Sojourners

By Ben Davis

Named after one of earths African-American abolitionists and women's rights activist, Sojourner Truth, who was born into chattel slavery but escaped to freedom in AD 1826, the Jaunt-Ship Sojourner whose name was chosen by the family that would pilot her, was created to be one of the first human ships of the late 22nd-Century to use jaunt technology reverse-engineered from their alien opponents in the so-called Earth-Xeria War several years before. Sojourner would allow the Strong family to journey across the wide open reaches of outer space with the aptly-named Strong family ready to explore its regions for knowledge and to handle its unknown dangers. The Strongs prove themselves not only worthy of a staunch pioneer spirit but having the bravery and fortitude necessary to navigate the perils and wonders of an interstellar frontier all the while at first unsuspecting the treachery of their own Planetary Coalition in its attempt to seize absolute power from the beneficent Xerians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491789650

Ben Davis

Ben Davis is an award-winning children's author. He lives in Tamworth with his ever-patient family and in his spare time enjoys rock climbing, white-water rafting and pretending to have adventurous hobbies.

Book preview

Chapter One

Strands and Other Cosmic Slop

A ssistant Engineer Barrie Strong descended the ladder that led to the core of the ship’s jaunt-drive. Intermittently wiping the sweat from her brow, she hurried downward to reach her destination. In less than an hour, the ship would experience an explosion with a force that could decimate an entire planet if she cannot repair the d rive.

Barrie’s mind wandered as she touched down on the corridor floor that would now lead her to the core room. An audible and automated claxon blared at her and was counting down to warn her of the ship’s imminent destruction—it was necessary but a constant irritant—as she had to hurry and fix the damage.

She had to save the family—Mom and Dad, Reena, Thom, Jr. …

In a strange calm tone, a voice addressed her on the ship’s extensive and omnipresent communications system. She also found it to be irritating.

Ms. Strong, you have thirty-two minutes and six seconds remaining to repair the drive before meltdown. I must point out the extreme alacrity you will need to—

I know Mada, damn it! Barrie shouted as she raced further down the engineering corridor. She began to feel the heat emanating from near the end of this section of the ship. On her small but well-toned frame she tightened the straps that held her engineer’s tool pack to her back. She ran faster.

Ms., I was created, of course, to provide any and all aboard this vessel with important information …

. . . To get on my last nerve? I’m almost there and I can do without any further distraction, you stupid automaton! It was getting hotter. Her small lithe body was a ball of perspiration.

The voice from beyond sounded somewhat dismayed in its expression, Young Miss, I assure you that my intelligence is impeccable and there is no need to get, as you humans say, ‘persnickety’.

Per …? Hmmm, remind me to get my brother Michael to rewrite your vocabulary protocols, she snickered almost silently to herself. She was almost near the end of the corridor that led to the core room door. The heat now was nigh oppressive.

Thirty minutes, forty-three seconds.

Stupid cuckoo clock! Barrie made her way up to the core hatch and awaited its biometric activators to recognize her signature and open the door. Sweat began stinging her brown eyes as she wiped her face. Dumb-ass cosmic strands! she cursed further. The young woman waited for the door to slide open but nothing happened.

Mada, the door’s stuck! It won’t—

The voice was obtuse. I am aware of this fact. The heat seems to have fused the biometric array at this juncture and has obviously damaged the hatch’s inner locking mechanism. Collision with the strand has precipitated extensive damage and has disabled it from sensing your bio-signature.

Barrie was becoming a bit frantic. I know dammit! The door won’t open and I can’t override it. Are you able to blow it from where you are? she inquired in haste.

Affirmative, said the voice again in that eerily calm tone.

Then blow the damned door! Hurry!

But, you could be injured or killed and that would not do to repair the core.

Do it! she screamed as she ran from the door, hid behind a conduit nearby and closed her eyes.

No need to yell, Madam. As you wish. There was a brief silence.

The hatch exploded open. Debris flew in many directions as the simmering heat from within engulfed the corridor now.

Ms. Strong, I suggest caution. Not only is the temperature almost at intolerable levels, the air in this area is becoming toxic.

