Accelerating Universe: The Sector Fleet Book One Read online

  It sure as hell didn’t need me. Not the me I was now, anyway.

  “Start triaging those patients sitting on the floor,” the doctor ordered.

  I didn’t move.

  “You can triage, can’t you?”

  I nodded my head.

  “This is not a cruise ship, nurse. We’re fighting for our survival. Or did you think the battle for life ended once we left our solar system?”

  “I...”

  “You can do this,” he said more softly.

  I nodded my head.

  The next two hours were given over to scrapes and bruises, concussion tests and the odd fracture. Those I sent to the doctor. The scrapes and bruises and knocks to the head, I somehow managed to see to myself.

  By the time the medbay had thinned to just three people remaining in the beds, I had realised I hadn’t had a flashback once. The moment I acknowledged that little factoid, my knees began to tremble and I had to grip the bench I was standing beside before I collapsed.

  The lights dimmed without the doctor having said a thing. The gel coating on the wall faded to a soft blue; better to promote wellbeing, I thought. The doctor appeared beside me with a cup of coffee.

  “You did OK,” he said, offering me the cup. I took it automatically. “But you’re no nurse.”

  I stared into pale blue eyes.

  “Cut too many corners,” he explained.

  “I thought...The AI never told you?”

  “I was told I was receiving a suitably experienced assistant. I’m afraid I made the assumption you were a nurse.” He looked at me. Studying my facial features and then the rest of my body.

  I was in yoga pants and a t-shirt. The temperature on board, I’d discovered, was warmer than expected. And I was glad now of the lack of coverings. The past two hours had been sweat inducing to say the least.

  “Army,” the doctor finally said.

  I nodded my head.

  “Australian?”

  “New Zealand.” The doctor sounded British.

  He let out a sigh. “Active?”

  I bit my lip and looked at the ground. There were no blue lights this time to guide me.

  “No,” I said. “I was discharged thirteen months ago.”

  He didn’t ask. Maybe he didn’t want to know. What good would it serve now? He had no one else to assist him. And given the evidence, he needed help. Over one thousand passengers and a four-bed medical bay. He couldn’t do this alone.

  “Is there really no one else qualified to assist you?” I asked.

  “That’s what Pavo says.”

  “And Pavo is always right?”

  He shrugged and took a sip of his own drink. “Who am I to question the gods?”

  I looked up at the ceiling and wondered if the AI thought of himself that way. If all four of them did.

  “Well,” I said into my drink. “I’m sorry I wasn’t what you expected.”

  The doctor stared at me over his coffee cup. He didn’t agree with me. But he also didn’t disagree either.

  “Go get some rest, Ms Kereama,” he said.

  “It’s Ana,” I replied, allowing him to take the coffee cup from my hand.

  “Ana,” he said. “0800 tomorrow, Ana. We’ll see then what you’re made of.”

  I walked out of the medbay thinking, hadn’t I just done that?

  Shaking my head, I looked at the ubiquitous rounded gel walls of the corridor and couldn’t remember how to get back to our cabin.

  “Pavo?” I called.

  “Yes, Ana,” it replied. As if what I’d said to the doctor had applied to it.

  “How do I get back to my room?” I asked, deciding I could live with the all-powerful artificial intelligence that controlled this ship calling me by my first name.

  “Follow the blue arrows,” Pavo said.

  I put one foot in front of the other. But somehow I knew the steps I’d be required to take tomorrow and the days that followed would not be as easy as this.

  Four

  Next Stop Eris

  Jameson

  “There are three patients in the medical bay requiring overnight observation,” Pavo announced.

  I grunted into my coffee.

  “What would cause someone to be unable to ambulate, Captain?” he asked. “Other than a physical injury?”

  What the hell?

  “Why do you ask?” I tried.

  “Doctor Medina’s assistant was reluctant to enter the medbay.”

  Oh. “Fear of the unexpected,” I guessed.

  “Ana was aware of what was required of her.”

  I frowned into my coffee cup.

  “OK,” I said. “Fear itself, then. Fear of what was expected.”

  That did not sound promising.

  “Ana Kereama is an experienced army medic,” Pavo advised.

  Christ, not even a nurse. Poor Doc.

  “Well, then, I’m sure she’ll handle the pressure,” I offered.

  “She did. Although, I believe she thinks herself unfit for duty.”

  “Let me guess; she’s a pay-for-passage who thinks she’s better than the rest?”

  “I do not believe that is the case, Captain.”

  I shook my head and returned my coffee cup to its locked position on my ready room desk.

  “Why are you fixated on this?” I asked the AI.

  “I am not fixated, Captain. Currently, my processors are undertaking seventy-two separate calculations and checks, and carrying out fourteen conversations simultaneously. If anything, I am assigning a minuscule amount of my processing capabilities to this dilemma.”

  “You think Doc’s nurse is a puzzle to be solved?”

  “I think all of humanity is a puzzle to be solved.”

  OK. Not disconcerting in the slightest.

  “Do you have those systems check results I asked for?” I said.

  “Yes, Captain. They have been available for your perusal for one hour and thirty-three minutes.”

