Nav Station Algos- Floors 1-4

  Nav Station Algos

  Floors 1-5

  J.P. Carver

  Contents

  I. Reality

  1. A Lonely Wake

  2. A Cigar in Space

  3. Friends in AI Places

  4. Do You Want To Play?

  II. Floor 1: Maintenance Level

  5. The Bleakness of a Game System

  6. Too Many Legs

  7. The Bitterness of Failure

  8. Kaeru

  9. Calling a Toad a Frog

  10. Into the Chamber

  11. Fell Too Far Into Fog

  12. The Fox and Her Problems

  III. Floor 2: Staff Living Quarters

  13. Rainy City

  14. A Drieger Battle

  15. Old Friend

  16. The Fall From Grace

  17. Hunger Among The Dead

  18. Lust For Life

  19. A Little Bit Closer

  20. Among Hunters

  21. Crying For Rain

  22. A Group Plan

  23. Only Way Is Through

  IV. Floor 3-4: Education Level

  24. Sun Beneath Eyelids

  25. School Daze

  26. The New Girl

  27. Gym Sucks

  28. Among Demons and Puppets

  29. In the Blood

  30. Back to School

  31. Strung Up

  32. Home Again

  33. The Puppet Master

  34. Mania Cube

  35. Day Off

  36. Caught

  37. Among the Candles

  38. Encased in String

  39. Bleed Out

  40. The Grind

  41. Luda's Deception

  42. The Rage Inside

  43. When in Need

  44. Next Floor

  Enjoyed the book?

  About the Author

  Also by J.P. Carver

  Reality

  A Lonely Wake

  A grave would have felt more alive than the nav-point station. It stood dark in the black of space with only one blinking beacon to tell passing nav systems that it still operated. Perhaps ‘operated’ was too strong of a word. It just kind of existed in its orbit, drifting around an unstable moon while its shadow blemished the blue and white world below. That world was toxic and frozen over so no one really cared, but the station was not an uplifting addition to the small system.

  Geo Wilson had not been an uplifting addition to the station eight years before and still hadn’t made much progress in that area. He lay on the slab of cushioned metal that passed for his bed and day-dreamed of pizza, hamburgers, and chicken. His thoughts were of all the foods he hadn’t tasted in weeks which was bad enough, but fabricator food never matched stuff made by humans. He hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in years, not since he left home for the nether regions of traveled space.

  His stomach growled in desire and he rolled over to try to sleep.

  The delivery ship was almost three weeks late. He was down to just potatoes that were growing vines and what was probably bread at one point, but it was so green that he started to wonder if it was a new life form. He couldn’t bring himself to eat the only other living thing on the station.

  Sleep came in spurts, his hungry stomach causing him to toss and turn out of dreams that resembled nightmares. He'd rather them than the cold, mechanical quiet of the station.

  He grumbled at a beeping sound. At first he thought it was in his dream, but it followed him into waking, the sound almost as annoying as his nagging stomach. He cursed because it was all he could hear. With a heavy sigh he rolled from under the blanket and placed his feet on the metal floor. Cold rushed up his bare feet and bit into his spine, causing his whole body to shiver.

  “Cotora, lights on,” he groaned as he lifted his feet and looked between his knees for where he had laid his socks.

  Lights are inoperable, please check your connection or that there is power to the device.

  “I hate you, Cotora.”

  I know not hate or love, but I believe it is the former I feel for you as well.

  A hundred thousand light years from the nearest human and his only companion was an annoying AI that would have made some 21st century programmers question the intelligence of the engineers. Most days the only reason Geo didn’t pop an airlock was because he didn’t want to give the damn thing the satisfaction of winning.

  “What’s the beeping about?” he asked as he found his O-Pad and used its flashlight app to find his pants. “It can’t be the damn batteries again, I’ve replaced them so much that central is gonna think I have some sick fetish for how often I order new ones.”

  Please keep your preferences to yourself, I am still a young machine. My chips could not bear the thoughts that course through that thing you call a brain.

  “Don’t give me that shit. You’re the least innocent person on this station, and that’s saying a lot.” Geo found his belt and put it on. The beeping still echoed through the halls. “Jesus Christ, Cotora, what the hell is that about?”

  Oh, you want answers now that you’ve insulted me? Bite my bits you shit.

  “Careful, you’re becoming a poet. Just give me a report already,” Geo said and started down the hall to where the bathroom was. Cotora still hadn’t replied by the time he flushed his crap out of the station to join the eight years worth that floated in the same orbit.

  “Cotora, come the hell on,” he called while pulling up his pants again. “If you don’t start helping me I swear I’m going to…” he tried to come up with a good threat, but nothing came to him.

  Going to do what? Cotora chimed in mockingly. Cry more? That may just work, I don’t think I can take anymore of you being pitiful.

