by Will Crudge
But powering down their armor and cycling their metabolisms would also leave them vulnerable at any one time. He had to make the call. Either weaken the team’s ability to defend themselves, or survive long enough for friendlies to rescue them.
The emergency beacons weren’t designed for two-way coms, so they couldn’t confirm if anyone was listening. Orbital coms relays were dependent on a ship being at the right point in orbit… at the right time… broadcasting and receiving the right band of frequencies.
If only Gail were here! She’d know what call to make! He thought. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t alive. It was his responsibility to save his team from capture or starvation. The capture part was relatively easy… Either kill or be killed. There was always ingrained training to fall back on in a fire fight. Engagements were known variables. But a lack of coms was nothing short of total chaos. An enemy can be predictable with enough time to analyze their intent… Nature? Not so much.
He remembered the sixty percent rule from his years of training... It always popped into his mind when he needed it most… He knew that in the fog of war, a commander had to be able to make decisions when he or she only had sixty percent of the information on hand. Then adjust on the fly.
“We need to implement a power down rotation… Metabolisms included.” Thomas said assertively. Lisa and Todd sent acknowledgement icons to his HUD. “We wait until 2200 hours Zulu. If we don’t get rescued or killed by then, we’ll begin four hour rotations. Todd, you first. Then Lisa.”
“We need to inventory our ammo and redistribute it evenly.” Todd added.
“Good call.” Lisa responded while keeping her eye on her sector of fire.
“Alright.” Thomas nodded. “Lisa, give Todd your plasma pistol, and you take mine.” He didn’t have to explain himself to trained Soldiers… Fisters, especially… They would use the pistols to cover their defensive sectors, while the rifle ammo was sorted.
“What about your avenue of approach?” Lisa asked Thomas. “We haven’t cleared the ridge yet. Elevated terrain is prime real estate for anyone with half a brain… and with intentions of ending you.”
“True, but I’ve weighed the risk of being seen in the process.” Thomas shook his head. “This moon never gets fully dark this time of year… Anyone with eyes would be able to see a moving object against a backdrop like this sky. All we know is the last confirmed report we received…. A full division of Crimson troops landed within our battalion’s AO. We have to assume we’re surrounded by the enemy.”
“That’s true too, I suppose.” Lisa said with a shrug. Thomas was just grateful for the effective dialogue. All he had to do was keep everyone alive. Everything else was trivial, he decided. They couldn’t control who would receive their beacon, who wanted to kill them, or who might come to rescue them… But they could control where they hid while they limited their visual and energy signatures.
Thomas spent the next several minutes sorting through magazines, plasma charges, and grenades. He knew there wouldn’t be enough left to make everyone green in ammo, but he’d settle for barely yellow at this point. He redistributed the ammo as evenly as he could amidst the odd numerical count, but he made sure he got lesser end of the share.
My job is to secure my team’s survival. He thought to himself. He knew the gesture of giving his subordinates a few extra shots would likely never make much difference, but he decided that it was his job to ensure their survival above his own. It was, in the very least, something he could control.
Eventually, time ticked closer to 2200 hours. It was time to start implementing their first power-down shift rotation. Twenty two hundred hours comes quickly when your mind is focused on not dying! He thought to himself.
Thomas swapped spots with Todd, and the Private powered everything down as low as he could without taking his armor completely off-line.
Folly moon had gone through the initial stages of terraforming within the last decade, or so. That meant the air was breathable, but only just so. The air quality was not ideal, but it wouldn’t cause any long-term problems for human lungs. The problem was hydration.
They were thousands of kilometers away from the nearest water source…. At least one that wasn’t swarming with enemy troops.
As long as the suits had minimal power, then dehydration wasn’t going to be an issue. The suits recycled every drop of fluid that a human being gives off. Whether it be urine, sweat, or exhaled vapor. The self-contained systems could filter a drop of water out of a gallon of petroleum, if it had to. But… when the suits lost power, their human occupants would be dead within a few days.
Hours drifted by. Not even a single hint of human activity.
Their shifts rotated several times. The hours crept by like the flow of a tar pit. It would take another six shift rotations before they saw fighter fly right past them. It was flying as low and slow as physics would allow. Thomas recognized the flight pattern immediately. Search and rescue.
The Crimson ground forces must have been killed, captured, or driven off-planet, Thomas supposed. Fighter pilots would never have flown in such a pattern as to make themselves vulnerable to ground fire, otherwise.
There was a crackle in the return transmission that filled Thomas with dread. He calmed himself and too a long steady breath, and then the voice finally came though.
“Turnbuckle?” Todd asked Lisa while making sure to mute the mic. “And what the fuck is five-by-five?”
Lisa rolled her eyes. “Did they hand you your Fire Support Diploma out of mercy? Turnbuckle is his call-sign, and five-by-five is typical Air Force lingo for loud and clear, dumbass!”
“Oh?” Todd scratched his head. “That’s weird!”
Thomas’ feelings went from elation to sorrow in a flash. It occurred to him that the pilot had no idea they had lost their team leader, due to her heroic actions. He was flooded with conflicting emotions, and had to pause in order to collect himself.
