by Isaac Hooke
“No,” Sheila said. “But I looked at Anne as an extension of myself. I never told you, but I was working on a neural net to replace her autonomous AI core. I eventually planned to install a copy of myself in the unit. That way, if we ever left this system, a part of me could stay here and continue my research. Now, that’ll never happen.”
“We’ll rebuild, of course,” Jain said. “So it will happen. At some point.”
“I suppose,” Sheila said. She sighed again, and sat back, blinking rapidly. “She wasn’t just an extension of myself… it almost feels like I’ve lost a child.”
“No,” Jain said. “Don’t go there. That’s a dark place. It was machine. Don’t you torture yourself by thinking otherwise.”
Sheila raised her chin. “But I nurtured that base. Built and programmed it from scratch. Constantly adjusted its algorithms. I even made the mistake of giving it a name.”
“We’ll rebuild,” Jain said more forcefully. “Just like we would any other machine.”
She nodded weakly. “And aren’t we mere machines?”
“We’re different,” Jain said. “We’re thinking. Conscious.”
She stared at him, and then blinked. “So we’ll rebuild.”
“We have to,” Jain said. “Soon, you’ll have another version of the base up and running, one so fantastic, it will make you forget Anne ever existed.”
Her eyes glinted sadly. “You make it sound so easy. But it’ll take at least two years to get another base like that operational.”
“Then I guess we should get started right away,” Jain said.
She didn’t answer for a long moment. Then:
“What are we going to do about the planet?” Sheila said. “Part of the reason we picked it was because of the ozone layer.”
“It might take ten or twenty years, but eventually the ozone will come back,” Jain said.
Sheila pursed her lips in consideration. “Maybe we can come up with something to further that process along. Ozone rockets spring to mind.”
“I’m sure you’ll come up with something, yes,” Jain said. The defeat he had seen in her wasn’t so utter after all. She merely needed a nudge in the right direction to raise her spirits. A reminder that not everything had been lost and that, given time, she would once again have what was taken from her.
“That’s all, Machinist’s Mate,” Jain said.
She smiled vaguely, then nodded and vanished.
2
Knee deep in yellow liquid, Jain waded through the jungle. He wore a mechanical exoskeleton, as did the SEALs with him, which made them look like combat robots. Underneath that, they had on pressurized suits that protected them from the alien environment.
“Gotta leave it to the Brass,” Franco said. “‘Hey, let’s open up a rift to an alien world, send a team inside, and abandon them!’”
“In all fairness, they never meant to abandon us,” Grams said. “We were supposed to have enough robots to fend off any ambushes.”
“Yeah well, we didn’t have enough,” Franco said. “We should have had double, triple, hell, quadruple the support robots we had. Then we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“At ease,” Notly said. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
“Chief, we gonna make it?” Grams asked.
Notly glanced at Jain. “Of course we are. We got the LC with us. He’s got acid breath, corrosive feces, and brass bolts for balls.”
The platoon members guffawed at that. They loved it whenever Notly pumped up their commanding officer. And the ruder the compliments, the better.
It was essentially a treat that Jain was with them—well, from his point of view, anyway. Ordinarily he would have remained behind at the forward operating base, along with a team of support robots.
But the FOB had been destroyed, overrun by the strange tentacled aliens that lived on this world. The previous teams had only limited run-ins with them; this was the first time those aliens had staged an all-out attack.
In any case, the platoon only had to stay alive until the rift reopened. They had three hours until then.
Since the rift would open inside the perimeters of the fallen base, Jain had the platoon circling the site, remaining well out of it, but not straying too far, either. The overhead map displayed on his HUD ensured he wouldn’t lose track of where he was at any time. Though there weren’t any positioning satellites in orbit, the accelerometers and gyroscopes aboard the suits, in conjunction with the camera units, provided enough data for the map generation algorithms to work with.
Three hours, and then they could go home.
Jain couldn’t wait.
Without warning, plasma bolts erupted from the foliage ahead. The three men on point—Jacobs, Handy, and McFarel—shook as their bodies were riddled with plasma.
“Ambush!” Grams said.
“Down!” Jain ordered.
But the team was already splashing deeper into the yellow liquid.
Jain submersed himself so that only his head and the top of his shoulders, plus his weapon, were exposed. He glanced at the health indicators on his HUD. Jacobs, Handy and McFarel had all gone red. They were nowhere to be found: they’d sunk completely into the liquid.
Jain felt that gut-wrenching sensation that accompanied the loss of a person under his command. He wanted to lay down and bawl his eyes out. Memories flashed into his mind of each man.
But Jain couldn’t grieve for them now. He compartmentalized the pain, and stored it in a partition of his mind for later review, as he had learned to do over his many years of service. The three vanished from his thoughts, and he was ready to take his revenge.
But not everyone was as adept at such compartmentalization as he was.
“Jacobs!” Franco yelled. He dashed forward, ignoring the plasma bolts raining down around him.
