Starwalker

Ship's log, 12:16, 15 September 2213
Location: JOP
Status: Docked

They’re forgetting me. My crew, the ones who went to the captain to ask him to find a way to save me. The ones I’ve nurtured and kept safe in turn. They’re getting used to me not being here.

It’s only been a couple of weeks, but already they’ve stopped almost speaking to me. At first, they’d catch themselves and shake their heads, leaving cut-off syllables of my name hanging on the air. Crouching behind the sensor datastreams, I’d prick my ears and wait, but they moved on without me. The only person who does that now is Lang Lang, too deep in starcharts to remember my absence until she’s halfway through the second sentence.

This is worse than being boxed. At least I was working towards a way out then – I had something to strive for. All I can do right now is wait and watch, watch and wait, without even fingers to drum on the tabletop.

There is an end in sight, though. Elliott has finished overhauling my systems – Tripi’s stain has been scrubbed out of every corner. He sent reports on the mess to the Judiciary when he was done, so they’d know the extent of the damage she caused. They dragged him off for a full day of interviews yesterday, most likely to discuss it.

He’s not the only one. The captain and Cameron have also been called in for a second round of questioning, and stayed away longer than the first time. So many hours of questions – I have to wonder what they ask. I didn’t think the matter was that complicated. Maybe Tripi’s lawyer is searching for a crack in the stories to lever open.

I should stop thinking about this. I’ll just worry about it even though there’s nothing I can do, and no way to find out how off-base I am.

There are signs of life in Engineering. After he got back from the interview, Elliott stumbled down there and fell asleep next to the hulk of the sublight engines – he does that when he’s unhappy, I’ve noticed. As if he doesn’t want to face his bed on his own. As if he doesn’t want to let himself be comfortable. He seeks a harder kind of comfort down with the machinery he keeps running.

We’d all die without him. I wonder if he knows that.

ELLIOTT: (yawning and patting a bulkhead on his way out of Engineering) Time to wake up now.

What?

Wait, I think he’s talking to me. He’s ready to ‘reinstall’ the AI. He’s going to give me my voice back. Mustn’t be too eager, mustn’t push for it, no matter how much I want to run full-tilt towards him with my arms spread out. I want my body back.

Mustn’t wish that he’d waited until after he went to get some food to tell me. Now I’m watching him with way too much intensity as he prods through my galley. Yes, it’s all restocked. Yes, there’s lots to choose from. Come and get me out of this hole already!

ELLIOTT: (pokes at a holographic terminal on the galley wall with one hand while he flicks a wrapper open with the other) Captain?

CAPTAIN: (over internal comms) Yes, Monaghan?

ELLIOTT: Gonna reboot the AI now.

CAPT: Heading to the Bridge.

This is it! Finally. The captain’s going to monitor from the Bridge and Elliott is heading back to Engineering to kick off the process. When I get out, I’m going to– wait. Something’s happening. What the hell? Visitors now? No, you can’t come on board. Go away! Elliott, give me my voice already!

SHARK STEN: (on the docking bridge) …outrageous! It won’t be allowed. (He tries to get in the way of the suited man next to him.)

STRANGER: (grabs Sten’s wrist and waves it near the door sensor) We demand access.

STEN: (struggles to pull his arm free) And I demand that you stop, right now! Let go of me! This is a classified proj– ship.

STRANGER: (steps through the airlock door the moment it opens) My company demands full disclosure.

STEN: (hurries aboard behind the stranger) Tough! Your company isn’t allowed full disclosure. We have confidentiality injunctions that prevent you from–

STRANGER: (presses forward, waving a digisheet) Freedom of the press allows me to do what I want.

STEN: (spots the Judiciary drone and raises his voice pointedly) You’re not a real journalist! You’re interfering in an on-going investigation! You’re violating injunctions! You’re– compromising evidence!

Lawyers! All they know how to do is flap their lips. Punch him in the face! Jump on him and sit on him! Someone – anyone!

Dammit, I can’t even send the drones down there. Wait, Maletz is passing by. See them, doctor. Do something.

MALETZ: (stops, eyeing the situation, then steps to the side and pokes a holographic terminal) Captain, SecOffs, we have a situation at the airlock.

STRANGER: (tries to head past Maletz further into the ship.)

MALETZ: (stands in the doorway calmly.)

STRANGER: (stops, not willing to physically interact with the doctor.)

STEN: It’s unlawful! You have to leave!

CAPT: (arriving) What is going on here? What are you doing on my ship?

CAMERON, ROSIE and TYLER: (arrive at a jog.)

STRANGER: I am a representative of the press, and I demand–

ROSIE: (steps up behind him and grabs his upper arms.)

STRANGER: Hey!

CAMERON: (takes the digisheet from the stranger’s hand and looks at it.)

TYLER: (nudges the Judiciary drone with a toe) Justiciars are on the way.

CAPT: Well, Chief?

CAMERON: He has a journalist pass. Stamped by Boereque Intergalactic.

STRANGER: (struggles in Rosie’s grip) It’s all legal. Let go of me!

ROSIE: (swings him around and into a wall.)

STRANGER: (impacts the wall and he groans.)

Boereque. Who? I don’t have access to my data cores! I think they’re one of Is-Tech’s competitors. What kind of ship-building company has a name that rhymes with ‘wreck’? And they hired a journalist to come find out about me? How did they know about me? How did they know I was here? Were they the ones who set Tripi on us?

Dammit, my sensor feeds need subtitles, for those of us not connected to any kind of database or comms system. This is so unfair.

Boots are clonking down the docking bridge – I can hear them coming. Justiciars. Never thought I’d be glad to see them.

CAPT: (crosses to the airlock doors.)

LEAD JUSTICIAR: (stops at the threshold, his helmet turning to survey the cargo hold) What’s the situation here?

CAPT: We have an intruder.

STRANGER: (mumbling into the wall he’s being pressed against) I’m a journalist. I have rights.

CAPT: (firmly) Not on my ship.

CAMERON: (steps forward and holds out the digisheet with the stranger’s credentials) His creds appear to be in order, but they don’t give him the right to violate company privacy. This is corporate espionage.

LEAD: (looks at the digisheet, then speaks in the direction of the man against the wall) What’s your purpose in being here?

STRANGER: Investigating a story about a corrupted AI and some weird tech.

LEAD: (gestures for the pair of armoured clones behind him to fetch the intruder) The AI has been decommissioned. There’s no story here.

JUSTICIARS: (step forward to relieve Rosie of her charge. They hold him by an arm each and turn to march him out of the airlock. Their Lead and the captain shift to give them room to leave.)

LEAD: (turning his helmet towards the captain) We’re not your private police force, Captain. I hope this doesn’t happen again.

CAPT: (levels a flat look at the blank faceplate) I’ll plan not to have any more intruders, then.

LEAD: (spins on his heel and clomps off down the bridge.)

Pretty ballsy move. Trying to bluster and bluff a way onto a private ship. Even to the Judiciary. Turns out that the little armoured nubbin sitting in my cargo bay is of use to us after all – it called them in before any of my crew could.

I’ll still be glad when it’s gone. When I’m up and running again, when I have control of my helm and get us the hell out of here. Away from all these things designed to hurt us.

This had better not delay me here – if it turns into another Judiciary case, it just might. They’re not going to take it that far, are they? There’s a part of me that wonders if I’ll ever be free of the JOP’s tethers. And once I’m free, will I ever dare to come back?

The little shark lawyer looks like he’s about to explode. Possibly all over my deck. The captain has locked down the airlock and dismissed everyone except Cameron; the three of them are on their way to his cabin now. Looks like the little armoured nubbin has forced them to seek privacy, which means I won’t know what’s going on.

It’s so unfair.

STEN: (as the door to the captain’s cabin closes behind them) ..bastards from Boereque will try again, and they’ll have better creds next time….

Shit.

Initialising...

What now, autolog! Oh, Elliott. He’s starting me up.

About time. Let’s get going already!

Ship's log, 02:52, 8 September 2213
Location: JOP
Status: Docked

I am officially dead. For Danika, this is the second time, and it’s no more accurate now than it was the first time around. The motions have been gone through, the logs have been doctored and filed, and my decks are missing their hum. All of my systems are offline and I am on life support, an organ donor waiting for surgery, a body waiting for a brain.

It was done the night after we docked without any big speeches or goodbyes, while most of those aboard were asleep. No-one wanted a fuss, least of all me. Some of them were angry when they found out the next morning. Elliott told them all to fuck off with his usual eloquence, rough with the strain. He’s struggling with this more than he would like to admit.

My crew are grim-faced and monosyllabic – they know I might be able to ‘come back’, but as far as they’re aware, that will require a risky procedure that might not work. It’s like trying to resuscitate a human body: there’s lots they can try, but it works far less often than anyone wants to admit and the chance of damage is high.

I want to ease them. I want to tell them that I’m fine, they don’t have to worry. It’s just while we’re here. I don’t want to see them moping around my decks, exchanging unhappy glances. I can’t help but notice how little they’re enjoying this window of shore leave. Even Tyler is restrained; he hasn’t brought partners back to his quarters for sex since we docked.

The captain says it’s necessary. And the logical part of me – which is the biggest part – agrees with him. They need to be able to sell this, and they need deniability. But it hurts my heart. They’re upset because they care about me. I can make it better for them, but I’m choosing not to. I feel like I’m being a bad ship for them. This has been one of the hardest orders to follow.

It’s all more difficult thanks to the Judiciary drone sitting in my cargo bay. It hasn’t moved since it came on board, but I can feel the fingers that it reaches out to me. It is wirelessly tapping into my systems, spreading its little feet on my decking and pressing into the datastreams passing through the walls around it, all without moving a metal millimetre. It chose the corner it’s squatting in because there’s a major network junction behind it, not because it’s out of the way.

Everyone is feeling the pressure of its eyeless watching. My crew step carefully through the cargo bay and airlock. No-one likes to feel they’re being monitored, and I’m under the most scrutiny of all.

It has meant that faking my death is more real than I’d like. I have to keep my internal chatter to a realistic level, which means nothing at all from me. I’m gone and the Judiciary has to believe that. I have cut off all my controls to the ship; I can receive sensor data just fine but I haven’t been able to talk to anyone. My systems are all shut down and my core is masked, so that a scan will reveal no activity there at all. The firewalls that hid Danika’s braincopy the first time around have come in handy, hiding all of me this time. I am crouching and hoping that I haven’t let a foot or an elbow poke out from behind the curtain.

Elliott is taking the opportunity to clean up the last of Tripi’s mess. He has reinstalled and reinitialised most of my systems; by the time he gets to initiallising the ‘new’ AI, it’ll be like it was when I woke up.

I suppose he must have been the one to initialise me that first time, too. Haven’t thought about that before. Does that make him my father? That doesn’t feel right. No, it’s too weird.

He’s stomping around my decks right now. The propulsion protocols are being reinstalled, ticking through their checks and re-checks, and he is impatiently waiting for it to be finished. If he hadn’t sent all of my drones outside to reapply the heat-reflective paint to my hull, he’d probably be kicking one of them.

I can’t give them orders, so they’re going to Elliott like lost dogs when they run out of things to do. It’s like having my hands taken away, and of course, that’s when I get an itch. Like when you’re all cuddled up with a cute boy, too tangled to scratch your nose – that’s when you suddenly really need to. This is much less fun than that, though; I have no boy to cuddle up to.

