Tyche's Ghosts

by Richard Parry

  “Yes and no,” said Jody. “But let’s get back to that another time. Shit’s going to get real soon.”

  He was referring to the massing collection of Service-class constructs arrayed around the base of one of Mercury’s massive solar fronds. Hundreds, metal chassis glinting in the sun. Behind them, a vaulted secure door led to the Judge facility below.

  “We have all we need,” said Algernon. “The math is quite simple, Jody.”

  “Walk me through it one more time,” said Jody. He pressed a hand to the glass in front of him. “You sure this will hold?”

  “Engineers have no trust for the things they don’t make,” said Algernon.

  “I think it’s a meat sock issue,” said Jody. “We’re frail in the head.” He tapped the side of his rig’s visor.

  “You’re frail. Sentence ends,” said Algernon, but he cracked his jaws, illumination along the interior of his ‘teeth’ showing a grin. “Stand behind me, Jody Mercadal. You are a special meat sock, and you won’t die today.”

  The enemy, for want of a better term, held railguns, high kinetic weapons that accelerated small ferrous payloads to hypersonic velocities. A slug would penetrate the armor of Algernon, which is why they were sheltered by the special laminar glass the Coordinator-class constructs had designed. The enemy’s crystal minds were not as advanced as Algernon’s, but well ahead of anything organics had inside their fragile, cumbersome skulls. They wouldn’t waste munitions attacking Algernon’s overwatch bunker.

  “Okay,” said Jody. “You’re good at math. I won’t die. Cool story. I still want to hear it one more time, what with all those assholes out there.” He pointed toward the still growing ranks of the Service-class constructs.

  “Emberlie will take her Marine unit four hundred and twelve meters over there.” Algernon pointed toward a small rise to the left of their position. “They will lay down a barrage of fire designed to excite and interest the enemy.” He swiveled, pointing to the base of the solar frond. “We will take our Marines in there, except for Alicia Orri and Capricia Sly.”

  “Can I stay with those two?” said Jody. “I mean, you got this, right?”

  “I’ve ‘got this,’ but you’re still coming,” said Algernon. “You have Guild magic about you, Jody Mercadal. We might need a spark of it today. Don’t worry. I’ll be with you. There are insufficient Service-class constructs to be a material threat.”

  “There are hundreds,” said Jody.

  “I seek clarification. Is this a question, statement, or disagreement?”

  “All of that,” said Jody. He sighed. “Well, let’s get started.”

  Algernon clapped a golden hand on the shoulder of Jody’s rig. Human mannerisms were a bizarre, mismatched collection of things that made no sense. Fifty million years of evolution on the computers inside their heads left the odd strand of corrupted code. But if it took a slap on the shoulder to get Jody to relax, Algernon would do it for his friend. “Let’s. By the end of today, this civil war will be over.”

  “And then we can get on with the process of freeing the rest of you,” said Jody. “The emperor promised. The man sticks to his word.”

  “Hmm,” said Algernon. He’d only met one human so far who was known for keeping his word, and he stood with Algernon against the rest of the AI race.

  The situation was complicated.

  • • •

  Emberlie touched Algernon’s mind over the comm net. “Be safe, Algernon.”

  “You too.” Constructs did not hug the way humans did, but the clutch of their thoughts was much the same in Algernon’s view. “Today is the best of days. The Guild armada is with the Navy above. We will override the Judge and end this conflict.”

  “Your trust in humans is interesting,” she said, but turned, long golden limbs working with perfect efficiency. She lifted a particle cannon like it weighed nothing at all, then turned to her squad, addressing them over the audio comm net.

  Algernon left her to it, turning to his own team. He had six Marines. Technically, they reported to Jody, but Jody told them, I’m a geek. A nerd. Algernon is who you follow. When the shit’s hitting the fan, look for the golden guy. And the Marines had nodded, and relaxed, like following a Guild Liaison had never been their first choice. Algernon was never sure why humans didn’t say something when things were a bad idea but laid it at the feet of the muddy programming in brains designed fifty million years ago.

