Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 2: Redemption (2 page)

***

Rasta-Tckner was of two minds. This was of course normal for Hymenopterans. His was a race of beings that shared their individual intellect with a secondary hive consciousness.

The hive had been violated. Entire colonies in
multiple nest sites had been destroyed by an invader. The hive had mobilized to swarm and destroy the invaders.  His self-consciousness recognized the home nest had moved. The stars had shifted dramatically. This warranted immediate study, but the hive mind overrode his personal intellect.

There was a ship in the
nest's home system. It had appeared when the stars changed. The swarm would repel this invader, and so a minute fraction of the hive, perhaps a million vessels, rushed forward to obliterate this intruder.

Cat sat in one of the Lazy Boy recliners in her 'Living Room.' Being the captain of the
GCP Yorktown
, the fleet's flagship, carried several perks. One such perk was an astonishingly expansive living quarters. This allowed her to entertain guests upon occasion. Such was the case today, and her guests were no ordinary visitors.

The Ashkelon jumped into this point in time two weeks ago.
During those few weeks, a firm friendship had formed. Cat had no doubt Lastila's people would eventually seek an alliance with the GCP. So many of the GCP's core beliefs and values were shared between the two peoples.  The very phras
e‘
Beloved of the Creato
r
’ seemed to an artifact of a distal shared interaction with the Heshe.

Captain Lastila of the Ashkelon 'nested' on Cat's smaller sofa. Her communications officer, an Ashkelon named Sassi
, sat in a similar 'legs up' style in her second Lazy Boy. The Ashkelon were a bird-like race that seemed to resemble large exotic silver-haired moths. Physically they were about as tall as humans or the Hupenstanii, but they were much lighter.

They were a
curious and inventive people. Their drive to explore and develop new technologies was a function of their unusual biology. Their children could fly unassisted and had a never-ending passion for soaring on the thermals of their home world. Unfortunately, as they matured into adults and put on mass, they gradually lost this ability to fly.

The
creative race had compensated by developing technologies to assist the adults in this regard. Nothing they developed, however, compared to the advent of space travel. Unlike the human race, which took the better part of a hundred years to fully-commit to space travel, the Ashkelon embraced it immediately. The relative weightlessness of space allowed even the old and infirm to revisit their childhood passion for flying.

"It's so hard to believe
," the Ashkelon captain trilled for the umpteenth time. "We have moved 2.68 million years into our own future... and you know this because humans have machines that can think."

"We call them computers
," Cat said with an amused smile.

"We
also have computers," Sassi said. "I was one until it was determined I had greater linguistic talents."

Cat's
first officer, Ken Kirkland took a sip of his Scotch. It seemed the Ashkelon shared humanity's love for distilled spirits.  "Yes, well, many years ago, when our people still fought wars against ourselves, we had teams of women who calculated artillery azimuth charts by hand. We called them computers. But just as we have stopped fighting except in defense, manual calculations are rarely done anymore. AI's are just a lot faster," said Ken, who shared the larger couch with the D'lralu engineer Ben.

The D'lralu stroked his muzzle.  "Humans have always had a
particular skill with AIs though. Would it surprise you to know I am actually a hybrid intellect? A part of me is truly D'lralu while another part is, in fact, a human AI."

Sassi tweeted excitedly for a second in his own
language. Captain Lastila gave him a stern look. The Ashkelon were much like the Hupenstanii in that they had a natural ability to learn other languages. As a matter of politeness, however, they tried to use their host's language.

Cat laughed. All the members of her
crew had access to AI-assisted instantaneous translations, so the young Ashkelon's response was not lost. Sassi had immediately seized on the idea of directly tying into a ships sensor net and flying free amongst the stars much like a fledgling flying in the open skies of home. This of course being possible with the direct man/machine integration implied by Ben's declaration.

"Actually
, when we found Ben he was doing just that as the cybernetic control unit for a D'lralu attack craft that had invaded our system," Cat added.

"There was no
pleasure in what I was forced to do for the Masters; but in rescuing me, my friend and now commanding officer introduced me to one of the greatest joys any sentient being has ever experienced."

"And what would that be?" Captain Lastila asked.

There was an unmistakable twinkle in Ben's eyes as he answered with a single word, "Chocolate."

***

Captain Jeffries of the Galactic Coalition of Planets Starship
Heidman
stood looking out the port observation window as his ship approached what was for all intents and purposes a ternary planetary system in orbit around a binary star.
It was as far from Earth normal as he had ever seen and yet the possibility of life on each of the planet-sized moons was intriguing.

The
GCP Heidman
was a Bowman class exploration ship. Her mission was to help the Galactic Coalition of Planets develop a profile of the types of star systems that could support life. Currently the
Heidman
was evaluating several promising moons in a binary star system called Kepler-47.

The Kepler-47 binary system was about
five thousand light years away from Sol in the constellation Cygnus. The larger of the two stars in the system closely matched the Earth's sun in size and solar output. The second of the two stars was a much smaller M-class dwarf star.

The two suns orbited a common gravitational center
roughly every seven and a half days. Of the half dozen planets detected in the system only one, the largest, Kepler-47b had an orbit within the goldilocks zone where liquid water could theoretically exist. The planet's radius was 4.6 times that of Earth, roughly the size of Uranus, complete with well-formed rings. Its orbital period around the binary stars was 303 days.

Jeffries turned to his first
officer, an Irishman named Rudy McQuin. "What do we know about our big friend out there?"

Rudy scanned his holographic display for a second and then with a flick of his hand
threw a larger image on the main screen.

