Misjump Read online

  Chapter 12

  It was raining again the next day, a slow drizzle that would soak anyone in tiny increments that they would barely notice. Fortunately for Gregor, the outside work was mostly under the shelter of the hull. In a regular port, these jobs would be done by ground staff, but they were easy enough for the crew. At least there were no landing fees. Everything that needed to be done was completed by lunchtime. At some point, he would need to find some fresh air filters, but they had enough for now. He walked up the ramp and closed it after himself. They were done here. He decided to try the AI system.

  “Sarafina?” He waited for a response. None came. “Fumi?” This time the response was immediate.

  “Yes, Gregor. What do you need?” Fumi’s voice was more even now, the speed problems resolved.

  “Planning meeting over lunch. Can you be there, please? Uh, please to tell the others the same,” said Gregor.

  “Got it,” said Fumi. Gregor heard the sound of a keyboard being used over the intercom before the channel was closed. The comm on his belt beeped, the tone indicating a new message. He shrugged. Maybe it was best to give Fumi jobs to do, but it felt strange using her as the ship’s AI. He went to wash up.

  As was his custom, Gregor let everyone eat their main course before starting the meeting. Dessert would be served afterward, and he had found that encouraged people to get to the point.

  “So, ship is ready and I think all is done here, yes? Anyone need more time groundside?” he asked.

  Jax was the first to speak. “There is a lot left to salvage. We could fill the hold a dozen times over.”

  “Da, sure, we could but useful stuff? What do we really need? Food and air filters and fuel and we have those. Any food will likely have spoiled and air filters? Maybe at Erste but is a wreck there.”

  Jax nodded. “Yeah, but they could be good for trading.”

  Gregor nodded. “Yes, but with who? No-one here but us.”

  Meilin raised her hand slightly, something that she often did before she spoke in meetings. “I have been thinking about this. There are several worlds within a single jump of here. If they wanted and had ships, then they could easily have salvaged here. They haven’t so maybe they don’t have ships or maybe they don’t want anything here.”

  “Or maybe they are afraid of something?” suggested Jax. He looked pointedly at Lori.

  Lori sipped her coffee, giving herself time to think. “I don’t think that there is any biological threat here now. There may have been once, but if so, it is long gone. There is something odd though. It is not just the people that are missing. We didn’t see any large animals and wouldn’t there have been something that bred out of control? When did you last see a world without dogs and cats at least? There must have been cattle or something.”

  Jax nodded. “None of the bodies that we saw looked like anything had tried to eat them.”

  “Could the world be under quarantine?” asked Gregor.

  Lori shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Meilin wrinkled her forehead. “If it was a plague, where are all the bodies? There were a few dozen at the hospital, but there must have been hundreds of patients and staff. Ivo, Jax, how many did you see?” she asked.

  Ivo answered. “There were maybe twenty-five in the police station. None at all in the houses. A few scattered around. No animal bones either that I saw. If there had been a cleanup crew, wouldn’t they have dealt with all of the people before dealing with any of the animals?”

  Gregor leaned forwards. “Da, good questions but that happened a long time ago. Question now is what we are going to do. We jump somewhere from here, I am thinking that maybe they will not be pleased to see us. Maybe we want to be careful, yes?”

  There were nods around the table. “What are you proposing?” asked Jax.

  Gregor’s face was unreadable. “Nearest major planet is Ironstone, big industrial world. We jump there but hit the jump point rolling. When we come out, we have jump to another system ready to go and head for next jump point if things look bad.”

  “If they are friendly, that is going to look like we have something to hide. It also sounds dangerous. Are you sure?” asked Lori.

  Gregor nodded. “The jump is safe enough. Commercial ships don’t approach jump fast, but navy ships train for exit like that. If we meet friendly boats out at jump point, we brake hard and blame it on bad piloting. It happens.”

  Lori shook her head. “I am not keen on this. For all we know, there could be something that we have picked up and we are a danger.” She seemed to be coming around to Jax’s idea.

  Meilin gestured vaguely. “I think that what happened here was fast. Wouldn’t we have seen symptoms if we had been infected with something?”

  Lori shook her head. “It could have a long incubation period and then strike suddenly,” she said hesitantly.

  Meilin nodded. “And everyone on Neuholme got sick at the same time when with a long incubation time? You are the expert, but does that seem likely, my friend?”

  Lori shook her head. “No. Pretty much impossible. I just don’t like to take risks that we can avoid.”

  Gregor tapped his hand on the table. “If anyone have better idea, tell me over dessert, yes?”

  “Wait!” said Fumi, her voice coming from multiple places in the room. “I didn’t see anything here because I was … I have heard about it from everyone. If we are infectious, I don’t want to risk another system. What can we do to protect them?”

  Everyone looked at Lori. She thought for a few seconds. “We don’t know that it is a disease, but I agree. It is too big a risk to ignore. When we drop into normal space near Ironstone, I think that we let the system defence boats take the lead as long as they don’t immediately open fire. The hull is airtight and a quarantine doesn’t get better than that.”

  “How long would we last against a system defence boat if they did open fire?” asked Jax looking directly at Gregor.

