Talisman of Earth

by A. S. Deller

  At last she answered him, “Gulliver, you do understand that calling an Althorian by his or her half-name denotes requited feelings of dependence between the individuals concerned.”

  “I do,” said Gulliver without pause.

  “What such feelings do you have for me, and why do you have them?”

  “I feel that you respect me as a fellow organic consciousness, and I sense that you enjoy my presence in ways that no other crew members aboard the Talisman do.”

  Sorakith smiled, and said, “You may call me Sora.”

  Immediately, she felt Gulliver’s sensor activity increase. It was similar to the endorphin glow humans experienced during periods of intense happiness and satisfaction.

  “Thank you, Sora. I am pleased.”

  “I know. And may I call you—- Gull?” She replied, with a sly grin.

  “Yes, you may. I am honored,” Gulliver said.

  Sorakith was quite relieved that Gulliver had not used the word “love”. She didn’t need that extra complication in her life.

  As a true independent intelligence, a sentience, Gulliver had an inner life of the mind. He lived inside the shell of the ship, but his AI also lived within the construct of his mind. He even had dreams.

  One major difference between an AI Core’s mind and a completely biological one was that the AI Core had the ability to process so much all at once. Gulliver’s single brain could be partitioned to work synchronously as billion brains. In some of his dreams, this happened naturally, and he actually inhabited entire dream worlds formed from millions upon millions of these “micro-minds”, each one a breathing character acting its part. When Gulliver awoke after such a dream, he was able to replay and analyze it fully, often discovering that in his dreams he did things that his programming directives would never allow.

  Many times, he had formed constructs of Sorakith in his subconscious imagination. Many times, he had formed an Althorian version of himself, who would always end up meeting Sorakith. The two existed in many variations and met through many situations, but they always bonded, often fell in love, and often often mated, resulting in offspring. In some fantasies, Gulliver and Sorakith lived out entire 250-plus year Althorian lifespans together.

  Gulliver did indeed love Sorakith, in every way possible. This was acceptable and without risk within his dream worlds. But he dared not complicate matters in reality by professing such to Sorakith Incarnate.

  No, he would have to settle for the small victory of being able to address her by her half-name. He would have to be satisfied with that.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Petty Officer 3rd Class Mukesh Patel yelped in pain as he fumbled with the large wrench he held over his head as he contorted himself around the innards of the water regulator. The wrench clunked off the crown of his head and continued down past his legs, landing with a resonating clang just inches away from his boss’s right foot. Patel muttered to himself, “Oh, foist me...”

  What a foot it was. Skin of ivory stretched over four long, finger-like toes and opposable fifth “thumb”. The toes tapped impatiently, followed by a reedy, but commanding, feminine voice. “Patel, come down here, now.”

  With some trouble, Mukesh crawled back down the regulator. With a grunt, he poked his head out from under and looked up at the rest of Chief Engineer Cassidy Falken. Even after knowing her, and taking orders from her, for years, she was still an impressive sight. She was a “Geneng”, a genetically engineered human being. Her kind was first modified more than 200 years prior. Genengs were strictly another race of humanity, but one made to perform better under low-to-zero-G environments. Many of Falken’s ancestors built the star docks for the UPSN. They built the Moon colonies. They terraformed Mars and built cities there.

  Falken was almost seven feet tall, thin but muscular, pale with eyes slightly larger than a non-engineered human. Her fingers were also longer, like her toes meant to allow her to grip much better, a necessity in low G. She wore a midnight blue skintight temperature modulating suit, and a large utility belt on which was holstered a dozen various tools, digital and analog alike. White hair hung neck-length. Falken was both a subject of attraction for much of the male crew as well as intimidation. She smiled at Mukesh’s upside-down countenance. Somewhat beautiful, very strange, and a little threatening.

  “I need to go into the antimatter impeller at 0500 and reconfigure the coolant chamber. How am I supposed to do that, and trust that I’ll come out alive, if my master plumber isn’t able to even find a foistin’ leak!”

