Corebound Chapter 4

Now that Jacob had a working power core and new treads, he needed new arms and another set of treads. He wanted to get the other unit mobile so he wasn’t relying on a single damaged drone.

On that topic, he bumped against the other maintenance drone and managed to push it out of the gap in the floor that it had been trapped in. He jumped to the other unit and tried to move it back on its own recognizance, but the smooth wheels had little traction on the metal flooring.

Instead of damaging it further, he powered it down and left it there before jumping back into the other working unit.

“Melody, could you give me directions to the nearest damaged unit so I can replace the arms on this thing?” Jacob waited, but there was no reply.

Thinking back, he realized the AI hadn’t responded since praising him for replacing the power core. It never seemed to talk unless directly spoken to, but it had never not responded when he asked it a direct question.

He hopped out of the unit and wobbled unsteadily inside his mind space. The transition back into a bipedal form, even a digital one, was a bit jarring after having spent so much time in the machines. Once he settled, he looked around for the glowing orb of the AI. It wasn’t there.

Jacob experienced a moment of existential dread, thinking the AI had finally stopped working and he would be next. Following that, he hyperventilated, which he realized shouldn’t be physically possible since he was only data, but his mind didn’t seem to care about the reality of the situation.

After experiencing that for a few minutes, his mind finally caught up with the present, and he realized he couldn’t physically hyperventilate, which allowed him to stop and think rationally once again.

“Fucking digital existence,” Jacob muttered. “Can’t even get rid of shit like that? What’s next, back pain and muscle cramps?” Jacob took a deep breath in and then let it out. He didn’t care that it wasn’t real; it helped calm his racing mind.

“Melody?” he called again.

Still no answer.

Not good, but at least Jacob had a plan, sort of. He was not going to die in this wreck of a ship, not if he could help it. If the AI couldn’t help him, he would figure it out himself. The knowledge was in his mind; he just needed to search for it.

“First things first,” he said to himself. “I need to get those two maintenance units in optimal condition so I’m not stuck doing all these repairs myself.”

Jacob tried calling out for a map or mentally picturing one that included the layout of the ship to see if it would appear inside his little space, but no such luck. He was going to have to do things the hard way and search the vessel manually.

Thankfully, both maintenance units were still available for connection, or he would be really screwed.

Not willing to waste any more time, Jacob hopped back into the mobile unit and headed off in a direction where he vaguely recalled one of the lines went.

The maintenance drones weren’t the fastest thing in the world, being about the size and general shape of a smaller skid steer. Only, instead of having a bucket and a cab, they had multiple robotic arms that would not look out of place on a car assembly line back on Earth.

It was honestly rather odd. Jacob expected an alien race that was capable of creating AI, obviously had some form of FTL to get out here and get the drones to Earth, and had done whatever it had done to Bob’s apartment wall to make it vanish without making a noise to have robots that seemed more like magic than just regular old robots.

He shouldn’t be complaining, however, since it meant he actually understood the functions of the robot, unlike, say, an FTL drive, which he searched his mind for now that he thought about it. The information Melody had given him didn’t seem to include anything about how the vessel moved, and he wondered what other information might not have been included.

After traveling for a few minutes down a corridor and not seeing anything worthwhile, he wondered just how long the damn ship was. Eventually, he came to an intersection and decided to take the left path, since that led back toward the direction where the immobile unit was. If he were lucky, maybe he would come out behind it.

He wasn’t lucky in that regard, as he hit a dead end where the corridor had collapsed. For a time, he simply stared at the skeletal hand poking out from under the rubble. It was disturbingly human, even though he knew it had to belong to someone from the original eiraxin crew.

Once he finally turned away from the macabre scene, he noticed a maintenance drone partially buried on the far side of the corridor. He trundled over because half the unit was sticking out, and that half had a fully intact arm, as well as a perfectly good track.

Removing and attaching the arm to his own unit made Jacob feel so much better, and made extracting the track much easier. He checked the power core as well after clearing away some of the metal pinning the unit to the wall, but it was completely dead.

