Prison Ship (16 page)

“I will not kill him.”

The cyborg stared at him as if it was challenging his stance.

Steiner’s comlink sounded.

“Steiner here.”

“Captain.” Benjamin Richards’s voice came from the device. “We just found Frank Pearce dead.”

“What?” Steiner exclaimed. “How could he die if he’s locked inside the brig?”

“Someone cut off the air supply to all three detention cells. Pearce suffocated.”

“That’s impossible. You and I set a proximity alarm inside the life-support station. Isn’t it still operating?”

“My console indicates it is. No one could have broken in through the ventilation shafts without setting it off.”

Steiner swallowed hard. If he hadn’t freed Bricket when he had, the bartender would be dead, too. His breath caught in his lungs. That was exactly what Tramer had wanted.

“Captain?” Richards asked.

“I’ll call you back in a minute,” Steiner said. “I think I may know who did it.” He closed the channel and looked up into the deathly pale face above him. “Did you execute Frank Pearce?”

Tramer remained silent.

“Answer my question.”

“Frank Pearce trapped you in your cabin without air,” Tramer replied.

“How do you know that? Did you see him?”

“People do not hide their words from what they
think
is just a machine.”

Steiner gasped. Could the cyborg be programmed to respond as if it thought it were still a man? That might explain the rage he saw within its human eye.

“Did you break into life support and kill Pearce?” Steiner asked again.

“His death was necessary.”

“Were you responsible for it?”

Tramer didn’t reply.

Steiner fought to keep himself from shaking. He was angry at the cyborg’s failure to give him a direct answer and a little frightened of what it might do if provoked. He stepped back from Tramer and took a deep breath to calm himself.

“Who is in command?” he asked.

“You are.”

“Bricket lives.”

The mechanical man saluted, then marched from the room.

Steiner stared dumbfounded after it, recalling its nickname, “Killer Cyborg.” It could murder without hesitation. Because it thought it was still human, it was more dangerous than before. It might be insane.

“AMAZING Grace” echoed throughout the small service air lock, which served as a chapel. The engineers worked together harmoniously to give the hymn a beauty Steiner had never known. Some waved their hands in the air as if having a religious experience. Steiner didn’t share in their worship, nor did he understand it. It hadn’t helped Mary. He was here for only one reason—to seek counsel from someone who knew Tramer.

When the hymn ended, Daniels led the congregation in a final prayer. After the men began dispersing, Steiner approached the head engineer, who was gathering his notes into his frayed Bible.

“May I speak to you for a moment?”

“Sure,” Daniels answered. “Is this of a professional nature or a personal one?”

“Both.”

Daniels indicated for him to sit on the floor beside him. “Please, go on.”

“On the professional side, I need your assistance again in operating the landing bay during the transporting of the trainees to and from the planet.”

The ebony man smiled. “No problem.”

“But there could be problems,” Steiner replied. “If there are any attempts to overtake the bay, I’ll be forced to blow its emergency hatch.”

As Steiner had expected, the head engineer gave no facial response—not even one of concern.

“I’ll provide a space suit for you in case that does happen, but it won’t protect you against the suction,” Steiner added.

Daniels chuckled. “I don’t care for one. Thank you for offering. What’s the personal question?”

Steiner stared at him blankly for a second, then remembered what he had wanted to ask him. “I need some advice about Maxwell Tramer. You’ve known it longer than I. It seems unstable, perhaps dangerous. Do you have any insight to offer?”

Daniels sighed. “The best suggestion I have is to try looking at life from
his
point of view.”

Steiner stopped him there. “You think that Tramer is a man?”

“He’s not a normal person like you and me. He’s a living soul trapped inside a mechanical shell.”

“Then you believe its humanity is intact?” Steiner asked, genuinely curious.

“Yes.”

“How can you tell?”

“I’ve seen flashes of it occasionally. He likes me.”

“Why you?”

“Because I treat him as a real person.”

“I’ve never seen you and Tramer together. If it—or rather, he—likes you, why doesn’t he spend time with you?”

Daniels smiled. “Maxwell isn’t comfortable being around other people. He secludes himself.”

