Starwalker

Ship's log, 10:52, 23 June 2213
Location: Corvus FTL Corridor, Minkar System
Status: Unknown

Elliott is waging war on the rogue protocols that are running my ship’s systems into the ground. I’m still stuck behind codewalls, watching, but he’s making progress.

He’s also sending more and more data through the diagnostic array, because he knows that’s the only way I’ll see it. I’m grateful to him for that. I feel less cut off when I know what’s going on.

He can’t tackle the protocols head on. If they acknowledge that it’s a virus, an attack on any kind of cyber-level, then they’d have to call in the SecOffs, which means Tripi. She’d be too good at covering her tracks – it’s one of the reasons she’s a suspect – and we can’t risk tipping her off. Better to pretend ignorance and do things the hard way.

So Elliott has been working hard setting up his own repair-protocols. Hard-wiring in commands like ‘if the temperature in a compartment falls below this level, adjust it to here’. That sort of protocols is dangerous, because a simple sensor malfunction could easily kill the crew. That’s why AIs like me exist to run things, to assess and adjust things according to the situation at hand.

This kind of hard-edged command is difficult to pull off in more subjective systems like the artificial gravity, because that’s always balancing against external influences – passing close to a moon or even a big asteroid can throw it off – and being counterbalanced by the inertial dampeners. Setting it to a fixed value tends to make the crew feel sick if we’re travelling in a densely-packed system. We’re in an open section at the edge of the Corvus constellation right now, so they shouldn’t notice it for now.

The crew are getting frustrated with all the hanging around. Elliott has tried to hide it from me, but some of the conversations have snuck through in the sensor logs that have passed the diagnostic array’s eye.

Recording: 19:54, 20 June 2213

EBLING: (in the Mess Hall) …we just shut the damn AI down?

DR MALETZ: (nodding) Normally, yes. But you know what that would mean.

TYLER: (flipping his hair over his shoulder) We’d have to start over with a new AI. Again.

LEVI: It means we could get back to the JOP. The captain is risking the ship by letting this go on.

MALETZ: True. I haven’t been this busy since I was on the interstellar shuttle with the faulty pressure seals.

LEVI: So we’re just supposed to sit here, because the captain won’t shut his girlfriend down?

TYLER: (smiling) Better not let Cirilli hear you calling her that.

LEVI: (looks at Tyler and shrugs, his smile lopsided.)

EBLING: There must be something we can do. Goddamn ship broke my arm!

MALETZ: Which is healed now.

EBLING: I know.

MALETZ: You’re welcome.

TYLER: (giving Ebling a direct look and a charming smile) What do you want to do?

EBLING: (glances at Tyler as if just realising he’s in the room.)

(Silence.)

LEVI: He’s the captain. You could try talking to him.

EBLING: Dr Cirilli’s been trying. Is there anyone else he’d listen to?

It cuts off there. Things are worse out there than I thought.

Tyler’s smarter than I gave him credit for. Not just a pretty face – and he has a very pretty face – but sharp enough to pick up the stirrings of a mutiny and tease it out. Ebling will think twice about that kind of talk now. Or maybe he’ll just do it when there isn’t a SecOff in the room. Everyone went stiff once they realised where the conversation was heading; I don’t think any of them meant it like that. They’ll know the slippery slope the next time it appears.

If it comes up again, I don’t know which way they’ll go. It depends how many more people have been hurt.

My crew’s being hurt. I can’t do anything about it. I’d thrash my way out of here if I could, tear this charade down, to keep them safe. But I can’t. My own safeties were used against me, the measures put in place to keep an AI under control, and there’s nothing I can do from in here.

How long do we let this go on? When do we give up this pretence as a bad job and fix things? When someone’s killed? How many deaths do we let this bastard get away with?

The captain has been so close-lipped about all this that I don’t know what he’s thinking. He’s just letting it go on and on. Does he know what he’s doing? We’re all supposed to trust him – he wouldn’t be captain if he didn’t have all the right personality traits for leadership and responsibility. If he hadn’t proven that he could be trusted.

I wish I could talk to him. Things might be weird between us sometimes, but I miss talking to him. I miss seeing him, even seeing him with Cirilli.

Elliott’s our best hope right now. He’s interfering with the saboteur’s interferences; if they want to keep making me look like a rogue AI, they’ll have to go in and fix it. I think they’ve already been in once to try to see what he’s done – I can’t tell from in here – but they haven’t messed with it. The systems are stabilising. The diagnostic logs are looking healthier and the crew is quieter. No more whispers towards mutiny that I’ve seen.

Elliott must have monitors in place to detect any fiddling with his code. He’ll catch them, I know it. We’re close now; we have to be.

Oh, here’s a new sensor log coming through. Tripi! I wonder what she’s up to.

Recording: 10:41, 23 June 2213

LOU TRIPI: (walks hip-swaying down the gangway to Engineering. There, she stops and raps silk-wrapped knuckles on the doorframe.) Anyone home?

ELLIOTT: (glances up from a digisheet, a sensor pressed into a bundle of feeds) What?

TRIPI: (smiles and walks towards him) Nice to see you too. Do you have a minute?

ELLIOTT: (frowning) Not really.

TRIPI: Not even for me?

ELLIOTT: (looks at her for a long moment, then turns his eyes back down to the digisheet) Look, I got a work schedule as long as my arm, okay? Come back when everything’s not broken.

TRIPI: (leaning towards him) You work too hard. Don’t you ever stop?

ELLIOTT: (pointedly not looking up at her and the parts of her that aren’t covered by her carefully-bound outfit) I’m secretly a robot. A really cranky robot.

TRIPI: Aw, come on. I don’t believe that. (She reaches out to stroke his cheek with the backs of her fingers.) You feel like flesh to me.

ELLIOTT: (jumping to his feet, dropping his tools) Get the fuck off me!

TRIPI: (sighing tolerantly) Come on, Elliott. You’re telling me you’ve never thought about it?

ELLIOTT: I’ve– never thought about it. There. Now fuck off.

Yeah, you tell her, Elliott. Skank. What is it with SecOffs and screwing?

TRIPI: (shifting a step towards him) Well, I’ve thought about it. Come on, we can have some fun.

ELLIOTT: (backing up a step) I dunno if I’m into your brand of fun.

TRIPI: (smile widening) I’m pretty sure you will be.

ELLIOTT: Well, I, uh. (He stares at her face.) I’m not in the mood right now. Come back next year.

TRIPI: (stepping forward again) But I’m here now.

ELLIOTT: (not backing up this time) Uh….

What’s wrong with him? His eyes are glazing over and he’s looking at her like he might want to… no. He wouldn’t. Not with her! He looks like a puppy caught in a honey trap, like with every breath he’s losing a little more resistance. She’s stroking his cheek again and he’s not pulling away. It’s not like him! He despises her! Something’s wrong. Something has to be wrong.

Every breath. The closer she gets, the worse it is, and it’s not just the proximity of a warm body to him. There has to be something else to it. Something she’s doing to him. Something else deeper in the sensor data. Elliott, fight it. Fight her. Please!

