Long Ago
He was unaware of anything. All thought had fled his mind. Even the awareness of the passing of time had gone.
How long he sat there, he did not know. Occasionally, Canaisis' voice pressed against the void that had become his mind, but it did not penetrate. The absence of thought offered a seductive absence of the pain in his soul.
Canaisis' intrusions threatened to break that mental void, but he resisted without thought. Everything had become too much for him... his efforts futile, the results ending up the same: extinction.
<EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN PROTOCOLS INITIATED... >
<END OF FILE>
The abrupt interruption startled Ayla with a painful stab of lightning through her consciousness. She was within the darkness again, her thoughts slowing to a stop, but she knew there was more. Gathering her strength, her Gift sought the Captain—it flowed toward him, and she became him.
∞
Mental conditioning from years of training snapped across his mind like a whip. His heart skipped a beat, then raced to a pounding pace as the adrenaline hit.
Zero-G!
He was floating in the dark with emergency sirens blasting his ears. As the emergency lights kicked in, he oriented himself within his cabin.
Extending his leg, he caught the edge of the bed, pulled himself to it, then kicked for the door. One hand grabbed the doorjamb, the other hand found the slide button mounted at the center of the door. Sliding the button aside exposed a small hole designed to emit a whistle if air flowed too quickly through it, an indicator of whether there was low pressure on the other side. He heard no whistle, but his heartbeat pounding in his ears sounded like a drum.
Bracing himself, he yanked the door open and launched himself from the jamb straight at the Bridge door. His hand locked onto the handhold beside the door as he slapped the manual override panel. The door opened, and he flung himself through the air at the command chair.
"Canaisis! Report!"
No answer. Gareth's sense of alarm jumped another notch. Something was terribly wrong. His lungs sucked in heaving gulps of air as he fought his panic. Training squelched his emotions as he pulled himself into the chair and strapped in to stop his body from floating up and away.
His fingers automatically keyed the controls in the arm of his chair. First came the Bridge protocols and then the control systems. The blast door to the Bridge closed with a thud as he watched for the indicator lights to tell him the Bridge's independent environmental systems and power had come online. The alarms on the Bridge were not as loud as in the hallway, but he ignored them. He was now self-contained, and that was a necessity since he hadn't taken time to don a pressure suit.
His mind became crystal clear, prioritizing as the Bridge monitors gave him information, his hands flying over the keyboards of his chair.
Systems were not responding. He needed to assess what he did have. Canaisis was priority, but she was shut down!
How's that possible? There was no time to wonder how. He needed to know why?
Lists of alternative courses of action scrolled through his mind. Keying subsystems to run diagnostics, he found no damage to the ship seemed to have occurred. Air pressure was constant across the board. But he had power failures across multiple levels.
Next, he keyed navigation to see where he was. He should have never allowed his ship to break orbit without knowing his course. He chastised himself. He'd been lax in his duty as Captain.
Subsystems from navigation showed him three-dimensional maps on the forward monitors. Focusing on them, he fine-tuned and rotated the views to get oriented. They were outside the moon's orbit by a factor of almost three, Luna itself just coming around from Earth's horizon. Canaisis had chosen to exit Earth orbit the same way they'd come in: along the solar planetary plane with a course leading to Maar for a slingshot.
Thinking there may have been a meteorite impact, Gareth activated full active-navigation sensors and waited. A few minutes later, four red dots lit up on the monitor. He concentrated on them—it took him a minute because usually he had a crew member in charge of navigation. The dots were on an intercept course and coming fast, having originated from Luna while it was behind Earth.
Not meteorites.
He had to assume they were hostile then. Missiles. He needed options.
As an explorer-class ship, Canaisis had no defensive weapons, so he began looking at the propulsion systems. He might be able to outrun them if he could get the engines up, but he needed a full crew or Canaisis. This was more than one man could handle. He needed other options. His mind raced, desperately aware of every second passing.
Returning to the diagnostics monitor, he catalogued what subsystems he did have while he tried to come up with a plan. He had ship attitude control and thrust, so he could maneuver. Interstellar communication system was functioning, environmental and cold-sleep chambers showed all green. That was a relief. But then, that was a self-contained and ship-isolated system, so not a surprise and of no use to him.
He pondered the option of emergency jettison, but a quick assessment told him he had time. The incoming bogeys were over an hour away. Whatever had hit them had to have been energy-based to travel this distance, assuming it had fired at the same time the bogeys had launched.
He was going through subsystem after subsystem when the alarm shut off.
