Title: Starlight, Starlight
Chapter 8: Of Plotting And Planning
Author: Steven Quinlan
Disclaimer: I own them all....Psych! However
the plot is mine
Archives: Let me know where, but otherwise feel free to archive
----
Everything is connected. Nothing happens without a reason. The sooner sentients learn this, the sooner they, like us, will begin to see the patterns, and the sooner they will be able to avoid danger and strife.
-Karin Nakir
Ki-Hodryan scientist, 11 months before the extinction of the Ki-Hodryan species.
CY 4212
----
Seamus Harper's Point Of View
----
Oh, how I love my life. Hi, I'm Seamus Harper, and I can see again. Right now, I'm busy nursing a sparky cola hangover and am wedged under Andromeda's panels tinkering.
I can't remember the last time I was this happy. I am just enjoying the ability to work again, to fix, to lovingly shape metal and circuitboards, to make for a more efficient and better ship.
I love being able to see. Okay, there's the main control sensors realigned.
"Rom-dol, how does that feel?" I ask her as I slide out from under the panel. Ever since I got my eyes back, and woke up after the party, I've been working like mad to get the Andromeda back up to my specs, and, I think that with about three days more of solid work, I can get everything back into shape
Rommie's hologram appears infront of me, "Quite good actually, I've got a slight axial tilt of 2 degrees, but it's well within High Guard operational tolerance levels."
Yeah right, like what did the High Guard know about being a ship engineer. Rommie told me once that they didn't officially have chief engineers on High Guard ships of the line to stop the AI's getting over dependant on a single person.
They would have three designated duty chiefs, one for each shift that were rotated on a two monthly basis. This of course lead to a whole bunch of people who really didn't know what they were doing and without the authority to back it up.
Which may be fine for High Guard, but out here, I run the show. And in the Seamus Harper show, two degrees is to big a variable. I slide back under the panel and start making alterations. God, it's good to be back.
--
A little later.
--
"So Doc, am I in good health?" I ask as I put the eyes back into my head, and that takes some getting used to, believe you me. He turns on me with a bemused look on his face
"Mr. Harper, you have a weakened immune system on the verge of collapse. Your teeth are slowly being disintigrated by the Sparky Cola that i'm told you drink. Your ears are operating at less than ninety-one percent efficiency and your hand to eye coordination is so bad, that if this were a real military vessel you would never have made it through army training."
He stops his rant to take a breath. I guess even Nietzscheans need to breathe once in a while, "However, if you mean, how is your body reacting to the implants, it is doing very well."
"Thanks Doc." I tell him as I jump off the bunk. As I start to make my way to the door, Rommie's hologram appears.
"Doctor Bischoff, as part of my normal operations I constantly monitor for unusual radiation, EM frequency transmissions and conventional transmissions. I have detected 4 seperate bursts of low grade transmissions from Harper's eyes in the last day. Can you explain?"
The Doc looks at the hologram and he seems to be momentarily unsure, nah, I'm dreaming, he's a Nietzschean.
"Well Miss Ascendant," Gotta love the fact that this guy is always polite. You know it's allways Mister this, Miss that, and he won't use shortened names, or nicknames.
It took Beka four days to convince him to call her by her first name, and now he does, he calls her Rebekka, her full first name, not just Beka. I thought she was going to have a fit when he did that. Rev didn't even bother trying.
"Cybernetic eyes like the ones I installed in Mister Harper aren't of a particularly high grade. Now, human eye sockets don't have enough lining in them to properly encase a cybernetic eye, so what I did was install a small transmitter in the back of the eye, in the blind spot of the optic nerve, and one in the eye itself."
He turns on one of the data flexi's and shows us exactly what he means with a set of diagrams. It's kinda cool in a really gross way.
"The eye transmits it's images to the receiver at any time that the conection pads aren't connecting to the eye itself, and any extreme eye movement can do that. It's likely you'll notice this in the future as well."
Hey, it works for me, Rommie spends a few minutes talking to the Doc, but I don't particularly want to hear them debate the validity of low end band transmissions as opposed to data connection pads. I have a meeting on the Obs deck to get to.
--
Dylan is waiting for me on the Obs deck, and as usual he's way early, but then that's our Captain.
"Hey boss, some party last night wasn't it." He nodds at me with a smile, that is laced with the grim lines of a hangover that is probably as bad as mine is.
"It was indeed. I've got a question for you, why is the slipstream drive non functional?" Straight to business, gotta love the man.
I look at him sheepishly, how do I explain this. "Well you see boss, now that I've got my eyes back, I want to make sure Tyr hadn't done to bad a job at keeping Rommie in working order."
He smiles at that and tells me he won't let Tyr know I said that, for which I am very gratefull. I am so not into the kind of pain I'd get for telling Tyr that he did a less than perfect job.
