Enemy

SF/Horror | Short Fiction #33

The ship’s alarm woke me seconds before I felt the first impact, a dull thump on the outer hull, followed by what sounded like the pummeling of countless rocks on a hard surface.

“What’s going on?” I shouted over the blaring of the siren. Zandra was at the helm, trying to steer us clear from whatever was pounding us.

“Asteroid belt,” her voice was thin and faint over the comm, panels shook, lights flickered, sparks flew and one after another the ship’s systems shut down until all went dark and then it was over.

The emergency lights came on and in its red silence, I realised that we were drifting, the familiar hum of the engines gone.

After the asteroid field, we did everything we could to fix the ship, we got the engines back online, and for a while, it looked like we could make it. There was still hope.

That was three days ago. How did we get here? I will tell you how. As long as I am still able to, for it was me. A better man would have put an end to it there and then. But I am not that man. I am a coward and I am the sole survivor on this ship. Do not attempt to rescue. Do not attempt to board. Do not come near. If you receive this message, turn back, turn back now.

***

“In a few moments, we will be leaving our solar system. We will go where no man has gone before.” Charles had a distant look on his face, standing before us, giving his little speech, it was all a bit much.

Zandra groaned and interrupted him.

“Yes, a historical moment, one small step for us in our little beat-up tin can, yadda, yadda, can we now get to the point where we talk about the fact that we will run out of oxygen in less than ten days unless we can fix the generators?” Zandra glared.

Charles nodded, looking Zandra in the eye, and before he could reply, Tif cut in.

“Won’t matter, if we don’t fix the hull damage. We’ll be dead within a week from radiation. Someone needs to go outside, now.”

“Tiffany is right,” I said and found myself stepping forward.

“You sure about that, Otto?” said Charles.

“No, but who else do you suggest? Ben?” I replied.

Ben raised his composite head, slightly inclined, trying to mimic the puzzled look of a human.

“I am not programmed to perform hull repairs, I’m sorry. Maybe we can reprogram one of the service drones?” Ben offered with an apologetic smile.

“Drones? And do what? Cut more holes into the ship? Sometimes I wonder why they put you on this mission,” said Tif.

“Would you like a list of my duties? Washing, clean—”

“Thanks, Ben. We appreciate you. Maybe we can mount welding lasers to some of the drones, Scott?” Charles turned to his engineer.

“Could work, I’ll get right on it,” Scott replied and left.

“Otto will need help outside…” Charles looked at his crew, tired, exhausted and not in the mood for speeches.

“I’ll go with him,” said Tif, stepping forward, and looking my way.

I nodded.

“And I will help Zandra with the generators, the rest please monitor your stations, and keep your comms open. We have come so far, we can do this,” Charles said.

Everyone nodded and shuffled off to their posts. Zandra, Tif and I stayed behind, sitting around the chrome table, no one spoke.

“Would anyone care for some beverages?” Ben broke the silence.

“Not now, Ben,” Charles sighed. “According to your calculations, what are our chances of survival?”

“Given our current circumstances and the probability of future complications, your chances of survival are zero point zero one percent,” Ben paused, then added. “Are you sure you don’t want that drink now?”

Tif smacked Ben over the back of his head.

“Ow,” Ben uttered in surprise, raising an arm in defence, but Tif had already opened his access port behind his ear and was pushing buttons.

“Hey, stop, that tick—les,” Ben’s speech slowed, his motor circuits shut down and his eye lenses opened wide.

“What did you do that for?” I asked.

“You heard him. He said your survival, not our,” Tif took her programming decoder from her belt clip and connected it to the android. “Time to find out why we are really out here.”

“You’re wasting your time, Ben doesn’t know anything about the mission. Why would they give highly classified information to a service unit?” Charles said.

“He may not know anything, but we can salvage some of his parts and fix one of the oxygen generators. It would give us enough air to supply part of the ship with. The rest we’ll seal off.” Zandra mused. “We don’t need him.”