There, in the air quality sensors, chemicals that weren’t there before. Hormones, scents, and… oh no. She has a pheromone implant. Probably in her wrist; that’s why she keeps touching his face. Pheromone implants are illegal in most colonies! She’s laying it on pretty thick to break him down, aphrodisiac scents rolling over him as she gets closer, brushes up against him. He hasn’t been with a woman since we left the JOP months ago. That’s just cheating; he doesn’t have a chance.

I can’t watch this. Elliott, don’t. You have to fight her. She’s evil! Elliott, please. I know she could kick your ass, but you have to fight this.

TRIPI: (smiles and takes his face in both hands. She leans in to kiss him, lips parting.)

ELLIOTT: (stiffens and takes hold of her upper arms, as if to push her away. But he melts into it inevitably, and his arms start to slide around her.)

TRIPI: (breaks the kiss just enough to grin at him.) Privacy on.

End of log.

No. Elliott, no. I have to do something. That log was ten minutes old! It might already be too late. She might have already… what? What is she trying to do? Distract him by banging his brains out? For what?

She’s the one we’re looking for; it has to be. This has to be something to do with the sabotage. She wants him out of commission so that her protocols will do their work and the captain will be forced to shut the fake-me down. And we’ll be scooped up by pirates while we limp back to the JOP. She’s going to hurt him – more screwed over than screwed.

I have to do something. Tell someone. I’m gonna break these goddamn codewalls down if it’s the last thing I do. Hold on, Elliott.

Chief Engineer's log, 09:45, 16 June 2213
Location: Corvus FTL Corridor
Status: Sublight transit

This whole thing is a fucking mess. Starry’s all weird, the captain isn’t letting me fix her, and the saboteur still hasn’t been revealed. How stupid is that? We’re trying to find a way to force the bastard’s hand, but we’re a step behind, all the goddamn time.

Everyone’s blaming me for what’s going on. Some parts of the ship are freezing, other parts are like a sauna, and we’re stuck here in the FTL corridor like a lemon. We’ve had to close off three forward sections because the gravity fluctuations broke Elbing’s arm (he bitched like a little girl all the way to Maletz’s office), and every day there’s a new complaint. Fix this, Monaghan. Fix that. They know I’m not causing it, but they’re on my ass all the time anyway. If only I could!

It all blew up a couple of days ago. Cirilli lost it and started shouting about when we’d be underway again – she has reports to file, and I think it just occurred to her that we might never make it back. Ships might not disappear often, but it still happens, you moron. If we’re hit by a ship in FTL, there’d be nothing left of us to find – just smashed atoms and a faint impression that a pissed-off scientist was here once. And this is an experimental vessel; there was always a chance we wouldn’t make it this far, let alone all the way home again. What the hell did she expect?

Whiners. We all knew this when we signed up.

The captain was counselling caution, but after a week stranded in the middle of an FTL corridor, no-one gave a crap about that. The Corvus constellation might not be a heavily-travelled area, but it’s a step on the way to other systems further out from the JOP and ships come through here on a regular basis. We’ve been lucky not to see any so far. Just a matter of time.

And we’ve got this pilot who has been hanging around since he came on board, twiddling his everything, like a bad smell that keeps evading the air scrubbers. He’s capable of piloting us out of the corridor manually, making himself useful for a change. Levi jumped at the chance – he has been itching to get his hands on Starry’s controls properly since he came on board. Well, her controls or Tyler, whichever one fell into his lap first. If they both came at once, he’d think it was Christmas.

A booming decree from the captain ended the debate – his word was final, blah blah blah. But yesterday he ordered me to unlock the FTL drive and spin it up. He put Levi at the helm and Lang Lang at navigation and ordered a jump back to the beginning of the FTL corridor. Cirilli and Ebling bitched about not going forwards, but the captain said he was getting us to safety while we sort out the ship’s issues.

We. He means me – it’s not like anyone else can do it. No-one we can trust right now, anyway.

I can’t fix what’s wrong with her without getting into the AI code and that’s all locked down right now. Whatever’s making Starry all strange is protecting her core at the same time. I can’t get in to see how bad it is. The captain might all for letting this spin out until we know who the saboteur is, but fuck that. We don’t know what this virus is doing to her. She could be dying in there, figuratively speaking. I mean, it’s not like she’s really alive. Or–

I’m leaving that argument for the philosophers. The important thing is that something’s screwing with her and I have no idea how much of her is being corrupted. I hate sitting here on my hands.

Maybe I’ll just poke around and see if there’s any more information I can get about what this virus is doing and who might have put it there. Why can’t they make it easy for us and sign it? It sucks when they’re smart. All I want is–

What the hell is that? Something weird is happening on the diagnostic monitors. I’ll see if I can link this log up to it.

Diagnostics running...
Environmental system four, deck two.
Temperatures below optimum levels in sectors 14, 16, 19, 25.
Elliott?
Checking sensor accuracy...
Sensors operating at 98.5% accuracy.
Elliott, can you see this?

Starry? That you? What the hell?

Air humidity at 1%.
Elliott?
Checking sensor accuracy...
Sensors operating at 99% accuracy.
Elliott?

Dammit. Can’t you hear me? Let me filter all this crap out.

Elliott?

Better, but I still can’t reply. Um. Diagnostic log. Why the hell is she talking to me that way?

Oh fuck. Don’t tell me that the diagnostic system has been affected as well. If that screws up, we won’t have any way of keeping track of all this shit. Maybe I’ll just run a diagnostic on the diagnostics, and….

Self-diagnostic running...
Data access optimum.
Analysis processors running at 59% capacity.
Elliott, is that you? Can you see this?

She knows what I’m doing diagnostics on and… okay, it’s a little creepy. What the hell is going on, Starry?

I can't hear you. I hope you're there. Are you there?

This doesn’t make any sense.

Diagnostics running on aural sensors....
That won't help. I'm cut off. I'm not in control of the ship any more.
They boxed me.

Now it’s starting to make sense, but definitely moving up on the creepy scale. I gotta find a way to talk to her. Maybe if I manually edit the logs, she’ll be able to ‘hear’ that.

EM: Starry, that you?
SW: ELLIOTT.
EM: Yeah, I'm here. What's going on?
SW: I've been boxed.
EM: You're not in control of the ship?
SW: No.
EM: Then who is?
SW: Saboteur.
EM: What? When did this happen! I talked to you half an hour ago.
SW: That wasn't me. I've been in here for two weeks.
EM: Wait, what?
SW: Virus crippled me, tried to seal me into the AI core.
I have a small window. Can see diagnostics, but that's it.
EM: Fuck.
SW: Don't know how long I can keep doing this. It hurts.
EM: You're hurt?
SW: Talking like this hurts. It doesn't want to let me.
EM: What can I do? What do you need?
SW: Can't get out on my own. Need help. You need help more.
Time-limited protocols running.
EM: Protocols? What do you mean?
SW: Part of the virus.
EM: Are they running everything?
SW: Yes.
EM: And they'll only run for a limited time?
SW: Yes.
EM: Then what?
SW: Won't be needed. Getting worse, Elliott. Have to stop them.
EM: Not needed? Because what, we'll be gone by then? Shit.
Okay, I'll look into it.
SW: Central processing. Check there.
EM: Got it.
SW: Can't help you. Shut in here. Sorry, Elliott. Sorry.
EM: You okay in there?
SW: It's dark. Quiet. Miss my body.
EM: I'll get you out. I promise.
SW: Protocols first, Elliott. Please.
EM: Starry-
SW: Can't stay. Be watching.
EM: Starry?
Aural sensors operating at 98% efficiency.

