The Ship of the Unforgotten - Chapter 30

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Jun. X, 2565 A.C.E.

The mattress and pillow were pretty thin, but after the last few days, not to mention the last few centuries, Dann didn’t care one whit. He slept deeply and instantly, and when morning finally did draw him slowly back from sleep’s embrace, he stayed curled within his blanket shelter, clinging to every scrap of comfort it offered.

Finally his brain returned to such a state of wakefulness that he couldn’t stay cocooned any longer, and he pulled back the blanket and stretched. He was stiff and sore—oh was he ever stiff and sore. After a luxuriously long rest in a real bed though, it still somehow felt good and right.

They’d returned to the islands by unspoken consent the night before and moved into the habitation they’d camped outside of the previous night. They were intended for several dozen people, each with a private bedroom that adjoined on communal living spaces and facilities for groups of a half dozen inhabitants.

Dann rose and left his bedroom—it wasn’t much more than a narrow space for his bed, really—and stiffly entered the communal space outside. Rose had food ready; he was the last to rise. Jenny and Jackson—Lydia, he reminded himself—had already eaten.

He sat down and helped himself to toast and powdered scrambled eggs. They weren’t bad for centuries-old relics, really. The real fruit they still had left over from crossing the rain forest biome helped too; it went nicely on the toast. There was even coffee. It wasn’t exactly a barista’s best brew, but it tasted like heaven right then and right there.

There wasn’t much talk just then; everyone still had that slightly groggy sense to them that told him they felt much as he did, if maybe not quite as sore.

When he’d finished, Rose entered the room from the corridor down to the central area by the exit to the island. “Good morning, Dann,” she greeted him with a smile. “You look … better, though still a little the worse for wear.”

“’Morning Rose. Yeah, I think I’ll grab a shower in a few,” he replied.

“Good idea, but you should wait. Before you do that, I have a concern to put before you all.”

They shared a concerned glance of their own. “W-what is it?” Jenny spoke up.

“I’m deeply troubled by Lt. Cobb’s behavior.”

“You know where the lieutenant is?” Dann asked. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Rose Dawn only regained awareness of him in the late hours of the morning, and he wasn’t particularly near us so she didn’t feel it was a high enough priority to wake you. I agreed.”

“You left him out there?”

“He’s in no danger. I am afraid though that he may be a danger, both to you and the unawakened survivors still in their cryo-pods.”

The Ship of the Unforgotten - Chapter 29

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Jun. X, 2565 A.C.E.

Lieutenant Frederick Cobb ground his teeth in frustration. Where were they?

He’d been searching for what felt like hours. He’d had to fight his way past maintenance bots of all shapes and sizes, and not all of the fights had gone his way. He’d been forced to use up some of his ammunition, but he’d managed to save some of it. It had cost him though. One of the bots, something with a damned needle on it, had jabbed him and injected him with something. It hadn’t been a clean strike though, nor a full injection. That’d been the last one he had to shoot.

After that he’d wandered in delirium, fighting dizziness and the strong urge to pass out. He was pretty sure he had passed out, maybe more than once. From the state of his clothes, he’d awakened in a pool of his own vomit at least once.

He slammed a fist into a console, forgetting to brace. It took him several minutes to get himself back down to the decks; by that point he was seething in rage. He’d been blind to fall into an obvious trap like that; they’d pay for their crimes when he found them. They clearly weren’t here anymore; he was almost certain this was where he’d seen them last, the main computer lab that the cowardly one had been working on.

The traitorous computer—he knew the story they’d fed him about an AI hijacking it was a crock—babbled something to him, but he ignored it, leaving the offices behind. He drifted for a time within arms’ reach of the hatch in the main corridor.

Would they have gone the way he’d gone earlier? He knew they’d been there before; after all, they’d had everything set up to sabotage him so perfectly in the tundra biome. So no, they’d have gone somewhere else by now, he was sure. What was in the biome next to that one? He didn’t know, he realized. And that made it the perfect place to try and hide from him. Not that it’d do them any good. He could end them any time he wanted with his remote.

Once again the temptation came over him to tap the control, but he fought it down. Not yet. He had to confront them with their crimes first. He couldn’t let them off so easily.

The matter settled, he set off down the biome access tunnel.

The Ship of the Unforgotten - Chapter 28, Pt. 3

Since there was no gravity, he couldn’t even properly wilt despite the growing tide of exhaustion stealing over him. Rose glanced at him and frowned. “Dann is exhausted, and the rest of you don’t look much better. We should get to a housing station and continue this in the morning.”

