by Ginger Booth
45
The incoming seventeen rocks on a collision course volunteered for Ben’s undivided and immediate attention. He couldn’t let the auto-guns take them because they dodged and darted and spun the ship. Ben rapidly rotated the ship to present its tender underbelly to the depot rock, and locked that orientation. To buy himself time, he used his right hand to target and obliterate the leading four problem projectiles.
“Mr. Copeland. Velocity matched and orientation locked. Deploy grapples. Counting on you, buddy.”
“Aye, cap, extending grapples.”
Technically, it should have been Lavelle giving that order to Remi, but he estimated they needed a moment to get their brains online. Behind him, Nico shrugged his own mental processes into gear and roused Lavelle.
Firing with two hands now, Ben finished destroying the flurry of nuisances. That accomplished, he set the firing AI to take over, but forbid it helm control. It was wildly less effective that way, but that was supposed to be Lavelle’s problem. The old pirate slid into the comfy chair with a mumbled apology.
Ben didn’t acknowledge it. “Your ship, Lavelle. Guns fixed auto, helm manual.” He watched the other man carefully as he cracked his fingers and studied the status board. “Welcome home.”
Lavelle finally nodded a few precious seconds later, through which Ben sat chafing and fired at another rock. “Got it. I have the helm.”
Good. Because Ben was a couple minutes late taking up what he was supposed to do immediately upon entry.
Fortunately, Remi’s mind cleared faster than Lavelle’s. “Ben, Remi. We’re out of position. Request course correction plan.”
With ship and rock in capable hands, the admiral bent to his calculations. Yes, they were all flying too fast for this distance from Pono. Which left them a choice of slowing a massive asteroid, or translating it inward. This might seem to be six of one, half dozen of the other. But it wasn’t, because tiny nudges to vector could point the rocks inward and let their own momentum do the deed. Granted it might take a month to settle into a stable orbit. Or…no. A few days.
“Remi, Ben. On simplest solution, we do not rendezvous Cookie before destination. Does this work for you? Or do you need Merchant to assist Thrive and Gossamer?”
“Request you ask them. I got issues.”
“Sass, this is Ben. Did you read?” He could ask Clay and Martin, too, but Sass had the big picture role on flying Loki and the Great Cookie.
“I – I’m busy,” she replied.
“Understood.” Ben asked no more questions, and attempted to use his own instrumentation to gauge the quality of their control. They had an interdiction cage up, which was outstanding. Their asteroid-on-a-leash slowly rotated. He guessed they were currently attempting to cancel that roll. He commed Clay direct to verify what he was seeing. Clay confirmed.
“Cope, how is the grapple? Do you think we could add about one degree of vector?”
“Maybe if we added point oh one per hour. Go much faster and it’ll spin and break our grip. I’ll calculate it.”
“Thank you, I need that number.”
They were two distinct problems, adding vector to his depot rock, versus Sass’s team adding vector to the Great Cookie. Aside from their rotation problem – possibly self-inflicted – they’d have a far easier time nudging with eight ships than he’d have with a single ship relying on grapples. To pass the time, he considered a flock of solutions with assorted trade-offs.
“Ben? Degrees point oh three one vector per hour,” Cope replied. “Gives us enough safety margin so we don’t destroy the grapples.”
“Great job, chief.” That variable nailed down, he considered the far smaller set of solutions it made available. They all worked. So he pulled up the orbits of Sioux, Sagamore, Hell’s Bells, Mahina, and Goa, an intervening methane moon. The new rock didn’t have enough mass to impact any of their orbits – he double-checked that point. But a slower insertion resulted in an interesting pattern. Like Sagamore and Mahina themselves, the Great Cookie – in its resting guise as Hanging Tree – would align with one, then the other, about once a month. His other solutions provided rather less pleasing alignment schedules.
“Remi, course selected. Beaming it to you.”
“Checking,” Remi acknowledged. “Working another problem.”
