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

  As his body continued to race toward engineering deck, his mind began to wander after Casey and Stef. He imagined the two of them begging him not to run off. He imagined them slowly unzipping their jumpsuits.

  Suddenly, he was forced back into the present moment as he crashed into Turner, who had just emerged from engineering. Turner was carrying a large portable fire suppressor, which hit Tynor solidly in the chest, nearly knocking the wind out of him as he sprawled to the deck. The hit was hard. He was still breathing, but was seized with another coughing fit.

  “Shit, Turner! Watch where you’re going, man!”

  “Oh man, I’m really sorry Tynor! Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine!” he managed between wheezes, “but listen, I need your help. Grab the chemical analyzer from the blue cabinet would you? I need you to run it back to Hansel on the bridge!”

  “Oh yeah, sure. I was just heading up there anyway. They said there might be a fire up there?”

  Both men were now scrambling to their feet.

  “Yeah man, now hurry it up! Hansel’s waiting for that analyzer so they can figure out how to put out the fire! Oh and you can leave that useless can.” He said gesturing toward the portable suppressor, “It’s some kind of weird exotic oxidizer shit!”

  Both men entered engineering deck. It was a mess, as usual, with the long workbenches covered in various half-finished repair projects and hand tools of every description. Above the benches, more tools hung all along the walls from pegboards which looked like they belonged in a 20th century automotive garage. The place smelled like it hadn’t been washed since the 20th century either. Tynor sat down on a ratty old couch in one corner, and watched as Turner jogged over to the blue cabinet and searched for the analyzer.

  “What’s this thing look like?” he called to Tynor.

  “Umm idunno, it probably says ‘CHEMICAL ANALYZER’ on it!”

  “Is this it?” Turner pulled a case from the back of the cabinet and held it up, attempting to read the faded lettering, “‘Jackson-Isaacs power co’ - that’s not it.”

  “Look in the back” suggested Tynor, then coughed violently a few more times.

  “I AM looking in the back!”

  Bryce, the second-lead-engineer, looked up from his work on the bench. Until now he had ignored the other two men. “You don’t sound too good there, Tynor. You want a cup of tea or something?” He approached Tynor, his weathered face showing a level of compassion that was rare in men in his field. He truly cared about his crew, as well as taking care of the “Old Lady,” as he referred to the ship. He set down his wrench and looked straight into Tynor’s eyes, seeing the exhaustion of racking coughing fits and the exertion of a hard run, but seeing also something deeper, something less tangible - some future sense, immediately imminent but not yet understood.

  “Stay here,” he told Tynor. Then, striding confidently toward Turner and gently shoving him out of the way, Bryce seized a small nondescript grey case from the back of the blue cabinet, and silently disappeared through the engineering deck hatchway.

  Chapter 9

  Bryce jogged down corridor B3 toward the bridge. He was almost there. At his age, a jog was not particularly sustainable, but he pushed himself forward with determination, carrying the chemical analyzer. Although there had been few words spoken, they had been enough, and besides, Bryce had seen the urgency on Tynor’s face. He was nearing the final corner before the bridge. It was one of those six-way intersections so prevalent on the ship. He, more than most, appreciated the simple beauty of the hexagonally based structure of these mid-era “Fleetcruuz” class ships. They were hardy; sturdily designed and expertly built. Many crewmen saw only the drawbacks to the design. Yes, there were a lot of blind corners.

  “Oof!” The blind corner drawback quickly evidenced itself once again as Bryce was knocked from the side and thrown against the wall.

  Two junior crewmen scrambled to brace the gurney which they had been pushing very quickly down the corridor. Too quickly, obviously.

