by M. D. Cooper
“I need to get down there, but Thompson’s mention of limpet mines has rendered me a little suspicious.” Amavia languidly stretched her limbs, glad the many modifications to her body that had been made to facilitate serving as one of Bob’s avatars also made sitting on the bridge for hours at a time unlikely to cause discomfort.
“What about at the station down on the moon where the string is anchored,” Sabrina suggested. “It looks like ships come and go from there with some frequency.”
Amavia nodded as she regarded the display of the impound strand. “That’s probably the best bet. Though it’s four hundred and seven kilometers from the base to where the Garrulous Brooke is docked. That’s a long slog just to make sure Malachi still isn’t on the ship.”
“Jessica and her team are still working their way to Chittering Hawks’s command deck, but Usef has secured the ship’s crew and is taking them to where the Sexy is waiting,” Sabrina advised. “I’ll reach out to him and see if the Brooke’s crew might have an idea where their ship’s AI ended up.”
“Oh!” Cheeky exclaimed and pointed to a point midway up the strand. “Look at that, it’s some sort of cargo drone headed to that airlock cluster. I’m just going to sidle on up to it and we’ll use that as our in.”
“Works for me,” Amavia replied as she walked to the bridge’s door. “Stay safe up here. Hopefully everyone below behaves as well.”
“Oh, they will,” Sabrina said with a wink. “I can seal up all the holds they’re in and there are enough autoturrets down there to kickstart a star. Don’t forget, Trevor’s still down there. I’m pretty sure he can take on four hundred refugees in a pinch.”
Amavia laughed as she walked down the passageway to the ladder, wondering just how much energy it would take to kickstart a star. She found herself categorizing the different source materials a star-forming nebula might contain, and then what densities they would have and how much energy it would take to compress them into a star’s mass.
What am I doing? she wondered, laughing at herself, realizing she was a bit nervous.
Despite Amavia’s centuries of experience between her two source persons, neither of them had ever solo-infiltrated a facility before.
In fact, barring the recent adventures aboard the Hellespont and then Cerka station, Amavia had never experienced pitched combat outside of training exercises.
Maybe I should take backup.
Then the realization that she could provide her own backup struck Amavia.
The team aboard Sabrina had not possessed the resources to send in combat drones during their long flight back from the Perseus Arm, and they’d fallen into the habit of singular unit combat, but Amavia knew that wasn’t the only option.
Ylonda had trained at controlling multiple starships at once, and Amanda had managed vast swathes of the Intrepid.
Moving a few extra frames in combat would be a breeze.
Pleased she wouldn’t exactly be going it alone, Amavia strode through the corridors on the cargo deck and entered Cargo Hold 2, which was blessedly empty. She triggered the hidden armory door to open and walked into it as the two frames she’d summoned followed behind her.
Both were still unmodified from their stock appearance, and possessed the basic, androgynous look of a standard frame. Only the detail on their faces would clue someone in that they were AI frames and not automatons.
She reached into the two frames and divided her focus between them, giving them the designations ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’. Then she directed her otherselves to each step up to an armoring rack while she did the same, selecting medium stealth armor for all three.
The ship’s AI snorted.
Amavia couldn’t help but laugh at Sabrina’s insistent tone.
The rack completed its process and Amavia’s three bodies all selected helmets and weapons before exiting the armory.
Amavia laughed as she reached the port-side airlock.
Amavia laughed and shook her head, but didn’t reply, instead tapping the ship’s external feeds to see where they were in relation to the cargo pod Cheeky was shadowing.
It was a bulky, oblong thing, over two hundred meters long, just a hair smaller than Sabrina, currently seven kilometers away. The distance was decreasing as the pod applied braking thrusters, easing toward one of the large cargo airlocks on the impound string’s shaft.
And I’m an organic, Amavia reminded herself. Mostly. I need to be splat averse.
She calculated the perfect time to jump, and synced it with Cheeky so the pilot would be able to adjust the timing if she altered the ship’s vector.
