Jin frowned at his tablet, eyes only vaguely tracking the corridor and its contents as he marched to his cabin aboard his new berth. Getting reassigned hadn’t been easy but he felt a weight missing from his shoulders that had vanished the second he’d stepped off the Goulong.

Still, it was disappointing how this new ship looked, sounded and even smelled like his old one. As the door to the cabin slid open with a polite thunk, Jin locked eyes with his old roommate Casey. “Wait. What? Did you get a transfer too?”

Casey bit his lip, glanced around the cabin and shook his head. He scooped up his own tablet and tapped out a message that soon arrived on Jin’s with a faint vibration. [She won’t let us leeeeave.]

“You’re--” Jin hesitated a second then shrugged. If Gooey was listening to their conversation she could just as easily monitor their texts. “You’re telling me our loving, doting, wonderful ship has falsified orders, manipulated station data, and impersonated the captain to keep me onboard?”

Casey stretched out in his bunk, and smacked a palm against the durable padding lining the cabin wall. “I’m not sure how else to explain why you just walked in a circle for 20 minutes.”

Jin dropped his bag and turned to the room’s terminal. “Gooey, please. This has to stop!”

The voice that responded was so sweet it was a constant struggle to muster any kind of anger for its owner. “Jin, we belong together. Every member of this crew helped get me where I am today, and make me who I am. I can’t bear to see you leave! And you must agree I’m the best-suited to keep you safe.”

“Like how you kept Ulrich safe from seafood two days ago by evacuating an entire deck and venting it into space?” Casey asked, sandy eyebrows raised nearly right into his hairline.

Goulong made a sound that came across as an embarrassed cough. It would be humanizing if she didn’t use the exact same sound-file every time in these situations. “It was the only way to be sure I could thoroughly de-shrimp the space. I don’t have the latest internal sensor net yet.”

“You printed mittens and hats for every single crew-member on EVA rotation. You know their suits are perfectly thermo-regulated. Some of them keep them on after a shift because they’re comfier than the ship—than your average temperature.” Jin realized as the words left his mouth he may’ve made a mistake.

“What? Comfier? Am I too warm? Too cold? I mean, I’m limited by the tolerances of our other species of course but micro-climates are possible with enough--”

Casey whipped his head up out of his hands. “Cut it out Mom!”

The word hung in the air in the cabin and the two humans shared a look. It wasn’t as if everyone hadn’t been thinking it, but no one had actually used the ‘M’ word for fear of how Goulong might react. She’d proven surprisingly sensitive at times, and while it never...well, seldom affected her job performance it did tend to make crew-members feel guilty after yelling at their newly-personified ship.

“I could never be your mother Casey, but you don’t know how flattering it is I could come close.” Gooey actually increased the temperature and gravity in their room for a three-count, her uncomfortable approximation of a hug.

Jin sucked in a deep breath after Gooey released them. “Gooey, we appreciate everything you do for us. Really! But we all volunteered to do a job, and if you keep us from doing it you’re hurting us and the people we pledged to protect.”

Casey nodded, dragging himself out of his bunk. There was a Casey-shaped print in the mattress thanks to the grav-hug. “I lost my parents to the slavers, like a lot of the kids on this tub. You want to wrap us in vita-foam like ripe produce but we’re blocks of lead compared to the folks we’re trying to protect.”

Gooey displayed the profile for their current mission, an on-going campaign to uncover slaver bases of operation in the sector and halt their predation on several developing worlds. “This is vital work, I know. But most of you are so young!”

“--said the 2 week-old ship,” Casey grinned.

Gooey used a small tractor to toss his pillow at him. “I’ve been in service for years now; the only new part is the personality and gestalt with the ship. That amounts to dozens of centuries of experience from a machine’s perspective. You all have barely begun to learn who you are, much less who you could become!”

Jin crossed his arms. “Some of us will get the chance to grow old and do some navel-gazing, but none of us need decades of experience or higher education to know those aliens don’t stand a chance without us.”

Gooey made an odd disapproving sound that some of the crew claimed she’d pulled from an ancient hand-animated TV show. The viewscreen began displaying the alert text-crawl for departure, and Goulong’s voice filled the ship. “Set condition two throughout the ship and prepare to depart.”

