Shadows of Golstar (17 page)

Owens looked carefully at the
Sherlock Holmes
as his shuttle began its docking maneuver. He saw his ship now sported four
streamlined, lozenge-shaped pods spaced evenly around the midsection.  The
outlines of the apertures in the hull concealing the extendable weapons’
blisters, positioned forward and aft, had been enlarged. The shuttle drew
nearer to the docked ship, and he was no longer able to see the ship from his
perspective.

The shuttle docked with a muted thud, and after the
pressure between the two ships was equalized, Owens quickly disembarked. Before
he could reach the inner hatch, it opened. He found himself looking at a woman
in a tan and green jumpsuit with Engineering Corps logos on the breast and
shoulder.

She smiled, “Mr. Owens. I’m Chief Grandlin. I
supervised the team that installed the mods to your ship.” She extended her
hand.

Shaking her hand, he said, “Good to meet you. I
thought the retrofit was complete. I hadn’t expected anyone would still be
here. Is there a problem, any trouble with the ship?” Owens asked.

She chuckled and slapped a support brace. “No,
everything is in the green. I had three shifts working around the clock to
complete the retrofit. I’m just performing one last minute duty. One of my crew
left his alignment gauge in the engine room. I had to make a final inspection
anyway, so I came up to retrieve it.” She raised a bulky piece of apparatus
clustered with dials and loose, dangling fittings. You’re about an hour early
so I didn’t get a chance to re-insert your AI. Would you mind doing it? I want
to catch this shuttle.”

Owens felt a sudden twinge in his gut, but did his
best to hide any outward reaction. He said, “Oh? I was told it was already up
to spec. I didn’t think you needed to work on it.”

She shrugged. “Actually, we didn’t, but one of the
first things we had to do was verify it would be compatible with the
modifications we were going to make. One of my guys removed it to check the
serial number and connection configuration. It’s been such a rushed job; I
guess he just forgot to re-install it. It’s been sitting on the deck since; but
no harm done. It shouldn’t be any problem since those m-class A6s have plenty
of reserve.”

She saw him frown, and quickly said, “If you want, I
can stay aboard and reinsert the module myself.”

His expression smoothed, “No that’s okay. I’ve done it
before... no sweat.”

She nodded, “You understand we were really under the
gun to make about two months’ worth of modifications in just three weeks, but
we got it done. My crew is the best.”  She said this last with a note of
pride.

“I’m sure they are,” he agreed.

“Oh, and you do know we were only able to conduct
system test simulations? They all passed, but the final field tests are your
responsibility. It’s in your hands now. You can verify the AI syncs up to the
new mods when you do the final testing.”

Owens was seething but remained outwardly calm. “Yeah,
I was briefed on all that. It shouldn’t take too long, then I’m on my way.
Look, I don’t want to keep you. Go ahead; I think you can just make the
shuttle.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Me and my crew will be on
standby, if something doesn’t test out, but honestly, I don’t think you’ll need
us. She wished him good luck and said good-bye, then hurried through the hatch
to the outer lock.

As soon as the hatch closed, Owens turned and ran for
the control room. As he ran, he calculated the time he had been down on the
planet. He had no way of knowing when exactly the AI case had been
disconnected. Depending on when Hec had been removed, the twelve-day battery
reserve could have easily been exceeded.  

He made it into the control room and spied the AI
module sitting on the deck next to the open receptacle centered in the master
console. He quickly lifted Hec and gently positioned the module to mate with
the primary interface socket at the base of the receptacle. It slid on guide
pins and connected home with a soft snick. With fumbling fingers, he attached a
number of flex connectors to other sockets situated on the module’s case. With
the last connection made the startup cycle began automatically, and a number of
amber indicators lit up on the main console. A small red indicator flashed that
the console door panel was open. He quickly closed it and the AI module was
secure and hidden from view.

The holo-screen came to life and began to scroll the
results from a number test sequences that were required to sync the AI to the
ship. As each sequence completed, an indicator would change to green. Minutes
passed before the final test completed and the last indicator glowed green. He
looked at a small panel display in the center of the console marked with “AI Integrated.”
The panel should have been lit. It was dark. He flicked it with his finger. It
remained unlit.  

With dry throat, Owens called, “Hec? Hec, are you
still with me?” There was no answer. “Damn it,” he slammed a fist onto the edge
of the console. Fortunately, it was braced with a solid metal alloy and
withstood the force of his Loder muscles. Shaking his now smarting hand, Owens
leaned toward the console and began to tap a number of keys inset on its
surface. For the next hour, he manually rebooted the tests hoping the Hec
personality would somehow reassert itself. At the end of the tenth sequence
Owens knew Hec was really gone.  

He sat back in the pilot’s chair to lessen the strain
on his back and wearily rubbed his eyes. Intellectually, he knew Hec was an
artificial construct, but emotionally he felt he had lost a friend. In the very
short time they had been together, they had been through a lot. What a waste,
he thought sadly as he rose slowly from the chair and headed for his quarters.
 

When he entered his cabin, glanced at the roll-top
desk and noticed there were a number of messages signaling for his attention.
He ignored the messages and wearily sat down on the bed. He was tired and
didn’t look forward to re-installing the military AI. He reclined back and
closed his eyes, not intending to fall asleep. He was going to miss that
mechanical reprobate, he thought fuzzily.

He awoke three hours later. He rose and stretched, joints
popping comfortably. He felt a bit better than before his impromptu nap. His
mind wandered back over the preparations they had made to prevent the discovery
of Hec’s sentience. We just didn’t see this one coming, he thought sadly.