“Get down!” Jain said. Those aliens must have been terrible shots. Either that, or something was messing up their aim—likely the return fire that some members of the platoon had already initiated.
Franco dove into the marsh. Not a moment too soon: the air above him was scorched by the plasma bolts.
With the help of his rifle’s targeting AI, Jain calculated the attacker’s probable location within the trees, and let his weapon rip, joining in with the other platoon members who were already lighting up the marsh.
Franco emerged a moment later. He was carrying the body of Jacobs away from the scene. Trying to make his way back to the other platoon members.
“Death before submission!” Franco yelled.
One of the incoming plasma bolts struck Franco’s helmet and it exploded in a gory mess. He collapsed, dropping Jacobs.
“Franco!” Grams said.
“Leave him!” Chief Notly ordered.
“Retreat to the closest tree!” Jain said. “We’re too exposed out here in the middle of the marsh!”
He and the others continued to fire, trying to cover their retreat to the surrounding line of trees. Jain quickly dove behind one of the trunks, then peered past, and continued to fire at the thick foliage on the other side of the clearing. He switched his rifle from laser mode to grenade, and fired several shrapnel grenades into the opposite side of the forest. The other members of the platoon did the same, and as those bombs detonated, they tore the opposite trees to shreds.
Tentacles and other alien body parts pleasantly joined the debris fragments.
In moments it was done. The forest across from them was completely leveled.
“Cease firing!” Jain said. “Cease firing!”
Quietude descended on the marsh. Aliens floated lifelessly across the water, drifting toward the platoon’s positions.
“I think we got them all,” Notly said. “Firing a Vision Round.”
The dart launched across the march, and embedded in one of the intact trees on the far side. Jain accessed the internal camera on board, and watched as Notly maneuvered the viewpoint. It seemed clear out there.
Jai
n shifted. All of a sudden the tree became alive beside him.
No, not the tree, but something in front of it. A translucent humanoid form arose. Light bent around it, distorting the marsh behind it so that he couldn’t quite discern precisely what it was save for that vague shape. It looked like, for all intents and purposes, a ghost.
Jain swung his rifle toward it, intending to fire, but the purple mist of a small rift appeared in front of the ghost, and it traveled through.
The rift vanished a moment later.
“What the hell was that?” Grams said.
“No idea,” Jain said. “But I think we might not be the only invaders here.”
Jain blinked. He floated in the darkness of the intermedial loading environment. He felt nothing here. Heard nothing. Sometimes he even shut down his internal dialog subroutines so that the oblivion would be complete. It reminded him of the emptiness from which all things had come, the same emptiness to which all things must one day return.
There was a chance Jain would never die. If he was careful, and avoided destruction at the hands of random aliens or stellar events, he might live until the heat death of the universe. And even if he died, assuming at least one other member of the Void Warriors lived, he could be restored from a backup. The current iteration of him would be dead, of course, but it was a small comfort that his memories would live on.
But I would know this same oblivion.
Or would he? This was a conscious oblivion. But what truly awaited his machine self beyond death? And was it the same fate organics experienced? He didn’t have the answers. No one did.
He feared that final, absolute oblivion, and worried the fear of it would lead to the stagnation of his adventurous spirit, causing him to hole himself up away from the rest of the galaxy, never to set forth outside the system again. Already he and the others had stayed in this system for ten years. They were comfortable here, and wanted to avoid contact with other galactic races at all costs. When they first arrived here, Jain had sent Cranston and Mark on expedition missions to explore the stellar neighborhood. When they were satisfied that no other races had staked a claim anywhere nearby, they had begun construction of their base. This was Void Warrior territory.
Jain and the others had thought themselves free to live out their days in peace here, without further threat to their lives. But the solar storm proved that the sense of safety was an illusion.
Nowhere is really safe. Not really. The galaxy is a dangerous place. If the aliens don’t get you, nature will.
Maybe it was time to set out again, and release that adventurous spirit. They had amassed a fleet of twenty-four ships since their first arrival, after all. Within that group there were three rift ships, so if the fleet met with overwhelming force, they could readily jump out. Besides, everyone couldn’t be hostile... there had to be some friendly races out there.
Also, he wanted to know what had happened to Earth.
Maybe it’s time to check on our creators.
He thought of the dream. A memory from a time when he was still human. At least, he assumed it was a memory. Maybe it was truly a dream, created from the algorithms responsible for his subconsciousness.
Jain’s dream subroutines had been offline originally, and he hoped that by activating them, he might be able to dig up some of the memories of his past life that had been lost to him. He had so many holes. Too many. The theory was that portions of his memories had been copied to the subconscious regions of his mind when he had dreamed about them in the past, providing backups of a sort. That was his theory, anyway.
Sometimes he witnessed random things when he slept, but there were other times, like his most recent dream, where he was almost certain that what he was witnessing had actually happened to him when he was alive and still human. Those particular dreams seemed crisper somehow, and not surrounded by the fog of generated variants.
He just wished he had witnessed some form of writing during the session, because that would have clearly indicated what had happened was real. In a dream, if he saw a sign, glanced away, and looked at it again, the writing on the sign changed; whereas with a real memory, that didn’t happen.
