Элизабет Бир - Machine

That would pose no risk to the occupants at all.

I wanted to know before I left what kind of preparation we needed to make before we came back. And I was definitely leaving.

My plan seemed pretty good to me, honestly. Until the hull plates under my feet began to crumble.

Well, that explained where the extra bots had come from. Helen had been autocannibalizing her own hull to build them, and she’d finally autocannibalized too far. I had a certain amount of time to contemplate it, as I fell through the shredding fabric of that hull in slow motion, surrounded by the cryo coffins that had been closest to me. I was still plugged into the access port on the nearest one.

I wasn’t too worried. There was a long way to fall, and while Big Rock Candy Mountain was moving fast, she wasn’t accelerating fast. There was too much of her, and her design wasn’t built to take a lot of torque. I had maneuvering jets.

And I had Sally.

I pinwheeled, without much control. I needed to wait for the correct attitude before I hit my jets to stabilize and keep catching up. But I could set the suit to do that on its own. Its automated reflexes were a hell of a lot better than mine. I’d just jet myself right over and start collecting cryo units until Sally could come and get me.

I kept thinking that right up until I got myself stabilized and got a glimpse back inside the cargo bay. I didn’t see Helen or Tsosie inside.

But a tentacle of microbots was stretching toward me.

I yelped—out loud, knowing Sally and possibly Tsosie could hear me. And anybody back on the ambulance who was listening to our coms, which was probably everybody.

I hit my jets on manual, ducking away. Until I hit the end of the connector cable, at which point the cryo chamber and I began to revolve around one another.

It was a rookie mistake, and the kind of error that ended with frozen astronauts falling endlessly in orbit. Or at least until somebody came and collected their corpse, since it was antisocial to leave space junk spinning around out there where somebody else might run into it.

So on some level I should have been grateful that the tendril compensated for my maneuver, and snatched me effortlessly out of space. The cryo units were starting to fall behind— Big Rock Candy Mountain slowly gaining v over them—and I squeaked in frustration as I was pulled away. An unprofessional manifestation of a very professional anger. There were people in there.

If I could get them to Core General, they might be people we could save. But as we accelerated away from them, all I could see was their batteries failing, along with any chance at life for the people inside. Helen apparently had no control over Big Rock Candy Mountain ’s engines, which had been accelerating for centians and were expected to accelerate for centians more.

It occurred to me that the microbots could crack my hardsuit, or whip me around until my vertebrae separated, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to prevent it. A little bit of worry on my own behalf penetrated my professional despair.

“There you are!” Sally cried brightly. The rush of relief that flooded through me was so intense I had to dial it back a little. “You’re all right!”

“Not for much longer!” I yelled, shoving uselessly at the microbots.

Sally said, “Cut that out! It worked. But don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

I blinked several times before it occurred to me that I should ask her what she meant. “Excuse me?”

“Punching through the hull. Helen couldn’t let lives be at risk. You distracted her—and the machine—long enough for me to override them.”

“Oh.” I decided not to explain that I hadn’t punched through the hull on purpose. “Oh! Is that you towing me in?”

“It doesn’t mean I won’t squeeze you a bit,” she threatened.

“How are Helen and the machine?”

“I don’t think I harmed them,” Sally said. “Just subdued.”

I craned my head around. I couldn’t twist that far and had to rely on senso for a visual of the cryo units. “What about those people out there?”

“Helen’s going to be pretty happy with us once we rescue them,” Tsosie said. “I’m fine, too, thanks for asking.”

He knew—and he knew I knew—that I would have felt it through our link if anything had actually happened to him. But if Tsosie ever stopped busting my ass, it would mean that he was being controlled by brainworms.

“Well,” I said. “So am I. Can I go fetch those cryo units?”

“I’m coming,” Sally said. “I’ll save you a step.”

Tsosie cleared his throat. “You know. It is possible to be too cool under pressure.”

I ignored him. “Sally, we’re going to have to divert power from our own cryo tanks to support these.”

We had three. We used them when somebody was wounded beyond what we could repair in the field, and too badly to survive the flight back to Core General.

“Well,” Sally said in resignation, “nobody had better get sick on the way home.”

WE COULD HAVE GONE DIRECTLY on to the docked Synarche ship, but it would have been dumb. Sally was sending drones to investigate, and we could deal with it after a rest cycle. Tsosie and I were both exhausted and low on resources, and I was in too much pain to be much good to anybody.

One thing about the kind of pain I have is that it is so amorphous—so unlocalized—that it’s hard to describe and easy to ignore. You don’t even necessarily notice that it hurts, when it hurts. You just notice that you’re crabby and out of sorts and everything seems harder than it should.

Not being able to describe it also tends to make other people take it less seriously. Like family members, and sometimes doctors, too.

I found myself trying to massage my hands through the hardsuit as we cruised back to Sally, using our thrusters to match velocity and then, when she seemed motionless, to nudge us into contact with her hull.

Since we weren’t jumping out of her at a moving target at this time, we both entered through the same airlock at the same time. We waited through the decon and, when the lock cycled, stepped inside.

Loese, the pilot, wasn’t waiting for us, because she was on a rest shift and Sally gets very cross with us if we ditch our rest for nonessential reasons—or, as she calls them, “excuses.” The rest of the crew all found reasons to wander by and greet us as we were stripping out of our newly sterilized hardsuits. It wasn’t exactly a hero’s welcome, but it was nice to see everybody.

Not that Sally was so big we could have avoided them even if we were trying.

The first to wander around the ring was Hhayazh. It was one of our flight nurses, a multi-limbed multi-eyed nightmare creature from Ykazh, its dull black exoskeleton covered in thick, bristling hairs. It was also one of the nicest sentients you’d ever care to meet, once you embraced Ykazhian culture… which, in turn, embraced sarcasm with the enthusiasm of an octopus embracing a tasty, tasty mollusk.

“Greetings, far wanderers,” it said, through the usual translation protocols. “I perceive you’ve made it back to the real hub of the action. I hope your trip wasn’t too boring.”

“About as boring as being here,” Tsosie answered. “We heard you broke the place.”

“That wasn’t me,” Hhayazh said. It pointed at Camphvis, the other flight nurse, as the Banititlan came into the cabin. As she always did, she was leading with her eyestalks. “Camphvis leaned on the dashboard.”

Camphvis responded with the bubbling sound that her species used to indicate derisive laughter—which the senso translated into derisive laughter. This produced an interesting layering effect. “Where does Sally keep her dashboard?”