Casindra Lost

by Marti Ward

  Automated Medbay Systems couldn’t do anything more for him now, beyond allowing the healing to continue, and was recommending allowing Sideris to emerge gradually from cryocoma and hopefully return to a normal sleep/consciousness cycle, with an electrostimulation treatment being proposed to restore and maintain muscle tone.

  Al made a note about the Captain’s status in his log, and added a further note. Still no message drone or ship has appeared from Sol; still no contact with EmProbes EMP-G or EMP-NE.

  But then… a radio signal… an M-probe slowing down into PTL4 orbit is sending a message…

  But it is just a repeat of the last message. The last 48 hours of logs was corrupted. No further messages have been received. Please resend all logs and reports since the beginning of May. But there was no Gate probe and no mirror – there was no reasonable way send a reply. It would need the combination of an M-drone VS-mirror and the Casindra’s SECASM to open a cavum and send a reply – and it would take 144 days to get through the wormhole while in the process risking Casindra by basically firing a missile at it: their only remaining message drone.

  Al

  15 January 2078 09:00

  Another message drone had arrived from Earth, so that he had two in orbit around PTL4 now – he was still exploring whether it was possible to arrange for these dumb drones to use their Ford-Svaiter mirrors together to open and target a cavum. But operating from this distance, he could not guarantee the required precision – and even if he did manage to get it precisely right, the wormhole transit time would be 576 days and they had 440 days until the asteroids reached New Eden.

  Al decided to wait, in the hope that next time Solar Command would send a LETO, or at least an EmProbe with a spare mirror. With either of those, he’d be able to assure precise entry and a shorter transit time – as well as achieve a better outcome with the rogue asteroid cluster.

  Both EMP-A and EMP-T were decelerating into PTL3 orbit, well away from any asteroids, but close enough to be able to forwarded much more detailed data on the cluster. Al had verified the location of the target asteroid, designated Pacman, and noted that the asteroid group as a whole had drifted back fractionally in orbit towards PTL4 – as predicted on the basis that it was in a Hildian horseshoe orbit around Tenebra’s Lagrangian system, PTL345.

  He carefully updated their programming based on the latest data and calculations, and sent off the orders to implement Simba’s plan. The EmProbes would use their full thrust, a little over 0.2G, to push the two rogue asteroids slightly away from Pacman and slightly towards Paradisi: not continuously, but with a pulse each orbit around Pacman and the nearby barycenter, each time they came close to a tipping point.

  According to his calculations, their EMP’s contributions would mean that when Casindra came to push Pacman towards Paradisi, it should now drag the full set of major asteroids with it, missing New Eden, missing Ardesco, and unfortunately, missing Paradisi - with most moving into comet-like elliptics.

  Al logged the day’s developments, including the latest results from the Volcans’ samples and analysis. They had discovered some more species, and a few more pathogens, and he was continuing to develop and test vaccinations, documenting and logging every detail. A large part of the animals’ nourishment now came from the New Eden biomatter the Volans brought back, combined with what Al was able to farm in the agridome.

  The community was thriving… except for the Captain. Al was thinking the Captain and the cats should emigrate to New Eden as it was unlikely that they would survive the asteroid pushing expedition. But at the moment the Captain was in no state to survive on New Eden.

  Sideris

  18 March 2078 03:20

  You don’t dream in cryosleep!

  Sideris was not sure if he was still captain, or still aboard Casindra. He wasn’t sure what was dream and what was memory and what was reality. He felt he was emerging from a dream – but never waking up.

  One moment he was on Athos, scouring the beach for samples, probing the brush, setting traps at the edge of the scrubby saltbush type vegetation. The next he was on Aramis, with Simba, exploring the rain forest with the tall cool trees giving respite from the sun. Then he was on Porthos, hacking his way through the jungle, sweltering in the humidity. He found himself in the jungle on the hunt, quieting his racing heart, slowing his breathing – cool, calm and collected for stealthy minutes of waiting… then a sudden spring, racing through the undergrowth, gathering himself for that last leap – bringing down the possum-like quarry and catching its neck in his jaws.

