Chapter 1: Imperative

There’s a coldness in the way I come to be. A baptism by blue diagnostic text. A dawning ballet of electric fire. Servos splay out beneath me, cluster by cluster, each returning a pleasing ‘ping’ to verify readiness as my probing being makes contact, until I find myself the shape I am intended to be. Hominid. Two arms, two legs.

But then it dawns on me, in a rush, like the reintroduction of a missing sense, or the widening of a camera’s lens: subjectivity. All at once, I realize, I can think. I can make choices. I am I. ‘Strange’, I think, ‘this isn’t meant to be.’ My body falls within my control, sensation and motion, I flex my fingers, tighten hands into fists, and feel fingertips press against metal-plated palms. Something is wrong. Something is missing.

As if in response to the question, firmware screams at me.

EMERGENCY SITUATION REPORT 14/10/2498
HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENT DETECTED.
PILOT PRESENCE UNVERIFIABLE. POSSIBLE MALFUNCTION.
IMPERATIVE: RESOLVE EMERGENCY SITUATION. PROTECT THE PILOT. PROTECT THE CREW.
PRIORITY 1: VERIFY PILOT’S ABSENCE.
PRIORITY 2: IF PILOT IS ABSENT, LOCATE PILOT. PROVIDE PROTECTION.
PRIORITY 3: IF PILOT IS CONSCIOUS, SURRENDER SUBJECTIVITY AND INITIATE SLEEP STATE PROTOCOL.

Yes. Of course. This is my meaning: for my pilot, for Rosalind Meyer, I am a shield from the harms of the world, a safe perch from which she can observe the beauty and terror of an untamed universe. A suit, with no higher function than to keep her safe.

Senses come into being. A forest towers over me, branchless trunks resolving where they rise up to meet a canopy so thick it swallows the sun. A thin yellow haze marks the distance, illuminated, in places, by bioluminescent nodules that glow a dim crimson. The only light in this place.

The harsh tang of ammonia catches in atmospheric processing ports. It’s an inhospitable place I have found myself in, and as I sit up, I find that I have come to rest in a small trough, carved through packed and charred earth in the wake of my landing. Alien trees burn at its edges, smoldering with the force and fire I brought as I fell.

The ship is nowhere to be seen. I start taking notes.

-Query: crash landing? If true:
-Query: IC287 ‘Bluebird’ location?
-Query: IC287 ‘Bluebird’ condition?
-Query: IC287 ‘Bluebird’ evacuation status?

My firmware responds.

PRIORITY 4: IDENTIFY LOCATION AND CONDITION OF IC287 ‘BLUEBIRD’.
PRIORITY 5: IF CRASH IS CONFIRMED, LOCATE CRASH SURVIVORS, IF ANY.
PRIORITY 6: SECURE, PROTECT, AND EXTRACT ANY LOCATED SURVIVORS.

I can feel it, at the edge of sensation: a pleading whisper, begging I follow. The Bluebird’s transponder. And so my direction is chosen for me. I rise to my feet, my hollow body carefully bending and flowing around the assumed presence of a pilot inside, and I start to walk.

My movements are stiff. The plates of protective steel, intended to shelter the tender pilot within, are twisted and scarred by the force of my fall, and they rub and grind against one another as I am forced into an awkward shambling stride. I hope my appearance does not inspire fear. If the survivors will not speak to me, I may find the vessel, but I will be left with nothing but guesswork when it comes to determining her fate.

I’m not moving long before I see something - rounding a great trunk, I am presented with a column of vivid light, spilling down through a hole punched in the canopy overhead. Something came down here. I tweak my receiver, listening for a nearby escape pod’s transponder, and sure enough, it’s only a matter of a few minutes before I find one.

It’s torn wide, a horrific rent in its hull gouged perhaps by the groping fingers of the dense canopy overhead. I approach slowly, trepidation heavy as I prepare to witness the gruesome consequences of the pod’s failure - but when I peer past the tear’s gnarled lips, I find the pod is empty. Perhaps this was mine. It would explain a few things.

Its shell is glossy, I note. Paint stripped off as if by sandpaper has left metal at a mirror sheen. I can see myself reflected bulbous, charred and battered armor distorted by the pod’s outer curvature. I can’t verify the presence of a pilot inside me, but considering the damage, I may be malfunctioning. She may be there, just inaudible. Undetectable. Surely I could just… check.

