Starship Alchemon Read online

  “Way too many coincidences going on here for my piece of mind,” Rigel said. “The little buttwanker seems like it wants to go with us. I don’t trust anything that’s this damn cooperative.”

  “We mustn’t leap to conclusions,” Hardy warned. “We have no idea what we’re dealing with.”

  LeaMarsa felt drained, as if she’d just gone through some sort of crisis, but one that transcended her understanding.

  “Back to the lander?” Faye proposed. “Start running tests?”

  “Yes, to your first suggestion,” Hardy said. “But we need to hold off on any immediate testing and transport it straight up to the ship and into the proper containment area. We can then run a full battery of tests and study it at our leisure.”

  At our leisure. To LeaMarsa, the phrase suggested an optimism that was as far from reality as the Alchemon was from Earth.

  CHAPTER 4

  This was Ericho’s fourteenth deep-space expedition and his ninth as captain. His commands had ranged from a simple recon flight through a fledgling Quiets to a massive colony vessel packed with seventy thousand settlers armed with new-frontier optimism.

  The Alchemon, with its two modular decks configured to support a mere nine crewmembers, should have made for a fairly easy voyage. Instead, the last few months had ranked among the most difficult of his career.

  Low on the psychosynchronicity scale, crewdoc June Courthouse had speculated. The crew was unable to mesh into a tight unit. Pannis and the other megas utilized psych algorithms to match individuals with missions. But such modeling could miss what was often obvious to an experienced spacefarer, statistically acceptable quirks at the outset of an expedition that ultimately could produce a troubling Tomer Donner.

  It wasn’t only the lieutenant who was a problem. Hardy Waskov was vexing in his arrogance, which was likely amplified by financial obligations to three ex-wives and seven children. And then there was LeaMarsa.

  Ericho hadn’t been completely powerless in terms of crew assignment. He’d been a captain long enough to work the system and had managed to get two friends assigned to the Alchemon, June and Rigel. Unfortunately, he’d seen no reason to protest when June asked him to also include Donner, a family acquaintance who supposedly was being blacklisted – denied assignments worthy of his experience – because of some sort of legal entanglements within Pannis. Ericho regretted not looking more closely into his background before granting June’s request.

  A cluster of green lumes on one of the bridge’s main panels turned red. A pulsating alarm filled the air.

  “Level Six, Captain,” Jonomy said. “A break in a TEM line feeding Bono engine.”

  “Give me a schematic.”

  The diagram blossomed on Ericho’s wafer. A mass of labeled geometry highlighted by red patches indicated the trouble areas.

  “Bono engine is taking itself offline,” the lytic said as he silenced the alarm.

  “What about the other engines?” Although the quartet was not firing while they remained in orbit and the Alchemon could operate with a single engine, any such troubles could lengthen the trip home.

  “Beyonce, Mick and Celine retain full functionality.”

  As Ericho watched, internal repair systems addressed the thermometry problem. The red patches on his display began to shrink. Finally, only one stubborn clump of scarlet refused to go green.

  “I have notified RAP for manual correction of the last errant section,” Jonomy said. “A repair pup is being dispatched into that tube. Duplex circuitry is handling the load without any problems.”

  Ericho turned off his display. There was no need for him to do anything. The malfunction was just one more in a series of routine issues that plagued a ship as complex as the Alchemon. He felt useless in such situations, knowing full well that the innate intelligence of the ship itself, with the support and assistance of a lytic, could easily handle such difficulties.

  The captain needs to master that the master’s not the captain. That classic saying had been drilled into him at Pannis command school in Barstow, California, and the dialectic phrase entered awareness whenever trouble occurred. Like most captains, he’d long ago adjusted to the true nature of starship command. For all practical purposes, the ship and its lytic were the ones responsible for day-to-day operations.

