Dr. Osborne sat down on the stool in front of Rhodes. “You’ll be happy to know that General Brewster has ordered the battalion back to Coleridge Station instead of deploying you on Zobos,” Dr. Osborne told him.

Rhodes didn’t look up. He couldn’t even be happy that his assessment of the problems with the SAMs had been vindicated.

Now the battalion was going back to Coleridge Station the way he originally recommended, but at what cost?

Henshaw was dead. He predicted that, too, but he never predicted that it would happen like this.

He never dreamed she would be able to handle herself in combat, but she did. She handled herself as well as he ever could have hoped.

Now she was gone because of some rotten computer glitch. She died by the hand of one of her own malfunctioning comrades.

Rhodes couldn’t be surprised by this. The only miracle was that more people hadn’t died sooner.

He didn’t blame Dietz, either. Rhodes had wanted to shoot his own comrades. He’d been about to unload his Vipers on Oakes and Lauer just seconds before Dietz shot Henshaw.

Dr. Osborne consulted his device. “You’re probably wondering where everyone is. I’ve kept the whole battalion in stasis since the….unfortunate events. You and your subordinates were still targeting each other and even shooting at each other when I shut you all down.”

Rhodes only nodded. He suspected as much when he woke up alone.

“I’ve kept you in stasis while I modify your SAMs’ programming back to the way it was. It appears that the base program that caused your SAMs not to attack their own is the same programming that causes them to recognize each other and the rest of their battalion mates. We made a mistake.”

Dr. Osborne looked up from his device and waited for Rhodes to say something else. What else was there to say?

“The others are still asleep. I thought it best to wake you up one at a time to test whether everything is functioning the way it should.”

Now it was Rhodes’s turn to wait for Osborne to go on. “So….what do you want me to do?” Rhodes asked.

Osborne checked his device. “Is Fisher functioning normally?”

“I don’t know. He isn’t here.”

“You…you can’t see him?”

“No. He usually talks to me when I come out of my conversion cycle. That’s our habit—talking to each other before and after so we have some time in private before I have to face the battalion.”

“And….he isn’t there?”

Rhodes shook his head and wound up looking down at his hands. “This whole thing….it’s been hard on him.”

“Hard on him—how? He’s a computer program. None of this should be hard on him.”

“You don’t understand. He was the one who figured out that the Masks were SAMs. He didn’t think we should fight them. I think….He might have felt guilty that he put the battalion at risk by not recognizing the Masks as a threat—and then this happened.”

Osborne frowned. “The SAMs shouldn’t be having this kind of emotional reaction.”

Rhodes snorted. “He’s a sentient being. How could he not have an emotional reaction to….to all of this?”

Osborne shrugged. “If you’re right, then he should appear. If he isn’t malfunctioning, he shouldn’t have a problem showing himself.”

Rhodes hesitated again. “What do you want me to do?”

“Can you call him out?”

Rhodes glanced around The Grid in front of him. Fisher wasn’t there, but Rhodes sensed Fisher listening.

Rhodes didn’t want to talk to Fisher in front of Osborne. If Fisher was suffering from some emotional distress about this….

Oh, what the hell was Rhodes even thinking that for? He already knew Fisher was suffering from emotional distress about this. Fisher told Rhodes so himself.

Rhodes swallowed hard. He definitely didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Dr. Osborne. Dr. Trudeau stood on the other side of the room listening.

“I’ll call him out, but I won’t do it here,” Rhodes finally decided. “I’ll have to go back inside the capsule.”

Osborne frowned again. “Is that really necessary? If you do it here, I can monitor his stress levels and see if he really is malfunctioning.”

“Yes, it really is necessary. I’ll try to talk to him. If he’s malfunctioning, you’ll be able to see after I come out.”

Dr. Osborne didn’t stop scowling, but Rhodes already made up his mind. He wouldn’t humiliate Fisher by calling him out in front of both doctors.

The only thing worse would be calling him out in front of the whole battalion. At least none of the other SAMs were here to see Fisher’s disgrace.

Rhodes got to his feet and went back to the capsule on the other side of the lab. He didn’t realize until today that Osborne and Trudeau had a lab on board the Ero.

They must have set it up when the Legion brass assigned the ship to transport Battalion 1 around the galaxy.

Rhodes lowered himself onto the mattress, but he positioned himself away from the prongs. He didn’t need another conversion cycle.

