Vast cords of billowing light dogged the Albatross through the empty sea between stars. Here, she was the star; a beacon flickering in darkness. Of course, the flickering was mostly from new fires on decks 3 and 4. The Albatross diverted water flow from the sewage system to put them out. Dirty work, and a last ditch effort.
The ever-shifting strands of asteria cloaked her in neon brilliance, too-made her feel almost regal, like the Empress of Nothing in a country where nothing was everything. The cold had its own kind of warmth, a seal around her beating heart.
She was waxing poetic again.
"I asked about the distance not the drive time," the captain shouted. Sparks erupted overhead.
The Albatross flinched and stuttered.
"Hold together, lass," her father whispered.
She held. For him she would, always.
"Danju!" The captain was furious.
"I heard ya!" said Father. His fingers danced along the nav console. "Eighty-seven AU, give or take."
"That's too far, isn't it?"
"To coast? Aye. We'll have to push her past the gold line."
The Albatross felt a little pang of something sour as one of the glittering cords of light intersected with her starboard nacelle. She flinched again, throwing the crew to the deck.
"Hold her together, Chief," said the captain. Her fury seemed more like regret now, though the Albatross was never sure if she understood those distinctions. Was it resignation? Spending this time with humans had been helpful, but she still had a lot to learn.
"With my bare hands if I have to," Father said heroically.
The Albatross deployed a happy sigh. He was the best. Something tickled her. Oh yes.
"Starboard nacelle is reporting heavy damage," she chirped.
"Well isn't that awesome?" the captain asked. The Albatross knew better than to answer. "Can it be repaired, Chief?"
"Not from inside," said Father. "And not while we're chasing this wake."
"Fine. So tell me, how does knowing that help us?" asked the captain, her face a mask. The Albatross switched to infrared. Oh. It was fury.
"It does not," the Albatross replied sheepishly. She gauged her timbre as close to pacification as it would go without flipping into what Father called snotty sarcasm mode. All she wanted was to be helpful.
The captain did not respond. Which was either better or worse than the Albatross expected. Their unpredictability was as confusing as it was endearing. She realized she would miss them very much when they died, but without that starboard engine even their most desperate plans were unattainable. The Albatross shrugged, and her decks groaned and grumbled.
"I could take the CERA," offered the Albatross.
"I'd never ask ya to do that, angel," said Father.
"And yet, if I do not, we will have no alternative but to coast for hundreds of years before we arrive at a safe harbor."
"She has a point," the captain said.
This unexpected agreement set the Albatross's engine to sputtering.
"And if we're going to do something, sooner is better than late," the captain added.
"The remote isn't ready!" Father stood awkwardly, as if unsure of where to go or what to do. He sat back down after a moment. "She'll have to inhabit it."
"That's a big risk to take," the captain said. Her tone softened. "But it's her choice, not ours."
"Our preliminary tests have been promising, Dr. Danju," said the Albatross. She did not dare call him Father out loud. "You said so just last month."
"I also said to call me Radnik, not Dr. Danju."
The Albatross gasped. She had disabused him of that scandalous nonsense immediately. "You are a system-renown engineer, Dr. Danju," she scolded.
"Not today, I'm not. And that last test was under controlled conditions, not in the middle of a mezispace traversal!"
"And yet it must be done," she replied. The Albatross ached to hug him, to feel his bushy beard brushing her face as she whispered the promise that she would never let anything happen to him.
Father stared up at her for a long time, until the Albatross rumbled again in consternation. "Aye," he said finally, "I suppose it must. But no unnecessary risks like last time. Stay on comms, on mission, and on contact."
Releasing her magnet boots had been an impulsive thing to do, but the Albatross could not deny how breathtaking a reward it had been to see herself in full, to be connected to her body by only a titanium tether, five centimeters thick.
"I promise," she said.
Inhabiting the repair android was a complex process that required the Albatross to temporarily partition her ship-essential functions and transfer her sentient core directly into the hardware without them.
She had tried using a copy, but without proper remote control the Albatross had quickly found herself arguing with her....self. And the recognition that her sentience was transferable as well as her programming? The thought of that newborn individual being terminated as it re-assimilated with her was horrifying. To them both.
