The Starship Theseus

3. Nobody calls the UEOSC Yosca.

The Aurora Drive affected everyone differently. For Nathan Sawyer, it was a faint tingling sensation in his lower extremities, a popping of his ears, and a taste in his mouth. Citrus, like oranges and grapefruit mixed together, except overripe and almost rotten. The problem was his nerves, not anything in his mouth, so brushing his teeth would only add the taste of toothpaste to the mix. Fortunately, the sensations usually passed quickly.

"Translation successful," Katherine said competently. "Disengaging modular interlocks and adjusting habitation modules into stable orbit around Horthus Prime."

"I still think it’s weird that the guy named literally everything after himself," Nathan muttered.

"The Jurassians view names very different from humans," Katherine reminded himself. "Most of their population are Nameless. It’s not that they have no individual identity, but their society does not view them as important enough to waste a sound to associate with them individually. Rather, they identify themselves based on the patterns of their skin and their scent. A photograph of a Jurassian’s face is as solid a proof of their identity as your fingerprints or genetic code."

"To them, maybe," Nathan complained. "I can’t tell them apart without recognition software.

"That’s because you’re a human biased bigot," Simon interjected. "Aaaand their shooting at us."

"Confirmed. Twelve incoming anti-spacecraft ballistics. Athena, initiate countermeasures," Katherine said calmly.

"Athena, follow standard rules of engagement. Minimize response to facilities showing hostility and defending the Theseus," The old man ordered calmly from the captain’s chair.

The room was, in fact, modeled after a very old entertainment series, broadcast back when vacuum tube televisions were the norm. It was functional, after all, and the stations and positions made sense to anyone who had ever watched the show. Nathan, trapped in his parents commune back on earth, had grown up on that show and others like it, and had been incredibly disappointed when he finally got into space and learned just how little the reality matched his expectations.

But at least the virtual bridge looked cool in his head.

"Confirmed," Athena agreed. "Initiating countermeasures. Seeking solutions with minimal loss of life and minimal damage to the Theseus. Electronic intrusion into hostile facility successful. Shall I detonate the remaining warheads?"

"Negative, Athena," the old man ordered. "Disable the station but do not destroy it. Crew survival is optimal but not mandatory."

"Confirmed. Venting atmosphere."

"Some welcome. Hey Simon, am I being a human biased bigot when I say that the Horthians need to work on their manners?" Nathan asked.

"Quit it you two, we’re under fire," Lucy chastised. She then showed her own unconcern by grooming herself with a holographic mirror.

"Whatever, there’s not like there’s anything we can do about it, right?" Nathan asked.

"I hate to agree with him, but he’s right," Simon said reluctantly.

"That’s better. Unity under fire," Katherine chuckled. "Oh, broadcast from the planet. It’s Horthus."

"All of the planets are Horthus," Nathan pointed out.

"No, I mean Horthus the head of state. He just disavowed the actions of the orbital platform that shot at us. And, um, I think he also just condemned a lot of his own people to death. If they don’t fix the station themselves, the Named ones on board lose their names. If they escape, then their family shares that dishonor. If they don’t fix it themselves--"

"I still don’t understand this whole ‘I am unnamed’ thing," Nathan said, interrupting her. "I mean, why can’t they just say ‘My name is Bob, nice to meet you, and fuck the rules?’ That’s what I’d do."

"You’d do that because you’re human ," Simon said, unable to hide his disgust. "And you can’t understand not being human. Humans name everything, usually more than once. You have a given name, a nick name, a family name, a nationality name, an ethnicity name, a planet of origin name, and of course you’re all Homo sapiens sapiens , if that isn’t the most conceited selection for your scientific name ever. It’s literally ‘man wise wise’ in Latin. But because you did everything first, everyone else is stuck using your conceited--"

"Look, Simon, I love you, but is this rant ending anytime soon? In case you forgot, we’re under fire," Nathan said, interrupting the uplifted chimpanzee.

"Whatever. We were in more danger during the FTL countdown," Simon pointed out. "The Aurora Drive still has a .001% failure rate. Horthian weapon systems are like nine generations behind our own."

"They did for the Elizabeth pretty well," Nathan pointed out. "Sixty percent casualties."

