Chapter 16Avoidance
DATE:
7088.03.13,
RECON
ERA
CRSS
Reckless
HYPERSPACE
– WAYSTATION
#0085 APPROACH
The next forty-eight hours were a blur of awkward
silence and physical misery.
Forty-Five left me to my own devices for most of
the time, but when we shared the same space… We didn’t talk about
what happened in the cockpit. We didn’t talk about the heat, or the
contact, or the whispered offers of help. It was as if we had both
collectively agreed to wipe that specific sector of our hard drives.
We were quietly establishing the rules of our MAD agreement.
Forty-Five retreated into the role of the silent,
patrolling sentinel. He monitored the ship by going on patrol. He
‘secured’ the living quarters making sure nothing could come in
from the outer halls of the ship. The ‘Taniwha’ was locked away,
replaced by the cold efficiency of the machine I had hired. It was
exactly what it should be: professional, cold, and safe. And I hated
it. I found myself missing the arguments and the dry humour.
On top of the isolation, my body was revolting
against me. The toxic water I’d ingested days ago was finally
demanding its due. My temporary gastric unit was stalling more often,
the digester seizing and refusing to process what was coming in. The
fever dreams were bleeding into my waking hours. I was weak, shaking,
and sweating through my clothes faster than the ship’s scrubbers
could cycle the air.
By the time the navigational computer chirped that
we were approaching the Waystation, I looked like a reanimated
corpse. But I refused to stay in bed. I was the pilot. I was landing
my ship. If the station tower heard Forty-Five at the console without
a human operator we would automatically get flagged for a slew of
investigations, including a medical intervention. I forced myself
into the cockpit, my limbs feeling like lead, while Forty-Five
settled into the power-port near the couch for a mandatory power
cycle.
Six hours
later, I sat back more comfortably into my fluffy pilot seat. The
plush fabric probably going to need a thorough wash once everything
was fixedI
couldn’t help but steal glances at Forty-Five, who was still beside
the couch and had been this entire time. If
he had told me to stay out
of trouble, I could have raised so much hell. But he didn’t and I
was tired, too tired to
even follow through on my dismantling threat. Something that I might
not be able to address, full stop.
I had my
head resting heavily on my fist, body turned towards a display screen
currently playing some rom-com my sister had recommended years ago,
back when she still had a pulse and I still had a future. I
was suffering through another rush of heart burn. The
current scene was a sappy romantic reunion between childhood
friends.?A typical?scruffy kid becomes?a bombastic?babe,?and?a
lanky?nerd?becomes?a muscle-bound heartthrob. I couldn't help
but roll my eyes at the story line, finding it…predictable, sappy,
and naive.
Though it was probably what they were going for.
I turned away from the screen, focusing on the
controls. We were nearing our destination, and I had to take manual
control the moment we dropped out of hyperspace. Considering we’d
already gone through two debris fields, a near-collision with an
asteroid, a sludge leak, and a poisoned water supply, I wasn’t
leaving anything to chance.
I had Forty-Five’s ‘manual’ on my lap,
writing down what I had discovered so far as well as the ‘Demon
Patch’ incident. A book of secrets, something I’d vent out the
airlock or incinerate before I let anyone read it. I crossed out the
‘Zap-Trap’ logo in the inside page, scribbling ‘written by
Forty-Five and Melissa Cabot’ in its place. The little recipes and
AI generated pictures made me smile. I wish I had access to the
Inter-D network of the Golden Ring, the cosmic sphere of stars that
surrounded Sol, to run a proper search.
Instead, I was stuck with pen, paper, and a
mystery. ‘Responsive Nought Neutralisers Model 45’. It was
corporate word salad. A name designed to be boring so no one would
look twice. But I was bored and his ‘robot secrets’ had me
curious. It like a marketing ploy by the United Planets
Corp from the Silver Belt to cover up a failed prototype or some
black-market military surplus. Even if he had been Frankensteined
together from other pieces, the designation should have been a hint.
