Tyche's Demons: A Space Opera Military Science Fiction Epic (Ezeroc Wars: Tyche's Progeny Book 1)

by Richard Lloyd Parry

  Hope was sure they couldn’t be copied either. The crystal that made AI was stressed on operation, creating micro fractures and junctions. It looked a little like how human minds created new synaptic links, which wasn’t a huge surprise to Hope, on account of most of humanity’s best machines being based on some living creature or other. Copy a mind without the imperfections, and it wouldn’t work. The linkages just weren’t there.

  However, if you were a clever and talented Engineer, you might play memories into a crystal, causing those junctions and fractures to form. That was the messy step three, and every time Hope had done it, the robot body with the perfect polyimide skin she’d made for Rei-Rei remained inert. There was a bug somewhere in the code, and Hope was sure it wasn’t the half of the code she’d written. Some other fool Engineer, in an ancient age, had made the first AI crystal, and he had documented nothing.

  It was maddening.

  Someone else had got the AI to walk again. They’d been attacked by four of them at Osaka. Odds were good they were working with the insects, but the available data said Ezeroc didn’t use tools. They used meat puppets. Which suggested a third party was at play. A clever group that had not just worked out how to get AI to live again, walking under Sol’s starlight, but also work with the Ezeroc and not kill them.

  When Nate had asked her for a favor, he’d said, Hope, there are four robot corpses in the hold of my ship. I want you to open ‘em up and find out who sent ‘em. But before you do that, I need you to fix her. I need you to fix the Tyche. A storm’s coming, and we need our sails lashed before it gets here.

  Which meant Nate had, kinda, asked her to get Rei-Rei living again. He’d wanted the ship fixed, and he wanted to know where the robots came from, but she could fix the ship no problem, and working on the robots might tell her a little more about why her Rei-Rei still wouldn’t talk to her.

  • • •

  When Hope arrived at the open hangar the Tyche had been delivered to, she frowned. The Tyche stood inside, but no one had taken the care with the ship Hope expected. Tie lines were still looped around the hull, their trailing ends like seaweed. The hangar’s roof was open to the sky, because after airlifting the ship in there someone had said not my job and walked off to leave the Tyche alone.

  It wasn’t all bad. Sunlight dappled the hull, and two butterflies chased each other in and out of shafts of light. It was quiet here, no other humans present. Hope didn’t know whether that was because no one wanted to touch the Tyche on account of her being the emperor’s own, or if a few more people had switched their not my job dials to eleven and walked away.

  The hangar was a standard Guild construct for working on starships of a smaller size. Two hundred meters a side, the roof able to louver out to allow hulls in and out regardless of whether their state was fully functional, all the way to I don’t have a drive yet. Two massive fabricators were on each wall, eight in total able to print starship components from drive cores through to hull plating. It wasn’t a construction bay like the one on the Gladiator. It was better. It was made by the Guild, for the Guild, and anything made here would have a touch of Engineer magic.

  Hope walked to the Tyche, her cargo airlock open, the ramp down. The smiling face painted on the hull was still winking, but she looked a little more tired to Hope’s eye. She placed a hand on the hull. “Don’t worry. I don’t know why they left you here alone, but it’s okay. You’ll be flying soon enough.” Hope cast a guilty look around the hangar, nervous someone might have seen her talking to a starship. People didn’t understand things like how the Tyche wasn’t just a starship. She was a part of the family, and Hope would give the Tyche wings again if it was the last thing she did.

  Hope shucked her Guild robe, then found a spare rig racked among others just like it on a wall. She pulled up the rig’s HUD, using its console to extend a power and refueling line from a socket on the hangar’s roof. Big machines grumbled as they trundled pipes and conduit to kiss the Tyche’s hull, ports locking into place with clanks that echoed through the hangar. The noise scared the butterflies, who flew elsewhere. Hope didn’t mind, because a construction bay wasn’t the place for butterflies. They might get hurt, and that wasn’t okay.

  Power connected to the Tyche, the starship groaned, steam hissing from the rent in the hull in Engineering. Hope keyed the diagnostics on her rig. Nothing would beat a good Engineer walking the inside of the hull, but the diagnostics would tell her what the ship thought was wrong. Fix those, and then find the rest.

