Kakistocrat
SOC-12
It’s good as it stands. (My only comments would be on trivial minutiae.)
You Signed Up for This (Fanfic from Boughene PbP ATU)
- Thread starter Grav_Moped
- Start date
Thank you for the feedback!
One small nitpick:
"Shattered glass is still raining down, I’ve dragged Olga under the table, and the restaurant’s other customers took cover too."
I'd suggest changing the last bit to "...and the restaurant's other customers have taken cover too."
Has the fact that they are in a restaurant been mentioned previously? If so, then there's maybe "...and the other diners have taken cover too."
No, this is straight-up in media res -- a couple of in-setting seconds after I executed on Raymond Chandler's advice* "When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." Pointing out that their fellow victims are also in a restaurant was part of establishing the setting.
And thank you for the feedback as well!
----------------
*This was not really advice. It was just an observation on pulp fiction writing technique.
Here's the next installment. It's incomplete, but I hit a stopping point.
As always, critiques are welcome!
It's intended for readers who aren't familiar with Traveller's rules, but who have read the previous two installments, upthread.
I expect to revise it again. (ETA: Current set of edits done. More to come in continuation and the final draft.)
You Signed up for This, Pt. 3
(Draft 2.75)
It had been a difficult farewell to, and for, Melissa, but we’d agreed it was necessary – and neither of us knew if she would ever come back. She’d had to go face the Riket Apparatus alone, since we couldn’t trust the starship to be straight with us. And here I am again, standing under the front of the large steel arrowhead that is the Oganesson Pegasus, a week -- and six and a half light years -- from the first time I’d done this. Key the code, look up to watch the airlock hatch spin open, and climb the ladder past the nose landing gear. Cycle the cozy airlock to swap Efate’s industry-choked air for the sterile starship environment, then step out into the central corridor. Look left toward the open cockpit door, then to the right down past the living quarters to the wardroom. Nobody’s there. It’s quiet, but not the “too quiet” of foreboding. At least not yet.
“Olga?” I call out. It’s either going to be her, or Melissa pretending to be her – though that’s not likely, knowing what was in the hypno-drug cocktail the Riket Apparatus shot into her before it started editing her memories and personality to turn her back into Olga. Or... something could have gone terribly wrong.
“Hello!” Olga answers cheerfully from out of sight in the wardroom. “Who are you, and where am I? Just curious though -- it’s not a big deal.”
Nothing’s gone wrong, but my throat tightens nonetheless. Melissa’s really gone again.
“I’m Scout Mike Blandship, the pilot assigned to this ship,” I announce confidently as she approaches. “We’re at Efate now. Everything’s ok, as far as I know.”
“Oh, you’re the pilot I’ve been waiting for. That’s terrific -- now we can get going! Where are we going, anyhow? How about Regina? The ship’s autopilot suggested it when I asked.”
… And there it is, I think. Regina is the subsector capitol, much safer than we are while here at Efate, and should be a good place to start my post-retirement reporting. It’s also six parsecs away, and the Pegasus is supposed to be able to Jump five parsecs in one go – known as Jump Five. Not quite enough, but two shorter one-week Jumps would do it.
And that’s why Melissa and I agreed she needed to become Olga again: the Jump engines that are actually back there can’t even do four parsecs, let alone five! What it’s got back there instead of a Jump Five drive, is a primary with a range of three parsecs, a backup that can do two, and a fusion reactor that could power both at once if needed. That’s all well and good, and I let Olga work the engines since that’s not really my thing – but one of the basic things you learn in Pilot training is that drive ratings cannot be summed. They’ve tried. They failed. People died.
But Olga hadn’t seen any problem with them, so I never checked – to her, they were perfectly ordinary, and there was no reason the ship couldn’t do a five-parsec Jump. Melissa was of a different mind about that when she first walked back into the engine room. It took all she had to stay calm, then to mentally reach out to ask me to come verify that she hadn’t gone mad. She hadn’t, of course – the Oganesson Pegasus simply had a different set of hyperspace drives than it was supposed to have.
When asked, the ship’s computer once again reported it could do Jump Five. Except that it can’t! Melissa and I needed to find out if and how it could, and quickly realized that if we couldn’t even trust the ship to report its own systems accurately, we might well not be able to trust it about much else.
So we agreed to allow the ship to turn her back into Olga by using the Riket Apparatus in her assigned cabin. Olga knew something about that weird engine setup that Melissa – and the Imperium’s best scientists -- didn’t. That, or she was somehow deluded, and we couldn’t know unless we tried, and we needed her to be Olga so she could make it work, if it could work.
The ship didn’t know she had become not-Olga to begin with, though, only that the overlay was fading and needed to be refreshed. Melissa said she felt compelled to go under again as an echo of the conditioning that made her Olga, but her mind-reading talents let her wall it off. Those talents also let her leave a reminder to herself to remember how the engines work when she gets our from under the Olga personality again. If we can break her back out, anyhow. But for now, it’s Olga I’m dealing with.
I break from my reverie with a start, and maybe a little skepticism. “Regina, eh?” I ask. “Did it suggest a route, too?”
She thinks for a moment. “Yes, it did. Jump-three to Knorbes, then another Jump-three to Regina. Easy!”
Too easy, I think. The Pegasus could do that run without challenging its claimed Jump range, and that won’t do. “Olga, how about giving this thing a real test? Jump-five to the Scout Base at Hefry, then Jump-one to Regina?” Now let’s see how she and the ship deal with that…
“Sure thing! That’s what I’m here for,” she replies brightly. “If this were a plain Jump-two Scout/Courier, the ship wouldn’t need my help with the engines and astrogation.” And neither would you, she didn’t add because that’s not how she thinks – but it’s how I think. But then, if General Products had built it right in the first place, I wouldn’t need help with it anyhow.
