by Beth Powers
met the hologram’s eyes, “Your turn.”
I returned to the game as if nothing had happened. By the time she had beat me three games in a row, Taylor had lost some of her nervous tension. Unfortunately, my preoccupation with the next game contributed to my not noticing the hacker until it was too late.
“Your move.” In Taylor’s eyes, dark enough to mirror the blackness of space she so feared, concern had edged out the panic. Evidently, this hadn’t been the first time she’d spoken without a response from me.
When I attempted to access the speakers to apologize for my distraction, I found that I couldn’t. I had used them just a few minutes before to poke fun at her apparent lack of strategy. I traced the glitch in the system back to its source. The pretty dark-haired passenger who had sweet-talked Neil into letting her on board sat on the edge of the bunk in the next room over with a portable computer wired to a panel on the wall. I checked, she had connected to the comm system.
The woman’s fingers flew over her small keyboard. I tried to block her access through the wires she had spliced, but I came up against a wall of code that stopped me cold. I recognized the language it was written in and that told me why she’d so desperately wanted on our ship. She was using Vamirran code. Currently, the Vamirran solar system was politically and militarily in a mess so complicated that it couldn’t even be called a civil war. Our hold was full of weapons; it didn’t take too much to connect the dots.
I heard Taylor’s voice echo urgently in the distance, “Konstantin? Are you there?”
My ability to communicate had been shut down, even my hologram was frozen with its hand halfway toward the game board. I activated the ship’s defenses, which the hacker had managed to bypass, and they moved to intercept her rapid commands. No alarms sounded. She must have disabled the whole speaker system, preventing me from communicating with Taylor and stopping the general alarm from alerting Neil. I quickly flipped through video feeds, finding him in the cockpit. I tried to access the main screen, to flash a warning where he couldn’t miss it. I encountered nothing but Vamirran code. The path was blocked. I was paralyzed.
One of the auxiliary warning systems bounced off the hacker’s code, failed to sound its alarm, and circled back to me. Oxygen levels in the cockpit were dropping at an alarming rate. Neil’s chin fell forward on to his chest. I had accepted death for myself long ago, but not for my brother. He couldn’t die at the hands of a pretty woman he’d been too nice to turn away. I was no loss to the galaxy, but my idiot romantic brother needed to live, so he could continue to strong-arm the universe into believing happy endings were possible.
I was completely cut off; the hacker’s computer controlled the ship. My only option was to go after her system and try to get through it to reclaim mine. She probably didn’t even know I existed. As far as she knew, I was a computer, incapable of doing more than it had been programmed to do. She was in for a nasty surprise. I didn’t know what would happen to my consciousness if she shut me down. I knew what would happen to my brother if I didn’t try.
Not having this type of program ready, I borrowed the existing security system and attempted to smash it through her wall of Vamirran code. I managed to take a few chips out of the brick before she figured out what I was doing. I heard her curse the ship for having hidden defenses. Her program proved capable of attacking as well as blocking. It came down on me like a blanket thrown over my head. I was blind. Locked out. Paralyzed again.
I might not be able to escape from the blanket that constricted around me, but I didn’t need to get out. I just needed to get something through the barrier. Blankets could tear, and I could write in Vamirran as well as recognize their code. Being a starship leaves a bored consciousness with plenty of time to learn all of those things that were formerly put off until “someday.” Still, I hadn’t gotten around to learning Vamirran programming, and I couldn’t manage more than a fragment of poorly written code. But then, style wasn’t as necessary as aim.
I had thought of something the hacker might not have considered important enough to shut off. I watched my cobbled together command slip through the blanket just as the fabric of code that surrounded me became oppressively close, stranding me in an oblivion so complete that I lacked all sense of surroundings. I drifted, alone, with nothing but my own thoughts for company. Taylor would have been terrified; good thing I was used to the sensation of floating through space. At first, it was only mildly disconcerting. Then, I felt a strange grating jolt, akin to dislocating a bone while being struck by lightning. Something inside me broke and I began to drift apart. My thoughts spiraled out of reach, leaving nothing but emptiness in their wake.
“Konstantin? Kostya, can you hear me?”
I didn’t want to wake up, I didn’t want to answer. Returning to the land of the living wasn’t high on my list of priorities.
But that scared-to-death, desperate voice belonged to Neil. Shouldn’t he be dead? But he sounded like he needed help. Protective instinct lit a fire under my senses, and I came back to myself. Not my physical self, but my spaceship self—I was still hooked up. Running a quick check uncovered no Vamirran code nibbling away at the ship’s insides. The hacker, now glowering in frustrated anger, had been bound and locked in one of the bunkrooms. It would seem the threat had been neutralized.
Neil looked paler than usual and his voice verged on panic, but he was alive and standing in the common room next to a slightly perplexed Taylor. I commanded my hologram into existence between them. “What did I miss?” I asked in the driest tone I could manage. I didn’t want Neil to think I had been worried. The last thing my brother needed was encouragement.
A foolish grin lit his face anyway, “If I could hug you, Kostya, I would. Taylor got your message. And much to my astonishment, she was equipped to deal with the problem.”
Taylor’s smile remained hidden behind those space-black eyes as she explained, “At first I thought you were cheating at the game, until I realized the pieces spelled out a message. I don’t think she expected resistance—I caught her by surprise.”
I nodded my hologram head, still slightly amazed that my shot in the dark had worked, and responded, “I was hoping the hacker hadn’t made shutting off the gaming system one of her top priorities.” Of course, the thought hadn’t occurred to me until she had been about to shut me off as one of her top priorities. If my command hadn’t made it through, Neil would be dead. Perhaps my little brother needed me to stick around for more reasons than one. I assessed the silly grin that was still on his face—if only to prevent him from getting hurt by his own idealistic notions.
I shifted my focus to Taylor, who had pinned Neil with her gaze, even though I had the feeling that she was really addressing me as she asked, “What I can’t figure out is how your ship’s A.I. knew to send a message to me in the first place?”
When Neil and I had first discussed presenting me as an A.I., Neil had been against it. He said the truth would help me maintain my humanity. The only problem being, at that point, I didn’t feel like I had much humanity to maintain. My response had hurt him, but I made him promise not to tell anyone. So when Taylor’s question left her suspicions open for confirmation or denial, I let Neil squirm for a minute or two. He deserved it for letting that hacker on board, and I needed to work out what I wanted to say. Before Neil could open his mouth and lie, I answered, “I knew because I’m not a starship. My name is Konstantin, and I am a man.”
About the Author:
Beth Powers writes science fiction and fantasy stories. Her work has appeared in Shelter of Daylight and Plasma Frequency. When she’s not writing, Powers studies long, rambling novels from nineteenth-century America in an effort to add a PhD to her collection of degrees. She divides her spare time between reading science fiction and fantasy, practicing Tang Soo Do, and knitting an odd assortment of scarves. Powers lives in Ohio with her cats, Murphy and Roscoe, who, like most cats, tend to walk across keyboards, steal p
ens, and look absolutely adorable—especially when they are getting into trouble. Visit her on the web at www.bethpowers.com.
"Nothing Altered" in Plasma Frequency #4 (FREE!)
First appearance of "Konstantin" in Shelter of Daylight #9
"Racing the Sand" (first appearance in Shelter of Daylight #8)
Thanks for reading!
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