"And yet they destroyed seven Deathsworn capital ships and sixty three Deathsworn landing parties, as well as seriously damaging eight Aurealian cruisers before the Aurealians backed off," Simon hooted. "And the Elizabeth was a decommissioned troop transport! It was built to bring in soldiers to put down a colony rebellion that never happened. It wasn’t even designed for ship-to-ship combat, except to defend itself as it got close enough to drop PMT pods. And that was before it was decommissioned and sold to those colonists. If either the Deathsworn or the Aurealians were a peer level adversary, then the Elizabeth would have been lost with all --"

"Will you two shut up!?" the old man shouted. Nathan and the Pan troglodytes sapiens both recoiled in shock. Nathan didn’t think he’d ever heard the old man raise his voice before.

"Sorry boss," he muttered contritely.

"Sorry. I’d say it won’t happen again, but, you know," Simon admitted.

"Are we still under fire?" Nathan asked, trying to get back on topic.

"No. If you had been paying attention, Athena would have notified you that she has shot down the last of the missiles. Seven of them detonated, the remainder are expected to either burn up in the atmosphere or just … keep floating I guess. Kinda hope they don’t blow up next to anything important," Katherine said, shrugging. "If they were earth space force weapons, they would be detonated remotely, or disabled remotely, as soon as they were mission-killed. Assuming that it was safe to do so, of course."

"Oh wow," Simon exclaimed, studying his terminal. "Athena wasn’t kidding when she said electronic intrusions were successful. We have everything on that platform, from door locks to the reactors to their communications hub and holo emitters. I’m checking now to see if there’s any Horthian porn. You know, for scientific reasons."

Nathan snorted at ‘scientific reasons,’ but didn’t rock the boat. The old man’s artificial expression was even more stern than usual. Nathan asked "Have they never heard of digital security? I mean, it sounds like a script kiddie from earth could tear this entire system apart."

"Remember when I said their identities are based upon their appearances?" Katherine reminded him. "Well, so are their security measures. Their pigment patterns are recorded at birth, and can be used to identify them throughout their lives. All Athena had to do to hack them was send a datastream pretending to come from a known Named General. It’s an old trick that we picked up on during third contact, but they’re so reliant on their current system that they can’t fix it without breaking everything else."

"Or they could just start giving their people usernames and passwords. Or even keycards or something, some sort of secondary identifier," Nathan pointed out.

"Yeah, we’re specifically trying not to give them that idea," Lucy pointed out, scratching her hindquarters. The uplifted gorilla was always scratching something or other. "But even if they do think of it, we’re not sure they’d be able to do it."

"Why not?" Nathan frowned. "Seems like an easy patch to me."

Simon began hooting in laughter. "Oh my sweet summer child. The programs that the Horthians and the Deathsworn rely on to run their ships were written centuries ago. What’s more, we’re fairly certain that they were written by the Aurealians! There’s no such thing as a Horthian computer programmer, they would have to reverse engineer everything from the trinary. It was easy for us, we had thousands of techs flying in to examine the wreckage from … first contact. The kind of people who build brand new operating systems and kernals from scratch for fun! Meanwhile, you don’t even know how to run the security patches on your jarhead coffin, and you think that completely changing and rewriting the Horthian internet ‘an easy patch.’"

"The Aurealian have a similar lack of digital security," Katherine pointed out. "Although theirs stems from the fact that, until their war with the deathsworn, they’d never really considered that their own technology could be used against them. Their society is incredibly harmonious. They air gaped critical systems like their reactors, but communications, scientific, and historical records are an open book."

"Aurealians see selves all one pack," Rusty pointed out, lifting his head from between his front legs. "Hold no secrets from the rest of their pack. It is you humans who are paranoid about secrets."

"If we didn’t keep our secrets, then the Deathsworn would have the Aurora drive and our antimatter generation capabilities," Nathan pointed out to the uplifted Irish Setter. "I don’t even want to imagine the death toll they would inflict upon the Aurealians with that level of tech. They could just warp a bottle full of anti-helium down onto inhabited planets from light years away. The Aurealians are barely holding on while they’re at peer level. And I like the Aurealians. They’re cute. They don’t deserve to go extinct."

