Lyssa's Call - A Hard Science Fiction AI Adventure (The Sentience Wars - Origins Book 4) Read online

 

 

  Jirl mused. You mean freedom?

 

  And the TSF isn’t going to buy a sentient AI system if they’re all vulnerable to failure.

  Even if he didn’t say it, the implication was obvious.

  CHAPTER TWO

  STELLAR DATE: 10.05.2981 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Sunny Skies

  REGION: Departing Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol

  Cara watched as Fran stood with her arms crossed and stared into the holodisplay, the glowing models of Sunny Skies and the Resolute Charity reflected in the woman’s face, filling her augmented eyes with lively sparks.

  “What we have here is an engineering problem,” Fran said, glancing at Cara. “Which, in my opinion, is the best kind of problem to have.”

  “I thought we didn’t have any more problems,” Cara said from the communications console.

  Fran gave her a laugh, one Cara recognized as condescending in a caring sort of way. “Our worries end when we’re dead, my dear.”

  “I thought you made up the name Worry’s End,” Cara said, referring to the actual registry entry for Sunny Skies, which Fran had created when they escaped Cruithne Station. Cara blinked, wondering what other references Fran might have been using that flew right over her head.

  “Sure,” Fran said, giving her a sly smile. “You can believe that if you want to.”

  Cara rolled her eyes. “If being dead is where you got the name, it’s more depressing than I thought.”

  “What one person calls depressing, another calls reality. The name fit the need, and it’s served us all right, don’t you think?” She reached into the holodisplay to manipulate the glowing models, placing Sunny Skies alongside the Resolute Charity in various positions.

  Cara and Fran were alone on the command deck. Cara’s dad was still on the Resolute Charity, while Petral, Fugia, May and Harl were all in their respective rooms using comm links before the distance from the Cho grew too great for instantaneous communication. Cara couldn’t listen in on their conversations but could monitor the signals passing through the ship’s antenna array.

  “I guess so,” Cara said. “I’m going to keep using Sunny Skies.”

  “Weren’t you anyway?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Calling something a different word doesn’t change what it is, Cara,” Fran said, sliding Cara a serious glance. “Let’s focus on this. Start looking for mistakes I’m making.”

  “You don’t make mistakes,” Cara said.

  “If only that were true.” Fran raised her voice slightly, “Lyssa, you listening?”

  The AI’s voice emerged from the overhead speaker for Cara’s benefit, since she couldn’t communicate via Link. “I’m here,” Lyssa said, the speakers making her sound far away.

  “Thank you,” Fran said, turning her full attention on the holodisplay.

  Leaving the ships in place, Fran traced distances between them with her fingers, leaving lines as thin as spidersilk connecting the two ships. Numbers marked each line, showing the requirements to build the connecting structure between the ships, Cara supposed.

  She liked it when Fran teased her this way because the woman always seemed to push her to be better without putting her down. Cara had observed Fran’s tendency to make things better, even when it came to Cara’s dad. She figured the flip side of Fran’s nature was that she might never be satisfied, which meant Fran was going to leave someday. But everyone left eventually, didn’t they?

  “Since you aren’t going to ask me what our engineering problem is,” Fran said. “I guess I’ll tell you. But only because I’m in a hurry and I want to be able to talk about this while I work.”

  “Okay,” Cara said.

  “The engines on the Resolute Charity have an order of magnitude more thrust capacity than our little Sunny Skies. Even though she masses much more, it still means she’s going to leave us in the dust unless we find a way to attach Sunny Skies to her. That would seem easy, but we have the problem of the habitat ring, which we would like to keep spinning.”

  “Couldn’t we ask Lyssa to figure it out?”

  “Where’s the fun in that? Besides, I already planned on asking Lyssa to stress-test my options once I get them figured out.”

  “Wouldn’t the easiest way be to stack Sunny Skies on top of the Resolute Charity, end to nose?” Cara asked, leaving her console to walk closer to the holodisplay.

  “I was thinking about that, but we lose Sunny Skies’ engines that way. And it might be nice to have them in a pinch. The thing about lining us up side-by-side is the strain that would put on any sort of support system we might build. And the time it will take to build that support system. And the material we would need.”

  From the overhead speakers, Lyssa said, “I believe I can find sufficient material on the Resolute Charity. The ship is equipped with a surprising amount of repair supplies that could be manipulated for this purpose, including spare sections of outer support struts.”

  “That’s some good news for once,” Fran said.

  The Resolute Charity was basically a series of drums mounted horizontally on a central axle, each spinning independently to create internal gravity for the hospital and clinic sections. The nose section—and engines in the rear—capped the drums, with external support struts running the length of the ship.

  Fran moved the two models closer together, placing the Sunny Skies alongside the Resolute Charity’s stern, the small ship’s engines a hair further aft than the hospital ship’s. She rotated the freighter so that its docking mounts faced the Resolute Charity’s, but left enough room for Sunny Skies’ habitat ring to spin.

  “What do you think about that?” Fran asked Lyssa.

  “That looks like the easiest way to do it,” the AI said. “You seem to already have this information available.”

