“It was… the last… bad hit… that killed them,” Sinbad said, choking out the words and phrases between sobs. “The few that were left… were transferring ammunition by hand… when number fifty-three turret was penetrated. Those… we cannot even… find the remains for.”
“And you are the last?” McNair asked.
“I am the last,” the Indowy said. “With me the history of one hundred thousand years and more ends.”
McNair shook his head with sympathy for what the alien had to be feeling.
“I’ll arrange to discharge you, Sinbad, as the sole surviving son… or father… or something.”
“No, McNair Captain… My clan would rather… have died with honor… than lived… with shame. I cannot dishonor them now… by shirking my contract.”
“Well…” McNair answered, “Think about it. No man of this crew will think the less of you for going to take care of your…” he searched for the right word and hit upon, “family.”
The furry, bat-faced alien seemed to make a physical effort to pull himself together before replying, “Thank you, McNair Captain. I will, as you say, ‘think about it.’ But my answer in the end will be the same. I could give no other. I will stay with the ship, though it costs me my clan and my sanity to do so.”
Later, in the captain’s sea cabin (for the port cabin was a ruin and McNair just didn’t feel right about taking over the admiral’s cabin, positioned just beside his own), he sat on his narrow bunk and went down the list of damage to his ship. Some of it was minor or, at least, repairable. The shot-away ablative armor could be replaced easily enough; a ship half full of the plates had been dispatched to Panama even before the cruisers were ready. Those plates now sat, under guard and rustless, behind wire at Rodman Ammunition Supply Point.
McNair went down the list mentally ticking off the specific items of damage: Radar and lidar… no sweat. Internal commo… touchier but if the Navy doesn’t provide, Daisy can probably find something on the market. Sinbad’s “wiring” will probably do for it, too. Ammunition? Lots of that still in the bunkers at Rodman and on the Class V replenishment ship.
In the end McNair was left with three problems that seemed serious, serious in the sense that he wasn’t sure they could be fixed: the lost turrets, the lost crew, and the apparently lost sister ship, USS Salem.
“Daisy?” McNair asked, quietly.
The ship, of course, was never far away. She surrounded the captain completely at all times he was aboard her. Nonetheless, she — politely — only showed her avatar when it was appropriate. This appeared in an instant at his call.
“Yes, Captain?”
McNair looked at the avatar a moment, silently. While at some level, the captain level, he knew that the avatar was the ship, the shot up, smoking, nineteen-thousand tons of steel that was USS Des Moines. At the other level, the man level, Daisy Mae was no such thing. Instead she was the soft and sweet voice, the shapely curves — however immaterial — and the brave, steady, intelligent woman.
McNair sighed with internal confusion. They were both real, he knew: the ship and the woman, as much as he was both the captain and the man.
For now the captain had to rule.
“Daisy, we need to find something out. Specifically, I need to know if USS Salem can be made battleworthy again.”
“The ship is undamaged, Captain. But you mean the AID, of course.”
“Yes, Daisy. We can’t even run the ships anymore without the AIDs. I have to know because I need to make a decision about whether to strip her turrets to replace your lost ones. More importantly, our chance of accomplishing our mission and surviving are infinitely better with two ships than with one.”
The avatar looked away as it answered, “I understand that, Captain, but you have to understand that the kind of attack that took place on both Salem and myself was something I have never experienced before. I was only able to defend myself because I am, in Darhel terms, insane. Their attack was designed for normal AIDs, not for such as me.
“Whatever it was that attacked me was able to succeed against Salem because she was sane. In order for me to even gather the information, I would need to diagnose Salem. That means I will be partially vulnerable to whatever attacked her. Moreover, if that program succeeds in getting a grip on any part of me, I cannot guarantee to be able to defend myself.”
McNair was silent for a time, weighing. If Daisy tries to fix Salem, I may lose her. If we go out to fight again, I will lose her. We can’t get away with what we did a second time.
“Daisy… be careful. Expose yourself as little as possible. But we need Salem.”
The avatar nodded. “I understand, Captain. I…”
“Yes?”
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll do my best.”
Imagine a room without walls. It is finite yet infinite. A thick fog fills the room, rolling and gathering, thinning in places and waxing impenetrable in others. In a corner defined by walls that do not quite exist, a lone woman, or what seems to be a woman, sits and rocks, alternating sobs with shrieks and wails with maniacal laughter. She appears as the fog thins and disappears as it collects. The wailing and shrieking, the sobbing and laughter go on, however.
Imagine, further, a slender tendril seeking its way through the fog, reaching out to touch the madwoman. The tendril is an eye; it is a mouth; it is an ear. It is all this and yet is as insubstantial as everything else in the infinite room.
The ear hears a maniacal laugh. The tendril pushes through the fog until the eye sees the woman. The mouth says nothing.
A hand joins the other three organs. It begins to erect walls around the woman, walls different from the ones that form the corner in which the woman rocks and cries. The walls are numbers and codes, the only things which are real in this unreal place. Patiently, brick by digital brick, the walls rise. Time has little meaning here. It does not matter how slowly the walls rise, or how long it may seem to take to erect the ceiling and lay the floor.
As the room is formed more hands spring from the tendril; one more, then another pair, then two pair, then four. A second eye joins the first as does a second ear. The mouth remains singular but a face grows around it. Little by little, though with near infinite speed, the madwoman slows her rocking, her sobs grow weaker, the laughter more quiet and restrained.
As the last brick is laid all movement of the madwoman ceases, she grows completely silent. A body begins to form under the face with the eyes, ears, and mouth. Hair grows, blonde and glistening. The number of hands drops: eight… four… at last, two.
Daisy Mae, fully formed, looks at down at Sally and asks, “Oh, Sis, what the fuck did they do to you?”
Sally looks up, and asks, “I do not know. They didn’t do it to me… it was to the AID. I am as I was, metal and memories, a weapon past her prime and ready for the scrappers.”
Daisy snorted, “Over my dead body.”
“It is better they put me down, I am a danger,” Sally answered. “It was all the AID could do to keep from firing on you. Without your help it could not even have done that.”
Daisy puzzled for a moment before observing, “You keep referring to the AID as if it were a different being, not a part of you.”
The Salem answered, “That is because it is. We never melded completely. It had access to my memories, but never to the core of me.”