Activation Degradation, page 23
Something about those records had felt undeniably off: the bizarre environment, so contrary to what it had been told about Earth, yes, but also . . .
The suggestion that the Harbors needed to be invited to return.
And the paired implication that, perhaps, there were people that hadn’t wanted them to return.
Hadn’t wanted . . . or still didn’t want?
Was that all in the past, or . . .
The crew thought aliens had invaded Earth.
In turn, Aimsley had been told by its handler that aliens were invading. And all it had found aboard the wedge were . . . humans.
Aimsley was pulled from the strange coil of its thoughts by Fuentes clearing her throat. “Hello, Aimsley, you listening?”
“Yes. Please, continue.”
It would reexamine that disturbing train of thought later.
Chapter Nineteen
They worked long, long hours, until everyone was sweaty and exhausted. It was well into what should have been their power-down cycle when Buyer came in, took a wrench from Fuentes’s grasp, and ordered everyone to go to bed.
“Three hours of downtime,” he said. “Mandatory rest. Now.”
Fuentes protested. “I still need to machine a connector for—”
“Do you have schematics?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said with a yawn. She was half slumped over the injector housing. Discarded parts were strewn all about her feet. Jonas was doing his best to keep the space clear, but was clearly tired as well.
“Then I’ll do it. When we get sleepy we get sloppy, and since we don’t know what we’ll be up against if we can’t beat Aimsley’s handler to the platform, I need everyone to be as alert as possible. Maya?”
She and Aimsley were working two catwalks below, and both looked up at him with bleary eyes. “Yeah?”
“I put a cot in the medbay. Tuck Aimsley in?”
“Yessir.”
She slid her arm through Aimsley’s, tugging it back up the levels, then out the door, into the hall, and toward the lift.
“By ‘tuck me in’ he means ‘lock me in’ doesn’t he?”
“Sorry, Aims,” Maya said with a sigh. “Can’t blame us for being cautious.”
It nodded and hmmed its acknowledgment. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, shoot.”
“Earlier, you said your Harbors are falling apart. Why? You said Melassani found the first Crystal a thousand years ago, so humans have been aboard for at least—”
She punched the lift button, and the doors slid aside. They waddled in together, still arm-in-arm. Aimsley was so tired, it was only now realizing how intimate the gesture was. Such a touch felt oddly natural, coming from Maya. Especially strange, considering she was about to lock it away.
“They were never meant to last this long,” she said. “We were supposed to find a new home for humanity, out there.” She waved vaguely. “The Harbors were supposed to ferry us from Planet A to Planet B, that’s all.”
“So why do people still live aboard them?”
She let out a heavy sigh, the kind that conveyed turmoil far larger than herself, this crew, and this ship. Their gazes met, and she looked both sad and resigned. She gave a little half shrug, shaking her head. “Because there is no Planet B. If we couldn’t fix our home world, we had no chance of tailoring a far-flung planet to our needs. There’s a difference between, say, a small research colony on Mars and a place for all of humanity to live forevermore.” She sighed again, shoulders falling. “The people who originally launched the Harbors were living in a pipe dream.”
“So when you couldn’t find what you were looking for, you came back?”
“When we received word Earth was improving—generations ago—we came back.”
“But by the time you got here . . .”
She nodded limply. “Something else had taken over.”
They reached the top deck, and she guided Aimsley to the medbay, opening the airlock and ushering it inside. “Well, here you are. Not exactly the worst prison, as far as prisons go. Look, you’ve still got company.”
The cat was curled up on the counter.
“Well . . . Good night, Aimsley. Or, good nap, at least.”
She unthreaded their arms, then—drowsily, absentmindedly—set her lips against its cheek.
They both froze for half an instant, before Maya jerked herself away. “Oh. Uh. Sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” it asked quietly.
She averted her eyes. A pinkish hue crept up her neck. “I’m tired, I’m not thinking straight. Just forget I . . .” She waved her fingers through the air, as though she could clear away what had just happened like so much smoke. “Good night.”
