The Silver Liner: Takes Flight!

by Daniel Sullivan

  Terri,

  Sorry to put you through any worry; I know the Verona is reported to have gone down with all hands, but I got away. Thought you’d want to know.

  Love ya, girl!

  A.

  Terri’s heart swelled with joy and her pulse quickened. For Amanda to get a message to her like this was very unusual. She does love me, she thought. Terri finished her drink and caught a cab home, able to rest easy knowing that her love had survived the tragedy.

  Amanda Keyes took the chance to get a message to Terri. It was unwise, given that she was working covertly, but Amanda knew that Terri would worry herself to death if she did not. Thankfully, the UPA Interceptor Orion had excellent long-range communications. Terri was so good about planting that virus. She’s a very useful asset, the agent thought. Best to keep her on the hook in case I need to use her again. She knew that it was somewhat callous, but Amanda was not the settling down type and Terri knew it. Nevertheless, there was no reason that Amanda could not extend some kindness and affection to a girl whose bed she had recently shared.

  “Whatcha doin’?” a woman’s voice asked the question from the bed.

  “Coming back to bed, hot stuff,” replied Keyes seductively. She flushed the toilet then ran the faucet for cover. A moment later, Amanda exited the Orion XO’s cabin latrine and surreptitiously put her data pad away as she walked back to the bed in the dark. “You ready for more?”

  “You know I am, Amanda.”

  “Ooh, now that’s what I want to hear,” cooed Keyes as she slid into bed, kissing Commander Jansen deeply. As the XO began nibbling at her neck, Keyes moaned her approval and said, “Mmmm, love ya, girl.”

  10

  The Selene arrived at the signal’s origin a scant two days after receiving the S.O.S. Captain Royce had ordered the ship to move a slower pace than usual in order to both conserve fuel and to have time to react to any trap that might await them. He had just stepped onto the bridge when Mister Tanaka announced they had found the source.

  “Signal originates here, Sir,” the communications officer stated.

  “Do we have a visual?” Kendrick could not see anything out the window.

  “Um, no, but according to the sensors, the object is tiny,” replied Tanaka.

  “Turn on the floodlights,” ordered Kendrick.

  “Hai.” Tanaka illuminated the space ahead of the ship as Kendrick had ordered and there seemed to be a small object reflecting light.

  “That it?”

  “Hai,” replied Tanaka. “It must be the beacon. It’s not big enough to be a pod.”

  “Let’s reel it in,” said Kendrick.

  Yoshida piloted the ship up close to the source of the S.O.S. As Selene closed on the source, it began to take on a familiar shape.

  “Is that … a … person?” Tanaka looked alarmed as he asked this.

  The ramifications were clear: someone had either been lost in space or intentionally tossed overboard. Neither scenario was promising.

  “If it is,” Kendrick noted, “sensors are picking up no difference in temperature between her and the surrounding space.”

  “Her?” asked Nozaki.

  “Yup,” replied Kendrick. “Definitely female.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Kendrick shook his head and laughed. “You kidding? Look at her; curves and bulges in all the right places. No space suit either—or I wouldn’t be able to tell. Poor girl is dead, but she’s got a beacon powerful enough for us to pick up? Park it. I’ll go get her. Send Fiona and Doctor Yori to the airlock. Tell ’em to bring a couple of nurses and a gurney.”

  “Hai,” Nozaki replied.

  Kendrick looked over at the man at the gunnery station. He was larger than the others, about as tall as Kendrick, or maybe a couple of centimeters taller. Given the man’s facial features, Kendrick was betting the man was Korean. “You, in the gunner’s station, you look sturdy. What’s your name?”

  “Mun Kang Hi, Sir,” the man replied (Mun pronounced Moon), a friendly smile on his face. “I’m the Fugin’s security chief and gunner. You can call me Kang.”

  “I’ll stick with ‘Mister Mun’ while we’re on duty,” Kendrick replied. “Meet me in the airlock. I’m gonna need you you’re help.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Mister Mun replied.

