Carpathian Forty-Three

Carpathian Forty-Three - Part 25

"Two hours to brake," Voclain announces to everyone. "Stephen, we need you for the Ring spin down," they say on a private channel to me.

Right. The ship. The brake. Life and death. Fort fades away. The trees fade away, replaced with the baren operations center. Thak looks at us from their place at the operations table. Ward still works that lean against the bulkhead, observing us.

"Acknowledged," I say curtly to Voclain. I settle into my seat in operations, reconnect with the ship. Warning messages blink in my vision. We need to stop the Ring. There's time, we're on schedule. I work the checklist, faster than I could without the implants.

"ENG, pressurize hydraulics 89-C and 89-D." I say on the comms.

The hydraulic lines that control the Ring hub are still manual. I feel Alpha twist the valve to pressurize the lines. Rhianu is already strapped in at their station in Engineering. The Twins were built for Earth standard gravity, they can move about while the rest of us are strapped in.

"Pressurized, OS," Rhianu responds.

I start slowing the ring, letting friction dissipate the momentum there. Those of us in Operations start to feel lighter.

"I'll be in Medical," Ward says, heading off. I nod at them.

I feel Miki settle into their chair, strap in and pivot so that they face 'forward', away from the Drive module, away from the direction of thrust. They're nervous. We're all nervous. No one has ever done this.

The pads in the Ring hub heat up. Cooling lines move that heat to our water tanks, heating them a few degrees. In the grand scheme we won't notice slightly warmer water. The pads need the cooling though. Heat management is important on a spaceship. It's hard to cool systems in the cold vacuum of space.

My shoulders ache as the Ring spins down, slower, and slower. The ship is telling me where it's sore. Gravity disappears slowly as the Ring spins down. The Ring pads smell 'hot', at least that's how my implants project those readings into my mind. Not burning rubber, but rubber that is threatening to burn. The pads themselves are actually an aluminum-nickel alloy.

"Pre-burn comms check," Voclain reads out.

"ENG," Rhianu says over the coms.

"Medical," Ward reports in.

"Observation," Thak says to my right.

"Navigation," Miki says to my left. That's a new one. Navigation. Ships like Carpathian Forty-Three haven't had navigators since before Miki was born. No, since before I was born.

"OS," I report.

"Comms are good, go for Ring lock," Voclain says.

The ache in my shoulders is just a dull twinge now. We all float against the chair restraints. Operations in zero gravity is as much out of place as the clean room is. Today the ship is less our home and more a ship. I feel my shoulders pop as the Ring locks into place.

"Ring Lock," I call out.

"Confirming," Rhianu says, sending Beta to check on the locks on the Ring hub.

I pick at the access controls we've put in place, that deny Miki access to the ship. They're like a scab on a hangnail. I want to rip them off and get on with the brake. We can't though, we're more than an hour away from our trajectory change.

"Locks verified," Rhi says after a few minutes of validation by Beta, mostly involving the drone jostling the locks on the Ring hub and smacking them with a Teflon hammer.

"Thirty minutes to pre-burn systems check," Voclain says. I can run those checks in a second with my reactivated cybernetics. We're following procedure. It sets people at ease. It feels comfortable. It makes the brake as interesting as watching paint dry.

How can I forgive the Quantum Sentience?

"Stephen?" Miki thinks at me, concerned. No one else hears the exchange. Fuck.

Thak's console mirrors the warnings and countdowns in my field of vision. They're the observer. They're looking for alerts and warnings, ready to call them out if any of us get distracted. I'm distracted. No. Yes.

"We don't need to go through this now," Miki thinks. They're right. This trajectory change is life or death. I shouldn't be worrying about events that happened years ago. Yet, I'm worrying about events that happened years ago.

I never asked why. I never asked why the Quantum Sentience disconnected from us at Acosta, left us on our own. Even in therapy, it never felt right. I didn't want to 'walk in their shoes'. We felt Genevieve die. The oppressive pressure on their chest, gasping for breath, panic, fear. We felt them fade into nothing, their last breath passing through us like a wave, drawing us towards the same fate, the same stillness. Dozens died at Jansen Hall, some in more pain than Genevieve. So much pain.

"Stephen," Fort says, manifesting in my vision, standing in Operations, their eyes soft and caring. I close my eyes. They're still there, I can feel them, the compassion and protectiveness emanating from them in warm waves. It's like we're their children. No. Sibling? It's complicated. Analogies don't fit.

"I don't want to know why," I think at them, my eyes still closed.

I feel Miki rewrite the access control that locks them out of the ship. They wipe away that scab, not tearing, not pulling at it. It's just gone. They start running the pre-burn checks, triple checking what I've already done.

"If you knew why you might forgive them?" Fort asks.

"Stephen," Voclain's voice interrupts sharply. "Pre-burn systems check."

"Roger," I say, more habit than acknowledgement.

Did I black out? Where did those thirty minutes go? Did I freeze, working through pseudo-Fort's question?

I pull up the checklist and run through it, hydrazine lines, hydraulics, crew safety, drive pre-pressurization, computer systems. I linger there, a red error blinking at me, reminding me Fort's gone. The ghost that plagues me is a language model driven by my own subconscious. I acknowledge the checklist and override the computer systems error.

"Pre-Burn checks complete, computer checks bypassed," I report in.

"Navigation," Voclain says, their voice carrying more confidence than I realized they could muster, "You have the conn."