The clocks on the cockpit panel count up, and they count down. 168:17:43, :44, :45… rolling up the hours, minutes, and seconds of the week we’ve been outside the real universe; 00:00:15, :14, :13… counting down the seconds until we fall out of Jumpspace. Four, three – suddenly the hazy grey of this little pocket universe “pops” and the stars re-appear outside the windows a moment early. It happens. I check the boards and get my bearings, then look out the window. Hefry’s a small and airless rockball, and we should be almost on top of it. The system’s orange dwarf star should be visible to Coreward, and its red dwarf secondary off to galactic Trailing, and dim. Beacons for the Scout Base ought to start showing up on the screens right… about… now.
Those aren’t the scout base beacons. We’re getting comms traffic from Regina. Regina? Three-light-years-away-from-Hefry, Regina?! I look again and check the screens – we’re two light-seconds out from a gas giant planet with a Terra-normal world in its orbit. Star’s yellow-white with a brown dwarf close-in, and there’s a distant yellow dwarf companion.
That’s Regina, all right.
Not our intended destination.
Not in range of the Jump Drive, even if we had the right one installed.
I look rightward, to ask an unfazed Olga in the co-pilot’s seat, “Hey, could you tell me where you think we are?”
“Looks like Regina,” she replies cheerily, then turns back to the controls.
I draw a deep breath, count to ten. “Do you have any idea how this happened?” I inquire, with all the politeness I can muster.
“Nope,” she answers.
A bit of skepticism sneaks into my tone, despite my efforts. “You plotted the course, and tuned the drives. You didn’t notice anything unusual?”
She’s still almost obliviously cheerful. “Nope. Easy plot, simple drive settings. Kinda spaced out while doing it, then okayed the final computations. And here we are!”
My incredulity escapes. “Where did you plot our course for, last week when we started the Jump?”
Her cheer fades to puzzlement. “Hefry? Pretty sure it was Hefry.”
Exasperated, I sigh. “But we’re at Regina. Nailed the Jump exit, perfect navigation, perfect drive settings.”
She smiles brightly. “Thanks! That was pretty good, wasn’t it?
“Wasn’t it?” she wonders aloud.
Something is very wrong with Olga here, I think. And with the ship. We need to get Melissa back out again, but not until we’re dirtside and away from the ship. “Yes, it was very good, except for the part where we were going to Hefry because the ship couldn’t get to Regina in one hop.”
“But Mike, it did. Pretty neat, huh?”
“You can’t be serious. Our ship just misjumped – at least, I assume it did -- and instead of ending up in deep space halfway into the next subsector the way misjumps always go, it’s right where we needed to be.” Exasperation clenches my jaw and fists, but my self-restraint stops it there. “That. Just. Does. Not. Happen. You don’t remember anything unusual?”
“Totally ordinary, boss. I set the Jump course for Hefry, and we came out at Regina exactly as I set the course to be.”
Something’s very wrong with her. “Wait. You said you set our Jump course for Hefry, then you said that you meant for us to come out at Regina. Which was it?”
“Yes,” she replies brightly, then her mood sours. “Please, I don’t want to think about it.”
As always, critiques are welcome!
It's intended for readers who aren't familiar with Traveller's rules, but who have read the previous two installments, upthread.
I expect to revise it again. (ETA: Current set of edits done. More to come in continuation and the final draft.)
You Signed up for This, Pt. 3
(Draft 2.75)
It had been a difficult farewell to, and for, Melissa, but we’d agreed it was necessary – and neither of us knew if she would ever come back. She’d had to go face the Riket Apparatus alone, since we couldn’t trust the starship to be straight with us. And here I am again, standing under the front of the large steel arrowhead that is the Oganesson Pegasus, a week -- and six and a half light years -- from the first time I’d done this. Key the code, look up to watch the airlock hatch spin open, and climb the ladder past the nose landing gear. Cycle the cozy airlock to swap Efate’s industry-choked air for the sterile starship environment, then step out into the central corridor. Look left toward the open cockpit door, then to the right down past the living quarters to the wardroom. Nobody’s there. It’s quiet, but not the “too quiet” of foreboding. At least not yet.
“Olga?” I call out. It’s either going to be her, or Melissa pretending to be her – though that’s not likely, knowing what was in the hypno-drug cocktail the Riket Apparatus shot into her before it started editing her memories and personality to turn her back into Olga. Or... something could have gone terribly wrong.
“Hello!” Olga answers cheerfully from out of sight in the wardroom. “Who are you, and where am I? Just curious though -- it’s not a big deal.”
Nothing’s gone wrong, but my throat tightens nonetheless. Melissa’s really gone again.
“I’m Scout Mike Blandship, the pilot assigned to this ship,” I announce confidently as she approaches. “We’re at Efate now. Everything’s ok, as far as I know.”
“Oh, you’re the pilot I’ve been waiting for. That’s terrific -- now we can get going! Where are we going, anyhow? How about Regina? The ship’s autopilot suggested it when I asked.”
… And there it is, I think. Regina is the subsector capitol, much safer than we are while here at Efate, and should be a good place to start my post-retirement reporting. It’s also six parsecs away, and the Pegasus is supposed to be able to Jump five parsecs in one go – known as Jump Five. Not quite enough, but two shorter one-week Jumps would do it.
And that’s why Melissa and I agreed she needed to become Olga again: the Jump engines that are actually back there can’t even do four parsecs, let alone five! What it’s got back there instead of a Jump Five drive, is a primary with a range of three parsecs, a backup that can do two, and a fusion reactor that could power both at once if needed. That’s all well and good, and I let Olga work the engines since that’s not really my thing – but one of the basic things you learn in Pilot training is that drive ratings cannot be summed. They’ve tried. They failed. People died.
But Olga hadn’t seen any problem with them, so I never checked – to her, they were perfectly ordinary, and there was no reason the ship couldn’t do a five-parsec Jump. Melissa was of a different mind about that when she first walked back into the engine room. It took all she had to stay calm, then to mentally reach out to ask me to come verify that she hadn’t gone mad. She hadn’t, of course – the Oganesson Pegasus simply had a different set of hyperspace drives than it was supposed to have.