  “Oh gosh - I’m so sorry chief!” sputtered one of them, still bracing the gurney from the impact, while the other man immediately began a quick inspection of the gurney’s occupant. Bryce attempted to recall the man’s name. He recognized both of them, had seen them many times, but their names were foggy. Perhaps Kent. ‘Yes Kent, that’s it,’ he thought to himself - ‘and the other man is... Peter? - no... maybe Spencer’. Bryce was a people person alright. He felt it was important to know the names of all the crew members, and on a ship this size, it was only slightly onerous, but certainly worth the effort. His attention then turned to the occupant of the gurney. The man was not moving. He had an emergency oxygen mask obscuring half his face, yet Bryce could easily recognize one of his own staff. Colin Stiphons, one of his best men. He was smart as a whip, and a diligent worker; never one to scrimp on quality and always willing to stay late to finish a task. Bryce choked back a sudden burst of mixed emotions. On some subconscious level, he thought of Colin almost like the son he never had, even though they were not really close on a personal level. He had always felt it his duty as a supervisor, to provide not only pragmatic direction to his staff, but also, to provide leadership in some more ethereal regard. He thought of himself as a role model for his men, someone for them to look up to, much the same way that he himself looked up to his own boss, the Director of Engineering, Dick Bradley, and of course, Captain Stentrop himself. And now, looking down at the unmoving man, he felt a certain amount of doubt and disappointment in himself. Had he truly been all he could be to this man? Had he ever really showed his staff his pride in their accomplishments, their hard work, their work ethic? Was it too late?

  “Chief?”

  Bryce’s attention snapped back into focus. His eyes instinctively snapped up to engage the speaker.

  “You OK?” Kent questioned.

  “Yes of course,” he answered, “it’s just...” He interrupted himself and, turning toward the bridge, took control of the situation. There, a dozen meters down the corridor, was the ship’s Medical Officer, the robot doctor, Brother Anderson. Thank God! His man would be in good hands!

  “DOCTOR!” Bryce shouted, “We have a wounded man here!”

  The doctor responded immediately, flying into action faster than any human could, and took only seconds to traverse the corridor. He quickly inspected Colin, instantly noting an absence of burn marks, abrasions, or obvious disfigurement.

  “What happened?” he asked the two men holding the gurney.

  Spencer replied, “There was a fire and an explosion. Looked like he was thrown clear by the blast - but he took a nasty blow to the head; possible concussion. We were careful to move him in case of spinal damage too.”

  “Good, good. Get him down to medbay and I’ll be right behind you”

  Spencer and Kent started off down the corridor pushing the gurney toward medbay.

  “Actually, wait a sec,” interrupted Brother Anderson. “I don’t have a full report, but there’s clearly more to this than a simple fire. We may have more casualties. You two better patrol the fore-deck sections and see what help we can provide. I’ll take him to medbay and prep it for further recourse.”

  Then, turning to Bryce he continued, “I wanted to run a chemical scan in the bridge. We may have a foreign oxidizing agent on our hands.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” answered Bryce.

  Brother Anderson and his gurney were already halfway down the corridor as he said it.

  Chapter 10

  Blurry white light panels glide by too rapidly, yet with a strangely recognizable jolting pattern. It matches time with a metallic ringing, “clang, clang, clang!” On and on it rings. A blurry white arm crosses my vision. A strange mumble. The space seems to spin in a drunken dream. Sounds fade into colours - orange, green, yellow, pink. The colors are faces. Faces with no eyes, no mouths. They mumble inadvertent flavours. The white noise is an acidic smell. My eyes blink, momentarily cutting short all sound.
They flicker briefly. The smell is burning flesh. The sound is pain. The pain of my dead co-crewmen. It’s unbearable. Again, I go black.

  Chapter 11

  Spencer and Kent had done a good job of initial assessment for concussion and spinal trauma risk, and of taking appropriate measures to stabilize and evacuate the patient. They had applied the standard “stabi-mist” emergency oxygen mask correctly, ensuring proper fit and appropriate flow levels. The ship-wide safety and first aid courses had been a good investment of resources, and were paying off once again. Brother Anderson allowed himself a moment of pride for the success of that project. Nearly half the crew had gone through the program and passed their certification tests, earning for the ship the highest safety ranking in the whole Ventas-Calir fleet. A congratulatory plaque had been presented to Brother Anderson by Captain Stentrop and X.O. Bhutros; the plaque now hung on the wall, here in medbay, just to the left of the quietly beeping monitor which displayed Colin’s vital signs.

