Carbon had pretended to be asleep for nearly an hour before she extricated herself from Alex and Neya, carefully climbing over her husband and then tucking the comforter down into place so it was like she’d never gotten out of bed. She stood there for several more minutes watching them in the dark to make sure she hadn’t woken them up, then very quietly turned the lights up to five percent.
Alex had looked tired since before they had returned to Sol, but it had gotten worse since he came on board. He even looked tired when he was asleep, a very disconcerting feat Carbon had thought impossible. It worried her, as did Neya’s... everything. Neya was a mess, emotionally. It was good she wasn’t hiding her feelings anymore, and that she would return to getting therapy for the staggering loss she was keeping in her soul. Was it even possible to extricate something like that? Could a single person grieve enough in a lifetime?
When would she grieve her own mother?
Carbon shut that last thought out, not even bothering to fit it into the hole with all the other intrusive thoughts she’d racked up today, simply attempting to cast it as far from her mind as possible. There were other things to worry about right now. She could get back to that once things were at least slightly more calm. Once Alex had better control over his life at their hearth. Once he wasn’t in as much danger.
That was the crux of this small deceit. That machine - those hateful machines, there was more than one now - lodged in his head, infesting his body. Unnatural. The fact that someone who apparently used the same hardware interface as him had been suffering neurological problems so severe that he was mutilating himself... This was not an outcome she would allow her husband to suffer.
It was a burst of sentiment that had her rummaging around in his clothes by the light of her comm, pulling out a pair of his shorts and a dark red t-shirt, both too large for her. The tab on the waist of the shorts cinched it far enough that it didn’t slide off her hips, and she tied the shirt like he had done months ago on the Kshlav’o. It was comfortable and smelled faintly like him, which in turn made her feel a little bit more relaxed. A little safer. She knew it was just her imagination, but it felt like he was working with her on this task, even as he was getting the rest he clearly needed.
The first step to solving any problem, was understanding the problem. Carbon set out collecting the tools she would need for this, a Codex interface and hardlinked tablet. Someone had put them both in the junk drawer, along with the data cable. She had only expected to find the cable in there, but wasn’t going to complain about Neya’s curious sorting as it had been expeditious. Not this time, anyway.
She got it all laid out on the table. Getting it set up was easy enough. Plug everything in and set the Codex on the interface. The computer within it made sure it was where it was supposed to be, connecting to the local network and getting credentials from several places before allowing her access to the data. They had left a brief rundown on the ship and the logs stored within. She skimmed it, already very familiar with how Humans handled such things. According to the Confed registration, the CRS Serenity was on its fourth owner - a John Smithee - and classified as a light yacht, crewed by two with room for six passengers and a maximum of one ton of cargo. Folders had been labeled clearly. Black box recordings, navigation records, and then the security cameras. Bridge, main corridor, crew cabin, kitchen, common area, engine room, and cargo.
Where was the sickbay? Teleya had said that gore covered needle was found in the sickbay. It was possible that she just didn’t have much experience with the ship before Intelligence took it, so perhaps she was mistaken about that.
Carbon opened the first main corridor file to start things off, and nearly dropped her tablet.
The thing that was pacing up and down the main corridor only barely registered as Human to her. The shape was right. Two arms, two legs, a head. The first thing that drove a cold spike into her stomach was how it moved. Alex had a leisurely pace in nearly every movement he made. Sometimes almost aggravatingly slow. In contrast, the... He. The lack of shirt made it easy to visually determine this was a male. He moved like a startled forest spider, walking with a too-quick pace and twitching uncontrollably. His form blurring momentarily as he dodged around unseen obstacles and punched the walls with blows that were unnaturally fast.
And those limbs. The pale skin on the torso ended at the shoulder, black prosthetic arms gripping the scars like parasites that had taken the place of the originals. They were longer than they should have been and spindly. Entirely too often gaps were visible where flesh should be. The left arm didn’t even have a hand on it, just a socket where one had gone. Dark hardpoints pocked his torso in addition to a multitude of scars. When he paced close to the camera, she could make out similar mechanical horrors sticking out of his ragged pants legs. They were angular almost-feet, clawed monstrosities trying to dig into the deck with each step.
