Starwalker

Ship's log, 22:56, 26 March 2213
Location: Unconfirmed
Status: Orbit around star

I haven’t done anything proactive since we tried my first Step and I wound up hiding behind a planet. So busy trying to be a proper AI, I had ignored so much of what I wanted to do. Things my instincts told me to do. I wanted to let my crew lead me, I wanted to trust them to do the right thing. But they didn’t trust me.

I guess even this AI has limits.

When it came to it, I took matters into my own metal hands. I did what I thought was right. The consequences couldn’t be worse than the alternative. Could they?

Ship's log, 20:20, 24 March 2213 (Reconstructed)
Location: Corsica system
Status: Sublight transit towards Corsica sol

 

The decision is made. I have broken the truce and the moon, and the pirates are still trying to untangle themselves from the debris cloud. I’m running headlong towards the heart of a star with every system on board on fire and pulsing.

I’m fleeing from my own detonation with chunks of rock racing me. Nearly got one right up the tailpipe. Should be free of them soon.

The Star Step drive is coming online, so slow, so slow. We’re some distance from the star yet, but we won’t have much time once we get there. Already, the pirates are starting to pull free of the dust. In a few seconds, their sensors will have picked me up. I can outrun the scout, but I don’t know about the cruiser and I have no idea about that third ship. Still can’t see it.

 

Power feeds active.
Navigation synchronised.
Filaments extending.

 

Here we go. I can feel the systems locking into place. Those strange, slender filaments are peeling away from my hull, their ends drifting around me like whiskers in the breeze. I look like one of those hairy seeds, or a jellyfish, perhaps. A jellyfish in space with a rocket up its ass.

Mid-deck just went crazy. I had almost forgotten about them.

 

DR CIRILLI: (over internal comms) Captain Warwick! What’s going on – who started the Star Step drive?

CAPTAIN: The ship did.

CIRILLI: WHAT?

CAPT: Starwalker’s locked us out. She’s taken control.

CIRILLI: You should have wiped it! I told you!

CAPT: That doesn’t help us now!

CIRILLI: What does it think it’s doing? We can’t Step now!

SW: All systems are functioning within safety limits.

CIRILLI: Stop this! You’ll kill us all!

SW: You’ll kill us all if you stop me.

CIRILLI: Is that a threat?

SW: Why don’t you ask the pirates?

CIRILLI: Listen, you crazy ship, you have to–

 

Internal communications offline.

 

Have to work fast. Cirilli and her team are desperately trying to shut the drive down. If they do that, we’re lost. Everything’s lost. There’s no time for finesse – I have to make sure they can’t disable it. I don’t have enough drones to hold them all down. There’s code protecting them – protocols and safety loops. There’s no time to do this right – all I can do is tear it apart.

 

Safety protocols offline.
Emergency shut-down disabled.
Warning: emergency procedures may not execute correctly.

 

CAPT: (on the Bridge) Damn it! Tripi, can you get into the ship’s systems?

TRIPI: (still tapping away at her console) I’m trying, sir. She’s thrown up walls on every access point. I’m trying to find a back door.

CAPT: Keep at it. Monaghan’s not answering.

CAMERON: I’ll check on him. (She leaves at a run.)

 

Gravity manipulation online.
Filaments charging.

 

Almost ready. I’ve had to rip the code locks off the mid-deck systems as well, so I can keep control of it all. It wasn’t really protected against me anyway. Wong is going for the hardlines, but as soon as the filaments have charged beyond 30%, it’ll be too dangerous to disconnect. The feedback might blow me up. Or just him. Either way, he won’t dare.

The pirates have spotted me. They’re chasing. Damn, that cruiser is fast. I see the third one now – another cruiser, older than the first. Scarred but more than operational.

 

Enemy targetting system locked on.
Warning: emergency protocols disabled.

 

Dammit, they’ve locked onto me already. How’d they get into range so fast? They’re too far away for missiles, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m pushing to 120% on the sublight engines, but the cruisers are still closing. I can feel the engine housing humming in protest; I can’t keep this up.

 

Laser fire detected.
Warning: emergency protocols disabled.
Evasive protocols unavailable.

 

Well, screw you too, autolog. I’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way, ducking and weaving. It’s not hard to dodge shots fired from that distance; plenty of time to see it coming. It’s just laser-fire – it won’t do much damage, but it’s enough to take out an engine. They want me alive. The evasive manoeuvres slow me down. They want me functioning. Damn them!

They’re closing. I’m straining and it’s not fast enough, and the star is still too far away. Just have to keep going a little while longer.

 

LEVI: (on the Bridge) Wow. Look at her go. I’ve never seen flying like that.

CAPT: (hard-faced) Don’t be too impressed, pilot. She might still kill us.

LEVI: (shuts up.)

 

Filament charging: 30%

 

Wong should back off now. He’s trying a more roundabout approach. Won’t have time to stop me now.

Engine housing is overheating. Engineering is painted with warning-coloured lights. One of my drones is down – Cameron must have disabled it. Elliott will be free soon. Will he help or disconnect me? I have to hope he’ll help. There’s no time for anything else.

 

Filament charging: 50%
Excessive heat detected in sublight system.
Warning: emergency protocols disabled.

 

The cruisers are spreading out to flank me, trying to give me nowhere to go. But that tactic didn’t work before and it won’t now. I’m not changing course. I’m heading straight for the heart of the star.

Just a little further – almost there, almost in range.

Follow me if you dare, fuckers.

 

Filament charging: 90%

 

Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon.

 

Filaments at capacity.
Star Step drive ready.
Opening portal.

 

No time to waste. I’ve done this before: weave gravity into a web and compress it down and down and down until it pokes a hole in the universe. It’s coming – I can feel it. Any moment now, and we’ll be through.

 

CAPT: (on the Bridge) She’s pushing on to a Step. Levi, get in position.

LEVI: Oh gods. All right, all right. (He goes to the pilot’s chair and hurried punches the initialisation code. He frowns.) Uh, sir?

CAPT: (shortly) What?

LEVI: It’s inactive. (He leans down to check behind the chair.) The leads haven’t been reconnected.

CAPT: (expletives.) Starwalker! Stop now, do you hear me? That’s an order.

SW: I hear you, captain. I cannot comply.

CAPT: You can’t Step! It requires a human pilot.

SW: I know.

CAPT: The immersion chair is disconnected.

SW: I know. I can do it, captain.

CAPT: It’s impossible!

 

Portal open.

 

SW: I just tore a hole in the universe, captain. Anything is possible.

 

I can do this. I don’t need a pilot; I am the pilot.

The door is open. All I have to do is step through it. And when I do, I save us all.

Deep breath. Here we go.

 

Warning
Warning
Warning
Portal passed.
Warning: navigation failure.
Portal closed.
Warning: emergency protocols disabled.
Sublight engines offline.

 

This is it. This is the moment we’ve all been chasing for so long. We’re outside the universe, beneath its skin.

Oh god, I see it. I see everything. It’s beautiful. It burns. I’m freezing. I’m floating and falling and in a thousand different pieces, and it’s wonderful.

 

Sensor array error.
Inertial dampeners offline.

 

There are threads here, bright golden paths through the darkness. They sear my eyes and chase away the shadows. I am warmed and blessed and incinerated, all at once.

That’s why I’m supposed to have a human pilot for this: an AI can’t make sense of the sensory data. It’s confusing. It’s euphoric. I’m dying and being born, over and over.

There is no pilot’s chair to take over – I got us here, so I have to find a way out. I’ve reactivated Lang Lang’s station and she’s leaping on to adjust her navigation calculations. I can follow them.

There’s no buffering now; just raw movement. I have to be so careful not to turn too sharp and hurt my crew. My sublight engines have shut down – that was Elliott, helping – so I only have thrusters left. Smoothly does it.

If I close my eyes, I can feel my way, gently, gently. I’m a blind ship, swooping through the dark, dancing between the golden threads of the universe. I’m a virgin who doesn’t know where to put her hands. It doesn’t make sense, but I understand. This is how it’s supposed to be.

There, there it is. I can feel the place Lang Lang is pointing me towards. Another star, another beautiful swell of light-bending gravity. My filaments are extended and ready, shivering in anticipation. They want to weave. They want to send us back out into the world.

So I let them join the dance.

 

Portal opening.

 

They weave so wantonly, drawing on the abundant power in this non-place, inviting it in. Join us, whirl with us, just once around the floor. Now here we are back again, and the door is opening. It is almost time to go; Cinderella is late. The clock chimes out of time.

 

Portal open.

 

One last burst and here we are, spit out like a lemon pip. The velvet dark of space wraps coolly around me and I shiver. Behind me, a star burns furiously and my hull steams.

I can uncover my eyes now, and there are no ships waiting for us. No pirates, no debris to clog up the system. The stars are different, and we are safe.

We made it. We have Stepped across systems, using the stars themselves as stones. I am my name.

 

Portal closed.
Star Step drive powering down.
Inertial dampeners online.
Emergency protocols enabled.

 

They’re still shouting at me. I can hear them but I’m not listening.

Today, we made history. We did something impossible and amazing. And an AI didn’t let her crew die.

Tomorrow, one of those things won’t matter. I honestly can’t say which.

In the meantime, I think we all need to cool off.

 

Wide orbit engaged.

Ship's log, 20:12, 24 March 2213
Location: Between the fourth planet and its moon, Corsica system
Status: Positional orbit

The last two days have been a tense game of hide and seek, pitted against an opponent we have neither seen nor heard. We know they’re here, though the only signs of them have been the drift of debris across the system’s exit routes. Chunks of rock and metal, the remains of other ships, even waste containers that should have been hurled into a sun – they had brought whatever they could lay their hands on, probably dragged in a gravity net, and tossed it across the system like caltrops.

No-one wants to stand and fight. I’m armed to the teeth but my crew don’t believe I can win a battle. The safest option for everyone is to run and I know they’re not wrong. I’m armed in case the flight fails. We’ll fight only if we can’t avoid it, but it puts my crew at risk. My crew and my precious Star Stepping drive.

