Things Fall Apart: Chapter 11, Part 1
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Starship Bellerophon was minding its business, on a long return cruise from an exploration and mapping mission, when it suffered disaster, ripping a chunk out of the ship and leaving most of the senior officers and crew dead. Most of the ship's AIs are missing from the network, also presumed dead, with evidence pointing to a massive, internal "attack" by those AIs.
The survivors' mission, now, is simply to hold their ship and their people together; figure out what happened to them, and why; and get to a safe port! En route to the nearest beacon on the time-compression network, in hopes of finally calling for aid, Bellerophon received a distress call, and discovered that they were not the only ones to suffer catastrophe. Only three crew survived Almaty's destruction, along with the compromised AI of the disaster beacon.
Now, Bellerophon has encountered another ship in distress—a more mundane engineering problem on a civilian ship, but one that left them stranded for almost two megaseconds—three weeks. The fact that no-one answered their call earlier suggests a much wider problem, which the crew must now contemplate as they complete their latest rescue.
Four hours later, Ari ben Yosef Espinoza and Lieutenant Alexander were in Singer's office to make a report. Espinoza was, as promised, in coveralls, and looking at him, even with his greying hair, Singer now could believe this man, wealthy magnate that he was, had also once been an enlisted grease monkey, and by choice at that. His face was smudged, his hair a sweaty mess, his coverall showed clear signs that he had not simply sat back and orchestrated. And despite the seriousness of their overall predicament, he was smiling—no, grinning—like a child who had just been given a lifetime pass to as much ice cream as they could ever desire.
Singer suppressed the urge to grin back at him. At least, until she heard whatever news he had. Ostensibly aiming at Alexander, she said, "Report!"
Ze was not quite so overtly pleased with zirself, but Singer could read that her XO was also much more content than ze had been for a while. It was not just that empathic sense of hers that told her. The set of Alexander's shoulders were just slightly less tense. They had a lot of problems still in front of them, but now, they had one fewer.
The Lieutenant gestured at Espinoza, just as ze might any other junior officer or crewperson who deserved the credit for something, and Espinoza took the ball. For all his exuberance, his report was as crisp as she'd expect from any of her crew.
"Skipper, your own people had already done about as good a job as anybody could have with the situation. One of the coils was badly compromised. If you'd been able to detect the compromise, of course, you couldn't have replaced it. The spares, I'm told, were all stored near the ventral boat bay, which was destroyed, and of course, the coils can't be replicated.
"Fortunately, coils are all pretty standardized. There's no such thing, for example, as a 'fleet grade' coil as opposed to a civilian one. One of the coils off my ship slotted in just fine, and the diagnostics show we can probably get up to 1000:1, now. The only thing preventing that is structural integrity."
He stopped, looking at Alexander, clearly passing the ball back. Ze caught it. "I've already got PO Wasserman running some sims on the subject, with input from Chef. My own estimation is we can probably manage 750:1, which still beats our previous best, ten times over. That should get us to the vicinity of New Norfolk within about two hundred kiloseconds!"
Singer had no desire to spoil the moment by wondering out loud whether there was still a New Norfolk to be in the vicinity of. Instead, she asked, "Any idea how long the assessment will take?"
Ze nodded, and said, "Just a shift, we think. Maybe a little more. We've had weeks of running as we are, and Chef has been keeping tabs on things like spaceframe stress and so on. Not his specialty, of course, but..."
Singer now understood. If they'd had all their AIs intact, or Castor and Pollux active again, they'd already know. Chef was simply overstretched, and learning to do parts of his job on the fly. He'd had nothing left over to keep a running estimate of what the ship could take if the TC drive were in better shape.
Now, Singer let a smile show. "A shift and tw0 hundred kilosecs is still a lot sooner than we thought, so I'll take it. Señor Espinoza, let me thank you again, both for your expertise and your generosity."
Espinoza's smile got a little crooked. "Sooner you get home, sooner I get home. It's enlightened self-interest, I assure you!"
Singer knew a pose when she saw one, and her reading of the man confirmed it. He had a reputation to maintain, and that reputation, while not bloodthirsty or absurdly greedy, was still one of trillionaire mogul, not "generous" spacer.
That's his story, Singer thought to herself, and he's sticking to it.
Aloud, she said, "I can accept that, since the end result is good for everyone involved." She looked back to Alexander, and said, "Are the crew of the Grand Despot transferred?"
Her exec nodded. "Yes, Skipper, along with some more spares of various parts, and an offer to siphon some replication mass to top of our tanks again if we need it. The hope is still to take the ship in tow, but if Wasserman's assessment shows that would slow us drastically, or just not be possible without endangering us, we want to make sure we have what we need. We also have plenty of room, so everyone's movable personal effects are also coming over—we've got drones shuttling stuff back, since we're short on pilots and one of them is busy right now. Pilot Goldsmith is supervising from their side."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, it occurred to Singer that she should have been involved somewhere in that decision making process. But she found no fault with it, so she simply nodded. "Very good, Lieutenant. If there's nothing else, why don't you find Señor Espinoza a bunk and a shower. Are his people all bunked near each other?"
"Yes, Skipper."
"If there's a meeting room or something near there, assign it to them as their common room. I imagine Señor Espinoza will want a chance to catch them all up at some point. I don't intend to hold them completely separate from the crew, but they'll probably be happier having a space of their own, as well."
Alexander smiled just a bit, then. "Already done, Skipper. There was a store-room I've got some of the ratings repurposing as we speak."
Singer nodded and looked back to Espinoza. "Is that suitable, Señor? Is there anything else you'll need right now?"
"Plenty suitable, Skipper, and more hospitable than I might have hoped for. All I need now is that shower you mentioned, and maybe a nap, then, if the common room is ready for us, I'll want to talk to my people."
"Sounds good. One last question: I assume your ship's instance of Chef will be running her in the absence of your crew. What do you want to do if we have to abandon your ship?"
For the first time she saw Espinoza's enthusiasm dim a little. Whether it was for the idea of abandoning the ship, or the AI, she couldn't say. But he responded, "Is there any we can take him with us? Will it be weird to have two Chef-templates in the same network?"
Knowing full well he'd be listening, she said in the vague direction of her desk screen, "Chef? What's the protocol here?"
The AI appeared. "If we're certain the other instance is uncompromised, we can load him into an isolated set of processors with a VPN. We generally try to avoid having two of the same template in one network. Over time, they tend to merge into a single personality. That's not necessarily bad, but there's no separating them out again, later. If you replicate the combined person into another ship—say, back into the Grand Despot or another of Señor Espinoza's ships—it would be a replica of that combination. It would know everything we both knew."
"So there's no benefit to having two of you? It wouldn't help with your workload?"
"Not as much as having two completely different templates, Skipper. That's one reason we have different templates in the first place. They've literally spent centuries trying to figure out why two copies can't retain individuality in the same environment, like human twins or even clones might, but they've never figured it out. Best I might be able to do is throw him some things to think about for me in his bubble."
"Then, if that's acceptable both to Señor Espinoza and the other Chef, we'll plan to onboard him in a guest suite, much like his crew," Singer replied.
Chef smiled at the analogy. "Sounds good, Skipper. Anything else?"
"No, Chef. Thank you."