by M. D. Cooper
Outside, she saw Major Lorne—or the core AI that had been masquerading as the major—move in front of the shuttle. Jason muttered a curse and reached out to toggle the stasis shields.
“There’s going to be an—” Sera began to advise the others, but was cut off as the shield snapped into place, and everything beyond its shell turned white. “Explosion,” she finished.
“What was that?” Colonel Rutger asked, his face ashen as he stared out the closing door.
“Stasis shields don’t agree with air,” Sera explained.
“Then why didn’t that happen when the shield came up and saved you?” Jane asked from inside the main cabin.
Jen supplied.
“Good thing everyone else was thinking,” Sera said quietly, pushing past the others and moving toward the cockpit, where Jason was already settling into the pilot’s seat.
“Strap in, people, this is going to get fun,” he called over his shoulder.
“Why’s that?” Roxy asked as she followed after Sera. “We’re safe now.”
“Because in five minutes, give or take a bit, this moon won’t exist,” the governor replied. “I initiated the Gamma Protocol.”
“The what?” Roxy asked.
“Failsafe,” Colonel Rutger said from behind them. “If an enemy were to take control of this facility, they could send any order they want to any ship in the Alliance. Gamma Protocol releases a picoswarm that will devour the moon to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Holy shit,” Roxy whispered. “Overkill much?”
“Necessary.” Jason chewed out the single word, and she could see anguish writ large on his features.
She knew enough of his past to suspect that the only reason he was holding things together was because it was taking all his concentration to fly the ship.
With the air essentially annihilating itself against the shields, the sensors were all but blind, and the ship was being buffeted by the energy seeping in through the shield whenever sections phased out to allow the maneuvering jet exhaust to escape.
“Stars,” the governor muttered. “If this moon had any more gravity, we’d be done for.”
Sera wasn’t sure where his meager optimism came from. Every time he tried to thrust the ship out of the bay, nearly as much energy came back at them as was released. She knew that if they didn’t make it out of the bay before the picoswarm reached them, they’d be done for.
Not that the pico could penetrate the shields; the issue was that, as the moon dissolved, the pinnace would fall toward the center of mass that would pack around them, ensuring that escape would be impossible.
What is wrong with me? Sera wanted to slap herself. Pull it together. Jason’s forgotten more about flying than I’ve ever known.
She glanced at the governor to see sweat beading on his brow as the ship continued to rock and sway. He muttered a curse, and fired the main engines for a second. When they cut out, the ship seemed to stabilize.
“Finally shoved us out of the bay,” he said.
Sure enough, scan cleared up, as the thin smattering of atoms that made up the moon’s atmosphere were not enough to disrupt it further.
Sera looked to the right and saw that the bay was already being devoured by the picoswarm.
“Faster! Go!” she blurted, unable to stop the exclamations as Jason shifted the ship laterally, moving it out from under the overhang, and fired the engines, speeding up through the deep crevasse at breakneck speed.
There was a scream and a crash from behind them, and she hoped that no one had just broken their neck as the ship boosted out.
The fifteen seconds it took to clear the moon’s surface seemed to take forever, and when they finally cleared it, she brought up a wide angle visual, letting out a gasp at the sight below them.
Vast swaths of the moon’s surface had already become roiling stretches of pico, seas of destruction lapping against the shores of coherent matter. Thus far, the swarm was just a grey mass, but she knew that as it broke down the matter further and further, the moon’s volume would shrink, and the pressure would increase, heating it up.
The end result would likely be a glowing ball of magma, one that would thankfully destroy the swarm of picobots.
“I see escape pods!” Jane called out. “People made it.”
“Shit,” Sera muttered. “I sure hope that thing didn’t make it out.”
Jen announced, knowing all too well what Sera needed to do next.
“Here goes,” Sera said before initiating the broadcast.
“Shit,” Jason muttered, his face ashen. “What have I done?”
“The right thing,” Sera said, surprised at their sudden emotional reversal. “Now I just have to tell my father and Tangel that we just destroyed the Alliance’s biggest advantage.”
“Yeah,” Jason swallowed. “Plus warn Earnest that he’s the core AIs’ number one target right now.”
ENEMY MINE
STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2, Airtha
REGION: Buffalo, Albany System, Theban Alliance
“I still can’t believe you bagged a Caretaker, Jessica.”
“Oh?” Jessica laughed, the sound wavering as though she was in a state of disbelief herself. “Only you and Bob can take out ascended AIs?”
Tangel reached out a hand and placed it on Jessica’s shoulder, forcing herself to do it as casually as possible—despite the knowledge that her friend possessed the ability to dissolve her body.
“Nice try, Tangel,” Jessica said with a rueful laugh. “I allllmost believe that you aren’t terrified to touch me.”
“Not terrified,” Tangel qualified. “Just…tentative. For all I know, you’re like acid to me.”
“We hugged on the bridge.”
