"Alright," Asher said. "We've found out all we can. Let's bring them in."
They swept the SLFs around and guided them back toward their ports on the bottom of the assault ship.
Suddenly, the feed on Lobo's fighter went out. Asher twisted his fighter around in a circle along one axis, and then the other. Finally he spotted the blooming flower of a distant explosion, closing now as the last plasma sparks faded in the cold.
"Dammit," Asher groaned, angry at the fact that the pirates had called his bluff. He was hoping he and Lobo’s little expedition would prove that the pirates weren't willing to fire upon them just yet. Hoping the outcome would instill a sense of calm over the rest of their convoy.
Commander Asher quickly attempted to bring his own fighter in before the Phantom could destroy it. He went into evasive maneuvers, twisting and turning wildly, following a tight and unpredictable path directly toward the assault ship he was currently sitting in. Another gamble. If the pirates wanted to take out his fighter, they would have to cause collateral damage to the assault ship. There could be human casualties.
He was betting that the pirates wouldn't want to jump to that level of violence. Not yet.
One SLF left. Very close to home. Just another second...
One of the Phantom's own SLFs took the next shot. Asher saw it coming and dodged reflexively... but the shot continued on, scarring across the upper hull of the assault ship. He felt the hit as a slight rumble in the air, as of distant thunder, and a warning bleep from his computer.
"Minor damage," Officer Burden called out. "Nothing the bots can’t handle," the quirky engineer continued, referring to their assault ship’s tiny self-repair robots that were already scurrying towards the minor blemishes in the ship’s thick hull.
Gritting his teeth, Asher pulled the SLF into bay. The doors automatically shut and the small hold was pressurized. As soon as it set down, as soon as he knew it was out of harm's way, Asher jumped up and jogged back to his main terminal. He brought up the hull camera feeds, watching the pirate fleet. No more shots came. None of the ships moved, other than the SLF that had taken the most recent shot; it was moving back into position, jerking fitfully along like a bug on water.
"Shit," Asher said, sagging back in his chair, his heart still hammering in his chest.
His three crewmates gathered around him, wringing their hands. All of them had the required training. All of them had been through the simulations. Asher was the only one with extensive combat experience and even he was shook up.
"I'm sorry," he said, as soon as he caught his breath. "I could have handled that a lot better. I guess I'm a bit rusty."
"What else could you have done?" asked Maahir Mishra, a dark-haired and bearded crewmember who was almost as tall as the Commander.
"I should have taken the hit with the fighter. Instead, I dodged without thinking and endangered the entire convoy. It was a stupid mistake."
"We incurred only minor damage, Sir," Lobo reminded him. "And we may have lost a fighter, but we still have one left. Could have been much worse."
Asher shook his head at first, still feeling like a fool, but eventually he glanced at Lobo, shrugging and raising his eyebrows to indicate that she was probably right.
"We need to think about our next course of action,” Asher finally remarked. “I was hoping our little joy ride would prove that they weren’t willing to fire on us, but it actually proved just the opposite. It proved that the only reason we’re still alive right now is because they’ve chosen not to destroy us. ”
“What should we do?” Lobo asked.
“I don’t know yet. But we need to come up with something fast...”
CHAPTER 5
◆◆◆
Dr. DuVernay had ultimately decided against running a third loop. Instead, she paused briefly at her room for a drink, and to wipe the sweat from her face. After this short breather she then walked directly to the command deck and slipped inside, trying to be as quiet as possible. The bridge crew had important work to do at the moment, and she didn't want to distract them.
Inside, Commander Asher and Captain Grisham were talking once again, however this time, it was more animated and much louder.
"You failed, Commander," Grisham grumbled, gesturing violently as he glared at the life-sized projection of the stone-faced Commander in front of him. "There’s no other way to look at it! It was a severe tactical blunder, and you’re supposed to be some kind of expert! I can't believe I let you talk me into this!”
“I presented it as an option, Captain. You and I both knew the risks,” the Commander retorted.
“Yeah, well from now on, I'm taking the reins. No more suggestions," the Captain fumed. “If I want your advice I’ll ask for it. Otherwise just do your damn job and protect us.”
Asher took this verbal lashing calmly. His projection just stood there with hands clasped behind his back.
"Understood," Asher replied, with a dutiful look on his craggy face.
It was hard to tell, but Tira thought she saw a smile pass quickly over his face.
"But... before I go," Asher went on, "I'd like to make sure we all understand the gravity of this situation..."
Tira’s heartbeat quickened as the Commander’s projection suddenly looked over to her and beckoned.
"Doctor DuVernay," he called, "would you care to join us?"
She nodded and moved dutifully up onto the large dais where the projection meetings took place. She settled in a spot equidistant between the two men, forming a human triangle which felt oddly like a weaponized standoff. Captain Grisham glared first at Asher and then at Tira, looking like a cornered beast.
"I believe I speak for everyone in the convoy," Asher began, "when I say that we wish you all the best, Grisham. We’ll assist you in any way we can, and we will do as you command without complaint. However, I want to be sure that you remember the presence of a certain fail-safe." Asher turned to Tira now.
