Burnt Ice (25 page)

They took it in turns to oversee
the stress on the entire structure, which they acknowledged was probably a
pointless exercise. If something came loose even Lotus would not be able to
shut things down in time. They knew they would be very dead, very quickly.

Many shift changes and one
hundred stressful hours later, they were at full power, and slowly relaxing.
Marko spent much of the time, with Lotus watching on, balancing the AG units
throughout the ship. Although the vessel was producing 1.2 gravities of thrust,
they were only experiencing a fraction over 1G. Jan had upgraded all their
biomed units for additional gravity, but as they now had such huge amounts of
power at their disposal they could not see the point in doing anything the hard
way.

As soon as the necessary checks
of the propulsion systems were complete, they carried on with the developments
of the ship and its surrounds. The first additional structures to be installed
in the ice were the extra backups for the sensors. Then they established the
astronomical drones at points around the iceball and ran hardwiring through the
ice to establish comms with them. It was very hard work, trying to assist the
drones, as the AG ceased to have an effect within twenty metres of the ship.
There was also a big chance of falling, which — even in the heavy engineering
suits — was a scary thought. They were all relieved when those tasks were
finished. Harry and Marko, with Veg’s assistance, then rebuilt five of the
engineering drones for mining operations, sending them out into the ice to
gather anything of use. This included the materials cache which they had picked
the eyes out of earlier. After seven days of operation, Veg was delighted to
find a deposit of gem-quality emeralds. Lotus was very excited by this find.
The talk between the biological crew members was that the old duck liked
precious pebbles! Marko was laughing about that when she tersely pointed out to
him the long odds of finding something so rare as Jardin emeralds in a comet.
Takes all types to populate the Universe, he mused.

Every day he would place Fritz’s
funny little comm unit, which was about the size of a fingernail, into his ear,
and sit next to the tank where Fritz floated, slowly moving, totally immersed
with wires and tubes attached to his combat bio points and more taking care of
all his biological needs. Most of the time Fritz was grateful just for the
company, and to listen the music that Marko had initially detested. He
recognised Fritz’s favourite bands, but over time the music changed and he
found himself enthralled by music he had never heard before, played on totally
unfamiliar instruments. Marko considered it was a small price to pay for his
mate and he started to enjoy the new music.

‘How’re you today, mate?’

‘Good thanks, Marko. Hate how all
my muscles move almost all the time. Stephine set that up. Says it will prevent
atrophy and that I’ll be bigger when I get out. She has also set up a
subroutine that is teaching me some shit called Tai Chi. Stupid. But I really
like her. Man, what would she be like naked!’

‘We will never know, Fritz. Dream
on.’

‘Hey, Marko. See that little
thing against my chest? It’s Sirius, and she’s growing, mate. I can only just
see her, it’s a bit blurry. She’s talking about what she will be like and has
decided to be as tall as me, so I think that’s nice. Been thinking a lot about
physics as well — need you to start taking notes for me. Do you trust Veg?’

‘Yeah, kind of. Hellish mystery
around those two. Not sure who is in charge of who, or who needs who the most.
I saw them the other day and she was sitting in his lap. I must have been
tired. She seemed to be asleep and almost melding into him. I must have been
imagining things. They do seem to love each other, though. Forget about that
one, chap. Stick with the electronics. The holoporns are all good, and Helena
gave me some really choice ones of her to use in the neural tap. But I don’t
know, Fritz — I really miss her touch. Induced dream states are all very well
but there’s still something missing.’

‘Holoporns are set up that way,
Marko. Otherwise we would never have sex for real. We would all just waste away
in cyber-existence, and there would be no children.’

‘Hey, how come you aren’t talking
with Lotus about the physics like you always do about the library information?’

‘Jan won’t let Lotus’s presence
in medical. Lotus was seriously pissed off about that, but as the ranking
medical officer on board, Jan has the final word. She pulls rank even over
Lotus on that score. Not sure why Lotus is so keen to monitor Sirius, though.
Maybe because I am present and not the normal tech, so she would never know
anything about Sirius and her development, but what’s to know? She will be a
standard human anyway. Do you think there is a game being played here, Marko?
Still shitty weird how Sirius got killed, eh?’

‘Not sure, mate, not sure. But
hey, what AI do you know that’s
not
into some weird crap or other?’

‘Yeah. You’re probably right. Hey
what’s with that midi unit of yours? Did ya wreck it, ya dummy, trying to pinch
shit from Jan’s medical unit?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. Have to go
spend a couple of days on it. Some of the diamond-growing nanotes turned a part
of the biomass into diamond. Major repairs needed. Same time tomorrow, Fritz?’

‘Thanks, Marko. See you then.’

‘Oh, been meaning to ask, Fritz.
This music I’ve been playing to you of late. I really like it but I don’t
recognise any of it.’

‘Yeah, I love it too. There is
some very high maths locked down into a chunk of it. Lifted it all from the
library. Excellent, eh? Go ahead and play it to the others. They may like it
too.’

Marko walked back into
engineering feeling a little bad about lying to Fritz about Topaz, but he
reasoned that Fritz would be sharing everything with Sirius and Marko didn’t
want her knowing too much. After looking into the tanks, then using
magnification through his glasses to check the nanotes, he ran though the
projections and called up Harry.

