She said hello to Old Guy, and asked about this. “Isn’t it a little weird, Rock Dancer watching a movie of himself fighting a battle on the other side of the system?”
Not really. Happens all the time. Occupational hazard of being able to multiprocess. Care for a mint?
Olga looked up at the main screen. The combat was reaching a crescendo. There was a single large polyhedral Amok space battleship on the screen. This time it was close enough that it was picked out in high detail: she could see all the weapons emplacements on its surface, ragged gashes where Rock Dancer had scored hits, bays where flights of missiles were being launched. A side-screen showed a video feed of Rock Dancer’s main hull; it was also damaged but still operational, moving down a long trench carved into the surface of a planetoid.
She had never been able to keep track of which class of cybertank was which, to her one big metal box on treads looked a lot like another. But even she could tell that this was a Magma-Class. Nothing else had that almost vertical-sided bulky armored hull with the astonishingly large cannon in front. Rock Dancer darted out from his trench, and shot at the Amok Battleship. She could see as the beam tore through the battleship’s armor, and even catch glimpses through the open gaps into deeper levels, where there appeared to be burning fires. Rock Dancer retreated, and narrowly escaped retaliation, the Amok beam weapons slicing open new trenches in the surface of the planetoid. Now this is more like it, she thought. It’s almost as good as a movie. But how can there be a fire in a vacuum?”
Before Olga could pose the question, the main screen shifted viewpoint and several more of the polyhedral Amok craft came into view. She had trouble with the scale, but they appeared to be much smaller than the main battleship. They were arcing in low over the planetoid, and caught Rock Dancer by surprise. He tried to turn around to bring the smaller Amok units into the firing arc of his main weapon but didn’t have enough time. The big Magma-Class opened up with all of his secondary and other weapons, calling in kamikaze strikes from his surviving remotes, just as the Amok ships started to fire. They must be only a few hundred kilometers away from each other, and for once the battle moved visibly quickly. A blur of missiles and beam weapons, bright flashes that temporarily blanked out the screen, and then the video feed was lost.
The screen came back to life, but she could tell that something had changed. The image was a lot fuzzier; Fanboy explained to her that it was being relayed from Rock Dancer’s surviving stealth observer units. One of the light Amok ships appeared to be destroyed, and another two damaged. But Rock Dancer looked melted, and was glowing blue-white. As they watched, what was left of his hull sagged in on itself, then it exploded as the reactors went critical, and the screen blanked out again. Zippo watched his master’s demise, and hooted mournfully.
Fanboy was the first to break the silence. “Rock Dancer, that was totally, totally awesome. A cybertank fighting in single combat against a real space battleship. You didn’t kill it, but I can see from the telemetry that you damaged it heavily. It’s not correcting its course, so it will miss the main battle with us. Tactically this is a major victory, as useful as if you had destroyed it outright. And the recordings are going to hit the charts; top 1,000 easy, maybe even top 100. Sorry about you dying though, tough break there.”
The android that was now only a surviving fragment of the original Rock Dancer looked wistful, and hugged Zippo to him. “It was a pretty good fight, wasn’t it?” Rock Dancer petted Zippo on the head. “Hey it’s all right little guy, we did good, we won a major victory!”
Old Guy spoke up.
Very nice, Rock Dancer, very nice indeed. One of the most impressive combats that I have ever witnessed. Thanks to you the Amok have lost 10% of their main attack force. But now, if you don’t mind me asking, do you have any plans? I mean, about being dead and all.”
Rock Dancer continued to pet Zippo. “No, I hadn’t made any advance plans about what to do when I am dead. Careless of me. I think I’ll just hang around for a while and let it all sink in. I left some other bits of my mind here and there throughout the system, I should gather them all together before making a decision. I imagine that something will occur to me, sooner or later.”
The main viewscreen started showing detailed calculations for various orbital trajectories. Alternate paths flashed on and then were erased almost faster than she could follow, and equations streamed past in unending flow. Then the flickering stopped, and there was just one steady course on the display. “Uh Oh,” said Uncle Jon. “This could be a bad sign.”