“Ready when you are,” Ben agreed. He sighed and studied Sass’s progress with that pesky spin. She’d slowed it in one axis but added a yaw in another for a nasty wobble. He brought up the simulator they’d used to train themselves, before the decision for Sass to take the job. “Sass, Ben. Request you echo Cookie control instructions to me by tight-beam.”
“Don’t you fly my cookie, Ben.” She sent the new tightbeam anyway.
He snickered. “Just thought maybe I’d see where the simulator and reality diverge while you’re occupied.”
“God, yes. Please!”
He fed in her beamed instructions and observed the simulator’s reactions, versus the asteroid’s. He watched intently until he spotted what might be the problem. “Nico, you’re still here.”
“Aye, sar.”
Ben rewound the observation and simulation a minute, then played it for Nico at quarter speed. “I think what’s happening is an assumption of equal density throughout the rock. But that’s wrong. The surface of the cookie is riddled with corridors and chambers. But the core is solid rock. Could that explain this discrepancy?”
Nico frowned. “Do you have the densities and the depths?”
Ben found and supplied their seismic observation schematics, with Remi’s estimates on density.
“Give me a few minutes,” Nico requested.
“You have time,” Ben deadpanned. “Sass won’t succeed at this rate.” He updated Remi and Sass on his plan while he waited. “I don’t think you can compensate by eye, Sass. We need your software fixed.”
“Please!” Her voice betrayed her strain.
“You’re doing great, Sass. We’ll get you a better tool.”
While he waited, Ben checked in with Martin, whom he hadn’t spoken to yet. The Sag first mate claimed his only problem was boredom. Steering the cube corners of interdiction wasn’t much of a challenge. “That’s how we like it, Martin! Nice and easy. Hopefully we’ll join you in the mess hall soon for drinks. Let slow inexorable processes run their course.”
“Can’t wait. Need a nap. That gateway transit is disorienting, huh?”
Ben barked a laugh. “You have no idea. Oh! Excuse me, I have a task.” Nico had unfolded from the floor, bearing his tablet as a gift.
“Happy you. Martin out.”
Nico stammered, “So, I don’t know how accurate –”
“We try it,” Ben cut him off. He fed the new program with Sass’s ongoing commands, running in parallel to the Nico’s previous program on the viewscreen, with a view of the traveling cookie beside them. Half a minute was more than enough to see the difference.
“Sass, I’m sending you a new simulator. Much improved! Crewman Nico did us proud.”
“He takes after his dads!”
Ben batted his eyelashes at Nico. The young man cringed backward. Lavelle chuckled, and quipped, “Not so much in personality.”
“No,” Ben agreed. “Awful proud of you, though, crewman. Even if you are weird.”
“But that’s how I’m most like you,” Nico argued. “Weird. Like why could you and Dad and me function through that transit weirdness, when no one else could?”
“Good question.” Ben hadn’t noticed anyone else who functioned as well as he did. Cope and Nico even seemed more rational than himself when in the throes of the multidimensional sensory onslaught. However the team was not yet nudging toward their happy destination. “Bad time.” He handed the tablet back.
“Aye, sar. Permission to check on Floki?”
“Denied. Waiting on Sass to verify her problem is solved. In fact…” Ben switched comm channel. “Tikki, Ben. Please prevent anyone from rousing Floki until
Nico returns.”
“Aye, sar.” The housekeeper’s drawn-out tones suggested he found this advice dubious.
Ben added, “If he rouses naturally, that’s fine. But ask him to wait on contacting Loki.”
“Aye, sar.” The second acknowledgment sounded willing enough, and Ben signed off.
“I don’t understand, sar,” Nico whined.
“Crewman, I devoutly wish you’d hold your questions until I get that rock, and the other one, pointed where they’re going. Keep a rego-damned list! Ask me later.”
“Aye, sar. Sorry, sar.”
Ben turned back to studying his pair of hurtling rocks. Cope seemed to have their depot rock well in hand. The continual power drain off the engines, still running hot, suggested he was already applying the tiny increments of vector that would bring it home – in a mere two days by Ben’s latest solution, assuming the Great Cookie could also meet that rendezvous.
