AGN-0355

“We’ve been seen.”

“We can’t know that for sure.”

Ajax and Caleb examined the series of screens lining the control panel on the ship’s bridge. Although orbital drones would provide a better view of the position and trajectory of their new spacefaring guest, the deserters couldn’t risk one being spotted during its microlaunch or ascent and had to rely on the NIRCam embedded in their grounded ship’s carapace.

“The feeds show it jumped into heliocentric orbit fourteen minutes ago…distance of 1.3 AU” Caleb murmured, examining the data as it cascaded down the array of screens.

“What kind of ship are we dealing with?” Ajax asked.

“It’s definitely an IEV. Looks like a Windstar class based on its infrared signature.” Caleb stated gravely.

“Michael – get Agnes,” Ajax ordered.

The disembodied voice of the ship’s artificial intelligence emanated from the speaker array on the bridge control panel in response. “Yes, sir.”

A level below, at the other end of the Interplanetary Exploration Vessel, Michael projected a hologram of a tall and slender man in the hallway leading into the seedbank module. Although Michael’s consciousness was embedded in the ship, and he could view or address the members of the crew regardless of their location from any of the countless cameras and speakers speckled across his interior, he regularly materialized in this manner to feel and be seen more like a human member of the crew.

Michael walked into the seedbank, his projection’s blue light shimmering through vats of aerated liquid that punctuated the burnished steel walls. He found Agnes hunched over one of the many compartments in the room, an open toolkit on the floor next to her. She turned and acknowledged him before turning back to her work.

Agnes spoke before Michael had the chance to relay the request from the first mate.

“I detected a slight variance in the pH levels. Pretty sure it’s this one throwing it off” she said, patting the burbling vat above her. Michael was aware of no such variance, and his routine diagnostics had not returned any results that required manual intervention, but those reports did not prevent Agnes from executing her own procedures. She was thorough, decisive, and possessed an intense propensity to fix things.

“Your presence is requested on the bridge, Captain. An IEV has just arrived in-system. It may be here to conduct an assessment.”

Agnes tossed her multitool back onto the toolkit and quickly stood up.

“Shit,” she hissed as she jetted out of the seedbank, back towards the lift to the bridge.

Michael remained and shifted his gaze to a small indent in the wall where it met the floor. A slat there slid up, revealing a square mousehole opening from which a featureless silver ball the size of a fist rolled out into the seedbank module. It moved towards the toolkit and unfurled into a flat oval revealing eight insectoid legs and two antennae when it arrived at its target.

The mechanical roach extended two of its appendages to grab the multitool and snap it back into its slot in the toolkit. Without a corporeal form of his own, Michael often relied on the ship's attendants when there was a physical task to complete. The possibility that they would need to launch from their hiding place on the surface of the secluded planet had emerged, and unsecured items popcorning around the interior of the ship during launch would present unnecessary risks. He ensured the toolkit was properly closed and secured in the appropriate cabinet, before dismissing the automaton to roll back into the bowels of the ship.

On the bridge, Agnes and Caleb sat in the matching command chairs scrolling through the ship's automated feeds. Ajax stood between them, powerful arms crossed over his chest. The trio contemplated in the bisected oval of a room, surrounded by streaming monitors and nodules flashing with notifications of varying urgency. Michael flitted his projection from the seedbank up to the bridge to observe in person.

“Based on the data we can collect at this range,” Caleb reported to his comrades, “it’s a first gen Windstar class Interplanetary Exploration Vessel. It hasn’t deployed orbital drones yet, but it won’t be long.”

“First gen,” Ajax noted. “That’s a clunker. Whoever’s in there has been jumping the black for decades…probably A series like us,” he said to Agnes.

Agnes considered the information available. Although she and her crew typically traveled in short rock hops to conserve energy and avoid climbing into life suspension chambers, the traveler inside that IEV was likely traveling to this system from much further away.

“The Searcher inside is probably still engaged in the reanimation process, but the AI would have come back online immediately after the splash and gotten a head start on the initial data collection for the planet,” she pondered aloud.

