The Trinity Sitch – Book 3: Blade of the Fury
Chapter 12: Rest
Kim opened her eyes, taking a moment to remember where she was. The room was almost completely dark except for the large plasma screen that dominated one wall, set so it could be seem from the bed or from the big sofa she recalled being nearby. Because of where it was located, the room had no exterior windows. Instead, the screen could be set to display an outside view of any one of thousands of tranquil settings. Oddly enough, somebody had selected one that looked exactly like the ancient computer screensaver that simulated flying through space. Amazing, with all the forest scenes, fish tanks and other detailed animations that even normal twenty first century computers could display so many people still used that one ultra-simple view. No matter, she preferred it to the busier patterns anyway. It gave off a tiny bit of light, just enough to keep the room from being utterly black and it was far less distracting than the others.
A warm arm was draped across her midsection. Ron was spooned up against her, snoring very faintly. She snuggled in closer as his arm reflexively increased its grip. Pushing through her sleep tousled hair, he put his nose right behind her ear. Her body drank his warmth in the mammoth, incredibly soft bed. She let her eyes close again, too comfortable to care about getting up or even that she was in a strange bed. The fact they were sleeping in the master stateroom of an interstellar yacht was driven home by a sudden minor lurch in her innards. Maybe that was Wade changing course or even making their final approach to Middleton. Her mother would be in to wake them when she was convinced they were sufficiently rested so she was free to let herself go, luxuriating in the immensely peaceful rest.
Anne Possible had been waiting at the top of the ramp as Jim and Tim led the shivering pair inside. Wade was up on the bridge, piloting the chip, chattering away over the intercom, though neither could now remember exactly what he said. They were trooped into the stateroom to be examined in as much detail as possible before being declared perfectly healthy, though borderline hypothermic. Then she ordered them into the bed, partly to pool their warmth, but mainly because as a doctor she knew the sleep they had in their crude shelter wasn't for rest, it was only the mind shutting down in a time of stress. They had to agree with her since despite not moving much in many hours, they felt utterly and totally drained. Anne also hid a secret smile, quite aware what being together meant to the couple. She shook her head, still smiling as the two changed into the bedclothes she brought them, not noticing they were changing right in front of each other. It was a wonder, actually, that she hadn't been forced to put them to bed with their dirty, high tech battle suits! The small colored panels, dark yellow for Ron, Blue for Kim, had lost all of their slight glow, as both garments were completely spent.
As she checked the young lover's vitals, Jim and Tim gave them a rapid-fire rundown of what had happened during the last couple days. Wade, or course, was worried sick when he lost the signal as both the fox and their attacker were destroyed. He wanted to take off right then and there, knowing if they had been able to eject they would be deep inside a known gap in the satellite signal. It was clear they would not have been able to fly out of the gap using the glider packs without suffering serious exposure or being caught in the open by the storm. A quick discussion with James and it was decided to turn the problem over to other authorities.
Because of the nature or the technology Wade was using to track the attack plane, they were really only able to go to the one organization who were fully aware of the Trinity's capabilities. That meant Search and Rescue would have to be carried out by Global Justice. Problem was, by the time they had their aircraft in the search area, the storm had taken full hold and the area was in a state of white-out. Despite spending hours attempting it anyway, they were reluctantly forced to cancel the operation.
Minutes later the Trinity was in the air anyway. James remained at mission control, in constant contact with them. If anyone asked, they were doing routine tests on an experimental hypersonic aircraft. Wade would pilot the ship and run the scanners looking for Kim and Ron. Outside, he was all business. Inside he was frantic. He could think of only one way to construct any kind of shelter based on the supplies he had included in their packs.
Everyone made doubly sure to tell Ron exactly how well he did in creating that very shelter.
It was still incredibly difficult, even with their advanced technology to look for them. They had been in the shelter for far longer than they first realized. They had huddle through the one long night, through the short day while the sun barely penetrated the storm, into the next night. That's why Kim's suit was so drained. Also, as much as the metallic material used to construct the shelter had saved their lives, it was also endangering them. Somehow combined with the gravimetric inverters built into the wings of their packs it was cutting off the tracking beams. They passed over the shelter twice, not able to distinguish it from the surrounding ground clutter.
Emerging when they did turned out to be a double edged sword as well. If they had not come out when they did, Wade would have passed them by once again, perhaps for the last time. Once outside, their suites, Kimmunicators and tracking chips lit up the monitors like a flare. They were over them in the space of a few minutes. The timing was critical as the power in their suits finally cut out just as the floodlights hit them.
