The real expense was in the habitat. There were plenty of ships that weren’t much more than a collection of environment-controlled boxes stacked on top of drive systems. Finding something with a rotational habitat and its own gravity systems meant a recreational craft, mostly in the class of a private yacht, since the rich could afford gravity.
There were ways around the lack of gravity in long-term travel: special sleeping bags that exercised muscle, body enhancements, even nano-tech, but none of those options weren’t especially healthy for growing children. Or at least not Brit’s standard of healthy.
“We could spend a couple years on Mars,” Andy suggested. Through all the searching, he had become enamored of the idea of owning a farm somewhere in the free zones where land was still cheap. He spent hours a day researching the new designs for above-ground water storage that also served as radiation shields. A used burrowing-drone was a lot cheaper than a ship.
“If we don’t do this now, I don’t think we’ll ever do it,” had been Brit’s answer. She was probably right. There wasn’t much money in farming; enough to support yourself, if that. They would buy a farm and find themselves trapped there.
Andy couldn’t explain it, but having Cara in their lives made him feel more and more that he needed ground under his feet, someplace stable to call their own. The idea of living in OuterSol with only a ship as ‘home’ seemed somehow destined for trouble, like saying they were going to be wandering actors.
But he loved Brit and he could barely contain the emotion he felt when he looked at Cara. He wanted to support her dream but didn’t know how it was truly going to happen.
“Why are you putting so much effort into her dream?” Major Ryth had asked. “Tell her you want to spend a couple years on Mars. It makes total sense. It’s not like you’re talking about settling there. You’re hardly over thirty, for fuck’s sake.”
Andy covered Cara’s ears. “Watch your language around the baby, sir.”
Major Ryth, who claimed he was never leaving the TSF, seemed faintly amused and saddened every time he saw Andy, as if he were talking to a buddy who’d suffered a head injury and refused to see a doctor out of pride. Maybe that was true. Ryth looked at Cara hanging in a carrier from Andy’s chest like she was a strange animal with ridiculous rules.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry. I handle grenades more than kids.”
“8221 messed with Brit,” Andy said. “I can’t blame her. She doesn’t like the idea of being exposed.”
“And you won’t be exposed on a ship in OuterSol? JSF doesn’t keep as close a lid on things as the TSF does down by Sol.”
“Not the way she sees it, sir.”
Ryth nodded as if he could see the point. “Have you decided for certain you’re getting out?”
“That’s the plan.”
“It’s a terrible plan. You’re going to miss the TSF.”
“Yeah.”
“We should drink,” Ryth said. “This is depressing the shit out of me.”
“It’s not depressing,” Andy said, bouncing Cara. “It’s a new life.”
“A new life without heavy weaponry. I couldn’t do it.” Ryth tilted his head and studied Cara. Aside from never wanting to sleep, she had become a surprisingly calm baby. Andy had to remind himself that, to her, the world ten inches beyond her face was a swimming blur. Her blue eyes seemed to drink in everything around her. He found himself just watching her as she studied the mobile above her crib, little brow furrowing with what looked like the deepest thoughts.
“Can we take her to the firing range? I feel like wasting some lead and rail rounds.”
“I think they’ll take her away if I do that.”
Ryth shook his head. “What good is a baby then?” he gave Andy a wry smile. “You know, I fell in love, once upon a time. Thought about settling down, having kids, all that. It’s a nice thought. Grab it when you can. I guess I should have.”
“What happened, sir?” Andy asked.
“I cheated on her.” Ryth had been staring into the distance for a second. He turned his gaze back to Andy. “You never called me about that ship. You two have been crawling all over High Terra ship lots when you should have just called me.”
Andy didn’t want to admit he’d forgotten about his commander’s offer of a favor. “Where’s the ship, sir?” he asked.
Ryth nodded judiciously. “It’s sitting in a junk yard on one of the spurs. I think they’re about to cut it loose and let it drift out to a refinery to get melted down, so you can get a deal.”
Andy bounced Cara, frowning. “If it’s about to get scrapped, why are you telling me about it?”
“It’s old, but I think it could work for you.”
“How’d you hear about it?”
“I won it in a poker game.”
“It’s your ship, sir?”
“I guess so. I’ve never done anything with it. You should take a look. If it works for you two, you’d be doing me a favor, really. I’m sick of paying storage fees. That’s why it’s in a scrap section now. That’s cheaper than an actual berth. I’m sending you the address. You’ll need EV suits to get on board.”
