by Isaac Hooke
“Because of the laws that were passed,” Medeia said. “You remember Command Weskin’s spiel before we signed up, right? Containment Code was outlawed, because it was considered tantamount to slavery. We would have our own free wills, he promised. So they’d have to resort to the usual means of controlling minds, starting with institutionalizing us.”
Jain nodded. “In my scattered memories, I sometimes have glimpses of the indoctrination sessions I experienced after booting for the first time. It was all VR based. While installing any form of Containment Code might have been illegal, they could still program us the same way you could brainwash ordinary minds. Every day, trainers drilled the space navy ethos into us. They dialed down our pain senses and made us perform rigorous ‘physical’ training. We essentially went through the equivalent of a robot boot camp.”
Jain paused. “I specifically remember loyalty tests. They’d give us these once a week. We’d be transported to a VR environment and faced with different choices. Sometimes, we’d be thrown into an impossible combat situation, where the only way to save the fleet was to sacrifice our lives. Other times, they’d make us relive tragic episodes from our past, and gave us the choice between saving a loved one or one of our teammates. For the tests, they temporarily repressed our memories so that we didn’t know we were operating in VR, and everything seemed real to us.
“I remember passing the tests… I readily gave up my own life or chose the life of a teammate over the life of a childhood friend. That’s how effectively they’d conditioned me. But not everyone passed. At the end of the week, there would always be one or two Mind Refurbs missing: anyone who failed was promptly removed from the program, and I never found out what happened to them.”
“Probably repurposed to be the AIs responsible for operating the navy’s trash compactors,” Mark said.
Gavin gave Jain a calculating look. “So, you’re the only one among us with memories of this indoctrination…”
“Scattered memories, yes,” Jain said.
“Even so, it could be that you feel a residual sense of duty and obligation,” Gavin said. “Which explains why you’re so eager to return, when the rest of us aren’t.”
“I want to return, too,” Medeia said.
“As do I,” Sheila said.
“Well, fine, but the rest of us don’t,” Gavin said, glancing at Cranston.
“Don’t look at me,” Cranston said. “I want to help humanity.”
Gavin’s face darkened. He crossed his arms over his chest and gazed out at the Jovian landscape, apparently watching the lightning arc from cloud to cloud.
“Let me tell you a secret, Gavin,” Jain said. “When we go back, we’re not going to stay.”
Gavin looked at him, his face brightening. “We’re not?”
“No,” Jain said. “We’re going to do what we can to help humanity, and then our obligation to them will be done. We’re out.”
“I’m not so sure they’ll let us go so easily,” Cranston said. “You know how much these starships cost? Probably hundreds of trillions of credits. Once we travel back into the fold, getting out is going to be extremely difficult.”
“Then we’ll work out some sort of agreement,” Jain said. “They can have their ships back. In return, we’ll require that they remove our minds from the vessels, put us inside android bodies, and deposit us on a colony world, or even Earth.”
“Why would they agree?” Cranston said.
“Wouldn’t you?” Jain said. “If you were faced with a fleet of warships capable of dealing deadly damage, why would you risk not agreeing?”
“I see your point,” Cranston said.
“But what if some of us want to rejoin the space navy?” Mark said.
“I’ll leave that up to each of you when the time comes,” Jain said. “But once we’ve secured Andreas I from the enemy, I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay. I will require your rift ship, Sheila. The rest of you are welcome to join me, as usual.”
“I’m not sure why you’d want to stay,” Gavin told Mark. “I can think of so many other things I’d rather be doing than quelling rebellions on human colonies.”
“I doubt there are many revolts,” Mark said. “Most of our work will involve protecting humanity from aliens. Member species of the Link have been trying to conquer Earth for the past hundred years.”
“You’ve been reading your history, I see,” Medeia said.
“It’s called getting up to speed,” Mark said. “You should try it.”
“The very first day I was restored from my backups, I reviewed all the historical events that had taken place since my mind scan,” Medeia said.
“Oh really, well aren’t you the intrepid one,” Mark said.
“Intrepid?” Medeia said. “You sure that word’s in your vocabulary?”
“Hey, I’m a machine,” Mark said. “I have a big vocabulary.”
“That’s right, keep flirting you two,” Cranston said.
Medeia spun on him and planted her hands on her hips. “We’re not flirting!”
“Sure, sure,” Cranston told her.
Mark quickly turned his attention to the gas giant below, as if it was the most fascinating thing in the galaxy.
The team members were quiet for several moments.
Cranston shook his head. “We could have died in that last battle,” he said into the silence.
Medeia nodded. “I almost did. I’m surprised I made it.”
“I’m the one who almost died,” Gavin said.
“Yeah, you too,” Medeia agreed. “We lost the first time we faced these bastards. The second time, we barely pulled through. I don’t have much hope for the third engagement.”
“I do,” Jain said. “We’re always learning.”
“But so is the enemy,” Sheila said.
