Pandora’s Crew

by Gorg Huff

  Missiles like the Charley and hunter-nukes didn’t have much in the way of internal drives. They got most of their thrust from the wings of the launching ship. Their rockets were more in the way of guidance systems. So most of the matching of trajectory was going to be on him. Worse, the shuttle was headed in the wrong direction.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “Ma’am,” Peter Mullins said, “that shuttle off the Pandora . . . it’s just changed course again. Looks like it’s going to go after that weird ass missile they fired.”

  “Call down to the shuttle bay and get a shuttle of our own launched.”

  “Are you . . .”

  “Do it,” Sylvia said. “We can apologize later, if it proves necessary.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Chuck Givens looked at the vectors. The way he was moving when he got Rosita’s orders to go get Charley meant that he would have a lot of change of V to match with the missile. Much more than that shuttle from the station.

  Besides, the shuttle from the station was a Craig cargo shuttle, which had more legs than his ship boat. There was no way he was going to get there before they did. Rosita Stuard was a professor, Danny Gold was a smuggler, the next best thing to a pirate himself. Rosita would talk until the pirates had the thing and Danny Gold would be too busy keeping his head down to do anything about it. Chuck couldn’t let that tech fall into pirate hands.

  He sent the self-destruct signal to the Charley.

  There was a flash in the distance and Chuck turned the shuttle around.

  Chapter 30

  The question “what is self” has become more complex with the development of effective interface systems. Are we what we know when we can have whole terabytes of data shoved into our brains? I tell you we are what we know, and we risk our very selves in accepting this unnatural technology into our bodies.

  Reverend Doctor Elizabeth Falwell, 2115 old calendar

  Location: Skull Station

  Standard Date: 01 01 632

  Sylvia Avery called her father again, right from the control room, even before the residue of the explosion of the super weapon cooled to darkness. The techs were still trying to sort out what happened, and she was still hopped up from the terror she felt when the Brass Ass fired a nuke at the station.

  She wasn’t exactly terrified now. Her feelings weren’t as immediate, but in a way they were even stronger. She wasn’t going to die, not immediately, but her nation’s whole navy just became obsolete and she didn’t know what to do. She could still see those missiles dancing away from her home.

  Those emotions must have shown, because the first thing her father said when he saw her face was, “What’s wrong, Sylvia?” Dad was dressed in pajama bottoms and she could see he was in his bedroom. It was late night on the planet, but the station was on standard time and that made it even later on the station.

  “This just happened, Dad.” She sent him the recording of the attack and its consequences. “They blew up the super missile before our shuttle even got close.”

  “I would have done the same thing,” Roger said with a considering look. “I wonder if we have enough . . .”

  “Dad, I’m not sure I would have used it, whatever it was. If I’d been given time, yes. But something like this . . . I would have hesitated. And any hesitation would have been fatal for us on the station.”

  Roger nodded, then said, “Syl, I’m on my way up, and I’m calling a captain’s council. In the meantime, that diplomatic immunity we agreed to for Edward VI of Franklin . . . it goes double now, and extend it to the whole ship’s company of the Pandora. But don’t let them leave.”

  “That won’t be a problem. The little girl who got shot needs a surgeon from downside. It’s going to be at least another day before—”

  “Good enough,” her father interrupted. “Please let His Majesty know that I would like to have a chat with him at his earliest convenience.”

  Location: Brass Ass, Skull Station Orbit

  Standard Date: 01 01 632

  Danny was in an access corridor floating toward stern D. “Grand Admiral of the Pirate Fleet, Roger Avery III, would like to have a chat with Eddy at Eddy’s earliest convenience,” Pandora reported to Danny and Eddy at the same time. Eddy was in mid C arresting a crewman.

  In other words, they were both still in the process of cleaning the pirate crew out of Jenny Starchild’s new ship.

  “What’s up, Pan?” Danny asked, even as Eddy asked, “What for?”

  Pan filled them in.

