by M. D. Cooper
As the report ended, something in the pattern of Shiso’s communication caught Noa’s attention—a strange, repetitive cadence that seemed at odds with her initial reports. He went back and played excerpts from earlier ones, swapping back and forth between them. A chill of dread went up his spine as he realized there was a clear difference. Where before, the AI’s communication had been precise and succinct, later on, she had fallen into a repetitive pattern that almost felt like an assembly loop.
Noa felt the weight of a hand return to the back of his chair.
Knowing he risked Hiro’s ire, Noa nevertheless felt compelled to try once more.
Noa bowed his head in compliance.
* * * * *
Noa spent the next hour working up a best-case deployment of mobile fusion generators whose energy output would power both superconducting electromagnets and high intensity lasers. These two, when combined, would envelop the shipyard in a uniquely potent magnetic field.
The field was based on equations developed centuries ago by Maxwell and Faraday that described an effect known as Faraday rotation. To produce Faraday rotation, the focused beam of light emitted by the lasers would be carefully aligned along the axis of the magnets generating the field.
When the magnets were energized, causing a magnetic field to spring into existence, it would impact the laser in an interesting way. The electromagnetic wave produced by the laser would actually rotate…and generate its own magnetic field.
At low intensities, the field made use of electron absorption to create an electromagnetic pulse. However, when more powerful lasers were employed, electron absorption became immaterial, replaced by radiation friction. This made it possible to generate an EMP in the vacuum of space.
To ensure complete annihilation of all nano, Noa knew he had to step it up a notch. So he set up the SC magnets to oscillate. This singular difference would result in an EMP so powerful, it had the potential to generate a significant cosmic event.
Because of this, Noa was being very, very careful indeed with his calculations.
The initial pulse would first exceed the breakdown voltages of the assembly nano. Whatever nano the first pulse missed would be pulverized by the pulses that followed in rapid succession. What remained would be nothing more than specks of metallic sludge.
Containment netting was holding station between the construction site and the planet-and-ring to capture leftover debris after the magnetic field was shut down, and Sextant would spend the better part of the next few months employing dragnet drones to take care of the smaller remains.
Hiro approved the plan, and Noa looked up to see the captain of the GSC ship plotting a curved path, along which the vessel would drop its charges.
Noa shook his head. I’ve been so buried in these reports from Imbesi that I didn’t even notice we’d departed the ring. So much for my first military flight experience….
It took a few hours for the craft to completely deploy its combination of SC magnets and lasers around the outer edges of the shipyard’s frame, and several minutes more for the ship to retreat to a safe distance.
No one on the GSC ship detected the clouds of assembly bots that floated past the generators, jarred loose by the nuclear charges, as they settled onto the shipyard skeleton.
Noa saw the lieutenant in charge of deployment turn to the ship’s captain. “Charges are in place, sir, and EMP alerts have been broadcast.”
Noa knew that the alerts the lieutenant referred to were warnings sent to nearby inhabited areas on the off-chance the cleanup team had miscalculated the intensity of the EMP.
The captain nodded. “Activate the field on my mark,” he said calmly, then after a pause, snapped, “Mark!”
The resulting electro-magnetic pulses generated by the powerfully oscillating magnet-and-laser-generated field were eerily beautiful, yielding massive auroras as the EMP interacted with the shipyard framework. Serpentine ribbons of blue and green from particulate debris spun delicate filaments outward, and then gyrated madly back the way they came in a wildly coruscating dance of energy.
The destructive fury wound down as the ship’s sensors registered spike after spike within the field. Noa stared impassively at the holo display as the magnetic field cut off, and the nets began to inexorably close in on the site. He tried desperately not to think of the individual trapped inside the remains, whose life had just been sacrificed for the greater good. He resolved never to forget the one named Shiso, and to find some way he could honor that memory.
* * * * *
The next morning, a sleep-deprived Noa dragged himself into the office after a night spent combing through sensor sweeps with the GSC, looking for anomalies. He looked up blearily from his desk as Hiro Takumi walked toward him and, with a nod, indicated that Noa should join him in his office. Numbly, Noa followed.
When the door slid shut behind them, Hiro turned to him. “A hard few days, yes?” The son of the so-honbucho regarded him with eyes that saw him all too clearly.
Noa just nodded his response, and Hiro waved for the younger man to take a seat.
“I want to show you something,” Hiro said, and nodded toward the room’s holo as a sensor log appeared. “See this?” He tapped on a log entry, dated the previous afternoon.
“Yes, but I’m not sure what I’m looking at,” Noa admitted, squinting at the display.
