kissed my cheek.
Was the cow feeling the same warmth I had? If so, I could understand the importance of the contact. But there was no way to tell, and I continued to stroke the cow’s head. The thought of killing, much less eating, the aniform made me sick.
Droids aren’t supposed to feel emotions, but I would have sworn that Picasso sounded wistful. “An android can pet them all day long without the slightest sign of pleasure. A human comes along and they go crazy. Why?”
I gave the first cow a final pat and moved to the next one. “Beats me. Some kind of evolutionary linkage or something?”
“Maybe,” Picasso said doubtfully, “but it still seems strange.”
Time passed, and Picasso turned his attention to shoveling shit. I was halfway through the cows and well on my way to the sheep when the captain called. Her voice came from a speaker mounted over my head. There was a vid cam as well but duct tape covered the lens. “Hey, Maxon, you there?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. He’s actually doing some work for a change.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, get your ass to the bridge. We got trouble.”
There was a cacophony of disappointed moos, baas, grunts, and cackles as I turned towards the hatch and made my way forward. “What kind of trouble?”
“Bad trouble. It seems that Lester made a move on your skinny-assed friend and she put a dart through what was left of his brain.”
“He deserved it.”
The captain’s voice followed me through the hatch. “Probably…but that’s beside the point. Lester was our engineer and we needed him.”
“Give me a break. This ship has backups for its backups. I assume Lester was no exception.”
There was a long silence followed by the sound of the captain clearing her throat. “Well, Lester was supposed to have a fully qualified assistant, but I couldn’t find anyone to fill the position.”
I remembered the long lines outside every business office on Staros-3 and knew the captain was lying. The miserable bitch was using a phony identity to line her own pockets. I knew better than to say anything, however. “How unfortunate.”
“Exactly,” the captain agreed. “Now get your butt up here.”
I entered the “holy of holies” four minutes later. It was roomy and almost entirely automated. Banks of seldom-used manual controls glowed softly, air whispered through duct work, and the star field hung almost motionless on a curvilinear screen. The entire crew had gathered around the captain’s thronelike command chair. There was Wilson, the round-shouldered, gaunt-faced pilot; Killer, his whites stained with what looked like blood; Kreshenko, his carefully shaved face devoid of all expression, and the captain, who looked as she always did: fat.
I saw Sasha and hurried over. She had an angry-looking bump on her left temple and her clothes were ripped. The question sounded lame even as I asked it. “Are you alright?”
She gave me one of those “how could anyone be so stupid?” looks and shook her head. “Never felt better.”
But the size of her remaining pupil, the tightness around her mouth, and the quick, shallow breathing told a different story. It felt awkward to put an arm around her shoulders, but I did it anyway, and felt pleased when she made no attempt to escape.
The captain raised an imperious hand. Light glinted from her rings. “Now that chrome-dome has been kind enough to join us, we can begin.”
She pulled a pocket comp from her pajamas and read aloud. “Consistent with Comreg 6789.2 paragraph three, it is the captain’s duty to hold a formal inquest upon the death of a crew member, and take whatever steps he or she may deem necessary up to and including summary execution. Reports of the captain’s findings, plus physical evidence if any, shall be filed at the next port of call.”
The captain closed the pocket comp and put it away. A pair of piggy little eyes swung towards Sasha. “So, sweet buns, what happened? And remember, the bridge recorders are running, so this is for keeps.”
I felt Sasha shrug and allowed my arm to fall away. “Lester made sexual advances towards me from the moment I came aboard. I rejected them over and over again. So many times that I feared for my safety and carried a weapon.”
“Which I told you not to use.” the captain said sternly.
“True.” Sasha admitted calmly, “remembering that you warned me about Lester, and did so in front of a witness.”
The captain had forgotten about that, and she scowled accordingly. “Go on.”
Sasha nodded slowly. “I got up at the time I usually do, took a shower, dressed, and stepped out into the passageway. I was halfway to the galley when Lester stepped out of a hatch and punched me in the side of the head. I fell. He slapped my face, threatened to kill me, and ripped at my clothes. I reached for my gun…”
“Where was it?”
“In a shoulder holster under my left arm.”
“So he couldn’t see it?”
“Correct.”
“Go on.”
“I reached for my gun, pulled it out, and shot him in the face.”
“And?”
“And he fell over dead.”
The captain nodded grimly. She looked around the compartment. “Questions?”
Silence.
“All right, given the fact that Sasha Casad’s testimony is consistent with the physical evidence, and is partially confirmed by a security camera located in the vicinity of the attack, I find that Lester Hollings’s death was a justifiable homicide, committed in self-defense. Inquest closed.”
The captain nodded to Wilson, and he touched a button. She smiled and looked around the bridge. “Okay, everybody, the recorders are off.”
Sasha and I turned to go but stopped when the captain said, “Not so fast, chrome-dome. We still have a problem, and you’re going to help.”
“She means the phantom,” Killer said helpfully as he examined a set of absolutely filthy fingernails. “We’ve got to find him.”
I looked at the captain. “Why?”
She scowled. “Because the phantom was programmed to assist the engineering officers, that’s why. Barring a major drive failure, or something equally catastrophic, the phantom has enough shit to see us through.”
I nodded slowly. “Oh.”
Sasha was more inquiring. “Why search for him? Get on the horn and order him to come.”
The captain rubbed her chins. They jiggled. “It ain’t that simple, honey buns…the phantom doesn’t like humans.”
Kreshenko spoke for the first time. “We believe that Lester abused the Engineering Support Android in a manner that caused it to run away.”
Sasha frowned. “Abused…how?”
The rest of the crew looked at each other. They were visibly uncomfortable. It was Wilson who answered. He had a deep, rumbling voice. “Lester tried to modify the ESA’s body so that it could function as a sex surrogate. That’s the theory, anyway, but none of us have gotten close enough to confirm it.”
There were sexroids of course, lots of them, but they had programing appropriate to the job. The ESA didn’t, and Lester’s attempts to graft that function over the others had driven it insane. Which raised some interesting questions: Assuming we were able to capture the phantom, would it be able to perform the job it had been designed to do? And why had the whole thing been left so long?
I think everyone had similar thoughts, but no one wanted to say anything. To do so would be to question the way the captain did or didn’t do her job and risk one’s livelihood. A real no-no when there are twenty people waiting
