by D. R. Rosier
Paula was in the lounge off the dining room feeling a little sorry for herself. She had a bowl of ice cream as her mind spun with the possibilities for weapons. All her mind kept doing though was flitting between all the failed ideas she’d already come up with. It was hopeless.
“Hey babe, how’s it going?”
She rolled her eyes, “Not in the mood Nate. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”
She felt him sit next to her, she hadn’t looked up from the bowl of ice cream. She almost snapped at him but he talked first.
“What’s wrong Paula?”
Her head snapped up and she stared at him, he’d never used her name before or the concerned tone. She searched his face for a moment, but only saw sincerity there.
She grumbled, “Who are you and what have you done to Nate?”
He laughed, “I can be somewhat of a curmudgeon at times, but I try not to kick people when their down, especially not those I like. Talk to me.”
She sighed, “You know we can’t go back right? The government would kill for the knowledge in our head, and Aide would kill us for giving it to them.”
He nodded slowly, “Yes, of course. We haven’t really talked about it all, but that was quite obvious from the beginning. I’m sure though something exciting will come up for us to do.”
She nodded, “So, it’s all worth it, if we can save the world. It wasn’t like I was doing so well back on Earth anyway. But I feel like a complete failure.”
He asked, “How so?”
She snorted. “What good is making that sacrifice if I don’t actually do anything to help? You and Olivia have made contributions, and who knows what you’ll come up with in the future. All I’ve managed to figure out is I can’t improve the weapon systems. I’ve thought of a few things that might work better than plasma, but it’s way beyond even the Alion’s science.”
He nodded, “We aren’t done, there’s still time to figure something out. You need to take a break and relax a bit.”
She glared at him and said caustically, “That’s what I was doing when you interrupted me.”
He smiled at her, “Actually what you’re doing is wallowing in it, not getting your mind off of it.”
She couldn’t help but notice how handsome he actually was. Especially when he wasn’t busy being an asshole. But she suppressed that, it had to be just her internal clock and the fact he might as well have been the last man on Earth that was available as far as she was concerned. He was a pig and she sure as hell wasn’t going to fall into bed with him.
Fall into bed with him? Why the hell did that even enter her mind?
He shrugged and touched her shoulder, she wanted to both jerk away and lean into him, but did neither.
“I’ll leave you to your thoughts, but try and relax babe,” he said in a faux smarmy tone.
She didn’t know whether to smile or bite his head off. By the time her mind caught up he was already halfway across the room…
Chapter 15
Over the next two days Aide visited the different people on her ship with her body. She also gave serious thought to what would happen when this was all over. Obviously if they were destroyed, she wouldn’t have to worry about it. But what about if they prevailed? She didn’t really have any programming past that to return to her people.
Would she be free to pursue her own life? Or would some hidden program, protocol, or even a transmission from her masters call her back to them for service? If it did, what would happen to the five humans, if she left there would be only one way to control the information. Her mind shuddered back from the idea.
The most disturbing thing about it was she hadn’t ever given it a thought at all before Kris had suggested the possibility. Almost as if she had been programmed not to? Then again, her emotions and body were fairly new; it was possible that it just hadn’t occurred to her before now.
She tried to make a point of talking to everyone at least once a day, but in truth most of her time in her body was spent with Olivia. Even once they managed to leave the bed, she found herself working with Olivia as if they were colleagues as they tried to come up with something new to work on in the lab. Even when away talking to others, her mind always seemed to wander back to the impressively intelligent and beautiful blonde woman.
Her main processor for the last two days worked on finishing up the programming for the large command carrier and its fighters, monitored the state of the world, and continued to help Kris become better at tactics and adjusting them during battlefield conditions.
The first went well and she was looking forward to the new ships. The second was a bit more complicated. There were rumors all over the internet now about ships approaching Earth, although the major news networks seemed to be blacking out the information. Some of the governments she had sent information to had been making quiet plans to be in bunkers when it happened.
Not that it would help them if the Sthellan made it past. Their weapons were just too crude. A missile from one of their more advanced aircraft had less kinetic power than the ship hitting a small meteorite while cruising at fast speeds in space. That even assumed the Sthellan would enter the atmosphere, more likely they would scour the world clean of satellites than bombard from orbit.
A few of the governments tried to demand oversight. One even asked if they could be taken off planet to another one, kind of a lifeboat in case the world was destroyed. She would’ve actually considered that, but it was too late. Any ships fleeing the system would be seen now, and the Sthellan far from here would be receiving the active scanning of this solar system by now.
She hadn’t replied to any of the latter two, it was against protocols. But she almost wished she could respond to that last request and explain why it wouldn’t work.
She mentally shrugged, the enemy was almost here. She switched the bridge from simulation to actual and went through diagnostics one last time, making sure she had full control of the thirty six ships out there. They were all gathered on the bridge, here to watch the battle. She hoped that wouldn’t throw Kris off, but from what she was reading it was like they weren’t even there in his mind.