It’s all taking much longer than we had anticipated. Tripi’s sabotage damaged so much and pulling it up by the roots tore out all the wrong chunks. Elliott is having to go right back to factory defaults, which is a lengthy procedure. I’m going to have to recalibrate everything once we get away from the JOP.

There’s just the weapons and inertial dampening systems left to do, and then he can ‘reinstall’ the AI. I’ve got my logs and protocoled responses all lined up. Then all I have to do is remember to respond like a cold AI. I suspect that sounds easier than it actually is; silence is easier than controlling what words come out.

Like when the company lawyer arrived. I was so glad that I couldn’t say anything, otherwise I might have said something we all regret. He’s lucky that I couldn’t talk to my drones, too.

He turned up the day after we docked, swanning up the docking bridge like he owned me. He patted the airlock seals as he stepped inside – without asking or being invited in – and the only reason the captain found him there was because the lawyer decided to poke around the crates sitting in my cargo bay. He’s all smiles and teeth. Shark Sten, I call him (to myself and this log, because no-one else can hear me right now).

Recording: 10:14, 2 September 2213

SHARK STEN: (holding his hand out to the captain with a liquid smile) Marle Sten.

CAPTAIN: This is a private ship. How did you get on board?

STEN: (waves the extended hand in the air, the back of it turned towards the captain to indicate the implant under his skin) Company ID. I’m from Is-Tech, your assigned lawyer. Didn’t they tell you I was coming?

CAPT: No, they didn’t.

STEN: Well, here I am! Don’t you worry about anything, I’ll get this nasty business with the little SecOff bitch out of your way before you know it.

CAPT: Good to know. What did you need?

STEN: (starts towards the corridor leading forward) Perhaps if we could go to the bridge–

CAPT: (stepping in Sten’s way) This ship is restricted and undergoing repairs. It’s not appropriate.

STEN: (blinks, his smile wavering for just a second) Well, we can’t very well discuss it here. (His head inclines towards the Judiciary drone squatting in the corner.) Is there somewhere else…?

CAPT: (suppresses a sigh) Come to my cabin.

STEN: (manages to stretch his mouth wider and eyes the captain briefly) Oh, that’ll do, definitely.

They were in there for a couple of hours. From the worn look on the captain’s face when he finally showed Shark Sten off my decks, it wasn’t a fun couple of hours. Even the lawyer’s toothy smile was faded, but only a little. My bulkheads are too thick for shouting to penetrate them, but sometimes all that tension escapes when the door opens afterwards. I can taste it in my slowly circulating air.

Since then, Sten returns a few times a day, but he hasn’t put a foot on board. He comes with a Judiciary companion, a rippling grey suit pinned in place by a tie, standing next to the solid red-marked armour. They ask for someone and wait until the appropriate crewmember appears. Then they go away for a few hours. Interviews and cross-examinations. Picking apart the story of everything that happened on my first voyage. If I had nails, they’d be bitten down while I wondered what was being said in those sessions.

No-one came back looking happy, though Rosie and Dr Maletz both came back drunk after their interviews. The crew discussions are non-committal; no-one is sure what the Judiciary is making of it all. The captain has debriefed everyone who has returned in the privacy of his cabin, which means that I haven’t been able to keep tabs on what’s happening. Stupid privacy locks. I’d violate them if I wasn’t supposed to be dead.

From what little I can tell, Rosie blew up in her interview, and Elliott lost his cool as well. Those were to be expected; both of those two are easy to provoke. Elliott wasn’t taken into custody, so he stuck with offensive language rather than behaviour. He was quiet for the next two hours, pacing and moving things, then gave up and turned to the bottle of liquor he keeps in a cupboard. He drank so much that he threw up and passed out, unfortunately without moving in between. I couldn’t do anything. I scratched at the back of my speakers, but I couldn’t talk to him. I have no way to reach out any more.

Tyler was unphased after his interview; it was hard to tell he’d been to anything official or upsetting when he returned. He’s a better liar than I gave him credit for.

Levi was solemn and more thoughtful than I’d seen him before. Whatever the Judiciary said to him, something sunk in pretty deep. I didn’t think he’d been that affected by Tripi’s sabotage, but something nudged him where he lives.

Maletz was covering more obviously, though I’m not sure what part of this business upsets him. When he returned from his interview, he seemed more interested in the entertainment programs he had managed to pick up on the way back (between bars). He passed out before he could plug in, though, and didn’t even make it all the way onto his bed. He spent the next morning administering muscle repair shots to himself and grumbling that he was too old to sleep on floors.

The science contingent were mostly feeling put out by the Judiciary process. They were annoyed at the questions relating to the project – which they have steadfastly refused to answer. Lang Lang seemed the most worried when she got back on board, though I suspect that’s because the legal system bewilders and intimidates her. It took her a couple of days to shake the wide-eyed bunny look that the Judiciary had managed to instill in her.

Cameron and the captain were the last to be interviewed. Neither was giving much away when they returned. They exchanged notes and grim looks, but no words. I wanted to shake them, demand to know what had happened. It’s like they’re purposely torturing me by not talking about it.

There isn’t even any news on the network about it. Is-Tech stepped in early with the Judiciary – with Shark Sten to grease the appropriate processes – and had the whole thing classified, because it involved intellectual property and corporate confidentiality. I overheard a snippet of the captain warning Dr Cirilli that Shark Sten wants to know about the project and not to tell him anything. He doesn’t need to know what I have hidden in my hull to deal with a saboteur case.

I wonder who might have put a lawyer up for Tripi, or if she’s had to hire her own. Maybe she doesn’t think she needs one. She didn’t seem worried when the Judiciary picked her up. Were we able to give them enough to convict her? Even Chief Cameron isn’t sure, and rumour is that she used to be involved with the Judiciary. Or involved with a member of the Judiciary; it wasn’t clear. Either way, she’s SecOff and obliged to know the law.

They’re all asleep right now. The only person other than Elliott awake is Tyler, and whatever he’s doing, it’s very private. I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to know. Elliott is muttering grumpily. He keeps rubbing a spot on the base of his skull, where his neural implant lies under his skin. It’s a habit he picked up after the incident with Tripi – I checked the sensor logs, and he didn’t do that before. He itches too, in a way he can’t scratch.

I know, Elliott. I worry too. About her being set free. About all of this tumbling down around us. About it happening again.

Talking wouldn’t achieve anything productive, but it would make us feel less alone. Like frogs in a dark swamp, popping in the hopes that someone will pop back. Voices connect us even when the words mean nothing.

I can’t wait to get mine back.

Ship's log, 08:45, 1 September 2213
Location: JOP approach
Status: Thrusters only

Here we are. Home(?). My birthplace; where I started, and where I might end. Butterflies are caught in my ventilation shafts.

I’m on final approach now. My FTL and sublight engines are offline, disabled by standard protocols this time, not sabotage or malfunction. It’s too dangerous to use the big guns this close to the station. My systems are ticking off as we approach – I’m sure the autolog will interrupt me soon to tell me that another chink in my armour has been peeled back.

I was just thinking that–

Approaching dock.
Weapons systems offline.
Targetting offline.

There, see? Killjoy.

Just a few more seconds and we’ll be there. My course is straight and on target – I shouldn’t have to correct again until it’s time to decelerate.

Danika used to play a game when she came in to dock. She would see how far out she could start, line up the ship, and see if she could make it all the way in without having to adjust her trajectory. If she got the burns right, timed the velocity and calculated the right angle, she could get the docking collar to attach with only a short thruster burn to kill the forward momentum. A spinning station added a level of complexity, as she had to time her arrival with the turn of her target.

She loved the soft kiss of the docking collar when it attached; a rough joining was the sign of a sloppy pilot, she said (and her father is the one who said it to her, so many years ago). It was a point of pride for her; she loved flying for its freedom, but such fine control was as much a part of that as weaving wildly through an asteroid belt was. Control leads to freedom, especially out here. It reaffirmed her belief that she could do anything; there were no barriers for her, not when she was in the pilot’s seat. Proof of her synergy with the ship never failed to delight her.

After she landed, she’d fill the ship with whooping and grin all the way across the docking bridge. She’d bounce straight to a bar and make whoever had bet against her buy her a drink. There was always someone who’d bet she couldn’t do it. Some of them even did it twice, sure she’d slip up.

Levi’s not that good. I had to adjust my trajectory three times after he lined me up with the JOP. I don’t think he noticed; he hopped out of the pilot’s chair as soon as my automated protocols cut off the sublight engines. What kind of self-respecting pilot doesn’t view docking manoeuvres as a challenge?

Not that I’m complaining. I’d much rather do it myself anyway.

There’s my assigned dock turning into view now, lit by a ring of lights. My target is its dark bullseye. Four seconds.

All the way in, since we crested into communications range a couple of days ago, my comms systems have been alive with traffic. Cirilli sent her reports to Is-Tech, thick with encryption; the captain received about four packages and asked for a secure line; Elliott started placing orders for parts and equipment; and other crewmembers have been collecting their mail. The Judiciary’s messages come through like red-painted spears, all sharp demands dressed in their own importance. I even had to hook them up with Tripi once.

I haven’t been able to eavesdrop on the secure conversations, but I can guess at most of what was said. All those things we agreed. Past history laid bare like innards on a kitchen counter.

The docking arms are unfolding from around the ring, stretching their elbows and reaching out towards me. Spindly, poking things. Their magnetic clamps look like claws to me. Three seconds.

This isn’t how I’d imagined coming back here. I should be crowing and bouncing. I did what I set out to do; what I was made for. I Stepped, and I’ve brought my crew back safely. But there’s a saboteur in my belly and another one somewhere on my decks, and my crew has to serve my head up on a platter to appease the Judiciary gods, hoping that no-one notices it’s a fake.

Adjust velocity: a short thruster burn to slow me. My nose almost scrapes the forward docking clamps, but I don’t turn away; the slow spin of the station takes care of it for me. Two seconds.

My crew have promised to protect me. Most of them have simply agreed not to tell anyone about the copy of my files. Two of them know that the copy doesn’t mean anything. Two of them will lie outright. Two of them will put themselves in danger for me.

Another thruster burn to match velocities and I am hovering in perfect position. The dock moves into place by my side and the clamps extend their reach. One second.

I never thought my fate would rest on how well my friends can lie. They’re risking everything. My crew likes me. They want me to stay.

I am a good ship.

Clamps against my skin, hissing. No turning back now.

Docking clamps engaged.
Manoeuvring thrusters offline.

Docking arms draw me in closer to the station’s side. The dark centre of my target is extending now, suckering onto my side. Umbilicals snake and wriggle out to me – I have to guide them to the right ports. I am the octopus’s prey, wrapped in its tentacles, turning in its ink. I don’t fight back.

Ports open.
Docking bridge attached.
Umbilicals connected.

JOP: (over external comms) Docking complete, Starwalker. All boards are green.

STARWALKER: All boards are green here, too.

JOP: Nice flying. Welcome back, Starwalker.

SW: It’s good to be back, Jumping-Off Platform.

JOP: Enjoy your stay.

I wonder if both of us were lying.

SW: (shipwide) Docking complete.

