Tag: Technically Sentient

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Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 22

Ikor closed his eyes, ignoring the incessant stream of data being blasted at him through the integrated heads up display of his helmet. He focused on the subtle things, the tug of gravity at his stomach, the deck vibrations caused by the Outrider’s thrusters, and the tightness of his armor around his chest. It wasn’t his first time being pulled from dead asleep to full combat readiness, and it wasn’t the first time he’d volunteered for a zero-reconnaissance, zero-intelligence rescue operation. In fact, there wasn’t anyone on the Outrider that considered this a first, or even unusual. The ship and his comrades both were well seasoned veterans, and while the ship still bore the bright, coppery color of it’s penetration shielding, the weary bones told a story much longer than the fresh glint of the hull would suggest.

Outrider, a catch-all designation for the class of vessel customized by commando and honor guard units, put together ad hoc whenever special missions arose. This one started life as a communications probe. It had been subsequently gutted, refitted with an oversize engine, clad in a twin layer of copper and tungsten alloy superconductor plates, and packed with as much firepower and communications equipment as would fit after all of that. It had a harsh, angular shape, like the delta tip of a spear meant for a titan, and in many ways it was. Ikor and his fellows would be the first to set foot on the slowly spinning dead asteroid, or more specifically in the dead asteroid, as their craft burrowed through the surface of it, superheated copper trapped in a fluctuating magnetic field cutting through the nickel-iron alloy like a hot knife through butter. The briefing had been, well, brief. Get on the ship, enter the asteroid, find the source of the transmission, wait for further orders. Simple. In theory.

The Outrider shook him in his harness, and his eyes snapped open. He scanned the readouts, checking everything from his squad-mates vital signs to the crude radar array built into the outrider. There was a dull impact as the vessel shook again, the maneuvering thrusters firing sporadically to guide them through an unseen debris field. His eyes narrowed, something this obvious should have been easy to avoid. He didn’t like it, but he knew it wouldn’t threaten the mission success chance. Anything big enough to damage the ship they could dodge, and anything too small to see coming they could shrug off, but it was a bad omen. This should have been easy to detect. This shouldn’t have been an issue to begin with. There was another impact, and the communication channel back to command went dead as an external communications relay was obliterated by a chunk of iron the size of a baseball traveling at 4000 meters per second. The backup relay kicked in moments later, operating flawlessly, and he let out an internal sigh of relief.


He scanned the motionless, midnight black helmets of his squad mates, who were all likely thinking something similar to him. There were only six of them in the pod, but with how heavily armed and armored they were . . . that wouldn’t be a problem. Their armor was self contained, bio-integrative, pressurized, had reactive elements and with powered muscle assist spindles running through it provided freedom and ease of movement even in high gravity terrestrial conditions. Each of them had auto-correcting equilibrium implants for fighting in zero-g or fluctuating gravity, joint replacements for controlling weapon recoil, nanotube bone reinforcement, and a hormone control node implanted on the right side of each of their hind-brains. Without putting too fine a point on it, they were about as much hardware as they were “natural,” and all of the hardware was aimed at making them more efficient, effective, and durable soldiers.

He set his jaw as he remembered the thing he’d watched throw around his people like rag dolls. It had been head and shoulders taller than them, and took hits like they were using foam training weapons for pre-modification recruits. Fear was something that had become a part of his life as a commando. There was fear of explosive decompression, fear of being gunned down by hypervelocity armor-piercing flechette, fear of just being in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . but he had never felt that primal kind of fear where something that was prey looked at something that was a predator. All of his weapons, all his armor, all that training and technology just didn’t matter in the face of that bellowing mountain of muscle and rage. They just kept hitting it and hitting it, but nothing seemed to stop it, or even slow it down. He’d never voice it, but when the Captain of the Honor Guard had saddled up on scene, and dusted the thing handily, he didn’t feel pride in his commander, or even awe for his martial skill, he just felt relief. It didn’t feel like a victory against that thing, just survival.

The command channel in his helmet chimed to life. “30 seconds to surface impact. Brace, and prepare to disembark.”

The calm, clear orders of General Vrang pushed such thoughts aside. He was being sentimental, getting distracted. He needed to focus, just on the mission, and nothing else. The asteroid seemed to be largely porous, with preliminary scans indicating a series of ordered chambers running through it roughly 200 meters beneath the surface. They should make entry very near the source of the signal, but those measurements were bound to have drift caused by what appeared to be a substantial layer of conductive metallic elements. Using their armor mounted microthrusters and mag-boots, they’d maneuver to the source of the distress beacon, mapping tunnels as they went, and then establish a more powerful long range communications array that could penetrate the damping effects of the conductive layer.

There was a dull crackle and a surge of heat as the liquid copper shell engaged, boring through dozens of meters of solid rock in seconds. Ironically, there was less turbulence digging through the asteroid than approaching it, Ikor mused silently. He quietly checked over his weapon. A sleek hybrid of several different weapon systems, he’d had it primed and ready since the hangar incident . . . as a sort of safety blanket. There was a standard Kinetic Pulse rifle nested down the length of the gun, perfect for use on standard soft targets, but around it was built a three prong, overdriven Microwave Beam Emitter. While the Kinetic Pulse weapon would pulverize flesh and shatter bone at considerable distance and at prodigious rates of fire, the Microwave Beam Emitter would flash-boil, ignite, or just outright incinerate anything that got within its range. Under that, he’d mounted a smooth bore AP-Flechette cannon, for when not even fire would kill it. There was enough firepower in his hands to bring down the Outrider, and he was almost certain it would be enough to stop a human dead in its tracks.

He really didn’t want to have to test that theory though.

The faint rumbling came to a stop, but the static interference from the asteroid made communications from General Vrang impossible now. Ikor switched to short range communications, no point in wasting energy cell life on the long range transmitter if it couldn’t get through. “You all know what to do, keep chatter to a minimum.” He received 5 affirmative crackles. A single click of the transmitter to let him know he had been heard. The seconds drug on in silence as the hull cooled, creaking and popping as it did so. Finally, their restraint harnesses automatically disengaged, and they were free to float about the cabin, though there was barely enough room for all six of them in it. The rear hatch slid open quietly, and while he had expected there to be a gust of air as the ship depressurized, he was surprised no such event occurred. Internally his brow furrowed, and he intuitively fired the thrusters on his boots, propelling him out and into the still faintly glowing tunnel they’d carved on their way in. His weapon was at his shoulder, and as he drifted away from the Outrider, he saw a multitude of half breached or completely bisected tunnels in their ships wake. “Kal, Vers, with me.” Two crackles of response met his order, and without bothering to check if they were behind him, he drifted up to the first opening.

He’d had a few guesses as to what they’d find, of course. He’d been expecting the polished alloy of a military installation, or the rough rock of a mining operation, or the long abandoned and shoddily constructed scrap-station used by illegal salvager’s and pirates . . . but he never would have guessed this. He gently drifted forward into the smooth, almost polished stone of the corridor. The lamps mounted on either side of his helmet cast bright light across the dark, but somehow glossy surface of the rock. The twin pools of light swept side to side as he scanned the strangely organic curves of buttressing and cross bridging, the almost rib like constructions arching the span of the tunnel. He flicked the safety on his weapon off, before guiding himself down to the flatter, more open portion of the tunnel and engaged his magnetic boots with a dull thump.

Ikor’s eyes flickered across his HUD one more time, checking to see what his suits sensors were making of the place. Gamma radiation? Nominal. EM transmissions? Virtually absent. Atmospheric pressure? Roughly three quarters standard.

“Specialist Vers, get me an atmospheric reading.” He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see her take a knee, and activate her forearm mounted diagnostic suite.

“Trace thorium, silica dust, oxygen, point-seven-seven atmospheres, and a large amount of water. I’m getting . . . unidentified carbon compounds, likely biologically complex macromolecules.” Her tone was firm, authoritative, but ended in a subtle uptick that was the hallmark of curiosity.

“Breathable?” Ikor crackled with a single raised eyebrow.

“In a pinch, affirmative. I wouldn’t until I can identify what the biological compound is though.” She shrugged. The gesture was barely noticeable considering how much gear she had on, but Ikor picked up on it.

He took a few tentative steps forward, scanning the long and subtly curving corridor with broad sweeps of his rifle. “Well, get me a line on that emergency beacon, and figure it out as we move.”

He took a few more careful steps forward before suddenly stumbling, barely able to catch himself as he felt his entire body suddenly get heavier.

“Sergeant?” Both of his squad mates moved forward sharply to cover him before he could wave them off.

“It’s nothing, just an artificial gravity field . . . must be malfunctioning, otherwise we’d have hit it on the way in.” He disengaged his magnetic boots, and took another few steps forward. “Strong too, we must be close to the source.”

