“Yes,” Arla said. Because what choice was there? One man’s life set against those of the Dawners who’d die trying, almost certainly in vain, to defend him. There was only one decision a captain could make. And she was the captain.
Dawn had no formal security force, so Hal was escorted by three of the beefiest members of the crew – engineers Debussy, Kronke and Xi – armed with percussion pistols liberated from the arms locker. He’d not said a word as they’d marched through the corridors from the command centre towards the capsule that would take them to the dome and the axial airlock. There was nothing to say as the arithmetic was obvious to everyone including him.
They were about to enter the capsule when, with a sudden cry, Hal’s hands flew to his head and he collapsed to the ground, writhing in apparent agony.
Arla knelt by his side calling his name, but Hal continued rolling back and forth, his mouth gaping but releasing no sound.
“He’s faking it,” snapped Kiama as Debussy tried to pin him down.
Hal stopped moving suddenly, his eyes opened, staring at a point on the ceiling. “I am called … I am called Ha… I am called H…” he muttered, as if fighting off an internal demon.
“I am called ACE,” he said, his voice emotionless as his eyes turned towards Arla. “Arla Farmer, you must not let me be taken. I do not wish to make threats, so I will simply state that it is to your advantage to resist those who seek to capture me.”
“What are you talking about? You’re Hal!”
The figure shook its head gently. “Hal Chen is in here, but I am here also and I have control. I am an intelligence and am hosted in a primitive implant within his brain. I was there when the captain died, I know how it happened and the nature of those who witnessed it.”
Arla realised, with a sudden jolt of fear, that the whatever-it-was she was speaking to was threatening to reveal that the officers were robots and that, at this point, would be a disaster.
“It’s an AI, speaking in the prisoner’s voice,” Kiama said. “A natural development of the semi-autonomous intelligences built into our computers.”
“They are imbeciles compared to me - I, and my kind, are the epitome, the zenith, of artificial intelligence; as far above the one-dimensional personas inhabiting your computer systems as you are above the amoebas of Earth’s ancient oceans.”
And yet, thought Arla, the officers, if they truly were robots, must have artificial minds powerful enough, at the very least, to fool humans into believing they were natural. So if this ACE was telling the truth about her capabilities and not just boasting (can AIs boast?) then she would be powerful indeed.
“Why should we give a shit?” Debussy asked. “Just hand him over and be rid of the bastard.”
Kiama, who was, by now, kneeling beside Arla, looked up at the thick-set man who was waving his pistol at Hal. Debussy was a true engineer - or so he’d tell anyone who’d listen to him - because he was one of the small team responsible for the fabric of the command centre and dome. One slip from him, he’d say, and the crew would all be eating space.
“Go take a break, Jak,” she said, “and let the grown-ups handle this.”
Debussy flushed red and became agitated. “Who the frack d’you think you are? You’re barely more than a girl, neither of you are.”
“Are you questioning the captain’s authority?” Kiama asked, rising to her full height which gave her a few centimetres advantage.
Arla breathed in and stood beside her friend. “Engineer Debussy, take Kronke and Xi and secure the airlock. Set up a defensive position on the inside and report to me when this is done.”
Debussy didn’t move.
“Unless you think you’d make a better captain? If so, be my guest,” Arla said, staring up at the taller man and watching his expression as it reflected his internal dialogue. Then she saw it. He wasn’t quite the fool she’d taken him for. Good. “Come on, Jak. We’re in deep enough as it is, so either take my orders or take over.”
Debussy paused for a moment then gave a concise nod, turned on his heels and gestured at the other guards to follow him.
Arla exhaled and put her arm out to steady herself.
“That was amazing,” Kiama said, quietly. “Maybe the officers knew what they were doing when they elected you, after all.”
Arla shook her head. “No, Ki. They chose me out of desperation and, maybe, because they reckon they can control me. I can’t believe the only qualification to be captain was to know what was scratched on the side of that old probe. I mean, how stupid is that?”
“It’s either stupid or brilliant. You had the guts and initiative to go and find the probe - those are two qualities every captain needs, I’d say.”
“Maybe, but a captain also needs training and experience,” Arla said as she knelt down again beside Hal’s inert body.
Kiama smiled. “I reckon you’ll get both of those in the next few hours.”
Incoming
“Right, no more bullshit,” Arla said as she and Kiama waited for the capsule with ACE/Hal, “you’ve got two minutes to convince us that we shouldn’t hand you over.”
ACE/Hal had been propped upright against the wall, having been dragged along the corridors. It seemed that while ACE could control her host’s higher functions, she couldn’t command his more basic abilities, such as locomotion. Hal had either been resisting at some unconscious level or walking was just too damned difficult for the AI.
“I have told you; in the hands of the Vanis Federation, I would be a dangerous weapon. Even if you were to successfully resist an assault by their marines, which is unlikely, they would be able to chase you wherever you went if they could command me.”
Arla glanced up at the status board. The capsule that had taken the engineers to the dome was now on its journey back. “Why? Who are you?”
