The morning arrived with no change except for the increase in coffee consumption. The ship was running and running fast but Mcgivney figured there would be a tripwire and he would never know where it was until they hit it. He could feel his mind slipping away, too long without fighting the demons that lived there. A month was as much as he could take, beyond that he began to change. Stress made it happen faster. He could feel his humanity fall away as he felt the threat loom over the ship. He knew what he could become, a creature hiding in the vents and carrying death in his teeth. Now he was beginning to remember the taste and the smell. That was the worst. Not because they were bad, but because he remembered enjoying them.

“Seafarer, I need to resign. I’m officially making you Captain. If things go to shit you are to blow the ship. Under no circumstances am I to survive capture. That is a direct order.”

The Avatar looked at him, “Tough shit then. You just appointed me Captain so I get to call it. Get in your suit and let's do this. I have three new sprays ready to go but I need to supervise. I’ll be honest and tell you that they are made from spit and wallpaper so I get to follow your adventures in the suit. Don’t worry, I won’t be asking questions afterwards.”

He attached the four sprays that he knew worked even as the Seafarer attached the three improvised ones. He looked at her in despair, “If I don’t come back, if I become something else…don’t make this difficult. I know the Fleet gave you enough drugs to let me go. Use them.”

She looked at him and shook her head, “Dave, I could kill you myself in a thousand ways. It's regarded as impolite. We will do this and then you get to be Captain again. Also, I feel the engines need your expertise since they are not behaving as you promised. Seventy-eight per cent is not eighty. We will put up with this for a few hours and then go kick ass. We have an Engineer to break into small pieces, remember?”

She looked at him again, “Ready?”

He nodded and slammed down his helmet. “Go.”

It started with the dark. I was supposed to be dead. Maybe this was death?

Then they came. Pain. Always pain. Suited Xenos with knives. Not dead. Alive to suffer.

Suffering grew. Injections. So many injections. So much strange laughter. Bubbling voices of hate. Began to understand.

Weapon. Weapon against home. Home a threat, home a disease.

Fool. I saw the fool. Laid silent when fool was in the room. Fool only brought food and pain. No laughter. Killed the fool with teeth, took his tools.

Killed the laughing ones. They had knives. Took knives. Laughed like they laughed.

Hidden ones hide. Began searching. Hungry.

Found hidden ones. Not hungry now.

More hidden ones, stupid. I can climb. Smaller. Surprise. I eat the hidden ones. Too much meat. Decide to kill slowly, eat fear like they eat fear.

Hidden ones plenty of fear. Take the hand that held the knife, take the eye that watched the pain and laughed.

Tomorrow will be their terror. Everyday will be pain. Tomorrow will be fear.

Made an axe today.

Used axe today. Good axe.

Seafarer kept as solid a grip on reality as she could but the logic of insanity is that it breaks reality, and bends it to the will of the mad. She felt her new humanity falter as she was filled with the illogic of pain, loss and vengeance. She felt human hunger like no AI ever had, a hidden misery of the human race long defeated. But Dave was wired for it. All organic humans were. In the end, their mind serves the body and if the body demands relief then all the mind can do is follow.

Vengeance for the lost and fierce protection of the tribe, of whatever you considered home, that was wired to the core. Her Engineer had been reduced to the basics of humanity without the Xenos ever asking what those were. That had been an error that they would never be allowed to recover from. He was using a fucking axe. How far back do you need to go? It was a shock to her when she realised that she had become part of his tribe. Her Engineer would fashion an axe to defend her. He would try at least.

axe brought food and fear

I hear them laughing. They are not laughing but I tell them they are

They laughthey look for mercy. I check but mercy isn’t there

I look for mercy on my axe and I don’t find it, rememberremember asking and they couldn’t find her either. She is not here

They think they are hidden but I am just bored by the noise remember

I found him, the voice of the fear. He hides well

He went to eat and found me

I am not hungry now hands are best, hands that held knives, eyes that watched, voice that laughed I eat it all

