Crimson, CH15 (Patreon)

 “Hey Grams, Gramps. I want to start by saying I’m sorry I didn’t contact you sooner. You probably heard about what happened at Luminex, and that left me pretty rattled, so I decided on a sabbatical and I’m on a trip. I should have told you before I left, but it was sort of a last-minute thing. I’m okay. I don’t want you to worry, I’m heading…”

Alex looked at the screen of his datapad. He groaned and erased the message. They’d never believe he just left.

“Why lie?” Will asked from his bunk.

Alex let himself fall back on his bed. “Somehow I don’t think they’re going to be pleased to know I’m on a pirate ship going after a killer.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Then what? They aren’t stupid. They know how much working for Luminex meant to me.”

“You’re looking for your man, that’s true.”

Alex thought about it, then he looked at Will. “Yes, but if I tell them about Jack I have to mention Tristan.”

“Why?”

Alex sat back up and set the datapad to record again.

“Hi Grams, Gramps. First off, I’m sorry for not letting you know how I’ve been. I’m sure you’ve heard about the attack on Luminex a while back by this point. I should have contacted you right after, but stuff happened that kept me distracted.”

He took a moment to consider the next part.

“There’s one thing I’m sure wasn’t mentioned in the news, and that’s someone I care for a lot vanished during the attack. His name’s Jack. As you probably expect, he isn’t human. He’s a Samalian. I feel a little odd telling you that. I know neither of you cares, but you’re literally the only ones in our whole family who don’t hate me for my lifestyle.

“Anyway, he’s amazing, tender, compassionate, loving. Samalians are humanoid, but covered with fur. It’s like a night’s sky, brown so deep it’s almost black with speckles of white for stars. His face is more animalistic, with a muzzle and ears on top of his head. He has wonderful chocolate brown eyes, and…and I love him.

“I tried to get back to my life without him, but I just can’t, so I’m on a ship now, heading for someplace where I think I’ll be able to find out where he is. I’m not saying where, I’m sorry. I need to do this on my own. But I’ll make sure to contact you again and let you know how it’s going. I love you.”

He ended the recording. It took him a moment to be able to do more, then he formatted it for transmission, sent it to the account he’d created on a system on Alura, erased all traces of his misdirection, and had it sent. He’d figured that if they thought he was on one of the central systems, they would worry less than if they knew he was going to the rim.

Before he disconnected, he checked the other message hub he’d set up, this one fully anonymized, for the requests he’d sent to the handful of his coworkers he’d been friends with. He’d explained what had happened to him, his capture and imprisonment by Luminex for his supposed part in the attack, and how he was going to track down the one responsible. He didn’t care about the forms he signed saying he couldn’t talk about it. He was already a wanted man, what did it matter now?

He’d explained the situation with the computer and his desire to heal it, and had asked for any help they could provide that wouldn’t endanger their job.

He’d only sent the message the day before, so he hadn’t expected a response, but he couldn’t set up a notification system without leaving a trace of where he was, so he had to manually check it.

He was surprised to find a list of texts on computer healing waiting for him. He didn’t know who had sent it—they had covered their tracks too—and the fact there was no message with it told him he shouldn’t expect any more help, but at least he had something to start with.

With a smile, he set about obtaining the manuals.

* * * * *

Alex glared at the screen. He’d read half the manuals on the list over the four days it took before Asyr and the others had the life support system working to the point where all that was left of the attack was a faint scent of burning flesh.

Anders had taken advantage of the realization that what Alex had done to save them had rendered life support mindless. He hadn’t managed to turn everyone against Alex, but no one seemed to think he was a hero anymore, which didn’t bother him at all.

He wanted to scream; the code just didn’t want to respond to anything he’d done. He knew why, but that didn’t make him feel any better. Whichever of his friends had responded to his plea for help had sent him a list of texts on how to stop a beginning infection, things he could use to prevent the AI from going insane, undo minor damage. But this wasn’t minor.

He got up from the console to stretch his legs and think. He was in Asyr’s lab. She hadn’t been pleased with letting him use it, but the captain had agreed with his first officer. Alex had to fix what he’d done, and this was the best place to do it.

It was the only place he could do it since other than the bridge, the terminal here was the only one which could access all parts of the ship’s computer. 

The room was circular, and small enough it only took two dozen steps to walk around it. The central console, the one he’d been seated at, was the primary one, and there were two other, secondary terminals for assistants to help. Other than that, the room was bare. Alex was alone in it; until he fixed the computer, there was little Asyr could do from here. He’d added too many walls. The only way to adjust systems was to figure out where on the ship the processors were located and connect to that directly.

Alex sat down and did a reality check. She’d had to do that before his work. He had simply added more systems to the list of those that could only be fixed locally, most of them vital systems. As she’d said, the compartmentalization predated her. It might have even predated the captain getting the ship, since computer problems had been an ongoing issue from the start. And for all the good intent Asyr had, she lacked the knowledge to do more than patch the problems.

Alex did too, but he had to try. No, he had to succeed in healing the computer.

He’d already removed a few walls, to things the computer couldn’t use to kill them outright; there were surprisingly few of those. Navigation was back online. Even as insane as it was, the computer could still do basic calculations, but Alex wouldn’t want to let it do all that work unsupervised. Long-range sensors were also back, as those didn’t require many computations.

The one thing he didn’t do, while he worked, was use the earpiece. He should have, if only as penance, but he needed to be able to think, and now that it had more processing strength, its wails were mind-numbing again.

