Chapter 6
Lost In The Mist © 2015 Sinclair Diavante
Chapter 6.
+30 days.
I was trying to pull some orange optical fiber through a conduit in The Jefferson, but it was caught somewhere. The tiny click as I pulled indicated I had just destroyed the glass filament inside. Fucking wonderful. I yanked on it and ripped the whole thing out in frustration, throwing it onto the floor, where it joined a few other ruined pieces.
I had managed to get all the beam damage repaired successfully, though I was having a hard time matching up the finish on the exterior panels, they had a strange texture which I couldn't easily reproduce. It looked like digital snow, up close. Oh well, scars told a story. I also subcontracted several pricey installations, crew quarters and facilities, along with a state of the art Autodoc. Always a good idea, it might save my life some day.
They were quickly completed by people I had never before seen on 1Z-Yoshi, and I humorously imagined them mechanically scurrying back into whatever hole they normally resided, silently waiting for the next contract to respond to.
The results were fantastic.
The smell of new polymers and fresh materials was a pleasant change from what The Jefferson originally arrived into my paws with. Cushy rubberized foam now lined all the floors, which felt wonderful under my paws.
She was cozy, with none of the lengthy hallways a Rhenthar ship typically had. The frame was compact for its size, with an engine module surrounded with cooling nacelles. That lead forward to a circular crew quarters, she could bed twenty. Bigger than I was after, but the smallest I could find which could still travel at faster-than-light speeds.
Hyperdrive version 1.0 promised an interesting ride. I had only read about it so far. The original space folder, the first of its kind. It was famous for feelings of nausea and the strange math which calculated, in all probability, when you switch it off you've entered a new, and slightly different universe. I applied centuries of software update patches to the control hardware, in hopes that such might be mitigated.
I picked up and inspected the AI core Nod had given me last month, turning it around to look closely at the only visible opening it had. A dim red laser winked at me querulously; as it did most times anything came near it. So far, the only use I'd had for it was as a stand to put my Solve-All diagnostics computer on. The days of having a lap big enough to put a laptop computer onto were long behind me.
Out of curiosity, I paused from my efforts on the ship, and disconnected the SolveAll from the fiber onboard systems. I used a short piece of patch optic cable to link the Solve-All to the AI. The cable end didn't fit, but some tape held it in place just fine.
I put the Solve-All's onboard optical port into "listen" mode, and dumped the output to the screen.
Nothing.
Duh. Of course not, the cube only emits data when it "sees" something. I transmitted a couple of bursts of data to the port, and watched the screen fill up as seemingly random data appeared rapidly. The cube was trying to send me something. After trying a few different kinds of modulation formats, the Solve-All froze. It refused to respond to any of my keyboard inputs.
Oh, great. This is exactly why I wasn't hooking the AI up to my ship any time soon. The Solve-All, that I could replace. I stared at the lifeless screen, and toggled the optical port, getting ready to power cycle the whole thing, when the graphics suddenly melted, and seemingly slid to the bottom of the screen, collecting in a squashed pile. I tapped a few keys, and green text appeared:
Target?
Hm. Now this is interesting. I typed no target and it displayed:
Idle.
I tried typing a few other things, like login and ? but it only kept repeating Idle in response. If I weren't so high on weed, I would have noticed the wireless activity light on the side of the Solve-All flickering like mad. But I'd been snagging green from Jimmy a lot, lately, and I completely missed it.
I folded the computer open and closed a couple of times, even power cycled it, but could get it to do nothing further. It frustrated me, and I wanted to get something done that day.
So I got up, went to one of the ship's maintenance display screens, and called up the trouble ticket system, deciding to skip the Solve-All, for now. There was plenty of time left in the day to dig up something more interesting. I'd ask Nod for additional information about the AI, later. I needed some login credentials or something before I could safely go any deeper into such alien technology.
Damage, Access Panel 1D-43. A 3D map rotated on the screen and I formed a decent idea of where that was, near the engine room. I stared for a few more seconds, memorizing it, then got up and headed toward the engine section.
The deuterium containment system hummed dangerously as I walked by it. I didn't relish standing so close to such massive amounts of stored energy, but I supposed it made no difference where I was on the ship, if it blew up I'd be dead no matter what. I stared at various indicators, all showing calm green, systems OK status.
I ran my paw over the cover of a superconducting cable, checking for condensation. The engine room was massive inside, with a trend in its cabling and support structure, most led to a diamond shaped housing in the center. In it was the space folder, a mysterious device created to ultra fine tolerances. A warning was written on its side:
No User Serviceable Parts Inside.
I knew little about how it worked, but I did know that it had parts which, if you held them between your fingers, they were immediately ruined beyond repair. The machined surfaces were that smooth. I turned my attention to the access panel in question.
Quarter turn fasteners dropping free, click, click. I plucked it from the wall, peering around inside with a tiny, powerful spotlight. Bullet holes stared back at me, too many to count. I leaned in and aimed the light down into some of them, and saw the floor of the dry-dock bay glimmering with its dull red surface.
Oh... lovely. Nod's going to hear about this, that's for damn sure. I aimed the light around, and tried to track some trajectories, but they went too deep, into areas which would be hard to reach. This was going to be like trying to dig out needles from a 300 ton block of Swiss cheese. There wasn't even any sense in going further with this one, it wasn't happening today.
I thought back to what I knew about damage repair, and remembered something which could specialize in this sort of problem. Nanobots. The little buggers could crawl from hole to hole and assess, and sometimes even repair, the damage. Eventually.
If programmed correctly.
If I got the right kind. Argh.