  Kendrick suited up and stepped into the airlock, making sure that the tether was secure, and opened the outer bay door. He propelled himself forward and floated out into space towards the frozen girl, Mun poised to reel him back in, and Doctors Yori and Kinsale standing by. He got to the frozen woman before he ran out of tether. Good, he thought. He was good with the jets on the suit, but he would just as soon not have to use them.

  Taking hold of her gently, Kendrick found that though frozen, the woman was not blue. She looked calm, just a mild look of consternation on her attractive face. She wore her hair in kind of a bob cut and had delicate facial features. She reminded him of … Selene. No, not reminded; aside from the bob cut, she was almost a dead ringer for his late wife! Kendrick tugged on the line and Mun slowly reeled him back to the ship. He wondered what this poor girl could have done to warrant being tossed into space. Given that she had a beacon somewhere on her person, he wondered why her own ship did not come back for her. She was not very hard to find. Even with most of Selene’s systems on manual, the Fujin’s crew had been able to find her quite easily. He found himself stroking her hair absently as they were pulled back. His hand brushed an object lodged in the back of her skull. Murdered, he lamented.

  Returning to the ship and stepping through the airlock with a frozen girl in his hands, Mun secured Kendrick in the airlock, closing the door as soon as the captain was fully inside. Once the airlock was pressurized and the temperature equalized, the inner door opened and Kendrick handed the slain woman to the waiting Doctors Yori and Kinsale. They handed her to two of the Fujin’s nurses, who laid the girl on a gurney, securing her in place.

  Kendrick opened his helmet, taking a deep breath. “Waste of a perfectly good babe.”

  “Is she …” Fiona began. Kendrick nodded and finished.

  “Yeah, she’s dead … but there’s a whole lotta questions I have about her.”

  “No space suit,” noted Yori. “Wonder what she was doing out here. She couldn’t have just fallen overboard.”

  “I think there’s a knife jammed into her skull,” Kendrick observed. “Probably just disposing of the body, but …”

  “No way,” exclaimed Mun excitedly as he removed his own helmet. “An Escort-7 floating in space? Talk about buried treasure!”

  “What the hell are you going on about?” Kendrick asked, highly irritated all of the sudden.

  “She’s an Escort-7,” Mun explained. “The first generation models all have the same face. Different hair and skin tones, but they all look essentially the same. Unlike the current ones, these were all based on the same template. You know, Captain, it does get lonely in space. We get her fixed up and we can really have …”

  “Don’t even think about finishing that sentence!” Kendrick looked sternly at Fujin’s security chief.

  “Sorry! What’d I do?” Mun asked, thoroughly confused.

  Kendrick shook his head. “It ain’t what you did; it’s what you were gonna do. Except for the hairdo, this girl looks exactly like my late wife when she was younger. Identical to her college graduation picture! So don’t even think about getting’ your jollies with this girl.”

  “Sorry.” Mun backed away a little as he spoke. He looked sincere, but also wary of the captain.

  “More importantly,” asked Kendrick, “Why is a dead ringer for a young Selene Conway floating in space?”

  “Selene … Conway?” Mun was confused. Though visibly fearful of Kendrick’s wrath, his curiosity and loquacious nature drew the security chief right back into the conversation.

  “Yeah, Selene Conway,” confirmed Kendrick, his voice having resumed a conversational tone. “Met her back during my r
ock star days. She was a starship engineer and AI programmer. She was about twenty-eight at the time. I married her and she became Selene Royce. Selene designed the AI for this ship. She died five years ago; the ship was named for her.”

  Fiona suddenly made the connection. “That’s where I’d seen her!”

  “Where you’ve seen whom?” asked Doctor Yori.

  “When I first came aboard, I saw the holographic avatar of Selene’s avatar and a picture of Ken and his wife. I thought she looked familiar, but I could not put my finger on it. I have seen first gen Escort and Valet-7 androids, as well as medical androids based on that design. I’m sorry, Ken, but I think Mister Mun may be correct.”

