Tracking the Trailblazer (Colony Ship Trailblazer Book 1)

by John Thornton

  Janae preferred to stay away from the few places where she knew the tants slept. That too was somewhat of a mystery, as she would see many more tants moving about the compound during the daytime than those she knew were sleeping in the various converted cargo storage areas. She suspected that many of the tants, especially the children, were somehow leaving the compound, but she had been unable to ever see where they went. She had tried, repeatedly, to find a place of concealment and covertly watch, but had seen no place where they slipped away.

  Therefore, she walked to a place she had used before. It was a short hallway, with a cargo container wedged into it. The container was broken open, but several mats were still inside it. Those mats were adequate as a bed, but Janae was unsure what their original function or design had intended. The lid was fixed open—due to broken hinges—and therefore, it provided a secure location, with only one way to approach. Janae drank her fill from a sink in a nearby lavatory, and then consumed some food that one of the tant children had given her. It was something called biltong. It was tough, chewy, and had a strange flavor. Janae had tried to ask the children about it, when they have given it to her, but they just laughed. She asked what it was, and they just kept repeating, “It is biltong.” Later, after she was alone, when Janae verballed described what she was eating, the AI Kimberly grew frustrated with the inability to do an in-depth analysis. Janae lacked the experience to describe taste sensations, and could not communicate what her tongue was relating. Kimberly’s best conjecture was that biltong was some kind of protein which had been dried with herbs, oils, and salt. Nonetheless, Janae at it. She missed the satiated feeling of eating a Dome 17 food ration bar, but also resisted living solely on the recycled food from her RAM suit.

  While Janae slept, the bolts holding a panel on a side wall reversed themselves. They dropped to the floor with a small clank, but that was all it took for Janae to awaken. She lay quietly on her mat and listened. Tiny sounds came from the darkened area, and so Janae prepared herself to spring up and sprint away.

  “Janae?” a small mechanical voice called. “I believe you are here.”

  Janae peered out of the cargo container and in the dim light could just make out the shape of one of the wheeled machines—an automacube. Its manipulation arm was hold something flimsy and flat in its gripper. The machine rolled out from where the panel had been removed. That space was about a meter square, and illuminated better than the area around Janae’s makeshift bedroom.

  The mechanical voice came again from the machine, “Follow me. Your tools are in the shell of Ida. I have a map to help in your journey.”

  Janae considered her options, but then Kimberly spoke to her, “Janae, Ken just related he is making a journey through the Ida biome. He has received unexpected assistance.”

  She knew if she spoke, Kimberly would hear, but, very likely, so would this visitor in the night. The place which the machine had opened was the first new passageway she had seen since she had explored the compound. Considering the distance, and how she would have to vault out of the cargo container, Janae figured there was no practical way to sneak past the automacube.

  “I am here,” Janae said softly, “and why is a machine, an automacube, addressing me?” She slowly pulled herself off the mat and slipped onto the deck.

  “Come quickly with me,” the automacube said. It then rolled backward on its six drive wheels and into the short passageway.

  Somewhat apprehensive, Janae followed, ducking down and squat-walking along with her back hunched. The passage was about two meters long, but then came to a larger space. As she got inside that chamber, she noted it was about three meters wide, but still only a meter tall, and had several other passageways which led away from it. They were all dimly lit by some amber colored lights set into the sidewalls. The place was cramped, and so she dropped out of the squat and into a crawl, then turned and looked at the machine.

  The blue automacube jutted its multi-jointed arm straight toward Janae. She grabbed the paper which was in the machine’s gripper, and as soon as Janae held it, the machine twirled about and used its manipulation arm to pick up the bolts, and placed them back into spots on the outside panel. Then it pulled the panel shut, and a slight whir was heard as it sealed them both inside.

  “This is a map and deck plan,” Janae said. “Does this red arrow indicate my position now, or where I am supposed to go?”

  There was no response from the blue machine. Instead, it rolled past her and into one of the passageways that led away from that chamber. Crawling on hands and knees, Janae followed the automacube. The passageways had dust on the deck, which looked to have only been disturbed by the wheels of the machine. Janae wondered how long the passageway had gone unused, but after about an hour of crawling, the automacube opened another panel, setting aside the section of wall, and revealed a corridor. The machine turned on a light which shot a beam onto a sign on the side wall. It read, “Energy Concentrator Starboard Collector Nineteen Array Tertiary Control Room.”

  The machine then wheeled about and with surprising speed just drove away.

  “Hey! Come back!” Janae called as she got to her feet and sprinted after it. Watching the machine dart away, she recognized she could not keep up with it, and she stopped running after about twenty meters. “Do I thank you or curse you?”

  She looked back at her map, and could barely read it because of the low light levels. “It wanted me to get out of that compound, and now it showed me that sign. I suppose I will go where it suggested. I am entering some place called something like an Energy Concentrator Tertiary Control Room.”

