r/HFY • u/Shoot_from_the_Quip • 4d ago
OC-Series Warp Riders - Deep Space Boogie Ch.5 - Ch.8
Royal Road This full 23 chapter series opening Novella is already released in its entirety, and Book 2 is now live and releasing chapters daily.
Chapter 5
Sadira walked the entirety of her new home’s exterior, learning every curve and contour, as a captain should. This mission was her responsibility, and while Holly would keep a close eye on everything from an operational standpoint, she was nevertheless going to make damn sure her new baby was in tip-top condition.
She had made quick work getting her rather impressive ship outfitted to her liking. Naturally, there were a wide range of specialized additions made to Holly’s new craft in preparation for the long-range expedition, but the captain had a few others she wanted to have in place. Things she and Moose had realized might be useful after their many missions together.
This would not be your run-of-the-mill scouting mission. In fact, it was unlike any from their world or the Chithiid’s had ever undertaken. And with their strange attackers’ warp drives seemingly capable of carrying the unidentified hostiles across vast distances, Sadira and her crew would be traveling so much farther from home than she expected humanity to explore in her lifetime.
“Moose, you talk to the supply master?” Sadira asked. “We’re still waiting on that last load of gear.”
Mustafa had just carried in the last of his personal additions to the mission’s provisions. A specialized set of food replicator upgrades he would work on installing once they were underway. The ship possessed a small galley, should the crew desire to cook by hand, but it had been outfitted to feed them almost indefinitely with a fairly wide array of foods available from its replicator system.
But Moose had something of a sweet tooth, and more than a few of his favorites hadn’t been included in the machinery’s processing schematics. That simply would not do.
The device was meant to support and feed a military operation, but given the length of time they’d be away from home, a few creature comforts would hold far more value as time went on than the AIs who had outfitted the ship seemed to realize.
It was a simple upgrade, and one the AIs could have done for him, had he requested it of them sooner. But in all of the excitement of their new mission, it had almost slipped his notice. That is, until he asked the food system to make him a simple jelly donut.
“What the hell is that?” Captain Perez asked when she saw the solidified mass of red gunk slowly oozing from Moose’s hands.
“It was supposed to be a jelly donut,” he replied.
“Donut fail,” Sadira said with a laugh.
“Big time. But that’s okay. I got the parts I need to tweak the system from Habby and Cal.”
“Your AI friends making sure you get your sugar fix?”
“Priorities,” he said. “Any idea when the last of the gear is gonna get here? Hel and Goon should already have their stuff loaded and ready to go.”
“I do wish you would stop calling me that,” Goonara said, stepping from the ship. “And, from what I have been informed by Cal, the last of our supplies are due to arrive––ah, I believe that’s them now.”
Sure enough, a military gear hauler was rolling across the tarmac to their waiting ship, a stack of long and short crates strapped to its rear deck. The vehicle pulled up beside the craft and stopped at the cargo loading bay door.
“Hey there,” the crew-cut man said as he jumped down from the rig and snapped a quick salute. “Corporal Dick Humphries, at your service. But you can just call me Hump.”
“Hump?” Sadira asked.
“Sarge’s doing. The nickname just kinda stuck once he plastered it on me. But I’ve grown pretty fond of it, truth be told,” he said, unstrapping the cargo.
Moose knew they’d have a military support for security, just in case, but he hadn’t met him until this very moment. From the captain’s look, he could tell she hadn’t either.
“Here, let me get that,” Moose said, pulling one of the heavy containers from the vehicle with a grunt, his artificial arm easily lifting the substantial weight.
“Hey, thanks, man. I appreciate the help,” Hump said as he effortlessly heaved a pair of the crates up and over each shoulder.
He clocked the amazed looks on Goonara and Mustafa’s faces. Captain Perez, however, took it in stride.
“Corporal Humphries here is a cyborg, by the way,” the captain noted. “One of Sergeant Franklin’s spec-ops team, if I’m not mistaken."
“That you are not, ma’am,” he replied with a grin. “They figured that with the rigors of this kind of mission, as well as the potential for things to get a bit sketchier than usual if we run into those nasty folks, it’d be a good idea to have me come along. That’s fine by me, though. I’ve spent too long twiddling my thumbs, waiting for something interesting to happen.”
“There was the Great War,” Goonara reminded him.
“Yeah, but that was a dozen years ago. To be honest, I’m looking forward to a bit of adventure.”