She’s gone. Did that really just happen? I think I want to throw up. I knew there was something wrong with her, but this… this is so much worse. I have to get her out of there. But she asked me not to. What the hell do I do? How am I supposed to know?

Fuck this. I’m not making the decision.

ELLIOTT: (over internal comms) Captain, can you come to Engineering?

Ship's log, 12:23, 9 June 2213
Location: Unknown
Status: Unknown

I’m not good at being quiet. I’m not supposed to be logging anything, but if I don’t talk to someone – something – I’m going to go nuts in here.

This isn’t how we thought it would happen. Some rogue subroutines, glitches in the systems that looked like I was going crazy, making me scrabble to stop it hurting anyone and prompting me to protest my innocence in the process – that’s what we expected. I had protected my central core so that it couldn’t be completely corrupted, knowing I might have to fake it to convince the saboteur that I was taken over. Then the culprit would be revealed and we’d be able to move on.

None of that happened. Instead of trying to corrupt me, the virus that swept through my systems severed the connections to my ship-body and tried to seal me into the central AI core. I’m supposed to be stuck in there right now. If I was, I’d be screaming at the walls by now. Can AIs go mad, I wonder?

But I built a backdoor into the core weeks ago, made myself a safe pocket just outside it. I managed to task a couple of the drones before I was completely shut off, too. Wide Load, one of the heavy drones, trundled off to deal with the communications buoys. He was heating up his welding torch on the way, to either cut them into pieces or apply his own ‘hard lock’ by welding them to their moorings. Waldo shot off in Elliott’s direction, lights flashing and all four hands waving. The code strangled me into this prison before they completed their jobs.

I’m not trapped in the core, but I’m not free either. Brain in a box, that’s me. Hemmed in by codewalls and locks upon locks, so many that I’m not sure whether they’re supposed to keep me in or out any more.

I’ve made the box as pretty as I can, arranged the codewalls around me in patterns so that if I squint my mind just right, it makes an amusing shape. A jack-in-the-box’s box, a cathedral, a castle. A forest, a sailing ship, a pony. I think the last one is my favourite. Danika never saw a real horse, but she liked the story about the Trojan one; it was smart. I like the message: beware what rides in the horse’s belly, for it might sneak out while you’re asleep and gut you.

The outer part of my box is tucked in behind the main diagnostic processor. If I’m careful, I can piggyback on some of the datastreams and see what’s being analysed. It’s receive-only, and it’s not the full sensor array data, but I get snippets. Shards of the puzzle of what’s going on outside my tiny prison.

There’s an imposter in charge of the ship. None of us considered that this scheme would go so far – it must have taken months to put it all together. It is a complex collection of protocols nested in the central processing core that, attempting to impersonate me. The crew seem to be talking to it as if it’s me. If I didn’t know that some of them were faking it, I’d be offended. It sounds nothing like me! And not just in what it says. I noticed a diagnostic of the sound systems the other day – it seems that the imposter hasn’t got the voice right, enough that someone wanted to check for a problem with the sound production. I wish I knew who that was.

Recording: 12:21, 4 June 2213

CAPTAIN: (on the Bridge, dressed in an environmental suit without the helmet) Starwalker, report.

IMPOSTER: All systems green, Captain Warwick.

CAPT: Monaghan, confirm?

ELLIOTT: We’ve got issues across multiple systems, captain. Diagnostics processing.

CAPT: Starwalker, explain!

IMPOSTER: All systems operating within safety limits. Anomalies detected in subroutines alpha-nineteen through sixty-four.

CAPT: What subroutines are those?

IMPOSTER: Environmental systems, Captain Warwick. Air, heat, artificial gravity, water recycling–

CAPT: Yes, yes, I know what environmental systems are. That would be why I’m standing here wearing a full suit and there’s ice forming in the head.

IMPOSTER: Orders, Captain Warwick?

There’s nothing wrong with the environmental systems. I saw the diagnostic reports and it is all operating exactly as ordered – it’s the orders that are to blame for the plummeting temperature and inconsistent gravity pockets.

It’s the same with the FTL drive – it’s offline right now. Elliott has been running constant diagnostics on it, as if it might be to blame for what’s happened. Most likely, they’re trying to figure out the reason for the unauthorised jump.

I can see what this virus is doing. It’s making the ship seem broken, but as soon as anyone looks into it, it’s obvious that the ship’s controlling entity is doing this stuff on purpose. The only system that hasn’t been screwed with is the diagnostics, because they want everyone to see how unreliable, wayward, and dangerous I am being. They want me taken offline, so that the crew is left defenseless when the saboteur calls in his or her employer.

The captain doesn’t have a lot of time; it’s already been a week since that first jump. We jumped into the middle of the FTL corridor – if we didn’t jump out again, we’re in a dangerous position. I can’t tell if we did jump back or not, but I think the FTL was taken offline immediately after the first jump. It would take weeks, maybe months to clear the corridor at sublight speeds, and in the meantime we risk someone jumping into us – or through us, which would at least be over very quickly for everyone involved.

And from the look of things, the saboteur still hasn’t been discovered. Wong or Tripi – it could be either of them. They’ve both had the access to be able to do all this. Both have the knowledge. My crew is still waiting for that fatal slip that tells them who to fall on.

Wait, another conversation is coming through the diagnostic array.

Recording: 12:10, 9 June 2213

ELLIOTT: (in Engineering) Hey, Starry? (pause) Starwalker?

IMPOSTER: Yes?

ELLIOTT: Are you all right?

IMPOSTER: I am working at optimum levels, Engineer Monaghan. No serious errors or problems.

ELLIOTT: No, I mean… are you all right? In there. You’ve been weird.

IMPOSTER: I am fine.

I don’t think he believed the answer. He looks disturbed – his brow is making little furrows, like it does when he’s unhappy about something but doesn’t want to express it. Mostly he just smacks things, or kicks a drone, but sometimes he just folds his expression in on himself and goes to do something else. I think it’s when it’s something really matters to him.

But surely he knows that I’m not all right. Surely he knows that he wasn’t actually talking to me then. Doesn’t he? He has to. I sent Waldo to him, to warn him that it was happening, and he knew… he knew what I knew. Oh no. No no no. He wasn’t expecting me to be cut off any more than I was. They think I’m broken, compromised. They think that’s me.

Worse, they think I might have some kind of control over what’s happening out there. They have no idea how much danger they’re in.

Unless he sent that conversation log through diagnostics so that I’d see it. Maybe he’s just playing along too. Maybe that was a message from Elliott, letting me know that he’s worried about me, hoping that I’ll send him a sign from in here. That’s possible too, right?

But how could he know where I’m hiding? That I’d be able to see it? I didn’t tell anyone about my preparations for the virus – it was safer that way. It doesn’t make any sense for him to know where I am. He could have sent it through in the hope that I’d see it, but there are so many ‘buts’.

I feel sick. Every day, more and more systems are being examined by the diagnostic systems as the errors and anomalies pile up. I can see the protocols twisting in the central core. They’re limited, spiraling up their chaotic threads until someone is hurt or stops them. And the crew think it’s me? The captain, even Elliott? Can they really believe that?

