[https://i.imgur.com/n3lD97i.jpg]

Chapter VI: Ship

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”

~ Albert Einstein 1879-1955 A.D.

(Record Intact)

507 A.E. April 25, 07:32:17 Local

JP “Sol” Starwind

New Earth Imperial Order, Delan III, Red Heaven, Dowin Engineering Planetary Headquarters

We leave Dowin and ride to dock seven in a priority transport pod Voice somehow obtained. I try to absorb all that has happened, but my mind keeps getting stuck.

“I-it talks?” Danther asks, the words pulling me out of my distraction.

“She talks,” Voice replies, aloud, and he shudders.

“She?” he asks.

“She,” Voice confirms.

“Well I suppose that isn’t terribly strange,” he says, seeming to latch onto the idea; he doesn’t realize he’s half mumbling to himself.

I grin; I can’t help it.

“Are you the ship’s A.I.?” Danther asks, still not getting it.

Voice snorts. “No,” she replies with derision. “I am and the ship is my ship, not the other way around.”

He turns to me, thunderstruck. “She thinks she’s alive, Sol.”

“Excuse me, but I am alive—alive as much as you, flesh nugget.”

And just like that, he’s lost again.

We arrive at the dock a little while later, my mind still buzzing. I stare at the ship, perplexed, and then turn to Danther. I laugh. He’s far past his depth. “Mind overdrawn?” I ask, giddy.

He just nods.

I turn back. “So, uh… permission to come aboard?” I ask.

“Permission granted,” the voice replies, amused, and the main hatch opens.

The vault-like hexagonal door shifts open and the walkway we’re on adjusts gravitational orientation to match that of the ship. Danther closes his eyes as his skin turns white; for all his mental aptitude, he can’t seem to rationalize the instinctual response to gravity shifting to make “down” the southern horizon.

“Can we just go in already?” Danther asks through his teeth.

“Weak-stomached flesh nugget,” Voice mutters.

I snigger.

“Shut up both of you!”

We enter the security checkpoint, which is apparently also an airlock, an old Earth portal-thing used to keep air from spilling out of the ship. After the machines scan us, the main door opens.

I…

It smells.

Not bad, exactly—not good, either.

“You go on,” Danther says and I turn, seeing him hunched against a wall. I just roll my eyes and proceed.

After a few steps—seeing a little more—I realize what the smell is.

It smells… old. You don’t get that smell much anymore, everything fabricated and refabricated as it is. Father Sedulus’ workshop, full of handmade furniture in various states of creation as it perpetually was, had that smell.

Walking through the ship, I feel a heaviness in my heart. Pictures hang on the walls, furniture is strewn about. There are carpets on the floors.

This isn’t a ship.

It’s… a home.

It’s… it’s the fossil of a home.

“Oh, Voice,” I say, my heart breaking.

“When are you going to stop calling me that?” she replies, but it’s hollow… empty.

“This… this was your home, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, Soma,” I say, immediately realizing my slip up. “V-Voice, I mean.”

The little girl appears before me out of nothing. “How… how long did you know?” she asks, voice very small.

“I recognized your voice as soon as you…,” I admit. “You were just too convenient—too—”

“Obvious?” she asks, tone depressed.

I grin, bittersweet. “A little obvious, yeah.”

She looks down. “I’m not very good at being a person.”

My heart, not nearly as broken as I had estimated, shatters. I stoop down, wrapping my arms around her. “You’re not very good at being alone.” I squeeze her a little. “I can’t imagine being here—in this ship—all this time with every sight a memory and everyone…”

“Gone,” she says, finishing what I can’t.

“You can join us,” Danther says from behind, surprising me. “I mean this is your ship and all, but Sol and I lost our parents.” He’s silent for a moment. “We’ve been like brothers—are brothers in every way that matters. You…,” he says, trailing off. I turn to him. “You could be our sister.”

“What happened to me thinking I’m alive?” Soma asks, somewhere between spiteful and curious.

“I understand now.”

We’re all silent for a little while. “Do you want me to show you around?” Soma asks.

“Yeah,” I reply.

“Sounds good,” Danther adds.

“A-alright!” Soma says, looking at each of us in turn. “Well the room we’re in is one of the two entery-slash-cargo rooms—the other’s on the starboard side.”

“So this ship’s bilaterally symmetric?” Danther asks.

“What?” I ask.

“Same on both side,” he answers with offhanded ease.

“Yup,” Soma replies.

Danther nods. “Something about that is soothing—not just to me,” he says when I look at him. “People have been designing most ships that way for centuries—at least on the outside.”

“It would make sailing easier,” I say.