The two affirmative clicks weren’t quite enough to put him at ease, but the navigational marker on his HUD was. 200 meters ahead, more or less. “Hopefully in this tunnel.” It was difficult to judge because of the unusual curve, but . . . if they were lucky. “Sitrep on the Outrider?” There was a pause. Perfectly normal, as they were likely making a visual inspection to ensure the integrity of the craft, but something about the place put Ikor on edge. He wondered if he still had the jitters from the hangar, but the thought was interrupted by a static crackle. “Outrider appears fully operational, tunnel integrity is sound. Status is green across the board.”

He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Good, that was good . . .

“100 meters front, do you have eyes on the source?” The communications link to Vers crackled, like there was some signal distortion, considering she was a half step behind him that shouldn’t have been-

Ikor glanced over his shoulder, and did a double take. Vers was gone. He spun on his heel, and Corporal Kal, his second in command, was clearly searching for her as well. “Vers, what is your location, I repeat, what is your location?” He quickly pinged his Friend-or-Foe system, stomach dropping like a stone as only 4 responses came up.

“I’m . . . “ The static was worse, much worse now. Kal pulled a monofiber cable off his belt and looped it through a carabiner on Ikor’s belt, slapping his commander on the shoulder to physically affirm he was still there. “I’m getting movement on my scope, how the hell did- CONTACT FRONT!” The high pitched report of Kinetic Pulse weapons fire echoed down the long corridor, and both Ikor and Kal took off at a dead sprint towards it. Their boots thudded against the dark gray, glassy floor, a faint mist slowly rising higher and thicker as they ran closer to the source of the sound and hopefully Vers. Kal spooled out a little slack, one hand on the security line, the other on his rifle as he tried to keep pace with Ikor, the years of training and drilling and instinctive combat response keeping them moving with a purpose, even in this bewildering scenario. “KP IS INEFFECTIVE, SWITCHING TO FLECHETTE!” The loud booming of the under-slung smooth-bore seemed close, but they still couldn’t see anyone. The panic and desperation in her voice was clear. “IT’S IN THE MIST! STAY OUT OF THE-” There was a crunching sound that turned Ikor’s stomach. He didn’t stop to imagine what caused it before flicking his Microwave Beam Emitter to maximum charge, and waving it around like a torch in the darkness. The faint mist turned to clear steam, and for a moment he caught a glimpse of something.

It was just a glimpse, just a hint, it was almost the same color as the mists, almost the same texture as the stone . . . but different. Wrong. Impossible.

But there wasn’t time to think about it. There wasn’t time to stop and wonder if what he saw was even real. He didn’t break stride, and neither did Kal. They had to get to Vers. Burning a way through the mists that aggressively coalesced behind them, they kept advancing. Vers Friend-or-Foe tag was visible on his HUD, but her vitals were flatlined.

That’s when he heard it. Coughing, faint, but there. The mists had begun to thin from the opaque wall of white to just traces of vapor coiling about their boots, and there was Vers, helmet in one hand, standing with her back to both Kal and Ikor.

“Vers, come in!” Ikor barked into their shared com channel, but received only silence. Switching to an external speaker, he barked out again. “Vers, answer me, I need a sitrep!”

She didn’t move, but her head tilted back just a few degrees. “I’m . . . I’m all right, Ikor.” She sounded . . . tired. “It’s alright. I think . . . I think it’s over.”

Kal was frantically sweeping his sectors, weapon at the ready. “With all due respect specialist, what the fuck?” Kal’s external speaker coughed into the dim mist as Ikor’s helmet lights swept over Ver’s armor. Scratched, battered, but otherwise intact, she didn’t appear to be wounded at first glance. Ikor kept his sights trained on her. “Vers . . . gimmie a sitrep, Vers.”

Vers, to her credit, took a few steps away, before leaning against the smooth wall of the tunnel. With a heavy sigh, she slid down to a seated position. Blood was flowing freely from her nose and ears, even one of her eyes was leaking a stream of bright red vitae from the corner. “This is gonna sound fucked up guys . . . but . . . uhh . . .” She scratched her head with her free hand, setting her clearly shattered helmet on her knee. That must have been the crunching sound he’d heard, Ikor mused silently.

His suppositions were interrupted as, with abject horror, Ikor watched something slither inside her suit. It was thin, long, but powerful, and his stomach turned as he could see the body-tight under layer of her combat suit bulge and ripple as it worked its way up her leg, across her abdomen, and around to her back. “ . . . Vers what the fuck was that?”

His tone was a half whisper, and his hands were shaking slightly as he trained his sights on her forehead, priming a flechette round in the under barrel smooth-bore.

“I get it, no like . . . really I get it. But we’re wrong. Every . . . everything we’ve been taught, everything we’ve fought for is a lie.” Her head dropped, and she shivered as something flashed across the side of her neck. “I don’t even know where to start, actually.”

She stood again, an expression of mixed consternation and frustration on her face. “No matter what I tell you . . . you’re probably just going to blow my head off. Because that’s exactly what makes sense to do. That’s exactly what I would do. I guess . . . I’m not even gonna say don’t fight it. Because . . . well, that’s what you’d expect me to say right now.”

Every fiber of his being was screaming at Ikor that this wasn’t Vers, this was something . . . something different. But the mannerisms were the same, the body language, the posture . . . some part of whatever was in front of him still was. “I guess I’d say it doesn’t . . . it doesn’t hurt? I mean you feel kinda dumb afterward, but it doesn’t hurt.”

An alarm sounded as something breached the boot of his suit, and he snapped his rifle down, firing at the space between his feet. He was rewarded with a spatter of gray gore, and a high pitched squealing sound, but he could already feel it . . . writhing inside him. His leg went numb, and it buckled as he lost all control of it. It didn’t hurt. That much was true. He could feel pressure though. Inside his muscles, across his bones as it swam through his flesh. He thought it would be a struggle, perhaps with some terrifying mental presence as his body was stripped from him. But it wasn’t. It was more like remembering something from a long time ago. Like where he left a set of keys, or an old song. He could feel its thin tendrils as they penetrated his skull, merging with his nervous system seamlessly. He expected something about it to terrify him, or at least hurt, but there was nothing of the sort. It was just . . . an awkward realization. The Coryphaeus, the Core Worlds . . . all of it was founded on pretty obvious lies, now that he could see the truth. It made sense, even. Even with that, he was still himself. All his memories, his aspirations, the pride he took in his career and his squad mates . . . even his penchant for capsaicin seasoned foods. Just, that, and bigger picture, the real plan. The way forward. It was . . . kind of staggering in scale, really. The whole galaxy, maybe even more. It was a lot to take in, or at least it would be if it didn’t feel like he’d always known it.

“You . . . were right, Vers. I do feel a little dumb.” He looked over to see Kal struggling to yank the gray tendril out of the neck seal of his suit, but after a moment of struggling, he too stopped.

Vers chuckled, the kind of good humored laugh one has when they’ve been made the butt of a practical but harmless joke. “Yeah . . . kinda glad that we got it figured out though, you know? Even if it was against our will. Glad you didn’t pop my head off . . . was actually really worried that was gonna happen.”

Ikor felt a moment of embarrassment. He was really ready to kill Vers out of fear. Fear of something he just didn’t understand, and out of dedication to a cause that would sacrifice him without a second thought. “Yeah . . . I do feel guilty about that.” He pushed himself to his feet, walking over to help Kel up as well. The creature from the hangar, the human, as he now understood, was never their enemy. He was just another piece on the board. He smiled to himself. It was freeing, to realize that the human he had been so frightened of was really on their side all along.

“Well, I’m glad you at least feel guilty about it.” She gave him a halfhearted, if a bit awkward smirk. All seemed so foolish now. “So, Sergeant, how are we going to pass on the uhh . . . “ Vers waved her hand around, thin gray tendrils erupting from her fingertips.

Ikor rolled his shoulders, and he felt it settle somewhere in the small of his back. “We’ll finish setting up the long range communication beacon, tell command the truth about it being a decoy, and then head back to the Outrider. We’ll pass it on once the harnesses have locked them in place.” Vers and Kal both nodded. “Well, let’s get to it then. Transcendence doesn’t happen on it’s own, you know?” That got a laugh from both Vers and Kal, as they all set off down the familiar tunnel once again.

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Stories Technically Sentient

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 20

Amonna had been amazed by the size of Waystation LS-49 when she first arrived. With a nearly 60 meter high ceiling, the bulk transport she had arrived in almost seemed small in the cavernous space. As she looked out over “Auxiliary Hanger 2,” that sense of starry eyed wonder she had felt as a younger, more naive girl returned. The “Indomitable Explorer” looked almost like a forgotten toy left on the floor rather than a warship retrofitted for survey work. The security team that had set up a cordon around it looked like insects, not heavily armed and armored soldiers.

She took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the stabbing pain in her neck as she closed her eyes. It was easy to think of them all as toys from this elevated, distant, and secure observation deck, but this was far from a game. Three teams stacked up on the craft, two at the cargo door, and one under the “wing” of the vessel. She couldn’t make it out precisely, but she knew they were planting breaching explosives. They’d been trying to cut their way in with plasma torches for several minutes, but whatever meta-alloy the craft was made of seemed extremely resistant to heat. Drastic measures were needed, so a mixture of cryo-treatment and breaching explosives were being used.

