After an encounter with a powerful space storm freelance interstellar surveyor John Hawkins finds himself a long way from home and must make a dangerous journey to return to the safety of human civilization.
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The Long Road (original science fiction)
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Chapter One: Awakening
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The Long Road
Chapter One: Awakening
Consciousness returned.
Lying near motionless, with only the gentle rise and fall of his chest showing that he still lived on a narrow cot in the medical bay Captain John Hawkins awoke slowly from a deep coma-like sleep. As he began to stir lights in the medical bay automatically came on at a reduced level, so as not to dazzle him as he woke, even as a pair of pale grey-blue eyes slowly opened. He immediately shut his eyes again and groaned as his whole body was aching as though it was one giant bruise, even the tips of his toes hurt and the less that was said about the headache that was pounding away like a band at a Founding Day parade in the back of his skull the better.
"John, John can you hear me?" a female voice said seeming to be coming from both all around him and inside his own head at the same time prompting him to tense up expecting trouble. After a few more confused seconds he recognised the voice and relaxed from the near instinctive tension that had gripped him, there was no threat here.
"Aside from feeling like I've just gone ten rounds with a boxing champion I'm fine Alice," he replied as he opened his eyes again and awkwardly sat up, the sheet that had been covering him sliding down revealing his bare torso for all to see. Not that there would have been anyone aboard to see since as with all deep space survey ships he was the only organic being aboard, the only other person here – if you could call her that – being Alice the ships artificial intelligence matrix. Between the two of them and a small army of various drones they were all that was needed to run the interstellar survey ship Sundance, a sharp change to how it would have been in his grandfather's time when survey ships had required a crew of over a hundred as back then automation had been far less advanced than it was now.
"My telemetry link to your nanites confirms no lasting system damage just residual disorientation that should pass in a few moments," Alice confirmed.
"Tell me about it," John muttered as he could already feel the pain and disorientation fading away completely as the army of tiny sub molecular biomechanical robots inside him and had been ever since he was eighteen when like all citizens of the Human Commonwealth he'd been given his first nanites, though due to the nature of his career as an independent interstellar surveyor he had upgraded his a bit over the years to as close to military grade as you could legally get without being in the Peacekeepers, worked their normal magic. He looked around taking a note that he was in the medical bay and not in his cabin. Huh what am I doing here, he thought looking around. "Alice what happened? Why am I in the medical bay?"
"Some memory loss is normal given the level of systemic disruption you suffered."
John rolled his eyes slightly as that was not an answer to his question. "That's not what I asked Alice."
"I know."
Snarky artificial intelligences whatever next, he thought with a mental snort. "So would you mind answering my questions or are we going to be sitting here playing twenty questions all day long," he asked as he stood up, noting idly that he was as naked as the day he was born. A sure sign that whatever had happened it had required him to spend some time floating in a regen tank while a much larger armada of nano machines repaired whatever it was that had happened to him. "Have I been in regen?"
"You have," the artificial intelligence confirmed before deciding she'd played with him enough, for giving her the AI equivalent of a heart attack, for now. "Do you remember the last planet we surveyed?"
"The dustbowl yeah I remember it," John confirmed frowning as he wondered what that had to do with anything. The planet in question had been a desert world, with what little surface water there was being extremely saline, that there initial scans had revealed to be rich in a number of highly useful metals and minerals including velarium carbonate – the material that was used in the construction of the graviton field manipulator that was the core component of a transluminal engine – which had prompted him to land and investigate. While he had confirmed indeed that there was a large amount of velarium carbonate present, enough to net him a few million credits when he sold the location and provided the samples he'd taken to one of the mining conglomerates who were always on the lookout for new sources, he and the ship had had to endure several quite substantial sandstorms while working.
To say that had been pleasant would have been a colossal understatement, though well within the capacity of the light armoured suit he'd been wearing to withstand. To say nothing of the titanium-carbon nanofiber hull of the Sundance.
"What about it," he asked as he made his way across the medical bay to the entrance, while there was nobody else aboard he didn't want to walk around naked all day so it was time to head to his cabin and put on a ship's jumpsuit. "Did the sandstorms cause some damage that our pre-take off diagnostics missed?"
"No but as we left the planet we encountered an anomaly. A massive, charged particle storm from the direction of the systems twin suns," Alice answered, "from the size and intensity of the storm I calculated that one or both stars emitted a particularly large coronal mass ejection triggering the storm."
"Oh yes now I remember," John replied scowling as he remembered how he'd been sitting in the control seat in the cockpit, linked to the ship via a neural interface with his nanites serving as the connection medium it was how ships from small cargo ships and interstellar survey ships like Sundance to the biggest battleships and supercarriers of the Peacekeeper Fleet were normally flown in the twenty-fifth century, when the sensors had come alive with warnings about the massive space storm approaching.
As he recalled by the time they had become aware of the size and power of the storm there had been no time to return to the planet and shelter till it passed. Nor had there been that much hope that the Sundance's shields would withstand the storm for long. As a result there only chance had been to divert as much power as possible to engines and shields and hope to get far enough away from the planet's gravitational mass shadow to engage the transluminal drive. Essentially their only chance had been to outrun the maelstrom of radiation and solar particles.
"Did we manage to get away in time?" he asked as he arrived at his cabin and went inside. For some reason he was unable to remember if he had been able to go faster than light in time. He had to assume that they did otherwise they would be kind of dead, the turbulence of the storm would have certainly torn them into a few billion fragments. Such things had happened to other survey ships in the past.
"Ugh not quite."
"What do you mean not quite?" John demanded as he got out a pair of underpants and socks from a drawer before putting them on. Then he began the process of getting into one of the standard pale blue nanofiber jumpsuits that were a common thing for spacers to wear aboard ship. It wasn't the easiest of things to get into since in its inert format the material was tough and not very elastic, thus getting his one point eight three meter tall, hundred- and two-kilogram frame into it was quite a struggle, but he managed. A soon as he finished the nanofibers in the jumpsuit synced up with his own nanites and the tight jumpsuit relaxed and resized itself to fit him perfectly. If only there was a way to resize these blasted things before struggling to put them on. It would make life so much easier, he thought.
"The stormfront caught us just as the transluminal drive engaged," Alice answered at last. "It impacted us just as we dropped our shields for FTL flight. As a result there was a massive power surge through all ships systems, the safety limiters on the neural interface were overwhelmed by the massive electromagnetic spikes…"
"…resulting in me getting one hell of a shock," John finished wincing knowing that would have screwed him up something royally as while having nanites in you gave you numerous benefits, such as perfect health enhanced strength and so on it did come with a handful of downsides. One of those downsides was that the nanites could in certain conditions conduct and amplify an electrical shock, a weakness that was well known and which was brutally exploited by modern pulse weapons. No wonder he had ended up in a regeneration tank for who knew how long, he'd been frankly lucky it hadn't fried his brain.
"Indeed you were barely alive when the drone got you to the medical bay. I had no choice but to place you in a regen tank and as you organics say pray."
John winced realizing he had really been screwed up by that shock. "Ouch! How long was I in there and what's the status of the ship?"
"You have been in regeneration for fifty-two hours, forty minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Ship status is not good. I believe you should come to the cockpit so I can give you a full assessment of the damage and we can decide what we're going to do from there."
John scowled even as he put on some boots, the tops immediately adhering to the jumpsuit with molecular bonding strips. He really didn't like the sound of that as it meant Sundance was likely quite seriously damaged by the stormfront slamming into them as they jumped to translight. Which was perhaps the worst possible time for such an impact to take place as to jump to translight a ship had to drop its shields in order for the polarized graviton field created by the transluminal engines to properly warp the space-time continuum.
"I'll be right there but answer me this first is the hull intact?"
"It is now. There was a small hull breach in the secondary aft cargo bay though the hull has since sealed itself. There was only minimal radiation contamination from the storm it has since been purged by automatic repair systems."
"Well that's a relief," John muttered knowing that there was nothing in the secondary aft cargo bay at the moment as the velarium carbonate samples, and the other samples he'd taken from the dustbowl, were all in the two forward cargo holds. He was also relieved to know that at very least the systems that would repair the hull if breached had worked as designed and sealed the hole, that, and the fact that other automated systems had cleaned up the radiation that had infiltrated the ship through the hull breach. While radiation sickness was not much of a thing in this day and age, even the most basic civil grade nanites could deal with the effects of radiation poisoning, it was still not the most pleasant of things to experience.
Still he knew better than to count his chickens before they hatched – whatever that old Earth saying actually meant – as the way Alice had spoken indicated that there were more problems waiting for him to deal with. Problems that even with the assistance of drones and the ships own self-repair nanites she couldn't repair on her own as while most systems could be repaired fairly easily by the automated systems there were a number of them – especially in the navigational, power generation and engine control systems – that couldn't be repaired that way and would actually need to be physically replaced. The problem was some of those junctions were in places that it was awkward to get a drone into and thus would have to be done the old-fashioned way. Thus it was with a nervous scowl on his face that he left his cabin and made the short journey five meters forward and up two steps to the cockpit.
John found himself mildly surprised to find that there was no apparent damage to the relatively plain looking semi-circular room. In the centre of the room with the control console – and its manual controls, which he seldom used as unlike some pilots he preferred to use the neural interface – wrapped partially around it in a half moon shape was the pilot's chair. At the back of the cockpit against the port and starboard walls were two auxiliary stations, each with a single chair near it that were meant to be used on longer assignments when the ship would have a larger crew than just himself and Alice.
He paid them no mind as he moved up to the pilot's chair and slid inside. Immediately the controls in front and around him hummed to life and a number of holographic screens projecting all manner of information from power generation – which he noted was way below its normal level indicating there was damage to the main reactor system – to base matter storage for the food and parts fabricators appeared. The interface panels also lit up and he hesitated a moment before placing his hands on the glowing surfaces, for a second nothing happened and he feared the interface was actually damaged then a familiar electrostatic tingle ran through his muscular frame and he could suddenly see everything in his mind. Everything that the screens could tell him and more, he could sense the damage that the solar storm had inflicted on the Sundance was considerable but it didn't feel irreparable.
"Alright Alice how bad is it," he asked.
