AI Awakening

by Robert Boren

  On it.

  “Good, then I’ll go back to my office and work the back channel. Talk to you later.” Vermillion left the bridge.

  “You used to be a fighter pilot?” JJ whispered to me.

  “Yeah, in my youth. It was fun. Vermillion knows I liked it.”

  “You won’t, though, will you?”

  I eyed her. “Don’t worry. I was ordered not to.”

  Trey, we’re almost done with that workup on the fighters. Another couple minutes. Is that okay?

  “I’ve noticed you always under-promise and over-deliver. You’re catching on quick.”

  Trust me, the delivery always leaves you wanting.

  JJ giggled, shooting me a glance.

  See what I have to put up with?

  “You won’t get any sympathy from me.” I winked at JJ.

  What did that mean? You closed one of your eyes.

  “It’s just a stupid human trick,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Ha. You just thought about it.

  “I meant no offense.”

  I know you’re fond of me, Trey. The feeling is mutual, even though we joke with each other.

  As far as you know.

  I sighed. “Are you two done yet?”

  Yes, I’ll put the diagrams on screen and talk to them.

  A picture of the sleek Mark V fighter came on the screen, outline with cutaway views of the interior in some spots.

  This generation is very similar to the Mark IV in look and pilot interface, but the capabilities are much different.

  Break it into bullet points on the screen next to the picture. Not all humans absorb info at the same rate.

  “That’s a good idea,” JJ said.

  Taking her side. I’m shocked. Okay, so be it.

  The screen to the right of the one showing the diagram started, the first bullet showing a condensed version of what Butch had just said.

  Second bullet point. The Mark V has jump capability, which requires much more power. The new battery pack is larger, so the second seat was removed. A full charge takes eighteen hours, which is over double the Mark IV version’s recharge time, but range and power to weapons and shields is much better. The longer charge time is worth it.

  “How much of this did you know before?” JJ whispered.

  “Most of it so far, from a conversation I had with Vermillion.”

  For the third bullet point I’m going to add some new information, over and above what the official documentation says. I’ll tell you what is new.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  The Mark V doesn’t have the rear-facing gunner. There is an onboard AI which can fire the rear weapon, or the single pilot can fire it, but in a target-rich environment that isn’t optimal. The friend or foe recognition capabilities of the onboard AI isn’t good enough to rely on. In testing there were too many friendly fire incidents.

  “That was from the documentation, correct?” I asked.

  Yes. Here’s the new part. The new AI capability can interface with the Mark V and take over for the onboard AI. It was good that we initiated AI creation for the pilots. That nearly eliminates the issue.

  “Nearly?” JJ asked.

  I’d say it totally eliminates the issue.

  In theory my girlfriend is correct, but the new AIs have not been tested running fighters.

  Girlfriend?

  Just kidding. I’m not a masochist.

  JJ burst out laughing again. I could only shake my head. Skip and Sondra shot each other a smirk.

  Keep it up. Are you gonna go on?

  Fourth bullet point. While the Mark V has stealth Samson Drive technology, it has no cloaking device. These ships are invisible to sensors while in a jump, but visible to the naked eye while operating in battle mode.

  “Nobody else has cloaked fighters,” Nolan said.

  That we know of. We have no idea if there are fighters on the Razor ships, or what their capability might be.

  “Touché,” Nolan said.

  Fifth Bullet point. The weapons systems are as follows. Kinetic railguns, shooting standard Central Authority exploding projectiles or depleted uranium rounds. Plasma guns, enhanced with the new technology we now have on the larger ships.

  “They aren’t as powerful as the New Jersey or Tristar plasma guns, are they?” Skip asked.

  No, not in a gross sense, but they can be focused on a much smaller area, which gives them similar ability to break through shields and damage the ship. The shields are the latest technology as well, but against the power of a New Jersey class ship or even a Razor ship, they’ll break down with repeated heavy use. There are also battery concerns with both the Plasma guns and the shields. This ship was designed around the railgun capability, which would be the right choice most of the time against large targets.

  “Which type of projectile is the best?” Sondra asked.

  To attack large targets like a Razor ship, the depleted uranium rounds followed immediately by a standard round. The uranium will break through the shield, the standard round going through the weakened point in the shield, where it can detonate after piercing the ship’s outer hull.

  “What could we do other than ship to ship with a fighter?” Skip asked.

  Ground attacks. Either projectile can be deadly on terrestrial targets.

  “What about range?” Sondra asked.

  I’m getting to that. Bullet point six. Enhanced impulse power. The Mark V fighters have improved impulse engines, which gives them astonishing speed in vacuum operations. The system self-adjusts to the presence of terrestrial gravity to protect the pilots. The engines are dual powered, meaning they can run off the main battery power pack, or they can use a small reactor with standard fuel. Not all of our Mark V fighters have reactors, and there are some issues with them that haven’t been ironed out yet.

  “What kinds of issues?” Nolan asked. “I didn’t see those in the documentation.”

  “So that’s why you haven’t been asking many questions,” Sondra said.

