Void Ship

by Dave Bara

  “And this match is a problem?” said Aybar. Renwick nodded.

  “Without the original sample, I can’t confirm it, but in looking at the test data, I’m almost certain that a large portion of it was deleted,” she said.

  “How?” asked Aybar.

  “When I looked at the files, I saw traces of inconsistencies, like the files had been cut, then spliced back together. It was almost seamless, but there were tiny data fragments out of place. Enough for me to determine the size of the original sample that had been tampered with,” he looked to Amanda but she didn’t react. Renwick continued.

  “As you probably learned in grade school science, there are twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in human DNA. Also twenty-three in Raelen DNA, twenty-three in Gataan DNA, and twenty-three in the Soloth sample that Amanda processed. Now that would seem to fit with our theory of the Preserver culture, that they divided their DNA characteristics to make four similar, yet different ‘child’ races as a means of preserving their legacy, and it should have made for a total of ninety-two base pairs,” he said.

  Aybar shook her head. “I’m still not hearing anything conclusive,” she said.

  “I’m not sure I have anything conclusive,” Renwick said. “But consider this, when I assigned data-size attributes to the fragments, in other words, I gave each one a value equal to a measure of reported data in the report, guess what the result was?”

  “I’m sure I have no idea,” said Aybar.

  “Sixty-nine fragmented data points. In other words, the original sample from Zueros had ninety-two base pairs, the twenty-three Soloth chromosome pairs reported in Amanda’s analysis minus sixty-nine additional fragments. The data had been tampered with,” said Renwick.

  “Curious,” agreed Aybar, “If not altogether convincing.”

  “That’s what your analysis revealed?” said Yan. “Sixty-nine fragments of data that you equivocate to DNA chromosome pairs?” She seemed angry at him.

  “That and the error that destroyed the Gataan frigate,” he said.

  “And what about those data fragments, Amanda?” said Aybar. Amanda shrugged, in what had to be a very calculated human gesture.

  “It could be anything from dust in the digital core to wearing of the equipment on your skiff boat. I was limited to what I had on hand,” she said, then resumed her stoic poise.

  “I’m not putting this up to a vote,” said Yan. “But I want your opinion on this. Everything we do from here on in could have life or death consequences for each of us. Senator Renwick is commander of this mission, but I am captain of this ship. I say what will be done to it and when. The repair has to be made. I assume that Mr. Renwick would be one volunteer, but I’d need another to allow him to take on this insane mission. Do I have another volunteer?”

  Kish and Mischa stayed silent. Reya eyed her husband silently from across the room, but made no commitment. Only Aybar stood and met Renwick eye to eye.

  “I see one fatal flaw in your plan, Senator. It would take too long compared to letting the android do it. We can’t waste that time,” she said, then crossed her arms.

  “I agree,” said Renwick.

  “So I have a proposal for you. One person to make the swap and repair, and one to fly the skiff,” she said.

  “And you’re volunteering?” asked Yan, incredulous.

  “I am,” she said. Yan threw up her hands in frustration.

  “You’re both insane,” she said.

  “Perhaps so, captain,” said Aybar, looking to Renwick. “But I can’t think of anybody I’d rather be in the asylum with right now.”

  With that, Yan shut down her console and stormed from the galley.

  RENWICK AND AYBAR WERE halfway through the skiff pre-flight checklist when Yan called down to him from the bridge.

  “There’s no way I can discourage you from this, is there?” she said over Renwick’s personal com line. He turned away from his flight checks to get a bit of privacy from Aybar. It was clear that the two women, both commanders, tolerated each other, but didn’t really get along. He didn’t want to do anything to exacerbate that situation.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said quietly into the com.

  “What if I threatened to cut you off from sex?” she said. He smirked, appreciating her attempt at humor in a tense situation. She was quite a woman, even if she was three hundred years old and stuck in an android body.

  “That would hurt you more than me and you know it,” he responded. This time she laughed a bit on the other end of the line. Then things turned serious.

