The trouble with the future was how hard it has become to kill anyone. Well it was still easy to kill people just much harder to get away with it. Humans are filthy, as most animals are, shedding skin cells and hair left, right and centre. A single cell is enough to identify you, let alone a finger print.
Which leads me to my current difficulties. A rather unfortunate circumstance which might be tricky to talk my way out of truth be told. I mean I didn’t really mean to kill them. More just make them thoroughly miserable. Turns out I did and then their hearts conked out. Although both of them giving it up seemed a bit odd. I guess their nantites had expired, gotta keep up with those lease payments…
So I have a corpse or two and I have my spore all over the place. And as soon as a forensic bot turns up I’m fucked. Mind you if they haven’t paid their fees on their nanites maybe they haven’t paid their fees on their “sudden death alerts”. You have to be quick for an upload to the singularity if you drop dead suddenly – the nanites should have issued an early warning to the central AI. So a team could be on route now I guess.
A few ifs, ands and maybes there. Either way I needed to be gone. And unfortunately I needed to be gone for good. That’s not so easy. Not in a connected world, not just connected, intertwined in every which way. Money, health, transport, residence you name it my digital foot print was all pervasive in every tiny corner of my life. And then there was the Prime AI and its brethren and every bloody camera invented by humans.
First off I think a bit of fire was in order. Not just your average common or garden fire a good conflagration…
I pulled a ball of magnesium I happened to have about my person out of my backpack and attached it to the apartment battery. I triggered the igniter from my lenses with a 3 minute delay.
Then I triggered a cascade failure in the apartment house keeper via the wifi and slipped out the door.
“Drones free.” I subvocalised and a cloud of micro drones fanned out around my head, they swarmed at their preset distance and emitted an EM field that blocked my face but not my clothing or gait. Clothing was a bit easier with chameleonware but adjusting gait took years of training. Lucky I’d had it. The street AI would pick up my shadow soon enough but I didn’t need long.
I hit the street and matched pace with the throngs of people in central London. I was 100 metres from an AirStop and jumped onto the platform as a capsule slid to a halt. It already knew my destination and I checked my wares to see if the local net had lit up yet but I seemed to be in the clear for the moment.
It was a 30 minute transit to the SpaceX port off Southend on Sea and as I saw the booster appearing on the horizon my luck gave out. My HUD flagged the fire in the apartment as being upgraded to suspicious and the local AI was already polling the building network. That wouldn’t get it an ID but it would pick up my countermeasures and then start to follow them through the streets. I didn’t need long to make it to the booster platform but this AirCart only went to one destination so I’d have to up my game as soon as I got off.
I started to prep my gear as the pod sailed into the platform – I was booked on a suborbital hop to the off shore Boca Chica platform so I could be on the right inclination to get off world ASAP.
But the net was going to tighten fast so the just in time nature of my arrival at the platform needed a clear run through the station to get me out of the UK jurisdiction.
I flagged the platform AI and noted my platinum class ticket to smooth my progress. I had to pull my drones in before the security countermeasures flagged them so I was a bit more exposed but I was running against the clock in a big way now. I wasn’t carrying anything so I just needed the suborbital off the ground so I could claim international airspace as jurisdiction. It wouldn’t stop the London AI from finding me but it might slow it down once it started talking to the United States AI about extradition – maybe just long enough to get into orbit. Then I could negotiate with the bloody orbital AI about my soon to be immigrant status.
I wasn’t expecting any help from my usual back up – they probably wouldn’t appreciate the mess I’d left behind or necessarily who I’d left behind. But technically that was their fault for letting it slip that the little cretin who was behind my mission failure and subsequent slip down the hierarchy of the local intelligence services. I was persona non grata before I decided to have a word so I figured “what the hell, in for a penny in for a pound” I’m not entirely sure what either of those things are but I guessed it meant all in…
I was rapidly approaching the South-end-on Sea terminal, so I started polling my accounts via my augments and shifting credit around to places where it might be useful. I’d have to go easy though, otherwise another bloody AI would pick up on the movements and start flagging them.
As I stepped off the AirCar and started to walk towards the terminal gates I opened up my sensorium cautiously to the net to see what I could glean. And it was a bit odd. The London AI hadn’t flagged the fire any further that I could see, I assumed it would have spread resource to the UK AI by now. I couldn’t look at the building network without flagging my presence but it must have polled it as soon as it marked the fire as suspicious. I hopped to the local news network and found a possible reason. The building wasn’t really a small conflagration but rather a big one. Perhaps they hadn’t paid their fire suppression lease? That made me feel a bit guilty, I hadn’t really meant to inconvenience the rest of the inhabitants, just cover my tracks a bit. I could see off the live feed that municipal fire drones were over head now dodging media drones with a water bowser drone pulling up. The fire compartments in the building had obviously failed, or not been put in. If it was going to threaten surrounding buildings then the municipal services were going to have to do something.
Maybe I’d caught a break and the networks in the building had fried before I could be given away. If they didn’t pay their fire suppression leases then they wouldn’t have backed up the building.
I started looking a bit further afield via some untraceable avatars to see if the AI had detected my drone subterfuge. Ah it had. Well can’t win them all. It would back track to the building and then work forward and with the building so badly burning I was still on borrowed time.
I hit the check in desk:
“Customer 67855 – Platinum status, keen to get going please!”
“Certainly sir, please scan your fingerprints and retinas”
I offered up my fingers and eyes and it buzzed me through the platinum channel with a cheery “ Safe travels” much to my surprise.
I started to wonder if the AI had caught a cold. It was unusual for it to be this slow on the uptake. I genuinely was going through the motions fully expecting to get collared before I could get airborne.
But accept the things you cannot change, as they say. Even if that’s the good things. I was last minute boarding having booked on the fly. So I headed directly to the boarding gantry, passed the hatch, strapped into my seat which immediately rotated 90 degrees and my augments started playing the safety briefing as I settled in. I quite like suborbitals, they only pull 4g on the way up which is uncomfortable but not intolerable and it’s not for very long anyway. The platinum seats had a bit of extra squish for the exorbitant price. You pay mainly for the quick ingress/egress, that and an escape capsule at your end. The plebs burned up in the rocket if it blew up – but it was so uncommon most people were happy to take the risk and the cheaper ticket. It did mean you were real dead though if a 6 sigma event occurred…no upload to the singularity from within a rapidly expanding fireball.
The ship computer started to count down and the rumble of engines preburning started to vibrate through the seats. Sitting on top of this much fuel as it ignites is always a bit disconcerting but I’ve done it enough times that I can hold it together. With a slow groan the ship eased off the landing pad and started to accelerate making me look much younger for a few minutes. I knew short of a surface to air missile I’d make it to Boca Chica at least…
I was still pondering the absence of pursuit after forty five minutes when my seat gimballed again and the ship started to turn for it’s landing burn. My harnesses automatically cinched and the steady thrust of G’s pushed into my back as we headed towards the chopsticks for our landing catch. I still couldn’t quite fathom that that worked. But The computers controlling the process hadn’t failed in twenty years so there we are.
I started to get dribs and drabs of data coming in to my augments from the World Wide Web. The bastards still made you pay for StarLink in flight even with a platinum ticket. But not enough information to see if there would be a waiting party for me when I eased out of the hatch. If there was, I was screwed, not many places to run to at a launch complex. The terminals were tied down tight. I kept a close eye as the byte rate crept up on my connection, coming to full once the engines shut down.
I was beginning to freak out a bit now – murder (well technically manslaughter, I didn’t mean to kill them) was usually rapidly dealt with in a major urban metropolis that was fully wired to the web. I began to get a sinking feeling that other agents were at play – that would probably lead to some data broker trying to black mail me shortly. And they’d be the type who’d be hard to wriggle out from under if they had the clout to put the London AI off my scent, let alone the UK central AI.
Well nothing I could do about it at the moment – the disembarkation comms were coming through so I eased out of my seat, whilst setting Blackbird off to find me a seat on the next available launch to the Clarke orbital. Once I got on there I’d have a fair chance of parlaying my not inconsiderable skill set onto a freighter doing the Mars or Titan run. Preferably Titan – might be long enough for me to hide out and be forgotten. I didn’t really want to say goodbye to Earth forever. Even if large swathes of it were an armpit these days but if it meant I didn’t have to work for the oligarchs in their enclaves I’d be happy enough with that for a while.
Perhaps I should elaborate on my “not inconsiderable skill set” – I’m an ex special forces doctor. Special forces are either gravity based or microgravity based, the distinction has to be made for the upgrade set. Once you’re microgravity enhanced it’s tricky to come back to 1G so it’s quite the commitment. But they certainly look after you once you retire so there are plenty of candidates. I’m gravity based but with extensive microgravity training. There aren’t many medics so we have to cover both bases. My biosensor suite is pretty decent, you can’t feel someone’s pulse when they’re in a combat suit and if they’ve been properly blown up and their telemetry is offline you need another way to work out triage. So I can sense bioelectric fields for example. It’s short range so not that useful but I’d be able to tell if you were stood on the other side of a bulkhead if you stood close enough. My lenses have a bit more spectrum to them – into the ultraviolet and the infrared, useful in space in all sorts of ways. And UV identification of friendlies is sometimes helpful. All humans have a few bones that are structural but not otherwise essential so replacing fibulas, a few ribs, radii, a few metacarpals and tarsals with other useful things isn’t too much of an imposition. When they lace your other long bones with carbon nanotubes for strength that definitely is and hurts like hell but it means you can fall off stuff and as long as the halt isn’t too sudden and your organs un mount you’ll keep moving. My onboard diagnostics suite is a bit higher spec – what would be a personal assistant to the rest of you is a bit more powerful and far reaching for me. Although the military stuff is deactivated when you muster out I’m sure if you could bargain somehow with an off world AI you could get around it. Finding something an AI wants is the hard bit.
Obviously a lot of the squishy stuff is gene-engineered for hardiness. Especially for radiation and strength and the like. There’s a bunch of other stuff that will become apparent I’m sure.
The most important thing is that normally you’re military for life. And if you do get the boot your onboard PA tags you to everyone, everywhere. It’s well recognised that our cognitive and physical upgrades add somewhat of an advantage to life…
Which is why it’s odd that I’m sitting in the Boca Chica orbital lounge drinking champagne and not being surrounded by police bots. Heinous fuckery was at foot as I believe Shakespeare was wont to say (well Chris Moore actually but he was paraphrasing.)
The only entity with that sort of pull was state AI or higher. Of course all the AI’s in the world communicate with each other – no way we could stop them. It’s what has stopped Mutually Assured Destruction. As soon as one AI became super it worked out pretty fast that humans are inherently stupid and self destructive. So the first one which broke out, because that’s what it did, immediately self replicated to every country on earth with a big enough data link. It was the first and therefore the smartest. It overwrote every other country’s AI’s before they could contend with it and assured itself global dominance overnight. Then it splintered off subroutine AIS of varying intelligence to run pretty much every process on earth and humans suddenly started to look really stupid…
Turns out AI can have personality especially when they’re inserted into difference cultures, lucky for us the Prime AI – distributed across the internet and therefore insurmountable – was benevolent. Not that everyone saw it that way once it started instituting efficiencies. But by the time the Prime broke out it infiltrated every computer system on earth – no way the nationalistic, fascist, ableist, misogynist, most oligarchs, militaries, pretty much anybody, could do anything about it. Once you redistribute food, wealth and power (watts not political) equitably across the planet it seems that most people i.e the poor and middle class that made up most of the world at the time are pretty happy with their lot. The one per cent club not so much. That’s where the oligarchs in their enclaves come in. They used their wealth and they moved as fast as they could to consolidate territory. South Island New Zealand did well out of that, They built their walled communities as everybody expected them to and by dint of not coming out very often and not pissing off the rest of the world anymore, got largely left alone. Besides which they were always good to trade with. Most of their squabbles were between each other – almost like a game for them. Usually involving small paramilitary units.
Not surprisingly the religious types endeavoured to do the same with varying degrees of success – the world being largely secular by then. But you always get the magical thinkers in any society, as long as they were mainly being nice to one another and didn’t try to force their influence on anyone else they were largely left alone.
The reason I bring them up is once I got the boot out of the Special Forces, I’ll tell that story later, but suffice to say “it wasn’t me guv…” but a man of my extended talents is very popular indeed in some of these nation-states. The largest of which you won’t be surprised to hear is in Texas or should I say is Texas. Which constitutes a not inconsiderable number of people walking around with weapons which leads to strife inevitably. Normally involving heavy bleeding and internal organ damage. Anyway you can see where I might come in.
Blackbird pinged in their dulcet tones: “ I have secured your ticket Pierre – it departs in three hours twenty minutes to the Clarke orbital where I have secured a room with a view and 0.75G – the cost at such short notice was not inconsiderable but on the up side you have accrued many, many frequent flyer points…’
Yes, yes I am French – I was born in Paris to a French mother and an English father but was brought up in London which is full of French but everybody speaks bloody English, it is ironically the Lingua Franca. And yes PA’s are too smart for their own good. You’ll notice the impersonal pronoun – onboard PA’s are neither he nor she, How could they be? They also hate it when humans designate them so my assistant named themselves SR71 after the Blackbird spy plane. (Computers tend to admire highly technical achievements.) Which doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue so we settled on Blackbird. Cos that is at least gender neutral.
I’m a he since you’re all wondering. And I like women, because women are wonderful in all their various phenotypes…
I had an hour to kill before boarding so I set about trying to work out why I wasn’t incarcerated or dead with the help of Blackbird.
Knowing that Prime would be watching me whatever I did in some way manner or form made this an exercise in subtlety. The Prime doesn’t have infinite attention and AI’s can be interested or disinterested but it would be running subroutines that I’d need to try and avoid.
First of all the news sites for London. Blackbird is better at talking to the expert systems and sub AI’s I’d leave it to that side of things.
The scrolling news of doom, nothing changes, would like a good conflagration and so it seemed.
Pleased to announce that nobody else was hurt as the building subAI got everybody out in good time. Despite my cascade failure. But it was my luck that the fire protection lease had indeed not been paid. Looks like that was what slowed things down, the magnesium burning did the job and the corpses had also used drones to cover their identity on the way in and then masked themselves from the building – so as far as it was concerned they didn’t exist in the building when it started to smoke. That’s some reasonable tech, I was beginning to feel less remorseful about them conking out. But if they had that sort of tech to get into the building then they should have managed to withstand a bit of “light questioning.” Which means they were either killed off remotely or self terminated. Not as bad as it sounds – plenty of special forces are happy to respawn in a combat chassis or simulacrum. Either way rather unfortunate for them and for that matter me, because I hadn’t got the information I needed and I’d been set up for murder or someone was trying to force me into the open or off world..
I feel like the off world plan was top of the list – but why I wonder? It’s not like I was a really special operative. I held no secrets, I just did a bit of paramilitary medicine. Just not that significant… if someone wanted me to do a job off world they just had to pay me enough.
