The captain nodded and Hilda returned to her station.
She was right, good news and bad news. Still, Tanis Richards was on the Excelsior, and in his book that counted as a miracle just waiting to happen.
Amanda had been listening in on the bridge conversations.
Andrews asked.
Priscilla inserted herself into the conversation.
Andrews’ tone was gentle, but firm.
Amanda’s voice was small.
Bob joined the conversation.
There was a ghost of a grin and Bob’s presence left the conversation.
Amanda’s avatar shook her head.
Priscilla groused.
* * * * *
“Every time I run the scenarios we’re lower on fuel. We’ve got more drag than anticipated.” Tanis looked up from her console at Joe.
“I’m getting the same thing. I think the stellar medium is thicker than anticipated. Not much, but enough to screw us.”
“Can you come up with anything?”
Joe sighed, gave his console a long, hard look and then turned sorry eyes to Tanis. “I can’t.”
“I refuse to accept that. There is always something you can do. I didn’t survive over a thousand engagements to die because a spaceship runs out of fuel.” Her eyes glinted in the dim lights of the bridge, a fire in them refused to be quenched.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” Joe replied
“Let’s look at our inventory again.”
Joe brought it up on the main holo. There were parts for the relativistic probe, another net, extra cores for the thumpers that hadn’t been used in Joe’s configurations, and several physical probes for examining rocks.
“Nothing much there,” Joe said.
“I wonder.” Tanis brought up the specs on the thumper cores. “I wonder if we can’t make use of these somehow.”
On another section of the display she brought up their route and removed the required fuel for one of the course corrections. It brought the numbers closer, but still within the margin of error. She tried removing a different course correction and got the same result. Then, looking at the fuel computations again, removed the fuel requirement for two course corrections.
The numbers came out of the error margin and showed green. They could rendezvous with the Intrepid and maneuver.
“OK, so if we can use the thumpers in place of fuel, then we’re all set.” Joe scowled at the display.
Tanis brought up a display of the ship’s exterior and pointed at a structural ridge that bisected the hull. “We plant the thumpers along this ridge and then fire them off to adjust our course. These calculations show they have the impact force to do it.”
“You saw what they did to the asteroid, right?” Joe looked incredulous. “They ejected a million tons of mass. They’ll tear the ship apart.”
“Oh, I don’t deny that it will be as rough as all get-out, but we don’t fire them all off at once. Stagger them, do it in stages. And the more, the sooner, the better; since it will take less to correct now than later.”
Joe looked her calculations over again. “We’re going to need to do EVA to mount them—the ship has no bots capable of that.”
“So where are the suits?” Tanis asked.
* * * * *
“What are you doing in here?” Priscilla looked up from her holo arrays in consternation. “Can’t you do what you’re supposed to for once?”
Amanda laughed. “When have I ever done what I’m supposed to? Besides, I can’t sit in a med bay while everything is going to shit.”
Priscilla glanced to her right and pulled several holo displays into the foreground. Her fingers raced over the consoles while her mind manipulated a dozen other systems.
“The accelerator is losing containment in the sixth coupling, isn’t it?” Amanda asked.
“Yeah, that coupling has always been a bit twitchy.”
“Let me help,” Amanda walked to Priscilla’s pedestal and pulled a holo display in front of herself. “I can help—you need it.”
“You know you shouldn’t, you’ve been through some ridiculous mental stress—what we do is hard enough under the best of circumstances.”
“I’m not asking to interface with Bob, just let me shunt some tasks. I have to do my part here, don’t you understand?”
Amanda’s unblinking stare bore into Priscilla’s eyes. She didn’t respond for a moment, fingers still dancing across her displays. Slowly she nodded. “I do understand. Bob does, too. Here, take this, run the math and update the engineers with the ETA.”
Amanda pulled the data stream to her display and reviewed the information.
“What on Earth? This can’t work!”
Priscilla chuckled. “When has one of Tanis’s crazy ideas looked like it would work?”
“Yeah, but this time she’s crazy, she’ll tear the Excelsior apart and we’ll never get that fuel.
The fear in Priscilla’s mental tone was palpable.
* * * * *
Tanis finished welding the last of her brackets to the ship’s hull. Joe was moving behind her, placing the thumper cores into the brackets, a small hauler bot trundling behind him on its magnetic tracks.
Troy added.
Troy snapped.
Joe sent the bot ahead to Tanis.
Tanis pulled the thumper core out of the bot’s carriage and slipped it into her bracket, sliding the latch into place and then using her welder to tac it in.
Tanis hadn’t seen a single piece of dust impact the ship, but there was no point in testing fate. All it took was a tiny spec at these speeds to punch right through a person.
Minutes later they were back in the airlock, waiting for the inner hatch to cycle open. When it did, they stepped through and removed their helmets.
“You’re going to need to go under for this again,” Joe said. “Those impacts are going to be vicious and I can’t worry about you and pilot the ship at the same time.”
Tanis nodded. “I understand. But let me get a BLT in first. I always seem to come out of stasis hungry.”
* * * * *
Joe looked over at Tanis in her stasis pod one last time before he brought up the thumper’s control display.
he asked Troy.
Joe chuckled and sealed his EVA suit. There was a good chance that even if the maneuver were successful the hull would crack open in one location or another.
Emergency systems should be able to seal any leaks in moments, but Joe didn’t want to test out their speed with his life.
Joe said and flipped the holo-switch.
The screen showed a countdown to the first thumper firing and Joe had to force himself to relax and unclench his teeth.