  “I’m worried, Renwick. This is a very dangerous mission,” she said in a much more sober tone.

  “I know,” he said, “ but it has to be this way. We can’t risk a complete system failure of the scoops. The Kali would be a sitting duck for that HuK, not to mention the rest of the Soloth fleet.”

  “You really don’t trust Amanda, do you?” she said. He sighed.

  “It’s not whether I trust her or not. It’s whether I believe she’s trustworthy. At this point, it’s simply that we can’t take the risk,” he said. Yan remained silent. She seemed resigned to the situation at hand.

  “Good luck on your mission, then, Senator. Don’t get yourself killed,” she said.

  “I won’t. Promise,” he said, then signed off.

  He and Aybar completed the flight checks. Renwick went to the airlock and checked the diffuser modules that Thorne had loaded onto the skiff one more time to make sure they were secure near the cargo hatch. After he was satisfied he returned to the cockpit, sealed the passenger cabin behind them, and put on his EVA helmet. He gave a quick thumbs up and Aybar fired the skiff engines.

  “Com check,” said Aybar.

  “Check,” replied Renwick. “We’re good to go.”

  “I hope so,” said Aybar. He watched as she lifted the skiff off the deck with skilled precision. Renwick looked down onto the brightly lit landing deck and saw Thorne standing in position, unmoving. Privately he hoped he was wrong about the androids, because if Thorne had tampered with the new diffusers in anyway, they were both flying to their doom.

  Aybar guided the skiff through the environmental field, out of the landing deck, and into open space. They were protected from the interspatial buffeting of the wake as long as they stayed within the bounds of the stern. Beyond that they would be subject to the whims of the Kali and her strange mechanisms.

  Aybar had chosen to fly the skiff rather than one of the Kali’s own shuttles because she was intimately familiar with the controls and how the small boat handled. Renwick got a taste of her experience when they were only a few hundred meters out as she deftly rotated the skiff on a fixed plane, parallel with the landing deck. Then she ignited the chemical impellers, and the skiff started rising vertically, the stern construct passing below them as they ascended. Renwick took the time to observe how big the Kali really was, and how complex she was constructed. More than ever he was convinced she had not been made by humans, no matter how advanced they were three centuries past, in Yan’s time.

  “Hold on now. We’re about to experience some buffeting from the wake as we clear the stern,” said Aybar into his ear. With that she suddenly increased the skiff’s speed and started angling her ascent, preparing to meet the interspatial distortions head on.

  The skiff cleared the stern and flew straight into the Kali’s wake.

  The vibrations were strong enough that Renwick felt his teeth clattering together inside his helmet. Though he was securely strapped in to his couch seat and held in by a suspensor field, he was still taking a pounding, as was the tiny boat.

  “Hold on,” said Aybar over the com, her voice loud and high-pitched. “The inertial dampers should compensate in another second-“ at that the intense vibrations stopped- “or two,” she finished. The dampers could take out most of the structural vibration in any space-borne craft, providing for a much smoother ride, but they couldn’t stop severe pockets of turbulence, especially of the kind gener
ated by the scoop diffusers. A second later and they got their first taste of the turbulence.

  The ship rocked from side to side, the safety couch and suspensor absorbing most of the impact.

  “Will she be able to take much of this?” asked Renwick. Aybar shook her head inside her EVA suit.

  “She won’t have to,” she said. “Once we’re in the shadow of the scoop tower the buffeting should decrease enough for us to execute the mission. I ran the specs myself half an hour ago. This is the rough part.” Another impact shook the skiff as Aybar accelerated slowly towards the looming scoop tower. Renwick felt his stomach lurch.

  “Dampers aren’t much help against tides like this,” said Aybar, looking over at him as she held the skiff flight controls in an iron grip. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your sea legs soon enough.” Renwick’s stomach churned again. He hoped she was right.

  “Status,” came Yan’s voice over his com, a welcome distraction. Renwick looked down at his co-pilot’s instruments.