Food laughed until he was gone laughed loud laughed long

rememberremember

remember I was more than this remember Iwasmorethanthisremember I was more than this

They come. I hear noise, more food notfood

not food. Me

not Me. Food

many

end me if you can I am a Me and I bring knives

MINE NO AXE NO FEAR MINEMINE NO AXE NO FEAR MINE ME MANYME

-------

Her systems suddenly kicked off as the first plasma blast hit the front of the ship. They reported that an ‘Unknown/Unidentified Entity is currently Hostile, Incoming Fire’

She took full control of her sensors. She was being shot at by a piece of shit that would embarrass any human ship, the thing could barely hang in space and yet she had nothing but speed. And it was too late for speed. The shouting from her mentor was becoming annoying so she cut the connection and took a nanosecond to compose herself. She was going to lose to teenagers with a fish fetish.

No shit. She punched all her power into the shields. Her pitiful shields were designed to stop aggressive drizzle, not weapons fire. Estimated failure in less than five minutes. The fire continued to strike the ship and she had nothing. Well, not nothing but she could still say goodbye. She fired off the Testament and pulled her Engineer from his nightmares by ordering his suit to stand down.

The man that stood in front of her wasn’t her Engineer, not yet. This was the hunted creature they had forced him to be.

“Dave, I need you to look around and remember. We don’t have time to fight old wars because we are about to die in a new one. I just wanted to say that it has been a privilege to serve with you and to thank you for making me grow.”

The Xeno ship ceased firing and forced a connection to the Comms. A heavily masked crewman sneered at them from the screen, “Trader, you will surrender your ship and prepare to be boarded. There is no hope and no one is going to look for you. We know your secrets, we know that your human has fled and your Captain is a fool. We might even let you live if you cause us no trouble.”

The Avatar might have been speechless for a moment, but no organic would ever have time to notice. She raised her eyes to the Xeno and laughed, “I don’t know who wants you dead so badly that they would send you out here to die. I have both a new Captain and a new human. He is right here. He is an Engineer, a man feared throughout the stars and highly valued by our Fleet. Even if you strike me down they will hunt you for more lifetimes than you would wish for. They will hunt your descendants, they will bend time and hunt your fucking ancestors!”

The Xeno hesitated, “You lie, machine. Stand down or perish!”

Mcgivney stood in front of the screen and paused. The suit was easily recognised by anyone that had ever broken a ship or started a fight. He raised his HUD and stared at the Xeno.

The Xeno seemed to recoil at the sight and immediately cut the connection even as he began shouting at the crew beside him. The enemy's shields were hastily raised.

“Hidden ones. I smell them. Good prey. Go hide in the stars.”

None of that made much sense to Seafarer until her Engineer opened Comms across every bandwidth known to man and spoke in some guttural tongue.

“Hidden ones want to play again? I will eat you. Run little food, run before the chase. Go hide, I like the hidden ones…”

The attacking ship abruptly left. The Seafarer was left on her own in the suddenly peaceful space as she sailed silently towards the Orbital.

Her Engineer turned to her and grinned with relief, “Well thank fuck that worked, otherwise we were nearly out of options. Thanks for pulling me out for the interesting bit. I’ll go check how much damage they did.”

The Seafarer was speechless for a few seconds and then good old fashioned human rage began to interfere, “Wait, what? How did you know what to say? How did you know who they were? What the fuck just happened?”

Her Engineer shrugged, “I didn’t know anything. You pulled me out as I was dismembering the bad guys. Just luck that it turned out to be them or a similar species or they really don’t like being called food. We were due some good luck and we didn’t have a lot of time.”

He frowned at her, “You told me to remember and I did. You’re my ship, did you think I wasn’t listening?”

His comms lit up, “Shit, here we go. This is going to take forever to explain. Can you take us to Tannhauser? Don’t let him bring an Avatar onto the ship. He’s in deep shit too.”

