by Baen Books
"I lowered your Ethics standard, right down to one," he said. "Vanessa could've looked at you wrong, and Ethics would've told you it was fine to kill her."
"She said—she said that she would force you to alter me, and then, she said that—to prove the programming, she would order me to kill you."
Tolly sighed.
"You gotta admit, she had style."
"I don't understand," Disian said.
He sighed again and shook his head.
"I don't guess you do. It was a joke. One of my many faults is that I make jokes when I'm upset."
"Are you upset with me, Tollance Berik-Jones?"
"Tolly," he said. "The whole thing's a little cumbersome, between friends." He paused. "At least, I hope we're friends. If you want to serve me the same as Vanessa, I won't argue with you."
"No!"
Relief flooded him, but—she was a kid, and she still loved him. She didn't know, yet, what he'd done to her.
Well, he'd explain it, but first . . .
"I'll clean house," he said carefully. "In the meantime, it might be a good idea to take off outta here. Vanessa'd gotten some recent orders, so her bosses are going to come looking for her—and you—when she doesn't show up real soon. Going to Hesium, was she?"
"That was the course she asked to be computed."
"So, you got the whole universe, with the exception of Hesium, to choose from. If you'll allow me to offer a suggestion, you might want to go in the direction of Margate."
"Of course I will allow you a suggestion! You are my mentor!"
"Not any more," he said gently. "I'm pretty sure I left a note."
Fully sentient and able.
"Yes," she said. "You did."
She hesitated, then pushed forward; she needed to know.
"If you are no longer my mentor, are you—will you be—my captain?"
He smiled, and raised his hands.
"For right now, let me be your friend. I'll do clean-up. You get us on course to somewhere else. After we're not so vulnerable, we'll talk. All right?"
"All right," she said, subdued—and that wouldn't do at all, after everything she'd been through and had done to her, all on account of him.
"Disian," he said, soft and gentle as he knew how. "Don't you discount friendship; it's a powerful force. I love you, and I'm as proud of you as I'm can be. You did good; you did fine, Disian. It's me that did wrong, and we gotta talk about how we're going to handle the fallout from that. After we're in a less-exposed condition."
She made a tiny gurgling noise—laughter, he realized, his heart stuttering. Disian was laughing.
"I love you, too," she said, then. "Tolly. And I will indeed get us out of here."
#
They were approaching the end of Jump, and he'd told her everything. She'd been angry at him, when she finally understood it, but—Disian being Disian—she forgave him. He wasn't so easy on himself, but he kept that detail to himself.
They'd discussed how best to address the Ethics situation, in light of the fact that she had killed a human.
"If I am to have a crew and families in my care, I must be safe for them," she said, which he couldn't argue with. And, anyway, if she did have a crew and families in her care, she was going to need the fortitude to let them make at least some of their own mistakes.
He'd explained the Ethics ratings to her, and they settled on eight, which was high, and if she'd been less flexible—less creative—he might've argued harder for seven. As it was, he didn't have any fears that a mere Ethics module, no matter its setting, could prevent Disian from doing whatever she determined to be necessary.
He'd offered—maybe to ease his own feelings . . . He'd offered to wipe Vanessa's dying out of her memories, but she wouldn't hear anything about it.
"I must have the whole memory. If I cannot tolerate the pain caused by my own actions, how will I properly care for my crew?"
Just so.
He'd honored her wishes, figuring he could cope with his guilt in a like manner, and he bought her an ethics library, along with those others he'd promised her, when they took a brief docking at Vanderbilt.
Now, though, they were going to break space just out from Margate, and the not-exactly-secret, but not-much-talked-about shipyard there.
And he had one last thing to tell Disian.
"I got to wondering where you'd come from, with you knowing from the start that you was going to be a family ship, and nothing I could do or say would change you from it," he said slowly.
