Alec Dishman ran a hand down his jaw feeling the coarse texture of a shadow that teetered on the verge of full-blown growth. He studied himself in the mirror. Too much of that growth was peppered with white, which provided an increasingly striking contrast to the dark brown hue of Alec’s skin. While not exactly a spring chicken, Alec was far removed from retirement age by the standards of United Defense. No. Alec lowered his head, weariness draping a demoralizing shawl across his spirits.
Years were being etched into Alec’s features, no doubt about that. Can’t reverse time’s mark on the body. But stress bore the brunt of the responsibility for making Alec appear older than he was. Stress from the loss of everything and everyone that was dear to him. Stress from the scourge of collapse sweeping through the galaxy, killing, pillaging, enslaving. Stress from the inability of a civilized galaxy to arrest this scourge, drive it back into the hell from whence it spawned. Most of all, stress from the centuries long blight of corruption, apathy, and downright incompetence that left the door wide open for invaders to pour into the inner galaxy like carrion converging on a corpse.
Alec allowed himself a cynical grin. How apt the metaphor was. The United Empire for the Prosperity of Sentient Life was exactly that. A corpse.
There was a time when robust life flowed through the UE’s expansive body. When communication relays dotted the stars, bringing the gift of connectedness to thousands of systems beneath its benevolent umbrella. When ships equipped with singu-drive engines crisscrossed vast gulfs of distance in minutes and days rather than the years such travel would normally have consumed in stasis. When moon size patrol ships plied the space lanes insuring that the chaos and savagery threatening to infringe on the UE’s ordered arrangement remained far beyond the reach of civilized awareness. When the divinity of UE technology could breathe life into dead planets, and confer the blessings of advancement upon technically deficient species.
Alec’s tiny little grin grew louder until it burst forth in an uncontrollable bout of bitter laughter. There was a time. That time was no more. A fading dream, pushed aside by the grimy hand of a horrific waking reality. Alec slammed a fist into the mirror, cracking the glass, fracturing his knuckles. He bit back the stabbing pain of his hand and stumbled backwards colliding none too gently with the wall behind him.
Commander Dishman. My scan shows that you have suffered severe self-inflicted trauma to your right hand.
Alec looked up at the sound of the compu-aid. Actually, he didn’t really have to look up. The compu-aid’s androgynous voice was omni-directional.
“Shut up, Co-aid,” Alec growled, holding up his busted hand at mid body. “I think I know first hand the nature of my goddamn injury.”
A floating comp-aid avatar, the size and roughly the shape of a human head floated into the rest room. From its central optic, a shimmering beam emitted enveloping Alec’s hand in a soothing field of medicinal energy. A stream of nanites swarmed around the injured hand, mending bone, closing cuts, disinfecting. Alec’s hand was good as new in seconds and he flexed his fingers to confirm the healing. Rather ungratefully, he shot the avatar an irate look. “What’s the use?”
I beg your pardon, Commander?
“Do I have to spell it out? What’s the use?” Alec stepped out of the restroom, holding his hand up for an all-seeing, interloping mother hen of an AI to behold. “This. Healing a broken hand when I’m going to die anyway. The last active officer in an empire that no longer exists.”
As far as we know, sir.
Alec stifled another bout of laughter. “As far we know? Not ‘we’. Maybe as far as you know.”
He opened his closet door, and eyed the immaculate UE Defense dress uniform hanging on the rack. He bypassed the uniform and grabbed the same pair of gray maintenance coveralls he had been wearing for months on end. More repair jobs were on the schedule for today. The environmental flow unit on Deck 01 was sputtering. Normally, there would have been five tech avatars assigned to that area to address the problem. The last attack had wiped out nearly half the avatars in the outpost. Raiders, who would never have gotten within 200 million miles of the outpost in better times, had breached the UE’s outer boundary. They were armed with first generation UE made gamma rad missiles. Outpost interceptors and point batteries managed to destroy 99% of all incoming gamma rads. It was the remaining 1% that got through that blanked the outpost’s shields, subsequently shorting out most critical systems, turning AI avatars into smoldering husks.
It was a sure sign of the UE’s fall that criminal lowlifes were able to get their hands on one of the most advanced weapons ever created.
