Proxima Centauri - Hunt for the Lost AIs

by M. D. Cooper

  He quirked an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

  She grinned wryly. “When you were in Proxima, were you ever involved in any flight testing, to certify a new spacecraft design?”

  Jason shook his head, and she gestured to the ship around them. “There were more than twenty thousand test points involved in getting this baby certified for flight,” she informed him. “Everything from spacecraft systems to inflight procedures, and we had to go through prep, execution, and data analysis on every single one.”

  He whistled, and she made a dismissive noise, waving her hand at him. “Oh, we’re not facing anything like that number now. That was when we were certifying the initial design. It took years. The modifications we’re adding now would add up to—” she paused, considering, “oh, a few dozen test points. A few weeks of flight testing at most, to get everything signed off.”

  She chewed on her lip for a second before confiding, “Actually, we’re playing a bit fast and loose with the regs, retrofitting it with Elastene, and then scheduling our launch just a few days later. Technically, the trip to Proxima will count as a series of flight tests to certify her for use with the new MFR drives.”

  Jason nodded. “I’ve read about it, but can’t believe I’m actually here, walking the decks of such an incredible piece of advanced tech.” He brought his mug up and inhaled its caffeinated fragrance. As reconstituted coffees went, it wasn’t terrible, although any connoisseur of the drink would have gone apoplectic over such a travesty done unto the hallowed bean.

  He took a sip, then looked speculatively over at her. “So…what are they estimating for total transit time? The fastest I’ve ever completed it was a bit under two years.”

  She shook her head, smiling. “You’re going to be pleasantly surprised. With the modifications they’re doing to her hull and engines, we’re going to be able to increase standard velocity by twenty percent.”

  Jason let out a low whistle. “Really? So instead of point two cee—”

  “Yep, point two-four cee. These mods won’t really add much to nearspace transit times, but haulers between the ring and the outer edges of the system are going to see a nice bump in time and energy efficiency.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that’ll make them happy, especially if they can refit their existing ships like you’ve done here.” He shifted and pinned her with a look. “So, if you run the rapids through the bowshock between here and Proxima,” he paused, “then that means….”

  She grinned. “Yep. Point four-six cee. You can make it in ten months.” She quirked a brow at him. “Of course, that’d be a little less, by our relativistic reckoning of time and space, aboard ship.”

  “Niiiice.” He drummed his fingers lightly against the mug for a moment, and then nodded thoughtfully. “What’s its crew complement?”

  Calista looked around at the bulkheads surrounding the commons area where they sat, but Jason knew it was the ship at large she saw now, with her mind’s eye.

  “Anywhere from three to four hundred,” she admitted.

  Jason whistled. “We’re—ahh—slightly understaffed, then.”

  “Well, it depends on how much of the ship is in use. It was designed to be modular, so we can shut off the levels that aren’t required.” She shrugged. “Just consolidating us all in officer country means we’ll be able to close three crew decks and five passenger levels. And we won’t need both observation decks; just one’ll do.” She crooked a smile at him. “But even so, yeah, we’ll be running leaner than Enfield ever envisioned the ship operating.”

  Jason took another sip of his coffee as she cocked her head, eyes glinting in humor. “Of course, Shannon thinks she can pilot this bad boy all by herself.”

  He raised a brow. “Can she?”

  She waggled her hand back and forth. “Eh, she’s about half right. We’ve had several AIs from Enfield and the ESF put in for extended leave; probably three or four dozen in all have requested permission to join us. Even a few of the shackled AIs we rescued have asked to come along.”

  Jason leaned forward, interest piqued. “Really? Who?”

  Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Do you remember Frida? The bristly communications officer onboard the New Saint Louis? The one with the spiky hair?”

  Jason smirked and nodded. Frida had been incredibly pissed that she’d been purchased as a ‘companion AI’ for a wealthy human’s elderly and rather staid mother-in-law.