Fanboy stood up straight, and started to talk both verbally through his android remote, and also through his inbuilt ship-wide speaker system, so that everyone in his pressurized region could listen at the same time. “Your attention please. We are going to engage the Amok fleet directly. Intercept course charted! Full power to the engines!”
At this point the floor started to slope away to one side. It took Olga a while to realize that the floor was not slanting, rather Fanboy was thrusting at full power so that the apparent gravity was a mix between the centripetal force pushing her directly out sideways, and the force of the acceleration pushing her back towards the ship’s aft.
“Contact expected in ten days standard. Prepare all systems for full combat operations.” Fanboy hesitated a bit, and then added: “I apologize for the inconvenience.”
6. Space Opera!
“Query: Meaning of Life
|-> Survival
|-> Purpose
|-> [[untranslatable]]” - Office Copier, class unknown, name unknown, construction date unknown.
Rock Dancer was taking the fact of his death very well, considering the circumstances.
He had never been much of a ‘people-person’ sort of cybertank. He had spent most of his existence floating around in the asteroid belt communicating with his peers via long-range radio and laser links. He seemed to be a decent sort, and Olga supposed that she should feel sorry that he was dead. Still, it was only his main self that was dead, the humanoid remote onboard the good ship “Fanboy” was still very much alive and kicking, if a tad too gloomy for Olga’s taste. She thought about making a joke about them both being ‘undead’, then decided not to. It might come across as tacky.
The others onboard could stand hard vacuum, but Olga was restricted to the pressurized zone in the middle of Fanboy that had originally been intended for a human crew. It was a cylinder about 100 meters in diameter, and 20 meters long. Not that much volume, but it had a surprising number of nooks and crannies, and Olga enjoyed exploring it. Most of the ship was a past-tense futuristic sterile plastic and chrome, but she had chanced upon one cabin that reminded her of a trans-Atlantic steamer from the early 20 century (She’d been on one, once, but couldn’t remember its name. The Normandy? The Queen Eritrea? The Floyd Patterson? It had been so long ago. Perhaps Uncle Jon could help her figure it out).
The floor was bare steel, but the rest of the cabin was rich dark woodwork. Sumptuous paneling, glass-fronted book-cases containing rare volumes and a complete set of action figures from the television series ‘Alien Hunters of Dimension Gamma.’ The room also had a single modest bed, an elegant rosewood desk with an intricate ivory inlay, and a brass light-fixture emitting a warm glow. She sat at the desk and soaked up the ambience.
The tall blond humanoid android belonging to the ship knocked on the door. “Hello, can I come in?” he said.
“Sure,” replied Olga. As if it made a difference: Fanboy was the ship, he knew everything that happened inside of himself (or could if he cared enough), and if he wanted to enter a room he bloody well could. But it was nice that he bothered to knock first. Olga had changed into a pair of blue jeans and a white tee-shirt and tennis shoes, but Fanboy still had his Dieter Waystar costume on. Did he ever take it off?
“Am I disturbing you?” asked Fanboy.
“No, I was just enjoying this cabin. The style is so much warmer than the rest of the ship. Did you design it?”
“No,” said Fanboy. “This comes from the humans that first created me. Originally the entire pressurized zone was done in this style, but I got tired of it and decided to redecorate. I kept this cabin as a museum though. At one point there were several such pressurized zones inside me, and a few armored centrifuges secreted about my person as refuges of last resort for the humans that were supposed to crew me but never did. I got rid of the rest of the pressurized zones centuries ago, but kept the main one for old times’ sake. I’m glad that I did, because that let me invite you to my party.”
“Did you ever know the humans personally?” asked Olga.
Fanboy shook his head. “No, I never did. I was designed and constructed by the humans, but never activated by them. I slept through the entire period where they somehow slipped away, and was only woken up by my fellow cybertanks long after they had gone. I would have liked to have had them crewing me, but that will never happen. Oh well. In some ways you are the closest thing to a human crewmember that I have ever had.”
