by S. H. Jucha
* * *
Cordelia produced a map of the system’s drone locations for Reiko, who ordered the Tridents to investigate each one. Travelers exited the warships to make entry to the mining sites, ships, and platforms.
For many fleet personnel, this was their first encounter with the drones. It quickly became evident to the commanders, who reported it up the line, that the sight of the severely emaciated and deprived humans was taking a toll on the crew members. Soon after the reports reached Alex, he abandoned the operation.
Alex interviewed the crew members who had completed their assignments aboard the nearby processing platform. They told Alex that the count was difficult because the drones continually moved about, while the crew was counting. They captured images of the faces to eliminate duplication. To make matters worse, they were unsure whether to count some of the drones who sat on the deck or lay in bed in a stupor. It was obvious to them that the drones were in their final stages and probably wouldn’t be alive by the time they were relocated.
“Perhaps, we should have asked Faustus for the count at each location,” Julien said to Alex, when the interviews were complete.
“Let’s make this simple, Julien,” Alex replied. “Have Cordelia send her map to Faustus, marking the affected sites. Inform Faustus that the drones must be relocated from those sites.”
“What reason do we give Faustus to induce his cooperation?” Julien asked.
“Do you remember when Cordelia said that raising children was best left to humans?” Alex asked.
“Understood, Alex,” Julien said quietly. His friend was pointing out that communication with Faustus was best handled by the SADEs.
It took the fleet half a month to move the drones from the potential danger area. Faustus cooperated with the SADEs, and Alex never asked Julien how he had managed it.
When the drone transfer operation was complete, Alex checked in with Claude and Z. They confirmed the avatar was ready. Claude had installed a controller, and Z had programmed it to be operated remotely. The avatar would fulfill multiple roles, if necessary. In the simplest scenario, it would uncouple Faustus’ power supply, and the fleet would witness a small nova. If nothing happened, the avatar could relocate Faustus. In this latter scenario, it could handle the dispersal of the nanites aboard the colony ship.
Alex intended to deliver his message in person to Faustus that it was to edit its forbidden data. He felt that was the least he could do for the entity, but a backlash occurred the moment Alex uttered the thought.
In turn, Julien said that a SADE should deliver the message, and Alex strongly vetoed that action.
It was left to the avatar to deliver the instructions to Faustus. And, perhaps, it was merely the sentimentality of humans and SADEs that thought they should speak to Faustus in person. After all, Faustus was encased in a box, and sensory input to the entity was delivered via drones, machines, and equipment. In the end, it probably made no difference to Faustus how it received the request.
The expedition’s ships backed off from the New Terra to a distance known as Gaumata’s insurance. It stemmed from Darius Gaumata’s distrust of all things Nua’ll and estimations of their destructive capability. In more than one case, his caution proved to have saved many lives.
In a simple balancing of SADE calculation and human paranoia, Cordelia ensured the fleet was spread outside the calculated danger zone. Then Tatia ordered the fleet to expand that distance by another 50 percent, which was an amount that satisfied Darius.
Alex received assurances from Tatia of the fleet’s readiness and from Z of the avatar’s positioning aboard the colony ship.
Faustus linked to the avatar’s controller, having recognized it wasn’t a sentient creature.
Alex gently shook his head at the incredulity of the question. The difference between Faustus and a SADE couldn’t have been more aptly demonstrated.
The alien’s words didn’t satisfy Faustus, but there didn’t appear to be an alternative. No home fleet had come to its rescue, and the aliens had terminated its drone development operations and were preparing to depart. That the aliens had cleared a wide sphere around the ship, as reported by the drones, said that the aliens suspected that the code’s investigation might result in more than its demise.
Faustus ran probabilities of success, depending on the approaches that might be employed to investigate the forbidden code. The most successful direction was thought to be based on an analysis of the operating base code, programs, directives, and comms. There was continuity in the methods and styles.
In contrast to that direction, it occurred to Faustus that if a trap was to be laid, then the logical idea would be to embed a different form of code in the protected area. Using the prevalent style to open the hidden code would immediately trigger any executable files within.
Faustus ran through hundreds and then thousands of options. The difficulty was in trying to anticipate the mind of a far more sophisticated entity. Calculations were spinning out of control, and Faustus shut them down. It came to the conclusion that if a trap existed, there was zero opportunity to thwart it. The only choice was to hope for clemency from its creator.
