Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2)

by Joel Shepherd

  An electronic ripple sounded on coms. A vibration, in apparently random sequence. “Hang on,” said one of the techs, “that’s definitely her. That’s… that’s basic text coding, just let me…”

  A cursor appeared on Trace’s visor. Then it ran, making words. Primary function, it said.

  “What is a primary function?” Trace asked. “Killing deepynines?”

  Primary function, it repeated. And nothing more.

  “I don’t think she’s entirely there,” another of the techs suggested, scrolling rapidly through the torrent of data-feedback they were receiving from the construct and the micros in the nano-tank. “The data intensity is way down on what it was just half an hour ago. That effort might have burned her out.”

  Trace stared at the big red eye, and got a cold chill up her spine. She recalled the serpentine body, the intricate manipulator arms, writhing and flexing before her in zero-G. The emotive, almost plaintive note in its voice. Not a cold and unfeeling machine. A living, thinking mind, vastly flexible and completely alien. She’d heard that voice again just recently, in her helmet, confronting the deepynine commander. Yet now, all the queen could give her was a blinking cursor and a few words of print?

  “She’s foxing,” Trace said with certainty. “I think she can talk fine. She’s choosing not to. Probably playing dumb, keeping her options open.” But Rooke was right too, she thought. No way this was the fully conscious queen she’d met in the Argitori rock. Even able to speak, this was probably a shadow of that fearsome creature. Whether that made her safer or more dangerous, Trace did not know. “Thank you for helping us to kill the deepynines. We have a common enemy. This ship also hunts deepynines. Do you know why?”

  A pause, as the cursor blinked. No.

  “We think the deepynines are still alive. Most species think they’re all dead, but we think they have allied with a species called the alo. Do you know the alo? They did not emerge in the Spiral until many thousands of years after the end of the Machine Age.”

  Alo, said the cursor. I know.

  Trace took a deep breath. Here was the only question that really mattered. Probably the biggest question in the galaxy right now. “Do you know what happened to the deepynines after the drysines destroyed most of them? Were there any left? And are they still alive?”

  Evidently, said the cursor. Trace could almost hear irony, in that single word. Exasperation at a silly question, given what had just happened. Around them, Trace had never heard such silence from a small room full of people.

  “How many?”

  Unknown. Regeneration possible. Organic sentience assisted?

  “Yes,” said Trace. “Yes, sentience assisted. Alo assisted, we think alo have helped the deepynine to regenerate.”

  Possibility. Terminal danger.

  “How great a danger?” Trace pressed.

  Ask alo. Trace blinked at the words. Definitely it was irony. There was no way that alien machines had irony as humans understood it… it must have picked it up from listening to surrounding speech patterns. And she recalled in her first conversation with the queen in Argitori, how its voice had changed in just a few sentences to become more expressive, more human. A fast learner, to put it mildly. And her suspicion increased. Surely this queen was far more awake and aware than she was letting on.

  “We think the deepynines are working with the sard. We think they are helping the sard to build deepynine or drysine technology ships. We want to stop them. Will you help us?”

  I see Dobruta.

  “Yes. Do you know the Dobruta?”

  Yes. Dobruta want to kill all the children.

  “Are you afraid?” Trace asked carefully. No reply on her visor. “Yes the Dobruta wish to kill all AIs. AI civilisation was very bad for all organics.” Still no reply. Trace supposed it was too much to ask that it might venture an opinion on past horrors, let alone an apology. “But we need to stop the deepynines. If you help us to do that, you will become valuable to us.”

  When the deepynines are dead. Do I die too? Several onlooking techs exchanged incredulous looks.

  “If the deepynines have been regenerated in alo space, then it will take a very long time to kill them all,” Trace said reasonably. “There could be a lot of them. As you become important to us, your function will grow.” Behind her, she could just smell Erik’s displeasure. She was making promises she might not be able to keep. The queen might become dissatisfied when those promises were broken. All sorts of possibilities arose.