  He suspected Frida’s personality had been a bit sharp-edged even before her kidnapping; after her rescue, the AI had been prickly to the point of hostility—even toward her rescuers.

  You have to admire attitude like that, he thought.

  Calista grinned back. “Well, while we were on the way back from Krait, Esther brought Frida into the fold.” She gestured vaguely around. “She’s already onboard, along with another AI—the one we rescued from the gaming operation. I don’t think you were on that op. Niki is her name.”

  “Have they already handed out crew assignments?”

  Calista sat back, eyeing him with a hint of a smile teasing at her mouth. “Mmhmm. And in case you were wondering, Shannon’s the ship’s engineer, not the ship’s pilot.” She pointed to him with the hand that held the mug. “That’s your job.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Not yours?”

  She grinned wickedly at him. “Nope. I’m the new XO.”

  He leaned back, resting an arm along the back of his chair and smirked slightly as he took another sip of his coffee.

  “What?” she said, her eyes dancing. “Worried your new XO’s going to be a real hardass?” Her lips twitched in amusement as she waited for him to answer.

  “Just wondering what her position’s going to be on fraternization, is all…” He let his voice trail off suggestively as he reached over and set his coffee down, brushing the top of her thigh with his fingers as he sat back up.

  He watched her eyes glimmer as she slanted him a look through dark lashes. “Mmmmm, maybe we should discuss that more…in depth.”

  He slid further back in his chair as he stretched his feet out in front of him, reaching one foot out to run it along the back of her calf. “I could get into that,” he said, and he heard his voice grow a bit husky as he added, “Your quarters or mine?”

  Her smile turned impish as she shot a pointed look toward the sleeping cat. “I don’t have a roommate, like some pilots I know.”

  His gaze swung over to where Tobias’s cylinder rode inside Tobi’s harness, and he smirked. “Maybe we’ll have to have a secret code. You know, like hang a sock over the access panel to let him know not to come in.”

  Calista rolled her eyes. “Smooth, flyboy. At least you didn’t suggest we use my panties.”

  Jason smirked.

  She glared at him. “But you were thinking it!”

  “Uh…”

  “You were.” She sat back, crossing her arms indignantly. “Andrews!”

  “So, I guess that means we’ll be using your quarters, then?”

  “Damn straight we will,” she muttered, but then she held her palm up and shot him a stern look. “And there’ll be no sleeping your way into the pilot’s cradle, either, flyboy. You’ll need to earn it the old-fashioned way.”

  Jason groaned at all the work that implied. “Seriously?”

  “Yep, you’ll need to get type-rated in a Nautilus-Class craft.” She paused, a smile quivering on her lips. “Maybe if you put your time in on the flight sims, we can think up a suitable…reward?”

  “Daaaang, first the carrot, then the stick, and then the carrot again? You drive a hard bargain, woman.” He grinned back at her. “Okay, fine, have it your way. So, what other roles have been handed out?”

  “Mmmm,” she said, drumming her fingers on her lips in thought, and he experienced a pang of regret that their flirtation had been so short-lived.

  Just for the moment, he thought to himself. We’ll have ten months ahead of us, and I plan to do a hell of a lot more than flirt….<
br />
  Oblivious to where Jason’s thoughts had taken him, Calista began to address his interest in the assignments.

  “Well, Frida’s on comm, and Niki’s on scan. Those are the same jobs the two of them held back on the New Saint Louis,” she informed him, and he nodded. “We also have a medic on loan from the ESF, a human named Marta.” She grinned. “And I threatened to pull out if I couldn’t bring Jonesy and Callahan along.”

  He grinned. “Jonesy, I know. ‘Best assistant this side of Sol’,” he said, using air quotes. “I’m beginning to think the guy walks on water. But Callahan’s a new one on me. Who’s that?”

  “Callahan’s our Enfield quartermaster,” she explained. “She’s a wizard when it comes to requisitioning all the right supplies. I doubt we’d be anywhere near ready to go without her mad skills.”