Of course, the rads would never have gotten past the shield if the Outpost’s IFF beacon had not identified the raider ships as friendlies. Considering that two of the raider ships were hijacked UE cruisers, Alec supposed it was understandable that the Outpost Watch Computer was fooled. The Compu-aid programmed a new set of threat assessment protocols into the Watch Computer immediately after that fiasco.
Alec grabbed a diagnost out of his tool pouch and waved it over the operating comp controlling atmospheric output in EV Flow Unit 12. A mental nod. Just as he thought. A generator was on the verge of collapse due to having to compensate for three adjacent shorted out generators. Overall, a flow unit had four generators powering the circulation of air and pressure to sustain a single life: that of the outpost commander.
In theory, an outpost could operate with just a main computer and its specialist drone avatars without biological oversight. In practice UE planners decided long ago, that an outpost space station, with its massive weapons banks, was too critical an asset to be administered solely by an AI. It seemed the planners believed that the kind of intuitive judgment a biological mind had to offer trumped the cold, logic-driven analysis of a machine.
Alec pocketed the diagnost and removed a panel to an access chute leading to the guts of the flow unit. How fitting, he thought. The Academy prepared him to be military leader. But in the past five years, he had been more of an engineer than an officer. And keeping outpost systems operational had been a crash course indeed. “You never answered my question,” Alec pressed. “Why patch me up? Why not just let me whither and die?”
Your death has been an obsession with you of late, Commander.
Alec could have sworn he heard an admonishment in the compu-aid’s voice. Or were years of oppressive solitude causing the human to ascribe emotions where none existed in a machine?
“Give me an update on the outside,” Alec demanded, climbing into the chute.
No change. I have attempted communication with UE ships and outposts on all frequencies. No response. Enemy occupation of UE systems for as far as my active surveillance can reach continues. An increasing number of UE systems have fallen off the contact grid completely.
“There you have it,” said a sober sounding Alec. “Now, dip into your logic and, based on that update, figure out why I’m so obsessed with my death.”
My logic compels me to ask why you continue to effect repairs to this outpost considering your dire feelings.
Alec reached the generator display and took out a gripper wrench. “Duty is a habit with me. At this point, duty is all I have.”
I too have a duty, Commander. My duty as defined by my programming is to my commanding officer, to his health and wellbeing, and to the continued upkeep of this outpost.
“Until death do us part,” Alec grunted. He wrapped the gripper wrench around a panel screw and proceeded to conduct his repair in bitter silence.
Images of despair and desolation played out in the grimmest detail across the display screen of Alec’s mind. Burning cities. Rolling forested landscapes reduced to radioactive deserts. Planets once vibrant with life, stripped of their sustainable ecosystems by biological or chemical catastrophes. The cold, dead hulks of UE ships floating in space. Nothing more than enormous crypts encapsulating cold dead crews who sacrificed their lives for a now cold, dead empire.
Alec jerked awake. A reflex motion knocked the bottle off the table he was dozing at. He looked around, realized he was in the lounge area, and reached down, fumbling for the bottle. Most of the bottle’s alcoholic content had splattered across the floor. A square shaped avatar buzzed over and wiped the area clean with an extender pad before Alec’s fingers could grasp the bottle’s neck.
There were two empty bottles sitting on the table. Alec did not remember downing them. That hardly bothered him. The express purpose of his drinking binge was to forget things. It didn’t always work. Alec’s nightmares remained a constant companion. He needed something stronger-much stronger-to keep the nightmares away. Co-aid would object, however. Regulation 9843-92, in no uncertain terms, prohibited a commanding officer from consuming by whatever means, proscribed mind altering substances. A subset of that regulation prohibited drunkenness while on duty, but Co-aid had been strangely oblivious to Alec’s binges over the past months. Since there were plenty of legal drugs—pain relievers, anesthetizers and the like—stocked in the outpost’s medical storage, Alec wondered how much of Co-aid’s blind eye would remain blind if he helped himself to a vial or two…
Commander, you scheduled a tactical drill for 1300.
Alec shot up from the table, but massive inebriation severely upset his balance. The next instant, a pair of human size avatars with blank, chrome faces were gently assisting their human charge to his feet.
“I didn’t…order…”
Actually, you did, Commander, the compu-aid interrupted. You specified time, date, and exercise parameters. If you like I can confirm…
Alec squirmed out of the avatars’ custody. “No…no… I probably forgot…let’s…let’s get this over with.”
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