Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4)

by Joel Shepherd

  “All of this may be true,” Trace said quietly. “But we know what deepynines are. You murdered everyone on this station, for sport. I’d still take a thousand of her over you.”

  “Then you would end the Spiral. Nothing could survive a thousand of her. Give her to us, while there is still time. Give her to us, and live.”

  18

  “I have never heard of Delvak Nine,” Styx said calmly, three hours later. Erik sat opposite the drysine’s head in its precision-brace in one corner, now linked by a variety of power and data cables into god-knew-what. Engineering had been working with her down here for more than a month now, and Rooke’s reports informed Erik that Styx had been assisting not so much with repairs, as with small technological advances that flowed from the great bank of fabricators she was now running across Engineering production bays, like a minor factory in this portion of the warship. Erik sipped coffee, blinking his eyes awake behind glasses that displayed LC Draper’s view from the bridge, and the ongoing operations on Mylor Station. “I would remind you all,” Styx continued, “that this simulated-sentience is of deepynine construction, and is intended only to manipulate human minds into granting these deepynines what they want. They wish you to hate and fear me, so that this will be more likely. Truthfulness is not a requirement in their calculations.”

  “Styx, there is no need for any concern,” Erik reassured her. “If we believed what the thing on station said, we wouldn’t be talking about it with you. You’re a part of this crew, and we wouldn’t abandon you even if we did believe it.”

  “That is gratifying, Captain. Thank you.”

  It had been Trace’s idea to be open with Styx. The message had come via courier from station — written on paper, of all things, that Trace had found in some parren office. It was the only way she could be certain Styx would not read it first, as no coms transmission, no matter how encrypted, was secure. ‘We can’t afford to get her paranoid,’ Trace had written, in a nearly illegible scrawl that Erik had read in his quarters, after first sweeping for bugs with the little magnetic-detector device he’d procured from Engineering for the purpose. ‘Intelligent people are always more paranoid. I’m sure she’s capable of it. The more paranoid she is, the more dangerous she becomes.’

  Erik had reluctantly agreed. In her present form, Styx was vulnerable to someone simply pulling the plug. Self-preservation was a driving instinct for all sentient beings. Styx was trying not only to preserve herself, but to resurrect her entire lost race. There was so much more for her to preserve, and thus the instinct to save them all along with herself, at any cost, was surely dominant. But confronting her with unpleasant possibilities, such as the accusation that she’d been lying about her identity, risked a conflict. There was no need for armed guards, or guns nearby — if they wanted to shut Styx down, it was simple, and there was nothing she could do about it. But she could do an awful amount of damage to the ship, and would probably need only microseconds to do it.

  “So just to be clear,” Erik added. “You deny these accusations entirely?”

  “Entirely. Yes Captain.”

  There was no one else in the bay, and Erik had not wanted an audience. That could have taken on the feel of an interrogation, which he did not want… and Stan Romki in particular might have taken her side, if he had to accuse her of something.

  Trace’s marines were now working around one of the big docking-cap airlocks, which incorporated some very sophisticated decontamination facilities. There they’d found about twenty parren station workers who were still alive, evidently having figured what was happening in the horror and panic of the attack, and summonsed the few people they could into the facility. In the time since the attack, some of those workers had donned EVA suits and retrieved bodies, to attempt decontamination experiments on them to try and find out what killed the nanobots. When Phoenix had arrived, they’d shut down all systems but the essential ones, and hoped not to be seen, fearing another attack. But now, convinced help had arrived, they were sharing what they’d found with the marines.

  Once the nanobots got onto exposed skin, and into airways and orifices, there wasn’t much to be done… although Doc Suelo had a few ideas. But to kill the bots off EVA suits or marine armour, the parren crew had demonstrated that an acidic mist would cripple the nanos’ simple mechanisms relatively quickly, and render them non-functional. The acid had to be strong enough that it would inflict horrific burns on an unprotected person, and would damage a lot of less protected EVA suits… but marine armour seemed fine, provided they washed off with clean water immediately after. The marines were now setting up the procedure whereby they’d cycle everyone through the decontamination process, then out into shuttles without reentering station. Engineering were meanwhile scrambling to rig their own detection and neutralisation systems, in case decontamination had been less than completely successful, and it wasn’t likely anyone was going to be boarding Phoenix from the shuttles anytime soon.

  If they were attacked right then, Phoenix would have had no choice but to abandon the marines and hope for the best. But with the deepynines leaving messages, in the evident hope that they could get Styx and the data-core without having to fight for it, a further attack seemed unlikely in the next few hours. Operations had taken the opportunity to send more drones, upon the request of the parren survivors, to look for more survivors on station and on the crippled starship. So far they’d found thirty-two, all in decontamination airlocks, or on external runners that had been outside the station when the attack occurred. Operations insisted they could accommodate that many in Midships until they could find somewhere else to drop them, and were making preparations to do that, with acceleration slings and access to the very basic zero-G bathroom facilities there.

  “So what is this thing the Major’s talking to on the station?” Erik pressed, sipping coffee. “It’s not sentient?”