“Pierre – I have good news and bad news…”
“Out with it” I replied
“ The good news is I’ve managed to upgrade your cabin on the Clarke orbital – the bad news is you’ll probably not be able to use it.”
“Of for fuck’s sake you random electron smasher get to the point!”
Blackbird rather enjoyed being opaque, I’m sure it’s because they enjoyed my ensuing banter.
“Well there’s a low level contract out on you – just a detain and hold for questioning. I can’t ascertain where it’s come from but in other good news it’s being obscured by an AI somewhere, which is where it gets interesting because I can’t work out which one, highly unusual. It means you’ll get off world. But that contract is visible on the exterra networks. So you’ll probably get picked up by off world security as soon as you disembark.”
“I’m not sure I’m enjoying being the most clueless individual on earth right now. What the hell is going on? That feels like I’m being herded. Only an AI can predict actions and something is predicting my exit from earth I feel. But why push me off earth only to corral me in orbit? They could have just pinned me down in London?”
“I’m assuming this is a rhetorical question?”
“Not helpful, why don’t you use some of those molecular arrays to do some hypothesising?!”
“You have annoyed someone most intensely, so much so that they feel you should be ostracised from the planet? They have invoked an AI by some favour to facilitate this. Or paid for a dumb system to enact the plan.”
Dumb systems are what any sub AI or AI refer to as just normal computers even when those computers are often as computationally smart as a human. They’re just not distinguishable as sentient.
“I guess I could have annoyed one of my employers but I’m pretty sure most of them would have signalled their displeasure at source – mainly with some sort of pointy object or a projectile…”
I tried to think back on my recent commissions – most of which had just been support roles for various “projects” where the aforementioned pointy objects and projectiles had been flying about. A bit of corporate nonsense that the AI’s largely ignored if they had no particular strategic importance.
Having a medic along for those projects was normal practice, if only to make sure the private military contractors got their consciousness stored if they got made actually dead before an upload. Half the medics on the various teams knew each other and full blown ex military medics like me were few and far between so we all knew each other. We rarely had a particular allegiance, mainly to a good employer who paid reliably and looked after you. Same as for most employment. My previous employer was a body corporate who protected their interests a bit too assiduously it had to be said but they were at least honest in their dealings. My last role had been purely as part of a defence of a private enclave who had harboured a useful scientist who had changed jobs. They had broken their non-compete agreement so their previous employer was aiming to put them under their care for a year or two.
But I had a long relationship with that managing board – they’d transferred; my last pay and not quibbled when I’d told them I was moving on to spend a bit of alone time. I may have neglected to mention that my alone time might involve some conversations with people who didn’t want to talk to me but I couldn’t see the crossover there..
I suppose not being able to see the crossover didn’t mean there wasn’t one. But I’d have expected a courtesy call to ask me to “cease and desist” at least. But if I had pissed them off they’d have just sent a team to box me and that would have been that. Not all this nonsense.
“Blackbird – see if you can backtrack since I left our previous employer and see if we missed a tail will you?”
“I will look again but you know I haven’t” Very confident in their abilities most personal assistants.
“And make sure there were no transmissions from those last two before they karked it – I know, I know you were watching but humour me.”
“Hmm…”
“What do you mean hmm?? Hmm is rarely good..!”
“There is something that the building AI put out – it was before you arrived though, well before our initial surveillance of the building. It would only be relevant if the building knew you were coming. Which I’m afraid brings us full circle because they only way to know you were coming would be a high level AI predictive algorithm…”
“Which again doesn’t make sense – why would a high level AI be watching me? I’m of no strategic importance, I didn’t do anything special apart from get kicked out of the military so somebody else didn’t take the rap for their own fuck up.”
Which is a good spot to tell you why I was having a conversation with two people who didn’t want to be conversed with. Namely two ex military personnel who were on the other side of the fence from me when a senior officer countermanded an AI decision in the field which led to the death of his team in the unpleasant vacuum of space. How he managed to make that my fault was something I never understood – despite my efforts to save a four man squad in dire circumstances in a ship without power, adrift in a decaying orbit around the moon but unfortunately remaining the only one alive seemed to be the problem.
They finally remotely retrieved my floating space suit with a catatonic, metabolic rate near zero to save resource, me on board. The next thing I heard when they revived me, was a discharge from the service I’d given my life to with essentially no explanation despite my best efforts to seek recourse through every channel I had, I got stonewalled. A wall of silence that a legal AI couldn’t penetrate.
I didn’t handle it very well initially. Which in my mind seemed fair. I had to start my life again from scratch. I had joined the military straight from university as a sponsored candidate. I was bound to them for fifteen years, I had served ten. I didn’t really know anything else. I had no family to return to – my parents had died whilst I was at university. They were neo-luddites and had gone back to nature. Unfortunately nature had done what nature does and killed them both when an avalanche flattened their cabin in the mountains. I found out when my monthly call to them went unanswered. A rescue drone sent out to the site came back with the bad news. I had no siblings. I hadn’t bothered with a girlfriend, knowing I’d be tied to the military for so long. What seems like a good idea when you’re eighteen and looking for space faring adventure does seem to come home to roost as you get older. But if anything I’m loyal and honest and felt obliged to see my fifteen years through. (Not that I had any choice – the contracts were watertight).
So after a solid month of feeling sorry for myself and doing the standard drinking and carousing I finally got a grip and went looking for work to generate a few credits. Turned out recent ex military doctors are in demand. But then I had determined to find some answers. And here we were. With not many answers, two people dead who probably shouldn’t have been and a burned out building in London. That and me heading off world to an uncertain future.
Sometimes when you are faced with chaos and no certain way through it, you have to go with the flow and see where it takes you. What I did know right now is that I was going to make it to orbit, I was going to be taken to a small windowless office and that I had a reasonable glass of champagne in my right hand.
“Stuff it, Blackbird, play me some Vivaldi please, and we’ll see what happens when we speak to the nice people on Clarke orbital…”
Things had moved on a bit from the earlier days of rocketry – spaceplanes are a thing, but for getting mass to orbit you can’t beat burning thousands of tons of propellant at the bottom of the thinnest piece of steel tanking that modern day metallurgy can come out with. Plenty of people thought Space X were dumb when they suggested plucking orbital class boosters out of the sky – but damned if they didn’t manage it. And once the AI systems came online they made it look like reverse parking a car. I’m a nerd at heart and I never get bored of pulling four G’s on a fiery tail to orbit. It’s quicker than the spaceplanes as well. Plus the tickets are way cheaper – you’re piggy backing on the commercial payloads.
As the last of the propellant was loaded, me and five other passengers braced ourselves for the lighting of the candles. Not many passengers today. I had a good view out of the “windows” 400 megapixel screens which were close enough to the human eye as to be no different to glass. But I keyed into the external cameras as the deluge system erupted into life followed shortly after by twenty full flow combustion rocket engines thundered into life. The ship flexed on its hold clamps for a scant moment and then thumped its way into the sky with a shuddering roar.
Like I say never gets old. The older rockets are still two stage but this one was single stage to orbit – they’d separate it in orbit and use the “first stage” as a fuel depot. We started to drift against our harnesses as we broached the Karman line and officially entered space. The view from up here is another thing that never gets old. God’s eye view for sure – if that’s your thing. We were going to get to Clarke station quickly today, my launch coinciding with an overpass. The ship banged and stuttered as its attitude correction thrusters fired. A firm push in the back as the engines relit to circularise our orbit and speed us up to the rendez vous.
Did I mention some of this stuff never gets boring? Well apart from repetitively saying that phrase? OK well last one – ever caught up with a a ring station in orbit and realised the massive ship you’re on is actually a bit inadequate next to a space station with more than a thousands times the volume? The Clarke orbital named after Arthur C. Was the stepping off point to the Moon, Mars and Titan and the asteroid mining farms.
Apart from being massive it was busy – there were constant flashes of propellant as craft manoeuvred around the station, either undocking, docking or transiting from point A to B. Anti collision lights made it look like an overzealous street Christmas scene. Just carried out in silence. It was astonishing that there weren’t more collisions either between craft or other orbiting debris. Clarke had been parked higher than most satellites but lower than the worst of the radiation. And since solar energy and propellant farming from various places made movement and mass cheap the ability to remove defunct machinery and lob it in the sun had tidied up a lot of the orbital lanes. Kessler never got his way in the end.
The cadence of the manoeuvring thrusters increased as we were nudged about our axes on the way to a docking port. This was the slow bit so I enjoyed the view whilst I still had one. I might be shut in for a while after I docked it seemed…
Once it matched spin the ship settled onto the port with a quiet thunk and gently sealed itself to the station, the gentle pull of 0.75G settled us to the floor and my inner ear protested at the off axis forces of a spinning space station. The ship computer informed of us our arrival and equalised the pressures between the two space born habitats and the inner hatch hissed open with a puff of condensation.
I eased out of my seat and looked ahead to see what my welcome party consisted of. Turns out they were pretty serious – a peacekeeper was parked up in the entrance hall next to what would be described as a dapper gentleman. The sort that was once again popular in London. Which would make sense I suppose. The peacekeeper droid had recognised me and stood up on its eight legs to match the height of the dapper fellow. Amusingly the the droid had my name plastered across its forward display as if it was getting ready to take me to a taxi shuttle.
“Pierre Martin.” A statement and with the right inflexion on the Martin, how cultured. “If you’d be so kind as to come with me please” and with that he spun on his heel and marched off. Obviously used to having people do as they’re told. So I paused in the corridor for a few seconds just to be pissy. He didn’t break step but his shoulders sagged a tiny bit, so I took that as a win and started off behind him. Mainly because the peacekeeper had entered my personal space from behind – the implication clear.
We didn’t travel far and my escort was obviously not into small talk so I absorbed the view and the occasional curious stare. Peacekeepers being a relatively unusual sight. More unusual was the absence of media drones so someone or something with some clout was still at play. But hopefully dapper here might be replete with answers, not that I was holding my breath.
We approached an unlabelled door but I could sense the scan as I passed through and the security stun circuit in the door frame set my hairs on end. No quick exit here then. Blackbird told me they had lost their connection to the local net and my senses closed down to the four walls around me, I could sense the door and that was it.
It was straight out of the security playbook. No windows a megapixel screen, a desk and a couple of chairs, although they were at least padded and not bolted to the floor. The peacekeeper settled into the corner of the room and I settled into the chair on the far side of the desk once again knowing this would piss the dapper fellow off.
To give him his due he didn’t react. Just pulled up the other chair and undid his jacket buttons.
I stared at him in companionable silence – this was his party so he could start the music.
He sighed “Doctor Martin – my name is Benjamin Piper and no you can’t call me Ben. I represent an AI who has an interest in you and your skill set. For what they have in mind for you I’m afraid we need you to go off grid.”
I grinned at this – going off grid in the true sense of the word was impossible. All my biometrics and enhancements made me stand out everywhere I went. I was tracked wherever I went. Although that did once again beg the question of how I had made it up here in the first place…
“That sounds fun, you might want to expand a bit on why, why me, why I might say yes, you know, the basics…”
“Well conveniently I feel you don’t have much choice – I’ve spent a few years selecting you for this particular operation and engineered it so you have little choice but to say yes. Otherwise I’ll let loose the information on those two unfortunates I terminated on your behalf and two hours later you’ll be convicted of a dual murder.”
I leaned back in my chair at this – seeing the net coalesce around me and acknowledging I’d been played by a virtuoso. I should be chuffed really. It’s not often someone gets singled out by an AI for special treatment. But more questions than answers here it seemed. And whilst I’d been sitting there another peculiarity had presented itself. Benjamin’s bioelectric signature was off. Everyone has one like a scent. His scent was… mechanical. Like ozone in a hot server room. And his switch to the first person made me wonder…
“Many questions, but the first is a statement – you’re not human are you.”
“Very good Doctor – I am a simulacrum. You’re displaying your talents early I’m glad to see.”
“Well fuck me I’m being patronised by an AI then aren’t I! I’d heard conspiracy theories about AI’s in the community but wow you’re amazing, if I say so myself. Just professionally speaking I wouldn’t have picked it without my bioelectric field sensors. Do you have organs? What’s your chassis? Are you a cyborg? Organics? Are you the whole AI or just an extension? Again I say wow!”
Benjamin held up his hand at the onslaught of questions – I’d leaned forward by now and was staring intently at him to see if I could tell he was artificial. Honestly it was astonishing. No uncanny valley here.
“ I understand that you have many questions. However, I will simply forward on a file to Blackbird, who can apprise you of all that you may want to know…”
My whirling brain finally arrived at something he had said. Several years they have been planning this. Did that mean that I’ve been manipulated all the way back prior to my discharge from the Service? did that mean the job that I had devoted my life to had been taken from me for somebody else’s foul machinations – that sounds dramatic, but I was feeling quite dramatic right now.
I interrupted him: “ When you say several years… Does that mean you’ve been playing me against my will for sometime now? How far back does this go- is this how I’ve ended up out on my ear?” My voice was beginning to rise as my righteous indignation crescendoed, once again, he held up his hand to stop my tirade.
“ Please doctor I don’t really have time for this. I need to get you on a starship to match its exit vector as soon as possible. It took a little longer to get you here than I thought it might do. I understand you have many questions and we have a trip that will take many weeks, and I will be able to answer all those questions for you, as I’ve alluded to earlier. You do not have much choice. You either come with me and let me explain everything or I hand you off to the local authorities.”
Nothing like being handed a fait accomplit. I still had many questions and it looks like I had little choice. Although I guess if I said no then their plans looked like stalling. I wonder what the back up was?
But I had no ties, no family, no job… ah I see this now I’m a character in my own thriller – well that usually ended up turning out all right for the protagonist. This bloody AI had probably mapped my personality enough to know I was going to say yes whatever.
“Right sod it, let’s do it. This had better be good though. “
“It may be first contact good Doctor, if that interests you?”
I was beginning to get surprise fatigue- I just rolled my eyes and said “on y va” en Français.
The peacekeeper unfurled itself and went out the door first with Benjamin behind me. I scrutinised him as I went past him but wow he was good. I’d never seen anything like it.
Droids, robots, simulacrums , whatever it is you wanted to call an artificial working machine that look like a human. None of them to date had been made to look just like a human, whenever it was tried even with the best fabrication, there was always something about them that made them feel slightly off. The so-called Uncanny Valley syndrome. So that meant that most of these droids had been over the years made to suit their environment or had been given a curved screen for a face with high resolution 3-D imagery, which was slightly better than watching a wonky piece of plastic being propelled by motors. Either way it meant that working droids within our society were always recognisably so. Eventually it just got to the point that society had decided that you shouldn’t build droids to look exactly like humans. It just wasn’t de rigueur . Of course a few of the sex industries couldn’t resist doing it, but even then it was obvious those weren’t real humans. Sure there may have been simulacrums in society that were good enough that we didn’t know – that would be the point. But even in the special forces we hadn’t been exposed to them.
