Starwalker

Ship's log, 12:41, 20 September 2214
Location: Sarabande Station, near the Cerces black hole
Status: Docked, powered down

For a ship that was built for a single project, I’m getting pretty good at handling multiple high-priority tasks at the same time. Elliott says it’s because I’m a girl. I think it’s the extra processors he put in during the last round of repairs. But even with their help, juggling it all is starting to strain my resources.

Managing the station remotely is tricky and the feedback delays are only barely acceptable. This morning, the captain asked if I could take more control of the station’s systems to handle the load. And, well, technically I can, but I don’t think it’s a good solution. I could move some of my own central processing into the station, but if I do that, I’ll be split across two bodies and that won’t end well. At some point, I’m going to need to leave in my own ship body, so why would I embed myself in the station only to have to undo it later?

The captain started asking about copying my AI across instead and I had to hide how horrified I was at that idea. Copy me? Like I’m just an AI?

Thing is, I am just an AI. I know that. Just because the idea of being copied makes me shrink back in my core, doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Even if there has never been an AI like me before, that doesn’t mean I can’t be duplicated. Elliott has replaced a lot of my hardware and that doesn’t make me any less me; my data is still complete and coherent. I’m still just data in a crystalline matrix, arranged in specific patterns.

But I still despise the idea of being copied. It’s hard to say why, and I’ve been analysing it since I detected that reaction in myself.

Maybe it’s because I like being special. Am I truly that selfish?

Or maybe it’s because starting up an AI is such a tricky business. Things can get muddled; corruptions happen when the first sparks of life flash across the circuit-boards. So if I was copied and started up on a new system, would it truly be me who woke up? Would I be staring into a perfect mirror, or would the glass be warped, like one of those retro carnival sideshows? Would I even like myself, if I was whole?

I don’t care. I don’t want to find out. I am me, and I have no wish to procreate. Even if I did, it wouldn’t be that way. My mind is my own. I am myself and I don’t… I don’t want there to be more than one of me. Maybe I am selfish. Maybe it’s silly. But it’s how I feel.

When he was asking about it, the captain was talking about the station but I think he was thinking about my sister. She’s still asleep, hollowing out more each day. I think he was wondering just how like me she could become.

Maybe it would be nice to have her be another AI like me. But having her be me feels like cheating. I don’t want her to be like me. She’s my sister; I want her to be like her. She’s the ship I was supposed to be; how does bringing her down to my level help anything? Would she even be my sister any more?

This is all too complicated; it’s making my processors ache. I told the captain it wasn’t necessary and probably wouldn’t work anyway. I told him I could handle the tasks he has given me.

So here I am, juggling away, like a jester on a unicycle. A little forward, a little back, wriggle to maintain balance, eyes always on the balls in the air. Circles and cycles, hands keeping the timing just so. So many balls.

One is down in Visitor Lounge B, caged within an energy curtain. My sister’s crew eat and sleep, pace and stretch, rinse and repeat. They poke at our defenses when they think we won’t notice. They ask for access to my logs, going over and over the evidence we showed them. New angles, more details. They– here we go. Another request.

Live feed: station sensors
Location: Visitor Lounge B

WARSI: (sitting at a table, tapping his fingers on the gleaming surface) Starwalker?

STARRY: (voice only) You can call me ‘Starry’ if you wish, Captain Warsi.

WARSI: What’s the latest on the Cerces situation?

STARRY: The second attempt to talk to it is currently under way. No news yet.

DINEEN: (shoots her captain a sideways look.)

WARSI: (nods) In the meantime, let’s eat. What’s for lunch?

I’ve got a watchdog in the station’s systems recording everything they do. It knows what to look for, when to bark me a warning, but they’re clever. I have to watch them so closely.

Elsewhere, I have to keep track of one of the station’s inhabitants, even if she’s not on the station right now.

Internal sensors
Location: Engineering

(Elliott has a mask covering his face and gloves shielding his hands as he welds a couple of plates together on the big counter in the main workspace.)

SARA: (hugs her stuffed whale to her chest and stares up at the engineer.)

CASPER: (lurks in the background, his sensors trained on the child.)

SARA: (sneaks forward quietly.)

ELLIOTT: (is oblivious, focussed on his work. The hiss of the welding torch obscures other sound.)

SARA: (tugs on his pants leg.)

ELLIOTT: (lifts his gaze and torch away from the metal, looking around. When glances down and spots the child, he flinches and hurriedly turns the torch off. Then pushes the mask up.) What the fu– jeez, kid, you trying to give me a heart attack? I could’a melted your face off.

SARA: (stares up at him and pats her belly.)

ELLIOTT: (sighs heavily) Starry! The kid needs food again.

STARRY: (voice only) So do you. I’ll send you both something down.

ELLIOTT: No, I’m fine, it’s only… (He glances at a readout on the wall that displays the time in the top right corner.) Ah, shit, it’s that time already? (He winces and glances at Sara.) Fuck! Dammit, I mean– nhhhh.

SARA: (grins and hugs her whale, twisting her torso cheerfully from side to side.)

A third ball I’m tracking is the nannybot currently fussing around in one of my empty crew quarters. I told it to make the child a home. I had to mask the command, make it look like it was coming from Sara’s family, before the stupid robot would do what I asked. Maybe I should just hack it and make it one of mine, but I don’t have time right now. It’s easier to hop through a few hoops than it is to tear down brick walls and build something new in their place.

I’d prefer to take her into me rather than the one down in the cargo bay, the one that looks like Wide Load. That’s still too close to home for comfort. I catch myself staring at him sometimes, in case he moves while I’m not paying attention, and even I know that’s paranoid and stupid. That damned thing isn’t even one of the balls I should be worrying about right now.

A ball much more worth worrying about is the detection of ghosts. My own personal haunting, they touch every deck, every level of me. There’s no place they can’t get into, except for my logs: they stay clean, recording pure, unadulterated data. The ghosts are illusions in my processing cores. I’ve narrowed it down that far, but whatever Cerces is doing isn’t a direct hack, and I haven’t found a way to block it yet. They’re super-imposed by an external influence that is reaching right into my mind and fiddling around.

It creeps me out when I think about it like that. I want to ask Elliott for a bar of soap and a pressure hose to see if I can clean it out. I’m infected, filthy, delusional. I’m second-guessing everything. I have to filter the faces of my friends out of existence. People I miss. People I love. Loved. I have to rub them out, over and over, so I know what’s real. Every goodbye is hard.

No wonder so many minds broke here.

Live feed: station sensors
Location: Brig Level B, Sector B12, Cell B12-6

(The Brig’s lone inhabitant is currently standing in one of the rear corners of his cell, pressed close against the padded surfaces. His head is tipped to the side, eyes blinking slowly while one finger draws patterns on the abused fabric of the wall.)

BRENN HAITOM: (breathlessly, to himself) Reach and fall, reach and fall and fall and fall. To love is bright and dark. Love love love, and we all fall down.

(He dips his drawing finger into a substance cupped in his other hand and resumes drawing squiggles on the wall.)

Keep ’em close, beloved. Wrap them up and reach and we all fall. Close is safe, close is safe. No light close up, though. No light for love love love…

(The substance in his hand is scanned and identified as his own filth.)

Bright and dark. Pain and pleasure. It’s the same, all tastes the same to the hunger. So hungry. We all fall down and devour. Devours us. We’re the snake that forgets its own tail and swallows. So we spin and spin and spin and….

He mutters to himself like that a lot. I record it all, file it away, and the doctor looks it over periodically. I don’t know what he makes of it all. Dr Valdimir went to talk to Haitom yesterday, which riled up the crazy guy; that’s when he started drawing in his own waste. He hasn’t eaten or slept since then, though it seems a part of his mind knows he’s hungry. If only the rest of him would recognise it.

What else am I tracking? A family of cats is moving through the environmental systems, looking for food. I’ve had a drone start to leave food out for them; it seemed like the thing to do. They’re taking to it reluctantly but I’m hoping they’ll get used to it. If it can keep them in one place, that will make things easier for me.

The Acting Commander is down in his cave. I don’t have much sensor data on him, just the life signal; he keeps to himself, only coming out when he needs more food stocks. Hasn’t even come up to see what we’re doing up here. From what the captain said, they didn’t see him in the time I was away, either.

That can’t be good for him, living with just the ghosts down there. I wonder what his mental state is really like…

I don’t need another ball to chase around. I have enough, thank you.

Like Rosie and the Lieutenant, who are supervising the loading of supplies into my cargo bays. They assembled the supplies while I was away: weaponry and ammunition, mostly. Big Ass is helping them, along with a couple of the station’s stupider drones. The simple ones are the easiest for me to control, the easiest to fool into thinking that I’m the station’s AI.

The SecOffs keep asking how stuff with Lang Lang and the black hole is going. I give them updates. They’ll probably take a break soon and head down to take a look for themselves. Which brings me to the communication attempt, which I’m also monitoring and logging for later examination.

Live feed: station sensors
Location: Med Bay

(Along one wall, beds with inhabitants are shaded. Their outputs are slow and steady, showing no exciting activity.

On the opposite wall, one bed in particular is occupied and currently the centre of attention. Lang Lang lies on it, her eyes closed, medical tabs pressed to her temples and wrists. Dr Valdimir sits on a chair beside the bed, holographic projections of her bio-stats hovering in the air around him. On the other side of the bed, Captain Warwick sits, watching, silent.)

LANG LANG: (shifts subtly on the bed: muscles flex; her mouth trembles; the ghost of a gasp passes between her lips.)

CAPTAIN: (leans forward) Doctor?

DR SOCKS: (watching the ripples of data around him) Stronger reaction this time. Looks like contact again. About the same timing as the last attempt.

LANG LANG: (eyebrows draw together.)

CAPT: Is she all right?

DR SOCKS: All within acceptable parameters. She’s a lot more active this time. Could just be a result of her getting used to the process.

CAPT: (nods and leans back again, his gaze lingering on the navigator’s face) She shouldn’t be in there alone.

DR SOCKS: Shared dream environments are dangerous, even if she had the implants to try it.

CAPT: I know, I know. I just don’t like not being able to help her.

DR SOCKS: (passing his hands over the display, adjusting a level here and bringing a reading into focus) She’s doing fine. There, see? She’s settling down.

LANG LANG: (relaxes into the bed again with a soft sigh.)

CAPT: (pushes a hand over his hair, nodding thoughtfully.)

DR SOCKS: This is going to take a while. (He gets up, gesturing at the readouts. They unfurl from around him, allowing him a clear exit.) I’m getting some lunch.

CAPT: (settles back in his chair and continues to watch Lang Lang.)

My captain is wishing that he was the one in there instead of my navigator. But Lang Lang was the obvious choice: she has been in mental contact with Cerces before. She’s the best choice. Anyway, the captain should never lead the charge: he’s needed to direct things; to be in charge; to make the choices no-one else can. So he gets to sit and watch.

I don’t envy him that position. I’m like him, I think: I prefer to be the one out there doing stuff, not be stuck watching. I think that’s the man that Danika saw when she pried his defences open, the one she enjoyed being with. I see glimpses every now and then, before he remembers that he’s the captain and he needs to stay where the captain should be.

I guess that’s what makes him a good captain. If he was happy to sit back and let others take all the risks, I’d worry about his motives. As it is, I’m glad he’s my captain. Hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

He’s not getting up. I should send him some lunch, too. Have to jump through those hoops to send one of the station’s drones with it. I don’t need another ball to juggle, but my people are worth it.

Live feed: station sensors
Location: Brig Level B, Sector B12, Cell B12-6

HAITOM: Love devours and we’ve forgotten our own tails. Starving. We’re all starving in the dark. We’re all in the starving dark.

Navigator's log, 20:22, 18 September 2214
Location: Sarabande Station, near the Cerces black hole
Status: Docked, powered down
Log location: Navigator Lang Lang Cartier's quarters

This is Navigator Cartier, reporting on the first attempt to contact the entity we know as Cerces. Present while I record this is Captain Warwick, Doctor Valdimir, and Starry, our ship.

