31. "I do not expect to see the end of this terrible war."
It was the third time Simon had been thrown out of an airlock.
The first time had been something between a joke and a prank, and he’d had a PMT recall beacon which had pulled him back in after a few minutes of a dizzying spacewalk.
The second time had been a disciplinary action. He had accessed some files that he should not have, sent some messages that he should not have, and caused some trouble that he should not have. The disciplinary committee had decided that ‘cooling his heels’ in vacuum for a few hours would do him good, and so they had jettisoned him with a timer and a PMT beacon. It had positively affected his behavior, for about two weeks.
He did not have a recall beacon this time. Just a small radio transmitter broadcasting his location built into his vacuum suit. Because this time, he might not be marked for recall, and those beacons were too expensive to waste as a decoration on a space-mummy.
Confessing to Lucy had been a mistake. He’d known that before he’d done it, but she had seen straight through him to know that something was wrong, and a part of him had hoped that their link as uplifted primates would see her siding with him against their human oppression.
Except that Simon was the only uplift on the Theseus who would call Nathan an oppressor with a straight face. Tony might, in between purring and scritches under his chin. But otherwise …
Still, he had been caught and known that discovery was inevitable. So he had disclosed everything to Lucy and asked for her help in breaking the information to Nathan, now that he was captain. He hadn’t been expecting her to throw him a vac suit, lock him in an airlock, and then jettison him.
He had sort of known that it would come to this, but he had thought that he would at least force Nathan to be the one to push the button himself. Simon very much deserved it, the military law on the matter was clear about acts of sabotage, of which Simon’s ‘prank’ would be legally considered. But the young chimpanzee uplift had been hoping to at least force Nathan to finally show a moment of hypocrisy, even if it was only perceived by the two of them. Simon had been planning a speech, his final words to the hated enemy before his execution. Only none of them applied, because Lucy had sentenced him for his crime instead.
Simon drifted helplessly. The explosive decompression as the field holding in the airlock’s atmosphere had vanished had thrown him clear of the Theseus, and now he was drifting helplessly. He tried to stop himself from spinning about as much as he could, but his suit was designed for survival in emergency decompression or maintenance aboard the Theseus itself, not for spacewalks. It had no stabilizers or thrusters with which to stabilize himself. Just a few hours of breathable atmosphere, and then he would face the choice between breaking the seals and suffering a swift death, or dying slowly as he ran out of air.
"Simon, Simon, do you read me? This is Nathan. Simon, do you read?"
Simon was a little surprised when his suit’s radio kicked on. He was a little surprised that his suit had a radio. Nobody used light for communication anymore, except as a backup. PMT was somewhat compatible with the quantum pairing that was used by most methods of faster-than-light communication, although signal strength was gradually lost as repeated transfers changed the spin of the relevant particles.
"Come to gloat, Nathan? I don’t regret it. I regret nothing! You’ll never-"
"Shut up, Simon. I’m coming to get you. I’m pissed as hell, but you’re mission critical, and if I could I would throw Lucy out here for a few hours to pay for this little fucked up stunt she’s pulling. So I’m pulling you back in, and then you’re going to cool it in the brig for a few hours while working until I tell you to stop working. And you don’t get a fucking choice in the matter, so just shut the fuck up."
Simon allowed himself to feel a surge of hope. If Nathan was thinking about the matter logically, then of course he wouldn’t allow Simon to be summarily executed, despite the laws on the matter allowing such treatment. That had been Simon’s greatest fear, that in the heat of the moment Nathan would retaliate in a way that was impossible to undo or repair. That he would be justified in doing so was less important to Simon, but now that he knew he had the chance to redeem himself he would embrace it fully.
"I’m sorry, Nathan. You were never supposed to-"
"Shove it, you fucking ape," Nathan growled. "You jeopardized a combat mission. You knowingly put the lives of your allies at risk. For what? A fucking grudge? Fuck you, Simon. I am done trying to impress you or be your friend. If you weren’t critical to the operation of the Theseus and the success of its mission goals, I would leave you out here to mummify."
"That’s fair," Simon admitted, a little surprised. He had never heard Nathan insult a Sapient’s base species before. "I was drunk on fermented berries when I made the change. I was planning on changing it back, but I forgot."
