Carbon was sure she was dying. It was irrational, Alex had explained how the indexing process went and had been almost exactly right about it so far. The lack of anything outside of the most fundamental portion of her existence - her mind - was deeply unsettling and left her scrabbling for something to orient herself. Even the presence of the machine seemed to be gone, the scratchy geometric harshness muted in the same way every input from her body had been.
Alex had touched her cheek, some time ago. Seconds? Days? However long it had been was up in the air without the presence of something aside from thoughts to consider. He had said there was a minute left, and she’d had the existence of time for at least ten of those. Maybe fifteen. That just left forty-five seconds, which should have expired a long time ago. It should have.
It must have.
No, something was wrong. The index didn’t work right, it cut off access to her antenna and she was locked in her mind now, unable to do anything but wait as the Eohm pushed them into the nearby star, killing them both.
As unpleasant an idea as that was, her mind was glad to provide her with worse. Clearly what had happened was the AI had taken control of her body and resided in it now. Her understanding of Human designed AI was tenuous at best, so this was a thing that they might be able to do. It had overridden Alex’s control of his arms when the crash cage activated, forcing them into a protective position over his head. Why not the whole body?
She was considering that if it could do that. That it might actually be able to pilot the Kshlav’o to safety, and then wear her body for the rest of her natural life, with her thoughts locked away forever when the indexing program finished and she was unceremoniously dumped back into control of her body, a happy little tune that just felt affirmative playing in her head.
Carbon blinked as her panicked mind joined back up with her completely relaxed body, everything coming together as she quietly cursed the existence of computers. Adrenaline dumped into her bloodstream as her limbic system finally managed to notify her body that it was time to panic, limbs shaking even as the near-mad rambling was quashed by the existence of nothing having changed in the workshop. It hadn’t been more than seconds.
“Again, I’m sorry. I wish you didn’t have to do that.” Alex sounded defeated, despite her apparent success. “Let’s get out of here.”
“How?” The presence of the machine in her mind did feel different now. The scratchy nature was gone, though it was all hard edges and carried the distant scream of communication protocols. The fact she knew exactly what the sharp sounds were, without actually having ever learned what they were, did not escape her notice.
“Tell it you want to turn the drives and navigation systems on.” Soft and warm, and still so sad.
Carbon closed her eyes and addressed the thing. In her mind it looked like a three dimensional fractal, slowly growing at the same rate it consumed itself, waiting. Bring all dormant systems online. Prioritize the reactor, main AI, all drives, and the Navigation systems.
It complied, and curiously, she felt it all happen. The reactor hummed to life in the back of her head, the idea that it was running at full capacity suddenly present. The violent flush of a few tons of impure plasma out the ventral exhaust as it boiled into the void, like exhaling a deep breath of smoke. The presence of the AI shifted, slightly, more capable now.
The exhilarating power of the sublight drives and the waning, sick presence of the remaining waverider. The expansive existence of the Nav system, unfurled like sails.
Seconds had passed. “Done.”
“Now... uh, sink into the navigation system. The data from the emergency waveride should be there waiting for you. Don’t worry about bringing us in line with the uptake cone, just focus on merging our vector into the path that’s shown.”
The action was familiar, not unlike sharing a memory. It did explain how Alex took to links so quickly. The body stopped existing, local space spread out before her as though she were the ship itself, all of this knowledge just present inside of her mind now. She knew where everything was. “Oh. It is incredible.”
“That’s great.” A hint of pride, and amusement. He continued quickly, “just reach out and grab the path and pull us along it.”
That was easier said than done. The glowing yellow line of the pre-calculated waveride was quite some distance away now, and the Eohm scow had broken off after the Kshlav’o came back online. Actually motivating the ship to move was also a new experience, the docking thrusters orienting before the sublight drives spun up, a massive waste of time that she didn’t know how to avoid. But they were underway, the sickly waverider drive warming up on her back as though it rested over her shoulder blades, as though it understood her intention to use it.
The waveride overlapped with their current heading, and she did as she had been instructed, grasping the data with an unseen hand and integrating it into their flightpath with a sharp tug. The AI notified her that it couldn’t use the drive in proximity to another ship. She glanced backwards, her perspective shifting as she focused on the scow. Scanners were actively searching for targeting solutions as the communication array screamed into the darkness, the old ship rolling as it approached to bring all of its guns to bear.
As Carbon knew what the AI knew, it also borrowed from her. She’d served on a warship, knew the ins and outs of space combat, and she knew what it looked like when someone was coming around, guns hot, for a strafing run. The AI knew that now, too.
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The ship behind them was an enemy, actively trying to do them harm. The safeties switched off and plasma poured through the engine, running the lone waverider drive array up the safe maximum.
Behind them, spacetime flexed and the Eohm scow managed to loose a single round before its decks pancaked on each other. The resultant wedge of metal and biological components creased and folded, reactor contents boiling away in space.
The idea that going from the relative crawl of sublight speeds to one c could feel slow was strange, but that was how the machine presented the acceleration right now. Leisurely, like it was taking a stroll through a garden. Gravity from the star soon tugged at the ship, at her, and the speed increased to something that felt tolerable, though they were still billions of kilometers away from the edge of the system, and before the slingshot around the sun they were bearing down on the Eohm fleet in what must seem like a suicidal attack.