He did need Fisher. Not being able to see and hear Fisher seriously unnerved Rhodes. He didn’t like not being able to consult with Fisher and voice his concerns and process his thoughts. Fisher really had become the confidant Rhodes needed him to be.

The capsule cover lowered and locked in front of Rhodes’s eyes. He took a deep breath and began in a low murmur. “Are you there, pal? We’re all alone. You can talk to me now. No one will hear.”

Fisher’s voice drifted from somewhere far away. “You said you would take me offline if I interfered with the battalion again. You should do it now. I’m a danger to everyone, especially you.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Rhodes resisted the urge to groan in exasperation. “Do you hear yourself? You sound like me. You sound like Fuentes. You and the other SAMs are the ones who’ve been the most driven to survive. Now you’re telling me to take you offline.”

“There was no excuse for what I did.” Fisher’s voice trembled. “That’s the second time I’ve taken control of you and killed someone.”

“You didn’t kill someone. Dietz did and that was a malfunction. The whole thing was a malfunction.”

“It was a malfunction caused by a modification that was my idea.” Fisher’s voice got louder and more unsteady. “Henshaw is dead because of me.”

Rhodes started to argue and changed tack. “Will you please make yourself visible so I can see you? I know you feel ashamed of what happened. Just face me. I’m your friend. What happens to you happens to me. Remember?”

Fisher didn’t make a sound for a minute. Then he started to expand.

He made himself an inch wide in the very top corner of Rhodes’s vision. Fisher didn’t make himself any bigger than that.

Rhodes studied him for a minute while Rhodes tried to decide what to say. He couldn’t know for sure, but he had a sneaking suspicion that Dietz didn’t feel nearly as broken up over Henshaw’s death as Fisher did.

“Listen to me, pal,” Rhodes finally murmured. “I need you. I can’t do this without you. I never thought it would come to this, but I can’t keep doing this without you helping me. I know you screwed up. I screwed up, too. We all did. This whole project is one giant screwup from beginning to end.”

He broke off trying to contain this overwhelming agony inside him.

When he managed to speak again, he didn’t even try to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“Listen, man. I need you. I can’t take you offline no matter how many times you screw up—or I screw up—or any of us screws up. We’re in this together. You’re the only thing keeping me sane right now. I don’t even know if I am sane anymore—but if I am—if I have any chance at being sane ever again—it’s because of you. I can’t let you go—not unless I go with you. If you go down, I go down. We could both be dead in the next battle and then all of this will be for nothing. I can’t lose you before that. I need you too much.”

He broke off fighting down emotion. This understanding of just how much he needed Fisher—it had been creeping up on Rhodes for a long time.

Saying the words out loud took every ounce of strength he possessed. The pain of saying them only slightly paled in comparison to the pain of actually feeling this way.

He shut his eyes and turned his head aside trying his best to avoid seeing Fisher right in front of him.

“All this time—I’ve been the one who wanted to die. Now it’s you. I kept going for you—because I thought you wanted to live.”

“I do want to live,” Fisher half-whispered. “I want to live more than anything. I just don’t know how I can when I’m like this.”

“Like what?” Rhodes asked. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a hell of a lot more functional than I am.”

Fisher snorted under his breath. “Don’t joke about that, Captain. I am not functional—not at all.”

“The only time you’ve ever messed up is when you’ve been malfunctioning. That’s more than I can say.”

“My job is to protect you—and the whole battalion,” Fisher replied. “I can’t even do that. I can’t do the one task I’m mandated to do. I can’t advise you. I don’t know what to do. I don’t trust myself to assess any situation—not even a peaceful one like the battalion spending time in the barracks. How can I continue when I can’t even perform my most essential function? How can I live with that?”

“Your most essential function is to help me process all this information and sensory input, isn’t it?” Rhodes asked. “You’re doing that.”

“How am I doing that when I can’t process it myself?”

“That’s how you’re helping me process it. Don’t you get it?”

“No, Captain. I don’t get it. I don’t see how I can help you process it when I don’t even understand what’s happening to me—to both of us.”

“That’s exactly how you’re helping me. You’re helping me because neither of us understands it. We’re both in the same fix now. We’re both completely out of our depth, questioning our own sanity, and just trying to make it through the day. You’re helping me because now I know that someone understands. You understand because you’re going through the same thing I am. You’re helping me by going through it with me. You’re helping me by being as screwed up as I am and we have to make it work together if either of us is going to survive this. Now do you understand?”

