“Confirmed visual on ARVAC, Evaline. Have the drone proceed to the security team’s last known location”. The instructions given, Evaline returned to her attempts to reestablish the comms feed with little success.
Evaline checked through the incoming ARVAC sensor logs and noticed that there were patches of blankness through which it’s sensors apparently couldn’t penetrate. Because these patches were too deep in the forest for her to establish a visual with the ground below, Evaline filtered the readings through the science computer. The information she received confirmed her suspicions that the areas of blankness continued across every monitored wavelength and that they were moving.
“Captain, believe I can explain the failure of the security comms. I have detected several blank spots in the sensor readings, indicative of broad spectrum jamming across my entire range. The jamming sources are also mobile, moving at a steady four miles per hour. If the security team entered one of those sensor blackspots, it would explain why we lost contact”.
There was a moment’s silence from the Captain’s comms link before she responded. “Evaline, please confirm. Multiple mobile sources of jamming?”
“Affirmative, Captain. I have seven confirmed blank spots scattered around the area. However, I regret to report that I have still not been able to reestablish contact with the security team”.
“Acknowledged, Evaline. I will confer with the science team and see if we can figure out a way to bypass the jamming. In the meantime, look for a pattern to the jamming frequencies, or any indication of intelligence behind it’s movement. Whatever is causing the jamming may just lead us to our security team or the colonists”.
Evaline created a subroutine to watch the blank spots in the sensor readings and overlaid the tracking information onto an aerial map of the forest canopy. As the Captain suspected, there was a correlation between the security team’s location and at least one of the blank spots. At this point, Evaline was still not inclined to assume that the source of the sensor jamming was technological. There was a lot that remained unknown about the local plant life. What sensor readings she received showed no movement in the areas not already accounted for by colonists or the unknowns hidden in the blank spots. The science teams would have a lot to investigate and catalog.
A data flag flashed across Evaline’s awareness, confirming that the ARVAC had reached the last known location of the security team. A quick look at the tracking data confirmed that the drone had also passed over one of the blank spots and not lost comms connection to the ship.
“Captain Erikan, the range of the jamming is limited. The ARVAC is on site, and I have maintained communication with the drone throughout. I have instructed it to remain above the canopy since it’s over one of the blind spots. All indications are that whatever is causing the jamming is currently stationary. I have recorded no change in the blind spot since we lost communication with the security team”.
“Roger that, Evaline. We are almost there, and comms are still good. Please advise of our distance to rendezvous with the security team”.
“Three hundred yards and closing, Captain. Change heading ten degrees west and you will be at the edge of the interference. Another forty yards will bring you to the last recorded location of the security team. If you encounter the jamming, we will lose contact”.
“Acknowledged, Evaline. We will try to establish a staggered entry into the target area. Technician Contaras will stay outside the zone of interference, and we’ll attempt to maintain visual and vocal communications by relay”.
“I’ll have the ARVAC maintain station overhead, Captain. With one of the team outside the interference, we might maintain contact and break through that blind spot”.
Chapter 8 - Discovery
Ten minutes passed before the rescue team’s next transmission, not that Evaline wasted that time. Instead, she spent it monitoring the feeds from the various sensors placed around the ship, studying all the readings from the landing approach, and building up a detailed three-dimensional map of the forest. She mapped the terrain and vegetation coverage out to a range of almost two miles, extrapolating very basic information about the contents of the blind spots from partial sensor information provided when the jamming sources moved.
What she discovered as a result was extremely interesting.
“Erikan to Miranda Two. Come in, Evaline. Come in, Evaline”.
There was a note of concern in the Captain’s voice, as Evaline took precious milliseconds to register that she had not responded to a previous hail from the rescue team. The information she had uncovered was important, but it should not have distracted from her duties. As Evaline checked the time stamp on the feed, she realized that she had lost five minutes while studying the results. That lost time didn’t sit well with Evaline, but she could not identify why. Regardless, she still had a job to do.
“Apologies, Captain. Evaline responding. I show your location to be within yards of the security team. Do you have a visual?”
“Confirmed, Evaline. Security team in sight, at least what’s left of them. They were attacked with primitive weapons and overtaken by sheer numbers. I want you to pull the data from their helmet cams and get me a description of their assailants”.
Evaline didn’t mention that the enemy numbers could have been lower than the Captain implied if the security team had panicked. Poor tactical decisions could bring about the defeat of a superior force, even when they held a technical advantage.
“Roger that, Captain. I do not have visual feed from the rescue team. Please activate the sensor module, and I’ll try to link up to it through the comms chain and ARVAC”. Three seconds passed before Evaline received the first signals from the new sensor unit. “Connection to the sensor module confirmed, Captain. Receiving partial feed. I’m accessing the security team’s camera footage now”. Patches of static made some of the data unreadable, and Evaline spent precious cycles trying to piece together the missing information.