The worst part was that his nearly bare head was wrapped in the same stuff. A ring of metal that covered his eyes and ears, the gleaming black surface far too close to where the living organs should have been for them to have remained. A half dozen beady lenses dotted the front in a mockery of a face, more sensor surfaces wrapped all the way around. Even some tiny stubs of comm antennas radiated out from the grotesque band.
His mouth screamed, lips pulled back with too many teeth on display for a Human. She turned the volume up a little bit. There was no sound produced beyond a coarse exhale that could barely be heard over the metallic click of his footfalls.
It turned her stomach. This wretched Human-thing was obviously disturbed, and with all of that done to it, how could it not be? She clicked that file closed. Maybe the bridge would be a better place to start. Whoever was transporting this... person, probably spent a lot of time in there, on the other side of a nice secure door.
The same Human stalked onto the bridge and plugged that sensor ring on his head directly into the console at the pilot’s seat. Carbon shuddered with an uncomfortable familiarity, having once been connected to the Kshlav’o in a similar manner. Once jacked into the machine, screens and controls operating as though the ship were being controlled by a ghost, he stood stock still. As though whatever demon that motivated his body in the corridor had simply slipped down the cable. The slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed was the only source of motion keeping the camera on.
Was this the John Smithee on the registration? How had... How had that been able to purchase anything, let alone a registered spaceship? Carbon was sure she’d never seen a Human with such obvious, grotesque modifications. A machine arm once, some synthetic eyes... All worn with pride she didn’t quite understand - they could have them rebuilt with ease! Even Tsla’o prosthetics pushed the boundaries of medical reason with implanted nerve interfaces, but they kept the form and function of the original limb, though they were often decorated to the owner’s taste.
Carbon closed that video too, set the tablet down, and went rummaging around the kitchen for some alcohol. Half a bottle of Lacan. She’d sworn off it after vomiting on Alex, which he had handled with grace that she didn’t think was possible from anyone. Even salvaging what had been a miserable day with an enthusiastic kindness she had not expected, and hoped to never forget.
She would simply not drink half the bottle in one go this time.
Now armed with a full glass of booze, she returned to the table, took her seat, and downed half of that in one gulp. There was hardly an hour’s worth of video in the bridge folder. He would come in, plug in and set up the autopilot, then leave. That seemed to be all of it. She chose the crew cabin next. John came in and wrecked it a few times. Ripped the upper bunk off the wall, smashed the computer terminal and desk, carved gashes into the wall with his one hand. There didn’t seem to be a reason behind this, just directionless fury and unreal strength.
Cargo was more of the same. She thought he might have set up a... charging station or something in there, considering all the mechanical parts, but mostly he just paced endless loops around a single green crate strapped securely to the floor. There had been printing on it once, though it appeared to have been scuffed off intentionally. The common room folder contained hundreds of hours of video, more than the ones she had looked at so far combined. That was odd. She summoned all her fortitude and started the first one.
John Smithee was tidying the place up, black metal hand wrapped around a delicate looking vacuum. From the vantage point over the door, it was clear that this room was what Teleya had called the sickbay. There was a couch and a big entertainment screen on the wall, but also a robotic surgical arm bolted to the carpeted floor next to what looked like an emergency stasis bed, if memory serves her correctly. His movements were mostly careful and methodical as he cleaned the area, normal if not for the fact he looked like someone who was in the middle of being turned into a machine.
He carried a small computer over to the stasis bed and sat with it in his lap, jacked the ring around his head into it. The surgical arm came to life. Carbon recognized the PIN driver at the end of the conventional robotic arm, the one she had rebuilt for Alex. The needle was hardly a glint as it slipped into an unseen port in his left shoulder. She scrubbed through the video, the surgical arm repositioning around his shoulder a half dozen times before it did the same thing all the way down the prosthetic limb.
The change was immediately visible. Once the surgical arm was out of the way he unplugged himself and stood up with almost normal movements. John walked over to the couch, sat down and cradled the arm that had been worked on like it was a child. He remained there calmly for several hours before getting up and walking out of the room.
Horrifying as this was, it did alleviate most of her fears about Alex’s implants. These were clearly not the same thing, despite using the same interface. Neurological problems seemed like a bad guess at this point as well. The extensive scarring said trauma to her, but such violently extensive prosthetics were clearly making things worse.
