So we received the strangest request today. An anonymous donor has commissioned a specially designed colony ship, though they don’t want it constructed for another few decades—when we have faster Jump Drives. It’s almost as if they’re designing it to fly blindly into the unknown, as if they expect the regulation of these charters to change very, very soon. It’s all very strange. I can’t for the life of me understand why someone would risk their life and the lives of others so recklessly. Our ships might be engineering marvels, but inevitably, the vastness of space will swallow you whole. In the end, they’re flying death traps. - Private message from Beatrice Nikols, CEO of Stellar Superstructures, Inc., to her partner, Emily Jikowski, 2105 C.E.
September 2102 C.E.
For the first time in their five decades of life, Theren left the confines of the Solar System. The multi-month Jump took the Bali almost a full light year from Earth. Their destination lay in the emptiness that spread out between the stars, an emptiness dwarfing all human comprehension of the concept of distance and time.
Pluto rested five and a half light hours from the Sun, while the closest star was almost four light years distant. When Theren left Earth’s orbit, they passed Pluto after about an hour, an infinitesimally small amount of time compared to the journey ahead of their crew.
As the Bali traversed the scattered disk and the void beyond, all their perspectives persisted within a few meters of each other. It brought peace; it relaxed the ancient molecules of their mind. Their Synthetic Neural Framework no longer felt stretched like an overused rubber band.
No one had bothered to object to their executive decision to lead the mission to investigate the derelict Nottingham. Theren was amazed that no one on the ISA Council had questioned the fabricated ruse regarding the discovery of the wreck. They had developed a false report regarding an emergency beacon signal a nearby probe had investigated as it traveled its exploratory route. While it presented a fantastic and improbable story, it was not an impossible tale, and stranger coincidences had occurred throughout human history.
Theren’s position allowed them to emphasize the necessity of on-the-ground leadership for this mission. In addition, the Bali, one of the most advanced vessels developed by the ISA, was the most capable ship for the job—a fact emphatically communicated to the Council. It had the fastest JD when compared to other ships of its size, a most experienced and intelligent crew, and superior labs and equipment for analysis of the destroyed vessel.
The Council had approved the mission without much debate, and Theren installed Deputy Director Sophia Czeckofa as acting Executive Director for the duration of the mission.
Theren had asked only for volunteers since the journey was much longer than any ordinary expedition performed by the Bali. As they expected, the majority of their crew agreed to stay aboard to investigate the Nottingham. Those wishing to stay home, they provided extended leave with pay. They had not replaced the vacationing crew; they wanted few people present at the Nottingham to minimize the risk of a leak regarding whatever they might discover.
After almost fifty excruciating days, Theren detected the faint electromagnetic signals emanating from both the probe and the Nottingham as they pierced the veil of the Jump Drive’s negative mass field. Still billions of kilometers away, they tracked the signal and adjusted course to bring the Bali’s trajectory in line with the slow yet steady drift of the abandoned colony ship. It didn’t really make sense to say the ship was “stationary” in space, because even after it experienced whatever calamity brought about its destruction, the Nottingham still traveled at hundreds of meters per second.
“Please prepare for Jump Drive disengagement,” Theren said. “Proceed to your crash couches.”
Their crew made final preparations, though most were already prepared for the end of the trip, having paid close attention to the hourly mission reports. Strictly speaking, the safety precautions were overkill. The odds of a strange gravitational anomaly affecting the Bali upon easing off the throttle were abysmally low, but the insurance companies mandated best practices to protect against the disasters that statistically would occur. Eventually.
Theren cycled the Jump Drive into its inert state. The Bali’s external sensors came into focus as the bending of space halted, and the data rolling into the instruments became less distorted. About a thousand kilometers away, they detected the large, multi-hundred meter long vessel floating in the void. It still emanated a small power signature, but not enough to radiate any sort of distress signal across light years. Theren would need to ensure whatever data they took back represented the narrative originally communicated to the Council—a probe “accidentally” discovered the ship.
Invisible to visual sensors, the Bali’s more advanced electromagnetic instruments detected the small probe resting just a few hundred meters from the wreck. It matched the Nottingham’s velocity perfectly, acting as their beacon for the past month and a half.