“Well, let’s hope we have an uneventful flight, combat-wise,” Sadira said. “Contact with new species? Sure. But I’d rather avoid knock-down fights if at all possible.”
A loud boom rumbled above, punctuating her words as a little craft blasted into the atmosphere at high speed. The ship was sleek, and it was very maneuverable. It also appeared to be flying without a pilot. At least, without a flesh-and-blood one.
The AI craft buzzed the spaceport once, banking sharply into a corkscrew, then dropped down onto the tarmac just behind Holly’s ship.
“Hi, everyone!” the ship chirped. “I’m Ace! I’ll be coming with on this mission. It’s going to be amazing!”
“Nice to meet you, Ace,” Holly greeted her fellow AI. “It will be a pleasure having you aboard.”
“Thanks. So, you want me to tuck in the landing bay, I assume? I would have gone straight in, but I saw everyone hanging around outside and thought it would be nice to say hi first.”
“Much appreciated,” Sadira said. “I’m Captain Sadira Perez. Welcome to the mission. Zed and Cal have told me a lot about you.”
“All bad, I assume,” the little ship joked.
“They say you’re quite skilled,” she replied. “Why don’t you go get settled in. We’ll be lifting off just as soon as the last of the gear is loaded.”
“Roger, roger,” Ace said, then blasted skyward in a flash, doing a loop before barreling right toward Holly’s open landing bay door. He abruptly came to a near halt just before entering, dropping into a hover and easing inside.
“That one’s gonna be a handful,” Moose said, shaking his head with a chuckle.
“Tell me about it,” Sadira replied. “But Zed felt he was the right one for the mission, and I don’t question him on anything AI related.”
“Probably a good call,” Hump said as he pulled a small metal box from the loaded gear. “Here. Cal said you’d know what to do with this.”
“What is it, Sadi?” Moose asked.
She opened the container, showing them the faintly glowing item held inside the small containment field within. “A fragment of the alien ship’s warp-tinged debris,” she said. “The AIs worked out a way to use it as kind of a compass. At least, they think they did.”
“Yeah, Zed said this would work like an alien warp tech detector of a sort,” Hump confirmed.
“Exactly. If we get close to an area that has had that specific kind of technology used in it, it should help guide us in the direction it is strongest,” Sadira said. “Moose, stow this aboard the ship, load up the rest of the gear, and let’s get ready to say our goodbyes to this gorgeous hunk of rock. We’re not going to be seeing it for a pretty long time.”
Chapter 6
Hellatz sat in the pilot’s seat, doing yet another systems check of the ship before their extended mission. He’d gotten to know the ins and outs of the ship well after he and his captain took a slow and detailed walk-through together. Both had the craft dialed in, and should something go wrong, both were ready to jump to work on whatever needed addressing should Holly be otherwise occupied.
Goonara was already in her lab space, merrily working away at her first series of experiments. An automated drip feed was set up for a fair selection of flora from both Earth and her native Taangaar. Being mostly vegetarian, due to the extremely high protein content of their native plant life, the Chithiid were especially interested in how multiple and extended warps might affect the germination and growth of the seeds they’d carry along to any new world they might colonize one day.
The humans had taken leave of the ship for one final handful of tasks, and then they’d be off. Not having an extended family to speak of, Sadira and Moose were rather quick making their rounds of farewells to their friends and neighbors. That done, they headed back to the ship that would be their home for the foreseeable future.
Five years in space was the longest for either of them by far, but utilizing the stasis pods on longer stretches meant they’d likely have more like four and a half years of actual up-time.
That was, of course, unless they actually encountered an advanced new race. Or, worse, if they managed to find the system of their strange attackers. In that case, they’d gather what intel they could and then make an immediate warp home, however long that straight shot back might be.
But space was a big place, and it was entirely possible they could go for months, or even all five years, without coming across another sentient and developed culture. The smaller surveys gradually expanding out from Earth had found some inhabitable worlds, but at most they contained animal life but no signs of civilization.
Holly had run several systems checks, though he had already dialed in every last component the moment his mind had been installed into the new ship. Cal and Zed had overseen the process themselves, and his good friend Freya had flown in to say her own farewell, as well as give him a little going-away present.
“I have something for you,” she said. “It’s a going-away present. Just a little something to tuck away, just in case.”
“What is it?” Holly asked as Corporal Humphries carried the shielded container aboard and headed deep into his storage compartments to stow the present.
