Project Columbus: Omnibus

by J. C. Rainier

  I remember now. Two years ago, our camping trip to Puget Sound. This was the ferry we took.

  The memory brought her warmth that cut through the cold reality of Raphael. She held on to it and tried to draw it closer. As she did, the image changed. It was dark, but there was a camp fire in front of her with bright, glowing embers. She watched as her family roasted marshmallows and caught up on years of stories from Haruka and Saika.

  Haruka embraced the memory as long as she could. It seemed as if it could go on for an eternity, and she did not mind in the least. She smiled for a long time as she reminisced, but the warmth eventually faded and her eyes opened once more to the cold steel roof of the control room. She looked down at the time on the console. Two hours had passed.

  Damn. She sat bolt upright and unstrapped. Haruka opened the hatch and tore down into the propulsion room as quickly as she could, finding her way to the dimly lit gap in the casing of generator two.

  “I’m back, how’re we doing?”

  Mancini’s voice gave a ghostly query, “We?”

  “Yeah,” she tried to play it off.

  “Where the hell were you?”

  “I’m sorry, Marco. Time got away from me.”

  “Yeah, just enough to miss all of the damn carbon build up and other muck in here,” he grumbled.

  “Hey, you’re still alive. And the generator didn’t punch you in the face, did it?”

  “Not today. But I wasn’t hitting on its sister, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  Haruka laughed. “Well, that’s good news. But seriously, where are we at?”

  “Final inspections. Five, maybe ten minutes.”

  Haruka looked around and saw the cleaning rags that Mancini had been using floating around the generator. She collected these and deposited them in a trash locker along the far wall and then returned to the steel dome.

  “Bridge to Kimura,” Colonel Fox’s voice was barely audible over the whine of generator one, “Why isn’t generator two back online yet?”

  Haruka braced herself against the outer casing of the massive turbine with her left hand. Clutching a ratchet in her right, she reached for the control panel at her side. She tapped the ratchet on the com system button.

  “We’re just finishing final inspection of the power transfer grid, Colonel. We should have number two back up in about five minutes”

  “I want a report the instant they’re done, Lieutenant. Fox out.”

  As the com system light went out, Haruka pulled herself back over to the open access panel.

  “I don’t see why she’s in such a big rush. It’s not like we will get there any faster if we hurry maintenance.”

  “I’m telling you, Kimura, it’s the Fox way or the highway. It doesn’t matter if the problem is relevant or not,” Mancini’s voice echoed from within the dimly lit cavity. A greasy hand and matching sleeve outstretched from the opening, palm up and fingers splayed. Haruka placed the ratchet in his palm, and he promptly retracted his arm to within the confines of his workspace. The walls of the generator made the wrench sound like dozens of arguing crickets.

  “I don’t know, Marco. Maybe there is something to getting done with the generator and the inspections faster.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Going back to sleep so I don’t have to listen to her yapping anymore.”

  “C’mon, she’s a Fox, not a dog.”

  “My bad, I won’t have to listen to her howling any more. Is that better?”

  A chuckle from within the casing affirmed her answer. Haruka gazed across the long room, past the reactor, at generator one in the distance. Nova shot like an arrow from between the two, and caught the ladder up to the propulsion control room.

  Haruka raised her voice to overpower the whine, “Where are you going, Weyler?”

  Nova stopped briefly, her eyes meeting Haruka’s.

  “I thought I’d get started on the thruster inspections, Lieutenant.”

  “Alright, that’s fine.”

  Nova crawled hand over hand up the ladder and out of sight. Haruka resumed her gaze across the room. She became fixated on the bright purple glow emanated by the reactor. Shivers ran down her spine, and goose bumps rose on her skin. She turned back to the terminal and brought up a screen of readings from the reactor.

  Correct temperature, no radiation leaks. Her eyes fell once more on Gabriel’s power plant. Still, the sooner we’re done and away from this reactor, the better.

