Shadow Core - The Legacy (6 page)

“The information pack I received implied that there was simply no way we would be able to perform a normal docking,” Kade replied as she entered some commands into her console. 

“Still, even under the best of circumstances that's a dangerous thing to try and we're not really equipped to pull off that kind of stunt. One wrong move and the collar could cut through an energised power line, or rupture a coolant node with explosive consequences. Why would you ever consider taking such a big risk?” Jude asked.  

“The ship was supposed to be derelict. I thought that with a bit of luck we would be able to find a safe place to cut into,” Kade explained. 

“You should ask for your money back. This ship is a lot of things, but derelict isn't one of them,” Jude pointed out the obvious as she gestured towards the main view-screen, which was showing the flashing navigation beacons being projected by the Zenith in order to guide the Icarus into position. 

Spitefully, Kade said, “Yes...I'll definitely need to have a word with John when this is all over,”.  

Astonished, Jude asked,“TO2 John? The perv?”  

“Unfortunately... yes, him,” Kade said, exasperated. 

“I thought you said; and I quote, 'I'm never working for that perverted little weasel of a man so long as I live', end quote.” Jude smiled. 

“Yes, I did say something along those lines. But his last job brought us a lot of money and the information he gave afterwards seemed genuine,” Kade said to a stunned looking Jude. 

“He was the coffee guy?” Jude asked. 

“Yep,” Kade replied. 

“Ha ha ha, I don't feel anywhere near as guilty now for skimming some of the product for us.” Jude smiled broadly. 

“Jude!! Seriously? How much did you take?” Kade asked, shocked at her sister's actions. 

“About fifty kilos. It was quality coffee!”  

“Excellent!” Kade grinned. 

The Icarus was almost in position as it performed a final set of deceleration burns from its thrusters, slowing down to a crawl and eventually stopping in almost perfect alignment with the docking port's navigation beacons.

The two ships were now sitting side by side in space, which made the Icarus's two hundred metre long frame seem utterly insignificant when compared to the Zenith's imposing superstructure.

Minutes passed and nothing happened as the crew of the Icarus waited impatiently by the airlock windows. Jude acting particularly fidgety as she stared intently at the hull of the Zenith, wondering just how much longer they would have to wait. 

Kade, who was standing besides her sister, couldn't help but wonder if the guidance system had malfunctioned. As far as she could tell there was no airlock anywhere along this section of the hull.

A few more minutes passed with no activity and then a set of warning lights on the hull of the Zenith started flashing yellow.

Kade wondered what it meant as she saw what had previously seemed to be seamless armour plating literally opening up in front of her like a set of heavy double doors, revealing the Zenith's hidden airlock.

She looked on in amazement as the control panel, on the airlock door next to her, started flashing. The Zenith was asking for confirmation that the Icarus wanted to connect before starting deployment of the docking umbilical.

Kade pressed the accept button without hesitation and a docking collar started to extend out of the Zenith's airlock, heading towards the Icarus.   

Jude watched with a stunned look as the docking umbilical, which was little more than a retractable tunnel made of polymers no stronger than your average spacesuit, was being surrounded by armour plates as it extended towards them.

Normally, docking umbilici were little more than unpressurised and flimsy tunnels, designed to allow quick access while providing basic protection for crew and cargo being exchanged between ships. Cheap and cheerful tech which had been around for millennia. And the inner umbilicus racing towards the Icarus was no different. But the armouring being applied around it was something Jude had never seen before. 

It looked as though there were six feeder slots around the airlock and each was deploying interlocking armour plates around the inner tunnel as it extended through space. The final construct seemed so heavily armoured that it looked like it could probably take a direct missile hit and survive the experience. And yet the construction seemed flexible enough that the whole thing could be purged at a moments notice.  

It offered enough protection to keep the occupants safe if the ships were attacked during a personnel transfer, which was a common tactic since this was when ships were at their most vulnerable, but still allowed the ships to be quickly disconnected so that they could achieve battle readiness at a moments notice.

This was a level of over-engineering Jude had never seen in ship designs, and it made her even more curious about the builders of the Zenith. She was also still trying to figure out why this ship looked so familiar to her, which was rather frustrating.

As Kade, Jude and Nick stood by the airlock door, waiting for the docking sequence to end, they checked over their space suit systems one last time.

The suit designs had come a long way since they were first conceived, no longer the bulky one eyed white or grey monsters of days gone by. These days the basic design was a one piece, form fitting, nano polymer suit reinforced with multiple padded layers, with a belt mounted micro generator and oxygen synthesiser. A tech harness supported the navigation thrusters and protective field generator, while the left fore-arm of the suits allowed for mounting of a user's standard Echo unit: which could interlink to all of the suits sensors and control systems for added flexibility. 

Kade's suit was red, with a golden harness.

Jude's was blue, with a silver harness.

And Nick's suit was just the standard, off the shelf basic model, white suit.

As the three of them were finishing their checks the ship shook roughly as the umbilical tunnel made contact with the Icarus.

Kade could hear the sound of the magnetic clamps striking into her ship's hull as they were energised, causing the ship to vibrate as it was locked in place.

A few seconds passed as the umbilical finished sealing up against the hull and then the lights on the airlock doors turned green. The docking sequence was complete.  

“You two ready?” Kade asked while looking at Nick and Jude. All three of them now wearing full space suits in preparation for boarding the Zenith.   

“Ready!” Jude said enthusiastically. 

“You sure you got enough crap?” Nick asked while holding two rather large and heavy cases. “I don't mind if you want to take half the ship with you, but why do I have to carry all of it?”  

“I'll take that as a yes. Let's go then!” Kade said as she activated the airlock controls.  

The inner airlock door opened, allowing them inside and quickly shutting again as the atmosphere started being pumped out of the small room.