Ignoring the voice, Barrie pressed a small button on her chest and instantaneously her enviro-suit helmet assembled over and around her head. Immediately, she pulled on her safety gloves. She then stepped gingerly but stealthily inside. It was a good thing too as her helmet registered the heat and toxicity levels from the room and without. Barrie accepted Mada’s assessment using her own visual confirmation. Shit, he was right!

To further confirm the BioSynth’s findings, another voice, feminine but ironically more monotone and metallic than his, launched through her helmet speaker:

WARNING! EXTREME DANGER! YOU HAVE REACHED THE DRIVE CORE! TOXICITY, HEAT AND RADIATION LEVELS APPROACHING CRITICAL! RECOMMEND ENTERING WITH FULL PROTECTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL EQUIPMENT! REPEAT: DO NOT ENTER WTHOUT FULL PROTECTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL EQUIPMENT!

Barrie walked further in to the core room and passed a long row of computer panels that revealed exploding circuits. Some of the panels were very heat-sensitive; many were melted almost beyond immediate repair as well. These did not seem to concern her as they were not her objective at the moment. She made her way to the room’s center and even with her helmet and gloves on she could still feel the heat.

She glanced over what made the ship jaunt across time and space: the KHMP (Kurosawa-Hawking-Megadyne-Pulse) drive. Barrie thought at first how much smaller it seemed than the specs and model she saw of it just a few years ago on Earth at an engineer’s convention with her mother.

Created by the descendants and followers of some of the world’s most brilliant Earth scientists of the past couple of centuries, who were all dedicated in their hopes to aid humanity itself to leap and explore the stars in their own lifetime, the drive was a hybrid of the original space engines that powered the ships of earth’s greatest enemies, the Xeria, in their mad quest to conquer earth and destroy the entire human race to make it their world. After nearly doing so, mankind somehow overcame its adversaries and leveraged a fortuitous advantage and regained the world of its birth before experiencing defeat and total annihilation.

She marveled at the incredible device that sat before her. As an aerospace engineer, it was natural for her to have an admiration for any and all kinds of space machinery. Barrie certainly envied all of the men who reverse-engineered Xerian space-drive technology as much as the beings who originally designed and fashioned this fantastic and beautiful instrument together. The fact that the aliens used such vast technology to wage war against other sentient beings always bothered her. Maybe they didn’t consider earthmen sentient, she thought for a moment.

Ignoring the heat, still she stepped closer to the engine and could hear what was wrong with it. Typically, the KHMP at its peak effectiveness should purr at her continuously like that of a million prides of baby lions. Now, it only revealed its inefficient operating capacity. This time, the purring was accompanied by an off-kilter humming that only one with the skill and experience of a space engineer like Barrie, who helped to build the damned thing with her mother, et al, would even notice. To her, the aberrant drive-sound was akin to listening to a terrible concerto with several of its performers playing off-key. The purring and humming of the engine sang too quickly per its normal pace. This too bothered the hell out of her.

It was damaged.

It was going critical. The rising heat was an unfortunate symptom of it.

It was going to blow up with the blazing ferocity of small supernova.

It would kill her entire family.

Barrie was shaken from her thoughts. Ms. Strong, you now have twenty-three minutes, chimed Mada.

Cuckoo …

There was another explosion, within the room but slightly smaller and no less forceful, that shook and knocked her wiry body down. Her head slammed hard to the floor and the items in her equipment pack pressed hard into her back as she fell. Barrie was thankful for having her helmet on, but there was still a twinge of pain.

Oh, Jesus take the wheel! She arose from the floor, steadied herself and adjusted her helmet as she made her way slowly over to an as-yet-undamaged wall panel with a view screen on it. After pressing her slender gloved fingers over its opaque surface, it came on and greeted her with an eerie-blue light. She saw the layout of the ship’s drive and sought to punch in a diagnostic scan of it.

Another alert blared from the female voice: WARNING! CORE MELTDOWN IMMINENT! REPEAT: MELTDOWN IMMINENT! COMMENCE EVAUATION PROCEDURE IMMEDIATELY! COMMENCE EVAUATION PROCEDURE IMMEDIATELY!

