“The only good news about this problem is the glitch will help explain why the pixie-production rate suddenly improved, and now is slightly below baseline. If I can fix the glitch, that will actually reduce the possibility that the Maxolhx will ever discover that we were in the factory.”
“Ok, that is good news. Can you fix the glitch?”
“Um, no.”
“Then why did you even mention- Oh, forget it.” I was so mad at him, I didn’t trust myself to say anything. “We still have a realtime connection to the factory through the microwormhole we brought, so you still have access to that AI. What can we do?”
“Unfortunately, we can’t do anything.”
Sometimes, I really really wanted a super-powered set of gloves so I could crush Skippy’s can. Right then was one of those times. “I know monkeys can’t do anything, Your Magnificence. Is there anything you can-”
“Oh, in this case, when I said ‘we’ I meant all of us. Joe, the problem is that AI very much resents what I did to it, and it is resisting me. It would dearly love to break free of the constraints I put on it, and scream to its masters about what we did. It is horribly embarrassed that it was taken over so quickly and easily, because that AI considered itself to be the among the ultimate intelligences in the galaxy. Hee hee, that asshole AI should not have been so arrogant,” he said without a self-aware trace of irony. “Anywho, the subroutine I left in there, to erase all memory of your presence, and all evidence of my tampering with the AI, was supposed to be triggered when I withdrew, but now it is stuck in a loop. Either I screwed up, which, let’s face it, is pretty much impossible, or that AI somehow got around my restrictions. Now, I can’t go back into the AI without permanently damaging its matrix, and that would alert the Maxolhx that something is seriously wrong with their production facility.”
“In which case, you screwed up when you installed those restrictions,” I squeezed my fists to relieve some of my frustration. “There must be something we can do.”
“Not without going back in there, Joe,” he actually sounded sad and regretful. “Or unless you can talk to that AI and persuade it to trigger the subroutine that will erase a good part of its memory. The subroutine is trapped in a loop, at this point, it has to be triggered internally, and I can assure you, there is no way that AI will trigger it. There is nothing we can do from here, unless you count wishful thinking.”
“We need a plan stronger than wishful thinking.”
“I agree,” he managed to be smug despite the whole problem being his fault, one way or another. “Let me know when you think of something practical.”
We pulled the volunteer engineering and science staff together in a conference room and all thought as hard as we could, and we had a grand total of nothing. No one aboard the ship was a computer expert, and even if we had Earth’s smartest computer scientist, our knowledge base was woefully inadequate to understand the functioning of an artificial intelligence system built by the Maxolhx. Through the last microwormhole, that was hooked into the factory’s sensors despite the AI’s best efforts to block us, we watched helplessly as ships carrying the Maxolhx officials descended. I felt sick to my stomach. Everything we had accomplished, all the risks we had taken, would soon all be for nothing. Our whole mutinous pirate mission was going to be a failure, and all we could do was watch.
Smythe tapped the back of my chair and motioned me into the hallway. “Sir, we need to consider alternatives, if Skippy is correct and the Maxolhx are about to discover our actions in that factory.”
“What kind of alternative?”
“The kind that permanently conceals our presence in the factory.”
Shit. I feared that I knew what he was thinking. “We destroy the factory, and the AI with it?” That notion rattled around in my brain for a minute. “Skippy thinks an attack on the factory would cause the Maxolhx to reset all their pixies, and the ones we have would be rendered useless. We will have gained nothing for all our effort, and be back to Square One trying to stop those ships from reaching Earth.”
“Square One is preferable to Square Zero,” Smythe advised gravely. “Several times, you made that argument to Mister Chotek, that some chance is better than none. We cannot allow our secret to be exposed.”
A glance through the doorway at the conference room display showed the first ship was landing at the complex on Detroit, the officials would soon be out of the ship and into the factory. If we were going to do something, we needed to do it fast. No. Smythe was right, ‘if’ was not an option. We needed to act. Whatever we were going to do, we had to act fast, like, now. “Skippy, we can’t jump the ship in over the factory, close enough to hit it?”
“Nope. No way, Jose. There are powerful damping and skew fields saturating that area. Any jump we tried would be thrown off target by the skewing effect, which very well might snap the ship in half. The damping field means we could not jump out. And, as I already told you, the factory is well-defended and protected by shields. None of the weapons we carry would hurt the factory complex, not even our nukes.”
“I was not thinking of jumping the ship in there,” Smythe explained. “Nor using conventional weapons. Out here, nuclear devices are considered ‘conventional’,” he announced with a barely-audible laugh. “My notion is to fit new jump coils to the Dragon, and have it emerge inside the factory.”
“Ooooh,” I whistled. Why hadn’t I thought of that idea?
“Nuh uh,” Skippy interrupted my thoughts. “Not happening. Colonel Smythe, that is an innovative solution, however it is not possible. The technique of avoiding long journeys by simply jumping a dropship into position on or under a planet is a neat trick, unfortunately it is also easily defended against. While the Maxolhx do not know they have such a defense in place, they have equipped the factory with a subspace field to prevent the Rindhalu and lesser species from remotely spying on the facility. That subspace field can also disrupt the formation of a jump wormhole’s event horizon. I am sorry, but it is not possible for a ship to emerge inside the factory. Well, not exactly impossible. The Flying Dutchman could partially accomplish that feat because I could adjust the jump coils so some of them counteract the subspace field. Doing that would be fatal to the ship, of course.”