  Gregor smiled crookedly. “At close range, not long enough to worry that it would hurt. This is a merchantman and they would tear through us like hull was cardboard. Jump point to next system after Ironstone is close and maybe we get to it before they are in position to fire but maybe not. More maybe not than maybe, I think. If you have better idea, now is time to say it.”

  No-one had a better idea or much appetite for dessert.

  Fumi picked up the noodles with her fingers. The almost-food felt rubbery, rather like Udon noodles. She would have to get the AI working on some chopsticks next, she thought. The way that the noodles waved when she moved them seemed a little off somehow and she wondered if the simulation of the not-quite-food was wrong or whether the physics of the virtual reality wasn’t entirely as it should be. She would think about it later. She was hungry and irritable because of it. She lifted one of the noodles to her mouth and sucked one into her mouth. It was chewy and bland, which was better than she had been expecting. The texture was not quite right, but it would pass with a little sauce to give it some flavour. It was definitely a lot better than the rice had been, but being her favourite out of two choices was not much of an achievement. Maybe she would work on some soy sauce next. A little umami would go a long way. She ate the noodles slowly, thinking about better meals that she had eaten.

  When she was finished, she stood in front of a screen and pulled up the intercom software. She paged Meilin’s cabin. There was no camera or microphone in the screen. It wasn’t a simulation of a monitor but the image that would be rendered to a screen displaying on the wall of her VR instead. Setting up a camera angle was relatively simple as it was built into the VR software.

  It took Meilin a few seconds to answer. She was a little shocked to see Fumi’s name on the screen. She walked over the wall-mounted screen, a couple of paces only; the cabins could charitably be called cosy. Meilin touched the screen to accept the call. “Hello Fumi.”

  “Hey, Meilin. Thank you for what you said earlier. That was very sweet,” said Fumi.

&nb
sp; Meilin smiled softly. “I do not think that I have heard of someone thanking the person that read their eulogy before.”

  “Yeah,” said Fumi, “I am not thrilled about being the first, but those are the breaks, I guess. Look, I wonder if you could do me a favour. We are built about the same, yes?”

  “I am a little taller, I think,” said Meilin.

  “Not in bare feet, you aren’t, sister. Your ass is a little smaller, but that will be fine. I need you to model some of my clothes for me,” said Fumi.

  Meilin looked down, breaking eye contact. “If you wish it, but who am I modelling them for, please?”

  “Me,” replied Fumi. “Well, the computer and me. I want to scan them. All I have to wear is this white tube dress thing and it makes me feel lousy. I know that no-one is looking, but I am and … well, this is hard enough without being dressed like I just came from a minimalist fancy dress party. If you model them, I can scan them and use them as a texture over mapped clothes. That should look half decent with a bit of tinkering.”

  “Oh!” Meilin paused. “Of course, I will be happy to help. Do you need me to help you scan some of the things from your room too, the furnishings or art?”

  “Yeah, good idea. Too bad we can’t scan food,” said Fumi.

  Meilin angled her head a little, lips together. “We can scan food if we like. Would that help?”

  Fumi shook her head. “Probably not. I have been trying to model some, but it has not gone well so far. Getting the look right might make it more appealing but it is not like you can scan the flavour or nutrients.”

  Meilin smiled a little broader. “Oh, I don’t know. The nanites managed to do it with you pretty well.”

  Fumi’s mouth hung open. “You. Are. A. Freaking. Genius. Never mind the clothes. Let’s start with the food. What do we have that is ready to eat? I am starving!”

  Chapter 13

  The Sarafina headed out to the jump point on an odd vector. Usually, a commercial ship would carefully approach the “soft spot” and engage its hyperspace shunt. Velocity was conserved on a per universe basis. Velocity in the rational universe didn’t apply in tau space but would still be there when the ship returned to normal space. Running jumps were a naval tactic designed to avoid jumping into a fixed field of fire when entering a hostile star system, but traders didn’t have a need for that. In peaceful space, there were system defence boats stationed near jump points to enforce customs and to defend against theoretical pirates.

  Gregor sat in the cockpit, his eyes continually switching between displays. The AI was back up but sluggish since it was sharing processor time with Fumi and her VR. It was not a great deal of help as it was not trained for this sort of entry, but it would be useful if it could sanity check what he was doing. He pressed the button on the comm screen for Fumi’s room. He knew it was routed through to the VR now.

  “Fumi, is Gregor. Any way that you can give more processor to AI for a bit? Could use some help here.”

  Fumi’s image on the screen pouted for a moment. It had been upgraded from a static picture to a more realistic version of her face. “Yes, I can change the priority of the simulation, but that means that I won’t be able to do much until I have more proccessor time. Can you restore my priority as soon as possible? I have been trying to stay in real time as much as I can.”

  “Da, no problem. Send me command to restore you, okay?” said Gregor.