  “We’ll see,” Kendrick said flatly. “Regardless, this is all highly troubling.”

  They all looked at each other, as Kendrick signaled the nurses to take the frozen girl to the Med-Bay. He looked back at the doctors and Mun.

  “Y’alls commin’?” he asked, his southern drawl reasserting itself as he turned to go with the nurses.

  Mun indicated his intention to return to the bridge, but Yori and Fiona both nodded and joined him; both remained silent as they went to the Med-Bay.

  Kendrick was deeply troubled; the frozen woman was identical in every way to the younger Selene Conway, except for her hairstyle. However, her hair color, thickness and texture were all exactly as he remembered. Moreover, her peaceful face wore the expression Selene had worn when she had finally died. By the time Miss Selene Conway became Mrs. Selene Royce, she was but a shadow of her younger self. Gaunt and gray on their wedding day, her disease and the treatments of it had sapped her strength and vitality, causing her body to waste away and ultimately killing her. He held back tears at the memory.

  If what Mun said was accurate and Fiona’s realization about having seen Selene’s face on the Escort-7 units confirmed Mun’s observation, then a lot more than just Selene’s AI program had gone into the android industry. Apparently, her entire image had been coopted as well. Kendrick clenched his fists. Somebody will pay for this. Then, he shook his head. Who am I kidding? I can’t take the mega corps on. Nice thought, but ain’t gonna happen.

  Once they were in the Med-Bay, he gently laid her on a table. The frozen girl wore no space suit, but kind of a stylized pilot’s jump suit. No helmet or breathing apparatus though. Her bobbed hair was a dark brown with a dark reddish overtone and her skin was very fair. Her open, staring eyes, however, were a beautiful blue. As Doctor Yori began checking her over, Kendrick began his own examination. He looked at the back of her neck and examined the object lodged into her skull. He figured on finding the hilt of a knife, but instead, he found a plastic object that resembled an OSD. There were no traces of blood in her hair or on her clothing, lending further credence to Mun’s assessment.

  “Looks like we may be able to find out what’s going on around here.” His voice was thicker with emotion than he wanted it to be. “I found a data-port like I have. I thought she’d been knifed, but this ain’t no knife. It’s some kind of … cybernetic device. Also …” pausing, he removed something else, “… a data storage chip in the adjacent socket.” He removed both the device and the chip.

  “How will that help?” Fiona looked confused, but Doctor Yori Hayashi answered.

  “She has cybernetics … that, or she’s an Escort-7 gynoid—never actually seen one before. It’s possible that she has some memory storage device built in with them.”

  “Like a black box?” Fiona looked hopeful.

  “Exactly! An’ I intend to find out what’s on it.” Kendrick plugged the chip into his own chip socket and began to examine the data. Very quickly, it became apparent that the device was an auxiliary storage device, not the main one. He opened up the files and examined them. “I’m going back to my quarters to sift through the data. There’s something fishy here, an’ I’m gonna get to the bottom of it. Findin’ an identical twin to my wife floating out in deep space is takin’ weird to a whole new level. Keep me posted on what you find.”

  “Hai.” Doctor Yori, executed a crisp bow to him, Kendrick bowed in return and left. Yori then looked at Fiona. “Should we put some kind of curtain up? I would like for this woman to have some dignity and my examination requires me to undress her.”

  Fiona nodded. “I think the Captain might appreciate it too, given that she looks just like his late wife. Did you see the look on his face? This is really bothering him, a lot more than he’s letting on.”

  “Hai,” Doctor Yori agreed as she began undressing the frozen woman, while looking to see if there was a cause of death other than oxygen deprivation and hypothermia or possible interruption of neurological functions by whatever that device was. For all they knew, that was the beacon source. Now that they were inside, the woman’s skin was cool to the touch, but still soft.

  “Dr. Yori, her joints are still pliable,” said Fiona as they undressed the patient. “And she feels human. I’ve seen more Escort-7 units than I’d care to admit and though she looks like one, this … isn’t one, I’m certain of that. This is … real skin.”

