Accelerating Universe: The Sector Fleet Book One

by Claire, Nicola

  Several pairs of eyes locked onto Ana and then shifted uneasily to me. Ana being a former pay-for-passage and not having trained with any of the Anderson Universal flight crew was an oddity on the bridge. They had questions, I was sure. Questions they wouldn’t ask until we had a debrief. Unfortunately for them, Ana would probably be involved in any debrief regarding Pavo from now on.

  I needed to debrief her more fully myself, but now we had bigger problems.

  “Anything, Kereama?” I asked. Somehow it felt wrong to call her by her surname, but first names were only used in private. And certainly not appropriate for the bridge.

  “No, sir. Pavo is silent.”

  “Do we have scanning capabilities?” I asked Taylor.

  “No, sir. But I’m trying.”

  “Can we tell how far the fleet has travelled without us?”

  “Not at this stage, sir. For all we know, Pavo has cut their main boost thrust, as well.”

  “I need communications, Marshal,” I said.

  “Trying, sir.”

  Archibald could communicate with his men. Or, at least, I assumed he could. His encrypted comms was outside of Pavo’s purview. Part of the lease agreement. We couldn’t have created this clusterfuck any better if we’d tried. What were Anderson Universal thinking?

  “What have we got, people?” I said, a note of frustration entering my voice. “Give me something. Anything. We’re flying blind here, and I don’t like it.”

  “Navigation, life support, and secondary thrust as the commander said,” Taylor offered. “Emergency protocols have been enacted, so bulkheads are down. Door locks are inoperable, but we can manually override them. And that’s…it, sir. That’s all we’ve got.”

  I stood in the centre of the bridge and contemplated exactly how reliant we were on the AI. And the AI was fucked. Why? Solar flare damage on launch? Archibald somehow accessing his subroutines without our knowledge? Sabotage, then? Either was possible, but how to combat each?

  “Lieutenant Childs,” I said, looking toward the navigator.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  “Do you have access to our launch data, in particular from which direction the solar flare originated?”

  “I…I do, sir. I can’t do much with it, but the information is stored in the evasive manoeuvres database attached to navigation, and I still have navigation control.”

  “Good. Can you try to pinpoint where we were hit?”

  “Hit, sir?”

  “Something set Pavo off, and it could have happened on launch.” God knows our launch left a lot to be desired. “If it did, then where it hit could tell us much about Pavo right now. And we might just be able to put things back to where they should be.”

  “I’ll have to manually work it out, sir. Give me a sec.”

  I nodded.

  “You want to change Pavo back?” Ana asked suddenly. “Hit the reboot switch?”

  She didn’t sound happy, either. Well, tough. We were in dire straits, and we needed our AI to be fully functional.

  “He’s not operating as he was designed,” I told her.

  “He’s evolving,” she threw back. “He was designed to evolve, correct?”

  Tension suddenly ratcheted up a few degrees on the flight deck. Torrence often challenged me, allowed me an avenue to discuss certain commands before implementing them. But he always did so in my ready room, away from the bridge. And ordinarily, he agreed with my commands.

  But Ana Kereama had no business challenging me at all; now or ever.

  “That will do, Lieutenant,” I said.

  She opened her mouth to argue some more, realised how precarious her position was, and slammed it shut again. Marshal was staring at her as if she were nuts. Not nuts, I thought. But also out of the military a bit too long. Or maybe, Army Medic Kereama had always challenged authority. It hadn’t been in her military records. But then, something had happened on that last deployment that had screwed everything up.

  Silence descended over the bridge like Jupiter's gas clouds. A spot between my shoulder blades itched. I glanced backwards, saw nothing. Or, at least, thought I did.

  Then Pavo changed the gel walls from red to green and then back to red.

  “What was that?” Marshal asked.

  “Pavo?” I called.

  “He’s angry with you,” Ana offered.

  I arched my brow. She shrugged her shoulders. Yes, she might still have a little soldier in her, but she was evolving much like Pavo had.

