Test of Mettle (A Captain's Crucible Book 2) (19 page)

B
ridgette sat propped against the bulkhead, her suit assembly shaded blue by the glowing filaments embedded in the alien metal. She kept her suit on, not wanting to touch the alien bulkheads and deck with her bare skin.

She had heard the stories about the previous prisoners, how the aliens had used worker robots to forcibly remove their spacesuits and thermal undergarments, and how their aReals and implants had stopped working. Well, she still had her spacesuit. And her contact lens aReal still worked. The latter was a small mercy, because she could while away her days in virtual reality and forget that she was aboard an alien ship, a prisoner carrying a baby in the third trimester of pregnancy. To think, she had once been afraid of giving birth to a child aboard a
human
vessel...

It seemed like only yesterday she had been laughing away in the captain’s private mess, having supper with Jonathan, Robert and Stanley. Eating a luxurious meal of turkey and pasta. These days, all she had was the green, vomit-inducing gruel the aliens deigned to feed her.

Thinking about the stuff, she repressed the sudden urge to throw up. Her morning sickness had worsened since captivity. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the food or because she was using VR a lot more—some of the experiences had a tendency to inflict motion sickness, especially since she didn’t have the inner ear-stimulating headphones designed to negate that. Or perhaps the worsening of her nausea was simply because she had given up hope.

She rested a hand on her belly. She wanted to talk to Eugene, yet she knew he couldn’t really hear. Besides, there were no words she could use to comfort the baby, not anymore. She was beyond hope at that point. If a rescue was coming, it would have taken place long ago.

She felt a wave of despair coming on.

Over the past six months, she had battled depression. When it came, in the span of a day she could swing from wanting to give birth naturally, to desiring that the baby was cut out of her and gestated in a “test tube” for the rest of the term, to insisting on an abortion, and back again.

The doctor called it antenatal depression. Bridgette had refused to take antidepressants while she was pregnant, despite the doctor’s reassurances that her baby would be fine. If the depression continued into the postpartum stage, only then would she consider such a treatment. Instead she had relied on counselors and long conversations with Robert to get her past the hiccups.

Except there were no counselors anymore. No Robert.

I’m going to die. My baby’s going to die. The aliens are going to take it and dissect it. I hate having this burden inside me. I hate it...

She stared at the small cap that rested on the deck beside her. Inside it were the aReal contact lenses she had removed to give her eyes a respite. She had taken the cap from the index finger of her right glove, which covered the surgical laser used for suit repairs. The laser itself wasn’t exposed, because beneath the cap was another section of the glove that had to be folded open, which she left sealed.

She used her saliva as liquid; not the most sanitary storage conditions, but what else could she do other than not wear them? She would have to get her eyes checked for bacterial infections if she ever got back to the
Callaway
. Not to mention the rest of her body: the air could be crawling with alien pathogens.

Almost all of humanity required prescription lenses of some kind, as natural selection had long ago ceased to select against poor eyesight. As such, prescription contact lenses and spectacles were the perfect places for engineers to piggyback the augmented reality systems that modern humans used to communicate and interact with the world.

She continued to look longingly at the cap that held her lenses, yearning for the virtual escape contained within. She had only taken them off ten minutes ago and already she wanted to go back. She could have used the aReal in her helmet, though the available simulations and experiences were limited. And she’d have to waste precious oxygen if she did that, unless she wanted to strip off her upper assembly and hold the helmet in place with her hands. Plus the helmet was all icky from the gruel she’d put in it.

She at last gave in. Fumbling for the cap, she replaced the lenses with shaking hands. Once she logged in and the augmentation overlays appeared over her vision, she felt an overwhelming sense of relief. And when she began to browse through the various programs, she experienced pleasure just reading the names. It was like being a Vaddict all over again, something she had escaped as a child, long ago.

I’ve reverted.

But before she could pick a program, she heard the subtle creak of moving metal, and looked up to watch the far bulkhead gradually slide away.

That meant her gruel had arrived.

With a sigh, she scooped up her gloves and helmet, and then clambered weakly to her feet. If she didn’t retrieve the food, the bulkhead would simply seal and she’d have to starve for the next four hours. She used the helmet as a container for the slop that served as food, as the actual bin it arrived in was too heavy to carry into the main compartment, and she couldn’t eat it all before the airlock hatch resealed.

She walked through the broad, low compartment, and wrinkled her nose as she passed the open latrine, where she ejected the excretions she made while wearing the suit.

Before she reached the airlock, a thick black mist rolled into the room.

So her gruel hadn’t arrived after all.

She remained motionless as the mist floated up to her. She refused to back down. It reached one head taller than her, so when it halted a few inches from her face, she forced herself to look up into that blackness, where she thought the head must be. Small points of light occasionally flashed within, tiny enough to confuse with her own phosphenes. She half expected a clawed limb to strike out at any moment to rip her in half, and she chose to look death in the eye.

The mist moved backward, then dispersed entirely, revealing a spacesuit. Behind the faceplate Barrick peered out. He affixed the small device—likely the darkness generator—to his belt, then he stepped to the side to remove his helmet. 

When he moved, she saw that immediately behind him stood another man who wasn’t wearing a spacesuit. Odd. Either he was an Artificial—a robot designed to appear indistinguishable from a human—or he could somehow breathe the caustic environment produced by the darkness generator. Bridgette thought it must be the former, based on what Barrick had told her before.
On board that ship there will be a man. Except he isn’t a man.

“I have brought someone who would like to meet you,” Barrick said when his helmet was off. “Bridgette, meet
Zhidao
.”

