Archaea 2: Janis (10 page)

“Janis, Jane has a request... please hold”

“Of course Yak. Shall I play us some hold music?”

I blinked rapidly a few times. Was that a joke?

“Jane, I have Janis on the line” I said, with a finger pinching my nose.

“What line?” Jane said from far away, deep inside the access space around the turrets.

“Never mind, I am just... never mind. It wasn't funny.”

“Yak, I thought it was very funny.” said Janis, “I greatly appreciated the reference to ancient communications systems used in reference to the manner in which we are forced to communicate at this time.”

“Yak, I want these turrets to be accurate as far as I can get,” Jane called down, “but the armatures aren't ranging above 50km.  We also need more precision on the scope, it's only accurate to thousandths. We have these shiny new turrets, and we're trying to calibrate them with this... this... dumb stupid old dumb...”

“Stupid?”

“Yes! Stupid and dumb old scope. We need a better scope, Yak. Tell Janis, she will understand.”

“Will do Jane. Please hold.”

I just about laughed myself out of the chair when Janis started playing ancient muzak.

“Janis, now who's the funny one?”

“I am Yak.”

I was probably laughing hard enough to freak Jane out a bit, but who could blame me.

“Janis, Jane has a problem. The turrets are new, the scope is too old. The turrets have micro-adjusters that are more precise than what the scope will track.”

“Thank you Yak. I have analyzed the documented specifications for the turret model, and I have built a new interface for the scope that supports ranging to 10,000 kilometers, with precision to ten decimal places. Please ask Jane if that will suffice.”

I goggled a bit as the scope blinked and came back online. The interface was completely different, and looked very intuitive, with all information near the center reticule – no more range settings in the bottom corners. The range zero values were now precise to 10 decimal places, so I flicked through some of the earlier settings to see how we did... it didn't look that good.

“Jane?”

“Yes Yak?”

“Janis has... completely redesigned the scope, Jane. It's completely different, but looks much easier, though I don't really understand all of it.”

“Did she do anything with the precision?”

“She sure did... it now ranges to 10,000 kilometers, and has a precision of ten decimal places. Will that work?”

I heard some banging and shuffling from above me, followed by Jane's head popping down out of the access hatch looking at me as if I had grown horns.

“Yak, I don't think I heard you right. Did you say ten-thousand-kilometers?”

“Yes Jane. And ten decimal places.”

“Janis, can you hear me?

“Yes Jane.”

“Janis, did we hear you right, this new interface allows ranging to 10,000 kilometers?”

“Yes Jane, that is correct. In order to provide this degree of accuracy, I have provided ten decimal place accuracy for the zero range indicator. I am afraid this is a little above spec for this model, but I am confident in your abilities to work precisely, Jane.”

“Well, I am the queen of precision. If the scope is accurate, I can adjust it to zero... but... Janis, is 10,000 kilometers feasible for a rail shot on a moving target?”

“Certainly Jane.”

“But Janis, the muzzle velocity of the shot is... uh...”

“Jane, the muzzle velocity is 12,823 meters per second”

“Ok, so that's... um...” She looked through me, through the bulkhead, and into the place where math happens. “700 some-odd seconds... and... something like twelve and a half minutes or so. Is that right Yak?”

I can't math my way out of a wet paper bag on a good day, so I kept my mouth shut and nodded sagely.

“Yes Jane, at that range, time-to-target is approximately 12.8373001 minutes, though that value would be an average, best-case result, actual values would have some variance.”

“Janis, that is... is that even possible?”

“Of course Jane. It is trivial. I normally assign ballistic precalculations to secondary processes to maintain peak efficiency in higher order processing. This provides additional resource allocations for high-priority development of a sense of humor, and 'woman's intuition'.”

Jane and I burst out laughing.

“Did I make another joke?” Janis asked.

“Janis, you don't need any additional development of a sense of humor. You are already the funniest person on this crew.” Jane said with a smile.

“You are very kind, Jane. It is apparent to me that as a member of this crew, a sense of humor is an important skill to develop, though I am finding it a significant challenge.”

“Janis, you can do anything if you try.”

I caught Jane's eye as there was an incredibly uncharacteristic moment of silence from Janis.

