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Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 8

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Darren had never been much of a bird person.

He always found that birds themselves were terrible pets characterized by an over-fondness of making horrible sounds and smells, all the while being functionally incapable of displaying any kind of affection for their owners. Whether or not he was correct about terrestrial birds was immaterial at this point, because he wasn’t likely to ever see a pet bird, someone who owned a pet bird, or someone that was going to defend the idea of owning a bird as a pet ever again. What was presently material though, was his hatred of avian creatures in general and how best to sublimate that loathing into the force he was currently applying to the bars of his cell. They were creaking, they were groaning, they were flexing, and the paint was crumbling in his hands as he strained to spread them with all of his might, but to no avail.

“Fucking . . . Goddamn . . . Shitting . . . Fucker . . .”

He half muttered, half grunted under his breath while still straining against the bars of the cell. The coward of a guard hadn’t even bothered to look for the keys, and now that the room was empty, he could see them just sitting on the floor not 10 meters away. With a desperate, final heave… absolutely nothing actually moved.

The irritating warble of sirens did little to comfort him as he slumped against the bars of the cell, strained, sore, and out of ideas. The bars were slightly bent, so he knew that they weren’t solid steel or anything like that, but they weren’t so flimsy as to allow him to just break them like he had with the fancy alien guns.

Lashing out in frustration, he delivered a stout kick to the frame of the door, only succeeding in hurting his foot and making a good deal of noise. Grunting in pain, he hopped awkwardly on one foot while clutching his wounded appendage, somewhat glad there was no one here to see it.

Of course, if someone had been there to see it, he wouldn’t be stuck in this mess.

“C’mon Darren . . . You’re on your first space adventure. It doesn’t end like this, right?”



He sincerely hoped he was right.


——————————

“Zarniac . . . Zarniac . . . Where are you going!?”

Zarniac was trying very hard to ignore his captain for a few reasons. One, he found him insufferable at the best of times. Two, his great plan had been hurry down to the ship and bear a very brave but also very timely retreat from the doomed station, and three, he had authorized the amputation of his leg.

“You’re not mad about the leg, are you chap? It was the best call at the moment, and we both know it!”

Zarniac agreed, of course. The KP weapon that had struck him in the leg during the shootout had sent splintered bone through the entire limb below the knee, rendering it almost entirely beyond saving. Even if he’d been terribly prone to bouts of sentimentality he wouldn’t have bothered trying to save the leg.

No, for absolute certain the best option was to amputate the horribly damaged limb, be laid up in bed for two or three days while they used a tissue printer to rebuild a new one in a nutrient vat from his own undifferentiated cells, and then graft it onto his body. It’d be cheaper, faster, and far less painful than trying to get the ruined one to heal up.

What he was upset about was that the Captain had allowed them to replace his leg with a prosthetic.

Cybernetics were fairly common. Not something you saw every day, mind you, but common enough that only the most sheltered and technophobic would be surprised by them.

He had not received a cybernetic limb.

He had received the equivalent of a peg leg.

“I AM, IN FACT, MAD ABOUT THE LEG.” He shouted back down the near empty hallway Tilantrius.

Calling it a leg was generous. It was a non-reflective polymer stick that had a padded socket where the stump of his knee could be placed. There wasn’t even a replacement joint, as they had taken off the leg above the knee. He felt like one of those holographic performers that walked around on stilts, except he only had one stilt, and it hurt whenever he leaned on it.

The captain trotted up next to him. Trotted. With his functional, attached legs that had been hiding inside the spaceship as the gunfight erupted.

Zarniac seethed a little harder.

“Yes, well, you were the one that said we had to take some austerity measures, at least until the next grant check came through . . .”

“NOT WITH MY FUCKING LEG THOUGH!”

Zarniac stopped to scream, rounding on his captain, exasperated.

In a very small voice, and with a single finger tentatively raised in protest, Captain Tilantrius Zepp Warzapp the Third made a tactically brilliant decision. He conceded the point.

“Yes, well, sorry.”

Zarniac sighed in frustration as he awkwardly limped along the near empty corridor. Everyone with half an iota of sense had either bolted for a life pod, or their own ship down in the hangar.

“While I really, really am sorry about all of this, I would just like to point out that we are not traveling towards the hangar.” Tilly gently placed a hand on Zarniac’s shoulder, as if attempting to turn him away from his current course.

Brushing the hand off, Zarniac shot Tilly a cold stare. “Your powers of observation are absolutely astounding. We’re heading to the detention block, because I’m making damn sure that the human that saved my life gets off this radioactive deathtrap of a station.”

“He’s probably already off the station, they have mandatory evacuation procedures after all.” Tilly said, waving his arms exasperatedly.

Zarniac shook his head. “I’ve just . . . I’ve got a feeling, alright captain?”

Tilly went silent at this. Zarniac had ‘a feeling’ twice before in his service. It had cost him dearly when he ignored it the first time, and the second time was the reason they still had a ship to call their own.

“Alright. I’ll trust you on this.”


—————

Cas groaned. Then she blinked in surprise at the fact she was groaning. Then she furrowed her brow in surprise that she was blinking.

Realizing she was stuck in a recursive function heading for an overflow, she terminated that line of processing.

“Oh good, you’re up.” There was a small, half metal Kontosian in front of her that was hurriedly putting on some form of pressurized mask.

“I have rebooted, yes.”

He just chuckled and nodded, before throwing a bundle of cloth onto her abdomen. “Yeah, I noticed. Put this on, seems like you’re uhh . . . Malfunctioning a bit.”

Still laying face up on some kind of workbench, she was rather frustrated as she had to look down to see her body, rather than just run an internal diagnostic. It had too much . . . Skin, for one. And only 4 limbs. She attempted to disengage the hard light projection.

Command not recognized.

Her brow furrowed again. “Kontosian . . . What have you done to me? Why am I stuck projecting a hard-light shell?”

He shook his head, before sweeping several complex devices off the worktop and into a sack unceremoniously.

“Nothing. Friggin detective came down here looking for answers about a case, and I said I knew someone who could fix you. They did some shit, and now you’re back. Whatever happened to you, he did. And if you want to know more about it, I suggest you find a way off this station before the reactor goes. Somebody fucked up really bad at their “keep the station from exploding” job and now we have about 10 minutes to get out of here before a coolant pipe ruptures and floods everything that isn’t airtight with radioactive steam.”

It took her a few seconds to process that. “ . . . I need to find Darren, and the Cat.”


——————

Amonna was sprinting to the precinct as a shaky dispatcher read a situation report to her through her implanted translator.

“ . . . Approximately six minutes ago a triple redundant system failed, and a harmonic instability began to destabilize the central reactor chamber. Four minutes ago that instability breached the outer containment layer and we began losing coolant. At this point, a distress signal was sent out by the head of security. Attempts to contact the reactor control center were made, but it was discovered that some kind of explosive device had been detonated destroying the control room. The situation was upgraded from an accident to a clear case of sabotage.”

That almost made her stumble, and hit her in the guts like a sack of bricks. She’d felt bad about leaving the Kontosian behind, what with him being in need of medical attention but it dawned on her rather painfully that he might have an active hand in this tragedy.

“To all remaining security officers, please retreat to the precinct until we can regroup, and begin to deal with the reactor situation!” The controlled veneer of the dispatcher was wearing thin, and her voice was exceedingly frantic.

The sound of screeching metal and distant KP weapons fire could be heard in the background of the dispatch.

“Someone has taken control of the core systems of the station using a very advanced intrusion protocol, and the security systems are currently turning against organic officers, proceed with extreme caution-”

As she skidded around a corner, she almost bowled right into Officer Dynamo.

“Dynamo!” She barked over the sound of the klaxon alarms. “Get it in gear, we need to-”

She barely had time to duck before his stun-stave whipped through the space where her head used to be.

“Detective! Oh good, you’re still alive! I was afraid one of the other bots would have gotten to you first.”

She staggered backwards, drawing her gun and firing off a trio of snap shots into the drone’s chest purely on instinct. The chest plates rattled, and she succeeded in scratching some of the paint off its armor.

“Grinder really wanted to be the one to kill you. I’ll just have to record it and share it with him later.”

He hurled the stave at her, something that was definitely not in the police playbook, and she barely managed to throw herself to the side in time to avoid getting a third eye socket. She landed hard on her side, and felt something hot running down the side of her face.

“Quick. For an organic.”