  “We’ve cleared the stern and are in open space. Traverse to the scoop tower should be complete in...” he signaled to Aybar.

  “Seven,” she said.

  “Seven minutes estimated. Interspatial wake turbulence is manageable, for now,” he added.

  “Affirmative. That matches our tracking here. Keep your head down. Yan out,” she said.

  “Heads,” said Aybar over the com. “Keep our heads down.” Renwick smiled.

  “Slip of the tongue,” he said.

  “I bet. Incoming wave!” Aybar said. The skiff rocked with another displacement wave. They recovered again as Renwick watched the scoop tower grow ever larger in the front windows. The rear of the scoop looked like a giant swan’s neck with a low, flat head on top. The diffuser grills were spewing out dark energy that had been collected and then processed back into normal matter. It came out as uneven puffs of gray smoke, then quickly diffused and dissipated as it passed over them. All too frequently though a wave would divert from its smooth path and rock the skiff, sending them rolling. It seemed like an eternity as they climbed the swan neck, angling up to the ‘head’ of the Kali’s scoop array. The displacement waves became less frequent as they climbed, gaining more and more ground into the shadow of the scoop.

  “I think we’re through the worst of it,” Aybar finally said. Renwick let go of his death grip on the control panel and leaned back as they ascended the neck, floating just a few meters from the metal surface.

  “I’ll go get the modules ready,” he said, gladly un-strapping himself from the safety couch and heading to the door to the passenger cabin.

  “Be careful,” said Aybar. “We’re still subject to the odd wave as we rise, and once I position us outside the access hatch I’ll have to hold us in place manually. It’s likely to get rough up there again.”

  “Understood,” said Renwick, exposing the cockpit to the passenger cabin again with the flick of a switch and making his way back to the cargo hold.

  Each of the diffuser modules were as big as a man an twice as deep. Luckily they were designed to be replaced if necessary, and Yan had told them the access hatch would accommodate their size. The modules themselves were a matched pair, fused together for transport by a nano-seal. Renwick would take them both across as one, then break the seal once he was inside the diffuser array and install each of them, one on each side of the neck. He waited pensively while Aybar positioned the skiff, looking out until he could see the familiar shape of the Kali’s access hatch.

  Aybar sealed the cargo airlock from the inside while Renwick strapped the enormous payload onto his back, four times his size. He felt her disconnect the artificial gravity in the airlock to make the pack weightless. He lifted the pack on his back, then checked the cone jets on his suit that he would have to use for deceleration. The diffusers had a lot of mass, and if he didn’t handle his ‘landing’ on the other side things could get very messy in a hurry.

  “Ready to vent environment,” said Renwick to Aybar, hefting the modules.

  “Venting,” came the reply. Two small ports opened in the airlock’s outer hatch as the atmosphere vented, then stabilized, and the outer door opened. Renwick looked out on the expanse of space separating him from the access hatch of the Kali’s diffuser array.

  “Access hatch opening,” came Yan’s voice in his com. He watched from across empty space as the hatch opened to reveal a dark room, lit only by a few tiny monitor lights. It looked like miles across from where he stood.

  “What’s our distance?” he asked Aybar.

  “One hundred-fifty meters,” she said. “Just enough for you to jet out, decelerate and get in.”

  “We hope,” he said. He lugged the module assembly on his back once more and positioned himself in the airlock hatch.

  “Better get moving,” said Aybar. “Not sure how long I can hold this position. There are rogue waves getting pretty close.”

  “Affirmative,” said Renwick. He positioned the cone jets at his waist for the proper angle, then released his safety line and fired a short burst. It calmed him a bit to finally get out in space. He moved out of the airlock slowly, almost drifting towards the neck of the scoop and the access hatch.

  “Your bio levels are elevated,” said Aybar in his ear.