  “Good for Givens,” Danny said. “Pan, tell Mr. Givens that I appreciate his quick thinking. Not that I think it’s going to matter in the long run, but it was worth a try.”

  “Why won’t it matter?” Eddy asked.

  “Because he couldn’t blow up their scan records. Skull Station saw it. They saw what it did. Even after he blew it, they will be able to find bits of superconducting cable. Even if they can’t, the only thing . . .” Danny was floating down the passage, kicking from wall to wall in what amounted to a zero-g run, using each kick off to get him going down the passage a bit faster. He saw a flechette gun barrel peeking around a corner and changed his bounce pattern. “Don’t try it. Even if you take me, you’re still screwed!”

  The gun came out again, this time in a hand, and Danny fired. “Stupid idiot!”

  He got to the side corridor and looked at the man. He was an older man, and not clean. Danny knew Skull System law and knew what was in store for this character, assuming Danny was unwilling to take responsibility for him. He pointed and fired, then continued the conversation. “The only thing they really need to figure out what it was, is seeing how it grabbed the hunter-nuke.”

  “What was the interruption, Captain?” Tanya Cordoba-Davis asked.

  “Idiot decided to fight,” Danny said. It was true. After Danny saw the man, he didn’t have much chance. At least not the way he went about it. Danny was in the open, true, but the distance wasn’t great and the man didn’t try to spray the corridor. He just stuck his gun out into it. It wasn’t even a hard shot.

  “Well, we have the rest, unless the bridge crew lied,” Sara said.

  “Good enough. Pandora, please have Fred bring over some drones. I’m going to want to have this ship gone over stem to stern. It’s a pig sty, not to mention we don’t know what kind of traps have been set up.” Danny flipped a mental switch and spoke to Professora Stuard. “Professora, I need you to get yourself briefed on the politics of Skull System.”

  “I’m already doing so, Captain,” Rosita said. “The system is governed by a captain’s council of all the ships that have joined the Skull fleet, which is about half the ships in the system. You aren’t required to join, but if you don’t, you don’t get a vote. It’s fairly fortunate for us that Captain Flatt didn’t choose to join. There is also a planetary government of landowners, but it yields to the captain’s council on anything to do with space.”

  “Fine. Prepare a brief for me and Eddy, please. Tanya, you want to come?”

  “I want to be there,” said Sara from the Brass Ass bridge, before Tanya answered.

  Location: Skull Station

  Standard Date: 01 02 632

  Danny followed Eddy into the chamber in Skull Station. It was circular and large enough so that you could see the curve of the floor. There were rows of seats around the edge, but there was also a large round table in the center of the room, with comfortable chairs around it. Behind most of the chairs stood men and women, some in space suits, some in the pseudo pirate garb that was the style in Skull System. A day after the taking of the Brass Ass, the vids of the dancing missiles were all over the system.

  As they reached the chairs, Grand Admiral Avery asked more than said,

  “You seem to have a large staff, Your Majesty?”

  “I don’t have any staff at all,” Eddy told him. He stopped, turned, and pointed. “This is Danny Gold, First Breeder of the Gold Clan of Parthia, captain of the Pandora, and the owner of the missil
e you want to talk about. These are Grand Stockholder Tanya Cordoba-Davis, formerly of the Cordoba Spaceforce, Sara Electrum, a spy from Cybrant and, of course, Professora Stuard of Danworth, Captain Gold’s political advisor.”

  “Just how many governments am I dealing with here?”

  “That’s an interesting question, Grand Admiral,” Professora Stuard said, walking up to the table and taking a chair. That led to everyone else sitting down as she finished. “And one that may have a bearing on our discussion. We are concerned about the possibility that civilization in the Pamplona Sector is in danger of collapse.”

  Danny didn’t turn his head or widen his eyes, but he wanted to. This wasn’t the plan. They understood that they couldn’t prevent the captains of Skull System from realizing what the shield missile was. All they could do was help them—or not—in developing their own. So they agreed among themselves to negotiate with the notion of getting the best price they could for their help.