"So I figured I'd do a major diagnostic on all of the ships systems. I did weapons and sensor arrays while we were getting here, and started the engines one as soon as we came out of slip and confirmed the area was clean. It should be done in about six hours."
I wait for about ten seconds, shifting from foot to foot as he stares at me, and seems to be considering something.
"It's not a problem Harper," He reassures me. "It's just that the ship that was going to pick up our guests isn't here yet, and they asked if we could drop them of at one of their bases instead. I said yes, but I'll let them know we're going to be delayed."
He nods at me and starts to walk out, "Oh and Harper?" I nod at him to continue, "Don't work yourself to death. We've got time to do any repairs you want to, they don't all have to be done today."
With that he walks out, and I grin to myself, Dylan just doesn't get it. I don't work as hard on the ship as I do, because I have to. I do it because I enjoy it. I'm an engineer, it's what I do.
--
"Oooooooh, if only I could tesseract, could tesseract, could tesseract.
If only I could tesseract, I'd tesseract alot." I swing into my fifteenth rendition of the song as I punch in my security override into the main control panels in machine shop 5. These panels give me keyboard control of all the vital systems and require a 42 digit password. Not too difficult to remember, but fun to come up with, hey I am a genius you know.
I'm about to start my 16th rendition of 'If Only I could tesseract' when Rommie appears infront of me with a pained expression on her face.
"Hey Rom-doll, what's shaking?"
"What are you singing, and how do I get you to stop?" The hologram asks me.
"It's just a little song I put together to help me pass the time. I think it's rather catching myself. "I flash her a huge grin, I don't care how upset she is, right now nothing can bring me down.
I've got my eyes back, the Nietzschean Doc has his DNA sample, and right now everything is right with the world.
"Well, if I can't get you to stop, then can I at least get you to jack in? I think I may be developing a glitch in the front targetting array software."
"Sure Rommie." I plug myself into the main board and feel my body go limp as my brain starts processing the information coming from Rommie.
It's a funny thing that, if it wasn't for the data port, I couldn't do what I do. The VR helmets are worthless for serious programming and they lack the reaction speeds of the dataports. Heck, even a broken down old dataport like mine is better than any non direct way of working on a computer.
I look around and reach out to grab the targeting arrays. If you want to get technical, my mind issues an order to the dataport, it converts the order into the user level computer language that Rommie's been programmed with, and her own AI matrix converts that command into the actual AI programming code.
"Okay, now let's have a look at this array."
It takes me about 2 minutes to find the problem with the array. When I was fixing the axial tilt on her sensor array iIforgot to adjust the targetting array for the extra difference. It takes me only a few seconds to fix, and I see the discrepancy drop to below one percent. That's acceptable even for me.
I'm about to ask Rommie if she needs anything else, but she beats me to it.
"Harper, didn't the doctor say that your eyes would stop functioning if you jacked in?" She looks puzzled, as if she can't figure out a piece of problematic data.
"Yeah, because they are both feeding information directly into my brain, it would be a problem to seperate the two, so when I turn the dataport on, the eyes go off." Stops me from seeing the deck infront of me overlayed on the AI net that i'm looking at.
She looks at me curiously. "Then why are they still transmitting?"
That's strange. I check Rommie's sensor logs and she's right, there is the same low end transmission that the eyes usually give of.
I tell Rommie to hang on as I drag my mind back to my body, take out one of them, that still makes me shudder, and plug it into a scanning console. Luckily I don't need them to both be on at the same time.
I start the scan and then plug back in, going over the scan results from the inside. There doesn't appear to be anything odd, untill I notice a slight fuzzyness around the edges of the transmission circuits.
That's a new one on me, I dig deeper and find myself up agains some Intrusion Countermeasures. This is where the dataport really comes in handy. I dodge the attack from the program and build a defensive program and trigger one of Rommie's offensive ones, because all coding in an AI matrix is essentially long strings of ones and zeroes, form is everything.
The IC has appeared as a fire spitting snake of some kind, and my defensive programming appears as a big shield, the attack program Rommie loads up and attacks the IC with manifests itself as dozens of little combat drones shooting at the snake.
Whatever Rommie was using as an offensive program did the trick as the IC program freezes in motion before blowing up
As the AI program disintigrates I take a good long look at the fuzzyness behind the circuits and find something that makes my blood run cold. A second data stream, just like the one in the camera in Alexander's office.
"Rommie? When was the last burst transmission?" I ask urgently. I hope to the divine that I'm wrong about this.
"Exactly 4 minutes and twelve seconds ago."
"Show me the camera feed for the ten seconds leading up to that." A feed appears infront of me, and in the ten seconds before the signal I am typing in my override codes for the ship's main computer control.
Tyr was right, Alexander and his buddies are up to no good. I know what they are trying to do now, and heaven help me, if I don't get to the bridge right now, we're all going to be killed.
