Chapter 6

  Critical Low

  DATE: 7088.03.06, RECON ERA

  CRSS RECKLESS

  Gryanke System

  I had let Forty-Five pilot overnight again, so when I woke up, we had made more progress to the edge of the solar system. I grabbed my towel from the floor and headed straight to shower. My forehead felt warm. I hoped a cold shower would help bring down my temperature. I kept my back to the sink’s mirror, having no courage to look at my naked body today.

  The water spluttered on, the pressure leaving something to be desired. I figured tinkering with the water system should keep me busy during the two-week interstellar trip to Graphi. I went through the motions of washing. Scrubbing my skin, but avoiding a section over my ribs out of habit. I ran a hand down my stomach, a frown on my face.

  The siren was deafening, a physical weight in my skull.

  The smell of sewage, thick and copper, clogging my nose and throat.

  Emergency lights pulsed, bathing the wreckage in a violent crimson hue. The hull was breached. I could see the canyon rock grinding against the caved-in metal. But I was focused on the wreckage. I was tangled in it. Surrounded by tubes. Miles, and miles, and miles of them.

  I have to fix them.

  I tried to gather them up. I tried to push the wet, slippery cabling back into place. Then I saw where the lines ended.

  My mouth opened to scream.

  A shudder wracked my body, dousing whatever fever I had with the sharp cold of fear. I took deep breaths through my mouth, letting the water run across my face as I fought back tears.

  Shit. I thought to myself. I need a distraction again.

  I got dressed in a clean men’s singlet and sweatpants. I didn’t bother wearing a bra today. I went to the galley first, making my usual shake before heading up to the cockpit. I tapped Forty-Five on the shoulder, sitting in the co-pilot seat, slurping my drink loudly. “Come on, rusty guts, time to swap.”

  His slow turn in my direction had me both worried and apprehensive. Did I do something wrong again?

  “Report. Energy levels critical.” Forty-Five’s voice was as robotic as ever, but there was a slight digital static.

  I blinked, then winced. I hadn’t uncovered the big boy alcove, and he hadn’t had a chance to charge since Grantham’s place, three days ago now. A full 72 hours. Power source must be old. “Oh shit, I forgot to clear out that alcove! Let me do that right now.”

  “Negative.” He intoned, turning fully. He had let go of the controls and rested his elbows on the arm rests, letting his hands fall in his lap, head resting against the backrest. “Access to any power point will be sufficient.”

  “Power point? I have two next to the couch, low and high voltage each.” I sat down in the main pilot seat, squeezing a hand in between my knees while I slurped down more of my drink. In the process of putting my drink in the custom cup holder, I had a sudden thought. “Wait, is there anything I need to do? Please don’t tell me I need to carry you over.”

  A hydraulic hiss and Forty-Five stood up, using his grip on the arm rests as leverage. “Negative.”

  As he stood over me, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflective glass of his helmet. My wet hair was tangled and messy. My singlet had wet spots from the odd stray strands. As Forty-Five moved out of the cockpit with slow, deliberate steps, I looked down, realising the cold air of the cockpit had made my lack of a bra very obvious through the thin singlet. I crossed my arms, frowning. I was colder than I thought.

  Pulling at my cleavage in a vain attempt to cover myself up a bit more, I spun in place once, briefly seeing that Forty-Five was rooting around the side of the couch.

  I shrugged, busying myself with the controls and checking our bearing based on the navigational computer. I noted that Forty-Five had taken our bearing a bit closer to the edge of the system rather than cutting directly in the direction of Graphi. I frowned, twitching my nose at the course correction. If we reached the edge of the system sooner, we could then engage the hyperdrive. I wasn’t eager to use the Alcubierre Drive purely for the fuel requirements. Hyperdrives were cheaper to run, if not more dangerous as any mistakes in calculations could drop you straight in a system’s sun.

  I experimented with a couple of navigational paths, trying to calculate which would get me to my destination the fastest and be the least risky. I dropped my head in frustration. I didn’t care if a path was risky but if I had to listen to Forty-Five nag at me for anything else, I might just throw myself out the airlock.