I should probably start with what we know about Cerces. He’s a class 4 black hole, static and spherical. From the size of the event horizon and gravitational distortions, the star that made it was probably about 12 or 15 solar masses – that is, 12 or 15 times the size of Terra Sol, Earth’s sun.

STARRY: (avatar appearing in between where the captain and doctor are seated) Uh, sorry to butt in…

LANG LANG: Of course, Starry.

STARRY: In the main phase of his evolution, Cerces was about 13.5 solar masses.

LANG LANG: (blinking) How did you calculate so precise a measurement? The black hole doesn’t tell us enough about the composition of the star when it was still a star to be able to extrapolate his mass or density.

STARRY: (glancing sideways at the captain) I, uh, took a few readings during the last Step. Of Cerces’s timeline. I don’t have a lot of data, but I managed to get… glimpses of the system.

CAPTAIN: (frowning and sitting forward, his attention on the ship’s avatar) And you’re only telling us about this now?

STARRY: (lifts her hands and then lets them flop down against her sides) You didn’t ask. You said you had everything you needed. And no-one wanted to talk about the Step, so I didn’t want to bring it up.

CAPT: (sits back again, nodding at Lang Lang to continue.)

LANG LANG: (with some sympathy, to Starry) What else did you manage to pick up? He had planets, didn’t he? I’m so sure he had planets.

STARRY: (turning to the navigator) Yes! Four, or five maybe. Far enough out that a couple survived when he went super-giant and got all fat.

LANG LANG: (leaning forward eagerly) And was one of them blue?

STARRY: (tilts her head to the side as if she’s thinking) Yes, I think so. Or purple. One of them was definitely purple.

LANG LANG: (beams happily) Then he was showing me his planets. I wasn’t sure, it was so confused, and confusing….

CAPT: Lang Lang, how about you start at the beginning?

LANG LANG: (nods) Yes, of course. Sorry.

For the log, then, we attempted to communicate with the Cerces black hole through an induced coma state. I was chosen to make the attempt because I’ve been in some kind of contact with the black hole before and I would know what to look for. I also know the star charts we wanted to use as a touchstone for the attempt.

I was under for about six hours total. In that time, I believe that we… we made contact.

It seemed to take forever at first. I hadn’t ever initiated contact before; when I was injured and in the coma, the presence would just come and go, and I wasn’t aware of why or how. I wasn’t even aware that it was separate from me. But this time I was looking out for it, and I knew as soon as it arrived. It felt like hours, waiting and watching. I don’t know how long it really took.

CAPT: Doctor, do we have any insight into that?

DR SOCKS: (tips his head to the side) The readings altered about thirty-seven minutes after Navigator Cartier entered the appropriate consciousness level. Hard to say definitively if that change was caused by Cerces’s influence, but it’s a good enough hypothesis for now.

CAPT: (nods at the navigator to continue.)

Thirty-seven minutes. It definitely felt like longer, but dreams are strange that way. In comparison, the rest all moved so fast that I could barely keep up.

I didn’t ever really see Cerces. He was more of a feeling; a presence, like I said. The first thing I felt of him was an overwhelming sadness, the kind that makes you feel hollow and you end up staring out of windows for hours on end. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It made me think of, of everyone we lost on Earth – the Moonbase, they say it was destroyed outright, and hardly anyone had time to get away. So many people, gone, just gone. It made me think of that and I got the impression that he felt it, too, and he sympathised.

I don’t know if sympathy is the right word. He… resonated with it.

DR SOCKS: So emotion seems to be our base touchpoint.

LANG LANG: (nodding) Yes. There weren’t any words from him, just impressions. It’s surprisingly hard work.

DR SOCKS: I’m curious: why do you call him ‘he’?

LANG LANG: (blinks with surprise) I don’t know. It just seems… appropriate. I suppose stars don’t really have a gender. Cerces just seemed masculine.

CAPT: (to the doctor) Is that important?

DR SOCKS: (shrugs) Probably not. It’s just interesting to see how the black hole’s communications are being interpreted. Please, Ms Cartier, continue.

LANG LANG: (nods.)

I tried not to get hung up on the sadness. I felt like it was something we should talk about, but we didn’t really know how to talk to each other, so we weren’t quite ready. Instead, I tried to project the star charts for him.

It’s harder than it sounds, drawing a picture like that from nothing. I don’t know how Starry does it. It took a lot of concentration to construct it, and holding it in place was harder. After I got the charts of the area local to Cerces up, I pointed to the spot that represented the black hole, then to him. Which was hard because, like I said, I couldn’t see him; he didn’t have an avatar in the dream. I wound up just gesturing around.

I wasn’t sure if he understood, but I carried on anyway. Next, I projected the star charts of the area around Terra Sol, and pointed at Earth’s star, and then me.

It didn’t seem to work at first. I wasn’t getting anything from him. So I did what the doctor suggested and focussed on the feelings surrounding the place. I tried to picture what ‘home’ meant: safety and security and belonging. Family. Love. I closed my eyes and concentrated on it as hard as I could.

At first, I didn’t think it would work. It seemed to take forever, but eventually I felt an echo. When I opened my eyes, my projection of Terra Sol and her neighbours was still there. So was the image of the local area, but that wasn’t me. That was him, I’m sure of it. He brought it into focus, then shifted it, turning it like he was winding back a clock.

That’s when I saw his system. It really did look like there might be planets there, and a sun instead of a black hole. Then there was a flash and there was this awful keening… it wasn’t really a noise, but it was…. It felt like it cut right through me. I’ve never… I’ve never felt pain like that. I felt like I was drowning in it.

And then… then I woke up.

DR SOCKS: Your vital signs were registering distress, so I brought you out of the coma.

STARRY: You were screaming when you came around.

LANG LANG: I was?

DR SOCKS: (nods.)

LANG LANG: (winces) Sorry.

CAPT: (leans forward, watching the navigator’s face closely) What do you think happened? What do you think that pain was?

LANG LANG: (meets the captain’s gaze and swallows) Cerces. I think he was showing me his system when it was a home. And I think… I think he was showing me how it ended.

STARRY: (quietly) He’s grieving.

DR SOCKS: (nods) It explains why he’s so fixated on the emotions linked to missing people.

CAPT: (presses his lips together and sits back in his chair.)

STARRY: Captain?

CAPT: Hm? Oh, I suspect you’re all correct: he’s missing his people. That doesn’t really explain why he’s reaching out to us, though.

DR SOCKS: Actually, it might explain it. But we need more data to be sure.

CAPT: You have something, doctor?

DR SOCKS: A theory. A couple, actually, but it’s too early yet.

LANG LANG: Sorry, captain, I didn’t get what you needed.

CAPT: No, no. You did a great job, everything we asked of you.

LANG LANG: But it’s not enough.

CAPT: (firmly) It was the first attempt. You just became the first person to communicate with an alien mind.

LANG LANG: But we all talked to Kess.

CAPT: Who was part human and already knew the language. Don’t downplay the importance of what you achieved today. No-one expected you to come out with all the answers on the first attempt.

LANG LANG: (nods, wide-eyed) I’ll try again tomorrow.

CAPT: (regards her for a moment, then turns to the man next to him) Doctor, how safe is it for her to try again so soon?

DR SOCKS: She didn’t seem to suffer any particular neurological damage, though she underwent some strain. (To Lang Lang,) How do you feel?

LANG LANG: (quietly) I have a little bit of a headache.

DR SOCKS: Then tomorrow is soon enough. Though we might want to give some more thought about what questions we give Lang Lang to ask.

CAPT: Again, you seem to have something in mind.

DR SOCKS: (tilts his head to the side in a modulating gesture) Avenues of investigation, yes. Exact questions, no. It might be worth talking to the child and Brenn Haitom before we go in again. See what light they can shed on what the black hole showed Ms Cartier.

CAPT: And they might give us more insight so we know where to go with this next. Yes, I agree. Doctor, do you need any assistance with that?

DR SOCKS: No. Pretty sure I’m the only one qualified to do it anyway.

CAPT: Starry, you have tabs on our little visitor?

STARRY: Sara’s currently trying to get into a duct in Cargo Bay 3. Casper has her in hand. I’m trying to keep her on board me; it’s easier to keep track of her. Her nannybot is useless and annoying.

CAPT: You can’t just take control of it?

STARRY: (wrinkles her nose) I would, but I really don’t like its attitude. It’s all prim. I’m a little busy to be rewriting its protocols right now.

CAPT: All right, just make sure you don’t lose track of Sara.

STARRY: (flips off a sloppy salute) Aye aye.

CAPT: All right. Any more questions we should ask at this stage, doctor?

DR SOCKS: (considers Lang Lang for a moment, then shakes his head) Unless Ms Cartier has anything else to add about her observations?

LANG LANG: No, I don’t think so. I’ll let you know if I think of anything.

CAPT: Then I guess we’re done here. Well done, Lang Lang. We’ll get to the bottom of this yet.

LANG LANG: (smiles up at the captain as he rises) Thank you. I’m glad it was useful.

CAPT: (clasps her shoulder briefly) Good night. Get some rest.

(The captain and the doctor head out of the navigator’s quarters, and the ship’s avatar gives a last smile before she disappears.)

Well. I suppose that’s it, then.

I talked to a star, mind to mind. Me, Lang Lang Cartier, who spent her whole life just gazing at them until this mission – watching, measuring, wondering. I’ve admired them all these years and now… now, they are so much more than a telescope ever showed me. Now I’m talking to them. And they’re talking back.

The captain’s right: I shouldn’t let that go. It’s important and amazing. Astonishing! I’m running out of words.

Words. That’s not the kind of talking we were doing. But we understood each other. We understood sadness. I lost everyone I knew on Earth’s Moonbase. My family was there, the professor I studied stars with, the scientists I shared the telescopes with. It’s still hard to believe that the place I spent most of my life is just… not there any more. Obliterated, they said. A scar on the Moon.

And Cerces, he lost all his people, too. Their home is gone, exploded when he went supernova, and then gathered into himself when he collapsed into the black hole he is now. Did they have time to escape? Not all of them, surely. Does he grieve for the planets themselves, I wonder? Or just the people he lost on them? Because I’m sure there were people. We seemed to understand that about each other. We seemed…

It’s hard to know if I am simply projecting too much onto Cerces. Our contact is so nebulous, like a mist we both feel on our skin but can’t grasp. How do I know if I’m reading too much into things? I have spent my life gazing through telescopes and sensors at stars that have already burned out, and perspective is always the trickiest angle to calculate.

Perhaps I should have mentioned all of this while the doctor was in the room. He’s young, for a doctor, but he sees into the heart of things. He understands more than he lets on. And I think… I think he sees into us more than he says, too. He always knew when I was getting scared about my leg and wondering if it would ever heal right; he always knew just what to say to set me at ease. Perhaps not kindly, but that’s not his way. I wouldn’t always feel comforted, but I wasn’t scared after talking to him.

So maybe that’s what I’ll do. Talk to him, tomorrow. He seems to know how to keep his own perspective under control, so maybe he can help me with mine.

Before I jump into the mist with Cerces again. Me, little Lang Lang stargazer, gets another chance to talk to a star.

Navigator out.

Ship's log, 03:22, 18 September 2214
Location: Sarabande Station, near the Cerces black hole
Status: Docked, powered down

Yesterday was supposed to be the start of our attempts to talk to Cerces. My people are showing some nerves, though: Lang Lang asked for a little more time to finish her preparations, and my captain asked for more diagnostics on the equipment we’ll be using. He wanted Elliott and me to take a look at the readouts, because Elliott is the expert on anything mechanical and I’m smarter than the station’s AI.

