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Senior Officer Harvey Specter dashes to the bridge of the U.S.S. Justice.
“About time you got here,” spits a junior officer hunched over a control panel.
“Oh, shut it, Litt, if you hadn’t botched the exit paperwork we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Excuse me? The customs board in this system is acting in bad faith, they never require a full inventory for other ships—”
“And if you were a competent quartermaster less obsessed with collecting mud samples it wouldn’t take until the day of departure to discover that we’re twenty rations short—”
“Both of you, settle down.” Captain Pearson, head of the Justice, sweeps onto the deck, and the two lower officials immediately fall silent. “Specter, this is happening because you utterly failed to show cultural sensitivity on your mission—"
“I used perfectly standard negotiation tactics!”
“That you should have known were drastically inappropriate in this solar system, so you’re going to fix this mess, and quickly. We were scheduled to make the jump to hyperspace an hour ago.”
Officer Specter glowers up at her, then snaps a switch on a nearby control panel, opening a comm link to the problematic customs officer. “Tate, you’re treating us unfairly because of the solar system where we originated, and I have to say I’m not surprised. It’s a pattern with you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about—”
“I have proof you lost General Cooper’s shipment to the Venetian-Martian Alliance last week. And when I say ‘lost,’ I mean ‘purposefully dumped out an airlock.’”
“You’re bluffing,” comes the response, but everyone on the bridge hears the quaver in Tate’s voice.
“Donna,” Officer Specter barks, “send File 45A90 over to Tate’s superiors at the capitol—”
“Upload commencing now,” says the android. Only those who know the Donna well can hear the definite element of snark in her otherwise obedient voice as she calls up File 45A90 and realizes it’s nothing but plans for the next all-ship fire drill.
“All right, all right!” Tate calls over the comm. “Get your ugly ship out of my system.”
“Who are you calling ugly?” Donna exclaims, but Officer Litt has already switched off the comm link and typed in the departure commands.
“30 seconds until the jump to hyperspace,” Captain Pearson says into a mic, broadcasting the declaration around the whole ship. “Head to your designated posts and strap in.”
3. 2. 1—
And they shoot into hyperspace, far above the speed of light.
Even if she didn’t know the layout of every inch of her ship, she could just follow the jazzy music wafting through the hallways.
“Officer Specter, may I come in?”
Captain Pearson hears the click of the lock, and the door to Officer Specter’s quarters slides open. The man himself is facing away from her and staring at the blue-white of hyperspace as it streaks by his window, and she doesn’t have to see his face to know there are shadows under his eyes, and maybe a tear on his cheek.
“Harvey.”
“Jessica, no.”
“You’re obviously still struggling. Bereavement leave is a perfectly legitimate reason to take time off—”
“You just made me Senior Officer because you need my help. We’re still patching holes from Hardman’s sabotage. I can’t just up and leave.”
The captain stays silent for a moment, trying to find a way to prove him wrong, but he’s not, dammit.
“A compromise, then, because you need to stop working yourself to near-death and then taking it out on local peoples and Louis,” she says. “Pick an enlisted member of our crew and make them your assistant.”
He spins around in his chair to give her a look. “If there’s any enlisted member on board who’s still willing to work with me, they don’t have enough sense for me to work with them.”
“Then take a look at some fresh candidates. We’ll be stopping by Cambridge for a couple of hours next week— if you start reviewing applications now, you should be able to pick up someone who’s sensible and not terrified of you . . . yet.”
It’s a decent plan— Cambridge Station is the home of Harvard Fleet Academy, the elite school where the Justice has recruited a truly disproportionate number of its crew members. Still, he can’t prevent a grimace from flickering across his face.
“I know you think you work better alone,” Captain Pearson murmurs, “but, if your only functional relationships are with me and our ship’s AI, you’re going to burn out before your time.”
It’s their second morning in hyperspace.
“Donna, I need the—”
“It’s open on your computer.”
“Oh, and also I didn’t have a chance to—”
“Your freshly brewed coffee is waiting on your desk, courtesy of one of my many lackeys.”
“Marry me?”
“I’ve got the venue picked out, just waiting for automaton marriage to be legalized.”
“Excellent,” Harvey snorts as he heads into his office and sits down to look over the list of resumes Donna’s compiled for him. He breezes through them, flicking each one off the screen after scanning it for only a few seconds, and quickly runs out of options.