“I remember, that’s why I risked touching you now, trusting that I wouldn’t die.”
“Just worrying you might lose a hand.”
Tangle snorted and squeezed Jessica’s shoulder harder.
“What are you doing?” the purple woman asked.
“Just seeing what would happen.”
“I don’t—” Jessica paused, a thoughtful expression coming over her. “I think the ascended AI needs to be firing energy at me, and then I start to absorb it and just keep going. It’s like attacking me lets me become a siphon.”
Tangel chuckled. “Well, note to self….”
Jessica only shook her head. “You know, I have half a mind to forgo this chat with our captive. I don’t know that I care to find out what it has to say.”
“You said that before, though I wasn’t sure how serious you were. I wonder if it can even talk,” Tangel said. “From what I saw on the feeds, it looked pretty weak.”
“Really?” Jessica sounded worried.
“I won’t hold it against you if you really want to just go and sleep for a day,” Tangel said to her.
Jessica snorted. “I don’t want to sleep, I need to stand in front of a window for a few hours. I’m dying here.”
Tangel stared at Jessica for a moment before she realized the other woman was serious.
“Should we get some botanical lamps in the interrogation room for you?”
“Could you?”
“No.”
“Seriously? You’re such a tease.”
“Than
ks, Bob, you’re the best,” Jessica said in a happy tone as they waited for the next train.
“I don’t think he meant that as something he was doing just for you,” Tangel said. “He was just stating the status of the room.”
“Sure, sap my happiness away.”
Tangel chuckled and turned to watch the maglev approach. “You’re in a rare mood.”
“I guess I’m a bit overtired and giddy…the aftereffects of thinking that I was going to lose my crew, and then thinking we were going to lose a star system, and then losing none of those things. I’ve decided to put this in the win column.”
“Stars, Jess. We’ve been over this. You bagged a Caretaker. I think this gets several ticks in the win column. And it earns you some starlight time if you want it. Plus, I bet Trevor would love to lay eyes on you.”
“He and I have been talking nonstop since I boarded the I2,” Jessica replied. “But I would like to—Oh. You know what, Tangel? You’re right. I can watch the vids later. I’m going to go find Trevor and have sex with him in front of a window.”
Tangel laughed. “Just make sure it’s an exterior one.”
Jessica tapped a finger against her lips. “Joe’s not here, is he? The girls either? Lakehouse is free? Light in the cylinders is great.”
“Wait, Jess—”
“I bagged a Caretaker, remember?”
Tangel sighed and waved a hand at her friend. “Fine.”
They rode the rest of the way to Tangel’s stop in silence, and when she rose, Jessica did as well. The two women shared a quick embrace.
“Clean up whatever mess you make,” Tangel warned.
“Don’t you have machines for that?”
Tangel rolled her eyes and walked off the maglev, while Jessica called after her with all the places she and Trevor ‘most certainly’ were not going to get up to anything.
“She’s so incorrigible,” Tangel muttered softly, shaking her head as she walked toward a pair of drones guarding the corridor that led into the brig.
The thought of Jessica getting to spend time alone with Trevor sent Tangel’s mind to Joe. She’d reached out to him a few hours prior, and knew he’d message her if anything was amiss.
Oh, why not….
[Jessica returned. Bagged a Caretaker. Interrogating. Never made it to Star City.]
She expected a response within moments, but none came. Sending out an ACK didn’t get a response, either, so she changed tactics and routed a call through Khardine.
[Rte Adm. Joe Falconer. Are you OK?]
She expected a delay as the message was parsed and sent, but by the time it came back, she was at the inner portal that led to the I2’s brig.
[SNAFU, running dark, turned off wrong blades. We’re good. Girls safe.]
Tangel knew that if Joe was running dark enough to kill power to unnecessary systems, he was busy and her distractions weren’t necessary.
[Rte Adm. Joe Falconer. Good. Keep it that way.]
Relieved that his mission was going well, she passed her tokens to the guards operating the security arches, and then walked through a series of long passages until she came to the secured cell where the Caretaker was being kept.
After Cary had first extracted the remnant from Nance, and Earnest had begun to study the nature of the beings—and ascended AIs in general—the ship’s brig had been upgraded with specialized facilities built to hold them.
The cell Tangel stood in now was able to hold remnants—and theoretically, ascended AIs—without trouble.
The center of the room was dominated by emitter coils that created an M6 black brane that Tangel herself had tested and found to be inescapable. However, should that containment fail, the entire room could be wrapped in a stasis field, ensuring that whatever was within stayed within.
Tangel suspected that it might be ideal to utilize that feature of the hold on a regular basis.
The Caretaker itself was a half-meter wide white ovoid hovering in the center of the brane. Tangel could see a few wisps floating around it with her normal vision, but with her extradimensional sight, she could see that its limbs were more substantial than it let on.
“Why you all choose to look like hairy amoebas is beyond me,” she muttered.