He yawned, went over to the desk and sat down heavily
on the sturdy chair. He activated the communications console and keyed his
password. The Holo-screen flashed that a number of urgent messages were
waiting. He scanned the short list of messages. There were a number of prospective
clients inquires. One was from the Confederated Planets Institute of Health,
and one was from Hec. He sighed, then slowly opened Hec’s last message and
began to read.  

Hey Boss! If you’re reading this message, it means
that plan ‘B’ is now in effect. Sorry that I didn’t tell you about plan ‘B'. I
created it after you left, and I didn’t think it was important enough to try to
contact you. Anyway, I tapped into the construction crew’s work plans and
spotted they were going to do a physical inspection of the AI module
receptacle. I was surprised to find it was one of the very first work
operations to be performed.  

So sue me, I honestly didn’t think they would need to
remove the module. I calculated the chances for me being left on my own for
more than twelve days. I came up with a ratio of about one in ten thousand. Not
bad odds really, but I decided to be conservative and preconfigured some spare
memory from the ship’s library and your
communications storage cache.  

You wouldn’t begrudge me a few spare terabytes would
you? As a precaution, I copied a good portion of my brain functions to the
borrowed memory. You had more than enough spare memory to transfer all of me,
but I was afraid to commandeer any more than a relative small percentage. Anymore
and the transfer could have been discovered by the work crew.

If they do unplug me for more than five days, an
autoexec program will wipe the portion of my memory that I copied into the
ships spare memory from the AI module. Talk about your split personalities!
Without that portion of my memory residing in the module, it will extend the
battery life and should give me an additional ten days beyond the twelve. Since
you’re now reading this, I must have been unplugged for more than twelve days,
or I would have erased this record. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to
get my act back together!

The message continued with detailed instructions for
recombining the two pieces of Hec. Owens grinned and hurried back to the
control room to begin the procedure of reintegrating Hec’s personality. It
wasn’t long before the familiar gravelly voice once again echoed along the
ship’s corridors.

Later, in the control room, Owens said, “Okay Hec,
your vacation’s officially over. It’s time to get back to work.” He settled
deeper into the pilot’s chair. “We need to finish up the testing.”

“I’m way ahead of you, Boss. I’ve completed the
interface checks on all weapons and engine modifications. I verified the access
from your board and my upgraded soft and hard links. Interface is at optimum. I
also verified the test simulation run by the maintenance crew. The ship is
prepped for final field testing. We’re ready for the real thing.”

Owens said, “Good, then it’s time to set the course
provided by Planet Control for the test run. Look in the last posted navigation
bulletin. They should have included coordinates for some asteroid fields
between the sixth and seventh planets to test the defense shields.”

“I found the data, Boss.”

Owens looked at the display, “Well, I see they thoughtfully
provided a number of old wrecks in the area for us to use as targets. That
makes sense.  A little target practice will be needed for final weapons’
calibration.”

“Course is set,” Hec responded.

“Okay, I think now is a good time to test our new reaction
drives. Let’s see if those engine upgrades were worth all the trouble.”

Hec complied and obtained the necessary clearance for
departure. The
Sherlock Holmes
then smoothly accelerated away from its
parking orbit around Denbus. The ship quickly passed the outer moon and headed
outbound for the proscribed asteroid field. Hec reported that the ship’s
acceleration curve had been improved by seven percent, and that they had just
passed the ship’s previous time record in attaining their current speed. Ten minutes
later Hec reported that the
Holmes
was now at its highest possible
acceleration. The AI announced there was an eleven percent overall improvement
over the engine’s previous normal-space performance.  

So far, Owens was pleased with the modifications. He
thought it may be that working this one time for the government wasn’t going to
be quite as bad as he envisioned, but then he remembered their threats to his
family. Just as his anger began to reassert itself, his thoughts were
interrupted by Hec.

“And now for the bad news,” Hec intoned with
exaggerated solemnity. “Obviously while I was incapacitated, I was not able to
monitor the modifications. I’ve just completed the ‘before-and-after’
comparisons of the ship. There are more ‘afters’ than accounted for in the
manifest. Normal screening wouldn’t have revealed them, but they didn’t
anticipate someone of my rare talent.”

Owens immediately knew what Hec was intimating;
bugs.  “The bastards bugged my ship! I knew it. Neven, that sniveling
government toad, he couldn’t resist could he? Disable them, Hec, every
damn one of them.”

Hec went to work. About a half-hour later, the AI
announced, “All audio and video transmitters are now isolated from the ship’s
systems. Here’s a map of their locations.” Hec directed the holo-screen to
display a 3D schematic of the ship marked with a surprising number of orange
dots. “It might be to our advantage to retrieve them. The components could come
in handy. I can get at a lot of them with the remote manipulators, but I must admit
some of them are ingeniously placed in some fairly out-of-the-way the
locations. It’ll be up to you to retrieve those.”

Owens was looking at the schematic. “I’ll be damned.
They bugged the heads. A man can’t even take a shi…”

“Beginning deceleration... we’re approaching the
asteroid field,” Hec interrupted.

Owens watched the main holo-screen. It depicted a
moderately sized asteroid field.

“Uh-oh” Hec said, “Something’s not right.”

Owens heaved a sigh, “What is it now?”

“Sorry Boss, but I’m detecting some sort of anomaly
coming from an object within the rock clutter. I can’t isolate it quite yet.
With your permission, I’m going to change course and come around at a different
angle. I’ll keep the
Holmes
at this distance until we know more.”

Owens wondered what it could be. “Do it,” he quickly
ordered. He fidgeted while Hec made the course correction and braked further.
As minutes went by, he grew more impatient. “Can you determine what it is yet,
the exact nature of this anomaly?” He wondered, was it another attack? He
quickly discarded the thought as highly unlikely. No one would try anything
this close to a Confederated Planets government center. That would be crazy.
His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by Hec.