  Bring me the new deepynine remains. I will analyse.

  “You advised us to burn them.”

  Things change.

  * * *

  “Lieutenant Commander, this is most ill-advised,” Captain Pram insisted on the vid feed in Erik’s quarters. Erik sat at his small desk with no other company. He’d had to clear the crew out to make this call, following the usual strongly worded disagreements. Kaspowitz had been unhappy, but given his friendship with Trace, was not prepared to pick a big fight with her. Or perhaps he just knew he’d lose. Shahaim had been on the fence, disliking their lack of information, and seeing this as a possible solution. Rooke had been mostly embarrassed that he’d let Romki pull this particular stunt right under his nose, and tech-head that he was, was more fascinated by developments than was probably wise. And Trace, as always, remained stubborn as a rock.

  “I’m aware of the dangers,” Erik began.

  “I think you are not,” said the tavalai captain. The big, wide face loomed on the vidscreen, mouth thin with disapproval. “I assume it is speaking complete sentences, and I assume it seems agreeable.” It wasn’t speaking anything, just writing words on screens, but Erik let it slide. “I would remind you, Lieutenant Commander, that no AI willingly speaks a verbal language. For them it has the utility of a human expert on birds imitating bird calls to attract a mate. Their usual mode of communication is direct data transfer — it is a language of sorts, though it compresses information at a rate tenfold more efficient than our own tongues.”

  Captain Pram was assuming ignorance on the humans’ part — Erik had listened at lengths to Romki’s explanations of ‘Ceenyne’, the deepynine audible language from the last few hundred years of the Machine Age. But he wasn’t about to get into an academic debate now, because without Romki present, he’d surely lose. “I am aware of that Captain,” he answered the tavalai.

  “But you have not considered what it means.” Erik was becoming very tired of tavalai lecturing on human shortcomings. “We use language to express emotion and personality. All that you think you are hearing from this machine is faked for effect. Neither drysine nor deepynine nor any of the other AI offshoots have ever felt anything comparable to human or tavalai emotion or sentiment. It views our sentiment as weakness, and tries to make you trust it. I assure you, you cannot.”

  “You wanted her to translate whatever data you’ve found in the base,” Erik replied, attempting patience. “Well now you’ve got her, and she can do it with far greater accuracy than your construct.”

  “It is not a she, Lieutenant Commander, it is an it.”

  “I’m aware of that too,” said Erik. “Have you found the data in the control centre that you were looking for?”

  “Please do not change the subject. I will remind you that you are currently surrounded by tavalai-controlled mines and gun platforms. Should this new crewmember of yours decide to take control of your weapons to open fire upon my ship, I assure you I will not hesitate to use every weapon in the vicinity in our defence.”

  Erik leaned forward to the screen. “Buddy, even with all your mines, you couldn’t take this ship.” A silence, as the two ship commanders stared at each other on their screens. “I am in command of this vessel. Your opinion is noted. If you wish further cooperation in finding this sard base that’s making all these advanced ships, you will send crew with the data we came here to get, and see if our unexpected guest can decipher it. Any other path will see our cooperation ended. Am I making
myself clear?”

  The tavalai’s nostrils flared, and the screen went blank. Erik gazed at the dead screen for a moment longer, then went and opened the door.

  “Everyone hear that?” he asked the bridge as he emerged. It was all first-shift in the chairs, save for Lieutenant Draper in the command chair. Nods all around… and from Trace, who had stayed to listen. Erik took hold of the supports by Draper’s chair and hung there, ducking a little to see the far posts past the command screens. Trace took hold at Kaspowitz’s chair.

  “Sir, we’re on full alert with those mines and platforms,” said Draper. “We’ve locked onto the coordination signal, but there’s no way to block it, Makimakala could signal an attack at any moment.”

  “And for all my bluster,” Erik added, “we’re totally screwed if they do it. I actually think that went kind of well.”

  “You think?” Kaspowitz said drily.