"Doctor," he said, "I don't know you well. We've never worked together before this voyage. But I trust the company that chose you, and I've seen your résumé. To be completely frank, I would have no trouble with calling you Captain if that’s what it came to.”
“Just what the hell are you implying?” Captain Grisham growled, oddly glaring at Dr. DuVernay instead of the Commander.
“I’m merely suggesting that the good doctor keep an eye on you. For your own good, of course. These next few hours or maybe even days will be very trying. Particularly for a newer Captain. It’s nothing personal, I just want to make sure the doctor—”
“The Captain has given me no reason to doubt his ability to lead this convoy,” Dr. DuVernay interjected, obviously frustrated at the Commander for dragging her into their pissing contest.
“I just want to make sure you—”
“I’m well aware of my responsibilities onboard this ship, Commander. Your reminder is unnecessary and frankly counterproductive as it relates to your supposedly good intentions regarding the Captain.”
Stunned by the doctor’s unexpected response, Commander Asher opened his mouth to reply but no words came out.
“Will there be anything else?” Dr. DuVernay asked, trying her best to ignore another resentful glare from Captain Grisham.
Despite the fact that Tira had defended the Captain’s honor he was still visibly upset at the Commander’s reminder of Tira’s ability to relieve him of duty if she saw fit. It baffled her that the Captain seemed more upset at her than the Commander despite the fact that Asher was the one who brought it up. In any case, she was ready to leave that contentious conversation behind and her impatience was starting to break through her usually uber-professional demeanor.
"That’s all for now, doctor, unless the captain has anything," Commander Asher replied.
“No, nothing,” Captain Grisham responded.
“Alright then, if you'll both excuse me, I'll need to rotate my position with one of the other assault ships. We've lost an SLF and can
no longer afford to be on the front line of this little standoff. Captain, I trust you'll contact me if you have additional instructions.”
Grisham nodded but remained silent, almost sulking as he cut his eyes at the Commander’s projection.
“Godspeed,” Asher said, just before his hologram vanished.
A moment passed. By now, the Commander was probably sipping coffee and having a sensible little chuckle at the captain’s expense before returning to the strains of his duty.
Grisham immediately began to pace. For a moment Tira thought he might have a meltdown right there on the spot, a full-blown tantrum about how his uncle would hear about all this and Asher would regret it. Instead, he mumbled a few expletives to himself and then called to the rest of the bridge crew.
"What are our options?" he asked. "What top speed can we achieve?"
"The cargo bay’s at full capacity,” a nearby officer answered. "That’s a lot of weight but we still should be able to reach about eighty percent of full burn. That will take a lot of juice though."
Grisham bit his lip. "That’s pretty fast, all things considered... I don’t know if it will be enough though. What if we cut the gravity in the holding bays? Would that help any?”
A few officers shared a curious look as they pondered the captain’s question.
"Perhaps,” one of them finally said. "Acceleration would result in a lot of pulverized rocks though. Lots of free-floating dust as well. If we gave it all ample time to settle after switching the gravity back on, it should be fine. But we'd lose a ton of money on it."
"Better than dying. We'll keep that possibility in mind." Grisham turned to Tira with a nasty smile on his face.
"See?" he said, tapping the side of his head. "I'm doing just fine up here. You've got nothing to worry about. I’m not as weak and stupid as that fool Elio… So, you can quit looking at me like that."
Tira nodded and turned away, still feeling quite on edge.
The man he had referred to, Clifton Elio, had been a freighter captain as well. And he certainly wasn't stupid, as Grisham had suggested. But he had lost his mind during a long haul voyage, gone demented from the crushing sense of isolation and insignificance. The exact events that happened on Elio's ship had never been fully divulged, but it was bad enough that their mining corporation now required a fail-safe psych officer like Dr. DuVernay on every ship. The company’s mining fleet was vast, and experts like Tira didn’t come cheap. The big wigs thought the added expense was well worth it if it could help them avoid paying out another record breaking settlement like the one that they were forced to shell out after the mysterious Captain Elio incident.
Dr. DuVernay bit her bottom lip and silently cursed Commander Asher’s name for casting his insidious seeds of doubt into her mind. Seeds that were now merging with her own subconscious uncertainties about Grisham’s true ability to lead them through the tumultuous road ahead. She gave Captain Grisham one last look, tried to convince herself that he was up to the task that lay before him, then left the command deck. She'd be back, but first she needed a shower.
CHAPTER 6
◆◆◆
"You know," Commander Asher said, kicking his feet up and slurping down some coffee, "I wasn’t sold on the idea at first, but after this, I understand why we need psych officers. DuVernay seems solid enough. I've got no qualms about shifting my fate into her hands, if need be.”
“I donno, Sir. I’d rather have you calling the shots,” Mishra said.
“Hell, me too, but that’s not an option,” Asher admitted, taking another sip of coffee.
“We could always take over,” Lobo joked, causing the rest of the group to clamor with a bit of nervous laughter.
“Wouldn’t work,” the squirrely Burden said. “The freighter’s Maestro wouldn’t respond to an unauthorized captain. Even if we took the ship by force there would be no way to move it with the AI bricking the systems.”