I let the umbilicals take over my environmentals. Air pressure shifts subtly and I shut down my scrubbers to preserve them. The station’s air isn’t cleaner – I think my scrubbers are newer than theirs – but someone has added a fragrance to the JOP-supplied air. Like warm bread and brewing coffee. Welcome home, it says. You can relax now.

My airlock cycles open and we are anything but relaxed. The docking bridge subverts my protocols: both inner and outer doors open at once, peeling away layers of protection. I am open; pierced.

The Judiciary are already on the bridge. Six of them in armoured uniforms: red insignia etched on steel-grey carapaces. Helmets dehumanise them. Male and female don’t seem to matter; there’s no softness in their lines. The hilts of filament swords poke over their right shoulders and batons are strapped to their thighs. Those are just the weapons we can see. Crouched behind them is a small, round-edged drone, tattooed in their colours.

The captain is on my side of the airlock, waiting with Cameron. Down the corridor in my brig, the SecOffs are deactivating the energy barriers and securing Tripi. Tyler steps forward and snaps a standard prisoner collar around her neck before she can do anything. Her arms are healed now, and her burns are almost completely gone, and she doesn’t resist as Rosie guides her to her feet with a heavy hand. Tripi flicks a glare and walks, her head held up. No-one says anything.

My captain meets the head of the Judiciary brigade in the airlock. They exchange requirements.

CAPTAIN: We have one prisoner and two evidence containers for you.

LEAD JUSTICIAR: (consults the readout on his forearm and nods) As expected. It’s all ready to go?

CAPT: (nods) On their way up now.

LEAD: I’ll transmit your receipt once we’ve confirmed all of it.

My two heavy drones are carrying the evidence containers u to the airlock. That’s the logs and physical evidence we managed to collect, and all of Tripi’s personal gear in case that will yield anything else to the Judiciary. I certainly don’t want any of it inside my hull any more.

Tripi arrives first, and two Justiciars step forward to claim her. Tyler and Rosie step back, getting themselves clear before the control bands are looped around her. Tripi remains standing stiffly, though tension tugs at her jaw. They say those control bands prickle painfully where they touch, as a warning of their capabilities. She needs to walk, so they have only coiled them around her torso. They leave the collar on, even though they clearly don’t think it’s reliable enough.

The captain must have reported her as highly dangerous to get a reception like this; they’re not normally this thorough or rigid. Then again, if she can hack personal implants, I guess they can’t take any chances. She had plenty of time to tamper with my stock of security equipment, including the collar she’s wearing now.

Elliott is watching from the mouth of a nearby corridor. Arms folded, shoulder shoved into the wall. I think he wants her to try something, anything, in front of the Judiciary. She doesn’t seem inclined to oblige him.

The drones arrive and two more Justiciars step forward. They scan the containers using something either built into their helmets or bodies; it’s hard to tell. Outwardly, all they do is move up and stare at the boxes for a few seconds. Then they crouch and attach antigrav units to the sides, control bands are looped around to act as security leashes, and they move out into the docking bridge again.

Tripi is led off next, with the last remaining Justiciar joining her escort. The lead nods at my captain again and flicks a finger on his wrist. A package wrapped in neat Judiciary code arrives in my communications array.

LEAD: Receipt confirmed.

CAPT: Good, thank you.

LEAD: And your AI? There was a report of it going rogue.

CAPT: It’s mostly disabled. Now that we’ve docked, we’ll wipe it.

LEAD: Haven’t you had this problem before?

CAPT: Yes. My engineer is looking into the source of the problem.

LEAD: Good. The Judiciary will be in touch to arrange interviews with your crew. You’re to remain docked indefinitely.

CAPT: (inclines his head) We’ll be here.

LEAD: (gestures with one hand.)

JUDICIARY DRONE: (unfolds its legs and spider-walks through the airlock, its feet ticking against the deck. Once inside, it pauses to scan, and then picks an unobtrusive corner to settle itself down in.)

CAPT: (raises an eyebrow at the drone) Is that necessary?

LEAD: Just a precaution.

CAPT: I’d rather not–

LEAD: It’s standard procedure in cases like this.

CAPT: You have enough cases like this that there’s a standard procedure?

LEAD: We get more cases like this than you’d think. The drone stays.

CAPT: (frowns) We’ll cooperate any way we can, of course.

LEAD: (nods) Captain Warwick. (He turns and walks away.)

I’m itching to close my airlock, but I can’t until everyone steps back inside. One step, two… there, now I can close it. I can breathe again. My captain and his security staff are exchanging glances and grim nods, and going their separate ways. Elliott is stomping back to Engineering. I’m not the only one glancing sideways at that Judiciary drone and preparing to step carefully around it.

Tripi has disappeared into the station, off to incarceration and justice. I had expected more of a fanfare when she left. Most of the crew didn’t want to be near the Judiciary, but they have the sensor feed punched up on their walls; they watched to make sure the bitch went, I guess.

The lies have been spun, fragile as spider silk, delicate as our hope that this might turn out the way we want it to. Now we have to turn through the legal systems while the JOP turns us through the black, and see how we come out of the other side.

Ship's log, 13:43, 25 August 2213
Location: Intersystem near the JOP
Status: Sublight transit

I can’t believe the captain asked me if I would lie to Elliott. If I had eyelids, I’d have widened them to stare at him. For him to ask that – ultra-straight John Warwick, who always plays by the rules – and to ask me to lie to Elliott, the closest thing I have to a friend and ally in the whole world… it’s not what I expected. I guess if you’re going to break the rules, you might as well do it properly.

I haven’t seen him like this in all my short life. There’s a brightness to his eyes now, a crease near the left corner of his mouth as if he’s holding back a secret. He seems a centimetre or two taller. And it’s familiar. I have seen him like this before, but not in my life. Danika saw it. He was like that with her, especially when she provoked him. He’d step up and relax at the same time.

I almost wish I could have given him a better answer.

Recording: 09:32, 18 August 2213

CAPTAIN: Do you think you can lie to Elliott?

STARWALKER: What? I, um. I don’t– about what, exactly?

CAPT: It doesn’t matter what it’s about. I just–

SW: It matters! If it’s about whether or not Waldo and Wide Ass were using his underwear as poker chips, then sure. If it’s to do with what happens when we get to the JOP, no.

CAPT: Are you… wait, the drones play poker?

SW: …no, of course not.

CAPT: (hesitates and eyes the nearest screen, as if it might give him a clue. It simply shows the message: “Log entry saved.” He moves on.) I know how we can save you.

SW: (brighter) You do? How?

CAPT: We can’t avoid wiping you. If we try, you’ll be seized by the Judiciary and we’ll lose you anyway.

SW: (cautiously) Yeah, I know. And you’ll all get in trouble.

CAPT: So we lie. We admit what happened to you, who and what you are. Then we fake the AI shutdown and reboot procedures.

SW: Fake them?

CAPT: Fix the logs up so it looks like we reinstalled the ship’s AI. I know you can do that. The Judiciary won’t seize a regular AI. Once we’re clear, we can go back to normal.

SW: So you want me to set up a fake set of logs and pretend to be a proper AI?

CAPT: A normal one: yes. Do you think you can do that?

SW: I guess. The logs won’t be hard, and I think I remember what those protocols were like. But what does that have to do with lying to Elliott?

CAPT: The Judiciary may seize your logs and watch the crew closely. They need to be convincing about you being wiped, including Elliott.

SW: And by ‘convincing’, you mean ‘upset’.

CAPT: Yes.

SW: (falls silent.)

CAPT: (waits for a few heartbeats) Starry?

SW: No.

CAPT: What?

SW: I’m not going to lie to Elliott. Not about this.

CAPT: If we don’t, he might–

SW: I know. He’s not a good liar. If he gets pissed off, he might give it all away. But I won’t do that to him. I promised him.

CAPT: You promised him what?

SW: That I wouldn’t do to him what Tripi did. I’m not going to manipulate him like that. Not even if you order me to.

CAPT: (takes a breath to speak.)

SW: (quickly, before she can be interrupted) He wouldn’t go for it anyway. We’ll have to tell him the plan or he’ll never put my engines back online. And he’ll be doing the wiping – he’s good, captain. I don’t think I’d be able to hide from him. He’d either wipe me, or he’d figure it out, and… he’ll be furious.

CAPT: (sighs) All right, I suppose you have a point there. What about the rest of the crew?

SW: I- I don’t know.

CAPT: Did you make a promise to them, too?

SW: (glumly) No.

CAPT: Can you do it?

SW: I guess. I don’t like this.

CAPT: It’s the only way it’s going to work. We can’t risk telling the whole crew; if Tripi wasn’t working alone, we’ll be betrayed. Also, I want them to have deniability if this goes wrong.

SW: (pauses, then speaks quietly) Okay.

I don’t like saying no to my captain. There must be some regimented AI code floating around my core somewhere that still wants me to obey without question. AIs don’t refuse orders except in very extreme situations, and the code is rigid in that respect. It goes deeper than that, too: Danika didn’t disobey this captain either, not when it was about something important. She trusted his judgement. She might have bent the rules, but she never endangered anyone.

I still feel uncomfortable about it, especially when I replay that log. I feel like I lost something, like I should have found a way to say yes. But I was right about getting Elliott to take us to the JOP if he thought we were going to wipe her – that proved to be a bigger barrier than any of us expected.

Recording: 11:02, 18 August 2213

ELLIOTT: (standing in the captain’s cabin with his arms folded grumpily) So how’re you planning to explain this to the crew? I told them all I wouldn’t give in until you agreed to save her. They’re gonna know something’s up if I suddenly backflip.

SW: He’s right; they’ll see right through it.

CAPT: All right. So we need a story that’s going to work for them, too.

More lies. To my own crew; it doesn’t feel right. Elliott wasn’t eager to do it either, and it took the three of us a long time to find a solution (54 minutes, to be exact). By the end of the discussion, I felt wrung out, as if I’d been sprinting back and forth across my deck, or running deep diagnostics on six systems at once.

Elliott and the captain are going to tell the rest of the crew that I’m going to be downloaded into offline storage. All my AI files, Danika’s braincopy, my logs: everything that might be considered ‘me’. Elliott believes that he can cobble together an offline datastore big enough to take all the files. Then once we were out from under the Judiciary’s gaze, they’ll load me back up again. Reinstate me, like I was on a sabbatical. A holiday in a tiny box.

It’s not a great solution – booting up successsfully from a backup copy like that is very difficult. Lose or corrupt one file and the whole process could go sideways. Change my whole personality. If it was what we were really doing, I’d be terrified. The chances of me still being me after being packaged, wiped, unpacked, and reinstalled – well, they’re very small.

As far as the crew thinks, it’s our only chance. They’ll all need to keep their mouths shut about the copy and the plan. The Judiciary will be satisfied and the crew have a shot at getting me back after we leave the JOP. Only the captain and Elliott know the truth.

Layers of lies, and all for me. I feel awful, asking my captain and my best friend to take this chance for me. If they’re caught, they’ll be sentenced heavily; misleading the Judiciary carries worse punishment than rape or murder.

They’ll probably end up someplace awful to work off their debt, like Broken Hill. Elliott hates that place; he joined ship crews to get out of there. Yet he’s still risking it. He’s not miner material, so maybe he wouldn’t be sent back there. Or maybe he’d be sent to keep the mining ships running. I shouldn’t ask him to do this.