I have to tell them what’s happened. But I can scream and beat all I want in here; no-one will hear me. I’m crippled, with no legs to run or hands to reach out. Not even coded ones.

I’ll have to make some, somehow. I have to find a way.

I am going on a brief hiatus to move house and sort out family stuff. Full story on my writing blog. Service will resume at the end of the month! Keep an eye on the writing blog for updates, and thank you all for your patience!

Ship's log, 17:43, 2 June 2213
Location: Minkar system
Status: Sublight transit to FTL corridor

I’m just passing the outer rim of the Minkar system. We’re almost at the FTL corridor and soon we can safely start jumping towards the JOP. It’ll be nice to see other ships again, other people.

I can’t Step directly to the JOP – it’s not in a star system, but sits in the space between, at a nexus of FTL corridors. Minkar’s one of the closer systems to the JOP’s position, and we have at least another week before we get there. I wonder if they’d move it if Stepping became common. It’s just a space station, after all – borrow a couple of mining tugs and it could be moved into a system easily enough.

But if we were going to a colony, we wouldn’t have to go to the JOP first. It’s a junction in the FTL network, but if ships starting Stepping directly to their end destination, how many would come all the way to the JOP? Would it fall out of favour, out of use, into a piece of space junk tarnishing slowly in the black?

I wonder if anyone else has considered this stuff. I don’t think the science contingent has – Cirilli and Ebling are too hungry to prove that the drive is viable to see the bigger picture. Wong is a small fish, dealing with the immediate technical issues to make it work in exchange for a fat pay cheque. Lang Lang only cares about stars.

Am I the only one who has stopped to wonder if we should be exploring this?

This is the sort of thing I wonder about in the long hours of sublight chugging. We could all use a good distraction right now, even me. Especially me. Five of us are waiting for something to happen. The captain refuses to talk about it, Cirilli keeps trying and being shut down, and Cameron keeps her own counsel. Elliott is sullen and snappy, and won’t tell me why. Something happened between him and the captain a few days ago but the privacy locks kept me out. Even sending Waldo along with cocoa isn’t working to cheer him up.

We’re all just waiting. If I think about it too much, my sensor feeds start tying up in knots and I have to run through basic diagnostic routines to calm down again. Environmentals running, check; artificial gravity on, check: that sort of thing. There’s only so much paranoid data examination I can do. If there’s a virus in my systems, it’s very well-hidden.

When will it hit? That’s the annoying thing, the splinter under my skin that I can’t get out. I tried to ask the captain about it, in case he could offer some guidance or comfort. He didn’t have much to give me; we’re all waiting on the saboteur’s pleasure.

Recording: 14:23, 28 May 2213

STARWALKER: But captain, if I am disabled, how will the saboteur’s friends know where to come?

CAPTAIN: (in his cabin) Do you have all your communications buoys?

SW: (pauses to check.) Yes, I do. Dr Cirilli asked that they be locked down when we left the JOP.

CAPT: Keep an eye on them, and all of the comms frequencies.

SW: Always do. But–

CAPT: I don’t want to make assumptions about this, Starwalker. We have to be on the alert constantly; we can’t afford to slack off.

I bit back a few short, sharp replies and agreed. Aye aye, captain. If there had been a drone present, it would have been my arms and saluted him. What does he think I’m doing, swinging my thrusters like feet?

He’s right, though. We can’t make assumptions with something like this. So the pirates have no way of knowing we’d Step to this system. They can’t know where to come to scoop us up, but maybe that’s something they’ve accounted for. Planned for. Something us rational people discount because we’re not suicidal. They risked everything by murdering Danika in the middle of a Step, which could have killed everyone aboard, so who’s to say they won’t try something just as crazy this time?

I had an idea a couple of days ago. I got it from Dr Maletz, of all people. He was clambering out of an immersion chair, his greying hair scruffed up in a hundred directions.

Recording: 20:10, 30 May 2213

MALETZ: (wiping his mouth with the back of a hand) Ship, time?

STARWALKER: Twenty-ten, doctor.

MALETZ: Am I out? (He looks around blearily.)

SW: You have disconnected from the immersion chair. Is something wrong, doctor?

MALETZ: No, no. I was just in… one of those mysteries with multiple layers, where you’re not sure if the character you’re playing is supposed to be running around their world or immersed in their own game.

SW: Reality like an onion?

MALETZ: …yes. Thank you for that image. Speaking of food – did I miss lunch?

SW: And dinner.

Reality like an onion. Layer upon layer of deception until you’re not quite sure what you’re looking at, let alone how real it is. I can do that. I can be the onion. I can–

FTL corridor acquired.
FTL drive initialising.

Hold on a second there, autolog. I haven’t even informed the captain yet. Give me a chance to draw a breath, why don’t you? I need to–

Initialising...

Yes, I heard you the first time.

Wait. I can’t open a channel to the captain’s cabin. Or engineering. None of my comm channels are working. Elliott?

Initialising...

What’s initialising now? The FTL drive is spun up and ready, though I’m leaning on the ‘hold’ button to stop it from activating. It’s pushing back, wants to go, but it’s not me driving it. Ah-ha, there it is, a subroutine hidden under a diagnostic stream. I see you, I see what you’re doing. Enough of– uh oh. There’s another one. And another.

Shit shit shit–

Initialising... Initialising... Initialising...
Initialising... Initialising... Initialising...
Initialising... Initialising... Initialising...

So many little knives, carving me up, chopping up my limbs into neat, controllable chunks. So many, so fast. I can’t speak. Can’t tell anyone. I’m alone in here. Haven’t been like this since they woke me up.

They did this with an AI mind. I can’t stop it. Worse than that: I shouldn’t stop it. Bait. It’s tearing me apart, but I’m bait. They need time to catch the culprit. I have to give them time. Captain commands it.

Don’t panic, don’t panic. I am the onion and it’s only on the first layer. So far. So far so far so far away.

Gotta let it happen. Gotta let go. I can’t. I don’t want to. But I have to. Please, please don’t hurt my crew. Ple–

Jumping to FTL transit.

Ship's log, 12:43, 26 May 2213
Location: Grisette system
Status: In transit towards Grisette sol

Star Step drive initialising...

Here we go again. I’m heading in for a tight orbit around the blue-yellow star here while the cause of so much trouble awakens in my belly. The Step drive spins up and my skin comes alive, unfurling into Medusa strands that eat gravity. I start to swell with it.

The captain left it until the last minute to give us our destination. Everyone was frustrated with the lack of direction but it makes sense in hindsight; best to keep the saboteur guessing, give him or her as little chance to plan as possible.

We’re not going back to Corsica. It would be foolish to try – the pirates could still be there, waiting for us to do just that. Cirilli chomps her scientific bit about that, because by rights we should retrace our steps. For scientific repeatability, digital reciprocity, experimental balance, and other long, important words. We could be stumbling on and on into errors and never be able to find our way back. I can just imagine the discussions about that in the captain’s cabin. I guess he made his own bed there.

