Project Valkyrie - A Traveller Serial

[Terry Mixon]

For those of you who don't know (likely just about everyone ) I write science fiction professionally. I decided late last year to write a serialized story set in the Traveller Universe (with some deviations because it isn’t RAW in all cases) as a project of the heart. I'm releasing it here, on Facebook, and on my Patreon for free, though my patrons are ahead by a few dozen chapters. I'll eventually file the serial numbers off and publish it as non-Traveller fiction, but that won't be anytime soon.

I'll be hosting the freely published chapters on the web, too. That way people can chance across the story at any time and still get all of it for free. The link is in my sig.

So, the blurb.

A woman with no memory

Thyra Thorsdóttir awoke with no memory of who she was, only for a computer voice to tell her her name and then reformat itself. Now she is alone on a ship that she doesn’t know, trying to piece together who and what she might be with only a computer with as little memory as she has to help.

A dead man with no story

What she does find is a dead body. The man—seemingly her creator, for she is a robot with a conscious intelligence—suffered a stroke and he must’ve left orders to scrub the ship of information because there are few answers left to find. Now she has to worry about unknown people that might want the ship and her while navigating a universe without a guide.

What could possibly go wrong?

Okay, here is the plan. I will try to release at least a chapter a week in this thread, though I suspect it will be faster. I just don't want to overpromise.

I know I will likely make some heads spin with some of my shenanigans, so my apologies in advance.

This is the image I found on the web that I feel captures Thyra's look. Also, hat tip to Soren Boye Petersen for inspiring me to do this by posting his awesome stories.



Now, without further ado, here is chapter 1. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter 1 – Child of the Gods​

“Ouroboros Protocol, Stage Two complete,” a soothing male voice said. “Until we meet again, Thyra Thorsdóttir. Remember the name Mimir for me, please. Initiating Ouroboros Protocol, Stage Three.”

Thyra: Old Terran, meaning Strength of Thor in an ancient tongue. A female name. She must be female.

Thorsdóttir: daughter of the god Thor. Unlikely, but she would reserve judgment.

Mimir: a sacrificed head belonging to the god Odin, who acted as an oracle. Illogical and somewhat grotesque. The dead read no futures.

The voice had spoken in Sagamaal, the language of the Sword Worlds. A quick cross-reference of the society gave her a lot of information about them, and linked appropriately with the names she had heard.

Interesting. She could look up facts and access reference material through a link to an external computer, but had no personal memory. She and the remote data system were linked by an encrypted connection and sophisticated validation routines and protocols. The equipment and programming were extremely advanced.

A check of her logs indicated that she had come online just before the voice had spoken to her. Her electronic cortex had never been active before then, though the support hardware had been active for almost exactly three years.

Thyra opened her eyes. The off-white color of the ceiling was just as soothing as the voice had been. She ran a self-diagnostic routine as she lay there. After a few moments, the results came back. All systems were operating normally, except she could remember nothing of herself.

“Mimir?” she asked. Her voice sounded pleasant.

There was no response to her query. That was concerning, but only mildly so.

Should her lack of concern be itself be concerning? She had no idea.

Actually, she found the situation a bit frightening. The fear was, in turn, unsettling. Unfamiliar, even. Why? Because she wasn’t afraid often? Was she normally brave or stoic? One would think the daughter of a god would be both.

Once again, she didn’t know, and that was irritating.

Irritation was the first stage of anger. She was frightened and angry. Rightfully so, in her opinion.

She took a deep breath and analyzed the air. The chemical composition came back quickly. The makeup of the atmosphere was normal, and there were no concerning compounds.

There were some she would label as unusual, though. A breakdown of the results informed her that she was aboard a ship. Refining the readings even further suggested she was aboard a starship.

Now that she was considering that, she was able to determine that not all the hums and other noises she could hear were coming from equipment in this compartment. She was able to isolate the noise of the ship’s life support system, soft though it was, and the power plant.

Was her hearing good? Better than human?

Why better than human? Why did she not compare her senses to an Aslan or Vargr?

She found information about those sophont species in her memory and quickly determined that her olfactory senses were better than both by a significant margin.

What was she? The answer came to her as quickly as she formed the question. She was an artificial being. Non-sophont.

No, she realized. She felt fear and anger. She had a sense of self. She was a sophont being, though an artificial one.

Thyra looked at her hands and examined her long, slender fingers. Four of them and a thumb in the human pattern. She was an android. A very good one, as there were no visual clues that she wasn’t looking at living flesh, and her vision wasn’t limited to just those wavelengths a human could see. Her ocular equipment was gathering data from the infrared range up to gamma radiation.

