Bernard's Dream: A Hayden's World Novel (Hayden's World Origins Book 8)

by S. D. Falchetti

  He ends the recording and leans back, pulling the blanket around him. When he glances at Ananke’s screen, it continues to swirl blue in silence. She’s intuitive enough to know when he wants to talk and when she should give him some space. Luhman 16B slips out of the eclipse on the bridge screen, its dull red crescent emerging from the left side of Sao. James watches it, taking in the sight of the starry sky, thinking about what they’ll do next.

  When James and Will used to rock climb, occasionally they would find themselves wedged into a crevice that was no wider than their bodies, giving them the sensation of being enshrouded in a sleeping bag made of rock. Although James wasn’t claustrophobic, there was always a slight feeling of panic at the thought of not being able to move. Right now, James is crawled up into the reactor room wall breach, and it feels very much like those climbing experiences. Dark, torn metal wreathes around him, leaving barely enough room to move his arms. Beckman’s feet straddle beams above him. Both James and Beckman wear the orange heavily-padded engineering maintenance suits supplied by Hitoshi. The suits are like one-piece overalls with gloves and a padded snoopy hat designed to keep them from getting burned, cut, or bruised. They also wear augmented goggles that superimpose the wiring and supports hidden in the walls.

  Beckman ignites a flickering red arc on his plasma torch. “Cutting.” He slides the arc along a bent strut, and orange sparks burst out, ricocheting in zero-gee slow motion off the cavity’s walls to collide harmlessly with James’s maintenance suit. Beckman finishes the cut and snaps the strut. “Hot potato coming your way.” He tosses it down, its end still glowing, and James catches it in his left insulated glove.

  “Ready for K2,” Beckman says.

  James looks down at his feet and relays the message to the breach’s opening. Julian feeds up an arm-sized metal strut, and James shimmies it past his body. Fortunately, they’re in zero-gee, and it doesn’t weigh anything, but it has plenty of inertia, and he’s careful not to let it get away from him. His right arm and shoulder tinge with pain at the strain, but he keeps a poker face as he feeds the strut up to Beckman.

  Beckman rotates it into place and flicks the selector switch on his torch. “Going hot.” Electric blue crackles along the seams. Beckman surveys the cooling weld.

  “You’re pretty good at that,” James says.

  Beckman looks down at him through the swirling smoke. “Got plenty of practice growing up on the farm.”

  “Stuff always breaking?”

  “Yeah. Either you learned how to fix it where it fell, or you got used to hiking home in the dark.”

  “Well, it’s a real long hike home from here, so glad you’ve got those skills.”

  Beckman appraises him a moment. “Let’s hope—“

  Ananke’s voice interrupts, playing over the ship’s intercom. “All crew to bridge.”

  Both James and Beckman have the same startled reaction. If Ananke is summoning the crew directly to the bridge without checking with James first…well, that can’t be good. James collects his wits and yells to Julian. “We’re coming down.” He descends out of the cavity like he’s climbing backward out of a hole, unhooks his utility belt, and pushes off towards the reactor room exit as Hitoshi gophers out of the Riggs room access hatch. Julian is in motion a good six meters ahead of him, and the two quickly coast down the main corridor, turn at the junction where Ava and Willow have emerged from the science lab, and spill onto the bridge.

  The bridge screen is magnified to show the orbital ring over Sao. Parked one click above the ring is a half-a-kilometer-long cylindrical ship with a slatted outer surface like bark. A thin layer of ice is caked upon the bark. The ship’s interior is hollow, with metal buds speckling its surface. James’s pulse ticks up a few beats. It’s a Silver Star ship, the same configuration as the one they encountered at Janus, and all of those tiny buds are Silver Stars. The cylinder’s rotation is slowing.

  “It just jumped in,” Ananke says. “There was no activity from the ring. The spectral pattern of the flash is similar to Silver Star jumps that we’ve witnessed before.”

  Everyone settles into his station as James clicks into his harness and pulls off his maintenance gloves. “Anything on coms?”

  “No,” Ananke says.

  “Can you pull the log from the one we encountered at Janus?”

  A window pops up reading Bernard’s Beauty Forward Camera, July 29th, 2082 04:02 Earth UTC. A cylindrical ship caked in ice rotates quickly on the screen, the blue arcs of embedded Silver Stars swirling in its interior.

  “There’s a memory I could lose,” Hitoshi says.

  James eyes the back of the Janus ship, which is smooth. The back of the ship at Sao has six radial fins. “Configuration’s a little different. There are fins on the aft, and the Janus one was heavily caked with ice blocks. The ice on this one is thin.”

  “It was twenty years ago,” Lin says. “Could be modifications or just a different version of the same class of ship. You went onboard, right? How many Stars were there?”

  “Ava was with me. Best guess, about fifty. Not so much aboard as walking on the surface. I’m not sure if there’s an inside part of the ship. We hauled ass once the Stars started waking up.”

  Lin glances over at Ava, and Ava smiles. “Yes, this is what happens when James says, ‘do you want to go on an adventure with me?’”