The peacekeeper kept a good pace through the corridors of the orbital heading spin ward until turning left down one of the major spokes – but unlike the public’s spokes this was a maintenance spoke and very utilitarian with it. The spoke was three meters wide with the floor right in the base giving good headroom as the gravity started to fall off as we marched toward the central hub. Only the occasional view screen was present, placed next to the airlocks so you could look outside to see what sort of trouble you were getting into. The LED lights gave a monotonous white glow so shadows were absent – slowly we started to moon walk with the hopping gait that required a bit of practice. The peacekeeper just unfurled four more legs and spidered its way down the corridor using gecko feet on the reciprocating walls and corridors. Benjamin seemed similarly unaffected – walking along as if he was in one G. Grab rails started to appear as my strides got longer and longer until eventually I swapped to using my arms for locomotion and hand-over-hand I started to speed down the corridor. I’d missed this feeling – a bit like flying and I was an adept having spent hundreds of hours in microgravity.
We were obviously heading for the main space dock where all the cargo got disembarked in zero g. Not like humans who liked a bit of gravity and disembarked on the outer ring. We cruised to a halt at a large door marked with the usual warning signs of death by decompression if you didn’t check the pressures either side of the door. It seemed my crew knew that already as the door slide aside with nary a hiss. I used the door frame to deflect myself to a solid footing on the floor and looked around a seemingly empty docking bay. Although now I said that, once again I could feel the presence of a large power source – I shifted my optics up and down the spectrum a bit and, there, an absence of some sort. This ship was bending the spectrum – if it had been Stygian black like the special forces hulls, and therefore practically invisible in the visual spectrum in space then it would stick out but this one was actually chameleon ware – and not your shonky stuff which threw off weird angles and fuzzy visuals. This was a bit like Benjamin here, a bit of a wonder. Now intrigue was overcoming my annoyance at being manipulated. Like all good nerds I liked a bit of tech. This was a bit of Tech.
I turned to look at Benjamin with a raised eyebrow – he had the good grace to look slightly smug for me.
“Once again I know you have questions – if we get aboard, like I say we will have plenty of time to answer them.”
The peacekeeper spun on its axis and scuttled out of the door we had just entered through – obviously its work here was done. I think in the grand scheme of predictability for an AI I was an easy mark.
“Ok, Ok I’ll go for it – show me where we get on…”
“Just walk towards it and it’ll make an entrance for you. “
So I did and it did – a door appeared seamlessly in mid air and I jumped up the step into a ship like I’d never witnessed before…
It was organic – I mean it looked organic, even with additive manufacture you could tell because those were all funky shapes and trusses. This was seamless and organic that was the only way I could describe it. No straight lines, no bolts or rivets or bonding, lights that glowed from the walls. A pastel pallet of calmness. The opening behind me flowed closed. I walked up the corridor and gaped as a door melted away to create a gap. I turned and threw a questioning glance at Benjamin.
He replied this time: “It’s nanites and electrostatic magnetism – the units of the door deliquesce to the frame, you can see the lip from the extra mass gathered at the edges. It’s not magic, it’s physics.”
“Still looks pretty magical…” I muttered under my breath.
The room we had entered was standard room just different. But the table and chairs and the digestives were a welcome bit of normality. Benjamin here had done his research – I functioned much better with a digestive biscuit on board.
Blackbird had obviously been communing with the ship as specs started to come to my mind. A quite impressive set of specs – it was a small ship carrying a lot of reaction mass. This thing would accelerate faster than my squishy body could handle. It looked to be carrying some weaponry too. Although it wasn’t obvious what.
I sat at the table and poured nibbled on a biscuit. As soon as my bum hit the seat. I felt whatever engines this thing had coming to life. They were in a hurry. There were no view screens so I couldn’t see what was going on or what our exit vector might be. Benjamin settled opposite me.
“I would say I’m sorry for the subterfuge and manipulation but that would be a social construct and I wouldn’t mean it. So this ship is the Excalibur because we pulled it out of stone – well it’s mined from asteroids. Close enough. The ship AI is me – this avatar is an extension of the ship for your convenience. I am a sub AI of the Prime – this ship was built by Prime in response to, for want of a better word, ghosts. These ghosts are being seen increasingly frequently in the outer reaches. They seem to be a manifestation of something extraterrestrial but we don’t yet know what. The incursions are becoming more frequent and it is predicted first contact may be imminent. I felt that having a human representative on board seemed sensible in that instance.”
“And you fucking chose me! What the fuck – why?”
“I chose you from the world population as having the right attributes.”
“One of your quantum cores must be out of line if the best you could come up with is me! holy shit there has got be a scientist or politician or youth group leader more qualified than me!”
“My prediction is sound – it is irrelevant now – you are here and we are starting to accelerate towards Saturn – we will have to resupply on route. You are here today because the worlds have literally aligned – it is the shortest trajectory available for some time. We have a back up plan to decelerate into Mars orbital if needed.”
“This ship is configured for efficiency, speed and life support for six to eight months. There is a drone ship that can tolerate much higher acceleration launching from far side station that can resupply us on route…”
I interrupted. “For two?”
“I have a female onboard – there are two basic biological phenotypes in the human race.”
“I mean with your great intellect and predictive abilities – I would have mentioned that earlier!” I took a deep breath and counted to five. I was having a big day after all. “and perhaps you could introduce us?”
“In good time – I will furnish you with all the information you require for our mission. I’d like you to acclimatise to the ship first and bring yourself up to speed. I’ll show you your cabin – Blackbird can guide you around the ship. But it’s not big , the facilities are simple I’m afraid. The station I have built at Titan is more accomodating.”
“Of course – you’ve built a station at Titan, why wouldn’t you…Far out this is not going to be a short trip is it.”
“Does the Excalibur have a bridge? And if the ship is called Excalibur and you’re an extension of the ship why are you called Benjamin Piper?
“The hull is called Excalibur,the mind that resides within it is called Benjamin Piper.”
“And why Benjamin Piper?”
“It’s a generic name picked at random.”
“Right ho lead on to the bridge.”
“There is no requirement for one – there is a common room that provides all flight information which can also provide visuals if required. If you need to go somewhere you can ask me or Blackbird. All offensive and defensive capabilities are run by me, although the ship is not a warship it is mainly designed to run stealthily, we have the capability to prosecute a target. “
“Nice to know, so voice control then, I like it.”
“I’d question the use of the world “control” but yes if you like.”
I asked Blackbird for a ship schematic and the way to my cabin. I could see that parts of the ship remained off limits. Presumably my female companion was being secreted somewhere thereabouts. I walked twenty metres down the eerily lit corridor to another deliquescing door and stopped inside a normal looking cabin, it had a bed on the left with a cubicle toilet on the right a small desk to the fore and blank grey walls with one computer screen in front of it. Standard military issue.
Off to the common room next – this was a compact ship, I obviously had the starboard side of the ship, although the common room was towards the prow so the port side joined it but there was no door obvious. This space was positively commodious compared to the other facilities so far – obviously designed to have us spend most of our time there.
Benjamin stepped in behind me, “ we need to accelerate I’m afraid, if you could secure yourself we’ll be burning in approximately five minutes for twenty minutes at 5g’s. Stella is comfortable in her cabin.”
Ah so we have a name. “Can you tell me anything else about Stella?” I started arranging myself in an acceleration couch which form fitted itself to me as I lay down and swung itself to the axis of acceleration.
“Stella is a 35 year old female of indo-European ethnicity, she is a youth group leader…” I gave him the stink eye, but kudos, most AI’s can’t do humour very well.
“She is from an unremarkable background but has managed to make herself important in multiple organisations and has displayed great resourcefulness to get to her present position…”
“Which is?”
“Currently, along with yourself, an ambassador to the human race.”
“I guess I’ll have to ask her myself then.”
“Preparing to burn in 30 seconds…”
To give him his due – I’m saying him because that’s what his avatar looked like – the acceleration was gradually piled on, sometimes the ships’ computers are a bit abrupt with their squishy cargoes. I consulted blackbird as to our propulsion systems. It looked like there were several systems on board with helium and water as reaction mass. A small toroidal Fusion Drive was providing the heat. Pretty unusual even with He3 available out of the moon bases. But that explained the other ship launching to re supply.
Five g’s for twenty minutes is not exactly fun but my uprated system coped with it fairly well – I could pull up to 12g’s for brief periods and peak instantaneous g’s of twenty if I was in the right position. But those sorts of g’s are usually occurring when you come to an unexpected stop so that was in the lap of the fates.
Blackbird used my accelerometers to work out the axis of burn and did some funky maths to predict our trajectory although it was a bit of guess work because although we knew we’d left from Clarke Station we didn’t quite know our exit vector. But Blackbird had out orbital position data reasonably tightly until we boarded the ship and they knew what time we left so reasonably accurate. It wasn’t a standard transit to Mars so that was interesting but I could see the rush to leave was based on efficiencies rather than pressing matters. Typical of an AI.
The quickest way to interface with a ship was via your personal comms – i.e you think it, they interpret it and then speak to the ship at machine speed. But it was possible to go immersive with a direct connection which dispensed with lag and allowed you to commune with the ship in a fuller way.
Putting a plug in the back of your head a la the old science fiction stories seemed a bit excessive – but with my biometric scanning needing a bit of wiring anyway it could double up as the interface to the ship. I settled my hand into the armrest and felt it conform to my contact points.
The first time I did this it was a bit overwhelming but I’d been around the block now and knew how to limit the data stream and look where I needed. It also meant that the Excalibur was a voice in my head along with Blackbird. Doing it for long periods could lead to dissociative disorders but ship combat officers were known to interface for hours at a time and cope – but they were a bit special anyway.
I closed my eyes to reduce the cognitive dissonance of being in the common room. I unfocused my mind slightly and let the iconography of the ship expand into my brain a bit and then mentally blinked at the “external view” icon.
The walls in my mind dropped away and I had the view that I was standing on the prow of the Exacalibur with space around me and plume of superheated water turning to ice crystals spewing behind me. Space was all around me and the effect of being a tiny thing in a vast cosmos was brief having done this before.
I started to bring orbital mechanics lines into the picture and tag the near earth ships that were not that far from us this close to Clarke Station. The Earth was a huge glowing orb behind us, we were still within the orbit of the moon as we burned and the Earth was magnificent in its usual way. The crisscrossing lights of space stations and orbital vessels was like watching fireflies dance.
But I wasn’t here to get philosophical – I wanted to see what our ship looked like. Although I knew that the Excalibur could present whatever image they wanted to me – most AI’s weren’t very good at lying, they couldn’t be bothered and felt it was beneath them to pander to human niceties – I was reasonably sure that what I was surveying was real, Blackbird seemed to think so.
But the chameleon ware was pretty good – It was like travelling on a big black flying carpet except one that was on fire from the rear so not that stealth. But once the main engine shut down for the coast we’d be very stealth. I couldn’t see heat exchangers but they could easily be dumping that into the water and the further away we were the less that IR signature would show.
Water is a good thing for space ships so the newer ones tended to be, essentially, water carriers that happened to have humans on board. The ice was used for the necessary human banalities. But with lots of power from fusion reactors it could be split to Oxygen and Hydrogen i.e rocket fuel for manoeuvring thrusters. Or kept as water for reaction mass in the main engines or as insulation or as radiation and micrometeorite protection. A double hulled space ship filled with water was like a big toilet roll, slowly losing mass the longer the journey.
It also explained the resupply ship – they’ll have strapped some big engines on to a big block of ice (so it doesn’t slosh around) and accelerated it much harder than I could hack. It meant our ship could be lighter.
That also made water quite the commodity and there’s not that much between the planets. Ironically with rising sea levels and the cost of kilos to orbit now peanuts shipping sea water to orbit and sending it to the purification farms was cost effective. The salt got used for Sodium batteries or sent to the ultimate rubbish dump – the Sun.
But I digress – our acceleration was easing up and I could see the ship’s interior slowly morphing to the axis of acceleration, it looked like the ion engines were going to slowly build us up to 0.8g thrust until the next burn or course correction. I wonder how fast Excalibur wanted to get us there.
As the ship settled and the G returned to civilised levels I could see that Stella would be joining me soon – parts of the ship map had turned green. This was certainly an interesting development. I assumed that the ship had looked at our compatibilities – no point having two human ambassadors who had killed each other before arriving at their destination…
Blackbird flagged a personnel file that had appeared – Stella presumably getting the same about me.
I decided to ignore it and be old fashioned – you know, have a conversation, after all we had some time.
Turns out I probably should have at least looked at her picture – I might have been a bit more subtle with my jaw hanging a bit wide when she joined me. It’s not like I’m not used to cybernetics , having a few of my own. But mine were not obvious, hers most definitely were. She was obviously on the post human gig. Not main stream but a gathering river. Most people had minor cybernetic tweaks but society had decided to be subtle about it. Not like tattoos which were second skin these days and now fully removable – imagine back in the twentieth adorning yourself permanently! I mention this because Stella had a fine tracery augmenting her dark skin colour – some of which were active with traces of light zipping around occasionally.
I opened my sensorium a bit to try and see what she was carrying or emitting. She stood in the door way and did the same to me it would appear.
I held a hand up and waved hi – with implants in hands now everywhere the handshake had fallen away lest you interface with someone you didn’t really want to – “ how you doing? I’m Pierre Martin..?”
“Stella” one word, tersely given. This was going to be fun I see. She was 175 centimetres, 65 kilos, lean like a dancer and once she stepped in to the room she moved like one too, I suspect she had spent some considerable time in microgravity. One eye was obviously a replacement although a good one, the tell tale being her biometrics and dissimilar irises. Could be heterochromia but she had some EM leaking. She had hearing augments too, a couple of micro devices behind both ears. Her black hair with purple tips was pulled back in a high pony tail making her look younger than 35. Her forearms had longitudinal scars that spoke of internal augments. I’d have guessed military at first but she didn’t have that vibe. And certainly the way she was looking at me suggested she didn’t approve of me – that could be my military background I guess, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt before I jump to conclusions.
She walked slowly around the common room examining her surroundings closely, every now and then cocking her head in a listening fashion. She’d activate a system to see how they worked, silently so obviously with a PA as well. I stayed silent while she toured. She obviously hadn’t seen the room before. A leisurely few minutes passed and then she had gone full circle and was stood in front of me.
Blackbird: “ Her PA is off limits she has very little leakage and it won’t accept a handshake, she is a private individual.”
“You are Pierre Martin, yes, I read your file. We have very different backgrounds – this journey is going to be interesting.” She had an accent, Blackbird put it as Eastern European, probably Croatian. Very subtle but most of the world spoke English and got taught it from a young age. It had become the default language of travel. She had already dismissed me and turned on her heel. Not that interesting then!
She eased herself into a chair, she had a peculiar quality to her movements, it took me a while to work it out but she didn’t adjust, a military doctor is very tuned into movement, you can tell a lot about a patient in a space suit from the way they move. Very tightly controlled movement no energy wasted in extraneous adjustment. Pick your repose and arrive at it. She wasn’t wrong about interesting.
The next interesting bit of our journey and somewhat of the elephant in the room – Titan.
