Choices

The young man sat in the cell, barely conscious, full mag restraints keeping him from moving, his eyes glowing a bright blue. His hair, once long was now cut short and all the pieces that had ribbons braided into it, except the gold ribbon of marriage were gone, a patch at the base of his skull shaved bald, two small blue dots revealed, they showed the location of the lump that was the CPU.

The ship had rocked and jostled, but he barely seemed moved, and now, with the light low, and the abandon ship Claxon blaring he sat. He had been left behind. The boarding party checked each room, finding few survivors from the fight, the only other survivor was in the brig, the young man with the bright blue eyes.

There was a hiss and then when he woke, he was somewhere else, the magnetic restraints were gone, and he was seated in a comfortable chair. He could hear someone moving around, and then they stopped, heat came closer and the scent of watch tea came to him.

His eyes were still out of focus, between the sedative and the deep trance he had been in, the recall sleep, it was taking time to come back to the land of the conscious.

“Chari kin?” The age-old question fell from his lips, though he felt he had no right to ask. The world began to resolve into focus around the tea cup. It wasn’t Clatch, taller and more narrow than what they used, it still lacked a handle, meant to be held against your palm.

Chari Ste-kin.” Stone kin was the normal translation.

Blue eyes blinked languidly as he processed, “Girati?” The voice was soft, very broken. Another blink or two and the last of the ice like film was gone and he could see again.

“Yes,”. Tyrell smiled. “I hope my Clatch isn’t too bad.”

For the first time the young man smiled. “Your inflection is flat, but otherwise it’s good.” Curtis took a sip of the tea. It was honest-to-ona watch tea. Well made. And he closed his eyes for a second to savor it.

“Is this my final meal?” He asked as he saw the clatch meal set before him, stew and flat bread and tea. What a man on watch would have eaten. As last meals go, not bad.

“Is that what you think?”

“That’s why they left me behind.” He sighed, “They designated me K1. I’m a Unit, too dangerous to take offline, but not allowed to protest.” 23, his mainframe was still in recall, there, but locked out of control by the K1 designation.

“No, this isn’t your last meal. It’s the first of many, I would hope.”

“What do you need from me captain?” Curtis could finally see the markings on the collar. This was a ship captain.

“We pulled you off a ground patrol ship, why were you in the brig?”

“Because they hadn’t decided to kill me yet.” He said. “With no commission and a K1 ranking, there was nothing left to protect me. They were just waiting to have the ship awake so they could have an audience.” He frowned. “I was supposed to be terminated at first watch, Standard slag.”

Tyrell flinched at the clinical words. He could see the ghost of patches on the uniform, he’d refused to wear black, but he wouldn’t wear his kinsman’s garb either. “You were hoping that you’d die of starvation if they left you behind.”

“Hope is too strong a word captain.” He ate slowly, the captain said it wasn’t his last meal, but how could he be sure of that? “It was better than the option they had planned for me. They’d given the K1 designator so I was locked out. And ordered my mainframe into standby in preparation for slagging me.”

That was just gruesome, torturous way to go, They nerve blocked the patient and then pulled out the cpu, which triggered the anti-tamper protocol, that sent a wave of painful commands and a wash of poison through the system, as the energy spooled down, they slowly smothered or thrashed themselves to death trying to avoid the reprimand, and the poison, and unable to breathe because the autonomic systems were damaged.

“Why were you there?”

“Because I—“. His voice dropped. He took another sip of soup trying to get moisture to his suddenly-dry mouth.

“You know what a 355 is?”

“Return and destroy.” Tyrell said. “Sanctioned murder.”

“I’ve been under a 355 since I was eleven sir. As long as I was at academy they couldn’t do anything. As long as I was serving, they couldn’t do anything. But the minute I was logged as having resigned my commission, it flagged.”

“Why?”

“I’m a Unit,” Curtis said. “I’m honestly surprised you’ve given me this much credit, this much dignity, but I’m a Unit, I’m out of uniform, and out of bounds.”

“Why should we care that you are a Unit?”

“The law says I’m to be destroyed.”

“How did you reconcile it with your other half?”

“Sir?”

“Sitting Ketteh,”. He said. He knew it wasn’t what the kin called it, but the Girati word was expressive enough. “Tandara’s watch? How did you square it with your computer not to destroy them when they came in?”

“We were both stopped by the PFP.”

Curtis looked down, not wanting to admit that.

He heard something click softly against the table. A bright blue vial. “That’s your way around it.”

Curtis’ hands read the stripes he knew he would find. Blue rain, it would be enough to stop even him. Not technically a poison, OD didn’t count as suicide. Not according to the computer.

“But why don’t you tell me what happened? Whatever it was, it had to be bad. Very bad, for a Unit to be that meek.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because your fear, deep down, is the same as mine, to die alone and unremembered. And it takes a lot to break a Unit.”

“What’s your clearance sir?”

“Deep black.”

Curtis Nodded.