"Yes, we all know you think that the three eyed cat-like goat centaurs are adorable," Lucy groaned. "I think they’re creepy. Anything with three eyes is creepy."

"Whether they’re creepy or adorable is irrelevant," Katherine said sternly. "Focus on the mission, sapients."

"Right. Um, so, what are we supposed to be doing then?" Nathan asked. "I mean, they shot at us when we came through, but aside from the boss guy saying ‘just kidding,’ there’s been no action. Aside from Simon dredging their internet for porn, what else can we do right now?"

"Please, I’ve already finished downloading everything they had, all forty eight petabytes of it."

"That sounds like a lot," Nathan commented.

Simon snorted. "Says the human!"

"Okay, I walked into that one. So if you’ve downloaded what you were after, why are you still typing like you’re trying to write Shakespeare?"

"Because I have serious objectives too. I’m laying trojans, pulling out operational specs and standing orders, documenting historical archives, basically I’m giving their system a full colonic. When I’m done I’ll probably start to write my name in their second moon using their coilguns. That’s not mission critical, but it would be pretty cool, right?"

"I’m countermanding that last bit," the old man said sternly. "We don’t want them to realize how vulnerable their network is for as long as possible. Even if they can’t patch the vulnerabilities, they can start airgapping like the Aurelians do, which will significantly impede our non-lethal countermeasures."

"You never let me have any fun," Simon complained, but he didn’t stop toying with his holographic interface.

"So, we have unfettered access to their systems, right?" Nathan asked.

"More or less," Katherine agreed, not looking up from her station. "We’re trying to use known Named individuals who aren’t around to contradict the logs we’re generating. Ones that are either dead or Deathsworn and not in the system. We’ve found in the Norathan system that the computer doesn’t like it when it knows an individual is in two separate places at the same time. Fortunately it just crashed their internet for a few hours; they never figured out why."

"But it doesn’t mind when we use someone who’s dead?"

"Apparently not. At least we’ve never had any trouble with it in the past," Katherine shrugged.

"So then … why are we here?" Nathan asked, looking at his crewmate directly as he began to express the suspicions that had been forming since he’d been examining the incoming data. "Seems like all of this could be done by an automated probe out by the minor gas giant. Instead we made a huge scene of showing up in orbit around their most protected planet and disabling a major space station just as they’re preparing for an invasion. Did we know about the invasion? Because nobody fucking told me about the invasion."

The old man snapped his fingers, grinning at Simon, his artificial lips twisted in a smirk of victory.

"Oh come on, that doesn’t count. He had to figure it out on his own," the uplift complained.

"He only had to figure out that we were withholding the true mission objectives from him," the old man countered. "Which he clearly has, even faster than the time frame we agreed upon. Pay up."

"This is bullshit, but I don’t want to get thrown out an airlock again so fine," Simon grumbled. He made a motion, and the holographics documented the exchange of credits.

"You’ve been lying to me," Nathan said slowly. "This isn’t just an espionage mission, is it?"

"Oh, it is," the old man assured him. "But there are things that you don’t know that you don’t know. And now we’re at the crossroads, and the devil is asking for you to make a choice. Either we read you in completely and you act as your conscience commands, or we put you in stasis until we return to Yosca space."

"Nobody calls the UEOSC Yosca except for you, old man," Nathan argued, although he felt a cold sweat breaking out.

"It will catch on one of these days," the old man assured him.

"Do I have to decide right now?" Nathan asked nervously. "You know how I feel about stasis. It’s one of the main reasons I washed out of the marines."

"Any movement from the Horthians?" the old man asked of the other crew.

"Nothing local," Katherine stated. "There’s some movements out by the outer orbits. Looks like they’re ignoring us while they keep preparing for the Aurealians."

"Huh. Smart," the old man chuckled.

"How exactly is that smart?" Nathan asked. "The Theseus can tear apart this planet’s defenses and level its cities from orbit, and they’re just letting us do what we want."

"But we’re Yosca," the old man said, grinning. "Yosca doesn’t shoot first. Considering that Horthus disavowed whoever shot at us earlier, we’re quite restricted on how we can legally intervene. There’s a reason this guy is the system overlord. If we play by the rule book, all we can do is offer to mediate their dispute and act as an observer when that doesn’t work out. Considering that neither the Aurealian swarm, nor the Horthians, are signatories, we can’t even criticize them for humanitarian reasons and yes, Simon, I know that we need to find a better word than humanitarian but English is what it fucking is so shut up, okay?"