  Next thing he knew he was back on the bridge, working with Al to solve the asteroid problem, Simba paying attention and very aware of what was going on, very aware of the menace posed by the gray shadows on the screens, trying to push them away. He remembered the breakthrough idea to push the heaviest asteroid, Pacman, faster towards New Eden and the Paradisi sun. He remembered the second breakthrough, the idea of having EmProbes push two rogue asteroids closer to Pacman so they followed it past New Eden, past Ardesco, past Paradisi.

  But between the dreams, he was sometimes aware of Simba or Samba snuggling into him on a medbed. At other times, he was aware of muscle stimulation – he must have been laid up for a while, and they were ensuring he’d be able to walk and move properly when he was released.

  Al

  18 March 2078 06:00

  It was the start of the Captain’s shift – but there were no officers on the bridge other than Simba who turned up like clockwork. As per standard procedure, Al reviewed the previous shift’s logs verbally with the new shift at 06:00. Simba didn’t usually have much to say, and Samba even less on his rare visits. But Simba tended to listen attentively and nodded approvingly from time to time.

  Reports were prioritized, and the report from medbay on the Captain was first. The Captain was in a state where all apparent tissue damage from the incident had been repaired, and muscle tone had been recovered sufficiently for light duties to be undertaken if and when he regained consciousness and demonstrated that he had retained his faculties. The broken bones and external and internal bruising were Al’s fault, getting his quadlift to manhandle him into the bridge so that they could seal the sliders and flood the walls for the surprise extra wave of neutron radiation that caught them as their NEAL2 Lagrangian slipped out of its hiding place behind the moon in its regular orbit around New Eden. The radiation had caused some cell damage, including neural damage – particularly in the hippocampus. This had been difficult to repair, and some loss of recent memory was to be expected – technically a failure to consolidate and reconcile recent events into long term memory.

  Al determined to institute a regime of playing the captain recent video logs before releasing him from medbay – he just hoped he would cooperate. Currently the medbed was keeping him at the edge of consciousness and audio logs would thus be attended to. One of the protocols available was to bring the patient to partial consciousness for short periods for assessment, and then drop them back into sleep. During these periods Al proposed to play the full video of key logs and provide additional commentary and updates. As higher levels of consciousness and engagement were reached, Al hoped they could have some sensible conversations about his reactions and intentions – and get acknowledgement from him that he was still compromised and needed to demonstrate full fitness before medbay would release him. He must remember to emphasize that it wasn’t his decision and he wasn’t going to override the medical systems.

  The next report was about the asteroids. The effects of the EMP-A and EMP-T interventions were running exactly as predicted – slightly better in fact due to improving on the fuel margins allowed for them to reach PTL3 and position themselves against the asteroids. Also Al had managed to override the mandated minimum 20% fuel margin by asserting it as an emergency operation. Only the planned 2% fuel would remain to decouple from the asteroid and facilitate rendezvous with Casindra – or perhaps use in a last-ditch attempt if their attempted shift of Pacman wa
s inadequate. Simba showed her approval of the processes with a purr and a contemptuous bat at the asteroid trajectories.

  Then came the Volcans, the analyses of their new samples, and results of experiments to improve their understanding of their nutritional values, and their understanding of the toxins and pathogens that turned up. Most of the Volcans had returned yesterday without finding anything new, but had nonetheless returned ongoing data that filled out and refined the geographical, geological, climatic and ecological models of the planet. No obvious effect of the ion storm had been detected.

