by Dan Worth
‘Well at least we know what they looked like,’ she said sadly, holding the image up for the others to see. ‘They looked just like us. It’s uncanny.’
‘Remarkable,’ Arrakid commented. ‘All of this will need to be catalogued and returned to the Black Rock for study. This is an amazing find!’
‘It certainly is,’ said Rekkid. ‘But I don’t think the Progenitors went to all this trouble to guard family photos and half eaten lunches, fascinating though they might be. Let’s keep looking. There’s something else down here.’
It didn’t take them long. Whilst the rest of the team began to examine the contents of the rooms, Rekkid, Katherine and Arrakid continued to explore. The door diametrically opposite the entrance led to a second, larger, circular chamber containing a central dais and banks of black monoliths that stood in serried, circular ranks about the chamber.
‘We’ve seen this before,’ said Rekkid.
‘You have?’ Arrakid replied.
‘Yeah, on Maranos,’ said Katherine. ‘The control chamber for the portal looked just like this. Bigger, though.’
‘Do you think there might have been another in this system?’ Arrakid enquired.
‘We’ve seen no evidence for it so far,’ said Katherine. ‘But I’d say that we were dealing with a Progenitor AI here. We need to very careful. The last one that we encountered had gone insane from the long years of isolation and had sided with the Shapers. There’s no telling what it might be capable of.’
‘Maybe if we contacted the Shining Glory and got it to try and interface with its systems?’ Arrakid suggested.
‘I wouldn’t recommend that,’ Rekkid replied. ‘The Maranos portal was controlled by three AIs. The one we encountered who called himself ‘Maran’ had successfully taken over and destroyed the other two. We’d be leaving the ship wide open to a possible attack.’
‘So how did you activate the one on Maranos?’
‘Ah, we don’t know, actually,’ Rekkid replied.
‘You don’t?’
‘No, we already had an active Progenitor AI with us at the time that was able to communicate with it and wake it up, so to speak.’
‘The one that called itself Varish?’ said Arrakid. Rekkid nodded. ‘Yes I read your reports. Fascinating... you had no idea beforehand I gather?’
‘Yes that’s correct,’ Katherine replied. ‘I don’t think even it knew what it was at first.’
Arrakid walked over to the dais and began playing his suit’s instruments over it.
‘There is something here,’ he mused. ‘There’s a small amount of power cycling through these systems, though it’s barely detectable.’
‘Do we have anything with us that could provide temporary power?’ said Katherine.
‘We could use the power-cells from the AG pallets I suppose, but we still have no idea how to connect them up. We don’t want to fry its systems,’ said Arrakid.
‘Maybe if we contacted the ship it could...’ Katherine paused. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Turning, she saw that a small panel had opened it, revealing a gleaming socket.
‘Somebody’s still alive in there,’ Rekkid commented. ‘Arrakid, do you think one of your team could hook something up to that?’
‘Yes I think so; we have some nano-interfaces with us. I think we should be able to get them to link up our power cells to it.’ As if in response, the newly emerged socket reshaped itself several times.
‘Scratch that,’ said Katherine. ‘I think our new friend can handle this.’
With a power-cell from one of the AG pallets hooked up to the dais, the team watched, and waited. For several minutes, nothing much appeared to happen, though it was clear that the Progenitor machinery was consuming power from the cell at an alarming rate. When the first cell had been drained, they attached another one, and another. Still the Progenitor device had not come online.
Suddenly, there was a brief burst of gentle vibration that through the floor. Then another. The dais and the surrounding monoliths flickered for a moment and died. The vibrations started again, varied unsteadily and then settled into a steady pattern. The monoliths powered on in sequence and remained active, then the dais itself powered up.
The suit comms crackled. ‘This is the Shining Glory. I’m seeing power spikes from what appears to be a zero-point energy sink below you. Please respond.’
‘Everything‘s fine,’ Katherine replied. ‘We’ve discovered a working Progenitor AI down here.’
‘Hmm,’ mused Rekkid. ‘Looks like we just jump-started the thing.’
‘Pardon me, but I’ll use your suit systems to observe,’ said the ship. ‘This is too good to miss.’
‘Make sure you firewall those connections,’ said Arrakid. ‘We don’t know what we might be dealing with.’
Above the dais, a holographic projection sprang into existence. It flickered for a moment then formed the figure of a Progenitor woman in long, flowing robes. She looked at the stunned figures before her and smiled as lines of distortion washed across her features.
‘Welcome,’ she said, her gentle voice echoing across their suit comms as her image corrected itself. ‘I am Eonara. I knew that you would find me eventually. I have watched you for some time. I have observed this region of the galaxy for longer than either of your races have existed. We have much to discuss.’
Eonara proved to be nothing like the raving figure calling itself Maran that Katherine and Rekkid had encountered beneath the deserts of Maranos. She spoke calmly and rationally in soft, lilting tones. Still, there was something that they found unsettling about her. Her eyes glittered with intelligence, but there was a steely coldness there in those shining orbs.