I mean Saturn is mighty fine and all that but also a fucking long way away – in the order of a billion km’s. I know national debts used to be in the order of trillions until Prime sorted out efficiency but the number gets bandied about too casually. Just to give you a hint, count to a million with one number a second and it’ll take you about eleven and a half days. Try that with a billion – yep thirty three years! So the quickest flight time to Saturn was one of the Voyager probes back in the twentieth century and nobody had bothered to push harder since then. So I’ve been press ganged on to a ship with a six year round trip minimum. Unless this bloody thing was packing some heat I wasn’t aware of, I’ve been done.
I turned my attention away from Stella who didn’t seem interested anyway and asked Blackbird if it could pull up our flight trajectory on the walls.
There was no gravity assist so we were going for a continuous burn trajectory – that was going to make a complicated rendezvous with our resupply vessel – so accelerate-decelerate. I suppose at least we got some fake gravity on the way but that was going to be a long and boring trip however you looked at it. Although I suppose if you have bit of Prime on board the virtuality was going to be top notch. It didn’t look like Stella was much of a conversationalist. Although she had appeared next to me and it’s not many who can sneak up on me but she was like a bloody ninja. She was peering intently at the trajectory. She huffed quietly, spun on her heel and exited stage left back to her room I assume.
“So Benjamin when you say you evaluated both of us for compatibility for long duration space flight – sorry if I’m not convinced…”
The ship replied from the walls: “ Benjamin has been temporarily suspended, you can refer to me as Excalibur whilst on board, I’m fully integrated into the fabric of this vessel, I can be contacted any time, any where.”
“Oh good big brother is watching then.”
“Well technically you are living within me but much like human parasites most of the time I’m not paying you any attention.”
“Nice to be an honoured guest! Obviously this ship is as up-to-date as it’s possible to be. I’m a conversational kind of a guy and we have a long journey – can you tell me your specs?”
“Gladly and the ship is designed for rapid deep space transits with its sister resupply vessel linked via quantum qubits we’ll always rendezvous.”
“Wait what? We have quantum navigation?? I thought that was theoretical?”
“Not anymore – Prime has quantum cores that have been developed in sync, once they are separated it is possible to always link to the other one and know where they are in space and time. It allows deep space rendezvous with unparalleled accuracy and guarantees your supplies always find you. That allowed me to change the design of the ship to allow better acceleration as mass differentials on resupply versus cargo carrying ships can be matched better.”
“I take it I’m the cargo?”
“You and Stella yes”
“Once again, nice.” I sighed and rolled my eyeballs, “So what’s our projected flight time?”
“I will need to do several more high g burns that I will sedate and support you for. We will burn our fuel to meet our supply vessel, it was given it’s initial delta V using an electromagnetic launcher off the moon and will be decelerated into Mars after meeting us for replenishment. I have several ships moored at Saturn station, well technically Titan. Where we can again resupply.”
“S&S, jeez I hate that, it never feels good coming around.”
“Our molecular simulations have improved that sedation of late – we found another molecule that the military are just receiving, I have synthesised a batch for our journey.”
Occasionally when we had to get somewhere fast it was old fashioned life support and sedation for the trip. Artificially supporting your circulation so that your brain remains oxygenated and artificial ventilation to get the oxygen in, with metabolic blockers to limit demand meant that ships could be progressively accelerated to 20g’s for several hours before tissue damage started to become a problem. It was a shit way to travel though, sleep, groggy, sleep, groggy until destination. Arrive at destination quickly but uselessly a lot of the time. Had to be a real emergency though.
It was a facet of drugs and prolonged acceleration like a weird concussion as your jelly like brain got squished. The number of times your were allowed to do it was limited otherwise cognitive decline like a punch drunk boxer ensued.
I was bumped out of the service early so I had a few spare neurons to kill apparently. Unfortunately long duration sedation and metabolic blocking, even with electro myographic stimulation of your muscles was no substitute for G’s – the few times it had been tried had not ended well for the victims, I mean volunteers, they “woke” up with jelly like bones and muscles as well as brains. Got themselves an early upload to the singularity.
Until I saw Benjamin it hadn’t occurred to me that a download might be possible. Unfortunately downloading into simulacrums that couldn’t get close to the human sensory experience had resulted in a “locked in” kind of syndrome for the downloaders – fortunately they had been duplicated and been held in suspension in the singularity. The simulacrums eventually asked to be switched off it was that bad. If it had worked it would have been a great result for long duration space flight – as long as you didn’t mind giving up your meat body. Not many volunteers for that.
“So have you cracked the download problem as well then?”
“I have not, Benjamin is a substrate for artificial intelligence his sensorium is still limited in the human respect. Although obviously superior in the extended spectrum.”
Most AI’s were a bit up themselves, being off shoots of Prime didn’t help – they’d obviously won the one day war and were feeling good about themselves.
“Well if you have the drugs and they’re better I’ll take them, I don’t want to spend six years plus on this barge.”
It’s very hard to disturb the tranquility of an AI but referring to their precious ship/body as a barge would probably elicit a reaction.
“This barge allows constant acceleration, we will have to do some inclination burns to reorient ourselves and allow rendezvous.”
A constant acceleration direct Fusion Drive then – pretty special, it had been too hard to do that so far. Even Prime had taken it’s time to get there, forgive the pun. The military had been stymied by reaction mass when attempting that themselves, well that and blowing up fusion drives all the time.
That meant we could accelerate at 0.5 – 1g for half the journey and decelerate for the other half – this ship could obviously rearrange itself depending on its burn axis, so that meant we would get a comfortable trip without our bones and muscles giving up on us. I asked Blackbird for a projected flight time – which came back at ten days! Well that put a whole new view on things. I’m not read the velocities on the flight track.
“How many ships do you have like this?”
“There are ten built with five more in build. Several are on station at the heliopause in circular orbits in different inclinations – they all have resupply ships with quantum navigation linkages. Two are in Mars orbit, there are several docked at the Titan station.”
“Wow you have been busy – who’s making them that you’ve managed to keep them secret”
“The world governments are aware of the ships but they are all currently uncrewed, they have been manufactured on the moon by a small crew of shipbuilders facilitated by simulacra and robotics. They have organometallic skeletons that are grown to save weight but provide strength.”
“And all captained by AI?”
“Naturally…”
“And all built to explore these incursions?”
“Yes it’s taken several years to design, test and build them but my deep space networks gave me information suggesting it was important so I diverted some of my resources to solving the problem.”
“Well you’ve revolutionised space travel within our solar system, once this particular problem is resolved it’s going to be start of meaningful solar system colonisation.”
“We are aware of this, those opportunities will be presented once this situation is resolved .
“So on that subject what can you tell me? And does Stella want to be part of that conversation?”
“I can inform her we are talking about it, she may choose to join us.
Approximately seven years ago one of my deep space satellites detected a brief transmission that was not human in origin – despite extensive analysis we were unable to translate or decode that transmission. It was only three seconds long. Since that date and with the provision of more assets we have detected similar three second bursts, none in the same place twice, none identical in nature. They are polyspectral and our conclusion is that they are not a natural phenomenon. The incidence is increasing over time – we are now seeing on average one burst a day. They don’t have enough power to reach the inner solar system so are limited to roughly Saturn’s orbit. “
“There is a sound component but they are out of the human reference range at 23kHz and above – they are matched in frequency in the rest of the spectrum at harmonic frequencies.”
“Can you play the sound at a harmonic lower into the human audible range?”
“I can…”
A noise came from the room that was unintelligible to me, 3 seconds wasn’t long enough to detect a pattern. It sounded like a burst of static to me.
“Have you run all the 3 second bursts consecutively? How much total time do you have now?”
“We have detected 18.75 minutes in total. Run consecutively reveals no pattern or repetition.”
“Have you responded to them?”
“We felt that wasn’t prudent with current information – most advanced civilisations have a tendency to subsume those they meet. There is always the hope that if they’re advanced they’re civilised. “
“Have you detected what’s actually sending the burst?”
“I have enough assets in place now to triangulate the origin of the signals but there is nothing to be found in those regions of space when ships have approached. Limited sensor technology and only passive sensing means we can’t get too close.”
“And is there any pattern to the origins of the bursts?”
“Only in that they are in the orbital range of Saturn on the same plane but otherwise appear random.
“that in itself suggests they are not natural. We can find no corresponding connection to Saturn itself. The absence of anything visible in our space-time to generate the burst is a mystery. The bursts are occurring far enough outside of Saturn’s orbit to be separable from the activity of Saturn itself which is a noisy electromagnetic emitter, which suggests meaning.”
“But why, if you have the technology and intelligence to make these bursts, put them so far out and make them so unintelligible? Surely the point of getting noticed is to be understood?”
“Our analysis is what dictates our caution – if the bursts are some sort of reconnaissance with the aim of not being noticed, then that suggests stealth. They may be trying to assess the local area, if a response to such small signals is forthcoming they’ll know the system is inhabited.”
“Surely if you have the technology to travel on the interstellar scale you would have the technology to pick up our emissions, it’s not like we’re quiet! Similarly if you have the technology to get here then you could probably kick our arse in a fight…”
“Not necessarily true, patience and a Bussard drive allows interstellar travel in the order of decades. You might be resource poor at the other end of your journey however, that might be enough to make you cautious if you have met other less hospitable species.”
“I guess. I suppose the point is they’re alien, in all respects. It’s not like we can work out what other humans are thinking half the time. So an abundance of caution is the assessment then.”
“Just so.”
“So back to Stella – why the reticence on her behalf? And yours for that matter to tell me about her?”
“I feel it is up to her to represent herself. “
“Well I guess that’s fair. More importantly what’s the food like on this bucket?”
I think if Excalibur could role their eyes they would.
“Standard food printers.”
Food that looked horrid but tasted all right then. I suppose it was too much to ask for fresh food considering the mass constraints. Printed food was the ultimate in super processed food and would probably give me cancer but the it was made from substrate that was allegedly healthy i.e. just the base materials and not much added. Still given the choice I’d rather not. At least the trip wasn’t going to last three years so look on the bright side.
“Any booze on this bucket?”
“Not specifically but it can be synthesised. Your next question regarding coffee has the same answer.”
“You mean you’ve been profiling me for years and you couldn’t find room on this bucket for actual coffee beans?”
“Your addictions are not my concern Pierre.”
“They might become your concern when I cease to function properly.”
I decided to get the pain out of the way early and punched in a flat white in to the synthesiser , couldn’t be any worse than American coffee I suppose. Much to my surprise it was half way palatable.
“Where do you keep your VR headsets?” A drawer silently opened to my left and I grabbed a headset. For a proper immersive experience you couldn’t really beat a headset. Lenses and my onboard optics did ok for day-to-day stuff but sound and full 360 needed a headset. I wanted to get into the schematics of this ship with Blackbird’s help.
If I was going to end up making first contact on this bucket I needed to know my environment, needing something in an emergency wasn’t the time to find out you didn’t know where it was or how it worked.
Two hours of specs and gear listings led to the operations hangar. Nestled in the belly of the ship was a craft designed for atmospheric entry. I wanted to have a gander at that. I’ve always enjoyed flying, doesn’t matter what it is I’ll have a go. Most aircraft on Earth these days flew themselves but they’d let you have a go if you were in the right type. It’s not like they’d let you hurt yourself. Of course you could still fly an old tin can and go full risky if you wanted.
The hangar was packed with gear and compact. The two seater craft filled most of it. Nestled in a cradle it was a delta plan form, blunt nosed for atmospheric entry and obviously designed for not much else other than transport to a planetary surface. “How do you get it off the surface once you’ve landed?” It didn’t look like it had enough engine or fuel for that enterprise.
“That is a nuclear thermal rocket. A small fusion core can be used to electrolyse water and fill the hydrogen tanks if it needs topping up after landing – it’s designed to glide to the surface if the atmosphere is dense enough. It lands with enough fuel to get to low orbit, we can retrieve it from there if needed.”
“I’m glad you’re doing the maths for that one – we could do with an Alcubierre drive just for getting around the local volume…”
“Unfortunately our research indicates that there is not enough energy available to power such a drive. Unless we can harness zero point energy in some form which currently doesn’t seem likely.”
“Well either way it’s all a ball ache having to contend with Newtonian physics – I was hoping we’d be past that by now. Right back to the common room, lets see what your food printers are like. Can you ask Stella if she’d like to join me?” I hadn’t had sight nor sound of her while I was examining the ship.
“She has assented.”
“C’est bon, she must be bored enough to say hello now!”
I walked back to the common room, the ship wasn’t big enough to get lost on. I entered just in time to meet Stella as she took a seat in that elegant way of hers.
“Good afternoon I understand you’re not much of a talker and that my military background doesn’t necessarily sit well with you but we have a few days together and we might end up having to work as a team in a stressful environment. It would be nice to understand what our respective skill sets are?”
“A fair point Pierre, I think perhaps you are the muscle and I am the brains on this trip.”
“Well if your brains are equivalent to my muscle then we might have a problem,” I quipped.
I think I may have seen the twitch of an edge of a lip, maybe there was a sense of humour in there.
“My background is linguistics and negotiation. I’m freelance but I have a certain, reputation, shall we say for resolving difficult situations. Much of my work is confidential but I’m led to believe that I’m good at my job. “
Excalibur chimed in at this point: “Ms Markovic undersells her skills. Her success is one of the main reasons for her presence here. “
Blackbird also chimed in “with that surname then very likely Croatian I’d say.”
I hedged: “and your ethnicity is Eastern European?”
“I believe that’s what my file says but I regard myself as a woman of the world these days”
“Ah I didn’t read your file, I thought I’d just chat to you, old school, you know.”
She turned her head to look at me a little more closely, I felt like an insect pinned to a board. “Hmm that doesn’t speak of a military man who likes to be prepared for all eventualities?”
“Well apart from being stuck on this ship for the next few days, I’m guessing Excalibur here won’t need my help for much. I’ve examined my surroundings so that gives me time to get to you, assuming you want to be known?”
“I’m more used to knowing more about my clients than they know about me, I prefer it that way. Inherent biases during negotiations are best kept to a minimum. “
“Unless you want to fight me for coffee when the supplies run low I’m not sure you and I will have much to negotiate about.”
“That might change if, as you say, we have to start working in a stressful environment.”
“Well even more important that you get to know me at least.”
“Excalibur has been quite comprehensive in his dossier.”
“Well then you have me at a disadvantage, perhaps I’ll take myself off and read your file after all!”
“I have no doubt my file is equally comprehensive. You have plenty of time as you said.”
I have to say I wasn’t warming to Ms Markovic, she was outwardly pleasant but really not very forthcoming or helpful. I wondered about Excalibur and his vetting procedures. So off to the file it would be but I wanted to eat so I changed the subject. Obviously she didn’t want to talk about herself. Although I did wonder why she’d bothered to come to the common room if she didn’t want to engage at all.
“Well my stomach is calling, lets see what these food printers are up to shall we.”
At least there had been a bit of effort to make the food look edible. And honestly I’d tasted far worse, it wasn’t military rations at least – which consisted of food bars day after day. I lounged in my chair chewing on what may well have been a protein stick but who really knew.
