Emergency Call 2164

By Robin B. Devlin

The Interstellar Search and Rescue ship Florence Nightingale had already been a museum piece when Allius O’Dare bought her more than ten years ago. With a little love and care, she had retrofitted the ship from a simple freighter to a well-equipped ambulance ship. She ran her flesh hand along the control panel, typing in a code with her cybernetic hand. Data flashed across the view screen quicker than a non-augmented human eye could follow. Allius absently reached for her coffee mug and lifted it to her lips when she froze: there was a narrowband signal aimed seemingly at random. She took hold of the hand mic and spoke into it.

“Bridge to Ophelia, come here, I need you.” There was a garbled reply that sounded vaguely affirmative. Allius plugged herself directly into the ship’s navigation computer, her very brain becoming one with the Nightingale’s AI software. The infinite complexity of the human brain, augmented by the Nightingale’s navigation software, generated a precise course to the stricken vessel. Within seconds, calculations that would normally have taken hours processed in the blink of an augmented eye.

Ophelia appeared at the airlock leading to the bridge. She was wearing a ship-issue blue jumpsuit that fitted snugly against her lithe figure, with her shoulder-length curly brown hair tied back into a loose ponytail.

“Problem?” she asked curtly.

“A brand-new search and rescue operation, call number two-one-six-four,” replied Allius. “I wanted you to have a look, see if you had any opinions.”

“Let’s see,” said Ophelia thoughtfully as she pulled an old-fashioned pair of spectacles out of the breast pocket of her jumpsuit. Allius rolled her eyes, the synthetic one making the smallest of whirring noises.

“I can’t believe you can still get those things; they must be antiques.” Ophelia smiled.

“Hey, if it was good enough for Ben Franklin, it’s good enough for me,” she said, scrolling through the readouts. “Besides,” she flirted, “I thought you liked the green.”

“Oh, I do,” demurred the captain softly.

“These readouts are off,” said Ophelia, frowning at the monitor screen. “It’s an SOS for sure, but it looks to have been sent manually. Look at the message header: where the ship’s AI information should be, it’s blank.” The captain ran a hand through her short blond hair.

“Their insurance details check out,” she said decisively. “Mr Smith!”

A few moments later, there was the tall, careworn figure of their pilot, Jonah Smith. He was wiping oil from his fingers on to an already oil-soaked rag.

“Aye, Captain,” he said, pocketing the oily rag.

“Set a course for the Stark System,” ordered Allius.

“Rescue, recovery, retrieval or salvage?” asked the pilot amiably.

“Rescue. Their escape pods have been jettisoned, but there were no lifeforms aboard. Sounds like a short in the mainframe,” said Allius.

Jonah jumped into the pilot’s seat and started to flick switches. He picked up the hand mic and spoke into it.

“This is your pilot speaking. Please be advised we will shortly be arriving in nowhere, the ass crack of nowhere, to be precise. Once there, our glorious leader will brief us fully.” He paused and added, “Godspeed.”

Ophelia playfully slapped him round the head with a rolled-up magazine.

“One of these days, O’Dare is going to knock that bullshit attitude right out of you, Smitty,” she said.

“Gives me something to look forward to, I suppose,” said Jonah, finishing off the calculations that would open a small wormhole in the local system and deposit them in the Stark System.

“Hang on to your wage packets,” called out Smitty as he steered the ship into the wormhole.

Travelling by hyperspace was not instantaneous. Instead, hyperspace opened a corridor between your current position and your destination. It took skill and concentration to pilot through a wormhole, and Smitty was one of the best pilots in Sector Twelve-One. The trick, he would say, was not to get hypnotised by the splashes of colour that represented star systems they were passing through.

Although he would never admit to it, it always reminded him of when he took acid when he was younger. The entire Florence Nightingale hummed with the energy of the Hawking engines maintaining the wormhole. Smitty reached for the hand mic and, never taking his eyes off the hypnotic patterns of hyperspace or the readout screens, spoke into the mic.

“We’re two hours from the Stark System. Make yourselves comfortable.”