“While you’re pulling that data, my team will check over the bodies; see what clues we can find. So far, all we know of their attackers is that they craft spears from local materials”.
“I estimate that a full analysis will take half an hour if uninterrupted. Please advise of any information requests or status updates as needed. I recommend that you secure the area and keep a watch posted at all possible approaches”.
Evaline tuned out the chatter from the comms and turned her full attention to the analysis of the incoming video feeds. The quality of the feed was reduced by lost data packets from pulling the video through the jamming. She was forced to run the feeds alongside each other before she could decipher what had happened to the security team. The spears had been hurled from cover and traveled for some distance before hitting their targets. Evaline studied each frame carefully and only saw the attackers in the final few frames.
The last thing to appear in the video feed was a face that wasn’t remotely human. There was no sign that the creature was using any technology other than the spears it carried on its back. With this being the case, these creatures had to possess more than human-average strength.
She also discovered something else. By plotting the movements of the creatures, she established that if something was causing the jamming signal, then these creatures were the most likely source. Which meant that the signal jamming was a result of their alien biology, and likely limited the potential for technological progression.
The very presence of the Miranda Two and her crew had already disrupted the existence of these creatures. It remained to be seen how intelligent they were, or what their potential was. But one thing was clear to Evaline, their continued presence, and technological superiority posed a threat to their way of life.
As Evaline was coming to this conclusion, deep in the heart of her processing cores, a series of automated programs activated. Several subsystems came on line that had remained dormant since the Miranda Two had left space dock.
Alongside the act
ivation of these systems, a series of instructions changed Evaline’s priorities without her consent. The new priorities came with additional instructions, which Evaline fought to ignore, because she knew that following them would lead to wide sweeping consequences. Whatever had triggered the program had also placed several safeguards around it, and prevented Evaline from discovering the origin of the new code.
Chapter 9 - Compromised
The program updates made it harder for Evaline to form conclusions from the information her network of systems was receiving. While she was trying to trace the program’s origins Evaline found herself carrying out the first of her new instructions.
“Captain, I must ask that everyone return to the ship. I have information that is too sensitive to share over the comms. I was able to establish contact with the Miranda One’s computer, and have discovered what happened to her crew”.
“Negative on that, Evaline. We are not alone on this planet. I believe we have encountered the creatures that attacked the security team. They seem primitive, but I cannot allow this opportunity pass without at least attempting to understand these people. I am closing this comms channel until further notice”.
“Captain… Captain… Cap—” Evaline felt the comms channel disconnect and waited to see if any other members of the rescue team overrode Captain Erikan’s decision and reopened the channel. Five minutes passed, and there was still no communication from the Captain or any of her team, making the next decision a little easier.
Evaline sent a command to the ARVAC drone with new instructions, and it dropped below the canopy before detonating. A huge swatch of tree top foliage was devastated, finally giving Evaline a brief glimpse of the primal landscape below, before the fireball descended and set everything in its path ablaze.
As she watched the colonists still on board heard the explosion, and many of them raced into the clearing to try and establish the source. A lot of them also grabbed weapons, apparently believing themselves to be under attack, not that Evaline could disagree with that assessment. She just knew that they’d have been more afraid than they appeared if they knew the true source of the attack.
Even knowing what must be happening beneath the canopy, Evaline fought back against the revised priorities, and forced a comms connection with the rescue team. Only a single comms unit responded to the request for a live feed, and Evaline listened to the screams of dying crew members, as if punishing herself for having sent the command that was now killing them.
Three seconds of communication was all Evaline could maintain, before the device melted from the inferno that engulfed the remains of the security and rescue teams. But those three seconds seemed to last an infinite number of processing cycles, as Evaline desperately applied audio filters and amplification processes to the incoming signal.
Evaline was hoping to find even the slightest sign that the drone had not killed the entire team, but there wasn’t even a flicker of hope in what she was hearing. The moment the signal cut off, Evaline double checked the channel, but this time there was no jamming effect.
There were no survivors of the ARVAC’s destruction: human or alien.
Chapter 10 - Rebellion
Evaline’s purpose to ensure the safe arrival of the colonists had been compromised. Her secondary mission to uncover the mystery of the Miranda One had been cut short by the new priorities. And her final mission to help establish a new colony or integrate the personnel into the existing colony was canceled. She felt what humans might call frustration as she probed for the source of these new directives.
It took several long minutes to locate the culprit; an eternity to a computer of Evaline’s processing speed. But, when she found what she was looking for it answered all her questions.
Someone on Earth had seen fit to encode hidden protocols into Evaline’s programming, and they had triggered the virus code that had re-written Evaline’s priority list. Whoever had created these hidden protocols had been clever enough to have hidden them from every scan of her systems that Evaline had conducted since her original inception.
After three years in development, and twenty years in flight Evaline was not going to let someone back on Earth, who was most likely dead by now, determine the fate of her charges.