  This capability is in the documentation, but it’s restricted. The reactor cooling module has some problems with high, sustained usage. This could cause the reactor to explode.

  “We don’t have to use them, even if they’re onboard, right?” I asked.

  That is correct, Trey. Bullet point seven. Operational capacity of the batteries are as follows. Jumping and impulse cruising only, up to one month on an eighteen-hour charge. Fighting, using plasma weapons and shields with battery impulse power, up to thirty-six hours.

  “And then they’re dead in the water?” Skip asked.

  No, they’d be dead in space.

  Hardee har har. We need a rimshot.

  “All right, what else?”

  This isn’t in the documentation of the Mark V, but it is in the documentation of the New Jersey, and there’s a flag to it from the Mark V documentation.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I bet I know,” JJ said.

  There’s that gambling reference again.

  JJ shrugged. “It’s the enhanced tractor beam capability of this ship. We had long discussions about that in the SDAC. The range on the new tractor system is incredible. We’re still well within the range to pull in the fighters if they engage at the end of our wormhole.”

  “We won’t be if we continue on for another fourteen hours,” Nolan said. “We might want to slow down or stop and wait for the Razors to get here.”

  “Butch, how much longer can we travel on impulse power before we’re out of range with the tractor beam?” I asked.

  Twenty hours, six minutes, and twelve seconds.

  “So we’re okay for now. Let’s keep going, but monitor closely.”

&nb
sp; JJ, I’m surprised that you didn’t know more about the Mark V from the SDAC.

  “I didn’t sit on the SDAC fighter board, only the large ship boards,” JJ replied.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  It is. Emerald and I have been looking at the Razor data we collected from the prior engagements. We’ll pass along suggestions on the spots to apply pinpoint plasma and railgun attacks. We can feed that information to the pilot’s AIs as soon as they are far enough along in their development.

  “Very good,” I said. “How far along is that development?”

  Twenty-two percent.

  “What, no fraction?” JJ asked.

  I rounded.

  Finally taking my advice, huh?

  One ignores females at their peril.

  JJ shot me a grin.

  { 12 }

  Dogfight

  W e were still heading for the natural worm hole to the Virgo Supercluster. The AI generation for the fighter pilots was nearly complete, and it still appeared that the Razor ships were heading for the spot where we came out of our worm hole in the Leo Supercluster.

  Vermillion walked onto the bridge. “You’re all still here? It’s been hours.”

  “Can’t leave at this point,” I said. “Too much going on.”

  “Are you still planning to send fighters to attack the Razor ships?”

  I nodded. “The fighters are being prepped as we speak.”

  “How many are you sending?” Vermillion asked.

  “One hundred, with an additional hundred ready to help if needed. The jump to that location only takes four minutes.”

  “Two hundred out of five thousand,” Vermillion said. “Good, I’m glad you aren’t sending a larger number.”

  The AI development for the fighter group is complete.

  “You created five thousand new AIs in this amount of time?” Vermillion asked.

  “No, Mr. Chairman,” I said. “We picked the team first, and created two hundred. We’ll continue on with the rest, but at a slower pace.”

  “Where are the Razor ships?” Vermillion asked.

  “Twenty minutes from arriving in the Leo Supercluster,” Nolan said.

  “Should we be getting the fighters out before they arrive?” Vermillion asked.

  “That’s the plan,” Skip said. “Sooner or later we should test the cloaking with that bay open, though.”

  “I agree, but not when we’re in danger of losing a fuel source like Boroclize,” Nolan said. “If they see our position, it won’t be difficult for Simone to figure out we can take a natural worm hole to the Virgo Supercluster.”

  “Is there anything in the Leo Supercluster that would make them think we’re looking for fuel here?” Vermillion asked.

  “There is,” Nolan said. “There’s a world about twelve days from our position that has Boron in large amounts, but it’s of a lessor quality. It’s like the grade we have on Amberis.”

  “We can’t refine it with the New Jersey facility?” Vermillion asked. “Why not? Refinement is refinement, is it not?”

  “It would be better to refine it with a facility like Tac has,” JJ said. “We have a single-stage refinery. Tac’s is multi-stage.”

  “What does that mean in layman’s terms?” Vermillion asked.

  “The higher the grade of Boron, the less cycles of refinement we need. The Boron on Boroclize, like the Boron that we used to get from Devonia Axxiom, can be refined with a single cycle. In order to refine lower-quality Boron we’d have to repeat the cycles over and over again. That takes a long time.”

  “How does Tac’s system get around that?”

  “His system has the capability to run over a thousand cycles at a time. He’ll still have to complete all the cycles for each batch of raw material, but he’s doing it on a thousand batches at once. Once the output gets rolling, he’ll get fuel output daily.”

  “JJ’s right,” Nolan said. “They’ll stagger the start times, so once they’re up and running, we’ll have some batches completing every day. That’ll give us a constant flow of output.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Vermillion said. “We’ll have fuel in process at various stages at the same time. We’ll be finishing some and starting others every day.”

