“Well, I'll tell you right now the fighter and deck crews are all down with going rogue if we're recalled early.” Minh took a drink and nodded to himself before going on. “But they're also loyal to you as much as they are to me. If you pointed our bow back home they would still follow your orders.”
“Good to know. Your sisters would love to see you I'm sure.”
“Ha! They've probably redecorated the whole restaurant with a pink cat theme by now. It would be good to see them again though.”
“You really think we're getting recalled, don't you? Is there something you know that I don't? Feeding Admirals again?”
“Not this time. Just a feeling.”
“Well, here's hoping it stays that way.”
We spent a few more minutes enjoying the view before Minh broke the silence. “Life has been interesting.”
“I told you I'd take you with me if they gave me a command,” I said with a crooked grin.
Chapter 12
An Evening At The Cinema
The following night Observation One was full. Folding chairs had been set up and most of the crew sat down to watch something that most of us rarely ever saw, but first I had a few things to say to everyone.
I stood in front of the crowd and smiled. “Good evening, I'm looking forward to tonight's entertainment as much as you are so I'll make this quick. Our recent victory is a direct result of everyone's hard work. Your endurance, expertise and speed have amazed your commanding officers and myself. The victory was well earned. So is the full pay and leave you'll be enjoying once we reach Starfree Port.”
The sudden cheering and whistling almost knocked me off my feet. Other than the immediate senior staff, no one was made aware that we'd have leave time. They thought that the possibility was gone as soon as Zingara faded from sight.
I continued when most of the clapping and whistling subsided. “I don't know how long we'll have just yet. It could be a day, it could be a few. Either way we'll be taking leave in shifts, so pay close attention to the duty roster and schedule. Make sure you read the policies and laws of the station before you set out, and don't travel alone. We're still a wanted crew in this area of space regardless of the station's political alignment.
“Now, it's important for everyone to know that we have new orders coming from Freeground Fleet Command. They're sending us after something important, something big. You'll be filled in on a need to know basis. What happens after that is wide open, but I need each and every one of you to decide where you want to go if you're reassigned. Use this leave time to think things over. There may be no easy way back home if you stay on. If you'd rather head back to Freeground for reassignment after our orders are carried out I'll give you a glowing recommendation for whatever assignment you'd like to request. It's not a sure thing, but the opportunity to change where you are and what you're doing could be coming up. I’ll support any decision you make, but I hope everyone stays. I couldn't imagine replacing any of you.”
“What about my partner an' me?” One half of a gunnery team called out. He was standing and pointing at Bruce, who I had met in medical some time ago.
“Even you and Bruce,” I called back. There was a trickle of laughter and after it subsided I took a more serious tone. “Now there's a chance that Freeground will want to keep us right where we are -- out in the galaxy trading for and taking what we need to make things better for ourselves and our home -- but if the possibility of early recall and debriefing comes up, I want everyone to be sure about where they want to be. No second guessing. There won't be time.” I let that hang in the air for a moment before I smiled and went on. “Now, time for some fun. I know you're all anxious for leave to start, but we're still in hyperspace. This is the best I could do, and it's well earned!” I finished before taking my seat.
The holographic entertainment package I had purchased from the station included current news and a new holographic movie set in ancient earth, around the year 1886 AD. There were thousands of holographic movies, documentaries, serials and anything else you could imagine, but what I had bought was all brand new. Things no one had seen before, and I had created an opportunity for most of the crew to experience it together. There would be two screenings, one for the senior staff and the majority of the crew, the second was for the skeleton crew that manned the stations and kept watches during hyperspace and through the night shifts.
There was something about watching a galactic news broadcast that was only a day old that made us feel good about being closer to the galactic core. We were en route to a strange port far from home in a ship we had worked to bring up to par with the requirements of our mission. With the senior officers in the front row, Jason with Laura on his arm -- or vice-versa, it was hard to tell sometimes -- and Ayan beside me. The lights dimmed and the Heart News Company's holocast began.
The stories leading up to the headline piece included several shorter features. The first was about a farmer who had genetically engineered a small, cute bioplant life pet that could be crushed only to spring back to its former shape. The projectors in Observation One created holographic representations of herds of the four centimetre tall creatures that ran around the room throughout the piece. The rainbow colours and small squeak and purr noises the creatures made were obviously intentionally engineered to make them much more appealing. The fact that they were bioplants made them excellent pets, they'd live for as long as you gave them the special liquid solution they required, purchasable only through the farmer that created the creatures, and you could control their size by feeding them more or less at a time. The purrs, tumbling and squeaking was working. I was glad that we were nowhere near the farm that was responsible for creating and producing these things, otherwise we could end up with an infestation of tiny, bouncy, colourful pets with small mouths and disproportionately huge blue, brown, green or purple eyes.