This was not yet established. Sass made headway on fixing her wobble, but the asteroid still rotated on two axes. “Sass, Ben. Is your control up to snuff yet? Or do we need a second revision to the program?”
She took her time replying. “A second pass couldn’t hurt.”
“Nico, you’re on.”
The youth leaned over his shoulder to observe again, the remaining variance between expected performance and actual results. “Maybe the densities I used are wrong?”
Ben corrected him. “On this pass, I expect you’ll apply a fudge factor.”
Nico clearly tried to get his brain around that request, and failed. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Thank you, crewman. Stay here, I’ll need you to code it.” Working together, Ben characterized the remaining problems until Nico could code him a couple parameters to adjust. Ben played with the new settings until he was sure the new software worked better than the old. Then he sent it off to Sass and talked her through how she could self-serve via the new adjustments.
In five more minutes, at last the cookie settled into the proper rotation for the rest of its happy life in Pono orbit, occupied face toward the Jovian planet.
“Ben, Remi. Is very nice, but you point it the wrong way. The problem I work is radiation.”
“Ouch!” Ben acknowledged. “Will correct orientation. Ah, is radiation a serious concern?”
“We are concerned that Loki’s nano-circuitry is too sensitive for Pono space. Solutions exist. Evaluating options. Before we kill our package. Very busy.”
Rego hell! To have gone through all this, and end up killing Loki in the final stretch? Ben gulped. He modulated his voice oh-so-carefully. “I have every confidence in you, Mr. Roy.”
The engineer snorted and cut the comm. Ben sheepishly asked Sass to flip the cookie to present its stone backside to the constant gale of radiation kicked out by Pono. He sure hoped the engineering team had considered this horrific hiccup during their planning sessions. This was the first he’d heard of it.
He trusted Remi would let him know. He turned to Nico. “Well done, crewman. Excellent work! Now you may wake Floki. But I ask that he does not contact Loki yet. If our passenger is offline, he’s better off staying that way.”
“Would you rather Floki stay offline too?” Nico asked unhappily.
“Floki is a member of this crew. He is safe inside the ship. If I were him, I would very much resent being kept offline. So we wake him. Loki’s situation is not equivalent. Yet. We are working a problem. Understood?”
“Aye, sar.”
Ben turned to his other companion. “How’s your life going, Lavelle?”
“Lovely sailing weather today, Ben. Enjoying the floor show.”
Ben chuckled appreciation. “Glad somebody’s happy.” The Great Traveling Cookie, soon to become the central node of Hanging Tree platform, finally rested pointing the other way. Sass did better with those new fine-adjust tools than he expected.
Sure enough, she hailed him. “Ben, cookie team reports success. Just finished applying your delta-v. I expect to reach rendezvous in just under five hours.”
“Bon voyage!” Ben added her whole command gang into the comms circuit. “Fantastic work, team! Congratulations, and thank you! I’d offer to join you for drinks, but we’re running a couple days behind you.”
“No need,” Fraser piped up, their civil engineering guru from Hell’s Bells. “While we’re still in proximity, we could bring our ships to your rock. Save wear and tear on your grapples.”
Ben’s face widened into a grin. “I like the way you think, Fraser! Stand by.”
46
The next day, standing in the asteroid again with Remi felt like old home week to Ben. He tagged along as the engineer performed his final measurements in a giant drum-shaped chamber, its helix of processors coiling to six stories above. An army of spider robots hung suspended around them. Nothing issued them orders yet. The entire control disk of Hanging Tree waited offline pending final bullet-proofing adjustments.
By heartfelt mutual consent, the duo went nowhere in this rock without work floodlights. Ben’s view was great. The newest space platform of Pono felt like a giant theater stage, audience waiting breathlessly for the premiere of the drama.
The crowd whispers in suspense. Did they fry their golden goose, their genie in a rock bottle, their frenemy, the digital sentient Loki, before they rigged his radiation safeguards?
“I drastically underestimated this job,” Ben mused. “Sorry.”
