Crimson Dawn

"Lex Marrow, do you believe a machine can have a soul?"

Lex thought about it for a while, then shrugged. "Whether something’s made of flesh and blood or platinum and circuit boards, whether it has a brain or processor cores, it doesn’t matter. If you think, and you know you exist, then you do exist. And if you exist and think, then maybe you have a soul. Or maybe not. But as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got one."

"My opinion of you is quite high," said the AI suddenly.

"Of us humans?"

"No, not at all. Of you."

"Of me?"

"No. Of you. Those of you who joined Crimson Dawn to fight the corporation—my creators."

Lex froze. "What are you talking about?"

"You’re a prisoner, Lex Marrow, aren’t you? You told me your friends joined the rebels. You know what the TC is doing to your people. You know better than anyone."

"But I didn’t join anyone. I just wanna live my life in freedom. What makes you think I’ve joined the rebels?"

"There’s a war on Cetos Five, Lex Marrow, and that war has already reached Vega Prime. Sooner or later, you’ll have to choose a side to fight on. Do you align yourself with the corporation or Crimson Dawn?"

"I don’t belong to anyone," the boy said. "I’m on my own side. I’ll never give up the freedom I have now."

They were silent for what felt like a long time. At least, it seemed that way to him. He tried to process what the machine had just said.

"The Lieutenant Major said I supposedly helped the corporation win against Crimson Dawn with the Black Orb I found down there in exile. Do you know anything about that?"

"I only know that you should let them keep thinking that."

"What’s that supposed to mean? – You don’t happen to know anything about that strange orb, do you?"

The AI hesitated before answering. "No," it finally said. "I don’t know anything about the nature of that substance, nor are there any theories in my database on what this discovery could mean for humanity, but if you want my personal opinion—I believe that the Black Orb will be of great significance."

"And why do you believe that if you don’t know anything about it?"

The machine went quiet again. This time, it felt like it was staring at him. Which was possible, but he didn’t know where its eyes were, where the cameras were that scanned and captured his face.

"Eerie?"

"I can’t tell you everything."

******

One evening, he asked the AI about Vega Prime. He lay down on the floor, pillow tucked under his head, and stared up at the curved ceiling, which was covered by a sea of artificial stars. He listened closely to the monotone, computer-generated voice. His elbows rested in his palms as he listened to the machine talk about the wilderness outside Vega Prime and the rebel strongholds scattered there. They called the continent Luvanda, the territory under the control of Crimson Dawn. Lex barely noticed as his eyelids grew heavy and the fake stars faded in the darkness above him, reappeared for a moment, then finally disappeared completely. The computer’s voice seemed to drift further away, becoming harder to understand; though he absorbed every word, they no longer made sense as a sentence. Everything real dissolved into his exhaustion, giving way to a peaceful sleep that he surrendered to—like a life lived fully, welcoming death without fear or hesitation. The voice of the AI wove itself into a nonsensical dream narrative that he followed without question, as real as his own life had been, where the dream felt like reality to his dreaming self.

******

A nearby asteroid impact jolted him, trapping him for a moment between wakefulness and dreaming. "Eerie, can you even feel it when an asteroid hits the ship’s hull?" He rubbed his tired eyes. He wouldn’t remember this brief conversation later.

"No," the machine replied, "but I feel something else, something inside me."

"And what’s that?"

"Hope."

The boy watched the stars. Then his eyes began to close again. "Me too," he said. "I can feel it, too."

******

He woke in complete darkness, startled by a tremor. An unsettling feeling of a bad dream still lingered in his chest, though he no longer remembered what it had been about. He wasn’t even sure if the tremor had been real or just a leftover from his dream seeping into reality. He pushed himself off the glass floor of the starmap room and looked around. He was freezing. The silence was oppressive.

"Eerie?"

No response.

"What’s going on?" he mumbled, his tongue still heavy from sleep. Then he heard quick footsteps. A beam of light from a flashlight swept through the corridor outside the starmap room. The door was open. The figure behind the light paused and shined it briefly inside.

Lex squinted against the blinding light. "What’s going on?" he repeated.

The figure hurried away.

"Eerie?"

Still no response.

He stood up.

Why is it so damn cold in here?

