Lyssa's Flame_A Hard Science Fiction AI Adventure

by M. D. Cooper

  They fell quiet, each considering the reality of the situation.

  Dropping from the sky, a silver airplane swooped down to buzz the airfield, trailing laughter on the Link. Lyssa covered her ears from the noise.

  “They’re restless,” Ino said. “They long for battle.”

  “It’s what we were made to be,” Card added automatically.

  Lyssa realized something as she watched Card. For the Weapon Born, the mission wasn’t suicide. The mission represented action, which would always be preferred. It was waiting that represented a slow death. Was this the same form of abstracted control that Alexander had led his peers to rebel against? Was it control if they chose it freely?

  “We don’t have to steal a ship,” Lyssa said. “We can generate the income once we arrive.”

  Kylan laughed. “You’re worried about that? It’s a pirate station. They expect to get robbed.”

  Card raised an eyebrow. “I was hoping for a bit of sport.”

  “We have the new mech designs,” Ino added. “Since we lost the Resolute Charity’s fabrication systems, I’ve been developing several ideas that I look forward to building. I’ll need access to fabrication ships as well.”

  “We can’t steal those,” Ino said. “Lyssa can entertain herself with her market manipulation while I secure the best ship available.”

  “Are we willing to kill for it?” Kylan asked.

  They stared at him. Lyssa considered the question. “I think as in any situation, it’s better if we don’t,” she said. “But we have to protect the crew above all else. We’ll be operating in a dangerous place among people who wouldn’t think twice about doing us harm. We should respond accordingly. Objections?”

  “There are some who have a certain—bloodlust,” Card said. “It can be difficult to stop once it asserts itself.”

  “I know,” Lyssa said. “This isn’t a question we can answer now, just as we can’t plan for a response to the armada until we have more information. I always welcome questions but we should understand the information environment.”

  Kylan gave them a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

  “You dislike killing?” Card asked.

  “Don’t you?” Kylan asked.

  She shrugged. “If a person is between me and the objective, I take appropriate action to achieve the objective. It depends on the mission.”

  “I didn’t get that training,” Kylan said. “It isn’t that easy for me.”

  Card slapped him on the shoulder. “The next time we’re in combat, I’ll remember you are weak. Don’t worry.”

  “It’s not weakness!” Kylan said. “I just don’t think the same way you do.”

  Card considered him. “Maybe you should take the infiltration mission,” she said. “It occurs to me that you might be better suited to respond to unexpected situations with Psion.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” Kylan asked.

  “No,” Lyssa said. “I think she’s right. Card can still secure the ship on Traverna, but Kylan’s group should carry out the armada mission. Are you ready?”

  Squinting against the wind, Kylan looked at each of them. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll do it. It’s not like I haven’t been in strange places before.”

  “This isn’t a suicide mission,” Lyssa reaffirmed.

  “I’m not interested in suicide,” Kylan said. “Besides, it’s still a long ways off, right?”

  “Conflict will always come sooner than we expect,” Ino said. “We should be ready for battle even at Traverna. If we’re thinking of hiding there, others will as well.”

  “You’re right,” Lyssa said. “Fran seems to know the place, but we’ll need to be wary.”

  “Everything changes where humans are concerned,” Card said. She gazed up at the dogfighters overhead. “Are we finished talking? I have a Weapon Born that needs payback for hurting my ears.”

  “One last thing,” Lyssa said. “When we reach Traverna and find medical care for Andy, we need a plan for what may happen if I don’t survive.”

  Card turned her gaze back to Lyssa. “You assume they’ll let you die before him?”

  “I don’t know,” Lyssa said. “My wish is that he would survive.”

  “It’s enough, for now, to acknowledge the possibility,” Ino said finally. “This isn’t an outcome I wish to discuss.”

  Lyssa shook her head. “We need a chain of command. Our mission is to protect the crew of Sunny Skies and that must continue even without me. Is this agreed?”

  Each nodded in agreement.