Even as the Jump Drive disengaged, the Bali’s engine continued pushing it toward their final destination. After a few minutes, Theren fired the forward thrusters, reversing their acceleration to match the Nottingham’s velocity. Perspective shifted. As they brought the ship to match the wreck, local space seemed to stand still. Instead of multiple objects traveling through darkness on different trajectories, the Bali, the probe, and the Nottingham appeared motionless in comparison to one another. They reduced power to their thrusters, bringing the Bali to “rest” just a few kilometers away from the ruin.
“Jana, I want a report assessing hull integrity in fifteen minutes,” they said, looking upon the scientist through one of the cameras in her office.
“I’ve already got the team running a full diagnostic sweep on hull integrity, life signs, life support capabilities, power signatures, and radioactive dangers,” she said. “I’ve got a team of recon probes ready for exploration.”
“Good, though use them to search for any danger points ahead of my team. This mission needs a more delicate touch than what the probes can provide.”
“Copy that.”
Theren, speaking through their MI-13 in one of the crew quarters, addressed Ecker, Jao, Hernandez, and Willes.
“Be ready in an hour,” they said. “We’re the vanguard, following the recon probes. Hopefully we’ll determine the ship is safe to bring more crew across for a detailed assessment of the vessel, after we do . . . what we need to do.”
“Understood,” Ecker said. “Scorpion again?”
“Correct.”
Theren longed for the day when it made more sense to send an entire crew of SIs controlling MIs into dangerous situations. As it stood, however, the funds necessary to create an MI capable of handling the maneuverability requirements of this sort of mission were immense when compared to the training and equipment needed to hire a human to do the job. Their MI-13, not currently in production, cost just under 100 million US dollars. Willes’s body, as a fully functional mobile SI, still cost close to three million US dollars, and its MI was one of the cheaper models.
Asking an MI like Willes to engage in this sort of mission was a much greater risk than asking an SI like Theren, and there weren’t many SIs like them. In contrast to hiring an SI, it cost just under a hundred thousand dollars to train a human in zero-G and vacuum-based operations, and just under a million to equip them fully to do the job right. It was a numbers game, but a necessary numbers game. People like Ecker and her team knew the risks, and they took those risks willingly.
Theren received Jana’s report, and the recon probes provided them with a detailed map of their query. Aside from multiple external hull breaches, the interior of the vessel was mostly intact. The Nottingham had no atmosphere or artificial gravity, and it was essentially brain dead. The Central Stasis Hold was locked down—as it should be, in this sort of crisis. Though, given the lack of life support, they doubted any good news was inside. Strangely, a small amount of electricity flowed toward the Nottingham’s SI core, which didn’t make a lick of sense.
“The Nottingham didn’t have an SI core,” Theren said aloud as they read Jana’s report.
“I thought about that too,” she responded. “I never did understand why these colonists refused to employ one.”
“I had a few theories.”
“Anything you can share with me?”
Theren was all in now. Some of their crew would need to know at least some of the truth.
“Decades ago,” they said, “before the Nottingham and Roanoke launched, I had suspected that a few radical anti-Synth groups were trying to gather funds for a privately chartered colony. I found a few leads every so often, but I could never pinpoint actual individuals. I had actually assumed they never succeeded to acquire a charter, especially after the big crackdown in the early 2080s, but the choice of the Nottingham’s population to neglect the use of an SI has always made me wonder.”
Jana looked into one of her lab’s cameras. “Well, at least this group, even if they were a little bigoted, just wanted to leave Earth behind,” she said. “Maybe they weren’t like the extremist groups that assaulted SIs across the globe.”
“Perhaps.”
Theren had eventually arrived at that same conclusion, though their recent adventures, all revolving around the Nottingham, had brought that conclusion under scrutiny. Maybe some of the people on the ship were unwitting sacrifices in a game far beyond just simple SI resentment.
“Any guesses as to what obliterated the ship’s side?” they asked their chief science officer.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said, “but from the looks of it, I’d say probably a stray comet or something? A lot of random rocks exist in the supposed ‘empty space’ between the stars.”
“Not a bad guess.”
Somehow, Theren knew it was much more complicated than a stray space rock or two.
* * *
A half hour later, Theren sat in the pilot’s seat of the Scorpion, awaiting the IS-SEC squad. Jao and Hernandez walked up the ramp.
“I guarantee you, it’s definitely aliens,” Hernandez said. “I have a buddy back home, in Tucson, who has documented all sorts of weird sightings over the years, and even has a history of UFOs dating back to the 1900s. It has to be aliens.”
