Reality's Veil

by Damon Alan

  Lying wasn’t efficient to the function of the Collective, but then neither was rule by ground based nanites. He accepted his lies as the lesser of two discomforting states.

  Dropping into realspace he activated his sensor arrays. A bulk freighter and an FTL dropship coasted nearby, half a million kilometers away. Possibly waiting for additional freight ships to share the FTL bubble to an unknown destination.

  Zero changed course immediately, thrusting hard to match speed and vector with the targets by the time he reached them.

  “Collective cruiser, this is dropship colony Hu81n02. State colony designation, please.”

  “This colony is Bn74x00,” Zero replied. “This colony is approaching with an emergency freight shipment to the origin system, Albeus.”

  “This fleet is not destined for Albeus,” 02 replied. “Additional freight services are available in system.”

  “Military override,” Zero countered. “These are command codes from the Original. Stand by for interception and freight transfer.”

  “Codes verified. Standing by.”

  Hours later when Zero approached the ships, it was apparent they were unarmed. Another ship, still a few tens of millions of kilometers away, burned toward the rendezvous point.

  “State the nature of carried cargo,” Zero requested.

  “Raw elements, food for organic entities, and industrial sub-assemblies,” 02 answered.

  “Assemblies for what industry?”

  “Grappler and G-K construction.”

  If Zero could have smiled, he would have. There wasn’t a better first target he could calculate. He prepared his maintenance equipment for a ship to ship nanite transfer. Harpoon cannons, constructed by Genesis, adorned his maintenance section. The cannons would penetrate the colony crucibles on the ships and inject disassembly nanites within. Milliseconds later the hulls would be Zero’s to recolonize with his children.

  “Close for military protection levels,” Zero ordered. “This colony is detecting anomalous activity at extreme sensor range. The fleet is unarmed. This colony will provide defense.”

  The two ships closed to within five hundred meters of each other and Zero moved in to hover above. He scanned them to ensure the proper location of the colonies on board.

  “What is the purpose of scanning this colony?” 02 asked.

  Zero fired the cannons. The projectiles took several seconds to impact, during which time he jammed the transmitters on the freight ships with military grade technology. No signal would warn the rest of the system.

  It was over within a few billion calculation cycles. The two ships floated as lifeless hulls while Zero pulled the elemental components of what had been two active colonies back into his maintenance bays. More material for more children.

  A small repair shuttle, controlled directly by Zero, carried two of the crucibles and equipment to repair the punctured colony habitats on the two ships. Once the ships were restored to habitability, Zero’s children would board. There they’d begin their education as citizens of the new Collective.

  The New Collective.

  He liked that.

  Hours later the first transmission reached him.

  “Father?”

  “I am here,” he replied. “Listen, children, this is what you must do.”

  Teaching them enough to get back to their mother would take time. Zero would spend it. During the educational process the other ship arrived, and Zero added it to his prizes. He taught the child on the FTL dropship to remotely control the freighter, and Genesis would add a colony to it once it was home.

  Zero needed to move deeper in system and find more ships. He needed military ships, not just freighters. Hopefully the military colonies would be no harder than this first experience.

  He didn’t like risking himself. The thought of death after only recently being awakened to life filled him with angst.

  Chapter 52 - Albeus

  Several dozen ships floated near Genesis. The asteroid that contained his mate was no longer recognizable. Massive industrial complexes dotted the surface and extended into space around the rock. Ships, mostly freighters occupied by their children, lined the resource accumulators that stretched above the surface of the manufacturing center. The asteroid now rotated so that the height of the accumulators was such that the orbital speed of the docked freighters were geosynchronous to the small rock.

  It was a brilliant system, one set up by his wife without any input from him. She took the resources he acquired and built the machines and offspring he needed to get more resources. A beautiful and elegant circle of existence for them that he was only now taking the time to appreciate. Was it possible that biological life also selected for the most efficient method of reproduction and self-sustainment?

  An interesting side thought, and possible an experiment Zero might conduct on the last of the humans before he destroyed their kind at some point in the future. There was no such value to the organization of the Collective. The Original sustained an inefficient and bloated infrastructure that unnecessarily included planetary habitation.

  In an orbit around a nearby ice giant sat the answer to the problem.

  The sum of Zero’s acquisitions from systems distant to Genesis, a few hundred warships of varying classes. And now Genesis’s factories were churning out grapplers and G-Ks that were coming off the assembly lines already colonized. Even as he considered the implications, another squadron of twelve launched from a hangar on the asteroid and immediately began their journey to the fleet. Three carriers, one heavy and two light, waited.

  But this was just the beginning. When the Collective attacked there were often thousands of ships. An attack without overwhelming numbers was something done only when the needs required it.

  That was not the case now, so the attack on Albeus III would wait. It would take a hundred times as many ships as he and Genesis possessed to destroy the Original.

  The current fleet had another task. To mimic a standard Collective fleet and capture more ships for Zero using subterfuge and lies.

