Running With Argentine
Page 31
When someone had questioned her memory, she’d just laughed… And then started reminiscing about how the children would play and hide in those very same unoccupied sections. She explained that this was a generational ship. Designed for long duration exploration. People raised families and celebrated the passing of elders when they crewed on a ship like the Roosevelt.
The furthest section aft reconnected the four sections into one massive hub. It contained the large-scale workshops, heavy industry, power plant, and massive engines.
The T.L.S. Roosevelt was literally a small city.
The Pelican’s second shuttle run had carried Paula's wheelchair aboard. They were using it now to push forward and find the bridge.
At the same time, the chief was taking a small team to find the tram that would take them to the engineering section.
It was a somewhat eerie experience. They all carried hand lamps; the emergency lighting would keep you from tripping, but not much else.
Paula's memory might've been vague back in her cabin when she was describing the ship's layout, but along the way she seemed very confident. She would occasionally have to stop at an intersection and illuminate a section of blank wall. It was as if she were reading something none of the rest of them could see. She would then, once again, guide the group forward without hesitation.
The last elevator the group used opened up onto a very wide corridor.
The team walked its length until it ended at four sets of double doors.
They helped Paula out of her chair and she, without hesitation, walked up to the bulkhead that separated the two center doors and placed her palm upon it.
Both sets of center doors opened and we walked onto the bridge.
It was incredible…
ΔΔΔ
The bridge itself was a large dome.
The two outside doors led down a shallow ramp to a 5 foot sunken area that comprised the outside two thirds of the dome floor.
The inner two doors opened up on a slightly raised section that extended forward but stopped well short of the center of the room.
It was wide enough to comfortably hold several work consoles, each with its own seat. At center, is what was obviously the Captain's Chair.
Behind it, in slightly raised theater style seating, were a dozen other plush seats.
Everyone had stopped in their tracks when they’d first entered. The size of the room was… Unexpected. And though Argentine and his team quickly recovered and started talking excitedly, Paula remained transfixed.
He said to her quietly, "Are you okay?"
"Oh yes!" she whispered back.
She looked up at Argentine and said, "Let me show you something…" And then louder, "Sami, you'll want to see this."
She shuffled over to one of the consoles and set down. "This is the astrogation station," she said with pride. "Watch this…"
She placed her hands palms down on the console… And the entire dome transformed into a giant star field…
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Wonders Abound
Aboard the Roosevelt
At about the same time in a different area of the ship, the chief almost lost his balance…
They'd just stepped on a tram that he’d hoped would transverse the entire length of the ships keel.
He wasn't used to experiencing the effects of inertia on a spaceship. One of the many things that had made spaceflight possible (one of the most important things, actually), was inertial dampening. The massive acceleration's used in space flight would crush everyone and everything without this important piece of technology.
But he'd never been on a ship, he realized, that was big enough to carry these type of moving parts inside it.
And that wasn't the biggest surprise…
He almost lost his balance again, but this time it was from an overwhelming feeling of expanse... When their tramcar had exited the forward section of the ship it became obvious that the top half of the car was transparent – and the tube they were traveling in was built into the top of the keel.
The other three scaffolded sections of the ship were now visible in all their detail.
As fast as their tramcar must be moving, the other parts of the ship were so distant it felt like they were inching along.
The chief, Dr. Amaya, and Marco and Nicu Petulengro all stood with their mouths agape; the majesty and size of what they were looking at was… Awesome.
The chief gave yet another start when Nicu grabbed his arm and pointed…
"There! Look! People! There's someone here!"
It took a moment, but the chief finally found what he was pointing at and almost had to pull his heart back out from his throat…
There were moving lights… A bunch of them.
And if there were moving lights, it meant ships.
He was just about to raise Argentine on his comm when they came into a closer view of one of those objects…
"They're machines," the doctor observed. "I don't think they're big enough for even a single pilot."
She was right, the chief realized. They were looking at some type of robotic maintenance work. It made sense, when he thought about it some more. A ship this size, no matter how advanced, would need constant upkeep…
But the robotic technology on display here was certainly far more advanced than anything he'd experienced.
