Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1

by Lj Cohen

  "Oh, clever, clever boy," Ro said, smiling. "You have been busy."

  Relief flooded through Jem. He sagged against the console, feeling the soreness in his neck and back for the first time since he sneaked in here. "I was just about to graft it on. If it works in the sandbox, then maybe we can try it for real."

  Ro leaned forward, her eyes bright. "Nice!"

  Jem stepped away from the display. "Do you want to do the honors?"

  She raised her arms and zoomed through the code so quickly, Jem's vision blurred. He sighed and backed further away. Her project, her choice. At least he had the chance to work on it with her, even for this small piece.

  The display flickered briefly. "Oh, no, this is your baby," she said, tucking her hands behind her back. "All yours."

  "You sure?" His voice squeaked and Jem cleared his throat.

  She nodded.

  "This is outstanding!"

  "Yes, yes it is," Ro said, staring at him hard. Jem shook out his hands. He could do this. He had to do this. It was just a trial run. It didn't have to be perfect.

  "Okay," he said. "Here goes." First he had to prepare the AI program for the graft. Moving his hands carefully, he created a rough edge in the code representation. Then he did the same to his shunt. Theoretically, when he drew them together, the two programs should meld to each other and create a seamless whole. If it worked, then they should be able to use the holographic interface to pass commands to the AI. It would be much faster and more efficient than the original and very primitive voice command structure or console input as long as you were skilled in using it.

  "What are you waiting for?" Ro asked, nudging him in the ribs.

  Jem put his arms down for a minute and rolled his shoulders before sending the final command to execute.

  The display winked out as the new program compiled. The seconds ticked by. Jem waited, barely daring to breathe. Yes, this was only proof of concept, but unless it worked right out of the gate, he doubted Ro would trust him to continue with her.

  Ro's breathing sounded harsh and ragged beside him. She clutched her micro so hard her knuckles had whitened. Jem smiled, glad she was just as nervous and excited as he was.

  Red lights flared all over marred consoles, making the ruined polymers appear to be melting again. Jem sucked in his breath and turned to Ro, his eyes wide. "What the hell?"

  "Oh, you brilliant boy," she said, her voice a husky whisper. "You did it."

  Chapter 13

  Ro gave a very startled Jem a bear hug and twirled him around in a circle before springing away and pairing her micro to the brilliant interface graft he'd just enabled.

  "Ro, what did you do?" Jem said, a quaver in his voice.

  She couldn't look away from her display. In one virtual window, she had the original program specs with her mods running. In another, one of her system tools coaxed the crippled AI to spool out its damaged code. "I knew it would work, so I yanked you out of the sandbox."

  "Jesus, Ro, you could've told me!" Jem's voice cracked.

  "Your code scanned five by five." It was a race between her and her father now and she needed Jem's interface if this was going to work.

  "But I didn't get a chance to work out the bugs. What if —"

  "Time to put on your big boy pants," Ro interrupted. You could 'what if' until the singularity. It was what she'd been doing, until now. "I aim to get this AI working. Help me or leave. What will it be?"

  He didn't move and Ro smiled. "Good. Now watch and learn, my young assistant," she said, sounding a hell of a lot more confident than she felt.

  The strobing red lights cast distorted shadows across the bridge. Ro kept her gaze locked on her displays to keep from getting queasy. With Jem's code grafted on, she readied her modded program for full forced upload. The AI had too much damage to patch which was probably why her father gave up after getting the autonomic systems running. If this worked, it would have to build its personality subroutines from factory specs. It would take time, but it was better than the brain-dead mind that barely functioned.

  "Ready?" She turned toward Jem. He stood just behind her, his arms hugged around his ribs, his gaze darting around the bridge before finally settling on her virtual display.

  His interface hack had been brilliant. She wished she'd thought of it, but she didn't have the gene-mod background he did and if his genius was anything, it was his ability to create a code interpreter for a biological metaphor and make it work.