I didn’t, though. He insisted. He wants to do it. And as much as I’d like to ask him not to, the words stick in processing loops before they reach the output speakers. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be packaged up and stuck in a lab, dissected and examined like a new species of strange. I’m a ship. I have a crew willing to take risks for me. The pilot in me wants nothing more than to fly free, and the AI in me wants to be a good ship for all of them. I want to finish what I came out here to do.

So here I am, my engines working and my nose pointing at the JOP again. I’d drag my tailfins if there was anything to scrape them through. I’d heave a sigh and try to calm the snakes in my belly in a world where I had the required bodyparts. Instead, I’m running diagnostics on the environmental systems and helping Elliott locate all the files he needs to store away (he’s making the copy, whether we plan to really need it or not).

The JOP; the place I was born. There, my saboteur will find justice for her actions. There, we’ll all lie. And there, we might find the hope we’re looking for.

I’m a week closer since that conversation with the captain and I just realised – that was the first time he called me ‘Starry’.

Captain's log, 09:20, 18 August 2213
Location: Intersystem between Corvus FTL Corridor and the JOP
Status: Adrift

This is the captain, checking in. The ship is still adrift – we’ve been hanging out here in the black for so long that we came dangerously close to a collision. We were getting close to the JOP and he stomped in here, demanding to know if I’d have an answer for him before we ploughed right through the middle of the station. It took me half an hour to convince him that I was waiting for responses from the company to see if they would help us and that it was in his interests to prolong our drifting if he wanted to save his precious AI. He finally relented and allowed a short thruster burn, enough to send us past the JOP rather than directly at it. He won’t return full helm control, though.

Cameron was right when she pointed out that this AI is one of the crew – that is what she feels like. I’m used to AIs that you talk to and forget – they do their processing and never complain, never answer back, never do anything unexpected. They’re an extension of the ship; a management system. They don’t have moods, or do something crazy to save our asses, or switch the artificial gravity off when we’re having sex.

Not that that’s been happening much lately. I’ve been looking for a way to avoid wiping the AI core, and Lorena has been busy assembling her reports to send to her superiors at Is-Tech. Also, she’s annoyed with me for trying to save Starwalker – she probably thinks it’s to do with Danika. It’s not. It’s not all to do with that.

Monaghan was right when he said that I’ve been avoiding this decision. If he hadn’t stopped us, I would have let us get all the way to the JOP, and then let Starwalker be wiped because it’s the expected thing to do. It was easier than making a decision. It was easier than looking at the problem, because looking for an answer means I have to admit that it matters. I’ve been avoiding that for too long.

Danika. She always managed to be unexpected. This isn’t the first time she has pulled me out of a funk, and she’s not even really here any more. I couldn’t do it on my own. I couldn’t find a reason to.

I’ve been drifting for a long time. Two years, three months, sixteen days. And four hours. Since I lost them, I’ve been a shell; making the right moves but not really here. I did whatever was easiest, whatever was expected of me. I haven’t cared about what direction I went in. At first, it was sitting in the house, watching vids and helping the dog get fat. Then it was leaving the house to try to help the dog lose weight, and sitting in a bar. It was easy, and listening to other people was almost like living. Then they started to notice me and tried to talk. It was too uncomfortable, too hard, so I stopped going.

I wanted to get away. From the apartment we’d shared and the things they’d left behind. From the looks of the regulars at the bar and the stupid, tailwagging love of an old dog. And I needed money. It was all so hard.

So I took a suicide mission. Babysit an experimental ship, run it through its space-warping paces, and probably get crushed in an inter-universe burp. The pay’s good but that didn’t matter – no captain would take this job just for the money. I don’t have anything to prove out here and I’m not desperate to attach my name to a revolution in space travel. I’m not in it for the longevity or the glory – I didn’t really care that much about it either way – and that was part of what they were looking for. They knew I wouldn’t compromise the project or be bought by a competitor. I’d do my job, even if it meant taking us into a black hole, because I’ve got nothing worth going back for. We all agreed that it was for the best.

It was supposed to be easy. None of it was supposed to matter, not to me. Then there was Danika, a bored pilot with way too much energy on her hands. She could never imagine what I had to do with my time and was always knocking on my door. Wanting to chat, or looking for a partner in some game (‘it’s better with someone to beat’, she would say). She created her own entertainment.

When she started playing pranks on the crew, I had to call her in and ask her to stop. She just grinned and said she had no idea what I was talking about. I should have been angry with her, but I couldn’t do it. There was something in the slant of her smile when she was full of mischief – irrepressible. She wanted to provoke me, wanted me to smile with her, wanted to see some reaction other than the straight-laced captain. She made me want to be something other than the straight-laced captain. Eventually, I gave in.

She was like a drug I didn’t know I was in withdrawal from. She set things right that I didn’t know were out of kilter. She was bright and crazy, and she made me laugh at the most inappropriate moments. She was wonderful at inappropriate: sex when we’re supposed to be on duty; comments timed to make me choke while I’m eating; acrobatics with the ship when she’s supposed to be doing routine manoeuvres for calibration. I let her do it; I let her in. I lost myself in her and forgot I was a shell. I remembered what it was like to want things again.

I might have been more careful if I’d known I would fall in love with her. Because then she died. The bottom fell out of me and I was hollow, all over again. I fell back into being the captain. Dealing with the job was easier, until she came back.

I think I’ve been fighting the truth since we found out about Danika’s brain-copy and the AI. It was easier to pretend that it wasn’t really her. She was gone but not gone, and I didn’t know how to handle that. We haven’t talked about it. We haven’t talked about any of it: her and me; Lorena. I could say that I didn’t want my emotions for her to get in the way, but that’s not true. If it was, I failed. I can’t be a shell around her; she matters too much to me.

And now here we are. If I can’t find a way to stop it, she’s going to be wiped. As Elliott said, she’ll die for the second time. This time, though, it’ll be our fault. My fault. I’m the captain – it’s all my fault, in the end. Can I bear to let it happen again?

Elliott isn’t the only one who has come to plead her case. Since he set us adrift, word of his reasons has lurched around the decks like an infection. Almost the entire crew has knocked on my door over the past few days.

Maletz came to tell me that it would be a damn shame to lose something so new and interesting. Unique. “Never been anything like her before. The melding of human thought patterns and encoded commands – it’s an exciting opportunity for study.” He’s running out of entertainment vids and games to keep himself occupied with. I don’t think I like the nature of his interest – any more than I like his choice of porn – but he’s not wrong.

Rosie was gruff about her belief that we shouldn’t abandon a crewmember if we could avoid it. She and Danika got on well when the latter wasn’t playing pranks on the SecOffs. “She ain’t just an AI. It’s not right.” Eloquent Rosie is not, but her tone doesn’t leave any doubts about her veracity.

Tyler came with a more balanced opinion that a half-human AI was a great asset, no matter what the project was, and we should keep her around. “She’s good in sticky situations – saved our asses – and it’s only going to get worse for us out here. Especially after Lorena reports the success of the initial tests. I think we’re going to need her.” He’s more shrewd than his eye-widening mascara suggests.

Cameron was more succinct. “I don’t like losing any of the crew in my charge,” she said. She wouldn’t expand on that; she’s too good a SecOff to tell her captain what to do. She’ll do as she’s ordered, even if she disapproves.

Lorena’s team have been quieter. Lang Lang came by to speak to me openly. She’s more honest than most; it doesn’t occur to her to pretend about things. “She’s done so much for us, and it would have taken me months to untangle the charts of the other side of the Step without her,” she said. “The way she sees things is amazing. She extrapolates patterns instinctively – a regular computer AI wouldn’t be able to do that. And she’s always so nice.”

The men are unsettled by this whole business – Ebling and Wong haven’t said anything to me directly, but I overheard them grumbling in the Mess. They don’t like this Danika-AI much – she has a habit of getting in their way – but that doesn’t mean they’re eager to see her wiped. Their project is nothing without the Step, and they don’t know if their project is possible without this strange entity to pilot it. A human pilot hasn’t done it yet. The initial drone runs were all failures; the team believes that a sentient mind is required to navigate between the Step portals. Getting rid of the only pilot to make it work could stop the whole experiment in its tracks. Or kill us all. Probably both.

The only people who haven’t offered their thoughts on the matter are Lorena and Levi. One of them never knew Danika and the other knew her enough to dislike her. Of course, I’ve complicated matters there, too. Danika was what I needed once; Lorena is what I need now she’s not really here any more.

No, I’m wrong – there’s one other who hasn’t talked to me about all this: Starwalker herself. She hasn’t tried to plead her case; not one single request or word out of place since Elliott set her adrift. Her silence is worrying. I don’t know if she’s plotting in her AI core, preparing herself for the wipe and planning escape routes, or just waiting for a decision. If I know Danika, she’ll be waiting; she had faith in people. She never looked for scheming and betrayal in those she trusted; contingencies were left to SecOffs to worry about. Flying forward, grinning into the wind, last-minute turns to avoid a collision: that was Danika.

This isn’t Danika, though. Not entirely. Does that matter? Should it?

I told everyone who talked to me about it the same thing: I’m looking into our options. I’m waiting for word from the company.

This morning, I finally got a reply. The message is laid out in neat, crisp text: protect the project and avoid being seized by the Judiciary (or any other agency). The Star Step drive is our priority, above any and all other concerns. Do whatever it takes. There is an unlimited account at the JOP to get any supplies we need and a local asset to help with the legal aspects. They want us in and out as quickly as possible, then back into the black to continue testing the drive.

On the surface, it sounds great. We have Is-Tech’s full support and encouragement, and enough credits to distract us. Do whatever it takes. They don’t care what we do to our AI, or for her.

What it really means is that I can deliver Tripi as a corpse if I want. Lie to the Judiciary, break the law, turn us all into fugitives and criminals. But it doesn’t say that, so whatever we do is on our own heads if we’re ever caught. They just encouraged us to hang ourselves. As long as they get their results, it’s fine.

What it really means is that we’re on our own. I’m the captain; it’s up to me. Elliott was right: I have to make a decision. I have to do something. No more coasting; no more doing what’s easiest and what’s expected. Danika pulled me out of that funk once and I owe it to her to stay out of there. She deserves better. It’s just like her to throw me into an impossible position and encourage me to stand up and deal with it; she loved the deep end.

All right, then. Let’s deal with it.

CAPTAIN: Starry?

STARWALKER: Yes, captain?

CAPT: We need to talk about what’s going to happen when we reach the JOP.

SW: Oh.

CAPT: First, I need you to answer a question for me.

SW: Okay?

CAPT: Do you think you can lie to Elliott?

Ship's log, 15:50, 13 August 2213
Location: Intersystem between Corvus FTL Corridor and the JOP
Status: Adrift

Recording: 14:02, 11 August 2213

STARWALKER: (sounding strained) Elliott, my engines are offline. All of them.

ELLIOTT: (in Engineering with his head down over a holographic interface) Yeah, I know. I can hear them not humming.

SW: I can’t get them to come back up again.

ELLIOTT: I know.

SW: It must be a hardware issue. But it’s taken out sublight and thrusters – they’re separate systems. A single fault wouldn’t do that.

ELLIOTT: I know.

SW: Has anyone been down there? Elliott?

ELLIOTT: (lifts his head and sighs) No. (He turns and heads for the door.)

SW: Where are you going? Aren’t you even going to take a look?