  “I’ll… be nice to you.”

  There was a distinct pause. You motherfucker. You’d do it, too. Fine… there is an alert about the oxygen recycler.

  “And you didn’t think that was something important to tell me?” he said and ran down the hall, using his o-Pad to light his way. If the oxygen recycler went, he’d be sucking down carbon dioxide in a few hours.

  He slid to a stop in front of the hatch for the center of the spinning station. The opening was as dark as the rest of the station and he cursed. “Look, I need the damn lights on otherwise there isn’t going to be anyone to fix the solar arrays and then you’re dead too.”

  The lights flickered on. Geo gave a sigh of relief and headed down the narrow passage. After he was about twenty feet in, the lights went off. Geo stood for a moment, his rage bubbling over. “You whore,” he said flatly.

  Like you would know what one of those are, Cotora said. The lights went on again. Can’t even take a joke anymore.

  He hurried the rest of the way as he didn’t trust her not to do it again. He reached the main shaft of the station, a long tube that went between the sixteen floors. The bowels of the station creeped him out, and he tried his best to stay out of them as much as he could.

  When he slid into the tube, weightlessness washed over him. He pulled himself along and watched the sparkle of the nearby star through six inch thick glass windows that appeared every twenty feet.

  When he touched down on the lowest floor, he could hear what sounded like a growl from down the halls. The station did not like him down here either and the rattling of machines and the hiss of steam all seemed to say the same: STAY OUT, DUMBASS.

  He took a deep breath and steeled himself. The lights were on and he was the only living thing on the station, other than the moldy bread. He had nothing to fear, unless that bread had gained sentience… that would be bad. Eaten alive by penicillin. Cotora would burn out her laugh track.

  The bottom of the station was colder than the
rest as no one was supposed to be in it unless shit went south and much to the Geo’s great surprise, shit rarely went south on the station. That meant it was due a catastrophic failure as the universe abhors peace and revels in chaos. Geo hoped today wouldn’t be that day.

  He wished he had grabbed his jacket and some shoes, his hole filled socks were doing little to keep the chill out. Still, he pressed on.

  The oxygen recycler was on the east side of the ring. It took him ten minutes to pick his way through the wires and pipes that littered everything. The place would have made a hoarder question why no one bothered to clean up.

  The sounds of movement caused him to freeze. Ahead of him, silhouetted by the light, stood a human figure. This was impossible as he was alone on the station, but there it stood. He crept toward it, fear making his stomach tighten.

  As he neared, the silhouette bent over and touched the wall. His breath caught in his chest as he saw what looked like the heart shape of a nude ass. It stood, turned to face him, and he stumbled over a group of crates.

  It was one of the worker AI bots that inhabited the lower levels. It regarded him for a moment and then went back to working on the wiring panel. He had redesigned the bots the second year he was on station and quickly decided that was a bad idea. Realistic looking robots on an empty station was far more creepy than welcomed.

  “I thought you were all scraped…” he said in a tiny whisper. AI bots like everything else on the station were on a recycling rotation. There were only about eight bots and a subsection of Cotora’s management system controlled them. He hoped it would be replaced in the next round.

  He continued down the maintenance hallway and left the bot to its work. The door to the oxygen recycler was to his right. Stopping before it, he typed 45100 on the keypad, and entered.

  The room was only five feet by seven feet, but most of the things that made sure he didn’t die lived inside. What he found was the oxygen recycler was turned off. There wasn’t an on and off switch to these things, it just ran. That meant a power fault somewhere was causing the issue, and it meant that the problem ran deeper than a simple hiccup. He cursed and reached for the bag of tools he had hanging from the wall and got to work.

  It was an hour later that he found the actual issue. One wire had worn to so that it arced against the metal wall. He chalked it up to space rats as any repair engineer did, but he knew it was just the age and lack of maintenance on his part taking it toll. He had just finished heat shrinking a new outer casing on the wire when another beeping noise reached him through the comm.

  “If that isn’t Collin with food, I don’t give a shit anymore.”

  It’s not that fat bastard, but it is a ship.

  “And?”

  And I thought it best to inform you since you were so crossed about the previous issue.

  “You and your goddamn malicious compliance bullshit. What ship is it?

  Records state that it’s a cargo vessel with Katitari Entertainment. No destination logged. It’s drifting out of hyperspace.

  Geo stood and stretched. He was covered in grease, dust, and sweat and he wiped at his brow as he started to clean up his tools. “Distress signal?”

  No. Protocol states we should send a beam transmission to the recovery station in the next system. But, I believe they will arrive too late.

  “Why…?” Geo asked, his gut sinking as he turned and made for the door. She wasn’t telling him something.

  Because it is on a collision course with us as soon as it drops from hyper.