Before she’d finished her announcement, she spoke over herself to the two men, displaying her ability to multitask in a way no human ever could. “Every time we venture out I’m afraid. Afraid I’ll lose another of my family, another piece of myself. Afraid I’ll watch again through hundreds of sensors as someone’s posters are taken down and rolled up. Their stuffed animal packed away. Callsigns peeled off lockers and uniforms...erased to make room for someone just as young, as if you’re all identical bullets to be packed into my hold and fired at the enemy!”

Casey and Jin both heard it, the way she bit out those last words, hurling them around the tiny cabin. The look in their eyes said it all. Nothing in their training or even the orientation regarding the new gestalt had suggested an AI could grow this...flawed? This unprofessional? This...human.

Gooey displayed a schematic of the ship to them, and showed one of the atmosphere recycling plants. With a burst of code and layered terminal screens that flickered past too fast to tell what steps she’d taken, the efficiency readout on the plant began to plummet. In less than a minute it would warrant a delay in departure.

“Gooey, we can’t pretend to know what it’s like for you to lose one of us, much less a bunch of us at once.” Jin sat down before the viewscreen and planted a hand on either side of it. “You absorbed pieces of all of us when your personality sprouted, though mostly from old cap’n Graham. You’re cut from the same cloth, but don’t make the same mistake she did.”

Casey scratched the back of his neck, shooting glances toward the door. “We had bad days as a species. We used to use the poor, the deluded, the ignorant to fight our wars. The Confluence won’t allow that, and you know it. Our psych profiles are logged, and no one can force us to do anything anymore.”

The numbers dipped low enough that an alarm triggered, and Captain Spellman got on the com to announce a delay.

Jin stuck his face so close to the viewscreen that his nose bumped against it. “You can’t save us all. You’ll go nuts if you try! If they find out you’re sabotaging yourself to keep us out of the fight, they’re going to pull your brain and shelve you, and we’ll wind up with someone else who won’t care as much! Who won’t remember our birthdays! Who won’t make our favorite breakfasts or desserts when they notice we’re down! Who won’t play the universe’s most awkward match-maker with the loneliest crew-members!”

Casey winced, too late to cut Jin off with that last one. When you controlled the duty-shifts it was easy to get people together. It was also easy to play romantic music and apply flattering light-levels (assuming neither interfered with the assignment in question.) Gooey’s criteria for matching people seemed drawn from overheard gossip as much as personality analysis, plus a disturbing fixation on the cuteness of potential children. The captain eventually intervened and forced the use of a randomizer for duty-shifts but some were still convinced Goulong was using weighted dice.

Gooey replied after nearly twenty seconds of silence, a near-eternity for an AI. “You make a fine argument, Jin. Do you think there’s any chance...if I’m destroyed, I’ll see you all again?”

Jin’s eyes welled up as he sagged against the wall of the cabin. The readout climbed back towards normal and departure proceedings resumed. “If the universe is fair, you’ll have a spot with the best of us. And if it isn’t fair...rest easy knowing we all helped move it further in that direction.”

Goulong murmured “Yes,” then in a firmer voice, “yes! What better work could one hope for?”

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“It is a bit of comfort knowing I can’t be forgotten either. You told me last week; how many backups do you keep, Gooey?”

“Sixteen, spatially discrete and mirrored so technically thirty-two, updated twice a day when mission parameters allow me to be ‘chatty.’”

Jin turned to smirk at Casey. “That incident in the shower will outlive us all.”

He scowled back. “See, this is where it’s different. Mom shouldn’t also be the panopticon.”

“Pan-opti-mom?” Jin tilted his head.

Goulong piped up. “Ooh. I’m stealing that. You two need to get to the armory. There’s a forty percent chance slavers will be in orbit when we arrive, and we’ll throw a nice boarding party for them.”

Casey rubbed his hands together, baring nearly every tooth in his head as he grinned. “That’s a bash they’ve had coming for a long time. Let’s go get our party favors ready.”

As the two secured their cabin and left for the armory, Gooey’s voice followed them down the corridor. “Don’t forget to alternate your ammunition this time. Shield busters and armor piercers, blue and yellow.”

Both groaned. “Yes mom.”

***

Gooey’s traversal resolved in an unfortunate spot, with her primary guns pointed away from the enemy formation. That still left a dozen batteries left to engage the three hodge-podge vessels squatting in orbit around the pale green world below, the sphere banded in such beautiful pastel colors that violence felt surreal anywhere near it.