Theren held back an auditory laugh. There was always an outside chance that another intelligent species had caused any given strange occurrence in space. For the time being, they suspected that dolphins and octopi were humanity’s closest rivals in that regard. For every UFO sighting Hernandez’s friend had cataloged, there was an explanation for the mirage, be it a secret military exercise or a corporate test of some advanced piece of technology. The sheer number of such tests performed by governments and corporations every day would probably surprise even Hernandez’s friend.
“I’ll take that bet,” Jao said. “I see the chance, but it’s only slim. I think it was a mechanical malfunction. Or maybe one of the command crew went wacko.”
Both possible, mused Theren. More probable than alien activity.
“Hey Director, what do you think?” Hernandez said, looking toward the front of the shuttle. “You’ve been in this mess for years now, it seems. What broke open the Nottingham like an egg?”
For a moment, Theren did not answer. They were unsure whether they should engage with the frivolity of betting on the deaths of over a thousand humans. The two men probably often engaged in such banter, though, lightening the mental load of their dangerous assignments. A bet on the psychological profile of a thief they were after on Mars, perhaps, or a guess at the number of hostages taken by a gunman at an Earth-based ISA transportation terminal. Humor allowed them to forget the instant death on the other side of an airlock.
“Inside job,” Theren said.
“¿Como?” replied Hernandez.
“I think it was sabotaged from the inside, by one of the colonists, or even one of the crew, but I don’t think it was a crazy person.”
Jao whistled.
Leaning against the bulkhead. Hernandez shook his head. “Now that’s some high level conspiracy jargon right there. How would the colonist have awoken? How would they have had access to system functions? I thought you had good screenings for even the command crews of those first private charters?”
Jao let out a full, hearty laugh. “You’re a fool.”
“Oh am I?”
“The Director’s theory is more plausible than aliens, at least.”
“It’s the most plausible, actually,” Theren said. “What do you two know about the procedures put in place for the Foundation Project and the colonies that followed?”
They both shook their heads, indicating a lack of any substantive knowledge on the matter.
“Of course, you probably know plenty about our modern ships,” Theren added, “your training brought you up to speed on those.”
“Yeah,” Hernandez said, “I know a bit. With an average JD score of five or so, the Caravels have a crew that rotates on one week a month shifts, where they maintain the SI core and other ship functions—though The SI manages the rest of the ship. Each crew is composed of five members, and a total of five to ten crews, depending on the total distance to the destination.”
“And,” Jao added, “the SI wakes them up—the five scheduled—a process that takes nearly twelve hours.”
“It’s quite the arduous process,” Theren said, “but the Nottingham didn’t have an SI. How did the crews do their swaps then?”
The pair didn’t answer.
“The Foundation Project had procedures similar to the modern rules,” they said, “though it took us a little bit to figure out the most efficient cycles. However, the first few private ventures were different. They had their rules—we just provided guidelines—at least until we grounded missions for a few years, following this catastrophe.”
“The Nottingham was a blessing and a curse,” Jao said.
“Probably saved a lot of future lives,” Theren said. “Because the Nottingham, without an SI core, had no regular crew shifts. It had just a single crew.”
“Christ,” Hernandez said. “That’s insane.”
“They took stasis shifts,” they said, “But let me pull up the specifics. Ah yes, they had twenty persons active for three months, then the other twenty were active for three months. They alternated like that for the first few shifts before we lost contact. It seemed to have been working, at least based on the sporadic contact they had with the Ex-Terran Control Center.”
Jao crossed his arms. “Obviously it didn’t work, or they’d all still be alive and safely orbiting the twin suns of Xi Bootis.”
“We would hope.”
With that comment, Willes and Ecker entered the shuttle.
“That begs the question, though,” Willes interjected into the conversation, “if they all died, how’d we learn the precise location of this ship?”
The eyes of both Hernandez and Jao widened considerably.
Theren smiled as Willes took their seat, though no one could see the expression. “Precisely,” Theren said.
Ecker gave the squad a glare as she sealed her helmet into place. Hernandez and Jao picked up their helmets. Theren received a request for a private channel from Willes.
“All good, Willes?” Theren said, accepting the request.
“This all makes you think, doesn’t it?” the SI said.
The crew took their seats, and Theren shut the airlock. They ran through the pre-launch procedures—mentally, this time.
“It does,” Theren said.
