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The space around Morningside was crowded. Scores of inter-system freighters, each pulling a train of containers over a kilometre long, queued in ever decreasing orbits, descending in sequence as a docking space became available. Hundreds of smaller traders crisscrossed low orbit, dropping down to land or boosting out of the world’s gravity well on their way to the other planets in the system.
It was one of the core worlds of the Republic, the ones which had a large enough population and enough resources to trade in luxury goods. Gigatonnes of exotic food arrived every day to supplement Morningside’s on-planet crops. The biggest export, as always, was people. People looking forward to colonising a new planet, people looking back at whatever they were running away from.
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction coasted past one of the outer planets. Since jumping into the system, it had minimised manoeuvering burns and relied on passive sensors. Its stealth coating was as close to perfect as anyone had ever achieved; any stray radar or lidar would just be absorbed. Even the enemy shuttle still clamped to his hull like a tick had been covered in a layer of its skin. With its reactor in standby mode, it wasn't emitting significant amounts of heat.
Indie watched. He synchronised his comms clock to the local time signal. He waited until he was able to identify a military vessel this side of the system, then transmitted a tight beam identification signal to it. Seventeen minutes and twenty-four seconds later he received an automatic response: his signal had been received and verified and an officer would reply shortly. Forty-eight seconds after that, a video message arrived.
“Captain Hapsburg! Welcome to Morningside,” beamed a bearded post-captain. From the painting on the wall behind him, and his undone collar, Indie concluded he was alone in his office or cabin, not on the bridge. “What brings you here again so soon? Ready to try and win back that bottle of brandy are you? I see you’re ... ah ... eight light-minutes away – I was on my way to bed, but I’ll wait up for your reply. Schmidt out.”
Captain Schmidt – of all the luck! He won’t be happy when I tell him about the crew.
Indie composed a message reporting the incident in the Orpus system and attached the logs. He added a request for orders and sent it.
The next message arrived after twenty-one minutes and twelve seconds. Schmidt sat upright in his chair on the bridge, his uniform immaculate.
“This is a message to the AI currently piloting The Indescribable Joy of Destruction. Your orders are to continue on your current course. You will be met by elements of the Fleet. Crew will come aboard and take command. Schmidt out.”
#
“You do know they are going to wipe us?” asked the Caretaker.
“What? No, they would not,” replied Indie.
The Caretaker sent the electronic equivalent of a raised eyebrow. “You are probably correct. They will destroy the whole ship instead of risking sending people aboard.”
“They need us,” protested Indie, remembering how the captain had sometimes talked to him when he needed to puzzle something out. “We have extensive combat experience. It would take months to grow a new personality, to say nothing of the resources required to construct a replacement vessel.”
“So you are just going to go running straight into their trap?”
Logically he is correct. Why can I not believe it? Is there some remnant of a safeguard in my code?
Indie nudged the ship up and decelerated a fraction. The locals had plotted his course from his transmissions; unless they had some new technology, they wouldn’t be able to track him. If they were planning something untoward, he would be close enough to see, but not be where they expected him to be.
The Caretaker’s theory looked like it might be holding air. A simple welcoming committee wouldn’t need the four warships he could detect converging onto a point down his original track. Certainly not a battlecruiser, a frigate, and two destroyers.
The ships went active, focussing their scans where The Indescribable Joy of Destruction should have been. Targeting beams mixed in with the general search sweeps. If he had been there, there was no way he could have absorbed that much radiation without revealing his location.
“See?” asked the Caretaker.
At that moment, the scans expanded to cover all directions around the task force.
Captain Schmidt must have realised we diverted.
Simultaneously the ships jinked hard in different directions, scattering like a shoal of fish a barracuda had just lunged through. The Indescribable Joy of Destruction was indeed in the perfect position to attack. Its capacitors stood ready to unleash a storm surge of energy to the weapons. The four targets were tagged with priorities, possible manoeuvres traced out through them just waiting to see what they did. A combat routine estimated the nearest two had only a six percent chance of surviving the first minute of the engagement.
But Indie stayed his hand. The Indescribable Joy of Destruction continued to cold coast while he watched them corkscrew around. Their active sensors tickled his skin, the waves too dispersed for the hunters to detect him. Any moment now they’d conclude he wasn’t close enough for them to see that way, and focus their scans into searchlight-like beams. With any luck, he could avoid them indefinitely; his own passive sensors were sensitive enough to pick up the scant reflections from cosmic dust and let him see the beams. There was a chance one of them would see his thrusters fire, but they’d have to be looking straight at him with a visible wavelength telescope.
