Archaea Read online

  Gene's second great triumph in the Archaea was the upgrade of her wired systems backbone. He was something of a horse-trader in the various stations we visited, and was always on the lookout for new parts or materials he could use. People have many hobbies aboard a ship – some paint, others play music – but Gene tinkered. The best type of person to have as an engineer, I've always thought.

  During our time in the service, Gene had managed to get his hands on a nexus core that had been scrapped out of a destroyer, and had it in storage. He wanted to wire it into the Archaea, as it would greatly improve our fire-control and systems capabilities. I realized this would be a significant upgrade, but its true significance would prove to be astounding.

  He must have called in every favor, because he shortly had our little bird fitted out with the latest generation of wetnet to go along with the core. I asked him what he planned to do with that much computing power, as it was probably enough to run an entire station, or even a planetary network, and he just smiled.

  He was always of the mind, that it's better to have, than need. Of course, he's right - as a result, the Archaea was born again hard, and almost ready to go. We only needed to tie up a few hundred loose ends.

  *****

  I love a challenge, and the Archaea was one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to really dig in and make a difference. She was the very definition of 'challenge'. Dirty, unkempt, un-maintained, and barely operational, but what a ship! I loved her the first time I laid eyes on her. She was perfect for what we needed, and the price was right considering her condition.

  My first glimpse into the hatch was so horrible that with therapy, I may someday be able to block it from memory. What I saw was a dark hole, barely lit with a semi-dead flickering flouro on the side of the corridor. The walls were so grimy that determining the original color was impossible; they appeared to have been formed from compressed dirt.

  Trash of every possible type cluttered nearly every nook and cranny – grime, dust and rotting fuzzy bunches of grimy muck that may have once been a sandwich but had since evolved into a semi-sentient being looking for representation in the galactic federation.

  So what was it about the Archaea that I liked? What about it caught my attention?

  The engines, of course.

  This ship was built for speed, unlike anything I had seen. The fastest corvettes in the service would have anything on this ship. The Archaea was nearly all engine, with lean, shark-like lines giving the impression that she was about to slip her mooring and leap away.

  She had decent capacity in the holds and a solid and well built internal structure, and best of all, the slipspace generator amidships spoke to my engineers eye of massive, unbelievable power systems hidden inside. With that kind of power plant, you can make a compressed pile of rotten dirt into a magnificent star-faring chariot - which may have been what they did, from the looks of it.

  The grime and grit were only skin deep, however. My initial inspection of the internals showed me that while much was outdated and not up to my standards for precision or mechanicals, they were mostly functioning and reasonably within safe parameters.

  Safety is pretty important when your ship is hammering vortexes of collapsed gravity waveforms as it blasts through the fringe. Not that we were going to just firewall the slipspace generator right off the dock, of course. Well, I guess I couldn't really say that for sure, knowing the captain.

  Dak and I tackled that ship like the Emperor was waiting dockside for a tour. We tore into every possible access hatch, port, cover, and where there wasn't a hatch, we cut and installed one. Most of the core systems like enviro and life support systems were pretty solid, and didn't need too much to bring them up to speed, though we did integrate some new tech we liberated from the tyranny and oppression of their previous owners. In other words, what we couldn't beg or borrow, we flat out stole. Military supply being what it is, in the service you could get anything you wanted, if you knew who to ask.

  You can't even imagine the thoughts that went through my mind when I first went forward from the hold and discovered the Archaea was built around that gun. What a beast that thing is! I've been in ships a hundred times the size of the Archaea that didn't have a main gun like she did.

  I think, to be honest, that gun was what sold the captain - but as much as he may want to drop the hammer on some poor unsuspecting pirate in deep space, I want to make sure it wouldn't vaporize the chunk of existence we occupied.

  We definitely needed a professional on the roster to work that problem, and luckily for us we found Jane Short, the tiny little queen of all that is murderous and vicious, a first-rate weapon tech specialist. She secretly loves it when you call her Shorty, by the way.

  She's an engineer like me, so we have to play nice. She has her area where the gun geeks play, and I have the real engineering spaces – we stay to our sections mostly.

  She came in pretty much like I did with guns blazing, and immediately tore everything apart and then rebuilt. Luckily, we had updated the wetnet throughout the ship, or she would have probably broken...err, fixed that too.

  We're both pretty impressed with Pauli's work. His code was impressive, definitely next-gen sort of stuff and super easy to work with on our end. He's a nice enough kid too, one of those spooky-smart types, but easy to talk to.

  At this point, I thought we'd probably survive the shakedown cruise, as long as the captain didn't decide to firewall the engines or fire that gun. Knowing him as I do, however, we have to plan for him to run everything up to maximum rating and beyond.

  *****

  My days were getting shorter. I wouldn't put it past Pauli or his 'expert system' to intentionally mess with my clocks to push us to the breaking point getting our weapons systems operational, but the captain insisted I was being paranoid.

  It sure seemed to me like my days were getting shorter, and my backlog was getting longer.

