Torchship Pilot

by Karl K Gallagher

“Commander Long, figure out what it meant by that later,” said the admiral.

  Mitchie nodded.

  When the discussion started throwing vectors and dates around Galen called a halt. “You’re doing staff work. Do it in your offices. Deng, have a proposal ready for me in a week.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the chief of staff.

  “Long, thank you for a fascinating briefing. Try to not get into too much trouble.”

  ***

  Mitchie swallowed her first bite. “Whoo! That’s spicy.” She followed it with water and a mouthful of rice.

  “Marshal’s Chicken,” said Guo. With just the two of them on the ship in dock he’d decided to experiment.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Chef’s secret.” The smugness was not secret.

  Gaia’s Hand said, “There are seventeen recipes for Marshal’s Chicken in use. All variants have—”

  “Hand, ‘secret’ means he doesn’t want me to know. Telling me would be rude,” interrupted Mitchie.

  “Oh, pardon me.” The tree-face looked abashed.

  “Not as rude as telling an admiral he’s wrong,” said Guo.

  “Well, no,” she said. “Hand, what did you mean by saying the Fusion could only mobilize ten billion? Are you excluding babies and cripples?”

  “No. Removing those physically unfit reduces the potential mobilized force from ten to under eight billion humans.”

  “Where are the other billion people?” asked Mitchie.

  “They don’t exist.”

  “The Fusion is inflating its census numbers?”

  “The census, at least the census reports Akiak has copies of, is accurately counting people,” said Hand. “Many of the people being counted are false identities generated by the government.”

  Mitchie said, “How did you—no. Why is the Fusion creating so many fictional people?”

  “To provide losers in games and other status competitions.”

  Mitchie traded looks with Guo. Neither grasped the explanation. “Expand on that, please,” she said.

  “Humans have an inherent aversion to being permanently at the bottom of a status hierarchy—the omega of a group. Call it omegaphobia. A person feeling stuck in the omega position will take high-risk actions to achieve higher status or force another member of the group into the omega position. This can be crime, sexual liaisons, attacks on members of rival groups, or accusing in-group members of betraying the group.”

  Gaia’s Hand continued, “By creating artificial omegas the Fusion provides emotional security to its lower-status citizens. Ones feeling insecure have harmless targets to attack verbally or in games. This appears to have reduced the crime rate and the intensity of partisan politics.”

  Mitchie said, “Go back to ‘omegaphobia.’ I’ve seen lots of spacers and none of them threw tantrums over being at the bottom.”

  Gaia’s Hand put on a thoughtful expression. It waited exactly five seconds before answering. “A spacer is at the lowest-status position in a crew. But just being in a crew makes him higher status than the people left behind. There’s also an expectation that he will rise in the hierarchy over time. A military or business organization gives opportunities for higher status in reward for performance or seniority. This provides additional security.”

  “But why would someone panic over being stuck at the bottom?” asked Guo. “It’s not fun, but living on the stipend is a stable life. What’s going to happen to them?”

  “It seems to be driven by evolutionary adaptions,” said Hand. “This is speculative since we can’t prove what happened in prehistoric times. The best theory TFS anthropologists have developed is that it’s a reaction to how ancestral hunter-gatherer bands handled not having enough food to go around.”

  The leafy face was replaced by an animation of fur loincloth wearing humans butchering a wildebeest. “In times of plenty a band would share food among all members. The sharing would continue through temporary shortages to even out luck. If a long-term shortage left the band without enough food to support everyone they would have to eliminate some members to keep everyone from dying of malnutrition. You’ve probably heard of some of the methods used.”

  “Tossing orphaned children into a parent’s grave,” said Guo.

  “Stranding an old woman on a mountain,” added Mitchie.

  “Infanticide and senilicide,” said Hand. “There’s also invalidicide, when someone sick or crippled would be driven off or left behind during a migration. All of these are subsets of omegacide—killing the lowest status member of the band. If there’s no one too young, old, or crippled to contribute to the group’s survival, then the least popular member is killed or expelled.