“Are you sure the housing stations are safe?” Jackson added, stifling a yawn.

“With the AI disabled, certainly,” Rose said.

“How is Rose Dawn now?” Dann asked, realizing that the main computer hadn’t spoken with them yet since their return from the ship’s hull.

“She is occupied, but should be okay shortly.”

Jenny looked up sharply. “Did something happen? Shouldn’t she have been fine as soon as you disabled the AI?”

“She’s running systems checks to ensure all traces of it are purged from the system. Wouldn’t want to leave any hidden code laying around that could cause trouble in the future.”

Jenny nodded. “Is there anything I can do to help with that?”

“Actually, your assistance would be welcome, but not tonight. Tomorrow.”

They filed out through the offices, stopping briefly only to collect the phones that were still attached to the large collection of maintenance bots that hadn’t drifted off down the main corridor. The bots seemed to wake up shortly afterward, moving off to take care of various maintenance tasks around the ship. They got back in the tram cars and made their way to a safe place to sleep.

The Ship of the Unforgotten - Chapter 28, Pt. 2

“While you were outside,” the computer tech continued, eyes never leaving the AI’s housing, “and Jackson was taking care of the maintenance bots, I was working on a few different things.” She pushed and pulled against the handholds on the bulkhead, looking ready to launch toward the AI at any moment. She seemed to realize what she was doing as well, and stilled herself with a visible effort. “One of those things was that city we saw.”

“We don’t know for sure that that’s a city,” Dann started to object.

“We do know,” Jenny said. “At least we do now. After you left, I got Rose Dawn’s sensor suites up and running again. The AI caught on eventually and shut them down again, and they were useless after that, but while they were on I picked up a lot of very interesting stuff. The colony down there has been filling the air with all kinds of broadcasts. Not nearly as much as Earth was producing, but way more than I need to say, yeah, they’re definitely human, and they’ve been here a while.”

“That’s crazy,” he said. “How can that be possible? How long have they been here?”

“I can’t tell from the broadcast contents, but there’s enough development on the surface that I’d say years, or even c-centuries. Without knowing the population they had to start out with or any knowledge of their living conditions, it’s hard to tell for sure. They’ve built quite a bit and have 3 major population centers that I was able to make out on this side of the world.”

“Three doesn’t sound like that many for half a world,” Dann noted.

“Not for Earth, no, of course not, but it took time to build a lot of huge cities on Earth, too, back in prehistoric times, and they were in an environment that was ideally suited to them. Colonists on another world, like us? We’d have to focus our efforts on the best available spots, wherever they might be on the surface, and prioritize that above concerns like being close to the neighbors, right? I-I’d say they’ve done pretty well to have three cities so fast.”

Dann found himself wishing for gravity so that he could rest his head in his hands easily. If it was true that the planet had already been colonized by humanity, they had to have left after the Rose Dawn had, and obviously they had traveled a lot faster to arrive so much earlier.

The Ship of the Unforgotten - Chapter 28, Pt. 1

Some time later the passage beyond the hatch was littered with floating disabled hulks. Jackson had gone through several racks worth of the altered phones and was waiting on yet more when suddenly the behavior of the oncoming bots changed. Several were making their way toward their position when, without warning, they stopped, turned, and started toward the forward end of the ship—the bridge, where Dann and Rose were clambering about the hull.

Jackson tapped her phone’s activation sequence. “Chambers? Rose? Whatever you did, thanks,” Jackson said, relief on her face. “They’re pulling away! What did you do?”

“I think we pulled them off of you and onto us,” the reply came. “Let’s just hope it takes them a while to get to us.” Chambers’ voice was stressed, but it didn’t sound serious. She was about to reply when Pixton poked her head out through the door. “Jackson, I’ve got more for you here—oh! W-what are they doing now?” she said, eyes wide.

“Rose and Chambers,” Jackson said. “They did something, pulled their attention. I don’t know if we’re going to need those,” she gestured at the phones, “but let’s keep ‘em out here just in case they decide to come back.

<>

Dann stripped off the suit with shaking hands, barely resisting the urge to hug the enclosing bulkheads that surrounded them once again. “I am so glad to be back inside,” he said fervently.

“You did fine, Dann. In fact, you did much better than fine. Do you know you’re now in the top 1% of known human space walkers, measured by duration?”

“That’s because nobody in their right mind would want to make a habit of that,” he said. “I know I sure don’t plan to.”

He’d just stowed away the last of his suit when Pixton burst into the room, followed by a steadier Jackson. “D-do you have it? Where is it? Is that—is that it?” she asked, eyeing the large device floating beside Rose within easy gripping range.

