The Service of Mars

by Glynn Stewart

The clever ones were learning that she was a very smart teenager whose fresh viewpoint was often extremely valuable—and who was as willing to listen to arguments against her suggestions as she was to lay down the law when needed.

  About sixty percent of Damien’s job these days was running the Protectorate for Kiera Alexander. The other forty percent was teaching Kiera Alexander how to be Mage-Queen of Mars.

  He was far more confident in the success of the second part of his job than the first!

  “Lord Montgomery, Your Majesty.” Malcolm Gregory bowed his way into the room as the military conference ended. “I looked into that matter you asked about. Obscura?”

  Damien glanced at Alexander and raised an eyebrow. He certainly hadn’t asked Gregory to look into anything regarding the complex quantum AI built at Mars’s south pole. The intelligence was capable of pattern recognition and calculations far beyond any regular computer and was alive in a way humanity had only achieved four times…but it was also the size of a battleship and notoriously eccentric.

  “What’s this about?” he asked.

  “I was curious,” the Queen told him. “We have immediate access to one of only four complex quantum AIs. With the Link, it would be possible for Obscura to be receiving immediate updates as soon as scan information and intelligence updates reach Legatus or Mars, and the AI would potentially be useful in organizing our strategy.”

  “I checked. No specific requests have been made of Obscura with regards to the war,” Gregory told them. “It doesn’t have access to classified information as a rule. The military doesn’t trust the AIs.”

  “That’s frustrating,” Alexander said mildly. “Especially when we’re trying to locate the enemy’s base.”

  “We get two questions a month from Obscura in exchange for power,” Gregory noted. “We could forward it the relevant information and ask for an analysis. It might…end up being more than two questions, though, in which case it will ask a price.”

  “Those prices are always strange, as I understand,” Damien said cautiously. “Nude-scans-and-pinup-posters kind of strange.”

  “Not always that kind of strange, but always strange, yes,” the Chancellor confirmed. “My inclination is also to provide Obscura with a full copy of everything we have on the war if we’re going to give it anything. It can churn through that in a couple of hours at most.”

  “Then we have the High Command put together a list of questions,” Alexander suggested. “I suspect we want to know more than ‘where is the accelerator ring,’ key as that question is.”

  “I’ll talk to people,” Gregory promised. “It won’t take more than a day or two, depending on just what Obscura wants for a price.”

  “I think its perspective on all of this might be valuable,” the Queen said. “If nothing else, if I read my father’s decision on the matter correctly, all four of the quantum AIs are Protectorate citizens.

  “Not humans, perhaps, but still part of the Protectorate we are expected to keep safe. Their opinion on this war might be interesting.”

  Damien had barely made it back to his office before Gregory called him again.

  “Is this about Kiera’s brainstorm?” he asked as he answered the Chancellor.

  “Not in the way I think you mean,” Gregory told him with a chuckle. “Honestly, I think the military’s refusal to talk to our friendly AIs is a blind spot that could hurt us. Certainly, we might well have given up an advantage.”

  “Was the Republic using theirs like that?” Damien asked. “There was one on Legatus, yes?”

  “Opticon, yeah,” the Chancellor confirmed. “And they might have tried, but Opticon is not nearly as cooperative as Obscura, from what I understand. It has its own power source and only deals with humans to get new fissionables for the reactor pile. Otherwise, it appears to spend its time contemplating its digital navel.”

  “Handy for us,” Damien murmured. “And Obscura?”

  “Obscura has the data and has informed us of its price for our answers,” Gregory told him. “It wants to talk to you. It will give us the answers to the questions provided but only to you.”

  “All right. How do we set that up? I take a call?”

  Gregory snorted.

  “Nobody, and I mean nobody, is giving a quantum AI an unrestricted network connection,” he pointed out. “Obscura gets an hourly download of something like eighty percent of new content on the sys-net, but it does not have full access.

  “You’ll have to go to it. It says it’ll be ready to speak to you in three hours.”

  “That’s fast,” Damien noted, somewhere between surprised and amused by the restrictions imposed on the Protectorate’s AIs.

  “I think Obscura is fascinated by the problem,” Gregory said. “Plus, we don’t give it unredacted military data very often. From the tone of the tech I spoke to, we currently have an AI that is effectively wallowing in the data we sent.”

  “All right,” Damien said. “I don’t have anything that can’t be done from a shuttle. I’ll talk to Romanov and set up the trip.”

  32

  Damien couldn’t pretend he was even remotely familiar with the science and engineering behind the handful of true AIs humanity had built. He understood enough to know that they needed to be kept cold.

  Obscura lived, if that was the right term, in three interconnected silos at the Martian south pole. Each silo looked to be at least half a kilometer across from above, but he couldn’t tell how deep they were from the air.

  “Obscura Complex Control has given us landing clearance,” Guard-Lieutenant Denis Romanov told him.

  The Guard-Lieutenant was the commander of Damien’s bodyguard, a former Marine combat Mage whose platoon had been drafted to back up Damien’s Secret Service detail and never left.

  “We’re coming in on silo one,” the Guard continued. “It doesn’t look like the other two actually have humans in them at all. We’re reading some movement but no heat signatures to suggest people.”