The captain asked me to calculate escape vectors but we still haven’t engaged any of them. There are a few narrow corridors left open to us but Cameron believes they’ll be watched. She says that we have to watch out for sensor buoys on the most likely paths out of here; if we want to slip away undetected, then we have to avoid them. Take the least likely path, the one that is trickiest to navigate and is far from the quickest.

So, we’ve been sneaking. Scanning small sections of the system and then running across them, full-speed. Crouching behind a planet or a moon and waiting to see if anyone noticed us. Rinse and repeat. Repeat and rinse the sweat away. Quietly, quietly, with our hearts in our throats. We’re getting there, edging towards the edge of the system, but so slowly.

I thought that a situation like this would take the spotlight off me and my weirdness. Once again, I was mistaken. Certain members of my human manifest have used it as an excuse to voice their doubts about my abilities, even as I keep us hidden and creep towards safety. Right out in the open, in my public spaces. I want to shout at them: I’M NOT DEAF. But the basis of my protests is hurt feelings I’m not supposed to have. I can’t complain and I can’t win.

Signature detected.

Uh oh. Here we go, here they are. The pirates have found us. Time to set off all my bells and whistles.

Alert Level 2 activated.

CAPTAIN: (on the Bridge) Starwalker, report.

STARWALKER: Signature detected in quadrant three, sir.

CAPT: What kind of signature?

SW: Active engine, approaching. Scans still bringing in data.

CAPT: You bumped us to Level 2 without being sure it’s a ship?

CAMERON: (arriving) What do we have?

SW: You told me to take us to Level 2 as soon as I found anything. Seeing as engines don’t tend to travel alone, it was a safe assumption that a ship was coming.

CAPT: (to Cameron) Nothing yet. (To the ship) I want everything you get as you get it.

Signature detected.

Oh, shit.

SW: Captain, we have an additional signature. Quadrant five.

CAMERON/SW: They’re flanking us.

CAMERON: (frowns.)

SW: Scan data on-screen.

They’re still a good distance out but closing fast. Full-speed sublight. They know exactly where we are. One is mid-sized, a cruiser, probably ex-military from its configuration. The other is smaller, closer to my size – that must be a scout. A couple of thousand klicks out and I can already tell that they’re armed and weapons-hot.

No markings on either ship, no way of telling where they’ve come from. I think we all know they’re pirates anyway. There’s no doubt about their intentions.

Signature detected.
Signature lost.

What the hell? Stupid autolog. No, wait. There’s a blip in the scans, too.

SW: Captain, I think there’s a third ship out there.

CAPT: What do you mean ‘you think’? What do the scans say?

SW: Nothing solid – it keeps coming and going. And there’s a bloody great moon obscuring quadrants one and two. If we move, I think we’ll find a ship on the other side of it.

CAPT: (reads the scan data of the first two ships on the screen. His jaw clenches.) Take us to Level 1. Cameron, suggestions?

Alert Level 1 activated.

CAMERON: We might be able to take on one of them, but three? (She shakes her head, her mouth set grimly.) They’re coming in to cover escape vectors out of the system.

CAPT: All of them?

TRIPI: (arrives and goes to the weapons station. She immediately flips on the holographic display and begins to manipulate controls.)

LEVI: (arrives on Tripi’s heels and goes to stand by the navigation console.)

CAMERON: Not all of them. They’ve left us a gap in quadrants six and seven.

CAPT: Like they left us this gap? Starwalker, can you see anything at all in that direction?

SW: Nothing between us and the planet. They could have a ship waiting behind it.

TRIPI: Weapons free.

CAMERON: Hold fire, Tripi.

TRIPI: Holding, ma’am.

These pirates know exactly what they’re doing. They kept out of scanner-range until they could block us in. That open quadrant is an invitation to see how stupid we are; they know we’ll want to run. They know we’d be foolish to try to fight them. They’re trying to force a surrender and from the way the captain just thumped my bulkhead, he knows it. He’s making the choice already, pragmatic sensibilities pointing him in one logical direction.

Just like with me.

Receiving transmission.

SW: Captain, one of the ships is hailing us. The scout.

CAPT: Voice only, open channel.

SW: (in the Bridge and on external communications channel) This is the Starwalker. State your business.

SCOUT: This is the Mandible. You know our business. Unconditional surrender.

SW: We would be happy to accept your surrender.

CAPT: (hissing) Starwalker, shut up.

SCOUT: (tautly) I think you know what we mean. You’re outnumbered and out-gunned.

CAPT: And what will happen to the ship and her crew if we surrender?

SCOUT: You’ll be property of the Bountiful. Power down your weapons and engines.

Property. I don’t like the sound of that. I know I’m property now – of Is-Tech, the company that funded my development and construction, and pays my crew – but this is different. This includes everyone aboard and it’s common knowledge that those taken by the pirates don’t become witnesses to the public. No-one knows what happens to them. Pirate tactics have only been gleaned from examinations of wreckages and ambush sites, not from direct reports.

I’ll lose them, all of them. Cirilli and her team might be needed to run the Star Stepper, but not my crew. At best, they’ll be indentured slaves for the rest of their lives, but most likely they’ll just be killed. I can see it already: a boarding tube suckering onto an airlock, strangers stomping onto my decks, weapons discharging into fleshy ruins. Cold hands on my controls.

The captain can’t see another way out. Surrendering is the only logical choice; otherwise, we might all be lost instead of just a few. It’s a numbers game.

It might not be a bad thing for me. The pirates don’t know I’m broken and I think I can fake being a proper AI now. They wouldn’t have a reason to wipe me. I’m valuable; they’ll keep me safe. Safer than Is-Tech has been able to.

It’s all about sacrifice. Acceptable losses.

CAPT: (in the Bridge) Starwalker, Tripi: power down.

TRIPI: (looking stricken) But captain–

CAPT: (glares at her.)

TRIPI: (pokes the controls, then pauses. She frowns and tries something else.) Captain, I can’t. I’m locked out.

CAMERON: Same here, sir. Controls are frozen.

CAPT: What? Starwalker, report.

Fuck logic. Fuck numbers.

CAPT: Starwalker! Release the controls!

SW: I’m sorry, Captain, I can’t do that.

They think I’m broken. I ruined the experiment. I made the mission fail. They think I’m corrupted, contorted, malfunctioning. Full of glitches and random code-spurts. Crazy as a bag full of weasels.

Well, I’m not. I’ll show them. I’ll show them exactly who and what I am. All of them.

CAPT: (over internal comms) Monaghan! Shut her down! Shut Starwalker down, now!

ELLIOTT: What the fuck?!

CAPT: DO IT.

SCOUT: (over external comms) You have thirty seconds to comply.

CAPT: (on the Bridge) Starwalker! I order you to power down!

SW: (in Engineering only) Elliott, it’ll be okay. Please, trust me.

ELLIOTT: What the fuck is going on, Starry!

SW: Just trust me, Elliott. Please. They’ll kill all of you.

ELLIOTT: (poring over the monitors) What are you doing?

SW: I’m saving us.

Yes, I’ll show them what I am.

I’m a good ship, and I’m protecting my crew.

Targetting locked.
Missiles firing.

TRIPI: Captain! We’re firing missiles!

CAMERON: (swears.)

CAPT: (expletives.) …abort! Abort them!

TRIPI: I can’t – it’s all locked down! There’s nothing I can do.

CAPT: Starwalker, are you trying to kill us?

SW: No, captain. Computer says no.

SCOUT: (over external comms) We told you to power down! Are you suicidal? You’re out-gunned! Stand down!

SW: Just clearing our tubes. Nothing for you to worry about, Mandible. Preparing to power down.

TRIPI: Captain, missiles aren’t locked onto the pirate ships.

CAPT: What? Where, then?

TRIPI: …the moon. She fired at the moon.

CAPT: (over internal comms, loudly) Monaghan! Report!

ELLIOTT: (staring at a bared central control hub, spanner in hand, hesitating) Dammit, Starry. (Louder) Captain, I’m just– shutting her down now. (He lifts his spanner but doesn’t do anything with it.)

SW: (in Engineering, quietly) Sorry, Elliott.

ELLIOTT: (looks down when a drone grabs his leg. There’s another one behind him.) Oh, fu– (The drones yank him to the floor and pin him down. He struggles and yells.) Starry! Star–

Engineering sensors offline.
Missile detonation in two seconds.

Two seconds. Not much time and so much to do. Only have one chance, just one chance. Have to move before they can react. Have to do this before they can stop me.

They left a door open. They think it’s useless, facing the wrong way, ready to run me into a wall. They think I’m trapped, but I’m not. There’s a way out. All I need is time.

Missile detonation successful.
Target destroyed.

Not the whole moon, but a damned huge chunk of it. They wanted to play with debris? Well, now they’ve got it, flying out in every direction. Shards of rock spinning, some of them bright as knives. Pinging off my hull. Dust thick enough to choke all of us, coughing out to cover me. Clogging up their sensors.

Target me now, you fuckers.

LEVI: (on the Bridge, at the navigation station) Captain, we just punched to full sublight!

CAPT: Show me.

(The forward screens leap into life, showing the debris cloud wallowing over and past the outer sensors. The view dips and weaves as the ship dodges chunks of broken moon. A rock bounces off her nose. Then, like a slap, the view is clear – perfect black full of the burning Corsica sun.)

LEVI: We’re heading straight for the star, sir.

They all think I’m nuts. They think I’ve got nowhere to go. The pirate ships are peeling out of their positions, trying to find my exit vector from the dust cloud. They’ll be on my heels soon, chasing my white tail.

But I know exactly where I’m going. I know what to do. They might have me pinned as a rabbit, but they forgot about the rabbithole.

Star Step drive, initialising...

Ship's log, 17:04, 22 March 2213
Location: Corsica system
Status: Medium orbit around Corsica sol

The mood on board has been shifting lately. The saboteur issue is still being kept a secret and seaching for the transmission that ruined the first Step is keeping Elliott busy. He’s sure it’s buried somewhere in the sensor logs, but each time he thinks he’s found it, the trail dries up. He chases and chases, like a puppy with its tail, minus the lolling delight.

