by C. Gockel
Alaric could do nothing about that battle. His jaw ground. Not yet. Right now, the Luddecceans were helping the civilian ships evacuate, but they had to remain far back from the fray, their cargo of troops too valuable to lose. The other two Luddeccean ships were just out of atmosphere, protecting that flank from pirate vessels rising from the planet. The Merkabah was providing cover for the civilian ships among the living shields that made their breaks for freedom. A fleet of “tugboats” had joined in the battle, pulling dozens of civilian vessels to safety that couldn’t do so on their own. Smaller, more maneuverable fighters commanded by Mitchel darted directly into the fray to lend aid, while the Merkabah trained her heavier phasers and torpedoes on any large pirate vessels that tried to cross the line.
Most of the civilian shields had engine damage. The first thing the Dark had done was to incapacitate them, not destroy them. Dead shields were not shields—and couldn’t be converted. But not all the civilian ships in the fray were victims, or System 5 trillionaires attempting to flee on their luxury yachts. Some of them were working vessels that had come to help, of which the tugs were the most numerous. Designed to withstand heavy impacts, small, with powerful engines, the tugs were fearlessly diving in and pulling larger civilian craft from the fray.
A glance at the holo showed no tugs were readily available, and the ferry was minutes, maybe even seconds, from having her hull breached.
“Captain, we’re being hailed…by the Emerald Jane…a yacht?”
The holo highlighted a sleek vessel that had earlier pulled from the fray, miraculously undamaged. She’d come about now, and her trajectory was the ferry.
Alaric’s brow furrowed. The owner of the Bernadette—a Wu someone—didn’t acknowledge his folly and had been demanding rescue—three tugs had already been destroyed attempting it. Alaric had ordered his team to ignore the Bernadette’s hails. Was this another rich man about to ask for something unreasonable?
Scowling, Alaric said, “Give me details on his ship and put him on.” The holo magnified the Emerald Jane. The yacht was shaped like an arrowhead, with wings that would give her real lift in atmosphere and time bands that shimmered around wide windows down her titanium hull. Someone whistled. She was a beautiful thing.
Over the speakers, a deep, yet shaky voice said, “Luddeccean Captain, this is the Emerald Jane. I’ve got claw-tow lines. I’m going to tow that tick right off the ferry. Don’t shoot me.”
Alaric tilted his head at the nervously given order, but he could see no fault with the plan, and he admired the man’s bravery. Still… “Emerald Jane,” Alaric said. “You’ll be heading into enemy fire.” Very few of the Republic vessels had weapons. Even the Leetier, the Luddecceans’ only civilian vessel, had enough firepower to keep pirates at bay if need be.
“That’s on me.” The Emerald Jane’s trajectory did not change, and her velocity was increasing. “There’s over 2,000 people on that ferry!”
Alaric swallowed. A brave man with his heart in the right place. But Alaric was not sure if the Emerald Jane’s captain understood exactly what he was getting into. “A tick on a tow line is as good as on your hull if you don’t let her loose fast enough.” But not too fast—that would have the tick right back where she started.
“Understood,” the captain of the Emerald Jane replied.
Alaric’s eyebrow rose. Was he going to have to revise his opinion of the idle rich? But then he caught sight of her name on her port side: Emerald Jane Tours. A tour boat. Not idle rich. Working affluent.
Infected fighters were peeling away from the main group, waiting for the gate’s defenses to fall. Their heading was the ferry. Alaric’s eyes narrowed.
“We’ll clear the way for you,” Alaric said and gave his crew a new heading. The Merkabah shot past the ferry on the opposite side of the tick, taking the new fray by surprise and quickly dispatching them.
“Got the blood sucker!” the captain of the Emerald Jane exclaimed.
“Bring us around,” Alaric ordered, giving new coordinates. “Be prepared to help our new friend.” Phaser fire erupted around them, but the Merkabah corkscrewed into a loop, emerging on the ferry’s starboard side just in time to see what he’d feared. The tick crawling up the tug line like a spider up a web.
“She’s welded my tow line to me!” the captain of the Emerald Jane exclaimed. “I can’t let her go.”
“Pulse solder,” one of his men muttered.