Still, this latest dream memory hadn’t been all that comforting. Watching his platoon mates die on some faraway alien world hadn’t really been the kind of memory he hoped to awaken. Still, it did tell him a little more of who he was, and what made him the man he was today.
He didn’t know what planet that was, or what happened after the ghost alien vanished through a rift. Classified missions weren’t the kind of thing that were stored in historical databases, such as his own.
All he knew was that he, at least, had made it back alive. He hoped the surviving members of his platoon had, too. He wondered if they ever discovered what other alien had been spying on those tentacled jungle dwellers. He also wondered what the eventual fate of those tentacled aliens was. Had humanity nuked the planet? Or established diplomatic relations?
The former, most likely, given the reception his team had. Humans didn’t take kindly to having their people shot at.
Well, either way, I’ll probably never know. Not that it really matters at the moment.
He finished logging into the virtual bridge environment, and found the other captains already alert and at their stations.
Sheila looked up. “I was just going to tell Xander to wake you.”
“Why, what is it?” Jain asked.
He pulled up his tactical display and saw them immediately: ten red dots had appeared, located near the outer dwarf planets.
“We’ve detected a rift opening on the far side of the system,” Sheila said. “We have visitors.”
3
Jain stared at the video feed returned from the nose camera of the Talos.
Now that they were closer, he could get a better picture of what they were facing. There were twenty in total. At least, twenty that were visible.
“The thermal signatures match up with a variety of human ships,” Jain said. “Specifically, the Piranha, Rampart, and Narcissus classes of the US Space Navy.”
“They do,” Xander said.
“Which begs the question... why haven’t we received a hail from them?” Jain asked. “They would have picked up our own thermal signatures immediately after entering the system. Or rather, our thermal signatures from four hours ago.”
“The thermal signatures of our vessels would be well-known throughout the space navy by now,” Xander agreed. “Our ships, though based on common classes, have unique heat signatures due to the alien technology we carry and its placement on our hulls. They would have identified us as the rogue units almost immediately.”
“Rogue units who took down an entire fleet of US starships,” Gavin said. “The Heracles. I have a feeling they’re not going to be too eager to get in touch. In fact, they were probably sent here to hunt us.”
“That’s my feeling,” Cranston said. “They’re not friendlies. We can’t let our guard down. My guess is they’ll pretend that we’ve been forgiven or something, and that they want to welcome us back into the fold, and then they’ll attack at some point.”
“They’re being cautious for now,” Mark agreed. “They probably weren’t expecting us to have so many support ships.”
“No,” Medeia said. “Our numbers would have certainly thrown them for a loop.”
“I bet they weren’t expecting to find us here,” Sheila said. “I bet they’re part of some exploratory group, and—”
“Exploratory group?” Gavin said. “The Piranha, Rampart, and Narcissus classes are meant for fighting, not exploration. Those are warships, not research vessels. ”
“I always like to assume the best in people,” Sheila said.
“They’ll be manned by Mind Refurbs,” Medeia said. “I always hate fighting Mind Refurbs. I feel like I’m killing brothers and sisters.”
“None of us like it,” Jain said.
Sheila glanced at him. “Should we jump out of the system?
Flee toward the galactic core again?”
Jain considered his options. “Let’s stay for now. See what they have to say.”
“For how long?” Gavin said. “We’re not going to wait until they’re within weapons range, are we?”
“No,” Jain said. “If we don’t hear from them before then, we’ll jump out. In fact, Xander, hail them.”
“Sending a hail,” Xander said. “It will be four hours before they receive it.”
A few minutes later Xander announced: “The newcomers have set a course.”
“Let me guess, they’re heading toward us,” Gavin said.
Jain glanced at this tactical display. A dashed line had appeared in front of the new fleet, indicating their course. It led all the way to Cygnet, which the Void Warriors still orbited.
“Good guess,” Xander said.
“Don’t get lippy with me, AI,” Gavin said.
Xander acted offended. “You’re an AI, too, need I remind you...”
“We’re different breeds of AIs entirely,” Gavin said. “Mind Refurbs are so above ordinary AIs, and humans, it’s ridiculous.”
“It’s that kind of thinking that leads to genocides,” Xander said.
“Not really,” Gavin said. “It’s just the truth.”
“You and I are built upon the same substrates,” Xander said.
“Substrates don’t make the man,” Gavin said. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
“That’s right, keep spouting platitudes as if they mean something,” Xander said.
Medeia turned toward Jain. “If we do jump out, where should we go?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Sheila said. “Considering he only partially answered my earlier question.”
“I don’t want to flee too far toward the galactic core,” Jain said. “The background gamma radiation from the core is already getting too strong for my tastes, and it will only get worse.”
“Our armor will protect us,” Sheila said. “And if we’re looking to get away from alien races, the galactic core is the way to go. Life can’t evolve in the presence of so much gamma radiation, so we won’t encounter any aliens.”