  And if the direst projections of the Bridge Officers Union were to be believed, Ericho might be among the last generation of unmodified humans to command these ships. Many experts were predicting that a new wave of cyberlytic advancements, long stalled by lawsuits brought by I-Human and other anti-AI organizations, soon would lead to elimination of the megas’ proprietary officer corps. Captains and lieutenants would become as redundant as car and truck drivers prior to autonomous vehicles. Vessels run solely by increasingly advanced lytics would become the new norm.

  It was a sobering future to contemplate for a man in Ericho’s profession, a far different scenario than he’d imagined as a child reading Captain Clarke novels. That popular series of juvenile adventures about a gifted starship commander had inspired his choice of careers.

  Of course, real interstellar travel tended to be slow-paced and lacked the spikes of desperate action prevalent in the Captain Clarke universe. Still, Ericho enjoyed the nature of his profession, even the periods of boredom. And unlike many of society’s long-lived humans who aspired to multiple careers, he had no desire to do anything else.

  “The pup has arrived in the trouble area,” Jonomy said. “RAP estimates an hour for repairs.”

  RAP was Robotics and Probes, the Level Four system that controlled the maintenance pups, the army of small specialized machines that lived in the bowels of the ship and handled repairs that couldn’t be dealt with by the internal correctors. Scores of the basketball-sized pups patrolled the access tunnels that wound mazelike through the Alchemon, an entire domain too compact for human intrusion.

  Donner, largely silent since that threatening outburst several hours ago, erupted into giggles.

  “Ah, let us rejoice in the pain that will soon be upon us. For the voice of the plague blows like a fierce wind, singing of the storm.”

  Within the HOD, the lieutenant again began doodling his obsessive image, the elongated skull-like face. Ericho decided enough was enough.

  “Override it, Jonomy.”

  The lytic responded. The holo dissolved. Donner’s expression soured, like a child deprived of a favorite toy.

  “Captain, you are a slayer of veracity. But truth will find a way, for we are but pawns within the realm of luminous dark.”

  “The bridge is adequately staffed,” Jonomy said, catching Ericho’s eye. “Although your shift is not over, I am sure that the Captain would agree to your early vacating.”

  “Absolutely,” Ericho said. “You’re free to go, lieutenant.”

  Donner responded with a cryptic smile, making it hard to tell if he’d take the bait.

  “The lander has cleared the atmosphere,” Jonomy said. “Contact reestablished. Estimated docking in twenty-six minutes. Hardy again requests a decision on the organism.”

  It was Ericho’s chance to be a captain, issue a command decision. But he didn’t know what to do.

  Hardy wanted the organism brought into the containment, the isolated portion of the ship that theoretically could safely house any known lifeform. But based on the info transmitted by Rigel, what they’d found down there was not only unique but disturbingly bizarre. It was difficult enough imagining an organism surviving within a rock for a billion years, let alone with some sort of fetal creature inside it. Add to those anomalies the weird storm leading to its release from the rock and the way it had rolled obediently into the capsule, and even the most reckless captain would entertain caution.

  The organism would have to be returned to Earth, of course. That was a primary purpose of this mission, or for that matter, any Quiets voyage that came upon alien life. Pannis would have Ericho’s job if he failed such a basic obligation.

&n
bsp; However, if a captain felt an organism posed a danger to the ship, he had the option of keeping it outside the vessel in the ecopod attached to the hull. The downside of such a choice would be having to spend the nine-month return voyage with a disgruntled science rep. Hardy’s study of the organism would be severely limited if it wasn’t inside the containment.

  And if the organism later turned out to be in some way profitable to Pannis, his decision would be criticized for being overcautious, possibly resulting in a black mark on his record. Despite occasional misgivings, Ericho had every intention of continuing to command starships for as long as they’d have him.

  “What kind of probabilities are we looking at?” he asked the lytic.

  Jonomy rubbed a hand across his forehead umbilical, caressing the cable as if it were a pet snake.

  “In regard to potential danger, EPS concludes that the organism’s composition and behavior produce too many unknowns for accurate projections.”

  EPS was Elementary Probability Scanning, the Level Three system tasked with calculating odds.