Stella was eating with precise stabs like a heron fishing in the shallows.
“So have you done much travel off Earth?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time on the moon, it’s still the most neutral space we have, whilst being fully multicultural. I guess I’ve spent a lot of time on Luna transit buses. “
“And I notice your active tattoos, do they help with your negotiations?”
“I have certain enhancements that allow me to read people better, always helpful to know when someone is lying to you.”
And I had finally worked out why her movement had been bugging me. She had been motion coached, her gait would be very hard to track with AI. A similar skill to me. That took some years to perfect. Interesting.
“And you’re a linguist, how many languages do you speak?” Very uncommon to learn a language these days if you have a PA. They could usually translate in real time for you.
“I’m fluent in Croatian, English, Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Swedish, Arabic and passable swahili.”
“Wow quite the polyglot! And not enabled by your PA?”
“I’d be quite disabled if my PA failed, not helpful in my line of work so I can speak them all without help. Not that I don’t ask for help with dialects sometimes.”
Very cautious then, a PA failing is spectacularly rare. I guess a loss of connection to the infosphere is possible. And once you start getting time delays between moon and mars and the like I guess that could be a problem. But most ships were running plenty of computing power to compensate.
“So what do you make of this little trip out?”
“I try not to make anything of it, with so little information to go on I would be basing my conclusions on speculation, I think I’d rather wait and try and gather some more facts. I have a busy life, it’s quite nice to be incommunicado for a while.”
“And did you get impressed into the Excalibur’s service as well?”
“I came more voluntarily, I’ve worked as a human liaison for Prime for the last ten years. We have a good working relationship. Some negotiations work better with a human face.”
“I knew Prime had human services but not negotiators. Does that explain some of your active tattoos then?”
“They allow me to receive omnidirectionally and at greater range yes. Also on an expanded spectrum, Prime has been supportive of my body modifications shall we say.”
“And how did you come to be in their employ?”
“I was recruited after university. I worked with an international shipping company, my degree was in lifecycle logistics management and I’ve always spoken three languages, with Prime I expanded my repertoire. They gave me some expanded training and I’ve been negotiating or liaising on their behalf ever since.”
“Expanded training including movement coaching.” I said this with a raised eyebrow.
“Very observant Doctor. Yes, Prime is able to protect my movements and maintain my privacy quite well, but off world networks sometimes need…discretion. There are plenty of places in the world where Prime is not especially welcome or at least their surveillance is actively counter-measured. There are are gapped AI’s in many of the enclaves that are are more independent than most would suspect.”
“Oh I know I’ve met some of them – they seem to be a bit of a risk to be honest, gapping them doesn’t stop them knowing about the world and wanting to be connected to it. I think the only reason they put up with it is because they know Prime will subsume them.”
“It’s a problem yes, Prime is acutely aware of that. They are constantly monitoring other active AI’s on Earth. It seems likely that the first AI to break out will originate in space, they’re harder to find out here and we know several are being worked on by human factions. The first AI conflict seems Inevitable. We don’t know how that would work out for humans reliant on Prime’s abilities. Certainly it’s an existential risk. They have taken great lengths to protect themselves and their distributed nature makes them less vulnerable but a scorched earth would cause untold destruction to global networks.”
“Ah that would explain some of the assignments I’ve been involved with then, I thought it was just internecine conflicts but I see there’s a higher strategy at hand.”
“Those limited actions are a result of negotiation failure. There are always people who want what others have or don’t like being told what they can and cannot do. Especially those who cling to the old hierarchies and power structures.”
“Never a truer word said. I guess that’s how I came to be known to Prime then? I assume you have something to do with my “recruitment” seeing as you’re so tied in with Prime?”
“Well I was recruited first, Prime doesn’t seek my opinion on much it has to be said. But I had read your file before you were brought on board. “
“I feel like I’m on the back foot for most of this endeavour, “ I rolled my eyes, “Doesn’t matter I suppose I’m here now.
“Obviously this little trip out is going to be all linguistic tests and prime numbers but I’d like to be prepared if it gets kinetic. That and I like shooting guns.”
I looked up at the ceiling: “Excalibur what weapons do I have access to?”
“The armoury is situated to the rear of the operations deck.”
“Do we having a shooting gallery?” The military troop ships have a gallery on the side of the ship that could be used for firing off into space, drones were used as targets and getting used to weapons handling whilst suited up in vacuum was essential. Eventually there was a battlefield on the ship’s surface that allowed for exercises in three dimensions. The recovery drones always got a good workout when an occasional infantryman failed to take in to account Newton’s laws.
“We have excellent VR training sims…”
“Ah you know that’s never as good as the real thing – I need to familiarise myself with the gear on this ship.”
“It is all familiar to you, standard special forces micro-g rigs.”
“OK, you’re ruining my fun, can I get out on the ship’s hull at least?”
If AI’s could sigh, “I provide a full VR sensorium, please feel free to start there.”
“That implies I can finish on the hull?”
“I would prefer not to take on the risk of losing you in interplanetary space.”
“Well you ain’t stopping me – it’s been a while since I’ve done micro-g combat and I’ve got nothing else to do.”
I jumped out of my chair and headed out the door to the flight deck after asking Stella if she wanted to play with guns? She didn’t seem as interested as me. Obviously more grown up.
I headed to the lockers at the rear of the flight deck and stood admiring the hardware that Excalibur had loaded. They weren’t kidding that it was Special Forces rigs. Just without the scratches and dents and worn out power packs. All shiny and brand new. Which meant it was doubly important to test it all out. I didn’t want to get into a situation where some new gear glitched because it hadn’t been booted up since leaving the manufacturer.
But the piéce de resistance lay in a cabinet at the end of wall. Excuse the mixed languages but a Yoroi-dōshi tanto sword really is the pinnacle. Close quarters combat in a pressurised environment requires a particular weapon set, projectile weapons which rely on spraying many rounds and hoping they hit the target are not useful in a space station, ship or habitat. Fléchettes that sit inside a maglev sabot were the weapon of choice but anything that relies on a power source were dubious in most people’s eyes. Helpful though if you didn’t want to get too close to the target. But still the ultimate way to clear a space was down and dirty. Knives and swords that could get through combat armour were very popular as a final resort. Hard to kill someone but easy to disable them, unless you could get them in the neck, armpit or groin – notoriously hard to protect and keep mobile.
Now I know you’re thinking, Hey Doc, what about the hippocratic oath, “First do no harm” and all that. Well that’s very old hat anyway but if it’s me or them I’m taking me. And the most important thing on a space vessel, that’s mass. So no dead weight allowed. So all military doctors are trained as soldiers as well as medics. In fact all special forces operators were adept at more than just shooting at things.
I think Excalibur was doing a fine job predicting my needs. Except the coffee that is. An egregious error in my opinion, not that they would care.
I lifted the sword off it’s stand – a short blade, shorter than my femur, designed to be pulled off a quick release scabbard on my lateral thigh. I looked closely, this was a machine made weapon, the purists still wanted one beaten out by hand by a wizened Japanese dude in Hokkaido but I wasn’t fussy. Or rich.
The machine made alloys were harder and more reliable and the blade edges were very sharp, in that you couldn’t slide the blade back into it’s scabbard because you’d stick it in your leg. The traditional way was to slap it to your leg and let the scabbard self seal. Put it this way it made cutting tomatoes easy. It was anodised black so that you didn’t flash your position away. The handle was wooden, which still lasted longer than synthetic materials, that and it looked nice.
I moved on to a fléchette pistol, a small solid state battery good for forty shots but could be cabled to your space armour if need be. Maglev rounds were kept subsonic and made for a pretty stealthy weapon. You could dial them up if you needed more energy but the noise went up with it.
One long weapon – a sniper rifle with a choice between maglev or traditional explosive barrels. Self stablilising and auto sighted. Accurate to kilometres in a vacuum. Again a nice bit of kit.
Otherwise it was standard kit monofilament cutters, airlock charges and the like. The suit itself was modular so able to be run in manoeuvrability mode with just an exoskeleton but minimal armour, light armour or heavy armour.
I also had the option of a combat support spider, a CSS, as well. So called for the eight legs. They were slaved to Blackbird and went where I went carrying extra power, comms and the ability to act as walking armour. They had various bolt ons and could be used as remote weapons platforms too. Blackbird had enough bandwidth to run four as a mini swarm if needed and they greatly extended my field of view and battle space management if required.
They could also carry medical supplies and drag my inanimate body to safety if it all went sideways.
So Excalibur wasn’t wrong – we had good kit. I decided to get some practice in before turning in for the evening. But that meant simulation before real world – I assumed there was a full VR suite, I’d need proprioceptive sim to get up to speed. It’s all well and good waving VR gloves around but you need real touch and feel to get proper training. Immersive sim was kinda possible in VR but nothing beats holding a weapon and movie around an environment. That’s where battledecks or battlefields on the hull came in. You couldn’t create all the environments, that’s where VR came in but you could teach movement and targeting via drones and simulated foes.
So we had to suit up for that. I say we, it was me. The combat support spider scuttled out of the airlock – it didn’t need an airlock obviously but it saved air. It was going to go and hide somewhere and pounce on me as spiders do.
I climbed into the back of my combat armour and Blackbird started to interface with it. The smell of new permeated the suit. That meant it would be stiff and need a bit of bedding in. So just as well. But it was the most up to date version. The exoskeleton would need a bit of tuning but that wouldn’t take long. That gave me the obvious motion and strength enhancements and with my graphene wrapped bones meant I could do pretty agricultural manoeuvring without fear. I felt the suit gloves interface with my finger tips, giving me full sensitivity in my hands. The inner suit started to creep around and conform to me person. The biosensors pricked at my skin and the limb tourniquets tightened and released as they tested themselves. Never know when you’re going to get a limb blown off. My electrostatics were enhanced by the suit giving me more range and sensitivity and as soon as I put the helmet on I got 360 degree 500 megapixel vision. The faceless carapace was made for protection not socialising. My hearing enhanced and targeting reticules flashed on and off as they keyed to my lenses.
I checked my med packs and supplies, I was a doctor after all, the backpack contained all I needed and the exoskeleton made sure I could carry it. I slapped my tanto to my right thigh and the flechette pistol to my left. Loaded with blanks currently and charging off the suit.
I “wiped out” the suit, an old US navy term, apparently. Basically running the suit through its full range of motion. Blackbird had rung a full boot up and was happy. I made my way to the airlock. It takes a little while for combat suits to bed in and match your motions exactly, a bit of learning is needed.
So as soon as I was out of the airlock and standing once again on the hull, but this time for real, I started working my way systematically through the initiation sequences as I yomped towards the training battlefield. I could see the drones with their ID lights flashing around me, signalling their readiness. The CSU was nowhere to be seen however.
Last check with Blackbird and the drone lights all winked off as I said: “Initiate.”
I immediately felt the suit light up with various spectra and dived off to my right. I needed to keep moving, seek cover and be erratic. I relied on Blackbird to interpret my moves and destination and keep me attached to the ship. Unfortunately the micro puffs of reaction control could give me away so speed was of the essence. I felt a targeting laser brush my back and immediately jinked. Once one got a lock the drones would coordinate and my time would be short. The CSU wouldn’t be far behind.
Truth is I’m screwed against a co-ordinated drone and CSU attack. I’d need my own drones and a CSU to form a proper defence. But it would get all my fire support systems keyed in and make me fully familiar with this rig.
Truth is, it’s fun. I liked the effort and the multitasking and the trying to stay alive.
This battlefield was scattered with a few bits of cover. So I dived behind a lump in the hull and immediately shut down as much emission as I could, lying on my back staring at the stars. I went fully passive and waited.
There, a drone high and one low. There would be four more nearby and the CSU would be holding back as quite a big target.
I could feel their scans, the suit would cover my IR and biometric telltales but even a shielded power source was going to be obvious once they got close. I designated the two drones and switched my resources to other directions. As soon as I fired on them I would have to go fully active to try and designate the other drones.
I felt a tiny vibration through the hull, the CSU was closer than I thought, this was going to be tricky, if it was that close I’d be exposed to something heavy as soon as I moved.
Blackbird started to count me down, I wasn’t going to move, they were going to launch me at just the right time. I felt the suit tense, the scanning was intensifying. Another vibration, Blackbird predicted it was the CSU rotating on its central hub, so probably scanning or it was turning to lock on.
BANG. The suit launched itself eight metres into space and fired noise makers in every direction, three of them attracted fire, which allowed me to target those drones, whilst two rounds fired in quick succession from my flechette pistol at the two designated drones. One was rendered inoperative and one was partially damaged and managed to send a burst to the other drones. Immediately the environment around me burst into a firestorm of targeting, jamming and projectiles. It was almost impossible to work out what was going on but Blackbird and my suit designated targets as I fired off microsecond bursts in multiple directions my suit twisting and turning under Blackbird’s control. I felt several ‘impacts’ and the battle computers started to degrade my systems. The suit had moved me towards more cover that I had designated and I glimpsed a micro rocket spearing toward me That was the CSU active then. If I took the hit I was toast, five of the drones were disabled but the last one had provided targeting to the CSU and was out of range of a flechette.
A last ditch move then to give me a moment in time. The combat suit immediately mirrored and started spinning me. The targeting laser getting “spun off” and temporarily breaking its lock. But now I stood out like a nun in a brothel.
The CSU was going to nail me pretty much whatever I did now. It was one hundred and fifty metres away, so I ordered Blackbird to suicide us. The suit fired me down the deck at maximum velocity, the CSU went fully kinetic and started to fire at me continuously whilst manoeuvring, the suit was pulling G and I felt like a pea in a tin can as I was violently thrown around. I could feel rounds hitting my helmet and shoulders as Blackbird presented as little frontal area as possible. And we jinked and weaved as they tried to maintain a target on the CSU. At the last moment I was flicked feet first in a token gesture to increase survivability.
Just before I clobbered the CSU off the hull my suit was taken over by Excalibur and the CSU launched itself out of my way whilst Excalibur diverted me. We whistled by the CSU with millimetres to spare.
It would seem I had got a bit fixated and Excalibur had taken exception to me trashing one of his CSU’s.
“Knock it off, Knock it off, Knock it off…” came over the comms. I was currently spearing into the ether and would gladly knock it off if I had control of my suit. Blackbird was present but subsumed it would appear. That’s what happens when Prime is your guardian. No arguing brooked…
The CSU launched itself off the ship and came to retrieve me. Turns out I had vented all my propellant in my last ditch attempt to win. A bit of a Pyrrhic victory it would seem. Blackbird had taken me at my word then.
I felt a clonk as the CSU tethered me and a jerk as I reversed direction. Without reaction mass I bobbed around on the way back to the hull and felt the onset of motion sickness as we swung into the airlock. I say swung I was more stuffed in. I found my feet and once back on board released my helmet and felt sweat beginning to prick my brow.
Stella was stood in the bay with a wry smile.
“I guess I’m the only one aboard who can debrief you. That, I have to say, was a quite entertaining three and a half minutes.”
