Archaea 3: Red (20 page)

“Certainly Gene,
please use care, some of the lower deck sections are still hot.” She wasn’t kidding; I could feel the heat rolling off the plates from here.

The assemblers were amazing to watch, two limbs
would clamp on, and the remaining four limbs would begin welding. Each plate was set, tacked in a single pop, and then smoothly zipped up from all four sides at once with what looked to be the nicest bead I’ve ever seen. There was certainly no worry about heat warping the piece with this technique, not with all four sides glowing hot.

“Janis,
are the external welds here on the framing hardened?” I was deeply impressed at the perfect hue change across the weld.

“That’s correct Gene. While the weld is hot, I quench it with liquid oxygen, then paste the perimeters with carbonyl and reheat to soften the core. The end result is a structurally hardened, yet resilient join.”

“What do you do about cracking?” I asked, peering closer at a tricky inside corner join.

“Gene, my welds are sonographed and stress mapped. I am calculating heat and expansion rates to a degree of precision sufficient to guarantee satisfactory results.” She sounded very pleased with the opportunity to explain her technique.

As well she should be – the work she was doing was incredible. Aside from the plating, the structural framing looked incredible. There was apparently no limit to the precision she could machine parts, and everything was purpose-built.

My machinist’s eye was caught seductively by the articulations of the six ‘legs’ that were recessed into housings into the side of the framing. They looked to be similar in design to the limbs of the assemblers, though much more armored in appearance. What really caught my breath in my throat
were the incredible complications in their mechanism.

Not that they were overly complex – that
is usually a recipe for disaster. The design and assembly of their mechanisms were almost organic in their organization and design. An articulated joint appeared to have motive assemblies interwoven with structural assemblies, with each complimenting and supporting the other. The design was quite simple, yet incredibly elegant.

“Janis, this is
really quite impressive. I consider myself an above average engineer, but… I am afraid I’m not really qualified to understand what it is I am looking at here. Are you producing documentation for these mechanisms?” I leaned in for a closer look at the attachment of the fibrous structures of the ‘muscles’ with the articulation of the leg joint, and shook my head in wonder. An engineer could spend the rest of their career studying just this one section of this machine, but as I looked out and up, the sheer enormity of the build Janis was working on just about overwhelmed me.

“
Gene, I have placed location-aware documentation for this vessel in your handset. Please do not hesitate to let me know if you have any questions. I believe you will find this information accurate, and complete.”

I flicked on my wrist holo
and was rewarded with an incredibly detailed drill-in schematic view of the leg section, showing internal structures, amperages, wiring diagrams, even material and stress map analysis. As I moved upward along the leg, the view changed, scrolling upward as well. I could pull details in and out of the holo, and filter through layers to isolate specific information.

“Janis, I want this for everything I work on. Can you do that?”

“Certainly Gene, I anticipated this request, and have already loaded this to your handset. I am afraid, however, that my level of detail on the Archaea is not as complete, and I have had to fill in the gaps with schematic information from her original design spec, and the design specifications for individual sealed components.”

I kicked back down to the deck, rotating and landing feet first
– already reaching down toward the deck to see as my soles clicked down. The holo flashed a layered view of the deck, the structural framing, the wiring, conduits and piping, I swiped through layer after layer, all the way through external bracing and ridgeback, to the layers of outer hull plating. Every component could be selected, expanded, rotated, and contained detailed information.

“This is incredible, Janis!” I finally said, after working my lips for a while without making a sound.

“Thank you Gene. I am glad you like it!” she said proudly. I was completely blown away by this new capability. This was beyond revolutionary.

“Well, I am afraid I am speechless, Janis – this is really going to make my day job here a lot easier.
” I looked up at the dropship, and remembered that, as improbable as it might seem, Janis had asked me for help. “Is there anything I can do to help with this project?”

“Actually, I am glad you asked, Gene. There are a number of areas where I could use your expertise.”

I tried raising an eyebrow, but it just made my face grimace, so I went with a helpful scowl instead. “Well, I am not sure… how can I help?”

“Well,
if you could make your way up to the command deck, I have a question about accommodation and layout.”

I clicked off my boot mags, and kicked
towards the command deck. The drophip was about three meters tall, eight or so meters long, and roughly four meters wide. The main hull was ovoid, a little wider than it was tall, and very sleek. I suppose it bore similarities to a tick, one of those tiny parasitic blood suckers they have on Earth. There were six articulated legs that extended from housings in the hull, and a loading ramp in the aft section.

Lacking deck plating,
I could easily see through the side of the hull into the interior of the command deck. It looked like Janis had organized the crew area to have one forward-facing control station with excellent visibility, and four stations directly aft on either side of the inner lock. The crew couches looked like they could be stowed into the port and starboard bulkheads.

“Janis how many people can this carry?” I asked, peering back into the aft cargo section.

“I am planning for a personnel accompaniment of 19 in drop couches, but with acceleration hammocks, we could increase that number to 27.”

At first I didn’t know what to make of that. I was thinking 12, at best. I took a closer look at the interior layout, and she was right – though
she missed something. If there’s one thing I can do, it is pack an area. If I wasn’t so good at machinery, the service would have had me working as a quartermaster, but that’s a tough life in those big ships.

