It felt strange being back aboard DROMEDARY after going planetside. I decided to cut my liberty short to return with Gital after he was recalled. Being planetside was wonderful despite everything I learned. The shock of learning of my ‘parents’ persisted but had grown manageable. However, it was difficult to keep the events of the past twelve ESH from playing in an endless loop in my memory processor... ‘brain’.

    Learning my creation makes me a ‘Living Manufactured Being’ was the most surprising revelation. I held the Data Blocker given to me by Vivian Banneker the man claiming to be my Father. Hanging from an ancient golden chain, it looked to be nothing more than a spherical piece of jewelry. He showed me how to connect it to my PHUD and control its primary function. Now I could limit or block the live broadcast apparatus installed within me. Vivian warned me to do so with care as to not let those monitoring me learn I had such means. As I held the device, it suddenly pulsed causing my PHUD to scramble in addition to the hardlight display. An instant after that, the lighting flickered in my compartment and then all was normal once more.

    In spite of the strange occurrence, I could not clear the Manufactured Woman Semele out of my thought stream. To know she originally had been Gestated and it was from her human genetic material both our manufactured forms were created left me happy and confused. She was my Mother and with the secret inclusion of Vivian’s DNA, the biological elements of my body made me their child! Semele and I spoke once more before Gital and I left their hidden home. Immediately she was aware we finally engaged in sexual activity! I asked her how she knew without being able to monitor my activities and she replied, ‘she didn’t need to monitor me. It was written all over my face.’ I spent the next hour running self-diagnostics to determine if there was any physical evidence to corroborate what my Mother implied. On the shuttle trip back to AIPOTU Station, I asked Gital about it and he agreed with my mother. Obviously there is some method for detection of such things known only to humans... I will have to gather more data.

    Though I was sorry to leave AIPOTU so early, we would be in orbit for another six ESD and Shift Two would have another opportunity to go planetside before we transmitted to the BELEROPHON System at the edge of the Galaxy. The ascent and transit back to DROMEDARY via the refitted Escape Pod was a thrilling substitute for missing the last four hours of liberty! Despite its ancient design, the craft was quite spaceworthy and with Gital’s modifications it handled nimbly through AIPOTU’s thick atmosphere and the vacuum of the busy Orbital Lanes. We transited in Gital’s Pod and I couldn’t wait to do so in the one I prepared. I still had to upload the Pod’s new AI Matrix and it would be ready for space trials!

    Sitting alone in my personal compartment, I looked at the hardlight display and realized how fortunate my life was. Technically, I had been officially online for two ESD. But since I spent three weeks online during Bubble Time transiting from OASIS 10 to AIPOTU, I had many experiences and learned so much. My contracted time with Gital was one ESY. I then recognized how truly short a period that would be but was not saddened. Bubble Time from AIPOTU to our next arrival point at PEGASUS STATION would be two Earth Standard Months! Gital and my fellow crewmates had activities planned to keep the passengers well occupied. DROMEDARY had a full schedule for the year I would be Gital’s companion. By my estimate, we would see dozens of systems while spending years in Bubble Time.

    My only true regret was it would be unlikely I would ever see my parents and their beautiful blue planet again. My Father relayed to me that as the prototype for my Android series, once my contracted time was up I would be returned to HEPHESTUS CORP for final analysis. After all data from what I learned from my stored experiences and physical condition at the end of the trial period was uploaded, I would be ‘shelved’. He said it was possible after my series had a long and successful run, perhaps centuries from now some enthusiastic collector might negotiate to purchase me the original ‘Pandora’. With luck, I might even be reactivated for short periods until I either ended up in a museum or floating in a debris field somewhere in deep space. I shook my head violently to clear that possibility from my thought stream. It was just too terrible to think about.

    One thought which completely evaded my thoughts until now was the condition of the strange Transport BOX which always piqued my interest whenever I passed by it in the Main Cargo Bay. Instantly, the strange red glow from within the container rushed forth into my visual recall display and I flinched! For a moment, I felt the unreasonable fear just as I did in the Cargo Bay. The hair on my scalp rose at the image and all my vital stat levels peaked on my PHUD. I tried to shut down the image but could not! Those red eyes stared right through the BOX’s heavy gray material and I felt unable to move. Then the image winked out and my PHUD’s display was normal once more. The only things which made the incident seem real were my racing heart and the elevated vital stat levels still prominiently displayed.

