by Dain White
It was looking worse and worse on our current course as we approached the halfway mark of this leg – something Janis warned the captain of when she shaped this course. While she was able to slipspace through a lot of this system leading in, and would be able to slip past most of it as we head out, not even Janis can pilot a slipspace jump through the heart of it. While she doesn't have limits apparently, the Archaea does, and so here we are, hurtling through on reactive drive.
“Yak, could you please keep your best eyeball on targeting?” the Captain said from behind me. “I am about to drop velocity to a safer speed on Janis' request as we approach the worst of it here.”
“Aye Captain” I replied, leaning forward a bit and making sure my eyes were completely open.
The captain clicked on the 1MC. “All hands stand by for transit and deceleration. We are approaching a pretty dense field and I will be taking it through on manual.”
Looking forward, the view started to be less encouraging. Stars past the Danaan Fields were mostly occluded and hidden by massive layers of dust, which served to light up some of the larger planetoid-sized rocks dead in our course. Close in, brightly lit by our forward arcs, the occasional hunk of slagged iron passed by. Glowing streams of repeaters reached out here and there, selecting a rock here, a rock there, which would in turn become incandescent and fall apart into a mass of glowing bits. Occasionally, the repeaters would continue to pound into the glowing, sparkling clouds, selecting larger pieces for destruction.
The target list Janis was working from kept growing, despite her wicked accuracy. Some of the larger rocks would spawn an additional pile of targets she would categorize and prioritize, while balancing the priorities of previously selected targets.
On my console the result was a shifting mass of bright orange that fell off into lighter and lighter shades of orange with distance or priority into grey targets, which were just tracked. Nothing larger than a football escaped her keen eye. She didn't seem to have any problems yet, her accuracy rating was holding at 100%, though she was definitely servicing at least 10 times as many targets at the same time.
“Pauli, can she keep this pace?” I asked, at a moment where he wasn't mashing keys.
“Well, that's hard to say Yak”, answered Pauli. “She's still not even breaking a sweat, and she's still freakishly accurate.” He shrugged, taking a moment to look through the forward port at the raging chaos ahead of us. “I think she's probably well within a safe tolerance still. She never misses, because she literally can't miss, or maybe it's more accurate to say she wouldn't miss. Her goal is total, complete satisfaction from the captain at all times.”
He was very reassuring, but I was still concerned. The density of the targets ahead of us was definitely increasing. The grey target boxes ahead of us on screen were slowly, almost uniformly, turning a light shade of orange as their priorities increased.
“Yak, how many pending firing solutions are in the queue?” asked our captain from behind me. Here I thought he finally slipped off to sleep with a coffee cup clenched in his hand white-knuckle tight. He never sleeps, I think.
“Captain, we are currently at 413 priority targets, and holding solid at 100% accuracy, but it looks pretty bad ahead of us.”
“Janis, dear, are you at all concerned about the fire solutions you have for point-defense targets currently scheduled?”
“Negative, Captain. I am currently at nominal capacity for available solutions.”
“See Yak? Nominal. We're doing great son, but keep those eyes peeled and sharp. If there are other bad actors out there, this is an obvious sector to spring a trap. They may be impressed with our speed and gun-display – they may see us as a prize for capture. If I was a pirate, I'd want a ship like this”, he said, patting the padded armrest of the helm station affectionately.
*****
The sound of the turrets firing almost continually filled the fire control station, but I had given up worrying about it. I kept an eye on the stock of plasticine we were cooking off for ordinance, but so far we have had a very comfortable amount in reserve. It would definitely be something we will need to recharge after this trip, but for the amount of work those repeaters are doing, we should be okay. The mechanicals seemed to be performing very nicely, and nothing seemed to be gumming up or overheating.
Every time I am on watch, I spend a little bit of time in the turret station, checking armatures and mounts. It's pretty loud in there, and not really a good place to stretch out, but it's just my size, and the sound is soothing for me. I love the whizzing whining whirring clicks and squeals as the machinery snaps from one aim point to another. It's like being in the heart of a living machine. I guess with Janis at the controls, that is a pretty accurate analogy.
The feed systems for the ammunition ovens are pretty easy to maintain. I clean the recovery systems that catch driblets of plasticine and ferrene, the accumulators that magnetically separate them, and the bleed valves and pumps that shunt raw materials back into supply.
I check settings, tighten every fitting I can to spec, and then spend a little more time polishing everything I can reach while talking to my machinery very nicely.
There is nothing that gives me more joy than well cared for weapons. Some girls like flowers – I'd prefer a cleaning kit and a dirty gun.
Every other shift, I work my way from stem to stern through the gun deck polishing and adjusting the nova cannon. While our current state of alert didn't have our armatures glowing at that terrifyingly sexy shade of blue that gives me a major case of the I-wanna-shoot-ems, it's still an incredibly dangerous place to work.
It's perfect for me, of course.
The main companionway from the hold aft, heading forwards through the gun deck and leading down into the ring spaces is marked off with a caution-and-warning stripe and handrail. People that aren't named Jane Short shall not ever, under any circumstances, walk outside of this safe area – not that anyone does – the lit gun is downright terrifying.