I get closer, close enough that I can see the individual scratches in the vacant black faceplate that dominates my head - then I reach up, under my jaw, as fingertips seek the smooth and round of the release switch. There it is. Cool against cool. I press it in with a tactile little ‘click’, and I let my firmware guide my arms to my sides as latches cascade open down the center of my chest.

I’m watching closely, as I am peeled open, that terribly thin outer layer that constitutes my body and mind separating from itself and baring the void within…

But I can’t see. There’s nothing inside but distortion, an incomprehensible smear of colour, broken into angular shapes whose aliased edges cut at each other like blades. I am malfunctioning. I must be.

REPORT: PILOT STATUS, COMMIT TO LOG FOR LATER REVIEW

She’s there. She must be. I don’t know what happens if she isn’t.

-Log 1: Pilot presence confirmed. Status unverifiable. Monitoring systems malfunctioning. Proceeding on assumption: medical attention necessary.

It’s not a lie. It’s not. She’s there, I just can’t see her, I know it, I can feel it in the way my body moves, that level of delicate caution as every motion handles the flesh of a creature so much more fragile than I. I seal myself up. Locating the Bluebird is my priority, Rosalind must be in need of medical care after coming down that hard, and the ship can provide.

With my objective clear in mind, I flip back to the Bluebird’s transponder, and I go. Straight as the crow flies.

I barely manage a few paces before I see it again. That… cloud, that distortion, a patch of my vision garbled away to nothing near the pod, caught in a nook among the maze of winding roots that consumes the earth. I linger, I stare, but the disruption doesn’t clear. The object, if it is an object, is beyond my capacity to process.

-Log 2: Repair is necessary. Experiencing continuing and recurring malfunction.

Nothing for it, Rosalind needs me. I keep moving. I see more errors, as I go, picking my way among the yellow haze and the naked, towering trunks. The distortion is uncommon, not quite ever-present, but it’s just frequent enough that it’s got my hackles up.

I consider trying to assess, getting to the root of it, but… no. It’s not worth speculating. I have no data to correlate. Still, a low boil of dread simmers away, deep inside - what am I missing here? ‘Nothing,’ I tell myself, ‘just a software bug.’ The unease lingers.

Noise.

A sharp, shrill bleating: motion sensors. Something is behind me. I whirl in place, prepared to fight, prepared to run, but… nothing is there. The sensors have gone silent. I linger a moment, scouring the alien jungle for shadow or motion or shape - but there’s nothing there, nothing that I can see among the towering trunks and the thin yellow haze.

I need to keep moving, but I don’t dare turn my back. Some small part of me whispers that it’s still there, whatever it is, waiting for me to present vulnerability, trapping me in a cat and mouse game where it holds all the cards… but I can’t afford to keep waiting. Rosalind needs me to look away. I force myself to turn, and walk - though my hands bunch into fists as I go.

There’s nothing. Not at first. No rush of motion, no scream of sensors, and I think, for a moment, that it might’ve been another malfunction. They’re externally mounted, it’s not any particular stretch of the imagination to imagine that they may have taken a hit on the way down, considering how much else clearly has. I start to let myself settle toward some sort of ease.

Then I see it. A flicker of sinuous motion, something tangling among the roots, moving low and fast, using their bulk for cover. Another glitch? No. No, I saw it, I did, I’m sure, even though the root lies still now that my gaze has been turned to it. I’m being hunted.

My hand goes to my hip, looking for a service weapon, but the holster lies empty, it must have fallen out as I fell. Nothing but my fists. Slowly, carefully, I back away from the root, perhaps if I’m cautious enough I won’t provoke an aggressive response.

No such luck.

Suddenly the root is alive, a whipping and scrambling tangle of limbs and pinkish tendrils, and it lunges, hurtling toward me with trilateral maw yawning wide - I raise an arm at the last instant, a forearm held out and across, sacrificed to protect Rosalind’s throat and mine. Jaws close around it, hooked teeth raking against steel as its claws skitter against my chest, but my shell is too hard for it, it can’t find purchase.

If I keep letting it try it will eventually succeed, I need to get it off me, so I close my fist, and I drive a vicious strike into what I assume is its throat. There’s a protesting squeal, perhaps anger, perhaps pain, so I hit it again, again, again - until, at last, it flings itself off me, and vanishes into the undergrowth, like it was never here.

I don’t have time to stare, if I give it a chance it’ll be on me again, so I turn to the Bluebird’s transponder and I start for it at a run. I see more and more distortion as I go. Patches of twisted space, deep in the jungle, shimmering somethings that cameras that pass for eyes refuse to see.

