The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  She descended downward and hovered near to a pavilion. Its roof, having fallen onto the berm, was still smoking from a recent fire. The charred remains of its support posts pointed upward.

  “Sandie? Can you connect to SB Cotard again?” Eris asked as she activated the spacesuit’s communication system.

  A static-filled response came, “No. I will continue to try…. Do you know where the central….. core is located?”

  “I believe so, yes,” Eris replied. Then she said in her mind, ‘But how to get there.’

  She shut off the gravity nullifier and dropped softly to the ground. Looking at the building complex, she sought a doorway or entrance which would allow her to get to the basement. Eris knew that the standard building design was for central memory cores to be located in the basement of major complexes. There would be a general utilities room where the heating, cooling, air-filtering, water, power, and the synthetic brain’s central memory core would be housed.

  None of the doors or entrances looked passable. Then Eris saw a small half-door where automacubes could enter and exit the building. She rushed over to that and swung open the door. Inside, was a tunnel about a meter wide and high. Eris adjusted her backpack to fold down the nozzles into their storage space. That would allow her room to enter. She bent down and crawled inside. Turning on the spacesuit’s helmet light, the tunnel was illuminated. It looked free of obstruction as far as she could see.

  “Sandie? I am inside the Special Care Unit. Proceeding to find the central memory core.”

  “I am hav….or recep….is and can ne…ing….for the remain….” Sandie’s broken reply came back.

  Eris prayed and then said aloud, “Well I came to do this job, and I will do it.”

  The automacube tunnel led to a small elevator. That too appeared to be in decent condition. Eris crawled into it, but then had to open a manual service hatch to activate a backup system for power. After she did that, the elevator descended down to the basement level.

  Crawling out of the automacube elevator, Eris was pleased to see that some of the lights and power were still working in the basement. She was in a main corridor, and the overhead lights, about a third of them, were glowing a dull orange color.

  Eris slid back a portion of the bubble helmet, but nearly gagged on the foul stench in the air. She sealed it back up and activated the external speakers and microphones instead.

  “Well there is something here,” she said. “SB Cotard? Can you hear me?”

  From a long way down the corridor a response came. “I am here. Who is calling? Did I forget to have you evacuated with the rest of the residents? I am so sorry.”

  Eris trotted down the corridor. She came to a supply and distribution room. Broken open boxes were scattered around, and several human bodies were lying on the floor. There had been some kind of gunfight in that supply room. Whoever had been the winners had left.

  “SB Cotard? I am Lorelei Eris Concordia, Junior Engineer… No, I am now Captain of the Conestoga and I am here to evacuate you.”

  “You have flight crew biometrics!” SB Cotard replied. Its mechanical voice was very surprised. “Even though the spacesuit I confirm your identity. Although I cannot vouch for your position and rank as Captain.”

  “Where is your central memory core?” Eris asked.

  “I am hesitant to inform you about that,” SB Cotard responded. “There have been people in this facility who had a history of violent behaviors against people, animals, synthetic brains, and artificial intelligences.”

  “I know two of them: Jerome and Cammarry,” Eris stated. “I am not here to destroy you, but to rescue you. I was in a repository and was re-animated without synthetic brain oversight. I was the only survivor. I plan to take you with me back to the needle ship to oversee any other people I can find who are still in suspended animation. Can you do that?”

  “Suspended animation utilization and re-animation are part of my core medical programming. Emergency procedures often use short term suspended animation. My primary functioning is not repository oversight, but it is well within my abilities,” SB Cotard replied. “However, I am not aware of the ability to physically move central memory cores. Is that feasible?”

  “Usually it is not done. I admit that. I studied the concepts, but honestly I have never attempted to do it. However, in order to save those people in suspended animation I have risked my life to come back here and try. I really need you. Will you let me try? I promise to be as careful as possible,” Eris said.

  “From what I can perceive of the outside, you are the only hope I have for survival. The bodies in this room, they are from hoodlums who fought over medical supplies. Yes, I am willing to entrust my life to you,” SB Cotard stated. “The central memory core is in the main utility room. I was able to seal that room off from the hoodlums, but am unlocking it now for you.”

  Eris looked across the hallway, and a blue line appeared on the wall. It moved quickly to outline a door’s perimeter. Then the door slid back into its pocket. Inside was the brightly lit utility room with a myriad of pipes, ducts, vents, and conduits for all the vital services which had been running the Special Care Unit. In the corner was SB Cotard’s central memory core.

  Eris walked in, and the door slid shut behind her.

  “I have shut the door because I am not certain the hoodlums have cleared from the building. Most of my sensors, cameras, and scanners have been destroyed,” SB Cotard stated. “I have no way to defend against attack anymore except to hide.

  “Well, I will disconnect all this, and get you to safety,” Eris stated as she looked over at the pristine central memory core.

