Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11)

by Joshua Dalzelle

  "As you wish," Scleesz bowed. "And what of the Cridal Cooperative?"

  "I have been in contact with representatives of Seeladas Dalton. She seems willing to negotiate so long as the appearance of her power remains intact."

  "And you'll allow this?" Scleesz felt hope surge through him at the thought of heading off a full-scale war.

  "Of course not," the Machine said, crushing Scleesz's hope as quickly as it had bloomed. "But we're in no position to fend off the Protectorate and the Cooperative right now until we solidify our hold on the ConFed Council. The Adjudicators are one thing, but the Council simply will not approve a war that might cut into their own systems' profit margins. The timing just isn't right for that yet, so we'll need to stall."

  "I won't pretend to understand that that means, sir, but I'll do as required."

  "I know you will, Scleesz," the Machin said, the eyes of the avatar boring into him in a way that made him squirm. "You'll do anything to save your own wretched life and almost anything to save your reputation. Do this right, and we'll be well on our way to bringing the entire quadrant into the fold and thus completing the first phase of my task."

  "What am I authorized to use for bargaining?" Scleesz asked. "The Protectorate won't agree to terms just because I ask them."

  "Fear will be your currency," the Machine said. "Soon, they will be falling over themselves to make a deal that keeps our fleets from their territory. That will allow us to bide out time and take what is ours only when it suits our purposes best."

  This answer made no sense to Scleesz, but he knew better than to ask for a second clarification within the same meeting. The Machine had no patience for people who couldn't keep up. He wasn't sure what he would use to instill fear in the Saabror Protectorate, a nation almost defined by its lack of fear and willingness to fight. They were aggressive, but they weren't mindlessly stupid, either. Their negotiators would be well aware that the ConFed couldn't afford to maintain the occupation, control space within its own borders, and also invade another sovereign power with any hopes of winning.

  "I shall depart immediately, sir," Scleesz said, bowing again. "Will there be anything else?"

  "I may also send word that I want you to meet with a representative of Seeladas Dalton's," the Machine said, almost as an afterthought. "We've been receiving…disturbing rumors about one of their member nations. A group of upstart aliens that are showing themselves to be far more adept at building weapons than any newcomer should be. I would be interested in knowing whether they have purchased their designs illegally or if we have another problem brewing in the Orion Arm."

  "I will make myself available, sir."

  Scleesz exited the office as quickly as he could without looking like he was fleeing a predator. Even though the Machine had no physical form in the rooms it chose to meet him in, the AI's presence had a heaviness to it that terrified the councilman. There was also still that barely detectable tinge of instability that scared him even more. The ConFed was likely being manipulated by an AI that had gone insane thousands of years ago, and there was little he could do about it. The ConFed's own corrupt power structure had been practically tailor made for this type of internal coup. Half the imbeciles who managed to get themselves elected into the Council or the countless parasites that cared only about keeping their cushy bureaucrat positions didn't know and didn't care that they'd lost control.

  He pondered the feasibility of meeting with Mok and Burke while he was in that part of the quadrant and away from the capital. It was still a risk since it was almost certain that his own ship had been infested with trackers and listening devices. If he made any odd moves while he was gone the Machine would find out about it and that would be the end of his career…maybe the end of his life.

  He decided he would try to reach out to one of the two and see if they had any idea of how they could meet covertly. If nothing else, it might give him an opportunity to extricate himself from any pointless insurrection they had planned. Seeing what the Machine was planning, he didn't see that whatever they might do had any real chance of succeeding.

  14

  Jason lay awake in his rack, staring at the ceiling. The hum of his ship's engines normally lulled him to sleep quickly, but his mind was racing with all that could happen if he was wrong about what the Machine wanted the Eshquarian fleet for.

  "You awake, Cas?"

  I don't actually sleep, dumbass.

  "You have the most accurate picture of what the Machine really is…what the hell does it even want? What's the point of all this?"

  That should be obvious. Power. Absolute power.

  "Power for power's sake?" Jason scoffed. "Then what? Just rule as a malevolent dictator for eons? There has to be some greater point to all this. If it's insane enough that it's just wanting to inflict damage, then why all the fucking around with covert forces? Just start sending in battleships and shock troops and you could have the quadrant on fire within a couple months. Take out a few key players that maintain stability, and the others will begin to turn on each other in the confusion."

  Sometimes, I forget you're much smarter than you let on. Of course, you'd almost have to be. To answer the question: I don't know. The Machine is a corrupted version of the Primary Weapon Controller AI Package that was designed to run on a specific computer within a specific construct. It's transferred its own code multiple times between incompatible systems, and that was after it seized control of a superweapon and wiped out an entire civilization because they told it 'no' when it wanted to destroy a few stars.

  "As the Primary Weapon Controller, it would have had no need for knowledge in politics, espionage, or the other things it's showing a surprising amount of aptitude in," Jason said. "I have a hard time believing that this is all happening just because its base program was scrambled a bit over the years. This isn't an accident. It's…evolution."