When asked, the ship’s computer once again reported it could do Jump Five. Except that it can’t! Melissa and I needed to find out if and how it could, and quickly realized that if we couldn’t even trust the ship to report its own systems accurately, we might well not be able to trust it about much else.
So we agreed to allow the ship to turn her back into Olga by using the Riket Apparatus in her assigned cabin. Olga knew something about that weird engine setup that Melissa – and the Imperium’s best scientists -- didn’t. That, or she was somehow deluded, and we couldn’t know unless we tried, and we needed her to be Olga so she could make it work, if it could work.
The ship didn’t know she had become not-Olga to begin with, though, only that the overlay was fading and needed to be refreshed. Melissa said she felt compelled to go under again as an echo of the conditioning that made her Olga, but her mind-reading talents let her wall it off. Those talents also let her leave a reminder to herself to remember how the engines work when she gets our from under the Olga personality again. If we can break her back out, anyhow. But for now, it’s Olga I’m dealing with.
I break from my reverie with a start, and maybe a little skepticism. “Regina, eh?” I ask. “Did it suggest a route, too?”
She thinks for a moment. “Yes, it did. Jump-three to Knorbes, then another Jump-three to Regina. Easy!”
Too easy, I think. The Pegasus could do that run without challenging its claimed Jump range, and that won’t do. “Olga, how about giving this thing a real test? Jump-five to the Scout Base at Hefry, then Jump-one to Regina?” Now let’s see how she and the ship deal with that…
“Sure thing! That’s what I’m here for,” she replies brightly. “If this were a plain Jump-two Scout/Courier, the ship wouldn’t need my help with the engines and astrogation.” And neither would you, she didn’t add because that’s not how she thinks – but it’s how I think. But then, if General Products had built it right in the first place, I wouldn’t need help with it anyhow.
The clocks on the cockpit panel count up, and they count down. 168:17:43, :44, :45… rolling up the hours, minutes, and seconds of the week we’ve been outside the real universe; 00:00:15, :14, :13… counting down the seconds until we fall out of Jumpspace. Four, three – suddenly the hazy grey of this little pocket universe “pops” and the stars re-appear outside the windows a moment early. It happens. I check the boards and get my bearings, then look out the window. Hefry’s a small and airless rockball, and we should be almost on top of it. The system’s orange dwarf star should be visible to Coreward, and its red dwarf secondary off to galactic Trailing, and dim. Beacons for the Scout Base ought to start showing up on the screens right… about… now.
Those aren’t the scout base beacons. We’re getting comms traffic from Regina. Regina? Three-light-years-away-from-Hefry, Regina?! I look again and check the screens – we’re two light-seconds out from a gas giant planet with a Terra-normal world in its orbit. Star’s yellow-white with a brown dwarf close-in, and there’s a distant yellow dwarf companion.
That’s Regina, all right.
Not our intended destination.
Not in range of the Jump Drive, even if we had the right one installed.
I look rightward, to ask an unfazed Olga in the co-pilot’s seat, “Hey, could you tell me where you think we are?”
“Looks like Regina,” she replies cheerily, then turns back to the controls.
I draw a deep breath, count to ten. “Do you have any idea how this happened?” I inquire, with all the politeness I can muster.
“Nope,” she answers.
A bit of skepticism sneaks into my tone, despite my efforts. “You plotted the course, and tuned the drives. You didn’t notice anything unusual?”
She’s still almost obliviously cheerful. “Nope. Easy plot, simple drive settings. Kinda spaced out while doing it, then okayed the final computations. And here we are!”
My incredulity escapes. “Where did you plot our course for, last week when we started the Jump?”
Her cheer fades to puzzlement. “Hefry? Pretty sure it was Hefry.”
Exasperated, I sigh. “But we’re at Regina. Nailed the Jump exit, perfect navigation, perfect drive settings.”
She smiles brightly. “Thanks! That was pretty good, wasn’t it?
“Wasn’t it?” she wonders aloud.
Something is very wrong with Olga here, I think. And with the ship. We need to get Melissa back out again, but not until we’re dirtside and away from the ship. “Yes, it was very good, except for the part where we were going to Hefry because the ship couldn’t get to Regina in one hop.”
“But Mike, it did. Pretty neat, huh?”
“You can’t be serious. Our ship just misjumped – at least, I assume it did -- and instead of ending up in deep space halfway into the next subsector the way misjumps always go, it’s right where we needed to be.” Exasperation clenches my jaw and fists, but my self-restraint stops it there. “That. Just. Does. Not. Happen. You don’t remember anything unusual?”
“Totally ordinary, boss. I set the Jump course for Hefry, and we came out at Regina exactly as I set the course to be.”
Something’s very wrong with her. “Wait. You said you set our Jump course for Hefry, then you said that you meant for us to come out at Regina. Which was it?”
“Yes,” she replies brightly, then her mood sours. “Please, I don’t want to think about it.”
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Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
For those of us who do know Traveller ... WHUT? 
Bootstrap maker-device recovery from scratch, by a ship that got its drives imploded. Starts with the OEM computer... which then woke up and wants to find its last known crew. Already (kind of) has one of the passengers....For those of us who do know Traveller ... WHUT?
How else do you get at least J6 out of a J2 and J3 drive?
Oh yeah, should have spoiler-alerted there, shouldn't I?
Honestly, I don't think I'll stick the landing within the allotted page count....
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Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Kakistocrat
SOC-12
At the moment, I only have a question: what is the pronunciation of “Riket”?
No idea. Named for the missing scientist in Expedition to Zhodane, but it's not specified there either.
That scenario suggests he invented it, but I suspect he may have independently re-invented something that's been around for a while elsewhere.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Sounds like Cricket.
Partial re-write and extension of the previous installment. In the end, I didn't stick the landing in the allotted page count. Still, may as well put this here for posterity...
CONTENT WARNING: Non-explicit nudity (it's stated they're nude, but without any detail whatsoever. No sex is involved.) ]
-----------------------------------------------------
I close the motel room’s bathroom door, leaving our piled-up clothes behind, the ventilation fan running loudly. Melissa’s on the bed, looking quite serious. Her well-toned youthful figure is much more suited to our mutual nudity than mine is.