  He was stable for now, but remained unconscious. His electroencephalograph indicated widespread but unusually weak activity in the theta wave band as well as hippocampal nu-complex waves. Brother Anderson was prepared to monitor these signals closely, over the next hours and days, adjusting his intravenous drip admixtures as needed, using a variety of synthetic neurotransmitters and narcotics, in hopes of finding a combination that would promote higher frequency waveforms. Eventually, this could enable recovery of sensory stimulus response, and ultimately, consciousness. True, this was a bit of an art form and a balancing act as the combinations were nearly endless. Unlike his own synthetic brain, the human brain relied on an endless complexity of constantly fluctuating biochemistry. After hundreds of years of study, the human brain was understood well enough to be mimicked artificially, at least in relatively superficial ways, but still not well enough to be fully mapped or treated adequately from a medical perspective. Many top minds regarded it as an unsolvable problem.

  Here in the medbay, caring for a wounded brain, and surrounded by implementations of biological and chemical cures, Brother Anderson’s own mental focus shifted back to the system cures needed by the rest of the ship. Physical and systemic assessment was the first step required. Then he would be able to properly prioritize and analyze the rest of the many problems here on board the Ventas-341.

  He made a quick check of Life Support. Thankfully, this was one system that remained unaffected and fully functional. As medical officer, Brother Anderson had a hardcoded direct interface into Life Support. The majority of the other systems were still unknown, and would remain so, unless he could get Status Reporting Services back online. Now that he controlled Central Ship Ops, he could access the low level protocols required to force reboot sequences on all other subsystems. He sent the command to the SRS.

  While waiting for the SRS to boot, he radioed Engineering Foreman Bryce.

  “Bryce here,” he answered.

  “Yes chief, this is Medical Officer Brother Anderson. What is the status on the bridge, chief?”

  “Well, the fire seems to have burnt itself out, thank God, but we were easily able to get enough of a smoke sample and some samples from the burnt extinguisher foam to determine the primary makeup of the oxidizer. It’s fluorine. Nasty stuff indeed, Brother. I had no idea it could make such a mess!”

  “Thank you, chief. I would like to inspect that data further if you don’t mind”

  “Of course. I will upload it to you once I get back to Engineering. I’m heading there now.”

  “Thank you chief; and the bridge itself?”

  “I’m afraid it’s pretty much completely melted. No-one could survive it. The whole thing is one massive clump of burnt out shit. A real god-damned horror.”

  “Thank you chief... Oh, and chief?”

  “Yes, Brother?”

  “I’m going to run full ship diagnostics, and I’ll need you and your men standing by to make repairs as necessary.”

  “Of course.”

  SRS was now up. During his conversation with Bryce, Brother Anderson had waited for its READY status, then had triggered a “Quick All System Autoscan,” which was now beginning to tally results.

  Comms came up yellow. Quickly drilling into the results revealed the reason. Some sections appeared normal, but others were flagged “degraded quality” and still others “offline.” The bridge, and several other decks within sectors A and B, showed offline. Like many of the other ship-wide systems, comms was partially segmented, meaning that it might be working fine in one area of the ship, but not in another area. Unlike some of the other systems, comms had built in feedback; its peripheral zones constantly sent data samples back to the main controller, so it was able to report on its own fault locations. In a way, it had a certain type of self-awareness. It could locate its own injuries.

  Brother Anderson could use this fact as a way to hunt down other potential system issues that did not present automatically in the report data.

  Status was now being reported as all green for some of the other systems: Life Support, Artificial Gravity, Main Power. This was potentially misleading though. According to Bryce, the bridge was completely destroyed. The comms status report confirmed this. Quite likely, the power and data lines in that deck were also melted and shorted. As he suspected, the segmentation of Main Power must not support fault location feedback. Life support probably didn’t either. Brother Anderson sensed a lot of manual verification in his immediate future. It was just then that he both felt and heard a vibrating shudder ripple through the hull and bulkheads, accompanied by a brief surge in the lighting. “Better double-check main power and hull integrity too,” he thought to himself.