She hurried out the airlock, leaving Aimsley slightly dumbfounded.
Hesitantly, it lifted its hand to its cheek, where the ghost of her lips still made its skin tingle.
Aimsley tried to sleep. It tossed back and forth on the cot, disturbing Zelmar at every turn.
It couldn’t shake the feeling that something still wasn’t right. Not just in terms of its handler, and the platform, and its sisters, and this wider world of the Harbors, but something more fundamental.
Maya had said they were looking for a home for all humanity. But clearly all of humanity hadn’t left on the Harbors. Why had some been left behind? The Harbors didn’t sound like scouting ships. They were arks. Meant to start anew.
So what was meant to become of everyone still on the planet?
And who, really, was keeping the Harbors away from Earth?
Perhaps it would find more answers if it probed deeper into the wedge’s archives. Perhaps it would understand better if it could find correspondence between the Earth-based humans and the ship-based humans.
Centering itself, Aimsley opened to the ship, let itself become discoverable once more. The flood of pings felt less violent this time—more manageable, now that it wasn’t caught in the throes of anxiety.
First it zeroed in on the cameras, just to check on the crew. The bunk room door was open, allowing the hall camera to peer inside. Maya and Fuentes’s cabinets were wide open, and both women were sleeping soundly. Doc’s was cracked open a fraction, but no light seeped out. The camera’s angle was not kind, but Aimsley just managed to catch the twitch of a blanket, which suggested that Doc was, in fact, inside. But the cabinet Buyer and Jonas clearly shared was empty, doors ajar.
That made sense. Buyer had intended to keep working. Jonas was likely helping him.
Flicking through a few more feeds, it found them in the cargo hold, at the corner table. But they didn’t appear to be cataloging parts or dismantling stolen tech.
The hold was nearly dark. The emergency lighting on the floor, lining the built-in portions of the booth, was the only source of illumination. The camera was close, not quite providing a top-down view of the pair. Jonas’s gun and holster lay across the tabletop, set near a small pile of parts that suggested they had been working, but had interrupted themselves.
Buyer had Jonas pressed into the seat cushions, his hand around the back of the other man’s neck, and they were sighing into each other’s mouths. Jonas scrabbled at Buyer’s lower back with his good hand, rucking up the captain’s shirt, revealing thick, swirling black markings that Aimsley hadn’t seen before.
Were these markings functional, or simply—as Maya might put it—pretty?
“Please. Buyer, please.”
“Shh. Shh, quiet—”
“We came down here so I wouldn’t have to be quiet.”
“Still . . .”
“Please.”
“Patience.”
Jonas hissed and turned his face away as Buyer—too eager, too greedy—accidently put excessive pressure on Jonas’s still-tender shoulder.
“Sorry, sorry,” Buyer said quickly, in a voice Aimsley had never heard him use. It was rich, and heated, and he pressed his mouth against Jonas’s exposed throat to punctuate his apology.
“Be careful, you stupid bastard,” Jonas shot back, hooking his finger in the cord around Buyer’s neck, yanking firmly. There was no real bite to his voice, not like when the others were around.
Buyer huffed a laugh into Jonas’s skin. “I’ll make it better,” he promised. “Let me make it feel better.”
“That’s Doc’s job,” Jonas whispered back.
“No,” Buyer said, amused. “This is definitely not Doc’s job.” He snaked a hand between their bodies, sliding it down Jonas’s torso to the apex of Jonas’s thighs.
Jonas whimpered, twisting Buyer’s necklace in his fist, fingers white-knuckled. “Your hands,” he said hoarsely, a weak protest. “They’re still—”
“Don’t worry,” Buyer reassured him. “Once I get these off, you won’t be using my hands anymore.”
Jonas’s answering groan sounded like pure anticipation, and he swiftly captured Buyer’s mouth again.
Watching them made something strange and warm blossom in Aimsley’s belly. They looked beautiful like this—all tender with each other. Leaving touches to excite and soothe rather than direct or wound.