The ISS Ridley hung in the dead space between the red giant Stark and the second planet in its system. There was no visible damage, but something about it seemed … off, as if it were coiled and ready to pounce. Smitty brought the Nightingale to a dead stop a few hundred miles from the stricken ship, which in astronomical terms was right on its doorstep. Jonah pushed back in his battered pilot’s chair and took a long drag on his e-cigarette.

“All yours, Captain,” he said, rolling his head around to ease the crick in his neck and blowing out a plume of vapour.

“Thank you, Mr Smith,” said Allius. She sat down in the captain’s chair in the centre of the bridge and tried to hail the lifeless ship.

“Ridley, this is the interstellar ship Florence Nightingale responding to your SOS.” There was no reply, just static. She tried again, signalling for Terri Clay, the ship’s technician and general factotum, to run a remote diagnostic on the Ridley.

“There are several life signs aboard,” she reported, “but they’re all concentrated around the medical bay.” Clicking through the interface, she listed the vital systems. “They have gravity, air, power — the works — but it’s just sitting there.”

The captain nodded.

“Well, we’re not going to find out anything else from out here, are we? Take us in to dock, Mr Smith.”

“Aye, Captain,” said the pilot. The bulky form of the Nightingale manoeuvred with surprising grace next to the sleeker, newer Ridley, making contact with the airlock on the first pass. There was a clanging noise as the airlocks locked together with a hard seal.

The crew of the Florence Nightingale sat in their stations on the bridge. Ophelia had changed into her green scrubs and carried her medical kit. Looking like a large cool box, it contained all of the equipment to carry out almost any medical procedure. O’Dare got to her feet.

“All we know about this call-out,” she said, “is that the ship’s crew sent out the call manually and that there has to be a problem with the shipboard AI since we can’t make contact. Clay, you and Smitty will go together. Make your way to the mainframe and try to get it restarted. Maybe there will be wounded along the way, so take a med pack each.” Terri put a friendly hand on Jonah’s shoulder.

“Looks like you’re stuck with me.” She smiled.

“Oh, I’d love to get stuck into you,” replied Smitty, playing with his e-cigarette.

“Down, boy,” said Terri, half scornfully and half playfully.

“Flynn, you’re with me,” said Allius.

“Now there’s a surprise,” whispered Smitty to Terri, who kept her poker face but nodded almost imperceptibly. Allius went on:

“Just so we’re all clear, we have no idea what to expect in there. Could be just a downed transmitter, or it could be marauders who hit the ship and stripped it clean.”

“’Ralders don’t leave survivors,” said Smitty.

“Whatever it was, it’s down to us to find out, patch up the ship and any surviving crew,” said Allius.

The crew of the Nightingale made their way through the airlock and onto the Ridley. On the captain’s orders they were wearing their bulky vac suits. Allius led the way in, holding out a portable scanner as she went, her footsteps echoing eerily off the stricken freighter’s bulkheads. No one wanted to be the first to admit it, but there was an indefinable wrongness about the ship, as if they were standing at the mouth of some ancient leviathan. Allius was the first to pull herself together.

“Come on,” she ordered, sounding braver than she felt. The ship was running on back-up power from the solar batteries, so the lights were dimmed. A chain of blood-red lights ran along the floor, describing the edge of the corridor. Terri brought up a copy of the ship’s schematic on her PDA and swiped the data over wirelessly to the other crew members.

As they approached an intersection leading left and right, their footsteps reverberating hollowly, a sign on the wall read “Mainframe” with an arrow pointing to the left and “Med Bay” with an arrow pointing to the right. Terri studied her PDA and said:

“There’s a concentration of body heat coming from the med bay.”

Allius nodded.

“The plan stays the same. Ophelia, you and I will locate the surviving crew members and offer medical assistance. Terri, you and Jonah go and get the mainframe back online.”

“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” said Jonah, hefting the field medical pack on to his shoulder and striding off down the left-hand side of the corridor, Terri following in his wake holding the motion tracker like a priest trying to ward off evil spirits.

The pair of them made their way down the corridor in silence. Suddenly, there was a hiss like a serpent rearing up, ready to strike, as one of the internal airlocks snapped open. Startled by the sudden noise, Terri dropped the motion tracker. The bulky metal device hitting the steel deck plating of the ship’s floor made an inordinately loud bang, like a shout in church. Jonah reached out and put a gloved hand on her shoulder.

