In the end, they determined that the system was capable of more, but that it had been over-engineered in the first place, delivering within the desired pressure and volume ranges while retaining excess capacity. Being filled with fluid at all times was probably the single greatest improvement recommendation without changing any of the associated hardware. Air created unwanted turbulence. The system was designed well, but was too big for the needs. It was over-engineered and lost its efficiencies. They could have used pipe of a smaller diameter. On a ship of that size, reducing the pipe sizes to exactly what was needed would have saved gross tons in weight. Just a little over thirty kilometers long, with probably hundreds of thousands of kilometers in piping that was too big. The reduced weight would have made a big difference.
The Android and Briz chatted like old friends, even though the Android’s voice was mechanically plain, without inflection. Briz spoke with an animation that showed a zest for all things technical.
“Whatever ship I’m on, I want him there, too!” Cain whispered to Stinky. The Wolfoid nodded vigorously. Briz stopped his conversation and looked directly at Cain, nose twitching and ears dipping as he appreciated the compliment. “Of course you heard me,” Cain whispered, shaking his head. Rabbits had incredible hearing, plus their eyes were on the sides of the head, so they could see directly behind them with their peripheral vision. It was difficult to sneak up on a Rabbit, but not impossible, as Cain and Stinky had demonstrated on numerous occasions, enjoying their ongoing game of Scare the Rabbit.
The teams were sent through the twisting and cramped spaces between decks in search of systems issues. Their goal was to recommend solutions to the problems to the Android instructor.
To Cain, it seemed like a treasure hunt, so he was happy as could be. The Android wanted the recruits to explore individually, but Lieutenant Simonds overruled it, saying that with the recent aberrant behavior in the presence of the recruits--he avoided the word “Android--he wanted the exploration done in their recruit teams.
Stinky led the way into the maze of piping, cables, and machinery. Cain brought up the rear as a precaution since Stinky didn’t want to take any chances, just in case the Androids really were out to get Braden and Micah’s descendent.
Briz was second and constantly held up the team as he was easily distracted, going off on a tangent to look at some inane piece of equipment and study it before returning to the group. Finally, the Wolfoid gave up and told Briz to follow his nose. The rest would come along for the ride, but he challenged Briz to share his understanding of the systems with the rest of the team over their mindlink. With Mixial’s help in keeping the mindlink active, the team was treated to a running commentary of mathematical calculations, physics formulas, and mechanical engineering standards.
They weren’t close enough for Cain to make faces at Stinky, but he listened as well as he could, until the Rabbit squealed in fear. Then Cain was focused like a laser as he ran forward.
Cain passed Ellie and Tandry, who ran forward to help a friend, but not as quickly as Cain’s headlong rush. forward but cautiously. How quickly they learned that if one of them was in trouble, they were all in trouble. The three of them ran ahead, half crouching to avoid the piping overhead. Stinky was already with Briz, pulling him back from something that the others couldn’t see. The Hillcat hissed.
The blood from a deep cut across Briz’s foreleg stained his silky white fur. Cain had been raised to always keep numbweed with him, and being on the spaceship was no exception. Although he didn’t carry much, he had enough to pack into the Rabbit’s wound.
“You get too close to the real work?” Cain asked casually, thinking Briz got himself into some bad piping. He expected the Rabbit to answer, but only saw fear in his eyes. Cain looked around rapidly, thinking the Androids had made a surprise attack. Black Leaper pointed ahead. One of the mutant vines had penetrated into the section and was wrapped around a heavy coupling through which the ship’s power flowed. Light reflected from its metal leaves as they moved of their own accord, back and forth in front of the equipment.
“Let’s report it. It’s not safe in here!” Tandry offered with wide eyes.
“If we go, we fail,” Stinky replied simply. “Our mission was to find issues and return with recommendations. I’d like to think we found a big issue. I know the vines are throughout the ship, but have they dug through power couplings before?”
They looked to Briz for an answer, figuring it was something he would know. He still wasn’t talking, so Cain shook him, knowing that the pain from the wound would have lessened with the numbweed. “Come on, Briz. We need you on this one. What can we do to stop that thing from getting into the power?”
The Rabbit’s eyes seemed hollow as he started to talk, his vocalization device translating his speech as monotone, devoid of emotion. “The vines are metal, but they’re also organic. They use their blood to move dissolved metals into the leaves, solidifying them, growing them.”
“A bio-mechanical construct? We’d always assumed they were alien, didn’t we?” the Wolfoid asked. Cain shrugged. That was what he thought.
“The Android in engineering told me that they’d made progress using electrical discharge, but were still experimenting at how they could reverse the growth, not just stop it,” Briz answered. He stood up and looked at his arm.
“We’re here with you, Briz. Just tell us what we need to do,” Stinky told the Rabbit.
“We need a handheld computer. And then we need a communication device.” The team looked at each other. As the team leader, Stinky had been given one. He held it up for the others to see.