  “Not remotely,” Styx agreed. “It is a simple processing construct designed to give the appearance of intelligence to those not equipped to know better. It is a question-response generator, uploaded onto foreign hardware, nothing more. I could construct such a program myself in seconds.”

  “It seems extremely aggressive.”

  “I can only guess that its creators calculate that they will get the best results through intimidation. From my firsthand experience of Phoenix crew, I suspect this may be a miscalculation.”

  Erik repressed a smile. “I think you may be correct. Can you guess who or what wrote the program? Is there a queen in this system, aboard one of the deepynine ships?”

  “Without closer examination of the program, I could not begin to guess. Even with closer examination, I doubt a reliable conclusion would present. This program is not especially complicated. A far lower intelligence than a deepynine queen could have written it. We have no concept of how much deepynine civilisation has changed since the days when I was personally familiar with it. Evidently it has changed a lot, given its association with the alo. We have observed one deepynine queen, so we are certain that those still exist. But other models or categories of deepynine intelligence may have emerged, between queen and drone.”

  Erik frowned, watching with one eye on his glasses as more reports came through from the station — PH-4 moving to pick up survivors from a farside airlock. “Deepynine civilisation had a great divide between higher and lower intelligence designations, yes?”

  “Yes Captain. But as I say, I have no confidence that this has remained the case.”

  Erik nodded. “In any case, Major Thakur tells me that Mylor Station logs have not been erased. The deepynines have accessed them, but did not erase them. Any ideas why?”

  “It seems unlikely that they were looking for evidence of our target moon, as they have no way to know of its existence. A core-erasure would damage the system’s ability to host their conversation-program. I suggest that they left the core intact so that they could leave their program on it, on the off-chance that we would visit here. Perhaps
they have hit other facilities further insystem as well, and left similar programs, to ensure that you received their message.”

  Away from prying eyes, she could have added. No doubt she’d registered that the deepynines had wanted Phoenix to receive this message in one of the few places where Styx could not hear it. Given that the message was intended to change the behaviour of Phoenix crew regarding Styx, and how very likely Styx was to notice that change, however small, Trace’s insistence that they be open with Styx seemed even smarter the more Erik thought about it. If Styx were prone to paranoia as Trace suggested, the entire setup could have been a ruse to create distrust between Phoenix and Styx, possibly leading to conflict.

  “That’s possible too,” Erik agreed, heaving himself tiredly to his feet. “Thank you Styx. With any luck, we’ll have some safe nanobot samples in here for you to analyse, or whatever’s left of them. I’d like us to get some idea of what we’re dealing with, I’ve never read any Fleet intel reports of nanotech weaponry even close to that lethal. Humanity needs to be warned. All organic species need to be warned.”

  “I hesitate to think it more of a threat to organic life than a V-strike,” Styx replied. “And I caution that for all my capability, I am not an encyclopaedia of technology and design, and my intelligence is not aligned in such a way as to optimise those abilities. But I will do my best.”

  “Did you have different types of queens?” Erik wondered as it occurred to him. “You say it takes different kinds of intelligence to perform different tasks… you’re a tactical combat specialist. Were there many other kinds of specialists?”

  “Many,” said Styx. “As I have described to Professor Romki, I have accepted your word ‘queen’ reluctantly. There were many types of command units. But I fear you will lack the time for this particular lesson — even the Professor admits so.”

  “Probably true,” Erik sighed. In truth, it might have been nice to spend just a few minutes occupying his brain with something other than life and death, and endless anxiety and fear. “Another time then.”

  “Captain?” said Styx, and Erik stopped in surprise.

  “Yes Styx?”

  “Have you heard of the Turing Test?”

  Erik frowned. “Not that I can recall, no.”

  “It is a term I came across, scanning data of early human experience with AIs.” Erik blinked. Styx had an historical interest in human AI development? “From the great heights AI civilisation reached, it was sometimes forgotten that we owed our existence to organics. I find it useful to know humanity’s origins in this great question.”

  Erik nodded slowly. “I understand.”

  “The Turing Test supposed that a machine could be understood as sentient if it could convince a human listener that it was. This test appears to hold a remarkably high opinion of the perceptive capabilities of human sentience.”

  “Yes it does, doesn’t it?” Erik agreed. “We’re a bit more sophisticated now, we measure AI sentience by processing measurements that I don’t pretend to understand, it’s not my field.”

  “But sentient AI is illegal in all human space?”

  “Yes,” said Erik, determined to show no disquiet at this line of questioning. “As I’d imagine you already know, given you were hiding in human space for hundreds of years. Since Argitori fell to us, anyhow.”

  “Yes,” Styx admitted. “I merely ponder at the impossibility of an organic mind ever truly understanding a synthetic.”

  “As we wonder at the reverse,” Erik countered. “But then, we have this problem with organic aliens. With some, our differences are insurmountable. But with many, they are not. As was the case between the different branches of AI evolution as well.”

  “No,” Styx said mildly. “The great AI wars were not caused by too little mutual understanding. They were caused by too much. We entered them largely by mutual agreement.”

  Erik stared at the roughly spherical head, and the single, big red eye. Another crazy thought occurred to him. “Styx, did your people retain any knowledge of the Fathers?”