The next piece was about a newly colonized world with density modification, full flora, fauna, seeded earth animal life located close to the core. It had only taken twenty five years to stabilize its orbit, modify the density to be earth like despite having the surface area of eight earth sized worlds and finish the colonization. The speed at which they were able to accomplish the near impossible was amazing. The fact that they had even added an earth-like moon was astonishing. The price of a piece of land, sold per square meter, was utterly unrealistic to everyone watching.
The Lorander Company had returned from another deep space exploration expedition with a new set of navigation charts and conclusive research on everything from stellar phenomenon to enhanced autonomous cellular regeneration, or as many people called it, the fountain of youth. On planet Alenda, the home of the largest trading market in the galaxy, the celebration of the crew's homecoming after the ninety eight year round trip would last for days. Dozens of the crew members were born on the vessel during the voyage and they were seeing civilization for the first time.
The Lorander Company was famous for opening new routes to the vast outer reaches of space, and providing most of their research results to anyone who could pay a visit to their research facilities on an equal trade basis. Their income, which was significant, came from establishing wormholes to new worlds and areas of space that had vast untapped resources. They were the most successful large company of its kind and one of their exploration vessels returning meant a great deal for everyone.
Directly afterwards was a piece about a Vindyne general and his court martial. “An Overlord class super carrier was severely damaged as a result of poor command decisions, costing the Vindyne Corporation a developing moon colony and causing collateral damage to another nearby world. The estimated expense of the disaster is beyond the ten trillion mark. Extended food and energy shortages are expected in their outer territories as a result.”
The hallway of a wood and stone building appeared to the right of the announcer then, with a lawyer commenting on the story. “The damage done as a result of this man's incompetence will affect hundreds
of thousands of families. We'll be reviewing our command and performance structure afterwards and analysing the data we've collected during General Collins' trial. My only regret is that the press will not be allowed to hear the full list of charges. Regardless of the exclusion of some details I am glad the nations in the care of Vindyne Corporation will be able to hear this man's punishment.”
The hallway faded and the focus was once again back on the announcer. “An hour later the sentencing was made, and we were provided with this footage from the Vindyne disciplinary committee.”
A grand courtroom appeared in front of us. Nine judges sat behind a long, high bench and the gallery was filled to the left, right and behind our seats. “Will the offender please rise,” the lead judge, a broad faced man with the glossy look of artificial youth directed.
The defendant, an older man with a short grey beard, rose and I shot to my feet. Ayan took my hand and gave me a worried look, reminding me of where I was and that behind me sat the majority of the crew. “What's wrong?” she asked in a whisper.
I sat down, not taking my eyes off of the face of the man who was my second interrogator for a month or more. “That man interrogated me personally. I had no idea he was in command.”
“I never saw him,” Jason said. “He must've taken a personal interest. Looks like you'll get to see him hang.”
“Looks like,” I said with a nod. I was torn, I wanted to see him punished for being in command of the disaster we witnessed in orbit around Concordia, but something told me that he had a way out. Legal systems had a way of making a big show about punishment but letting high-class criminals out the back door after the public eye had moved on.
“General David Collins, you have been found guilty of fourteen counts of criminal negligence, and one count of the dereliction. We hereby strip you of rank, seize any property registered with the Vindyne Taxation Authority, revoke your citizenship, ration and discount rights. You are dismissed with the severance stipulated in your contract and will be remanded into the custody of Vindyne Correctional Services where you will undergo assessment and rehabilitation.”
The image of General Collins, who was staring straight ahead, at attention, unflinching, faded slowly. He was still all strength and dignity and it made me grind my teeth.
“So, what does that mean?” Oz asked quietly.
Jason was smiling. “They're taking everything he has and removing his citizenship. With Vindyne, if you're not a citizen in their territory and don't have declared business there as a transient, you may as well be a slave. You can't work for more than sixteen credits an hour and aren't allowed to sell anything, and I mean anything. Non-citizens are factory, sanitary and low end service workers and if you don't have a job for more than five days they put you into a work camp.”
“Sixteen credits an hour? A traveller can't buy a decent meal with twenty back on Freeground,” Laura commented.
“From what I've learned about the Vindyne, the average fast food meal costs fifty.”
“That's robbery. A bad meal out of a materializer on Freeground costs six.”
I was still considering what I had just seen as an advertisement for one of the various entertainment networks ran through its subscription programming highlights. “Do you know anything about this assessment period?” I asked.
“I assume it's a bunch of testing that will result in some kind of rehabilitative placement.”
“Well, I hope they send him into one of the incubation chambers they like so much and reprogram him as the village idiot.”
“You really did see more of the ship than we did,” Oz said quietly. “I didn't see anything like those incubation chambers in your report.”
“They had thousands. Used them to reprogram people. Erase their memories and replace them with fragmented experiences that were formulated especially to push them into filling certain roles in a community. When they were finished changing their minds – literally – they would be sent out to colonize or labour on one of the worlds they claimed as their own. The process took months, sometimes years, but they would end up with a colony of unwitting slaves. He was right in the centre of it all.”
