Chapter One: Awakening
AJW
Well-known member
The Long Road
Chapter One: Awakening
Consciousness returned.
Lying near motionless, with only the gentle rise and fall of his chest showing that he still lived on a narrow cot in the medical bay Captain John Hawkins awoke slowly from a deep coma-like sleep. As he began to stir lights in the medical bay automatically came on at a reduced level, so as not to dazzle him as he woke, even as a pair of pale grey-blue eyes slowly opened. He immediately shut his eyes again and groaned as his whole body was aching as though it was one giant bruise, even the tips of his toes hurt and the less that was said about the headache that was pounding away like a band at a Founding Day parade in the back of his skull the better.
"John, John can you hear me?" a female voice said seeming to be coming from both all around him and inside his own head at the same time prompting him to tense up expecting trouble. After a few more confused seconds he recognised the voice and relaxed from the near instinctive tension that had gripped him, there was no threat here.
"Aside from feeling like I've just gone ten rounds with a boxing champion I'm fine Alice," he replied as he opened his eyes again and awkwardly sat up, the sheet that had been covering him sliding down revealing his bare torso for all to see. Not that there would have been anyone aboard to see since as with all deep space survey ships he was the only organic being aboard, the only other person here – if you could call her that – being Alice the ships artificial intelligence matrix. Between the two of them and a small army of various drones they were all that was needed to run the interstellar survey ship Sundance, a sharp change to how it would have been in his grandfather's time when survey ships had required a crew of over a hundred as back then automation had been far less advanced than it was now.
"My telemetry link to your nanites confirms no lasting system damage just residual disorientation that should pass in a few moments," Alice confirmed.
"Tell me about it," John muttered as he could already feel the pain and disorientation fading away completely as the army of tiny sub molecular biomechanical robots inside him and had been ever since he was eighteen when like all citizens of the Human Commonwealth he'd been given his first nanites, though due to the nature of his career as an independent interstellar surveyor he had upgraded his a bit over the years to as close to military grade as you could legally get without being in the Peacekeepers, worked their normal magic. He looked around taking a note that he was in the medical bay and not in his cabin. Huh what am I doing here, he thought looking around. "Alice what happened? Why am I in the medical bay?"
"Some memory loss is normal given the level of systemic disruption you suffered."
John rolled his eyes slightly as that was not an answer to his question. "That's not what I asked Alice."
"I know."
Snarky artificial intelligences whatever next, he thought with a mental snort. "So would you mind answering my questions or are we going to be sitting here playing twenty questions all day long," he asked as he stood up, noting idly that he was as naked as the day he was born. A sure sign that whatever had happened it had required him to spend some time floating in a regen tank while a much larger armada of nano machines repaired whatever it was that had happened to him. "Have I been in regen?"
"You have," the artificial intelligence confirmed before deciding she'd played with him enough, for giving her the AI equivalent of a heart attack, for now. "Do you remember the last planet we surveyed?"
"The dustbowl yeah I remember it," John confirmed frowning as he wondered what that had to do with anything. The planet in question had been a desert world, with what little surface water there was being extremely saline, that there initial scans had revealed to be rich in a number of highly useful metals and minerals including velarium carbonate – the material that was used in the construction of the graviton field manipulator that was the core component of a transluminal engine – which had prompted him to land and investigate. While he had confirmed indeed that there was a large amount of velarium carbonate present, enough to net him a few million credits when he sold the location and provided the samples he'd taken to one of the mining conglomerates who were always on the lookout for new sources, he and the ship had had to endure several quite substantial sandstorms while working.
To say that had been pleasant would have been a colossal understatement, though well within the capacity of the light armoured suit he'd been wearing to withstand. To say nothing of the titanium-carbon nanofiber hull of the Sundance.
"What about it," he asked as he made his way across the medical bay to the entrance, while there was nobody else aboard he didn't want to walk around naked all day so it was time to head to his cabin and put on a ship's jumpsuit. "Did the sandstorms cause some damage that our pre-take off diagnostics missed?"
"No but as we left the planet we encountered an anomaly. A massive, charged particle storm from the direction of the systems twin suns," Alice answered, "from the size and intensity of the storm I calculated that one or both stars emitted a particularly large coronal mass ejection triggering the storm."
"Oh yes now I remember," John replied scowling as he remembered how he'd been sitting in the control seat in the cockpit, linked to the ship via a neural interface with his nanites serving as the connection medium it was how ships from small cargo ships and interstellar survey ships like Sundance to the biggest battleships and supercarriers of the Peacekeeper Fleet were normally flown in the twenty-fifth century, when the sensors had come alive with warnings about the massive space storm approaching.
As he recalled by the time they had become aware of the size and power of the storm there had been no time to return to the planet and shelter till it passed. Nor had there been that much hope that the Sundance's shields would withstand the storm for long. As a result there only chance had been to divert as much power as possible to engines and shields and hope to get far enough away from the planet's gravitational mass shadow to engage the transluminal drive. Essentially their only chance had been to outrun the maelstrom of radiation and solar particles.
"Did we manage to get away in time?" he asked as he arrived at his cabin and went inside. For some reason he was unable to remember if he had been able to go faster than light in time. He had to assume that they did otherwise they would be kind of dead, the turbulence of the storm would have certainly torn them into a few billion fragments. Such things had happened to other survey ships in the past.
"Ugh not quite."
