Authors: Joseph A. Turkot
Black Hull (2 page)
He couldn’t remember anything but
finishing the job in the Zubenalgubi system. The pick-up had gone smooth. No
valve explosion. No getting in a pod. No evacuation emergency. Just going into
cryo to wake up back home, pay for the wipe. Trade ten years of mission time
for thirty in prison. A second chance to see his children grow up. And Karen.
A
good injustice
.
“Engage ILS.”
“Authorization required.”
Mick rose from his corner and walked to
the computer. His fingers wrote a familiar pattern on its screen. The lights
dimmed, turned off. Two amber dots remained softly alive, winking. The
auxiliary power hissed, turned off. He walked to a porthole. A small latch
turned, his fingers raised its velviplastic screen.
A new black appeared: a softer, gentler
black, speckled with distant suns. He leaned against the pod wall, looking into
space.
How many others are still alive? No
ships pass the route we took—no UCA ships. What are the odds that another black
hull ship passes and detects this pod? Three billion to one?
No
. Those were good odds.
The temperature dropped. Goosebumps enlarged
on his forearm.
Jack London wrote about freezing to
death. It hadn’t sounded so bad. Hadn’t it been pleasant to warmly die upon the
Yukon? Why not here? ILS ensures a gradual exit—there will be no want for
oxygen. Comforting . . .
He left the porthole, the sight of the
gentler black, returning to the metal dark of the pod interior. It smelled like
detergent.
A clean black hull pod. A clean grave.
He closed his eyes.
I love you boys. I love you Karen. I
love you guys. I’ll miss you, too. A lot. Please don’t forget I loved you, even
though I fucked it up. I’ll always love you.
A tiny noise broke the silence: ILS
clicked on, its humming enough to subdue the siren in Mick’s head.
“System charged.”
Did I dream that?
Mick rubbed his arm.
Still cold
.
The cabin was dark, barely lighted by a thin row of soft-glowing Christmas
lights.
Why do I have to wake up? There’ll only
be an hour or two left of ILS.
He rose from the floor and approached
the terminal screen.
COMMAND>
The green letters burned his eyes. He
blinked. His fingers stroked right along the glass.
COMMAND>INPUT>
A down swipe.
COMMAND>INPUT>STATUS…
A moment of dread. Anticipation.
Why the hell couldn’t I stay asleep?
STATUS:
x02899182v223a
AUX. PWR: 98%
EPU: LVL 6
It can’t be. I am dreaming.
He turned to the cabin behind him, to
the soft black-within-black of the porthole he’d left open. He looked back to
the screen:
AUX. PWR: 98%
Not a dream
.
He drew an I, then an O on the glass.
The computer came to life. Lights brightened. He blinked and held his eyelids
together hard.
“How has auxiliary power increased?” His
voice quivered with boyish excitement.
A new hope? Not yet
.
“Record of charge at twelve hundred
hours.”
“Who charged it?” He ran to the
porthole, saw nothing but the speckled bands of deep space. He opened the other
two portholes, saw the same.
“Charge authorized by XJ71.”
“Information on XJ71.”
“XJ71, first generation android of Corp
Tech Industries. Patent year twenty-six fourteen.”
Twenty-six fourteen? Jesus Christ.
“Where is XJ71?”
“No tracking record for XJ71.”
“Full range scan, immediately.”
Mick waited. Adrenaline surged through
his veins. A black hull operation headed by an ancient android? The thought
tested itself in his head.
What else could it have been? It charged
the pod within the hour—it had to be in range still.
“Full range scan return: no trace of
heat anomalies, no trace of cross transmissions, empty matter analysis.”
“Impossible.”
“Recommended course of action: intermittent
life-support systems in wait of rescue.”
A dream
. He ran around
the cabin, then down the lone corridor of the pod, past the cryo chamber, into
the escape hatch chamber. It was lit. He inspected everything.
No trace of
entry.
A sharp metal bracket caught his head as
he raced back to the cabin. A spell of dizziness brought him to a stop.
Would
someone charge the pod and leave me to die anyway?
He looked at the
computer screen.
Same numbers
.
Computer error? Malfunctioning from
the explosion?
His fingers began a series of rapid movements over the
glossy screen. Errors. Nothing returned.
“Computer—show full pod history.”
“Cannot access pod history. Corrupted
data.”
“Check engine thrusters.”
“Thrusters A and B have failed.”
“How the hell did we get from six
percent power to ninety-eight?” The computer didn’t register Mick’s anger.