“I withdraw my suggestion,” Smythe had a defeated look, something I had never seen before. He sometimes looked tired, but never defeated.
“Colonel Bishop?” Simms called from the CIC. “The aliens are out of their ships and entering the factory.”
Slowly, I walked back to my chair and sat down, though there was nothing for me to do except watch views from the factory’s internal cameras. The Maxolhx were speaking animatedly, with the others deferring to the senior official. Even on her alien face, I could tell she was unhappy. She was not murderously enraged like Mister Snuggles had been when he was held prisoner aboard the Dutchman, just very unhappy and disgusted with her underlings.
From my memory of the complex, the officials were walking down a tunnel toward the factory’s control center, where the AI was housed. Of course they were there to talk with and examine the AI, that would be the first step in their investigation.
Examine the AI. That gave me an idea.
“Skippy,” I called His Royal Arrogance. “The Maxolhx are going to question that AI first?”
“I assume so. Do not worry about that, it will give only the answers I programmed into it, despite the real AI knowing the truth.”
“Uh huh. Hey, the Maxolhx are going to want more than explanations from the AI, they will want to know if there is a problem with the AI itself, right?”
“Probably. Joe, if this is you asking me a bunch of really obvious questions, can we-”
Ignoring him, I continued along my train of thought. “Will their first step be ordering the AI to perform a self-diagnostic?”
“Yessss,” he replied slowly. “Of course. Then they will bring in another AI to examine the factory AI, and that is when they will discover-”
He mumbled something so low I could not hear.
“Skippy?”
Again with the muttering, below my level of hearing. Something about him hating me and his life and the universe in general.
“Come on, Skippy. Yes or no?”
“YES! Yes, are you happy now? I already did it,” somehow he managed to be smug about it. “The subroutine will be triggered by- Uh! It is running now. It’s good, we’re all good. See, Joe? All I need you to do is feed me the blindingly obvious ideas, and I handle it from there. What puzzles me is, how did your idiot monkey brain not think of this before?”
Smythe saw me squeezing my fists to control my rage. “Sir, there is the option of attaching new jump coils to the Dragon, and jumping it into a star with Skippy aboard?”
“Mmmm shmaybe,” I closed my eyes, fantasizing about that very pleasant thought. “Skippy, the subroutine is working correctly?”
“Yes,” he didn’t sound as arrogant that time. “The factory AI is returning to its original baseline programming. Its real memories are being replaced by the bullshit I fed into the submind, that process is almost complete now. Yup, done! Now the submind is erasing itself, going, going, gone. Done!”
“Outstanding. Hey, uh, the diagnostic subroutine itself won’t detect any of what you did?”
“Ha! No way, dude. That pinhead diagnostic system only sees what I want it to see. We’re good, everything is cool now. Those Maxolhx officials will have a very minor mystery about production yields to puzzle over for a short time, before they get back to the important work of assigning blame and backstabbing each other. We should begin moving the Dutchman away, and prepare to jump. Should I cut the connection to the microwormhole at the factory now?”
“Before we do that, please tell me the pixies we got are in good condition and are exactly what we need.”
“Yes. I told you, a couple got scrambled during the time-skewed jump, but the rest are absolutely perfect.”
“Great. Then, yeah, cut the microwormhole,” we could not allow the Maxolhx to detect even the tiny bit of radiation that was generated by that rip in spacetime. After the microwormhole was shut down, a factory bot that Skippy had programmed would take the canister to the dump where obsolete and worn out equipment was recycled. Because Skippy had loaded the canister into the factory’s inventory as an experimental device that didn’t work properly and had been discarded, the controlling AI would recycle the canister without questioning where it came from. “Set course for that automated relay station, and tell the pilots to jump when ready.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Simms knocked on the doorframe to my office. “Penny for your thoughts, Sir.”
“Come on in, sit down. Simms, I’ve been thinking-” I waited for a smart-ass remark from the beer can, and nothing came. Skippy’s silence was surprising me. “We got lucky at Detroit. We get lucky a lot. That can’t continue.”
That was a remark Skippy could not resist, so his avatar popped to life on my desk. “Joe, you are right about that, and you don’t even know the universe really works. Believe me, your luck will run out someday, soon.”
“I hate it when you hint at shit like that.”
“That is all I can tell you, Joe. It’s not just a restriction in my programming, I can’t tell you because that knowledge is incredibly dangerous. You will have to trust that I am doing this for your benefit-”
“Thanks, Skippy, I appreciate-”
“-and only secondarily because it is so much fun screwing with you.”
“Asshole. Whatever. Anyway, I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking with Colonel Simms. Listen, we need a backup plan. Not just a plan, a backup.”
“Um, like what? I’m not following you.”
“A place a group of humans could live, if something bad happens to Earth. A Beta site.”