As though to validate that thought, several heavier capital ships peeled off and turned their way, even as the Kshlav’o hit two c. Gravity pulled at her harder now, the planned waveride arcing further down into the gravity well. Four times the speed of light. Finally, it felt like they were moving at a pace that was reasonable. Eight times. The SOS they had set to transmit sent, Earth now informed of their exact location and that they were alive. Twenty times. Fifty times. A hundred and fifty, as the ship slipped further and further into the gravity well.
The hit the apex of the slingshot at nearly a thousand times the speed of light. They slipped past the Eohm home fleet before the capital ships could finish changing their vector as they climbed out of the star’s gravity well, still accelerating with the one engine pushed as far as it would go.
A minute later they exited the system. She might have heard a sigh, and the sound of Alex laying down nearby. A more pressing problem was that what had been screaming fast suddenly felt lethargic as the yawning gulf of 24 lightyears of empty space opened up before her.
The engine held for now, and there was no gravity to speak of. She kept the throttle all the way up, but glanced back at the system they’d just escaped. Nothing on the SAPRAM. No waverider drives being put into use. No sense in trying to kill what was running away when all you wanted was to be left alone. “The Eohm are not attempting to follow us.”
She was reasonably sure she said that out loud.
“Oh, thank god.” [Pilot Sorenson] sounded relieved from wherever he was. [Pilot Sorenson] was in the [starboard workshop].
“Alex?” It came out breathless, and a little confused. Why did she know where he was? She could see him laying on the floor beside [Engineer Tshalen] [seated] in the [starboard workshop] [acceleration couch], from the aspect of the door control panel. “Are you there?”
“I’m here. You’re doing fine, don’t try to look around. It gets weird the first few times” His hand landed on her knee, patting her reassuringly.
“I am aware. I can see so much.” She heard [Engineer Tshalen] speaking from several different vantage points.
“It’s a little overwhelming at first.”
“Yes. We should arrive soon.” Another thing she didn’t know but knew without even checking their speed or distance to their destination.
“About that...” [Pilot Sorenson] sat up and looked at her through the door control panel’s camera. “The engine sounds a little bit off.”
“Does it?” She looked at the engine room through [Main Engineering Camera 1] and yes, [Waverider Drive 2] was making a sort of shrieking howl that was not normal. It was glowing on the IR spectrum, too. Generally a bad thing. “Oh. It does. It is not going to last much longer.”
“Should we slow down?”
“No. The failure will occur at any speed, we will make the best time we can till then.”
“It won’t kill us, right?”
“It will not.”
“Good, that’d be a waste.” He said it with a grin and an easy laugh as he looked back at [Engineer Tshalen].
I will not allow the crew to come to harm She didn’t say it, but it didn’t need to be said. Of course she wouldn’t.
The ship’s alarm went off after a few minutes of the crew sitting in silence, the engine giving up with a hollow whump as plasma flooded main engineering, the ship’s speed decreasing to sublight quickly afterwards. The adjoining areas increased in temperature, life support adjusting to maintain an optimal range as emergency ventilation purged main engineering, artificial gravity returning to the ship. They were hundreds of thousands of kilometers short of the Thackery’s Globule, so she set the autopilot to finish the trip along the waveride path with sublight only.
The task she’d set out to do complete, she surfaced, detaching from the navigation systems at an achingly slow pace. “We didn’t make it all the way, but the autopilot should be able to handle the rest of the trip quickly.” Carbon slipped all the way out of the system, the fractal fading from her mind as she unbuckled the harness on her acceleration chair, blinking in the overhead lights.
Her stomach twisted as the hideous realization of what had happened while interfaced with the AI hit her all at once. It wasn’t like sharing a mental space with a person, where sometimes things slip across the boundaries, no, she had merged with the ship - or it had merged with her - and she had become a thing.
It didn’t matter which way it had occurred. She’d stopped being a person. Not Tsla’o. Not Carbon. An unliving monster, the scary story you told children, made real.
She - Carbon! Carbon Tshalen! That is who she is! She stood up from the couch too fast, the artificial gravity that had been absent for so long making her head swim as she pulled the personal AI off her shoulders and threw it aside. Her legs wobbled despite the implants that were supposed to keep things in good working order while in zero-g. Carbon took a step away from the acceleration couch and passed out.
Alex loomed over her, blocking the lights from the ceiling. “Hey, hey. You’re all right, I caught you. What’s going on?” He was trying to stay calm, but the panic in his eyes, in his voice, mirrored her own.
Carbon sat up and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him as hard as she could. Real. He feels real, the real Alex, not the one on the camera. Not in the machine anymore. She looked up into those dark brown eyes and pleaded for an answer. “Am I still me?”
“Yeah.” He gave her a pat on the back, his arms trapped by her embrace, and thoroughly confused. “You’re still you.”
Carbon sighed and rested her head against his neck, shoulders slumping. “Do not make me do that again. Ever.”