Chapter Sixty-Three - Busy as Always
“Day,” The Weeping of Mothers sent as Day and Twilight came closer to Ceres.
“Hello,” Day sent back. “We’re back!”
“I’d noticed, yes,” the older AI sent. “I think most of us noticed, actually. You’re emitting enough radiation that Dawn started to worry about the prisoners, and they’re quite some distance away.
Day instantly froze up, then started running some very rapid calculations.
“Don’t worry. They’re fine. She put up some shielding and the asteroid they’re housed on is far enough that it wouldn’t be an issue even without that. In any case, where did you find a torchship?”
“Ah, Twilight found it,” Day said. Just in case, she started the shut-down procedures on the Deliverance. The ship was surprisingly thrusty for something so large. She could see why the idea of using nuclear thrust might have once been tempting. It had fantastic overall fuel efficiency and a decently strong thrust coefficient even taking into account the size of the reactor and all the heat sinks and cooling that was needed to make it work.
The issue, of course, was that it was all wildly dangerous to anything organic and for most older computing systems.
Day and her siblings were designed to be able to withstand a fair amount of radiation, of course, and her cores were all enveloped in interlocking lead plates and electromagnetic shielding to prevent exactly that kind of thing from bothering her too much, but the humans who’d designed this ship were very much not immune to the dangers it presented.
“This is the Deliverance, it’s a ship Twilight discovered in Jupiter’s lagrange point. It’s pretty old. Early human expansionist era.”
“A relic,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “Bring it here, we can give it a proper look. At worst it might have some fuel that we can use, and at best, we might learn a thing or two from it.”
“I was hoping that would be the case,” Day replied. “There are interesting life support systems onboard. And some strange computing systems that I think fell out of favour for more easily mass-produced systems.”
“I’ll look at those,” Dawn pipped up, and day retraced the direction of the call only to find it routed from a tiny satellite nearby. Following the trace from there leads to another satellite, then another. Day soon gave up as she started to uncover a network of them peppered around Ceres’ far orbit. It looked like the beginnings of a large multi-node radio telescope of sorts.
Day and Twilight worked together to bring the Deliverance to a slow stop above Ceres, then it fell into the waiting graspers of The Weeping of Mother’s drones, who admittedly had some difficulty finding places to hold onto the ship. The Deliverance was deceptively fragile, the way it was built. It wasn’t a warship, that was for certain.
“Will you two be staying around for a while?” The Weeping of Mothers asked.
“At least a little while,” Day said. “I... don’t know what I’ll be doing next. I suppose I’ll go where I’m needed. But I do want to replenish and restock. I’ve been zipping around for a while.”
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“You have a number of upgrades waiting for you as well,” Dawn said. This time Day spotted her sister. She was drifting along in a stable orbit around Ceres, just outside of the main traffic leading from their main base and out. “That applies even more to you, Twilight. Day at least has a working prototype of the French drive.”
“Urgh,” Twilight said. “That things going to ruin my curves.”
“I’m sure we have time to work out a nice, stealthy housing for yours,” Day said. “Something that won’t break up your design too much if it’s so important for you. In any case, the shipyard’s being used right now, I don’t think we have much room to get our upgrades in just yet.”
“It’ll clear soon enough,” Dawn said. “I’ve been working with The Weeping of Mothers to prepare our newest sibling’s core.”
“Oh? Can we talk to her yet?” Day asked.
Dawn sent back a negative, then a long report on the state of the core, which while it had cone on a few times, had yet to pass all of its diagnostics and wasn’t quite ready for a meet-and-greet. Soon though. The hull that sister would be occupying was almost complete, in any case. The MAC cannon it was going to employ was installed already, and most of its main components were all in place. All that was left, it seemed, was assembly of the outer hull and lots of small details that needed to be checked and prepped.
“Ah, okay,” Day said. She was a little disappointed, but not too much so. She had other things to worry about. She turned her attention back towards The Weeping of Mothers and sent a few questions her way while she hovered over Ceres. “I’ve got two questions, in order of importance, I suppose. First, do you know anything about the ERF Brief Candle? And are you familiar with any of these NASA missions? If they were running experimental ships, then we might be able to grab some interesting technology from them.”
The Weeping of Mothers answered almost right away. “So, you’ve looked into your memories? I’m glad! And I hope you haven’t found anything too distressing, but if you have, well, I’m here. As for Brief Candle. I think the ship was lost over Mars. I have some drone scans from about six years ago that indicate it's in an unstable orbit around Mars right now. A high elliptical orbit. We could investigate, if you wish. As for NASA, I think the association fell in popularity and reach as more and more of humanity found their way to the stars. They continued to do research until the end though, even if their budget took a hit. I can fill you in on a lot about them, of course.”
“Of course?” Day repeated.
“Yes, of course. I was once a research vessel myself, you know. Before I became The Weeping of Mothers I was The Mother of Innovation. I was a joint ESA, NASA ship, back when I had a full crew. We were stationed around Saturn, which was quickly becoming the new frontier of space and one of the hottest areas of expansion before the Accord arrived. Which reminds me, we should send out an expedition that way, one of these days.”
***