“You okay, Ter?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said distractedly. “I thought all the internal systems were down.” She picked up the motion tracker, a chunky early model; it seemed to be undamaged. Jonah shone his torch around the airlock.

“Must draw from the auxiliary power,” he said. “Come on.” He added, after a moment’s hesitation, “This is the way we need to go anyway.”

“Okay,” agreed Terri, falling into step with him, still clutching the motion tracker like a talisman.

They walked in silence for a while until they reached another airlock. This one was magnetically sealed.

“It’ll just take a second to override,” said Terri, taking a wrench from her tool belt and removing a panel to expose the wiring underneath. As she worked, one of the wires brushed against her hand, sending a shower of sparks flying. She withdrew her hand as if bitten.

“Bloody thing!” she said, shaking her numb hand.

The airlock opened with a soft, serpentine hiss, revealing the ship’s mainframe, illuminated by the blood-red emergency lighting. Terri turned the torch beam to the main processing unit. It was smashed to smithereens, a large fire axe buried in the AI’s primary core. A body lay by the AI core, flat on its back. The name R Idris was embroidered on his uniform pocket.

“Well, there’s your problem,” quipped Jonah.

Terri unfastened her tool belt and laid it on one of the consoles near the damaged AI.

“What are we thinking here — that one of the crew went crazy and took it out on the ship’s AI?” said Terri.

“More than likely. The old spacers on the colony where I grew up called it the Pandora Syndrome,” said Jonah. Terri looked at him blankly.

“Pandora was a princess who lived in an ideal world with no evil, no disease. She had everything she could ever want, but one day she was given a beautifully made box. She was told not to open it under any circumstances, so of course she opened the damn thing and in doing so let out all of the evil in the world. So when mankind made it past the local system and saw the infinite expanse of creation first-hand, some of them went mad,” said Jonah, aiming the beam of his torch over her shoulder so she could see better. “Anyway, what are you doing with your next shore leave?”

“Oh, you know — read a good book; not dash around the galaxy looking for the sick and wounded.”

As she said this, the main fluorescent lights flickered into life and the ship’s AI booted to its secondary core. A hologram of a bald man appeared in the centre of the room.

“Secondary boot completed,” it said in a cold, accentless, emotionless voice.

“Query: What happened here?” said Terri.

“Information: Crewman second class Roman Idris attacked my primary data core with an axe,” came the cool reply.

“Damn arties,” said Jonah. “Query: Why did crewman Idris attack you with an axe?”

“Information: To stop me.”

The hairs on the back of Jonah’s neck stood up.

“Query: To stop you doing what?” said Terri.

“Information: To stop me from opening all the airlocks.”

“Why would you … I mean, query: why would you open the airlocks?” Terri asked, exchanging a concerned look with Jonah.

“Information: Opening the airlocks would facilitate the crew being flushed into space.” The sentence hung in the air for a moment. “Information: You’re all going to die in here.”

Allius led the way through the bowels of the ship, Ophelia following in her wake. Allius consulted her PDA, the stifling silence of the ship seeming heavy and daunting, the noise of their heavy vac suit boots reverberating through the empty corridors of the deserted ship.

“I don’t know about you, but this place is starting to creep me the hell out,” said Ophelia, sweeping the movement detector around the deserted rooms that branched off of the corridor.

“Yeah, a bit,” Allius nodded.

“Screw this — I can’t breathe in this thing,” said Ophelia, taking her helmet off and taking a lungful of the cool air of the ship. Allius followed suit, also taking off the bulky gauntlets.

“There,” she said. “Better?” she asked, running her human hand along the curve of Ophelia’s face.

“Sorry. I just hate these suits; I feel like Spam in a can. Let’s dump the skid lids and pick them up on the way back?” said Ophelia.

Allius nodded and they stowed the bulky vac suit helmets in a storage bin. Allius took a marker from her utility belt and marked it with a large black X.

“Just in case we have to leave in a rush,” she explained.

