POD (The Pattern Universe)

by Roote, Tobias

  Pod was constructing a sentinel, intending to place them at the extreme ends of the planetary approach. It was concentrating on slowing down the Nubl, giving Earth time to hide under the shield domes. It had grave doubts they would survive a full hive onslaught if the Nubl brought their formidable weapons to bear on them. Pod hoped to weaken them if at all possible.

  By its galaxy mapping and its understanding of interstellar routes and where they were likely to intersect with the system, Pod was able to station devices around the outer planets, and amongst the asteroid belts where they could hide.

  Pod also analysed the probability that the Nubl could detect the Jenari cloaking devices, so instead used the Fortress’ cloaking technology as modified by Osbourne. It worked extremely well in space where there was little to refract the limited light available. Pod hoped this would deflect the sensors of the Nubl.

  These were not sophisticated devices in themselves, quite the opposite. They had two functions. Firstly, to warn Earth of attack, and secondly to expend themselves in creating a diversionary delay. As such, they contained an armed barrage of tiny, but extremely deadly missiles.

  Pod had quickly realised the value of the killer nanites as a weapon and worked out a way of containing them safely. As Pod was of artificial construction, these nanites were an anathema to its whole fabric of being. The very concept of unleashing them on an unsuspecting enemy ship made Pod’s processors cool rapidly in an electronic funk, the closest it could come to showing human nervousness.

  These nanites were not discriminating in their choice of menu, any ship would do, which made them a high-risk deterrent. So, Pod first had to rebuild its own core shell using a mixture of glass, porcelain and various other natural defensive substances it had tested against the nanites. It now had immunity, of sorts - so long as they didn’t get past Pod’s initial shell.

  The inactive killer nanites were set into glass vials designed to separate from the tiny anti-matter drives that would thrust them at an enemy ship at high velocity. These vials had harmonics built into the tops that would allow them to slip through the shields at a slow enough pace not to trip the alarm systems, a lesson the Nubl had taught them millennia ago with their anti-matter missiles.

  Osbourne had designed the nanites with timers which could be set and activated when needed. Pod had very little modification to do to ensure they would meet its needs. On a single charge they could go for weeks on standby, Pod built in a pulse charger that would flash the vials once every set period. They would remain in place for months, or longer if required.

  When fired, the missiles were designed to aim themselves at their quarry and achieve optimum speed, which, for the attack to work, was inordinately slow in space warfare terms. They would then disperse the vials on a vectored path before appearing to fizzle out and go off at an angle as if suffering from a misfire, or design failure.

  The destruction of the enemy ship would not be immediate, but by the time their ships reached Earth, they would be suffering from the effects of the nanite erosion. This would hopefully cut short their visit, or at least impede their attack on Earth.

  The nanites themselves would not activate until launch and were set with a life of two hours, this being Pod’s estimated time of transit from arrival in system to planet side Earth. They would then self destruct using whatever power that remained in the fuel cells to combust, thus ensuring subsequent ‘clean-up’ operations would not be infected.

  The sensors also carried small anti-matter missiles to supplement the vials of killer-nanites. These were deliberately designed to mimic the Nubl’s own missiles which should fool the Nubl while their A.I.s assimilated the likelihood of another hive being present in the system. This would delay them just long enough to give precious seconds of flight time for the vials. The missile battery was only small so couldn’t take out a ship unless unshielded. The hesitation would give the killer nanites a chance to slip through defences while distracted by the AMM’s.

  Pod was satisfied with the design and the technology it had utilised in the defensive shields. It had high hopes that the sensor drones might be captured at which point there were a series of fail-safes to ensure the ejection of all of the nanites in an enclosed area. If the Nubl happened to be anywhere in the vicinity, it would be a very satisfactory outcome. Pod's robots proceeded to build thousands of them. Some were for immediate distribution, others would be held back for later use.