Jacob had no idea if the things could be recharged. He decided not to waste time checking his memories for the information at the moment since he didn’t know if he was on borrowed time or not.

He stacked the tread awkwardly over his unit and headed back. One track would be enough to at least get the immobile unit out of the way, so he could pass it, so that’s what he planned on doing.

After getting the track on, Jacob popped back into his space and called for Melody again, but there was still no response. He would continue to check when he had to pop between units, but for now, he moved forward.

It didn’t take long to shimmy the unit with one track off to the side, and then he was back in what he was starting to consider ‘his unit’ and moving past the previous blockage.

The corridor ended in a pair of thick doors that had been twisted off at some point. The irrational part of Jacob’s mind tried to convince him that some horrible space creature or mega robot had done it, but when he got closer, he saw that it looked like they had been bowed outward by something. Considering the ship looked like it did, he was guessing something explosive had caused the damage.

With the doors missing, it did make it easy to enter the next area, which turned out to be a massive hangar or flight deck of some sort that was easily the size of a sports stadium. At least he assumed it was a hangar by the wrecks smashed against the walls. They looked a lot like the thing that had abducted him. Some were bigger, while others were smaller. There was even one that sat crookedly in the center of the cavernous space that was larger than all the others. It looked far more menacing than any of the other units.

The tracks of his unit left scuff marks in the carbon scoring, showing that his hypothesis about the doors was probably correct. Something big had exploded inside the room.

Jacob didn’t care about the broken machines along the walls or the thing in the center of the room, but he did care about a group of maintenance drones mixed in with the other wrecks. “Jackpot!” he crowed as he trundled forward with eagerness.

One of them had to have an intact track.

After searching the first four, he was starting to regret his earlier optimism. Whatever had come in through the massive hatch had done a number on the units. Most of them were barely a collection of loose parts resembling a maintenance drone, let alone having anything intact.

He kept digging, however, because this was the likeliest spot he had seen so far where the part he needed could be found. His persistence was rewarded as he moved aside broken parts to unveil one maintenance unit upside down in the pile. The side facing the wall had been scorched black by the blast and half melted, but the other side was undamaged and had a relatively intact track. A partially broken track was better than none at all.

If Jacob had struck out here, he would have headed to retrieve the bad track he discarded, but he was glad he didn’t have to do that now.

He could see more units buried in the pile, and he made a mental note to come back after fixing the things that Melody had pointed out as critical before vanishing, because the room was likely to have a few useful parts.

Jacob whistled happily inside his head as he brought the track back to the other unit. Once it was on, he popped back into his space and tried calling Melody again to no avail.

“Okay, new plan,” he muttered.

There were now two fully functional, albeit damaged, maintenance drones. Jacob had a hard enough time just moving one forward while using the sensors of the other, so he doubted he could operate both effectively. Melody said they could be given orders once they were in better condition.

He scratched his face and shrugged. “Worth a try. Maintenance unit?”

Nothing.

“Of course it’s not going to answer, you idiot. It doesn’t know that name, that’s just what you call it.” After verbally condemning himself, he looked into his memories, but apparently, maintenance knowledge didn’t apply to ordering the stupid drones around.

He got an idea and walked over and touched the newly repaired unit, but instead of pushing his mind into it like he did to control them, he sent it a simple command. “Head to the fabrication center.”

It worked. The unit beeped at him before shrinking into a fist-sized model that plunked itself down into a projection of a hallway. The projection expanded until a room appeared, and as soon as it did, a white line showed the drone’s path and a helpful timer.

Jacob groaned when he saw where it was heading. That was the collapsed hallway he had already explored. He saw a few other hallways leading toward that room, but without any idea as to the condition of those spaces, the current path might just be the best choice. He poked the drone again, and the line started blinking. With minor effort, Jacob figured out how to stop the drone near where he thought the obstruction was.

The last thing he needed was for the drone to run into it and tip itself over.

While it was heading there, Jacob planned to check the other paths leading to the fabrication center. Maybe one wasn’t blocked.