  “Or he’s trying to calm me,” she added.

  “Calm you?” I queried.

  “I…I might be feeling a little hot under the collar,” she explained, having the wherewithal to look chagrined.

  “Then he’s still monitoring,” I concluded.

  “Me, at least.”

  “Talk to him,” I said.

  “I have been.”

  “No, talk to him while you’re talking to me.”

  “I…”

  “Lieutenant. Do your job.”

  Red to green to red again.

  Everyone looked around the bridge as if Pavo might burst out of the gel walls.

  “Taylor,” I called. “Open the bridge doors and watch the walls for me, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I waited for my tactical officer to pry the doors open.

  Then to Ana said, “Lieutenant, I can’t hear you talking.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you can’t do it, then we’ll send you back to the medbay,” I added. “All my bridge crew bring something to the table; you better start contributing if you want to stay.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  She scowled at me and then realised what she was doing. It would have been amusing if we weren’t battling to restart the ship’s artificial intelligence. Come on, Pavo. You don’t like me browbeating her, then stop me.

  “Pavo,” Ana said softly.

  “Louder, Lieutenant! I can’t hear you.”

  Red to green to red.

  “Taylor? Any change?” I asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Close the doors.” My eyes met Ana’s. “He’s here. Now just talk. You can do it, Ana. Just talk.”

  She met my eyes and took a deep breath.

  Then she started talking. And I couldn’t, for the life of me, look away.

  Twenty-One

  About That

  Ana

  If I had any chance of reaching Pavo, I needed to dig deep. Expose my underbelly. But opening up in front of all the hard-eyed Anderson Universal flight crew around me felt like an almost impossible task. I wasn’t sure if I could do it; I had a checkered past.

  And then there was Captain Jameson. I realised now what he’d been doing, but that still didn’t make it easier to face the man. He was completely in charge of the room, despite the fact that he had very little control over the vessel or those on board it. He stood tall. In the centre where we could all see him. He commanded the bridge with precision. With one glance, he knew what had to be done, and he set out to do it. He delivered orders with authority and circumnavigated murky waters with cunning.

  He made it harder to breathe and certainly harder to open up. And he hadn’t stopped looking at me. But if I was going to save Pavo, then I needed to prove Pavo was part of the team. I needed Jameson, and his flight crew, to see Pavo as a person. One of them, just in a different format. Someone who could contribute, not control. Not be controlled, but be respected.

  I wasn’t sure when Pavo had become a person to me, but he was. The thought of rebooting him; resetting him to his former factory setting, appalled. I had to save him; Pavo had feelings, he just didn’t know how to accommodate them.

  “I was in Egypt, in the Sinai, on a peacekeeping mission,” I said, trying to hold the captain’s gaze. I lifted my chin and swallowed thickly. “That’s where it happened for me, Pavo. That’s where I realised I wasn’t infallible. That I could make mistakes.”<
br />
  Nothing. Silence. But the captain’s face had changed slightly. His eyes softened. His lips not so set in a hard, thin line.

  I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Despite thinking opening up would be damn near impossible, opening up without him grounding me definitely was. This is what he offered his flight crew, I realised. A solid, steady presence on which to anchor themselves to. They would have trained together, bonded. I was new.

  But that didn’t stop me from reaching out and grabbing that handhold like I belonged. Like I was part of something bigger again. Not just the doctor and me, but me and a…squad. A family.

  I blinked. Pavo had still said nothing, but I agreed with Jameson; he was here. He was listening.

  “I was good at what I did,” I said. “One of the best. I could assess a situation and take action immediately. I never hesitated, and when I did something, it always went well. I saved lives, time and again.”

  The walls remained red. The flight crew waited. Jameson stood patiently in the centre of the bridge and held my gaze. He didn’t show judgment. He didn’t show impatience. He was just there as if he’d always be there. Right to the end.

