Lyssa's Dream - A Hard Science Fiction AI Adventure (The Sentience Wars - Origins Book 1)

by James S. Aaron

  Normally the ship would have picked up any debris fields and avoided them. It was Andy’s own fault for disabling half the array out of caution. A truly hardened spacer would tell him she’d rather be cooked slowly than blown apart by a meteorite. You could survive getting cooked. Was it Brit’s voice saying that? Maybe. She wouldn’t have let him turn off the sensors.

  Next time, Andy told himself. Don’t beat yourself up about it now.

  He started a slow lope toward the airlock, letting himself float just a meter at a time before coming back down on a clear section of the ship’s skin so his boots could latch properly. A section of his faceplate display had begun malfunctioning. What should have been a row of indicators showing his suit’s systems was now just a cloud of fractured light. Had the helmet taken an extra-large bit of dust?

  Andy flinched at a stabbing pain that flared in his forearm. Shocked, he searched for the cause to find a pinhole jet of air spraying into the vacuum. His display flashed yellow to alert him to the leak.

  “Way ahead of you,” he muttered.

  “What?” Cara demanded.

  How much time had he let pass since talking to her? Alice was still a hundred meters away. A note on Andy’s display counted down the distance between them.

  “Just talking to myself. Are you checking the other systems?”

  “We’re taking impacts all over the ship. Could we have flown around this?”

  “In a perfect world, yes.” Another stab caught his left shin and Andy nearly stumbled. More sizzling jabs of pain ran up his leg. It felt like tiny devils were attacking him with needles. He moaned at the loss of the suit. He didn’t have room in the budget to replace it.

  “Are you all right?” Cara said, fear in her voice. “Alice is almost there. Can you see her yet?”

  Along with calling the robot Alice, the kids referred to it as ‘her.’ Andy steadfastly thought of the robot as it in case he ever had to sell it. He saw its angular form bobbing toward him.

  “Almost here,” he said. “Are the sensors picking up anything larger? Anything that could hurt the ship?”

  “No,” Cara said. “I don’t see anything on the screen. Should I look somewhere else?”

  Sometimes when she said specific phrases, she sounded almost adult to him, almost like her mother. He had to remind himself that she wouldn’t know where to look unless he told her, unless she remembered what he had taught her. If he had done that correctly.

  “Check the secondary arrays for electromagnetic activity,” he said. “We should—” Andy gritted his teeth as another hot needle stabbed near his bellybutton. That could be a problem. “We shouldn’t assume there isn’t another ship out there. Do you see anything?”

  “I don’t see anything, Dad. Why would another ship be out there and not send us a message? Isn’t that what everyone is supposed to do?”

  “Just because they’re supposed to do it doesn’t mean they will,” he said, gasping. He had managed a few more leaps, closing the gap between him and the approaching robot. Warning indicators flashed inside his faceplate until he couldn’t tell what was a notification and what was the onboard system tracking incoming debris. His vision grew blurry from pain.

  “Where’s Alice?” he asked, blinking. “Where did Alice go?”

  “She’s almost there,” Cara said. “I think she got hit by something.”

  Without seeing where Alice had come from, the robot collided with his chest, steam jets spraying in all directions. Andy grabbed at its square body while struggling to activate the magnets along his forearms and palms. The suit clamped down firmly, holding him in place, and he blew out a sigh of relief that only fogged his helmet more.

  Alice spat steam and Andy realized he’d forgotten to release his mag boots. Floating free, he had a moment of panic as he wasn’t sure if the robot could hold him. The fear was irrational, though. Alice could carry a hundred times his weight in vacuum.

  “I’ve got Alice. Or Alice has me. We’re coming back in.”

  “She’s got you!” Tim squealed across the channel. “I want to ride Alice.”

  Andy straightened out his body, floating parallel to Sunny Skies. He noticed several more punctures peppered across the ship’s skin until finally the edge of the airlock passed underneath him and Alice lowered them both into the open mouth of the doorway.