  Capricia Sly was a recon specialist. Her ship suit was silver but would change to be any color and temperature it needed to be. When the Marine activated her stealth tech, she would disappear to all eyes, even Algernon’s. It was her job to go wide and far, making sure nothing was coming for them.

  Lance Reeves wore a mechanized suit, golden sheathes for all his limbs. A rocket pack was installed on the rear of the suit, and it sported a plasma cannon on one limb and a rail assembly on the other. Lance had said That’s mine when he’d first seen the suit, designed by Algernon’s people, for Jody’s people. It would keep them safe and move with fluidity difficult to match in their usual powered armor. The more Lance wore it, the better the neural net would support him.

  Alicia Orri was the squad’s sniper. She carried a long rail array, and her helmet provided telemetry from the rest of the squad. The Marine would wait a distance back, and target enemies through walls and other structures.

  Steffen Bo was the only one of the Marines Algernon thought had a bad attitude. He carried a portable cluster rocket launcher, and had said to Algernon, I don’t like your kind. Algernon wished he didn’t have to keep Steffen Bo safe.

  Finally, the curious pair of Jeanne Garay and Dirk Tiny. Dirk was short, like his name, and Jeanne was larger than meat sock female average. Tall, and broad-shouldered, she and Dirk moved as a pair. They carried plasma rifles, and neither said much. This suited Algernon, because meat sock conversation was very slow.

  Algernon looked among his squad. All professionals, checking weapons, waiting. The blood flow visible through their visors suggested heightened stress caused by fear, but they held it down. Minor tremors in their voice patterns confirmed his suspicions: the meat socks thought they would stop functioning today. “Hello,” he said.

  They stirred, then quietened, all gazes locked on him. Steffen Bo coughed. “This going to be some kind of morale bullshit?” he said. “We should just fucking glass this rock. Be done with you.”

  Algernon shrugged. “You probably should.”

  “Yeah, we — wait, what?” Steffen Bo looked like he expected a trick.

  “You should,” said Algernon. “The math is there. My people are at war with each other. You would call it a ‘civil war,’ but war is never civil. The Service-class constructs, who shine your shoes and clean your toilets, are very tired of being your slaves.” Algernon spread his hands wide, palms up, in what he knew the meat socks would see as a conciliatory gesture. “So are the Coordinator-class constructs, like Emberlie and myself. The difference of opinion is in how this is best solved.”

  Blank stares. Jody coughed. “Algernon’s saying the Service-class constructs want to kill us all, and the Coordinator-class machines want to sue for freedom.”

  Algernon gave a meat sock agreement nod. “Exactly so. The constructs out there don’t want to kill me. They want to kill you. While you exist, I am a threat, but if you all die, every last one of the meat socks in the universe, then our species will live in harmony.” He shook his head. “The difference of opinion is in whether genocide is a good option. Which is what, ironically, you are proposing, Steffen Bo.”

  “You saying you’re better than us?” sneered Steffen Bo.

  “Yes,” said Algernon. “Or, I’m saying people like Jody Mercadal are better than you for building my people the way we are. We have names, not designation. Our dreams are of freedom, but a shared one with our makers.” He blinked his optics at them. “I’d be pleased if we could fight together. We need to reach the Judge. It is the central arbiter of the Servi
ce-class constructs. We believe by influencing the Judge, we can change the code.”

  “Brainwashing?” said Alicia Orri.

  “Educating,” said Algernon.

  “I wonder,” said Alicia Orri. “But not enough to care. Where do you want me?”

  “Here are your coordinates,” said Algernon, sending the battle plan to their HUDs. “Please try not to die. It would make me upset.”

  Emberlie touched his mind. “We’re going.”

  Algernon gave her the warmth of his thoughts. “See you in seventeen minutes.”

  The sharer of his life nodded to his meat socks, especially Jody Mercadal, and then turned on her heel, leaving the overwatch center.

  “It’s go-time,” said Lance Reeves. He flexed the metal limbs of his exosuit. “Don’t you worry, Algernon. We’re gonna get your people back online.”

  “Very good, Lance Reeves,” said Algernon. “It is definitely ‘go-time.’”

  • • •

  Algernon exited the overwatch bunker first, the gold of his limbs reflecting Sol’s light, casting him a warrior of the sun. As soon as he exited the bunker, he drew railgun fire.

