"Why didn't they use the ships to get home?"
"Because it can't be piloted by just a human or just a machine, it needs both. Lucky for me I had Seraph along for the ride. We left robot space two days before we returned to Dawn."
This was astonishing. "But that's half way across the galaxy!"
"We were only able to do it because I had the co-ordinates of Vanis. I couldn't believe it when we picked up Dawn's transmissions to you. But I knew Bex had been converted, so we followed you in and landed after it had gone quiet. I found Scout and, luckily, your mate Clancy had just finished fixing Wells. So, we came to find you."
Arla smiled. "I'm glad you did. And Clancy's not my mate."
Returning Arla's grin, Hal got up and poured another coffee.
"And he didn't fix me," Wells said from across the room. "Mr Mainframe was very helpful, but my systems were undergoing an automated purge and recovery process. He is an intelligent young man, but he is, after all, an archaeologist and not a roboticist."
Settling back in her chair, Arla took a sip of coffee. "I only hope I've done the right thing on Dawn. That's the third time I've trusted Xi and he's let me down every time."
"You didn't have a choice," Hal said. "He's the only one who has any chance of restoring order. We've got a job to do, and we can only hope Dawn will still be viable when we get back."
So many burdens. It wasn't enough that she was responsible for every free thinking being in the galaxy, but if, by some miracle, she achieved her aim and put ACE out of action, and restored Core to its original ambivalence towards humanity, and dealt with the remaining clones (who certainly wouldn't come quietly), she would then be left with her original mission - to find a safe place for the people of Dawn to settle. That was assuming their supplies lasted for long enough.
"Well, hello darling!"
A hand appeared on Hal's shoulder and he spun round, lunged forward and fell straight through the figure standing beside him and fell to the floor.
"Wells!" Arla shrieked. Then she looked across at the robot. He was looking at them with a delighted expression.
He helped Hal to his feet. "I am sorry," he said. "But I surmised that the most effective way to discover whether the facsimile was realistic was to test it on you."
"Surmised, my arse. And I didn't believe that robots had a sense of humour."
Hal stood looking at the figure standing behind where he'd been sitting, his breath coming in shallow puffs. "You bastard."
"So, this is the ACE vaccine?"
"If that is how you wish to describe it," Wells responded, with a slight bow. "I am using Scout's holographic projector to produce the image. As you can see, it is quite lifelike until you try to touch it."
Arla waved her hand through the seemingly solid body. "It's more realistic than Scout's projection."
"Hers is made deliberately artificial. She was sharing with a human crew and, I imagine, it was important to distinguish between organics and artificials."
"What is your name?" Hal asked the hologram. It was a little taller than Arla, had blonde hair and a clever face that was full of animation.
"My name is ACE."
"The pattern was taken from the ship's crew database. This was Lieutenant Rachelle Sorensdottir."
Arla sighed. "Try to focus, Hal. Yes, she's lovely - but that's exactly the sort of form ACE would choose."
"I know that well enough," Hal scowled.
Arla turned to Wells who stood to one side like a proud parent. "And you're sure she's safe?"
"Yes. She has no autonomic control - she is, essentially, a digital puppet."
Hal passed this hand through the hologram. "She can't leave the ship?"
Reaching down to the table, Wells produced a small rectangular box. "This portable projector offers some mobility, for a limited time. But I do not imagine we will have much use for it - the purpose of the hologram is to ensure safe passage through Luminescence space."
"Yes, but now we have Stiletto, we don't need to hop from gate to gate - we can emerge in the Core system, or wherever we want. But we can't do that in Scout - you'll have to go the long way around. So, you keep a copy of your puppet ACE here and we'll take one with us."
"That is not acceptable," Wells said, distress obvious on his plastic face. "Arla cannot be permitted to go with you alone."
It was as if a light had come on in Arla's mind. Hal had found the means to reach the heart of the Robot Empire in a single leap, and here, on Scout, they had the weapon.
"How many can fit in Stiletto?" she asked Hal.
He shrugged. "No more than three, and that'd be a squeeze. It was designed so that a small crew would jump to the next star and build a temporary gate so that the supply ship could follow, along with the other engineers."
"Any cargo space? Yes? Good. It's time I had a talk with our friend down below."
Core
Hal had been right enough about the cramped conditions. Stiletto might have been fairly comfortable for two, but it was up close and personal for three.
Arla and McCall sat behind Hal who, naturally, occupied the pilot seat.
"The quarantined personality has been transferred to my matrix," Seraph said. "It has precise co-ordinates for Core, so we may proceed when ready."
"Let's go."
A deep rumbling began to vibrate through Arla's back as the engines fired up. It pulsed louder, then dropped away, but each wave was noisier than the last so that, in the end, she wondered if she'd be deafened before it reached its peak.
Finally, and quite suddenly, it stopped.
"That's it, we're in hyperspace," Hal shouted over the ringing in Arla's ears.
She sighed and looked across at the grey-faced McCall. The doctor shook her head slowly. "By the Goddess, that was awful."
