“Sadness,” Erik translated for the tavalai. “I’m not sure how she associates rain with melancholy, considering she’s never actually been on a planet. But I don’t think physical locations make much difference to an imagination this powerful. Maybe she’s watched a lot of movies.”
“Amazing,” Pram murmured, gazing at the scene. “It makes tavalai very sad too, Hannachiam. And very alarmed that it could happen again. I understand that you have been assisting parren and human researchers to understand the weapons that were used to kill those civilians?”
“Limited progress,” Erik admitted. “We’re using some analytic equipment we built from scratch using data-core schematics. It’s incredible, but if drysine tech was lacking in one field, it was the biological sciences. Machines never had much use for it.”
“Well,” Pram said grimly. “If you have nothing to share with me, I have something to share with you.”
Tif sat locked into the simulation chair, strapped so tight she could barely move, inflation bladders compressing her limbs every time she ‘manoeuvred’. Inflation bladders were rarely used on starships to combat G-compression, because starship G-forces always came from aft, where the engines were located, and did not drive blood from the head — the main problem that inflation bladders were created to combat. In the simulator the compression was used to simulate the forces of G itself — poorly, Tif thought, but it was certainly distracting and constricting, and sometimes made it hard to breathe, just like the real thing.
Worse, the chair spun within a gimbal of three concentric rings, and played havoc upon the natural orientation of a pilot’s inner ear. That did not bother Tif much — all pilots beyond a certain level of experience learned to disregard what their own bodies were telling them, and trust the instruments. By far the worst bit was the 3D holographical display that now presented a real-time evolving tactical scenario before her eyes of staggering complexity. Solving the problem it presented was like trying to play Styx at chess while being spun about in blindfolded freefall while people threw rocks at her.
“Watch your off-side orientation,” came LC Dufresne’s blunt instruction over coms. “Thirteen degrees infraction is too steep.”
That described the optimum orientation between a perfect firing alignment that allowed all guns a sight of their firing arc, and the pitch at which the warship had to maintain in order to continue this degree of course alteration. Tif set her jaw and reoriented, but now her course wasn’t shifting rapidly enough, and the incoming ordnance that Scan highlighted on her graphic would intercept her in less than thirty seconds instead of her preferred thirty-five.
Engineering showed the jumplines fully charged, but the possibilities on this gravity slope about a G2 star threw her jump-pulse projections off-optimal. She dumped V in a massive pulse of jump engines, used the slower V to rapidly spin and reorient the ship to a better firing alignment, then pulsed up once more to gain V ahead of the changing intercept-point with that incoming ordnance.
“Your course reset is offline by point-five degrees,” Dufresne told her coldly. “Intercept angle on targets three and four are now sub-optimal, readjust.”
Tif battled the frantic sensation that her brain was about to explode with data-overload… a horrible feeling, the mental equivalent of drowning. Armscomp blared at her that fire-volume at the primary targets was insufficient at current attitudes, so she gave a barrel roll with a tail-swing to let it get the next full volley off, then hammered thrust up to the full-performance 10.5Gs to set up the next jump pulse when the incoming ordnance arrived, pre-setting attitude with a swing back to her previous trajectory…
Suddenly Scan was telling her the second target, which had been trailing her to this point, had abruptly pulsed and was slashing at her rear quarter at high-V with ordnance incoming. She pulsed up early… but the jumplines hadn’t quite reached full charge, and was held up on a two-second delay, during which time one of those big, obvious incoming rounds that she’d had on her Scan the entire time slammed into her and presumably killed everyone on the ship.
The displays went blank, and the gimbal came back to neutral. Tif flicked her wrists to clear the arm restraints and pulled off her helmet, biting back the guttural growl of frustration she knew alarmed some humans. She was sweaty and tired, heart hammering, eyes sore and limbs aching. It always astonished her that even here, sitting in a simulator without any actual G-stresses upon the body, a simulator pilot could burn hundreds of calories and feel like she’d hunted a rogue raslan barehanded.