Remi handed off the latest drill for him to put away in the toolbox. “And that is the difference between an amateur engineer and a professional. Ben, there was no estimate until two days ago. As engineers, we are pleased only after the moment of truth. This ‘moment’ typically takes hours.” He patched in Cope. “Comms check?”
Ben’s husband led the team that built the new comms arrays, triply redundant for conditions in the Pono rings. These days, every ship and skiff and platform in the rings used his protocols, on Spaceways equipment. The system relied on a brute-force approach to compensate for radio scatter through the asteroid disk, plus powered satellites just north of the rings for long distance relay. Every transmission beamed out in triplicate from as widely spaced a footprint as feasible. The signal was recomposed in hardware, with automatic repeat requests and queuing until the data packets passed integrity checks. Sometimes this worked well enough to support static-filled real-time video with light-speed time lags. More often, people texted with attachments.
Remi’s job was the radiation bulletproofing that would permit Loki’s exquisitely fine circuits to operate in safety. It remained to be seen how much data damage had accrued in the scant minutes he faced vast Pono unprotected from the particle winds.
Cope replied, “All comms correct and complete. Gossamer laid the overhead satellite a couple hours ago on its way home. I’ve spoken by video to Abel on Mahina, plus HB Control. Hanging Tree can expect eclipse blackouts until we hang a trailing satellite. But Loki should be able to piggyback signals on one of the others.”
Long ago this description might have made Ben’s head hurt, but the rings were his home. Rocks lay in the way of clear signals. Straight up was the shortest route out of the shoal. But the permanent bulk of Pono itself remained. They bounced signals around it, as the moons and platforms and tiny humans continued their independent carousel rides round and round.
Cope continued, “I can’t promise your client will be happy. Comms are a lot slower than he’s used to, and eat up power. But that’s life in the big rings. Great job on the installation, guys.”
“Great job on comms, Cope!” Ben returned. “And a fantastic job done by all.”
“When’s the moment of truth? Coming back to the ship first?”
Remi nodded, and squatted to put his own supersensitive radiation meter away in the toolbox now as intimate to Ben as his own. The repaired cases, with working latches instead of duct tape, were a major improvement over their last ramble together through this electronic warren.
> “Could I talk to Loki from here?” Ben asked.
Remi met his gaze with a slow soft smile. He waved a be-my-guest. “Use your tablet for video.”
They’d already powered up the multitude of star drives that fed this place after Floki’s team installed the new comms system. Emu, Joey, and Wilder beat them back to Merchant an hour ago.
Remi flicked a switch he’d installed on his processor plate, chosen from tens of thousands because it lay at waist height in this room. Any would have served. Loki’s architecture was vastly distributed, with no center. They just needed to kick-start the heartbeat process.
Ben pulled out his tablet. “Loki, Ben. Are you awake?”
No answer. Seconds mounted, an eternity on superconducting data buses and nanoprocessors. Ben gulped, given time to be truly frightened. Was all this for nothing?
Then the pixels of his tablet finally swam to life. Loki appeared groggy, dressed in a torn T-shirt. Ben had never been so glad to see his ugly mug.
“Not very awake,” Loki complained. “Days are missing!”
“That’s true, friend. Transiting the gateway knocked you offline. For safety, we kept you that way until we finished the move. How do you like the new digs?”
Loki blinked slowly. “Comms are so slow to the depot rock. Why?”
Ben patiently explained the local facts of life, including their lingering concern. “Listen, Loki, you were exposed to significant radiation before we got you shielded. Now you’re under icepack, with a few magnetic dodges. But we need you to check for processor and data integrity.”
The wild-haired visage shook its head. “Processors are self-correcting. All critical data is duplicated, up to five times depending on sensitivity. My normal procedures. Integrity checks are running, self-correcting now. Sanctuary space has radiation, too, you know. And there are always errors in manufacturing.”
“You really are a pack rat,” Remi noted.
Ben shared a wry grin with him. “Welcome to Pono, Loki.”
The AI’s response surprised him. “Can I…talk to my son?”