  My name is Jane Short, but don't call me 'Shorty'. I am over 5'2" tall (by a smidge) but that's beside the point. It's trite, annoying, not funny, and predictably, no one listens or cares. Everyone on this ship calls me 'Shorty', despite (and probably because of) the irritation it causes me. You would think grown intelligent men would be more respectful of a lethal weapon, even one my size.

  I am the weapons specialist on the Archaea, and have known Captain Smith going on ten years now. I was between jobs, and a Unet posting he made recently caught my eye. He was looking for an armament specialist with a nova-class certification, so obviously I was interested - opportunities to work on systems like that just don't exist for civvies. I really enjoyed working with Captain Smith in the service, and all in all, it looked like a dream opportunity for a woman like me.

  When I first saw the Archaea, I wondered if Captain Smith had his specs confused. What I saw was a long-haul frigate, about 100 meters long with top-mounted kinetic railers, which was pretty standard repeater turret armament. There are nova-class repeaters, but this ship clearly didn't have them.

  Once I stepped inside, however, I saw my reason for being. My heart double skipped, I gasped, I heard tweeting birds, hell, I nearly swooned and almost wept - I was in love. The Archaea was built around one of the biggest and most powerful nova-class beam weapons ever made. I'm not talking about a giga or even a tera, but a petawatt emitter – the kind you could use to slice a moon into itty-bitty pieces.

  I couldn't wait to light it up.

  The Archaea is laid out in rings that rotate around a central core. When she was built, pseudomass technology hadn't matured to the point where artificial gravity would be feasible. For a ship her size, it wouldn't make much sense, in any case.

  On the surface or in drydock, you enter the ship through the main cargo bay via a belly loading ramp. At the top of the ramp is a reasonably large hold, set up well for modular containers, with an internal track-mounted crane hoist. Along a catwalk at the forward end of the hold is an internal lock that leads into the gun deck th
at is all null gravity when we're underway. Aft of the hold are the access hatches to the engineering space where the valve twisters and wrench monkeys live.

  Moving forward through the core, there are three hatched openings in the deck that lead down to our ring spaces. Each ring of the ship is self-supporting, and can be isolated from ship systems for some time, in the event of catastrophic systems failure or hull-breach.

  Ring 3 holds the gallery, wardroom, and recreation area. Ring 2 has a medical bay, a reasonably well stocked lab that is mostly used to store various parts and other contraband, and a very well equipped machine shop. Ring 1 is crew quarters and officer country, though we don't really live by rank on this ship. The captain is the Captain, and everyone else isn't - that's pretty much the way of it.

  I live in ring 1 forward, in a nice little stateroom with all the amenities. I have a loft bunk with a desk and clothes locker underneath, a holoview panel with a cabin enviro unit opposite, and a tiny wall-mount sink for brushing my teeth (one tooth at a time, it's pretty small) and even a mirror for getting angry at – if I stand on a stool.

  No short jokes, please.

  Moving forward in the central companionway, a hatch leads up to my gunnery station and beyond, to the top-mounted repeater turret compartment which houses the mechanicals and ammo ovens. Forward of my station, is the hatch leading to the bridge deck of the ship. In a firefight, which we have only simulated so far, the core of the ship is probably the safest place to be, though it might not be very comfortable. In our ramp-up tests for the main gun, the temperature jumped pretty high, and I can't imagine what a prolonged battle might be like in there.

  Chapter 2

  My heart was in my throat as I stepped through the debugger for the bootstrap module I've been developing for so many years. The core of the Archaea is like an infinite pool of power, nothing I've built into it has even scratched the surface of what it is capable of - not that I haven't tried!

  I can't say for sure how fast it really is, it may be faster than I could calculate to be honest. The speed of the core has enabled me to write some pretty interesting predictive modeling algorithms that utilize sheer speed and processing power of the core, to bend the response curve beyond real-time, making use of quantum mechanics to provide results literally faster than they're requested, and then to fold those requests back into itself faster than they can be generated.

  I have lost sleep wondering what might happen if this becomes self-aware.

  Shorty was chomping at the bit for this predictive modeling and analysis engine. She was really excited for it to be extended to the fire-control and tracking systems for the repeaters. She wasn't the only one – Gene was practically hanging on the back of my chair waiting for me to tell him it was ready for ship systems management.

  To be able to have systems that don't react, but act in advance of their need - that's simply revolutionary in the field, and I'm really excited to be able to be a part of it.

  Of course, my work isn't limited to Janis development - there's a ton of systems throughout the ship that were originally coded by what I can only assume was a monkey with a shock collar on - and the shock collar was clearly out of batteries.

  We have systems that work, but only barely, and in a slow, limited capacity. Like the enviro module in ring 3 - it's a simple logic controller that is supposed to monitor temperature and humidity according to the number of people in that zone, but is apparently changing the temperature depending on who is currently in ring 2, or maybe depending on the unknowable will of the gods, hard telling.

  It's bug 284, and I'm working on it. Until then, Shorty may have to deal with some fly-away hair, not that she can even see it in her mirror. Maybe we could chip in and get her a step stool.

  *****

  As we were getting close to the time where the stationmaster will be either cutting us adrift or taking me to section court for late fees, I called a meeting in the wardroom. I wanted to head for deep space as soon as possible, or at least to boost for a short bit around this system.

