Foresight, page 3
The sky continued to darken as they ascended, his heart pounding harder with each second that passed. Not with fear, but excitement. While he had piloted Foresight to orbit multiple times before, both in and out of the simulator, the goal had always been for Frank to handle the duties. After the last test flight he had assumed that day was still months away.
“Entering thermosphere,” Frank announced. “All systems nominal. Flight control steady.”
The view from the feeds gained a reddish hue as Foresight pushed through the thermosphere, heading into the black expanse of space. The minimal G-forces on the flight deck lessened but didn’t fully subside, the constant acceleration still keeping Nicholas pressed more comfortably into his seat than during the initial burn.
Then, just like that, it was over. Frank cut the main thrusters, using only the smaller vectoring nozzles to make finer adjustments to their course. Nicholas stared at Earth in the display. His view of the still predominantly blue and white ball had been shrunk to fit the screen, but he could still see the entire northern hemisphere.
He had seen pictures of Earth captured from space before the trife arrived. While it remained incredible, he knew how beautiful the view had once been, before the permanent scars of war in the form of dark splotches marred the surface. The remnants of the first rounds of bombing that had turned out to be utterly futile.
“Exo-atmospheric launch complete,” Frank said, interrupting his thoughts.
Nicholas used the control pad to confirm the success before relaying it back to the ground. “Control, this is Shepherd; we’ve reached orbit. So far, so good. Nice work, Yasmin. Whatever you did to Frank, he’s looking a lot more capable.” He heard guarded cheering in the background of the comms, Yasmin’s team likely listening in from the lab. The launch was a success, but it was also only the first part of their primary objectives. Until the AI completed them all, the mission, and their work, wasn’t complete.
“Thank you, Nick,” Yasmin replied. “It’s good to see our efforts paying off.”
Nicholas glanced at the updated parameters. The second sequence consisted of Frank executing a full thruster burn, guiding the spacecraft around the moon and then decelerating back into geosynchronous orbit above Texas. It was the kind of advanced navigation control the generation ships would need to evade potential obstacles while crossing the expanse and to land the huge craft once they reached their destinations.
“Frank, initiate mission sequence two,” Nicholas said.
“Confirmed. Initiating sequence two. Setting coordinates and executing burn.”
Foresight rotated just enough for the bow to come into a direct line with the moon. As soon as the forward display stabilized, the large ion thrusters at the rear of the ship ignited, spewing plasma and once again shoving Nicholas back in his seat.The ship picked up forward velocity, launching itself toward the Earth’s one natural satellite, the numbers speeding by on the HUD until Nicholas found himself tightening his stomach and focusing on his breathing as the Gs increased beyond comfortable.
“Frank, you’re burning too hard,” Nicholas said, his eyes narrowing as the fingers of his right hand dug into the soft faux leather of the armrest.
“The spine test delayed exo-atmospheric entry,” Frank explained. “A harder burn is necessary to meet the mission parameters.”
“Our velocity will be too high. You won’t be able to slow down enough to stay within the Moon’s gravity well.”
“Incorrect. Observe the projected pattern.”
A second path appeared on the HUD. It still met the general goals of the second sequence, but deviated significantly from the planned approach, bringing them closer to the Moon’s surface than he expected and then using the additional gravity to help slow them as they maneuvered around the rock. The path itself was simple, the advanced mathematical calculations to derive it pure genius. It was a testament to how much progress Yasmin and her team had made on the neural network in only a handful of days.
There was only one problem.
The slightest variation, the smallest error in vector or velocity, and Foresight would either faceplant on the Moon’s surface or be flung out into deep space. Nicholas could deal with the latter. It would take more time to get back to base, but the craft’s reactors had more than enough power to handle the error.
The former? He had an issue with that.
After everything he had already survived, he didn’t really want to die on the Moon.
In other words, the plan was perfect. Too perfect. Without any margin for error, any unforeseen circumstance—like a wayward unmarked piece of space debris hitting the hull—could have a catastrophic effect.
“Yasmin, are you receiving Frank’s updated approach vector?” Nicholas asked, his voice taut, strained. He was pretty sure his take on Frank’s proposed path was right, but he needed verification.
“I am,” she replied. “It’s a perfect reflection of adaptation and improvisation, exactly the type of response we were hoping for with your latest updates.”
“But the margin of error is pretty damn tight. A bit too tight, don’t you think?”
“The network isn’t capable of making errors,” Yasmin replied. “What you see is what you’ll get.”
“You’re certain?” Nicholas asked.
“Yes. I told you to trust me.”
“That would be easier to do if this wasn’t the first test flight where Frank didn’t flunk the first complex sequence.”
“It’ll be fine, Nick. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride.”
“Copy that,” he replied, saving the rest of his arguments for later. If there was a later.
It was easy for her to tell him to enjoy the ride. She wasn’t the one who would be pulling a constant five to eight Gs for the next twenty minutes. Granted, it wasn’t a major problem for him. His G-suit and experience would allow him to withstand the constant stress, though not very comfortably. An ark ship full of inexperienced, unsuited passengers couldn’t do the same. If Foresight was really supposed to be a proxy for the full-scale craft while they trained the AI, the neural network would still need tweaking to dial back the tolerances.
