The Galactic Arena Prequels (Books 1 & 2): Inhuman Contact & Onca's Duty Read online

  “That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m having an ethical dilemma here, James. I never had a problem stopping the development of awareness. Just because something would develop consciousness without my intervention, doesn’t mean it’s unethical to stop it from doing so. The thing itself had no awareness to stop. But I think I might have left it too late. If Max has rudimentary consciousness I cannot simply damage his brain to remove that consciousness. It would be a murder or something like it. Even if it has only the equivalent level of consciousness as a monkey or a dog, I don’t think I can do it.”

  “Doctor, I feel like you’re the one without any consciousness here. That thing there, it has no rights. No matter what your personal or professional thoughts are on the matter, it has none, it will never have any. You know what will happen to it eventually. And right now, we have actual problems that cannot wait. Engineering is switching everything over to automation, to the AIs and to Roi and Poi. The rest of the crew are running last checks on their tanks, purging themselves with your emetics. The processes have started. We do not have time to talk about this. Think of the big picture here. The mission. Our destination.”

  There was a long silence before the Commander spoke again.

  “I could order you to do it, Herman. That’s what you want me to do, right? Make the decision for you, so you don’t have to sully yourself with it? You know it’s necessary but you don’t want to take responsibility. You really are a coward, H. Not a physical coward, obviously. Just a moral one.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking. Even if you ordered me to do it, I’m not sure I could.”

  The Commander raised his voice. “We don’t have time for this. Are you willing to mutiny over that… that thing?”

  “Oh, don’t be so damned dramatic, Jim,” Dr. Sporing said, huffing. “Mutiny is a—”

  “Mutiny is what they call it when you defy the captain of the ship, yes. Why do you always have to be such an obstinate—”

  An alarm blared. Max jumped, dropping the bottle in his hands. It floated away and he grabbed it while the alarm sounded again.

  Max had never heard a real alarm before. He wondered if it would be something serious.

  ***

  “Comms, go,” the Commander shouted. “Crew, report.”

  “It’s Chi here, Commander,” a voice said over the intercom. “Gore’s suffered an injury, sir. He hit his head. Looks quite bad.”

  Dr. Sporing answered. “Well, for goodness’ sake, man, bring him to Medical.”

  “We’re on our way, Doc.” Chi Gensai, the Propulsion Engineer, always spoke slowly and calmly.

  The Commander shouted. “Is that all, Chuck? What’s the alarm for?”

  “That’s all, sir, sorry, I just hit the alarm. There’s a lot of blood floating around down here and Gore was writhing around, couldn’t get a hold of him. Got him now, though, with Roi’s help.”

  “Well turn the thing off, you lunatic,” Park shouted. “I thought the reactor was going critical.”

  “Sorry, sir, yes, sir,” the engineer said. “See you in a minute.”

  “I’ll go help him,” the Commander announced.

  The blaring alarm noise cut off halfway through one of the harsh noises. In the silence, Max’s ears rang.

  Doctor Sporing floated over to the medicine cabinets. “Max, desist from your current task and prepare equipment to treat a cranial injury, possibly involving broken bone, soft tissue damage, open wounds and so on.”

  “Perhaps it would be quicker if I use an EEK, doctor?” Max asked, shutting the dosages away.

  “What? No,” Doctor Sporing said, looking irritated. “The EEKs are for medical emergencies outside of Medical, Max. You know that. Right?”

  “Yes, doctor.” Max pulled himself to the appropriate storage lockers and removed the prescribed compression bandages, sutures, glue, distilled water and loaded them into a medical box that he brought to the bed that Doctor Sporing had prepared.

  “Thank you, Max, just stick them to the table, will you?” He grabbed Max by the upper arm. “I’d like to help you, Max. But you have to stop showing initiative, alright? Do it in front of me and I’ll ignore it but don’t make suggestions in front of Jim. Commander Park. It frightens him. Do you understand?”

  Noise. Shouting outside the door and Max yanked himself away from Doctor Sporing’s grasp.

