In a place too big for the human brain to realize how empty it was, there was an untidy heap of sorted scalded and assembled elements, moving from one of infinite unremarkable point As to one of a few very specific point Bs.
Inside, carbon things moved, surrounded by tens of thousands of times their weight in silicon, titanium, copper, lithium, and so much more that was meant to keep them alive. They turned in their sleep, they ingested organic molecules, they signaled each other in light, in the vibration of air molecules, in the emission of chemicals, in the smack of an appendage across the broadside of a central body mass. They idled.
The Patient, despite his name, despite his shared genetic code (give or take a few bespoke modifications), had not. He had planned. Then he had waited.
Now, sixteen light years out, he was about to act. It felt like stretching. It felt like exhaling. It felt like floating.
It felt like telling Canary on monitor duty ‘goodnight’ as he had done sixty times before (in a place where night and day were as carefully constructed as their shared atmosphere), walking past the terminal and trailing his fingers as he had done sixty times before, flicking a switch to act on an autoextract pack he’d placed there before the ship left, and taking one turn different halfway to the sleeper deck.
To the inner hold. Atmosphere-preserved. Not comfortable for life, but comfortable enough. Just enough. A seedling, a human, a vertiginous space cow (common names lied), or an unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science whose only formally recorded information was its weight: a little less than six hundred kilograms.
The Patient drew up the inner hold’s manifest, spun it down to a container holding extremely innocuous dried foodstuffs.
Alright, a little more than a little less than six hundred kilograms. Rationing had not been kind to it. It would be ravenous.
Oh, ideal.
The Patient didn’t draw up the rest of the ship from his hand terminal. It was already in his head. All the gaping arteries and veins and venules of traffic that oozed humanity through the tight-packed-to-the-brim body of the ship, all at their smallest just big enough. All cut just the right way at just the wrong moment, turning into funnels, cutting off escape, cutting off weaponry, cutting off alarms.
A cut reversable and retractable. Hidden. Oh, the alien did it. Ah, how tragic, how unforeseeable. Who can say what was damaged, or lost, or spaced in the chaos. What a tragic accident – it seems a crewmember became careless. Thank goodness for the insurance. Thank goodness. Thank goodness.
Thank the foresight of the company in setting up a branch devoted to Patient solutions to expensive problems, like the cost of mothballing and retiring antique ships and the agitation of would-be-unionizing crews. A little cost up front (augmented assassins) saved a lot of cost in the end (paying other people money).
The Patient opened up the second cargo container, which also held innocuous dried foodstuffs, engaged all the locks and plugged into the clean-control-center. He breathed in and out one more time to savor their lungs, then turned over autonomic function to the command software. Other things would need as much of his attention as possible.
The ship inside his head became the ship inside his grasp. He stretched without matter, then squeezed.
The first cargo container clicked open and a little more than a little less than six hundred kilograms of liquid muscled death did not pour out.
The Patient waited.
After three minutes, the Patient maneuvered a freestanding hold drone into position to glimpse inside the first cargo container.
The unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science was lurking at its far end, back to the wall, both its praying forelimbs and all four of its preying forelimbs held tense and at the ready, its antennae twitching, its eyes unsheathed and flickering. Its primary spinal column was a rigid pole; its secondary brace bulged in time with its deep, quick breaths.
The Patient waited.
And waited.
And waited.
After six hours, the Patient closed the first cargo container, unsealed his control center, and hurried back to the sleeper deck, where he told the shift lead he’d gotten distracted catching up on old second-screen dramas.
“They’ll rot your brain,” she said disapprovingly.
“Well, the job’ll do that anyways,” he said. And she didn’t laugh, but she sighed in a way that wasn’t entirely unfriendly, and so he skated by for the day, which he spent reconsidering his options.
***
The Patient minded their fingers as they told Canary ‘goodnight’ for the sixty-second time. The switch was already flicked. The pack was already in play. The sensors in the inner hold were already his. All he had to do was run the habit as if nothing had changed.
Funny how the little things got to you. Less funny when the big things did too.
Seal. Plug in. Patience. Unseal.
And this time, the hold wasn’t empty. A slab of fresh protein. Still warm. Waiting at the hall entrance.
There. Go on. It’s safe out here. There’s food, right? Have a bite. Have another. Look for more. Smell the sweat and blood and flesh all waiting for you. Go on. You’re starving, aren’t you? Don’t you want to hunt? To kill? They’re slower than you, they’re smaller than you, they’ve got no claws or teeth and I can take all their weapons away. Go. GO!
After an hour, the unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science darted out between flickers of the eyelid, grabbed the protein slab, and scrambled back into its container as if the hold’s floor were lava.
The Patient closed the container and hissed until his teeth hurt.
Fine.
***
Seventy-five goodnights, now each delivered a little earlier – a dire sin, but the Patient needed the extra setup time. Protein delivered in its own fluids, served rarer and rawer and farther and farther each time. A trail of juices dribbling farther afield. A schedule set up.
The organism yet left its container with wary tread, but it moved with less panic now. Its steps were still careful, but sure… at least within the perimeter of the hold.
The halls were a different store. While its eyes followed the bloodtrail, its antennae remained high and alert.
Well, it was about to get an interesting surprise.
One little tweak, that’s all it had taken. One little tweak on a schedule sheet.
As it rounded the final corner, quiet as a mouse, its meal finally in sight, new footsteps echoed down the hall. In the distance a janitor was moving. Loud. Careless. Certain of her own safety. Directly towards its promised meal.
It stared out into the beyond. Its antennae swiveled. The edge of its mouth curled tighter, baring an inch of something that was too complex to be a tooth.