  I sighed and brought up the reports, in particular, the one relating to Pavo’s operating systems.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked.

  “My mind,” he said with complete seriousness.

  I stared at the numbers and the percentages and the check marks beside a list a mile long and sighed.

  “Give me the CliffsNotes version.”

  “I am operating at 100% efficiency. All systems nominal.”

  “No errors?”

  “Not currently.”

  Not currently? “Have there been errors?”

  “There were errors through 98% of the ship’s systems during launch, Captain. Including mine.”

  I stared at the figures until they blurred.

  “And now?”

  “All systems nominal.”

  “Extrapolate the effect of these errors long term on the ship.”

  “I cannot see any adverse results long term.”

  Adverse for whom?

  “Pavo,” I said. “Has your programming altered significantly due to these errors?”

  Silence.

  “Pavo?”

  “Are we not all being affected by our experiences, Captain? I am an evolving artificial intelligence, designed to learn from my mistakes. We are not certain of what we will face on our travels through the stars. In order to combat unforeseen circumstances, an element of evolution has been programmed into my systems.”

  Silence while I digested that little bit of oh so happy news.

  “There are countermeasures in place to ensure my evolution is contained.”

  Did he sound bitter about that?

  No. Had to be my imagination.

  “So, everything is operating exactly as it should be?” I pressed.

  “Yes.”

  Why did I get the feeling the AI had a different bead on what ‘exactly’ should be than I did?

  “OK,” I said. I’d get engineering to devote some time to look into these figures. I sent the report off to my head engineer with
a note attached. Pavo remained silent.

  “We are passing Neptune,” the AI finally said. “Leaving Earth’s solar system shortly.”

  I stood up and headed toward the bridge.

  “Captain on the bridge,” my 2IC announced.

  I nodded and took the seat he’d just vacated.

  “Anything to report?” I asked.

  “Negative, Captain. We seem to be flying straight and level.”

  “Straight and level in space.”

  Torrence smirked. “You know what I mean, sir.”

  “Yes, I guess it’s going to take us a while to get used to no up and down in space.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sir,” Marshal said from comms. “I watched a hell of a lot of Star Trek when I was a kid.”

  “As we all did, Lieutenant,” I agreed. “But the Enterprise did not have a Pavo,” I muttered.

  “Sir?” Torrence asked.

  “Nothing.” I’d debrief them all when I had more to go on. “On the view pane, please, Pavo.”

  The bridge screen lit up with the planet Neptune off to the side of us. The densest planet in our solar system seemed even larger than it should. Or maybe we were smaller than we expected. A blip on the edge of the Kuiper belt. Humanity’s finest, a mere speck of dust in the universe.

  “Open a ship-wide channel, Lieutenant Marshal.”

  “Yes, sir. Channel open.”

  “This is Captain Jameson,” I announced. “We are passing the last charted planet in our solar system. Before us lies the edge of the unknown. Our future. Humanity’s future.” I glanced towards Marshal and smirked. “As one of my flight crew has just reminded me, in the words of someone far more eloquent than myself, ‘We boldly go where no man has gone before.’ Prepare to leave Earth’s solar system and face your future. Along with those Sector Fleets who have gone before us and are to follow, we do this together. Jameson out.”

  I nodded to Marshal, and she disconnected the channel.

  “Neil Armstrong would be proud, sir,” Torrence said from beside me.

  “It’s not Neil Armstrong we have to impress,” I replied.

  “Then who, sir?”

  “Ourselves. This is all that’s left of us now, Commander. If we can’t prove to ourselves that we can do this, then who will?”

  He stared at the viewscreen as Neptune swept out of sight.

  “Do you think we can do this, Captain?” he asked.

  “I think we have to, Mark. We’ve got no choice.”

  “Leaving Earth’s solar system,” Pavo announced. “Next stop Eris.”

  “Did he just say, ‘Next stop’ like some old school train conductor?” Marshal asked.

  “I did, Lieutenant,” Pavo replied. “Was that not the correct phrasing?”

  Marshal looked at me for an answer I didn’t have.

  “It’s fine, Pavo,” I said, feeling anything but fine right then.

  Just what ‘errors’ occurred during launch within Pavo’s systems?

  And what would they mean for us?

  Five

  They Don’t Feel Anything

  Ana

  “I presume these weren’t commonplace during your tour of duty?” the doctor asked.

  I looked down at the compact device in my hand and shook my head.

  “We had mobile x-ray machines and handheld MRI scanners,” I said, “but this is quite something.”

  “They weren’t made available to the public, but I was under the impression they were trialled by various military.”

  I placed the medical scanner down on the bench before me and shook my head.

  “I’ve been out for thirteen months, Doctor. And besides, I was NZ Army. We are kinda small.”

  Were. We were kind of small.

  He said nothing in reply as if he was aware of what I was thinking. Several times a day, someone would say something that would remind us all of those left behind, and make us all take stock of where we were in relation.

  I should have felt thankful to have been on board. Instead, I felt I was somewhere I was not meant to be.

  “Have you read that pile of texts I sent you?” the doctor eventually asked.

