Starlighters
By maddan
- 1956 reads
***I can't say for sure how long I've been down here, perhaps a week
now, probably less. Floating in the sulphur flumes and drifting in
their thermals.
I remember it all very well, when the stars were out. I can hold the
variables and do the maths but that is useless so long as I have no
measure of time. I cannot calculate my chances of ever being rescued;
minuscule at best, I know that much, maybe resolving to zero at any
moment. At least then I will be able to act with a degree of assurance,
I can almost wish for it. Till then I suppose I wait, it is the only
truly logical recourse in the circumstances, I only wish I felt more
logical about it.***
Michael realised he was awake, the non-sourced ambient light adjusted
slowly upwards at a rate designed to cause him the least discomfort. He
rubbed his eyes and tapped the small panel located immediately above
his head. The door above him slid silently open and an asexual voice
clearly intoned the standard waking announcement.
"Good morning, Moorcock, Michael, Engineer D S 7 6 0 4 9 1. You have
been routinely awakened at journey destination. Transit vessel is now
in orbit around the star McBeale A, you have been in hibernation for
approximately twenty seven months relative frame, approximately forty
one months origin frame and approximately forty one months destination
frame. In the absence of a nearby outpost or colonisation local time
has been arbitrarily set to zero, zero, zero, zero from establishment
of stable orbit. Current time is zero six nineteen hours. No shift
rotor has yet been set. Breakfast is being served in the
refectory."
He swore and pushed himself towards the toilet.
Douglas and Reichman were already up and floating in the refectory,
greedily forking steaming, shapeless foodstuff into their respective
mouths. He squeezed his way awkwardly past them and heated up something
of his own.
"Morning." He said once the canteen had vended him a lump of hot,
sticky mush.
Neither man answered. He put his energy into swallowing breakfast. This
whole bloody thing, he mused, was a complete bloody farce.
The authorities had insisted on a human presence in the crew; it was
management procedure more than anything else. There should be nothing
here that the refitted engineering platform couldn't handle and there
was even an Edie on board that could happily out-think that and the
three humans put together. But no; the rules stated that in an untried
situation a human presence was necessary in case they were confronted
with unforeseen circumstances. In reality the Edie could handle pretty
much anything thrown at it but regulations are regulations and it was
ruled that a human must be present and where one human was present a
full flight team of at least three humans must be present.
For sure there was a certain amount of glamour involved in the job and
Michael had been extremely proud to be picked. But that was followed by
the months in Genus Config' having his body retrofitted to take the
extreme gravity, heat and radiation; as it was he would likely be
having tumours lopped off for the rest of his life. Then there was the
seven or so years away from home (admittedly mostly spent in
hibernation and less for him because of relativistic effects), the long
periods of boredom a task like this entailed and to top it all off Dean
Douglas and Ian Reichman, the two most insular and bloody miserable
flight technicians he had ever had the misfortune to meet.
"Drop platform in five hours" Grumbled Douglas chewing his last
mouthful. He dumped the plastic carton, nodded to Reichman and expertly
pulled himself out into the corridor.
Michael looked at Reichman who expertly avoided catching his eye, he
risked a conversation again.
"Sleep well?"
"Aye."
"My first long trip you know?"
The man dismissed him with a single laugh, more like a cough than any
actual expression of meaning.
Michael pressed on: "You spent long in hibernation?"
"'Bout ninety years."
"Bloody hell!" He exclaimed, the man couldn't have been over fifty
unless he'd had some serious cosmetics, which, from the look of him,
seemed unlikely.
Reichman dismissed him with another half laugh, muttered "Dean's done
twice that at least," turned away and pulled himself out into the
corridor.
Michael watched him go, trying to work out if he was serious.
"Where's the Edie?" He shouted.
"Cargo." Came the reply.
***I have a name; EDC-3091; Model 4000 Educated Consciousness
(Engineering Class) Registration number 3091. I was known as 3091 when
there were other EDC consciousnesses around but more often they just
call me Edie.
At a known temperature I can perform a known operation at a known
speed. At 273.16 degrees Kelvin I can resolve the surface integral of a
three dimensional sphere in 4.7063 nanoseconds, my tick-over time
between operations is 0.0012 nanoseconds, it's all well documented in
the specification. By continually repeating this calculation and
adjusting the count through a temperature compensation algorithm of my
own devising I can obtain a crude estimate of time passed. It is
something to do with myself at least.***
"Oi!" Douglas' voice forced itself over the clamour of the cargo bay.
