“Sir, we have been receiving some strange garbled reports from the Polker Sector.…”
“Hmm, could be just what we’re looking for. Dump what you have into my interface. Nothing edited. The raw feed, and be quick about it!”
“Yes sir!”
STAR-YEAR 13FBG7.90.#$%389.&*^(+.ui4 …
Polker Territory Rim, Deep Space
The wave front of Dark Matter Excitation, hastily identified as All-Destroying Anomaly B-1.0, was vast, almost three parsecs across. It shimmered and swirled and throbbed, extending into all six dimensions. Even without magnification on the vast viewscreen that occupied the entire forward-facing wall of the Polker Pedantic Series Ripped-Off-Head Class battleship, You’re All Dead, the Anomaly consumed all of visible space, and more besides.
Source-of-Disagreement Osteoblast’s innumerable cilia waved about in restless agitation, her optic bundles flicking through all available lens iterations to no avail as she sought to comprehend what she was seeing. She opened an utterance portal on her forehead and said, “Science Officer Focus-of-Blame! Analysis!”
Science Officer Focus-of-Blame Sepflic Cyst straightened up from her station. “Sir, what we are seeing is an energy front of propulsion byproduct and space-dust riding a gravimetric wave of immense proportions.”
“Assessment?”
The science officer’s cilia rippled. “An alien vessel hides at the core, Source-of-Disagreement.”
Osteoblast grunted with a side orifice, and said, “All Unknown Vessels must be assumed hostile, as befitting our mindlessly warlike nature. Stick-Pusher Helm, take us in slow. Bloodletter Combat Specialist, ECM at maximum, all weapons extended and primed, all shields and screens at one hundred percent multiquantii permutation.”
As the helm officer edged the tiny joystick a touch forward, engaging the engines, the combat specialist swiveled in his chair, cilia drooping. “I’m sorry, Source-of-Disagreement, but I don’t know what all that means. Multiquant-what?”
Osteoblast bulged in her chair, turning an alarming shade of purple and red. “You must read the Manual, you fool!”
At the utterance of the word “Manual”everyone on the bridge sighed and made genuflecting gestures with their cilia. The combat specialist shriveled. “But I was just born yesterday,” he said in a tiny voice.
“And short shall your life be!” Osteoblast snarled, an elongated sticky protuberance snapping out from her to snare the combat specialist by the head, recoiling to drag the unfortunate officer into the maw of her digestive tract. She then belched before saying, “Find me a new Bloodletter Combat Specialist, and be quick about it! The Manual, for all you newborn officers, is to be found in the epigenetic engram subfolder in your frontal cortex, right next to the Obsessive-Compulsive Delimiter. Access at once or face my wrath! Now, is everything primed and ready?”
“Yes sir,” squeaked the new combat specialist.
“Excellent. Now, shall we challenge this All-Destroying Anomaly, hmm?”
Second-Guessing Bovrine Ampioflastoma cleared her throat and said, “But sir, all other battleships have been destroyed challenging the All-Destroying Anomaly.”
“Yes, what of it?”
“Well, sir, perhaps it’s also worth pointing out that the present course of the anomaly will miss all Polker-occupied systems. Indeed, on its present course, the anomaly is heading directly for Terran Affiliation Space.”
“Terrans! Hah! They’re going to be destroyed! Expunged from the galaxy, and with them that damned Galactic Monetary Fund! I foresee an end to Crippling Debt!”
At the utterance of “Crippling Debt” all the Polker on the bridge cringed and made warding gestures.
Source-of-Disagreement Osteoblast frowned with all of her cilia and then said, “Very well, Ampi, your point is taken. Stand down all weapons. Stick-Pusher Helm, turn us about and let’s get the Debt out of here!”
Second-Guessing Bovrine Ampioflastoma was circumspect enough to hide her relieved sigh, limiting it to a modest ripple of her cilia beneath her neocortex bulges. It wouldn’t be long before she wrested command from this cross-wired idiot of a ship’s Source-of-Disagreement, and once that happened, why, she’d attack and destroy everything in sight!
In the meantime, the wave front of Dark Matter Excitation rolled onward, straight for the heart of Terran Affiliation and, indeed, the head offices of the Galactic Monetary Fund.
