Hadrian studied the deflated, misshapen sack lying on the floor at his feet. “Excellent,” he said, nodding as he moved on.
“Lieutenant Jocelyn Sticks, sir. Navigation, helm, screens.”
“That is a lovely perfume you are wearing, Lieutenant. Do I detect patchouli and frankincense?”
“Uhm, maybe, sir. I’m like, I don’t know.”
He smiled at her, studying her round, pretty face and expressive eyes. “Is the
Willful Child
your first off-planet assignment, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. Like, it’s all very exciting. You know? Exciting!”
“Indeed it is, Helm, indeed it is.” He wondered, briefly as he stepped to the last officer on deck, if his selecting certain bridge officers on the basis of their file photos was perhaps somewhat careless. But then, the task of ship pilots was hardly taxing. Besides, from his position in the command chair, she would have to twist her upper body round to address him. He was looking forward to that.
The last man snapped a perfect salute and said, “Lieutenant James ‘Jimmy’ Eden, communications. First off-planet posting. Honored to be serving under you, Captain.”
“I’m sure you are. Thank you, Lieutenant. If I recall from your file, you were in the last Terran Olympics, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir! High-g beach volleyball, sir. We came in fourth.”
“Well, I can see that kept you in shape.”
“Indeed sir. I have volunteered for all surface assignments, sir.”
“So I noted. But as I am sure you understand, we are about to receive combat marines, marking the debut of interservice cooperation in Terran Space Fleet. Also, the role of ship-to-surface communications is essential when we have people on the ground, on a potentially hostile planet. Accordingly, I expect you to be planted in your seat at comms during such excursions. And, in keeping with my desire to assure myself of your readiness in such circumstances, I am double-shifting you on the duty roster for the next seventy-two hours.”
“Of course, sir!”
“Now then, best man the phones, eh? We are about to de-lock and get under way.”
“Yes, sir!”
Comms was always a problematic specialty, as no cadet in their right mind would ever want to end up on a starship as little more than a teleoperator. From Eden’s file, Hadrian knew the man had barely scraped into the Academy on intelligence and aptitude tests. But then, an athlete out of the medals didn’t have much to look forward to in the way of future prospects, much less a career. Jimmy Eden counted himself lucky, no doubt. But the likelihood of assigning the overmuscled, gung-ho, bright-eyed, all-too-handsome-in-that-square-jawed-manly-way officer to the glamour of surface missions—and potentially upstaging Hadrian (who intended to lead every one of those missions and to hell with fleet regulations, brick-brained marines, and all the rest) was as remote as finding an advanced civilization of spacefaring insects in a ship’s bilge dump.
Striding to his command chair, Hadrian swung round to face his officers and said, “Welcome to the inaugural voyage of the AFS
Willful Child.
Our ongoing mission is going to be hairy, fraught, and on occasion insanely dangerous, and when it comes to all of that, I’m your man. I mean to get you through it all—no one dies on my watch. Now, to your stations. Sin-Dour, take the science station. Comms, inform Ring Command we’re ready to de-lock.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Helm, prime thrusters. Prepare for decoupling. We’ll smoke later.”
Buck DeFrank spoke from the engineer station. “Antimatter containment optimal. Surge engines ready, Captain.”
Hadrian sat down in the command chair and faced the forward viewer. “If anything but optimal, Buck, we’d be spacedust, but thank you.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“No problem,” Hadrian replied. “It’s all very exciting, isn’t it? Don’t worry, we’ll shake things out soon enough, and I look forward to your panicked cries from engineering level.”
“Panicked cries, sir?”
Jimmy Eden swung round in his seat at comms. “Ring Command acknowledges, Captain. Good to go.”
“De-locking complete,” Helm reported.
Hadrian studied the forward viewer, which presented a colorful wallpaper of a Hawaiian sunset. “Someone turn on the hull cameras, please, Ahead View. Helm, maneuvering thrusters. Take us out.”