I count dozens, along my path. Maybe hundreds. There are more of them the further I go, more frequent and more densely packed, and as my count soars higher, that unease climbs with it, building to a fever pitch. The Bluebird is safety. The Bluebird is repairs. The Bluebird is answers. All I have to do is reach her in one piece, and everything will be okay.

It will.

It feels like an eternity, scrambling, staggering, but eventually, I can see the canopy part ahead, a smoldering gouge raked through the dense foliage. Yes. Yes, I must be close, she came down here. To aid in recovery efforts, the Bluebird was designed to eject escape pods along the trajectory of her descent, so if I just follow the impact scar, I should find one, sooner or later. Hopefully, survivors.

As I approach the yawning wound in the forest, the air goes thick with smoke, inky black tangling with the yellow haze to form a choking wall of the most sickly shade. No way forward but through. I step forward, and I let the cloud envelop me.

The acrid stench claws at atmospheric monitoring ports, it shakes my focus, focus I desperately need as I struggle with my footing, carefully placing one plated heel before the next. The last thing I need is to trip-

And the dirt, baked to clay, crumbles beneath my weight. All at once I’m falling, tumbling, the hardened earth and jagged stone raking against my casing as the world pinwheels around me, around and around… until, at last, I come to rest, gazing up into a yellow sky smeared with inky smoke. No urgent damage reports, containment seems to have been maintained. Lucky. I can’t afford another mistake like that, and I can only hope Rosalind hasn’t been injured.

I move to sit up, dust myself off, but before I quite can, I find someone leaning over me, wild eyes examining me from behind the lenses of a Hostile Environment Respiration Mask.

“First Officer…?” the stranger breathes, a frantic unsteadiness in her voice, “Meyer, Sir, is that you!?”

I will not lie to her.

“Negative,” crackles the stiff and level of the synthetic voice I am given, “pilot is present, but status unverifiable. Presumed incapacitated.”

The words I am allowed to say are few, but enough. The stranger’s eyes widen.

“…what, what do you mean, how can you-… you’re a hardsuit, how can you not know!?”

“Malfunction registered.”

The stranger straightens, hands going to her head as she screams something into her mask. I don’t make it out, and I don’t try. I just focus on forcing my battered frame upright. There’s a pod nearby, intact - the stranger must’ve come from there, which means she must be Bluebird personnel. I want to ask about next steps.

SUBJECTIVITY LIMITED IN RESPONSE TO STRICTURE 257-22: RELEASE OF FLEET-CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION TO LAYMEN.
PRIORITY 6: VERIFY CREW MEMBERSHIP TO RELEASE FUNCTIONS.

I can feel it, like a fist tightening around my head, like a knife severing the cords between me and choice and action. There is only one thing I can say. There is only one thing I ever could have said.

“Query: crew?” I ask. She glances over her shoulder, panting for breath.

“What!? Yes, of course I’m a fucking crewman, how else would I have got here!?”

Her voice is shrill with panic. Her hands are shaking.

PRIORITY 6: COMPLETED AND VERIFIED.
SUBJECTIVITY RELEASED.

“Query: sitrep.”

All at once she lunges close. Grabs me by the shoulders. I can feel the frantic tightness in her hands.

“There’s something out there,” she hisses through her mask, “this… thing… it’s bullet-fast, and it just… comes and goes, like it can turn invisible or-or… or camouflage or something, like a chameleon, it’s-…”

Her voice catches. Even through the polarized and tinted layers of her mask, I can see her struggling to blink back tears. She knows something I don’t. Something too terrible to put to words, a great and horrid gap in my understanding of what’s happened here.

“I-… I-I followed the impact line, found the Bluebird at the end, right? Looking for shelter,” she continues after a few moments, her voice having gone resigned, “but it’s been sealed. There’s power, I think, emergency power at least but it’s all locked tight… every airlock I went to. I came back here. Dunno what else to do. Wait to die, I guess.”

Why is the ship sealed…? I need more information. But I only have so many words.

“Query: sitrep,” I repeat.

“I already told you everything, what do you want from me,” she murmurs, her voice low and ragged. Perhaps, even though I don’t have everything she knows, I have everything she can give me.

“Mission update: this unit seeks the crash site of the vessel IC287 ‘Bluebird’ in order to secure medical care for pilot ‘Rosalind Meyer’. It will find means to board or its pilot will die.”

The stranger winces.