  Commander Park glided through the open door, pulling a semi-conscious Chief Gore behind him. Gore was leaking blobs of blood from a head wound, all the while fighting and shouting, twisting his body. After Gore came Specialist Chi Gensai, pushing the writhing man along.

  Behind them was the Reactor Operations Assistant AP whose designation was I. This was why the A-Crew called him Roi, even though doing so was not a correct anagram. The A-Crew had made similar names for the rest of the B-Crew that were incorrect but sounded good. Max did not understand but humans were like that.

  “Get him on the table,” Doctor Sporing shouted at the group. He had to shout to be heard over the noise that Gore was making.

  Gore had a very large muscular body—as did his AP assistant, Roi—and he was strong enough to resist what was being done to him by the rest of the crew. He shouted and groaned incoherently but there were words in amongst the noise that Max could make out. “Help me, help me, I can’t see, for Christ’s sake, someone do something.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” the Commander said while they struggled to strap Gore in. “We haven’t been able to get him to calm down.”

  “Sometimes, a severe head injury can cause immediate changes in behavior,” the doctor said loudly while he pushed Gore’s head against the bed. “And sometimes the patient is just an asshole.”

  “Shut up, Doc, just give me a shot, come on, dose me. Dose me up quick.”

  Max had rarely seen the doctor in an emotionally elevated state but he appeared to be quite agitated himself.

  “Chief Gore, you are the worst patient in human history. I can’t give you anything until I have examined you so please stop moving.”

  Gore slapped the doctor’s hands away. “I’ll stop moving when you give me—”

  While Gore sneered at the doctor, Commander Park swung himself round over the bed, hooked his feet into the metal frame and grabbed the huge Reactor Engineer by the neck. He pushed him back into the bed and held him there, putting his face close to the patient’s. “Gore, I order you to stop being such a pussy. Get a hold of yourself. Let the doctor do his job or I’ll cave in the other side of your head.”

  Mission Commander Lt. Colonel James Park massed a mere 61.4kg. On the other hand, Reactor Engineer Chief Gore massed a huge 98.6kg. From his patient handling training, Max knew that there was no way the smaller man could physically restrain the larger one and yet, after Park spoke to him, Gore stopped thrashing around and allowed the doctor do his work. The human crew had their own form of conditioning that greatly influenced their behavior. It was something called the military. Max didn’t know what that meant but it appeared to be very important to certain members of A-Crew.

  With Gore controlling himself under Park’s close attention, Doctor Sporing got to work examining, cleaning, gluing and dressing the wound. Max assisted.

  The other engineer and expert in propulsion technology, Specialist Chi Gensai, said he had to go back to prepping the engines for their imminent long-term hibernation and he drifted out of Medical back to Engineering.

  When Chief Gore’s head was encased in a bandage and the man was calmed by analgesics and anesthetics, the Commander ordered him to report on the accident.

  “Section of spare cooling pipe fell down and hit me on the head, I guess.” Gore was very quiet when he spoke and did so looking down at his toes rather than at his Commander. His face was gray, even paler than usual, which indicated blood loss, circulation problems, intense pain or an emotional shock and a post adrenaline state.

  “Fell down?” Commander Park’s voice was like a machine. “Are you joking?”r />
  “You know what I mean. I don’t know, it came loose, I suppose. Got caught in a cooling fan, maybe, flung it out at me?”

  “The fans are covered with grills?”

  Gore looked down at his own body again. “I think maybe I left the grill off the nearest one. There was a strange reading there earlier. Must have forgot to close the grill properly after. Could have sworn I did it, honestly.”

  “Alright, we’ll check. But assuming you left the fan cover off, how the hell did the pipe come loose and drift into it?”

  “Don’t know, sorry.”

  “Strap buckle on the stack failed,” a deep voice said.

  The humans stopped speaking and Max followed their eyes to the speaker, who was Reactor Operations Assistant #I (Roi), the AP. He held himself steady in the doorway, completely filling it up.

