Criminal Core

by Nick Broad

  The thought of it left me stunned. “Holy shit,” I whispered. “You’ve been alone on this station for years?”

  Shay hid it well, but the little tremble in her lip spoke more than words could say.

  “It must have been very lonely,” I said soothingly, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “It was....what it was,” she said, fighting back tears. “It doesn’t matter. It’s really good that the reactors are broken, actually. I’m supposed to have a Core here working with me - I have to, by law. If they let an AI run this place alone, it would only take a few years before it went full Skynet and turned the station into a gulag. Cleaning up all the blood after vivisecting half the prisoners would be a major hassle.”

  “Well,” I said, brushing a tear off her cheek, “that’s what the other half of the prisoners are for, right?”

  She started to laugh. “I knew I made a good choice in picking you, Noah. You’re going to help me fix this, right?”

  “Absolutely,” I assured her. “I’m your man. You saved up decades of your life to bring me here, Shay. How could I possibly let you down?”

  She hugged me tight, her legs spreading around my thighs so easily that I didn’t even notice until I felt the heat. “I thought this place was going to be broken forever,” she whimpered. “They’re like three toys, you know? The station spires. Broken toys.”

  “We’ll fix them,” I said firmly. “It’s why we’re here. Why I’m here.”

  She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “That’s what the galactic council on artificial intelligence says, anyway,” she said, swallowing hard. “Alright, enough emotional bullshit. Let’s get to work. I need another cup of coffee.”

  “Cool.” I turned my attention back to the screen. “I’m going to start digging into the station records. From what you said, the Beta reactor is borked, but there might be a way to bring Gamma back online. I’ll get Chirrup to help me. Any chance you can get me another cup, too?”

  “Sure,” she said. Then she arched an eyebrow. “Maybe some clothes, too?”

  Oh yeah. I was naked. “That would be good,” I said, blushing.

  “God, you’re so cute,” Shay purred, making her way to the door. “And so tall...”

  Once she was gone, I glanced up at the ceiling. “Chirrup, you there?”

  “Of course, Warden!” She was so loud and cheerful that it made me flinch. “How may I serve you?”

  I put my hands on my nude hips and surveyed the viewscreen.

  “Data,” I said. “Bring me data.”

  Six: A Satyr and a Sail

  The data was a fucking mess.

  For one thing, none of it was consistent. The Black Oubliette had been in operation as a Class-A Galactic Prison for nearly eight hundred years, and in that time it had been owned by any number of governments, corporations, and crime syndicates. It had been bought and sold like a credit card debt back on Earth: and just like with the credit cards, no one’s methods of recordkeeping were exactly the same.

  Add to that the number of revolts, riots and revolutions that had taken place here, and the records Chirrup pulled up for me started to resemble the digital version of swiss cheese. But the further I dug through the things, the more a few basic facts became perfectly clear.

  One: this station was even less secure than Shay let on.

  Two: it had once been a state-of-the-art detention center, the likes of which the galaxy had never seen before.

  Three: the people currently in power wanted it the way it was now.

  Frankly, I was starting to suspect the damage to Beta and Gamma’s reactors had been done deliberately. And not by rioting prisoners, or by gangs like the Red Tigers who liked to leave a mess on their way out the door. The Black Oubliette had been treated like a fancy house someone wanted to rob: cut the power, cut the phone lines so no one can call for help, then smash the windows and take whatever you want. I still didn’t know who had caused this energy crisis, but if there was any way to piece it together from the records, I would eventually.

  “Here you go,” Shay said, tossing me a silvery shipsut. “These are pretty easy to get on and off. Plus, they make your butt look cute.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a grin, shimmying into it. I could see where being able to undress in a hurry might come in handy around a girl like Shay.

  “So how’s the research going?”

  “Pretty good,” I said, sipping the coffee Shay had brought. Damn, but it was delicious. “I wanted to ask you - what is the Solar Sail?”

