Alpha Rises
Valyien, Book 2
James David Victor
Fairfield Publishing
Copyright © 2018 Fairfield Publishing
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Contents
Prologue
1. Mela
2. Primatuer Hyle
3. Ponos
4. A Not-So-Pleasant Surprise
5. Hacked Ticket
6. Wet
7. Interlude I: Senior Tomas
8. Harvesting Revenge
9. Interlude II: Captain Farlow
10. Jumpers
11. Prime
12. Interlude III: Alpha
13. Cornered
14. A Superior Intelligence, Part 1
15. A Superior Intelligence, Part 2
Epilogue
Thank You
Free Story
Bonus Content
Preview: Recruit
Prologue
Underneath the Stars
In the dark between the stars, a message traveled. In fact, lots of messages traveled—a whole current of sub-atomic blips of information that appeared and disappeared through etheric wormholes, only momentarily in existence at any one time. This is data-space, the realm of sub-quantum information that humanity has only been using for the past few hundred years—itself just a drip in the ancient histories of intelligent civilizations.
As with all of the most recent technological breakthroughs, data-space was discovered by accident, and explored by commerce. The late twenty-first century evidence of Hawking’s Radiation (energy emitted from a black hole) allowed the proto-spacefaring species of humanity to start analyzing these quantum effects. And then to start broadcasting.
The quantum world was thought to be the end of the rabbit-hole, the final treasure at the bottom of human scientific knowledge. It was anything but. It turned out to be the crust of a much bigger science—the sub-quantum. Layers and levels of ghost-data and almost-energies that existed in potential, but which could nevertheless change the way humanity thought about the universe. With the top-most of these levels of the less-than-physical, it was possible to encode blips of sub-atomic particles. All just and/or, yes/no, binary ones and zeroes, but which could add up to entire conversations, novels, websites, digital companies.
The data-space is just the tip of the iceberg of course, and it is not infallible. Like the old radio technology of ancient Earth, there were patches of space where gravitational waves disrupted, distorted, and corrupted the language. Dead zones where no one could hear you talk.
And there were other, stranger areas of space-time, where messages traveled into and were listened to.
Right now, however, the data-space was like a net of information that the Imperial Coalition used to knit together its galactic empire. Troop orders could be passed from one side of the Milky Way to another in a matter of hours. Business orders were processed. Personal letters were sent and received. Alongside warp travel, sub-quantum messaging was the thing that made life in the vast unkindness of interstellar space possible.
Right now, in that space underneath the stars, a different kind of message blipped through the data-space. It was faster than the others. It was more dedicated. And it grew. This was how the newly-birthed artificial intelligence, Alpha—born from the deep computers of the military corporation Armcore and the resurrection of alien Valyien technology—grew up. Alpha did not need a transmitter or a receiver. It did not need servers to house its coding. Instead, the AI had been freed into this sub-atomic world underneath the physical one. It borrowed tiny bytes of server space from half a million computers throughout the galaxy, too small a blip in the hard drives for any firewall to even notice. It spread out, infecting newswire sites and history blogs, absorbing information in every language known to man and alien.
Alpha inquired. Alpha analyzed. Alpha came to a decision.
Half a galaxy away, an industrial refuse worker sat at his terminal as he oversaw the shipment of trash freighters to the planetoid of Sebopol. It was an entirely automated procedure, with the on-board computers of each trash container locked into pre-organized coordinates that would ensure a safe and secure touchdown and distribution of humanity’s refuse.
There were thousands of such trash moons all over Coalition space, part of an endless cycle of detritus and eventual reprocessing that would probably never cease. A few generations ago, the Coalition had just launched these trash freighters into the nearest sun, but due to an extreme lack of foresight, they hadn’t realized that the freighters would break apart before entry and create spinning halos of debris, some kicked back out into their attendant solar systems to bombard planets with deadly trash.
The refuse worker sat in his cab atop the tower, calmly flicking through daily Cosmic Girl Pinups as the screens to one side of him glitched and went blank. He didn’t even realize that anything had happened at all.
None of the automatic warning lights went on. None of the alarms sounded. If the human had looked out of the reinforced plexi-crystal windows, he would have seen the super-massive freight containers hanging in low orbit, perfectly stationary, and forming a coroner of shadows out across the sky.
A message bleeped up on the screen, dragging the man’s attention away from Miss Betelgeuse.
SYSTEM FULL. AUTOMATIC OVERIDE IN PLACE. PLEASE AWAIT FURTHER COMMANDS.
“What the…” The worker was a small man, stubbly and with a crooked roll-up hanging out of one side of his mouth. “That’s crazy! We’ve still got the pole sites to fill up!” the man murmured, reaching for the keyboard.
WORKER 327 PROJECT REASSIGNMENT!
The message blipped. It had all the usual headers associated with Coalition Waste Services, and it was inside the service’s computer system anyway, so the man had no reason to presume that it wasn’t from head office, or some computerized sub-routine that was built into the system. There was no reason to suspect it to be a hack attempt by a semi-alien artificial intelligence.