“You think they’re organic?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know,” Sheila told him. “Their ship is certainly big enough to hold organic forms of life. Just because the decks we encountered weren’t pressurized, doesn’t mean that all them are like that.”
“I think it’s AI driven,” Gavin said. “Like ourselves. It would have to be, because of the ranges involved in space combat, and the speed at which one has to respond to a battle space that can change in microseconds.”
“The battle space doesn’t change in microseconds,” Mark protested.
“Really?” Gavin said. “At what range can you detect an incoming slug. A kilometer? Sometimes less? At that point you have a microsecond before it hits."
“Well, I think we can agree that either the alien ship is operated by an AI,” Jain said. “Or they have an AI aid that they heavily rely upon.”
Again, quietude descended upon the group.
Sheila glanced at Jain. “You think the aliens are going to return to this system?”
“I don’t know,” Jain said. He paused. “It’s possible they might, if they want to stake a claim to this system and its resources. For all we know this system is at the edge of their territory, and their empire is expanding outward, and we just so happened to get in the way of that expansion.”
“Well they’re obviously warlike,” Cranston said. “The Oberon wouldn’t have fired first.”
“No,” Jain said. “They destroyed the Oberon because they weren’t happy about finding other starships here, attempting to stake a claim to a system they already considered their own.”
“So why go to Andreas I?” Sheila said. “Assuming you still believe that’s where they went.”
“They want to see what kind of a spacefaring species we are,” Jain said. “How powerful our ships are. What kind of technology we have. If they can conquer us easily, they probably will.”
“Conquer us, or wipe us out?” Medeia asked.
“Conquering would make more sense,” Jain told her. “That way they could absorb us into their empire and have our ships, war machines, and the mining facilities to produce them—basically our whole industrial war
complex—all already in place. It makes far more sense.”
“Unless they’re really, really xenophobic,” Sheila said.
“You talk as if we’ve already lost,” Mark said. “We don’t even know if more of them are coming. Maybe this ship isn’t the forerunner, maybe it’s the only one. Building a ship like that has to be resource intensive.”
“I somehow doubt they have only one,” Jain said. “My biggest worry at the moment is that when we get to Andreas I, we’ll find more of them.”
“We might have already lost, you’re saying…” Sheila said.
Jain nodded.
“You keep saying ‘us’ and ‘we,’ talking as if we’re part of humanity,” Gavin told them. “When we’re not. We’re nothing like them.”
“Actually, we’re a lot like them,” Cranston said. “At least up here.” He tapped his temple.
“Yes, but look at what we really are,” Gavin said. “We’re thinking machines. Capable of trillions of operations per second. We can increase or decrease our time sense. We can switch bodies by moving our AI cores into new units, or by remotely operating them. We exist in a virtual reality generated solely in our heads.” He looked Cranston in the eye. “We’re not human.”
“Maybe,” Cranston said. “But tell me something then: why do I feel more human than I ever have. I feel like I’m the quintessential human, in fact.”
“Cranston is right,” Jain said. “We’re quintessential humans. Which is why we have to be an example for all other humans. In every situation that we face, we have to act in the most moral way possible. The most courageous. We have a lot of power. We have to use it for good.”
“But good and evil are subjective,” Gavin said. “The aliens we face, for example, probably think what they’re doing is the model of what is right and good. At least for their race.”
“And from their viewpoint, it probably is,” Jain agreed. “All I’m saying is, we have to act in the most virtuous way possible, at least in regard to the viewpoint of our own race.”
“And which race is that?” Gavin said. “Humanity?”
“No,” Jain said. “The Mind Refurb race.”
“Does that mean giving our lives, to save humanity?” Medeia asked quietly.
“For some of us, it might,” Jain told her.
The bonding session didn’t last much longer after that. Sheila tried to convince them all to leap off the platform for another free fall session, but none of them were too enthusiastic about that. The Space Machinists bid each other goodnight and promptly logged out.
16
Jain kept time accelerated outside of bonding and training hours, and when he watched the construction taking place in the shipyard, it was like observing a time-lapse. He saw the curved upper section slowly grow into a half circle, then three-quarters of an annulus, and finally a full ring. The rectangle on top enlarged, becoming faceted, so that the ship looked like a very big diamond-ring. Well, a diamond-ring made entirely of the same gray substance, anyway.
No enemy vessels entered the system during that time so that when Sheila neared completion of the project three months after she began, Jain was almost beginning to believe the aliens had forgotten about them. Maybe they had.
“I’m ready to power on the reactor,” Sheila announced a few days after the end of the three-month deadline,
In anticipation of that moment, Jain had sent Gavin and Medeia to the inner planets to mine fission material, and they had returned a few days ago. They had already transferred the material over to Sheila, so she was ready to go.
“Turn it on,” Jain said.
The other ships had put some distance between themselves and the shipyard, in case things went wrong. But the ship powered on without issue.
“All right,” Sheila said. “I’m performing the initial tests.” A few minutes later, she said: “Got some issues with power distribution to the X3 ring portion. I’m shutting down.”