  “Given weather cycles and population growth an omegacidal event could be expected in a band once every decade. So being the lowest-status individual in good times isn’t worrisome as long as you expect someone else to take the spot before the next crisis.

  “If you are stuck as the omega then changing your status is a life or death matter. If you’re one step above the omega you need to watch for attempts to push you down. That’s omegaphobia.”

  “What does a guy do when he’s having an attack of ‘omegaphobia’?” asked Mitchie.

  “At the most basic level, attack someone else. If he can hit someone and not be hit back he’s put the target below him. The socially-aware variant is to attack a member of a rival group and gain status as a protector of his group. Or expose a member of his own group for violating a taboo, gaining status for enforcing the group’s identity.”

  “But the Fusion’s stipend kids aren’t doing that because they outrank all the fictional people,” she said.

  “Yes. More specifically they aren’t doing it to real people. When they feel status insecurity they attack an easy target. Which is almost always one of the fictional population.”

  “Hmmm.” Mitchie’s eyes traced the flowering vines painted on the galley walls as she thought. “Exposing the fictional people would make those kids realize they were omegas. And they’d be pissed. Probably pissed enough to turn on their government.”

  “Riots everywhere,” said Guo in horror. “You’d destroy their whole society?”

  “Why not? They’re trying to destroy ours.” She turned back to Gaia’s Hand. “How did you discover this?”

  The animated figure gestured toward the data crystal plugged into one of its ports. “The Akiak library mirror you gave me includes copies of the last few Fusion censuses. I’d been analyzing it to pass the time, looking for trends. Most of the population presents the normal bell curve distribution in traits with random variations. A set of lower-class profiles were too exactly distributed, as if they’d been generated with a bell curve function and a random number generator.

  “When I looked more closely at that population I realized that they were not displaying expected omegaphobic behaviors. They were killed repeatedly in games and kept playing without altering tactics. They lost arguments in social media and gave up. They entered competitions they couldn’t win. And then they publically whined about it where the winners could read and gloat. All aberrant behavior for humans.

  “Once I considered they could be puppets I looked for puppeteers. There are tens of millions of Fusion bureaucrats working in agencies such as ‘Social Monitoring’ and ‘Public Order.’ Supposedly they’re looking for imminent crimes and averting them. If that was true there would be trials where a Public Order agent presented evidence that they saw the crime coming but couldn’t intervene in time. I found none.

  “Looking for physical evidence I discovered that city sanitation profiles of throughputs matched a scenario where over ten percent of purchased food was discarded uneaten. I infer that the fictional people have apartments inhabited only by a housekeeping bot which throws away food brought by deliverybots.”

  “That holds together,” said Mitchie. “But they could still deny it. We’d need more proof to make them admit it.”

  “Or to conv
ince us,” said Guo. “Do you want to go to an admiral with ‘my pet AI said’ as your justification?”

  “I think it’s enough to ask for a mission to get proof,” she said.

  Always the holy mission, he thought.

  “Besides, they’d love a way to stop the Fusion without destroying their whole fleet. We’ll need those ships against the Betrayers someday.”

  “Victory through blackmail?” asked Guo dryly.

  “I’m not fussy,” said Mitchie.

  ***

  Admiral Chu snapped, “Being fictional is hardly the only explanation for people behaving themselves. They could be intensely monitored, or just drugged.”

  “Yes, it’s a bit circular,” said Admiral Galen. “Omegaphobia is so bad the Fusion is faking a billion people. The proof is they’re not being omegaphobic.”

  Mitchie said, “The theory depends on the analysis by Gaia’s Hand. If we can find independent proof we have leverage on the Fusion. If we prove it’s not true we’ve found out the reliability of the AI we inherited.” She studied the room. They were all senior officers in on the secret of the AI. She’d picked up on arguments over whether to use it in battle planning. Both sides seemed to like the idea of testing it.

  “Find proof how?” demanded Chu.