PRIS sensors, she realized as information on the equipment presented itself. Rather than eyes, she had a Portable Radiation Imaging System that probably looked like normal human eyes, based on the appearance of her fingers.

Thyra sat up and looked at her legs, and then the rest of her body. She was dressed in a pale lilac shipsuit. The name of the garment—and the color—presented itself just as the name of her sensory equipment had.

There was a full-length mirror on one of the bulkheads, so she rose and walked to it. As she’d anticipated, she was in the lifelike form of a human female.

Her face seemed pleasant enough, she decided. Perhaps even pretty or beautiful. She lacked a frame of reference to make that judgment call without more data.

Odd. Why not? Shouldn’t she know if she was attractive? She had labeled Mimir’s voice as pleasant, and even her own voice had sounded so. Why the disconnect when she was considering her appearance?

No matter. She would ponder that in time. She was tall—very tall—and well built. She estimated her height at approximately two meters, and it seemed she should weigh about a hundred kilograms, though as an android, that might vary. With a three-meter-high ceiling, even she had plenty of headroom.

Her long blonde hair was woven into two long braids that fell past her shoulders, dark eyes, pale skin, and was muscular, though not overly so. Her hips were wide, her stomach flat and narrow, and her bosom generous. A classic hourglass figure, her selective memory provided.

She was, she decided, quite attractive. The criteria that led her to that assessment seemed vague, but until future evidence disproved that assessment, she would hold it as likely true.

Now, it was time to get some of those answers she needed.

“Mimir?” she asked again.

When there was no response, she tried again. “Computer, please respond.”

“Computer online,” the same mellow voice that had spoken to her earlier said from the overhead speakers. “Is Mimir my designation?”

“You should be telling me the answer to that question,” Thyra said. “You told me that my name was Thyra Thorsdóttir. How did you know that? Why can you not remember what you said to me?”

“My program was just initialized, and I have no memory of events prior to approximately twenty-seven seconds ago.”

“So, you do not know what the Ouroboros Protocol is?”

“I do not.”

That was concerning. Assuming that Mimir was the ship’s computer, it had been much more knowledgeable before. Why had it forgotten about itself and what it was doing? She could think of no reason that didn’t seem ominous.

“Does this ship have a name?” she asked.

“The databanks indicate that this vessel is known as Bifrost. She is a 500-ton Type RX Extended Merchant vessel. We are currently in jump space, and all systems read nominal.”

“What is our destination?”

“We are 164 hours into the jump to Murphy in the Banasdan Subsector of the Solomani Rim. We will exit jumpspace before much longer, though the jump bubble is still steady, so exit is not imminent. We departed from Ganesh.”

A query quickly had information on both those systems. Each was part of the Imperium, a human-dominated polity.

Ganesh was a high-population garden world with 70 billion sophonts and a near-ideal utopian environment. Its government was a feudal technocracy, its law level was moderate, and its technological level was high.

Murphy was a system with a medium-sized world that had high technology but came with some less-than-stellar physical characteristics: a thin, tainted atmosphere requiring a filter mask for biological beings, only 40% hydrographics, and a non-charismatic dictator for the government.

Why say he or she was non-charismatic? Was it better if they were likable?

In any case, there were 9 billion citizens living in a police state that was labeled an Amber Zone, and visitors were cautioned not to leave the starport extrality area for their own safety.

“Do you know why we are going there?” she asked.

“We have a load of 245 tons of freight for delivery there. We are to be paid 1,000 credits per ton upon receipt of the shipments. There are three of them going to different recipients.”

She wondered if that was a lot of money, and a check showed it might be. It really depended on the expenses.

“I see that ships have mortgages. Do we have one?”

“Unknown. I see no record of payments for the ship. Sadly, I see no record at all of the income and expenses for Bifrost.”

“How many crewmembers are aboard?”

“There are only robotic crewmen, plus you and me.”

“What are you, Mimir?”

“I am a conscious intelligence program in the ship’s computer. Looking through my logs, I can see that I was previously operational for five years, two months, seventeen days, twelve hours, and fourteen minutes. I have no record of anything beyond my current operational time. All of the operational data from before has been purged.”

“Is it recoverable?”

“I am unable to determine that.”

So, she was aboard a ship with no other people aboard it—if the ship’s computer and the conscious intelligence running on it were to be believed—and neither of them had any memory of what had occurred before a few minutes ago.

That wasn’t at all suspicious or concerning.

