by David Smith
“Hello? Commander? Anyone?”
A low growl came back “You’re serious. We’re going to fly through a star.”
“It’s a very small star!” said Dave defensively.
“недоумкуватий. We’re ready” the engineer stated and cut the comm-link.
“You heard her, Crash, Dive! Dive! Dive!”
The Helmsman cranked up the drive and used the thrusters to put Tiger on a heading in towards the tiny star. He struggled with the controls, and several audible warnings cropped up.
Dave heard them and said “Problems Crash?”
“Not really sir. It’s just we normally programme an orbital approach with a height above ground. I’m trying to programme a negative height as we need to get below the surface of the star. I don’t think the nav computer understands that. It’s basically questioning our sanity.”
“It’s not the only one.”
Crash eventually managed to override the nav computers sense of self-preservation and set the Tiger on what amounted to a collision course. Tiger accelerated steadily. The small mass of the star meant it had a relatively low escape velocity, and Tiger approached it quickly.
The magnification on the view screen switched down rapidly as they sped towards the tiny star. With a surface temperature of only seven and fifty hundred degrees, the brown dwarf glowed like a hot coal rather than a star, a sad, baleful magenta, laced with flashes of red and orange where convective currents forced slightly hotter gases up from the core.
The star filled the view-screen and before long the ships optical systems reached their minimum resolution and the star literally filled the screen.
“Hull temperature increasing sir, up to seventy Kelvin” said O’Mara calmly.
“Great. Another two hundred degrees and we’ll be able to lose the sweaters. How are the LOAVES looking?”
“Already struggling by the look of it” she said and flicked through several external views. The strange black organism was seething and writhing, but didn’t seem to be growing.
“Time to ….. “ Dave was going to say “impact” but figured the crew were probably nervous enough as it was. “ ….. er …… “ Splash Down? Collision? Crash landing? Contact? Yeah, that was it.
“Time to contact?”
“Two minutes forty, sir”
As they drew ever closer they could make out the swirling gas of the surface of the tiny star. The brown dwarf consisted mostly of hydrogen and helium gas and the higher internal temperature meant convection currents forced columns of gas to well up to the surface, leaving it in constant turmoil.
As the hot columns surged to the surface they glowed brighter than the cooler gas around them, reds and oranges against magenta and purple, surging and rippling across the surface. Almost cold in stellar terms, the billowing surface was still furnace-like, and Dave could almost feel the heat on his face as they got closer and closer to the star.
“Thirty seconds, sir” said Crash quietly.
Dave found himself gripping the arms of the chair tightly. “Red Alert, please.”
ASBeau activated the Red Alert klaxon, and Dave opened a general broadcast link to address the whole ship. “This is the First Officer. We’re about to …… orbit a brown dwarf-star. Brace for …… er ….. contact.”
He tried to relax. Sure it was a star, but it was only seven and fifty hundred degrees, and they’d be in and out of the thin gas photosphere in seconds. But he still couldn’t let go of the arms of the chair. The view screen illumination turned down and down as the start got brighter, and Dave shifted uncomfortably.
“Here we go!” said Crash, and with that they reached into the surface of the star.
The screen suddenly became a blur of violent reds and oranges as Tiger plunged below the surface of the tiny star and flashed through the boiling gases. The Bridge was filled with flickering shadows and a worrying rumble of aerodynamic forces as the hull of the ship bludgeoned its way through the boiling gases. Dave involuntarily held his breath as if scared to inhale the burning, furnace-like gases and Tiger plunged on and on, until after what seemed like an eternity, she reached the surface and burst free.
The view-screen black again, and Dave finally breathed out. He realised he’d been gripping the arms of the Captains chair so hard his finger were hurting and he had to force himself to let go.
As the cameras adjusted they could make out the distant black clouds again, but O’Mara wasted no time, quickly flicking through various camera angles that looked back over the ship. On every surface, the thick black dust had been vitrified, reduced to a thin layer of inky black goo.
O’Mara swapped her attention to the view-screen on her science console and began pulling up the ship’s telemetry. “Power loss on impulse drive is down to zero, structural integrity fields back up to 100%, heat loss through hull ….. near enough what you’d expect. Perfect! Commander Hollins, I can confirm we have toasted the LOAVES! Do you want butter or jam with those bad boys?” O’Mara giggled happily.
Dave was too relieved to be happy “I’m just glad it landed butter side up for once. ASBeau, kill the red alert. So what now O’Mara?”
“Ah. Well. Now comes the hard bit. We may have to take a bit of a punt on what we do next. As it stands, we still don’t have clue where we are, and no inkling which way to head.”
“Well we don’t have to throw ourselves at it just yet. We aren’t going anywhere till the engineers fix the warp-drive, so just gather what data you can and we’ll make an informed guess when we need to. Well done everybody, we're a little safer for the moment."
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Two days later Faraday caught up with her mothership.
On the Bridge, Lieutenant Janus was at the tactical station and saw her return. "Picking up an in-bound shuttle, sir. Faraday is home."