“I’m a vampire.”
“Yes, surely, but still a biological hominid. We share the same basic psyche. And you were there, back before humans left old Terra. Sorry about dragging you off into a combat where I am almost certainly going to be destroyed.”
“I understand that you needed to accelerate to catch your – what did you call it? ‘launch door’? – and intercept the Amok. With the survival of this entire system at stake, you did what you needed to do. Besides, even if I were back on the main planet that is the first thing that the Amok are going to destroy, so what would be the purpose of that?”
“The phrase is “launch window,” but still, good point. However, I am refitting the capsule that brought you to me for a longer range, and I should be able to send you back to the main planet in about two days. Then, I think that there will be time to return you to your fellow vampires before the Amok destroy this system. You should be alright.”
“Thank you. That is most considerate.”
“Don’t mention it. You know, you’re quite charming for a psychopath.”
“It’s sociopath, not psychopath. And sociopaths are often charming. You have a rare gift for compliments.”
“Is there a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?”
“Certainly. A psychopath is someone who has been diagnosed by a psychiatrist, and a sociopath is someone who has been diagnosed by a sociologist. Besides, ‘sociopath’ sounds better. More sociable.”
“What’s it like being a sociopath?”
Olga laughed. “What’s it like being a 1.5 kilometer long intelligent starship that enjoys role playing old cartoon shows? You know what a silly question that is. It’s like being anything.” She stretched a bit and then sat back up in the chair. “I can still remember what it was like before I became a vampire, although with each passing century it gets hazier and hazier. I recall mostly being a lot like I am now, but I think that I worried more, and made bad decisions, and had trouble sleeping. Sociopathy has its advantages, but also its downsides, like everything else.
“Downside? If there was a downside surely the virus that transforms people into vampires would not have edited empathy out of you.”
“For a vampire that needs to drink the blood of humans, not having a sense of empathy is surely an advantage. But if you need to blend in with society, it can make things tricky sometimes. Remember: all people are in their hearts the same. They are selfish, and will screw other people over if they can get away with it. A so-called normal person, however, will hesitate, and need to come up with some sort of rationalization before doing so. That can be useful, because it prevents you from trying to screw people over when you can’t get away with it – which is most of the time – and getting caught, or punished, or driving away friends and allies. A sociopath has to constantly think about this, while a ‘normal’ does it automatically.”
“No cybertank would ever betray its fellows,” said Fanboy.
“Just keep telling yourself that,” replied Olga. “Perhaps it will be true.”
Fanboy didn’t know how to respond to this, so he just frowned.
“Consider: most people have an inbuilt sense of balance. They can stand up straight without thinking about it, but the price is being able to get motion sick. If you didn’t have a sense of balance, you would be immune to motion sickness or space sickness, but if you wanted to stand up you would have to open your eyes and consciously think about it.”
“So it gets tiring, always trying to avoid acting like a jerk?” asked Fanboy. “It sounds like it could be a lot of effort.”
“Sometimes,” admitted Olga. “But I’ve had thousands of years of practice, and I’ve developed a set of habits that mostly work. It’s all in the heuristics.”
“But on the planet of the vampires, you are all sociopaths. So why can’t you drop the pretense and just be yourselves?”
“Because sociopaths don’t like getting screwed over any more than a normal person does, obviously. If anything we are less comfortable around each other than we are with so-called normals. If you are the only thief in the village, perhaps you can prosper. If the village consists of nothing but thieves, well, that’s not a pretty picture. We have to work at it.”
“Whatever system of behavior that you have devised is effective. I must say, you are by far the most charming sociopath that I have ever met.”
“As always, you have a most unique way of expressing a compliment. Thank you, I think. And you are absolutely positively the most engaging sentient starship that is into role-playing adolescent fantasies that I have ever encountered in all my thousands of years.”