"What do you mean not quite?" John demanded as he got out a pair of underpants and socks from a drawer before putting them on. Then he began the process of getting into one of the standard pale blue nanofiber jumpsuits that were a common thing for spacers to wear aboard ship. It wasn't the easiest of things to get into since in its inert format the material was tough and not very elastic, thus getting his one point eight three meter tall, hundred- and two-kilogram frame into it was quite a struggle, but he managed. A soon as he finished the nanofibers in the jumpsuit synced up with his own nanites and the tight jumpsuit relaxed and resized itself to fit him perfectly. If only there was a way to resize these blasted things before struggling to put them on. It would make life so much easier, he thought.
"The stormfront caught us just as the transluminal drive engaged," Alice answered at last. "It impacted us just as we dropped our shields for FTL flight. As a result there was a massive power surge through all ships systems, the safety limiters on the neural interface were overwhelmed by the massive electromagnetic spikes…"
"…resulting in me getting one hell of a shock," John finished wincing knowing that would have screwed him up something royally as while having nanites in you gave you numerous benefits, such as perfect health enhanced strength and so on it did come with a handful of downsides. One of those downsides was that the nanites could in certain conditions conduct and amplify an electrical shock, a weakness that was well known and which was brutally exploited by modern pulse weapons. No wonder he had ended up in a regeneration tank for who knew how long, he'd been frankly lucky it hadn't fried his brain.
"Indeed you were barely alive when the drone got you to the medical bay. I had no choice but to place you in a regen tank and as you organics say pray."
John winced realizing he had really been screwed up by that shock. "Ouch! How long was I in there and what's the status of the ship?"
"You have been in regeneration for fifty-two hours, forty minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Ship status is not good. I believe you should come to the cockpit so I can give you a full assessment of the damage and we can decide what we're going to do from there."
John scowled even as he put on some boots, the tops immediately adhering to the jumpsuit with molecular bonding strips. He really didn't like the sound of that as it meant Sundance was likely quite seriously damaged by the stormfront slamming into them as they jumped to translight. Which was perhaps the worst possible time for such an impact to take place as to jump to translight a ship had to drop its shields in order for the polarized graviton field created by the transluminal engines to properly warp the space-time continuum.
"I'll be right there but answer me this first is the hull intact?"
"It is now. There was a small hull breach in the secondary aft cargo bay though the hull has since sealed itself. There was only minimal radiation contamination from the storm it has since been purged by automatic repair systems."
"Well that's a relief," John muttered knowing that there was nothing in the secondary aft cargo bay at the moment as the velarium carbonate samples, and the other samples he'd taken from the dustbowl, were all in the two forward cargo holds. He was also relieved to know that at very least the systems that would repair the hull if breached had worked as designed and sealed the hole, that, and the fact that other automated systems had cleaned up the radiation that had infiltrated the ship through the hull breach. While radiation sickness was not much of a thing in this day and age, even the most basic civil grade nanites could deal with the effects of radiation poisoning, it was still not the most pleasant of things to experience.
Still he knew better than to count his chickens before they hatched – whatever that old Earth saying actually meant – as the way Alice had spoken indicated that there were more problems waiting for him to deal with. Problems that even with the assistance of drones and the ships own self-repair nanites she couldn't repair on her own as while most systems could be repaired fairly easily by the automated systems there were a number of them – especially in the navigational, power generation and engine control systems – that couldn't be repaired that way and would actually need to be physically replaced. The problem was some of those junctions were in places that it was awkward to get a drone into and thus would have to be done the old-fashioned way. Thus it was with a nervous scowl on his face that he left his cabin and made the short journey five meters forward and up two steps to the cockpit.
John found himself mildly surprised to find that there was no apparent damage to the relatively plain looking semi-circular room. In the centre of the room with the control console – and its manual controls, which he seldom used as unlike some pilots he preferred to use the neural interface – wrapped partially around it in a half moon shape was the pilot's chair. At the back of the cockpit against the port and starboard walls were two auxiliary stations, each with a single chair near it that were meant to be used on longer assignments when the ship would have a larger crew than just himself and Alice.
He paid them no mind as he moved up to the pilot's chair and slid inside. Immediately the controls in front and around him hummed to life and a number of holographic screens projecting all manner of information from power generation – which he noted was way below its normal level indicating there was damage to the main reactor system – to base matter storage for the food and parts fabricators appeared. The interface panels also lit up and he hesitated a moment before placing his hands on the glowing surfaces, for a second nothing happened and he feared the interface was actually damaged then a familiar electrostatic tingle ran through his muscular frame and he could suddenly see everything in his mind. Everything that the screens could tell him and more, he could sense the damage that the solar storm had inflicted on the Sundance was considerable but it didn't feel irreparable.
"Alright Alice how bad is it," he asked.
"We sustained minor damage to the outer hull beyond the small breach in the aft secondary cargo bay," Alice answered, "including the loss of our long-range communications array. Almost all the external damage has been repaired though the long-range comm array is too badly damaged to be repaired at this time it will need replacing. I can detail a drone to do so."
"Do it."
"Acknowledged dispatching repair drone. Dorsal and ventral pulse cannons aiming mechanisms sustained minor damage but it has since been repaired. Internally the damage is more serious. Main power is down, the fusion reactor was scrammed during the impact event and is currently offline due to damage to the primary fuel flow regulator. It has been ruptured and I cannot get a drone in beneath the reactor module to replace it. We are currently running on power from auxiliary capacitors. Capacitor charge at sixty percent."
"I can fix that. What else?"