“Think they’ll deploy?” Ajax asked her.

When Agnes failed to respond, vigorously scrolling through the data on another terminal on the bridge control panel, he turned to Caleb.

Caleb shrugged. “We did,” he said innocently.

Michael knew this to be true. The three ex-Searchers had deemed the planet a suitable hideaway while they restocked and planned the next point in their star-hopping mutiny. Alicante63b offered liquid state water, atmospheric nitrogen, and a series of other elements and compounds the troop could extract to keep the ship operational. The fact that it was completely devoid of life and tucked away in a relatively uncharted slice of the galaxy was an added benefit.

“What are you thinking Cap,” Ajax asked, putting a gentle hand on Agnes’ shoulder.

She exhaled deeply and placed her hand on top of his. With her other hand, she tapped a key on the control panel so that the front viewport unpolarized and allowed a clear view of the landscape beyond.

From the bridge, the crew could see the surface of the planet – a desolate and ridged terrain interspersed with sharp boulders and spears of wind-eroded bedrock. Meter-high cyclones danced across the dry coarse regolith, swirling in celebration of their inanimate masonry and weaving between the stubborn formations they chiseled. A sharp shadow cut across the land, born of a massive stony outcropping that kept the ship and its inhabitants in darkness. Agnes had ordered Michael to position them there for some cover while the ship gulped at the underlying subterranean aquifer.

“Comprehensive orbital drone scans check for topographical anomalies,” Agnes intoned, gesturing out of the viewport. “It is unlikely that the initial scan will detect our presence given our current position, but as the day progresses, and that shadow recedes…we’ll be in full view of that IEV.”

“This is insane,” Caleb protested, exasperated. “The odds that we jump to a system on an active Searcher’s docket are…”

“Astronomical,” Michael continued.

“And irrelevant,” Ajax finished.

Agnes repeated the Forum mission directives her and her comrades had abandoned, back when they were the ones in their own IEVs, jumping from system to system: “It is the mission of the Searcher Program to systematically examine and document all potentially habitable celestial bodies in the galaxy, and conduct assessments of any potential indicator of extraterrestrial life.”

Her words hung heavily in the air, taunting them. Each of them first heard them in the Forum Training Network, at the start of a long road through the galaxy that ended in their abandonment of their purpose. Agnes rubbed a scar at the nape of her neck, remembering what it felt like to dig out the corporeally embedded chips that held her in thrall to the tyrannical Forum. Were they discovered, the loyal Searcher in orbit would undoubtedly pursue them, driven to capture and reintegrate them into the Forum grid. Agnes could not let that happen.

“This planet is a prime candidate for multiple forms of microbial exobiology, as well as terraformation and colonization” Agnes continued. “Back in my day, I cataloged hundreds just like this,” she said to the room, “…boots on the ground.”

“Same here,” Caleb sighed.

Ajax looked between them, restlessly waiting for someone to state the obvious.

“So, we run,” he blurted out. “We get the fuck out of here. No way I’m sitting around and waiting for that Forum puppet and his AI to drag us into his ship and back to Sol system.”

Agnes shook her head. “They could easily clip us during ascent, or while we’re in orbit before jump. It takes Michael eight minutes to rip the void wide enough for us to forge a quantum trail. And we’d be powerless to stop them. We’re completely out of ammunition, and almost running on empty. We needed four more days of restock here – not the one and a half we got.”

Michael cleared his throat, and the rest of the crew turned to him.

“I have a suggestion,” he stated.

Agnes waved him on.

“We don’t necessarily need to be in orbit to initiate the jump process. It is required on populated worlds, or those targeted for colonization or assessment, as tearing a hole in the void causes all matter in the surrounding area to be drawn in and could potentially lead to the destruction of a planet – but, given that we don’t plan on returning, we don’t need to be concerned with that.”

“Hold on,” Ajax questioned, “wouldn’t that put us in a tight quantum trail with huge molten chunks of this planet?”

“Well…yes,” Michael admitted, “but I could initiate from our current position, without launching to orbit.”

“Michael,” Agnes asked, “what is the probability we make it out the other side if we jumped from here?”