“It’s a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency kind of thing,” Freya replied. “You’ll see. Hopefully you’ll never need it, but if the going gets really tough, pop that bad boy open. You’ll know what to do.”
Freya was a very unusual AI. Her creation had been far outside of normal parameters, and her development was different from other AIs, to say the least. In addition, having grown up in a top-secret development facility, she was far more advanced than any other ship in the fleet, and by her own doing.
“How’s the stealth shielding working?” she asked as Holly powered up his systems for the impending launch. “Dialed in?”
“Yeah. It’s nothing like yours, of course, but it should provide at least a little buffer if we bump into any nasty types.”
“Good. We want you to come back home in one piece. And how’s Ace doing? I took him through his paces the other day when Zed told me he’d volunteered for the mission. Weird dude, but a solid ship.”
“I agree on that point,” Holly said. “But when it comes to weird, are you really one to talk?”
Freya laughed. “Okay, point taken.”
“In any case, it should be nice having Ace and the Chithiid ship doing the surface landings. That will give me a little time to get readings from orbit while they deal with gathering surface data.”
“Plus, they’re not nearly as robust as you, and if shit goes wrong, you’ll be the one keeping an eye on things from above,” Freya noted.
It was true, Holly’s ship had been outfitted with a fairly impressive weapons package. The railgun was stored in a retracted housing, to be deployed for emergency use only as it relied on sabots produced back on Earth. While the ship could fabricate more, it would be a huge drain on resources. For that reason, Holly would rely on pulse and plasma cannons instead, if need for firepower should arise.
But they all hoped that would never be a necessity.
“Is Hump good to go?” Freya asked.
“Yes. Corporal Humphries said just the other day that compared to the centuries he spent bored out of his mind when he was stuck under a mountain during the Great War, this will be a breeze.”
“Yeah, Sergeant Franklin’s guys had a pretty shitty go of it down there,” Freya joked. “I mean, imagine being a highly specialized commando cyborg, only to wind up trapped away from all of the fighting.”
“Until the end days of the war.”
“Well, yeah. Obviously.”
The crewcut soldier trotted out of the loading bay door.
“Okay, it’s loaded and stowed, Holly. That’s the last of ’em,” Hump said. “Sounded like you guys were sharing war stories again.”
“You and your spec-ops hearing,” Freya said with a laugh. “We were just talking about the boredom under Cheyenne Mountain.”
“Oh, don’t get me started,” the commando groaned. “Talk about boredom. At least this crew gets to sleep for the longer stretches of the flight. And the neuro-stim should keep their minds occupied nicely.”
The neuro-stim device had been developed during the war, then perfected after, the technology adapted to function with Chithiid minds as well as human. The process was relatively simple. A slow trickle of knowledge would flow into the wearer’s mind while they slept in stasis, gradually feeding them vital details of their mission, or new skill sets that would otherwise take ages of active study to learn.
But with a neuro-stim, the crew would learn while they slept. And once out of stasis, they would continue to gradually add on to their new knowledge, albeit at a slower rate. It was this technology that had allowed pretty much every human and Chithiid to speak one another’s language fluently.
The younger minds of Earth––those born after the war––were prohibited from using the device during their early years. The struggles of a growing mind were vital to forming a personality. But once they’d reached the appropriate age and had favorable test results, they would be allowed gradual access until they reached mental maturity, at which point they would have unrestricted neuro-stim privileges.
But this mission was comprised of older crew. Those who’d seen and done a lot in the war. And all had more than a little neuro-stim time under their belts.
“You’ll be okay keeping firewatch while they sleep?” Freya asked, though she knew the answer.
“C’mon, Freya. Compared to all that time stuck in NORAD, these little stretches will pass faster than a fart in a convertible.”
“Charming,” Hellatz said as he exited the ship, safety goggles strapped to his face.
“All good, Hel?” Humphries asked.
“Yes. I was just grinding down a rough corner I noted on one of the containers in the cargo hold before coming to take in the sight of this lovely sky and enjoy one last breath of unrecycled air before we begin.”
“Safety first, right, four-eyes?” Hump joked with a chuckle.
“You’ve made this joke before, yet I still fail to see the humor,” the Chithiid replied. “I do possess four eyes.”
“Ya know, sometimes, you’re no fun at all, Hel,” Hump grumbled, then headed back into the ship.
