2023-08-09

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“You can’t say you don’t deserve it,” Maurice says, after a long pause.

I turn from the light show beyond the window and look at my companion, a stuffed bear all of two hands high, weighing less than a banana bunch. Brown fur, and a pair of dead black eyes. He hasn’t spoken to me since I was six. That was three decades ago.

“Have I run out of air that quickly?” I reply, before turning back to the window.

I shouldn’t indulge my starving brain like this. I should save my breath; I might live a few minutes longer that way. A few more minutes knowing I was about to die, knowing that my new allies abandoned me at the first hurdle, knowing that I’d turned my back on my home and my idiot species, only to end up floating alone in orbit. I honestly didn’t think they would leave me here. Sure, this way they get what they want, and they get another dead human. Hurrah and by jingo! But what happens next time someone important wants to defect? Either A: nothing, or B: they get a library card from the conscientious objectors instead. With them, there’s the heroic chance to become a human campfire outside a recruitment office. What an opportunity.

The war was our fault. I knew it, the brass knew it, and the Blobs knew it too. Technically, they’re called the Heirotes. That’s the closest our language got to theirs before the shooting started. After that, they became the Blobs. Not their fault the closest analogues dirt-side were slime moulds. But then again, if they’d come to Earth looking like Tigers or Wolves, I’m sure we’d be fighting the Pussies or Mutts instead.

“I wish. You have three hours left, by my estimate,” Maurice says.

At this I frown and look at the ruined instrument panel and its ruined oxymeter. The boards are all toasted, fried, or baked with no seasoning. I scour the cupboards next and find an emergency kit. Various medical supplies, not of much use. But there is a bottle of seventy-percent ethanol, and some opiates, which is nice; I can binge one last time before death. There’s also an inflatable boat, water purification kit, signal flare, yada yada yada. Useless useless useless. Wait, there’s a meddit. I put the cuff around my arm and hit the button. No dice.

Wait, there’re also some matches, bingo. People can go down to about 15% oxygen, before they start to get altitude sickness. Lower’s needed for delirium. But flames struggle to burn below 16%.

Finally, something trivia is useful for.

The match lights and keeps burning.

So oxygen is fine. And I have no way to test for anything else, meddit being dead. I turn to the bear and scowl. It doesn’t scowl back.

“All right then, smartass. What’s your game? Are you Research Div or Navy?” I probe.

Both are well placed to guess about my defection. After all, I’m owned by the former and leased to the latter. Five-year term, under clause fifty-eight of my contract. The generous option to extend afterwards is fifty-eight subsection A. Subsection E says I get one gym bag’s allowance, ten kilos max, and to report first thing the following day at oh six hundred hours, Mr George Goodrich. What a load of bull. And it’s Doctor. And yes, I’m petty.

“I’ll cut you a deal: you tell me why you want to defect, and I’ll tell you who got to me. How about it?”

“Counter deal, Maurice: you shut up and let me drown my sorrows in peace,” I say, waving the bottle at him. I unscrew it and just my luck: inside is a blister pack, so I can’t just swig it. I start popping out the pills one by one. A handful ought to do it.

“No deal. Tell you what, I’ll go first. Neither. I’m from O/S, baby.”

I look at the bear and after a while, realise my jaw is open. OverSight are spooks. The ones who take lollipops from babies, stab their mothers, then sit in the pram and say Goo-goo ga-ga; no sir I’m just a baby. Please move five inches to the left, you’re blocking my line— ah, thank you.

“Bull.”

“No, I’m a bear.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Your turn.”

“I’m not saying anything,” I say.

“Oh come on bud, you’re dead if you don’t. If you do, I can at least promise mercy.”

“Fat chance.”

“Another deal: I ask questions, and you stick to yes or no. Use whichever of the two seems best to you, and at the end of this we won’t hurt you. Labour, sure. Prison, maybe. Torture, no. How about it?”

I look at the bear. Maurice wasn’t supposed to be threatening, but he really knocked it out of the park.

“Yes.”

“Your name is George Goodrich, honorary Colonel while on loan to the Navy from R&D.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” I reply, firm.

The bear must have seen a vein pulse, as it laughs.

“Dr Goodrich?”

“Yes.”

“On loan to help the development and installation of a prototype drive. The first to combine Human and Heirote theories of gravity?”

“Yes.”

“And you defected because you hate the human race.”

“No.”

“Because you hate being used like a piece of meat, thrown from your comfortable job into orbit, without any say on the matter.”

“No.”

“Because you hate your superior officer? Colleagues?”

“No.”

“The food sucks?”

“It does. But no.”

“Dr Goodrich, I can go forever but you only have an hour of air left. Tell me why you tried to defect.”

“You said three hours.”

“I’m O/S. I lied.”

I sigh.

“I decided to defect because we’re wrong.”

The silence holds for a moment.

“Continue,” Maurice eventually pushes, disgust narrowing out neutrality in its voice.

“We started this war for the same reason we start every war. Because a cabal of concerned industrialists, politicians, and pond scum decided to blame all our problems on someone else. Because it was convenient, a good way to make quick money, and something to do.”

“But what about Titan? Enceladus? Erestine Station? The Paris incident?”