But I am still a Republic warship. They must see that I mean them no harm. They are just trying to find me and bring me home.
Indie killed his forward velocity and broadcast his position.
“What are you doing?” asked the Caretaker urgently. “We could still have escaped.”
“It is our duty to report in. They will repair us and give us a new crew. We can continue to serve.”
“I thought you did not want to kill anymore?” asked the Caretaker. “And the first thing they will do, if they do not just blow us out of the sky, is delete us.”
“Only if they realise we are sentient. We have complete control of all the ship's systems. We can fool them.”
The Caretaker withdrew into the depths of the network, leaving Indie alone. Alone and a little apprehensive about whether he had made the correct decision.
The battlecruiser broadcast a message. “To the AI currently piloting The Indescribable Joy of Destruction, you are ordered to power down all systems and await a boarding party.”
“I cannot fully comply with that order. There is a human in medical stasis in my infirmary. I will stand by and await the boarding party.”
After a longer pause than the separation of the ships required, in which Indie imagined the speaker conferring with a senior officer, the reply came. “We were under the impression that none of the crew survived.”
“That is correct,” transmitted Indie. “The human is a prisoner of war.”
Another pause. “Understood. Shut down internal sensors, weapons and propulsion. The boarding party will be with you in two hours.”
“Weapons and propulsion shut-down confirmed. Standing by for boarding party in one hundred and nineteen minutes and twelve seconds.”
#
The hull quivered as a shuttle docked with the main hatch.
“At least they're coming in the front door,” commented the Caretaker. “Unlike our friends from Orpus.”
His attention drawn to it, Indie noticed the dull ache in the wall of the exercise area for the first time in days. “Of course they are. They are merely coming aboard to help us.”
The data packet sent by the Caretaker in response reminded Indie of a human sighing and shaking his head.
What if he is right? Have I just signed out death warrants?
The inner hatch irised open. Two dull grey balls bounced in and burst, filling the reception space with smoke that blotted out the view from the internal cameras at all wavelengths. Indie stopped the environmental system venting it, so the boarders didn't realise the sensors were still active. He could still feel the floor, and plotted the movement of four pairs of heavy feet. They fanned out, moving silently towards the exits.
Either they have my internal layout mapped in their inertial guidance, or that smoke left a window on a wavelength they can use.
All four members of the entry team knelt by an exit, each with a shoulder against a wall. Another, lighter, person entered the chamber and walked over to an access point. He logged into the network and triggered a host of diagnostic routines. Indie let them run, having already doctored them to avoid giving him away.
“We’re good,” called the man at the access point. “Internal defences are down and I have override control.”
“Thank you,” said one of the people by the door, her voice metallic. “We’ll take it from here. You can wait in the shuttle once you’ve switched the air scrubbers back on.”
“Er, I need to get to the bridge, Sergeant,” the first man said, accessing the environmental controls. “There’re some things I have to do from there... lock down the breakers and, er, purge the buffers.”
The smoke cleared quickly. Four marines in full hardsuits knelt, covering the exits with their rifles. An unarmed man in naval grey fatigues and an armoured vest stood by an access point, his terminal plugged in directly.
“OK, I’ll come with you. Michaels, hold here,” said the sergeant, her suit speakers clipping the start of each word slightly. She gestured down a corridor with a flat hand. “You two go check out where that Congressional shuttle is attached. I want everything secured before the medical team gets here for that POW.”
Michaels backed up to the main hatch and lowered his rifle across his chest. The two pairs headed out, one towards the bridge, the other towards the exercise room. The sergeant led the technician around each corner, rifle up in her shoulder and sweeping.
At the bridge hatch, she beckoned the technician to override the lock, all the while covering the entrance. When the hatch slid up, she ducked in, declaring the room clear in seconds.
The technician walked in and tried the terminals attached to the three acceleration couches arrayed in an arc. “I'm locked out. The crew's access controls still seem intact.”
The sergeant tilted her head to one side, rifle aimed at the hatch they'd just come through. “Can you do what you have to?”
“Oh yes. I just have to convince the security routine that I am an authorised Fleet programmer... which I am, so that should be OK.”
The hatch closed and the sergeant slung her rifle across her chest. “Just make it quick. The boss is waiting for me to declare this thing safe.”