"Well, good thing that you’ll be on a restricted diet for the rest of the mission, isn’t it? No fermented anything for you, no sir. Just cloned standard frugivorous fare until we return to Yosca space and I decide whether or not to file official charges or not."
"For the record, I’ll confess and cooperate," Simon said nervously. "I made a mistake, Nathan. I let my personal feelings cloud my judgment, and I’m willing to face the consequences. I spoke with Lucy first for advice--"
"Really? Because she said that you were looking for help in covering it up," Nathan countered harshly. Simon could see the human now, zooming across the distance with the aid of an EVA device.
"I went to her for advice. On how to approach you directly," Simon lied. He had been hoping that Lucy would simply help him make things go away. "Kathy already knew. I only had until she returned, then if I hadn’t told you myself, she was planning to."
"She left without saying anything?" Nathan grumbled. "Well that’s fucking great. One of my civilians is a mutinous saboteur, and the other one is covering for him. I’ll deal with that tidbit later. I’m severely restricting your computer access to intelligence gathering purposes only until I need you to pull intrusions. Did you lay any other traps for me that I should know about, because if I find that you --"
"I can’t remember doing anything else this stupid," Simon said quickly. "Honest. I’d come clean now if I could think of anything so that you could fix them, for my own benefit. If I did something and didn’t tell you now, then something happened, the investigation would point straight at me and the next time I was thrown out of an airlock, I’d be wearing nothing but my fur."
"Yeah, there is that," Nathan agreed. He did not contradict Simon on the outcome, and Simon had not expected him to. The small white object in the distance, which Simon knew to be his rescuer, was not growing in size, but the chimpanzee knew that he would be rapidly approaching. Distances in space could be a funny thing to the eyes of earth-descent organisms; after a certain distance it was hard to tell if an object was moving closer or getting further away. Moments passed, and finally the sense of distance began to shrink.
"Athena says we’re in range, prepare for transfer," Nathan informed him.
A moment later, Simon finally stopped falling. That was the worst part of being thrown out of an airlock, the sense of vertigo and free-fall. Simon didn’t understand how the early astronauts had managed to spend months or years in space without the use of gravitic fields. And the poor early test animals, who’d had no understanding of what was being done to them …
Even today, humans were often unscrupulous in regards to the advancement of science. Risks taken, ethical concerns pushed aside, lives forever affected by the need for data sets and null points. To Simon, there was nothing more frightening than humans discussing "The Greater Good," but at least in this particular instance, the greater good had saved him.
He broke the seal of his helmet, and quickly vomited into the brig’s toilet, giving in to the urge which he had been fighting for twenty minutes. It was a disgustingly human action for him to worship the porcelain goddess – chimpanzees were not supposed to get motion sickness! - but he didn’t see any alternative. There certainly wasn’t any other receptacle into which he’d like to vomit, and the need wasn’t going to be denied any further.
Once he recovered, he studied the cell for a moment. Eight by nine, with a human looking bed rather than the comfortable sling-hammock that Simon would have preferred. A multi-species commode, a sink and mirror which he could use to groom himself. And nothing else.
"Athena, request communication connection with Nathan Sawyer," Simon tried.
"Captain Nathan Sawyer," the AI’s clinical voice corrected him. Simon winced at the rebuke, because it was a rebuke.
"Request communication connection with Captain Nathan Sawyer. Message as follows; ‘I’m sorry. Tell me what you need from me and I’ll do my best.’ I accept any and all incoming communication requests from Captain Sawyer or any other crew members of the Theseus."
"Message placed in Captain Sawyer’s inbox. Reply from Captain Sawyer as follows: ‘Find the fucking embryos. We’re not leaving a single one of those behind.’ End message, two way communication not approved."
Simon winced, but was not surprised. Quickly, he doffed his vacuum suit, setting it in one corner and changing into the simple jumpsuit provided for him from one of the Brig’s drawers. It was comfortable, but clearly displayed his new status as prisoner awaiting justice.
"Athena, request computer terminal protocols be transferred from my rooms and work station to current location," he tried.
"Request acknowledged. Permissions of user ‘Simon’ severely limited. Monitoring and infiltration of Jurassian assets approved. All operation and monitoring privileges of Theseus equipment or crew has been revoked. Message from Captain Sawyer as follows: ‘You get the grounded-script-kiddie treatment until further notice. If you need superuser privileges, you need to ask nicely.’"
