Race to Terra (Book 10 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  Audio communication would take a seeming eternity, but at least it was possible for truly critical information. Almost all of what they’d be doing would have to be text.

  And all of that depended on someone over there figuring out exactly what they were doing, which wasn’t assured. This was a good start, but they’d have a lot more work to do before they were back in contact with Admiral Mertz.

  8

  Jared stared at the FTL com as it shut down for a third time in less than a minute. He wasn’t alone in watching the machine’s antics. Austin, Kelsey, and Tony stared at it with equal incomprehension.

  “That’s definitely worse than it’s been behaving,” O’Halloran said. “Let me run a self-diagnostic on it and then plug in some additional equipment to see if I can tell what’s going on.”

  He left the device powered off and quickly attached wires from some of the surrounding equipment. Only when he was seemingly ready to continue testing did he power device backup.

  “The self-check isn’t finding anything,” he said under his breath. “I’m not even sure how that’s possible, considering what we just saw. Let’s see if I can get a full cycle of testing with the other equipment in before it does it again.”

  It turned out that the man had no trouble performing his testing because the FTL com didn’t power itself off again. At least not in the three minutes it took the Fleet engineer to do his work.

  “All of those readings look normal,” Austin said as he looked over Tony’s shoulder. At least in so far as I can tell. It’s not like I have a lot of experience working on faster-than-light equipment.”

  O’Halloran straightened and stretched his back. “Everything looks normal to me, too. We’re going to have to dig into the equipment much more deeply if we’re going to figure out exactly what’s going on.”

  “Let me try one more thing before we tear this apart,” Austin said. “Do you mind?” he asked as he gestured toward the keyboard.

  The engineer stepped back and gestured him in. “Be my guest.”

  The young Rebel Empire noble sat at the computer and began paging through different screens and typing on the manual keyboard.

  “If I were accessing something remotely and shutting it down time and again, it wouldn’t just be to drive the people watching the equipment crazy. I’d want them to find something. The easiest place for someone to plant evidence of what they’re doing is in the logs.”

  Jared consulted his implants and noted the time. “I can only stay out of sight for so long, gentlemen. How long will such a search take?”

  “Approximately this long,” Austin said. “I found something.”

  They all leaned forward to look over his shoulder, and the young man pointed to a line on the screen. “This is an error message thrown by one of the components we were looking at. Does that look like a standard error message to you?”

  The indicated entry had three words: This is Kelsey.

  Jared felt his heart soar. Somehow, she’d done it. His sister had figured out how to access an FTL com over some unimaginable distance.

  It wasn’t a normal communication request, but they were getting information. That meant that the device itself could actually sense its linked pair. Kelsey and Carl were attempting to communicate with them.

  “That is pretty definitive,” he agreed with a grin. “The only reason that I can see for them to do what they’re doing is that they can send a signal over a great distance, but it’s not triggering some threshold where we can answer. Or maybe our side isn’t recognizing what they’re doing as valid.

  “We’ve got to figure out how to interpret this. Does anyone have any idea how we can manage that? If we change the error message, will they see it on the other side?”

  Austin shook his head. “Almost certainly not. I’d guess they’re using some kind of specialized code to cause a certain component to fail while adding additional code that writes that one line to the log. The potential length of the error code is limited to just about what they sent too, so I wouldn’t expect a longer message.

  “Nothing they’re going to be able to do from the other end will allow them to read our logs. And unfortunately, without knowing exactly how they managed this particular feat, we’re not going to be able to do the same to them.”

  O’Halloran scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’ve got a lot of information on the normal operation of these devices, and when this unit started behaving oddly, I went through everything. I can’t imagine how they’re sending a signal that we can’t detect. Everything has to go through the FTL receiver. Why isn’t it detecting this?”

  Kelsey cleared her throat. “I realize that I’m the least knowledgeable person about this sort of thing, but the device is obviously detecting it. Someone on the other end couldn’t be making this equipment do anything unless this piece of equipment was receiving and interpreting whatever they were doing as a signal.

  “Since I’ve been going through working on my communications skills, now that my implants can actually talk to other equipment, I’ve come to a realization. There are several layers of communication taking place all the time with my implants.

  “There’s the conscious level where I’m intentionally signaling someone or something. Then there’s an unconscious level where my implants interface with the equipment around me to initiate communication in case I need to use something. Under those circumstances, unless I choose to do something, I may not even be aware that they’ve done anything.”

  Austin nodded slowly. “I see what you’re saying. It’s possible that the incoming signal isn’t being interpreted as something we need to be notified about, but the equipment can handle it. It’s already capable of doing that with sending a ping out to the other side and verifying the other FTL com is operational without anyone doing anything at the other end.