“Record of a charge authorized by XJ71.”
“What time did XJ71 authorize charge?”
“Twelve hundred hours.”
“Information on XJ71.”
“No information returned—corrupt data.”
A full reboot. I can live without ILS
for thirty minutes. No space suit. I don’t have any other option.
He ran to a corner terminal, removed a
panel, and began entering a series of commands into a small console. Several
wires moved, twisted, untwisted. The cabin went black. Soft light from space
broke the uniform dark of the pod. Mick shuffled around, removed a tiny
flashlight from a shelf, returned to his hands and knees. The air grew colder.
C’mon you piece of shit.
He fiddled against the small space under
the terminal, rearranging wires, plugs, cords, components, capacitors. His
fingers were too big.
“You piece of shit.”
NASA
F.R.I.N.G.E. ships are wireless now. Wireless.
The amber dots glowed again. Power ran
through the wires.
If this doesn’t work?
Voices spoke to
each other in his head:
Then we go to sleep. Why are you asking me that?
A picture flashed before his mind’s eye:
a picnic with his two sons, his wife, when she had been his wife: A frozen
piece of time, before the charges. His son played with a toy rocket. He was
telling stories about the beginnings of space flight. His wife looked at him
with admiration. A pioneer and a genius, the press had called him. He had
whispered many stories to his children as their eyelids failed them; he’d
inspired them, taught them principles, adventure, what it meant to be a good
man.
The screen blinked green as he turned
the terminal on again and applied full power. I/O. The cabin lit up.
“Auxiliary power level?” Though the screen
told him ninety-seven percent, he needed to hear it from the computer.
“Ninety-seven percent.”
“Record of auxiliary charge?”
“Charge authorized by XJ71 at twelve
hundred hours.”
“Information on XJ71.”
“XJ71, first generation android of Corp
Tech Industries. Patent year twenty-six fourteen.”
“What kind of ship was XJ71 in?”
“No record of tracking for XJ71.”
Same thing. It’s just troubleshooting,
you can figure this out. You’ve done this a million times. Go through each
step. Take your time.
“ILS duration at current power level?”
“ILS can be sustained for an estimated
four days at current power level.”
Relief spread. The thought of a nap
passed through his head.
I have time for it. I can sleep,
troubleshoot. Figure out this mystery—I always do. That’s why I was in
F.R.I.N.G.E.
Another voice replied:
You used to
know how to figure things out. You’re old, but even you are too young to figure
out this computer system. This ship is hundreds of years old. You spent your
career on new ships. Give up.
“Run full-range scan.”
Always do
things twice. Three times if necessary.
“Please allow three minutes for scan.”
Mick returned to all three portholes,
double-checking the blank canvas of space. Nothing moved. Stars blinked,
nothing more.
Power doesn’t just restore itself. Could the computer have had
full power the whole time, been misreading data? How long was I floating on ILS
since the explosion on Crake?
The computer beeped, data returned.
“Full range scan return: one heat
anomaly, no trace of cross transmissions, empty matter analysis.”
Adrenaline flowed again.
“Heat anomaly on display.”
The screen flashed several times,
appeared to turn off, then listed its return:
HEAT ANOMALY DETECTED:
SPACETIME REFERENT: 4.56743 x 2.1110092
x h7 o 0.12 {0.0000138}
HEAT: 19.1 kelvads at range of 8,560
miles.
SIGNATURE STRENGTH: 24 meters squared.
VELOCITY: no velocity detected.
No velocity? An error—nothing there. The
board is fried. It’s fucked.
“Double-check heat anomaly velocity.”
“No heat anomaly detected or recorded.”
The screen blanked, returned empty.
“Heat anomaly on display.”
“Data is corrupt or irretrievable.”
“Holy shit.”
He sat on the ground. Adrenaline rolled
into anxiety.
“Shut off gravity.”
He floated into the center of the cabin.
Save power.
He let his body twist through the void.
His eyes surveyed the rotating cabin.
Without a reliable computer, I could be
in range of a UCA ship and never know it. I could have thruster power and never
know it.
Something caught his eye in one of the
portholes: a moving star.
He grabbed the rail of a terminal and
pulled himself to the porthole: Blue-white and moving fast.
“Code U signal.”
“Advise against code U signal: power
consumption too great in proportion to remaining auxilia—”
“I know how much power it uses!”
“Recommend ILS—”
“Code U signal, immediately!”
“Commencing code U signal.”
The blue dot traced a line across the
speckled black of space.