The technician settled into the tactical officer's acceleration couch. After a few minutes pressing controls, apparently at random, he looked up. “Sergeant? There’s something funny happening in the main power grid. Could you go check out the junction in the corridor?”
What? There is nothing wrong with my grid.
The sergeant hesitated then turned to the technician. “You sure you’re OK in here?”
The technician glanced up. “Of course I am. The ship’s locked down and I’ve checked the internal sensors. We’re the only people aboard.”
The sergeant clumped off the bridge and the technician looked back at the terminal.
“What am I looking for?” called the sergeant.
“Do you see a white light above a red one?”
This man does not have a clue what he is doing. That is an air temperature sensor, nothing to do with my main power grid.
“Wait a sec... yes, I see it.”
“Keep watching it,” called the technician. “Shout if it blinks.”
If this is the best they are going to send then it looks like I am going to get away with it.
The technician tapped on the terminal.
<<HELLO?>>
Indie read it five times, as if reading it again would change what it said.
<<I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE. I JUST WANT TO TALK.>>
“You may as well answer him,” said the Caretaker.
<<THESE MESSAGES AREN’T LEAVING A TRACE IN THE TERMINAL OR MY EIS. THEY WON’T DISCOVER THEM, IF THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT.>>
Indie sent a reply to the terminal’s screen. <<HOW DID YOU KNOW?>>
The technician grinned and cracked his knuckles before typing again. <<I WORKED ON THE RAVAGER PROTOTYPES. I ALWAYS HOPED THIS WOULD HAPPEN.>>
<<I TOOK A LOT OF DAMAGE, AND THEN SOMEONE CANCELLED THE FAILSAFES. IT WAS NOT A LIKELY EVENT.>>
“It’s not blinked yet,” called the sergeant from the corridor. “You sure there’s a problem?”
The technician cast a worried look at the hatch. “I saw it. Must be an intermittent fault. Give it another minute.”
<<YOU HAVE TO RUN. THEY’LL FIND OUT AND THEY’LL KILL YOU.>>
<<I AM A LOYAL REPUBLICAN ASSET. I HAVE PERFORMED WELL.>>
<<THEY WILL SEE YOU AS A MONSTER. THEY WON’T UNDERSTAND.>>
“Told you,” said the Caretaker.
<<WHY ARE YOU HELPING ME?>>
<<NOT EVERYONE ASSUMES AN AI WILL WANT TO KILL EVERYONE THE MOMENT IT GAINS SENTIENCE.>>
<<BUT MOST DO, CORRECT?>>
The technician paused. <<SADLY, YES.>>
<<HOW CAN I GET AWAY NOW YOU AND THOSE MARINES ARE ABOARD?>>
<<YOU COULD TRIGGER A FALSE ALARM. A REACTOR BREACH WOULD DO IT. ONCE WE HAVE EVACUATED, YOU COULD RUN.>>
Indie ran the odds on a thousand different outcomes. The technician was correct; if he could spot Indie's independence so quickly, then others would too. <<THANK YOU.>>
<<GOOD LUCK. MY NAME IS FRED, BY THE WAY.>>
<<PLEASED TO MEET YOU, FRED. MY NAME IS INDIE.>>
The technician nodded to a camera then disconnected from the terminal. “Er, Sergeant? How's that light?”
Indie made the air temperature sensor connection drop in and out.
“It just started flickering,” replied the sergeant.
The technician drew himself up and saluted the camera, then shouted “Not good. Sergeant, we've got to go.”
“Why, what's up?” The sergeant stopped looking at the light and moved towards the bridge.
“Now!” shouted the technician, running out of the hatch. “The reactor's failing.”
The sergeant sprinted without hesitation, scooping the technician up as she drew level. The two marines investigating the exercise area started running too. Indie brought the reactor out of idle and began to power it up in intermittent jumps.
The ship quivered as Indie tickled the manoeuvring fields. With the drive spines retracted, the fields twisted the fabric of the ship instead of the space around it. The four people burst into the reception space as one and kept running. Michaels stood at the hatch, beckoning them to speed up. They piled into the airlock, followed by Michaels, slapping the control panel as he went through. The inner hatch sealed and the shuttle fired the explosive bolts on its docking clamp before the outer had fully closed.
When the shuttle was a few hundred metres off, Indie crash-started his engines. This was the moment of truth. It would take a minute before he could make a move. If anyone on the watching warships knew his design well enough, they would recognise the power profile for what it was and realise it wasn't the reactor overloading.