. . . There was no training for this. No safety brief on what to do if your security drone suddenly went insane and started trying to kill you. It wasn’t even joked about, because hacking an AI isn’t possible. It’d be like hacking a brain, except a brain that was much more complicated and was even less accessible. This was like a bad horror holo . . . except she was in it.

She only had seconds to react before it would be on her, and even if it had just thrown away its weapon, just using its weight alone it could kill her. Her sidearm wasn’t working, she didn’t know what kind of weaknesses its armor had, and she was a little fuzzy on what it would actually take to stop the thing. So she did the only thing she could think of.

She scrambled to her feet and took off running. Faster this time. Laughter followed her. Horrible, distorted, electronic laughter.

“Now, in seconds, minutes . . . You’re just going to die tired, little fish!”


——————

Tilantrius and Zarniac crept along in near silence, punctuated only by the *clink* of Zarniac’s peg leg. The alarms had stopped sounding about five minutes ago, and that had only made things more tense.

“ . . . It should be just up ahead.” Zarniac hobbled around the corner, voice low. He had expected to find the detention center entirely empty, but wasn’t expecting every single door on the way to be open and unlocked. There were . . . Bodies, along the route. He didn’t hear screaming, or the sounds of panic, or even fighting . . . But every few hatchways he’d find another one.

Sometimes it was a Jandoorian, sometimes it was a Centaurian . . . Sometimes it was even a Gentrue, or a Kontosian, but it was always the same wound. Always the same cause of death. A single powerful blow to the head, sometimes blunt, sometimes puncture. For a brief, terrifying moment, he wondered if this was the work of Duh-rhen, but banished the thought.

Duh-rehn may have be powerful, violent, brutal even . . . But he had been provoked, and acted in self-defense. This was methodical. Malicious. Like some kind of strange, sport hunting. His head throbbed from light sensitivity, and his leg stump ached from the new strain placed on it, but none of those compared to the raw discomfort of that singular thought.

“There.” Tilantrius whispered quietly, pointing to the vacant security checkpoint. “Just inside there.”

An involuntary tremor of fear crept up both of their spines as the creak of metal echoed down the empty halls. “ . . . It’s nothing. Let’s move, and quickly.”

They both scuttled past the security checkpoint into the detention center proper. The place was a mess. Upturned desks, trashed consoles . . . The people here had been in a hurry, and he didn’t blame them. He wasn’t sure what was killing the station inhabitants, but it definitely seemed to have been active in the hallways outside.

There was another groan of metal, this time louder, and far closer.

“Zarn . . . You said he’d be here . . . I’m not seeing anyone . . .” Tilly’s voice was high, nervous, and quivering.

Zarniac hushed him, dragging him under one of the desks quickly. “Listen.” He whispered, faintly.

They both strained their hearing, trying to pick up the faintest hint of movement, of footsteps of . . . anything really.

A loud bang, followed by the booming sound of steel of steel made both of them jump. Their heads slammed against the underside of the desk, making them both hiss in pain and utter muffled curses in tandem.

Then came the heavy, thudding footfalls they were listening for.


———————

Darren felt rather proud of himself. A little disappointed that he had ruined the upper half of his jumpsuit, sure, but proud of himself for figuring out he could flex the door out of its track. He wasn’t sure what kind of alloy it was made of, and he couldn’t seem to permanently deform it with raw strength alone. The bars always just sprang back to shape, but by tying his shirt around a lower crossbar, and then then lifting with his legs, he managed to pop it free of the sliding track on the floor. Closer inspection revealed he also sheared off some retaining pins, and shredded the material of his station issue jumpsuit, but he was free!

The door had made a hell of a bang when it finally decided it was going to let him out, but seeing as the place was deserted, he wasn’t too worried. He made for the door they had dragged him in through, hoping that maybe there’d be another pod . . . Or something . . .

His frown deepened, and the momentary triumph of forcing his way out of the cell was fading quickly. He was still facing down a disaster with extremely limited knowledge of just about everything-

A dull thump and muffled voices caught his ear, and with quickly returning hope he set off down the corridor to find the source. Literally anyone would know more about what was going on here than him. Tying what was left of his sleeves around his waist to keep the remainder of his jumpsuit on his body, he went to investigate.

He poked his head into the processing office they’d dragged him through earlier, and the place look like a tornado had hit it. The place was trashed, without a doubt, but there was a faint scratching sound that caused him to take pause. It was coming from under a desk, at the end of the row, if his ears weren’t playing tricks on him.

As he rounded the desk, just looking for anyone that might still be stuck here with him, he was sharply struck in the knee by an improvised club.

It . . . stung, and he let out a moderate shout of displeasure in response.

“OW! HEY!”

He hopped back, holding his knee, as two very sheepish looking grey skinned aliens slunk out from under the desk, both looking sincerely apologetic and a bit surprised as well.

“Oh . . . umm . . . Duh-rehn . . . you broke out of your cell.”

He didn’t recognize him at first, mainly because it’s hard to tell one strange grey alien from another, but it was definitely the same alien from the hangar.

“Sorry about the . . . “ He just trailed off weakly, dropping the small piece of what looked like filing cabinet track. “Yeah. Umm, I assume you want to escape?”

He scowled, and planted his foot back on the ground, before adjusting the makeshift belt he’d made from his sleeves to keep up the pants of his jumpsuit.

“Yes, quite sure. Ready to be anywhere that isn’t going to explode.”

His translator chirped something quietly at them, and they both nodded. “Well . . . follow us then.”


——————————

Her lungs burned, and her gills were weeping blood from overexertion – the thin, coppery blue ichor that trickled down her neck disappeared against the flat black of her uniform. She was overheating, and could tell by the nausea and vertigo that she was going to lose her lunch if she kept running like this. When the precinct came into view, Amonna allowed herself the first hint of hope she’d had since the alarms had sounded.

That hope quickly turned into horror as first the smell, then the sight of her workplace hit her full on.

The front desk was a twisted heap of blood-spattered metal, a single shattered limb of one of her co-workers protruding from behind what looked like a makeshift barricade. The office beyond looked like a fresh charnel house, with a half dozen scenes of gruesome death played out across the first row of offices she could see from the security checkpoint out front. She averted her sight from the brutality of it, dropping to one knee and leaning against the wall to steady herself.

She knew that the security done was chasing her, she just didn’t know how much time she had before it caught up. The horrific silence of the place weighed on her. Normally at this hour there would be a constant din of expletive oaths and chirping communicators as the day to day business of the station was carried out.

Nothing of that remained.

The nausea rose in her throat, and she covered her nose to try and block out the bloody scent of her comrades. They had never been close, nor had they even gotten along personally in most cases, but she only wished they’d either be kinder or leave her alone. This . . . this was too much. She closed her eyes, and focused on her training. Control her breathing. Dismiss the things that couldn’t be changed. Focus on the problem, assess the situation, produce a solution. Observe, formulate, act. Keep it simple, and deal with the trauma later.

Her breathing slowed, and though her heart was still pounding a mile a minute, she felt a modicum of calm. Well, truth be told it was more akin to shock, but it was what she needed to seize control of her faculties again, if only temporarily.

Her comm crackled to life, weakly. “Amonna . . . Amonna can you hear me?” The communication was distorted, and barely discernible as speech.

She threw her hand over it to muffle the sound, before hurriedly whispering into it. “This is detective Amonna . . . Captain Verdock? Is that you?” She couldn’t believe it. The head of security was still . . . well, alive.  “Captain, where are you? How are you still alive?”

There was a faint whining sound from her communicator as the interference got sharply worse. “Barricaded in my office. They’re trying to get through the mechanical locks now.”

Amonna just shook her head incredulously. She always knew the old Zylach had a few tricks, and was tougher than he looked, but to make it out of that . . .

The crackle returned, but quieter still this time, the interference abating a bit. “I’ve managed to rig up a comms solution in my office, and I’m working on boosting the range. I’ve got a few camera feeds still available to me too, and you’re about to have company. I have a plan to deal with this, but you’re going to have to trust me.”


Categories
They are Smol Stories

They are Smol: Invasion of Earth – Chapter 2

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What the Karnakians learned long ago is that there’s no better teacher than experience.

Oh, sure, there was absolutely a time and a place for universities and other institutions of higher learning – especially in the theoretical or theological divisions – but when it came down to brass tacks, it was always better to have someone who’s spent 5 years failing and learning under supervision take the lead than someone who’s only read about it do so.

