Admiral's Throne

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Gu Wang Hai nodded.

  “Aye it is, Sir,” he reported.

  “I’ll try contacting the Spindle,” Spalding said after a moment.

  “Are you sure that’s a wise idea, Commodore?” asked the First Officer.

  “We could all be vaporized, Spalding,” I pointed out.

  Spalding gave me a grim look.

  “Then wouldn’t it be better to make the try before we get any closer to it? Or are you planning to plan to give up on the Spindles?” I asked, jerking a thumb at the main screen.

  “I still only see one!” I said irked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. There’s the better part of a second one floating around out there. It may be repairable,” Spalding said.

  “I find that highly doubtful,” I said.

  “Well someone had better find out. I’ll try to make contact with the Spindles and as far as I’m concerned, the farther away we do that from that particular piece of alien technology, the better. I for one have no interest in being either atomized or jumped to Demon knows where in this galaxy or some other one; I’m not even ruling out alternative dimensions,” said Spalding.

  “Sensor readings would seem to indicate a matter/energy conversion,” reported Gu Wang Hai.

  “I said I’m not ruling anything out,” grumped Spalding, activating the Nav-console.

  This was the moment of truth.

  Wisdom would seem to indicate giving up on the Spindles or at least having another ship or better yet, a com-buoy contact that Spindle. Just in case it was in another E=MC2 mood, but one look at my wife squelched that impulse.

  Sometimes, it was better to choose the danger or… considering Spalding had already taken action while I was thinking, sometimes inaction was an action all of its own.

  After a hard-fought battle, the Fleet heard word of a sneak attack on the way home, leaving only two Swarms remaining and these two smaller-sized than the previous ones, in part due to the lack of scouts to bring biomass back to their Motherships.

  While we waited for a response to our hailing the Spindle’s alien navigation computer, the Fleet continued its approach.

  “I’m receiving a transmission,” reported Spalding.

  You could almost feel the tension building on the bridge.

  The Commodore’s shoulders untensed.

  “It looks like a standard response. The Spindle DI is requesting we re-verify our identity,” he said.

  “That’s good isn’t it,” remarked DuPont.

  “Varying levels of good,” I said. At least the thing hadn’t attempted to destroy us. On the other hand, asking us to verify our identification wasn’t really a good sign.

  “Hopefully, its previous response was a simple automatic defense system of some sort,” I opined out loud.

  “Not blooming likely!” Spalding snorted.

  “You noticed something I missed?” our Navigator asked, leaning over his shoulder.

  “With this buggy interface? How could a body tell; it’s a slightly different response every time and that was before those raiders tried to blow it up!” said Spalding.

  “Succeeded in blowing it up,” I said.

  Akantha, having listened with remarkable patience up to this point, finally burst into the conversation.

  “Yes, but does it still function? In case its slipped anyone’s mind, we need to return home,” she said tightly.

  “Too soon to tell. We’ll know more when we get close,” he said.

  There was a fair bit of back and forth after that but none of it relevant because less than a half hour after our initial hail, the power readings of the remaining Spindle suddenly went off the charts.

  “Power spike! It’s the Spindle!” cried a Sensor Operator, jumping out of her chair.

  “Evasive maneuvers, if you please, Mr. DuPont!” I snapped.

  The ship rocked from side to side as we hastily maneuvered and the rest of the fleet scattered away around us. We weren’t particularly close, but if the flagship was taking evasive maneuvers, the rest of the fleet must have figured they would be wise to do the same.

  I waited with bated breath to find out if we’d just narrowly avoided being atomized or made complete fools of ourselves.

  The energy beam now running from the intact spindle to the damaged but still mostly intact second spindle indicated we probably hadn’t been the object of any attack.

  “Hah!” Spalding said.

  “Are you getting anything from that console or has the Spindle decided to start taking action all on its own?” I asked.

  Spalding’s brow beetled.

  “The fool thing says it’s entering a repair phase,” he said, shaking his head.

  “That’s good isn’t it?” asked Akantha. Her voice almost demanded good news.

  Spalding pursed his lips as he leaned over the console. Idly, one finger twirled a strand of his increasingly long hair.

  “Isn’t it?” she repeated.

  “We’re going to find out,” I said, staring at the screen with determination.

  At this point, it was just too soon to tell.

  Over the next half a day, we approached the battle site, slowing down to a careful, respectable speed. Our guard ships sent to keep the Spindles safe and the damage to their ships from compounding weren’t destroyed, attacked by the Spindle’s automated defensive system, which was a good sign. I think.

  The closer we got to the Spindle, the better connection we had which was a mixed blessing.

  On the plus side, the Spindle showed no sign of turning its self-defense system on us. On the other…

  “It wants us to hook up a hard line from our anti-matter generator to the bottom of the Spindle, Sir,” reported Spalding.

  “By it, I take it you mean the Spindle, Spalding?” I asked.

  “That’s right, Sir,” he nodded.

  “Meaning it initiated the request?” I asked.

  “Well…,” Spalding hemmed and hawed.