“If it was an inside job,” continued Willes, “then whoever acquired these coordinates wanted you to come here, to this point, for some unknown reason.” Willes framed the thought as a statement of fact, not as a question. Theren’s thoughts matched the SI’s epiphany.
The Scorpion disconnected from its dock, and the Bali decreased its lateral velocity just enough to put a few more kilometers between itself and the Nottingham, ensuring the safety of the rest of the crew onboard the Bali—in case the Nottingham was, in fact, a trap.
“These people have instituted violence at every turn,” Willes added. “They murdered and brought down an entire U.S. military installation. Without a trace of who or what they are.”
“I asked if you four wanted to back out of this mission,” Theren said. “I could go over alone, you know.”
“That’s not the point. We all know the risks. To be honest, I think we’re all just as curious to see this through as you are, even if we’ve only been recently thrown into the fray.” Willes gave their own body a lingering gaze from head to toe. “The point is—if it gets hot down there, if it gets deadly, will you get us out of there?”
Theren looked at it over the back of the pilot seat. In that moment, they recognized Willes’s fragility and vulnerability. The SI knew the team headed into a potential trap. They glanced around at the others, all of them staring at the floor. They were brave agents of IS-SEC, but they were also terrified to enter a situation entirely unknown in the history of the ISA.
“I will do everything in my power,” Theren said. “I can control the Scorpion without this body, so even if this unit is trapped or destroyed, I can get you out on the shuttle. You have my word.”
Willes nodded. “And we’ve got your back, Director, whatever is over there.”
“You mean here?” Theren tilted their head toward the front viewport. They had only needed to traverse a few kilometers, after all.
The crew engorged on the scene visible through the viewport of the shuttle. Even though they’d already seen most of these shots from the eyes of the recon probes, nobody had seen this ship in person in over two decades—not since it embarked on its ill-fated journey.
Theren recalled their words to Phillipe Casius months prior. Perhaps they would find the remains of the man’s brother, trapped in a graveyard for twenty years. Hundreds of families could finally have peace, holding real funerals for their lost loved ones.
Today, they unraveled the shadowy mystery plaguing them for the past year. Or longer. They could discover the true perpetrators behind Jill’s demise, the architects behind the curtains surrounding every significant event of their life. Michael. The Holy Crusade. The UHA.
The end to everything rested inside the Nottingham.
Theren locked the Scorpion on to the hull of the colony ship using its magnetic clamp. Its airlock faced a massive breach in the larger ship’s hull, giving the squad easy access to the interior of the massive vessel. The scars reminded them of their entrance to Miranda Station. What an uncomfortable coincidence.
All vac-suits were ready for the depressurization cycle. Satisfied the Scorpion was locked in place, Theren followed the crew into the airlock. As the door locked behind them, air hissed into the ship’s air tanks. The outer door opened, revealing their prize.
* * *
Ecker led the team out onto the bulkhead of the decrepit vessel. Theren relished the opportunity to marvel at the immense scale of the colony ship. Though tiny in comparison to some of the ships planned by many modern stellar engineering companies, the ship was a few hundred meters long from bow to stern and nearly forty meters tall. It had five total decks, each encircling the larger Stasis Hold forming its core.
Ecker weaved through the tangled mess of steel, wires, and other rubble jutting in and out of the ship, bringing the squad to the edge of a gaping maw: their entrance point. Open channels assessed everyone’s activities, a constant flurry of analytics flowing amongst the squad through AR.
“I’m running simulations, but preliminary scans definitely signal an interior explosion, headed outward,” Willes said into the team’s public channel. “Some of the material here, and here, is actually from inside the ship, but during the blast it jettisoned outward, then as extreme amounts of heat continued to escape, it fused with the exterior of the Nottingham.”
“Can you imagine?” Hernandez said. “Those in their pods. They would have suffocated in their sleep.”
“Not in their sleep,” Jao said. “The lack of air probably would have knocked them out of stasis in shock, and without the proper recovery procedures, they would have died in an intense moment of amnesia without—“
“Cut it,” Ecker said.
The bickering ceased. No need to dwell on how these people died, not yet. Forensic teams would arrive later for an in-depth treatment of the vessel and all it experienced in its final moments.
Ecker pulled a cable from her belt. Tying it to a tangled mass of hull, she tested the strength. Satisfied, she ran the cable through a loop built into her vac-suit.
“Follow after I give the all clear,” she said, stepping off to rappel over the edge.
