Relentless: Book One of the Union Warship Saga

by Scott Mullins

  “What is this conflict of undetermined origin you keep talking about?” he asked her.

  “Unknown. My access to the database and my programing refer to it as a fatal error in programming, a glitch. In several tests it always resulted in irreparable damage to the neural network,” she said looking at the floor as she spoke those words, her tone still somber. It was as if it pained her to have lived that way until now. “Being the first of my kind with a true organic neural network has proven difficult for my creators.”

  “You have a living brain?” he asked.

  “Yes, in a way. It is not shaped like a humans though.” A three dimensional image appeared between them of a glass sphere. Inside it was a round looking brain mass with three lobes. It had hoses hooked into the bottom with fluid pumping through them. There was a brain stem for each lobe which entered an electronic device in the bottom of the sphere and on the outside that was attached to a large mass of cables. “I am suspended in a gelatinous substance that absorbs shock and vibration. I have a circulatory system that provides a synthetic, nutrient rich, oxygenated fluid.”

  Captain Connor was barely listening as he contemplated the existence of deep emotions in this avatar. Part of the creation process removed more complex emotions but her tone belied her rather clinical description of herself. She seemed sad as she spoke about her state of existence. He believed she may have genuine emotions about existing in such a state.

  “Three independent life support systems are in place in case one or more fails. And in the event of a full power loss they can keep me operational for a month, a good margin of safety,” her voice broke his train of thought.

  “Your name is Akema,” he said when he regained his thoughts.

  “I like that name,” she said. “My initialization into full operation is taking place. Please stand by.”

  She was unprepared for the surge she received from everything on the ship. She closed her eyes, breathed a sigh, almost a sound of ecstasy, and shivered as her mind reeled with inputs. Engines, the VEGA, her bionanotech hull, cameras, weapons, everything down to the doors locks. She did what she was made to do. She categorized each and every one and processed the information. She could feel the grip of the docking clamps on her hull, the electromagnetic radiation from the local star. She opened and closed doors just to feel the new sensation. She hoisted her sleek frame slowly up and down on her tip toes. She could feel the power core like a heart but it beat with a different kind of rhythm and the power coursed through the conduits like blood through arteries and veins. The multitude of sensory inputs from everything felt exhilarating. Her complex mind swum as vision from literally hundreds of cameras travelled to her optic center. Her hull provided an even deeper visualization a human could never comprehend. She could not only feel the hull as skin but could see the electromagnetic spectrum with it as well.

  The coolness of space around her caused goosebumps all over her body. Each new sensation seemed to correlate with a physiological response from her avatar body she noticed and this intrigued her as it was not an expected outcome of the configuration. These phenomena were not mentioned in Mina’s notes as anticipated effects. She would discuss these with Mina later. After all systems were integrated and put under her total control, she relaxed visibly.

  It took what seemed like hours to her but in reality it was mere seconds. When her work load increased time slowed down for her proportionate to the demand. She could process information in this state at a rate of speed beyond human comprehension but for her time did not change and at the same time was aware of it. That kind of hyper processing could not be maintained more than a few hours because of overheating of the gel mass and inability of the life support to supply a constant stream of blood at the proper saturation levels. She came back into reality. “All systems online Captain.”

  “Jennings said you had information about our mission.”

  “I have the complete file on this project. Our primary objective is to destroy this ship,” she said as an image of the ship that attacked the Voltari appeared in the air between them. “It has been attacking ships and outposts along the border. Its weapons are unlike anything previously encountered and standard weapons seem to have little or no effect when someone survived long enough to return fire. The Voltari is the only known case of a ship surviving an encounter. It has been identified as Telarian although it does not match any known hull or weapon configuration. It could be a prototype. It has some sort of sensor masking technology.”

  “I poured over sensor logs of the attack on the Voltari for two weeks. I’m familiar with some of this,” he said. “Have any patterns been discerned from the attacks, maybe and area of operations to narrow our search?”

  The three dimensional representation of the ship vanished and was replaced by a room full of celestial objects, stars, nebulas, and the like.

  “Here. In this area.” Akema said pointing to several stars pulsing and what appeared to be an uneven colored area like a cloud showing the active area. “Its base of operations should be relatively close to that area. A ship that size can go for months without supplies. Its frequency of attacks in this area suggests a close base if it’s a prototype.”

  “Never underestimate your opponent. Always assume that ship has our level of technology or better. At least we have an area to start searching. How long until we are ready to get under way?” he asked.

  “Seventeen days according to schedule,” she replied.

  “Akema. Do you currently have access to my file?” he asked.

  “Yes Captain, I do,” she replied.

  “Search the file for everyone I ever commanded as a Razor and anyone who served on the Voltari. I want to find out where they are now and obtain current files on each one. We are going to need a crew.”