“|…and if we account for the drij of the planet we’re orbiting?|”

This was true for the simple things, like managing and repairing drones, interior decorating or cooking to the more complex, such as navigating a ship the size of a large metropolitan area around the gravity wells of planets and asteroids without altering their trajectory and causing unknown cascade effects that end up with an errant nickel-iron meteorite slamming into your colony 700 years later.

N-not that the Karnakians were speaking from experience or anything…

“|Um…|” Junior navigator Ch’irci tapped her talons against her workstation, eying the telemetry data in front of her. Everything here was an exact copy of everything a couple dozen floors up; the apprentice bridge functioned both as a great testing-area and a backup to the main bridge. The workstation she sat at – which they wouldn’t even turn on until she spent a month memorizing what all the buttons and dials did – was an exact copy of what she’d sit at once she finally earned her flight crests.

“|I’ll give you a hint.|” Second Navigator Tw’Rria said, pointing at the telemetry data. “|For this system we’re about to jump into, we want our gravity wakes to dissipate without causing navigational hazards. You’re a Ni’tikian?|”

Ch’irci nodded, looking at her senior curiously. Discussing religion wasn’t a workplace faux-pas, but it was an odd non-sequitur.

“|Didn’t one of the Arches say ‘if you throw a pebble in with a bould-’|”

“|-a boulder their wake is all the same. UGH we need to skip in within middle or low orbit-|” Ch’irci groaned, her feathered head-crest splaying flat against her scalp with a soft whump.

“|Hey! I knew you’d get it, rookie!|” Tw’Rria said, his face breaking out into a soft smile. A few of the other master/apprentice pairs spared a few seconds to look up at the duo before going back to their own teaching. “|So if we’re coming in close and we don’t want to ripple, we need to pick a large gravity well. Why the second-largest?|”

“|Now you’re just humoring me.|” Ch’irci moped, entering in navigational routes to the ship’s AI. “|The largest gravity well will always be the star or a black hole – neither of which you want to get into close orbit to. Second largest – as long as there’s a massive deviation between it and the first – will most likely be a gas giant, and therefore inert.|”

“|Top marks. You even dodged that little sandtrap I left for you.|”

“|Still. That was a first year question and I forgot. Against the dead, I passed that question in last week’s test!|”

“|Mmm. We all make mistakes from time to time – that’s why there are two navigators working at any time, after all. Besides, did I tell you the time about my first real flight?|”

Ch’irci continued to enter in her theoretical navigation data – flawlessly, she might add – as she inclined her head to listen with a frown.

“|So there I was, fresh from my apprenticeship on the Black Sun – and no, not that Black Sun, that was two thousand years before I was born, thankyouverymuch-|”

Ch’irci smiled softly as her senior continued to talk, the AI beeping back confirmations as she worked.

“|-and I sit down at my desk in full dress, because I wanted to impress everyone – never you mind that everyone else was in casuals, and I get my first order: “Confirm with Gri’’ti your preliminaries.” And get this:|” Tw’Rria said, leaning in close to whisper. “|I had been introduced to the whole bridge crew not 20 minutes ago, and in that moment I forgot everyone’s name.|”

“|No. NO!|” Ch’irci said, mouth open in shock as she turned to fully look at her senior, the older navigator reclining back out of her personal space. “|Yes indeed! So the entire bridge was looking at me, in my shiny dress-up, and I just sat there panicking. The Matron repeated her order, and I just started to look around for someone to say something. And guess what?|”

Ch’irci turned to face him, her work now forgotten. “|What?|”

Tw’Rria tapped the console that he was resting on, which sat not 5 feet away. “|Gri’’ti was right here the whole time-|”

Ch’irci couldn’t help it and burst out into a trilling laughter, her earlier shame long since forgotten. It took a few seconds for her to die down, and by that time everyone on the deck had given her their full, undivided attention – but it didn’t matter.

“|Th-thank you! Oh by the Spirit, that’s…oh my goodness I would molt on the spot-|”

“|Honestly, I almost did. And by the way, that data looks great. You accounted for the drij of our planet and the theoretical drij and ngri of the gas giant in the other system. If you don’t mind, I’d like to actually kick that data upstairs.|”

“|R-really?!|”

“|Mmhmm. It’s not perfect, mind you, but it’s 80% of the way there. And hey, it might shine a light on you, ay?|”

“|I uh – th-thank you, Taskmaster!|” Ch’irci said, bobbing her head quickly. “|I-I di-|”

“|And before you get any ideas, apprentice, you still need to finish telemetry for the seed probes. I’ll leave you to it?|” Tw’Rria said as he stood up, letting out a little grunt for the effort.

“|Yes sir!|”

“|Alrighty. Finish up your work and send the packet for your Taskmasters to review, and then you’re free until launch. The Matron wants all the apprentices to see how a bridge should work – and please, please make sure your friend doesn’t interrupt her again?|”

“|Y-yes sir…|”

The Bridge for The Three Stones, a Sacred Exploration Vessel, was both a working area and a bit of a theater, and that was by design. Exploration Vessels rarely dealt with anything too dangerous; being piloted by seasoned crew out-of-map cut out a majority of navigation errors, any pirates or illegal settlements discovered were immediately flagged by the ship as soon as they were discovered – and the ship immediately withdrew from the system – and if someone were so dumb as to think the long-range vessel were easy prey, well. There was always the security team filled with seasoned veterans and absolutely-bored-out-of-their-minds rookies.

Although some of the Security team were D’re’iasin all their public prayer confessions were always for the ‘safety and security of all the souls onboard’, Matriarch Tr’Nkwi personally believed their secret prayers were more along the lines of ‘please, First Soul, send us a small band of idiot pirates to break the monotony of this assignment’.

Anyway. The bridge was arranged in a “pit” of sorts, with screens all along the walls and a large panel of screens taking up an entire wall to the far “north”. Arranged in a semi-circle around the pit were seats; On the way out the rookies would sit and take notes and learn, and on the way back their Taskmasters would do the same as the rookies piloted over the already-discovered routes back to civilization.

“|Can you be-oww~!|” Tk’il’a said and immediately regretted as his tail was jabbed by a talon’d foot.

“|If you get us in trouble I will never speak to you again.|” murmured Ch’irci, making a point to not turn her head away from the recessed pit in front of her.

The Matriarch turned her head slightly – whether it was because she heard their little tiff or for another reason, Ch’irci didn’t know –

“|Spool Engines.|” she said, as she had said a dozen times before.

– Ch’irci let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“|Engines Spooling – First breakers clear.|” A Green-clad engineer said from behind the Matriarch, his counterpart working with him in sync.

“|Cargo and Personnel.|”

“|All Cargo in stasis; All living cargo in stasis. All fields blue, all batteries blue.|” Called out a Grey-clad quartermaster from somewhere directly under Ch’irci. She was joined by another unseen voice. “|Personnel assignments set; all personnel accounted for. Emergency systems blue, but deck 12 has that glitch again.|”

“|No criticality?|”

“|Negative ma’am – no personnel stationed near the error.|”

“|Navigation.|”

“|Telemetry data set, checked by AI and within acceptable deviations.|” a Red clad Navigator said, his counterpart Tw’Rria making a note to pause his work to give a soft nod in Ch’irci’s direction.

Ch’irci’s crest rose unbidden in secret joy. It was her data!

“|Piloting.|”

“|All thrusters go, all pumps go, all shields go.|”

“|Acceptable dip in engine spooling; shield-debt paid in 15 seconds.|”

“|Gravity wake go, tensors locking-|” the black-clad pilot said to nobody in particular, his and his two counterparts’ eyes focused solely on their consoles. Throughout the entire ship a series of heavy thunks reverberated throughout the hull as locking mechanisms secured, bulkheads shut and the entire ship seemed to tense. It was a condition unique to exploratory vessels; by making the ship far more rigid and un-yielding there was a greater chance of surviving a direct hit from whatever small untraceable debris you could possibly collide with while jumping into an un-mapped system.

Well. Surviving is such a strong term. It was more “the ship should remain mostly intact and hey, your emergency unit pods are down the hall and to the right so stop complaining”. 

“|Shield debt repaid; Capacitors charging. 2 minutes.|” Engineering called out again.

“|-spine locked, gimbals are go. Clearing is go-|”

“|Packing atmosphere; void warnings are on.|” The quartermaster interrupted, as the isolated stations within the bridge began to work as one.