“Well, Mike,” she inquires, “shouldn’t we be getting down to business now that we’re alone?”
I wink and grin, breaking her facade – there’s her contagious laughter, and I’m doubled over as well for a minute.. “Lissa, playing this off like lovestruck teenagers was the most fun I’ve had since we did the ‘squabbling married couple’ routine to get through that border checkpoint on Feri. And I’m sorry I didn’t take a peek earlier.”
She takes a breath to compose herself. “I get that, though. You weren’t supposed to peek at the starship’s engines – when I was Olga, I was conditioned try to keep you out of the drive bay and away from the nav displays.”
“She was pretty subtle about that,” I answer. “Thanks for the heads-up not to react when I saw them though, or I would have.”
“I almost did, myself, but I was trying to be Olga and kept it together long enough to show you – then to get us out of there before the ship figured out I wasn’t her any longer. I don’t trust it.”
“The ship?” I ask.
“Yes. It’s a General Products build, and you know how they are,” she states, grimly. “That’s why we needed to get all cloak-and-dagger to escape it, and ditch our clothes in case they were bugged.”
“Crap,” I agree. “Yeah, they built the battlecruiser Kinunir – and it ended up going crazy and killed off its entire crew a while back. Didn’t find it for years! And Pegasus’s engines were supposed to be the latest stuff from Rhylanor, not old stock components. It wasn’t just the shipyard lying to the Scouts, they’ve got the ship lying to us too.”
“Mike?” she asks. “When I was Olga, didn't I say anything to you about the hyperspace engines?”
“No, nothing,” I reply. “Acted like they were perfectly ordinary. And they’re not – instead of being factor five with a sixteen light-year range, it’s a factor three and a factor two, which might get you ten light years in a week’s jump. At least the smaller one’s a backup if the first breaks down!”
“Yeah, that’s General Products for you,” she chimes in. “The drives can’t be added to make for a factor five – drives don’t work that way. But why? The only ships I know of that run backups are the giant Leviathan trade scouts and…” Her voice trails off.
“And?” I prompt.
“That solar-powered alien ghost ship. The Annic Nova. General Shipyards back at Boughene Station blew it up while trying to reverse-engineer it.”
I don’t even notice she’s naked any longer. “What do you know about it?”
“It’s how I got off Feri. My cover got blown, and the Scouts tried to smuggle me out in medical stasis on board the Nova. Didn’t quite work though, had to wake me up to defend the ship -- I’ll explain later. It’s actually a pretty good story, and the classified parts are even better. Going to need to get you cleared for them though.”
“Ok, fine,” I sigh. “But now what? Ship’s got issues, and we don’t know what those issues actually are.”
“Olga probably does, though,” Melissa states. “If I become her again, I can try to remember what she knows after I get back out from under the overlay.”
My jaw drops. “Wait, what? We’re two and a half light years – a week – from Boughene Station where they edited your mind into being Olga. You want to go back?”
“Don’t need to. There’s a personality overlay device in my cabin on the ship. Part of the overlay conditioning compels me to use it to reload itself when it fades, but I’m used to fighting off things inside my mind.”
“Part of the psychic powers thing?” I ask.
She sighs. “Yeah, part of the psychic powers thing.”
“So,” I scowl, “this is a serious plan to figure out the Pegasus’s weirdness, and not just the overlay playing tricks on you to get itself back into your head?”
She looks off into the distance, or at least into the mirror over the dresser. “Pretty sure. And we know how to break it when necessary.”
I shake my head in resignation. “Guess we’ve got to do it then.”
She laughs, grins, and throws herself back onto the bed. Oh, right -- we're both naked, and she's quite fit and attractive. “'Do it?' Really?” she asks.
I’m laughing too. She's crew, and we both know it's totally inappropriate. “Um, not quite what I was talking about. Would a hug do?”
“Yeah, I knew what you meant,” she says seriously. “A hug would be perfect.”
It was.
CONTENT WARNING: Non-explicit nudity (it's stated they're nude, but without any detail whatsoever. No sex is involved.) ]
-----------------------------------------------------
I close the motel room’s bathroom door, leaving our piled-up clothes behind, the ventilation fan running loudly. Melissa’s on the bed, looking quite serious. Her well-toned youthful figure is much more suited to our mutual nudity than mine is.
“Well, Mike,” she inquires, “shouldn’t we be getting down to business now that we’re alone?”
I wink and grin, breaking her facade – there’s her contagious laughter, and I’m doubled over as well for a minute.. “Lissa, playing this off like lovestruck teenagers was the most fun I’ve had since we did the ‘squabbling married couple’ routine to get through that border checkpoint on Feri. And I’m sorry I didn’t take a peek earlier.”
She takes a breath to compose herself. “I get that, though. You weren’t supposed to peek at the starship’s engines – when I was Olga, I was conditioned try to keep you out of the drive bay and away from the nav displays.”
“She was pretty subtle about that,” I answer. “Thanks for the heads-up not to react when I saw them though, or I would have.”
“I almost did, myself, but I was trying to be Olga and kept it together long enough to show you – then to get us out of there before the ship figured out I wasn’t her any longer. I don’t trust it.”
“The ship?” I ask.
“Yes. It’s a General Products build, and you know how they are,” she states, grimly. “That’s why we needed to get all cloak-and-dagger to escape it, and ditch our clothes in case they were bugged.”
“Crap,” I agree. “Yeah, they built the battlecruiser Kinunir – and it ended up going crazy and killed off its entire crew a while back. Didn’t find it for years! And Pegasus’s engines were supposed to be the latest stuff from Rhylanor, not old stock components. It wasn’t just the shipyard lying to the Scouts, they’ve got the ship lying to us too.”
“Mike?” she asks. “When I was Olga, didn't I say anything to you about the hyperspace engines?”