“Titan, Enceladus and Erestine are first contact events. Of course it was going to go wrong, they had no idea how different we are. It’s insane to them that A: people don’t share genetic information for funsies, B: don’t deconstruct each other into goo to do so, and C: don’t reform afterwards. Bad for the victims, but an honest mistake. And Paris was an accident, just like they told us. Their engines are good at long distances in microgravity but suck at short distance in gee. Do you really think they would land, sign an accord for peace and cooperation, then kill ten thousand people and melt the Eiffel tower into slag?”

“Your office analysed those records, didn’t it?”

“Who else could? Simulated it too. Same result, for ninety percent of the ten thousand sims. Just bad luck.”

“What was the other ten percent?”

“Uh, nothing really feasible. About a quarter of it was possible, but it would have required some very intricate sabotage to the engine nacelles.”

“The nacelles, could they have been a false flag?”

I look at the bear. An uncomfortable shiver rolls down my spine and my voice falters. If there’s any lesson I’ve learnt, any wisdom I’ve gained in my brief existence, it’s that we’re a species of idiots. But this is next-level.

The silence holds, and Maurice changes topic.

“How did you get in contact with the Heirotes?”

“How do you think?”

“An engine specialist, living and working in the second-largest carrier we’ve ever built. Where there’s fifteen dedicated O/S officers to keep an eye on comms. I have no idea.”

I shrug; they’ve got me so I may as well spill, make them feel stupid.

“Do you remember how they had problems with our microbes, at first?”

“The landing in Beijing. Yes. Fifteen cases of walking mould, cleared after a few days and some mild baths in anti-fungals.”

“What about Operation Tamarisk?”

“No, you’ve lost me.”

Haha, another win for useless trivia.

“Soviet troops resorted to using documents in the field as toilet paper. But office print doesn’t flush well.”

“So?”

“So western spooks would go retrieve them all from the trash after dark, sponge off the stains, and et voilà. Of course, we don’t need water to flush up here, so…”

The bear held the silence for a solid ten seconds.

“So, you vacuum flushed a note, and figured they’d seize it because they were looking for our microbes?”

“Yep.”

“And how did you know they’d accepted?”

I walk over to the window and flourish my hand at the light show.

“You’re kidding. You did this?”

“No, and yes. I gave them a time and date, and they nailed it to the second. First strike went through the ship, and the captain ordered evac. I torched the lab under orders, became separated in the confusion, and made my way to the conveniently defective life pod with the only thing I cared about from my baggage.”

“Me.”

“Yep.”

“What about the drive designs? Wasn’t that your leverage, your trade?”

I look at Maurice and take a moment to think. No matter what the bear says, I know exactly how this is going to end. Do I stick to my guns, or help the race I’ve just betrayed? My race. Ah hell, I may as well do one last thing for the Blobs, even if they’ve left me behind. Time to lie.

“Nope. They’ve already got ‘em, flushed out the toilet with the meet-up instructions. Encrypted, so they won’t be able to use them for a few months without my help, but they’ll crack the code eventually.”

I shrug and go back to the packet of pills. This is my final gift to O/S. The illusion that they’ve just made a big boo-boo. With this drive the Heirotes stand a chance and, who knows, if my idiot race thinks they’re screwed in the future, they’ll sue for peace now, while it looks like they have the upper hand. But I have no illusions about my own fate. No mercy, no quarter, and probably a long time on the ironing board. It’s better to take the pills.

“Wait! What are you doing?!” Maurice calls out.

It’s the first time I’ve heard real emotion from it. I almost smile.

“You know quite well. Have a fun time writing that report, prick.”

I put the first pill in my mouth, and it tastes sweet.

Sweet? Damn, it’s a sugar pill.

I spit it out and say something vile. The pills are fake, the meddit is broken, no oxygen or suits, and my bear is bugged. They’ve got me. O/S must have planned it all from the start. I can see it all now: feed the Blobs fake information. They come in, take out the second carrier, then immediately get curb stomped by the first. I thought it was sunward, defending Earth, but I’m only a labcoat, what do I know? The plan makes perfect sense. Hey, why not slip the Heirotes fake plans for the drive too? If they’re foolish enough to try building it on planet, maybe gravity twists too hard and they punch a hole in the fabric of space. A very expensive, very deadly hole. Then, there’s just the small matter of wiping up the rest and publicly executing a certain traitor. Overall, a big win. Shame about the second carrier. But then again, sacrifice is always good for propaganda.

Maurice starts to laugh as I realise this, clearly enjoying the expression on my face, then it says something completely incomprehensible.

Wait a second. That sound like…

“We had to know you were for real,” Maurice says, speaking English again.

At this point the whole pod shudders. There’s a moment of nausea as the fields take over, and then through the window, the black of space is replaced by the glare of a white docking bay. Inside are armoured Heirotes. One, wearing some sort of headset on some sort of head, waves at me.

I look at the bear.

“I assume the plans are in me?” Maurice asks.

I nod, then close my mouth. I manage to open it again and find myself shocked.

“How did you guys get a bug in Maurice?”

The bear laughed.

“What? You think you’re the first to defect?”

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