I wrote the name out in different ways, circling
the first letters of each word.
‘45RNN’
I stared at the word ‘nought’, tapping the pen
against my nose. Every engineer and mathematician worth their salt
knew ‘nought’ wasn’t just a word. It was a value. I scratched
out the ‘N’ and replaced it with a ‘0’. 45-R0N. My heart
stuttered. I thought of the large droid dismantled in the cargo bay.
The one that was infected with the 'Oh-One' virus. 27-R0N. Ron. It
wasn't random. It was a naming convention.
No wonder he was illegal. The closer you got to
Sol, the tighter the leash of civilisation became. In the Core, where
the Golden Ring and Silver Belt basked in five millennia of
terraformed perfection, strict regulations had bred a culture of
specialisation. Robots there were hard-coded to mono-task. A chassis
held a pilot, or a medic, or a soldier. You didn't need a survivalist
machine when you lived in paradise. But Forty-Five?
“You weren’t built for the safety of the Core,
you were built for the dark,” I whispered in the silence.
He had enough memory power to run a space station
compressed into a bipedal frame. He had self-preservation protocols
that overrode commands (the "Mutually Assured Destruction"
logic loop was terrifyingly autonomous), a medical database detailed
enough to act as a battlefield medic, and the processing speed to
micro-jump a ship through a debris field.
You don’t put a pilot, a medic, and a soldier in
one chassis unless you expect them to operate where no help is
coming. He was a relic. A ghost from the Severance, or perhaps the
bloody early days of the Reconnection Era. Back when the Inter-D
network was dead and ships launched into the black knowing they might
never speak to another soul again. He wasn't just a bodyguard. He was
a one-man survival kit designed to help humans survive the Iron Wall,
or beyond...
‘
‘
“By the lag,” I gasped. They had known each
other. And if he was hiding that connection, hiding what he truly
was, he must have a reason. A reason terrifying enough to make a
war-machine play dumb, charging off my wall outlet like a common
toaster, simulating "snark" and "exhaustion" with
frightening accuracy. Whoever programmed his conversational
subroutines had dialled the "Personality" setting way past
the recommended safety limits.
It was uncanny, bordering on simulation sickness.
I scrubbed my face aggressively, wincing as my
cracked lips split further. I took a sip of my third shake of the
day, made from pre-packaged soy extract and liquefied nutrient bars.
My stomach - or rather, the cheap, temporary mechanical replacement
they installed three months ago - gave a warning grind.
A low, metallic vibration deep in my gut. It was
stalling. The servos were gumming up, struggling to process even the
liquid ration. I knew what came next. If the unit seized completely,
the seals would fail. Sepsis would hit fast and hard. Technically, I
should be terrified.
I looked at my reflection in the dark console
screen. Hollow eyes. Grey skin. I looked like a ghost waiting for
permission to leave. But I wasn't afraid of the sepsis. The void
felt... quiet. Comfortable, even. The idea of just closing my eyes
and letting the systems shut down didn't scare me the way it should.
It was what I wanted. It was a shame that it came
for me before I got to learn more secrets, like the ruins waiting out
on Graphi. Or before I fixed 27R0N, and the ‘zombie’ droid in the
cargo bay, with whatever secrets they held. Or before I figured out
Forty-Five’s full capabilities. Or dismantled him, whichever came
first.
A weak chuckle escaped my damaged lips.
I still had a lot to do, and that was only in the
first two months since escaping the Core Station hospital. A part of
me wondered what would happen six months from now, whether or not I
figure out who created the RON technology. If Forty-Five went back to
Grantham. Or if I managed to outrun my demons.
I patted the console of the Reckless. This ship
was the only thing that was truly mine. I’d found her as a gutted
wreck in a scrap heap when I was a teen with my mother, and I’d
spent every spare credit and drop of sweat rebuilding her. I briefly
wondered what would happen to her after I was gone.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
I pulled up the ship’s registry, the alerts and
warnings that were automatically queued to burst-transmit to the
station authority the moment we made contact. It was a wall of red
text. A digital scream for help. Buried in the header was my gamble.