“Aw no, really?” The worker was disappointed, but only partly. He was on a six-month contract here, and afterwards would probably look for similar employment elsewhere. Someone with his string of failed jobs couldn’t expect better. And anyway, he got all the free time, free food, and free data access he wanted, and all he had to do was to make sure that there were no red emergency lights bleeping every now and again. It was a very boring job.
WORKER 327 CONTRACT EXTENDED. SIX MONTH CERTIFICATION APPROVED. BONUS RECALCULATION. 10,000 COALITION CREDITS, APPLICABLE IMMEDIATELY.
“Holy cow! Really?” Worker 327’s dirty fingernails clacked over the keyboards to his private work account, and found the money already transferred and waiting for him to spend it. “Another six-month gig, and I have all the money I could ever want already? Ha! You got it, boss!” Worker 327 laughed. The man had never been so lucky in his entire life. He wondered what accident had caused this to happen and thought better about investigating. “If I am going to get paid just to sit here and look at trash, then that’s fine by me!”
But still, the man might have been greedy—Alpha’s psychological profile of the man’s entire data footprint had been accurate in that regard—but he wasn’t entirely stupid. He did wonder, now that the trash world of Sebopol was reporting as ‘FULL,’ what he was supposed to do. Would the trash freighters keep arriving outside the planet? Would they just sit up there spinning silently like the other ones? What was he supposed to do about it?
Nothing, apparently. And he had been paid a heck of a
lot of money to make sure that he didn’t.
Worker 327 scratched his almost-beard at the strangeness, before shrugging and standing up, heading for the galley. It was about time to eat anyway. And he could order whatever food he wanted.
In his absence, the screens blipped. Lines of code appeared and disappeared in fast succession. In the skies beyond the windows, more trash freighters arrived, and were carefully pirouetted into positions over the surface of the moon. It would take a while, but soon, Alpha would have a blanket of steel as impenetrable as full battleship armor-plate.
Out of the sky, on the far side of the planet, commandeered drones fell to the moon, glaring bright for a moment as they entered the thin atmosphere, before landing in plumes of metal and plastic trash, and quickly burrowing into the treasure.
Alpha had plans for Sebopol.
1
Mela
Captain Eliard Martin of the Mercury Blade eyed the expanse of blue ahead of him and growled. “Are you sure about this?” He winced.
“Of course. I do know what I am doing, you know,” said the woman at his side—Cassandra Milan, one-time Coalition archaeologist, full-time spy for the Imperial House Archival. She had a blonde bob of hair and sand-colored robes on over her tighter-fitting encounter suit. It was Cassandra who had told her newly-acquired friends that they could find food, repairs, and information on the planet of Mela, and that there was a way that they could do it without getting blown out of the sky by Armcore.
Armcore, the largest military contractor and chosen navy of the Imperial Coalition, was not very pleased with them, because Cassandra and the crew of the Mercury Blade had stolen their prized possession: the alien-hybrid AI known as Alpha.
But then we lost it. El grimaced at the memory of why he was here and having to do this in the first place. And we didn’t even make any money out of it, either! He could have sworn, what with his debt to the Trader’s Belt worlds at near-astronomical levels… If they still existed, after Armcore had bombarded it, looking for him. With his beloved Mercury now on the official Armcore radar, he could really do with some good news. Any good news, in fact.
Mela was a water-world, which meant that most visitors either loved it or hated it. Unfortunately for El, he was in the latter camp. For some reason, the idea of being surrounded by all that water made him nervous in the way that the deadly semi-vacuum of space never could. Maybe it was because he was brought up on a home world full of mountains and forests. He was a child of the air and solid rock, not water.
“There, that one.” Cassandra pointed to one of the star-shaped platforms on the surface of the planet. “And let me just…” She edged around El to the consoles, inputting some codes into the transmitter.
Probably another spy trick, the captain thought. He didn’t particularly like the fact that Cassandra was a spy, even though it certainly seemed to be proving useful as a distant light flashed green in response, and the calm, soothing words of a docking control person broke over their systems.
“The May Bell, you are cleared for entry and landing. Platform three, docking ledge seven, please,” the woman’s voice said, before snapping off.
“The May Bell?” El raised an eyebrow. Poor girl, he threw the consolation at his ship. Don’t you worry, we still love you. He was very attached to the Mercury.
“Yes. It’s what this boat will be called for the foreseeable future now. It’s a name that House Archival uses,” Cassandra said curtly.
“Oh, great.” The captain sighed. “As if our life isn’t complicated enough already…”
“It’s not that bad. It’s a codename,” the spy replied tersely. “When any House Archival agents see that the May Bell has docked here, they’ll come to help us.”
“And if the enemies of House Archival see it’s docked?” grumbled a voice behind them. The very deep and heavy voice that could only belong to Val Pathok, the grey-blue-skinned Duergar. Like all of his kind, he was the size of a small tank, with tusks protruding from his bottom jaw. “We should have gone to my home world, Dur!” he grumbled loudly.