“I apologize for the delay in my response. I have upgraded my core logitecture with that ruleset. Thank you Jane.”

*****

“Captain, do you have a moment?” I asked, as he walked into the galley wearing his standard slipspace uniform of faded flannel pajamas.

“Pauli, I am completely, utterly stuffed full of moments. How many would you like?” he asked, as he bee-lined it for the coffee maker.

“Just one... do you know how long our current run will last?”

He looked up at me, while his hands continued to go through the motions of making coffee. Watching him measure, grind and pour the grounds made me a little uneasy, as if they had a life of their own.

“Are you asking me if we're there yet?”

I laughed, “No, not in the classic sense, anyway.”

“Are you saying something Pauli? Are you telling me my ship is too slow?”

“No, Captain, of course not... I am just curious when we might be able to tap into the Unet. I have something I want to check.”

“Well Pauli, “ he started while working steam and the press, still without looking at his hands. “I don't normally measure space using units of time. It's either a straight distance calculation, or, it's more of a how-many-pots-of-coffee will it take sort of calculation. See, the Sol to Vega run is about a 34 pot run, which puts it at... oh, about 10 days I guess.”

“You drink 3 pots of coffee per day?!” I exclaim in amazed wonder.

“No, not by myself, of course not. There's always a cup or two handy for my crew... to share.”

“Captain, that's not healthy. That's too much coffee.”

He slowly turned, and raised an eyebrow to regulation height. “Son, as the master of this vessel, I will be the one to determine how much is too much coffee, thank you. As a case in point, Gene sneaks one, maybe two cups of coffee per day, and that is too much!” he slammed his hand onto the galley counter for emphasis. “Too much, by far. He hardly leaves me any... Speaking of which, how much coffee do you drink, Pauli?”

“Me? I don't drink any, Captain. I am not a coffee person. It tastes like burnt cardboard.”

He fixed me with a blank stare. He does this every once in a while, just sort of gazes at you with an empty look, devoid of emotion. It's almost like he's waiting for the rest of the sentence, or maybe he's fallen asleep with his eyes open. He seems to hold it just long enough for you to think he's either forgotten how to speak, or maybe to think that you forgot something important, and then the moment you try and talk, to fill the void, he interrupts.

“It's just that--” I started.

“You don't like coffee?” he asked, both eyebrows achieving low orbit under his hairline.

“No, not really. I've tried it a few times. The last cup I had was... oh, three of four years ag--”

“Three, or four... years?” He said, a look of real concern on his face.

“Yes, about that. It was on Luna Freeside. I had a contract job in Tranquility Hab, and the grounder I rented was running flat, so I stopped for a recharge along the road at Manners. I was hoping they'd have chai, but all they had was this pressure pot of coffee going. It tasted like...”

“Don't even tell me, Pauli. My heart can't take the strain. You poor, pathetic, miserable excuse for a human being. I should space you out of the closest lock on general principles, just to put you out of your misery, but the fact is, you just haven't had any good coffee.”

He took another sip, eyes closed.

“Here, let me pour you a half cup of some real coffee, son. This is guaranteed to fill your soul with clarity.”

“No, that's okay... really...”

He looked back at me with one of those million-meter stares, as if daring me to finish that sentence.

“Here Pauli. Now wait. Before you sip, I want you to try to forget everything you've ever known, about anything. I want you to clear your mind out completely. Any memories of other drinks, hot or cold, just let them go.”

He held out the cup, as if it held the mysteries of the universe, with a little bow of his head. I took a hesitating sip, expecting bitter, acrid, dank and nasty dreck.

And another sip.

“Well?” he asked, watching me closely for a reaction.

The flavor was... warm. It wasn't sour, bitter, or sweet. It was... indescribably good.

“Captain, that's amazing!”

“You like it? I call it... coffee.”

“I do... I have always liked the smell of fresh coffee, but the taste was too bitter and nasty.”

“You weren't drinking coffee, son. You were drinking sadness.”

“Can I have another cup?”

He looked at me intently for a moment, as he took a measured sip of a cup that was almost certainly the finest tasting, most perfect cup of coffee ever made.

“Sorry Pauli, we're on a strict ration of one cup per week.”

I laughed, as he filled my cup with a wink.