“She’s right. We should use his parts, after all, his mission is to help us. So, he can help us one last time. After we repair the hull,” I added.

Tif pulled a thin cable from her decoder and connected it to her interface behind her left earlobe, a faint click and she was punching buttons again, light started to pulse between Ben and her, flowing along the blue translucent connecting cable. “You guys think that asteroid belt was an accident?”

“What else could it have been?” Zandra asked.

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Tif’s pupils dilated as she processed the full extent of Ben’s data stream.

“It doesn’t matter, whatever the reason, we need to fix it, it will buy us more time. Or we plot a course back to the nearest station, and hope someone will pick up our signal and send a rescue team,” said Charles.

“Rescue team? We’re twelve lightyears from home. No. We’re on our own. I say we push forward. We still have three working stasis pods, maybe we can fix a few more. We’ll keep going as long as we can, and when it’s time, we’ll enter stasis and redirect all remaining power to maintain the pods. We can make it our destination – at least some of us,” I said.

“The crew doesn’t know about the pods?” Charles asked.

“Not yet,” said Zandra.

“Let’s keep it that way – for now,” said Charles looking at the rainbow colours of data in Tif’s eyes.

With a soft beep, the transfer was complete. Tif disconnected the cable. She looked at us, her pupils still dilated. “There is no planet.”

Her words hung between us like the blade of a guillotine.

“Impossible. I saw it myself,” Charles protested.

“Ben changed our course and fed our navigation system with false data. We are no longer heading to our destination. Where we are headed I don’t know. I couldn’t access his Directive. It’s encrypted deep inside his kernel.” Tif started to shiver, her body reacting to the neural overstimulation.

“So he flew us into the asteroid field?” I couldn’t believe it.

“There’s no way of knowing whether that was intentional, but yes, he put us on a collision course, and since our sensors were fed with fake data, none of our systems responded. That is, Ben still must have known about it, he knew we would be hit.” Tif stared at the motionless android. “Why don’t we ask him?”

“Wait, we better make sure he can’t access the mainframe before we switch him back on,” said Charles.

***

Scott had retrofitted three drones with modified welding lasers and I worked with Tif on the hull damage until our suits ran low on oxygen. On the way back to the airlock, Tif stopped.

“Come on, Tif. We need to get back inside.”

She shook her head and pointed at something at the bow. I turned and scanned the ship, and then I saw it. A piece of asteroid, stuck in the hull, too far out to reach.

“Leave it, it’s too far,” I signalled with my hands, shaking my head, but Tif was already heading for it, her magnetic boots clicking onto the metal, step by step, one slower and heavier than the next.

I cursed and followed her, drones in tow. She was pulling at the rock the size of a football when I got to her, but it wouldn’t budge, it was firmly wedged into the plating, fused with it. I set the drones to work and the lasers cut the piece free. Tif snatched it before it could float off into space while the drones welded the hole shut.

She held up the piece, its smooth surface black against the void, and we both stared at it. I remember I heard her whisper to it, I was sure of it, and for a moment I thought it whispered back. I must have been hallucinating, we were practically out of oxygen at that point.

I don’t remember how we got back inside, it was all a blur, bits and pieces. I remember a feeling of euphoria, and whenever the image of the black rock flashed before my eyes, it intensified. I wanted to hold it, it was all I could think about, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing it. It filled me with such dread that my vision faded to black and I lost consciousness.

When I woke, I found myself in quarantine. Sitting up, I glanced around and noticed someone beside me, sitting on the ground, murmuring.

“Tif?” my voice was hoarse. “Tif? What happened?” I wanted to get up and a sharp pain shot through my arm. Looking down I saw my lower right arm was bandaged, soaked in red stains.

“They took it. They took it. I need it. Give it back. GIVE IT BACK!” Tif screamed suddenly, jumping up and hammering against the confines with her fists, then slumping to the ground again, muttering things that did not make any sense.

“Tif?” I moved towards her, held out my hand, slowly reaching for her shoulder when she jumped me and pushed me to the floor, pinning me down with her knees. I wailed in pain.