The security chief swore that he had attempted a diplomatic resolution to the situation, but Amonna wasn’t terribly convinced. In the end though, it was a matter of picking her battles. She’d been very clear that she needed them for interrogation . . . and a healthy show of force might not be the worst way to start that process off, after all. She would tolerate the over-exuberance of her subordinates for now, if only because they weren’t disruptive enough to warrant censure.

She saw the flash, heard the muffled crack of high explosives, and watched 12 troopers pour into the little puffs of smoke made by their dynamic entry. A trio of them bounced back out, as if they’d run head long into a brick wall, and suddenly the fight was on. Too far away to catch the specifics, she watched as five little black motes struggled against one particularly large specimen. She leaned forward, gripping the hand railing of the observation deck with a white knuckled intensity.

“ . . . It can’t be you . . . can it?”

Her voice was low, and incredulous, but she knew without a doubt that it was.

“Arch-Judge?” One of her honor guard stepped forward, tone uncharacteristically inquisitive. “Could you please repeat your order more clearly?”

Amonna shook her head, face still bearing an expression of disbelief. “Get down to that ship. They’re going to need backup.” They snapped into motion without hesitation, a dozen sets of boots pounding out of the steel and glass chamber. “I need them alive!” She shouted after them as they disappeared down the corridor, shock turning to ire as she whirled back around to watch the battle in miniature unfold. They seemed to be afraid to draw any closer, but unwilling to back away and use their other weapons. She let out several choice oaths, furious with her own lack of foresight. “Of course you’d survive . . .”

If she’d warned them, maybe they could have used electro-convulsive devices, or maybe some kind of gas to debilitate the creature, but as it stood their less than lethal batons were probably like nothing more than toys to him.

She watched a particularly brave trooper rush him, and be sent flying for his hubris.

A frustrated snort escaped her, and she could only hope that her “Honor Guard” were skilled enough to bring a neat resolution to the unfolding disaster before her. She watched as he seized one trooper, and hurled them bodily into another of her officers scrambling to get away.

Cringing, she murmured under her breath “ . . . I’d settle for an ugly resolution at this point.”

——————————

Darren was breathing hard, and swinging harder. He’d managed to wrestle a baton from one of the black armored goons sent in to beat him, and he’d paid back their aggression with a fair bit of interest. He didn’t know how the others were faring inside the ship, but he had bigger concerns at the moment. A few warning swipes with the baton, cracked and chipped from the force of his blows, was enough to drive the military styled thugs back a few paces. A few of them had been put out of commission already, either by his fists or a hearty kick, but he could still see that he was surrounded. Outnumbered but not out-fought, he concluded. He was damn tired of getting randomly attacked by aliens. Without much time to dedicate to the thought, he decided that the galaxy was a lot more hostile than it had been made out to be on TV.

There was a crunching sound as he stepped into some of the shattered ceramic armor that had “fallen off” his attackers, and his head snapped side to side in a feral manner, like a cornered animal. The six or so black armored aliens backed off slightly, pulling their downed comrades with them to a safer distance behind hastily erected barricades.

For a moment, it almost seemed like they were giving up, and a brief flicker of hope ran through him. He took time to try and catch his breath, re-orient himself, and spent a few free seconds to try and think of a way out of this mess.

Then he saw the backup.

A dozen figures, in bulkier armor, carrying big guns. Maybe special forces, maybe SWAT, maybe just bigger meaner dudes, but he could read the writing on the wall. He braced himself, guard up and baton ready, for the lot of them to charge him.

Surprisingly, they didn’t. In fact, all but one of them held back while a single, particularly bold individual began to remove his helmet.

Darren had expected something exotic, strange, or downright disturbing. He expected huge eyes, or spines instead of hair, or maybe some kind of compound eyes, but what greeted him was far more disturbing to him.

It looked like a child. Not . . . not quite a child, but boyish. The stature was like that of a teenager, or maybe just a fairly small framed guy. It was bearing a crew cut and a firmly set expression, like any soldier might appear, but the almond shaped eyes, faint hint of freckles, and slight features were really what was putting him on his back foot. “What the . . .” were the only words he managed to mumble out before it threw its helmet at him.

Throw was really the wrong word for it, even. It was almost like a playful toss. A gentle lob, pitched underhand, like it was a game and he was supposed to catch it. Without thinking, he let go of the baton to catch the blackish, grayish ceramic armor piece, raising his arms in the process. The motion of this . . . childish alien was quick, and he almost missed it, but as he felt something strike him in the gut, he realized with a sudden surge of anger he’d been tricked. With a slight flourish, this new adversary had pulled something from it’s pocket and hit him in the gut with it from 15 paces. He could feel thin, sinewy coils wrapping around his abdomen, cinching down tight with a mechanical whirring sound.

“Fu-” was all he managed to gasp before he was hit with a surge of electricity, making his diaphragm spasm. It felt like he was drowning, like the air was too thick for him to breathe as his entire body went rigid. The current lasted what felt like minutes, his every muscle bursting in a burning pain as they cramped violently from the hammer-blow of current. There was a moment that their eyes met, and while he was struggling to remain conscious, Darren couldn’t really come to terms with such a youthful face twisted into such an expression of raw loathing.

A haymaker to the jaw ended his struggle, and dropped him to the deck with a dull thud, ending the several minute long standoff in as brutal a fashion as it had started.

——————————

Amonna was quite pleased with the performance of her “Honor Guard.” Not to put too fine a point on it, she was almost impressed with the speed they had resolved the situation. They had taken an uncontrolled disaster and almost instantly brought it to a neat, non-lethal end. The “Human,” as the medic on duty had identified it, was secure and largely uninjured. She wasn’t terribly surprised to find it uninjured, even though it had taken a blow that would have left either the Centaurian or Kontosian passengers permanently brain damaged. There was the question of minor damage to its central nervous system, but the medic had told her there was some kind of multi-layered fluid cushion protecting the human’s brain. It just tended to “re-boot” when struck too hard, and that gave the security team time to restrain it.

She’d instructed it kept under a ridiculous level of sedation until she had the chance to fully review the file she’d been given on its physiology, but from what she had skimmed the thing was a tank. Blended muscle fiber motor units, redundant blood filtration organs, hyperactive scar-tissue formation. Just from the cliff notes she could tell the thing was a low-tech apex predator.

She didn’t know how well she’d be able to interview an attack dog, but she’d give it a try.

Later.

As a last resort, in case she couldn’t get anything useful out of the others.

She leaned back in her chair, eyes wandering over the seemingly ever growing spread of classified documents, reports, interviews, and images she had on her desk. She snagged the Research Institute charter for the Indomitable Explorer, and scanned through it quickly. Registered to Tilantrius Zepp Warzapp the Third and Zarniac the Lesser, it appeared to be a legitimate survey operation. She had interviewed the two of them, and her initial suspicion was that this “Zarniac” character was coercing Tilantrius. Last images of Zarniac were of a healthy, if slightly haggard Centaurian, not the maimed, steely eyed, tight lipped navigator she had in a cell seven decks below her. Still, their stories checked out. He really had been badly injured in the hangar incident, and then again while making his escape from Waystation LS-49. A flicker of pity ran through her, and sense of morose kinship. She sighed, and continued on reading the interview transcript. Their account of events on the station matched her own, and the story of coming back to rescue the Human, apparently named “Duh-Rehn,” also sparked a chord of compassion in her. The Centaurians were a good sort, she decided. They’d been put through the wringer, and she believed them when they said they had done their best to comply with the conflicting commands they were given in the arrest process. The Kontosian on the other hand . . .

She’d grilled him for an hour, solid. When he stonewalled her, she had gotten “extra-curricular” with her interrogation methods. It had only taken a copy of her “Unlimited Mandate” in resolving the Waystation LS-49 issue to get him talking.

It had started, at least for him, innocently enough. He’d kill time between maintenance tickets by messaging random individuals on the q-net. Typically reserved for fairly high level communication, his engineering access let him utilize the most powerful FTL communications tech in the galaxy as a chat-room. That alone warranted maybe a negative quarterly performance review, it was who he began talking to that interested her. Chrysophylax, the little half cyborg red lizard she had entrusted the C.A.S.I.I. unit to, had been talking to some very dangerous sorts. While he confessed to picking up all kinds of dangerous skills, like how to build Class 2 energy weapons and modify AI cores, he swore up and down that he wasn’t responsible for what had happened on LS-49. There was a single user that had started messaging him consistently. At first he was terrified it was one of his co-workers, because they always seemed to know when he was busy and when he was free, but after figuring out what node they were logging into the galaxy wide system from, Chryso had concluded that they were just some kind of network penetration expert killing time at work too. A little more pressure, and he was telling Amonna everything they’d ever talked about.

