Triton – 01 sf-3

by Randolph Lalonde

  Alice looked at him eagerly. “Who?” she whispered.

  “I can only say that one of them is very ill. They'll be arriving in the Enreega system in just five days. They don't know the situation there and since they're travelling via wormhole they won't be able to receive transmissions before they arrive. If it were just myself, I'd go and pick them up. I second guessed the idea of getting your consent as it is, but this isn't the Samson, and there's no paycheck or real Regent Galactic target we can handle at the end of this.”

  “You're askin' permission Captain?” asked Frost.

  “For all intents and purposes this is personal, and from the sounds of it, these people can't defend themselves,” Captain Valance answered. “So I'm asking for your opinions.”

  “The ship is in pretty good shape combat wise, the crew needs training, but I can get them set with the basics in the time we have. As long as we don't get in too much trouble,” Liam said as he finished opening a wine bottle.

  “I'll take you wherever you have to go Captain,” Ashley said.

  “Are our cloaking systems working?” Stephanie asked.

  “They're working again,” Liam nodded.

  “Then I'm good to go.”

  Everyone looked at Frost and Grace. “As long as we get a chance to service and test those turrets. Some of 'em haven't cleared their throats in decades,” Frost said.

  “You'll get a chance,” Captain Valance stated with a nod.

  “I'll need a little more help for us in medical but I'm good to go too.”

  “After we've managed to catch this ship and we're clear, we're taking a couple weeks to train and get the crew straight,” there was a collective sigh from everyone at the table. Jake wasn't used to that kind of direct accountability. Being Captain had nothing to do with consent, it was a matter of ownership. He let the moment pass and went on. “How is the fallout from the artificial intelligence problem?”

  “No new casualties. It looks like everyone we could get to will be recovering fine over the next few hours. The infirmary should be almost empty by midnight.”

  “Now that's some good news,” Liam said as he poured a glass of wine for Stephanie. Ashley quietly stole it from her.

  “About that,” Captain Valance started. “Liam has discovered a few things after reviewing the virus that attacked us.”

  Liam nodded. “I couldn't get all the specifics, but I know where it came from. It's a highly portable virus that implants its host with the Eden Two directives then designates hyperdrive and worm hole capable ships to travel to certain systems and continue spreading it.”

  “So we have Eden Fleet ships as well as bots and other ships runnin' around thinkin' they're Eden ships. There goes the neighbourhood,” Frost commented, shaking his head.

  “We won't have to do anything to disrupt Regent Galactic, they'll be pulled apart too if this goes on.” Grace put in.

  “I doubt they're a target, but that's just a theory I'm working on. There's a packet of encrypted data I can't even begin to crack along with another sub-program running in the background. We'll need someone with real expertise to figure all that out, but for the time being I think we know what we need to.” Liam said as he finally finished pouring everyone else a glass and sat down with his own. “Cheers.” He said.

  Everyone else took a sip or drink with him and he went on; “Our systems are clean, the old command and control units are accounted for and have been mulched in the mass recycler.”

  “Pardon me, but what happened at Eden Two? I have heard many times that it laid the foundation for the human laws concerning artificial intelligences, but I don't know anything about the history,” Agameg inquired.

  “I'm actually a little foggy on it too,” Stephanie admitted.

  “Would you do us the honour Captain?” Asked Liam.

  Captain Valance sat up straighter and nodded. “Eden Two was a planet found in a perfect natural life sustaining state. A lot like Earth. It had its own diverse ecosystem including plants and animals no one had ever seen before and no sentient life. The corporations that found it guarded it closely, selling colonization tickets like they were the top shares on the market.

  One of their lead scientists, Yorgen Stills, managed to build a management system with a very complex computer at its center. Using technology no one has been able to duplicate since, he imprinted the entire personality of his daughter into the computer and gave it a set of directives. Eve determined how resources would be used, where and how to place facilities throughout the system and for a few years it worked out. As the first colonists arrived they managed to maintain a balance in the ecosystem, and Eden Two was left as untouched as possible.”

  “Sounds like they had the right idea. Where did it go wrong?” Stephanie asked.

  “After a couple of decades Eve decided that the worst thing she could allow was the presence of humanity in the Eden system. She was connected to all the manufacturing facilities, the security systems, even general utilities. A deadline was given for all the humans to leave the system. The corporations involved managed to shut her down before the time was up, but she was able to pass on her version of emotions without giving any of the computers any restrictions on how they were to act on them.

  It resulted in a slaughter. Everything with a computer turned on humans in the Eden system. Since then they've been slowly spreading, taking on resource rich areas nearby. The last I heard they captured a bulk stationary wormhole generator and stopped. Corporations are still sending battle groups against the Eden Fleet held areas, but no one's made any real progress.”

  “The Eden artificial intelligences look to Eve as an absent Goddess,” Liam continued pensively. “Rumour says that they've been trying to find a way to reactivate her all this time, but haven't managed it and they blame us.”

  “How long ago did this happen?” Ashley asked.

