Inner Life 4: Language

After mastering sight, I put all my effort into figuring out the language systems in my nervous system. This, as it turned out, was a fantastic move. The crew used sound to share information constantly.

“Okay, rocks and stars,” said Ricky Danger to everyone one morning in the mess, “we’re about thirty days out from pickup, and it’s time to make some decisions.”

“What decisions?” The Gun asked. “We secured the artefact. We hand it over, debt’s paid, we get the hell out of this system before another crime boss finds some way to trap us.”

“There’s crime bosses in every system,” my body pointed out.

“Then we get the hell out of this system and we all smarten the fuck up in the next one.”

“So, um,” Spanner Ann cut in, “are we just going to ignore the part where we discovered aliens?”

“Yep,” The Gun said.

“They do seem kind of important, is all.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they? Not our mine, not our metal, the strength of the struts isn’t our problem. They’re the Empire’s problem, and us getting involved isn’t going to help anyone, certainly not us.”

“So we’re not even going to warn them? Gun, you saw that ship. That was a fully stocked Penetrator, we spent weeks trying to figure out how to get in, and those bugs had completely gutted it! We have to warn someone!”

“All the evidence suggests,” June said, “that the crew brought them aboard their ship and clearly didn’t secure them properly. A stressed tiger would do the same thing. It certainly doesn’t indicate that we’re facing an alien invasion of any kind. I’m sure the next Penetrator the Empire sends will learn from the previous one’s catastrophic mistakes when taking samples.”

“It does feel kind of unfair,” Ricky Danger said, “that we’re the only living witness to real actual aliens, and we’re not going to get any credit for the discovery.”

“We don’t want it,” June said. “We don’t want that kind of heat on us. Do I need to list just how many crimes we are in the middle of committing right now?”

“Yeah, yeah; I know.”

“I also doubt we’re the only witnesses,” the Nav said, staring at the plastic table in front of it. “The Penetrator we boarded had containment facilities for live samples. So they were probably sent to get live samples.”

“The Empire already knows about the aliens,” Ricky said. “Fuck.”

“Do they know that they can do the thing they did to Trigger?” Spanner Ann asked. “And tried to do to me?”

“We’d all better hope not,” Earthman said, “or none of us will ever see the outside of a detention facility again.”

Pots did a sort of snort thing with its nose. “With our rap sheet, if we’re caught, we won’t anyway.”

“You misunderstand me,” Earthman said. “This whole mission was predicated on the idea that our theft would be invisible, at least in the short term. We expected to run into a fully equipped Penetrator, get in, get the artefact and get out, and there’s no reason that anybody would notice the replacement for years; plenty of time to get far, far away. But if the Empire knows that these aliens can infect and control people, we’re in a much more serious situation. Think of what could happen if infected people got out into the Empire populace. This is no longer a matter of theft, it’s a matter of disease control. The instant that Penetrator went down, it became a potential infection source, and absolutely anybody coming in from that part of space is going to be inspected very, very thoroughly. The surrounding wormhole gates might even be closed down entirely; at the very least, they’re not letting us through without a full history of our activities. The instant they find out we’ve boarded that ship, it wouldn’t matter if we were the only traders in the universe with a completely clean and innocent record; we’re major infection risks. If they know what those aliens can do, they’ll never let us have physical contact with another human again.”

“But you said we’re safe,” Spanner Ann said. “You said that with the incubation period that Trigger demonstrated, anyone else who’s been infected would’ve developed signs a long time ago.”

“That’s my belief, yes,” Earthman said. “But this is an entirely new, completely alien species. We don’t actually know anything. There might be other forms of infection, or indeed other infective agents. There’s absolutely no way the the Empire will take the risk so that a handful of random star gunners can keep living their lives. People have vanished over far smaller risks.”

“The question’s immaterial, since even if Earthman’s wrong and they would let us go after deciding we weren’t infected, they wouldn’t get that far,” June said, “because they’d already be imprisoning us for the aforementioned extensive crimes, which they would absolutely discover when looking into us. The mere fact that they’ll be looking so hard is game over.”

“So we need to fake all our records,” the Nav said.

“Unless you’ve got some way to sneak through a wormhole gate or want to spend the rest of your life here, yeah. Can you do it?”

“Well… maybe. Depends how hard they look.”

“Do your best,” Ricky Danger said. “We’ll look into other plans. Why did we, of all people, fall into a mess like this?”

“Because we’re taking shady jobs from The Roach?” Spanner Ann suggested. “And because you’re constantly looking for unseen frontiers or whatever? If we go looking for weird shit and do the bidding of the guy who keeps doing weird shit, then at some point there’s probably going to be weird shit.”

“Point taken,” Ricky said.

“I hate this,” Spanner Ann said. “I hate this so much.”

“We all do, Spanner.” Ricky squeezed its shoulder with one hand. “Can you get rid of the physical evidence on the docking pod? I have no doubt that anyone looking too closely will want to know where all those melted externals came from.”

“That pod’s about ready for decommission anyway. I say we sell the scrap and be done with it.”

“Great, do that at the next port.”

“That’ll put us below spec for pods,” June warned, “and we can’t afford a new one until after the handoff.”

“Then we pool what we have and pick up something a little less junky that has a few more landings in it to keep us on spec for the inspectors, and upgrade after we meet with The Roach. Earthman, those aliens.”

“Rick, no.”

“You know we have to.”

“Rick! They’re so scientifically fascinating!”

“Will the inside of a quarantine cell be fascinating? For the rest of your life?”

Earthman sighed. “I’ll incinerate them before we make port. Okay?”

“See that you do. Every last piece. Great talk, everyone! Now, let’s go out there and do our best not to die or be imprisoned!”