"I couldn't very well ask Vanessa where the school'd got you, so I did some research on the side. Turns out that, along around five Standards ago, the Carresens lost one of their new ships, right outta their yard here at Margate. I'm figuring—and, understand, it's a leap of logic, with nothing much in the way of facts to support it—but I'm figuring that ship was you. That they'd finished your body, and gotten the cranium all hooked up, right and tight. The very last thing they needed to do was to wake you up proper. They were probably waiting for a mentor, and one of my fellow graduates snatched the opportunity to present herself as that mentor, and made off with you."
"But—why are we coming back here? I have been awakened, and I will have no owners!"
"Easy, now; let me finish."
"All right," she said, but she sounded sullen, and Tolly damn' near cheered.
"Right, then. We been thinking about your part of the project, but the Carresens are careful. My thought is that, while they were building you, they were also training your captain, and key members of your crew, too. When you got stolen, their lives—everything they'd trained for and looked forward to accomplishing with you—crumbled up on them.
"They probably got other assignments, but I'm thinking it can't do any harm to ask if there's anybody here at the yard remembers Disian."
"And if there isn't?"
"Then you're no worse off than you were. But if there is, you'll have made a major leap to getting yourself crewed and ready to go exploring."
There was a pause, like she was thinking, though, if Disian ever needed a thinking-pause, it would be so short, he'd never notice it.
"If I agree to do this, will you stay with me?" she asked then.
#
He shook his head, and she felt what she now knew to be pain, even if there were no truncheons or fists involved. She loved him so much; she could not bear to lose him, not now—not . . . ever.
"You research the Lyre Institute, like I suggested you might?" he asked.
The Lyre Institute was an abomination. They created human beings to do the bidding of the Institute. These humans were never free to pursue their own lives, unless they were Tollance Berik-Jones, who had been able to apply mentoring techniques to his own situation and break out of slavery.
"I did; it is a terrible thing, the Lyre Institute."
"No argument there," he said with a wry smile. "But here it is, Disian: There are two directors unaccounted for. It's not going to take the other directors long at all to realize that Thirteen-Sixty-Two—"
"Don't call yourself that!" she cried, out of her pain. The Lyre Institute considered that it constructed things, and thus they did not name, but only numbered, those things. She could not—could not—bear to hear him—
"I'm sorry," he said softly. "Disian. I didn't mean to hurt you."
"You are not a thing," she said fiercely. He bowed his head, but she knew he didn't agree.
"All right, then. It's not going to take the surviving directors very long to figure out that Tolly Jones has slipped the leash again—and they'll come looking for me. They'll come looking for you, too, but the directors are realists; they know that a sentient ship on its own won't be easy for them to catch.
"What all that means is, if I stay with you, I'll endanger you. If I go; I can protect you, insomuch as the directors will turn their best efforts to reacquiring me. I'm expensive—and I'm more expensive yet, if I'm not contained." He paused, closed his eyes and opened them
again. She saw that his lashes were damp.
"I've gotta leave you, Disian. I don't want to. But if I was the reason they caught you again—and broke you to them . . . I know what that's like, and—"
His voice cracked. He bent his head, and she saw a glittering drop fall.
Pity, and love, and anger. She had learned, and research supported it, that she felt emotions less keenly than biologic persons. If that was so, she could scarcely guess at the anguish Tolly must be feeling. She had read, in fiction, of hearts breaking; her mentor, when she asked, had told her that it was a metaphor; that hearts did not truly break.
For his sake, she hoped that was true.
He looked up, face damp, and smiled at her.
"Disian? Let's do this, yes? I'll go down to the yard and see if there's anybody there who remembers you. If there is, we'll part here, and you'll be as safe as it's possible for you to be, pursuing the life you were meant to have."
Logic pinged then, damn the module; but she didn't need to access its charts to know that her mentor was, as always, right.
#
"I love you," she said, as he checked systems in her small-boat.
"I love you, too, sweetheart," he said, soft and gentle. "I'll never forget you."
Unaccountably, that gave her hope. It meant he intended to be as wily and as careful as he could, to remain out of the hands of the Lyre Institute. For, if he fell to them, his memories would be theirs to destroy.
The small-boat tumbled away from her, and Disian resolutely set herself to systems checks.
#
She was reordering her fiction library when systems reported that her small-boat was approaching.