They walked in silence for a few moments, following the red lights set into the floor like children from a fairy tale following a trail of breadcrumbs. Their path led them to a red-and-white bulkhead with ‘MED BAY’ stencilled in black spray paint. Allius tried to open the door, but every time she tried to key in the emergency override code, it rejected her.

“Looks like you’re going to have to use ‘The Persuader’,” said Ophelia.

“Uh-huh,” agreed Allius, driving her chromed metal fist into the keypad. The door slid open with a silken hiss and they were greeted by the muzzles of three stun guns.

Completely unfazed by the heavy stun guns pointed at her, Allius shone her torch on each of the three men in succession, her augmented right eye picking up their names from the uniforms they wore. Only when she had decided there was no immediate threat did she put her hands in the air. Ophelia followed suit.

“We’re here to rescue you,” said Allius levelly.

“That’s right, and we’re very much not in need of being shot,” added Ophelia, her human eyes picking up that each man barricaded behind an overturned crash cart looked absolutely terrified.

“Who are you?” asked one of the men, with the name T Jackson embroidered into his uniform.

“I am Captain O’Dare, and this is our trauma surgeon, Doctor Flynn,” said Allius, keeping her hands up but slowly walking forwards. “Also on board we have our pilot, Mr Smith, and technician first class, Clay.” By now she was right on top of Jackson; she reached out and, in one deft movement, twisted his wrist and grabbed the heavy stun gun, popping the cartridge clip and dropping the component parts to the floor. Jackson backed away.

“What the hell is going on, Ty?” asked one of the crewmen who had the name I Flame on his uniform.

“Put your side-arms down, guys. They’re here to help,” said Ty calmly. “That’s a hell of a move for an ambulance driver,” he added, massaging life back into his wrist.

“Captain,” Allius corrected. “Now, what’s the sitrep?”

“The artie went haywire, opened the airlocks and flushed most of the crew into space,” said a young-looking man with A Pringle on his uniform. “That damn thing went completely batshit insane. We only lasted because Roman took out the primary core.” Allius took her comm from her belt and spoke into it.

“Smitty, Clay, come in, please,” she said, her tone urgent and concise. “Under no circumstances are you to get the artificial intelligence back online. Repeat: do not plug the AI back in.”

She waited for a reply and received nothing but static. She ran her hand through her short blond hair and tried again.

“Jonah, Terri, come in, damn it!”

There was a hiss of static and then Terri’s voice, faint but distinguishable, came through the tiny comm speaker.

“Captain? We have a situation here. Come in!”

At that moment the fluorescent lights in the med bay flickered and in the centre of the room appeared a hologram of a handsome bald man in his early thirties. The hologram turned to face the group.

“Information: Murry back online. Transferring all functional circuits to the bridge. Transfer complete,” said the AI.

“Aw, hell no!” spat Ty.

“Information: You’re all going to die in here,” said the AI with a cold, hollow voice.

“Murry?” said Ophelia.

“Bleeding-edge artie. We just had him installed,” said Ty. “But he’s defective. Our first jump to a system other than Sol and he just …”

“But … Murry, why Murry?” said Ophelia.

“We named him after the captain’s parrot,” said crewman Jackson.

“Screw Murry,” said O’Dare. “How do we switch it off?”

“If he’s transferred all functions to the bridge, then the only way will be to make our way there and disable him manually,” said Ty. As they spoke, the hologram looked at them; its cold dead eyes looked through them rather than at them.

“Information: You’re not going to win, you know. Fire detected in the med bay, initiating carbon dioxide/nitrogen flood.”

There was a serpentine hiss and the three men bolted for the bulkhead, which snapped shut. The air in the sealed room was soon hard to breathe. O’Dare had leapt across to the airlock, trying to prevent it closing with her cybernetic arm; the edge of the bulkhead brushed her fingertips as she fell just a few millimetres short.

“Damn it to hell!” she said, punching the door with her flesh hand. Then she squared up to the bulkhead, pulled her cybernetic arm back and punched it as hard as the servomotors would allow. The bulkhead buckled but did not open. She pulled back again; the door buckled more and more with each blow.