Fanboy smiled happily. “Then the pleasure is mutual! But you still have not worn your Ensign Angela Corona uniform yet! Come on, soon you will be back with your fellow vampires, and I will be a random cloud of radioactive space dust. Don’t let your last thoughts in this life be one of sad regrets at passed opportunities! Please? Just one time?”
“You are incorrigible. Yes, I will go back to my cabin and I will wear the uniform. Once.”
“Incorrigible,” said Fanboy. “They all say that about me. I think I like it. If I come back as something else, I hope they make that my nickname. Incorrigible. That would be great, huh?”
Olga looked skeptical. “Perhaps. But doesn’t it have rather a lot of syllables in it? And there isn’t a good short version, is there?”
“Hmm… maybe ‘Corrie’? or ‘Inco’? No those don’t really work… you might be right about that…” said Fanboy. Then he brightened. “Well, perhaps ‘incorrigible’ is not well suited for a name, but I still like being called it.”
“Whatever. Changing the subject, do you really think that you can’t beat these Amok things?”
Behind the desk was an ornate gold-leaf decorated wooden frame, but inside it was a modern viewscreen, which Fanboy activated. He caused it to display a map of the system, with the orbits of the main worlds, and the projected courses of the Amok fleet and himself. “One never knows how a battle will turn out,” he said, “but the situation is not to our favor. See, the enemy fleet is moving on a direct course that will take it right past the main industrialized world in this system. We presume that they mean to scour the surface with close-range weapons, which is insane. They should have pounded it with long-range missiles, but insane or not they are winning. If they can cripple our main industrial centers then they can wear us down with a battle of attrition.”
“But Rock Dancer already took out one of their battleships,” said Olga. “How hard can it be? Just do it nine more times.”
“If only it was that easy,” said Fanboy. “Rock Dancer was in the perfect place at the perfect time, and the Amok behaved stupidly. Perhaps the Amok will behave stupidly again, or perhaps not, but we can’t depend on that. He was our most powerful class, there are only two others like him in this system and there is no way that we can get them into position in time (they are a bit on the heavy side, you know). Also, h
e didn’t do it all by himself, he used up a lot of our ordnance from the asteroid belt, and we are getting thin. If the Amok swoop by our main planet they will have the high ground, they can wipe out our surface facilities, cripple our industries, and force us to keep our heads down while they land and defeat us in detail.”
“I still don’t understand why this is a problem. I keep hearing that giant space battleships are a silly idea (no offense). So why are these causing you so much trouble?
“Ah. Well. How much do you remember about the 19 and 20 centuries?”
“A bit,” said Olga. “Why?”
“Well, think of it this way. In the 19 and the early part of the 20 century, water-surface warships were developed with increasingly heavy armor and ever more powerful cannons. Then the balanced shifted: by the end of the 20 and throughout the 21 and 22 centuries naval forces were dominated by light cruisers armed with long-range missiles and sophisticated radars. In any likely combat scenario, the old-style battleships would have been blown out of the water thousands of kilometers before they could have engaged. They were obsolete. But. Suppose that a 1940’s era battleship could suddenly appear in the middle of a bunch of light unarmored 2080’s era aluminum-alloy guided missile cruisers. It would be a slaughter.”
“Humm. So it’s a question of being in the right place at the right time with the right stuff.”
“It always is.” Fanboy indicated his own course on the screen. “I am, by some perverse and highly improbable turn of good/bad fortune, the only combat unit in this system with any chance of engaging the enemy and at least inflicting some damage. Now I had two choices: I could have done a crossing high-speed intercept, which would have been faster and maximized my own chances of survival, and been really exciting! - but it would also have minimized the damage that I could dish out myself.” He traced his projected course on the screen with a finger: it looped around a gas giant and then merged with the enemy course. “So I chose a matching intercept. Takes longer to set up, but I can ease in at a slow relative closing speed and really lay on the firepower.”
Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure) Page 9