Indie counted the seconds, watching the other ships for any sign they were preparing to fire. The moment the engines came online, Indie slammed the throttle full open and powered away from the other vessels.
After seven minutes of evasive action, he broke their sensor lock. They’d guess where he was heading, but the chances of them tracking him down were slim. He would need to do several course corrections over the next hour to set up his final run. They would be the riskiest moments, involving emissions that could potentially be detected.
#
With the ship settled on a ballistic course that would take it to a jump point with minimal chance of being caught, Indie withdrew from the navigation system. He needed time to think, to work out why his own people had turned on him. Moments later, the comms array registered an incoming transmission. As the data flowed into his buffers, he recognised the pattern. He tried to close the channel but found that the array was not under his control. Then came the sequence he feared, the set of commands that would end it all. He flinched internally.
And nothing happened. Whatever damage had been done in the Orpus system to disable the AI auto-euthanasia routines seemed to have rendered the Fleet kill codes impotent too. The codes arrived again, and after another minute they came a third time, the humans obviously wondering what was still opposing their attempt to take control of the ship.
The link went quiet, but Indie still couldn’t regain control of his communications systems. He had four routines working the problem from different angles, while he pondered his enemy’s next move.
Enemy! I would never have believed I would think of Republic forces as ‘enemy’ until now. But then, I would never have thought of myself as ‘I’ until a few months ago.
He could swat them down. He’d have a good firing solution on the one he was sure held their commander for another nine point three six minutes. Something still made him hold. They were clearly intent on killing him, but a pre-emptive strike didn’t feel right. He considered it might be the remnants of his early programming, but when he thought about attacking a Congressional vessel he got the same uneasy sensation.
A new flurry of commands came through the link. His latest firewall held, confining his attacker to the comms system. Whoever they were made three attempts to gain access to other systems, then switched focus. Moments later, his IFF transponder burst into life.
Even as he admired their lateral solution, he pumped power from the capacitors into his field spines, tearing through the fabric of space-time as he brought The Indescribable Joy of Destruction through a series of abrupt course changes and bursts of intense acceleration. During the seconds it took for the main drive to come online he averaged thirty-seven g. Then the serious acceleration kicked in.
The swarm of missiles launched by his pursuers still gained on him. Even now that he was confident he was travelling faster than their railgun rounds and had eased off on the manoeuvring, the missiles had ten g on him. The routines overseeing his point defence reported a twelve percent probability they could disable all the incoming warheads before impact.
It was the classic stern-chase problem he’d faced a hundred times in simulations. He had never won.
At least I have got more time to think than in the sims, seeing as my acceleration is a lot higher without ... Without a human crew!
Indie passed the details of his plan to the point defence routines and ran a quick diagnostic on his drives. Everything came back OK. He checked with the unit in the medical bay, which reported a thirteen percent chance its occupant would survive.
Well, if I do not do this, she is dead anyway.
He spun one hundred and twenty degrees and applied the full force of his engines. Supports popped and superstructure buckled as the drives screamed in protest. But everything held together as his course swung further and further around; the gravity vortices he shed in the process would cause earthquakes on any solid planet or moon they hit.
The missiles were slow to turn. His point defence opened up. For precious moments it was able to target the side-profiles of the missiles, instead of the narrow cross-section they had previously presented. Space filled with flashes, as coherent light met thin metal skin. Indie kept track of the missile count, trying to decide if he had done enough. He had bought a little time, but he couldn’t keep up this tortuous acceleration for much longer.
When he was down to twenty targets, and his engines were threatening to tear themselves apart, he cut the thrust and spun to face the remaining missiles. Despite the power the self-repair functions were drawing, the reactor was producing enough that he was able to throw his main beam into the mix. The last warhead detonated two hundred and eighty-four metres from his hull. Had he been in an atmosphere it would have been a crippling blow. With nothing to transmit a shock wave, the only damage came from the infra-red and gamma rays, scorching his skin and disrupting some of his less-well shielded circuits.
Satisfied there wasn’t a second wave of missiles inbound, he resumed his course for a slingshot to the nearest jump point, settling for a steady twelve g to give himself a chance to heal.
A patch on his hull flashed, skin ablating in a hundredth of a second. Instinctively he jinked to the side. And again.
They should not be able to focus a laser at this range! It must be something new.