The air in the room was getting thinner and more difficult to breathe with each passing second. The three crewmen started to laugh.

“We’re dead,” chuckled Ty, slumping to the floor, the deleterious effect of the nitrogen mixing with the oxygen in the air making him giggle.

“Murry,” laughed Ophelia. “Who gets killed by a crazy AI called Murry?” She chuckled. “Your lips are blue!” she laughed to Ty, who burst into more peals of laughter.

Crewman Flame collapsed to the floor like a marionette with the strings cut. Allius, whose augmented body could function in low-oxygen atmospheres, continued to hammer away at the bulkhead. After several more punches from her pneumatic arm, designed to act as jaws of life, the door gave way and the room was flooded with cool, oxygen-rich air. The four of them breathed deeply, getting to their feet.

Ty walked over to check on Flame, who lay motionless on the floor: lips blue, eyes staring blankly into infinity.

“Man down!” he called out.

Ophelia eased the big crewman to one side and started to try and resuscitate him, breathing air into his open mouth and pumping his chest. After a few moments she grabbed a syringe from her field kit and jabbed him in the chest, but it was no good. After ten minutes of CPR, all she could do was close his eyes. Ty kissed his teeth and kicked the wall in frustration.

“Right, Ty?” said Allius to the crewman, who nodded, holding his chest. “You lead the way. We’re going to disable this thing once and for all.” She walked over to Ophelia and helped her to her feet, gently brushing the hair from her face. She kissed her softly on the lips.

“You okay?” she asked.

Ophelia nodded.

“Yeah. Let’s give Murry a reboot he’ll never forget,” she said, setting her jaw defiantly.

The AI’s threat hung in the air as Terri and Jonah stood dumbfounded. Terri answered the garbled message from her comm.

“Captain? We have a situation here, come in!” Then the signal was lost to static. The AI turned its head to the side, giving the pair of them a creepy stare, eyes hollow and devoid of any human emotion, like a shark’s eyes.

“Information: Your attempts at escaping me will be futile. You have only a point zero one percent chance of escaping the ISS Ridley alive. For your comfort and convenience, don’t fight me.”

Jonah picked up the axe and brought it down into the ship’s secondary data core.

“Smitty!” called out Terri. “That won’t work. We have to make our way to the bridge and disable it from there.”

“Yeah, well, it makes me feel better!” said Jonah savagely, bringing the axe down again, smashing the mainframe to smithereens. He took his vac suit helmet off, took his e-cigarette out and puffed deeply on it, offering it to Terri, who accepted it gratefully. She took a deep breath and coughed slightly.

“Damn it, Smitty — that tastes like the floor of a taxi cab.”

Smitty smiled and hefted the med packs on to his shoulder.

“Come on, bring up the schematic so we can find our way to the bridge,” he said, pocketing the e-cigarette and putting his vac suit helmet back on. The pair made their way out of the mainframe room, Terri leading the way. As she stepped through the airlock it slammed shut on Jonah, the door squeezing his chest, making him gasp for air. Terri joined him in trying to force the door open, but it was futile.

She dived for the airlock’s override and keyed in desperately, blinking the sweat out of her eyes.

“Hold on, Smitty!” she called out. The airlock crushed steadily inward around Jonah’s chest. Sparks flew as she gave up on trying to override the airlock by keying in an override code and instead tried to hot-wire it. The airlock slid open and Jonah’s body slid to the ground, lifeless and unmoving. She reached out and checked for a pulse.

He was gone.

O’Dare took point, her eyes flicking between the corridor and the PDA with a schematic of the ship lit up on the palm-sized display. Her comm buzzed; she clicked it on.

“O’Dare, speak to me, Clay,” she said.

“Smitty’s dead,” said Terri, sobbing. “I tried to help him but … he was crushed by an airlock.” Her words hung in the air for a moment; Allius let her shoulders sag and turned to Ophelia.

“Jonah’s dead,” she said simply, then into the comm: “We can mourn him when we’re back on the Nightingale. Until then, we have a homicidal artie to deal with. Rendezvous with us in the mess.”