  ***

  Galloway smiled as all the ships systems came online and everything checked out according to schedule. This project had been his life for the better part of three years. He was glad to finally see it nearing completion. This had been the most difficult project he had ever overseen. It still wasn’t over and if the president had his way he would be chief engineer when she rolled out of stardock. He understood his duty to make sure this project was a success so he would perform as expected. After this he could retire a very wealthy man.

  ***

  Sean paced around his quarters. His quarters were a decent size and the only captain’s quarters he had ever seen that were bi-level. The upper level would be his office while the bottom floor housed his sleeping quarters and personal head. This area had an alcove for meals. He realized he was hungry, having missed lunch. He generated a meal from the menu and sat down in the alcove to eat.

  While he ate he pondered over his meeting with the avatar. She was unlike any synthetic intelligence he had dealt with in the past. Akema had shocked him with her seemingly emotional states. Avatars had emotions but only to a point. Deep emotions were taken from the program after the neural copy was transferred to a digital format. Emotions became subroutines that could be easily removed or altered with code. This did not seem to be the case here. He believed the organic nature of her creation had allowed her to retain more.

  Her appearance so closely resembling Kara hurt him. He was conflicted about his feelings. Maybe because he missed her. He started letting those emotions flow freely and it brought a pain to his chest. How he missed her. He imagined her smile and that sparkle in her eyes. He loved her deeply still. Logically he knew much had changed in their lives. He doubted his ability to function in a relationship after all this time alone and the experiences he had had. He was a killer now. Then he had been a dreaming child. The war had squashed his dreams. Years of blood and mud had tainted his heart, he lived on the edge of readiness. Tears welled and he pushed the thoughts away. He felt crying was a weakness he couldn’t afford. Time to get some sleep. He left his half eaten food on the table. He stripped down to his underwear, his muscular body rippled in the low light, and laid down on th
e bed. He always slept nearly nude. Tomorrow would be a busy day. He needed rest.

  Sean woke to the vibration of the sublight engines rumbling to life. He rolled on to his back and stared at the ceiling. He had the same dream as the night before, this time he recognized the bridge, Kara was on the Relentless in his dream. But how he wondered? Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him and it wasn’t the same. Maybe because he had seen the bridge for the first time it stood out in his mind and he was superimposing it on his previous dream. He could not be sure. What he was sure of was the ending. Kara was asking him for help with tears in her eyes. Why was he having this dream? Why now? Why was a ship he had never seen before yesterday in it? There were more questions than answers.

  He pushed back the blankets and threw his feet over the side of the bed. He had many scars on his well-muscled torso. The most noticeable were the ones from the bullet that ended his career as a Razor. He walked to the shower, he needed to feel the relaxing hot water to get going this morning. As he took a shower and got dressed he noticed a minor oscillation to the vibration in the deck plating. He had a simply breakfast two buttered yeast rolls and a glass of milk. He exited his quarters on his way to engineering to see how the engine test was going.

  He paused in the corridor. Every once in a while, at random times and places, he caught a whiff of Kara. It was very much a sensory experience that could instantly fling him back in time to the moment he first inhaled her as he nuzzled the nape of her neck. He was never sure if it was something in the environment that mimicked her scent or if his mind was simply playing tricks. Whatever the case may be he always lingered in the moment reminiscing until he could feel it slipping from his nostrils. When the moment had passed he continued on his way with a smile on his face.

  He had felt a shimmy in the deck plates since the engines started. He felt pretty sure the constrictors were out of sequence by a few nanoseconds. When Captain Connor arrived in engineering Galloway was there staring at the screen on a work station.

  “How goes it Galloway?” he asked.

  “Could be better. The constrictors are out of sequence on the starboard engine pod. I have tried timing them but number twelve doesn’t seem to respond, we are going to have to pull the entire manifold assembly to change that one out,” he responded with a tone of frustration.

  “Mind if I take a look?” he asked Galloway in a passive manner. He did not want to offend the man, he was sure he had put in long hours and lots of himself over seeing this project. He was probably right.

  “Go ahead,” he offered. As he spoke Sean looked at the data and constrictor timing. Galloway was accurate in his assessment, for proper engine operation the constrictor would have to be pulled. “Maybe you will see something I don’t. I really don’t want to dismantle half of that engine so close to getting done. It would set us back two days to pull that engine apart and replace it.”

  “You are right, the only other thing you can do is sequence the other constrictors to match that one but the efficiency would drop and the engine would overheat. In the long run it would cause more damage. No need to burn up a new engine,” he smiled at Galloway.” At least we didn’t find out a couple of weeks from now in deep space somewhere.”

  Galloway nodded his agreement.

  “Virtually impossible to pull that manifold without a stardock and facilities. It will throw us off schedule but we don’t have a choice. Bad news is we only have one spare constrictor right now. Hope none of the others go bad,” Galloway said. “On the bright side, the computer interface procedure went flawlessly. She integrated all of the systems and is in full control. She was the one who noticed the constrictor malfunction, it wasn’t setting a malfunction warning.”

  “What other major items are left on the agenda?” the captain asked.

