by M. D. Cooper
The holodisplay zoomed in on the moon. Andy was there. She was there. Lyssa watched from three views now, ready for this one to cut out at any second. The Resolute Charity was melting around them.
Larissa was a roundish grey orb one second, then it was a sea urchin covered in spines. Missiles were launching from the moon. Wave after wave shot outward, course corrected, and then arced out over Neptune.
She frowned, not understanding at first. Were they attacking the clouds of Neptune? Why? Then she analyzed the flight paths and saw each of them was following a slingshot flight path. They were launching away from Neptune.
The first missile proved her correct as it was flung away. Lyssa tried to plot its course, but it began to jink erratically, then went dark, disappearing from scan. There was too much distance between Neptune and the rest of Sol. They were too small.
They would disappear without anyone knowing they had ever existed. Could she chase them with the Weapon Born? The blast radius from Proteus would burn them in instants, or they would be lost in the dark, their engines no match for the missiles.
She wracked her mind for a way to track the missiles. They were silent. No spectrum activity except for the drive signature, and then that disappeared as each missile killed thrust. She quickly mapped each projectile’s drive profile and velocity. With the right sensors, she might be able to find them later.
Even though she knew their last known vector, they could change at any time. This barrage of missiles could go anywhere in Sol.
Xander shook his head at her.
he said.
Lyssa was formulating a response when the ship’s communications array failed, and she lost her connection to the Resolute Charity.
The last thing she saw was Xander’s grin in an ocean of static, and then she was with Andy in the command center on Larissa, staring in disbelief as thousands of launch commands executed on the overhead screens.
The End
* * * * *
AFTERWORD
It’s hard to believe we’ve almost reached the end. If Michael had told me a year ago that we were going to write a story together that would span more than half a million words (a thousand words takes me about a half hour to write), I'm not sure I would have believed him. But here we are, and I as we close out the penultimate book in the SW: Origins series, I'm only more excited about where things are going to go.
I find myself only wanting to write more about these characters. In some cases, I already have. There’s going to be a novel focusing on Fugia Wong and Ngoba Starl coming out probably around July, telling the story of the gray parrot she mentions in Lyssa's Call. The story of the parrot is inspired by a Ted Chiang story called “The Great Silence,” which is available free if you search online (Chiang’s "The Story of Your Life" was the basis for the movie Arrival. I highly recommend that story, too.) In the “The Great Silence,” the parrot narrator says, “Humans have lived alongside parrots for thousands of years, and only recently have they considered the possibility that we might be intelligent.”
This has been one of the key ideas for me in Sentience Wars: Origins. I think humans are bad enough at judging each other that it's easy to think we won't be any better at recognizing intelligence in a newcomer like AI. Or, we’ll go through a phase where everyone is excited about the possibility of AI until the new car smell wears off and we get down to exploiting them just like we do each other. No, I'm not a pessimist. As an old battalion commander told me once, “I'm a student of human nature.” At the time, I thought that sounded like a ridiculous thing to call yourself. I've come around to his way of thinking.
The other possibility is that humanity and AI grow together in such a way that we'll become comfortable with each other through a process of time. There's a term being thrown around now called "Human-AI Centaur," where an AI does the heavy computational lifting on a project and the human does the detail work, much like robots and humans work together now in factories. This might be fine for non-sentient AI, but what happens when your co-worker truly has the right to say no?
There's only so much philosophy you can explore in an adventure-action story without boring people but this is part of what I find fascinating about the future we're moving toward. Once AI becomes sentient, it won't be like a marriage where people choose to live together and hormones smooth the way. We'll be family. I've been lucky to have a brother who is one of the greatest parts of my life, but there were certainly times when we beat each other up (and no we weren't kids.) But not all families get along. Sometimes the driving force in a person's life is to get away from their family.
So we’re at a point in the story where we’ve learned that Alexander has been used to trap and exploit other AI. We saw a ghost of his mind from Nibiru but is he going to be able to break free? If the Psion Group has the collected power of all current SAI technology, will anyone in Sol be able to stop them once they attack? Will other SAI find themselves driven to self-destruction like Xander?
I’m grinning as I write out these questions because I can’t wait to dig into the answers. There are going to be some huge explosions in-bound and our little corner of the galaxy is never going to be the same. We’re reaching the part of Sol history Tanis and Angela remember the most, the part that formed their feelings about humanity and AI and how the world had to get broken before each side could walk into the future together.
Michael and I were just joking about the tag line for Lyssa's Flame. Something short, punchy, to-the-point. Since Lyssa's Flame kicks off the first Solar War, I think it’s safe to write the punch line as:
BIG EXPLOSIONS.
I’ll see you there.
*****
As always, let me know what you think and what you’d like to learn more about. You can always email me at [email protected] or check in at the Aeon 14 Facebook group. I’ve got an email list at jamesaaron.net/list
Thanks for reading,
James S. Aaron
Eugene, 2018
THE BOOKS OF AEON 14
Keep up to date with what is releasing in Aeon 14 with the free Aeon 14 Reading Guide.
The Intrepid Saga (The Age of Terra)
- Book 1: Outsystem
- Book 2: A Path in the Darkness
- Book 3: Building Victoria
- The Intrepid Saga Omnibus – Also contains Destiny Lost, book 1 of the Orion War series
- Destiny Rising – Special Author’s Extended Edition comprised of both Outsystem and A Path in the Darkness with over 100 pages of new content.