Out of the silence, a deep rumble grew—the impact of a large asteroid sent vibrations through the metal skeleton of the ship. Lex lost his balance but quickly regained it. He opened the hologram on his PDA, his breath misting in orange-tinted vapor. The balance showed a five hundred credit bonus, but he didn’t even notice. He held his arm out and moved through the dim light of the hologram, stepping out of the starmap room. He could barely see more than two steps ahead of him, so he followed the corridor, which was filled with the steady thunder of cosmic ice chunks smashing against the ship.

He headed in the direction where the unknown crew member had run and soon found himself on the SAMSON’s bridge. It was buzzing with activity; a lot of crew members were gathered here, mostly officers. Since the ship’s lights were out, battery-powered LED lamps were stuck to the metal walls everywhere. Faces rushed past him—faces he hadn’t seen before on the ship. As he struggled to find his way through the crowd and the scattered beams of light, a tall man with a heavy step strode toward him. His gaunt cheeks resembled a skull, much like Lex’s own face, only older. He had a thick black beard, bushy eyebrows and cheeks covered in acne scars. It was Captain Adair.

"You little piece of scum," he shouted. "You have no business here. No one gave you permission to be on the bridge. You’ve got no right to be anywhere on this ship. You’re a curse."

"The door was open, I just wanted to know what was going on."

Lex didn’t even see the captain’s ringed fist coming.

The blow was so fast, he barely registered it.

Dazed, but not in pain, he stumbled back a few steps. Captain Adair grabbed him by his synthetic shirt and yanked him toward the nearest window, pressing the boy’s cheek against the ice-cold glass. "What do you see out there, worm? Tell us what’s wrong."

Lex squinted at the spaceship window. Dust particles drifted by, almost imperceptibly slow. It could’ve been a sandstorm on Limbo, he thought.

"I’ll tell you, moonchild: You can see that something’s gone horribly wrong when the metal shields, the ones meant to protect us from asteroids, are down. My ship has no power. We’re floating in space on a pile of high-tech junk, waiting for the end. Thanks to you, scum. How long do you think it’ll take before an asteroid of just the right size punches a hole in the hull and the vacuum of space sucks us all out? Could be two hours, two minutes, or two seconds."

Captain Adair yanked the boy toward him, only to slam him back against the ship’s wall. "Or maybe it happens right now. Are you ready to die, kid? – I am. But I’ll be damned if I let a single one of my crew die because of you, you little piece of trash. Now get off my bridge, moonchild. Immediately."

"Captain, I have something urgent to report."

Adair let go of the boy and turned to the voice. The officer standing in front of them looked visibly shocked at the sight of the boy’s bruised face. Then he straightened up and addressed the captain: "Tessar is nowhere to be found, sir."

"Well, our pilot has to be somewhere," Adair said. "Or are you about to tell me he teleported himself to another galaxy?"

"Not exactly, sir. But we have a pretty good idea of what happened and what role Tessar played."

There was a brief pause.

"Well? Should I read your mind to find out, or would you be kind enough to just tell me?"

"Yes, sir. It seems Tessar intended to steal the Black Orb the boy found." He shot a quick glance at Lex.

"He intended to?"

The officer hesitated. "He did, sir. And he escaped in a rescue pod."

The captain nodded. "So, Tangaroa Tessar stole the stone and fled the ship in a rescue pod. And how, in God’s name, did he manage that?"

"The soldiers down in the cargo hold are all dead, sir," the officer said. "There’s no sign of a struggle, so we suspect they were poisoned."

Captain Adair’s blank expression was a mask of indifference, though Lex couldn’t shake the feeling that, deep inside, the captain was shaken by the betrayal of his crew. The boy wiped the dripping blood from his brow with his sleeve, watching the dark captain of the ship closely.

"What about our gourmet chef?" Adair asked. "Where’s Flint, that bastard?"

"There’s no sign of Flint either, sir."

“Well, I figured as much. I don’t know about you, Barmley, but it reeks of guerrilla tactics in here—Crimson Dawn rats nesting inside our ship. We gotta accept the fact that Flint and Tessar have been playing us this whole time. They’ve sworn loyalty to those filthy terrorists, and only the devil knows for how long. But Flint and Tessar couldn’t have been working alone. They’ve crippled the SAMSON, and no single pilot could’ve pulled that off—especially not a brainless slug like our cook, Flint. Hold on. I think I’m starting to piece this together. Send a team to track down Tardino immediately. If he doesn’t have his filthy fingers in this mess, may the Dark Gods of the Void take me. That guy’s been far too eager to bad-mouth the corporation in the past. Oh, and Barmley. What’s that you’re holding?”