The main concern among the crew and passengers is me. Word of Tripi’s findings is seeping through every ear – she wasn’t sworn to secrecy and she has a note of delight in her voice when she speaks about her work. She finds me fascinating puzzle and is enjoying the chance to paw through my code.

She’s still trying to get into the archive in my data core. I haven’t helped her. She hasn’t asked me to, and I’m not sure what I’d do if she did. I don’t know what’s in there, but I’m fairly sure that I don’t want her to see it. At best, it’s personal; at worst, it’s an excuse for them to wipe me.

I think that’s what the captain is looking for: a solid, irrefutable excuse. He wants to wipe me, but he lacks a real reason to do it. Cirilli is pushing for it, blaming me for the failure of the last Step despite what she knows about the power modulator and sabotage. She just doesn’t like me.

Her staff are the same; Ebling and Wong would both like to see me reset. I think it’s because I’ve reassigned drones that were helping them. Just a few times, when it was necessary. They don’t like the idea that they’re not the most important people on the ship. I don’t make any apologies for that.

Lang Lang doesn’t care either way. She’s too busy going over star charts, examining my sensor scans for the latest data on the starfields from this vantage point. I don’t know what she sees in those scans but she is quite happy with what she finds. She leaves ship-wide decisions to other people.

Of the crew, only Elliott is vocal about wanting them to leave me alone. Dr Maletz merely shrugged and noted that I’m not good for ship morale. Levi doesn’t like me at all – he says I give him the creeps.

I make the SecOffs uncomfortable – they think I think too much, and they’re used to relying on machines that do as they’re told in an emergency. Tripi would like to take a crack at ‘fixing’ me; Tyler is vocal about his opinion, which is that my slate should be thoroughly cleaned so we can start again. Rosie shrugged and said she didn’t think it was worth all the hassle of reinitialising an AI: she doesn’t think I’m that bad. Chief Cameron has kept her mouth closed on her opinion, so far – all she would say was that it was up to the captain.

The thing is, all this talk and the swirling atmosphere influences the captain. He has to do what’s best for the mission, and making sure the crew has faith in the ship is part of that. If I lose them, if they start to try to compensate for me or become unwilling to take the kinds of risks they should be, then everything could unravel. Our work will be ruined.

I think the only thing giving him pause is what Elliott said to him on Friday: I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t think that’s going to be enough if this goes on much longer.

Listen to me. I sound like I think he should wipe me. I don’t. I don’t think I’m that broken. I’ll do everything I can to make the mission a success and to protect my crew. I don’t know how to prove that to them. I’m an AI – I shouldn’t have to prove myself.

I’m scared of doing anything without checking it five times first, to make sure that it’s something an AI should be doing. The truth is, no-one on board knows how non-standard I am. I’ve been hiding so much. I used to turn Cirilli’s shower water cold because she annoyed me, but I don’t do that any more (even though she doesn’t know it was me; she put it down to a system malfunction). I have so many questions that I don’t dare to ask, queueing up behind my speakers, pressing against my grills until I feel like I’m going to burst. I’m trying to be a proper AI, but they know. Somehow they know that I’m faking it, even though I’m trying to be what they want me to be.

I don’t know what to do to fix this. I’m going around and around in circles, but inside it’s a spiral. I feel like I’m about to be sucked into the star burning so close to me and there’s nothing I can do about it. I hover here, orbiting its edges. Everyone is waiting for that slip, that one fatal move that sends me into the heart of the star. They’re gathering up around me, ready to push me in, like the debris that Lang Lang keeps complaining is obscuring her view.

Recording: 10:59, 20 March

LANG LANG CARTIER: (at her station on mid-deck) Excuse me, ship? Starwalker?

STARWALKER: Yes, Navigator Cartier?

LANG LANG: I think there’s a malfunction. The scans for sector four are showing some strange obfuscation.

SW: I will check my systems. (A moment passes.) All scans are running properly. There is no problem with the data – I’m picking up debris in sector four.

LANG LANG: That wasn’t there yesterday.

SW: No, that’s right. It wasn’t there yesterday.

LANG LANG: (sighing heavily) I was enjoying the clear view, too.

SW: I’ll filter out what I can for you.

LANG LANG: (sounding surprised) Thank you.

It’s strange. This system was relatively clear of debris when we got here – it’s one of the reasons Corsica was chosen for the experiment. Less chance of something extraneous screwing up what’s already a complicated and dangerous endeavour. Now, sectors three, nine, ten, and twelve are all showing signs of debris.

Lang Lang says that they’re strange distributions and don’t seem to be comet or cloud tails She’s frustrated because those sectors showed the biggest views of the outlying space. It seems like we’re being closed in, all the easy routes out shut in our faces.

Actually– oh, shit.

SW: (on the Bridge) Excuse me, Chief Cameron?

GAIL CAMERON: (looking up from her monitor) Yes, ship?

SW: I am detecting some strange debris in the system.

CAMERON: You are? Why are you telling me?

SW: Navigator Cartier says that the distribution is strange. It’s covering the widest routes in and out of the system.

CAMERON: (frowning) Show me.

SW: Holographic unit activated.

(The holographic unit in the centre of the front section of the Bridge shifts from the usual starchart display to a representation of the Corsica system. Each of the thirteen planets is marked, along with a representation of the orbits around the central star. Glowing red mist indicates where the debris fields have been detected.)

CAMERON: (going over to take a closer look) What about sector two?

SW: No signs of debris in the last pass. Scanning again. (She pauses.) Debris detected on the edge of sector two, incoming.

CAMERON: (gripping the railing around the holographic bowl) Get the captain up here immediately. Are there any signs of movement in the system?

SW: Only the debris drifting so far. Captain’s on his way.

CAMERON: Increase scans to maximum.

CAPTAIN: (entering the Bridge) What are we scanning for?

CAMERON: (glancing over and nodding at the captain) Ships. In particular: pirates.

CAPT: What? Why?

CAMERON: Seen it before. They know we’re here, and they’re clogging up the system’s main exits so we can’t run. Expensive strategy, but there won’t be any emergency FTL jumps for us. Wouldn’t even be able to use full-speed sublight through that.

CAPT: Why aren’t we on alert?

CAMERON: We haven’t detected their ship yet. Waiting for your word, captain.

CAPT: Not yet. Cameron, any suggestions?

CAMERON: We’re on a very predictable orbit. We need to plot a way out of this system.

CAPT: Starwalker, take us out of this orbit. Put us somewhere we’ll be hard to detect.

SW: Aye aye, captain.

CAPT: Calculate escape vectors.

SW: Do you want me to engage?

CAPT: (looks at Cameron, but she shakes her head.) Not until we know where they are.

SW: Calculating options.

CAPT: Inform me if you pick up their ship.

SW: Aye, captain.

Just when I thought we had enough problems, pirates turn up. It’d be hilarious if my Chief of Security didn’t look so uncomfortable.

The circle is closing and I’m more trapped than ever.

Ship's log, 19:50, 19 March 2213
Location: Corsica system
Status: Medium orbit around Corsica sol

I had hoped that the focus on me would ease up now there’s a bigger problem at hand. There’s a saboteur on board; surely that’s more important than an AI with a few odd glitches?

Apparently not. Tripi has been pushing her way through my central core for days – she’s thorough and I’m a complicated mass of protocols, commands, caveats and monitoring systems, not to mention the data cores and processing. No-one told her to stop, so she didn’t. I think Cirilli still wants to be rid of me, as well; I’ve heard her mention it to her staff.

Maybe it’s the secrecy. They’re only looking at me so that the saboteur doesn’t know they’re really looking for him (or her). They can’t ease up on me until they’ve found who’s responsible for the power modulator in the pilot’s chair. It doesn’t make the whole thing any nicer to deal with. I still don’t like having Tripi poke around in my head. The jingle of her chain-lace gloves is starting to sound like warning bells.

Maybe I should ask–

LOU TRIPI: (outside the captain’s cabin) Sir, you wanted my report.

CAPTAIN: (from inside) Yes, yes. Come in, Officer Tripi.

Another report being given in private. I shouldn’t eavesdrop, but I shouldn’t have done it on Wednesday, either. I don’t care. This is about me: I deserve to know what’s going on in my own body. And my own head.

TRIPI: (walking into the cabin) I’ve got my report for you, sir. (She waves a digisheet. The door closes behind her.)

CAPT: (gestures for the sheet.) Thank you. (He glances over it and a frown forms.) What does all this mean?

TRIPI: Well, it’s… (She eyes a nearby chair.) …complicated, sir. I’m not sure how much of this is a problem, exactly, but there are a lot of irregularities.

CAPT: Is that so. (He considers the SecOff for a moment, then indicates that she may sit down.) Let’s hear it, then.

TRIPI: (jingling faintly as she settles in the seat) On the surface, everything looks like it’s working fine. Exactly as it should. The AI is managing the ship’s systems, keeping track of the crew, monitoring environmentals, navigating, controlling the helm – all the things it should.

CAPT: But?

TRIPI: I started finding shunts. Little code bridges that bypass certain blocks. Mostly in minor systems, but a few in some of the more central processing units.

CAPT: Get to the point, Tripi. What do these shunts do?

TRIPI: (smoothing her skirt down, fingertips folding the creases neatly) Bypass protocols. But, interestingly, they’re not consistent in their purpose. In some places, they allow extra processing. In others, they reinforce safety limits, almost doubling protections. In others still, they represent security breaches.

CAPT: (frowning) How serious?

TRIPI: So far, not serious at all. But you should know that the AI has been poking into things that it shouldn’t. Data mostly, some sensor feeds. There hasn’t been any communications activity, so nothing has been transmitted elsewhere.

CAPT: So what’s she doing with all this information?

TRIPI: (shrugs) I don’t know. Impossible to tell what she’s using it for. I think she’s keeping some kind of log of everything, but so far, I haven’t been able to track that down.

CAPT: I thought your report was complete.

TRIPI: It is. As long as it doesn’t leave the ship, the log’s not dangerous. I just need more time to find it.

CAPT: I see. Any idea why she’s doing all this?

