by Tom Germann
She didn’t stammer but she was so nervous that she was acting like she was tough.
“Good morning, everyone. I’m Shipmate Torrez. I will tell you . . . umm, I mean, brief you on our transit on through the Soron Asteroid Belt and why you have nothing to fear.”
Okay, I had watched her as she started talking and then I had tuned her out. I didn’t think we had much to fear from traveling through an asteroid belt. If it was a risk, they wouldn’t take an expensive starship through it. There was no way they thought anything could seriously damage the ship, so it had to be safe.
Images started popping up on the projector and moving across.
Shipmate Torrez had a dry, monotonous tone that would have put me to sleep if I actually had been paying attention.
So I just watched the images and thought about all the things that could go wrong instead.
There was our ship; it was travelling slowly through the asteroid belt. There were only a few large asteroids in the belt that we could see, but we were travelling slowly through a section that was full of small rocks.
Then the image showed a cutaway cross-section of the ship and I could see the three layers of hull and the filling in between.
I already knew what it looked like. I could see that everyone else in the section knew it as well. It seemed like everyone else was better at hiding their boredom than me, though.
She finished off by letting us know that we would only be in the asteroid belt for another two hours and this was only because we were travelling slowly to lessen the damage caused by a potential impact.
She wrapped up and Two thanked her for coming down to run the briefing on transit through the belt.
The only part that I had found interesting was Torrez’s mentioning that there were thousands of small sensor packs that had been placed on asteroids throughout the belt. It was a long-term project to track gravity and a bunch of other stuff that made the asteroid belt unique.
Boring, but kind of cool.
Four asked how much it was costing to build and deploy thousands of sensor packs like that. The answer was interesting: There was a small automated factory on one of the smaller moons. There were mining robots there that dug up the material, which was processed and then turned into a small inexpensive satellite pack that a shuttle came by and picked up by the thousand every month.
They were deployed with a small propulsion system that allowed them to be flown to their targeted asteroid by a Level 3 AI called Kharon. I didn’t know why they called their AI that; I just kept listening, sort of.
There were five larger asteroids on the inner edge of the belt that ran through the system. They housed the receiving units and monitored the sensors.
Kharon was actually located outside of the belt in his very own mini satellite. It was strange, the amount of armour that a satellite like that had. To protect a Level 3 AI in space, yes, the satellite needed to be armoured, but this thing looked like it could take multiple missile hits.
What was even more interesting was that with the rest of the sensor arrays that were in the system literally everywhere, it wouldn’t be difficult to pick up any movement in the system.
Considering the processing power that the Corporation had put in here, this system had better tracking systems than Earth.
All that for a fluke asteroid belt.
After the briefing, Torrez left but Two kept us there.
I was glad it was over. That was forty minutes of my life I would never get back again.
Two closed the door, made sure it was secured, and then looked around. “Look, everyone, you know as well as I do that the captain wants to do more training for his personnel. A part of that is taking young crewmembers and getting them in front of a different group for public speaking. They have it hard enough without our busting their chops. I get bored, trust me on that one. Next time, try to be a bit more relaxed.”
She stood up and unlocked the door, then turned to us as she opened it to walk out. “Just remember, one day that person giving the briefing will be you.”
Then she turned and was gone.
I headed back to my room as I was on a rest cycle and I called up Jane.
After she appeared, I took a look at the time. Jane was dressed up like some sort of schoolgirl. She was wearing a kilt, a white shirt, knee-high socks and black gleaming shoes. She had a backpack over one shoulder and, of course, her hair was in pigtails.
It wouldn’t have been as bad if her shirt wasn’t tied up under her breasts and if her kilt wasn’t as short as it was.
“Hi, Eight!” She blew a bubble with the bubble gum that she was madly chewing on.
“Umm, hi, Jane. Why are you in a school uniform . . . ish?”
She grinned around the bubble, which promptly popped and disappeared. “Dang! I keep trying to get that bubble bigger and not as messy! I’ll figure that out later, though. Oh! Well, it is work time and a school uniform makes sense to me. Why?”
She sort of leaned against the wall suggestively, which was weird as she was a projection.
“Uh . . . later, I guess. Jane, who is Kharon? Why is he the AI for the asteroid belt?”
She straightened up. “That’s an easy and a good question!”
A picture appeared; it was a small boat full of sad-looking people on what looked like a river. At the back was this almost-naked dude holding a pole. He was glowing slightly to draw attention.
Jane started talking. “Kharon is the ferryman on the river Styx. The river is the separation between life and the underworld where you go after you’re dead. At least, that was what the ancient Greeks believed. As for why the staff here call the AI Kharon, it is obvious. The asteroid belt is a river and it would be death to try to cross it unless your ship was tough enough. Kharon is the one watching all the depths of the ‘river.’ Is that all?”