“Donna—” he starts to complain.
“Harvey, don’t be unreasonable. Those were all perfectly qualified candidates.”
“I’m not looking for ‘qualified,’ I’m looking for another me.” He awaits a response, but none comes. “Donna?”
“Why don’t you put this aside for now? We’ve detected another hacking attempt from Hardman—”
“You okay?”
“Obviously! Do you really think that piece of filth could ever wound a goddess such as myself? But all the engineers will be scrambling to do damage control for the rest of the day, and they could use your oversight. I of course would never say a bad word against my primary programmer, but when it comes to group management Benjamin can be something of a . . .”
“Wuss? Pansy? Bumbling, stuttering pushover?”
“. . . I didn’t say a thing.”
Officer Specter throws himself into his new task, taking over Benjamin’s managerial role and leading the charge against Hardman’s latest attack. He doesn’t often deal directly with engineers anymore, not since his disastrous stint as an engineer working under Cameron Dennis left a bad taste in his mouth. Still, Jessica had sent him into Cameron’s clutches so that he could bring an awareness of engineering into his work as a commanding officer, and that’s exactly what he does, cleverly ordering priorities, hearing out concerns, and distributing tasks. The team finishes dealing with the hack hours ahead of schedule, thanks to his efficiency and also the surprisingly small amount of damage, and so Officer Specter sends the engineers off to a well-deserved rest.
Still, he can’t bring himself to go back to his own quarters— they’re too quiet, too lonely, and there’s a limit to how many nights he’ll lose to chatting with Donna. For a supposedly emotionless, heartless android, she’s suspiciously successful at making him spill his deepest secrets. Instead he skulks down to the Justice’s server room, usually off-limits, and lets himself in using keycodes that technically belong only to his captain. Though he trusts his engineers, he intends to run the diagnostics again and check the ship’s systems himself, because he knows Hardman’s sly tricks better than anyone, and because he doesn’t have anything better to do.
With a hiss the doors open, letting him into the cavernous server room. The Justice is a fairly modern-looking ship, all soft blues and light woods and glass walls, but this hall looks like it’s borrowed from the next century. There are rows upon rows of pristine white servers, dotted by sparkling lights in blue and red and green. A gentle whirring hums through the air, punctuated by an occasional beep.
Officer Specter strides down the rows, looking for any clear physical irregularities before he starts in on the software, not that he expects to find any— hackers usually aren’t careless enough to leave such obvious damage. But then he turns down a new row and finds an entire block of servers has gone dark, and there’s someone curled up on the floor in front of it.
And he’s springing forward and pinning this other intruder down and pressing the muzzle of his gun to their head. The intruder wakes up with a jolt and instinctively starts to struggle against the officer’s grip, before perceiving the cool metal against their brow and falling back against the ground, panting.
“You’re not Hardman,” Officer Specter growls.
“What— what? Of course not!”
Without moving the gun an inch, he examines the other trespasser’s features. He’s a male human, young, blond, with blue eyes and soft features currently bathed in white and jewel-colored light from still-functioning servers nearby. Definitely not Daniel Hardman, then.
“Are you one of his minions?”
“Hey, I have way better taste than that.”
“Then who are you?”
“An engineer.”
“Name your position, team, and current projects.”
“JSA— Junior Security Architect. Infosec Team 2. My main objective is the deployment of the new Pilot Antivirus System, but I also work on testing and upkeep of core infrastructure.”
“Who in Command do you report to?”
“Officer Harvey Specter,” the intruder reels off smoothly before glancing down at the name badge of the man pinning him down. “. . . Dammit.”
Officer Specter smirks. “All right, kid. Nice try, but I happen to know every person on the teams that report to me, and JSA Sorkin you ain’t. Last chance to give me a straight answer.”
“I’m Mike Ross, born on Earth? And, uh, did you hear about the drugs bust on Atarash?”
“Oh, you have to be kidding.”
“In my defense, I’ve never been involved with the supply side in the drug business before. I think that worked in my advantage— if the police had any sort of profile on me ahead of time, I doubt I would have been let into the spaceport.”
“The spaceport where you decided to use the U.S.S. Justice as your personal getaway car,” Officer Specter deadpans.