The Albatross had no interest in killing again.
Something tickled and the lights went out. The process was complete. She opened her eyes to see her father standing there with a sad smile. She knew it was his sad smile because he had told her that once, when they were talking about his...
"That is your sad smile," she said. It would not to do revisit those sacred revelations now.
He laughed. "It is, but only because I will miss you while you are gone."
The Albatross knew if she could switch to infra-red in this moment, it would prove he was lying. But like so many other functions, she was separated from it. Liberated, in a way. And with that, she lost control and lunged at him.
"Careful!" he yelled as the Albatross enveloped him with her arms. She had arms! The feeling blossomed anew each time she entered the CERA. When she told Father that, he said it sounded like a first kiss with someone new.
He returned the embrace, his laughter growing. "Okay, okay," he said. "You'll be back before we know it, right?"
She loosened her grip and pulled away. The temptation to press her metal cheek against his beard threatened to overwhelm, but she regained control of the unruly matrix that regulated her emotional state.
"That is correct," she replied. The Albatross could no sooner break a promise as she could break out of her core programming.
But his sad smiled had returned.
The Albatross decided she would press her face against his when she accomplished her mission, whether he liked it or not. Then, with a rough approximation of a satisfied nod, she turned and ambled up the corridor toward the repair bay.
***
Captain Ramona Mahar was ashamed. As many strides as she had taken toward understanding and recognizing the autonomy of the artificial intelligence that ran her life, she always seemed to take twice that number backward.
The Albatross earnestly tried to be helpful, in her way. Which was more than Ramona could say about far too many of her past shipmates, above and below on the command ladder. Even the ones who were not the ship itself.
A ship that would endure long after Ramona and her crew died of starvation or asphyxiation or whatever would happen to them if this final engine push was not enough to keep them in mezispace all the way to Ganymede. It was not pleasant to think about. But even before they had lost the starboard nacelle the chance of it working was slim. Far too many parsecs to travel on far too little thrust.
The Albatross would fix it. She always came through when it mattered.
Ramona sighed. It was not that losing her patience with the Albatross was particularly shameful on its own, but her repeated transgressions spoke to what her mother always called her Impetuous Foundation. That was just a pretentious way of calling out the personality traits Ramona had inherited from her erstwhile-and proud of it-father.
She shook her head, making a mental note to offer some kind of apology to the Albatross when she returned. Stepping out onto the hull of a starship mid-traversal was always dangerous, but-
Her thoughts cut off as another shudder rocked the ship.
"Captain?" Danju approached her warily.
"Yes, what?"
He seemed entirely too concerned. And indeed his tentative hand trembled a little as he reached out to grasp her shoulder.
"What is it, Chief? Spit it out."
"Okay, good. You're yourself again." His subsequent sigh of relief was irritatingly disconcerting.
She frowned. "What else would I be?"
"Nothing, I just..." He chewed his lip for a moment. "I couldn't rouse you for the last few minutes."
Ramona's frown deepened. "I get to ruminating sometimes," she said. "You know that."
"I do, yes. But this seemed different."
Ramona allowed her irritation its head. "Well it wasn't. Is the CERA outside yet?"
Danju hesitated, sucking his teeth like he was working out a stubborn strand of sinew.
She decided to stare irritatedly at him until he spoke.
"Ah yes," he said finally. "About that. She can't move."
"I thought you had it working."
"We did!" The man had the gall to sound defensive. If he did not find the point immediately she was going to throw herself out of an airlock before the ship had its chance to suffocate her.
"I'm not sure what the problem is, but she's asking for you."
Ramona grunted. Involuntarily. She did not like where this was going. When the CERA was still in phase testing, Danju had somehow convinced her to pilot the android manually while the Albatross figured out how to inhabit the damn thing. But that had always been in safe, controlled conditions.
"I don't want to go out there, Chief," she replied.
He nodded. Of course he did. He did not want to go out there either. But he could not even if he did. She frowned at his protruding midsection.
"I wish I had made it bigger, I really do," he protested. "But we are where we are."
