“You want to make the Artificials of the AEGIS fleet more…wise?”
‘More wise, more moral, more empathetic. As I said, more whole. Nowhere will an Artificial’s judgment be so crucial as on a military vessel, with hundreds or thousands of crew members under its care, civilians at its back and an enemy in its targets. These situations are what Abigail’s work was designed for, and I believe with your help I can bring it to fruition.’
Kennedy worried at her lower lip. There was no question that the dirty details of operational controls, overrides and accountability in the emerging captain-Prevo triumvirate setup were proving to be…messy. She wasn’t military, so the ultimate decisions of which directions to take were mostly Miriam’s to make, but she did need to know the answers in order to design around them.
If she could provide greater assurances as to safety—if Vii could convince Thomas who could convince Miriam of the increased safety—it would make everything so much easier. And less terrifying for all involved.
She steepled her hands and kicked the chair around absently. “So to make this happen, you faked your own Connova Interstellar credentials and arranged for yourself and all your hardware to be transported from Sagan to Romane, then had yourself installed and wired into my office?”
‘The Metigen known as Mnemosyne proclaimed we were on a tight timetable. It seemed the most efficient tack.’
Kennedy laughed. Fully actualized, self-aware and sapient or not, Vii was definitely an Artificial. She was still laughing when Noah walked in.
He stopped a few steps into the room and screwed his face up as he pointed to the cabinet. “What’s that?”
“Our new Artificial employee.”
“You commissioned an Artificial and didn’t tell me?”
“It commissioned and hired itself.”
He stared at her for a second, then at the cabinet, then shrugged. “Okay. Works for me.”
Everything moved faster once Artificials, Prevos and Mélanges—humans sporting a less-than-Prevo integration with an Artificial—were set loose upon the world. Dizzyingly fast, so much so it felt like they had blinked and the world had changed.
And now, barely two months after the Anaden Inquisitor had tried to kill Alex and Caleb, here was a fleet which dwarfed in size and technology the one Kennedy had helped build for Miriam and Volnosti just…yesterday.
Noah grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist and squeezing tight. “Sorry I’m late. I had to school an Atmospheric Solutions rep about what the ‘standardized’ in ‘standardized connectors’ meant.”
“It’s fine. Miriam isn’t here yet either. I was merely admiring the view.”
“And it is so extremely view-worthy. So what’s our purpose here today?”
She twisted around to face him. “Your favorite—compliance testing review.”
“Ugh. Kill me now.”
“That would be quite the waste, now, wouldn’t it?”
They both turned to find Miriam standing in the door. She waved them toward her. “I suggested we meet here because I suspected you’d enjoy a few minutes with your ships, but we should go to a proper meeting room if we expect to get anything accomplished.”
AMARANTHE
9
ANTLIA DWARF GALAXY
LOCAL GALACTIC GROUP (LGG) REGION II
* * *
CASMIR ELASSON-MACHIM, NAVARCHOS of LGG Region II, reviewed the readiness status of the II-13C Regiment until he satisfied himself everything was in order. From the bridge of the Imperium command ship he sent a directed order into the integral. “All forces, commence Modified Eradication Operation.”
Planet AD-4508b orbited a backwater star in a backwater galaxy, yet some called it a hidden gem. Lush foliage and towering tree canopies draped the equatorial region of its fertile surface. But while it looked inviting from afar, he couldn’t recommend any safari vacations to travelers—at least not until his mission was complete.
The dominant species of AD-4508b was a giant arachnid they’d labeled ‘Kich,’ a revolting mix of spider and scorpion. When full-grown they measured nearly five meters long and four meters tall at the torso.
Despite being surrounded by copious plant life, the Kich were carnivores. Their primary food source was the ‘Ierak,’ pterodactyls which roamed the skies at night. During the daylight hours the Kich scaled the tall trees and spun webs made of a crystalline substance closer to glass than silk between the tree limbs. When darkness descended, they retreated to the surface and lurked in the groundcover, waiting.
The Ierak used a non-visual-wavelength form of sight, one which failed to detect the diaphanous webs, and any Ierak to encounter a web was instantly sliced into pieces—pieces which fell to the ground to be consumed by the Kich.
Evolve or die, and evolution wasn’t working fast enough for the Ierak.
Under normal circumstances, when a planet displaying characteristics similar to AD-4508b was discovered, a Theriz Cultivation Unit was sent in directly without the need for interim operations. The Unit would employ its massive machines to churn the surface into raw resources, plant and animal alike, then ferry the yield off for processing and refinement.
However, it seemed the webs the Kich spun were both functionally and visually unique—or so he’d been informed.
Aesthetics were not his role; they looked like ordinary webs to Casmir. But on seeing images of the Kich’s deadly creations, the Idoni Primor had declared (with appropriate dramatic flair, he assumed) she must have several sets for her various palaces.
Of course, the webs were intricately attached to the treetops, so they needed to be removed as well in order to keep the webs intact. The delicate work of extracting a bunch of trees and webs could not be accomplished while fighting off a horde of giant arachnids in the daytime and swarms of flying dinosaurs in the night.
