It offered enough protection to keep the occupants safe if the ships were attacked during a personnel transfer, which was a common tactic since this was when ships were at their most vulnerable, but still allowed the ships to be quickly disconnected so that they could achieve battle readiness at a moments notice.
This was a level of over-engineering Jude had never seen in ship designs, and it made her even more curious about the builders of the Zenith. She was also still trying to figure out why this ship looked so familiar to her, which was rather frustrating.
As Kade, Jude and Nick stood by the airlock door, waiting for the docking sequence to end, they checked over their space suit systems one last time.
The suit designs had come a long way since they were first conceived, no longer the bulky one eyed white or grey monsters of days gone by. These days the basic design was a one piece, form fitting, nano polymer suit reinforced with multiple padded layers, with a belt mounted micro generator and oxygen synthesiser. A tech harness supported the navigation thrusters and protective field generator, while the left forearm of the suits allowed for mounting of a user’s standard Echo unit: which could interlink to all of the suits sensors and control systems for added flexibility.
Kade’s suit was red, with a golden harness.
Jude’s was blue, with a silver harness.
And Nick’s suit was just the standard, off the shelf basic model, white suit.
As the three of them were finishing their checks the ship shook roughly as the umbilical tunnel made contact with the Icarus.
Kade could hear the sound of the magnetic clamps striking into her ship’s hull as they were energised, causing the ship to vibrate as it was locked in place.
A few seconds passed as the umbilical finished sealing up against the hull and then the lights on the airlock doors turned green. The docking sequence was complete.
“You two ready?” Kade asked while looking at Nick and Jude. All three of them now wearing full space suits in preparation for boarding the Zenith.
“Ready!” Jude said enthusiastically.
“You sure you got enough crap?” Nick asked while holding two rather large and heavy cases. “I don’t mind if you want to take half the ship with you, but why do I have to carry all of it?”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Let’s go then!” Kade said as she activated the airlock controls.
The inner airlock door opened, allowing them inside and quickly shutting again as the atmosphere started being pumped out of the small room.
As the airlock approached zero atmosphere the outer airlock door opened, venting the remaining gases into the unpressurised tunnel that interconnected the two ships.
The corridor was dark, the only light coming from the Zenith’s airlock on the far side of the tunnel.
Kade took a few steps forward, into the zero gravity corridor and grabbed hold of one of the conveyor grips used to transfer personnel between ships. Squeezing it tightly as the conveyor started pulling her towards the Zenith. And Jude was about to do the same when Nick handed her a case, pointing to the obvious fact he only had two hands. She took the case and they both grabbed their conveyor grips, following Kade towards the Zenith.
The overhead lights activated momentarily as the three of them were being pulled across the corridor, the Zenith’s airlock getting progressively closer as the Icarus now looked to be a whole galaxy away.
The journey across wasn’t long, it would only take around a minute, but it felt like an eternity to Kade.
The naturally insulating properties of space meant that she could hear little more than her own breathing and the conveyor belt felt painfully slow. She had dreamed about this moment for so long and she was so close to her goal, that this small trip was complete and utter torture.
Kade could feel her heart rate speeding up as the conveyor finally finished its approach to the Zenith’s airlock and she saw the outer airlock doors opening, inviting them inside. She stepped over the threshold, feeling gravity pull her towards the deck once again and feared she would wake up the moment she set foot in the ship she had dreamt about so many times before.
The A.I.
The room was cold and dark, with only the dim blue light from Drake’s sleeper pod console illuminating the surrounding area. There were 20 pods in total, lining the walls of the room, each pod having an attached storage locker to hold the belongings of the occupant.
The floor was made up of one metre wide interlinked hexagonal metallic plates, giving it a silvery honey comb pattern: a common floor design throughout most sections of the Zenith.
The dominant feature of the room was a three metre wide cylindrical glass chamber that rose from the ground, centred on the far wall of the room.
The light level in the room had gradually begun increasing as the countdown approached zero. The transparent canopy on Drake’s pod opening at the exact moment the countdown ended, releasing trace amounts of a vapour-like substance into the air.
Drake slowly opened his eyes, trying to get used to the light as he looked around the room from inside his pod. He was disoriented, a common side effect when waking up from stasis and was trying not to move until he regained control of his senses. Finally, he stepped out of the pod after a few minutes only to quickly lose his balance.
“Crud! I swear I’ll never get used to that,” Drake said groggily after narrowly averting going head first into the cold metal floor.
“Stop complaining,” Drake heard Static’s voice say, though he clearly wasn’t in the room.
“Easy for you to say from in there… I think… I’m gonna barf,” Drake said.
“It’s nice and cosy in here. No cold floors or strange smells, perfect!” Static said, obviously amused.
“You’re not helping!” Drake said as he regained his composure and then started walking unsteadily towards the nearby chamber.
“You’re right, moment’s over. Starting up the maintenance chamber. How’s your body holding up?” Static asked with a clearly different tone of voice to the one he had just a moment ago; the playfulness all but gone, now replaced with genuine concern.
