Day 00003 Mission Nilex
Gareth awoke to find himself staring at the ceiling.
«Report,» he mentally asked as he swung his feet to the floor.
«Nothing to report, Captain. We continue accelerating from Sol, northwards of the elliptical plane. Engines continuing to increase thrust to match our mass scalar and operating well within expectancy.
«No contact from the Sol system.
«All internal systems at one hundred percent efficiency.
«Cold sleep vault integrity one hundred percent, systems all green.
«Our guests are in Hangar 2 performing their tasks.
«I have launched twenty-five globe drones for observation purposes.
«End report.»
He absorbed the information as he got dressed in his ship clothes, his mind coming to focus, preparing itself for business. Canaisis being impersonal and her flat tone of voice told him she was doing some serious thinking.
Turning sharply to head for the Bridge, he slid his sidearm home into its holster.
«It's nothing to worry about, Captain,» came Canaisis' voice in his head, her voice soft and Human again.
«Well, what had you so tied up, then?»
«I was trying to get a better image, that's all. Running algorithms to clean up the pixel distortion from twenty-five separate viewpoints. I didn't mean to upset you.»
He turned into the break room instead and prepared his morning tea.
«And what has your interest, Canaisis?»
«A ship was in transit to Earth from Maar when it fired up its engines and accelerated to maximum thrust. Quite unusual and very inefficient, since it's one-third of its way into its voyage. I determined that it's headed for Earth, but it appears to have a military design and weaponry, so my interest was piqued. I needed to see around my engines' thrust, so I launched the globe drones. Enough to get a good triangular focus on Earth as well as keeping eye on everything else.»
He understood what she meant by triangulation. By sending out the globes and spreading them out, she could get visual images over a wide area. Overlapping those images would give a more complete image with some sense of depth from the different angles of the object in question. He headed for the Bridge with his tea in a bulb.
When he reached his Captain's chair, he said aloud, "Show me, please."
The wall monitor came to life, showing an image of stars.
"This is when I first noticed the ship in question," Canaisis said, her voice drifting across the Bridge.
His chair powered up, but the rest of the room's consoles remained dark. They were unnecessary.
The image of the starfield distorted as she zoomed in to show a ship. Its image was small from the distance, but half of it showed clearly where the sunlight struck it. Gareth made note of dark small holes in the bow, and larger openings along the sides confirmed Canaisis' suspicion. The large antennas around its middle made it more apparent of its purpose. If he wasn't mistaken, those small holes were missile launchers, and the openings along the side were for launching fighters.
"Its path to Earth is confirmed?" he inquired.
"Yes, Captain. It was coasting when it began accelerating. At this stage of its journey, this will be an enormous waste of fuel and turnaround deceleration will require quite a high G-force."
YOU ARE READING
CANAISIS ∞ Chronicle One: The Last Living Ship ∞ 1: A New Mission
Science FictionBook 1 of CANAISIS ∞ The Last Living Ship trilogy (Chronicles of Canaisis 1) Can a ship, born to sail the ocean of stars to ensure Humankind's survival, save her Captain from the void within his own heart? ∞ ∞ ∞ Canaisis is the last of her kind, a L...