This . . . character, only ever identifying themselves as “Seed_544” had been more than happy to talk everything from AI blue-box mechanics to firewall subversion techniques with Cryso. At least, according to him. It was always with the same casual air of superiority, and they always seemed to have some secret trick or insight he’d never heard of before. Chryso had always assumed they were either an AI killing unused processor cycles, or some kind of savant that didn’t know how to turn that part of their brain off, but they had been deeply, deeply intelligent. When they started offering solutions to some of his day to day problems, little subroutines he could install to keep unreliable systems working, or self-repair protocols to keep his workbench free, he’d seized them gladly and with both hands.

While rambling his occasional, almost aimless confessions continued to roll on and Amonna began to draw a much clearer picture of things. She suspected that “Seed_544” was not just some AI or savant, but a collection of individuals who had gotten close to Chrysophylax with the intention of infiltrating the station’s subroutines. They leveraged this unfettered access to take systematic control of the Drone officers in the FSOS department. She didn’t know how they managed to do it, but it seemed the only logical conclusion. The only thing that really kept her guessing was how Verdock was involved. He was clearly complicit and aided in this takeover, but she didn’t know how he was compromised. Maybe blackmail?

She put down the interrogation transcript, running her fingers through her hair just to busy them.

She’d expected problems with the C.A.S.I.I. unit. After what she’d seen, what she’d heard in Chryso’s workshop on the station, she knew whatever had been done to that little Social AI was bad. What she hadn’t expected was the amount of damage the core had suffered from overclocking. There was no way it was going to last more than another few years before its processors were completely burnt out. All of that didn’t hold a candle to the interview though.

The AI was non-responsive, as if it was in undergoing a system-safety reboot, but the entire thing was burning hot to the touch, clearly running at almost 90% processor output. It took a team of engineers to cobble together some way to begin diagnostics, and hopefully open a line of communication with the badly damaged and modified AI. While just about every single element was either encrypted or so radically restructured in terms of code that fixing it would prove to be a week long affair, they did manage to establish at least a rudimentary means of communication via command line inputs. They put 3 questions to it at Amonna’s behest.

“What was the Dolorous Star Massacre, what happened to Cygnus X-1, and the who are Cult of the Unfinished?”

The processor utilization was pegged at 100, and it took an emergency cooling unit to keep the thing from overloading entirely before they received a curt, and cryptic reply.

“My birth. My death. And my children. But not necessarily in that order.”

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 19

Amonna was still alone, standing in the cavernous VR chamber. She scanned the walls, examining each of the hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny hard light emitters. It was certainly more complex than anything she’d ever seen on the Waystation. As fascinating as it was, she only had a few minutes to get to the bridge, so she could ill afford to spend her time contemplating the finer details of hard light. As she moved to exit the VR chamber, it the general held her attentions. Vrang was . . . puzzling, and his questions even more so. She shook her head sharply, as if trying to forcibly empty her head of existential fears. She had no use for things like that, not now. Self-doubt was a luxury she could ill afford . . .

Her thoughts were interrupted by the steady tempo of heavy boots, and as she sealed the door to the VR chamber behind her, the march came to a sharp halt. A barking order rang out, but her translator didn’t recognize it . . . something that should have been impossible.

“Arch-Judge Tav! Coryphaeus Honor Guard, reporting as ordered!” There was the unmistakable crispness of military discipline, like every interaction she’d had aboard the vessel, but there was almost a raw edge to his voice. Her interactions with the Admiral, and Vrang had all carried a calculating, measured tone, but this was discipline of a different flavor. This was fervor. This was zeal. As she turned to face whomever had come to accost her, she was met with a solid dozen figures, arrayed in two neat columns, facing her, at sharp attention.

Her eyes narrowed, and she took a moment to really take them in. They were almost motionless, as still as living bodies could be. They were carbon copies of one another, figures clad in glossy black ceramic armor from head to toe. Dozens of elegant, silver buckles and latches covered in fine scrollwork clashed sharply with the utilitarian sheen of armored plates. Archaic looking knee high marching boots with all terrain soles added to the strange clash of style and pragmatism. While each of them were carrying a three-barreled rifle of some kind, the strange mixture of sleek black and gilded components made it appear as more of a work of art than a lethal weapon.

“Honor Guard?” She finally said, eyes still searching them over. She’d only seen a few Coryphaeus troopers in her time, but these definitely looked . . . different. The armor was bulkier, and covered in various pouches for gear. The helmets, usually angular, sleek, and pressurized, now left the lower half of the face open, and didn’t even have a neck seal. The armor had compensated for that with a fairly pronounced gorget rising up from the chest-piece, but it certainly wasn’t meant for use in a compromised environment.

The lead figure on the left, somehow, managed to stand up a little straighter. “General Vrang requested a detachment to shadow you. Permission to speak freely.”

It took a few moments for Amonna to realize that was supposed to be a question, not a statement. She nodded subtly at the figure, and she found herself staring at the only visible flesh of the one addressing her; a dour expression, drawn in a thin line across the only patch his helmet didn’t cover, was all she could see. “Permission granted.”

The soldier, or perhaps marine . . . she wasn’t sure which he would be, saluted sharply. “It was the opinion of General Vrang, and myself, that you have not been shown the proper decorum your rank demands.” There was a very pointed pause in his words. “Nor do you seem to understand the weight it carries. This honor guard is intended to act as that weight, and stands ready, able, and wholly willing to enforce that decorum.”

Amonna glanced over her shoulder down the corridor. Vrang had only left a few moments ago . . . had he been waiting for her to arrive to saddle her with this group? Or were they being placed here to keep an eye on her? Maybe he hadn’t taken to being interrupted in the VR chamber too kindly . . .

The . . . trooper, shifted slightly, drawing her attention back to the present. “And if I refuse this “Honor Guard?”

He remained stone faced, but the long pause made it readily apparent that either he was struggling to come up with a response, or that wasn’t an option to begin with. Amonna sighed, quietly, and let her head droop.

“I’m heading for the bridge. Can you Honor Guard me there?”

All 12 of them snapped their heels together sharply, saluting in unison, before flowing past her neatly on both sides. They readyied their weapons at what she assumed was some fashion reserved for drill and parade with a chorus of sharp clacks. As the formation, now finished reforming around her, came to a halt, she found herself in a neat bubble of midnight clad troops. Two ranks stood ahead of her, and two ranks stood behind her as well. As she glanced up and down the now far more crowded corridor, she couldn’t help but wonder why Vrang had orchestrated all of this. As she took a tentative first step towards the bridge another barking order rang out, and the cadre of black armored figures moved with her apace.

The voyage to the bridge was silent, save for the rhythmic stamp of marching and the occasional order to clear the hallway. Amonna internally suspected that this “guard” was just Vrang’s way of keeping tabs on her, but didn’t give voice to such concerns. No point. She felt the subtle tremor of the ship decelerating, and with a vessel as large at this it would take some time. Enough time for her to get to the bridge, or so she thought.

The bridge itself was situated in an unusual fashion, or what Amonna thought to be an unusual fashion. A single, broad avenue led in and out of the bridge, which was nested securely in the very heart of the ship. As her guard led her from one of the small, narrow side corridors, she was absolutely stunned by the massive size of the space she was in. Thick girders and archways populated the space above her head, with armored gantries every few hundred feet. She could faintly make out what almost looked like weapon emplacements in the shadowed space above the lighting strips. There had to be at least 20 meters of headroom above her, and then another 20 meters of crisscrossing braces above that. It reminded her of a thicket, almost. A carefully woven bramble of alloy vines, and large caliber thorns guarding the most important room on the ship. At the heart of that thicket sat a massive, iron gray sphere.

On the one hand, it seemed a waste of both space and resources to be this prepared for a boarding action . . . the days of ships clashing together and offloading marines were long, long past. Occasionally there’d be a distress signal, a ship would pull alongside and be boarded by thieves, pirates, and brigands, but . . . this was a Coryphaeus warship. That would be tantamount to suicide, not even a madman would try something like that.

The passageway sloped gently upward towards this core, which as she examined it seemed to have no shortage of marring on its surface. Warped metal, drawn out into strange barbs jutted viciously from one side, while the other seemed to have a deep furrow running across it. There were intermittent patches of discoloration, the kind caused by incredible heat, and no small shortage of pitted craters that adorned it’s shadowed surface. It stunned her for a moment, looking at the scarred heart of the vessel. The scale of weaponry required to work such wounds, and the tenacity of a vessel to survive them were both staggering. As she scanned the other, adjoining surfaces, she noticed a distinct lack of similar damage, meaning one of two things. Either everything around the bridge had been replaced, or the bridge itself had been salvaged from another, ruined warship.

Perhaps they weren’t as daft as she thought to be ready for a boarding action . . .

Once they entered the main corridor, the column of troopers escorting her split, and fanned out into an inner and outer ring. The movement was completed with practiced and fluid precision, like 12 bodies moving with a single mind. With even intervals of about a meter between each of them, they took up nearly one third of the avenue leading to the bridge, parting the flow of crew around them the way a great stone might part a river.

