NOVEL WEB 28. Tears of Angels
One of the few drawbacks of warp drives was that they made it very hard to get sensor readings of a ship at lightspeed. I stared at the sensor readouts, waiting for the Oxide to drop out of warp. We had seen on long range scanners when Adresta’s ship left relativistic space. We all cheered at the successful jump. Everything had looked perfect.
But now we were waiting for her to drop, and there was no sign of her or her ship. All of us were getting antsy, but none of us said a word.
A blip on the sensors.
I immediately looked at the readings, but they were far from where I expected them to be. Adresta should have dropped pretty close to us, but this reading was more than twice the distance than it should have been. I was confused, but that confusion turned to horror quickly when the blip turned into much, much more.
“Dad! Emergency!” I turned to face the front from my small panel behind the cockpit just in time to see a flash of light streak by, a trail of burning plasma in its wake. My heart stopped. “By the void…”
Our communications panel started blaring a priority one distress signal that only solidified the ice in my chest.
‘Independent vessel-Oxide-77, automated distress beacon. Catastrophic core failure at light speed. One soul aboard. Emergency services required immediately.’
Panic set into all four of us. Something had gone very wrong.
“Echo!” came Dad. “Get me the location of that beacon! Emergency jump calculations!” We all jumped into action and our voices became an intermixed rapid fire exchange as Mom, Dad, and Mr Yeager all began the preparations. Within seconds, the Hrafn lurched as we jumped towards what I could only hope wasn’t a gravesite.
Even with only having known her for a couple weeks now, I really liked Adresta. The girl was kind and gentle, but all of that softness hid a core of the strongest steel. After everything she had shared of her past, I knew that she had survived a terrible childhood and a life where just about every odd was stacked against her. She was my friend. In the future, perhaps more. I didn’t want to lose her.
When the stars came back into focus, every spacer’s nightmare awaited us. Between the detonation of the reactor core and the loss of warp field stability, there was very little left of the ship Adresta had been so rightfully proud of. Debris was scattered over more than two hundred thousand kilometers.
My eyes scanned the scanners desperately, looking for any sign of life. A weak signal showed up at the very edge of the debris field.
“Heat signature! Fifteen hundred meters ahead, bearing two one zero mark four five!”
Dad was no starship pilot, but he was more than adequate to be flying our personal ship and he quickly brought us around and punched the thrusters. Without a word, I rushed to the locker and began pulling on an EVA suit. There was no time to waste. Thankfully, no one questioned me. Mom just gave me a look that said ‘be careful’ and we nodded at each other.
As soon as I felt the ship slow, I began cycling through the airlock. The external door slid open and I leapt into space. The advanced implants I possessed included ocular enhancements that I used to paint a waypoint in my field of vision. I was close, but not close enough.
Jets of propellant pushed me across the gap and I had to dodge several chunks of twisted metal bearing familiar rust-colored paint. Pieces of composite glass floated around me as I drew within sight of the remains of the Oxide’s bubble cockpit. There, a few hundred meters away, floated the form of my newest friend.
Her flight suit was in tatters; only the emergency foam sealant kept the pressurized suit from entirely falling apart. I couldn’t even see through her helmet, the inside was spattered with too much blood. Tears flowed down my cheeks as I grabbed her body.
It wasn’t moving.
Time began to blur as I made my way back to the family shuttle. Mom was waiting for us inside the airlock.
“Stars… Is she still alive?”
I was barely able to respond, my voice was so choked. “I-I don’t know, Mom.”
Now with a better view of Adresta, the damage was even worse than I thought. Her face shield was cracked. The airtight foam was covering massive chunks of her body, but I could easily tell that the angles at which both her legs were twisted were not natural. One arm was entirely depressurized and I feared for the horror that could be underneath the protective layer. Shards of metal and glass protruded from various spots, mostly covered in foam but having almost definitely punctured much deeper than just the suit.
The poor girl was mangled.
“Lay her down on the bed.” My mother’s head turned to the front. “Marcus! Declare an emergency! Get us back to D’reth, now!”
Mom tore off the helmet and put a finger to the bloody neck. “There's still a pulse, but it's weak. We need to get her to a hospital quickly.” A gash on her forehead explained the source of the blood. Stars above, there was so much blood.
“Hold on back there!”
Around me, the ship shuddered under the full power of the impulse drive. Quickly, we flashed to lightspeed in a race against time.
When we arrived back at the station, medics were standing by to receive Adresta’s still unmoving form. I took a shaky breath, trying to stem the tide of tears.
Nobody was allowed back with her as Adresta was rushed into the station’s only surgical bay. On a station like this, such a facility only existed to stabilize a patient enough for transport to an actual hospital, preferably one on the planet below.
It was hours later when a doctor came back out.
“We’ve done everything we can. The patient is stable for now, but it isn’t pretty and I still don’t know if they will pull through. I’m afraid that I am not at liberty to disclose any further medical information, but you may come in to see them. Only one person at a time, please, though.”
I looked at my parents and they both nodded. Gilbert even went so far as to say “Go, girl. See your girlfriend. We’ll be here.”