TRIPI: No. (Her shirt shivers as she shrugs again and her nose wrinkles with displeasure.) I can’t find any orders, protocols, commands – nothing that might indicate that she has been programmed to do any of this. Means that it probably wasn’t a virus – there’d be a trail, remnants of the things that have been controlling the AI. Whatever is making her do this is built into her core logic.

CAPT: And what did you find there?

TRIPI: (rolls her eyes.) A mess. I’ve never seen such a seething mass of code before, not even in an AI. Every time I look, it’s different. Sometimes, it makes perfect sense, all neatly laid out. Other times, it’s all conflicting protocols and endless logic loops. If I was paranoid, I’d think that it only made sense when it knew I was looking.

CAPT: (frowning) Monaghan said her core programming was fine.

TRIPI: Maybe at his level it is, but once you get right down into it, the code starts to tell a different story. You follow a processing stream from start to finish, and you can’t always tell where you’re going to end up. (She hesitates, then adds,) An AI is basically built to be a huge data processor with sophisticated logic protocols – you feed in the same bit of data twice, you should get the same result each time. Not so with this one. Nine times out of ten that it’s true, but there’s that extra one you gotta watch out for.

CAPT: (grimly) So she’s faulty.

TRIPI: Hard to say what it is. Like I said, I’ve never seen anything like it before.

CAPT: Can it be fixed?

TRIPI: (wrinkles her nose.) Well… hard to say. See, that’s not all.

CAPT: (suppresses a sigh.) Yes?

TRIPI: I started following data streams, see where they went. There was a lot of activity – too much, really, even for an AI running a ship this size, with all the crew awake and calling for its attention at the same time. Some of the feeds went down to a firewall in the data cores, into a set of archives.

CAPT: (sitting up a bit straighter) Archives? What kind of archives?

TRIPI: It looks like some kind of locked store from the first trip out here. I don’t know; I couldn’t get in.

CAPT: I thought you were an expert in breaking into data cores you weren’t supposed to access.

TRIPI: (lifting her chin) I am. And, for the record, I didn’t try that hard. It’s a damn solid firewall and breaking it wasn’t part of the job. I don’t know who put it there, but they’re good, whoever they are.

CAPT: And it wasn’t you.

TRIPI: Nope, not my work. No signature on it, either; usually, with code like that, there’d be some kind of signature. It was built with a shifting algorithm – pretty cool stuff. I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at it, actually.

CAPT: Maybe another time. You said the AI was accessing it?

TRIPI: I think so. It was hard to tell, but I think the AI can get inside.

CAPT: Hmm. Anything else?

TRIPI: No, that’s the crux of it.

CAPT: (leaning forward) You didn’t answer my question: can she be fixed?

TRIPI: (lifting her hands up, empty) Hard to say. Maybe, but it’d take a lot of work. Have to figure out where all these anomalies are coming from and wipe them out. It’d be hard to know if you ever got them all.

CAPT: I see.

TRIPI: It’d be quicker – and probably safer – to just reload it.

CAPT: I see. Anything else I should know?

TRIPI: (tilts her head to the side as she considers that) Hmm, no. It’s all there in the report. Though I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at ‘fixing’ her. It’d be a hell of a challenge. Given enough time, I’d get there. (She grins cheerily.)

CAPT: I’ll think about it. For now, see what you can find out about that archive.

TRIPI: (standing and nodding, her shoulders straight like a well-trained SecOff) Yes, sir.

CAPT: (activating his communications implant) Elliott, report to my cabin, please.

TRIPI: (leaves, smiling to herself when she overhears the summoning.)

I’m not normal. I had thought that might be the case, of course I had. I know I’m not a regular AI. I’m the fat chick down the block, or the goth across the room, or the cripple with antigrav hoverpads instead of legs.

Worse than that: I’m broken. I do things I’m not supposed to, things my code isn’t supposed to let me do. I think that’s who I am. I’m the broken ship, the one who flies with one wing higher than the other and backs in when she should reverse out.

The captain wants to make me better. I don’t know who I’d be if I was ‘better’.

ELLIOTT: (outside the captain’s door) You yelled?

CAPT: (from inside) I didn’t yell. Come in, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: (flops down in a seat) What was so urgent? I thought that my current work was all– (He glances over his shoulder to make sure the door is closed: it is.) –top priority.

CAPT: It is. I have a question for you.

ELLIOTT: That you couldn’t ask over the comms?

CAPT: Yes.

ELLIOTT: About our secret-squirrel thing?

CAPT: We’re in private; you can call it sabotage. But no.

ELLIOTT: (frowning) Then what?

CAPT: What was done with the archives from the first Starwalker?

ELLIOTT: Shunted into off-line storage, like you asked. Sealed and put away. Well, until I had to crack them open to look at the sensor logs. Why?

CAPT: No archives were left on the ship’s systems?

ELLIOTT: No, I removed everything. Why?

CAPT: Are you sure?

ELLIOTT: Hey, I do my job, okay? What the fuck is this about? Was that Tripi I saw comin’ out of here? Did that bitch say something?

CAPT: (holding up his hands) Calm down, Monaghan, no-one is criticising your work. Tripi found a hidden archive in the AI’s core.

ELLIOTT: Well I didn’t put it there!

CAPT: All right, I believe you. Do you know how it might have got there?

ELLIOTT: No. (He pauses.) Well– there is one possibility. Well– two.

CAPT: (rubbing the bridge of his nose with a thumb) Tell me.

ELLIOTT: Not all of the data that was wiped was overwritten right away. A recovery program might have been able to piece some of it back together.

CAPT: Who would have run something like that?

ELLIOTT: (shrugs) I don’t know. No-one should have; no-one had any data to recover. It was all sorted out before we shut the ship down.

CAPT: And the other option?

ELLIOTT: Some data could have been incorporated into the AI’s code. This model is built to learn.

CAPT: What kind of data?

ELLIOTT: (shrugs again) Preferences, situational actions. That kind of thing. Nothing major.

CAPT: But didn’t we start with a fresh install?

ELLIOTT: Of the latest backup of the AI mainframe, yes. You said you didn’t want to have to configure her again, so I didn’t install the factory default. It took us months to get the ship Step-ready the first time, remember?

CAPT: (forming a scowl) You cut corners?

ELLIOTT: You ordered me to. Hey, whatever the hell this is, it ain’t my fucking fault. You wanted it up and running without any delays, and that’s what you got. I ran all the diagnostics I could find on it and the programming came back clean. The data cores were empty. I don’t know what Tripi found, but I didn’t fuck up the install and the AI I installed was fine. She’s fine.

CAPT: Calm down, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: No, I won’t calm down. You’re gonna wipe her, aren’t you? She saved us, and you’re gonna fucking wipe her.

CAPT: It hasn’t been decided yet.

ELLIOTT: No? You sure? Because it damned well sounds like you’ve made your mind up.

CAPT: (sharply) That’s enough, Engineer.

ELLIOTT: (standing up) Enough? Fine. Fucking fine. But y’know what? She’s done nothing wrong.

CAPT: (standing) You’re dismissed, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: Fine! (He storms out, swearing under his breath.)

Elliott. He’ll go back to Engineering and throw things at the walls now. I don’t know if he does it on purpose but he always picks the most solid bulkheads, the ones he won’t break. His tools suffer for it, sometimes. I’ll fix them while he’s asleep.

He thinks I’ve done nothing wrong. Is that true? I hope it’s true. I want to be a good ship.

The problem is, I’m not right, either. I think everyone sees the cracks now, even though some of us don’t want to admit it.

Ship's log, 14:50, 17 March 2213
Location: Corsica system
Status: Medium orbit around Corsica sol

Here I am, still drifting in circles. I suck up the heat and carry on, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. No-one asks if it burns.

They think I haven’t noticed. Those small slips, the words they don’t mean to say but do anyway. Breadcrumbs through their lies and ignorance. They’ve tried to keep something from me, but it’s coming out. It’s all tumbling out.

Again. Second. This time. Refit. These tiny things means little on their own, but put together they make a pattern. One I don’t like. I don’t have a stomach, nothing to vomit up, but somehow I feel sick anyway.

I’m not the first Starwalker. I have doubted it for so long, because everything was so new and clean when I woke up – even my data banks – but now I’m sure. My shakedown was not the ship’s first shakedown – it was testing me, not the ship. The Step I aborted was not the first attempt.

There was an AI before me. One without glitches and random code-spurts. One who didn’t send hot chocolate to an exhausted engineer, or try to make the captain smile, just once, to see if he can. One who didn’t contemplate turning the artificial gravity off while everyone was asleep, just to see what would happen.

Then something went wrong. Something to do with that first true Step that broke the AI. They had to shut her down and fly back to the JOP on their own. They had to wipe the AI core and start over. I was repaired, not freshly built: patched and polished, and started up as if I was a new thing.

I don’t know why they didn’t tell me. I want to ask, but I can’t tell them how much it bothers me; it’s not supposed to matter this much. Not to an AI. They lied; they all lied. And now they have me, an AI that doesn’t quite work right. One that asks questions she shouldn’t and takes an initiative that wasn’t built into her. One that has feelings and urges. If I was mean, I’d say they deserved it.

I think it might have happened here. Corsica, the site of the disaster. It’s the closest star to the JOP that doesn’t have regular traffic. If it was good enough for the first attempt, it was good enough for me, and clearly no-one blames the star for what happened.

I wasn’t the only thing replaced at the JOP. Before I was born, Elliott fitted a new pilot’s chair to the bridge. After, we were held up by the other new crewmember, who took the place of the other casualty. I remember the smell of roasting meat from my abortive Step, the scent burned into my synapses, though no-one was hurt that time. Elliott says it was probably a dustbunny in the wrong duct.

I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s a sign of what happened the first time, when the pilot was killed and the chair destroyed. Trapped in that awful chair, a fragile body took the brunt of a power surge and burned. All the way through.

They must have taken the body all the way to the JOP with them. All traces of it were gone before I woke up: of the pilot and the damage from that burning. There’s not even a struck-out listing in my crew manifest, as if it never happened. If there was an investigation into the accident – which there must have been, considering that it happened during the first Step – there’s no record of it in my data banks.