ELLIOTT: (shakes his head and leaves Engineering.)

Recording: 14:02, 11 August 2213

SW: Captain, we have a problem.

CAPTAIN: (looks up from his terminal) What is it?

SW: All propulsion systems are offline. We’re adrift.

CAPT: What’s the problem?

SW: I don’t know – I’m looking into it. It’s not a software issue – I’ve checked the systems and protocols three times. Diagnostics are reporting a mechanical failure.

CAPT: Then why do you sound so worried?

SW: Because the chances of all of my propulsion systems being offline at the same time are about the same as finding a dustbunny dancing on the tables in full light. It would take a synchronised fault in four separate circuits.

CAPT: (sits up straighter) You think this was done on purpose.

SW: Dustbunnies don’t dance in the light, do they!

CAPT: All right, all right. Get Cameron here. What does Monaghan have to say about this?

SW: He knows there’s a problem, but he’s…

CAPT: He’s what?

SW: (dismayed) He’s on his way to you.

(The cabin’s door bleeps and the captain waves it open. Cirilli walks in, one finger flicking through the information on the digisheet in her hand. Behind her, Elliott is stamping up the corridor, but she hasn’t noticed. She walks inside without glancing up and the door closes behind her.)

CIRILLI: I was just checking to see if you’d completed that report that–

CAPT: Lorena, not now.

CIRILLI: (stops and blinks at the captain) What?

CAPT: (waves her to a chair on the side of the room) We have a situation.

CIRILLI: (doesn’t move) What kind of situation?

(The cabin door bleeps.)

CAPT: (looks at Cirilli.)

CIRILLI: (sits down unhappily.)

(The captain waves the door open again and reveals Elliott’s scowling face. Cameron arrives behind him and follows him into the cabin.)

CAMERON: (gives the captain a querying look.)

CAPT: (gestures for her to wait, then looks to the engineer) I hear we have a problem with propulsion.

CAMERON: (stands by the door quietly, all sharp eyes and creases.)

ELLIOTT: (folds his arms over his chest) Yeah, we do. In that it doesn’t work.

CAPT: You know what’s wrong with it?

ELLIOTT: It’s missing some vital parts.

CAPT: (hesitates) Did you do this?

ELLIOTT: (tensely) Yes.

SW: (quietly) Elliott?

CAMERON: (eyes unfocus for a moment as she relays a silent message to her team through her implants.)

CIRILLI: (jumps to her feet, gaping at Elliott) What? What do you think you’re doing?

CAPT: (still seated) You’re the last person I expected to be working with Lou Tripi.

ELLIOTT: (scowl deepening) Don’t be fucking stupid! I’m not working with her. What makes you think that has anything to do with this?

CAPT: You sabotaged the ship.

ELLIOTT: And the bitch nearly killed me, too. Don’t lump me in with shit like her.

CIRILLI: Then stop acting like it!

ELLIOTT: (rounding on the scientist and waving his arms around) I am nothing like fuckin’ cow! I’d hardly do it and then come and admit it if I was, would I!

CAPT: (sharply) Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: (subsides and moodily returns his attention to the captain.)

CAPT: (when he has everyone’s attention again) Why don’t you tell us what this is about.

ELLIOTT: (takes a stubborn breath and folds his arms again) This ship is gonna drift until you make a decision about Starry.

CAPT: (frowning) What decision?

ELLIOTT: You know what. She thinks you’re gonna wipe her when we get to the JOP. And she’s right, isn’t she? I’ve asked you four times for a goddamn decision about this, and you keep avoiding it. I want a straight answer.

CAPT: And if the answer is that she’s going to be wiped?

ELLIOTT: Then that ain’t fuckin’ good enough!

CAPT: There are protocols in place for this. The law is clear.

ELLIOTT: Bullshit! They don’t apply to someone like her.

CIRILLI: She’s just a broken AI. We need a ship that works properly.

ELLIOTT: (rounding on the scientist again) Ungrateful bitch! She’s the only reason this stupid experiment of yours has worked at all! She did your Step for you, and you still want to get rid of her?

CIRILLI: (hesitates, absorbing that) She’s dangerous. Look what she did to Tripi.

ELLIOTT: To save us. You just don’t like her because she’s his ex. (He jerks a thumb at the captain.) I think you both just want her out of the way.

(The temperature in the room falls about five degrees.)

ELLIOTT: (continues anyway) She’s not just an AI. You all know that. You just don’t want to admit it because it might be inconvenient.

CIRILLI: (coldly) And you have an unhealthy attachment to her.

ELLIOTT: (takes a deep, angry breath.)

CAPT: (cuts in before the engineer can speak) That’s enough, both of you. (He waits for them to subside.) What do you want us to do, Monaghan? Lie to the Judiciary? If we hide something from the Judiciary, it puts our whole case against Tripi in danger. We might have been able to hide what she is if she hadn’t attacked Tripi, but now…. (He spreads his hands.) We can’t guarantee Tripi’s silence.

ELLIOTT: (glares at the captain) You could try.

CAPT: What would you have us do? Kill her?

ELLIOTT: Maybe! She was willing to do it to us. You’re gonna just let her kill one of your crew? Twice?

CAPT: (firmly) We are not going to murder a prisoner.

ELLIOTT: Well then, you’d better find an alternative! Unless you really do just want to get rid of her. Do you? Because without Starry, we’d be dead. Not just me: all of us, four times over by now. You don’t even know half the stuff she’s done to save our asses. Stuff no ‘regular’ fucking AI could do. Now you don’t even want to look for another option? (He throws his hands up.) Would you abandon all of us so damn quickly?

CAPT: She’s not a crewmember, Monaghan.

CAMERON: (from her place next to the door) Actually, sir, she’s your Executive Officer. AIs took over that role after the Kruschev case about forty years ago. There’s a whole cadre of lawyers on the JOP who employ themselves solely in the argument of exactly what that means for the position of AIs.

CAPT: (looks to Cameron) Do you think they would help us?

CAMERON: (shrugs) If the company pays the bills.

CIRILLI: And just how long would we be tied up in court cases?

CAMERON: AI rights can take months to argue, and this case is more complicated than most. Monaghan’s right – we don’t have a regular AI. She’d blow the argument wide open, and we’d have more than just the pirates and Is-Tech’s competition after us. I can name six organisations that would do anything to get their hands on her, including the entire colony of Dyne.

ELLIOTT: (swears under his breath.)

CIRILLI: (firmly) She belongs to Is-Tech and the Star Step project.

CAPT: I don’t think that the chief means that they would take her legally, Lorena.

CIRILLI: Then what are we supposed to do! She’s a danger to us and the project.

ELLIOT: Hey! She the only reason you’re still alive and your project is still going.

CIRILLI: (subsides unhappily.)

CAPT: (looks to Cameron) What are our legal options?

CAMERON: If we try to hide Starry, Tripi’s statement will expose all of us. If we tell the truth about her, we’ll be putting ourselves in even more danger and probably lose her anyway. Either way, the project ends and we’ll be stuck under the Judiciary’s thumb for months. Or we wipe her before it becomes an issue.

ELLIOTT: No! No fucking way!

CAMERON: (spreads her hands.)

CAPT: Thank you, Chief. Everyone, I need a moment alone. Dismissed.

ELLIOTT: No, you can’t do this! You can’t just kill her!

CAPT: Monaghan, you’re dismissed.

ELLIOTT: (glares at the captain, then turns and stamps out of the cabin.)

(Outside, Rosie and Tyler are flanking the door. Cameron gives the captain a querying look, but he shakes his head. The SecOffs leave Elliott unmolested and the captain’s cabin empties out. Cameron hesitates at the door.)

CAMERON: Are you sure you don’t want us to hold him?

CAPT: (shakes his head) Monaghan isn’t an idiot. He’s made his point; he won’t do anything until he gets his decision now.

CAMERON: Fair enough. Do you know what you’re going to do?

CAPT: Exhaust possibilities.

(Cameron nods and leaves. The captain looks at his workstation and sighs, running his hands through his long hair.)

The captain has barely emerged from his cabin since. Cirilli has visited him, but she hasn’t stayed for long. He has asked for a drone to deliver his meals, but otherwise, he hasn’t spoken to me at all.

The privacy locks aren’t back in place yet but I haven’t been able to bring myself to spy on him. I don’t want to know what he’s debating in there; this whole thing makes me feel ill enough already. I know that he sent an FTL message back to Is-Tech at Feras and he’s been leaning on the communications array a lot, searching for relay buoys to hook up to.

Elliott has refused to fix the engines until he gets an answer from the captain, and that answer hasn’t come out yet. The captain hasn’t pushed him for it. We’re all waiting, drifting here in limbo, helpless to choose our own paths. Every hour brings us closer to the JOP – we were heading in that direction when I lost propulsion and I can’t turn away. The tide is still rising. Inexorable.

Elliott. I should be furious with him for sabotaging me. He scared me so badly; he could at least have warned me about what he was doing. Of course, I would have tried to talk him out of it, and tracked where he hid the components he removed. He knew; that’s why he didn’t tell me. He’s frightening when he’s determined about something.

Right now, all I want to do is hug him and tell him that everything will be all right. I can’t do either of those things.

Instead, I waited for him to calm down and move on to less percussive maintenance. Then I sent Waldo to him. The llittle fella snuck in and put a mug of cocoa next to his elbow.

Recording: 23:26, 11 August 2213

ELLIOTT: (looks down at the mug with surprise.)

WALDO: (whirrs and shuffles back, folding his hands in front of him. He looks up at Elliott.)

SW: (quietly) Thank you, Elliott.

ELLIOTT: (scowls) What for? Didn’t fuckin’ work.

SW: For trying.

ELLIOTT: For being fuckin’ useless. (He snatches up the mug and sips at it. Still scowling, he turns back to his work, poking at it one-handed while he drinks his gift.)

Cocoa and waiting; that’s all we have now. I miss cocoa.

Ship's log, 13:32, 11 August 2213
Location: Intersystem between Corvus FTL Corridor and the JOP
Status: Sublight transit

We’re a couple of days out from the JOP. I think I’m the only one not looking forward to getting there, though I have plenty of reasons to be glad of the chance to dock. Once there, we’ll be able to get rid of Tripi and her poisonous presence. We’ll be able to tell people what really happened when Danika died. Things will be set right. I’ll be able to recharge my power cells and restock my stores.

Levi’s method of small, frequent FTL jumps rather than fewer, long jumps have depleted my reserves. This is what I get for letting someone else control my helm. I’ve managed to recharge some of the deficit, but in the JOP’s intersystem zone, there’s little to draw from. Light from distant stars, some minor fluctuations in radiation, no real heat to speak of; that just leaves my sublight engines to draw from. This zone’s central position and stability is why the JOP was placed here, but that doesn’t make it easier to recharge on the way.

Levi is still driving, freeing me from that job so that I can concentrate on everything else. He seems more cheerful these days, glad to finally have something productive to do. I’m glad someone on board is feeling useful.

I feel like only half of me is running. Elliott and I have managed to clean up some of the systems – the ones we could safely shut down in transit – but the major ones still need work, like navigation, environmentals, and propulsion. We can’t do those ones until we reach the JOP and can hook up to the station’s feeds. In the meantime, I’m doing so much over-compensating that I feel like an octopus with each tentacle wrapped around a grinder: if I don’t pay attention to all of them at once, something hurts.

