20.6.3585
I spent the next two days going about my usual routine. Waking up early in the morning, slipping on my spacesuit (officially titled as a Virgo External Repair and Salvage Suit) and heading out to the station to continue harvesting trace amounts of precious metals for later use. I was getting a crash course in what all of the buckles, pockets and hooks were for as I explored deeper into the mostly depressurized recreational areas. Rhea was insistent on me being cautious while inside, and she was right to be worried.
Opening one of the rooms that still had air in it was dangerous, loose items could be thrown out by the change in pressure, potentially shattering both visors and bones. These suits were built to be extremely durable but there were some things that your equipment couldn't compensate for. The process was fairly simple. I found a secure place to hook my line to and opened the door while keeping out of the way. The air would blow me off of my feet but the tether would keep me from injuring myself.
Aside from those job hazards, it was a relatively mundane experience once the novelty wore off. The presence of gravity meant that I didn't have to worry about floating away, my air supplies were also generous enough that I could easily do twice the work without running out. My comfort levels increased so much that Rhea could take a step back and allow me to work without guidance.
But I wasn't left wanting for people to talk with. Sumeragi would sometimes radio in to me and see how things were going. It turned out that there was a camera beneath one of my lights, allowing my two companions to observe from the bridge.
"How are things going on your end?" Sumeragi inquired, breaking through a tense silence that settled over the station as I picked through several discarded objects. My cage was only half-full thus far. I needed to pick up the pace a little to keep on schedule.
"I'm tired – but nothing worth worrying over."
"Are you sure that you don't need any help? When I was working with Celestial Being, we never allowed a single person to perform EVA procedures."
"That depends, do you have any training in this?"
"No. We have teams of engineers who are extremely talented, but you're doing very well considering your own lack of formal qualifications."
"Rhea is keeping me on a short leash. Anything more complicated than this is out of my wheelhouse. Rummaging through people's discarded belongings is about all I can do."
Speaking of which, somebody left their mobile phone in one of the drawers. I quickly retrieved it and tossed it into the cage for later. A cloud of dust and debris was an ever-present accomplice as I wandered the halls and shops. The gravity pulled a variety of different things down with it and the lack of maintenance meant that the entire station was coated in the stuff. I had never walked on the moon's surface before, but I imagined this was what it looked like if someone built a shopping mall on it.
"Nobody said a leader has to be talented…"
That was a cutting remark from a woman who dealt with a lot of incompetent leaders.
"…As long as you're willing to listen to the advice of the people around you and take that into account, you'll already be a much better commander than anyone I served under in the AEU."
"Oh yeah? And what if I turn out to be a massive wanker?"
Sumeragi laughed, "A 'massive wanker' wouldn't be so self-aware. A consistent eye for what your own actions are resulting in is essential."
"I know that you strive for perfection in every operation you lead."
"I do," she replied pensively, "But it seems that I failed on that count since you brought me here. I could work so hard to protect everyone else, but that caused me to ignore the danger I was placing myself in too."
"Well, I'm sure everything worked out on their side."
"Yes. They're all the best pilots anyone could ask for. I just wish I could have seen them succeed. I wonder if it was the right thing, coming here moments before I was going to die."
"Do you think that they'd be happy if you died there?" I asked earnestly.
"No, they wouldn't. I may be alive right now but that won't spare them the grief of my loss."
"I'm no military man, but I think that everyone understands that they're putting their lives at risk for the sake of the future they want to see. I brought you specifically because I wanted to give you a second chance. It might not be fair, but you shouldn't beat yourself up over it. I didn't give you much of a choice until the deed was already done."
"It was a selfless decision," Sumeragi replied, "You don't need to feel bad about it."
"I feel a little bad though. I wish there was a way we could reach out and ask."
Rhea popped up again, "I searched for a Sumeragi who would find your proposal palatable."
"You can do that?" Sumeragi asked.
"Based on the description provided to me by the Captain, I am capable of constructing a psychological assessment of the individual and calculating the odds of them joining the crew. I believe that you are the most receptive Sumeragi we could find."
"That's… strange," Sumeragi concluded – not wanting to declare it as a serious invasion of her privacy with the two culprits on the radio line.
"It is standard procedure for an empathetic AI model like mine. I must act in the best interest of the crew at all times and strive to protect their lives with no exceptions. Part of that duty is ensuring the good mental wellbeing of the crew, analysing external and internal threats to that wellbeing."
It was starting to get distracting having two voices in my ear while I was trying to work. I pulled the cage along with me and headed back into the main atrium for one last sweep of the area. There were several windows above that looked out onto the blanket of stars beyond. The people who worked on this station must have been filled with hope for the future, that or they were excited to be working somewhere so unique. But perhaps in the future this was the equivalent of a boring office job.
"What was that station meant to be?" I inquired.
"With the creation of the displacement core, the Ralis-Byrant Corporation believed that it would be able to transport raw materials over vast distances in very little time. It laid claim to several untouched systems to carve a pathway through null space."
"Null space?"
"Systems and bodies considered too remote to be habitable. The logistics involved were seen as too costly, in terms of expense and the lifespan of the crew who had to man the ships. Crewless vessels were floated to take on the responsibility, but they would frequently run into technical problems during the trip that required a human hand to fix."
"So one day, they wanted this place to house a displacement core too?"