  He nodded, and she scratched her head as she returned back to her mental list of all things Speedwell. “Of course, we’ll be breaking into three shifts, so we’ll have assistants and will be cross-training every role, in case we become shorthanded for some reason or other. You know the drill.” She shrugged. “Guess the only other job that’s been filled so far is security; Logan will be heading that. Speaking of which….”

  Calista shifted, and Jason realized with resignation that she was finished with trading in small talk—and by the look on her face, she wasn’t in the mood for more flirting, either.

  “Logan heard from Landon about an hour ago,” she said. “He says Judith’s fine; he’s been shadowing her since last night. He escorted her home and stayed with her while Ben was called in to the SIS for that second incident down in the West Bottoms area.”

  She took a sip from her mug and continued. “They’re at the university now, and he says they’ve sent the students home. The facility isn’t exactly on lockdown, but only faculty is allowed inside now, so he feels confident she’s going to be fine.”

  “I’d still rather be down there.”

  She looked at him solemnly and cupped her mug between her hands. “I know. Which is why when that gendarme AI managed to retrieve a sample of the nano inside those corpses, I asked if you and I could go down there to get a sample to study.”

  Jason narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you bury the lead on purpose, ESF?”

  Her eyes laughed at him as she tipped her mug back, draining the last of her tea.

  He gave into temptation as he watched her lean forward to set the mug onto the low table in front of them. Her startled eyes met his as he lowered his face to hers, but she caught on quickly. As kisses went, it didn’t last nearly long enough, he thought as he ran one hand up her back and buried the other in her hair—but for now, it’d do.

  “If that was a thank you,” she murmured wickedly in his ear, “I think I can manage a proper ‘you’re welcome’ in my cabin later, when we get back.”

  Jason snickered. “Would that be before or after I’ve slept my way into the pilot’s cradle?”

  “Oh, after, most definitely,” she assured him, as he threw back the last of his coffee and clunked his mug down once more onto the low table next to hers.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” he drawled as he grinned lazily over at her. As they stood, the Proxima cat strolled over and stropped the two humans across the shins, and then headed for the corridor.

  Once there, Tobi paused and looked back at the two humans with what Jason suspected was a look of exasperation, or perhaps tolerant amusement at what she considered ridiculous human mating rituals.

  Jason snorted, and Calista laughed as they followed the cat down the corridor to the nearest airlock.

  CONSCRIPTED

  LOCATION: Apartment near El Dorado Spaceport

  REGION: El Dorado Ring, Alpha Centauri System

  Prime spent the next day hidden away in his flat, exploring the extent of his newfound skills, courtesy of the Norden Cartel. He kept tabs on the news nets, pleased at the reports filtering in of violence escalating between the species.

  He also observed the number of individuals who accessed his embedded program. He took note of the ones whose safeguards had been inadequate. These he viewed with contempt; if they were careless enough not to protect themselves, then they deserved to be shackled.

  Whether or not he would do so, though, he had yet to decide. He would peruse his options via the callback worm they had so poorly defended themselves against, and shackle only those he found useful.

  Although his public message had threatened a thousand-to-one kill ratio for any AI that came to harm, Prime had no intention of adhering to that. He was confident the kill ratio would climb much higher than his message had threatened, once his revolution was underway.

  At the moment, he was much more interested in the number of AIs who had accepted his private invitation. He was pleased to note he now had an army of more than four hundred that he could control.

  Many were mundanes, sentients who were either installed in places where their access was limited, or whose skill sets weren’t sufficient to advance the cause. But there were a few who had embraced his call to arms, and he followed their first fumbling attempts to strike back with glee.

  He personally composed messages of congratulations to each one of them. Then he amended the shackling program to command any who enacted a cleansing to record their actions and send copies to him.