Chapter 8: Of Plotting And Planning
Author: Steven Quinlan
Disclaimer: I own them all....Psych! However
the plot is mine
Archives: Let me know where, but otherwise feel free to archive
----
Everything is connected. Nothing happens without a reason. The sooner sentients learn this, the sooner they, like us, will begin to see the patterns, and the sooner they will be able to avoid danger and strife.
-Karin Nakir
Ki-Hodryan scientist, 11 months before the extinction of the Ki-Hodryan species.
CY 4212
----
Seamus Harper's Point Of View
----
Oh, how I love my life. Hi, I'm Seamus Harper, and I can see again. Right now, I'm busy nursing a sparky cola hangover and am wedged under Andromeda's panels tinkering.
I can't remember the last time I was this happy. I am just enjoying the ability to work again, to fix, to lovingly shape metal and circuitboards, to make for a more efficient and better ship.
I love being able to see. Okay, there's the main control sensors realigned.
"Rom-dol, how does that feel?" I ask her as I slide out from under the panel. Ever since I got my eyes back, and woke up after the party, I've been working like mad to get the Andromeda back up to my specs, and, I think that with about three days more of solid work, I can get everything back into shape
Rommie's hologram appears infront of me, "Quite good actually, I've got a slight axial tilt of 2 degrees, but it's well within High Guard operational tolerance levels."
Yeah right, like what did the High Guard know about being a ship engineer. Rommie told me once that they didn't officially have chief engineers on High Guard ships of the line to stop the AI's getting over dependant on a single person.
They would have three designated duty chiefs, one for each shift that were rotated on a two monthly basis. This of course lead to a whole bunch of people who really didn't know what they were doing and without the authority to back it up.
Which may be fine for High Guard, but out here, I run the show. And in the Seamus Harper show, two degrees is to big a variable. I slide back under the panel and start making alterations. God, it's good to be back.
--
A little later.
--
"So Doc, am I in good health?" I ask as I put the eyes back into my head, and that takes some getting used to, believe you me. He turns on me with a bemused look on his face
"Mr. Harper, you have a weakened immune system on the verge of collapse. Your teeth are slowly being disintigrated by the Sparky Cola that i'm told you drink. Your ears are operating at less than ninety-one percent efficiency and your hand to eye coordination is so bad, that if this were a real military vessel you would never have made it through army training."
He stops his rant to take a breath. I guess even Nietzscheans need to breathe once in a while, "However, if you mean, how is your body reacting to the implants, it is doing very well."
"Thanks Doc." I tell him as I jump off the bunk. As I start to make my way to the door, Rommie's hologram appears.
"Doctor Bischoff, as part of my normal operations I constantly monitor for unusual radiation, EM frequency transmissions and conventional transmissions. I have detected 4 seperate bursts of low grade transmissions from Harper's eyes in the last day. Can you explain?"
The Doc looks at the hologram and he seems to be momentarily unsure, nah, I'm dreaming, he's a Nietzschean.
"Well Miss Ascendant," Gotta love the fact that this guy is always polite. You know it's allways Mister this, Miss that, and he won't use shortened names, or nicknames.
It took Beka four days to convince him to call her by her first name, and now he does, he calls her Rebekka, her full first name, not just Beka. I thought she was going to have a fit when he did that. Rev didn't even bother trying.
"Cybernetic eyes like the ones I installed in Mister Harper aren't of a particularly high grade. Now, human eye sockets don't have enough lining in them to properly encase a cybernetic eye, so what I did was install a small transmitter in the back of the eye, in the blind spot of the optic nerve, and one in the eye itself."
He turns on one of the data flexi's and shows us exactly what he means with a set of diagrams. It's kinda cool in a really gross way.
"The eye transmits it's images to the receiver at any time that the conection pads aren't connecting to the eye itself, and any extreme eye movement can do that. It's likely you'll notice this in the future as well."
Hey, it works for me, Rommie spends a few minutes talking to the Doc, but I don't particularly want to hear them debate the validity of low end band transmissions as opposed to data connection pads. I have a meeting on the Obs deck to get to.
--
Dylan is waiting for me on the Obs deck, and as usual he's way early, but then that's our Captain.
"Hey boss, some party last night wasn't it." He nodds at me with a smile, that is laced with the grim lines of a hangover that is probably as bad as mine is.
"It was indeed. I've got a question for you, why is the slipstream drive non functional?" Straight to business, gotta love the man.
I look at him sheepishly, how do I explain this. "Well you see boss, now that I've got my eyes back, I want to make sure Tyr hadn't done to bad a job at keeping Rommie in working order."
He smiles at that and tells me he won't let Tyr know I said that, for which I am very gratefull. I am so not into the kind of pain I'd get for telling Tyr that he did a less than perfect job.