“Thanks, sir. I really appreciate this.”
“Don’t thank me until you see it. She’s ugly, but she’ll get the job done.”
“What’s it called?” Andy asked.
“Sunny Skies.” He chuckled. “What a depressing name.”
Cara made a cooing sound and Ryth touched her nose with a rough finger. She smiled, drooling, and reached for him. The major tested her grip.
“That’s all right,” he said, nodding. “You’ve got a good young soldier, there, Sykes. She’s already stronger than you.”
* * * * *
They had to leave Cara with a sitter, something Andy was more anxious about than Brit. Riding a series of maglev trains down to the outer levels of High Terra—which everyone called ‘low’ but actually faced away from Earth—they took a shuttle down the thousand-kilometer spur station hanging off the ring and found the automated scrap yard. They waited in the customer service area for an hour as Major Ryth’s codes finally cleared with the automated maintenance system.
“I guess he wasn’t kidding about the ship getting cut loose soon,” Andy said.
“As long as they don’t do it while we’re on board.”
In EV suits, they entered the grease-stained airlock and waited for the automated systems to cycle. It had been nearly a year since Andy had been in vacuum, and he didn’t realize how much he had missed the Big Dark until the outer doors opened and the outside space left him speechless.
They crossed the open dock space, surrounded by the dark, silent hulks of ships that had obviously been dead for a long time. Most had sections of their hulls open to space, like cut-out dollhouses showing corridors, cargo bays and even living spaces. Several had drifted into each other and now seemed huddled together like they were hiding from the inevitable release to Earth’s gravity, or the disassembly drones, depending on the price of steel.
Andy searched among the sections of scrap and shadow, flat pieces of steel reflecting sunlight. As they came closer, a long, narrow shape separated itself from the greater jumble: a tube with drive clusters at one end and a habitat wheel with fat spokes. Bow and stern arranged themselves in his mind just as his suit’s nav computer highlighted the ship a
nd identified its registry signal.
They floated together for a minute, looking at the ship. Andy didn’t want to get his hopes up but from the exterior he didn’t see any major damage.
It took another half hour to reach the ship and find an operational airlock. The entry point on the habitat was unresponsive and for a minute Andy thought the ship wasn’t going to have any power at all. The mid-point airlock responded, though. Andy entered Ryth’s owner codes and they waited for the ship’s computer to respond.
Andy shook his head, scrolling through transport logs that ended twenty years ago.
Once inside the ship, Andy checked the schematics and made Brit stay with him until he could find the main drive control and verify ship’s power. The batteries were still holding a serviceable charge from what turned out to be a robust solar collection system. He was able to activate the internal lighting system on batteries alone. As the lights flickered on around them, he had the feeling of being inside a resurrected body, watching it take breath after a long stasis.
It wasn’t until they reached the habitat wheel that Andy started to believe this might be the ship they had been looking for. The internal corridors were full of junk. Wires and conduit hung from open panels everywhere. It looked like scrappers had been through the ship at least once, yanking out several high-value fixtures and systems.
Discovering the command deck in mostly usable shape, Andy found himself breathing a sigh of relief. He didn’t want to let himself get excited. He could sense that Brit was getting there.
They floated through crew chambers with battered furniture that could work as family rooms, the kitchen with its empty cabinets and storage areas with refrigeration units humming to life.
When they found the hydroponic garden, Brit made a sound like a sigh. He couldn’t see her face well through her face shield but he wasn’t surprised when she said,
Chapter Thirty-Nine
STELLAR DATE: 08.27.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Near Cruithne, Terran Hegemony
Andy stumbled out of the habitat airlock and found himself under assault from two sets of small arms. He grabbed onto the bulkhead before Tim and Cara could knock him over, and did his best to return the hugs between equal bouts of laughing and crying. Behind them, Fran stood in the corridor with her arms crossed, the overlays in her green eyes gleaming. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and gave him a smile.
“I watched you in the video, Dad!” Tim said. “All those people were coming at you and you stopped them.”
“Turns out they weren’t people,” Andy said. “I think they were robots.”
“Robots?” Cara said. “You mean mobile AI?”
“Maybe.”
“Dad?” Cara asked. She grabbed his free hand. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, dazed. He squeezed his eyes closed, then forced them open despite the sudden headache. “I’d like to get out of this suit and sit down for a second.” He glanced at Fran. “What’s going on outside?”