"There is considerable damage to the navigational sensor array. I am currently unable to get a reading from the sensors, diagnostics indicate that the main sensor processing node in the main computer core has blown out and needs replacement. As with the reactor fuel flow regulator you will need to enter the core room and manually replace the node in order to restore sensor power."
"So far nothing too bad. Bit of work for me but a little hard work never hurt anyone. Anything else?"
"We have sublight engines only. Transluminal drive systems overloaded after the impact; curious it looks like the impact supercharged them propelling us forward much faster than they normally would be able to do so."
"How much faster," John asked knowing that normally there were only two stable transluminal speeds those being six light years per day and ten light years per day with only smaller ships with less mass, like the forty-seven-meter-long Sundance, being able to achieve the higher FTL speed.
"By a factor of at least one hundred. Until sensor telemetry is restored I cannot say for sure how far off course we are."
"Great and the drive itself."
"Damaged but repairable. Three of the graviton field projector nodes have been burned out, we will be unable to warp space until they are replaced. I have detailed a drone to do the repairs."
"Is that the extent of the damage?"
"Yes."
"Alright then. What do you recommend I repair first?"
"I would recommend the sensors as the auxiliary capacitors have sufficient remaining charge for another two days if necessary. Not that it will take you that long to replace either damaged system."
"I should hope not. Alright I'll get started on the sensors, the sooner we can see again the better."
His decision made John disengaged the interface and stood up, then he left the cockpit and began making his way back towards first the small hold that held spare parts and from there the computer core. As he walked one thought occurred to him. This was going to be a long day.
---///---
Three hours later John smiled as the newly installed sensor processing node lit up and a thrum ran through the computer around him. Removing the damaged node and replacing it had been both hard and easy in equal measure, easy because the systems – like most starship systems – we're essentially plug in and play. As soon as the new node had been fitted and he'd made all the appropriate connections to power conduits, quantum matrix processor and memory crystals it had immediately begun powering up and syncing to the ships computer system. The hard thing about it had been that the computer core was quite a tight place to work, especially for a man his size as he was sure that the shipwrights who designed the Darwin-class survey ships like his Sundance were all midgets, with a number of quite tight corners and sharp edges. Not to mention the odd only lightly shielded conduit which had resulted in him getting a few painful – if harmless – zaps.
He tapped a hidden button on the right wrist of his jumpsuit causing its built-in communicator to come on. "Alice I've restored the sensor node," he said, "confirm its working properly please."
"Stand by commencing diagnostics… diagnostics complete the new node is working within normal parameters. All sensor systems are now back online John."
"Good alright begin scanning the area to see if you can find out where the hell we are," John ordered, "I'll close this panel up and get out of here before getting started on the reactor fuel regulator."
"Acknowledged commencing scans I estimate half an hour to comprehensive scan completion. John might I suggest you have something to eat first. My telemetry link from your nanites show your blood glucose levels are dropping low."
Leave it to Alice to babysit me, John thought with a slight amused smirk even as he did acknowledge that he was feeling a little hungry. While the drop in blood glucose levels wasn't serious yet, the nanites would alert him if it was, he had to admit that the artificial intelligence did have a point. "You've got a point," he admitted, "alright I'll seal this up and go grab a bite to eat first. Then I'll see about sorting out the problem with the reactor."
"Very good John. Though I should not need to remind you to eat, you know your bodies reserves will have been drained by the regen treatment. Determination and nanites can only keep you going so long."
"I know but this needs to be done," John answered as he sealed up the panel over the newly installed node, gathered up his tools and began to carefully climb out of the computer core. "Gah who designed this bloody core a dwarf."
"The mark twelve c quantum computer core was designed by Doctor Raymond Tarkenis in 2453, and he is not a dwarf but is just as tall as you though not as physically imposing."
"I was speaking metaphorically Alice. I know who designed this model of computer core."
"Oh."
"You would think after three years together Alice you would be used to my humour by now."
"I am an artificial intelligence John. We are designed not to have emotions in the way that organic beings like you do, thus things like humour are an alien concept to us. Bad things tend to happen when we are given the ability to feel emotions."
"I know," John admitted as he exited the computer core. As he recalled there had been a time when humanity had experimented with giving their AI companions the ability to feel emotions in the same way that they themselves did. The result had been disastrous as the prototype AI Adam had been driven insane by the whole concept of emotions and had started a war that had lasted for nearly two decades as humanity fought against their wayward creation – especially after it sequestrated the denizens of two planets using their nanites to turn them into near-mindless drones in its service – they had finally triumphed destroying Adam and his drones but the cost had been horrendous in terms of lives lost and resources destroyed. Several entire planets had been annihilated with a mixture of electron pulse beams and ND warheads and over twenty-seven million had perished over the course of that conflict – a death toll that wouldn't be exceeded until the Commonwealth's first war with the alien Zen'tou.
Having learned their lesson they never did try to give an AI the ability to feel real emotions again though they could of course simulate them for the sake of social interaction.
Mentally he shook himself, dismissing those depressing thoughts from his mind. While he hadn't been there himself, it was nearly two centuries ago when his grandfather had been a young man, it wouldn't do him any good to dwell on that old war. A war that continued to cast a long shadow with there being a small, but very vocal in the way that such groups tended to be, minority who to this day argued that all artificial intelligences were a potential threat to human life and should be destroyed. Instead he focused on making his way to the small mess hall and the food fabricator present there.
He was just sitting down to a nice dinner of steak and potatoes when Alice spoke to him again.
"John I have completed my initial scans."
"And?" he asked taking a bite out of his food as he did so.