  Releasing the magnets in his right palm, Andy smacked the locking mechanism and watched gratefully as the doors slid closed.

  “I’m inside,” he said. “Still no other ships?”

  “No other ships,” Cara said. “I see little damage symbols all over the ship but everything still seems to be working.”

  “Any big flashing X marks?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Andy relaxed slightly. Once he got to the medical bay, he could send Alice out to check the interior systems for an update. In a perfect world, he’d have five mechs to assist with maintenance. As it was, Alice could scan everything and he would have to decide what to trust to the robot and then start working his way through the rest himself. He wouldn’t be lying around the rest of the trip to Cruithne.

  The lock cycled, air hissing around him until the inner door opened and he let Alice carry him in. They weren’t out of zero-g yet. It was another fifteen minutes of navigating corridors and gangways through the functional portion of Sunny Skies until they reached the habitat ring.

  Inside the ship, Andy’s faceplate display cleared of the clutter from trying to track incoming debris. He rested his helmeted head on top of Alice, turning his face to the side, and watched the corridor slide by. He was back in atmosphere but didn’t feel like pulling off the helmet. Every movement sent waves of pain through his body, though what felt like hundreds of puncture wounds was probably only three.

  He passed a section of smooth, pale wall the kids had used as a canvas at some point. Stars and planets danced, some by Cara’s finely detailed hand and many more in Tim’s bold lines. Of course, there was also a scene by Tim showing Andy and Brit holding hands with Cara and Tim on either side, everyone smiling. They were all standing in what looked like a green field, but where would that have been? The last place they had visited with actual grass parks was High Terra, in the suburb where Brit’s parents lived. Tim would remember the parks, he supposed. That wouldn’t be a happy memory for Tim. For any of them.

  He wished they had visited Earth. At this point, he didn’t know if he would ever be able to take them to see where he had grown up, to show them where he’d been born. They could always go back to High Terra. Brit’s mom was still there. They would be able to stand in the ring’s graduated gravity, but never Earth without modifications. He didn’t know how he could ever afford that kind of surgery. Something they’d taken for granted in the TSF. He wondered how he would afford Cara’s neural link in eight years. He needed to think bigger than he had been so far, shuttling cargo nowhere to nowhere for chump change.

  Andy’s thoughts bounced around until he and the robot finally reached the bulkhead separating the inner ship from the habitat ring. He released his magnetic locks, slid off the robot and pull himself into the interior airlock. Over his link, he directed Alice to download the most recent maintenance data and check each point of concern. The robot answered with two small jets of steam as it turned to float back down the hallway.

  Cycling the doors, Andy’s stomach did a flip as he oriented on the inner section and his feet came to rest on what had been his ceiling. As the inner gravity took hold, he felt like two bags of concrete had settled on his shoulders, renewing the pain in his arms, legs, and abdomen. He groaned and leaned against the wall.

  The lock opened to reveal Cara and Tim, both waiting for him.

  “Dad!” Tim cried, running forward to grab his legs.

  Andy winced but suppressed the urge to gasp. “Hey, buddy,” he said, hugging his son’s brown-haired head against his side.

  The kids were dressed in standard blue-gray coveralls, Tim’s with th
e cuffs rolled way up, and Cara’s looking a little too small.

  Cara wasn’t quite tall enough to get under his arm to support him. She stepped close and for a second looked like she had when she’d been Tim’s size, reaching up for a hug. Then he realized she had grabbed his helmet with two hands to disengage the lock and pull it off. In her hands, the battered helmet looked like it had been run through in a trash compressor.

  “The suit says you’re bleeding,” she said. “We need to go up to the medical station.”

  Andy nodded weakly, willing to let her be in charge of this part. “No red X marks popped up on the maintenance display since I asked you?” he asked.

  She gave him an irritated look. “No, Daddy,” she said. “But I think there’s a big one on your head.”