Miss …

I know, I know! I’m running out of time! Not one for patience, are you Bio-Synths? Now a crimson light flashed inside her helmet. Barrie saw its digital readout and cursed. Ah, crap it to hell! My helmet’s malfunctioning! I gotta take this thing off! Damn! She pressed a small button on her chest but to no avail as the helmet would not disassemble instantly from her head. The young woman had to take it off manually and did so. Soon after, she was assaulted by the gathering heat and noxious gases in the core room. Inside of her fatigues she became soggy with perspiration. A nice warm shower later would take care of this she thought to herself.

Mada’s voice interrupted her whimsy abruptly. Young Miss, my scans reveal the area of your current position to be vary hazardous. The temperature is reaching very critical levels. Soon, the radiation will …

The drive’s purr-hum was sounding much quicker. Its noise now irritated her ears. Barrie looked again at the view screen.

Mada, patch me in to a schematic of the drive’s internal housing. I need to see what’s wrong the KHMP drive’s main filament lines. That cosmic strand that hit us must have damaged them and the connectors routing the plasma. The heat seems to be backing up—and that’s why it’s so darned hot and toxic in here, she started coughing. There’s pressure in the connector lines beyond the drive’s capacity to flush automatically to release it out into space. This would cause a malfunction with the auto-restart.

Mada interrupted her again. You now have seventeen minutes and thirteen seconds.

Barrie winced but continued verbally what she was seeing. Laughing through twenty-year-old eyes stung with tears irritated by the acrid air she was breathing, she noticed something very odd. "Hey, wait a minute! These lines look like … but this is impossible. They look like they’ve been aged somehow. I’m not an astrophysicist like Dad, but even I know that c-strands wouldn’t do this. We only left earth a month or so ago, so these filaments shouldn’t have more than a couple of light-weeks on them. Yet they look as though they’ve been in use for, what, maybe fifteen years or so."

The android’s voice queried over the comm speaker. What then would account for this?

I’ve no idea, Mada. Barrie knew that further inquiry as to the mystery of the main filament lines would delay what she came down in the core room to do in the first place. Time indeed was running out. At any rate, the heat has damaged the mains and caused an expansion of the filaments. That’s why the drive is behaving the way it is. It’s backed up so to speak and building to explode the core. It’s like an old-fashioned toilet that won’t flush because it’s totally blocked up with—

Ms. Strong, a picturesque display is unnecessary at this time. Though I am not an engineering specialist, I was able to gather your meaning the first time around. I strongly recommend that you quickly refrain from human euphemisms and analogies, remedy the engine problem and begin your repairs. You now have nineteen minutes and thirteen seconds.

Asshole. Barrie tried to suppress her annoyance—she was never as so bothered by any mobile artificial intelligences such this one as she believed all BioSynths to be more compliant and lacking in attitude but decided that it was not so with this one. Despite the heat, her coughing and teary eyes, she had an even more pressing question: why didn’t this ship, a hybrid of very sophisticated alien and Terran technologies and built with the most sensitive sensor array ever conceived, detect the cosmic strand—if that is what it was—before it hit? The jaunt-ship, while equipped with force shields to detect even the most microscopic meteoroids that at the impossible speeds they could attain could poke holes through its hull, is capable of making the most minute course changes to avoid such things almost automatically. Even as a layperson, Barrie knew that c-strands carry sufficient mass to alert the detectors surrounding the craft that should have initiated the necessary alterations to avoid them without human control. But the current condition of the filaments served to rule out c-strands as the logical conclusion.

Again answers to these questions would have to wait. While all this jaunt-ship, the very first of its kind, had more than a thousand and one tests performed on it before its launch from earth, she knew that space itself, no matter the technology created to navigate it, was still full of unknowns and it was reasonable to consider that not everything could be predicted with any great certainty or handled safely despite any well-thought contingencies. Human fallibility was something she knew even at her young age must be kept in consideration. This sometimes bothered Barrie but at the same time this also gave her some measure of emotional security. She quickly stowed her concerns for now and continued forward with what she intended to do.