"According to my analysis we have been swept five hundred and twelve light years from our previous position. We are currently drifting through the outer edges of a previously unknown planetary system in the unknown regions beyond the borders of the Zen'tou Empire."
John grimaced. "Is the Zen'tou Empire between us and home," he asked hoping it wasn't. The Zen'tou were the only other spacefaring civilization that humanity had yet encountered – not the first there was a pre-industrial early agrarian species, the Sha'teen, inside the claimed borders of the Commonwealth though as per long standing practice they were left alone and only watched from afar with drones – and they were not the most pleasant of people to deal with. They were quadrupeds who looked like someone had crossed a crocodile and a preying mantis and made it the size of a large horse to create a carnivorous species that pushed just about every horror button one could have. Humans and Zen'tou had clashed three times since they'd first encountered one another a hundred and fifty years ago and it had never been a pleasant experience for either species.
Thus they were someone he wouldn't want to go anywhere near if he could avoid it.
"Unfortunately yes. If we took the most direct route back to Commonwealth space we would have to pass through several sectors claimed by the Zen'tou."
"Which would be like ringing a cosmic dinner bell and I don't fancy becoming some Zen'tou's lunch thank you very much," John commented with a grimace as it was known that the Zen'tou did sometimes consume living sentient prey – including humans – during some of their more disgusting and disturbing religious festivals.
"Indeed it would not be a good survival strategy for either of us. However there is one possible way through, though it will have its own dangers."
"Oh?"
"Our sensors confirm that the outer edge of the Maelstrom is only twenty light years from our current location, we know that extends across Zen'tou territory and indeed has formed one of the borders of their empire for centuries and crosses into Commonwealth space near the Adaris system."
John grimaced again at that. The Maelstrom was a relatively thin but long stellar nursery complex that extended across a region of space several thousand light years long and over four hundred light years across. It was filled with numerous stars and planetary systems in various stages of development and due to how densely packed they all were it was literally a gravitational madhouse limiting how far you could travel at any one time before you encountered gravitational eddies and currents – that like an oceanic sandbar could stop you dead in your tracks – forcing a sublight flight. Not to mention radiation and electromagnetic storms were a constant hazard. To the best of his knowledge nobody had been able to chart the Maelstrom, though there had been many attempts over the centuries to do so, especially after they made first contact with the Zen'tou.
Still if that was his only way back home, that didn't risk him becoming some alien's dinner, he would have to brave the Maelstrom. And who knew if he made it back he could bring a lot of valuable data back with him, data that a lot of people in the Commonwealth – from the mining conglomerates to the government and Peacekeeper Command – would pay very handsomely for.
"Is the Maelstrom the only way back?"
"As far as my sensors can determine yes. Oh this is interesting."
"What is it?"
"Sensors a picking up a distress beacon signal from deeper in this system. While I cannot be certain due to the distance and signal degradation I believe it could be human in origin."
"A human signal this far out?" John repeated an utterly incredulous look on his face and in his voice at that bit of information. They were in unknown space; how could other humans have gotten out here before him? Either they had been the victim of a similar freak occurrence as himself and Alice or there was something else going on. Whoever was on the other side of that beacon signal, if there was anyone, would certainly have never been allowed to cross Zen'tou space to get here. While there was currently peace between the Commonwealth and the Empire it was a tenuous one at best – they always were – and there was always the threat that war would break out again between them. Thus the immense carnivorous quadrupeds would never allow members of what they saw as a prey species to cross their territory and not get hunted down and eaten. "How is that possible?"
"Unknown at this time," Alice sounding as puzzled as an artificial intelligence could get at this odd development. "We would need to get much closer to the signals source to determine exactly where its coming from and how it got out here without being detected and hunted by the Zen'tou."
"We should finish fixing the ship before we do that," John pointed out as he finished off his steak and potatoes. Which prompted him to pick up and put the plate and cutlery back in the fabricator which would nanotechnically deconstruct them and reconstruct them again later with whatever he choose to eat next. "I'll head to engineering and get started on sorting out the problem with the fusion reactor. In the meantime why don't you launch a few of our probes and send them into the system to triangulate the source of our mysterious signal."
"Very well launching probes." As Alice spoke the deck beneath John's feet vibrated slightly with recoil as four of their system survey probes launched from their bay and began moving into the system. "Probes away. They will reach their first scan positions in one hour and fifteen minutes."
"I should have the fusion reactor fixed by then."
"Indeed. Shall I begin plotting our eventual course to the Maelstrom after we investigate the beacon signal?"
"Please Alice it would save us a lot of time."
"That it would. Very well I will begin plotting the course while you replace the reactors fuel flow regulator."
"Sounds like a plan."
With a course of action decided upon John left the mess hall and once again made his way towards the spare parts store to retrieve a replacement fuel flow regulator for the fusion core. As he walked he found his thoughts turning to the anomalous seemingly human signal coming from deeper within this seemingly uninhabited system. The questions as to what its true nature was and if indeed it was human how it had gotten out here playing over and over again in his mind. Each time his curiosity about them only grew as he did like a good mystery and this one seemed to be quite interesting indeed.
Reaching the small parts store he went and retrieved the fuel flow regulator. Grunting slightly at its weight as even with his strength being augmented by the nanites the damned thing was quite heavy. Ugh I am so going to spring for an anti-gravity trolly when I get back to civilization, he thought as he began to lug the heavy, somewhat bulky device out of the room towards the engine room. As he walked he put all thoughts of the beacon signal out of his mind for now, there would be plenty of time to investigate that later right now he had work to do and a ship to finish fixing.