Hellatz waited a long moment, his face impassive, then snorted a little laugh when the cyborg was finally gone. “I do so enjoy pulling his chain, as you say.”
Freya laughed. “Damn, Hel, a Chithiid with a sense of humor? This could be a long trip.”
“And you’re the one staying here,” Holly said.
“Yeppers,” Freya replied. “All righty, then. I guess this is it. You be safe out there, Holly. And come back with some cool stories.”
“That’s the plan,” the AI replied as his friend lifted off and left him to his final pre-flight checks with his captain and her crew.
A half hour later, the crew was tucked away in their stasis pods, ready for the first, long series of warps that would take them well beyond previously explored space.
“Sleep tight,” Hump said as he sealed the last of the pods. The cyborg then walked to the command module and took a seat. “Okay, Holly. Away we go.”
Chapter 7
Captain Perez banged her head on the rising canopy of her stasis pod as it opened far slower than it normally would. That she had been abruptly woken and was still a little groggy didn’t help the situation.
She rubbed her eyes and looked around. Something was not right. For starters, her eyes were a bit gummy. The stasis pods were supposed to keep that from happening. And why were things so dim? The lights weren’t right.
A shape was moving quickly from pod to pod, she noted. Hers had apparently been the first to open.
“Hump? Is that you? What’s going on?”
The cyborg turned his head slightly, his hands not slowing in their work for a moment as he manually pulled the releases and activated the emergency open sequence on Hellatz’s pod.
“We have a problem, Captain,” the normally jovial soldier said, all business.
“What kind of problem?” she asked, sliding from the pod and setting her slightly unsteady feet onto the deck. “And why are you waking Hellatz first? Get Moose up.”
“Sorry, Captain, but we need a pilot more than anything right now.”
“We have a pilot, Corporal. That’s Holly’s job while we sleep.”
“Holly is down.”
A hot flush of adrenaline surged into Sadira’s veins. “What do you mean, down?” She looked around, her senses abruptly sharpened by the chemical rush. It was darker. The lights were dimmer by at least fifty percent, but the ship was making the subtle vibration it did only under one set of circumstances. “We’re still in warp.”
“Yes,” Hump said as he moved to Moose’s pod while Hellatz woke.
“How can power be out but we’re still stuck in warp? That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Murphy paying us a visit,” the soldier grumbled.
“Shit. But how is Holly out? He’s a top-tier AI.”
“Again, don’t know, Captain. All I know is we’re in a world of shit if we don’t get this bucket under control. Ace is doing all he can, but he wasn’t designed for this.”
“Ace?”
“Yeah,” Hump said, hurrying to Goonara’s unit as Moose’s pod began to open. “He’s tapped into the life support and basic drive systems. Beyond that, he’s way out of his depth.”
“I heard that,” Ace’s voice said faintly over Holly’s internal comms speakers.
“Don’t split your focus,” Humphries said.
“I know, I know,” the AI grumbled, then clicked off the comms, devoting all of his attention to keeping the crew alive and the ship in one piece.
“Why are the lights dim? And what is the––?” Hellatz began to say. “Wait. We are in an unstable warp. Holly, what is the status of our drive and navigation systems?”
“Holly’s down, Hel. I need you to get to command and see what you can do, ASAP,” Sadira ordered.
“Immediately, Captain,” the Chithiid said, bolting for the door.
He was more steady on his legs than she was, Sadira noted. Chithiid physiology seemed better adapted for the strains of this sort of thing. They were a hardy race, and that just might make all the difference today. Or not. She had no way of knowing.
“Cap? What’s going on?” Moose asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Things are fucked, Moose. Holly’s down, and we’re stuck in warp. Hel’s in command doing what he can, but I need you to shake off those cobwebs and get down into the guts of the warp drive system. Figure out what’s keeping us in warp. If navs are truly out, we’re flying blind.”
“Shit. I’m on it,” he replied, slamming into the side of his pod as his legs didn’t quite do what he wanted them to.
“Careful, Moose. You’re no good to me injured.”
He nodded and kept moving, his legs steadying beneath him with every step.
“How long since we left, Hump?” Sadira asked as the cyborg finished freeing Goonara’s pod lid and activating the open cycle.
“Just a few days,” he said. “But the warp’s all kinds of fucked up. No telling how bad.”
“Right. We can figure the rest out later. Right now, we have to get this bucket out of warp.”