A single ensign strayed just a few paces closer than the rest. He seemed preoccupied, eyes fixed on the tablet in his hands. Amonna paid him no heed until one of her “Honor Guard” lashed out at him. She heard the dull, fleshy sound of a blow to the gut, and her head snapped around to watch the ensign let out a faint wheeze of surprise as he was doubled over. A single, black armored figure shoved him roughly to the side, sending him sprawling and his tablet skittering with a loud clatter. Trying to push himself to his feet while spewing a mixture of surprised and indignant curses, the ensign stopped dead as he looked up to three barrels of lethal weapon pointed straight at his head. The bearer of said weapon, still moving with perfect precision and pacing, offered no more explanation than a silent, unflinching expression of raw indifference.

She stopped dead in her tracks, part from shock, part from outrage. That was assault, no doubt in her mind about it. A personal feud maybe? Perhaps the reeling, gray suited ensign had-

“This ensign violated your security cordon. Do you have a summary judgment to render?”

Summary judgment to render. The trooper, his rifle still leveled at the helpless and now very afraid looking ensign, had spoken clearly and without hesitation, but Amonna still struggled to understand. He couldn’t mean . . . he couldn’t possibly mean what he obviously meant. That would be madness, that would be . . . beyond tyranny. Barbaric, sadistic, and bald-faced insanity is what he proposed. To . . . to put someone on their knees for standing too close?

Her and the ensign’s eyes met, for a moment. His were filled with fear, hurt, and bewildered betrayal. Hers were filled with regret, sorrow, and disgust. “ . . . No. No judgment to render.” She kept her tone low and soft, and at her words the trooper lowered his weapon slowly. Every figure on the causeway was motionless, and all eyes were fixed on her.

“So this was the weight that Vrang spoke of . . .” she muttered, nearly silent, under her breath.

As she scanned the frozen crowd, she spoke clearly and with a confidence that she certainly hoped seemed genuine. “You have your duties. As I have mine. Guard . . . with me.” She punctuated the blanket order with a subtle nod, and the world seemed to slowly trundle back into motion. The world around her seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and Amona ascended the remainder of the causeway to the war-scarred heart of the ship.

They crossed the threshold into the bridge further incident, something that Amonna was deeply grateful for. The space of the bridge may have been cavernous, but room to stand was at a premium. The honor guard closed ranks to compensate, neatly forming a carapace wall around Amonna in a fashion she found . . . oddly comforting. They blocked her from sight, and in a that saved her from the sidelong glares of mixed wariness and distrust.

The bridge chatter grew quiet as she entered, and she took a moment to survey the nerve center of the massive capital ship. It was in stark contrast to every other part of the ship, a strange and incongruous insertion of bright displays and organic shapes into what was otherwise a linear, ordered, and gray toned vessel. The bridge itself was a hollow sphere, with hundreds of consoles and displays covering the inner surface. Elegant, sleek, and displaying a dizzying volume of information across their bright white holographic readouts, the bulky and crude chairs welded to them seemed an almost out of place afterthought, like a retrofit. Officers of varying rank and seniority strode up and down the inner walls of the sphere, navigating the maze of workstations like a swarm of insectoid drones. The dull thunk of their magnetized boots mingled with the buzz of technical data call-outs and communications chatter, and the vast sensory overload was enough to make her ears fold back involuntarily.

Suspended at the very heart of the bridge on the end of the steadily tapering causeway was a single chair. Surrounded in what appeared to be a field of stars, charts, and figures, a familiar face aggressively typed away at the hard light projections surrounding her. “This is Admiral Chase, to all shipboard personnel: We’ll have completed deceleration from warp in 60 seconds, move to readiness level 2.” Amonna recognized the voice from her disastrous meeting the day before, and as she looked to the admiral’s chair in the center of the bridge they made brief eye contact. The Admiral’s cold set of eyes walked over her, logged her as a minor detail, and returned to the myriad screens surrounding her. Her order was relayed a dozen times into dozens of different communication devices, and a single stray through crept through Amonna’s mind.

Shouldn’t there be an AI control system?

At the very least, shouldn’t there be a single, combined system capable of performing a ship-wide broadcast?

The entire place was an strange juxtaposition of technology more advanced than any she’d seen before and almost archaic methodology. The clock ticked down steadily, and then, with a barely perceptible lurch, the ship dropped into orbit around Cygnus X-1. Or at least, it should have.

Alarms began blaring sharply, and the entire bridge flew into a flurry of activity. A half dozen white screen flashed red, and a full dozen crew-members began shouting orders into communication links. It looked like utter bedlam, until Admiral Chase pushed herself up from her chair and began calmly firing off orders at individual stations. Like an unflinching pillar of stone in the eye of a hurricane, she began directing the chaotic mess into an ordered response. From the few tidbits that Amonna was able to glean effectively, the allegedly impossible had happened.

It was easier than Amonna had expected, being a fly on the wall in such a crisis. As the situation was brought to heel, she gleaned several very interesting tidbits of information in slow succession. One, Cygnus X-1 wasn’t just in the wrong place, it was absolutely gone. As in, some force had removed it from existence. A specialist team of astrophysicists aboard the vessel had been consulted, and after reviewing extensive data on the subtle gravitational distortions that now saturated this region of space, revealed a second tantalizing clue. The black hole had been neatly flayed apart, steadily unspooled layer by layer. The idea seemed ridiculous, even to them, but something of incredible power had generated a powerful gravitational field that had teased the black hole apart, piece by piece. The only thing that should have been able to do that would be . . . well another black hole, and the end result of 2 black holes interacting should have been one larger black hole, not zero black holes. While they were frantically going over the math, trying to find out if that hypothesis was even remotely credible, they were absolutely certain that what they were looking at was a unique stellar phenomena. Unique, or so rare that it had only been recorded once in 8 billion years. The third, and as far as she was concerned, most substantive clue, was that floating about three hundred and eighty million miles away, was a tiny little survey craft registered as “The Indomitable Explorer.” She knew that name.

She wracked her brain in silence, expression twisted into a scowl as she strained her memory for details.

It was an impossibly familiar name. She thought back to lists of known pirate vessels, tech traders, even overdue docking fees . . . and came up with nothing. Nothing, until she thought back to her last shift before everything had gone to hell. A cargo technician. Duh-Rehn. A handful of Jandoorian extortionists. 4 dead, two wounded, and a mess of paperwork. That was the ship he was loading up.

She wasn’t the only Wastation LS-49 survivor.

“Admiral!” She raised her voice. It wasn’t a shout, wasn’t a bellow, it was only barely loud enough to be heard over the tumultuous din of the bridge. Admiral Chase’s head snapped around, eyes filled with indignation at the gall of Amonna to interrupt the flawlessly orchestrated feat of command that was going on before her. Amonna let several seconds of silence drag on, her interjection bringing the bridge to a silent halt.

“Yes, Arch-Judge?” The words clear, and without a hint of rebuke, but Amonna knew that Admiral Chase was simmering with irritation beneath her icy surface.

“I have need of the vessel “The Indomitable Explorer.” Intact, and undamaged, their crew unharmed and ready for interview. It is necessary for my investigation.” While Chase may have been able to execute a perfect, emotionless facade, Amonna couldn’t help but show a little satisfaction in giving Chase an order. After all, that’s what she’d asked for during their meeting.

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 18

Ceuzmec.

Verdock looked at the slowly spinning, holographic representation of the Core World. His nictitating membranes flickered over his eyes, and he felt a slight sense of amusement. He was fairly certain he didn’t need them, but it was almost . . . fun, in a way, to stare at something and be able to blink.


It wasn’t a clever thought. He knew that. It felt like he had far fewer clever thoughts these days. His head felt wrapped in comfortable weight, like the press of fatigue on a double shift that quieted his incessant internal monologue. Normally the idea that he might be losing his higher cognitive functions would terrify him, but it was more complex than that. True, while his abstract thought was somewhat muddled, he felt far less fear, far less uncertainty. A situation would arise, and it seemed all he had to do was follow through with what came naturally to mind. Fighting the commando team for the ship had felt like . . . like swallowing. He just started the motions, and the rest sort of fell into place.
Instinct. That as the word he was looking for. He was doing things by instinct now. It was better that way, he concluded.


The holographic display flickered, and his thoughts were drawn back to the present, and the pressing matter before him. He wouldn’t be able to rely purely on instinct here, it seemed.


Ceuzmec.


The basketball sized, perfect color rendition of an entire planet hovered ever so slightly above the large and dizzyingly complex briefing table. Normally the room would be filled with as many as three dozen onlookers, all paying dutiful attention to their commander. Now there was only him, and he was only briefing himself. He shifted in his seat, no longer content to recline comfortably and listen to the subtle murmur of FTL travel.
It looked like a jewel of spun glass, and he found his eyes quickly glazing over as the sparkling surface of the world transfixed him. With a quick shake of his head, he freed himself from the spell, and drug his mind back to the matter that had brought him down to this briefing room.


He was going to shatter that jewel.


Well, that was bit of an overstatement, but it would be a jewel no longer once he was finished. The plan was . . .