“Mixial and I will go and get a handheld from the Android. What do I tell it?” Tandry offered. She was shorter and could run without being hunched over like the others.
“That we need it to help us make the best recommendation for problem resolution. It’ll accept that answer,” Briz advised. Tandry nodded once and was off. Mixial ran past to get in front of her, leading the way out of the maze.
The others settled in to wait, not taking their eyes from the vine and its deadly leaves.
Man Against Machine
When Tandry returned with the handheld computer, she gave the thumbs up. The Android had surrendered it without question. As soon as he had both pieces of equipment, Briz got to work, turning the communication device into a poor-man’s scanner to look for radio-frequency emissions. He hoped that they were technological and not biological. If its intelligence came from the organic side, then the communication device would be useless in detecting it, otherwise his jury-rigged contraption would be able to detect the emissions.
The Rabbit started furiously coding, using snippets of code from within the handheld itself to fill the routine processes. Once the handheld was synced with their device, he perused the entire radio-frequency spectrum. He picked up a great deal of emissions and spent a long time sorting through them.
Finally, he shook his head. “I’m not finding anything from the vine.”
“We’re kind of far away…” Cain started to say. Briz stopped what he was doing.
“Yes. Take the device as close as you can. I’ve isolated the signals not associated with the vine, so if there is anything, it should be obvious.” The rest of the team looked at each other. No one volunteered.
“Fine!” Cain surrendered, but as he reached for the device, Ellie grabbed his arm.
“I’ll do it.” Before he could protest, she scooped up the communication device and started crawling toward the power coupling and its vine protector. She crawled on an indirect route, keeping piping and other equipment between the vine and herself. When she could hide no longer, she reached out tentatively and pushed the device incrementally closer, checking with Briz to see if he had anything.
She cursed herself for always being last to volunteer for positions that would help the team. Cain was always first with his hand in the air, followed closely by Leaper. Tandry took the tasks that she was most comfortable
with, technological work like what Briz was good at. And that left Ellie, on the outside looking in.
No more, she said to herself as she half-stood and moved toward the vines. Cain yelled something, but she didn’t hear him. She inched forward, holding the communication device before her. Briz said something, but his vocalization device didn’t project strongly enough for her to make out what it was. She stopped, turned, and saw Cain waving.
‘What? I can’t hear you?’ she said over the mindlink
‘Back away, slowly. Briz said he found what he was looking for. I’m proud of you,’ Cain said. Ellie looked frustrated. She wondered if he knew he was projecting to all of them.
She was brought back to the moment as the communication device was violently ripped from her hand. The vine had slapped it away with an offshoot vine in the overhead. She jumped back and looked at her hand. The razor sharp leaf had only hit the device. To her surprise, her flesh was intact. The device was on the deck, beneath the vine, but out of the reach of its flailing leaves. Ellie crabbed backward until she could rejoin the team. She punched Cain when she was within arm’s reach.
“What?”
“I’m proud of you?” she said accusingly.
“We all are. I wouldn’t have gotten that close!” Tandry came to Cain’s rescue. Ellie shook her head and looked to Briz to take the conversation somewhere, anywhere else.
“It’s mechanical, passing instructions via the V Band of EHF, some fifty-three gigahertz. Let me dial it in and see what we can do.” Briz’s small Rabbit hands flew across the handheld keyboard, coding, splicing, and rewriting. He activated the communication device in broadcast mode and the vine went crazy. The leaves started hacking at the power coupling. Briz adjusted the settings and the vine calmed, then the leaves went limp.
“Throw something over there,” Briz ordered. Ellie pulled a granola bar from her packet, eased closer, and underhanded it toward the vine. It hit, bounced off a leaf, and dropped to the floor. Briz chittered in excitement, hopping up and down. The others cheered.
One leaf started vibrating, then another, then the whole vine was shaking and the leaves were slapping back and forth, attacking the power coupling with renewed vigor.
Briz immersed himself once again in the handheld as the others pulled him back, farther away from the danger of a ruptured pipe, but probably not far enough if the power flow was unleashed into the space.
“Let it go, Briz! We have to get out of here!” Stinky ‘shouted’ over his vocalization device. Briz pulled away from the hands that sought to guide him away from the vine infestation. He squatted on his haunches and continued to code, eyes focused intently on the small screen.
The others looked at each other, unsure of what to do next. Black Leaper took a deep breath, ready to bark the order for them all to leave, when Briz brightened.
“I’ve got it now.” He activated his program, made a small adjustment on a slide-bar, then watched as the leaves instantly stopped hacking at nearby surfaces and drooped, almost to the deck. The vine lost all strength. Briz pulled free and walked closer, carefully adjusting settings on his device.
The clang of metal hitting metal shocked them back to a different reality, as they hadn’t seen what caused the noise. Then another and another. The leaves fell from the vines, crashing against pipes and equipment on their way to the deck.. Briz bounced up and down, his pink nose twitching.
The team spread out as they approached the vine. It was noticeably shriveled, the deck littered with its razor sharp, metal leaves.