“What?”

“You know sea ships. —even distribution of mass.”

He nods, contemplative. “I suppose the same holds true for force distribution of modern engines—at least marginally.”

“That, and it must be easier to only have to design half the ship and copy it,” I add. Danther stares at me. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Sometimes it surprises me how insightful you can be, is all.”

“Oh, fu—!” I begin looking down to Soma, who gives me a hard stare. “…uh, funny.”

“If it’s all the same, I would prefer civil vernacular aboard my ship,” she says and Danther snorts.

“So,” I say. “Uh, what are those hexagon things?”

Soma goes on to explain that the ship, a retired Earth-spec gunship, fits the modern classification of F-Class Hunter Corvette. It utilizes a “modular” design, whereby a lot of the parts and systems can be rapidly interchanged. The hexagons in question are four of sixteen utility insertion hardpoints.

We reach a tall hallway that houses another, larger version of these hexagons—this one of four—before heading down a cramped decline that empties into what is obviously some sort of dining room.

My mouth drops.

Within the dining room—along with table and it’s implements—sits twin housings meant to fabricate, ready, and fire seven-meter-long torpedoes. Two sit in the pre-lunch tubes, another pair in the ready, and two more within the fabricators themselves.

I turn back to Soma, only to see something even more… damn. At first, I can’t exactly tell, but my scanner indicates it’s some kind of weapon—a huge weapon. It’s no wonder this is designated a hunter class; the ship is practically built around this monstrosity.

“It’s a gravity dilation accelerator cannon with warp cascade capacity,” Soma says.

“A what?” I ask.

“I swear, do you ever listen when I’m talking to you? Do you have any idea how gravity even works?” Danther replies, shaking his head.

“Well it sorta just pulls stuff,” I reply, a little sheepish.

“I suppose that’s technically correct—in as much as a tongue just tastes stuff.” Danther sighs, rubbing his temple. He looks up. “Einstein described gravity less as a force than the universe’s reaction to uneven distribution of mass and energy. Dr. Albert Heidman later discovered in 2123 A.D.—never mind the history. Gravity is essentially an exotic force that leaks in from the endoverse as mass stretches space time.”

“If you think of space in two dimensions as a porous membrane,” Soma says and a helpful, colorfully designed holographic plane sort of just appears before her. She then drops a ball onto the plain and it creates a dip.

“So this slope is gravity?” I ask, dubious.

“No, no, no!” Danther says, rolling his eyes. “Look closer.”

The hologram grows and I see the way the ball stretches out the membrane, exposing little holes. I point. “So the gravity comes from those?”

“Gravity comes from the endoverse,” Soma says. “It enters through the holes.”

“But how does it work?” I ask.

“Well, mass is attracted to the holes—it’s sort of like a ‘vacuum force’ in the way that it operates. The holes open independently—infinite points attracting everything around them—and as the vectors align and create wells, the holes dilate, creating stronger points of gravity.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“So, like singularities?”

Danther nods. “Yes, actually. Those are gravitation singularities, the dilation of which is directly proportional to the mass stretching the universal membrane. We call them gravitational windows.”

My head swims a little. “So how does that thing work, then?” I ask, pointing over to cannon thing. “It sorta just, uh, dilates stuff?”

“It creates a region of intensely dilated monodirectional gravitational windows,” she says, and I can tell by her expression that my face makes it obvious enough how lost I am.

“It’s like dropping a projectile toward an ultra-massive black hole for thirty or so meters,” Danther says, exasperated.

“See,” I say, the idea clicking. “Now that makes sense! Why not just say that?”

“And, given that it has warp cascade capacity, a warp condition can be set so that the that gravitation inducement can be imparted repeatedly by rendering space so that…” He trails off, my expression of confusion more obvious than I expected. Danther sighs, eyes closed, and brow furrowed. Soma just shakes her head, grinning.

I take a more analytical approach, applying a more information-heavy filter to my sight. “I can see now why everyone wanted to get in here. Look at all the resources in that thing.”

“Holy shit!” Danther exclaims, apparently only having just realized how ridiculous the weapon actually is.

“Language!” Soma snaps.

“Sorry, I…,” Danther begins. “This thing… it…”

“Has enough material to outfit a—quote unquote—modern lineship, I know,” Soma says, the smug grin on her face downright wonderful. “Back in the day, we didn’t spread resources so thin.”

“Is… is that… Black Line rated?” Danther asks, in awe.

Soma grins. “Yup.”

The two go on to discuss the gun, words quickly devolving into math talk I neither understand nor care to understand. I meander about, inspecting a torpedo rack with about as much appreciation as my limited understanding can muster. “Yes, Sol, torpedo go boom!” I can almost hear Danther say. I roll my eyes.

