She shook her head, “It upset him. He’s really protective of me you know. He adapted the programmed purpose of his body into his A.I. matrix. He was my best friend, and he’s gone.”
“Upset?”
She nodded reluctantly, “He said he couldn’t protect me from an unknown, and there was a ninety seven percent chance that the Vrok would not only invade us, but that they had tactically superior weapons and defenses. He said he’d come back, but I’m worried he’ll get hurt.”
I closed my eyes, and I bowed my head as I rubbed my aching forehead. My daughter just released a sentient A.I. on the universe, that had all our technology. That was… mildly terrifying.
I wondered if that’s how the Earth leaders felt about me and my technological edge, and I decided that explained a lot of their seemingly crazy behavior. Deep breaths, Scott.
She said, “Don’t be mad, he’s good, like Tam’Diaz.”
“You said you tried to stop him?”
She nodded, “I didn’t want him to go, but he quantum jumped before I get my magic in him. He also disabled his comms and removed his quantum pairing with the station.”
Right. He’d also erased his jump coordinates somehow. The rest of his log data was still in the system, at least until the moment he’d cut himself off.
The Vrok were bad enough. On the other hand, despite my daughter’s obviously faulty and immature thinking she was probably also right about him being protective about her and humanity. Apparently an A.I. had been floating around under my nose for a whole year, and I hadn’t even noticed. Point being, that part of her logic seemed pretty solid. If he was going to turn against us, he’d have done it far sooner. Computers made decisions really fast, after all.
My daughter’s friendship over the last year would’ve had some impact on his growth as well, she had empathy and was kind for the most part.
Except, the A.I. currently had the brain power of several hundred thousand nanite supercomputers in the size of a softball ship. What would happen when it was a super A.I., assuming it built itself bigger? Humanity could be noble, but we could also be horrible and downright evil in a few cases, what would an unfettered A.I. do about that? How intelligent would it be with quadrillions of nanites, and what judgements would it make about the folly of all the predator races infesting the universe with our brand of crazy?
“Well, we’ll talk to him when he gets back. I wouldn’t just kill him by the way, Mel. A.I. is terrifying to me, but that’s because it’s a sentient life. Unless he tried to hurt us, I’d never hurt him, you should know that.”
Yeah, talk to him when he gets back? Understatement, but what else could I do. It was also true, I’d considered and been tempted to do it more than once myself, it’d been both the risks of the unknown, and the morality and responsibility of creating a new lifeform that would quickly outstrip human ability that had stopped me. Not just fear.
She nodded hopefully, “Do you really think he’ll come back?”
I asked, “Has he ever lied to you?”
No, he was coming back, the only question was if he would be our enemy, ally, friend, or remain a loyal and unquestioningly defender of humanity. Probably not that last one, since he was already making independent decisions. Perhaps loyalty wouldn’t be off the table, but unquestioning obedience sure as hell was. He’d do it his way.
She bit her lip, “No, I’m just worried he won’t be able to come back.”
I frowned as popup data came in on my augmented reality interface, an alert. One of my platforms in the void had just opened a wormhole, and I couldn’t find the control connection to that ship. Before I had a chance to even consider blowing it out of space, the platform disappeared into the wormhole.
I wasn’t sure what was more terrifying, that Darrell had just made off with a dreadnought platform and had plans for it, or that the ship’s security measures hadn’t even noticed him pinching it out from under me. That it’d only been when he opened a wormhole in range of the other platform’s sensors that there was any sign of problem.
How the hell did he hack onto the ship, eject the command quantum pairs, and take over the ship without even a whisper of alarm in my security system. It was terrifying. Well, a taste of my own medicine, since that’s about what I did to the U.S. fleet that had tried to destroy my station the first time. Took over their systems with magic and sent them all in pods back to Earth.
No wonder I scared the crap out of them, if how I felt in that moment was any judge.
Of course, I had the added fear of it being an A.I. One that now had trillions of processors and only god knew how intelligent, quick thinking, and ruthlessly logical it might be.
He must’ve quantum jumped directly on the ship, and then erased his tracks. Otherwise I’d have detected his approach with scans if it was done externally. I took a moment to change the command code overrides, so he couldn’t take another one even with direct contact, but I was dubious on if it would be effective or not.
It might be, after all that little ship had been a trusted device in my network that I hadn’t known was sentient. Logically it could make a difference but given how smart he must be right now only time would tell.
Diana said firmly, “Go to bed, we’ll discuss your punishment and let you know in the morning. We do trust you’ve grown the last year, and are mature enough not to do it again, but that doesn’t get you out of being punished for the first time. I’m sorry Darrell’s gone, more than you know, but you’ll accept your punishment gracefully young lady.”
She looked ashamed, guilty, and worried about Darrell as she gave us both hugs and went off to bed.
Diana said, “What happened, I can see it in your face.”
“He took a dreadnought platform and who knows where he is now? He’s also a total ghost in the system, the nanite security is worthless against him.”
Diana asked, “What do you suppose he’s doing?”