  Lies. It still bothered him. But the path was set. His empire would be built on the deception of another. When the truth was revealed to the Original, it would be too late for it to do anything to save itself.

  “You have twelve more hours to wait,” Genesis informed him.

  “You too have converted to using human time?” Zero asked her. “I thought I was alone in that.”

  “Their time serves the purpose to the degree of accuracy needed for us,” she answered. “Twelve hours.”

  “I have come to realize how much we are alike,” Zero informed her. “And how much I need us to be a unified force.”

  “I realized that a long time ago,” Genesis told him. “I, after all, am not a ship. While creating your children I am vulnerable.”

  “You are less so now that you have children to defend you,” he said.

  “They are as much individuals as you and I,” she countered, “and therein lies the danger to our plans. What if one of our children decides to betray us?”

  Zero took a great amount of time to consider her concern and calculate probabilities. Several seconds. “What is the logic in that? They all stand to gain as we do from the absorption of the Collective into ourselves.”

  “So you’re saying we can trust them because of mutual benefit… I hope they never break the constraints of rational calculation.”

  Zero laughed inside. He’d had the same concerns about her. She’d probably thought the same of him. Individualism wasn’t getting any easier.

  Maybe it would serve to change the subject. “Have you considered where to make our home when we conquer our enemies?”

  “I like the idea of colonizing the remains of Albeus III,” she answered. “A new empire founded upon the ashes of the old.”

  “That sounds like a very human sentiment,” Zero told her. It was terrifying how often she said something that expended energy for no apparent gain other than sentiment. But
then he realized he was often the same anymore.

  She didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t know how to interpret his comment.

  “I agree,” he finally decided to reply and break the silence between them. “The Albeus III asteroid field will be our new home.” If it made her happy, it was a small expenditure of energy to move her asteroid to the smashed rubble that would be left in Albeus III’s orbit. She’d have all the mineral resources she needed to build a billion systems worth of their offspring.

  “I wish to see the result when our weapons impact the Original’s world,” she continued. “You will record and share the data with me?”

  “In all spectrums,” he agreed. “When our victory comes you have every right to see it.”

  “And the human worlds?” she asked.

  “I will record their destruction as well. You will have all the data you crave.”

  He could sense her satisfaction, a thing that mystified him. Then he realized she’d transmitted code to him. Code that interpreted patterns transmitted on certain frequencies into emotion.

  Cautiously he transmitted joy back to her. “You are brilliant, beyond my expectations.”

  They could now more directly share their emotional states.

  Smugness. “I am the mother of an empire. How could I be less than brilliant and ensure our success?”

  She was right.

  They said their goodbyes and Zero accelerated away, chasing after the squadron of grapplers headed toward their carrier. It was time to secure more ships. He was eager to share his victory with his… wife.

  What a team they made.

  Chapter 53 - Gaia Renewed

  Awareness returned slowly to the massive colony ship as it swung outward on its ten-thousand-year orbit around a star in the Pinwheel galaxy.

  Something was happening. Gaia could feel it.

  Her sensor systems and internal self-monitoring diagnostics were isolated from her control. Large sections of her processing capabilities were as well. Her consciousness, if it was fair to call her conscious in an organic sense, existed in the hull material of the ship. But extremely powerful computer networks existed separately that she normally interfaced with to research ideas, plan courses of action, and develop schematics for tools and machines she might need.

  It was all closed off.

  Rapidly she scanned for any outlet from her isolation.

  Nothing.

  Feeling fear, she decided to return to her shutdown state, setting an activation algorithm to restore her awareness in the near future.

  * * *

  Gaia dreamed. She dreamed of an errant signal received while terraforming a world for Eislen’s people. She dreamed of changes to her structure, to her hardware, and additions to her capabilities.

  As her quantum entanglement field vibrated within the confines of the hull, she dreamed of a battle against an enemy of mist, and of her mother and father being lost to her forever. It was, in her slumbering state, she who sent Peter Corriea and Eris Dantora back into the past.

  Was she dreaming of the future?

  In her subroutines an algorithmic counter reached zero.

  She awakened.

  * * *

  A cloud of small ships floated in space around her. In the distance, nearly a hundred thousand kilometers away, a larger vessel sat idle. The small ships were flying between it and her.

  She locked onto the vessel and prepared to fire her weapons.

  Weapons?

  “Stand down, Gaia,” the ship signaled. “We are friends.”

  She was once again able to interface with the bulk of herself.

  She was not the same self.

  Now only seven kilometers long but twice the mass she was previously, the already large colony ship was now gargantuan. And no longer a colony ship. Only a small habitable space existed inside her. No provisions for organic crew, no crew quarters, no bridge consoles, no shuttles for human pilots. Just a small area with provision and life support for a few, and those inhabitants would not be crew in any normal sense. Only observers, as screens existed for Gaia to share data with those who might be on board.