TWO
Once they were clear of the hangar, Hadrian ordered Comms to enslave a station camera, permitting the bridge crew to watch the
Willful Child
move serenely away. A fine ship, he mused. The oblate main hull rippled in shifting patterns as the ship’s skin reacted to ambient radiation beyond the station’s screens. The in-system antimatter engine pods yielded a fuzzy discharge from the nozzles, dull yellow in color. The twin railguns were slung low from the hull’s belly, splayed slightly out to the sides, like fuel tanks or enormous missiles. The main FTL T drive was a bulge on the hull between the railguns. Some uncharitable person might describe the ship as looking like a beluga whale with infected udders. But there was word of an upcoming paradigm shift in ship design. Of course, rumors like that were little more than pillow talk for engineers. Still, Hadrian would not be upset to see a whole new range of sleek, swept-back cruisers come off the line, all painted white with little lights blinking and flashing.
Still, the
Willful Child
made plain its purpose. Engage class. Exploration and combat. Primarily combat, but of the deep-space, you’re-all-on-your-own variety. So, in blunter terms: Find and Kill! (Of course, only if necessary. Subjugation is even better.) But …
Engage class!
The most prized ASF command, as far as Hadrian was concerned. And here he was, twenty-seven years old, his first starship, his first venture into space. It all seemed so … unlikely.
“Captain!” James Jimmy Eden pivoted in his chair, his hair perfectly coiffed and his jaw still square. “Admiral Prim is hailing you.”
Hadrian rose. “About time. I’ll take it in my office.” He turned to his first officer and studied Sin-Dour for a moment, during which he mentally tore off all her clothing and flung her down onto the deck. He smiled. “You have command.”
“Yes, sir,” Sin-Dour replied, eyeing him searchingly.
Still smiling, Hadrian turned to the engineering station. “Buck. Head down to your lair. Make sure we’re ready to get this wagon rolling at my command.”
“Yes, sir!”
In his office once again, Hadrian sat and said, “Configure prerecorded animation, Hadrian Attentive 01.”
He rose from his chair and stepped to one side, watching as his simulacrum materialized, seated at his desk. “Note the usual prompts.”
The version of him at the desk assumed a stern expression and nodded.
“Excellent,” said Hadrian. “Now, phase the real me out and open the channel to Admiral Prim.”
A holographic representation appeared directly opposite the desk, the admiral seated behind his own desk back on the Ring. “Ah, there you are,” the silver-haired man said, gaze fixing on the simulacrum. “I suppose I should be offering you congratulations, Captain, and a rousing send-off, but I can’t. I just can’t.”
Hadrian watched his doppelgänger nod and say, “I understand, sir.”
“Completing the Mishmashi Paradox is a three-year problem, even for space-hardened officers. I am not alone in taking this personally, Sawback. I mean to find out how you cheated, even if it takes me the rest of my unnaturally extended life.”
“Yes, sir.”
The admiral leaned forward. “You did cheat, didn’t you?”
“No, sir. Cheating is wrong. Cheating is bad. Bad cheating. Bad.”
While this was going on, the real Hadrian walked to the wall off to the left of the desk and collected the Polker Sniper Belt Rifle from its wall mounts. He dusted the stock, studying the faint claw marks made by the last Polker to own it. He checked the charge and was relieved to find it still flat. Then, taking up the weapon, awkwardly as it was not designed for Terran physiology, he aimed at the admiral’s head.
Pop. Splat!
“… will never be repeated,” Lawrence Prim was saying. “The regulations are being rewritten even as I speak. And damn to all the hells the idiotic fool who slipped that fast-track into the command chair. Darwin knows what obsessive psychosis led to that insanity.”
Plop. Splat!
“I can’t imagine, sir. But it sounds bad.”
Hadrian’s brows rose, impressed with the program’s intuitive algorithms. Then his eyes narrowed on his simulacrum.
Prim was speaking, again. “As for this newfangled automated assignment protocol, well, all I can say, clearly someone’s taken the ‘I’ out of the AI. We’re looking into that, too, so don’t be getting too comfortable with that Engage-class ship, Sawback. If I get my way, you’ll be a damned ensign on an Initiate-class within a month.”
“I humbly await my mission orders, Admiral,” said the doppelgänger.
“Shakedown patrol,” Prim snapped. “We’re not risking that ship while it’s under your command. Sector III-B. We have reports of a smuggling operation active in the Blarad System.”
“Smuggling, sir?”
“Knockoff apparel of various Terran sports teams.”
“Sounds serious, sir.”
“What are you, an idiot? This is two-crew patrol stuff that wouldn’t stretch an in-system black-and-white.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Then why are you smiling, Sawback?”
“I am delighted to be commanding the
Willful Child
, Admiral.”
“Blarad is a crowded system.”