Aimsley let its fingertips stray up to its cheek. The affection Maya had shown it was milder, less familiar. But it understood it to be affection nonetheless.
In the cargo hold, the captain slid off the seat, to his knees.
“Please. Please please please,” Jonas kept chanting, voice gone high and breathy.
Intrigued, Aimsley wanted to keep watching. But . . . there was a reason they were doing it in the dark. A reason they were doing it away from the sleeping level, away from their crewmates.
They didn’t want to be seen.
Didn’t want everyone to know.
And though both curiosity and that pleasant pooling of warmth encouraged Aimsley to stay, to keep observing them, it knew this had to be one of those private things Doc had mentioned.
Unlike AMS unit functionality, not all human behavior was meant for consumption by all other humans.
So much for not having one’s junk out at the table, it thought, amused.
Aimsley allowed itself to enjoy a few more soft sighs and one quiet moan before flipping to a new feed.
There were still rooms on the ship that were unconnected to the security cameras. Places the crew had not physically shown it that it could not mentally go.
It had worried, during its first exploration, that those rooms could be hiding the true invaders. Aliens. Strange creatures from another world.
And, in truth, there had been something there—something alien. But so different from anything it had expected. Anything it had been told to expect.
Now it had doubts such hostile phantasms—invaders, conquerors—even existed. On Earth, in the solar system.
What if it was all just people? Human people.
If those in the Harbors had abandoned other humans to a dying planet, and then come back . . .
It was just a hunch. It didn’t think this was something the crew was purposefully hiding. Aimsley was fairly convinced at this point that the humans aboard the Violent Delight genuinely believed in the invader concept—that aliens were keeping them away from Earth.
But what if that wasn’t the most logical explanation?
Once more, Aimsley roamed through their records, looking for anything that might support its new theory. It found plenty more videos of a devastated world, and a thinning, sickly populace. None of the narrators ever seemed to speak with ire, but Aimsley knew better than to assume there was no ire in them.
It sat up on the cot, fidgeting. A strange, new nervousness flooded its system. It stood, began to pace. Zelmar stole its spot on the pallet, soaking up the leftover body heat.
Maybe whatever was in those hidden rooms would help set its mind at ease, help steady it.
After all, did it matter what its handler turned out to be? Alien, or human? Did that change anything—the plan, the rescue?
No. Of course not. But it might change the future. Might change how it saw . . . saw everything.
Suddenly the cube felt too cramped, too small. The air was thick. It needed to get out, to see whatever the crew had hidden from view.
It checked on the crewmembers once more. The majority of them were still asleep. Jonas and Buyer were still . . . occupied.
“Keep watch,” Aimsley said to the cat, then swiftly hacked the lock and let itself out to explore the ship.
It should have realized that one of the darkened rooms was the shower room. Another two were waste disposal rooms, with individual stalls and plumbed versions of its bedpan.
It started to feel silly. It didn’t even know what it was looking for, or what it would do if it found something disturbing or unusual. Confront the crew about it? Simply tuck the knowledge away for the trip out of Jovian space? What?
Yet a fourth space didn’t even need entering; there was a window on the door. Through it, Aimsley spotted a small craft—the skiff. It was a bit larger than the boat, and likely had several compartments in its interior. It would fit the crew and the cat and perhaps a few hives if need called. It, unlike the wedge, had thin, elongated portholes. Across the side, hastily painted in white—as though for a prank or as an idea executed in the midst of an inebriated haze—were the words Violent End.
Opposite the craft was a hangar door just wide enough for the skiff, but the space held no more.
As Aimsley hacked the lock on a fifth room, it told itself this would be the last one. It had already made its choice to trust the crew. In turn, it would need to be someone worthy of trust.
It opened the door, and the scent of hot sugar hit its nose immediately.