As the airlock approached zero atmosphere the outer airlock door opened, venting the remaining gases into the unpressurised tunnel that inter-connected the two ships.

The corridor was dark, the only light coming from the Zenith's airlock on the far side of the tunnel. 

Kade took a few steps forward, into the zero gravity corridor and grabbed hold of one of the conveyor grips used to transfer personnel between ships. Squeezing it tightly as the conveyor started pulling her towards the Zenith. And Jude was about to do the same when Nick handed her a case, pointing to the obvious fact he only had two hands. She took the case and they both grabbed their conveyor grips, following Kade towards the Zenith.  

The overhead lights activated momentarily as the three of them were being pulled across the corridor, the Zenith's airlock getting progressively closer as the Icarus now looked to be a whole galaxy away.

The journey across wasn’t long, it would only take around a minute, but it felt like an eternity to Kade. 

The naturally insulating properties of space meant that she could hear little more than her own breathing and the conveyor belt felt painfully slow. She had dreamed about this moment for so long and she was so close to her goal, that this small trip was complete and utter torture. 

Kade could feel her heart rate speeding up as the conveyor finally finished its approach to the Zenith's airlock and she saw the outer airlock doors opening, inviting them inside. She stepped over the threshold, feeling gravity pull her towards the deck once again and feared she would wake up the moment she set foot in the ship she had dreamt about so many times before.

The A.I.

The room was cold and dark, with only the dim blue light from Drake's sleeper pod console illuminating the surrounding area. There were 20 pods in total, lining the walls of the room, each pod having an attached storage locker to hold the belongings of the occupant.  

The floor was made up of one metre wide inter-linked hexagonal metallic plates, giving it a silvery honey comb pattern: a common floor design throughout most sections of the Zenith.

The dominant feature of the room was a three metre wide cylindrical glass chamber that rose from the ground, centred on the far wall of the room.

The light level in the room had gradually begun increasing as the countdown approached zero. The transparent canopy on Drake's pod opening at the exact moment the countdown ended, releasing trace amounts of a vapour-like substance into the air.

Drake slowly opened his eyes, trying to get used to the light as he looked around the room from inside his pod. He was disoriented, a common side effect when waking up from stasis and was trying not to move until he regained control of his senses. Finally, he stepped out of the pod after a few minutes only to quickly lose his balance.

“Crud! I swear I'll never get used to that,” Drake said groggily after narrowly averting going head first into the cold metal floor.

“Stop complaining,” Drake heard Static's voice say, though he clearly wasn’t in the room.

“Easy for you to say from in there... I think... I'm gonna barf,” Drake said.

“It's nice and cosy in here. No cold floors or strange smells, perfect!” Static said, obviously amused.

“You're not helping!” Drake said as he regained his composure and then started walking unsteadily towards the nearby chamber.

“You're right, moment's over. Starting up the maintenance chamber. How's your body holding up?” Static asked with a clearly different tone of voice to the one he had just a moment ago; the playfulness all but gone, now replaced with genuine concern.

“My senses are muddled, my balance is shot and I feel like I'm hungover... so about as well as can be expected since we rushed the wake up sequence,” Drake replied as he stepped into the maintenance chamber.

“OK, give me 10 minutes and we'll bring you up to speed. Starting the cycle now,” Static said as Drake started to hear a very faint hum from the chamber.

Drake muttered, “I really don't like this thing.” Feeling as though his skull was being compressed while a million tiny ants paraded around every millimetre of his skin, as the chamber started to activate.  

The pressure on his head felt as though it was increasing though Drake knew there was no actual pressure, his body was just having a normal reaction to the way the chamber worked on the human anatomy. Not that knowing how the thing worked had ever made it any less unbearable.

The bio-scan was uncomfortable to go through at the best of times and having just been awakened from stasis in under an hour certainly wasn't helping. Usually, a normal reanimation sequence would take the best part of a day to run its course.  

The strain on Drake's body was becoming too much to deal with. His vision was going dark and he was starting to lose all strength in his limbs, causing him to nearly collapse on the floor. But, before that could happen, the gravity inside the chamber cut out, leaving his unconscious body to naturally revert to the foetal position as it floated peacefully inside the chamber.

Back in the virtual environment, Static was overseeing the management of the maintenance chamber, as well as reviewing the data streaming in from the probes monitoring the solar system and trying to manage several other tasks.

Information was flashing by his monitor at an incredible pace as he tried to split his attention across all the different tasks, quickly becoming frustrated.

“Damn. This day was going so well too. These visitors have a terrible sense of timing. Trust them to show up half way through a maintenance cycle,” Static said as he stared at the screen with a bored look.

“Nexus, how much longer are your diagnostics going to take?”

“Three days, two hours and twenty four minutes remaining,” Nexus replied in a monotone voice.

“Ha ha ha, three days? Ten more minutes of this and I'm going to go insane, let alone 3 days. Halt the diagnostics.”

“Authorization required.”

“Sigma-225-omega-prime. Pause diagnostics and restore full functionality,” Static ordered.

“Authorization confirmed. Pausing full systems check by order of prime user. Ending pseudo AI maintenance mode:

Unlocking Artificial Intelligence core system.

Re-connecting all high level functions.

Re-initialising Nexus Artificial Intelligence Unit.”

A minute passed and nothing happened.

Static was still busy keeping an eye on the ship's systems when he felt a hand on his left shoulder and turning around saw Nexus looking at him with her intense blue eyes. This was her true form, a fully realised artificial intelligence and one of only a handful in existence which could truly be classed as sentient.

As Nexus looked down at herself her expression changed to one of disappointment. She was wearing her default clothes, which consisted of little more than a single piece light blue suit, a tight one at that.