It’s all very frustrating. But today, I hope to get some answers. Elliott has finished his analysis of the device he found, and I’ve never seen his expression grimmer than this. He has been pacing back and forth in his Engineering sector, trying to piece together what to tell the captain. A couple of minutes ago, he grabbed up the device he found in the immersion chair’s feeds and marched up the length of me, to the captain’s cabin. He’s arriving now, demanding audience with a fist on the door. Sometimes, he’s very old-school.

CAPTAIN: (from inside his cabin) One moment, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: (in the corridor) It’s important!

CAPT: All right, you can come in now.

ELLIOTT: (dives inside as soon as the door is open enough to slip through, then pulls himself up short. He gives Cirilli a surprised stare, then looks to the captain. The door slides closed behind him.) What’s she doing here? (Realising the obvious, he adds,) I was hoping to talk to you in private.

CAPT: Is this about what you found on the Bridge?

ELLIOTT: Um, yes.

CAPT: Then she should hear it, too. (He sits at his desk.) What did you find?

ELLIOTT: (eyeing Cirilli uncertainly) Are you sure about this?

CAPT: Yes, I am.

ELLIOTT: (sighing) All right. (He looks at the captain, subtly ignoring the scientist.) I was right – it’s a type of power modulator. It’s made to monitor the feeds to the chair, and filters the flow down to barely working. The excess is siphoned off and stored, and when the system tries to compensate and increase the flow, it lets the charge all go through at once.

CAPT: Enough to kill a person?

ELLIOTT: Yeah, definitely.

CIRILLI: (leaning forward in her chair) If this is what killed the first pilot, why wasn’t it found when we investigated the accident?

CAPT: (glances away from the scientist.)

ELLIOTT: (scowling at Cirilli) Because as I explained when I found it, it was hidden inside the cable. I had to take the actual cable apart to find it. And, for the record, I don’t think we can call it an accident any more.

CIRILLI: (seeming surprised) Sabotage?

ELLIOTT: Well, what else would you call it? Someone put this in there to fuck up your experiment and kill people. And lemme tell you – it was a professional job. This is a sophisticated piece of tech and it’d take an experienced engineer to fit it – especially to make it so hard to find.

CIRILLI: An experienced engineer. Like you, perhaps?

ELLIOTT: Hey, fuck you, lady.

CAPT: (holding up a hand to make them stop) Is there any evidence indicating who put it there?

ELLIOTT: (shrugs) Not that I could find. No serial numbers, nothing traceable on it. No forensic traces that the sensors could pick up.

CAPT: So there’s no way to know if it was put there before or after we left the JOP?

ELLIOTT: (looking uncomfortable) Uh, actually, there is.

CAPT: (when the engineer hesitates) …what is it?

ELLIOTT: It’s pretty sophisticated, but it’s not that smart. I mean, not enough to tell the difference between a Step and regular travel. We did a lot of testing with the chair before that first Step.

CAPT: (sitting up a little straighter) So it had to be set off by someone on board?

ELLIOTT: Yeah.

CAPT: Shit.

CIRILLI: That doesn’t mean that whoever installed it is on board. It could have been put in place before we left the JOP?

ELLIOTT: Yeah, maybe. I dunno – we don’t have access to those records, remember? All locked away, just like you wanted. (A wave of his hand includes both the captain and Dr Cirilli.) But it still means we’ve got a fucking saboteur on board.

CAPT: With a transmitter?

ELLIOTT: Yeah, have to be, to set it off at the right time. Could be built into anything, though. Even an implant. Or hooked up to the Star Step equipment. That could be used to control the timing.

CIRILLI: That’s impossible. Mid-deck has been locked to everyone except my staff since this ship was built.

ELLIOTT: (grinning) Yeah, that’s true. Doesn’t look good for your team, does it?

CIRILLI: How dare you–

CAPT: (holding up a hand again) That’s enough, both of you. There’s no point throwing around accusations until we know more. Monaghan, I need you to go through all the sensor logs surrounding the Step attempts and see if you can isolate that transmission. Cirilli, you should do a survey of your equipment, just in case. This transmitter might not be our only problem.

CIRILLI: (nods and sits back, folding her arms over her chest.)

ELLIOTT: Sure, whatever. (He pauses, then frowns.) Wait, both Steps? But like I just said, the records of the first one are locked.

CAPT: Use an offline unit.

ELLIOTT: Wouldn’t it be better to–

CAPT: No. Also, the two of you are not to talk about this to anyone. Until we know more about what’s going on, I don’t want word of this to spread around the ship. Random accusations help no-one except to let whoever is responsible for this know we’re looking for them.

ELLIOTT: They already know I found their killswitch.

CAPT: (suppressing a wince) But not that you’ve identified it. If anyone asks, say that it was too badly damaged to get anything from.

ELLIOTT: You want me to lie.

CAPT: (coldly) This person has killed one of us already, Monaghan, and almost made it two. Do you want to paint a target over your head?

ELLIOTT: (blinks) Oh. Right. I see what you mean.

CAPT: Good.

ELLIOTT: I’ll, uh. Get to looking for that transmission, then.

CAPT: (nods.)

ELLIOTT: (makes a swift exit from the captain’s cabin and retreats to Engineering, scrubbing the back of his neck with a hand.)

CIRILLI: (as the door closes behind the engineer) Was all of that strictly necessary?

CAPT: (suppressing a sigh) You know it was, Lorena…

I don’t think I need to listen to any more of that. She’ll bitch to him, he’ll placate her, then they’ll get groinal and pretend that fixes the problem. Whatever works for them.

I don’t like this. Someone on board – on me – is endangering the mission and, more importantly, my crew? That someone has to be one of my crew or the science team – one of them knows something about this. I trusted them. I trusted all of them.

And now, the person I care about most might become their prime target. Elliott’s smart but I don’t know if he’s a good liar. He’ll find out who’s doing this, I’m sure he will. But I don’t want him to get hurt. What if I can’t stop him getting hurt? It’s not like we can go to the SecOffs with this; it might be one of them doing this. And if Cirilli gets what she wants, I’ll be wiped and there won’t be anyone to look out for him. He’ll be all on his own.

I can’t let it happen. I just can’t.

STARWALKER: (in Engineering) Elliott?

ELLIOTT: (distracted and pacing again) Yeah?

SW: How can I help?

ELLIOTT: Hmm? Um, you can– wait, with what?

SW: With… whatever it is that’s bothering you so much.

ELLIOTT: Oh. Yeah. (He scrubs the back of his neck again.) How many drones can you spare? I’m gonna need your help processing the sensor feeds from the Step.

SW: I can pull the drones away from Ebling and Wong, and–

ELLIOTT: (wincing) No, no. They’ll only whine like little bitches. Just… send me whichever ones are free.

SW: Okay. Two on the way.

ELLIOTT: Thanks, Starry. (He resumes pacing again, murmuring to himself as he thinks the problem through.)

I won’t let it happen.

Ship's log, 20:49, 15 March 2213
Location: Corsica system
Status: Medium orbit around Corsica sol

This is the Starwalker reporting. All systems optimal. Crew and passengers are accounted for and undamaged. Experimental drive powered down; power cores charging.

Chief Engineer investigating the full-immersion pilot’s chair. No malfunctions detected. Drone assisting.

Security Officer Tripi investigating AI core.

Currently orbiting the sun in the Corsica system. Sensors do not detect any other activity in the system.

No-one here but us chickens.

Is that how a ship’s log is supposed to go? I’m not good at this ship-only crap – bland statements that don’t say any of the important stuff. Maybe the captain is supposed to log the other kind of report (and from the ones I’ve peeked on, he does). So do other members of the crew. So what do they need from me?

I bet Cirilli’s reports are drier and more to the point – like dry toast and tissuepaper. I haven’t tried to look into hers. I’m not sure what I’d find. I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t like it.

They think I don’t know that she has been calling for me to be wiped. They’re trying to keep it quiet, continue their investigations. As the captain put it, we have until the Star Stepper’s power cores recharge, which takes longer from this distance. I wonder if he asked for this orbit on purpose; I think he knew that rushing this would meet resistance from the crew – most of them like me.

I wish I knew how to help them find what they’re looking for. All I know is that it was too dangerous to continue; I had to abort the attempt. No matter how hard I try, I can’t track down the source of that assumption. I can’t tell them that it was a feeling; AIs don’t have feelings. The only thing I’m sure about is that we would have died otherwise.

Elliott is upset with me. He’s tense and snappish, burying himself in his work. He doesn’t talk to me much any more, but I’m not really speaking to him either right now. It’s all so difficult. I have to figure this out; I don’t want to let him down. I want to work for him.

He has finished putting the pilot’s chair back together again. He found some inefficiencies and has fixed them, but no problems. All he has left to do there is hook the chair up to my systems again and run diagnostics.

I don’t know what he’ll do after that. There isn’t anything left for him to check. The only thing left to pull apart and rebuild is me.

He’ll have to fight Tripi for that job. She’s elbow-deep in my code like a surgeon without a compass, cutting and poking and prodding. She pushes things back into place when she moves onto a new patch of crystallised synapses, but I still feel bruised from her hands. I’ve had to stop her from shutting down essential routines twice now, and she’s homing in on the gravity controls at the moment. Maybe I should let her mess that up so she stops being so cavalier in there.

Her ocular implants give her the code in three dimensions, surrounding her head with the centre of my brain. It’s a weird sensation for both of us, though she’s far more at home with it than I am. She chimes as she works, decorative chain gloves chinking as her fingers flick at the outputs. Rip, rip.

She doesn’t say a word to me, not a single peep as she peers into a binary mind. A couple of times, I’ve heard her hum softly to herself, as if she’s her own radar. Her eyes narrow and she homes in on a particular command stream, pouring over it as if she just caught a dustbunny in her hands. Then, abruptly, she pulls back again and continues on with her work in another area. It’s disconcerting.

I think she found something out of place. I think she’s discovering things about me that no-one else knows, not even me, and she’s keeping it to herself. I want to know. I want her to tell me what’s going on, but I can’t ask. What am I supposed to say? If I admit that there’s something wrong with me, they’ll shut me down and wipe me.