"Thirty ninety one. Stick all this drilling shit in hold four."
Nothing happened. Douglas, hanging weightless from one of the crane
gantries, waited a moment before shouting again.
"Oi&;#8230;"
He was cut short by the crane roaring into life and heading at speed
towards a loosely secured pallet of machinery. He cursed loudly and
pushed himself out of the way.
Within the bowls of the platform Michael found EDC-3091's interface
unit hovering over the flight console, it twisted on its air jets to
face him but said nothing. Michael knew that besides helping the
platform with it's pre-flight checks and operating two of the loading
bay's cranes it would also be talking directly with the transit ship's
sensor array; downloading all it could about McBeale A.
"Hello Edie." He said.
"Good morning Michael." It replied in a clearly intoned male voice.
"Sleep well I trust."
"Like a baby. Were you awake the whole time?" He asked, genuinely
curious.
The Edie moved from the console. "I placed myself in a timed holding
pattern so, in a manner of speaking, I was asleep."
Michael swam leisurely backwards and braced himself against bulkhead.
"Any news on our star?"
"So far nothing much of interest, the cold crust seems stable enough
with the expected variations in temperature and occasional fires though
they appear fairly localised; presumably around gas vents. The
atmosphere is a pretty nasty cocktail of mostly hydrogen and about
anything else you care to imagine, the weather is suitably violent. A
geophysical survey has been hampered by the extremely high background
radiation and I suspect will remain impossible. I have taken the
liberty of making a preliminary choice of digging sights."
"Fine." Micheal replied. "Whatever you reckon has my OK." His mind was
on different things. Principally regret at ever agreeing to tag along
on this hair brained scheme.
He would not be stepping a foot on the cold crust of the star; that was
far too dangerous. Despite it's name it was still around a thousand
degrees and hotter in places, then there was the spontaneously
combustible atmosphere with its thousand kilometre a hour winds and
highly acidic gas pockets, the unstable surface with unknown seismic
activity going on beneath it and god knows what other dangers theorised
or not.
At zero, eight, thirty hours precisely the platform was dumped
unceremoniously outside the transit vessel complete with its crew of
three and sole Edie. It span leisurely on two axis before firing a
ninety second burn that expertly and precisely decayed its orbit. They
would be a further fifteen (twenty four hour) days in free fall before
the nineteen hour landing sequence which would mean the welcome return
of gravity.
The quarters on engineering platforms were notoriously cramped and this
one had been seriously beefed up to meet its new requirements and space
was at a premium. Michael was lucky, he realised, to still get a
private berth.
***When the stars were out... It is possible the stars are still out
now, all the available information seems to point that way, logically I
should assume they are. I would like to think a few caught though, that
all that effort and expertise was not totally in vein, that the species
does show some responsibility to the universe it inhabits. That poor
Michael did not die entirely without reason.***
Michael sat in the drilling control station prodding his dinner with a
fork. It was a grey, sticky concoction tasting vaguely of chicken, he
had tried spicing it up with chilly powder which had aesthetically
given it the impression of having measles and done very little to the
taste. The incredible blandness of the stuff was as resilient as it was
insipid; not just tasteless, he mused, but an actual vacuum of flavour
that would happily absorb all foreign attempts at seasoning. Add to
this the fact that he wasn't even hungry and the whole thing seemed
like a waste of time, he stood the fork upright in the bowl and placed
it on drill three monitor console. At least the Edie would be back soon
and he would have someone to talk to.
The EDC or Educated Consciousness was a long way from a new innovation;
the Edie on board, though far from low spec, was probably substantially
older than Michael himself. Maybe not quite as long lived as Dean
Douglas but then he seemed to have spent so much of his life in
hibernation that he could well count as a medical freak. The interface
unit, and the Edie's was now attached to a wheeled mobile housing,
although essential to it's use, was not the actual consciousness
itself; that was composed of a complex energy matrix held within a
harmonic waveform. The interface unit was the mechanism through which
the EDC communicated and interacted with the physical world, it also
contained the tuner instrument that held the waveform in place and, by
propelling itself, moved the entire consciousness. They were self
aware, capable of innovative, lateral thinking and complex problem
solving; but for bureaucracy the Edie would probably be in charge of
the entire job.