Chapter One: Awakening
Consciousness returned.
Lying near motionless, with only the gentle rise and fall of his chest showing that he still lived on a narrow cot in the medical bay Captain John Hawkins awoke slowly from a deep coma-like sleep. As he began to stir lights in the medical bay automatically came on at a reduced level, so as not to dazzle him as he woke, even as a pair of pale grey-blue eyes slowly opened. He immediately shut his eyes again and groaned as his whole body was aching as though it was one giant bruise, even the tips of his toes hurt and the less that was said about the headache that was pounding away like a band at a Founding Day parade in the back of his skull the better.
"John, John can you hear me?" a female voice said seeming to be coming from both all around him and inside his own head at the same time prompting him to tense up expecting trouble. After a few more confused seconds he recognised the voice and relaxed from the near instinctive tension that had gripped him, there was no threat here.
"Aside from feeling like I've just gone ten rounds with a boxing champion I'm fine Alice," he replied as he opened his eyes again and awkwardly sat up, the sheet that had been covering him sliding down revealing his bare torso for all to see. Not that there would have been anyone aboard to see since as with all deep space survey ships he was the only organic being aboard, the only other person here – if you could call her that – being Alice the ships artificial intelligence matrix. Between the two of them and a small army of various drones they were all that was needed to run the interstellar survey ship Sundance, a sharp change to how it would have been in his grandfather's time when survey ships had required a crew of over a hundred as back then automation had been far less advanced than it was now.
"My telemetry link to your nanites confirms no lasting system damage just residual disorientation that should pass in a few moments," Alice confirmed.
"Tell me about it," John muttered as he could already feel the pain and disorientation fading away completely as the army of tiny sub molecular biomechanical robots inside him and had been ever since he was eighteen when like all citizens of the Human Commonwealth he'd been given his first nanites, though due to the nature of his career as an independent interstellar surveyor he had upgraded his a bit over the years to as close to military grade as you could legally get without being in the Peacekeepers, worked their normal magic. He looked around taking a note that he was in the medical bay and not in his cabin. Huh what am I doing here, he thought looking around. "Alice what happened? Why am I in the medical bay?"
"Some memory loss is normal given the level of systemic disruption you suffered."
John rolled his eyes slightly as that was not an answer to his question. "That's not what I asked Alice."
"I know."
Snarky artificial intelligences whatever next, he thought with a mental snort. "So would you mind answering my questions or are we going to be sitting here playing twenty questions all day long," he asked as he stood up, noting idly that he was as naked as the day he was born. A sure sign that whatever had happened it had required him to spend some time floating in a regen tank while a much larger armada of nano machines repaired whatever it was that had happened to him. "Have I been in regen?"
"You have," the artificial intelligence confirmed before deciding she'd played with him enough, for giving her the AI equivalent of a heart attack, for now. "Do you remember the last planet we surveyed?"
"The dustbowl yeah I remember it," John confirmed frowning as he wondered what that had to do with anything. The planet in question had been a desert world, with what little surface water there was being extremely saline, that there initial scans had revealed to be rich in a number of highly useful metals and minerals including velarium carbonate – the material that was used in the construction of the graviton field manipulator that was the core component of a transluminal engine – which had prompted him to land and investigate. While he had confirmed indeed that there was a large amount of velarium carbonate present, enough to net him a few million credits when he sold the location and provided the samples he'd taken to one of the mining conglomerates who were always on the lookout for new sources, he and the ship had had to endure several quite substantial sandstorms while working.
To say that had been pleasant would have been a colossal understatement, though well within the capacity of the light armoured suit he'd been wearing to withstand. To say nothing of the titanium-carbon nanofiber hull of the Sundance.
"What about it," he asked as he made his way across the medical bay to the entrance, while there was nobody else aboard he didn't want to walk around naked all day so it was time to head to his cabin and put on a ship's jumpsuit. "Did the sandstorms cause some damage that our pre-take off diagnostics missed?"
"No but as we left the planet we encountered an anomaly. A massive, charged particle storm from the direction of the systems twin suns," Alice answered, "from the size and intensity of the storm I calculated that one or both stars emitted a particularly large coronal mass ejection triggering the storm."
"Oh yes now I remember," John replied scowling as he remembered how he'd been sitting in the control seat in the cockpit, linked to the ship via a neural interface with his nanites serving as the connection medium it was how ships from small cargo ships and interstellar survey ships like Sundance to the biggest battleships and supercarriers of the Peacekeeper Fleet were normally flown in the twenty-fifth century, when the sensors had come alive with warnings about the massive space storm approaching.
As he recalled by the time they had become aware of the size and power of the storm there had been no time to return to the planet and shelter till it passed. Nor had there been that much hope that the Sundance's shields would withstand the storm for long. As a result there only chance had been to divert as much power as possible to engines and shields and hope to get far enough away from the planet's gravitational mass shadow to engage the transluminal drive. Essentially their only chance had been to outrun the maelstrom of radiation and solar particles.
"Did we manage to get away in time?" he asked as he arrived at his cabin and went inside. For some reason he was unable to remember if he had been able to go faster than light in time. He had to assume that they did otherwise they would be kind of dead, the turbulence of the storm would have certainly torn them into a few billion fragments. Such things had happened to other survey ships in the past.
"Ugh not quite."