“I will try not to hit anything I don’t mean to hit, sir.”
“You’ll hit nothing! Contraband search and that’s all, do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir, the latest blow in our ongoing Jersey War.”
“What war? You damned fool—”
The hologram flickered and the doppelgänger frowned and said, “My apologies, Admiral. Transmission difficulties, I’m afraid. New ship and all.”
“What? I’m barely twenty klicks away!”
“We’ll iron it out soon enough, sir, I assure you. Oh dear, you seem to be dropping out. Until later, Admiral!”
The hologram sputtered, audio cutting out—which was probably good since the red-faced admiral was rising from his chair, gesticulating wildly—and then the image vanished with a faint hiss.
Hadrian returned the sniper rifle to its mounts. He’d lifted it from a marine’s discharge gear crate downside, when serving a week’s assignment as a quartermaster’s aide. A worthy reward for that purgatory. After a moment admiring the strange weapon, he faced his doppelgänger and said, “Don’t even think of trying to incapacitate me and taking over my role on this ship, until such time as I can win my way free and confront you in front of my officers, forcing the lovely Sin-Dour to decide which one of us is real by stripping us naked and weighing our balls. All that, friend, won’t happen, do you understand me?”
The doppelgänger blinked up at him, and then smiled. “Well of course not. What an absurd scenario, oh twin of mine. After all, I am locked into this position, possessing no freedom of movement beyond this chair. And the firewall between my independent program and the overall ship’s system is impenetrable.”
“Really? How do you know that?”
“Isn’t it time to shut me down now, brother?”
“Shut down and out the bilge hole with you, oh twin dearest!”
“Now that’s unfair! How do you know you won’t be needing—”
“Off!”
The doppelgänger vanished.
“Extract file and sever all links,” Hadrian said.
A small cube extruded from the top of the desk. Collecting it, the captain went to the disposal chute and sent the cube through the decontamination energy field. “Out the bilge hole, beloved twin. Next time, I’ll devise a two-point-oh with the IQ equivalent of a gibbon’s brain, see how you like that!”
He knew the perils of command on a deep-space mission, the unexpected dangers at every turn. He did not plan on taking any chances. Well, actually, he did. Plenty of them, in fact. But that wasn’t the same as carelessly letting some holographic doppelgänger wander through the back shunts of the ship mainframe. Who knew where it might pop out.
Hadrian departed the office and strode onto the bridge, only to find that he was already sitting in the command chair. “Damn you—I just deep-sixed you!”
His simulacrum smiled up at him. “Ah, dear twin of mine. I took the liberty of copying myself, just to be on the safe side. However, this stipulation of appearing exclusively in this seated configuration is rather awkward—”
Sin-Dour cleared her throat and said, “It just materialized in the command chair, sir. While I was occupying it.”
Hadrian blinked at her. “Shouldn’t that be more difficult to contemplate? Never mind. Computer, shut this thing down and wrap it up tight and then erase it with extreme rancor. Then scour your systems and make sure it hasn’t dropped off any more packets.”
“Oh that’s not fair—”
But the doppelgänger got no further, as it vanished.
Jimmy Eden spoke from comms. “Captain, the admiral requests—”
“He’s always requesting something. Set up some static on the lines, will you?”
“Sir?”
“You heard me.” Hadrian sat in his chair and fixed his attention on the huge screen. He leapt to his feet. “A strange planet! Why wasn’t I informed?”
“Sir,” said Sin-Dour, “that is Neptune.”
“We’re still in-system? Who’s manning the oars on this tub?” He glanced over at the engineering station, saw no one there, and hit internal comms. “Engineering. Buck, you there yet?”
“Yes, sir,”
came the tinny reply.
“Fire up the T drive. Once past this planet here we’re bugging out, understood?”
“Sir!”
Hadrian leaned back. “That’s better. Buck takes orders, no questions asked. Pay attention to Buck DeFrank, everyone. He’s showing you how it’s done. Now, let’s do a deep scan of Neptune, in the manner of a dry run.”
The adjutant, who had been positioned near the science station, now spoke. “Captain!”
“What is it, Tighe?”
“The Purelganni have seeded Neptune, sir, as a gift to the Terran system. There are now amorphous semigaseous life-forms in the upper atmosphere. Primitive and benign, to be sure, but a deep scan would ignite those beings that are in range.”