Triton One Outpost
It’s dark out near the edge of the solar system. The sun is still the brightest star, but its light is not the burning yellow, as seen from Earth. It’s a far-off white speck, offering no heat or comfort, except as a navigation point if a ship needed to return home to the inner system.
It’s also very lonely out on the edge. By the year 2198 humanity has only just established a single presence this far out. “Triton One” was the optimistic name given to the station clinging to the icy surface of its namesake: the largest moon of Neptune.
There’s a type of person drawn to that isolation. The irony is that it’s not the type of person anyone would want to be stuck inside a tin can with for years.
But Triton One is a bit more than a tin can. A black carbon-fibre dome stretched tightly over a crater, its edges anchored into Triton’s surface by melting the ice and allowing it to refreeze over the anchor points.
Dotted around the outside of the dome, the various science experiment modules and communication relays known as “pingers” called out to the Kuiper belt and beyond, to interstellar space.
For the romantic at heart, Triton One persevered with humanity’s attempt to contact other life. For the militaristic at heart, it provided an early warning system if that life turned out to be hostile.
***
For Lana Sumeti, the Triton One station provided the biggest delivery contract she’d ever taken on. The onboard AI brought her ship, the Liu Xin, into a tight orbit around the large moon. It had been many months since leaving the Delta V station in Saturn's orbit and the comforting buzz of the inner system. As each month went by, the various stations and waypoints slipped out of range and the lag time between transmissions made it impossible to have a smooth conversation with another human.
That suited Lana just fine.
She had been through a lot in her early years, and she still felt— and looked like— a survivor. Short, roughly cut black hair bordered a stern face with narrow Asian eyes. A sharp chin and thinly cut lips gave the impression that she was not amused, and in no mood for small talk.
Her slightly-built body at just 5 feet 4 inches high might fool someone into thinking she didn’t have the physical prowess to back up that menacing stare of her's. If they cared to test that theory, they’d be reflecting on their mistake from the floor.
The softly beeping alarm from the ship’s AI woke her, blinking as the lights above her sleeping pod flickered on.
An oblong space in the wall of the small “bedroom” compartment contained a sleeping bag and anchor straps to prevent the occupant floating away in Zero-G. A monitor and speakers in the ceiling allowed access to ship systems while in bed.
Lana sat up and dangled her legs over the edge of her bed. Her ankles bumped into the ship’s emergency preservation pod below. The most expensive and least used component of the ship. It triggered horrible memories.
She climbed out of bed, using only one handle despite being in Zero-G, and slithered into black denim shorts, a white T-shirt and the mag-shoes that kept her upright in the ship. Her uniform of choice. The denim shorts prevented her from sliding off her leather command chair. The state of her T-shirt was a useful indicator as to when she should give her clothes an irradiation wash.
Built around a captured asteroid, providing the mass and anchor points for cargo, the Liu Xin was Lana's pride and joy— and home. At the front of the rock, the cockpit, living quarters and life-support systems were surrounded by storage tanks. In total, nearly 100 cubic metres of habitable volume. Oxygenated, pressurised, temperature regulated and “liveable”. A narrow corridor connected each compartment. Behind this small capsule of humanity, the dense, rocky asteroid stretched back the length of a football field.
Anchored to the back end, the ship’s nuclear-powered engine comprised the main thruster and several manoeuvring thrusters to send the ship in any direction required as per Newton’s third law. When on a delivery run, cargo containers were bolted to the rock around the ship’s circumference.
If it wasn’t carrying any load, the Liu Xin might be described as “sleek”, with its pointed front module followed by the oblong asteroid and the flared thrusters at the back. When it was carrying cargo, its belly fattened, giving it the appearance of a giant space-faring armadillo.
***
Ank, the ship’s AI computer, controlled everything. There are few more complex tasks than plotting inner-system space travel. The solar system’s planets and moons generate thousands of overlapping gravitational fields. If the fields were visible, they’d look like the intersecting ripples in a pond after someone had thrown a thousand pebbles into it—only in 3D. Every field affected an object’s path through the system. Keeping track of all that data, while maintaining a fast but safe and economical route, takes massive computing power.
A ship's AI also has the simultaneous task of managing life-support systems, to keep one of the most fragile creatures, a human, alive in an environment totally hostile to them.
All that cannot be controlled by any old off-the-shelf computer.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Lana had given her AI a male persona. She'd been a young girl rescued from a colony disaster by male soldiers and then bounced around within a patriarchal state bureaucracy. Men were always trying to find an angle they could use to exploit her. Now, it felt good to be a woman in her early twenties, giving the orders to an older (but inferior) male for once.
Her trust fund had bought top-notch specifications for the ship, and she’d discovered that this AI was a very advanced one. When she grew tired of ordering it about, she enjoyed its semi-intelligent conversation.
She had named him “Anh-ca” meaning “Big Brother” in her father’s native Vietnamese. Eventually, she shortened his name to “Ank”, saving her the effort of a second syllable.
“Hey Ank, are you speaking with Triton’s AI yet?” Lana asked, making her way down the tight corridor towards the cockpit, stuffing T-shirt into shorts.
Ank put on his superior but bemused voice to answer. Lana had configured a light, almost feminine voice for him. She'd had enough of macho male voices in her ears.
“Well, I’m not speaking with them right this second if that’s what you mean,” Ank huffed from the speakers in the corridor wall, as she shuffled past.
