The Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles #1, Inception (6 page)

He adjusted the infuser and injected her arm again. This time her arm immediately expelled the foreign nanites.

When the doctor went to try a third time Cat stopped him. "I don't think my Heshe nanites are going to allow you to do that."

"Very interesting" Ken whistled.

"Maybe there is a better way to do this" Cat offered. "If you can show me a completed
comlink I can instruct my nanites to replicate it inside of me."

"You can talk to your nanites?" Ken and the doctor echo in unison.

"Not really" Cat answered. “I have a Heshe nanite controller which has its own dedicated AI... It interprets my needs."

Ken stiffened briefly with a distant look in his eyes... "Captain, we are in the medical bay. We are
having difficulty getting Catherine configured with a comlink. There seems to be a minor compatibility issue with her Heshe nanites... Yes Sir... We will be there shortly"

Ken turned to the other two. "We have
to either wrap this up or come back later... The Captain is waiting and my wife is fuming that her chicken curry is getting cold."

***

The next several days flew by in a flash. Cat was unsuccessful in her attempts to self-generate a comlink. It was frustrating because almost any other device from medical scanners to scientific calculators were easy for her nanites to absorb and internalize. As a result she could hold her hand over a person's arm and see where a break had occurred years before with an eerie ghost-like image appearing in her field of vision that would sharpen when she focused on it.

She took to carrying an external
comlink that fit in her ear canal. It required her to tap her ear to activate, but at least she was able to send and receive comms.

Most of her time was spent in main engineering working on the hyper-field issues or in her quarters going over science team personnel records. She was fifty years behind in most of the sciences. Although she had a near perfect memory it would still be many months before she would be fully comfortable in her own field, much less the host of others encompassed by her current position. She would be fully dependent on the skills of her science team, and thus she wanted to be
completely cognizant of their specific skills and backgrounds.

She was just finished reading the latest set of performance reviews when her external
comlink beeped.

"Kimbridge here."
she said when she actuated the transceiver in her ear.

"Commander," the captain’s voice filled her left ear. "Please report to the bridge. We are receiving a communication from the Heshe."

The bridge of the USC Bowman was the stuff of science fiction. Flat-panel 3D screens lined virtually every surface. These could be reconfigured at a moment’s notice to fulfill virtually any desired control or reporting function. In addition, there was a full immersion holographic projector, the likes of which had simply not been possible in the days of the ESX Arizona.

The science station...
Her science station
, Cat mused with a certain sense of pride, was typically configured at a console just to the left of the slightly raised captain's chair. As she entered the bridge the captain swiveled his chair to look at her with a quick nod. "Lt. Cortez, signal the Heshe we are ready."

Rather than heading to her station, she instead stood next to the captain. He signaled with a hand for the forward view screen to be turned on.

The ever-present image of the Orbital One shipyard was replaced by the oddly familiar visage of her recent friend and mentor, Cal.

A rainbow of colors undulated across the cephalopod's alabaster skin. Cat heard Cal's speech in her head while at the same time noting that the Bowman was receiving an audio transmission.

"
Greetings beloved of the creator.
"

"Greetings beloved of the creator" Cat returned ritually.  "How may the beloved be of service?"

"Love your neighbor and that will be service enough
!" Having completed the ritual both Cat and the Heshe waited a polite second before the Heshe continued "
My systems have detected the Heshe Expanse at the extreme end of their effective range. I will be leaving to join them immediately.
"

Despite the knowledge that this day would be coming, and the nearly three months the alien had been gone on its reconnaissance trip, Cat still felt a not so subtle pang of regret. Cal, in its own peculiar way, had become her best friend and perhaps her last tie to a past that was forever out of her reach.

"Will I see you again?"

"
If the creator ordains it... But the universe is large and we are small. I suspect not. Know this though Catherine Kimbridge, my existence is the richer for having known you.
"

"I will miss you" Cat said softly. The Heshe named Yarin Prime flushed a deep blue that Cat had learned to associate with laughter.

"
I am leaving but before I go I have a gift for you
."

"A gift?"

"
A software update for your encounter unit
"

"What will this update do?" Cat said, suddenly wary.

Captain Ramchandani leaned forward... The thought of his senior personnel receiving software updates... from aliens no less... was disconcerting. "Specify please" the captain demanded in a tone that seemed to indicate the 'please' was for politeness only.