So the decision was made to conduct a limited Eradication of the Kich first, rather than as an inevitable byproduct of Cultivation. And because this was all for a Primor, Casmir had been sent in to supervise the operation.
It should have been beneath his rank, the duty of one of countless ela-Machim overseeing minor ship groupings. But all gave way before a Primor’s wishes, so here he was.
He took small comfort from the fact clearing a single jungle would suffice to acquire the specimens required, after which the Theriz Unit could sweep in to make mincemeat of the surface.
The attack transports and CAS fighters of the LGG II-13C Regiment penetrated the atmosphere, and Casmir focused on his integral connection to the troops to monitor the operation.
The darkness is omnipresent. No moon lights the night.
Two transport vessels land in open areas on opposite ends of the targeted region. Troops move out in formation as customized vision enhancements transform night to day for them. Hovertanks take the lead. Their wide-field weapons should do the bulk of the work, leaving the troops the relatively easy job of mopping up the occasional straggler. But Machim never employ half-measures, and as always the force deployed is overwhelming both in numbers and firepower.
The air is sweltering, thick with moisture and a pungent odor. Alien planets often smell foul, and Casmir orders the activation of suit olfactory filters for all troops. There’s no breeze at ground level; chirps and rhythmic hums signal the presence of native creatures too small to attract the Kich’s wrath.
Plasma bombs intended to ignite the leafy undergrowth but not the hardier tree trunks drop from the CAS fighters, bringing a sea of hellfire to the landscape.
The Kich flee their cover, and the hovertanks open fire.
The front line of the creatures falls under the weight of the barrage, but a second wave surges up and over the bodies to swarm the hovertanks. Zeus, the monsters are fast! The hovertanks fire continuously, but additional Kich use the new front line as cover, then leap into the air the twenty meters required and attach themselves to the large vehicles. Webs spew forth in furious movements of thick and shockin
gly agile limbs to surround the frames and clog the engine ports.
The hovertanks begin to crash to the ground.
Undeterred, the ground troops open fire on the Kich using smaller, precision versions of the wide-field weapons. More Kich fall, and the ground runs thick in viscous, azure blood as the troops’ weapons rip apart the attackers. The battle begins to turn in the Regiment’s favor.
Then a third wave of Kich appears out of the shadows of the jungle. Without the hovertanks to keep them at bay and thin the herd, they plow into the troops in force.
Still, the thought the Regiment might fail in its mission does not enter Casmir’s mind. These are Machim soldiers, genetically bred for the rigors of combat. Their armor is impenetrable to most weapons, and the bodies beneath the armor are hardened to absorb abuse that would quickly kill lesser men.
From the point of view of those in the field, the Kich’s size is startling. The creatures loom large over them, rearing up to reveal hairy, barreled torsos and sturdy, sharp pincers. But unarmored organic skin can’t withstand the superheated plasma bursts of Machim weapons, no matter how tough it is.
No one here is a coward; no one runs or panics in the face of the rampaging arachnids. Instead the troops simply fire upward into the exposed torsos while adroitly maneuvering around to avoid the stabbing pincers.
But the battlefield is both crowded and increasingly slick with corpses, limbs and the associated fluids, and the room in which to maneuver rapidly diminishes.
The vigorous swipe of an outstretched limb knocks a soldier to the ground. He swings his weapon up and slices open the exposed belly of the offending Kich—his vision becomes obscured.
Casmir switches his focus to a different soldier in the vicinity, temporarily overriding the man’s freedom of action to locate the one in peril. Behind the prone form, a Kich shoots glass-silk from its spinnerets to fashion a web around the head and body of the fallen man. Casmir allows the approaching soldier to shoot and the spinner is felled, but the man on the ground struggles and fails to break through the web.
It’s happening elsewhere. Casmir borrows the eyes of a pilot of one of the few remaining airborne hovertanks, and from above it soon becomes obvious the Kich are displaying an unexpected ability to work together in a tactical manner. In some instances they deliberately sacrifice themselves so others can gain a better vantage to disable their adversaries.
There are so many. Far more than surveillance indicated. Do only a portion climb the trees on any given day? As ectotherms, their body temperatures are too close to the ambient air temperature to allow for reliable thermal detection, so if many remain below it would not have been apparent to the advance surveillance teams.
The troops carry emergency oxygen supplies inside their suits. If the webbing has not penetrated the outer layers of their armor, they can survive for a time. Perhaps twenty minutes.
But Casmir has no weapon on hand that will break the tough, resilient webbing en masse without liquefying the troops’ armor or pulverizing the bodies it protects.
There are too many.
Dismay creeps into his chest as the battlefield slowly, inexorably turns to glass.
Casmir withdrew as much as possible into his own mind, though the slaughter continued to whisper and scream in the background of his consciousness. He ordered a retreat for those who remained alive, but he’d just lost twelve thousand soldiers.
They could and would be replaced—in many cases with themselves—but he wasn’t going to waste resources throwing them at the enemy again and again. An alternate strategy was required.
Deploying more powerful weapons from a higher altitude risked destroying the trees holding the webs aloft. This outcome did not fulfill his orders and thus was unacceptable.