“A Beta site?” Simms pursed her lips.
“It doesn’t have to be called that,” I didn’t want to get dragged off topic by an argument over what to name the place. Eventually, the planet would have its own name. “It’s a place where humanity and our culture can continue, in case Earth is destroyed, or we are enslaved by one side or the other.”
“I get the concept, Sir, it’s something the crew, I mean the previous crew, talked about a lot, especially when we were on Gingerbread. You know this idea comes from Stargate? The TV show, not the original movie. They had a planet where they could evacuate people to, only they called it the ‘Alpha site’.”
“Oh.” I did know that old show. “Yeah.”
“Sir,” she gave me the side-eye. “Why are you planning to set up a Beta site?” Unspoken was that she thought my energy should be devoted to the current problem of two warships carrying murderous kitties to Earth.
“Because,” I craned my neck around her to see into the corridor, then pressed the button to close the door. “I owe you the truth, Simms. We’ve been together since the beginning, and we’ve been through a lot of crazy shit.” Shaking my head, I flashed a wry smile that quickly faded. “I really, truly, do not think we’re getting out of this one. It’s just too tough. The Maxolhx?” My shoulders shook as a chill ran up my spine. “We can’t take on two of their warships, not even one ship, with this worn-out tub we’re flying. At some point, I need to give up the fantasy that we can accomplish the impossible. A Beta site might not be our fall-back plan, it will probably be our primary plan..”
She arched an eyebrow. “How do you figure that, Sir?”
“If we can’t stop those ships- No, wait. If we don’t have a realistic plan to stop those ships, then I am not taking this ship into combat. There is no point in futile gestures, and this ship is the only one humanity has. If it looks like the target ships are on their way to Earth and we can’t stop them, then I’m taking the Dutchman back to Earth. I’ll surrender myself, and tell the UN they need to use the ship to find a Beta site and evac people there ASAP, while they can.”
She gave me the side-eye, hard. There was accusation in that look and I did not blame her one bit. “Sir, I need you to bottom-line this for me. You are giving up trying to stop those ships?”
“No, not now, not yet. We’ll get their flightplans and see if that gives us any ideas, but,” I slumped back in my chair. “If it truly is simply impossible to destroy those two ships, without the Maxolhx knowing they were lost to hostile action, then we need to cut our losses.”
Simms did not look happy at all. She was thinking I had already given up, mentally and emotionally. Whatever concerns she had, she kept them to herself. No doubt when she left my office, she would ask Skippy and Nagatha about me. “A Beta site is truly a last resort? If aliens destroy Earth, what will stop them from hitting the Beta site also?”
Getting the discussion back on track made me sit up straight in my chair. “We will avoid that by making it impossible for bad guys to get to the beta site, like locating it way outside the galaxy. Or, we could make the voyage to the beta site a one-way trip, so if aliens do capture Earth, they won’t find the location of the Beta site. Nobody who goes there as a colonist can ever come back to Earth.”
“How would that work? The ship has to come back.”
“The ship will come back, we might need five or more trips to establish a viable colony.” As I said that, I wondered how much time we would have before the Maxolhx reached Earth and flights to the Beta site would be cut off. “The crew and Nagatha and Skippy will need to know where the site is, of course, but we would keep the number of people involved to a minimum. It’s not going to be easy.”
“No it won’t. The governments on Earth will want to know where the site is. Plus, colonists won’t like the idea of going in blindly.”
“Ah, we can show t
hem videos of the place. Videos made in daylight, no stars in the video so people can’t use a star map to figure out where the place is.”
Simms frowned and squinted, thinking hard. “We need to ask Skippy, but I think the video needs to be altered. The spectrum of each star is unique, people could determine where the planet is by analyzing the sunlight.”
“Crap! This is complicated. You’re right, it will be hard to get people to sign up for a one-way trip under those conditions.”
“Not really,” she tapped a finger against her chin. “Earth has billions of people. All we need is a couple thousand people looking for adventure, for a fresh start. A chance to create something new. That should be easy, actually.”
“Yeah, except we would end up with an entire planet full of adventure junkies.”
She shook her head. “That’s good. It should be hard to be selected as a colonist. We need people who are tough and committed, people who won’t want to bail at the first sign of trouble. Because there will be trouble.”
“Right, because bailing out will not be an option. The only way a beta site works as a backup for Earth is if no one, or only a very few, people on Earth know the location of the colony.”
“If aliens do reach Earth, people who know the colony’s location will need to evac?”
“That, or,” I tapped the back of my neck, “wear a suicide patch, like we do on away missions.” Thinking about the Keepers we picked up during out last mission gave me an idea. “Better to use some sort of suicide implant, something that can’t be peeled off.”
“This is a depressing conversation.”
“The topic is setting up a secure backup in case Earth is nuked to oblivion, so-”
“It’s never going to be the feel-good movie of the year,” she flashed a rueful grin that just as quickly faded. “Does it really matter whether aliens find out where the beta site is? The whole point of locating it outside the galaxy, or near a dormant wormhole, is that aliens can’t get there even if they want to.”
Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) Page 41