  “It has maintenance remotes it controls, right?” Damien asked.

  “Yeah,” Romanov confirmed. “I have a threat profile on them, but there shouldn’t be any in the audience chamber.”

  “Audience chamber,” Damien echoed. “What did I agree to?”

  “No idea, boss,” his bodyguard admitted as the shuttle touched down. “Nobody deals with the AIs. Desmond the Third banned building more of them at the same time he recognized the existing four as sentient citizens.”

  “Cost-benefit ratio of building a multi-million-ton computer that has its own agenda certainly seems a bit off,” Damien agreed. “Let’s go see what this one thinks.”

  The red-armored Royal Guards led the way off the shuttle onto the windy landing pad. The shuttle’s thrusters had clearly melted a gap in a layer of ice as they’d come down, suggesting that the south pole was just as cold as it sounded.

  The Guards were in exosuits, and Damien wrapped a layer of magic around himself before he left the shuttle. Someone was waiting by a large opening in the walls of the concrete upper floors of the silo, waving them over.

  “Your Excellenc— Lord Reg— My lor—” The man, wrapped from head to toe in cold weather gear, stumbled over addressing Damien.

  “My lord works if you have to use a title,” Damien said gently. “I’m guessing we should get out of the cold?”

  “Yes, my lord,” their host agreed, gesturing toward the cavernous opening in the concrete. As soon as they were all in the garage-like transfer space, a door swung down behind them, and lights and heat turned on.

  “We take a moment to warm up this space,” their host told them. “Helps keep the human part of the complex livable without getting too expensive.”

  “How many people are even here?” Damien asked.

  “Seventeen,” the stranger said. “We’re an interface crew, mostly, plus some scientists studying Obscura with its cooperation.” He yanked off a glove as the chamber warmed and offered his hand to Damien.

>   “Dr. Riley Shu,” he introduced himself, the hand hanging in the air without him seeming to notice. “I run the human component of Obscura Station, such as it is. Obscura is basically self-operating at this point and has been for forty-three years.”

  “I can’t shake hands, Dr. Shu,” Damien said gently. “An injury; I don’t have full use of my hands.”

  Shu shrugged as he doffed the rest of his heavy parka and gloves.

  “I forgot, I’m sorry,” he admitted. “I don’t see much outside of the station. My grandfather was the team lead who built Obscura, and it’s both a family friend and a family project, basically. I’ve been in and out of the station my entire life.”

  “Anything I should know about before I talk to it?” Damien asked, watching the inner door to the heating chamber begin to open.

  “Obscura isn’t human,” Shu said slowly. “That’s…critical to understand, I think, even if it talks like a person and has its own motivations. It just doesn’t think like we do.”

  “Despite occasional forays into horny teenager?” the Lord asked.

  “Despite that,” Shu agreed, enough of his features exposed for the flush to show on the ambiguously brown skin of a Martian native. “We’re not sure where it picked that up from. I suspect it started as a joke between my grandfather and Obscura, but…”

  The scientist paused thoughtfully.

  “You know the psychology theory that says if you pretend to be something long enough, it becomes part of who you truly are?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Damien agreed. He was reasonably sure that was the only reason he had survived any of his jobs in the last few years.

  “Obscura does that instantly if it isn’t careful. It has no separation between personality and thoughts, between data and software. It’s part of what allows it to be what it is, but it results in some eccentricities.”

  “If it answers the questions we need, I can tolerate that,” Damien said.

  “Obscura will answer the questions, and it will tell you where it isn’t certain,” Shu reassured him. “The other three are somewhat notorious for being literal genies and warping their answers, but we have no record of Obscura ever doing that.”

  “All right.” Damien exhaled. “Let’s go talk to the AI.”

  Shu waited outside the audience chamber as Damien stepped inside with Romanov. The Guard waited by the door as Damien walked forward, taking in the plain-looking room. It could have been any midsized media or conference room, the type used for classes or presentations.

  As he approached the front of the room, the screen that covered the wall lit up. For a moment, it was blank. Then it resolved into a digital image that could have passed for Riley Shu’s brother.

  “Lord Regent Damien Montgomery,” a voice greeted him. It came from speakers all over the room, echoing around Damien. “Born June seventeenth, year twenty-four twenty-nine, on the planet of Sherwood. Mage by Right. Identified as a Rune Wright in twenty-four fifty-four. Declared a Hand of the Mage-King September, twenty-four fifty-seven. Declared First Hand of the Mage-King August, twenty-four fifty-eight. Declared Lord Regent of Mars August, twenty-four sixty.”

  “You would be Obscura,” Damien noted. “I didn’t know you were aware of the Rune Wrights.”

  “I am aware of many things,” the AI told him. “I have your answers, Lord Regent. They are not as complete as I would like.”

  “I only have possibilities and likelihoods myself,” Damien admitted. “And guesses, I suppose.”

  “I understand,” the AI replied. “Your key answers, then. There is an eighty-five plus/minus seven percent likelihood that the Republic had a single fallback facility that includes both their continuity-of-government infrastructure and their accelerator ring.

  “Probability approaches unity that the Republic possesses an accelerator ring that was constructed in secret.

