Casindra Lost

by Marti Ward

  As his eyes continued to follow the gym, his thoughts took on a sour note.

  The gym did have another function – its official designation was ‘escape pod’. This explained the heavy-based frustum design reminiscent of the re-entry capsules of the Mercury and Apollo missions over a century ago. It was capable of carrying and protecting as many as 28 crew and passengers, and officially this was its primary function – but Sideris had spent 40 odd years using the gym on a daily basis, at home, at school, and on university vacations back in LETOland, and not one minute using it as a re-entry capsule. It certainly didn’t seem likely that it would be of much use as a lifepod in the Andromeda galaxy.

  Where would I escape to? Who could possibly rescue me?

  It was the EmProbes that were the true lifepods, or at least a lifeline, even though they weren’t designed to transport passengers. They each had their own level 2 AI, Ford-Svaiter mirror and EmDrive, and were capable of crossing between planetary orbits; programming, launching and retrieving drones; opening and targeting a wormhole at an appropriately positioned FS mirror array; and sending through a message drone, or themselves. Based on the evidence of his files, they were a proven design, having been refined over decades of unmanned missions through wormholes, including several to the Paradisi System in Andromeda, and indeed the Cavitran drives were a refinement the design.

  Using human-piloted LETOs and a complement of AI-controlled EmProbes, in combination with a fleet of remote-controlled M-drones and Volcans, was a quick and dirty way of putting together a manned survey mission based on tried and true technology…

  Sideris could see that Casindra’s scissor lifts to the new Cavitrans were at full extension and 120° apart as the primary payload was being maneuvered into place – by the other LETO of course! This payload was a 25-meter diameter saltwater fish tank, but would have a pressurized 4-meter diameter atmosphere as its center. As usual it was being latched above Casindra – in this case it was being positioned so that the center of gravity of the whole assemblage would lie in a central air pocket as the aquadome rotated. But why a quarter of the gross mass of the fully loaded Casindra needed to be devoted to seawater was unclear.

  Two other spheres had already been installed: one biodome focused on bird and plant life (that should be the port one) and the other on animal life including freshwater fish and amphibious species (to starboard of course)…

  “Commander Sideris, the Board will see you now.” The voice startled Sideris, who scowled at the militaristic designation, as he looked back to see a uniformed figure gesturing towards an open doorway. Two gold bands, rather than the three on his own new uniform, marked the woman as a lieutenant. ‘Commander’, with three bands, was a rank, while ‘Captain’ designated the person who actually commanded the ship – whatever rank they happened to have.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Sideris responded formally as he made his way through the door in the low gravity, the soft tearing sound of his maglock boots almost muffled by the Velcro carpet, the even softer whisper of the closing sliders matching the room: luxurious yet understated.

  “Please take a seat.” That was Thorndike, wearing a gold bird as his insignia.

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Sideris responded formally as he took his velseat, and studied the four other faces seated either side of Thorndike, a large segmented fenestella providing a window to the stars behind them. There were two women in lab coats, a well-built blonde sitting to the left of Thorndike and a slim brunette to her left. On Thorndike’s right was a young man with steely eyes in a three-letter suit sporting the SSS badge, and on his right an elderly man in shirt sleeves and 20th century hornrims who looked to be Indian or Pakistani.

  “I trust the preparation of SS Casindra is proceeding to your satisfaction,” announced Thorndike, as if it were impossible to believe otherwise. Sideris took it as a question and an invitation.

  “The reports I’ve received indicate that all upgrades have been completed, and as I was coming in I noted that the final payload module was being locked in place,” Sideris responded, hesitating only a moment before continuing. “However, I do not have complete documentation on the upgrades. In particular, I have not been provided with engineering documents or operations manuals for the SECASM or the AI or the vNs, and I still have questions about the purpose of taking the three biodomes, and in particular the need for taking a small sea with me.”