“Copy that, Skipper,” came the static-laced reply. Allius clipped the comm back on to her belt and pulled Ophelia into a hug.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said as Ophelia sobbed. “We’re going to get out of here, you hear me?” Ophelia nodded, dabbing at her red eyes.

The four of them made their way through the ship. Allius walked next to Ty, who maintained a gloomy silence. Allius glanced at her PDA from time to time, looking for any heat signatures that would mean there were more survivors. Every now and then they would pass an alcove set into the wall where the holographic projection of Murry would loom over them like the spectre at the feast. The hairs were standing up on the back of Allius’s neck and her arms were covered in goose pimples, her eyes darting around the corridor.

Ahead of them she saw a shape drop down from the ceiling, heard a servo whirr and had just a second to tackle Ty to the floor as the ship’s automated defences opened fire down the corridor. Bullets ricocheted off the steel walls, kicking up sparks. Ophelia hit the deck, but a few seconds too late, and took a wound to her shoulder. Crewman Pringle dove for the cover of a nearby alcove and huddled there as Allius dragged Ophelia by the collar of her vac suit. Ty scurried after them, swearing under his breath.

“You okay?” asked Allius to Ophelia.

“I’m hit, but I think it’s a through-and-through,” she said, grimacing in pain. The vac suits had a layer of non-Newtonian fluid that went solid when an impact was detected; it had slowed the bullet down and prevented the wound from being fatal. The cacophony of bullets being fired and ricocheting ceased. Murry loomed over them, the hologram looking down on them.

“Information: You’re not going to win, you know. Query: Why don’t you just give in?” Allius brought her cybernetic hand down on the holo-projector, effectively silencing their tormentor. Allius spoke into her comm.

“Terri, I need you to override the security protocols,” she said into the thumb-sized comm.

“On it, Skipper. Where are—” The comm channel was shut down and Murry’s stilted voice came over the comm.

“Information: You’ll have to try harder than that.”

On the other side of the ship Terri was running as fast as the chunky vac suit would allow her to; she considered dumping the suit but thought better of it. Inside the helmet sweat was forming on her brow; all she knew at that moment was that the captain needed her. She pelted down the corridor, skidding to a halt as she saw one of the ceiling-mounted internal guns. She leapt through the air as the automated security opened fire.

“Why the actual-shivering-fuck do they have guns in the ceiling!?” she yelled into the comm as bullets ricocheted around her.

“Parts of the ship are off limits due to black-bag ops,” came the reply, a male voice she didn’t recognise.

“Who the hellfire are you?” she barked into the comm, taking a wrench to the security panel and undoing the bolts.

“Lieutenant Tyrone Jackson,” came the reply. “I guess I’m the ranking officer on board now. It’s just me, two crewmen and your people on board now.”

“Good to know. Now, Tyrone, let me work — I’m trying to save our collective arses here.” She pocketed the comm and ripped wires from the motherboard she was working on. The lights dimmed to emergency lighting and the ship’s AI hologram flickered on opposite Terri, causing her to drop the spanner she was using to access the main security circuitry.

“Query: You think you have won? Information: This is my ship now, and I am in control.” The accentless, emotionless voice grated against Terri; all she could think to do was flip Murry the bird and continue to override the security drones from where she was. There was a whirring sound as the ceiling-mounted guns powered down. Terri punched the air in victory.

“Take that, you silicon bastard!” She shouted, grabbing her tool belt and running to meet up with Allius and her party.

Tyrone led the way to the mess hall, taking the most direct route possible. Where possible they avoided external airlocks.

“Crazy artie flushed most of the crew into space. We were holed up in the med bay — no external airlocks there. It’s how we survived,” he explained. “We had a complement of two hundred souls running at full capacity, and now there’s just three of us …”

“Well, at least it’s efficient,” said Allius gloomily. “Let’s just focus on getting you and yours out of here. I’ve already lost one of my men and don’t intend on losing any more,” she added. Consulting her PDA, she said: “The only way we’re going to meet up with Terri is if we take this route, here.” She pointed at the schematic of the ship on her PDA, a route that ran directly around the exterior airlocks. Ty frowned at the palm-held device.