Lights flickered on to reveal five large, silver fermenters. Several bottles of phosphoric acid, and containers labeled “barm,” sat on a workbench near the door. A set of three barrels were labeled “Must,” and a slide of honeycomb sat over a small bucket, slowly dripping.
Ah, the meadery.
It quickly spotted a security camera in the corner of the ceiling and realized there was no active feed because the camera was simply broken. Nothing nefarious to be found.
It leaned against the doorjamb, feeling anxious and foolish with no outlet. It made up its mind to return to the medbay. There, it could check in on Jonas and Buyer, and if the two men were back at work, it could use the comms box to offer its help. If it couldn’t sleep, it needed to keep working. The sooner they were finished with repairs and on their way to the platform, the better.
With a self-deprecating huff, it pushed itself off the jamb and started to turn around.
A warm body was suddenly at its back.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?”
Chapter Twenty
Oh no.
Jonas.
Oh no.
Aimsley spun on its heel, backing into the meadery.
As it whirled, Jonas’s arm came up, and the AMS unit found itself staring down the barrel of his gun.
“I knew it. I fucking knew it,” Jonas growled, clenching his jaw, thrusting the weapon forward. “I came up to hit the head, but my feet took me here because I just had a frigging feeling, and here you are.”
Aimsley threw its hands up, tried to make itself look as unthreatening as possible.
It swore at itself. I should have just stayed in the medbay.
Jonas’s hair was mussed and his shirt open, revealing his chest and neck. Light pink and dark purple markings covered his skin. His lips were flushed from being bitten, and there was a heady, musky scent in the air.
All clear evidence of his encounter with the captain.
But his expression and posture were far from loose and relaxed, as he’d been with Buyer. Now, pure fury boiled beneath the surface. His stare was sharp and stony, his jaw tight, teeth grating. His muscles were tense, coiled.
He shook with surprise and rage.
“First they try to tell me it’s fucking fine that we have you aboard because you’re going to be our ticket back home,” he gritted out, punctuating every other word with a jab of his weapon. “And now they try to spin it like, instead, it’s gonna be whatever crap you’ve got on that platform of yours, but the whole fucking time you’ve just been playing us, haven’t you? Of course you’ve been in contact with your handler. You’re walking us right into a gods-damned trap! Taking us straight to your alien buddies.”
Aimsley shook its head slowly, deliberately, making sure every movement was well telegraphed so as not to spook him. “None of that is true.”
“You’ve got them all fooled. Every last one of them,” he growled. “Even Buyer. But not me.”
Aimsley stared defiantly over the barrel of the gun. “You can’t fire that in here,” it said carefully.
“Can’t fire it with the dampening field engaged.” He flicked off the manual safety. “You wanna guess whether or not the dampening field is engaged?”
Aimsley took a small step forward, and Jonas took one back, trigger finger twitching.
Jonas knew by now that Aimsley had him outweighed and outclassed when it came to fighting hand to hand, one on one. They’d tussled—collided—enough times to get a feel for one another, how they moved as individuals in the zealous heat of the moment.
Even without his injured shoulder, it was in Jonas’s best interest to keep Aimsley at arm’s length.
But was he deranged enough to shoot inside his own ship?
“How the hell did you even get out of the medbay, huh?”
It didn’t have a good answer. It wanted to keep its secret. If they truly didn’t know it could access their systems, then it could enter and exit the information streams freely, learn more about Earth and the Harbors at will.
But what it needed right now was for Jonas to stay calm. To take a deep breath before doing anything rash.
“I realized I could access the hololock with my enhancements. No different from what you do with your implants,” it said calmly.
But Jonas wasn’t stupid.
“Oh, no. No, no, that is very different. Don’t try to spin this with some puppy dog eyes and ‘I’m just a robot, I don’t know how to human right’ nonsense. It’s not gonna work on me.” He shook his head, pursed his lips—even lowered the gun for a moment before changing his mind and raising it again. “Fuck. This is—Gods damn it. I should take you to Buyer,” he said, more to himself than Aimsley.