  James chuckles. “Kept my word on the adventure part.”

  On the bridge screen, the cylindrical ship’s spin slows to a comfortable rotation. Ananke has inset additional images in low-light and ultraviolet. In ultraviolet, the ship is lit up with pulsing light spilling from the seams of its slats.

  A flickering appears on the ship’s belly and illuminates the orbital ring below it. Three strobes appear on the ring, flickering back.

  “They’re communicating,” Willow says. “I’m logging it all.”

  The flickering dialogue continues for a full two minutes before abruptly stopping. The cylinder rotates there slowly.

  “James,” Beckman grumbles. “I’ve got a bad feeling about where this is headed.”

  The blue lights of the Star nubs sweep to red, then, like agitated bees swarming out of a hive, the Silver Stars spill out of the ship’s orifice, soaring like a flock of birds, swirling and moving organically, like dozens of silver asterisks dotted in red. The flock of Stars turns in an arc, steering along a vector that points directly at Promise.

  “James…” Beckman says more urgently. “They look pissed.”

  James is genuinely alarmed. “Charge the emitters. Kinetics to manual fire only. We may need some warning shots. Everyone make sure you're clicked in and ready for evasive.”

  “Ready,” Beckman says.

  The lead Stars begin spinning, prismatic streaks curving around them.

  “They’re going to jump!” Hitoshi says.

  “Steady,” James says.

  The first Stars jump in brilliant blue flashes, bursting in a shower of light just a few hundred meters in front of the ship. The Stars back at the ring pop like popcorn, joining the lead craft. All of them have their silver rods extended with end lights cycling through hues of magenta and purple.

  The tactical display brackets each and assign it a target identification. Beckman taps at his console. “Forty-eight total. Distance, two hundred and thirty meters.”

  “Willow,” James says. “Run the first contact sequence using the forward floods.”

  Willow slides her hand along a few icons. “Okay, it’s running.”

  Promise’s forward floodlights strobe in ultraviolet using the frequency and duration they observed from the Sunflower. They’re starting with simple counting sequences.

  The Stars ignore the message and accelerate towards the ship, spinning angrily. One flashes right past the bridge’s camera, and the bang of a collision sounds from the starboard nose. More Stars swarm Promise and smash against the hull. They’re not heavy or fast enough to jolt the ship, but they certainly can damage it
. It sounds like a couple of dozen people with hammers are trying to break into the ship.

  James takes a deep breath and looks at Ananke’s screen. Hints of silver swirl in it.

  “James,” Ananke says. “They know I’m here. I can feel it. Just like the last time.”

  “Kinetics active,” James says, “put a couple of shots across the Stars’ bows. Don’t hit any of them.”

  Beckman works quickly on his console. Trajectories slice along the tactical display. “Firing.”

  Promise’s kinetic cannons snake lines of pulsing blue rounds in front of the nearest Stars. The Stars veer away briefly from the warning shots, spin in place a moment, then redouble their assault on Promise.

  James presses his lips together, breathing out through his nose. “Power emitters down to one percent. Target the nearest Star in range and fire.”

  Beckman presses an icon, and one of Promise’s port lasers flares green, painting a Star in brilliant emerald. After a few seconds, Beckman says, “No effect.”

  “Up it to three percent.”

  Beckman slides up the power control, and the green laser light brightens. “Still ignoring it.”

  “Five percent.”

  The Star glows bright green as it’s bathed in laser light. It sharply turns away from the light and flies away from Promise, retreating. Quickly it spins up to speed and jumps, reappearing back in the orbital ring. The other Stars continue to smash against Promise.

  “Fire at will,” James says. “All lasers, five percent.”

  All of Promise’s lasers slice across the swarm, bobbing from Star to Star. One by one, the attackers peel off and accelerate away from the ship, jumping back to the ring. When the last Star jumps, Promise ceases fire.

  “Hitoshi, damage report,” James says.

  Hitoshi overlays a schematic of Promise on the screen. “They smashed up the dorsal antenna and dish. Armor’s all scratched up just about everywhere. Doesn’t look like any interior damage.”

  On the screen, the swarm is buzzing around the orbital ring. The cylinder ship and the ring are having another strobe conversation.

  “I’ll bet they’re calling us a lot of bad words,” Beckman says.

  James sighs. “I’ll bet.”

  “We’re still running the first contact protocol,” Willow says. “Should we continue?”

  “Sure,” James says. “What the hell.” He rubs the bridge of his nose, sighing, then looks around. “Okay, half of us are unarmed. Let’s get in EV suits and grab sidearms, two at a time, Hitoshi and Lin first. We’ll cycle through the protocol and just watch what they’re doing for a while.” When he looks at Ananke’s screen, the silver is fading. “Are you all right, Ananke?”

  “Yes. It was like the time over Janus. They seem to be able to access my matrix wirelessly. I don’t know how.” She pauses. “We may be able to use it to communicate with them.”

  James squints. “Use it? They abducted you with it. I’m thinking just the opposite, that we need to find a way to shield you from them.”