  One additional duty lay heavy on Brother Anderson’s mind. One that he had automatically shunted off for later consideration, and had thus far not allowed to consume even a single cycle of concern, but which now he must begin to address.

  He radioed central administrative support. “Central admin, this is Brother Anderson.” There was no response. Of course. He realized that Central Admin was on one of the comms circuits that showed as offline. He radioed Bryce instead. “Chief? It’s Brother.”

  “Yes Brother?”

  “Is Hansel still with you?”

  “Yes, we are on our way back to Engineering”

  “Can I borrow him for a few minutes?”

  “Sure, Brother.”

  “Hansel here, Brother Anderson.” Hansel spoke into his own radio. He found it funny that Brother Anderson hadn’t just called him directly if he needed him.

  “Ah good, Hansel. Listen, I need you to take a message over to Central admin for me. Their comms are down.”

  “Sure thing - what do you want me to tell them?”

  “Ask them to please begin funerary preparations; list of deceased to be forthcoming.” Finally, with critical systems for the most part in stable condition there were a few moments available for Brother Anderson to act in his capacity as ship’s chaplain.

  “Um... Alright. I guess I’ll let them know.” replied Hansel. Then, to himself, muttering under his breath as he turned back toward sector D, “Nothing like breaking the news gently. How the hell is that my job now?”

  Chapter 12

  Barely noticing constant high pitched whines, glaring red emergency lighting, and dark spots on walls had become easy for Hannah. It was almost second nature. Barely noticing the corpses surrounding her in the mess hall, however, had become increasingly difficult. Even now, turned away from them all, huddled in a corner, she could feel their deathly gazes jealously tracking each breath. She felt their empty plastic eye sockets on formless plastic bodies. She heard her own breathing as though it were no longer a function of her own muscles, her own nervous system, but rather, that each breath was being drawn inexorably from her by that mob of lifeless, lungless bulging gas-bags. The air circulation system was in cahoots with the mob. It seemed to resonate with her breathing pattern, the pitch of air flow through the vent grate seeming to alter
nate ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, higher and lower, like a slow motion vibrato effect. She held her breath for a minute, trying to trick it. The ventilation, in turn, with its own belligerence, rattled the empty wrappers of protein bars now strewn around her. She had not gotten sick of macaroni and cheese, but she had gotten sick of walking over to the dispensary every time she was hungry, to punch in the order and accept the bowl of warm orange goo. Instead she had carried over a large case of individually wrapped Omega Bars. Their foil wrappers now crinkled quietly in the slight breeze. They too became carcasses. Empty shells of former biology. Rattling ghosts to join her tormentors.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” she confessed to the nearest wrapper. The wrapper in turn merely stared back indifferently. She felt a surge of hopelessness and anguish welling up inside her. It was a thick dark cloud, rolling over a vacant muted landscape; a heather-crusted cliché of a Scottish highland out of some old movie. She watched the cloud, its well defined edges roiling and churning toward her, black and purple and greasy grey, obscuring all else. She would soon be overcome.

  The mess hall hatch slid open with a swooping whish, and a light scratchiness. Brother Anderson entered, startling Hannah out of her self indulgent reverie of misery.

  “What do you want, kneeler?”

  Brother Anderson was in rolling mode. This was standard protocol for moving about the ship. The kneeling stance created a lower center of gravity, creating greater stability and allowing increased speed and reduced component wear, as compared to walking. Wheels mounted in the knees and ankles created a stable four-point base which was ideal for the smooth surfaces found on most ships. The original design had proven so effective that it had been copied by most manufacturers and become a de facto standard for humanoid model robots. Nevertheless, the robotic detractors had latched upon this design as a perceived flaw. In their eyes, the kneeling pose was further evidence of robotic inferiority and cause for much derision.