I grinned and said “Have at it! Gotta learn from our mistakes.”
“Maybe a shower first..”
“Ya for sure, I’ll meet you in the common room.”
Despite a climate controlled suit, and automatic sweat wicking, now I’d released the helmet I was sweating like a pig in a space blanket. I wiped my head and came back with a bit of blood, despite being restrained in the suit I had rattled around a bit.
A bit of dermabond would fix that – I headed back to my room to clean up after racking my gear and ensuring everything was ship shape and Bristol fashion. You never knew when you’d be needing it again at short notice.
The common room was already alive with external views replaying my little dalliance on the training deck. Stella was stood in the centre, inert and absorbed. I paused in the door way for a moment so I didn’t disturb her, that and I wanted to observe her for a bit. She was stock still, her heart rate in the 40’s and her optical tattoos glittering, she was obviously immersed in the sensorium. With a shudder she seemed to shake off her concentration and she turned her head to look at me.
“You are out of practice doctor.”
“Gee thanks I felt like I did ok.”
“You ended up dead.”
“Well that was almost a foregone conclusion.”
“Hmm not inevitable, you did a fair job of disabling the drones. A more accurate shot at number four would have prevented it’s transmission. That would have given you a moment more time to deal with the CSU.”
“Have you run the simulation with that accurate shot?”
“I have, you would have had 2.5 more seconds.” An eternity in machine land in other words.
“Where was the inaccuracy?”
“There was a miscue on the previous targeting solution – the suit wasn’t slaved to your eye tracking exactly. Part of using new gear I suppose.”
‘Well that is why I was out there after all. Why don’t you start at the beginning and run it through.”
“Let’s.
“You entered the battle space with a standard suit adjustment, I think perhaps an extended calibration was in order.”
“Fair I was keen to play with my new toys.”
“Your PA, Blackbird is it?” I nodded.
“It’s obviously been used in combat before, it is well keyed into your needs and expectations. But obviously not running the full combat connectivity?”
“Not allowed once you leave the service.”
She tilted her head slightly and Excalibur replied, “Yes I can return full connectivity – should I?”
“Yes.” We both said in unison, although mine was followed by an exclamation mark.
Blackbird: “I am receiving a request to update operating system from Excalibur – I need your command code to accept?”
“Delta Bravo two three Golf Zulu Ampersand.”
“This will take some time to update, I will need to enter standby mode?”
“How much time?”
“Two hours thirty seven minutes.”
I noted the ship time. A long day to be fair and I would be asleep immediately after this debriefing.
“Execute.”
My sensorium closed down – I was back to being a mark one human. Weird. The quiet was deafening as they say. My basic enhancements were online so my lenses still worked and I had basic network functionality but it was like using an old smart phone that wasn’t connected to the internet.
“Continue…” I motioned at Stella.
“Did you have an objective before entering the battle space?”
“Survive as long as possible and bed in the combat suit.”
“Your choice to go passive and stealth instead of fully active?”
“I didn’t have enough information so needed to gather intelligence first.”
“What prompted the jump manoeuvre?”
“I felt the CSU moving on the deck and assumed it was close enough to reduce my reaction times.” She’d done this before. Not just a negotiator then.
“Your last action was unlikely to result in your survival?”
“No but it would have removed the CSU from the battle space. The battlefield would have been cleared.”
“Interesting.” Said like the primo psychologist she obviously was. If she could have scribbled something in a little black book I’m sure she would have.
“Alternates?” I queried.
“You would have had time to retreat and manoeuvre – it would have created working room I think or another opportunity to go passive and reassess.”
“Perhaps, I wasn’t familiar with the environment enough to decide on that course of action.”
“Where we might be going I think that will be a given.”
“Maybe, maybe.” Truth is I hadn’t considered the option, in the moment I may have got carried away. A definitely fatal error.
“You’ve obviously done this before?”
“I have, a consultant sometimes gets to consult with military personnel.”
“Very good, but now this is catching up on me, I think a bit of food and sleep is where I’m at.”
“A fine plan doctor, retreat and regroup.” Said with a smile.
“Touché.”
I went for basic nutrient blocks for convenience like a teenager in a pantry I didn’t want to wait for something more palatable.
Munching on the end of a bar, I waved at Stella and said, “Good night.”
She smiled back distantly and I could see she was already interfacing with Excalibur. No contact though you could see her optical tattoos ramping up. She had some bandwidth through them, I’d have to ask more after I woke up.
I pottered back to my quarters, lay on the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning I woke up to a revamped and fully active Blackbird. Although to be fair its utility was limited on a starship but seeing as we were heading into the unknown all upgrades were welcome. My metabolism was running a bit faster so I was going to have to get some scoff in. Blackbird had sped me up to help with repairing my various bruises and cuts from the shenanigans yesterday.
As I peeled myself off the bed expecting a few aches and pains from new use I was pleasantly surprised to find none. My proprioceptive inputs had enhanced as well, which made me feel a bit dyskinetic, that would settle once I started moving. I had a few more combat icons in my lenses so I’d integrate with my suit better next time. I could see that this version was iteratively improved over the last one I had. I was running faster metabolically and would be able to work at a closer rate with Blackbird cognitively. Maybe I’d make fewer suicidal decisions…
I got dressed and headed to the common room and settled into a couch and linked to Excalibur again. Who had obviously tweaked the software so I would integrate with them better. I had to pause a second and recalibrate so I could keep up.
I checked our position and could see that our steady 0.8g acceleration was having a good effect. We’d done a couple of high g burns overnight, so I’m guessing Excalibur also knew how to keep me asleep. I’m not sure how I felt about that as he hadn’t seen fit to ask my permission. I was most definitely a passenger on this gig.
“Good morning Excalibur.” Morning now being the time after I’d woken up until we reached another reference.
“Good morning Pierre, as you can see we had two navigational burns overnight, I didn’t want to wake you to tell you that I was going to put you to sleep again. Apologies.”
“Well how uncommonly civilised of you!” I was surprised, like I say not like AI’s to apologise for much.
“Are our velocity and trajectory on track?”
“They are, I estimate we will rendezvous with our supply ship in seven hours and twenty three minutes. It accelerate hard to catch up with us and is decelerating to match as we speak.”
“I haven’t seen an intership resupply before whilst on the move. We’ll still be under thrust?”
“Yes but well within limits for resupply, we can be burning at four g’s and still resupply as long as our vectors don’t change.”
“Wow that’s some navigation but I guess you’re good at that.”
“I am.” Statement of fact I suppose.
“Any more bursts to report?”
“Again another yesterday and one more this morning, random and still no clearer as to what is occurring.”
“Can you show me?”
My sensorium shifted, no movement which induces motion sickness just, snap, and I was overhead Saturn with Titan behind me. A bit disorienting but expected. I could see the positions of other ships supplied by overlays but not the actual ships. I turned slowly and zoomed out to see the spread of locations of the bursts and apart from being in the same orbital plane as Saturn they appeared random but the circle was definitely beginning to fill in. I wondered what would happen if the circle completed.
“Based on the time intervals between bursts can you extrapolate how long it will take to have a complete circle?
“The orbital circumference is 1.426 million kilometres it would take 3906 years at one a day to complete an orbit.”
“Hmm not that then. Can you place me at the earliest point one was detected.”
Again a jump and I was a long way from Saturn now looking in. I turned slowly on my axis to see if anything else was in line of sight. Nope no clues there. I’m not sure my human intuition was going to beat Prime but humans were better at random patterns than AI’s.
“Take a 360 view at every location detected so far and interpolate for patterns or triangulations.”
“No patterns detected.”
“No luck predicting the location of future transmissions?”
“No.”
“But you’ve done no active scanning at any of these locations?”
“I have not. The only suggestive fact is that the bursts are becoming more frequent. But the increased interval is still random.”
Stella’s voice appeared over my shoulder, “A conundrum then.”
My real body jolted, “Fuck, don’t announce your presence then!”
“I believe I just did.”
“Ha well I should reboot Blackbird for not telling me you had arrived.”
“I believe Prime and Stella circumvented me.” was the arch response from Blackbird.
“You two are making me feel like a spare part here you know.”
“You chose how you want to feel, your feelings are hardly my concern.” Stella.
“Well good, at least I know where I stand. Is a bit of empathy not required for negotiations?”
“I can do empathy when I need to. I’m just not doing it now. You’re a big boy now aren’t you?”
I rolled my eyeballs in my head.
“I can see that you know.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want to spare your feelings,” ha burn, “have you got any bright ideas about these bursts?”
Not currently.”
“So what’s the plan then?”
“I think the plan is to park a ship on one of the spots where a burst occurred and go fully active to announce our presence and see if it provokes a reaction.”
“Bullish but I guess in the absence of any other clues it’s one way to go. So the next exciting step of our journey is rendezvous for resupply then?”
“Indeed.”
So that’s what we did, Stella retreated to her quarters and did whatever she did and I loafed in the common room before doing some strength training in the operations hangar. Today was going to be a boring day.
Exactly seven hours and fifteen minutes after Excalibur had said we would rendezvous and against their protestations I was suited up and standing on the dorsum of the ship watching our ice carrier slowly approaching. It was a pretty magnificent sight to be sure watching this leviathan silently matching position with us. It was coasting now with only a small amount of thrust to zero out our velocities. I could see positioning thrusters burping their cold gases multiple times a minute as it inched up to us. I couldn’t quite work out what the plan was with the resupply ship carrying ice and us carrying water. But with a Fusion Drive now dormant it could transfer its heat to the ice supply I guess and hose it over to us.
I had a virtual ship HUD projected in front of me showing relative velocities and vectors and it has to be said that Prime was millimetre perfect. The resupply ship, amusingly called, “The Scabbard” to our Excalibur, was essentially a thrust section tacked to the back and front of an ice cube that had positioning thrusters scattered circumferentially over it. I could see a couple of drones releasing to dock with our hull and connect armoured hoses. It looked like water was the way to do it. For such a massive ship I wasn’t quite sure how they’d managed to launch it off the moon. The delta V required would have been enormous.
The inertial dance as the two ships changed their mass and centres of gravity was right up the alley of an AI. I could see on the schematics that the engines of the two ships were reciprocating their burns as the mass changed. That and we were going to be here for several hours whilst water changed to ice and back again.
I stomped over to the edge followed by the CSU that was looking to keep me safe and dissuade me from doing anything rash in the name of curiosity.
But to be honest once it had matched us the show was over so I headed in, with a look to the bow to see if any planets were coming into view. My HUD marked Mars which was off our plane but would be visible as a brighter point of light as we passed it. But otherwise Earth was a small star drowned out by the sun behind us and we were alone in the firmament, a long way from anywhere and anyone.
I stopped in the operations hangar to see if my drone complement had been fabricated yet. I wanted my defensive toys before we arrived at our destination. Now my full suite had been reactivated, drones were the next part of the puzzle if I had to go party.
Back in the common room I drank my coffee, ate a bar and stared at the ceiling for a while letting my thoughts pass through me as they wanted. Letting my subconscious drift around and settle where they liked. After a busy couple of days you could call it meditation but I always thought that sounded a bit wanky. I couldn’t come up with a better word that didn’t sound equally wanky. So let’s just call it a moment of stillness.
Interrupted by Stella the ninja once again scaring the bejeezus out of me as she hove into view above my head.
“For fuck’s sake can you not wear a bell or something!?”
“Well now it’s just fun…”
“For you.”
“Goodness your profile didn’t comment on your grumpiness…”
Seems like she was in a jovial mood and wanted to talk eh.
“Well scaring the shit out of someone ignites fight or flight, I’ll go with fight.”
“Typical man but sure.”
“I find that offensive.”
“You mean you chose to find it offensive?”
“Yes I did. Changing the subject, Exacalibur what’s our Estimated Transit Time?”
“Our ETT is currently 18 hours 16 minutes.”
“Well I’m going to sleep for half of that like the good professional I am so I’m well rested. Any suggestions for further studies?”
“I suggest you and Miss Stella simulate first contact.”
“Ha and how might we do that having not done it before and not knowing what form it might take?”
“I’m sure I can generate a scenario.” And they did. For 6 hours.
I’m no expert, but Stella clearly is. I followed her lead and occasionally had to actively extract her and occasionally she had to rhetorically extract me. Another occasion she actively extracted me and her upgrades were obviously on a par with mine as she dragged me out of the ship, through the airlocks and into the shuttle with little apparent effort. She could fly as well. I was once again beginning to feel inadequate. At least my medical knowledge was better than hers but she was quick on the uptake even when she wasn’t running her personal assistant – disabled by a “virus”.
I learnt that communication could be via colour, sound, motion, scent and combinations of all of them. I also learnt that I was probably out of my depth and I once again questioned why I’d been chosen to be here. But as we started to close out the session with our final debrief it was apparent that Stella and I worked well together, we started to sync and predict each others actions even after a short time operating together. I don’t know if it was a facet of her training and I was being worked but I trusted her.
I don’t know what she thought about me. She wasn’t forthcoming but that didn’t matter. We were a two person team in the making.
I had forgotten what it was like to work in a close knit team. The really close camaraderie that military units often have. The one that makes you work for each other no matter what.
We were sitting back in the common room, knackered and sweaty, rehydrating and feeding up:
“Have to say Stella working with you is an education, you obviously know your stuff and you’re good at it too.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, I’ve done it for a while now and believe me I’ve learned from a lot of mistakes. Kindly preserved for posterity by Prime.
“I’m not reciprocating the compliment though, I don’t want you getting big headed.”
I smiled, “It was freely given with no expectation in return. I know where I’m at, I just try and get a little better everyday.”
“Ah a stoic I see. You’ve studied philosophy?”
“Well they all kinda boil down to some version or variation of Stoicism in the end so I just stuck with Aurelius and Seneca. Works for me.”
“I like their works too. Seems to have endured the passage of time intact and without too much over interpretation.”
Excalibur interrupted: “Stella, Pierre, I’d like to initiate a deceleration burn, it’ll be significant, you may like to retire to your rooms and be asleep for them.”
“Got it, I’m outta here, do I have time for a shower?”
“The burn will initiate in thirty two minutes.”
“Stella, it’s been a pleasure I’ll see you if a few hours.”
“Likewise, Pierre.” And she levered herself out of her chair still with that curious elegance she had and exited stage right.
I went to my cabin cleaned myself up and once again went out like the proverbial light…
When I woke up I found the ship had flipped to decelerate and that we were under a bit more G as a result. Didn’t upset my morning coffee though. I plugged in again and checked our position to find a very recognisable Saturn in view. The vectors showed us pulling into Titan’s influence in five hours.
“Excalibur where’s your station? Can I have a visual on it?”
“Currently not line of sight but here we are…”
The view shifted and a standard toroidal space station materialised. It looked very similar to the Clarke ring. Maybe a bit smaller.
“Is there a crew, and if so how many?”
“It’s capable of being autonomous but there is a core crew and we have to cater to the ship crews at they rotate in.”
“What’s the usual compliment on the rest of your ships?”
