Crusade chapter 2 (standard:science fiction, 2254 words) [2/11] show all parts
Author: St George	Added: Mar 11 2003	Views/Reads: 2992/1909	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The first part of the tale.

CRUSADE 

The airlock door hissed open and Captain Richard Carver stepped aboard
his new vessel. A screen lit up to his left and a female face appeared, 
she looked as though she was in her early thirties, “Good morning 
Captain,” she said. “Good morning Alecto, is there something wrong with 
this screen?” asked Carver, addressing the image. “No Captain,” she 
replied. “Then why isn't your image being displayed properly?” “It is 
Captain, I didn't like the image I was first assigned so I changed it, 
this is an image extrapolated from all the pictures and descriptions of 
Queen Matilda stored in my memory cells, I like it.” Alecto was the 
artificial intelligence bio-computer aboard the Crusader. She (all 
bio-computers are female because their genetic structure includes two X 
chromosomes) was one of the most powerful computers built by either man 
or the Andurils, and one of the few to have been given sentience and 
free will - something she evidently enjoyed. She had only been online 
for 27 minutes and had already discarded the avatar she had been 
assigned. 

Carver began walking toward the shuttle station, talking to Alecto as he
went, “Have the anti-matter bunkers been filled?” “Yes Captain.” “What 
about life support supplies?” “120 cubic kilometres of atmospheric 
gases are stored in the pressure tanks, 7000 metric tons of food and 
water are stowed in the super cooled bunker and the sickbay is fully 
stocked Captain.” “Good, and munitions?” “A full compliment of 400 
Harbinger torpedoes, 1200 starstreak defensive missiles and 90 
firestorm space to surface bombs Captain” “Excellent, what's the square 
root of 2049?” “45.265881 Captain, and for a computer designed to 
navigate a starship the size of a city across the vastness of space, 
that is not a taxing question.” Carver continued walking until he came 
to the entrance to the shuttle station, he stopped, the automatic door 
hadn't opened. “Alecto, open the door please.” “I'm sorry Captain, 
there is a fault in the door's motor, it is not responding.” “Are you 
telling me that you have enough firepower to vaporise a continent, but 
you can't open a door?” “I have ordered my nanobots to repair the door, 
but in the meantime may I suggest the manual pump Captain.” Carver 
griped a handle that was next to the door in a recessed wall section 
and pumped it five times, manually opening the door. “This is a new 
ship, there are bound to be teething troubles Captain,” apologised 
Alecto. 

In front of him Carver saw one of the shuttles that ran almost the whole
length of the 2200 metre ship, the shuttles ran inside a cylindrical 
tunnel, there were eight of them; each on its own track, with the 
tracks attached to the walls of the tunnel. The tunnel itself was 
divided into ten 200-metre sections each of which could rotate 
independently of the others so that one station could serve all eight 
tracks, and in theory no-one would have to wait more than a moment or 
two for a shuttle that was going in their direction. Carver boarded the 
shuttle and it shot off toward the bow, Sector 1, where the bridge was. 
He took a cat-microphone from the pocket of his immaculate black 
officers uniform and hooked it over his ear. Just then Alecto spoke 
“The door to Shuttle Station 5 has been fixed Captain.” “Thank you 
Alecto, are any others faulty?” “Captain there are 9753 doors on this 
ship, not counting air-locks, would you like me to test them all?” “No, 
only the ones which haven't been used since the ship was completed.” 
“402 doors have not been used since completion, testing.....All doors 
are functioning properly Captain.” “Are there any other faults?” “In 
all probability Captain.” This would take some getting used to, thought 
Carver. A moment later the shuttle stopped and he stepped out into the 
corridor again, one of two corridors that ran the length of the ship. 
He thought about ordering Alecto to open all of the doors between here 
and Station 5 so that he could look back a kilometre to where he had 
just been but thought better of it. He stepped into one of the four 
transparent ‘vert tubes' that were set against the wall, there was no 
floor or ceiling, but running up the centre was a metal pole;  examples 
of these tubes ran from the lowest to the highest decks throughout the 
ship and were the main means of movement between decks though 
stairwells and lifts were also available as alternatives. There was no 
artificial gravity net at the bottom of the tubes so all you had to do 
was use the pole to push off and then again to stop you when you 
reached the correct deck. Carver pulled himself up the pole hard and 
flew upwards at high speed, he was going the 250 metres to the top 
deck, deck 1 of 166. At the very top of the tube the ceiling was 
heavily padded in case anyone failed to stop in time but Carver did not 


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