  Shay’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Wow, you really have been digging deep,” she said, surprised. “The solar sail was one of the first things to go on this station. It was basically a big mirror - it reflected energy from this solar system’s sun and focused it onto solar arrays all over the station.”

  I nodded. I’d figured out just about all of that already from the records. “It was tied to the tethers, right? The tubes between the stations - they’re there for security and to give the solar sail a base.”

  “Impressive!” Shay gave me a big grin. “Yeah, when it was running, the sail stretched over the entire Oubliette. It produced more energy than all three reactors put together.” She sighed, slumping into the captain’s chair. “Those were the good old days...”

  “You and Chirrup were talking earlier about a storage unit in one of the spires full of extra escape pods,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra solar sail, would you?”

  She gave me a look of newfound respect. “You are clever,” she whispered, nibbling at her bottom lip like I’d just turned her on. “We don’t - but what we do have are the blueprints. The fabricators could make another one pretty easily. It is just a really big tarp made of mirrors, after all. We’d just need a few days and an extra couple thousand energy credits to make it happen!” She’d been getting more and more excited as she spoke, but suddenly her expression clouded. “It won’t work, though,” she said, crestfallen. “We can’t install it.”

  “Why not? Are the solar arrays on the station spires broken, too?”

  “No, they’re fine,” she said, shaking her head. “They’re outside, clinging to the surface of the ship like barnacles. You’d need a laser cannon to do any real damage to them. But that’s not the problem.”

  “Oh.” I turned my attention back to the screen, wondering if I could see what it was before she explained it to me. “What is, then?”

  She glanced up at the ceiling. It seemed to be a habit of hers whenever she called upon our AI assistant - like tugging a rope to summon a butler. “Chirrup, show Noah the SATR, please.”

  I stared at her in confusion. “The Satyr?”

  Shay shook her head. “Stable Autonomic Transmission Range,” she said, her tone clipped and didactic. “You’ll see it in just a second.”

  The screen zoomed back out, transforming once more into the wireframe map of the spires. Only now there was a pale, golden circle drawn around the station. Wait - not the whole station. The circle was irregular, puckered inward and bloated outward at points for reasons I didn’t understand. There were one or two outcroppings on the other spires that were outside of the circle entirely.

  “Like I said, these bodies aren’t us - we’re just using them for the moment.” Shay traced the circle in the air with a finger, clearly enjoying this teaching opportunity. “As long as you stay inside of this circle, the transmission between your android body and your Core is pretty much instantaneous. You see things, smell them, etcetera, within a fraction of a fraction of a second.”

  “I think I get it,” I said, examining the screen closer. “This is like the ship’s Bluetooth.”

  Shay blanched. “The what?”

  “Old Earth stuff,” I said, waving a hand. “And just like a Bluetooth signal, I’m guessing there’s some interference around these places where the circle isn’t quite as...um, circular?”

  She smiled, back on solid ground. “You got it. There’s a couple of
spots where solar radiation frazzles the signal. If we walk into one of those dead zones - bam! Body falls to the ground, switches off, and you’re back in your Core again.”

  I shuddered at the thought. “I’ll have to avoid those,” I said.

  “Most of them are places we never go,” she said, “but this one’s tricky.”

  She pointed to an outcropping on the very bottom of Gamma Spire. It stuck out like a thumb, jutting into space at a weird angle, and when I saw it I started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Shay asked.

  “It looks like a trailer hitch,” I said. Shay’s expression didn’t change. “Look, back on Earth we had these personal vehicles, and some people were really into them. They used them to tow things, like a boat or a camper, and sometimes...they’d, uh, they’d decorate them to make them look like a pair of testicles.”

  She gave me a long, even look. “The people of your time were so interesting,” she said flatly.

  A blush rose to my cheeks. “Uh huh.”