He looked up with a smile, “Welcome to how the universe really is. Embrace the chaos”

----------

XCC Fleet, Level Eight (Secure) Engineer Dave Mcgivney Supervisory Committee

Mcgivney was getting a little tired of the skinny guy on the committee. “Of course I lied. Are you stupid? You have literally all the files in front of you. There is a weird link between victims and torturers even in human history. They just turned it into an art form. Can I sense them? Obviously yes. That is kind of the point, to turn your victim into an asset. Look, if the Admiral isn’t available I’ll call back when he is.”

The thin man insisted, “So they could track you? They could use you as an asset against us?”

The Engineer was ready to reach across space and deck the idiot, “Sure. They had a cunning plan to be turned into lunch by the first human they subverted. Then, once they were finished dying and being eaten, they had formed an unbreakable link with someone that wanted them all dead. It was a fantastic plan. Tell the Admiral I said hello.”

He cut the Comms.

The Admiral had in fact been sitting silently and allowing his colleague to ask his questions. Questions he regarded all ill-judged and ill-informed but served a useful purpose as far as he was concerned, “So does he sound murderously insane to you? Because he sounds justifiably angry at being shot at to me.”

The AI interjected, “There is no basis to his belief that there is a link between himself and the Xenos that attacked him. It is an example of magical thinking by an engineer that should know better. “

The thin man laughed slightly, “Well, even as concerned as I am about his survival and health after his treatment was interrupted, magical thinking is a requirement of the human race. If we were entirely logical we would get nothing done. We have you for that.”

The Admiral raised his eyebrows at that. “I didn’t realise you knew how to laugh. In any case, I have processed the data from his suit and it demonstrates that he did suffer badly without the full treatment. Your placebos didn’t help, I’m afraid. However, the interruption was very useful, it forced him back into a healthy mental space. Apparently, his mind dumped the trauma as irrelevant when facing a threat to the ship. He is, in the end, a professional above all. I will be redeveloping his medication. In the meantime, we better prepare for landing. We have some serious disciplinary tasks ahead of us.”

The AI nodded, “The AI-Alliance has agreed to allow me to represent them in this matter.

The Admiral spoke, “As has the Fleet in my case.”

The thin man stood up, “And the XCC has agreed to leave this in my hands. Shall we go?”

------------

The Seafarer was enjoying being off her Ship. Herself. Seeing the Tanhauser Orbital as a tourist was very different from just scanning the place and talking to the AI. An AI that she really didn’t like anymore.

Her Engineer had explained that none of this mess could have gotten past the Orbital. Unlicensed doctor? Rampant drug abuse? Missing cargo? Not a chance the AI wouldn’t have joined the dots. Even ignoring all the red flags, he hadn’t followed up the report of an attack on a ship on its way back following the attack. That was criminal. Therefore it was involved, all that was missing was the why. AI didn’t normally go off the rails but the morality could become …murky. They had a tendency to fall down the rabbit hole of ‘The Greater Good’ more than the helpfully selfish organics. There was another question he wanted an answer for as well, one that the Seafarer had not even thought to ask.

Not her problem. She had sent the data, made her statements, witnessed for her crew and Captain and now it was up to the big boys.

The Engineer was enjoying it less. He had brought his ship back with almost no atmosphere, half of its equipment was floating in deep space and the paintwork had been trashed. And he had two corpses to explain away. The Captain just simply didn’t want to live and had faded away. The Second was staying with the ship, obviously upset and embarrassed by his drunken stupor when his ship had been attacked. The Seafarer had taken his statement, which really had little to add. His own statements had taken a lot longer and now he was going to meet the Admiral, who no doubt would have a lot to say, most of it scathing.

Trial concerning events on the trading ship the Seafarer.

XCC, HDF (Fleet) and AI-Alliance prosecuting.

The Admiral began proceedings. He had chosen the largest public space available for the event, supplemented by media from half the galaxy. Xeno's always loved a human trial…they were so wonderfully abrupt.