  "No," he answered, softly. "But that's not going to change anything, is it?"

  "No."

  Jem's new holographic interface simplified the work of hand-feeding thousands of lines of code allowing her to build a virtual structure instead, something Ro was very, very good at. As she reviewed her schematics, she once again felt a familiar awe for Douber and May and what they might accomplish now, with something like this. She wondered what the two legendary programmers would make of her.

  She quickly threw open another window and tossed it toward Jem. "Monitor the environmentals, okay? This could get a little messy."

  "Messy?" Jem squeaked. "How?"

  "Just keep us quiet, okay? I don't want Daedalus to get curious."

  "Okay." He didn't sound comfortable, but Ro knew he'd have her back.

  "Here we go," she said, and focused all of herself on the code. Jem would just have to cope without any hand-holding. If he couldn't, then she'd picked the wrong assistant.

  With careful fingers, she pinched her program into a neat cube that lay sparkling in one palm. Her free hand pulled up one of her favorite subroutines. The auto-run sequencer was one of the first tools she'd built and she knew it so well she didn't even need to look at it.

  "Okay, baby, she's all yours," Ro said, sending it spinning in the air towards the window where the ravaged code limped along. She regretted that she'd never get to meet the original AI. There was no hope for it, really, given how the code looked. Once the sequencer worked its magic, she should be able to force her program to override the damage and the AI would be able to create a new personality out of the ashes of the old.

  Come on, Ro, you can do this, she thought, biting her lip. She had to. Her stomach cramped as she waited. Garish light washed through the bridge. "Who programmed these lights, anyway?"

  "Sorry?" Jem said.

  "Can't you do anything about it?" Red was a stupid color for emergencies.

  "I'm on it."

  She glanced up. The scrolling code stuttered to a stop. Ro held her breath, pulse pounding in her ears as the symbols slowly flashed, white lettering glowing in a smoky background. The background winked out, taking the letters with it. All her virtual windows crashed. The red wash of light abruptly cut out, leaving them blinking in near darkness.

  "Fuck," she said, stiffening her arms so she wouldn't inadvertently send any commands.

  A klaxon blared, the sound rising and falling in a painful wail that reverberated through the small space. Anyone even near the ship would hear them. "Jem!" she shouted over the cacophony.

  "I'm on it!"

  "Come on, come on," she urged. "Hurry." She needed to be able to see to send commands to the computer. Even the nauseating red light would be welcome. Her outstretched hands trembled, her prepared code waiting. She didn't dare move blind. And if the auto-run sequencer completely broke down the old program while she was immobilized, her new code wouldn't have anything to grab on to.

  The damned siren made it impossible to concentrate. What the hell was taking Jem so long? Even if she could turn, she wouldn't be able to see him. "Now would be a good time," she said.

  The sound cut out so suddenly, Ro nearly fell back. She risked turning her head. Jem stood hunched over his micro furiously inputting commands in its small display. Dim white lights rose up from the two drones in cone-shaped columns. "How's that?"

  "Better."

  "It wasn't my fault," Jem said in a small voice.

  "Did I say it was?" Ro opened and closed her right ha
nd, working the cramp out. The cube of her waiting program still hovered over her left.

  "You overloaded the interface."

  She gestured and new windows popped open all around her. "Yeah, I figured."

  "You should've let me debug first."

  Probably so, but that ship had jumped the wormhole. She studied the wrecked AI code and her helper utility. There was still time to make this work. Sweat dripped off her forehead and into one eye. Ro wished she had a hand free to push the hair out of her face.

  "When you had me use the virtual window to interface with the emergency lights, everything crashed."

  "I know. I know. Now will you shut up and let me work?" Damn but Jem was touchy. He started to talk, but Ro just kept right on going as if he hadn't said a thing. "Follow internal chatter from Daedalus. Let me know if it starts to ping the ship."