“Did you kill it?” Cain asked. Mixial sniffed the leaves, carefully stepped past them, and squatted to pee on the base of the vine. No one tried to stop her.
“I think so,” the Rabbit stammered. “We need to find another one and test it to see if the comm protocols of the vines are universal or local,” he added excitedly.
Cain carefully moved the leaves with the toe of his boot until he found the communication device. It was scratched but functioning well, as demonstrated by the death of the vine. Cain almost keyed it to talk with the Android, then looked to Stinky, the team leader. He handed it to the Wolfoid with a smile, but Stinky held up his hands and pointed to Briz. The Rabbit traded the handheld computer for the comm device and keyed it, talking quickly with the Android and requesting that he join them.
After many pats on the back, the Android arrived. Its artificial skin covered a face devoid of expression. It pointed with its hand for the recruits to lead the way. Cain went first. When he reflected on his choice, he felt like he was putting the others at an unreasonable risk since they were between the Android and him. Stinky told him not to worry about it, because they had Briz on their side.
Cain laughed as he made his way through the maze of piping to the dead vine and deck littered with metal leaves. The Android reviewed Briz’s program on the handheld computer, then took the communication device and looked at it, too. Its Android eyes fixed on a random point and it froze as it communicated with someone or something else. The recruits watched as the process continued. The Android turned its head, told them all to standby, then resumed its former position.
The recruit team from Class Beta 37 shifted uncomfortably as the wait seemed interminable. Mixial was sound asleep under a piece of machinery that generated enough heat to make her comfortable.
When the Android looked up at them, Cain could have sworn the thing looked pleased.
“By using the ship-wide communication system and the main computer to run your program, the vine infestation has been eradicated. Dr. Johns has sent his compliments to you, Briz, and said that there is a medal waiting for you. He would like to meet with you as soon as you return to the New Command Center,” the Android finished and walked away.
And that was how the RV Traveler was cleansed of the vines that human scientists had created then lost control of. Once the alien theory was discounted, other options presented themselves, or so Briz told them. The rest of his team still considered him a genius and too valuable to send to space with the others.
A New Partnership
Briz was having none of it and insisted that he was staying with the team. Master Daksha also had his ideas regarding Black Leaper and his team, but didn’t share them with the others. They only suspected.
The Tortoid had nostrils and didn’t process smells like other creatures, so when they tried to explain why the teammates called the Wolfoid “Stinky,” it was completely lost on him. He adamantly refused to join the recruits in using nicknames that he considered the denigration of all humanity.
Daksha also talked extensively with Mixial. Tandry expected it was related to the eventual takeover of Vii by the ‘cats, as they were always plotting something. Mixial’s duplicity in the great obstacle course debacle had still gone unaddressed. After the fire, the recruits from Leaper’s team avoided talking about it, but Tandry didn’t forget.
Maybe the ‘cats wouldn’t take over the planet, but Tandry expected that they thought they already had. Most people of any influence were bonded with ‘cats. Mixial wondered why Cain hadn’t. He was gifted and most importantly, he descended from those who always had ‘cats in their lives. She asked, but he shrugged off her question.
A Tortoid, a Rabbit, and a Wolfoid. Sounded like the start of the companions as gathered by Braden and Micah. Throw in an Android attack and it looked like history was repeating itself. Judging by the emotions that Ellie and Cain were projecting, it also looked like the couple was set. All Cain needed was a ‘cat to keep him on the straight and narrow.
“Come here, you two!” Tandry belted out of nowhere, looking pointedly at Cain and Ellie. They were in billeting. The shipboard training was complete and the next day, they’d be returning to Vii. Confused, Cain and Ellie joined her.
“So?” Tandry asked, which only served to further confuse her two other recruits. They shook their heads. “You’ve been sneaking into his room every night. You keep us all awake, then you spend the day fighting as if you’re no
t in love. Are you two the only ones who don’t see it?” Cain stood perfectly still, scanning the area with only his eyes to see if anyone else was listening.
They were, they all were.
“So?” Tandry repeated her question.
“I don’t know what you want,” Cain ventured. Ellie remained silent, also hesitant to move.
“Go for a walk, on the Livestock Level, and talk about what you want out of life, like adults, instead of the feint-parry-thrust game you’ve been playing.” Without question, the young couple departed, more to get out of the spotlight of their classmates than to follow Tandry’s order. Their recruit badges gave them access to the main decks, so in they went, making sure the hatch closed behind them.
They were alone. For the first time, they were alone and in the open. Cain leaned toward her and she responded, kissing him fully, in the artificial light of day. She held out her hand and he took it. They walked down the steps and into the grasses, holding hands as lovers did. They walked and they talked. They had much in common. They had shared goals. They felt like they were also in competition. There were limited positions on SES ships. They didn’t know of any married couples serving together.
Cygnus Rising: Humanity Returns to Space (Cygnus Space Opera Book 1) Page 8