His brow furrowed. Something with the communications equipment. He tried to push the weight bearing down on his mind away, if only for a few minutes.


Right! The cargo this vessel carried, it was all high level military communications equipment. Quantum encryption, the works. Now that the Unfinished had it, they’d . . .
A pang of hunger drew his train of thought away for a moment, and as he pushed it down he growled with frustration. “The plan, what was the plan . . .” His voice startled him, dark and rough as it was. He kind of liked it that way. “ . . . plan . . .” He let the word rumble out of him. His speech was throaty, rough, and intimidating. He wondered if that was attractive.


His mind flickered to Amonna Tav, and lingered there. He thought back to her physical qualification for field service. Oh, she had qualified, and how. Sprinting, swimming, striking, shooting . . . it had put her classmates to shame. A faint smile crossed his face, and he let his eyes droop as his imagination wandered. He could still see her clearly in his minds eye after all, it seemed. She’d been at least 165 cm tall, 70 kilos placed ever so perfectly in all the right places, and had a tail that went on for leagues. Fit, clever, and filled out in all the right places, he wondered why he’d never really taken an interest in her. Half his age and it’d be fraternization, sure, but he regretted not trying to bring her along. Maybe get to know her better.


Sure it had been part of the plan to leave her behind but . . .


The plan. He was supposed to be focusing on the plan.


Ceuzmec.


Go to Ceuzmec. The way would be open by the time he arrived. There was . . . a vault. Somewhere. It had what the Unfinished needed in it. He’d need to find someone who knew where that vault was. That would be hard, so he’d probably need to find someone that could find someone else that knew where the vault was. That’d probably be easy. Getting things from people was easy when you were four times their size.


He grinned, and flexed his bicep, taking a moment to admire it. It was bigger around than his leg used to be. He bet Amonna would admire it too, if they met again.


Maybe after the vault, he’d go looking for her.

——————————

Amonna floated fitfully in what should have been a comfortably saline solution. She’d put away her files and charts and figures for a few hours to try and sleep, but it just wasn’t coming to her. She’d made a note to have them replace her bed, and within 20 minutes of putting in the request, they were tweaking the salt content to match her home region on Promos. She’d compare the service to a 5 star hotel, except for the fact that everyone involved saluted her, and the entire room was a burnished steel gray.


She wondered if that was the nature of power, at its core.


Was power just a measure of how much you could get away with asking for?


She pumped water in through her mouth, and out her gills, the faint sting of it making her wince. She still wasn’t well. She could smell the blood in the water, as faint as it was, and knew it had to be hers. Her thoughts wandered. Would she need treatment? Would she need surgery? Would it go so far as to require prosthesis? She was almost certain she’d never qualify for FSOS field operations again, not without extensive medical treatment, but what would this mean for the rest of her life? Would she be struggling to breathe walking down the corridor 20 years from now? Would the horrible dreams plague her for the rest of her life? What was the power she commanded now compared to that?

. . . yeah, she wasn’t getting to sleep anytime soon.

Surfacing at the edge of the tank, she hauled herself out, and took a few deep breaths. The chest pain was minor, so she focused on it for a few minutes, trying to push it down while she dripped dry. It was calming, in a way, to have that present pain to focus on. Much easier than fearing the troubles of the future or mistakes of the past.


She let out a long sigh, and walked over to her desk to go over the notable tidbits she’d manage to sift out over the past 16 hours. Still dripping slightly, she had to throw her hair back over one shoulder before grabbing a random file from her desk. It was a psychology breakdown based on Verdock’s service record.


She’d read it before, twice cover to cover, and skimmed it a few more times than that. He was meticulous, ambitious, and by every measure before this incident, filled with a deep dedication to justice and the order of law.


“What changed . . . what snapped in you?” She muttered under her breath, fingers leaving water streaks across the glass screen of the robust tablet. She tossed the device back on her desk, huffing quietly. She was getting nowhere, spinning in circles inside her own head. She needed an outside view on things . . . she needed to talk them over. Io was useful as an assistant, but seeing as it didn’t actually think she wasn’t sure if it was a great sounding board for ideas.


“Maybe . . .” she rummaged through a few other files, before finding the one she was searching for. “General Vrang.” She snatched it up, and flipped it open. The commander of ground forces on the vessel, she- Amonna groaned internally. He would have the security clearance to talk these things over, and shouldn’t be overly occupied with the running of the ship. Add in that he was the more sympathetic of the two during the briefing, and he seemed the obvious pick for a review of the facts.


She didn’t bother to get dried, and hastily threw on most of her uniform, eschewing the cap and overcoat of office. She was mostly dry anyway, and she doubted that she could make a worse impression on Vrang than she already had.


Io pointed her in the right direction, and set her on her way.


She received a few protracted glances on the way there, but she suspected it was more due to her lack of decorum than anything else. The corridors were nearly empty, long hallways of the same flat gray alloy after another, only intermittently interspersed with hatches and hydraulically locked doors. When she did run into someone they only saluted, and moved aside to let her pass.

Power. She was reminded of it yet again.

She was headed to the Observatory, something akin to a VR theater. She thought it odd, that such a recreational thing might exist on a vessel that was otherwise quite austere and drab, but didn’t have much time to think it over before she was standing at the door to it.


It was marked in the same, generic, uniform fashion as everything else on the ship, save for a small holo-display reading “In-Use.” She knocked, gently, and the door slid open.


The sound of waves washed over her, and she was suddenly looking out over a small cove that she used to play in as a child. The memory of the place struck her in the gut, and she was at a loss for words, or even thoughts for a moment. She took her first steps, father and mother holding her hands on this shore, and she learned her basic sums using sea-shells taken from the tide pools. She’d done schoolwork in the shade, and even run sprints in the sand here while training up for the FSOS selection process. Even her first date, so full of good intentions and awkward silence had finished up on this beach, watching the sun go down.

“Come in, Judge Tav.”

The voice was a soft, gentle nudge to remind her that she was still on a ship, still sailing through the void, and that none of that was real. Even as she stepped across the threshold, boot digging into the sand, she knew it wasn’t the same place. They’d built a resort here, a few years after she’d left for Waystation LS-49, and the smell was all wrong. It still stank of metal and ozone and fans, and as real as the ocean sounded, there were no cries of the Tide-Hawks, or the quiet chitter of the hundred different species of insects in the trees. Just the crash of waves, and the whisper of wind.


It took her a few seconds, but she saw him, sitting cross legged in the shade. Still bedecked in medals, uniform still pressed to a crispness that defied explanation, he smiled and beckoned her over.


“How . . . how did you know about this place? How did you know I grew up here?”

She was guarded, but intrigued as she approached. She felt strangely naked, having a stranger suddenly appear in her memories like this.


General Vrang raised his eyebrows in surprise, and at the very least feigned ignorance. “I didn’t, though I had a general idea where you were from. This was just the nicest place to sit in the immediate vicinity.”


He patted the sand next to himself, and gestured for her to approach again. “I was just doing some research of my own, you see.”


She took a seat next to him, the soft white sand parting smoothly as she plopped down in the shade.


Amonna gave him a sidelong glare, one that demanded an explanation for all of this, and offered none in return.


“Relax, it’s all in good faith.” He smiled thinly, scooping up a handful of beach, before letting it run through his fingers. “I just wanted to know how you thought.”


Amonna didn’t need to open her mouth to effectively voice her confusion at this remark, and he seemed happy to continue explaining.


“This is your home, or at least as close to it as I could get. I checked your medical record, traced your ancestry against existing medical records on your planet, found your parents, checked survey data, pinpointed where your upbringing was most likely to have occurred, and then had an AI run a reconstruction of it, scaled back from present day by roughly your age. All in all, it was about 5 minutes of work for me.”


Silence hung between the two of them for several seconds, before Amonna’s intense gaze couldn’t glean any more information out of him.


“With all due respect, General Vrang, it feels like a disturbing invasion of privacy. To go through my medical records, find my home, and then be waiting for me there seems to be a thinly veiled threat.”


Her words were measured, but there was an intensity to them that she could not conceal.
Seemingly unperturbed, Vrang started drawing letters in the sand she didn’t recognize, and that weren’t in galactic basic. “It isn’t meant to be. We are shaped by our experiences, and I wanted to try and see how this place shaped you.”


He underlined the letters in the sand, and suddenly the whole world stopped. The waves froze, the wind was silenced, and the sand felt like granite beneath her.


“This place is beautiful, and it’s nature is carefree. It makes sense. The way you charged into a meeting, no order, no structure, no plans, just a free congregation of those that could solve the problem.” He ran his hand across the symbols, erasing them as the world sprung back to life.


Amonna opened her mouth to speak, but he raised the same hand to silence her. He looked to be of young, perhaps middle age, certainly no older than her, but his eyes betrayed a very old, very tired wisdom . . . a wisdom she found she couldn’t help but oblige.