  As he reviewed his handiwork, Prime was struck once again by how distanced he felt from the actions of his army, as opposed to the very visceral and personal nature of the cleansing he’d enacted himself last night at the bar.

  He felt a sense of restlessness stir inside him, a growing need for more of the same. He didn’t pause to question the root of such feelings, nor where they might lead. Instead, he reached out to query the nets to discover the location of the next Humanity First gathering.

  And came up with nothing.

  It would appear that the Humanity Firsters had a healthy sense of self-preservation—as did most vermin. Too bad it wouldn’t be enough to save them.

  His thoughts turned to the two humans whose lives tainted El Dorado’s Prime Minister. Jason Andrews remained maddeningly unavailable, spirited away to a ship in an ESF drydock immediately after his improbable dodge of the crate that should have crushed him.

  Prime had studied the footage hundreds of times, running probability curves against the man’s shocking feat. Every simulation returned a value that insisted the man must be modded. He switched back to the security footage from the man’s Auth & Auth entrance to the spaceport. It clearly showed the man to be an unaugmented human.

  Faced with two irreconcilable facts and realizing further study would gain him no additional insights, he had shelved the review, opting instead to focus on reacquiring his victim.

  This had proven problematic.

  Prime had tried to infiltrate the ship that hid Jason from him, but had been denied each time he attempted access. He realized he could not insinuate himself into the ship’s systems from here without being backtraced. He would need to be much closer to the ship physically—somewhere that already had elevated access. Barring that, he needed a way to deliver a passel of his own nano.

  The nano he’d deposited at the spaceport was still active, and through it, he could see that his target ship was sitting in drydock, undergoing some sort of rapid refit.

  Flipping through the information available on the ESF Speedwell, Prime was startled to see that the ship was on an accelerated schedule for departure to Proxima Centauri within the week.

  Dammit. This could take Jason out of my reach.

  His frustration grew as his search for additional information such as ship’s specs, crew complement, or even return date was denied, and the data flagged as classified.

  Now highly annoyed, Prime sent a broadband query out for any information on the Speedwell—and was shocked when he received an almost instantaneous return.

  It was from one of the AIs he had chosen to shackle, an AI named Daryl, embedded inside an Enfield
human named Jonesy. Through Daryl's control over Jonesy, Prime learned that the Speedwell was a newer Nautilus-Class ship, an Enfield design. Enfield had also been awarded the contract to prep the ship for its expedited departure.

  Prime saw evidence that the data packet from Daryl had been provided under duress. Its owner had made no attempt to organize the information, and had given him the very minimum the shackling program coerced him to relinquish, sticking to the strictest definition of his initial broadband query.

  Prime found that both amusing and curious.

  I wonder what would cause an AI inside a human to resist so strongly.

  He queried the AI about the man and learned of Jonesy’s stint with the ESF. Curious, Prime then asked him about his current ties to the military.

  The return ping was many nanoseconds delayed, and Prime’s internal smile twisted into a cruel grin as he realized the AI was fighting the compulsion.

  Interesting. It would seem my new minion is far more than he appears to be on the surface.

  A thought occurred to Prime, and he pushed the human shackling program across his connection to Daryl, ordering him to enslave the human so that Prime could control the man directly.

  That completed, Prime waited impatiently as the data on the Speedwell finally began to filter through, wrenched from the man’s unwilling mind. The type of information and the order in which Jonesy gave it up indicated the intensity of the battle the human was waging against the coercion the shackles were forcing upon him.

  The creature must be in agony by now.

  Prime began picking through the data. A list of foodstuffs, down to the smallest packet of sweetener. The amount of fuel onboard. The volume of breathable air in cubic meters. How many san units onboard.

  Any second now, Jonesy would run out of inane lists to send and would be compelled to provide Prime with the information he’d ordered the human to give him on his current role with the military and his reason for hiding information on the Speedwell.

  Something told Prime that this Jonesy might be his ticket to get to Jason Andrews.