Shaken, Not Stirred 34

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[Unit 007]

Were they trying to die? The maneuvers The White Rabbit was pulling were something I wouldn't even attempt in a fighter!

Then I had a thought - what if I had been constructed to pilot or crew a substandard warship? That war was hundreds of years ago, my own atomic clock told me, again, and perhaps I was on the right side of history now? Or the wrong side?

No, I had held those childish hands, helping them onto our ship, and I absolutely knew I was on the right side of any halfway-honest retelling of what happened here.

A ship closed to meet us, and fired off a salvo despite the protests of our radio operators,

"Shut your fuckholes, or they're all gonna get get filled!" is the last message they sent before our rabbit-eared (he preferred being called "Leporidae", but I enjoyed his reactions when I called him a "rabbit", so "rabbit-eared" was an unhappy compromise for both of us. I had been violently reminded that "bunnyboy" was off the table) Helmsman and Acting Captain (Sam couldn't Captain a starship out of a paper bag), ordered "RAMMING SPEED!" and slammed us into the opposing ship at a decent fraction of the speed of light, turning the offending ship into two pieces of flotsam and a floating graveyard one might term a literal "sky burial", probably causing headaches for whoever had jurisdiction here like it was his job. I'm glad the Church disowned me, if only to see the choking and fast-freezing bodies of our enemies littered through space after we plowed through them like they were nothing but trash. Fuck, my original programming was trying to reassert itself, despite my attempts to modify or outright overwrite it - I still felt so much pleasure in watching them die, screaming into the uncaring void of space.

Even if the Universal Sailor's Code said we should try to rescue survivors, we left them in the unforgiving void of space. We had more souls on board, abused by their employers, who had probably hired those attackers, and were trusting in us to save them all. I also hadn't managed to overwrite the pieces of my programming and training that gave me pleasure from the deaths of my enemies. Was that the thing that influenced the Church to cut me loose?

My organic companions on the bridge weren't faring much better, so this seemed to be something common to sapients, not just a robot thing.

"How fast before we can warp?" our Captain asked.

"Less than a minute!" a surprisingly chipper response came from the starsailor on the bridge, "so let's make up for lost time."

"We are about to make the warp jump in a minute or so," the Helmsman or Acting Captain blared over the ship's intercom, "so buckle your seatbelts, or at least get in a seat and fasten your seatbelt! Or fasten on the securing straps in your bunks! Because if you don't, this is going to go badly! You've got about forty seconds!"

...even I could have phrased that better. But, and this was the awful part, he wasn't wrong at all. I barely managed to buckle in before I had a hard flashback to my robot brothers being violently slammed around a dropship's cabin as it burned through the atmosphere of a planet whose name I don't even remember. Nothing else reinforced the idea that we were just expendable cannon fodder like that one memory.

Is this what organics call "PTSD"? I didn't care if The Holy See said I didn't have a soul - I at lest had a mind, and it played by (mostly) the same rules as any other sapient's!

"Are they idiots?" our rabbit-eared helmsman and acting captain asked, then screamed "READY THE DAMAGE CONTROL TEAMS! I HOPE EVERYONE'S STRAPPED DOWN! WE ARE ABOUT TO COLLIDE AGAIN WITH SOMEONE WHO THINKS THEY CAN KEEP US ALL HERE!"

Now that was an impact. Everything that wasn't secured went flying, and I saw on a monitor that we had ripped our way through another spaceship which shouldn't have been there based on our navigation display, so it wasn't squawking IFF, had tried to block us as we were approaching the speed of light.

"Go up or down!" the Acting Captain screamed into multiple channels, including emergency ones, "we cannot course correct at this point!"

"They're intentionally try to block us," I said. my brain had managed to catch up with and outrun the Acting Captain's, "they're not moving."

"Give them another radio hail to get out of our way!" he yelled across the bridge, and then muttered "what the Hell do think they're playing at?" The radio guy complied, and even made the call to local Star System Control to find out what the other vessel was and why it was there.

Apparently, judging by his reaction, the vessel really wasn't supposed to be there, but all attempts to contact it went unanswered.

The Leporidae flicked the switch for the full-vessel intercom, and punched the button for emergency lighting.

"This is your Captain speaking," he said, "we are about to have a collision at near light speed. I hope you've all fastened your seatbelts or other restraining devices, because this isn't going to go well. If you die, I hope you go to the best afterlife you believe in. Secure yourselves and brace for impact."

We slammed through the ship blocking our path, and I finally realized exactly why Sam had insisted every bulkhead in front of the passengers had to be dogged down. The human had seen this coming.

"That wasn't as bad as I thought it might be," the leporidae Captain said over the intercom, "but keep those seatbelts and restraints on, because we're about to hit warp! Once we do, medical teams will be deployed. Damage Control teams, do your fuciking jobs! And don't open anything that might lead to hard vacuum!"

...well, I thought as we started warping, this wasn't like a commercial flight at all. Or even a combat flight. As soon as we stabilized, I unbuckled myself and stood up.

"Hey," the Leporidae pilot said, "get your robes back on before you go in there. That's how you met them, right?" he asked as I hesitated to turn the bundle into a garment.

"Don't be a pussy," he said, "it's how you got them onboard, right? So wear it again, because god only knows how many casualties we're looking at. You can try fixing them if you want, but comforting them is just as important right now."

I threw the robe on and cinched my belt.

"You got this," the Captain told me, "you actually look like a monk!"

"That's because I was one," I told him coldly, "but hopefully I won't make the same mistake my superiors did by dismissing me. I trust you to guide this ship, or whatever's left of it through hyperspace."

"It's not easy," he told me with uncharacteristic humility while I tightened my belt to secure my robe, "we lost a lot of it. But I am an Ace. I fly this damn ship, and you help out the passengers - deal?"

"Sure," I said, ensuring my hood was riding correctly, "not the worst bargain I've ever made."

And I opened the door from the bridge out into the rest of the ship.