"What do you mean not quite?" John demanded as he got out a pair of underpants and socks from a drawer before putting them on. Then he began the process of getting into one of the standard pale blue nanofiber jumpsuits that were a common thing for spacers to wear aboard ship. It wasn't the easiest of things to get into since in its inert format the material was tough and not very elastic, thus getting his one point eight three meter tall, hundred- and two-kilogram frame into it was quite a struggle, but he managed. A soon as he finished the nanofibers in the jumpsuit synced up with his own nanites and the tight jumpsuit relaxed and resized itself to fit him perfectly. If only there was a way to resize these blasted things before struggling to put them on. It would make life so much easier, he thought.
"The stormfront caught us just as the transluminal drive engaged," Alice answered at last. "It impacted us just as we dropped our shields for FTL flight. As a result there was a massive power surge through all ships systems, the safety limiters on the neural interface were overwhelmed by the massive electromagnetic spikes…"
"…resulting in me getting one hell of a shock," John finished wincing knowing that would have screwed him up something royally as while having nanites in you gave you numerous benefits, such as perfect health enhanced strength and so on it did come with a handful of downsides. One of those downsides was that the nanites could in certain conditions conduct and amplify an electrical shock, a weakness that was well known and which was brutally exploited by modern pulse weapons. No wonder he had ended up in a regeneration tank for who knew how long, he'd been frankly lucky it hadn't fried his brain.
"Indeed you were barely alive when the drone got you to the medical bay. I had no choice but to place you in a regen tank and as you organics say pray."
John winced realizing he had really been screwed up by that shock. "Ouch! How long was I in there and what's the status of the ship?"
"You have been in regeneration for fifty-two hours, forty minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Ship status is not good. I believe you should come to the cockpit so I can give you a full assessment of the damage and we can decide what we're going to do from there."
John scowled even as he put on some boots, the tops immediately adhering to the jumpsuit with molecular bonding strips. He really didn't like the sound of that as it meant Sundance was likely quite seriously damaged by the stormfront slamming into them as they jumped to translight. Which was perhaps the worst possible time for such an impact to take place as to jump to translight a ship had to drop its shields in order for the polarized graviton field created by the transluminal engines to properly warp the space-time continuum.
"I'll be right there but answer me this first is the hull intact?"
"It is now. There was a small hull breach in the secondary aft cargo bay though the hull has since sealed itself. There was only minimal radiation contamination from the storm it has since been purged by automatic repair systems."
"Well that's a relief," John muttered knowing that there was nothing in the secondary aft cargo bay at the moment as the velarium carbonate samples, and the other samples he'd taken from the dustbowl, were all in the two forward cargo holds. He was also relieved to know that at very least the systems that would repair the hull if breached had worked as designed and sealed the hole, that, and the fact that other automated systems had cleaned up the radiation that had infiltrated the ship through the hull breach. While radiation sickness was not much of a thing in this day and age, even the most basic civil grade nanites could deal with the effects of radiation poisoning, it was still not the most pleasant of things to experience.
Still he knew better than to count his chickens before they hatched – whatever that old Earth saying actually meant – as the way Alice had spoken indicated that there were more problems waiting for him to deal with. Problems that even with the assistance of drones and the ships own self-repair nanites she couldn't repair on her own as while most systems could be repaired fairly easily by the automated systems there were a number of them – especially in the navigational, power generation and engine control systems – that couldn't be repaired that way and would actually need to be physically replaced. The problem was some of those junctions were in places that it was awkward to get a drone into and thus would have to be done the old-fashioned way. Thus it was with a nervous scowl on his face that he left his cabin and made the short journey five meters forward and up two steps to the cockpit.
John found himself mildly surprised to find that there was no apparent damage to the relatively plain looking semi-circular room. In the centre of the room with the control console – and its manual controls, which he seldom used as unlike some pilots he preferred to use the neural interface – wrapped partially around it in a half moon shape was the pilot's chair. At the back of the cockpit against the port and starboard walls were two auxiliary stations, each with a single chair near it that were meant to be used on longer assignments when the ship would have a larger crew than just himself and Alice.
He paid them no mind as he moved up to the pilot's chair and slid inside. Immediately the controls in front and around him hummed to life and a number of holographic screens projecting all manner of information from power generation – which he noted was way below its normal level indicating there was damage to the main reactor system – to base matter storage for the food and parts fabricators appeared. The interface panels also lit up and he hesitated a moment before placing his hands on the glowing surfaces, for a second nothing happened and he feared the interface was actually damaged then a familiar electrostatic tingle ran through his muscular frame and he could suddenly see everything in his mind. Everything that the screens could tell him and more, he could sense the damage that the solar storm had inflicted on the Sundance was considerable but it didn't feel irreparable.
"Alright Alice how bad is it," he asked.
"We sustained minor damage to the outer hull beyond the small breach in the aft secondary cargo bay," Alice answered, "including the loss of our long-range communications array. Almost all the external damage has been repaired though the long-range comm array is too badly damaged to be repaired at this time it will need replacing. I can detail a drone to do so."
"Do it."
"Acknowledged dispatching repair drone. Dorsal and ventral pulse cannons aiming mechanisms sustained minor damage but it has since been repaired. Internally the damage is more serious. Main power is down, the fusion reactor was scrammed during the impact event and is currently offline due to damage to the primary fuel flow regulator. It has been ruptured and I cannot get a drone in beneath the reactor module to replace it. We are currently running on power from auxiliary capacitors. Capacitor charge at sixty percent."
"I can fix that. What else?"
"There is considerable damage to the navigational sensor array. I am currently unable to get a reading from the sensors, diagnostics indicate that the main sensor processing node in the main computer core has blown out and needs replacement. As with the reactor fuel flow regulator you will need to enter the core room and manually replace the node in order to restore sensor power."