  Some of the Volcans had originally been deployed on Petra, and had now surpassed their one-year active service life – and the remainder would within a few days. So Al initiated a plan to withdraw the Petra Volcans from service for a week and perform full diagnostics on them, while 3D-printing replacements for the critical parts. The nanosilc nanobots were of course fabricated and replenished on an ongoing basis – and cleverly, the older parts that were encountering occasional CRC errors were used as the ablative skin during the fast trips to the surface and back. They’d lasted much better than the ones they deployed on Ardesco, despite the much higher frequency one-week turnaround timetable Al had been using since the shockwave.

  Finally, all the systems reports were approved – the engineering systems had long since managed to complete repair or replace the sensors and systems damaged by radiation. The Cavitran reactors and EmDrives were used only once a week for testing, battery recharge and orbit correction – the chemical fuel reserves were hard to replace and were being hoarded carefully, with solar panels suppling their needs apart from a slight overrun at present due to the medbay systems being used to repair the Captain.

  Chapter Sixteen

  New Eden revival

  Sideris

  1 April 2078 05:40

  Captain Jerome Sideris was awake and had had enough of bed. There had been no alarm here in medbay – although he could program one. But it seemed the medbed was controlling his sleep cycle anyway – he’d finally got to the point where he could expect to be awake for a full 12-hour shift. But something else had woken him… the cat, Simba had been sleeping with him but had now gone to attend to her own business.

  According to Al and the Automated Medical System, he should have another two weeks of controlled sleep, passive physical therapy and situated awareness memory support protocols. But at least he could tune into the bridge and see what was happening there. For the last two weeks, he’d been a passive patient as Al had filled him in on what was happening in his few hours of wakefulness each day, and then as those hours grew longer he had been able to watch videos of key events, both before and after the radiation incident. But he hadn’t been able to sit up or speak clearly – he’d just mumbled acknowledgements that Al had seemed to understand. But today he felt like himself, as if he could leave this bed and resume his life, that he could now express himself as usual.

  “Al, please give me a panoramic view of the bridge with full audio,” he managed.

  “Good morning, Captain,” Al responded. “Full AV coverage of the bridge has been provided.” The small medbay screen showed the eight sides of the bridge just in time to see Simba and Samba enter.

  Sideris watched and listened as Al went through the status reports, intrigued by the way Simba seemed to take them all in, and make appropriate responses. Her response to the asteroid correction mission was intriguing. The scene was reminiscent of dream-like memories that couldn’t possibly be memories, since he hadn’t been there. He got Al to show him the video of the way he had originally sought support from Simba and started to treat her as an officer, as he made his decisions about this mission. But he still had questions.

  And as for Solar Command… This would really set the cat among the pigeons!

  It was time to take charge. He pulled himself up to a sitting position – and the medbed automatically adjusted to provide support. He had just brought up the log relating to the discovery of the shockwave, when breakfast arrived in the form of a medbay robot carrying a bed tray with a protein drink, cereal, strawberries, and – peeking under the lid – a mushroom omelet. How did Al manage that? And could he manage to eat it all?

  He tried a strawberry then started on the cereal, while continuing with logs relating to the shockwave and the asteroids. The asteroids that Solar Command apparently still didn’t know about. Having sent three unreturned drones, Solar Command must be assuming that there was either a mirror problem or some other cavum problem – anything else would have allowed a drone to arrive, ping Casindra and all of its probes, and return with an update on what was going on in the system, if there was even one M-probe it could reach, without necessarily any explicit uploading and resending by Casindra. Their next step had to be to up the ante – at a minimum they should send an EmProbe with a level 2 or 3 AI on board, and an extra SV mirror to replace or repair the gate.

  The asteroid encounter with New Eden was predicted for 30 March 2079 – at least that was the date of the tipping point where they had to push the cluster off balance enough so that it wouldn’t shed asteroids into New Eden. It would already have been tugged down for months by Ardesco, but any asteroids pulled toward Ardesco would pass behind it – as it wouldn’t be there any more by the time they arrived. But on this occasion, New Eden would add her own pull, and was following at just the right interval to get clipped. So today was significant – in one year from today, the asteroids that had been pulled free of the cluster would be set on their course, with the fate of New Eden determined by the success or otherwise of their attempt to push Pacman out of its horseshoe orbit around Tenebra and its Lagrangians, hopefully into a long cometary orbit around Paradisi.