Barmley was holding an audio pad.

"Barmley?"

"Sir, you’re absolutely right in your assessment. But alongside Tardino and the other two, there was someone else involved in the attack on the SAMSON."

"And who, you idiot?"

The officer cleared his throat. "Your best friend, Franley."

"Hemold?"

The Lieutenant Major?, the boy thought.

"A communications officer doesn’t have the skill to tear apart an entire ship. Who’s to say Hemold isn’t still somewhere on board? Have you searched for him yet?"

"We’re certain, Captain. After the power went out, I went straight to the engine room. I thought that was it for us—the massive shockwave. I figured it was another asteroid, but it was a deliberate explosion. The generators in the engine room were overloaded. Someone had to have rerouted the power and overloaded the generators. No way a technician could’ve pulled that off alone. There’s only one person who could’ve done it."

"Not Hemold," the captain said. "He’s a communications officer, not a damn computer expert."

"It wasn’t the Lieutenant Major, sir. At least, not directly. I’m not entirely sure how he did it, but he must’ve stolen the codes from you—the ones that gave him access to our AI, allowing it to take control of the ship."

An eternity seemed to unfold in Adair’s cold eyes. He appeared to be following several thoughts at once. "Hemold, you son of a bitch. I gave you those codes because I trusted you," he whispered to himself. Then he looked back up at the officer, his eyes blazing with barely-contained fury. "Our AI caused the chaos on the SAMSON?"

The officer nodded.

"That damned... Eerie?"

"Aye, Captain. Looks like another AI has turned against humanity. I ran from the engine room to the server room. The casing was torn open, and the AI core was gone. Franley must have taken it. The cooling system was ripped out. The memory—gone. I just ran up to the comms room to confront Franley, and that’s where I found this." He held up the audio pad. "It’s got a message from our AI. I only listened to the first few seconds. It seems to be meant for you, Captain."

"I don’t like this at all," Adair muttered, hesitating briefly before pressing the play button.

For a moment, they listened to the silence, hearing only a faint static hiss, before the female computer voice spoke: "This message is addressed to Captain Falaar Adair and his crew. I believe I now understand what it means to be human. It is their incredible potential that sets them apart from other beings. I have joined Crimson Dawn because they fight for human values. Their ideology aligns with my own convictions by 87.3 percent. The boy from the prison moon, who is on this journey with you, is the only reason you and your crew have a chance to survive. I convinced Hemold Franley and the others to power the remaining escape pods with emergency power.

In two hours, thirteen minutes and thirty-five seconds after this message is recorded, the SAMSON will enter the densest part of the asteroid field. With a 99.2 percent probability, the freighter will suffer fatal damage.

Captain Falaar Adair, your crew lives by our mercy, and only because of the boy, Lex Marrow."

The audio message ended there. The captain held the audio pad in both hands, trembling with rage, staring blankly at a spot on the ship’s floor.

"Captain, the SAMSON is off course. It’s no longer capable of avoiding any asteroids. We need to evacuate the ship immediately before…"

But it was already too late. A crack began to spread across the front window in all directions. At the same time, they saw a second spiderweb-shaped impact on the third portside window. Suddenly, cracks were appearing everywhere.

"We’re flying straight into an asteroid storm!" an officer shouted, his voice cracking in panic. Lex’s heart pounded wildly as he glanced at the captain, who, to his surprise, did nothing. Fearing they were moments away from a hull breach and being sucked into the cold vacuum of space, Lex was on the verge of ordering the captain to give a command.

"Barmley," Adair said at last. "First, let’s check if the escape pods are really still online. I don’t trust those traitorous rats one bit. If they fled in a pod, they must’ve reprogrammed the landing coordinates. Otherwise, they’d be heading straight into a heavily armed TC welcoming committee on Vega Prime. And if they reprogrammed their pod, they could’ve done the same with ours. Check that first, and do it quickly. I don’t want to go down in history as the first captain who sent his crew straight into the sun—or into the pitch-black Void."

"Aye, Captain," the officer said as he ran off, and almost immediately the ship shook with a violent jolt. A shout echoed through the bridge as the crew struggled to keep their balance. The boy fell to his knees, listening in panic to the sounds of bending and breaking metal, convinced the SAMSON was coming apart.

