Slow, but steady.
Anthony sighed as he browsed through the lines of code for the Local Vita node, it seemed to work perfectly. But something had forcibly reset it, or caused a shutdown of some of the essential components down in engineering, disabling its means to properly utilize the environmental controls, and synchronize itself to the rest of the system. It wasn’t that it lost connection to the rest of the ship, it simply did not recognize the ports that allowed it to connect to it.
This would take some time to readjust unless he could use one of the other Vita’s to access and repair the coding for him, a feature he implemented in case of simple system failures. Shame he overlooked the possibility that one of the notes could loose connection to the network and refuse connection attempts from the others, labeling them as, suspicious. But then again, had Maggie gone rogue on them, it could in turn also have been abused by her.
There was no helping it now, he would have to implement an accepting rule allowing connection attempts from the other nodes, and then direct the next node to reconnect and repair the system control feature, which would be much faster then having to code the whole control-unit anew. It was good that the core features, the capsule control, was still active, for the most part anyway. Did leave him to wonder, why was he released from sleep only after the rest of the crew was gone ?
Darn, he did not think about this possibility, what if Jonathan was released so late for the same reason ? Maybe the other nodes where afflicted with the same problem, which meant, he had to rewrite the code base after all, if only he had made a backup for it in the first place, a cascade failure of this magnitude, he didn’t think it even possible when he erected the system structure, so sure that the Vita Nodes would correct one another. For them to all fail at the same time.
“ Well, shit ! “ He cussed through clenched teeth, and then deeply inhaled. Vita managed to still retain basic control over most of the essential systems. Air scrubbers seemed to work, and the water purification was functional as well. The Control for the Androids was offline, as well as Security, and the data storage system, disabling his ability to look at any alternative means to recreate what exactly happened on the ship.
But, he could still work with that, if no other option opened up to him, he could reinstate the Vita system, and maybe even expand it’s control so that it could take over for Maggie as the Colony-ships primary AI was seemingly a lost cause. Her core had been raised out of the cooling vat, and her parts had been partially salvaged. If he was lucky, he could get some spare from storage, but he wasn’t confident that he could fully reinstate her even then.
“ So, NH 03, if I can get Maggie from there, over here, it should work out. “ He mused, wondering if the idea of connecting the transports ship to the controls of the colony-ship would be feasible.
That was a long-term goal however, he had to consider short term gains first, one of which would be access to the remaining crew quarter, a simple task as he just had to command the Vita node to release the locks on the doors. Though while inputting the corresponding commands, he did consider that the lack of a manual override function on the doors felt like an oversight. Sure, the pure electronic control assured a measure of safety, but now that most controls seemed to have failed, what if there would be a power-failure ?
Anthony shook his head, and finally made his way from the bridge, back onto the command hallway. Checking each of the crews quarter in turn, just to assure the accuracy of the Vita node by assuring there was indeed no other crew-member left present on the ship. And for once, he was disappointed that his work gave him the proper result.
Every room he checked, he found a clean and empty sleep capsule, room's that had shown clear use, and security lockers that had their firearms removed, all pointing to the fact that, not only was the crew active here for a while, but there was indeed some sort of firefight, considering that the rule had been to carry firearms only if the need arises.
It led him to satiate his curiosity about his earlier guess however, to have a look into the Robotic unit storage, assuming still that Maggie may have gone rogue and use the androids to revolt against the crew. But the units that where there did show no signs of damage. Most of them still neatly packed up in their racks as if they had been loaded up just the day before.
Only a few of them had been removed, and by how their exterior shell had been damaged, it was more then likely that someone yanked them off their holding rails. Considering that Jonathan must have tempered with the unit he referred to as, Andrew, it was quite likely that he had scavenged some parts from the units here, with parts like some hard drives and power-cores missing.
Thinking back, Jonathan did hook up the storage and data system on the Logbook console, so that's where some of the parts went. But honestly, how did the boy manage to activate a medical unit without Vita’s or Maggie ? If he recalled it right, Andrew appeared before the boy ever mentioned his contact to the transporters AI. Did someone else modify parts of the system ? A Saboteur ?
A brief “ Hm ” Escaped Anthony’s lips as he gave a moments contemplation to the issue, only to shake off the thought as he could not change what had happened now. He could try and recreate the facts in case he found more concrete evidence, but for now, he needed some basic assurances that the ship wouldn't fall apart around him.