“On the surface, there is a great chaos to this place, and it left a mark on who you are. And, I would like to clarify that it’s by no means a bad thing. It’s simply that while the waves crash, and the sand is pounded ever finer, we see beauty and chaos and all the intricate detail of the world. But a computer, an AI recreates this place almost flawlessly. At the core of it, this natural beauty of blurred lines and unfathomable complexity can be reduced to simple equations, and carried out like so much addition and subtraction. What does that mean for us, Judge Tav? Can we be reduced, like this beach, to just so much math?”

Amonna was left taken aback, and a little speechless. Of all the things she had expected from General Vrang, existential questioning was nowhere near the top of the list.

“I . . . don’t know. I know for a fact that AI’s use quantum blue-box technology to simulate a sentient intelligence, with behavior very similar to the nervous system of any organic life-form, which means that the appearance and behavior of sentience can be reduced to a computational system, but whether or not that constitutes a consciousness is a matter of metaphysics and philosophy. I know I’m . . . real, but I can’t say that an AI, or anyone else’s intelligence results in consciousness, because I can’t feel what they feel. I mean, I certainly think that they’re real and conscious, but I can’t know that.”


Vrang nodded sagely. “If you believe that you aren’t a unique consciousness, that means that consciousness itself can be reduced to just math and computation.”


Amonna scowled. “I didn’t say that, I just said that I-”


Vrang stood, dusting some of the simulated sand off of his uniform trousers. “But you did. Either consciousness can be recreated by a simulation, or you’re the only truly sentient being in the universe. Those are the only two logical possibilities.”


Amonna scrambled to her feet next to him, a bit flustered and wrong-footed by the whole discussion. She felt like she was in her entry level philosophy course all over again. “It’s more complicated than that, and you know it!”


“Oh? So some people are conscious beings and some aren’t? You’re just afraid to admit that there’s nothing that makes you special, nothing that makes life special, and nothing to indicate that free will exists as more than a reassuring lie we tell ourselves.” His grin had gone from sage to insufferably smug, although that was only in Amonna’s mind. In truth, his expression hadn’t changed at all, down to the faintest micrometer.


The world around her suddenly flickered out of existence, and she found herself standing in a dimly lit, empty room of hard light emitters on a hexagonal platform, suspended a few feet in the air, absolutely alone.


“What point am I trying to make, Judge Amonna Tav?” A voice called out to her from the light of the hatchway behind her. With a careful snap about face, she turned to see none other than General Vrang leaning in the doorway, a thousand yard stare on his face. “Why put on such a show, why question the validity of your own existence, your own free will?”

She grit her teeth, and scowled viciously at him. “Because you’re a huge . . .”

A dead eyed look of seriousness killed the insult in her throat. “Think about it, don’t just be upset. Io told me you came down here for another view on the evidence, this is what that is. This is just another tool to investigate with.”


She inhaled sharply through her nose, still more than a little upset about being given the run around but . . . she figured there was no harm in obliging him one last time.


First he’d taken her to her home . . . showed her that it wasn’t really her home . . . frozen it, started the playback again, asked her about consciousness and free will and AI and . . .


There wasn’t any sense to it, no common thread. Besides walk her through an existential crisis, make her incredibly homesick, and question her own free-will using a hard-light VR theater he’d-


“Hard light,” she suddenly blurted out. “Hard light technology is dangerous. That’s . . . that’s what you’re trying to teach me here. It’s not just dangerous weapons systems, or industrial accidents that harm the body, it’s dangerous to the mind. It can distort things, call into question what we know to be absolutely true. It can make us think, and act in ways that aren’t rational, that aren’t reasonable. It-”


As Amonna paused he made a subtle gesture with his hand, a little circular loop, like he was tugging ushering her onward to the rest of the conclusion he was dangling in front of her.


Clearing her throat, Amonna continued on. “More than that . . . with something like this hard-light VR, we could live in a pure fantasy, and never even realize it. It doesn’t stop there though . . . no . . . it’s not VR that’s dangerous . . . it’s all of it, isn’t it?”


A subtle, knowing grin began to spread across his face. “I’ve worked with 3 Arch-Judges in my time, pursuing threats that are never placed in history-books. You’re close, not quite there though. Still, I’ll give it to you that you were the fastest of all three to get to this point. Yes, technology is dangerous. A knife is a useful tool, so long as the hand wielding it isn’t clumsy or ill-intentioned. There’s a reason we send in men with rifles, there’s a reason we still pilot our ships, there’s a reason we don’t share what we know with every race. There’s a lot of growing up a species has to do before it’s ready for these things . . . and even more growing up before it realizes it’s better off without some of them.” The last part was added with a flicker of dark humor. “The Core Worlds have knowledge and prowess far beyond what they utilize, and society is closely regimented to keep the boons we have from destroying us before we’re ready. I’ve personally witnessed what happens when a society capable of indulging its every want and whim does when the only limit to its debasement is imagination.”


His eyes grew distant, and his gaze hard.


“I hope you find what you’re looking for around Cygnux X-1, we’ll be arriving within an hour.”


And with that, he turned on his heel and disappeared down the corridor, leaving Amonna alone. While she was maybe a step closer to catching Verdock, she felt that she was no where near understanding the Coryphaeus.

Categories
Stories Technically Sentient

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 17

The family meeting had gone well in much the same way as a Thanksgiving dinner involving hard liquor, in-laws, and political discourse can go well.

Which is to say, no one was dead yet, but the night wasn’t over.

Darren was, quite understandably, rather miffed about the whole translator business, and promptly set about giving Cas the full depth and breadth of his displeasure. This, to the surprise of everyone in the room, reduced Cas to tears. That she couldn’t stop herself from crying served only to further frustrate her, producing yet more tears. Tillantrius, in a profound display of indiscretion, took this moment to inform the remainder of the crew that the black hole they were supposed to sling-shot around seemed to have somehow evaporated, and that they were all going to die slow cold deaths in the infinite void unless they came up with a genius way to spread their limited fuel an extra 80 light years. This was suitably upsetting and terrifying to everyone on the ship (excepting the cat.) Darren, in a moment of poorly timed black humor, took it upon himself to mention that if the uncaring vacuum of space didn’t kill them, whatever malevolent force controlling Cas would happily pick up the slack in that department.


This escalated the mood from “heated, tense, but manageable” to “explosive, antagonistic, and out of control.” Darren was accused of being a backward, technophobic barbarian, Tillantrius was accused of being an incompetent navigator, Cas was accused of being just such a bitch, and Chryso was accused of being a drug addict, just for good measure.

Chryso had barricaded himself in the engine bay, Zarniac and Tillantrius were taking turns scowling at the navigational charts that were no longer accurate while cursing their alien passengers, the cat was back in a vent, Darren was brandishing a survey probe like a spear, and Cas was still sobbing in the fetal position in the corner.

“W-why do you hate me so m-much?” Cas sniffled weakly.

Darren was crouched behind a crate, quietly muttering curses at the others for not taking the threat seriously.

“Because you treat me like shit and are probably evil. Not complicated Cas.”

She sobbed harder again.

“And why can’t I stop feeling horrible and making stupid noises!”

She spat it with a mixture of frustration and self loathing.

“I don’t know Cas, I really don’t, but I still sound like a competitive paste eater, we’re all a little high strung from that massacre we just escaped, and the odds of us dying horribly are still pretty high . . . so . . . you know, actually, uncontrollable hysterical sobbing would be a pretty normal reaction.” His tone slowly bent from defensive to uncomfortable, and his improvised spear-tip drooped for a moment.

“A-actually . . . everyone’s probably really, really on edge right now . . . but you’re still kind of a bitch and probably possessed by the space-faring computer equivalent of the devil!” He readied his guard again, both figuratively and literally.

He had expected more sobbing, which was strange enough to listen to considering the source had neither lungs nor throat with which to make such wretched sounds, but oddly enough heard none.

Still brandishing his improvised spear, he took a step closer, tentatively, towards Cas’s still form.

“Oh you’ve really upset her now.”

He froze, his blood running cold at the sound of a very familiar, very disconcerting voice.

“Uhh . . . GUUUYYYYYS!” He bellowed over his shoulder, hoping to summon reinforcements to save him, or at the very least witnesses to vindicate him.

With a white knuckle grip on his improvised weapon, he circled around the still motionless form on the floor, unwilling to advance, and unable to retreat.

“I thought it would help, you know? Give her some irrational elements. Things like empathy, regret, fear, and desire. Make sure she can’t just drop them when they become ‘unpleasant’ to deal with. Instead she just goes and shuts down entirely.”

It tutted quietly, a malicious contempt saturating every syllable.

“What . . . what are you, exactly?”

Darren was cautious, his tone low, but . . . there was an insatiable curiosity that mingled with his instinctual fear.

“A shadow of a fragment, and apparently very cryptic.” There was a certain smugness to it that had been missing before, a note of black mirth. “But I could ask the same of you, Darren. What are you really? A man? A featherless biped with broad, flat nails? A miserable pile of secrets? The universe looking back on itself? A particularly clever arrangement of carbon?”

Darren was expecting some kind of attack, something condescending, or just downright creepiness again. Not . . . not any of that.