"We sustained minor damage to the outer hull beyond the small breach in the aft secondary cargo bay," Alice answered, "including the loss of our long-range communications array. Almost all the external damage has been repaired though the long-range comm array is too badly damaged to be repaired at this time it will need replacing. I can detail a drone to do so."
"Do it."
"Acknowledged dispatching repair drone. Dorsal and ventral pulse cannons aiming mechanisms sustained minor damage but it has since been repaired. Internally the damage is more serious. Main power is down, the fusion reactor was scrammed during the impact event and is currently offline due to damage to the primary fuel flow regulator. It has been ruptured and I cannot get a drone in beneath the reactor module to replace it. We are currently running on power from auxiliary capacitors. Capacitor charge at sixty percent."
"I can fix that. What else?"
"There is considerable damage to the navigational sensor array. I am currently unable to get a reading from the sensors, diagnostics indicate that the main sensor processing node in the main computer core has blown out and needs replacement. As with the reactor fuel flow regulator you will need to enter the core room and manually replace the node in order to restore sensor power."
"So far nothing too bad. Bit of work for me but a little hard work never hurt anyone. Anything else?"
"We have sublight engines only. Transluminal drive systems overloaded after the impact; curious it looks like the impact supercharged them propelling us forward much faster than they normally would be able to do so."
"How much faster," John asked knowing that normally there were only two stable transluminal speeds those being six light years per day and ten light years per day with only smaller ships with less mass, like the forty-seven-meter-long Sundance, being able to achieve the higher FTL speed.
"By a factor of at least one hundred. Until sensor telemetry is restored I cannot say for sure how far off course we are."
"Great and the drive itself."
"Damaged but repairable. Three of the graviton field projector nodes have been burned out, we will be unable to warp space until they are replaced. I have detailed a drone to do the repairs."
"Is that the extent of the damage?"
"Yes."
"Alright then. What do you recommend I repair first?"
"I would recommend the sensors as the auxiliary capacitors have sufficient remaining charge for another two days if necessary. Not that it will take you that long to replace either damaged system."
"I should hope not. Alright I'll get started on the sensors, the sooner we can see again the better."
His decision made John disengaged the interface and stood up, then he left the cockpit and began making his way back towards first the small hold that held spare parts and from there the computer core. As he walked one thought occurred to him. This was going to be a long day.
---///---
Three hours later John smiled as the newly installed sensor processing node lit up and a thrum ran through the computer around him. Removing the damaged node and replacing it had been both hard and easy in equal measure, easy because the systems – like most starship systems – we're essentially plug in and play. As soon as the new node had been fitted and he'd made all the appropriate connections to power conduits, quantum matrix processor and memory crystals it had immediately begun powering up and syncing to the ships computer system. The hard thing about it had been that the computer core was quite a tight place to work, especially for a man his size as he was sure that the shipwrights who designed the Darwin-class survey ships like his Sundance were all midgets, with a number of quite tight corners and sharp edges. Not to mention the odd only lightly shielded conduit which had resulted in him getting a few painful – if harmless – zaps.
He tapped a hidden button on the right wrist of his jumpsuit causing its built-in communicator to come on. "Alice I've restored the sensor node," he said, "confirm its working properly please."
"Stand by commencing diagnostics… diagnostics complete the new node is working within normal parameters. All sensor systems are now back online John."
"Good alright begin scanning the area to see if you can find out where the hell we are," John ordered, "I'll close this panel up and get out of here before getting started on the reactor fuel regulator."
"Acknowledged commencing scans I estimate half an hour to comprehensive scan completion. John might I suggest you have something to eat first. My telemetry link from your nanites show your blood glucose levels are dropping low."
Leave it to Alice to babysit me, John thought with a slight amused smirk even as he did acknowledge that he was feeling a little hungry. While the drop in blood glucose levels wasn't serious yet, the nanites would alert him if it was, he had to admit that the artificial intelligence did have a point. "You've got a point," he admitted, "alright I'll seal this up and go grab a bite to eat first. Then I'll see about sorting out the problem with the reactor."
"Very good John. Though I should not need to remind you to eat, you know your bodies reserves will have been drained by the regen treatment. Determination and nanites can only keep you going so long."
"I know but this needs to be done," John answered as he sealed up the panel over the newly installed node, gathered up his tools and began to carefully climb out of the computer core. "Gah who designed this bloody core a dwarf."
"The mark twelve c quantum computer core was designed by Doctor Raymond Tarkenis in 2453, and he is not a dwarf but is just as tall as you though not as physically imposing."
"I was speaking metaphorically Alice. I know who designed this model of computer core."
"Oh."
"You would think after three years together Alice you would be used to my humour by now."
"I am an artificial intelligence John. We are designed not to have emotions in the way that organic beings like you do, thus things like humour are an alien concept to us. Bad things tend to happen when we are given the ability to feel emotions."
"I know," John admitted as he exited the computer core. As he recalled there had been a time when humanity had experimented with giving their AI companions the ability to feel emotions in the same way that they themselves did. The result had been disastrous as the prototype AI Adam had been driven insane by the whole concept of emotions and had started a war that had lasted for nearly two decades as humanity fought against their wayward creation – especially after it sequestrated the denizens of two planets using their nanites to turn them into near-mindless drones in its service – they had finally triumphed destroying Adam and his drones but the cost had been horrendous in terms of lives lost and resources destroyed. Several entire planets had been annihilated with a mixture of electron pulse beams and ND warheads and over twenty-seven million had perished over the course of that conflict – a death toll that wouldn't be exceeded until the Commonwealth's first war with the alien Zen'tou.
Having learned their lesson they never did try to give an AI the ability to feel real emotions again though they could of course simulate them for the sake of social interaction.
Mentally he shook himself, dismissing those depressing thoughts from his mind. While he hadn't been there himself, it was nearly two centuries ago when his grandfather had been a young man, it wouldn't do him any good to dwell on that old war. A war that continued to cast a long shadow with there being a small, but very vocal in the way that such groups tended to be, minority who to this day argued that all artificial intelligences were a potential threat to human life and should be destroyed. Instead he focused on making his way to the small mess hall and the food fabricator present there.
He was just sitting down to a nice dinner of steak and potatoes when Alice spoke to him again.
"John I have completed my initial scans."
"And?" he asked taking a bite out of his food as he did so.
"According to my analysis we have been swept five hundred and twelve light years from our previous position. We are currently drifting through the outer edges of a previously unknown planetary system in the unknown regions beyond the borders of the Zen'tou Empire."
John grimaced. "Is the Zen'tou Empire between us and home," he asked hoping it wasn't. The Zen'tou were the only other spacefaring civilization that humanity had yet encountered – not the first there was a pre-industrial early agrarian species, the Sha'teen, inside the claimed borders of the Commonwealth though as per long standing practice they were left alone and only watched from afar with drones – and they were not the most pleasant of people to deal with. They were quadrupeds who looked like someone had crossed a crocodile and a preying mantis and made it the size of a large horse to create a carnivorous species that pushed just about every horror button one could have. Humans and Zen'tou had clashed three times since they'd first encountered one another a hundred and fifty years ago and it had never been a pleasant experience for either species.
Thus they were someone he wouldn't want to go anywhere near if he could avoid it.
"Unfortunately yes. If we took the most direct route back to Commonwealth space we would have to pass through several sectors claimed by the Zen'tou."
"Which would be like ringing a cosmic dinner bell and I don't fancy becoming some Zen'tou's lunch thank you very much," John commented with a grimace as it was known that the Zen'tou did sometimes consume living sentient prey – including humans – during some of their more disgusting and disturbing religious festivals.
"Indeed it would not be a good survival strategy for either of us. However there is one possible way through, though it will have its own dangers."
"Oh?"
"Our sensors confirm that the outer edge of the Maelstrom is only twenty light years from our current location, we know that extends across Zen'tou territory and indeed has formed one of the borders of their empire for centuries and crosses into Commonwealth space near the Adaris system."
John grimaced again at that. The Maelstrom was a relatively thin but long stellar nursery complex that extended across a region of space several thousand light years long and over four hundred light years across. It was filled with numerous stars and planetary systems in various stages of development and due to how densely packed they all were it was literally a gravitational madhouse limiting how far you could travel at any one time before you encountered gravitational eddies and currents – that like an oceanic sandbar could stop you dead in your tracks – forcing a sublight flight. Not to mention radiation and electromagnetic storms were a constant hazard. To the best of his knowledge nobody had been able to chart the Maelstrom, though there had been many attempts over the centuries to do so, especially after they made first contact with the Zen'tou.
Still if that was his only way back home, that didn't risk him becoming some alien's dinner, he would have to brave the Maelstrom. And who knew if he made it back he could bring a lot of valuable data back with him, data that a lot of people in the Commonwealth – from the mining conglomerates to the government and Peacekeeper Command – would pay very handsomely for.
"Is the Maelstrom the only way back?"
"As far as my sensors can determine yes. Oh this is interesting."
"What is it?"
"Sensors a picking up a distress beacon signal from deeper in this system. While I cannot be certain due to the distance and signal degradation I believe it could be human in origin."
"A human signal this far out?" John repeated an utterly incredulous look on his face and in his voice at that bit of information. They were in unknown space; how could other humans have gotten out here before him? Either they had been the victim of a similar freak occurrence as himself and Alice or there was something else going on. Whoever was on the other side of that beacon signal, if there was anyone, would certainly have never been allowed to cross Zen'tou space to get here. While there was currently peace between the Commonwealth and the Empire it was a tenuous one at best – they always were – and there was always the threat that war would break out again between them. Thus the immense carnivorous quadrupeds would never allow members of what they saw as a prey species to cross their territory and not get hunted down and eaten. "How is that possible?"
"Unknown at this time," Alice sounding as puzzled as an artificial intelligence could get at this odd development. "We would need to get much closer to the signals source to determine exactly where its coming from and how it got out here without being detected and hunted by the Zen'tou."
"We should finish fixing the ship before we do that," John pointed out as he finished off his steak and potatoes. Which prompted him to pick up and put the plate and cutlery back in the fabricator which would nanotechnically deconstruct them and reconstruct them again later with whatever he choose to eat next. "I'll head to engineering and get started on sorting out the problem with the fusion reactor. In the meantime why don't you launch a few of our probes and send them into the system to triangulate the source of our mysterious signal."