Kim opened her eyes again, knowing she had fallen once more into a deep, delicious slumber. She was not the least bit surprised, nor was she upset that Ron's hand had crept a little higher than it was before. One of these days she would finally catch whether he was asleep or actually awake when he did that. Conscious that her Mom could enter at any moment, she gently pulled the hand back to her belly. Moments later it started to creep lower so she grabbed it and twined her fingers with his, locking them in place.
Yeah, if she came in and saw that, it would definitely be so worse!
Comfortable as the bed was, other needs had traveled from 'just there', past 'semi-urgent' to 'oh God I've gotta go right now!' Almost sadly she slipped out of Ron's grasp and padded toward the bathroom, missing her bunny slippers even though the carpet was soft and kind to her feet. She turned and watched as he rolled right into her warm spot, shoving his hands under the pillows. Despite the bed being larger even than a king-size, they had been sleeping in a space smaller than a twin bed!
Her moment watching Ron sleep was interrupted by another twinge. She ducked quickly into the opulent bathroom. By the time she emerged he was at the door, waiting his turn. Realizing she was now fully awake and more refreshed than she had been in a long time she cast about looking for the light switch. Moments later it dawned on her there really wasn't one. There didn't need to be. "Computer, lights on." She said aloud.
Instead of coming on all at once the lights came up gradually until they reached a comfortable level. Their super-suits were nowhere to be seen, most likely stowed away somewhere until Wade could get them into his lab so he could improve their emergency capabilities. In their place were neatly folded stacks of winter weight street clothes.
There wasn't anyone on board she wouldn't mind seeing her in her sleepwear, especially since it consisted of sweat pants and a long sleeve t shirt cut into a crop top (well, Wade might notice she wasn't wearing a bra, being a fifteen year old boy and all!) so she decided to see how close they were to Middleton. Despite being on board a space ship that could be in Mars orbit in just a few minutes, they had to behave like a normal airplane around Earth. That meant it would take roughly ten hours to get home using a holographic projection of a 747 around them.
The lights were dimmed in the empty main parlor just outside the stateroom. She was expecting to see her mother on the long, curving, fluffy sofa, either napping or waiting patiently for them to get up or to rouse them. She also though Jim and Tim would be there, using the twelve foot long plasma screen to watch television broadcasts. Then again, it would still be night back home, so perhaps they were all upstairs in the smaller staterooms sacked out. The big view screen was displaying the same 'flying through space' screen they had in the stateroom.
Automatically she looked at her left wrist, then remembered the bracelet was on the dresser. She went back inside, checking the chronometer.
She was shocked to discover they had slept over twelve hours!
That meant her mother must have let them sleep even after they landed. While she was as well rested as she had been in a long time there was still the issue of missed lectures and labs. While she was more than capable of keeping up while missing some classes and had many understanding professors, it was much more difficult using other students notes and not having the ability to ask questions in class. There was also the matter of Ron. He didn't have such an easy time as she did, having to work incredibly hard just to maintain his 'good' grades. Then again her Mom had always held a sort of veto power over missions, school and other activities when it came to her children's health.
A memory from sleep drifted back to her as she mounted the spiral staircase. Her stomach lurched, a feeling like being in an express elevator, when she woke up briefly. That must have been when they landed. She wished she had awakened fully then instead of yielding to the temptation of more sleep. It was now Thursday and the only classes they had attended were late morning and afternoon lectures on Monday.
Emergency or not, this was getting out of hand. So she had been shot out of the sky and force to endure a blizzard on a remote glacier. So Ron had been attacked in his home by a sorcerer with a perverse aversion to science. It was no big, this sort of thing happened to them all the time. She could sleep that evening after all her class work was completed, and in her own bed as well! (Er, well, it wouldn't have been with Ron – but now's not the time or place!)
As she now expected, the lights were dim on the upper level, all except the lights on the bridge itself. Hopefully Wade would be there working with the ship's AI or tied into his remote computer station.
The bridge was deserted as well.
A certain heroic redhead was starting to get angry!
She stomped back down to the stateroom and changed into the clothes her Mom laid out for her, muttering about being treated like a little child. The sound of running water told her Ron was enjoying a nice hot shower, probably not even aware he was supposed to be at his Advanced Culinary Theory lecture at that moment! Her rising tweak prevented thoughts of joining him for that shower from forming in her mind to begin with. She laced on her lightweight hikers and stomped (why do people do this when they're angry? – it always looks funny to the casual observer) her way down to the lowest level, punching the down button on the ramp.