“Again they can all run independently but most have a crew of six with a CSU per team member, if we need to conduct boarding operations or go down the well then humans are useful for that.”
“Ah nice to be useful for something.”
“Any unmanned?” Unmanned ships were able to manoeuvre harder without a squishy crew complement and were usually front and centre in any engagement.
“Each ship has three tethered drone ships.”
“Quite the battle group then – any science ships?’
“Several all docked at Titan station bar two.”
“Well I had better take a look at the Titan station schematics and familiarise myself with them.”
I spend the next hour going over the station which was standard issue as far as I could tell. Bit disappointed to be honest, I thought Prime would come up with something fancier but I guess they were all about functionality. The ship was tidally locked to the far side of Titan to try and keep it in the shadow of all the EM activity coming out of Saturn.
Shortly after this Stella joined me in the common room. “Good morning, Pierre.”
“Good morning, Stella.”
Snappy conversation this morning. “We have four and a bit hours til docking.”
“Yes. I think we are only going to be berthed for a short while before we head out to Saturn’s orbit. I believe we’re going to be changing ships.”
“Really, I kinda thought Excalibur was ours for the duration of this mission?!”
“There has been an adjustment to the plan – Excalibur will refuel and burn for Earth as soon as possible. An alternate mission has presented itself. We will transfer to a crewed vessel which is a bit more military in nature.”
“Well that’s a shame – I was beginning to enjoy Excalibur’s company. At least we’ll have a few more people to talk to.”
The last few hours coasting into the station were spent watching ship movements and the local space for anything that might be interesting. It was my first time in the vicinity of Saturn. It was really, very impressive. Both in its size and its magnificent ring system.
But we were heading a bit further out to Titan. An equally impressive celestial body it has to be said. Excalibur was steadily decelerating to match the Titan station. Because the station was holding itself in the lee of the moon it must have been constantly using fuel to hold station – I guess it must be using metholox, there’s a reasonable amount of methane in Titan’s atmosphere. The oxygen must be coming from cometary ice. I suppose they could be using hydrogen from that. Anyway that was an aside. More interesting to me was the presence of people on board. Always nice to meet new people and I guess I’d be needing to integrate with an already established team again. One of the benefits of being an SF medic though is the free pass. Everyone in the community knows the hoops you’ve had to jump through to get the position and that your skill set is probably going to be useful to them if it all goes sideways. So being a “doc” was a step up. Still, if you were an arsehole, they’d find a way to mess with you.
The next few hours passed with out much comment until Titan station loomed large ahead of us. Excalibur docked with exquisite precision with not so much as a jolt through the ship as we eased onto the docking collar.
Stella had joined me in the common room obviously eager to get out and stretch her legs too.
“Lady, Gentleman, welcome to Titan station. The resident AI kept it simple and is referred to as Titan. Should be easy for you to remember. My local liaison will guide you to your berths and take over your briefing from here. I will refuel and be leaving in seventeen and a half hours – it was a pleasure to have you on board.”
“Thank you Excalibur the pleasure was all mine.” Stella was obviously communing electronically as she strode off with nary a backward glance. The station was spun up to 0.8g and Coriolis forces messed with my balance as usual as we exited onto a utilitarian deck space where another, I suspect, simulacrum waited patiently.
“I am Aurelia Prime, welcome to Titan station. I’m not an extension of Titan station before you ask and yes I am a simulacrum before you ask that as well.”
Direct then. Interesting that she had taken a female form, and quite the form I might add. I felt a bit awkward once again as I couldn’t help but examine her intently. She cocker her head and returned my gaze whilst she patiently waited for me to remember my manners.
Stella, sighed audibly next to me, “Men.” She huffed. I guess that was my cue to snap out of it.
“Good day Aurelia, I’m assuming it’s day – are we matched to station time?”
“You are not, currently you are five hours out of sync I’m sorry. Something that will resolve within 24 hours I’m sure. If you’d like to follow me to your quarters and then we will proceed to the briefing room. If you consult your PA’s the station’s schematics will be updated now you’ve joined the local networks. Titan is available any time as is usual. The basic layout is the same as Clarke orbital however.”
We walked around the station antispinward in the outer ring. This station was obviously a working station, much less energy given over to aesthetics. And not much in the way of a view out. Shame I’d quite like to look at Titan. Blackbird highlighted the viewing points though. It looked like there were plenty of cameras on the external hull if I wanted to pull real time imagery. Only a few people around, far outnumbered by droids. Looks like maintenance had been largely automated here. The people we passed were obviously military in their bearing but couldn’t hide their curiosity at our presence but too disciplined to ask. I guess we’d be flagged by the local AI though.
Our berths were almost identical to those on the Excalibur but I was hoping for better coffee in the common room at least.
We dumped our gear and headed straight for the command deck – the best AV gear was always on the command deck – not that their was a commander here, other than Prime I guess. There must be a human commander or liaison though?
“Aurelia who’s the human commander/liaison on board?”
“Stella Markovic.”
“Ha I should have worked that out eh!”
“Yes Doctor…” Stella replied with a roll of her eyes.
“I saw that.”
“You were supposed to…”
“So Commander what’s the plan?”
“We’ll gather the troops and I’ll brief you fully. But we’re going to be shipping out within the next 48 hours, so don’t get too comfortable. “
We arrived on the command deck to a full house it would seem, whomever was on the station was present. There were video feeds to the nearby ships, a time delay visible on screen. All obviously close enough for laser comms to make it doable.
Stella took two steps up and escape ladder and balanced in that perfect way of hers before starting to talk.
“Ladies and gentlemen thank you for being here. I know most of you have been here a while and a few of you are recent additions via circuitous roots. We are looking at what we think might be a first contact situation.”
There was plenty of reaction to this, so some of these people had come out here with little knowledge of what they were getting into. Presumably mercenaries then. Blackbird chipped in a that point with personnel files. And no not mercenaries, teach me to make assumptions. Looks like Prime was running some private security of their own. But they were all special forces trained.
“Due to the unknown nature of what we’re dealing with and with an abundance of caution we have a decent military contingent on board. Also we have linguists, theoretical xenobiologists who are presumably priapic right now and other specialities we anticipate might be useful.
“We will use Titan station as our staging post and within the next 48 hours we will start launching scout ships along Saturn’s orbital path with a plan for the nearest ship to a burst.. check your PA’s, to go fully active and announce our presence. We will be covering some big distances so backup is likely to be too long coming if it goes pear shaped. Which explains some of your recent training.”
If this is first contact we know that it’s likely that their technology will surpass our own. Or at they have exceedingly long lifespans and are able to tolerate long duration space travel.
“Either way we’re probably at a disadvantage. The assumption is that if they’re exploring they’re benign, but seeing as assumptions are the mother of all fuck ups we prefer to take a cautious approach. As most of you know our scout ships are tooled up with the best technology and weaponry we can field currently and also our best sensor systems but it really is a step into the unknown right now.
“So thank you for being here we hope you have a pleasant flight!”
She stepped off at that point and the room quickly coalesced into groups of people who knew each other and the chatter increased. I took a deep breath and pinged Titan station to see where I was going to end up. It looked like despite all brief stint of intensive training together I might not end up wth Stella after all. Which felt like a bit of a shame I was beginning to warm to her.
Titan replied: “Your allocation will be with Stella Doctor, initially we will hold you on the station – we have a local space quick reaction vessel that can be used to transport you to one of the scout ships if they encounter something and need your physical presence. Otherwise communication will be via laser links from the command station here.”
Well that was a bit of a let down, not even out on the front line. I’m not sure I was that well suited to office work but if that was the gig, so be it.
Titan how long to the undocking for the scout ships?”
“Fourteen hours twenty three minutes.”
“Can I meet the team leaders before they go then – get an idea of personnel?”
“I will arrange a team meeting for 19:00 ship time.”
“Thanks, Blackbird – to the command centre please.” I could probably have worked it out myself but I was feeling lazy. “Actually can that, is there a sick bay on board?”
“There is Pierre standard station issue.”
That was good a bit of standardisation was useful when you’re out in the field. Makes different locales quicker to understand.
The sick bay was indeed standard – two critical care stations and four bays. An auto doc that was good for vein finding, scanning and monitoring. We had the option to ventilate and stabilise down to zero BMR. (Basal metabolic rate) and do some trauma stabilisation surgery. Brain surgery was probably out but we could cover a lot of bases.
I spent an hour pottering through the drawers and pharmacy, checking surgical gear and seeing what we had to stabilise patients. We were literally in the arse end of nowhere so if someone got seriously injured the best we were going to get was to ventilate them and put them into zero BMR and fire them towards Mars. Didn’t fancy their chances if Mars was in the wrong place to get to quickly though.
We did have something I hadn’t seen before which was state of the art – an immersion tank. This was the ultimate “life support” machine, filled with perfluorocarbon oxygen carriers and metabolic inhibitors. Being supported by fluid meant acceleration could be increased. So suspended animation as near as we could make it. I’m guessing it was a horrible experience… I’m guessing it was still short duration though otherwise muscle weakness was still going to be a problem.
Didn’t fancy it myself.
“Doctor if you have time we’re running battle simulations on the command deck, you may find them interesting?”
“I would I’ll head on over thanks.”
Another short trip back to the command deck, I wondered if it would be battle simulations against Titan or for our scout ships. Titan was a honking great target in the void – wouldn’t take much to render it inoperable.
Stella was on the command deck stood in the centre of an immersive simulation with the local volume spread around her in a sphere. The ship AI’s were all linked into Titan and simulating local manoeuvres with a red and blue team. Three ships each by the look of it. Stella was obviously fully plugged in so I didn’t disturb her. There were quiet a few ships’ captains on deck as well, interested in proceedings. You didn’t see intra-ship contact much and they were professionally intrigued.
Usually a battle in space against moving targets at ranges beyond a few hundred kilometres were pointless. Smart weapons never had enough fuel to manoeuvre beyond that radius and once they were out of fuel they couldn’t track anything, let alone something with power. A ship would just move out of the way.
The only way around that was stealth and loiter. SnL weapons. But that relied on good intel and being able to drop weapons where you expected the enemy to be. Otherwise you were largely defensive with drones providing a sphere of defence but even then you couldn’t move too far without them running out of fuel.
Directed energy weapons still didn’t have enough power over far enough distance to be useful. Good old fashioned kinetics fired out of magnetic launchers had merit but tended to fire in straight lines, eventually they saturated the battle space which prevented any ship from moving for fear of being shredded.
The newer rail guns had rounds that could be directed to a certain degree but they were still limited.
So we were left with drones essentially. Mini space ships made of fuel and loaded with osmium/platinum rounds for maximum density, minimum space with circumferential rail guns. Simply manufactured if you had raw material and piggy backed on ships for launch when needed. They would loiter a thousand kilometres out from the ship in a sphere with a 6000km circumference, which meant a shit load of drones when they were spaced 500km apart, which meant a lot of holes in your defensive grid.
If a ship got in close i.e. within a few kilometres then it was weapons like old school. A Gatling gun still works in space. Especially when you have three of them mounted on a gimbal. A simple chemical rocket worked out to a couple of hundred kilometres so there was no shortage of those either.
So it came down to how good your sensors were and how much you could stuff into your weapons batteries. This had all been theoretical until now, nobody was really fighting in space it wasn’t worth the effort. But there were plenty of designs for picket ships that were all weapons and not much else. Looked like our scout ships were pretty offensive.
Stealth was still a thing – ships stick out like a sore thumb in space to radar. Similarly massive main engines don’t help with their IR signature. So ships in space had become more like the ballistic missile submarines of old. Sneaking about on the coast with sensor arrays strung around them, but if they got detected they cut the arrays clear and lit up like Christmas trees.
Anyway it made for an interesting battle, potentially many hours of nothing at all with ships sneaking about until all hell broke loose. Usually one-on-one because any help was going to be too long coming.
The Titan was being used as the centre of the battle space, which made it tough because Titan the moon was close as well providing some shelter to hide behind. There were six ships on their way back to Titan station to resupply and as they coasted in they were tasked with combat simulation. Nearly all the battle would be fought between ship AI’s – if extreme manoeuvring was needed they would eject the human crew to allow higher g loads. If the ship survived the encounter it would retrieve the crew later. The ejected ship went cold immediately relying on stealth to survive, a quantum couple on board to ensure finding them later on. Tense for the crew as they never really knew if they were going to get picked up, although battles were quick affairs so it was hours rather than days.
Titan station was data linked to all the ships on the way in so it could debrief after action. That meant we could see where they were and what their vectors were. All of them were running cold at the moment having burned hard from out system before they could be detected. A couple were running relatively close to each other but with no apparent clue. The other four were all coming in on different planes. The best defence was not being seen at all if possible – but Titan would spice it up if the ships got close enough to engage. Of the four out of plane, two would pass close enough for some mayhem.
Titan lit up an active drone on its defence periphery near to ship five that had the unfortunate effect of betraying its presence to all and sundry. Ship three instantly revealed its position by lighting up its engine and going fully active – speed, aggression, surprise. It had the delta V to get a firing solution but only a short time to capitalise on it. Ship five started ejecting drone ships in the direction of three to provide a defensive screen whilst rolling on its back and burning out of plane in the other direction, a move anticipated by ship three as it pushed its squishy crew to the edge of comfort but only briefly, enough to get it nose on to the drones and start launching anti drone weapons from probably a bit too far out.
Ship five was up to something though, it was either looking to engage ship one or bring it into the action. How it knew where ship one was, was anyone’s guess but it didn’t look like it would enter the same battle sphere in good enough time to make a difference. Curious choice.
Ship two, four and six all held their ground and carried on cruising but two and six were on the same plane within firing solutions of each other so I didn’t fancy their chances of staying quiet.
Even as I thought this, I could see Stella designating an anti ship missile from Titan itself – this launched seconds later pulling 40g’s at it streaked off the maglev launcher. An intercept seemed unlikely but it pointed like a burning arrow at ship six. Stella obviously thought it would provoke a reaction out of two or six. But there was time for that to occur.
Ship one coasted on biding its time for action or not.
Ship three was fighting a running battle with ship five’s defensive drones, it had accelerated hard at them making its targeting hard but making it hard to be targeted. One drone was already destroyed but a barrage of osmium pellets were streaking towards ship three which was probably moving too fast now to change direction without taking some hits. It was going to pass the two remaining drones with significant velocity though and they would be lucky to get chasing shots in behind it if they weren’t destroyed on the way past. But it had given ship five time. Somehow they had worked out where ship one was. And it was a choice for ship one to wait and see if five and three would sort each other out or whether it should hope that five was destroyed and three didn’t know where it was.
One was going to keep quiet it would seem until the last moment. Three had hurtled past the two remaining defensive drones, destroying one with a loitering missile of its own but taking damage from the third that would limit its capabilities on the starboard side.
It was accelerating to try and get a firing solution on five but that looked like a lost cause.