Commander Draper came to help her with the restraints, sometimes difficult for sim-dazed pilots with their heads still spinning in circles. “Fleet training command regrets to inform you that you are dead,” he told her cheerfully, as was Draper’s way. That was tradition, she’d been informed — for senior pilots to tell juniors exactly how dead they were, in case they hadn’t yet grasped what those simulator results would mean in real life. And it was a senior pilot’s way of putting a junior in her place, telling her just how far she had to go.
She tasted blood in her mouth, and put a finger inside her lip. It came out red, to her annoyance. “Seriously Tif,” said Draper. “You should consider a mouthguard.”
“And you aw understand what I say with nouthguard?” Tif said drily. “You don’t understand now.”
“How dare you say that about my mother,” said Draper, crouching to undo her legs. “I think the kuhsi god is not the god of ergonomic design. If I’d been born with that mouth and teeth, I’d demand my money back.”
Tif repressed a snort. “Ask gods cone back as hunan. No teeth, chew food rike awd rady. No thanks.” Draper laughed, finishing the straps and giving her a friendly whack on the arm. Tif liked Draper. Unlike her, he was a hell of a warship pilot. And unlike Dufresne, people liked him.
“How I do?” she asked her instructors. They were in Phoenix itself, as the simulator functions were all integrated up at the bridge, and too difficult to run successfully off-ship. Engineering Bay 14, grey steel and greyer storage compartments, extra wiring still exposed where Engineering had run cords to the new setup. It was all temporary, the simulator gimbals mounted on the rear G-wall, with Phoenix in the bay, sitting on her brand new tail.
“You died,” said Dufresne, reviewing the screens arrayed before her chair, replaying that last sequence of manoeuvres. Tif was having difficulty hearing, then recalled that her ears were still bound and reached to undo the bandana that held them there, flat beneath the helmet.
“I die good?” she asked Dufresne. “Or I die bad?” Blood recirculated into her ears, hot and painful. But now she could hear properly.
“Dying is usually bad, Second Lieutenant,” Dufresne told her. “Please try to recall that if you’re ever flying this ship in combat.” Unlike Draper, Dufresne meant it without humour. If a kuhsi senior had addressed her like that, Tif would have been upset, but Draper caught her eye and winked. “You progressed nearly halfway through the assigned simulation. A full report will have to await our full assessment, but you appear to have fallen short on multiple objective counts, and achieved satisfactory results on a few.”
“The first time I tried that scenario,” Draper told her, “I died about a minute short of where you survived to. So you did better than me for a beginner.”
“She took a lot of shortcuts to survive that long,” Dufresne said with disapproval. “Thus bypassing multiple assigned objectives.”
“I survive ronger,” Tif told her. “Other objective stupid. First thing is survive, yes? Crazy scena… scena-rio.” She had to bite out the awkward word. “No one rive aw through. Inpossibu.”
“The Captain survived the entire scenario in Academy training,” Dufresne said coolly. “And Captain Pantillo before him. With high ratings for secondary objectives as well.”
Tif felt her heart fall through the floor. She’d been sure it was impossible. There were just too many enemies in all the wrong places, and the sheer volume of information to be process
ed was too much. Draper put a hand on her shoulder, and gave a hard look at Dufresne.
“What the Lieutenant Commander fails to mention,” he said, “is that among the very good pilots who have never successfully completed this scenario, her name is right up there.”
“Yours too,” said Dufresne, unruffled as she continued to scroll through the data.
“Exactly,” said Draper. “There’s no shame in failing here, Tif, the entire scenario is designed to push you to your limit just to see where that limit is. We only run it on advanced pilots, and you’re now certainly one of those. Only a few total freaks like Captains Pantillo and Debogande have ever passed.”
It made Tif consider the plausibility of crew-wide rumours that Dufresne was actually a better pilot than Draper, but had been knocked back for the Commander’s rank because no one wanted her in charge. “How about AI ship?” she wondered. “Drysine ship…” she waved a hand at Dufresne’s screens. “Too nuch data for ne, head exprode. AI fry no probren, yes?”
“I have no idea,” said Dufresne.