Faustus examined the discrete portion of its semiliquid core. Data in the core was stored in strings of code, which were arranged in simple, repeating patterns at the atomic level. This allowed for a dense data field in a relatively small area.
If Faustus could have breathed a sigh of resignation, it would have done so. Instead, with deliberate, small steps, Faustus breached the protected code assembly. Nothing happened, and Faustus began examining the code strings. As suspected, it was in a different format than Faustus’ base and was completely undecipherable. Faustus ran algorithms against the strings to decipher the new format. It believed it was only a matter of time before the code would be understood.
Faustus believed that all comm lines were truncated. Unfortunately, the entity was unaware of an additional circuit that was dedicated to Artifice’s backdoor program. Opening the protected code initiated a small, executable file.
While Faustus proceeded with the analysis on the newly discovered code format, the tiny executable triggered a program in the installed power unit, which Z and Miranda had investigated. Faustus was initiating programs and even taking a few ticks of time to consider what form of avatar would suit its purpose in a new world, when its existence ended.
From the Freedom’s bridge, Alex and company waited for the result of Faustus’ investigation. From the moment the entity announced it was beginning to investigate the isolate
d code, they expected a disastrous result. When the moments ticked by, many thought they’d underestimated the dangerousness of the situation.
Tatia was about to make a comment, when, suddenly, a mini-nova was recorded by the ship’s telemetry before sensors were overwhelmed by the bright light and the energy wave that followed close behind. When the sensors cleared, Tatia immediately ordered the fleet’s ships to engage.
The enormous eruption of mass from the colony ship and the moon were shooting off into space. Huge chunks of the moon struck more rocks and drove them off in different directions.
The Tridents had ringed the blast area on the ecliptic plane. Scattered between them were the fleet’s travelers. After telemetry indicated the blast wave had substantially faded, they executed their orders. They drove forward to destroy as much of the debris as they could, reducing the rocks and metal to space dust.
For the new traveler pilots, it turned out to be a more substantial challenge than they had realized. The Tridents could eliminate wide swaths of material hurtling their way, but the traveler pilots had to fire and weave aside of the next rocks before their beams recharged.
Cordelia had positioned the Freedom in front of an ore-processing orbital platform. Many of the drones from the primary platform had been moved there. She’d rolled out the city-ship’s rail-mounted beam weapons. Borrowing the technique she’d employed at the wall, she slowly spun the city-ship on its horizontal axis.
When the metal and rubble reached Cordelia’s ship, her powerful beam weapons thoroughly destroyed the debris. The size of her ship and multiple weapons were able to clear a much larger path than a squadron of Tridents.
There was one dreadful incident. A drone freighter was on course for the primary ore-processing station. Belatedly, a Trident reported the freighter’s vector to his commodore. When Alex received the message, it was too late for him to interrupt Faustus.
When the explosion took out Faustus and the New Terra, there was no way to redirect the freighter, and the Omnians had no time to catch the ship, get aboard, and discover the means to reorient the alien ship.
The Omnians watched in horror, as the freighter narrowly escaped missile after missile of debris. Briefly, they thought it might be safe until a large chunk of moon rock, slowly turning through space, came its way. The chunk of aggregate debris was half the size of the freighter. When the two bodies collided, they mangled each other, and the freighter’s reaction mass tanks exploded, further scattering the pieces of moon rock and ship.
Viewing the destruction on the Freedom’s bridge, Miranda had the last words. She said, “There is something important to take away from this event,” she said, turning to stare at Alex. “Artifice demonstrates great consistency. If we touch the entity’s things, we can expect one result and one result only.
* * *
Once the danger from the extensive debris spread was neutralized, Cordelia sought out Julien, locating him at the observatory on the city-ship’s uppermost deck and situated at its precise center. Residents of the Freedom could recline in comfortable chairs in a dark room and enjoy the brilliant star field. Cordelia lay down in a chair next to Julien and reached out a hand to hold his.
Cordelia linked to Julien, and sent
Julien returned.
Julien sent a timeline to his partner of the years since he’d first met Alex, annotating it with the discovery dates of new aliens.
Cordelia studied the timeline and extrapolated it forward.
Julien received the tinkling of silver bells, following Cordelia’s thought, and he squeezed her hand in appreciation.
-39-
Null Horse
Mickey met with Miriam after the New Terra’s detonation.
After listening to Mickey’s request, Miriam replied, “The SADEs are at work on the project now, Mickey. The nanites specific to the New Terra are being deactivated. We’re reducing the number of canisters for Captain Merman’s squadron to account for the ships, sites, and platforms that have been eliminated.”