Ayla mentally screamed as lightning once again lashed across her mind, and a part of her reactivated with a vengeance. An infinite sea of numbers filled her, overwhelming her mind, and she felt herself splitting in two as her Gift held onto the Captain. Through her Gift, a consciousness of magnitude surged upwards with willful determination... and anger.
<PLAY NEXT FILE #D074229T000342... >
∞
The sudden silence startled Gareth, his hand pausing over the controls. Then gravity exerted itself, the pressure of the harness easing as he settled into the chair.
"Canaisis?" His tone was hopeful as he looked up at the ceiling, eyes roaming.
A small voice in the back of his mind chided him. The alarms had hindered his thoughts—he should have turned them off. As a captain, his instructors would have been disappointed in him. He'd been better than this in the past, the small voice rendered in judgement. He was guilty of self-pity—a captain had no room for himself. The ship and crew came first.
Bridge lights restored themselves, breaking the hold the small voice had over him.
"Is that you, Canaisis?"
"I'm here, Captain."
He hated to admit it to himself, but a tremendous sense of relief flooded him—he wasn't alone in this.
"Report on recent events."
"You were in your cabin, unresponsive to my hails. I sensed a strong neutrino buildup from Luna, indicative of a fusion plant generating power. I tried to get you to respond for twelve minutes to no avail. Then an energy beam washed over me, causing an emergency shutdown in order to protect my processing and memory systems."
"You're built to be impervious to most energy overloads, Canaisis. How could this happen?"
"The energy was a modulated neutrino emission. It had a unique effect on the two-dimensional particles of my system."
It was definitely an energy weapon that had hit them, then. Canaisis was built to be an explorer of the stars, and as such, designed to be immune to anything conceivable. An A.I. failure hundreds or thousands of light-years from Earth was a disaster and totally unacceptable. Canaisis had multiple redundant systems because of this, not to mention safety measures designed to prevent a failure before it occurred.
"Analyze your records, Canaisis. See if we can compensate for this energy if it hits us again. We've got a problem coming at us, and I need you."
"I already have, as soon as I came online. That will never happen again, Captain."
There was a tone to Canaisis' voice Gareth had never heard before. It struck a chord of disquiet in him he found he needed to rationalize. Maybe it was because she was still recovering. That's all. He made a mental note and refocused on the immediate problem, aware of how precious time was.
"I see the objects you're referring to, Captain, and I agree with your assessment. They most likely are weapons. I'm bringing engines online now."
A huge smile grew on his face as he sat back in his chair and looked at the forward monitor.
"Good to have you back, Canaisis. You had me scared for a minute there."
"And you me, Captain. What happened to you? You wouldn't respond to me. I was growing very concerned."
"Not now, Canaisis. We'll talk about it later. I'm not even sure myself, but right now we've got to find a solution to those bogeys coming at us."
"I'm aware. Engines will come online in one minute, but I'm not sure it will be a solution."
"What?"
"The objects are increasing speed exponentially, Captain. We don't know their range or maximum speed. Out-running them may not be an option, but running will buy us time."
He leaned over at his armchair screens. "Are all systems online?"
"I'm bringing the ones that can online, but some systems suffered hard failure."
"Run me a list of what's operationally ready now, and what systems will be, over the next hour."
Information flowed across his screen as he tried to formulate an idea for an active weapon. He was still thinking when the one-minute mark came and Canaisis announced, "Prepare for maximum thrust, Captain. This will not be gentle."
Leaning back in his chair and reclining it, he responded, "Do it, Canaisis."
The thrust came on hard and climbed to a full two-and-half G's. Laying there, each breath a struggle, he watched his armchair screen closely. It displayed an overlay of Canaisis and the missiles in relation to Earth. Numbers indicated speed and distance, but he was interested in only one piece of information as the first half-hour passed. It told him his distance from the missiles and time until impact. It dropped rapidly at first. Steadily, the rate of closure declined, and he started to hope when the force from the acceleration lessened.
They'd achieved maximum thrust. Canaisis could achieve one-G continuous thrust, and they were reaching that level. He waited as he watched the targets on his screen, but by the time the thrust had dropped to one-G, the news was not good.
"They're still closing, Captain. Time for intercept is approximately thirty minutes."
"Approximately?"
"We don't know the nature of the weapon. If they're energy-based, they may activate from some distance away."
He chastised himself—he should have thought of that.
The last thing they needed was an x-ray laser pulsed by a nuclear explosion or something worse. No telling what technical advancements had been achieved while he'd been away.
"We should jettison the cold sleep pods now, Captain, for maximum survival."