"Our primary goldilocks probably does not directly support
life. We're looking at four to five gravities on the surface, and that's only because the planet is much less dense than Earth
.
”

“
It has a liquid magnesium oxide core
,”
he continued
.“
As you know, magnesium oxide is a transparent ceramic under Earth-like conditions, but when subjected to the types of pressures and heat on a planet like 47b it turns to a metallic liquid state and is responsible for the substantial magnetic field surrounding the planet.  The atmosphere is more like a combination of Neptune and Uranus with a thick hydrogen-helium upper layer followed by ammonium hydrosulfide closer to the rocky surface. Of specific interest to the
GCP Heidman
is the pair of massive moons orbiting the large planet. Both have thick nitrogen atmospheres with breathable levels of oxygen; and more importantly, liquid water on their surfaces. The larger of the two moons is 78 percent the mass of Earth, while the smaller is 62 percent."

He paused with a puzzled look on his face as he turned back to his
primary display. "We have something going on here..."

The
Heidman
was just entering into orbit around the smaller of the two moons when the rings around Kepler-47b began to shift. The bridge staff barely had time to sound general quarters before the
Heidman
was overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of truly minuscule vessels that seemed intent on attaching to the
Heidman's
hull.

They
rapidly enveloped the starship in a meters-thick mass that effectively tripled the weight of the ship.

Blind and out of control, the
GCP Heidman
plummeted into the thick and turbulent atmosphere of 47b. At two miles above ground level, the atmospheric pressure was such that the nanite infused structural integrity systems of the
Heidman's
hull were overwhelmed, and in the following 328 milliseconds much of the ship was crushed into a mass of twisted metal. A single quantum entangled message was received by Earth's Lunar One outpost. "They're alive..."

***

Admiral Faragon leaned across the table to face the holo-projector on his desk. He was speaking via a secure entangled quantum communications link to his most senior officer,Commodore Catherin
e‘
Ca
t
’ Kimbridge of the
GCP Yorktown
.

"We have precious little to go on. All indications are the
Heidman
arrived in the system with no issues. They were proceeding with a standard survey of a planet in the Goldilocks zone when we lost all communication. The assumption is a catastrophic systems failure. The only transmission we received indicated they found something, but they were cut off moments later."

The holograph of Cat leaned to the
side and picked up a small tablet. With the advent of embedded cybernetic AIs the use of PDAs and tablets had declined over the years, but just as some people continued to read books printed on paper, some people preferred to think about problems by looking at a display screen.

"Sir
," Cat said while looking at her handheld PDA, "Was the
Heidman
equipped with internal Heshe fabrication systems?"

The
Admiral quickly checked with his personal AI before answering. "She was part of the second upgrade cycle. What are you thinking?"

"If the
Heidman
was part of the second upgrade cycle, then she was fitted with adaptive nanite regenerative fabricators..." Cat started to say.

"There aren't a lot of scenarios in which that
ship could not repair itself. Even if the crew did not survive, the ship probably did," the Admiral acknowledged.

"Correct
Sir, but it goes beyond that. If the ship's AI thought that a system failure was imminent, it would have looked for a way to protect the crew with some form of stasis. My point is, if there was enough time the ship would have found a way to protect the crew."

"How much time are we talking about?"

"That's hard to say Sir, but twenty to thirty seconds at a minimum."

"With the way the last transmission was cut off I'm not sure they would have had that much time." The
Admiral, who had started to sound cautiously optimistic, now sounded deflated.

"Perhaps not
Sir, but our newer Heshe enhanced AI's are extraordinarily creative and highly motivated to save lives. I'd like to assume the best until proven otherwise."

"Cat, if there is one thing I've learned in the short time I've known you, it's
to not bet against you. Take the
Yorktown
and investigate. If there are survivors, find them!"

"Yes
, Sir!" Cat paused for a fraction of a second. "Sir, I'm going to invite the Ashkelon delegation to accompany us. It might be good for them to see our rescue efforts."

***

Captain Jeffries woke to a painful throbbing in his right leg. He remembered falling across the length of the bridge as the hyperfield inertial dampeners went offline. The bridge was dark, and there was the smell of charred plastic in the air.

"Cindy
, lights" he said in a voice that sounded coarse and dry in his ears. There was no response. He tried his internal CommLink. The ship's AI responded this time.

"Unable to
comply at this time." the vaguely female persona that was the Heidman's AI responded. "All critical systems except stasis chamber life support are currently offline. Emergency power reserves are at 12 percent and falling."

"What's the status of the crew?"

"All surviving members of the crew are in an induce
d‘
medical morbidit
y’
to reduce environmental power requirements. Their neural pathways and brains, however, are being maintained by medical nanites."

"Can they be revived?" 

"Certainly Captain, but ongoing deterioration of their biological systems will require substantial resources to repair."

A sudden painful
thought occurred to him. "You said 'all surviving crew'... how many did we lose?"

"Eighty
-six percent of the ship was lost when the Heidman broke apart on collision with the surface of Kepler-47b. I am currently unable to communicate with systems in those portions of the ship. Of the remaining forty-seven personnel, three are confirmed too irreparably damaged to be saved by available nanite regeneration techniques."

"OK, so we are in pretty
bad shape. I'm assuming I'm awake because you revived me?"

"Your
assumption is correct Captain. My cognitive and database systems were severely damaged. I am operating at 9 percent normal efficiency and have lost access to 98 percent of my online database. Redundant backups are currently inaccessible.  Onboard fabrication units are assembling a forty-three megajoule fusion reactor. It will come online in sixty-one minutes. You will be required to determine power utilization priorities."