"
I am sharing a small portion of the Heshe cultural database with Catherine Kimbridge. The update will allow her to interact with it. It is my hope that the information will allow your race to survive the challenges you will face in the coming years
."

The view screen suddenly switched back to a display of the shipyard. The captain turned towards Lt. Cortez. "Get him back!"

"I can't Sir. I have no idea where to send the signal."

"Sir" Cat interrupted, "The Heshe technology so far outpaces ours that there
really is not a chance our signal can reach it... Also, you should know, that the 'software update' has already occurred."

***

Cat spent the next several hours in the medical bay. It felt like her quality time with Admiral Faragon all over again. She was poked and prodded until she was blue in the face. At the end of the day there was no discernible change in her physiology or cognition. The entire time she was being examined the captain and Ken Kirkland stood by and watched. Was it concern for her welfare or worry that she was no longer her own woman?

Finally
the doctor told the captain that there really was nothing more to do. She had been reluctant to offer a suggestion until after the doctor was finished with his work. Since he was, she spoke up. "Captain, there is something we should try."

"Go ahead Commander."

"Well, since the update was aimed at the 'encounter unit' maybe I should try to access it and see what happens."

Ken pulled at a tuff of his red beard in thought. "Help me to understand... I know you have alien nanotechnology running around inside. You mentioned you have some type of centralize link for them a well... But this is the first time I've heard of an 'encounter unit'"

Cat looked alternately between the two men as she answered. "My apologies. I described it in as much detail as I could in my debriefing. It was something the Heshe I call 'Cal' gave me when I first woke up in his facility on Mars. It seems to be some type of universal translator. It's not limited to voice. It ties into both my visual and auditory cortexes and provides a two way translation. When Cal was saying goodbye I heard him in here..." she tapped her head "as well as here..." she tapped her ear.

"So what happens when you access this unit?"
the captain asked.

"Normally I don't. It seems to know when I need it and when I don't."

"Meaning..." Ken added "it kicked in when that squid started flashing but not when you were speaking Arabic to the Captain"

"Hindi"

"Pardon?" Ken asked.

"I was speaking Hindi to the Captain."

The captain raised a hand to interrupt the engineer "...and so, what happens when you try to access the unit directly?"

"Let me try" Cat said as she reached out to the unit mentally as the Heshe had taught her many months ago. The two men saw her gasp. When she reached out to the encounter unit a
very familiar voice greeted her.

"
Hello Cat
" the voice of Cal said.

***

Ken and Cat had been meeting in main engineering after breakfast for several weeks to discuss hyper-field equations. Today was different. Today was the first time Cat's new embedded alien AI was joining them.

Having a permanently available AI was not altogether unusual. Humans had been augmenting themselves with technology since the first pair of glasses had been invented. Most of the Bowman's crew used their
comlink to access their personal shipboard AI 24 hours a day. What made Cat's AI different was the level of integration.

Cat's
AI had access to her full range of senses. What she saw, Cal saw. What she heard, Cal heard. Add to this the fact that Cal had access to information and technology that was quite literally out of this world and the potential for this symbiosis was incalculable.

It was also the cause for more than a little concern.   Captain Ramchandani had immediately called the admiralty board to
apprise them of the situation. No one doubted Commander Kimbridge’s intentions… but there was considerable doubt as to her level of control over the alien tech running around inside her. What stopped her newly implanted AI from changing what she saw or heard and, in doing so, compromise the Bowman?

The fact was
, no one could think of a reason why the Heshe would choose to do this – given their technological advantage over humanity.  Creating a puppet everyone knew about seemed an inefficient way to infiltrate the United Space Command. Never the less, Captain Ramchandani kept a wary eye on his Science Officer.

That explained, at least in part, why the captain was in engineering the next morning with Ken and Cat. The Hyper-field calculations were the last
major roadblock preventing their now complete starship from breaking orbit.

“
So…” as Cat finished explaining for the captain, “We are very close to achieving a suitable heuristic solution that will allow us to calculate a jump fast enough to make a suitable quantum fold.” She leaned over the interactive 3D briefing table and touched a widget that brought up a scaled map of the solar system.

“Our deviation is now just 9.6 AU” Ken added.

“How tight do we need to get the numbers?” the captain asked.