“It’s a transmission from the construction site, just a few minutes before detonation.”
Noa looked up, startled. “Then it must have been from—”
“The AI, yes.” Hiro nodded.
“Shiso,” Noa corrected, but his tone was respectful, and Hiro tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Have you been able to decrypt it?”
Hiro nodded. “It was an auto-update for maintenance nano. It seems harmless enough, but I grow concerned, Noa.” The other man leaned forward, his eyes intense. “If this maintenance code has anything—anything at all—embedded in it that might infect other AIs as it did Shiso….it is already too late. Do you know what that means?”
Noa’s tired brain refused to function. He sat, staring stupidly over at Hiro, and the man’s inscrutable expression might have softened marginally, Noa couldn’t tell.
“It means, Noa, that there is no way for us to protect the AIs in the Tau Ceti system. Within days, weeks, months—all the AIs on Galene, on every habitat, every asteroid mining station, every drilling rig—they will all become infected. And if the infection contains the corrupt nano replication code, and if it spreads to nano, then it’s not just AIs who will be endangered.”
“But we don’t know that the transmission contained anything of the sort. It’s possible it was perfectly harmless. Routine.”
Hiro nodded. “It’s possible. But we cannot gamble the lives of every creature in Tau Ceti on possible. This is forward thinking, Noa, this is how the F
amily has survived for so long.”
He leant forward, pinning the young man with a hard look.
“I know your family has long eschewed the ways of the Matsu-kai. We respected that decision when they journeyed here with the original colonists. But this,” Hiro gestured to the holo before them, “this changes everything, Noa. For the sake of Tau Ceti, I need you to reach out to the Family on Alpha Centauri. A Sakai stands as kumichō there. Your name, Noa, will hold sway. ”
Noa’s eyes grew wide, and he began to shake his head at the mention of the syndicate boss in Alpha Centauri. “I can’t…. I wouldn’t even know where to begin—”
Hiro cut him off with the flat edge of his hand. “Immaterial. The codes, the communication link, all this we can provide. The Family name of Sakai, however—we need a Sakai to wield it.”
Hiro’s eyes drilled into him with an intensity that Noa found himself powerless to break.
“If Tau Ceti’s AIs succumb to the same corrupt code sequence that Shiso did, then our only possible hope is to import uninfected AIs from another colony.” Hiro’s voice grew hard. “We cannot afford for this to get out, so we cannot appeal to an individual’s good nature for assistance.”
Noa’s exhausted brain stumbled in confusion at this. “I’m not sure what you’re saying. If we can’t ask for help, then where will we get it?”
“We buy it.”
Noa blinked at Hiro, uncomprehending.
With a forced patience, Hiro spoke slowly and clearly. “Noa, you will contact your Sakai kumichō on El Dorado,” he said, referring to the traditional family head. “You will beg of him a boon—the purchase of AI ashikase.”
“Shackled AIs?” Noa exclaimed in horror. “That’s…against the Phobos Accords. It’s illegal!”
Hiro nodded solemnly. “Yes, and once they arrive—and we gain their assistance in finding a cure for their infected brethren—they will have paid for their freedom.”
“We can’t—”
“We can. And you will.”
FAMILY BUSINESS
STELLAR DATE: 08.01.3202 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Sakai residence, Ring Galene
REGION: Tau Ceti Star System
Twenty-nine years later….
Twenty-nine years had passed since Noa stood on the bridge of a GSC destroyer and watched the destruction of a shipyard—and the murder of an innocent AI.
Shiso had been listed in the after-action report as a casualty prior to the massive EMP. The report had been altered to state that the AI had perished from rampant nano growth before the GSC cleanup team arrived.
Compounding the shame of that coverup was the knowledge Noa carried with him of the encrypted message sent to The Sakai, kumichō of the Matsu-kai organization on El Dorado. He knew his family here on Ring Galene would disown him if they ever discovered that he had initiated contact with the Family Father.
And if they ever learned of the contents of his message? That he had exchanged credits for the purchase of a sentient, had engaged in the illegal trafficking of AIs—worse, ashikase, shackled AIs—his name would forever be stricken from the family, a forbidden memory.
If it were just him, he could bear it. But he had a daughter to consider, a two-year-old child he had named to honor the memory of the AI who had been sacrificed. For young Khela Shiso Sakai, he would bury his shame deep in the recesses of his heart.
Two things kept him from sinking into despair.
The first was that the need to acquire an uninfected AI seemed to have gone away. Somehow, through swift intervention—and through the sacrifice of an innocent life, he thought bitterly—the rapid replication of uncontrolled nano had been contained. No reports of aberrant nano had surfaced anywhere in the greater Tau Ceti system, and there was no evidence that any AIs in the area were carriers of corrupted code.