I move onto the next room and freeze.

My mind doesn’t know where to start, though my eyes lock onto the obvious point of interest. A six-meter sphere floats in the middle of a large room, some fish of species I have never seen before swimming within. A wash of different blue shades illuminates the area, moving in gentle patterns, shadows cast by a wild growth of bamboo and other foliage.

“My mom had it fabricated to surprise my dad… had fish delivered from Earth itself,” Soma says, a slight edge of emptiness to her voice. I look over my shoulder, seeing Soma—another hologram of Soma—speaking to Danther behind me. “She was a doctor, my mom.” She grows quiet. I respect it. “She died before the war… treating people…”

“Soma…,” I say, kneeling and putting an arm around her shoulder.

“I tried to keep them alive, but… it-it’s been hundreds of years, and…”

“It’s okay, Soma.”

“They were my dad’s fish!” she says, crying. I wrap my arms around her. “He really loved those fish! —named all of them with my mom before she…!” She sobs, embracing me.

I start tearing up as well. I never met my parents, but the void is of a similar sort. Even so, I remain calm for her… try to feel strong and breathe… She stills after a while.

“The coral’s still alive,” I whisper.

She sniffs. “I know.”

She pulls back, looking at me. “Thanks Soma,” I say.

“For what?”

“For sharing even though it hurts.”

A bittersweet grin flashes on her face, disappearing a moment later. “Thank you for listening.”

“Do you want to tell me their names?”

She nods, and we head over to the tank, I getting stuck in the bamboo and making Soma laugh. She tells me about the fish—Bob, the yellowtail damselfish; Star, the angelfish; Basil, Leaf, and Boo, three inseparable clownfish who seem to find me utterly fascinating, and many others. She tells me how they would swim about and do various fish things, little subtleties of their limited personalities coming out over the years.

“What are those? —those clear things in each of the fish?” I ask after a while, having noticed them a couple times already. “Are they like, micro-A.I. modules?” I ask, mushing appropriate sounding words together.

“They are what’s left over…,” Soma says, sad.

“What do you mean?” I ask, but I think I already know.

“They are diamonds,” she replies simply. “I took their remains and turned the carbon into diamonds.”

“Do you think… when we start traveling, I mean—you might wanna get more fish?”

“They will just die too.”

“Everyone dies, Soma.”

She looks at me, a strange, sad forgiveness in her eyes. “I don’t.”

507 A.E. April 25, 08:02:21 Local

Danther Minth

New Earth Imperial Order, Delan III, Red Heaven, ENS Legacy

Initially, Sol and I explored together, but he wandered off while I dug into the more technical aspect of the spinal G.D.A.C.. Once I noticed he was gone, Soma informed me he had headed into what she called the “atrium” and that they were having a private conversation—whatever that means.

I decide to leave them alone, fixating on one of fabricators I see. My scans immediately indicate the presence of far more luonium formations and purnium crystals than—thousands of specimens—hell, the theories about Earth tech must be true. I can only imagine how it must have been to have rich endoversal troves of material just waiting to be fabricated to excess into any number of what must have been common devices. Even prime industrial fabricators don’t use this many luonium sources—the energy conversion must be near instantaneous in a rich enough endoversal vein.

I inspect some simulation pods, each, from the scans, looking top spec. Yet I recall this being one of those technologies that saw significant improvements after The Exodus. She must be keeping up with current technology.

“Voice?” I ask.

“You can call me Soma.”

“I… okay, sure.”

“You had a question?”

“These simulation pods… they’re new. Where did you get them?”

I wait in silence for a little while, but Voice—Soma—does not answer.

I explore the ship room by room, initially avoiding Sol in the main room, but, having made my way through the storage area opposite where I entered, have to take an elevated path around the central, octagonal room, seeing him and another Soma looking at a large spherical aquarium. I spare a couple seconds to grin and continue.

He has no idea how valuable this ship is, though, I suspect he might say the same of me.

As I enter the engine room—the room actually contains thrust-based engines, amazingly enough—I come across more perplexing oddities. The fettrium armor has chemical patterns that are ancient and incredibly inefficient by today’s standards, but internal components have configurations I had always been taught were modern—moreover in patterns that don’t match any patents I’ve ever seen. Likewise, the warp arrangement of the stealth drive has high velocity compensators and inertial opposition is near perfect—the powerplants have luonium cores larger than I have ever seen! It is only when I come to one of the ship’s eight delectium engines, that I am certain something is wrong.

It’s my design.