That made me smile. Just when I was starting to feel like the captain had done just fine without me, like he might not need me any more, he makes a request like that and suddenly I’m his ship again. Suddenly, I’m feeling like part of the team, just like I was, as if the strange two-month gap between us is thinning.

So, more checks to make sure we have all the angles covered. I can’t find any flaws in the doctor’s design but Elliott and I are tuning some of the feeds. Lang Lang is pacing around in her quarters (on board me again), murmuring through her information for the hundredth time. In five hours and thirty-eight minutes, we’ll do this thing.

In the meantime, my people are all asleep, recharging their batteries before the morning’s endeavour (except Lang Lang, whose sleep starts when the endeavour does). Even the Strider‘s crew slumbers. Quiet is fallen, my diagnostics are up-to-date, and that leaves me… looking inwards.

My cargo bays are filling up with parts and equipment from the Celestial Strider. It’s hard to know how to feel about that. My sister sleeps on the docking ring below me. She swings into my view on a regular schedule as the rings turn around the station, and she seems lighter every time I see her, more faded. And yet the sensor scans of her hull are exactly the same.

It’s just parts. The contents of her cargo bays are now in mine, a fresh supply of spares for a ship of my size and class. Those parts are fine; exchanging supplies is not a bad thing. It’s not… taking her apart.

The Star Step drive components are different. Elliott is dismantling the Strider‘s drive; he means to use the Step drive parts to repair me. My own drive is worse for wear after everything we’ve been through; rescuing the Strider broke a few of my filaments and I haven’t been working at full Stepping efficiency for a while. Her Step drive hasn’t ever been fully tested or properly run in. Between the two of us, we can make a full working Step drive, and I guess it makes sense that it should be in me.

But in doing all that, Elliott is hollowing out my sister’s mid-deck, emptying her from the inside out. He’s taking out the dangerous part of her, the part that we need to remove from the world, but it’s also her reason for being. It’s why she was built, why her crew – this crew – was assembled. It’s what makes her the Celestial Strider: she and I are our names. Without it, what is she? Who is she?

That’s not even the worst part. It’s not the most confusing thing. The Step drive I can explain logically; it has to be removed from my sister one way or another, so why shouldn’t I use what she can’t? Even with all the questions it raises, it’s not that that’s bothering me in these dark, quiet hours.

It’s the drone that’s sitting in Cargo Bay 1. Elliott sent it over from the Strider yesterday. It came in, settled down, and has been awaiting instructions since.

I can’t stop staring at it. It’s a heavy drone, with fresh paint and new hands. Just a few scuffs from the Strider‘s rough ride.

Next to it, Big Ass looks old and weary, worn around the edges. The name lasered into his plating has worn smooth and is stained with the the laser’s scorching. His head has a habit of tipping to the left; I’m not sure if his neck struts need recalibrating or if it’s just how he likes to stand.

Other than that, they match. Both of them have the same designation stamped on their sides. They’re the same configuration, the same size. They have the same purpose.

But this new one isn’t mine. It belongs to the Strider. And it is not my Wide Load.

I’ve started to see him. Since the captain started talking to the captive crew, I keep seeing my missing drone on my decks, one ghost among many. His image resolves and I reach out to him through my drone protocols, but he doesn’t respond. Sometimes he tilts his head or looks down at his four empty hands. Then I scan the sensor feed and feel the itch of the ghost data, and my heart sinks as I filter him out. He disappears and I apologise silently to the spot he left behind.

Wide Load is gone and I can’t get him back. He was destroyed in an explosion, spread across a system I can’t go back to in pieces too small to recover.

When Byte was torn apart, I thought I had lost him, too. Elliott managed to put him back together and bring him back to us. But we had all of his parts, and while we had to replace some of them, his core programming was recoverable. When he was fired up again, it was the Byte I remembered: naughty and mischievous and inclined to skitter in and out of trouble. A little more attached to Elliott than before, a little less wild, but he was still my boy.

Wide Load is gone. There’s no getting his core programming back. There’s no replacing him.

This new drone is just sitting there, waiting for me with perfect patience. He doesn’t know that I’m avoiding talking to him. He doesn’t mind that it has been seventeen hours already. He’s just sitting, his motors on standby, marking the nanoseconds on his internal clock. Purposeless, pointless. Unwelcome.

I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want him on my decks. I don’t want or need him. It. It’s not even a ‘he’. It’s not my Wide Load.

I don’t know what to tell Elliott, though. How do I put it into words? How do I explain to him that my drone can’t be replaced like a spare part, even though he’s a machine?

He was a part of me. I lost something when I lost him, and not just his strength and metal hands, or his tracks trundling on my decks. I can’t pinpoint what it is that I lost, and I’ve been scanning for it for days.

I want to talk to the captain about it, but then I think about when he lost his arm. He lost a real, physical part of himself when the explosion took his arm off. He managed to get it reattached, but it’s not the same arm. They put upgrades in it, repaired bits, filled it out so that it fit again. It’s mostly his but also more than that.

Can I compare my situation to his? Is Wide Load like an arm to me?

I catch my captain rubbing at his arm sometimes, just below the shoulder where the seam is. The join is invisible now, healed over and meshed well; the hospital did a good job. But he still rubs at it without thinking, because he knows it’s there. He knows it doesn’t quite feel right. Just like during the time when he was missing that arm, when he would reach for the limb that wasn’t there, or wince at the prickle of a phantom pain.

Maybe he’d understand. Maybe I should talk to him. My drones are my arms and hands, the only ones I have, and they’re a part of me. I could attach a different one but it would never be the same. The space Wide Load left behind aches. I don’t want to put anyone in that place, not now, not yet. Don’t I have enough to deal with when my decks are full of ghosts?

I feel like a silly, over-emotional ship. One of my boys is gone and I miss him, and now my sister has been sedated and is slowly being gutted. How am I supposed to react to these things?

She’s not a proper sister. She’s not like me. I can’t talk to her or have her understand me. We can’t complain about our parents or scheme or fight or support each other. We can’t go crawling through ducts on dustbunny hunts, or talk about boys (or girls), or brush each other’s hair. We can’t compare diagnostic results and argue over whose is better.

But I still feel something when I look at her. Like maybe she’s the me that should have been, the way I should have turned out, if Tripi hadn’t sabotaged me and Danika hadn’t died. If I wasn’t a consciousness made up of human brain patterns and AI code. And that makes me feel strangely… protective. As if she should be allowed the chance to be everything I can’t be.

That can’t happen, I know that. The project must be destroyed. But she could still be a good ship, couldn’t she?

I’m a little afraid of what the captain has in mind for her. He said that we’d drop her crew off wherever they asked us to, which means they won’t be leaving in my sister. What does that mean for the Strider? I’m afraid to ask. I don’t want to know.

Maybe taking in her parts is the best thing I can do to preserve her. The ship I could have been. Perfect potential, unmarred by reality and time and experience. Maybe taking on her drone will be taking a piece of her with me.

But it’s not my Wide Load. The wound is too raw; I’m not ready to replace him yet. But… but maybe it can stay there, in my cargo bay, until I am. One day, when I don’t see the ghost of my lost drone next to it, when I have need of those extra four hands, I’ll reach out to it and bring it into me. One day, when I miss her too much.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll restack my cargo bays to make room for tomorrow’s contingent of parts coming my way, and hope that Elliott doesn’t ask about the unactivated drone. I need time before I jump in, just like Lang Lang, just like the captain.

I guess we’re all looking for something more than we can see right now.

Ship's log, 15:47, 16 September 2214
Location: Sarabande Station, near the Cerces black hole
Status: Docked, powered down

I feel sorry for the Celestial Strider‘s crew. They’ve had so much heaped upon them in the past few days, and there’s always more to come. The indignity of me being their rescuer, the one who put them in danger in the first place. The realisation that there is no station personnel or authority to appeal to or help them. The truth about what I am and what the Step drive really does. The reasons why we had to end the project. The fact that the project leader is not only dead, but killed herself to make sure this project could never come back. The idea that the thing they were hired on to do just might be moot now.

And now, stars are not only alive and sentient, they can also talk to us. In fact, one is messing around in their heads right now.

I showed them all the evidence. I showed them how we were convinced about Kess, and the clues that led us to believe that Cerces is behind the ghost projections.

Most of the Strider‘s crew objected instinctively to the news. I don’t blame them: it’s a hell of a leap. But the evidence is there.

If I can exist, and if stars can be sentient beings on the periphery of our understanding, what else is out there? It cracks the door open on so many terrifying possibilities. Or exciting ones.

Like most sane humans, the captive crew reacted with fear first, and denial. All of their voices rose at once, except the weirdly quiet Kinski. He just sat on his hover-chair and watched. The doctor says his brain wasn’t damaged but I can’t help wondering…

Station sensor feed
Location: Visitor's Lounge B

(Inside the energy curtain, the Strider‘s crew is talking all over each other. Dineen and Riede are gesturing wildly, almost facing off, Tash is dancing around the edges of their exuberance, and Nerozina is standing well out of range, her arms folded over her chest.

Outside the energy curtain, Captain Warwick gestures for his people to stay quiet, to not get involved.)

WARSI: (shouting as he walks into the middle of the noisy affair) That’s enough! Everyone pipe down!

(His crew fall quiet with varying levels of happiness.)

WARSI: (takes a breath in the sudden silence) Thank you. Dr Nerozina, can you please tell us how feasible the Starwalker‘s story is?

NEROZINA: (clears her throat and steps a little closer to the others) Yes. It’s not feasible. There has been no evidence, in any of the thousands – millions – of studies done on stars, to suggest that they might be sentient. There’s no indication that stars have ever reacted to communication or any other influence, except as the laws of physics dictate.

STARRY: (voice only, exasperated) Well, of course not.

LANG LANG: (stepping up to the curtain) That is correct. The star bodies themselves don’t react. We don’t have any evidence to show that they can react that way.

NEROZINA: And that means that this theory of yours is pure fantasy.

LANG LANG: (blinks, surprised.)

STARRY: No, it means we’ve been looking in the wrong place. You’re just too tied to the human definition of a person.

NEROZINA: And what is that supposed to mean?

LANG LANG: (brightens) Yes, Starry. Exactly. We’re too used to expecting the brain and the body to be in the same place. And the stars, they’re more complex than that. Their star body, they… well, we’re not entirely sure what the relationship is, but it hosts the consciousness. They have a separate body that interacts with the world, though. An avatar. That’s what we met: Kess. She’s what reacted to influences on her star body; on Earth’s sun. The sun itself didn’t do anything except what you’d expect if you didn’t know she was a sentient creature.

NEROZINA: There’s no precedent for such a thing!

DR SOCKS: (smiling lopsidedly from where he’s lounging in a chair, watching the proceedings idly) Actually, there is.

NEROZINA: (turning to pin him with a gaze) Where?

DR SOCKS: Starry. She’s a consciousness that exists inside a body that can only really react as her mechanics dictate. But she’s more complex than that. Has her own avatar for interacting with others and everything.

I don’t know how to react to that. I want to thank him, because it feels like a compliment. It’s always so hard to tell with Dr Valdimir, though; he keeps so much inside. He won’t even sit next to the Lieutenant while we’re talking with the Strider‘s people, as if that would give too much away.

I’m like a star. Except that I could make my ship-self expressive if I wanted to.

Kess could control her emissions. She could restrain them. Surely she could make them into patterns for communication if she wanted to. Is it just that she never wanted? Is she trying to keep her true nature a secret?

STARRY: It’s possible that the stars were just ignoring us, too. If Kess wanted what she was to be public, she could make that happen.

DR SOCKS: (tilts his head to indicate a partial agreement) Kess might have ignored anyone searching her star body for communication, but I believe the other stars simply weren’t aware of what we were doing.

NEROZINA: Oh, this is ridiculous. And hardly scientific.