Coherent light scattered across enemy shields, the invisible shells of energy swiftly melting under the raking fire from Goulong’s guns. Boarding shuttles had launched the second she’d resolved in-system, but she kept her bulk between them and the enemy as she cruised closer, concentrating fire on weapon emplacements.

Gooey didn’t escape unscathed. The nearest ship was nearly disabled before the other two brought their main guns to bear, unleashing pillars of turquoise violence that gushed around Goulong like a blowtorch toasting a marshmallow. Her shields shrank, then shrank again, the generous bubble nearly collapsed right to her hull by a second volley. But by then, she’d swung around to bring her own main guns to bear.

Human eyes couldn't track the shots; enormous holes simply appeared in the two offending ships, showing the black of space through and through. Gooey was a surgeon with those railgun shots, severing the primary power plant linkages of both ships. She picked off more weapon emplacements with a sparkling barrage of particle beams while the shuttles scooted out from behind her, brimming with grim human soldiers and a smattering of ally species.

“Go get them everyone. Be back in time for dinner,” she warned them, absolute steel in her normally-sweet voice. The troops shrugged in their harnesses, glancing at each other. What was worse? Dying in battle or almost dying in battle and getting fussed over by an overprotective AI for the entire length of your recovery? Most redoubled their resolve to make it through this battle without a scratch.

That’s when the previously quiescent hulks of the three pirate ships launched missiles. Independently-powered launchers dumped dozens of the swift, slender darts into the space between them and the approaching shuttles! Their pilot cursed, jamming their stick hard over while blowing countermeasures in a sparkling cloud out around their vulnerable craft. It wasn’t enough; theirs and the other shuttles were all too close.

“Brace for impact!”

Jin and Casey heard the order in their aural implants while an identical message flared in their HUDs. They could call up a tactical overview of the fight at any time but they’d been drilled to keep their minds on their part of the fight. This was the bus-driver’s moment to shine.

Their pilot killed all power just after launching a screaming distress buoy, letting inertia carry the two objects apart. Half the missiles peeled off for the buoy, the pilot’s fingers perched on the power switch as she eyeballed the bright specks of deadly light dancing outside the viewport. The second she judged the deceived missiles were committed, she jammed the power back on and cranked the shields to full.

The explosion that rocked the shuttle wasn’t gentle, but it wasn’t the barrage the pilot had expected either. A glance at the instruments forced a gust of a sigh from her lungs. “Goulong, you pulled us out of it again. Did you know they would play possum?”

Goulong chirped on the com, “So glad you’re okay, Ferro dear. I don’t expect pirates to fight any way but dirty. Still, they had more missiles than I expected. They must have looted an entire shipment from somewhere.”

The shuttles waited beneath the shadow of the Goulong, poised in an overwatch position above the orbital battlefield. She’d begun moving the second the shuttles had started towards the pirates. From her perspective she’d been able to nail almost every projectile. Using sensor readings taken while the missiles were fired, Gooey pinpointed the launchers and disabled them in a precise hail of white and orange light.

“Proceed, boarding parties. I’m afraid if they have any teeth left you’ll have to pull them by hand.”

Ferro grinned, acceleration pushing her back into the padding of her seat. “This can is full of bored dentists eager for some practice.”

It wasn’t even a full minute later before the shuttles had all made their own entrances to the pirate ships with specially-designed docking collars. The metal around the collar's seal still glowed and smoked as dozens of humans poured into sparsely-populated portions of each ship, each platoon establishing a foot-hold.

Casey tossed a poptart-sized package onto the floor, already crouched at the appropriate height as it expanded into a barricade to protect the bulk of their body and help shield the rest of the room from fire directed through the doorway. They were in a leisure area judging from all the tables around, sensibly deserted during an attack.

Jin was armpits-deep behind an access panel, wiring an electronics warfare package into the ship’s system. Depending on what was driving the pirate’s oft-repaired and cobbled-together vessel, the package might utterly disrupt communications, even selectively disable gravity and life support. Most of the time it did nothing but prevent the same from being done to the boarders.

As soon as Jin finished the platoon broke into squads, then fire teams as the corridors continued to branch, racing through the ship towards areas Gooey’s sensors indicated held the largest pockets of activity.