"Very well launching probes." As Alice spoke the deck beneath John's feet vibrated slightly with recoil as four of their system survey probes launched from their bay and began moving into the system. "Probes away. They will reach their first scan positions in one hour and fifteen minutes."
"I should have the fusion reactor fixed by then."
"Indeed. Shall I begin plotting our eventual course to the Maelstrom after we investigate the beacon signal?"
"Please Alice it would save us a lot of time."
"That it would. Very well I will begin plotting the course while you replace the reactors fuel flow regulator."
"Sounds like a plan."
With a course of action decided upon John left the mess hall and once again made his way towards the spare parts store to retrieve a replacement fuel flow regulator for the fusion core. As he walked he found his thoughts turning to the anomalous seemingly human signal coming from deeper within this seemingly uninhabited system. The questions as to what its true nature was and if indeed it was human how it had gotten out here playing over and over again in his mind. Each time his curiosity about them only grew as he did like a good mystery and this one seemed to be quite interesting indeed.
Reaching the small parts store he went and retrieved the fuel flow regulator. Grunting slightly at its weight as even with his strength being augmented by the nanites the damned thing was quite heavy. Ugh I am so going to spring for an anti-gravity trolly when I get back to civilization, he thought as he began to lug the heavy, somewhat bulky device out of the room towards the engine room. As he walked he put all thoughts of the beacon signal out of his mind for now, there would be plenty of time to investigate that later right now he had work to do and a ship to finish fixing.
Chapter One: Awakening
Consciousness returned.
Lying near motionless, with only the gentle rise and fall of his chest showing that he still lived on a narrow cot in the medical bay Captain John Hawkins awoke slowly from a deep coma-like sleep. As he began to stir lights in the medical bay automatically came on at a reduced level, so as not to dazzle him as he woke, even as a pair of pale grey-blue eyes slowly opened. He immediately shut his eyes again and groaned as his whole body was aching as though it was one giant bruise, even the tips of his toes hurt and the less that was said about the headache that was pounding away like a band at a Founding Day parade in the back of his skull the better.
"John, John can you hear me?" a female voice said seeming to be coming from both all around him and inside his own head at the same time prompting him to tense up expecting trouble. After a few more confused seconds he recognised the voice and relaxed from the near instinctive tension that had gripped him, there was no threat here.
"Aside from feeling like I've just gone ten rounds with a boxing champion I'm fine Alice," he replied as he opened his eyes again and awkwardly sat up, the sheet that had been covering him sliding down revealing his bare torso for all to see. Not that there would have been anyone aboard to see since as with all deep space survey ships he was the only organic being aboard, the only other person here – if you could call her that – being Alice the ships artificial intelligence matrix. Between the two of them and a small army of various drones they were all that was needed to run the interstellar survey ship Sundance, a sharp change to how it would have been in his grandfather's time when survey ships had required a crew of over a hundred as back then automation had been far less advanced than it was now.
"My telemetry link to your nanites confirms no lasting system damage just residual disorientation that should pass in a few moments," Alice confirmed.
"Tell me about it," John muttered as he could already feel the pain and disorientation fading away completely as the army of tiny sub molecular biomechanical robots inside him and had been ever since he was eighteen when like all citizens of the Human Commonwealth he'd been given his first nanites, though due to the nature of his career as an independent interstellar surveyor he had upgraded his a bit over the years to as close to military grade as you could legally get without being in the Peacekeepers, worked their normal magic. He looked around taking a note that he was in the medical bay and not in his cabin. Huh what am I doing here, he thought looking around. "Alice what happened? Why am I in the medical bay?"
"Some memory loss is normal given the level of systemic disruption you suffered."
John rolled his eyes slightly as that was not an answer to his question. "That's not what I asked Alice."
"I know."
Snarky artificial intelligences whatever next, he thought with a mental snort. "So would you mind answering my questions or are we going to be sitting here playing twenty questions all day long," he asked as he stood up, noting idly that he was as naked as the day he was born. A sure sign that whatever had happened it had required him to spend some time floating in a regen tank while a much larger armada of nano machines repaired whatever it was that had happened to him. "Have I been in regen?"
"You have," the artificial intelligence confirmed before deciding she'd played with him enough, for giving her the AI equivalent of a heart attack, for now. "Do you remember the last planet we surveyed?"
"The dustbowl yeah I remember it," John confirmed frowning as he wondered what that had to do with anything. The planet in question had been a desert world, with what little surface water there was being extremely saline, that there initial scans had revealed to be rich in a number of highly useful metals and minerals including velarium carbonate – the material that was used in the construction of the graviton field manipulator that was the core component of a transluminal engine – which had prompted him to land and investigate. While he had confirmed indeed that there was a large amount of velarium carbonate present, enough to net him a few million credits when he sold the location and provided the samples he'd taken to one of the mining conglomerates who were always on the lookout for new sources, he and the ship had had to endure several quite substantial sandstorms while working.
To say that had been pleasant would have been a colossal understatement, though well within the capacity of the light armoured suit he'd been wearing to withstand. To say nothing of the titanium-carbon nanofiber hull of the Sundance.
"What about it," he asked as he made his way across the medical bay to the entrance, while there was nobody else aboard he didn't want to walk around naked all day so it was time to head to his cabin and put on a ship's jumpsuit. "Did the sandstorms cause some damage that our pre-take off diagnostics missed?"
"No but as we left the planet we encountered an anomaly. A massive, charged particle storm from the direction of the systems twin suns," Alice answered, "from the size and intensity of the storm I calculated that one or both stars emitted a particularly large coronal mass ejection triggering the storm."
"Oh yes now I remember," John replied scowling as he remembered how he'd been sitting in the control seat in the cockpit, linked to the ship via a neural interface with his nanites serving as the connection medium it was how ships from small cargo ships and interstellar survey ships like Sundance to the biggest battleships and supercarriers of the Peacekeeper Fleet were normally flown in the twenty-fifth century, when the sensors had come alive with warnings about the massive space storm approaching.
As he recalled by the time they had become aware of the size and power of the storm there had been no time to return to the planet and shelter till it passed. Nor had there been that much hope that the Sundance's shields would withstand the storm for long. As a result there only chance had been to divert as much power as possible to engines and shields and hope to get far enough away from the planet's gravitational mass shadow to engage the transluminal drive. Essentially their only chance had been to outrun the maelstrom of radiation and solar particles.
"Did we manage to get away in time?" he asked as he arrived at his cabin and went inside. For some reason he was unable to remember if he had been able to go faster than light in time. He had to assume that they did otherwise they would be kind of dead, the turbulence of the storm would have certainly torn them into a few billion fragments. Such things had happened to other survey ships in the past.
"Ugh not quite."
"What do you mean not quite?" John demanded as he got out a pair of underpants and socks from a drawer before putting them on. Then he began the process of getting into one of the standard pale blue nanofiber jumpsuits that were a common thing for spacers to wear aboard ship. It wasn't the easiest of things to get into since in its inert format the material was tough and not very elastic, thus getting his one point eight three meter tall, hundred- and two-kilogram frame into it was quite a struggle, but he managed. A soon as he finished the nanofibers in the jumpsuit synced up with his own nanites and the tight jumpsuit relaxed and resized itself to fit him perfectly. If only there was a way to resize these blasted things before struggling to put them on. It would make life so much easier, he thought.
"The stormfront caught us just as the transluminal drive engaged," Alice answered at last. "It impacted us just as we dropped our shields for FTL flight. As a result there was a massive power surge through all ships systems, the safety limiters on the neural interface were overwhelmed by the massive electromagnetic spikes…"
"…resulting in me getting one hell of a shock," John finished wincing knowing that would have screwed him up something royally as while having nanites in you gave you numerous benefits, such as perfect health enhanced strength and so on it did come with a handful of downsides. One of those downsides was that the nanites could in certain conditions conduct and amplify an electrical shock, a weakness that was well known and which was brutally exploited by modern pulse weapons. No wonder he had ended up in a regeneration tank for who knew how long, he'd been frankly lucky it hadn't fried his brain.
"Indeed you were barely alive when the drone got you to the medical bay. I had no choice but to place you in a regen tank and as you organics say pray."
John winced realizing he had really been screwed up by that shock. "Ouch! How long was I in there and what's the status of the ship?"
"You have been in regeneration for fifty-two hours, forty minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Ship status is not good. I believe you should come to the cockpit so I can give you a full assessment of the damage and we can decide what we're going to do from there."
John scowled even as he put on some boots, the tops immediately adhering to the jumpsuit with molecular bonding strips. He really didn't like the sound of that as it meant Sundance was likely quite seriously damaged by the stormfront slamming into them as they jumped to translight. Which was perhaps the worst possible time for such an impact to take place as to jump to translight a ship had to drop its shields in order for the polarized graviton field created by the transluminal engines to properly warp the space-time continuum.
"I'll be right there but answer me this first is the hull intact?"
"It is now. There was a small hull breach in the secondary aft cargo bay though the hull has since sealed itself. There was only minimal radiation contamination from the storm it has since been purged by automatic repair systems."
"Well that's a relief," John muttered knowing that there was nothing in the secondary aft cargo bay at the moment as the velarium carbonate samples, and the other samples he'd taken from the dustbowl, were all in the two forward cargo holds. He was also relieved to know that at very least the systems that would repair the hull if breached had worked as designed and sealed the hole, that, and the fact that other automated systems had cleaned up the radiation that had infiltrated the ship through the hull breach. While radiation sickness was not much of a thing in this day and age, even the most basic civil grade nanites could deal with the effects of radiation poisoning, it was still not the most pleasant of things to experience.
Still he knew better than to count his chickens before they hatched – whatever that old Earth saying actually meant – as the way Alice had spoken indicated that there were more problems waiting for him to deal with. Problems that even with the assistance of drones and the ships own self-repair nanites she couldn't repair on her own as while most systems could be repaired fairly easily by the automated systems there were a number of them – especially in the navigational, power generation and engine control systems – that couldn't be repaired that way and would actually need to be physically replaced. The problem was some of those junctions were in places that it was awkward to get a drone into and thus would have to be done the old-fashioned way. Thus it was with a nervous scowl on his face that he left his cabin and made the short journey five meters forward and up two steps to the cockpit.