Simon facepalmed in frustration, wondering if Nathan realized just how severe of a headache the young man was creating for the both of them ! He’d said earlier that the Horthian computer assets were laughably insecure, and they were. But he needed the Theseus in order to keep his intrusions secret.
Well, it didn’t matter. He had what he’d wanted, what he needed. A chance of redemption, however unlikely. And if he needed to blow up Nathan’s inbox with SUDO commands for a few hours to get some of his privileges restored, then he would do just that.
Simon took a drink from the brig’s faucet, and then he got to work.
~~~~~~~~~
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It was strange, feeling the turbulence as the shuttle craft entered the atmosphere. Doing so was entirely unnecessary; they had a PMT beacon on board and could have simply transferred the ship to one of the existing beacons on the surface, of which there were now hundreds. But Nathan felt that it was important for the Horthians to be able to track this particular shuttle, designated ‘the captain’s yacht,’ from the moment it undocked from it’s carrier until it was surrendered into Jon’s control.
It was the last piece of human technology that Jon Cassonova would ever be given, after all. It possessed a hydroponics bay to provide him with his basic sustenance, and an independent mode of transportation, although only at sub-light speeds for intra-atmosphere and intra-system purposes. It contained two spare bodies, one of which Jon would be swapping into, the other of which was ‘just in case’ he needed it at some point, because he wouldn’t be able to request another one. Not one that would arrive within his remaining lifespan.
All of the tech, aside from the PMT beacon, was approved to be left behind. Everything was human built, but built to the standards of the known technology within the conflict zone. Even the computer system was built based upon Jurassian technology, although it had a few nuggets of human programming hidden within it.
Lucy wondered why she was even there, riding the clanky death trap. The landing was automated; she would only need to pilot the ship in case of an emergency. And even then, she might have been better off letting the computer handle it. Not the onboard computer, but Athena; the ship retained a connection to her and would continue to do so until Jon’s body-swap was complete and the PMT relay beacon was burnt out. After that … if Jon planned on piloting this thing, Lucy hoped that he had trained in how to use it. It felt ancient to her as it shuttered through re-entry.
She knew it wouldn’t happen, and yet she allowed herself to imagine a flaw in the atmospheric shielding failing, causing the ship to break apart and killing her. It was foolish, even if that happened the PMT would activate and save her life, but the gorilla mind is a strange thing sometimes.
Her escorts arrived right on schedule; six high-speed intra-atmosphere defense crafts fell into formation around her to guide her to their destination. She was unconcerned; the weapons they possessed were dangerous to the yacht, but she believed that Horthus was far too interested in getting his hands on a human shuttle craft, even one built to standards that were outdated by five centuries, that none of them would dare even power up their targeting software.
The mission was simple; retrieve Jon’s Combat chassis, replacing it with an approved civilian one, and then PMT out. Lucy didn’t even see why she had to come down to the surface in the first place, although she hadn’t questioned the order. Not when she’d seen Nathan’s expression as he’d issued it. If she wasn’t safely inside the shuttle, there was a good chance she would have been enjoying some time on an unscheduled space walk, like the kind she’d organized for Simon.
She had no regrets. She’d achieved the optimal outcome; Simon had faced his worst fear, and Nathan was forced to look at his decisions in their true perspective. Now that Simon knew that Nathan wouldn’t actually execute him – not until the mission was complete at least – he could focus on doing his job and redeeming himself. And Nathan had been forced to acknowledge the same. Simon had no easy replacement; he was one of few experts into both Deathsworn and Aurealian computers who was available and willing to participate in this mission. Even if Simon could be replaced on the Theseus eventually , they did not have time to look until the current mission was completed, one way or the other.
Which meant that both Simon and Nathan had to get over their bullshit and work together. Unfortunately Nathan’s unexpected – to them – promotion complicated things. It shouldn’t have, Jon would have spaced Simon for the stupid stunt he’d pulled as well. Then Nathan would have reached out while Simon was in the brig, and hopefully they would be able to work with each other afterward. That was how Lucy saw things going, at least, and she was Gorilla sapiens .
