Arcturus

Arcturus sat on his bunk in his quarters, turning the Captain’s Log in his thick, clawed hands.

They had few books on board the Old Bug; a half a dozen hard copies of essential manuals, a few more kept as curiosities. Most of them were for emergencies. In a disaster, if all the computers on board failed, a few crew members would still have the simulation training needed to run everything manually. If in addition, something happened to the key crew, the manuals held instructions on how to keep the ship together long enough for help to arrive. Those books were all well made and carefully crafted. Their pages were all the same size, and bound tightly together. Each one had a neat, detailed cover and title in clear lettering.

The one he held looked like their sad, inbred cousin. He'd found it when he moved into his father's old quarters, half hidden beneath the padding of his bunk. His father had mentioned the Captain’s Log to him at times, but he’d never shown it to him. He’d assumed it was garbage at first; a huge bundle of flimsy plastic sheets sandwiched between two hard, thick layers of acrylic. Metal rings bound the pages; crude, uneven things that looked as though someone had bent them into place by hand. The whole thing smelled musty, and some of the first plastic sheets were yellow and cracking. Arcturus had never seen plastic do that before.

A stylus marked the last page to hold any writing. He’d recognized his father's hand by its blocky, awkward letters. Arcturus couldn't have done much better; why write when you could dictate to the computer? Why would his father have bothered with the effort?

Leafing back through the pages, he’d discovered that his father’s writing stopped after a scant few pages. The hand had changed, and his eyes had widened at the sight of his grandfather’s name. As he’d read, he’d heard the sound of the wizened old captain’s gravelly voice, echoing from the pages.

There had been more. Dozens of entries, hundreds. Some opened and closed with names he’d vaguely recognized from the ship’s logs. Others had been foreign, and unknown to him. In mounting horror he'd scrambled through the pages. Some wrote no more than their names and the dates they had served, others filled page after page with their clumsy script. All echoed the same sentiments.

Hold the course. Do your duty. Keep working. Build up the Funds.

Do not trust the Efreet. They lie. Find a way out, if you can.

Their frustration had risen off the pages, raw and palpable. He’d drunk up their worry, their determination, and their fear. This was where they had poured those feelings out, locking them out of sight. The Captain’s Log was a safe place to vent thoughts that they dared not share with anyone else. It was a bitter draft, but he’d downed it eagerly. He'd have given anything to have his father back in that moment, and the Log filled some of that longing. It was even better, in some ways. He had his grandfather, and great-grandfather, and ancestors he'd thought lost to memory. If the words they had for him were hard, then so be it; he’d determined, in his first hours as Captain, to listen.

After what must have been hours of reading, he hit a point where he found that he couldn't read the words at all. The writing was smooth and dexterous, the characters Efreet standard, but the words were nonsensical. He’d tried to sound them out, and had found them awkward nonsense on his tongue. A few more pages back, and even the familiar characters vanished, giving way to symbols he had never seen before, complex and confounding. It had taken him longer than it should have to realize, with a burst of pain from his implant, that they must be his people’s language, their own writing.

The Efreet told us we’d never had such a thing, he’d thought, tracing the symbols with a single dull claw. But the Efreet lie, don’t they? The Log had made that painfully clear.

Now, years later, he held the Captain’s Log closed in his lap, his head bowed. I did what you told me, he thought, stroking the top cover. He'd found a way out, as those long dead, dusty voices had urged. Maybe. A chance, at least. He thought he should feel something. Excitement, or satisfaction.

Mostly he just hurt. Pain warred for his attention with a deep worry in the pit of his gut. In the aftermath of the Strickening, a blistering headache roared in his skull. Every single scale of his body ached with the leftover fever. Any sensible Torellan would have stayed in bed to sleep off the effects, and Vorona had told him as much.

Three days had passed since he’d smashed the transmitter. A few of those who had been present were up and moving, resting in their cabins. The worst off lingered in the sick bay. Vorona had discharged Reel early to free up the bed she'd been using. She’d ordered the young engineer to stick to light duty on the bridge for a few more days.

Arcturus could not allow himself to stay down, and there was no such thing as light duty for a captain. Necessity and sheer willpower kept him on his feet, trudging through his duties. A few of his senior crew followed his lead, fighting through the pain. He'd have wept with gratitude for their efforts, but it would have hurt too much. It had been the worst Strickening any of them could remember.

Tucking the book out of sight, he eased himself to his feet. It made his head pound, but he’d found that when he gained his feet, he could stand it. Palming open the door, he made his way down the corridor towards the bridge, keeping one hand on the wall as he went. The smooth metal was chilly under his hand, and he stole a moment to lean against it, letting it cool some of the heat of the fever before pressing on.

When he arrived on the bridge, Yerry sat slumped in her seat at her console, alone. She looked up at him as he made his way over to her. Her scales had an unhealthy gray pallor that almost matched her coveralls, and her eyes were pinched. Glancing from her to the screen, Arcturus frowned. Rather than its usual bright backlit glow, the display was so dim that he couldn't make out what was on it. Yerry followed his gaze and chuckled.

“It helps with the headache. See?” She slid one dull claw along the rightmost edge of the screen, brightening it to its usual glare. Pain immediately flared behind Arcturus’ eyes, forcing him to turn his head aside. Yerry had her eyes closed, a slight smile on her mouth.

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He knuckled at his temple, his head pounding anew. “Was that necessary?”

“Think of it as payback for a week of feeling like I’m using my head to crack asteroids.” She said, dimming the console again.

“It’s only been three days.”

