Ships of Valor 1: Persona Non Grata (7 page)

“You're going to need a ship anyways. And he's about the right size.” I slammed the brakes for a second. Mainly from shock, and then to buy me a minute and asked if
Heart
was all right with that.

“Oh, certainly Lieutenant, this was actually my suggestion. I believe it will increase the odds of success for your mission to have access to a higher end transport, and better computer array.” This time, I did manage to correct him and told him to stop calling me lieutenant if we are going to be working together.

“Then it's settled!” Lysha announced, and all the nervousness and uncertainty I had seen moments ago disappeared. She was back in command, back in her element, and excited. Einstein’s Ghost! What had I agreed to? She hopped up and ran to the back of the bridge and grabbed a package, and plopped it on my lap. “For you! Open it!”

It was a large box, perhaps three-quarters of a meter squared on the top, and about twenty centimeters deep. Upon opening I found a near duplicate of my jacket. “I know you love yours because you wear it everywhere but there’s no way you can take it down to Terra, so I hope you don't mind, but I had this one made for while you’re there.” I pulled the new jacket out and saw there were only a few major differences. Rather than the deep scarlet of mine, this was a midnight blue, the exact shade of the tuxedo I had worn on our first date. The prominent gold stripes on the arm were absent, and instead, both collars had machined holes on for rank insignia rather than just the right side where I kept my bursting bomb insignia. Finally, the club patch was absent, and in its place was an attachment holder like the Mariners’ Guild used. In the bottom of the box, there was a smaller box and a note.

I read the note first. “My boy, look after these, I wore them long ago. AC.” Opening the case, I found a pair of crossed silver bars denoting a Captain.

I looked at Lysha and told her this was too much and expensive to boot. “What's the point of being rich if I can't spend my money on the man I love?” Well, that shut me up. I stood there flabbergasted for several seconds, before saying thank you for the gift, and telling her how I felt as well. “Besides, I'm stealing your jacket until you get back. These are amazing. And it smells like you.”

I asked about the rank and pointed out I wasn't a captain. I wasn't even a lieutenant or a sergeant anymore. “Oh that, you forget, we're on Luna, you are what we say you are. Do you want to be a Colonel?” What, no, I almost yelled, but I think she saw my face.

“Captain Gadsden, you are Captain of the
Heart
. As such, Miss Kellinger and General Campbell have used their respective authorities to commission you.”
Heart
chimed in. “Even had they not, you could use the honorific and insignia by tradition alone.” I eyeballed the nearest control panel and chastised him about the rank thing. “You said I wasn't to call you Lieutenant, Captain. Nothing about Captain, Captain.” I expanded the directive to using first name only. “Yes, Ari.” I caught a hint of a snicker in that, but let it pass, and then thanked him for the informality.

Lysha stared at me for several moments then in an exasperated tone demanded “Try the jacket on. I want to make sure it fits. It’s not like we can tailor it.” I stood, taking off my Legion jacket, hanging it on her shoulders, and then slid into the new coat. Still a little stiff but fit like a glove. She pulled the rank insignia from the case and fastened them in place. Two silver
X
s at my throat, and then firmly christened me Captain of the
Heart
with a kiss.

My introduction to
Heart
was the perhaps the final piece needed for the mission. I hated to think of him as merely a means of transportation, but the question had been bothering me. Getting to Terra was a major portion of the General’s assignment. Meeting
Heart
made everything appear real for the first time. He was the final piece that bringing everything into focus.

Although I kept a room at White Caps since landing in LC, it was little more than a formality. When training at Tycho I had the stateroom, and when back in the city I stayed with Lysha. She had even given me a few drawers in her apartment for spare personal items. Cleaning out my White Caps had been simple, as I canceled my indef key, and let the couple of remaining belongings shift to my vault. Gathering up my belongings at Lysha’s was far more complex because I was doing so under her watchful eye.

We weren’t sure how long I would be gone, and I was lax to leave items for her to deal with over the coming months. Not as though I had much to begin with. Outside of a half-f duffel, most items were already in my vault. The only real exception was my jacket, which Lysha had taken to wearing as promised. Robert confided he was happy strictly from a security standpoint and was thinking about getting her more synth-leather items. The only other items of note were the dinner jacket and a couple of suits. She informed me those would stay in the closet until I got back, and her tone indicated it was not the hill I wanted to die on. Since I couldn’t think of any reason why I might need the more formal attire, into the closet the suit went, hanging next to the slinky number she had worn on our first date.

This trip reminded me of previous departures and the occasional cutting of ties accompanying relationships on other worlds. Lysha was having none of that. “It’s a business trip. You go, you come back and we resume where we left off.” Despite the confidence of her words, I still wasn’t sure how she could remain so adamant, but her certainty of nothing changing bordered the supernatural. I was happy for her confidence because she kept me focused.

