Chapter 1 – Mid-Watch
The look of concentration on Commander Riley's face was intense. It had been 7 minutes since she'd said a word, and 3 since she'd moved. If Willis wasn't constantly receiving telemetry from the Commander's biosuit, he might have thought she was dead. Suddenly, she shifted in her chair and threw an arm out towards the oversized window in front of her.
"There! Right there, there it is!" she shouted.
"Unlikely, Sir," Willis responded.
"I'm telling you, Willis, I can see it, that's Earth right there!" the commander said, adamantly, "can't you see it?"
Willis could see it, or at least his sensors could. The advantage of being an AI was you didn't have eyes that could fool you into seeing things that weren't there.
"Yes Sir, I can see, but you can't," Willis responded.
Suddenly the huge window in front of the Commander lit up. Green and blue shapes appeared showing data feeds from various systems. Just above where the Commander was pointing, and several inches to the right, a green box surrounded a very faint white dot. Red text appeared by it.
SOL3 - EARTH
101,294Km
The Commander tilted her head slightly before saying anything.
"Well… I was almost right."
"Most definitely, Sir." Willis responded, "Shall I prepare yesterday's reports for transmission?"
"Go ahead," the Commander said, her tone betraying a calm exterior. She was annoyed.
Willis went quiet, but the Commander noticed text beginning to roll up the screen in the corner of her vision as the reports compiled and compressed. She let out a slight sigh and got up. The Commander's seat lay in the forward quarter of a well-sized control room. Half a dozen chairs lined the walls behind her - each with its own set of screens - with several more in front, closer to the window. In the centre of the room was a large console. Its lights were dimmed now, but the faint outline of the ship could be seen. She pushed off from the chair, floating in zero-gravity towards the console. Her momentum was a little more than she'd anticipated and she snatch-grabbed onto a handle running along the console's edge, before coming to a halt. She cursed and looked around the empty room, forgetting for a second that she was on her own; except for Willis of course.
The Commander hit a few buttons on the console and it lit up, displaying the vessel's name - ISA Bedivere - before a hologram of the ship appeared. She began checking over the various systems, using the console to enter data into the ships log. The hologram was deep orange in colour and it showed every part of the huge vessel in intricate detail. At the bow was the command section, designed to separate from the rest of the ship in an emergency. It contained office and engineering spaces, a small sickbay, and the bridge - the ships control centre and the Commander's current location. Aft of the command section was habitation; living quarters, the main sickbay, mess, and recreational areas were housed here. Then followed the smallest part of the ship, the science area. A few labs were contained here, along with an area housing the crew's space suits and several maintenance drones. Following that came the ships largest section, the cargo holds. Measuring roughly half of the vessel's overall length and housed in a ring pattern around a central zero-G corridor, they could be configured to hold just about anything you could think of. Finally, aft of the cargo holds, was the engineering section, containing the ships propulsion and main life support systems.
It took a few minutes for the Commander to complete all the standard checks. Everything appeared normal, as it always did. She tapped the console, shutting off the hologram, and floated back to her chair. She sat for a minute before hitting a button on the seat arm. A small display on the window pops up, projecting her image. Her tall, slender frame, clad only in a form-fitting charcoal flight suit, sits floating slightly above her seat. She runs a hand over her head. Her pale skin brushing over deep crimson hair pulled back into a tight ponytail; a silver streak runs down one side. She lets out a muffled yawn, taps another button on the seat, and speaks,
"Good morning Bozeman, mid-watch system check is normal. Mission logs and personal databursts are attached. Looking forward to tomorrow's entertainment update. E-O-M zero-two-twenty-one ZULU."
She hits a few buttons again and her image disappears from the screen.
"Willis," she says, " attach my log entry and transmit when your reports are ready, send out the mail too'.
"Yes, Sir," Willis replies.