The thumper fired on schedule and a deafening clang echoed through the ship. Moments later, the second thumper fired and then the third and the fourth.
Troy said.
Joe shook his head back and forth.
Troy said.
Joe looked over the rocks they were pulling.
Joe looked down at Tanis. “Hold on, just a few more to go.”
The Intrepid’s bridge erupted with cheers as the data came in showing that the thumper core detonations had achieved their goal. The Excelsior had altered course enough without using antimatter fuel. Calculations put it well within the green and the ship had survived the impacts with its hull intact.
Another round of cheers sounded as Joe’s smooth tenor voice filled the bridge net.
They were within just a few light minutes now and the response didn’t take long.
Privately, the captain added,
The response came back.
* * * * *
“Holy shit,” Tanis breathed as she got her first visual glimpse of the damage to the Intrepid.
They were approaching on the port side of the colony ship, the same side struck by the edge of the solar flare. At the rear of the ship, the housing had been completely burned off the port engine, exposing portions of its inner workings to space. Several of the gossamer arcs, which provided additional structural integrity to the ship, were gone, and a few more were warped and twisted.
The port cylinder rotated, showing Old Sam covered in large scorch marks. Tanis imagined those would be the areas with the failing stasis pods. Good thing someone had determined to bring an extra hundred thousand.
Several large stasis grapple arms were ready to take the load from the Excelsior and Joe communicated with the engineers, executing the handoff flawlessly.
Even with the thumper core assistance, the fuel situation was as close to the wire as possible. Once the final maneuvers were complete, Joe shut down the antimatter engines entirely and used thrusters to bring them into position for docking.
The Excelsior that landed was a different ship than the one that left a scant week ago. One side was scorched and dented from the cores and the forward shields were pitted and scratched. Upon visual inspection it was evident that the structural strut the thumper cores had pushed on was cracked in two places. The Excelsior wouldn’t be going anywhere until serious repairs were done.
The ship eased in on the magnetic rails and Tanis pulled up a view of the dock. There had to be at least a hundred people down there, all cheering their lungs out.
Troy said.
“You deserve this as much as we do, Troy,” Tanis said. “You’re one hell of an AI.”
“I know that all too well,” Tanis said.
Tanis and Joe walked out of the ship’s port hatch and down a gantry to the waiting crowd. In the front stood Captain Andrews and Terrance Enfield. Both men were beaming and clapping with the crowd.
“This is getting to be a habit, you saving the Intrepid.” Captain Andrews smiled at the pair.
“One I hope you don’t intend to break anytime soon,” Terrance added.
Tanis looked at Joe and they smiled at one another. It was good to be back home.
NODE 11
STELLAR DATE: 3241792 / 08.18.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Node 11, Engine
REGION: LHS 1565, 85 AU from stellar primary
“What are we going to do with this thing?” Priscilla asked aloud as she stood in the node where Ouri and the Marines had found Amanda.
Earnest had re-initialized the node, but upon careful inspection, Bob had discovered that the RAI was still there, still hidden in the crystal firmware.
Bob replied.
Though Priscilla was on duty, she was detached from her plinth in the bridge’s foyer. Bob had summoned here, to this node, this place of abomination where Amanda had been held captive for weeks. The chains which had supported her body still hung from conduit, as did the neural link-up cables.
It was like a scene from a nightmare. Priscilla knew that Amanda was devastated, both physically and mentally. It would take less than a day to repair her body—both of the avatars were more machine than organic at this point—but mental recovery, on the other hand, would take longer.
“I meant the rogue AI trapped within,” Pricilla replied. “Do we imprison it? It’s a sentient being, we can’t just execute it.”
Bob asked.
Priscilla admonished.
Bob replied.
“Fine, now respond to my question.”
Bob replied.
“You know what I mean, stop equivocating,” Priscilla scowled as she gazed up at the node. “This thing tried to kill us, and if we killed it in the act of stopping it, then that is one thing. But to preserve its life, only to murder it later? That is what is wrong.”
Bob replied.
“It is what?” Priscilla asked, aware—for the first time—of uncertainty in Bob’s mental tone. “There is something about this AI and what it did that has unnerved you.”
Bob thundered in her mind.
The power in Bob’s mental tone nearly brought Priscilla to her knees. She had never found him to be so emphatic—and so nonsensical. If a thing had happened, then it was possible.
Bob said.
“Please do,” Priscilla replied and leaned against a railing.
“How is that possible?” Priscilla
frowned. “The laws of physics limit the processing power of a node.”
Bob replied.
“So…with all this laid out, what do we do with it?” Priscilla asked. “You cannot kill it. That is not an option.”
Bob replied.
“Very well,” Priscilla replied, pushing herself off the railing. “I’ll see that it is done.”
Bob replied.
“Then why did you bring me down here?” Priscilla asked. “We could have had this conversation without my physical presence.”
INCONSISTENCIES
STELLAR DATE: 3241794 / 08.19.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Security Operations Center (SOC)
REGION: LHS 1565, 153 AU from stellar primary
Tanis let out a long sigh and leaned back in her chair. Her old office in the SOC was exactly as she’d left it, down to the nicks in the desk and the stain on the couch where Terry had once spilled a glass of juice.
Outside her door, the SOC hummed with activity as every colonist out of stasis went through a re-interview process. Stats and transcripts from several of the interviewees hovered above her desk, keeping Tanis in the loop every step of the way.
She closed her eyes again and the virtual conference with the command crew snapped into place in front of her.
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