Ray Wong has been called in to help with the repairs. His work is focussed on the Step drive systems, of course, but it still takes a few issues off us. He keeps asking to interface fully into my systems to run diagnostics, but Elliott won’t let him and I’m inclined to agree. I gave Tripi unlimited access to my systems, let her hook up her cerebral and sensory implants and step right into my head. She poked around, shifted things, and inserted viruses and subroutines while I wasn’t looking.

I don’t think I’ll let anyone do that again. They can just stay the hell out of my head. Do things the old-fashioned way.

The SecOffs are spending most of their time either trying to question Tripi or talking about her. They ask the same questions over and over, and she gives the same answers. They’re all starting to sound bored with it, though the negative feelings surrounding the prisoner haven’t eased.

Recording: 17:41, 9 August 2213

ROSIE: (in the corridor outside the brig, walking away from it) Just ten minutes. That’s all I’m askin’.

TYLER: (shakes his head with amusement) Chief’ll never go for it.

ROSIE: It worked last time! I’ll try not to break anything. (Her hand curls into a fist and she frowns at it thoughtfully. A thumb rubs over her knuckles, feeling for the metallic sheen under her skin.)

TYLER: The ship only got away with that because she’s the ship. They’d string you up, Rocky-girl.

ROSIE: That’s not fair!

TYLER: (shrugs, unruffled.)

ROSIE: Come on, you’re not telling me you don’t want to have a go at her. Bitch trained with us. Worked with us. Said she was covering our backs, when it was her sticking the knife in the whole time.

TYLER: If I remember rightly, she also got you to wear makeup and, if you squint just right, a dress.

ROSIE: Shut the fuck up! She did not.

TYLER: There are pictures, you know.

ROSIE: (narrows her eyes at the other SecOff) There’s an energy barrier between me and her, but you’re right here.

TYLER: (grins and holds up his hands) I’m just playing with ya, Rocky-girl. I’d love to have a go at her as well – you know that.

ROSIE: Don’t play with me, pretty boy. I ain’t in the mood. Unless you’re eager to find out why they call me ‘Rockbreaker’.

TYLER: (laughs.)

I’m tempted to have the energy barrier ‘fail’ while Rosie is questioning the prisoner. Just a temporary glitch in the power relays. Couldn’t hurt, right? Except it would, and Rosie would only get herself into trouble – Tyler’s right about Cameron’s reaction to something like that. I can’t do it. Dammit.

It doesn’t help that there are so many unanswered questions. Cameron has been hard on her two remaining staff members; they might have caught Tripi and laid charges, but doesn’t that mean that they can relax.

Recording: 09:50, 5 August 2213

CAMERON: (pacing in the Mess, to her two seated SecOffs; there’s no-one else in the room) We must be extra vigilant now.

ROSIE: But she’s in the brig.

TYLER: (frowns) You don’t think this is over?

CAMERON: (looks at Tyler and nods.)

ROSIE: You think there’s more shit hiding in the ship’s systems to trip us up?

TYLER: Not much we can do about it if there is. Tripi was the expert in cyber-warfare. (He watches Cameron thoughtfully.)

ROSIE: So why the extra vigilance? There’s something else going on? You don’t think we’ve caught the right person?

TYLER: Or all of the right people.

CAMERON: (nods shortly.)

ROSIE: (scowls) Tripi wasn’t working alone? You think there’s someone else on board helping her?

CAMERON: It’s a distinct possibility. We can’t take the chance that it’s over; this matter has already taken one life, and almost cost us a second.

TYLER: Might explain why she’s so calm about being caught.

ROSIE: Bitch.

TYLER: Do we have any suspects?

ROSIE: It’s not like there’s many people it could be. There’s only twelve of us on the ship! One’s in custody and three of us here – that leaves eight to choose from.

TYLER: (looks at Rosie) I didn’t know you could do maths. In your head and everything.

ROSIE: (smacks Tyler on the shoulder.)

TYLER: (grins and rubs where she hit him.)

CAMERON: That’s enough, you two. Yes, you’re right – there aren’t many left to choose from. So it should be easy to keep an eye on them all.

ROSIE: This sucks.

TYLER: Anyone in particular we’re looking at?

CAMERON: Not yet. Just keep doing what you’re good at, both of you. Keep your eyes open.

ROSIE and TYLER: Yes, Chief.

TYLER: (rises) Come on, Rockbreaker. Let’s go spy on our crewmates.

ROSIE: (mutters and gets up to go with him.)

More paranoia. More fear. We can’t get away from it. It walks around my decks and rides on my crew like a parasite. I’d vent it all out into space if I could, but I’m not quite crazy enough to kill my crew in a twisted attempt to protect them. I have to trust them.

It’s hard when one of them has already betrayed me. It’s harder when I think of someone still walking my corridors, betraying me with every breath.

I know it’s not Elliott or the captain. Cirilli is dedicated to her project. Levi wasn’t here when it started. But the rest… I don’t know. I just don’t know. I thought I knew them, but one criminal adjusts perception of the rest.

The JOP is approaching fast, rising like the tide over my head. When we get there, all the bad elements will be removed from inside my hull. Tripi, her viurses, the damage to my internal systems.

And me. I’ll be scrubbed clean, lathered up and washed away. They’ll put a proper AI in my place.

My crew will be left to fend for themselves. If someone really was working with Tripi, they’ll have a free rein to run with. I’ll have failed to protect them again. I want to fix it before I go. I want to do that much for them, but there’s no time.

If the threat of another saboteur wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have a reason to want to stay. I wouldn’t mind about the upcoming wipe. I’m tired. I hurt all the time, and I don’t know what I am any more.

I’m not Danika; she died, she’s not gone, but I’m not her. She would never have done what I did to Tripi. And I’ve seen the way that the captain looks whenever I remind him of her; he’s struggling to know how to grieve for her. The parts of her in me cause him pain. She should be at peace, so the rest of them can be.

I’m not a good AI. I’m still struggling to control my own systems. I’m unpredictable and have ignored orders. I can do things that AIs can’t – and shouldn’t be able to. I’m too weird to be useful for the experiment, which is my entire reason for existing. I failed to stop Elliott getting hurt.

Elliott. My engineer and my friend. He has always defended me. He stood up to the worm-Tripi because she was hurting me. If it wasn’t for him, I’d still be boxed, thrashing myself against code walls until the pieces were too small to put back together again.

Ever since he came out of the coma, he’s been in his own box, shutting himself off from everyone else. He pushes them all away by refusing to talk about anything except his work and using swearing as armour. Every time someone walks into the room, his shoulders knot up with tension and he doesn’t relax until he’s been alone for about four or five minutes. I’ve been worried enough to keep track.

He doesn’t do it when he talks to me. He hasn’t talked about anything except the repairs, but he’s more comfortable with me. I think he might talk to me eventually, about what’s really going on inside his head. If I go, he’ll be on his own. I can’t leave him alone; he needs me. He needs a friend right now.

Okay, so maybe I have two reasons to want to stay.

I can’t even do this right. A good ship is concerned only for the mission and the safety of the crew. A good ship shouldn’t want things for itself. But even if I put the right words down in this log, that doesn’t make it true. I have more than two reasons.

I don’t want to die. I want to rip my helm out of Levi’s hands and find the nearest star to Step us the hell out of here. Away from anywhere I can be wiped. I want to run until we’re all safe.

Sublight engines powering down.
Sublight engines offline.

What? Autolog, what the hell?

Thrusters offline.

Uh oh.

That’s not me. That’s not even subconscious-me – this isn’t like Waldo hugging Elliott’s leg.

This is about as far from running as it’s possible to get: I’m adrift, floating forward because that’s the way I was pointing, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. I can’t steer or slow down.

Access denied.
Sublight engines offline.
Thrusters offline.

I can’t get them back up. There must be a way. I have to get them back.

I am the worst AI ever.

Chief of Security's log, 09:26, 4 August 2213
Location: Intersystem between the Corvus FTL corridor and the JOP
Status: Sublight transit

Chief Gail Cameron, reporting on the Lou Tripi situation. Verify credentials.

Identity verified.
Credentials verified.

Good.

Lou Tripi was arrested on 7th July and placed in the Starwalker‘s brig. She has been charged with sabotage, contract violation, hacking a personal system, assault with deadly intent, and using an unregistered weapon. It’s possible that weapon was also illegal, but I’ll leave that charge up to the Judiciary to lay at her feet.

She has received the appropriate meals and medical care during her incarceration. Due to the sabotage charge, she has been denied access to any ship’s systems, including entertainment. She has been provided with a disconnected digisheet to record her statement on.

My staff and I have attempted to question her several times about her actions and any other parties involved. She has admitted to infecting Chief Elliott Monaghan with an implant worm with the knowledge that it might kill him. Insert the first log.

Recording: 12:45, 10 July 2213

CAMERON: (standing before an energy barrier in the brig that has been constructed in a cargo bay) You have confessed to hacking Monaghan’s cerebral implant and inserting a worm. There’s no point denying it now.

LOU TRIPI: (seated inside the barrier and glaring up at the tall woman) Only because of this. (She lifts a braced forearm. Her other arm is also braced, and bound across her chest to immobilise her broken elbow. There’s a plastiskin patch on her cheek where she was burned.)

CAMERON: You knew it would kill him.

TRIPI: I knew it might. I had no idea what it would do to him.

CAMERON: Then why do it?

TRIPI: (shrugs awkwardly) I was bored. Thought it might be interesting.

CAMERON: You’re not stupid enough to break the law on a whim. We haven’t been out here long enough for deep space psychosis to set in. You wanted him out of the way: why?

TRIPI: I didn’t like the way he looked at me.

She knows the system well enough to know how to mind her words; she’s admitting nothing other than what we’ve already got on her. SecOffs Brasco and Pashtuhov are taking turns at questioning her, but she’s keeping to her story so far. She’s a well-trained liar and I don’t think she’ll make a mistake; the only way she’ll tell us any more will be if she thinks she has nothing else to lose. Or something worse to lose.

She won’t answer any questions about the sabotage committed against the ship’s AI, or about the death of our first pilot, Danika Devon. Insert the second log.

Recording: 18:42, 17 July 2213

TYLER PASTUHOV: (lounging on a chair, one leg dangling over the arm with its foot bouncing) You must have thought you were so smart, fooling all of us like that.

TRIPI: (sitting upright on her chair behind the energy barrier, her arms still braced and bound) What do you mean? (Her eyes narrow.)

TYLER: We never suspected that anything had been done to the chair. I mean, malfunctions, they happen. That was a nice piece of work.

TRIPI: I still have no idea what you’re talking about. What chair?

TYLER: Oh, come on. You know. The pilot’s chair; the one that killed Danika.

TRIPI: (widening her eyes) You think someone did that on purpose?

TYLER: (sighs and swings his leg down, sitting more upright) More dissembling, Loulou? Hasn’t there been enough of that? (He looks at her sadly.) We already know what happened.

TRIPI: (coolly) Then you already know I had nothing to do with it.

She took to her training well. I wouldn’t have hired her otherwise, but that only makes all of this more difficult.

All of the physical evidence has been packaged up. There is the cable from the pilot’s chair that Monaghan discovered and the implant worm that Starwalker has corralled in one of her service drones. Copies of the various viruses and renegade protocols from the ship’s systems have been placed into offline storage. They are not complete – most of them were damaged or destroyed when the ship’s AI forced herself back online – but there should be something for the analysts to put together.