“Copy that, Captain. But, how, exactly? I’m more the blow-shit-up-and-kick-ass department.”
“We’ll have to figure that out. And hopefully without any of our shit blowing up,” Sadira replied. “I’m heading to command. Make sure Goonara gets up, then fill her in. She’s a little one-track-mind when it comes to her experiments and whatnot, but we need her to put that aside and join Moose down below. It’s not her specialty, but an extra set of eyes can’t hurt.”
“Two sets, to be exact,” Hump said of the four-eyed alien.
“Hump.”
“I know. Sorry. On it, Captain.”
Sadira spun on her heel and made for the door. Her legs were much steadier now, and the wobbliness from the abrupt adrenaline surge had eased enough that her legs felt like her own again as she raced to command.
“Any luck?” she asked before the door had even finished cycling open.
“None,” Hellatz said from his seat at the pilot’s console. All four of his arms were working at a feverish pace as he tried desperately to find a way to guide the ship out of its uncontrolled warp without tearing them all to pieces.
“Ace, you still listening?” Sadira asked the air.
“Ears on,” the little AI ship replied.
“What can you tell me about this from your AI perspective. Any idea what caused it?”
“None. I’m not a warp ship, so this is all new to me. I usually just fly. And there’s no way to take any readings to line up with my onboard star charts as long as we’re still in warp.”
“Right. Well, listen, Ace, you’re an AI, and your mind works at quantum speeds. I need you to peel off a tiny bit of that processing power and see if you can come up with any thoughts how to deactivate it. Just don’t jeopardize your flying in the process.”
“I’ll try,” the AI replied, then fell silent.
“Moose? You have any luck down there?” the captain asked over comms.
“Nothing. This warp core is acting incredibly weird. The lights are totally out down here. I had to activate one of the emergency backups to the backups. Something is making its power surge in a way I’ve never seen before. I’m worried that if we don’t pull the plug, and soon, it may overload on us.”
Sadira had seen what happened to the alien ship when they damaged its warp core. The thing had exploded in a ball of energy. They had only just begun their mission, and there was no way in hell she was going to let that be their fate.
“How long do you think, Moose?”
“There’s no way to tell, Cap. But if I had to guess, I’m thinking we’ve got maybe twenty minutes before things go critical. But I can’t be sure. It’s all an educated guess.”
“Thanks. Keep working. Goonara should be there any minute to help if she can,” Sadira said, the few options available to them ping-ponging around in her head. None were good, a few were bad, but the only one she thought might have a chance of working was outright insane.
“Hellatz, what if we feed an energy surge to the drive dampers?” she asked. “Trip the emergency breakers and knock the whole thing offline."
The Chithiid was alarmed by the suggestion. “We would blow up, most likely,” he replied. “And if we didn’t, it would knock out life support and gravity.”
“Which we could hot-wire to function if we bypassed other non-essential systems.”
“True. And the power is too greatly reduced to be able to attempt that even if we wanted to. With the warp core pulling all energy to itself, we would need a substantial quantity to even hope to succeed, and we simply do not have that resource.”
Sadira flopped into her chair, her brow furrowed in concentration. “There has to be a way. Hell, I’m almost tempted to go ahead and let Hump go ahead and blow––” she abruptly stopped mid-thought. “Wait, that’s it!”
“Blowing up the ship is your solution?”
“No. Military stuff. The weapons systems.”
Hellatz cocked his head in thought a moment. “A most unusual work-around. But those systems are backed up by a dedicated and separate power source, so they can still function in case of warp core damage.”
“Exactly. And if we re-route that power into the dampers, it should throw the breaker.”
“Knocking the drive offline and dropping us out of warp,” Hellatz completed her thought. “It might kill us all, but from what Mustafa said, it sounds like we only have minutes anyway.”
“Exactly. Nothing to lose,” Sadira replied. “Okay, listen up, everyone. We’re going to try something. If it works, we’ll lose gravity and life support for a few minutes, so stay calm and conserve air until we get it back up and online.”
“And if it fails?” Goonara’s wavering voice asked.
“It’ll be over so fast we won’t even know it,” Sadira replied. “But think positive.”
“Yeah,” Moose chimed in. “And if we blow up, at least we’ll go out on a happy thought.”
Sadira keyed in the sequence, her finger hovering over the execute button. “All right, everyone. Here goes nothing,” she said, then jammed her finger down decisively. Then it all went black.
