But the one thing he could depend on was the trust he had in his fellow crew members. Not just to not slit his throat while he slept, but even to watch out and make sure no one else did.
Tanin was still a madmale, but no one but a madmale would have been able to accomplish the things he did. Forcing trust on them was probably the height of it. But it was a madness that Sway had come to depend on through the years.
And now, he could sleep safely while a female cared for him like he was her own youngling. He truly was grateful. Both to Garnet and the captain.
“Great,” Garnet beamed at him, patting her robot on the top as it passed by, cleaning the floor, like it was a pet. “I’m almost done in here. We swung out of subspace like an hour ago. Sorry, like half a mark ago?” Her brow furrowed as she tried to convert from her Earth time into Standard time.
Sway could see that much time had passed for himself on the multiple holodisplays he had up. While he didn'tneedto do any calculations or navigation while in subspace, he liked to keep working anyway. The calculations for entry and exit had to be donebeforethe swing and could not be completed en route. However, he could always find something to do. More math to improve on. To study. Even while they were in subspace, he could force himself to work.
He had to.
When Sway first joined with Tanin, his knowledge of subspace was limited. The Master wanted to expose living tissue to subspace, which meant he needed access to subspace. Something that neither the Master nor Sway had been able to do when that particular urge came upon him. But the Master tookpeople whodidknow and forced them to regurgitate as much of it as they could to Sway. And that’s how he first learned.
Accessing subspace from a singular position was actually not that hard. Once you knew the math, it could be done quickly. So long as your subspace generator and crystals didn’t move, you could keep using the same equations with very little changes.
However, accessing subspace from a moving starship, calculating from new locations, finding a safe place to swing out, calculating the new landing location, and doing it all in an area wide enough to encompass an entire starship wasincrediblydifficult.
Alred knew all that. Knowing any of the math at all was why Sway had been on the list of potential candidates for navigator in the first place. But since what he knew wasn’t actually navigation skills, his name had been low on that list. It was like asking a youngling who just figured out how to stand up to drive a hover. The jump in skill was too great to be a reasonable expectation.
Still, Tanin had taken a risk on him because Sway seemed more trustworthy than the others. To Tanin, that quality was more important than what he knew. After all, knowledge could be learned, but the inherent character of a person could not.
Tanin kept the vow he made to Sway that day. He never asked Sway to hurt or kill anyone ever again. He ordered others on the crew to do so, but never Sway. Even more impressively, Tanin convinced the others to give Sway that same consideration. They made sure not to force him into a situation where he’d need to commit violence. In return, Sway was determined to be the best navigator he could, even if he had to learn everything nearly from scratch.
So, he could do more work. He could always do more work.
He could keep the bad thoughts at bay and be a reliable member of the crew. He could.
A little light flashed on one of his displays, and there was suddenly a tiny person walking across his console. He was bright yellow, see through-
-and he had aface.
Sway blinked at the small light form, stunned. He was pretty sure when he last saw the computer person, just yesterday, Alred had been faceless.
The tiny figure stopped, turning to grin up at him with fists on his nude hips. He was male in shape but neutered for modesty’s sake. And he had aface. It was a very strange sight after years of only seeing him as a faceless, vaguely person-shaped figure.
The light form was a fake body for Alred to use to interact with people. Alred was the ship’s acting AI, so his bodywasthe ship, in a way. But it was hard for regular people to hold conversations with a ship. Or to see one as a real, living person. The light form was like a doll used to speak with them, giving them something more familiar to treat as the person Alred.
However, his body was not the ship, but actually his core attached to the ship. The core was like a brain in a body, so it was practically the same thing as a person. Alred, for all that he was acting as an AI, was still a sentient being. Just a technologically based one. He still demanded the same respect and acknowledgement that any other being would.
But the light form didn't need a face. It never had. Alred’s eyes were the cameras and other sensors spread throughout the ship. Eyes on the light figure were as pointless as feathers on a rock. To see him with one now, so suddenly, was odd.
Especially when he smiled –with a mouth– up at Sway like nothing was different.
“I’ve already started us on the docking route to Hir-Fallow,” he said, his voice tiny in proportion to the tiny light form.“Tanin is in the upper bridge now contacting them. I’m so excited for my upgrade!”
“It’s the Humility’s upgrade, not yours,” Garnet said, chuckling as she stepped around Spot so she could stand beside Sway and look at the little Alred. “You’re not actually a starship, Alred.”
“I am right now,” he countered smugly. “You can be jealous, it’s okay. Jealousy is a very normal, healthy reaction. Denying it wouldn’t be good for you.”
“Jealous that I don’t weigh a few thousand tons and have lasers in my face?” She snickered, grinning at him like she wasn’t surprised that he suddenly had features. “Yeah, I’m totally jealous.”
“They’re projectiles, actually. We don’t have the credz to afford lasers. And I’ll have you know, I’ve dropped a few tons since I was an AI on Rik-Vane. And I’ve not gained back enough to weigh nearly as much as the starship recycler I used to be. So, I’m doing rather well on my weight, thank you. I’m very healthy. It’s quite rude of you to shame me for my size.”
Sway had no idea what a ton was, but it seemed like Alred was just playing along with whatever teasing game he and Garnet had going on. So, he just smiled at the two of them as he checked the ship’s trajectory, speed, and coordinates. They were going pretty slow – relatively speaking – as they came in on approach to their destination. Short, slower-than-light navigations were easy for Alred.
As a computer, he was better at calculations than Sway. So, for standard navigation, he could do a lot of the work. The dynamic changes of subspace math, however, was more suitable for a non-computer based brain. With Sway and Alred together, they could get the Humility almost anywhere.
Hir-Fallow Station was massive, even by station standards. It was dedicated to ship repair and upgrades and could accommodate multiple ships of many different classes all at once. It also had an entire city within it for the workers that did those repairs and the crews of the ships who came in on those ships. Sway couldn’t see it from here since the bridge didn’t have windows, but he could see the data that represented it on his holodisplays.
