by M. D. Cooper
The space was small, but somehow cozy. A holo display rose up over the main bank of controls, which were both holographic as well as physical. Ships like the Excelsior were often used and abused. As a result, they had more backup systems than a Cruithne hooker.
Luckily, that was not the case with this ship. It was brand new, also constructed at the Mars Outer Shipyards, just like the Intrepid. System logs indicated its only journeys had been a few short shakedown hauls. It had never actually moved any mass other than its own, but all simulations showed that it would have no problem with the task set ahead of it.
A faint murmur in the back of her mind informed Tanis that Angela was conversing with the ship’s AI, a somewhat surly individual named Troy. He had been shut down during the trip and hadn’t expected to be pulled out of the AI version of stasis for another eighty years. Tanis had been surprised to find an AI on the Excelsior, but Joe had informed her that it was common to have high-grade engineering AI on heavy lifters. They were often moving things that could destroy worlds if mistakes were made.
Angela’s mental tone took on a soft cooing.
Tanis nodded and watched as her flow-armor slowly absorbed into her skin. At first it was merely uncomfortable, like the increased pressure on the outside of the skin when entering a lighter atmosphere. Then the pressure began to build and all of Tanis’s bones began to ache.
It got worse, and Tanis ground her teeth, determined not to scream as she felt the flow-armor crawling under her skin, along the outside of her skull.
“I think this hurts more than high-g…” Tanis gasped.
A minute later the pain lessened, replaced by an overall throbbing throughout her body.
Tanis lay back in the acceleration couch and wiped the sheen of sweat from her brow. She heard boots in the hall and Joe entered the cockpit.
”Uh…. Why are you naked again?”
Tanis chuckled. “It’s my lot in life, apparently. Would you mind grabbing me a shipsuit from my cabin?”
13:34 hours to Intrepid escape maneuver
0:25 hours to end of Excelsior mission launch window
They were ready.
Captain Andrews had Linked the Excelsior with the bridge net.
Tanis switched the holo display to show the rear view. The Excelsior was facing into the Intrepid and would be backed out on magnetic rails. From there, maneuvering thrusters would rotate the ship and ease them away from the Intrepid. Once they had reached a safe distance, the antimatter engines would ignite and the Excelsior would begin its journey.
Tanis thought she could detect the slightest strain in Ensign Teer’s mental tones. She couldn’t blame the woman. Now that the doors were open, the view was filled with the angry red glow of Estrella de la Muerte. Suddenly the name that was so funny before didn’t seem quite as amusing. The possibility that she would die under the light of this dim red star was not lost on Tanis.
“You know, we look at stars all the time, but this is only the second one I’ve seen up close. Hopefully it’s not the last,” Joe echoed Tanis’s thoughts.
She looked over at him, his face betraying none of the uncertainty of his voice as his eyes flicked over the displays and then came to rest on her. They stared at one another for a moment, then Joe stretched out his hand and Tanis took it in hers.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
They got lost in one another’s eyes as the ship slid to the edge of the ES shield on the magnetic rails, the red glow of the star filling the cabin.
“I know I’ve seen vids of them, but I never really expected a red dwarf to be so…red,” Tanis said.
“I guess that’s what Jupiter will look like after they light it up the rest of the way,” Joe said.
“I’d hope so,” Tanis said. “It would make everything on the terraformed worlds look like it was covered in blood.”
Tanis laughed to herself.
The Excelsior maneuvered away from the Intrepid by thruster until the colony ship was no longer in line with the heavy lifter’s engine wash. During the process, Angela shut down and Tanis set her couch to fully recline before turning to Joe.
“I’m ready, good night.”
A cover slid over the pod and the stasis field snapped into place.
* * * * *
“Good luck,” Joe whispered to Tanis as he prepared the Excelsior for its first burn. The engines began their initialization process; hydrogen and anti-hydrogen readied to mix and annihilate one another. He kept one eye on the status indicators while getting comfortable on his couch and beginning his physiological alterations in preparation for extreme g.
As a pilot, Joe was physically altered in several ways to protect him from the extremes of spaceflight. Structural supports interlaced his brain with nano netting to hold it in place during rapid course alterations. His bones were also reinforced with carbon nanotubes, which lessened the risk of fractures being caused by normal movements under high g.
Within his skin—indeed, most of the soft tissue in his body—a latticework of liq
uid crystal began to harden, creating a rigid structure that would keep his body from simply flattening when the Excelsior boosted at 70g. Even the walls of his body’s cells hardened, preparing for the impending pressure.
Joe’s brain turned off pain receptors; it was going to hurt, there were no two ways about it. However, he needed to be able to function; there was no point in his body telling his brain that 70gs were excruciating, he already knew that.
He looked down at Tanis in her pod and wished that she could experience what he did when flying. It wasn’t that she was bad behind the flight controls, Tanis just wasn’t a pilot in the sense that she lived for it. Joe lived for it. There was nothing like feeling the thrust of a ship thrum through his body, threading obstacles and arcing around worlds. Gravity and radiation were his wind and rain, forces he floated on and soared through.
Tanis probably felt the same about him when it came to a pitched firefight. She normally acted cool and reserved, but he had seen that primal grin on her face when engaged in battle. He’d seen it on her face when she killed—something which was hard to reconcile with her serene look beside him in the stasis pod.
The Excelsior’s engines thrummed to life, bringing him back to the task at hand as they slowly built up the antimatter reaction. The first thrust would ramp up to 10g and then calibration checks would run for thirty minutes. After that, there would be a few course corrections and then the 70g burn would commence.
