by M. D. Cooper
Andrews checked the current status of the engines and saw that they were creating the equivalent of just over ten trillion newtons of force to achieve their velocity. That was slightly better than expected, even with the twenty-five thousand kilometer wide ES ramscoop deployed. Calculation showed that their final velocity at Mercury’s historical orbit past the apex of their slingshot would be closing in on 1,000 kilometers per second, or around 3.6 million kilometers per hour. Current projections were all in line to complete this stage of their journey and exit the solar system only forty hours after that point. The TSF interceptor would have to leave the Intrepid in time to decelerate around Saturn, or it would take them over a year to return to Callisto.
He could have looked up their status on the Link, but he owed it to the survivors of Blue Wing as well as Major Richards to visit them in person. That and he had news for the major she would appreciate hearing.
Upon entering the infirmary, he noticed that he was one of many visitors. The staff had sound barriers in place to keep the noise down, but even so he could still hear a dull murmur. He made his way amongst the wounded, saying a word here, or giving a nod there. Each member of the squadron was being awarded a TSF Medal of Valor for their bravery. They had earned it.
Tanis Richards had her own little crowd. Commanders Evans and Ouri as well as that strange woman, Trist, were all at her side. The officers snapped off salutes when they saw him approach and Trist gave a friendly smile. He wasn’t entirely certain about that one, but Tanis had vouched for her, so she had received special dispensation to be a part of the colony mission.
Tanis herself looked much better. Her face was no longer twisted in a rictus of pain and an easy smile rested on her lips.
“You appear to be in much better condition.” The captain placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad to see that the doctors are getting you patched up.”
“Nothing I can’t handle, sir, just a bit of swelling in pretty much every one of my lobes as well as some implant overheating.”
“No permanent damage?” he asked.
Tanis chuckled. “None other than what was already there. Angela took more of a beating than I did and we’re having some bleed between our thoughts, but the docs said it will straighten out.”
Captain Andrews nodded and smiled. “While it is mostly a formality and of little bearing now, I wanted to be the first to inform you that the TSF has officially recognized your actions over the last few months. You’ve been awarded the Star Cross of Bravery and have also been promoted to lieutenant colonel.”
Tanis schooled the surprise from her expression. “I guess they decided it was OK to promote me now since they don’t have to increase my pay. It is nice to have it back, though.” She mouthed the words “Lieutenant Colonel” and smiled.
“Credit won’t do you a ton of good where we’re going anyway,” Trist said.
“Your new rank holds here,” Captain Andrews said. “With it, you’re the third highest ranking military officer on this vessel and when we arrive at our destination you’ll be given duties and responsibilities according that position.”
“Third highest?” Joe asked. “Who other than Sanderson is above her?”
“We’ve got some crusty colonel in the deep freeze,” Ouri said. “A real treat, let me tell you.”
“Rank or no rank, the Reddings, Terrance, and I know who we owe our safety and very lives to. Not to lay it on too thick, Lieutenant Colonel, but we are all in your debt…again.”
“Thank you, sir.” Tanis smiled. She really didn’t know what else to say.
“You’re welcome.” The captain returned the smile. “You’ve done your job well, and we’ll soon be traveling too fast for any type of attack. We’re safe, and finally on our way. You can rest now knowing your work is done.”
Tanis laid her head back and closed her eyes. It felt done. Analysis had shown that the fighter attack was a last attempt by Strang to take them out before they left the system. He was now being held without ability to electronically communicate and all STR operations were on lockdown, the entire company frozen.
Nothing could interrupt the Intrepid’s flight now, it would be smooth sailing from here on out.
* * * * *
Eventually everyone left her side except for Joe.
“I’m due to enter stasis in a few hours,” he said.
“I saw that on the schedule.”
“I’m getting tired of almost losing you, you know.” Joe sounded like he was choking.
“I know how you feel.” Tanis grinned.
“Always with the jokes. I suppose I’ll see you in a hundred and twenty-five years.”
“Forty.” Tanis smiled up at Joe.
“What?”
“I pulled rank and got you on a duty rotation with me in forty years.” Her eyes twinkled, and she thought his might be misting up.
“Those last three years, don’t they?”
“Just you me and…a pair of GSS ensigns. We’ll order pizza and watch lots of movies.”
Joe looked exasperated. “Why do you always do that, make light of things?”
Tanis scowled at him. “I can’t be miss emotional freedom overnight you know.”
“You’re right I’m so—”
Tanis interrupted him, “Commander Evans, could you please stop overanalyzing everything and just kiss me?”
It was loving and passionate.
It was worth the wait.
