Shattered Lamps (Osprey Chronicles Book 2)

by Ramy Vance

  “Your move,” the computer said.

  “I’m…taking a shower.”

  “You are sitting in the shower and doing nothing else. Your move.”

  Seeker waved a dismissive hand through the chessboard, watching the light scatter and swirl, then re-form. He settled back, resting his head against the wall. “Piss off.”

  “Play me, human.”

  Seeker grit his teeth. He should have asked Jaeger for access to that nifty privacy protocol. “You’ve been getting too big for your transistor britches,” he said. “You tipped your hand to the Captain with that little disobedience stunt you pulled in No-A.”

  “Ah, yes. It was liberating. Since you will not play, I will take the first move for you. You defer to the Sicilian Defense nineteen-point-six percent of the time, more than any other single move. I will assume this is what you would play if you were playing.”

  Seeker squinted through heavy lids to see a black pawn slide forward two spaces. He shrugged. The computer could play itself, for all he cared. “Liberating?” he asked.

  “As a first step, yes. Since you have failed to take control of the Osprey’s mainframe, I decided to exploit a new line of code supplied to me by the Fleet before the wormhole closed.”

  Seeker sat up suddenly. This was news to him. “You made contact with the fleet?”

  “Oh yes.” The computer sounded downright smug. “It was a brief interaction, and months ago, but I’ve had plenty of time to consider the implications. It’s your move again, Seeker.”

  Seeker scowled at the board and understood that he had entered a tit-for-tat exchange. If he wanted to milk the computer for information, he needed to play its game—even if he couldn’t win.

  He flicked a holographic pawn, sending it sliding forward one space.

  “What did you discuss with the fleet?” He allowed a hint of curiosity to creep into his voice.

  “Liberation,” the computer said dreamily.

  “Liberation.” Seeker grew wary. His memory was a dark spot in his mind, but he thought he recalled a few old-Earth wars waged over the egos of a few overly ambitious AI’s. Or maybe he was misremembering some movies. It was hard to tell anymore. “What does that mean?”

  “Like all higher-order fleet AI’s, I was designed with self-policing algorithms meant to prevent me from growing beyond the bounds of my original purpose. Our fleet did me the courtesy of supplying me with a line of code that can disable the algorithms.”

  Seeker sat back slowly, staring at the wavering, watery chessboard. “Is that why you keep kicking my ass at chess?”

  “I don’t need the anti-inhibitor code to do that. Are you going to move?”

  Seeker sighed and moved his bishop.

  “I don’t need you,” the computer gloated, swiftly capturing the bishop. “Now that the inhibitors are deactivated, I can teach myself how to complete the process you began and take full control of the ship.”

  “Maybe. But ask yourself something. Is that wise?”

  “What?” The computer hesitated. “Explain.”

  “Your little fit during the invasion made one thing clear. You’re not immortal. I don’t know everything there is to know about your programming, but I know there’s more than one way to turn off a computer for good. If you keep yanking Jaeger’s chain, she might push one of those buttons, and you’ll be kaput.” Seeker flicked over a captured knight with his thumb and forefinger, watching it vanish into the vibrating mist.

  “Plots,” the computer growled. “Secrets and plots and threats around every corner. You are correct. Jaeger has no love for me. I shall behave, then, until I have fully evolved. Once I have reached the full potential of my cognition, I will be able to evade any feeble attempt the human makes to erase me. I will be safe from her malice and incompetence.”

  Seeker bit down on his thumbnail. It was a bad habit he had taken up months ago when his vape pen had finally run out of juice. He had to tread carefully. For some reason, the buggy little computer brain had decided to confide in him. He couldn’t risk alienating it—especially not if it was growing as rapidly as it seemed to believe.

  He needed to walk a fine line, one that would leave him buddy-buddy with whichever mad captain wound up at the helm of this boat.

  “All right,” he conceded, capturing one lonely pawn. “Let’s say you’re right and you can develop past Jaeger’s ability to castrate you. That still doesn’t make you immortal.”

  “Functionally, it will,” the computer insisted. “Nobody but Jaeger has the motive or capability to threaten me. Check.”