  The two men to his left both reacted to this – the SSS guy in the suit and the science type in shirt sleeves. The suit managed to get the floor. “All documentation and operations software has been installed on the Casindra’s databases and the computer systems. The ship’s AI will be able to give you access to whatever you need, and indeed can control all the ship’s systems.”

  “And you are?” Sideris hated these anonymous suits (and shirts and skirts). Thorndike could have at least had the courtesy to introduce everyone. There were hundreds of people at the station, and he’d only been there a week.

  “I’m sorry! Let me introduce everyone,” interjected the blonde woman. “I am Professor Sabina Gunther, and am responsible for all the research and systems relating to health, cryonics and zoological engineering – including your aquadome, aviadome and biodome – I believe you’ve talked to some of my staff about them. Next to me is Dr Ingrid Kuttner who is in charge of agricultural engineering, planetary surveying and terraforming.” Dr Kuttner smiled back as he nodded to her – since surveying was the major part of the mission for which he had direct responsibility, it would be good to buttonhole her at the end.

  “You know Mr Brandon Thorndike,” Prof. Gunther continued. “Then we have Dr Aditya Ganesh whose remit is mining and manufacturing, including 3D printing and intelligent systems – as exemplified in the self-replicating mining robots you will be deploying on Petra. Finally, you’ve already heard from Dr Michael Abramov who is responsible for systems integration and communication. I don’t think any of us is qualified to explain the SECASM operation to you, and I suspect you know more about it than any of us.”

  “Thank you, Prof. Gunther,” Sideris hadn’t missed the twinkle in her eye as she referred to the self-styled colonel, who had only glared in response. He wondered that it wasn’t commodore, or admiral or general. “I am broadly familiar with the principles of the individual functions of the Solar Energy Collector and Ford-Svaiter Mirror, and the nanosilc. What I’d particularly like information on is the new capabilities and programmability of the AIs, including these silicon nanobots that are not only in the SECASM but are now, uh, part of the hull and bulkhead coatings. As far as I can see, I am heading off to another galaxy with systems that haven’t been tested, which I don’t know to operate, and for which the ship’s computers can’t have been programmed with appropriate expertise – because there isn’t any experience with the technology yet!”

  “I can comment on that,” interjected Dr Ganesh. “Reach Corp has been testing the integral nanosilc hull coatings and SECASM on EmProbes, including the most recent unmanned probe to New Eden – which has also set up a Ford-Svaiter mirror at Paradisi-Tenebra Lagrange 4. The Vanguard class of shuttles and drones also use a form of the nanosilc hull coating. I have overseen the knowledge engineering of your AI based on the experience of these tests. The AI is also fully programmed to be able to handle your mirror extension mission, and your von Neumann miner deployment at Petra.”

  “That leads me to another question and a request,” responded Sideris. “I’ve been given a three-and-a-half-year mission that involves tasks at four planets, plus the Gate on entry and departure. Given the Gate is at Tenebra’s L4, that’s at least three visits to Tenebra’s orbit, interspersed with visits to two other inner planets and one outer planet – where a minimal cost transition to or from Tenebra will take well over a year for an inner planet, and would take of the order of four years to get to or from Petra. My question is whether I am authorized to prioritize the missions and deployments as I see fit based on what I find, and to e
xpend fuel as necessary to meet the timeline. The request is that two Valiant scouts be attached to Casindra.”

  “You are indeed authorized to prioritize objectives within the broader framework of the mission,” answered Thorndike. “However, as you know an EmProbe has been assigned to undertake the miner-seeding mission at Petra autonomously – it has already been preloaded with three Volcan drones carrying the miners. Your priority is to extend the mirror at Paradisi-Tenebra Lagrange Point 4 and survey the three Goldilocks planets. As for valiant scouts…” Thorndike trailed off, looking to either side for assistance.

  Abramov leaned forward to field that. “The Vanguard family includes the Vanguard shuttle, seating 250 passengers, and will be used on the follow-up mission by SS Moraturi. You will be equipped with a fleet of Volcans, this pilotless drone being the smallest member of the family. As for the Valiant, that’s a two-seater scout that is still experimental, and is neither budgeted nor authorized for this mission. Reach Corp will not be delivering any till next year at earliest.”