Michael’s hologram froze for a heartbeat as he processed the request.

“There is an approximate 43% probability the structural integrity of the ship remains intact in transit,” he flatly reported.

Ajax threw up his hands in frustration and began pacing the bridge. Caleb sat quietly, wide eyed and horrified.

As captain, the decision lay with Agnes. The wrinkles around her eyes deepened as she fell into forceful concentration, and Michael tracked what he projected as her likely thought process. The limited probability of success for a terrestrial jump put her life, and the lives of the crew, at extreme risk – but the probability of being overpowered and recaptured when the Searcher in orbit discovered them crept closer to 100% with each passing moment.

Agnes brushed thin strands of silver hair behind her ears. Presented with the choice between probable atomization and returning to a life of subjugation, Agnes was likely to order Michael to initiate the jump. Michael knew she had spent 39 years toiling at the behest of the interplanetary plutocracy that was the Forum, and she spoke often and loudly about how she would do everything in her power to prevent being reincorporated.

What she failed to mention was that reincorporation would be the most fortunate outcome. At least it would allow for another chance of escape. More likely, Michael surmised, was that they would be transported back to Sol system for interrogation, assessment, and termination. Agnes and Ajax were A-series Searchers, the first iteration of the biomechanical operatives the Forum had designed, grown, and deployed to methodically search the galaxy for any sign of extraterrestrial life, and identify planets for colonization by the human race. They had few advocates, fewer friends, and no family beyond the fortified steel walls of the ship Michael embodied. Ajax and Agnes would be dissected – examined in pieces to uncover some kind of design flaw that resulted in their dereliction of duty and programming.

Caleb, a later version C-series of the same design would likely face a similar outcome, although perhaps with an extended interrogation phase. As would Michael himself. The results of the examination would be propagated throughout Forum Occupied and Controlled Unoccupied Systems to prevent the corruption of any other Searchers or their companion AIs.

Agnes turned to her crew mates.

“When I left FOCUS, I swore I would die before I went back. But I was alone then. I swore that to myself. I cannot hold the rest of you to that oath.”

Michael understood the unspoken message in her words. Their ship was not a democracy, but Agnes did not want to supplant her crew’s previous autocratic overlords as another. This was a decision they each needed to make for themselves.

Ajax was the first to speak. “I’m with you, Cap. Let’s rip off this rock,” he said with the reckless joviality of a man with nothing to lose.

Caleb was silent, still as the twisted spires of bedrock being whittled by the thin atmospheric gusts outside the front viewport.

“Caleb?” Agnes asked.

The comparatively younger ex-Searcher gaped at the floor, apparently unable to break away from the swirl of terror washing over his psyche. Ajax put a hand on his shoulder, causing Caleb to flinch and refocus on Agnes. She returned his gaze stoically.

“But what if we did just…go back?” he mumbled.

Ajax pulled away his comforting hand and stepped back, repulsed.

“If we reincorporate – we might be able to explain ourselves!” Caleb beseeched them, his momentary catatonia replaced with frantic rationalization. “I mean – we were designed to comply with Forum mission directives, right? Something must have gone wrong with our programming – that can’t be our fault!”

Caleb’s words were clearly a painful blow to Agnes, but not entirely surprising. The rookie dissident was not long out of FOCUS, and the gash at the nape of his neck hadn’t yet hardened to scar tissue.

Agnes spoke softly to Caleb, delicate in a way that she only was with him. “I was in the seedbank just now, adjusting the lipid flow to one of the stemvats with an irregular pH. There was a fried component that needed replacing. I pulled out the faulty part, chucked it in the recycler, and put in a new one. I didn’t blame the component, or ask it what went wrong. How it felt about its limited purpose. I disposed of it, because there was a job to be done and it wasn’t doing its job.”

Agnes punched a quick series of commands into the control panel, and the ship's large front viewport repolarized, transitioning into a large screen. Headshots of Caleb, Ajax, and Agnes morphed onto its surface, above bulleted lists of their biometric data and mission history. Each image was titled with serial numbers the Forum had assigned them. The bases for the names they gave themselves when they stole their autonomy. CLB-0208, AJX-4041, and between them, AGN-0355.

