringy,” he said.
“I’m joking. So. I’ve been waiting. Waiting and waiting.” Cena rubbed her cheek again. “And now you’re here. I can barely work a healthy freethinker. But I know that if we wipe the personality module, Anastasia dies. Or at least reboots.”
Silas remembered the swollen module, spitting and swirling with corrupt code. Beyond repair. But there was an alternative to wiping it blank.
“If she’s distracted, will you be able to get into the system?” Cena gripped his arm with cold fingers.
“I almost got in before.” Silas gently tugged his arm away. “But that was, you know, before. She’ll be ready for intrusion now. Her main interface nearly electrocuted me on the way out.”
“She’ll be busy,” Cena said. She looked down at her hands. “With your friends.”
Silas snapped upright. “You said you didn’t know where they were.”
“I don’t.”
“I got away,” Silas said, raking both hands over his head. “They got away, too. Holed up somewhere how you did.”
“Maybe,” Cena said. She gave him a long look. “Whether Anastasia has them or not, the only way to help your friends is to shut her down. Agreed?”
Silas inhaled deep enough that his oxygen meter blinked. “Agreed,�
� he said. “Let’s fucking wipe this thing out.” He stuck out his hand and Cena clung to it like a vice, grinning fierce and mad.
“Good,” she said. “Good. I’ll make you a suit.”
A half hour later, Silas was creeping through a maintenance corridor, swathed from head to foot in what felt like rotting mushroom. The flesh suit was slick and warm and constricted his chest and arms, but he could move. Through a ragged gap he’d never noticed on Cena’s hump, he could more or less see.
And the tendrils hanging from the ceiling couldn’t. They brushed against him every so often, first trailing along Cena’s back and then bumping his, but they made no move to coil or strike. As far as the feelers were concerned, Silas was already part of the bioship.
So, he figured using the radio was worth the risk. Making sure Cena was still trundling forward, and that his external speaker was off, Silas chinned his mic. There was a static crackle, then nothing for a long minute. He clenched his jaw. He could picture Io’s top half without the bottom. Yorick crucified to a nutrient tube, unable to speak. Not even the company man deserved that.
“Silas! You alive?”
He’d never been so glad to hear Io’s voice. “I’m alive,” he said, clenching his fists inside their fleshy mitts. Relief crashed over him in warm waves. “I’m alive,” he repeated. “And I got Haley’s ghost. Are you alright? Are both of you?”
“Yeah, we’re alright, you stupid fuck.” Io’s reply was half-laughed. “You lobotomy case. You idiot.” She exhaled static. “How did you get back aboard? Fuck, Silas, our ship’s gone. Gone.”
“I know. Where are you?” Silas demanded, still picking his way along in Cena’s wake. “Actually, wait, don’t say. Anastasia might be listening. Look, I found out what happened with the crew, and it’s fucked up. It’s seriously fucked up.”
“We found out, too,” Io said. Her voice sounded strained. “And yeah. It is. But we don’t have to end up like them. We’ve been . . . negotiating. With her.”
Silas felt a prickle down the nape of his neck. “Bad idea,” he said. “Bad, bad idea. She’s completely bat-shit.”
“I know that.” Io paused. “Look, she has the lifeboat prepped and ready to launch. She doesn’t want us. Says we’re not family, whatever the fuck that means. But she wants us to do something for her first. She wants us to make her whole.”
Silas stared ahead at Cena’s swaying back. “What do you mean?” he asked, feeling another stab of trepidation.
“It’s the last crew member.” Io’s voice was coarse now. “They got away. She wants the whole set. She wants us to help hunt them down and recycle them.”
Cena turned to urge him on, and Silas realized his steps had slowed. He gave an affirming wave. She turned back. The ribbed corridor was coming to an end. They were nearly to the bridge.
“This was supposed to be a rescue mission,” Silas said.
“It was supposed to be maintenance,” Io said flatly. “We weren’t advised of these risks. Yorick will spin it our way when we get back to Dronyk.”
Silas weighed it. Part of him wanted nothing more than to get off the Anastasia by any means necessary, get far away from this nightmare circus of meat and mad AIs. A lifeboat beeline for Pentecost was tempting.
But even on full burn, it would take another month to reach the planet. A lifeboat’s freethinker was nowhere near equipped to hold a ghost. By the time they docked, Haley might be nothing but nonsense code and a jumble of decaying memories.
And if they took the lifeboat, Cena would have to die for it.
“You’re with them right now, aren’t you?” Io was silent for a long moment, waiting on the reply. “Silas?”
“She saved my life,” Silas finally said. “Pulled me back into the ship.”
There was a long pause. “You have Haley’s ghost, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I have her.”
“If we don’t get out of here, and soon, she won’t have a chance at recovery. You know that.”
There was another chance at recovery, but Silas couldn’t tell Io that. Not with Anastasia potentially listening in.
“So where are you?” Io pressed. “We’re heading to the lower decks. Engineering. We going to find you there?”
“Yeah,” Silas lied. “Engine room. Come in carefully. She has a, uh, a kind of plasma cutter.”
“Be nice to have a fucking howler,” Io said. “Alright. Sit tight, stay away from the door. And don’t tip her off.”