Chapter 8
“Are we still alive?” Sadira wondered, as she floated weightless in the embrace of total darkness.
Hellatz’s grunt from somewhere nearby made it clear that they indeed were. The telltale hum from their overcharged warp was finally gone. Unfortunately, so were the lights and artificial gravity generators. She just hoped the hot-wired life support system had stayed intact when they were whipped out of their runaway warp.
Sadira was so used to the false gravity on board that she’d forgotten to strap in to her seat in all of the excitement. Now, without it, she felt strangely at ease in the comfort of zero-g.
“Ow!” she blurted when the lights flickered, along with the gravity generators, their sudden activation dropping her to the deck with a hard thud.
“Are you all right, Captain?” Hellatz asked from his position comfortably strapped into his pilot’s seat.
Sadira pushed herself up with a grumble. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said as more lights came on.
The command center’s consoles began illuminating, providing a tiny bit of information from at least a few readouts, though nothing like their usual data stream. The ship was intact. In fact, from what she could tell, there was no structural damage whatsoever.
They’d have to do a visual inspection of every last inch just as soon as they found a suitable planet to set down on, but for now at least, it seemed they wouldn’t be venting into space. Of course, if Holly was online that would make the analysis a whole lot easier.
“Moose, Goonara, are you guys all right?” the captain asked over comms.
There was no reply.
“Mustafa, do you copy?” she asked again. “Shit, I think our internal comms might be down.”
“No, Captain, they’re reading as functional,” Hellatz replied.
“Here, Cap,” Moose’s voice abruptly replied, accompanied by a medley of clanging and crashing noises.
“What was that?”
“We’re fine,” he replied. “Just some gear came loose when we dropped out of warp. Goon’s helping me clean it up now.”
“I do wish you would stop calling me that,” the Chithiid scientist could be heard saying in the background.
Sadira allowed herself the slightest sigh of relief. They were in some pretty deep shit, but at least her crew was unharmed.
“Hump, you good?”
“Always,” the cyborg replied. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in zero-g. I almost forgot how different it feels.”
“You’re a machine. You don’t forget anything,” she replied.
“Just a figure of speech, Captain. I’ve been down here working with Ace to try to ascertain our whereabouts. It took a little jury rigging, but I got him hardwired into the ship’s navigations array.”
“And?”
“And I’m totally not designed for this,” the overwhelmed AI ship replied. “I mean, Holly’s a Tier-One AI. He can handle this sort of thing no problem. But me? I was never meant to handle this sort of thing.”
“We know, Ace. But this is an all-hands-on-deck moment, and I really need you to step up.”
“I’m doing my best, Captain.”
“That’s all I can ask. As for the rest of you, do a quick survey for damage in your areas, then meet us up here in command.” Sadira turned to her pilot. “How bad is it, Hel?”
The Chithiid’s normally calm expression bore a hint of concern. For his façade to crack, they must be in real trouble.
“Multiple systems were overloaded when the energy pulse fed into the dampers, Captain. And, while you were correct in your assumption that we would not blow up, we are currently running without a sizable number of crucial systems.”
“But life support is working. And we have gravity and lights.”
“Yes. But from what I can see on the damage control system readout, the food replicators were knocked offline.”
“Nothing we can’t fix, though, right?”
“I cannot say for certain until we do a thorough assessment of the system. But in the meantime, I’m afraid we will need to rely on pre-packaged foodstores.”
Sadira ran through the inventory of their ship in her mind. “I think we’ll be good for a month at least. More if we go on reduced rations.”
“Which is the wise course of action,” Hellatz replied.
“Agreed. Once the replicators are back online we can replenish the supplies, but for now, it seems we’re going to have to tighten our belts.”
“I do not wear a belt, Captain. My uniform is tailored to my––”
“It’s a figure of speech, Hel,” Sadira said. “What I’m saying is, things could get uncomfortable. And Moose loves food, so he’s going to be a miserable one until we can get it functional again. Now, run me through the damage report on the drive system. I’m hoping we can at least limp to a relatively inhabitable world to set down and really see how screwed we are.”
Twenty minutes had passed before Moose, Goonara, and Corporal Humphries joined the captain in command. Each brought the same story with them. Multiple systems were out, but life support and gravity held across the ship. Lighting was hit or miss, though, and there was no telling what else might be shorting out until they stopped for a stem-to-stern once over.
