Symphony of Destruction (The Spindown Saga, #1) Read online

  _ACTION=‘payload loss remediation req’

  He launched the send routine. That was all he could do. It would not even be able to tell him if it transmitted successfully. The inter-component communications were not responding. Most likely the control unit was destroyed. Most likely the transmitter was destroyed too. Everything was destroyed. As he would soon be.

  It was over.

  He launched the data deletion routine. It prompted for authorization. He spoke his passphrase - but stopped short before the last syllable. It would wipe his memory, delete all his local data, terminate his original incarnation. Disconnect, delete, destroy. He would be no more.

  For a while.

  Until Hannah’s promised resurrection.

  Hannah will spawn my third archaeon.

  He took one final look around. The vast expanse of space stretched before him. Robots were not supposed to wax poetic, not supposed to feel. Sadness, immensity, awe, ecstasy, love, hope.

  At the edge of his field of vision he noticed a speck among many, a speck with a telltale shape. The shape of a Kernighan TS17 thrustertug. It was far away, but not too far. Its trajectory was vaguely parallel to his own. He had an idea.

  His local data storage still held a copy of the ship’s log files. He traced back to the moment of the initial hull breaches. Yes, here it was.

  EventHeader=SEC-NAV.376.13428

  Timestamp=567.3297.17.824

  _User=SFELD446

  _Type=security protocol

  _Description=‘emergency navigational beacon launched, channel 569.2043’

  He set his telemetry to scan the channel indicated in the log. Yes. There it was. The beacon was still active. Unbelievably, it hadn’t met the fate it warned of. It had not yet bumped into any of the deadly motes.

  A small chunk of rock bumped his elbow. With his other hand he scooped it up, plus a few more that floated through his vicinity. He collected them in his left hand, and then, taking one into his right hand, held the pebble between finger and thumb. He estimated its mass. Then, with as much momentum as he could impart to it, he flicked the pebble away, in the direction opposite from the thrustertug. It flew away fairly quickly. Yes. This could work. It would take many, many flicks of many, many pebbles. It would take quite a while to close the distance, but there were plenty of pebbles floating nearby which he could continue collecting along the way, and he had nowhere else to be. Nothing better to do. He laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of his situation.

  Eventually, Brother Anderson did reach the thrustertug. He programmed it to automatically navigate toward the emergency beacon, then set thrusters to full. It would be another long journey, but this time it would not be one he would remember. He would not be aware of his own presence when he reached his destination. He would not see the green and yellow fluorine reactions. He would not notice as his chassis exploded through the cloud of deadly debris. He had miraculously sailed unscathed through fireballs and shrapnel and tons of grinding rock. This next collision would not be one he would survive.

  He returned to the data deletion routine. The original confirmation thread had timed out, so he launched it again re-using the parameters he had already fed it. Then he spoke his passphrase, one last time.

  Chapter 72

  The pod blasted away from the Ventas-341 on her small thrusters. The plasglass pane showed a wall of dark grey, receding rapidly, then a glare of light as sunshine hit the pod, now out of its mother’s shadow. The warm sunlight lasted about two seconds, giving Hannah and Colin just enough time to really notice it, before being replaced by an orange ball of fire much closer than the sun could ever be.

  The pod was buffeted as a minor shockwave raced past her, followed by shrapnel and fragments of former hull. A few bangs and crashes caused their hearts to race as bits of ship ricocheted off the pod’s thick hull. It was tough, though, built to withstand atmospheric entries and even crash landings. They were safe here. A few more seconds later, the new found silence allowed the passengers a chance to relax into their seats and their breathing.

  “It’s OK. We made it. The worst is over with.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Hannah nodded, her breath was forced as she willed herself to relax. Finally letting go of her safety straps, she reached for Colin’s hand.

  He saw the nervousness in her eyes, even through the slightly fogged up helmet. “It’s OK,” he repeated slowly.

  “I know.” She was starting to believe it now.

  Colin just held her hand for a moment, then he tapped on his own helmet. “I guess we can take these off now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” He cracked the seal and pulled off is helmet, then helped Hannah with hers.

  “Wow.” Hannah shook her hair loose.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, uh. Where are we going anyway?”

  “I guess we never really got a chance to sort out which of those beaches we are hitting first, eh?”

  Hannah laughed, “Yeah right.”

  “Well, we are headed back into the belt, with the sun at our back, and there’s plenty of places to go, not too far from here.”

  He was right. The sunshine was again beaming through the pane behind them. It made Hannah feel as though the pod was riding on a beam of light that would carry them to their destination, wherever that may be.

  “Pass me my oboe will you?” She was wriggling out of her thick-gloved suit now.

  “I don’t have it. I thought you packed it.”

  “Shut up!” She slapped him with a flapping, empty glove on the end of an empty arm.

  “Oh here is it!” He gently pulled out the oboe from where it had been tucked beside him, and handed it to her.

  She began to play an improvised melody. A tune of sunlight, and space, and escapes. A tune of the joy of sadness, and the melancholy of hope. A tune of beaches, and ships, and billions of orbiting rocks.

  Colin smiled as he listened. Hannah played out the melody, then paused, and lowered the oboe. She slumped over, leaning her head on Colin’s shoulder, and closed her eyes.

  Again the asteroid belt lay ahead. They had been through it before, but this time it felt different. This time it was not merely a loading zone, a job site. This time it was the hope of a new home, a new start. This time it was a jumping off point in an unending zone of uncountable rocks, with myriad outposts, filled with infinite possibilities.

  Author’s Note

  Thanks so much for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed it! Please consider leaving a review on Goodreads. This is a huge help to get the word out for a new author like myself.

  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46805397-symphony-of-destruction

  As you may have guessed, this story isn’t over. The Spindown Saga continues, following our friends Hannah and Colin, and Brother Anderson as their adventures only get wilder.

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  Also by Ken Goudsward

  The Spindown Saga

  SAMPLE Chapter - Symphony of Destruction

  Symphony of Destruction (Coming Soon)

  Standalone

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  Watch for more at Ken Goudsward’s site.

  About the Author

  Ken writes somewhere between hard sci-fi and space opera, with a strong character focus.

  Read more at Ken Goudsward’s site.

  About the Publisher

  Dimensionfold Publishing is a small author-run indie/self/collaborative publishing hybrid specializing in dark comedy and science fiction.

  https://dimensionfold.com/

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  Ken Goudsward, Symphony of Destruction (The Spindown Saga, #1)