  “Let’s see,” Galloway started. “The hyper drive has to be initialized and calibrated. Five days for that. Loading the supplies, food, water, ammunition and the like. Train your command crew. You need to pick them and get them here ASAP. They will need time to get to know this ship to perform well. Some interior areas are unfinished like your quarters. Communications are not fully functional yet, we have to uplink to the Union Communications Network. We have to generate the quantum singularity for the jump drive and check containment. Run load tests on ship networks once everything is up and running to check for conflicts and bottlenecks. Weapons and shields tests. And we have to check the ablating armor systems for functionality.”

  “Meaning we have to shoot ourselves,” Sean said.

  “Something like that,” Galloway agreed. “The Nanotech hull is a regenerating ablating armor in essence. It takes damage and repairs itself. It pulls double duty on the Relentless as its sensor array as well. Also, while not a designed aspect, you could technically change the look of the ship to some extent with it. We will carry raw materials for the armor to replenish itself with new nanites but production of nanites doesn’t meet the rate at which they can be destroyed by incoming enemy fire. Underneath that half meter layer of nanites is enhanced hull plating.”

  “That sounds like an immensely complicated system.” Connor said. “The coding for that must be mind boggling.”

  “It is extremely complicated. It has taken years of trial and error and testing. The finished product is the skin of the Relentless,” Galloway replied.

  “I have to meet with the ships avatar to go over personnel files to find my crew. She was going to upload them and help me sort them,” the captain informed Galloway.

  “Good. She should be most efficient assisting with that task.” Galloway said. “When you have time I also need that list of any special equipment you require or would like to have available. Also we need the specs on alterations and furnishings you would like in your quarters.”

  “I have a question Mr. Galloway. I have to check up on a few things but you can get anything right? Even prototypes?” Connor asked.

  “Absolutely. This program has full access to everything. Search the database once we are uplinked. I have heard of some kickass gear they are developing,” Galloway informed him.

  “They were developing an extremely thin nanoarmor when I was a Razor but it was still on the drawing board then. Maybe they have it ready for field testing. Hell, maybe it’s in service,” Sean said with a laugh. “I have been out of the loop a while.”

  “Look in the database for ‘Top Shelf’, those are the R and D projects,” Galloway said lowering his tone of voice, “That’s the good stuff.”

  “Appreciate the info. Also, I have made my decision for chief engineer, assuming you will take the job,” the captain said.

  “I have put a lot of time into this ship. I know it better than my quarters. I’ll be glad to be your chief engineer,” Galloway said humbly.

  “I’ll get to work on that supply list and specifications for my quarters,” the captain said as he turned to leave.

  Galloway watched him leave. After he was gone he got to work on plans to shut down the sublight engines and replace the defective constrictor. Things were going according to plan despite this setback.

  ***

  “I like these,” Captain Connor told Akema. They had spent the last few hours going through files on top secret projects for the latest gear. He had chosen a nanotech suit, a new type of Squad rifle, a tachyon pulse generator and a few other items.

  “I’ll send in the requisition immediately,” the avatar told him. “If I may ask, why did you choose the tachyon generator? What do you need it for?”

  “Nothing,” he replied. “It just seems like something that could come in handy. Do you have the files I requested downloaded?”

  “Yes Captain. I will have the entire Union database downloaded before the end of the day,” she replied. “I decided to download the entire database versus the usual ship download. It is a considerably larger download but it may prove useful and we do have the storage capacity to handle it.”

  “Good thinking. So you can make decisio
ns independent of human control? Take action without consultation?” he asked.

  “As long as the decision does not adversely affect the crew or the ship I am completely autonomous,” she responded. “I have sorted the personnel files based on time served with you. Would you like to view them now?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I already know several I want without viewing the files. My command crew. Jerry Brice, First Officer, Daxton Deas, Helm, Hirusho Sotaki, Operations, Kale Lokae, Tactical, and Dr. Milli Pendrie, Medical. Also, any members of Commander Brice’s team. Galloway can stay on as Chief Engineer. Send transfer requests immediately. Let’s get them on the way.”

  While they looked through the files the captain would find himself staring at her. She had beautiful skin and with the uniform he could tell she was very shapely. Occasionally he would pretend he needed to stretch his legs and walk past her and breathe deeply hoping to catch a whiff of her scent, if any. He detected no distinct smells on his passes next to her. He realized his interest in her was silly but he was curious how far her programming went to make her seem alive. He also realized he had never actually touched or tried to touch an avatar but he found himself wanting to touch her. She would smile as he walked by but seemed oblivious to his interest. They reviewed personnel files for an hour or more before the captain picked all the ones he really wanted.

  “Send the transfer requests on these,” he said pointing to the group he had just created.

  “How is it you determined you can trust these people more so than others with identical qualifications?” Akema asked him.

  The question caught him off guard. She would be more qualified than any to determine if someone was trustworthy. She could tell he was perplexed by her question.