“It was YOU. You took it. We will all die!”

It was then that I saw her face, a million cuts, cuts that ran deeper than her flesh. Someone, something had done this to her, and I did not understand, not yet. I heard the gas before I could smell it and seconds later we both passed out for the second time.

Ben was standing over me when I woke again. Charles's face came into view, Zandra next to him. There was no sign of Tif or the rock.

“Where’s Tif?” I rubbed my bandaged arm, only to find the bandage gone and a small thin scar running from my wrist to my elbow. I blinked, looked at their faces, back at the scar.

“Tiffany’s stable, for now. You on the other hand… how did you do it?” Zandra asked.

“Do what?”

Charles put a hand on my shoulder. “You were outside, ready to come back in when you found something. Do you remember what it was?”

I stared at Charles, his words echoing in my mind. What it was…

“The rock. A piece of asteroid stuck in the hull… Tif took it.”

Images came back to me. Images of me and Tif, outside on the hull, fighting. “No, it can’t be.”

“I’m afraid it can, Otto. Tif cut you with that rock. Your wound got infected and for some time it was touch and go, you were burning up and there was nothing we could do.” Charles paused and removed his hand from my shoulder. “But the fever broke and the wound started to heal. How, we do not know. Quite frankly, one could think it’s a miracle.”

“She cut me?” I did not remember that. I remembered something else. I remembered Ben outside, bringing us back inside. I remembered seeing the rock reflected in his eyes.

“It was Ben! He took it!” I exclaimed.

“Unlike us, he can handle toxic material without any risk to his health,” Charles explained. “Ben brought you back.”

“Where is it?” I demanded.

“Safe,” said Zandra. “You both acted all crazy and wouldn’t let go of it. It’s better, you don’t know where it is.”

I looked at them, a pit in my stomach, itching to scratch my scar open, letting whatever it was I felt inside me, spill forth. Instead, I nodded. I had to find out where they kept the rock.

“So you switched that bastard android back on. Why did you change course, Ben?” I said.

“About that,” said Charles. “We know it was you. Very clever. We almost missed it but thanks to Ben’s self-diagnosis, we found the subroutine you planted. You were the only one on duty that night, the night before the asteroid belt. What I can’t figure out is why. Why did you do it, Otto?”

“What? That’s crazy. I don’t know anything about androids, let alone how to do any of that stuff. It wasn’t me. I would remember that!”

“That’s what I said,” replied Zandra. “I guess you also didn’t know that Ben recorded you. Let’s have a look, shall we?”

She pressed a button and the screen in front of us flickered to life, showing Ben and me in the maintenance hub.

“See that there? That’s you, uploading an override subroutine into Ben’s system, programmed to be triggered, executed and deleted at a specific timestamp. We weren’t able to restore it but it’s obvious. It was you,” Zandra concluded.

“I…I don’t know what to say. I don’t remember doing this, I swear!”

“You also didn’t sabotage the oxygen generators then?”

“What? No! Why would I do that? That would be suicide.”

“Yes, and yet you did. But we were able to fix one,” said Charles and nodded to Zandra.

She raised a syringe and injected something into my neck.

“And now you will tell us exactly why you are here and why you did what you did,” said Charles.

“I’m not the enemy,” I said, every word a struggle.

“Who is the enemy, Otto?”

“I’m… not… the enemy,” I felt the drug spread through my veins, and something else, something dark.

I could hear it whisper. I felt its thirst, its desire for life, so deep, a well that could never be filled and I knew I was that well, for it was inside me. My body started to shake, my vision faded and I knew no more.

When I woke, I found myself wandering the ship alone. Blood on the walls, bodies in the corridors, the crew was dead. Killed. By who or what I do not know. By the enemy, I could hear Ben’s voice in my head.

Ben told me to put Tif, Zandra and Charles inside the stasis pods and then retrieve the rock and when the time was right I would use it on them. Ben would know, the same way he knew how to program me.

An illustration of an asteroid belt (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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