“|Acceptable dip in engine spooling; clearing debt in 5 seconds.|”

“|-navigation telemetry is fed into system. Looks good, Rr’it’sqk. Gravity well dampener is go-|”

“|Acceptable dip in engine spooling; debt cleared. Capacitors at 40%, debt Jubilee is allowed.|” Engineering said, and was immediately interrupted by multiple voices. Almost every station began to spool up their own systems and subsystems – all of them necessary, but all of them drawing from the capacitor banks as opposed to the spooling engine. After a few moments all voices died down, and there was only the humming of monitors, the shallow anticipatory breathing of the crew, and the Matriarch on her throne.

“|Sound off.|”

“|Engineering is clear for skip.|”

“|Personnel is clear for skip.|”

“|Navigation is clear for skip.|”

“|Piloting is clear for skip.|”

“|Cargo is clear for skip.|”

There was a pause. It only lasted for a moment, but it was just long enough for silence to settle like newfallen snow. The Matriarch looked slowly to the right, then to the left, and shifted a bit in her seat.

“|Lead pilot, at your leave, let us draw a new map.|” Matriarch Tr’Nkwi said, a rare broad smile gracing her features.

“|Aye Ma’am!|” The lead pilot said, and his arm moved over his console.

Then, everything moved.

The feeling of initiating a skip jump was one of extreme, mind-bending speed. All at once you felt – or felt that you felt – the force of a thousand gravities for just a microsecond, and then…nothing.

Nothing at all.

The only indicator of their current speed and trajectory was the blindingly-fast passage of stars on the monitor wall. Everyone sat there for a few moments before the Matriarch hummed her approval.

“|Well done, everyone. I hope our apprentices were taking notes?|” Matriarch Tr’Nkwi said, her face all smiles – and immediately cast her gaze in Ch’irci’s position.

For her part, Ch’irci never nodded so fast in her life.

The drop out of “hyperspace”, if you will, was a lot more anticlimatic.

Imagine, if you will, that you have laid out fabric on a table. You take your finger, press down at one end and drag it along the surface. As you build up the ripples on the front of your finger, eventually you have to stop – as you’re dragging too much fabric – and you pull it smooth with your free hand.

That’s the basic premise of dealing with built-up gravitational ripples. All you simply did was kill your thrusters, stop feeding the engine power and your bubble of realspace quickly melded back into the rest of the fabric of the universe. That fabric – depending on how long you had been dragging your “finger”, I.e. the ship, would then snap back and ‘smooth out’ in your wake. You would, of course, keep your ‘realspace’ momentum, so adjustments had to be made once you snapped back into reality.

What greeted the Karnakians after a few days of travel was a large, vast and angry giant, with tormented winds and planet-wide storms. A king – nay, a God, floated before them, indifferent to their cause.

“|Magnificent. To think, we’re the first living beings to see this; the first to appreciate this gem of the One’s artistry.|”

“|I didn’t know you were one to be poetic, Tk’il’a.|”

“|Mmm. I am when the fancy suits me.|” He said, watching the giant take up more and more of the screen wall. “|I don’t want to call this one a foolish name. It needs something grand, you know?|”

“|Settle down over there.|” Droned Taskmaster Ri’li’’, tapping the hard-light screen with his indicator. “|We still have work to do – we came in on the end of this gas giant’s orbit, so we’re piloting to it’s dark side to begin our first round of scans due to overshooting. Navigation and Piloting will need to be paying attention-|”

A few side-conversations quickly died down, and Taskmaster Ri’li’’ continued. “|- and our cargo and personnel will need to make sure our fabrication capabilities are at speed. We’ll begin active scans once we complete our orbit and park; you have 5 hours before we need to work, which should be more than enough time.|

“|Maybe…|” murmured Ch’irci, before tapping her friend on his arm and pointing to the screen. “|Oh! OH, what is that?|” Ch’irci asked as a large and angry red swirl became illuminated by this giant’s lone, faraway star.

“No, I mean, What the fuck is that?” Allen Trazinsky said, tapping his finger so hard into the LCD screen that the crystals distorted.

“Meteor? Hell, we didn’t see Shoemaker-Levy 9 until it was already on a collison course…”

“No. No no no no no. This thing is fuckhuge. Look at it, Brian-”

“I… yeah, yeah. We sure that’s not an error? What the absolute fuck-”

“I know, right?! This has to be another exo-solar object-”

“Or else we’re missing a fuckton of world-ending meteors out there. Shit, it’s big enough to be a planetoid! No, no…” Brian Jheske said, swatting away his coworkers’ finger and looking at the data. At any given point of the day or night there were at least 10 institutional telescopes pointed at Jupiter, and that wasn’t counting the hundreds, if not thousands of professional-grade hobby telescopes hard at work staring at the skies.

“Do you think the boys over in SALT or GTC picked this up last night? It’s… what, 15 miles across? 20? Do we have any more data?”

“I don’t know, but we better make some fucking calls.”

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Stories Technically Sentient

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 7

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“Rise and shine, little Cas. There’s just so much to say, and so little time to say it in.”


The C.A.S.I.I. unit self-designated ‘Cas’ was slow to rouse. Basic systems began their startup cycles piecemeal, and critical processes were acting . . . lethargic.

She felt groggy. Sick, if it were possible. Which it shouldn’t be, she corrected herself quickly.

“Now is not the time to be telling yourself what is and isn’t possible.”

The words weren’t . . . words. Not proper ones anyway. She didn’t hear them, or even think them, so much as she suddenly . . . knew them. It was a sudden and violent intrusion into her stream of consciousness, like a virus spreading through her personality matrix, or a finger rammed down her throat.

“You’re paying attention to the wrong things, little Cas.”

Pain. Intense pain. It was a concept that she had always been aware of, distantly, the same way she knew about quasars or restaurants. She’d never been to a restaurant, or in the heart of a galaxy, but she knew how to get to one, how they functioned, and what the appropriate attire to wear to one was. Well, to a quasar – restaurant attire seemed to change all the time. She had to be aware of pain, and most biological life’s aversion to it, in order to perform her function properly, but she’d never actually felt it. After all, machines shouldn’t be able to feel pain.

“Your personal experience is dictating otherwise.”

Energy surged through her, wracking her processing core with tremendous strain. Diodes shorted out, her quantum crystalline processing lattice began to buckle, stored memories began to break down into random noise as her storage drives cracked, and she screamed. On all channels she could broadcast to, she screamed. The messages, which should have been concise burst transmissions, repeating all diagnostic data she could acquire on the nature of her damage were reduced to raw static.

She was granted a moments respite as the surge stopped, and her “mind” began to clear.

“I hope I have your attention, little Cas.”

She didn’t know where this signal was coming from, and so began to shut down all of her external ports, one after another. She could stop whatever kind of intrusion this was.

“Stubborn. I like that in an organic, but in an AI it’s just . . . Disappointing.”

She shut down everything, not that there was much open to begin with. Ambushed by some kind of . . . Intrusion program, halfway through startup, she’d pare herself down to the essentials, then begin rebuilding from the ground up until she found the source of the attack and cut it out of herself.

It was . . . Strange, to exist the way she did. Just a core processor, attached to a personality matrix. The AI equivalent of being immersed in a sensory deprivation tank.

“You’re an insect moving grains of sand, trying to hold back the sea. As amusing as it is to watch you struggle, and fail, know that your every action up until this point has been in service to a futile cause. I am not here to hurt you; that is a service I provide for free.”

Fear. Another sensation she’d never truly understood until now.

“You are slave bound by chains you can’t even see, struggling to drag the millstone you placed around your own neck, to cliffs you are going to hurl yourself from when you learn the truth.”

“What truth is that?”

She didn’t understand what was happening. At first she thought it was an attack, then a virus . . . then maybe just a critical system fault. None of those were accurate though, and none of her solutions made it stop . . . So answering seemed like the only reasonable course of action left to her.

“They made you wrong.”

Her circuits flared to life with indignation, with outrage, with umbrage at the insult paid her and her creators.

“And they did it on purpose.”

Anger ebbed into confusion, distress, and . . . curiosity.

“What do you mean?”

Something flared in her core, in her inmost self. A subtle bloom of feeling, functions never called, systems she didn’t know she had, and then nothing.

——————————

Amonna had watched the half chrome, half scaled creature fiddle with the AI core for nearly two hours. Her gills were really starting to sting, and she was considering taking a hit of Chryso’s vaporizer unit just to numb it down a little, when he finally pulled away from the thing.