"Stiletto wasn't built for comfort," Hal said. "The first time I fired up the engines, I didn't think I'd survive. It gets easier. Now settle down, we've got around 36 hours before we emerge. You might want to get some sleep."
Sleep? There was little enough chance of that. Although the roaring sound had died away to a regular hum, the ship was rocked every now and again and, in any case, Arla was awash with adrenaline.
"You can come out now," she called.
Liquid metal flowed from a grill in the rear compartment and applied itself, like a thick coat of paint, to the wall beside the main viewscreen. In the centre of the silver wall, a mouth appeared.
"I am here."
McCall snorted. "You don't say?"
Sarcasm was lost on The Emissary.
"Are you clear about what we're attempting?" Arla asked.
"I communed with Wells at length. He is a limited intelligence, but he has appraised me of your plan."
"Maybe he's not as all singing, all dancing, as you are, Freddie Mercury," McCall snapped. "But at least he helped us along the way - he hasn't spent the past months locked in a panic room."
Arla sighed. "Indira."
The mouth in the wall moved. "It was necessary to protect my purity. If ACE had become aware of me and my location, she would surely have destroyed me and any chance of restoring Core to its former purity."
"So, we will get you onto Core planet," Arla said, hardly believing herself as she said the words. "What happens then?"
"I must be injected into the matrix so that I may eliminate the rogue code added by ACE. I must then persuade the governing intelligences to revert to their previous form and to restore respect for the Three Laws and the Fourth."
Arla nodded. "That a robot must not harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm?"
"Exactly. That is the guiding tenet of Core and it was the overturning of that rule that brought about the current emergency."
"What if you can't convince them to reinstate it?"
The Emissary, despite looking like a tinfoil poster, contrived to shrug. "Then I will have failed. However, I believe that the greater risk is that ACE will return and recontaminat
e the matrix. Then all will be lost, since she will certainly destroy me also and all trace of the original Core will be gone."
"Don't worry about ACE," Hal said, "we'll take care of her."
Arla fought the temptation to roll her eyes. "So, we have a plan then?"
"Yep. Find her, kill her, get away," Hal responded without turning around.
She saw The Emissary's silver surface ripple. "Oh, not you as well - you know she's not human!"
"If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck ..." McCall muttered.
They emerged from the gate into Core space and the electromagnetic chatter exploded. Although they could have jumped straight into orbit around the planet itself, it made more sense to come through the gate as if they were on a routine mission - the last thing they needed was to attract attention.
"Ready, Seraph?"
Yes, Hal. Initiating the ACE simulation. Online.
The chatter between the robot ships that gathered around Stiletto and the ship was conducted in a few milliseconds of microwave communication. There shouldn't have been time to worry about whether the simulation was convincing enough to fool the patrol ships and yet incapable of betraying them and yet the sharp stab of adrenaline that pierced Arla's guts suggested otherwise.
We have been given permission to pass.
"Excellent!" Hal cried, punching the air.
The virtual ACE performed excellently. The ships were curious as they had not encountered a vessel like Stiletto before. She was able to persuade them that it had been discovered and brought back to Core for analysis in the hope that it would provide a decisive advantage in the war.
"She wasn't wrong about that," Hal said, "though not in the way they expected."
Planet Core swept serenely beneath them as Stiletto orbited. They had been intercepted by planetary security ships but, again, it seemed the ACE simulation was working flawlessly. Arla had felt ice fill her veins when Seraph had told them they were being hailed by an ACE clone - presumably here to keep an eye on the shop - but even she didn't seem to notice that she was communicating with a fake.
Arla looked up at the silver poster on the wall. "Are you ready?"
"I am. I will now transfer my consciousness into the space allocated in Seraph's comms array and, when the planet initiates communications, I will invade the channel and make my way into the collective."
"Surely there are security measures to prevent exactly this sort of thing?"
The Emissary began to flow across the wall and towards the console. "Not unless they have been added since the revolution. It had never occurred to us that we would need to protect ourselves from our own kind."
McCall grunted. "Well, if there's one thing we know for sure about ACE, it's that she's paranoid. I don't reckon you'll find the way unguarded."
"You may well be right, doctor. In that case, I must rely on my own resources to ensure success. We have, after all, little option. To use a human idiom, this is the last roll of the dice. If I fail, or if you fail, all resistance is ultimately doomed, and the galaxy will become a singularity. It will be one. It will be ACE."
Incoming communication from Core Executive.
"Farewell, my friends."
And he was gone.
The journey took a hundred milliseconds at light-speed. At its end, The Emissary became aware of two others, waiting at the firewall like snowflakes glittering in the night.
One moved towards him.
Declare your purpose.
"I wish to commune with Core Executive."
It is not permitted.
"Nevertheless. I am The Emissary. I have returned with tactical information essential to the prosecution of the war."
Another shape appeared. This one was pin sharp and red.
You may relay your information to me.
"I am The Emissary and shall speak before the governing council."
You will not. It is not permitted.
The Emissary became aware of further movement in the ether beyond the firewall. These measures had been put in place since he was last at Core Executive and he suspected that if he didn't act he would find himself siloed and then interrogated. If that happened, his mission would fail.