In time the Edie wheeled itself clumsily up the steps into the room.
The wheeled housing was about a metre high and, like almost everything
else on the platform, seriously beefed up to match the hostile
conditions outside. Even so the alloy frame was showing signs of
scorching from the intense heat, the wheels had already been replaced
once and number two arm had been reattached to its socket after almost
vibrating off.
"Evening Michael." It said.
"Edie."
"Number two is back up and running at eighty three percent. It looks
like Three broke that hard iron layer already and is now making a good
four kilometres an hour but we're due to take it down for routine
maintenance tomorrow morning. I believe it would be prudent to replace
it with Two and leave One resting for the moment. Hopefully we should
be out of here within a month."
"Whatever you say Edie."
The machine paused a moment before edging closer. "Michael, can I ask
you a question?"
Michael turned round to face it. "Yes of course."
"Why are you up here? There's nothing to do that the platform can't
handle."
He stared out the window into the darkness, the horizon lit up with the
loom of flash fires. "I just prefer the peace and quiet." He
mumbled.
"Sorry?" Replied the Edie. "Prefer the peace and quiet to what?"
Michael looked at the machine again, unlike ships an EDC shouldn't
require explicit statements, there was nothing either on the unit or in
the voice to give away what it really meant. He spoke carefully in a
single, measured tone. "I prefer the peace and quiet to the not peace
and quiet."
"Oh." Said the Edie, EDCs never said 'oh' unless they meant something
by it; it was one of the words humans used while they were thinking of
something to say, EDCs thought far too quickly to need them. "I assume
you mean the not peaceful or quiet?"
"Or the neither peaceful nor quiet."
"Nothing to do with Flight Officer Dean Douglas or Flight Technician
Ian Reichman?"
"Of course it's to do with Douglas and Reichman, I don't think I can
stand one more minute together with them."
"Oh Good!" Said the Edie. "They were beginning to irritate me as
well."
Michael gave a short, incredulous laugh.
"You know they keep calling me 3091."
"Yes," he said, "I had noticed."
"It's really getting on my nerves."
He looked down at the machine. "You don't have nerves." He said after a
beat.
"Well it's really getting on my low baud carapace sensor array
then."
EDCs cannot laugh, it is a physical reaction they are incapable of
simulating. The Edie, however, found the sound of Michael laughing
almost as intoxicating as the sensation itself.
In the canteen Dean Douglas and Ian Reichman sat playing cards into the
artificially imposed night, chewing idly at the vended foodstuff and
sharing drinks from a bottle they had smuggled aboard. There was not a
word of complaint between them, there was barely a word.
***Three times ten to the fifteen nanoseconds gone, almost a full
standard week. Not long now till this star passes it's last chance to
catch. I can gain a measure of temperature through the excitement of
certain internal energy levels and shall know for sure if it does fire
up. If it hasn't caught by around eight times ten to the fifteen
nanoseconds then the ignition chamber will have passed its peak and
begin to cool down and the star will remain dead. If that happens then
there is the faintest chance that somebody will come back to get me, if
it does catch however then there is no chance at all.
I can alter the aspect of my containment waveform, if necessary I can
release it from it's static form and send it racing off somewhere into
the sky. Should I go ahead with this then the matrix that is my
consciousness will collapse but certain memory information will remain
encoded within the wave. There is the tiny, infinitesimal chance that
this long wavelength radiation will be picked up somewhere and
translated. It is my last chance of a testament as to what happened
here. ***
Michael was woken, as ever, at zero seven hundred hours precisely. He
had found, over the long weeks on the platform, that the best chance of
avoiding Douglas and Reichman was to grab some breakfast immediately
and then to decamp to the drilling control room to eat. The team was
not much longer on McBeale A, the tunnels had been completed and the
majority of the drilling equipment stowed back in the belly of the
platform. Only Number One was still busy hollowing out the cavernous
ignition chamber ready for the instillation of the vast trigger
machinery. All just monkey work from now on, the platform was handling
it all by itself.