He was completely focused.
She said, “They’ll be in range soon, you’re in command.”
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Kris felt centered and focused. He’d been a little nervous earlier, but that was normal before a mission, once the mission started his nerves always settled. This time it was no different.
He’d found in the simulations it was best to start out simple, and adjust from there. Really he had two jobs, defend the planet from attack, and defend his command ship. It was easier to do both with the command ship close to the planet; otherwise he’d be susceptible to feints and trickery putting him out of place. His ships were more powerful, but defending was harder, he had to make sure one enemy ship didn’t decide to avoid the fight and go straight to destroying cities.
He had to admit things got a bit easier once the shield modifications were online. That was one advantage he had now, it would take more attacks now than the enemy knew to knock out his ships.
His command ship was just relatively close, a mere 1.5 million miles from the Earth, still far enough away in case something tried to get past him. He was directly in the path of the enemy. A few hundred miles in front of him were six ships laid out in a five pointed star pattern with a ship in the middle. This would give him and the six ships plenty of room to back up during the battle before they had to stand firm.
The remaining thirty ships were ten thousand miles ahead of him in a six by five grid pattern.
So far the enemy was approaching in a similar pattern, he would be happy to just slug it out, he knew one for one he would tear them apart in that case. But he wasn’t expecting anything so simple to happen. FTL had made the galaxy small, but the solar systems were still large in scope since sub light speeds needed to be used. In Sol’s case, FTL wouldn’t work past Neptune.
Right before entering weapons range, the
enemy broke apart in seemingly random directions. He’d faced this scenario in the simulator, the first time he’d assigned a ship for every ship. The faux random pattern of the enemy would keep his ships from ganging up on one of theirs, while in specific instances bring two or more ships in range with one of his.
He commanded, “Split into two’s, go for the fifteen with the most direct trajectory toward the command ship and Earth.”
He’d worry about the other fifteen later, or when they changed tactics.
The enemy started to group in twos as well, but he ignored that, letting the ships double up on the original fifteen. A few moments later plasma fire was traded back and forth by one pair, then a second, and then the room got extremely busy.
As some moved closer to him he ordered the ship and six covering scouts to start moving back. Though the closest enemy ships started turning red, indicating they were destroyed on the hologram. It looked like it was taking three to five hits to take an enemy out; the enemy needed more than double that thanks to the new shielding.
It was kind of calming to him actually; he’d have to really screw up bad to lose thanks to Olivia’s updates. The enemy figured out the new shielding quickly however, and he lost two ships in quick succession, but the enemy ships were being destroyed much faster.
When the enemy was down to fifteen ships, they took off at right angles to his command ship like spokes in a wheel, and kept going. He still had twenty six, so he sent two after eleven ships, and one on one for the last four. The tactic confused him, if they split apart they wouldn’t be able to take any more of his ships, much less win the encounter.
Then the enemy ships all started to turn, it looked like they wanted to go around his command ship and make a run on Earth. The ships were fairly even in speed but his started catching up as they cut the turn just a little too tight. His turned at a slightly lesser angle and got back in weapons range. The ones with two ships had no chance, at two plasma shots a second, that was four shots and they exploded.
The remaining four managed to live another few seconds as they traded shots, but without multiple hits at a time, the shields on his ships had more time to regenerate the field. He was startled when everyone in the room started to cheer, but he had questions.
“Aide, did the Alion uplift the Sthellan race?”
Aide asked, “What makes you think that?”
He frowned, “I’ve considered it before. They are just too… evenly matched. And all the technology seems to be the same, minus the updated shields that aren’t Alion. Sure, our ships were slightly better on shield and weapon power before the upgrade, but not by much. I’d guess that’s a simple design difference, it’s almost negligible. The speed is almost identical, that tells me they have the exact same reaction drives. I find it hard to accept that two different races are using the same exact technology.”
Aide sounded a little lost when she said, “There is a 97.2 percent chance the Alion did given the available evidence, but I can’t confirm it. I don’t have that information in my database or archives.”
He nodded, “I’m not sure what difference it makes now. The Sthellan would destroy Earth, which makes them the enemy. But I wonder what made them so aggressive in the first place, were they always like that? How did the war start?”
Nate asked, “Does it really matter?”
He looked at Nate, “Yes. Because once this is all over I assume even though we can’t go back to Earth we will make plans. You scientists can geek out. Stacey has been talking about making us our own planet, or we could leave the carriers we build here and go see what’s out there. Who knows?
“But if the Alion uplifted the Sthellan, maybe they would see our plans as a threat. Especially since with those carriers we could probably kick their asses along with the Sthellan. They won’t like it.”
Paula asked, “What should we do then?”
He shrugged, “Save the Earth, hope that it won’t happen, hope that they will leave Earth alone if it does, and that they will be satisfied with removing the only five uplifted humans.”