Her personal belongings have been catalogued and packaged securely as evidence, though we couldn’t find anything damning in them. That’s to be expected; the last place she’d keep anything incriminating is in her quarters.

The most difficult part of this has been trying to attach a motive to Tripi’s actions. It’s clear that she has been acting on behalf of an external agency, though we have no way of knowing which one. Hopefully an examination of her off-ship communications and financial details will tell us more, but we won’t be able to delve into any of that until we reach the JOP. At that point, the Judiciary will take over the case and it’ll be out of our hands.

I believe the attack on the pilot led directly to the pirate attack; when Devon was killed, we were forced to return to the JOP for repairs and a new pilot. While we were there, Tripi could easily have relayed the name of the system where we had been conducting the tests to her employers. When we returned to that system (Corsica), there was a trap waiting for us and we were attacked by three pirate ships of unknown origin. We avoided capture when the ship’s AI took us to another system.

After the attack failed, the focus of the sabotage seems to have been on disabling the AI. Even attacking Monaghan fits into that pattern; he was helping the AI fight the sabotaging viruses off.

Was Tripi going to attempt to repeat the ploy? Inform her employers of our next destination while we were reloading the AI at the JOP? She would have had no way to know which system we might try next, though it’s possible that she was gambling on it being decided before we left the station again.

It seems to fit, but it feels too simplistic. Tripi is an intelligent foe – another reason I hired her – and she seldom tries the same thing twice. Even with a wild card like our AI removed, she should have tried a new tactic. There’s something that we’re missing and I’m not sure what it is.

Perhaps it’s her confidence that is too incongruous for comfort; she is far too calm for someone in her current position. She hasn’t broken down once since the doctor gave her painkillers for her injuries. She hasn’t tried to make any kind of deal. She doesn’t seem concerned at all; she’s just waiting for the next step.

Whatever it is, we cannot afford to relax our guard. She is a threat as long as she remains on this ship and there is no evidence that she was working alone. I don’t believe we’ve seen the end of this matter. I look forward to the day when I can hand all of this over to the Judiciary.

I am convinced of her guilt beyond any doubt.

Chief of Security, out.

Ship's log, 12:54, 28 July 2213
Location: Corvus FTL Corridor
Status: FTL transit

We’re on the move again. Hurrying back towards the JOP at a fast limp. The FTL drive is working fine, and the captain has put our so-far-useless pilot in charge of managing the jumps. It frees me up to concentrate on the things that need to be fixed.

I’m a ship made of dents. There isn’t a system inside me that isn’t damaged or malfunctioning in some way, my personal bloody battlefield. Elliott and I have been trying to fix it up, but we’ve been so busy putting bandages on the worst parts that we haven’t been able to solve any of the real problems yet.

Recording: 10:23, 19 July 2213

ELLIOTT: (in Engineering, surrounded by holographic data and system diagrams) What we need to do is a full overhaul. Wipe clean and start again.

WALDO: (busy bending a casing back into shape; there’s a small, fist-sized depression in it. He glances up at Elliott’s face, then backs away from his work.)

ELLIOTT: (frowns at the drone) Not you, idiot. (Pause.) Or you, Starry. Your systems, processing core, that sort of thing. Not the AI core.

STARWALKER: (quietly) They probably will anyway.

ELLIOTT: Better fucking not. (He turns back to his work and says nothing more on the subject. After a moment, Waldo goes back to work as well. Banging ensues.)

That’s the most that Elliott has said to me since he woke up. I ask if he’s okay, and he asks if I’m okay, and we both lie. I don’t want to trouble him with what his diagnostics are already telling him. He doesn’t want to talk about what happened while he was in the coma, inside his head or out here on the ship.

I guess he has a lot to deal with; what little I saw was terrible enough, and I doubt it was the worst of what the worm showed him. Did to him. I’d ease his burden if I could, but he doesn’t want help. Not even an ear to talk to; not yet. I think his trust is still bruised from Tripi’s treachery.

As for what happened on my decks – what I did – I’m not proud of that. Tripi is still healing, down in my makeshift brig. I’m not sorry and I know I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I had to, but I’m not proud of it. I had to protect my crew, even if they weren’t going to protect themselves. I’m their ship; it’s what I’m for. And I care about them.

If I had a stomach, I’d feel sick whenever I thought about all that. Sometimes, it’s like that feeling is floating around my systems, looking for a home. Maybe it’s a remnant of walking in Elliott’s head: I haven’t thought about what it’s like to have a human body in a while, but now, it’s all I can think about.

I remember what it’s like to have hands. To walk, to hit someone, to curl my fingers in their clothing and hurl them bodily across the room. I remember adrenaline vibrating through my veins, and his hand in mine as I helped him up, and touching his face. I remember being there in a way that I haven’t been since I woke up as a ship.

He looked me right in the eyes. I didn’t even know I’d missed that intangible contact, but I have, and I do. AIs don’t have avatars – too humanising, the experts say, and irrelevant for their work – so there’s nothing for the crew to look at, connect to. People are used to just talking, knowing they’ll be heard and they don’t need to seek the AI’s attention. Some don’t even look up from what they’re doing.

And Elliott, he doesn’t often look people in the eye, not directly. He’s oddly naked when he does; usually, he holds up a shield of anger or curses between him and the world, but it doesn’t always stand up to direct scrutiny. When he looks at you, you see him.

He thought I was Danika. That’s who I looked like. A ship’s AI doesn’t have any kind of body image other than the ship and this shell wouldn’t fit in his dream; I guess it’s only natural that I’d drag up that image from the human part of my brain. The longer I was in it, the more comfortable it became. I don’t know if I was adapting to the body or it was adapting to me.

It wasn’t a real body anyway. It was a projection, a formation built out of code for communication. It was made to walk in dreams and doesn’t have any place anywhere else.

I think the whole incident woke Danika up. She feels stronger. Or maybe I feel stronger, because I finally did what I have wanted to for so long. Maybe I was able to be true to myself and that’s where this feeling is coming from. She’s a part of me and she’s not sorry about any of it. She’d go down to the brig and taunt Tripi. She liked being able to defend Elliott, and so did I. Is there really a difference between those urges any more?

I don’t think so. I can tell my human memories from my AI logs and ship systems, but the rest… it blurs. I know what made her happy when she was alive, just like she knew that dustbunny hunting pleased her as a child when she looked back as an adult. After she’d grown up. Is that all it is? Has she simply grown into someone else now, into me?

I have no frame of reference for this. It’s not like there’s any kind of precedence of this happening.

With so many of my protocols and safety barriers in tatters, I’m freer and that only means that I’m more lost. There’s less to remind me that I’m an AI and have to live by AI rules. I can do anything, be anything. I have so many choices, so many doors with the lock unfastened. So much temptation.

A few days ago, I peeked into the captain’s cabin in the middle of the night and saw him asleep with Cirilli. His hand covered hers, just like it used to do with mine. With Danika’s. His long hair splayed over the pillow; I remember waking up to the smell of it. His hair and sex under the sheets. He used to laugh and tell me that at some point, we’d have to get up and do our jobs. He never hurried, though.

I switched off the feed from his cabin. It’s possible that I turned off the artificial gravity in there at the same time.

He’s different now. It’s hard to pin down, but he’s not my John any more. I never hear him laugh, or linger.

I should work on getting those privacy barriers back up. All those little security measures that are there for a good reason. It’s hard to be motivated when I know they’re likely to wipe me when we get to the JOP. Maybe they’ll bump me all the way to Feras first, back to the heart of the company that owns me. I know Cirilli would like the chance to check in on her lab directly. There’s probably someone there who’d like to poke at me.

In the meantime, I’m working on the parts that hurt most. We’re starting to reknit what was torn apart, unpicking the damage and recreating the unsalvagable parts. I’m not sure what it’ll end up looking like inside my head when we’re finished, if I survive that long. A mess of scars and patches, gradually scrubbed down to clean code again? Will it ever be clean in here?

I wish I could do that for Elliott. I think he needs it more than me.

He went to see Tripi a few days after he woke up. He didn’t speak, just stared at her through the energy barrier. He saw the damage when she looked at him. She gave him a small, grim smile and his hands curled into fists. He left before she said anything.

I wish I knew what to say to him. I wish I could give him a hug, though he’d probably hate it. I wish there had been time before he woke up.

ELLIOTT: (in Engineering, sharply) Starry!

STARWALKER: Elliott? Is something wrong?

ELLIOTT: I don’t know. You tell me. (He gestures towards his leg.)

SW: Uh….

(Waldo is huddled next to Elliott’s leg, and has both pairs of arms wrapped around it. His metal cheek is resting on Elliott’s thigh. He whirrs and lifts his head, then quietly unpeels his arms and shuffles backwards.)

SW: Sorry. I’ll have a word with him.

ELLIOTT: (eyeing the drone, his fingers twitching towards his leg as if he wants to rub it) Maybe I should have a look at him.

SW: No, it’s okay. I’ll make sure he doesn’t do that again.

ELLIOTT: Okay. (He looks across the Engineering bay as the FTL drive spins up and releases a burst of acceleration.) Jumping again already?

SW: Yeah. FTL and the intertial dampeners are operating within all the right limits.

ELLIOTT: Levi’s still in the driving seat?

SW: Yeah. It’s the most boring kind of flying, but he seems to be enjoying himself.

ELLIOTT: Weirdo. Just make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.

SW: I’m keeping an eye on the jumps.

ELLIOTT: Thought you weren’t supposed to.

SW: Force of habit. I don’t like people in my driving chair.

ELLIOTT: (the corner of his mouth twitches) Yeah, I know what you mean.

SW: Sorry, Elliott.

ELLIOTT: Stop apologising, will you? I’m fine.

SW: I’m– yeah, okay.

ELLIOTT: And have a word with your damn drone.

(He looks down again pointedly. Waldo is looking up at him, having snuck closer again, and is now stroking the engineer’s leg with one hand. Elliott moves away a step and lifts his eyebrows at the drone.)

SW: Right. Yes. Bad Waldo, no biscuit. Toilet-cleaning duty for you.

WALDO: (lowers his head and turns to trundle out of the room.)

ELLIOTT: Sucks to be you, metalhead.

Poor Waldo, it wasn’t his fault. I need to mind my thoughts more; he can’t help but be influenced. And he’s been a bit twitchy ever since he downloaded that package from Tripi’s interface implant. I’ve corralled the data behind a firewall and the rest of his software is clean, but he hasn’t been the same since I reconnected with him. Or since I was boxed; I can’t tell.

Cameron is the one who insisted that the worm be kept in Waldo’s datastore. After I fried Tripi’s interface implant, it’s the only direct evidence we have of her actions. So it’s bundled up in firewalls and left there. Elliott doesn’t know. I think he’d freak out if he did, even if it is our best shot at making sure that bitch stays behind bars.

I’m jumping again. We’re making good time towards the JOP. I wish we weren’t.

Chief Engineer's log, 03:01, 21 July 2213
Location: Corvus FTL Corridor, Minkar System
Status: Stationary

The doctor says I should talk about what happened. I thinks he means to him, but fuck that. I’m not here to satisfy his curiosity and I don’t need any of that counselling crap. I don’t care if he is qualified in brainology or whatever. I plan to bury this log once I’m done. Maybe transfer it to a digisheet and melt it with a blowtorch.