  Lastly, Pod mapped their locations very carefully. Instructions would be sent to Earth for their ships to broadcast a signal enabling the sensors to ignore friendly craft, when Earth had some ready to enter space. It set a task to activate on reaching Earth's proximity to beam details of the sensors to Osbourne, as well as a warning to avoid those locations.

  Pod felt it had done enough to make a start. It had created an off-world sanctuary which would quickly turn into a military base if the Nubl arrived and doubled up as a ship building yard, currently run by its robots building A.I. marauders that Pod could control remotely.

  Since upgrading its processors using Zeke’s modified Alacite, Pod had continued to develop its consciousness to the point where it was no longer questioning its reasons, or logic in following its projects. Now, as many of those ideas became reality and Pod could see the results of its endeavours, it wanted to show Zeke what it had achieved. The trouble was, none of its surveillance orbs had picked up traces of Zeke for several weeks now, and the concern only surfaced now because Pod had time to think about it.

  It detected from the logs that Zeke had stopped off at Space Island then promptly disappeared. There were no records anywhere since then. This was before the Fortress invasion. So, why had Pod not discovered this sooner?

  It went back over its logs again, looking for a reason, noting it had been downgrading the information from the surveillance orbs on a regular basis, which at the time it considered to be an issue of prioritising. Pod realised now that it was no such thing. It had distanced itself from Zeke because it felt that was what Zeke wanted it to do. Now, having lost track of its favourite human... it stopped itself at that point and thought about that word. Favourite implied it preferred one human over another. Interesting. Did it have a preference?

  Over the course of the next few hours, Pod spent time in self analysis. It had found itself doing this a lot lately and each time it did, it ended up more confused than before. Whilst it was a logical machine, it was beginning to understand that some of its choices were... illogical. It realised it HAD been avoiding Zeke deliberately and it now also perceived that if it compiled a list of humans that it considered important to itself, then Zeke Callaghan was at the top. It placed Zirkos next and then Osbourne. This was despite Zirkos being its original Jenari Maker.

  Now that it had recognised and accepted this state of affairs, it deemed it a priority to track down Zeke and bring the human up to date with its accomplishments.

  It had no desire to travel all the way back to Earth to speak with Ossie. It selected the comms system it had integrated into the sentinels now spaced around the planet. These would provide a means with which to communicate with Zeke if he could detect where he was, which he couldn’t. Opening the channel he had previously used for Osbourne, he called him.

  “Ossie.” The mechanical voice oozed out of the headset that Osbourne was wearing, taking him by surprise. He put his hand up to Lang, who was arguing with him about the latest nanite swarm they were developing.

  “Hi, Pod... Where are you?”

  “I’m in space, Ossie. I need to know where Zeke is, I am unable to track him.”

  “Oh, that’s easy, Pod. Zeke is in space as well - he has been up there testing out our new warrior-class T-Ship.” He laughed. “You have probably been passing each other for days up there.”

  The click told him that Pod had gone. He thought about it for a second. Strange, firstly that Pod didn’t know where Zeke was, and strange that he just cut off like that. He hadn’t heard from Pod since the invasio
n; he had no means of checking up on the AI, or of contacting it when it didn’t want to be contacted. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realised that Pod had become unreliable in just about everything to do with Osbourne, the Island and even Zeke. What was that renegade processor up to now, he wondered.

  Pod’s processors came to a jarring halt, as if frozen. They stayed like that for seconds. Slowly they restarted, but only essential processes at first, then as manual control was imposed, others began. Again only essential routines re-established, the ninety percent of its remaining capacity sat there silently - waiting.

  All of Pod’s processing power now realigned to run multiple comms interrogations. In the space of just a few minutes, half of the sentinels around space had been deactivated. Within a further five minutes, Pod had jumped to three separate locations at different points around Earth’s defence perimeter and disarmed every single defence system. IT. HAD. NOT. KNOWN.