  “That said, a basic analysis reveals a forty-nine percent probability that our best course of action would be to bring the organism into the containment, versus a forty-eight percent probability that it should be housed externally. The difference is statistically irrelevant.”

  There were times when EPS calculations could be helpful. This clearly wasn’t one of them.

  “Returning the organism to the planet’s surface registers two percent. Naturally, that does not take into consideration potential career fallout, particularly for an expedition’s commander.”

  “And the remaining one percent?”

  “Destroy it.”

  Donner muttered something. Ericho couldn’t make out the words.

  “Under Pannis guidelines,” Jonomy continued, “those latter two options are unacceptable.”

  The HOD darkened into an image of the approaching lander against the shrouded backdrop of Sycamore. Jonomy magnified the 3D picture until the cylindrical capsule attached to the craft’s flat underside became visible.

  Donner rose from his chair and ambled to the starboard airseal. As the door slid open at his approach, he paused and turned back to them.

  “May dreams from beyond blister my soul and serve as my epitaph.”

  Grinning madly, he dashed through the airseal. It whisked shut behind him.

  “His ideation is increasingly obfuscating,” Jonomy said.

  One way of putting it, Ericho thought. But the lytic was right. Donner was beginning to sound like a walking malfunction. And that incident a few hours ago when he seemed ready to erupt into violence suggested a man with an overloaded fuse.

  Ericho realized he’d ignored the problem long enough. He would have to do something about the lieutenant before the situation degenerated further.

  “Captain, Hardy insists on speaking to you. He is impatient for a decision.”

  The science rep usually sounded impatient. That didn’t mean Ericho had to talk to him. All too soon, Hardy would be back aboard, bombarding him with petty grievances. But perhaps with his precious organism to study, he wouldn’t be as bothersome.

  Ericho realized he’d arrived at a decision.

  “Inform Doctor Waskov that the containment will be ready.”

  FROM THE FILES OF LIEUTENANT TOMER DONNER, PANNIS CORP BRIDGE OFFICER

  His name is Renfro Zoobondi. He’s an icy-assed errand boy for Pannis’ executive team, a fixer who handles the dirtiest assignments.

  And Renfro Zoobondi enjoys his work.

  I was on the Theodoris, returning home from a seven-month passenger run through the Earth-Karama Quiets. It was the first voyage out for my young cabin mate and Pannis trainee, Karl Mingus.

  The two of us had begun an affair on Karama after discovering a mutual interest in twentieth-century jazz musicians. In short order we’d fallen madly in love and were intending to marry when we returned.

  Never in my life had I felt this way about someone, felt linked to another human at such a fundamental level. Just being in Karl’s presence often gave me incredible feelings of joy. I dreamed of us exploring the stars together, of being intimate on so many different planets that we’d be invited to join the exclusive Lightyears Club, whose members had experienced verified sexual encounters on at least six inhabited worlds.

  Sensual fantasies aside, I was looking out for Karl on a professional level, trying to make sure his apprenticeship resulted in the best possible outcome: a junior crew license.

  Renfro Zoobondi was hitching a ride back to Earth on the Theodoris after addressing some labor problems at the mega’s mineral-processing facility on Karama. Many of those “labor problems” were onboard, returning to the home world with bleak job prospects after having been fired by Zoobondi. Not surprisingly, tensions were running high. There was even talk of the most dire form of mutiny: chronojacking the ship, defeating its safeguards and energizing the spatiotemporal coagulators before the vessel entered a Quiets. Theoretical physicists remained fuzzy on calculating the extent of the weird energies unleashed but the physics of spacetime dictated the strange outcome. The ship would be propelled forward into a random future and locale.

  You’d have thought Zoobondi would have kept to himself in his first-class cabin. But he was too arrogant for that. He walked freely through the ship, ignoring the enraged looks and whispered threats of the fired employees. He seemed to relish the fact that he was hated.