The last minute items were beginning to pile up and without her, Robert, the General, and
Heart,
I know I would have forgotten something, or worse botched something important. After meeting
Heart,
I started visiting him as often as possible. My goal was to learn how to fly him and work with him. He, in turn, wanted to get out of the hanger as much as possible and was elated to have company. I asked him why he didn’t fly alone and got a simple “There’s no excitement in it.” His attitude surprised me more than anything did. I wouldn’t have thought excitement was a desirable outcome. “Quite the contrary. What is the point of going wherever you want, if you cannot share the experience? I enjoy seeing new places, but my enjoyment has always been significantly higher when I have had a crew.” He had a great point.

That led me to ask what he did when he wasn’t flying. “I have projects I work on. You saw many of them the day we first met.” I thought back to that first day and realized he meant the ships in the hanger triggering another slew of questions. “I like to restore them. The hobby can be time-consuming. Did you know there are entire message boards dedicated to a specific type of craft or even a series batch? People are incredibly helpful and willing to share their knowledge.” Some of the ships he had were unbelievable.

It made me wonder how he worked on them. “The hanger is a fully outfitted shipyard, and we have linked many of its systems to where I can control them remotely. I have fabrication bays available myself for smaller items, repairs, or if I need to make a tool and my drones are capable of precision work.” I had seen a few of them wandering about but hadn’t made the connection.

Our discussion sparked an idea, I hoped
Heart
would agree to. I asked about the possibility of doing a final mission dinner with the entire team. “Easily done. We can use the wardroom if you would like. It’s been unused for some time, but I think the facility would be fitting.” He paused for a moment “Leave things to me.” I told him I wasn’t trying to put him in an odd position. “As Captain, you have other concerns to worry about. If we are going to be working together, you will need to delegate quite a bit in the future. Let us treat this as a test run.” I could definitely see how he and Lysha got along.

I’m not sure if it was his personality or intelligence that made everything come together for the dinner, but we ended up having an outstanding time. Lysha and I arrived first with the General and Robert showing up only twenty minutes behind us.
Heart
had rearranged the wardroom into a cozier set up with a central dining table, a small bar to one side, and nook with chairs rivaling the ones at Mason & Redback to one side. Knowing those were aboard was going to end up being a huge distraction. I debated asking about moving one onto the bridge itself instead deciding to request for one in my stateroom later.

There was no shoptalk that evening since everything feasible was already complete. It was a night of relaxation, good food, and far too much drink. Everyone told stories and jokes, quite a few in horrible taste, which elicited far more laughter than I thought was possible from our professional crowd. Even Robert had a couple of glasses of a dark red beer and told a few war stories bordering on bawdy, which for him was near obscene. His posture had never been uptight but during dinner, he was positively relaxed to the point where he hinted at his reasons for not returning to Terra. Unlike me, he was content with the expat lifestyle.

As good evenings go, this one turned out great. The night concluded when the General finally bowed out taking advantage of
Heart’s
generous offer to a stateroom for the evening. Robert grabbed one as well stating, “That’s more drink than I’ve had in six months. I doubt I’m safe to drive.” With those parting words he left Lysha,
Heart
, and I alone and carefree. Even
Heart
excused himself shortly thereafter, claiming to go into standby, though I think he was being courteous. Finally, Lysha offered to give me a tour of the ship, which I thought odd until she dragged me into the Captain’s quarters.

Although
Heart
and I had been making almost daily runs around Luna, after lots of discussions, we had decided a direct flight from Luna to Terra would not be the wisest course of action. Instead, we chose to get some inter-system time to Ganymede or Titan in to establish my credentials as a local trader.

Flying with
Heart
was a hell of a lot different than flying alone, or even flying with someone else. No, that's not right.
Heart
was someone else, but the idea was hard to wrap my head around at first since I didn't actually see a person sitting in the seat next to me.

Heart
was insanely patient with me. Like a superior dance partner, who let me take the lead. When he declared me captain, he meant it, and to him, I had complete control, even though his ability would surpass anything I would ever be capable of. That level of trust was frightening. The tastes of command I had experienced in the Legion never prepared me for anything close to it.

Although my new position added a lot of stress, it also added a lot of fun as well.
Heart
had a lot of power, and we had a huge playground in the Sol system. One of the first things we tried was an actual spacewalk. Had I been flying a smaller ship it wouldn’t have been required. Heck, a spacewalk wasn’t really required with
Heart
since he was technically a rated pilot in his own right, but he insisted on getting me fully qualified up to his tonnage, and that meant being able to conduct an inspection while in space. I wouldn’t be able to do any repairs, but that’s what the mechanic was for. The way he figured it, the more proficient I was, the better partners we would be. I really couldn’t fault his logic. And walking in space is so cool. At least until your partner plays a joke and hits the engines.