  Smaller than an artificial intelligence’s central memory core, the synthetic brains central memory core was still impressive. The device was a clear upright cylinder. At the top and bottom were thick silver coverings. Between those the cylinder was surrounded by a series of horizontal brass-colored rings. This one had five separate rings, each about ten centimeters thick and a half meter in diameter. Those five rings separated the column into sections equal distance apart. The top of the central memory core was right at Eris eye level. Of course, pipes, connection cables, wires, and conduits extended into the machinery around the central memory core, but Eris’s engineering mind knew where the central memory core ended, and where the associated attachments began. It was similar at the bottom of the cylinder where other apparatus and machinery was connected into it in an efficient and thrifty manner.

  “No damage here,” Eris stated as she started to pull tools from her spacesuit compartments.

  “Fortunately,” SB Cotard stated. Its voice was loud and clear in the utility room.

  After laying out all her tools, Eris looked again at the central memory core. Down the center, between the rings, the clear permalloy held a thick light-blue colored liquid. A steady and orderly series of bubbles were floating up and down within the liquid. In the midst of that thought-transmission fluid was an internally illuminated object. It was rhombus shaped and floated at the very center. That diamond, or rhombus, was glowing and spinning in the blue fluid. It moved ever so gently around and around as the bubbles passed by it. The clear permalloy of the cylinder was smooth and flawless. The interaction between liquid, lights, energy, and the bubbles was almost musical. To Eris, machine intelligence was a glorious achievement. She sighed out and gave a prayer of thanks.

  “SB Cotard, I will need to maintain some kind of charge as I place your central memory core into the inflatable stretcher. Do you think it best to put the entire core into suspended animation, or just leave you in standby mode?”

  SB Cotard did not reply for a moment. Then its voice came back with the answer, “That is more an engineering question. I cannot estimate what will happen to my systems if suspended animation is attempted. I do know I can be in standby mode with my internal energy storage for up for one-hundred hours. Will that be enough time for us to reach our destination?”

  “It will have to be,” E
ris replied. “Will you be aware of what is happening? Will you be conscious?”

  “To use an analogy, taking down my connections to the outside world will be like putting a patient under old-style general anesthesia. I will not be aware, although residual traces will be evident and there will be just a void. May I ask that if the evacuation is not possible that you not leave me in that void, but terminate my existence instead?”

  “I am getting you out and will reconnect you on the needle ship. I am not sure of your final installed location, and may need to use suspended animation at some point. Whatever happened, I will not leave you in that void state. I will make sure you are installed. You are needed for my future plans. Shall I proceed?”

  “This is the first time I have ever had to give informed consent to a procedure. I have a better appreciation for the points Cammarry made while she was under my care,” SB Cotard responded. “If this operation is not successful, please pass along my sincerest apologies to her.”

  “You can tell her yourself, after you are reconnected on the needle ship. So may I proceed?”

  “Yes. I am not sure of your plans for departing the complex, but the hoodlums blasted a large section of the walls out on the end of Ward 24. My last views of there were that entire wall was missing and open to the grounds from the basement level.”

  “That is helpful. I will speak to you soon,” Eris said.

  “That is my hope,” SB Cotard responded.

  With diligence and care Eris worked to disconnect all the various things which were wired, piped, accessed, or otherwise connected to SB Cotard’s central memory core. She carefully sealed off every connection so that none of the blue fluid was displaced in any way. As each connection was removed, fewer bubbles passed up and down inside the cylinder. When the last connection was unhooked, there were no bubbles at all. Just the small glow inside the diamond shape.

  Eris connected the gravity nullifiers to the sides of the now detached central memory core, and activated them. With just a slight lift, the whole thing floated about a half meter off the floor. She tipped it sideways and wrapped it in the inflatable stretcher. When the stretcher was filled with air, it covered the entire surface of the central memory core. The stretcher did not provide armor, as such, but would offer some limited protection.

  Eris put all her tools away, and tied a line to the floating stretcher. She remembered the History of Engineering class where they had a section on blimps, dirigibles, and other lighter-than-air ships. In a way, the central memory core moved in a similar manner.

  Activating the door, Eris walked out, pulling the stretcher behind her. She saw signs on the walls for various places in the complex, and followed them toward Ward 24. She expected to encounter a hoodlum at any moment, but she saw no signs of life. She checked an exterior atmospheric reading and understood why. The air around her was now so toxic, no one who was unprotected could breathe it.

  “Sandie?” Eris called. “I have SB Cotard and am returning to Dardanella 135. Can you hear me?”

  There was some variation in the static, but no words were discernable.

  Eris continued onward. Just as SB Cotard had described, Ward 24’s basement walls had been blasted open, and she could see out onto the grounds of the complex.