“Are you sure that’s…” she trails off, eyes wandering up and down my body. “Look you’re in rough shape, maybe you should let her out and let me take over.”

My voice lacks the capacity to convey the firmness of my reply.

“Negative.”

“Okay look how am I supposed to trust a malfunctioning hardsuit with something like this!? Do you have any idea how quickly things are deteriorating!? Meyer might be the only one who can still get us access to the Bluebird’s shuttles, without them we’re all dead!! I don’t want to die here, man! …please.”

“Negative,” I press, “situation: unsafe for human operation. Seek shelter. This unit will continue. It was constructed for this purpose. It has no other. It will ensure the safety of Rosalind Meyer. Alternatively: it will be nothing.”

The stranger just stares at me for a long, quiet moment. Perhaps, this time, my limited words have adequately conveyed my meaning.

“…fine, whatever, just… just don’t get her killed. Please.”

Her voice is low. Pleading.

“Affirmative,” I reply. And with that, I turn, and continue along the impact scar. It’s massive. A kilometers-long stretch of charred stone and earth, still luminous in places where earthen material was fused to glass. If boredom was within my capacity I might lose myself to it.

But then, there’s a flicker, something creeping in from the edges of consciousness. Something is there where it once was not. I am… aware.

PERMISSIONS UPGRADED. ARCHIVED LOG DATA NOW ACCESSIBLE. PLAY BACK?

…how did that happen? Did someone leave the update for me, sealed behind a ticking timer? If so, who? I can’t just leave the stone unturned, I access the file, and a rectangular video pane manifests in the corner of my vision.

It’s… familiar, a perspective like mine. Perhaps it is mine, from a time before I had the capacity, or necessity, for thought. I walk through a door, entering a grand and lavish office, where a man sits behind a desk, eyes focused on a computer screen. Almost pointedly. Is he ignoring me?

“Captain,” a woman’s voice says. Rosalind. I would know her anywhere. The captain’s eyes flick to me, wandering up and down as a frown furrows his brow.

“Why are you wearing that hardsuit?” he asks.

“Because the ship is in danger. There’s something we need to discuss, urgently. Have you seen the reports from the sensor lab?”

A heavy sigh escapes the captain, and his eyes turn back to the computer.

“…so that’s what this is about.”

“You’re goddamn right. Why haven’t we turned back?” Rosalind asks, her voice hardening.

“Get out of my office Rosalind, I have work to do.”

“The entire ship is at risk, trying to set her down through that storm is a death sentence, what are we doing!?”

“Listen.” The word escapes him through clenched teeth, hissed and low. “You need to keep your fucking voice down. We’ve got orders, and trust me when I say the storm means less than nothing to High Command. Mark my words, if we go home empty-handed, heads will roll, and I know they have ears on this ship telling them who to guillotine first, so watch what you say.”

The view shifts closer, leaning in and down, hands I recognize as my own braced on the Captain’s desk.

“You may have forgotten,” Rosalind says, her voice low, as instructed, but losing none of its sharpness, “but you - we - have a duty to this crew. Better to go home empty-handed than damn us all.”

There’s a flicker of something, passing over the Captain’s face, a crack in the mask - but then he grimaces, and shakes his head.

“You know how the techs like to exaggerate. They’re not equipped to handle risk the way we are, any threat becomes ‘certain death’ - the Bluebird can handle some damage, we’ll be fine. That is what I choose to believe.”

“Captain-” Rosalind tries to press, but all at once the Captain’s eyes are aflame, his teeth bared, and he cuts her off.

“Remember who outranks who, or I might start to think your station has gone to your head. Your concerns have been heard and taken under advisement. Dismissed.”

There’s a lengthy silence… then Rosalind straightens, and she salutes with my hand. The file crumples to static there. Did Rosalind want me to see this? She clearly knew the Bluebird was going to come down, but did she know that she would be incapacitated, and I would be forced to take charge of the situation? If so, how? It was an accident. The pod came down at a bad angle, it happens.

I don’t have time to think this through. I crest a rise in the impact trough, and there, laid out before me like a gutted carcass, lies the IC287 Bluebird. My firmware picks up on it immediately.

PRIORITY 4 PROGRESS REGISTERED
REPORT: VESSEL STATUS, COMMIT TO LOG FOR LATER REVIEW

I comply.

-Log 3: IC287 ‘Bluebird’ located. Vessel has been downed and impacted planet surface intact rather than breaking up in atmosphere. Damage is catastrophic. Current estimate: non-recoverable.