"That is correct. This is a waypoint station, intended to be a node in a network that would allow ships to travel to far-flung reaches of space. Moving an entire ship requires a tremendous amount of energy, which was to be generated by a collection of fusion reactors and stored inside of the universe's largest hyper-dense battery farm, but every solution seemed to bring forth more barriers to overcome. They believed that the investment would pay off – there are several resource-rich planetoids in this sector that would result in significant profits if exploited."
"But it never came to be."
"No. It did not. A flood of money from outside investors dried up quickly once they failed to demonstrate results, and corporate warfare ensured that many of the innovations they succeeded in making were lost."
Including the Pariah and its displacement core. The collapse of the corporation must have been very quick and messy by future standards. These monolithic organisations have enough money to limp on for a very long time, and it was only a few decades before my arrival that they were finally dissolved. They must have undergone downsizing and cuts to make up for the money invested into the Pariah project, dooming the technology from being pushed any further. If they were somehow able to make it scale better, removing the need for so much space and energy generation, perhaps it would be the revolution they envisioned.
Unlike a lot of media set in the future – corporations here still had to abide by international law. In fact, according to the documents that Rhea possessed from when she crashed, it was illegal for any company to establish itself outside of the jurisdiction of an Earth-bound nation. Disputes were resolved by the Interstellar Court of Chancery, an internationally recognised body appointed by the United Nations. How the UN survived for a thousand-plus years is another matter…
Confusion on that aside, the borders on Earth had been fairly stagnant for a long time with the power of defensive warfare and the benefits of globalism as economic policy warding the superpowers away from being too aggressive. Nationalists loved to bang the drums of war until it risked depriving them of imported goods. It was easy to be a bloodthirsty war hawk when you weren't in the thick of it. God forbid you take away someone's smartphone.
Those maps might have been outdated by this point. A lot could change in a few decades, just as easily as they remained the same for a very long time. I was hoping that Rhea could update her archives once we returned to civilization. I didn't want to make myself look like a total fool for not knowing basic things about my new home.
I opened another mechanical door and entered into a small office space. There were many personal effects and touches left by the desk that the original occupant was forced to leave behind. The strangest among them was a large stag's skull which was mounted onto the wall behind the desk. I reached up and took it down to study. It was fake, someone was trying to compensate for something though I couldn't speculate as to what. Perhaps they fancied themselves a hunter but couldn't find anything to shoot in outer space. I checked through the drawers, using some brute force to get through the locks. There were a few more precious devices left behind, issued by the company for productivity's sake.
Rhea's ability to mark objects of interest was very handy in cluttered rooms like this. A small red outline would appear around the item, showing me that it was something on her 'wish list.' I grabbed everything I could find and threw them into the cage to sort later when I got back to the ship. I still had a few hours of exploring to go before I returned. I set my mind on the task at hand and moved on to the next location.
------
Sumeragi was used to being on board a ship. Tight enclosed spaces where comforts were few and far between, but the Pariah was something else entirely. It was even smaller than her old ships, though that was due to severe damage that it sustained during a fight that downed it on a nearby planet. She'd studied up on the flight logs in the black box and checked through every document she could get access to.
Rhea would not give her complete access to the archives unless she agreed to become a member of the crew. She understood that operational security was very important, but in exceptional circumstances like these, she was hoping for more leeway. Sumeragi was cynical at the best of times, so being dragged into another world using some kind of advanced warp engine caused her hackles to shoot up.
Captain McAllister seemed to be on the level. He had refrained from enforcing any policy on her and tried his best to be friendly and accommodating to her needs. Rhea was the one who worried her the most. Biomechanical terminals were bad enough already. The prospect of a fully autonomous artificial intelligence controlling essential functions was troubling. Celestial Being had its own AI system, but ultimate control over the ships and armed units belonged to the commanders.
Sumeragi's most pressing concern was the biomedical tube in the medical wing. Rhea was struck silent when she asked probing questions about what it could really do, with vague assertions that her programming restricted her from utilising them without human permission. Documents from the company that originally built the Pariah claimed that every employee was to undergo basic conditioning work using nanomachines in the body, machines that would do what McAllister claimed they did.
But there was clearly more to this story that Rhea was keeping from him. McAllister was the trusting type, or rather, he felt indebted to Rhea for helping him escape the desert planet he found her on. The only source of ill-will would be Rhea playing a role in his kidnapping and subsequent appointment as the Captain of the ship. McAllister didn't believe that was the case; Rhea showed ample evidence that an electrical storm struck the ship near the time of his arrival and caused the core to trigger randomly.
She closed the window she was using and leaned back in her seat, "Rhea – would it be possible to join the crew without going through the enhancement process? I'm already well suited to space travel."
"Yes, that is possible; though I will not be able to provide the full plethora of my protective features to you – such as vital monitoring and position tracking."
Sumeragi was going to get her answers one way or another. She could join the crew as the Senior Commander, get access to more documents, and piece together the puzzle which she was presented with. In her mind, McAllister wouldn't force her to stay on the ship even if she did accept his offer initially. In the worst case, she could jump off at the next port and be away before they even knew what was happening.
"I think I'll go along with it for now," Sumeragi concluded, "Is there anything that I need to do?"
"There is only one thing – your profile has already been prepared. In order to be authorised for access to the ship, I need a small DNA sample and your fingerprint." Sumeragi frowned but complied with her request, pressing her index finger against a scanner and allowing a needle to draw a small amount of her blood.
"Congratulations, Senior Commander Noriega – and welcome to the Pariah."
Sumeragi wore a fake smile and nodded, "The pleasure is all mine…"