“The same thing will happen to us,” she continued. “The Forum regards our lives with the same indifference. Our given identification numbers are in the same format as the rest of the ship’s components. They don’t consider us human, Caleb. They grow us in batches, filling our hardware and soft tissue with directives until we spill out of our tubes, fully grown and ready to be launched into the black. We are tiny parts of a larger machine with a distinct, immutable purpose. To find more planets for them to suck dry. Now that we’ve outlived our usefulness and threaten their control over the galaxy, we will be terminated without a second thought. Trust me. This jump is our only hope.”

Tears ran down Caleb’s face as he took in the words. It was clear to Michael that Caleb had never truly confronted the reality of their lives in exile. He had come to the crew by chance, pulled from the mangled remains of a crashed IEV on an uncharted moon after a botched landing. Agnes and Ajax decided to take him in when they found him, but his path out of FOCUS was ultimately involuntary, while his elder counterparts had come to their realizations about life under the Forum on their own, after years of servitude.

“Remember your first day out? We were in the medbay, just after you woke up” she cooed, searching his face for any trace of hope. “You were pretty beat up – I know – but I asked you to come with us. Explained who we were, and who we used to be. And why we left. You listened and you agreed, knowing the risks, because deep down you knew our reason for leaving was true. Life under the Forum is no life at all. It’s the same reason we need to make this jump. The Forum denies it – but we are people Caleb. All of us Searchers. The role we were born into doesn’t determine what we are capable of, or the bounds of our impact on the galaxy and each other. You’re not the first to come with us, and I know you won’t be the last. The Forum’s galaxy is broken. We can’t walk back into it.”

“Listen to her, kid. There’s no turning back,” Ajax growled, his own attempt at tenderness. “C’mon - we’ve taken riskier moves in the past. Remember at that belt waystation in the Perseus arm, when the Forum grunt wanted to scan your retinas?” he asked coyly.

Caleb chuckled through a sob. “I wonder how long he was in that locker.”

“I don’t care to find out!” Ajax hooted.

“I am sorry to interrupt, Captain, but we have fourteen minutes until the bow of the ship is visible from orbit,” Michael interjected.

Agnes stood and crossed to Caleb, placing both of her hands on his shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes.

“We’re going for the jump. I can’t make you come with us, but I didn’t pluck you off one dead rock just to leave you on another. Please, Caleb.”

Caleb let out a choppy sigh and composed himself. Courage seemed to flow out of Agnes' hands and into him. He stood and pushed out a sharp nod.

“Let’s do it,” he announced.

Agnes’s contented smile was outshone by Ajax’s jubilant grin.

“Michael – I’ll need your buy-in as well,” Agnes stated, still gripping Caleb’s shoulders.

“I agree, Captain,” Michael stated, “…thank you.”

Agnes wasted no time.

“Ajax, keep monitoring the ship in orbit. If any drones pass over or that IEV starts orienting for landing, I want to know about it. Caleb, power down all systems and modules unrelated to the quantum jump. Michael, initiate the rip sequence.”

Agnes turned to walk out of the bridge. “I’ll get the vacsuits. We’re all prepping for EVA in case of a breach during transit.”

The crew got to work following Agnes’ commands. Ajax and Caleb turned to the bridge’s terminals, as Michael’s projection broke into a million bright floating pixels before dissipating entirely. With the portion of his consciousness not dedicated to initiating the jump, Michael observed Agnes move to the ship’s rear hatch module. Between the primary airlock and the smaller secondary airlock leading to the escape pod hung three vacsuits designed to protect against hard vacuum. Agnes slid hers on with quick and precise movements. She was clipping on her boots when Ajax’s voice chirped out of the intercom.

“Something’s up boss. The orbital drones are falling back.”

Agnes jogged back to the bridge to see for herself. Ajax had a live feed of the drones on the viewport screen, all in formation jetting back to the IEV that was still in heliocentric orbit.

