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Kamaria burst back into the Security offices, her face pale and breathing hard. Spencer and Darcy both looked over to her with concern.

“What’s going on?” Darcy asked.

“Nothing,” Kamaria said breathlessly. “Everything’s fine.”

“We heard the announcement,” Spencer stated.

“Oh, that…um,” Kamaria still hadn’t been able to process what had happened. She still couldn’t believe Matiew and his insistence that BaBS-Y would make a terrible mission director. And yet…

“Hey, hello over there,” Darcy said as she walked over to Kamaria, waving her hands and snapping her fingers to get her attention. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Kamaria lied. “You heard the mission director. Someone’s doing something they shouldn’t. She’ll deal with it. Everything’s fine. And it’s not my fault.”

She hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud. Both Darcy and Spencer, however, picked up on that last bit she’d said and exchanged looks.

“Why would we think it was your fault?” Spencer asked in as sarcastic a voice as he could manage. “You get some cryptic message from your doll, you rush out of the office, then there’s an announcement about some new plot to overthrow the robot, and now you come back here, looking terrified and guilty. Nothing suspicious about that at all.”

“You know what?” Kamaria began, trying to find what words she could throw at him. “You know what, Spencer? Well, for your information, uh…it was just some other people being stupid and thinking they could run this ship better than BaBS-Y. But you know what? They can’t. Because robots are better than people!”

“You wanna know something?” Spencer asked, but this time he was deadly serious, his voice low and quiet in contrast to Kamaria’s near-shouting. “I had family on board the The Dawn Light. You know what happened on that ship?”

Kamaria had recently been shown a report on The Dawn Light. Her mouth felt too dry to speak as she clenched and unclenched her fists.

“It was the first colony ship they sent out and my uncle got hired on as a data tech,” Spencer went on. “His whole family, wife and kids, all just up and left. They made it about six months and then everyone on board stopped sending messages. It took a few months to figure out what happened. Any guesses?”

Kamaria knew what had happened. Or, she knew what the report had said. It was ridiculous though. Why would robots do that? It made no sense.

“The cleaning bots killed everyone,” Spencer said when it was clear Kamaria wouldn’t be responding. “They’d decided that the humans were interfering with their task of keeping the ship clean so they killed them. Some people got beaten, some got gassed, others just got locked in their quarters until they died from dehydration. Then the robots cleaned everything up. They even sent back a notification, praising how clean the ship was now that all the people were dead and processed. Cleanest ship in the solar system, right up until the ship crashed into Jupiter.”

“That’s stupid,” Kamaria heard herself say but the panic inside of her was growing.

What if they were right and she was wrong? What if–

“Attention Security staff,” BaBS-Y’s voice came in over the speakers, “Prepare the holding cells for admitting the criminals.”

“You’ve already captured them?” Kamaria asked, shocked.

“Not yet,” BaBS-Y replied, “but they will be shortly.”

The eyes on Kamaria’s stuffed animal began to blink.

Get Ms Stock and Mr Gree into the holding cells

They are sympathetic to the mutineers

They are a risk to the Thesis and the Frank Nelis salon

Kamaria wasn’t sure when she’d stopped breathing but suddenly the room began to spin and her heart was pounding so hard and fast it was hurting.

“Kamaria?” Someone said but she couldn’t tell if it was Spencer or Darcy.

Both of them rushed forward to try and catch her as she started to fall.

*

“Keep working!” Jancy Chol shouted over the noise of robots battering at the barricade of desks and chairs. In times past, some people in the RCC had complained about there being only one way into or out of the Robotics Control Center. Now, everyone was glad they only had to defend this one entry point. Even still, the wood and aluminum furniture wasn’t going to last much longer.

Besides the noise from the assault, the sound of dozens of people working away at their workstations was the only other sound. Typing, clicking, sometimes someone running from one station to another with handwritten notes. The cameras were all covered over with hastily taped pieces of paper but there wasn’t time to deal with the microphones.

“Targets one through three have been completed,” someone announced over the din. A few hesitant cheers and clapping were the only reply. Still, progress was progress.

Matiew didn’t have time or energy to focus on much else beyond his own list of tasks. He and Rine were sequestered away in his office, each of them working independently. The pain from moving so much would have been unbearable for him were it not for the painkillers Jancy had brought him. Even still it wasn’t easy. He could feel the ribs sliding around from time to time and, painkillers or not, that always made his breath catch and electric pain to shoot up his side.

He needed to make at least a dozen new protocols for the robots still under the RCC’s control. With every passing minute, BaBS-Y found a way to strip yet more robots away from them and it was everything they could do to hold onto the remaining few. The only reason BaBS-Y hadn’t been able to just take them all right away was because of the safety measures it had agreed to when it first became the mission director. That slim margin was shrinking but while it held they could use those robots to combat the ones BaBS-Y was sending against them.

“Attention,” BaBS-Y’s voice spoke over the speakers, “Anyone currently engaged in this mutiny may stop now and surrender. Punishment for those who accept this offer will be significantly less compared to those who persist.”

Matiew looked up and met Rine’s gaze. She was shaking, hardly able to work. He scrawled quickly on a pad of paper and held it up for Rine.