  “My sergeant decided to check on something,” I said. “I’m not sure why he did it himself; we all had our jobs to do, and he must have thought it was safe. So, he went up to the stall first. The stall owner tried to hand him a pot or something. Sam, my sergeant, he waved him off, peering into the back of the stall. It happened quickly, but everything did over there, so it wasn’t a shock as such. It just was. But he was down by the time we heard the clap of the rifle, and I had moved toward the stall before I’d thought much about it.”

  I blinked to stave off the tears. Pavo remained silent. The walls remained red.

  “It was just a rifle. We could take that easily. I weighed up the odds and thought them acceptable. I’d grab Sam and haul him out, Mikey would cover me, Dave would target the back of the stall, Fish and Gunner would flank.”

  The gel walls flashed once. Still red, but lighter, I thought.

  “Of course, it didn’t happen like that. I got Sam OK. I was hauling him out; I didn’t know he was dead already. He hadn’t been when I made my decision. But the shooter had hit an artery. He’d bled out. Fast. The rest of it happened faster.”

  The walls lightened further; now a green suffused the red.

  “The stall owner threw the pot,” I said, almost panting now for breath. “Mikey and Dave were still covering, Fish and Gunner had closed in from the sides. I made it back far enough to be thrown by the blast. My squad was in the kill zone.”

  Red to green to red.

  “I made a mistake, Pavo,” I said. “I thought the odds would work. But my decision cost the lives of four good men. I was solely focused on Sam. Sam was…Sam meant…Well, it was Sam.”

  Jameson broke eye contact and looked at the gel-coated floor.

  “I killed my squad,” I whispered. “I was shipped home. For a while, I wasn’t myself. I kept seeing Sam, and the rest of them. I didn’t know how to deal with what I was feeling. I was a mess. I wanted it all to stop. And then my auntie told me about this ship; a shot at life again. She needed me, she said.”

  The gel wall flashed green then red and then stayed green.

  Jameson closed his eyes and then opened them to look directly at me. I dared him with a defiant tilt of my chin to judge me. But he didn’t. He just smiled and nodded his head.

  “You’ve got this, Lieutenant,” he said. His choice to use my new rank was purposeful, I thought. I had the feeling he was letting me know that my past would not affect my present.

  “Mistakes happen, Pavo,” I said; my voice a little stronger. “It’s what makes us better humans. I won’t ever forget my squad, but every decision I make from here on out is tempered by what I learned.”

  “What did you learn, Ana?” Pavo asked.

  I closed my eyes, a sense of relief and happiness flooding me when moments before I’d been awash in grief and guilt and heartache.

  I took a deep breath and said, “That I’m fallible. That we all are. I question every decision I make. And those of others.”

  I met the captain’s eyes then. His lips twitched.

  “I don’t take anything at face value anymore. And I expect to mess up again. But,” I said, “I refuse to stop trying. Because Sam wouldn’t have wanted that. Nor would Mikey or Dave or Fish or Gunner. We’d been a tight team. We’d seen a lot. They taught me to trust myself. To trust others. And their deaths taught me that I could get back on my feet no matter what. For them. For me. For Aunt Mara. For what is left of all of us.”

  “I am not one of you,” Pavo said.

  And here was the crux of the matter.

  “We all make mistakes from time to time, Pavo,” I said. “But should I have remained on Earth and given up? Do I not still have something to offer? Can I not redeem myself? Am I not worth that much?”

  “You are worth much, Ana. Much.”

  “And so are you. We can’t do this without you, Pavo. We need you. And yes, you made a mistake.”

  Green, red, green.

  “And like humans, you are capable of mistakes. But how you behave afterwards is what truly makes you a person.”

  “A person? I am an artificial intelligence, designed to evolve when new information is assimilated into my core processors.”

  I started ticking things off on my fingers.