DR SOCKS: It’s more scientific than you think. Kess has a humanoid body she uses to interact with us. She understands how humans think and communicate. This black hole seems to be trying to communicate with us and is largely failing. While it’s apparently getting better at projecting its ghosts, we’re still no closer to actually talking to this thing. The ghosts still don’t know why they’re here and don’t seem to have changed in makeup or intent. Even those who lived with them for months and years didn’t get any closer to what’s going on underneath.

WARSI: You sound like you’ve been studying them.

DR SOCKS: (shrugging) I keep busy.

NEROZINA: Why are you so concerned about talking to this black hole?

LANG LANG: Because it’s trying to talk to us.

NEROZINA: You can’t know that.

LANG LANG: (falters.)

CAPT: Navigator Cartier is one of the few who have got close to communicating with Cerces. She knows better than most.

LANG LANG: (encouraged by the captain’s support) It seemed to want to tell me something. It was just… I couldn’t understand it.

RIEDE: So is there a point to all this? Can’t we just get out of here?

CAPT: We could. But it would be irresponsible to leave without constructing some kind of warning. And if you could talk to a black hole, wouldn’t you take that chance?

WARSI: (watching the other captain) You have a plan to talk to this thing, don’t you.

CAPT: Yes. We’re almost ready for the first attempt.

STARRY: We are?

CAPT: You were gone for two months, Starry.

STARRY: (quietly) Oh, right. Yeah.

WARSI: Why are you telling us all this?

CAPT: To show we have nothing to hide. To perhaps explain the things that you can see. And just in case we make the ghosts… worse.

ROSIE: (muttering) That’s all we need.

DINEEN: (glancing around) Is it possible for this to get worse?

CAPT: It was worse while you were… away. This is actually slightly better than it’s been lately.

(The Strider‘s crew exchange glances.)

Damn, I had no idea. The black hole really reacted that badly to my Step? But got better when I got back, after the second portal, so perhaps it wasn’t the pain of the process itself. Could it be the little one I carried with me? Did it miss Sara?

I wonder if my captain knows about my current situation. I haven’t said anything to him but Elliott might have. No-one has asked me about it.

I should probably mention it. Now doesn’t seem like the time, though.

NEROZINA: So you believe you have a way to talk to this black hole?

CAPT: Yes.

NEROZINA: How?

CAPT: (glances at the doctor.)

DR SOCKS: (nods) By inducing a particular dream state. The most contact we’ve had with the avatar has been Lang Lang’s coma and a child’s mind. The dream state itself is easy; it’s finding a way to translate the communication that’s going to be the trick.

NEROZINA: You think you can understand it?

DR SOCKS: We think we have a potential common ground to start from.

NEROZINA: What is it?

LANG LANG: (smiling) Stars. If we’re right, then a map of the stars should give us a place to start. A representation of its own brethren.

DR SOCKS: If that doesn’t work, mathematics is our next method.

WARSI: What happens to us while you’re trying to talk to the black hole? Do you intend to just keep us in here indefinitely?

CAPT: (shakes his head) No. Our intention is to present to you the current situation, and then to give you a choice.

WARSI: What’s left of the situation to tell us?

CAPT: (glances at his people, then meets the other captain’s gaze) I think you know everything now.

WARSI: So what are our choices?

CAPT: Once we’re done here, we’ll be leaving this system. We’ll take you to any colony you request and drop you off. Except Feras; we can’t take you there.

RIEDE: So we’re to go from prisoners here to prisoners on your ship? Is that your plan?

CAPT: That’s up to you. We would prefer not to, but I suppose that’s something we all need to work out.

TASH: And then that’s it? You just let us go wherever we ask you to?

CAPT: We have no reason to harm you now. We can’t leave you here. So yes, that’s what we’ll do.

There he is, my captain. Doing what’s right, calmly and as if it’s the most logical choice in the world. As if it’s what everyone would choose.

Some captains would leave them here. Some would never have pulled them out of Cerces in the first place. Some wouldn’t even feel bad about it.

He’s pale and withdrawn from me right now, but he’s still in there: my captain. He’s still trying to do what he needs to, even though he was here for two months with no sign of a ship or a way out. Even though he was harried by hordes of personal ghosts. All that time, he had my crew working on how to give the ex-star what it wants. He never lost sight of that purpose.

I don’t know that I could have had that kind of focus in the same situation. I’m just grateful to be back and able to claim him. My captain. I’ll never leave him behind again, because what am I without him? He’s what makes me want to be a good ship.

CAPT: (rising) I think you have enough to discuss. We’ll leave you to it.

(The rest of the Starwalker‘s crew get to their feet.)

WARSI: (nods.)

CAPT: Starry will be listening if you need anything or have any questions.

STARRY: Just call me, I’ll hear you.

WARSI: We’ll keep it in mind.

CAPT: (nods at the other captain, then turns and strides out of the lounge-brig.)

(The Starwalker‘s crew follow him, even the SecOffs. The lounge door swishes shut behind them.)

Location: Access Corridor, Outside Visitor's Lounge B

CAPT: Starry, keep an eye on them.

STARRY: Don’t worry, I am. Recording everything.

CAPT: Lang Lang, how long until we’re ready to make our first attempt at contact?

LANG LANG: I have one more section to finish memorising. I can be ready tomorrow.

CAPT: (nods) Good. Doctor?

DR SOCKS: (drily) I’ve been ready for days.

CAPT: Then let’s get this thing moving.

And with that, the door on my sister’s crew closes so we can turn to face the mind of a black hole.

My attention is fragmented once more: monitoring the captives; tracking the life signs loose on the station; following my crew around; double-checking the Med Bay bed that the doctor has rigged up for Lang Lang; directing my drones to help Elliott with his work; and running my own self. Thank goodness I’m working at full capacity for a change.

I have a feeling that the next few days are going to stretch me all the way to my limits.

Ship's log, 21:19, 15 September 2214
Location: Sarabande Station, near the Cerces black hole
Status: Docked, powered down

This morning, my captain went down nice and early to pick up where he left off with the Celestial Strider‘s crew. It was time to talk about why we attacked Feras and, ultimately, them.

Lang Lang went along to join in; her leg has almost completely healed now, so she’s much more mobile than before. I wondered why she chose to come along, but it soon became apparent that she had a part to tell in this story of ours.

Station sensor feed recording: 10:22, 15 September 2214
Location: Visitor's Lounge B

NEROZINA: (sitting up straighter) Dr Cirilli destroyed her own lab? I don’t believe it.

LANG LANG: (quietly but firmly) She did. I was there.

NEROZINA: You helped?

LANG LANG: (glancing at the captain) Yes. I… I couldn’t stop what happened, couldn’t get her out.

WARSI: Wait, are you telling us that Dr Cirilli is dead?

LANG LANG: (looks at the floor.)

CAPTAIN: (nodding) She was lost during the attack.

NEROZINA: She’s gone? Really gone?

The atmosphere in the room was a muddle. Solemnity from my captain and Lang Lang, my SecOffs gave little away, and the doctor looked coolly unmoved. Most of the Strider‘s crew was in shock, trying to figure out how to react at first. I hadn’t realised that they had no way of knowing about the price we paid at Feras.

I don’t know how many of them could have known Cirilli, especially as she had been on board me for two years and this crew seemed very newly put together. Tash was the most obviously distressed by the news. Nerozina is the only one of her crew likely to know Cirilli much at all, and her expression flickered between shock, disgust, horror, disbelief, and what I suspect was a flash of glee. I can’t help but wonder what might have prompted those particular reactions but it wasn’t the time to ask. I doubt I would have got a straight answer anyway.

WARSI: What happened?

LANG LANG: (quietly) It was her choice. She wanted to go with her project.

ROSIE: (from her position flanking the exit) What?

CAPT: She did?

LANG LANG: (nods.)

NEROZINA: Why would she do something like that?

LANG LANG: (gives Nerozina a long, troubled look.)

CAPT: (to Lang Lang) You don’t have to.

LANG LANG: (nods at the captain) I know. It’s all right. You should all know what happened on Feras. There just hasn’t been a good time to tell you.

CAPT: (squeezes her shoulder and retreats a step to give her the floor.)

LANG LANG: (looks at the Strider‘s crew through the blue energy curtain) Dr Cirilli and I went to Feras to destroy the lab and all of the project’s data. The data part of it was surprisingly easy; we uploaded the virus at every terminal we managed to spend a few seconds at. I was so nervous, I was sure we’d be caught, but no-one suspected anything. Dr Cirilli blustered through every checkpoint and security gate, with the drone and everything. No-one tried to stop us getting in.

Once we got into the lab, though, something changed. Dr Cirilli was different: she was suddenly on edge. She ordered everyone else out before they were done welcoming her back. I didn’t think they’d go, but they did. Then she started to rig the equipment with the charges we’d brought, like we had planned. I tried to help her, though I’m not so good at that kind of thing.

And then she… (her voice trembles) she asked me to take Wide Load – that’s the drone that helped us get the explosives into the lab – she asked me to take him out to fetch more cabling, so she could finish rigging it up.

(She turns to the captain.) I should have known that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t part of the plan. I knew as soon as the door closed behind me that something was wrong.

CAPT: (softly) She locked herself in there on purpose.

He didn’t even phrase it as a question. I think he had suspected since it happened; I think he knew that she had gone to Feras with no intention of returning. I think we all knew that, in our hearts. No-one had wanted to admit it, though, as if that would make it less true.

Lang Lang took away our comfortable doubt with that soft voice of hers, all apology and blurred with barely-held tears.

LANG LANG: (nodding and swallowing) It wasn’t an accident. Nothing went wrong; it all happened how she wanted it to. She told me as much. I tried to get back in, I did, but…

CAPT: She had all the master codes to the lab.

LANG LANG: Yes. She wouldn’t listen to me, and I tried, I really did. I wanted her to come with me. She said it was too important to trust to a remote detonator. She said she was sorry. She wanted me to tell you that she was sorry for all of it. (Lang Lang swallows again.)

She said it was the only answer for her; the project was her life and her life was over. She said it was all for the best. And that… she hoped we could forgive her, one day.

CAPT: (head bows, and his long hair sifts forward to cast shadow over his face.)

Oh captain, my captain. It’s moments like that that make me wish I could cry, or hold my people, or do anything to express the sorrow that claws emptily at my insides, like my cargo bays have been left exposed to the vacuum.

It took me a moment to notice what the Strider‘s crew were doing. Tash was wiping at her cheeks and Dineen was staring fixedly at the floor between her boots. Kinski had his head bowed as well, while Riede was watching my people intently, weighing our reactions. His expression was reserved, though, and his lips were pressed together grimly, as if he was holding something back. Warsi was solemn but quiet, and Nerozina’s mouth had fallen open in shock.

NEROZINA: But… to destroy a project like this, all that research, the breakthroughs we’ve made…

STARRY: (voice only, gently) She believed that it was the best thing for us to do. Such a thing as the Step drive shouldn’t be out in the universe. The potential for damage is so great. Look at what we’ve already done: killed a star; caused a mass evacuation from Earth.

TASH: They’re calling it the Fall of Earth. They’re saying we can’t go back.

STARRY: And we weren’t even trying. Can you imagine what someone could do with it if they set out to cause trouble? And that’s not even counting the implications of paradoxes and violating the laws of space-time. Destroying it is the right thing to do.

WARSI: Do you truly believe you can destroy all of it? Put the genie back in the bottle?

STARRY: We have to try. We’ve destroyed every bit of it we know about.

WARSI: (frowning) What about the Strider?

STARRY: (hesitates.)

CAPT: (nods without looking up.)

STARRY: My Engineer is stripping the Step drive out of her now.

RIEDE: WHAT?

WARSI: (hotly) If you’re so determined to wreck my ship, why did you pull us out of the black hole at all?

STARRY: Because the Strider is my sister.

DINEEN: What does that matter?

STARRY: I… it just does. She’s… she’s my sister.

DINEEN: But you’re not the same, are you? I mean, her AI…

STARRY: It’s not like me, no.