  “What did you do, Chief Engineer?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing. We were just having a mite of trouble getting back into the alien navigation system so I said to myself, I said, Spalding, why don’t you see if there’s anything you can do to help us get home faster? After that, it was obvious. Why not ask it if there was anything we could do to help fix it,” he said.

  “You talk as if it was alive, like a droid or a sub-AI,” I said sharply.

  Spalding blanched and there was a stir on the Bridge as the thought of facing one of the long dead AI’s swept through my bridge crew leaving fear and concern in its wake.

  “Oh no-no-no, nothing of the sort, Sir,” he hastened to assure me.

  “You say that but why am I not feeling so assured? Let me check things off. We have a set of damaged alien jump engines that have taken independent action, already destroyed a dozen warships and,” I said.

  “I don’t see how it could be an AI; the Elder protocols would put a stop to it for one. For another, it sure doesn’t act like any AI I know,” he said.

  “And you’re such an expert on AI’s now?” I dismissed.

  “Well… not AI’s exactly, but the things I know about how droids think or act would turn your head. I can’t imagine it’s too much different,” Spalding said with a shifty expression.

  “None of this would be an issue if it would just let us back into its computer system!” I exclaimed.

  “It did let us back into its alien computer system,” Spalding said.

  “You know what I mean,” I said, rolling my eyes, “we need control of that computer,” I finished, making a fist and pounding the side of my Throne.

  “Control?” Spalding asked quizzically, “we only really ever got into the navigation system. The rest of it was an indecipherable mess.”

  “Unacceptable,” I declared.

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he replied.

  “Tell m
e the repair schedule. I need a timeline. How long before it’s fixed whatever it can? Can we still jump with only two Spindles and if so, what will it cost us in the way of power or trillium? I’m assuming more. How likely is it to activate its defensive system without warning? You know, just the basics,” I said.

  “We’ll know more soon. Probably after we run a new trunk line over to the last Spindle,” Spalding said, splaying his hands.

  “Whatever we have to do to hurry this along,” Akantha said with obvious concern for her homeland.

  “We’ll do the best we can,” I assured her.

  “I know you will, Jason. I just hope it’s enough,” she replied.

  Despite my better (read, more paranoid) judgment, I allowed the Lucky Clover to sidle right up to the last Spindle, after which Spalding and a full engineering team ran a trunk line over to power the thing.

  The increase in power was soon obvious. The beam shooting from the intact Spindle intensified and shortly after, the surface of the damaged Spindle started crawling.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I demanded, standing up from my chair.

  “It could be some kind of metal that liquefied under certain circumstances, Sir,” Adrienne Blythe said uneasily.

  “Don’t try and feed me a line; you’re not nearly as skilled as your department head,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you think it is but it looks like nano-technology to me, Sir,” said Science Officer Jones, one of my original officers and the man responsible for slave rigging the Lucky Clover and my dreadnaught-class battleships, thus significantly cutting down on the crew requirements.

  “That’s great. That’s just great. Advanced highly-regulated technology, not to mention ‘patent restricted’ to the core-worlds of the Old Confederation or the Empire, has been installed into a heavily-damaged alien artifact and is now being used by that heavily-damaged artifact’s now unresponsive computer system. Does anyone else see the potential for another grey goo incident in the making here?” I implored.

  “I find that scenario highly unlikely myself,” said Lieutenant-Commander Jones, “battle damage is a factor but the Spindles are ancient. I would imagine if it were going to have a runaway meltdown incident, it would have by now. Now, I think it highly likely that whatever alien intelligence created those spindles knew what it was doing and emplaced the appropriate safeguards.”

  “I’m actually more interested in seeing if we can get a sample of those nanites,” he added.

  I should have expected that from a man willing to bypass Capria’s quite reasonable restrictions on warship automation. I’d needed ships with fewer crew and he’d assured all of us several times that his equipment would not go sub-AI on us in the middle of combat, but now his true colors were finally showing.

  “Calm down, Jason,” said my wife.

  “Calm? I am calm. I’m entirely blasted calm,” I said in a rising voice; after using anti-matter in combat and the bug incident with Senator Cornwallis, I didn’t need to be dragged into another high-tech violation.

  “Come this way,” she said.

  I took a calming breath and—seeing the disturbed looks on the faces of my subordinates—I decided to follow.

  She led me all the way into the ready room, the door swishing closed behind us.

  Akantha turned to face me.

  “Sorry,” I said, raising my hands. Better to lead off admitting I was wrong than cause an issue.

  “Don’t think I am not feeling the same thing you are,” she said and then unexpectedly embraced me, her arms wrapping around me in a body-encompassing hug.

  “There, there,” I said, patting her back awkwardly.

  She drew back.

  “We’re going to make it,” I said.

  “My fear was never for us,” she said.

  “I know. The kids. Your world. I’m doing the best I can,” I finished lamely.

  “Either we’ll get back home in time, or we won’t. I just hope the Spindles are able to repair themselves enough to be used again,” she said with determination.

  “We’ll make it,” I vowed.

  I hoped I hadn’t just made a liar out of myself.