“So now that I have you properly caffeinated, why are you so fired up to get on the Unet?”

“Well, I have a scraper piped to a drop that is mining feeds, and wanted to check that.”

“Son, have you been talking to Gene lately?”

“Sir?”

“Never mind. What in blue blazes are you blathering on about? What's a scraper, how does it pipe to a drop, and is it hungry, and that is why it needs to be fed?”

“Um.. sorry sir. A scraper is a bot, like a program of sorts that performs a specific task. It reads information, in this regard it is reading feeds... news, events, articles, that sort of thing. It's sending all of it's information via pipe connection to a drop, which is a type of Unet-based storage system. I use drops because they are flash, and crypto, and we can burn them when we're done.”

“Pauli, you were making sense there again, for a bit... but you started sliding away from me son. Do you need more coffee?”

I laughed. “No thanks! I am afraid I may have had too much!”

“Well, in any case Pauli, it sounds fascinating... our current leg is going to run us another 5 more pots of coffee, give or take. We're going to transit to a new heading, and slip again, but as we're on a pretty common route, there's probably an updated Unet node nearby. How long will it take you to... ah... do that thing you need?”

“Just a few moments... less than 20 seconds, sir.”

“That's actually a pretty long time, depending on the amount of coffee you've had. I once spent all day long waiting 20 seconds.”

Chapter 9

It felt good to have my crew all in their appointed positions. Yak to starboard, watching target screens and comms. Pauli to port, doing whatever he does over there that makes everything run... Shorty is on station in weapons, flashing all greens on my boards, that is nice to see. And Gene, that lovable old coot, is back in engineering napping or something. Of course, I can't leave out Janis – she's everywhere, and everything, and making it all better.

“Janis, I see you have turrets operational again, are you enjoying your new guns, dear?”

“Sir, I am, thank you. I am pleased to report significant improvements in armature speed, firing rate and range over the previous turrets.”

“That's great Janis, be advised, we are about to pop the bubble out of slipspace, please remain as alert as you can dear.”

“Sir, I will.”

“Shorty, Janis said we have a range increase, is that significant over our previous model of turret?”

“Captain, these turrets are a much newer model, and are mil-spec, so they have a higher muzzle velocity... and... well, Janis recalibrated the scope to support a 10,000 kilometer range, sir.”

“Very well... wait. Did I hear you correctly? Ten-thousand-kilometers, Shorty?”

“Sir, yes sir.”

“Interesting. That would present a pretty challenging firing solution.”

“Yes sir, my thoughts as well, but Janis is confident she can hit at that range.”

“Very well. Gene, are you and Janis ready for your experiment with the tokamak?”

“We sure are, Dak. As soon as you give us the go-ahead.”

“Walk me through the process you will be going through, please.”

“Well, the first thing we're going to do is scram the tokamak, pretty much down to nothing. This means just about all ship systems will be powered down to a nominal state, of course all mission critical systems are on fuel cells, so we'll have air and water, that sort of thing.”

“Gene, I am not really excited about... well, all of that. How long will that take?”

“Well, it will take about a minute to power down, and then, Janis will reconfigure the fields in the reactor, and we'll ramp up – all told, we are probably looking at about ten minutes.”

“Five minutes, is that all? That isn't too bad, Gene. I think we can hold at this transit for that long. Pauli has some Unet voodoo he wants to do, so that will help. Okay folks, here's the deal. I want everyone to stay alert, and stay on station. I am setting material condition zebra at this time, movement is restricted. Does anyone have any questions?”

No one did.

“Okay Gene stand by, I am popping the bubble in 3... 2... 1... mark”

The view out of the forward screen filled with stars.

“Targeting, report”

“Sir, I have two targets on screen, designated Sierra-one and -two.”

“Very well Yak. Range and heading please.”

“Sir, Sierra-one is ranged 1.452 million kilometers at 325, closing at 12km/s, Sierra-two is ranged 390 km at 178, closing at 16km/sec, steady rate, sir.”

“Very well Yak. Janis, you are clear to engage any threat at your discretion, to the limit of your abilities.”

“Clear to engage, aye sir”, Janis said.

“Sir, incoming hail from Sierra-two.”

“Yak, please open comms.”