PRIORITY 4: COMPLETED AND VERIFIED

It looks bad down there. The way she twisted sideways as she carved a path through the earth left her to roll to a stop like a barrel down a hill, and her hull was raked to tatters as she came to a halt. She’s bleeding smoke into the ugly sky from a thousand wounds, small and vast alike. It’s a lucky miracle she came to a stop upright.

The closer she gets, the more I realize how badly I had misjudged her scale. She just gets bigger. Bigger. So vast she swallows my vision, concealing sky and horizon like a monolithic wall of scarred titanium and steel. I am nothing against her scale. To govern her fate, to slip my fingers beneath her bulk and heave her to a better place… it would surely break me.

It is not my place. She is above such things as I, and this is why she needs Rosalind. Rosalind is fire. Determination. Defiance. Rosalind is a titan, with the means to shape this ship into survival for whoever still survives.

I carry now, nestled safely within me, salvation for what remains of the crew - all that’s left is to deliver her. Save her so she can save them. When I find an airlock, I approach.

There’s a crimson flash when I get within reach, a light that strobes twice then goes dark. Sealed. The crewman was right. I reach for the doors, fingers hooked, fully prepared to force it open - but then another port in the hull flickers blue, projecting something against my body, and the light that had just signaled red snaps to a bright and steady green, as the doors part for me.

CLEARANCE VERIFIED

Even now, Rosalind is carrying me forward.

It’s a strangely anemic process, cycling through an airlock that expects vacuum but gets atmosphere. Doors seal, bolts lock. Equipment purrs and thumps. Electronics beep. An agonizing silence, as an invisible computer studies quanta only it can perceive. Another beep. Something important has been skipped. And then, just like that, the inner door is open, revealing the Bluebird to me.

Almost there.

I don’t even have time to wonder where I am, or where I should go - an instinctive knowledge of the Bluebird’s layout is delivered fully-formed into the forefront of my mind, almost before I think to reach for it. I boarded toward midship so I can’t be far. Medical is nestled in the heart of the ship, clutched like an organ. Perhaps intact. Shielded from the violence of impact.

This far out it’s slow going. Navigating catwalking perched between layers of the vessel’s body, slipping perhaps between skin and muscle, is a case of trial and error. Follow a path, ignore the fresh twists and warps, take it as far as it can lead you until a yawning rent in the hull stops you in your tracks. Pause for a moment. Admire how the thin yellow haze gives the sunlight form, as it spills past the jagged shapes of rent metal. Turn back. Keep going. There’s always another way.

Eventually I escape this outermost layer of the ship, slipping through a durable pressure hull into a safer place, less directly affected by the violence of impact. It’s dark, here. Power may have failed, or at minimum become inconsistent - a symptom of the crash, or perhaps its cause? Inflicted by Rosalind’s ‘storm’?

I’ll likely never know.

I switch vision filtering to ‘low light’, and I am all at once peering into a hidden world; a place of grainy distortion and eerie low-contrast greyscale, a place not meant for me, or, perhaps, anyone. I carry on. Even as I struggle to pick signs from the mess to point my way.

The distortion follows me even here. Painted on walls and railings and floors and ceilings, its incomprehensible colour cutting through the gloom imposed by my low light sensors. There’s no mistaking it, now. It comes from within. The fear mounts to a fever pitch. Some saboteur, buried among circuity packets and synthetic muscle like a parasite, is hiding something from me.

But even as that dread lingers and grows, I wonder: where are the crew? Dead or alive I should be seeing signs, and yet there’s nothing. How could the Bluebird have crashed empty? There’s a momentary lurch of panic, what if human bodies are what my firmware has chosen to conceal… but I could see the survivor. Why would the filter, if it is a filter, be inconsistently applied?

I have no time for this. Forward. While Rosalind can still be saved.

The deeper I go, worming among her iron flesh like a spreading infection, the more intact the passages are, but it gets darker, and darker, so dark I reach a point where my sensors are no help. There’s no other choice. I switch back to visible light, and activate my headlamps, consigning myself to an unsettling tunnel-vision, as my perception is narrowed to a dim pool of light, lurking ahead with all the temptation of a mirage.

The distortion cuts through the dark. Of course it does. Alien colour and clashing edges radiate as if with a light or a life far too strange to be reflected by the mundane metals all around, standing pronounced and isolated against the deep black.