“Well, I think if there is any honesty in what we just saw, he'll get what he deserves. Scapegoats often get the short end, and considering they're using him as one for this supply shortfall they say they're having, I think they'll bury him in a deep hole somewhere or wipe his brain clean,” Ayan concluded, taking my arm and wrapping it tightly around her shoulders. My mood lifted as she knitted her fingers with mine.
The headline of the entire holocast came on. It was the kind of news that everyone in the galaxy should know, the kind of thing that could change everything. The war in the Eden system had taken a dark turn. Over two hundred years before, several corporate colonists landed on Eden Two, a planet almost exactly like Earth. It was considered the new jewel of the universe. As people began to migrate there over the following twenty years, they built moon stations, began taking measures to preserve the delicate balance of the planet's ecosystem in preparations for the millions that were well on their way to settle as close to Eden Two as possible or on the world itself if they had the power or money to arrange it.
It was to this end that they developed Eve, an artificial intelligence that was tasked with advising and directing organizers and owners on how to use the planets resources properly without disturbing the natural balance of the ecosystem. The developer, Yorgen Sills, had imbued the artificial intelligence with something he saw as nothing short of revolutionary: the full personality imprint of his daughter. No one even knew the technology to do such a thing existed. Eve served her purpose perfectly and even communicated with most of the colonists on a personal level for over twelve years. Seen as a modern triumph, she was allowed to spawn artificial intelligence programs to fulfil specific purposes. These were built into machines ranging from massive planters, security androids, to interplanetary transports.
No one knows exactly what the catalyst was, but at one point Eve decided that the best thing for Eden Two was to ensure its security from humanity and it provided the system-wide populace with a deadline. They were to leave. Any humans remaining within Eden Two space after the deadline would be destroyed. Most of the colonists did their best to flee and got off in time, but corporations brought battleships into the system, tried every method imaginable to eliminate or shut down Eve and finally managed to do it before the deadline was up.
There was a problem. Eve had passed on her ability to feel. Her children had a set of emotions that were exclusive to machines, impossible to understand from a human perspective. Her mechanical children saw Eve with great reverence, as though she was not only their leader but their Goddess. When she was shut down they decided -- deadline or not -- that every human must be destroyed. The machines concluded that humans weren't only a danger to the planet's ecosystem, but also a threat to an equation they called the Cosmic Balance. Before deactivation, Eve had completed formulating and sharing some kind of big picture theory with her creations, in which humans were a negative influence.
What followed was a holocaust spanning three years. Eve was never reactivated, but every human in the Eden system was eliminated. The first attack drones, small ships and robots that would attack in great numbers, were developed by Eve before she was shut down. There were many scientific advances she didn't share with her human masters, and her children had access to them all.
The war of the Eden system continued, and many corporations fought to take the system back, but with very little success. In the last few decades, as though losing patience with humanity, Eve's offspring had been making strategic strikes, taking resource rich areas near the Eden system, expanding their territory. The most recent news was not good. As I watched footage of massive corporate destroyers and their fleets of ships being torn apart by thousands of smaller drones, and highly advanced juggernaut class ships firing concentrated weaponry of strange manufacture, I couldn't help thinking of Alice.
There was a good reason why safeties were imposed on all artificial intelligences, a very good reason.
The United Core World Confederation had lost a habitable world to Eve's army. For the first time in history the machines had taken a world occupied by millions of humans by using the information found in a United Core World Confederation macro wormhole generator. Every space farer knew that once they had that they could use it to create super compression wormholes and move across greater distances in a much shorter time. The thought of it was terrifying. Eve's army emerging from a wormhole in force, it could happen anywhere now. And the fact that the events we were watching all around us holographically were months away by hyperspace didn't seem nearly as comforting as it should have. After all, what was months away through hyperspace was generally weeks away by wormhole, perhaps even just days away with their new macro wormhole generator.
There were many other ongoing conflicts in the galaxy. There always were. Despite its vastness and the hundreds of planets that had been colonized or were immediately ready for settlement or resource harvesting, there never seemed to be enough. Corporations warred with each other and sovereign governments. People everywhere rebelled however they could to be free from their oppressors, to become wealthier, or just to be left alone.
Watching the holocast you could sometimes see which way the Hart Corporation was leaning through which corporations or governments they vilified or attributed terrorist attacks to. War in the galaxy existed everywhere, even in how the news was edited and was finally presented.
The typical holocast was two thirds war, tragedy, and crime. It was the central point, what got them the subscribers, and provided a reliable podium for the advertisers. The vast majority of it was edited to inspire maximum fear and dramatic effect. It was geared towards the coreward masses, not to those of us who were not so desensitized to the violence and loss they flashed all around us holographically. When they didn't present the summarized chosen facts of ship to ship or ground warfare, they focused on court battles, personal strife, and tales of loss designed to appeal to our raw sympathies. The fluffier, lighter hearted segments, of which there were few, was normally just another part of some marketing campaign.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins Page 43