Unfortunately, Nathan’s promotion put him in charge of deciding Simon’s punishment. That meant that there was no way for him to reach out to forgive or attempt to lessen whatever Simon’s stupidity had earned him by Jon’s lax standard prior to his ‘retirement.’ That was why Lucy had stepped in why and how she had.
Execution was the worst punishment Simon could face for his crime, and throwing someone out of the airlock was the most common method of execution in most militaries. So Lucy had thrown Simon out of the airlock and forced Nathan to retrieve him, personally, without PMT. Spacing the little monkey was no big deal, her authority allowed her a wide range of corporal punishment options that she could have authorized that were far worse, objectively, than simply throwing him out of an airlock in a vacuum suit. The hard part had been forcing Nathan to go after the little cretin himself; there was no point in the exercise if the new captain of the Theseus could simply recall Simon by issuing Athena a verbal command to confine the offender to the brig.
Thus, she had somewhat gone against the established protocol for using EVA’s as punishment by not including a PMT relay in Simon’s gear. It was a risk, but not very much of one. Not unless the monkey had somehow gotten on a re-entry vector to burn up in the planet below, but Lucy had purposefully selected an airlock with a low probability of kicking him out with such a vector.
"Human shuttlecraft, surrender control of your landing software to the local flight control tower," came a demand over the radio. Lucy simply acknowledged the order, flipping the controls to allow the Horthians to believe they controlled the vessel without actually surrendering anything. The PMT relay remained ready to pop her out of there at a millisecond’s notice, with or without her input.
"Horthian control tower, you have control," she lied. "Take me in."
The escorts were decidedly alien in design, and aerodynamics were the same everywhere, making the jet crafts look both fake and real at the same time. They were certainly better than some of the ‘bricks with jet engines strapped to them’ that had been early human attempts at weaponizing aircraft.
In fact, the Horthian control tower proved to be perfectly up to the task of bringing her to her destination, and neither Lucy nor Athena deviated from their remote control. Jon was waiting for her on the tarmac, along with a squad of Horthian Deathsworn armed and armored to the teeth. Lucy herself was also armed, she had prepared under the assumption that her visit would be cordial while preparing for the eventuality that it was not.
Five of the Deathsworn barged onto the shuttle immediately and began searching it, using handheld devices looking for … Lucy didn’t know what they were looking for. One of the devices came too close to her own armor and it was destroyed, she tried not to feel smug as the UEOSC’s countermeasures proved their effectivity.
"Lucy, I was hoping to see you again. Thank you for bringing me a change of clothes and the rest of my care package," Jon said after he was allowed on board.
"How are they treating you? It’s not too late to change your mind, there would be nothing lost but your pride," she reminded him.
"My pride, and the trust that I am working to build here," he argued. "It’s working, Lucy . My plan is working! Horthus does not trust me, but he and his generals are still listening to me, seeking my advice! I’m even teaching them to play go, can you believe that? Some of them are quite good, even, or they will be soon."
"You and that dammed game of yours," she grumbled. Mostly because she had never managed to beat him with less than a twelve stone handicap. "Well, Nathan will never forgive you for springing it on him like you did."
"He would have refused outright if I’d given him any choice in the matter," Jon argued. "You know he would have. That’s why it was only those of us I could trust not to warn him who knew in advance."
"The Rodentia corp chain of command should have been on that list, sir," she informed him reproachfully. "There were casualties that might have been avoided if they had been, sir."
"Oh?" Jon was silent for a moment. He was still for a moment. "Please inform Lewis and the others that I apologize for my lapse in judgment and meant no disrespect. It is a difficult line to cross in what to tell them and what not to sometimes, due to no fault of their own. They are what we made them, and we love them for it. How is the rest of the Theseus taking the events of yesterday? They clearly suffered a very serious military loss, one of the first the UEOSC has suffered in centuries. Has it affected morale?"
"Morale is certainly affected, sir. We’ve had to send a unit for resupply, sir. We had in excess of one hundred thousand units that we could not properly handle due to the outcome of events yesterday, sir. The Rodentia corps is particularly affected, sir. They want to know what else they can do to help the song singers, as they call the Aurealians."
"So many? Well, Nathan will handle it. I have complete faith in him," Jon said resolutely.