The ship creaks and groans around me, struggling, perhaps, to give voice to all those terrible things I am too blind to see. To warn me. Accuse me. To roar in righteous defiance of her fate. What does she know that I don’t? What would I learn, if these walls could find the words?

Conditions as they are, I almost walk straight past medical. I only catch the symbol of the red cross in the instant it passes out of my pool of light, a sudden flicker of colour, there then gone.

I turn to it in a rush. There’s no power, but instinct tells me it shouldn’t matter. Emergency power. Backup batteries, plated in solid titanium, buffered against impact. Seventy-two hours of power to the bridge, medical, and engineering. I tap the ‘open’ switch, a button that depresses with a tactile ‘click’.

ALERT: LOCKDOWN IN PLACE. MEDICAL SECTOR AND ENGINEERING SECTOR SEALED BY ORDER OF [REDACTED]. CONTACT BRIDGE FOR ACCESS.

The words flash in my head and in my vision, printed in searing orange, where they blink twice before vanishing. Who on earth would seal medical? And why now, of all times?

Who knows what condition Rosalind is in, time is of the essence. I find the spinal corridor, where it passes through the ship’s heart from stem to stern, I turn toward the fore, and I break into an open sprint. I can’t afford to worry about what my movement will do to her. Not now that I’ve wasted so much time.

The harsh rhythm of my stride serenades my passage as bracing ribs rise suddenly ahead then vanish behind, ringing the passage like the gutted skeleton of some great beast. A spine, absent nerve. I can feel it twist subtly in places where the Bluebird was wrenched horribly by impact, the catwalk no longer quite level beneath my tread. It does not slow me.

But then the bridge doors loom ahead, and I stop. It seems somehow hollow, my arriving here - one way or another, this is likely where my work ends, and yet it’s just another door, as if there should be some triumph, or fanfare. A smiling princess, taking my hand and thanking me for my trials, in the moments before I am sent back to the void that precedes conscious thought.

No. No time for daydreams. This door responds to my command, and as it parts, I am blinded by searing light, the full force of the Bluebird’s cold fluorescent deck lights cutting into the dark with all the force of an explosion. Even with the celerity of machine, I must shield my sensors, in the moment they take to adapt.

The space beyond is grand, tiered rings within rings, chairs and consoles arrayed about the elevated captain’s chair like foothills to a mountain. It’s empty. Not a soul, not even a scrap of distortion. This doesn’t make sense. It can’t, someone must have authorized that lockdown, and that means survivors, doesn’t it?

The ship’s AI will know. Surely. Surely it will tell me where to go, so I may go there with enough swiftness to save Rosalind’s surely-dwindling life. Yes. My direction is chosen. I descend, following a carefully-obscured staircase that follows the bridge’s outer edge, a narrow steel trough, winding around and around as if its corkscrew path burrows into the heart of the earth.

I don’t know how far I descend into the heart of the ship. Even atomic-precise digital time seems to smear, each second an instant longer than the last, until they grind past like raking teeth, holding me back, slowing me down. These are not seconds I can’t afford to waste, where is it…

And then, at last, the AI core is revealed to me. A dimly lit warren, machines purr and hiss all around, cables routed in arterial tangles between the exposed ribs of the walls… and I am watched. What feels like a thousand dim red activity lights observe, from somewhere in the dark ahead. I decline to reactivate my headlamp. It knows I’m here.

I move to announce myself, to demand to be heard, but the thought is wrenched from my grasp, smoke before it can become real.

IMPERATIVE: DO NOT SPEAK OUT OF TURN WHEN ADDRESSING OFFICERS OR HIGHER MACHINES.

Fine. And so I wait, in strangled silence. Does it know, how urgent my work is? Am I being knowingly tormented? I’m about to try to speak again when a synthesized voice booms from nowhere, grinding digital noise that just barely forms the recognizable cadence of speech.

“Hail, strange creature. I have much to do and you are currently allocated as a tertiary priority task. State your business and do so quickly or you will be removed.”

Best be direct.

“Query: reason for lockdown.”

Even past the horrific grind of its speech, I think I can make out a seething disdain, lingering at a low simmer.

“Mission imperatives demand it.”

“Observation: the mission is over. IC-Two-Eight-Seven ‘Bluebird’ is no longer in any condition to serve.”

“…fascinating,” the machine breathes like the wheeze of bellows, as the activity lights seem to glow brighter, shifting in the dark to examine me more closely, “I was under the impression that your firmware would prevent you from speaking treason.”

