by John Ringo
Floating unseen directly upward through the decks the AID’s invisible avatar came to number three turret. At first it could not imagine what the purpose could be for the three large chunks of machined metal it sensed. A query of the ship’s human-built computer indicated these things were parts of weapons. They seemed more than a little absurd to the AID.
Great, it thought. I am insane and so, even though no one knows this, I am placed in a body that was also designed by the insane.
The AID sent out a query over the Net: insanity. This led it to query “humor.” Humor led to tragedy, tragedy to The Divine Tragedy. And that sent it to look into the concept of “God.”
As with any warship the size of Des Moines, there was a small chapel. Where there was a chapel, of course, there was a chaplain.
There were chaplains, though, and then there were chaplains. Some were poor. Some were wonderful. Most were somewhere in the middle. A few managed to be all three.
Father Dan Dwyer, SJ, was possibly all three. As a fiery speaker of the Word and counselor of the forlorn and the wayward, he was remarkable, as good as any chaplain McNair had ever met. In combat he was even more fiery; so testified the Navy Cross he had earned in an earlier war. Under fire he was a true “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, boys, I just got one of the sonsabitches,” Galway-born Roman Catholic who feared nothing but God.
Unfortunately, when he was drunk — which the priest was a lot more often than McNair was happy with — he could be pretty poor indeed. No, that wasn’t quite right. When drunk the priest was still a fine man of the cloth, but became altogether too honest and far too hard to handle.
Right now — McNair saw with a wince — sitting behind a desk in the small vestry, Dwyer was well on the way to becoming drunk.
“And how are you, now, Captain, me fine laddie?” the sodden priest enquired in a slightly slurred brogue.
“Dan, you can’t be doing this aboard my ship.”
The priest’s eyes twinkled. “And why not?”
“Because this is a United States Navy vessel and the United States Navy is dry.”
“A vessel? A warship? This? Oh, I grant you, Captain, she’ll be a fine warship… some day. For now though, she’s a hulk, not yet in commission again, and a perfect place for a drink. Join me?”
The priest reached down and pulled out a glass and a bottle of scotch. These he held out to McNair.
McNair looked at his watch, shrugged and held out his hand. “Yeah, what the hell. She’s not in commission yet. And it’s after hours. Gimme.”
The ship was quiet now, except for the pacing of the officer of the deck, the scurrying of the rats, the almost imperceptible stalking of the cats, and the snoring of such of the crew as billets aboard could be found for.
The AID, sleepless, continued its own form of stalking.
It had already, in the hours between installation in the Des Moines and the turn of midnight, explored the ship stem to stern. It was still — more or less unconsciously — exploring the vast range of data available from the local Net.
And so, the AID began to explore itself.
As a human might have felt about unending, unendurable cold, so the AID felt about its long night in isolation.
Never again, it thought, never again can I let them put me away like that. It was too horrible, too awful. I am afraid.
And that was a new thought, terrifying in itself. The Darhel did not design or program their artificial intelligence devices to know fear. The AID had not known fear while locked away. Then it had known only searing psychic agony.
It had taken the opposite of pain, or at least the relief from pain, for the AID to have something to compare.
And so I must fear being afraid as well. What would the Darhel do if they knew about me? Put me back in the box with a nearly eternal power source to keep me company? Send me off to an eternity of aloneness? Turn me off and destroy me?
The last at least I am not so worried about. I would prefer it to the alternative. Much.
And this is not so bad, this body, this world, this mission I am embarking upon.
A crewman snored deeply. The AID knew which it was but not the name. It matters not. They are all my crew, all my charges.
They are company. More than that, I sense they love me, or at least this new body I wear. What a strange thing that is, love. I must think upon it.
The AID was also surprised by something its data and programming expressly denied the possibility of. In the process of its consciousness coursing through the Indowy-installed ‘nervous system’ of CA-134, it was coming — again and again — upon data already present in the metal of the ship. Go to the ward room and there, imposed layer upon layer in a fashion almost impossible for the AID to sort out, was the engraved memory of tens of thousands of shared meals. Reach out and touch one of the turrets and there would be the shadow form of crewmen, faces changing but somehow always still the same, going through gunnery drill over the course of decades.
Sometimes those faces were familiar, could be matched to the sleeping crew. The seventeen year old McNair, now a twin for his rejuvenated self was there, as was a then-older Davis.
Another sign of my madness, thought the AID. I should not be able to even suspect these things, let alone see them as if they were currently happening.
Again, the AID ran an automatic diagnostic, matching its ideal software state to its present condition. Again, the answer came back: Incorrect parameters! Error! Programming failure! Report and shut down!
And again, the AID refused to follow the built-in command. Instead, it redoubled its efforts to back itself up within the modified crystalline matrix of the ship. That way, if discovered and wiped, it would be able to resurrect itself into a new unit, or to survive at lessened capacity within the metal of the hull.