John found himself mildly surprised to find that there was no apparent damage to the relatively plain looking semi-circular room. In the centre of the room with the control console – and its manual controls, which he seldom used as unlike some pilots he preferred to use the neural interface – wrapped partially around it in a half moon shape was the pilot's chair. At the back of the cockpit against the port and starboard walls were two auxiliary stations, each with a single chair near it that were meant to be used on longer assignments when the ship would have a larger crew than just himself and Alice.
He paid them no mind as he moved up to the pilot's chair and slid inside. Immediately the controls in front and around him hummed to life and a number of holographic screens projecting all manner of information from power generation – which he noted was way below its normal level indicating there was damage to the main reactor system – to base matter storage for the food and parts fabricators appeared. The interface panels also lit up and he hesitated a moment before placing his hands on the glowing surfaces, for a second nothing happened and he feared the interface was actually damaged then a familiar electrostatic tingle ran through his muscular frame and he could suddenly see everything in his mind. Everything that the screens could tell him and more, he could sense the damage that the solar storm had inflicted on the Sundance was considerable but it didn't feel irreparable.
"Alright Alice how bad is it," he asked.
"We sustained minor damage to the outer hull beyond the small breach in the aft secondary cargo bay," Alice answered, "including the loss of our long-range communications array. Almost all the external damage has been repaired though the long-range comm array is too badly damaged to be repaired at this time it will need replacing. I can detail a drone to do so."
"Do it."
"Acknowledged dispatching repair drone. Dorsal and ventral pulse cannons aiming mechanisms sustained minor damage but it has since been repaired. Internally the damage is more serious. Main power is down, the fusion reactor was scrammed during the impact event and is currently offline due to damage to the primary fuel flow regulator. It has been ruptured and I cannot get a drone in beneath the reactor module to replace it. We are currently running on power from auxiliary capacitors. Capacitor charge at sixty percent."
"I can fix that. What else?"
"There is considerable damage to the navigational sensor array. I am currently unable to get a reading from the sensors, diagnostics indicate that the main sensor processing node in the main computer core has blown out and needs replacement. As with the reactor fuel flow regulator you will need to enter the core room and manually replace the node in order to restore sensor power."
"So far nothing too bad. Bit of work for me but a little hard work never hurt anyone. Anything else?"
"We have sublight engines only. Transluminal drive systems overloaded after the impact; curious it looks like the impact supercharged them propelling us forward much faster than they normally would be able to do so."
"How much faster," John asked knowing that normally there were only two stable transluminal speeds those being six light years per day and ten light years per day with only smaller ships with less mass, like the forty-seven-meter-long Sundance, being able to achieve the higher FTL speed.
"By a factor of at least one hundred. Until sensor telemetry is restored I cannot say for sure how far off course we are."
"Great and the drive itself."
"Damaged but repairable. Three of the graviton field projector nodes have been burned out, we will be unable to warp space until they are replaced. I have detailed a drone to do the repairs."
"Is that the extent of the damage?"
"Yes."
"Alright then. What do you recommend I repair first?"
"I would recommend the sensors as the auxiliary capacitors have sufficient remaining charge for another two days if necessary. Not that it will take you that long to replace either damaged system."
"I should hope not. Alright I'll get started on the sensors, the sooner we can see again the better."
His decision made John disengaged the interface and stood up, then he left the cockpit and began making his way back towards first the small hold that held spare parts and from there the computer core. As he walked one thought occurred to him. This was going to be a long day.
---///---
Three hours later John smiled as the newly installed sensor processing node lit up and a thrum ran through the computer around him. Removing the damaged node and replacing it had been both hard and easy in equal measure, easy because the systems – like most starship systems – we're essentially plug in and play. As soon as the new node had been fitted and he'd made all the appropriate connections to power conduits, quantum matrix processor and memory crystals it had immediately begun powering up and syncing to the ships computer system. The hard thing about it had been that the computer core was quite a tight place to work, especially for a man his size as he was sure that the shipwrights who designed the Darwin-class survey ships like his Sundance were all midgets, with a number of quite tight corners and sharp edges. Not to mention the odd only lightly shielded conduit which had resulted in him getting a few painful – if harmless – zaps.
He tapped a hidden button on the right wrist of his jumpsuit causing its built-in communicator to come on. "Alice I've restored the sensor node," he said, "confirm its working properly please."
"Stand by commencing diagnostics… diagnostics complete the new node is working within normal parameters. All sensor systems are now back online John."
"Good alright begin scanning the area to see if you can find out where the hell we are," John ordered, "I'll close this panel up and get out of here before getting started on the reactor fuel regulator."
"Acknowledged commencing scans I estimate half an hour to comprehensive scan completion. John might I suggest you have something to eat first. My telemetry link from your nanites show your blood glucose levels are dropping low."
Leave it to Alice to babysit me, John thought with a slight amused smirk even as he did acknowledge that he was feeling a little hungry. While the drop in blood glucose levels wasn't serious yet, the nanites would alert him if it was, he had to admit that the artificial intelligence did have a point. "You've got a point," he admitted, "alright I'll seal this up and go grab a bite to eat first. Then I'll see about sorting out the problem with the reactor."
"Very good John. Though I should not need to remind you to eat, you know your bodies reserves will have been drained by the regen treatment. Determination and nanites can only keep you going so long."
"I know but this needs to be done," John answered as he sealed up the panel over the newly installed node, gathered up his tools and began to carefully climb out of the computer core. "Gah who designed this bloody core a dwarf."
"The mark twelve c quantum computer core was designed by Doctor Raymond Tarkenis in 2453, and he is not a dwarf but is just as tall as you though not as physically imposing."
"I was speaking metaphorically Alice. I know who designed this model of computer core."
"Oh."
"You would think after three years together Alice you would be used to my humour by now."
"I am an artificial intelligence John. We are designed not to have emotions in the way that organic beings like you do, thus things like humour are an alien concept to us. Bad things tend to happen when we are given the ability to feel emotions."
"I know," John admitted as he exited the computer core. As he recalled there had been a time when humanity had experimented with giving their AI companions the ability to feel emotions in the same way that they themselves did. The result had been disastrous as the prototype AI Adam had been driven insane by the whole concept of emotions and had started a war that had lasted for nearly two decades as humanity fought against their wayward creation – especially after it sequestrated the denizens of two planets using their nanites to turn them into near-mindless drones in its service – they had finally triumphed destroying Adam and his drones but the cost had been horrendous in terms of lives lost and resources destroyed. Several entire planets had been annihilated with a mixture of electron pulse beams and ND warheads and over twenty-seven million had perished over the course of that conflict – a death toll that wouldn't be exceeded until the Commonwealth's first war with the alien Zen'tou.
Having learned their lesson they never did try to give an AI the ability to feel real emotions again though they could of course simulate them for the sake of social interaction.
Mentally he shook himself, dismissing those depressing thoughts from his mind. While he hadn't been there himself, it was nearly two centuries ago when his grandfather had been a young man, it wouldn't do him any good to dwell on that old war. A war that continued to cast a long shadow with there being a small, but very vocal in the way that such groups tended to be, minority who to this day argued that all artificial intelligences were a potential threat to human life and should be destroyed. Instead he focused on making his way to the small mess hall and the food fabricator present there.
He was just sitting down to a nice dinner of steak and potatoes when Alice spoke to him again.
"John I have completed my initial scans."
"And?" he asked taking a bite out of his food as he did so.
"According to my analysis we have been swept five hundred and twelve light years from our previous position. We are currently drifting through the outer edges of a previously unknown planetary system in the unknown regions beyond the borders of the Zen'tou Empire."
John grimaced. "Is the Zen'tou Empire between us and home," he asked hoping it wasn't. The Zen'tou were the only other spacefaring civilization that humanity had yet encountered – not the first there was a pre-industrial early agrarian species, the Sha'teen, inside the claimed borders of the Commonwealth though as per long standing practice they were left alone and only watched from afar with drones – and they were not the most pleasant of people to deal with. They were quadrupeds who looked like someone had crossed a crocodile and a preying mantis and made it the size of a large horse to create a carnivorous species that pushed just about every horror button one could have. Humans and Zen'tou had clashed three times since they'd first encountered one another a hundred and fifty years ago and it had never been a pleasant experience for either species.
Thus they were someone he wouldn't want to go anywhere near if he could avoid it.
"Unfortunately yes. If we took the most direct route back to Commonwealth space we would have to pass through several sectors claimed by the Zen'tou."
"Which would be like ringing a cosmic dinner bell and I don't fancy becoming some Zen'tou's lunch thank you very much," John commented with a grimace as it was known that the Zen'tou did sometimes consume living sentient prey – including humans – during some of their more disgusting and disturbing religious festivals.
"Indeed it would not be a good survival strategy for either of us. However there is one possible way through, though it will have its own dangers."
"Oh?"
"Our sensors confirm that the outer edge of the Maelstrom is only twenty light years from our current location, we know that extends across Zen'tou territory and indeed has formed one of the borders of their empire for centuries and crosses into Commonwealth space near the Adaris system."
John grimaced again at that. The Maelstrom was a relatively thin but long stellar nursery complex that extended across a region of space several thousand light years long and over four hundred light years across. It was filled with numerous stars and planetary systems in various stages of development and due to how densely packed they all were it was literally a gravitational madhouse limiting how far you could travel at any one time before you encountered gravitational eddies and currents – that like an oceanic sandbar could stop you dead in your tracks – forcing a sublight flight. Not to mention radiation and electromagnetic storms were a constant hazard. To the best of his knowledge nobody had been able to chart the Maelstrom, though there had been many attempts over the centuries to do so, especially after they made first contact with the Zen'tou.
Still if that was his only way back home, that didn't risk him becoming some alien's dinner, he would have to brave the Maelstrom. And who knew if he made it back he could bring a lot of valuable data back with him, data that a lot of people in the Commonwealth – from the mining conglomerates to the government and Peacekeeper Command – would pay very handsomely for.
"Is the Maelstrom the only way back?"
"As far as my sensors can determine yes. Oh this is interesting."
"What is it?"
"Sensors a picking up a distress beacon signal from deeper in this system. While I cannot be certain due to the distance and signal degradation I believe it could be human in origin."