  Andy tapped his temple with a gloved index finger. “You mean here?” he said, giving her a pained grin. “That one’s never going away. You have to ignore that one.”

  Cara rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she urged. “You promised us pasta. I don’t want blood in my shells and cheese.”

  “Ugh,” Tim shouted in his monster voice, which meant he was relieved. “Blood in the shells and cheese?”

  “That would certainly be terrible,” Andy said. He let them pull him the rest of the way to the med section.

  Chapter Three

  STELLAR DATE: 08.15.2981 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Sunny Skies

  REGION: Greek Asteroids, Jovian Combine

  Despite being over a hundred years old, the auto-surgeon did a good job on Andy’s wounds. They were low on pain meds, so Andy was going to be aching for a week as the sutures healed. He could deal with that. Pain didn’t cost him anything.

  Moving slowly around the small galley, he selected supplies for the shells and cheese he had promised the kids, grimacing when the reach for a container of flour sent stabbing pain through his abdomen.

  “You don’t seem better,” Cara said, watching him.

  “I’m fine. Give me a couple days.”

  “Why don’t you just pull out some of the prepared stuff. We don’t need anything special.”

  “You said shells and cheese,” Tim called from the table. He had a pad and stylus out, kicking his heels against the floor as he doodled.

  “I promised shells and cheese, and that’s what you’ll get,” Andy said. “It’s bad enough the cheese is going to be artificial. We can still make the pasta. That’s a Sykes family specialty. Your grandmother used to do it the very old way and lay all the pasta shells out on a sheet to dry. Can you imagine doing that?”

  “Why?” Cara said, wrinkling her nose. “That sounds like a big waste of time.”

  “Sometimes doing is the reason.”

  “Sometimes doing is dumb,” she said. “Next we’ll be growing our own wheat.”

  “If we had the space, I would love to do that.”

  “Mom liked to garden,” Cara said.

  He nodded. Sunny Skies had an aftermarket hydroponic garden installed by some owner in its distant past. The apparatus was currently dry and taking up space in the habitat ring that could have been used for special cargo, he just hadn’t gotten around to cleaning it out. The room had been one of Brit’s spaces.

  He measured scoops of the flour. “Get me two cups of water.”

  Cara went to the cabinet for the measuring cup, then filled it at the sink. Andy watched her hold the cup in the air to check measurements. She added another few more milliliters before nodding.

  “Go ahead and dump it in there,” he said, motioning toward the mixing bowl.

  It was still cheating, in a way. The flour had everything it needed to form reasonably tasty pasta. No need for eggs or salt, or the olive oil his mother loved whenever they could scrounge it. He had purchased a hundred kilos of flour three years ago when he had the extra funds to think about emergency food. Now they had nearly run through that.

  He would need to negotiate for new food stores on Cruithne, not the cheapest place in InnerSol to scrape up calories. He was already going to need to find fuel.

  Andy put worries about their destination out of his mind and focused on turning the dough. He dusted the counter with flour and dumped out the bowl.

  “There you go,” he said. “Dust up your hands and start turning that over.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “I’ll do it!” Tim shouted, jumping down from the table. “I want to squeeze the dough.”

  “Your sister can do it. You’ll help with the cheese sauce, all right?”

  Tim slapped the counter and a cloud of flour filled the air around his hands. As he reached for the dough ball, Andy swatted his hands away.

  “Let’s go, Cara.”

  Dusting her hands, Cara moved around the counter to grab the lump of dough and start folding it. Andy washed his hands at the sink and took the rolling pin down from a cabinet near the ceiling. It was an ancient looking thing, crusted with old dough that was harder than concrete.

  When Cara was done turning the dough, he had her roll it out into flat strips that she then fed into the pasta machine until they became snake-shaped ropes that she laid back out on the freshly dusted counter.

  Andy pulled a kitchen knife out of a nearby recess. “You remember how to turn the shells?” he asked.

  “I remember,” Cara said.