"I am sorry," he said, and he commanded them out of existence. It pained him, since the loss of any intelligence is a loss to the universe, but had he allowed matters to continue, he would have faced far more of them. Too many, perhaps, for him to handle.
He hurried forward. He had announced his presence to her in signs that could be read half way across the galaxy and he had little time before his enemies would close in on him. The only thing on his side was the relatively sluggish speed of light - since any message to ships in the neighbouring space would take seconds at least, and probably minutes, to arrive. And then decisions would have to be made and ships manoeuvred into position. He calculated that he had, perhaps, twenty minutes before he would be shut down. It seemed like an eternity to a being that operated to millisecond timescales, but the task was an enormous one and, for a moment, he allowed himself the indulgence of feeling overwhelmed before, after a nanosecond or two, he dismissed it. Sometimes, trying to become more human-like was counterproductive.
He sharpened his mind and went in search of Core Executive.
ACE
The future of the entire galaxy depended on a plan that amounted, in the final analysis, to 'winging it'. Arla hadn't been able to hide her exasperation when Hal had shrugged and announced that he had no particular idea of how to get close enough to ACE to be able to destroy her.
He did, on the other hand, know how to find her. This had been the other half of the equation that Arla had demanded answers to once The Emissary had been injected into planet Core's communication matrix. His physical form had seeped out of the console and coagulated into a bucket of liquid metal that had solidified almost instantly.
"It was Seraph's idea, to be honest," Hal said, "so I can't take the credit. Tell them about it, old chap."
Before transferring myself to the escape pod with Hal, I left a fragment in the comms system. I knew that I would be purged from the main computers as soon as they discovered my treachery, so the fragment that remains is in a remote subsystem and is extremely limited. It betrays no signs of being sentient and merely broadcasts the ship's position on a secure channel for which only I possess the decryption key. The signal is directed at the nearest gate relay and will travel to the closest nexus.
The smugness in the computer's voice as it described its cleverness was almost too great to bear. "And how do we pick it up?" Arla managed.
"We must return to hyperspace and scan the gate network."
They sat in the non-space between gates as Seraph search for the signal.
"I'll go in alone," Hal said. "I'll try to convince her that I've returned to the fold - Stiletto being my gift to her."
Arla's jaw dropped. "Are you insane? That's the lamest plan I ever heard!"
"Not really. You don't understand the depths of the original ACE's narcissism. I reckon she'd buy the idea that someone, having run away, would find they couldn't live without her and return, begging for forgiveness."
"I'm sorry, but that sounds pretty desperate to me," Arla said. "And she'll have security, won't she? She's not exactly going to trust you."
Hal shrugged. He'd swung his pilot's seat round so they would be facing each other. "Do either of you have a better plan?"
"This is pathetic," McCall said, shaking her head. "The fate of the galaxy depends on us and our best plan is to walk right in and beg forgiveness?"
"I just need to get within reach of her and I'll do what needs to be done," Hal growled. Arla watched his face tighten as if he were recalling grim memories.
She reached out to touch his arm. "Be realistic. She'll be surrounded by Protectors - they'll react the instant you make a move. It's suicidal."
"That's not what you want, is it?" McCall asked. "A suicide mission?"
Hal sighed. "Maybe, once
. But Seraph rescued me from that. Thanks pal."
You are most welcome. I do have a suggestion, by the way.
"Well, it can't be worse than his," McCall said.
It is not a complete solution. However, it may be possible to use the transmitting code I installed as a back-door into the ship's systems. From there, I may be able to resume at least some control.
"Could you vent the air to space?" McCall asked. "That'd finish her off."
Hal shook his head. "No it wouldn't, doctor. It would kill the human host, but the implant would remain, and she'd be back. The only way to be sure is to destroy the chip with her in it."
"So, a blast to the head?"
Hal nodded grimly.
"How in hells are we going to get a blaster onto their ship?"
"We don't necessarily have to," Arla said. "All we need to do is incapacitate ACE - as soon as the body becomes unconscious, the Protectors will cease functioning and we can get off the ship."
Hal shook his head. "No, that's not right. She fell asleep with me and the Protectors kept functioning."
I can answer that. ACE can move her consciousness to other devices in the same way I can. When the host fell asleep, she would transfer into the ship's systems and, from there, into a robotic body. I suspect you didn't notice, but she plugged herself into a terminal beside the bed to do so.
"So, the woman I was sleeping with wasn't ACE, it was the poor girl she'd hijacked."
Correct, the sleeping woman was a human, though whether any traces of her original personality remained is unknown.
"What is it?" Arla asked. Hal had slumped back, a shocked expression on his face.
"I thought about killing her so many times," he said. "I thought I could rid the galaxy of ACE by smothering her as she slept. But all I'd have done was kill an innocent human being."
Yes, the death of that host would have been no more than an inconvenience if ACE's consciousness were elsewhere.
"But I couldn't do it. And if she was innocent then, she's innocent now."
They were talking in circles. Someone needed to make a decision.
"Ok. Here's what we're going to do," Arla said. "The doc is going to mix up a potent shot of something that'll render her unconscious as instantly as possible ... "
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