  “I keep it in my brain alongside the sarcasm,” Fran said dryly. “Will the material we have available withstand acceleration tests? Can you assess the strain with Resolute Charity and Sunny Skies engines combined?”

  Watching Lyssa and Fran work together filled Cara with a sense of safety. She wished she had more to contribute.

  “Maximizing placement to allow for a passage between the two ships will be a challenge,” Lyssa said.

  “Now you’re getting fancy. All I want the ships to do is not break apart and destroy each other.”

  “I believe a solution that satisfies crew needs and structural integrity is possible. I’m looking for other designs in the database.”

  Fran snorted. “Crew needs. What do you mean by that?”

  “I assume you would like to see Andy during the trip,” Lyssa said, in a tone that made Cara imagine a raised eyebrow.

  Cara stole a glance at Fran and found her rolling her eyes, chuckling.

  “Why would you think that?” Fran asked. “If he wants to come over here, he can get in a shuttle and make the trip. We don’t need a love-bridge adding complexity to our design.”

  “There are safety considerations as well,” Lyssa said. “I believe the option of a shuttle is always a good backup in the event of an emergency, but I may need faster ways to move support drones between the two ships. Maybe I should have suggested this feature when Cara wasn’t here.”

  “Why not?” Cara asked.

  “Because Fran doesn’t want to prioritize her personal needs over solving this problem,” Lyssa explained.

  “Oh, I prioritize my needs,” Fran said, raising her eyebrows. “Trust me. But in this case, I’m more concerned about how much time we have versus the integrity of the design. The love-tunnel is secondary.”
/>   “Maintenance access bridge,” Lyssa corrected.

  “Nope, it’s the love-tunnel,” Fran said. “No changing it now.”

  Cara jammed her fist against her lips to keep from laughing. She didn’t want Fran to notice that she understood the joke. She glanced at the engineer and saw Fran was still focused on her design.

  “Fine,” Lyssa said. The holodisplay shifted, showing the two models side-by-side with their engines on an even line. Support struts linked the two ships’ docking mounts forming a series of X shapes. Additional anchoring lines ran out to other docking mounts on the Resolute Charity. Next a middle connector running from Sunny Skies’ main cargo bay to the engineering section of the Resolute Charity. “This design will serve our purpose.”

  “How long do you need to build it?” Fran asked.

  “I estimate twenty hours.”

  “So, our trip takes a hundred and one days now instead of a hundred?”

  “The combined thrust of both ships will increase acceleration by thirty percent,” Lyssa said. “Still, I estimate at least ninety days travel based on our transfer maneuver at Uranus.”

  “I love it when you talk orbital mechanics,” Fran said. “Don’t stop.”

  Cara snorted.

  “Stop laughing at my jokes, Cara,” Fran said, focus still on the display. “Your father isn’t going to let us spend time together.”

  “I’m not laughing,” Cara protested.

  “I suppose you can laugh. But don’t repeat anything for another two years, at least.”

  “I promise,” Cara said, trying not to giggle again.

  Fran’s gaze didn’t leave her work. Where Fran always seemed to focus inwardly, Petral would be looking at Cara to gauge her response. Her mom probably wouldn’t have made a joke at all.

  The thought of her mom made Cara glance at the communications console again. They were still within range of most transmissions from the Cho, Ganymede and Europa, as well as the rest of the ship traffic throughout the Jovian Combine. She couldn’t help checking the regular ship’s channels for a message, and then the rest of the general spectrum for some signal that might have been aimed at the ship if her mother were trying to contact them covertly.

  In truth, Brit would probably use the Link directly to her dad but Cara had harbored a secret fantasy that she might discover some distress signal her mom had sent through other means. She hated the spark of hope she felt every time she sat down at the console and scanned the spectrum.

  This time wouldn’t be any different than before. Her mom wouldn’t ask them for help. If she contacted them at all, it would only be after she had captured or killed Cal Kraft. That was her mom’s strength: a single-mindedness that shut out everything else until the mission was accomplished. It was her dad’s weakness that he cared too much to think that way.

  Was it a weakness? A lot of people would think it weak, but he was strong when it mattered. By most considerations, her dad was as pragmatic as any spacer. He had killed people. He had nearly killed himself to get them to Cruithne before all this started.

  Cara remembered his face when he’d come inside the ship after the debris field had punched his EV suit full of holes—puncturing his arms, legs and abdomen near his belly button—looking drawn and angry, as if the world just wouldn’t stop hammering on him. Yet he’d smiled when the airlock opened and laid eyes on Cara and Tim—before he’d fallen inside and they’d caught him.

  That was how she remembered it. They’d struggled to get him up to the autodoc and then it had seemed like things would be okay for a while. Then the engines had failed…and here they were.

  Watching Fran, Cara knew things could certainly be worse. Her dad hadn’t told her how much money he’d made on Cruithne, but that stress seemed to have lessened. Something had changed between him and Lyssa in the last twenty hours as well, and the trip to Proteus seemed to actually fill her dad with excitement more than dread.

  “I’m going to check on Tim,” Cara told Fran, who nodded absently, still focused on Lyssa’s proposed design.