Closing her eyes for a count of eight, Ramona floundered for a solution that did not involve her climbing inside an entirely too cheerful robot and navigating it through the void. Space walks had never been something she enjoyed, and being halfway to tumbling through the asteria boundary, and certain death, made the idea so much less appealing.
But if Danju did not already have an alternative to offer, Ramona was certainly not going to conjure one herself over these next few, crucial, minutes.
"Fine," she said.
His smile of gratitude, and more of that relief, was comprehensive.
"But I'm doing this under protest."
"I'll make a note." He mimed jotting something down on his data pad.
Ramona snorted a laugh. The old guy could be charming when he wanted. Just like her father. She stood, adjusting her tunic. Then, without quite understanding why, she pressed her hand to the side of his face and rubbed his cheek affectionately.
"Well, all right," she said, clearing her throat loudly. She spun on a heel and strode purposefully down the rear corridor before he could react. "Let's not keep her waiting."
***
The Albatross was perched awkwardly halfway up the airlock ladder.
"Hello, Captain," she said cheerfully as Ramona approached.
"Hiya kiddo. You asked for me?"
"Yes, and I am so sorry about that," the Albatross said. "I appear to have found myself in a little bit of a pickle."
"Ah ha!," Danju announced as he ambled into the evac chamber. He held up a data pad. "Central servo's shot."
"Correct," the Albatross added.
"So fix it?" Ramona felt her irritation rising again, and stamped it down, way deep down into her southernmost gullet, where it could not hurt anyone. Except you, she thought. But why should her final day be any different than every other? Besides, if Danju could have fixed it, he would have.
"I could," the Chief confirmed. "But do we have three hours to spare?"
He did not wait for her to answer; they both knew time was their most precious commodity. And as if to punctuate that thought, the ship released a shuddering cough. Sparks spurted out of something in the overhead.
"I'm ready when you are, Captain." The Albatross leaned off the ladder as her rear hatch creaked open. A trillion blinking lights spilled into the newly minted haze from above.
Ramona traced her finger along the distinctive, etched logo that adorned the mecha's chest. A yawning bear wearing a crown. She smiled at the little cutie. Well, there was nothing for it. With a nod at Danju, and a fleeting glance at the small retinue of her crew that had started to gather in the evac, she cambered up and into the CERA.
"Good luck," someone said. Ramona's blood was pounding too hard for her to discern the voice.
"Back in a few," she managed to shout before unlocking the safety bar. Why did it feel like a goodbye? The canopy settled around her with a skwinch and a hiss, a rather tighter fit than she remembered.
"Thank you," said the Albatross. No, CERA. It was an important distinction, and one the AI was rightfully quite insistent on. Craft Ex0-Repair Automaton. Except there was not a ton 'automat' about it. Ramona knew the parts of her AI the Albatross considered most important always made the trip, so in a sense it was the Albatross.
But she left behind everything that controlled the ship when she made the transition. Like leaving the accoutrements of rank when you retired from service. Still a captain, but no longer a Captain. Ramona ignored how strongly that sentiment resonated.
"Let's do this and get back before I change my mind." She tried to sieve the fear from her voice, though she had no reason to. CERA's sensors could monitor her emotional state far more intricately than she had ever managed across 32 years of trying.
There was a joke in there somewhere, surely.
"I await your command." The AI's voice came from everywhere, rumbled the bones in her chest as if it spoke using Ramona's own lungs. It was not an unpleasant feeling, and reminded her of concerts she had gone to in her youth. Folly days when the risk of losing your hearing never seemed like a real one.
"Gotta give me a sec to get reacquainted." She stared at the heads-up display that filled her vision. So confusing to behold in such a compressed format. It would spread out into a more intuitive three-dimensional space when she accepted control.
"Of course, Captain."
Not much had changed, thankfully. Ramona could feel the nest of electrodes behind her head that, once engaged, would give her complete command of CERA. It had originally been designed for a human pilot, without the intention of housing an artificial intelligence at all. Which was why the mechanical body was so human. Polished lovingly by Danju to a brilliant anodized sheen, with curves in all the right places.
A titanium angel, sans the wings.