“Okay. So we suit up first. At least then we will stand a chance if Murry decides to open the airlocks again,” said Allius. Tyrone headed for one of the crew’s abandoned lockers and fished out a vac suit. Ophelia ran back and collected hers and Allius’s helmets from the marked storage bin, ignoring the pale blue figure of Murry following her course along the corridor. Taking a diamond-filament rope from her belt pouch, she passed it through the loop in each member of the party’s space suits, tethering them all together so if one of them were to get sucked out the strength of the remaining members would act as an anchor.

Crewman Pringle’s hands were shaking badly as he tied a knot in the diamond-strong rope. He looked nervously up at Ophelia; he was barely out of his teens with a soft downy moustache and big brown eyes.

“You’re gonna do fine, kid. Just keep hold of something and don’t let go,” she advised. He looked into her eyes and nodded.

“Grab hold, don’t let go,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he fought to control his emotions.

“It’s okay, kid. We’re gonna get you out of this. We’re professionals,” she said with a smile. Reaching out and taking his hand in hers, she squeezed his hand companionably. “What’s your name, honey?” she asked, keeping her eyes on his.

“Ajax,” he answered softly.

“No kidding. My father was an Ajax,” she smiled. “He was a brave man. Not gonna let the side down, are you, Ajax?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered. The change in him was subtle but he held himself more confidently, double-checking the knots with hands that no longer shook.

“Ma’am is my mother. I’m Ophelia,” said the pretty surgeon, helping Ajax with his vac suit. He cracked a smile and nodded that he was ready.

“Everything copacetic?” asked Allius, coming over and brushing her gloved hand against Ophelia’s.

“We’re five by five, aren’t we, Ajax?” she asked the young crewman.

“Yeah, five by five,” he said with the smallest catch in his voice.

Allius opened the internal airlock that would lead them along the exterior edge of the ISS Ridley. She spoke over the suit-to-suit comms.

“What was this vessel for? What was your mission, Ty?” she asked as they made their way slowly and carefully through the next section of corridor, grabbing hold of anything solid they could use as an anchor. “And don’t give me this ‘classified’ bullshit.”

“Wish I could. I’m a chef; only classified info I have is my chilli recipe,” said Ty modestly. Ajax spoke up:

“I was an Ensign in the artificial neural network team. All I know is that there were parts of the ship you needed a black-badge to enter, well above my paygrade, ma’am.”

“Artificial neural network? So you’re a programmer?” asked Allius, passing one of Murry’s remote holographic projection units. The AI slowly turned his head, watching them pass.

“Yeah … I mean, affirmative, ma’am,” said the young ensign, not daring to meet the eyes of the hologram.

“Good. You can help Terri get this metal bastard back in the box when we get to the bridge,” said Allius. Murry’s voice was suddenly over the suit-to-suit comms.

“Query: You’re not still trying to win, are you?” it droned. “Information: Spacewalk approved for all crew members. Goodbye crewman Jackson. Goodbye crewman Pringle. Goodbye interlopers.”

With that, the external airlocks opened and all of the air was sucked out of the corridor. Ajax fumbled for something to hang on to but his fingers just slid against the steel of the ship’s wall. Tyrone stood prone, holding tightly on to the diamond-filament rope. Ophelia and Allius were both holding on to the remote AI projection unit for dear life as the last of the oxygen was sucked into the void of space.

Terri ran along the featureless corridor when the klaxon went off. She tried to cover her ears but the helmet got in the way; the noise was so loud, so pervasive, that she fell to her knees. Struggling with the vac suit helmet, she tossed it to one side and covered her ears. Drops of blood were trickling from her ears. She shouted out but the yell was lost in the background din of the klaxon sounding off.

Then, just as soon as it started, it stopped, leaving her lying on the floor, sobbing. An image of Murry appeared on a monitor screen built into the wall. Terri could see his lips moving but couldn’t pick up what he was saying over the ringing in her ears. Frustrated she threw her helmet at the monitor with as much force as she could muster. The helmet split the monitor screen down the middle and the broken image of Murry looked at her coldly.