I manually updated the flight roster. If they checked the black box,
they would see reaction times faster than any human. If I didn't list
him, they'd flag the ship for having an unauthorised AI or a hacked
nav-computer. So, I hid the truth in plain sight. I gave him a name,
using the old calculator-spelling we used in school to pass notes.
Four was A. Five was S. AS-RON.
// TRANSMISSION PACKET: [CRSS-RECKLESS] ->
[HASH-0085-CMD] STATUS: EMERGENCY DOCKING REQUEST
[VESSEL MANIFEST] CLASS: Custom/Light Personnel
Carrier CAPTAIN: NULL – [PRIVATE CRAFT] CREW COUNT: 1 (Biological),
1 (SYNTH)
[FLIGHT DECK ROSTER] ... PILOT: CABOT, MELISSA
[Lic: 7088-A-Active] ... CO-PILOT: ASRON [Lic: MECH-SYNTH-ASSIST]
[AUXILIARY SYSTEMS] ... [SYSTEM]: NAV-LINK:
CONNECTED ... [SYSTEM]: SECURITY SENTINEL (Model: 45-RNN) ......
[STATUS: AUTOPILOT OVERRIDE - ACTIVE]
[SYSTEM ALERTS - CRITICAL] ! WARNING: LIFE SUPPORT
ERROR [H2O Cycle MANUAL OVERRIDE – ERROR] ! WARNING: HULL INTEGRITY
72% [Micro-fractures detected: Stbd Wing] ! WARNING: UNREGISTERED
SIGNATURES IN CARGO HOLD [Digital Quarantine Detected] ! WARNING:
MEDICAL ALERT [Pilot Biometrics: Unstable - SEPSIS RISK]
I stared at that last line. Pilot Biometrics:
Unstable. The ship knew. The sensors in the seat could feel my
temperature spiking and my heart rate fluttering like a trapped bird.
If I didn't override that flag before we docked, the station wouldn't
just send a mechanic; they’d send a trauma team with a stretcher.
And if they took me away, they’d confiscate the ship and crack open
the cargo hold to see what those "Unregistered Signatures"
were.
"Delete," I whispered, my voice cracking
as I tapped the command to suppress the medical alert. It blinked,
fighting me. The system didn't want to let me die. "Override
command code: Cabot-Alpha-One. Delete."
The red text vanished from the queue. "Good
enough," I muttered, leaning back and closing my eyes for a
second. The registry listed ASRON as a 'Mech-Synth-Assist'. To a
bored docking master, it looked like I was just a lonely pilot who
named her autopilot. To me, it was the only way to explain how we
survived.
A soft chime from the dashboard snapped me out of
my thoughts. The stars outside the viewport stretched and snapped
back into pinpricks.
‘Fucking
finally,’
I
thought.
I took
control of the flight sticks and got us off autopilot, making sure
our trajectory avoided any incoming traffic and heading directly to
the only periodic flashing bright light in the area off in the
distance.
I flicked
on the communications array and dialled through the frequency I
needed to contact the control tower.
“CRSS
Reckless to Station Hash-Zero Zero Eight Five Command, we are on
final approach—bearing Zero Nine Zero degrees from point Zero,
vector three. Requesting docking clearance and transmission of
authorisation protocols.”
I waited as
patiently as I could, grabbing the pilot headset once I started
seeing other shapes move around me.
“CRSS
Reckless, we hear you, we see you. I repeat, we see you. Rotate Nine
Zero degrees. Travel Two-Hundred
clicks
to your aft.
I repeat. Rotate Nine Zero degrees. Travel Two-Hundred
clicks
to your aft.” Came a static reply. I followed the directions,
making sure to keep an eye on the forms moving around me, my headset
letting me know they were all spaceships.
There
was a godsdamned queue.
Once the
ship was parked in position next to a much larger ship, I pulled out
a yoyo I had stashed in one of the side consoles of the dashboard.