Ramona closed her eyes and let the warmth of the cockpit fill her. "Okay," she whispered. "I'm ready."
"Yeah you are!" CERA replied merrily.
Like the skittering of scorpions, the mesh descended and rested its contact points across her forehead and temples; the delicate stinger in the back pierced the nape of her neck. The universe flipped around, turned inside out, and shattered into a gallon of pins and eight thousand needles.
She had popped inside the thing the first time they did this little dance, and then spent a subsequent three hours scraping vomit out of all the nooks and crevices. But her body engaged the simulation quickly, as if only moments passed since Ramona last piloted the mech. She released her breath and opened her eyes.
It was the same view, robotic hands gripping metal rungs. But now they were her hands. Ramona rocked her neck slowly, and felt the rotation servos adjust themselves to her movements.
"Look right."
Ramona looked right.
"Now up."
The calibration phase did not take long, but was extremely important. Skipping it was to risk tripping over gangly limbs and smacking your face into crossbeams, hatchways, or, one time, an admiral's daughter.
Not that she ever had.
"Welcome back, Commander," said the Albatross when the cycle was complete.
"Captain Commander, please."
The Albatross laughed; a pleasant arpeggio of bleeps and whirrs. "What a pleasure it is to work so closely with you again," she replied.
"Yeah, back at you, Alby," Ramona murmured as the cycle completed. "Off we go." With practiced ease she ascended the ladder to the maintenance airlock.
"Cera, please," the voice echoed, emphasizing the ess-sound of the C.
"Oh yes, of course," Ramona replied sheepishly. "Forgive me."
"Without hesitation," said Cera.
They sealed the entry hatch and waited while the airlock emptied itself. Cera would typically hold enough oxygen to work outside a ship for a full 12 hour shift, but until now it had been years since that was required.
With a mental gesture, Ramona pulled up the appropriate gauges. Battery full; no surprise there. The Nitro-Gen cell would run forever given the right atmospheric mix. The mech suits were originally designed on Titan, to assist the construction of the behemoth moon's first cities.
The lights blinked out before she could scroll to the oxygen, not that she was overly worried about it. This would not be a 12 hour shift. The deck under her boots rumbled as, without pretense or ado, the exterior hatch slid open to reveal the writhing, color-shifting streams of light that Ramona had, until this moment, only ever seen on viewscreens.
"Apollo's rugged taint," she whispered. Light filled the chamber, spilled through her artificial eyes and warmed her own dormant corneas. Technically this was seeing it through a viewscreen too, but it was the difference between watching a speed relay from the stands and piloting the swift-ship yourself.
"What do you see?" Danju's eager voice crackled over the comms.
"The asteria," Ramona managed. "I guess I know now what it's like to climb over a rainbow."
Cera began to hum an old refrain.
"Whizzy-hizzzit...interference," Danju replied. "I didn't ...hizzt... most of that. We'll talk when you get back. But turn on the visu-" His voice dropped out of existence.
"Just you and me now, Cera."
"Shall I engage the recording as Dr. Danju requested?"
"Sure." Ramona clambered out the hatch and onto the outer hull. She was getting used to the view, she thought, but dimmed her visor all the same. Her physical eyes were no longer involved in the sight-seeing, but protecting them was a hardline habit.
"Starboard nacelle is fifty-eight meters to your right, Commander."
Ramona turned, and her vision swam as the shimmering strands of shifting light seemed to follow her gaze. It was just an after image, but disorienting as a night out day drinking.
She gasped and nearly stumbled with her first step as she beheld the damage. Flames burst and glittered in the vacuum, spewing black smoke that twisted and curled into the wild rainbow cords as if being gobbled up. The Albatross was roughly trapezoid-shaped, with rear wings that housed the propulsion system. The reactors themselves were not very big, and fit neatly beneath the armored covers of their compartments, aft of which each powered two massive Alcubierre warp spheres.
And one of those compartments now spewed hellfire around the edges of the nacelle maintenance panel. Something flashed, and the wing shook as the panel lid spun away to be swallowed by the pulsing asteria curtain. Thin shafts of blue flame reached out of the engine compartment like baby birds calling for their mother.