  No sound from behind her. She could feel him sulking even without being able to see his face. Well, at least he was quiet.

  Ro watched the code waver in the display. She had a narrow window. Too early, and the new program would bounce off the defenses of the old. Too late, and it wouldn't be able to anchor itself to the autonomic processes and form a unified AI. Even if she'd calculated everything perfectly, there was a solid chance the AI wouldn't coalesce and the programs would simply fragment, leaving a ship that could run basic environmentals but would never be able to fly.

  No wonder her father hadn't even tried.

  A flash of green caught her eye. Her hand steadied, holding the new code still. Without any conscious thought, she tossed the waiting cube underhand through the bridge towards the holo display. It sank through without a ripple and flattened, forming a large rectangle that bisected itself over and over, forming multiple sheets. Each represented a subroutine and each one folded into a complex three dimensional shape.

  Each shape found a part of the program to fit itself into, seamlessly, before vanishing. She'd modeled the mechanism after the holographic version of old-style Tetris and the folding paper technique of origami. When all her pieces had seated themselves, instead of game over, it would be game just beginning.

  Ro rolled her neck and squeezed her shoulders back. "Jem, you still with me?"

  "Yeah."

  She turned to him and spread her arms out. "Look, I should have told you. I'm sorry."

  He shrugged as if he didn't really care, but Ro knew him well enough to know he was still pretty mad at her. "This is going to take some time." She gestured at the colorful shapes floating down through the broken code. "You should head to bed."

  "I want to see this through."

  Jem's eyes looked as red as a bittergreen user's.

  "Oh, I have the assay results."

  "And?"

  "Micah was telling the truth. Look." She walked over to him and accessed her server space from his micro. The assay spooled out for them both to see. "It wasn't Micah's plants. The problem was with the stuff Barre used."

  Jem stood silently for several minutes as her program continued to propagate through the old AI space. He frowned. "It doesn't matter. He's using again and he got sick. And I don't know what's going to happen to him."

  "Well, isn't that his problem?"

  Jem winced and Ro realized she'd crossed a line. That was something her father would say and it killed her to hear it coming out of her own mouth. He grabbed his micro and stomped out of the bridge before Ro had a chance to apologize.

  "Shit."

  In the display, her program continued to churn away. There was little Ro could do from here and chasing Jem through the station would only call attention to her and the ship. The program had stabilized itself enough to run on its own. It would take the time it took. She uncoupled her micro and left the bridge with one final look at the color and light display inside.

  The rush of accomplishment never came. Instead, Ro clenched her jaw, thinking of her interactions with Nomi and Jem. If only people were as logical as programs, Ro could just debug them and everything would work.

  Chapter 14

  All night long, Micah stared up at the bare ceiling in his quarters. He shifted the lumpy pillow trying to get comfortable, but his mind continued to churn. He kept coming back to Ro and the ship. Could she really do it? Could she really get that thing to fly?

  And why did Micah feel a surge of excitement every time he thought about it? Escape was a flat out impossible dream. He'd made a promise. It didn't matter that he'd made it years ago, before he could possibly have known the shape that promise would twist into.

  Voices, slurred by anger and drinking, rose and fell in waves. Micah didn't want to know who his father was arguing with this time. It never mattered. It never changed the fact that he was trapped.

  "You said you could manage it," his father said, his voice surprisingly clear for a moment. A second voice came through in an indistinct murmur.

  Micah rolled out of bed slowly, gliding over to the door.

  "We have less than two weeks. See to it."

  He stiffened. What was his father planning?

  "Keep your afterburners cool. She'll have it nailed down."

  That was Alain Maldonado's voice. Micah drew his breath in and held it. He stood with his ear pressed against the cold surface of the door. There was no reason in the cosmos for Ro's father to be working with his father.

  "We are already behind schedule. Your payment is contingent on delivery."

  Shit. Micah had almost convinced himself that his father's new job meant a new start. He should have known better.