The second had begun on the twenty-sixth anniversary of the day he had first sent his message—the fastest time a response could come from Alpha Centauri while being routed through Sol. His anxiety had spiked as that date drew near, but slowly, as the months passed without a response, he began to relax. To believe that maybe, just maybe, the message had been lost to the interstellar winds, and that he could consider this a regrettable but closed chapter of his life.
A year passed without word, and then another. Then, six months past the twenty-ninth anniversary of that fateful day, a message appeared as a blinking icon in his inbox—one that bore the routing of a passage through Sol. The message’s encryption algorithm indicated that only a Matsu-kai Family token would reveal its contents.
The missive’s arrival startled Noa awake in the quiet of the early hours. He lay there, staring at the blood-red icon in the shape of an undulating viper ready to strike.
How very appropriate.
He swallowed, then sucked in a lungful of air, not realizing he’d been holding his breath until he felt a burning sensation in his oxygen-starved body. Tentatively, he reached out and accessed the notification. The viper uncoiled, and with a flicker of its forked tongue, revealed a single line:
[Assets acquired; en route, ETA 02.01.3235, Adjusted Gregorian]
Nearly thirty-three years in the future.
Noa started to dismiss the message, then saw the ideogram of the other individual to whom the message had been sent: Hiro Takumi. He pressed his head back against the softness of his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut against a headache that was beginning to form. The cadence of the soft, even breathing of his wife didn’t change as he carefully slipped from their bed and padded through the ringlit house, out to their rock garden. Taking a seat, he composed himself, knowing it was just a matter of minutes before the other man would comm him.
The Family must remain untainted by any suggestion of impropriety, Noa knew. Yet he refused to let the loss of any more life stain his soul.
He knew that by being so forward, he was treading the fine line of respect for the son of Tau Ceti’s most prominent so-honbucho, but he hoped that the scion of the regional chief understood Noa was acting within his legal clan rights.
There was a long pause on the other end, and then Hiro’s avatar bowed his head—and winked out of existence.
Noa blew out a shaky sigh. He was fortunate that his bluff with Hiro had succeeded. In truth, there was no easy—or, rather, ethical—way to wipe an AI’s memories. He hoped he might simply convince these shackled AIs that it was in their best interest for the matter to remain hidden.
He rose, and as he made his way back to his bedroom and his sleeping spouse, he passed by his daughter’s room. Pausing, he stared down at her tiny, sleeping form. For her sake, he would do this, so that she might not live under the shadow cast by her father’s deeds, should they ever come to light.
PART TWO: PHANTOM BLADE
BROTHERLY LOVE
STELLAR DATE: 04.07.3192 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ESS Speedwell
REGION: C-47 Dock, Proxima Centauri
Proxima Centauri, twenty years after the Imbesi event;
Just over three weeks after the encounter with Prime.
“That’s the last of it,” Jason Andrews announced as he scrubbed his face and leant away from the bridge console to eye the woman across from him.
Major Calista Rhinehart, a former El Dorado Space Force top g
un, was leaning over a similar console on the starboard side, completing her own final systems check before they turned the Speedwell over to its new owners.
She sighed, jabbing a finger into the console’s holoscreen one last time, then rose and stretched to relieve her tired muscles. “Same here.” She brought her hands to her lower back, massaging idly as her gaze swept the ship’s bridge.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to miss her.” Jason kept his voice light, infusing it with a teasing note, but he knew she was feeling the same blend of nostalgia and loathing he felt toward the vessel that had brought them from Alpha Centauri.
Calista shot him a considering look. “It wasn’t all bad,” she teased, her lips tilting up in the hint of a smile. “I can think of a few times—and places—worth remembering.”
Before he could respond, a feminine voice broke in.
Jason turned an unrepentant grin toward the bridge’s visual pickups at their engineer’s tart reprimand. “Do I hear a note of jealousy in your voice, Shannon?” His grin became a short laugh, as the AI made a rude sound over the speakers.
“Ma’am, yes ma’am,” Jason mocked as he stood, turning laughing eyes to meet Calista’s.
He made a small ‘after you’ gesture and followed the tall, dark-haired woman out into the corridor. The ship echoed with a quiet that was due more to the lack of personnel traversing its decks than to it being currently moored, with engines silent.
“Feels a bit creepy, knowing we spent the past ten months on board in the company of a serial killer and didn’t know it.” Calista’s voice was hushed, and Jason knew the ship’s quiet had affected her as well.