"So far nothing too bad. Bit of work for me but a little hard work never hurt anyone. Anything else?"
"We have sublight engines only. Transluminal drive systems overloaded after the impact; curious it looks like the impact supercharged them propelling us forward much faster than they normally would be able to do so."
"How much faster," John asked knowing that normally there were only two stable transluminal speeds those being six light years per day and ten light years per day with only smaller ships with less mass, like the forty-seven-meter-long Sundance, being able to achieve the higher FTL speed.
"By a factor of at least one hundred. Until sensor telemetry is restored I cannot say for sure how far off course we are."
"Great and the drive itself."
"Damaged but repairable. Three of the graviton field projector nodes have been burned out, we will be unable to warp space until they are replaced. I have detailed a drone to do the repairs."
"Is that the extent of the damage?"
"Yes."
"Alright then. What do you recommend I repair first?"
"I would recommend the sensors as the auxiliary capacitors have sufficient remaining charge for another two days if necessary. Not that it will take you that long to replace either damaged system."
"I should hope not. Alright I'll get started on the sensors, the sooner we can see again the better."
His decision made John disengaged the interface and stood up, then he left the cockpit and began making his way back towards first the small hold that held spare parts and from there the computer core. As he walked one thought occurred to him. This was going to be a long day.
---///---
Three hours later John smiled as the newly installed sensor processing node lit up and a thrum ran through the computer around him. Removing the damaged node and replacing it had been both hard and easy in equal measure, easy because the systems – like most starship systems – we're essentially plug in and play. As soon as the new node had been fitted and he'd made all the appropriate connections to power conduits, quantum matrix processor and memory crystals it had immediately begun powering up and syncing to the ships computer system. The hard thing about it had been that the computer core was quite a tight place to work, especially for a man his size as he was sure that the shipwrights who designed the Darwin-class survey ships like his Sundance were all midgets, with a number of quite tight corners and sharp edges. Not to mention the odd only lightly shielded conduit which had resulted in him getting a few painful – if harmless – zaps.
He tapped a hidden button on the right wrist of his jumpsuit causing its built-in communicator to come on. "Alice I've restored the sensor node," he said, "confirm its working properly please."
"Stand by commencing diagnostics… diagnostics complete the new node is working within normal parameters. All sensor systems are now back online John."
"Good alright begin scanning the area to see if you can find out where the hell we are," John ordered, "I'll close this panel up and get out of here before getting started on the reactor fuel regulator."
"Acknowledged commencing scans I estimate half an hour to comprehensive scan completion. John might I suggest you have something to eat first. My telemetry link from your nanites show your blood glucose levels are dropping low."
Leave it to Alice to babysit me, John thought with a slight amused smirk even as he did acknowledge that he was feeling a little hungry. While the drop in blood glucose levels wasn't serious yet, the nanites would alert him if it was, he had to admit that the artificial intelligence did have a point. "You've got a point," he admitted, "alright I'll seal this up and go grab a bite to eat first. Then I'll see about sorting out the problem with the reactor."
"Very good John. Though I should not need to remind you to eat, you know your bodies reserves will have been drained by the regen treatment. Determination and nanites can only keep you going so long."
"I know but this needs to be done," John answered as he sealed up the panel over the newly installed node, gathered up his tools and began to carefully climb out of the computer core. "Gah who designed this bloody core a dwarf."
"The mark twelve c quantum computer core was designed by Doctor Raymond Tarkenis in 2453, and he is not a dwarf but is just as tall as you though not as physically imposing."
"I was speaking metaphorically Alice. I know who designed this model of computer core."
"Oh."
"You would think after three years together Alice you would be used to my humour by now."
"I am an artificial intelligence John. We are designed not to have emotions in the way that organic beings like you do, thus things like humour are an alien concept to us. Bad things tend to happen when we are given the ability to feel emotions."
"I know," John admitted as he exited the computer core. As he recalled there had been a time when humanity had experimented with giving their AI companions the ability to feel emotions in the same way that they themselves did. The result had been disastrous as the prototype AI Adam had been driven insane by the whole concept of emotions and had started a war that had lasted for nearly two decades as humanity fought against their wayward creation – especially after it sequestrated the denizens of two planets using their nanites to turn them into near-mindless drones in its service – they had finally triumphed destroying Adam and his drones but the cost had been horrendous in terms of lives lost and resources destroyed. Several entire planets had been annihilated with a mixture of electron pulse beams and ND warheads and over twenty-seven million had perished over the course of that conflict – a death toll that wouldn't be exceeded until the Commonwealth's first war with the alien Zen'tou.
Having learned their lesson they never did try to give an AI the ability to feel real emotions again though they could of course simulate them for the sake of social interaction.
Mentally he shook himself, dismissing those depressing thoughts from his mind. While he hadn't been there himself, it was nearly two centuries ago when his grandfather had been a young man, it wouldn't do him any good to dwell on that old war. A war that continued to cast a long shadow with there being a small, but very vocal in the way that such groups tended to be, minority who to this day argued that all artificial intelligences were a potential threat to human life and should be destroyed. Instead he focused on making his way to the small mess hall and the food fabricator present there.
He was just sitting down to a nice dinner of steak and potatoes when Alice spoke to him again.
"John I have completed my initial scans."
"And?" he asked taking a bite out of his food as he did so.