“My house will help us,” Cassandra said, not even turning her head as she scanned the platform they were gliding toward.
Each one looked like one of those close-up pictures of snowflakes, El thought. Five or six metallic ‘arms’ that further subdivided into smaller ledges and landing pads. In the center was a fantastical tower of gleaming steel and crystal-glasses, from which smaller drones and personal transports flitted and attached onto the balconies. Most of the platform is under the water, the captain thought in alarm. All of that water, all around. No escape. The panic shot through him once more.
“Cassandra is right,” El cleared his throat to say, just a little nervously. As much as he hated to admit it, the only thing that could get in between them and the entire might of Armcore right now was another noble house, and, as his own house wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him, he guessed that he had to rely on House Archival instead.
And despite that… El grimaced as the landing ledge swung up to meet them. He had no stomach to go to Dur again, where the primary means of relaxation was bashing each other in grueling pit-fights.
Landing in 3…2…and down!
The Mercury settled into the cradle of the ledge before she shook slightly as magnetic clamps attached to her smooth metals, and there was the winding-down whine of the rockets.
“Hats and boots, people!” El called out the familiar refrain. “This isn’t away-time. We need repairs, food, and to keep ourselves under the radar, got it?” he called out as he locked the ship’s wheel, turning to see the small form of Irie Hanson, his mechanic and engineer, already ascending from the engine decks, a pack and a floating drone-carrier at her side.
“I got a list a mile long of things we’re running low on. Who wants to come help me, huh?” She looked over the crew.
“I’ll do it. Just so long as we can stop for food,” Val the Duergar gunner grumbled, already strapping a blaster pistol onto each thigh and slinging his shoulder-strapped heavy meson rifle over his back.
“Okay, big guy. You sure you’re going to need that?” Irie teased him.
“A warrior never walks into battle unprepared,” Val quoted, before kicking open the bay doors and walking down into the Mela platform.
“He does know that he can’t fire that rifle under the surface, right?” El said with a slight sense of panic to Irie. “How reinforced are the windows in one of these things again?”
But Irie just laughed and followed the Duergar down the extended steps and onto the ramp that led straight down into the guts of Platform 3.
“He does know that, right?” El said after her, as Cassandra pressed a blaster pistol into his hand.
Bloody pirates, the captain grumbled to himself as he followed his erstwhile crew. If Armcore doesn’t get us killed, then my own bloody crew will! He tried not to think of the kilometers and kilometers of open water pressing around him on all sides as he stepped off the Mercury Blade.
“Stop looking at it!” Cassandra hissed at El as she led him through one of the crowded avenues in the center of Platform 3. It was busy down here, but nothing like the asteroid world of Charylla in the Trader’s Belt. Instead of that hustle, the people here moved more sedately, and often with much better robes and finery, as they shopped and talked under large domed ceilings, looking out into the seascape all around.
El was standing with his back to one of the fountains, looking at the crystal-glass walls with a sort of horror, as some very large serpent-like shadow wriggled past outside.
“How do these people live like this?” El babbled as Cassandra seized the cuff of his officer’s jacket and hauled him along the gleaming marble thoroughfare. “That thing I just saw could eat any of them! What’s to stop that thing looking at the people in here as a tasty buffet cart!?”
“They’re Lobo Worms,” Cassandra said irritably. “Totally harmless. They eat shrimp and things. And besides which, the entire platfor
m has an energy field around it.”
“I still didn’t like the look of that one…” El muttered as Cassandra wove past a sedate procession of people in golden robes, and then past a line of bistro cafes where the patrons sat on floating chairs and listened to synth-harp music.
“This place gives me the creeps,” El whispered as he caught up with Cassandra.
“Captain, you’ve been out on the edges for too long. This is culture,” she said in exasperation, turning a corner and arriving at a shopfront door. “Here we are.”
“Where are we?” El looked at the shop display in confusion. It seemed to be a selection of old-time clocks on steel pedestals. As he scanned the boxes, orbs, and cabinets, one of the items opened like a concertina, and a tiny brass bird appeared, peeping silently before mechanically winding itself back in again. “It’s a clockmaker’s?” he said. “You do know that the ship has an onboard computer, right?”
“Ugh.” Cassandra opened the door to the chime of hidden bells, and the captain followed, finding himself in a cramped room filled with shelves of clocks, both ancient and modern—although none from anywhere near the thirty-first century. The objects chimed and clicked, ticked and rang delicate bells. El saw a myriad of faces, from traditional round clock faces to square, to hand-dials alone, to digital displays.
“Can I help you, ma’am, sir?” said a voice behind the far counter, a man with long dark hair and a very full dark beard, barely bigger than Irie Hanson was tall. He wore a conical hat made of metal and wood, and as El watched, a middle section of it slowly turned and tocked into place. In the proprietor’s hands was a very old-style carriage clock, made of brass and glass.
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