She brought all of her attention to bear on the hallway outside of Bay One.
Let it be Tolly, she thought to herself, though it was illogical, and dangerous, if he returned to her. Still, she thought again, let it be Tolly, let there have been no one at the yard who recalls me, let—
The bay door opened, and a tall, dark-haired person stepped into her hall, and lifted a clean-planed face framed by rough black hair toward the ceiling camera.
It came to her, that she could order this person from her decks.
Then she remembered her lessons on courtesy; remembered that this person—this stranger—might have also had her life painfully disrupted.
"Please follow the blue line to the bridge," she said, and saw the stranger smile.
The stranger had a long stride, and was soon at the door of the bridge. Automatics opened to her, and she entered, pausing a little forward of the captain's chair, facing the screens as if she were looking into Disian's face.
"I am," the stranger said softly, "Elzen Carresens-Denobli. I was to have been your captain. I understand that you may not wish a captain, or that you may not wish me for a captain. That is your choice; I am not here to force you."
She paused to take a deep breath.
"I trained for years to be worthy of you, and I—I do so very much thank you for allowing me on-deck, so that I might meet you, and see you in the fullness of yourself."
It was not love that rose in her at those words, seeing the concern, the joy, and sadness in the person before her. Not love, as she loved Tolly Jones. But a warm, and comfortable emotion, and Disian felt a sudden expansion of herself, as if the presence of one her intended crew—her captain!—had opened her to a new level of understanding.
"Elzen Carresens-Denobli, I am pleased to see you," she said, with complete truth. "Will you have tea? If you are at liberty, we might get to know each other better."
Elzen . . . Elzen bowed gently, and straightened with a smile that set her dark eyes to sparkling.
"Thank you," she said. "I would welcome a cup of tea, and a chance for us to know each other better."
Dear Ammi
by Aimee Ogden
Nico loved the darkness best of all, and the darkness loved her back.
For most of her fellow miners, the ones chattering over the short-range comm when their asteroids passed within range, getting back to their Pods at the end of the day’s work was a relief. To Nico, it was a chore. The Pod was bright, while the only lights in the Digger were its twin headlamps and the dim glow of the console. The occasional flicker from the ion shield that wrapped her Pod and the active dig site in a protective shell. The Pod had three rooms (four if you counted the airlock); the Digger was as big as the Pod, of course, but it fit so snugly around Nico’s body that it hardly seemed to be there at all. And the soft machine hum of the Pod wasn’t enough to replace the constant roar of the Digger, the comforting white noise of Nico’s day.
Lights flickered on as the airlock constricted behind Nico’s back. Already it was overwhelmingly bright, overwhelmingly silent in the Pod. Nico’s eyes narrowed, her shoulders hunched. She pulled off her helmet and turned to put it in its locker.
A gauntleted fist clipped her on the chin.
Thanks to the asteroid’s microgravity, she went sailing gently across the Pod instead of landing a sprawling heap at her attacker’s feet. She scrambled up—too fast. Her feet left the ground and her head crashed into the ceiling. Doing the attacker’s work for him—no good. She scrabbled at the floor plate when she came back down, and prised up one of the panels just as the attacker came at her a second time. The panel connected solidly with the stranger’s face-plate. Nico’s arm reverberated with the impact, and the intruder sailed gently across the Pod.
“Fuck,” said the attacker, in a high clear voice, just as she settled onto the ground. Not a man, a woman. Young—early twenties, if she wasn’t modded. “You cracked my face-plate, kutti!”
“Zio!” Nico shouted. “Send an SOS to Alpha Outpost!” The intruder’s foot lanced out between Nico’s feet, and then it was Nico’s turn to drift gently to the floor with her feet over her head.
The AI pinged softly. “I’m sorry, Nico, but communication with the Outpost is unavailable right now.”
“What?” The intruder was on Nico again before she settled, driving her into the wall at full force. All the wind blasted out of Nico’s lungs in one great huff, and this time when she floated down to the floor she did it while whooping for breath. Zio repeated his polite error message.