I started to nod and then stopped.
“Jane, can you tell me why you appear to me the way you do?”
She blinked. “Well, of course, Eight. I’m female because it has been found that Marines, male and female, will do a better job listening when the avatar is female. I thought you knew this?” She was frowning.
I took a deep breath. “I knew about that, Jane. But why are you appearing to me like you are?” I carried on before she could answer. “I mean, why are you an attractive young female that is dressed, ummmm, to impress a guy?”
I had to be careful how I worded that. I didn’t want to end up talking to Steven about a sexual harassment complaint.
A chair appeared next to Jane and she put her backpack down. She carefully sat down and crossed her legs. She had great legs.
Jane started talking and for once, she appeared to be completely serious without a grin or smile. “Eight, my job as an AI is to train you. Combat is high on the Corporation’s list of my responsibilities, but that is not all. I am also supposed to educate you on strategic objectives as well as tactical. Not just in a combat zone, but in any combat. The one big weakness that you specifically have is a lack of understanding of women. You never really spent much time with them, and that is a long-term fail point. One day, if you get in trouble, the odds of it being directly related to a ‘pretty face’ are pretty high. I know you, Eight; I have evaluated your entire file. I have to keep you healthy. You see this pretty face and hot body dressed suggestively; I am not trying to torment you but get you accustomed to it. One day when some little cutie comes along and flirts with you to get what she wants, it won’t work simply because she’s pretty. You’ll have the ability to think clearly, which most males can’t do in that scenario. At least, not if they aren’t used to being around gorgeous women that pay attention to them.”
I just stared at her. I didn’t understand at all. “That makes no sense, Jane. It’s not like you’re actually here or anything, and nothing ever happens.”
She did smile
then. “Your mind is telling you that I am here. I do flirt with you and you do like it, even if you have some bad experiences that make you consciously think that you shouldn’t. Understand that since you see me, your brain accepts me as real. And I am. I just happen to be a sim running in your head.”
She stood up and grabbed her backpack. “Does that help you at all, Eight?”
I shrugged. “I guess so, Jane?”
Then she was gone. I gave my head a shake. So the AI that ran most of the combat sims and evaluated us was getting me ready to go out and not get taken in by every hot chick that wanted to manipulate me. I realized it suddenly. Some of the guys from the Project had talked to me about it sometimes when we hung out. I was in the ‘friend zone.’ I wasn’t sure how I should feel about that since she was an AI.
I turned the lights out and went to sleep.
Strangely enough, I was out in just seconds, and I slept better than I had slept in a long time.
Station O-762
We docked a few days later with the station. It was impressive to see a projection of it. There were no portholes on a starship so everything was either on screen, in sim, or projected.
The station was huge and could hold almost a hundred personnel on board, even though there were only fourteen personnel on board right now. This was one of the biggest stations out here in the depths of space, and the structure was there to support them, but it was barely staffed.
It was a modular system that meant if they needed to expand further, they could bring more units in with something like the Mama Pig and just drop them. There would be a full-time crew of six maintenance personnel that could move it into location and secure it.
We docked, and then the crew met with the station personnel with two of us as escorts. It was me and Ten.
We didn’t have to act as security or anything like that. We just showed up in our ship suits and played the role of a sort of honour guard.
We did get the chance to get off the ship, though, and I saw the actual station from the inside. It was huge compared to anything I had seen before. All I got a chance to see was the one passage to their conference room. It also happened to be their mess hall.
Normally the station crews are happy to give you a short tour if you happen to be on the shuttle that docks. We had docked the entire ship here, and I would have thought that the personnel would be happy to see newcomers. They weren’t. They just kept working on their jobs, aside from the few that came over to help us unload.
We unloaded a lot of crates and moved them to their storage room. They had tons of supplies there, and they were getting even more.
We finished unloading and then one of the female maintenance personnel—a Ms. Brennan, according to her name tag—looked us over. “Okay, guys. I understand that you fit, young, healthy and, oh my, strong Marines are going to drop off a shipping container with supplies on our small secondary automated base on your way out. Any chance that I could ask you to park your ship in orbit and unload it onto the shelves for me?”
She threw me a big smile and batted her lashes at me. She had a tattoo of something on the one side of her neck and I noticed how big and deep her eyes seemed. I felt myself blushing red and stammered out, “Sorry, Ms. Brennan. We have to leave straight off after dropping to be on time for our next post.”
She laughed at me and I could feel Ten watching me from the side.
“You turn such a nice shade of red! Don’t worry about it, shy guy. I know that you have to be off and about saving humanity. I was just joking, and you do turn an interesting crimson when flirted with. You do need to go and get laid! Call me Clara.”