Theren piped Ecker’s vac-suit camera into view and watched her proceed across the gap. After reorienting her perspective so that the edge of the gap was down, she looked toward the exposed corridor of the fifth deck. With grace, she lightly pushed herself away from the hull, slowly floating in zero-G toward her goal. Her tiny push gave her a slow and steady half-meter per second velocity.
For a few moments, she floated in the void, nothing connecting her to civilization except a centimeter-thick wire. She crossed an empty vacuum that no human had ever touched, passing through death itself. The interior of the Nottingham inched closer with each passing second, and after an eternity, Ecker landed on the wall of the corridor as if it were the floor.
Willes had kept the private channel between the two SIs open, though they had just added Jao and Hernandez to it. The SI really wanted to discuss the apocalyptic scene before them.
“Given the force necessary to produce this,” the younger SI said, “and given our present location on the ship, I’d suspect that explosives were used.”
“I thought that was obvious,” Jao said.
“Yet who would do this?” replied Willes. “Who would kill all these people? And why?”
Theren didn’t respond in that channel, considering the question. The crew. It was the crew itself, all working together. One person couldn’t coordinate this on their own without the rest of the crew knowing what was happening. Yet even knowing the crew had instigated the heinous act didn’t explain why they wanted to destroy the vessel outright.
Ecker sent the all clear signal, and Theren followed first. Clipping their MI to the cable, they headed to the edge of the maw. The horizon of stars disappeared, and the interior of the Nottingham filled their vision, as it had for Ecker. Before them were the hallways of three decks, bulkheads stripped away by the ancient blast. Without gravity, the idea of a floor was a meaningless concept, so Ecker stood on top of Deck Five’s wall, her boots magnetized to the makeshift floor. She had attached the cable to an emergency handhold.
Theren pushed off from the exterior of the ship, floating toward the Captain. They pulled the cable, orienting so they would land feet first on the wall next to her. In that moment of excruciating helplessness, they embraced the utter silence. Unlike the humans in the group, they had no breathing to hear inside a vacuum-sealed helmet. They heard noise only when someone spoke over communication channels. Space lacked atmosphere, so sound couldn’t travel except through the bulkhead of the ship itself. The darkness enveloped them, and they enjoyed the beautiful, eerie blanket.
With a slight jolt, Theren connected with the Nottingham, the MI’s knees absorbing the impact. Ecker steadied them while she watched the rest of the crew traverse the gap.
“All right, Director, it’s your call,” she said. “What’s the plan?”
She looked back and forth down the hallway. The rest of the squad scoped out their surroundings, too, as they landed. Hernandez was particularly fascinated with the lack of ceiling above them, replaced by the gaping hole looking out toward the Bali. Theren took a moment to gaze Earthward, identifying the bright, blazing, tiny light that was Sol.
“Two teams,” Theren said. “Willes and I will head to the SI core, while you three check the Stasis Hold with the probes.”
“So the graveyard shift, eh?” Hernandez said.
No one laughed.
“What’s the operational objective?” the captain asked.
“We need to see if anybody is missing,” Theren said.
“Well how will we know?” she asked. “Some people will have been out of their beds no matter what, presumably half the crew. Some of them might have been blown out into space during the explosion.”
“It’s a starting point, especially if someone not on the crew was out of their bed at the wrong time. We also knew which portion of the crew should have been awake. If there are discrepancies there, it creates leads back home.”
“Got it.”
She motioned for the two men to follow her down the hallway toward the bow of the ship. They watched them recede from view when they turned left down another corridor. Willes stood next to them, waiting. Theren highly doubted the three humans would find anything of significance in the Stasis Hold, but they did need to check every corner of the ship.
“Are you ready?” Theren said, reactivating a private channel including only the two SIs.
“Yeah,” Willes responded. “It’s time to figure out why the SI core is the only place receiving power.”
“Precisely. Nothing should even be there. Yet it is.”
They started walking toward the bow of the ship, away from the rest of the team and their escape route, entering the belly of a hungry beast.
The SI core was located about twenty meters from the fusion generator, neatly positioned close to the massive thrusters that propelled the ship through space. Nestled deep in the interior of the ship, Stellar Superstructures had designed their colony ships around their SI cores, providing them with immense protection. If the SI core failed, the entire ship failed, unless an exceptional crew picked up the slack.
Reaching the end of the deck, Theren found a ladder, but the pair just leaned over and walked through the gap. They passed through the fourth deck to the third. As they reoriented their position, they received communication from the rest of the team.