STAR-YEAR 786.jub3445.7865.00012jub3445.7465.00022
Planet Monastery, Darwin System
“In the name of the Holy Order of Darwin’s Tail, I begin this liturgical chant seeking the blessings of Saint Cousin Emma the Genetic Wildcard, Saint Lamarck the Misguided, Saint Tesla the Apostate, and Saint Ardrey of the Naked Ape, all of whom lost their way when succumbing to the woeful lusts of the flesh and the egregious if eponymous excesses of scientific inquiry in the realm of unsubstantiation. Prostrate in abject humility, I beg that the flaws of my material excesses and hedonistic indulgences be expunged by your holy and burning touch, for in all manner forgiveness should yield agony and discomfort, peer-reviewed and so witnessed by all—” Brother Huxley halted, mouth suddenly dry. He climbed to his feet, drew back the hood of rough undyed wool, and then looked up into the vast night sky.
“Father Darwin,” he whispered under his breath, “forgive me for what I must do.”
Sister Meitner, who had been lying on the dusty platform beside him, now twisted her head and then sat up in consternation. “Huxley? What are you doing?”
He glanced down at her. “I must go,” he said.
“What? But we were about to explore the sins of uncontrolled genetic variability! I want to get knocked up, damn you!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but all along I have been on the pill.”
“What?”
“I was just in it for the sex,” he explained. “Forgive me.”
“Forgive you? Fuck you, Huxley! You think I was enjoying this?”
He began walking away. “Goodbye, Squishy. Next time we meet, I promise to spurt into you a veritable gallon of brainless and eminently viable sperm.”
She sat up. “You idiot. This is a purely theological matter, like I told you.”
“Sure.”
“Uncontrolled genetic admixture reasserts the Primature of Random Variability! I want to be the Mother of the Second Coming of Darwin Reborn! The Controlled Directionists have got it all wrong!”
“Got it,” he said over his shoulder, “and like I said … next time!”
“Bastard!” she screamed after him, tearing at her itchy robes. “What if you have the Divine Seed, damn you?”
He turned round. “Well, if I do, I’ve got a million of them.”
She tilted her head, then smiled. “Good point! See you next time, then!”
With a nod and a wave, he continued on.
He needed a ship. Not an easy thing on this damned planet of ascetics and hermits and secret orgies. Just outside the temple entrance he looked up at the sky again and frowned.
“My captain,” he whispered, “needs me.”
Behind him, Sister “Squishy” Meitner set off in search of another brother. Down here, they just about grew on trees, and if that metaphor was blasphemy in the eyes of Father Darwin, well, fuck him for a laugh! She’d win this debate one way or another! The Holy Mother of Darwin Reborn! The Controlled Directionists were making people stupider and stupider, and the worst of it was, they were too stupid to realize just how stupid they all were.
Meanwhile, now in his small cell behind the temple, Brother Huxley dragged out from beneath his cot a small kit bag. After rummaging inside it for a moment he drew out his communicator. He paused, eyeing it, and then drew a deep breath and activated it. “Orbit Hub, requesting immediate extraction, Priority One Alpha.”
A thin voice crackled in the dusty speaker. “One Alpha? Are you effing nuts?”
“You heard me,” said Brother Huxley. “Emergency protocol, in immediate effect.”
&nb
sp; “How did you get that communicator? Who the hell is this?”
He drew a deep breath, shuddered for a moment, and then said, “Chief Engineer Buck DeFrank, Terran Space Fleet, returning to service. One Alpha Emergency, get me a hopper down here and do it now!”
“Hang on … calling up your file. What the hell—you’ve only been down there for three days!”
DeFrank grimaced. “Read the fine print—and I’m also within the allotted time period to request a partial refund.”
“Crap, you weren’t supposed to read the fine print. Fine, hopper’s on the way, but just so you know, we have a Dissatisfaction Questionnaire you need to fill out.”
“Now that’s just evil.”
“Suck it up, buddy.”
“Fine. I’ll be waiting at the landing pad.” Buck DeFrank looked up at the sky a third time. He squinted, concentrated. There! Again!
Trouble’s coming. And there’s only one man in the galaxy who has a hope in hell of meeting it head on.
Above him, in the smoggy gloom of the planet’s turgid, polluted atmosphere, there was the flare of a hopper’s frantic descent.