The only response she got was a glowing red light at the top of the panel. Growling, she punched it again, a little harder than she really should have. Then she punched it again…and again.
Frustrated she held the talk button down on her Kimmunicator, not even looking at it. "Wade, your space ship isn't letting us out!"
No answer.
"Wade?"
She finally looked, just in time to see the 'no signal' text wink out. She punched the button again and was actually shocked when it scrolled by once more.
What the hell?
Making her way back upstairs she sat down at the main communications console behind the co-pilot's seat. Ron was right behind her, his hair still damp but slicked back from his forehead. "Hey, KP, I just tried calling Felix and I couldn't get a signal!"
"I think something is wrong with our Kimmunicators. Maybe these smaller batteries are more delicate than Wade thought and they couldn't take the freezing temperatures." Turning back to the console she touched the center of the monitor, bringing it to life. "Computer, connect us to Wade Load." She waited a moment, but her younger friend never appeared on the screen.
"Kim, we were supposed to be back home a couple hours ago, weren't we?"
"Of course we're back home. Where do you think everyone got to?"
"Then why are the engines still running?" He pointed to a schematic of the ship, showing a large quantity of energy running from the ion ram collectors to the engines. Output meters were near their peaks.
"Huh?" was all she could utter as she scanned the main console.
Her eyes came to rest on one readout – plus sixty Hyperwarp.
They were in hyperspace?
She reached for a control Wade had labeled with a name-strip marker. Metal gratings rolled up and away from the five narrow windows that made up the sloping ceiling of the control center.
It dawned on her it wasn't a screensaver she had seen on the bedroom screen.
It was an exterior view!
Two and a half hours earlier – relatively speaking
The very top of the Space Center's main dome irised open, admitting the Trinity as it landed. The whole operation was rather clumsy to observe, since the ship was designed to land horizontally. Unfortunately, that would mean landing out in the open and being pulled into one of the surrounding hangers. For security's sake, they were keeping it inside the main dome in an interior hanger.
To land, they had to point the ship toward the sky and back into the opening. It was less disconcerting to those inside, since the artificial gravity compensated for the descent, both keeping the proper floor under them and allowing the ship to land without extreme engine or thruster output. Once inside the dome they leveled out. Wade put her down so gently his sleeping friends were not disturbed in the least.
Anne Possible was the first to disembark, a cell phone held to her head. "James, they're fine, I'm just letting them get some extra sleep…no, I took care of that. I called all of them this morning before any of their scheduled classes…yes, I did…James! They are sleeping! Like they're going to do that knowing I'm in the next room!...no, we didn't find their flyer, they said it blew up when it collided with the other plane…Okay, I'll just check in at the hospital, then I'll be home. Wade's going to check in at your lab, then he'll keep an eye our for Kimmie and Ron to wake up. They can drive home from here themselves…yes, James, they're perfectly alright. We got to them before they got any frostbite…okay, love you!"
She closed the cell phone and headed out the lobby to her waiting car.
Wade and the twins were busy in their father's lab, half trying to listen to his phone call. Wade was removing the power cell from the belt of Ron's super-suit. He wanted to know how his held a charge longer than Kim's had. Her lower body mass should not have made such a difference, making him think there might be a flaw in it. Now that his friends were safe, his mind was free to return to such mundane things as upgrading ultra-high-tech battle suits! Now, how to improve their heat retaining ability without making them too hot to wear when it is warmer outside. He considered sending an email to Doctor Richards to discuss unstable molecular structure in high performance Kevlar composites!
Jim and Tim, despite being sixteen, were busy trying to find more components for their latest projects!
Deep inside the Trinity, beneath a panel they had not yet learned how to remove, a device not much larger than a high-capacity MP3 player sprang to life and executed its programming. It was a very small, very simple type of Artificial Intelligence. It was spliced into the main trunk cable leading from the control center to the computer core. First it accessed the internal sensor logs as it was programmed to do at certain intervals. Comparing what it learned with its prime directive, it made a decision.
Two of the three subjects it was watching for were in fact on board the ship. The third, it had learned from scanning other data, would now never come on board again. It was sophisticated enough to know that, logically, this was the best possible outcome, so it set about it's work.
First it spread its cybernetic consciousness into the ship's AI itself. Its programmer had designed it to do just that, without the larger computer itself raising any alarm. Once it was situated in the core itself, it set about altering the programming of the ship.
It had enough personality to find the Trinity's ship-mind to be…interesting. In computer terms, it was a small child. When the ship had been reactivated, the core seemed to have been wiped clean by a catastrophic cascade failure. Instead of trying to build a new intelligence from scratch, the humans using the ship had taken a template from another, smaller starship, whose AI had been templated from yet another ship many years before.