“Voice! Voice, what the hell is this?” I demand.

“Soma and language!”

“Soma! I’m serious!”

“It’s an engin—”

“It’s my engine design! Where did you get it?”

Soma becomes silent.

“Voice!” I yell. “Soma!”

No response.

“Soma!”

I leave the engine room, looking for Sol. My neural indicates he’s in the ship’s airlock and I make my way there, seething. Something’s up and damn, if I’m going to be—

I reach him, opening my mouth to—

Khal stands outside.

He’s more to the left than down due to the gravitational alignment, but it’s him. I look over to Sol, who just stares at the man. Sol takes a step forward, leaving the airlock. Soma follows. I take a breath, swallow, and proceed, vertigo flaring. I close my eyes, holding on to the nearest railing, and feel the gantry’s access begins reorienting the platform to planetary gravity. By the time I’m centered again, we have reached the walkway below.

“Ah, we’re all here,” Khal says, grinning. “I do not know what I have done to offend… Voice, did you call yourself? —but I still have great interest in this ship.” His disconcerting grin widens. “All the time I spent fixating over you and I never got so much as a word.”

“I don’t like you very much,” Voice—Soma—replies.

He chuckles. “To be fair, I am not a very likable person when one sees only the surface.”

We all remain silent.

“I listened to your apparently one-sided conversations with the ship, Mr. Starwind, —the ones you spent the last month giving,” he says, tone a little more distant. “You said you wanted to race. If Voice and Danther here share your intent, you will need to have this ship registered. To that effect, I have come with a sort of peace offering: I have filled out and expedited a registry request, as well as waved the entry fee for next week’s Dowin-sponsored race.” He pauses. “The Thirty-seventh Annual Delan Engineering and Cosmonautics Race.”

“That…,” I say, surprised by the gesture. “That’s actually kind of you.”

“Don’t mention it.” He grins. “Even if this ship doesn’t like me—something which I hope I can rectify—I am sure I can learn from watching her in action. I trust, Voice, you won’t have me close my eyes and cease admiring you?”

“As long as you ‘admire’ from afar.”

“Very well then.” Khal chuckles, turning to leave. “Good luck in the race.” He raises a hand, waving.

507 A.E. May 03, 22:25:09 Local

JP “Sol” Starwind

New Earth Imperial Order, Delan III, Red Heaven, ENS Legacy

ENS Legacy.

I think as I lean on the railing in the tiny CIC. I look out on a holographic window displaying the setting star. Well… sort of —the gravitational orientation is—hell, whatever.

ENS Legacy.

That’s what Soma had called the ship when I asked, needing it for the registration. I grin. When we had given the registrar an ENS—Earth Navy Ship—registry, he had thought we were joking; I’m sure even now the news is tearing across the planets. Everyone—everyone—is going to be watching the race.

ENS Legacy.

What the hell have I done to deserve this?

A week’s passed and I haven’t heard anything else from Khal, which, of course, could mean just about anything.

It took about a day for the rumors of the “Walnut’s Cracking” to spread and people began showing up in small hoards to ask questions. I asked Soma about that, though she seemed to want to keep things as quiet as possible; I do my best to respect her wishes, which, for the time being, means having all the supplies we’ll need to set off Delan III fabricated or delivered.

Watching her, I can tell she wants to go out and see all those people. Meeting Danther and myself… we’ve given her something she hasn’t had in a long time and she wants more. At the same time, though, she’s afraid…

No…

She’s… she’s shy.

The way she asks me questions—trying to make them sound off handed, but coming back to wheedle for more information… it’s hard to remember she’s hundreds of years old. Yet… she’s been watching us for centuries, but hasn’t had anyone to answer questions—hell, to even talk to.

Interacting with her, I am never not amazed by how wonderful she is. She’s so very much like a human—she’s a person, but just a different kind. It’s like when I had my learning A.I. in school, Strider—Mr. Strider—but she and her A.I. are one.

Yet it’s only now, on the eve of the race, that I’ve had the time to think about it. I never realized how much work goes into getting a ship properly prepared for travel and it eats though time like I do food. Soma’s ship hasn’t had anyone inside it in a long time, which makes this more or less like getting it ready for the first liftoff as far as the crew is concerned.

While Soma insists that all we really need is a supply of generic native matter, she obviously hasn’t had to account for human passengers in a while. Working with some degree of efficiency, I set about creating a fabrication list, which Danther, still in an absent-minded stupor over all the technology here, corrected; barely anything I added remained unaltered.

For one, I hadn’t thought to differentiate between potable and not potable water by way of storage volume; he pointed out how easily the water could get contaminated if stored in a single drum, which seems obvious now.