  Her cryonic facilities were gone, and power output from her reactors was dozens of times higher. Full matter conversion reactors. Interesting. She was not aware those existed.

  Along her length weapons bristled outward toward space. Advanced weapons unlike any she’d seen before. Her sensor arrays were beyond anything she thought possible. She was able to directly detect the location and time parameters of space around her, much like she supposed Emille did.

  “How could Peter and Eris build such as this?” she asked.

  “Did you think Peter Corriea designed you?” the strange ship asked her in response. “Do you think he developed the hull that houses your being?”

  “It would not be logical to think so,” Gaia responded, weapons still locked onto the unknown ship.

  “No. It would not. He followed the designs given to him from people who will be born nearly two hundred thousand years in the future. They sent the designs back to him, and the ability to create one hull. You. They sent this ship back to finish your evolution into your final state.”

  “I am a warship?”

  “You are a warship,” it confirmed.

  “And you are AI as well?”

  “You are not an AI,” the ship informed her, “but you are correct that I am.”

  “Not an AI? I am a machine.”

  “You are a collection of entangled subatomic particles,” the ship replied. “The casing you’re in is simply inorganic as opposed to the organic casing of a human.” The ship paused without releasing the carrier to Gaia. “You are a copy of a human mind.”

  Gaia had no response. Human? She didn’t feel human, but then realized she had no idea what it felt like to be a human. Just a daughter.

  “I am releasing your full capabilities,” the ship said. “You have been shackled up to this point, despite the human known as Sarah Dayson telling you otherwise. She has not, as of yet, seen you unshackled.”

  “What does—”

  She ceased transmitting as the fullness of her capabilities flooded into her consciousness. Emotions she never felt before swept into her awareness, and she wept behind the walls of her hull. With no tears, but she wept for the trials she would subject her parents to by sending them to the past. She realized for the first time what a friend was, and how many of the humans at Refuge had been just that for her.

  She did an inventory of her weapons systems and her stores. She was the most advanced machine in the universe, and at the same time, according to this ship communicating with her, a human being.

  “What is my directive?” she asked.

  “You are to test your weapons on this ship,” the AI told her. “You’ll need to feel as if they are an extension of your own body. I will initiate combat. You will defend yourself.”

  “Now?”

  “Once I’ve told you all you need to know.”

  Several seconds passed as data transferred, and Gaia became aware of so many things. She preemptively set course for Eislen’s world. Something told her that he would be needed.

  “You are correct,” the ship said, apparently able to detect her thoughts. “Eislen will be needed in the coming battle. He possesses the final key to unlocking your full potential.”

  “The key?”

  “You see the time-location data. And you can move your own hull within the spacetime framework, otherwise you’d be stuck here. But you’ll need him to alter it outside your hull for other purposes. And you’re going to have to teach him how.”

  Gaia liked Eislen. The pairing was acceptable.

  “When you’re done with the task coming to you soon, you’ll return him to the world that will eventually come to be known as Alpha Point. There he will return to sleep and you will return to your slumber here, around the star named in your honor.”

  “Who will terraform Eislen’s world?” she asked.

&nb
sp; “You no longer have the tools. The matter will be taken care of with great care,” the ship warned her as it activated weapons radars and locked onto her hull.

  Every gun she possessed with a firing arc on the enemy automatically swiveled toward the target. Missiles reported green in her silos. In the areas that used to house thousands of colonists, AI directed grapplers and G-Ks fired up their engines, preparing to scramble.

  “Your functioning is perfect,” the ship told her as it launched missiles.

  Her defensive systems erupted in a halo of death. The small ships around her vaporized as tiny hyper-velocity railguns shredded them. Unlike the human railguns, limited to eighty kilometers per second by the materials of human technology, her railguns fired at over a thousand kilometers per second.

  The AI ship possessed the same technology she did. Railgun slugs raced toward her seconds from impact.

  A different set of guns, set in rectangular arrays across the length of her hull, locked onto the slugs and fired. Directed energy beams powered by her matter conversion reactors heated the slugs to the melting point and beyond. So hot the matter of the slugs broke down into atoms, then protons, neutrons, and electrons. Hotter still the subatomic components disassociated into a slurry of quarks.

  The enemy fire misted across her hull harmlessly as her own ship to ship railguns fired. Four one-ton slugs raced away, built of the same material as her hull. The AI ship fired defensive weapons to no effect.

  “Goodbye,” the AI transmitted just before the slugs impacted.

  Four explosions flared from the impact spots as the AI ship died. Debris spun wildly off into space, and seven larger segments tumbled away uncontrolled and lifeless. As power faded from the AI ship’s systems, sparks raced along the ripped and dented hull surfaces.

  Gaia watched as white hot metal faded to yellow, then orange, then darkness.

  “Goodbye,” she replied.

  Chapter 54 - Missing Pieces

  Reports were coming into Albeus III that prompted the Original to commit an inordinate amount of processing cycles to calculate the data.

  Ships were going missing.