"A human signal this far out?" John repeated an utterly incredulous look on his face and in his voice at that bit of information. They were in unknown space; how could other humans have gotten out here before him? Either they had been the victim of a similar freak occurrence as himself and Alice or there was something else going on. Whoever was on the other side of that beacon signal, if there was anyone, would certainly have never been allowed to cross Zen'tou space to get here. While there was currently peace between the Commonwealth and the Empire it was a tenuous one at best – they always were – and there was always the threat that war would break out again between them. Thus the immense carnivorous quadrupeds would never allow members of what they saw as a prey species to cross their territory and not get hunted down and eaten. "How is that possible?"
"Unknown at this time," Alice sounding as puzzled as an artificial intelligence could get at this odd development. "We would need to get much closer to the signals source to determine exactly where its coming from and how it got out here without being detected and hunted by the Zen'tou."
"We should finish fixing the ship before we do that," John pointed out as he finished off his steak and potatoes. Which prompted him to pick up and put the plate and cutlery back in the fabricator which would nanotechnically deconstruct them and reconstruct them again later with whatever he choose to eat next. "I'll head to engineering and get started on sorting out the problem with the fusion reactor. In the meantime why don't you launch a few of our probes and send them into the system to triangulate the source of our mysterious signal."
"Very well launching probes." As Alice spoke the deck beneath John's feet vibrated slightly with recoil as four of their system survey probes launched from their bay and began moving into the system. "Probes away. They will reach their first scan positions in one hour and fifteen minutes."
"I should have the fusion reactor fixed by then."
"Indeed. Shall I begin plotting our eventual course to the Maelstrom after we investigate the beacon signal?"
"Please Alice it would save us a lot of time."
"That it would. Very well I will begin plotting the course while you replace the reactors fuel flow regulator."
"Sounds like a plan."
With a course of action decided upon John left the mess hall and once again made his way towards the spare parts store to retrieve a replacement fuel flow regulator for the fusion core. As he walked he found his thoughts turning to the anomalous seemingly human signal coming from deeper within this seemingly uninhabited system. The questions as to what its true nature was and if indeed it was human how it had gotten out here playing over and over again in his mind. Each time his curiosity about them only grew as he did like a good mystery and this one seemed to be quite interesting indeed.
Reaching the small parts store he went and retrieved the fuel flow regulator. Grunting slightly at its weight as even with his strength being augmented by the nanites the damned thing was quite heavy. Ugh I am so going to spring for an anti-gravity trolly when I get back to civilization, he thought as he began to lug the heavy, somewhat bulky device out of the room towards the engine room. As he walked he put all thoughts of the beacon signal out of his mind for now, there would be plenty of time to investigate that later right now he had work to do and a ship to finish fixing.
Chapter Two: Cerberus
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Chapter Two: Cerberus
John smiled as he finished tightening the last of the bolts that would hold the new fuel flow regulator in place beneath the spherical fusion reactor core. While he had had slightly more space to work here under the core than in the computer replacing the regulator had been a tough job. The core might have been offline for nearly three days but the access space underneath it had still been quite hot, especially as the reactor scram would have triggered an emergency vent of the plasma mass inside the core and the emergency dump conduit ran directly underneath the access space.
With the last bolts tightened he began to carefully shimmy out from under the core, standing back up with a stretch as soon as he was back out in the main area of the engine room floor loosening up muscles that had started to cramp up while he had been down there. Once he was sure he was sufficiently loosened up he moved over to the console that controlled the fusion core and began the startup process, first warming up the magnetic and gravitational field projectors that would compress and contain the reaction once it started. The projector lights going green a few moments later showing that they were ready allowing him to open the fuel intakes causing deuterium and helium3 cryo slush to begin flooding into the core. Both materials immediately transforming from liquid to their natural gaseous state when in the core.
For several minutes he watched as the core pressure readings increased then the magnetic and gravitational fields activated pushing the gasses closer and closer together into a tight ball – essentially mimicking what nature did inside the core of every star in the universe but on a far smaller scale – that began to get hotter and hotter. After a few more moments the ignition light came on, indicating that the core was now fully primed for fusion initiation. John immediately touched the control and a powerful bolt of energy was directed from the auxiliary capacitors into the core…
…and a miniature star was reborn making the translucent nanocrystal composite walls of the core light up with the light of the reborn sun. For a few more seconds nothing happened then with a whirr main power returned to all systems on the Sundance for the first time in days.
"Alice what's our status?" he called out.
"John all ships systems are now reading as fully operational," Alice responded immediately, "main power online and stable. Commencing recharge of auxiliary capacitors. Raising shields and priming sublight engines for use. I must also report that my drones have finished repairing the transluminal drive. We can go faster than light whenever you desire."
"Excellent. What about the probes we launched have they found anything?"
"They have indeed please come to the cockpit and I will brief you."
"Okay I'll be there in a few minutes let me just put my tools away."
"Confirmed."
It didn't take John long to gather up the handful of tools he had needed to use to replace the fuel flow regulator. Once he was done he gave the various holographic display screens a quick but thorough once over making sure that everything was working, and that power was flowing through the ships miles and miles of hyperconductive cabling to all the systems that needed it at the proper rate. Once he was satisfied he left the engine room, pausing just long enough to put the tools in the appropriate storage cabinet and made his way up to the deck above and then forward to the cockpit.
As he had a few hours earlier he engaged the neural interface and noted with a combination of relief and approval that Alice had been right, every single one of the Sundance's systems were now back online and, according to all diagnostics, functioning as they should. For the first time in days his beloved ship was fully online and ready for what was promising to be quite an ordeal ahead. Though thinking about that, he thought.
"Alright Alice tell me what our probes found," he said.
"As you wish. We have identified and triangulated the source of the signal," the artificial intelligence answered immediately, "the signal is coming from a outermost moon of the third planet, a Saturn-type gas giant. The moon has a thick atmosphere composed primarily of nitrogen, methane and ethane and the surface is composed primarily of a mixture of rock and ice."
"Interesting," John muttered even as the neural interface relayed the information on the planet and the moon in question straight into his mind. While it was slightly smaller the atmosphere and surface conditions of the planet in question were a dead ringer for the Saturnian moon Titan right down to having oceans, rivers and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons flowing on the surface and cryovolcanoes that spewed hot sulphurous water onto the surface instead of lava. "And the identity of the signal?"
"It is definitely of human origin and is definitely a distress beacon albeit one that is very old as this particular distress signal type fell out use after the end of the Colony Wars in 2284."
"Which is when the Commonwealth was formed," John commented even as his interest grew. The Colony Wars were a series of conflicts that had occurred between various human colony worlds and their founding nation states on Old Earth over autonomy and in some cases outright independence. When the old nation states – fearing the loss of tax revenue not to mention the flow of cheap raw materials – refused to negotiate and even responded with military force war had erupted, a terrible war that had seen three worlds including Old Earth herself reduced to an irradiated wasteland as back then they had still been using such primitive, barbaric weapons as nuclear warheads. To this day Earth was uninhabitable, and would be for at least another millennia, the survivors having long since settled on the artificial ring – dubbed Asgard during its construction after the home of the gods of Norse mythology, the name had stuck – that had been built in orbit.
The Commonwealth Parliament met on Asgard, with windows that permanently looked down on the radiation ravaged Earth as a reminder of what could happen if they failed to keep the disparate tribes of man united. Aside from the conflict with Adam they had mostly succeeded with the most times humanity had had to really flex its military muscles being the wars against the Zen'tou.
"Correct John you have remembered your history."
"Have you identified the signal?"
"Yes. By comparing it to our records I believe that the signal is coming from the USS Cerberus, a deep space colonization vessel launched by the United States of America from the Kennedy Space Centre on the twenty third of August 2230 bound for the Tau Ceti system."
John whistled at that. According to the history books the Cerberus had never reached Tau Ceti, instead a few weeks after the vessel had been launched all communication with her had ceased. United States Space Command ships had searched for her for weeks afterwards, attempting to track the tachyon and graviton wake trail that a starship left behind as it travelled at transluminal speeds but no trace of her had ever been found. The disappearance of the Cerberus and the fate of the several thousand colonists in cold sleep aboard her remained one of the great enduring mysteries of their time. One that had inspired numerous speculative holo dramas and far too many works of fiction to count over the last few centuries.
And now the possibility of finding the answer to the fate of the Cerberus had been dropped in his lap.
"Have you plotted a course to the moon in question?" he asked.
"I have it is ready for you to initiate. I assume you want to land on the surface and investigate the crash site?"
"I do indeed. The fate of the Cerberus and the people who were aboard her is one of the greatest mysteries in modern times," John reminded the AI. "Now that we have found her remains we have a duty to the memory of the seven thousand people that were aboard her to find out exactly what happened to them and how the hell they got out here thousands of light years from where they should have been. The ships computer core and black box should still be intact."
"Though I know I couldn't stop you if I disagreed I do agree with you John."
John nodded knowing that was true as while Alice had access to almost all the systems on the ship there were some things that both software and hardware lockouts – lockouts that it was highly illegal to even attempt to bypass – prevented her from accessing and doing certain things. Like using the transluminal engine and the weapons system. Those were systems only an organic crewmember – like himself – could use. It was a safety system that had been put in place by Parliament after the end of the war with the insane AI Adam and his thralls.
Instead of commenting on the issue out loud he accessed the navigational and engine control systems, confirming that the short flight to the frozen moon in question was properly programmed into the navigational computer. While he didn't doubt Alice had done it right it was regulation that he check and it was one of those regs that any defiance of would be automatically recorded. Recorded and reported to the appropriate authorities the moment he docked in a Commonwealth port. Which could easily result in his pilot's licence being suspended, something that would be a complete disaster for him. Satisfied that everything was in order he engaged the transluminal engine.
A thrum of power ran through the Sundance as the engine powered up and began generating the polarized graviton matrix so vital for warping space-time and travelling faster than light. Through the cockpit windows space seemed to shimmer with a heat haze like distortion before twisting and turning into a blue walled tunnel through whose translucent walls normal space was faintly visible as a slipstream blur of colours and shapes. John smiled at the sight, he had always liked FTL flight – ever since he'd been a small boy and his parents had taken him on his first interstellar flight – there was just something about it, about travelled across space at speeds much greater than that of light, that was both unbelievably exciting and unbelievably relaxing to him. Paradoxical as that sounded.