“My senses are muddled, my balance is shot and I feel like I’m hungover… so about as well as can be expected since we rushed the wake up sequence,” Drake replied as he stepped into the maintenance chamber.
“OK, give me 10 minutes and we’ll bring you up to speed. Starting the cycle now,” Static said as Drake started to hear a very faint hum from the chamber.
Drake muttered, “I really don’t like this thing.” Feeling as though his skull was being compressed while a million tiny ants paraded around every millimetre of his skin, as the chamber started to activate.
The pressure on his head felt as though it was increasing though Drake knew there was no actual pressure, his body was just having a normal reaction to the way the chamber worked on the human anatomy. Not that knowing how the thing worked had ever made it any less unbearable.
The bio-scan was uncomfortable to go through at the best of times and having just been awakened from stasis in under an hour certainly wasn’t helping. Usually, a normal reanimation sequence would take the best part of a day to run its course.
The strain on Drake’s body was becoming too much to deal with. His vision was going dark and he was starting to lose all strength in his limbs, causing him to nearly collapse on the floor. But, before that could happen, the gravity inside the chamber cut out, leaving his unconscious body to naturally revert to the foetal position as it floated peacefully inside the chamber.
Back in the virtual environment, Static was overseeing the management of the maintenance chamber, as well as reviewing the data streaming in from the probes monitoring the solar system and trying to manage several other tasks.
Information was flashing by his monitor at an incredible pace as he tried to split his attention across all the different tasks, quickly becoming frustrated.
“Damn. This day was going so well too. These visitors have a terribl
e sense of timing. Trust them to show up half way through a maintenance cycle,” Static said as he stared at the screen with a bored look.
“Nexus, how much longer are your diagnostics going to take?”
“Three days, two hours and twenty four minutes remaining,” Nexus replied in a monotone voice.
“Ha ha ha, three days? Ten more minutes of this and I’m going to go insane, let alone 3 days. Halt the diagnostics.”
“Authorization required.”
“Sigma-225-omega-prime. Pause diagnostics and restore full functionality,” Static ordered.
“Authorization confirmed. Pausing full systems check by order of prime user. Ending pseudo AI maintenance mode:
Unlocking Artificial Intelligence core system.
Reconnecting all high level functions.
Reinitialising Nexus Artificial Intelligence Unit.”
A minute passed and nothing happened.
Static was still busy keeping an eye on the ship’s systems when he felt a hand on his left shoulder and turning around saw Nexus looking at him with her intense blue eyes. This was her true form, a fully realised artificial intelligence and one of only a handful in existence which could truly be classed as sentient.
As Nexus looked down at herself her expression changed to one of disappointment. She was wearing her default clothes, which consisted of little more than a single piece light blue suit, a tight one at that.
She didn’t exactly hate it, but over the years she had developed a more refined sense of taste… which basically meant she was obsessed with clothes and this simple look just wasn’t cutting it.
She closed her eyes for a moment and in the blink of an eye her appearance changed completely.
Her single piece blue suit had changed to some dark blue jeans, a white belt and a short ultramarine coloured vest that showed off her tanned white skin.
Her hair style had also changed. Her short blonde hair now had a red streak down the right side. And she was wearing an engraved bracelet on her left wrist that was similar to Static’s.
Nexus opened her eyes, looked at Static and smiled as she saw his approving look.
“Thanks for ending the systems check Stat.” Nexus smiled. “I hate being put into that mode.”
“I know you do Nex, but you know it’s necessary. We have to do these checks once a year in order to make sure your matrix is running stable. The last thing anyone wants is a repeat of that cascade failure which almost killed you,” Static said, clearly concerned.
“Yes, definitely don’t want to try that again. But still… that pseudo AI mode is so… it just freaks me out.” She shuddered, as if experiencing chills running down her spine. “I’m aware of what happens around me. I can still feel but can’t act on my emotions. I can only perform the most basic of tasks and can’t take any independent actions. I’m reduced to being little more than a high tech personal assistant. It’s like I’m reset to the state I was in when I was first activated, before I became sentient, becoming a shackled soulless doll again. All I can do is follow orders, regardless of what those orders are… it frightens me.” Nexus frowned.
“Speaking of which… why did you have me summon Drake again? You know he’s going to start hating you if you keep doing that,” Nexus asked.
“Ha ha ha, it was an accident… this time anyway.” Static grinned.
“What was it last time? You summoned him while he was falling through the air?” Nexus asked.
“That was also an accident. How was I supposed to know he had jumped off a cliff?”
“And the time before that? When he was swimming around butt naked?”
“Yeah… that was on purpose.” Static laughed.
“Honestly!” Nexus said disapprovingly.
“Hypocrite… you were laughing your backside off for hours. We actually thought we had somehow managed to break your matrix with that stunt,” Static pointed out with a smile.
“Er… yes, anyway… it’s good to be back,” Nexus said in an attempt to change the subject.
