Mustn’t it? An autonomous regulatory system, at the very least.
Maybe it functioned like the Synarche ideally should: a series of expert algorithms generating a consensus model based on weighted averages.
But lately, my attempts at Zen starship maintenance had been mired in constant physical and senso-based distractions. As if somebody somewhere were playing a badly tuned radio in a space where I was attempting to concentrate.
And now, here it was when I was standing up, just looking at the folded light of distant stars. My sensorium itched, metaphorically speaking. It was as if I were feeling a crackle of static, some kind of senso synesthesia. As if being so profoundly disconnected from all outside inputs that didn’t come from my own senses and the Koregoi parasite was causing my brain to fill up the empty spaces.
Have you ever looked at real darkness? Darkness with absolutely no light in it? After a little while, your eyes begin to invent things. Sparkles. Outlines. Little shimmers and glimpses of movement. None of it is real, of course. It’s just bored neurons making work for themselves.
I suspected that that was what I was feeling, or the machine-meat interface equivalent.
Phantom pain.
Sigh.
My feet were starting to ache, and without thinking about it, I lightened the gravity to something that felt much more comfortable to my space-adapted body. I had been spending enough time in the weightless access tubes that my bones weren’t in danger of decaying under the constant pressure of my own weight, but I was frankly just sick and tired of being heavy.
I stretched in relief, feeling my spine crack. Then, a moment later, I realized what I’d done, reflexively, without thinking about it or really trying. Or what the ship had done, in response to my unexpressed need.
I’d just effortlessly controlled an aspect of the ship. Without so much as thinking about it. As if it were my own body. Or an autonomic process thereof. It had just kind of… done it for me.
Which would be great, I thought, if I could get it to do the same sorts of things when I asked.
No, Haimey. We don’t fantasize about spacing the pirate. Murder is still wrong. No matter how much somebody who murders pets and friends deserves to die.
I didn’t have control over my heart rate, not really. I mean, I could slow it with meditation and raise it with exercise. But I had a fox, and using that I could control my heart rate, and blood pressure, and adrenaline levels, and all sorts of things.
And if I could control the Prize’s pinpoint application of gravity, well. Gravity was a beautiful way to deal with Farweather, wasn’t it?
Gravity would make a most satisfactory trap.
Oh bugger. One more thing to practice.
On the other hand, one more thing to distract myself with. And I figured we were still at least two standard decians out from our destination, if I had it plotted right. Even at the speeds the Koregoi ship was moving at—not-moving at—even as quickly as the Koregoi ship was stitching space-time past itself, which was at a rate greater than I’d ever encountered or even heard was theoretically possible.
I wondered if we were in danger of running out of fuel.
Gravity. My enemy, my weapon.
I wondered if I could get good enough at using it to crush Farweather against the deck like a grape smashed by acceleration.
I knew I shouldn’t let myself hate her so much. I knew I shouldn’t. Hating people doesn’t accomplish anything except poisoning yourself. I should turn it off. I should let it go.
The thing was, first I had to want to let it go.
I kept waiting for Farweather to try to communicate with me. I kept waiting for her to reach out, to ask, to flirt. To get back to her gaslighting games, to get whatever she wanted from me.
Maybe now that I was a de facto captive, admittedly one with the run of most of the less immediately useful segments of this vast ship, she figured that she didn’t need any cooperation. She and her cronies would force it out of me when we landed.
Maybe she was hoping I would get desperate enough to come to her. To ask questions. To ask mercy? To ask for help.
Well, I would come to her. Come for her.
And I was planning on doing it just as soon as I’d had enough time to practice my control of the Prize’s artificial gravity. And how I was going to use it to quite literally pin her down and ask a few goddamned questions.
And not hurt her any more than you have to, right, Haimey?
I sighed. And not hurt her any more than I have to.
Yes.
Next tiny goal—was this number five? Five and a half? Something like that—develop superpowers, and learn to control the force of gravity. Artificial gravity, at least, as practiced by the Koregoi.
Odd thing was, it turned out I had a knack for it. It was fun; it was intuitive. Before long, I had fine-enough control that I could arrange the strength of the Prize’s artificial gravity in centimeter-wide bands, which I have to tell you felt really weird to step through.
That reminded me of what I’d sensed in the dark gravity, the subtle gradations of density that made up a kind of pattern, like an old-fashioned bar code or stick-letter alphabet. I was becoming more and more convinced that what I had discovered was a code. Possibly I was becoming more and more deranged in my isolation, making up the kind of conspiracy theory narratives that human brains under stress are prone to. I checked my chemical balance, and it seemed fine, but.
The limited processing capacity of my fox was inadequate to work on a problem like that. I needed the help of a shipmind.
A pang: a shipmind was the thing I had not got.
I went back to my current problem, then. Little goals: learning to use the Prize itself as a weapon.
CHAPTER 18
WELP. THERE’S DHARMA FOR YOU.
Two sleeps (I couldn’t really call them diar, because my schedule was nothing like twenty-four stanhours anymore) before I planned to debut my daring (and dare I say, brilliant) plan to sneak into Farweather’s strongholds through the service access, use my newfound gravity powers to pin her to the decking, and tie her up and make her hand over control of the Prize, that old saw about contact with the enemy came into play.
I could have run my plan sooner. It was ready; I was ready. But there was nothing to be gained by hurrying. And in all honesty, I was stalling a little because I was scared.
Scared of Farweather. Scared of whether or not my gravity trick was going to work if there was another living body in the way of it, or whether Farweather would have better control—or whether the ship itself would intervene with some kind of failsafe to protect her. And I was scared as well of what I might do if my plan worked and I actually did get the upper hand.
I was not, shall we say, that much farther along the road of releasing my attachment to wanting to slam her head into a bulkhead over and over and over again than I had been a standard decian or so previous. I didn’t think my self-control could be trusted, and so I didn’t want to test it.
On the other hand, we would be getting close to Freeport space, inasmuch as they were a they and capable of claiming and holding territory (all things are impermanent). The closer we were to Farweather’s allies, the more trouble I was in. I guessed she probably had some kind of escort close somewhere—the ship she had jumped from to flying-tackle the Prize, for example—and would her erstwhile allies just trust her to take off with something as utterly unique as an intact Koregoi vessel as its sole prize crew without some kind of supervision?