Of course this time he didn't get to enjoy it for more than a few seconds as all too soon the FTL tunnel evaporated as the Sundance dropped back to sublight speed. Ahead of him was a majestic ringed gas giant that was almost identical to Saturn in Sol only this planets predominant colour was green instead of saffron. It had the same type of incredibly delicate looking but undeniably beautiful ring system surrounding it.
Flight vectors appeared on his vision and John knew instantly that the moon where the signal was coming from was on the opposite side of the planet from his current location. Not at all disturbed by that he brought the sublight engines online and began the process of establishing an orbit around the gas giant. He would be over the apparent crash site in another fifteen minutes.
---///---
Even through the thick atmosphere of the Titan-like moon it was fully possible to see exactly where the Cerberus had come to rest. The Sundance's sensors easily pierced the thick veil of the moon's cold atmosphere and, through the neural interface, built a three-dimensional topographical image of the crash site in John's mind. Despite what had obviously been a prolonged impact sequence, indicating that someone had been attempting to control the ship as she came in, as there was a scar in the ice and rock surface over ten kilometres long and nearly a kilometre wide leading up to the ship herself, the Cerberus was surprisingly intact her long bow section sticking out over the edge of a sheer cliff that dropped several hundred meters into an ocean of liquid methane.
Looking at the ship John found it had to believe that humans had once flown about the galaxy in ships like that. Instead of the needle-like shape of modern ships – the shape having long ago been determined to be the most optimal shape for focusing the fields created by human transluminal engines – the Cerberus had a rounded bow section that gave way to a large blocky main body that had a vaguely hexagonal design that carried on all the way back to an even more ungainly looking box that housed her old fashion fusion drives and the transluminal drive. It honestly looked like an old pre-FTL design.
But then it probably is, he thought recalling that at the time the Cerberus had been commissioned and launched on her fateful voyage humanity had still been very new to the whole being able to travel faster than light thing having only developed the first transluminal engine – after discovering velarium carbonate on the Uranian moon Oberon – a decade and a half earlier. For the first few decades they had continued to repurpose old sublight ship designs, as it had worked albeit not very well, until through trial and error come up with the hull design that had been used since, even if the technology inside had changed and advanced.
"She appears to be surprisingly intact," he commented studying the data.
"That she does," Alice agreed, "though at the same time it is not too surprising. Historical records indicate that the Cerberus and her two sister ships Prometheus and Hercules were refitted military vessels, specifically the Freedom-class battleships – what we would consider a cruiser today."
"True and while most of the railgun turrets and missile launchers would have been removed, not to mention their magazines, during the conversion the basic structure would still be heavily armoured. Still given the materials and manufacturing methods available back then its still impressive that she survived the crash."
"Agreed. I have located a suitable landing site for us, it is a few kilometres down the valley from where the ship has come to rest. The ground is too uneven from the crash even after all this time to land any closer."
"Can't be helped. Feed the landing coordinates into the navigational array and I'll take us down."
"Confirmed. Sending coordinates."
Information flashed through John's mind and in seconds a course appeared before his eyes. A slight smile appeared on his face as he began the process of configuring the Sundance for a landing. First by configuring the fields produced by the sublight engine for atmospheric entry and flight as well as reconfiguring the shields to properly protect the hull from the heat of atmospheric entry. Once everything came back as ready he began the landing sequence.
Immediately the Sundance began moving again, slowly but surely moving down from the high orbit that she'd been maintaining over the moon first into a lower orbit and then she entered the tenuous upper atmospheric layer. John kept his attention on the interface as he monitored the ship as she descended, landing was always a tricky and dangerous time as the slightest miscalculation could easily see his beloved ship be damaged or even destroyed by the forces involved in the process. As the ship descended deeper into the atmosphere he sensed and saw atmospheric molecules beginning to build up against the shield, the molecules quickly beginning to heat up as they encountered the force field.
It was however nothing to worry about, even as the ship descended deeper and the compacting molecules ignited transforming into a roaring corona of burning plasma. While it was spectacular to look at and made the force field glow and ripple with distortions, it wasn't in anyway dangerous as the plasma wasn't hot or turbulent enough to be a threat to the shields. They were designed and rated to withstand far more turbulent things than a simple plasma sheath. As the got deeper into the atmosphere the plasma sheath cooled and dissipated and his external cameras got their first detailed pictures of the surface of this nameless alien moon.
It really does look like Titan, John thought as he beheld a landscape that was both familiar in the presence of mountains, valleys, rivers and lakes and alien at the same time in that the liquid was a mixture of various liquid hydrocarbons with methane and ethane being the most prevalent. Much like Titan was to this day. Seeing the environment reminded him of his university days when he had been learning to be an interstellar surveyor at the University of Elysium on Mars. He had been to Titan several times during his training for various reasons along with numerous other moons in Sol and he couldn't help but feel a profound sense of déjà vu at seeing a moon so far from Sol looking so eerily like Saturn's largest moon.
He pushed aside those thoughts and focused on the final phase of the landing procedure. Which saw him pass over the wreck of the Cerberus, which at this close a range showed some suspicious damage that looked out of place for a ship that had simply crashed. He passed her too quickly to be certain but at a first glance some of the damage to the hull looked deliberately inflicted, as if she had been attacked by someone or something. John frowned and made a mental note to check that more thoroughly when he actually approached the Cerberus.
As it was he turned his attention back to the matter at hand, landing his Sundance. Reaching the coordinates Alice had identified for him he brought the ship to a halt, hanging there in a stationary hover a hundred meters above the stone and ice surface. A thought lowered the shields and another caused the landing gear to deploy, each long strut flowing like liquid from their recessed positions as part of the lower hull before forming three-toed claws on their base and turning solid.
Confirmation flashed through the data feed that all six landing legs were deployed and locked. Smiling John lowered the ship the rest of the way and barely a second later a soft shudder ran through the hull as the ship contacted the ground. Pleased he began securing the ship, something that only took a few moments as he just had to power down the main sublight drive as he wouldn't be able to leave the ship while it was active – less the powerful magnetic fields involved in the production of the drive field rip both the nanites and iron out of his body.
"Landing sequence completed," Alice said breaking the silence in the cockpit. "Sublight drive powering down to stand by mode. Do you wish me to fully power it down?"
"No just keep it in stand by mode we're not going to be here too long," John replied as he took his hands off the neural interface pads and stood up. "I'm going to get into my armoured environmental suit. Make sure the skimmer is ready for me to use will you?"
"As you wish."
---///---
Ten minutes later dressed head to toe in an armoured environmental suit, that would keep him safe from the cold, toxic atmosphere of this planets, and holding a standard EP-67 pulse rifle – not that he anticipated trouble but it never hurt to be careful – John stepped into the airlock chamber. As he had expected the skimmer, a modern high technology descendant of a motorbike but which used advanced anti-gravity technology to float anywhere from a few centimetres to a kilometre above the surface of a planet instead of old-fashioned wheels, was waiting for him. The small craft floating a centimetre above the deck.
He activated his helmet comm. "Alice I'm in the airlock open the outer door and lower the ramp," he ordered.
"As you wish extending ramp," Alice replied as the door to the rest of the ship closed behind him and sealed. "Depressurizing airlock, replacing with atmosphere taken from external vents stand by… atmospheric replacement complete. Opening airlock doors."
The doors in front of him opened with a faint hiss, revealing the eerily familiar but at the same time completely alien environment of this moon in all its glory. John for his part placed his EP-67 in the receptacle on the skimmer that was meant to house it, then climbed on himself. The doors finished opening and he brought the engine to life prompting the skimmer to rise a few more centimetres above the deck, then he kicked it into gear and started moving the contra-gravity vehicle launching forward like a startle rabbit. In seconds he was down the ramp and beginning to scoot across the desolate, but beautiful for being so, landscape towards where the Cerberus had crashed.
Due to the powerful engines of the skimmer, and its contra-gravity nature, it didn't take more than five minutes for him to travel the several dozen kilometres between where he had landed and the crash site. The former US Space Command battleship turned interstellar colony ship laying like a beached whale on the surface of this planet, smaller bits of debris littered the area showed evidence of how violent the vessels impact with this world had been.
John slowed down as he drew closer to the Cerberus. It immediately became obvious that this crash was not the result of a freak accident like the incident with the solar storm that had thrown him, Alice, and the Sundance out here. The Cerberus had been attacked. All over the hull but especially near the engine section there were deep perfectly straight fissures in the hull – fissures that went all the way through the armoured outer hull, into and then through the vessels inner pressure hull – that were the tell-tale sign of a vessel that had been hit with beam-based energy weapons. Though after all this time there was no way he could tell what kind of weapons had been used on her, though the list of potential culprits for who could have attacked her was pretty damned short since aside from the Zen'tou they had never encountered another spacefaring species.
Which meant that the fate of any of the crew and colonists who had survived the crash was likely to be pretty horrific given the carnivorous nature of the quadrupedal race. Still better board and get there records, he thought, find out just how they got out here so far from home, then silence a cry for help from over two hundred years ago. Feeling the familiar rage and hatred for the Zen'tou that every human in the galaxy felt for those monsters John guided his skimmer right up to the hull. Then he stopped, climbed off the skimmer, and retrieved his EP-67 and began making his way towards the nearest breach in the aged, armoured hull…
…and from there the interior of the Cerberus.
---///---
Alice monitored her human carefully through a telemetry link with both his armoured suit and his nanites as he made his way up to, and then into the interior of the Cerberus. She noticed from the chemical activity in his brain that John was angry about what he was seeing as the attack damage to the Cerberus was obvious. An attack that logically could really have only come from the Zen'tou as if it had been other humans in her era who had attacked her then the damage would have looked different. Railguns – like those which had been used at the time – left very different damage styles and patterns to those inflicted by energy weapons like the plasma beamers used by the Zen'tou.
Abruptly the signal strength on her telemetry link dropped significantly, to a level that would make communication with her human difficult, as John entered the crashed ship. After running a few probability matrices as to why the signal strength had suddenly dropped she could only conclude that it was due to the hull of the Cerberus which was thicker than the armour used on more modern warships. Shields having long since replaced having really dense layers of armour on even the largest warships, what armour was there while still thick was more to defend against any shots that got through the shield than be the be-all and end-all of a modern warship's defences.