“No, nothing,” I reply. “Acted like they were perfectly ordinary. And they’re not – instead of being factor five with a sixteen light-year range, it’s a factor three and a factor two, which might get you ten light years in a week’s jump. At least the smaller one’s a backup if the first breaks down!”
“Yeah, that’s General Products for you,” she chimes in. “The drives can’t be added to make for a factor five – drives don’t work that way. But why? The only ships I know of that run backups are the giant Leviathan trade scouts and…” Her voice trails off.
“And?” I prompt.
“That solar-powered alien ghost ship. The Annic Nova. General Shipyards back at Boughene Station blew it up while trying to reverse-engineer it.”
I don’t even notice she’s naked any longer. “What do you know about it?”
“It’s how I got off Feri. My cover got blown, and the Scouts tried to smuggle me out in medical stasis on board the Nova. Didn’t quite work though, had to wake me up to defend the ship -- I’ll explain later. It’s actually a pretty good story, and the classified parts are even better. Going to need to get you cleared for them though.”
“Ok, fine,” I sigh. “But now what? Ship’s got issues, and we don’t know what those issues actually are.”
“Olga probably does, though,” Melissa states. “If I become her again, I can try to remember what she knows after I get back out from under the overlay.”
My jaw drops. “Wait, what? We’re two and a half light years – a week – from Boughene Station where they edited your mind into being Olga. You want to go back?”
“Don’t need to. There’s a personality overlay device in my cabin on the ship. Part of the overlay conditioning compels me to use it to reload itself when it fades, but I’m used to fighting off things inside my mind.”
“Part of the psychic powers thing?” I ask.
She sighs. “Yeah, part of the psychic powers thing.”
“So,” I scowl, “this is a serious plan to figure out the Pegasus’s weirdness, and not just the overlay playing tricks on you to get itself back into your head?”
She looks off into the distance, or at least into the mirror over the dresser. “Pretty sure. And we know how to break it when necessary.”
I shake my head in resignation. “Guess we’ve got to do it then.”
She laughs, grins, and throws herself back onto the bed. Oh, right -- we're both naked, and she's quite fit and attractive. “'Do it?' Really?” she asks.
I’m laughing too. She's crew, and we both know it's totally inappropriate. “Um, not quite what I was talking about. Would a hug do?”
“Yeah, I knew what you meant,” she says seriously. “A hug would be perfect.”
It was.
***
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[Author note: this break is not just a 'chapter' break, it's to keep it within forum's character limit per post.]
-------------------------------------------------
It’s a day later, and I’m standing under the Oganesson Pegasus. Look up the ladder past the nosegear door to watch the hatch spin open, climb into the cozy airlock to swap Efate’s smog-choked atmosphere for sterile starship air, then step out into the central corridor. Cockpit’s off to the left, wardroom’s down the hall to the right past the living quarters. Nobody’s there. It’s quiet, but not the “too quiet” of foreboding. At least not yet.
“Olga? Olga Nixon?” I call out. It’s either going to be her, or Melissa pretending to be her – though that’s not likely, knowing the hypno-drug dosages the overlay device shot into her to turn her back into Olga. Or... something could have gone terribly wrong.
“Hello!” Olga answers cheerfully from out of sight in the wardroom. “Who are you, and where are we? I’m just curious though -- it’s not a big deal.”
Nothing’s gone wrong, but my throat tightens nonetheless. Melissa’s really gone again.
“I’m Scout Mike Blandship, the pilot assigned to this ship,” I announce confidently as she approaches. “We’re at Efate now. Everything’s ok, as far as I know.”
“Oh, you’re the pilot I’ve been waiting for. That’s terrific -- now we can get going! Where are we going, anyhow? How about Regina? The ship’s autopilot suggested it when I asked.”
… And there it is, I think. Regina is the subsector capitol, a much safer place than here on Efate, and should be a good place to start my post-retirement reporting. It’s also nineteen light years away, and the Pegasus is supposed to be able to Jump sixteen in one weeklong hop. Not quite enough, but two shorter one-week Jumps would do it.
“Regina, eh?” I ask. “Did it suggest a route, too?”
She thinks for a moment. “Yes, it did. Jump-three to Knorbes, then another Jump-three to Regina. Easy!”
Too easy, I think. The Pegasus could do that run without challenging its claimed Jump range, and that won’t do. “Olga, how about giving this thing a real test? Jump-five to the Scout Base at Hefry, then Jump-one to Regina?” Now let’s see how she and the ship deal with that…
“Sure thing! That’s what I’m here for,” she replies brightly. “If this were a plain Jump-two Scout/Courier, the ship wouldn’t need my help with the engines and astrogation.” And neither would you, she didn’t add because that’s not how she thinks – but it’s how I think. But then, if General Products had built it right in the first place, I wouldn’t need help with it anyhow.
The clocks on the cockpit panel count up, and they count down. 168:17:43, :44, :45… rolling up the hours, minutes, and seconds of the week we’ve been outside of reality; 00:00:15, :14, :13… counting down the seconds until we fall out of Jumpspace. Four, three – suddenly the hazy grey of this little pocket universe “pops” and the stars re-appear outside the windows a moment early. It happens. I check the boards and get my bearings, then look out the window. Hefry’s a small and airless rockball, and we should be almost on top of it. The system’s orange dwarf star should be visible to Coreward, and it’s red dwarf secondary off to galactic Trailing, and dim. Beacons for the Scout Base ought to start showing up on the screens right… about… now.
Those aren’t the scout base beacons. We’re getting comms traffic from Regina. Regina? Three-light-years-away-from-Hefry, Regina?! I look again and check the screens – we’re two light-seconds out from a gas giant planet with a Terra-normal world in its orbit. Star’s yellow-white with a brown dwarf close-in, and there’s a distant yellow dwarf companion.
That’s Regina, all right.
Not our intended destination.
Not in range of the Jump Drive, even if we had the right one installed.
I look rightward, to ask an unfazed Olga in the co-pilot’s seat, “Hey, could you tell me where you think we are?”
“Looks like Regina,” she replies cheerily, then turns back to the controls.
