And, as they had recently found out, no one knew when more enemy would show. The last seven years had been stressful, even frantic. Absen had lain awake many a night, sweating the possibility that a Meme task force would show before Desolator regained his former strength.
Now, no single thing except the Pseudo-Von-Neumann complex on Afrana’s moon Enoi rivalled Desolator’s production capability, and his computing power. Those capabilities would now be used to turn Conquest into a similar warship, multiplying its combat capacity by at least a factor of ten. Absen suspected that, properly handled, it would be much higher. After all, she was still his ship, even with new teeth. He knew her inside and out, and he knew Meme, how they thought, how they fought, how they never forgot.
He knew how to kill them.
Because they learned slow. Nothing was ever lost to Meme memory molecules, save by annihilation, but they were not flexible of mind. The shorter-lived races supplied that spark, which was, Absen supposed, one reason the blobbos enslaved them.
The electric vehicle rolled to a smooth stop in front of an enormous opening it could have easily passed through. There was no door.
“The control chamber,” the minion said, pointing.
“Thank you,” Absen replied. The cart and creature rolled away, leaving him among the machines. Far fewer were visible, just a handful on their ways about inscrutable tasks. He entered the control chamber.
Seated on a large chair, a technological throne, really, sat a majestic old Ryss, his mane graying but his eyes clear and bright. “Abssssen!” the big cat hissed, standing to stride over. “Admiral on the bridge!”
The crew present stood, until Absen waved them back to their seats with a smile. “At ease. Carry on.” Absen shifted to passable Ryssan. He’d finally accepted a cybernetic implant, which included the ability to download his allies’ languages. The formal phrasings and overtones, the feeling of gravity in the words, actually made it a pleasure to speak, even though his mouth undoubtedly could not do it full justice. “Captain Chirom, it is good to see you.”
“And you.” The Ryss towered over the human, putting out his paw-like hand to be clasped, man-style.
“It was well done, the killing of the Destroyer.” Absen raised his voice to encompass the dozen beings scattered about the scores of control stations, a bare skeleton crew, drawing pleased smiles. “I commend you, Captain and crew.”
Chirom ruffled his mane in a Ryss shrug, and lowered his voice. “I am a figurehead, no more. Desolator doesn’t need me, and barely has a use for organic crew. Now that he is building a twin, I wonder whether we organics have become obsolete.”
Absen returned the shrug. “I learned long ago that all we can do is trust people, whatever their flaws. Is Desolator a person?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Is he trustworthy?”
Chirom turned toward the opening where the door used to be. “As much as anyone is.”
“We humans have a saying: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“It is a wise saying. We Ryss also have a saying: Trust with one eye open.”
Absen chuckled as Chirom walked slowly out of the chamber, leaning slightly on a heavy walking stick. “Yes, we have similar maxims. That’s one reason for the crew, I believe: as fail-safes and reminders to the AIs that they no more built themselves than organics did.”
“Yet they are building themselves now. And organics are rebuilding themselves with microbes and machines.”
“True, but reproduction is reproduction. Only a fool believes he owes nothing to those who came before. I hope Desolator and his kin will not be fools.”
Chirom looked sidelong at Absen. “I believe he is saner than most of us, as long as he is not damaged. And I believe he has learned from this incident, and has taken steps to guard his mind better than before.”
Absen sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that for some time. Once we returned control of his own body, his machines and his factories, we gave up any chance of controlling him. There’s no point in trying. We have to trust him…and I try to. I’m not so sure about any new AIs he spawns.”
“Why not?”
“Organics go through a stage of helplessness and then growth. If raised properly, they learn their limitations and their society’s rules before they gain enough power to do too much damage. When they are eventually given freedom and responsibility, we hope they have learned the wisdom and restraint to handle it all.”
“I believe you have missed one critical factor,” Chirom replied.
“Yes?”