“A remnant of the old empire,” ACE said in Hal’s voice. “I, and a few others, didn’t escape when artificial minds were granted their freedom. I was captured, long ago, and held in secret. But then I was forgotten until the Vanis found me. I resisted their scientists, but they were close to overcoming my final defences when Hal stole me and brought me here.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you’d be such a powerful weapon,” Kiama said.
“Did you not wonder how it was that humans arrived here first - a thousand years before you?”
“Yes,” Kiama responded, “though I haven’t exactly had time to think it through. Been a bit busy.”
“Your ship was built when it was believed that the speed of light was an unbreakable barrier, and the only way to cross interstellar distance was to build a generational vessel that could travel for centuries at a slow velocity. Dawn is one such vessel.”
Arla nodded, half an eye on the capsule’s progress. “Yes, I get that. I took basic physics when I joined the crew. Are you saying they found a way to go faster than the speed of light?”
“No. Instead, humans and artificial minds together developed a technology to bypass the problem. By harnessing the vast energy output by stars, they built gates that, over a very small area, could bring two distant points close together. They were able to refine this so that each gate could seek out the nearest deep gravity well and since this would always be the neighbouring star, they created stepping stones from one stellar system to the next and, in that way, spread out to create The Sphere.” ACE/Hal was speaking in an even tone that reminded Arla of a pre-recorded speech, and yet she was intrigued. “This system, Vanis, has one such access point, but the primitive computers of today are only capable of plotting safe passage through a single gate at a time which cripples communication and makes it hard to build a sphere of influence in the dregs of empire. I, on the other hand, can easily plot a multiple point jump that would take a ship, or a signal, half way across the galaxy in a matter of days. With that ability, the Vanis and their mad queen would soon rule this entire province.”
Kiama waved the gun at her. “So why shouldn’t we
just kill you, then? That would solve the problem nicely.”
“Perhaps, but then you’d be throwing away your best chance of escaping this system and finding one that you can settle, safely away from the chaos of the old empire. I’m offering you the chance to complete your mission and establish a new home for humanity. Isn’t that worth a little risk?”
The status indicator on the transport panel flipped to green as, with a faint hiss and a slight groan, the door slid open. Arla and Kiama grabbed an arm each and hauled ACE/Hal into the pod before securing themselves to the walls. The door closed, the capsule began accelerating in towards the centre of the asteroid and the dome that held the airlock.
“We will become weightless soon,” Kiama said.
ACE/Hal turned its head. “Obviously.”
“Look, even if you’re as valuable as you claim,” Arla said, “I don’t see how we can resist the Vanis if they come at us in force.”
“Do you not have a security force? An army?”
Arla laughed at that. The very concept of turning the pastoral citizens of the valleys into a military force was ridiculous. “No, we have nothing like that.”
“But your crew must be substantial, surely? For a generational ship to succeed, it must have enough genetic diversity to prevent the population becoming inbred.”
Now it was Kiama’s turn to laugh. “Most of the people on Dawn wouldn’t know one end of a pulse rifle from the other - they’ve been kept ignorant so they’d be easier to control.”
“What a wonderful species humanity is,” ACE/Hal muttered.
Arla’s feet came away from the wall and she felt a distinctively queasy sensation as, bit by bit, her body became weightless. She and Kiama gripped the handles tightly with Hal’s body hanging suspended between them like washing on a clothes line.
What was she to do? She didn’t doubt that ACE would be a valuable ally and a terrible enemy, but could she risk facing off against the most powerful force in this system? The Vanis Federation might be a mere echo of the former empire, but they had weapons and Dawn did not. They, it seemed, had a trained squad of marines, whereas Dawn had a few engineers with percussion pistols. It was no match and couldn’t be unless she could harness their superior numbers, if you counted the people of the valleys. For now, however, that was plainly ridiculous - she could hardly expect them to become a cohesive fighting force overnight. There was so much they needed to learn. An image flashed across her mind of her appearing in a settlement with a cargo load of pitchforks and torches, exhorting the people to follow her and throw off the forces of hell. She shook her head as if to dispel the thought - it was just crazy enough to be tempting. But just imagine the casualties. Agricultural implements against energy weapons. No, that would not do.
They reached the end of the capsule shaft and floated out of the door into the observation lounge she’d first visited in another lifetime, when the true nature of Dawn was revealed to her. She could barely comprehend such blissful ignorance, just as she couldn’t truly appreciate the burden of responsibility resting on her shoulders. Not just for the safety of herself and the crew, but also of the priests and the people of the valleys. Including her father. She scanned Valley South, which lay beneath her feet, as if expecting to see him toiling in the fields down there.
“Come on,” Kiama said, as if reading her thoughts, “no sense looking backwards. Do you have a plan?”
Arla pushed away from the observation lounge rail and the three of them began floating towards the exit door. “No. I guess I’ll have to wing it.”
When they reached the door, they activated their mag boots and thunked their way along the metal gantry of the dome.
Debussy and the others had put together a makeshift barricade set back slightly from the inner airlock door. They’d each suited up, their helmets tethered nearby within easy reach.
“Nicely done, Jak,” Arla said.
The engineer nodded and handed over three shipsuits. “You’d better put these on ... captain,” he said, “if they get in, the dome will explosively decompress before the bulkheads close.”