This?particular station?has become quite popular in the area and
saw quite a bit of traffic. Unfortunately, I was bound to the
dashboard until I got further instructions, which could take hours.
I turned
back to the show still playing to the side, putting
aside the manual and my tablet. Ruminating on all the little secrets
I have to keep now.
Two hours
later, a burst of static through the comms jolted me awake. I
scrambled upright, wiping a string of drool from my face and shaking
the pins-and-needles from the arm I’d slept on. “CRSS Reckless,
this is Station Hash-Zero-Zero-Eight-Five Command. Approach vector
confirmed; bearing One-Zero-Zero degrees relative. You are cleared
for docking at Bay 4. Authorisation code:
Alpha-Tau-Nine-Nine-Three-Lima-Four. Maintain current velocity and
prepare for automated guidance lock. Welcome back, Melissa."
I scowled
faintly, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. There was a cadence to that
voice I recognised, buried under the distortion and fatigue. Before I
could place it, the nav-computer pinged for the code. I punched in
the sequence. Alpha. Tau. 993. L4. “Lock confirmed,” I mumbled,
slumping back as the thrusters cut and the station’s autopilot
took hold.
A heavy
thud of footsteps announced Forty-Five’s return. The robotic gait
was back - stiff, heavy, precise. He buckled himself into the
co-pilot seat without a glance in my direction. The Nanny Bot had
returned to duty.
“Just so
we’re clear,” I whispered, leaning toward him as the station
lights washed over the cockpit glass. “We get the repairs, we get
the water unit
replaced, we leave. If
they ask about the bio-data, it’s a sensor glitch. Do not
let them drag me to a hospital. Remember the deal.”
Forty-Five
didn’t look at me. He sat rigid, staring straight ahead at the
approaching docking bay. “Protest,”
he said, his voice flat, his
hand curling into a tight fist.
“However, the
deal is… noted.”
“Reckless,”
a different
voice cut in from the
tower, the tone
bureaucratic. “Before we engage the hard-lock, we have a mandatory
customs query regarding a
recent cross-band
health directive.”
I
stiffened, my hand hovering over the comms button. “Go ahead,
Station Command.”
“Please
confirm if your vessel has originated,
docked, or entered
orbit in the following systems within the last thirty standard days:
Kraeys, Virteeft, Sardao, Shi or
Gryanke. And please
advise if any of your crew disembarked from the vessel.”
My heart
hammered against my ribs. Gryanke. That was where we started. I
opened my mouth to lie. To say we had come from the other direction.
But before I could speak, the console in front of me flashed. The
station had initiated a request
for our navigation logs
- a standard procedure for docking, but one I had forgotten in my
exhaustion.
>
[REMOTE QUERY: HASH-0085-CMD]
> [READING METADATA…]
>
[PREVIOUS
PORT
AUTHORITY:
KELARA - GRYANKE
SYSTEM CMD]
“Received,
Reckless,” the Tower interrupted, the voice droning
on. “Logs confirm
departure from Gryanke. You are the fifth
ship this week, you’re
lucky you made it. Do
not - I repeat, do not - disengage your seals.”
“Wait,”
I said, leaning into the mic, panic rising in my throat. “Station
Command, I’m
fine. I
just need—”
“Override
engaged,”
the voice continued
drily. “We are
flagging you for automatic
bio-hazard containment,” the Tower continued. “Medical teams are
dispatched to your airlock as
precautions. Do not
attempt to disembark without assistance. Station Out.”
The line
went
dead, the silence in
the cockpit oppressing.
I sat frozen, staring at the screen. The airlock status light turned
from Green to Amber. External Control. I was trapped. My
chest started closing in, a wheeze started to sound with every
breath. They were going to check my vitals. They were going to scan
me. They were going to see.
My vision
began tunnelling.
The
crate.
The
surgical bed.
The
white visors.
“Melissa.”