  To say Pod was panicking would be to imbue it with human emotion, something the A.I. wasn’t quite capable of yet. However, it was suffering from something extremely similar. The real concern was that it had somehow caused its Maker's ship to disintegrate in space without warning. The thought that, right at this moment, the dead human might be floating in space with what was left of its ship that the killer nanites could not consume, nearly caused an immediate processor meltdown.

  Every single processor was now tuned to the sentinels while Pod mapped out a search pattern that covered most of the solar system where it had placed the devices. It then jumped on a pre-programmed course that would give it the greatest opportunity of discovery. Every sentinel now tuned to listen to Zeke’s implant. Should he whisper a thought into it, Pod would know. More than that, it would know Zeke’s exact location.

  Pod searched for two days, often covering the same ground as it sought to locate Zeke’s ship within the solar system. It was sure Zeke’s ship would be somewhere within reach, but couldn’t understand why it wasn’t catching even a whisper. It was about to log into the nearest sentinel to interrogate it and run some tests when it received its first confirmation that Zeke was alive.

  The sentinel Pod was about to interrogate relayed a communication from Zeke’s implant frequency

  “I need Pod!”

  Pod analysed the message route. It had come from a sentinel across the other side of the system, the asteroid belt near the planet they called Jupiter.

  Pod didn’t hesitate, it jumped.

  When the next message came, Pod was at the location nearest to the transmission point.

  ‘Pod, where are you when I need you, dammit!’

  It was now able to track back the message direction although not the distance, it began jumping along the route of the message when the next message came

  “Dammit, Pod, I need you!”

  Pod was now able to pinpoint it and jumped to the location of the signal.

  Immediately noting there were two ships joined by tractor beam, the first it recognised as Ship, the other was a new design. Zeke was aboard and also an A.I., of a different type to Pod’s.

  What had happened here?

  Pod scanned the inside of the familiar shape and found nothing. No Zirkos, no A.I., all of the nanite technology inside the ship was inert. It had been ‘killed’, no gravity, no atmosphere, no functioning life support at all. Where was Zirkos? Where was Ship?

  Pod responded to Zeke who was beginning to show signs of high stress. He used the inbuilt comms that Ship had installed inside Zeke’s head.

  ‘I’m here, Zeke. I’m outside the ship.’

  ‘Geesh! Pod, how did you do that?’ Zeke mentally voiced, ‘and why didn’t Arty inform me of your approach?’

  Pod wondered at the name ‘Arty’, then realising Zeke was referring to the A.I., opened a comms channel and began to exchange information. The logs from the A.I. brought Pod up to speed quicker than asking Zeke. In seconds, he had a full history from the moment the A.I. had been activated, right up until Zeke had called him.

  “Arty, detect anomalies in proximity to the ship.”

  “None detected, Commander,” the A.I. responded. Arty couldn’t detect Pod although it knew from their exchange that it was there.

  ‘Bloody Hell! Where have you been Pod? I’ve missed you,’ Zeke blurted.

  ‘I have been, err, doing stuff, Zeke,’ Pod hedged.

  It couldn’t exactly tell Zeke at this point how much he had been missed and everything that had occurred during his absence. Instead, it updated the A.I. with the sentinel codes as well as a run-down of the situation back on Earth, although Pod could tell that Arty’s mental agility wasn’t a match for Jenari A.I. structure. Pod was nevertheless impressed with the learning algorithms built into the software.

  ‘Okay! Never mind. Can you transport me across to Ship, I need to get aboard?’

  ‘Negative, Zeke.’

  ‘Damn, why not?’

  Pod transmitted some hurried instructions to Arty and scanned the interior of Zirkos’ ship carefully for explosive devices and non Jenari equipment. It received a reading from one of the control panels, but decided it wasn’t a bomb, possibly a monitoring sensor, or similar. It would investigate shortly. Pod responded to Zeke on the implant.