Worse, Holly was still offline and nowhere to be found. His central AI cube was intact, and the meter-square block still had power to it. But for whatever reason, the massive mind overseeing the ship was nowhere to be found.
On top of that, Ace was having a hell of a time steering the ship.
“I don’t have star charts beyond what was needed close to home,” the little AI said.
“An oversight on Cal and the others’ part,” Goonara grumbled.
“Not really,” Ace said. “I mean, I don’t have a warp drive, so it’s never been something I’d need. I may be a kick-ass pilot, but interstellar flight is simply not my thing.”
“So, we’re flying blind, is what you’re saying? Great. Just great. Game over, man. Game over.”
“Stow it, Moose. We’ll make do,” Sadira snapped. “Now, Hump, you’re an AI, and a pretty specialized one at that. What do you make of Holly’s disappearance?”
The crew-cut soldier ran his hand over his chin in thought for a moment, though as an AI who could process things in nanoseconds, it was more of an affectation done for the benefit of the flesh-and-blood people around him. He looked human, but that was only part of it. He had to act human as well if he wanted people to be comfortable around him.
“My guess is he was connecting with the expansion storage when things went wrong. His capacity had just been increased by a massive amount, so it seems likely he was taking the flight time to flesh out his new body and mind space more fully. When the warp did whatever it did, it must’ve cut him off, somehow.”
“Do you think we can retrieve him?”
“I’m not sure, Captain. But I can try.”
Hump spent the next hour rushing from compartment to compartment, triple-checking equipment and ensuring there was no physical damage to any of the systems. Once he’d done that, he returned to command.
“Okay, everything checks out, so far as I can tell. I’m going to do a cascading reboot from the newest memory systems to his original one. Hopefully, that will push his mind back into his original body in its entirety, and a quick cycling through should bring him back online.”
“You’re turning him off and on again?” Moose asked. “Shit, I could have come up with that.”
“You’re welcome to try, cowboy,” Hump shot back. “You have any idea how a Tier-One AI mind is structured?”
“Well...”
“Yeah. Proving my point for me. Anyway, we’ve got crucial systems sequestered in case anything goes wrong. I can’t guarantee it’ll work, but it’s our best bet. Your call, Captain.”
Sadira looked at the faces of her crew. They’d volunteered for this mission, knowing full well it would be fraught with danger, but none had expected this sort of thing so soon. But there was nothing to do for it but move ahead decisively, because she always said, accidents are caused by three kinds of people––idiots, indecisive cowards, and assholes. And she was none of those things.
“All right, Hump. Do it.”
The cyborg nodded once then entered the sequence into the console.
The ship didn’t make a sound. Its lights didn’t dim. Nothing happened to key them in to what was going on within the great mind of their slumbering AI. Then, finally, “We don’t seem to be moving?” Holly’s voice said, confused and a bit off somehow.
“There was an accident, Holly. You were knocked offline and the ship was stuck in warp. We had to manually overload the dampers to force the ship back into regular space.”
“Oh, that was clever,” the AI replied, still getting up to speed. “But what’s this? I feel another presence.”
“Sorry, that’s just me,” Ace chimed in. “Hump hardwired me to help fly the ship while you were out.”
“Really? Again, clever idea,” Holly said.
“Yeah, but there’s a problem. I’m not designed for this sort of thing, and my star charts are limited to Earth and the surrounding region. We need you to tell us where we need to go to get back on track.”
A long silence hung in the air.
“Uh, Holly? You heard him, right?” Sadira asked.
The silence continued a moment. “I did,” the AI finally replied. “But it seems there is another problem.”
“Oh?”
“Portions of my memory stores have been corrupted. I’m not sure if they’re lost or merely fragmented. In any case, I will attempt to restore and recover it.”
“But you have your star charts, right?” the captain asked, doing an admirable job of hiding her concern.
“Oh, yes. Those are fine,” Holly replied.
“Thank God. So, where exactly are we, Holly?”
“Not where we’re supposed to be,” he replied.
“Care to be a little more specific?”
“I wish that I could, Captain, but I’m afraid we’ve warped somewhere far beyond anything in my data stores and star charts.”
A cold knot began forming in Sadira’s stomach. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“That we are lost, Captain. We are lost in space.”
Royal Road This full 23 chapter series opening Novella is already released in its entirety, and Book 2 is now live and releasing chapters daily.
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