The count sped down toward zero, paused for a moment, jumped up a few seconds, then resumed its march.
When the time came, Amavia had her three bodies clasp hands and leap out in unison. They raced through open space toward the drone, well aware that if they missed, it would be a long trip through the black before Cheeky could circle the ship around to grab them once more.
The drone grew larger beneath them, its corrugated hull marred by pits and scratches from long service. Amavia activated the a-grav units she had added to the armor, decreasing her delta-v until she and her other bodies were moving at just a few meters per second.
After what felt like forever, they hit the cargo drone’s hull with maglock boots activated, a thud transmitting up through their armor.
In Amavia’s experience, cargo drones usually had poorly calibrated impact sensors—more focused on detecting shifting loads then low-impact collisions with debris—and they were typically few and far between.
Hoping that was the case here, she didn’t wait before working her way across the drone’s surface toward the end that would dock with the impound strand.
Here we go, girls, she thought with a smile as the drone completed its final deceleration and eased into the strand’s docking arms.
She wished her extra bodies could reply, a bit
of companionship would be nice.
We really need more AIs on Sabrina’s crew.
JACKPOT?
STELLAR DATE: 05.03.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Command Deck 2A, Chittering Hawk Station
REGION: Virginis System, AST Space
Jessica signaled for Iris and Jinx to hold position in the corridor while she checked out the room on the right. Its door was recessed in a three-meter-deep alcove, and in that alcove stood an AST soldier and a combat mech.
There was just enough room to squeeze between them, and she did so, well aware that had she been wearing her armor, it wouldn’t have been possible at all.
Sidling up to the door, she deployed a passel of nano that eased through the small gap and into the room beyond. What she saw nearly took her breath away.
The room was filled with four long racks and covering the surface of every rack were AI core transport cases.
They came in all shapes and sizes, making it difficult to be certain exactly how many AIs were in there, but Jessica guessed it had to be at least a thousand. They were going to need something more than just three sets of arms to transport them all.
Turning around carefully in the alcove’s narrow confines, Jessica eyed the combat mech, and then the guard. The mech would be no trouble to disable as it appeared to be entirely robotic, but the human presented a problem.
Getting the AIs out would take some time, during which he might be required to check in. If they simply disabled him, they could find themselves getting visited by a host of Heegs in short order.
Subverting his mind to control his actions was also possible, but not something Jessica wanted to do, even if it was necessary to save thousands of AIs.
Deciding she had to breach his armor anyway, she carefully deposited breach nano on the man and the bot, and then slipped past them and back into the corridor.
Iris gave an appreciative whistle.
She could feel a mental glare from Iris—or imagined she could. Not having the AI in her head made her feel especially empty at times like this.
Jessica nodded.
* * * * *
Iris had separated from the group, circling around the storage room to get to an observation port where she could signal the Sexy without giving away her position. Jinx had taken up a position in the service corridor, waiting for Jessica’s order to start cutting through the bulkhead.
Jessica stood with her back to the door—which was already unlocked—staring at the bot and on her right and the man on her left.
The combat mech was already breached, little more than Jessica’s puppet now, but the man was another matter. She couldn’t see a way around performing a deep breach of his Link so she could masquerade as him, while rendering him unconscious. Then a realization hit her.
Oh, shit. I’m an idiot. Maybe I really do need a new AI.
With full control—unbeknownst to the man—of his armor, Jessica tapped into his visual and sensor feeds and set up a virtual environment matching the small alcove the soldier guarded, while shunting all of his live inputs to null storage.
He didn’t even flinch when she flipped him over to a simulation of his surroundings.
Look at that! Iris would probably find something I could have done better, but pretty damn smooth if I do say so myself!
Hitting the door’s access panel, Jessica kept her eyes on the soldier—who remained stock still—as the door opened and she backed through.
Easy, peasey, lemon squeezy.
Once inside the room, she closed the door and walked to the rack that stood against the wall where Jinx would cut. She quickly, but carefully, pulled the AI transport cases off a two-meter section of the rack and set them aside.