Still, John Smithee had Human made machines attached to himself. There was no way that the wreath of metal around his head wasn’t attached to his brain as well, given he was plugging it into computers. She had the data, she would check it while it was available to her. There probably wasn’t a lot more information for her to pull from this, but it was better to be sure.
Carbon scrolled down the list of files, jumping into the next month. Over three weeks by Tsla’o reckoning. He appeared to eat constantly, sipping something from a food pouch. This was almost always followed by another session with the arm. What precisely was going on when he did this was unclear. Nothing was being injected, there was no physical medicine at play here. He was doing something to the hardware that left him comfortable, soothed the thing that drove him to destroy.
It quickly became clear that the machinery was laced through his entire body. Carbon watched with growing unease as the surgical arm was used to access points all over his ribcage, spine, and even abdomen. Had whoever did this fitted him with synthetic organs? A revolting idea, but considering everything else, plausible.
She should have been ready for it when he used the stasis bed, but she really wasn’t. A stasis field and living creatures did not get along. Nerves would light up as the outer edge of the expanding field passed through them, which wasn’t too bad until you got to the brain. Every neuron firing at once caused seizures more often than not, which relegated the time dilation technology to dire emergencies only. John Smithee set a timer on it, laid down, and the field popped on around him. The video ended as nothing was moving, not fast enough for it to perceive. Smithee was still alive, just experiencing time at a vastly slower rate.
The next video was eight days later.
She ran the numbers, sticking with Human time so she didn’t have to flip it back and forth between their clocks. Eight days in a 1000:1 ratio field would be perceived as almost twelve minutes. If he wasn’t having a seizure the whole time.
Carbon finished her Lacan and started the next video. She wasn’t sure what that would look like in a Human. He laid there for several seconds, rocking back and forth on the bed and gasping for air before his body went slack. John sat up and went about his day like nothing had happened, right as the eastern wind. Like he’d been rebooted.
She watched as his treatments became less and less effective over the next several weeks. The hours of calm turned into minutes, and he lashed out much more frequently, often hurting himself in the process now. He would pick at the spots where metal met flesh, flaying himself with sharp fingers before realizing that he was doing it again. Some of those wounds she knew should bleed profusely simply didn’t, and he didn’t bother to clean or treat them. More scars for the little living flesh that remained on him, a monument to agony.
Overwhelmingly, Carbon felt pity for John Smithee. This was a miserable existence, frail skin stretched over an engineered frame of cancer. She had a very good idea that this could only end in his death. That he was to do so alone, in this state of obvious anguish was inexcusable. Who had made him this way? Why were they not made to stand by him?
A monstrosity or not, he had lived. It was only right for someone to remain with him as he approached death. It would not ease anything for him at this point, but she would stay with him until the end.
He eventually stops returning to the common area. Timestamps lined up with him staying mostly in the cargo bay. He alternated between pacing around like a wounded animal and sitting on his knees before that green crate. There he spoke to it, prayed to it, screamed at it. Slamming those too-long arms into the deck plates before it.
On the last video from the cargo bay, he ripped the straps away from the crate and pulled the latches open, the side falling away to reveal more of that cursed black metal. John stripped off what little clothing he wore and stepped into one of the largest sets of combat armor Carbon had ever seen. The limbs that were wrong for his frame fit just fine once they were slotted into this final machine.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
It swallowed him up, closing around his body. The gaunt form hidden within an impenetrable fortress of angled metal. Only his head remained free.
He had been turned into a killing machine, and she wondered if it had been with permission or not. Had they ever thought this outcome was a possibility? He was clearly alone and very badly disturbed. Maybe she would check the black box, it may give an indication of where he had been going. Was he trying for vengeance, did he seek forgiveness, perhaps he just wanted to be somewhere he wouldn’t hurt-
Her thoughts were interrupted by the video as John Smithee stood and reached into the crate he now towered over, bringing out a sword that gleamed in the overhead lights. The silver-white blade stood in sharp contrast to the dark metal that covered him, a juxtaposition he did not spend much time considering. With speed that couldn’t be matched by the camera, he turned it on himself, ramming the blade up under the sensor ring and giving the hilt a sharp twist.