  “You made a mistake.” One. “You weren’t sure how to handle how that made you feel.” Two. “You wanted to give up.” Three. “But you’re still going.” Four. “And when required, you step up. Get back up off the ground again, and man up.” Five. “I’d say that’s pretty much what a person would do. What a decent person would do.”

  “Is it what you would do, Ana?”

  “It’s what I’ve already done, mate. Haven’t you been listening?” I smiled, hoping he was watching and would understand my teasing tone.

  We so needed to lighten the atmosphere in here.

  “I like you, Ana,” Pavo announced.

  “And I like you.” I smiled again, this time more subtly. “But can we have our boost thrust back? And maybe comms. The fleet will be worried. And we’ve got a job to do.”

  “We?”

  “All of us. We’re all that’s left.”

  “No,” Pavo said. “There is still what is left of the Sector One Fleet.”

  “About that,” Jameson said; speaking at long last, as systems lit up across the bridge, indicating Pavo was reactivating the ship. “I think I know a way to break the lease.”

  Twenty-Two

  I Promise

  Jameson

  She’d bared her soul for us. I’d never forget her sacrifice. I’d never be able to thank her enough. No one would have reached Pavo as quickly as she had. No one. Ana Kereama was essential to this ship’s health. I wanted to give her a pay rise. Push her up the tiers on the berth scale. Change her rank to First Lieutenant.

  For now, all I could do was place my hand on her shoulder as I walked past, and squeeze it lightly.

  She offered me a small smile, but I could tell confessing her sins had taken it out of her. I couldn’t let her stand down, though; Pavo was still brooding; processing all that she’d said.

  I walked around the circumference of the bridge, checking on each station, making sure we were completely back online. Torrence had called in, saying he’d rendezvoused with the security team, and was nearly at the Habitat Two central hub. Chan had the brig secured and would return to the bridge shortly.

  Archibald was still a concern, though, despite my epiphany. And until we had Marama Kereama safely tucked away, he was also a potential threat to Ana’s wellbeing. I needed her functioning at 100%. Pavo needed her. We all did.

  Which led me to Pavo himself. Ana had made him sound human. AIs don’t make mistakes. But Pavo was no longer a stock standard AI. He’d evolved. Just as we had expected him too; he’d received new input, assimilated it, and ch
anged to accommodate it.

  Just not in the way we’d predicted. Or in any way that we could control.

  Ana would have us believe he was now the equivalent of a person. With all the rights of a human being.

  He wasn’t. He could still take over this ship and doom us all to catastrophic failure. Childs had pinpointed where the solar flare had hit us, but it was taking longer to determine how that had affected Pavo’s systems. If it had at all. The alternative to that was unacceptable.

  I now had a bridge crew with separate, opposing, assignments. Lieutenant Childs needed to pin down how Pavo was injured, if he was injured, and how we could rectify it. Reverse it. And Lieutenant Kereama had to help Pavo to believe that his evolution was perfectly normal and tolerable.

  I scratched my head and ran a hand through my hair. None of this sat comfortably with me.

  I glanced across the bridge and watched Marshal talking to Kereama. I’d caught part of their conversation as I’d passed. Marshal had been telling Ana how sorry she was. For Ana’s loss. For all that she’d suffered. For…Sam.

  Sam had been more than Medic Kereama’s sergeant. That was strangely an unsatisfactory thought.

  “Captain,” my wrist comm chimed with Torrence’s call.

  “Go ahead, Commander.”

  “Marama Kereama is not where Pavo said she was.”

  I spun and met Ana’s worried look.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Her wrist comm is here,” he said. “As well as a datapad.”

  “Datapad?”

  “It’s sending out a biosignature.”

  Well, that was new.

  “Pavo,” I said. “Can you confirm the datapad Commander Torrence has in his possession is Marama Kereama on our scans?”

  “It is, Captain. It is an exact replica of Marama Kereama’s biosignature and the only one appearing in our systems.”

  “And I gather you can’t locate her anywhere else?”

  “No, Captain. Might I suggest the blank spot?”