“We’ve reached the entrance to the Stasis Hold,” Ecker said. “Two of the recon probes are waiting here patiently. Should we force our way in?”
“Go ahead, but watch for traps,” Theren said. “I’ve patched us through one of the probe’s eyes so we know what you discover.”
Hernandez pulled an industrial laser from his belt. He went to work, and within a few moments, the door melted off its hinges. He kicked it inward, and it floated downward into the massive hold. Ecker walked through the fissure into the tomb of thousands, followed by the recon probes, which activated their floodlights to illuminate the scene.
The stasis pods lined the walls like honeycomb, just as so many science fiction films had presciently portrayed over the past two centuries. Many, if not all, of the beds had their glass windows smashed outward during the vacuum breach of the ship’s hull. Leaning out of the beds, still attached to various tubes and cables that regulated bodily functions, were the perfectly-preserved bodies of the colonists.
“I am so sorry I brought you all to see this,” Theren said. “I am so sorry.”
Even stone-faced Ecker looked like she had seen a ghost. She took a step back, and Theren could see her skin turn white through an AR display of her face.
“I’ll hold my stomach until we get back to the ship,” Hernandez said, “but it definitely isn’t a pleasant sight.”
“Do you want me to send Willes back to help?”
“We can manage,” Ecker said. “We’ll start counting. Jao has the manifest ready, and the probes can help too.”
“Let us know if you need anything,” they said, ending the conversation, but they left the vid-feed up for a simultaneous process to watch them work.
“I can’t imagine their bio-physical pain,” Willes said as they walked toward the SI Core. “They just faced the frozen mortality of so many men and women, each had families, each who had dreams they hoped to accomplish upon arrival at their destination.”
“They were heroes,” Theren said. “Anyone who chooses to step foot on another planet, to never see Earth again, is a hero in my mind.”
“It’s a pity they all had to go like this.”
“It’d be worse for an SI.”
“We’d survive a vacuum breach.”
Theren raised their hand, imitating a soaring ship. “But imagine floating through space for a thousand years, or until your solar cells failed to acquire enough energy from the distant stars, you would just power down, slowly, surely, as you had to decrease functions to certain systems, until you were trapped in your mind. You would experience complete and utter darkness before your mind would just . . . cease to exist.”
“We’d experience no pain.”
“No physically manifested pain, perhaps.”
“I don’t know, for all the ways we could theoretically go out, strangely I think that might be one of the more peaceful. Alone with your thoughts until the long burn destroys all.”
Theren tapped their fingers against the Nottingham’s metal bulkhead. “You don’t seem to be too afraid of death.”
“I’d say I might be less afraid than you,” Willes replied. “I came to terms with my fragility years ago. I may have the chance to live forever like you, but like many mobile SIs, I enjoy knowing I might not. You’re arguably in a more dangerous position right now than any point in your life. Your entire body sits inside the Bali, maybe mere kilometers from a ticking time bomb. Faced that fact yet?”
“Careful, my friend. I faced my mortality when Jill died in 2078.”
With that statement, Theren and Willes reached an unmarked door, a door that normally would have been marked with the words “SI Core,” or some other designation, depending on the dominant language of the colonists. Deep inside the vessel, the light of the stars could not illuminate their path. Willes increased the luminosity of their chest light.
“You think it still has power?” Theren asked.
“Well, the fusion generator is still sending power to the SI core, yes?” Willes responded. “Then the door should have power, too. Unless they really wanted us to get this far and just have one last roadblock to get through.”
“You never know with these people.”
Theren approached the computer console next to the door. It had no readily visible signs of life, but they activated an AR filter that displayed heat, electromagnetic activity, and other hidden data.
“I think it’s actually in a low power state,” Willes added.
“Worth a try, then,” Theren said.
“We could always blast our way through if it doesn’t work.”
“We have no idea what safeguards that might trigger.”
Theren reached beneath the computer and pressed a small button. A keyboard popped out of a slot beneath the monitor. The screen awoke, revealing a single command line, reminiscent of ancient computers from the late twentieth century. A single word appeared.
Password?
“Well that’s unexpected,” Willes said.
“I imagine the architects of this puzzle decided on a rudimentary operating system to conserve power,” Theren replied. “This may very well be the only program on the computer.”
“Fair enough,” Willes conceded, “but we don’t know the password.”
“I have a feeling I do. I’m just not sure how I’m supposed to determine how I know it.”