  “Stupid nanny bot,” I muttered to myself, hunched like a goblin over the touch display built in the navigation console. I tapped away at the functions, launching program after program while writing custom ones to get the calculations done faster.

  An hour later, I was leaning back in my seat, bare feet resting on the co-pilot seat and noisily slurping down the last of my shake. I was watching a rom-com my sister had suggested I watch years ago. Malware scans were running deep-level diagnostics. Illegal firmware was usually buggy as hell, and I needed to know if my unexpected co-pilot had uploaded unfriendly programs that would fly us into a star.

  My custom patch was compiling, forcing the ancient nav-computer to shake hands with the newer hyperdrive without triggering a system crash. Instead of idly watching the progress bar, I thought an episode or two might keep me awake.

  I glanced back at Forty-Five. He had settled next to the couch, where I could barely see him sitting up against the wall with legs stretched out in front of him. I blinked, suddenly remembering that I was supposed to read the manual.

  I sat up, hands in the air as I tried to remember where I placed that thing. Getting up and swinging myself down the railings to the living room floor, I checked the coffee table first. I let out a celebratory ‘Ha!’ when my hands closed around the thick book.

  Before heading up to my fluffy throne (seat covering freshly changed), I checked on Forty-Five’s connection to the charger cable. The rainbow LED decorated cable I usually used for charging my large tablet was flashing merrily away. Forty-Five’s head was leaning to the side, resting in a curvature of the wall.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Curious, I thought. I hadn’t seen a robot charging this way. I wondered if he was awake still, or if he went in stand-by mode too. “Hey, Forty-Five, I stubbed my toe.”

  No response.

  “Hmm.” I hummed to myself, tapping the book against my hand. I flicked the book open and started reading, moving towards the cockpit again.

  Half an hour of reading and I was ready to throw the book across the room. The start began innocently enough with a long, technically thick index, an introduction to the base model, and a brief diagram labelled with letters. From then on, it devolved into pure chaos. The first bit had me raise my eyebrows; there were instructions to run a standard microwave, including how to cook a chicken. Then there was a binary code that translated to a recipe for goulash, which had me double and triple check my translation inputs.

  Skimming quickly through the next few pages revealed three poems and lyrics to a popular club song, which brought out some strangled confused squeaks. I just sat back staring at a straight-up badly AI-generated picture of a robot shooting a target, twisting the book this way and that to make sure I was seeing it correctly.

  I skipped forward to other parts and found entire sections that were just blank, a couple of other poorly generated pictures that were entirely out of place, and two more songs, one from Ancient Terra (titled ‘Never going to give you up’) , and the other from fifty years ago.

  I snapped the book shut and threw it onto the co-pilot seat. I rested my head in my hand, leaning against the armchair as I angrily stared a hole at the still playing rom-com show. My eyes darted over to the diagnostic reports that showed an all clear from virus, malware, et al.

  Did Grantham give me a dud on purpose? Or is it that he doesn’t know the manual is completely useless? Not many people read physical books anymore, finding them bulky and boring to read, preferring the digital versions that might have moving pictures, dynamic text, and occasionally sound effects as your eyes were tracked over specific sections.

  I rubbed my chin, eyes flicking down at the manual for a moment. I wondered briefly if the whole thing was a cipher, but I quickly dismissed that thought. It was too… chaotic. There was no pattern to it. Grantham swore he would never sell or rent anything that would harm a customer. My mind drifted back to the Emporium, the smell of cheap motor oil and battery acid filling my nose as I remembered Grantham’s wide, slick smile.

  I noticed it falter slightly with one of its steps.

  "Seemed a bit shaky in its steps; is it faulty?"

  "Oh please." Grantham answered my question with an eye roll, dramatically grasping his chest in mock hurt. "Faulty? You know my reputation. I would never sell or rent anything that I even think might harm my customers. How would I do business otherwise?"

  I snorted softly in the quiet cockpit, kicking myself for not digging deeper. I should have been more worried about his reputation, considering he regularly offloaded his stagnating goods to me.

  I frowned, stiffening in my seat. Forty-Five wasn’t a ‘stagnating unit’, he had been a recent acquisition.