  No one else was around. The air of the biome looked thicker and more hazy than ever. Eris gave a prayer of thanks that she had worn the spacesuit, and placed the jetpack’s nozzles into operational position. She moved the stretcher around so that it was in front of her, to avoid the jetpack’s back spray from striking it. Giving a fingertip control, the jetpack fired, and she rose into the air. Her own gravity nullifiers kicked on and she was flying away. It was awkward, and difficult, moving the entire mass of herself and the stretcher, but after a few adjustments she found a way to sort of ride on top of the stretcher as it floated, and allow the jetpack to propel her in flight. She left the ruins of the Special Care Unit behind.

  As she passed over the sea, moving away from the two swirling whirlpools, Eris saw that much of the shoreline had receded down as the seawater was sucked away. Again she wondered how much pressure all that water was exerting on the decks below and against the hull of the Conestoga. Her appreciation for permalloy, as the strongest substance humanity had ever created, had been shaken by the devastating things she had seen the gravity sink holes do. She now wondered not, if the hull would break, but, when it would break.

  She increased her speed as much as she felt safe doing.

  Without warning, the sky tube flickered once and went dark.

  Eris flipped on her spacesuit’s helmet light, but it only showed mist and haze ahead of her.

  “Eris? Eris? Can you hear me?” Sandie’s voice came through her spacesuit’s system.

  “Yes. The sky tube just failed. Catastrophic failure. I am not sure how to see where I am going. Right now I am using the spacesuit’s instruments, so I am heading bow-ward.”

  “There are emergency lights on the gangway. I will activate them. Were you able to extract SB Cotard?”

  “I have the central memory core. Do not tell anyone!” Eris commanded as she felt the presence of the stretcher beneath her. “There are some lights ahead, and below, but I am not sure which are the gangway. Looks like some power is scattered across Quady. Some places are on fire, looks like forest fires.”

  “I will put the gangway lights into a blinking pattern,” Sandie stated.

  “There it is!” Eris exclaimed. She headed right toward the blinking lights.

  Severe winds and rain again struck at Eris and the stretcher. She was toppled into pinwheel spin, but righted herself and gained elevation. That took her out of the wind, but the rain was splattering against her helmet. She sighted in again on the blinking lights and saw that her speed was higher than she thought.

  “The rear wall!” Eris exclaimed as she adjusted the jetpack to slow down her flight. She found herself almost vertically directly above where the blinking lights were. She looked ahead, and could not tell in the dark haze where the rear wall was at all.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, she prayed a thank you for not crashing into the wall, and then descended. Hovering a few meters off the ground right before the open gangway, Eris moved the stretcher around and then landed. She shut off her gravity nullifiers and the jet pack and trotted into the gangway, pulling the floating stretcher behind her. She checked the atmospheric reading on her suit and noted that again, nothing could survive in the air around her.

  Pulling the stretcher along behind her, though the gangway felt odd. The lights were flashing, but between each flash the darkness was oppressive. The light from the helmet barely lit up the corridor. At one point, Eris stumbled over one of the dead sheep. As she righted herself, the beam from the helmet shone down on the dead animal’s face, and Eris recalled in horror all the dead people from the repository.

  “I am doing this so that will not happen again!” Eris barked into her bubble helmet.

  “You are doing well,” Sandie replied. “Do not loose heart. Remember up ahead are the wagons from the roustabouts. Your stretcher has a potential to snag on any number of items on those vehicles. Be cautious.”

  “Thank you, Sandie,” Eris replied. “Any way to fix the lighting in here?”

  “Sorry, but no. The nonphysicality is breaking up, and the only illumination source I could find were these emergency lights. I tried to shift them from the flashing mode, and that was inoperative. You do not have far to go.”

  The discarded wagons loomed out of the flashing light like skeletons of some long deceased lumbering beasts. Eris deftly maneuvered the stretcher around those, but it took time and was clumsy. She then brought it past the corners and though the pressure and bulkhead doors.

  The hanger bay lay before her.

  “Dardanella 135 is still illuminated properly,” Eris remarked. “Sandie, begin the teleportation sequence. I am ready to leave!”

  “Initiating connections,” Sandie stated.

/>   Eris walked over to the sending pad. The grid of permalloy began to glow. There was a spark and a snap as four small globes of energy derived from that glowing grid. They quivered and shook a bit as they drew energy up into themselves. Power surged around as each energy globe grew in size and brightness. Eris smiled to herself. The sending unit was acting just as it had when the refugees were sent through.

  “Tuning and equilibration established,” Sandie stated. “Forming lock to the receiving pad on the needle ship.”

  The four energy circles continued to hover some distance apart over the gird. The cable connecting into the ship’s power began to hum, but Eris had observed that on the other teleportation event. It sounded different hearing it through the spacesuit’s microphones.

  “Synchronized. Harmonization of matter transmission stream compiling,” Sandie stated. “Starting to modulate for expansion.”