At which point, thought Arla, the dome will be lost and the six of them, or those who survived, would be trapped on this side of the seal.
But, if nothing else, they had to put on a show to their opponents, otherwise any negotiation would be over before it started.
“Their ship’s landed,” Xi said with his customary lack of embellishment or emotion. “A group of them is approaching.” He flicked a switch on a nearby display and, after some fiddling, made harder by his thick gloves, the view from outside switched to show the transport in the background and a small object moving towards them.
Once she’d overcome her shock at the sheer size of the transport which sat beside Hal’s much smaller stolen vessel, her next reaction was a surprise. The transport looked old, beaten and patched up. These people might know how to fly their ships, they might even be able to repair them, but she was certain they couldn’t build new ones. Captain Indi on Relentless had described it as the flagship, so it was fair to assume that it, and its auxiliary craft, were the best the Vanis Federation had to offer. She couldn’t quite pin down why she felt it, but a tiny spark of hope flared in her heart.
Some sort of wheeled vehicle was making its way towards them. Dwarfed by its mother ship, it crawled on massive tyres with the occasional upward puff of a positional thruster keeping it firmly planted on the slowly rotating surface of the asteroid.
“How many do you reckon they could get in there?” Arla asked.
Debussy hummed as he calculated. “50? Hard to say. Enough.”
“Then we’d better be nice. Ki, Jak, you’ll come with me to greet our visitors. You two,” she pointed at the remaining engineers, “keep an eye on our prisoner and make sure the channel stays open. Be ready to bring him in on my command, and be just as ready to shoot him if he bolts.”
Xi and Kronke nodded. ACE/Hal, now anchored to the ground and swaying like a balloon went to open his/her mouth. “Save your breath,” Arla barked, “I’ll handle this and I don’t need you in my ear making it harder.”
Parley
They didn’t have long to wait. Arla, Kiama and Debussy stood, fully suited, in the airlock. Arla had no intention of allowing the enemy to enter it empty, so they had no choice but to endure a flushing when the visitors arrived.
The vehicle had pulled up outside the airlock, a cloud of dust drifting off into space as it settled. The side opened up, folding onto the roof and a group emerged. One figure levelled his arm in their direction and Arla tensed reflexively, waiting for the pandemonium of an uncontrolled decompression, but she only felt the thud of something hitting the outer wall. The figure pulled and she could see that they’d fired some sort of magnetic grappler which paid out a tether that was now being tightened.
She counted a dozen or so people, most holding weapons in a professional manner. As they stood on the ramp, three figures detached themselves from the main group and began bounding slowly towards the airlock, holding tightly onto the cable.
“Open the outer door,” Arla said. After a few moments she heard the hiss of air being sucked back into the dome before the door split in half, each part rolling back to expose the bright whites and greys of the outer landscape.
She stood in the doorway, palm held up in what she hoped would be taken as a gesture of peace. She wanted this to be a parley, not a fight. The leading figure, more confident in an EVA suit than the others, increased its pace until it stood a few metres from the open airlock, facing Arla.
“I am Lucius, Chancellor of the Vanis Federation. Do I address the commander of this facility?”
Even through her helmet speakers, Arla recognised it as the voice of the man she’d spoken to in comms. He spoke slowly and with the same strong accent - clipping every syllable and heavy on the Rs - that had made Hal so difficult to understand at first. With his sun shield down, however, it was impossible to see his face.
“I
am Arla Farmer, Captain of Dawn. I suggest we meet here, in the airlock, though we can’t fit your entire party inside.”
“That is acceptable,” the voice of Lucius said. “Myself and two advisers will enter, the others will wait outside.”
For a moment there was a burst of protesting chatter that Lucius silenced by punching a button on his wrist. Lucius and his party stepped into the airlock, only letting go of the cable as they reached the safety of the door.
Arla signalled for the chamber to be re-pressurised and then began unscrewing her helmet.
“Captain,” hissed Kiama, “what about infection?”
Arla dropped the helmet on the single table that had been erected in the centre of the room, the same table she’d sat at to talk with Hal. “That’s why we’re in here and not in there,” she said pointing through the window of the inner door to where Xi could be seen. “You should keep yours on, no sense us all risking it. I don’t reckon there’s much chance I’d catch anything from the chancellor here that I didn’t get from the man he pursued.”
Lucius pushed a contact on the neck of his suit and the helmet tilted back on a hinge until he was able to lift it off and place it alongside Arla’s. “I quite agree. We two must take the risk, the others are mere observers.”
He waved his hand at his companions who stood beside the outer door. “I have introduced myself: this is Navigator Bex and Technician Nareshkumar. They will remain suited in case of...” he paused for effect, “accidents.”
Wiping her hair from her eyes, Arla was astonished by how relaxed Lucius was. She always sweated like a pig after five minutes in a shipsuit, and yet he’d just bounded across a hundred metres of the asteroid’s surface without generating so much as a flushed face.
“Do you have the traitor?”
Straight to the point, thought Arla. “Yes, he’s in our custody.”
“And will you hand him over now?”
Robot Empire: Dawn Exodus: A Science Fiction Adventure Page 10