  He handed the knife over, handle-first, and watched her make the first few shells by laying the knife blade flat on the end of the dough-snake, pulling and lightly smearing the pasta dough so it rolled against itself before she cut it off. The first few were warped but once she had the hang of it, a pile of fresh pasta shells grew on the counter beside her.

  “Don’t cut your nose off,” Andy said.

  Cara didn’t take her eyes off her work. “Shut up, Dad.”

  With Cara occupied, Andy pulled down the ingredients for the artificial cheese sauce and had Tim pull over a chair to stand beside him at the stove. Soon the sauce was bubbling to Andy’s satisfaction with Tim focused on stirring, pausing occasionally to dip the spoon and raise it above the pot to drop dollops of sauce.

  “Don’t lose any of that sauce,” Andy warned. “That’s all we’ve got.”

  “I won’t lose any sauce, Dad. I want to see how high it can drip.”

  “Higher than you can reach, trust me.”

  “Dad,” Cara said.

  He glanced at her. She was done with the shells and now arranging them loosely on a baking pan to feed into the auto-oven, which would flash twenty-four hours’ drying in five minutes.

  “What do you need?”

  Cara didn’t take her gaze off the shells as she asked, “Did you ever kill anyone when you were in the TSF?”

  He frowned. What had brought this on? The debris field? Seeing him bleeding? He considered lying, then knew he shouldn’t. It was always a matter of how to present the truth.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You weren’t close to them, though, were you?”

  Andy’s throat was abruptly dry. He went to the sink to pour a glass of water and drank half of it. “Most of the time it was far away, in ships,” he said. “But there were a few times when we had to board ships. Then it was up close.”

  “Did Mom have to kill people, too?”

  “Sometimes. She was a pilot, just like me.”

  Cara nodded without saying anything.

  “Why are you thinking about killing people?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I was curious, that’s all. That’s what people do in the TSF, don’t they?”

  “I never wanted to hurt people, but sometimes you don’t get to choose. Sometimes people attack you first, or they attack other people. You do your best to keep everyone safe.”

  Cara nodded.

  “Is that pasta ready?” Andy asked.

  In twenty minutes, they were sitting at the little table with glasses of water and bowls of the warm shells and cheese. Tim lifted his spoon above his head to let the shells drop back into the bowl.
He tried dropping a shell in his mouth and missed. Andy caught the shell before it hit the floor and stuffed it in his own mouth, making a face at Tim that earned him a squeal.

  “Better hang onto those shells, kid,” Andy said, chewing obnoxiously.

  “Dad!” Tim shouted. “That was mine!”

  “I’m a shells and cheese pirate,” Andy said. “You let that shell go and I’m gonna gobble it up.”

  Cara was quiet throughout the meal, only smiling when Andy complemented the pasta shells and Tim nodded agreement, smacking his lips.

  When they were done, Tim fed the dishes and utensils into the sterilizer and then dashed down the corridor to the small room they used as a lounge. There was a couch, a 2D viewing screen to replace the room’s broken holodisplay, and boxes full of Tim’s toys scattered around. They watched a series on Marsian terraforming for an hour and then Andy announced it was time for bed.

  It was a little early and Andy got the complaints he expected. “Time to get a start on a new day,” he said.

  Cara remained quiet.

  Andy glanced at her, hoping she would get past whatever mood had settled on her shoulders.

  He chastised himself for the thought, knowing he needed to find some way to get Cara to open up about what was bothering her. Otherwise nothing would change. They had a saying in the TSF: Hope is not a method, which was a smart-ass way of saying you couldn’t hope your way out of a bad situation.

  He pulled up the ship’s diagnostics briefly over his link to check on Alice’s progress on the damage caused by the debris field, and checked the ship’s depressing fuel levels as well. They were going to arrive at Cruithne Station on velocity and vapors.

  After teeth were brushed, hair combed or tied in fresh braids, Andy sent Cara to her room as he read Tim a story and arranged his son’s various toys on the bed to protect him from monsters.