With that, Clara led the four of us in the party into the mess hall. She pulled up a projection of the moon we were to go to and briefed us on how to drop the containers.
When the shipping container landed on the projection moon, it gave me a sense of scale of how big the site was. It was going to be twice as big as the station, and it looked like there was room to expand. That made no sense to me.
I just noticed where and when. The ship crew would worry about the container; we were just security.
After we had finished the briefing and the crew had taken all sorts of notes and grabbed a copy of the sim, we headed back to the ship.
Clara moved up and started walking next to me. Ten had moved forward when Clara had come out of the mess with us.
She started chatting me up. “A few years ago when I was training on Earth for my first round of testing, I ended up staying at a Corporation hostel for a few days while I was waiting for my transfer. I met up with a really nice guy; he was a bit like you. Timothy turned the same shade of red that you did back there. Are you from a nice, middle-class family like he was?”
I looked over at her. “No, I grew up in the Projects. East Coast, Number Four Red.”
She stopped and I stopped as well. We were just at the airlock and the crew ahead was going through the formal goodbye procedure that always seemed to exist in space. Just say “bye” and leave was my thought.
Ms. Brennan—no, Clara—looked at me. “I’m from Central, Seven. Good times there. I haven’t been back there for ages, not since I entered the Deeps.”
I nodded at her. I didn’t really know what to say.
The first crewman was going aboard.
Clara turned to me so that we at least had the semblance of privacy. “So, is it true? Did you really give up your name to become a Marine?”
She wasn’t mocking me; she just seemed curious.
“No, we don’t give up our names. It’s just that keeping a name can be less effective in the high-speed combat we get involved in. I’m called Eight in the section but my real name is Sam. Sam Slate.”
I could feel Ten’s eyes on me. The other crew had gone through the hatch.
Clara was looking at my face carefully and she stuck her hand out. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Sam ‘Eight’ Slate. Have a safe trip.”
I took her hand. Her grip was strong and she was warm.
I smiled at her. “You take care of yourself in the depths of space, Clara. Don’t be going near that river and Kharon.”
We squeezed each other’s hands and then released. I walked down the passage, nodded at the two crewmen there, and looked back to see Clara already walking away.
I went down the hatch and boarded the ship.
Ten was waiting for me along with our crewmembers. We left while the crewmembers secured the ship before we departed. The conversation was quiet while we walked back to our section.
“So Eight, were you trying to hook up there?”
I stopped and looked over at Ten. I considered her words. “No. It was nice to meet someone who smiled and treated me like a human, unlike the rest of the crew, who were more about working and getting us off the station as fast as possible.”
Ten looked me over and shrugged before walking off. I followed.
It didn’t really matter, but I was curious why she was asking these weird questions.
The ship disengaged and we slowly left the station behind. The ship arced in toward the moon and moved into orbit, then the crew took the shuttle, first one and then the other, to drop off the extra supplies.
After three trips all the supplies were down.
I didn’t go down to the moon but I did help load. We had brought them a lot of supplies, which was strange. The Mama Pig or one of her little sisters would be along in about a month. We were bringing a lot of supplies for such a short time.
After the last shuttle docked, the ship broke orbit again and we took off for the edge of the system and deep space.
There was a briefing when we were well underway.
This time, the first mate had come down to talk to us. There was very little information passed on, other than that a ship had appeared at the system’s edge just over a month ago. It
had moved along the edge for five days and then left.
That was the extreme range that the sensors could really get anything useful from, but the data indicated that the ship had been a Kah-Choo scout or courier ship.
It was strange because the Kah-Choo never came here. They always went around and made their presence known at the Sol System at the outer station where the ‘system greeter’ was.
The interesting thing was that the data suggested that they had known that they had been spotted.
Two decided to run some more raid sims as well as defensive training.
We carried on working and preparing while we headed for the edge of the system, and then, when we finally passed an invisible line, the ship’s computers ran their computations and we jumped into deep space.
Sabotage Exposed
The conference room is dark, as always. After all, there is no reason to have it fully lit unless those sitting around the table want it lit up. The viewing screens are fit with the latest light amplification anyway and the viewer can see the inside of the room like it’s the middle of the day. The light can even simulate being outside under a hot sun if a viewer so chooses.
The main meeting is now over and, as always, those who are not required or wanted for high-level discussions have been dismissed. The doors have been locked down and the few occupants have lit fresh cigarettes or cigars according to their preference and topped up their coffee cups.
The mood is much more tense than normal and while ashtrays are overflowing and cold cups of coffee abound, no one involved has felt any desire to refresh those vices. If anything, most are drinking water and panicking.
The president’s screen, as always, has his icon on it. The lighting around the edge, however, is a deep red. Most people attending are not aware that the colour indicates the president’s mood. His quiet anger quickly becomes obvious to everyone when he talks.