  “Shielding me won’t do any good if the ship is destroyed.”

  James’s shoulders tighten, and he glances up at the bridge screen. The Stars glide slowly over the damaged areas of the ring, projecting blue spotlights. For now, Promise seems to have the military advantage, although over Janus, it took just a single star to destroy their ship. If any one of those forty-eight Stars jumps inside of Promise, the result can be devastating in a blink. Maybe these Stars don’t know that, but he doesn’t want to bet everyone’s life on maybe. He watches Ananke’s screen swirl blue and purple, and he knows that she’s watching him right back. To his left, Hitoshi and Lin depart to arm themselves. James scratches at his chin, watching the swarm churn silently in the red light of Luhman.

  22

  Mendings

  For the first hour, the Star swarm ignores Promise, carefully inspecting the orbital ring while a few Stars fly in formation along the exterior of the cylinder ship, then, one by one, half of them descend into Sao’s atmosphere on a trajectory towards the surface tower. None return, and all is quiet for three hours.

  Just before dinner, James dismisses everyone to change out of their EV suits. They can’t wear the suits twenty-four seven, and it’s just slowing down their repair work. He does have everyone keep their sidearm, and it’s a bit glaring seeing the crew in regular clothes with pistols. Even the clothes themselves are a bit of a submission, an acceptance that they’re in a situation they can’t easily extract themselves from. When everyone regroups in the Canteen, it’s more of a working dinner than a social gathering.

  “Okay,” James says, taking a sip of his coffee, “we’re going to have to shift to a staggered sleep schedule. Work eight, sleep four. We’ll divvy up into groups of three. Rotate whose turn it is to sleep so two people are always awake. Hitoshi, Lin, and Isaac on Riggs repairs. Beckman, Julian, and me on structural. Willow, Ava, and Ananke on Stars communication. Kind of like we did on Astris. We’ll do seven-thirty shift transition meetings, morning and night. Work for you?” When everyone nods, James adds. “Hitoshi, best guess on drive repair?”

  Hitoshi finishes chewing his bite. “Thirty-six hours. And that’s not a Scotty exaggeration. Twenty-eight to finish repairs and another eight to align and test.”

  “How about structural?”

  “Well, you’ve got Beckman, who was apparently a welding machine in another life. Should be able to get all of the struts replaced and pull the cabling. You can get a couple of drones on the dish and antennae. We have spares for those. Wheel out Betty II to pull up the damaged floor in the reactor room. Yeah. Totally doable in the same amount of time.”

  Lin squints. “So, out of curiosity, was there a Betty I?”

  “Uh…she exploded, along with Gossamer Goose, over Janus, right after a Silver Star smushed Beckman.”

  “I’m still sore about that,” Beckman says.

  “Sorry. Too soon?”

  Beckman stares at Hitoshi.

  James glances at Ava. “How’s the signal progress coming?”

  Ava says, “We’ve got a much bigger dataset after their last conversation. They’re very consistent. They seem to speak in fragments that are multiples of eight-hundredths of a second. Willow’s been cataloging them all.”

  Willow nods. “We have over six hundred unique fragments that appear in groups forming three thousand sequences. So far, we’re treating the fragments as morphemes and assuming they’re stacking them together into words and sentences.”

  “You’re going to have to take me through what a morpheme is,” James says.

  “Morphemes are just the smallest unit of meaning in a spoken language. They might be complete words like quick or building blocks like -est that change the meaning, making quickest. So, the Stars have six hundred morphemes assembled into three thousand words. What’s interesting is that both the morpheme and word distribution follow Zipf’s law, the same as human languages, which means they tend to use the shorter words more often than the longer ones.”

  “What do you see as the next steps?” James says.

  “We now have a bit of a fill-in-the-blank dictionary. If this were English, it would be populated with the most commonly spoken words. We also have the context from each communication, which helps. Suppose you encountered two people yelling at each other in a foreign language standing in front of two crashed cars. In that case, you could assume one of the repeating words is probably car. There’s a good chance the ring’s conversation includes the words for ring, ship, Silver Star, and maybe even Promise. So, we can test it if we could get either face-to-face or have a way to present images to them and try words that we think fit.”

  “What would the test look like?”

  She chuckles lightly. “It’s surprisingly low-tech. If we were on Earth talking to humans, I’d hold up an apple and say apple. They might think I mean food, fruit, red, round or apple. So, then I’d hold up an orange and say orange. Because it’s a differen
t word, that’ll eliminate food, fruit and round. At that point, they might think I mean the colors red and orange, or they might think I mean the foods apple and orange. So, next, I show them something red that’s not a fruit, eliminating red. It’s a slow trial-and-error process. With the Stars, we’d need to get them someplace where we could physically show them things, or perhaps we could digitally show them things on a slate. We’d have to start with things that they have experience with…apples aren’t going to work…but instead, things like Sao, the ring, themselves, ourselves, and Promise.”

  James squints. “Where would we do the meeting?”

  “You’re not going to like this,” Willow starts, “but the cargo hold is ideal. It opens right to space, and we can stage things there.”