Fisher remained silent for a long time. He pivoted to one side and looked off in another direction so he wouldn’t make direct eye contact with Rhodes.

“I don’t think I can do this, Captain,” Fisher finally murmured under his breath. “I don’t know how I can survive this.”

“Neither do I, pal.” Rhodes felt himself starting to lose it. “I don’t want to survive it, but I have to—and I can only do that if you help me.”

Fisher didn’t answer again for another long, silent moment. “I wondered at first if I should have the doctors disconnect me from you, take you offline, and install me in another soldier. I thought you were too damaged and they should take you offline before you either destroyed yourself or harmed someone else.”

“Maybe you weren’t completely wrong about that,” Rhodes muttered.

“Now I find out that I’m the same way. I fear for my existence and my own sanity because I’m attached to you…..and yet it somehow works better that you are so broken and barely hanging on. It somehow makes more sense that I should be attached to someone as broken and barely hanging on as I am.”

Rhodes let out a shuddering breath. “So you do get it.”

“I think so, Captain. I didn’t before. I don’t see how we can get through this when neither of us has the skills or fortitude to cope with this, but I suppose this is all we have to work with. There is no one else in the battalion who is better off than you are—or I am. We either make it work or we both go down.”

“That’s what I say, too,” Rhodes replied.

“So….what do we do to make it work?”

“I don’t know,” Rhodes replied. “I suppose it’s a step in the right direction that you recognize me and you can hear me and you aren’t yelling in my ear to target people in our own battalion.”

“We don’t know that. I might go back to doing all of that as soon as one of them wakes up.”

“Then we should test it.” Rhodes studied Fisher a little more closely. “Are you ready to go out there and face the doctors?”

“How should I advise you in the future? How should I know if I’m assessing the situation correctly or if I’m malfunctioning again?”

“Just do exactly what you did before. Assume you’re making the right call unless one of us senses that the other one is malfunctioning.”

“Is that wise, Captain?” Fisher asked. “I don’t want to trust that.”

“You can’t start second-guessing yourself now. We’ve gone over this before. If you don’t trust yourself, then trust me. I would rather have your flawed assessment than no assessment at all. Okay?”

“I’m still not certain about this.”

“I am. Just tell me the very first thing that pops into your head. We’ll keep talking every morning and evening the way we have been. You can talk to me about your doubts then. If I see anything that concerns me, I’ll let you know.”

Fisher turned around to scrutinize Rhodes even more brutally. “So…you don’t see anything that concerns you now?”

“Apart from your doubts in yourself? No, I don’t.”

“Stop that, Captain!” Fisher countered. “You’re only saying that to make me feel better.”

“Do you think the doctors should take me offline?”

“Of course not!” Fisher exclaimed. “You’re the one who has stopped me from doing all these terrible things—except that you haven’t been able to stop me.”

“Do you think they should take me offline because I hacked The Grid to break that transponder code and override your programming? Do you think they should take me offline because I fired my Vipers into the wall instead of at Oakes and Lauer the way you recommended that I should?”

“Stop, Captain!” Fisher snapped. “Of course they shouldn’t take you offline for that! You were correcting my malfunctions—as far as you were able to.”

“If they take you offline, they would have to take me offline,” Rhodes finished. “I couldn’t function without you.”

“They could give you another SAM.”

“I don’t want another SAM. I want you. I trust you….”

Fisher gasped. “You do?”

“Of course. I need you too much. I trust all your assessments. So you malfunctioned a few times….”

“More than a few.”

“That’s nothing the rest of us haven’t been going through in the same way. If I shouldn’t be taken offline for malfunctioning, then you shouldn’t, either. Now come on. We’re doing this. If we stay in this capsule any longer, Dr. Osborne will think we’re both malfunctioning.”

Rhodes activated the controls, opened the capsule cover, and sat up.

“You’re sure about this, aren’t you, Captain?” Fisher asked.

“Absolutely sure. You questioning yourself is the one thing that actually makes me feel better. It tells me that you finally understand. It makes me trust you even more.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Fisher murmured. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

“I know what you mean to me. You aren’t going anywhere, pal.”

End of Chapter 30