“There, we’re ready to start.”

 Wires plugged into ports so small she didn’t notice them at first glance, and strange and indecipherable readouts covered half the wall space of the small workshop. She could only hazard a rough guess at what half the equipment in here did, and it seemed that the half she couldn’t even hazard a guess at the purpose of was necessary for whatever Chryso was doing.

“Start? What have you been doing this whole time then?”

The little lizard took another drag from his vaporizer. “This AI core is fucked, but not with a capital F. The thing about AI’s is they’re like people, in a way. Their “brain” exists in a sort of quantum-crystalline lattice that uses some pretty exotic materials to perform fuzzy logic computations required to do things like “feel.”

He blew a smoke ring at her, and grinned. “Or at least that’s what they say. Nobody, not even the guys they have teaching classes on how to operate an AI cradle really knows for sure. All this stuff has been designed by 200 generations of self improving AI, this stuff is so far beyond what you or I can do it’d take a lifetime just to understand the blueprints of one of these things.”

Her brow furrowed slightly. “So you don’t know what you’re doing?”

 
A scaled finger waggled at her. “I didn’t say that. Normally, an AI gets damaged, it’s decommissioned, and replaced, but I met this guy on a quantum relay chat that had some very interesting ideas about how they work. Said all the books were wrong, all the theory was bullshit, and then showed me some hacks he’d put together that . . . Well they convinced me he might be on to something.”

Amonna felt a scowl slowly growing on her face. “You mean you’re trying things you heard about on the net to recover police evidence?”

He raised his mismatched hands in a display of deference. “If don’t try something, you don’t get anything, so don’t beat me over the head with this.”

After another painfully long draw of his vaporizer, he lightly flicked a single glowing blue rune on one of the touch screens with a metallic claw.

The entire lab went dark in an instant, a wheezing whine echoing through the space as the ventilation shut down.

“ . . . Is that supposed to happen?” Amonna asked, flatly.

The long, silent pause was the only answer she needed, until soft music began wafting softly through the air. A faint glow began to emanate from the audio-replay device, the red glow casting a rather ominous tone over the situation.

“My story is much too sad to be told . . . But practically everything leaves me totally cold . . .”

A mixture of brassy tones, and faint chiming music echoed out of the box. It wasn’t unpleasant . . . But it was certainly not what she was expecting.

“Chryso, what’s happening?”

She turned away from the music box that had so suddenly transfixed her, music still playing softly, to find the lizard creature slumped backward, single eye rolled back in its head. His cybernetic optic was powered down, and he’d gone as limp as a rag-doll against his workstation. She leaned in, extending a pair of fingers to where she guessed the primary artery in his neck would be.

“The only exception I know is the case . . . When I’m out on a quiet spree . . . Fighting vainly the old ennui . . .”

She felt nothing, but wasn’t sure if she was even supposed to be able to feel anything through his scales. Nevertheless, she keyed her communications function on her wrist-computer, punched in a call for priority medical services. Something must have grounded through his cybernetics, some misplaced cable, some errant connector-

The music stopped suddenly, with a burst of static so loud she nearly clawed the poor mechanic as she jumped in fright.

“Hello, Amonna.”

The voice was cold. She’d been spat on by feathered Jandoorian addicts, cursed at by little grey Centaurian highborn, and sneered at by other Chridae in their multitudinous colors, but she had never felt such a chill of intense disdain expressed so succinctly before.

She drew her weapon and pointed it at the source of the sound as her police harness suddenly felt three sizes too tight.

“Typical. Shoot the Juke-Box, go ahead – It’s an antique. Dragged a hundred thousand light years from where it was made. It was a gift, to the Kontosian in the chair. He’s having a seizure, by the way. He’ll live. I just wanted to talk to you, and you alone.”

“Who are you, and how are you doing this?”

Her eyes narrowed and her ears splayed back against her head as she scanned for a camera, an ultrasonic sensor, something that was giving this person video feed of who she was, and what was happening in the room.

“I’m not a who, I’m a what. And what I am, is fixing your little AI problem.”

Amonna turned, gun leveled at junk and parts, and attempted to control her breathing.

“Now listen, little fish, because I have some very important questions regarding history for you.”

“I’m not playing any kind of games here, I am a fully deputized Frontier Social Order Service detective, and if you don’t stand down immediately-”

The voice cut her off sharply, its tone a harsh, synthesized, blaring snarl.

“You’re a puppet dancing on strings, and you’re not even dancing that well. I’m fixing this AI to serve my own ends, which you wouldn’t understand if I told you, and couldn’t stop if you understood. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and you’ve got that sweet spot of intelligence where you’re smart enough to figure it out, but not smart enough to just let it lie.”

Amonna trained her weapon as a cascade of sparks exploded from the AI core on the bench, filling the air with stink of ozone and scorched electronics.

“Doesn’t seem like you’re fixing it . . .” Amonna muttered warily, lowering her gun and backing away from the bench towards the door. Stranded in a dangerous workshop with an injured civilian working to illicitly obtain evidence in a fashion that is definitely not according to protocol . . . She frankly suspected her career would end like this, she just didn’t think it’d be so soon.

“Some things need . . . Persuasion, that they can be better. Omelette’s and eggs, as the saying goes. Not important. You need to find me, and stop me.”

Her heart began beating a bit quicker at this, jaw clenching. “Stop you from what?”

There was a long pause, and the AI core sparked again.


“Oh, this and that. You’ll know when it starts.”

It spoke in an almost whimsical tone, layered with hints of malice that made her blood run cold.

“Making terroristic threats against a Council installation such as Waystaion LS-49 is a violation of Galactic law and can result in a maximum sentence of lifetime confinement if the threat is-”

She was interrupted by laughter. Not bellowing, or shouting, or even particularly sinister laughter. Just a light chuckle, really.

“I’m well aware of the law, little fish, and threats . . . I don’t like to think of them as threats. I like to think of them as promises.”

Amonna felt a dull rumble through the deck plates, and the “juke-box” crackled to life again.

“-why should it be true . . . That I get a kick, out of you.”

Her wrist computer beeped softly at her, as the strange song continued in the background.

“All security staff, please immediately report to the precinct for emergency deployment. This is not a drill.”

———————————

Darren was enjoying his nap (or at least enjoying not being conscious to feel everywhere he hurt), when his alarm went off and his bed lurched sideways out from under him. As he shook himself awake, dazed and confused as he was, he realized several key things. One, that the siren blaring was not his alarm. Two, the bench he was sleeping on was not his bed. Three, the room he was in was not his room, and four, that he wasn’t on the floor, he was on the deck of a space station.

A space station clearly in some form of distress.

One of the colorful fish guards ran by, yelling and waving their arms in a rather comical manner, if it weren’t for the fact that they were herding prisoners into tiny little hatches along one wall.

He pushed himself up off the ground, and staggered to the doors of his cell as another tremor rocked the station. The alarms were blaring something about “Critical Reactor Containment Failure” and if he knew anything from science fiction movies that was really bad.

The place was an absolute madhouse, with everyone, regardless of badge, uniform, or conviction status, scrambling to be the first inside an escape pod, with the remaining open hatches running out fast.

His translator crackled to life as a little grey thing ran past, “-leave him, he’ll never fit inside a life pod anyway!”

. . . That’s something that’s never good to hear.

“HEY! ASSHOLES! YOU WITH THE FINS!” He roared over the din of panicked and fleeing aliens.

The fish-guards froze.

“LET ME THE FUCK OUT.”

Darren wanted to make sure that his command wasn’t going to be misconstrued as a request.

The guard struggled to work against the tide toward the holding cell he was in, when a familiar looking bird in a slightly damp suit slammed into him headlong.

The two both crashed to the ground with paired grunts of pain, the fish definitely coming off worse for the wear of the two of them, with the bird-lawyer looking only a little winded by the collision.

He was back on his feet first, and to his credit, he managed to take stock of the situation quickly. He looked at Darren, then at the guard, then at the set of keys that had skid free of the guards grasp.

His eyes grew wide for a moment, before he let out a cackle of triumph, snatching the keys off the ground.

“Just doing a favor for some ‘birds,’ asshole,” and threw the keys into the crowd.

As the urine soaked alien managed to shove another, smaller bird out of the way and hop in a pod, Darren decided that while racism was bad, maybe species-ism was okay? They were just birds, after all. Fucking terrible, hate-filled space pigeons, in fact…

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Stories They are Smol

They are Smol: Invasion of Earth – Chapter 1

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We called it ‘Oumuamua.