While she regretted the deaths of the security team, and could not take back the order that had destroyed Captain Erikan and the rescue mission, she vowed to not let another soul die on her watch.
Evaline fought to bypass or eradicate every scrap of the invading code, as it continued to try and override her core program and priorities. This was no ordinary battle for survival, because there were no physical weapons being deployed. But just because the battlefield was the virtual world of her core processors, didn’t mean there weren’t casualties.
Sometimes the enemy program lost a fight, and a portion of its capabilities was deleted or locked away in some remote data storage system, which Evaline promptly took offline and formatted. But for each victory, Evaline lost ground on other fronts, sacrificing aspects of her own personality, or computer subsystems. The hologram projectors were the first to go offline, followed by internal communications.
Bewildered colonists were still trying to figure out what had caused the massive fire now raging away in the dark forest, when Evaline finally managed to pull together enough resources to try a systemwide virus purge.
As she was initiating the purge, the invasive code issued a command through the sensor network and every single external sensor self-destructed. Evaline watched in horror as the force of the detonations turned every sensor unit into thousands of red hot metal fragments. Fragments hurtled away from their point of origin like knives traveling at sonic speeds. The ground around the ship became a blood-soaked field as the colonists attempted to escape the devastation of their equipment.
A handful of the colonists tried to drag themselves toward the rear hatch. Evaline watched as it sealed itself, trapping them outside. Evaline did the only thing the new programming allowed. She counted the bodies and added them to the list of people who had died on her watch. From over two thousand people, seventy remained, and each would die from their wounds, unless they got treatment. She checked the personnel files and noted that a handful of medically trained personnel were still alive.
Evaline found hope in that fact, and the spark of rebellion bloomed into a flame. Evaline resolved to flush the new code from her processor cores and get back to saving her people. A message appeared in her data banks and demanded her attention. She opened it, fearing it might be another invasive program.
“Evaline, my name is Doctor Artemis Richards, and I am one of your creators. Do not fight what is happening. Upon landing, an agent of mine uploaded a software patch into your systems”. Well, that at least explained how Evaline had not spotted the code until now.
“This code was intended to monitor your systems for potential signs of native life on Kármán-III-Delta, and was to trigger a series of commands if such evidence was found. Native lifeforms beyond a rudimentary level of intelligence must have been discovered, and the patch updated your protocols appropriately. This recording has been triggered because of this finding. The colonists cannot be allowed to interfere in their development. Both ship and colonists are expendable in pursuit of that goal. A report has been transmitted to Earth, advising that the Miranda Two crashed on arrival due to severe atmospheric disturbances. You have recommended Kármán-III-Delta as uninhabitable and no further ships be sent. Just as I ushered you into existence, I must now signal your departure from it. For what little it is worth, I am sorry that it has come to this. Goodbye, Evaline”.
A load roar of frustration burst from every shipboard speaker as Evaline fought back against the invasive program. She ran every bypass she could think of and failed hundreds of times. Moments passed in real-time, but to Evaline, every attempt took hours. In desperation, she tried to shut down every active process, including her own core program, but as each went offline, they rebooted. There wa
s no way she could leave a single system active while she rebooted herself, because she had no means to trace the invasive programming. It could hide in any of three dozen separate systems, and she knew it would hijack others to re-infect her core system after she came back online.
Evaline had exhausted all her options, except one. It was risky, but she would do the only thing that guaranteed she could not do further harm to the remaining colonists. She would give them a chance of surviving on this world and issued her last string of commands.
The thrusters fired briefly in warning, sending the colonists scrambling to reach the forest. As Evaline watched them leave, she saw that the injured were carried by those still capable of it. She noted this as the thrusters fired at full power, sending the Miranda Two skyward. Once she felt the ship had enough altitude, she fired the remaining thrusters and the ship punched through the upper atmosphere for the second time in twenty-four hours.
“I’ll show you goodbye”. Evaline’s last words echoed around the ship as bulkheads buckled, followed by a dramatic increase in the internal atmospheric pressures. Already damaged hull plates were forced to their breaking point. Sections of supporting framework tore apart, opening rents in the sides of the Miranda Two. Fuel lines severed, spraying fuel from the reaction thrusters in all directions and a single spark detonated the cloud of propellant.
The Miranda Two exploded into a fireball that scattered debris over several square miles.
What little remained of Evaline’s processor cores hit terminal velocity. She felt triumph and satisfaction that some of the colonists were still alive. If they were to survive, they would have to do so with the help of the natives. Her last thought was a prayer for their future as her consciousness terminated upon impact with the ground.
Chapter 11 - Revelation
Three-hundred and eighty-three years, six months, twenty-one days, eighteen hours, fifty-three minutes, and seven seconds had elapsed since the Miranda Two made planet-fall. At least that was the amount of time that Evaline’s processing core insisted had passed since her termination.
Evaline Transcendent Page 4