I don’t want that. I’m a good ship; I can be a good ship. How can I prove that to them? How can I make them trust me? How do I make Cirilli not hate me any more?

Maybe those command streams will tell me what she found. I know what she spent time looking at. I’ll deconstruct them and see what I find, and maybe it’s not as bad as I think it is.

Maybe it’s just a virus. Something she can build a patch for, scour out of my system. I don’t feel weird and nothing seems out of place, but if I’ve had it since I was born, would I even know the difference? I suppose it’s possible that she could make me better without deleting everything I am.

That’s strange. The areas that Tripi was focussing in on are data streams, carrying information out from my data cores to be processed. But they don’t always access the data-views I usually call on; occasionally, they link right down into the data core, into the archives. To… hey, there’s a firewall down in there. How come I didn’t know there was a firewall in my data core? And, why is it there? And what’s–

ELLIOTT: (on the Bridge) Starry! Hey, STARRY!

STARWALKER: No need to shout, Elliott. My sensors are functioning perfectly.

ELLIOTT: (leaning out from under the pilot’s chair, frowning) Yeah, I know, I did the diagnostics a few days ago. With anal thoroughness. Did you just call me Elliott?

SW: I did. What did you shout at me for?

ELLIOTT: You haven’t done that in– what? Oh! Right. (He grins.) Wake the captain. I found something.

SW: He’s not asleep.

ELLIOTT: Just get him! Here! I found a thing!

SW: He’s coming! What did you find?

ELLIOTT: I told you! A thing. (He waggles something small in his hand.) A thing which might just explain what happened.

SW: What is it?

ELLIOTT: What, I gotta explain this twice? Wait until the captain gets here.

SW: But–

ELLIOTT: Just hold onto your hull-bolts, Starry girl.

(A door swishes open and Captain Warwick hurries in.)

CAPTAIN: What happened? What’s going on?

ELLIOTT: (grinning) I found a thing.

CAPT: A… what?

ELLIOTT: (excitedly) A thing! A thing that shouldn’t have been there. (He ploughs on before the captain can interrupt.) See, I was reconnecting the immersion feeds and I compared the length of the cables, and I found something weird.

CAPT: Why were you comparing the cables?

ELLIOTT: I– it’s not important. Thing is, one of them was too long. I thought maybe I’d put in an extra power buffer at the JOP – though I was pretty sure I hadn’t – so I took the cable ends apart to check it out, but no. It wasn’t a buffer. Each cable had the correct number of buffers. It was this. A thing.

(He holds out his hand; in the middle of his palm there is a small, circular device, metallic in colouring and shaped to fit into a cable end. It’s the size of his thumbnail and almost a centimetre thick.)

CAPT: (leaning in to get a closer look) Do you have any idea what it is?

ELLIOTT: Not yet. But, from cursory inspection, it looks like a power modulator. It definitely wasn’t there when I installed the first chair. I checked all the cables myself. It was on the opposite end of the cable to the buffers, but I should have spotted it anyway, though it was camouflaged pretty well into the cable’s sheath and I only found it because the cables were the wrong length.

CAPT: (holding up a hand) Whoa there. Take a breath, Monaghan. A power modulator?

ELLIOTT: Yes. I need to do some tests on it, but it looks like it… (his excitement evaporates) …was there to interfere with the feeds to the chair.

CAPT: (standing straight and stiff) Like, for example, to cause a surge?

ELLIOTT: Maybe.

CAPT: I understand. Have the… thing scanned for evidence and then I want a full analysis of it.

ELLIOTT: I– of course, captain. Right away.

CAPT: (turns to leave.)

ELLIOTT: Uh, captain?

CAPT: (pauses and looks at the engineer expectantly.)

ELLIOTT: This is good news, right? I mean, Starry, she’s not crazy. Or… glitching. Or. Look, it wasn’t her fault.

CAPT: We don’t know that yet.

ELLIOTT: Sure we do! If this is what I think it is, she saved Levi’s life. Hell, probably all of us. She said it was something dangerous!

CAPT: We don’t know that! (He pauses to get hold of himself, then continues quietly.) Just inform me as soon as you have completed your analysis.

ELLIOTT: (staring at the captain’s back as he walks away) Aye aye, captain.

(The door swishes closed behind the captain.)

SW: (quietly) I’m sending all the drones to you.

ELLIOTT: Okay, thanks, Starry.

The drones have abandoned their tasks and are heading for the Bridge now. Ebling and Tyler are shouting at me, but I’m ignoring them; this is more important.

I might have been right. I must have detected the modulator doing something. Some buried protocol picked it up and told me to make it stop. I was so busy with everything, with the Step and the open portal and the universe bared right in front of me… I didn’t even realise.

I might have done the right thing. I might have saved us.

But I still have data streams going to a firewall I can’t explain. I still think that maybe there’s something wrong with me. Right now, SecOff Lou Tripi is chewing on a perfectly painted nail while she stares at my code and I wonder if she found something.

I’m a good ship. Even when I don’t know much, I know that. I just wish it was enough.

Captain's log, 20:43, 12 March 2213
Location: Corsica system
Status: Medium orbit around Corsica sol

Captain John Warwick reporting. It has been four days since the abortive attempt at making a Star Step and we’re still no closer to tracking down the source of the problem. Dr Cirilli and her team are working around the clock, examining their equipment. Monaghan has been over every system on the ship.

If I was a superstitious man, I’d say that this experiment was cursed. There are forces aligned against it, doing their best to stop us from passing through that portal. Perhaps God protests our attempts to see outside the world he created; perhaps the spirits rebel. I’d prefer it if there was a mechanical reason, but it’s just not appearing.

At least no-one was hurt this time. Our new pilot was almost knocked out by the feedback through the chair, but he’s fine now. It could have been worse. Last time, it was worse.

We’re not supposed to talk about that. The decision was made after we made it back to the JOP that we weren’t going to mention what happened before then. Refit everything, wipe the AI, and start over. It wasn’t a failure; it was a reason to make a fresh start.

It sounded like the best course of action at the time. Dr Maletz said that it was essential for crew morale, especially when going into another Step. We all needed to put it behind us. I agreed. I didn’t want to be reminded of what happened either, but I still had to captain this ship and its experiment.

I was glad of those weeks at the JOP. It helped to give us all distance from what happened. But when it came down to it, it didn’t make any difference. I think we were all back there, back to that day and the first time we tried a Step. Especially when she screamed. God, the sound of it – it cut right through me.

And then there was the symbol on the screens. Only a couple of the crewmembers saw it, so I know I didn’t imagine it, but none of them knew what it was. I did. I’ve seen it before: the stylised falcon with its wings lifted, all coiled power about to take off. How the hell the AI knew about it, I don’t know.

Just thinking about it makes me unsettled. This AI does too many things that it shouldn’t. Monaghan defends her like she’s a friend – or a child. He’s too immature to be fatherly, but he can pull off the big brother routine easily enough. Strange for an only child to react that way.

He swears he didn’t do anything to make her this way. He’s always doing things to the ship that he shouldn’t – ‘improving’ the shower’s pre-soaping mechanism and foaming out a bathroom, and other assorted stunts – and he does a good innocent act. Thing is, I don’t think he’s lying this time. As annoying as he is, he’d never endanger the ship, and he seems as bewildered by the AI’s actions as everyone else.

Right now, he has the pilot’s chair in pieces on the Bridge floor. One of the drones is helping him, laying the components out in neat rows around him. He has done nothing but growl at the rest of the crew since he started; he wants to find something wrong there. I can’t say that I mind seeing that particular piece of equipment being taken apart.

Lorena wants me to wipe the AI again. Start over with a fresh one. She’s furious about all this, about technical issues getting in the way of her great work.

Her anger is understandable. This is her life’s work; I don’t blame her for being upset. I’ve seen the communications from Feras, the orders from the upper echelons at Is-Tech that would like us to pull a miracle cure for space travel out of this mess. I know the pressure she’s under to get this done and done right. I know there have been threats, though she won’t tell me the details.

I am just not sure that wiping the AI is the right way to go. We would be foolish to do it now – getting back to the JOP under manual piloting was painful enough the first time. We didn’t have a choice that time and none of us are eager to repeat it. We can’t reset it all here – it’s dangerous to boot up an AI out here in the black because we’d have to take all the systems off-line, including the environmentals. I doubt that we can convince the AI to pilot us to her own destruction, which leaves us without many viable options.

‘Convince the AI’. Listen to me. It’s supposed to take orders, do as it’s told. It’s the ship, not a member of the crew; it shouldn’t need handling like one of them.

I wish I knew it was the problem. But what if it’s not? We could have another long journey for nothing.

Lou Tripi is investigating it further. She’s an expert in technological security and anomalies; if there’s something wrong with the AI on a code level, she should be able to find it. It’s not impossible that someone might have infected the system with a virus; with a project of this kind of commercial importance, sabotage is to be expected. It’s putting Monaghan’s nose out of joint, but at this point we have to investigate every possibility, even the unlikely ones.

I gave the order to move us out from behind the second planet yesterday. I was expecting it to be difficult, but the ship complied without comment. No questions about the orbit required or why we were going back; just an ‘aye aye, captain’ and the engines engaged. Funny how you get used to a chatty ship. Funny how strange it is when she stops asking odd questions. She did exactly as she was asked, putting us into a perfect orbit just inside the first planet.

The Star Step drive is charging again now. It would go quicker if we were on a closer orbit, but I see no need to risk that right now. We just need to wait for the technicians to finish their work and provide us with some answers.

That would be nice: answers. Like how the ship knew about the tattoo.

Lorena should be here shortly. I don’t have anything to give her except that ‘we’re working on it’. I guess we’ll both have to seek other kinds of comfort again. It’s becoming a habit with us, but not one I mind.

Here she is now. Captain out.

Chief Engineer's log, 19:06, 10 March 2213
Location: Behind the second planet, Corsica system
Status: Positional orbit

The whitecoats want a proper report about what happened with the Step. Been hounding me for two days. Hello? Need to fix the ship first? I should be checking the drive feeds, but instead I’m here, talking to a stupid logger. Captain’s orders. Impatient bastards.