  "Don't threaten me, Senator. You have as much to lose as I do."

  His father laughed. Maldonado had no idea. The only thing Corwin Rotherwood had left was Micah and he wouldn't even have that for much longer. Either Micah's work would finally destroy the cartel and its hold on their lives, or he walked away when he earned his citizenship. Surely, the promise he'd made to his mother couldn't bind him beyond that.

  Micah wanted to storm out into the common room and confront the two men, but that wouldn't accomplish much. He waited, hoping they would continue talking and that something they said would help him figure out what they were doing.

  "The ship will be ready. Make sure you will be," Maldonado said.

  Silence answered him and seemed to stretch until it filled the entire compartment.

  Waiting until his legs had stiffened and his clenched jaw ached, Micah finally risked opening the door and stepping through to the living quarters. His father lay sprawled across the uncomfortable generic couch that furnished all the station's habitation ring, snoring, an empty bottle and a broken glass on the floor beside him.

  There was a time when Micah would have struggled to drag his father to bed and clean up after him. Not anymore. He retreated to his room to wash and change, letting his father stew in his own alcoholic sweat. At least one of the Rotherwoods knew how to take care of himself.

  He needed to talk to Ro, and this time, she couldn't dismiss him.

  ***

  All shift long, Nomi replayed her interaction with Ro, trying to understand what had unsettled the engineer so badly. Unable to keep her focus tight-beamed, she went through the shift-change checklist on automatic pilot and handed over control of the array to her morning replacement. She yawned and glanced away from his ident, already forgetting the man's name.

  "Anything interesting?" he asked, smiling.

  "Just the usual field full of quiet," Nomi said.

  "Night shift," he said, shaking his head. "Glad you came aboard. You saved me from another stint. How about I buy you dinner some night as a thank you?"

  "Right now, all I want is to sleep." She yawned again, dramatically before turning away. It was rude, but she didn't want to chat with him. She certainly didn't want to flirt with him.

  "See you around, Konomi."

  "Later," she said and left the array, wondering how to find someone who didn't seem to want to be found.

  "Nomi."

  She whirled around,
staring into Ro's face. Nomi felt her cheeks heat up. "I was just thinking about you."

  Ro stared at her, without blinking, her eyes a muddy green and bloodshot. "I'm not very good with people and I owe you an apology. Is there somewhere we can talk?"

  The dark circles beneath her eyes made her skin even paler in contrast and her usually neat braid unraveled into a hopeless tangle. "You look like you've been up all day and all night."

  "I have."

  "Look, it's okay. Why don't you head home and chill and we can meet later."

  Ro shook her head and the rest of her hair slipped free of its tieback. Nomi resisted the urge to smooth it behind Ro's ear.

  "I'm not going back. I'll get Mendez to issue me my own quarters."

  Nomi frowned, wondering what it would be like to dislike her own parents so intensely. "When was the last time you ate anything?"

  "I don't know. Breakfast?" Ro shook her head again. "It doesn't matter. I'm okay. I'll eat after I square things with you. Deal?"

  "Deal," Nomi said. "We can talk in my quarters." Her face flushed again. "I mean, if you're comfortable with that." She forced herself not to look away. It wasn't like she was asking her out on a date. Nomi forced her shoulders to relax. What was wrong with her?

  Ro flashed her a smile so brief it hardly eased the tension in her expression. "Five by five."

  They walked toward the habitation ring through the increasingly crowded morning shift. Nomi nodded to the few people she recognized. Ro scowled and kept her head down.

  "Ro?"

  She looked up, her gaze unfocused.

  "We're here."

  Nomi signaled for the door to open and waved Ro inside the standard single quarters that she'd done as much as she could to make home-like. A row of holos lined the wall of the short entryway. "Lights, morning scene." A pale pink glow softened the harsh metallic surfaces.

  Ro stopped, studying the images of her family as if they were a rare biological specimen.

  "My folks and my little brother, Daisuke."