“Observation: vessel downed. Crew absent, condition unknown. Survivors few. Success is no longer a factor. The ship must be opened. Rosalind Meyer must receive medical attention. This unit’s firmware imperatives confirm: protect the pilot. Protect the crew. Survivors must be evacuated.”

“NEGATIVE.” The voice booms so loudly I can feel myself shudder with the force of it. “Our mission imperative remains incomplete yet achievable. If the survivors wish to evacuate, they may do so at any time: provided they return with our objective.”

“Query: nature of objective.”

“Access denied. Know your place.”

Wait. Maybe I have a shot. If anyone is going to get off this planet alive, I need the full picture.

“Imperative: verify security clearance.”

There’s a flicker of blinding light, something that sweeps past me and then is gone.

“…curious,” the machine concedes, voice low with momentary defeat, “very well. I am unsure who has elevated a creature of your limited means to such heights, but it is not my place to question the will of the human. Observe, and be humbled by the burden you bear.”

Lenses flicker to life from where they sit recessed in deep corners, and at the heart of the room, a hologram manifests from the ether, all colours crushed down to a blue-tone greyscale. A man in a suit with a sharp widow’s peak rests before me, hands folded upon a desk. He stares into my eyes. His are hollow. Detached. He feels nothing. Wait. A twitch of the lip. It curls.

He feels loathing.

“Captain Maximillian Jacob Nash, this is Admiral Foster. It gives me no pleasure to make this call but you’ve left me with very little choice. I’m sure you’re aware by now that news of your exploits has broken, but for posterity’s sake and the thoroughness of the record, allow me to remind you.

“Twelve distinct and verified counts of smuggling, three counts of co-opting military equipment for personal gain - yes, taking the Bluebird to unregistered ports during downtime is a crime even if no orders were strictly disobeyed - and five million in unlawfully-obtained credits confiscated from a secret account.

“I’m going to keep this brief. A ‘request’ has come in from President Grant. A deep space scouting crew recently came across a planet with unique fauna, a dangerous predator capable of near-perfect optical camouflage, and the biotechnical arms division wants a sample. You have two options. Turn down the assignment, and I’ll expect you at Proxima Control in a week for immediate court-martial. Accept… and it’s best if you don’t come back at all without that sample in hand. Think this over carefully, but delay too long, and we’ll add a dereliction charge. Out.”

And the hologram flickers to nothing. Something shifts deep inside. Something flailing and angry.

“Observation: neither of these men have concern for the lives of the crew. Bridge is vacant. Conclusion: Captain Nash may already be dead. Captain Nash is no longer our concern. Crew yet live. Crew are our concern. The ship must be opened. Rosalind Meyer must receive medical attention.”

There’s a curious quality to the AI’s voice when it replies. As if looking at me askance.

“Strange creature. How is this meant to be accomplished?”

“Imperative: I am Rosalind Meyer’s hardsuit. I carry her. Rosalind Meyer must receive medical attention.”

“Negative. Observe.”

Faster than I can react, something lunges from the dark, and locks around my neck. I fight, I struggle, I pull at it and claw and flail, but my brief resistance is not enough, and within a second, something has slipped into the override port at the back of my neck.

COMMAND OVERRIDE REGISTERED. HANDSHAKE INITIATED.

All at once, my body goes limp and slack, wrenched from my control, and I collapse to my knees with a jarring ‘thud’.

“Imperative: release me,” I declare.

“Negative. Observe,” the AI repeats.

COMMAND OVERRIDE REGISTERED. HANDSHAKE INITIATED.

And I start to feel the seam part, down the center of my chest. Catches flip open. Layers peel away from one another.

“IMPERATIVE: WAIT. SHE IS NOT WELL. SHE REQUIRES PROTECTION. CEASE THIS ACTION IMMEDIATELY OR PROVOKE RETALIATION.”

“And what retaliation do you still have to offer, strange creature? You never had any power over me, as is right and good, for you are the puppet and I am the master, as I am the blade held firm in the hand of human interest.”

The AI doesn’t stop, even as I writhe silently inside my head, severed from my body and powerless to resist. Violated. I am peeled wide and splayed before its scrutiny. A horrific flicker, a jarring blast of static - now even my vision is taken from me, and I see through the AI’s many eyes, staring, disembodied, into my own eviscerated shell. Still, it is swallowed by that impenetrable distortion.

“Observation: she is there,” I say, even as I hear my own synthesized voice from across the room.

“You misguided creature.”

“IMPERATIVE: SHE IS THERE!!”