  Kimberly the AI, who had been listening to Janae’s part of the conversation, added, “I assume you are alone now. From what you said, you have been led away from the tants, and are now somewhere else. You have an atlas for the Trailblazer?”

  “More like deck plans, which are hard to read,” Janae said as she approached the door under the sign. The place I am about to enter is actually called the ‘Energy Concentrator Starboard Collector Nineteen Array Tertiary Control Room’—whatever that means.” As she stepped up to the entrance, the doors parted, and their twin sides slid into pockets in the wall.

  A series of squeaking, hissing, and chattering noises erupted as the doors opened. Grayish brown things rushed at Janae, and also scattered to various places in the room, while the overhead lights sparked, flickered, and sputtered into life.

  “Animals!” Janae muttered as she dodged away from the ankle-high, noisy, angry, and quickly scurrying things which had been in the room. “Smallish, four-legged animals with hairless tails live in here. Tiny black eyes, and pointed faces.”

  Conduits, which had long since had their insulation gnawed away by the animal occupants, began to glow from restored energy levels. Some of those could not tolerate the heat, and the smell of burnt dust floated on the air. Crackles, pops, and sparks flew out as the conduits adjusted to the energy and its power was shifted away from the leaking channels and into the still marginally functional ones.

  Janae blinked her eyes, as the lights stabilized, and the room’s content was exposed. It was a small room, being about eight meters square, with a central chair that dominated the space. That chair had numerous wires, conduits, and connections coming from the back of it, as well as toggle switches on both of its arms, and a headrest with antique ear phones and a wrap-around optical set. Along the far wall was a workstation with countertop, moldy chairs, and old-style display screens. Of the entire bank of screens, three were fractured with chunks missing from them, four more were just a dull gray color, and the remaining three were flicking and flashing images as they attempted to activate.

  “What a mess!” Janae said as she walked away from a smoldering conduit which was radiating heat. “Something wrecked this place long ago, something with immense power. Clear permalloy is shattered on some displays, and there are actual holes in the permalloy walls.” She squatted down and saw several palm-sized holes in the wall und
er the workstation, the residue of animal dropping was all around. Some kind of tannish-yellow organic material was scattered about in clumps and pushed up into corners. As she looked at those organic piles, she realized a meter-wide panel section of the wall, beneath the workstation, was missing. A dark recess was there, which had a particularly putrid odor.

  Kimberly asked, “Are you able to see any functional interfaces? If you had the fusion packs, or the com-links you could jack into an access port, if there is such a thing. I conjecture a control room would have some way to do that.”

  “I do not have a fusion pack, and this area is getting power. Too much for some of these busted up systems. The room is getting hot and smells burnt. If I had a com-link I could connect directly with Ken, and we could organize this better.”

  Janae walked over and carefully examined the large chair at the center of the room. Much of its cushioning material had been chewed away, but there were no smoldering wires, or smoking circuits, or heat emanating from it. She turned and sat down on the chair.

  “RADIATION WARNING. RADIATION WARNING. RADIATION WARNING,” two of partially functional screens displayed a bright yellow image with a strange symbol on it.

  Janae immediately stood up and deployed all of her RAM suit’s accoutrements. The hood pulled up and over her golden hair, goggles slipped into place, and the gloves came down from the sleeves. She reacted without thinking, as instinct took over. After she was fully ensconced, she checked the suit, and it was functioning at perfect levels. There was no sign of any radiation on her suit’s indicators, but she did not drop her guard.

  Looking over at the screens, the three functional ones were again flicking and flashing still images. One was rolling the same image frame up and out of the picture, and then it came from the bottom and rolled up again. It was an image of some kind of graphs, but the symbols were unfamiliar.

  Janae turned and looked at the chair. “Pressure sensitive? Or weight detection?”

  “I am not sure to what you are referring. Elaborate, please?” Kimberly asked.

  “I have gotten some kind of radiation warning and am fully suited. The monitors here—if you can call them by that antiquated term—are mostly dysfunctional, kaput. Three seem to offer some kinds of readings. Let me try something again.” Janae sat down.

  As Janae suspected again the warnings sounded, but from just two screens, “RADIATION WARNING. RADIATION WARNING. RADIATION WARNING.” That third screen was still gently rolling the graph up and around the view.

  “Are you voice activated?” Janae asked.

  “You know you can tap the communication filament to deactivate or activate our connection,” Kimberly affirmed, “I strongly suggest you not deactivate our link at present.”

  “Kimberly, I am trying to work with the systems here,” Janae snapped. She still had good vision through her goggles, and her gloved hands carefully examined the various toggle switches and such on the chair’s arms. None of them were labeled. Janae then realized she had spoken the artificial intelligence’s name, and she looked about as if expecting someone to be standing there observing her. “I just need to figure this system out. It is the first I have been able to work with on the Trailblazer. Trailblazer? Is any system vice activated? Hello?”

  There was no response. The radiation warnings kept alerting, the graph kept rolling, and the other screens remained broken.

  “Process of elimination,” Janae said and began flipping the switches one-at-a-time.

