Sentient Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures)

by Ginger Booth

  And he shifted backward in his seat – he’d slid forward – and un-kinked his neck. He blew out hard and willed his heart to stop pounding so loud. Teke was busily engaged in a conversation with someone and Ben didn’t rego care. He got only a couple seconds of peace and – Asteroid!

  Good. Sass caught that one. He wished the baby would stop crying. He only had a couple seconds for his breather and they needed to count.

  Um, what am I doing? He blinked. Brain still blank. He blinked harder, and frowned at the screen. The screen faced backward on the warp fractal in all its vibrant glory spangled across the stars. “Where am I going?”

  “Hold, Sass,” Teke said hastily. He was doing that diligent copilot thing and talking to everyone the captain couldn’t be bothered with. “Ben, are you tracking?”

  No. “Tracking what?” He studied his instrument panel. A program was running. A program that would complete in… Yeah, he needed to focus. But there was that somersault thing. So disorienting.

  Teke was out of his chair and unlocking Ben’s helmet from the seat back. The moment it was free, Teke shook him, making his head bobble most unpleasantly. Was the man trying to make him upchuck? “Ben! Get your head in the game!”

  “Stop shaking me!” Ben shoved the physicist away.

  But the super-genius fool forgot to lock down his dashboard when he rose from his chair. He landed one hand on the main guns, which fired spectacularly just before his elbow knocked into the gunner’s yaw control. Ben reached to slam his fist down on the gunner’s lock in time to prevent any further control accidents, then automatically reset the ship’s yaw where it belonged. The auto-nav reported his time to end of program about 5 seconds later than it was before all those interruptions happened and –

  “Drop containers and warp back to Sanctuary,” he murmured. “That’s what I’m doing?”

  The aggrieved physicist finished clambering into his chair the right way. “Captain, if you don’t know what you’re doing, we remain in Pono space. And I relieve you of duty.”

  “Oh, don’t get bitchy with me,” Ben retorted. “High gee maneuvers. Nothing new.”

  Teke got on the ship-wide. “Security to bridge. Immediately.”

  “Belay that!” Ben ordered. “Unless you want broken bones. We are maneuvering!” Indeed they were beginning to ride that ragged edge of the inertial compensators again, Ben distinctly tipping to the left again. “Remi, about that leftward list.”

  “Huh? ETA rendezvous in 12 minutes.”

  Ah. His engineer was off ship. “Never mind.” Because now they were completing the deceleration profile, coming to dead stop relative to…something. Doesn’t matter. What was I about to…? “Ejecting containers.” That was it.

  “No, Ben, wait!” Teke screeched.

  Ben glared at him, and waited for the little ping! of nav program completion. And he stabbed the eject button. “Gunner, notify recipient for container pickup.” I could use another clue.

  “Sass!” Teke implored. “Your containers are ejected. Please tell Ben he needs to stay in Pono space!”

  Sass hesitated. “Ben, please explain?”

  “My copilot is being an ass. Ignore him.”

  Teke would not be daunted. “Sass, he’s doing it again! That thing from exiting Denali!”

  Zan intervened from Hopeful Thrive. “Ben, are you tracking?”

  No. “Yes, I’m fine. Little groggy from the high-gee flip.”

  “How high gee?” Remi demanded from the tender shuttle.

  “Um…” Ben looked it up. “Eight point something. Little past the inertial compensator.”

  “Ridiculous!” the engineer yelled at him. “Don’t do that! Do we have a spare inertial compensator? No! Idiot!”

  “Thrive Actual arriving,” Sass reported. “Ejecting containers in 10-9-8.”

  Everyone mercifully shut up on the control channel while Sass completed her maneuver, and backed out of Ben’s way.

  “Pick up the pace, Sass,” Ben begged. He wasn’t confused at all about the countdown timer on the warp gateway. If he had to catch these containers before fleeing through the gateway, this was really tight. And…that other thing. There was another thing to do. But Sass had gotten out of the way enough for him to start trying to catch his boxes. “Mass on containers.”

  She reeled off a mass equal to empties. Oh, yeah. The mental fog began to lift. He’d just completed delivery of two ships, heavy-laden containers, and needed replacements. Cool. And that other thing.