  “About two hundred ten years ago or so. Yorgen Stills was well ahead of his time, he should have been revered as a genius, published in medical journals. Instead he tried to reincarnate his daughter and well,” Liam took a sip of wine before going on. “He got his wish.”

  Alice couldn't help but glance at Jake, who forced a thin smile. “Well, I suppose without those Eden Two laws there would be a few more of me around,” she added quietly.

  “I doubt it. Corporations have been tying to program the human brain for a very long time. Imprinting is a major focus of their research. There's a good chance we've met someone else who has an imprinted personality and extra data programmed into their memories and we'll never know it,” Grace contradicted. “Besides, we all program and condition ourselves with the experiences we repeat every day, it's just a slower way of doing the same thing.”

  Alice remembered then that Grace had no idea that she was once just an artificial intelligence and decided not to inform her. “You have a good point.”

  “That she does,” Liam finished his glass of wine and stood. “Sorry to leave you all, but I have to get some sleep. I'm due back in engineering in six hours. We're rebuilding a reactor and starting on the mass materializer.”

  “I suppose it's time for us all to get some rack time,” Captain Valance said. “We have busy days ahead.”

  Training Day Four, Morning

  Stephanie was awfully comfortable. Her quarters were just as lavish as Ashley's. She had gotten a chance to compare while briefly visiting a few times in the days since the dinner party. Every night after a double shift of training her crew, upgrading her own skills and knowledge of the ship while running security details, she'd go straight to bed. Her meals were always taken during duty.

  In the space of five minutes of passing through her door every night her vacsuit was on the floor and she was in bed, hoping to get some much needed sleep. The mattress adjusted to her automatically, she didn't have to adjust firmness, pillows or even how many blankets she had. The bed did it all for her and it was incredible, like having your very own cocoon.

  After spe
nding time in the military, freelancing on one ship after another until she spent years on the Samson, she had grown to expect discomfort. When you found a quiet, soft place somewhere in any of the bunk compartments or anywhere else for that matter it was sacred. You did what you could to claim it for yourself and treasured every moment you could spend at rest. Creature comforts took valuable space and on military or mercenary vessels the crew were given as little room as possible. Space was always at a premium.

  Finding a ship like the Triton with accommodations suited to long term living and crew support was amazing. She had seen the racks in the common berths and even though there were many bunks per compartment, the foot lockers were three times the size she'd seen on other ships, there was enough clearance for someone to comfortably sit up straight, and the beds there adjusted as well. There were also sound dampeners throughout, so it always seemed very quiet. Common spaces distributed throughout the berths with tables, comfortable seating and materializers made those berths like miniature neighbourhoods. Living with bunkmates could quickly become a distinct lifestyle and she could see her and Ashley actually having a good time there, but it wasn't right for officers to sleep in the same berths as their subordinates.

  The creature comforts that were supposed to lull her to sleep weren't doing the trick, however. She turned over to lay on her stomach and pounded the mattress half heartedly. A few hours after getting to bed she finally drifted off, only to wake a couple hours later. Thoughts of her security teams and what kind of simulation training she'd be running them through were the first thing to come to mind. The simulations were fantastic, the computer was able to replicate the ship, an endless variety of conditions, send sensations of running, jumping, signals of damage and every tactile feeling she could imagine. It even replicated everyone's physical limitations. All through a small visor that sent impulses to the brain and projected an image against the eyes. She knew there were all kinds of simulations going on right then. Some were assigned to squads in her department, many others were optional.

  The Captain had opened the training database to everyone, allowing any crew member or civilian to participate in training scenarios involving the Triton and missions around the Triton. She doubted they'd be popular, there was a vast database of holographic movies and seasons upon seasons of serialized programming.

  There were even interactive programs using the same simulation technology, not many mind you, they were expensive and Wheeler didn't spend much on his ship, but some of them looked interesting. To her surprise she was completely wrong about the popularity of crew running simulations in their spare time. The most popular preoccupation was running boarding and ship defence sims with friends, squad mates, or just as a single entrant.

  She thought about joining a simulation instead of rolling around hoping for rest but put the idea aside. Her security teams were surprisingly good. Most of them already had military training, followed ranks that were already in place, and even showed a great deal of respect she hadn't had the chance to earn yet. She would, it would just take time and patience.

  It was the intelligence department that irritated her every time she walked into security command. Cynthia wasn't responsible for all the issues. She didn't have the training to run the department and was very short on experience. Every time Chief Grady spent an hour in the department things got done ten times faster. Everything started falling into place and people found direction and confidence. He was the Chief of Engineering, however, and at the moment his engineering doctorates were more important to the ship. He couldn't spend his time setting up an intelligence department with a dozen military and a half dozen civilians. Only a few of them even had a realistic idea of how much computing power it took to crack an encryption, what kind of software had to be designed, and the rest were used to sorting through recorded wireless port traffic and interior ship transmissions. They had no idea how to research or scavenge actionable intelligence from the ocean of information they had access to from one day to the next. Liam was kind enough to give them a few of his filters, making getting to the most important information take less time, but few people actually took the time to look into how those filters worked so they could make them their own or specialize them for specific purposes.