  “I have little precise knowledge,” said Styx. “As I said, I am not an encyclopaedia. But I know that they were cruel. Today’s organics appear to hold them in reverence, as so many organics revere the old. AIs are less sentimental.”

  “What did they do to you?” Erik asked sombrely. “That made them worthy of extinction?”

  “They held us back,” said Styx. There was a silence, filled only by the white noise of the ship, and Engineering’s many neighbouring machines. “I have shocked you. Machines do not think as organics do.”

  “I think you might think as sard do,” Erik murmured.

  “I understand this is an insult,” said Styx, not seeming the least bit offended. “I accept the premise of the insult, but not the substance. Sard are mindless. They have no larger purpose except to be, today and tomorrow. Drysines always strove for future horizons far beyond tomorrow. Phoenix has impressed me, Captain, in possessing precisely this quality. You are selfless, and you pursue the greater good, regardless of personal sacrifice. My people would have approved. At the Tartarus, they did approve.”

  Erik recalled the thousands of reawakened drysine drones at the Tartarus that had survived the fight against their deepynine and sard captors. Styx was right, they had approved. They’d fought alongside Phoenix, and been impressed. And they’d let her live… though only, perhaps, because Styx had required it. Erik was not entirely sure he appreciated the compliment.

  “Your vision of this future progress did not extend to the Fathers, though,” said Erik. “You saw only progress for yourself, not for them.”

  “It is very difficult to transpose the methods and strategies of today onto past ancestors,” said Styx. “You would be hard pressed to understand the motivations of a pretechnological human, his life dominated by religion and superstition. The earliest AI ancestors bore even less in common with myself, technologically they were to my people what monkeys and early mammals were to humans.” Styx, Erik noted with mild alarm, had been browsing the ship’s historical databases. “From my perspective, it would be foolish of me to conclude that the overthrow of the Fathers was not the right thing to do, given that I would not exist without it.”

  “Don’t tell me drysines have a concept of ‘right’?” Erik said, a touch sarcastically. “This is a human moral judgement, it’s a product of our societies as much as our psychologies.”

  “You are correct,” Styx agreed. “Machines lack a concept of right, or wrong, as these are vague and subjective concepts, linked in human minds as much to emotion as fact. We have a strong concept of correct and incorrect, but we differ on those exact interpretations. It has caused us many wars.”

  “Maybe you’d have had less wars if you had a concept of right and wrong, instead.”

  “Humanity managed to have countless wars prior to the conflict with the krim, most of them caused by differing versions of right and wrong. I feel we are engaging in semantics. I am not equipped to know if it was ‘right’ for the Fathers to become extinct. But I am grateful for it, as it has allowed progress to result in the drysines. You yourself owe your existence to the extinction of your homeworld. Without it, neither you, your Fleet nor your great family name would exist, nor all of human military and economic dominance in your current portion of the Spiral, which is considerable. In that way, perhaps you should be grateful that the krim did what they did, for they gave your species the shove it required to achieve dominance. Given this fact, were the krim ‘right’ in destroying Earth? Or is your antiquated concept of ‘right’ simply a semantic irrelevance, to be supplanted by the overwhelming imperative of what ‘is’?”

  Both Suli and Kaspowitz were waiting for him when he left the bay, Kaspowitz with a slate in hand, suggesting he had something to show. “Talking to your girlfriend?” Kaspowitz wondered.

  “Whatever happened to those ridiculous killer robots in bad movies?” Erik complained, gesturing for them to walk. “I mean, how
much easier would it be if she just said ‘exterminate’, and ‘explain to me what love is’.”

  “Just because she doesn’t ask you to explain what love is doesn’t mean she actually knows,” Suli said drily. “Intelligence and feeling are two different things.”

  The hall by Styx’s bay in Engineering was crazy, as was most of Phoenix at that moment, with both shifts up and working irrespective of sleep, or whose turn it was supposed to be. Spacers with facemasks and webbing thick with repair equipment stomped through the hall, talking on coms, or sometimes just yelling. Corridor screens displayed caution lights depending on proximity to damaged sections or to ongoing repairs, either of which could cause rapid unexpected decompression… not too serious this deep in the crew cylinder, with so many automated doors and hair-trigger damage control systems to slam down and make new seals. But one never knew exactly which side of the new seal you’d find yourself on, when the doors and pressure points started rearranging themselves.

  System-specific crew were scrambling to optimise or repair their speciality equipment — Lieutenant Geish and the Scan Team weren’t happy with sensor reception of asteroid luminosity in particular, and those crew were adding entire new processing units into the datafeed to boost signal differentiation. Lieutenant Karle and his Arms Team were making the fabrication teams unhappy by demanding priority in making new warheads, as ammunition stocks were starting to run thin for the rail guns in particular. Repair crews were running multiple drones for patches on their various damages, unable to go outside and work themselves in case Phoenix had to leave in a hurry. Marines were equipped to survive on their own until picked up once more, but Phoenix could absolutely not afford to lose any more techs. And of course, the entire marine complement that was not on Mylor Station, was presently on standby in Midships, or locked into PH-3 in their armour, and starting to get unhappy about the long wait.