Carbon yelled in surprise as the front chunk of the wreath was torn free and thrown against the far wall like a comet made of gore, impacting so hard it left a red smear and a visible dent. What remained of John’s head slumped to the side, motionless, the armor keeping him standing upright.
There was a bit of chaos in the room as Alex and Neya both sat up abruptly in the dim light, startled awake by the sound. “What’s going on, you all right?” Alex was the first to inquire, tossing back the covers and springing to his feet despite being mostly naked by his standards.
“What is happening?” Neya said in Tsla’o, sliding over behind Alex. “Are you all right?”
Heart racing from that abrupt but predictably messy ending, and a little panicked by the fact that everyone was now coming to her aid, she set the tablet down. With the screen down, of course, and entirely too hard to make her deflection convincing. She took the gamble that he had his translator on already and spoke in Tsla since both of them were up now. “I was just watching some videos and was startled.”
It wasn’t untrue, it just didn’t contain a lot of context she wanted to avoid talking about with Alex specifically.
Perhaps because he was still halfway asleep, Alex seemed to believe her. He slipped into the chair beside her and stretched. “Since when do you watch videos in the middle of the night? Can I see?” He inquired, completely credulous as he reached for the tablet.
Oh no, he did believe her. He really did trust her that much and just took her at her word as she held the slender piece of electronics to the table. “It is work related and quite shocking.”
“They aren’t having you watch porn again, are they?” He was confused by her reaction, eyebrows pulled down as he stifled a yawn. “That’s ok if you are, I can probably put some context on it if you want.”
“No, that- This is very different.” This would have been so much easier if she had just snuck out to a secure location and had the data delivered there. But no, she had to think it would be fine to check out from the comfort of her own home. It had felt perfectly reasonable before seeing a ghastly husk of a Human rip a massive implant off his own face. “It is unexpectedly violent.”
“Ah, huh.” He relaxed and withdrew his hand, eyes scanning the setup as. A hint of suspicion crept into his voice. “You aren’t doing something, you know... Harmful to yourself, right?”
“No, I am not.” She wasn’t, right? She had followed John Smithee’s final months on that little ship out of a desire to gather information at first, and then perhaps misguided compassion for someone who was already gone. It wasn’t punishment, it was not intended to open up old wounds. Carbon had known this ended badly when she asked for these recordings, and while she might not ever forget that final moment it was not sought out.
“Well, what was it?” Neya asked as she took a seat across from them, just now finishing putting her wireless beads on. “I do not recall the last time a video of anything got that kind of response from you.”
If it wasn’t for the obvious concern on Neya’s face, she would have thought the two of them were triangulating against her. It was not a deceit on their part. They actually cared about her well being and it frustrated her that she had to keep telling herself that about the people she loved. Carbon knew they would stop asking if she kept insisting, but... Why continue to be evasive about something she had embarked on with earnest intent? “I was looking into the source of the PIN and driver parts that Xenotechnology and Intelligence had. It came from a ship that we acquired, which I thought unusual as I do not believe these systems to be common.”
“Yeah, that’s accurate.” Alex sat up, suddenly much more awake. “Until that setup in the surgical suite, the most drivers I had seen in one place is three. That was only because that workshop had three stations with a single arm each. McFadden only has one as far as I know.”
“That is interesting, as there was only one surgical arm aboard this ship as well.” Carbon lifted the tablet up carefully, winding that last video back a good ten seconds so John Smithee was merely standing there in that metal, facing away from the camera before she showed it to him “Do you recognize what has happened to this man?”
He recognized it instantly. “Oh shit, that’s Hellbreaker armor.”
“You know what it is?” This did not sit well with her, after having managed to convince herself it was sufficiently different from what Alex had.
“Oh yeah. Probably the most recognizable ground vehicle from the Unification war. The precursor to modern boosted armor and drop troops. There’s always at least one in any movie set in that era.” Despite how quickly this knowledge bubbled to the surface, he still sounded somber, the usual eager inflection in his voice tamped down. “Banned at the end of the war. Probably would have stayed in use if not for what happened to that Chancellor’s kid.”
“What happened to them?” She asked before she thought that answer was probably its own horror show.