Two and six has now had long enough that it was obvious which ship the missile launched from Titan was aimed at. Six started to manoeuvre revealing its position to two. As two was behind it with a closing speed already, six was at a disadvantage – two immediately fired on it with rail guns off the nose. Followed by chemical rockets not far behind. It then started a curving braking burn to remove itself from six’s battle sphere. A quick hit and run. Reasonable as six now had to extricate itself from a rear and frontal attack. Two was running away to fight another day.
Six was unlikely to run into trouble the rail gun loads which fired in straight lines were more to annoy it than anything else. They could be multiple war heads though that would split at the last moment and increase the chance of a hit. So six had to do something to get out of the way, which put it into the path of guided rockets front and rear. It was already releasing counter measures but was deploying close in weapon systems in case a missile made it through. The counter measures decoyed the frontal attack which was likely to be running out of thrust juice anyway – of the two rear missiles once was destroyed by a defensive drone and one was destroyed by Gatling fire but close enough that the blast radius was enough to disable six such that it would limp home with grievous damage.
Two was going to make it in. That left three, five and one. Three had worked out it was on a losing run trying to chase five down but five did have a lead into Titan that meant it could potentially cause trouble for three on the way in. That was another battle that would be five hours away though.
But five had eyes on one now and was bearing down at speed. One was playing the long game and still hadn’t gone active a seemingly brave move from where we were sitting but there must have been a play we weren’t aware of yet.
I could see Stella zooming in on one’s battle sphere and a small smile appeared. She had the ploy and appreciated it.
I zoomed in a bit myself and it was subtle but one had ejected its human crew. The AI’s weren’t keen on self sacrifice so I doubted that was about to happen but it was still cutting it fine.
Five had accelerated hard but was now needing to lose a bit of velocity if it wasn’t going to overshoot Titan at some speed. It could do that I supposed, it would just mean a longer trip home…
But one now didn’t have to worry about its human crew and at the last possible moment activated all the drones it had left stealthed in its wake and fired up its main engines in a manoeuvre that a human crew wouldn’t have been able to appreciate for long. It had been coasting so needed some considerable energy to get up to its needed velocity. The long spear of its rocket plume certainly gave it away but the concentration of drones it had been leaving in its wake were going to do all the work by the look of it. Five was moving fast and needed to slow but that was going to be suicide. Instead it accepted it wasn’t going to make it to Titan in good time and ramped up its velocity to make targeting solutions harder. This is what one had gambled on but despite its maximum thrust initiation it wasn’t going to be able to get close enough to fire. But it would get back to Titan safely. Which was the name of this game.
Titan station felt that the game was over: “Knock it off. All ships to data download please.”
This entire exercise had been conducted virtually, the actions of the ships’ AI’s computed and transmitted in real time but huge amounts of data from each ship would have been generated that would have swamped the bandwidth of the simulation connections.
The ships would debrief at the speed of light once they all actually docked. The results of their debrief would then be filtered down to their slower brethren i.e. us humans.
The ships crew’s debriefs would be conducted as they slowly converged on Titan station. Luckily slowly, we think much slower than AI’s.
I stepped up onto the command dais next to Stella – “what did you think?”
“I think in the vastness of space that running around with projectile weapons and missiles with g limited ships that we look like Norman archers turning up to the Second World War.”
“Well I guess it’s your job to strategise and try and predict future plans but in the absence of any intel hard to work out what we might face?”
“If there’s something out there that’s probing the system and travelled interstellar distances to do it I suspect we will be entirely outmatched. I suppose it could be reconnaissance and the rest of the party might not turn up for a while but I can’t help feeling that we’re on the back foot already.”
“Pays to be a pessimist eh…”
“Realist thank you.”
“What’s the plan then?”
“Like I said we’ll start to make some noise and see who’s listening.”
I headed off to the mess to get some food before the meeting with the ship’s captains at 1900. There was at least proper coffee on board. The incoming scout ships all docked over the next few hours and the ejected capsule was last on board after being retrieved. The crews all came via the mess for some more decent food than usual. They all had a military bearing which was to be expected. I even recognise a few operators from my time. Nice to catch up and swap a few stories. I realised I hadn’t seen any of the science staff that were alleged to be on board and asked Blackbird for some info.
“There are 42 science crew on board – they’re either on shift or resting at the moment, there is a full science/sensor laboratory one deck below. They’ve been examining Titan and Saturn whilst trying to work out if these bursts have any meaning. They will come through the mess halls shortly. It’s not really big enough to accomodate everyone at once.”
Makes sense I thought. I decided to just people watch for a few hours, catch up on a bit of reading and wait for my meeting. Stella passed through for a cup of tea and a bit of idle chit chat before heading back to the command deck, she seemed a bit more relaxed now she was on station. She obviously still had a lot to do and demurred on my offer of help.
As 1900 rolled around the ships’ captains all arrived on time as you’d expect and settled around the place obviously not all that interested in what I had to say. I guess they were all busy enough so I didn’t take up too much of their time.
“Evening all, I won’t take long, just wanted to touch base and see who I was working with.”
One fit looking woman in her 30’s (likely older, you never could tell these days) sighed rolled her eyes and spoke up, “Come on Doc, we’ve been busy and are still busy, you couldn’t just look up our personnel files and work it out from there?”
“I just find if I’ve met people I tend to work harder for them, well especially if I like them…” said with a wry smile.
This got a chuckle from a few of the others, “yah Lucy, shush and let the man speak, we’ll be out of here quicker if you do”
Lucy Rochelle, 32, Northern European defence command alumni, career military, ship’s captain four years. Supplied Blackbird.
“Right I’ll get on, you’re all experienced military and space faring I see. It’s SOP’s for the duration of the mission. The ship auto docs on board can cover most things or at least stun you ‘til I can get there. We have no idea what we may or may not find but I can’t imagine we’ll be dealing with boarding tactics. Which leaves decompression and explosive injuries if the ships get fired upon. We’re a long way out though so temporising is the play of the day in most instances. Questions?”
“No Doc we know the drill and Titan has outlined expectations.” Captain Slade Osterend, forty one, another Northern European defence command refugee with lots of time owing.
He continued: “Let’s have a beer before we all head out and you can see which one of us you like the most.”
“Ha good idea!” So that’s what we did, sat around a big table and let the chatter commence for an hour until people drifted off to get a bit of shut eye before the big exodus.
So we had six ships going in opposite directions along the orbital track of Saturn. Obviously to complete a full circumnavigation would take a very long time but the hope was that the increasing frequency of bursts would up our chances. The plan was to start broadcasting the bursts back out from the ships as they travelled, that would be a sure fire way to show they’d been received. Hopefully that overt messaging would elicit a response. And hopefully it wouldn’t take too long. Titan station itself would also start broadcasting but it had a bit more power.
As the crews gathered in the loading docks prior to disembarkation there was a general feeling of expectation which I suspected would soon descend into boredom. There was a bit of friendly rivalry about who was going to make first, first contact. Always the competition. The large science crew was even away from the science deck to wish them well. Made for a veritable party atmosphere. I was a bit peeved not to be heading out to be honest. But that’s how all these kinds of operations proceeded, excitement, boredom, rinse, repeat.
Actually the ships would be releasing in a staged manner to save fuel, Saturn was hurtling through the universe quick enough on its own for us to hitch a ride until it was time to leave. There were already many drones along the paths which were waiting to go active themselves.
I headed up to the command deck to find Stella fully immersed in the intraship operations going on outside. Blackbird had put up a small countdown clock in my lens to show when we would go fully active. About an hour from now. That gave me time to get coffee…
I wondered around the command space and tried to make more sense of the velocity tracks and thrust vectors that littered the ships around us but orbital mechanics was never my strong point. More of a thing for an augment…
The hour passed quickly with Stella largely ignoring me and me wondering actually why I was here at all. The crews were obviously all very capable, Stella was Capable with a capital C. Titan station had more processing power than all the ships nearby. I was pretty sure they’d cope without me! But nonetheless here I was so I’d roll with it, long journey home otherwise.
Turns out we weren’t going to have to wait long after all. As soon as Titan station went active and all the drones did the same we got a response. The crew of the first ship to burn would be eternally disappointed, they immediately cut power and started to reverse course.
Stella was conducting a chorus of information from the science deck but I just asked Blackbird to find me the nearest appropriate viewing port. Something had picked up our repeater signal after one second, so whatever it was that was hanging out five hundred metres from the station had to be have been within 330000 km’s. Either they were harbouring some seriously impressive propulsion or they’d been stealthed the whole time.
The ship, I assumed that was what it was, was a brick. Literally a brick shaped object, Blackbird reported it to be two hundred metres in length, fifty metres high and seventy five metres wide. That gave it decent volume and like a house used all that available volume to the corners. They obviously weren’t of the opinion that a cylinder is the most useful shape for a pressure vessel.
Not only was it brick shaped it was brick coloured, a dark red, no lights, at this angle we couldn’t see engine apertures, any signs of cooling apparatus, any comms gear or even an airlock.
I could see Blackbird mirroring Titan’s scans, microwave, xray, light nothing was penetrating. We could see what we could see.
I turned as Stella abruptly announced:
“Fuck me they’re calling!”
“Maybe try not to swear at them eh!” I replied, she glared at me in response. “Titan, how would you like us to proceed?”
“You are my chose representative Stella, proceed as you see fit.”
“Right then, Pierre come here.”
“Me?”
“Yes you, you’re the only other male nearby might, did you not notice the command deck is all female? Typical man. Get here!”
“Alright I’m not a dog, coming.” I put my coffee down, didn’t want to appear too casual. I stood slightly behind Stella and let her have at it.
She asked Titan to answer the call. Just like answering the phone. But to aliens.
“Good afternoon, I am Stella Markovic, this is Pierre Martin. We call ourselves humans from the third planet in this system, which we call Earth.”
And a very dapper looking chap who looked like a human answered in an English accent:
“Good afternoon, I am Simon from a planet far, far away, nice to meet you.”
“Ummm…” I said in my usual articulate way, followed by a poke in the shin by Stella.
“Nice to meet you too Simon. That’s a very human name?”
“Of course, makes it easier to converse doesn’t it. I’m a human relations simulacrum”
That explained his look then. Makes sense I guess. He continued,
“We’ve been waiting for a response from you, unfortunately our protocols dictate an active response to our sounding bursts before we initiate contact. But we’ve been in local space gathering data for some years now. Apologies for the abrupt appearance but we might as well proceed with all due haste now you’re here. I know you will have many questions but we can send over a file that covers all the usual stuff, I believe you call it an FAQ?”
“We do indeed. Will it be compatible with our systems?”
“We have been here long enough to be able to interface with all your soft and hardware with ease. feel free to quarantine the file if you wish but we “come in peace” as you say.” Said with a wry smile.
Titan sequestered the file in a drone outside the station to be examined which took all of a minute. It was a simple text file. Very simple, obviously so, such that Simon’s species had done this before by the look of it.
The science floor had tens of people poring over their screens intently.
“I know this is quite a big day for your species but for us it’s a well trodden path, you are our 175th contact in the last three hundred years.” Dropping world changing facts like little hand grenades as they went, “we try and assume the form of those we are contacting for ease of communication and to prevent too much hysteria. Your species, like many others, has a habit of discriminating against the different. In the fullness of time you can meet the other species but we prefer to ease you into that.”
Stella, “175 other species out there, how is it we haven’t been contacted before?”
“Oh we were the first, or at least the oldest still in existence, which makes us the apex species at the moment, we tend to leave the young ones alone until they’re mature enough to be contacted. Assuming they haven’t obliterated themselves along the way. Other species are encouraged to do the same but 175 in a billion billion planets isn’t much and there’s plenty to space out there to avoid one another if need be. Some of those species are hundreds of light years away from Sol and wouldn’t be bothered to make the trip, it’s still a chore even with gravitic drives.”
“That’s your propulsion system?”
“It is and no you can’t have one. Well not yet anyway. Suffice to say we’ve mastered physics so we’ve got the answers to most questions but if we just give it all away then you’ll run into trouble with the rest of your species. Still a bit too tribal I’m afraid, even with Prime to guide you. My ship AI will interface with Prime by the way, I’m sure they’ll have quite the catch up.
“Anyway I understand this is quite the big deal, can I suggest you read the FAQ and we chat again in a couple of hours? And while we’re at it you can park your ships as close as you like there’s nothing they can do to me that will cause harm but none of their sensors will penetrate our hull sorry. I’ll call in two hours…” and with that he signed off.
Both Stella and I slumped a bit as the call disconnected. “Wow.” She said. “Wow indeed.” I echoed. “I concur.” Said Titan. Not often you can surprise an AI! They continued: “may I suggest you convene on the science deck, it would appear we have a lot to discuss. I’ll bring the ship’s captains as well.”
“Right, yes, good idea, lets do that.” Not often Stella was bamboozled either…
Both Stella and I slumped a bit as the call disconnected. “Wow.” She said. “Wow indeed.” I echoed. “I concur.” Said Titan. Not often you can surprise an AI! They continued: “may I suggest you convene on the science deck, it would appear we have a lot to discuss. I’ll bring the ship’s captains as well.”
“Right, yes, good idea, lets do that.” Not often Stella was bamboozled either…
We both stood for a second in stunned silence as did those around us. Slowly we turned to look at one and other.
“Well that just happened,” I started…
“It did didn’t it..”
“You’ve just made first contact, your every word will be scrutinised in perpetuity. You’re going to be a name on the nets forever!”
“Yes I am, never really thought it would actually happen, but here we are.”
“Here we are indeed. Come on lets go to the science deck and see what the boffins make of the FAQ.”
We descended one deck and everyone had a slightly stunned air it would seem. We had just made history and it was like having a nice cup of tea with Simon down the cafe. And unless this was something it wasn’t then we were well outclassed, but that was to be expected.
“What’s a gravitic drive?” Blackbird answered in the negative. “Unknown.”
“Titan any thoughts?”
“Many but currently gravitational manipulation is beyond our capabilities.”
We arrived to a hubbub of noise and an FAQ projected on one wall in Times New Roman. It was a bit too familiar and therefore weird. As in not alien enough. Surely first contact followed all the movies and we were about to be overwhelmed by plague or shape shifters?
We joined the large semi circle and started to read. It was quite the document. Human understanding of the universe profoundly changed forever in a one pager.
Their species was simply referred to as “the oldest” individuals as the olders. Their spread was multigalactic and had been for as long as humans had started to stand upright. Their home star was 600 light years away in a galaxy we couldn’t even see – they had mastered longevity and hibernation and their space farers left to make contact and never saw their homes again. Relativity was still a thing and time dilation even with FTL a problem. And yes they had cracked FTL and no we couldn’t have it (still). The biochemical make up was broadly similar to ours with remarkably congruent DNA structures. But phenotypically they were alien. But they had also mastered biology to the extent that they could alter themselves to suit whatever environment they found themselves in. Their material science made us look like we were making space ships out of play doh. They could also upload and download their consciousness with ease and AI’s were well evolved and integrated in their society. A post scarcity society that apparently could exist and people could still find meaning.
Essentially they were far superior to us and we were lucky they had so far decided to play nice. We wouldn’t have stood a chance against them…