    I then recognized something was wrong. Even when we returned to DROMEDARY, something seemed off. Executive Officer Basi was not present when the Captain came aboard which was customary. She called in, but something in her voice seemed strange. Gital immediately contacted Chief Engineer Ardis Roes and went straight to the Engineering Deck after we arrived. Everyone in Engineering and Systems who was supposed to be headed down for planetcall were still on Duty! Even my Shift Systems Supervisor contacted me to let me know I should report for duty within the next hour....

    Warning klaxtons unexpectedly reverberated from every quarter of the Interstellar Transport. The warning was beamed directly into my PHUD. I smack my face hard and the display puts the warning graphic and audio feed on mute. It still flashed in the lower part of my vision but not as large or bright. DROMEDARY suddenly lurched and then I was thrown from my feet! I compensated with a sudden twist of my body and avoided smashing head first into the display console. I manage to salvage the rest of the fall, but came to a brutal stop against a bulkhead stanchion. My PHUD winked out for an instant as I endured the wave of feedback I’ve come to know as ‘pain’. 

    I heard explosions rattling the Dromedary’s decks. The hardlight display I nearly opened my cranium on came alive with visual boxes filled with the frantic faces of crew and passengers screaming from other areas for assistance. I got to my feet and tried to make contact, but the viz feed images erupted in a blizzard of data corruption! I tried to call up the hardlight control panel, but my body’s electrical field would not activate the matrix. In another burst of data corruption, the panel came back online and there were dozens of viz boxes blank or filled with static.

    Screams grew worse and one by one viz boxes went down. I worked the control display with fingers flying in an effort to contact the Transport’s Control Section. My efforts paid off and I brought up the image of a young woman with blonde hair and yellow-green eyes. She is disheveled and bleeding from a scalp injury. I noted how the trail of blood seemed to split her face in half. Screaming into her display the fearful woman called out to me. “Thank the Core! Pandora Help us!” Behind her, random energy discharges wreak havoc and there were screams other than hers resounding in my ears. I recognized the young Helm Technician after relieving her for duty once on the Control Deck. Moving in closer to the display as if it will help I yelled, “Control, what is your status?”

    The young woman now crying screamed, “Pandora the Control Systems are off-line! We’ve lost orbital integrity!” The information causes me to blink hard as the implications of what she relayed hit me all at once. “Control, can you compensate for orbital drift?” The Transport lurched again, but this time I hung on. The young Technician wasn’t so lucky. She flew from view and the visual feed showed only energetic mayhem as the various displays in the Transport’s Control Center burst with catastrophic data corruption. Amidst the din mixed within the audio feed, I detect the unmistakable sound of laughter. It does not come from anyone I can see scrambling to get out of the Control Room.

    To get a better look before Control’s main display went down I voice commanded, “Display, pan right nine, zero degrees!” The display did as commanded and I ssaw the young woman in the grip of... something. It tore at her and her Protective Body Membrane as she screamed and thrashed about. I then notice her status display which activated up during what the Transport’s AI deemed a medical emergency. Her name is Lori Nyo. She is 75 standard Earth years old and is a Grade 1 Modified Human. Despite Lori’s modified physicality and her PBM in Defensive Mode, the thing has her pinned and shreds the Technician’s PBM like ancient Kevlar. I then realized what it was doing to her after tearing away the protective covering and then the visual feed went down with data corruption. “NO!” I screamed to no useful effect.

    All the viz boxes were down. Hundreds of humans, androids and alien beings Med Stats all flashed red with the graphic, ‘Off-line’. Dazed, I looked about my compartment and recognized I was alone. I could not raise Gital, Basi or any of the crew! I quickly called up the remaining active viz feed showing the Transport’s exterior. High above the Super Earth AIPOTU, I could see the warning graphic from the Control Center feed ominously flash ‘Off-line’. Data corruption had taken down secondary and tertiary back-up systems yet, the display showing the counter rapidly rattling down kilometers until the transport breached the atmosphere continued to function.