It was not as hot as I thought it would be though. Our cooling systems aboard the Archaea were well engineered to the specification for the gun. Even with the new power plant, and the work Janis and I did to boost output for the cannon, the cooling systems kept up well. Most of the maintenance I do on the cannon involves manual confirmation of the talkbacks on my station, confirming that the reported values are accurate. For this I slave a view of my screen to my handset, and take it exploring.
I am also trying to isolate and understand, if not fix, the cause of the overwhelming harmonics we all felt when the gun was at firing maximum. The amount of energy we were amplifying at the time was fearsome, even for me – maybe especially for me, as I've spent so much time right next to these babies. I can't tell if it is a factor of the structure difference between a frigate-sized hull and a destroyer hull, or something endemic to the configuration of the gun in the hull that we need to look at more closely, but I'm determined to find out.
Gene loaned me a sweet little gizmo that he uses to check deformation and flex, and I am working my way through the structure of the gun deck checking everything I can reach. The process is pretty easy, though it is taking its toll on my body as I contort from one position to another around the frames above and below the gun deck.
I work along each frame, attaching sending units, then clamping the readout further along the frame. The sending units beep their positions in relation to the readout, and the readout calculates real-time flex and variation, and outputs a color-coded stress map.
So far, everything looks good.
*****
I love flying this bird. She handled like a dream, smooth and responsive. Janis was constantly plotting a course through the worst of Danaan and I had settled down into the rhythm - precess, roll, burn to the clock, orienting the Archaea on a new heading with maneuvering jets, burn for delta-v – sometimes I boost, other times we flip endo and decelerate.
One of the disadvantages of being a Captain in the service wa
s they wouldn't let me take the helm. I'd have to just stand-to and watch some wet-behind-the-ears rating do it. The ironic thing about being in command was, the better you were at it, the larger and larger the ship they'd post you on. As the captain of a capital ship, I'd issue a command, and it'd practically (or impractically) take 5 minutes just to filter down through the supernumeraries between me and the job that needed to be done.
Thankfully, that is all behind me now. I am in command, and in control, and really couldn't ask for a better ship. Janis was making this all too easy. She had halo-mapped all targets currently on an intercept course so I could pick them out of the dust and darkness of this forsaken system, and plotted our course through it all in a track overlay with waypoints . All I had to do was stay on track, and follow the recommendations of the maneuvering checkpoints along the way.
One thing I knew for sure – it would have been terrifying to conn the Archaea through this mess using the navigation systems she came with. Her previous owners must have needed therapy after trying to use her as a rock-buster. Every time I am on rock-watch at the helm, I can't help but remember a time when on the Mars-Ceres patrol and our nav system took a dirt nap – all screens went black, and I had the unsavory position of navigating a corvette-class ship through a tricky transit of the asteroid belt by the seat of my pants. I will never forget the sound of everyone on the ship behind me holding their breath. I could hear them sweat.
It wasn't as bad as this though, even at the worst of it, I could at least see – this would be an absolutely terrible time for Janis to take a powder. Looking forward, all I could see ahead of us was an ocean of dark with some black lumps hiding in the shadowy depths.
“Say Pauli...”, I said, in a reasonably calm, cool and collected voice, “...what do you think would happen right about now if Janis were to stop functioning?”
I asked the question lightheartedly, but it reminded me that we really haven't thought too much about redundancy for Janis – heck, we'd just met her a few days ago.
“That's a good question Captain... I wish I could tell you I had this already taken care of, but I am afraid I am a little inexperienced preparing a disaster-recovery plan for a sentient system. It's just not something I've ever done before...”
“Have you asked Janis what her recommendations are for this? Maybe she has a plan in place – one sec--” I was coming up on a waypoint transit, and had to focus on the task at hand for a moment.
“All hands – stand by for maneuvering”, I bawled on the 1MC, secretly hoping Gene and Shorty were nowhere near a grabber. Nothing gives me more joy than to think of them floating around waiting to get back to work. I know, I'm ruthless. Someone has to be, right?
This transit is complex, but easy enough for an old salt like me. Come about 44 degrees to starboard, roll 53 degrees to port, pull back on the yoke for a 32 degree pitch and watch the t-minus before I punch a 10 second burn at 30 percent right on the mark. A quick check of my boards to make sure we're back in the pipe with everything green-to-go, and we're off to the races.
This is what makes my job worth doing. The feel of the deck, the precision of command with coffee hot and close at hand. Speaking of which, that reminds me that I was just about to save us from a fate worse than hurtling at ludicrous speed into a destroyer-size hunk of iron.
“Pauli, how are we coming along on that disaster recovery plan?” I lean back in my seat, and unleash the second eyebrow for a trip to join the first.
“Are you referring to the plan we were just talking about making?”
“Yep. How is that coming along? I hate to nudge, but we're currently going... oh, somewhere between really fast and dangerously fast, and as fun as it would be to dead-stick this baby right on down the line, I am afraid it'd end up with all of us regretting the choices we made in our final moments. You, especially. Choosing to disregard the decisive and articulate order of your superior officer... tsk, tsk. It'd just be terrible to have to explain to a million-ton hunk of iron that you didn't want to take the time, it was too much effort... that you wanted to hold off until your compiling was done...”