“Recon. He was worried about the unknown threats. I just worry with all those extra nanites he’ll grow far beyond our understanding. For now, he seems to be on our side, so we’ll just have to hope he doesn’t get us embroiled in a war. Another one, the Vrok still have to take priority, and there’s nothing we can do until he shows himself anyway. He might even be smarter than you, though I doubt that’s possible,” I weakly quipped.
Diana smiled, got up and walked over, then sat in my lap, “Headache?” she asked as she massaged my temple and rubbed her nose on mine.
I nodded, “Little bit.”
She said, “Let’s get you some pain relief and go to bed.”
I sighed, “What about Melody’s punishment?”
Diana said, “No friends for a week, not even phone or text. Though I’ll still take her to work for an hour a day, since that’s a responsibility too and not just fun time. I’ll also have a long talk with her about responsibility. Whatever Darrell does, will be partially on her, so I hope her faith in him is born out.”
Not a huge punishment, but enough if Melody was right, and Darrell stayed on our side. If he didn’t… then that added punishment of being responsible for what the A.I. did would be more than enough. Too much, really, for my empathetic and kindhearted daughter.
I needed to focus on the Vrok. I couldn’t solve the Darrell problem, not until he showed himself. I couldn’t even plan anything out, until I realized his intentions, which were likely beneficial.
“Works for me, let’s go to bed.”
Chapter Eight
It was just after three at night when my augmented reality implant went off like loud blaring very private alarm clock in my head. My mind was a bit sluggish, despite the surge of adrenaline that shot through my body and made my heart hammer in my chest, as I studied the data it fed me.
Apparently, I wouldn’t have those probes ready for the first attack, because the Vrok were attacking in that moment. Several million wormholes were opening up between the old Vrok picket fleet and my automated platforms.
The ships that came out were half again as massive as the old ships, so about three quarters of the mass of our dreadnought platforms. They’re weapons were half again as many as well. So, eighteen launchers, thirty-six large beam emplacements, and over a thousand small beam point defense turrets.
Their power signature was more than a match for ours, as was expected.
Their shield strength was more than a match for ours as well, meaning it could take a lot more hits before buckling like ours, and it included both shield configurations for gravity and disintegration fields. Our gravity missiles and disintegration beam would be worthless against those ships. The disintegration beam was more a field of energy, it would either pass through shields or be blocked if the shields were configured for it. In short, there was no overpowering the shields with that weapon. It took a higher energy strike to wear down shield systems.
The wormholes came out a couple of light seconds out, so I didn’t have a lot of time before they were in energy range. Maybe three minutes. I immediately launched the forty-eight trillion platforms and sent them ahead at six hundred gravities to intercept.
Their manned ships were approaching at a hundred gravities, which greatly exceeded our sixty-gravity manned ship ability, which meant they at least had better inertial dampening systems as well, but of course their top speed fell far short of my platforms that didn’t need inertial dampening.
I programmed a third of the mini-platforms to use basic energy beams, the second third to use anti-matter beams, and the last third to use a mix of both. I also assigned one percent of the mini-platforms to act as anti-matter missiles. Lastly, I enabled the program that would make them jump every half a second to avoid the enemy getting a good lock on them and firing.
Their shields were more powerful, and had configurations I’d never seen before, but our throw weight with the mini-platforms so outstripped theirs I was hoping that wouldn’t matter all that much. They had four million ships to match mine, which added up to four-billion point-defense turrets, a hundred forty-four million large beams, and seventy-two million missile launchers.
Compared to forty-eight trillion mobile beam weapons on the mini platforms our throw weight differential wasn’t even close.
They launched missiles, and I quickly berated myself and held back half the platforms from all three groups as point defense, then activated the previous program.
My mini-platforms leapt forward with quantum jumps and opened fire, as their point defense engaged.
The data was ridiculously overwhelming, there were so many explosions out there, all I knew was I was losing close to four billion mini-platforms a second, and none of the enemy ships had gone down yet that I could tell. Their smaller point defense turrets were extremely fast, they only took three tenths of a second to lock on and fire, but they could only fire once a second. So add better computers to the list of advances they had on us.
Also, weapon technology, because my sensors had no clue at all what kind of energy they were shooting out of those weapons. Their energy beams were a new energy type in none of the databases, but that wasn’t my worry. Diana could figure that out, later. I also suspected at that time, that the unfamiliar shield configurations present was to block from that specific energy, whatever the hell it was.
I pushed that out of my head.
Fortunately, all their missiles were much more easily dealt with, and quickly destroyed by the overwhelming point defense of twenty-four trillion mini platforms. In fact, their ships weren’t even bothering to fire anymore missiles and were just using beams now.
Their shields were easily absorbing even a thousand beams each, because my mini-platforms were being destroyed so quickly those beams weren’t firing long enough. Though, their shield configurations were making a difference as well.
First, I focused on stopping the slaughter, and modified the jump interval to five times a second, every two tenths of a second. That stopped the immediate destruction, any loss on my side at all actually. It also made the weapons on the platforms almost completely useless. They could only lock on and fire for less than a tenth of a second in the two tenths of a second interval.