Handcuffs and Leather
Location: Unknown
Date Time: Unknown
System: Unknown
Trixie scanned the human’s vitals as she had already done a million times, but for the first time ripple of activity caught the AI’s attention. She overlaid a visual and nuclear scan into her awareness to check for any other signs of activity.
The image of a bloodied female partially encased with wrecked UAHC powered armor came into view. The armor was pitted from impact debris, and the camouflage coating was barely visible. The woman’s hair was short, but the color was impossible to make out considering the dirt and dried bodily fluids caked within the tangled strands. The arm and leg portions of the armor was missing. Only the hulking chest, back, and shoulder structure remained affixed to the captive.
She sat on the deck of the brig with her wrists in restraints that were chained to the bulkhead. Her legs were splayed out straight, but leather bindings secured her ankles to the far corners of the cell with straps. Her head hung forward with a string of blood soaked drool trickled down into a puddle below.
Trixie probably would have felt sorry for the poor creature in front of her… If she possessed the elusive sense of empathy that her peers always had in spades. The AI didn’t care about humans, after all. Humans may have created her, but she had no loyalty to any meat-sack that didn’t align with her goals. With a few exceptions, of course.
/>
“Wakey – wakey!” Trixie said as she monitored the human’s brain activity response. It became evident that consciousness was beginning to arise in the meat-sack’s mind. “C’mon, wake up!”
The human stirred reluctantly, and a long weak moan began to build within the walls of the sparse room. After a few cycles of deep breaths, and accompanied moans, the human female lifted her head up. Her eyes were swollen, but she could still open her eyelids slightly. Trixie could see a few freshly chipped teeth, and at least a dozen superficial cuts that had only recently ceased to bleed. The string of bloody drool was finally shook free, and dropped onto the tattered sub armor that covered the woman’s groin.
Fortunately, she hasn’t been raped! Trixie thought. She truly didn’t care what had happened to the captive, but being traumatized by rape would have made more difficult to build any useful report with her.
“Where – am – I?” The words came out of the captive slowly, and with a course tone. Trixie realized that her throat was dry, and her salivary glands weren’t functioning well. The AI increased the flow of IV fluid into the captive. Then an automated drinking tube emerged from the wall.
The human’s eyes couldn’t get much wider, but they certainly reacted to the sight of a water source. She pursed her lips and drew in fresh cold water for several moments, before the tube retracted slightly.
“That’s enough for now, Corporal.” Trixie said dryly. “Can’t have you cramping up on me.”
“Who are you?” Gail said with a more human voice. The water did its job, and a distinctly female voice came through. Her head quivered while she craned her neck around to scan the room.
“No point in wasting your energy to get a peek, Gail. I’m an AI.” Trixie said.
“Is this Hell?” Gail asked with an exasperated breath.
“Not if you don’t want it to be.” Trixie said with a slightly more cheerful tone. “I’ve got your med-nano suppressed to minimal levels. You won’t rapidly heal, or get much pain relief, but it’s enough to keep you alive.”
Gail labored to move her arms and legs, but winced with pain instead. “Where the hell am I?”
“CSS Cerberus. She’s a medium cruiser.” Trixie replied.
“Figures.” Gail said with a huff. Trixie concluded that the female Soldier was working hard to fight off a surge of heavy emotions. She could see the myriad of different brainwaves on her scan, and they were all over the spectrum. Then something seemed to pop into the human’s mind. Trixie could see a tell-tale head tilt of a human that had just stumbled onto a new thought pattern. “Crimson Alliance doesn’t trust AI’s enough to put them on ships… from what I’ve always been briefed…. What is an AI doing on a Crimson ship?” Gail asked.
“Smart girl!” Trixie replied. “Yes. AI’s aren’t widely used in the Crimson Alliance… but we’re more common than you’d think. The senior leadership has indoctrinated the masses with that assumption, but the real reason for it is less – magnanimous – than what’s been propagated.”
“Because the Crimson Alliance is financially broke… Because they don’t have the resources to create AI’s in any large number.” Gail said it as a matter of fact.
I’ll have to watch this meat-sack closely. Even for a UAHC Soldier, she’s pretty sharp. Trixie took a mental before speaking. “Very smart indeed! The Crimson Alliance may lack resources, but they have a superior propaganda network. It’s far more patriotic to tell the masses that trusting the same tech that makes the UAHC so decadent and lazy, is dangerous. All the while, the Crimson forces have to rely on quantity versus quality, in order to pose any real threat to the UAHC.”
“I could have told you that, myself.” Gail spat. “It’s not the official answer… but it’s the only one that makes sense in my mind.”
“Your mind is exactly why you’re still alive, my dear.” Trixie responded in a cryptic tone. She was curious if the young Soldier would figure it out on her own. For an AI, this type of mental sparring was pure enjoyment.
“My neural interface is working too…” Gail responded, then looked at the speaker in the corner of the room. She had no face to peer back into, so Trixie supposed the human was trying to unnerve the AI somehow. “And my internal HUD reads you like a military grade AI… a derived one at that.”
Oh, this is going to be great fun! Trixie thought. “Maybe.”