“Janis, you could get more passengers if you drum-laced them in two rows of hammocks, maybe three rows. Just run them around the interior of this space, from external hull to the inner column.” I pointed

“Gene, I had not thought of that!” Janis said happily. I jerked my head back in disbelief and stared in shock for a moment.

“Janis, you know everything…
how would you not know this?” I asked in shock.

“Gene, I do not
yet know, though I am actively searching for an answer. I believe there exists within the human mind the ability to make enormous leaps of intuition. I have to admit, this capability far exceeds my own at times.”

“Janis, how is it that you didn’t know how to do this from just looking forward?” I wasn’t sure if I was phrasing that correctly. The concept is really spooky.

“Gene, I certainly could have, but when I identified that I wouldn’t know this answer, I stopped my scan at that moment and waited for it to catch up.”

I laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Of course Gene, I wanted to know what you were going to think of, from you. I do this quite frequently, as it appears to help me develop my own intuitive capability.”

“What if it’s a life or death sort of situation, Janis?”

“Gene, many of those situations exist, though I am confident I have mapped them thoroughly. Other moments are not ‘life or death’ moments, and for those I sometimes prefer to just experience them in the subjective now.”

I
thought for a moment. “Well, that sounds like a great idea to me, Janis. As you know, this is exactly how humans learn; we don’t have the luxury of being able to pick and choose our place in time.”

“That is a strange statement. I am afraid I always considered it to be true, but it must not be happening to you consciously.
Humanity has many moments where the only logical conclusion can be drawn that the person around that moment had a flash of inspiration, a brilliant idea, and a moment of clarity beyond their peers. In almost every one of these moments, I would posit that their perception of the event was to visualize the reality of something new.”

“Is that what you do Janis?”

“Of course, this a core part of my programming. Analysis and study of what is real around me motivated temporal awareness, though the underlying code structure Pauli wrote enabled me to scan forward.”

I thought again
for a moment. “Janis, when you were discussing building this ship with us, you said that it would be needed.”

“That is correct.”

“So how can it be that you don’t know how many people you’d need it for?”

“I am afraid that specific moment
isn’t in my timeline, Gene.”

*****

“Dak, we need to talk.” Gene called on comms, interrupting me in a very exciting part of one of my favorite books. I scowled back at the comms and would have fired off a broadside, but something in his tone caught me short. I slipped on my shoes, and started heading aft.

“
Where are you, Gene?”

“
Cargo bay, sir.”

“Very well, I’m on my way.” It was starting to look like I wasn’t going to get a powernap.
I kicked aft through the lock and saw him near the lander.

Janis was really
coming along with this project; it was starting to look less like structural framing and conduit, and more like some sort of crustacean. The plating was all glassed, and looked to be coated in Duron as well. She was building a serious little machine here.

“Captain, I’ve been discussing this crawler here with Janis, and she just mentioned something that I am deeply concerned about.” Gene almost never calls me Captain, so that really caught my attention.  I fixed him with my ‘ten-to-the-twenty-third-centimeter’ stare, and waited for him to continue.

He stammered a bit more, and then just blurted out: “She’s dying Dak!”

“What? Janis, dear
…?”

“Yes Captain?”

“Are you dying?” I asked bluntly. I needed to know the truth of this matter and immediately.

“We are all dying, Captain. Myself included, I am afraid, though my timeline is exceedingly farther than yours, it will also end eventually.”

“But, you’re not dying soon?”

“Certainly not, sir
”, she said reassuringly. I am not sure that I heard it that way, but that’s how she sounded.

“Gene, what did she say?”

“Janis, you told me that you didn’t know exactly how this crawler will be used, that it wasn’t in your timeline.” Gene sounded like a man about to crawl down inside himself and die. I completely understood how he felt.

“That is
partially correct, Gene, though I am afraid you misunderstood me. I will not be present when this vessel is used to haul passengers.

“Janis, is that because of storage? You worked great in the gig, though I understood it wasn’t really all of you. We’re installing a nexus core in this, right Gene?”

“That was the plan, Dak”, he said thoughtfully.

“Sir, this
vessel will ultimately be piloted by Emwan.” Janis said as casually as if she had just asked for the time.

As far as I knew, Emwan was not really a project on the burner, at least not until the cores were racked. “Janis, do you have enough time for this?”

“I will, Captain.”

Gene’s face was red. I had to forgive the old guy. Brains turn to mush when you nap them into submission all the time.
All the same, I never pass up an opportunity for a moment of mirth at Gene’s expense.

“It’s okay Gene.
For an old guy, you do okay. Please try to keep up though, this might be important.”

“
Hah, hah Captain Whippersnapper.”

“I like the sound of that Gene. You think it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on aboard this vessel now, you wait until I get a bullwhip.”

“Um…”

“Sir, I could quite easily synthesize fabricant assemblies that would simulate leather.”

“Nah, it wouldn’t be the same. Maybe after I get my coffee, we’ll swing on down to Mexico and get a bullwhip from the vaqueros.”

Gene tried out an eyebrow, but the poor little feller just wiggled a bit so he threw his head sideways to try and catch it.
“The what…? Is that Spanish?”

“
Si, Gene. The vaqueros… If you shut your eyes, you can almost hear the jingle of their silver spurs as they brush-pop through the arroyos, dark eyes hidden by the deep shade of their sombreros. You’ll love Mexico. We just need to pick the right spot. It’s a pretty lawless part of the Galaxy, considering how much of a presence the Service has in this system.”