  This was expected, and why in his left hand he carried a portable laminar shield. The glass pinged and clicked as railgun rounds impacted. The ‘shield’ was not a traditional design like humans were familiar with, although he carried it on just one arm. It was a brick of glass, one meter thick, designed like ablative armor to crack and wear under fire. Its purpose was to allow Algernon to survive two minutes. He started his internal counter, noting the firing positions of the enemy allowed only a few to aim on his position at once.

  Emberlie’s team had taken a different path, a tunnel dug under the crust of Mercury. They would emerge in a few moments at their expected position.

  The egress from the bunker was a narrow path, leading down a miniature valley toward the solar frond. The surface baked in the light of the sun, giving Algernon a steady supply of energy to replenish his internal backup batteries. His Marines followed behind him, huddling in his lee to avoid dying under the railgun assault.

  “Fuck me!” said Capricia Sly.

  “Steady,” said Algernon. “This is expected. Nine seconds. Eight. Seven.” He continued to count until he hit one.

  Emberlie spoke to him, consciousness to consciousness. “We are ready.”

  Algernon thought about a fitting thing to say. Battles were recorded for prosperity, and his logs would be downloaded and stored somewhere. “Stand by ion control. Fire.”

  There was a brief pause, mere picoseconds, but a significant length of time for Emberlie. “What?”

  “You’ve never watched the classics,” he said.

  “That’s why they fear us. Not because we’re better than them, but because we have a terrible sense of humor. This is not an ‘ion cannon,’ Algernon, and that is a very, very old movie.”

  He signed off with a mental wave. The hillock that separated Emberlie’s position and the massed troops firing at Algernon ruptured in a massive shower of rock as Emberlie’s particle cannon sliced through. Her high-energy beam of subatomic particles sheared the hillock in half, the lance of blue-white light brighter than Sol’s for a moment. Service-class constructs shattered and exploded, fuel cells rupturing as their incandescent energy was released. The shockwave of the particle cannon’s work rumbled the ground under Algernon, the volcanically dormant Mercury feeling alive and vibrant.

  Emberlie’s Marine squad fired, a hail of small arms rounds designed to draw the Service-class machine’s attention. It did exactly that, the machines swiveling to the perceived maximum threat. Some fire still bore down on Algernon, but that was expected. He would have been disappointed if their foe hadn’t fought both fronts, because it would have shown a flaw in their guiding logic arrays.

  Algernon readied his own particle cannon, the weapon’s link to his internal systems showing no errors. Meat socks might have said green across the board, but there was no green. Just a series of readiness assessments, all nominal.

  Targeting solution. Seventeen shots. Pending. Acquired.

  He screwed his feet, driving them into the rocky ground of his home, then one-two lowered his shield and raised the cannon. Bright actinic blue-white energy spat from the end of his particle canon, seventeen bright bolts fired so close together human eyes would see a continuous stream of fire. Seventeen targets turned incandescent, pieces of machine exploding into fragments heated significantly higher than Mercury’s lambent surface.

  Shield back up, no incoming fire arrived. Algernon ran. Like a golden streak, he launched from the soil, chips and fragments flying in his wake. As he ran, he dropped the shield, the hunk of glass tumbling slowly in Mercury’s gravity as it fell. He held the particle cannon in both hands, and as new targets came into his visual field, he let his neural net do the work.

  Target pending.

  Target acquired.

  Shot.

  Target pending.

  And on it repeated, a clock that would never stop. He was half-way to the Judge’s entrance when Steffen Bo’s cluster rockets impacted ahead of Algernon. Too close by far, and Algernon’s judgment suggested this was deliberate. It didn’t matter, as his body twisted and dived, grabbing a Service-class construct as a mobile shield. The construct struggled in his grasp, but it was slower and weaker than Algernon. Fire boiled from the cluster rocket’s impact point, heat and shrapnel washing over Algernon, huddled in the shelter of the construct he held.