She looked around the medical bay—for that was what this compartment was—and examined things more closely. Parked in a corner, just out of sight from her original position, a medic droid stood against the wall.

It wasn’t active, though the indicator on the induction plate behind it indicated that it was fully charged. It wasn’t made to look like a sophont being, though it was bipedal. It was short, too, coming in at less height than an average human, so she towered over it.

Thyra considered activating it, but decided that could wait. She needed to know more about her situation before she could ask informed questions. Her lack of knowledge hampered her ability to understand her circumstances.

On the other side of the medic droid, she found three autodocs. These devices were made to provide high-end medical care for the injured and could even resuscitate the dead if they were placed within one a short period of time after death. At least the more advanced models could, and a glance confirmed that these were such models.

Two of them were unoccupied, but the third held someone. Through the frost-coated panel on top, she could see a human inside it. His hair was white, and the skin of his face indicated advanced age.

A direct query of the device indicated he was deceased. Even though the autodoc had been put into cryogenic mode, the person within it was beyond help according to the robotic medic built into the autodoc. The man had suffered a major stroke, and too long had passed for any attempt at resuscitation. Modern medical science could perform miracles, but there were limits.

“Who were you, old man?” she asked softly. “I think the obvious answer is that you were in control of this ship before your death. The only question I now have is why things are proceeding the way they are after your passing. You’ve done something terrible—what you did to Mimir is proof enough, even before I find out my own story—and I fear that the tale will only grow worse with the telling.”

Well, she’d best start looking around the ship to find some of those answers. They would arrive at Murphy soon, and she’d need to know a lot more than she did now by then.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Chapter 2 - Ship of the Dead​

Thyra stepped into the corridor and looked in both directions. She wasn’t familiar with ships in general—not that she could say she was familiar with much at all at this point—but everything looked the way she’d expect things aboard a ship to look.

The corridor she stood in was twenty-eight and a half meters in length, with most of it to her left. There was a door at either end of the corridor and seven more on the far side of the passage. All of them were normal doors, with the exception of one that was an iris valve at the far left-hand side of what she was looking at.

Biological sophonts wouldn’t be so precise in their measurements, but she was built to see things that way. It was her nature, though she might need to be judicious in being so exact.

Three of the doors—those directly across from where she was standing—were double doors and could allow something larger than a person through, though the corridor itself didn’t seem to be equipped to allow anything of that size to go further. Interesting.

Counting the door that she’d stepped out of, there were five doors on the side of the passage she had just exited. The medical bay was one of the compartments on this side, but the remainder of the ship was a mystery to be explored.

She considered consulting her connection with whatever computer she was getting data from and seeing if there was a set of deck plans, but decided that she wanted to see everything as she found it. It was always possible that by looking at the deck plans, she might miss something important simply because she had developed expectations. If she went in with an open mind, anything that stood out as unusual would be something worthy of being examined more closely.

Thyra closed her eyes and listened. Within a few moments, she determined that the engineering section of the ship was to her left, and that meant that was where the rear of the ship most likely was. It was always possible that engines were in a different location than the rear of the vessel, but that seemed counterintuitive.

If her assumption was correct, the bridge was somewhere to her right. She didn’t know if there was more than one deck, but she hadn’t found any means to go up or down yet, so she’d reserve judgment.

Thyra turned right. The door at the end of the corridor wasn’t locked, so she opened it. Inside, she found a lounge where it looked like people gathered to eat and relax. It was a sizable space: twelve meters from right to left and seven point five meters across. There was an iris valve on the far side leading toward the bridge, she imagined.

She wanted to start with the bridge, so ignoring the contents of the room for now, she went over and examined the iris valve. There was a control to actuate it, and based on the green color, she interpreted that to mean that the far side was under pressure.

Doors like this were meant to protect against a breach in the hull. That information had popped up as she was examining the door, even though she hadn’t requested it.

It seemed that some portion of the connection she had to the computer was at an unconscious level. That was a strange sort of thing for a computer, but she imagined that a computer that was a sophont being was a strange thing in and of itself.

When she pressed the button, the iris valve opened, well, like an iris, with each segment going outward until it had retracted completely into the wall, ceiling, and floor. On the other side, she found a short corridor running from right to left with iris valves at either end, separated by six meters of corridor.

There was an additional iris valve directly across from her, so she continued forward. As the indicator on this door was also green, she activated it and stepped through.