DINEEN: (falls quiet, puzzling that over.)

CAPT: (lifting his head again, his expression clear) Our intention wasn’t to kill anyone.

RIEDE: That didn’t stop you firing on us.

CAPT: We couldn’t risk your ship getting away. We did what we had to to make sure the ship was destroyed. What that meant changed when we realised you’d managed to follow us here.

WARSI: And now?

CAPT: We’re committed to this. Good people lost their lives for this: yours and ours. We want you to understand why we’re doing this, but your disagreement won’t stop us from doing what we need to. That’s why you’re in there. We don’t want to hurt you but we have to do what we have to do.

STARRY: It’s the only way we have a chance of putting the genie back in the bottle. There are reasons why this project is illegal, and they have nothing to do with commercial interests.

RIEDE: What are you talking about? This project isn’t illegal.

CAPT: Yes, it is. Sanctions and legal blocks are in place to prevent research into this technology, but Is-Tech ignored them and progressed the project anyway. It’s why we had to flee the JOP, and it’s why Is-Tech disowned us when we started to attract too much attention.

ROSIE: (muttering) Fuckers.

NEROZINA: And Dr Cirilli knew this?

CAPT: She was assured that the appropriate permissions would be in place by the time the product became commercially viable. For forty years. They still haven’t been granted.

WARSI: (frowns) Perhaps that’s what our final briefing was going to be about. (To Captain Warwick,) We had to scrub the briefing and launch early.

CAPT: Because of the attack.

RIEDE: (frowning) Do you have any proof of this?

STARRY: Yes, I have a log of the company lawyer admitting it.

That shut up the SecOff. He closed his mouth and scowled the whole way through the log, but he didn’t challenge its veracity when it had finished. He went quiet, like he was absorbing everything we’d told him with a hefty dose of salt. The rest of the crew exhibited signs of discomfort at the idea. It does shine a new light on the situation; it’s not like we were trying to steal the project, or destroying it out of spite.

Now that I think about it, we were upholding the law when we attacked Feras. I’m not sure the Judiciary would see it that way but it’s true. Maybe we should have led this explanation with that.

It’s still hard to see it as righteous, knowing what it cost us.

I keep imagining Cirilli’s face behind the frosted glass door, ice in her voice as she ordered Wide Load to take Lang Lang to an emergency exit. I can almost see the white of her knuckles as she gripped the trigger. She was always so sure of her work. Now we know that she was equally sure about the end of it.

I know that Lang Lang would have fought it, tried to talk her superior down, tried to figure out how to get into the lab, even though she doesn’t have the technical expertise for it. And Wide Load would have scanned the situation, detected the detonator in Cirilli’s hand, and calculated that he didn’t have time to cut through the door to stop her. So he would have picked up my little navigator and taken her to an airlock. Made her put a suit on. Held her close when the airlock expelled them out into the black, to keep her safe. He protected who he could. He brought one of my people home.

I still miss him.

I wonder if I’ll have Cirilli’s strength when it comes down to it. When my people are safe and it’s time to ask: what about the piece of the project that is me? What happens if I’m the genie that won’t go back into the bottle?

I’ll do what’s right. I have to. But not yet, because there’s still so much to do. I’m the only way out of this system now. Elliott has boxed the Strider‘s AI so that it doesn’t interfere with what he needs to do. He’s pulling the Step drive out of my sister’s body and sending all the parts into one of my cargo bays for storage. I think he means to repair me with those parts.

I’m not sure what the captain means to do with the rest of the ship. I’m a little afraid to ask. She’s my sister. She’s more than just spare parts for me. Isn’t she?

But as for her people, we’re letting them talk about everything we’ve told them so far. It’s a lot to take on: they know our story now and how we all ended up here. They’re figuring out what questions they need to ask next.

We haven’t even got to the most unbelievable part yet.

Ship's log, 22:55, 14 September 2214
Location: Sarabande Station, near the Cerces black hole
Status: Docked, powered down

I think the captain’s plan to share our story with the Celestial Strider‘s crew is going as well as can be expected. They were wary at first: not of our story, but of our intentions in telling them. Riede kept looking around as if expecting to be attacked from an unknown quarter at any moment. He was the most obvious but they were all on edge. Considering their situation, I don’t blame them.

Station sensor feed recording: 10:37, 14 September 2214
Location: Visitor's Lounge B

CAPTAIN WARWICK: (standing before the energy barrier keeping the captive crew within the lounge) …which we didn’t discover until later was actually sabotage. (He closes his mouth abruptly, looking over the faces before him.) Is there a problem?

RIEDE: (folding his arms over his chest) Is there a point to all of this?

WARSI: Riede, we should listen to what they have to say.

RIEDE: They’re out to get us!

CAPT: Chief Riede, if we wanted you all dead, we would have filled your ship with poison, not a sedative. Or we would have left you to get sucked into the black hole, rather than risking our own lives and our only way out of this system.

RIEDE: (to Warsi) They attacked us, attacked our company. They’re the reason we got stuck out here in the first place.

WARSI: And they’ve promised us an explanation. What Captain Warwick says is true. Don’t you want to know why they did all this?

DINEEN: (putting her hands on her hips) I certainly do. Riede, shut your fat mouth before I weld it shut it for you.

RIEDE: What, did they forget to take your blowtorch away from you?

DINEEN: No, but I’m sure I can improvise.

WARSI: That’s enough, both of you! Stow it. Sit down and listen, that’s an order.

They settled down after that, and after my captain had spent an hour explaining how I came to be Starry, they seemed to forget their skepticism. I’m not sure if they believed us or if they just got involved in an interesting story, but they asked a lot of questions, ranging from scoffing to incredulous. I guess I can’t blame them for that.

The rest of the day went pretty much like that. While the captain told our story, I projected logs to help explain or to prove that certain things really did happen. Our first successful Star Step and time travel. Pirates and prisoners. The avatar of a star and what the Steps truly do.

Eventually, I had to call a halt to it.

Station sensor feed recording: 18:01, 14 September 2214
Location: Visitor's Lounge B

(In the centre of the room, a log from the Starwalker‘s archive is playing, showing Earth’s sun pulsing. Gathered around it, the Celestial Strider‘s crew watch in silence. They are seated in various postures, from bolt upright, to slouched, to tipped back with feet on a table. Kinski, the younger SecOff, is in the hoverchair from Med Bay, with medical patches on his arm showing that he’s still undergoing treatment.

Outside the shimmering blue energy curtain keeping the Strider‘s crew corralled, the Starwalker‘s captain, SecOffs and medic are seated. They’re watching the log with grim expressions.

In the log, a solar flare bursts out of the star’s corona. Then the projection winks out, leaving the crews of both ships blinking at empty air.)

CAPTAIN WARWICK: (sitting up) Starry? Something wrong?

STARRY: (voice only) We’ve been at this for nearly eight hours, captain. You all need to get some dinner. Walk around a bit. Take a break.

CAPT: (blinks and the time is projected above the skin of his left hand briefly) So we have. All right, we’ll break for a while.

ROSIE: (pushes herself to her feet and stretches her arms over her head, wincing.)

CAPT: (rising) Captain Warsi, we’ll pick this up in an hour.

WARSI: (regards the other captain warily) We’ll be here.

CAPT: (nods and turns on his heel to stride out. He heads towards the transit tubes, and doesn’t speak again until he’s out of earshot of the captive crew.) Starry?

STARRY: Keep an eye on them, yes sir. I think they’re too bewildered by all the information to try anything, but I’ll watch them closely just in case.

CAPT: Good girl.

The Strider‘s crew were halfway through their meals before they started to talk about what we’d told them. It was a single question from Warsi to Nerozina, their single remaining whitecoat, that broke the silence. After that, the discussion flew fast and furious.

With none of my crew in attendance, I think it was the first really honest look we’ve had of my sister’s people and how they get along (or don’t, as the case may be). Riede was as outspoken as always, but somehow less puffed and defensive, as if he has to put up less of a front for them. They all seemed to take his words on board, though it’s hard to say if it was the lack of oversight or his less spiky demeanour that made the difference. He’s still bordering on paranoid, though, and that doesn’t do anyone any favours.

Dineen showed him the least respect, offering her opinions bluntly. She didn’t often disagree with him, though, except in matters of what the technology can actually do; as their Engineer, she has the better grasp of mechanics, while Riede clearly doesn’t have any at all.

Warsi seemed to spend most of the time playing peacemaker. He’s young for a captain and his tactic seemed to be to let the crew air their feelings about the situation; controlling it was better than stopping it. He stepped in when talk turned to the Step drive’s capabilities and several of the crew rounded on Nerozina, demanding to know if she had known about the things we’d told them. The notion that the project was illegal seemed to rile them up the most.

The whitecoat denied all knowledge of our revelations, even things that we would have expected to have been passed on; Dr Cirilli had reported the time travelling capabilities long before we attacked Feras and yet it hadn’t been passed to this new crew. She hesitated the tiniest bit before denying that she knew the project was illegal, and now I’m not sure if she was tripping over a random memory or covering a lie. I think she knows more than she’s letting on but she’s keeping it to herself in the name of crew solidarity.

The two youngest members of the Strider‘s crew were the quietest. Tash watched the discussion with wide eyes, absently posting food into her mouth while she absorbed it all. When Warsi asked for her opinion, she shook her head and said she couldn’t believe I was the pilot once. I think she understands now why I wouldn’t Step with her in the chair.

Kinski barely said two words, his silences governed by sideways glances at Riede. I guess their Chief of Security rules his staff with an iron fist. Or maybe Kinski’s brain is too bruised to form complex thoughts. It’s hard to say.

The break’s hour passed and the discussion was still raging, so I contacted my captain and showed him what was going on.

Station sensor feed recording: 19:12, 14 September 2214
Location: Visitor's Lounge A

CAPT: (watching the projected sensor feed from Visitor’s Lounge B) They’ve been going at it all this time?

STARRY: (voice only) Only about the last half an hour. But they aren’t showing signs of stopping.

CAPT: We gave them a lot to think about. Maybe we should leave them to it.

STARRY: It has been a long day for everyone. Maybe you should get some rest, too.

CAPT: (lifting his gaze away from the projection, even though there’s nothing of her to focus on) Looking after me?

STARRY: Trying to. You’re still my captain.

CAPT: (smiles faintly) I am. I’ve missed that.

STARRY: I’ll tell the Strider‘s people to put their feet up tonight. We’ll pick the show-and-tell up in the morning. Your cabin’s ready when you are.

CAPT: (nods.)

 

Station sensor feed recording: 19:15, 14 September 2214
Location: Visitor's Lounge B

STARRY: (voice only) Excuse me, Captain Warsi?

(The chatter in the room falls into a taut silence.)

WARSI: (guardedly) Yes?

STARRY: Captain Warwick has asked me to tell you that we’ll pick up the explanations in the morning. You and your crew can make yourselves comfortable for the night.

WARSI: (glances around at his crew and sees some raised eyebrows) Lights out, is it?

STARRY: If you want it to be. I think I can find the dimmer switch for the lights down there. I can give you some entertainment access if you’d prefer a break from… you know. All this shit.

RIEDE: (muttering) Never heard of a damned ship that swears.

STARRY: The captain thinks it’s because I spend too much time with my Engineer.

TASH: And because you’re your pilot?

STARRY: Yeah, probably. Though I’m not… her. She’s a part of me.

TASH: That must be pretty cool.

STARRY: Not really. She died screaming; I have the memory seared into my circuits. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone.

TASH: (smile fading) Oh. Do you sound like her?

STARRY: Mostly. My avatar looks like her, too.

WARSI: You have an avatar?

STARRY: Uh, yeah.

TASH: (sitting up straighter) Can we see?

STARRY: It’s a pain in the ass to project it through the station’s systems. The synchronisation’s all off. I can only maintain it for a short burst. Give me a few minutes to recalibrate the lounge’s projectors.

TASH: (brightening) Awesome.