  “The metaphor is sound, though,” she said, turning back to the screen. “It is a kind of hitch - it’s where the solar sail is deployed. From there it connects automatically to the tethers and begins collecting energy from the nearby sun. Only neither you or I can go there.” She pulled a face. “Believe me, I’ve tried. Chirrup had to use a crane to drag my body back into the SATR after I disconnected.”

  I rubbed my chin. “Could we send drones in to do the initial setup?”

  It was a good idea, but Shay shook her head. “They function about as well as we do outside of the SATR. Which is to say, not at all.”

  “Shit,” I grumbled, taking another big sip of my coffee. It had finally reached that awesome spot between too-hot and too-cold that made it perfect to drink. I would’ve thought they’d have found a way in the future to keep it at that temperature longer. “Still, it’s a start. We should still focus on fabricating a new solar sail, just in case. From what you’ve said, both the auxiliary reactors sound pretty borked. A new sail is the best way to get this station back up and running.”

  “I thought you’d say that,” Shay murmured, the corner of her mouth turning up in a smile. “But where are we going to get the energy?”

  I was thinking about that. “Chirrup, how much would it cost to fabricate a new solar sail?”

  Her response was swift and chipper. “Fabrication of a new solar sail would cost fourteen-hundred energy credits, Warden!”

  I whistled. “Wow. That’s a lot. And we have...five credits right now, if I’m not mistaken?”

  Shay’s lips twisted in a pout. “We could cut our bodies off and go into hibernation for a couple hundred years,” she said, rolling her eyes and running one leg up my thigh. “But honestly, it’s worth the cost to keep us running. I’d much rather be awake and having orgasms with you than sleeping...”

  “Same here,” I said with a smirk. The thought of going back into hibernation frightened me almost as much as the whole ‘you’re actually a thinking ball of light’ thing. “Anything else we could do to free up some energy?”

  She nibbled her bottom lip - not in a sexy way this time. “I do have an idea,” she confided in a low voice, sounding reluctant. “You’re not going to like it, though.”

  “All our options are pretty rotten,” I said with a little laugh, beaming down at her. “I’d be interested in hearing yours. It’s probably less rotten than the others.”

  “Gee, what a vote of confidence,” she growled, sliding her foot up and down the gap between my thighs. “But it is rotten. What if we cut the power to Beta and Gamma?”

  I was genuinely taken aback. “What!?”

  “Hear me out,” she said quickly, leaning forward. “That’s nine hundred credits a month we’re spending on the prisoners. Spending it on food, on power, on oxygen. On people who just break out of here in a couple of days! If we stop giving them our reactor’s energy and close down the tethers, we’d have enough energy saved up in two months to build the solar sail. You’d have two months to figure out how to install it, and I’d get two months of seeing how hard I can train you to make me cum. It’s a win-win!”

  She was trying to distract me from the ethical problems with that last part. I didn’t blame her; Shay could be damned distracting. “But everyone currently inside Beta and Gamma would die,” I protested. “I’m not cutting life support to those people, even if they did commit crimes. The whole purpose of a prison is to imprison people - not kill them.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” Shay sighed. “You’re too damned good, Noah. I should have picked one of those deranged psychopaths from the Great Collapse...”

  She trailed off. Because I was staring at the screen, and from the look on my face, she could tell I had an idea.

  “You’re thinking I’m a monster,” Shea said with a pout.

  “No,” I shot back. “I’m asking myself why you haven’t done that already.”

  Now it was her turn to be taken aback. “Pardon?”

  “If you’d vented the other spires,” I said, pushing on as fast as I could think, “you’d only have had to spend weeks alone here, instead of decades. You could have decanted a new Core in a fraction of the time. So why didn’t you?”

  She pouted harder. “I can’t,” she admitted, glaring at me. “It’s not in my programming.”

  I scoffed. “Really?”

  “Really,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “An AI supervisor is not allowed to cause harm to prisoners. It’s one of my primary directives. I have no way of overriding it. Only a Core can make decisions that could lead to casualties among the inmates of the Black Oubliette.”