Had she been human Alice would have sighed in annoyance at suddenly being unable to contact John. She wasn't used to being out of contact with him after all, aside from his recent spell in regeneration she was always in contact with him via the nanites in his body. It let her attend to all his needs in the most efficient means possible. Suddenly not being able to was thus quite disconcerting, or would have been if she had been able to feel emotions.
An alert suddenly flashing through the system caught her attention and she turned her primary processors towards investigating the source of the alert. The probes she had deployed earlier, and which had triangulated the location of the Cerberus wreck site, had just picked up a burst of polarized gravitons and tachyon particles in the outer system. Sending a deeper interrogation command to the probes Alice became as shocked as an AI could get when the results came back. The energy burst was undoubtably the result of an FTL event and there was now another starship in the outer system.
A ship that was definitely not Zen'tou.
The data from the probe showed that the vessels power signature was far too high to be from any Zen'tou vessel, or indeed any vessel that used a fusion based power source. In addition the Zen'tou were known to make use of a fusion engine system and not the gravitational/electromagnetic system that Humans had used for the last hundred years or so. At several kilometres long it was also much larger than anything in either the Peacekeeper fleet or the Zen'tou harvester fleets.
And it had definitely detected there probes because it had changed course and was now heading straight towards them on an intercept course. This, Alice decided, was not good.
John smiled as he finished tightening the last of the bolts that would hold the new fuel flow regulator in place beneath the spherical fusion reactor core. While he had had slightly more space to work here under the core than in the computer replacing the regulator had been a tough job. The core might have been offline for nearly three days but the access space underneath it had still been quite hot, especially as the reactor scram would have triggered an emergency vent of the plasma mass inside the core and the emergency dump conduit ran directly underneath the access space.
With the last bolts tightened he began to carefully shimmy out from under the core, standing back up with a stretch as soon as he was back out in the main area of the engine room floor loosening up muscles that had started to cramp up while he had been down there. Once he was sure he was sufficiently loosened up he moved over to the console that controlled the fusion core and began the startup process, first warming up the magnetic and gravitational field projectors that would compress and contain the reaction once it started. The projector lights going green a few moments later showing that they were ready allowing him to open the fuel intakes causing deuterium and helium3 cryo slush to begin flooding into the core. Both materials immediately transforming from liquid to their natural gaseous state when in the core.
For several minutes he watched as the core pressure readings increased then the magnetic and gravitational fields activated pushing the gasses closer and closer together into a tight ball – essentially mimicking what nature did inside the core of every star in the universe but on a far smaller scale – that began to get hotter and hotter. After a few more moments the ignition light came on, indicating that the core was now fully primed for fusion initiation. John immediately touched the control and a powerful bolt of energy was directed from the auxiliary capacitors into the core…
…and a miniature star was reborn making the translucent nanocrystal composite walls of the core light up with the light of the reborn sun. For a few more seconds nothing happened then with a whirr main power returned to all systems on the Sundance for the first time in days.
"Alice what's our status?" he called out.
"John all ships systems are now reading as fully operational," Alice responded immediately, "main power online and stable. Commencing recharge of auxiliary capacitors. Raising shields and priming sublight engines for use. I must also report that my drones have finished repairing the transluminal drive. We can go faster than light whenever you desire."
"Excellent. What about the probes we launched have they found anything?"
"They have indeed please come to the cockpit and I will brief you."
"Okay I'll be there in a few minutes let me just put my tools away."
"Confirmed."
It didn't take John long to gather up the handful of tools he had needed to use to replace the fuel flow regulator. Once he was done he gave the various holographic display screens a quick but thorough once over making sure that everything was working, and that power was flowing through the ships miles and miles of hyperconductive cabling to all the systems that needed it at the proper rate. Once he was satisfied he left the engine room, pausing just long enough to put the tools in the appropriate storage cabinet and made his way up to the deck above and then forward to the cockpit.
As he had a few hours earlier he engaged the neural interface and noted with a combination of relief and approval that Alice had been right, every single one of the Sundance's systems were now back online and, according to all diagnostics, functioning as they should. For the first time in days his beloved ship was fully online and ready for what was promising to be quite an ordeal ahead. Though thinking about that, he thought.
"Alright Alice tell me what our probes found," he said.
"As you wish. We have identified and triangulated the source of the signal," the artificial intelligence answered immediately, "the signal is coming from a outermost moon of the third planet, a Saturn-type gas giant. The moon has a thick atmosphere composed primarily of nitrogen, methane and ethane and the surface is composed primarily of a mixture of rock and ice."
"Interesting," John muttered even as the neural interface relayed the information on the planet and the moon in question straight into his mind. While it was slightly smaller the atmosphere and surface conditions of the planet in question were a dead ringer for the Saturnian moon Titan right down to having oceans, rivers and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons flowing on the surface and cryovolcanoes that spewed hot sulphurous water onto the surface instead of lava. "And the identity of the signal?"
"It is definitely of human origin and is definitely a distress beacon albeit one that is very old as this particular distress signal type fell out use after the end of the Colony Wars in 2284."
"Which is when the Commonwealth was formed," John commented even as his interest grew. The Colony Wars were a series of conflicts that had occurred between various human colony worlds and their founding nation states on Old Earth over autonomy and in some cases outright independence. When the old nation states – fearing the loss of tax revenue not to mention the flow of cheap raw materials – refused to negotiate and even responded with military force war had erupted, a terrible war that had seen three worlds including Old Earth herself reduced to an irradiated wasteland as back then they had still been using such primitive, barbaric weapons as nuclear warheads. To this day Earth was uninhabitable, and would be for at least another millennia, the survivors having long since settled on the artificial ring – dubbed Asgard during its construction after the home of the gods of Norse mythology, the name had stuck – that had been built in orbit.
The Commonwealth Parliament met on Asgard, with windows that permanently looked down on the radiation ravaged Earth as a reminder of what could happen if they failed to keep the disparate tribes of man united. Aside from the conflict with Adam they had mostly succeeded with the most times humanity had had to really flex its military muscles being the wars against the Zen'tou.
"Correct John you have remembered your history."
"Have you identified the signal?"
"Yes. By comparing it to our records I believe that the signal is coming from the USS Cerberus, a deep space colonization vessel launched by the United States of America from the Kennedy Space Centre on the twenty third of August 2230 bound for the Tau Ceti system."
John whistled at that. According to the history books the Cerberus had never reached Tau Ceti, instead a few weeks after the vessel had been launched all communication with her had ceased. United States Space Command ships had searched for her for weeks afterwards, attempting to track the tachyon and graviton wake trail that a starship left behind as it travelled at transluminal speeds but no trace of her had ever been found. The disappearance of the Cerberus and the fate of the several thousand colonists in cold sleep aboard her remained one of the great enduring mysteries of their time. One that had inspired numerous speculative holo dramas and far too many works of fiction to count over the last few centuries.
And now the possibility of finding the answer to the fate of the Cerberus had been dropped in his lap.
"Have you plotted a course to the moon in question?" he asked.
"I have it is ready for you to initiate. I assume you want to land on the surface and investigate the crash site?"
"I do indeed. The fate of the Cerberus and the people who were aboard her is one of the greatest mysteries in modern times," John reminded the AI. "Now that we have found her remains we have a duty to the memory of the seven thousand people that were aboard her to find out exactly what happened to them and how the hell they got out here thousands of light years from where they should have been. The ships computer core and black box should still be intact."
"Though I know I couldn't stop you if I disagreed I do agree with you John."
John nodded knowing that was true as while Alice had access to almost all the systems on the ship there were some things that both software and hardware lockouts – lockouts that it was highly illegal to even attempt to bypass – prevented her from accessing and doing certain things. Like using the transluminal engine and the weapons system. Those were systems only an organic crewmember – like himself – could use. It was a safety system that had been put in place by Parliament after the end of the war with the insane AI Adam and his thralls.
Instead of commenting on the issue out loud he accessed the navigational and engine control systems, confirming that the short flight to the frozen moon in question was properly programmed into the navigational computer. While he didn't doubt Alice had done it right it was regulation that he check and it was one of those regs that any defiance of would be automatically recorded. Recorded and reported to the appropriate authorities the moment he docked in a Commonwealth port. Which could easily result in his pilot's licence being suspended, something that would be a complete disaster for him. Satisfied that everything was in order he engaged the transluminal engine.
A thrum of power ran through the Sundance as the engine powered up and began generating the polarized graviton matrix so vital for warping space-time and travelling faster than light. Through the cockpit windows space seemed to shimmer with a heat haze like distortion before twisting and turning into a blue walled tunnel through whose translucent walls normal space was faintly visible as a slipstream blur of colours and shapes. John smiled at the sight, he had always liked FTL flight – ever since he'd been a small boy and his parents had taken him on his first interstellar flight – there was just something about it, about travelled across space at speeds much greater than that of light, that was both unbelievably exciting and unbelievably relaxing to him. Paradoxical as that sounded.
Of course this time he didn't get to enjoy it for more than a few seconds as all too soon the FTL tunnel evaporated as the Sundance dropped back to sublight speed. Ahead of him was a majestic ringed gas giant that was almost identical to Saturn in Sol only this planets predominant colour was green instead of saffron. It had the same type of incredibly delicate looking but undeniably beautiful ring system surrounding it.
Flight vectors appeared on his vision and John knew instantly that the moon where the signal was coming from was on the opposite side of the planet from his current location. Not at all disturbed by that he brought the sublight engines online and began the process of establishing an orbit around the gas giant. He would be over the apparent crash site in another fifteen minutes.
---///---
Even through the thick atmosphere of the Titan-like moon it was fully possible to see exactly where the Cerberus had come to rest. The Sundance's sensors easily pierced the thick veil of the moon's cold atmosphere and, through the neural interface, built a three-dimensional topographical image of the crash site in John's mind. Despite what had obviously been a prolonged impact sequence, indicating that someone had been attempting to control the ship as she came in, as there was a scar in the ice and rock surface over ten kilometres long and nearly a kilometre wide leading up to the ship herself, the Cerberus was surprisingly intact her long bow section sticking out over the edge of a sheer cliff that dropped several hundred meters into an ocean of liquid methane.
