Have Tech, Will Travel (SCE Books 1-4) - Keith R. A. DeCandido_. [et al.] [82]
“This is a brave little girl here, who never had the chance to grow up into the brave woman she ought to have been. We may be the only ones who see what she went through, how courageously she handled it. We have to bear witness.” Gold’s brown eyes were serious. “We crawl over corpses in alien vessels all the time, take their dead ships, examine their bodies. I hope we never forget that they were once people. She’s reminding us. Friend is reminding us.”
Corsi said nothing, only leaned back in her seat and fixed her gaze on the table.
Jaldark lifted her head and stared into the viewscreen. She was shaking. Her hair, once long and lustrous, was dull and stringy. The implants in her temple, which had once pulsed to a steady, slow rhythm beneath the skin, were flashing erratically.
“I don’t think I have much longer,” she said in a voice thick with tears. In the background, Friend continued to call for her. “The pain is so bad I can hardly stand it.” She bit her lip and closed her eyes as, Duffy guessed, another wave of pain racked her skeletal frame. “I think I’m going to die. But I can handle that. It’s Friend I’m worried about. He’s supposed to autodestruct if anything happens to me. They said Starsearchers aren’t designed to function on their own. They told us the ships need an Omearan mind to link with in order to make ethical decisions. They warned us that they could be dangerous without a pilot. But I don’t believe that. I don’t think Friend would hurt anybody, unless they hurt him first.”
She took a long, shuddering breath and leaned into the recorder. “I can’t kill Friend, I just can’t. That would be the most selfish act I think I could possibly perform. I know I’m supposed to, but I won’t do it. I won’t. I’ve deactivated the autodestruct mechanism. Friend won’t be able to reengage it on his own. He’s going to live, even if . . . even if I don’t.”
She smiled a little, a taut, pained smile. “That’s what friends do, isn’t it? They help each other. If anybody finds this, please take care of Friend. Send him home. The coordinates are in the computer. Help him find a new pilot. He’s going to be so lost without . . . me to take care . . .”
Jaldark whimpered. More than a scream, that tiny sound rent Duffy’s heart. Watching this was torture. Jaldark’s chest hitched. Her free hand went up to press tightly at a flashing implant. When she was able to speak again, it was through tightly gritted teeth.
“Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I love him. Tell him it will be all right. He’s just got to be brave.”
She began to gasp, as if her body could no longer absorb oxygen. Her brilliant eyes rolled back in her head, and the recording device slipped from a suddenly limp hand to bounce on the floor. There it lay, recording only the base of the chair until it ran out of bytes, while, out of sight, Jaldark quietly gasped until she made no more sounds, and the plaintive voice of Friend kept demanding, “Jaldark, please respond!”
La Forge reached over and wordlessly turned off the screen. For a long moment, despite the urgency of the situation, no one spoke.
“Rest in peace,” said Gold solemnly.
“Do you see?” said 110 softly. “The ship— Friend—has lost its only companion. Jaldark told us that the ships are supposed to autodestruct if anything happens to the pilot, but Friend does not have that option. It was not designed to be alone. It does not know what to do. Like its pilot, it is a young vessel, with little experience, and it is terrified. We must not destroy it. We must help it. And I volunteer to be linked with it as Jaldark was.”
Gold looked at him sharply. “110, forgive me if I step on your toes here, but—you’ve been deliberately avoiding such an intimate link with anyone. That’s why you’re putting off going back to Bynaus. Assuming I will even let you, which is not an assumption you ought to be making, why do you want to do this? You barely survived your last encounter with that ship’s computer. We’ve got trained specialists on the way right