  Through a tedious process, Janae discovered a way to alter one of the radiation warning screens. By flipping a switch on the right arm, that screen went into a “Diagnostic Tuning Module” which did not seem like a proper name for a subroutine, yet it was something. Building upon that, Janae worked her way through various sections, and finally revealed a report on the radiation warning.

  She read the screen aloud, “Module 878FR21-J8M3. Radiation warnings alerted on voyage time 10935.42. Read more here.”

  Adjusting the screen and finding a way to “read more here” took a lot of repetition, and several times Janae had to go back, start over with the basic radiation warning, and try again. Nonetheless, she maneuvered through the systems, adjusted the inputs, altered which switches were engaged, and eventually managed to open a dialogue box with the log records. An antique keyboard arrangement unfolded up, around, and out from the side of the arm of the chair. It was about the size of her palm, but did not have dust or any signs of damage.

  “Eureka! Bravo, old machine.” She patted a rotted part of the seat cushion with affection. “Now, display all the details on the radiation warning posted 10935.42,” Janae said as she typed in a command.

  It failed to register, and the screen went back to the basic radiation warning.

  “Blasted, old machine! Have to start you all over again.” This time, however, the keyboard was still deployed, and therefore, Janae was able to use it, rather than the toggle switch combinations to navigate through the menus, subroutines, and files. The screens switched much faster as she did the inputs in that manner. “I have yet to see any evidence for active artificial intelligence in any of these systems. Every indicator of a link or coupling to a Trailblazer AI is severed.”

  “That is a sad occurrence,” Kimberly related. “I conjectured at least some of the Trailblazer’s AIs would be functioning.”

  “None here, but they are a hundred years old, and there was massive system damage, right?” Janae cursed Jubal, not for the first time. “Now, display details on radiation warning dated 10935.42,” Janae continued to speak out loud while she worked.

  The screens flipped quickly in response to Janae’s efforts and finally she was rewarded with a better log report.

  “Radiation warning initiated for the entirety of the needle ship. Mass casualties in flight crew. Captain Josey Alberts, is only senior officer to be active. Lattice of Compeers off-line, Machine Maintenance unable to give estimate for repairs. Suspended animation repositories failing at unexpected rate due to radiological influences. Primary cause was massive explosions in energy concentrator beginning in sections…” Janae read the reports, and compared the described areas to the paper map which the automacube had given her. She found the room she was in, on the map, and many of the other names matched, which allowed her to see that the energy concentrator stretched from the very bow of the ship, where it was labeled as a “collector scoop” to the stern which was labeled as “ejection port assemble.” The log entry did not mention a micro-singularity, but Janae concluded that probably was the reason for the explosions. Yet, what exactly a micro-singularity was, remained unknown.

  “So, what the tants call Axis Mundi, is here called the needle ship, and it looks like most of it was bathed in deadly radiation something like seventy years ago,” Janae spoke for Kimberly’s hearing. “My current location is right at the edge of what is marked as ‘marginal survivability’ and some of the sections are listed as ‘open to space’ which cannot be good. It also looks like the eight habitats escaped the most of the radiation burst, and explosions mostly because the disaster was contained by the energy concentrator’s own thick shielding. Played a catastrophic game of havoc on the drives of the Trailblazer. The pathway to Ida, I think, is marked on the map, and I am certainly glad I have the RAM suit. Large areas of radiation are marked in various places, but this report is about seventy years old. The log also had a margin note saying mitigation procedures were happening. I am not sure…”

  Suddenly, the entire system shut down. Amber glowing lights came on in the corners of the room, but nothing else was illuminated. Janae tried everything she could, but nothing would function. Some of the toggle switches were now stuck—frozen, or seized up.

  “I just lost virtually all power here. I can at least head back toward where our lost supplies are. Get those, and the set up the teleportation receiving pad. If this map’s arrow indicates where they actually are. I have been lied to so much lately, I wonder if anyone is telling the truth.
But according to the map, I have about a seventy kilometer hike,” Janae stated.

  “Ken has a similar distance to go, but he is traversing inside the biome,” Kimberly relayed.

  Hearing voices as she stepped from the control room, Janae immediately leaped back inside and pressed herself against a darkened corner. Footsteps and noises stopped just outside of the door. Janae crawled beneath and under the workstation and using her legs first, she crammed herself inside the tight, dark recess where the panel had been removed. It was nearly black where she hid. She was thankful the RAM suit covered her entire face, for now the smells of that opening were blocked from her perception.

  There were shadows of movement as someone entered, then another figure followed. They stayed close to the doorway.

  “These old stations are roach-filled, rat traps, nothing in here. Whoa, another aberrant energy surge must have leapt through, it stinks! But no norms in here,” a Tant stated.

  “How did she ever escape? We had every passageway sealed and hidden?”

  “She is an odd one, that I know is right,” replied the other tant voice. “We should never have tried to help her. She is a norm, after all, and norms cannot be trusted.”