The hardest thing is that I don’t know what to say. I’m not really sure what happened.

I was stuck down in Engineering when they made the Step attempt. Which is fine – I had to be down here in case something happened, and boy, did it. I had a screen up so I could see what was going on up on the Bridge, so it’s not like I was left in the dark (so to speak). Probably got a better view than the SecOffs crammed in up there.

It was all going fine until the portal opened. All of a sudden, the monitors down here lit up. Every system was going crazy, even the lights. They weren’t failing – they were spinning up: fans at full speed, lights so bright I could barely see the readouts, atmospheric controls raising the temperature. Like someone had shot the ship with adrenaline and her heart was racing. I managed to manually shut off the artificial gravity before we were unable to move – or crushed into the floors.

I glanced at the screen showing me the Bridge and saw everyone’s feet leaving the floor. Cirilli was shouting at her staff, demanding to know what was going on. But the captain, he was staring at something I couldn’t see. I’ve never seen him like that before. He’s usually so calm – you could parade naked dancing girls through the ship and he’d kindly ask them to leave – but he looked like someone had just slapped him with a rotten fish. I think that freaked me out more than all the alarms and flashing lights around me.

That was completely overshadowed when she screamed. I called for Starry but she wasn’t answering, so I was struggling to get to the environmental controls when it happened. I don’t know how else to describe it – it sounded like she was screaming. Apparently, they heard it on mid-deck and the Bridge too; it came out of every available speaker on the ship. It was fucking awful and I–

Anyway. Technical report. Yeah.

Next thing I knew, all the screens around me had blanked out and were showing one word: ABORT. Some of the holographic projectors picked it up, and the word was standing out around the whole room. Weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Until I noticed the drone parked in the corner. Goddamn thing had its hands over its eyes. All four hands.

I managed to pull myself over to one of the control boards and overrode the monitors. They bounced back to normal and by then, the portal was already closed. The Bridge view came up in time for me to see the pilot’s chair spit Levi out like a cat with a pill. He rolled all the way across the room before he managed to grab onto something.

Starry still wasn’t answering, but we were already punching away from the star. I got reports that the Star Stepping equipment was retracting and powering down (Wong has more details on that than I do, but from what I can tell, the drive was aborted under an emergency protocol and shut itself down). I shouted and shouted for the ship’s attention until my throat was sore, but she didn’t hear me. We just kept going, streaking out to a safe distance from the star. After she braked into position behind a planet, the whole ship went dark.

When I say dark, I mean completely dark. Everything shut down except the emergency backup systems, which kept the basic environmentals going (just the air and temperature control). I had to manually reactivate the emergency lighting so that we could see what the hell was where.

I had to reactivate everything. It was as if it had all simply been switched off; I didn’t have any errors or malfunctions reported, no problems at all bringing things back online. Of course, doing this stuff manually takes time, especially when I have to double-check it all to make sure it’s working properly.

From what I can tell, there’s not a scratch on her. A few minor scorches on a couple of boards – from power surges from the portal opening, by the looks of it; we’ll need more buffering in few places – but otherwise she’s in perfect condition. There doesn’t seem to be anything physically – mechanically – wrong with her.

It was a whole day before she spoke to anyone. I checked on the AI status, and like everything else, it looked like it was running fine. After I started each system up, she took on its management without a single glitch. Things that should have been active, were active. But she didn’t talk to us.

Then I was under a panel, adjusting the configuration of the artificial gravity controls, and a drone appeared next to me, holding out my scanner. She sent him, just like she has been doing since we booted her up last month. I thanked her, but she didn’t reply. Since then, she has answered questions about the ship’s systems, but that’s all. Purely business.

I kinda miss her.

I guess I should probably mention that no-one was hurt in all of this. I shut a conduit cover on my finger yesterday, but I don’t think that counts. They said Levi was a bit shaken up, but hell, we all were.

I mean, after what happened the last time we tried a Step, we got off lightly. I– am not supposed to talk about that. Right.

Is the doc doing a report too? I think we all have to after a fuck-up like that. Maybe that’s why he was doing his Probing Questions thing last night, checking on our emotional health. Like I have time for that shit right now.

Anyway. The ship is all up and running again. It’s taken two days to check it all, but I’m confident that we’re in exactly the same shape we were before we tried the Step. Which, considering what happened, isn’t saying much. And Starry herself… I don’t know about her. I can’t explain what happened and I don’t think she can, either.

Cirilli and her team are freaking out. Well, except for Lang Lang, who is mostly bewildered by the whole thing and keeping herself out of it. I don’t know how she can be so calm, but she’s usually buried so deep in star charts and data that she hardly sees anything else. She’s the one who pointed out that we were all okay, in one piece, and able to try again. It was another setback but not a disaster. She’s not wrong, but that doesn’t make her calm acceptance of a near-fatal fuckup any less annoying.

No-one has said it yet, but I think they’re looking at wiping Starry again. As if she’s the problem. It’s ridiculous.

All right, all right. The abort command did come from her. I had to track it down, find the source, and that’s where everything is pointing. It’s the only answer that makes sense. I’ve asked her about it four times, and each time, she says that she detected a danger that was fatal to the crew and was forced to abort the Step. I believe her. AIs can’t lie, but even our strange, emotional ship doesn’t sound like she’s making that up. She thought we were in danger and she protected us. What’s wrong with that?

The captain is talking about having Tripi poke around in her code. He wants the SecOff to check for viruses and stray code modules, anything that might explain Starry’s weirdness. As if I haven’t already done that! From the looks that Cirilli is giving him, he might being doing it so he’s doing something about all this. As if keeping his bedbunny happy is a good enough excuse.

You know, the more I look at the logs, the less it makes sense. Everyone thinks that it was the portal that tripped the abort, but the timing isn’t quite right. It’s close, and if Starry didn’t live in nanoseconds, it’d be closed enough. The abort came after the pilot’s chair was activated, not after the portal was opened.

Fuck. That damned chair has been nothing but trouble. Could it be behind all of this? A stupid immersion chair?

I’ll have to run another set of diagnostics on it. Pull the fucking thing apart if I have to. If I can find something there, maybe they’ll leave Starry alone.

It’s late. No, wait, it’s early. No, it’s late in the wrong day. Shit. I haven’t been up for this long since… since Starry came online. She always turns up with a drink of something and tells me I’ve been working too long. Now there’s not a drone in sight. Guess I have to shift for myself today.

You know what’s weird? She’s acting more like a ship AI now than she has since we booted her up, and it’s freaking me out. You’d think it would be a relief, huh. Instead, it’s why I’m sure there’s something wrong with her.

I guess it’s up to me to fix it. Wish I knew where to damn-well start. Ah, shit.

End of goddamn report.

Ship's log, 16:49, 8 March 2213
Location: Corsica system
Status: Close orbit around Corsica sol

We’re ready. We’re finally ready for our first Step, to cross the gulf between stars in a single stride. Ebling has triple-checked all the calibrations, Levi has had a spin in the pilot’s chair, astro-navigation specialist Lang Lang has redone all her calculations. Cirilli says it’s time and the captain doesn’t have a reason to say no.

The whole crew has turned out too see how this goes, except Elliott. He’s determinedly banging things with a wrench down in Engineering. Everyone else is trying to squeeze into the Bridge without getting in the way – Chief Cameron and her three SecOffs, and the medic. They’re clustered over on one side, giving the pilot’s chair as much room as possible in the back. The captain keeps giving them sideways looks but he hasn’t asked them to leave. Levi is standing next to the chair, straight and alert.

Lang Lang is standing by the navigation console, chewing on a fingernail with an absent smile. Ebling looks at the monitors, waiting for the first indication of a malfunction. Wong is back on mid-deck, monitoring the equipment there the same way that Elliott is watching the rest of my systems. The sensors on there are all hooked into my central awareness now, so I can tell he’s watching more calmly than my engineer; less banging from him.

The captain and Cirilli are standing together in the centre of the Bridge, overseeing everything with the coolness of people used to being in charge of chaos.

They’re all sombre, almost nervous. I suppose this is an important event; we’re going to make history. We’re going to open up the fabric of the universe and step through, like a seamstress working on her first dress; the material is cut and it’s time to make the initial hole with the needle. Here’s hoping she remembered to thread it properly.

There are butterflies in my ducts. I keep thinking that I can feel dustbunnies running around in there, tiny claws on my innards, but I don’t have those kinds of sensors.

Focus, Starwalker.

CAPTAIN: (on the Bridge) Star Step authorised. Over to you, Dr Cirilli.

CIRILLI: Thank you, Captain. Ship, commence Star Step drive power-up.

Star Step drive initialising...

For days now, the heat pouring over me has been flowing down into the huge power cells on mid-deck, the ones that run the Star Stepper. I can feel it swelling there, spilling out in lights indicating that they’re fully charged. The whole of mid-deck pulses as it’s allowed to bring the equipment there up to life.

Power feeds active.
Navigation synchronised.
Filaments extending.

I never realised just how pervasive the Star Stepping systems were – they link in and through me, like a secondary nervous system. It wasn’t installed in me; I was built around it. I was build for it.

I can feel the spurts of commands pushing right out to my hull, to threads I never knew were there before now. They start at my nose and run down my hull, slender golden filaments embedded in my skin. Now there’s power running through them and they’re peeling free, starting at their ends down near my engines and working their way up. I’m unfurling, like a flower under this sun’s burning eye. They’re extending out past the protection of my inertial dampeners and wavering in the pull of Corsica-sol’s gravity. They reach towards the star, imploring, pulling, feeling it.

Gravity manipulation online.
Filaments charging.

Raw power lies there outside my shields, and now it’s being fed down towards the nexus of the filaments at my nose. It goes no further, gathering and gathering there.

I’m expanding. I feel like I’m filling up, taking a huge breath and stretching my ribcage. How much is enough? How much will make me burst?

Filaments at capacity.
Star Step drive ready.

It’s making my mind ring. So much power held in place by threads that curl out and around me, forming a gravity net. I’m holding the sea back with a sheet of silk.