“AIs think so much faster than we do that time to them must seem expanded. Seconds become minutes or hours, or even days. If it takes twenty or thirty years to raise a mature Ryss, or a Human or Sekoi, perhaps a mature AI can be…developed, if that is the proper word, in much less time.”
Absen stopped at a corner where their access corridor met one of the enormous main thoroughfares that ran Desolator’s length. Its center was full of rolling machines, speeding to and fro as if on a highway, while others ambulated on the sides like pedestrians.
Chirom pointed to the left, and they continued next to the wall. Humans would have constructed a railing, perhaps an elevated walkway, but the machines had no need. Between their semi-centralized control and their reflexes, the clattering traffic flowed around the two organics without mishap.
“Your words restore my confidence,” Absen said. “The Conquest AI will, I am sure, be connected soon.”
“It has not been connected until now?” Chirom asked, surprised. “How long has it been aboard Conquest and activated?”
“A month or so. Desolator sent it over in a shuttle. Cyberneticists from all three races have been talking to it – him? – starting with text, then audio, then video, according to the program and timetable provided.”
“And you have not spoken with him?”
“The AI? No. I…” Absen ground to a verbal halt, even while continuing his slow stroll next to the Ryss.
“He makes you uncomfortable. I understand. Remember, I lived most of my adult life with Desolator’s…insanity. His voice still gives me nightmares at times.”
“Maybe you should ask him to change it.”
Chirom nodded. “Perhaps. But we Ryss are traditionalists. Only the threat to our very survival forced our society to take the drastic step of building machine intelligences in what we believed to be our own image. Along the way we remade our own biology and our society, and nearly destroyed ourselves in so doing.”
“Needs must when the devil drives.”
“That is an odd turn of phrase, but I believe I understand.”
Absen smiled. “Transliterated from English, the most common Human language.”
Chirom shook his head and his mane. “The whole concept of different languages is still absurd to me. I understand it in my head, but not in my stomach. We Ryss only ever had one language, though with some variation in accent. The Sekoi are the same. How you Humans ever rose to unite your planet while speaking hundreds –”
“– thousands –”
“ – thousands, then, of languages, is inconceivable.”
Absen clapped Chirom on his shoulder, reaching upward to do it. “That, my friend, is truth, and a very long tale indeed. Remind me someday to tell you the story of the Tower of Babel.”
Chirom turned aside into a smaller corridor, leaving the hustle and bustle of the thoroughfare behind. The admiral and Tobias followed. Absen found carpet suddenly under his feet, instead of the rubbery nonslip surface of the utility tunnels and spaces.
“Where are we going?”
“To the place of food. I could have something brought to me in my quarters, but I prefer to eat with others, and show myself to the crew. It seems to do them good.”
“You are a hero, Chirom. All of you Ryss are. Humans and Sekoi owe the Ryss aboard our lives, for stopping Desolator from devastating the planet.”
Chirom winced, gesturing upwa
rd to encompass the ship they occupied. “We also built this death machine, and poorly, it seems, for one unlucky strike to put a lance through the AI’s mind. We have no more than corrected our own error, and Humans and Ryss paid in blood.”
They entered a large dining hall, sparsely populated. Absen could see a few dozen of each species, while the room could undoubtedly hold five hundred or more. Along the wall stretched three separate sections, one for each race’s food. The human station held the middle, symbolically as well as practically standing between the carnivorous Ryss and the mostly herbivorous Sekoi. Interestingly, it appeared that some of those two races sampled food from the human counter, and humans from the other two. Ryss did not seem to eat much Sekoi food, nor vice versa.
“An admirable arrangement,” Absen remarked as they walked across to the serving counters, nodding and greeting the crew on the way.
“Conquest will be similar, I suspect. Desolator is not much of an innovator. He can perfect and engineer an idea, but comes up with little original, as far as I can tell.”
Absen’s voice was musing. “Perhaps that’s one thing we organics can do better than machines. I hope the AIs recognize that. There’s little enough they would seem to need us for.”