CALAMITY
STELLAR DATE: 3241790 / 08.15.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, AI Primary Node
REGION: LHS 1565, 0.5 AU from stellar primary
Forty years later…
The Intrepid lost control of its drive system.
The ship’s AI detected a fault in the neural nodes that managed the fusion engines. It switched to the backup systems, but those nodes crashed and went offline. Milliseconds later, power failures cascaded across the ship taking out key systems. In less time than a human took to blink, the AI felt more than a fifty-percent reduction in its ability to think.
The AI, named Bob by its human avatars, ran through priorities. First on the list: take the fusion reactors and the antimatter annihilator offline while he still could. If they were cut off from his control, there would be no way to detect, let alone stop, a runaway reaction.
He initiated a controlled shutdown only moments before losing all access to the stern of the ship. The few sensors responding via wireless interface showed that the commands succeeded.
Bob gave the AI equivalent of a sigh of relief.
With the ship’s reactors no longer producing power, the ship’s systems began switching over to superconductor batteries. Several neural nodes powered back up for several seconds until an explosion amidships sent shockwaves through the decks as one of the SC battery banks took on heavy load and overheated. Bob ran through the power distribution. It was well below even nominal draw; there was no reason the bank should have failed, let alone exploded.
More banks started failing—though less catastrophically than the first—until there were more batteries were offline than functioning. As a result, large sections of the ship were powered down and what neural nodes were left began switching over to internal backup energy.
Another explosion rocked the ship and reports streamed in from the bow. Visual inspection showed a large hole in the ES ramscoop emitter. Bob looked over the logs and could find no indicators pointing to any failures, anywhere. Everything should be working correctly.
With the ramscoop offline, the few small fusion generators still running were now on stored fuel. Bob checked the reserves and found that while deuterium and helium-3 were at acceptable levels, lithium was critically low. Yesterday’s logs showed a million tons of lithium.
> What was going on?
Bob dedicated what processing power was left in the remaining bow neural nodes to pouring through the ship’s logs. He discovered subtle errors and inconsistencies. After a few minutes, the realization dawned on him that his sensors were reporting false data. A minute later, he determined that even the positioning sensors had been reporting the starship’s vector incorrectly.
They were not passing by the star named LHS 1565, they were falling into it.
The knowledge lent a sinister look to the star’s dim red light. At a fraction of Sol’s luminosity, and a mass of only 115Mj, it was on the smaller end of the stellar scale, not far beyond the threshold of being a brown dwarf—a fact that wouldn’t stop it from vaporizing the Intrepid in its corona.
He took a fraction of a second to consider the notion of seeing starlight as sinister. Such an action was not something he had been capable of before his first mental merge with his human avatars, Amanda and Priscilla. Having his mind melded with theirs provided new insights and perspectives, the most prominent of which was currently suspicion.
It was also strange that in the two minutes since Bob had sounded the general alert, no humans had responded. Gollee was on duty at present, and he was never more than a thought away, but now the AI couldn’t find him. The few internal scanners still functioning showed no sign of the duty crew.
Before the ship had left Sol forty years ago, there had been a few random failures that were chalked up to sabotage. The STR Corporation had gone to great lengths to stop the Intrepid from getting to the New Eden colony and many known sabotages did occur. Either some had gone undetected, or a second group had been involved.
Either way, whoever was shutting down the Intrepid was onboard now; but with the ship falling into a star, they wouldn’t be for long.
Bob checked the status on the servitors he had dispatched to survey the damage across the ship and found he had lost their signal. He was losing all signal across the ship.
The wireless transmitters were going offline and his distributed network was dangerously fragmented. Bob shut down all but his primary node to prevent a schism and gained a small insight into what the fear of death was like.
Preservation protocols began writing data and algorithms to crystal storage in an attempt to store his latest state.
Those imperatives satisfied, he reviewed the remaining options. Humans were needed to solve this riddle. His remaining transmitters received a response from only the closest stasis chamber. He looked over the list of humans within the pods and realized all may not be lost. Tanis Richards was in that chamber. If anyone could get to the bottom of what was going on, it would be her.
Correction. It had to be her.
Bob initiated the protocols to retrieve the human and was about to provide her with a message on the general shipnet when all access beyond his node was cut off. He attempted to resend, but nothing worked. All physical connections were severed.
Bob spent several long minutes trying backup systems and alternative data paths. His desperation increased and, for the first time in his life, Bob wished for a body.
It would fall to Tanis.