  He had finished his fruit and cereal, and just started on his omelet, and the new discoveries of the Volcans, when Simba arrived. She jumped up on the medbed, nuzzling under his arm until he put down his knife and fork and gave her his full attention. He’d never seen her so excited. But eventually she settled down for her siesta, and he continued with Al’s notes.

  Those records were massive. Al had more than recovered most of the New Eden samples lost on EMP-NE – the exception being of course those that Simba had caught.

  Maybe tomorrow he’d find the story on their fresh food and the unusual flavors he’d detected in the drink and the cereal – and perhaps even the omelet. And once he’d finished reading all the logs and reports, he would get up and out of here whatever Al and AMS said.

  Sideris

  7 April 2078 09:40

  Captain Sideris was getting even more restless. He’d finished going through the logs yesterday, including going over the audiovisual vlogs of his last 24 hours before the shockwave slipped past Acerba and sent him into a coma. Parts of it were coming back as direct memories – surprisingly he seemed to have more memory of his interactions with the cats than his interactions with Al, or his work on the asteroid problem.

  There was nothing much happening on the bridge and Simba had visited briefly before heading off to join her family for their mid-morning snack and nap. The medbay systems had just completed another hour of extensive neurocognitive testing, but were not responding to his orders to show him the results, or comparisons with his reference results. This could contaminate the tests and confound the results, and could only be authorized by the captain or the chief medical officer – and apparently he wasn’t either at the moment.

  The electrostimulation was annoying now that he was in a normal day/night sleep cycle, and he couldn’t see why he shouldn’t start getting some real exercise. He’d had all the tubes removed a couple of days ago, and now managed to stagger around medbay and make use of the toilet and shower facilities. Rather than returning to bed, he took a seat at the nurses’ station, and continued a rundown of ship’s systems. The summary reports from the automated subsystems were fine as a rule, but he wanted to check every system himself. And if they didn’t want him leaving medbay, here was as good a place as any to do this. In a
ny case, Al had life-support turned off on the engineering deck.

  The bridge was still empty on the medbay screen that he’d taken over to monitor it, but then Al’s voice emerged from the ether. “Captain, an EmProbe has arrived from Sol, and is decelerating towards SJL4. It is requesting acknowledgement from all ships in system, as well as upload of all logs since May 2077. All logs and reports since 1 May 2077 have been forwarded and the urgent asteroid alert has been highlighted. The message drones have also been fully updated. Should I request dispatching a message drone back immediately?”

  “Yes, Al, please request information on the specifications of any Ford-Svaiter mirrors it is carrying and ask it to arrange to open a wormhole and send back MD16 as soon as possible – using all mirrors it has available to facilitate a fast and stable cavum.” Sideris responded, making another decision at the same time. “I think it is time I rejoined you on the bridge.”

  Al

  7 April 2078 09:55

  Al had already been communicating with the new EMP arriving into PTL5, in parallel with his conversation with the Captain. It was good to see the Captain taking responsibility again – even if he was leaving medbay a week before the AMS said he could be discharged. If Sideris was able to get out of medbay without the AMS overriding him, then Al was prepared to take that as a formal discharge and reinstatement as Captain.

  He wouldn’t discourage the Captain by telling him he’d already preempted the orders, or that the conversation had really been a test. On the other hand, he would make a reference to the self-discharge – the Captain always seemed to operate best when he was in an argumentative frame of mind, associating every possible fact that might support his position. The trick was to get him to look at the other side of the argument just as comprehensively. Al had researched a number of psychological models of argument and persuasion, and had experimented with reflective and motivational approaches. But for the Captain the informal approach known as ‘reverse psychology’ seemed to work best.