He snapped the light to his belt, grabbed the kit and went back into the cabin. He looked at the floor and saw no red, although there was still something on the floor. When he turned to look at Ayia, who was still out, he saw it all over her. He looked closely, then stood back, shining the light on his chest. It wasn’t blood. It was vomit. The floor as covered with it.
“That explains the smell,” Kale muttered.
“Ayia?” he began looking her over. He did not see any sign of injury. He decided to leave her there. It was better to get the power up first, then clean up.
Gheno was stirring in the ‘Hall’ as Kale strode past.
“What happened?” he said, wiping his mouth with his hand.
“Dunno, kid,” Kale stated, going past him to the hatch that led down into the reactor, “But we’re out of power and FEI is offline.”
“I feel…horrible,” mouthed Gheno in discomfort.
Kale nodded, uncertain whether Gheno saw him or not. He released the hatch and opened it, using the ladder to get down below. He unclipped the light from his belt and looked around the reactor room. There appeared to be no visible damage. As he walked past the reactor he could feel the vibrations it reverberated through the air. He walked past it to the main control panel and nearly stumbled into the add-on Oganno’s researchers installed. It appeared undamaged as well, although Kale wouldn’t have known for sure.
After clipping the light back on his belt he went to work on the control panel. He brought up two screens telling him how to reroute the power back from the reactor to the rest of the ship. FEI could have done this in a few seconds but he had to read each route, then drag and drop each of the ships power subsystems back to the main reactor. The screen was virtual, of course. Each action told the ship how to link up the power. It took Kale a few minutes but when he routed the last power unit he tapped the OK button and, suddenly, each component started lighting up on the screen. The lights turned on in the reactor room. Life was returning to the Midnight Oil. He pushed the screens down and began walking back to the ladder.
He could hear Gheno groaning from above him.
“You ok?” he shouted up. The act of shouting made him feel dizzy.
“It’s so bright,” Gheno replied. Kale remembered how his eyes hurt when he first awoke.
Gheno was not covered in vomit but he was wet.
“I think I pissed myself,” he said, looking embarrassingly down at himself.
Kale reached down and checked himself. He was dry.
“We’ll clean up,” Kale pointed out, “but first we need to know where we are. FEI?”
There was still no response. Kale looked at Gheno.
“You probably know more than I do. Can you see what’s wrong with him? We are going to need him.”
“Yeah, just let me find some new pants.” Gheno stood up. After stepping over the puddle of urine he left beneath him, he waddled over to his room.
Kale went back into the cabin where Ayia was still passed out. He unhooked her straps and carried her back into the ‘Hall’, laying her gently on the couch. He opened the first aid kid, drawing out two of the bio readers. He attached one to her left temple and one to her right wrist. He booted up the small computer and it started to take its readings. He took out a small wet cloth and wiped her face. Ayia reacted, but didn’t wake up. The readings started showing up on the small display screen. Brain readings were ok, as were the blood, cardio, biorhythm and O2 readings. Kale removed the electro-nodes from Ayia and turned the kit off. He would let her sleep it off for now. There was nothing they could do until FEI was restored.
Gheno came out of his room with a fresh change of clothes.
“Is this one I don’t live down?” he asked.
“Maybe, but if it’s any consolation, Ayia and I both threw up on ourselves,” he pointed out, pulling at his shirt.
“Yeah, I think you got the better end of the deal.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just get the damn AI up. You know what to do?”
“Yeah, I think so. Did you put him back on when you rebooted the power?”
“I routed everything, so that has to include him.”
“Ok,” Gheno got on the ladder and stepped down into the reactor room, out of sight. Kale was grateful that while they were at Devil’s Den, the boy took the time and effort to truly familiarize himself with the Midnight Oil. Kale also recognized the Gheno’s expertise with AI far surpassed that of anyone he knew.
Kale looked back at Ayia then went into his room. His room was far smaller than the other rooms. It housed a bunk and a very small closet. He only needed it to sleep and kept most of his belongings, the few that he had, in a chest in the ‘Hall’. He opened the closet and grabbed a new shirt, changing his.
Back out in the ‘Hall’, he sat down at the edge of the hatch.
“Any luck?” he shouted into the reactor room.
There was a slight pause before Gheno responded.
“Well, no. You did get power to the AI cores, but it’s just not there.”
“What’s not there?”
“He isn’t. FEI, the AI. He’s gone.”
Kale’s shoulders sank.
“The whole program is gone?”
“Well, no, the basics of the program are there, but the cognizant part, the AI part, that part, with a few others, are missing,” Gheno tried to explain.
The basics of the AI program, its ability to compute and think, were coded into the hardware of the cores. But the software, the part that adapted and thought independently, that piece that interacted with everything else, that part was wiped out. Gheno explained that, ideally, one could install another program into the cores quite easily.
“But we would need a program to install,” Kale finished.
Gheno nodded, climbing back up out of the reactor room.