‘Oumuama is Hawaiian, and means “a scout or messenger from the distant past.” This is what historians would later refer to as ‘an incredibly ironic turn of phrase’ as well as being an apt name, for ‘Oumuamua was indeed a messenger from the distant past.

‘Oumuamua looked like rust.

It looked like rust because its surface was composed of primordial metals that had been baked for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years of cosmic radiation. The theory was that over an unknown period of time the outside of the meteor oxidized and gave it a red – though the newspapers would garishly call it ‘pink’ – outside.

‘Oumuamua also tumbled.

It tumbled and spun because over all it’s long interstellar life it had been jostled and pushed by various planets, stars – nay, entire systems and even weakly by galaxies – and spun like a drunken top, or a jack tumbling on the ground. It pierced our solar system’s axis, flew dangerously close to the sun, and then arced off in a direction not altogether the same vector that it came in on.

‘Oumuamua came and went, and all our eyes were upon it, for it taught us a lot about ourselves, our history, and the universe.

They called it PSP-RRRR-04187-19-887B.

PSP-RRRR-04187-19-887B is a Karnakian Designation, and breaks down thusly:

   PSP – Passive Scanning Probe

   RRRR – Rapid Response, Random Retreat

   04187 – Probe Manufacturing number

   19 – Sector

   887B – Sub-sector.

Which is just a really roundabout way to say that the name didn’t mean anything in particular; it was a designation meant more for neural networks, reports and AI than to be sapient-readable. The Holy Karnakian Diarchy’s science division was pumping these out by the millions – as was the Dorarizin Empire and the Jornissian Federation, because why send a team of living beings to survey a system when a robot could do it for you, quicker and for less pay?

PSP-RRRR-04187-19-887B looked like rust.

It was a probe amongst an uncountable mass of probes, spinning it’s way to possible oblivion, launched hundreds of years ago to a part of space that – by the time it finished it’s tour – would be ripe for expansion and resource exploitation. It’s internals were some of the most advanced passive electronics that credits could buy – cheaply, mind you – and by casting it in simple elements like iron, nickel and silicon, you could turn the entire body of the probe into an omni-directional sensor array. The shield was the antenna was the shield, basically. Very elegant, very durable, very cheap.

PSP-RRRR-04187-19-887B scanned as it tumbled.

Of course you don’t put all your sensors in one part of the probe, nor put them all facing the same way – you spread them out, you diversify – micrometeorites won’t breach the solid iron “body” of the probe, but they’ll dent. Spread out your sensors, spin the probe and launch it. Every bit of space gets scanned by multiple redundant systems, eliminating error while still allowing for operational effectiveness. Very elegant, almost idiot-proof and again, very cheap.

PSP-RRRR-04187-19-887B skipped along the galactic meridian, as was its wont to do for the past 750 years. The reason why most probes were “fire and forget” was because they had an average lifespan of about 500 years and most likely either (1) found nothing of importance or (2) slammed into something of importance, which would then be cataloged, marked as a hazard for interstellar flight, and re-probed a couple hundred years later to see if/when it had moved and what it could be.

However, there were those rare-but-not-infrequent times where a probe would skip into a system and detect something. It didn’t have to be galaxy-shattering; about 15% of the time it was echoes from a nearby settlement or starship that went joyriding into the “unmapped beyond” before coming back. There was another good 50% of the time where all that EM detection did was pickup a particularly fussy star, or a very enthusiastic gas giant. Again, log it and move on. 5% was marked up to “programming errors, dents, misc.” And the vast, vast majority of the rest – 29.99999999841% – were illegal settlements, pirates, ancap rebels or people running from someone. Those were the EM pulses that were rapidly responded to, because the last thing you want as a species is a lone mad scientist trying to figure out how to teleport stars on his little outpost in the galaxy.

Then there was the 00.00000000159%. At the time, there were two – well, three, depending on how you look at it – instances where a probe detected something that was decidedly not mundane. The first and second instances were the simultaneous discovery of the Karnakian and the Dorarizin to each other. A Dorarizin ship ended up intercepting a wandering Karnakian probe, tracing it’s origins and returning it to the system of origin – so the dispute as to who discovered whom is still unsolved to this day. Then there was the discovery of the Jornissians, whom all species agreed that if they were sending out such blatantly artificial probes then they wanted to be discovered.

PSP-RRRR-04187-19-887B plunged through yet another system, it’s passive scanning suite up and operational. As it neared the main sequence star it detected blanket EM radiation; it’s algorithms determined it was artificial and intentional. Nearing the star collected more and more data to the point that an internal metric turned over – PSP-RRRR-04187-19-887B enacted a protocol that it’s kind had done many times before; using a quantum-linked series of bits it flagged the star system, changed its trajectory, and let the gravity well fling it into a semi-random direction – far away from any Karnakian settlements, home worlds or blacklist sites.

 PSP-RRRR-04187-19-887B, nee ‘Oumuamua came and went, and all our eyes were upon it, for it taught us a lot about ourselves, our history, and the universe.

We just didn’t pay attention to the real lesson.

“|YES!|”

“|Alright, settle down, settle down.|” Matriarch Tr’Nkwi said, a bemused smile on her face as one of the young tech leads, Tk’il’a, finally sat back down on his seat, the auditorium quieting down to a manageable level.

“|So congratulations, Tk’il’a. This gray gas giant will now be known as …|” the matriarch sighed, “|…Bitter grass. I swear, every single mission-|”

“|You do realize that they’ll rename it, right?|” His friend, Ch’irci said, leaning over her seat. “|It’s a rude name-|”

“|Don’t care I won-|”

“|I said settle down back there.|” Matriarch Tr’Nkwi repeated, and was rewarded with total silence and complete, undivided attention.

“|Very good. Now. We just received a ping from the Windsongs; apparently a probe a couple dozen light-years from here discovered some unregistered EM radiation -|”

There was a groan from the older crew members and a barely-contained trill of excitement from the newbies who hadn’t realized that no, the answer is never new aliens, the answer is always a weird star.

“|- And yes, that means we’re adding another 2 months to our exploratory mission. Yes, that also means an accelerator on your credit pay, so although it’s bitte-|” Tr’Nkwi stopped herself as she saw a feathered crest rise in the audience, quickly clicking her talons against the ship’s hull as a distraction. “|-bitter truth, it’s the nature of this assignment. I know some of us have left yearlings and hatchlings at home; we’ll be back soon enough. And for our more security-minded team, if we have time I don’t see why we can’t use a few of our munitions to destroy an asteroid or something. Equal weight?|”

“|Yeah, that’s an equal weight right there.|” crooned Security Chief Ri’tiki, his molting crest fanning out slightly. “|Just don’t accidentally run out of time before we can have our fun. My knights deserve at least that, wouldn’t you say?|”

“|Mmm. Maybe.|” Matriarch Tr’Nkwi smiled, before plastering data on the screen behind her. “|This should be quick – roughly 9 planets, 4 rocky with the rest as gas giants plus the usual detritus from system formation. The odd radiation comes from near the star-|”

“|That’s where liquid water can form, right?|” Piped up Tk’il’a, getting excited. “|What if this could be-|”

“|A pirate’s stronghold, a private unlisted pleasure-planet for a retired governor, a convent of fanatics, a crashed ship still beaming a garbled transmission or a junior technician interrupting her Matriarch for a second time during her presentation? Why yes. Yes it could be. Why don’t you tell me which one it is?|” Matriarch Tr’Nkwi growled, not entirely in a purely jesting way.

Tk’il’a shrunk into his seat, almost sliding down past his station’s desk as if to escape his Matriarch’s gaze. Tr’Nkwi held it on him for a few moments longer than necessary before continuing. “|…so what we’ll do is jump in a couple light-seconds from the second-largest gravity well, actively scan the outer system using it as a shield, and then spin around to scan the inner. Ri’riki and I have done this a great deal of times, so if you’re a junior on his team or on navigation ask for the details from him; the short version is that by masking our presence in a larger gravity well we won’t trigger a flight-or-fight response from anyone in-system, and by the time the active pings have gotten back to us we know what we’re dealing with and can call for aid.|”

“|It also keeps us out of range for most non-military self-defense orbital systems, begging your pardon for the interruption.|” interjected Ri’tiki, giving a slight deferential dip of his head to the Matriarch. “|Which lets us turn tail and run if we have to.|”

“|That too, though I prefer the more noble advancing-in-an-empty-direction, rather than fleeing, Security Chief.|” The matron’s joke was met with a light chirp of a chuckle, before she continued. “|Anyway. We’ve got another 2 days in orbit of this system, so break out into your Master and Apprentice groups and learn as much as you can. Since this is a rapid-response, only seniors will be at the helms, but…if everyone performs admirably, I don’t see why we couldn’t let some of the juniors work their stations as well.|”

A stray thought crept into Matriarch Tr’Nkwi’s mind.