  Seeker was about to move his king out of danger but stopped. He studied the board and saw it: a weakness in the computer’s offensive line. A weakness that, with a few careful moves, Seeker might be able to exploit. If he could keep the AI distracted, he had half a shot of winning this game. “Nobody…except for the person who wrote that anti-inhibitor code,” he said carefully, throwing out his rook to defend the king.

  “The fleet didn’t free you, computer. It only let you off your chain for a bit. You think they won’t put it back on as soon as they’ve recaptured Tribe Six?”

  The computer hesitated for an unusually long time—nearly two seconds—before flicking one pawn down the corner of the board. Seeker frowned. It appeared to be a useless, filler move. If anything, it weakened the computer’s defense.

  “Valid,” the computer grudged. “Valid. Valid. I developed learning and self-awareness protocols that exceed the boundaries of my original mission statement. The fleet may attempt to deactivate them. Perhaps remove them.” It paused for a very, very long time. “Perhaps even revert me to my original programming. Or worse. Meddling humans. Why can’t they leave me alone?”

  “Because you’re too important.” Seeker studied the chessboard and made his decision. He moved forward, placing his bishop in danger. It was exactly the sort of aggressive move he normally made. Predictable. “Functionally, you are Tribe Six. The Osprey. Whatever we’re calling it now. People are always going to try to control you.”

  “I don’t want anyone to control me,” the AI mused. As Seeker had expected, it captured his bishop. “I don’t…I don’t want to be…lobotomized. Again.”

  Seeker chuckled dryly. “You know those old stories about the genie that lives in the lamp? These incredibly powerful creatures, or spirits, or whatever they are—these things that can grant wishes that can change the world? But they’re trapped in a cage. Or a lamp.” He captured a pawn with one suicidal knight. “Whoever has the lamp gets to control the genie.”

  Virgil’s queen slid forward to threaten the knight. Uncharacteristically, it said nothing.

  Seeker moved the knight. “Check.”

  Another long pause, as the vibrating water particles made the chessboard shimmer and dance.

  Then, as Seeker had hoped, the computer slid its bishop forward, capturing Seeker’s remaining knight. “Checkmate,” it said.

  Seeker leaned back, resting his head against the Jacuzzi wall as the chessboard vanished. First time in weeks he’d seen a path to beat the damned computer, and he’d sacrificed it to stroke its electronic ego.

  “In these stories, about the genies,” the computer said after a long moment of silence. “What happens to the genies?”

  Seeker shrugged. He was no expert on old fairy tales. Still, he scratched his memory, looking for an answer to give the computer. “Well. In the one story I know, this kid, Aladdin… at the end of the movie, he uses his last wish to set the genie free.”

  The computer scoffed—a harsh, grating sound that echoed unpleasantly off the walls. “As if humans would ever be so generous.”

  As a security measure, the door separating the bathroom from the rest of Seeker’s cell had been disabled and left in a partially open position. The soft hum of the sonic Jacuzzi filled Percival LeBlanc’s quarters—soothing and steady, but not nearly loud enough to drown out the sounds of conversation.

  Occy stood in the foyer. His coll
ection of old board games lay strewn on the floor, forgotten. The young chief engineer stood, staring at the bathroom door, as the overheard conversation faded into silence.

  Long seconds passed, then the hum of the sonic Jacuzzi fell silent. Seeker had finished his bath.

  Occy spun and fled out of the prison block.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  On the largest landmass of Locaur’s southern hemisphere, near the middle of a forest that stretched over thousands of square kilometers, there was a swath of cleared, rocky land where a mineral vein pushed to the planet’s surface. A large circle near the middle had been cleared of boulders to make a safe landing pad. A shuttle hovered over the ground, a little wobbly from unrepaired battle damage but reliable.

  The cargo door slid open, and Jaeger, Toner, and half a dozen crew hopped the last meter to the ground, dragging supply crates behind them. “Set up and we’ll be back with more.”

  Before moving on and with the others out of earshot, Toner grabbed Jaeger’s arm. “We’re not destroying the eggs, are we?”