  “Then I’ve decided that the chain of command is Ino, Card, then Kylan. Any questions?”

  Without saluting, they still acknowledged her command. Lyssa felt a swell of pride and even joy at knowing that they had created something that could endure.

  “Disseminate this order,” she said. “Be clear it does not establish hierarchy among the flights. Each is still equal with different capabilities.”

  “Understood,” Ino said. Card and Kylan nodded.

  “Dismissed, then,” Lyssa told them. She smiled. “Go burn some fuel.”

  Card barked an aggressive laugh and turned to stride out onto the airfield. In a blink, a black single-prop fighter was bouncing down the runway.

  When Ino left, Kylan told Lyssa, “I don’t like thinking about you dying.”

  She gave him a smile. “Like Ino told us all earlier, death is what reminds us we’re alive, right?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  STELLAR DATE: 01.10.2982 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Sunny Skies

  REGION: En Route to Traverna, OuterSol

  Cara found Tim in the medbay, sitting on the stool beside their dad’s head. Em leaned against Tim’s knee, tongue lolling and ears straight. Tim didn’t turn to look at her as she walked in; instead, he sat still with his face close to their dad’s. He looked like he was whispering something at first, but he stopped when he heard her approach.

  Their dad looked like he was sleeping peacefully, the status monitor above his head beeping with his heartbeat. Tim didn’t know that he was sedated. Cara only knew because she’d overheard her dad telling Fran it was the only way he could escape the headaches. During the hours he was awake, which were growing fewer, he said the headaches were like fireworks behind his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Cara asked. When she was close enough, she read the vital statistics on the display, something that had become her habit, then took her dad’s hand in hers, pressing his palm tightly between her hands.

  “He’s really asleep,” Tim said, poking their dad’s temple.

  “Stop that,” Cara said. “You’ll wake him up.”

  “He’s not going to wake up for a long time. Was I like this after I came back from Clinic 46?”

  “Sort of. You were completely out. We took you all the way to the Cho and you didn’t wake up until a few days after that.”

  “And a doctor looked at me there?”

  He had heard the story several times but still didn’t seem to believe it. He asked the same questions in his new calm-Tim manner, accepting the answers and nodding like she was explaining the plot of some half-interesting vid.

  “What did the doctor say?” Tim asked.

  “I’ve told you before. I don’t remember exactly what she said. Something about there being a very low chance of you waking up.”

  “And Mom was there, too?”

  “We all went. We stayed in a hotel in this hospital district with lots of sick people all over the place. There were willow trees everywhere.”

  “Willow trees have the long droopy branches.”

  Cara nodded, studying the display again. “They look like green hair.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, then squinted at their dad. “The doctor said I wasn’t going to wake up because I’d been imaged at the clinic.”

  Cara was surprised he knew that. “Who told you that?”

  “I heard Mom and Dad talking about it. Maybe it was be
fore I woke up. I don’t remember exactly. That’s why I think Dad can hear me even when he’s asleep.”

  “You’ve never told me if you remember what it was like.”

  Tim shook his head. “I don’t really remember. I was in a lift on the clinic. That guy, Cal Kraft, he asked me if I wanted a sandwich and then I felt a shock in my neck and everything got all droopy like the willow trees. I remember walking down corridor after corridor, then going into a room with a med couch in it. I guess that’s where they imaged me.” He glanced at her, expression nonchalant. “There are five copies of me. They made five seeds.”

  “You didn’t hear Dad talking about that.”

  “I remember Cal Kraft and the other man talking about it. I guess the Seeds got blown up with the clinic.”

  “Maybe,” Cara said. “I don’t know.”

  Tim looked back at their dad. “They wouldn’t be like me. I’ve thought about it. They might start out like me, but everything would be different pretty soon. That’s why Lyssa isn’t anything like the girl she was made from. None of them are.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. That’s how Lyssa seems to explain it.”

  Tim nodded, seeming very sure of himself. That was how he had acted since waking up, like he had a secret knowledge and confidence that maintained his calm. Nothing really phased him anymore. She couldn’t decide if it was annoying or scary.

