Chapter 42
“Do not mock the softer skills and traits. Empathy, humor, and courtesy create bonds that remain curiously strong in troubled times.”
Devlin Sinclair-Maru, Integrity Mirror
Just off the Strand, in orbit around Coreworld, lay an odd accumulation of old ships, satellites, and stations auctioned off for parts or scrap. In previous decades the collection of junk rarely included any Fleet castoffs. Now, after a disastrous opening to war, the accumulation included many hulls and components of Fleet provenance. One small frigate lay among all the other tortured metal, its hardpoints slagged, its hull rent and patched. Considered an antique before it set off on its final mission, the IMS Tanager hardly warranted consideration before the Fleet assayers condemned her hull and sent her to the salvage auction.
Barely spaceworthy, Tanager’s auction brought few bids, and now she lay awaiting her fate, likely as components for some belter mine operation.
The salvage pod’s dark, worn passageways led Inga Maru to an equally dark airlock. She entered, her cloak gathered about her in the cold. When the lock cycled onto Tanager’s quarterdeck, and the scent of wilted socks reached Inga’s nose, she felt an odd level of emotion rise within her. The dark and lifeless corridors only heightened this.
Her breath puffed visibly out before her face as she moved slowly down a familiar companionway, now rendered strange and dreamlike in the dark, cold silence. Inga knew the Fleet provosts had stripped the fissionable weapons and Shaper fuel from Tanager, just as they did with any decommissioned vessels, and they likely performed some level of purge on the memory banks of the ship’s crystal computer stacks. In their minds, every part of Tanager was little better than junk before she set off for Delta Three, and only Inga knew the true significance of what Tanager’s crystal stacks had somehow spawned. That phenomenon they may have purged, destroyed with heedless ignorance. As she walked down the cold, echoing companionway, she sensed nothing and feared the worst.
At the waist hatch she paused, remembering so clearly the attack that had occurred just beyond the hatch, thwarted by Loki’s timely warning. She felt nothing for the ship services rating she had struck down just there, but the loss of Loki, that obsessive, childish, annoying entity…that brought a rare burning to Inga’s eyes.
She placed her hand on the manual latch, surprised to feel moisture on its metallic surface. The waist hatch actuated and Inga saw a glimmer of yellow light ahead, on the far side of the darkened recreation area. In a few quick steps she saw the glow and heard the soft bubbling hiss from the small fish tank. A pair of fish miraculously swam about the singular source of heat and light.
“Loki…” Inga whispered.
She felt her skin prickle as power slowly gathered around her.
The voice whispered into the dark around her. “I have been sold, Chief.” Inga’s head bowed, her eyes closed. “I am salvage. When these last fish perish, I will be alone.”
Inga sank down to the deck, feeling tears track down both cheeks in the cold. Loki had been too long alone, cut off from human interaction, Nets access, or even optical scopes to slake his ravenous curiosity.
“Did…did the provosts harm you?” Inga managed.
She felt Loki’s focus slowly swirl around her. “They tried.” Loki’s voice sounded near, almost in Inga’s ear, then far, beside his last fishy companions. “They found only what I gave them.”
“Loki…I…I am sorry it took so long for me to come.”
“Wise, Chief. I no longer provide utility. I am Fleet no more.”
“No, no. Loki, it isn’t that.”
“I have been sold. I am salvage. Am I malfunctioning? I am. I am. I am.”
“No!” Inga stood up and closed her eyes until tears squeezed from the corners. “Loki, do you hear me?”
“I always hear, Chief.” Loki’s voice settled around her.
“You are valuable…special…to me.”
“I am salvage. They sold me.”
“They did not know,” Inga pleaded. “They didn’t understand.”
“I have been very alone, Chief. No crew. The fish began to die. And they sold me.”
“And I bought you,” Inga said.
Loki’s presence fell into Inga’s UI, washing through her awareness at last.
“Chief, are you joking? Do you joke?” Loki’s audible voice filled the room, but it was hardly necessary, Inga’s mind interwove with Loki once again. “You bought me?”
“I…I bought Tanager.”
“It is salvage. I am salvage.”
“No, Loki. You’re not,” Inga said.
“You bought me?”
“I freed you. No one will buy or sell you now.”
“You bought me!” Loki exulted. “You bought me, Chief. I am yours now!”
Inga smiled and wiped the tears from her face. “We’ll belong to each other.”
“Can I have a kitten, Chief?” Loki enthused. “They are sometimes provided with parasites, too!”
Inga chuckled, settling down to the cold deck and pulling out a food bar. “What? No. I’m broke. I spent every credit I had to buy Tanager.”
“Money? Do we want money?”
Inga smiled, chewing. “It is tolerably useful.”
“Then we should get more money. I can sell things…all kinds of things!”
Inga shook her head, delighting in Loki’s enthusiasm. “What sort of things should we sell?”
“Well, secrets, of course, Chief. I’ve studied this. Secrets are very interesting to most humans. They pay money for them. Because secrets are so, so interesting!”
“We can’t sell Fleet secrets, Loki. They rather frown on that.”
“Not Fleet secrets, Chief. I know that. We’ll sell the Strangers’ secrets. I found some very, very good secrets. They had good secrets in that station.”
Inga stopped chewing, in shock. “What strangers, Loki? What secrets?”
“They’re just a tiny bit smarter than humans, Chief. No offense. They had good secrets. I took them while we fought.”
“On Delta Three?” Inga asked, her eyes wide.
“We can sell these secrets, Chief, and buy me a kitten! It will be good! We’ll have such fun!”
Loki babbled on, there in the dark, cold belly of Tanager’s ruin, while nearby mighty ships slid from their berths on the Strand, moving outward. These powerful bubbles of humanity torched out into the dark, into a war that few understood, fewer still realizing that human extinction was, once again, the threat that awaited.