  “He didn’t once ask about the deepynine drones, nor about how the queen became activated, or how she helped. None of it.”

  “Well he thinks you’re nuts for trusting her however it happened,” said Shilu. “With respect, LC.”

  “No, he’s not interested in the details,” Erik insisted. “And whether you think she’s going to kill us all or not — when you’re commanding a warship in dangerous circumstances, operational details are everything. He didn’t care. That tells me the operational details of the queen herself are not his main concern.”

  “He doesn’t want her to tell us things,” said Trace. Erik nodded. “Tavalai have had humans at a disadvantage regarding old galactic history since we first got into space. He’s using our firepower and intel, but he doesn’t want us to actually learn stuff about the hacksaws.”

  “He’s Dobruta,” Erik agreed. “Dobruta have spent thousands of years trying to stop anyone from learning stuff about the hacksaws. The fear is that the technology is so seductive that someone will make a deal with a hacksaw queen, promise her life in exchange for power and riches.”

  “Which is exactly what it looks like the sard have done,” Trace finished. “And now Captain Pram fears we’re about to do the same thing. It’s their nightmare scenario — a big queen seduces some alien species into resurrecting her race in exchange for power. Tavalai have no faith that any other species are as principled as them.”

  “They’ve been fighting humans a long time,” Draper reasoned. “They see us as the enemy, whatever Phoenix’s situation. The Captain’s probably scared that instead of solving his problem, he might have just made it worse by giving hacksaw tech to humanity.”

  “Only we already had hacksaw tech,” said Erik. “Fleet’s got lots of it, only they’ve always agreed with the Dobruta about the dangers of copying it. Much has been destroyed. But if Romki’s right, and the alo became so high-tech in the first place by cooperation with the deepynines, then the most deadly piece of hacksaw tech in the Spiral might be the one we’re standing in. And others like it, that we used to take half of the tavalai’s space away from them.”

  “Thus making the galaxy safe for artificial life again,” said Trace. “Deepynine in particular, by removing the main anti-AI force from power. Their big strategic plan that Fleet’s been playing along with. The big question is whether Fleet did it willingly or not. And if not, if they know there’s deepynines behind the entire alo front, then the alo will have to take out Fleet at some later stage… which means the alo will stab us in the back at some point, in time-honoured Spiral tradition.”

  “And possibly use the chah’nas to do it,” Erik agreed. “Since the chah’nas just got access to our space. Which means that all of humanity could be about to get whacked, and we could lose…” He glanced across the bridge. Pale, frightened faces stared back at him.

  “Billions,” Kaspowitz muttered.

  “Hundreds of billions,” Shahaim whispered.

  Erik nodded slowly. “So then we’ve agreed that the deepynines are back. They’re doing strategic things. The best way to kill a deepynine is with someone who understands deepynines. Our Dobruta friends on Makimakala distrust all AIs equally — deepynine or drysine, no difference to them. But humanity is threatened by deepynines, and our new passenger might be the most knowledgable… thing, about how to kill deepynines, in all the galaxy.

  “And so I’ve changed my mind.” He gave a little nod to Trace. “It’s good that we’ve woken her up, to the very limited extent that we have. It’s also incredibly dangerous, and we have to be on the highest alert, because everything Captain Pram said about her is true. But at this point we have no choice.

  “Now we have to find that base, but here’s the thing. Captain Pram wants to destroy it. It’s giving the sard powerful new weapons that threaten the strategic balance through Outer Neutral Space — first the barabo, and then the tavalai will get it in the neck. I’d like to see it destroyed too, but that’s not our primary objective, and my conversation just now with Captain Pram makes that clear to me. Our primary objective is to find out what the hell’s going on there. Who are these deepynines helping the sard, are they connected to the alo, are they operating independently, et-cetera. Because we’re operating with a blindfold on at the moment, and if we can’t figure what the deepynines are up to, we’ll have no idea what to do next, or just how much danger humanity is actually in.

