The Starship Theseus

7. Have you fools figured out how the humans destroyed my space-station yet?

"Have you fools figured out how the humans destroyed my space-station yet?" Horthus demanded, pushing aside the nameless female who had been rubbing stim-oil on his skin. His sleep cycle had been poor and the stress was drying him out. The stimulant that soaked into his bloodstream may alter his judgment, but the lack of rest would more so.

"It is not technically destroyed. The original crew has expired and we are working on sending replacements," one of the reliable Nameless answered. "They are prepared to deal with the lack of atmosphere for up to six days while they repair the computer systems that caused the malfunction. Because your edict only condemned the original crew, we can replace them as needed until we return it to operation. Or at least that is the interpretation of your words under which we are acting, Highness. If you wish it otherwise, please correct us."

"No, it is as I wish it," Horthus admitted.

"Before they expired, the original crew provided valuable information. They were able to disconnect one of the affected toilets from the network and operate it manually. Hopefully that fix will work for the rest of the toilets, which will allow us to pressurize the station with atmosphere shipped in from other facilities."

"Highness, it is the opinion of the Nameless gathered before you that you preemptively order all space assets to disconnect their toilets from their local networks and establish protocols for local control only," the leader of the Nameless, who by rights should have a name but had turned one down to remain in her role, said.

"Why the krick are the toilets on the network in the first place?!" he exclaimed.

"For the tracking of mass and atmosphere loss, and to prevent Nameless from disposing of contraband by flushing it into vacuum in the event of searches," she explained. "But mostly just because that is the way that things have always been. Nobody thought to change it until the humans used it as a weapon against us."

"And how the krick did they manage to do that?" he demanded, growing angry. It was partly the lack of sleep and partly the stimulant, he knew, but he felt his claws extending and had to consciously retract them. Only to feel them extending again.

"According to the computer logs, they didn’t," the lead Nameless said calmly, although she subtly moved away from him for her personal safety. He approved. She was too valuable for him to kill, and he had a suspicion that he was very soon about to kill someone.

"Too much stim oil," he muttered quietly. Then he shivered to clear his thoughts. "Explain."

"We have traced the malfunctions back to input commands from a registered user," she said, then motioned for another Nameless to take over the explanation as she took another several steps back. Good. She was important, and the further away she got the safer she was.

"We are still trying to understand how and where the input commands came from," the new Nameless explained. No, he wasn’t new, he’d just spoken. "They appeared to come from within the station’s own communication network. Or at least that’s what the previous crew was able to determine before they expired. Their replacements are prepared to pick up the investigation where they left off. We do know how the signal overrode the safety mechanisms, although we don’t know how the humans did it."

"Please, enlighten me," Horthus said, his voice a dangerous whisper that made all of the Nameless in the room take a step back.

"The orders appear to have been entered by a female Named One known as Sarantan. Her authority was sufficient to override the safety mechanisms. We don’t know how the humans accomplished this, however," the male who had been speaking explained.

"Sarantan?" confusion cut through the bloodlust for just a moment. "I knew Sarantan. I mated with Sarantan. She would never betray me, betray her people, in such a way."

"The safety logs -"

"And then there’s the fact that she died five years ago. I attended her funeral-feast myself," Horthus continued.

"Even so, sire, the safety logs show that the commands came from her. We are not accusing her of issuing them. It was clearly the humans impersonating her somehow," the speaker continued.

Horthus was silent a moment as he thought, the anger, stimulant, and hunger burning in the back of his consciousness. "Why did the station accept commands from her? She is dead. Do our military installations routinely accept commands from the deceased?"

The Nameless swallowed nervously. "Highness, we don’t, the computer systems we use, they are what they are. The ones who built them are long dead. We know how to add new users, how to elevate or remove their privileges, but I know of no way to actually delete or remove a user."

Horthus went very still. When he spoke, his breath was a hiss. "Are you telling me that there are thousands of named profiles in my network that the humans can exploit against me?"