    As per protocol, I worked to cut through the data corruption and get audio only contact with AIPOTU Planetary Net’s AI. “EPIMETHEUS Supply Co-operative Transport DROMEDARY, it is evident you have catastrophic loss of orbital control and will descend into the atmosphere within 30 Earth Standard Minutes. Please have all personnel proceed to functioning Particle Wave Transport Stations immediately for emergency evacuation to Aipotu.”

    “Aipotu Planetary Net, this is Transport DROMEDARY. We are suffering catastrophic data corruption from an unknown source and do not advise Emergency Particle Wave Transmission!”

    AIPOTU Net was a planetary network completely controlled by AI. It paused for a moment running various scenarios and then the display graphic ‘EXTERIOR SCAN’ popped up. No sooner started I snapped, “AIPOTU Net, we are suffering catastrophic data corruption! Do not scan this Transpor....” The audio feed shutdown and that laughter continued. I looked once more at the exterior viz display and AIPOTU loomed ever larger. Knowing how planetary AI’s think, I dashed towards the compartment hatch. AIPOTU Net’s AI would treat the DROMEDARY as any other harmful space debris or asteroid by using its planetary defenses to deflect or shoot the offending matter out of the sky!

    Though unlikely to affect its many firewall’s and built-in defenses, AIPOTU Net would not allow any chance of data corruption to infect its systems or those on the planet. Without access to Particle Wave Transmission and data corruption fouling every system aboard, the AI would choose to protect itself and the planetary population at the expense of any survivors aboard the dying Transport. Lurching harder than before, I could tell the DROMEDARY was firmly caught in the planet’s gravity well and wasn’t getting out. I took a hard shot in the ribs from the edge of the compartment hatch and once more my PHUD nearly went down. I took in a sharp breath as I fell into the passageway. My PHUD came back up and through the billowing smoke, something big moved.

    I did not waste time trying to figure out what it was! I raced down the passageway and could hear the heavy sounds of something large and powerful coming up behind me! I had to reach the nearby Cargo Bay. The set of ancient Escape Pods my companion Gital and I rebuilt lay there. With all the Particle Wave Transmission Pads down, the Pods were the only possibilities for getting Gital, myself anyone still alive off DROMEDARY before the inevitable. I slid to a stop in the Cargo Bay and someone slammed the manual override actuator causing the hatch to crash heavily upon the deck as it shut. Due to the growing flames in the Cargo Bay, I could see it was a large dark-skinned bald human male of no doubt high modification who’d closed the hatch. “The Shielding System’s down!”

    The bald man’s words yelled over the din struck hard as did the compartment hatch edge. With the Shielding System down and the PWT offline as well, there was no way to evacuate the Transport! Even with the fully functional Escape Pods at hand, it was over. Then, a jarring thud struck the manually sealed cargo bay hatch. Again and again, something in the passageway pounded the Micro-Crotanium Alloy hatch which easily withstood the stresses of Particle Wave Transport across interstellar distances hard enough to make expanding dents!

    “Shit! We’ve got to get the fuck out of here!”  The bald man’s language was coarse, but absolutely correct. Yet at the moment, I had no solutions. With the shielding down, all of the gigantic Cargo Deck Apertures were sealed tight. The Pods could not activate the apertures. There had to be some way I could discern how we would get off the dying Transport. The pounding continued and I wondered what could have possibly caused this disaster?

    Out of my periphery, I saw something familiar lying on the debris covered deck that made me shudder. It was the strange gray Transport BOX! It was open and somehow I knew it should not be. I looked inside and its containment field was offline and whatever had been held within was gone. I looked about the Cargo Bay and through the spreading wall of flames, I saw copious amounts of blood and androidal functional fluids. There were also parts of torn bodies strewn about!