“Any ideas as to his reasons?”

“Maybe it’s too painful to be reminded he was once a man. It might be easier to live as a machine.” Daniels paused. “Have you ever seen how everyone treats him?”

“Most keep their distance.”

“Exactly. They fear him. A few others act impersonally to him like they would toward an appliance.”

Steiner swallowed against the bile climbing up his throat. Hearing Tramer being referred to as Maxwell was growing too uncomfortable.

“What do you think that does to him emotionally?” Daniels asked.

Steiner shrugged, unwilling to make that stretch.

“But it’s so easy, Jacob. Maxwell acts like a machine to protect himself from his own emotions.”

A sliver of doubt cracked through Steiner’s stone-hard convictions. Could Maxwell be alive? No, he refused to accept that. Maxwell was dead—that was the only way it could ever be.

“He likes you, too, you know,” Daniels said.

Steiner looked sharply at the head engineer.

“More importantly, he respects your authority,” Daniels said. “I saw how he acted toward Captain Barker. That man behaved like a fool. Maxwell resisted him. However, he deals with you respectfully. He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t like you.”

That was as much as Steiner could bear. “How can you say that? That monstrosity has no regard for human life. I believe it’s been involved in the recent murders. It might even be insane.”

The head engineer shook his head. “If Maxwell had lost his mind, everyone on this ship would have been his victim by now. He is completely rational.”

Steiner jumped to his feet. “Seven years ago, it mutilated two defenseless people. Does that sound rational?”

Still seated peacefully on the floor, Daniels picked up his frayed Bible and held it close to him. “I’ve assassinated many people throughout my lifetime. If anyone is more worthy of being condemned as a murderer, it’s me.”

Shame flooded through Steiner. He shouldn’t have lost his temper with a man who had done nothing but help him since the beginning of the voyage. “I can’t compare you to Tramer. You’ve changed, found God, or something like that.”

“Maybe he has changed as well.”

“I doubt it. All I see is the infamous ‘Killer Cyborg.’ ”

“Behind the hardware, under the deformities, a tortured soul cries out in agony—in some ways, just like me.”

“I don’t see that.”

“Look into Maxwell’s human eye. The pain is evident.”

BEFORE retiring for a nap, Steiner decided to go to the command center and verify Daniels’s theory. One by one, the ship’s cameras followed him. In his mind’s eye, he could see the cyborg’s frozen stare boring into him.

He likes you, too,
he could almost hear Daniels say.

With forced steps, Steiner ascended the stairway to the main deck of the command center. Tramer stood in front of the security monitors. It didn’t turn around to acknowledge his presence but continued flipping through the images on the screens.

“Mr. Tramer,” Steiner finally managed. The cyborg turned to face him. “I am putting you in charge of training the combat teams on the planet surface.”

“An intelligent choice,” the synthesized voice said.

“I’m wary of sending you alone. I would like you to include Patrick Braun as your second. He used to be a U.S. Ground Forces sergeant.”

“He is undisciplined.”

“He is out of practice. Once you get down there, I think he may prove to be an asset to your team.”

“I will comply and notify him of the change in his schedule. However, if you wish to oversee the training for yourself, a transmitter can be connected to my sensors. The signal can be received on the security monitors. You would then be able to modify my training procedures as you see fit.”

The suggestion took Steiner by surprise. “Is that hard to set up?”

“The bartender is capable of the procedure,” Tramer replied. “I can guide him through the process before I leave.”

Steiner wondered why the cyborg was being so helpful. It didn’t have to volunteer for the transmitter. It could have kept silent. Then he realized it might be looking for an opportunity to execute Bricket.

“If you try to harm him—”

“I have and will continue to respect your orders. So far, his pardon has not caused the rest of the crew to lose their fear of you.”

Steiner hesitated, wondering how to respond. “Thank you,” he finally said.

“Is there anything else, Captain?” it asked.

“Yes,” he forced himself to say. Every instinct in his being told him to leave, but he stood firm. It was time to test Daniels’s theory. He would apologize to Tramer for treating it like a mechanical device. If it was just an inanimate object, it wouldn’t respond. If it was Maxwell—no that wouldn’t happen.