“I’m glad you’re back too. Being stuck for two days with only Drake for company is murder, speaking of which,” he said as he pointed to the maintenance chamber monitor showing Drake’s vital statistics.
“Murder?” She asked as she glanced at the screen Static was pointing at and then looked back at him. “I know Drake can be a pain but that’s a bit extreme isn’t it?” She said and smiled, this comment bringing an immediate smile to Static’s face as well.
“Ha ha, you’re probably right. Seriously though, please take control over the chamber and resume full management of the ship’s operations. I’ve been trying to keep everything running during your maintenance but it’s starting to drive me somewhat… insane.”
“Oh please. I was still doing all the work, all you had to do was make decisions,” Nexus said.
“All that proves is that I am useless without you. And would probably crumble away to dust if I were to ever lose you,” Static said.
“Fine, I’m on it… and thanks.” She smiled as she moved, stopping a few steps away from Static.
Nexus closed her eyes, a white circle appearing on the ground around her. And at the exact moment she opened her eyes again a multitude of screens began cascading upwards from the circle. Swarming all around her and streaming all manner of information at an absurd rate that no human could ever hope to grasp.
A few moments passed, with each of the screens that were floating chaotically around Nexus gradually falling into an organised pattern: becoming arranged into several circles which were rotating around her as she regained full control over the ship’s systems.
“Drake’s bio-scan is complete. All biological systems are in perfect working order. He’s probably the healthiest human in the galaxy. Core charge is near critical however, down to 33%,” Nexus reported.
“Yes, he keeps avoiding the chamber, rectify that please. And check his synch ratio as well,” Static said.
“Starting core infusion. Synchronisation at 93%.”
“That’s fine then,” Static said as his console started streaming information from the solar system monitoring probes deployed around the Zenith.
“What’s the plan to deal with our visitors?”
“Put them through decontamination and let them in. Grant them basic level one access to the ship systems and then we’ll see what they get up to.”
“You think they may be…” Nexus started to ask.
“It’s possible…” he answered before Nexus could finish her question. “…but, either way, we need to know where they got my code from.”
“That code is over 100 years old,” she said.
“I know,” Static replied with a pensive look as he remembered details of his past: the last time he had used the code and the tragic events that followed. “Time sure flies,” he said sadly.
In the real world, Drake’s body was surrounded by a warm white light as his body floated peacefully inside the maintenance chamber, waking up to the sound of two voices chatting away in his head…
“Huh! My head… Keep it down!” Drake said, feeling as though the mother of all headaches was pounding away inside his skull.
“Morning, sleepy head!” Nexus said cheerfully.
“Nexus?” Drake asked while slowly closing his eyes again. He was exhausted and his body was drifting off to a natural sleep in the comfort of the zero gravity environment.
“The one and only, now get some sleep. Your body needs time to adjust after waking up from suspended animation,” Drake heard Nexus say as he began to naturally lose consciousness again.
Meanwhile, at the Zenith’s airlock.
Kade, Jude and Nick had just entered the airlock. The outer space doors closing behind them as the lights in the relatively small room activated.
Kade didn’t feel scared, or even anxious, she was far too excited at simply being aboard the ship she had heard about in her grandfather’s stories so many times in the past. The ship she had been searc
hing for all these years.
Jude was just plain giddy with excitement. The thought of discovering this ship’s secrets causing her to become oblivious to any dangers it might hold.
Nick, on the other hand, seemed relatively indifferent to the situation.
As Kade stood in front of the airlock door she couldn’t help but notice that there were no controls anywhere in the room. While the lack of extensive door controls wasn’t exactly unusual, there was generally at least a call button of some kind, but not here.
Understandably, especially since the outer airlock doors were also shut, Kade was starting to feel a little uneasy for the first time since she had left the Icarus.
She was still wondering how they were supposed to open the door when her suit’s radio crackled to life as a rapid succession of intense light pulses started flooding the airlock.
“Decontamination sequence in progress. Please stand by,” they heard an unknown female voice say through their radios.
The light pulses were getting stronger and more frequent, forcing all three of them to close their eyes. The airlock environment was quickly becoming saturated with near blinding strobe light, shifting colour in a random pattern. And then, suddenly, it stopped: the light in the room returning to normal.
“Decontamination sequence complete. Scan in progress. Please remain still to expedite process,” they heard the female voice say as they opened their eyes.
“Scan complete.
No known pathogens detected.
No unknown elements detected.
No explosive materials detected.
Weapons detected!
Visitors are reminded that ‘boarding protocol 1’ is in effect. Please consult Aurora if you have any questions. Now re-pressurising airlock,” the voice said as they heard air being pumped into the room. The inner airlock door opened after a few seconds, finally allowing them into the Zenith.
The three of them stepped out of the airlock, into what appeared to be a waiting room; an unmanned security station on their left and a row of storage lockers to the right, the room itself looking big enough to hold several dozen people.
Shadow Core - The Legacy Page 5