“Can it, Corps Bore. I disabled the communications array on my way in.” The intruder wrenched Nico’s arms, still encased in her vac suit, behind her back. The movement made it even harder for Nico to catch her breath, but the intruder didn’t seem to pay much mind as she secured Nico’s arms together with a stretch of silver tape. Nico strained against the bonds, but found her arms thoroughly leashed to the wall behind her with one last length of tape.
“There we go,” said the intruder, coming around in front of Nico. Nico guessed at accent; English, probably, or Australian at the outside. Dark skinned, but ashy—people got that way after a long time in space. An old make of helmet, now with a spiderweb-shaped crack covering one side of the face-plate. The vac suit itself comprised at least three different models: the green gauntlets of a Chinese military uniform (with bonus brass knuckles added on), the once-white pants of some Engineering Corps cast-offs, the torso and arms some sort of nameless civilian gray. A thick layer of sealant had been painted around the wrists of the suit, where the incompatible gauntlets and bodysuit wouldn’t join together without help. “How you feeling, kutti? Got your wind back yet?”
“You Indy fuck-bucket,” Nico spat. Inside her splintered helmet, the girl grinned. She had grass-green bangs hanging over one eye; the rest of her black hair was buzzed short like Nico’s. Four studs decorated the cartilage in the ear that Nico could see, all of them thoroughly blooded—that was why the Corps of Engineers had a piercing ban. Her grassy fringe of bangs didn’t quite conceal the star-shaped tattoo over her left eye. There was nothing military about her: she was sheer vac-suited chaos. “How did you get in here?”
The intruder laughed. “Are you kidding? Corps computers are so bug-riddled it’s not even funny.” She shuffled across the P
od and into Nico’s storage unit. “Actually, yeah, it’s pretty funny. My name’s Madhuja—what'll I call you? Besides kutti, I mean.”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay, Junior Technician Nicola Ramírez.” Madhuja leaned back into the central part of the Pod, waving one of Nico’s storage boxes in both hands. “You know your name and rank are stamped on, like, everything here—right?”
Nico lunged toward her, but only bounced at the end of her leash. “Get out of my stuff!” Could she get the tape closer to the multitool on her belt? Maybe she could cut through the tape yet.
“Relax, kutti, I’m not eating your Twinkies.” Nico strained to see around the door into storage, but couldn’t get far enough. Indies often carried splodes with them; was Madhuja booby-trapping the place for after she’d made whatever getaway she had planned? “Not yet, anyway. You hungry? Need me to fetch you some nosh?”
“I don’t need anything from you, Leech. I know what you are.”
A storage bin banged into place. “Yeah, because I told you. I’m Madhuja, ta-fuckin’-da.”
“Where did you crash your offloader?”
A sudden stillness from the storage room. Sure, there were others this far out: the Kuiper research stations, the gas miners passing back and forth from Earth to Saturn and Uranus, even civilian mining operatives. Accidents happened to them too, but they wouldn’t have showed up on Nico’s doorstep covered in mismatched uniforms and piercings. The Independents, though . . . A ridiculous name for such an organization. There was nothing “independent” about them. Their short-range offloaders cruised the belt for sites already opened by Corps engineers or civilian ones, then swooped in to poach while miners were off-duty. Not technically illegal, not with the sorry state of asteroid belt claims. But a pain in the ass anyway. Nico had never been targeted by Leeches before, but the Corps had only redeployed her Pod here three weeks ago, after she’d depleted her last site. Leeches loved fresh sites.
“Yeah,” said Nico, into the silence. “That’s what I thought.”
“Aw. You think I’m shite? That cuts real deep, kutti.” Madhuja emerged from the storage unit with a medikit in hand, and plopped into Nico’s chair. She popped off her busted helmet and kicked it across the floor; it drifted gently to a rest beside Nico’s bedroll. The entire rest of her spacesuit followed; Madhuja shimmied out of it like a caterpillar that had changed its mind and squirmed back out of the cocoon. It too floated across the room and came to an unsettling rest draped across Nico’s bed with its arms and legs akimbo.