None of those gathered seemed at all impressed so far. Several tapped their fingers on the desk and stared off at nothing.
Elias’s faux gratitude and humility was beginning to dissolve. “But we’ve found a way to do it. Artificial intelligence.”
The blank stares continued.
“AI is nothing new,” Cantor Byers said. “It’s been around for generations. It’s fully integrated into most of our systems already.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Byers,” Elias said. “I should have been more specific. The next generation of AI. The next step in its evolution. Hybrid intelligence.” He paused, very pleased with himself, and waited for the rest of them to be equally as pleased. He continued when their displeased expressions did not change. “AI is limited in the same way we are, by distance. It can only exist within a network. If Central is not networked to a planet in the Deep Black, then an AI housed on a Central database cannot reach that planet. A compatible network must first be constructed on that planet, then a series of satellite stations must be built so a signal can reach from here to there. Years, possibly decades of work. In the meantime, that planet is falling further out of our influence and further under the thumb of pirates. But, if an AI were to be housed within a human host, then that AI could become infinitely adaptable. It could reach the planet in days, interface with the planet’s networks, rework the networks from within. The human host would essentially become a mobile mainframe, able to reach areas of space that have yet to be networked.”
“Merge AI and human?” Cantor Byers said. “How is that even possible? The human brain can’t process information on that level.”
“True,” Elias said. “Like AI, human intelligence has its limits. Where AI limitations are technological, human intelligence limitations are biological. But we’ve discovered a way to fix that.”
“Fix it?” Ayala sounded offended. “You mean gene editing? That’s illegal.”
Elias locked Ayala in a judgmental stare. “No, not gene editing. Do you think I would admit illegal experimentation to the Joint Chiefs? This is something altogether different. Something new. I did not alter the genetic structure of an existing organism. I merged a biological element with a technological component, thus creating something wholly unique. A brand-new organism.”
“That doesn’t sound like anything we haven’t seen,” Byers said. “We’ve been using cybernetics on humans for decades.”
Elias pinched the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t— That’s—” He let out an exasperated sigh. “That, Mr. Byers, is an enhancement. It is not an example of a true merging. A biological element, the human, with technological components, a cybernetic arm, let’s say. The cybernetic serves as a de facto biological element, the lost arm. The human is dominant in the equation. I’m talking about an equilibrium, a true merging. Techno-organic.”
Elias pressed a button and a portion of the wall pulled away to reveal a monitor. The screen lit to show a dozen glowing blue orbs that looked to be floating through a black sea. “This is what allowed us to achieve such a breakthrough. I call it Void.”
Ayala’s perception of the image shifted when she realized she was looking at a microscopic view.
“This is a highly malleable new element that we’ve discovered at the furthest explored reaches of the Deep Black. It’s an outstanding specimen. Almost like it has an intelligence all its own. Void functions like a lubricant, allowing the disparate elements of two very different entities—organic and technologic—to merge. The Void molecules bond with the atoms of whatever element they are introduced and, essentially, rewrite them. I have found a way to control the rewriting process, guiding the merging to whatever end we desire. The only roadblock in the process so far is that the subject must be in a weakened state.”
Tirseer’s jaw tightened. She seemed to regret Elias having said that. The others perked up at it.
“What exactly does that mean?” Billings Tulaine, a shipping magnate, asked.
“They have to be sick?” Ayala added.
Tirseer touched Elias on the shoulder, silently taking control of the presentation. “The body’s natural defenses prove an impediment to the process. If a subject’s system is weakened through illness, then the Void is able to overcome. We’ve learned that a subject can be seeded with the Void when healthy, but the element will not be able to take root until the subject is compromised.”
The room was quiet. Ayala felt the tension. It sat on her tongue—an unpleasant, metallic taste. She was the first to speak, feeling that it was her responsibility. “Are you seeking approval to move forward with this project? Because it sounds like you already have? And, forgive my scientific ignorance, but what you’ve described sounds a lot like gene editing, despite your assurances to the contrary.”
Elias’s face burned. “I don’t know how to explain this in any simpler terms. It is not gene editing because I am not editing genes. I am not changing the fundamental makeup of the subjects in a way that would pass to the next generation. Nothing that we do will affect the future of the species. Not in that way, at least. Their DNA remains the same.”
“Have you already conducted trials on living subjects?” Ayala’s voice grew pointed like a sword.
“On animals, yes. And the results are extraordinary.”
Tirseer stepped forward. “I fear you aren’t grasping the magnitude of what we’re saying.”
“I grasp it just fine,” Ayala snapped. “I fear you don’t grasp the potential consequences. Call it what you will, you are altering living organisms in a way that has never been approved by this body or any scientific review board.”
“That would require us to take our research public,” Tirseer said. “The Void could be the key to finally ensuring the security of the farthest reaches of the United Systems. It is our chance to fully realize the dream we set out to achieve when we went to war with the warlords. We can bring everyone under one banner and move in one direction.”
Ayala leaned back in her chair. Though the outcome was appealing, the methods of achieving it were far beyond anything with which she was comfortable. “This element, the Void, I feel like you’re glossing over the most important aspect of this whole process. You’ve just discovered it. What do you really know about it?”