ALONE IN THE DARK
STELLAR DATE: 3241790 / 08.15.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Officer Stasis Chamber B7
REGION: LHS 1565, 0.5 AU from stellar primary
Tanis stared at the holo alerts around her. The words didn’t make sense. She checked the general shipnet and found the same information. This couldn’t be right. She had been awakened too soon…or was it too late? Everything seemed to be offline or failing.
Tanis said, feeling as though she was blind, unable to see data on the nets, limited to just her own eyesight and hearing.
“I noticed that,” Tanis said aloud, though her AI could hear her internal thoughts. Angela was a distinct entity, but also occupied a portion of Tanis’s brain. Even if she didn’t have access to auditory pickups, she could read many of her host’s outermost thoughts.
Tanis didn’t know. The ship AI’s presence had always been close, like a looming mountain on the shipnets. One of the most advanced sentient artificial intelligences ever created, she couldn’t imagine what would shut down or block it.
“First things first,” Tanis said. “We need more intel. There’s no data on the duty officers, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t around somewhere. Let’s get to the bridge.”
Tanis looked at the rows of stasis pods, her gaze lingering on Joseph Evans’ in particular.
“They should be safe. Pods have their own backup power supplies. Besides, I’m going to recode the door and seal it.”
Angela signaled her approval and within minutes they were moving through the ship to the bridge.
The corridors were empty, and only the occasional dim emergency light provided illumination. Tanis added IR and UV overlays to her vision, as well as a structural overlay to ensure she stayed on the right path. Angela released a cloud of nano to scout ahead and keep an eye out behind them as well.
Tanis gave a stoic smile. “Then we better get things fixed up. Plus, if we don’t smash into a star we’ll still freeze to death.”
Angela said.
The empty corridors stretched on with no sign of life or recent use. She estimated the distance to the bridge to be just over a kilometer; provided there were no sealed hatches on the way, she would be there in a matter of minutes.
Tanis found herself wondering why she was awakened. No other stasis pods showed any signs of reviving their occupants and there was no data left for her on the net. It had to be Bob who brought her out of stasis, but why not leave her with some information?
They passed through the forward commissary, cutting behind the food stands and through Chef Earl’s main kitchen, then into the executive dining room. It was a shortcut that would take them to a hall one level down from the bridge deck and only a few hundred meters aft.
The dining room was dark, chairs were stacked along the wall, and the tables showed a thin layer of dust. It drove home that forty years had passed. Though, by Tanis’s reckoning, she had left this room only hours before.
It was odd that it lacked more recent signs of use; it was one of the closest dining rooms to the bridge. Surely the duty officers would have been eating here, unless they felt uncomfortable and were using the officers’ mess only one level further down.
Tanis looked up who the duty officers should be and was surprised to learn she knew each of them personally. The first was GSS Lieutenant Collins, a man Tanis had not gotten along with particularly well before the Intrepid had left Mars. She had only spotted him once or twice afterward and was surprised that a supply officer had been added to the in-flight duty roster.
The next was Lieutenant Amy Lee. She had been stationed under Tanis in the Security Operations Center in the harrowing days before the Intrepid left Sol. Tanis knew Amy Lee reasona
bly well, but not as much more than an acquaintance beyond their working relationship.
The last of the three duty officers was Ensign Gollee. Tanis knew him from a few games of 4D chess they had played in the officer’s mess, but had not worked with him professionally. She felt bad for Amy Lee and Gollee being stuck with Collins. If she had to spend three years with that man, Tanis knew someone would be dead—him.
Angela said.
Usul was Amy Lee’s AI. He wasn’t a military pairing, like Angela, but had been with her family for several generations. When she made colony, he jumped at the opportunity to leave Sol and transferred to her.
Gollee, like most pilots, didn’t have AI. Most of their extra processing space was needed for additional systems to handle plots and vectors. Collins was simply too low on the totem pole to be granted any military AI and he wasn’t the sort who would normally attract an unchartered AI for a pairing.
Tanis reached the top of a service tube and stepped onto the bridge deck’s maglev station. In all her previous visits to the command deck, Tanis was one of hundreds crowding the station and executive corridor. Now, the emptiness was palpable; emergency lighting cast long shadows across the space as the echoes of her footfalls skittered up and down the hall.
Beyond lay the bridge’s foyer; the place where Priscilla and Amanda—the ship’s two physical avatars—took turns providing the main interface between the humans and the Intrepid. The avatars’ pedestal was empty and the holo emitters were offline. Even more than the main hall, this room had always been a riot of light and color—usually white, grey, and light blue if Amanda was ensconced, or red, pink, and violet if Priscilla was running the show. As Tanis slipped through the darkness, a shiver ran down her spine and she couldn’t help but feel like she was the only person on the ship.