Now that the thrust from the engines was maintaining one-G, he returned his chair to up position and answered, "Negative. We don't know how the missiles will react if we suddenly have objects being released. They would definitely be targeted. We need to deal with them face on, jettison the pods at the last second. They may assume the pods are part of our debris."
"Understood."
"Give me that list of operational systems again. Are the shuttles online?"
"Shuttles are operational, but remote control systems are offline."
That was disappointing news—it had held a slim hope. Maybe he could pilot one himself? But he would need Canaisis for guidance for his idea to work.
"How about shuttle communication? Can you give navigation data to a shuttle if I pilot one?"
"What's your thinking, Captain? My systems are still limited."
"If I pilot a shuttle out, I might be able to draw the missiles off. Or get close enough to damage them directly."
"I cannot allow you to risk yourself, Captain. You have no weapons, and the missiles most likely have defensive capabilities. And you said it yourself, you might become a target as well."
She was right. It was a foolhardy risk with little chance of success. Looking at his screen on his armrest, he noted the minutes counting down. He needed an idea, and he needed it now.
"How are they locked onto us, Canaisis?"
"Most likely optically. I detected continuous laser energy on my hull in millisecond pulses before I engaged the engines."
Electric countermeasures were out then, he thought. And there was no way to hide the engine thrust. Canaisis was running hotter than a star.
"Can we throw them off by projecting an EMP?" he asked.
"Possibly, but they would need to be close, and these devices are designed for warfare. They could very well be protected against such measures."
He sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin, contemplating. "You said laser pulses?"
"Yes, Captain."
"Then they have optic receivers."
"I would assume."
He felt relief settling into his bones—he had his idea. "Then let's give them a sight they've never seen."
"I don't understand, Captain."
"Don't worry, you will. Bring the communication laser online. Get ready for ship maneuvers, and to cut the engines."
"Aye, Captain. What message am I to send?"
"No message, just continuous maximum power. When you're ready, rotate us and sweep the laser over the missiles, a tenth of a second should be enough for each target."
"Aye, Captain. Cutting engines, now."
Zero-G settled over him, then the forces of maneuvers tried to pull him from his chair, and he lost eye contact with the red dots on the monitor. He knew that Canaisis was bringing the stern of the ship into alignment with the first target. Canaisis was an interstellar explorer, equipped with a communication laser capable of reaching across the stars. Up close, its power could cut asteroids in half. When it was time, capacitors closed circuits, and the laser discharged its potential in a continuous burst.
"Targets one and two destroyed. The other two have begun evasive maneuvers. I'm running predictive algorithms."
Vengeful elation filled his mind at Canaisis' words.
"Relax and take your time, Canaisis. The maneuvers buy us time, but in the end they have to come to us. That dictates their course."
He was jerked around again by ship maneuvers when Canaisis announced, "Target three destroyed."
The ship maneuvers became violent, and it felt as if he was being pulled sideways out of his chair. Surprise took him when the main engines fired and it felt like a giant hand tried to push him through his couch at the same time the safety harness dug into his side. This lasted for almost a minute.
"Target four destroyed."
Canaisis' words brought a new feeling to him, a sense of joy that his ship was safe. He felt the ship maneuver some more, gentler this time. His eyes were on his screen, but he saw no other bogeys.
"Resuming course, Captain."
His body weight returned to normal with the one-G thrust, so he unbuckled his harness.
"Anything else coming our way?"
"No, Captain. And I detect no energy readings from Luna either."
"Well, that's something. Change our course to take us up out of the planetary plane. I want as much distance from any objects in this solar system as possible."
"Aye, Captain."
"Keep looking for anything unusual. I don't want any more surprises."
"Understood," replied Canaisis.
He stood up, his limbs shaky from adrenaline and fatigue. But now was not the time to feel weakness. He reached for his sidearm and pulled it. Gazing at it in his hand, a realization came upon him. It was not just a reminder to others of a captain's duty, it was a reminder for the Captain as well. He lifted his fingers to study the symbol of Canaisis engraved on both sides of the pommel. Then he closed his fingers, squeezing hard until the symbol hurt his fingers and palm.
I almost blew it, he thought to himself and drew one deep breath in and out. He slid the firearm back into the holster and looked up.
"Notify me immediately if you detect any activity of any kind. I'm going to check on the cold sleep pods, and then I'll catch some sleep."
"Aye, Captain."
"When we return in a few centuries, we'll have to be careful here, so try to catalog any suspect sites for future reference," he added as he waited for the blast door to open.
≈ ∞ ≈
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