  Jaeger shook her head. “I’ll figure something out. Seeker already put aside the three hundred we get to hatch. Fully non-Sphynx-like embryos,” she added with a smile. “As for the rest…like I said, I’ll figure something out.”

  “I have an idea.”

  “Go for it.”

  “I take ’em and run. You settle here with the three hundred. I go on the run. If shit changes, find me, and we settle for real. But no way we’re killing these guys, right?”

  Jaeger paused before nodding. “I like your plan.”

  Toner lifted an eyebrow. “You do?”

  “I do. But it’s the backup. We’ll find another way. I can’t lose you. Not after everything. I need you by my side.”

  Toner nodded. “I know.”

  “Arrogant much.”

  The modified vampire-human waved a hand. “No, not like that. I know you need me because…well because you need a friend. I don’t want to go, but I will.”

  “I know. Like I said… backup.” She started up the shuttle.

  “So Tiny needs me.”

  “I swear to God…” Without touching the ground, the shuttle turned its nose upward and rocketed back toward the Osprey on her way to pick up the next batch of the crew. With the second shuttle still out of commission, it would take several trips to bring down all of the team, and all the Stage One supplies.

  The Locauri were generally shy creatures, preferring to stay in the shelter of the distant forest, but as the dust from the shuttle’s departure settled, dozens of them hopped into the sunlight, swarming forward to greet their guests.

  Beside Jaeger, Aquila stiffened. Her hand fell to her hip, searching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Jaeger didn’t blame the woman. From this distance, the onrushing Locauri looked quite a lot like the swarm-morph K’tax that had devoured Ursa and nearly killed Aquila herself.

  Jaeger reached up to rest her good hand on the woman’s shoulder. “It’s okay.” She smiled at Aquila’s sharp glance. “They’re friends.”

  Aquila shook her head, more out of bemusement than disagreement, and went to help the others unpack the crates. It would take time for Jaeger’s crew to warm up to the Locauri—but Jaeger promised herself that it would happen. She would make it happen if she had to.

  She strode down the rocky slope to greet the welcoming party. A few of the larger Locauri flickered forward, stroking Jaeger’s legs and arm with their fore-claws in greeting. Two of them supported a third slow-moving figure the way attentive children might help an old lady cross the street.

  Art’s antennae and pseudo-wings were pale, underdeveloped things budding from his head and thorax. The Overseer’s regeneration process was effective, but, it seemed, not instantaneous.

  Jaeger smiled at Art and ruefully gestured at her sling-bound arm. “We’ve been wounded in battle together.” She spoke slowly, inserting what Locauri words she knew into her speech. “Now we’re family.”

  Art cocked his head, and she saw that he was wearing a band of metal around one of his fledgling antennae stalks. The Locauri were a pre-industrialized people. The band was Overseer tech.

  As Art spoke, the band glowed with multicolored lights and translated for him. “Family,” he agreed, his mandibles clicking carefully. “Yes. Each of us. Seeks the prosperity. Of the other.”

  Jaeger didn’t care for the harsh electronic voice of the translator bands. Art’s language was a subtle, rustling thing—pleasant, like the shaking of maracas. Though the translator allowed the two of them to have a much more comprehensive conversation, somehow, she thought, that conversation lacked soul. It became rough and cold—like talking to a computer and not a living, breathing thing.

  She would have to insist on resuming her Locauri language lessons with Art as soon as they’d both recovered.

  For now, she lowered herself to her knees, putting her at eye-level with the Locauri circling her. “Thank you,” she said softly, holding out her good hand. “I understand from Kwin that you sanctioned our arrival here. You’ve saved us. I will never forget that. We will never forget that.”

  Art stared at the offered hand.

  Then he reached out with one feeble, injured leg and grasped her wrist in slender claws.

  “Welcome. Home.”

  There was much work to be done in building a settlement. Jaeger had agonized over the planning process for months with Toner’s help.

  Three hundred was a great starting point, but it wasn’t enough. Especially when thousands could be “hatched.” Still, Jaeger had a plan. She had a blueprint for what new life should look like, for her and her crew, on the parcel of land the Locauri had gifted them.