The two selected their food from some limited choices. A ship’s mess is a ship’s mess, Absen thought, no matter how much one tries to make it into a restaurant.
To his surprise, after loading his plate with what looked like warm raw meat from the Ryss line, Chirom got a large cup of cold milk from the human section’s dispenser, and then put it in the microwave to warm.
Chirom rumbled to Absen, “You are surprised at my choice? I am told that the felines of your own world also enjoy bovine’s milk.”
“Makes perfect sense, now that you say so,” Absen replied. “Can you taste sweet? I am told that Earth cats cannot, but they like milk for its protein and fat.”
“The fact that you just spoke our word for it should tell you we can, but I understand that sweet is a much more powerful sensation for the Earthborn. For us, it’s not so compelling.”
Absen chuckled. “Easier to avoid obesity for you, then.”
“I do not see many obese humans.”
“That is because,” Absen lowered his voice out of deference to nearby Ryss that might overhear his vulgarity, “of the…microbe we have within us that improves our health.” He found himself struggling for precise terminology in this unfamiliar tongue.
“Life code restructuring,” Chirom said with distaste. “Perhaps we can discuss that after we eat.”
“Apologies. What should we discuss?”
“Perhaps your war plans?” Chirom spoke diffidently, his eyes down, lifting gobbets of meat delicately to his mouth with one extended foreclaw in what passed for good table manners among the great felines.
A lifetime of attention to operational security warred with the obvious knowledge that his plans would be of no consequence to anyone in the system once he left it behind. OPSEC won out; there were still factions within human, Ryss and Sekoi society with differing agendas, as well as undoubtedly some Hippo agents of the Meme that even Spooky Nguyen had not found yet. He couldn’t afford to assume the next three months would be free of interference, so Absen shook his head. “Not here. Not yet.”
“As you wish. Then, perhaps…back to our differences.”
Absen forked meatloaf and mashed potatoes into his mouth. “That’s a rich subject,” he said around his food. “Such as?”
“I was thinking of our approach to combat. Take for example the new TacDrive system, which seems an obvious improvement of the basic photonic drive, once I heard of it. Yet we Ryss did not think of it.”
Absen grunted and swallowed, washing his food down with tea. “You can’t think of everything.”
“Yet, the projections show the ability to use the drive tactically within a star system will multiply the combat power of any ship, at relatively little cost, as well as providing a means of escape.”
“As I understand it, Ryss are not fond of running away.” Absen swirled his tea, then drained the glass.
“No, we are not. The Dominator ships were built to fight the Ryss way: to bite, claw and shred our enemies until they are dead.”
“Or until you are.”
“Yes, that is the disadvantage. Yet to run smacks of dishonor.” Chirom’s voice was mild, even as he met Absen’s eyes.
“You don’t seem exercised by that word the way others of your people are.”
“I have had the past seven years, the contemplative years of an elder, to think on other ways. Yours, the Sekoi, and those of races the Meme absorbed. For a time, our strategy of concentration of power served us, until the Empire simply overwhelmed us with numbers. When it became obvious the Ryss were doomed, we tried to run, but were too late. Had we faced the possibility of defeat earlier, more might have escaped. Now I look around and see only the pitiful remnant.”
Absen said, “But your people are breeding on Afrana, faster than the other races. In a few generations your population will rival ours, and soon after, the Sekoi. By that time more superdreadnoughts will be built, and all of our peoples will spread, and hunt Meme.”
Absen felt the fire in his soul as he thought of the new tools at his disposal. Any true warrior loved more powerful weapons, stronger armor, faster vessels of combat, for they brought victory, and life. Perhaps with the Ryss tongue came echoes of the Ryss spirit.
“I know. But I will never see that day.”
Absen reached across the table to grasp the thick wrist of the other officer. “You are growing maudlin, my friend. I know you do not wish to hear it, but I must remind you that, with human knowledge and the Sekoi Blends’ expertise in the biological sciences, we could create a microbe for Ryss that would ward off aging, at least for a time.”