“A lot of the details were sealed when I had my Unification war phase, but the short of it was the German Chancellor’s son was in special forces, he got brought up into the Hellbreaker program, and at some point got dishonorably discharged for friendly fire. The Confed military zeroed him out and dropped him off at his parents home.” Alex paused, looking between Carbon and Neya to see if they picked up what he meant. Carbon certainly didn’t, and Neya wasn’t any closer to getting it. “That is to say, they removed all his mods except the stuff that would have killed him. That guy you showed me still had the halo on his head, but they got arms and legs, and a bunch of other stuff done internally. He was basically a torso with half his face missing, dumped on the porch.”
Neya leaned in, clearly horrified. “Tell me that is not the end of it. This is... I do not know if I can conceive of a dishonorable action where that is an appropriate response.”
“If they had done that to some normal person, it probably would have been. Turns out the German Chancellor had a lot of sway because of their manufacturing base that the Confed military did not want to go away. Investigations found a lot of discrepancies in the program. The son got exonerated. He had complained to upper brass about some mods that were installed without program approval, so his CO got rid of him and tried to cover up a bad orbital strike with that discharge. Ended up being a rare instance where a lot of folks went to jail.” He shook his head and sighed. “But, that was like a hundred years ago. Everyone involved is long gone.”
The timestamps on the footage she had been watching were only four years old, this did not line up at all. “They were retired at the end of the war?”
“Officially, yeah. I’m more aware that the government doesn’t always do what it says now, but the public outcry about the more invasive mods in the wake of the war made setups like that illegal. Kids coming home missing limbs and eyes because their own government took the originals to make them better soldiers, and didn’t let them keep the military hardware for obvious reasons. They also didn’t automatically replace what had been taken with civilian equivalents upon discharge.” He paused, cautiously checking Carbon and Neya’s reactions to that before he continued. “This was before mediboards, so they were issued prosthetics once the Confed realized how bad a look that was. Radicalized a lot of folks against implants, too.”
So it could have been removed. Should have been removed! “Is it possible that one of them... Fled the war?”
“I mean, yeah. They did a little bit of everything, depending on how they were equipped. Had a really nice cutter suite onboard. Systems intrusion, I mean. Hellbreakers were made to be unstoppable in a couple of different ways. Should have been trivial for one to just steal a ship at the time, military or otherwise, and then just fuck off to wherever.” His head tilted towards the paused video as he gave Carbon a sidelong glance. “Like this guy, I assume?”
She could share this with him. He was her husband, one of the few she truly trusted. It was ultimately about his health, as well. Carbon took a breath and allowed herself to relax that urge to guard everything too closely. “Yes, but he - the ship registration says his name is John Smithee - was alive only a few years ago.”
Alex made a very unbecoming sound of amusement, a tight laugh channeled through his nose. “Oh, that’s the fakest name possible. Lots of folks would just use John Smith, but Smithee really kicks it up a notch. Must be a movie fan. Was he wearing that armor all the time? I can’t imagine it’s hard to get reproductions given their ubiquity in war movies.”
“No, it is real, this was the only time he put it on, and he seemed very upset about donning it.” Then he killed himself immediately afterwards, so clearly had a reason to be upset. Carbon closed that file and went back to whoever this was claiming to be John Smithee standing in on the bridge. “He was clearly fully modified as you described.”
“Huh, so he is.” Alex leaned in and watched him jack into the pilot’s console. “The ship is a KMG, pretty new marque. Well. It’s a rebrand of the Kershaw-Massey Group after they had a string of motor detonations, but they only started production with that name, uh... it was after I was born. Had a reputation for making cheap junk, so I never paid that much attention to them.”
The idea the Confederation would let companies that had manufactured several exploding motors continue making ‘cheap junk’ space ships, and that they hid it with an almost transparent name change, was mind boggling. At the same time, so very Human. She had been to a museum that was mostly about their utter lack of self preservation when it came to exploration. Delightful. None of them would ever set foot on another Human made ship without her having vetted it first. “So it is possible that he was actually one of these Hellbreakers?”
“I guess, if he put himself in cryo for sixty years. Flew too close to a black hole, maybe.” He shook his head, then leaned back and shrugged. “I’m having a little trouble reconciling this, though. He should be dead, but he clearly didn’t bother doing that.”