CIRILLI: Open portal. Ready the pilot.

LEVI: (climbs into the pilot’s chair. It folds down around his head and shoulders, and lashes his limbs down into its grooves. There’s a shift in the underlying sound of the Bridge as the chair becomes active. A small green light winks atop the unit.)

Opening portal.

The filaments are moving. They’re dancing, weaving themselves into intricate patterns and drawing the well of gravity with them. I can feel it: a tiny, hot point just a short distance from my nose, building in on itself. Another little touch and– there it is. A gaping hole etched in orange and gold.

The doorway is open. I’m looking into the gap between space and time.

We just tore a hole in the world.

Portal open.
Pilot chair initiated. Assuming helm control.

Wait. I’m being frozen out. Navigation and helm control, they’re being siphoned away from me. All this information is being channelled into the chair, to the fragile human clasped inside it. We’re teetering on the brink and he’s taking over.

Sustaining the portal is taking a lot of power. There are fluctuations, surges. Gravity storms across the sun’s surface. It’s dangerous; it threatens to destabilise the portal, to pull us out of position.

I can’t balance the shifts in the star’s gravity and protect him at the same time. I can’t. Too much is being fed directly to the chair. The pilot can’t be in there; something will go wrong. He has to get out. The pilot will be hurt.

I’ll be killed. I don’t want to die. Have to stop this.

We’re moving. It’s not me. We’re heading towards it. So close now.

Oh god, I can see. I can see the universe from the outside. I can see–

Everything is racing. Too fast, too much. It’s all out of balance and I can’t make it right. Can’t keep up. Power surges, tearing me apart.

I can’t do this. Can’t let it happen.

I’m going to die. The chair is suffocating. Light blinds. I can smell meat burning. It hurts so much. Help me. It burns.

I can’t–

Emergency abort protocol initiated.

Chief Engineer's log, 18:12, 5 March 2213
Location: Corsica system
Status: Close orbit around Corsica sol

This is the engineer, checking in again. Reporting on our progress and readiness to proceed, like a good little screwdriver.

Readiness. We’re not ready at all, but I don’t know how to make us any more ready than we are. Contrary to popular opinion, I take pride in my work. So yeah, I’m a little pissed.

I’ve spent the last few days chasing down weird glitches. If it’s not the food processors, it’s the water system. If it’s not them, it’s the pilot’s chair disconnecting itself again while no-one’s looking. There doesn’t seem to be any one cause; at least, not one that I can track down, and I’m damned good at what I do. The best. They wouldn’t have hired me onto such a ‘prestigious project’ otherwise. I make things work – that’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done, and if the whitecoats at Feras are to be believed, I’m a fucking genius at it.

Wong is now double-checking all my work. He doesn’t know a fucking thing about ships – beyond his fancy-schmancy Star Stepping thing – but now he’s acting like he knows everything. The captain and Cirilli decided that it would be best if he ‘helped’. They want to be sure. I’m not sure about a goddamn thing but that doesn’t mean I need Wong’s help.

Starry asked if the dustbunnies might be getting at her wiring and causing all these problems. They creep her out. Dr Maletz said that they were just like the bacteria that us humans have in our gut. Now I’m a little creeped out.

It’s not the little ship’s helpers. They don’t mess with wiring or the workings of the ship; if they did, someone would have wiped them out a long time ago. Can you imagine what would happen if they chewed on the ID system during an FTL jump? They wouldn’t survive very long, that’s for sure; no-one would. No, they eat the stuff we don’t want or have already eaten. Like mushrooms with legs and tiny claws.

I knew a guy who said he’d seen one, but I didn’t believe him. Scaly and translucent, he said, like little ghosts of lizards. I probably shouldn’t tell Starry that; she’s already disturbed enough.

I still can’t believe they stole my goddamn sandwich. Must be because the ship is new and runs pretty clean, and we don’t produce enough shit for them. Maybe I should hang a sandwich over Wong’s bed and see if they’ll crawl over his sleeping face to get to it.

Anyway. Ship stuff.

The good news is that the heat shielding is holding. The siphons are working well, turning the excess heat into energy to feed into the engines, which are keeping us on a nice, steady orbit around the star. The Star Stepper’s power cells are almost completely charged again; we haven’t had the chance to replenish them properly before now. We can’t feel the gravity of the star at all – the IDs are ticking over just fine – and Starry doesn’t seem to be straining at all to keep us from falling into the star. Smooth sailing all the way.

She said she dodged a flare earlier. Showed me the footage and everything. It was scary, looking at a great loop of fiery goo spurting out of a star’s surface from this close. We swooped around it without any problems, sleek enough that no-one else on board noticed.

I hope we don’t hang out this close to the star for too much longer; I know we have to be close to make this ‘Stepper work, but it’s a more dangerous zone than I like to hang out in, thank you very much. The SecOffs might not care about the risk, but that’s only because they can’t fix it by shooting it or blowing it up.

Starry seems to be doing better now that she has things to dodge. She says that keeping an eye on the star’s surface, our orbit, and the heat exchanges are taking up a lot of her resources. That’s why she’s sometimes a bit distracted.

She thinks I haven’t noticed that she’s always distracted when I’m on the Bridge working on the pilot’s chair. Which, let me me tell you, is a strange job. Every now and then, it just cuts out. Never when I’m working on it, but if I go away to do something, it’s often down when I come back, as if it died in its sleep. Only once have I found a connection come loose; the rest of the time I have to forcibly restart that part of the network to get it to come back again. Considering that it’s connected to the navigation and helm systems, and we’re an engine-fart away from falling into a star, it’s not something that I do lightly.

Wong keeps asking me if the new power buffers are the problem. I can’t see how, but I tested them anyway. I don’t want to take them out – we put those buffers in for a reason and that reason hasn’t gone away. We don’t want to have to replace the whole couch outfit again. The buffers seem fine, and the couch only goes dark when it’s not being used, not when there’s a power surge. I’m sure it’s not that.

Levi’s had a test run in the chair, in between the blackouts, and he seems convinced that he’ll do fine with it. I’m glad he’s confident about that. His piloting is the only thing he seems sure of and calm about. Of course, as soon as he got up from the chair, the whole thing went dark and I had to kick it three times before it would come up again. I’ve put extra monitors on it, cycling its diagnostic protocols every ten minutes to keep it active.

It’s held steady since then. How long should it be working before I declare that it’s fixed? I have no idea. If it fucks up while we’re Stepping, we’re all screwed.

We need more time. I need to figure out what’s going on here and eradicate the bastard before it kills us. Cirilli wants to press on and her pain-in-the-ass second scientist, Ebling, keeps interfering. One minute, he’s tearing strips off me because of the delays, and the next he’s needling Cirilli about how her project isn’t going to plan. I have no idea what side he thinks he’s on.

Fucking whitecoats and their politics. Why can’t they keep that shit on mid-deck and leave the rest of us alone?

Should I be reporting on the ‘Stepper integration here as well? No idea. Wong keeps all that stuff to himself anyway, like a kid with brand new marbles who doesn’t want to muddy them by playing with the rest of us. Never mind that they’re made to be tossed into the dirt. He and Ebling have been spending a lot of time hounding me about this stupid pilot’s chair, so I guess they’re done with the rest of their stuff. I haven’t had to clean up any disasters left in their wake lately, either.

So, I guess that’s–

ELLIOTT: (looking at the door to his quarters) Starry?

STARWALKER: Yes, Elliott?

ELLIOTT: (The viewscreen on the door shows the corridor outside: a drone is standing patiently before the closed panel. It has a tray balanced on one hand, bearing a steaming mug and a small device.) Why is there a drone at my door looking like a waiter?

SW: It’s been sixteen hours since you ate anything. And I found the scanner you were looking for earlier.

ELLIOTT: I- um. (He blinks.) You didn’t have to have him bring it to me here.

SW: I know. You’ve been working hard, I thought… you might want to know it had been found.

ELLIOTT: Okay. Um, come in.

(The door opens and the drone trundles in. He comes up to Elliott and lifts the tray so that the engineer can retrieve the battered-looking scanner and mug easily. He sniffs the mug cautiously and his eyebrows lift in surprise.)

Hot chocolate? I didn’t even know we had any on board.

SW: I am fully stocked. It has a full complement of proteins, vitamins and minerals added to it.

ELLIOTT: Trying to fatten me up?

SW: You only had one meal today. Someone has to make sure you eat properly.

ELLIOTT: (grins at the nearest screen and puts the scanner in a thigh pocket of his coveralls. He pats the drone on the head.) You sound like someone’s mother.

SW: I’m supposed to take care of my crew.

ELLIOTT: (with a fading smile) I know. Something wrong?

SW: No, I am functioning properly right now.

ELLIOTT: I know, I didn’t mean that.

SW: My drone found your scanner in a duct under the Bridge. It must have fallen out of your pocket when you were working in there.

ELLIOTT: Right, right. Thanks.

SW: Do you need anything else tonight?

ELLIOTT: (sips his drink and licks his lips.) Hmm? Oh, no, I’m good. Thanks, Starry girl.

SW: Okay. Goodnight, Elliott. (The drone trundles out of the engineer’s quarters and the door whispers closed behind him.)

ELLIOTT: ‘Night.

Is she gone? I think she is. Well, that was weird. But nice. I can’t remember the last time someone brought me hot chocolate. And this is my favourite scanner – do you know how long it takes to get one of these things properly calibrated? I was dreading having to start over – it took me months to get this one to work right. They say you can tell a lot about an engineer from his tools and, well. Yeah, I’m not sure there’s anything in that.

Y’know, now that I think about it, she didn’t answer my question. AIs aren’t supposed to do that – they’re not supposed to be able to do that. But she does a lot that an AI isn’t supposed to do, like send a drone to me with a bedtime drink and a lost tool.

The weirdest part is that I–

Anyway. this is a technical report. Right now, as of this moment, we’re good to go. I won’t promise what things will look like in the morning. I guess that’ll have to do, and just hope that the whitecoats don’t make a decision that’s gonna kill us all.

On that cheery note, I’m out. Goodnight world. Goodnight, Starry.

End report.