  ‘Just got traded in day before yesterday, as a matter of fact.’

  Did Grantham rent him to me because no-one knew how old he was? Or even what he was?

  "So, you ran a full diagnostic and have it ready to go with the manual?"

  "Yes, of course, I did,” Grantham had chuckled. "Full diagnostic, certified, sealed, and signed. But you wouldn't trust a scoundrel like me, would you? Why don't you give it a little test yourself?”

  And I had given it a test. That was the problem.

  That was the thing that was bugging me now. I had run the diagnostic right there in the shop. I’d plugged my datapad into the port in Forty-Five’s back and watched the readout scroll by. A couple of things had stood out to me. I pulled out the report from that day again to refresh my memory.

  The rom-com in the background was forgotten as I analysed every line, chewing the inside of my cheek. At the time, standing in Grantham’s shop, I had been focused on the Combat Protocols.

  >> COMBAT PROTOCOLS......... CLASS-2 [UNLOCKED]

  I remembered frowning at the ‘Unknown’ errors, tapping the screen to reveal more information. The dialogue box had been empty.

  “Only, Class-2 Combat Protocols?” I asked out loud. “The way it walked and lack of obvious weapons made me think it was Class-3.”

  Grantham had waved it off, but looking at the data now, in the silence of deep space, the other lines screamed at me.

  >> LOGIC GATES.............. STANDARD (EMULATED)

  That shouldn’t be possible for a standard unit. Emulation meant the hardware was doing something different than what the software was reporting. It was a mask. A Class 2 shouldn't have the processing power to emulate a toaster, let alone a full logic stack.

  And then there was the Obedience Chip: Virtual.

  That was the one that made my stomach turn over. Standard Sentinels had hardware chips—physical breakers that fried their circuits if they tried to kill their owners. A virtual chip was just code. And code could be rewritten. Code could be hacked. If Forty-Five decided he didn't want to obey anymore, there was no physical switch to stop him.

  But the kicker? The thing that made no sense with the "Class 2" rating?

  ! NOTE: Firewall density rated Class 7.

  I drummed my fingers on the console. A Class 2 Sentinel was a bodyguard, requiring only a Firewall Density rated 3 or lower. Densities rated 5 or over were installed on military equipment capable of wiping out entire populations. Class 7 didn’t officially exist on the civilian market. It was the kind of firewall you put on a dreadnought's AI core, not a rental droid. Why would someone put a vault door on a cardboard box?

  Unless the box wasn't cardboard.

  >> MANUFACTURER: ZAP-TRAP_SYSTEMS

  >> PREVIOUS OWNER: [REDACTED - LEVEL10 ENCRYPTION]

  "Zap-Trap Systems," I muttered, reading the manufacturer tag again. I knew them; they were specialists in residential security systems. Little automated drones or quadruped robots.

  The level 10 encryption on the previous owner. I had never heard of anything that had an encryption that high. Even the military-grade systems my dad worked on for planetary defence only went as high as Level 7. What the hell was going on with this report? Was it a compatibility error from Severance era software? Maybe it was actually pre-Severance? Was he really more than 1,000 years old, when the original Inter-Dimensional connection network went dark?

  I had figured out older models with less than this. I rubbed my neck as I gave a quick glance to the dormant machine. I had cracked open plenty of bots before, always managing to put them together without triggering the anti-tamper shocks. It would only take me a few hours to do a little check.

  I glanced out the scratched observation pane, the wide, curved glass offering a panoramic view of the star-field. We seemed on a clear path for the next six hours while we tracked on Forty-Five’s navigational path, arriving to one of the final asteroid belts of the system.

  I leaned against the console with my elbow, resting my head on the side of my hand. I let out a breath of air, lifting a stray strand into the air before it fell back down. I tilted sideways, tracking the displayed paths the computer calculated for me. Forty-Five’s route was certainly safer, adding 14 hours to the final time to destination. Mine was rife with obstacles, fighting the tidal pull of a major planetary body and there was no knowing what was lurking behind the giant.

  Resting my two hands against the console, I pursed my lips. I had time. Just a quick look. I stood up from my chair and rushed to get my tool kit from the lab.