“The Benevolent Hand is dead in space. From the chatter I’ve heard, they’re fighting deck to deck. Heartbridge has been issuing statements on the public channels calling for any available ship to help them against a pirate attack. The TSF sent a few counter-messages but they’re getting drowned by Heartbridge PR. It’s depressing how good they are. They’ve already put a face on the Benevolent Hand Massacre, a little girl named Lisa.”
“How surprising,” Andy said. He let them lead him down the corridor past the med bay. Glancing in the open door at Petral—still unconscious in bed—he asked, “Any change with her?”
“Good, actually,” Fran said. “The organ repair went faster than we expected. I figure we can wake her anytime now.” She chuckled. “She’s going to be so pissed.”
“She’s alive. She should be happy about that.”
“You don’t know Petral. She missed all the fighting.” Fran shot Andy a sly glance. “And all the fun.”
Andy cleared his throat. “Are we back on course for Mars 1?”
“I set the course, Dad,” Cara said. “Fran didn’t believe me that I knew how to do it.”
“Wasn’t the course already in there?” he asked.
Cara gave him a sour face. “I had to find it in the library and reset the flight parameters. I checked fuel status and the engine load just like you showed me.”
“The system should do that automatically now,” Fran offered.
“We don’t trust the system,” Cara shot back.
Andy tousled her hair and she ducked away from his hand, which made Tim stumble when he found himself carrying his dad’s full weight.
“Oh!” Cara said, pushing up under Andy’s arm again. “Sorry. I forgot you couldn’t walk.”
“I did just fight off four robots and a gangster.”
“We’re going to have to fix Alice again,” Cara said.
“I don’t think Alice is a drone,” Andy said. “It’s a cat.”
“She’s a cat!” Cara corrected.
When they reached the command deck, Andy sank into the captain’s seat the glanced at the overlays showing system status. The holodisplay had pulled back to show only star locations and their projected course from Cruithne to Mars 1. The flightpath estimate showed fifteen days again.
Were people really going to share their heads with AI in the future? Andy found her silence aggravating. He wondered if he could force her to respond to him.
Andy barked a laugh.
“What are you laughing at?” Tim asked. He was standing beside Andy, gazing at the holodisplay’s collection of stars and path-lines.
“So that you don’t all think I’m crazy,” Andy said, raising his voice slightly to get everyone’s attention. “Lyssa has decided to start talking to me.”
Lyssa gasped.
“She did?” Cara said. She crossed the room from the communications console and peered into Andy’s eyes as if she wanted to search out the AI in the back of his head.
“She’s not ready to say hello yet,” Andy said.
Cara shook her head. �
��How’s she supposed to communicate with us, Dad? Has she got the Link? You and Fran could hear her then but not me and Tim. That’s not fair.”
“What about your hack? It didn’t seem to stop you from listening in before.”
“Maybe. It only works when you’re using the ship systems. Maybe we could set up a local network through one of the EV helmets.”
“And I would have to wear a helmet all the time?”
Cara shrugged. “It would work.”
Andy spread his hands on either side of his head. “Could we put antennae on either side of the helmet, like fox ears?”
“The antenna inside the helmet will work just fine, Dad.”
“Sure, but I’d like to have fox ears. Can we paint a fox face on the face shield?”
Cara finally figured out he was kidding her. “Dad!” she said. “I was being serious. How are we going to talk to her?”
“We’ll leave her alone for a while. When she wants to talk to us, we’ll figure out a way.”
“Dad!” Tim shouted, pulling his arm. “Are you falling asleep? You can’t fall asleep.”
Andy wiped the side of his face. Lyssa hadn’t said anything else.
He looked down at Tim, whose eyes were round and excited. There might have been a desperation there, too, he realized. He looked at Cara suddenly and saw the same edge of fear mixed with relief and fatigue. Everything they’d been through since the apartment in Cruithne, the train ride, Karcher’s death, Petral getting hurt, all the high-g maneuvers. None of it was any place for kids, yet he couldn’t imagine them anywhere but with him.
They must have been terrified to watch the camera in the airlock, seeing him surrounded by the—Weapon Born, Lyssa called them. He still wasn’t sure how he’d survived. Lyssa had helped him somehow, or they’d worked together. Or had it been Tim’s voice in his head, holding him steady with the poem?
Lyssa's Dream - A Hard Science Fiction AI Adventure (The Sentience Wars - Origins Book 1) Page 29