Based on current projections, that burn would last for six hours. Joe checked that the ports on his shipsuit would line up for the fluid transfers. Before the 70g burn, his heart would shut down and an external pump would take over circulating his blood—or rather, what would be taking place of his blood at the time. The extreme pressure would force the oxygen right out of regular blood cells. Specialized nano cells would be taking over for the burn, each equipped with microscopic stasis fields for carrying the necessary chemicals to keep him alive.
Troy interrupted his shipsuit check.
Joe laughed, no mean feat with his body weighing over a ton.
The sentimentality was mistaken as a quirk of the creators and when the process was commercialized, a nurturing environment was not a part of the young AI’s upbringing. While the alterations allowed the AI to grow into their full potential quickly, they lacked compassion, something that was difficult for them to understand or relate to.
The dichotomy led to a series of terrific conflicts between humans and their creations. Sides were chosen and the Sentience Wars erupted in the Sol System. The lines did not divide evenly and AI and humans drew up on both sides of the battle. While any one conflict was short, the overall upheaval lasted from the early twenty-third century to the late twenty-fourth.
In the end, it was a third faction of AI who convinced both sides to cease hostilities and created the Phobos Accords, a set of rules and guidelines for the raising and upgrading of AI. The non-compassionate AI and the humans who sided with them—a group not far removed from machines themselves—were offered the option of re-education or expulsion from the Sol System.
Interestingly, most chose re-education. It would seem that seeing many of their fellows die had actually taught them compassion and understanding a different way.
With the Phobos Accords, not just anyone could create an AI, just as not anyone was fit, or suited, to create and raise children—though human creation was far less regulated than that of AI.
In the current age, nearly all AI were created from a merging of directives and imperatives from groups of parent AI. The process was analogous to the merging of DNA to form a human child, yet, as intelligent as the modern AI were, still no one could determine precisely what the temperament or potential of a young AI would be.
Because the brain of an AI—like the neural enhancements in a human’s brain—was not digital, but analog, they grew and strengthened based on experiences and stimulus. Digital systems were used for computers and Non-Sentient AI, but to place a Sentient AI in a digital environment would be akin to a lobotomy on a human—and, of course, very illegal.
The Intrepid had no NSAI nodes. All the AI onboard were sentient, though there were far fewer than normal, what with Bob running nearly all systems and not really needing assistance.
Joe replied trying to avoid the conversation.
Joe’s mental tone told Troy to let it go and the AI complied. The pair returned to the business of reviewing engine stats and ensuring the ship was holding up.
Joe established a connection to the Intrepid and was connected to the bridge net.
Joe uploaded the navigational data to the Intrepid and waited for the response.
EXCELSIOR
STELLAR DATE: 3241791 / 08.16.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Excelsior
REGION: LHS 1565, 26.8 AU from stellar primary
32:14 hours to asteroid group
6:28 hours to Intrepid escape maneuver
Tanis opened her eyes a moment after the stasis field snapped off. She could feel Angela re-initializing and ran a check on her body to ensure there was no structural damage.
A face loomed over hers.
“You seem to be all in one piece.”
She grinned. “I don’t think I would have broken into multiple pieces no matter what.”
“Well, not unless the ship did.” Joe laughed. “Everything seem OK?”
Tanis held up a hand and moved all of her fingers. “Right as starlight. How did our burn go?”
“Hurt like hell.” Joe rotated his shoulder and grimaced. “Well, didn’t hurt at the time, but it always aches like crazy when my cells de-crystalize.”
As he rolled his shoulders Tanis couldn’t help but imagine running her hands over them, feel the muscle rippling below the skin. Everything certainly looked like it was alright from where she sat.
“Well then, we have more than enough time for a good rub-down.” She held a hand in the air and let it fall. “We’ve got what, 0.3g?”
“Good guess, just a little over. I worked it out so that we could have some thrust for this part of the trip.”
“That’ll be just enough to have a
bath if we don’t get too energetic.”
“There’s a bath on this thing?” Joe asked.
“I finished all my preflight work an hour before you were done with yours, so I had a build-out bot swap the second cabin for a hot-tub,” Tanis said with a mischievous smile.
“Most dangerous flight of our lives and you make sure it has a hot-tub.” Joe shook his head as he gave her a hand to pull her out of the stasis pod.
“Seemed like the right move at the time. Besides, nice warm water feels good on the muscles after a hard burn.”
“Where did you get it from anyway?” Joe asked.
“It was set aside to be put in the gym facilities on one of the cruisers,” Tanis shrugged.
“Someone’s gonna be upset about that.”
“Before or after we’re the heroes of the day for getting the ship the fuel they need?”
“Good point.”
“So, what’s to eat? I’m starved,” Tanis asked aloud as she welcomed Angela back into her mind.
“I, ah…hadn’t gotten anything ready.”
Tanis gave Joe a peck on the cheek, something that felt weird to do, but nice nonetheless. “You just couldn’t wait to talk to me.”
“Well, more specifically to see if you were dead or alive.”
Tanis laughed. “Well, I won’t last long without some food. I only had the one BLT while we were getting ready.”
“So several more BLTs all around, I imagine then?”
“It’s like you can read my mind.”
“Not yet.”
“Woe unto anyone who stands between me and a BLT.” Tanis grinned and loped out of the room in the low gravity with Joe close behind.
In the wardroom, she opened the refrigeration unit and snapped the stasis field off. After extracting the lettuce, tomatoes, and strips of bacon, along with butter made using milk from the Intrepid’s own cattle, she closed it and snapped the field back on.