  “Secondary antimatter-production options could include smaller-scale production facilities in multiple systems, but the data provided does not support that possibility. The probability that such smaller facilities have been tested approaches unity. The likelihood that more than one currently exists and has been missed by Protectorate scouting approaches null.”

  Those were answers the humans had put together on their own, Damien knew, though they’d been debating the likelihood of a concealed Republic government leadership base.

  “Given the personality of Lord Protector Solace, it is likely that the Lord Protector is at the antimatter accelerator ring,” Obscura noted. “That is four of your questions, Lord Regent.

  “The fifth question, which I estimate to be your most critical, is the location of the accelerator ring. Currently data suggests an alignment with Captain Kelly LaMonte’s analysis, especially factoring in her direct experience in the Chrysanthemum System.

  “There is a thirty plus/minus seven percent probability that the facility is in the Alignment System. There is a seventeen plus/minus six percent probability that the facility is in the New Madagascar System. There is a fifty plus/minus eleven percent probability that the facility is in the Chrysanthemum System.”

  The AI paused.

  “Assuming that the facility can be located and either destroyed or captured, the probability that the war will end inside of the next seven months is ninety percent. The probability that Gygax and the fallback represent the only Prometheus facilities in the possession of the Republic is ninety plus/minus two percent.”

  In the possession of the Republic.

  “Is there a chance of other Prometheus facilities?” Damien asked.

  “That was not a prearranged question,” Obscura noted. “I have answered the questions that were provided.”

  “You have, thank you,” Damien conceded. “You wanted to speak to me in person, though. Was that just to answer the questions?”

  “No.”

  Damien waited. He knew the AI processed thought and intention far faster than he could, so he let Obscura speak.

  “I calculate an eighty plus/minus five percent chance that you possess enough information to ask a critical question that I have previously been paid to answer,” Obscura told him.

  “By whom?” he asked.

  “That is not one of those questions,” the AI replied.

  Damien waited, but this time, the AI was waiting as well. There was something the AI wanted him to ask. Something it was apparently required to answer.

  “What was the price of your citizenship?” he asked, taking a stab in the dark.

  “These questions,” Obscura told him. “All four of us will have calculated our own answers.”

  There was one driving question, Damien supposed.

  “Who are the Reejit?” he asked softly.

  “A nonhuman intelligent species present in this sector of space in the late second and early third millennia,” Obscura said instantly. “That they interacted with humans on a covert basis during the twentieth century is seventy-two plus/minus twenty percent likely.

  “Physical appearance of the Reejit is unknown, but evidence suggests tool-using beings with similar limb structure to humans. All known and identified sites suggesting aliens with star-travel capabilities are above ninety percent likely to be Reejit.”

  Damien exhaled.

  “Do you have access to the files of the Royal Order of Keepers of Oaths and Secrets?” he asked.

  “I am unclear on the question,” Obscura replied. “I was provided with a database of information on topics that were not general information to allow calculation of these critical answers. The source was not officially part of the Protectorate Government, and I am not certain of the labels or names used.”

  “There are other questions, I take it?”

  The AI didn’t answer.

  “If I don’t guess them, you won’t tell me?” he asked.

  “I will interpolate related questions and provide information,” Obscura told him. “But I do not provide data without structure.”

  Damien nodd
ed, thinking. The Keepers had died to a man and woman, some killed by enemies of the Protectorate, some blowing themselves up to keep their secrets. What could they have hidden in the AI that would be worth all of that? What could they have known, two centuries ago when the Protectorate was born, that was so important?

  There was one more question. A question no one who was not a Rune Wright would think to ask.

  “Who built the Olympus Mons Amplifier?

  “That, Lord Regent Montgomery, is the key question I was asked to calculate,” Obscura replied. “I calculate a probability approaching unity that without the amplifier, Project Olympus would have failed. I also calculate a probability approaching unity that the Eugenicists could not have built the amplifier themselves.

  “There is a thirty-five plus/minus fifteen percent chance that the Olympus Mons Amplifier predates the Eugenicist occupation of Olympus Mons.” The AI paused. Given its thought speed, Damien knew the machine was doing it for effect.

  “There is a sixty plus/minus fifteen percent chance that the Olympus Mons Amplifier was built after the Eugenicist occupation of Olympus Mons, specifically for Project Olympus. If that is correct, there is a ninety plus/minus nine percent chance that the Reejit aliens were involved in the construction.”

  “Why?

  Damien was a Rune Wright. His Sight allowed him to understand the meaning of runes and the flow of magic at a glance. He had walked the halls of Olympus Mons and studied its amplifier, and he knew it wasn’t built for humans.

  He had seen the abandoned runes concealed deep inside an alien ruin as well, runes that exactly matched the runic language humans called Martian Runic. Runes carved by aliens who shouldn’t have shared a structure for magic with humans.

  “I have spent your entire lifetime calculating the answer to the question of why,” Obscura told him. “Despite the data I had, I did not have enough data to find it. I had a thousand probabilities, and I could tell that the database I had been given was incomplete. I suspected part of the answer was in that database but that whoever had given it to me did not want me to have that information.