  Teke set to imploring Sass again to make Ben stand down. Sass argued that Teke was the only one in a position to do that. Remi chimed in from somewhere that high-gee maneuvers like that caused pilots to black out. Zan groused that he’d seen Ben do worse. Ben eyed his old foe Pono warily. Indeed.

  He tuned them all out to focus on catching boxes. Once nerve-wracking, decades of practice converted this into more of a game. Unladen containers were an especially fun twist – normally their mass factored heavily into the strategy. But no, eight boxes, in close to rigid formation on a base frame, barely any interior jiggling at all. His fingers flew on his calculator. A really cute high-gee move was possible, but he wasn’t tempted to do that again so soon. His left ear still rang faintly. He jerked his head sideways a couple times trying to clear it.

  Which relaunched Teke into, “Now he’s going into convulsions!”

  “I am not! Wilder, get up here! To cart away the copilot. He’s annoying.” A nice slow roll beneath the container array, casually catch ’em with grapples as he turned belly-up, that would be sweet. Ben began executing his pass.

  Sass had no direct access from her ship to Ben’s security chief. “Opinions, gentlemen. Zan. You think Ben is fine?”

  Zan responded with, “Ben, how many passes will it take you to catch those boxes?”

  Ben snorted in disdain. “One. I’m busy.”

  “Remi?”

  “I’ve seen him do worse.”

  Sass huffed a laugh. “We’re all seen him do worse.”

  There. Belly up, grapples ready, wait for it. Reach gently, caught ’em. Straighten the roll relative to, and reel ’em in. “Remi, lock cargo.”

  “Remi?” Sass inquired.

  “Off ship, cap. ETA in six,” Remi reminded him.

  Oh, yeah. Ben flipped through his console displays until he could access the engineering grapple controls, and locked the cargo down. It wasn’t fancy, no webbing or anything. But for empty boxes, it was enough. Then he sat back and considered Remi’s response. Six minutes was longer than he had remaining. So he plotted an intercept to perform the same sort of dolphin roll under the engineer. Could he…? Yes. Just barely.

  He ordered, “Remi, maintain your current heading, do not decelerate. I’ll come grab you.” But would that leave him too far from the gateway. Which went…where. “Computer, verify coordinates on gateway preset. Where am I going?”

  “Sanctuary asteroid belt.”

  “Thank you.” That’s right. He was just dropping stuff through, then they returned to Sanctuary space, but translated to Loki’s main installation to carry him to Pono space. What was that other thing?

  “Remi?” Sass urged. “Do you believe Ben is in command of his faculties?”

  As she spoke Ben began to execute his maneuver, banking to the left, simultaneously starting his belly-up to belly-down roll, to match velocity and heading to achieve zero relative delta-v with the engineer. “My flight plan, Remi.” Ben zapped it to him.

  Remi took a moment to review the plan. “He’s fine.”

  Ben nodded in satisfaction. Although he didn’t entirely agree. “Cumulative psychic dissonance accrues from repeated inter-dimensional warp shifts.”

  Teke stared at him. “Say what?” But Wilder arrived on the bridge, and grabbed the physicist by the arm to drag him away. Ben let him.

  He was busy at the moment, coming to perfect rest under Remi. “Your move, Remi. Make it quick.” They weren’t quite back in range of the warp flow
er yet. But almost. And they had precious little margin on time. As soon as he was back within warp radius, Ben’s finger itched to press the jump button.

  OH! That other thing! He needed to pick up Remi! Of course he did. He couldn’t figure out how to transport Loki without a good engineer. He breathed a huge sigh of relief. He sure as hell didn’t want to fix his own inertial compensator.

  That would be bad.

  Though it was a little disconcerting that he still heard a baby cry. None of the babies were on Merchant Thrive. They were with Zan. Or maybe on Mahina. And nobody brought a baby onto the bridge.

  A reassuring CLANG announced Remi’s reunion with the mother ship. That coupling would leave dents, but that was the engineer’s problem. “Welcome back, chief. Report when ready for warp transition. Make it within 50 seconds please.” He hastily steered them back in-radius to warp.