"So I figured I'd do a major diagnostic on all of the ships systems. I did weapons and sensor arrays while we were getting here, and started the engines one as soon as we came out of slip and confirmed the area was clean. It should be done in about six hours."
I wait for about ten seconds, shifting from foot to foot as he stares at me, and seems to be considering something.
"It's not a problem Harper," He reassures me. "It's just that the ship that was going to pick up our guests isn't here yet, and they asked if we could drop them of at one of their bases instead. I said yes, but I'll let them know we're going to be delayed."
He nods at me and starts to walk out, "Oh and Harper?" I nod at him to continue, "Don't work yourself to death. We've got time to do any repairs you want to, they don't all have to be done today."
With that he walks out, and I grin to myself, Dylan just doesn't get it. I don't work as hard on the ship as I do, because I have to. I do it because I enjoy it. I'm an engineer, it's what I do.
--
"Oooooooh, if only I could tesseract, could tesseract, could tesseract.
If only I could tesseract, I'd tesseract alot." I swing into my fifteenth rendition of the song as I punch in my security override into the main control panels in machine shop 5. These panels give me keyboard control of all the vital systems and require a 42 digit password. Not too difficult to remember, but fun to come up with, hey I am a genius you know.
I'm about to start my 16th rendition of 'If Only I could tesseract' when Rommie appears infront of me with a pained expression on her face.
"Hey Rom-doll, what's shaking?"
"What are you singing, and how do I get you to stop?" The hologram asks me.
"It's just a little song I put together to help me pass the time. I think it's rather catching myself. "I flash her a huge grin, I don't care how upset she is, right now nothing can bring me down.
I've got my eyes back, the Nietzschean Doc has his DNA sample, and right now everything is right with the world.
"Well, if I can't get you to stop, then can I at least get you to jack in? I think I may be developing a glitch in the front targetting array software."
"Sure Rommie." I plug myself into the main board and feel my body go limp as my brain starts processing the information coming from Rommie.
It's a funny thing that, if it wasn't for the data port, I couldn't do what I do. The VR helmets are worthless for serious programming and they lack the reaction speeds of the dataports. Heck, even a broken down old dataport like mine is better than any non direct way of working on a computer.
I look around and reach out to grab the targeting arrays. If you want to get technical, my mind issues an order to the dataport, it converts the order into the user level computer language that Rommie's been programmed with, and her own AI matrix converts that command into the actual AI programming code.
"Okay, now let's have a look at this array."
It takes me about 2 minutes to find the problem with the array. When I was fixing the axial tilt on her sensor array iIforgot to adjust the targetting array for the extra difference. It takes me only a few seconds to fix, and I see the discrepancy drop to below one percent. That's acceptable even for me.
I'm about to ask Rommie if she needs anything else, but she beats me to it.
"Harper, didn't the doctor say that your eyes would stop functioning if you jacked in?" She looks puzzled, as if she can't figure out a piece of problematic data.
"Yeah, because they are both feeding information directly into my brain, it would be a problem to seperate the two, so when I turn the dataport on, the eyes go off." Stops me from seeing the deck infront of me overlayed on the AI net that i'm looking at.
She looks at me curiously. "Then why are they still transmitting?"
That's strange. I check Rommie's sensor logs and she's right, there is the same low end transmission that the eyes usually give of.
I tell Rommie to hang on as I drag my mind back to my body, take out one of them, that still makes me shudder, and plug it into a scanning console. Luckily I don't need them to both be on at the same time.
I start the scan and then plug back in, going over the scan results from the inside. There doesn't appear to be anything odd, untill I notice a slight fuzzyness around the edges of the transmission circuits.
That's a new one on me, I dig deeper and find myself up agains some Intrusion Countermeasures. This is where the dataport really comes in handy. I dodge the attack from the program and build a defensive program and trigger one of Rommie's offensive ones, because all coding in an AI matrix is essentially long strings of ones and zeroes, form is everything.
The IC has appeared as a fire spitting snake of some kind, and my defensive programming appears as a big shield, the attack program Rommie loads up and attacks the IC with manifests itself as dozens of little combat drones shooting at the snake.
Whatever Rommie was using as an offensive program did the trick as the IC program freezes in motion before blowing up
As the AI program disintigrates I take a good long look at the fuzzyness behind the circuits and find something that makes my blood run cold. A second data stream, just like the one in the camera in Alexander's office.
"Rommie? When was the last burst transmission?" I ask urgently. I hope to the divine that I'm wrong about this.
"Exactly 4 minutes and twelve seconds ago."
"Show me the camera feed for the ten seconds leading up to that." A feed appears infront of me, and in the ten seconds before the signal I am typing in my override codes for the ship's main computer control.
Tyr was right, Alexander and his buddies are up to no good. I know what they are trying to do now, and heaven help me, if I don't get to the bridge right now, we're all going to be killed.