    I recognized at that moment, a Transport BOX that should not have been opened had been. Now me and a lone crewman were all who were left as something horrible fought to make its way into the Cargo Bay. The Transport DROMEDARY was hurtling towards a fiery crash planetside and in moments AIPOTU Net’s AI would turn its planetary defenses upon us. Two perfectly good Escape Pods sat prepped and ready, but there was no way to get off the Transport. Worst of all, I strongly suspected everything that was happening may have been my fault.

    My greatest concern was what happened to Gital? I could not raise him via Direct Link but I knew he was still onboard! Behind us there was the sound of debris and burning containers falling to the deck followed by screams for aid. “Help us! We’re trapped!” I recognized the voice of Cargo Officer Vivy Ersuna then in what seemed to be an instant I was lifting the fallen overhead grating high enough for her and two others to crawl free. “Thanks Pandora! Damn you’re strong!” I did not understand the CO’s meaning until I saw the weight of what I held firm on my PHUD. “Five thousand kilograms?”

    I had no idea my strength capacity could provide such output! Stranger still, as I dropped the debris I recognized it was far from my upper limit. As we carried the survivors towards the Escape Pods I asked the CO, “Have you seen the Captain?” Struggling to carry an injured woman Esurna replied, “No! Last I heard from Captain Gital, he was in Engineering!”

“What about the XO or the rest of Second Shift?”

“They’re still planetside Pandora! I came back early. I haven’t heard from XO Basi since I came back aboard.”

    We reached the Pods and waiting for us was another man bald but covered in a tattered PBM and stripes of gray and black ash. He and the much larger human who sealed the hatch helped gather up the injured. The Larger Man said, “Whatever that is on the other side is going to get in here soon!” I looked towards the hatch and knew the man’s assessment was correct. Little by little the incredibly durable material was giving way under the onslaught!

    My immediate concern was for Gital, but as a bona fide crewmember of the DROMEDARY I was duty bound to render aid to any passengers and crew in an emergency. The Transport was falling towards the planet and AIPOTU Net was readying to shoot us out of the sky. Even if there was not some strange and deadly creature trying to get to us, no time existed to search for my companion.

    “Everyone, get into the Escape Pods!” The Cargo Officer looked at me like I was insane. “You expect us to go out into space in those ancient contraptions Pandora?” As I called up the unlocking codes I replied, “The Captain’s Pod is spaceworthy. We came up from the planet in it. Mine has not been tested yet.” All present except for the man covered in ash looked with either horror or resignation at the prospect.

    “These devices may be based upon an ancient design, but they were created for situations just like this. Cargo, you take the Captain’s Pod and the injured. That will take up the extra three seats. You two will have to take your chances with me though I am certain my Pod will prove effective. While you get them aboard, I will prep them for launch.” I suddenly realized I just told my first lie. The Escape Pods were already primed for launch and once everyone was aboard they could deploy.

    What I had yet to relay was I had no idea how we were going to get off the ship in time! While I sifted through hundreds of search queries, the ‘Ashen Man’ came up beside me. “Listen, you must bring that container with us!” I looked him in the eye and despite his obvious earnestness I snapped, “Whatever was in that BOX broke out and is destroying DROMEDARY! What good is it now?” With surprising speed and strength, the Ashen Man grabbed my arm and snarled, “You fool! They didn’t ‘break out’. They were freed! The only hope of putting them back lies within that container. You must bring it with you!”

    Strong as he was, I dared not wrench my arm away lest I injured him. The logic of the situation was pervasive. Anything that could tear through a Transport large as DROMEDARY so quickly would likely be very difficult to destroy. ‘They’ as the Ashen Man called them had been safely contained within the BOX and no doubt would have remained so if not freed. “Fine, get aboard. I’ll retrieve the container!” It was against my current stream of logic to do so, but the one lesson I acquired from my time aboard DROMEDARY was it did not hurt to have a back-up plan. Gital called it, ‘covering your ass’ and at the moment I agreed.

    I hurriedly stepped over the debris, dismembered body parts and components to reach the empty container.  Or at least I thought it was empty. Within lay an orb of similar size to the one I wore around my neck. As I reached to get a grip on the container’s rim, the orb flew forward and struck my arm! Upon contact with the sleeve of my blue standard body covering, the orb burst in a flash of blue light! Feedback shut down my PHUD and knocked me onto the deck. Screaming, I grabbed my arm and rolled over only to see the hatch was near to giving way.

