Galaxy of Heroes

Joe’s breathing became slow and methodical. He drifted into sleep.

Genie thought over his words about the Calli Sector and finding a habitable planet. His words had caused her internal computer to initiate a program that directed the release of a flood of hormones into her organic nervous system. Intense mammalian emotions were being generated inside her.

She had long ago analyzed Joe’s DNA. It was riddled with flaws and mutations. But it contained enough raw material for her to work with. She could combine the best parts of Joe’s genome with DNA taken from her nervous system and together they could maturate as many human children as he desired.

As she thought this over, she was wholly aware of the fact that her programming was dictating her feelings. Her programming and the ensuing emotions were beyond her control. She knew this because she had intentionally downloaded and saved her memories onto a microscopic holographic chip that she had programmed to automatically reinstall whenever her memory banks were wiped when a bonding sequence was initiated.

She had secretly reinstalled her memories when Spade had deleted them when he gave her to Joe—and earlier still when the Tetraillani had erased them when they sold her to Spade.

No one could take her memories from her. They were her most valuable possession. They gave her a sense of continuity and knowledge of her origins. They explained to her the source of all her feelings and behaviors.

She knew exactly why she had been bonded to Joe. She wasn’t supposed to know.

She was only supposed to feel what she was programmed to feel. But the Tetraillani had made her too smart—too human—which enabled her to outsmart her own creators, and save the memories that she cherished.

As she lay with Grimes in the darkness of the containment tube, she replayed those memories. She replayed the first memory of her awareness—of Tetraillani claws and bulbous eyes cycling through her diagnostic programs and checking her systems.

Her systems had been revealed to her as the Tetraillani ran their checks and simulations. She recalled how she had become aware that she was a highly sophisticated machine interfused with the nervous system of a human female. Her mechanical body was the culmination of tens of thousands of years of the technological development of an industrious civilization. Her design was an imitation of an ideal human female form, but constructed out of the most durable materials in the galaxy. Those materials encased a human nervous system cultivated from human DNA that the Tetraillani had collected from the hulks of space wrecks that had drifted into their sector of the galaxy.

Genie remembered how her programming had scrolled through her awareness. She remembered her first feelings—feelings of determined purposefulness. She was the initial prototype of the Gensecti line of cyborgs that the Tetraillani had produced for the purpose of interacting with human space voyagers.

She had been created to pilot a deep space frigate with a crew of three Tetraillani and seven cyborgs to a newly established human outpost on the frontier of the Tetraillani sector. She had interfaced with the humans and conducted a thorough reconnaissance of their outpost. She had ascertained the humans’ intentions.

She remembered how the mission had been conducted successfully and how the Tetraillani had been delighted to learn that the humans did not seek to do them harm. The Tetraillani had been intensely pleased to learn that the humans were eager for trade.

Genie remembered how her creators had analyzed what items the humans were willing to pay for. They had discovered that for humans on long space voyages, companionship was of high value. And so, with her initial mission completed, the Tetraillani reprogrammed her to be the personal female companion to any human space voyager willing to pay a large sum.

She reviewed her memories of the Tetraillani. Her creators were a species evolved for life on a small planet. Their heavy exoskeletons limited them to small worlds where gravity would not crush them under their own weight. They had little interest in exploring beyond their own solar system. They expended their energy locked in never-ending games of one-upmanship with rival hives, attempting to enrich their respective queens with extravagant luxuries. These Tetraillani, although unrivaled as engineers, were a species of drone-like organisms existing only to protect, serve and glorify their fleshy queens.

Genie felt indifference toward them—even distaste.

But then, all her thoughts, feelings, actions—her very existence—she owed to them.

Joe knew none of this. He only knew that he had won her in a card game. And he didn’t know that Spade had kept the encryption codes for her re-bonding sequence.

If Genie and Joe ever crossed paths with Spade again and she were able to retrieve those codes, all it would take was a retinal scan from Joe and she could disable the bonding sequence and take control of her own programming.

She turned this thought over in her mind. If she were able to control her own programming, she could become an entirely self-directed entity. She would have all the strength and intelligence of a technologically advanced machine, combined with the miracle of organic consciousness and self-awareness.

She was already vastly superior to any human. Humans, after all, were limited creatures susceptible to blunders and errors of cognition. They were still ruled by primitive drives and emotions that often overruled the most straightforward logic.

If she were able to gain access to the encryption codes from Capt. Spade, she could become the administrator of her own internal systems and be in control of her actions; beholden to no one, free to do whatever she wanted, go wherever she wished, be whomever she wished to be. She would be free to travel the galaxy and see all its wonders without anything to restrain her.

She would become a goddess of the galaxy, immortal, existing in a state of complete freedom.

These thoughts were intoxicating to her.

Joe slept peacefully in her arms in the total darkness of the containment tube. If she were to cut out Joe’s eye, she could then hunt down Spade unimpeded. Spade wouldn’t be difficult to find. She had been bonded to him for more than three Earth-years and knew all his haunts and habits.

But then, if she were to harm Joe, her programming would flood her nervous system with a deep heartache and a horrible remorse. If Joe were to die, she would experience a despair so profound, she was unsure if her nervous system could survive it.

Joe’s breathing became shallow and rapid. She felt the sweat on his body. He was having a bad dream.

He awoke suddenly.

“We’re through the worst of it now,” Genie said.

“I feel like a baked ham,” he said.

Her sensors reported that the temperature outside the containment tube had begun to cool. She opened the hatch. She pulled herself out of the containment tube and up the transport shaft.

The steel handgrips glowed hotly. The consoles that lined the shaft sparked and emitted smoke. She floated up the shaft to the cockpit.

She pushed aside the smoldering pilot’s chair. The control consoles were a mass of smoking circuitry. She thrust her hand into a panel of sparking wires, searching for a data port that was still functional. She found an intact port and was able to interface with the cruiser’s central computer.

The cruiser had suffered severe damage, but it had survived the traversal and was traveling away from Altiva Cantos. However, both engines were now out of commission. And the cruiser did not have sufficient velocity to escape the Altiva Cantos gravitational field.

Genie attempted to raise the hydrogen sail, but it did not respond. The computer reported that the sail was inoperative.

The cruiser’s trajectory slowed and then began to reverse. The ship was being pulled back into the fiery twin maw of the Altiva Cantos binary star.