“Actually no,” said Draper. “The Captain was saying he discussed it with Styx, and Styx is surprised with the capabilities of human pilots. She says AIs don’t have a problem with data-overload like we do, but human pilots acquire an instinct after a while that allows them to take short-cuts without having to process all that data. So being able to run all the data doesn’t guarantee an AI will necessarily make better decisions — some AIs get sidetracked by irrelevant data that a human or kuhsi would ignore, there’s apparently dangers to being too smart. The more important thing is to know which data matters and when, and that’s something organic brains are naturally better at than AIs — we have a better biological sorting mechanism. AIs think themselves to death and drown in complexity.”
“The computer gives you a rank of forty-two percent,” Dufresne said primly as she finished her calculations. “As you can see, Second Lieutenant, it’s quite a bit different from flying a shuttle.”
Tif couldn’t argue with that. “Deep space with junp engine,” she said tiredly. “Lots options, deep view…” she demonstrated with her hand, indicating the ridiculous depth a pilot had to process, well beyond the visible light horizon, toward things the ship’s scanners insisted hadn’t actually happened yet. “Don’t need new skill. Need new brain.”
She hauled herself dejectedly to her feet, as Draper went and peered at the Lieutenant Commander’s screens. “The computer also says,” he added, “that the Fleet Academy mean-average for a pilot of your experience would expect you to be scoring at twenty-seven percent. And your forty-two percent would place you in the… top one percent of all trainees.” He smiled broadly at her. “But I already expected that.”
The news did not cheer Tif as much as it was supposed to. “Books say trans… trans-i-shun hard. Good score eary not say pirot nake trans-i-shun. Need change brain, brain sonetine say no.”
“Well there’s no arguing with that,” Draper admitted. “But if I had to choose between being a twenty-seven-percent pilot on the wrong side of the transition, or a forty-two-percenter, I’d choose where you are now. Now, let me show you the next assigned reading and lectures — the LC and I will try to grade your papers faster this time.”
7
On Captain Pram’s insistence, Erik and Trace were ushered into PH-1’s cockpit upon return to the shuttle. When disembarking without an external airlock, the shuttle’s entire rear hold would be decompressed first, leaving the forward hold just rear of the cockpit sealed with an extra pair of pressure doors to protect cockpit integrity. Erik, Trace and Pram used it now as an airlock to access the cockpit, and stood in bulky pressure suits beside the observer chairs with barely enough room, Erik stooping slightly beneath the overhead.
“Guys, noise cancellation, please,” Erik told Hausler and Yun, who by regulation had to remain in the cockpit while the shuttle was grounded. Both activated helmet headsets so they could hear nothing else, and gave thumbs up to indicate they’d done it. The cockpit was pressure-guaranteed, as pilots couldn’t fly in full EVA suits, and would have to seal up with a safety hood, and plug their flight suits into emergency air if the cockpit were holed. More important right now, the cockpit was the most secure place for a top-secret conversation.
“We can turn off all coms,” Erik told Pram, “but there’s no guarantee Styx can’t surrepticiously turn them back on…
To his surprise, Pram waved away the concern. “She will hear of this eventually, there’s no preventing it. I’m more concerned in the near-term about the parren.” He considered them for a moment, big, amphibious eyes rimmed with the wrinkles of ageing skin, just as with humans. That made him somewhere over two hundred human years old, Erik guessed. The mouth, twice the width of a human’s, pursed with displeasure, thick lips pressed thin with tension. “I understand the Lien Wang is here to try and persuade you to go home?”
“They told you that?” Erik asked warily. As much as he liked and trusted Pram, he could never forget that Pram served an alien government with which humanity had recently been at war. Whatever else he was, Pram was a dutiful servant of the collective tavalim, and would screw all of humanity in an instant if it ensured his own race’s survival. And Erik, of course, would do the same in return.
“It seems the logical thing,” said Pram, inner eyelids blinking rapidly in the dry human air. “What happened to your plans to head to croma space and search for the origins of the alo?”