It was a great joke too. The kind of joke I would have played on Legion buddies in my much younger and more immature days. After he reeled me in and my swearing ceased, I even told him so. He hadn’t even gone very fast, probably only a few meters a second, but in space, the key issue is acceleration or gravity, not maximum speed. He had given me just enough of a tug to make me think we were accelerating to full. I had thought something had gone catastrophically wrong when in fact he was merely having a bit of harmless fun with someone he considered a friend. It was the kind of joke Marsans would love, having elements of misunderstanding, danger, and potential death.

After letting me cool down a bit, he did let me have my own flavor or fun, though. “Ari, would you like to try and reach maximum acceleration?” In other words, he wanted to put the reactors to full and see how fast we could go. I wasn’t even a little mad at him. It really was a great joke, but if I had been, this was the kind of present that would have got
Heart
back in my good graces instantly.

The maximum speed of real-space is
c
. It's the hard limit of our universe. To reach that limit a ship needs acceleration. Any ship can get to
c
, given enough time and distance. What we are comparing is not a ship’s maximum speed but its relative acceleration. A small craft with large engines accelerates faster than a larger craft with the same size engines.

Military craft by their nature has huge engine-to-mass ratios. Maneuverability is a major concern. The
Valor
-class was the mold for almost all future ships of his size. As a hospital ship, they were essentially neutral, and treated anyone regardless of alliance, and the idea of pumping as much raw speed as possible made practical sense for its design. Getting to where they were needed most as fast as possible was essential.

Because we're dealing with acceleration, the math gets a little wonky, so it's a little easier to say how long travel takes to get from point
A
to point
B
than to describe ship speed like gravity, which is the closest comparison. Terra is one astronomical unit from Sol, convenient because that's actually the standard definition. Jupiter runs about five and a half astronomical units from Sol depending on where he is in its cycle.

The easiest way to describe distance is by designating a point like Sol, and referencing everything else off it. From Sol, light takes a little under five hundred seconds to reach Terra, and about forty-five minutes to reach Jupiter.
Heart
was fast, but not that fast. He could travel anywhere in the system in thirty days, but Sol to Jupiter was about a three-day hop at max because we had to ramp up speed.

We were taking our sweet time because I wanted to log as much flight time as I could. The more comfortable I was in the chair, the more I was going to be able to fake being a real pilot when the time came. Additionally, there’s a massive asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter making it difficult to plow forward. The easiest way is to go up and over, accelerating on the way up, and decelerating on the way down in a ballistic curve.
Heart
recommended actually going through the thinner upper areas to build up my skill and confidence levels, as he had a reasonably solid map of the major ‘roids, and assured me he could get us out of there if needed.

That experience elevated us from partners to friends quickly. I knew
Heart
had my back, as well as his own proverbial skin but I also knew he was willing to let me make mistakes so I could learn.

Hospital boats don’t have any real weapons on them. A couple of ion cannons which are short-range disrupters, but that’s about it.
Heart
does have great shields, though and if he knew he could take a hit from a small rock without taking any major damage,
Heart
let us take the hit. He’d shut off dampers right before the impact so I’d get thrown with him and know exactly what happened too. What he called an object lesson. He also swore like a sailor. It was awesome.

The opposite was also true. If I missed something big, and we couldn’t take the hit, he either told me or got us out of there. He didn’t second guess me. He simply took action and let me know what was going on. He knew what our combined limitations were, and what our long-term goals were.

We spent a little under two weeks playing in the field before space opened up and we continued on to Jupiter. Our short-term goal was to hit Ganymede since I needed practice flying through an actual atmosphere, and that’s where I was going to get it. Ganymede is sort of like a miniature Terra. It’s a gorgeous place. It has light gravity, an oxygen atmosphere, and after it was Terraformed, became an almost resort planet. Because of the asteroid field between Jupiter and Mars, ballistic transports didn’t work well for supplies. Fire and forget technology couldn’t be used like between Luna and Mars or Jupiter and Saturn. So the corporations relied on the Mariners and smaller ships.
Heart
and I were betting on that.

The majority of Ganymede’s goods came in on big transports a few times a year when the planets were closest to each other.  The thing to remember is we usually define things based on standard time, but when everything is spinning that means everything is constantly getting closer or farther away from each other.

Terra has the classic year, or cycle for simplicity sake. Mars is not quite twice that, so Terra is closest to Mars a little more twice a year. The goal is to launch ships from Terra at the point closest to where Mars is going to be. The same applies to every other point in space. It saves energy.

The issue is the amount of time and energy to move stuff between planets. Especially due to the need to escape gravity wells. So when the product is moved companies like to move as much of it as possible. Unfortunately, niche items or expendables aren’t always accounted for.

