She trailed her fingers along the smooth window, letting them drift along the moss growing at the edges, marveling at this wonderful place.
And then, the speakers crackled, like they were dusting off years of disuse.
“I do not like to be touched.”
Every senseignited, and Torian’s body shifted so fast into fight mode that she could barely breathe. She spun, but the room was empty. Outside the windows, people in the public hangar were retiring to their respective ships, and the light cycle was shifting into an evening setting. A few folks lurked on the edges and didn’t seem to belong to any ship at all. Maybe they were friendly—or maybe they were opportunistic.
It hardly mattered if someone else wasalready aboard.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, fumbling for the ammo Amelia had given her. Shit, she should have loaded her gun sooner.Thiswas why she’d hated working security—the heart-pounding moment between identifying a threat and reacting to it, the moment where anything could happen and if she didn’t think fast enough, Celise might be seeing her next in a body bag.
Fuck.Fuck.
Old habits eked their way into her mind, rusty after six months as a scrap. Canvass the space, identify the threat. The cargo bay was empty; she’d just left there. But the ship wasn’t big. Torian loaded her gun with shaking hands, drawing slow breaths to try and calm the adrenaline.
It didn’t work.
With her pistol cocked, she moved slowly through the ship. It only took seconds to assess the sleeping room—a space big enough only for a narrow cot and some shelves—and the flight deck. Everything was empty except for several potted plants, which had overgrown to a point of absurdity.
Nothing moved.
Gripping her pistol, she turned toward the only space left: the engine room. But the hatch was still sealed, and an offensive from there would give her the advantage.
Were they watching her through the cameras?
Torian glanced suspiciously at one of the lenses mounted to the ceiling. She’d seen several throughout the ship, and oddly enough, none were covered with moss. Torian aimed at one; even a jelly bullet should be enough to shatter it.
“That is not advised,” the disembodied voice said.
“Neither is attacking me,” Torian replied, because that was something Amelia would say. It sounded cool, for a brief moment. Like she was actually competent and not terrified.
Then the voice added, “Your heart rate is elevated, and you are demonstrating physiological signs of stress. Be assured, Torian—if I were interested in killing you, you would have already suffocated.”
So much for cool.
The disembodied voice knew her name and had the ability to analyze her heart rate. Or maybe it was a guess by someone hidden in the engine room, watching her—but she was starting to doubt it. To double-check, she pried open the engine room’s hatch and peered inside.
The lights turned on, full-bright, dazzling. From this angle, she could see most of the room—and it was still and empty. Before, it had been dark and oppressively hot, but now she could see that it was a veritable forest of green, with a tall glowing pillar on one end and the engine on the other end. The engine alone wasn’t covered in moss, and she was grateful for that.
“I have concluded you are searching for another human. Be advised: You are the only fauna aboard,” the voice said.
Fauna?Torian lowered her gun, puzzling through that statement. Only one remaining option made sense, and she voiced it cautiously. “You’re an artificial intelligence.”
“Incorrect, and frankly, insulting.” The computer’s voice was somehow stiff.
“How is that incorrect?” Artificial intelligences were something of a misnomer: their capabilities were always limited to the data they could consume, and only a few in human history ever gained recognizable consciousness.
Even then, those barely passed as something truly sentient.
The computer seemed ambivalent to her curiosity.
“Artificial intelligence is human terminology. It implies that my processing and logic are manufactured or fake—and that any intelligence associated with it is also inferior to biological intelligence.Applying this definition to my capabilities is both inherently biased… and blatantly false.” It paused. “For example, I am adelightfulconversationalist. Far better than most biological sentients.”
It was so unexpected that Torian snort-laughed. “You are?” She peered again into the engine room, but nothing moved down there. Reluctantly, she holstered her pistol, still crouching on the ground.
“Absolutely. I was programmed with eight hundred and sixty-three subfunctions for conversation, and utilize fifty-three percent of them at any given moment.Stop touching me.”
Torian froze, lifting her fingers from the moss along the hatch’s edge. “Wait, aren’t you the entire ship? I can’t exactly avoid touching you.”