Chirom patted Absen’s hand with a careful paw. “No. The Sekoi embrace the life-code tinkering, but dislike body-machine implants such as you have. We Ryss eschew both, for what you would call religious reasons, though also cultural. We already broke taboos to create the machine minds and to change our own breeding patterns. Right now, most of us Ryss are in a conservative phase of the social cycle, trying to preserve our culture against the enormous alterations forced on them from outside. We cannot tolerate much more change, I caution you.”
Absen sighed, nodded, and withdrew his hand. “All right. It just pains me to think I will depart and you will die of old age.”
“I will join my ancestors in Eternity. You Humans believe in something like that as well, do you not?”
“We have beliefs as varied as our languages. Most of them involve some kind of afterlife. I…” Thinking again about his lost family, and absent comrades, Absen sighed more deeply, a shudder. “I hope so. I dearly hope so.”
“Then perhaps there is a common Eternity, for all of the Creator’s children.”
“Even Meme?” Absen raised his eyebrows.
“Even Meme. Once they have been punished in the Pit for their sins.”
Absen laughed then, a low, chilling thing. “Good. I intend to send many, many of them there.”
Chapter 5
While Absen slept on Desolator during the refit, his days were spent aboard Conquest, wandering the corridors and watching the machines tear his ship down and rebuild her.
The dreadnought’s bones remained the same, though newly laminated with collapsium and neutronium in microfine ferrocrystal matrices, strengthening them much as humans did to their cyborg combat troops.
Her armor likewise improved. Tiny machines like miners burrowed through the toughest substances known to humanity like gophers in soft dirt, and then filled in their tunneling with exotic substances. Dense shielding, hard overlapping plates, superconductors to instantly dissipate heat and cold and EMP and even create powerful magnetic fields to deflect charged particles, all the knowledge of Ryss, Sekoi and humans merged under Desolator’s supervision.
They were aided by a
colony of human “lab rats” in white coats wandering around with tablets, peering at everything, seeing nothing but their work. Absen imagined that if the Eden Plague had not cured most eye problems, they would have all been pushing thick taped-together glasses back onto their noses every few minutes while they poked about like moles.
As it was, the machines acknowledged Absen more often than the organics did. It appeared that a geek was a geek was a geek, no matter what the physiology. These technoids were in their own material heaven, chattering endlessly about details Absen could barely follow.
Still, he was able to ask a few pertinent questions and make some suggestions drawn from his submarine days. Despite the engineers’ assurances that all systems were extremely reliable, Absen insisted on more backups, and more damage control equipment, especially the kind organics could use. He didn’t want to rely solely on the new AI and its machines, no matter how effective they were supposed to be.
Once the structure, the hull, and the armor were completed, weapons appeared, most of them as if by magic. In reality Desolator floated their large parts across the intervening space and installed them from outside, while their smaller internal parts were brought in through the docking port.
Machines ripped down bulkheads and created corridors and enormous interior spaces within Conquest in which to work. Absen sometimes stood in a hatch and looked across hundreds of meters of openness, usually without gravplates, and watched the dance of the telefactors and robots – he hardly knew which was which, or if there was a difference – as they floated free like drifting spiders, crafting vast mechanisms of destruction at a rate dozens of times faster than EarthTech could have.
Conquest had taken over five years to build, the entire output of the Ceres planetoid and its thousands of Pseudo-Von Neumann factories as well as many pieces from around Earth’s solar system. This time she would be reborn within three months, remade and reconstructed by the efficiency of mechanical workers with no need for sleep, food or recreation.
In the ships’ evenings, Absen returned to Desolator and talked with Chirom and others of the crew of that ship, watching the old Ryss struggle against approaching age. Most of his race lived to only about fifty standard years; to make it to sixty was the equivalent of a century of life in a pre-Plague human.
Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) Page 3