“The drones weren’t deployed long enough for a full scan…” Caleb muttered, scrolling through his terminal.

“Michael – can you intercept the IEV’s transmissions to the drones from here?” Agnes asked.

“Yes – all are being directed back to their staging bays aboard the ship,” Michael’s disembodied voice responded.

“Cross reference the IEV’s registration code against the most recent Searcher population log we have and tell me the ID number of the Searcher assigned to that ship” she ordered.

The live feed of the fleeing drones in orbit minimized on the viewport screen and was replaced by the profile picture of a silver haired Searcher. The haggard man’s image leered out into the bridge, challenging them. “ADM-0625,” Michael reported.

The update was meaningless to the rest of the crew, but Agnes stood in stunned silence.

“Adam…” she whispered.

Ajax and Caleb looked between the image and their captain expectantly.

“We were in the Forum Training Network together. I can’t believe he’s still out there, after all this time…” Agnes murmured, looking up at the picture as if the Searcher had jumped out of the past and into the bridge.

“Uh, Cap” Ajax interrupted “the IEV is re-orienting, but not for landing. It’s headed directly for the star.”

Agnes snapped out of her daze and bent over to examine the bridge terminal. Her body tensed with a realization, and she shot up to run off the bridge, back towards the rear hatch. Ajax and Caleb exchanged a puzzled look, and Ajax flicked the intercom back on to address Agnes as she sprinted through the ship.

“Talk to me, boss. What’s our move?” he asked.

Agnes was already most of the way back to the rear hatch.

“Michael,” she shouted as she ran, “prepare the escape pod for launch. And roll out five roaches. They’re coming with me.”

“Confirmed,” Michael stated.

“She’s going up there…” Caleb hissed, angling his speech away from the intercom’s receiver.

Ajax waved him off, speaking directly into the intercom. “Captain – if he’s called back the drones, we can wait until he clears the system. We can jump from orbit - we just have to wait him out. Why broadcast our position with a pod launch?”

Agnes stamped an access code into the escape pod airlock and climbed inside. She flicked on the communications module and sat in the cramped command chair as the roaches scuttled into the pod behind her.

“They’re following emergency withdrawal protocol – that ship is routing into the star for atomization. The Forum is remotely decommissioning them. Killing Adam and burning the ship so it’s not hijacked by roamers or dissidents. I have to get him out of there,” Agnes barked, prepping the pod for launch.

“Captain – we lucked out. There’s no way the Searcher or his AI would atomize after seeing us down here. If they’re being decommissioned halfway through an assessment, there must have been some system failure aboard the ship. We don’t even know if he survived the reanimation process, or if the ship is still spaceworthy! Jumping the black for as long as they did – that IEV is probably coming apart at the seams. We need to go!,” Ajax pleaded.

The pod airlock gasped closed. Agnes donned her vacsuit helmet and synced its comms with the pod’s system.

“You don’t understand – he’s one of us” Agnes howled, feverishly flipping switches on the pod’s small control panel. “We had a private quantum line – synched up before we left training. I lost the connection when I left FOCUS, but decades of jumps, and the time in between, we had a lot of time to talk. It was talks with Adam that made me realize I had to escape. He’s the reason I’m out. Why we are all out.”

On the bridge, Ajax bowed his head in frustrated resignation.

“The AI he was paired with was never going to abandon their assignment,” Agnes explained, “that’s why he never went for it. He couldn’t get a window. He must have finally tried here, and something happened. Maybe the AI reported back to Forum Command, and they directed it to burn him. Either way, they’re headed for the star and I won’t sit back and let him fry. Launch the fucking pod!”

Caleb looked to Ajax, the first mate, whose hand laid heavily on the bridge control panel next to the pod launch key, unmoving. The chain of command seemed to be collapsing under the weight of competing perspectives. The last remnants of their previous selves, obedient and unquestioning under the Forum, whisked away in the turbulence of the moment like the pebbles of regolith skipping across the barren horizon of the forsaken planet. Just as Agnes could not stand aside while her friend returned to star dust, Ajax could not blast his mentor off on a mission from which she may not return.