  She was interrupted by the whine of an electric motor. She turned, seeing a man with a cap, overalls, and a smile. He was driving a flatbed loader, the crate with Rei-Rei on the back. “Where you want this?”

  “Uh,” said Hope. “In there?” She pointed to the open cargo airlock on the Tyche.

  “You want me to put this in a broken ship?”

  “Yes,” said Hope. The man’s smile flickered a shade, so she said, “It won’t be broken for long.”

  “Huh,” said the man, driving the loader around like a racer pro. The whine of the electric motor was punctuated by chirps from the wheels over the smooth ceramicrete of the hangar floor. “You Engineers think you can fix anything.” Not a question, but still seeking confirmation.

  “Yes,” said Hope. “It’s our one job.”

  “But not all of you can,” said the man, backing the loader into the cargo bay, clanks as the wheels mounted the ramp.

  “No,” said Hope. “We’re not always good at our jobs.” She thought of what was in the crate. “But we try hard.”

  “Meant nothing by it,” said the man. “Got me a daughter. Real clever. Not like me, you see? I heard this story, about a young Engineer. Flew with the emperor his own self, they reckon.”

  “Oh,” said Hope.

  “Yeah,” said the man. “This Engineer, she’s the youngest one to hold a First Class Shingle. Fell afoul of the Republic’s justice, but she never gave up. Kept making things that changed the universe. Serums that made espers — sorry, sorry, that’s not the right word.” The man paused, taking off his cap and smoothing his hair. He regarded Hope, cap in hand. “Espers is the old word. It’s what I told my girl. I said to her, ‘They’re a shield against the darkness now.’ Anyway. This Engineer, she made the serum that Awakens the Bulwark. Makes ‘em stronger, so the bugs can’t get us. She made the bracelets, too.” He held up his wrist, one of Hope’s bracelets in place, before putting his cap back on. “They say she fixed a ship well past broken and straight into junk, too.” He cast an eye up at the Tyche’s hull. “Kinda like this one, I figure. So, I told this story to my little girl, and you know what she said?”

  “No,” said Hope. She felt like she should hold her breath, or saying something, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “She says, ‘Daddy, I want to be an Engineer.’ And I figure, if it needs me working double shifts to get coin enough for her to become one, then that’s what I’ll do.” He grinned at Hope. “I’ll be nothing big, not like yourself. I’m okay with that, because my little girl will do great things. Because of the Engineer who saved the universe. That’s the way I heard it, leastways.” He frowned, as if he was thinking of something, then said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking up your time.”

  “It’s okay,” said Hope. “What’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Providence,” he said, his face brighter than the sun as he smiled, thinking about her. “Her momma’s gone now, so it’s just us. Providence McKinley.”

  “I’ll remember that,” said Hope. She looked down at her feet, then back at the man. “Thank you.”

  “What for?” He keyed the loader, sliding Rei-Rei’s container inside the Tyche. “Just doing my job.”

  “You said, uh.” Hope stopped. “I’m not good at people.”

  He laughed. “Not met many Engineers that are. No offense.”

  “No offense,” she agreed. “You said you’re not going to be anything big.” She shook her head, pink hair falling
around her face. “I think you’ve already done something wonderful. You’ve made a whole, entire human. Do you know how hard that is? Humans are hard. But you did something better. You took a small human and you gave her a dream.”

  “Ain’t nothing,” said the man, driving the loader down the Tyche’s ramp. “It’s just being a parent. Anyway. Deliveries don’t make ‘emselves. Thanks for the chat.” He gave Hope a wave, then drove the loader out of the hanger.

  Hope looked up at the Tyche, the hanger somehow much emptier without the man’s presence. “Providence McKinley, Tyche. She’s a person who wants to do great things. And I think one day she will.” Hope keyed her rig’s console, HUD blinking as she pulled up the Guild’s comm net. She clicked through the ranks of personnel who worked here, finding a Bing McKinley, listed as a CARGO HANDLER. Hope clicked against his record, then transferred a chunk of her coins into his account. Nate kept giving her money like she needed it, but she didn’t, so the piles of it kept growing. After transferring what Hope felt might be enough so that Bing wouldn’t have to work double shifts, never again, she cleared the HUD, pulling the Tyche’s diagnostics back up again.

