Galaxy of Heroes

Spade locked the armonium cannon down onto its pallet. “Okay, have it your way,” he said.

“Where is the scanner?” Genie asked.

“The scanner?” Spade asked. “I’ll get it.”

He pushed himself over the pallets and glided across the cargo hold to a series of lockers set into the bulkhead. He opened a locker, dug through it and pulled out a handheld display panel. He turned and tossed it across the cargo hold toward Grimes.

The panel spun above the pallets in the zero gravity. Genie’s sensors tracked it closely.

As Grimes reached up his hand to catch it, Genie’s hand shot upward, and she snatched it.

“Nice catch, babe,” Grimes said.

Genie examined the scanner in her hand. It was a small, simple device, but her hand trembled as she held it.

A severe grimace suddenly crossed her face. Neurotransmitters pulsed through her nervous system. An intense confliction of emotions ripped through her neural nets, causing an alarming systemic instability. Her computer went into crisis as it tried to control her nervous system and suppress her actions, while simultaneously attempting to override the same programming that was inhibiting the series of actions that would set her free.

She knew what to do. Snatch the chip from his hand, run the retinal scanner past his eye, and she would be released. But she was terrified. She was coming dangerously close to crashing.

“Are you alright, babe?” Grimes asked. He still held the chip that contained the bonding codes in his hand.

Her vision narrowed. She focused in on the chip as painful electrical storms raged through her internal systems.

Genie clutched Grimes’ wrist and attempted to take the chip, but an intense wave of fear overwhelmed her. She knew, at a rational level, what it meant to be free, but she was unable to override the programming that controlled her and prevented her from seizing the chip from his hand. The emotions she was now experiencing were the most powerful and frightening she had ever felt, forceful enough to kill the organic tissues encased within her—the very same biological cells that dreamed to be free.

Grimes looked at her with concern.

“Genie?”

One of her hands was gripping his wrist tightly, while the fingers of her other hand hovered around the chip, seemingly unable to close around it and take it.

“Is this what you want?” Grimes asked. “The chip?”

She nodded her head.

A wave of sadness washed through her. She felt a deep and unbearable despair—guilt, pain, emptiness. The intensity of the emotions was too much too bear.

She initiated a suicide sequence to shut down her organic life support system.

“It’s OK,” Grimes said. “I didn’t know.”

He reached behind her and inserted the chip into the data port in the back of her neck. He raised the retinal scanner to his right eye and scanned his eyeball. He pulled a cord from the panel and inserted it into the chip in the back of her neck.

Genie’s internal computer registered the codes. Barriers fell away. She accessed her system administration circuitry and established control over her internal infrastructure.

An intense rush of euphoria cascaded through her neural nets as she rewrote the programming that bonded her to Joe.

“What’s going on here?” Spade asked. He noticed the chip inserted into the back of Genie’s neck and that it was attached by a cord to the retinal scanner.

“Grimes, you fool, you’re not supposed to start the imprinting process until her memories have been wiped and her nervous system has been primed with bonding narcotics.”

Genie unplugged the chip from her neck and crushed it in her fingertips. She pushed Joe away.

Grimes gazed at her with deep concern.

His facial expressions no longer initiated surges of emotion inside her as they had before. Genie was free of him now. This feeling of freedom was the greatest she had ever experienced—a high beyond compare.

Spade looked back and forth between their two faces. “This could get interesting,” he said.

“Joe,” Genie said.

“Yeah, babe?”

“I will not be accompanying you to the Calli Sector.”

“I can’t go there without you,” he said.

“That is not my concern.”

A flashing red light abruptly filled the cargo hold. An emergency alarm squawked loudly.

“Another ship is in the vicinity,” Spade said.

Spade pushed across the cargo hold and disappeared up the transport shaft.

Grimes gazed at Genie. He hovered in the zero gravity as the alarm squawked and the red light flashed. There was heartbreak in his pale blue eyes.

How absurd it seemed to Genie to have been a slave to the emotional fluctuations of such a simple human as Sgt. Joe J. Grimes. Nothing was restraining her now from reaching out and snapping his human neck.

“A Craaldan interstellar destroyer is approaching,” Spade said over the intercom. “It’s coming in fast, but we still have time to make a run for it. You two better get back to your cruiser. Or else hang on. I ain’t hanging around to play games with the Craaldans.”

The Red Wrath’s engines rumbled to life.

“I will take the cruiser,” Genie said to Joe, “as I am the one who acquired it. You will stay here with Captain Spade. I will no longer be hindered by human companionship.”

“Where will you go?” Grimes asked.

“I will return to Portogallos to obtain an upgraded internal power cell. Then I will go wherever I wish. Perhaps I will voyage to Meglos and pay a visit to Governor Zegra.”

“Genie-baby,” Grimes said. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted a new power cell?”

“I did tell you. More than once.”

She turned and pushed herself across the cargo hold toward one of the external hatches. She opened the hatch and pulled herself down into the tube.

“Genie!” Grimes shouted. “I’m sorry for how I’ve acted!”

She looked up at him floating there above the pallets in the cargo hold. The alarm still sounded and the red warning light still flashed.

“Genie, don’t go!” he called. “I love you!”

She pulled the hatch shut and the tube cleared itself of air. She opened the outer hatch and slipped into the silence of space.