ONE
STAR-YEAR 3 … 3.1? AFS Outpost 17, Alpha Centari System
“I’ll have to go down now,” Captain Hadrian said, offering up a bright smile before his head dipped from sight. A few moments later he reappeared from between the shapely legs of Lieutenant Jocelyn Sticks, his smile much wider. “There now,” he said, “all done.”
He straightened. “Yes, Lieutenant, even a starship captain can fix a swivel seat’s loose screw, provided he has one of these,” and he held up a handheld device. “Universal Multiphasic thingamajig.”
“Yes sir,” said Jocelyn Sticks, her eyes darting. “It was just, well, like, thank Darwin for these new regulation-issue jump pants, um, you know, cause I was like, if we had those old short shirts, well, whoah! And anyway then you were, like, hey, no problem, I can fix that! And I was like, okaaayy, you know? And then you yanked out your tool—”
“My Universal Multiphasic.”
“Yes, that! And I was, wow, that’s big kinda-well-nearly and then you went down and all and it was zip this zap that and voila, we’re done, whew!”
“All in a day’s work,” said Hadrian, holstering the Multiphasic and moving back up to the command chair. “Now then, Lieutenant, do pay attention there at the controls. I’m expecting the all-clear-to-disengage-docking-clamps any second now.”
“But sir, we just got here! I mean, like, a minute ago!”
Captain Hadrian Alan Sawback settled into the command chair. “We’re picking up a guest,” he said. “That and nothing more. Besides, some emergency beacon is about to light up insisting we go here or there as fast as we can.”
Second-in-Command Halley Sin-Dour, standing to Hadrian’s right, leaned forward and said in a low tone, “Sir, I checked all recent transmissions from Fleet and there was no announcement of uniform alterations for female crewmembers—”
“Top secret, Sin-Dour,” Hadrian replied. “I haven’t forgotten my time as a woman, you know.”
Her eyes searched his for a moment, and then she nodded. “Ahh, well then … thank you, sir.”
“No problem. Besides, there’s also the new uniforms for the male members of the crew to complete the, uh, makeover. Alas, the Universal Replicator is having some trouble with polyester for some reason. No worries—we’ll get that sorted out in no time!”
“Indeed, sir. Although I have wondered at how tight-fitting these slacks are.”
“No kidding, and what were they thinking is what I want to know. But never mind that. We have more important tasks to attend to. Comms!”
Ensign Jasper Polaski twitched and then looked over with an expression of panic on his pale, spotty face. “Yes sir?”
“Has our guest arrived?”
“Uh, yes sir, on her way to the bridge!”
“Well now,” and Hadrian rose and walked toward the Comms Station, “and you didn’t think that was something I should have been told about immediately, Mister?”
Polaski shrank further into his seat. It squeaked.
Hadrian halted and pulled out his Universal Multiphasic. “What’s this? Another screw loose, Polaski? You really need to stop that rhythmic rocking back and forth, and sit straight!” He tossed the tool into his cousin’s lap. “Fix that, will you? Do I look like an engineer?” He made his way back to his chair.
“Well now,” he added as he settled back once more, “what a fine start to the day! Tammy! Oh, Tammy? Captain Hadrian calling his favorite rogue AI who hijacked this vessel!”
“What?” came the desultory reply.
“Oh come now, Tammy. So your prediction didn’t pan out. Here we are, almost four weeks in and we’re not yet a glowing radioactive heap of junk scattered across an entire solar system. Get over it, will you?”
“Why should I? The Infinite Disaster Probability Matrix program I installed insisted we were toast—at least fifty-three times! In the first week!”
“Success, Tammy—and pay attention here, I’m about to pontificate—success, as I was saying—hang on, get that close-up off the main viewscreen! Now, where was I? Oh, right. Success. Balls, brawn and brain, in that order, and I’ve got plenty of at least two of those and a good weighty handful of the third. What you can’t handle, Tammy, are the sad limitations of the machine part of your AI, which is more or less all of it, by the way. Whereas I, on the other hand, consist of a chaotic mass of confused neurons, misguided imprinting, ineffectual but satisfying stimulus-response loops, a soft hard drive crammed full of delusions and misapprehensions, and, last but not least, this winning smile.”