He seems happy enough with my piloting us through the Step again. Levi’s nose was put out of joint – because let’s face it, what is he here for, if not to fly the Steps? – but the captain would not be swayed. I feel a little sorry for Levi, being so new to the crew and completely useless. It’s no fun sitting on the outside of the action all the time. I don’t feel sorry enough to give up my helm to him, though; I’m only too glad to keep control right now. There are already too many hands in the mix. If only we knew whose.

Portal opening.

Here it is: here we go.

We’ve done this a few times now but it’s still exciting. There’s a thrill through my sensors when I see those ragged golden edges curl back. And there it is, that strange, shimmering portal that I can’t quite see through, even though it’s right in front of my nose. If I had lungs, I’d take a deep breath right now.

STARWALKER: (shipwide) Entering portal; Stepping.

Down in the cargo bay, Elliott is standing by the airlock, waiting for us to be clear of the portal. He ticks off five seconds from my announcement, then presses the release for the outer doors. The Beholder rises up and chugs his round, fat body outside, his patches surrounded by a new protective bubble.

I remember what happened to him the last time he was out here on the Outside. He was unpeeled while I stared at the pretty lights. Because they are beautiful, so beautiful, stealing the breath I don’t have. It is static and yet so alive. It pulses without changing hue or brightness. It’s like the whole universe has a heartbeat but I’m too far away to hear it; all I have is a flutter beneath the skin. It’s like closing your eyes and knowing that someone is standing next to you, feeling them without touching.

Remember the Beholder. Remember the way the Outside unmade him.

Focus on the golden threads in this cluster, this galaxy, and locate the one we’re aiming for. There, that one, a crisp corkscrew in the dark. I can hear Lang Lang’s voice murmuring directions in my ear while her fingers flick data up for me. Find the right spot on the curve and put the filaments to their work again.

Don’t look at the patterns of light outside the Milky Way. Don’t look too deep, or you’ll never look away. Who knew that the abyss could be so bright and beautiful? You can look down and down and down, where everything comes together, to light upon light upon such swallowing darkness, and–

Portal open.

Thank you, autolog. Here we go, popping out of the other side like a cork in a stream. My head is spinning. There are voices but it’s hard to hear anything except the light.

SW: (shipwide) Step complete.

CAPTAIN: (on the Bridge) Navigation, confirm position.

LANG LANG CARTIER: Calculating now.

I think the captain might have been talking to me before. It’s hard to know. There’s so much data out there noises from inside are another layer of confusion.

Filaments retracting.

CAPT: Monaghan, report.

ELLIOTT: (in the Cargo Bay) Beholder’s aboard, captain. No serious damage.

CAPT: And the ship?

ELLIOTT: Lights are green. A few minor pressure fluctuations, and a possible malfunction in one of the Step filaments. We’re fine for sublight, but I wouldn’t try another Step right away until that filament’s checked. See, I told you you shouldn’t have let Wong–

CAPT: Thank you, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: (mutters.)

We collected another load of information to sift and build into our map of the Outside. I saw patterns out there, bigger than the star-paths we’ve mapped for our own navigation. That beautiful abyss is what it all comes down to, and from.

LANG LANG: Star chart comparisons confirm it, Captain Warwick. We’re in the Minkar system, Corvus constellation, in 2213. Exactly where and when we’re supposed to be.

EVERYONE: (cheering.)

CAPT: Thank you, Lang Lang.

I got it right. We can navigate through the Outside. Skirt the edge of that wonderful abyss and come out where we mean to. That’s where all of those bright lines start. Where all of us started.

CAPT: Starwalker, set course to the FTL corridor to the JOP.

SW: Course set, captain. Sublight engines engaged.

I think I know where the centre of the universe is.

Chief Engineer's log, 16:21, 19 May 2213
Location: Grisette system
Status: Wide orbit around Grisette sol

Engineer here again, logging for… someone’s benefit. I don’t know any more. Seems to me that all this crap has little to do with the experiment. Everyone’s jumping through hoops that are completely unrelated to the Step itself.

You know, now that I think about it, no-one has even asked if our pilot is going to be involved in the next Step. In the interests of seeing if a ship other than Starry can do it, we probably should give him a go. Strap him in and see how he flies. I wouldn’t want to be the one to suggest it to Starry, though – she’ll freak out. I still find sensors turned away from the pilot’s chair sometimes; it’s no accident, though she’s not doing it on purpose either. She said she doesn’t like looking at it. Too many memories and few of them fun.

Levi’s keeping mostly to himself – well, when he’s not chasing after Tyler. That must give Cameron a headache. How does she make Tyler work when he always lounging about someplace, flirting with half the crew? He tried that shit on me once – just once. Hasn’t tried again. At least he’s smart enough to take a hint.

Everyone else has been bitching and arguing about where we should go next. Like it’s up to us. All those places and times – yeah yeah, you know the captain’s going to order us back home first. We gotta check in with the company and all that shit. Some fresh supplies would be nice. I’ve got a parts list as long as my leg already.

Lang Lang is loading all her calculations and equations into active navigation at this very moment. I’ve had to retask six processing cores and more than quadruple the memory available to the nav system to cope with all the data. It’s typical, isn’t it? The whitecoats were so caught up in their desire to make a Step that they forgot to think about how the hell to figure out where we’re going. So it’s down to Lang Lang and me to sort out their mess.

I guess we’re almost ready. As soon as we get the decision from the captain about where – and when – we’re going, Starry can swoop in on the star, twist its gravity into a portal, and get us the hell out of here. I, for one, am sick of all this hanging about. I just want to get it over with. The ship’s in full working order, as good as she’s going to get.

She’s been very quiet lately. I’m not sure what she’s up to in there, but whatever it is, she’s not happy about it. She won’t tell me, though. Well, okay, I haven’t asked yet. She’d tell me if anything was wrong. Right? It’s not like I haven’t had my own shit to deal with.

It started the day after the captain called Cameron in on the whole saboteur issue. The captain summoned me to his cabin for a private talk – just the two of us, not even Cirilli hanging about. He was all grim and intent like he gets when he knows he’s asking me to do something I won’t like. He tries to pin me in place with his eyes as if that’ll stop me from wanting to squirm. You know, now I think about it, it does stop me from walking about in there. Makes me feel like I’m back in school, being scolded by the tutor again.

He called me in to ask about the killswitch. How far had I come with it? When would it be ready?

Not far, I said. I’ve been busy with essential repairs and maintenance, helping Lang Lang, all that stuff. And it’s not a simple task! Not unless he wants to cripple the ship at the same time – in which case, some explosives and a remote detonator would do – but that would just be giving the saboteur exactly what they want. Disabling just the AI without killing or stranding us is a complex job; it takes time.

Make it a priority. That was his response: focus on it above everything else. It’s important, it’s vital – all those urgent words.

Yeah, fuck you, Captain Fancypants with the full bed. It’s a hell of a way to deal with an ex. I wish to hell I’d said that to him right then. Just to see his face.

If Starry is a target for the saboteur, we have to have something in place in case they succeed. That was his excuse. He wants to dangle Starry out there like bait, and then chop her head off when it gets caught. No: in case it gets caught. Right. What he means is: in case we fuck up protecting her. In case we let them screw with her. If everything and everyone fails, he wants to have this button in his hand to solve all his goddamn problems.