Just to be sure they weren’t about to move a bunch of empty cases, Jessica randomly checked a few and found them filled with AI cores.
Satisfied that the rescue wasn’t a wild goose chase, Jessica pulled the shelves off the rack and then gave two knocks on the left side of the clear space, and then two more on the right side.
A second later an electron beam slid through the re-enforced plas and began to cut. Jinx left two small sections on the left side un-cut, but they were hot enough that when a two-meter opening was cut and Jessica pushed on the section of bulkhead, the connections functioned as hinges.
“Shitting stars,” Jinx whispered aloud as she got her view of the four racks filled with AI cores. “I’ve never seen so many AIs.”
“It’s a lot,” Jessica replied, noting that Jinx had deployed a sound cancelling nanocloud in the service corridor. She also had two hover pallets sitting nearby.
“Nice, those will make things a bit easier.”
“Thought so.”
Jessica began to grab AI cases and set them in the service corridor, while Jinx loaded them up. Down at the end of the passage, they could see Iris standing at the T intersection.
Jessica pursed her lips in annoyance.
It took seven long minutes to get the AI cases down to the end of the corridor. Jinx was pushing the last loads on the hover pallets down the service passage, and Jessica was going over the room, making sure they hadn’t missed any cores—they’d already found several that weren’t even in cases, each of which were now tucked in a flow armor pocket Jessica had made on her stomach.
Like baby kangaroos, she thought with a laugh.
Her inspection complete, she bent to grab one last case that had been too long and ungainly to fit on the pallets. Jinx had taken a peek inside and gasped to see over seventy THQ-A901 cores like her own.
The AI had been excited to see so many AIs who may have had similar experiences, but Jessica had pointed out that they were in low power and would need a careful reactivation such as she’d had before they could communicate.
As she hefted the case, Jessica got an alert from the mech out in the alcove that people were approaching.
“Damn!” she muttered, instructing the combat mech to open fire on the two officers who had stopped in front of the alcove, demanding access.
Shots rang out, and she only paid partial attention as the combat mech killed the two officers and then took up a defensive position across the corridor, ready to take out anyone who came to inspect the scene.
When Jessica reached the T, she found the hole was being cut just ten meters down the right-hand passage. Jinx was unloading the hover pallets, but Jessica stopped her.
“They’ll fit inside the Sexy—well, barely. Leave them loaded for now.”
“OK,” Jinx said with a nod, glancing worriedly down each passage.
“Just…uh…move them dow
n the right side a bit, we don’t want them getting shot.”
Jinx nodded with nervous energy, and Jessica found herself amused by how the AI was trying to mimic human behavior.
Iris approached and pulled a rebreather from her armor and handed it to Jessica.
Jessica took the rebreather and wrapped her lips around it, letting the flow armor seal to the device.
Jessica and Iris helped move the cases to the edge of the hole Usef was cutting in the bulkhead. As they worked, she checked her feeds from the combat mech. It had killed a soldier who had rushed to the officer’s aid, but was now under fire from two separate directions and wouldn’t last long.
Rather surprisingly, the guard who was lost in his own little sim world hadn’t heard any of the sounds going on around himself and continued to stand stock still.
Behind her, the Sexy completed cutting through the bulkhead and with a simple push, the chunk of bulkhead floated away into space.
Unlike Sabrina, the Sexy’s stealth systems were a bit more rudimentary, and it couldn’t maintain them while the ramp was lowered.
Two people in EV suits stood on the ramp, and Jessica didn’t hesitate to begin passing them AI cases.
They’d moved just over two hundred of the cases, when the feed from the combat mech confirmed that it had finally taken terminal damage from the attacking soldiers. After the briefest of pauses next to the frozen guard they entered the AI core storage room.
Jessica gestured for Jinx to hand over her rifle, and then edged to the corner of the T intersection. There she waiting for several of the AST soldiers to make it into the service corridor before swinging the rifles around the corner and opening fire in railgun firing mode.