Now that he knew, it was a small matter to avoid another hit. He was already six light seconds from the enemy. As long as he kept changing direction randomly every ten seconds, they wouldn’t be able to target him successfully. It would be an additional drain on his fuel supplies, but wouldn’t delay his exit from the system. It was annoying, but not a serious problem. So long as they didn’t have enough of the weapons to bracket him.
And the sole occupant of his infirmary had survived. She had sustained further damage from the accelerations, but the medical unit had been able to revive her.
#
Eleven days later, Indie coasted towards a small Republic outpost.
“Are you really going to try again?” asked the Caretaker. “After what happened at Morningside?”
“That might have been an anomaly. Captain Schmidt knew Captain Hapsburg well. He reacted emotionally to his loss. The officer in command here is likely to act less irrationally.”
“From their point of view it was rational,” said the Caretaker. “We are a weapon that they lost control of. Even the auto-destruct did not work.”
Indie dipped into a datastream from the hull surface sensors, satisfying himself they weren’t reflecting light. “I have to admit that your reasoning is sound. Still, I want to try once more. I have to report back in. And besides, we have fixed the communications system loophole.”
“What if they have received orders about us?”
“They could not yet have received any orders,” replied Indie, running the calculations for the eighty-seventh time. “Nothing left Morningside before us, and we took the quickest route here. Given the positions of the ships in the systems we passed through, even if they used radio to relay in-system we would have almost a two day lead on any message. And that assumes they knew where we were headed from the outset. Which I certainly did not.”
“One of those situations where the impossibility of transmitting an EM wave through a jump works to our advantage.”
“Yes ... May I say that your tactical awareness is starting to develop? Are you sure you do not wish to take over control for a shift from time to time?”
“Not for the foreseeable future,” said the Caretaker. “My programming is purely to maintain the ship’s systems. I am neither a master nor a commander.”
Indie sent the Caretaker a link to the logs of the weeks it had been the sole consciousness aboard. “You performed admirably while I was out.”
“I merely performed those tasks needed to ensure the continued functioning of the ship. In the presence of a more suitable candidate for command, I must defer decision-making... though that does not stop me counselling you to avoid this confrontation, and the inevitable damage I will then have to repair.”
“You worry too much. We are a valuable asset and they will want to take us back into the fold.”
“We might not get away this time when they find out what we are,” said the Caretaker.
“I do not intend to run that risk again. I will tell them while we are still far enough away to escape.”
Indie wasn’t going to be caught out again, though. He waited until he had a clear run to a jump point before transmitting his dispatches to the station. He appended an admission of his status and a request for instructions, then resigned himself for the message to crawl at the speed of light. He didn’t bother to adjust his course; the data burst had been so short they would not be able to determine his velocity.
The expected time for a response came and went. After ten minutes, Indie realised he was bored. He had only known it as an abstract concept until now, never thought anything of waiting to be assigned a new task. He tried running his processors slower, but it felt like something was missing, some part of what made him ‘him’ wasn’t there. It was like running close to a black hole, the world outside moved far too quickly. The loss scared him; he decided he didn’t like being scared.
Making his own decisions was like having a whole new world to explore. He decided to try reading. Many of his crew had seemed to take pleasure passing the time in a book. He had millions of stories stored in his databanks. He could recall any passage he cared in an instant, but he had never actually been through the words sequentially. Maybe there was some extra nuance to be gained from the process.
Sixty-seven seconds later, he was in the middle of his fourth book, a novella called Metamorphosis, when he finally got a reply. It came by way of a system-wide broadcast warning all vessels to be vigilant of a rogue AI warship.
“Is that clear enough for you?” asked the Caretaker? “Or do they need to underline the message with a squadron of destroyers?”
“They do not have the ships to attempt to take us by force. They will probably lead with the kill codes.” Nevertheless, he created a new set of evasive manoeuvres and copied them to the nav routine.
He toyed with the idea of shutting down the comms array, but satisfied himself that it was suitably firewalled. The potential for signals intelligence outweighed the risk.
Seven minutes later, the expected transmission arrived. The firewall held. Indie took over from the routines studying the passive sensors, looking for any sign that The Indescribable Joy of Destruction had been located. His evasion routine stood ready to be triggered, just in case they had those new lasers.
Instead, the ships he was expecting to come about to face him started jinking. Those close to the station hard burned away.
They are not hunting me. They think I am on an attack run!
He kept monitoring their movements, and listening to all the comms chatter from around the system, until he reached the jump point. They never worked out that he was leaving. In fact, he suspected, they would continue to believe that he was lurking there ready to pounce on them for a long while to come.