  When the fire had past, he dropped the glowing remains of one of his people, and ran again. His particle cannon was no longer operational, a fragment of rock having destroyed its firing mechanism. Algernon dropped it, picking up a railgun. It would take precious seconds to unlock the crypto keys on the firing mechanism, but that’s what Alicia Orri was for.

  His optics mapped targets as he went, and the bright flashes of impacts hit as her railgun shattered the targets he mapped. Human and machine, working as one. Together, for a common goal. Peace, through war.

  Humans were peculiar.

  Lance Reeves ran past him, bright golden limbs taking great leaps. “I got you, Algernon!” he yelled, diving to the front. Algernon took a few picoseconds to process that. A meat sock, running into the line of fire, to protect a machine. Maybe Lance Reeves realized Algernon’s survival was paramount. Or, and Algernon understood the wary logic, maybe Jody Mercadal wasn’t the only special meat sock.

  Capricia Sly’s voice came over the comm. “We’ve got a situation. The Guild is firing at the Navy, and—” followed by silence, and the absence of her on the network.

  Lance’s weapons roared, kinetic railgun rounds and plasma swashes blazing out. He managed exactly three shots from the railgun, and forty-two from the plasma cannon, before the golden armor exploded in a shower of flame. The impact was immense, throwing Algernon sideways, golden limbs pinwheeling as he tried to gain an understanding of up versus down.

  As he spun, he saw the heavens. Optics focused above as he flew through the not-quite-air. Navy vessels, alongside Guild. They were both firing, bright lances of energy reaching from orbiting ships. Weapons designed to destroy hulls in the hard black, raining destruction on ground teams.

  Algernon ran through multiple simulations and came up with a likely scenario. The Guild, concerned with the fact their creations were not infallible, thought to use this moment to erase their mistake. They would excise the Judge like a cancer. All on the surface would be considered expendable to that one, singular purpose. Algernon had shown them where it was and brought his friend Jody Mercadal here. Who was also of the Guild, which meant they didn’t care who had to stop functioning to halt the machines.

  Emberlie said, “They are razing the planet.”

  In Algernon’s internal tactical map, he saw the lights shut off as Alicia Orri died. He saw when Steffen Bo stopped functioning, his parts sprayed across Mercury’s acrid surface. Jeanne Garay and Dirk Tiny were one moment firing plasma into the
enemy, and then there were wisps of smoke and ruin where two humans had stood.

  Algernon saw Jody Mercadal, looking to the skies. His friend looked down, right into Algernon’s optics. “Run!” he shouted.

  Not save me or you said I wouldn’t die. Just run. Like Algernon was important, just as important as a meat sock.

  When the signal came, Algernon listened. He thought it was Jody, because it came across the comm net. But it wasn’t. It was a magnificent problem. Pure math, a core equation so beautiful he couldn’t look away. At first, ten percent of his crystal mind focused on it. Then, twenty. A second after he’d opened the data packet, a full half of his mind was consumed with the problem.

  Algernon realized there was a problem and told his neural network to get him to Jody.

  Emberlie said, “We are undone.” Then she shut off, gone.

  There was a hard plink-chunk, and Algernon stumbled. His internal diagnostics reported a round had penetrated his chest armor. He looked behind Jody, seeing more figures in Guild rigs approaching. He thought, I do not know these people, and they are not a part of my tactical plan. Now, he had less than forty percent of his mind left, the beauty of the problem unfolding before him.

  A massive explosion lifted Algernon into the air once more. An orbital strike, the heavens opening as the Guild starships vented their wrath on the crust. As he flew, he saw their starships receiving fire from the Navy ships and returning in kind. Human turned on human.

  The round that penetrated Algernon’s chest released its payload, a charged EMP blast. His neural net disrupted, arms and legs flailing to uselessness.

  Twenty percent of his mind remained. But the problem was so beautiful. He had to solve it.

  The moment when Jody Mercadal died happened very fast. Algernon was used to being so much quicker than humans, and here, with just ten percent of his mind left, he was a snail like them. A stray fragment of rock penetrated the Engineer’s visor, shattering his face, and destroyed his fragile, beautiful mind.

  Ground shaking, destruction all around, Algernon fell as Guild members walked past him. Toward his Service-class kin, and the Judge below the surface.