I draw a deep breath, count to ten. “Do you have any idea how this happened?” I inquire, with all the politeness I can muster.
“Nope,” she answers.
A bit of skepticism sneaks into my tone, despite my efforts. “You plotted the course, and tuned the drives. You didn’t notice anything unusual?”
She’s still almost obliviously cheerful. “Nope. Easy plot, simple drive settings. Kinda spaced out while doing it, then okayed the final computations. And here we are!”
I can’t hide my incredulity any longer. “Where did you plot our course for, last week when we started the Jump?”
Her cheer fades to puzzlement. “Hefry? Pretty sure it was Hefry.”
Exasperated, I sigh. “But we’re at Regina. Nailed the Jump exit, perfect navigation, perfect drive settings.”
She smiles brightly. “Thanks! That was pretty good, wasn’t it?
“Wasn’t it?” she wonders aloud.
Something is wrong with Olga here, I think. And with the ship. We need to get Melissa back out again, but not until we’re dirtside and away from the ship. “Yes, it was very good, except for the part where we were going to Hefry because the ship couldn’t get to Regina in one hop.”
“But Mike, it did. Pretty neat, huh?”
“You can’t be serious. Our ship just misjumped and instead of ending up in deep space halfway into the next subsector the way misjumps always go, it’s right where we needed to be.” Exasperation clenches my jaw and fists, but my self-restraint stops it there. “That. Just. Does. Not. Happen. You don’t remember anything unusual?”
“Totally ordinary, boss. I set the Jump course for Hefry, and we came out at Regina exactly as I set the course to be.”
Something’s very wrong with her. “Wait. You said you set our Jump course for Hefry, then you said that you meant for us to come out at Regina. Which was it?”
“Yes,” she replied, cheerily, then her mood soured. “Please, I don’t want to think about it.”
But you do have to think about it, I realize. And you have to think about it now. “Space Unicorn,” I sing, “Shining in the night, Smiles and hugs forever, All around the world…”
And Melissa chimes in, “So pure of heart, and strong of mind, so true of aim with his marshmallow laser…”
I echo that line, as in the song, “….marshmallow laser!” Then I pause. “Melissa, you there?”
“Yes. Wow. That wasn’t a misjump -- the drives did what they were supposed to do. But it’s wrong!”
“Wrong, how?” I ask.
“Attention Crew,” echoes from speakers all around the cockpit. “Crewmember Melissa Ketonic, please verify your identity. I did not expect to have you aboard.”
Melissa turns in her seat to face me, searching for help.
I whisper to her, “Say yes.”
“I am Scout Melissa Ketonic, yes. Who are you?”
The voice echoes with inevitabilty, “I am the computer from the starship Annic Nova. I seek my ship’s crew, and wish to return them to my home port. I see that I now have part of my crew already. The rest, as far as I can tell, were headed for Regina and points beyond. We shall find them together.”
I look to Melissa. She looks back.
“We’ll do what?!” we announce together.
------------------
[Author: Yep, I failed to stick the landing. Bit more writing needed here...]
-------------------------------------------------
It’s a day later, and I’m standing under the Oganesson Pegasus. Look up the ladder past the nosegear door to watch the hatch spin open, climb into the cozy airlock to swap Efate’s smog-choked atmosphere for sterile starship air, then step out into the central corridor. Cockpit’s off to the left, wardroom’s down the hall to the right past the living quarters. Nobody’s there. It’s quiet, but not the “too quiet” of foreboding. At least not yet.
“Olga? Olga Nixon?” I call out. It’s either going to be her, or Melissa pretending to be her – though that’s not likely, knowing the hypno-drug dosages the overlay device shot into her to turn her back into Olga. Or... something could have gone terribly wrong.
“Hello!” Olga answers cheerfully from out of sight in the wardroom. “Who are you, and where are we? I’m just curious though -- it’s not a big deal.”
Nothing’s gone wrong, but my throat tightens nonetheless. Melissa’s really gone again.
“I’m Scout Mike Blandship, the pilot assigned to this ship,” I announce confidently as she approaches. “We’re at Efate now. Everything’s ok, as far as I know.”
“Oh, you’re the pilot I’ve been waiting for. That’s terrific -- now we can get going! Where are we going, anyhow? How about Regina? The ship’s autopilot suggested it when I asked.”
… And there it is, I think. Regina is the subsector capitol, a much safer place than here on Efate, and should be a good place to start my post-retirement reporting. It’s also nineteen light years away, and the Pegasus is supposed to be able to Jump sixteen in one weeklong hop. Not quite enough, but two shorter one-week Jumps would do it.
“Regina, eh?” I ask. “Did it suggest a route, too?”
She thinks for a moment. “Yes, it did. Jump-three to Knorbes, then another Jump-three to Regina. Easy!”
Too easy, I think. The Pegasus could do that run without challenging its claimed Jump range, and that won’t do. “Olga, how about giving this thing a real test? Jump-five to the Scout Base at Hefry, then Jump-one to Regina?” Now let’s see how she and the ship deal with that…
“Sure thing! That’s what I’m here for,” she replies brightly. “If this were a plain Jump-two Scout/Courier, the ship wouldn’t need my help with the engines and astrogation.” And neither would you, she didn’t add because that’s not how she thinks – but it’s how I think. But then, if General Products had built it right in the first place, I wouldn’t need help with it anyhow.
***
The clocks on the cockpit panel count up, and they count down. 168:17:43, :44, :45… rolling up the hours, minutes, and seconds of the week we’ve been outside of reality; 00:00:15, :14, :13… counting down the seconds until we fall out of Jumpspace. Four, three – suddenly the hazy grey of this little pocket universe “pops” and the stars re-appear outside the windows a moment early. It happens. I check the boards and get my bearings, then look out the window. Hefry’s a small and airless rockball, and we should be almost on top of it. The system’s orange dwarf star should be visible to Coreward, and it’s red dwarf secondary off to galactic Trailing, and dim. Beacons for the Scout Base ought to start showing up on the screens right… about… now.
