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THE FIRST SHOT WAS not one Lena had been expecting. She had settled into a kind of aware/less aware routine that passed for a sleep cycle. She didn’t feel tired, so it must have been working. Or else she was asleep and had been dreaming all of this. That was a thought stream she wasn’t prepared to sail down. Where did she even start if she assumed nothing was real. She settled on the idea that the half waking half sleeping state she was in was real and augmented by whatever inputs the ship provided through their brain interface. Crazy though all that was, it made more sense.
Arohirohi panicking had woken her up. It was an emotion of the ship’s she was not used to and the way her heart was hammering, she didn’t fancy it happening often either. All Rowie’s attention, and so all of Lena’s was focused on the cargo bay. The marines and the first officer were in there again.
“What’s wrong, Rowie? That’s just where they practise.” Lena was never sure if she were speaking out loud, so people in the ship would be able to hear her, or if she was imagining the whole thing or slurring something unintelligible in that way people talking in their sleep sometimes did.
Suddenly, she was looking down on what passed for a cargo bay, from above. A complicated array of packing crates was laid out on the floor. “Oh, it’s a maze Rowie! They’re playing a game.” The panic did not seem to ebb at all with her explanation, the ship was properly worried about this and let her know. Her view zoomed in to a section at the side of the cargo bay where a long, dead end in the packing cases had been constructed. There was a two-thickness wall of crates at the end with a tarp with circle patterns draped in front. “Huh,” said Lena. Then the firing started. The marines had long rifle things that made a sharp shut when they fired. Try as she might, Lena couldn’t look quickly enough at the target wall to see when they fired, but lots of marks started appearing on the targets. She didn’t know anything about weapons, but she figured any gun being fired on a spaceship, even one as unusual as Arohirohi, was a bad plan. Rowie seemed to be terrified. Whether for her own safety or Lena’s wasn’t clear, but the ship was casting round for a quick solution to the problem and she was asking for Lena’s advice about it.
The ship showed her an image of the marines. Then a picture of the stars they were sailing through.
“I don’t understand, Rowie. Can you make it clearer for me?”
Again, the marines on their makeshift firing range, then stars. Marines, space. Marines, space. Lena’s mouth went dry.
“No Rowie, no!” As dangerous as live fire in the hold might be, Lena didn’t want deaths on her conscience. It wasn’t even as if she knew the marines at all, but there were nine people, all with families at home waiting for them. But Rowie was thinking differently. Her friend was going to need some educating, to keep everyone safe. “No Rowie, you can’t open the bay.” Marines-space came the image. Marines-space. Marines-space. The ship was really thinking about depressurising the entire cargo bay somehow and jettisoning the entire marine fire team into the void. “You can’t Rowie, they’re people.” Then she got images of the rest of the crew, one at a time at a rapid pace. “Yes, all of them. People like me.” There was a picture of Lena, as she was when she’d entered the ship, grinning and looking round. “Yes, that’s right, me. Those marines, are like me.” The ship showed Lena two close-ups of symbols from the packing cases. N from a sign saying CAUTION and a zero, from the end of a serial number. N-0, N-0, N0N0N0N0N0.
“Well not exactly like, me, but you can’t hurt them, Rowie. You mustn’t.” Lena was starting to get frantic and she couldn’t tell where her own frantic was ending and the ship’s was beginning. If she turned the marines out into space, aside from the awfulness that Lena would feel, Rowie would then be a murderer, and everyone’s enemy. She didn’t want either of those things for her friend, but all she could feel when she was sure of whose feelings were which was the ship’s rising panic. She needed to focus and quickly. She needed a plan of action, when action was the thing, she was least sure she’d be able to do in the state she was in. Could she come out of this state of semi-hibernation any time she wanted to? Could she do it in a hurry? What toll would that have on her body? Enough for her not to be fighting with marines or their commander, but it was crazy even to be thinking that. What could she do instead? Was there anything she could do while still hibernating? Was there anything she could do at all?
Rowie had gone quiet in her mind. That was really worrying.
“Wait, Rowie, I’ve got a plan to stop them. No one needs to get hurt.” That was a lie. She had half a plan, and she wasn’t sure that much would work. She wondered if Rowie could tell if she was lying, if she wasn’t reading her mind. How much could she tell from her intentions as one species to another? Her friend was increasingly hard work. And still quiet.
“Okay here’s my plan.” She whispered to the ship. Then she realised how stupid that was. Whisper or shout, this plan had to work, or the marines would be out in vacuum and Rowie and her would be in a hell of a lot of trouble.