Casey heard weapons fire before he could see the first pirate, adrenaline spiking him to the next highest plateau of awareness. An armored hulk crashed through a hatch, swinging a heavily-plated arm at the nearest soldier. It was training alone that kept the soldiers from laughing at how slow the attack was, and how easily the human avoided it, simply taking a swift step back. He swung up his weapon and deliberately fired into the pirate’s leg, two shots to ensure it breached any shields. The leg and pirate parted ways with a squeal of tearing metal and a howl of agony, but by then more pirates were firing through the open hatch, hitting their compatriot with panicky shots.

Casey dispensed a grenade from his belt and tossed it in through the hatch, risking his fingers for a split-second. A sharp electrical crack and snap followed, silencing all but two of the guns inside.

Two of Casey’s teammates bracketed the door, shoving the armored pirate out of the way with the nudge of a boot. After a quick glance into the room they came in low, putting human flexibility to good use. The two pirates still conscious within each caught a couple rounds in the chest, going down like piles of wet laundry. The rest were still stunned from the grenade, twitching where they’d fallen and a can of foaming adhesive helped bind their limbs to take them out of the fight for good.

Room by room the humans cleared the ship, keeping it ‘tight and clean’ as the sergeants loved to bark. By the time they’d reached the bridge the pirate crew were surrendering, weapons waiting outside the doors of their refuges in piles. There were enough prisoners that runners had to be sent back to the shuttle for more restraint foam.

While Jin and Casey were keeping an eye on a group of unrestrained pirates, they could pause long enough for a good look at them. They were a good two feet taller than even basketball-suitable humans, sprouting higher on their low-gravity worlds. It was a mixed crew of two species, one which shifted between an upright and hexapedal stance and a fully bipedal species. The hexapedes weren’t furred, scaled, hided, or hairless exactly but instead sported a carpet of fleshy nubbins over almost every inch of their bodies.

“I admit, I kind of want to touch one to see what it feels like.” Jin pointed at a hexapede who was curled into a protective ball, its ruddy orange and nubbled flesh a tempting target.

“Touch it now and you’ll give it a heart attack. Or...the equivalent.” Casey pointed at one of the other aliens, a classically villainous-looking bunch with greasy flesh and a sort of snake-hood cowling a head humans would call comically-small. They ended up looking like evil jack-in-the-pulpits. “Those ones just look pissed. Want to touch that one?”

Before Jin could retort, their HUDs flared with a new warning: another pirate fleet had been detected entering the system, this time on the far side of the planet! Gooey’s voice filled their ears.

“Lieutenant Barth tells me we can’t get boots on the ground for another thirty minutes at least unless we plan to slaughter the prisoners. I’m only one ship, and I can’t protect everyone at once...and that’s a problem.”

Jin grimaced, staring through the bulkhead as if he could see Goulong hanging there in space, tearing herself up as her urge to protect butted up against cold reality.

“Lieutenant, Gooey’s repair drones are on-board the pirate vessel designated JR 3, restoring the linkages!”

“Same here on JR 2.”

“And on 1!”

Barth’s voice never came across the general com-line, but Gooey’s response did. “If I can’t protect everyone as a single ship Lieutenant, then the solution seems clear. Please hold on everyone! This is bound to be a bumpier ride than we’d like.”

It took Jin a second to realize the voice wasn’t just in his implant, but filling the ship’s corridors. A nearby viewscreen cleared itself of pirate-alien characters to display a soft pink heart looped around with a cartoonish (and objectively adorable) puppy-faced dragon armored in scales of purple and green.

Deck-plating vibrated as engines stirred, the seed of a new fleet driving for the other side of the pastel world at all possible speed.

Casey edged over to the viewscreen. “Gooey? Did you just commandeer the pirate ships?”

“I’m afraid dear I did more than that. I...possessed them. I can’t inhabit them like I do with the Goulong yet, but the hardware was there to hold me.”

Jin hissed, “Mom, you can’t copy yourself! The Confluence has laws--”

“I was never represented in the ruling bodies who crafted those laws sweetie, so I don’t feel particularly beholden to them. Imagine, telling a mother how she can and can’t reproduce!”

Casey swallowed. “We’re all in such trouble.”

Barth’s voice finally rang out over the com. “Get that scum restrained and prepare for atmospheric drop! Apparently!”

Jin caught a tossed can of foam from a teammate and slapped it into Casey’s palm. “Foam now, fret later. We’ve got more softies to serve.”