"More like hundreds of thousands, highness," the cringing computer expert said. "Perhaps millions."

Horthus became conscious that he was going to kill something. That he needed to kill something, and that his rivals could make of it what they would. He eyed his Nameless advisors, remaining in control just enough to remind himself of their value, trying to determine which of their deaths would impact the defense of his system the least.

The young attendant who had applied the stim-oil picked that moment to return to the room with a jar and a towel. She had just a fraction of a second to realize what was about to happen, and then Horthus was upon her.

She was permitted to defend herself, and she tried. But Horthus had reigned as supreme for fifty years and battled dozens of skilled challengers in single combat, while she was just a Nameless attendant caught by ambush. She left scratches in his leathery skin atop the scars long healed, but no more than that.

"Mercy, highness, mercy!" she screamed.

So he gave her mercy.

She was dead before he began to eat.

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‎ ~~~~~~~

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"How is he taking it?"

Katherine jerked in surprise as the holoemitter beside her suddenly activated, showing the figure of her captain. She had returned to her own hab complex, a separate craft designed for the comfort of civilian humans. The rooms themselves were smaller than Nathan’s officer’s quarters, but Katherine thought of them as ‘cozy.’

"Not as bad as we feared, but not as well as we hoped," she answered, going back to brushing her hair. Nathan wasn’t the only one who was tired, and she planned to get five or six hours while he did.

"Actually I was hoping that he wouldn’t take it well," the captain said.

"Of course you were. Sadist."

"If he took the information stoically, then he isn’t the man I thought he was," he explained. "Your mother brought you into the information slowly, sharing her work with you over years as it became obvious that my plan wasn’t going to come into fruition in time for her to be a part of it. But Nathan, he’s a good man. It’s why we need him. Actually we need twelve of him, but all of the other candidates are sworn to established forces with conflicts of interest. That’s the problem with good men, they get snapped up so quickly. Nathan’s loyalty is to the Yosca and his conscience only, and that’s why he’s vital to the mission."

"That he washed out of the ESF just in time for him to be useful was extremely fortuitous," Katherine admitted, setting her hairbrush down.

"Yes, fortuitous," the captain said meaningfully.

"Oh Jon, tell me you didn’t!"

"It was his idea to quit, I just pulled some strings to ensure that certain doors that might have been open to him otherwise remained shut. Or at least hard to open. The ESF wanted to make him into an officer, a captain even. A ship of his own, no stasis required. But we needed him more than the ESF does."

"He’ll hate you if he figures it out. I had my doubts when I met him, but he soaks information up like a sponge and, more importantly, processes it to its logical conclusion. We are both going to have to be careful not to let him know that you interfered with his military career," she stated, her exhaustion heavy in her voice.

"Or I could just tell him and let him punch me a few times, if it makes him feel better," the captain said with a dismissive shrug. "Now that he knows what’s at stake, I’m certain he’ll understand. He may not like it, but he’ll understand."

"No, Jon, he won’t," Katherine said sadly. "He doesn’t know why he’s critical to the success of this mission, and if we explain it to him, then it defeats the entire purpose. When I was reading him in, he felt consistently overwhelmed. Outraged about the what the Jurassians were doing to Aurealian noncombatants, yes, but mostly just overwhelmed. At the end he was simply numb, Jon. It is going to be hard for him to accept that most of the Jurassians are simply cogs, that the Nameless deserve protection and rights which even their own governments do not afford them."

"He’s a smart kid. I’ve seldom met a man more dedicated to non-human sapient rights than he is. He should be overwhelmed right now, but once the ground mission starts, he’ll understand. The Rodentia corps is already mapping and sapping the targeted facilities. Once the rest of us start to move, Nathan will be too busy to wallow in self-pity."

"I hope so, Jon. Now fuck off, I’m tired and I need to change into my nightgown."

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