Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)

23 - Device

"Anything to report, Foxy, on that level two system check?" asked Ria, returning to the Control Room with two cupsules of coffee.

Cupsules were a kind of cup designed to cope with the complications of space travel. Looking like a child's feeder cup but larger and made from metal, the key addition to the design was a valve in the centre of the lid which allowed the cup to be filled in a zero-G environment without removing the lid or risking spillage.

"All key systems are working perfectly, Commander," Foxy replied immediately from the speakers around the room. "However, I have discovered some anomalous connections on processors three and four of my primary system."

"Anomalous connections? How do you mean?"

"After attempting to close my first ten processors for diagnostic evaluation, processors three and four refused to shut down as they continued to receive external data, even though all sensor data was being routed to processors eleven to twenty. I scanned the ports on buses for those processors and discovered extra connections which are not included on the port map."

She handed one of the cupsules to Stephen as she asked, "What does that mean? Is it a problem?"

"It's hard to draw any conclusions without finding what those extra ports are," he replied, nodding his thanks as he took the offered cupsule of hot coffee. "Those ports are listed as inactive in the maintenance map and I'd be amazed if a mistake like that was left in in error. More importantly, if there's data on those ports, something has to be sending the data."

"Could it be a late addition to Foxy, something added just before we launched?" Ria asked, before taking a small sip of the too-hot coffee.

"You mean they didn't have time to add it to the manuals?" he scoffed. "Failing to add it to the manuals would be incompetence and completely against program procedures, but not telling the crew either? That's just dodgy. During the voyage, we're operating without any backup from Earth. We must be able to diagnose and repair any circuit on this ship. If Control left something out of the manual, it might make it impossible for us to repair something critical to our mission."

"Should we take a look at it then?"

"I've already sent the Chief down there. Out of the three of us, he's the expert," Stephen replied.

"Not going to give him a hand?"

"Not until I've taken something for this headache," he replied, momentarily rubbing his temples with his thumbs. "I'm gonna head down to the Medi-Bay for some painkillers."

"Okay, I think it's time I studied the Elysian transmissions in more detail, so I'll see you when you get back up here."

After several minutes of staring at each of the decoded transmissions on her command screen, Ria moved it to the large display screen on the wall. She put both transmissions side-by-side but there simply seemed to be nothing helpful contained in either.

"Foxy, can you replay what our sensors could see of the Elysian at the time of the collision?"

"Sorry, Commander. Our optical systems can only resolve visual information up to a range of around 120,000 kilometres. The Elysian was approximately sixty million kilometres away at that instant. The best data present on Hesperian would be the telemetry packets received from Elysian before and after the impact.

"That's a clever idea, Foxy. Put that data on the right side of the main screen. Let's see what we can find."

The two panels already displayed on the screen slid to the left and tiled themselves vertically and a new panel appeared to the right, displaying the telemetry immediately before the impact and another immediately after.