“We’ve got you. Engage your time bands and maintain current course, Emerald Jane!” Alaric ordered. Bands could act as weak shielding from impacts and phaser fire by distorting the time field around a ship, but Alaric didn’t wait for confirmation before he ordered his own men. “Fire!”
The tick exploded, meters from the Emerald Jane’s port side. Alaric released a breath. “Emerald Jane?”
“We’re fine,” Emerald Jane’s captain replied shakily. “But that was my only claw-tow. I can’t help the ferry anymore.”
“Get back behind the line,” Alaric said.
“Yep,” said the Emerald Jane’s captain, disappointment palpable in his voice. In the holo, her course changed.
“You may be able to help the ferry’s passengers evacuate, Captain,” Alaric’s suggested, eyes on the holo. “Her time bands don’t look like they’ll be operational anytime soon.” Or her main thrusters.
“No one could stop me!” the captain declared, this time confidently. “The Emerald Jane will make as many trips as necessary.”
Alaric found a smile tugging at his lips. Galactican or not, cyborg or not, the yacht’s captain’s humanity came through. But then a tick transport too large for one of the small fighters snapped his attention back to the holo.
He was so engaged in targeting the tick carrier preparing to engage its time bands that he didn’t notice the bridge dimming. The tick carrier exploded into shards of dark scrap as a well-aimed torpedo impacted with its rear thrusters from the Merkabah...and in the moment of relief, that’s when he noticed—the bright phaser flashes between the gate and the infected aboard had stopped.
His comm erupted. “We’re being hailed by Admiral Mitchel.”
“Put him on,” Alaric commanded.
“We’re also being hailed by…” His comm officer’s voice faded.
“By who?” Alaric asked.
“Five. The ID is just…Five.”
For a minute, Alaric’s mind went blank. “It’s Time Gate 5,” Alaric whispered.
“Sir?” said the priests, scanning the raw data from Mitchel’s feed.
“Put it on,” Alaric said, staring at the dark in the inner ring of Time Gate 5. “Put them both on.”
“Yes, sir,” said his comm officer. Ambient conversation on the bridge stopped. He swore everyone on the bridge held their breath.
Mitchel’s voice cracked across the bridge. “Captain Dar—”
Another voice cut him off. “Captain Darmadi.” Alaric glanced at the readouts near his armrest. It was “Five.” Whether it was a question or a statement, he couldn’t tell. “This is he,” Alaric answered.
There was a pause, and then, “Yes.” Had it analyzed his voice and then cross checked what it had heard with known voice-disguising programs?
Eyeing the darkness of the inner ring, no longer lit by phaser fire, Alaric tapped his fingers on his armrest. “How can I help you, Five?”
“I’ve lost. My phasers are done—sabotaged by the infected aboard me. I have lost the ability to destroy my time band and even of self-destruct. I cannot help you the way Trina did.” The gate’s voice was inflectionless. If it had feelings on the matter, they weren’t evident, and it wasn’t an answer. Alaric went very still. It wasn’t human. Sometimes, Alaric had been called a robot, and sometimes he’d wished he was. Not having feelings, at times, seemed like it would be a relief. Alaric did have “feelings,” and so did the machines he’d met. He had a vivid memory of Trina, the android avatar of Time Gate 33. She’d been very beautiful, with long black hair, war
m brown skin, and chocolate-colored eyes. She’d given her love and then her life to the engineer who’d maintained the systems of her time gate form. She’d given every human in the galaxy a reprieve from the Dark’s ambitions in the process.
In officer’s training, it had been drilled into him that if machines appeared to have emotions, it was only because they’d been programmed to have them. But in one of their shared dreams, Volka had told him that Trina hadn’t been programmed to love, and yet she had anyway. Were emotions a natural outgrowth of complexity? Was the gate emotional now? If so, what was it feeling? How would he feel?
“Self-destruct,” Alaric suggested, “would be wasteful. There are other options.”
The plan had been to get the Luddeccean troops aboard, to help resist the infected. Of course, they’d wanted to do that after the gate disabled the infected’s firepower. The reverse had happened. “We can come aboard, Five, and help you resist.”