  “There we go. All buttoned up.”

  Haruka’s attention snapped back to the generator, where Mancini was securing the thick, curved metal of the access port. She placed her finger on the com system button and gently tapped.

  “Lieutenant Kimura to Colonel Fox.”

  “Fox here, are you done yet?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Airman Weyler has already started thruster inspection; I will be joining her shortly while Mancini starts the inspection of the plasma drive.”

  “Very well, Lieutenant. I want another report in an hour when your shift ends. Fox out.”

  Haruka grinned at Marco. She raised her voice an octave and spoke through her nose, “Yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am”

  Marco’s mouth widened into a broad smile and his brown eyes gleamed. He cupped his hands to his lips and gave a short howl.

  1st Lt Darius Owens

  22 September 2019, 19:17

  Gabriel

  “Colonel Eriksen will be here in just a minute,” Darius announced. Dr. Kimura gave a gentle smile. “Are you sure you don’t want me to talk to him, Doctor?”

  “No, thank you. I feel as if I am imposing on you as it is.”

  Darius shrugged. “Well, you’re not. Sorry it has taken this long; he didn’t seem too keen on leaving the bridge while he was on shift.”

  Just then, Colonel Eriksen pulled his way into the sleeper hallway. His beard made his expression look grimmer. He pulled himself upright and tugged at his flight suit.

  “You wanted to see me, Doctor?”

  Dr. Kimura fidgeted slightly and looked at the floor. “Yes, Colonel. I need access to the passenger matrix.”

  Eriksen stared at Dr. Kimura and opened his mouth, but seemed to be unable to find words at first. His eyes narrowed and his crow’s feet seemed to stretch almost to his ears.

  “You want access to the matrix to do what, Doctor Kimura?”

  The scowl on Colonel Eriksen’s face was as hard as the day of the interrogation on the bridge. Darius wondered if that made this request any more uncomfortable for Dr. Kimura.

  “To find a new secondary doctor,” Kimura said, unflinching.

  “So let me get this straight. You stand accused of treason, and you want me to let you pick a new backup for you?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “And why on God’s green earth… or black space, or whatever the hell,” Colonel Eriksen’s face started to turn red and he seemed flustered. “Damn it, why should I let you do that?”

  “Because of who the current backup is, sir.”

  Eriksen’s face remained quite colorful, but his expression changed to that of utter confusion. “I have no time to speak in riddles, Doctor. Just tell give your reason so I can make my decision.”

  At least he’s going to hear him out. Maybe Dr. Kimura will get what he needs after all.

  There was a brief pause inside the sleeper hallway that the three men weightlessly floated in. Although there was plenty of space to move about, there was something about the colonel’s voice that made Darius feel as if they were all stuffed in a can.

  Dr. Kimura stared intently at Colonel Eriksen. “Very well. The secondary doctor is Kayla Reid, the sister of Lieutenant Brandon Reid, and my daughter in law. I will state, for the record if it pleases you, that she was given this position because of her relationship to me. She was given minimal systems training back at Laramie shortly before the launch of the transports.”

  “Wait,” Eriksen cut in. “Why was she given las
t minute training? Wasn’t there already another doctor in place?”

  Dr. Kimura squirmed and his brows rose in a worrisome manner. “There was a time gap between the disappearance of Doctor Lang and the arrival of the passengers. She was given training so as not to… ah… disturb any of them when they arrived. We knew she could be trusted to handle the task.”

  Eriksen rubbed his hands through his hair. “Okay, fine, but why replace her?”

  “Because she will be useless if she has to come out of stasis. At least unless you plan to hide the fact that her brother has been arrested and accused of a capital crime, and that he could be executed.”

  “He chose his path.”

  “But she didn’t,” Kimura retorted without skipping a beat. “Please remember that anyone who is not, as you say, a conspirator, has no knowledge of what is going on. This will all come as a shock to Miss Reid when we land. Do you really want to risk the passengers and crew on a secondary doctor who could potentially become panicked, should I become incapacitated?”