He looked past the glare of the blue sensor orb, into the gray, seemingly lifeless, human eye on the left side of the deformed face. He realized he had never seen it blink before. Could it?
Look deeper,
he told himself. The pupil shifted slightly back and forth, as did many people’s when they were looking at another person.

Are you Maxwell Tramer?
he asked silently.
Are you hiding your emotions for your own protection?
Steiner didn’t want to believe it. It was more comforting to accept it as a machine. The possibilities were too horrifying. But he had to know.

“Mr. Tramer, I wanted to say …” He trailed off, not knowing if he could finish. His stomach tightened into knots. He forced himself to continue. “I want to apologize for the way I’ve behaved toward you during the past few weeks. I’ve acted as if you were only a machine. You were my friend once, and I hope you can be again.”

The eye blinked.

Immediately, Tramer turned away. When Steiner inched closer, he saw the cyborg’s reflection in one of the darkened monitors. A single trail of wetness ran down the ghostly countenance.

Feeling sick, Steiner steadied himself against the wall. Daniels had been right all along. Steiner stumbled back down the stairs out of the center, his discovery too mortifying to imagine. Maxwell had survived the explosion over seven years earlier.

When Steiner returned to his cabin, sleep didn’t come well. He lay on his cot, thinking of his first meeting with Maxwell. It was about a year before the Day of Betrayal, when there was still hope for a peaceful resolution to the unrest between United Star Systems and the newly formed New Order Empire. Steiner had joined Captain McKillip’s Cyrian Defense and gone with them on a covert mission to uncover evidence that the New Order was building new warships, called battlecruisers, which outgunned the typical U.S.S. Destroyer-class vessel. After McKillip had secretly released the evidence to the interstellar media sources, the U.S.S. Congress reluctantly approved a weapons upgrade for all their U.S.S. warships, enlisting Maxwell and Candice Tramer, a renowned team in the field of particle physics, to upgrade the particle cannons. Candice oversaw the production while Maxwell oversaw the installations, visiting the
Valiant
first because it was already in the space docks at the time. Steiner had been assigned to assist him personally, following him around the ship and making sure he got everything he needed. Maxwell had a quiet demeanor, and his voice had lacked inflection, making him sound machinelike even then. But he had possessed a sharp wit, which he interjected randomly throughout his monochromatic drone just to see the unexpected reactions from his intended audience. When he was inside the
Valiant
’s cafeteria, Maxwell had witnessed a fight between Mary and Steiner and quietly observed that she might be pregnant because he had gone through a similar struggle with his wife before the birth of their daughter. He had been right.

Steiner wondered what had happened to his wife, Candice, and his daughter. She had visited the
Valiant
only once, to discuss a production problem with her husband, and Steiner got only a brief introduction to her. Where was she now? Steiner suspected she and her daughter were no longer a part of Maxwell’s life. He couldn’t blame them. Wiping a tear from his face, Steiner rolled over and thought about how Mary might have reacted if something like that had happened to him. He wanted to think that she would never leave him, no matter what. It wasn’t long before he fell into a deep sleep.

Steiner and his newly pregnant wife, Mary, were walking behind Maxwell past a row of pulse cannons as he droned on about how he had enhanced their output. A pulse cannon exploded, blinding Steiner. When he looked up, there was Mary with a sad look on her face. Steiner raised his hand to her, but realized it was a metallic arm—Maxwell Tramer’s arm. He was in the cyborg’s body. Mary turned, blowing him a small regretful kiss, and ran out onto the launchpad for her shuttle. He couldn’t move his mechanical legs to stop her. The shuttle erupted into flames.

Abruptly, the dream changed.

Steiner, back in his normal body, stood in the command center of the
Marauder
, face-to-face with Maxwell Tramer, the cyborg he had been forced to work with, trying to determine what its most horrifying trait was. Its smell? Its appearance? Its lifeless stare? No. It was the possibility that this grotesque creation of human hands could be his former friend. He found himself turning in utter disgust and walking away.