Crusade chapter 11 (standard:science fiction, 3219 words) [11/11] show all parts
Author: St George	Added: Mar 11 2003	Views/Reads: 2434/1869	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
chapter 11

Extract from personal log, Captain Carver, R: “We have been docked at
Athens for sixteen days now and the inactivity is starting to tell on 
the crew, and myself. There seems to be a stalemate developing. There 
have been a number of small border skirmishes recently but with the 
exception of the human attack on Athens no large incidents have 
occurred recently, neither side is willing to commit its capital ships. 
That said though, our time in port has not been entirely without 
plusses. This morning a freighter arrived from earth carrying supplies 
including a very pleasant surprise, four tons of strawberries, these 
were distributed on a first come first served basis and stocks ran out 
fast. Alecto tells me that a lot of people didn't actually want to eat 
them. Anduril rations are, though I hate to admit it, superior to our 
own, but the Andurils are rather partial to the sort of high fructose 
foods which are not native to their own world, therefore it seems many 
people have taken to trading supplies with their Anduril counterparts.” 


Extract from Captains log, Captain Carver R: “It is my solemn duty to
record the passing of Lars, the ship's cat, he was run over by the 
internal shuttle during the night. It seems he followed a crewman into 
the station and then went onto the track; his body was entrusted to the 
stars with ceremony befitting his rank of midshipman. His replacement 
will be Thistle.” 

A ship can be equipped with all the best atmospheric equipment and
ten-level redundant backups but there is always a chance that something 
will go wrong, and if by the ever present thousand to one eventuality 
the backups and alarms fail then that is where the cat comes in. All 
Solarian ships carried a cat, because in the event of life support 
failure the cat will show signs of illness before it becomes dangerous 
for humans. In addition, it is also good for morale. That said, the cat 
is always an honorary midshipman, which leads to the common joke 
amongst ratings that they are outranked by the ship's cat. 

“Welcome aboard Captain.” said Carver, greeting his guest at the
airlock. He had been told that Crusader would be playing host to an 
officer from department nine, the navy's shadowy R&D department, but 
they had been reluctant to say what the purpose of the visit was. The 
guest introduced herself as Captain Hiroko Ai, but she made no mention 
of her two associates who followed wordlessly, each carrying a large 
metal case. As soon as the party was in the main corridor Captain Ai 
asked to be taken to central processing and asked Alecto to have the 
head of computer maintenance meet them there. “What are you going to 
do?” asked Carver, slightly worried by these ominous instructions. “I 
am going to give Alecto an intelligence test,” was the reply. Up until 
now no-one had been able to devise a test suitable for computers such 
as Alecto, and because it wasn't particularly important, the research 
hadn't been very high priority. Nevertheless a test had now been 
devised. 

When the party reached central processing, the two assistants set about
connecting fibre-optic cables to various inputs in the main console and 
plugging the cables into their cases, which turned out to be computers. 
Meanwhile Captain Ai spoke to Alecto. “You've changed your avatar I 
see.” was the first thing she said. “Yes Captain, twice. The first 
time...” “A yes or no will suffice,” responded Ai, cutting Alecto off. 
“Listen carefully Alecto. You are about to undergo a test which will 
discover your intelligence, it will give an indication in human IQ 
units. The test is divided into three sections, section one consists of 
eight thousand questions, these will be delivered electronically and in 
a variety of languages, they may also be in the form of anagrams or 
encoded, requiring you to develop your own cipher for each code. The 
questions may by written in characters not normally used for that 
language or may be delivered in pictograms or hieroglyphs. These 
questions will test your mathematical, logical, and language skills as 
well as deduction and puzzle solving; there is no time limit on section 
one but your time will affect your score. You will begin section one 
and two simultaneously. Section two requires you to plot a four 
dimensional diagram of a 12 planet binary solar system over the course 
of ten thousand years, there is no time limit on section two but your 
time will affect your score. Section three consists of one thousand 
eight hundred questions; each question requires you to sort or 
manipulate a series of two, three or four-dimensional polygons in a 
given manner, and there is a time limit of three minutes for this 
section. Do you understand?” “I understand.” responded Alecto. “Very 


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