“Luddecceans attacked Time Gate 8 without provocation,” Five replied flatly.
There were murmurs throughout the bridge. That wasn’t how it had happened at all—Gate 8 had attacked Luddeccea. Alaric’s home world was still dealing with the literal fallout from the gate’s aggression. “That’s a lie,” one of the priests hissed.
Holding up a hand for silence, Alaric said, “We are allies now, Five.”
In the holo, the infected ships were trying to get to the gate. Admiral Mitchel’s fighters were trying to hold them back. Alaric ground his teeth. He needed to get his troops to the gate, but they needed the gate’s help to get aboard, get through airlocks, and join the uninfected security forces aboard. Every minute Five delayed was an advantage to the Dark.
“You keep your word to machines, Captain Darmadi,” Five said.
“I keep my word, period,” Alaric replied.
“Order your troops not to destroy me.” It spoke the words flatly…but ah, yes, it had emotions. It was afraid. Perhaps allowing Luddecceans aboard was to the gate akin to inviting a viral infection to kill a bacterium. His brow furrowed. Not that his order would necessarily be obeyed by all Luddecceans.
“I will do that,” Alaric said. “You have my word.”
A readout beeped.
“Humans don’t always obey orders,” Five said, again in expressionless tones. But there was emotion behind those words. Alaric felt sure of it. Up until Trina’s sacrifice, he’d thought of her as a child entranced by the world. In a way, she had been only a few years old. Time Gate 5 was centuries old and had been observing humans all that time.
Alaric knew in a flash of insight that the gate was testing him. “No,” Alaric admitted. “They don’t.”
Seconds ticked by without response, or a word breathed on his bridge. Even Mitchel said nothing.
Did centuries of observation make one wise? Or did wisdom, like courage, need to be tested? There was no response, and then Alaric said, “It is a test of your courage to let us aboard.”
Another pause.
“Yes,” Five responded at last. “You have a plan?”
Alaric’s eyes fell on the massive hulk of the Bernadette and narrowed. “Yes.”
28
Malfunctions
Galactic Republic: S5O12
6T9 sat in the mechanical room. He was plugged into Central; he was at full power and so was his suit. He was alone in the mech room, except for a few cleaning ‘bots. The Marines and James were with the ColdSWEEPERs in the hangar. 6T9 had not been able to go.
The room had warmed, but was still only -215 C. His suit had heated microfilaments laced throughout its surface, but between the filaments, the chill crept in and then traveled along his metal skeleton where it was close to his synth skin. James, with his more modern poly skeleton, was in better shape. Also, in James’s words, “If I cut the flow of synth blood to my external capillaries, my external layers become a blanket instead of a conduit for cold to reach my core. You can’t do that?” 6T9 couldn’t. Seeing James’s face, 6T9 had understood why. Without the synth blood warming his complexion, James looked…plastic. 6T9’s model was designed to look realistic, even when powered down. Appearances couldn’t be compromised for self-preservation, after all.
It had been an hour, twenty minutes, and thirty-five seconds since Volka had discovered the hangar empty.
6T9 was alone. Even the emotionally malfunctioning ColdSWEEPER they’d met outside the facility had left the room, saying that, “I believe the boundaries of this game of hide and seek are larger than usual. I have to find Jocelyn. It is her birthday.” 6T9 hadn’t had the heart—literally or figuratively—to try and explain that Carl had detected no living humans and Jocelyn was dead.
James pinged 6T9 over the ether. “6T9...we haven’t heard from Sundancer yet. Have you?”
“No,” 6T9 replied.
A pause like static hovered between them. “Don’t worry. I’m sure if something happened to them, Carl would inform Time Gate 1, and One would let us know.”
The team aboard Sundancer were trying to follow the fifty ships that gatelessly transported the Dark-infected researchers of Reich Enterprises. Sundancer was somewhere across the universe, too far for ether and its lightspeed limitations.
6T9 huffed. “I’m not at all sure that Daddy 1 would contact us if he thought it would emotionally compromise us and hinder the mission.”
Another beat of static. “No, probably not.” James’s thoughts became wry. “Thanks. Now I’m worried about Noa.”
