| |
The final seconds counted down. Then from deep within the ship’s structure, a rattle erupted, followed by a deep roar that overpowered all the other sounds. The whole ship shook violently. In engineering bay, loose objects rattled off the workbenches, cascading to the floor in a silent cacophony. No sounds could compete with the mighty roar of the ships engines. They had idled at five percent output for so long, Brother Anderson had almost forgotten the experience of their full power. It was an amazing phenomenon.
The new coordinates popped up on his perception, requesting final approval. He confirmed. The ship began to swivel her enormous mass. Fifty million tons of ore resisted the force. Fifty million tons of ore wanted to maintain their current trajectory. The roar of the engines sought to convince them otherwise. The hull shook and bucked like a wild beast, and though its hideous groans could not be heard beneath the engine noise, Brother Anderson could feel them, could see them on his data visualizations. The entire hull appeared red in his view. Then suddenly, the hull was no longer a single structure, but a chaotic mass of giant steel ribbons, thrashing to and fro’, in an explosion of red, blue, and green data. The instantaneous release of tension tricked the system into displaying many of the structural components as within normal tolerances. The tolerances may have been normal, but the shapes certainly were not. The Ventas-341 had been torn into a tangled matrix of no particular shape. A chain reaction of explosions was now spreading through her interior spaces. She had become a giant fireball. Brother Anderson sensed the heat behind the engineering bay hatch, even before the wall in front of him ripped in two. Negative pressure sucked his steel and plasmold body through the gash, hurling him past horribly twisted struts amidst flying panels and various debris. He was singed slightly as a fireball shot across his path. Suddenly, he was surrounded by millions of tons of rock, as the momentum of the cargo carried it past him. It was spreading out along its original trajectory, the containment fields now gone. The cargo became a huge three dimensional field of gravel. As he fell through it, he felt as though he was tunneling rapidly through a planet, as the planet was falling apart. Then the debris field spread behind him as he rocketed from its space. Behind, and to his left, the giant engines still spewed their blue plasma out in a mighty jet, but that jet was now losing shape as the various engine components fell apart from each other, their individual plumes now crossing and interfering with one another, driving the still burning engines through the debris field and beginning to melt the cargo to slag.
Even as the ship and payload continued to disintegrate all around him. Brother Anderson had one last task to perform as CSO of the floundering Ventas-341.
All monitoring systems had now failed to function, so there was no way of knowing if it worked, but he had to try. He composed a final message to Central Operations Fleet Command Center.
MessageHeader=MTC-LRC.4036728.937465
Timestamp=567.3694.04.289
OriginatingVessel=VENTAS_CALIR.CS45.VENTAS-341
SubmittedBy=CRS.05623928.ACTING_CSO
Progress=PAYLOADON.RET
Requirements=N/A
Status = RED
IssuesList:
_ID01
_DESC=VESSEL
_SEV=RED
_ACTION=N/A
_ID02
_DESC=PAYLOAD
_SEV=RED
_ACTION=‘payload loss remediation req’
He launched the send routine. That was all he could do. It would not even be able to tell him if it transmitted successfully. The inter-component communications were not responding. Most likely the control unit was destroyed. Most likely the transmitter was destroyed too. Everything was destroyed. As he would soon be.
It was over.
He launched the data deletion routine. It prompted for authorization. He spoke his passphrase - but stopped short before the last syllable. It would wipe his memory, delete all his local data, terminate his original incarnation. Disconnect, delete, destroy. He would be no more.
For a while.
Until Hannah’s promised resurrection.
Hannah will spawn my third archaeon.
He took one final look around. The vast expanse of space stretched before him. Robots were not supposed to wax poetic, not supposed to feel. Sadness, immensity, awe, ecstasy, love, hope.
At the edge of his field of vision he noticed a speck among many, a speck with a telltale shape. The shape of a Kernighan TS17 thrustertug. It was far away, but not too far. Its trajectory was vaguely parallel to his own. He had an idea.
His local data storage still held a copy of the ship’s log files. He traced back to the moment of the initial hull breaches. Yes, here it was.
EventHeader=SEC-NAV.376.13428
Timestamp=567.3297.17.824
_User=SFELD446
_Type=security protocol
_Description=‘emergency navigational beacon launched, channel 569.2043’
He set his telemetry to scan the channel indicated in the log. Yes. There it was. The beacon was still active. Unbelievably, it hadn’t met the fate it warned of. It had not yet bumped into any of the deadly motes.
A small chunk of rock bumped his elbow. With his other hand he scooped it up, plus a few more that floated through his vicinity. He collected them in his left hand, and then, taking one into his right hand, held the pebble between finger and thumb. He estimated its mass. Then, with as much momentum as he could impart to it, he flicked the pebble away, in the direction opposite from the thrustertug. It flew away fairly quickly. Yes. This could work. It would take many, many flicks of many, many pebbles. It would take quite a while to close the distance, but there were plenty of pebbles floating nearby which he could continue collecting along the way, and he had nowhere else to be. Nothing better to do. He laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of his situation.
Eventually, Brother Anderson did reach the thrustertug. He programmed it to automatically navigate toward the emergency beacon, then set thrusters to full. It would be another long journey, but this time it would not be one he would remember. He would not be aware of his own presence when he reached his destination. He would not see the green and yellow fluorine reactions. He would not notice as his chassis exploded through the cloud of deadly debris. He had miraculously sailed unscathed through fireballs and shrapnel and tons of grinding rock. This next collision would not be one he would survive.
He returned to the data deletion routine. The original confirmation thread had timed out, so he launched it again re-using the parameters he had already fed it. Then he spoke his passphrase, one last time.