“I established contact when we arrived and asked for orbital clearance. And I’ve confirmed where they want the cargo containers dropped. I’ve also programmed the container detach and landing thruster-packs for delivery when our orbit takes us above the station. That isn’t for another 63 minutes. You could have stayed in bed, Lana.”
Lana rolled her eyes as she walked into the cockpit, her mag-shoes predicting her footfalls, alternating their magnetic currents to maintain a reasonable walking gait in the absence of gravity. She strapped herself into the command chair.
I’ve never met an AI quite so frustrating.
For three years now, she’d been trying to enhance Ank’s adaptive AI capabilities. Every conversation was supposed to contribute to his understanding of his role and her needs. It helped her develop her conversational skills, for the times when she’d need to speak to real people.
Ank sounded far more sophisticated now, than when he was booted up for the first time. But occasionally he reverted to his core programming — attempting to control everything and make her life as simple as possible. Lana hated that micro-managing. She hadn’t escaped the politics and celebrity of the Mars rescue only to be controlled and mollycoddled. She was out here making her own way and needed to be the one in control.
“Ank, can you predict and respond to every human interaction that our encounter with this space station might trigger?”
“No, Lana, I can’t.”
“So, therefore, is it better I’m out of bed and ready to communicate with the other humans on that station, even if I don’t want to?”
“Yes, Lana.”
“Thank you, Ank.”
“Lana?”
“Yes, Ank?”
“I still think I could have handled it.”
Lana sighed again. At least Ank had predicted her need for a hot cup of Earth coffee. She took a generous mouthful from the sipper cup and surveyed the small, dimly lit cockpit that was her domain.
A few feet in front of the command chair a view screen stretched across most of the curved cockpit nose. Unnecessary, given the ship's external camera's ability to project live images on the various monitors throughout the living quarters. But the ship designers had still considered a front-facing view screen important for psychological reasons.
A dark and brooding Triton now occupied most of the screen, gently turning under the ship. The icy grey world looked ominous and inhospitable against the backdrop of blackened space and twinkling stars. In an hour the black dome of the station would slip into view on the horizon.
Lana sipped her coffee and asked Ank to scroll through her usual ship status data. Projected onto the view screen with Triton as a backdrop, the soft blue text seemed to flow elegantly over the moon’s turning landscape. The Liu Xin’s engines were one hundred percent healthy and not even firing at the moment. Ank had the ship in a perfect orbit that required no thruster corrections. All engine and life-support indicators were green.
***
As Triton turned majestically in space, the domed station breached the horizon, and the Liu Xin was hailed. With a direct line of sight, it would now be easy for humans to talk to each other. The initial contact with frustrating delays had been left to the AIs, but now Lana would have to respond.
Well, here we go I suppose, she hated the thought of a conversation with strangers.
“Liu Xin, this is Triton One. Good to see you! I’m Comms Officer Lieutenant Trent Denacker, do you read?” the excitable voice sounded out of place in her cockpit.
Lana’s curiosity overcame her unwillingness to engage in small talk.
“Lieutenant Denacker? This is supposed to be a science station; why do you have a military rank?”
“I’ve only been navy for about a month. You need to catch up on your news feeds. That AI of yours can fill you in better than I can. But the gist is, we’ve been re-assigned as FSCS Navy, on account of threats from the UNE. I’m now a lieutenant. Our station chief is a major, and yeah, we’re still waiting to hear about a pay increase!” he stopped to breathe.
Lana deactivated the comm channel with Triton One to speak to Ank.
“Ank, why didn’t you tell me about the growing hostilities?”
“Well, I was going to, Lana, as soon as I determined that they would have any bearing on your day-to-day-life.”
“Ok Ank, go into programming mode, please—” she paused unnecessarily, to give him time to enter programming mode.
“Relax some criteria you use to determine what information I need. Otherwise, I’ll need to spend hours each day surfing old news feeds to make sure I don’t miss anything.”
“Yes, boss.”
She let the “boss” quip ride this time. It was good he occasionally acknowledged the hierarchy in their relationship, even if he did use that tone.
Lana reactivated the comm channel to Triton One.
“Lieutenant Denacker, it looks like our AI’s have organised the logistics of the supply drop. Is everything fine at your end?”
“Your AI did most of it, to be fair. He said something to ours about not wanting to wake you up. Sheesh. You’d think sleep would be the last thing you’d want after months in that mobile rock. Are you coming down to shake out the cobwebs? We have some pretty good homebrew bubbling away down here.”
Lana cringed. She’d already exchanged enough words with this guy. She pictured the scene—she’d be the first new person this lot had seen in ages, and their number no doubt included very horny scientists.
Ick! As to their homebrew—I very much doubt it will be a patch on my Aussie Shiraz. Nope, I’m outta here.
“Negative sorry. I have engine issues that prevent me from touching down,” she lied, “I’m returning for repairs as soon as we’re done.”
“Wow? After such a long trip? That’s too bad,” Trent sounded hugely disappointed.
The cargo deployment went without a hitch. Huge magnetic clamps released the containers and thruster packs took them away from the ship before boosting power and heading down towards Triton One. Reverse power brought the containers down in the designated zone two hundred metres from the black dome. Three containers full of rations, fuel, and water. And if they were lucky, there might be personal cargo from friends and family.
So perhaps they’ll have plenty to celebrate even without trying to get into my pants?
After staying to make sure everything arrived intact, and that her crypto payment was transferred into her digital wallet, she signed off with the usual formalities.
“Ank, please plot our course back to Delta V.”
“I’ve already done that Lana.”
“Of course you have Ank, silly me.”
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