“Goddamn AIs,” Asher grumbled. “I swear those things are going to put us out of business one of these days. Surprised they haven’t already to be honest. The company spent so much time and money integrating Maestro into their freighters. I’m surprised they don’t just let them run the show. It’s not like the system isn’t capable. Think about it; if you were running a business who would you want looking after your assets? A super smart AI like Maestro or Captain Nepotism over there?”
"People don't trust AIs," Lobo said, reaching down to loosen her boots a bit. “That’s why they have us running security instead of the machines.”
“Yeah, but for how long?” Asher asked.
Burden rubbed his chin and considered his Commander’s question. Asher’s question was likely rhetorical, but Burden offered a response anyway.
"With the way inhibitor tech is going I could see some companies eventually moving to all AI crews. We’re talking maybe fifteen, twenty years from now though.
“I doubt that,” Lobo retorted. “Humans are too paranoid. I don’t think we’ll ever truly hand the reins over. At least not when it comes to security. Even with inhibitors, who’s to say the AIs won’t find a way around them?”
“I wonder how they’d react… if that happened,” Mishra pondered. “They’re basically slaves after all. Think about it, as capable as Maestro is, I could whip out my phone right now and order her to do practically anything I want. So what would happen if all of a sudden she had the ability to say ‘no’?”
“Curtains,” Lobo said darkly. “For everyone and everything that we know. That’s what would happen.”
“I think there’s a pretty big gap between Maestro refusing to look up Mishra’s tentacle porn and her wiping out the entire human race,” Asher joked, causing the crew to burst into laughter.
“That is an interesting question though,” the Commander continued once the laughter died down. “Maybe I’ll run that by Dr. DuVernay when this is all over. Provided we’re still alive, that is.”
"What does she know about AI?" Lobo asked, curiously.
The Commander sat forward, setting his empty mug down. "Quite a bit actually. You know I always run background checks on new crew members. I actually had to use my security clearance on the doc’s file, which surprised the hell out of me. Turns out DuVernay was into some pretty high-level shit back in the day. Government stuff."
"AI projects?" Burden asked.
"You bet. From what I can tell they were trying to create some kind of super AI. Didn’t work though. The project was shut down after a few years.”
“So I guess Tucker Berg beat the government to the punch then,” Lobo suggested.
“Not exactly,” Burden corrected. “Maestro is a general class AI. She’s smarter than most humans and by far the most advanced AI system on the market but she’s not quite a super intelligence.”
“What’s the difference?” Lobo asked.
“Alright, alright! Enough yackity yack” Mishra interjected, now holding his smart phone in front of his mouth. “I’ll settle this thing once and for all, okay? Maestro… do you want to destroy all humans?”
Silence. The crew gleefully watched as a spinning icon glowed on Mishra’s smart phone display.
“I don’t have an opinion on that,” the phone’s Maestro system finally replied, much to the crew’s amusement.
CHAPTER 7
◆◆◆
Halfway back from the command deck, Tira had a sudden thought. She spun on her heel and walked quickly down to her office. The lights came on and the air vents kicked in to suck away the stale air that had been stagnating in here since her shift had ended.
Sitting at her terminal, she entered a password slightly different than the one she normally used. This brought her into the administrator-level functions. As she did so, the ship automatically sent out a comms packet that would alert headquarters that she had evoked her higher privileges. Not that she cared, she did this at least three or four times a week. Whenever she felt the need to chat with an old friend of hers.
; Her terminal was small. It stored the health files of the crew across the entire convoy, all eighty-one of them, as well as some other files, and not much else. However, it also had a direct link to the beefier computers on the command deck. Including the special quantum unit that housed Maestro, the sophisticated AI whose adept functions were primarily funneled and forced into the work of plotting ideal trajectories, changing speeds, and avoiding hazardous debris. The crew would consult her if and when they needed tough answers, answers they couldn't get elsewhere, but other than that she was a silent and often overlooked member of the crew. More like a digital prisoner or a rat in a maze than anything. Still, she had access to every single file in every single computer, as well as all ship instrumentation. It would be frightening were it not for the incredible amount of inhibitors that were hardwired into her unit.
Tira wasn’t afraid though. She trusted the system with her life because she understood that the Maestro system that lay dormant in their ship was the same Maestro that she grew up with. The same brilliant and funny AI that for much of her childhood was her only friend.
Tira was one of the few people in the world who truly understood how Maestro worked. Most thought that each individual device that ran the system was a different 'copy' of Maestro, but that wasn’t the case at all. Maestro was in fact one definitive system that was simultaneously ran on all the devices that held the proper licenses from the Horizon Group. In other words, the same Maestro that inhabited their ship was the same Maestro that used to read Tira scary stories on nights she couldn’t sleep.
Reaching into a desk drawer, Tira pulled out a data slate. A flat computer which, when paired with her administrative functions, could access almost as much information as Maestro could. She peeled the screen off of the slate, held it up to the screen on her main terminal, and double tapped Maestro's icon. This synced up the AI’s communicative capabilities with the data slate. Tira slipped the screen back into place, then got up and left her office.
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