  Mostly rutters. Pirates had to have rutters and know secret routes in and out of places to carry on their trade.

  But Rosita seemed to be trying for something more.

  Still, Danny was unwilling to spoil her play. He had developed considerable respect for Rosita over the past year and a half.

  For the next couple of hours, Rosita—with the cold dispassion of an academic—described what she felt was the imminent demise of the Pamplona Sector in an orgy of war and lawlessness, with the invasion of Parise by the Drakes and Franklin by the Cordobas as the equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at the beginning of World War 1 on Old Earth. Or the attack on Donovan that led to the collapse of the Sol Federation.

  The captain’s council was impressed. They had their own datasets, and in many ways it was even more complete. Some of it was from the pirate side, and a lot was from the smuggler side.

  What there wasn’t was any sort of consensus that the coming collapse was a bad thing.

  Several of the captains felt that the Cordobas and Drakes being busy killing each other would mean more and easier prizes. Others, taking a longer view, knew that the collapse would hamper trade and that they couldn’t capture merchants if there weren’t any merchants to capture.

  A few, led by Roger Avery, even realized that civilization was a good thing.

  “This is all very interesting, but what are you proposing?” Roger asked some hours later.

  “We need cores of civilization to expand from as the present empires are collapsing, and alliances between those cores. That would be Eddy in Franklin, you here in the Skull System, Danny in Parthia, and others later. But those three governments as the start.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not the government of Parthia. They have their own council of clans.”

  “Of course. But you’re a clan and can act as agent for the council. They will have to confirm any treaties, but they will if we can come up with something workable. They aren’t stupid and will be happy just to get a real seat at the table.”

  More talk ensued, and eventually a grudging agreement by the captain’s council was reached.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Doctor Henry Cox’s fingers moved in the Waldo-gloves as the micromanipulators followed the tracks of the wounds in Jenny Starchild’s back, neck, and head. He used micro-staples that made a human hair look like a log in comparison to tie cells together, while Gerhard Schmitz backseat drove. “Place the DX5 unit there, Doctor. It will need to attach those two nerve bundles.”

  Doctor Cox pulled back a touch and the micromanipulators stopped their motion. Then he twisted a hand to select the grain-of-sand-sized unit to feed down the tube to a point in Jenny Starchild’s medulla. He placed the unit and watched as Schmitz activated it. Micro-tendrils snaked out like the roots of a plant, and Doctor Cox went back to putting the little girl back together.

  It took nearly as long as the council, and at times was almost as tense, but there was a collegial feel to it as Henry and Gerhard discussed where each microbrain would go and what it would do.

  The surgery wasn’t just work on the spine and directly damaged portions of the brain. The brain is an integrated system. To fix it properly, they needed new pathways of integration. They placed nodes in Jenny’s visual and auditory centers. Others were placed around her body to keep track of her bodily functions—the working of her pancreas, lungs, liver, gallbladder and so on.

  All the while, John Gabriel paced in the waiting room, wanting a drink.

  And eventually had one.

  Then another.

  Then several more.

  It was a somewhat inebriated and highly belligerent John Gabriel who met the two doctors when they finished. “How is she?” he demanded.

  “We won’t know that for some days, until the systems have had a chance to integrate,” Gerhard said, fussily.

  John grabbed him by the collar. “You said you could fix her!”

  “Orderly!” shouted Doctor Cox, having more experience with overwrought family members of patients.

  John got to sober up in the cells, diplomatic immunity or not.

  Location: Arachne, formerly the Brass Ass

  Standard Date: 01 04 632

  Jenny woke slowly and felt her body. It was confusing. She had too many arms and legs. Way too many . . . and just the right number. She could feel space against her wings, but they were at low power and she could feel the fusion panels at her core. At the same time, she felt her body—her arms, her legs, her heart beating, her breathing.

  She opened her eyes and saw the ceiling over her head and the space around her.