  “Go to Lapis. Penetrate one of the military or governmental databases. Pull out detailed info on the fictional people and the puppeteers. Come back and give it to the analysts.” Mitchie stared defiantly at a couple of Chu’s staffers who clearly thought she was crazy.

  Admiral Galen chuckled. “The last step might be the hardest.”

  “A free trader was making smuggling runs through Turner,” said Chu. “Last one was a few weeks ago. Skipper said he didn’t want to go again.”

  “What class ship?” asked Mitchie.

  “Twenty-five meter tailsitter.”

  “Perfect.”

  The intelligence boss said, “It’s the AS Sunflower. Pump her skipper for how he did the run. You’ll need help cracking their network. I’ll send you a team.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mitchie left, followed by most of the other officers.

  Galen leaned over to Chu. “How long have you been trying to send that team into the Fusion?”

  Chu shrugged. “The whole war.”

  ***

  Mitchie froze as she walked into the galley. Guo started cursing. Smashed electronic bits covered the floor and table.

  “Didn't Mthembu have the watch while we were off-ship?” she demanded.

  “Yes,” answered Guo. He looked through the debris for something intact. One box was whole, but it was the infoweapon, not any part of Gaia's Hand. A cable from the infoweapon led to a battered set of sockets from the AI's chassis.

  “Where the hell is he?” muttered Mitchie.

  Mthembu's cabin hatch was half open. She went through without knocking. The coxswain lay face down on his bed. Only a third of his body had actually made it onto the bed. The long legs trailed behind. Mitchie tripped over them as she tried to wake him.

  “Yo, spacer! On your feet!” She grabbed an arm and shook him.

  The sleeper's eyes parted a little and he made an inarticulate gurgle. Guo came in to grab the other arm. Together they turned him over, leaving him sitting on the floor looking at his commander in confusion.

  “What happened, Mthembu? You were supposed to be keeping an eye on Waja.”

  “Did. ‘E was bein’ nice. Made tea.”

  “You drank his tea,” stated Mitchie.

  “Uh-huh. Tasted funny, but didn’t wanna be rude.”

  Mitchie turned on her heel and walked out of the cabin. She looked over the broken pieces lying in the galley. “Is any of this repairable?”

  Guo shook his head beside her. “No. He’s smashed the memory arrays. On top of whatever the infoweapon did. I think Gaia’s Hand is gone.”

  “God damn it.” She went into their cabin to fetch pistols. “Let’s go look for him.”

  Waja wasn’t anywhere on the Joshua Chamberlain.

  Mitchie called Captain Deng. “Sir, my problem child just had a tantrum.” She summarized the disaster. “Can you get him picked up before he says anything classified?”

  “On it,” answered the chief of staff.

  Guo started sweeping up the debris.

  “What are we going to do with this?” asked Mitchie. “I can’t stand the thought of just throwing the poor guy’s remnants away.”

  “I’ll pack it up and send them to Pete. Maybe he can salvage something.”

  “I guess that's not breaking the Chancellor’s order if he’s dead. Okay.”

  In his cabin Mthembu shouted, “Hey! He drugged me.”

  ***

  Captain Deng came aboard Joshua Chamberlain to make a private report.

  “Did you find him?” demanded Mitchie.

  “Actually, the security patrol picked him up before I sent out the alert. Seems he went to a below-decks bar and started ranting about how he’d saved everyone from a Betrayer. They called the cops. It turns out a common form of schizophrenia is believing some common object is an artificial intelligence and fearing it. So the SPs took him over to the psychiatric clinic and handed him over.”

  “That’s good security.”

  “When I showed up to provide his records I told the doctor he’d smashed an innocent viewscreen and run off, and his captain and crew were very worried about him. The doctor promised to give him the very best therapy and medications available. They were very sympathetic when I explained he was a Demeter refugee.”

  “Good grief. They’ll be trying to fix his brain forever.” Mitchie shook her head.

  “Yes. Probably not the punishment he deserves, but I hope it’s a sufficient one.”

  ***

  Mitchie looked up at the knock on her office hatch. “Yes?”