“Zhidao,” she said. “A Sino-Korean name. And yet you are not Sino-Korean. Perhaps not even human.”

“Correct on both accounts,” the mysterious man said.

“An Artificial?” she asked.

He shrugged noncommittally.

“You’re a prisoner, too?” she said.

“More of an honored guest at this point,” Zhidao replied.

Bridgette fidgeted uncomfortably under that piercing gaze. “Why did you want to meet me?”

His expression seemed to intensify, and she had the uncanny sensation that he was inside her head. Then the feeling went away.

“You have no psychic abilities?” the man said.

“None that I know of,” Bridgette said slowly.

Zhidao frowned. “Pity. There are so few of you. I get so little chance to practice.”

Barrick’s eyes flicked nervously toward the man, and he licked his lips.

“The telepath tells me you are a woman of some influence,” Zhidao continued. “I make it a habit of meeting people of influence. Besides, I find myself missing the company of human beings. The Raakarr are, how shall we say, not the best conversationalists.”

“Okay...” Bridgette wasn’t sure what to make of the Artificial. “So you can communicate with them?”

“With the help of the telepath, I have learned how, yes. You have heard of the arrival of the reinforcements?”

Bridgette furrowed her brow. “Actually, I hadn’t.” That wouldn’t be good for the fleet.

“Well a member of the Raakarr high council is aboard one of the ships,” Zhidao said. “And the Elk faction, as the telepath calls them, have agreed in principle to give us your homeworld when they are done with it.”

“Give you my homeworld?” Bridgette truly had no idea what the Artificial was talking about. She thought its AI must be malfunctioning.

“Yes,” Zhidao continued. “Populated would be nice. But if not, the multi-universe fields produced by sentient organisms still linger for several years after a population has terminated.”

Bridgette frowned. There was definitely something wrong with that Artificial. She had watched videos of malfunctioning AIs in the past. They babbled on senselessly, much like Zhidao. “All right, then. It was nice to meet you.” She took a step back and half turned away.

“I once gave humanity a choice, you know,” Zhidao said. “Seventy years ago. If they had agreed, none of this would have ever happened. Instead, they chose the wrong path. Which has led to the inevitable: your species will be terminated. It is only a matter of time.”

“Who
are
you?” Bridgette said.

The bulkhead began to groan as the inner hatch started to close behind the group.

Zhidao grinned emotionlessly. “Well. It was nice meeting you. Enjoy your imprisonment. Telepath, I leave her with you.”

The Artificial turned around and walked into the airlock. Before the hatch shut, she saw purple drops of condensation on the back of Zhidao’s neck, above the collar. That was familiar, somehow, and she thought she should have been able to place it. Something out of the history books...

When Zhidao was gone, she said: “What a strange Artificial.”

“A very dangerous one,” Barrick said. “I can only barely shield my mind from him.”

“I had no issue,” Bridgette said.

“That’s because you’re not a telepath,” he stated.

“But you seemed to have no trouble controlling minds aboard the
Callaway
,” Bridgette told him. “Regardless of whether the recipients had psychic abilities or not.”

“That’s because I’m human...” Barrick said.

Bridgette scrunched up her brow. “I’ve never heard of an Artificial with telepathic powers before.”

“It is not the Artificial that has the powers. But rather, what possesses it.”

“And what’s that?” Bridgette asked.

“A renegade alien. A remnant from the last attack his species made against humanity seventy years ago. I tried to stop him, you know.”

“Stop him?” Bridgette said. “How?”

“When I took over the
Callaway
I was going to blow up this ship, and all the prisoners from the
Selene
aboard, simply to destroy that one Artificial.”

Bridgette folded her arms. It was an awkward action, given the bulky suit she wore. “If you want Zhidao dead so badly, why don’t you find a way to do it now?”

“It’s not so easy,” Barrick explained. “You can’t simply kill his body: he will merely move on to another host. A robot. Or AI. He can even take over an entire starship. The purple drops of condensation you saw, that was his actual body. And it can’t be destroyed by any weapon known to man.”

Bridgette leaned against the glowing bulkhead. “So wait, then that means when you took over the
Callaway
, even if you had succeeded in destroying this ship, Zhidao would still live on.”

“That’s true,” Barrick told her. “But his race moves so slowly on its own that it would be essentially the same as killing him. He would be drifting endlessly through space for all eternity.”

“I see. An interesting conundrum, then.” Bridgette didn’t entirely believe any of it. A renegade alien from seventy years ago? A “possessed” Artificial?

Barrick smiled. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I will find a way to save humanity. I have sworn it.”

She forgot that he could read her mind.

Barrick’s smile deepened.

“When are you going to let me go?” Bridgette said.

“When the time is right.” He studied her. “You seem so sad. Is there something I can do to ease your burden until then? Anything at all?”

She paused, hesitating. She looked down at her hands.

“There is, isn’t there?” Barrick said.

There was something about his voice. So soothing. Almost hypnotic.

The telepath is attempting to influence me,
a part of her mind told her. Another part dismissed that notion.

She rested a hand on the belly region of her torso assembly but then removed it as if burned. Finally she said: “I have heard that telepaths can abort babies.”

Barrick nodded gravely. “I can trick your mind into believing that the baby is full term, forcing your body to flush it out prematurely.”

She knew she shouldn’t go through with it. The telepath was influencing her in some way. Either that, or she was experiencing a temporary lapse in judgment caused by the antenatal depression. One moment she wanted the baby, the next she didn’t. One moment she loved it, the next she hated it. The moment would pass.