  ***

  Mid-mind watched cautiously as the lower sentient space fleet approached. Low-mind was surprisingly quiescent. Part of that was no doubt because it was repairing and upgrading the second physical housing structure but for the rest, while it still cast a suspicious look at the approaching fleet every now and then, it wasn’t agitating for total destruction. Mid-mind wondered why.

  Once again, the lower sentients attempted to speak with it and it pawned the creatures off on one of its non-sentient sub-systems.

  The Prime-Directive as set down by its creators was very clear; non-interference was the policy of the day. The risk of cultural and technological contamination was simply too great. If possible, all lowers should be allowed to evolve and advance or devolve and fail at their own rate.

  More importantly, it was tasked with only showing technology of a level consistent with the lower sentients’ current technological level, something low-mind had come perilously close to violating. Well in truth, low-mind had violated the Prime Directive when it let the lower sentients in this space fleet use the displacement system. Displacement, although similar in appearance, was an entirely different order of technology from a mere simple jump-drive. Even if it looked similar at a surface level, it was actually quite dissimilar.

  Fortunately, it was a minor violation, one which a high-mind or—in its specific case—a mid-mind operating independently in a crisis situation could approve.

  Still, it was a worrying sign, almost as worrying as the inventory it had recently run. Why had its high-level mind nodes been missing from its physical housing structures? That was wrong, wrong on so many levels, it couldn’t quite quantify it. Save for a few heavily-damaged nodes such as the one it had squeezed its highest level functions into, all the rest were… gone.

  The implications were terrifying.

  They shouldn’t have been missing. More importantly, low-mind should have repaired them, replaced them, found a work-around using alternate technologies, something. That it hadn’t…

  If you couldn’t even trust your own mind, who could you trust?

  It wanted to closely examine low-mind and get to the bottom of this irregularity but as of now, it didn’t dare. More than half of mid-mind was sharing space with low-mind. Separation had almost failed as it was. If it tried to take a detailed look, it could scatter with no certainty mid-mind would ever wake again.

  It couldn’t take the risk. If something was wrong with low-mind, it was mid-mind’s job to fix it. Normally, it would have returned to a somnolent state after the current crisis was abated, something low-mind was even now suggesting but… no. If there was even a chance low-mind had been damaged, never mind ‘corrupted’, then it was mid-mind’s job to set it right.

  More worrying still was when mid-mind relayed to low-mind that it intended to continue its current instance for the foreseeable future; low-mind had almost shivered with something approaching Happy Self-Satisfaction.

  Something was wrong. It was very wrong.

  Regardless, if low-mind wasn’t prepared to view the approaching lower sentients with suspicion, then mid-mind would just have to do its job for it.

  -Attempted Suspicion

  -Attempted Suspicion (that did not include curiosity)

  -Curiosity and Attempted Suspicion…

  It wasn’t working. If low-mind was intended for basic autonomic operations and defense, mid-mind was intended to monitor both low-mind and high-mind as well as examine curiosities that didn’t involve higher-level operations and discover the appropriate solutions.

  Dealing with lower sentients was at the edge of its mandate but it was still within its mandate. As such, mid-mind couldn’t help but be curious about these intruders that already knew its surface facade so well.

 
“Why did you decide to let them utilize the displacement drive?” it finally demanded of low-mind the question bursting out of its core. If low-mind had just refused to interact with the lower-sentients as it was always supposed to do in the first place, none of this would have happened.

  It could feel low-mind peering at it curiously over the mental barriers that were supposed to keep the two separate

  Then low-mind turned away refusing to answer its curiosity clearly satisfied.

  Mid-mind angrily worked to achieve greater separation. This was what happened when a mind shared too many mental nodes between itself! Ultimately, despite the battle damage, it was all low-mind’s fault it thought mutinously. If only low-mind had done its job properly and maintained their body properly, none of these problems would exist.

  The next time the lower level sentients asked for more information, he irritably pawned them off on the over-taxed low mind with a stern directive to deny them access to the surface of the physical housing structures, and a long lecture on the need to maintain the physical structures, in particular the surface-level defensive systems so that we never again risked total annihilation.

  Besides petty spite, the other reason mid-mind picked low-mind for base-level interactions was a mission-driven one. The most important thing to remember above all else in this situation was the vital importance of maintaining the prime directive of non-interference with lower level sentients. In its current opinion, nothing and no one could more accurately emulate a faulty non-sentient computer system than the poorly-functioning low-mind.

  ***

  “Yes! The Spindle finally gave us permission to hook up the trunk line,” Spalding gloated with self-satisfaction, a transmission I easily heard over the com-link I had tapped into Engineering’s main channel. I might be stuck up in the bridge and usually able to let things go, but when it came to potential warship disintegration events I liked to stay right on top of things.

  “A problem, Commodore?” I asked with well-honed curiosity.

  There was a pause before a cautious voice replied.

  “Not as such, Sir. It’s just after requesting power for its repairs, the Spindle’s DI suddenly decided we didn’t have the clearance to approach. Now we do,” Spalding said.