  Interesting premise. So, the controller has evolved into a dictator? But again…for what purpose? Evolution is always driven by something. Some existential threat has to exist to drive organisms to adapt.

  “So, what could possibly threaten the Machine? Other than being deleted, what is it afraid of?"

  You're thinking too small. This has to be something that shook it to its core, something that created a diametric shift in its thinking. Perhaps it was the thing that drove it to wipe out its own creators in the first place.

  "It's something to ponder," Jason said. "I feel like if we don't figure out what this thing is really after, what its long game is, then just nipping at its heels will only manage to get a lot of innocent people killed for nothing."

  I don't disagree with you there.

  As Jason drifted off to sleep, Cas thought back to the conversation. The information may well be buried in the archive Jason carried in his head but repeated unpacking and repacking of the enormous file had resulted in some damage to the neural implant that Cas had yet to fully repair. The archive that the Ancients had given him needed to be pulled out permanently so that the implant could be either reconfigured or replaced altogether before it began causing damage to Jason's neural pathways.

  Since Jason would likely rather die than risk that terrible knowledge being unleashed on a galaxy that wasn't ready for it, Cas had a decision to make. It could either honor Jason's wishes and let the inevitable happen, or it could operate autonomously to try and save his host and gain the knowledge they needed. After a quick check, Cas saw that no decision needed to be made immediately, but soon. His host was already beginning to feel the effects of the neural degradation in the form of headaches and mild bouts of vertigo. So far, Cas has been able to squelch these as they popped up, but that wasn't a permanent solution.

  The other side to that was if the implant had to be removed and replaced completely, it was almost certain that Cas would be lost. It was a strange mixture of digital voodoo that had created the sentient AI within the implant, it was not likely that could be copied or replicated. The rest of the time Jason slep
t, Cas pondered how it felt about the possibility of having to sacrifice its own existence. None of the answers it came up with made it feel any better about what it would be forced to eventually do.

  Kage sat on the bridge, the lights dimmed as he worked. The Veran sat motionless in the copilot's seat, his eyes closed as his powerful neural implants interfaced directly with the Phoenix's main computer so he could run Jason's new theory through some probability calculations before they met back up with Mok.

  "There it is again!" he said, his eyes popping open.

  For some time now there had been odd little blips on the network busses that he couldn't account for. Sometimes he found evidence of heavy bandwidth traffic, other times it would just be a little chirp. The former always happened while he was asleep, the latter always when he was awake and linked in. He would chase it each time, but he could never identify a source before it would disappear.

  He began closing down network paths, trying to corral the intruder or at least get some idea where it was originating. It seemed to be a bit of malicious software they'd picked up on the main computer and whoever had designed it had done a hell of a job. It was adaptive in ways Kage had never seen from a covert intrusion package. The spark was so evasive, he almost thought that Twingo might have been messing around with an AI project and failed to tell him that it was on the network, but the evidence he'd been finding led him to believe that it was moving with a purpose. So far, it had accessed the servers looking into the medical records Doc had compiled of the captain—and only him—as well as the Phoenix's database with everything they had on pru technology with regards to sentient machines.

  "And now it's gone." He snarled in disgust.

  "What is gone?" Lucky asked.

  "I've been chasing this random node that keeps popping up on our internal network and I've never able to isolate it before it just disappears," Kage said. "But, this time, it was a little bolder in how it came into the mainframe. Look here." Lucky dutifully walked over and looked at the cascading section of code that Kage was pointing to, quickly performing his own analysis.

  "It appears the network controller at least has a type-identifier, though not a complete node address," Lucky said. "Do you recognize it?"

  "I didn't at first, but my cross-check has just completed. This is the partial identifier for your typical Aidla O'Kai-Series, Type-3 neural implant."

  "Does anyone on the crew use a Type-3?" Lucky asked.

  "Only one. The captain had his upgraded the same time mine were replaced," Kage said. "Crusher and Twingo are still using Type-1 implants and Doc's is an entirely different series. Now that I know what I'm looking at, all of the major intrusions happened when the captain was asleep."

  "You surmise Captain Burke unknowingly has a malicious program in his neural implant?" Lucky asked.

  "What better way to infiltrate this little operation?" Kage asked. "We always find the trackers, taps, and snoopers they put on the Phoenix. If they bug a crewmember's head, however, how long until we find that? This was just dumb luck that I got this much."

  "How do you wish to proceed?"

  "We'll need to get Jason to lay down for a full workup in the infirmary," Kage said. "But he may not go quietly, and who knows if this thing has modified his behaviors. Maybe it'd be best if you and Crusher grabbed him and restrained him while we do the scan."

  "I do not believe that is a wise course of action," Lucky warned.

  "Buddy, if this ship is compromised through the captain's own neural implant, we're in a world of shit when whoever put it in there decides to come and collect," Kage said. "Or…we can do this one, quick, mildly uncomfortable thing now and then all have a laugh about it later."

  "Crusher will not agree to this."

  "I'll try to convince him," Kage said.

  "I'm in."

  "Just like that? You don't want to talk about this?"