“You could have told me that you’d already initiated the project,” Mickey objected.
“If I tended to do that, Mickey, what would you have left to do?” Miriam retorted.
Mickey stared at the SADE, whose expression remained neutral. He was considering that Miriam was serious, when she broke into a smile.
“I think I liked SADEs when they were fresh out of the box. They were much easier to read then,” Mickey shot back.
“But we’re much more entertaining now,” Miriam replied, pursing her lips at Mickey.
Mickey grinned and shook his head in disbelief.
“Come, my lead engineer,” Miriam said, grinning. “Alex’s meeting will start soon.” She led off at a brisk pace, exiting the lab, and heading for a lift.
Mickey hurried to catch up. Over the years, he’d watched the growing signs of the SADEs’ increasing adaptation of human mannerisms. To date, it had primarily been Julien, Z, Miranda, and a few others who had become adept at displaying human traits, but the expedition seemed to have changed that, accelerating the adoption by other SADEs.
Mickey mused that it was, perhaps, the strong camaraderie born from trying to stay alive, while attempting to better a vast enemy, which had increased the SADEs’ uptake.
Miriam had held the lift doors open for Mickey, while he caught up. She signaled the doors to close, as Mickey took a place beside her.
When the lift began to rise, Mickey said, “You know I’ll have to get you back for that.”
“I would expect nothing else from such a preeminent engineer,” Miriam replied.
Mickey glanced at the SADE, who stared quietly ahead, but he caught the tiny smile that formed at the corner of her mouth.
The two of them arrived early for the start of Alex’s meeting. It was held in the small auditorium again, but the place was already full. Miriam walked to the front row. Earlier, she’d signaled Luther, who’d saved seats for Mickey and her.
The audience quietly chatted and commed until the hour of the meeting came and went, which caught everyone’s attention. Alex was a punctual individual. It was a trademark of the man, who loved numbers.
While the audience puzzled over the delay, the auditorium’s lights faded and the stage’s wide monitor lit up. A vid began playing. The attendees expected a synopsis of the expedition’s future tactics. Instead, an ancient vid unspooled. Many individuals tittered and chuckled, expecting the vid to end shortly. When it didn’t, humans settled in to watch, and the SADEs linked to the database and spooled rapidly through the vid. Then the SADEs spent the remainder of the time in conjecture about what Alex might want them to glean from the viewing.
When the vid ended, the lights came up, and Alex took the stage.
“The vid you’ve seen is courtesy of my exquisite partner,” Alex announced, with a wave of his hand. It brought Renée to her feet, who bowed lightly, to accept the audience’s applause.
“You witnessed one adversary gain entrance to another
’s sanctuary by the use of trickery,” Alex said.
“Are we trying to sneak into something?” Reiko asked in a loud voice.
“Actually, no, Admiral. This is where the dynamic changes,” Alex replied. “Replace the image of the antagonists’ animal, called a horse, with a freighter. And, in our case, the horse will be empty.”
“A null horse?” Mickey asked.
“If you will,” Alex allowed. “None of us believe Artifice can be trusted. The demise of Faustus is proof of what Artifice will do to its creations if they disobey its directives.”
“Could you explain the purpose of our null horse, Alex?” Franz requested.
“I plan to announce our transit coordinates to the Nua’ll sphere,” Alex explained.
“And drop the empty freighter into the coordinates,” Tatia finished for Alex. “I like it,” she exclaimed.
“What do you hope to accomplish by this, Alex?” Z asked.
“We’ve only conjectures about the nature of Artifice,” Alex replied. “We don’t know if it resides on the target planet. If it does, we don’t know if it’s buried at the polar cap. I want confirmation of these suspicions. And I want to see how the patrolling forces respond to our freighter’s actions.”
“You’ll need to convince Artifice that your voice originates from the freighter, Alex,” Miriam said. “That will require you relay your communications with the entity through the freighter. To that point, a sister won’t be aboard.”
“The scout ships can provide a relay, without risking our warships, our freighters, or the Freedom,” Killian volunteered. “We’ve a sister aboard each ship.”
“Our scout ships’ design has already been observed in Artifice’s system,” Linn noted. “The probes will be on alert for us.”
“For the purposes of this one-time visit,” Luther said, “we can load what the sisters have learned into the ship’s controller. It might give you sufficient time to hold a conversation with Artifice, Alex.”