  “And before you ask, we checked that. We’re not detecting the linked FTL com when we ping. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t figured out how to connect us. This is all taking place at the quantum level, and the photons generate an automatic response in our hardware that gets sent back.”

  Jared scratched his chin and considered what the young man and said. “I’m hearing the words, but I don’t think I’m getting the meaning that you intend me to have. Are you saying that they’ve found a way to stimulate the entangled pair so that our end sends a signal farther than we can intentionally do so?”

  “The theory is that the range of those things is unlimited,” Austin said, “but that some kind of flaw in the underlying theory is keeping the hardware from triggering a response past more than a single flip point. Even a repeater is only fifty percent effective in relaying a signal once.

  “It sounds as if they’ve found at least a partial answer to the problem, only we can’t pick up when they call because we have no idea what they’re doing. The problem is that we don’t know enough about what they did to even let them know that they’ve succeeded.”

  “Did you check the logs to see if someone is pinging us?”

  Tony blinked and took back over the keyboard. “Yes. I’m getting a lot of pings starting several days ago. The com automatically generated a response. I should’ve looked sooner,” he admitted sheepishly.

  As soon as he finished saying those words, the FTL com powered off again. It looked as if Kelsey was going to continue trying to get their attention.

  “We’ll need to keep checking the error messages, but we also need to be more proactive in communicating with them,” Jared said. “Since they’re being so insistent, I think that we might be able to use the status of our machine to communicate with them.”

  He grinned at the obviously confused people around him. “This isn’t going to make any sense to you, but I need you to look up something in the library and make it so that we can control when the FTL com is on and when it’s off very precisely.”

  Austin frowned. “That’s not exactly like sending a message to them.”

  “You’d be
surprised what kind of information silence can tell another person,” Jared said. “Just set it up the way I tell you, and I’ll wager they’ll get the message quick enough.”

  Kelsey watched Carl and Ralph Halstead become more and more frustrated while working on the FTL com. After what had seemed like they were getting somewhere, they’d started having serious issues with their connection to the linked com. Without warning, their pings started failing without any rhyme or reason.

  “What the heck is going on?” Carl asked, his tone frustrated. “It’s like they’re randomly turning it on and off.”

  “They might be,” Halstead said. “Honestly, it’s the only way they can let us know that they’re aware of our activity. We can only interact with them through causing their machine to turn off and leaving an error message that they may or may not find.

  “And then we can ping their system and get an automatic response that it’s up, if it is. If they’ve realized that, this is the only way for them to let us know they are aware of our attempts.”

  “But it should still make sense,” Carl grumbled.

  “Maybe it does, but we just can’t see it,” Kelsey said in a soothing voice as she rested her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “If there’s a pattern to this, we need to graph it out. Rather than random pings, we need to start sending a rapid, steady series of them. Only then can we tell if there’s a pattern to the machine being off or on.”

  The young scientist considered that for a moment and then nodded. “Good idea. Let me set something up to start pinging them once a second and graphing out the other com’s status.”

  It only took a few minutes for him to have everything set up the way he wanted and for them to be looking at real-time returns from the other com. It quickly became apparent that the other device was being switched on and off fairly rapidly.

  “There is a pattern in this,” Halstead said slowly. “The time frames that the machine is either off or on fall in two groups: between two and three seconds or five and six seconds. That’s some kind of binary pattern, but I’m not seeing a meaning to it.”

  Kelsey watched the pattern playing out on the screen and felt herself gasp when she saw the hidden pattern. “That’s Morse code! I had to learn it when we were signaling you in the Nova system, Carl.

  “The shorter time frame is for dots, the longer is for dashes. We’ll have to wait to see if the message is repeating, but I’m deciphering it in my head as I’m seeing this, and it’s a real message.”

  Carl’s eyes widened. “Holy crap! I can see it now. Hold it, now we’re getting just a series of dots with no dashes. I bet that’s the boundary before they start repeating the original message again.”

  She saw the message start up again and started translating it in her head.

  Kelsey, this is Jared. We’ve received your message. I’m hoping that you can decipher this message because I’m not certain that we can communicate back with you the same way you’re doing with us.

  We found your short note buried in the error log. If you can pass on to us what modifications we need to make on our end, we’ll update the FTL com so that we can communicate via pings. Please let us know that you’ve received this message by shutting our system down and telling us so.

  I have to tell you that I’m damn glad to hear you’re okay. Well done. Jared Mertz.

  Ralph Halstead leaned back in his chair. “Well I’ll be damned. It actually worked. What the hell do we do now?”

  Kelsey clapped her hand on his shoulder. “Cause their system to shut down with the error code ‘message received’ and then start getting them the information they need.

  “Actually, the first thing we need to know is where they are. If we have a system name, then we can determine what our transmission range is. I’d absolutely hate to have them flip out beyond our range and lose communication.”