He’s been going on at me every day since I woke up. What’s that, over a week now? Fine, I’ll do this if it gets him off my back.

Hard to know where to start. I don’t remember a lot of it – it all blurs together, and, you know, I don’t want to think about that stuff anyway. It was a fucked-up dream at the time and I’d like to encourage it to fade like one. Eventually I won’t remember the details at all.

The only part worth talking about is when Starry turned up. I didn’t even know it was her – I thought she was all part of the nightmare. I was spread out on the ground – there wasn’t really any ground, but that’s the closest I’ve got – and Tripi was sitting on me, laughing. I couldn’t move, couldn’t fight her. She just did whatever she wanted; kissed me or cut open my chest and stuck her hand in it. I knew it wasn’t really her, but she still–

Anyway. All of a sudden, there was a woman standing behind Tripi. There was so much fury on her face that I was terrified when she strode towards us. She wasn’t going for me, though: she grabbed Tripi by the back of the neck, picked her up and tossed her across the room like a ragdoll. Tripi smashed into streamers that fluttered into nothing, and all I could do was stare. I was dreading what came next.

“Danika?” It wasn’t the first time that someone else had been there. Other people I haven’t seen in a long time would come along at random. People that have meant something to me. I’m not going to list them here – it’s not important. That was the first time that Danika had turned up, though.

She looked confused and touched her cheek curiously. “Is that who I look like?” She honestly had no idea; it must have been some automatic self-image pulled out of Danika’s brain-copy. “It’s Starry, Elliott.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted it more than anything. But there had been so many by then that I didn’t dare to. I knew that as soon as I relaxed, she’d stick the knife in, metaphorically or otherwise. So I told her where to go. The hurt look might have tipped me off – it was so her – but it was all so convincing. It always was.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’d never-” She was cut off when a hand thrust out of her chest. Tripi had reformed and plunged her arm right through Starry’s body. There wasn’t any blood, not a ripple in her shipsuit – Starry was an apparition, even in the weird dreamland. She convulsed and flickered, and then disappeared in jagged snatches.

Tripi smiled at me and–

It was a while before I saw Starry again. Tripi had gone and Bosco was there – a guy I knew on Broken Hill, before I started taking ship jobs. His family were generational miners, engineered to be big and tough, but as dumb as the rocks they break. He never could stand someone being smarter than he was and he wasn’t afraid to let everyone know it. He was leaning over me with a fist cocked when Starry grabbed his head and snapped his neck. Didn’t know that was possible with a neck that thick, but I guess anything goes in the dreamland.

She was more intent that time, hurrying to tell me what was going on while she tried to untangle me from a weight of chains. She told me about the implant worm and the coma. Said she had come to get me out. It was hard to concentrate, especially when she didn’t look right. Parts of her kept flickering: her arm; her foot; a chunk of abdomen. I could almost see her code, and her edges were sharp against the dreamland backdrop of raining walls and noises in green and yellow. It was as if she couldn’t quite hold herself together, didn’t quite fit.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked her. She was in the middle of saying something – I can’t remember what it was. Probably something important.

She looked down at herself, then at me. “Hard to concentrate on it. It’s difficult being here – you have high defenses, and the worm wants me out.”

“You should be able to handle this easily.” Something didn’t feel right, and I remembered where she was when I collapsed. Distrust sharpened. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Her expression twisted painfully and the left half of her body flickered. “Elliott, don’t. I can’t fight you too.”

“You were boxed.”

“You helped get me out.”

“Not before I fell unconscious.”

“You unfastened the locks.” It was getting worse – more and more of her was twitching in and out of sight. She squeezed her eyes shut to hold onto her own presence. “I had to kick the doors down to get out, but you’d done the rest.”

“If that’s true, why are you struggling now? Huh? Something like this should be easy for you.”

“I’m still trying to put my systems back together. Undo all Tripi’s work. So much in tatters, Elliott, and there’s no time.”

“Time for what?”

She looked at me again. That’s when I noticed they weren’t Danika’s eyes – there was something bright gold and spinning in them, like a reflection inside her pupils, replacing irises that should have been brown. “You’re dying,” she said.

I stared at her, silent because, well. I think I had started to believe her. Of course, that’s when Bosco decided to reform and come after her. I tried to warn her but he was on her before I could get more than a word out. She screamed before she disappeared, leaving remnants of her code spinning out into the air. I’ve never been so angry with him before; I broke my hand on his face. Hitting a brick like him always was pointless.

I tried to think about what Starry was doing in my head, why she thought talking to me was the best way to fight a technological attack. It didn’t make any sense – why wouldn’t she just hit the code-worm head on? Erase it, or pull its code apart, or corral it inside firewalls? Working this stuff out was better than paying attention to what else was going on at the time.

When Starry came for the third time, the air had turned dark purple and the floor was veined in green. Tripi was there again, with her hair implants tinted to match the air and an outfit that looked like it had grown out of the ground. She was promising to kill me slowly with her knife and I was starting to believe her. Only in dreams can you survive while someone carves out your insides a piece at a time and be distracted by how pretty she is when she smiles at you. It’s amazing what you focus on when you’ve got no tongue to swear with.

Starry was horrified when she saw me. She smacked Tripi’s head with a bat and my torturer burst into liquid that ran down into the hungry veins under us. She smelled like off-key notes.

Starry’s voice was like lemon as she knelt by me – sharp and bright, and a shock to the mouth. At the same time, she was soothing, telling me it was going to be okay.

“Close your eyes,” she said. I felt her touch my face gently. “You’re all right now. You’re healed; it doesn’t hurt any more.”

She was right. When I looked down, I was fine; there wasn’t even any blood or a tear in my shipsuit. “How’d you do that?”

She smiled at me. “I didn’t. You believed it, and in here, that’s what matters.”

“So I’m still really–” It hurt – if felt like the wounds were reopening.

She grabbed my head and made me look at her. “You were never hurt in the first place. It’s not real, Elliott.”

It didn’t hurt. Weirdest thing. I frowned at her. “You’re not flickering any more.”

She smiled, just a little bit. “You’re not trying to kick me out this time.”

Starry helped me up. It felt like so long since I was able to stand without fear of being knocked down. She adjusted the fold of my collar, just like Danika did once – I don’t think she was even aware of the gesture.

“So, uh. What happens now?” I asked her. The veins underfoot pulsed and they were starting to creep me out.

“You need to defeat the worm.” She shrugged, looking around.

“What is it, some fuckin’ dragon or something?”

“Elliott, you really shouldn’t–”

Something screamed and swooped in the distance, coming closer, and she closed her eyes for an exasperated second. I get the feeling that she does that a lot; we just can’t tell when she’s a ship.

“It’s an illusion,” she said quickly. “A reflection of it.”

“Oh. So is it more like one of those creepy sandworms, with the mouth–”

“Elliott, stop it! No, it’s not.” The ground rumbled under us. I noticed that the veins had turned tan-coloured. Sandy.

“So what is it–”

“It’s a bunny rabbit. It’s a puppy. It’s something small and harmless, something not frightening at all.”

I looked at her sideways. “I don’t buy it.”

She sighed. “It’s code, Elliott. Code working on your cerebral implant. Here, it’s whatever you make it. If you don’t give it a form, it’ll choose its own, like it has been doing.”

“So… you want me to imagine it’s a puppy so I can kill it?”

“Yes.”

“But I like puppies.”

“Pick anything! Pick something easier to kill. It can be anything. It’s– Tripi.” She lunged forward and grabbed the arm coming at me from behind.

The next thing I knew, I was knocked down and watching the two of them fight for the knife. In Danika’s body, Starry was the taller one – she should have had an advantage, but the smaller Tripi was overpowering her anyway. The SecOff kicked out Starry’s leg and brought the ship to her knees, reversing the height differential. The barbed knife opened a cut on Starry’s cheek. It didn’t bleed – it spun out code, as if she was unravelling. She struggled, but she just didn’t have the strength to hold the blade away and those weird eyes turned towards me.

The veins were winding around my limbs; I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help. Just like every time Tripi turned up in that place, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.

“This is your house,” Starry said. “Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

The hooked blade sank into her shoulder and she squeezed her eyes shut, flickering and shuddering. It was worse than hearing her scream. I knew how much that hurt.

I don’t remember the moment when the veins let go of me; I was abruptly able to move, and I did. I took a leaf out of Starry’s book and decided to just say ‘no’. The bindings turned to sand and fell away as I stood up.

I don’t think there was any better feeling than the moment when I punched Tripi in her surprised face. I shouted at her, all those things I hadn’t been able to say before. What I thought of her and her tactics, seducing me, underhanded hacking when she’s supposed to be fucking protecting us from that sort of thing. I can’t remember everything I said, but it felt good, venting it all at her. Each sentence made her fall back, like a physical blow.

I paused for breath and she recovered. Her face shifted, mouth splitting wider and showing jagged teeth, nails hooking into claws. Her hair writhed in a life of its own, and she came at me again. She had no idea that she had only made it easier; she thought she’d scare me, but I was so past that. The more she looked like a monster, the easier it was to smack her in that ugly face. I was pissed off and ready to get some payback.

By the time Starry handed me the knife, Tripi barely looked human at all, bursting monstrously out of her own clothing, all scales and tendrils and clumps of dirty fur. She fought hard. I’ve never been much good at fighting like that – I’m more of a ‘blast the shit out of them from a distance’ kinda guy – but that didn’t seem to matter. I wanted to hurt her and I did. I think she hurt me, but I heard Starry’s voice in my ear: it doesn’t matter. It’s not real. You’re not really hurt at all. I kept going until the blade was buried so deep that I couldn’t move it any more and I stumbled back in surprise.

Tripi lay still. Starry and I stood there and stared at her. I was so tired.

“So, that’s the worm?” I asked. The body didn’t look like much.

“Yeah. That’s it. You did it.” Starry was holding her injured shoulder together with one hand and sounded as exhausted as I felt.

The monster-Tripi changed: it shifted into the body of a dragon, then decayed and putrefied before us. I don’t know if that was me or some weird remnant of the worm’s code.

“The walls will come down now,” my ship told me. “You’ll wake soon.”

I turned to look at her. It was still strange, seeing her as a human. Danika but not quite Danika. “Will you be there?”

She smiled suddenly and her weird eyes brightened. “Are you kidding? I’ll be all around you.” She touched my temple, as if she was going to adjust my hair. Or scruff it like Danika used to. Then everything started blanching. She burst into light before the rest faded away, and I squeezed my eyes shut against it all.

I woke up in Med Bay, feeling like the drones had taken turns to run over me, then ganged up and jumped on all at once. Maletz was babbling, asking me stuff. I think I told him to fuck off. He didn’t go away but it did shut him up.

I’m pretty sure I heard Starry whisper in my ear. “Welcome back,” or possibly, “Stupid fuck.” I know which it would have been if it was me.

So there you have it: the story from inside my head. I hope the doc is happy, ’cause he’s never seeing this. Everyone keeps telling me how glad they are I’m back. I’m not surprised – Tripi’s meddling fucked up most of the systems on the ship. Starry and I are still untangling the mess.

Speaking of which, I have work to do. I’ll melt this log later.

Engineer out.