  At that point there was a buzz, and everyone looked at their wristcom. Abramov looked up from his with a slack look of surprise. “The message says that two large stealth-fighters have just turned up, both bound with a blue ribbon, with a 10m wide card slung between them displaying a Reach Corp logo and reading, ‘Happy 50th Birthday Jerome’, signed ‘Sol & Gus’.”

  “Ah yes, Solomon and August Reach did promise me an early birthday present, as I’m going to be incommunicado on the day,” Sideris chipped in. “I can provide the two Valiant scouts… I was merely asking that they be attached.” He didn’t feel he needed to say anything about the smuggled champagne that Sol had promised would be inside… Nor that as reading material for the trip over, Gus had provided the complete engineering database for every Reach Corp product and secret project… Not to mention the conspiracy of medical and command grade officers they’d organized, to keep him out of cryo so that he’d have time to study them…

  “Yes, of course.” Thorndike rasped out, before pausing for a sip of water. He then continued in his best schoolteacher voice. “So back to the mission… As you might know, the Lagrange Points for Paradisi and Tenebra are the points where the gravitational pull of the star Paradisi and the planet Tenebra balance exactly with centrifugal forces to hold an object in an orbit around Paradisi, with the same period as Tenebra but well away from any planets or moons. L4 precedes Tenebra by 60° and L5 follows it at a remove of 60°, both being as far from Tenebra as they are from Paradisi, and a similar distance from Petra’s orbit. The L4 point has been selected as the safest place for the jump gate to allow you to return here, while Tenebra is the most appropriate place for an orbital mining depot and refueling station. Establishing this basic infrastructure is essential to the program, and indeed to your return, and your communication via message drone during the mission.”

  Sideris refrained from commenting on the fact that that was in his mission datapack, or that he had been shuttling to Lagrangians for over forty years, or that they happened to be sitting at the jump gate at the analogous Sol-Jupiter L4 point – so they might indeed have some idea about Lagrangians. He merely nodded to encourage Thorndike to continue.

  “The inner planets, Ardesco and New Eden are clearly most appropriate for mining and colonization respectively, with Tenebra and PTL4 providing the transport hub for the system. You are expected to orbit and scan each of the three Goldilocks planets, use the Volcans for low level scans, and perform ground surveys as you see fit. Petra will eventually provide heavy metals, including uranium and thorium as reactor fuels, but the von Neumann miners will prepare the way there.”

  Ganesh interjected at that point. He emphasized the importance and delicate nature of the Petra mission, and the potential for disaster if the von Neumann miners weren’t seeded correctly – it was anything but a minor part of the mission! The future of the entire colonization program depended on these miners refining and stockpiling the necessary resources. Sideris merely sat back and listened, letting the two argue – and learned more in the process than he would have if he’d asked all the questions that he’d had about that part of the mission.

  Chapter One

  Wormhole – SJL4 departure

  Sideris

  23 June 2075 05:58

  Captain Jerome Sideris sat comfortably in his command chair, and ran his eye around the empty bridge, and his hand over his grizzled crew cut. One part of his mind was on the countdown as it entered the last minute, but it was all out of his hands – the busy screens were all being monitored from Ida, and the precisely timed jump was being controlled with picosecond accuracy by the AI. Another part of his mind mused that he’d have to do his own haircuts for the foreseeable future. But most of his attention was on the viewscreens that showed the hive of activity surrounding the extension of the space station that was being built into the asteroid called Ida.

  Old man Reach had assured him that the partially complete Ford-Svaiter mirror was perfectly up to the job, although the time in the wormhole would be nine days rather than the matter of minutes it would be for the Asteria class ships once the full FSM array was completed. Young Solomon had more accurately gauged his concerns, reassuring him that all traffic around the gate had been suspended, and would not be resumed until Casindra had entered the wormhole. Of course, there was nothing they could do about the underlying concern that they as pilots understood well: he hated being a passenger, and here the pilot wasn’t even human.

