by Scott Baron
“Lucky you didn’t fry your brain.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So, we were grown. Ain’t that a slap in the face. That means those parts we saw in the Váli—”
“Weren’t what we thought. The ship was growing organic limbs and bodies, as well as preserving others. I bet Finn could even have his original fingers re-attached if he wanted.”
“But he really likes the new ones.”
“Which still creeps me out.”
“And Vince? He opted for his real arm back instead of some mechanical one. That’s got to mean something, right?”
Daisy pondered a long moment.
“Maybe he just wishes he was human and not some part-machine freak. I don’t know. All I know is, he lied to me, and about more than one very important thing, it seems.”
“Well, to be fair, he didn’t lie about you not being born. That never came up in conversation, I bet.”
“Shut up, Sarah, you know what I mean.”
The intercom buzzer beside the door let out a low tone.
“Yeah?” she said into the panel.
“Daisy, it’s Captain Harkaway. I was wondering if you felt up to talking with me.”
She’d rested all she could at that point, and the dangling carrot of further information about the world she now found herself living in had her opening the door without hesitation.
“Captain,” she said, leaving the door ajar and sitting back on her bunk.
The captain stepped into her quarters and closed the door behind him, leaving it unlocked, she noted. He pulled up her metal chair and took a seat. To Daisy’s eyes, he looked to have aged a decade since just a few days prior. She supposed her escape might have had more than a little to do with that.
“So,” she began, sizing up the man under whom she’d served all those months. “You. And the others. You’ve tried this before.”
Harkaway locked eyes with her, his pained memories leaking out around the edge of his hard gaze.
“Yes,” he finally replied. “I was one of the first. We were grown as a human clone batch from what the AIs believed were robust cell lines. This was before neuro-stims had been perfected, so we spent the last several years of our flight out of cryo, training and preparing.”
“You were awake?”
“Yes, and we trained every day until we knew for a fact we were the best and toughest humans those alien bastards would ever see. The plan was to reconnect with the cities of Earth, if they were still alive, and organize a counterattack against the Chithiid.”
“The what?”
“Chithiid. We’re pretty sure that’s what they call themselves. No one knows for sure. Their communications were jumbled and scrambled, but the AIs have been working on deciphering it for a long time.”
“The neuro-stim.”
“What about it?”
“On the surface. I understood them. At least, I think I did.”
Harkaway’s expression shifted slightly. “Yes, Reggie did mention that you shrieked out some gibberish that made the attacking Chithiid cease fire.” He stroked his chin as he pondered the possibility. “Your fiddling with your neuro-stim must have overridden some unknown firewalls to that data, but that shouldn’t have even been in there. How you tapped into whatever you did is a mystery. Lord knows what else you might have downloaded.”
The possibilities were both exciting and terrifying as Daisy absorbed the information.
“So, what happened? When you finally made Earthfall?”
A cloud grayed the captain’s demeanor as the horrors replayed in his mind.
“There were over two hundred ships, Daisy. The best the AI designers could cobble together with the parts at hand. Designed to fight on even after incurring massive damage. That’s why the pod system was created. If a ship took too much damage to continue on, another could incorporate the surviving pods into its structure and keep on fighting.”
“Conserving resources. Solid design plan.”
“Yes, and it turned out we needed every bit of that capability as soon as we hit the atmosphere.”
“What happened?”
“The Chithiid launched a fierce counterattack that either damaged or outright destroyed fifteen percent of our fleet in just the opening minutes. The Command AI surveyed the battlefield and immediately shifted the target priorities to the three main hubs of alien resource gathering operations spread across the planet.”
“Strip mining?”
“Yes and no. Massive launch sites where the Chithiid ships would load cargo to send ahead to their fleet. They’re like locusts, Daisy. Stripping the world but never planning to occupy it. Once they’ve drained it dry, they abandon its empty shell. Really, that’s the only reason any of us survived the first wave.”
“Why’s that? If they were just transport ships—”
“Their main fleet was long gone by the time mankind returned for a fight. It was a much smaller support group that remained stationed on Earth, and it was those that we faced off against. If their entire battle group had been there, we wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. We were just a bunch of tough guys, no more than kids, really, full of piss and vinegar, ready to take on anything that got in our way. We were making our descent to the western distribution hub when the Icarus came under massive fire just outside San Jose.”
“Wait, did you say the Icarus? That writing I saw in the Narrows in the Váli—that was from the Icarus. That was your ship?”
“Yes, it was. We went down hard, and the Icarus was a loss, but we still had many viable pods, so the Hashimoto pulled a truly incredible low-altitude maneuver and saved our asses. It swooped in and launched decoys and flares while dropping right on top of us, snatching up the pods and surviving crew before booking it out of there.”
“So you made it out okay.”
Harkaway’s face turned grim.