"If we play by the rule book?" Nathan asked, feeling pale. "Fuck."

"Yeah, sorry kid," Lucy snorted. "It’s shit or walk away time."

"Sleep on it," the old man suggested. "You won’t be asked to do anything against your conscience. You were selected for this mission because of your morality, not despite it. You’re a true believer, Nathan. I am too. I am telling you that the Theseus’s mission is Right, Just, and Moral . But I cannot tell you more than that until you agree to be read in completely. Athena, disconnect user Nathan Sawyer."

"Fu-urk," Nathan grunted as the bridge suddenly de-rezzed. He was left blind for a moment; not in darkness, but in static, as his brain reset from the sudden disconnection from the virtual bridge. His vision returned a moment later, as did his control over his body. He was resting comfortably in his bunk. Groaning in irritation with the old man, he yanked the leads out of the jack in his occipital bone which had been feeding the simulation into his awareness.

One of the many disappointments he’d faced when he learned how actual starships worked was that there was no bridge most of the time. Not a physical one, at least. The risk of a stray PDC wiping out the command staff was too high, back when PDC’s were actually a threat to piercing the hull. With the ubiquity of holoemitters, it became possible to establish virtual bridges throughout a starship back when the skip drive was still an interesting mathematical theorem without a practical application.

Then came direct brain stimulation. In Nathan’s case, an actual brainjack. That was a gift of the Earth Space Force from before he’d washed out. It’s not like a surgeon could just take it out, after all. It was bonded to his dendrites on a molecular scale. Fortunately, earth tech was top of the line, and the fact that he now worked for the UEOSC meant that the Theseus was fully integrated with the tech in his head.

Jacking in wasn’t a big deal, but uncontrolled disconnects like the old man had just done to him left him feeling sick and disoriented. He lay still for a moment while he decided whether his body needed to vomit or not, then slowly sat up and made his way into his bathroom.

The Theseus was luxurious compared to most military vessels, but that was largely because it was running undermanned. Nathan was bunking in a lieutenants quarters in the trooper habitation compartment. The Theseus modular nature made it a jack of all trades, master of all. Built to be retroactive compatible with weapon systems centuries old, while simultaneously future proof, it was the state of the art in military vessels in all of known space. A simple retrofit would customize it to face any threat.

The brainchild of the UEOSC, the earth space force had begged Nathan to take the position once the old man had approached him just to get details and specs. It didn’t matter that the influence of the ESF was shrinking every decade, that their ships were centuries old and their shipyards even older, that their resources were mined out and dwindling. They were the ESF, and if they couldn’t build the best ships in known space, then they would damn well at least crew them.

Except, of course, this had been after they’d washed Nathan out.

"Fucking hypocrites," he muttered under his breath. He pulled a bottle of anti-nausea medicine out of its medicine cabinet and swallowed the pill dry.

The Theseus had just seen its first action. Not only had it come out unscathed, the victory had been mostly automated. In fact, the only human input had been to minimize the response to the foreign hostilities and prevent escalation. The damage that the Theseus could cause in Horthian space if the Old Man took off the kid gloves was just a little frightening.

After staring at his mirror for a moment, he pulled out something for headaches as well.

"Fucking bullshit. It’s all fucking bullshit," he muttered again. "Fucking old man telling me it’s just routine espionage then pulling the rug out from under me. Going to fucking put me on ice? Fuck him. I’ll put him on ice."

Except, of course, he probably couldn’t. Nathan was as fit and capable as the ESF could make him in a fight, but except for the wiring in his brain he was one hundred percent human. The old man was something like eighty percent combat prosthetics. Even if Nathan was wearing his combat exoskeleton, the old man’s speed and strength would probably win out.

"Fuck him," he muttered again. "And fuck Simon."

Nathan truly didn’t understand why the uplifted chimpanzee was so hostile towards him. He didn’t have that problem with the other uplifts. Lucy was a bit gruff with him sometimes, but she was gruff with everyone. Rusty loved his bellyrubs, but only when they were off duty. Tony was basically Nathan’s best friend on the station. All of the others were at least professional with him, if they were not affable. But Simon went out of his way to ruin Nathan’s day whenever possible. There was no insult or dig that the upstart ape left unsaid.

