“About an eighth the speed, maybe less. We'll never make it in time to rendezvous with the Triton. ”
“Where did we pick up the virus?”
Jason looked for it in the transmission logs and found it. “It's from the Enreega system.”
“It chose a good time to rear its ugly head.”
“Well, that's just the thing. This virus is different, it sort of convinces an AI that it's an improvement to its software and starts making modifications, but if there's no AI the virus doesn't have anything to do and it just waits for the opportunity to transmit itself to another system.”
“I wonder why it took so long for it to get to this AI.”
“That's just the thing,” Jason said quietly. “I just turned the AI on a couple hours ago.”
Oz just stared at Jason for a moment. “Sometimes I think we'd be better off if we were still drawing on cave walls and clubbing each other over the head for women and food.”
Oz sat down in the copilot's seat and looked out into the stars as Jason checked the ship status. The only sound was the creaking of the outer hull as the hyperspace particle emitters cooled.
Jason noticed his friend's silence after a few minutes. “You all right?”
He nodded, still looking out into the cluster of stars in the distance. “Did that virus transmit to the Sunspire?”
Jason didn't have to check, he already knew the answer. “It did.”
“Do you think they could catch it in time?”
“Do you want my honest answer?” Jason asked quietly.
“Always.”
“If it got to the quantum core there's not much chance. The defence AI would be the first to try and fight it off, but this virus would prevent it from warning anyone about the problem. That's probably why my command unit wasn't attacked until now, it was silenced while my AI was resisting infection.”
“I hope they don't lose anyone. If they're smart they'll blow an EMP in the engine room.”
“I don't think Trajenko…”
“You're right. She wouldn't make that kind of sacrifice, she's never seen what a rogue AI can do.”
Jason just left him alone, there wasn't much he could do or say to help just then, and he knew it.
“They're going to think we did it,” his friend stated quietly.
Jason was surprised the thought occurred to Oz first. “I'll have to find out who made this. With the AI on this ship deleted and the virus in quarantine, I might be able to work it out. I'd rather have more processing power though.”
“Here's hoping the Triton is having better luck. But then, if anyone can spot a rogue virus it'll be the commander of that ship.”
“You mean Jake.”
Oz nodded and went back to gazing through the cockpit windows for some time, quietly searching. “ Do you remember why they called it the hyperdrive?” he asked finally.
Jason thought for a minute, smiling at the much larger fellow. “Honestly? No idea. I think I was eight when we started taking early space travel in school.”
“I ran across the historical account when I took command of the Sunspire. Ned Mahajic was trying to invent a zero friction drive for cars.”
“Oh, I remember now. The particles surrounded the test bed and it weighed something like a tenth what it should have.”
Oz nodded, looking specifically for the nebula the Triton was holding station near. “He disappeared. Stole enough money to finish his research and just vanished for sixteen years. When he came back he was driving a floating car that could move faster, manoeuvre better and run longer than anything on the planet and because he was such a big science fiction fan himself, he named it the hyperdrive, called the space within the particle field hyperspace.”
“People still argue about that name,” Jason smiled. “What brought on the history refresher?”
“Just trying to think outside the box. Ah, there it is,” he said, pointing to the nebula. At that distance it looked like nothing more than another distant point of light. He confirmed with the navigation screen. “Burning out the hyperdrive system took a lot of energy, I don't think we could make it if we tried. I'm just glad we're not drifting near the speed of light. The time differential shouldn't be more than a couple hours at worst.”
“Thank God. I don't want to catch up with Laura after she's had sixty years to remarry. Especially if only a month has passed in this overgrown pod.”
“Yeah, with my luck I'd have a hundred grand nieces and nephews to babysit,” Oz shook his head and started making some calculations. “There's no reason why the wormhole generator shouldn't work.” He looked at the status display in front of him. With the artificial intelligence deactivated the readings were showing the correct values. Half the particle emitters were inoperable, their power reserves were down to eighteen percent, but all the other systems were fine. He brought up a holographic navigational chart. “Get a message ready to send to a Freeground receiver and another for the Triton. I'm going to find a nice place for us to wait for a pick up.”
“Why send anything to Freeground?”
“Just in case something else happens and we don't make it.”
“Ah, always thinking with the glass half full.”
Oz looked through a list of worlds, all marked with an estimated arrival time based on worm hole compression and the thrust generated by their engines against the mass of the ship. “Pandem. It's governed by the Carthans so Freeground has no connections there but they have nothing against us either.”
Jason looked over to his holodisplay. “Looks nice enough, lots of tropical islands, calm climate, big cities. Sounds like a nice place to wait. Oh, and they're marked as enemy territory by Regent Galactic, perfect. The capitol is Damshir, it covers one of the largest islands. It's as close as we can get to our rendezvous point with the power we have left.”
“Yup, the Triton won't have any trouble picking us up there.”
“You know, it'll take them a while to get our message, and that's if they're still in the same area.”
“Always poking holes in my bright ideas.”
“It had to be said,” Jason said with a shrug.
“I know, let's just hope someone passes the word if they happen to go in the other direction. Otherwise we'll end up trading for parts and searching for them with nothing but this bucket.”
“You have a point, friends or not, you take up a lot of space in a ship this size. Good thing I'm not claustrophobic,” Jason grinned wryly.
“Good thing,” Oz agreed as he started plotting the course. “Looks like it'll take us at least four days to get to Pandem.”
Duplication
Bridge operations were something that had frightened Agameg Price at first. When something big happened on the Triton it was like watching ripples in a pond emanate from the outside in. The waves all converged on the center, which was either the Flight Control Centre or the Main Bridge and when a major decision had to be made it often came straight to the command chair.
That kind of pressure was completely new to Agameg, regardless, the Captain had enough confidence in him to give him the first shift in the command seat after taking the Triton, and if anyone asked, Price would tell them that he was just as jittery and lost as anyone else. He didn't know what kind of quality he exuded that made the Captain believe in him to the extent that he would be left to oversee all the department heads, major occurrences and moment to moment executive decisions that had to be made until the Captain himself or the First Officer could assume command.
None of that mattered. Alice had started placing him in the command seat during her shifts when she would retire to the ready room office or step off the bridge for a few moments. He was getting used to it, and had only recently realized that she had begun to unofficially treat him as her second in command. He was in charge of tactical officially, and while she was on the bridge he and Alice got along very well. Many quiet conversations about