Those aren’t the scout base beacons. We’re getting comms traffic from Regina. Regina? Three-light-years-away-from-Hefry, Regina?! I look again and check the screens – we’re two light-seconds out from a gas giant planet with a Terra-normal world in its orbit. Star’s yellow-white with a brown dwarf close-in, and there’s a distant yellow dwarf companion.
That’s Regina, all right.
Not our intended destination.
Not in range of the Jump Drive, even if we had the right one installed.
I look rightward, to ask an unfazed Olga in the co-pilot’s seat, “Hey, could you tell me where you think we are?”
“Looks like Regina,” she replies cheerily, then turns back to the controls.
I draw a deep breath, count to ten. “Do you have any idea how this happened?” I inquire, with all the politeness I can muster.
“Nope,” she answers.
A bit of skepticism sneaks into my tone, despite my efforts. “You plotted the course, and tuned the drives. You didn’t notice anything unusual?”
She’s still almost obliviously cheerful. “Nope. Easy plot, simple drive settings. Kinda spaced out while doing it, then okayed the final computations. And here we are!”
I can’t hide my incredulity any longer. “Where did you plot our course for, last week when we started the Jump?”
Her cheer fades to puzzlement. “Hefry? Pretty sure it was Hefry.”
Exasperated, I sigh. “But we’re at Regina. Nailed the Jump exit, perfect navigation, perfect drive settings.”
She smiles brightly. “Thanks! That was pretty good, wasn’t it?
“Wasn’t it?” she wonders aloud.
Something is wrong with Olga here, I think. And with the ship. We need to get Melissa back out again, but not until we’re dirtside and away from the ship. “Yes, it was very good, except for the part where we were going to Hefry because the ship couldn’t get to Regina in one hop.”
“But Mike, it did. Pretty neat, huh?”
“You can’t be serious. Our ship just misjumped and instead of ending up in deep space halfway into the next subsector the way misjumps always go, it’s right where we needed to be.” Exasperation clenches my jaw and fists, but my self-restraint stops it there. “That. Just. Does. Not. Happen. You don’t remember anything unusual?”
“Totally ordinary, boss. I set the Jump course for Hefry, and we came out at Regina exactly as I set the course to be.”
Something’s very wrong with her. “Wait. You said you set our Jump course for Hefry, then you said that you meant for us to come out at Regina. Which was it?”
“Yes,” she replied, cheerily, then her mood soured. “Please, I don’t want to think about it.”
But you do have to think about it, I realize. And you have to think about it now. “Space Unicorn,” I sing, “Shining in the night, Smiles and hugs forever, All around the world…”
And Melissa chimes in, “So pure of heart, and strong of mind, so true of aim with his marshmallow laser…”
I echo that line, as in the song, “….marshmallow laser!” Then I pause. “Melissa, you there?”
“Yes. Wow. That wasn’t a misjump -- the drives did what they were supposed to do. But it’s wrong!”
“Wrong, how?” I ask.
“Attention Crew,” echoes from speakers all around the cockpit. “Crewmember Melissa Ketonic, please verify your identity. I did not expect to have you aboard.”
Melissa turns in her seat to face me, searching for help.
I whisper to her, “Say yes.”
“I am Scout Melissa Ketonic, yes. Who are you?”
The voice echoes with inevitabilty, “I am the computer from the starship Annic Nova. I seek my ship’s crew, and wish to return them to my home port. I see that I now have part of my crew already. The rest, as far as I can tell, were headed for Regina and points beyond. We shall find them together.”
I look to Melissa. She looks back.
“We’ll do what?!” we announce together.
------------------
[Author: Yep, I failed to stick the landing. Bit more writing needed here...]
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[Author: kind of leaving this bit as a marker, OOC]
[If you just hopped to the end of the thread instead of the first unread post, jump back to HERE to get to the start of the new material. CONTENT WARNING AT LINK: non-explicit nudity (it's stated they're nude, but without any detail whatsoever. No sex is involved.) ]
[Had to break it up into multiple posts to make it fit. ]
---------------------------------------------
I quickly follow up to Melissa before the computer can continue, "Again, the drives are wrong how?" while mentally screaming to her, "First contact situtation!" I hope she's listening...
She looks off into space for a moment, then turns to face me. "You know the old joke, that two plus two equals five -- for sufficiently large values of two?" A pause, then the punchline: "Well, they're using sufficiently large values of two."
She reaches over, takes my hand in hers and looks at me with her huge amber eyes. I remember her telling me, "The math works under its own rules, but not the ones I learned at tech school. Feels like nonsense, but here we are on the far side of a Jump-6. And yes, this AI counts as a first contact. And a threat. Lucky us...."
[If you just hopped to the end of the thread instead of the first unread post, jump back to HERE to get to the start of the new material. CONTENT WARNING AT LINK: non-explicit nudity (it's stated they're nude, but without any detail whatsoever. No sex is involved.) ]
[Had to break it up into multiple posts to make it fit. ]
---------------------------------------------
I quickly follow up to Melissa before the computer can continue, "Again, the drives are wrong how?" while mentally screaming to her, "First contact situtation!" I hope she's listening...
She looks off into space for a moment, then turns to face me. "You know the old joke, that two plus two equals five -- for sufficiently large values of two?" A pause, then the punchline: "Well, they're using sufficiently large values of two."
She reaches over, takes my hand in hers and looks at me with her huge amber eyes. I remember her telling me, "The math works under its own rules, but not the ones I learned at tech school. Feels like nonsense, but here we are on the far side of a Jump-6. And yes, this AI counts as a first contact. And a threat. Lucky us...."
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[Fourth-wall break.]
Yeah, I've really written myself into a corner.
ANNIC NOVA's computer is:
The problems here are that in the longer term they're going to catch up with the Silver Streak of the Boughene Station Blues PbP and I'd need to get that up and running again to play it from the other side of the encounter. Worse, though, in the short term, they've just put an alien AI that at least matches Imperial tech and possibly exceeds it, into comms range of the subsector capital!