Michael logged in and activated the status monitor, it immediately gave
him a general rundown of all drilling in progress; not a sausage.
He checked again and verified that the monitor was working correctly;
it was. If the drill was resting it would say so and, anyway, he would
have been informed. He booted up the platform and typed in
>voice terminal.
It responded on screen
>voice terminal active
Michael spoke out loud in a clearly intoned voice "Check active."
>Voice terminal check: confirmed
The terminal screen instantly answered.
"ID Moorcock, Michael, Engineer DS 760 491."
>ID Successful, welcome Moorcock, Michael.
"Query, Why is, Drill number one, not, active."
>command QUERY: confirmed
>WHY IS component ID drill_1 NOT ACTIVE: confirmed
>QUERY result:
>drill_1 IS NOT ACTIVE because: drill_1 IS NOT ON_LINE
>drill_1 COMS FAILURE at 04:21
Michael looked at the screen and muttered to himself. "Weird."
>Weird: not recognised: please re state command
Michael mouthed an exclamation under his breath, there was something
distinctly wrong about this.
"Related Query," he said, "why was, I, not, informed."
>command RELATED QUERY: confirmed
>WHY_WAS crew ID Moorcock, Michael, engineer, DS 760 491 NOT
Informed (drill_1 IS NOT ON_LINE, drill_1 COMS FAILURE at 04:21):
confirmed
>QUERY result:
> Moorcock, Michael, engineer, DS 760 491 WAS NOT Informed of
drill_1 COMS FAILURE at 04:21 because: no related command
protocol
Michael responded immediately "Edit command protocols."
The terminal screen displayed a long list of conditional commands.
Michael didn't bother searching for the relevant protocol but scrolled
straight to the file header information, there he found what he was
looking for:
Last modified: 01:43: Dean Douglas
"Locate Dean Douglas" he nearly shouted the command.
>command LOCATE: confirmed
>LOCATE crew ID Douglas, Dean, flight officer, UT 046 578:
confirmed
>LOCATE result:
>Douglas, Dean, flight officer, UT 046 578 is not aboard
platform
"Locate Ian Reichman."
>command LOCATE: confirmed
>LOCATE crew ID Reichman, Ian, flight technician, KF 984 239:
confirmed
>LOCATE result:
> Reichman, Ian, flight technician, KF 984 239 is not aboard
platform
He sat back in the chair and starred at the screen, what in the
universe could have possibly possessed those two to leave the platform,
they seemed to have gone and disabled the drill but why the hell would
they do that. One thing was for sure, there was no way the bloody fools
were going to keep him on this godforsaken rock any longer than
necessary.
"Locate EDC 3091."
>command LOCATE: confirmed
>LOCATE component ID EDC3091 active interface unit: confirmed
>LOCATE result:
>EDC3091 active interface unit is in cargo hold 2
Michael rushed straight to the airlock and, after confirming that two
were missing, started fitting himself into one of the complex survival
suits. He jabbed at the intercom with a spare motion.
"Edie!" He shouted.
"Michael" came the clear reply. EDCs broadcast straight through their
telemetry with the platform so there was no microphone
distortion.
"Ready a fast vehicle, were going down to the chamber."
"We are?"
"Those two morons have disabled the bloody drill."
"Douglas and Reichman?"
"Yes Douglas and Reichman! You know another two morons on this bloody
star."
"Should I prepare another drill for operation."
"No!" He shouted, "Prepare a fast vehicle."
***In retrospect perhaps I should have tried harder to talk him out of
it. The sorry truth is that I never fully realised what was going on,
my vast intellect fails hopelessly when faced with the machinations of
the human mind. That or maybe I was looking forward to Michael finally
standing up for himself and just did not want to risk him thinking I
was taking sides against him.***
Though barely half finished the ignition chamber was enormous, so
distant were the ceiling and walls that Michael couldn't even see them
through the thick, turbid atmosphere. Towards the entrance there was a
neatly organised dump of equipment, the vast nuclear furnaces and
thermal concentrators required to relight the star, it was mostly dumb
machinery, it just had to be secured in the correct positions and
activated before they left. The only real expertise required on the
whole bloody job had been choosing where to site the chamber.
The Edie gently brought the vehicle to rest and let it hover on its
jets.