  “Tim,” Cara asked. “Do you get mad? You used to get mad all the time and you don’t seem to anymore.”

  “I guess,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t feel like the me I used to be before. I’m something else now. Sometimes I can see the old me. It’s like he’s standing over there.” Tim pointed to an empty corner of the medbay.

  Cara couldn’t help glancing where he pointed, relived to only find a cabinet.

  “He’s mad. He’s really mad. But he’s over there. And I’m here. I’m not sure why he’s so mad though. I remember wanting to kill that man, Cal Kraft. One of the people in the lift had a stungun, and I was going to grab it off their belt, turn it all the way up, and jam it right inside Cal Kraft’s leg. I was going to burn his femoral artery open.”

  He gave her a secretive smile. “You didn’t think I knew about things like that, but I do. I know that if you cut someone inside the leg like that, they’ll bleed too fast to get help, especially if you stab so the blood runs down their leg so it’s hard for people to see it. I read all about those sort of things.”

  Cara felt herself growing cold. The deliberate cadence of Tim’s voice made it sound like he was describing a study project rather than killing someone.

  He pointed his chin at the corner where the shadow Tim supposedly stood. “He was going to do that. He still wants to.” Tim chewed his lip, considering the idea.

  “You were in danger, Tim. It’s okay to think things like that when you’re in danger, when you don’t know if you’re going to be safe or not. And that guy threw you out the airlock. It was terrible. You survived something terrible.”

  “Yeah,” Tim said. “I did. When I think about those five seeds they made, I wonder which one got the angry version of me. Do you think that’s how it works?”

  “I don’t know how it works. It doesn’t seem like any of them remember much from when they were alive. They don’t have emotions or memories or anything. They just use the image to make it, so they can think and learn, like Lyssa did.”

  “I don’t know. That seems awfully simplistic.”

  It was odd to hear such a complex thought come out of her brother’s mouth. This was the strongest example yet of how he had become something different, something that didn’t seem to be a ten-year-old boy anymore.

  “I think we’ve been pretty lucky that Lyssa is like she is,” Tim said. “What if somebody had hurt her like Cal Kraft hurt me? What if she’d been thrown out an airlock? I think that would be pretty hard to forget. We’re lucky that Lyssa doesn’t want to kill us all like the other AI, especially the one that did this to Dad.”

  “An AI didn’t do this to Dad.”

  “Him and Harl and Lyssa fought a mech on Larissa. This happened as soon as they got back. Either the AI in the mech did something to Lyssa or to Dad. Harl thinks it’s related.”

  “Well maybe you should listen to Fran instead of Harl. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “Fran loves Dad,” Tim said matter-of-factly. “She’s not going to say something that might hurt him.”

  “She tells the truth,” Cara said.

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “What? Everything’s weird. Everything’s been weird since before we went to Cruithne.”

  “Well, a long time before that, even. I guess I mean everything. Everything’s weird. I don’t know when it’s going to stop being weird. I mean, they blew up a moon. That’s weird.”

  He stared at their dad for a second, petting Em’s head.

  “We’re going to be okay, Tim,” Cara said.

  Tim didn’t respond at first. Then he shook his head. “I was mean to Mom and Dad. I was really mad, and I didn’t know what to do. Now I feel—I can see that I was mean to them. I love Mom, but I don’t know what to say to her other than I love you, Mom. But I have to say more than that, right?”

  “No,” Cara said. “We’re the kids. We don’t have to say more than that.”

  He laughed. “I’m pretty sure Dad would make us say more than that. I couldn’t break something and just say I love you, Dad, and think he’s not going to be mad. I’d get a talking-to for sure, and he’d explain all the ways I need to think before I do something, how the ship can be dangerous, and we’re a long way from help, and we’re in Rabbit Country where everyone wants to eat us.”

