![[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless](https://fs.collectorofbookboyfriends.com/567896/thumbs/152x264/04-elite-mostly-harmless.jpg)
indignation.
‘My circuits are capable of processing more than fifty petaflops of instructions per second. Compare that with the average human brain, which can only handle around one hundred and fifty trillion computations and I think it’s clear to everyone who is superior.’
‘Computational volume does not equate to intelligence. And if you keep up the logic-based chat it’s going to drive me mad enough to do something stupid, which is exactly why I didn’t upgrade to voice controls. So you can stick that in your data-sets and compute it, you silicon shithead.’
Lights flashed and the drone’s helicopter blades whirred earnestly.
‘Your analysis is flawed,’ it said eventually, ‘and your language is appalling.’
‘Commander Rose, you are cleared for orbit,’ Rachel’s voice crackled through the comms panel, breaking the tension.
Angel pulled her harness tight and flicked a switch to hand the controls over to the station’s berthing computer, which lifted her ship deftly up off the landing pad before spitting it out into orbit. Immediately they left the slowly rotating maw of the spaceport, zero-g kicked in and everything felt a bit lighter. Now redundant the rotary blades above the bot stopped whirring and retracted back inside its body as it switch to magnetic pulse control. It was a relief to get rid of the buzzing noise , thought Angel.
She looked out at the ships flying this way and that around the station as her moderately armed Eagle escort slipped in behind her. It reminded her again what a foolish errand she was about to run; strange how DORIS didn’t have anything helpful to say about that.
She checked the sector-view map on the side display panel then tapped some co-ordinates into the keyboard. Her vision blurred with the reverberation of the cockpit as the engines roared and the Cobra shifted lanes, accelerating through the traffic to get ready for the jump. The soothing robotic voice of SysCon kicked in as they approached the slipstream to jump-orbit.
‘Good morning Commander Rose, please state your destination.’
‘LHS 3439.’
There was a slight pause before her navigation panel lit up with her clearance code.
‘Thank you Commander, you are cleared to jump. Travel safely.’
‘Are you on my back, Tailspin?’
The comms panel crackled again and it was Kram, sounding wounded.
‘I am ready to piggyback the jump yes, and I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’
‘Yeah, well you know what wishes got?’
‘What?’
Angel flicked the comms link off, leaving him to wonder while she finished preparations for their first jump. She just hoped they would make it unmolested through the next fifteen light years as they had to refuel in a pretty hot sector. She didn’t like making herself such a juicy target for any stray bandit with a taste for gold.
‘And you’d better buckle up too, DORIS, because antique interface or not this puppy’s about to jump into hyperspace and your moral compass won’t look quite so clever bent around the air vents.’
Angel smirked at the effect this had on the robot, which hummed darkly as it activated its magnetic safety strip and was summarily stuck to the cabin door. Angel turned back to the front HUD.
‘Let’s get this space-train moving then,’ she said to herself as she leaned forward and tapped an incredibly worn out ‘H’ key.
Chapter 7
Angel nudged the nose of the Cobra into perfect alignment with the jump corridor etching itself out in a thin matrix across the HUD. As the ship locked on to the trajectory she sank back into her command chair, the g-force of rapid acceleration pressing against her whole body like a hungry lover. They’d done this many times before, her ship and her, but she still felt the thrill of it when the hyperspace drive kicked in. The engines throbbed, vibrating the air around her and making her teeth rattle as the ship screamed towards a crack of impossible brightness that was blossoming on
‘My circuits are capable of processing more than fifty petaflops of instructions per second. Compare that with the average human brain, which can only handle around one hundred and fifty trillion computations and I think it’s clear to everyone who is superior.’
‘Computational volume does not equate to intelligence. And if you keep up the logic-based chat it’s going to drive me mad enough to do something stupid, which is exactly why I didn’t upgrade to voice controls. So you can stick that in your data-sets and compute it, you silicon shithead.’
Lights flashed and the drone’s helicopter blades whirred earnestly.
‘Your analysis is flawed,’ it said eventually, ‘and your language is appalling.’
‘Commander Rose, you are cleared for orbit,’ Rachel’s voice crackled through the comms panel, breaking the tension.
Angel pulled her harness tight and flicked a switch to hand the controls over to the station’s berthing computer, which lifted her ship deftly up off the landing pad before spitting it out into orbit. Immediately they left the slowly rotating maw of the spaceport, zero-g kicked in and everything felt a bit lighter. Now redundant the rotary blades above the bot stopped whirring and retracted back inside its body as it switch to magnetic pulse control. It was a relief to get rid of the buzzing noise , thought Angel.
She looked out at the ships flying this way and that around the station as her moderately armed Eagle escort slipped in behind her. It reminded her again what a foolish errand she was about to run; strange how DORIS didn’t have anything helpful to say about that.
She checked the sector-view map on the side display panel then tapped some co-ordinates into the keyboard. Her vision blurred with the reverberation of the cockpit as the engines roared and the Cobra shifted lanes, accelerating through the traffic to get ready for the jump. The soothing robotic voice of SysCon kicked in as they approached the slipstream to jump-orbit.
‘Good morning Commander Rose, please state your destination.’
‘LHS 3439.’
There was a slight pause before her navigation panel lit up with her clearance code.
‘Thank you Commander, you are cleared to jump. Travel safely.’
‘Are you on my back, Tailspin?’
The comms panel crackled again and it was Kram, sounding wounded.
‘I am ready to piggyback the jump yes, and I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’
‘Yeah, well you know what wishes got?’
‘What?’
Angel flicked the comms link off, leaving him to wonder while she finished preparations for their first jump. She just hoped they would make it unmolested through the next fifteen light years as they had to refuel in a pretty hot sector. She didn’t like making herself such a juicy target for any stray bandit with a taste for gold.
‘And you’d better buckle up too, DORIS, because antique interface or not this puppy’s about to jump into hyperspace and your moral compass won’t look quite so clever bent around the air vents.’
Angel smirked at the effect this had on the robot, which hummed darkly as it activated its magnetic safety strip and was summarily stuck to the cabin door. Angel turned back to the front HUD.
‘Let’s get this space-train moving then,’ she said to herself as she leaned forward and tapped an incredibly worn out ‘H’ key.
Chapter 7
Angel nudged the nose of the Cobra into perfect alignment with the jump corridor etching itself out in a thin matrix across the HUD. As the ship locked on to the trajectory she sank back into her command chair, the g-force of rapid acceleration pressing against her whole body like a hungry lover. They’d done this many times before, her ship and her, but she still felt the thrill of it when the hyperspace drive kicked in. The engines throbbed, vibrating the air around her and making her teeth rattle as the ship screamed towards a crack of impossible brightness that was blossoming on
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