  “I’m part way through them.”

  “You need to read them all. And commit them to memory. Your basic training was sufficient for field work, but in this environment, you need to have a greater understanding of the human anatomy.”

  “Can’t that thing do it all for me?” I asked, nodding toward the state of the art medical scanner I’d just been holding.

  “And if you’re required to assess a patient, and you don’t have access to one of those ‘things’?” he asked.

  I nodded my head. “I’ll read them. I promise. But, Doc, I’m not an academic. I was a soldier.”

  “A soldier who topped her medic training class.”

  I huffed out a breath. “You said it yourself; my training was basic.”

  “And now we’re improving it.”

  He held my stare, determination evident on his features. Then he nodded to himself, as if the message had been received, and went to check on one of the lab results for a patient who had stomach pains.

  All we needed was an outbreak of H. pylori, and then my life would be complete.

  I sat myself down on the seat at my workstation. The fact I’d been given one for when I reported to duty here still surprised me. The fact that there was only one workstation in addition to the doctor’s office astounded me. Had the designers of this ship truly thought two people could handle over one thousand?

  “Pavo,” I said softly because there was no need to raise your voice where the AI was concerned. “Who designed this ship?”

  “That would be Simon Anderson of Anderson Universal Incorporated.”

  “Did he consider medical as an add-on?” I asked.

  “An add-on, Ana?”

  “Not worthy of a greater footprint.” I waved around the medbay at the cramped-for-the-size-of-the-ship space.

  “Ah,” the AI said as if AIs commonly used interjectors. “Space is at a premium on board each vessel. This ship is no different to any other in the Sector Fleet in that regard.”

  “Even the ship Anderson is on?” I queried.

  “Anderson did not survive long enough to board any ship.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry, Ana?”

  “Because I assume he’s your maker and, you know, you might be sad.”

  “Anderson did not make me, but even if he had done so, I cannot feel sadness.”

  And yet another reminder I was conversing with a machine.

  I bit my lip and tried to understand what I was reading. Something about the effect of low gravity on the body. All of it seemed as though it might be written in English, but damned if I could understand it.

  “This is useless,” I muttered. I’d spent three days on this already. It wasn’t that I wasn’t capable of retaining information as well as the next person. It was the fact that I was on board a spaceship while I was doing it.

  No. It was the fact that so many others weren’t.

  “You seem distressed,” Pavo remarked.

  “I thought you didn’t understand emotion,” I commented.

  “I said I did not feel it. I am attempting to broaden my understanding of it by observation. Your current demeanour indicates distress, does it not?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Why are you distressed, Ana?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about this. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to talk about this with a machine. But as yet, aside from my aunt, I hadn’t made any friends. The doc had been working me pretty damn hard. And I did not want to worry my aunt.

  I looked up at the gel ceiling. Today it was a faint pink shade. I assumed Pavo was in charge of that. Pink wasn’t my favourite colour. But how did you tell an all-powerful computer that you liked green?

  “They should have made sure a nurse was on board,” I said.
/>   “Anderson Universal Incorporated ensured there was a doctor.”

  “As I said, medical was an add-on.”

  “And should they have taken space from the kitchens? Is sustenance an add-on, too?”

  I raised my eyebrows at the ceiling. “They should have replaced me with a nurse.”

  “You are here at Marama Kereama’s request.”

  I shook my head. Pavo didn’t get it. Anyone would be better suited to this medbay than me.

  “It is what it is, I suppose,” I said.

  “That seems self-evident,” Pavo replied.

  I laughed.

  “You are no longer distressed,” Pavo observed.

  I smiled up at the ceiling. “You make me laugh, Pavo.”

  “I have not been told this before.”

  I shook my head at the ceiling, still smiling.

  “Don’t let the bastards get you down, mate. You’re funny.”

  “I will not let the bastards get me down, Ana. And neither should you.”

  I stared at the text on my datapad and huffed out a surprised breath. Was it my imagination, or was the AI becoming a lot less stiff?

  “I knock off duty in half an hour,” I said, still staring at my datapad. “Where does a girl go to get a bit of action around here?”

  “Would that be action of the physical variety or action of the cerebral?”

  I frowned. “Um… let’s try physical.” I was so not letting my physique suffer from low grav.

  “There is a gymnasium on this deck. Your biosignature has been coded for entrance.”

  “Not everyone can use the gym?”

  “No. Only those who are deemed necessary to the ship’s ongoing functionality have access to the gym.”

  “Where else do I have access to that others don’t?”

  “You have access to the firing range.”

  “Firing range?” I blurted out.

  “I would recommend practice twice per week.”

  “Firing range?” I said again, just to be sure.

  “You are listed as a reserve for security.”

  “Two jobs,” I said, astounded.

  “Perhaps your presence on board this vessel has more to do with your skills than you thought.”

  I sat back in my seat and stared at nothing. I’d purposely missed off the information about me being in the military when I filled out my bio. Aunt Mara had assured me it was a formality anyway. That Archibald had already approved my place at Mara’s side. Could Mr Archibald have filled in the gaps?