It was enough that Thomas Jr. did his best to manually steer the jaunt-ship from suffering any further damage and to restore the artificial gravity. While he and Dad were both injured by the collision—her father suffered a concussion leaving Thom Jr. to handle all of the navigation duties on his own. With some very nifty maneuvering that made her very proud of her big brother, he saved them all from flying into the red sun of this star system. Though he fractured an arm, and no doubt his pride, Thom Jr. did a damned good job. It was not until the damage to the drive was discovered that the precaution to place everyone in the cryo-stasis life pods, set for immediate ejection into space should the KHMP become irreparably unstable was unnecessary. In addition, her argument with her mother as to who would repair the core too was unnecessary as her broken leg would have made her trip down here time-consuming and impossible. By these defaults, Barrie alone had to carry out her audacious plan.

Beyond her Dad’s and brother’s injuries, everyone else was unscathed. Her attention to the task at hand came rushing back to her quickly as the schematic Mada pulled up on her screen confirmed her remedy and her fears. The light from it shone on her sepia-toned face made it an eerie teal color. Her head hurt and the toxic air was making her nauseous. She had to hurry up with her plan.

Young madam, you now have …

Will you please shut the f—

. . . Fourteen minutes and thirty four seconds.

A sense of dread engulfed her as the schematic image now flashed red on the screen.

I was right, but I’ll be darned if can’t fix the damage before it goes critical. The purr-hum increased its faulty syncopation yet again and she was having more difficulty breathing.

No Miss, you and the rest of the crew will be atomized if you do not.

Barrie said nothing as she gritted her teeth. She began the procedure as she pulled some tools from her pack. Mada, fortunately, there is no mechanical damage to the actual core—none that I can see anyway. It would seem that that strand we hit earlier only altered its function as impossible as that may sound. The engine’s drive flow has been interrupted as I suspected and I need to restore it. I’m going to have to relieve the pressure at this point in the core to get the auto-restart to kick in!

You have thirteen minutes. What do you intend to do?

Barrie paused briefly in thought. A bypass of the system at this juncture is not possible and there is no time to get deep into the housing physically to manually stop its impending critical overload. The circuits are too damaged to divert the buildup and it will take a day or more to replace the stack by hand. According to you, I don’t have damned day to create an active shunt to cool the drive and vent the plasma that’s creating the pressure and the toxic air and hope the auto-restart, which shouldn’t be damaged, will kick in.

There was another momentary pause this time from the voice, Interesting, but how will you vent the pressure? There are no exhaust ports available in this room. They are outside the core room into space. How will you cool off the—?

I’m going to blow this room out! She coughed,

No response. Barrie seemed almost delighted at this.

Uh-huh, no smart-ass repartee this time, eh cuckoo clock? she whispered to herself.

Ten minutes! I was well aware that you biologicals are capable of suicidal acts but I never thought you would demonstrate it now. Your plan ignores an inordinate amount of variables to resolve this dire situation safely. First, to vent any heat and toxic air in here you will have to do a manual shut-down, which means to get more dangerously close to the circuitry stacks. Second, you have no efficient way to safely blow out the room, which means your imminent death, and that the drive will still go critical and furthermore precipitate of the deaths of those in stasis.

The purr-hum was even faster now. Barrie interrupted the voice, briefly, as she pulled something out of her engineering bag.

Don’t stop now, Mada. You’re on a roll!

Eight minutes and twenty seconds. Ms. Strong my sensors are faltering but I do believe I can detect a pulse gun and explosive charges in your possession. If it is your intention to kill yourself with them, now, then it would seem I will have to re-evaluate human psychology or at worst hope for updated software on the subject to be programmed into my next version should any remnant of me survive the devastation. That is if my series will be re-used ever again to serve on the next jaunt-ship. Perhaps the technicians will wipe my previous memory chassis clean so that I will not need to recall how this is such an inane solution to this problem. Perhaps it would be best, simply as a suggestion mind you, to simply wait for the inevitable.

Shut up … please! She coughed as she walked near