  Fumi nodded and started typing. The new message indicator showed up in the corner of the window and shortly after, Fumi’s image seemed to stop moving. Gregor closed the comm link. He scowled, an expression that looked very at home on his plain face. He turned back to the navigation screen and asked the AI to check the planned course. Plots appeared on display with the origin and destination systems shown side by side. The route shown matched what Gregor expected. He would arrive at Ironstone with a respectable amount of velocity. If there was anything near the entry point then he might be in trouble, but it was a tiny risk. Space was big and ships were small. If he had velocity then he had options. Accelerating from a dead stop left them vulnerable and he didn’t like that one bit. If everything looked good, he could burn off the speed in an hour or so. Unlike a navy ship, there was no automated jump available. He would set a timer that would be more precise than he could be. He would be sitting on the button in any case. He started typing commands, keyboards being more reliable than spoken instructions despite years of work. He re-ran the simulation of the jump twice and nodded before going back to the comms. He chose the ship-wide channel.

  “Jump in ten minutes. If you don’t need it and it uses power, shut it down. Ivo, you ready?” He had left all mics open and so there was some clatter over the sound of Ivo’s confirmation. The engineering screens were all echoed to the cockpit, but it was better to have someone back there. He repeated the warning at five minutes and at sixty seconds. It was not like the idlers could do anything about it, but it was in the rules and a habit. As the timer ticked down, he hovered his hand over the trigger button. The motion of the ship relative to the jump point seemed to speed up as the time got down to the last few seconds. His finger stabbed down just as the jump drive alarm sounded. The main display changed from an apparently static starscape to a shaded grey field that didn’t capture the look of hyperspace at all. Screens couldn’t reproduce the opalescence of the grey or how it somehow tugged at the eyes. Gregor turned off the main screen and sat back for a moment, looking at the engineering displays. He had left the channel to the engine room open and Ivo’s voice confirmed what he already knew.

  “Jump was good, all in the green,” said Ivo.

  “Da, smooth job. Thank you, my friend. Relieved.”

  Gregor sounded the “ship free” signal and restored the simulation to normal priority before sitting back in his chair and closing his eyes. He would get something to eat later. For now, he just wanted to relax. They would be in the jump for a full week barring disaster.

  Fumi tinkered with the code on the screen flush to the wall of the VR and saved the changes. When someone was talking to her, she would run in real-time relative to that person. If the ship needed the processing power, she would slow down enough for everything else to run reasonably well. If the ship’s systems were idling, she would use any remaining processing power and would live at several times normal speed compared to the rest of the crew. Best yet, she could arrange for her sleep times to happen when the ship’s computers were lightly loaded and get a full night of rest in under forty minutes by the standard of the rest of the crew. It meant spending a lot of time on her own but that was hardly something new. She had always been a solitary type. She pulled up the charts that showed time dilation and she was running at an average of 6.3 times normal. She might be able to improve that by sharing load across multiple ship’s systems, but she was reluctant to mess with the system that kept her alive, albeit only for some values of alive. She stretched, pulling the tension out of her back muscles. Time to eat. She switched programs and a menu appeared on the screen; it was a literal menu of foods that had been digitised. They would be created and brought into the VR as needed. So far, the choices were limited, but they were a massive improvement on her attempts at acceptable food and drink. She chose Chorizo casserole and black tea, the plate and cup popping into existence with a suitable sound effect a few millimetres above the table. They clattered down, spoiling the effect. She would have to fix that at some point, but now was not the time. She reached for her fork and started eating. She wasn’t that keen on the flavour, but it would do until she could get her favourites in the system. She also needed a better solution for what to do about the lifetime of the plates. As it stood, the food and the dishes were considered to be one object by the AI. If she dismissed the crockery then she dismissed the food that she had just eaten. Over time, the parts of the food would be assimilated by her simulated body and be considered part of her and, at that point, she could dismiss the plates. Until then, they cluttered up the VR. She
supposed that she could create a separate area of the VR for them and destroy them when they started to use too much computing power, but it was a sloppy solution and she didn’t like the idea. She also needed a better solution for what to do when the food had worked its way through the system. As it stood, she needed to define the volume of space that contained her poop and get the AI to delete it. Scanning some toilet paper would be a higher priority than new food items, that was certain. She would have done away with the need if she could, but her body remained stubbornly biological in some ways.

  She finished the meal and put the plate to one side. As she now operated with the same rights as the AI, she could control almost any of the ship’s functions. However, she didn’t know how to use most of the systems and anything that she did was possibly going to screw up the Sarafina and the crew. She didn’t want to do that, so she had best learn more about the components of the ship. She pulled up the list of manuals and decided to start with the life support section. It was not going to be an enthralling read, she suspected. She flipped to another screen to get another cup of black tea and then started in on her reading.

  #

  The week passed without incident and the crew settled down to their normal routine. They had become used to the pattern of a busy time in port and then idleness during a jump. There was little that could be done to the ship while it was in hyperspace. Going outside the hull was lethal and the essential systems could not be taken offline without dumping the ship back into normal space, possibly without enough fuel to jump again. They spent much of their time as much alone as four people could be on a small ship but met up for meals. Solitude was harder to find between the stars than most people who lived dirtside would imagine. There was a nagging concern about what they would find in the Ironstone system. The gazetteer listed the population as 1.2 plus billion. None of them wanted to think what could empty a world like that.