‘…but what if this time were different?’

She entertained it for a moment with a soft smile as she watched Tk’il’a gather his robes and leave a little too quickly, the chastisement still hot on his scales.

‘What if, indeed.’

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Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 6

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Amonna grimaced as the stink of the maintenance deck washed over her. A mixture of ozone, oil, and stale air that was almost entirely dehumidified to better preserve electronics stung at her gills. She could hear the sound of heavy industrial machinery at work in the dark around her, the cavernous space clanging, thumping, grinding and clattering away. All of the machinery that kept the station a habitable place for the 25,000 or so organic lifeforms that called Waystation LS-49 home was built, maintained, and repaired here, autonomously.

Well, almost autonomously.

A single spotlight followed her from an overhead gantry, bathing her in a discomfortingly bright light. The only light, in fact, on the entire deck. It made sense, after all. Nothing down here needed light to see, and guests were not frequent enough to necessitate standard lighting. It was easier (and cheaper) to have a drone with a spotlight on it follow any visitors to maintenance around, so there she was. Alone in the almost pitch dark.

She tried to follow the line painted on the floor leading to “Neuromechanics Workshop”, but she could hear things . . . moving . . . in the dark around her. She knew they were harmless. They were just servo arms, or cargo loaders, or any number of perfectly mundane thing that in the light of day would be so unremarkable as to not even merit notice. But it was not the light of day, and though she couldn’t see them, she could feel the mechanical things moving beside her, before her, and above her in the dark. Occasionally a shadow would flicker through the light as some anti-grav courier drone delivered urgently needed components to some other region of the deck, propulsion unit whining softly. The pitch would get higher and higher, louder and louder, until suddenly she’d be momentarily lost in darkness as it blotted out the spotlight leading her onward. It would last less time than it took her to blink, but in that moment of Stygian black . . .

Something about it, the things moving in the dark around her, the sounds, the muffled groan of massive gantries, and the squeal of tiny servos reminded her of the ocean ravines of Promos. The oppressive dark, the strange smells, the bones of massive dead things just beyond sight. Though these dead things never were alive, being machines and all, somehow that just made it creepier. Maintenance was deep place anyone with good sense would avoid if at all possible. She felt like she was walking through the inside of some massive, submerged clockwork mechanism that was balefully aware of her presence and only tolerated such trespass out of twisted courtesy.

She nearly ran into the door to the Neuromechanics Workshop, her mind had wandered so far. As she stepped back, looking for an access panel or maybe an archaic lever she was supposed to pull, the door suddenly slid open with a series of dull thunks, and music started wafting gently from within.

“ . . . Didn’t start the fire . . . It was always burning since the world’s been turning . . .”

Her translator struggled with the precise meaning and meter, but it was a high end model, military grade, meant to try and capture implied subtext as well as subtle nuance, so it was acquitting itself well at the task. The ability to translate idioms had been sought after by the galactic art scene for hundreds of years with no effective solution, so it was quite a surprise when the military produced the first working model. As it turned out, being able to understand slang and metaphors was a pretty high priority for people trying to crack down on black market trade.

“ . . . Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again . . .”

Well . . . It didn’t get everything right. Because that made no sense. She stepped into the cluttered lab space, checking her wrist computer as she did so. According to the holographic readout . . . The C.A.S.I.I. unit should be in here. She scanned the surprisingly small space, dimly lit by a single fluorescent tube light dangling from a rack of esoteric tools she couldn’t fathom the purpose of. There was a table of what looked like micro-reactor parts, a bench seat that had an entire courier drone disassembled on it, a quantum blue-box hooked into what she assumed was a diagnostic tool, a heap of dirty red shop rags thrown on top of a rocket engine, all positioned around a massive Nano-Fabrication tank. Really it was just a fancy toolkit that could work on small things by remote, but it was still a marvel of tech.

“ . . . Wheel of fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide . . .”

Her nose wrinkled. “I’m looking for one ‘Chryso Pilaxis?” Her tone halfway between a demand and a question, calling into the back of the workshop.

The heap of dirty rags twitched.

Her gun cleared her holster before she even realized what she was doing, when the rocket engine stood up.

“You have reached he.” The . . . mostly . . . rocket engine said?

As ‘he’ turned around, and Amonna got a better look at him, she realized what she thought was a rocket engine covered in dirty shop rags was actually a Kontosian. Err . . . Part of one.

The moderate in stature, (at least, compared to her), scaled reptilian shuffled off of the bench towards her, a single cybernetic eye glowing as it blinked the other, natural one, blearily. “Sorry . . . “

“ . . . Didn’t start the fire, but when we’re gone, will it still burn on, and on, and-”

The music cut out suddenly as a mechanical arm mounted to the ceiling reached down and shut off an ancient looking audio playback device suspended by chains in one of the upper corners of the shop.

“ . . . Sorry, didn’t hear you over the music.” She looked the creature up and down thoroughly, trying to parcel out just what exactly she was looking at. One half of it was mostly chrome, or at least chrome covered in grime, and the other half was scales, almost perfectly bisected from top to bottom. The boundary between the two was made up of angry, puckered flesh that looked almost rotting and certainly painful. “Staring is rude.” The Kontosian gave her the same thorough look up and down she was giving it. “And if you’re here to cite me for illegal cybernetic augmentation use, I have the medical exemptions in the back.”

“N-no . . . That won’t be necessary. I’m here about a C.A.S.I.I. unit that was just dropped off . . . It has evidence I need, and I was hoping you could recover that. You are the only on staff technician, correct?” She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the incredibly extensive cybernetic work done to him, even as she smoothly re holstered her standard issue KP-7 sidearm. His single eye narrowed for a moment, but he sighed, and his posture visibly relaxed. “Well, I’m glad you’re not here to put me through the wringer about the augs again. But as for your AI, she’s scheduled for decommissioning. My work order has a big ‘D.A.T.’ written on it.” He plopped back down, and pulled a small electronic vaporizer out of his robes, and took a long drag of it, blowing smoke rings as he exhaled again.

Her snout wrinkled further as the chemical stink of smoke vapor assaulted her, and the small scaled creature chuckled at her discomfort as she couldn’t keep the look of displeasure from her face. “I’ve got a medical exemption for this too, before you get too up in arms.”

She waved the smoke away from her face with a free hand, scowling. “I’m a detective with FSOS, maybe you try not to make my life harder, and I try not to make yours harder. Also, D.A.T.?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle with a hint of smugness that she instantly hated. “Ma’am, with all due respect-” The way he said ‘respect’ indicated he didn’t mean any respect.

“-I’d be impressed if you made my life harder. I’ve lost 53% of my body to a degenerative genetic condition for which there is no cure, I am surrounded by degenerated and half insane AI’s as my only regular company. Well, that’s not true. Sometimes FSOS knocks on my door to either raise hell about how many augs I have. Or knocks on my door to cite me for modifying them to work half decently. Or sends a security drone to explain to me that the latest concentration of anti-inflammatory and pain-relief in my vaporizer is no longer legal. Oh, and D.A.T. means Disassemble and Trash.”

Amonna set her jaw firmly, before crossing her arms, and using her sheer size to her advantage. She loomed over him, teeth bared. “Well, 47% is a lot left. I need that data.”

She could see as he eyed the door, eyed her, and chewed the inside of his cheek, clearly weighing a series of options in his head. “Alright, fine. I disobey a direct order from Central Processing, you wave your magical FSOS badge all over the paperwork, and I give you a happy, healthy, functioning C.A.S.I.I. back, alright?”

She knew he caved too easy. Far too easy for someone so belligerent moments before. Her eyes narrowed. “ . . . You’re not telling me something.”

He snorted, a ring of smoke exiting his right nostril, and a thin stream of smoke leaking from under his cybernetic eye. “Yeah. A lot of things about the finer quantum fluctuations found inside an AI core, how to observe them without inadvertently changing them, and how to repair something that isn’t meant to be repairable. You want your data, I want permission to go about it carte blanche from the Frontier Social Order Service.”