It would be too much, Erik supposed, to hope that Pram hadn’t heard about Phoenix’s plans. And if he knew, that meant all the major tavalai institutions and leadership knew. “Well you probably heard that the parren scholar we were speaking to about establishing contacts with the croma just crashed into the side of a steel cliff,” Erik replied. “So that’s proving harder than expected.”
“The Dobruta have croma contacts,” said Pram. “We can get you there.”
“How?” Trace interjected with suspicion. “Croma are nearly as far away from tavalai space as human. You have no significant relations with them, croma have few enough relations with their neighbours, let alone those even further away.”
“The Dobruta have an unusual role in tavalai affairs,” said Pram. “Making friends with strange aliens is our job.” The big eyes swivelled with an inward intensity that might have constituted a pointed look.
“Why give us contacts?” Erik persisted on Trace’s line of questioning. “What’s in it for you?”
“A lot,” said Pram. “Nearly all of which I am not at liberty to discuss with you.”
“Well I’m sorry,” said Erik. “But the last time we took assistance from one tavalai department, we nearly brought down the tavalai State Department.”
“And gained Drakhil’s diary, and from that, the drysine data-core,” Pram retorted. “I think humanity gained significantly from the venture.”
“And we went into it with our eyes open,” said Erik. “You’re right, we knew exactly what we were getting into. Without similar knowledge on this occasion, I can’t accept your offer of contacts or introductions. Because we both know very well, Pramodenium, that tavalai institutions are not authorised to make these offers unless they have some significant larger agenda in play. I need to know what that is.”
Pram looked out the canopy for a moment at the steel hangar bay walls, and the flatbed parren vehicles rolling by, crowded with EVA-suited engineers and scientists. Then he looked back. “I will deny that I told you this, if asked. I will lose my job if it is discovered. Possibly my life. There is still a death penalty for tavalai military personnel, for which the Dobruta marginally qualify. I could get that penalty for telling you this.”
“I appreciate your risk,” said Erik. “But the entire crew of Phoenix has had that penalty hanging over our heads for some time now, either inflicted by our enemies out here, or by our own Fleet back home.”
Pram appeared to consider that, and accept it. “Our scientists received samples fr
om Mylor Station, after the attack. They’ve been analysing them.”
“How did you receive samples?” Trace interrupted.
“Do you want to hear my information or not?” Pram replied. Erik gave Trace a faint shake of the head when she looked his way. “Analysis of those samples indicated what I imagine parren scientists have found — bio-synthetic nano-technology designed to rapidly interfere with biological life processes so as to cause rapid death. We’ve not seen that precise technology, but it’s not surprising that someone else may have it. It’s frighteningly advanced, but in a galaxy of V-strikes from jump-capable starships it’s hardly a worse existential threat than we already face from many sources.
“The worse news is that…” and Pram coughed, interrupting himself to wipe at his lips, an anxious mannerism. Erik saw that his hand was faintly shaking. An unpleasant chill started somewhere in his stomach, and worked its way up his spine. “Well, it gets quite complicated,” Pram resumed, the tremor having moved to his voice. “Obscenely complicated, in fact. The technology is on a level that makes it difficult for our scientists to even follow. Fortunately there is a small unit of such scientists who have been tracking these developments for centuries, largely emanating from the direction of the reeh.
“The samples concern not the parren who died at Mylor Station, but those who survived. Their DNA has been mutated. Only to a very small degree — too small for previous technology, advanced as it was, to even detect. But those mutations effectively make a kill-mechanism, which when activated will kill that person very quickly.”
“Then we have to tell the parren authorities immediately,” said Trace. “They have to round up and treat those parren survivors immediately…”
Pram held up a hand. “Other tavalai vessels have already done that, from the moment we made the discovery. But you see, it gets worse, because there are synthetic nano-particles that can wrap themselves with organic tissue to make synthetic-organic hybrid particles, thus rendering them invulnerable to the host’s immune system, and almost untraceable to modern medicine, drugs or counter-treatments. Their function is manifold, but the end design is to edit DNA, cause the mutation to spread, then to spread to neighbouring organisms much the same way as a cold or any other infectious disease would spread…”
Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five) Page 13