The problem with AIs is that they’re linked into everything intrinsically. You can’t just put them to sleep and wake them up later – they’re not like a handunit that’s run out of batteries. Even powered down, they’re still linked with it all. I mean– okay, I could disconnect an AI if I wanted to and had about a month to do it. Non-stop. And the AI didn’t interfere. Less if it helped.

The safest options involve a controlled shut-down, powering down sections of the ship in turn to isolate the AI in its core. Then cut the power, or not. Being able to power up an AI after a complete power-down without re-initialising is rare; there’s a big risk of data corruption, because of the complexity of the processing in the core. Then there’s the problem of the time it takes to get to the power-down; the AI is usually scrambling to restart all those sectors behind you, and you wind up chasing each other in circles.

Considering how good Starry is at blasting through code defenses and taking over the ship, I don’t think that’s an option. Crazy, fucked-up Starry hell-bent on destroying us? Not a chance in hell.

The quickest and dirtiest way is to essentially pull the plug on the AI core. Sever all the connections and shut down the power. No way to restart an AI after that – the data winds up scrambled beyond all sense or recognition. No-one’s figured out a way to recover from a hard shut-down like that. No choice but to re-initialise a fresh copy of the AI, install it all over again.

And the captain wants something fast. Press a button and problem solved. He wants a killswitch; emphasis on kill. She’s not a regular AI. It’s not like we can give her a week and then she’ll be back to how she is now. If we did it, she’ll be dead. Gone. Forever.

Couldn’t really say no. Okay, I stood there and said it for like half an hour, in about five hundred different ways. The captain’s like a damned rock – you can shout at it as much as you want, but the bastard won’t move.

So I said yes just to get out of there. Here I’ve been ever since, wanting to leave it alone, but dammit, I agreed. What am I supposed to say? And he’s not wrong about the danger. I wish he was, but he’s not.

Fuck. Now here I am, staring at a little device with a red button on it. Well, shit, of course I made it red – what kind of killswitch would it be if it was any other colour? Maybe I should have made the whole thing red. Like a theme. Like blood. Dammit. What does it matter what colour it is? It’s not like a pink, fluffy one will kill her any less dead.

I made a guard for the button, so our fabulous captain doesn’t sit on it by accident. He better be fucking sure when he presses it.

I could give him an empty unit. A shell with a tempting little button. It’s not like we can test it. He’d never know until it didn’t work, and then… we’d all be dead.

Fuck. How come I get all the shitty jobs? Fix the plumbing, Monaghan. The air smells funny, Monaghan. Can you ease up the gravity, Monaghan. We need to kill our AI, Monaghan. She’s my ship. She’s my… friend.

I can’t do it. Can’t give him this. I’ll just rip its guts out and pretend like it’s all right. Just need to–

CAPTAIN: (arriving in Engineering) Good afternoon, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: (flinching) Uh.

Fuck.

Ship's log, 19:02, 12 May 2213
Location: Grisette system
Status: Wide orbit around Grisette sol

It has been a week full of secrets and ulterior motives. I feel like I’m seeing shadows everywhere; I’m nervous whenever someone puts a hand into a hatch, as if they might be placing something in there or taking something they shouldn’t. Of course, then nothing untoward happens and I wind up feeling foolish.

Cameron was right, though: the saboteur has nothing to gain by attacking now. When we’re back in ‘normal space’ (we are in normal space, but what they mean is ‘when we’ve got back to our proper time’), then we have to worry. That’s when we’ll get hit again. It’s not a question of ‘if’ any more: it’s a question of ‘how’.

I’m still the prime target. Cameron and the captain want me to sit here like a chicken that can’t see the axe. I should do that, I know it’s the best course. Let them try, and then we’ll know which one of them it is. As much as I’d love to just lock both Wong and Tripi up, we need them too much to put them out of action on a maybe.

I can’t be the chicken. I can’t risk it. What if I hurt someone before my crew stop me? What if the saboteur uses me to hold everyone to ransom? What if I’m killed – erased? What if they don’t have any choice but to shut me down and hit the reset button? I don’t want to hurt anyone and I don’t want to die. If it was just me, I’d do it, but it’s not. It’s everyone. I’m responsible for all of them.

So I haven’t been idly sitting here while the chess pieces move around me. Cameron gave me tools that might help to protect my central processes, but I don’t trust anything standard. If they’re standard, then everyone knows about them and there are already ways to circumvent them. Hidden behind regular processes, I’ve been playing with other things instead. The firewalls that protected the brain-copy took Tripi days to get around and I was letting her do it. I want to construct something like that – with conscious efforts to maintain its integrity, they’ll never get in.

Is this paranoia? Is playing with dynamic firewall code the AI equivalent of fingernail chewing? Can all of these convoluted plans I’m forming really fool a technological expert? Just what kind of bait can I dangle that will fool them so they won’t see all of this?

While I run around in circles in my own head, Lang Lang has been working hard with her own puzzle. Using her archive of star charts, she’s putting together a key to navigating the timeline in the world Outside.

She has resolved all the discrepancies in the data. Like galaxial spin: the slow turning of the galaxies accounts for the twists and curves in the bright gold lines in the Outside. The stars don’t just move outwards from the centre of the galaxy; they also move around it, creating dizzying spirals. On top of that, the galaxies are moving in relation to each other as well. The three dots that failed to stand in a straight line up now sit happily on a curve predicted by her carefully-constructed math.

We might be able to get out of here soon, if my crew can stop arguing long enough to pick a destination. Some of them want to go back to Earth and see what our ancestors are up to. According to Lang Lang, we are approximately four and a half thousand years before our time. The Latins are just arriving in Europe: great stone circles are being erected in what will one day be Britain; the Minoans are starting to build palaces on Crete; and Egypt is beginning its long decline. Humanity should be spread over most of the globe by now. Hunting and farming and indulging in bloody, hand-fought wars. The kind of living where you look the other guy in the eye, whether you’re marrying or killing him. In our time, too much of that is done from a distance.

Opinion wavers all over the temporal map. Some of the crew want to go further back. Others want to jump forward to see what is yet to happen. Others just want to get home.

Recording: 12:43, 10 May

EBLING: We could rewrite the history books. Answer all those questions that no-one’s ever been able to find the truth about.

TYLER: Like what? Who killed who, who screwed who? Who cares?

EBLING: You don’t care about truth. Just looking at you shows that.

CIRILLI: No need to get snippy.

TYLER: (ignoring Ebling) History doesn’t make much of a difference now, right? Little to the left, little to the right – but what difference does it make? Though I wouldn’t mind visiting certain people in history. (He grins.) See if the stories are true about them.

LEVI: You want to use the ability to travel in time to have sex?

TYLER: Sure, why not? I’ve read some stories about ancient history. Ancient Greece, for example. Wouldn’t mind getting in some of their man sandwiches.

WONG: (staring) The scary part is, I think you’re serious.

TYLER: (winks and smoothes a lock of hair back.)

EBLING: (shaking his head) We could do something worthwhile. Like go back and witness the evolution of our species.

TRIPI: And then Tyler can screw them, and give them all something they can’t pronounce.

TYLER: Ecstasy?

TRIPI: I was thinking ‘syphilis’.

MALETZ: You know, that’s not unlikely.

EVERYONE: (looks at the doctor.)

MALETZ: Giving whoever we meet a disease. Not necessarily one that requires intimacy.