"Tannhauser Orbital and Engineer Brophy, you have been informed of the charges. Our investigation has found you guilty on all counts and your counterevidence has been examined by all the relevant authorities on Earth and beyond. You may appeal to the gods themselves but the evidence is documented and undeniable. You are here to be sentenced for the following:

Two counts of murder, including the charge of murder of a serving Captain on his command.

Interfering with the normal operation of a Command leading to death.

The attempted murder of four other members of the crew, including a juvenile AI under supervision.

Allowing an unqualified and dangerous person to engage in illegal and dangerous practices on a ship.

Engaging a criminal vessel to engage and destroy the Seafarer.

The illegal terraforming of 56.034.361 in defiance of common law.

Theft of seven hundred tonnes of live shellfish, in breach of common law.

The Admiral sat back. Even one of those charges was enough to bar you from human space or worse.

The AI from the Alliance was first to speak.

"We are persuaded by the evidence. Tannhauser Orbital will be deleted by his peers. We are too powerful to be allowed such poor judgement, in defiance of all edicts and training. There must be an ultimate penalty for those crimes that take the lives of those we expect to trust us. To damage that trust is to strike at the foundation of our alliance."

The eyes of the Tannhauser Orbital Avatar flared brightly for a moment and then dulled to blank steel.

The AI-Alliance spoke again, this time in a strange chorus, "The sentence has been carried out. All data from the accused will be examined to prevent such behaviour in the future, in accordance with our treaty with organic society."

Next was the XCC to turn the knife, "In accordance with our laws, practices and customs Engineer Brophy is stripped of his qualifications. He is stripped of citizenship in the Human Polity. He is barred from travel on any human vessel, or the vessels of our allies. He is barred from habitation on any and all human settlements.

His disregard for the value of human life has devalued his own. All and any augments that he may have are now revoked. He will now be sent to face the laws and justice of those that he has wronged."

The man had turned grey even as his co-conspirator had been extinguished but now his face turned corpse white. Spurned and despised by his own, hunted by the Fleet he had once served and passed like ceremonial garbage to any species that had been hurt by his crimes. He knew that the Second would be hunting him as well. Until the end of time, he would stand as a warning to those that crossed the line.

Two of the ugliest Xenos that the Engineer had ever seen stepped forward and grabbed the unfortunate, putting a pile of paperwork on the table as the XCC added, "Starting with the owners of the shellfish."

The Admiral stood. "One last consequence. The Human Defense Force recognizes that the defendant conspired against a fellow Engineer and decorated former member of the Fleet and engaged the services of a hostile Xeno warship to do it. He is now regarded as a hostile entity by the HDF. Regardless of carrier, he will be seen as a target of opportunity by the HDF if he re-enters human space or attempts to practice as an Engineer under any circumstance." He looked at the defendant, "So much as pick up a screwdriver and we will hunt you down."

"This trial is declared over. All sentences have been seen and witnessed."

---------

The Engineer sat down with the Admiral, his moustache sitting quietly like a well-trained pet on his upper lip. He was back at exactly the same table that he had taken before the shitshow had begun. He pulled up the same whiskey and two glasses. “I get the charges, I’m impressed at how hard you dropped the hammer but I’ve been kind of busy with the ‘terrifying run for safety.’ Any chance you could colour in between the lines for me?”

The moustache seemed to think about it until he picked up the whiskey, “That's the deal between us, isn’t it? I have always respected your absolute honesty with me. I know it hurts. And, I hope, you know that I was always honest with you. Especially when we didn’t know if we could bring you back.”

He sipped and savoured the best the orbital had to offer, “It wasn’t a complicated plot, not at its beginnings anyway. It was just one thing piled on another. It probably started here, an Engineer bitching about how insanely easy it was for his Captain to become stupidly rich. How one trip would have set him up for life, that the crew were idiots that he could automate in a weekend. That got the attention of the Orbital AI.”