“What about that program you have?” Kale asked.
“It’s just a shell, it’s nothing like FEI was,” Gheno explained, “It’s really just a pet project of mine.”
“Can it run the ship?”
“I don’t think so. We would have to tell it what to do, all the time.”
Kale thought for a moment.
“Well, that’s better than nothing. What do you need to get it going?”
“A shower?”
Kale laughed. “Ok, get your program in there and we can clean up. I just don’t want to be caught with my pants down again.”
“At least you didn’t piss your pants.”
Gheno began to upload his rudimentary AI to the AI cores FEI had once inhabited. It would take about an hour to upload and then a few more to compile in the cores. It was enough to begin cleaning up. Kale let Gheno use the shower first while he cleaned up the messes in the cabin and the ‘Hall’. He had just finished in the cabin, using a small pressure water vacuum, when he heard Ayia call out from the ‘Hall’. He dropped the vacuum and rushed out to the room. He entered the room just as Gheno exited from the showers, steam pouring out of the small cabin and into the ‘Hall’. Ayia was sitting up on the couch, eyes red.
“Did I throw up?”
Kale let Ayia get cleaned up next while he ran the water recycling. All organic particles in the water would be removed and broken down into their basic carbon components. These would then be stored in a vat that formed the carbon into bars while all other metals and minerals were stored in separate vats. In an emergency, these could be combined to make food. It was horrible, tasteless food, but lifesaving nonetheless. The clothes were dry-cleaned in a small unit that took nearly ten hours to complete, but they all had extra clothing.
After Kale took his shower, he gathered everyone in the pilot’s cabin and started initiating several screens.
“Alright Gheno, is your AI ready to go?” Kale asked.
“Not all of it, but we can start a few functions.”
“Alright. AI. Respond.”
There was no response. Kale turned and looked at Gheno, the boy was looking at the scr
een. Kale turned around and saw the words ‘Ready’ on the main display screen.
“Doesn’t talk?”
“Well, no,” Gheno replied.
“AI, where are we?” Kale asked.
The screen went blank again. A set of periods showed up, first one, then another, then a few more. The machine was thinking. Then, the periods vanished and were replaced with: “Cannot determine.”
“Why not?” Kale asked, getting irritated.
“Cannot determine location while in threaded space.”
The bright light. They had not yet exited threaded space.
“That explains why the flare guard is still up,” Kale pointed out, “that bright light was the jump.”
“Where are we jumping to?” Ayia asked.
The screen displayed “unable to determine.”
The screen then began displaying diagrams of gravity readings, funnels and lines, all with numbers and formulas next to them.
“I miss FEI,” Kale slumped back into his chair.
“Why don’t we just drop out of jump?” Ayia asked.
“We can’t, once in the jump, we have to wait until we drop through to the other side,” Gheno learned the basics of threaded space at the academy. The ship wasn’t just traveling in a straight line. Instead, the straight line was folded up between the two points. If the ship dropped out now it wouldn’t drop back into normal space.
“Mass that exists in normal space doesn’t survive in threaded space, or whatever it is out there,” Gheno explained, pointing out of the darkened window.
“So how long are we in this jump?” she asked.
They initially planned on jumping to Earth. The jump would use the new hook, which was untested, but worked on tested parameters. Gheno spent the better part of the next two hours inputting the information for the new AI to research. They would be able to calculate how long they would be in-jump by comparing a normal Alioth to Earth jump with the parameters of the new hook that was uploaded by the researchers. The results were encouraging.
The explosions by the dumbfire bombs had caused the new hook to malfunction. Instead of using the new speeds to calculate a time and distance from Alioth to Earth, it used the calculations for the old jump technology.
“The good news, it appears,” Gheno said while reading off the AI’s calculations, “Is that we should only be in the jump for a total of four days. The bad news is, who knows how far away we will be.”
“So how much longer do we have?” Ayia asked.
“No way of knowing. A max of four days is the only thing we can hope for, if, of course, these calculations are correct. ” Kale explained. Everything was knocked out and they had no way of measuring how long they were out for. They would have to wait it out.
Gheno spent most of the next day completing the compilation of his AI. He had no way to make it audible but at least now it could accept commands from anywhere on the ship and perform a few more prescient calculations. It was capable of computing solutions before being asked to do so by one of the humans. This was the adaptive, preemptive nature of AI technology.
Meanwhile, Kale and Ayia talked about Cruxe and the attack. When, and if, they managed to get back to Earth they would have to come up with a plan to deal with him. If the jilted lover was able to track them to Alioth, he would be able to do it again. They would have to be more prepared next time.
The ship dropped out of threaded space back into normal space on the third day. They were all sitting in the ‘Hall’ when a signal flashed on Gheno’s tablet. He was working on his AI program to see if he could make any improvements. Kale and Ayia were playing some kind of game on their tablets. It was a racing game they played against each other. They were laughing and Gheno routinely heard Kale curse, likely at his losses.