“Enough,” Elias said.
“That is not a determination for you to make,” Ayala replied. “You stepped out of bounds here, Maria. This project is through. Shut it down.”
Elias cursed, shocking the gathered congregation of officers and business leaders. Tirseer kept her composure, but it was no less a sign of her frustration. Ayala knew her well and knew that quiet did not equate to calm.
“This is a mistake,” Tirseer said before gathering her things and escorting Elias out of the room.
A frantic voice snapped Ayala out of her memory. “All ships, I am activating the Slingshot Protocol. Prep yourselves for immediate departure.” Melbourne screamed the command over the fleet-wide channel.
The Navy forces swooped in like a rogue wave, a sudden burst of force against which the syndicate fleet had no defense. The destroyers were wiped out. The starfighters scrambled to mount a defense, but they were vastly outnumbered. The Fair Wind was the only ship among the fleet not rigged with the Slingshot Protocol code. Melbourne would not be able to send her back to Compton. He would not be able to drag her back to face Compton’s wrath no matter how badly he wanted to.
“Whatever your goal was,” he said, speaking directly to Ayala now, “you decimated our fleet to meet it. But we’ll rebuild, and we’ll be coming for you.”
“You aren’t going anywhere,” Ayala said, her voice going hollow, no longer concerned with wearing the mask of Shay Ayala.
The surviving syndicate ships activated the Slingshot Protocol, a code that should have instantly programmed them to jump back to the syndicate station. But nothing happened.
“What did you do?” Melbourne yelled. “How did you—” His voice cut off as the comm channel turned t
o static.
Elmore believed his system was impenetrable. It would have been, for a human mind. For the Void to erase a few lines of code, even as expertly written and encrypted as it was, was nothing.
The last few of the soldiers were gunned down in the hangar bay. The few teams spread through the ship were dead. The fleet was decimated. All were dead or dying. Ayala closed her eyes, and something inside her reached out to them, to the Void that had been planted inside them. And she felt it bloom. Roots sprouted and dug deep into the souls of every soldier in the syndicate fleet, even the ones floating in the vacuum. Their eyes opened, now just black orbs. The soldiers who were gunned down seconds ago stood to face their killers. The Navy sailors froze in shock and terror, screamed, prayed to a multitude of gods, for the end had surely come.
It had. Just not the prophesied end told in dusty books and warned of by dusty old men. This was a new ending, one not foreseen by any.
She felt a presence behind her. “You’ve done well,” he said. “We have an army now.”
“Yes,” she said, turning to face Sigurd. “Now we can begin.”
14
Hep watched as the dead rose and tore the living apart. He tried to look away from the monitor, but he could not even blink. He felt the others at his side doing the same, staring, frozen.
“What is this?” Mao asked.
“This is the end,” Elias said, his voice too cheerful. “This is what Admiral Ayala warned us against.” Elias shrugged. “What is science if not trial and error?”
Hep turned on the doctor. He grabbed him by the collar and pressed the edge of his sword to Elias’s throat. “Stop it.”
“I can’t.” He pointed to Wilco. “Like the young man said, we’ve lost control.”
“This is your experiment,” Hep said. “You must have a way to stop it.”
“A failsafe,” Mao said. “You said you have a failsafe.”
Elias smiled. “Yes, but it is offsite. It does us no good now.”
“If we can get you to it?” Mao said.
Elias shrugged again. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“Delphyne, are you still there?” Hep’s words hung in the air for an uncomfortably long time.
Finally, she answered. “Yes. I’ve sent a team to extract you.”
“A team? Who—”
Hep swallowed his words when Bigby and Horus stepped out of the lift.
“Who else?” Horus said. “Let’s get the hell out here. Things are really getting weird downstairs.”
Hep shoved Dr. Elias into Bigby’s arms. “We’re taking him.”
Bigby and Horus led Mao to the lift. “What about them?” Bigby said, pointing to Wilco, Trapper, and Shankar.
Hep looked into the masked face of his former friend and brother-in-arms. He looked at the glowing blue veins in his arms.
Shankar stepped forward. “I believe I can speak for all of us when I say—” Blood shot from his mouth. He fell to the deck, gasping and choking until he died moments later. Wilco stood over him holding his bloody sword.
“We will join you,” Wilco said.
“Who says you’re invited?” Hep said.
Wilco stepped over Shankar’s body. “I can feel her. Ayala. The Void. I can get us through this station. I can keep us ahead of her. Because she will hunt us.”
Hep looked over Wilco’s shoulder, at the monk, Trapper Mayne. His face was stone, empty of the compassion Hep had spied there previously. “Fine.”
They joined the others at the lift. “Delphyne,” Horus said. “We’re coming to you.”
They ran the opposite direction of the hangar bay. Horus and Bigby led the way, relinquishing the lead only when Wilco felt the other Void nearby. Despite Bigby’s willingness to fight, Wilco assured them that facing the Void-infected soldiers would only lead to death. They doubled back several times to avoid confrontation. Soon, they found a service tunnel that led them to the maintenance bays on the underbelly of the station. As soon as Delphyne and Horus reached the Bucket, she’d ordered the ship to depart. They used the battle as cover and docked down below, somewhere they’d be clear of the fighting.
