Hard Landing, Part 1

"Funny how things work out." thought Lance as he scanned the aging craft's console.  Just a few moments ago everything was going just as planned.  There didn't seem to be any issues with the PH-35 Xenoliner as it cruised at light speed.  All systems were green, readouts nominal and the McPherson Lightdrive engines were purring away.

Suddenly with no warning, the craft slipped out of light speed, the engines shutdown and now he found the craft slipping through space at a high rate of speed with no maneuverability.  Thankfully there wasn't a lot of traffic in this part of the galaxy to contend with.  However, should he come across a lone asteroid or dark planetoid or uncharted debris field, there would be nothing he could do about it.

"What the hell?" Lance said out loud as he scrolled through the console data trying to figure out just what went wrong.  As he tried to relight the engines he just got the annoying chirp of the engine management system indicating the parameters were not correct for him to restart.

Thinking back, Lance remembered that he had to leave Mercer Prime in a hurry.  However, he took the time to have the ship checked out because he knew his next trip would be a long one with a valuable cargo that had to be delivered on time.  The last thing he wanted was to garner any attention from the authorities with a distress call from deep space.  This was something that he was going to have to figure out on his own and the quicker the better.

Suddenly the ship went dark. "Uh-oh," he thought.  "That can't be good," he said out loud knowing full well there wasn't anyone else onboard to hear but feeling better none-the-less to hear a voice in a stressful situation.  Even if it was his own.  Watching as the emergency lighting came on, giving the bridge an eerie glow, both soft and ominous at the same time, Lance decided he would have to take his troubleshooting from the bridge and into engineering where the main power couplers and breakers were.

The emergency life support system was working for now since it ran on backup battery power when the main system was down, however the artificial gravity system was offline.  Artificial gravity was the largest power consumer on the craft and is always the first system to go offline when the power fails.

Switching on his magnetic boots and his shoulder mounted light on his exo-suit, Lance made his way down the long hallway that ran the entire length of the ship.  This main hallway allowed someone to get to each section simply by navigating left or right depending on the area you wanted to go.  Engineering was located near the end of the hallway, one level down.  Since the lifts were not working, Lance would have to use the escape trunk in order to make his way into the room.  If there was a silver lining to not having gravity, it would be that he would not have to climb down the trunk.  Lance simply turned off the magnetic boots and slid down the shaft and then re-engaged them at the bottom.

 
Walking over to the breaker control panel, Lance opened the access door and peered inside.  Not being an electrical engineer, Lance realized this may be futile.  The inside was full of blue blinking lights and optic connectors glowing a soft amber.  It seemed to his untrained eye that everything was in order.  There was no smell of burnt connectors or blown fuses.  Though not trained he had seen enough to know what burnt circuits looked like and smelled like.  Closing the door to the electrical breaker panel, he turned his attention to the simple A.I. that was supposed to monitor and control all aspects of faster than light travel.

Artificial Intelligence had been the best breakthrough and was the determining factor in establishing safe travel in long distance FTL sequences.  It would be impossible for a person to quantitatively make the millions of calculations needed to effectively travel faster than light.  A good A.I. had the ability to make the adjustments to the FTL engines and keep them operating at peak efficiency.  A.I. also have the ability to monitor many more systems at one time and could make multiple decisions and corrections seemingly at once.  In order to do what an A.I. was able to accomplish, it would take a substantial crew with multiple shifts and it still would not be as safe and efficient.  The A.I. was the only reason Lance could pilot a ship of this size by himself.

 
Standing at the A.I. interface console, Lance noticed that the construct had also gone into low power mode.  Generally the last circuit to go dead on a ship is the A.I. so that it could continually monitor and record conditions up to the last moment.  This gave investigators a complete timeline if needed when and if derelict ships or crashed ships were ever discovered.  A.I.'s came in different degrees of effectiveness.  Military A.I.'s tended to be the most advanced with the ability to project holograms likenesses of themselves in order to better interface with the crew in a seamless fashion.  Commercial A.I.'s were more utilitarian in nature.  Most small to intermediate ships carried A.I.'s that communicated through text and voice only.  The A.I. aboard this ship could communicate through voice but only at the interface console in engineering.  The A.I. communicated on the bridge through text and numerous warning lights and signals.  Lance tapped the interface screen to bring the A.I. out of its low power mode.

"Sergio, report on current FTL conditions and flight command statuses."  Each A.I. had a name that was programmed by the end user.  The name served as a command word so that more simple A.I. constructs could differentiate between conversations in the background and command sentences and inquisitions from the console operator.  Lance chose the name Sergio to honor a friend he had lost in the Galeniam Wars years ago.

"Nominal" the A.I. texted on the interface screen.  "That's odd," thought Lance.  Generally when the A.I. is engaged in a verbal fashion, it responds the same way.

"Sergio, lock onto my voice linguistic characteristics and vocal patterns making command word unnecessary." This allowed Lance to talk with Sergio without having to say his name at the beginning of every sentence.  By locking on to his vocal patterns, this enabled the A.I. to only take commands from Lance and would not recognize vocal patterns from any other individual.  Plus, saying Sergio at the beginning of every sentence was annoying.

"Analysis, engagement, lock completed," Sergio responded.

"Ship systems dropped out of FTL and powered down into an emergency low power configuration.  Explain what conditions caused this anomaly," Lance inquired of the A.I.