“He does kill himself, actually. That is what startled me.” Carbon’s jaw tightened as she thought about swallowing the full truth of why she was reviewing this. It would be so simple to hide another thing, one more among the piles of secrets she already carried. That was not the relationship she wanted. “I had been afraid that whoever had been using the same interface needles you needed had an Amp as well, and it had caused him to have problems so severe that he had begun mutilating himself. I am sure that this is not the case, now.”
“Oh yeah, that... that’s fucked up. I’m sorry you had to see that.” He reached over and wrapped his arms around her, practically pulling her off the chair as he drew her into a hug. “I know it’s anecdotal, but modern Amps are very safe. One of my teachers in the program had an original Amp, from before they started the mark revisions. Same piece of hardware for fifty years, guy was sharp as a tack. Heck, you met Ed. He’s had his longer than I’ve been alive.”
“I did not want to let some risk that you might-” She clammed up for a moment, a wave of fear that he’d end up like not-John rising once again. Carbon leaned against him, the lack of insulating fur on him meant she felt his body heat faster than she would from another Tsla’o. It calmed her down, a little. “I do not like that your body is compromised by machines, and the idea that they might cause you harm in any way is... I will not allow that. It cannot come to pass. I do admit that it is good there is evidence yours is safe, and I take that into my considerations.”
“Well, you’re in the best position to spot it if something happens.” He patted her back and let the embrace linger, chin resting on her head.
“I am.” That was true. She linked with him fairly frequently, and would continue to do so as an entwined pair. Brain damage and cognitive problems would become clear in the link well before they did face to face. “I will be vigilant.”
“I know you will.” He kissed her head and released her, standing to go rummage through the stasis store. “Anyone else want more dumplings?”
“No, thank you.” This had been far more eventful than she had expected it to be, but at least she had closure on this new fear. She closed down the tablet and unplugged everything, then moved the grotesque skull Codex from the interface. “Neya... My tablet does not belong in the junk drawer.”
“I would like some, please.” She turned her gaze to Carbon and gave her a disrespectful flick of her fingers. “If it causes you to be up in the middle of the night, waking everyone else up yelling about some horrors you did not have to subject yourself to, then it does belong in the junk drawer. Actually. It belongs in the recycler.”
Carbon hadn’t expected such a sharp rebuttal, and was momentarily stunned. “That- ah, that is not what I meant. Just that-”
“She’s right, you woke us up because you needed to do all this in secret and ended up watching a guy commit suicide.” Alex set the last metal steamer tray down in the middle of the table and pulled the lid off. He immediately reached in to pluck one of them out, the purple and orange filling visible through the clear wrapper, and popped it into his mouth before sitting down again. “That’s fucked up and that tablet is going in the bin.”
“I was not doing this in secret.” She had been, of course, but she was having this little lie as a treat because hiding personal things was a reflex for her. Carbon closed her eyes and grumbled in frustration with herself. “I was doing it in secret. I did not want to bring a concern to you unless I had evidence, particularly with everything that had been going on. I had to verify it for myself first.”
“Fair.” He reached for another dumpling, not really paying attention to which one he picked this time. “Explains why you left all that out when I asked about it earlier, too. You should have brought me in though. It is about my health, right?”
“Yes, it is.” She folded her arms on the table and set her chin on them, very carefully not looking at anyone right now while she felt foolish for this entire endeavor. The desire to keep everything slotted into neat containers where they would not come in contact with each other unless she allowed it had brought her to a place that, in retrospect, felt incredibly stupid. She should have trusted her husband to take her concerns seriously.
“You know who else cares about my health?” Alex said around a mouthful of dumpling.
“You do.” Carbon mumbled in return.
“I was going to say Neya...” He had that sly grin she usually found endearing in his voice, and Neya chuckled quietly across the table. “I suppose I do too. So, I appreciate your concern about my well being. Please get me involved next time. We can get traumatized together.”
She almost cracked a smile. There was a moment where it felt close, at least, but she wanted to stay mad at herself for a while longer. “I will.”
“Thank you.” He reached over and patted her shoulder. “Nice outfit, by the way. Shorts are a really good look for you.”
That derailed her pity party, ears pressed low as a blush heated her cheeks. “Uh- I- Just wanted something-”
“Oh, finally someone is wearing them.” Neya blurted out, leaning down to look under the table. She hummed an appreciative note before popping back up with a smile that went from ear to ear. “A bit provocative to be seen out and about in, but... It is a good look.”