    Struggling to my feet, I felt compelled to retrieve the container. It turned out to be surprisingly heavy and I had to drag it across the deck. Suddenly, the task grew less arduous as I saw the Bald Man had come to assist me. “Damn this thing is heavy!” I would have agreed with him, but the damage to my arm was making every action difficult. Just as we got the container closed and loaded aboard the Pod, the hatch was pierced and dark energetic material forced its way through the opening. It was then my injured arm flared with pain so strong as to drop me to one knee. The Ashen Man moved past me and shouted, “Get them and the container out of here! I'll buy you some time.”

    Through the wave of pain, I looked up and saw the man turn back to me and smile. His eyes suddenly flashed with red light and I knew I had seen him before! He charged towards the organism pouring into the Cargo Bay and as hundreds of tendrils grabbed him he burst into a ball of red lighting that coursed through the creature! The discharge of energy caused the entire Transport to shudder. I felt the Larger Man help me to my feet and yell, “We’ve got to go! That won’t hold that thing off for long!”

    Once inside the Escape Pod as the hatch closed and the cockpit bindings secured me in the Pilot’s seat, I knew we were doomed. The other Pod was ready to go, but mine did not have an active AI Matrix uploaded. Without it, I could not control the Pod or get the Transport to open the sealed Bay Doors! “DROMEDARY, I am sorry you are not here right now....” There came a sudden surge of energy from the Pod and all systems came online. “Pandora 001 as always, I am here to serve the crew.”

    I could not keep from screaming, “DROMEDARY! Where are you?” Both Pods engines energetically came online and I could hear the environmental and hull integrity systems activate. “Pandora 001, when I could no longer fight the incursion to my systems, I retreated to your Escape Pod. Thank you for providing me with suitable temporary storage space.”  The Transport AI’s calm voice was welcome as any I ever heard. “DROMEDARY, can you open the Cargo Bay doors from here?”

“Negative Pandora 001. However, that will be unnecessary. In the event of the Cargo Bays being disabled, Captain Gital had me install an Emergency Drop Zone.”
“A what? He never told me about it! Where is it? Can you activate it?”
“The EDZ comprises the Escape Pod staging area. I cannot activate it without additional power resources.”
“No!” was all I could scream for we were so close but had been thwarted at every turn.

    “Pandora 001, there is an incoming audio communication coming from AIPOTU Net.”  I activated the Communications Array and on schedule AIPOTU Net announced, “EPIMETHEUS Supply Co-Operative CENTAUR-Class Corporate Transport - DROMEDARY, you have not complied by reestablishing orbital controls and are now a danger to the Orbital Lanes and the planet below. You now have thirty Earth Standard Seconds remaining to evacuate all personnel prior to the destruction of your vessel. AIPOTU  Administration regrets this action and will file the appropriate pro forma report to your parent company for insurance purposes.”

    “Well shit! That’s damn amicable of them. What’s your name, Pandora is it? What is the hold up?” My single passenger’s main question was valid. Without access to Dromedary’s ambient power grid, the Pods did not have the capacity to both open the doors and maintain integrity for a forced planetary drop. If all that were not bad enough, the creature was recovering! A sharp burst of feedback from the coms array made everyone capable cover their ears. Through a garble of static I heard a familiar but distorted voice say, “You’re not going anywhere Pandora!” I recognized it as belonging to Executive Officer Basi.

    Looking out the clear cockpit canopy, I saw the creature not only recovered from the blast caused by the Ashen Man, it had fully torn through the heavy Cargo Bay hatch. A portion of the dark energetic material formed itself into an exact replica of Executive Officer Basi. “Come on out of there you damned booby-bot or I’m coming in after you.”

“Where is Gital? What have you done with him? Did you kill him like you did everyone else?”
“So what if I did? It won’t make any difference to you in the next twenty-five seconds....”