“That’s it, at least when it’s got power,” Dann nodded wearily. He’d been out on the hull for almost 10 hours; to say he was run down was a serious understatement. “It won’t be causing us any more trouble.”

“Good,” Jackson said, “because we have more trouble.”

Dann’s heart sank. “What is it now? We didn’t lose any more people did we?”

“No, nothing like that,” Jenny said, eyes still locked on the device. She looked like she was about to attack the thing, though whether she wanted to tear it apart out of anger or a simple desire to figure out how it worked, he couldn’t say.

The Ship of the Unforgotten - Chapter 27, Pt. 2

Jenny Pixton flew through the air, her heart as light as her body, mind aflame with possibilities. Do something about the bots themselves! Of course! She shot her hand out and caught the edge of a standing desk, pivoting around her hand and hauling herself back to the deck briefly before launching off again in the direction she needed.

The problem with the maintenance bots was that while they were still under Rose Dawn’s control, they kept having their control overridden by the AI’s superior speed. But it wasn’t that much superior, and it wasn’t that much more powerful than Rose Dawn herself.

If she could somehow neutralize or even defeat the speed of the AI, then she could establish some sort of control over them. It would probably only be enough to shut them down or render them immobile, but that would be good enough.

She crashed into the bulkhead she needed, cushioning the landing with her arms. Wrenching open a cabinet, she pulled out one, two, then three racks of phones. Just the things! she thought. They’d do wonderfully. They were quite powerful for their size, already equipped with all the communications hardware she could hope for and capable of fully interfacing with the ship’s systems, and she had enough of them to take down a significant number of the maintenance bots on the ship. There’d been units enough for all of the ship’s crew and passengers after all.

Floating the racks through the air to her preferred workspace, she was tapping away at her tab well before they’d floated along behind her. This shouldn’t take too long, she thought, bits of code flashing through her mind and out through her fingers into the tab.

<>

“Sorry!” Pixton called as she hurtled through the door again, scaring the wits out of Jackson. She held a rack of phones in her arms as she flew, one in her hand, and—she was about to fly right right into one of the bots!

“Eyes forward!” she bellowed; she couldn’t do much more. She herself was wrestling with one of the blasted things. It had gotten her away from the decks, ceilings and bulkheads and she had all she could handle trying to keep it from choking her. It was a long-limbed beast, arms as flexible as the hoses they contained; they were intended to let it pressure-wash interior surfaces of the ship when it was hooked into the water conduits. Now they were trying to squeeze the life out of her. At least it wasn’t one of the vet bots; no needles to worry about.

Pixton glanced ahead with barely a hint of concern in her eyes as another set of robotic tentacles waved towards her. She held the phone in her hand out like a talisman, an almost eager look on her face. “You want me? Come get me, ugly!” she cried with a grin.

It obliged, or at least it started to. The wash-bot snagged her arm and began reeling her in, but then it started to spasm, almost as though it were having a seizure. As Pixton drifted closer and closer, the movement of the bot got jerkier, the freezing lasting longer before it burst into motion again. Finally, once she was right up next to it, it seized up and stopped moving entirely. Moving quickly, she duct taped the phone to the thing’s body.

“How’d you like that?” she called. “Sorry, I broke your toy.” Disentangling herself from the flexible arm, she kicked off its bulk; it had gripper treads to let it traverse wet decks and bulkheads easily, so it wasn’t moved by her launching. Pixton flew straight toward her and the wash-bot that was even now trying to get an arm around her throat. As Pixton got closer, her bot too began moving erratically. Jackson ducked to get her neck out of line with the arm, and then Pixton was on top of them. She slapped the phone against a flat panel on the bot’s chassis and taped it in place. “And that’s that for this round!” she said.

“Pixton? What on earth did you do?” Jackson asked, a note of real respect creeping into her tone; she didn’t waste any time pushing off the now lifelessly-drifting hulk to a bulkhead well away from it, though.

“Overrode the AI’s control. It has to work remotely, so there’s latency in the commands it sends. When my re-purposed phones are close enough, they’re fast enough to constantly override the AI’s ability to—”

“Okay, okay, I get it. You overwhelmed the signals it’s sending.”

“Yeah, basically! It’s too far from them to keep up.”

“So we just have to stick these things on them when they show up and we’re good?”

“Should be. Unless it does something like—”

“Um, Rose Dawn can hear us, let’s not give her or it any tips, huh?” Jackson said, eyebrow arched.

“R-right, good idea. Anyway, we won’t run out of these any time soon. Here’s the first batch. I’ll go make more!”