"According to my analysis we have been swept five hundred and twelve light years from our previous position. We are currently drifting through the outer edges of a previously unknown planetary system in the unknown regions beyond the borders of the Zen'tou Empire."
John grimaced. "Is the Zen'tou Empire between us and home," he asked hoping it wasn't. The Zen'tou were the only other spacefaring civilization that humanity had yet encountered – not the first there was a pre-industrial early agrarian species, the Sha'teen, inside the claimed borders of the Commonwealth though as per long standing practice they were left alone and only watched from afar with drones – and they were not the most pleasant of people to deal with. They were quadrupeds who looked like someone had crossed a crocodile and a preying mantis and made it the size of a large horse to create a carnivorous species that pushed just about every horror button one could have. Humans and Zen'tou had clashed three times since they'd first encountered one another a hundred and fifty years ago and it had never been a pleasant experience for either species.
Thus they were someone he wouldn't want to go anywhere near if he could avoid it.
"Unfortunately yes. If we took the most direct route back to Commonwealth space we would have to pass through several sectors claimed by the Zen'tou."
"Which would be like ringing a cosmic dinner bell and I don't fancy becoming some Zen'tou's lunch thank you very much," John commented with a grimace as it was known that the Zen'tou did sometimes consume living sentient prey – including humans – during some of their more disgusting and disturbing religious festivals.
"Indeed it would not be a good survival strategy for either of us. However there is one possible way through, though it will have its own dangers."
"Oh?"
"Our sensors confirm that the outer edge of the Maelstrom is only twenty light years from our current location, we know that extends across Zen'tou territory and indeed has formed one of the borders of their empire for centuries and crosses into Commonwealth space near the Adaris system."
John grimaced again at that. The Maelstrom was a relatively thin but long stellar nursery complex that extended across a region of space several thousand light years long and over four hundred light years across. It was filled with numerous stars and planetary systems in various stages of development and due to how densely packed they all were it was literally a gravitational madhouse limiting how far you could travel at any one time before you encountered gravitational eddies and currents – that like an oceanic sandbar could stop you dead in your tracks – forcing a sublight flight. Not to mention radiation and electromagnetic storms were a constant hazard. To the best of his knowledge nobody had been able to chart the Maelstrom, though there had been many attempts over the centuries to do so, especially after they made first contact with the Zen'tou.
Still if that was his only way back home, that didn't risk him becoming some alien's dinner, he would have to brave the Maelstrom. And who knew if he made it back he could bring a lot of valuable data back with him, data that a lot of people in the Commonwealth – from the mining conglomerates to the government and Peacekeeper Command – would pay very handsomely for.
"Is the Maelstrom the only way back?"
"As far as my sensors can determine yes. Oh this is interesting."
"What is it?"
"Sensors a picking up a distress beacon signal from deeper in this system. While I cannot be certain due to the distance and signal degradation I believe it could be human in origin."
"A human signal this far out?" John repeated an utterly incredulous look on his face and in his voice at that bit of information. They were in unknown space; how could other humans have gotten out here before him? Either they had been the victim of a similar freak occurrence as himself and Alice or there was something else going on. Whoever was on the other side of that beacon signal, if there was anyone, would certainly have never been allowed to cross Zen'tou space to get here. While there was currently peace between the Commonwealth and the Empire it was a tenuous one at best – they always were – and there was always the threat that war would break out again between them. Thus the immense carnivorous quadrupeds would never allow members of what they saw as a prey species to cross their territory and not get hunted down and eaten. "How is that possible?"
"Unknown at this time," Alice sounding as puzzled as an artificial intelligence could get at this odd development. "We would need to get much closer to the signals source to determine exactly where its coming from and how it got out here without being detected and hunted by the Zen'tou."
"We should finish fixing the ship before we do that," John pointed out as he finished off his steak and potatoes. Which prompted him to pick up and put the plate and cutlery back in the fabricator which would nanotechnically deconstruct them and reconstruct them again later with whatever he choose to eat next. "I'll head to engineering and get started on sorting out the problem with the fusion reactor. In the meantime why don't you launch a few of our probes and send them into the system to triangulate the source of our mysterious signal."
"Very well launching probes." As Alice spoke the deck beneath John's feet vibrated slightly with recoil as four of their system survey probes launched from their bay and began moving into the system. "Probes away. They will reach their first scan positions in one hour and fifteen minutes."
"I should have the fusion reactor fixed by then."
"Indeed. Shall I begin plotting our eventual course to the Maelstrom after we investigate the beacon signal?"
"Please Alice it would save us a lot of time."
"That it would. Very well I will begin plotting the course while you replace the reactors fuel flow regulator."
"Sounds like a plan."
With a course of action decided upon John left the mess hall and once again made his way towards the spare parts store to retrieve a replacement fuel flow regulator for the fusion core. As he walked he found his thoughts turning to the anomalous seemingly human signal coming from deeper within this seemingly uninhabited system. The questions as to what its true nature was and if indeed it was human how it had gotten out here playing over and over again in his mind. Each time his curiosity about them only grew as he did like a good mystery and this one seemed to be quite interesting indeed.
Reaching the small parts store he went and retrieved the fuel flow regulator. Grunting slightly at its weight as even with his strength being augmented by the nanites the damned thing was quite heavy. Ugh I am so going to spring for an anti-gravity trolly when I get back to civilization, he thought as he began to lug the heavy, somewhat bulky device out of the room towards the engine room. As he walked he put all thoughts of the beacon signal out of his mind for now, there would be plenty of time to investigate that later right now he had work to do and a ship to finish fixing.