  Cara sighed. “I’m tired of being in Rabbit Country, Tim.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “But you know we never get to leave, right? We just have to be smart, and pay attention?”

  He gave her another sly glance. “We don’t get to leave Rabbit Country, but we can get some tyrannosaur teeth. That’s what I’m looking for. If I’m a rabbit with tyrannosaur teeth, I’ll bite the head off anything that tries to mess with me, or you, or Dad. And Mom.” Tim snapped his teeth at the air and Em bounced up, excited to play.

  “You should play fetch with him rather than just sitting in here,” Cara said. “Take him down in the cargo bay. He loves that.”

  “Do you want to do that, Em?” Tim asked. “Play fetch in zero-g? Huh?”

  The Corgi perked up with excitement, following Tim’s every word.

  Tim laughed. “Okay. Let’s go do that.” He reached out to pat their dad’s arm. “I love you, Dad,” he said. “For real.”

  Andy stirred on the bed, frowning at something in his sleep. Cara worried he was going to wake. He’d come to a few times during the journey to Traverna, but each time he’d been in so much pain it was worse than him being unconscious. She hoped that when they reached Traverna, they could find a real solution to whatever was wrong with him.

  There was a click in the overhead speakers and Fran said, “Cara, Tim, where are you? We’re getting ready for the final braking burn into Traverna. You’re going to need to buckle-in. Check your dad’s straps and make sure he’s secure.”

  “I will,” Cara said.

  Tim slumped his shoulders. “I can buckle-in down in cargo.”

  “No, you can’t,” Cara admonished him. “We’ll go to the command deck. We can watch the holodisplay. You know Traverna’s a pirate station, right?”

  Tim rolled his eyes. “Cruithne was a pirate station and it’s boring.”

  “Cruithne isn’t the same. The TSF is on Cruithne.”

  “They’re going to be able to fix Dad on Traverna?” Tim asked.

  Cara paused to adjust the straps holding their dad to the medbay couch. “That’s what Fran hopes.”

  “Hope isn’t a plan,” Tim said.

  “I know,” Cara agreed. “But sometimes it has to be.”

&
nbsp; A groan from the bed drew Cara’s gaze back to her dad. He was blinking. His eyes focused and he looked at her, brow clenched in what she knew was headache pain.

  “I’m worried I’ve turned you into a pessimist, Cara,” he said hoarsely.

  “Dad!” Tim shouted.

  Andy pulled his outside arm free of its restraint to give Tim a hug. Em stood on his hind legs to peek over the edge of the bed, and Andy scratched his ears.

  “How do you feel?” Cara asked cautiously.

  He gave her a wan smile. “Great,” he said, obviously lying. “Let’s get up to the command deck together and I’ll strap in up there. I’d rather be awake for the arrival.”

  “Isn’t it better if you sleep?” Cara asked.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “You’ll distract Fran.”

  Her dad raised his eyebrows. “So you can read Fran’s mind now?”

  “I don’t have to read her mind to know how much she’s worried about you.”

  Andy dropped back in the bed, relaxing visibly. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll stay down here. You two get up there like she asked you.”

  “I can stay here with you,” Cara said.

  “Do what I told you, Cara. I’ll be fine.”

  She stared at him, feeling helpless, but nodded. “Do you want more of the medicine?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, voice tight with pain.

  Cara activated the autodoc and waited for it to update its diagnostics. In a minute, it injected her dad with something that was supposed to help the headaches. He flinched during the injection, then sighed. He was asleep in another few seconds.

  Tim gave her a solemn look, hugging Em against his side.

  “Cara,” Fran called over the speaker. “Why aren’t you up here?”

  “We’re coming,” Cara said. “Dad’s all strapped in.”

  “You’ve got thirty seconds,” Fran said. “If we’re in the window and you’re not buckled in, I won’t be cleaning you up off the deck.”

  “Why is she so mean?” Tim asked.

  “She’s not mean,” Cara said. “She’s professional.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means she doesn’t treat us like kids. At least not all the time. Now, come on. Let’s go.”