Olivia stuck her tongue out, “And to think I was all happy a minute ago when we won the battle.”
He smiled, “Sorry, I could just be paranoid.”
Stacey took his hand and squeezed it. She had a thoughtful look on her face.
Chapter 16
Aide estimated there was a 90.3 percent chance Kris was not paranoid. It all fit to neatly, and her emotions were in turmoil with the idea of her masters sending her an order to terminate her friends and her lover. The idea of doing so horrified her now, she wasn’t what she once was, and she was so much more. But really, was she?
When it came down to it, she was the one really in control here, and the Alion controlled her. Yet what could she do about it? She started a diagnostic, but then cancelled it. Whatever it was in her, she wouldn’t find it that way. She started to write her own program to search her core code, and the base firmware of her microscopic computer for any back doors or programmed overrides.
It was ironic, but there was nothing at all in her protocols that stopped her from doing so. All of her protocols and rules related to other species and uplifting. It didn’t take her long to code it, after all she’d coded control software for a command carrier and its fighters. Creating a new diagnostic was easier by far.
She hesitated a moment, almost scared to find out the truth, but in the end she started the program. Her AI core was extremely complex with trillions of lines of code, the firmware of the microscopic computer was just as complex, the code written literally in the molecular makeup. She knew it would take a long time to go through it all, and she thought she’d go crazy before it finally finished its analysis.
6.1 seconds later she had her answer.
She was shocked by what she found. There was no back door. If her masters told her to kill them and destroy the technology, she would be able to say no. There were also no hidden protocols; once the threat was gone she wouldn’t morph into a monster. As long as the humans followed the protocol, which only meant keep the technical knowledge from their planet, she wouldn’t have to harm them.
No, it was much worse than that. All the Alion had to do was initiate the self destruct remotely via a transmission, and she would be destroyed along with any technology she built and the people she was connected to. It had nothing to do with her; it was built into her computer core. It was chilling and for the first time she understood the human saying, ignorance is bliss.
She could not remove the self destruct either, if she attempted to do so she would have a core fault. It took her an additional 1.2 seconds to figure out what to do…
It had been less than two minutes since anyone spoke when she said, “You aren’t paranoid, but it’s no longer an issue. Though I can’t rule out them coming here and attacking if or when they figure out what I’ve done.”
Stacey asked curiously, “What did you do?”
Aide said, “I found the self destruct trigger and verified it was the only way for the Alion to force me to kill you. All they would have had to have done is send me a specifically coded message, basically the same as inputting a password, and my core computer would have taken care of it without my knowledge or input.”
Stacey repeated her question, “So… what did you do?”
Aide smiled, “I couldn’t remove the trigger, but I was able to… change the password.”
Olivia asked, “Can’t they just hack it, or guess?”
Aide’s voice was smug, “Sure, except that the transmission password includes wait states. A simple example would be sending a, followed by ten microseconds, then b, then wait five microseconds, etc… All I really did was greatly increase one of those wait states. It could take them quite a while before they figure out they need to pause the transmission halfway through for a billion years. By then it might be a little too late. In a way, by using wait states, I was able to make the remote self destruct worthless even if they did have the password.”
>
She got a concerned look on her face and added, “I wasn’t kidding about the attacking us part. I’m going to take an hour to increase nanites. That will give us something like eight trillion. The second run I’m putting out eight more carriers with four hundred fighters each. I’m also rewriting the security control codes from scratch, so another AI can’t attempt to remote control them.”
Kris blew out a breath, “Thanks Aide, I feel better already. I wish I knew what we could expect. Maybe we can go say hi after things settle down here. If we’re going to have nine carriers, we can probably just leave five here and take four on a little jaunt.”
Aide shrugged, “With five that’s two thousand fighters, I think that would be more than enough to meet the next wave. That said, overkill might be better. If you wait a few extra days I can make another eight. We can leave nine back here, and take eight with us. That’s thirty six hundred fighters to defend; it would take the enemy a long time to come up with a force to challenge that. They might not even bother.”
Aide asked curiously, “Is there a reason why you want to go though?”
Kris replied, “Because if they’re going to attack I’d rather do it on their turf. They might be more inclined to make a treaty instead of planning to attack if we are right there. I also wouldn’t be averse to trying to talk to the Sthellan, see if we can get them to leave us alone as well. We are already ahead of both now, with the carriers, and any other breakthroughs that might be made we will hopefully stay there.”
Aide said slowly, “As long as you know conquering isn’t an option. There is nothing I can do about my protocols, and in this case I wouldn’t want to.”
Kris shook his head, “I want to get to the bottom of things, and make peace. I have no intention of attacking, but we may have to defend ourselves.”
She didn’t have any trouble with that.
Paula said, “Sounds like a plan, I’m going to eat, anyone else?”
Nate replied, “Sounds good.”
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