  Cara grabbed her headset from on top of her console and slipped it over her ears. She played the white noise of the broadcast spectrum outside the ship as she left the command deck for Tim’s room.

  In the two days since their mom had left, their dad had stayed on the Resolute Charity taking care of small repair jobs that Lyssa and her growing drone army couldn’t handle. Unfortunately, that seemed to consist mostly of clearing bodies of dead crew and pirates. Her dad hadn’t admitted to the task until Cara had overheard him and Lyssa discussing the removal of a dead man from an access tunnel. Lyssa had been focused on the facts of the task and had asked why they ‘Simply couldn’t cut the body in half?’

  Her dad had explained the mess that would make in the tunnel and how, yes, they could replace the plas panels, but that he didn’t want to deal with carrying body parts to the reclamation system one piece at a time.

  “Is the ship going to be haunted?” Cara had asked.

  “Cara!” her dad had shouted. “You aren’t supposed to be listening to this.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Well, I’m trying not to end up haunted for the rest of my life, which is another reason not to go cutting people into pieces.”

  He did his best to clothe fatalism in humor, she was figuring out, the same energy that had powered his smile for her and Tim after the debris field nearly tore him apart. Something he said he got from their Grandpa Charlie back on Earth. Grandpa Charlie had never been implanted with a Link. Not that long ago, Cara couldn’t believe anyone would choose to cut themselves off from the network that joined all the adults in her life. She used to daydream about the day she turned eighteen and was old enough for her own Link surgery. Now that she had seen her dad living with an AI in his mind, she wasn’t sure she wanted any of that. She adjusted the headset, appreciating the fact that she could choose to take it off whenever she wanted and keep herself alone with her thoughts.

  She found Tim in his room, sitting on the deck with their Corgi puppy Em lying across his lap. Em already looked bigger than he had three days ago. He lifted his head and perked his ears up as Cara walked through the door. A book with a red cover lay open on the deck next to Tim. It was the Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, and he had memorized a surprising number of the small, spidery lines on its pages. Tim was still as inward-focused as the day he’d woken up on the Cho, and his single-minded attention to things like the book, or Em, or seemingly nothing at all, continued to worry Cara. He was nothing like the impatient, whiny ten-year-old he had been just a week before. He also didn’t seem to care that their mom had chosen to leave them again.

  “What are you doing?” Cara asked, trying to keep her voice gentle.

  She wasn’t sure yet how being responsible for Tim made her feel. Was it a chore or her duty? Her dad would call it her duty, and he had modeled caring for others enough that she understood the necessity. She was as responsible for Tim as her dad was for her. There was no changing the fact that something in Tim had broken while he was at Clinic 46 and the new version of him was fragile.

  Tim looked up from where he had been stroking Em’s back and shrugged. “Sitting.”

  Cara leaned against the edge of the doorway. “Sitting doing what?”

  “Sitting here with Em.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Tim frowned. “How soft his fur is and how everyone smiles at him.”

  “He does have that effect on people.” She sighed, wishing she knew the right words to bring back a little bit of the old Tim. Maybe this was how he was going to turn out, anyway? He was only ten. And she had been annoyed by him all the time. Now she was just—disappointed and worried. She wished her dad was done with the work on the Resolute Charity.

  “Do you want to talk to Dad?” she asked.

  Tim shook his head. “Does he want to talk to me?”

  “He always wants to talk to you.”

  “He
’s busy.”

  “How about I call him? I’ll use my headset.”

  “No!” Tim shouted, startling Em. The puppy hopped upright, ears straight, and stared into the corridor behind Cara. Tim pulled him into his chest. “Sorry, Em.”

  Cara took a deep breath, forcing herself to remain calm.

  “I think Dad would love to hear from us, Tim. He gets lonely over there. The last time I talked to him, he said he couldn’t wait to be done.”

  Tim petted Em slowly, gaze fixed on the floor. “When did you talk to him?”

  Cara shrugged. “I don’t know. An hour ago.”

  “Then you already bothered him. I don’t want to bother him.” Despite shouting “No!” Tim quickly fell back into listlessness. Em whimpered and settled back down across his lap, higher this time so his head lay against Tim’s stomach.

  “Bye, Cara,” Tim said.

  She stared at him.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

  Cara’s earlier desire to protect him was overcome by the urge to drag him out of the room. The problem was, she didn’t know what she would do after that. She couldn’t take him to anyone. Fran was busy and there was no telling what Fugia might do. The hacker didn’t seem to be working on anything explosive today, so Fugia hopefully wouldn’t ask Tim to hold ignition material like she’d done in the past.

  “Whatever,” Cara said, sighing with resignation. “It will be time to sleep soon. Are you going to get yourself ready for bed?”

  “Yeah. I will.” He didn’t look at her.

  Cara left the room and stood in the hallway, glaring through his doorway. Em watched her, one ear straight. When Tim didn’t look after her, she shook her head angrily and stomped away, frustration tensing her shoulders.

  In her room, she sat on her bed for a while before digging her pulse pistol from where she kept it hidden under the mattress. She turned the weapon in her hands, careful to keep it pointed away from herself at all times like her dad had taught her. She realized she was aiming at the doorway and turned to point at a bulkhead instead.