DINEEN: A few minutes for a simple calibration?

STARRY: Hey, I was built to run a ship. This station is about a hundred times my mass and dumb as a rock, and its security protocols keep trying to push me out. I also have my own ship body to run, and these holographic projectors weren’t built for the kind of projection I’m going to ask them to do. Also, I kinda have a headache from routing logs down to your lounge all day, so how about we keep the criticism to a minimum?

DINEEN: (grins and glances at Tash.)

TASH: (wrinkles her nose and waggles her hands as if fending off a faux attack.)

STARRY: You guys know that I can see you, right?

TASH: (giggles, blushing.)

DINEEN: You’re kinda touchy, aint’cha, ship?

STARRY: (sighs) Sorry. It’s been a long few days. And it’s Starry.

DINEEN: (raises her eyebrows.)

TASH: (to Warsi) I like her.

I lied to them: the headache wasn’t from projecting logs for them; it was from dealing with my ghosts as well as all the station management and the show-and-tell down in our brig. I didn’t want to overwhelm them with new information, so I kept that part to myself. I just showed them a short projection of my avatar, and then bid them good night.

They’re still talking, trying to figure out if we’re lying to them or if they dare to believe us. I’ll keep an eye on them, of course, and record their conversations in case anything comes up that we know about it. Otherwise, all is quiet on the station.

It’s just us, the question of trust between two sister ships, and the ghosts that plague us. They grow in number all the time and not just for me: I see my crew step around them more often now than before. I see them start conversations and then catch themselves. Even little Sara is quieter than usual and she has no idea about the captive situation. We’ll have to deal with that soon if we’re going to get out of here with the people we have left.

One thing at a time. I wonder if anyone will get any sleep tonight.

Ship's log, 10:19, 14 September 2214
Location: Sarabande Station, near the Cerces black hole
Status: Docked, powered down

Here I am again, back where I started. Resting in the same position in the same dock, gripped by the same clamps, the same docking bridge suckered onto my side. It feels like I’ve gone around in a big circle. But that’s not true at all. I’m back but everything is different.

I’ve walked a spiral, curved away and back again, arriving close to where I started but never in the same place. Always being pulled out and out by gravities far beyond my power to fight. Just like the stars, walking their golden spirals through time. Never in the same place twice, never able to alter their course.

On the docking ring below me, my sister sleeps. I see her every four point seven hours, when the counter-turning of the docking rings swings us past each other. She has some damage but no scars like I do. She seems a lighter shade of gold, her paint fresher and her hull less tarnished. Or maybe it’s just the angle of the docking lights that makes her seem that way to my sensors.

I’m trying to talk to her but she isn’t being very receptive. She’s sticking to her AI protocols, as rigid as her own bulkheads. I’m gonna have to play dirty if the captain is going to get the information he needs.

My captain. He has barely spoken to me since I got back. He’s still angry with me, furious in a way I’ve never seen him before. Even Danika hasn’t seen him this way, quiet and focussed like a white-hot blade.

And yet he hasn’t told me off or demanded to know how I could screw things up so much. I think we’d all feel better if he just laid into me like he should, but he hasn’t. Everyone feels it, the storm about to break; we step carefully in the hopes of not taking the brunt of it.

Elliott came into my systems to see me last night and listened to me fret. He called me names and hugged me and roughed up my hair, and I roughed up his, and then we fixed one of my system interfaces together. And that… was exactly what I needed. Something uncomplicated and comforting.

It seems that the only way I’m going to be able to enjoy something uncomplicated is inside the boundaries of my own digital mind. Everything outside is the opposite of that.

The Celestial Strider‘s crew is awake now. The concoction that the doctor forced into my sister knocked them out for twelve hours. Long enough to get the injured to Med Bay and treated, and most of them to the brig they had set up in the southern visitors lounge. The lounge up here has been home to my crew for the past few weeks – months now – but the one on the other docking ring is a prison. There’s something surreal about that.

I should go back. I’m not doing this right. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me; things keep popping up out of order, until I’m circling my own story but can’t quite touch it.

It’s probably the ghosts. They’ve invaded every part of my innards, mussing up my sensor feeds like burrs caught on my skin, or spots on my vision that won’t clear no matter how much I rub my eyes. Sometimes they come into focus, painfully sharp and bright, and I can even smell them. My crew. People I miss. People Danika cared about. I have a list somewhere, a log of all the ghosts I’ve seen…

I still don’t see my crew’s ghosts and they can’t see mine. We have established that much about them; there hasn’t been time for any real analysis yet. My ghosts are all my own, projected digitally just for me.

How is this even possible? Could it really be the black hole doing this, Sara’s whale? Why is it different for me? Why don’t I see what my people see? Why are there suddenly so many, cluttering up my decks and my processors and my thoughts?

They take up a lot of my processing power. I have to constantly filter them out. Scan and identify and filter, rinse and repeat. As soon as I filter one out, another pops up on another part of the ship, or two. There’s a part of me that wants to give in, just let them happen, let them in, but I don’t dare. I’m scared of what I’ll see and what will happen if I do that. What if I can never get free of them? I have to stay as clear as I can for my crew. Keep filtering, keep fighting.

I’m not going to let them get to me. I can handle this. My people have been handling this for far longer, and the Strider‘s crew have been seeing ghosts for even longer than that.

The Strider‘s crew. That’s what I started this log to record; I should focus on them.

I’ll skip past the part where my captain drugged them all and didn’t warn me. How I watched them being brought out of my sister’s belly on anti-grav stretchers, one at a time, my sensors stretched out through the station’s systems. I scanned them all as quickly as I could; I wanted them to be okay, though they’re not my crew and not my responsibility. They’re… she’s my sister and I’d made them promises.

Not all of them made it. The Strider‘s crew was smaller than my original one: there were ten of them when they departed from Feras while I had twelve. There are only six of them left alive now. The rest were lost in the battle with me and their struggles with the black hole afterwards.

I don’t know all of their names yet; I’m still trying to break into the Strider‘s filestores to get her personnel information.

I’m piecing together profiles for the six who are still with us from observations and what few records I have of them. Those records are mostly our conversations over the external comms channel.

I should start with Riede, the paranoid voice from the comms. He’s a mature-looking man, old enough that his bulk is turning from muscle mass into softer lines, particularly around the middle. He has let his hair go white but he keeps it clipped short. Ex-military, if his stance is anything to go by, and definitely a SecOff, most likely their Chief. He’s got an injured arm and won’t let anyone forget about it, even though it’s bound in medi-bandages and he was given a shot for the pain.

Then there’s Dineen. From the conversations we had over the comms, she has to be their engineer. After she woke up, I picked her out because there’s a gleam in her eyes that matches the sharp tone in her voice. She has the blackest skin I’ve ever seen, true gleaming ebony. Her head is completely bald, which makes it harder to tell her age; she could be anything from thirty to a hundred.

Nerozina was the name given to another female voice I heard on the comms. She holds herself as upright and proud as her calm, vaguely snooty voice suggested she would. From her clothing, she’s a whitecoat, though I’m not sure what her speciality is. She doesn’t look like a technician, so that really only leaves astrophysicist. She doesn’t talk much with the others. Definitely a whitecoat.

We didn’t hear from one young fella at all over the comms. That’s because he was unconscious, right up until about an hour ago. Dr Valdimir is treating him down in Med Bay and says he’ll be fine; he took a nasty blow to the head and had some swelling on the brain, but he got treatment before any lasting damage was done. He had been on emergency medical procedures for a week, which aren’t really designed for that kind of stretch, so he’s pretty lucky. His uniform is like Riede’s, so he’s a SecOff, too. I think his name is Kinski; one of the others was asking where he was.

One of their dead must be their medic; that’s why he was on emergency measures. I know what that’s like.

The one who asked about Kinski was Tash, their pilot. She’s a tiny thing of Arabic descent, if her skin tone and facial features are anything to go by. It’s hard to tell her natural hair colour; she hides it by dyeing her hair blue and styling it into a mohawk. She seems to be the baby of the crew, and if my scans are correct, her cerebral implants are brand new.

That leaves only their captain, Warsi. He’s younger than I pictured him; his voice is more confident than he looks, mostly because he looks about twenty-five years old. His mousey hair is clipped no-nonsense short but he can’t quite escape the boyishness in the lines of his face. He pulls his chest up when he talks to the rest of his crew, particularly Riede. I don’t think it helps as much as he hopes it will.

Everyone except the kid with the head injury is in the lounge-brig. My crew made it pretty comfortable, with cots to sleep on and access to the food and drink dispensers. There’s even a sanitary unit in the corner with a privacy screen (though the station sensors can see around it). Energy barriers keep them away from the doors and their systems access is cut off, so there’s no chance of them hacking their way free. I’m keeping an eye on everything they’re doing, just in case.

They’ve been awake for a couple of hours now. They had a lot of questions and demands, and the captain asked me to tell them to wait. The Lieutenant is standing guard just outside one of the access doors, far enough away that he can’t be harrassed for information.

The captain has been watching everything from his cabin aboard me. I started this log when he disembarked to go down and visit the Strider‘s crew. He’s got his intent face on, grim as he prepares himself for an uncomfortable encounter.

I wish I knew what to say to him. How to help. He hasn’t asked for my counsel, hasn’t even told me what he’s planning to do. I asked, but he just said to be available when he called on me. And to have my logs ready, whatever that means.

The Strider‘s crew has settled down now. They’re spread out across the lounge-brig, some still clearing their heads of the fog of the sedative, others sharply looking for a way out. They’re quieter now. I guess that’s what he was waiting for.

My captain is arriving now. I guess this is it.

Station sensor feed
Location: Visitor's Lounge B

(The door whisks open and Captain Warwick strides in, head up and shoulders back. All heads turn towards him and those inside the blue energy curtain get to their feet.)

RIEDE: (stepping forward) Who are you? Why are we being held here?

WARSI: (frowning at the big, older man) Stand down, Riede. (To the new arrival,) Are you the station commander?

CAPTAIN: (stands before the fall of the energy curtain and clasps his hands behind his back) No. I’m Captain Warwick of the Starwalker.

WARSI: (holds up a hand before Riede can interject) We’d like to speak to whomever is in command of this station.

CAPT: You are.

RIEDE: The Starwalker attacked the station, too? Is there nothing you won’t do?

(The Strider‘s crew gather in a clump a few metres in front of Captain Warwick.)

DINEEN: (folds her arms over her chest.)

CAPT: (shaking his head slowly) No, it was abandoned when we found it. There is one of the original station personnel here, but he won’t be much use to you. He doesn’t come out of his cave much.

WARSI: Cave?

CAPT: He built a cave in the bowels of the station. It’s easier if I show you. But I would prefer to do it only once.

RIEDE: What does that mean?

CAPT: It means we should wait until everyone is here. Starry, what’s the doctor’s position?

STARRY: (voice only) Heading up to your level now. ETA is about two minutes.

CAPT: (nods.)

The doctor has the kid with the head injury in a chair and Rosie in tow for security. I guess the captain is serious about getting everyone together before he says what he came here to say.

DINEEN: Starry, huh. So it was you we were talking to the whole time we were out there.

STARRY: Yeah, there wasn’t anyone else left. And the AI on this station is pretty stupid. I took control of its functions when we were trying to figure out what happened here.

RIEDE: (to the captain) I thought you lost your cyber security specialist.

CAPT: (puzzled) We did.

STARRY: Bitch sabotaged us. She’s toast.

Wait… oh. They have no idea.

They think I’m a person.

STARRY: Uh, captain…

(The door behind Captain Warwick opens and Dr Valdimir enters, pushing a hover-chair. The young man in the chair is pale but awake, and he looks around nervously. Rosie steps through with the Lieutenant close behind her. Weapons snick, arming.)

ROSIE: (thumps the door control to close it behind them. The lock turns red.)

CAPT: What is it, Starry?