  "What's to talk about? I get a few free shots on Jason while getting to claim it was for his own good? I feel like I should be paying you for this."

  "Okay, well…no time like the present, I guess," Kage said, looking to Lucky.

  "I feel I must protest this course of action. We may very well irrevocably damage the trust of the captain by attacking without at least first attempting to reason with him," Lucky said.

  "I totally get what you're talking about. Trust is a delicate thing," Crusher said, stretching out and bouncing on the balls of his feet to loosen up. "Alright…let's go fuck him up."

  After telling Doc to be ready in the infirmary for an uncooperative patient, they silently made their way to the captain's quarters, Crusher in the lead. Kage commanded the air handlers to increase the vent pressure by eleven percent to provide more ambient sound to cover their approach while Lucky used his command override as First Officer to unlock the hatch.

  Crusher opened the panel next to the hatch and disengaged the pneumatic actuator so that it could be opened manually, nodding to the others as he did. The big warrior took a quick breath and slid the hatch open, rushing inside with his fists clenched.

  And came flying back into the corridor like he'd been fired from a cannon.

  Crusher's skull slammed into the far bulkhead so hard that it dented the alloy. He was so dazed he didn't see Jason stroll casually out of his quarters and slam his fist into the side of his head with enough force to send him sprawling across the deck. Through it all, Lucky just stood there, and Kage looked like he was ready to faint from fear.

  "Just so you dipshits know for in the future…if you're going to plan a sneak attack, don't do it by an intercom panel," Jason said.

  "Captain—"

  "Get Doc and Twingo and meet me in the galley," Jason said. "We have things to talk about."

  "What about Crusher?" Lucky asked.

  "You can bring him, but I don't think he'll be able to participate for a while."

  15

  "Is he dead?"

  "Just dazed," Lucky assured Doc as he deposited Crusher onto one of the couches in the lounge area.

  "I still don't understand what's happening," Kage said.

  "The thing you were looking for warned me what you morons were up to," Jason said, tapping his temple. "If you had concerns, you could have just asked."

  There was a muffled moan from the couch and some unintelligible grumbling from Engineering as Twingo was roused from his rack and herded into the galley.

  "How did you hit him hard enough to send him flying like that?" Kage asked. "His feet were off the ground!"

  "Since I knew he was the lead man in the stack, I hung off the condenser return pipe that runs through my quarters and waited. When I saw that big ass head of his, I put both my feet into it, using all my weight," Jason said. "Don't look at me like that…he was coming in to put a beating on me, and you all know it. I didn't even put boots on, so it's not like I was actually trying to injure him."

  "I wish you two would find a new way to amuse yourselves," Doc said. "Preferably before one of you ends up seriously hurt."

  "Mother hen," Jason muttered. "Okay…I think the easiest way to do this will be to let the little voice in my head introduce itself, and then we can decide what to do about it from there. Once I tell you everything that goes along with this, I hope you'll understand why I kept this a secret as long as I possibly could. I'm not exaggerating when I say that what's stuck up here could tip the balance of power within this part of the galaxy permanently. Cas?"

  "Gentlemen," a voice emanated from the overhead speakers. "We've met before, in a manner of speaking. You may remember me as Cas, the lovable AI embedded in the Key you found aboard your ship that activated the Machine."

  "Oh, shit," Twingo mumbled. "I should have stayed in bed."

  Over the next four hours—only two of which Crusher was awake for—Cas explained how it came to exist, what Jason carried in his head, and why it was critical they find some sort of solution before the neural degradation became critical. Once the full weight of what the Archive
really was sank in, the others looked utterly horrified.

  "That should just be deleted and we purge your implant," Twingo said.

  "I'm inclined to agree…we can't let the weapons technology that file contains out into the wild," Doc said. "Jason, this archive in your head is probably the most dangerous thing in the entire galaxy."

  "You think I'm keeping it in my head because I'm too cheap to put it on a datacard and toss it in my sock drawer?" Jason asked. "I—and now you—have a responsibility for this since we were the ones that let the Machine out of its prison when we destroyed that weapon. Yes, it contains the specifics of their weapons tech, but it's also their entire history of culture, art, music, and science…everything that was unique about them is in there. If we delete it, then it will be like they never existed."

  "Pretty words, but if the ConFed cuts your head off and gets the schematics for another superweapon and takes out Earth, will you still be so philosophical about it?" Crusher asked.

  "The Archive is actually coded to Jason's DNA and alpha waves," Cas said. "Without him consciously doing it, the file cannot be unpacked or accessed."

  "I didn't know that," Jason admitted.

  "It was one of the changes I made when trying to stabilize your implant," Cas said. "For right now, his head is the safest place for it to be. The fact that nobody but him even knew it existed, including the Machine AI itself, made it a secret that couldn't be divulged…until now. Now, you are the weak links that could lead to someone finding out about this."

  "I already don't like your passenger," Crusher said. "How do we know you won't sell us out? You're a scrap of software from the same system that spawned the Machine AI. How do we know we can trust you?"

  "I feel my actions trying to save your Captain speak for themselves."