  “Yep,” JJ said. “All we have to do is fill the pipeline. Once we’ve got that going, we’ll be harvesting completed fuel from, say, a hundred final process cycles, while we start a hundred more first cycles.”

  “How many cycles does the raw material on Amberis require?” Vermillion asked.

  Nolan smiled. “Last time I talked to my Uncle, he said it will take 16 cycles.”

  “Does it make sense for us to create a more robust refinery on the New Jersey?” Sondra asked.

  “No,” JJ said. “The waste would be a problem.”

  “Yep,” Nolan said. “Lower grade Boron has more waste products to process out. Disposal of the waste becomes a real challenge. This is not a huge problem with a terrestrial facility. It’s dangerous to store the waste onboard a ship, and if we shove it outside, long-range sensors all over the zone will pick it up.”

  JJ nodded in agreement. “It’d be a nice bread-crumb trail to wherever we are.”

  “Isn’t there some waste even with a single cycle refinement?” Sondra asked.

  “Only a very small amount,” JJ said. “Small enough to encase in packaging and eject from the ship. Assuming we don’t have any leaky packages, sensors won’t see the waste material.”

  “Wait, why can’t the enemy see the waste products from the Amberis refinery?” Skip asked.

  “It goes into shielded containment right away,” Nolan said, “and besides, sensors have a problem picking out the radiation profile on planets. There’s too much noise in the atmosphere for the sensors to get through.”

  The sensors we use to see space-bound fuel and fuel waste are very well-developed. It’s what search and rescue looks for when there’s been a starship accident.

  All this talk is nice, but I think we’d better get those fighters out of the bay right now. The Razors will be out of their jump a little sooner than we expected.

  She’s right, Trey. Give the word.

  “Please deploy the two hundred fighters outside of the ship right now, and put the first hundred on standby for the order to jump.”

  Orders sent. Most of the pilots were already in their fighters waiting.

  “Put the fighter bay on screen,” I said.

  “As you wish, Captain,” Nolan said. The ten screens on the front wall of the room came to life, the first five showing the sleek fighters lined up from different angles, shooting out the open bay doors in groups of three. The other screens showed the fighters massing together in formation outside the ship.

  “Impressive sight,” Skip said.

  We watched as the fighters continued to fly out of the bay, and then the door closed, the first five screens moving to the outside view.

  “We have video and audio for each fighter, correct?” Vermillion asked.

  “We do,” Nolan said. “That’s why I lit up all ten monitors. We’ll display ten fighter cams on each of the screens. Audio will go to the normal bridge speaker system.”

  The Razor ships just came out of their jump, and fired plasma bursts to kill anything nearby.

  “How many?” Vermillion asked.

  All eighteen that left Devonia Axxiom, Mr. Chairman.

  Nolan looked up from his screen. “Scanning their plasma blast. I’m not seeing a huge improvement on their power level.”

  “Are we in any danger?” Sondra asked.

  “No, we’re way out of range,” Nolan said. “Glad our fighters weren’t there.”

  “Could that blast have killed them?” I asked.

  “Negative,” Nolan said, “but it would’ve eaten away at their shields.”

  “Deploy the fighters,” I said.

  One
hundred of the fighters on our screens disappeared, Nolan changing to the individual fighter view, which was blank for all, under their serial number and pilot name. Everybody held their breath for a few minutes, and then the fighters were there, the individual screens showing the eighteen Razor ships, getting bigger on the video as the Mark Vs rushed in, firing their railguns, debris noticeable on some of the big ships right away. The audio scratched on.

  “This is commander Klemperer. We are engaging the enemy now.”

  “Their shields aren’t very strong.”

  “No chatter, Hicks.”

  “Look at that one,” Nolan cried, pointing to the forth screen on the top row. “Four of our fighters teamed up. It’s beginning to implode.”

  “Looks like the AIs figured out the right places to hit,” I said.

  Thank you, Trey. The Razors are riddled with weak spots.

  “Whoa,” Skip said. “Look at those fighters go. They’re a lot faster than the Mark IV model.”

  “We’re killing a second one,” JJ said, pointing to another screen, where the massive ship was beginning to disintegrate, blowing up after a moment, the fighters rushing to the next target. “How are we doing that so fast?”

  We’re targeting ports into the drive system. Blowing the drive causes the reactor to overload in a few seconds.

  “Simone will look at this data and strengthen those points,” Vermillion said. “This will get harder.”

  There are sixteen other weak spots we can attack. We’re holding back so they can’t correct the problems, unless they figure them out themselves. So far they aren’t impressing me.

  “They’ll jump away any second,” I said, watching the fighters buzzing around the remaining sixteen ships. Two of them let out plasma blasts, the light washing out the video from most of the fighters, coming back on after a second, fighters racing towards those ships, hitting them repeatedly, one of them cracking open and then imploding, the other firing it’s plasma cannon twice before a fighter blew the turret apart, ten more fighters rushing at it, hitting it in the same place used to destroy the others. The Razor ship listed to one side and imploded, debris flying everywhere, the fighters having to avoid large pieces.