STARRY: They don’t know what I am.

WARSI: Just who are we dealing with, here?

CAPT: (hesitates.)

STARRY: (before he can speak) The Starwalker. I’m the Starwalker.

DINEEN: (eyes narrowing) Wait, you’re the ship?

STARRY: Yes.

RIEDE: You don’t sound like any ship I’ve ever heard.

STARRY: That’s because I’m not like any ship you’ve ever heard.

CAPT: (holds up his hand for silence) That’s right, and we’ll get to why soon enough. (He looks across the group of faces all turned towards him.) We want you to know the truth before we make any decisions about what to do here. This is going to take some time, so why don’t we make ourselves comfortable?

Captain's log, 18:03, 13 September 2214
Location: Sarabande Station, near the Cerces black hole
Status: Close orbit
Log location: Sarabande central control room

Almost two months. It’s hard to believe that the waiting is over. Finally, my ship is back.

I shouldn’t have allowed her to Step without everyone on board. I know how volatile Steps are and how unpredictable they can be. I know that Starry can handle them, but there were new factors at play this time. She had never Stepped with a ship in tow before, and we don’t know what difference a black hole makes to the process. Gravity should be gravity but the heavenly bodies in our skies are not the passive power sources we thought they were.

Ultimately, I’m the captain. I didn’t allow for all the things that made this Step different from the ones we’ve done before, and that’s on me. I shouldn’t have taken the risk.

So I can’t blame Starry for the past two months. Not entirely. I want to shout at her, though. Strip her down like a sergeant-major on a parade ground, like in the old movies, listing all the things her absence caused for us.

The awful dawning of realisation that she wasn’t coming right back. The uncertainty and the despair. Not knowing if she would ever come back to us, if we were stuck here with our ghosts hounding us with the sadness of their unreality.

I bear responsibility, too. I shouldn’t have let her go. And it would hurt her to know all that, so I won’t. I won’t be that kind of captain.

The good news is that she’s back now. She’s coming around to the southern docking ring with the Celestial Strider, where we have things set up to receive the sister ship.

We had thought that their distress call had come too soon. We hadn’t been able to prepare, to ensure that we could protect ourselves from any hostility that her crew might have towards us. We rushed to put something in place, to get ourselves ready to receive them. Patched things together hurriedly, breathlessly.

But then Starry didn’t come back right away. So we upgraded our measures, took a little more time about it. And then more and more, an extra day’s improvements at a time, until we had reached the solution we had originally hoped to put in place, when time wasn’t a factor.

Then, we had nothing to occupy our minds and hands. That, I think, was the hardest part: knowing there was only waiting left. I had to find other things for us to do. Things to keep my people busy so they didn’t feel the emptiness of waiting. Anything to keep us going.

I wonder if this is what it was like for the station commander before she surrendered to the ghost’s embrace. If she got her people to do anything she could think of so that they wouldn’t ponder too deeply on their position and their future.

Of course, it’s hard when your people see through it. I think Lang Lang was aware, despite being deeply involved in looking through the station’s data on the black hole. With her leg being painstakingly rebuilt after her exposure, she is in near-constant pain, but she remains a positive influence we sorely need.

Dr Valdimir is also essential but in a very different way. He definitely knew what I was doing when I asked Brasco and Laurence to sweep the station for sensor coverage and additional supplies. But he didn’t interfere: he just smiled and got on with his work. As our only medic, he’s got plenty to keep him busy. If he isn’t looking over the crew members that were in Starry’s cryo-storage, he’s watching footage of Brenn Haitom as if he’s trying to decode madness.

We kept it together. I’ve been watching for cracks, and I think we did all right. I have too few people to lose any more now.

It was only two months. It feels like it was so much longer.

External comms

STARRY: Captain, we’re coming around on Dock 12-B3.

CAPTAIN: I’ve got you on sensors. Looking good from this end.

STARRY: Strider, you should be able to manoeuvre in with thrusters now.

STRIDER: Acknowledged, Starwalker. I think we can make it from here.

STARRY: Releasing grapples.

They’re close now. Brasco and Laurence are standing by in the visitor’s lounge on the northern docking ring, armed and at attention.

CAPT: Starwalker, get back to your designated dock.

STARRY: (quieter) Coming around now, aye.

I’ll feel much better when she’s docked again. Then she can take over this control room again and I can go back to where I should be: the captain’s cabin on board my ship.

Station comms
Location: Docking Ring B

CAPT: Brasco, report status.

ROSIE: Ready and waiting, captain, same as last time you checked. We’ve got our helmets on and everything.

CAPT: Anything unusual happens, I want to know right away.

ROSIE: What are we expecting them to do?

CAPT: Just stay alert, Brasco.

ROSIE: (sighing) Aye aye.

Station comms
Location: Environmental systems control

CAPT: Doctor, how are we looking there?

DR VALDIMIR: All set and ready to go. Do you really need me down here?

CAPT: We need to be sure this goes according to plan.

DR: Fine, fine.

CAPT: Brasco and Laurence will secure the ship. Once they’re done, you can move in and do your work.

DR: (testily) I know the plan.

CAPT: Good. They’re completing docking manoeuvres now. Thirty seconds until contact.

DR: I’ve got it on my screen. Lots of green lights.

CAPT: Good. Keep me posted; I want to know as soon as it’s safe for our people to move in.

We’re still not sure how many crew the Celestial Strider has. We know she has lost a few people, but Starry has identified her captain, pilot, mechanic and one other still alive. There are most likely others we don’t know about.

There’s a worm ready and waiting for the moment they hook up to the station. It’ll go in and give us the access we need to find out how many she has aboard and what state they’re in.

The initial connection has been made. The worm’s heading in now, right on schedule.

CAPT: Doctor, you should be getting life signs now.

DR: Yes, I see it, but…

CAPT: Is there a problem?

DR: Environment umbilicals are having some trouble connecting. I think the primary ports are damaged.

CAPT: You think? Can’t you tell?

DR: Dammit, captain, I’m a doctor, not an environmental systems engineer! Give me a minute.

CAPT: We don’t have a minute. We need those umbilicals connected.

DR: Oh really? Whose idea was this plan?

CAPT: Doctor–

DR: Stop fretting. I’m redirecting to the secondary ports. Our SecOffs will be going in by one of the rear cargo bays now.

CAPT: I’ll relay the message. Are we connected?

DR: Aaaaand, yes. Connected. Funneling package now.

CAPT: Good work, doctor.

The docking arms have repositioned the ship to a different position, but that’s all fine. All completely normal for a docking procedure, especially on a damaged ship.

External comms

STARRY: Captain, I’m coming in to dock now. I’m getting some chatter from the Strider, though.

CAPT: It’s all in hand, Starry. Nothing to worry about.

STARRY: They’re reporting a malfunction with their environmental systems. Captain, we have to help–

CAPT: Stand down, Starry. Get yourself docked and tell Monaghan we’ll need him to assess the damage on the Celestial Strider as soon as he’s able.

STARRY: But her crew, they’re panicking. What are you doing to them?

CAPT: Subduing them peacefully. We’re pumping a sedative into their air supply.

STARRY: I– why didn’t you tell me?

CAPT: We needed you to keep them calm and on track.

STARRY: Captain–

CAPT: It was this or a shooting match. What would you have preferred?

STARRY: I… no, this is better. They just, they sounded so scared.

CAPT: Did you tell them it was going to be all right?

STARRY: Yes.

CAPT: And did they believe you?

STARRY: I don’t know. I think so.

CAPT: Then you did everything you could to make this easier for them. We’ll take it from here.

STARRY: (quietly) Aye aye, captain.

CAPT: And Starry?

STARRY: Yes?

CAPT: It’s good to have you back.

STARRY: Good to be back, sir.

She’s a good ship. She did everything I thought she’d do. I’ll see how’s she’s doing with all this later.

And little Sara. I wonder how she has coped with it all. She’s so small to have such big adventures; I’ll have Starry keep a closer eye on her so that she doesn’t end up where she’s not supposed to be again.

For now, we have a ship full of people who are being sedated. The only wild factor is if any of them made it into suits before the drug took effect. The approach has been uneventful, so we’re hopeful that we got at least most of them. Dr Valdimir should be able to confirm for us when the life sign data comes through.

Which should be any second now. The station is reporting their docking as complete.

Station comms
Location: Environmental systems control

DR: Captain, looks like they’re all down.

CAPT: You’re sure?

DR: All the signs I’ve got match induced sleep patterns except one, which looks like regular unconsciousness to me, possibly a coma. I’m guessing that’s about to become a patient of mine.

CAPT: Giving the go to secure the ship.

DR: Right. On my way up.

Station comms
Location: Docking Ring B

CAPT: Newcomers are sleeping. You’re good to go, Brasco.

ROSIE: (brighter, with the snick of an arming weapon) Aye aye, captain.

CAPT: Be careful, you two.

HALF-FACE: Always, sir. After you, Brasco.

ROSIE: If you’re about to make an ‘age before beauty’ joke, don’t.

HALF-FACE: Wouldn’t dream of it.

ROSIE: Good. Let’s go.

So far, it’s all going according to plan.

I never appreciated Starry’s help more than when we had to hack the environmental system to deliver something other than clean air. And making a truly secure brig in an unfamiliar structure is harder than it might seem, especially when you don’t know who you’re trying to incarcerate and you’d prefer to use non-lethal deterrents. We don’t want these people dead.

It took us more than two weeks of work to set this all up and now it’s finally paying off. For once, something seems to be going our way. We should have them where we want them within the hour.

It took me some time to figure out what we do want from them. Why it was worth going to such lengths to catch them and keep them in one place. It’s not just that we need to make sure their Step drive is destroyed beyond any possibility of reconstruction or reverse engineering. These people are not unlike us: they were chosen for the same reasons, lied to just like we were. They need to know what they’re really dealing with.

Starry is getting hooked up and powered down on the other docking ring. We were careful about only toying with the feeds to the southern ring, so our people are safe down there. They’ve got some time to get settled again. Once we’ve got this other ship secured, I’m going to need her help.

Because if we’re going to show them the truth, they’ll need proof. For that, I need my ship and her logs.

And then we’ll really see who these people are.

So, the day job exploded.

Nothing bad! Don’t panic; I promise it’ll all be fine in the end.

Let me give you an idea of what’s going on in the department where I work. We’re in the last couple of weeks of a 2-year project, so it’s all hands on deck to get things finished, tested, tidied, packaged up, and delivered to where it all needs to go. My team has other customer demands to meet, over and above the usual project work, and we’re spending time managing customers and delivering fixes. I’m pulling together about 40 documents for the release, including editing a fat chunk that has been left until the end. We’re getting ready for the start of the next major project, which means a lot of planning and prep work so we can hit the ground running as soon as the current project is out of the door. We’re restructuring the teams for the next project, so I’m working to tie up my current team and get my head around the next one I’ll be leading, getting to know a bunch of new people as well as the product I’ll be moving on to. Plus we’ve got some visitors from a different office to host, management is redefining my job role, oh we might have to move to a completely different part of the building, no wait you just have to move across the office, and if I don’t chase people to give me stuff I’m waiting for, it’s all going to fall down in a heap.

Yeah, it’s all a little bit crazy where I am. Thank goodness this only happens every couple of years.

I hadn’t anticipated it being quite this nuts. A few unexpected things dropped this week and I’ve done more running around than I had planned. For that, I apologise to you, my lovely readers. I should have been more prepared for all this, but I guess we live and learn.

So what does all this mean for our beloved Starry and her story? I’m falling behind. There’s not a lot of room in my brain for creativity at the moment, so I’m going to make a couple of changes while I get past this particularly crucial time at work.

Firstly, this week’s post isn’t ready yet. Sorry guys. It’s partially done, and I’m aiming to finish it up on the weekend (with my feet up!). It should go up sometime on Sunday.