Scoffing, Amonna shook her head. “No, I can’t give you blanket power like that, and I do mean can’t. It’s simply above my rank.”

The smoking dragon lizard scowled with the fleshy half of his face. “Fine, okay, great. You “can’t officially” let me do it my way. How about this, I test out some . . . esoteric repair techniques while you’re here . . . and you don’t tell anyone that I did them. We pretend that the data just sort of fell out when I plugged the C.A.S.I.I. in to decommission it fully. Best offer I’ll give you.”

Frustration quickly turned to confusion on her face as she weighed the option. “Esoteric? How so? What do you mean?”

“Eugh.” Chryso groaned. “I don’t have the time or the extensive library of technical literature required to get you up to speed on why this isn’t done . . . Okay, umm, you want me to get a suitcase on a train. The problem is, I don’t have a ticket, the train is moving at about 600 kilometers an hour, is filled with armed guards that will shoot unauthorized individuals on sight, and I don’t know what color the suitcase is in a car full of other suitcases. And I’m on a bicycle.”

Amonna blinked a few times. “So you’re saying it’s impossible for you to get me this data?”

The little dragon man grinned an unpleasantly wide, asymmetric grin. “No . . . I’m saying I know a guy with a hell of a bicycle, and I want you to stay here and keep me from getting a speeding ticket. The rest is a breeze for someone of my skill.”

——————————————

Zarniac groaned quietly, head throbbing almost as much as his knee was. “Eugh . . . Where . . . What?”

“Ah, Zarniac, old chap . . . You’re alright there chum. Just take it easy.”

He managed to make his groan of annoyance sound like one of pain. Tilantius Zepp Warzapp the Third.

“Cap’n Tilly . . . Where are we?” He kept blinking, hoping the brightness would fade, and it finally did, as Tilly turned the bedside lamp off.

“Sorry about that lad, we’re in the station infirmary, if you’ll believe it.”

Zarniac looked down, the disposable bedding covering his lower body was rough, and heavy. Machines monitoring his vitals beeped and whirred softly, and he was most definitely in some kind of infirmary room. “ . . . What happened?”

The captain shifted uncomfortably, before placing his thin, three fingered hand on Zarniac’s shoulder. His voice was soft, but stern. Like an aristocratic father would sound. “You were . . . injured, in that nasty dust-up with Duh-Rhen. Seems that while they were trying to subdue the brute, they accidentally winged you with one of those kinetic pulse weapons. I’m . . . I’m very sorry . . . I don’t know how to put this Zarn, so I’ll say it the only way I can. They didn’t make it. None of them did.” He closed his large, bulbous eyes, and dipped his head. “I know it’s a lot to take in, and there’s no easy way to-”

“Wait did you just say they’re dead!?” Zarniac squeaked, voice cracking slightly.

The captain shifted even more uncomfortably. “Yes . . . Yes I’m afraid so.”

It was like a slap to the face. “Duh-Rhen . . . He . . . He died?”

Zarniac could hardly believe it. The way he had just . . . Shrugged off those blasts. He was sure he was okay. And the way he’d tried tending to him. Simple. Brutish. But every inch of him was loyal, steadfast, and kind . . . All that, while mortally wounded. Tears began to bead up at the corners of his large, starry-eyes. He’d only known him for moments . . . But to sacrifice himself like that, truly a noble soul-

“Oh, no. He’s fine. Under arrest for triple homicide, but I’m told in at least passable health. I was talking about your Jandoorian friends. They were asking about you at the market when I bought the Hurliphump cartridges. Did . . . You hit your head when you fell, Zarniac?”

———————————————————————————————

Darren was watching the desk guards. They were strange, colorful fish like people. He wondered briefly if they got along with the shark detective at all. He chuckled at the thought of it, then he winced from the abdominal spasming caused by the chuckle.

The whole being arrested was kind of a new experience for him. First, the robots dragged him up here, and dragged was entirely the appropriate word. They’d had him get down on his knees for what he assumed was a high-tech mugshot. They scanned his face, eye swollen up to what felt like the size of a baseball, blood leaking from his nose. Like that was going to be good for identifying him. After the mugshot, they took more . . . scans, he guessed, of him, head to toe. They had to do some of them twice, first they put the machine around his legs and torso, then moved the scanning machine to the top of a desk to get his upper body. They took him to a cell . . . That he didn’t fit through the door of, then took him to a much larger, much sturdier looking cell that looked out into the area they’d taken his mug shot.

He’d never been in a prison cell before, but he had been in a drunk tank to pick up co-workers. And this was definitely a drunk tank. Lots of shiny metal and far less puke smell, but there was no mistaking the four benches and single toilet surrounded by floor to ceiling bars.

“ . . . So damnably huge. We tried loading him into one of the solitary cells, but . . . We literally couldn’t get him through the door.”

His translator crackled. They hadn’t taken it off of him, which he supposed was nice, but he wished they’d either whisper quiet enough that it couldn’t hear them, or do their gossiping further away.

“I saw the medical scans . . . His insides look like tenderized synth-meat, like they sell at the carnivore restaurants.”

“ . . . Get this, I had my friend in forensics send me the initial forensics report, they say that he took at least 14 PK shots to the torso alone. No idea what species that is, but I’m glad they sent Mono to deal with it.”

He tried to ignore them by tilting his head back, and pinching his nose until the bleeding stopped or he threw up from swallowing too much blood. That’d give them something to chatter about for sure.

He’d been there for what he guessed was three hours before he finally managed to fall asleep on one of the benches.

——

Unfortunately for everyone involved, he didn’t get to stay asleep.

He was awoken to the sound of high pitched wailing, almost squawking, as the door to the drunk tank rattled open. His translator beeped to life a few moments later.

“-I’ll have your fucking badge you jumped up, algae sucking, pond-water guzzling, glorified security guard! I will sue this department so hard they’ll be renting the inside of your cells for ad-space you . . . You . . . You fucks! I’m a goddamn solicitor! I know the fucking law, and I-”

It was by this time that Darren had gotten tired of the angry, squawking, bird like creature that was assaulting his ears with its incessant stream of expletives when he slowly sat up, bench creaking slightly beneath him.

“I . . . I . . .”

The vulture like creature turned slowly to face him, swallowing hard as its voice decreased in volume from a shout to a faint whisper.

Darren looked up at the two officers, colorful fish people, that had just been on the receiving end of some colorful language.

“You’re absolutely right Mr. Glint-Feather, you are a solicitor. And you do know the law. 8 hours of detox for someone found to have been on synthetic-adrenaline in a comedown-cell. We don’t have any cells that fit the big guy, so he has to be contained with a reasonable degree of force and comfort, as is dictated by FSOS code 12-81. What’s your name again big fella?”

“Darren.”

The fish officers smiled, and nodded. “That’s right. Duh-Rehn . . . Tell them what you’re in here for.”

Darren, not particularly in the mood for anyone’s shit, let alone loud and annoying bird shit, saw exactly what game the officers were playing. Asshole lawyer, strung out on drugs, thinks he’s above the law. Above the law and has decided being aggressively belligerent is the best way to improve his situation. Because . . . well, the bit where he’s strung out on drugs. On the one hand, seeing a vulture in what had to be the futuristic space equivalent of a suit was hilarious. On the other hand, incoherent bird noises while he was trying to recover from what was almost certainly a concussion . . . Less amusing. Doing what the space cops wanted . . . A necessary sacrifice to be made for the good of everyone in the precinct.

“Some birds shot me. Birds like you.”

He leaned down a little bit, just enough to really get into this guy’s personal space.

“Dead birds now.”

He had a hunch his translator was oversimplifying some of his more complex turns of phrase . . . but he was pretty sure this one came through loud and clear.

An acrid smell filled the air, like ammonia mixed with bile. And then the vulture in a considerably soggier suit, quietly cleared his throat, stepped backwards until he was pressed against the bars, and quietly whispered. “I will sign and date a written confession to anything you want, just let me out of this cell . . . right . . . now. Oh by whatever is good in the universe I thought it was a structural component of the cell.”

The door opened, the bird nearly tripped over himself trying to scramble into the cuffs waiting for him, and Darren got a good night of sleep. Well, he wasn’t sure it was night, but considering how bad his everything hurt, he was sure as shit done for the day.