‘We have the second nozzle almost
complete, Harry. Shall we start on the pumps and controllers?’

Harry arrived a few minutes
later, with Veg behind him. They pulled up the schematics for a standard
chemical rocket pump and valving mechanisms.

‘You know, fellas, with this
expansion chamber here, if we set a ring of lasers there, before the fuel is
forced into the nozzle for ignition, we might get a few per cent extra output.
Nothing burns better than preheated fuel. We have to do this anyway, as the
diamond nozzle does not need cooling, so we have to vaporise the liquid gases.’

As Veg pointed out the details on
the large engineering design screen, all three of them started to fill in the
requirements for the new equipment, placing each component in 3D on the screen
as the design computer changed its size to fit, checked its requirements, then
started to table and prioritise the auto casters and milling machines to begin
the manufacture of the parts.

Marko was keeping a close eye on
the fuel usage and realised for himself what he suspected the captain and Lotus
had probably worked out long before him.
Basalt
would have to burn all
the ice available to it, in whatever form, to accelerate continuously and then
flip over halfway and decelerate, to meet the captain’s timetable. Almost seven
years by the most recent calculations and a chunk less for
Basalt,
due
to relativity. Marko resigned himself to the reality that Helena would move on,
and he found that very sad.

Jan saw him sitting glumly at his
station, staring at the screen.

‘Hey, Marko. Why the gloomy look?’

‘Helena is not going to waste
almost seven years of her life waiting for me, is she?’

‘Hell, Marko. We almost live
forever, unless we do something really stupid, or commit a total death crime,
or simply give up on life in the dozen or so forms that I have seen and choose
oblivion. I would say that you will see Helena again, one day.’

‘I suppose you’re right, but an
awful lot can happen in seven years.’

~ * ~

While
the components were being made for the chemical rockets, Marko spent some time
on the midi unit.

‘Topaz, time to wake up.’

‘Hello, Marko. You have isolated
me from any feeds. Wise precaution. You always have been a little impulsive. So
where to from here? I think, therefore I exist, but I am also physically
isolated from any motive power and manufacturing.’

‘Well, Topaz. Now we talk, we
talk lots, and I decide if I like you or not. I have worked out a method of
extracting all of the Ernst information, if this does not work out, and you’ll
be stripped back to an ordinary midi unit again. So let’s lay out the design
for Captain Willie’s dragon creature. I shall take all the information as you
finish a part, and run it through another AI called Lotus, who you don’t know
yet. If she says the design checks out, then we are one step closer to
reintegrating you as a full AI.’

Over the next month the pace
slowed a little. Marko would spend time with Fritz, take meals with everyone,
run his shifts in engineering, work with Topaz on Captain Willie’s dragon,
learn cooking with Stephine and, when sleeping, have wonderful controlled
dreams of being with Helena.

He and his crewmates built a new
structure for the chemical rocket housing. One afternoon he shut the fuel feeds
off to the fusion rockets. For the first time in months, he had to control the
AG throughout the ship and wear a full hazardous-engineering suit. AG was
powered down in the bottom three decks so they could manhandle the rocket
assemblies into position between the three primary fusion motors. The first unit
was going directly in the centre. After welding the heavy trusses into
position, attaching all the control and fuel feeds, they all went back into the
ship, sealed themselves in the top two decks, and very carefully fired up the
rocket.

Harry slowly ramped up the power,
as everything about the motor was monitored. Some hours later Marko was able to
disengage the dead man switch, which, if had it been activated, would have
sheared all the trusses and blown the unit away from the ship. The rocket was
producing a respectable thrust, so it was run for a full day, then powered down
and carefully inspected for faults. It would be another four weeks before the
other three chemical motors were ready for installation, so the fusions were
powered up again.

‘May I come in, Marko?’

‘Sure. Great to see you, Stephine.
Pull up a chair.’

She looked around at the four
screens over the midi unit, nodded, then touched the main housing of the unit.

‘We can speak freely — I have a
little unit operating that confuses Lotus so she will not know of this
conversation. Marko, this is not a standard Magenta, is it? I know these
machines — and there is something different with this one, isn’t there?’

He looked into her extraordinary
eyes, thinking how he had come to trust her. He told her about copying Ernst
into the midi and creating Topaz. She nodded, told him that she would return
shortly, and walked out of engineering. Moments later she returned with a large
fat personal machine which she placed on top of the midi.

‘Marko, I have been to see Jan. I
believe that a rather unpleasant entity, a prion, has infected her machine.
Would you mind if I checked this machine as well?’

‘Um no, please go ahead. I have
spent weeks trying to find something that exists in the shadows of this unit.
The unit, incidentally, calls itself Topaz.’

She smiled, tapped a couple of
times on her wrist unit and the machine that she had brought in started to
unfold and deploy. It opened up a series of panels in the midi, including one
Marko had never seen, and hard-interfaced with the unit.

‘Cup of something nice, Marko?
Stay here. I’ll be back.’

When she returned, about fifteen
minutes later, she had a Thermos of a brew she called drinking chocolate, and a
biscuit called biscotti. He tried to bite it before she stopped him and showed
him how to dunk the rock-hard little biscuit in the chocolate. He grinned,
experiencing another new taste sensation. As they talked, mainly about his past
and the creatures that he had built, he perceived something changing on the
midi’s screens.