  “Permission to enter, ma’am?” asked Mthembu.

  “Granted.” She put down the report she was working on.

  The coxswain was in full uniform instead of the usual jumpsuit. He closed the hatch behind him and came to attention.

  “What's on your mind?” she asked.

  “Ma’am . . . I know I was derelict in my duty. I’m prepared to face the consequences. I just . . . want to know where I stand. Are you planning a non-judicial, or court-martial, or what?”

  She’d been postponing dealing with this until her anger cooled. But he was entitled to an answer. “Sit,” she ordered.

  Mthembu sat stiffly in the chair.

  “Yes, you fucked up. Badly. But we all fuck up. I have, the Chief has, Admiral Galen probably has some fuck-up stories we never get to hear about. The point is to learn from them and not fuck up again. Now. Your particular fuck up cost us an asset that might have made a huge difference in the war, not just this war against the Fusion but the bigger war against the Betrayers. Now we don't have it any more. So from now on, whenever you look at a casualty report, wonder how many of those dead would have lived if we had Gaia's Hand helping us.”

  He flinched.

  “That’s all. Dismissed.” She returned his salute and went back to her report.

  ***

  A bit of paint transformed the Joshua Chamberlain into a copy of the Sunflower. Her purser and a deckhand were willing to do one last run. The rest felt, as their captain put it, “We’ve been to the well enough.” For a modest fee they described their methods for approaching Lapis and the contacts they’d been dealing with there.

  The painful part of prepping for the trip was removing the comm and nav boxes from the bridge. Mitchie didn’t mind doing her own navigation but analog-only communication was slow.

  Guo found two mechanics with analog ship experience, a spacer and an engineer’s mate third class. Chu sent three techs with some expensive electronics boxes. One of the dorm containers was opened up again. The mechanics took the empty main deck cabin and installed bunk beds.

  The Sunflower’s purser picked out cargo with high trade value. Admir
al Chu picked up the bill. Losing Gaia’s Hand hadn’t reduced his support for the mission.

  Six days after getting the mission they headed out of the Shishi system. Passing through Turner’s system was just tedious. The only moment of tension was passing between two warships, one Fusion, one Disconnect, as they approached the Lapis gate. Neither one bothered the freighter.

  Once in the Lapis system Mitchie ignored harsh demands from System Control while transmitting a key phrase on another frequency. After a couple of hours Control changed to a friendly tone and directed the “Sunflower” to a spaceport on the southern continent.

  Rubenstan Port was far from the planetary capital. The techs recommended targeting a nearby Navy headquarters. Mitchie approved. After dark most of the crew headed out for shore leave. Mitchie and the techs wore party clothes over drab ones.

  The Weather Bureau had scheduled rain from 2200 to 0130, so they arrived at the base at half an hour before midnight to take advantage of it. Pickett had identified a utility road connecting to its back side. They walked off-road to be clear of the cameras at the intersections. As they reached the top of the last hill before the perimeter he cursed.

  “Trouble?” asked Mitchie.

  “Strong point.” Pickett handed her his scope as she crawled up beside him at the crest.

  She looked at the fence line. The rough road had a gate in the fence with a guard shack next to it. They’d expected the post to be unmanned. Instead a soldier was inside. The shack was lit up well enough to show he was watching a screen. “That, soldier, is a weak point. Wait here. When I wave hustle.”

  Mitchie slid back down the hill until the shack was out of sight. She dropped her pack, took off her green work shirt, and wiggled out of her bra. The work shirt had kept the t-shirt under it mostly dry. A minute splashing in a puddle made it as wet as the rest of her. She handed the discards to Lavrie. “I’ll want those in the shack. See you in a few minutes.”

  Walking down the hill was too easy with her survival training. She pulled in her vision, tucked her arms in close for warmth instead of keeping them out for balance. A slip landed her bottom in mud. She got up and kept walking, hunched over. By the time she reached the shack she was cringing. “Hi!” she called, a quiver in her voice.