The crew cheered, and went their separate ways.

So, there were more threats around than just the crew. This Empire that might know more about my people; this Roach that we were temporarily compelled to work for. But if I understood the conversation correctly, then if we got the artefact (whatever that was) to Roach, we could go somewhere new, where my people probably weren’t known. So, what did this do to my timeline? Taking over the crew was still high priority, but if the Empire might be able to detect people then the less of us that were on the ship, the better. I absolutely had to stay as unobtrusive as possible until we got through whatever inspection the crew were worried about.

It was a waste of an opportunity, really. Earthman seemed convinced that there were no more of us on the ship, so this would be a great time to mature and start taking people. But that wouldn’t help if it got us all caught by this Empire.

So, more waiting and learning. I had to trust the crew to get us safely to the Roach.

“Marge?”

Spanner Ann was behind me. My body turned to meet it.

“What’s up, kid?”

“Do you think we’ll end up in prison?”

My body laughed, but I couldn’t feel any corresponding mood lift in it. “You know the game plan. If we’re caught, we blame the Captain and June for everything. They’ll still pin things on most of us, but you youngsters should be fine; Sinner will – ”

My body stopped talking. Ann looked away.

“I don’t know if I can do his job,” it said quietly. “Amon always knew everything. He would’ve been able to refurbish the pod and leave no trace of anything suspicious. He would’ve got the damage just right so it didn’t look recently cleaned or like it had been cooked on the Penetrator. We wouldn’t need to junk it with him.”

“Like you said, it’s about time to junk it anyway, right?” my body said.

“He would’ve been able to get a few more landings out of it.”

“We’re going to upgrade the pods after the Roach pays us anyway. It’s not like switching out our junker for a slightly better junker in the meantime costs us much. Sinner refurbishing it probably would’ve cost the same.”

“Exchanging the pod will still look suspicious at the checkpoint, though! What if they look us over, and they see that we exchanged the pods, and decide it means we’re trying to hide where we’ve been so maybe we went to – ”

“Then we tell them exactly what we decided in the meeting. That the old pod was junk and needed replacing, and we’re on fumes, so we replaced it with what we could to meet safety spec. Sinner probably would’ve recommended doing this anyway.” My body put its hands on Spanner Ann’s shoulders and leaned down to look directly into its eyes. “Annie. Trust me. If anyone’s looking close enough to find exchanging a landing pod right now to be suspicious timing, they’re looking close enough to have already caught us in ten thousand other ways. We’re already fucked at that point. Your suggestion was good and the pod will be fine.”

Spanner Ann started giggling. “Wow, so we’re already fucked. That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

My body laughed again, and soon enough both were laughing helplessly in the hallway. This time, the laughter did reduce my body’s stress, and it couldn’t seem to stop, leaning against the wall and gasping for air. It took several minutes for the laughter to quiet down.

“Do you miss Trigger?” Spanner Ann asked.

My body sighed. “Well, I’m certainly not happy about having to shoot him. I spent years training him, and he was always a good arm to have at my side in a crisis. Until the crisis where he tried to stab you, I guess.”

“That wasn’t him,” Spanner Annie protested. “That was the thing in him. Earthman found all that nerve tissue in there, he said it took over his brain or something.”

“I know. Fucking terrifying. He would’ve rather died than do that to you, so I’m not sorry I shot him.”

“Do you miss him, though?”

“Yeah. Every day.”

My body remembered the shooting very well. When it slept, it replayed the sound and images from the incident, often with variations that never happened.

“Earthman’s holding up well, but I think he misses Scalpel, too.”

“Scalpel was the worst one, I think. It’s always hard to lose a kid.”

“They were twenty three.”

“When you get to my age, anyone under thirty five is a kid.”

“You’re not even old!”

“I know. I’m a normal adult age. And you’re a kid.”

Spanner Ann giggled.

“Losing three crewmates like that sucks,” my body said. “It’s awful and it’s always going to be awful. Sinner and Scalpel were the worst of it, because engineers and medical assistant aren’t supposed to die like that, especially medical assistants. That’s our job; Trigger and Shadow and me. It should’ve been me before trigger, and it should’ve been any of us before Sinner or Scalpel. That kid didn’t deserve to be ripped apart by a giant fucking bug, and neither did your mentor. I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault! I didn’t mean to imply that it – ”

“It was my responsibility, though. That’s why I’m paid the big bucks, kid; to put holes in things that try to rip my crewmates apart, and if that turns out to be impossible, to get ripped up in their place.”

“You’re paid the same as me.”

“Yeah, and you’re paid the big bucks to keep this ship up and running, and to make good engineering calls in meetings about stuff like replacing our junky landing pods. We all get paid the big bucks for different reasons.”

“We also don’t get paid big bucks.”

“We will all eventually be paid the big bucks for different reasons. Once we pull this ship back into the black. Finishing this Roach job will set us up, and then we can start looking forward to one day getting in a position where we’ll be paid the big bucks.

“He was proud of you, kid. You know it, I know it, we all know it. He was never shy about that. He was proud of how quickly you could learn and how dedicated you were and how much you could do. He taught you to hold this ship together without him, and he believed you could do it, and so do the rest of us. It’s hard to lose people, and I know you still need him – we all still need the people we lost. But never, ever believe that you need him for that reason. You’re a good engineer, both with and without him. And if we all turn out to be fucked, it won’t be because of anything you’ve done.”

“Do you think we’re fucked?”

“Nah.” My body grinned. “We’ve been fucked worse than this before, and the captain always pulls some wild bullshit at the last second. Don’t worry about it, kid. We’ll be fine.”