Nathan knew he had a decision to make, and he didn’t know which path he should choose. The old man had, if not outright lied to him, deliberately mislead him as to the scope of the mission. This was supposed to be routine surveillance of a known belligerent in the Aurealian – Deathsworn conflict. An easy maiden voyage for the Theseus, and a chance for Nathan to work for the UEOSC, a dream far more meaningful to him than being yet another ESF marine had ever been. The old man had one thing right; Nathan believed in the UEOSC. Believed in it like his mother believed in Jesus.

"Fucking Yosca. That is never going to catch on," Nathan muttered. He decided to take a shower. If he had shut down the fucking simulation properly , he would have spent an hour exercising, but he doubted he could keep the contents of his stomach in his stomach if he started working out now.

Officially, the Aurealian – Deathsworn conflict was none of the UEOSC’s business. The Aurealians were willing to talk, eager even. The Deathsworn talked only to undermine the Aurealian’s requests for aid. Both sides had documented that the history of their war went back centuries and that atrocities had been committed by both sides. Neither side was willing to come to a table and talk about terms for a cease fire. And both sides agreed that the Aurealians were losing, although they were losing well.

"So why the fuck are they attacking Horthus," Nathan asked himself, nearly dropping his soap. "Shit. Things that I don’t know that I don’t know. Right. The Aurealians are smart, they wouldn’t throw valuable ships into a meat grinder. There’s a reason, and the old man knows what it is. Something stinks in the state of Horthus."

Nathan continued to think things through, what he knew, what he didn’t. He kept coming back to the meat grinder. He had seen the emplacements in the system. Useless in modern warfare by ESF or its peer military standards, but the xenos were generations behind. To Aurealian tech, Horthus wasn’t a tough egg to crack. It was a damn rock that just happened to look like an egg.

Aurealian offensives were usually hit and run. They would zoom through a known target at significant velocities, launch their missiles at Deathsworn shipyards or drydocks or refineries, then outrace the opposition with their faster ships. It was the Deathsworn who would target Aurealian strongholds for capture and occupation.

Unless they weren’t planning on capturing the Horthus system. If they were simply planning on destroying it, then their numbers and actions made sense, but that seemed … un-Aurealian. The records he’d perused after being inducted into Yosca – the UEOSC dammit – had shown that although the Aurealians didn’t try to take or hold new territory. They defended themselves and their civilian populations fiercely, but he’d never heard of them invading. When they targeted Deathsworn emplacements, it was to destroy resources, not to take possession of them. And with what he’d just learned about Aurealian Cybersecurity …

The old man thought that the Theseus’s mission was right and just. That was a point worthy of consideration all by itself. He had been an admiral, once, before resigning his post due to a ‘moral conflict’ with the operating policy of the UEOSC. Yet instead of fading away into the pools of history, he had modified his body with combat prosthetics, used experimental methods of prolonging his own life, designed the most dangerous ship in known space, and recruited brilliant sapients from all over the UEOSC. Not that Nathan considered himself brilliant, it had just been an opportunity for him to get his foot in the door with the UEOSC. But the old man seemed to think highly of him for some reason.

It was as he was drying himself that he saw it, dangling around his neck. He’d put it on the same chain as his dogtags back in basic and never really thought of it again. When he did, he thought of his mother, who had given it to him. Not Jesus. His mother. She was religious, he was not. But she was by far the most moral person Nathan would ever meet.

"If I know, then I have to act," he said. "That’s why he didn’t read me in until it was too late to turn back. If I knew the scope of the mission, it would have affected my actions. He’s not asking me to do anything I wouldn’t do anyway. There are things I don’t know that I don’t know. If I knew them, then I would be obligated to act on them. And now I am obligated to learn what I do not know so that I know how I am obligated to act. Fuck you Jon. My choice my ass. Athena?"

"Yes, Nathan? I am here."

"Tell the fucking old man to read me in. But tell him the next time he fucking disconnects me without warning I’m going to reset his firmware to its factory defaults."

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