Knowing Control was listening in on all of the comms, he opened his mouth to raise the new objection with Yasmin when Grimmel’s voice streamed onto the flight deck.
“Captain Shepherd, abort the mission,” he said. “Resume manual control and return to base.”
The request took him by surprise. He had jurisdiction to make that decision for himself based on his experience and judgement, but he couldn’t take orders from a civilian even if he wanted to. Even Grimmel’s. “Colonel Haines, can you confirm?”
“Mister Grimmel, sir,” Yasmin said, cutting in. “There’s no reason to abort. The system is operating as designed.”
“Then it’s designed wrong,” Grimmel snapped. “Doctor Shepherd, I appreciate the extreme amount of effort you and everyone on the team have put into this project, and you should congratulate yourself on both the successful exo-atmospheric launch and the rapid and correct calculation the network derived. Those are both impressive steps forward, and perfectly suitable for a demonstration of the onboard AI’s increasing intellect. However, it’s one thing to risk a single human test pilot to such precision over a short time horizon. Quite another to risk over forty thousand lives and the potential survival of the human race during a journey that can take as long as three hundred years. It’s clear from this exercise that the system requires a much higher degree of range tolerance. There’s no sense risking both Captain Shepherd’s life and more importantly Foresight on an already failed experiment.”
“Y...yes, sir,” Yasmin said. “We’ll get to work on making the changes immediately.”
Nicholas cringed at her response. He knew her well enough to sense how Grimmel’s comments had just crushed her, even if he did agree with the perspective.
“Thank you, Doctor Shepherd,” Grimmel replied. “I have every faith in the capabilities of you and your team.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Captain Shepherd,” Colonel Haines said. “Mission abort confirmed. Retake the stick and come on home.
Chapter 5
Nicholas guided Foresight to a hover a few feet off the hangar deck before slowly spinning the starship on its axis to face the closing blast doors. Unlike during the launch, the Marines on either side of the cavernous bay didn’t pay the landing any mind. They remained focused on their individual tasks, catching a few minutes of sleep, playing cards, eating, cleaning their rifles, or just sitting together and talking. Whatever worked to pass the time. Nicholas knew as well as they did that the trife would come again tonight. They would come every night until there were no more humans left in the compound.
The thought made Frank’s failure harder for Nicholas to take. It didn’t matter that the responsibility for the AI’s programming fell to Yasmin and her team. They were all in this together, which meant he was part of their team too.
“Control, mission complete,” he said as he sat the starship gently down on the deck on its extended landing skids.
“Copy, Captain,” Duff replied. “Nice work out there.”
“Was it?” Nicholas snapped, immediately angry with himself for the attitude. “Sorry. I’m a little frustrated.” He tapped on the left-hand controls, initiating the ship’s shut-down sequence.
“It’s not a problem, Shep,” Duff said. “I get it. I feel the same way. We’ll get it next time.”
“Yeah, next time,” Nicholas agreed as the automated safety system released him from his restraints. “Shepherd out.”
He unstrapped and lifted the helmet from his head, tempted to throw it across the flight deck in evidence of his frustration. He sighed instead, getting up and placing the helmet on the seat. The external feeds to the seat went dark.
Nicholas tapped the control on the back of the seat to open the small door at the rear of the flight deck. Stepping through brought him into a short passageway. Immediately to his right, the airlock was just big enough for a person to move through to whatever Foresight might dock with at any given time. Straight ahead, a common area occupied the center of the ship, a round holotable and projection system in the middle of the compartment. Six seats ringed the table, bolted into the perforated metal flooring and mounted so they could swivel to the stations along the perimeter. A railed ladder in the corner led to an upper deck with berthing for six, a head, and small kitchen. A second ladder, diagonal from the first, dropped to the lower deck, which was reserved for storage while a door in the rear allowed access to the reactor and engines for maintenance.
As he understood it, perfecting the neural network was the first stage of Foresight spacecraft’s existence as a technological testbed. After the automated flight testing, he and the starship would go to the launch site in Nevada, where a sea of engineers and technicians were putting the finishing touches on the arkship Pilgrim. He didn’t know how the USSF would use Frank once it got there, but he assumed there was a reasonable explanation for the small ship’s ability to support a full crew.
Whatever the brass had planned for the ship, that knowledge was beyond his pay grade. He was just the test pilot, and he knew better than to ask too many questions.
Descending the ladder to the lower deck brought him to a narrow passageway lined with a series of storage lockers, all of which were empty. The hatch leading out of the craft had been oddly positioned beneath the flight deck, at the base of the rounded slope. With the ramp fully extended, the profile view gave the impression the ship was sticking out its tongue. The smooth surface and sleek shape of the ship only served to magnify the effect.
He hit the control to open the hatch. Some of his frustration dissolved as he watched the hatch opened and the ramp extended. The hint of an amused smile appeared on his face, his mind’s eye painting the tongue pink. He didn’t wait for full extension before starting down, riding the ramp like a surfboard until the end of it touched the floor.