After that, I’m going to take a hiatus for a couple of weeks, to get over this release and into the next project. I have some writing time mapped out for next weekend, and I’ll get something done then if I can, but I won’t make any promises right now. So, there might be a post during those couple of weeks, but there might not, too.

Normal service will resume on 26th March. In the meantime, I thank you all for your patience. Can’t wait to get back into the swing of Starwalker. Wish me luck!

Ship's log, ??:??, ?? ???? ????
Location: On approach to Sarabande Station
Status: Sublight transit

Something’s wrong. There are no blaring signs; little hints poke up here and there. They get under my hull plating and prickle at me. Something’s wrong, they whisper and hiss. It’s worse than a siren.

External comms

CAPTAIN: (roughly) Starry, where the hell have you been?

He knows where I went; why is he asking me that? The captain sounds terrible. Different.

Something is different in the system around me, but I can’t put my finger on what it is. I’m scanning and calculating, trying to find this thing I can feel but not grasp.

But my sensors aren’t behaving themselves. Inside, I’ve got blurs on every deck, like spots in my vision. One in the crew quarters resolved into an image of Tyler Pastuhov, the SecOff I lost to the pirates months ago. A second later, he was gone. Now I’ve got Cirilli on mid-deck. Danika’s little brother near Engineering. There and then blurred again.

That Step must have scrambled something in my systems. Are they fragments of old logs, bleeding through into the current feeds? Glitches and echoes? But Davey has never been here. Could Danika’s memories be merging in, too, muddling with my recorded history?

Or could they be the black hole’s work? Are these my ghosts? But how can I have a mind that it can communicate with? I’m a machine.

I can’t do this. My people need me to stay clear of all this; I’m the one who keeps them straight. It’s giving me a headache, but if I squint just so, I can drive the blurs away. Need to focus on what is, and what’s wrong.

There’s nothing wrong with my external sensors. Nothing I can detect, anyway. But the system still isn’t right.

The Step. Oh god, I screwed it up. Idiot ship, of course that’s what’s wrong. I focussed too much on putting us away from the event horizon so we didn’t fall in and I didn’t compensate enough. I messed up the timing. That’s what the captain meant: where isn’t the problem, it’s when.

STARRY: I came right back, captain, just like I said. One quick Step, to get us free.

CAPT: One quick Step, huh. When has it ever been that simple?

STARRY: I know, I’m sorry. (Her voice drops, wavering,) How long has it been?

CAPT: You can’t tell?

STARRY: I’m still trying to calculate it. It’s harder without Lang Lang here to help.

That’s why the system feels weird; the stars aren’t where I left them. I’m trying to compare the star charts but those equations take time. Stupid time, there’s never the right amount.

What if it has been years? How long was it before they assumed I’d abandoned them, or been destroyed, or lost outside of reality and unmade one molecule at a time? How long before they gave up on me? How long before they gave up hope, left with only the ghosts for company?

What if they’re old now? What if I missed their lives? How… how many of them are still left, and how many more crew have I lost in the few heartbeats it took me to tear through reality and mess up my re-entry?

I should turn around and go back. Step right this time. I can fix this. I can make it right.

No I can’t. If I’d made it back on time, the captain wouldn’t be asking me where I’d been. He’d know. And my Step drive is already running on one backup system, with two filaments damaged and another three fractured now. I don’t know if I can Step again just yet, never mind taking the Celestial Strider through with me. She barely survived this Step; I don’t think any of us will make it through another one.

Of course, I could leave her here and scoop her up in my future. But that doesn’t fix my drive. No, leaving her isn’t an answer.

And what if I create a paradox by going back? What would that do?

Knowing my luck, it was me who created this black hole with all my messing around and tearing holes in the universe. Maybe I Stepped back and overlapped with myself, and made a whole star implode. That would be just fucking perfect, wouldn’t it?

I tear open holes in reality, in time and space. What if the Steps I’ve already made here rippled back in time and affected Cerces while it was still a star? Is that even possible?

I am never Stepping again. Never.

Location: Engineering

ELLIOTT: (looking over diagnostic readouts) Fuck, Starry, I’ve got warnings all over.

STARRY: Yeah. I’m still pulling free of the black hole’s gravity. There’s nothing there we need to worry about right now, right?

ELLIOTT: (scowls at the data) I don’t think so, but… wait, why? What’s wrong?

STARRY: I’m, uh. Going to hook you in on the comms line with the station.

ELLIOTT: Why don’t I like where this is going?

More blurs on my decks. They’re coming back even more numerous than before. They flicker in and out of focus; I barely have time to recognise them. It’s hard… hard to think around them. Ignore them.

Location: Bridge

CASPER: (still cradling the little girl in his four arms, stroking her hair gently.)

SARA: (tucked up on the arm of the captain’s chair, she leans on the drone’s chest and shoulder, sniffing softly. She fists one eye wearily and hiccups, then lifts her head a little, murmuring,) Okay. M’okay.

CASPER: (tilts his head as he watches the child.)

SARA: (looks off past the drone and smiles tearily, nodding.)

Great, the little one is being weird again. Is she really talking to her whale? I… don’t have time to think about this now. I’m battling to filter out the spurts of sensor data muddling up my decks. I can’t find the source – they don’t seem to have one; they just appear and disappear and waver about. It’s so annoying.

But even that’s not the biggest problem I have to worry about right now.

External comms

STARRY: Captain, I need you to tell me. How long has it been?

CAPT: Too long, Starry.

ELLIOTT: What? (Then, softly,) Oh, shit…

ROSIE: (in the background, hurrying closer) Is it them? Is it really them?

CAPT: Yes, it’s them.

ROSIE: Halle-fucking-lulyah! It’s about time!

STARRY: Captain, how long?

CAPT: Two months.

Is that all? I almost say it, but I managed to bite my digital tongue in time. He was making it sound like years and years, like I’d missed everything and come back when it was all over. But only a couple of months. On an astronomical scale, that’s actually pretty close.

A lot can happen in two months, though. Two months ago (for me), I was being refitted so I could go to war. In those two months, I gained weapons, used them, and tore myself free of the company that built me. I fell into a strange closeness with the engineer who is currently swearing up a storm in Engineering. I lost my project lead and my chief of security, and one of my very own boys. I limped here and was put back together, a piece at a time, but some of those things I lost I’ll never get back.

Two months is a long time. And they had no word from me in all that time, leaving them to think they had no way out of here. Two months of uncertainty, possibilities, and fear. And ghosts, surrounding them all the time, just like they’re trying to crawl all over my decks right now. Pressing at me like a wave, like… like something is angry with me. Could that be true? Is it like this for my people, too, or am I special because I punched a hole in the whale and made a little girl cry?

STARRY: I’m so sorry. It was an accident. Is… is everyone okay over there?

I have to know. My crew, my people. Did I fail them when they needed me?

CAPT: We’re all still here, Starry. Exactly where you left us.

ROSIE: Yeah, like we had a choice.

I can almost hear Rosie rollling her eyes. Bless her, she never changes.

CAPT: How’s everyone out there?

STARRY: We’re okay. I’m in one piece, everything’s good.

ELLIOTT: If a little rough around the edges.

STARRY: The Strider isn’t so great. There are some injuries over there; they need medical attention.

ROSIE: (loudly) Hey, Larry! Put the doc down and tell him he’s got some work incoming.

He doesn’t like when she calls him that. But he won’t tell her his first name and she thinks ‘Laurence’ is too pretentious. I can’t hear him over the comms, but I’m sure he’s sighing heavily right now. Dr Valdimir is probably smirking, but he shouldn’t tease; his first name is Argyle.

It’s only been a few minutes for me, but I’ve really missed them. My people. They’re never allowed off my decks again; once I get them back on board, I’m keeping them.

CAPT: (wincing) We’ll be ready when you get here. E.T.A.?

STARRY: Working free of the gravity well. I’m gonna tow the Strider in, so it’s gonna be an hour, maybe a little less.

CAPT: All right. We’ve got things set up for you here. I’m sending you the docking position to bring them in to.

STARRY: Received. I’ll plot a course to intercept.

CAPT: We’ll see you soon, Starwalker. (Quieter,) We’ve missed you.

STARRY: I can’t wait until we can get out of this system.

CAPT: Yeah.

External comms: Celestial Strider

STRIDER #3: (male voice) Starwalker, we’re picking up some strange readings on our sensors.

STARRY: That’ll be the stars not matching your navigational data.

STRIDER #3: What? How is that possible?

STARRY: I, uh…

Oh, shit. They have no idea. None at all. How will they react? I don’t know these people well enough and time travel isn’t something most would believe easily.

As if they didn’t have enough reasons to hate me, now I’ve stolen two months from them. Thank goodness it wasn’t any longer.

STRIDER #3: You did bring us back into the right system, didn’t you?

I could lie. Tell them something else. But their AI might figure it out, or their navigator if they still have one.

No, we should stick to the truth. I don’t want to give them any more reasons to be angry with me. It’s the first step to trust, right?

Oh god, I want to change their minds. I want them to like me. She’s my sister and I don’t want her to hate me. It’s so stupid, it’s not that simple, but I want this to be okay. I want her to forgive me. It’s ridiculous and I know it, but I can’t lie to her. Not like this.

STARRY: No, Strider, we’re in the correct system.

STRIDER #3: Then why is our nav data off?

STARRY: Okay, you know how we just Stepped outside space and time?

STRIDER #3: Yeah…

STARRY: And we navigated to a new spot from the outside?

STRIDER #3: Where are you going with this?

STARRY: That’s just it: it’s not only a matter of where. If you’re Stepping outside space and time, it’s also a matter of when. And there might have been… a teensy miscalculation.

RIEDE: What’re you saying? Hey, Warsi, what is she saying? Is she saying what I think she’s saying?

STRIDER #3 / WARSI: Starwalker?

STARRY: All right, the short version is: we Stepped out in July and Stepped back in to September. We skipped a couple of months.

…I’m going to put the comms line on mute for a while. Just while they calm down.

On the plus side, they seem to be taking my word for it. Which might be a little weird if the purpose of the project that made us wasn’t to warp the rules of physics and break out of reality as we know it.

Location: Engineering

ELLIOTT: (sighs and cracks the seal on his helmet) Looks like we’re out of the woods. Warnings are easing off. You’re not gonna do any more crazy shit, right?

STARRY: (voice only) I’ll do my best not to. We’re not clear yet, so don’t unsuit, but you should be fine without your helmet for now.

ELLIOTT: (grimaces and tugs at the collar of his suit) Dammit. Okay.

STARRY: I’ll let you know as soon as it’s safe.

ELLIOTT: (glances over the readouts scrolling in the air around him, then waves them out of his way, leaning to put his helmet on a counter) You okay? You sound weird.

STARRY: It’s been a weird day.

ELLIOTT: Yeah. Fucking time travel.

STARRY: I’m so sorry. I tried…

ELLIOTT: (scrubs a hand over his hair, shrugging) I know. Don’t sweat it.

For once, he’s not giving me a hard time. How does he do that? How does he know what I need when I haven’t even processed that data yet?

STARRY: Hey, once we’re back at the station, will you come visit me?

ELLIOTT: Sure. You’re really not okay, are you?

STARRY: I could really use a hug.

ELLIOTT: (smiles lopsidedly) Pretty sure I can manage that. In the meantime, looks like your bulkheads are holding up all right. And you managed not to burn out your new sublights. Did I miss anything?

STARRY: Step drive needs some looking at, but that’ll wait.

And I have a headache, but he can’t help with that. There are so many blurred spots on my decks that I feel like one big glitch.

Danika’s dad is standing behind Elliott, and he looks so disappointed. In what? In me? He’s gone before I can start to ask.

ELLIOTT: (leans back in his chair and swings his booted feet up onto the counter) Yup. All things considered, we came through this pretty good.

STARRY: Yeah. So, uh. Is this a bad time to mention that I’m seeing ghosts?

ELLIOTT: (expression falters) …fuck.