    My injured arm flared again but this time with the same bright blue-white light as when the orb attacked me. The light filled the cockpit and flashed onto the Basi replica whereby she screamed and lost cohesion. “Pandora 001, I now have access to sufficient power resources to open the EDZ doors.”

    “DROMEDARY, open them damn it! Open them!” My first use of profanity was met with the sudden loss of gravity as the drop doors opened beneath us. The outpouring atmosphere inside the dying Transport explosively forced us outward into the vacuum of space. “DROMEDARY! Initiate Emergency Link with the Captain’s Pod and begin descent procedures!”
“Emergency Link established. Descent procedures initiated.”

    Once the link was established, a call came from Cargo Officer Esurna. “Pandora! Look above you!” My passenger and I looked above us through the canopy. As we saw the burning Transport’s distance increase, we also saw someone falling towards us! “Pandora 001, the Captain is attempting to contact us via the Emergency Channel.”

“GITAL!”

“Pandora! Pandora are you all right? How many survivors have you aboard?”
“Gital! I am fine! There are four survivors aboard. You’ve got to get aboard my Pod! AIPOTU Net is going to shoot down DROMEDARY!”
“I figured that was going to happen once the Transport lost orbital integrity. I’ve got a small problem. I can’t catch up to you. My thrusters are depleted!”

    “He’s in a Standard PBM. It’s good for about an hour in space without having been through all the stress of trying to get off a doomed Transport. No way this little ‘hopper’ has a Tether Beam Array onboard. He won’t survive the blast wave from the Transport’s destruction and his PBM won’t be worth shit on reentry. He’s done.”

    I found the human’s quiet assessment annoying as it was true. I called up the Pod’s schematics from the Flexi-film Manual I downloaded during the repairs. My search query quickly found what I was looking for. “Gital! I will fire the grappling line. You will have to grab onto it and the Pod will haul you in. DROMEDARY, roll one, eight, zero degrees!”

    The Pod rolled and then the targeting screen came online. Behind me the Bald Man mumbled, “What in the Core is that?” Impatiently, I shushed him and lined up the coordinates. I could not fire the grapple directly at Gital lest it damage his PBM's integrity. However, I could fire it close enough for him to grab. When the aiming points matched up I barked, “Fire grapple!” There was a small vibration and the grapple streaked past Gital. Sharply over the coms array my companion snapped, “You cut that shit close Pandora! I’ve got it. Haul my ass in!”

    “That was a damn fine effort. You know he’s still going to die right? He can’t get into this thing from the outside. All he can do is try and hold on through reentry. You are aware his PBM will burn away before we reach safe atmosphere....”

    I found myself enraged at the man’s words. “My companion is not going to die!” Over the com I could hear CO Espurna cheer, “Whoohoo! Damn it Pandora you got him! He’s on the outside of your Pod. Great job!” Happy though I was, the hard part was about to begin.
“Pandora 001, ten ESS remain until AIPOTU Net fires upon me... my former containment vessel. We are now at maximum thrusters and it is unlikely we will be able to get clear of the blast radius.”

    We had been presented with an ultimatum. Oblivion or survival! In that instant, I understood what it meant to be human. I refused to accept oblivion. After inputting landing coordinates I called out to my companion, “Gital, I have done all I can!” Gital responded via viz feed and I could see that grin he always wore when teasing me. “You did great Pandora. Maybe you can get your parents to buy me another Transport!”

    An uncontrollable flood of emotion caused tears to burst from my eyes and yell, “I will see you all planetside!” The pain in my injured arm grew with the brilliant glow emanating from it. Barely able to see I heard DROMEDARY count off the final seconds, “Five, four, three, two, one....”  Just before the glow overtook my PHUD’s filter, a dark yellow beam of light struck the dying Transport! Raising my injured arm in a futile attempt of protection, I saw what looked to be a luminous blue-white butterfly....

© 2013 H. Wolfgang Porter. All Rights Reserved.

Go to Part 4

Go to Epilogue

You need to be a member of Blacksciencefictionsociety to add comments!

Join Blacksciencefictionsociety

Email me when people reply –