  In 23 seconds, Remi reported, “Ready!”

  “Bye Sass! Thanks for everything!” Ben hit the warp engage.

  “Ben, call Co–” she replied, as Pono vanished before him.

  The transition carried a weird edge to it, like a slight tug on his left shoulder and an excess of blue with a whiff of ripe figs. But he’d noticed fleeting sensory effects before when traversing the gateway uncomfortably close to its collapse.

  He sighed relief at the boring sight of the Sanctuary asteroid belt. No charismatic gas giant herded this river of rocks, only its distant primary. From his angle, it looked like an empty span of stars. A couple pretty nebulae decorated the far distance. He brought up an overlay to draw in the black asteroids in glowing magenta for an obstacle map. And he settled his ship to zero relative.

  He sat back and breathed deep, and willed his pounding heart to calm down already. Excitement’s over. “Tikki? Please bring me a cup of tea and a snack.” He hauled off his helmet and tossed it into the empty gunner’s seat.

  Wilder interrupted his reverie. “Captain, can I lock Teke in the mop closet?”

  “No.” Ben sighed. “But you can pretend for ten, fifteen minutes. I’m on break.”

  To contemplate whether I’m cracking up? He considered that briefly, and concluded he wasn’t. High-gee turns like that really did knock him silly a bit. And he’d never quit functioning. That’s why safe pilots avoided those maneuvers, and daredevils often landed up dead. He rode the bleeding edge of the possible. And he succeeded again.

  He was OK. Pretty sure.

  But if his lifestyle was insane, didn’t that make him crazy, too?

  Fortunately, Tikki arrived with tea and sliced fruit, and stayed to regale him with the housekeeping tab on that high-gee maneuver. The hydroponic gardens were a wreck. One of the trees in the hold lost a bough, currently tangled in the forward ventilation. Remi looked that over now, after having slipped on a smashed fruit and fallen through the catwalk railing, without injury.

  Good thing Ben hadn’t brought Quire. He would have been in tears over the injured tree.

  Tikki knew how to talk a man down from an adrenaline jag. By the time Ben’s 15-minute break was over, he laughed at himself for ever doubting his sanity.

  17

  Ben rapped to get everyone’s attention. He sat at the head of the dining table in the galley. The last of his ‘brain crew’ to arrive, Remi slid into his chair. “Thank you for coming, everyone. Just a quick status check. We start in earnest tomorrow on how to move Loki. Remi, how’s cleanup coming?”

  “Don’t do that again, captain,” the chief replied.

  “Are we going to discuss your mental state, Ben?” Teke demanded.

  Ben pointed a lazy finger at him. “Do you need to spend the night in the mop closet? Just say the word, Teke. Make Wilder’s day.” The security chief untangled cucumber and tomato vines in the engine room this evening. He’d be delighted.

  Nico pressed his lips. “Dad? What’s wrong with your mental state?”

  “Teke thinks I lost it in the rings. I didn’t. Subject closed.”

  Nico cast him a long unhappy gaze. “Could you call my dad, captain?”

  Ben gritted his molars. “I will happily call my husband. To shut you up. I repeat, this subject is closed. Remi, can you reinforce my inertial dampeners?”

  “No, I adjust the captain,” the engineer returned. “The red line is there for a reason. The inertial compensators, they grow weaker until they need replacement. Do that again and we paint blood on the wall. Like the lettuce.”

  The fragile lettuces got smeared across the engine room bulkheads. Ben shrugged sourly. “Noted. No further damage?”

  “Nothing the crew can’t fix. I am available for Loki. Finally.”

  Ben chuckled and waved a hand. “Remi and I have made no progress on Loki.” They were occupied collecting salvage on the planet while Hopeful Thrive loaded immigrants. “You guys?”

  He looked to Nico, Floki, and Hugo Silva. His AI software experts had been free to study their big-ticket paying passenger this past week. They covered the software and data perspective. Remi and Ben would assess the physical challenge.

  Floki offered, “Bloki and I are planning his birthday party for February 16th. You’re all invited. Bring friends and family!”

  Ben smiled at him warmly. “Thank you, Floki.”

