The Dark Between The Stars

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN
ORLI COVITZ

Orli had never felt such despair. After Tom Rom left her in the Proud Mary, she fumbled with the med kit and slapped a pad of coagulant gauze on the inside of her arm where he’d been so rough taking his blood and tissue samples.

Her mind was filled with recriminations. She never should have given him the chance to come near her. She knew that Tom Rom was a relentless extremist, and he had explained what he wanted from her. She should have taken the time to rig her ship for self-destruct when he’d first started to pursue her.

BO and the other clan Reeves compies in the derelict city had been so brave. DD would have been just as brave. The thought of sending a final message to Rlinda, of delivering all that valuable scientific data—those had just been excuses. Excuses! And now that madman was in possession of the deadly alien plague. She had clung to a last few days of life, and now that decision might cost billions of lives if the disease ever got loose.

She hauled herself to the cockpit, barely able to stay on her feet, and collapsed into the pilot chair. She stared across the shadowed crater and watched the lights on the other ship brighten as Tom Rom went back inside with his prize. The stardrive engines glowed, and with a graceful leap the ship lifted from the crater floor and rose away from the asteroid. It ducked over the foreshortened horizon and streaked off, dwindling until it became lost among the other stars.

Orli slumped back, sobbing. Tom Rom was gone. He had vials of the plague. What sort of twisted employer would take such extraordinary actions to obtain a deadly microorganism, if he or she had no intention of using it? A collector?

It was too late.

She heard the outer airlock door activate and the hatch slide aside. Instantly alert, she scrambled for her hand jazer… but Tom Rom had taken the weapon as well. Orli felt yet another degree of helplessness. But when the inner hatch opened, it was only DD stepping into the main compartment.

The compy looked scuffed and covered with grit from tumbling against the crater wall and then trudging across the loose crater floor. His polymer body was also smudged with soot and charred lubricant from his repair work on the Proud Mary.

She nearly collapsed with relief, and he seemed just as pleased to see her. “Orli, I am so glad that man didn’t kill you. I was concerned.”

“He didn’t need me dead because the plague is going to kill me in another few days. Maybe he left me alive because he knows there’s absolutely nothing I can do about him. Bastard!”

She lifted herself from the pilot chair and staggered over to the compy like a little girl seeking comfort. She needed DD like this more often than she wanted to remember, and he had always been there to soothe her. The last time she’d cried on his shoulder was when Matthew had told her he was leaving. Now, that seemed like such a trivial thing to cry about.

Seeing her sway on her feet, DD met her halfway, put his polymer-coated arms around her waist, and hugged her close. Her tears now flowed in full streams. “It’s all right, DD. You tried. Don’t feel guilty that you couldn’t stop him.”

“Would this be a good time for me to tell you good news, Orli?” DD said.

She sniffled and laughed, but it was an odd almost hysterical sound. “Yes, now would be a good time for that.”

“You instructed me to stop Tom Rom. You told me to find any way. I was not able to fight him physically. So I found another way.”

Orli stared at the compy. “What did you do?”

“Earlier, you had me download the full module of starship engine design and principles. While Tom Rom was in here with you, I accessed his ship’s engines from outside and made several important modifications to them.”

Orli blinked. “You… sabotaged his ship?”

“According to my context database, ‘sabotage’ has negative connotations. I believe what I did was a good thing. Once he took off, a silent timer was activated that will build a feedback loop in the exhaust system and pipe the heat back into his ekti-reactor chamber. Once the process begins, he cannot stop it. I believe I succeeded in locking his diagnostic sensors so they will continue to display optimal readings, regardless of the actual measurements. The overload should be well under way by the time he detects anything out of the ordinary.”

Orli felt dizzy. Her head pounded, and she hoped she wasn’t hallucinating. “What will that do? Will it shut down his engines? Strand him in space?”

“No, Orli, it will cause the engines to explode. His ship and everything aboard will be sterilized. Including the plague vials.”

Orli couldn’t believe what she had heard. “So the explosion will kill him?”

“That would be the obvious consequence of the ship vaporizing.”

“How did your programming even allow you to consider that? Your core routines don’t allow you to harm a human.”

“It was an extreme conundrum, Orli, but I ran an analysis of the situation. My core programming forbids me to harm a human. These strictures also require that I not allow a human to come to harm through my own inactions. In the end, I was able to apply context. If I allowed Tom Rom to escape with viable samples of a disease that is known to be one hundred percent fatal to human beings, I concluded that my inaction would result in far more deaths than my action would. I did the calculations and I made the proper choice.”

Orli went back into her piloting chair and collapsed into it. She felt as if her bones had turned to water.

DD came to stand beside her chair. He looked concerned, even shy. “Did I do a good job, Orli?”

She laughed with relief. “Yes, DD. You did a good job.”