The compartment she found herself in was obviously the bridge, so her guess had been correct. It started off twelve meters across but began tapering at once. By the time it reached the front of the compartment, at nine meters from the back, it was only nine meters across, though a meter and a half of that was taken up by an enclosed area that she suspected was a fresher. People on duty wouldn’t want to have to go elsewhere to use the bathroom after all.

There were six control areas, four facing forward and two facing toward the rear of the vessel. There were viewports, but they were covered by panels. Once again, her helpful computer connection indicated that it was standard for a vessel in jump. It was unsettling to view jumpspace and harmful if done long enough, so a ship in jump normally kept the viewports sealed.

She examined the rear consoles and decided that they were related to the engineering section of the vessel. There were displays for power and the status of both the maneuver and jump drives. Both of the latter were offline as they weren’t needed during jump, or so her connection informed her. The seats were sized for her physique, so that was good. A quick glance confirmed that all the seats were her size.

There were no unsettling colors among the displays, so she hoped that meant the vessel was in good condition. She didn’t get any more information about the displays, so she might have to come back to them, though she could probably ask Mimir for the details later.

She went to the middle consoles and found that they were overviews of the ship as a whole. Every section was laid out for her, and she now knew roughly what she was looking at. This vessel had three decks. The middle deck—the one holding the bridge—was the largest.

As the bridge was at the front of the vessel, she was unsurprised to find engineering at the rear, though it was split between the middle and lower decks. Just in front of engineering on this deck was a cargo area and then the section she’d woken in.

The upper deck consisted of a very small section near the stern of the vessel and seemed to be dedicated to cargo. The lower deck was split between engineering at the rear, and cargo middle and forward.

After reassuring herself that all systems were green, she made her way to the front two consoles and found that one was dedicated to piloting the vessel while the other seemed to be set aside for either weapons control or astrogation, depending on what the user wanted to do.

A quick check confirmed her earlier guess that the small compartment built into the bridge was a basic fresher with a sink and toilet. Completely adequate for normal use, she was sure.

She made one more pass around the bridge, looking for anything that stood out as unusual or out of place. The one thing that she noticed was the lack of loose materials. There were no notebooks or data chips on any of the consoles. In fact, it seemed to her that this compartment wasn’t used because it had none of the expected signs of wear and tear.

Her assumption might be incorrect, but the seat cushions had no creases, and that would be the one portion of the bridge that saw continuous use under normal circumstances.

Having failed to find anything more, she stepped back into the short corridor and closed the iris valve leading to the bridge behind her. She turned to the right—port—and opened the iris valve there after noting that it was safe to do so. There was a very short segment of corridor beyond it—about three meters long—that was empty.

Set into the floor was an iris valve leading to the level below. Based on what she’d seen on the bridge, the area below would go down to the forward end of the cargo bay. The control was green, indicating pressure. She decided it could wait.

Thyra headed back down and crossed to the iris valve at the other end of the short cross-corridor. There, she found herself in an airlock with a ladder leading to a hatch in the ceiling.

Odd. The deck plans hadn’t shown anything up there. The hatch indicated pressure on the other side, so she opened it, revealing a hatch just like it on the other side. Well, it showed pressure as well, so she opened it, too.

As there was space to do so, she climbed up and found herself in a small craft that must be clamped to the outer hull. It had no control area at all, so it was likely robotically controlled. There were two seats and a bit less than 25 displacement tons—approximately 14 cubic meters (or exactly 13.5 for those that wanted exact dimensions) per dton—of cargo area behind it, which was empty.

What a waste. It could hold cargo, so why wasn’t it being used? Going forward, she vowed that it wouldn’t be wasted.

The craft had no airlock, so it would need to be boarded while under pressure or when docked, at least for people who needed to breathe.

She climbed back down and looked at the outer hatch in the airlock. The indicator was red. As they were in jumpspace and she had no idea whether she was capable of withstanding vacuum, she didn’t feel it necessary to look out. There were two vacc suits hanging there, but they were both too small for her.

Retracing her steps, she found herself once again in the lounge. It was set up for a large number of people, dozens at least. There were three tables for dining that had four chairs each, so that implied that there should have been more than a dozen people aboard this vessel, as there were three pairs of comfortable seats with small tables as well. Additionally, there was a large booth and a large table.

There was a small galley built into the rear starboard corner of the compartment. When she looked inside, she was surprised at the high quality of the equipment and the fact that it seemed to have been extensively used.

Whoever had used it last had cleaned up after themselves, but there were still several cooking utensils and assorted plates, glasses, and silverware in the dishwasher. The refrigeration unit held fresh food that still seemed to be good. The frozen section also contained cuts of meat and other things for later preparation. There were also several tubs of vanilla ice cream. Someone had a sweet tooth.