"After yesterday, some of us have finally figured out why, sir," she admitted. "Now let’s say we get you changed into something that won’t explode if the Horthians bring a scanner which your body can’t just fry like those little toys too close to it."
"Yes, you’re right. It will be strange, having non-combat sensory feedback once again. I was training in this body for so long that it has become second nature; I am almost worried about what will happen when its capabilities are taken away from me."
"You can still back out," she reminded him again.
"No, Lucy, I cannot. I will not. The Horthians are providing me with an opportunity here which is too valuable to squander. They are treating me humanely, Lucy. Even if that changes once my body is no longer one of the most dangerous weapons on this planet, I chose to give my life to build the foundation of a bridge between our peoples from the moment I was informed of the Elizabeth. And I do not believe it will change. I will make myself useful to Horthus, and he is too wise of a leader to discard a useful tool. I can work with him, Lucy, I know this already. I just need to make him see the wisdom of doing so, of bringing his people into the UEOSC, of setting aside the conflict which embroils this section of space. I do not expect to see the end of this terrible war, but I will settle for being one part of the beginning of the end."
"As you say, sir." She had never approved of this crazy plan of his to begin with, but he seemed to have a life about him that he had been lacking for decades as he moved into the automated creche which would remove his organic components from the combat prosthetics and place them inside their new host.
She could never watch this process without shivering. The man had allowed himself to be cut down to little more than his nervous system. Even his heart, lungs, and digestive systems had been replaced by synthetic replacements. As a result, Jon Cassonova was little more than a brain, spine, and a bunch of nerve fibers folded in on themselves inside of an artificial encasement that kept them as safe as possible and fed him a constant circulating supply of artificial cerebral spinal fluid.
It wasn’t that the process was long or difficult that troubled her. His old body would simply power down and disconnect from the encasement of his organic brain, which would then be lifted out and placed in its new body. It took less than five minutes.
Five minutes in which Jon was in perfect darkness, perfect silence. In which he had no sensory input at all. Only five minutes, but a sensory deprivation so deep and profound that the uninitiated could not even begin to comprehend the sort of effects it might have on a person. Jon had never once complained or requested anesthetics when he switched from one body to another.
And then the new body was booting up and going through diagnostics. Jon was looking at his new hand curiously. Many prosthetic bodies were styled after their occupant’s biological body before it was taken from them, usually infirmity, age, or illness where simply living in a prosthetic was deemed to be the greatest improvement to their quality of life. Jon had made the switch entirely to remain qualified for participation in combat, a decision he had made eighty years ago, subjectively, for a single battle in which he had surrendered.
And he had never stopped training for it.
This body was not Jon’s old one. It was a simple stock model, as pleasing to look at as a store’s mannequin, and just as inhuman as well. Then the holographics kicked on, and he was himself again.
"So different," the old man muttered. "So much feedback missing, and yet what is there is more … more realistic. Like I’m back in the flesh. I think I even feel my heart beating, as absurd as that is. I haven’t had a heart in thirty years."
"I should get going, sir," Lucy commented. "I’ll take care of disposing of your old body properly. The shuttle craft should have everything you need to live out the remainder of your natural life; the hydroponic’s bay produces everything needed to keep your organics alive indefinitely. You’ll just need to feed it filtered water now and then, and … you know this already."
"But it’s hard to say goodbye to an old friend you will likely never see again," Jon agreed. And they embraced. "Come, I will take my guards and return to my new lodgings. You may engage your stealth and bring the dangerous body to wherever Nathan has hidden the craft designed to return it to orbit. Horthus has promised not to pursue, he simply wishes to remove as much antimatter from the surface of his precious world as he possibly can, even if that means agreeing not to pry into human secrets."
"Fare thee well, Jon Cassonova," Lucy said as the man walked off of the shuttle. Reluctantly, his deathsworn guards joined him. "Godspeed."
"Godspeed, Lucy Gorilla," he replied, his holographic smile as genuine as he could make it as he looked back at her one last time over his shoulder. "And godspeed to the Theseus in the coming days. I pray that I survive to help Horthus rebuild in the aftermath of the coming battle."
Once the guards were gone, Lucy engaged her active camouflage, then quickly swept the shuttle for listening or recording devices. She found none. Satisfied, she initiated the PMT recall.