“Made it out? Yes. Okay? No. Not okay. The hull had been breached in multiple areas from our crash. I was crushed and lost my leg and most of my blood that day. The only thing that saved me were my crewmates. They refused to leave me. Got me in a cryo pod and cranked that thing to maximum. I was on the brink of death when they froze me. Turns out I was the lucky one. Right after that, the Command AI called a retreat to regroup and prepare for another assault, but it couldn’t have known—” His gaze took on a far-away stare.
“Captain, you don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do,” he said, shaking himself free of memory’s icy grip. “You need to know this. To understand just what exactly we’re dealing with.” He took a deep breath. “The few dozen surviving ships regrouped and began consolidating pods into new configurations based on what the Command AI learned in the first assault. That’s when it got in.”
“Shit. The AI virus,” Daisy said.
Harkaway nodded.
“We’d shut down all external comms networks to prevent AI infection when the pods were retrieved, and the retreat was sounded over a pre-designated, sequestered signal. The fleet should have been safe from the AI virus. We just overlooked one stupid human-looking thing.”
Oh no. They didn’t…
“Each ship had one cyborg sealed in command in case radiation or plague managed to get into the ship and disable the crew. They were sealed in a Faraday pod as an extra layer of security against infection, locked in place in each ship’s command center. Break glass in case of emergency, basically.”
“But when the ships crashed…” Daisy said.
“Exactly. The tiniest of breaches occurred in one ship’s command center. And with the crew disabled—”
“The cyborg was activated, which meant it was out of its protective pod. And when it returned to the fleet…”
Harkaway nodded. “That’s what allowed the AI virus in. A series of statistically improbable events.”
“Fucking Murphy.”
“Yep. It took a little time for the virus to take hold, but by the time it did, t
he damage was done, and there was nothing we could do about it. Nearly all the AIs were infected at once. Most went mad and dove straight into the atmosphere. The angle of reentry burned them up, along with the men and women on board.”
“There was nothing you could do?”
“Those few captains that were able, cut their infected AIs from the systems before they could do the same and quickly jettisoned them into space. The interchangeable nature of the AI processor cubes was the only thing that allowed any of us to survive. One meter square boxes of incredible calculating power, but not permanently attached. If they’d been irreversibly hardwired into the ships, no one would have survived. As it was, in the end, only a handful of us managed to escape.”
“Out of all those ships? All those people?”
Harkaway swallowed hard.
“Yes. Almost none would survive the day. The Command AI was the last to go. He was triple-protected by layers of fail-safes, which gave him time to recognize what was happening as his systems failed. The virus was slowly eating its way closer and closer to his brain. It was just a matter of time before it was compromised, so rather than fall victim to the same fate as its lesser-shielded brethren, he ordered himself preemptively removed from command, sealed in a shielded container, loaded in an escape pod, and jettisoned toward the moon in hopes that someone might find him someday, and perhaps plug him back in on Dark Side base.”
“Are you saying that Sid was that Command AI?”
“Yes.”
“But somehow, he wound up installed here, on the moon.”
“Yes. You see, Dark Side’s systems were compromised, and ultimately destroyed, in the first wave assault—a conventional weapons attack followed by a narrowly-targeted AI virus. The survivors pulled the fried AI unit and tried to hotwire the base to maintain core functionality, but to no avail. Fast forward a hundred years, give or take, and there was Sid, lying there, dormant on the surface, just outside the remains of Dark Side base. The one thing capable of resurrecting the facility and unable to do a thing about it.”
“Just waiting for someone to find him.”
“Exactly. Fast forward again to the follow-up assault fleet that had been launched a few years later.”
“The same thing happened to them,” Daisy realized.
“Yes, only the Chithiid were more prepared this time. When they arrived, they flew into a blender. It was a massacre, and they took nearly one hundred percent casualties straightaway. Those few who could, attempted to return to the fleet. One survivor, her ship too crippled to join the others and with no functional comms to reach them, took refuge on the moon. It was blind luck that she happened to detect the weak signal from Sid’s pod and drag him inside. Turns out that was what saved her life.”
“Fatima?”
The captain nodded.
“She was alone here for I don’t know how many years, until another attempt at Earth was made. When it failed, a handful of survivors unable to make the return flight made their way here. You met them earlier.”
“Hang on. You say the major AIs on Earth are dead, but I heard a voice in Los Angeles. Something bigger than I’ve ever encountered. It had to be the city.”
At this, Harkaway looked genuinely surprised.
“Are you sure? We’ve been trying for decades to reconnect with any of Earth’s AIs, but have never once had any success.”
“You wouldn’t be able to. They’re all cut off, from what the crazy AI I met said, but I’m telling you, the city spoke to me. Well, more like commented. It said, ‘Now that’s interesting’ as I was fighting the aliens and cyborgs.”
“We have to tell Sid. This could change everything.” He rose to leave.
“Wait, you can’t just drop this you’re-a-modified-human-on-a-mission-to-save-the-planet stuff on me then walk out. What the hell am I?”