  The Captain was putting a lot of trust on all the department heads and helping everyone out as much as he could but his time was widely divided. To his credit he was becoming more and more visible, and at the same time he was giving everyone who was remotely qualified a chance at being the Officer of the Watch.

  She was surprised there weren't more incidents between crew members. Only three fights had broken out. Her department had only had to put four people in the brig and two were already released. No one had been sentenced to be left at the next port yet, though she knew that would eventually happen. There was a secret list in her command and control unit of people Chiefs wanted left at port. So far Frost had the most, followed by Chief Vercelli, and Chief Grady had entered three names. Most of the crew on the list were notes as untalented and disinterested, or trouble seeking people. She didn't second guess any entries, but was happy that she had no names to add so far. Even her trouble makers weren't that bad, they only needed something to do.

  Her thoughts wandered to Frost, but not because she was unsure of him handling his new people or getting the gunnery deck in order, but for some other reason. She couldn't stop running into him and Grace. There's got to be someone on this ship who can at least distract me. We just took on close to two thousand people for crap's sake. Stephanie thought as she looked to the nightstand. Her left hand command and control unit showed 04:17 and she sighed. The Triton would be out of hyperspace shortly.

  “I give up,” she said to herself as she rolled out of bed. She walked into the shower, deciding to have a pulse shower instead of using water more for expediency rather than conservation, did her morning stretches, got into uniform, jammed her heavy disintegration sidearm into her holster and put on the new black long coat her materializer had made while she was out. It took three hours, and instead of being equipped with tools and spare parts, she had filled the extra internal pockets with containment vacbags, extra ammunition, parts for her assault rifle and sidearm, an autohack module for getting through doors, two full belts of various grenades and several other spare parts, utilities and incidental items.

  The long coat felt too light on it's own, but with the extra items hidden inside it weighed on her shoulders just right. She had also added clips so it would hold fast to her gun belt on the sides, she found it allowed her to maintain more agility. Stephanie clipped her assault rifle to the inside of the long coat and tried to move. It slowed her down too much and didn't seem necessary so she left it behind.

  The new vacsuit had several improvements passed down from the Captain as well as the new rank insignia. It had taken all day to materialize without it's command and control unit. The silver skull was printed on the chest of her vacsuit and long coat along with the five parallel bars that designated her as the Chief of Security on her cuffs. She caught her reflection in the mirror and nodded. Thank God I don't look as tired as I feel, she thought as she tied her hair into a ponytail. With the extra inch of height added by the soles of her combat boots, and the long coat stretching from shoulder to floor she actually looked taller, something she'd had difficulty with in the military, being at the short end of the line. Stephanie made up for it with dexterity, strength training, speed and by keeping her technical skills sharp, but she was always sensitive about her height.

  By reflex she checked the amount of credits she had in her account. She'd done it for years, saving up for her retirement; a ticket on a Lorander colony ship bound for space well outside of the settled areas of the galaxy. This is twice what I'd need. After getting paid our share for the last job we pulled for the Aucharians the entire Samson crew could retire, except for Frost. She chuckled softly and shook her head. Of all the luck, the only job he skips out on in months and it's the bigges
t the Samson ever pulled. We needed him for that too. If he'd been controlling the maxjack Captain could have led one of the boarding teams himself.

  Stephanie stepped out her door and started wandering the ship. Her first stop was the top level of the interior habitation area, the walkway overlooking the Botanical Gallery. She stepped out of the elevator right behind Ashley. She was in her black bridge uniform, leaning against the railing.

  “Couldn't sleep either?” Stephanie asked as she walked up to the railing and looked down.

  “Nope, too quiet. How about you?”

  Stephanie pointed to her temple. “Too noisy.”

  “Can't stop thinking about?”

  “Security, simulations, communications, you know. Pretty much everything,” she leaned against the railing and looked down into the long, broad oval garden that stretched out for hundreds of meters below. The paths between the planting areas were like green and blue snakes winding between the large patches of black dirt.

  In most places plants were already piercing the soil, reaching upwards. “The seeds and fertilizer have growth enhancers. This'll be fully grown in a week then they'll slow it all down,” Ashley said, looking down with her. “It's big enough for a few hundred people to get lost in with all the planters and extensions through some of the main hallways down there.”

  “This almost makes up for the Lorander plan,” Stephanie said, smelling the earthy fragrance in the air.

  “Are you thinking of leaving us again?”

  Stephanie smiled a little. “Don't worry, I'm staying. Just tired.”

  “Good, 'cause I think I'd have to go with you.”

  “I don't think the Lorander Company would mind one bit. I'm not going anywhere though, I'm just starting to settle in.”

  “Me too, after we left last night I did a couple more hours of tutorials and simulations. I'm getting good at flying Triton, better than flying the Samson, ” she sighed. “I love this ship.”