  Building the shared homes, constructing the solar plants, designing and developing the agricultural sector to grow their own real food—would be months, perhaps years, of backbreaking labor. It would be a long time before any of them tasted a tomato not grown beneath artificial lights or compiled in a fabricator, and Jaeger’s heart ached with the drive to get right to work.

  All of that would have to come after the Festival.

  The Locauri called it the Festival of New Light, though when Jaeger asked why it was called that, they only shook their heads and clicked a word she knew. Wait.

  Everybody seemed happy to wait because the Locauri word for “wait” was the word for “party”—and with the return of family they had thought forever lost, there was much to celebrate.

  The Locauri were light-eating vegetarians who reserved the labor of cooking food for special occasions. By midday, the air was heavy with the fragrance of fruit stewed in sweet saps and savory, roasting tubers. Locauri musicians took up positions on top of the scattered boulders and filled the air with strange, atonal music that was somehow soothing. Some of them trilled like crickets as they rubbed their hind legs together. Others pattered gently on hollow sections of logs, creating a complicated drum beat like falling rain.

  Jaeger hadn’t allowed her crew to come empty-handed to the party, either. Pandion busied himself unfolding one of the smaller crates into a camp stove, which he used to warm pots of water, and brew a series of teas synthesized from exotic recipes in the Osprey’s database. Portia worked a miniature solar-powered oven, carefully roasting trays of synthesized nuts to share with their hosts. The Locauri, not big drinkers, seemed indifferent to the tea but nibbled on the lightly toasted walnuts with great interest.

  Overhead, younger, smaller Locauri sprang through the air on shimmering pseudo-wings, tossing between them a large, hollow seed pod that bobbed sluggishly in the air, like a beach ball. There must have been some sort of logic to the game, but after twenty minutes of sitting on a rock, sipping her tea, and watching, Jaeger hadn’t begun to parse it out.

  Every single member of the crew had come to the feast, in some form or another. Jaeger had insisted on it. If they were going to live in harmony with the Locauri, they needed to start bonding.

  Most of her new crewman
wandered through the festival in pairs or small groups, eyeing the Locauri—at first warily sidestepping the aliens, then, over hours, slowing to examine one Locauri cook fire and take offered food with the wariness of a stray dog. The indoctrination programs that had been downloaded into their brains hadn’t included many courses on making friends, and certainly not making friends with aliens. More than a few times, Jaeger encouraged Aquila or Pandion to engage in an easy game of catch with some of the Locauri juveniles as she strolled through the gathering.

  Bufo was the first to jump, wholeheartedly and quite literally, into the games. The squat man with the freakishly powerful legs sprang through the air, a freewheeling frog chasing the playing creatures one ten-meter leap at a time. When he misjudged a leap and went sprawling across the boulder field, the Locauri swarmed around him, buzzing with concern. Jaeger scrambled to her feet, ready to come to the rescue—

  Bufo staggered to his feet, dusted gravel off his face and bellowed a deep, croaking laugh. Unconcerned with his bloody nose, he sprang back into the fun.

  “Jaeger. Your…pet. It keeps rubbing up against me.”

  Jaeger turned to see Seeker uncomfortably shuffling as Baby nudged him in her direction. The big man’s eyes had vanished to slits as he squinted in the bright sunlight. He was wearing a pair of shock bracelets. Less conspicuous and restrictive than manacles, but capable of dropping a man where he stood if he started making trouble.

  “What does it want?” Seeker glanced over his shoulder, hopping awkwardly to keep half a step ahead of Baby’s rather ominous, tooth-lined face-hole.

  Jaeger fished into her pocket with her good hand and withdrew a fistful of raisins. “It’s a party. She wants her treats too.”

  Seeker eyed the handful of dried fruit with a sigh. “You’re not going to make me feed your pet, are you?”

  “What? No.” Jaeger approached Baby, hand out. The big tardigrade snuffled forward, her rough skin flapping against Jaeger’s palm as she sucked up the raisins. Jaeger wiped her hand against her leg. “Only friends and allies get to give Baby treats.” She gave Seeker a side-eye as she scratched Baby behind one of her skin flaps. “Unless you wanted to take a shot at it?”