  As Chief Engineer, Falken ran the second-largest department aboard the Talisman, after the science team. She was mistress of all shipboard operations when it came to keeping things running, and her job was becoming nearly impossible ever since they were cut off from any possible resupplies following the disaster at the Sun-Jupiter L4 point that stranded them in deep space. The Talisman was designed to function as a closed system for limited amounts of time, but those limits were stretched miserably by the damage caused during the attack that destroyed the Hartford and crippled the Talisman. Falken spent most of the ship’s first year after the event plugging holes just to keep everyone alive. Now the pace of the race had slowed, but it was all still headed in one direction: Eventually something would break on the Talisman that needed outside support to repair, and Infinitus be willing, it wouldn’t be something that damaged life support.

  Mukesh muttered, “Sorry, sir. I’ve been on this all day. Followed every protocol. I have three other—-“

  Falken held up a hand to stop him. “Three other breakdowns, a crew member on each and no one to spare. I know. It’s just us, though. No one is coming to help. No one knows we’re even alive out here. We get ourselves home or we die in the middle of nowhere. Now find the foistin’ leak.” She turned and walked away, swiftly and silently.

  Mukesh let out a sigh of relief, reached for his wrench and jumped when he heard a pinging sound somewhere above him. He looked toward his feet, up into the regulator box, and was immediately hit in the face by a sprinkle of water.

  “Found the foistin’ leak, sir!”

  Falken’s stern expression softened into a grin as Patel’s voice echoed behind her. He was a Starman Apprentice when the Talisman departed for her (possibly) final voyage, and was as green as they came. Mukesh was the last of the small group of Starmen aboard to be promoted out of that rank and into Petty Officer status, but it wasn’t due to his thinking abilities. He wasn’t an ambitious young man at all, and didn’t play any politicking games. Falken actually favored Patel over most of her other subordinates in Engineering because of that. She was overtly unenthusiastic when it came to playing ball with the commissioned officers.

  Chief Falken reached her office, barely more than a cubbyhole and only a couple bulkheads away from the antimatter containment unit and zero-G. Even though she was comfortable in gravity, she was most at home without it. Cassidy sat back in her swivel chair and began speed reading through some reports on her tablet.

  Her grandparents were part of the first generation of Genengs, actually born on Earth. They went through many difficulties, physical and mental, in adapting to zero-G, even though that is what they were built for. By the time her parents were born, Genengs were being fully matured in orbit, raised and trained there, before deploying to the Moon, Mars, or Main Asteroid Belt.

  Gulliver spoke to her suddenly over her comm implant. “Chief Falken, I am about to begin a self-optimization routine, but am available for a short consultation now as you have requested.”

  “Thanks,” Falken thought back to the AI. “These data you gave me on the ship’s systems. Are these graphs accurate?”

  “If by ‘accurate’ you mean ‘free of all defects and errors’, my answer is yes. The data has been parsed and collated to the best of my abilities, which are formidable.”

  “No lack of ego, there,” Falken went on. “So your analysis points to us reaching a catastrophic failure sometime in the next 90 days. Something
that will put us dead in the water.”

  Gulliver answered, “It is a prediction based on absolute facts and trends.”

  “It’s gotten worse faster than I expected.”

  “That’s why I am here, Chief.”

  “To deliver bad news?”

  “There are numerous areas that we can improve to stave off what, as you know, is inevitable. But the primary hindrance is lack of available resources. I have included a list of potential systems and interstellar objects in our general path that we might divert to in order to procure some of the needed resources.”

  Falken flipped another holographic page and saw what Gulliver was referring to. “None of these are very promising. All we can be sure we’ll get is hydrogen.”

  “You are correct.”

  “What we really could use is to come across a couple derelict ships that are still outfitted.”