  “This means that we may have to lie to Makimakala, and tell them we’re going to help them destroy it, when actually we mainly want to learn from it… which is exactly what Makimakala don’t want us to do. So this is going to get very interesting. Do not talk about this off-bridge with anyone other than other bridge officers or equivalent rank. We’ll have tavalai coming aboard to talk to our queen at some point, and we don’t want some of the lower-decks motor-mouths blabbing the whole plan to them.”

  Slow, thoughtful nods about the bridge. From Trace, a look of considered respect. Kaspowitz gave him a wry smile. “We have a plan?”

  “We’ll think of one,” Erik insisted. “First, let’s find out where this damn base is. If there actually is a base, and the tavalai haven’t just been stringing us along.”

  “Like we’re going to do to them,” said Shilu with a grimace.

  Erik nodded. “Exactly.”

  26

  As Phoenix went into second-shift, Trace went back to TK55 to supervise operations. Her ride was PH-1, with Lieutenant Hausler wisecracking about being reduced to a ferry service, as Phoenix held off forty kilometres from the planetoid in the sun-shadow where the glare would less interfere with instruments, and where incoming ships would take longer to spot them on scan. There were no windows in the shuttle hold, but if she linked to PH-1’s scan feed, she could see Makimakala in similar position seven kilometres further out, and Rai Jang closer in, the smaller and more mobile ship ready to support marines or karasai up close in case any hacksaws got outside the base.

  With Trace were Command Squad, a number of second-shift Engineering crew ready to replace the first-shifters, plus Jokono, Hiro and Romki. The latter was on Trace’s request, as it seemed daft to continue to punish Romki for something that even the LC now agreed was necessary, however pissed he was at how it was done. But then, as Trace told him, if you were going to put people in charge of sensitive operations who were unlikely to follow orders at the best of times, you got what was coming to you. Keeping their premier hacksaw expert locked up so he couldn’t go and see this ancient base seemed more like Phoenix cutting off its nose to spite its face.

  Lieutenant Hausler flew them into the main starship hangar, and they vacated all air from the shuttle hold before exiting the main rear door. Kono led them out, Command Squad positioning with rifles ready just in case — there were still a few sard loose on the base, Bravo Platoon had nailed one just an hour ago, but no one figured they were more than a nuisance at this point. Pretty soon though they’d be running out of air, and being sard, they might decide to go down fighting. Engineering crew followed, carrying personal hand thrusters and light weapons, an
d moved toward the huge transit tunnels up which PH-1 could have comfortably continued flying if it weren’t such a pointless risk.

  Finally came the civvies, Hiro predictably assured and balanced, Jokono less so, and Romki least of all. Romki stared about at the service rigs the size of city towers, stretching across the cavernous interior, and murmuring incredulities beneath his breath.

  “Hey Professor,” Kono told him as PH-1 shoved gently away on attitude bursts. “Try to watch where you’re going and don’t get left behind.”

  Trace looked at Romki, looking and feeling as tiny as they all did, specks of dust within this ancient construction. “Amazing,” he murmured. “Just amazing.”

  At the tunnels’ entrance they rendezvoused with Bravo Second Squad, and deployed into escort formation, marines on the perimeter, spacers and civvies in the middle. Soon they split, Second Squad’s first and second sections taking the techs through new maze-tunnels up to the reactor, where there were power cores to study and dead deepynine drones to be recovered. Third Section took Jokono another way, to where Alpha Platoon had most heavily engaged sard defences, and there were plenty of dead, armoured bugs to examine and hopefully learn things from.

  Trace took a familiar off-shoot another way, with Command Squad and Hiro, through the tangled nest of ribbed tunnels and organic-looking conduits, vision set to infra-red to navigate in pitch dark until they reached well-remembered white-grey walls. Bravo First Squad marines guarded the corridor on the way in, and tacnet showed Trace not only other marines in guard formation, but mobile ball-sized drones skipping about the random twists and turns, establishing a picture.