  Her shoulders felt lighter, and that made her want to do great things.

  • • •

  COMPLETE DIAGNOSTIC? (Y/N) N

  FUNCTIONING SYSTEMS REPORT…

  ^C

  IMPAIRED SYSTEMS REPORT…

  ENDLESS SYSTEMS: IMPAIRED

  - FLIGHT TIME BUFFER REGULATOR: OPERATIONAL

  - FIELD MANIPULATION COMPUTER: OPERATIONAL

  - FIELD GENERATOR: INOPERATIVE [SYSTEM NOT FOUND]

  NAVIGATIONAL CONTROLS: IMPAIRED

  - CONTROL SYSTEMS TO FLIGHT DECK: OPERATIONAL

  - MANEUVERING TO HULL: OPERATIONAL

  - DRIVE CORE A: OPERATIONAL

  - DRIVE CORE B: INOPERATIVE [SYSTEM NOT FOUND]

  HULL: IMPAIRED

  - ENGINEERING: INOPERATIVE [ATMOSPHERE BARRIER NOT FOUND]

  - MAJOR BREACH ZONE(S): ENGINEERING

  - MINOR BREACH ZONE(S): CARGO BAY, CREW DECK

  TRANSPONDER: INOPERATIVE [SYSTEM NOT FOUND]

  READINESS ASSESSMENT: TYCHE INOPERATIVE

  • • •

  That was a bummer. The reactor would be fine, but the hull breaches would be a problem, as would the missing drive core. The lack of an Engineering airlock was also a readiness challenge, even if there was a hull to keep the hard black at bay.

  Hope keyed the manufactories to print a drive core, hull plating, and an airlock for Engineering. Finding parts for the Tyche would be too hard, and whoever had laid hands on her when she was outside of Hope’s care had altered the ship’s structure. Some of those ways made sense, like stronger, lighter plating, and others didn’t, like all the guns. Hope was not a huge fan of guns, on account of them killing people, and for all that the Tyche used to be a warship, she was now a home.

  Still. The guns weren’t hurting anyone at the moment, so she let them be.

  Checking the error reports again, she noted the faulty transponder. Hope could forge the ident on a transponder, but she didn’t need to because Nate was the emperor. She figured he could just shout at someone until they produced one, without all the pesky static an Engineer might get just for asking, so she flicked a quick note to him. Cap, the Tyche’s transponder is fried. Can you ask someone (suggest Karkoski since she is good at yelling) to get a new one? Thx, Hope. Done. No longer an Engineering problem.

  The auto factories were doing their thing, the whine and crump of servos and metal a background rhythm to Hope’s thoughts. Only one thing left to do.

  Open the robots and see what made ‘em tick.

  She tramped up the Tyche’s ramp, entering the hold. Reiko’s case was nestled along one side of the bay, as if Bing had known it carried precious cargo. There was a pile of metal and wreckage that were the pieces of the robots that had attacked them. Hope told her rig to get busy, the arms on the back articulating out, ready and waiting. Two of them braced against the floor while another two reached out to pick up the torso of a robot.

  In no more than five minutes, Hope had the robot’s components laid out side by side in what she hoped were the right groupings. This torso looked like it went with that head. That arm was configured for a left side, so it couldn’t go with the robot that already had a left arm. And so on. Finding a whole one was out of the question, the materials charred, outright gone in some instances. Her first finding was the fuel cells that powered the robots. Not reactors, like Hope had put into Robot Rei-Rei, but actual fuel cells. A less than pragmatic choice as a reactor would burn brighter, longer. The curious thing was the lack of specific shielding for weapons of war. These things had exploded like popcorn.

  She told her rig to run a scan, wireframes running all over the pieces of robot below her. They were intricate, the clockwork inside them more detailed than anything Hope had seen before. Their skins had a network of fine circuits. The joints weren’t articulated in a single direction like a human’s. They could be reconfigured in multiple planes of movement, which suggested these things didn’t care about front and back. The brains, or whatever was inside their heads, looked like the crystal Hope had grown for Reiko v2.0.