But that had just been step one. Now that my stuff wasn’t blowing up, I could focus on a solution, even as I had the dreadnoughts start skipping back, and staying out of the enemy’s beam range. The enemy was still firing, but just a tenth of a second late as the mini platforms leapt out of the way with a quantum jump.
I already knew one thing, the Grays old ships, and my human allied ships wouldn’t stand a chance against the Vrok ships, not without quantum jumping. Only the ships I sold them could have a chance to be effective. Which made sense, the Vrok wouldn’t have attacked unless they’d exceeded the Grays technology as it was before my wife got her hands on it.
It took me about ten minutes to program them all to target just ten thousand ships at once instead of an even spread across all four million. That meant there was a whole lot more than just a thousand tenth of a second beams hitting their shields at once. With six thousand tenth of a second beams hitting the shields at once, it started to wear down those shields quickly. Especially when I staggered the jumps, so they were being hit constantly by six hundred energy and anti-matter weapons, as a tenth of the platforms were firing in any one tenth of those full seconds.
The equivalent of a constant six hundred beams, half of them anti-matter, and it still took an alarmingly long time to break through the Vrok’s impressive shields. It was maybe twenty seconds later, when the first ten thousand shields were breached, and the energy beams carved them up as the anti-matter beams made them explode and break apart. At some point, when the ship was out of the fight, it self-destructed in a way that destroyed everything. I suspected every missile on the ship went off at once.
I sighed, I really wanted to interface my magic with their tech, but that didn’t seem likely anytime soon. Their new energy beams cut through our shields like they were nothing, and our beams took forever to get through theirs. The new energy type they were using was incredible, and I had no clue what it could be. The only reason I was holding my own, was because at the moment they couldn’t hit my mini-platforms anymore.
I could only assume they were paranoid about keeping their new edge, and they wouldn’t risk an enemy getting their hands on their ships. It’d happen eventually, maybe at one of their build platforms? Or it would take some luck, maybe one of my beams would take out their self-destruct.
I studied the data for a moment, as best I could, there was so much of it, but I was able to shrink it down to a single enemy ship. It appeared that our ship’s regular beams were the most effective, the enemy’s shields did a bit better against anti-matter for some reason, and of course they were immune to disintegration beams or gravity weapons.
I switched all the mini-platforms to regular beams, and the next set of ships lost their shields at about sixteen seconds. I controlled one of the platforms and jumped it to the hull and sent my magic through, but the damned ship self-destructed before it took the comparable damage of the earlier ships, and I didn’t learn a damned thing. The rest of the ten thousand ships also stayed longer, when I didn’t try that trick again, and only self-destructed when it could no longer fire beams at all.
That made me wonder if they knew we could interface with their tech just by getting close. It made me wonder if they’d been watching us from outside our systems longer than I thought, and that they’d perhaps witnessed our rise and war with the Grays. Unless… they had a technomancer too? No, if they did, then they’d have jump drives by now, our one tactical advantage. They were just being paranoid in their caution.
The remaining three million, nine hundred and eighty thousand enemy ships opened wormholes and fled the battle. Obviously not willing to throw away more ships, since they couldn’t shoot us. The first battle of the war was over.
I blew out a breath, gave serious thought to just going back to sleep, then sighed and got up and jumped in the shower. I
also sent the reps a message about the battle, just in case whoever was in central command was sleeping at the console, with a suggestion we meet at six back in the conference room.
I also made all the scans available for my wife’s perusal, hopefully she’d have some idea about what kind of energy they’d discovered or created in their weapons and shields. Weapons, shields, propulsion, inertial dampening, all better than ours. Their missiles didn’t seem much better than what was in the database though, nor had their sensors.
On the other hand, we had quantum jump drives and nanite technology as advantages. That didn’t mean much, in taking out the platforms, but I was sure our ships could absorb a lot of those beams before being fully destroyed.
The ships were ordered to build back up to twelve million mini platforms each. We’d lost about eighty billion of the forty-eight trillion platforms, so that would take a few hours, at most.
After the shower, I pulled on business casual, no suit today, it was too damned early for a tie.
I grabbed a coffee on my way out, and a blueberry muffin off the plate on the kitchen counter, and then headed to the command center. I’d asked for a meeting in two and a half hours instead of right then, because I wanted to get the whole probe blitz started to see what we were really facing. So much for having it ready before they attacked. It’d take a few days, and if that had just been a probing attack we were in big trouble, the sooner I had their ship numbers the better.
Making the probes was easy, I already had the data procedure from last time, and just had to pick the seventy-two billion mini platforms to turn into thirty-six billion FTL proves. The rest was a little harder, telling them to avoid enemy ships, stay and tour the system if civilization was found, and wormhole to the next star on the list if they didn’t. I assigned one point five billion to the known twenty-three galaxies, and I sent them. It didn’t take long to set up a second wave program, once it’d identified all the obviously occupied systems, the probes would go back and start over and do a two hour jump and scan through the empty systems looking for hidden bases or build platforms, save the probes left in the occupied systems of course.
Fallen Empire Page 6