Looking at the ship John found it had to believe that humans had once flown about the galaxy in ships like that. Instead of the needle-like shape of modern ships – the shape having long ago been determined to be the most optimal shape for focusing the fields created by human transluminal engines – the Cerberus had a rounded bow section that gave way to a large blocky main body that had a vaguely hexagonal design that carried on all the way back to an even more ungainly looking box that housed her old fashion fusion drives and the transluminal drive. It honestly looked like an old pre-FTL design.
But then it probably is, he thought recalling that at the time the Cerberus had been commissioned and launched on her fateful voyage humanity had still been very new to the whole being able to travel faster than light thing having only developed the first transluminal engine – after discovering velarium carbonate on the Uranian moon Oberon – a decade and a half earlier. For the first few decades they had continued to repurpose old sublight ship designs, as it had worked albeit not very well, until through trial and error come up with the hull design that had been used since, even if the technology inside had changed and advanced.
"She appears to be surprisingly intact," he commented studying the data.
"That she does," Alice agreed, "though at the same time it is not too surprising. Historical records indicate that the Cerberus and her two sister ships Prometheus and Hercules were refitted military vessels, specifically the Freedom-class battleships – what we would consider a cruiser today."
"True and while most of the railgun turrets and missile launchers would have been removed, not to mention their magazines, during the conversion the basic structure would still be heavily armoured. Still given the materials and manufacturing methods available back then its still impressive that she survived the crash."
"Agreed. I have located a suitable landing site for us, it is a few kilometres down the valley from where the ship has come to rest. The ground is too uneven from the crash even after all this time to land any closer."
"Can't be helped. Feed the landing coordinates into the navigational array and I'll take us down."
"Confirmed. Sending coordinates."
Information flashed through John's mind and in seconds a course appeared before his eyes. A slight smile appeared on his face as he began the process of configuring the Sundance for a landing. First by configuring the fields produced by the sublight engine for atmospheric entry and flight as well as reconfiguring the shields to properly protect the hull from the heat of atmospheric entry. Once everything came back as ready he began the landing sequence.
Immediately the Sundance began moving again, slowly but surely moving down from the high orbit that she'd been maintaining over the moon first into a lower orbit and then she entered the tenuous upper atmospheric layer. John kept his attention on the interface as he monitored the ship as she descended, landing was always a tricky and dangerous time as the slightest miscalculation could easily see his beloved ship be damaged or even destroyed by the forces involved in the process. As the ship descended deeper into the atmosphere he sensed and saw atmospheric molecules beginning to build up against the shield, the molecules quickly beginning to heat up as they encountered the force field.
It was however nothing to worry about, even as the ship descended deeper and the compacting molecules ignited transforming into a roaring corona of burning plasma. While it was spectacular to look at and made the force field glow and ripple with distortions, it wasn't in anyway dangerous as the plasma wasn't hot or turbulent enough to be a threat to the shields. They were designed and rated to withstand far more turbulent things than a simple plasma sheath. As the got deeper into the atmosphere the plasma sheath cooled and dissipated and his external cameras got their first detailed pictures of the surface of this nameless alien moon.
It really does look like Titan, John thought as he beheld a landscape that was both familiar in the presence of mountains, valleys, rivers and lakes and alien at the same time in that the liquid was a mixture of various liquid hydrocarbons with methane and ethane being the most prevalent. Much like Titan was to this day. Seeing the environment reminded him of his university days when he had been learning to be an interstellar surveyor at the University of Elysium on Mars. He had been to Titan several times during his training for various reasons along with numerous other moons in Sol and he couldn't help but feel a profound sense of déjà vu at seeing a moon so far from Sol looking so eerily like Saturn's largest moon.
He pushed aside those thoughts and focused on the final phase of the landing procedure. Which saw him pass over the wreck of the Cerberus, which at this close a range showed some suspicious damage that looked out of place for a ship that had simply crashed. He passed her too quickly to be certain but at a first glance some of the damage to the hull looked deliberately inflicted, as if she had been attacked by someone or something. John frowned and made a mental note to check that more thoroughly when he actually approached the Cerberus.
As it was he turned his attention back to the matter at hand, landing his Sundance. Reaching the coordinates Alice had identified for him he brought the ship to a halt, hanging there in a stationary hover a hundred meters above the stone and ice surface. A thought lowered the shields and another caused the landing gear to deploy, each long strut flowing like liquid from their recessed positions as part of the lower hull before forming three-toed claws on their base and turning solid.
Confirmation flashed through the data feed that all six landing legs were deployed and locked. Smiling John lowered the ship the rest of the way and barely a second later a soft shudder ran through the hull as the ship contacted the ground. Pleased he began securing the ship, something that only took a few moments as he just had to power down the main sublight drive as he wouldn't be able to leave the ship while it was active – less the powerful magnetic fields involved in the production of the drive field rip both the nanites and iron out of his body.
"Landing sequence completed," Alice said breaking the silence in the cockpit. "Sublight drive powering down to stand by mode. Do you wish me to fully power it down?"
"No just keep it in stand by mode we're not going to be here too long," John replied as he took his hands off the neural interface pads and stood up. "I'm going to get into my armoured environmental suit. Make sure the skimmer is ready for me to use will you?"
"As you wish."
---///---
Ten minutes later dressed head to toe in an armoured environmental suit, that would keep him safe from the cold, toxic atmosphere of this planets, and holding a standard EP-67 pulse rifle – not that he anticipated trouble but it never hurt to be careful – John stepped into the airlock chamber. As he had expected the skimmer, a modern high technology descendant of a motorbike but which used advanced anti-gravity technology to float anywhere from a few centimetres to a kilometre above the surface of a planet instead of old-fashioned wheels, was waiting for him. The small craft floating a centimetre above the deck.
He activated his helmet comm. "Alice I'm in the airlock open the outer door and lower the ramp," he ordered.
"As you wish extending ramp," Alice replied as the door to the rest of the ship closed behind him and sealed. "Depressurizing airlock, replacing with atmosphere taken from external vents stand by… atmospheric replacement complete. Opening airlock doors."
The doors in front of him opened with a faint hiss, revealing the eerily familiar but at the same time completely alien environment of this moon in all its glory. John for his part placed his EP-67 in the receptacle on the skimmer that was meant to house it, then climbed on himself. The doors finished opening and he brought the engine to life prompting the skimmer to rise a few more centimetres above the deck, then he kicked it into gear and started moving the contra-gravity vehicle launching forward like a startle rabbit. In seconds he was down the ramp and beginning to scoot across the desolate, but beautiful for being so, landscape towards where the Cerberus had crashed.
Due to the powerful engines of the skimmer, and its contra-gravity nature, it didn't take more than five minutes for him to travel the several dozen kilometres between where he had landed and the crash site. The former US Space Command battleship turned interstellar colony ship laying like a beached whale on the surface of this planet, smaller bits of debris littered the area showed evidence of how violent the vessels impact with this world had been.
John slowed down as he drew closer to the Cerberus. It immediately became obvious that this crash was not the result of a freak accident like the incident with the solar storm that had thrown him, Alice, and the Sundance out here. The Cerberus had been attacked. All over the hull but especially near the engine section there were deep perfectly straight fissures in the hull – fissures that went all the way through the armoured outer hull, into and then through the vessels inner pressure hull – that were the tell-tale sign of a vessel that had been hit with beam-based energy weapons. Though after all this time there was no way he could tell what kind of weapons had been used on her, though the list of potential culprits for who could have attacked her was pretty damned short since aside from the Zen'tou they had never encountered another spacefaring species.
Which meant that the fate of any of the crew and colonists who had survived the crash was likely to be pretty horrific given the carnivorous nature of the quadrupedal race. Still better board and get there records, he thought, find out just how they got out here so far from home, then silence a cry for help from over two hundred years ago. Feeling the familiar rage and hatred for the Zen'tou that every human in the galaxy felt for those monsters John guided his skimmer right up to the hull. Then he stopped, climbed off the skimmer, and retrieved his EP-67 and began making his way towards the nearest breach in the aged, armoured hull…
…and from there the interior of the Cerberus.
---///---
Alice monitored her human carefully through a telemetry link with both his armoured suit and his nanites as he made his way up to, and then into the interior of the Cerberus. She noticed from the chemical activity in his brain that John was angry about what he was seeing as the attack damage to the Cerberus was obvious. An attack that logically could really have only come from the Zen'tou as if it had been other humans in her era who had attacked her then the damage would have looked different. Railguns – like those which had been used at the time – left very different damage styles and patterns to those inflicted by energy weapons like the plasma beamers used by the Zen'tou.
Abruptly the signal strength on her telemetry link dropped significantly, to a level that would make communication with her human difficult, as John entered the crashed ship. After running a few probability matrices as to why the signal strength had suddenly dropped she could only conclude that it was due to the hull of the Cerberus which was thicker than the armour used on more modern warships. Shields having long since replaced having really dense layers of armour on even the largest warships, what armour was there while still thick was more to defend against any shots that got through the shield than be the be-all and end-all of a modern warship's defences.
Had she been human Alice would have sighed in annoyance at suddenly being unable to contact John. She wasn't used to being out of contact with him after all, aside from his recent spell in regeneration she was always in contact with him via the nanites in his body. It let her attend to all his needs in the most efficient means possible. Suddenly not being able to was thus quite disconcerting, or would have been if she had been able to feel emotions.
An alert suddenly flashing through the system caught her attention and she turned her primary processors towards investigating the source of the alert. The probes she had deployed earlier, and which had triangulated the location of the Cerberus wreck site, had just picked up a burst of polarized gravitons and tachyon particles in the outer system. Sending a deeper interrogation command to the probes Alice became as shocked as an AI could get when the results came back. The energy burst was undoubtably the result of an FTL event and there was now another starship in the outer system.
A ship that was definitely not Zen'tou.
The data from the probe showed that the vessels power signature was far too high to be from any Zen'tou vessel, or indeed any vessel that used a fusion based power source. In addition the Zen'tou were known to make use of a fusion engine system and not the gravitational/electromagnetic system that Humans had used for the last hundred years or so. At several kilometres long it was also much larger than anything in either the Peacekeeper fleet or the Zen'tou harvester fleets.
And it had definitely detected there probes because it had changed course and was now heading straight towards them on an intercept course. This, Alice decided, was not good.