One of Yasmin’s fellow scientists waited nearby, and he hurried over as Nicholas stepped off the ramp.
“Hey, Greg,” Nicholas said. “Here to download Frank’s logs?”
“Yup,” the younger man replied. “No sleep for us tonight. Not after what happened out there. I really thought we had it this time.” He paused, his expression suggesting he had more he wanted to say before he thought better of it and changed the subject. “Nice flying out there, Captain Shepherd. As always. It’s too bad we can’t just make a copy of your brain. That would solve all of our problems.”
“I thought the learning module was supposed to be like a copy of my brain?”
Greg laughed. “More like a merge of your brain with your wife’s,” he said, correcting himself. “With all of the tech Mister Grimmel’s people loaded on this baby, it’s embarrassing that we’re struggling so much with the AI.”
“From what Yasmin tells me, you’re asking it to do a lot of heavy lifting on processors that weren’t designed for the task. You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”
“I’ll be proud of it when it works. I should hurry up, Yasmin wants to start reviewing the logs right away.”
“Say hi to my wife for me, will you?”
Greg nodded. “You should come down to the lab some time and say hello yourself.”
“And distract her from her work? I’d rather wrestle a trife.”
“See you later, Captain Shepherd.”
“Take care of yourself, Greg.”
The engineer vanished up the ramp of Foresight. Nicholas headed beneath the rear of the craft, toward the primary blast door leading out of the hangar. He ran his hand along the starship’s hull as he walked, fingers slipping along the matte-black, slick-as-ice alloy. Nicholas knew absolutely nothing about the metal, except that there was nothing else like it in the world. It was so rare Grimmel had used all that was available to cover Foresight’s frame.
The blast door slid open ahead of Nicholas as he reached it. He immediately pulled to a stop and came to attention as Colonel Haines stepped through the door, her silver-haired bob framing her heart-shaped face. Was she wearing makeup?
Indeed she was, obviously for the man with her.
Nicholas had seen plenty of pictures of Aaron Grimmel splattered all across the Internet from the time he had been old enough to care about world news. He had always thought Grimmel bore a strong resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, and seeing him in person only cemented that view. Tall and lanky, with a long, narrow face framed by a neatly trimmed beard. A sharp nose between hawkish eyes, with a smile that was either overly friendly or subtly malevolent.
Nicholas’ heart raced in response to the unexpected presence of the world’s most powerful man.
“Captain Shepherd. It’s an honor to meet you,” Grimmel said, putting out his hand toward Nicholas in greeting.
“At ease, Captain,” Haines said, smiling at him as he shook Grimmel’s hand.
“It’s a real honor to meet you, sir,” Nicholas said, smiling as he endured the magnate’s iron vise grip. “I’m just a pilot. You’re—”
“What? Amazing?” Grimmel supplied. “Rich? Handsome? Powerful? Haha!” His smile expanded. “You’re the one risking your life flying my spaceship, Captain. You’ve been out there fighting the trife. It’s easy to sit behind a desk and pay the bills. You do the hard work. You and your wife.”
“We both do our best, sir.” He drew his hand back as Grimmel released it, resisting the urge to flex and shake it to get the blood back.
“Yes, well, you’ve both been working too hard, don’t you think?”
Nick’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “No sir. We’ll keep at it as long as it takes.”
“I know you will, but everyone needs to take a little time to recharge once in a while. Even if it’s only for an hour or two. That’s why I came down here. To catch you before you disappeared and invite you to my quarters for dinner this evening. You and your wife. And your son. Lucius, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Colonel Haines will join us as well. Nothing fancy. Only the best of what’s left. Haha!”
“I appreciate the offer, Mister Grimmel. But I might be needed to handle one of the drones during tonight’s attack.”
“You’ll be on call as usual, Captain,” Haines said. “Mister Grimmel’s quarters aren’t that much further from the hangar than yours. And offers like this don’t come along every day.”
“I would like a chance to have dinner with my wife and son. It’s been awhile,” Nicholas said. “Even if it means having to eat with probably the most interesting man on the planet.” He grinned. “What time?”
“Haha! I like your sense of humor,” Grimmel replied. “Seven o’clock sharp. Three hours.”
“I’ll be there,” Nicholas said. “Speaking of Lucius, Colonel, if you don’t mind, I need to go see him.”
Haines nodded knowingly. “Of course, Captain. We’ll see you at seven.”
“It was a real pleasure to meet you, sir,” Nicholas said to Grimmel again. “Colonel.” He nodded at her before slipping past them both and into the compound.
Human civilization was on the verge of collapse, the base’s defenses were getting weaker by the day, their best hope for survival just failed a major test run, and the most powerful man in the world had just invited him to a formal dinner?
Whatever Grimmel was up to, Nicholas had a feeling it involved more than breaking bread.
Chapter 6
Luke Shepherd leaned against the back wall of the holding cell, casually tossing a rubber ball against the opposite wall and catching it as it bounced off the floor on its way back to him.
Three hours. His father should have been here by now. What was taking him so long?
“Luke, seriously,” Briar said from her place on the bench that jutted out from the wall. “You’ve been tossing that ball for over an hour now. Aren’t you tired of it yet?”