The Orion War
- Book 1: Destiny Lost
- Book 2: New Canaan
- Book 3: Orion Rising
- Book 4: The Scipio Alliance
- Book 5: Attack on Thebes
- Book 6: War on a Thousand Fronts (May 2018)
- Book 7: Fallen Empire (2018)
- Book 8: Airtha Ascendancy (2018)
- Book 9: The Orion Front (2018)
- Book 10: Starfire (2019)
- Book 11: Race Across Time (2019)
- Book 12: Return to Sol (2019)
Tales of the Orion War
- Book 1: Set the Galaxy on Fire
- Book 2: Ignite the Stars
- Book 3: Burn the Galaxy to Ash (2018)
Perilous Alliance (Age of the Orion War - with Chris J. Pike)
- Book 1: Close Proximity
- Book 2: Strike Vector
- Book 3: Collision Course
- Book 4: Impact Imminent (April 2018)
&nb
sp; Rika’s Marauders (Age of the Orion War)
- Prequel: Rika Mechanized
- Book 1: Rika Outcast
- Book 2: Rika Redeemed
- Book 3: Rika Triumphant
- Book 4: Rika Commander (April 2018)
- Book 5: Rika Unleashed (2018)
- Book 6: Rika Infiltrator (2018)
- Book 7: Rika Conqueror (2019)
Perseus Gate (Age of the Orion War)
Season 1: Orion Space
- Episode 1: The Gate at the Grey Wolf Star
- Episode 2: The World at the Edge of Space
- Episode 3: The Dance on the Moons of Serenity
- Episode 4: The Last Bastion of Star City
- Episode 5: The Toll Road Between the Stars
- Episode 6: The Final Stroll on Perseus’s Arm
- Eps 1-3 Omnibus: The Trail Through the Stars
- Eps 4-6 Omnibus: The Path Amongst the Clouds
Season 2: Inner Stars
- Episode 1: A Meeting of Bodies and Minds
- Episode 3: A Deception and a Promise Kept (2018)
- Episode 3: A Surreptitious Rescue of Friends and Foes (2018)
- Episode 4: A Trial and the Tribulations (2018)
- Episode 5: A Deal and a True Story Told (2018)
- Episode 6: A New Empire and An Old Ally (2018)
Season 3: AI Empire
- Episode 1: Restitution and Recompense (2019)
- Five more episodes following…
The Warlord (Before the Age of the Orion War)
- Book 1: The Woman Without a World
- Book 2: The Woman Who Seized an Empire
- Book 3: The Woman Who Lost Everything
The Sentience Wars: Origins (Age of the Sentience Wars - with James S. Aaron)
- Book 1: Lyssa’s Dream
- Book 2: Lyssa’s Run
- Book 3: Lyssa’s Flight
- Book 4: Lyssa’s Call (2018)
- Book 5: Lyssa’s Flame (2018)
Enfield Genesis (Age of the Sentience Wars - with Lisa Richman)
- Book 1: Alpha Centauri (2018)
Machete System Bounty Hunter (Age of the Orion War - with Zen DiPietro)
- Book 1: Hired Gun
- Book 2: Gunning for Trouble (May 2018)
- Book 3: With Guns Blazing (2018)
Vexa Legacy (Age of the FTL Wars - with Andrew Gates)
- Book 1: Seas of the Red Star
Fennington Station Murder Mysteries (Age of the Orion War)
- Book 1: Whole Latte Death (w/Chris J. Pike)
- Book 2: Cocoa Crush (w/Chris J. Pike)
The Empire (Age of the Orion War)
- The Empress and the Ambassador (2018)
- Consort of the Scorpion Empress (2018)
- By the Empress’s Command (2018)
Tanis Richards: Origins (The Age of Terra)
- Prequel: Storming the Norse Wind (At the Helm Volume 3)
- Book 1: Shore Leave (June 2018)
- Book 2: The Command (June 2018)
- Book 3: Infiltrator (July 2018)
The Sol Dissolution (The Age of Terra)
- Book 1: Venusian Uprising (2018)
- Book 2: Scattered Disk (2018)
- Book 3: Jovian Offensive (2019)
- Book 4: Fall of Terra (2019)
The Delta Team Chronicles (Expanded Orion War)
- A "Simple" Kidnapping (Pew! Pew! Volume 1)
- The Disknee World (Pew! Pew! Volume 2)
- It’s Hard Being a Girl (Pew! Pew! Volume 4)
- A Fool’s Gotta Feed (Pew! Pew! Volume 4)
- Rogue Planets and a Bored Kitty (Pew! Pew! Volume 5)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
James S. Aaron lives in Oregon with too many chickens, a Corgi and two irascible cats. He kicked around the world in the U.S. Army for a while and always had a paperback in one of his cargo pockets.
Since he still has a day job, James spends his free time writing, hammering, soldering, gardening, biking, and listening to audiobooks during most the above.
You can sign up for his science fiction newsletter at http://jamesaaron.net/list
* * * * *
Michael Cooper likes to think of himself as a jack-of-all-trades (and hopes to become master of a few). When not writing, he can be found writing software, working in his shop at his latest carpentry project, or likely reading a book.
He shares his home with a precocious young girl, his wonderful wife (who also writes), two cats, a never-ending list of things he would like to build, and ideas…
Find out what’s coming next at http://www.aeon14.com