The Patient watched.
The organism shot back to the crate so quickly it skidded around the corners and clipped its fifth hindleg badly, limping the last stretch until it could take a flying leap into its container.
The Patient punched the control panel and swore so loudly he bit his own tongue.
***
“Three-quarters there!” said Canary in response to the ninety-first goodnight.
“Yes,” said the Patient, through a smile a less professional and excellent infiltrator, assassin, and corporate cost-saver wouldn’t have managed at all.
So what if it was a little glassy? It was plausible! Anyone would be frustrated in his position! Anyone would be cross in his position! Anyone would be upset and frustrated and maybe a little imp
no not that never that ever
RUDENT, to discover that their job was being obstructed because a rank AMATEUR wouldn’t do the VERY SIMPLE JOB they were literally BORN TO DO.
So! Maybe it was time for something more drastic.
For the first time in weeks, the protein slab was left inside the boundaries of the inner hold – just barely inside – which meant that for the first time in weeks, the unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science was actually going to retrieve it. The Patient had marched the juice trail backwards day by reluctant day, hallway by hallway.
Last night it had lain in plain sight five metres beyond the hallway entrance. A bodylength or two, maybe. The organism had regarded it with solemn contemplation, then slunk home.
Fine. Fine!
Two of them could be perverse.
The jaws shut. His immaterial hand moved.
Click.
It didn’t realize anything was wrong until it was face to face with the closed container door. Then…
The Patient waited.
The Patient waited through five minutes of anxious pawing, ten minutes of frantic clawing, thirty minutes of low-frequency rumbles, and an hour of sleepless pacing in front of the container.
Then the organism began to sleep. Fitfully.
The Patient seized direct and ostentatious control of half the subroutines of the ship and started to adjust inner hold life-compatibility systems.
***
Light. Drop to nothing – initial startlement? No, no response – increase to blinding, until it shuts every eye and begins to rely on ear and antennae alone.
It huddles at the container.
Temperature. Increase, then decrease, then wildly oscillate.
It pants through mouth and spiracles both. It shivers convulsively from head to toe. It does not move.
Chase it with the camera drone. Flash readouts in its face. Transmit his vocals in direct defiance of all operational security so he can finally say what he’s thinking.
“YOU-”
It spins on the spot, scurries away to claw at the container again, and a lashing hindclaw catches the drone and catapults it into uselessness.
Put yourself on full audio broadcast.
“STUPID, STUPID THING! IDIOT ANIMAL! YOU ARE MADE TO KILL! WHY WON’T YOU KILL!? KILL! KILL! GO!”
The emergency siren goes on – surely someone’s going to hear it somewhere. Someone who should’ve been dead THIRTY-ONE GOODNIGHTS AGO.
He engages the cargo hoists. Swings containers like children’s build-a-chipsets, chases it from corner to corner like a fly with a swatter.
It cowers. It expels noxious substances. It shrinks and dodges and begins to whine and whine in pitches audible even to the Patient’s biological ears.
It won’t go out the door. It won’t leave the room.
The Patient loses himself for a moment. When he finds himself again, he is standing outside his container, outside his control center, in front of the organism. He is screaming and shouting and kicking at it and it is huddled in a little more than a little less than six hundred kilogram-heap, waving its praying limbs helplessly at him. He can’t hear what he’s saying over the emergency siren, or over the red roar in his head.
Why? He’s pretty sure he’s asking why. He was built to be good at what he does. So was it. He loves doing what he does. Why won’t it?
What’s wrong with it?
He kicks again, watches as an apex predator shrinks back and makes inaudible noises. He screams again, walks back to his control center, kicks it, hits it, hears doors open and shut at random, precision-engineered hand-sculpted code created with a chemically-managed coolness executed with the precision and planning of his big toe snapping in half against a metal casing.
He kicks it again with his other foot, veers drunkenly out of the container, screams – oh he can hear that, the siren is off – runs up to the organism, screams again, runs away, kicks something else, back into the container.
It isn’t his. It stinks of alien urine and dead-meat predator sweat, and in the back is a cluttered mess of hairy fibres that appear to be fashioned of loose skin integument.
“That’s IT?” he asks. His throat is raw, he would be yelling if he still could but something feels scraped loose. “THIS is what’s been keeping you distracted? A SECURITY BLANKET?”
The security blanket shrinks back from him.
The Patient loses himself again for a moment. When he finds himself, he’s torn half the mass apart and is looking down at an unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science.
No information has of yet been formally recorded from it. He estimates its weight at six kilos.
It warbles at him. Little praying limbs wave in a familiar motion.
The Patient was lost for words, physically and mentally. But if he had, he might have said “ah.” He could’ve said “uh.” He definitely would’ve said “oh.”
The light behind him vanished.
He would never, ever, not in a million years, have had the time to say “no.”
***
Working out why half the bulkheads had shut, then released, was a big job. So was figuring out why the emergency warning systems had refused to fire when it happened. High priority. Then after that the janitors had to ask why they’d received sixteen schedule change prompts, and then evidence came in that some sort of mass data-grip program had hijacked half the ship’s systems to do all of that, and well.
It was the sort of thing that took time to work out. So by the time Canary went and realized that they’d worked through three full emergency shifts without hearing a single new goodnight, it wasn’t much later than the moment everyone else realized the inner hold had been the focal point of half the hijacking.
It was calm down there. Silent. There was an unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science sitting in one of two opened cargo containers, and it made threatening noises until someone triggered the door and left it in peace and quiet.
The manifest said there were two of them. Six hundred and six kilos. And apparently they were well-fed.