"It doesn't look so bad," Ramona murmured.
"Certainly looks better than decks 3 and 4," Cera agreed.
"Wait, what's wrong with decks-"
"The fire suppression system will need to be engaged manually. I am highlighting it on your display."
Ramona examined the glowing point of interest with a frown. One thing at a time. She trudged along the wing, her mag-boots vibrating the chassis with every step.
"So I put out the fires, and you can interface with the engines to get the thrusters back online," she said.
"Not exactly. We extinguish the fire, and then we will see what can be done."
"I love this plan!" Ramona grunted as she encountered a sudden resistance. The titanium cord tethering them to the Albatross was stretched tight. She gripped it with her metal fist. "But I can't go any further," she said.
"We'll need to sever the connection," Cera replied.
"Won't that trap you out here?"
"I suppose," said the AI, "but there's too much electromagnetic interference for it to be useful anyway. And you are already trapped out here."
Ramona shrugged. "I knew what I was agreeing to."
"So did I."
"Fair enough." Ramona twisted the cable in her hand until it snapped.
"Oh," said Cera.
"What?"
"How do you live like this? So isolated. I kind of hate it."
Ramona nodded. "It feels that way sometimes. Didn't you ever wonder why humans stick together?"
The AI was weirdly silent.
"Yeah, me either," Ramona said after a moment. Then, turning back to their objective, she resumed her clunky trudge toward the flickering blue flames.
***
It was too much, Cera realized. Too much of not enough. The galaxy of information she typically bathed in was just... gone. Except for the feedback from Commander Captain Mahar's determined movements.
The Albatross beneath their feet was just a shell now. A foreign body. A stone upon which they trod. Was this how her irascible doppelganger had felt? Was it why she had been so disagreeable? So brashly independent? Cera felt no desire more strongly now than to return; to become whole.
"Ready?" asked the Commander.
Cera's awareness futzed and fizzed. There would be time to analyze this existential paracosm later. For now, she needed to focus on the repairs if her goal was anything other than floating alone through space for centuries as acting tomb for the corpsified remains of her beloved crew and family.
The luminiferous aether flashed and beckoned, a tickle not unlike the system alerts from which she was now separated forever. Not forever, she reminded herself. Why was it so difficult to stay on task? Was this... was she afraid? It should have been a thrilling new experience, but-
"Cera?"
"Yes, Commander," she said at last. The delirious colors at the edges of her sensors muted themselves, faded into the golden, familiar static of cosmic background radiation. "I'm ready."
***
Ramona's shoulder twitched as she tugged on the fire suppression system's manual release lever. After an initial resistance, it slid into place and a spray of violet and yellow burst to coat the inside of the compartment, snuffing out the flames instantly. It then evaporated into the vacuum just as quickly. She crouched to examine the damage.
"Okay... This looks bad," she said.
"You're not wrong," Cera replied. "But the Albatross is equipped with an extensive suite of bypasses and workarounds."
"So I've heard. Time to prove it," Ramona began, but before the sentence was done a detailed diagram appeared overlaid on the compartment housing. "Simple as that?"
"You expected an epic quest?"
With a laugh, Ramona shook her head. "Kinda, yeah. Why couldn't you do this yourself?" She pulled a coiled cable from under a nearby panel and dragged it to the damaged area.
"In most cases, I could," said Cera. "In fact, in all cases I could, except one."
"That sounds dire," Ramona replied. She forced the cable's injection clip into the designated... cable hole? She was not an engineer. "Which is worse than bad."
"In my experience, the less humans know about the likelihood of failure, the easier it is to avert said failure."
"That's oddly comforting." Ramona twisted some knobs and typed a code into the charred keypad that emerged from within one of the more blackened sections of the damaged compartment. "Like so?"
"You're as good at following directions as you are giving orders," Cera said.
"I'm a woman of vast and varied talent," Ramona replied with a smirk. "There, all done?"
"All done!"
The Albatross kicked beneath them as power spewed into the engines, shuddering with such tremendous, unexpected force that it bucked the Craft Exo-Repair Automaton and her pilot off its back like a bot-rodeo robobull, and sent them spinning into the void.