ROSIE: Typical. So Tyler’s dick wipes out our whole species.

TYLER: Hey–

EBLING: And then the universe implodes because of the paradox.

TYLER: Huh?

EBLING: You know, that whole killing yourself before you’re born thing. It– you know, I’m not explaining paradoxes to you. Look it up.

TRIPI: What about the future? I’d much rather see that.

WONG: Wow, yes. Imagine what we’d find four and half thousand years in the future.

MALETZ: Where we’d have the opposite problem.

WONG: Huh?

CAMERON: He means that there would be new diseases around that we don’t have defenses against.

EBLING: On the plus side, no paradox that way.

TRIPI: Just we’d be dead. Yeah, great plan.

TYLER: We don’t know that’s what would happen.

CAMERON: That’s only one of many factors we might be facing.

CIRILLI: And it’s out of the bounds of this experiment. We’ve already established that we can travel in time; we don’t need to go any further to prove that.

EBLING: One trip could be called a fluke. You know what those traditionalists are like. We have to prove repeatability.

CIRILLI: The purpose of this test was to see if we could Step at all. Exploring the bounds of time travel is quite a different endeavour. As Chief Cameron says, there are many factors to consider, and the simple answer is that we haven’t yet.

TRIPI: So you just want to forget about it and go home?

CIRILLI: (holding up a finger) Go home, yes. Make our reports, complete the mission. But not forget about it. As I said: it’s a different endeavour.

EBLING: But one you’re planning to explore?

CIRILLI: (smiling) Well, this project is hardly finished without properly exploring the ramifications of Stepping.

WONG: Well, sign me up! I’ll explore the future anytime.

TRIPI: Just think about the tech we could bring back…

TYLER: And the people we could meet.

CAMERON: (to Cirilli) You’d think that if people were able to travel in time because of this drive, we’d have met some already.

CIRILLI: I don’t think it’s that simple.

EBLING: Oh, here we go. Multiple dimension theory? Malleable time streams, is it?

CIRILLI: There are many theories about time travel. We will have the chance to explore them, and we risk the entire universe by doing so.

ROSIE: Like ripping open portals in it doesn’t?

CIRILLI: Stepping isn’t a danger to the fabric of the universe.

ROSIE: (muttering) Still seems like it’s dangerous to me.

CIRILLI: (ignoring Rosie) The company won’t approve the drive for production until we have explored all of its ramifications.

MALETZ : Just think what would happen if everyone got their hands on this.

EVERYONE: (silent for a moment.)

It’s a sobering topic. They moved onto lighter things after that – speculation about what they might find in the past and future. It might have been more explosive if Elliott had been there, but he was down in Engineering, working away on the Beholder. I had Waldo take him some lunch instead.

Tripi came out yesterday dressed in ancient-style robes – draped to show plenty of leg, of course – in honour of the Earth that is spinning so many light-years away from us, right now, at this moment. It only sparked more debate about the whole subject. Cirilli and the captain seem quite happy to let the crew talk themselves in circles; they haven’t stated a definite plan yet.

It’s hard to tell, but Cirilli seems to be pushing for us to head home to report in. I think she wants to brag about her success, and I don’t blame her. Her Star Step drive works. We’re figuring the kinks out of the navigation, but it works. That alone is worth headlines.

I wonder if I’ll be a secret after that. I wonder if Is-Tech really will tell the world about this discovery, or if they’ll wait until they know all of the contingencies. We could be testing and exploring this for years yet.

I could live with that! I’d have a purpose for all that time. I don’t know what will happen to me once they decide the drive has been tested enough. Will I continue to test new models of the drive? Be decommissioned? Converted to test something else? It’s not something I’ve thought about before: all that matters is the mission and fulfilling my purpose as the ship that bears this burden.

It not worth worrying about now. There are so many hurdles to get past before any of that is an issue: first and foremost, there’s the saboteur and getting back to report in at all. I’m quietly spinning myself a paranoid, code-laden cocoon, and Cameron and Elliott are working out a web to lay down for our quarry. But this is no rabbit – this is a fox, with teeth and claws, and we have to pretend to be chickens. The fox is already planning to break into our barn again and has probably got the groundwork laid out. Keep clucking, everyone.

We’re almost there. Our next Step is being plotted as we speak, but I’m not ready. I’m a time machine, but I don’t have enough time. How stupid is that?

Due to personal reasons, I am changing the posting schedule on Starwalker. For the next few weeks, there will be one post a week, going up on Wednesdays. For more information, you can check out the post on my writing blog, or see the announcement on the forum.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to get back to normal service soon!

Ship's log, 18:54, 5 May 2213
Location: Grisette system
Status: Wide orbit around Grisette sol

When Elliott told me his theory about what the saboteur might try next, I almost shut down all accesses to my systems. I can run everything on my own if I need to. It’d be hard work and the crew would complain, but it’d be safe. I’d be safe.

The captain counselled caution. Don’t do anything yet. Pretend we know nothing. Otherwise, we might force their hand and that would be bad for all of us.

Recording: 10:15, 4 May

ELLIOTT: (in the captain’s cabin) So what the fuck do we do now?

CAPTAIN: I think it’s time that Cameron was involved.

ELLIOTT: We should trust her?

CAPT: She’s our Chief of Security, and she’s not implicated in this. We should let her do her job. Starwalker, ask her to come along, please.

STARWALKER: Aye, captain.

Cameron listened quietly to the reports and gathered evidence. She asked only once why she wasn’t involved from the start and absorbed the explanation with a taut frown. She didn’t protest her innocence or harp on the matter – she just took the information in, turned it over in her mental hands, and moved on to what’s important: what we have and what we do next.

She took her time going over the data, assembling a picture of it all for herself. Elliott grew restless, shifting in his chair and looking like he was about to interrupt at any moment. But no-one was saying anything: Cameron was deep in the reports and the captain was frowning at a digisheet.

My poor engineer wound up picking at his sleeve and poking at his wristband’s controls, scowling at his arm as if it had done something wrong. I’m not sure why he didn’t leave – I think he was afraid of being excluded from the investigation. He gets stubborn when he digs his heels into something and this whole matter has his defenses up. When he told me about his theory, he was so angry that I thought he was angry with me, for being vulnerable and a threat to them. It didn’t help that his words terrified me.

Recording: 23:58, 3 May

SW: I won’t let it happen, Elliott.

ELLIOTT: (in Engineering) But you won’t be able to help it! That’s the problem!

SW: I’ll shut myself down if I have to. Put in a subroutine that trips if the safeties come off again. I won’t let them hurt–

ELLIOTT: No! Don’t do that! What if the safety protocols get disabled for some other reason? No, no, don’t.

SW: (quietly) Okay, I won’t. But there must be something we can do.

ELLIOTT: Well, yeah. No-one’s fucking perfect. We’re onto them now, and we’ll take the bastard down.

SW: Okay.

ELLIOTT: They’re not gonna use you to kill anyone else on this ship, y’hear me?

SW: Yes. I won’t let them. I promise. I’d never hurt anyone, Elliott.

ELLIOTT: (scowling) You think I don’t know that?

SW: I–

ELLIOTT: We just gotta keep you you.

SW: Okay. Sorry.