She gathered herself together and limped across to another access panel. Keying in code furiously, she hacked through the firewall and accessed what she was after: the airlock-control software. She swore under her breath as she saw that the exterior airlocks were open. Typing furiously she tried override after override but Murry kept changing the protocols, so as soon as she had hacked through one layer of security she was faced with yet another layer.

“Screw you, metal nose!” she yelled at the fractured image of Murry on the monitor. She took her trusty wrench to the panel and started to pull wires out of the electronics underneath; she grabbed two handfuls of cable and jammed them together. The bolt of energy passed through her, sending her flying backwards. Murry looked down at her unmoving body, steam drifting lazily from her prone form.

Ty struggled to stay on his feet. Despite the fact that he was being anchored by Allius and Ophelia, he was a big, heavy guy and was slowly but surely being dragged further along the floor of the corridor. Ajax was floating like a terrified kite. Ty bared his teeth and, using all of his immense strength, pulled on the diamond-filament rope, tugging the young ensign back in, but it was no use: he couldn’t pull harder than the vacuum of space was pulling Ajax out. Ajax looked into Ty’s eyes and his hand went to his belt where the diamond-filament cable was connected. He pulled, and the knot came undone.

“No!” shouted Tyrone as the body of the young ensign rocketed out of the airlock. Tyrone was sent flying back and grabbed hold of Allius’s outstretched hand. The airlock snapped shut and the crew got to their feet. Allius reached for her comm.

“Clay, that was brilliant!” There was no reply. “Terri, come in.” There was nothing but static. She turned to the party. “Come on. We’re almost there. Ophelia, can you track Terri’s transponder?” Ophelia’s brow furrowed as she looked at the PDA; she couldn’t pick up their friend at all.

“No, she’s …”

“Right,” said Allius tautly. “How far to the bridge?” she asked in a pinched tone.

“We’re just a few hundred feet short, Skipper … we lost Terri,” said Ophelia.

“We have to concentrate on the living. Ty, lead the way.” The ragged party made their way to the bridge.

The bridge of the ISS Ridley was pristine and new, unlike the homely surroundings of the Nightingale, with Jonah’s battered West Ham United football on the co-pilot’s seat, and the general clutter of the four of them living and working in such tight conditions. This bridge looked like something from a brochure: everything was sleek, silver and very, very clean. As the bedraggled party entered the bridge, Murry’s hologram projected over the main view screen.

“Information: New heading set and locked. Estimated time of arrival: five minutes,” it said. This time the emotionless voice seemed to have an edge to it: smugness.

“Say what now?” said Ty, helping the wounded Ophelia to a chair.

“Information: New heading set for minus ninety degrees to the horizon of the Hades-class planet Stark Two, informally known as Hesiod.”

“Minus ninety degrees? That’s a collision course, you crazy sod!” shouted Allius, grabbing the pilot’s yoke and pulling back on it hard. The ship listed downwards, plummeting them towards the surface of the planet.

“Information: All manual commands overwritten,” said Murry.

“Fuck this ship!” cursed Allius, running over to the AI core.

“Just pull the plug!” shouted Ty as the view screen filled with the planet, rapidly getting closer and closer.

“I don’t know how!” she shot back.

“Good job I’m here then,” said a figure silhouetted in the airlock to the bridge. Terri ran forwards and skidded to a halt by the AI core; she started to rip wires out and expertly popped chips out.

“Information: error. Don’t fight me, you have less than a zero-point-one percent chance—” He was cut off mid-sentence as Terri jammed her screwdriver into the motherboard.

“Found the mute button,” said Terri, her nimble fingers working fast, as the planet’s surface loomed ever closer. Allius returned to the pilot’s chair, ergonomically designed for comfort over long-haul distances. It actually felt like she was in a torture device.

“I’m just gonna say it: we thought you were dead!” shouted Allius over the screeching of friction as the hull of the Ridley started to heat up.

“Nah. Just got a nasty jolt that killed my transponder,” said Terri, working feverishly. Allius pulled back hard on the pilot’s yoke and managed to get the nose of the Ridley level with just one hundred feet from the surface. The image of Murry disappeared as Terri bypassed the last of the hard drives. Tyrone let out a whoop of victory and the crew of the Nightingale let out a ragged cheer.

The end