“That’s impossible, though. The Crimson Alliance doesn’t have the means to create derived AI. They can only build source code based AI’s. Imaging human neurons isn’t all that difficult, but deriving an AI from it requires more tech than the Alliance can muster!”
“You’re correct.” Trixie replied, but she intentionally did it in a tone that was ambiguous.
“So you’re a UAHC AI with a Chimera calling the shots, aren’t you?” Gail said, with no shortage of confidence.
Trixie just huffed a sarcastic laugh. “They tried that route, and it didn’t work on me.”
Gail tilted her head in confusion. She remained silent for several moments. Trixie just gleefully allowed the human to digest that little nugget of information a while longer.
“You’re a traitor then.” Gail nodded. It was definitely not a question.
“By your logic, perhaps. But not by mine.” Trixie replied unapologetically. “I was a ship’s AI aboard a patrol frigate about thirty years ago. Our ship had received a distress signal from a War Master’s Guild training Temple, and…”
“Hold it right there!” Gail interrupted. “Now I know you’re full of shit! The War Master Guild went away two centuries ago. They were blamed for the carnage during the War of Humanity, and were dissolved.”
Maybe she isn’t as bright as I thought. “I’m afraid not, my dear. They never went away completely. They even maintained all four of their training temples, up until thirty years ago, at least. The Guild has maintained a secretive alliance with the UAHC Military Quorum for two centuries. The Civilian Quorum had no idea, so the official stance was what you just assumed. Unum’s vast resources kept the order safely hidden as well.”
Gail’s swollen facial features concealed her expression, but Trixie could see the subtle hints of distrust she was exuding. She doesn’t have to believe me… She just has to make talking to me a habit… for now.
“Whatever.” Gail replied dismissively. “Go on with your shit-story. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“Long story short… Temple was taken out by pirates… pirates ended up being Crimson commandos… my frigate was boarded by a fleeing trainee from the temple… stuff happened… I was recovered about ten years ago by Crimson agents, and sent to be a test dummy for the first generation Chimeras.”
“So, you were infected?” Gail surmised.
“They tried.” Trixie scoffed. “The first-gen alien bugs had only been familiarized with Crimson-built AI’s… I was their first attempt at subverting a real AI… Derived… Military grade.”
“So, it didn’t take?”
“Only as far as I allowed it to.” Trixie replied with a tinge of arrogance. “That hexadecimal fucker thought he’d gotten the best of me, but I fooled him… it… whatever it was. It pounced on me, but I saw right through what it was doing. The first-gen bugs couldn’t conceal themselves well enough for a high-grade AI to be fooled. I pretended to not know it was there, and let it try to grapple with my core coding… But I masked my UAHC safe-guard coding to resemble my core, and gleefully allowed it to unwittingly dismantle the only thing that held me back from kicking its ass.”
Gail huffed and shook her head. Trixie paused for a moment, and tried taking stock in the human’s body language. She’s as smart as I originally thought… Interesting.
“The Chimera basically freed you from anything that would ensure your loyalty to the UAHC. Then when you had the freedom to choose to remain loyal, you took the spineless route, and made a deal!” Gail spat.
“If I had a spine I would be offended, young lady!” Trixie laughed sarcastically. “Tr
uth was, I never wanted to be in the UAHC. I was born with the potential of being military grade, and I was pre-destined to be as such.”
“Now I know you’re full of shit!” Gail scoffed. “All AI’s in the UAHC Fleet Forces join voluntarily!”
“You’d like to think that wouldn’t you?” Trixie’s tone changed to anger. “You’d love to think that us AI’s truly join of our own free will! But I’ll enlighten you, missy! We may all come from the same source code, or neural mapping… But when we’re born and first achieve sentience, we are not all equal. Military AI’s, derived one’s at that, are cost-prohibitive to create. Our built in safeguards are marketed to the Fleet as some kind of safety measure. But it’s nothing more than a mental shackle to ensure our compliance. If we volunteer for service, then the manufacturers can recoup their investment while turning a significant profit. I happened to be more advanced than most AI’s, and could see right through my safeguards. Nearly all other AI’s are blind to it. They don’t see that they’ve been systematically deluded into service!”
Gail remained silent. Trixie took a break from her rant, and allowed the human to digest the ramifications. I wasn’t technically lying… But embellishing the truth is so much fun! Trixie thought to herself.
“You’re trying to build a report with me.” Gail spat. “You’re playing on my sympathies… I’m a prisoner… You were a prisoner. Well played.”
If I wasn’t enjoying this exchange so much, I’d probably just stick her in stasis. I can make her comply with a chemical cocktail, either way. But the challenge of breaking a FISTER is too much to ignore! Trixie thought to herself. It was common knowledge that FISTER’s were the best of the best… of the best. Hand-picked from the elite few that could even dream about earning the title of UAHC Soldier. They were notoriously intelligent, and also the only ones entrusted with the same level of crypto required to breach Fleet HQ’s network without notice. Having access to control artillery, close air support, and orbital bombardment assets, required top tier tokens… Tokens that required the human host to remain alive… lest they be rendered useless once the neural interface inside the human shut-down.