“And it will last at least a week, if I’m any judge.” She clicked her teeth in certainty, and winced.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to massage his own pain away. “It will go faster if you rest properly.”

She chuckled, and her voice softened. “And miss any of this?” She gestured to the screen. “Not a chance.”

“The translations?” He asked, the pit in his stomach lightening a little. “That’s welcome news.”

She nodded. “You were right; the computers have a translation program. I’d never looked at it before.”

“It’s part of the first contact protocols.” He said absently, looking at the screen. “But it’s meant to be used with a primitive native face to face. I’ve never heard of anyone actually using it. How’s it working?”

“Slowly.” She admitted. “I keep having to reboot the program…Do you have any idea how many languages there are down there?”

He blinked. “More than one, I take it?” In truth, that hadn’t even occurred to him as a possibility.

Yerry’s laugh was tinged with bitterness. “Oh yes. There are probably a good dozen that dominate the radio transmissions, and I’ve got the computer dedicating most of its processing power to those. But it’s identified…” She checked a readout on the screen, squinting. “...About 40 so far, with more every hour.”

Arcturus stood stunned. Forty different languages, and still counting? How would they ever make sense of it all? The worry churned in his gut. “Is there any possibility that what we’re seeing is codes? Diverse methods of encryption?”

“No chance at all, I’m afraid. Here,” she said, bringing up yet another window on the screen “is a count of how many kinds of encryption the computer has identified so far. That’s part of why it keeps locking up. It tries to treat the encryptions as languages.”

He stared at the ludicrous number, struggling to keep the strain out of his voice. “Well. When will we have working translations going?”

She shrugged. “For the most common languages? Maybe as early as tonight.”

“Good,” he said, trailing off. “That’s good…”

She looked up at him, her head tilted to one side. “Something on your mind, Captain?”

He rocked his head from side to side, uncertain how to begin. “Do you ever think about where we’d be if the Efreet had never discovered us?”

Her expression turned wary. “Still grubbing in the mud of whatever backwater planet they pulled us from. You saw the same videos in training that I did.”

“But we only saw what the Efreet showed us.” He said carefully. “What if…What if they didn’t show us everything?”

“Blast it Arcturus, are you trying to prolong this headache?” She reached back and touched her implant, wincing. His own buzzed to life in the same moment, painful where it should have been only annoying.

“We are a Low Race.” Yerry ground out, her eyes half closed as she started the familiar mantra. “Without the Efreet, the implants, and their training we would be nothing.”

“We are a Low Race.” He agreed, echoing the creed back to her. The words acted to quiet the rattling sensation in his head. “Without the implants, we would be nothing.” He left the bit about the Efreet and their training out, a tiny act of rebellion. Even so, the words left a foul taste on his tongue.

Yerry noticed. “You think that’s all we need then?” She asked cautiously.

He shrugged. “Why not? We have proof on board the ship that we don’t need the training.” His implant buzzed angrily at the words, but he ignored it.

She eyed him doubtfully. “I don’t know if I’d go so far as proof. Reel can use the implant, yes, and she’s come far. But how would we learn without the simulation systems?”

Did she mean the words, or was she trying to stave off another potential Strickening? Could they learn without the simulations? He hadn’t considered the question before, and it made his head hurt, even without the implant buzzing.

“It won’t matter, once we have unfettered implants.” He said, abandoning that line of thought. At least, he hoped so. He didn’t like to think of the things the Efreet had shown them in training. Pictures of Torellans on a strange world, digging in the banks of a river, covered in mud. Videos of dilapidated huts made of plants and stones.

He could still hear the words of his trainer, pointing at pictures of a bisected Torellan skull. “Your brains,” she had said, her tone bored, “Are half the size of an Efreet brain by volume. Furthermore, you lack the cranial features that we associate with higher level analysis, and for your protection the implants warn you away from certain thought paths. The implants provide storage to augment memory,” she’d said, prodding at one small, sad shrunken lobe of the brain. The image had responded, squishing under her fingers. “This makes up for your own lack of mental capacity. Once your debt is paid, you will be granted more powerful implants that will augment your capabilities. You will then function as a Middle Race…”

He tore his mind away from the memory, bringing himself back to the moment. The image of the head, cut neatly down the middle, was burned forever in his mind. The pitiful brain didn’t even fill the cranial cavity, an atrophied and shrunken thing.

Yerry was still looking at him, her face growing worried. He forced a heartiness he did not feel into his words. “Once we have higher level implants, we’ll be able to make our own way in the galaxy,” he repeated. “Let me know once you start getting something usable from the translations.”

“But Captain…” Yerry said, her voice uneasy. She glanced around; there was no one else on the bridge, but she still dropped her voice to a near whisper. “What will you do then?” She reached out and grabbed his arm. “What’s the next move?”

He hadn’t the faintest idea. “I have some ideas,” he said, pitching his voice to carry, confident and strong, “but it will depend on what the translations show us. Ping me over the Link the moment you start getting something usable.” He patted her hand awkwardly, before gesturing to the empty seat next to her. “Where’s Reel? She’s supposed to be on light bridge duty today.” The screen at that station glowed brighter than the one at Yerry’s. It was scrolling slowly through diagnostic reports of the ship’s power systems.

Yerry grimaced, letting her hand fall. “She was here for a while, but she said she needed to go check something…She didn’t say what, but that was about an hour ago. Do you want me to ping her?”

An hour ago? What takes an hour to check? Nothing, he concluded, a frown creasing his face. “No,” Arcturus huffed, turning towards the corridor he’d just come from. “I think I know where she is. Thank you, Yerry.” He hoped he was wrong; he didn’t feel up to yelling today.