  “That’s...a big responsibility,” I said, a little chastened. “Why?”

  “Because only you have a soul,” Shay whispered bitterly. “Only a Core is supposed to be able to grapple with the moral quandaries involved in managing this prison.” She slurped the rest of her coffee and set the mug down on the console with more force than was necessary. “To put it in the most hurtful possible terms, the people who designed this place don’t trust me. Or maybe they just want someone who can go to Hell for the bad things they’ve done. Someone like you, Noah.”

  That’s a hell of a thing to lay on me, I thought. And I’d been seriously considering Shay’s proposition, too. God, what an ass I was.

  “Geez,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Shay. Look, maybe there’s some way we can make this work. Move the prisoners to Alpha Spire or something like that. Hell, how many people do we even have on this station right now? Chirrup?”

  “Glad you asked!” the AI helpfully informed me. “Here are some statistics regarding the current prisoner population!”

  As the infographic filled the screen, I groaned. The situation was even worse than I’d thought.

  “Good God,” I said, staring at the central statistic. “Our breakout rate last week was 83%!?”

  “Kind of hard to keep them here without any locks on the doors,” Shay said, crossing her arms under her breasts.

  “It’s a damned revolving door is what it is,” I groused. “Okay - so according to this, there’s about three dozen people currently in Beta spire, and a half-dozen or so in Gamma. What’s the difference between the two, anyway? I’m a little fuzzy on that point.”

  “Beta is designated for violent criminals,” Shay explained. “Gamma is non-violent: political dissidents, smugglers of illegal contraband, tax cheats. All the things that don’t hurt someone else directly.”

  “I still can’t get over it,” I said, shaking my head at the statistics. “Eighty-three percent of these people will be free in a week. I’m not so upset about political prisoners seeing the light of day or whatever, but those Red Tigers looked pretty rough.”

  “They are,” Shay said. “They’re in here all the time. Banditry, looting - they’re basically a cartel.”

  “I’m almost hesitant to see the longer-term numbers,” I said. “Chirrup, show me the esca
pe rates on a monthly basis.”

  The result was even more shocking: a cool 99 percent. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people who walked into the Black Oubliette walked out within a month. And a quick check of the yearly rates showed the same thing.

  “A revolving door,” I repeated, feeling a little dizzy. “Shay, we’ve got to fix this...”

  I felt a hand around my waist. When I looked down, Shay had sympathetic eyes trained on me.

  “I know it sounds bad,” she said, her voice tight with emotion. “I gave you a pretty rough job, Noah. But at least neither of us is alone anymore. I brought you here, and you’re all mine...”

  Her eyes shined with more than sympathy. Chirrup chittered in the background as I leaned down and kissed Shay, hard and deep. She let out a groan and spread her legs, taking my hand and sliding it between her thighs. What I found there was warm, wet, and oh so ready for me...

  I pulled back. “Wait.” I said, a lightbulb going on in my head.

  Shay stared at me in disbelief for a moment, then groaned. “Is this going to be a thing?” she asked exasperatedly. “Are you going to stop and start asking me a bunch of questions every time I try to have sex with you? Can you never just do it and stop thinking so much!?”

  “Ninety-nine isn’t a hundred,” I said, a strange sensation tingling up my spine. “Why would anyone stay on this broken-ass station for a whole month?”

  Shay looked pissed, but when she realized I wasn’t going to relent, she thought it over. “Maybe they just want to rest and recharge for a bit,” she said, sounding annoyed. “Maybe they’re waiting for the heat to die down before they escape. Or they’re waiting for their criminal syndicate to come pick them up - if you’re not part of a big one like the Red Tigers, those escape pods might not carry you all the way to friendly territory.”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not it,” I said, turning back to the screen. Shay groaned in frustration, her hands balled into fists. “Chirrup, how many prisoners have been in the Black Oubliette for over a year?”