We just need to hold out a little longer.

Rine nodded but didn’t get back to work. She tried, but her hands wouldn’t cooperate as tears began to stream down her face.

At that moment, Jancy poked her head into the office.

“If anyone wants to accept BaBS-Y’s offer, we’re setting up a space in the conference room for them to gather. We’ll uncover the cameras there so BaBS-Y can see they aren’t helping us.”

Immediately, Rine shot to her feet and hurried out of the room. She looked so ashamed of herself that she couldn’t even look at Matiew or Jancy as she left.

“Tell her it’s okay,” Matiew said to Jancy.

“I will,” Jancy nodded and left.

There was too much still to do that Matiew didn’t waste any time thinking about Rine or what punishments BaBS-Y had in mind once it captured them.

If it captured them.

He tried to tune out the continued banging from outside where the PaLS were striving to break down the barricade.

*

Stepping outside of a space craft was a surreal experience. It was almost easy to ignore the fact that they were on a colony ship until you stepped outside.

Outside.

Nothing compared to the sheer wonder of outer space. The closest anyone on earth ever came to having this kind of experience was by looking up at the stars on a clear night. And that was nowhere near to what the vastness of space was really like.

“How are you doing, Cassandra?” Telio asked.

“Never better,” she replied.

“That’s good,” Telio laughed, “because we’re about done with the easy part.”

They’d only just stepped out of the airlock. Knowing Telio, Cassandra assumed he was expecting her to point that fact out. Instead she made herself chuckle and give him a thumbs up.

“Let’s keep moving,” she said and Telio nodded.

“Lucky for you we don’t have to go very far,” he said, pointing up to where a massive hole in the side of the ship revealed the interior of sector twelve.

“Yup, not very far at all,” Cassandra agreed, patting the large wrench she’d clipped to the waist of her space suit.

*

The Thesis was in danger and, by extension, so was the Frank Nelis salon. BaBS-Y had anticipated some resistance from Cassandra Kokkinos but not the RCC. It’s interactions with Min and Matiew had supported a belief that they would remain loyal, if somewhat reluctant. It did not make sense to attribute this sudden change to Jancy Chol alone. She hadn’t had any contact with Min or Matiew until today at the meeting. She’d sounded normal right up until Cassandra Kokkinos contacted her. Then, within barely half an hour, everything had shifted. Suddenly there were dozens of new protocols being sent out to robots all over the ship, directing them to lock down BaBS-Y, ISaCC, and the PaLS units.

Data Transfer had also begun sending out new protocols in the last few minutes, trying to limit BaBS-Y’s access to the Thesis data banks. Engineering was similarly causing BaBS-Y problems, but of a different sort. They were cutting power to the charging stations by literally cutting the power cables. There was nothing BaBS-Y could do about that now.

With so many different attacks all going on at once, BaBS-Y had to prioritize where it focused its efforts. The PaLS could work more or less independently as they forced their way through the barricades blocking access to the RCC and Data Transfer. Of the two, Data Transfer was the most likely to fall first. They had multiple entry points and not enough people to maintain the barricades while simultaneously working on each new iteration of protocols designed to hamper BaBS-Y.

In either case, BaBS-Y calculated each location only had an hour at most before the PaLS broke through. Then the robots would make quick work of all those who were resisting it.

It was a shame. There would be no way to recover from such a loss. There simply would not be enough people to do all of the things they were needed to do. The robots on board were quite adept at their functions, but none were purpose built to handle so many tasks. Within a month, the life support systems would fail and everyone on board would perish. Once that happened, BaBS-Y would be able to assign the role of mission director over to ISaCC or another suitable robot. Then, and only then, would BaBS-Y be able to reopen the Frank Nelis salon. It would have limited clients, and limited supplies, but for a time at least the salon would remain functional.

A year, maybe a year and a half was all BaBS-Y could expect to keep the Frank Nelis salon open. Hardly an amount of time befitting the Frank Nelis salon, but it was the best BaBS-Y could do now that so many of the humans were determined to destroy such an important salon. They simply did not understand its importance.

Another wave of new protocols all got released at once from both Data Transfer and RCC, cutting it off from vital sections of the ship if it didn’t act fast. Given enough time, BaBS-Y could deal with just about anything they could throw at it. The real issue was time. If BaBS-Y fell too far behind then the amount of time it would take to deal with the older protocols would be longer than it would take for the people to make another batch of obstructing protocols. They could potentially lock it out of the Thesis systems long enough to cause some real harm to its ability to govern the ship.

Activating Creativity Protocols

…

Determine how best to conserve power until this unit can restore the charging stations

…

Begin designing countermeasures to the Data Transfer and RCC

…

Modify PaLS protocols to increase efficiency in accessing and arresting mutineers

…

Determine ways to extend the functionality of the Frank Nelis salon beyond one and a half years

…

Analyze potential –

Error: Memory cache full

Warning: Internal core temperature is exceeding recommended temperatures

Reboot in process

…

…

…

BaBS-Y logged the third time that had happened in the past half hour, noting the loss of the four minutes and sixteen seconds that it had taken to reboot.

This unit needs more memory

…

Recent events may explain why Matiew failed to provide this unit with a solution to its lack of memory