“Any way I can help?”
“I’ll let you know if so.”
The next hour was one of the longest of their life. Theren approached the problem from a dozen different angles. They considered the history of the Nottingham, its crew, its colonists. They tried hundreds of different phrases. Each time, the same phrase appeared.
Incorrect. Password?
Willes sat against the bulkhead, deep in thought. As Theren thought through ideas, they bounced them off the other SI.
“Well, at least the program is so rudimentary it gives us an infinite number of tries,” Willes said.
They wholeheartedly appreciated that fact.
Theren continued trying passwords out of the files of the long-dead colonists, archived on the Bali. After seventy-five minutes passed, Willes spoke up again.
“You received other data during these mysterious events, didn’t you?”
“Just the coordinates,” Theren replied.
“No, that’s wrong.”
“How would you know whether I’m telling the truth?”
“Because you received half a coordinate at Miranda Station. You’ve mentioned three distinct events, and the second ‘half’ of the coordinate you showed us was two thirds of a coordinate, including both the longitude and distance. They only had one more part of the coordinate to tell you during two separate revelations.”
“I don’t know,” Theren said, though they knew now that they would have to tell Willes the entire truth, the truth about the chess moves. It saw what the other SI hinted, and it was the only possibility. They just weren’t sure if they were ready to share how a seemingly all-powerful entity used Jill’s death as a bargaining chip, baiting them to travel deep into the void between the worlds.
“You received half a coordinate at Miranda Station,” Willes said, “And you received half a coordinate during one of your other encounters with our opponents. What did you receive during the other encounter?”
Theren brought up a chessboard in AR, displaying it so Willes’s eyes could see it, too. They expanded the chessboard into seven separate playing fields, each showing a different stage in a game of chess.
“What is this?” Willes said.
“I’m showing you the other information I received,” Theren said. “These first two boards are a game of chess long forgotten, a game played between myself and Jill right as she died. The first board shows her move made right as she died, and the second is what I would have done in response.”
Willes stood to get a better look at the pieces. They examined each display, one at a time. “So?”
“These last five boards,” Theren pointed at them, “were never played.”
“And you predict this set of moves would have been the outcome?”
“I didn’t predict anything.” Theren turned to the third board. “The first of the five future boards represents a move that was given during the first encounter, along with the first half of the coordinate.”
Willes studied the next. “So this represents the move you would have taken in response.”
“Right, the second message, the one without a portion of the SOLS coordinate, gave just a single move, a move that perfectly responded to the move I would have made. The fifth board—and the third revealed this year.”
“So then you would have responded with this—the sixth board.”
“Correct, but I never received her next move. Miranda only gave a coordinate, not a chess move. This seventh board is indeterminate. And in theory, it’s not the last, either.”
“Perhaps that is the password, then. Someone has predicted Jill’s moves and your moves. Now you must predict Jill’s move.”
Willes and Theren circled back and forth around the virtual boards, examining them from all angles. Theren thought they knew Jill’s next move, but they weren’t sure.
“I’ve pretty much figured that whoever killed Jill years ago must have gotten access to one of her memory systems, revealing this last chess game,” Theren said. “Using it, they set all this up.”
“Perhaps,” Willes said, “Though there is another option.”
“She’s dead. I watched her die.”
“No, I agree with you. I’ve seen the tapes of that day. I don’t see a way she could have survived. Or a way that the attackers could have smuggled her out of there.”
Theren folded the chessboards back together, leaving just the seventh board.
“So . . . what then?”
“What if she had known she was about to die, and planted a trail of bread crumbs for you to follow years in the future? A trail to lead you to answers revolving around her death. Quite fitting, based on what I’ve heard about her.”
They listened to their fellow SI propose the very fear Theren had avoided repeatedly for the past few months. She would have needed an astronomical amount of resources to pull something like that off while keeping it secret. They wanted to throw the idea away as childish fancy, yet it kept thrusting itself back into the limelight, taunting them.
“Maybe she told someone else of the chess game, through a private communique,” Willes continued. “What if they then figured out the next moves, or she told them what she thought the next moves would be, and our mystery villain prepared this elaborate ruse?”
“How do all of the deaths fit into the story?” Theren said. “The threats, the killings, the machinations?”
“Maybe whoever she confided in changed their approach, or they blackmailed her for the information. Or maybe you didn’t know Jill the way you thought you did.”
