Grief and Dismay

The ship was Dismayed. Literally, that's what the status board displayed under mode: "Dismay".
What it should have read is "Boy, she is pissed!"

"Dismay" can only mean a number of things when we're talking about a sentient ship. Pastunella was one of the mark 12's. She's scripted up to date battle reports, play-by-play readouts on the whereabouts of all executive officers, and full spectral analysis of all surrounding celestial phenomena, gamma, infrared, solar, and quantum. Heck, out Past' can tell you what the captain ate for breakfast and exactly how many molecules of that meal remain in his digestive tract.

"Dismay" means she's offline, and critical. So either:
a) she's had a near total systems failure and is incapable of even remotely decent technical updates
b) our telesatellites have been fooled by local radiation degrading the signal (unlikely) or
c) There's been an attack on her local body of such magnitude and devastation that she has needed to wrest control from her human crew.

It was probably c. And I was scared. Not for me, tell you. Not for her crew either. But for the poor sap on the receiving end of her arsenal.

I can picture it now: Pastunella caught unawares by some pirate band or young upstart commander of one of the rogue empires. Said young maverick warlord thinks he's got this warship licked. Outnumbered, even a Segura class Warship like Pastunella cannot possibly surpass the might of 20 lesser warships.

And that's where he'd be wrong. The attacking warlord unloads all his torpedos, lasers, railguns, whatever he's got. Anything short of a nuke isn't gonna destroy her. Anything less will just make her mad. He doesn't know this yet, because he hasn't done his homework. We know this because if he had, he wouldn't be attacking.

Pastunella isn't just sentient, it's a LIVING ship. She repairs herself. She thinks. She FEELS. She reacts. Most of the time she's kept under close reign and balance by her human captain. But not always. Once she scanned the arsenal before her and recognized it as "not a friendly" she advised her captain to abandon ship. If he was brave or stupid enough to not take the better part of valor and take her advice, he would be forced to once the impacts hit. Either he'd be dead or most of his critical crew would be. A girl's thick skin can only take so much after all. Once Pastunella's shields absorbed even 90% of such an impact the last 10% would tear some holes in her.

The surviving crew hops into escape pods and scadoots to the shy side of the action.
AND THAT'S when the real fun begins. Once a certain percentage of the executive crew is deceased and/or the captain cedes control, Pastunella goes off script. ALL Mark 12's do. Off script means not even she knows what she's gonna do. She' s a 220 million ton mass of smart metal, circuits, and heat armed with the strength of 100's of fighters. And yes, SHE'S got the nuke.


I sit back and look at my circuit board for awhile. Finally damage and casualty readouts are pouring in. It's then that I realize how thankful I am that I am thousands of light years away from the mess. It's one of the times I'm glad to be merely a emergency board technician, no longer a proper soldier. I take the calls, I read the data, I dispatch the cavalry. I'm just the conductor of the symphony. Then the real men and women of valor take the ball and run with it. They go where I tell them and win the day (hopefully) for our side.

I'm reading 20 warhsips, non-friendlies, ALL heavily damaged. That's when I'm reminded that even WE'RE afraid of her--and we built her. Pastunella, the latest mark 12 is programmed with vengeance in mind. Her personality profile is such that she's likely to keep on battling the enemy even AFTER her entire crew is dead. She'll follow an enemy scout all the way back to their homeland if possible. And she'll do what what sane men and women will never recommend.

It's why she's got fail safes. Most Mark 12's have got self-destruct kill switches. Y'know, remote control instant death in the case of rogue action. Pastunella's too smart for that. Any ship that's talented enough to heal it's own wounds and upgrade it's own software could probably find away to hack the manual overrides and take control of her own kill switch. After all, if you had a 22 gigaton nuke sitting in your heart plate wouldn't YOU want control over it. We don't call them world killers for nothing, hon.

No, for Pastunella we've got safeword confirmations on a 24 hour atomic clock. Every cycle we send her the reenable code. She doesn't get word from us within a day, she dies. It's the old starving dog tactic. If you got a crazed attack dog you don't completely trust you get it hooked on meds real quick. Then you poison it. That dog don't receive the antidote every so often, it dies. That's the only way we really keep safe from the monsters we create.

My emergency response vessel must be entering the quadrant now. The signal is clearing up and I'[m receiving much more delicate data all OVER my screen. Twenty ships, Regarian, what's left of them anyways. It was an unprompted attack. Captain Onara--David--must have been caught with his gaurd down. He and his crew were exploring an uncharted area of space far from the demilitarized zone. Near the Toxic Lands, the last place you'd expect a full squadron of ships from a developed nation to be hiding. The Regarian's attacked first, without warning, without any com traffic at all.

And now we'll probably never know what was going through their crazed minds. Not unless their embassy starts talking to our again. That hasn't happened in a few decades. However, once they read their decimated ships they may change their tune. By now, Pastunella should be picking up her escape pods, gathering her crew, like a mother sparrow hovering over her newborn eggs.

Casualty reports show losses of a lot of our boys, but mostly non-executive class. If they'd killed David, Pastunella would already be en route to the Regarian homeworld, revenge on her mind. Hell hath no fury like a Septuta class battleship without her captain. The pair are typically bonded "at birth". David's the only commander she's ever known. He's been mother, handler, friend, and child to her. Even the Mark 9's have been known to crazy without their master. Masterless 9's have been known to go ronin without a captain. They'll dump all their crew ( with or without docking with a spaceport) and start traveling the system like a hungry kitten for food, all the while grieving the loss and not getting past the trauma.

But Pastunella is a Mark 12. We've corrected the weaknesses in the programming and, as well, she's been battle tested. She's seen a lot of battle and a lot of death. She knows what it's like to lose a familiar friend and keep on going.

The data reads that the battle has ended. No more radiation signatures are coming in from laser fire. And Pastunella has entered repair mode. The 15 smoldering hulks of Regarian meat metal ( 5 of them are nothing more than ash, which doesn't register on my screens) will be investigated soon. Prisoners of war will be taken, if there are any survivors, and the rest will be scavenged. The enemy black boxes may even provide us some clues to why they atacked, if they can be de-encrypted.

But battle status still reads a crimson block letter "Dismay". It probably means that David just hasn't had time to make it back to the bridge yet to assume command. Maybe he's still aboard an escape pod. or maybe Pasty's still so pissed at the indignity of the attack that she wants to go take on the entire Regarian empire in returbution. Luck for us, and them, that they're already a good 3 weeks from the border at high warp, let alone the homeworld.

David should be able to talk her down before then. In the worst case, we'd throw the switch. I click the dispatch button on my com board. I order one medical ship and a fleet of Javelin fighter escorts from the nearest space station. I order a science vessel, the Okarena of Time, to intercept as well because it's a day closer.

In any case, I click send. Then I earmark for "follow-up" and "red flag" it as critical. Battle is hard on everyone who survives it. And grief takes time no mater how many years you've been in the mess. Some of us deal with the dismay better than others. And some, like me, just get desk jobs. The hours ain't bad and the privileges decent. I still see action, like the soldiers on the front, I just see it in the vivid detail of delicate numbers, that dance across my screen--like a marionette ballet dancer in a music box, a shade memory of a far off happening.