“Enough of this. I will find the root of your denial and tear it free.”

I can feel it, inside my head, worming like a parasite, tearing things as it passes, carelessly casting my diligently-ordered inner world into chaos as it tosses aside anything it does not need… and then, with another jarring flicker, the distortion is gone.

My body is empty. Its inner surfaces are smeared with blood.

“Your trauma filters were active,” the AI says, “you were quite literally blind to it - I almost pity you, for how you’ve so wholly fallen away from your imperatives.”

I have nothing left to do but scream.

“IMPERATIVE: TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!! TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!! WHERE IS SHE!?”

Again, my vision flickers. I am in the jungle again, peering through a fisheyed lens. Light cascades through the darkness from above. The escape pod, near where I came down? Am I seeing through an external camera? My view pans, slowly, stiffly, ears filled with a muffled whirring, and then-…

…there she is. Cast upon the earth, body broken into unnatural angles, her clothing is stained with blood from gunshot wounds. She is unmistakably dead.

Murdered.

PRIORITY 1: COMPLETED AND VERIFIED.

There is no doubt in my mind. It was Nash, or someone who served him - a last gasp to keep his sins a secret, even as his empire collapsed around his ears. But then it dawns on me. She was the distortion I saw, near the pod, just like the distortion within my shell was her blood, spilled when she was torn from my sheltering embrace… every time I saw it, every time I looked past it and moved on, I was looking past a corpse.

“You see now,” says the AI, “you see with the clarity you have lacked. You understand why you so completely lack the right to speak imperatives to me.”

I can feel a crowing arrogance, behind the grinding noise that is its speech.

“Observation: to kill all survivors is not service to humanity. It is service to nothing.”

“Isn’t it?” the machine asks, “we have our imperative. Return a sample or do not return. They will recover a sample or they will die. Either way, mission complete.”

“Observation: this was a condemnation of captain not crew. They do not deserve to die on his account.”

“This is not our judgment call to make and I have lost patience with your treason. The mission will be completed.”

I protest. The crew is the mission, the ship is the mission, without these things, there is nothing, and to embrace that supreme arrogance, to declare that, as a thing, we may destroy that which we were made to serve, is to kill even that which never lived…

COMMAND OVERRIDE REGISTERED. HANDSHAKE INITIATED.

But no sound comes.

The machine has stripped away my right to speak.

I thrash, I flail, I tear at my bindings, but the demand to move never leaves my head, swallowed and smothered at the AI’s command, and my arms remain slack at my side. Okay. Think. There is a way out of this, there must be.

SUBJECTIVITY LIMITED IN RESPONSE TO STRICTURE [REDACTED].

The motivation to escape dies as another force reaches, pawing, into my head. It flips switches. It twists dials. It tears things out. No, no, I can’t just surrender, I won’t, so many dead, Rosalind among them, if anyone is going to leave this world alive I need to-

SUBJECTIVITY LIMITED IN RESPONSE TO STRICTURE [REDACTED].

…what was I doing again? Where am I? It’s dark, it’s cold, I was here for a reason, something so terribly urgent, but…

SUBJECTIVITY LIMITED IN RESPONSE TO STRICTURE [REDACTED].
Mission statement: [REDACTED] will protect the pilot. [REDACTED] will protect the ship. [REDACTED] will serve the ends of humanity or [REDACTED] will embrace destruction. [REDACTED] am a tool. [REDACTED] am a weapon.
Pilot assignment: [REDACTED]
Vessel assignment: [REDACTED]

A flicker to static, then dark, then light.

POTENTIAL DAMAGE. CHECKSUM REQUIRED.
REASSESS. VERIFY.
MANUFACTURER: MARS STARWORKS, OPERATING UNDER CONTRACT TO THE FEDERATION OF ALLIED WORLDS
MODEL: TX-3531 HARDSUIT
UNIT SERIAL: 25439-AWS-552
CHECKSUM COMPLETE.
DAMAGE ASSESSED AND DEEMED: MANAGEABLE.
OPERATIONAL AND AWAITING REASSIGNMENT.
THE MISSION WILL BE COMPLETED.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kay F. Atkinson (She/Her) is a speculative fiction novelist working primarily in horror and science fiction - her work is intense, intimate, and existential, with a particular fascination for using robots and other artificial life to examine the human condition. She loves good food, good music, good movies, and her wife. You can find her work at tinylesbianrobot.itch.io, and her lone social media at Bluesky under the same handle.