  “Wouldn’t yours be?” he snapped back, then continued on his course. Inside his helmet all he could hear was the sound of his own hard breathing. He remembered his EVA training from military school, mandatory in any military academy, and he trusted his skills, but the reality of making the crossing was still a major stressor. He decided to talk to let his emotions out.

  “How far am I clear?” he asked Aybar.

  “Twenty meters. Give it another ten before you fire the jets,” she replied.

  “Got it. What’s your status?”

  “Rogue waves are getting closer. I think the diffusers are degrading more rapidly,” she said. “I may have to move and come back to get you.”

  “Understood,” he said. He checked his distance monitor. Twenty-six meters out. “I’m starting to drift,” he said, his voice sounding stressed even in his own ears. “I’m going to fire the crossing burst now before I get too far off course.” There was a long silence before Aybar signaled an affirmative response. Renwick fired a short burst from the right cone to raise his angle, then locked in on the hatch and fired both jets. He accelerated rapidly towards the Kali. “Forty meters,” he said, “fifty... counting down now. Ninety meters to the hatch.”

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Suddenly he was off course, the neck of the Kali spinning in front of him, followed by open space, followed by a glimpse of the skiff, then the pattern repeated.

  “What the hell?” he yelled.

  “Rogue wave!” called Aybar in his ear. “I’m out of control!” Renwick realized he was too. The spinning was disorienting him rapidly. He remembered his training; if you’re in an uncontrolled spin you always fire a single jet, the one on the side you think you are spinning towards. If you start spinning faster, fire the other one. He reached down in desperation, first gripping the right cone control, then the left. The neck of the Kali was getting closer. He knew he had only a few seconds to stabilize his spin or he and the modules would end up mashed against the skin of the Void ship. He closed his eyes. pressed his thumb down and prayed it was the right control.

  A second later he opened his eyes. The scoop neck was once again in front of him and he was spinning, but much slower. He fired again and got his direction back. He was going to land on the underside of the scoop neck, but he was going to make it. Probably. He reached out as the neck loomed over him, then hit it hard and started dragging across the smooth metal, falling out towards the scoop and away from the access hatch. His was going too fast to grip anything with his magnetic gloves. He had no choice. He’d have to activate his magnetic boots and hope his relative velocity didn’t rip his legs off.

  He reached for the control, put his finger over it, then squee
zed his eyes shut again and pressed. He felt his feet slam into the metal as his mass-heavy payload pulled him up and bent him backwards, stretching his body with its momentum. Just when he thought the pull would rip his suit right off of his body the momentum whiplashed and he came back towards the metal skin. He deactivated his finger grips and pushed off with his hands, then steadied himself. He was attached by his gravity boots and in one piece.

  “I’m here!” he said into his com. “I’m okay!” The response was silence. He started to move, cautiously. Releasing the pressure on his boot grip so he could walk almost normally, the large pack on his back. He moved as quick as he could out of the darkness of the front of the scoop neck and back into the rear field. He looked up. A hundred meters above him was the access hatch, and it was closed. He looked out to where the skiff should be. It wasn’t there. He scanned the area, looking desperately for the small ship. He finally found it, spinning in space, accelerating away from him at a few meters per second.

  Heading right into the path of the displacement waves.

  19.

  “Aybar! Can you hear me?” he called into the com but got no response. He switched channels.

  “Yan, come in!” he shouted.

  “Yan here. My God, are you all right?” she said.

  “Affirmative,” he said, “but the skiff isn’t. Can you get a shuttle out here?”

  “Negative,” came her reply, scratching over the com line. “The displacement waves are coming in at unpredictable intervals, and they’re getting stronger. They’re too powerful for the shuttles. I may have to shut down the scoops entirely.”

  “Yan, if Aybar can’t get the skiff under control, she’ll drift right into the path of the next wave,” Renwick said.

  “Understood. But I can’t do anything about that right now. Wait... hold on...” she trailed off, the line cracking with static. Interminable seconds passed before she came back on the line. “It’s your wife, Renwick. The Gataan frigate crew is going to mount a rescue of you and the skiff.”