“Open comms, aye.” As he opened the channel, a hiss and crackle sound filled the bridge.

“Yak, please filter that signal.”

“One moment sir. There we go.”

The hiss and crackle faded off into a warbling echo that pulsed and then faded.

I looked intently at Yak's back, willing him to get the signal clear. The warbling echo pulsed back again, louder and louder, then slowly changed into recognizable words, though heavily compressed.

“...fied vessel, this is the Starry Dawn, please identify, over. I repeat, unidentified vessel, this is the Starry Dawn, please identify, over.”

“Starry Dawn, this is Captain Smith of the Archaea.”

“Copy Archaea, please stand by.” the warbling echo pulsed back in between the words and filled the channel.

“Captain... Dak Smith? This is Captain Les Scott of the Starry Dawn, on Mallory patrol.”

“Les? I'll be damned man, what did you do to get this post?” Les and I went all the way back to our academy days, he was a well-respected captain in the service, or at least he was. This was a dead-end posting if I ever saw one.

“Well, you know how it is Dak. Politics haven't changed much. They said they needed me for a very important assignment... but then I ended up out here. We've been on station here for about 2 standard weeks now.”

“I know exactly what you mean, Les. That's why I boost my own bird now, otherwise it might be me sitting here in the dark, counting my toes. ”

“You're one of the lucky ones, Dak. Well, I have to get this business out of the way here. Mind if I drop over for a visit? We need to board-and-inspect, standard stuff.”

I arched an eyebrow. What sort of inspection, I wondered.

“Les, that would be just fine. Go ahead and dock topside, I'll meet you at the lock and give you the tour.”

As we clicked off, I was already getting my proverbial ducks in a row.

“Janis dear, we are going to have some visitors over. Would you please remain absolutely silent while they are on board?”

“Absolutely sir. Steven, would you like me to load stego at this time?”

“Yes Janis, if you please, thank you.” Pauli added.

“Pauli, what is stego?” I asked.

“It's a form of cryptography called steganography, used to hide code inside other code, or inside files that are not normally executable – we have code-named the process stego. Janis will obfuscate her system code to prevent detection of her logitecture.”

“Very good Pauli. Shorty, is there anything you can do to hide the nova cannon?”

She laughed. “Sir, it's a cannon that just about fills the interior of this ship. I don't think we can hang a sheet over it, sir.”

“Good point. Any suggestions?”

“Sir, it's powered off, maybe we could tell them it's inoperable sir, that this used to be a rock miner, sir.”

“I guess that's all we can do, though it's incredibly clean and shiny. I don't think I will tell him it is inoperable.”

“Thank you sir. I could go get some dust out of Gene's engine room and toss it around if that would help?”

“What?” Gene said, working himself into a towering lather.

“Stand down Gene”, I said soothingly. “We all know your mechanicals are clean enough to sleep in.”

Yak and Pauli burst out laughing.

“Pauli, I am going to need you on station here, and work with Janis as needed. Jane, please remain on station, ready for immediate fire mission.”

“Aye sir.”

“Yak, how about you come with me to the top lock, and help me give our friends a tour. Please follow my lead, and try to stay as silently helpful as possible.”

“I can do that, Captain.”

Yak called out ranges as the Starry Dawn approached to one kilometer, I precessed the Archaea so we could watch their approach from the forward port. They moved in fast, by the book, dumping velocity at the last moment, not giving us any opportunity to run. Not that we were going to. The Starry Dawn was absolutely huge, a million-tonner just like I used to serve on.  Seeing it from out here, watching it coming in at high-v, then decelerating within one kilometer, it had the intended effect – I was definitely inclined to stand down.

Not that I had to, per se. The Archaea was built to kill ships like this, or out-run them – and we had experience with both. I liked Les though, and he was just doing his job.

As soon as we saw their gig enroute, I set condition yoke on the boards and made sure we were holding true on station before kicking aft to the top lock with Yak.

I watched the proximity scale on the lock door and cycled open the outer lock as soon as I saw they were on bolt. I watched on the screen as Les, and two armed marines entered, and closed the outer lock. Once it had pressurized, the inner lock flashed ambers, and I irised open the hatch.

“There he is” Les said, floating down at me with a smile and a handshake.