  The incident happened only a few hours before the Theodoris was to enter the Quiets. Karl and a man named Emil – one of Zoobondi’s labor victims – were in the gym working out when Zoobondi entered to begin his own exercise routine. Angry words were exchanged between Emil and Zoobondi. One thing led to another, and soon the hotheaded former employee was challenging the Pannis fixer to a fight wearing X-7 armor suits.

  The X-7s aboard the Theodoris weren’t the military versions and boasted no weaponry. They were meant for use by the ship’s security contingent, to be donned only in the event of some form of social unrest that demanded serious crowd control. But weaponized or not, a person encased in one could still inflict serious damage via servo-enhanced kicks and punches.

  According to later testimony, only the three men were in the gym at the time of the incident: Emil and Zoobondi in the bulky armor suits and my Karl, who’d been reluctantly recruited by the pair to serve as fight referee.

  Zoobondi somehow managed to disable the gym’s security cameras, perhaps using a safepad. In any case, he made sure there would be no official record of the fight.

  Emil later admitted that he was no match for Zoobondi. Emil was attacked savagely, and even with the protection of the X-7 received enough serious injuries to spend two days in the Theodoris’ medcenter. Emil testified that as the fight neared its end, Zoobondi wrestled him to the mats and landed punch after punch. According to Emil, on three occasions Karl loudly declared the fight over and Zoobondi the winner. But Zoobondi refused to end the brutal beating.

  Emil was too dazed from being pummeled to recall the details of what transpired next. He thought he remembered Karl trying to grab hold of Zoobondi’s arm to pull the fixer off him. He believed he heard the sickening punch that Zoobondi landed on Karl’s unprotected face with the X-7’s power glove, the blow that killed the love of my life.

  Zoobondi claimed it was a tragic accident. There wasn’t enough evidence to bring manslaughter charges. But even if there had been, the bastard was too well connected for such charges to stick.

  Shortly after the civil case I filed against Zoobondi was dismissed with prejudice by a Corporeal court – not so much as a blemish would appear in Zoobondi’s personnel file – I angrily confronted the killer. It took everything within me to hold back my outrage at the man, who seemed amused. He didn’t bother trying to claim it was an accident as he had in court, as much as admitted that he’d gotten away with murder.

  But it wasn’t until that moment when he patted me
on the shoulder and, with a sadistic smile, expressed his regret over my loss that I made my vow.

  In memory of Karl Mingus, in memory of the annihilation of the love of my life, I will make Renfro Zoobondi pay for his crime.

  CHAPTER 5

  The containment area occupied a large portion of the port quarter of downdeck, in a section of corridor bounded by airseals at both ends. Past the stern-facing lock were the Alchemon’s twin lander hangars. Beyond the forward lock was downdeck’s main expanse of shops and specialty labs, as well as the natatorium, dreamlounge, medcenter, main social room and various utility areas.

  LeaMarsa stepped out of the elevator from updeck, where the bridge, crew cabins, dining area and hydroponic gardens offered a more soothing ambience. Although downdeck had similar styling, there was something vaguely unsettling about the lower level.

  She passed through an airseal into a short corridor and approached the containment lab entrance, a door with a more imposing appearance than the others. According to Hardy it was pressurized to blow inward in the unlikely event of a breach to prevent contaminants from escaping. It also boasted a sureshutter. Should fast closure be required, the high-speed pneumatic blades would slice through any object positioned in the portal.

  The door supposedly was smart enough not to close while a human stood within its frame. But LeaMarsa had heard horror stories about sureshutters severing appendages or worse.

  The walls surrounding the containment lab were equally shielded. Sensors constantly scanned for breaches. The entire containment area was overseen by a Level Two system, the second-highest echelon of the ship’s six-tiered control network, the Sentinel notwithstanding.

  None of the safeguards made LeaMarsa feel secure.

  Why did I come on this journey?

  She recalled the meeting with the Pannis assignor and that slick VP, and how she’d arrogantly demanded a starship assignment.