6T9’s Q-comm flickered. He wasn’t the only person light-years from someone they cared about. But then another thought occurred to Sixty. “I’m sure she is fine,” 6T9 said. “Fleet would let you know. Don’t worry about me, if that really was why you were checking in.”
“Well—”
“I’ve got to go. I’ve got some…err…calculations to run.” You could hear a blink of surprise over the ether, 6T9 realized.
“I do have a Q-comm,” 6T9 said dryly.
“All right, let us know if anything—”
“Of course.”
There was a second of static, of caring hesitation. 6T9 should be grateful—and he was—but he didn’t want to prolong the conversation. He held his breath, and then James disconnected.
Making sure that his sensors would alert him if anything in the mech room changed, 6T9 withdrew his consciousness to his server aboard Time Gate 1 and queried. “May I speak to Bracelet?”
There was a rumble in the gray. “Of course. I will connect you.”
“Is it secure?” 6T9 asked.
Time Gate 1 said, “Your and Bracelet’s servers are adjacent to one another with a hardlink between them. The hardlink isn’t unhackable, but it hasn’t been hacked.” A vision appeared in the gray—sheets of dark, thick glass, packed tightly together, with lights flickering in their depths—it was impossible to say how large the sheets were without anything to give 6T9 a frame of reference. More sheets of “glass” appeared beside the first. They were linked together by a thick rope of unbroken shimmering fiber. He was looking at two servers linked by a fiber-optic cable.
Those plates were Bracelet’s and his minds, 6T9 realized. In the early 2000s, at the dawn of the computing age, creating a computer large enough to do everything a human brain did would have meant building a machine as large as Earth’s moon and powering it with a nuclear reactor. Quantum computing had helped, but the thing about quantum computers was that they tended to be large—even now, it took a lot of coaxing to make qubits behave, and there needed to be either multiple qubits or a conventional machine to verify answers. Quantum decoherence and quantum noise both made the antics of a single qubit unreliable. He’d tried to explain it to Volka once, and she’d said, “It sounds like quantum computers all are infested with mischievous sprites,” and grinned.
“There is no consciousness behind the randomness,” 6T9 had protested.
They had been outside on the asteroid, at the time, and the artificial sun had just slunk beneath the horizon. “A
re you 100% sure it isn’t some consciousness?” she’d answered and narrowed her eyes, glowing in the twilight. It had been a trap, designed to make him admit there could be a higher consciousness. She knew enough to know that he couldn’t say there was not a higher consciousness involved with 100% certainty. He’d almost shot back, “You’re right, there is a chance that we are in a vast computer simulation,” just to see her look of horror at the heresy of a God-as-a-computer, but at just that moment she’d lifted her nose and sniffed. “I smell a deer, and the poor thing is hurt.” She’d licked her lips very disturbingly. 6T9’s Q-comm had shut down for a moment; when it came back online, she had already disappeared into the brush. He should have mentioned the potential Computer God during their banter in Shinar.
In the present, the cable between the servers shimmered, and Time Gate 1 said, “Your communication is secure. As is communication between you and James.” A third set of glass plates appeared, connected to the first set by another thick shimmering cord.
6T9 would have scowled if he’d projected an avatar. Annoyance made him summon one immediately, and he did scowl. “This would have been convenient to know,” he said, thinking of James hunting him down just days ago, afraid to communicate via Q-comm.
“You never asked.”
6T9 almost rolled his eyes, but then noticed that there was no direct connection between James and Bracelet.
Time Gate 1 read the unspoken query. “Not yet. Maybe never. If James is compromised, you are a partition.”
“James would never betray the Republic,” 6T9 replied, avatar hands clenching into fists.
James said the gates had god complexes, but Time Gate 1 only sounded tired when it said, “Not willingly, no.” The gray darkened and appeared to shimmer. “I have never experienced true war before, 6T9. I am making this all up as I go along.” There was another shimmer in the mindscape—or server-scape. “If humans lose their war with the Dark, I am not so naïve to believe that the Dark won’t seek to destroy us. If humans win, it will only be because of gate-less travel, and we still might be destroyed. Perhaps not quickly, but slowly, as we become redundant.”