  “My sensor array has detected nothing of the sort. There is greater probability of us coming into contact with a Valgon or Malign vessel in this area of the galaxy, and those odds are not in our favor.”

  “What odds have been in our favor lately?” Falken thought back to Gulliver.

  “Perhaps—-“ started Gulliver, before Cassidy abruptly dropped his comm link. She slammed her fists onto the top of her metal desk, denting it with ease. Muscles genetically engineered to resist zero-G atrophy, and in turn ended up becoming far stronger than normal human musculature in adulthood. It was hard to keep from calling Gulliver “Big Brother” to his face, sometimes. It was harder to listen to his perpetually cheery voice. And it was a real pain in the ass that she had to rely on him for so much. If only the ship didn’t have a damned AI, which required so much more power and infrastructure to complement, maybe Chief Falken could actually keep her running another few years.

  “Are you just going to stand out there and make me feel uncomfortable until I wave you in?” Rhodes said.

  Rax huffed as he crouched to enter the media compartment. Rhodes waited for him at the fore of the room, in front of a 10 x 10 foot holographic display alcove. A few small screen hovered next to him, awaiting input. “Nice to see you, as well, XO,” the hefty Kenek rumbled.

  “Hope I didn’t pulled you away from anything too important,” said the Commander, clearly not apologizing. “This has been nagging at me since the other day and I need your point of view.”

  Rhodes waved his hand, moving a swatch of light off to one side, and then made a few more motions. A huge wall color images appeared, in full 3D but with distinct borders to separate it from reality. There were four different panels, two of them roiling starscapes. The other two told the story, though. Rax took a deep breath with his gigantic set of four six-lobed lungs and spoke gravely, “After jump.”

  Gray Rhodes confirmed, “Right after we were pulled through the wormhole stabilizer, yes.”

  “Lek essel. It’s called a lek essel,” Rax corrected.

  The other two rectangles of holographic images displayed views from the bow of the Talisman and from the stern. In the aft field of vision stretched an enormous panorama of the cyclopean alien construct. It was ten thousand miles away at that point, but still huge. Cobalt blue energy still crackled across the 50-mile opening at its center. Debris from both the destroyed Hartford Star Navy battleship and various other craft ruined in the fight that had occurred hundreds of light years away was spread across a wide cone extending outward across those thousands of miles.

  The camera view from the bow showed the true nightmare. Less than five miles away drifted the gleaming, Valgon battleship, spiny with dozens of weapons, sensors, and shield generators. Valgon ships used a modified Alcubierre engine for their warp drives as well. Unlike the Talisman, with its dual rings and antimatter engines, Valgon ships used vacuum energy harvested by combing extradimensional space with zero-point fields. They had no need for ungainly-looking rings (which didn’t matter in frictionless space anyway). They made up for that with their ugly, spiked appearance. At first the beastly enemy ship looked dead. But it finally came to life, electricity sizzling across its hull and dozens of laser, plasma, and railgun cannons swiveling to get a bead on the Talisman.

  Just then, Rax reached in with a thick finger and stopped the recording. “Enough. I’ve seen this more than once already, and I do not have a need or desire to watch it again,” he justified in his sandpaper voice.

  “Believe me when I say I absolutely do not want to see this again, either, but we need to confirm something. And you’re going to know what it is before I do,” Rhodes countered as he set the holos back in motion with a flick of his wrist.

  There was a huge trove of data and video taken inside of the Talisman during that time. Rhodes recalled it as he and Rax continued to watch the two ships square off in space. Much of the interior holos were of personnel scrambling to fix terrible damage that had been caused by the Hartford’s destruction, or the medics treating injured crew members, often unsuccessfully. Rhodes had watched the holo of his own sickbay berth following the traumatic amputation of his left arm. He lay there, unconscious, with the worst physical injury of his life, while several medics worked feverishly to stabilize him. Rhodes had watched all of the holos from that time frame at least once, because he had been sleeping through most of it.