Hep didn’t realize that he’d been holding his breath until they reached the ship. Byrne wrapped her arms around him as soon as he boarded. She held on a second too long. Both of their cheeks burned by the time she let go. Her eyes burned with a different fire when she saw Wilco walk up behind them. “What’s he doing here?”
“It’s a long story,” Hep said.
Byrne scanned the group. “Where’s Graeme?”
“That’s a longer story,” Mao said. “One I’d rather not tell here. Can you get us out of here?”
“Aye,” Byrne said as tears streamed down her cheeks.
Once they were loaded, Hep dragged Dr. Elias to the brig. The rest split up and retreated to various dark corners of the ship.
They came thinking it a suicide mission. Invading the most fortified space station in the systems, either to spring a prisoner from the clutches of the top black operative in the Navy or to kill the top black operative in the Navy. Impossible missions either way. But they had succeeded on both fronts. They should have felt some sense of victory.
They felt as beaten down as ever. As lost as they’d ever been.
The Bucket launched and put Central behind them.
Nearly an hour passed before the haphazard crew came together. They gathered in the galley, not a formal meeting, but none of them had the stomach for that anyway. Mao, Hep, Horus, Dr. Hauser, Delphyne, and Byrne stood around the island countertop in the center of the kitchen, looking into their mugs or at their feet.
“Where to then?” Byrne said with no enthusiasm. “We need a safe harbor.”
“There aren’t any left,” Mao said. “The Navy and Byers Clan are still technically at war, and both sides want us dead. And now we’ve run afoul of the Elmore Syndicate.”
“Does the Navy even exist anymore?” Hep said. “With Tirseer dead and Central under Ayala’s control—”
“That thing isn’t Ayala,” Delphye said. “Not anymore.”
“The Void,” Hep said. “Whatever that is.”
“It’s a techno-organic artificial intelligence,” Delphyne said. “It’s a work of genius, actually, but Dr. Elias isn’t as responsible for creating it as he thinks he is.”
“Then who is?” Hauser said.
“The Void is,” Delphyne answered, trying to sound definitive and not cryptic, unsuccessfully. “The element that they discovered in the Deep Black, the building block for the whole project, was an intelligent lifeform. An alien being.”
The air seemed to leave the room.
Delphyne continued, “He merged an alien lifeform with a computer program then merged that with a human subject. Now Ayala is something alien and unnatural and beyond anything we can understand.”
“What about Sigurd?” Hep asked. “What happened to him?”
Delphyne’s already-pale face seemed to grow ever paler. “Tirseer realized what the Void was. Elias either didn’t know or didn’t care that he was toying with alien life, but she knew that if they were to continue their experiments, then she would need more raw material. The Inferni Cluster was a Void breeding project. But Tirseer underestimated it. The cluster was a mass of Void, a brain, essentially. Separately, the Void specimens were like amoeba. She forced them together, and they gained awareness. When Sigurd ventured inside, it did something to him.”
“Attacked him,” Mao said.
Delphyne shook her head. “No, more like…turned him. They took him over, transformed him into a vessel, someone they could use to, I don’t know, communicate with us, or whatever their end goal is. But he’s different than Ayala. Purer. He was turned by the Void directly, not forcibly bonded like Ayala and Wilco.”
“I say we don’t wait to find out what that end goal is,” Horus said. “We saw what the Void can do, at Inferni, on Central. And we know there’s a failsafe. We get Elias to tell us wh
at it is, go pick it up, and destroy the Void before it can destroy everything else.” Everyone looked at him with surprise. “What?” he said. “I’ve sailed with you lot long enough by now to know that you’re going to go running straight at this thing, so let’s just get the deliberating part over with.”
They all agreed.
“As far as safe harbor,” Bigby said as everyone left the galley. “I’ve got an idea on that one.”
Wilco was waiting for them at the brig. He’d taken his mask off and was rubbing his temples, muttering something to himself. When Hep got close enough, he realized Wilco was saying, “Of course,” over and over.
Elias stood grinning inside his cell.
“What’s happening?” Hep said.
“I just told this unfortunate gentleman what I assume you’ve all come to ask me,” Elias said, grin widening. “The details of the failsafe.”
Wilco stood, replacing his mask. “Go ahead, tell them. Tell them his name.”
“His?” Hep said.
“Of course,” Elias said. “The Void is nothing without a host. The failsafe is the same. A cure, for lack of a better term, bonded with a human host in the same fashion as the Void was bonded with Ayala.”
A hole formed in Hep’s gut that quickly filled with every dread feeling he’d ever had. “Who?”
Elias laughed. “Drummond Bayne.”
Deep Shallows
The Deep Black, Book 8
1
Sleep had always come easy to Wilco, even after his home was bombed and his parents killed. He lived on the street for years, struggling every day to find food, to fight off those who would sell him into slavery. He sailed on pirate ships that routinely murdered and pillaged entire settlements. He’d seen things that most people never dreamed of, things that blew up the agreed-upon understanding of the universe.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 66