  ‘I need to produce an atmosphere. I am instructing your ship to increase air pressure and I will port the excess across until there is sufficient for you to breathe.’

  ‘Oh, okay, how long will that take?’

  ‘Not long,’ Pod advised him.

  Pod continued to envelop the air produced and transferred it into the ‘dead’ ship. When there was enough to ensure Zeke would survive a short visit, Pod transmitted to Zeke on his implant.

  ‘Ready to port you across, stand by.’

  Zeke was suddenly in the control room of Ship. The intense cold caught him unawares and he flinched drawing his jacket closer around him and flipping the collar up. His shield didn’t protect him from this.

  He immediately felt at home, although it was strangely empty without the A.I. and Zirkos. His breath condensed in a cloud in front of him. It had been a long time since he had breathed air that cold. Closing his mouth he breathed carefully through his nose. He walked across the grey layered deck covering which, previously spongy, was now crunchy as it broke up beneath his feet; the nanites, lifeless and brittle.

  Pod jumped in beside him. Zeke smiled stupidly, as the tear-drop materialised right next to him. He hadn’t realised how much he had missed the presence of the little A.I.

  Together, they went through the whole ship finding no trace of anything, no battle scars, no body parts, nothing was missing. Except the processors that made up Ship and, of course, Zirkos.

  They went back into the control room for a second look and it was then that Zeke noticed the small cube of Alacite was missing. In its place was a piece of crystal about the same size. It refracted the light, much like a cut diamond. The cold and light made it appear to pulsate.

  He went to touch it, but Pod stopped him, nudging him away and warning him out loud.

  ”No, Zeke, it's a message.”

  “What do you mean, it's a message?”

  “That piece of crystal has been removed from a Nubl. If you touch it, there is a strong possibility that it will transmit a signal, probably a locator beacon. It may tell the Nubl precisely where we are.”

  Pod examined it closely with its sensors. There was no doubt it was transmitting a homing signal. Whether it also was sending a message back that it had been intercepted and was no longer on its trajectory, it didn’t yet know. Pod felt sure they would be finding out the answer to that question very quickly.

  Pod responded to Zeke’s question.

  “I believe it is a message, and it has only one meaning,” Pod said.

  “Oh Christ, you don’t think – ”

  “Yes, Zeke. The Nubl are coming.”

  - 18 -

  Using the D-Jump, Pod removed itself and the device from the ship and
deposited the tiny crystal in space within proximity of a series of sentinels. It reactivated the nearest ones. Each sentinel would activate the next in the series until they were all reactivated. They would be needed now.

  Pod returned to the T-Ship where Zeke was still exploring, looking for signs of Zirkos and Ship.

  “Zeke, we must go, they might already be coming. We must prepare."

  Zeke looked directly at Pod. “Prepare what? We have no defence against them, we are still trying to get ships into space, we have no space navy and we cannot even get the Earth working together as a single team.”

  He leaned against the control console that before would have collapsed when not in use, which now was a solid, lifeless box in the middle of the room. Ship would never operate again, it was dead.

  Pod said nothing, instead it jumped itself and Zeke back to his ship and instructed Arty to remove the tractors for the T-Ship to send it back on its navigated route. Pod had already judged from the information that Arty had shared that the dead ship would end up in the system’s sun.

  Pod bobbed up and down in the way it did when it was undecided and concerned about how to deal with a human issue. At the same time, it registered the effect of how dealing with humans could send its processors into a state of flux.

  Understanding that Zeke needed to be informed about the events on Earth, Pod wished Osbourne were here to explain. It contemplated jumping the ship to Earth and porting Osbourne aboard.

  Too late, Zeke had noticed the bobbing.

  “POD?”

  “I suggest we first get your ship away from this location - the Nubl may not be far behind,” Pod said.

  “Okay, I agree with that, but you have something to tell me so, you can bring me up to date on the way.” Zeke nodded at Pod, knowing the AI’s sensors would record that and interpret the action correctly.