It's, as noted, a First Contact (aside from whatever it did at Boughene Station, and we don't know the details). They've also discovered they have an unusually-high-efficiency jump-6 drive that is somehow visually indistinguishable from a Jump-3 and a Jump-2 drive (it's actually J-9 but we don't know that yet).
What's kind of hanging me up here is that the obvious thing is to warn the Scouts and Navy, and turn the ship over to them. I really need to "humanize" the AI so there's a reason the characters might rationally decide not to do that.
Also, I need to humanize the Olga version of Melissa so it matters that she keeps getting bumped off and reloaded. I mean, she's been specifically created to be helpful and nice. Game mechanics just *poof* her out of existence with no consequence, but I'd like this to bother the audience.
Yeah, I've really written myself into a corner.
ANNIC NOVA's computer is:
I've previously established that Annic Nova is apparently TL-15 (except for the computer, and it wasn't TL-15+ until it rebuilt itself).
The problems here are that in the longer term they're going to catch up with the Silver Streak of the Boughene Station Blues PbP and I'd need to get that up and running again to play it from the other side of the encounter. Worse, though, in the short term, they've just put an alien AI that at least matches Imperial tech and possibly exceeds it, into comms range of the subsector capital!
It's, as noted, a First Contact (aside from whatever it did at Boughene Station, and we don't know the details). They've also discovered they have an unusually-high-efficiency jump-6 drive that is somehow visually indistinguishable from a Jump-3 and a Jump-2 drive (it's actually J-9 but we don't know that yet).
What's kind of hanging me up here is that the obvious thing is to warn the Scouts and Navy, and turn the ship over to them. I really need to "humanize" the AI so there's a reason the characters might rationally decide not to do that.
Also, I need to humanize the Olga version of Melissa so it matters that she keeps getting bumped off and reloaded. I mean, she's been specifically created to be helpful and nice. Game mechanics just *poof* her out of existence with no consequence, but I'd like this to bother the audience.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
I blame the Referee.
Who are THEY?
Whut.
If the ship is a "security threat" ... the PCs aren't getting it back.
End of story.
Yeah, dumb author.I blame the Referee.
Seriously, had some family issues that'd probably make a really entertaining story if I knew all of it and were it my story to tell, that totally wiped out my writing routine and motivation at about that time. Another week of looking at it could have saved a lot of angst after I turned the writing assignment in... but I didn't have that week. Mike, Melissa, and the Pegasus/Annic Nova's reconstituted original computer
Heironymous Nexus Technology (drive exponentiation). Drives can't be added, but they can exponentiate each other. J2^J3 is J-8, J3^J2 is J-9.Whut.
MWM retconned that explanation for AN's two drives back in 2016 in an interview at a convention...
Basically IMTU, J4 (2^2) is TL-13; J8 (2^3) is TL-17; J9 (3^2) is TL-18. Lesser distances are either from a single drive as J1-3, or by forced precipitation from jumpspace by impinging on a significant gravity well while attempting J-8. The Jump-n and Navigate programs are TL-17-18 prototype/experimental from a TL-15 base (TL stage effects modify cost and required CPU space).
Nova's low-tech alien computer and prior crew had no idea this was possible.
The ship did a bootstrap catastrophe recovery (because half the ship being gone is kind of a catastrophe) starting with the damaged maker devices, which promptly discovered the computer was malfunctioning (actually, replaced by a lower tech unit) and needed to be rebuilt first to manage the recovery process. Once built properly, the computer woke up and realized that its crew was missing and it needed a less conspicuous ship to seek them with.
It then subverted the shipyard at Boughene to swap out the (already not working well, it's a GP build) drives in the Oganesson Pegasus for ones that could exploit the rediscovered Heironymus Linkage technology. While doing so, it discovered that there was a clone of one of its crewpersons (at least as far as it could tell from corrupted video data) availalble, so it managed to get that body programmed as a technician for assignment to the smaller ship. It's sentimental like that. Didn't realize at the time that it was getting the actual person, not just the body...
If the authorities find out it is one... That's why I needed to write up some events and exchanges (that, alas, I don't think I've left in-story time for) to get the humans to choose to protect the AI from the Imperial researchers.
The open issues on that are whether the AI left a copy of itself back on the wreck at Boughene Station (I'll stipulate that it did not), and whether the wreck finished rebuilding itself (again, I'll assume that it redirected its efforts to upgrading the smaller ship, and covered its tracks aboard the wreck).
My original plan when I started all of this was that the AI was going to need to shift part of itself into Olga via a wafer connection during heavy processing (combat and jump), and would eventually start seeping into the overlay personality. Olga would go from being shallow, helpful, and almost annoyingly perky, through being somewhat quirky, to being alien but relatable.
And then Melissa would come out from under, to establish a real dilemma. Of course, that's not what I ended up writing.
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Speaking as one of the audience, I'm already bothered about what's happening to Olga. I think that you are raising some important ethical questions about how people would react to clones and especially clones that appeared to have the personality and memories of the person they resembled. Initially, when Mike thought that Olga was "just" a rather simple-minded artificial interface to a few expert systems he was still outraged at the thought of her being activated to take a bullet so that Melissa could safely disappear. He treated her as a person, if a slightly strange one. However, the moment Melissa's personality appeared he forgot that "Melissa Mk 1" is still alive out there somewhere and Olga was immediately relegated to a mechanism to be used as needed and then switched off. Given that AI systems are being created that can sweep up all the information about a dead person and create an avatar that can hold a reasonably convincing conversation with their relatives, these are definitely questions worth prodding the audience into thinking about. Who knows where that may go?
@yallambie :
1. Thanks for reading!
2. Great points!
3. I'm on via phone at the moment and can't give the extended response this deserves. Just wanted to let you know that I noticed, and will properly engage with your comments.
Again, thanks!
1. Thanks for reading!
2. Great points!
3. I'm on via phone at the moment and can't give the extended response this deserves. Just wanted to let you know that I noticed, and will properly engage with your comments.
Again, thanks!
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