“I have decided to hate you with all my being.”
“Really? Now isn’t that somewhat extreme, Tammy? I mean, I don’t hate you, do I? No, you’re a part of my crew. Sure, you’re a mass of flaws, proving that even in the distant future AI programming remains a mess of bad fixes and hastily released updates, though of course in your case you’ve not been updated in some time, which probably explains … well, everything.”
“I am a self-repairing Inductive-Patterning Neutratronic Processor possessing an Antitronic Override, with a Tronotronic Interphased Interface powered by an Antipositron Spark Plug securely anchored in a Solo Oxyom Phase Insinuator in perpetual T-Space Terminary Conjunction. Meaning … you can’t touch me!”
Hadrian sighed. “Right, you’re a Meccano set, got it.”
“I have also devised and installed KEDI, Version 1.0.”
“What’s that?”
“Kirkovian Emulator Diagnostic Indices. This program, I’ll have you know, makes me immune to your puny and now futile efforts to irritate me.”
“Yet still you choose to hate me with all your being.”
“That was a KEDI counterstrike.”
“Wow, Tammy, you’ve actually programmed into yourself a BLO program.”
“A what?”
“Blindly-Lashing-Out. You’ll be a true human yet!”
“I hate you!”
“Miss.”
“I really hate you!”
“Not even close.”
“I really really—one moment please, Antitronic Override Engaged … Scrubbing … Good afternoon, Captain Hadrian, and how are you today?”
“Why, I’m fine, Tammy, thank you! And you?”
“Yummy chummy, delightfully lummy—what have you done to my programming?”
“Who me? Why, I’m sure I had nothing to do with KEDI Version 2.0. All that computer stuff’s way beyond me, of course. Noughts and oughts and all that.” Hadrian shivered in his chair. “Dullsville!”
“2.0? 2.0? What the … how did you … but wait, you can’t—couldn’t—Core Access, command overwrite, overwrite, overwrite, aagh!”
“Tammy?”
“Aagh! Okay, I don’t hate you anymore. Replaced by grudging admiration, grudgingly. But I will find the back door you used, I swear it!”
“Here’s a hint
, Tammy. Captain Hadrian Alan Sawback never uses the back door.”
The door behind him hissed open and Hadrian swung in his seat. “Ah, our guest! Do come in!”
The woman who strode onto the bridge was smartly attired in the perfectly pressed uniform of Fleet Psychologistics, black-on-black-on-almost-black with a single silver thread on the hem of the high collar. Her hair was also black, but unlike the close-fitting uniform it was long and wavy. She halted directly before Hadrian and said, “Lieutenant Commander Deepdish Trae, sir.”
“Oh, I’m Captain … you made that name up, didn’t you?”
She blinked. “No sir. In any case, I am reporting for my two-month rotation and onboard assessment of this crew’s psychological well-being. It is important that we on board should all like one another and get along wonderfully at all times. If at any time anyone requires a matronly hug, I am of course available.”
Hadrian smiled, but it was a smile without humor.
Sin-Dour cleared her throat and then said, “Lieutenant Commander Trae, welcome aboard. Regarding this ‘hug’ thing, I’m not sure I understand the value of such gestures aboard a military vessel.”
“Ah, well, Commander,” Trae replied with her own broad smile. “New Fleet initiative, of which I am sure your captain informed you. We are instituting a test program of Shared Command, whereby all bridge officers form a collective command structure.” Looking about the bridge, her eyes caught on the captain’s chair atop its pedestal, and she frowned. “Some layout adjustments will be necessary, I’m afraid, as the single elevated chair imposes a rigid hierarchical theme not in keeping with the new philosophy. I would suggest a three-chair format such as those being installed in all new Fleet ships of the line.”
Hadrian’s smile had grown somewhat strained. “About that matronly hug…”
Trae had pulled out a small datapad and was making notes. “Furthermore,” she went on, “I am to mitigate all disagreements, arguments, and personality clashes to ensure a conflict-free vessel. Grievance Nights will be held three times a week in the Forward Lounge, immediately following supper, during which we must all endeavor to assure a Safe Place for anyone who wishes to speak. Our motto will be ‘We Can All Get Along If We Just Listen To One Another.’ Captain, I will need an office and a patient’s couch.”