  The two men locked each other in stares. Darius caught himself holding his breath, but he dared not exhale and draw attention to himself.

  “No,” Eriksen replied with a stern voice. “Miss Reid will not be replaced. You’d still have to pull a civilian doctor out of stasis to train them, and that alone could give them concerns as to why. The last thing I want is an antsy civilian doctor who can revive the passengers and doesn’t know why he’s awake.”

  The wrinkled scientist’s mouth curled down. “If we are to train a civilian doctor from the passenger manifest, I can keep him quiet. There are factors to consider.”

  Eriksen’s tone took on a sudden gruff quality, “You forget the situation that you’re in, Doctor Kimura. You’re only awake because of your skill with the sleeper berths. You don’t get to tell me what to do on my ship. You don’t get to make assumptions about what needs to happen next. Keep your eyes on the screen and do your job.”

  “But if I’m unable to continue for some reason, Miss Reid will be under too much stress.”

  “Then train Lieutenant Owens.”

  What? Me?

  “What?” Kimura cried out.

  “Lieutenant Owens will be keeping up the computer systems anyway,” Eriksen grunted. “From what I’ve seen of your job so far, it doesn’t look too hard. Teach him how to do your job. Miss Reid can help him if you can’t work, but I am not bringing another civilian out of stasis before we arrive. End of discussion.”

  Dr. Kimura bowed his head to Eriksen before the commander departed the sleeper pod. Darius let out his breath in a loud rush. There was an awkward moment of silence before he moved to the computer terminal and brought up the passenger matrix.

  “I am sorry to have burdened you with my request, Darius.”

  He shrugged. “It’s no problem for me. It’s not like the colonel is going to shoot the messenger.”

  “Nevertheless I appreciate your assistance.”

  “Again, no problem. I’m sorry that you didn’t get what you needed from him.” Darius turned to go.

  “You’re not going to stay?” Darius could hear the disappointment in Kimura’s voice.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve got a project that is eating up too much of my time. I’ve got to get back to the computer core.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  Darius grunted and turned back to face the doctor. “I don’t know. I found that the com system software was corrupted and rolled back to another version. I’ve been trying to repair the software, but it’s going slowly. To be honest, I’m not sure I can fix it all this cycle.”

  Kimura looked at Darius, raising a brow on his wizened face. “You’re rebuilding the whole file?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And you know what problems the old version had?”

  “Yeah.” Darius brought his hand to his temple and rubbed slowly. Crap, why didn’t I think of that sooner? “And I’m pretty sure I know what you’re going to say next.”

  Dr. Kimura smiled gently. “Then, if you please, we are even for your previous assistance. When you have time, return and I will teach you what Colonel Eriksen wants you to know.”

  Darius returned the grin, his white teeth contrasting starkly from his black skin. He turned once more and departed from pod four and into the desolate gallery. His mind began to form ideas on how to structure the task at hand. I don’t need to rewrite the whole file yet. All I need to do is patch the existing one to plug the hole for now.

  He made his way into the computer core and secured himself to the workstation chair. He called up the active com software this time, and with a renewed purpose he read the code and inserted new lines every few pages. So just cap this off…

  His fingers became a blur to him as he stared intently at the screen. A grin crept across his face as the minutes passed and he neared the end of the file. At last he reached the final code insertion. He paused and considered. What do I do with the incoming communications? Darius drummed his thumbs at the edge of the screen.

  A null mailbox. That should do the trick. He created a secured mail file that he could access and directed the com system to dump incoming transmissions from the main array into this new box. That will allow me to review anything that comes in and make sure it doesn’t accidentally shut off any systems.

  Darius stretched and rubbed his eyes.

  But first, I need to sleep.