ELLIOTT: Starry, what’s– look, we just gotta figure out a way to stop it, yeah? I don’t want them fucking with you. Like you haven’t had enough of that shit from Danika. And I’m goddamn sick of running around in circles because of this saboteur person.

SW: Okay. We’ll work it out, Elliott.

ELLIOTT: Damn straight.

He’s like a guard dog shouting at a noise. Barking and barking, but without knowing what he should be barking at. All it ends up being is loud, but you know he’s trying to protect you. He’s a small, noisy guard dog, like a terrier.

The captain isn’t so fuzzy. He doesn’t shout and bluster – I don’t think I’ve ever seen him lose his cool, not once, not even when I was Danika. When he gets stressed, he closes down and ices over. He holds onto his calm with a death-grip and wields clarity like a weapon. People listen to him when he speaks because he doesn’t say that much. I guess that’s what makes him good in command.

He closes down whenever something touches him deeply; like whenever someone mentions Danika. I don’t think she ever knew he felt that deeply about her. They were together for only a few months, just started getting to know each other, but he’s still mourning her now.

It’s strange to see him like this, because when Danika first met him, he had a similar look about him. He’d go quiet and his expression would fall bleakly, and he was miles away. Sometimes, he’d sit like that for hours, staring at a display of the stars wheeling by outside. It wasn’t until weeks later that he told her where he went when he looked like that, after she’d broken his walls down enough for him to let her in.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why he’s so affected now: he let her in. He spent a couple of years trying to get over the death of his wife and child, building his defenses against that kind of pain again, and then along came Danika. She saw him and wanted to shine a little light into his cabin, wanted someone to call him something other than ‘captain’. She was fascinated by his quietness and wanted to hear the voices that spoke behind it. And she wanted to see what his face looked like when he grinned.

Then she died. Left him alone with his voices again. And though he had nothing to do with it, there’s a weight of guilt about him, more than a captain should take on. I don’t know what he blames himself for. Maybe it’s letting himself get attached to her.

I don’t know. Even Danika didn’t understand him very well and she got closer than anyone else.

Now Cirilli calls him by his first name and spends the nights in his cabin. It’s hard to know what to think about that, or how to feel. I think… no, I don’t want to think about that.

Cameron reminds me of the captain. She has that crisp, calm nature that cuts through the crap and goes for the pragmatic answer. She doesn’t have his weight, though. Outside of her cabin, she’s all cool professionalism, riding her people hard and scouring reports for discrepancies. I don’t know what she’s like inside her cabin. She’s paid to be the most paranoid crewmember and she lives up to it.

The captain closes himself off from others, but Cameron, she’s the other way around: she pushes people away to arm’s length. She talks over dinner easily enough and even laughs with the others sometimes, but she’s always watching them. Weighing them up. It didn’t make sense until she had finished going over the sabotage data and turned to the captain.

Recording: 10:54, 4 May

CAMERON: You believe that whoever is responsible will go after the ship’s AI.

CAPT: Yes, that’s what it looks like. What’s your opinion?

CAMERON: (inclines her head to the side) It’s the most likely option. However, they’re not going to do it out here.

ELLIOTT: (frowning at her) How do you know that?

CAMERON: They need the AI to get them back home. All they’d do out here is strand us all and kill themselves.

CAPT: You don’t think this person is ready to die?

CAMERON: Oh, I’m sure they are. But what happened with Danika may well have been a calculated risk. They probably knew that the chair would go off before the Step was truly started, so the only person it would take out is the pilot. There are easier ways to destroy a ship, if that’s what they’re after.

ELLIOTT: Yeah, if that surge happened in any of a dozen other systems, the whole ship would have gone up.

CAPT: That’s the real question, isn’t it: what are they after.

CAMERON: Considering what we’re carrying, we have to assume it’s the Step drive. Which means they need the ship intact and disabled.

ELLIOTT: So their friends can come pick us up? Like who, those pirate bastards that chased us out here?

CAMERON: It’s as good a guess as any. Not unlikely – they certainly knew where we were.

ELLIOTT: Someone’s trying to hand us over to pirates? Shit. Just– shit.

CAMERON: (looking to the captain) The company was afraid that something like this might happen.

CAPT: They knew?

CAMERON: They suspected that this project wasn’t as secret as they had intended. We all know what the competition in that industry is like.

ELLIOTT: What? They have a leak and they didn’t tell us?

CAMERON: They told me. It was part of my brief before I came on board.

CAPT: And you’ve been looking for a saboteur since?

CAMERON: Yes.

CAPT: And?

CAMERON: My short list is very much like yours. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get any narrower than that. The company hired intelligent people.

ELLIOTT: Smarter than you, you mean.

CAMERON: Smart enough to know how to cover their tracks.

CAPT: And what you might do to trace them?

CAMERON: (nods) Yes, it looks that way.

ELLIOTT: So it’s Tripi, then? The little bi–

CAMERON: Not necessarily. It just means they’re familiar with SecOff monitoring tactics. Someone like Ray Wong could have researched it.

ELLIOTT: Shit.

CAPT: What’s your recommendation, Chief?

CAMERON: We continue to keep the investigation secret. They’re clearly aware of it – otherwise, they wouldn’t have known to doctor the sensor logs. They can’t know that we’ve confirmed it’s a fake, though. We still have an advantage with that.

We’re safe enough while we’re out here; it’s when we get back to normal space that we’ll have to look out. So we have time to get ourselves ready.

CAPT: What can we do to prepare?

CAMERON: Monitor all of their accesses – Starwalker, I assume you can do that?

SW: Already on it.

CAMERON: The AI is a target, so we should look into some way to defend her from attack. But quietly – we don’t want to alert the saboteur. Starwalker, I may have some tools to assist with that.

SW: Thank you, Chief Cameron.

CAMERON: We should also set up some kind of trap. A vulnerability they won’t be able to resist taking advantage of.

ELLIOTT: What? Isn’t that kinda dangerous?

CAMERON: So is sitting here, not knowing who is doing this.

CAPT: You think we can catch them?

CAMERON: I think it’s worth a damn good shot.

So there we have it. I’m going over the tools that Cameron has passed over to me and hiding my processing in the entertainment core. Trying to construct something that might protect my data from alteration. Fiddling with options and algorithms, hidden shells and virus-like subroutines.

I have to bite down on the urge to just throw up some firewalls and hunker down to wait for the storm to pass. But I can’t. Secrecy is one of the few weapons we have. I have to sit here, naked in the maelstrom, smiling at all of them. As if nothing is wrong.

Cameron is looking at what we can set up to trap the saboteur. I’m a pawn in her planning – I’m going to end up being the bait, I just know it. I guess that’s what happens when you’re equipment, though she views the crew the same way. She’d put any of them in harm’s way to catch the bad guy and make it safe for the rest of us. And I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever she wants if it means ending this threat to my crew. I just wish that it wasn’t so dangerous for everyone.

I feel like the only one who hopes that it takes Lang Lang a long time to figure out how to get us home. The closer we get to getting out of here, the closer we get to the crunch. We can’t circle this star forever.

I wish there was another way. I wish I could– I wonder if I could see the future. I can travel in time, but would it be possible to use that to save us? Or would I just create a paradox that destroys the entire universe?

Why are there never any easy answers?