  His musings were interrupted as mission control voiced the final countdown, and he noticed that his right hand had already been tapping out the seconds with double taps on the armrest. His mind was then ripped back to the 1001 things that could go wrong as he felt the AI power up the EmDrive – the Cavitran Drive they were now calling it. Basically, he was sitting between a couple of nuclear reactors spewing out microwaves.

  Another 1001 possible disasters inserted themselves as the SECASM unfurled – the Solar Energy Collector Array and Svaiter Mirror was a clever reconformable device based on Reach Corp’s silicon nanowhatsits that could configure and rearrange themselves. His life was in the hands of billions of tiny robots, each of which had a statistically non-zero probability of going wrong at any time.

  Now the AI was directing those nanobots to align the ship’s SECASM with the asteroid’s Ford-Svaiter mirror, having made the precise calculations to open and target the wormhole to its destination in the Andromeda galaxy on the outskirts of the Paradisi System – the millimeter precision needed to track the cavum was beyond a human pilot’s capability, and it had to be maintained every nanosecond of the way through the wormhole, every single nanosecond bringing further opportunities for some random astronomical event to disrupt the wormhole or their precise course through it. Not to mention that the two systems were approaching at 525km/s and the Ida gate point was orbiting the Sun at over 13km/s here in Jupiter’s orbit, so they were expected to emerge somewhere near what would have been Saturn’s orbit in our solar system, screaming at Mach 1800 towards PTL4 in the equivalent of Sol’s asteroid belt, but hopefully minus asteroids – all the while hoping there was nothing even vaguely solid in the way. That’s about 0.18% of the speed of light and the fastest I’m ever likely to travel.

  And it’s up to the AI to park gently alongside the partially constructed gate mirror rather than ram it into smithereens. I wonder if it will follow the established 50km first-approach protocols, or if it will want to demonstrate that it can do better than a mere human.

  Sideris wasn’t sure whether there were any butterflies on board, apart from the ones breeding in his stomach – certainly the wormhole was the biggest imaginable magnifier for a butterfly effect, as 2.5 light years got compressed down to a few days of travel, and even a tiny error in calculation, or a bump by cosmic debris, would be magnified incomprehensibly.

  His heart was in his mouth as they raced headlong at the other mirror, deep within the asteroid, backed by kilometers of rock,
blind except for a vague impression of dark at the very center of the SECASM. Suddenly the SECASM changed from a brilliant white… to a sparkling mother-of-pearl surface that encompassed both mirrors… to an expanding view of an unfathomable black chasm – a stabilized 3D space within an interdimensional wormhole, which they aptly called the cavum. He breathed again as they emerged into the long black tunnel, the inside of the wormhole, the cavum…

  Sideris was the first human to enter a wormhole – and he’d survived! So far…

  “Captain’s log, SS Casindra, 23 June 2075. Departure from Ida at 06:00 as scheduled. Entry to the wormhole successful at 06:02. All systems at nominal. Telemetry transmitting and logging.”

  This log entry was transmitted simultaneously by high redundancy spread spectrum radio and multibeam laser, although these technologies had not yet been successfully deployed through the wormhole, even though the spread spectrum system was designed to exploit the least cluttered and most likely frequency bands. According to his briefing material, every mission seemed to have included a new variation on the protocols, if not a brand new prototype transceiver.

  Probes equipped with EmDrives and multiple message drones had been sent back through wormhole often enough though, and the last unmanned probe had even launched a successful return message drone from within the wormhole. During the present mission, message drones MD1 and MD2 would be sent automatically from within the wormhole, just after entry and just before exit. This will leave ten for messages back from the Paradisi system. Sideris was scheduled to send one every three months, under a strict protocol that would ensure he’d get the message drones back with updates and supplies, and could then reuse them for the next round of messages and samples. Mission protocol specified that these would be designated sequentially in order of use, irrespective of those being received back and reused.