  Calvin McLaughlin

  25 September 2019 13:48

  Michael

  “What about these two?” Dr. Taylor asked, looking at Calvin instead of the vital signs on the terminal display.

  He glanced quickly at the first set, but his eyes swept back and forth over the readings for the second passenger.

  “The top one is dead, a complete flat line. But the second one…”

  “Take your time”

  “No, I got it. The temperature on the sleeper unit is too high. If it’s not reduced, this passenger will be subject to sulfide poisoning and can die of respiratory failure or… or… cardiac arrest?”

  “Very good. What do you do if the sleeper’s thermal control has failed and you can’t reduce the temperature?”

  Cal’s fingers hovered over the touch screen, and made their way to a red button with a large “X” imposed on top. He tapped the button, the terminal registered a loud buzz, and then the display changed the available commands to a set of four new buttons.

  “First I turn off the hibernation routine with these two buttons, then I turn on the amyl nitrite injector here,” he pointed to each command in sequence.

  “Good. You’re a quick learner, Calvin.”

  “But that will wake up the passenger, right?”

  “Of course, but that’s what you want if their unit is failing. Here, let’s try another set.” She keyed a set of instructions into the terminal, and two fresh vital signs appeared in front of Cal. He studied them for almost a minute each.

  “The first one is normal hibernation, but the second has a fast heartbeat. The temperature of the unit is normal, so this is sulfide poisoning, right?”

  Dr. Taylor pursed her lips, and then frowned slightly.

  “See the regular respiration? Also all of your indicators show the unit is functioning properly. This is actually a child in hibernation. They can have higher heart rates than adults and not be in any danger.”

  “OK, I understand.”

  “So are you ready to try it with real passengers?”

  Cal drew a great breath in and closed his eyes. He collected himself for a moment, exhaled, and nodded. Dr. Taylor exited the simulation program and called up the first pair of passengers with a short series of touches.

  Cal opened his eyes. Though his gaze looked forward, he was keenly aware of Dr. Taylor watching him. Slow, regular signs of life showed on his screen.

  “These two are normal,” he said.

  “Correct. Push that arrow to move to the next set,” Dr. Taylor said as she pointed
to a green triangle on the screen.

  Cal moved to the next set of vitals and studied them for a minute.

  “First one is normal, second one… a child?”

  Dr. Taylor’s eyes momentarily left Cal and went to the terminal screen.

  “Correct.”

  Cal summoned another pair of vitals to the screen. “These two are also normal.”

  “Correct.”

  “So you really sit here all day and scroll through looking at nothing, Doctor?”

  She turned away from Calvin and moved to another terminal at the far end of the sleeper unit’s hallway. Dr. Taylor turned it on with a keystroke and called up the passenger monitoring program. “It may seem like tedious work, but it’s extremely important. If something goes wrong with a passenger or a sleeper, we can catch it and possibly save their life.”

  “I understand.”

  Not exactly the kind of work that I was expecting, but maybe I can make myself useful.

  The pair worked in near silence, only broken by the occasional chirp from their terminals as commands were processed. Cal worked significantly slower than the doctor, his inexperience preventing him from doing more than six passengers every minute. As the minutes ticked away, Cal found his mind wandering from the tedium. He thought of the passengers within the sleeper units and wondered if they were dreaming.

  I had a dream when I was in hibernation, and it wasn’t pleasant. Are they all terrified, or do they have pleasant dreams? Was I just torturing myself?

  He realized that his thoughts had wandered, and brought his full attention back to his work. Cal glanced briefly over at the aging doctor, and noted to himself how quickly she could read the vitals. He turned back to the terminal and continued his analysis of the passengers.

  The duo finished their work in forty minutes. Cal’s neck had become somewhat strained as he was unaccustomed to working in zero-G. He rubbed his hand on his neck in a vain effort to relieve the tension.

  “And thus concludes my work, for now,” Dr. Taylor said.

  “How often do you do this?”

  “At least twice a day.”