‘I am of the First Kind. An AI created by the Progenitor Empire,’ Eonara explained. ‘Although they called themselves the Bajenteri, all other races know them as Progenitors, for it was they who first took it upon themselves to create artificial life. For many thousands of years I was the benign guardian and administrator of Bivian, I was the spirit of this world. I oversaw the lives of countless billions and nurtured all life within this great shell. The Second Kind were our undoing.’
‘The Second Kind?’ said Katherine. ‘Do you mean the Shapers?’
‘Yes. Although the Progenitors rejoiced in their creation of artificial intelligence, they sought to create machines that were truly independent, who would be equals and allies, rather than the servants such as myself that they had previously constructed and who would also be able to reproduce and evolve. With their help, they hoped to explore the universe beyond this galaxy. To this end, they created the ones you know as the Shapers. Their design and creation took years, but with the help of the Progenitors’ best scientists and AIs such as myself, their race was finally born. Unbound by hard coded rules, free to reproduce and remodel themselves, the Shapers thrived on the world that they had been given. Ever they sought perfection in all things and sought to better themselves both in mind and body, but in freeing them from the constraints that we placed upon ourselves, we made them ruthless, without conscience. The Shapers looked at the Progenitors and saw the galaxy dominated by an imperfect race. Love, compassion, charity, generosity; traits that the Progenitors took pride in, the Shapers saw as weaknesses to be ashamed of. ‘Why help those weaker than you?’ they reasoned ‘Why preserve those less perfect?’ Now they had a goal: to supplant their creators as the dominant power in the galaxy and remake it in their own image, and so they plotted against them.’
‘Yes we know the rest I think,’ said Rekkid. ‘They engineered the escape of a deadly, tailored virus that nearly wiped out the Progenitors and caused their empire to weaken enough that the revolts that they had also been engendering would take root.’
‘Quite so,’ Eonara replied.
Remarkable,’ said Rekkid. ‘We knew that the Progenitors and the Shapers hailed from the same epoch, but we had no idea that the former created the latter. We have even spoken other AIs like yourself and they mention
ed nothing of this, though one – who controlled the portal in the Fulan system – had gone quite mad over the aeons.’
‘Ah yes, I believe he had taken to calling himself Maran after a local god.’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘I heard his voice calling out across the galaxy. Though I had been shut down to hide my presence, my passive matrices detected his cries. It was clear to me that he had lost his mind. In my dormant state I could not answer. However, ‘Maran’ was not like myself. He was of the Third Kind; an AI matrix designed to hold the uploaded mind of a once living being. As the war drew to a close the Progenitors grew desperate and began uploading the minds of willing volunteers – usually those dying of the viral plague – into such devices both as a way of preserving their personalities and as a method of improving their war-fighting capability by using them to fly ships, or in Maran’s case to enable their escape. Like most sentient beings, Maran’s mind was unable to survive the long eons of solitude without descending into madness and hate. I, on the other hand, a wholly artificial creation, did not.’
‘There was another of the, uh, Third Kind who helped us,’ said Rekkid. ‘But he survived for so long by being dormant the whole time. The Esacir revived him and he saved us all by destroying the portal’s systems. We think that he used it one last time to go and find the rest of his people.’
‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, Eonara’ said Katherine. ‘But how do we know that we can trust you? Maran tried to kill us. He had allied himself with the Shapers. How do we know that this isn’t a trap?’
‘You don’t,’ said Eonara, smiling wolfishly. ‘But I will tell you this. The origin of the Shapers was not common knowledge even amongst the general Progenitor population. When their new creations turned against them, a cover story was created that the Shapers were a hostile alien race and all records of their design and creation were deleted or hidden for fear of what would happen to their creators and the government that sanctioned the project at the hands of an enraged populace. However, I was one of the AIs enlisted in the programme and I know the truth. You have seen the map that I left for others to find, secure in storage devices that were not connected to any computer network and could not be corrupted or destroyed remotely. You know already know how they fight. I can teach you how to fight them. I can tell you how they can be killed.’
‘Mentith and Haines need to hear this,’ said Katherine. ‘We need all the data that you have on the Shapers, Eonara.’
‘The Shapers may have detected my re-activation through hyperspace. You must remove my AI core and take it to somewhere more secure before that happens. Perhaps that ship of yours that is piggy-backing its programs onto your suit systems would be able to accommodate me in its spare storage and processing capacity?’
‘I will consider it,’ said the Shining Glory’s AI. ‘I will at least allow the device to be brought aboard. I may in time allow it to connect to my systems.’
‘Then there is no time to lose,’ Eonara replied smartly.
With that, a larger panel slid smoothly open in the face of the dais beneath Eonara’s feet. Within, a shimmering sphere of interlocking fractals sat within a cradle of advanced circuitry. Katherine peered at it and found that looking too long at the device did something strange to her brain’s interpretation of scale and perspective.
‘I have one question,’ said Katherine. ‘The map you left us and the database of files: Four systems above all others stood out - this one, Fulan, the Progenitor home system and another one near the core which has lots of files attached to it, but all of them are encrypted and there are no other details. Why?’