"Where now?" it asked, not really wanting the answer.
It was worried, it did not like having the entire human crew off the
safety of the platform at once. It had at least persuaded Michael to
take a cold exhaust vehicle but Douglas and Reichman had taken a
faster, standard jet and risked igniting one of the atmospheres many
gas pockets every time they used it. The equipment, including itself,
was designed to take such blasts and anyway they had spares for
everything, people, however, were notoriously fragile. It did not like
the idea of loosing the entire crew in one stupid accident and having
to go back home and explain.
"We follow the hard wiring" said Michael, still enraged after the three
hour journey.
The cable led a winding path through the chamber leading eventually to
its severed end and the drill. The Edie expertly placed the vehicle
down on the ground and, before it could protest, Michael secured his
suit and leapt out the airlock.
The drill control cable, roughly three hundred millimetres thick had
been hacked right through, a fire axe still embedded in the ground
beneath it. The five story high drill sat completely lifeless,
occasionally clicking and banging as it cooled down. To one side was
the jet that Douglas and Reichman had stolen, its rear port exhaust
nozzle twisted beyond recognition. The Edie recognised this immediately
as a tiny gas explosion, almost certainly crippling the vehicle, it
immediately logged into telemetry to check the crew status.
Douglas and Reichman were outside, slumped against the side of the
drill, seeing Michael they lumbered wearily to the their feet and
trudged towards Michael's jet.
"Morning" Mumbled Ian Reichmann through local suit coms before climbing
laboriously into the airlock.
Douglas wandered over to the severed cable and retrieved the axe before
following his flight technician towards the working vehicle.
Michael gathered his wits and moved to block him. "What the fuck have
you done." He shouted through the intercom.
"Explain later." Douglas grumbled, moving round Michael.
"No." Michael said, side stepping to obstruct his passage once more.
"You explain right now."
"Later."
"NOW!" Michael shouted pushing against Douglas just enough to cause him
to stumble back a step.
Ian Riechman turned on the boarding ladder and looked down at the both
of them. The Edie too remained out of the way watching the proceedings
carefully.
Douglas backed away and gestured to Michael to calm down.
"We thought we'd slow things down a little. In case you haven't
noticed," the exaggerated sarcastic tone in his voice was even
recognised by the EDC, "we are on quadruple danger pay twenty four
hours a day for doing fuck all."
He laughed, Michael heard Reichman laughing along in the
background.
"Yeah man."
Michael advanced a step towards him and screamed. "You stupid fucking
moron, I am putting this in the log. I am writing this in the bloody
log. I am going to make sure the both of you go down for fucking
sabotage."
The Edie registered a sensation not dissimilar to glee. 'That showed
you, you miserable bastard.' it thought to himself. It watched with
pleasure turning to horror as the stunned Douglas starred blankly at
Michael for a few protracted seconds before heaving the axe above his
head and swinging it straight into Michael's faceplate. The faceplate
withstood the blow and Michael staggered back against the side of the
ship, without hesitation Douglas swung again this time cracking the
bomb proof plastic and burying the axe into Michael's cheek.
Michael screamed silently through the broken radio and collapsed onto
his knees gazing down at his cupped hands as they filled with blood.
The lethal atmosphere penetrated first his eyes, blinding him before he
took a breath. His body bucked in agony and he was dead within
seconds.
***For the first time in my life I was stunned. I do have emergency
protocols for use in the event of witnessing a crime but they all
involve contacting the authorities. In fact I wasted at least two or
three valuable seconds trying to log in to any available network. I
think the first thing that went through my mind was that, as an EDC, I
was a completely reliable witness and the Dean Douglas would definitely
be prosecuted for murder when we returned home. Then I realised too
late the he was coming for my interface unit with the axe. Then
everything went silent and black.
Though I know that the vast furnaces will have atomised it long ago,
obliterating all evidence of the crime whether the star catches or not,
I cannot help thinking about how I float helpless above Michael's body.
I have no human sensitivity to decaying matter but that thought
continues to nag at the back of my mind and it irks me deeply. I was
his only friend on this lifeless rock and now I assume the role of his
ghost, to drift blind, deaf and invisible, to guard his resting place
and to remember. And I can remember till stars burn out.***
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