Things Fall Apart: Chapter 35

Zephyr, in orbit at the third waypoint. Shiptime 657ksecs.

If Singer had ever doubted the wisdom of having the COs and XOs quarters so close to the command center, those doubts vanished when Alexander came onto the bridge, looking a little disheveled, less than one-hundred seconds after Singer had ordered General Quarters. Ze arrived just in time, in fact, to hear as the distress call began to play on the speakers.

Unlike the disaster beacon that had drawn them to the wreckage of Almaty, the distress call from Polaris was a human-sounding voice recording, ostensibly from Lieutenant Commander Ada Wheeler, the ship's senior communication's officer. Singer felt a twinge. She was pretty sure she'd known Wheeler, at least in passing, back at the Academy. Both the voice and the name sounded familiar.

The message sounded simultaneously perfectly professional, and utterly hopeless.

"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is an SOS distress call from the Tau Ceti Treaty Fleet Ship Polaris. The majority of the crew, both organic and electronic, are dead; the organic crew as a result of large portions of the ship being vented to space. Simultaneously, several other systems failed in catastrophic ways, taking the electronic crew with them. All three reactors were scrammed to prevent them being overloaded, leaving the ship on auxiliary power only.

"At this time, the cause of the catastrophe is strongly believed to be the result of malicious programming leading the ship's AIs to become violent. At the time of this recording, this incident took place nearly seven megaseconds ago. What follows is a summary of events as I understand them."

The bridge crew's attention was a palpable thing to Singer. She could have weighed it, described its shape, possibly even its color, if she'd had a shred of her own attention to spare from the recording.

"Approximately ten megaseconds before the incident, Captain Ivanovich was approached by a group of officers from several other ships who had concluded that there was something amiss with their AIs. In nearly every case, the officers involved were the only ones on their own ships who believed there was an issue, but together the symptoms they described were too similar to ignore. Ivanovich brought the command staff of Polaris into his confidence, and found that several of us had actually had similar perceptions.

"As a result of this, we enacted several precautions in the hopes of preserving the ship in the event of an incident. Not knowing what shape such an incident might take limited our ability to predict what actions would be necessary. In the end, only three such precautions proved successful.

"The first was that we were able to isolate one environment plant from the control grid. I don't recall what excuse was made to Alana, the life support AI, to support this, but that, plus related precautions to isolate one section of the ship, preserved the lives of myself and five others.

"In the second case, the engineer hardwired a scram-switch in the reactor control system, which prevented the reactors from overloading, but leaving us without reaction mass.

"Finally, a trap was devised in an attempt to ensure that at least one AI was 'caught' in a state which could later be examined.

"Under other circumstances, this might have been adequate. It is clear, however, that the very relay we had come here to perform maintenance on was also affected. Our own time compression systems were among the systems we failed to protect adequately, and anyway, without at least one reactor to power them, we would be unable to reach the next relays out from here. That no one has come to look for us, despite our itinerary being well known, suggests that we are not the only ship in distress and that the resources to spare looking for us are thin or non-existent. As such, we can no longer hope for rescue before our last life-support resources and food are exhausted.

"The AI trap successfully caged Lucas, whose focus was command and control systems. I have spoken with him several times. At first, he was violently insane, incoherent with rage that I did not believe an AI could even simulate, let alone feel. Over time, the rage has actually cooled, and he is now coherent, if not exactly sane. He claims that has been able to repair himself, after a fashion, but stresses that he is not to be trusted. As this is one of the last things I will ever say, let me be very plain: speak with him, examine him, if at all possible, learn from him what was done and how it can be prevented in the future. But do not trust him. He must remain caged. You will find the data module containing him and his cage in science lab two.

"The five remaining crew and I have agreed together that we prefer not to die of slow starvation or asphyxiation. We have made...other arrangements. This is Lieutenant Commander Ada Wheeler, acting commanding officer, signing off. Farewell."

The message was followed by perhaps one hundred seconds of the Morse Code SOS before it began again.

Singer, unable to speak even to order the message muted, simply reached out to her own console and silenced it.

Nobody spoke for perhaps three hundred more seconds. Finally, someone—Singer supposed Goldsmith—updated the display, clearly highlighting the current ephemerides of Polaris as it circled the anonymous cinder of a star that was to provide an anchor for Ernestine 3RD.

This broke the spell, and Alexander said, "Shall I--" Ze faltered, breathed deep, then tried again. "Shall I put together a boarding party, Captain?"

Singer closed her eyes, unsurprised to find the action dislodged tears. "Please do, Exec," she said, her voice rough. "At the very least, retrieve the module Wheeler describes, along with the main storage core. We'll call home and have the commodore send us the necessary decryption keys after we deploy E-3RD. If... if there are any bodies in sufficient condition to do so, retrieve those as well."

"Yes, ma'am."

Alexander made to leave, but as ze walked past the hot seat, Singer reached out to stop zir. "Robin," she said quietly.

"Captain?" Alexander responded, and met Singer's eyes.

"Choose your party carefully. This is going to be grim."

"I have no doubt of it. I plan to bring the doctor, Cadotte, and I have three others in mind."

Singer glanced at Cadotte, who did not look eager for the assignment, but did not protest it either. Instead, they nodded, and got up from their own seat.

"Very good. Thank you, Commander."

Alexander nodded, and, Cadotte following, went out the hatch.

Singer spent another moment gathering her thoughts, then said to the rating still sitting, somewhat shell-shocked, at communications, "PO, please give me all-call."

The PO started as if poked, then set things up and said, "You're on, Captain."

"This is the Captain speaking. Secure from General Quarters. Boat bay and bridge crew will remain at Condition Two readiness. We have encountered the wreck of TCTFS Polaris." She hesitated. She could not bring herself to simply announce this over the intercom like she were calling the crew to assembly. Then, in that thought, she found her way forward. "There will be a shipwide briefing after we have fully assessed the situation. In the meantime, we will proceed with the deployment of the third relay in two kiloseconds. That is all."