“Alright.” Silas chinned his radio off. There was a cold slick of sweat on his shoulders that had nothing to do with the clammy flesh suit. Cena stood at the hatch, waiting. She set the slicer down, then put her hands on either side of her misshapen head and twisted. It tore free with a rending noise that shivered Silas’s teeth.
“This is it,” she said, discarding the chunk of rubbery flesh, picking up her slicer. “You ready?”
Silas keyed his external mic. “Yeah.” He fingered the neural cord she’d managed to find him, hoping all the conductors would still fire. “Ready.”
Cena fixed him with a flint stare. “Who were you talking to?”
“Myself,” Silas said. “I talk too much. I may be losing my mind.”
“All mad here,” Cena replied. She didn’t look like she believed him, but she still turned and wrenched the maintenance hatch open.
Cena stormed out onto the bridge wailing like a banshee, raking the slicer’s beam in wild arcs, scorching trenches into the ceiling’s overgrowth. Silas winced when she clipped a projector, leaving it black and smoking. He’d told her not to fry any circuitry.
“I’m here!” Cena called. “Anastasia! I’m here! No more hiding, no more sneaking. Eat me!”
Even as she screamed it, the bioship responded to the intrusion, oozing clear mucus into the sizzling furrows while tentacles snapped from the floors and walls. They converged on her like vipers, baring hooks and barbs, and Cena cut down the first crop. A straggler darted under the beam and wrapped around her foot. She stomped, swore, fumbled with her makeshift weapon.
Silas was so caught up he nearly forgot why he was there. Then Haley’s ghost pinged through his radsuit’s processor, and he located the soft blue glow of the ship’s main interface. The few tentacles dangling overtop of it strained in the direction of the fracas, distracted. Anastasia’s full attentions were on Cena and her slicer. Silas reminded himself he was invisible, took a steadying breath, and ambled out of the maintenance hatch.
It only took moments to traverse the length of the bridge, but it seemed like a hard eternity. Silas walked slowly, eyes fixed ahead. Cena shouted and shot down wave after wave of roiling tentacles. The hot orange flash of the slicer swam purple blots across Silas’s vision. The noise of searing meat and Cena cackling was loud, loud in his head. He walked through the chaos, untouched, and finally found himself standing where things first went to shit, right in front of the innocent blue interface.
He chanced a look at the two tentacles overhead, straining towards the fray like overeager watch dogs. Then he dug his hands through the stumps of his flesh suit and hooked the neural cord into the interface’s port.
Overhead, the tentacles shifted.
Silas removed his lumpy head next, freeing up the concordant port on the neck of his radsuit. With one last look back at Cena trying to coax dregs from the slicer’s battery, Silas jammed the neural cord into his neck and closed the circuit.
In. Silas slid through virtual space, wriggling through the now-active detection system, throwing up a blizzard of nonsense code that masked his passage through the core files. The personality module loomed, hulking, throbbing. Larger and more complex than any freethinker Silas had ever cracked, a writhing mass of electric thought. But he didn’t have to crack it. All he had to do was replace it.
Silas pulled Haley’s neural imprint from the flagging processor in his radsuit and pushed it across the channel. She streamed into the personality module as a digital flood, seeping into the cracks, c
oursing through the nodes. Code danced and jittered as it rewrote itself. Silas prayed hard to any god.
“What the fuck are you doing, Silas?”
He realized Io’s voice was not coming through his radio at the same instant he recognized the shape of a thumb pressed up to his neck.
“Fixing the freethinker,” Silas said, but even as he said it he felt his connection guillotine. He blinked, nerves tingling, back in the real world. Io was standing behind him.
“It’s beyond fixing. Said it yourself.” Io pulled him away from the interface, making the unhooked neural cord swing. “Dronyk didn’t see this coming. It’s not our shit to deal with.”
Silas realized he couldn’t hear Cena cursing. He turned and wished he hadn’t. The dead slicer was lying on the floor, and Cena’s limp body was being hoisted up the wall. A thick pale nutrient tube had appeared there, cilia waving in anticipation as the tentacles dragged her upward.
“You may leave now.” Anastasia’s voice blared through Silas’s head. “Your lifeboat is fueled.”
His heart stopped. It hadn’t worked. The transfer hadn’t worked. He’d dashed Haley’s ghost against the virtual rocks, or worse, she was trapped in some tiny corner of the freethinker’s personality module.
“Come on, Silas,” Io said shakily. “We have to get the fuck out of here.”
Silas looked from her to Yorick, who was silent, ash-white, uglier than he’d ever seen him. He would get no support there.
“Haley,” he pleaded. “Haley, can you hear me?”
“We’ll upload her to the lifeboat.” Io swallowed. “Even with the decay, you’ll at least have some of her. Some memories. That’s better than nothing.”
Silas shook his head, unable to explain. Cena inched up the wall. Her eyes were glazed over.
“Let’s go,” Io said. “Let’s live.”
Silas looked away before Cena reached the nutrient tube. He’d killed her, too. He knew he deserved to stay. He deserved to be the next one on the wall. But when Io grabbed him by the arm, he stumbled after her, tears tracking down his cheeks. Tentacles twitched as they passed.