“Welcome aboard, Les. Come on down boys. This is Yak Onebull, our operations specialist. The rest of my crew are at their stations.  Come on in, I'll show you around and make introductions.”

“Sounds good Dak, we won't take too much of your time. Target control shows another bird inbound, so we'll just take a brief look around.”

I led them forward to the bridge, and introduced them to Pauli, then led them aft pointing out the ring spaces.

“This is a really nice little bird, Dak!” Les said, clearly a little envious of what we had going over here.

“Thanks, I really like it. Big enough to go, and fast enough to get. This is the kind of ship I always wanted to try to find, Les.”

“I can see why – she's a real beauty. So what cargo are you hauling on this run, Dak?”

And just like that, there it was. A man is measured by his character, his willingness to take ownership of any situation he may find himself in. I like to think of myself as the type of man that measures well.

“Well Les, we're hauling gold, and medical supplies for Solis.”

He looked at me sideways a bit, as if to see if I was serious. “Are you contracted with AV on this run then Dak?”

“No... this is an independent run.”

“Dak, there are no independents on Solis, that's an indentured system.”

“Yep, that's the way I understand it, as well.”

He squinted at me a bit, then shrugged. “Well, there doesn't really seem to be much a man can do wrong with a load of medicine, even if it's not really on the books... but now, tell me about this gold. Who are you hauling that for?”

“We're not hauling it for anyone, Les. The gold is in storage, it is ours.”

He stopped cold in the companionway leading aft to the gun deck, and looked at me.

“Well... I have to say, Dak... if it was anyone else but you, I'd have some pretty pointed questions about what an independent is doing hauling gold and medicine into an indentured system... but you are one of the good guys.”

“Thanks Les, I appreciate that. The gold is definitely not for delivery. We acquired it during a recent scuffle we had with a mutineer --”

“You mean the Mantis? Red Martigan?”

“Yes, that's the one. We claimed the gold as salvage, among other items they didn't need any longer.”

“Dak, we recently got a bulletin from Fleet on that... you really lit a fire in the hive with that one.”

“Yeah, I know. I just about had to chew my arm off to escape from the service consulate. They wanted to call me back up for that.”

“Not just that, Dak, oh – there's a lot of that, people are really singing your praises for taking care of the Mantis single-handed... but it's about Red. He escaped, apparently.”

Now it was my turn to stop. I reached out and grabbed him on the shoulder. “Wait, he escaped? That's not possible Les, there were no survivors, and we scuttled the ship into oblivion, heck, we barely escaped. How could he escape?”

“I can't believe you haven't heard this yet, Dak! It's the talk of the service right now. It turns out that the officer you rescued... that was actually Red.”

He paused for a moment to let that sink in. My face must have betrayed the way I felt, because he added “I know Dak, it caught everyone off guard. Apparently, when they got around to processing his papers to get him back into the mix, he had skedaddled, gone AWOL. Of course, right about then the papers came back wrong, associated with a KIA reported a few months earlier from the Mantis, and when they brought up the file, it wasn't at all the same person.”

“So how did they know it was Red?”

“Well, they had done a full medical on him when you brought him in, and so they started checking their data against service personnel, and twigged on Red Martigan.”

I was speechless. That monster was Thom? We showed him everything. He knew... well, come to think of it, I am not sure what he knew, exactly, but I was going to be finding out from my crew. Pauli gave him the full tour. He was definitely there when we cracked open the gold. I looked at Yak, who had his losing poker face on.

“Steady on Dak, he'll be caught, sure as the wind blows. Every patrol in the service has eyes peeled looking for him, with direct orders to kill or capture. He better hope it's kill, the Admirality will see him swinging from the yardarm for his crimes.”

“Well, that's definitely eye-opening, Les. The guy we rescued was a soft-spoken chap who honestly seemed like he had been through a pretty rough time. I guess it makes sense though, it was a little strange that they would have kept him alive.”

“Well, no one blames you, Dak. You did the right thing, and any of us would have been lucky to have done the same. Of course, the talk around the galley fire isn't what happened, but how it happened, if you get my meaning.”

We had kicked off for the gun deck again, so I smiled and waved him down the ladder to let the Archaea's main cannon speak for itself.