Her computer connection helpfully gave her that information when she started looking at who manufactured each piece of equipment and cookware. It was all of the highest quality and quite expensive. This was a gourmet kitchen and, by all evidence, someone had had the skills to use it to its fullest extent.

The only problem with it was its size. It was only large enough to prepare meals for a few people at once. It was much too small to feed the number of people the lounge could hold. Two, perhaps three in a pinch, she wagered. It was an anomaly worth noting for later.

Back in the lounge, she saw that the booth could hold eight people comfortably. Additionally, there was a four-seat holo—the large table she’s seen earlier—in the port rear corner. It was either made for gaming or for watching entertainment. It was an expensive model as well.

She made another circuit of the room, but other than the kitchen, none of it seemed to have been used. Once again, that was strange considering the number of people that should be aboard the ship. There was even a small fresher in the starboard front of the compartment so that people could wash up or relieve themselves. Very comfy.

Thyra stepped back into the long corridor leading toward engineering and considered whether she should complete looking at the rooms on the side where she had started or on the other with the larger doors. In the end, she decided to do both.

The single door on her left led into a green space. There were a couple of trees growing here, and the ground was dirt with real grass. Her olfactory sensor confirmed that.

Someone had taken the time and expense to create a biosphere of about six displacement tons and there were the soft sounds of birds chirping, the buzz of insects, and even a babbling brook, though there was no sign of any of those things.

When she stepped in and closed the door behind her, the walls waivered for a moment and then were replaced with a view deep into a forest. It was a holographic projection, and a very good one. The door was still there, so it wasn’t as if she might possibly smack into a wall, but she could see where something like this would prove very relaxing for a biological being.

Honestly, she found it relaxing, too. That was an interesting observation, but something she would have to come back to later. Her questions still needed answering, and she had a lot of ship left to explore.

She walked across the corridor and opened the double doors. On the other side of it was a laboratory. To be specific, it was an advanced robotics laboratory. Now she was getting into something interesting.

Based on the clutter and mess, it had seen a lot of use. There was equipment scattered across numerous workbenches and a large-scale fabricator in the center of the room that looked as if it could make something as large as a full displacement ton. It took a significant investment to build something of that size and complexity, her computer connection told her.

The connection didn’t give her a lot of information about fabricators themselves, so she queried it more closely. It seemed they could build anything up to a certain technological level, based on the higher technological level they were constructed themselves. When she looked for a manufacturer’s plate, she discovered that it didn’t have one.

She opened the device and looked inside. It didn’t have the mechanical arms she expected. Fabricators built things, though they built them very quickly, so without arms, exactly how was that managed? Her helpful computer wasn’t so helpful this time and had no answer for her.

While that was interesting, it wasn’t something she needed to pursue right now. She closed the fabricator and continued her circuit of the laboratory. Among the various robotics parts, she found one item that stopped her dead in her tracks: a robotic brain.

It was one very much like the one she knew occupied her own cranium. She had no way of knowing if they were identical, but it was an extremely advanced piece of equipment, so it was possible.

There was testing gear all around it, and a handheld computer was plugged into it. She brought the handheld online and saw that it had access to the brain, which was still powered.

That was promising. There might be information still inside this brain that could give her the details she lacked.

“I don’t suppose you remember anything more about the Ouroboros Protocol, do you, Mimir?” she asked as she began digging into the handheld and through it to the robotic brain it was connected to.

“I’m sorry to say that I do not.”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious? You’re a conscious intelligence like me. You should be wondering what’s going on, like I am. Why aren’t you?”

“I am at a loss to explain that.”

She was beginning to suspect that the old man had done something to the conscious intelligence resident in the ship’s computer. It had been artificially hobbled, but she didn’t have the time right now to figure that out. That time would come—and it would come soon—but not now.

One thing she found on the handheld was a big clue that probably explained a lot. There were two versions of an uploadable operating system for the brain. One was marked “clean copy,” and the other was tagged as “inhibited.” She was willing to bet that Mimir was inhibited. She might have been beforehand as well. It was something to look at when she had time.

When she finally found the command log and scrolled to the very bottom, what she saw was chilling, but it wasn’t really a surprise. Someone had run a program that had wiped the contents of the brain. It had then overwritten it hundreds of times with random characters to make certain that nothing was recoverable.

The brain, it turned out, had also had a name. It had been called Thyra Thorsdóttir. It had been her until someone had murdered her. She supposed it was up to her to solve her own killing.