ΔΔΔ
Eventually their tramcar left the transparent tube it had been traveling in and the chief assumed they were in the aft hub. The tramcar, however, didn't stop.
"How do we stop the car and get off?" Nicu asked.
The chief had no idea but said, "We don't need to stop it. We want to go all the way to the end, anyway. That's where we'll find engineering."
When the car stopped the doors automatically slid open. They exited the tram and only took a few steps before, again, they all stopped and stared…
They were in a massive chamber. A chamber that just might extend the entire width and height of the hub.
It was full of massive equipment and latticed structural supports.
"What is all this?" asked the doctor.
"Unless I miss my guess," the chief replied absently. "Those huge constructs there are heatsinks – one for each engine. Those could very well be magnetic containment bottles. I've just never seen them that… Large.”
"Where are the engines themselves?" Nicu asked.
"That's the aft environmental bulkhead," the chief said pointing to a twenty story high, heavily reinforced wall. The engines will be just on the other side of it. We'd need special protection to inspect them."
They eventually discovered the glass-walled control room for the massive engineering space. It was a third of the way up the bow-side bulkhead and could be accessed by stairs or elevator.
Once he'd inspected the control room he knew it would require some study, but the chief figured he more or less had a handle on the controls.
"So what controls the Dreamspace motors?" Marco asked.
"Nothing here," the chief responded. "As a matter of fact, I don't see any Dreamspace machinery anywhere in this chamber."
In addition to two side doors opening onto the engineering space, there was a door set into the solid bulkhead on the bow side of the room.
Pointing to it the chief said, "Let's see where that takes us."
ΔΔΔ
The next compartment forward did hold the Dreamspace motors.
The control room door had immediately slid open as he stepped up to it revealing an almost identical control room on the other side of the bulkhead.
The chamber it serviced, although still large, was considerably smaller.
The chief glanced around the room through the glass-like windows; the equipment in this chamber was much more familiar to him. Obviously of an advanced design, most of it was still clearly recognizable.
Maybe Dreamspace technology could only be refined so far?
What held most of his attention, however, was the
forward bulkhead of the chamber. It was convex; as if it represented the closest third of a sphere that was mostly hidden on the other side.
There was a walking bridge from this control room to a hatch on the sphere.
The chief didn't need an engraved imitation…
Because this chamber was much smaller it didn't take long to transverse the bridge.
The door into the sphere didn't immediately open.
The chief, copying what he'd seen Paula do, put his flat palm on the bulkhead next to it. To his surprise, it then opened.
The control room they walked into was similar to the first two. But the chamber it overlooked was anything but…
After only a few moments the chief keyed his comm…
"Captain, we found the engine room. We also found the room that contains the Dreamspace motors...
"Yes, they're all incredible… But we've also found a third chamber."
"No, that's just it. The equipment I'm looking at is incredible… It's like nothing I've ever seen. And no, Captain. I have no idea what it's for…"
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
A Small City
Aboard the Roosevelt
Argentine stared in wonder at the dome that covered the entire room.
He momentarily considered if he was looking through an actual transparent dome when suddenly the star scape shifted and zoomed slightly in to highlight a blinking star…
"That is the Paladin-system," Paula said aloud.
Another blinking light appeared halfway across the dome…
"And this is our current location."
On one of the lower edges of the forward side of the dome, a large screen appeared and began rapidly flickering through many different configurations. After a moment, the screen magically moved to the left and a second appeared in its old position. Albeit more slowly, it too began flickering through images.
Both screens were large enough to be seen by everyone in the room, although they occupied only a small portion of the dome. Argentine realized that the entire dome itself must be a computer screen, probably configurable in an unimaginable number of ways.
"Captain, what would you have me do?" Paula asked.
"Ahh… Do you think you could take the ship out of Defensive Mode?" he asked.
"I honestly don't…" Suddenly a smile spread across her face.
Just then, Argentine’s comm beeped…
"Captain? Is my signal getting through? This is Rory. I don't know what you just did, but all of the sudden I'm picking up normal energy readings from the ship. It's like someone lifted a veil or something."
"I hear you, Rory. I think we just took the ship out of its automatic defensive mode, and apparently dampening her energy signature was part of that…"
As he was speaking he watched Paula nod at his words.
