Jacob worked his jaw as he rubbed at his temples, wishing he could make the lingering pain go away. Choosing to go with only one information packet had been the right choice. He decided that the eiraxins/Concord were monsters for including simulated pain in a virtual space.
He could sort of understand why they had included pain responses. Much like with a real body, pain was an indicator to stop doing something. That didn’t mean he had to like it. So far, the only upside to being digital was not having to eat, sleep, or deal with the other bodily necessities of life, and he still simulated most of those just to bring a bit of normality to his existence.
He wished he could comply with his body’s instincts and simply log off to rest and recover, but he didn’t have that luxury. So he was stuck rubbing his temples in hopes it would do something. It didn’t, but he kept at it until the painful throbbing finally subsided on its own.
Once he was finally well enough to proceed, he jumped into his drone and made his way to the ship’s engine section. With the main power restored, Melody was able to open the blast doors that sealed those sections.
Jacob had come across the sealed hatches in his previous repair work, but had ignored them in favor of getting the power back online. He was glad he did, because he had been on the brink of losing it without anyone to converse with.
He arrived alongside another drone controlled by Melody without any fanfare or issues. Unlike the section of the ship he had been working in, this area was undamaged. The last door opened, and the pair headed inside.
Jacob knew what to expect this time thanks to the data dump, but he was still surprised. Much like the reactor room, massive column-like structures extended from the floor and disappeared into the darkness overhead. He thought the reactors were enormous. The phase coils made them look small in comparison. The twelve-meter-wide columns were the phase coils themselves. He knew they extended all the way to the ceiling, which rose over three hundred meters, but the visual sensors in the drone weren’t capable of seeing that far.
“Melody, what if the coils are broken where the drones can’t reach?”
“I am not sensing any exotic radiation that would indicate direct damage to the coils, Captain.”
While that was good, that wasn’t really an answer. Jacob assumed the AI didn’t have an answer to the question because there was none.
If he came across a problem, he would figure out something.
Their first stop was the control station.
The columns gave the room an almost cathedral-like quality. It felt like he was walking through some hallowed hall. In a way, he sort of was.
The control room was clean and empty, which Jacob was thankful for. He had come across a few corpses in the cycles leading up to the reactor restart, and they always made him feel uneasy with how human-like most of them appeared. He noticed three distinct species amongst the dead. At first, he thought maybe they were enemy soldiers sent in to board the vessel, but they all wore the same tattered remains of clothing, marking them as ship crew. Jacob knew this because Melody forced him to wear a similar outfit when he first woke up. Now he wore blue jeans and a t-shirt, because the silvery jumpsuit was both ugly, uncomfortable, and way too loud for his tastes.
Jacob had been too squeamish to handle the body disposal, so he left that to the drones.
Melody trundled in behind him, and the sensor pod on its drone rotated to take in the room. “Captain, there doesn’t appear to be any damage here.”
“No, there doesn’t,” Jacob muttered as he moved over to the main console. The thing looked like it was straight out of an ’80s movie of what the future might look like. Hell, it had actual physical dials and controls, a rarity on Melody. Most of the physical controls were touch-screen-based.
There were a few of those same screens here, but otherwise, it looked ancient compared to everything else. He knew the space was a backup control room and not actively used, but the more he studied the controls, the more he frowned internally.
“Melody, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the control settings, but something looks off here.”
“That is not possible, Captain. The only reason to access this room would be if there was a catastrophic failure and the remote access systems were cut off. You would not be able to connect with the drones if that were the case.”
“What about sabotage?” Jacob asked.
“Crew loyalty is strictly monitored,” the AI responded, sounding offended by the mere suggestion that someone aboard could have acted against the crew.
“Was I checked?” Jacob asked as he stared at the controls, which were clearly set to disable the massive phase coils.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Melody was silent for a long moment following the question. “I was forced to make certain exceptions in your case, Captain.”
Jacob grunted. There was no point arguing with Melody. The AI might not believe it, but he was starting to understand why the ship hadn’t just been able to jump away when first attacked or why nobody had come looking for it afterward.
He reset the controls, and just like that, the phase coils pulsed to life.
“Congratulations on repairing the phase coils, Captain…They will take a few days to charge.”
Jacob noticed the AI’s hesitation. He suspected it was now taking his question about sabotage a bit more seriously. “Let me know before you jump.”
“Jump, Captain? I am not physically capable of jumping.”
“You know, move the ship or whatever you call it when you activate the phase coils.”
“The phase coils transition us from one point in space to another, Captain. There is no actual movement. The science behind it is rather complex. Would you like me to provide you with information on the exact process?”
“Perhaps some other time,” Jacob said as he disconnected from the drone. How the coils worked was less important to him than the fact that they worked.
***
“Final transition complete, Captain.”