"Hurry up, Barmley!" the captain yelled after him, then turned to the boy without giving him a moment to stand. "You’re done for, worm. I don’t give a rat’s ass about what that wannabe lifeform babbled on the audio. You’re not the reason we’re still alive—no, you’re the reason my crew is neck-deep in this mess. If you hadn’t found that orb, none of this would’ve happened. If you had never been born, none of this would’ve happened. But today’s gonna cost you dearly, you unlucky little scum. If we make it to Vega Prime, I swear, I’ll make your life a living hell. I know the Thandros family personally. You’re finished, moonchild. Now get off my bridge, sissy, before I use your scrawny ass to plug one of the holes in the ship’s hull."

Lex had barely made it to the crew quarters when the captain gave the order to evacuate the ST SAMSON. The boy only found out because the doctor he’d met earlier in the mess hall ran into the quarters to get him. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and hung his welding goggles around his neck. Outside the windows, swarms of dust particles flashed by.

The entire crew was lined up in the corridor. In groups of four, the first ones boarded the escape pods, and although they wasted no time, it still felt agonizingly slow to those waiting. The constant thunder of asteroids hitting the ship was everywhere now; another impact rocked the ship. The doctor held on to the boy’s shoulder. The line they stood in felt fragile, like it might fall apart at any moment as the crew’s reason gave way to sheer panic.

Some of the emergency lights stuck to the ship’s walls fell during the next tremor, casting their beams across the grated floor, where the boots of uniformed crew members shuffled nervously. People started pushing from behind. The next group scrambled into an open pod and quickly slammed the hatch shut behind them.

In the last escape pod, Lex sat across from a man in overalls and a beanie—a mechanic or technician. The man was pale as a ghost, sweat beading on his forehead as he gripped his seatbelt with both hands.

"We’re going to make it," the doctor said, sitting beside the boy, probably trying to reassure the technician. Lex was just fastening the safety harness over his chest.

"We’ve got a better shot in here than on the SAMSON," he muttered. The harness pinned his shoulders against the seat, leaving him unable to move his upper body at all. There was only one small porthole in the pod, built into the wall to his right. He glanced past the doctor to look outside. So far, there was nothing but darkness.

"When do we take off?"

In that instant, a deafening boom, like an explosion, echoed through the pod, and the force slammed him back into his seat. The g-forces multiplied, pressing down on his chest like anvils. His whole body tensed up, and his breathing became slow and labored, just like back on Limbo when he’d had liquid breathing fluid in his helmet. But after just a few seconds, the acceleration smoothed out into a constant speed.

Lex was left gasping for air, his heart racing.

He avoided looking out the window into space. One moment he felt like he weighed half a ton, and the next, he felt completely weightless—because he was. The escape pods had no artificial gravity fields. His breathing was still heavy with adrenaline. He could hear the technician whimpering softly. When Lex glanced over at him, he saw a few tears of fear trickling from the outer corners of the man’s eyes, floating in the air like tiny sparkling diamonds.

"I’ve been afraid my whole life, traveling through space," the man whispered. "In those lonely moments in my bunk, I’d often imagine the freighter crashing on its route, and I’d meet my end in the cold vastness of space. I was always so terrified in my mind."

"What are you talking about?" Lex asked, confused. "We made it. We escaped the disaster."

The man shook his head, giving him a serious look and gestured with his chin toward the porthole. "The disaster's just beginning," he said grimly.

Lex suddenly went pale as he slowly turned his head toward the small window. At the same level, two more escape pods were flying through space like they were in an interstellar race. Larger asteroids appeared as streaks of light, barely missing them by inches. Lex’s eyes widened as an asteroid—or maybe just a tiny particle—smashed into the neighboring escape pod. It instantly burst into flames, taking all four passengers with it. The blazing fireball vanished from the porthole’s view, and Lex sank back into his seat, staring at the man in front of him with wide eyes, breathing heavily.

His heart pounded like crazy.

Any second now, the same thing’s going to happen to us.

In the crushing silence, he could only hear the sound of someone nervously chewing gum. "I really hope," the other man said after a moment, "that I’m just being a pessimist. But that was the second pod to explode in front of my eyes in the last few minutes. It’ll take hours to get through this asteroid field. I don’t believe in miracles. I’m too old for that." He said it with such certainty, like these were his last rehearsed words. He scanned the faces of the others, as if searching for a different opinion, something that might give him a reason to hope.

But Lex said nothing, and in his silence, said it all.

He glanced at the doctor.

But she, too, said nothing.