His tone is almost human, but with no discernable accent there was something about everything he said that sounded condescending. Either that or he really was judging all the humans on board. The Commander had once tried to replace Willis' speech protocols with vocal samples from an old TV show she liked, but the AI took offence and locked her out of her entertainment database for a week. Mid-watches were long enough when you had distractions from knowing you were the only conscious person for one hundred thousand kilometres; they were unbearable without. Luckily, she was allowed access again, although strangely the files for that particular show had been corrupted somehow.
She starting going over the reports Willis had just transmitted. After she was done with that she let out a sigh, "Willis, how long until the next watch?"
Willis responded before the Commander had even finished speaking, "It's 0236, Sir. You are on duty until 0600 ZULU."
"Great," the Commander bemoaned, almost mirroring Willis' tone, "well throw up a football game from Monday's databurst will you. Oh and better turn on the AG up here while you're at it."
Almost immediately a faint buzzing sound began as the artificial gravity was restored, and the Commander was tugged back into her seat. The various boxes of data that had previously dotted the large view screen faded away or moved off to one side, replaced with the game. The Commander sat back, grabbed a small tablet computer from the side of the chair and started writing a letter home as she watched.
It took about an hour for her to finish typing up her thoughts into a letter. She threw in a few photos from a recent birthday party on board too. When she was done she placed the tablet back in the pocket on the side of the seat. Almost immediately it floated back up, she grabbed it and placed it back again. It bobbed up out of the pocket once more and floated stationary at about the height of the Commander's head.
"This is ridiculous," she said, "Willis, this is not funny you …" she cut off as the tablet stopped floating and instead shot straight backwards towards the rear of the bridge, clipping a titanium bulkhead and smashing into pieces; some of which came to a halt still floating in mid-air.
"What the hell is going on?" she exclaimed.
"There seems to be something interfering with the anti-gravity plating in the forward sections." Willis responded, and then almost immediately the bridge lights dim and turn to a sinister shade of red. Alarms start to sound. "It seems like we're flying into some sort of localised space-time distortion" Willis continues, "or should I say … it's flying into us."
The Commander looks incredulous, "what do you mean flying into us?" she replies.
"It seems to be moving, Sir, it's heading towards to aft sections. We have ship-wide system failures, if it meets the engineering compartment it could breach the reactor."
Regaining her composure the Commander leaps from her seat and runs to the back of the bridge, screaming orders at Willis as she slides down a ladder and into the command section, "I want everyone in the refuge now, except the Major, tell him to grab a pulse rifle and meet me by the cargo section".
She speeds through one of the two tight corridors that run the length of the forward sections, squeezing past other crewmembers as she goes. Willis stays with her, providing updates on the distortion. In a few minutes she's at the rear of the lab section, where the transverse corridors merge into one central path through the cargo containers. Waiting for her by the hatch out into the zero-G area is the Major. He's a tall, well built man, with well-trimmed black hair and a thick bristly moustache; a rifle is slung over his shoulder.
"What the bloody hell is going on, Jane?" he demands in a deep, booming voice, his accent is obviously British.
The Commander pauses for just a second to catch her breath and then repeats Willis' warning about the reactor. The Major doesn't bother with a reply, and just opens the hatch, grabs a handrail and pulls himself into the corridor. The Commander follows, still out of breath. The pair uses the metal rungs running along either side of the space to pull themselves between the cargo containers, racing to get ahead of the distortion.
"Is it still moving?" asks the Commander.
"Yes," Willis responds, "but it's stopping, it should be just up ahead"
"Which section?" inquires the Major, just as one of the huge container doors ahead of him explodes from the corridor wall, "never mind".
Gases start to spew into the open corridor, and sparks fill the air from a ruptured power conduit. Suddenly, a figure crashes through the door and spins into the passageway, grabbing a handrail to stabilize himself as his brown trench coast twists in the zero-gravity. He looks up towards the Major and Commander, his brow furling before he speaks, "What? What? What!"