"Unknown Interference," texted the A.I.

"Perform Self-diagnostics and report." Lance commanded.

"Self-diagnostics complete, all systems nominal," reported the A.I.

"Nominal? How the hell could it be nominal?" thought Lance.

"Why are you not responding to me verbally when I am communicating verbally?" asked Lance.

Lance stared at the console waiting for Sergio to reply.  Instead, just the soft blink of the cursor was the only response.

"Sergio, respond please," stated Lance.

"I am trying to formulate a correct response," texted Sergio nonchalantly.

"Does that seem like a normal or nominal response?  Maybe you should retry that self-diagnostic routine again.  You are acting anything but nominal," Lance said dryly.

"Command please," stated Sergio through the console screen.

"I need a complete diagnostic analysis of all of the ship systems to determine why we dropped out of light-speed and what is keeping the engines and power systems from coming back on-line," Lance stated in an exasperated tone.

"Proceeding.  Estimated time of completion is three standard hours," texted Sergio.

"What? Three standard hours?  Why so long? Sergio, what was the nature of the unknown interference that shut our systems down?" asked Lance excitedly.

"If I knew that, it would not be Unknown," stated Sergio.

I had no idea an A.I. could have wit! Lance thought to himself.  Whatever has knocked us offline has had an effect on the entire A.I. sub-routine.  Lance decided he would have to take the time and ask very straight forward and diligent questions in order to lead the A.I. to the answers that he needed.

"What was the last thing to happen prior to the Unknown Interference and the ship dropping out of light speed," asked Lance.

"Just before the FTL shutdown, the ship was hit with a very strong sub-light transmission from an unknown ancillary which penetrated system sub-routines and knocked them off line," replied Sergio.

"Can you reroute and get the systems back online?  Start with the main ships power," asked Lance.

"Algorithms have been penetrated and scrambled.  All necessary subroutines for restart are not working and out of array," reported Sergio.

"That makes no sense.  How could a sub-light transmission penetrate our shielding and distort onboard subroutines?  These systems are protected and have redundant algorithms programmed in." Lance responded.

Puzzled by this new development, Lance racked his brain to try to figure out how he was going to be able to undo the damage done to the subroutines that operate every aspect of the ship.  A full system reboot may be the only way to reset the subroutines and get the systems back online.  However, it is usually the job of the A.I. to complete a reboot and it was obvious that this strange anomaly had taken its toll on Sergio.

"Sergio, could you attempt to reboot ship operating subroutines one system at a time, see if we can bring the ship back online bit by bit?" asked Lance.

"Why would we do this?" texted Sergio through the console.

"Because we are offline and drifting through space at a high rate of speed and in immediate danger!" countered Lance.

"Unable to verify last statement, all systems nominal," replied Sergio.

Obviously I have lost my A.I. thought Lance. Sergio is going to be of no help getting this craft online.  Unfortunately these type of crafts are not made for manual flight and require the A.I. to do certain things in case the crew is completely incapacitated.  That is why there are redundant systems.  This was not supposed to happen!

Thinking through his options, the only thing that came to mind was to reboot the entire system by shutting the A.I. down.  Maybe when the A.I. came back up, it would be able to compartmentalize and separate the affected areas and be able to run the ship once more even if it was from a limited position.

 
This however brought severe risks.  First and most importantly, this would mean the shut down of all life support systems for the minutes that it would take in order to reboot.  Lance would have to don his helmet and gloves in order to protect himself from the extreme cold that would invade the ship the second the life support was shut down.  Since space exists in absolute zero, it would quickly overcome the ship and turn it into an immediate icebox.  Secondly, what if the systems never came back on-line?  If that happened, then Lance would have basically committed suicide.  Once the battery on his exo-suite ran out, he too would freeze to death and would be left hurtling through space in an ice coffin.

It was apparent that the A.I. had no means of repairing itself.  And if it couldn't repair itself, then there would be no way that it could repair the ship.  Begrudgingly, Lance came to the conclusion that his was his only route.

"Sergio, continue with full ship diagnostics and report when complete," Lance stated, mainly to keep the damaged A.I. occupied until he could finish the reboot.

"A full diagnostic test seems to be a complete waste of time and resources since all systems are nominal and operating normally," replied Sergio.

"Humor me and do it anyways, please Sergio!" stated Lance, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

"I will comply.  Expect report in exactly 318 hours," Sergio stated flatly.

"Good.  I'll be waiting for a full and detailed report," Lance replied because it made him feel good to do so.
Exiting the engineering room, Lance walked into the small cargo/hanger area where his exo-suit accessories were kept.  Sliding into is helmet and gloves, he made sure his suit was operating normally and had sealed correctly.  Satisfied with the suit's performance, Lance went to the next escape trunk, disengaged his boots and floated up to the main corridor.  A full system shut down and reboot could only be done at the command console and by the Captain of the ship.

Once in the command/bridge room, Lance walked over to the panel on the wall labeled "Emergency Override - Authorized Personnel Only".  Entering his Personal Identification Number, Lance opened the door.  Inside was one throw-switch labeled Override with the instructions, 'To initiate, Pull lever down, Wait 15 seconds then return to upward engaged position’.  Knowing that his may be the last switch that he would flip, Lance exhaled slowly.  Then he reached in, grabbed the lever and pulled down.