Captain Future xx - The Death of Captain Future (October 1995) by Allen Steele

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    Fictionwise
www.Fictionwise.com
    Copyright ©1995 by Allen M. Steele
    First published in Asimov's, October 1995

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The name of Captain Future, the supreme foe of all evil and evildoers, was known to every inhabitant of the Solar System.
That tall, cheerful, red-haired young adventurer of ready laugh and flying fists was the implacable Nemesis of all oppressors and exploiters of the System's human and planetary races. Combining a gay audacity with an unswervable purposefulness and an unparalleled mastery of science, he had blazed a brilliant trail across the nine worlds in defense of the right.
—Edmond Hamilton; Captain Future And The Space Emperor (1940)
    This is the true story of how Captain Future died.
    We were crossing the inner belt, coasting toward our scheduled rendezvous with Ceres, when the message was received by the ship's comlink.
    "Rohr...? Rohr, wake up, please."
    The voice coming from the ceiling was tall, dark, and handsome, sampled from one of the old Hercules vids in the captain's collection. It penetrated the darkness of my quarters on the mid-deck where I lay asleep after standing an eight-hour watch on the bridge.
    I turned my head to squint at the computer terminal next to my bunk. Lines of alphanumeric code scrolled down the screen, displaying the routine systems-checks and updates that, as second officer, I was supposed to be monitoring at all times, even when I was off-duty and dead to the world. No red-bordered emergency messages, though; at first glance, everything looked copasetic.
    Except the time. It was 0335 Zulu, the middle of the goddamn night.
    "Rohr?" The voice was a little louder now. "Mister Furland? Please wake up..."
    I groaned and rolled over. “Okay, okay, I'm awake. What'dya want, Brain?”
    The Brain. It was bad enough that the ship's AI sounded like Steve Reeves; it also had to have a stupid name like The Brain. On every vessel on which I had served, crewmembers had given their AIs human names—Rudy, Beth, Kim, George, Stan, Lisa, dubbed after friends or family members or deceased shipmates—or nicknames, either clever or overused: Boswell, Isaac, Slim, Flash, Ramrod, plus the usual Hals and Datas from the nostalgia buffs. I once held down a gig on a lunar tug where the AI was called Fughead—as in Hey, Fughead, gimme the traffic grid for Tycho Station —but no one but a bonehead would give their AI a silly-ass moniker like The Brain.
    No one but Captain Future, that is ... and I still hadn't decided whether or not my current boss was a bonehead, or just insane.
    "The captain asked me to awaken you," The Brain said. "He wants you on the bridge at once. He says that it's urgent."
    I checked the screen again. “I don't see anything urgent.”
    "Captain's orders, Mr. Furland." The ceiling florescents began to slowly brighten behind their cracked and dusty panes, causing me to squint and clap my hand over my eyes. "If you don't report to the bridge in ten minutes, you'll be docked one hour time-lost and a mark will be entered on your union card."
    Threats like that usually don't faze me—everyone loses a few hours or gains a few marks during a long voyage—but I couldn't afford a bad service report now. In two more days the TBSA Comet would reach Ceres, where I was scheduled to join up with the Jove Commerce , outbound for Callisto. I had been lucky to get this far, and I didn't want my next CO to ground me just because of a bad report from my previous captain.
    “Okay,” I muttered. “Tell ‘em I'm on my way.”
    I swung my legs over the side and felt around for where I had