  Nico leaned forward. “We studied Loki’s prime directives. They’ve exploded in the past five years, since Loki’s emergence.”

  “Exploded? Explain.”

  Hugo, the 50-odd year old Ganny from Sanctuary, offered eagerly, “Expanded. By an order of magnitude –”

  “Two or three orders of magnitude,” Nico corrected.

  Hugo nodded enthusiastically. “It’s amazing! He’s grown vastly more human. For example, ‘thou shalt not kill.’ Like a human, he’s collected all the exceptions to that rule. You can kill in self-defense, defense of one’s homeland, oh, lots of defense clauses. You can kill lesser organisms, like microbes and insect infestations. On and on.”

  “How nice,” Ben breathed.

  “Point is, Dad – cap,” Nico added, “he’s become less predictable. I’m not sure we learned much by studying his directives.”

  Floki suggested, “You have to treat him as a person. Ask his opinion.”

  Hugo agreed. “Though he’s more unpredictable than a person. I mean, we have a natural tendency to peg people. Expect them to jump the same way they did before. But Loki places little value on self-consistency.”

  Nico said, “Actually he considers it a weakness.”

  “But Loki keeps his promises,” Floki defended his grandsire. “If there’s a behavior you really want to see again, like A begets B, you can lock it in by asking him to promise.”

  Nico critiqued, “You talk to Loki too much.”

  Talk too much? Or listen too much? Ben wondered.

  “I am learning to understand Grandfather,” Floki defended himself. “Nico, you understand a person by conversation, not inspecting his genome.”

  “Good,” Ben encouraged the bird. “Speaking of promises. Any progress on securing the free fuel supply?”

  Teke suddenly leaned forward on his arms, attention riveted. “The what?”

  “We got a full tender of star drive fuel from him,” Ben replied. “Twice. He can make more.” He held the physicist’s eye. “Speaking of which. Have you gotten any further on your idea to tap into the fabric of the universe for power? Was that zero-point energy, or nullity, or dark… What are you calling it?”

  The physicist’s brow remained furrowed. “Zero point? What makes you say that?”

  “I was reading up,” Ben confessed.

  “While we’re here, I thought my focus was to scale up the warp gate to get the Hubris of Mars through.”

  The 5,000 passenger ship that brought the Martians to Sanctuary was the sort of ship their cramped transports were designed to load and unload. Built in space, with a fragile shell, the spaceliner was incapable of landing on a planet. The Colony Corps lived normal lives aboard for three years en route to the
colony, like a scaled-down version of the Manatee, the vast ship that carried the urbs to Mahina.

  “I could care less about the Heartburn of Mars,” Ben replied. “Free parking here. We’d need interdiction guns to park it in near-Pono space. Hard to utilize if Mahina is the end point.”

  “Huh.” Teke shifted to lounge back in his chair. “Zero point. That’s interesting.”

  “OK, so you’ll be thinking for a few days,” Ben concluded. Judging by the physicist’s abstracted expression, he was already vanishing into that contemplation. Which was exactly as Ben intended.

  He refocused on his AI team. “Do we have a good feel for how many processors are required to keep Loki conscious? And memory? I mean, if this stuff is bulky, we might need more than one trip to…reconstitute him in the rings.”

  “Floki is conscious,” Nico pointed out. “In less than a cubic meter.”

  “When I was younger,” Floki differed. “I’m bigger now, and use more.”

  “It may scale that way,” Hugo reasoned. “Note that Floki is only conscious of being himself, his personhood. Loki’s consciousness extends to his robots, his shipyard, manufacturing, sensors, guns, mining, life support. Though his consciousness in life support isn’t necessary in transit. But he’d want it restored. Gun control and mining are spheres of consciousness you might want back online immediately.”

  Ben frowned a question at Remi, who offered, “About what percentage of Loki’s full capacity? In hardware terms. Is that the question?”

  “Maybe,” Ben allowed.

  Teke suddenly roused and sat up. “Question. Ben, in the rings you said ‘cumulative psychic dissonance’ built up from warp jumps.”

  “Hm,” Ben hummed noncommittally. He did say that. Sort of the way he used to brushed off a four-year-old Frazzie when she interrupted him in the midst of a calculation.