  The Archaea looked good, far better than I thought it could at this point. Most of the interior had been cleaned or scrapped out, with new paint still wet in many places. The core companionway was well lit, and looked clean enough for an operating theater, nothing like the dark grime-crusted hole Gene and I experienced a few standard weeks ago.

  Despite the progress we'd made, I still wasn't sure if we were going to be able to haul mass out of there. Everyone had been so busy for the past few weeks, I hadn't seen much of anyone. I definitely needed to touch base with my crew.

  Once everyone settled and the witty banter had slowed down, I called the meeting to order.

  "Thank you, everyone, for taking a break from your schedules to meet with me. I know you have all been working pretty much around the clock, and hopefully, I'll be able to get you some sleep cycles soon."

  "Like I am ever going to be able to sleep with the air dry as a desert" stated Shorty, her hair slightly less frazzled than her patience with enviro.

  "I am hoping the bug will be fixed soon, possibly today", Pauli added, looking at Gene and adding "If the problem is software and not pathing in the wetnet..."

  "Pauli, I've gone through the routing in that section over and over, and I just can't find anything out of spec", Gene said patiently. "I can't rule it out completely, but I really think there's something happening in the logicspace tier."

  "Folks - I want to be concerned about your hair and comfort, but we have bigger issues...” I paused for a sip of coffee and time to haul my standard-issue Captains eyebrow to half-mast. “There are definitely some gremlins loose around here, and there probably always will be. What I really need to know is how close we are to being able to lift clear of this station."

  "Captain, we are done with structural testing of the tokamak casing, and the slipspace generators are testing well. I haven't lit the fires yet, but I've kicked the tires, and I think we'll probably not die a horrible death... Maybe not right away, in any case", Gene remarked.

  "Oh that's good to hear, Gene... I mean...While I'm as fearless as any hero of the fringe spaceways, if there's one thing I hate worse than dying, it's dying in sight of a laughing stationmaster with my money in his pocket"

  Everyone had a good laugh at that, until Shorty added "Well, we won't die a horrible death, that's for sure - it will probably happen faster than we can even realize. That nova cannon hasn't been fired in a decade, and when it was in service last it wasn't maintained, and hasn't been maintained well at any point that I can tell.”

  “Shorty, that's a petawatt cannon, right?” I said. “We used to blast those off all the time in my day. They're safe enough, right...I mean, how bad could it be?”

  She flashed me a look of tender frustration. “Captain, you may understand what a petawatt is in theory, but to harness that amount of energy and turn it into a standing wave, then bounce it around a few trillion times in the focusing chamber until it finally blasts a hole through reality - well, let's just say dry air isn't the only thing keeping me awake at night."

  "But you are making progress, right?" I asked.

  "Oh yeah, sure, we're making progress. We've re-calibrated everything, the focusing ring, the accelerators, the cooling dampeners. The challenge isn't in bringing the systems up to their designed spec, even with the hellish accuracy required for the calibration - the challenge is in understanding how those tolerances have been changed from a century of misuse and disrepair. It's clear to me that the previous owners didn't go broke - they just finally gave up from fear of pressing that shiny red button one more time. I wish some other people around here shared that fear", she added, fixing me with a stern look.

  "Hey, I'm the Captain. It's my job to think long and hard about the responsibilities of our duty, our mission, our strengths, weaknesses, our tactical situation - and yes, when needed, to think about that shiny, silky-smooth red button".

  I was joking, but to be honest, brutally hone
st, I have to admit that button was probably the single most awe-inspiring thing on the Archaea, and I couldn't wait to see what it did.

  Gene pulled us all back to reality, however - as he does so well. "Shorty, and begging the Captain's pardon, neither of you need to worry about vaporizing this sector of space, because you'll probably be incandescent reactive ash the instant we light up the tokamak."

  "Tell me you're joking, Gene", I added, ratcheting the other eyebrow up a notch.

  “Well, I am... somewhat", he added, "I mean, we're looking very good here structurally, and we've calibrated everything to the specifications we could find. Unfortunately, with all the modifications we've made both in software and hardware – we might be on reserve air with a broken tether, as they say." he trailed off with a scowl.

  "Gene, the code I've layered into the process controllers for the tokamak is top-notch, and certified bug free. I have built multiple redundancies, failover capabilities, error gating and interrupt controllers into the mechanicals. Our core systems are coming along well, and hopefully soon, I'll have the predictive analysis engine online for all ship systems", Pauli added.

  "Tell us more about this engine, Pauli", I asked.

  "Well Captain, this kind of system is really only possible because of the incredible capabilities of the nexus core and the wetnet bandwidth throughout the systems. You could process model planetary weather systems with this kind of computing power, hell, you could process model the subatomic particles inside the water molecules of a planetary weather system if you wanted.”

  'The core is so fast, I've discovered that with some iterative feedback loops, on a quantum level the code is able to deterministically find results for data that hasn't happened yet. I haven't yet quantified what that means, intrinsically - I mean, I know what is happening because I wrote it, but I can't really get a hook into how much it happens."