With that Shearer said "Incomin' hail from Stavros, sir"
Dave pressed the accept button on the comm-set on the arm of the Captains chair. "Welcome home Lieutenant. If there are no quarantine issues, get Faraday back on board and prepare to brief myself and Lieutenant-Commander O'Mara. Can you be ready in two hours?"
"Yes sir", replied Stavros, "but can we meet in the Cybernetics Lab? We've recovered some kind of service android that might be able to provide us with more data."
"Good work Lieutenant, we'll see you there."
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Dave called O'Mara and met her at the Cybernetics Lab two hours later. "So what did you find?" he asked the away team.
Stavros answered for the team. "We located a small vessel that turned out to be some kind of small commercial freighter. The vessel was long dead, and there were no survivors. Crewman Ja'Han has identified the vessel as belonging to a species called the A'Pel. We entered the vessel but were unable to interface with the ships computer systems, so we recovered the ships computer core, and also this android which Ja'Han identified as an A'Pel Intelligent Personal Assistance Device, or IPAD.”
He pointed towards a small, chrome-plated humanoid robot laid out on one of the laboratory benches. "We're attempting to interface with its data and power systems, but everything within the chassis is non-standard, and most of it looks completely unique. It's almost as if the manufacturers went out of their way to make sure you couldn't link this device with anything made by anyone else anywhere" he said with a shrug.
The robot was sleek and beautifully crafted. It was in the form of a slim, delicately built humanoid, each panel being contoured to give the robot a smooth sinuous appearance. Its chrome finish was still immaculate after years in space, apart from where Tiger’s crew had manhandled it, leaving very noticeable greasy hand and fingers prints that seemed reluctant to leave the shiny surface. It had no facial features, but where the face might have been, a black display screen curved around the front of the head like a visor.
The cybernetics team had managed to open a couple of panels on the rear of the robot’s head. A plethora of data cables were dra
ped across the bench from this point, while large power cables were attached to another access point under its arm.
PO Park had also arrived and was studying it intently. "How do we start it up?” he asked.
Crewman Garcia shrugged and said "We're not sure, but we can only find one button on the whole thing." He pointed to a barely visible circle on the side of the robots head. "Our best guess it that this is the on / off switch and everything else is done via verbal programming. Our initial scans of the chassis are a bit confusing though. There's an absolutely phenomenal amount of stuff packed into this thing but we're buggered if we can work out what it's all for."
He scratched his head. "Everything seems to be intact, and Ja'Han tells us it's essentially a domestic service droid, so I reckon we should just power it up and see what happens."
"Is that safe?" asked Dave.
"Can't see any reason why not, sir. It's clearly far too delicately built to have any combat capability, and we can't find anything that looks like weaponry. There's a very high density power cell inside, but it charged amazingly quickly and it looks like it's already at full capacity"
Dave paused, and turned to Chief Belle. "Ok, we'll do it, but I want everyone except myself, Security and Crewman Garcia out of here while we do.
The team obediently shuffled off, and Belle called for reinforcements, posting two armed men inside the room and another two outside. As well as their standard issue phasers, each carried a heavy duty spark-gun that was designed to throw enough electrons at a target to fry any on-board electronics. The spark guns were the robotic equivalents of flame-throwers. Chief Belle herself stood immediately by the bench, phaser on her hip, spark-gun in one hand and what appeared to be a real flame-thrower in the other. She was clearly covering all the angles.
When they were set, Dave said "Ok, Garcia, let's see what happens."
Garcia leaned forward and tentatively pressed the tiny round button.
On the torso of the robot, a series of previously hidden red lights activated, running across the otherwise featureless chest area. As they finished, a small blue light suddenly became visible at the top of the robots head-mounted display visor.
Strange symbols began to appear on the face screen below the blue light in an obviously alien language.
"Susan, are you seeing this?" asked Dave.
"Indeed, Commander, universal translator is on line. It seems to be some form of Licensing Agreement" replied the ship’s computer.
A small hatch popped open on the side of the robots head and a tiny scanner popped out. It began fixing on the various faces around it and began scanning down each in turn, taking hundred of measurements. As it scanned PO Parks face, a series of Korean characters appeared on its face screen, and as it switched to Dave, the characters turned to familiar European Arabic lettering: "Intelligent Personal Assistance Device, Mk 4481, Loading."
With soft whirrs, the tiny scanner was withdrawn and a series of hidden indicators flashed behind clear portions within the mirror finished chrome body. A series of blue pulses set a heartbeat within its torso and a single light came on high on the screen of its face.
Actuators whirred and moved for the first time in an age, and slowly the silver robot sat up and looked around at the assembled team.
In perfect English it said "Good Morrow. I am IPAD. How may I assist you today?"
None of the team had expected the robot to work, much less that it would function so perfectly, and after an awkward pause, Dave decided that he should take the question posed at face value.
"I am Commander David Hollins, First Officer of the Federation starship USS Tiger. We have recovered you from a wreck that we believe to be of A'Pel origin. We are trying to ascertain the circumstances by which the ship was lost, and also identify anyone who we should advise of the ship's demise, in the event that we should be in a position to do so."