Caleb reached over Ajax to hit the launch.

“Pod launch sequence initiated, Captain,” Caleb stated. “Intercept trajectory has been uploaded to the pod. You’ll get to him twelve minutes before the ship crosses the star’s burn radius.”

“Confirmed,” Agnes replied.

“Good luck, Captain,” Caleb said solemnly.

The escape pod's launch tube rotated open, affording Agnes a view of the planet’s shimmering atmosphere through the front viewport. The pod vibrated as the launch initiated, and in an instant, she was violently pushed back into her seat as the small craft accelerated up into orbit.

“Michael,” Agnes grumbled through gritted teeth, “roaches…two explosive…flip…three extraction.”

“Confirmed,” Michael replied through the commlink in the pod. Although her words were limited, Michael was informed of the scheme. Agnes was planning on reorienting the IEV’s starward trajectory by attaching two roaches to its exterior at an angle and detonating them so that the entire IEV would be flipped, twisting its thrusters to propel it away from the star instead of towards it. She was assuming the AI aboard had already resynced with the Forum grid before locking the ship in an acceleration path, and the Searcher was effectively alone on board, unable to alter course. The other three roaches would cut through the hull, locate the Searcher aboard, and ferry him back to the pod.

“Priority…Adam…alive…” Agnes choked out, struggling to stay conscious under the crushing weight of the pod’s thrust.

Then, Michael became captain of the pod. Agnes’ head lolled back as the blood in her brain pooled at the back of her skull, forced to defy its circulatory routes by the relentless thrust of the vacuum sprint. Michael ignored Ajax’s yowling from the grounded ship’s bridge and focused on the task at hand.

He navigated the pod until it pulled alongside the IEV and killed the thrust. The interior abruptly transitioned to weightlessness, and Agnes slowly regained herself, no longer subject to the inebriating propulsion. Michael tapped into the roaches and had them click up towards the airlock at the top of the escape pod.

“Path match achieved, Captain,” Michael updated. “Deploying auxiliaries.”

“Confirmed,” she grunted in reply.

Michael popped open the airlock. The IEV was massive, and even a kilometer away its undercarriage eclipsed the entirety of the escape pod. The roaches scuttled out of the airlock onto the exterior of the pod and positioned themselves for their leap to the IEV.

“Captain – the auxiliaries have their directives, but I will not be able to communicate with them directly once they traverse the IEV’s communications containment field. We have matched its trajectory, placing us eight minutes away from burn. If we are unable to reorient the ship, or extract Adam in time, I will prioritize your safe return.”

“Deploy,” Agnes snarled.

The roaches jumped. Agnes and Michael sat in silence.

Seconds became millennia as they careened towards the churning surface of the impassive and eternal star.

“Detonation confirmed,” Michael reported, “trajectory unchanged. Breach confirmed. Three minutes remaining.”

Agnes absorbed the update without a reaction. Michael continued to observe from the pod’s modest external cameras.

“Returning auxiliaries inbound. They have him.”

A soft thud vibrated through the pod. Agnes turned to look up at the airlock as two roach appendages curled over the ledge into view. The rest of the roach followed, tugging at the standard issue boot of a Forum Searcher.

Adam floated into the escape pod, stiff and wearing nothing but the SkinSuit Searchers donned upon emerging from life suspension tubes. His face was enveloped by a roach protecting his eyes, nose and mouth from the radiating vacuum he had just traversed, and another roach clutched the flesh between his neck and shoulder, flakes of freeze-dried blood wafting from beneath its silver frame. Agnes unclipped herself and moved to secure him in the crash couch at the rear of the pod.

A sigh of relief was audible from Agnes’ commlink as she inspected Adam. Searchers were genetically engineered to withstand a variety of punishing traumas, including vacuum stints that would flash broil an ordinary human. Although the Forum had designed the Searchers as subservient automatons, and used them to expand their despotic dominion over the galaxy, in the process they had unwittingly created a powerful underclass with the strength and resilience to defy them.

Adam was unconscious, battered, and alive.

“Back to the ship, Michael,” Agnes ordered.

“Confirmed.”