  When Jenny first came aboard the Pandora and was able to use her interface, it felt unnatural, like a wooden leg that still felt, or a glass eye that still saw, with a hard-edged precision that seemed wrong. This had the same precision, but it didn’t feel wrong. It felt like her.

  What is going on? she wondered casually. The Arachne part of her brain told her. She got shot. She remembered that. She was in shock until she lost consciousness, so it didn’t hurt, but she was sure that she was going to die.

  Now Arachne, who was almost separate from her but not quite, was explaining that in order to fix her after she was shot, they had to cannibalize some of the subprocessor units that fit into Arachne’s web.

  Jenny tried to move her own body, and there were twitches in the newly named Arachne as Jenny’s will to move almost acted as orders to the ship.

  But Arachne was learning very fast and so was Jenny. Now she actually willed her wings to move and they did—in a balanced choreographed pattern that didn’t move the ship at all but was the ship equivalent of an early morning stretch.

  Jenny was connected to the ship in a way that no one had been since the early—and unsuccessful—experiments into cybernetic ship systems. There was no wall. Jenny was Arachne and Arachne was Jenny. What made it work was Rosita’s warning to Gerhard to make sure that this Arachne was humble. Even more than a ship’s brain like Pandora, Arachne was focused on being of service, not being in charge.

  And that left Jenny as the boss of the whole network. She was the ship. The wings were her wings. Even the units that Gerhard and the crew of the Pandora were still installing in her were part of her. And with every unit, the ship that used to be the Brass Ass was more the Arachne, more her.

  Jenny wondered how long she spent asleep and her clock—the clock that was part of Arachne—gave her the date and time. Several days.

  “Welcome back,” Pandora told Jenny, and Jenny heard it in her ears and in the electromagnetic communication that Pandora and Arachne exchanged.

  “Is John all right?” Jenny asked Pan, speaking aloud

  “He went on a bender,” said Petra, “but he’ll be fine. He was really worried about you. We all were.”

  “I feel okay,” Jenny said, and knew that it was both true and not true. She didn’t feel any pain, not exactly, but she knew where each cut and bruise on her body was, and the level of healing. She knew where the artificial sub
-brains were installed in her nervous system and in the ship. She also knew what they did, and she could call it all up in an instant. But it didn’t hurt. She checked and decided that she wouldn’t try to sit up just yet.

  “So tell me about it?” Petra said. “The interface, I mean. Doc Gerhard said you are extensively tied into ship’s systems.”

  “I am. I can feel the wings and, well, the whole ship. This isn’t the Pandora. It’s Arachne. Who is— Never mind. I know. This used to be the Brass Ass. Oh, they gave me the ship?”

  “Sort of. You were awarded it for injuries done to you.”

  “It’s strange. Arachne isn’t like my interface with Pandora. She’s part of me. I have this knowledge. I know all about the ship. It’s part of me as though it’s always been there, the same way I know what strawberry ice cream tastes like. Arachne should have a crew of forty officers and crew, including missile techs, engineering specialists, and boarding or inspection parties of exspatio. But that’s based on a ship that doesn’t use a brain. Do you think I should hire crew?”

  “I don’t know, Jenny. The Arachne isn’t a cargo ship. She’s a warship.”

  Jenny heard the worry in Petra’s voice. “I know, but it’s all right. We need an escort for the Pandora and once we get back to Parthia—” Suddenly Jenny smiled. “Once we get back to Parthia, they are going to need a warship to help guard the system.

  “Petra, when I was seven, a rock hit the habitat my family lived on. It was sent there by a Drake warship because the system government was acting up. The Drakes figured that the planetary government would be more amenable to them . . . and they were.

  “I spent two years in a refugee camp on Bonks, being taught that it was all my parents’ fault for their sinful lives either while they were on the station or in previous incarnations. I can fight if I have to.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re only eleven years old. You shouldn’t have to fight.”

  “Almost twelve!”

  “Fine, almost twelve. That’s still pretty young to be a warship commander.”