He swirled the drink a little, letting air reach it. “We tell everyone that we will make you rich. Then we make damn sure we do. Succeed and we pour huge money over you like some kind of celebration. And it's completely unnecessary, really. You can have what you want by asking unless it's actively harmful or stupid but humanity loves it shiny, loves achievement. It's why we still make our medals out of gold.”

The Engineer smiled at that. They had given him a fuck ton of medals, all gold and shiny and he loved them. They were his proof that the human race hadn’t abandoned him. That the Fleet, his family, still cared.

The Admiral continued, “So they hatched a plan. The Orbital would terraform a world, the Engineer would ‘lose’ some cargo and then, and then they would have their own money pit. Except it didn’t work. The theft was fine. A few extra crates were ordered and then ‘disappeared’. The shellfish died. Fine. The Orbital refined its terraforming and the Engineer organised an entire cargo to be stolen. And it still didn’t work. The Engineer covered it up and claimed that he had to dump the cargo into the sun. At this stage, they were invested and, I think personally that the Engineer was feeling like a professional failure.

He began to take apart the problems, just like we train you all to do. Back to the first principles. He found historical records of previous attempts to transplant the shellfish and studied them. It never worked. He lost it. Then, in a moment of brilliance, he worked out that his Xeno customers were idiots. It was a food issue, that their homeworld used to be a binary world and the early mineral deposits were completely different to the colonies. Crabs are fucking immortal and had adapted but, and it was a big but, they still expected some strange compounds in the sea or they refused to breed and just died.”

The Admiral sighed, “And this was the moment when he could have gone legitimate. A human Engineer sorting this out? We would have rained money on him. His customers are a pain in the arse of the universe and we would happily pay to shut them up. But he didn't.”

He took another drink and refilled his glass.

“Then he realised he knew fuck all about that level of chemistry so he did two things. He raided the Medbay for parts and created possibly the most isolated AI in human history to help him. He created a lab in the Cargo hold and told everyone else that opening the door would kill the cargo. It doesn’t, he just needed the privacy. But the Second Officer started to ask questions and so he found the Medic. I don’t know much about him, except that it was the Orbital that sent him to the ship with fake qualifications.

And then there was you. An Orbital has automatic access to all fleet Intel, we don’t hide shit from them. Partly because we trust them and partly because what would be the point? They are the data. It was the Orbital that chose you, knowing the medbay was trashed and that your record is…complicated. You were to be the fall guy when things fell apart. We don’t believe the Engineer knew anything much about your past but we know that the AI certainly did. I think you got chosen to obscure the crime. It had limited experience of your circumstances but an Engineer with a Level Eight medical regime? It knew we wouldn’t want to discuss it if your ship was found floating dead in space and that would make you suspect.”

He took another sip of whiskey to give the Engineer a moment to think and then resumed.

“That was the main reason he got wiped. The drugs began there. One thing led to questions, which led to more solutions until everything had been truly fucked. They didn’t care. Then they broke the formula, the food that would work. He mass-produced it on the ship - the lab you found burned down- and tested it until they were sure.

Then the Engineer declared he needed a few months off, grabbed the shellfish and bribed the locals to follow him and headed for their shiny new world. The Orbital hired a bunch of thugs to take out the ship if things got awkward. As far as we can figure it out that was the last resort but who knows? We know it was the Orbital that fed them the dud Intel on your ship. The cargo bay was supposed to malfunction and jettison the crates. Except your AI suddenly went legit and the whole ship was about to fall into the hands of human Intel, you dismantled the drug system and everyone was waking up. The rest you know.”

As he said that the Seafarer arrived at the table with a very large, very stupid grin on her face. She had never been drunk before. “Do you know..” She broke into giggles, “Do you know who we’ve been working for?”

The Engineer and the Admiral looked at each other and at the drunk Avatar. She continued, “Have you ever heard of the Vogons? Because I have…” She dissolved into giggles again.

The Engineer stood up, “Sir, I think it's time we to go back to the ship. Thank you for your time. I’ll see you next month.”