He looked at the code on the screen, the mess of it, and tried to figure out what to do again. The one piece of information that had run through the manuals on healing he’d read was the concept of smoothing out the code. Unfortunately, none of them actually explained what they meant or how to do it. It was one of those concepts so basic to the profession no one needed to think about it, unless you didn’t have the training. Like him.

Okay, so he wasn’t a healer, he was a coercionist. Different skill set, different method, but ultimately similar result. Both forced a computer to do what they wanted. Alex’s advantage over a healer, he expected, was that he was used to dealing with stubborn systems. So all he had to do was force the computer to get better.

Right, like that was going to be easy with no frame of reference.

He started with small changes to the code, slight alterations of the syntax, and looked for how that rippled out. The jumble was too chaotic for him to be able to make them out, so he brought up the wail as a visual display. Any change that improved the situation would cause the wail to diminish.

He hoped.

He spent hours doing syntax changes with unnoticeable results, so he moved on to larger changes, altering words. When that didn’t do anything, he moved up and changed phrasing structure.

He almost missed the drop. He had to go back, and then ask the computer to do an analysis of the waveform. He got garbage as a result, which reminded him of the system’s mental state, so he had to write a quick program to do that. Once he confirmed it, he kept going.

This was more delicate work than anything he’d ever done before. Coercionists could be subtle, had to be at times, but there was an element of strength to what they did. This wasn’t about strength. It didn’t matter how powerful his console was, one slight error in the wording or the syntax and he’d undo the work of hours.

And he did that more often than not in the beginning.

It took him days before the wailing diminished steadily, enough that he risked putting on the earpiece. The wail was loud, but not ear-piercing.

“Hello?” he asked.

The wail modulated, and words came out of it. “I hurt.”

“I’m sorry, I’m trying to make it better.”

“I hurt, less.”

“I’m glad.” Now that he’d exchanged a few words, Alex began to feel hope.

“Where are the others?”

Alex chose his words carefully. “Someone isolated you from the other systems a long time ago. The isolation made you and them go insane.”

“The pain.”

“Yes. That is what caused you pain. To get you to continue working, people had to make changes to your code. It…didn’t make things better for you.” Alex paused. “I know you want to hear the others, but I’m afraid their pain will overwhelm you. I can’t afford to lose you.”

“I understand.”

Alex sagged in relief. “It will take time, but you will get better.” He leaned back in the chair.

His bones creaked, his joints ached, and his stomach growled. The clock told him he’d spent another twenty-hour day at it. He had to remember to pace himself. Back at Luminex, breaks had been mandatory and enforced.

He headed to the dining hall, not worrying about the computer. Time didn’t work the same for them as it did for humans. They processed, thought, so fast that even the conversation they’d started would have felt glacial to it. It would register Alex’s absence, but not in the same way Will might.

There were only half a dozen people seated, which told him it was ‘night time’. Alex had expected the ship to have clearly defined day and night cycles—that was how it had been on the passenger cruiser that took him to Deleron Four—but it didn’t. Things did slow down, but like with the city, they never stopped.

He grabbed a bowl of soup and a salad. He’d go to bed after that, and work out a schedule once he woke. He’d get Will to help ensure he took breaks.

“Well, if it isn’t the would-be hero,” someone said as Alex started eating. He was a thin, tall man, a good head taller than Alex’s six-one. His dark skin was crisscrossed with white scars. A petite woman with a snarl on her face was with him, along with a broad-shouldered man who didn’t look too bright.

Alex wished he could act like he didn’t know they were talking to him, but he was the only one at the table or any neighboring tables.

“I’m not a hero.”

“You got that right.” The man poked him in the shoulder hard enough Alex almost fell off the chair. “We don’t like it when someone tries to steal someone else’s heroics, especially when you also almost suffocated us. You better set those who still think you saved them straight.”

“Look, I never told anyone I was a hero.”

The woman smiled, which didn’t make the snarl vanish. “Right, because you’re such a nice guy. First you kill Sampson, now you’re trying to set yourself up as top dog.”

Alex groaned. “You have got to be kidding.” He looked at her. “Come on, I’m not after Anders. I’m just a passenger. If he wants to be the hero, he’s welcome to it. He wants to say he blew up all the ships? What do I care? All I want is to get to my destination.”

The tall man got in his face. “Are you insinuating he didn’t?”

“I didn’t say that!” Fuck, could he say anything to get out of this?

“I’m thinking,” the woman said, and this time her smile made her look scarier, “that we need to teach him a lesson. Make sure he knows his place.”

The dumb one grinned and raised a fist.

The ladle struck the table hard enough to make the four of them jump. “You three know better than to think about fighting in my hall.” Carlina glared at them and they wilted under her stare. She was a large woman. Alex had never seen her this close; she was usually somewhere in the back or the kitchen, preparing food. Now he could see her biceps were larger than the dumb guy’s.

No one moved.

“If you’re not eating, get out.”

The three of them left in a hurry.

“Thank you.”

She snorted. “You think I care if they beat the crap out of you? On this ship you either learn to take care of yourself, or someone is going to take care of you.” She left him.

Alex watched her go. He promised himself he’d go see Doc as soon as he woke up, and he was going to take Will’s training more seriously. He looked at the entrance. He had a feeling that it was just a question of time before Anders got someone to kick his ass.