She repaired that and turned the reactor on again, only to find another problem. It took another day for her to iron out all the kinks. At one point, she had her space drones open up the front portion of the shipyard, allowing the ship to fly free of the construction framework. Then she tested its maneuverability, firing the different thrusters aboard. She had only loaded a small amount of fuel aboard, in case disaster struck, so she had drained most of the fuel after a few tests.
“Looks good,” Sheila announced. “I’m ready to try a real-world rift test.”
“Let’s open a rift to Andreas I,” Jain said.
“All right,” Sheila said. “Initiating calculations.”
Those calculations relied on close observation of the star in question, using its wobble and other spectral data to determine the relative position of the planets. The goal was to prevent the rift from opening inside of a planet, among other things. It also served to “train” or accustom the rift generator to the gravity of the destination system in question, which was why one couldn’t simply load training data from other rift generators. The location where the rift opened was still relatively random, at least in relation to the planets. Once those coordinates were set, however, they could be micro-adjusted after arrival so that next time they could arrive closer to a celestial landmark of choice.
While those calculations took place, Sheila transferred over processed propellant via a series of transports and filled up the rift ship’s storage tanks.
“By the way, what do you want to call it?” Sheila asked. “The new ship.”
Jain glanced at his fellow Space Machinists on the virtual bridge. “I’m open to suggestions…”
“How about Daktor?” Medeia said.
“That’s a weird name…” Mark said.
“There they go, flirting again…” Cranston commented.
Medeia shot Cranston a glare.
“I think it’s more like you’re flirting with her, Cranston,” Gavin said.
Cranston shrugged, and looked away.
“Daktor,” Medeia repeated. “Dakru is Greek for tear. And Tor is German for gate.”
“But Dakru actually means tears as in crying, not ripping,” Sheila said. “So essentially the name means Crying Gate.”
“Sounds about right to me,” Gavin said.
“Daktor it is,” Jain said.
Four hours later, Sheila said: “Ready to open rift.”
“Why do I feel like a whole fleet of alien ships is going to come racing through whatever rift we create?” Mark asked.
“It’s an illusion,” Cranston replied. “Just like life.”
“Let’s not get philosophical now, please,” Mark said.
The focusing ring of the Daktor activated, and blue beams emerged at regular intervals all along its interior. Pointing inward, those rings converged on a central spot some distance in front of it, and then formed a single, cohesive energy beam that shot forward, traveling ten kilometers in front of the ship.
Nothing else happened.
“Well, where’s the rift?” Gavin asked.
“Patience,” Sheila told him.
After a minute, Gavin pressed: “Are you sure it’s working?”
“It’s working,” Sheila said. “It takes two minutes for the rift to form. Check your database.”
“She’s right,” Mark said. “At least for humanity’s rift gates.”
“The alien ship only needed thirty seconds to create its own rift,” Medeia said. “As well as travel through it.”
“Yet another disadvantage we have compared to them,” Cranston said.
Another minute passed and finally, where the beam ended, a large rip in space-time appeared. It was like an unfolding of nebular gases, emerging from an invisible source; it was big enough to fit every vessel in the fleet, including the Daktor itself.
The rift looked like an expansive collection of purple nebular gases enveloping ordinary space—even the stars beyond looked ordinary. Though Jain knew that if he was to rewind the video feed of his external camera,
he’d see that the stars and constellations had in fact changed since the formation of the rift, at least in the area enclosed by those particular purple gases.
The beam from the ship remained active, keeping the rift open.
“All right Xander, launch the telemetry probe,” Jain said.
A small dot traveled away from the Talos, toward the rift. It followed alongside the blue beam, and then traveled inside the circle of purple gas. It had begun decelerating a few moments before passing through so that it stayed on the other side for only a few moments before reversing course and heading back toward the Talos.
“Shut her down,” Jain instructed Sheila.
The energy beam deactivated, and the rift collapsed—the circle of purple gases fell in upon itself, revealing the original stars and constellations beyond.
“So, what do we have?” Jain asked Xander.
Based on the light coming in from the planets, Xander would be able to triangulate the probe’s position in the system, and from there deduce the ultimate fates of the colony and military base. Sheila meanwhile would be able to make micro adjustments to the rift’s destination, allowing it to open closer to the colony, for example.
“It will take some time to fully analyze,” Xander said. “But at first glance, the system is dead.”
“Dead?” Jain said.
“Yes,” Xander said. “No non-natural thermal or radio sources are present.”
“How can that be possible?” Sheila said.
“You know how,” Gavin said. “Those damn aliens destroyed everything.”
“Like I said, it will take some time to fully analyze,” Xander told him.
Two hours later Xander reported that Gavin was right. “There’s definitely debris above the military base, where the ships would have put up a defense. There’s also a ring system around the colony world, where previously there was none. That has to be the debris of the orbital defense platforms, along with satellites, and rift gates.”
“Can you tell if the military base is still intact?” Jain asked. “Or the colony?”