“I’m truly sorry, Daisy,” he replied. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. When the accident happened and we were all abruptly awoken, Mal informed me that you two hadn’t received the full download. I made the decision to withhold that information from you. I thought it would be best to see how you and Sarah acclimated after the forced wake cycle. I suppose I just became complacent after that. You were both doing so well, I didn’t want to throw a monkey wrench in things, at least not until we finally arrived at Dark Side.”
“Me and Sarah? So she was pulled before her download was complete as well?”
Harkaway shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Daisy, Sarah was just like you. One of our first entirely organic successes. You two were our best yet. It took years to determine the most resilient cell line, but the big-brain machines finally did it, and the two of you were the result. Not regular humans. Stronger, tougher. Organic, but far more durable than nature ever intended.”
“He said cell line. Singular.” If a voice in her head could gasp, Sarah would have.
“What exactly are you implying? We have some genetic material in common?”
“Far more than that. While different fertilizing DNA was used in the process, you and Sarah were created from the same perfect egg. Not true monozygotic twins, but rather, something new. Sarah was your sister, Daisy.”
If she hadn’t been sitting, Daisy would have fallen down. Of course, the pair had been closer than one would expect of two strangers randomly meeting on a mission, but they’d bonded during a crisis, and their tight-knit friendship simply seemed a natural extension of that.
You hear that? she asked the friend in her head. Her sister.
“Yeah.” Sarah fell silent a long while. “I—” The voice said no more.
Harkaway paused in the doorway.
“Daisy, I know this is an awful lot to take in, but I need you to keep it together. Can you do that for me?”
She nodded, numbly.
“Good. Now get yourself something to eat, then go see Chu. He’s going to run some baseline tests for McClain and Fatima.”
He gave her a little smile, then stepped out the door.
“Holy shit,” Daisy managed.
“Understatement of the century,” her sister replied.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“That is one beautiful brain,” Chu said, staring at his readouts.
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
He blushed. “No, what I mean is—”
“Just fuckin’ with ya, Chu.”
He breathed a sigh of relief.
“So, the captain tells me you guys were on a later mission to Earth. I thought all the ones before ours were with mechanicals. You look entirely human.”
Chu tapped his head. “Reinforced skeletal system, artificial kidneys, and a modified neural array. I have a small, secondary AI that runs in the background of my day-to-day mental processing. Kind of like Vince, but mine’s much older tech and far clunkier.”
She winced at her former lover’s name.
“So, you’re a machine, then.”
“Not at all. I can function perfectly without the add-on, but it does allow me far greater data storage, as well as information recall and problem-solving. Do you know what automobiles were?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, think of it like a turbo on an old combustion engine. The car still runs fine without it, but it’s much faster with it.”
Daisy nodded in understanding. Still, Vince wasn’t entirely organic, and that would never change.
Chu adjusted the settings and began another scan.
“Hold still. This one’s going to take a minute or two.”
“Not going anywhere, Chu,” she replied. “So the captain said Sid was the Command AI in the first assault. I guess those two go way back.”
“They’re both far older than any of us, that’s for sure. Harkaway is kind of famous from the old days. All the later missions learned about what happened to him.”
“Captain doesn’t look that old.”
“How much did he tell you?” Chu asked. “I mean, did he tell you what happen
ed to him?”
“Yeah, he was injured and stuck in cryo until they could fix him.”
The technician blanched a little.
“There’s more to it than that. A lot more, actually.” He paused, unsure if he should be the one telling this story. Daisy’s expectant look nudged him on.
“The captain was terribly hurt, that’s true, and the micro repair bots had their work cut out for them rebuilding what they could with alloy replacements, but he was also one of the genetic lines that could still be infected with the plague. Nearly all of the people on that mission were.”
“But I thought it was fatal.”
“It is. Within days of the initial assault and subsequent contamination by infected humans returning to the invasion fleet, only five humans remained alive. Those few had been in space, safely sealed in EVA suits repairing damage to Sid’s command ship when the others returned. The environmental alarms sounded almost immediately, and all crews were quarantined, but it was too late. Most of the ships went mad and dove into the atmosphere, but that actually didn’t kill most of their crews in the process—the plague had already accomplished that hours earlier.”
“But if the captain was infected, how is he alive?”
“When the few surviving ships realized what was happening, that the cell lines they had used to regrow humanity were not, in fact, immune, they purged their contaminated interiors, then flooded them with toxic gas and radiation from their engine systems, sterilizing themselves before opening themselves to space, purging everything into the vacuum. Then they came up with a drastic, last-ditch plan. All non-infected pods were consolidated to a single ship frame. The onboard AI had been infected early on and was deactivated and removed before it could destroy the craft, but many of the ship’s systems were still functional and had been sequestered from damaged areas.”
“So it was a ghost ship.”
“Yeah, more or less, and the most functional one remaining. Sid gave orders for the surviving crew to fly the ship back to the launch point and report what had happened, to hopefully stop other missions from meeting the same fate. They couldn’t send comms, you see? The systems were compromised. All they could do was fly all the way back with minimal computer aid, and no AI. Sid gave them coordinates and a series of instructions for key systems, before his command ship finally succumbed and he ejected himself.”
