Crusade chapter 3 (standard:science fiction, 2245 words) [3/11] show all parts
Author: St George	Added: Mar 11 2003	Views/Reads: 2599/1904	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Crusade continued

Carver stood and walked out of his office, “You have the bridge Mr
Logan” he said to the first officer as he walked towards the exit. 
Outside he stepped into the transport tube and casually floated down to 
deck 83, in no hurry. “Where are you going Captain?” asked Alecto, her 
face appearing on a wall-screen. “Section nine, hangars,” he responded, 
stepping into the shuttle, immediately Alecto accelerated the shuttle 
down the length of the ship to Station 9. The hangars took up all of 
decks 101 through 146 in Section nine and a large part of those decks 
in Section eight, each hangar was thirty feet from floor to ceiling and 
so took up almost four normal decks. When the shuttle reached Section 
nine Carver descended to deck 101, where the main space traffic control 
suite and hangar co-ordination rooms were. When fully loaded Crusader 
could field a veritable swarm of dependant craft, all of which had to 
be hangered and supported onboard. Most of the hangars were empty at 
the moment, the only craft on board were two real space 
vacuum/atmospheric shuttles and one hyperspace capable mid-range 
transport shuttle. After they completed shakedown and returned to Mars 
the hangars would be filled with fighters, tanks, dropships additional 
shuttles and the equipment required to service them. Carver had decided 
to personally inspect his ship during the journey to Mars, and since 
the Hangers were so vast it seemed like the logical place to start. 

Two weeks later, and with less than half of the ship explored, Carver
was sitting in his quarters dictating personal log entry, “April 18th, 
today we received our first transmission from Earth since launching. As 
well as official information there was personal mail, newspapers and 
recorded news programs from the past two weeks. Having been in Anduril 
territory for the past eight months overseeing construction of Crusader 
this is the first news of home I have seen in a long time. The Aachen 
pact dictates that only Neo Mir and the stellar navy have access to 
Anduril spacefaring technology, but in other fields human and Anduril 
scientists have been collaborating and the news is full of 
breakthroughs in many disciplines. I can't help wondering if, as a 
species, it is healthy for us to acquire so much knowledge so fast. On 
an unrelated note, with the stellar navy now fully operational, Neo Mir 
has finally become what it aimed to be, an organisation dedicated to 
peaceful science. Ten days ago they launched the first dedicated 
interstellar science vessel, the SS (Solarian Starship) Athena, the 
Greek goddess of wisdom. I find it ironic that as well as being Goddess 
of wisdom, Athena was also the keeper of Zeus's weapons I think there 
is definitely an unintentional subtext at work here,” Carver finished. 
“I think you're right Captain,” said Alecto, “it is ironic. Though 
perhaps Hephaestus would be more appropriate, the god of fire and 
metalworking who made the weapons. History shows us that scientific 
advancement is almost always turned to war-like ends eventually.” 
“That's a pessimistic point of view Alecto, though I have to admit that 
it is accurate.” 

The area Carver intended to inspect next was one of the most critical on
the ship, he stood outside the entryway; the words on the door were 
innocuous enough ‘central processing', but the door itself was designed 
to leave nobody in any doubt that the list of those allowed entry was 
extremely short. He stepped through. Beyond the door was a large hall, 
along both sides of which were tall metal cylinders. Each had a variety 
of tubes sprouting from it and the air throbbed with the noise of the 
coolant system that maintained the cylinders contents at 275 degrees K. 
At the end of the room was a large computer consol. In front of him 
Alecto's holographic avatar appeared, “Well, its nice to meet you in 
person Captain.” she said. The 16 cylinders, called bio-cells contained 
Alecto's organic processing medium, the material inside them was her 
only physical presence. Because she was organic, not electrical, she 
required nutrients rather than electricity to sustain her and these 
were supplied by the green tubes; the black ones removed the waste 
products; red ones contained the organic bio-electricity conductors 
that linked the cylinders and these, Carver knew, were almost exactly 
alike to his own nerve cells. Finally blue tubes took more ‘nerves' to 
the room below where the bioelectricity was converted into light pulses 
and taken, via fiberoptic cables to all parts of the ship. “Can I help 
you Captain?” “Nothing special, how about an operation status report?” 
“As you wish Captain. I am currently processing an average of 740,268 
commands a second, I am consuming 400 calories an hour, and generating 
4.2 BTU's of waste heat, I am currently operating at 0.000078% of 
capacity.” During his Neo Mir days Carver had seen several experimental 
bio-computers, not least the ones installed on Envoy 1. He hadn't been 
part of the computer research team (unofficially called cyberdyne 


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