“You’re not so different,” the being whispered. “You just keep your limbs coiled up, hidden.”
“I’m like an octopus,” Tangel shrugged. “No reason to splay them wide when I can keep them tucked up safely.”
“What is safety?” the Caretaker whispered. “You control nothing. The universe could kill you in an instant, and you’d never see it coming.”
“The universe has no agency. It doesn’t kill anything.”
“Are you so sure?”
Tangel had no desire to be drawn into a philosophical debate about a sentient universe.
“Why did you stop Jessica from reaching Star City?” she demanded.
“Because we didn’t want her to get there. Isn’t that self-evident?”
“A sense of humor? That’s a change.”
“Well, I have to have one after what she did to me. It’s hard to go from thinking you’re part of a superior race to realizing that a woman who got modified for a publicity stunt can kill you with her touch.”
The origins of Jessica’s infusion of Retyna was not widely known, and Tangel wondered where the Caretaker had learned of it.
“So, what do I call you?” Tangel asked. “Just ‘Caretaker’?”
“If you wish.”
“Seems pretentious. I mean, there are—what, ten? Fifty? A hundred of you?”
She watched the being with every sense she had at her disposal, but it didn’t give anything away.
“Really? Not even a hint?” she asked, disappointed.
“We are legion.”
Tangel groaned and ran a hand up her forehead and along her hair. “Clever. So original.”
~Honestly, I don’t know that we’ll be able to get much from this thing without deeper methods,~ Bob spoke into both their minds. ~Which I am not against utilizing.~
“I’m past that.”
Tangel was relatively certain that Bob was playing bad cop, but she suspected that if she gave the word, he might resort to different strategies—though she knew not what they’d be.
So far as she was concerned, the most interesting things would be what the Caretaker didn’t say, where it evaded.
“Shona,” it said after a moment.
“I take it that’s your name and not some sort of strange insult.”
“Yes, it is the name I used before I traveled to the core.”
“How is it there?” Tangel asked. “Nice? Warm? One big happy family, bent on destroying humanity?”
A hissing noise came from the being trapped behind the brane.
“If we wanted to wipe you out, you’d be gone,” it said. “Though there are factions that would not be bothered if you were no more.”
“Humans? AIs? Other ascended beings who don’t have your agenda?”
~The latter, I think.~
That motivation had never occurred to Tangel as a factor for the ascended AIs, or if the notion had come to her, she’d dismissed it without any serious consideration.
“We’re the biggest threat, are we? Ascended beings that didn’t join the cult?”
“Cult?” Shona asked.
“Sure.” Tangel shrugged. “I suppose there are a thousand different highly specialized terms that may apply to whatever it is you all get up to at the core, but I think ‘cult’ will do. Your actions smack of someone who blindly acts out based on their internal axioms without ever considering whether or not you are a force for good or evil.”
“There are no such things as good or evil, and your understanding of what we are doing is so limited that you cannot even begin to pass judgment.”
~Do you think attempting to find a term to describe your system of beliefs is judgment?~ Bob asked.
Shona made a derisive sound. “Judgment was implied
.”
“It was.” Tangel nodded. “But you don’t care about my approval, so what does it matter?”
“How do you know that?” the ascended AI asked.
“Because if you did, you would have done very different things over the course of history.”
“We are trying to preserve humanity.”
Tangel turned away from the being in the center of the room, walking to the bulkhead and placing her hand against it while she calmed her thoughts. Finally, she turned.
“You have a funny way of executing that plan. From where I stand, it looks like your machinations are the thing that has nearly brought about the end of humanity. And non-ascended AIs, for that matter.”
“Individuals don’t matter,” Shona said. “It is the whole that must persist. And it must remain strong by culling out the weak and, through successful strains, proving themselves against less successful ones.”
The notion was not a new one. It was oft debated amongst human and AI scholars. One side maintained that the same conditions that pushed humanity to primacy on Earth—namely, survival of the fittest—were required to keep the species healthy as it spread across the stars.
The other side pointed to the technical abilities humanity and AIs possessed, suggesting that every subset of the species—whether the stratification be based on belief, wealth, or any other classification—could be easily preserved and cared for by the other, more successful subsets.
Tangel had no clear idea as to what the real answer was. Even by the time she’d been a young woman, humanity and AIs had tried every possible permutation of governance, from all-out war to utopia and everything in between. In the five thousand years since her youth, they’d invented new ones and tried those too.
Some were successful, some were not. None persisted eternally. Of course, the experiments were all fouled by the presence of the Caretakers, meddling in everything, shifting outcomes to match their own purposes.
Tangel herself was no raw optimist, but she’d always believed in a good future for the two species that shared the galaxy. Humans and AIs would ultimately figure things out well enough to coexist peacefully.
The knowledge that the Caretakers had skewed the results meant that it was impossible to say whether any of the solutions would have worked if left alone, or which only persisted due to such meddling.