"Captain? There's something else… Remember that huge hanger-like structure running along the side of the fuselage? It's open and it just lit up. I even have approach strobes."
Paula spoke up, "If you want, you can bring your ship aboard now. It might make things much easier."
"Rory, are you sure the hangers will be big enough? Would Barry have any trouble piloting the ship in?"
"The hanger’s more than big enough… And yeah, there’s so much room even a blind teenager could bring the ship in. Is that what you want us to do?"
As Argentine was telling Rory to go ahead and do it he could've sworn that Paula giggled.
He turned to Sami, Mandi, and the lieutenant…
"Well, it looks like we have a ship."
ΔΔΔ
Paula fell asleep in her wheelchair before they'd made it all the way back to her cabin.
Along the way, though, she had explained a few things…
The golden circlet she was wearing was actually part of the ship. When calibrated to its wearer, it was a cerebral interface that enhanced an individual's ability to communicate with the ship’s core intelligence.
For astrogators at their station on the bridge, it could be a totally immersive experience. For everyone else, however, it was much less pervasive.
A crewman, for example, when wearing it would almost instinctively know which doors on the ship would open for him and which wouldn't. The more senior the officer, apparently, the more beneficial they were.
Before she'd fallen asleep, Paula had suggested that they search enough crew quarters to find a good fitting circlet for everyone. She'd never done it before, but she was fairly confident she could communicate with the medical bay's computer well enough to have them re-customized to each crewman's unique brain waves.
She'd also returned the ship to normal lighting.
Argentine had just finished a conversation with the chief. He’d seen him get riled up and animated before, but this was something special.
Apparently the level of technology he'd found was an engineer's dream, and some of the rest of it was totally unrecognizable. The fact that they'd observed maintenance bots also answered another question he'd been wondering about… Why was the ship so clean?
And why had they not run across any bodies?
Once they'd returned Paula to her cabin, he'd instructed Mandi and the lieutenant to go guide Rory and the rest of the crew back to this section and have everyone claim a cabin.
"Oh, and bring something to eat with you. We haven't found the mess hall yet," he'd remembered to add.
He then waited for the chief's team to get back before starting anything else.
In his mind, they needed to get some rest and then each find a circlet interface, and get Paula to the Medical Bay.
He might have a ship, but it wouldn't be until then that he would know if he could command it…
ΔΔΔ
"This is the first time I've seen her excited about anything," the lieutenant said quietly to Argentine.
They'd found the medical section roughly 40 minutes ago and still weren't finished exploring it.
Doctor Amaya had said, "This isn't a medical bay… It's a hospital!" She’d then immediately headed off to explore another section of it.
Meanwhile, Paula had found a console where she could interface with the medical computers. She'd been at it for quite a while without any apparent results, and Argentine was starting to get worried…
"Any luck?" he finally asked.
"Yes, and no…" she responded cryptically. "I can get the ship to calibrate the interfaces, but first the crew person needs to have their identity and rank verified."
Argentine immediately understood the problem. Paula was an astrogation officer so she had been able to vet Sami as a fellow astrogation officer. But an astrogation officer couldn't necessarily vet an engineer, for example.
"Maybe we’re approaching it wrong," Argentine suggested. "As an astrogator you can't vet another specialty, but as the senior officer aboard couldn't you vouch for another ship's officer?"
"I don't know if it will work that way," Paula responded with a distracted voice. She was still typing on the consoles holographic interface…
"It would also have to be Sami to do it. She's now the senior recognized officer on the ship."
Argentine glanced over at Sami who straightened up and comically puffed up her chest…
"Don't go getting any ideas, girl," he said with a laugh.
Paula interrupted with, "Actually Captain… You may be right. I'm going to start Sami on the calibration procedure and then we'll find out…"
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
The First Death
Aboard the Roosevelt
While the team had still been gathered together in the ship's hospital, Doctor Amaya had started throwing around orders…
"I want my patient brought here immediately and placed in this bed," she said to no one in particular as she pointed her finger at the open doorway of a private room.
A few of the Petulengro clan scurried off to get him.