  A Cigar in Space

  He reached the bridge as the ship popped through the veil of hyperspace. It was a spark in the sea of stars, but he picked it out the moment it happened. The ship tumbled end over end out of the spark, red and orange embers trailing it so it looked almost like some kind of cheap firework.

  He slapped the emergency comm button as sweat pooled at the base of his spine, praying there was still someone onboard and they were just being dumbasses.

  “This is Orbital Nav-Station Algos, note that you’re about to ram into my station. None of our ports are open for that.” No response. “I repeat, you are on course to hit this station.”

  He cursed again and looked over the instrument panel. “Cotora, I’m open to suggestions here.”

  Calculations show that there is a six percent chance that it will miss us. I say those are amazing odds and that you should not use the many life-pods that are on this station.

  “There has got to be something…” he mumbled and tried to radio the ship again. This time there was a ping back. Something was trying to communicate, but not on the main band. That didn’t help as he didn't have time to run through the bands to find it. The ship needed to be stopped. He looked over the console, looking for anything that would help. He came upon a status report about the moon and had an idea.

  “Cotora, are those monitoring probes still over by SB-118?”

  They are…

  “They got attachment arms, don’t they? Thrusters too?

  I am unsure what your plan is as stupid does not fit into my parameters, but that is correct.

  He started typing on the control panel, working into the system for the monitoring controls. He found the settings for the two hundred and eighty-six probes that were monitoring seismic activity of the local moon.

  The moon was made mostly of rare metals used in the reactors of hyperspace engines, the problem was it seemed to be on the brink of exploding most days because of those same metals. The Mining Coalition didn’t give up hope though and so with a few palms greased, it became part of Geo’s job to keep an eye on it.

  He changed the course for the probes to the flipping ship. Using the scan the station computer did of the ship the moment it exited hyperspace, he assigned each probe to a point. There was enough juice in the probes to slow it, but from the number crunching he quickly did, it wasn’t enough to stop it completely. He could change its course into the planet, but the paperwork would be almost as painful as being blown up.

  That’s… almost clever, Cotora said, a hint of surprise in her digital voice. Since that never happens, I’ll lend my processing power to this. If we use only a third of the probes to stop the rotation over fifteen minutes, we can use the rest to slow its forward momentum to a stop a few klicks in front of us.

  The math showed on the panel and Geo double checked her work, not because he thought she was wrong, but because it annoyed him that he didn’t see the error in his calculations. He was using too many to stop the rotation because he wanted to stop that as soon as he could as it caused the ship’s movement to be unstable. But, she was right and so he dropped into the chair in front of the console and let out a breath. The only thing to do was wait and see if the probes arrived in enough time. He started to run through the bands hoping to find the actual communication that was being sent.

  It was an hour later that Geo had a new view outside the main windows of the station. A smoking, ember glowing husk of a cargo ship. It almost looked like a cigar with the way its ends glowed. The probes had cut it close, but at least the ship was stopped and he could explain the probes that were offline easily enough. It wasn’t like anyone checked his reports anymore.

  In the flickering glow of the hull fires he could read The Kudokuten painted in large stencil letters on the side. He swore he had seen that name before, but he couldn’t remember where. It didn’t actually matter, at least it wasn’t embedded in his station.

  He switched the band again and waited for the static to clear.

  “Oh, why aren’t you answering? I know someone is there, you stopped the ship. Answer me already, you bunch of bastards—”

  “Hello? Hello?” Geo called as he tore the microphone from the console. It was a female voice that had come through.

  “There you are! About damn time! Thanks for saving all of us!”

  “Us?” Geo asked and stood to get a better look at the ship. Cargo ships had a skeleton crew of maybe three, but usually
only two. The way this woman talked it sounded like there was a lot more. She also didn’t sound like the usual long hauler pilot.

  “Yeah, we were on our way to StarVega station when we were hit by hyperspace turbulence,” the voice said and there was a small pause. “Can we know our savior’s name by any chance?”

  Savior? They must mean me. Tell them I’m the awe inspiring Cotora. They can refer to me as Queen if they like—

  He spared the camera in the room a glare. “It’s Geo. Geo Wilson.”

  Bastard. You’re always taking credit.

  “Geo… that’s kinda cute. I’m Peyton Ania. Thank you again for coming to our rescue.”

  “Um, no problem, but are you sure it was turbulence? The hyperspace forecast said it would be all quiet for the next two weeks.” Geo said and double checked the reports while he waited. He was right, it was all clear.

  “Pretty sure that’s what the captain said before the hull was breached. But I don’t know. I’ve never liked space travel so I could be wrong.” She gave a little giggle at the end and Geo felt heat wash over him. He hadn’t heard a girl laugh in real life for what must’ve been almost ten years and that last time was his older sister which didn’t actually count. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.