The shift back into normal space was entirely uneventful. Had Gheno not been told by the AI that they had dropped out they may not have known. Gheno stood up holding the tablet and announced they were no longer moving. All three dashed into the pilot’s cabin, excited. The glare shield was down and the cold blackness of space greeted them, just as it always did after a jump.
“Well,” Ayia pointed out, “it doesn’t look any different than any other space.”
“AI, location. Location,” Kale commanded.
A screen display came to life and the computer began to scan the stars. It attempted to recognize the patterns of the stars against the ship’s own database. In every explored system of space, stellar cartographers mapped the skies in order to find the position of known stars. This mapping was continuously updated by every single space ship that entered each system. This mapping was uploaded into giant databases all over the galaxy. The data was then distributed to other ships and the process was continued, endlessly. This ensured that any lost vessel could identify its location, at any time, and also helped map out the future movement of the stars as well, allowing for mapping in unexplored systems.
It was usually a process that took a few seconds, Nearly two minutes later, the computer was having problems locating where it was. As the fifth minute passed, and the AI was unable to locate their position, it became clear that they were in an unexplored system far out of the range of any known galaxy. The AI couldn’t recognize any of the stars. They had to know exactly where they were before they could make a jump back. Location was critical for the hook to enable them to land where they intended to.
“Plan B?” Kale asked, turning to face the young genius.
“It’s going to take a while but we have no other choice.”
“We have no choice for what? What’s plan B?” Ayia asked, feeling out of the loop.
“We need to measure the distance from where we are to the stars by the intensity of their light. We have to measure every star that the ship can see then compare that to the stars that we can identify. Once we find a star that we recognize we can begin triangulating where we are,” Gheno explained as if talking to a school-aged child.
Ayia didn’t even bother asking what that meant. She was clearly not the scientist in the cabin. Her expertise was geared towards business, marketing, finances and money, not black holes, starlight or gravity.
“And how long will that take?” she asked the obvious and most important question.
“Well, the lucky thing is that we can measure the light easily with the ships own gravity field. The bad thing is that the computer has to scan every star it can see, one by one, measure its light intensity and color then compare it with those that we have already identified. Even with the AI that could take a week,” Gheno replied.
“Well, get it started. Lucky for us, I stocked up on food and O2, so we should have enough. In the meantime, do we know if we are in a system?” Kale asked.
Gheno typed in a new command and the ship started swiveling to the left until it stopped. In the distance, right in the middle of its screen, a far brighter star was shining. At this distance, it was still just a pinprick in the black void of space. It was, however, clearly something far closer than any of the other lighted points. They were, in fact, in a solar system.
“Ok, that answers that. Get the AI to map the system too. Might as well make some extra money.”
Mapping new systems could always earn a few extra credits from Earth and Coran.
The scan returned with its information just a few hours later. Sensors could easily pick up the orbits of planets around stars to locate them. Then, high zoom optical lenses picked them up visually, analyzing their type. It was a method that was tried and true, and rarely led to any mistakes. It was so precise that it could locate moons around planets, large asteroids and it routinely picked up comets in their paths around suns.
The greatest find in exploring a new system was that of a living planet, especially those capable of sustaining human life. The second best result would be a system that contained planets wrought with rich mineral sources. Some systems were emptied of their minerals, especially those with iron, to supply the other systems, namely ones
with planets inhabited by human beings. Most systems, however, were barren. They would have a sun, perhaps a rock or two floating in orbit, and maybe a gas giant, or two. The only other benefit of a new system would be some kind of astronomical anomaly; a system with two suns like Gemini or Alpha Centauri, or a sun that was about to go supernova. This was something that scientists and researchers would pay a fortune for. Unfortunately, this case proved to be neither of the profitable prospects.
Kale sat at his chair going over the system’s information, Ayia and Gheno standing behind him.
“The standard fray. A white dwarf sun, old, dying, with two rocks floating around it, probably everything good completely burned off of it already, and three gas giants. Nothing special. Nothing useful.”
Kale was disappointed. “I'm getting nothing from this deal.”
Gheno was looking at the pictures and analyzing the mineral compounds. There was certainly nothing to brag about here. One of the gas giants was especially so aptly named, dwarfing Jupiter by nearly ten times its size. The gravity of that giant probably allowed it to have its own miniature system of planets. As he scanned over the moons, Kale continued complaining.
“The sooner we can get back to Alioth the better.”
“And then what?” Ayia inquired.
“Then we get this thing off of the ship. It clearly needs work. I'm not really looking forward to passing out and throwing up each time we jump. Not the way I like doing things.”
Ayia nodded in agreement.
“Well, at least your father will be happy with having tested the hook,” she said.
“He’s not my father,” Kale said.
“He’s not our father,” Gheno added.
The Emperor's Daughter (Sentinel Series Book 1) Page 12