Cold, metal
hands pulled my hands down from my face. I was wheezing, no breath
making it pass the ice
shard in my chest. My
mechanical lung had stalled, my organic one had seized. My torso
crushing.
“D-D-Don’t,”
I stuttered, the panic clawing the words before I could get them out.
“Let th-them t-take m-me ag-again.”
“Do not
speak.”
He
unbuckled me from the seat and pulled me into his arms. I was a
ragdoll against his plating. He moved with terrifying speed, rushing
me out of the cockpit and into my bedroom, depositing me on the
mattress.
He fished
out my inhaler and brought it to my lips. I took a hit, feeling a
partial ease in the tightness, but it wasn't enough.
“Mechanical
unit requires restart,” Forty-Five calmly,
but his hands hovered
over my chest, as
if hesitant to put his hands on me.
I pushed his hands away, finding the subdermal
button under my clavicle. I
pressed down until it clicked, waiting 3 seconds before releasing it.
A violent
intake of air forced its way past my lips.
I reached
out and gripped his arms, and he pulled them up to support my swaying
form. “I can’t go back,” I wheezed, the air whistling through
my newly restarted lung. “I can’t go into that hospital. Not
again.
Don’t let them take me.”
Forty-Five
got closer, caging me between his arms, creating a wall of black
armour between me and the door. His twin white lights were the only
steady thing in the spinning room.
“Analysis,”
he rumbled, his voice low and urgent. “Gastric
unit is failing. The
sepsis is spreading to the seals. You cannot survive without
medical help.”
“Then I
die on the ship!” I hissed, digging my fingers into his plating. “I
don’t want to die in a white room. If
I leave, the ship won’t
get repaired. They’ll
find the droids.
They’ll take-”
“Negative.”
The word was sharp, cutting through my panic, the
cadence off. “I am
staying to guard the
ship.” He placed
his hands on my face, putting blinders on the world,
the metal icy
against my feverish skin. His
tone reverted to the monotone.
“Tactical Assessment.
Simultaneous presence at two coordinates is impossible. Accompanying
the Client results in critical vulnerability for the Reckless.”
He shifted his grip, holding my shoulders firmly. “Submit to
medical intervention. Vessel repairs will be supervised by me.”
“But—”
“Whakarongo
mai.”
The Te Reo
Māori command for ‘listen’
slipped out in a deep, synthesised growl, vibrating through my spine.
“Whakawhirinaki.”
It was leap
of faith. The
MAD agreement. I knew enough to get him scrapped, he
might just come get me.
“But the
doctors…” I choked out, the tears finally spilling over. “The
white rooms…They’ll
make me disappear in the
freezer.”
“I will
come find you,” he
said firmly, the tone
and cadence fluctuating wildly. “The
Client will be found, alive.”
He looked up toward the door. Heavy footsteps were thudding down the
corridor. The medical team...they
must have forced the airlock open.
“E rua
ngā rā. Ka rapua koe e au,” he murmured.
days. I will look for you.’
Panic
flared in my chest again, hot and blinding. Logic didn’t matter.
The promise didn’t matter. The trauma was a physical weight
crushing my ribs.
“Kaore,”
I whimpered. “Kaua rātou e tukua kia kite i ahau! Taniwha,
please!”
No,
don’t let them see me!’
He held my gaze for one second longer, his lights
pulsing. Then, he let me go. He stepped back, clearing the line of
fire. Tears tracked down my cheeks as the barrier vanished.
Everything was moving too fast, I felt sluggish and slow.
I tried to reach for him, but white-uniformed
ghosts flooded into the room. They were talking, but I didn’t
listen, letting the words wash over me until...
“Non-compliant. Sedate her.”
I felt a sharp sting in my shoulder. And the world
went deathly quiet.
Ice flooded my veins, stopping the protests dead
in my throat. The room tilted. The last thing I saw before the
darkness consumed me was Forty-Five’s visor. He hadn’t moved from
his position in the corner, watching me. The twin halo lights flashed
a violent, warning red, darting to the side to watch the medics.
And then, nothing.