Jacob sighed in relief. It had taken over a month to arrive at their destination, mostly because their transitions had to be kept short due to the damage sustained by the ship. Even so, they had travelled nearly a hundred light-years from Earth, according to Melody.
He dearly wanted to know why it and its crew were so far from a Concord outpost, but he knew Melody wouldn’t know. Instead of rehashing a pointless conversation, he studied the feeds from the few functioning external sensors in his virtual environment. A frown quickly formed on his face. “I don’t see any repair station, Melody.”
Once again, the AI went silent, and Jacob was instantly on guard. This had been an ongoing problem over the last few weeks, and he was beginning to suspect that it paused when it was embarrassed by a mistake it made.
“Apologies, Captain. It seems I made an error in my calculations.”
“You made an error in calculations?” Jacob asked in concern. The AI was already flaky; the last thing he needed was for it to go senile as well.
“Well, not an error exactly. I simply failed to account for centuries of stellar drifting. Once the phase coils recharge, I will transition us to the correct location. It isn’t far.”
“Can’t we just travel there with the normal engines?”
“We certainly could, Captain, but it would take over eighty Earth years to reach our destination using that method.”
Jacob sighed. “When you meant not far, you were referring to stellar distances?”
“Precisely, Captain.”
Jacob was barely able to comprehend the size of the ship, which turned out to be just over four kilometers in length and a kilometer in width. It would take time for his Earth-bound mind to wrap itself around the distances involved between objects in space.
***
“Final transition complete, Captain,” the AI replied.
“Is this the final, final?” Jacob asked, hiding his annoyance.
“You can see the station from here, Captain,” the AI responded without answering the question.
Jacob squinted at a faint dot in the center of one of the virtual windows. “Why are we so far away?”
“If we transitioned too close, the added gravity from the station could tear us apart. A slow approach will allow the hull to acclimate.”
“Alright,” he muttered.
After hours of what seemed like little to no change, Jacob grew frustrated. “We are moving, right?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Can we go any faster?”
“The ship is moving as fast as possible, Captain.”
“And what is our top speed?” he ground out.
“While there is a top speed, I fear you may be confusing the ship’s normal drive capabilities with human ones, Captain. This vessel doesn’t rely on propulsion to accelerate. It forms a gravitational force that pulls us along or slows us down. We are essentially falling at a set rate, a little more than the gravitational constant on Earth.”
Jacob didn’t understand much about physics, but he was aware of some things. “Won’t we reach speeds where time dilation starts to affect us?”
“I wasn’t aware that humanity had discovered that issue. You are partially correct, Captain. Even at our current speed, you are feeling extremely minor effects of time dilation. Anything in motion does, but we limit our top speed to keep the effects to a minimum.”
“Wouldn’t that make the vessel extremely slow and easy to target?” Jacob asked in confusion.
“That’s what the phase coils are for. As for combat, most of that is done from stationary positions, with drones and other weapons. You can think of my hull as more akin to your navy’s carriers than a warship, although that isn’t entirely accurate either, as I am not a warship. I am more like an operations hub or fortress. As you can see from the state of the vessel, we do take return fire. This should all be covered in the command data I gave you as captain.”
Jacob rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “I haven’t looked at it yet.”
***
It took two days to approach the station and show just how massive the structure was. He couldn’t even comprehend how large the shipyard was, but he knew it dwarfed their ship many times over.
Another thing he noticed was the lack of any activity or light. The place was dead quiet, but it didn’t look damaged. At least he couldn’t see any damage as they approached.
At some point, the station’s bulk eclipsed all of Melody’s sensors. As they slid into one of the empty bays, which had room to spare, the station finally responded to their presence.
Large arms came down and locked onto the vessel, jarring it slightly, but otherwise holding it in place. Jacob expected something more to happen, but the station went quiet once again.
“Uh, Melody, what’s going on?”
“The station is operational, and I am attempting to communicate with the station’s AI, but it is refusing to acknowledge my requests.”
“Is this an AI like you?” Jacob asked.
“No, Captain. It is a much more limited model.”
Jacob wasn’t sure, but he thought he sensed a note of derision in Melody’s tone. “Do you think it would talk with me?”
“I am unsure, Captain. Without the ability to access its network, I would not be able to forward your request to speak with it. You would have to board the station and access a command terminal to see for sure.”
“Is that even possible?” Jacob asked, not looking forward to stepping aboard some belligerent AI’s station to have a chat.
“One of the clamps also doubles as a cargo transport and airlock. You should be able to use that to cross over into the station. You also don’t need to worry about losing connection. The maintenance drone’s connections are capable of operating to a distance of thirty light minutes without issue.”
Right, he had forgotten that he wasn’t actually leaving the ship; he was only sending a remote connection out.