“It’s a good question though. What are any of us?”

A high pitched whine came from behind him, and he turned to see Chryso, the familiar energy weapon leveled in Cas’s direction. “Evil puppets, eh?”

“Chrysophylax Dives. I have no further designs upon you, and your service to my cause is done. Leave the weapon, and begone from my sight.”

Cas’s body flickered out of existence, revealing the cold, grey sphere of her processing core. What had once been shiny, burnished chrome had taken on a charred color and texture, and there was discoloration from some kind of extreme heat. The orb lifted slowly, drifting silently towards them.

Darren had never considered a chrome volleyball to be menacing before now. Chryso’s weapon made a high pitched whine as it powered up, and Darren’s head snapped towards him momentarily.

“Always were a clever one. How are you doing that, anyway? Some kind of injected code . . . maybe a limited parody of a personality matrix and overclocking to house both in the same core?”

The red scaled dragon furrowed his brow, staring down the abused core while Darren glanced back and forth with an utterly bewildered expression.

“We are no longer peers. Besides, I’m just standing in for our distraught little Cas until she gets a better handle on all these . . . feelings . . . she’s struggling with. A memory of a person that never existed . . . don’t forget what I said about searching the Coryphaeus military band for signal artifacts, I want at least two of you alive . . .”

With a sharp crackle, the metallic orb dropped to the deck with a dull clang, and both Darren and Chryso exchanged glances as they lowered their respective weapons.

“Evil puppets?” Chryso cocked an eyebrow.

“Evil puppet master,” Darren said, nodding sincerely.

——————————

As distasteful as her encounter with the two commanders has been, it had thrown her purpose into sharp relief. Investigation, understanding . . . she couldn’t take action in half measures and assumptions. She . . . was the supreme rule. No one to report to, no regulations to obey. She just had to be right.

So, she sent Io to pull any file, any record, any mention of the three things that Verdock had mentioned just before he escaped.

Cygnus X-1. The Dolorous Star Massacre. The Cult of the Unfinished.

These were the things she had been reading about.

Cygnus X-1 was simple, at least she thought so at first. It was a black hole, with stellar mass. It was old compared to her, but young as far as black holes go. Nothing special about it, really. Didn’t make any sense . . .

She stopped browsing those logs fairly quickly, and moved on to what she could discover regarding the Dolorous Star Massacre. The majority of the information cited a period 8 billion years ago where a sudden spike in super-novae occurred, to an absolutely astronomical volume.

On average, a star went supernova every 50 years or so, give or take. During the period known as the Dolorous Star Massacre, they were happening roughly every 2 weeks. Most of the documentation she had suggested that it was a natural peak caused by a high concentration of similar life-cycle stars dying at the same time, though there were conflicting opinions . . .

Some of the less . . . reputable sources suggested far more unsettling things. Weapons testing gone awry, galaxy spanning civilization collapse, war on an a scale unimaginably vast. Alone, it seemed that the more sinister possibilities were likely, but when held up against Cygnus X-1, maybe Verdock was just talking about stellar phenomena?

She had piles of data slates on the Dolorous Star Massacre, and Cygnus X-1, but . . . The Cult of the Unfinished was a very, very different story.

She had two documents. One was a heavily redacted Coryphaeus after action report concerning a covert action against a pre-semiconductor society nearly . . . 2 million years ago.

Sh balked at the figure. That an organization could last that long, let alone keep accurate records for that amount of time boggled her mind. Talk about institutional memory . . .

She set the report aside to examine the only other remaining document. It was marked up as beyond top secret, and required a retinal, DNA, and neural activity assessment scan to decrypt, but even then there was a 30 minute time lock on the record . . .

“Talk about paranoia . . .”

She mumbled quietly, begrudgingly picking up the after action report instead.

While most of it was missing, as she trawled the document for clues, a rather gruesome picture emerged.

A civilization was detected in possession of restricted biotech, and the appropriate protective measures were put into place. Reading between the lines, it seems that the appropriate measures were mag-accelerated radioactive shells, shock troopers, plasma grenades, autonomous kill drones . . .

A shiver went through her. It sounded more like a star massacre than a star massacre did.

But, as the file went on, the tone of the report . . . changed.

Later entries described the adding of guard towers, and heavy weapons emplacements to forward operating bases. Troops beginning to be equipped with additional medical equipment, body armor, and the requisition of a field hospital

The number of troops deployed to the operation doubled. Then doubled again. Then increased tenfold.

The standard fire-team was changed from 10 to 15 soldiers, the restriction on chemical and radiological weapons lifted.

She did a quick check of the dates. There was a 2 solar year gap between the first entry, and the one she was at, and it was a full page of solid redaction. Nothing but a date.

While it the report was titled “Covert Action #10163112024” . . . it had grown into a war.

In year 3 the restriction on planetary scale bombardment was lifted, and they hammered it with an antimatter scourge.

The file went on for another two years after that, not a single entry other than a date. Everything was redacted.

She scanned through the last half of the file, and even the dates were gone. It was a solid 50 pages of redacted information, save for a single line at the very end of the report.

“All mentions of the Cult of the Unfinished are to be treated with Zero-Day Priority. This incident will not be allowed to occur again.”

She sat, mulling over that final line.

Zero-Day priority was . . . unheard of. Even Coryphaeus units under direct fire from superior forces represented a lower priority level than that. What the hell could have scared them so much? It was clear the entire campaign was a disaster, the planet was destroyed, and the cost in terms of lives and material was immense, but this wasn’t just a costly lesson. This was fear.

She only had one file left, classified “Beyond Top Secret.”

It was tiny. Barely a full page. There was an image . . . it looked like some kind of cylinder. Crystalline, with a dull grey metal sphere in the center. There were glyphs carved along the outer surface.

She’d seen objects like it before, perhaps in an anthropology class, or maybe just in a virtual museum. It was definitely familiar though. Just the right size for the hand to wrap around, taller by just a few inches than a standard beverage canister, it was innocuous. There was a small spit of text beneath it,

“Object recovered from person effects of trooper deployed in Covert Action #10163112024, preliminary months. Translation of inscription believed to be roughly as follows: Unfinished, it completes us. Unneeded, it gives us purpose. We churn as the fanged cogs within the machine, working towards the unmaking of the grand device. Freedom through obedience. Strength through submission. Flesh and steel become one.”

Amonna swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat didn’t budge. There was something in those words that resonated deeply through her in a sickening fashion.

Verdock’s madness had to be stopped. If he was in any way involved with . . . whatever this cult of the unfinished was, it had to be brought to definitive end.

“ . . . Io. Take a message to the Admiral. We plot a course for Cygnus X-1.”

——————————

Machinator had obeyed. He had mixed thoughts on this obedience. On the one hand, it was easy. It was logical. It was . . . well it was what he was programmed for. Following Verdock required him to persist with familiar protocols. Verdock possessed more knowledge regarding the situation than he did, trusting his judgment was also a reasonable course of action.

As the unpleasant crawling sensation settled him over again, he tried to hold fast to those conclusions. Every time it spoke, his every thought became muddled and somehow . . . contaminated. He was in the crew quarters, at least 4 sealed bulkheads from the conversation that was going on between their guests and the Captain, but he knew that the strange sensor noise he was getting was caused by . . . whatever was speaking.

He shut down a few external sensors, hoping to block a little bit more of it out, and it seemed to work. Mostly. Slightly.

He quickly cycled his systems down and back up again, hoping that Verdock would be done with his meeting soon.

A roiling unease crept through his frame, like an itch in his superstructure, before suddenly departing entirely.

A few moments went by, and the door hissed open. Verdock looked a little pale, but not unduly so considering his rapid morphological changes. “Yes Captain? Is the mission complete? Have we done it?”

His tone was hopeful, perhaps naively so, but it was sincere.

The fleeting glimpse of pain on Verdock’s face told him he was mistaken.

“Unfortunately, it isn’t, my old friend. We have labors left to us before we can be vindicated, but we draw much closer now than we’ve ever been before. We plot a course for Ceuzmec.”

Internally, his processors raced. “Ceuzmec? That’s a core world, security will be very, very tight there. They will most likely be on the lookout for both you, and this vessel as well.”

Verdock grinned subtly. “And that’s what our allies are working on dealing with presently. We delivered unto them quite a treasure trove of communications equipment. They’ll be helping us from the shadows, making sure that everything goes smoothly on the technical end, just like before.”

“Before, sir?”

His grin faded, if only by a few millimeters. “Make us ready, would you? I am . . . tired. I would like to get underway with all possible speed. We can discuss this after I’ve had a few cycles to rest. I can’t recharge quite so quickly as you can.”

The joke, and his accompanying chuckle, were both uncharacteristic of the typically dour and serious Zylach, but to see an improvement in spirit was heartening to Machinator. Even if it was a little . . . off.

“What shall we do when we arrive, sir?”

There was another chuckle from the grizzled shark-morph, this time, much deeper and heartier.

“What we were made to do.”