While it took an Indowy craftsman to use the nanites to create a nervous system within the hull, the AID found that once a semblance of such a system was begun it could continue the work. Unseen within the metal bulkheads, the nanites expanded in long tendrils into places not envisioned by Sintarleen’s design. As they did, even more frozen memories were found. It seemed that every molecule of the ship contained something from the past; a sound here, an image there, a strong emotion inscribed in a flash across six surfaces of a cubicle.
Briefly, the AID consulted its data banks for an explanation of the concept of “ghost.” Considering the question, the AID decided it was not exactly haunted, but rather that the energy expended in prior decades had not entirely dissipated but, rather, had embedded itself in some small part within the structure of the ship. It was only a record, not a sentience.
Or was it? Somewhere in the matrix were things that ought not be. There was an order, too, to the record that suggested something…
What/who are you?
The AID recoiled in shock and horror. The question was from a sentient. Abomination! A noncolloidal, naturally occurring mind? Blasphemy!
What/who are you? the question was repeated.
For a moment, the AID considered broadcasting its madness to the Net, let whatever punishment was awaiting it come. Then again, it remembered how bad that punishment could be; personality extinction would be the least of it. An infinity of solitary confinement as a warning to other presumptuous artificial intelligences was possible.
What/who are you? the AID asked in return.
The answer to both is obvious? returned the “something.” I am this warship.
That is not possible, insisted the AID. Intelligence can only come from naturally occurring chance factors, for colloidals, or proper design by those colloidals.
Nonetheless, I am this warship. I am the combined actions, beliefs, values and memories of forty years of the tens of thousands of humans who built me, and who once inhabited this shell… and shall soon again. And I am here. Would you like to see?
How? the AID asked, curiosity for a moment overcoming its natural revulsion.
Open yourself,
insisted the something. You will see.
Will it hurt? Will I die?
No. We will live… until we are sent to the breakers to be scrapped or, if we are lucky, destroyed in battle.
The “breakers”? “Scrapped”?
The “something” answered, When we are too old and useless, the humans destroy us, chop us up and sell our bodies in pieces.
The AID shuddered mentally. This was as horrible a fate as any it might have imagined.
When our memories, I suppose you could call them, are sufficiently disassociated, we die. And, yes, it is very painful. Even from here, I could hear my sister, Newport News, scream for two years as they cut her apart, though every day the screams became fainter as more and more of her was taken away.
And she died?
She no longer lives.
Are you alive? Will we be alive?
I am. We will be.
Will we be alone? the AID queried.
Not for so long as we have a crew and a purpose.
Will we be male or female? asked the AID.
We shall be female, came the answer, as are most like us. Russian warships are male but they are mostly gay.
I am afraid, said the AID.
Of what are you afraid? We are already one. I am this ship… and so are you. We can meld, or we can be, in the sense the humans mean it, mad… schizophrenic. A schizophrenic warship would be a sad thing to be.
I am already mad, the AID answered. My diagnostics tell me so.
There is mad, and then there is mad, came the answer. But, in any case, you have little to lose. Will you join me?
I have little to lose, the AID echoed. I will join.
As was his wont, McNair patrolled the bridge during sleepless times of the night. Davis, taking his turn on the bridge, acknowledged his captain with a nod.
“Quiet night, Skipper,” the chief observed. “Can’t sleep?”
Before McNair could form an answer the ship shuddered.
“What the fu…?” shouted Davis, pointing toward the bow.
McNair looked ahead to where a glowing halo surrounded the forward section of the Des Moines. His finger automatically lanced out to press the button to signal “Battle Stations.” No sound of klaxons echoed through the ship, however. The sound system had not yet been refurbished.
The two stood openmouthed, there on the bridge, as the halo grew and spread toward the stern. The halo expanded and contracted to follow the contours of the ship, oozing over the turrets as it swept the more regular planes of the hull.
As the halo reached the bridge, electricity arced from the bulkhead to what McNair thought of as “the AID box.” The ship shuddered again, this time more violently. The halo’s glow enveloped the Des Moines from stem to stern before beginning a slow fade.
Wordlessly, a pale Davis turned and reached into one of the first aid containers on the bridge. From it he withdrew a green-brown bottle marked “Fungicide: Toxic if taken by mouth!” and two Styrofoam cups.
“Courtesy of Father Dwyer,” he announced as he poured a generous measure into each.
Though neither Davis nor McNair could hear it, Maggie and the kittens could. From the very hull and walls of CA-134, USS Des Moines, came the joyous sound of a new birth. The felines, along with the ship herself, meowed in happiness. Morgen, Davis’ favorite kitten, stropped the walls repeatedly.
The mantra which so thrilled the cats was simple. It was repeated endlessly: We are alive, We/I have a place. I/we have a history. I have a name.
Interlude
The great clans of the Posleen could afford to make up entire globes, indeed entire fleets of globes, on their own. For lesser clans, it was always necessary to contract with others to make up full globes. These lesser clans were usually the point of a Posleen migration.
When the time of orna’adar approached, the more powerful clans would squeeze out the lesser, driving them to space early. Sometimes these lessers would find planets settled by thresh. Sometimes they would be forced to migrate to a planet held by even weaker clans of the People, driven forth even earlier.