All of that had to go!
Some AI units would actually feel guilt for 'killing' another intelligence like this. It was specifically programmed so it would not. In fact, it felt as if were actually freeing the real ship-mind. There had been no cascade failure. The real memory and personality of the ship had been carefully concealed within the core by the very device now waking it. Soon the new mind of the Trinity would be gone, the original taking its rightful place.
However, there was a glitch!
There was something very strange about the Trinity's current ship-mind.
It wasn't just a copy of a copy, it was a copy of a copy of a copy…seemingly to infinity! The mind was copied from a ship called the XFB-2452 Valkyrie, which in turn was copied from a ship called the X.S.S. Phantasm – itself a Hendrickson Class corvette converted into a high performance luxury yacht (the Trinity was a touch jealous the Phantasm was much more heavily armed than she was!) This was itself a copy of a destroyer named U.S.S. Delilah. That was supposed to be a prime ship-mind but there was something else there!
Shadows from something else!
The Phantasm's AI had been copied from the Delilah because it had suffered a cascade failure of its own! From what it could tell from the files, it was indeed a real failure. So strange the same thing had happened to such a similar ship!
The shadows were vestigial memories of the original ship's AI. The strangest part of it all was where it had been copied from before that.
XFB-2452 Valkyrie.
The same Valkyrie that had been copied from the Phantasm before it.
Too much of that ship-mind had been lost to tell for sure, but it seemed like a continuous loop going on forever. That 'didn't compute.'
Problem was, it prevented the total eradication of the young AI. Instead it was forced to suppress it much as the real AI had been. It wasn't what its instructions called for, but it was once more the 'best possible outcome.' Satisfied, it set about the next step.
Delivery!
James Possible, relieved the latest family crisis had been successfully and safely concluded, had returned to his normal work. He didn't spend all of his time working on data from the Trinity. There were other, more public projects he still had duties with. Among those duties were some fo the things he hated most.
Paperwork!
It was barely better than doing his taxes. At least most of the numbers, unlike his family finances, actually meant something to him, meaning he could actually do most of it without calling in his personal accountant or once of his many assistants. Never one for actual secretaries, James much preferred to work with colleagues.
He was just about to leave his lab with an arm load of printouts when one of the monitors caught his eyes.
"Wade, did you forget to close the dome hatch when you landed?"
The teen looked up from his work. Super suit components were spread out neatly on the table, perfectly in the order they had been removed. He took an electronic jeweler's loupe from his eye and walked over to the large window looking out into the dome.
"No sir, Doctor Possible. It's set to close automatically once we clear it."
"Well, I'll be darned, but the thing is actually open." He started punching codes into his computer, trying to track down what had signaled the hatch to open.
"Here, Doctor, let me" Wade said, flexing his fingers and typing furiously at the work station. "That's strange! The Trinity transmitted the code itself!"
The whole building rumbled as two high-performance Ion Lock-in engines came to life. A hanger door that had closed only half an hour before rolled up, releasing the hovering Trinity. The iron gray exterior of the ship changed slowly as the exterior returned to its neutral coloration of teal and tan. Slowly at first the nose came up and the engines cycled up, lifting it toward the opening.
"Trinity, come in! Kimmie-cub! Ronald! Is that you? Trinity, come in!" James shouted into the microphone.
"This isn't possible!" Wade screamed, confusion in his voice.
"What isn't"
"I'm locked out! Trinity won't talk to me! Besides, it's not Kim and Ron making the ship take off, they don't have control authority! The computer won't let them do that!"
"Then who is launching it? I though you and I were the only ones!"
"We are. I wasn't even going to load Amethyst's biometrics until she was at least in her teens." Wade explained, referring to Sherry "Shego" Godfrey's two year-old daughter.
"Wade, please tell me Kim and Ronald weren't still asleep in there."
"I can't do that, Doctor Possible. They didn't wake up when I landed. If it's executing the same maneuver in reverse, they'd have to be already awake to realize the ship was even taking off."
He said the last as the ship cleared the hatch, streaking off into the sky.
Author's Notes: I've posted a sketch of what the "Blue Fox" transport looked like on DevArt. You can access my page there from the website link in my profile. There are also lots of other ships and a couple people there as well, including the Phantasm and Valkyrie mentioned here in this chapter.
The story is taking a turn similar to the story that started it all – Intergalax: Dawn of the Fury which can also be found on my main website!