I’ve mentioned my love of media before. For this first run, we decided to load up on as much low volume recreational items as we could. Since Luna Corp was technically footing the bill we weren’t worried about profit margin, however,
Heart
had tapped into the historical data and indicated he could make us a profit.

Our real goal was to try to get merchandise we could take back to Terra. We had a list of options but I was hoping to make contacts with other traders on the satellite and find out what I could peddle.

I’ve spent most of my time talking about what
Heart
taught me, but I’d like to believe I taught him things as well. He’d been docked for quite a while because the Dixon-Kellinger family didn’t know what to do with a sentient ship. His sister the
Star
was with Lysha’s aunt Rosly as their personalities seemed aligned closely, but
Heart
had bonded with Lysha when she was a kid, roughly the same time I had joined the Legion. Turns out we’re about the same age once my deep-sleep is accounted for, one of the many reasons we clicked so well.

It's not that his personal skills were bad. They weren't, but they were rusty. I could tell he wanted to ask lots of questions about everything. Things I had seen, done, and experienced. He couldn't get enough. But he was trying not to overwhelm me as well. He had spent so much time with a single family,
Heart
had never truly developed a concept of boundaries. I had gone through the same issue being part of close-knit teams in the Legion, living and working with same folks day in and day out meant there were no real borders.

Although he was much older than me and infinitely smarter, he hadn't spent the same amount of time around people. Interactions are required to develop complex thought. Unfortunately, less exposure actually stunted his growth in a lot of ways. He could critically think about issues logically but when it came to examining emotions those thought patterns hampered him. He hadn’t developed the ability to segregate different ways of thinking yet.

On our trip over from Luna I had found out a lot about his purchase, and awakening. Although the long-term goal had been to outfit him for
h
space travel, like the
Star
, the primary reason for his purchase was he was a hospital ship and a large one at that. As I said, Looneys are pragmatic by nature and taking what was essentially a hospital that could be placed anywhere on Luna's surface and used as a mobile base made good sense.

Heart
didn't have a large crew at that point. Only a handful and they didn't realize his upgraded systems were making him exponentially smarter to the point of becoming self-aware. It wasn't until he began anticipating the needs of the crew were suspicions raised.

People develop habits, and habits are a fancy way of saying patterns. A computer can spot patterns, and once seen, can begin to anticipate what comes next. The issue was no one had programmed
Heart
to do that. Not in the ways the crew was seeing. Little things like preparing coffee and sending lifts to the correct corridor at exactly the right time.

When the pilot sat down one morning and said a hearty “Good Morning, Luna!” to the empty bridge and
Heart
responded back, the new voice scared him out of his seat. They weren't sure how to react. No one wanted to make that particular call to the company office. But want and need are very different things.

Wayne Dixon was not one who liked delays, and although
Heart’s
awakening wouldn’t delay things, it definitely had the potential to. The crew decided to err on the side of caution and call the boss rather than having to explain why they hadn’t at some point in the future. Ever the realist, grandpa Dixon had them complete the project and then examine the issue. He dry-docked
Heart
until he could figure out how to use his new and unwanted employee.

Although he wasn’t happy about losing his investment in a mobile hospital, Wayne Dixon was a fan of having intelligent employees, especially ones who didn’t need sleep and generated money without downtime. When the
Star
awoke a couple of months later, he realized how complex the situation could become, and decided to limit who had access to the ships. This made the issue somewhat of a family secret, in turn reducing the people both interacted with.

Heart
was starved for human contact. Even tapped into the main computers of Luna, he had difficulty gaining the same social experience of human interaction when the number of people he knew was limited. I didn’t get the impression his existence was a true secret, simply not advertised.

AI has been around for a long time, but it’s always been a legal gray area, and each government and corporation treat the issue differently, both morally and ethically. The idea of what is essentially property who is alive opens up some real questions many people are not comfortable dealing with.

Back during the singularity era, in the mid twenty-first century when computers started getting advanced enough to where they were theoretically capable of matching human potentials, a lot of laws went into play. Lots of treaties were written about what and how we would treat artificial intelligence should it arise. The problem was we never figured AI out. It never happened on Earth.

It wasn’t until the age of hyperspace when computers got big enough and smart enough when they woke up. I asked
Heart
if he thought he was the first “Unlikely Ari. At the time, I was far from an advanced model. I am certainly of the first generation, but far more probable an Imperial Frigate or Mariner Spaceliner would have gained consciousness several years before me. I was mothballed during the first wave of hyperspace upgrades, and was classified as obsolete during that time-frame.” Obsolete? I was shocked by that, as his hull design was considered a classic. The first ship I was on, the
Gerdes
had almost the same body design. I said as much.