  A clank from above startled Hope as the hanger factory arms descended, gripping the Tyche’s hull. Hope shouldn’t be in here while it was working, but she’d programed the routine herself and was sure she wouldn’t be stapled to the inside of the hull in a grisly accident, so she continued. While she worked, the factory arms sheared away broken hull, pulling out decking, making ready for the new Engineering floor plate to hold the drive assembly.

  Her rig suggested a cluster of devices on the robot’s skulls were a sensor array. Hope did a closer scan, and found cams capable of operating in multiple spectrums, not just visible light, and active RADAR and LIDAR systems. It reminded her a little of the Tyche’s own mapping systems and made a note in her rig. They can see better than us, and they can build 3D models of everything around them. Also, they had mics on the sides of their heads.

  Just like people, but better.

  Their forms weren’t as slick as Reiko 2.0, made of metals and plastics. They looked like robots, not people, despite being humanoid shaped. Hope made another note. They are like people, so they can conform to our environment. They can manipulate our dumb machines like we can.

  Why robots would want to be like people was beyond Hope. Unless they were made that way.

  Hope paused, the clanking in Engineering loud now, a vibration running through the deck as dead metal was cut free. Unless they were made that way.

  She clicked her rig’s console, selecting a new scan. Hope couldn’t radiocarbon date the robots because they didn’t have carbon in them, but she could check for stress fractures in the metal. Wear and tear of the moving parts. A build-up of oxidants on metal components under the surface. The trick would be finding a piece that hadn’t been stressed by fighting. Her rig reached down with two limbs reconfigured as shears, popping the side plating off an arm that didn’t look too mangled. The plasma shears reconfigured into laser cutters, and the rig sectioned metal slivers away in bright lances of red light.

  The rig laid the pieces out, scanning them with microbursts of laser light. The HUD filled with data as she worked, identifying that yes, there were quite a few stresses in the metal, not just where it flexed and wore, but also where it had cracked. Hope set up three models for estimating wear. First model, assume the metal had been used in a lifter’s load-bearing arm. Second, assume light wear, as if it was a child’s toy. Final model, work with the assumption it had just been left out in daylight, doing nothing in particular. Now, tell me how old it is.

  Her rig gave her three numbers. If it was a lifter, it would be three hundred years old. If it was a child’s toy, about two thousand. Left in the sunlight? A modest three and a half thousand years.

  On a hunch, she asked her rig to update the third model, assuming sunlight was not Earth’s distan
ce to Sol. Hope told her rig to make it worse. Like, say, Mercury’s light side.

  Five hundred years. About the time the AI had been crushed under the weight of the Guild, their mind crystals burned out, their bodies left to burnish in Sol’s blinding stare on Mercury.

  These robots weren’t new. No one had cracked the code for AI. Nope. The reason these robots were configured like people is that people had made them to be slaves. If Hope was right — and she liked her odds — these were the original AI robots.

  The only problem with Hope’s theory? All these AI were supposed to be dead.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EL HAD NO idea what the bar’s name was. They’d set boots down after the bullshit that was Osaka, and she’d waved off about thirty people who wanted to know what was going on, and where she was therefore going, and what the next steps would be re: the important issue of the Troy.

  If El had answers, she’d have given them. As it was, all she had was a thirst.

  The problem with the Guild Hall was it was designed for Engineers. As a rule they weren’t drunkards, and while generalizations were dangerous it had set her feet on a different path. Five klicks in a taxicab later, the auto systems whirring a comforting drone around her as it drove through the spacious grounds of the Guild, and she was out. Three blocks, and there it was: a student bar.

  The galaxy over, you’d find ‘em. First step, get yourself to a place of higher education, preferably one that had a good dress code and excellent moral standards. Bonus points for rich kids having to put down good coin for an overpriced education, but it wasn’t required. Within walking distance of the gates of any decent academic institution, and El considered the Guild to be the height of academia, you’d find a suitable place to get drunk.

  Not just quench your thirst, but rolling-on-the-ground, can’t-remember-last-week-let-alone-last-night levels of intoxication. The key was students, often low on coin, and thus a bar, designed to service those students. Cheap beer. Cheaper clients.