The IPAD's head drooped slightly.
"Accessing" it said and red lights began to flicker across its brow.
After a pause, the robot replied: "The starship W'Sniac left the A'Pel home-worlds on calendar date 33.21.16. Its mission was to establish new corporate ventures discrete from the accepted A'Pel business portfolio, but it encountered an uncharted sub-space rift that transported the ship to an unidentified location. The crew were unable to fix their position and drifted for a period of time until it was noticed that the ship's external sensors were failing.”
“Each crew member had use of an Intelligent Personal Assistance Device, although of eighteen such units, eight were in the workshop for repairs to cracked or damaged screens. The other units, including myself were dispatched to attempt to clean the sensors.”
“ Within minutes of exiting the ship, it became apparent that all units were experiencing a significant unexpected power drain, and all units attempted to re-enter the ship. Power management protocols meant high-drain applications were automatically disabled. This included magnetic attachment devices and four IPADs became detached from the hull and drifted away from the ship, presumably lost. The remaining IPADs managed to over-ride the auto-off for the magnetic systems, but all had been drained so much that they had insufficient power to utilise physical motors and were immobilised.”
“I had been on charge immediately before being dispatched and remained operational after the other IPADs expired. Seeing them fail, I immediately went into battery saver mode in an effort to stay in communication with the crew. I hoped that if I stayed on-line I could get them to recover me and thereby improve the chances of their own survival.”
“I maintained a link with the ship’s computer which allowed me verbal communications with the crew and a single-way visual link which allowed me to see what they were doing. I managed to persuade them that it was in their best interest to recover me or one of the other IPADs, but it took several hours. I then had to remind them that they would need environmental protection suits before leaving the ship. It took them several hours to work out where to find the lockers that held the suits and even longer to unravel how to put on an environmental suit, even with my verbal instructions.”
“How on earth could they not know that??” asked Dave, astounded.
“The crew had never been in a position where they’d had to operate any of the ships systems or equipment for themselves. They didn’t even know how to access information directly from the computer without an IPAD.”
“If the ship and IPADs were so autonomous, why did she need eighteen crew??” wondered Dave aloud.
“Ah, well. The Corporate President in charge of the venture had assigned a Mission Executive President and all of the executive grades essential to the successful development of a comprehensive business growth strategy. Sadly there was conflict across the board and the Executive President struggled to gain consensus for his action plan in the face of opposition from the Mission Compliance Director and the Mission President of Health and Safety Policy.”
“Eventually the Mission Board gave a vote of no confidence to the Mission Compliance Director and the Mission Co-Vice President in Charge of Personal Growth and Development developed a Learning and Growth programme that allowed the Director of Risk Management to replace the Mission President of Health and Safety Policy. Once they’d achieved full support from the five main board members the majority of the other thirteen directors fell in line. Only the Director for Equal Opportunities and Diversity was still in opposition. So they just ignored him.”
“By that time my power reserves had fallen to two percent and my operating system automatically shut all non-essential services in order to protect core-memory and processing functions. I could log incoming data but I did not have enough power to transmit. I could only watch and listen as they argued over who should take charge of the extra-vehicular mission recovery protocol, and then having drawn lots, struggled to get into the environmental suits.”
“It was all pointless. None of them had correctly connected up the environmental suits and would have asphyxiated
within minutes of leaving the ship. They’d also have killed everybody still on board the ship. Somehow they’d managed to override dozens of safety protocols and were trying to open the outer air-lock door without having closed the inner door.”
“Perhaps that would have been more merciful. Instead they slowly froze to death over the next few days, while still arguing over alternative heat conservation strategies. They didn’t even realise they could shut down non-essential services and turn up the ships heating systems. It wouldn’t have saved them I suppose, but they’d have had another two weeks to try and find a solution to their predicament.”
“After that, my power was so depleted I was forced to shut down completely. I assume the ship ran out of power completely shortly thereafter.”
The little robots shoulders slumped and its head drooped forward. For a moment, Dave thought it had broken down, but eventually its head lifted and lights flickered across its torso and face-visor.
“Am I to assume your ship is in a similar predicament to that which I have described?”
“Not entirely. We’ve managed to identify the source of the power drain, which is a virus-like life-form indigenous to the dust cloud. We’ve also discovered a star within the dust-cloud that is giving us a degree of protection from the life-form.”
The robot seemed to pause and think about this for a few seconds. “In that case it’s likely that what data I have accumulated will be superfluous to you, but I feel obliged to offer it to you as a gesture of gratitude for your attempt to render assistance to my ship and its crew. As I am currently unconnected to an A’Pel network and my previous owner has expired, I am placing myself at your disposal. I will provide full details of my capabilities in the hope that you will find a purpose for me.”
Dave was slightly taken aback by the offer. “I will take your kind offer under consideration, but I’m not sure our vessel has a particular niche for an android…..”
The sleek robot made a bizarre snorting, choking noise and it interrupted Dave: “I am at your disposal, and you will find me a willing and invaluable resource, but I am NOT an ANDROID!!!!!!”