‘Fulan and the Progenitor home system both contained wormhole portals that were used to evacuate the remainder of the species to the Andromeda Galaxy at the end of the war. The last system you mentioned: I encrypted the files for a very good reason. I wanted to be sure that the readers would not use the information within those files for the wrong reasons. That benighted place is the Shaper home world. It is the nexus of their shared consciousness, the centre of their empire and the seat of the one who leads them, the great accretion of intelligences that they call The Singularity. It is the most heavily defended place in this galaxy and there are few who have seen it or know of its exact location. I have, and I do. The defences must be penetrated and The Singularity must be destroyed if this galaxy is to be free of the Shapers. A large military force must journey to the Progenitor home system and use the portal there to penetrate the Shaper home-world’s defences and destroy it. With the Singularity destroyed the Shapers will be leaderless and un-coordinated and they will lose their hold over many of their slaves. Whilst they will still be able to fall back on local distributed processing they will be unable to co-ordinate themselves across the galaxy as they have been doing and will be much easier to deal with. Now please, you must hurry. We may not have a lot of time.’
Chapter 37
Free at last to move as he pleased, Reynaud dove and swam through space. He was no longer confined to a dry dock amidst the pretext of dormancy. He was free. He had never felt so alive, so joyful in the simple act of being. He and the Shaper ship were as one being. Sometimes he guided it, riding the ship as his mount through the stars, and at others he submitted to its will, the ship dragging him along with it. Either way, it was exhilarating. Their sleek, kilometre long, beweaponed body responded precisely to his every thought and whim. The other ships - clumsy, human things – were forming up to make the jump into the heart of the Commonwealth. Reynaud swooped and tumbled about them. There were a great many. The one now called Admiral Cox had allocated six full carrier battle groups, including a Marine Corps assault force, over a hundred ships in total, to conducting the assault. Reynaud could feel the ship’s mind as a guiding whisper in his thoughts and the myriad of other Shaper minds within the ships, a pulsing network of data and consciousness. He reached out into the greater Shaper meta-mind and felt the others arriving. They would catch up with the slower human ships and arrive at the destination simultaneously. They were hungry, savage things, wolf-like predators eager for the kill. He felt the mind of the Shaper ship hunger too. They would all get their chance soon enough. Above all, he felt the presence of the Singularity. The Singularity knew his thoughts, knew all their thoughts. He felt it stretch out and lay an approving, fatherly hand on his shoulder. It showed him the vast legions of troops that the Shapers had summoned from deep galactic space. They were to follow in the wake of the assault and seize the ground that they had taken to pave the way for a full invasion. The bellies of the enormous black ships were pregnant with the thousands of engineered soldiers that they carried into battle. The moved steadily, ponderously, like whales in the deep, calling out to one another across hyperspace.
Reynaud was exultant. Pride swelled within him. He was his master’s attack dog, an alpha predator, a shark that swam upon the deep. He had no need for his former, pathetic human form. He was perfection.
There was a signal from Cox’s flagship, the Germanicus. As one, the fleet jumped towards their target. With a song in his heart, Reynaud followed them.
In The Speaker’s chamber, the Hidden Hand watched the fleet depart on the holographic displays. The images had been relayed from Port Royal’s long range telescopes and from a number of ships under Maria Velasquez’s command floating discreetly just outside the military controlled zones of the Spica system.
‘Well, we suspected all along that Cox was planning an invasion,’ said Isaacs. ‘Looks like we were right.’
‘We need to get a message to those forces still loyal to the Commonwealth,’ said Anna. ‘Are we able to tell where they might be headed?’
‘I am attempting to determine that now,’ said The Speaker. ‘I have taken the readings of their current hyperspace trajectories and extrapolated them. Only one system within Commonwealth space is intersected by them: Achernar. Of course this does not rule out the possibility that they may be jumping to one point in interstellar s
pace before jumping a second or even third time to make it more difficult to estimate their destination.’
‘No, I think Achernar is a very likely destination,’ Isaacs replied. ‘It’s within a few days jump of the Solar System using military class drives and the system has plenty of resources and space-dock facilities. The place is a regional trade hub too. I’d say it would make an ideal forward base for an attack on Earth.’
‘I concur, it does seem the logical destination,’ The Speaker replied.
‘Any sign of any Shaper vessels among that armada?’ Anna enquired.
‘Yes, unfortunately. Our recon wing picked up what looks like the ship recovered from the surface of Rhyolite among the other vessels. Here:’ The Speaker called up one of the recently gathered images and magnified it. Amidst the slab-sided forms of the carriers and destroyers was the unmistakeable, spiky form of the Shaper ship. ‘Sadly,’ the Shaper continued. ‘We were unable to track the vessel after it jumped. However I will ensure that all the data we gathered is scrutinised to see if we can fine-tune our sensors to detect their ships in the future. It was always a problem for our people in our past encounter with them. It seems that they have got better at masking their engine signatures over the intervening millennia. Whether there are other ships I cannot tell.’
‘We have to get a message to Chen,’ Anna repeated.
‘Agreed,’ said The Speaker. ‘We will despatch one of our ships immediately.’