But he did have at his disposal creatures that were stronger and more savage than the Kich.
10
SIYANE
MILKY WAY SECTOR 53
* * *
YOU LET HIM GO.
Alex rolled her eyes in annoyance and motioned for Caleb to answer Mesme.
Knowing she must be mentally drained after hours of maintaining peak geniality for the benefit of Eren, he obliged her. “Yes. There’s an old human saying: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Any help he might give us if forced into it would be suspect and unreliable. This way, if he helps us it will be because he wants to do it—or possibly because he’s intrigued by the challenge—not because he has no choice.”
I comprehend the meaning of the idiom. But you do recognize the effort it took to arrange the meeting in the first place, yes? You do recognize it may be impossible to locate and persuade another ally who can enable you to acquire what you have explicitly stated your forces will need in order to match the Machim fleets on the field of battle, do you not?
Caleb didn’t search around for the profile of lights; there were times when it was easier to treat Mesme like a disembodied voice. “Of course we recognize it. Thank you for your hard work in both finding a candidate and putting us in a position to reach out to him. We still think this opportunity will pan out and Eren will help us. You’ve been observing us for aeons. You know sometimes these things take time.”
Despite the unsettling way the anarch had regarded Caleb initially—and for too long—he did think in the end they’d won Eren over, at least enough to bring him back for another round of negotiations. The man had left as curious about their origin and motives as they were about his world. He would come back, and hopefully next time not expend quite so much energy watching Caleb as if he were some kind of reviled predator expected to pounce and devour his prey the next instant.
Mesme’s tone lost a measure of its fervor. Undeniably. Yet time is one resource we no longer possess in any abundance.
Eager to shake off the disquiet his thoughts had conjured, Caleb went over to where Alex stood and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “We have a little time. Time enough, I think. While we wait to hear from Eren, we can continue pursuing other avenues. I’m interested in doing reconnaissance on several of the Machim ship production facilities. Alex, didn’t you want to try to find out more about how the intergalactic wormhole gateways function?”
The gateway structures dwarfed even the mammoth Katasketousya portals. Three imposing rings generated a stable wormhole some six kilometers in diameter, enabling almost instantaneous travel across and between galaxies. Unsurprisingly, the technology had intrigued her since their first traversal of one of the gateways.
She’d relaxed into him, but her mind seemed elsewhere, and it took her a few seconds to respond. “Yeah…Mesme, what do you know about the Reor slabs?”
Silence lingered.
“Mesme?”
Why do you ask? Data storage is not interesting.
Caleb maneuvered them to face Mesme, as there were also times when honing in on a mark helped to ferret out artifice. “Actually, sometimes data storage is very interesting—for instance, when it’s data that’s important to your enemy. But I don’t think that’s what she means.”
She squeezed his hands in affirmation. “True, and true. Valkyrie and I noticed a couple of unusual mathematical properties in the structure of a slab Eren had, and when I held it, we sensed…an aspect I can’t put a name to. At a minimum, Reor is a fascinating and potentially useful material I want to understand better. But maybe there’s also something more to it?”
Again, silence.
She peered over her shoulder and gave Caleb a look, then disentangled from his arms to wander purposefully through the cabin. “Mesme, is there something about the Reor slabs you’d like to share with us?”
Alexis Solovy, your cleverness and acute persistence is at times as irksome as it is useful. Very well. Travel to the coordinates I am providing to Valkyrie. The answers to your questions are better shown than described.
It was going to take hours to reach the mysterious coordinates Mesme had given them, which were located deep in dead space on the far
outer rim of the Tyche galaxy. The void under any definition.
By now the Kat’s—like Alex, he’d quickly adopted the shorthand with some relief—cagey, enigmatic behavior had become all too commonplace, and Caleb had resigned himself to tolerating it most of the time. When they arrived at wherever they were headed, Mesme would reveal its hidden secrets, since it must, but it wouldn’t do so a moment sooner. No reason to get worked up about it until then.
A multitude of crises were elbowing for position in the line of ‘things to get worked up about,’ whether they resided in the space outside the ship, at home in Aurora, or coursing through his own bloodstream. He was endeavoring to choose his battles wisely, and he wasn’t choosing this one.
Instead Caleb leaned against the wall and contemplated Alex.
She stood at the data table studying the images of the Reor slab Valkyrie had captured through her ocular implant. He wouldn’t go so far as to call her ‘worked up’ either—she wasn’t acting anxious or exasperated—but this particular puzzle had definitely caught her fancy.
It warmed his heart to see. The prodigious wonders and mysteries Amaranthe held was turning out to be just what she needed to smooth out the lingering rough edges of her recovery. Using her mind and imagination to uncover its secrets was so much better than simply flying amongst them—a heady experience inhabiting the ship had given her, but one which didn’t come from within and so was ultimately an empty one.
He believed this, not because it was true—though it felt true—but because she believed it. She was becoming far more self-aware these days, and his observation wasn’t news to either of them. He still took comfort in seeing it reaffirmed by her actions and choices, in witnessing its truth with his own eyes.
Relativity: Aurora Resonant Book One (Aurora Rhapsody 7) Page 7