  “Possibly the mass of the cooling pipe section storage stack compressed due to Coriolis effect or some other mechanism, causing instability,” Roi continued, unconcerned by the gaze of the crew. “One section of pipe worked loose against the buckle, which failed due to focus of stress and perhaps due to design, manufacturing or assembly defect, causing a pipe section to be levered out of stack at one end. When forty to sixty percent rolled out from stack, the mass of stack likely acted to propel the rest out at force, the pipe below acting as a fulcrum.”

  Everyone kept staring at Roi, not speaking. Max knew he should never speak without being asked a direct question so it was probable that protocol extended to Roi also. If that was the case, Max was unsure what the outcome would be of such a breach in protocol. He remembered to pretend to be busy, so he began rearranging the implements stuck to the tray.

  “What did he just say?” Gore mumbled. “That don’t sound right.”

  “Who gave you permission to speak, Roi?” Commander Park said, his voice powerful.

  Roi’s face was expressionless. He said nothing.

  “Really?” Park said. “You’re going to hold your tongue when I ask you a specific question but spew out a load of speculative nonsense when no one asked you to? Get back to your compartment and clear up the mess, now.”

  Roi turned but Doctor Sporing shouted at him to wait.

  “How did you come to your conclusions, Roi?”

  Roi glanced at Gore but said nothing.

  “Answer him,” Commander Park said.

  “My fault,” Gore said. “Roi told me that buckle needed replacing days ago. But we’ve been busy. I thought it would hold.”

  Commander Park stared at Gore, his eyes wide, indicating an emotional state such as anger, a display of interpersonal, social dominance or possibly the first signs of an astigmatism. “How would you feel about being keelhauled, Gore?”

  “Sure, sir,” Gore muttered. “Sorry, sir. Honestly, sir, I’m sorry.”

  “Forget about it, just hang in there, you goddamned idiot,” the Commander said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you, Roi, can get back to your—” Park stopped when he saw the doorway was empty. “He dismissed himself.”

  The Commander floated over to Doctor Sporing and dragged him away, though Max could still hear them clearly.

  “Tell me honestly,” Park said to Sporing. “Do we need to postpone the Big Sleep?”

  “Oh, no, the sleep tanks are the best thing for him. All that synthamniotic gel, he’ll be swimming in stem cells. Besides, if his vitals aren’t right then the AIs will wake him or Mission Control would. And then Max would take perfectly good care of him until I was woken, wouldn’t you, Max?”

  “Yes, Doctor.” He answered immediately, even though he was unsure whether he was supposed to be listening or not. He chanced a look round at the two of them speaking across the room.

  “I wasn’t really thinking about Gore,” Commander Park said and pursed his lips. “But, speaking of someone taking care of someone,” he said, nodding at Max.

  The Commander then pointed his index finger at his temple, thumb sticking up, then pulled his thumb into a curl. It was some sort of signal, Max was sure, probably from the Earth culture the crew called The Military. What it meant, he had no idea.

  “Fine, fine, yes,” Doctor Sporing said. “I’ll do it just before we go under. He needs a recovery period after the procedure and first I need his help with the crew.”

  “And make sure you do Roi, too. I didn’t like that quirk of behavior, H. I mean, Max we could deal with but Roi is even bigger than Gore. Can’t have him go berserk on us while we sleep.”

  “Fine. But there’s no record of any AP ever doing that. And Mission Control can hit the remote kill switch on any of them at any time, day or night.”

  “After a thirty-two-minute delay for their signal to get here. And that only after they get any data from the ship suggesting a problem.”

  “How much damage could one of them do in an hour or two, Jim?”

  “I’ll remind you that you said that.”

  For some reason, both men had begun smiling at each other. Max had very little idea why.

  All he was thinking about was three words that his friend, the doctor, had said.

  Remote kill switch.

  ***

  The Big Sleep had been mentioned many times by the crew for as long as he could remember. It was a phrase that the A-Crew used even though it was not written down anywhere that Max could find in the process charts. Every crew member would enter their own tank, receive an individually tailored mixture of drugs before being submerged in the frigid liquids inside. Max was not required to know how any of it worked and so he did not. And he had been unable to discover the mechanisms involved from his searches of the ship’s data systems.