  “Hai. She must have just died,” replied Hayashi. “Not a hint of rigor-mortis. She must have activated the beacon before being ejected. Poor girl would only have lasted a few moments in a vacuum and we’ve been tracking the signal for two days.”

  They soon had the patient undressed and found no visible wounds apart from the damage to her data port. The Selene’s medical bay was ten years old enough that her medical scanning equipment was no longer state of the art. Fiona hoped that they would be good enough and that there would be no need for an autopsy.

  Kendrick made his way to the bridge to apprise the crew. This would take longer than just a few minutes, possibly several hours. He hated to stick them on the bridge for that long without a break, but it could not be helped. “Mister Yoshida, any luck plotting that course?”

  “Yes, Sir,” replied Yoshida. “I’ve never had to navigate without instrumentation; how did you figure out our location?”

  “I learned how to do that in flight school, Mister Yoshida,” Kendrick explained. “We couldn’t use the computer until we knew how to astrogate.”

  “Where did you learn?”

  “A.A.E.A.,” Kendrick replied.

  “You went to the academy?” Yoshida was amazed. Even the rest of the Fujin bridge crew took notice.

  “Yup. Top of my class … and any class before or after,” Kendrick boasted. “Now that we know where we are and have a course plotted, there’s some data that I need to examine, so I’m going to be in my quarters. Mister Nozaki, you have the bridge.”

  “Captain?” Nozaki seemed surprised.

  “I need to figure out what’s on this chip that was in the back of that girl’s head,” Kendrick replied. “And figure out what the hell this thing is.” He held up the device that had been jammed into the socket. “A beautiful girl who looks exactly like my late wife was murdered and left floating in space off of any charted route. I damn well want to know why.” Anger tinged his voice; Kendrick resented that his most painful memories were now being dredged up and he was simultaneously trying not to break down in front of the Fujin crew. Anger helped him keep it together until he was alone in his cabin and could allow himself the tears.

  “Hai!”

  Kendrick returned to his quarters as fast as he could before anyone interrupted him. Once inside, he turned off the intercom and sat on the edge of his bed. For about five minutes, Kendrick Royce allowed himself to feel the pain and sadness that he had been holding back. Five minutes turned into fifteen as the tears came unbidden. Why is this happening? I was all ready to move on and now this! No answers came to him, but he was not really expecting any. His wife’s death had been just as senseless and random as his finding this poor girl; he had long ago resigned himself to never getting answers.

  Finally, Kendrick pulled himself together enough to begin doing what he came to his cabin to do. Kendrick lay down on his bed to examine the data, a
bsently looking at the device that had protruded from her skull. The cover for the chip socket had been torn away, indicating that the device was inserted in a hurry. Something about it did not look friendly, though he could not immediately put his finger on why. He put the device down as he found a protected file on the chip. Great; encryption. He accessed his data pad, retrieved a code-breaker program, and got to work. It did not take him too long to get in; the encryption appeared hasty.

  The files arrayed themselves for him. Most were various drivers and backups for jacking in and operating various devices; Kendrick had quite a few of those himself, but there was another file that was large enough to nearly fill the chip’s storage capacity. He took a quick look at that one and recognized it immediately. The captain recognized the program; it was a variation of the Selene’s AI.

  But why would an AI’s O.S. be on a data chip plugged into a person? He wondered if she were simply transporting it or if it was being used to control her somehow. It just did not make any sense unless she were brain dead … or an Escort-7 as Mun had asserted, though Kendrick was still not convinced of that. Then, he opened the file. Altered from the Selene’s, the O.S. had a purpose other than operation of a starship. Renamed ‘Escort 7,’ it was designed for personal interaction. So, Mun was right after all, Kendrick lamented. Still, could be just the thing to repair Selene’s damaged AI.

  Kendrick closed that folder and continued sifting through the files until he found the one he was after: the record of what had happened to her. He opened it up and was surprised that it contained a further encryption and a prelude: a message to the reader.