  Carl stared at her. “Do you realize how long it would take to transmit modification instructions if we can only use two or three words at a time? We’re talking days to get the information across to get to the point where we can even communicate via Morse code.

  “Not that I’m complaining about the speed of Morse code when it means the difference between some communication and no communication. Even so, it’s still going to be a relatively limited kind of exchange.”

  The young hacker nodded at the scientist’s words. “That’s going to allow us to do text-based messaging, but it’s not going to give us a shared method to transmit anything involving audio or video. Even if we could, the time to get the files across, specifically accounting for any errors in the transmission, would be significant.”

  Kelsey grinned at them. “I actually have an answer for that. This is one place where me watching a bunch of old vids from pre-Imperial Terra is going to come in handy.

  “Back when computers were first becoming a reality on Terra, they had hardware called modems that communicated over copper wiring to other computers. The transmission speed was incredibly slow.

  “The hardware had built-in error checking and handled the handshake of data back and forth in a way that’s documented in the Imperial libraries aboard all the ships we have. If we can tell Jared to look at how to build an interface similar to one of these modems, we should be able to reliably send files and be confident that they’re the same on the other end, once the error checking has any suspect portions resent.”

  Carl’s gaze became slightly unfocused as he consulted the library. Then he started nodding. “I see what you’re saying. Ironically, our transmission speed is roughly the same as those very early modems. Technology seems to have gone full circle.

  “Let me start off by sending the response to them to know we’ve got their message and ask them where they are and where they’re going. I don’t want to start transmitting all the data that we have until we have the initial greetings out of the way.”

  He manipulated the keyboard, and within two minutes, they were getting a new set of Morse code signals.

  Kelsey, I’m going to have my people start researching the communication protocols that Carl mentioned. It’s going to be slow, but that beats complete silence.

  As for where we are, the system only has an Imperial registry number. I’ll send that along momentarily, but the more important piece of information for you is that we’re on the way to Terra. We’re inside the Rebel Empire in the automated destroyer, but our situation has become complex.

  I don’t want to use up a lot of time telling you all of this until we can communicate back and forth more reliably. We’re masquerading as members of the higher orders and we’ve got actual members of the higher orders on board our ship that think we’re someone else.

  Again, I’ll spell it all out to you in more detail once we’ve established the communication protocols, which my engineer tells me will probably happen very quickly once we know how to modify our FTL com to more closely link with yours.

  Carl said that sending that kind of information would take days, which is going to put us dead center in the middle of an area where we don’t dare communicate from. If we can manage it sooner, that would be better because in about four days we’re going to be incommunicado for a period of time.

  Let’s save catching up for when we can actually talk and I can send you a real status. It’s good to hear your voice again. Jared.

  “Get him those modifications as quickly as you can, Carl,” Kelsey said. “It sounds like we’re on a tight time schedule. I’ll talk with Angela and start getting everyone herded together. It sounds like we’re going to Terra, and we’d probably best be moving if we want to get there in time to make a difference in whatever they’re doing.”

  She stepped back and let them continue their work. Jacqueline Parker stepped away as well. She’d been quiet during the exchange.

  “It’s not common knowledge, but conditions on Terra are supposedly… grim,” the scientist said in a low voice. “I’m not certain what you expect to find there, but you’re only going to
find death and destruction.”

  Kelsey turned toward the other woman. “Terra may be dead, but the key to beating the AIs is buried with her corpse. If we ever want to end this terrible subjugation of human species, we don’t have a choice.”

  9

  Olivia watched the timer and fumed. They’d been receiving data from Kelsey on how to modify the FTL com for days. Being able to only transmit a few words at a time to get those instructions was utterly ridiculous, but it was all they could manage.

  Carl Owlet had guessed at how long it would take to get the complete modification plans sent, and it was going to be very close to the time they’d have to stop using the FTL com. Perhaps too close.

  The last flip point was only a couple of hours ahead of them. If they failed to get the data before they flipped into the system with the AI, they’d have to shut down the process, because they didn’t dare do anything that might warn the System Lords that FTL communication existed.

  Doing all of this while sitting on Athena’s bridge stretched her nerves to the breaking point. She was far more comfortable sitting behind a desk where she could do real work instead of waiting here and doing nothing.

  She could hardly imagine how Jared managed. Projecting an air of calm seem to be a full-time job, so how did he manage to accomplish anything else?

  Part of her console lit up with an incoming call. It was from engineering, so it was probably Jared. Thankfully, Fielding wasn’t on the bridge, so they didn’t have to do everything via implants.

  Olivia knew that those were far more efficient, but her upbringing still made it hard. The nobility of the Rebel Empire had an ingrained refusal to use implants to their full potential. She was no exception, even though she knew it was stupid.

  She reached down and touched the acceptance on the call, and Jared’s face appeared on the console.