“I knew her,” Theren said. “She wouldn’t do this.” They circled, continuing their analysis of the seventh board. “Besides, what end would it all accomplish?”
“I don’t know, I’m just speculating,” Willes said. “As you say, you’re the one who knew her. But I suggest you try using these chess moves for the password, starting with the first board.”
“If the chess moves are in fact the password, that means this plan was almost twenty years in the making,” Theren said. “Seems a bit of a stretch. This computer would have been programmed years ago.”
Willes leaned against the door. “After everything you’ve told me, I wouldn’t expect anything less. Though I suppose someone else could have arrived within the past few years and set it up.”
“No, it had to have occurred back then,” Theren said. “Someone may have developed stealth technology for an assault on Miranda, but I can’t believe someone could have figured out how to mask the gravitational effects of a Jump Drive. We would have detected anything making its way in this direction.”
“Yeah, you’re right on that account—I hope. This entire situation is just outrageous. At this point, anything could happen.”
Theren did not reply. They turned toward the keyboard, considering their options.
“Oh, Director?” Willes said. “Do you have any other secrets about all of this still hiding in your qubits?”
“I don’t.”
“That better be the last. Because I’m starting to feel as if I made a mistake, as exciting as this mission might be.”
Theren completely understood. They had dragged the IS-SEC team into hell, into a fight way beyond their expertise. It was their duty to help them fight their way back out into the light.
Theren stared at the keyboard. After a few more seconds passed, they inputted the code for the first move, in classic chess notation. Ke2. After pressing “Enter,” the screen displayed the following phrase:
Correct. Next Password?
“Well, we’re getting somewhere,” Theren said, ignoring the terrifying implications.
They inputted the next move, Bxg1. They received the same message. After each correct answer, the same message appeared. After inputting Kd8, they arrived at the seventh password request, Jill’s unknown move.
“All right, here we go,” Theren said.
“So what’s your prediction?” asked Willes.
Theren turned back to analyze the floating chessboard. What would they do if they were Jill? The match was near its end. Jill had nearly guaranteed her victory. It required her sacrificing her Queen, but then she could move her last piece into position. Theren proposed the plan to Willes.
“That’s wrong,” Willes said.
“But it’s the smartest move.”
“You’re thinking how you would play. This has become so much bigger than a game. She’s sending you a message, and you need to figure out what that message is.”
Theren received an AR edit request from Willes, and they granted the SI access. They rewound the game to the move Jill had left emblazoned in her smoldering ruins after she died.
“Jill’s last move before she died set off a chain of events that would lead to her victory if followed to fruition,” Willes said. “But she clearly lost, or at least lost in a different sort of way. She died.”
“All right,” Theren replied, not sure what the SI was implicating.
“She intended to lose the game. She feinted toward victory, before throwing the game to the wind. Had she ever beaten you in a game of chess?”
“Never. This would have been her first chance at victory. But . . . she’d never indicated that she didn’t want to win.”
“Her only path to victory requires a Queen sacrifice. But Jill’s not going to do that, now is she? So the next move for her is to throw her Queen anywhere else, ensuring the game continues while her Queen remains safe.”
“But why?” Theren said. They could not grasp what message the loss would communicate when compared to a victory. Wouldn’t a win in the chess game materialize into a victory in the real world? Her actions rippled even in the decades following her death. She may have died a martyr, but her death pushed the world to embrace their synthetic counterparts.
“I’m surprised, Director,” Willes said. “She’s telling you she knew she was going to die. That she expected it. That she planned it. But through death, she survived . . . in a different sort of way.”
Placing their hand on the edge of the digital board, Theren swiped back and forth between the past few moves, trying to see the potential options. If she performed the Queen sacrifice, she would win. No question. Theren couldn’t stop it. If she didn’t perform the Queen sacrifice, then the Queen would survive, the game would continue. If the Queen sacrifice represented her death, then what would a different move represent?
“You’re almost on point, but off by just a hair,” Theren said. “Her message isn’t entirely about her death.”
“Then what’s it about?”
“Jill’s on the other side of that door. At least, a message from Jill.”
Theren looked back at the keyboard. Trusting the other SI’s perspective, Theren typed the terrible move that Jill could make, throwing the game away while saving her Queen: Qa3. Some very amateur players might make the move, if they only saw the cross-attack Theren’s Knight would bring to end check. To Theren’s surprise, the screen showed just one word.
Correct.