Yak and Pauli both laughed, but they knew that despite all this exceptional support we all were enjoying from Janis, she was not flesh-and-blood, and a stray gamma ray might be all she needs to crash. I am really fond of eggs, and baskets, but I don't like putting them together all at the same time.
“Captain, one challenge we face here is due to our network on board the Archaea. We have one core processor, and it's a sweet system – but we don't exactly have any redundancy.”
“That's what I am afraid of Pauli. We need redundancy. Janis has quickly become completely infused into damn near every system we have...” Saying that out loud gave me a great idea, naturally. One of the benefits of being such an inspirational leader, is occasionally, I inspire myself.
“Janis, you are currently able to access any networked system we have on board, is that accurate?”
“Yes Captain, I can access all major subsystems directly, though there are still a few bridged devices where I am unable to access them directly and must rely on an interface layer to process statements. Would you like a list of all systems that are not yet fully integrated?”
“No thanks dear, though I would like you to provide that list to Pauli. Do the various subsystems onboard the Archaea contain enough memory space to hold a shadow copy of... Pauli, what do I call it?”
“Well, I think you're referring to her core logitecture – the main subroutine, the function libraries, and the motivator blocks. Are you thinking she might clone these sections of her core and spawn TSR nodes?”
“Tea Essar?” I ask - despite it sounding very much like clicks and beeps to my non-technical ear, I'm always looking for new words to use on Gene.
“Terminate-and-stay-resident, Captain. It's a pretty archaic term since most of what we do now stays 'resident' in memory – but I am using it in the classic sense.”
“That's exactly what I am thinking Pauli. We don't need copies of 'Janis' the person – but we want all her best bits stored here and there just in case a worst-case happens.”
“I understand, Captain”, Pauli said, thinking for a moment. “Janis, I am unable to quantify the current storage requirements for your logitecture segments, as it fluctuates pretty rapidly now that you are maintaining that code directly. Are there storage spaces in secondary systems that can hold a TSR node in a redundant failover?”
Listening to Pauli, I started to feel that peculiar buzzing noise in my head that goes along with my eyes blurring over and invariably leads to the sound of my head hitting the desk for a well-deserved nap, but I summon all my reserves and maintain an alert face, heroically as usual. The sacrifices I make as Captain are unending.
“Pauli, this is already done – as my directive is to provide overwatch support for all systems, it seemed a logical process to ensure failover to a secondary logitecture node if the core were to power off. I am currently maintaining a series of 82 mirror-nodes located throughout the Archaea. I have also maintained a physical-media copy as part of our normal flash archive routine, though I am afraid it is only as current as the last flashing. In addition, I am posting updates to a Unet drop as I have been able; though I am afraid versioning is considerably off on that node at this time, I will update it when we are next able to connect.”
“Janis, this is... very good...” Pauli said in a small voice. While I shared his unstated fear, that he may have inadvertently created some sort of ultimate Unet-resident AI virus, Janis is good people. If there's anything I appreciate in this world, it is good people.
I cleared my throat. “Janis, I am not sure of the technical term to use here, but have you tried to activate these mirror-nodes just to make sure they will work if they're needed?”
While it may seem a futile exercise to some, to attempt to second-guess a sentient program, as the captain it's my job to make sure everyone has an opportunity to make me look good.
; “Captain, I activate nodes that are in closest proximity to the system I am working on, so that I can reduce the latency of the wetnet and work more effectively. This is my standard method of operation.”
“Pauli, what does she mean by 'latency' – I thought our wetnet was the fastest network available?” I asked through a nearly impenetrable hedge of bristling brows.
“Captain, it is – but to Janis, any latency at all would be considered an impediment to the successful completion of her mission. It makes sense she would have come up with a system to reduce it as much as possible.”
“Well, it looks to me like she's sufficiently redundant, though clearly we need a secondary core.”
“Yes sir, that would definitely be something we should look at getting our hands on at some point.”
“So Pauli... How's that coming along, anyway?”
“Sorry Captain... How's 'what' coming along?”
“Our second core.”
Pauli swiveled in his seat and did his best Captain Smith impression, eyebrows and all.
*****
I had spent the last 6 hours under crazy acceleration, and my tired eyes felt like they were on fire. The mechanicals on this ship would have to make do without me mother-henning around them for 10 minutes.
“Gene, do you have any idea how hard it is going to be to find this?” Shorty asked as I kicked through the gun deck to the bridge, coffee in hand.
“Find what Shorty?” I asked the air, not immediately seeing where she was.
“The harmonic. I've worked from the bow aperture, almost to the stern phase pumps, and checked damn near every frame.” She climbed down out of the mechanicals above me, hair in her face, dirt on her nose, and a twinkle in her eye.
“Maybe it's not fixable, Shorty.” I offered. “The Archaea is a few hundred years old. She's not some pre-fabbed modern gig you know.”