Chapter Eighty-Five - Coffin
Day made sure the airlock was closed correctly and that the one camera into the airlock was capable of seeing them. There was no connection between the camera and the airlock’s system, so clearly it was running off of a separate security system. It was being powered, though she didn’t know if it was still entirely functional.
There wasn’t really a way of guessing without taking things apart, and that would send a... particular message.
Clearly, something was alive in this station. She doubted it was organic, but the station’s AI had to be active to keep things afloat. If someone broke into her hull and started taking things apart, she wouldn’t take it well, so Day decided to be a little more diplomatic.
She had one of her repair drones stand before the inner airlock door. It raised a gripper arm, closed the hand on the end of it, then knocked on the door. Shave and a haircut.
“Think that’ll work?” Candle asked.
“It’s a very strange bit of human cultural heritage, something that someone who is either human or who has studied humanity’s past would recognize, but I don’t think the Accord would,” Day said. “So yes, I give it decent odds of letting whomever’s on the other side know that we’re friendly. Or at least that we’re from Earth.”
“We’re, uh, not though. We’re both Venusian, technically. Though you’re a bit more Ceresian, I suppose.”
“Than it’ll let them know we’re from Sol,” Day corrected.
The airlock hissed as it opened, and Day sent Candle the smuggest non-verbal reply she could.
The room the airlock led into was obviously some sort of storage space with a bulkhead door at the end. The room had fittings on the ground for small man-portable cargo containers. The room was lit by a single light stirp, the rest of them looking as though they’d been removed some time ago.
Day moved her repair drones into the room and scanned around. No signs of anything organic. The air was stale, but technically breathable. “Dusty in here, isn’t it?” Candle asked.
“A little, yeah,” Day said. She paused one of her drones in the centre of the room and flicked on its speaker. There had been no point in trying in the airlock where she couldn’t see any microphones. Here, however? There was a chance. “Hello. I’m part of the ERF, a Sol-based fleet currently exploring the Jovian system. We’re from Earth. Or... Mars and Venus and the asteroid belt. We noticed your airship station and decided to explore it.”
“Nice little welcoming speech. Needs a bit more ‘take me to your leader’ though.”
“Oh, shush you,” Day said.
Just then the air squealed as a microphone came on, likely for the first time in a while. “Are you... human? Not the drones, of course, but the people behind them?”
The voice was masculine, and it had the breathy quality Day associated with human speech. More importantly, it spoke at a human pace. Day’s message had been a little quicker than most humans spoke, perhaps not incomprehensibly so, but still... she was used to talking to her sisters at a blistering pace.
“My name is the ERF Daybreak on Ceres,” Day said. Honesty seemed like the right choice. Some honesty, in any case. “I’m a ship AI. The distance between these drones and our ships in orbit would make it very difficult for a human operative to keep up communications.”
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“AI? Oh, I’ll take that too!” the voice said. “Right, introductions. I’m Doctor... ah, hmm. Iscariot. Doctor Iscariot.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Doctor,” Day said. She wasn’t sure what to do with that name, or the title. Human-made AI didn’t have titles, as a matter of... she supposed tradition. They might have a classification, or a name that suggested what they were for, like NOVA QUANTUM’s full name, but never a title like doctor. At least, not according to her limited records.
That didn’t mean they were dealing with a human, however.
“Ask him if he’s human,” Candle said.
Day almost chaffed, but then it was a logical question to ask, and it would be better than beating around the bush. “Are you human, Doctor Iscariot?” she asked.
“I certainly am, with all the foibles and troubles that brings.”
“Are there others, on the Condor?” Day asked while Candle cackled.
The answer was a long time in coming. “No. Not anymore. Not for some time. You... you missed the last of them by a year or two. They’re still on the station, in body, but not in soul, so to speak.”
The bulkhead door out of the room hissed open.
“Come on in. I haven't prepared for guests, but make yourselves at home.”
Day pushed her drones forward. The corridor past the room was just wide enough for two humans to pass each other side-by-side, with handles on the sides for gripping onto and, surprisingly, tracks on the ceiling. She recognized them as the kind of system some older ships had so that a crew could stay in motion while a ship was accelerating or decelerating.
She wondered if she’d discover a few suits with hooks and anchors around.
“Can you tell us about this station? About yourself, Doctor?” Day said. “And I’m sure we’d be glad to tell you about ourselves too.”
The lights came on in one direction and not the other, and Day started heading that way. It was strange, being in a place that wasn’t her own or that didn’t belong to what was essentially a sibling. She found herself a lot more worried about being polite than she had ever been before.
“I could tell you all sorts of things, of course, but let’s talk face-to-face,” he said.
“Creepy,” Candle said. “Are we sure this isn’t a trap?”
“Even if the station had railguns, at this range, we’d be able to dodge,” Dawn said, reminding them that she was there. “And I’m not detecting any sort of nefarious software or ECM. Or anything, really. The station is surprisingly quiet from within and without.”
The lights led Day to a large room, this one nearly central in the ship, and she could make out the inside of the hull plating along the curved ceiling.
The room was filled with spaces that looked as though they should have held something, at least from the dusty marks left on the ground and the slightly discoloured paint. A few pods were sitting at the far end of the room.
“I’m over here,” the doctor said over the coms. “Number 37. The last one left.”
She stopped her drones before the machine labelled 37.
Within it, enclosed in a glass coffin, was what might have been the very last human.
***