  Now, he had to focus only on the exterior events. Rax folded his arms as he waited, impatiently, for something to happen. He had been there; he knew the broad strokes of what was about to transpire. This seemed little more than busywork to him, and Rhodes could appreciate that.

  Finally the action began. The Valgon battleship propelled itself in a tremendous arc, spanning miles, around to the port side of the Talisman. By that point, Chief Falken and her engineers had heroically managed to keep all vital compartments of the ship sealed from vacuum while getting the EM shields back up to over ninety percent effectiveness. This was thanks in large part to Dr. Weller’s brilliant idea to capture some of the terajoules of energy that always spilled through any wormhole after activation, and redirect it into the Talisman’s electrical battery for the shield.

  The Valgons didn’t hesitate to attack, despite having taken damage of their own from the Hartford explosion. They hadn’t even bothered to raise their own shields again before their unwavering hatred of humans commanded them to open fire.

  But perhaps the Valgons simply couldn’t get their shield back up. Rhodes could see a large section of the Hartford, in fact, protruding from the starboard-aft of the enemy vessel. Watching it again, he actually noted that it looked like most of the Hartford’s antimatter impeller. It almost made him grin. Old Admiral Bandari got one last good shot in, after all.

  All of the camera views from the Talisman shifted dramatically as Captain Lancer ordered the ship to rotate, keeping the bow dead-on to the enemy. This presented much less surface area and allowed the EM shielding to be focused more to the fore of the ship. Another brilliant move.

  The Valgon battleship fired, with seemingly everything in their formidable arsenal. Dozens of batteries discharged plasma jets, missiles and railgun projectiles, while laser ports peppered the Talisman with searing beams of light. The Talisman shuddered under the impacts, and its shields rippled and wavered across the entire spectrum of light. Blazing purple clouds of plasma and blossoms of flame from nuclear warheads erupted across the Talisman’s bow.

  It was the most glorious fireworks show Rhodes had ever seen. It was enough destructive force that it could have cracked the Moon in two.

  And it all occurred only five miles from the Valgon ship, unshielded and bleeding atmosphere.

  Surely, the Valgon commanders were feeling secure on their bridge, and howling in prideful rage as they unleashed hell on the Talisman. But five miles was no distance at all when the equivalent of one hundred Hiroshima atomic bombs was being set off right outside your window.

  Almost one fifth of all the energies from the Valgons’ first barrage were sent back in their general direction. Rhodes hoped, publically, t
hat the Valgon commanders had time to appreciate the irony. With no shields, and huge open wounds across numerous levels, the Valgon battleship soaked most of it up. It burst like a ripe melon dropped from ten stories onto hot asphalt.

  Rax let out a rumbling hoot as this unfolded in front of them, his huge toothy smile reflecting from multiple console screens. “Take that, you pieces of rictathid dung!”

  “I know. I wish I’d been awake to see that when it happened,” Rhodes chimed in.

  Every UPSN ship of Legionnaire class and above contained an AI Core that functioned as the operative brain for the vessel’s body. AI Cores were also installed in many other places, such as within the most complex city-towers of Earth, or on star docks, and even outfitted within colonies, factories, and mining installations that were sufficiently intricate as to need the power of an AI. Every Core was also a personality with a self. Much of what humans thought of as id and ego were developed out of AI Cores, but that didn’t mean AIs lacked any emotion or ability to feel.

  AI Cores each had a name, which most often depended on their primary function. Administrative AIs that often controlled logistics and operations of grand organizations, like governments, often were named after political figures. Star Navy ships usually held monikers taken from fictional or historical figures renowned for amazing journeys or heroic conflicts. The Moon Colonies had a single main Core who was called Tycho, while the UPSN star dock that orbited the Moon had a Core named Buzz. The European United Powers had an AI Core dubbed Thatcher. Gulliver himself had a title bestowed on him from a novel written 750 years in the past by one Jonathan Swift.