It wasn’t one thing. It started a month ago on Riget, I was suddenly pulled away to the Alpha system to deal with an outbreak of fever on Keisha. By the time I got there there were already hundreds dead. The day after I arrived a team was sent to assassinate the peace delegation sent to get help from the OSU. Two of them were units. They were using an experimental weapon called an EM mask. It allowed them to mask the fact that they were Units, sent out white noise to scramble the scanners and gave them a sort of ESP and telepathy. When the EM unit went online it killed the two humans and anyone who got close enough to try and capture them.

Still badly hurt from the massacre on Alpha, I was sent out as a doctor to see if I could treat the humans. I found two dead humans and two units in a lot of pain. The EM weapon was scrambling their circuits too.

We found a way to shield the CPU, a hood that nullified the weapon’s use, and I put them in it,

34 was ahead of me, 91 behind. We stepped out, I’d told the guards we were ok, that there was no threat, but they shot 34. Nine blasts from an MPE hit him, fried most of his mainframe and overloaded the weapon. I pushed the other one back behind me and into the room. Pausing to download his comrade.

“91 was hurt, besides the EM weapon and the damage it had done, he was badly injured, forced to keep fighting because of his program. I sat with him, doing what I could to help him. That’s when they told me. They had orders to kill him. He wasn’t to leave the room alive, or I wasn’t.

I was his doctor, And they expected me to slag him, those were the original orders. Not just kill him, torture him to death, and then have to relive it when my mainframe downloaded his after death.”

Curtis shook his head. “When we download, its’ not just seeing them, it's living them, it's our memory as much as theirs. That’s a gruesome death I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.” He took a sip of tea.

“They gave us a time limit, and an order. Slag him, or I was done.” Curtis was trying not to cry. “Neither of us argued that death wasn’t the best option. But that death? There was no way to disable the weapon short of killing him, and he knew it.

“I refused. Turned in my commission. Or tried to. But they wouldn’t accept it. So, while 91 was in recall-asleep for the night, I sedated him and disabled his CPU. The compound blocks all electrical activity in the body. Heart, brain, CPU, no power. Lights out. It’s—“. He shrugged. “About as painless as a Unit gets. A few seconds of panic, and it's over. I managed the download before they realized what I had done.

But, I had disobeyed a direct order, and I had technically resigned, so it was murder, which made me K1”. The designation for a killer Unit. “The reprimand was immediate and devastating.

“They stripped me of my rank that same morning, I’d barely regained the ability to stand before they did it. I cut the ribbons out of my hair myself. I figured if they were going to slag me, I might as well make it easy for them. Tell Diwa I was fair game.”

“23 was quiet. He wanted to attack but between the reprimand and the OSU clause, there wasn’t much he could do, Direct order trumps PFP every time.”

“They didn’t even bother waiting until we were out of the room to discuss it. They didn’t see us, we were back to non-status. At this point it wasn’t an execution, just a termination of a defective Unit.

“The attack came while I was in recall. There was nothing to do. Mag restraints are a bitch, and with my system still trying to repair from the damage, irony of irony considering what they planned for me,”

He drew a shaky breath, “I saw it happen only once, I was young, my system was still new, and one of the Units had tried to kill his master, without preamble or warning he was slagged, I was the one who ended up downloading him, I had to live those four hours after watching them. I swore never again.”

“That was what was playing the whole time I was in recall. The nightmare of those four hours and what I could expect as soon as the crew was awake.”

He turned his head so the captain could see the shaved area at the base of his skull, exposing the two blue dots that marked the top and bottom of the cpu. That was the preparation for the procedure. “There would be no warning, just a reprimand to drive me to my knees. Once there it would be a matter of brute strength. They don’t have to do much, just dislodge it, that’s enough to trigger the tamper protocol.” Curtis shrugged, “Once it triggers there is no way to undo it.”

“You know technically that falls to you Captain.”

Curtis didn’t move. If the captain wanted to kill him he couldn’t stop him.

“You’re ok with that? With dying? With the torture?”

“Am I ok with it? No, but I know that it's the law. That's what you have to do. K1 units are a threat to everyone.”

“If you could, would you go back to being a doctor?”

“Probably, it's the only thing I know besides killing. They made me good at killing, and I made myself good at healing.”

The captain put something down on the table. It sat across from the blue vial that was still in its place. The small medicus was the pin on a doctor’s lapel. “We are not the OSU, We don’t run like the OSU, and we don’t obey the tunic codes, This is free steel Curtis, as free as I can make it. So here are your options. You can sit around and mope, prepared to die, and I’ll provide you a way if that’s your choice. Or, you sign on with us. Become a crewman on this ship, and regain your rights and your name.”

“On your steel this is no joke?”

“On the steel,”. He said. “I swear, this is no joke. “You’ll be in quarantine for a few days, but I can push through the paperwork, and get your chips reinstated, get you a billet and berth, and you can start again, let your hair grow out, retie your ribbons.”

“Will I be damned to black?”

“No, you can wear any uniform, Usl or Clatch, both are legal.”

“USL?”

“United Space League, our new government. One that doesn’t acknowledge black tunic codes.”