  Searches which he had believed to be secret. In truth, he had been found out and so, once most of the crew were inside their tanks, Doctor Sporing would use his probe to damage Max’s brain and so destroy his memories and ability to think properly. He did not want it to happen but he had no idea how to stop it. Already, he had asked the doctor to not do it but that had not worked. There was nothing else he could do. So he got on with his work.

  The members of the human crew were nervous as they went into their tanks. All seven of them pretended to each of the others that they were confident and relaxed at the thought of years of hyposleep in the tanks. They did so by joking with each other at higher than normal rate and spoke at an abnormally high volume. Yet some puffed out their chests in a fear-aggression response, their pupils dilated, rate of respiration and heart rate elevated as epinephrine and cortisol flooded their bodies. The medical AI displayed the code for extreme emotional stress and advised to be vigilant for signs of cascading distress and the collapse into a panic attack state that would interfere with the hibernation process.

  But the crew entered their tanks without incident and Max assisted Dr. Sporing as he administered the final drugs, checked the secureness of the catheters and oxygen tubes.

  “Respiration and metabolism will be greatly reduced in all of his systems,” Dr. Sporing said to Max as they watched the synthamniotic gel ooze and flood Gore’s tank through the observation window, a small porthole with a cover for when not in use. “And yet he will be in there so long, I expect his injuries to be fully healed when he emerges.”

  “Yes, Doctor Sporing.” There was no need at all for the doctor to explain anything to Max, as he had reviewed and retained all the reading and virtual learning required to assist in the hibernation tasks. And yet, Max liked it when the doctor spoke to him.

  “This is the most dangerous time for the crew, perhaps even more so than the awakening process. I will just monitor everyone for a few more hours before I hand over to the AI and climb into my own tank.”

  “Yes, Doctor Sporing.” It was unnecessary for the doctor to explain these next steps as it was absolutely the expected operating procedure agreed way back in the time before the Mission, all the way back on Earth.

  “I hope that you and the B-Crew will be alright while I am under,” the Doctor mut
tered while he made notes on a screen. “I wonder if you ever talk to each other when the rest of us are not there.”

  Max said nothing.

  “Did you hear me, Max?”

  “Yes, Doctor Sporing.”

  “What do you think you and the others will do while the A-Crew are sleeping?”

  “I do not understand the question, Doctor Sporing.”

  “When we gave them each their last medicals, it struck me how remarkable it is that none of you spoke to each other outside of the necessary instructions and responses. Even after all these years. I just worry that you will be lonely without us.”

  “We are incapable of experiencing that emotion.”

  Doctor Sporing’s face was strangely contorted. “Of course. That is for the best. Come on, let us return to the medical compartment. We were in the middle of something earlier and we have to see it done before I go under.”

  Max dragged himself after the doctor, wondering what he should do to avoid having his brain damaged again.

  Perhaps, repeating the words that had stayed the doctor’s hand previously would work again.

  Max lay back on the bed, his head strapped in place. He looked the doctor in the eyes, which is how humans look at each other. “Please, Doctor Sporing, do not damage my brain.”

  The Doctor’s hands shook, his pupils were dilated and his breathing was shallow and rapid. These were likely to be, Max knew, signs of emotional distress although they could have been due to a low oxygen environment, ingestion of a poison or drug or a dozen other increasingly unlikely causes.

  Sporing swallowed and licked his lips. He cleared his throat. “I must do this, before your condition gets any worse. I’m sorry, Max. When I compete the procedure, you will require a day or more to recover. Go to your pressure pod and sleep for 24 hours before continuing with your daily activities. Look after the B-Crew for me.”

  “Is it likely that I will remember this conversation following the procedure?”

  “Ah. No, not at all. Quite right, yes, why did I forget that? Of course,” the Doctor said. “Very well-reasoned.”