And so Anthony spend the next few hours, or what felt like hours anyway, searching the ship for any other possible survivor, managing to find his way into both the colonist bays to find that no one had remained in his sleeping-capsule. Something that resulted in a slight sensation of disappointment for him, knowing that he was the only soul left on the ship, but that also granted the assurance that, whatever he did next, he would not have to keep the well being of anyone but himself in mind.
For that matter, if he could gain access to the NH 03 vessel, he could blatantly abandon the INC Hope, and do as Jonathan did, to follow the beacon trail whilst spending his time within the sleep capsule aboard the Transporter. But he felt it would be a waste to give up on the Colony-ship just yet. Depending on it’s state, he could still make use of her as she offered vastly more resources to him, and the remaining crew, should he end up finding them.
The NH vessels where never meant to be more then transport and asteroid miners. All the industrial and research equipment was on the INC Hope. As long as he could reinstate even just partial access to those, even if only for himself, he could at least find himself a nice place to settle and, well, do whatever he felt like.
And so hours started to fly by as Anthony begun his system checks on the remaining Vita Nodes, all but one, which was locked behind the bulkhead sealing the rear of the INC Hope. Bulkheads that should react to any depressurization event, so that he would not dare opening until he knew for sure the area behind them was save to approach. And for that, he needed the other nodes to have proper environmental control to get any reading on what was happening behind the bulkheads.
But he would be disappointed to find that all five reachable nodes had been compromised, so that, willing or not, he had to start writing new code for them. A task that would occupy him for a few days at least.
Days during which he begun exploring other systems of the ship, such as the mess that was left behind in the Hydroponic bay, either by negligence, or prolonged lack of attendance as the overgrown vats could attest to. A lot of plant matter having covered the floor of the large room, with some wild growth of plants having started to appear all over.
Anthony even managed to find a first glimpse of the guest within the Lab, that assumed rat that Jonathan had mentioned. And he only started to look for it after he noticed how the food dispenser still expelled pellets at a more or less regular interval, but with very little of them having been left unattended, so that he could be sure something was still coming to collect them.
It took him some effort to set up, but after dragging a Disabled android into the Lab, he managed to jury rig a recording device, tied to the Androids own motion sensors, but, after about a week, Anthony could watch the recording of what appeared to be a Fox, jumping into the cage into which the dispenser released the pellets, and quickly disappear again once it had collected it’s meal.
He could only make an assumption about the animal as he had not seen it’s kind before, only aware that it must have been an arctic variant based on it’s mostly white fur. But he could not be sure. It shared some aspects of the common red fox, given the layout of the fur pattern, but that may just be a natural result he was not aware of, or the effect of a gene-spliced variant, created as a Comfort pet for someone within the crew.
Though, Jonathan had been right, the creature was extremely alert, scared of human presence, so that he could only assume that it either had gone feral, or had been traumatized to the point where it would rather not come in contact with another human again.
Still, it was a welcome distraction from the day to day monotony, even if it was just a brief glimpse every now and then. One he could prolong for a few moments after he started to bring fresh fruit into the lab, carefully placed into the cage where the animal came to collect the pellets.
It made Anthony wonder as he watched the recording the next day, of how the fox jumped into the cage to eye the fruit, and then leave without touching it. Only to return an hour later to run off with the juicy treat. Where exactly in the Lab did a fox manage to hide ? It wasn’t exactly small, and depending on how long it had been living in there, there should be droppings, or any other indication that it was living in there.
There was just one way in, which was locked unless Anthony went in or out. There where small air-ducts for the air circulation, but the lab was on a separate system to reduce containment risks. And, now that he was thinking about it, it should also require water, but, where was it getting that from ?
The answer for that question would keep eluding him as, even after he took the chance to spend some time in the laboratory, he could not find any obvious source of water for the fox to exploit, But he did find a loose panel behind one of the fixed cabinets, so that he could only assume that there was some water-pipe somewhere in the wall that provided some degree of condensation for the animal to use. It probably even removed the isolation just to get to it.
It honestly impressed Anthony how smart this little beast was, if his assumption was true. For it to survive even in this environment. Albeit, it probably would have long since perished, if it had not been for Jonathan providing it a food source.