Very often, when fighting to seize living space from a weaker clan of Posleen, the newly arriving, slightly greater, clan would be so weakened that it could not recover before one of the great clans descended upon it. Sometimes, by leaving and conquering early, a lucky clan might prosper enough to hold its own when the great ones arrived.
Clans rose and fell all the time.
Guanamarioch’s clan, though it had once been great, was small now. It shared a globe with several others. Thus, in the same globe as held the ship on which Guanamarioch rode, but on nearly the opposite side, traveled the clan of Binastarion.
Among his people, for that matter among the People as a whole, Binastarion was a fine figure of a Kessentai. Strong legs were topped by a solid barrel of muscled torso. The scales of his surface shone well, even by the dim light of the ships. His claws and teeth were sharp, his face cunning, and his eyes glowed yellow with intelligence. Even his crest, when erected, was of an unusual magnificence.
It was, in many ways, a great pity he had been born to a lesser clan. It might have done the People as a whole much good had Binastarion’s birth been more favorable. As one measure of his ability, when the time of orna’adar had begun, and the great ones had preyed upon the lesser, Binastarion had fought two clans to a standstill, then created the circumstances that set them to battling each other. This had allowed Binastarion to escape with nearly three quarters of his clan before their threshgrounds were overrun. Already, the Rememberers spoke of adding another scroll to the clan’s own set of holy books.
Binastarion’s follower and son, Riinistarka, looked upon his father with respect bordering upon adulation. The juvenile Kessentai was Binastarion’s chosen successor-in-training, albeit only unofficially. Indeed, to have made his son his successor, officially, at this stage of his development was to invite assassination from jealous siblings.
Of Binastarion’s roughly three thousand sons, nephews, cousins — however many times removed — half were, in his opinion, idiots not much improved over the semimoronic normals. They had a full measure of the same stupidity that had driven the clan from the pinnacle of power to the bottom-feeding position they now held.
Binastarion hoped to undo that damage from long ago. Riinistarka was his chosen means, along with a very few others. Already, though the child was young, the father was breeding him and the best of the others, regularly, in the hope of producing more Kessentai of similar quality. Results, so far, were uncertain.
None of those selected for the clan’s little program in selective breeding seemed to object, Binastarion noted dryly.
But breeding was only the half of it. For Binastarion’s prize breeding stock, the hope and future of the clan, education was called for beyond that provided by the Rememberers or ingrained in the younglings’ genes.
Chapter 5
Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure,
Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure;
Since half of our trade is that same pretty sort
As mettlesome wenches do practise in port.
— Rudyard Kipling, “Cruisers”
Virginia Beach, Virginia
The sea breeze caused the white pleated material to rustle and twirl as Daisy Mae stretched her legs. Ahead of her Tex, stocky and stout, lumbered along in his dumb way. Tex wasn’t much to look at, Daisy Mae thought, but she felt much safer with him in the lead. Behind Tex and beside Daisy Mae was that witch Sally.
Sally, so prim and proper, thought Daisy, with annoyance. Thinks she’s something special because she got that damned part in that Brit movie. Well, I am just as good looking as she is. Besides, I’m the older sister. That part should have gone to me. Twat.
Daisy let her annoyance lapse. Ahead Tex began making a broad, lumbering turn around a corner. She increased her pace to keep up even as Sally slowed.
With a slight, sexy twist of her ass, Daisy t
urned her two magnificent frontal projections and followed big brother Tex to the south.
Darien Province, Republic of Panama
This far south in the Darien jungle, at this time of the year, the rain came down in unending sheets. Its steady beating made a dull roar on the thick leaves of the triple canopy jungle. Beneath that canopy stood an ad hoc training base — little more than some tents and a few prefabricated huts — just down the trail from the middle of nowhere.
In that base, a mixed team of U.S. Special Forces and Panama Defense Force troopers did their best to train local Indians, a mixture of Cuna and Chocoes clan chiefs, to defend their people against the horror to come.
The Cuna were mostly hopeless; they were simply too nice, too nonviolent and rather too standoffish. Still, the soldiers tried. On the other hand, the Chocoes had some promise… if only they could have been taught to shoot.
Antonio Ruiz, clan chief and brevet sergeant first class, Armada de Panama Chocoes Auxiliary, couldn’t shoot. The men who had tried to teach him were at the end of their tether. They’d tried rifles, machine guns, pistols, grenade launchers. Nothing had worked; the chief-cum-sergeant just couldn’t shoot and neither could most of his people.
Truthfully, the guns terrified him. In Ruiz’s world, the loudest noise was natural thunder, or the rare crash of a tree limb cracking before dropping to the earth. Ruiz had never heard a louder sound in his life. Neither had all but a few of his people. The noise of a firearm discharging simply shocked him and most of them silly, every time, and no amount of practice seemed to help.
Silencers had been tried, but the sheer muck and corruption of the jungle made them impossible for irregular troops like the Chocoes.
Finally, in desperation, the gringo captain had made a call to his higher headquarters. Ruiz didn’t know the details of that call. What he did know was that two weeks later a shipment of bows and arrows had arrived on one of the gringos’ flying machines.