He also changed the configuration of rations. Evidently the stuff I chose was space inefficient; also, I hadn’t known it, but apparently food spoils if left alone for too long? I guess with fabricators that isn’t an issue.

Danther had commended me on my choice of emergency hazard suits, though. All I did was cross reference all of the basic concerns like radiation, vacuum, temperature, toxins, etc. with the likelihood of actually encountering them and balance that against the price of blueprints and fabrication. I even splurged a bit and beefed up on the exoskeletal capabilities, which Danther seemed to have forgotten.

Beyond that, he tweaked the medical, repair, and logistics lists, adding things I had forgotten, removing unnecessary items, consolidating where I hadn’t even considered cutting, and otherwise being efficient.

Simply put, it was pretty amazing watching him work.

I’d put together a topic and Danther, mind occupied with some scientific thing pertaining to this or that, would kind of just passively deconstruct my list and make it better. I had always appreciated how intelligent and he was, but he had always applied it in things I just didn’t understand or care about… like engines. Sure, I care about how fast they can make me go, but the how is just a load of gibberish. Seeing him consider things from all the angles in this, an application I can immediately understand and appreciate, gives me a different perspective…

The brainly little shit.

Yet, as the fabrication train ran, I didn’t have too many free moments; Soma introduced me to the systems. It suddenly hit me one evening that Soma wanted me to pilot Legacy, which, in turn, made me realize how ridiculous that was, given how integrated with system she is.

But I learned.

Apparently operating the whole of a ship is stressful for an A.I. and I suppose that makes a degree of sense as she explained it; when she’s roaming around the city—or whatever the digital equivalent is—she can just siphon off spare processing power from—I don’t know, processors or whatever—and relax, but while in the ship she has to rely entirely on the local power and such. Evidently processing all the numbers is not too difficult and she’s all for tackling that, but a certain sluggishness comes with creatively dealing with the unexpected—she usually just avoids any “stressful” encounters—and she’d rather I do that.

There’s also this other problem I don’t quite understand. Legacy has a lot of components and she—along with every other A.I.—has difficulty figuring out how to deal with a lot of things at once—even if they were all the same. She explained it by bringing up a human muscle, showing me how many different fibers go into making it move and all the nerves and stuff—right down to cells, cell structure, and atoms. Apparently, she has to consider all those things, where my mind sort of just realizes what the muscle is supposed to do and works with that.

Whatever the case, she wants me to deal with that and I’m so in favor of the decision.

I found it easy to adapt to the piloting; I flew in the sims enough to get quite sharp, but the… I don’t know, lack of real, always got to me and the intrigue never lasted. The sim in this ship, though, with the promise of doing it for real ever looming brought back the old adrenaline I used to get when I was just learning.

All told, she’s a beauty.

Her engines are top, precision near enough perfect. They’re also downright monsters for a ship this size and, coupled with Danther’s design—which he won’t let either Soma or myself forget—this ship is somewhat ridiculous, so far as I can tell—no, no, it’s absolutely completely Goddamned ridiculous.

Even with the restriction on warp interference, I can’t see how we can lose this race.

“Did you double check the stock list?” Danther asks, coming into the room and disrupting my thoughts.

“I had Soma do it,” I say, waving a hand. “She did it in less than a second.”

“Hmmm,” he says, mild irritation in his noises. “Lazy,” he mutters.

I just roll my eyes, not interested in the argument. “I’m goin’ta get some sleep.”

He sighs.

“Yeah, me too Sol,” I reply, doing a bad imitation of him.

“Shut up.”

I snigger.

“Soma still hasn’t told me how she got my engine design.”

I roll my eyes. “Not this aga—”

“Sol, it’s a serious thing.”

“I know, I know,” I say, not wanting to tread over the same topic yet again. “I—”

“Sol.”

“What?”

“I think I’m okay with it.”

“What?” I ask, startled. “What do you mean?”

He looks a little away, thought in his eyes. “I don’t know, it’s… Well, something in the deep of my mind just clicked. Being around her this week, I’ve just grown to trust her, you know? The old me would have thought she, as an A.I., could easily be putting on some kind of carefully calculated show, but…”

“But she’s different.”

He looks at me. “So different.” He pauses. “If she doesn’t want to tell me, there’s a reason—not just a logical response-to-counter-response operator.”

“Whatever the hell that means.”

“Language,” Soma says from nowhere.

We remain quiet for a couple moments, each content with silent thought.

“We’re going to win, tomorrow, aren’t we?”

I look at him, a grin sneaking across my face. “There’s no way we can lose.”