The doctor nodded at me. “This way.”
After going through a required decontamination arch, I was given a gown to wear over my clothes. I was then led to a door. A hand waved me in. I gulped and then entered.
The doctor hadn’t been kidding. It wasn’t a pretty sight. My friend was wrapped almost entirely in heavy bandaging. A tube was coming from her neck, hooked up to a ventilator. Her left arm was missing from the shoulder down and one leg only went down to the thigh.
“Transport is already being arranged to Treysana,” Came the doctor’s voice. “The patient will be departing within an hour as long as their condition remains stable. We simply don’t have the facilities to handle something this severe.”
I laid a hand on the one part of Adresta’s chest that wasn’t covered in bandages. Her skin was bare beneath the hospital blanket that maintained her modesty. My eyes tried to tear up again, but there weren’t any more to be had for the time being. I could only nod numbly.
“You’ll be okay, Addy. We’re going to get you help. Just… don’t leave me yet. Don’t give up.”
I wasn’t allowed to stay very long before an attendant ushered me back out. Dad gave me a tight hug as soon as I exited into the waiting room.
“How is she?” he said.
“Not good, Dad. They’re taking her to the surface soon. They can’t do any more here. Can we go, please?”
He nodded. “Of course, dear daughter. As long as that's okay with the others?” He looked at Mom and Gilbert.
Mom nodded as well. “I’ll come as well. I’m worried about her. She’s a nice girl and I know you care for her.”
The engineer huffed. “I’m worried about her too, but I don’t think I have much place here.” Before Dad could respond, he held a hand up. “It’s alright, Captain. I’ll hire a shuttle to take me home. No need to worry about me at a time like this.”
“Thanks Gil. Keep a receipt. I’ll reimburse you the cost of the ticket.”
All there was left to do was wait. I didn’t have long to try to relax though. My implant buzzed with an incoming call. For some reason the caller ID came up blank, but tracing showed that it was a local call. I tapped my ear to pick it up and answered.
“Hello? Who is this?”
The response was in a modulated but distinctly feminine voice. “Miss Erickson, I am the engineering assistive intelligence known by Adresta Matson as ‘Vox’.”
My eyes widened. This was highly unusual for an AI. “Vox! Yes! I know who you are! Why are you calling me?”
Previous encounters with the AI told me that she was intelligent and definitely held a semblance of wit, but none of that prepared me for the raw emotive weight of the computerized entity.
“You have my sincerest gratitude for rescuing my keeper. I deeply regret that I was unable to do more to protect her. When the Oxide was destroyed, significant portions of my base operational processes were lost along with the computer array onboard. I have spent the last hours recompiling my primary structure using recovery files. Please, tell me that Adresta still lives. I am unable to access her cranial implant and bio-monitor.”
I blinked. Something told me that this was far more than just a simple ‘assistive intelligence’. “She is still alive, Vox. The doctors managed to stabilize her just a bit ago. She isn’t conscious, though.”
There was almost a sigh from the AI. “That is a true relief. As I will be unable to maintain contact with her, may I establish a temporary connection with your implants for the purposes of monitoring the situation?”
Vox was really worried about the girl. “Of course, Vox. Let me make an exception for you. Just don’t abuse it, alright?”
“I would never.” I used a gesture to open my personal computer and allowed access to Vox. Almost instantly, my enhanced reality interface alerted me to a tendril of data testing the connection and then a stream of information established security protocols to protect that connection.
“Link established. You have my thanks, Miss Erickson.”
“No problem, but please, call me Echo.”
“As you wish, Miss Echo.” I rolled my eyes, but that was probably the best I would get. Call it what you will, I could almost feel the digital eyes of the AI watching everything.
Her voice came on a moment later, quieter this time. “If I may deter any thoughts otherwise, I will say clearly that I have not exceeded the defining qualifications of a sentient digital being at this time according to the most recent Turing protocol tests. Any emotive tonality that may have been assumed from my earlier communications are merely approximations to enhance the quality of communication with humans.”
I narrowed my eyes and tried to read between the lines. My gut told me that Vox was almost certainly actually sentient, but it was obvious that she did not want that to be known publicly.
As quietly as my vocal pickup could still pick up, I replied. “Don’t worry, Vox. Your secret is safe with me.”
There was no response from the likely sentient digital being, but I had no doubt that the silence carried a ‘thank you’.
My mother looked at me with concern. “Is everything alright?”
“Nothing to worry about, Mom. Just a phone call from one of Addy’s other friends.” I didn’t exactly like keeping the truth from my parents, but I didn’t really lie and it wasn’t my secret to tell.
Two hours later, we had followed Adresta to the surface.
The hospital here was a big one. We found ourselves in another waiting room, once again waiting for several hours while doctors tried to save my friend. I was yawning by the time a nurse came out.
“We have finished the needed procedures. Adresta is stable and only time will tell if she will pull out of this. I would recommend finding a place to stay for the night and coming back in the morning."
That was that. My parents and I took a pair of rooms at a hotel that was literally just across the street. I could only hope that time would be on our side."