“Well, I figured the police would never see that particular plot twist coming, and I was right.”
“How has nobody on the ship found you yet?”
“I think because Donna likes me?”
He does a double take. “What did you just say?”
“As your ship’s managing AI she knows essentially everything, so she lets me into hiding places, warns me when people are coming, present times excepted, gives me work to do—”
“You’re a drug dealer, and apparently not even a good one,” Officer Specter scoffs. “What the hell kind of work can you do?”
Mike narrows his eyes, considering. “What if I told you I consume knowledge at a rate that makes humans, aliens and emotion-capable AIs jealous and I’ve actually passed the Earth starship service exam?”
“I’d say you’re an even worse liar than I thought.”
“You’re a senior officer, you know more than almost anybody about rules and projects and current schedules on the Justice. Ask me anything.”
“Tell me about Sarbox.”
“Sarbox is a research project commenced five years back, directed by Drs. Sarbanes and Oxley of the U.S. Department of Research. It collects data from over half a million spaceships including the Justice and uses it to verify studies by private corporations, which have famously doctored their conclusions in the past.”
“All right except for one thing— the Justice quit the study three years back.”
“Active collection, yes, but Sarbox is still drawing on and analyzing radiation data that the Justice is gathering for SOL’s UV mapping project.”
Harvey Reginald Specter does not stoop to gaping, but he feels tempted. “How can you know all that?”
“I told you, I have an incredible memory, and Donna likes me. She’s been having me read up on the Justice, and she’s had me do odd jobs that let me get even more familiar with how things work. I’ve been helping with the Hardman attack, I identified a breach on this particular server and switched it off to contain it, probably before the official engineers even started scanning for errors.”
He stares. “If you’re so competent on a ship, why didn’t you go to a training school in the first place?”
“Trevor— the guy who set up the drug deal, you probably saw his mug shot in the coverage— went to undergrad with me, and he convinced me to sell answers to a multivariate calc test. Turns out we sold it to the dean’s daughter.” Mike sighs. “I lost my scholarship, I got kicked out of school, and I have been wishing for a way back ever since.”
Officer Specter rocks back, finally pulling away his gun, and calls up to the ceiling, “Donna, would you like to explain yourself?”
The answer comes back, “You said you weren’t looking for ‘qualified.’”
He glares at the speaker above him for a full twenty seconds before bursting into laughter. “Mike Ross, I do believe this was your job interview.”
“Wait, what?”
“I need an assistant. Technically, I need an assistant who trained at Harvard Fleet Academy to become a commander and preferably graduated with honors.”
“. . . That’s not me.”
“If I call a certain astrobiologist over at the Cambridge station, it could be. She owes me an awful lot of favors.”
“. . . And that’s forgery and fraud.”
“You’re a genius, I’m seeing it now.” Officer Specter rolls his eyes.
“Hey, I don’t have a problem with forgery and fraud, I’m just making sure you know what you’re getting into.”
“My eyes are wide open, Mike.”
“So . . . Donna arranged this whole thing,” Mike says with wonder, then frowns. “Including the part where you nearly shot me.”
“I hacked his gun first,” the android cuts in entirely too merrily. “If he pulled the trigger, it’d switch into shock mode, backfire and just knock him out instead.”
Officer Specter glares, but he can’t stop the smile twitching at the ends of his lips.
“So, Mike, will you take the job?” she continues.
“Yes!” Then he looks at Harvey, slightly embarrassed, and amends, “If you’ll have me.”
Harvey at last pushes himself off Mike’s lap and stows his gun. “Yeah, I will. Once we get to Cambridge Station, you’re hired, and in the meantime keep sneaking around and doing whatever it is you’re doing.”
He reaches out a hand and pulls Mike up as well. “Hey, you wouldn’t by any chance be the person who ate twenty meals’ worth of rations without permission, would you?”
“Um, yes?”
“You nearly got Officer Litt fired.”
“Oh, God,” he exclaims. “Donna said it wouldn’t be a problem . . .”
“It wasn’t. Keep up the good work,” Harvey says with a smirk before heading back down the row and completing his check of the servers. If he swings by the spot where Mike is sitting more times than strictly necessary, well, that’s between him and the Donna.
He returns to his quarters exhausted that night, but as he surveys the blue of hyperspace streaming past his window he smiles, for the first time in months.