Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (35 page)

“You know,”
said Hiro on close coms, “
if the LC just promoted Rooke to a full Lieutenant, then Hale moves up to Second Lieutenant, which is the equal rank to a marine full Lieutenant.”

Trace looked, and found him floating surrepticiously nearby. He just seemed to have that knack of being somewhere without being noticed. “Thank you for explaining the Fleet ranking system to me,” she said. “Were you listening in?” How he’d figured to do that on one-on-one communications, she didn’t know. Spies.

“I’m just saying, Engineering is usually commanded by a full Lieutenant. There’s a lot of people strangely reluctant to give or accept promotions lately.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “Strictly speaking, equally ranked officers aren’t supposed to be banging either.”

“It’s better between marines and spacers, surely?”
Hiro pulled himself over, not bothering with the burner.
“It’s easier to maintain professional distance when you’re not operating in the same field or sharing the same skillsets. Or even bunking in the same parts of the ship.”

It struck Trace as a strange location to be having the discussion. But then, everything was strange lately. “People think it doesn’t hurt. People want what they want. They justify all things to themselves — one more slice of cake, one more hit of drugs, one more roll in the sack. And then it hurts them, every time.”

“Were you hurt?”
Hiro wondered, pulling up before her. His spacer suit had an open visor, exposing more of his face. Looking hard, trying to see her eyes behind the narrower marine visor.

Trace smiled. “A tragic romantic past? Would make a nice story, wouldn’t it? No, I do my job. I
am
my job.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“You think?” She gestured at the crew about the chamber, her marines amongst them. “Civvies pity me because I don’t do civvie relationships. I pity civvies because they’ll never know the marine family. I’m never alone. And as Kulina, I know that the collective karma of the galaxy rests upon my choices. I’ll leave civvies to waste their lives fretting about romantic love. I’ve got a real life.”

L
isbeth awoke
as Major Thakur opened the door to their quarters, a glare of light from the corridor, and the drone of ventilation and other systems. Then a clank as it shut again, the rustle of clothes being removed, and a closet opened for toiletries to be put away. Lisbeth slitted her eyes open, and saw the Major only in dull silhouette, hair still damp from her shower. A blink on the uplink icon in her lower vision showed her the time — 0210, still four hours of second-shift to go.

“How did it go?” Lisbeth asked.

“We got the deepynine drones back,” said the Major, unwinding some strapping about one hand. Lisbeth hadn’t realised she’d hurt it. Typically of marines, she’d just wrapped it and kept working. “Romki’s dragging them to Engineering, where there’s now a huge debate about whether to let the drysine queen see them now, or whether to process the remains first.” She gave a small shrug. “Not my department.”

“I should get down there and help with that,” said Lisbeth, and dragged herself from her bunk. In civilian life she’d hated to miss sleep, and her sisters had teased her for her slow morning starts. But there was a conscious drysine queen down in Engineering, about to meet one of her ancient enemy deepynines for the first time in eons, albeit a dead one. If a straight-A engineering student couldn’t get out of bed for that, she couldn’t get out of bed for anything.

“Nice to see you’re alone in here,” the Major observed.

Lisbeth frowned quizzically, fishing her fresh jumpsuit from the under-bunk storage locker. “Who would I be with?”

“I have no idea. I find it alarming just how little idea I have, with some of my marines.”

Lisbeth repressed a yawn as she stripped off the old jumpsuit and pulled on the new, somewhat flattered that the Major was bothering to share this with her at all. “Does it really matter if crew sleep with each other?”

“I’ve seen it completely screw up working relationships between marines. Completely. If it happens within one of my platoons, I’ll transfer them to different platoons immediately, and different ships if possible. Though that’s no longer an option now. Marines shouldn’t screw around with other marines — that’s what spacers are for.”

“People don’t really have any control over who they fall in love with, though,” Lisbeth reasoned.

“Yes they do,” said the Major, climbing past Lisbeth onto the top bunk. “That’s one of these soft rationalisations people make to excuse their lack of willpower. It’s easy to control.”

“Have
you
ever found yourself attracted to men and not acting on it?” Lisbeth asked, standing to pull on and clip her spacer harness.

Face on her pillows, the Major smiled. “You don’t inspect my locker for vibrating electric objects, I won’t inspect yours.”

Lisbeth grinned. “Well no, that’s
not
actually what I was asking.”

“I know what you were asking. Of course I have. I’m human. The only thing that makes Kulina different from anyone else is discipline. Most people have to force themselves to discipline, but Kulina couldn’t live without it, we’ve never known anything else. Women in the corps are outnumbered, and there are a lot of very impressive men around. You might have noticed.”

Lisbeth smiled self-consciously. “I might have.”

“You still get a few people making a fuss about mixing genders in the forces. They say that it hurts too much for men to see women get hurt or killed. They say men get protective. It’s possibly even true, but then we’re supposed to risk our necks for each other, gender aside.” All amusement faded from her face, her eyes distant. “What they never talk about is that it cuts both ways. When I was a young Lieutenant in my first action, I had a couple of great young guys in my command have… very bad things happen to them. Combat things. I hadn’t even realised I’d had a slight crush on either of them until I saw them… wrecked like that. And I realised that it’s bad enough losing any friends without those kinds of extra attachments. Never again.”

“Can you really just switch that off, though?” Lisbeth asked quietly.

“No,” the Major said tiredly. “No, maybe you can’t. Maybe we’re all just playing pretend. But I’m very good at pretending, and I’ve had a lot of practise. I’m so good I can even fool myself. And I like it that way.” Her eyes met Lisbeth’s. “Go on, you’ll miss the great AI cataclysm. You can tell me about it if anyone’s still alive when I wake up.” She closed her eyes.

“Major? It’s probably a silly question, but I’d been meaning to ask…” Thakur’s eyes opened once more, waiting calmly. “Has it been harder for you? As a woman? I mean, you’re the only living female Liberty Star recipient, for one thing.”

“It’s always harder for women,” said Thakur. “So what?”

“Well it’s just… my family. I mean my mother, she’s very strong on gender roles, and I wanted to be an engineer, and… well let’s say it’s been an issue. And mine’s not the only family like that. So many things are still unfair.”

“In this life,” said the Major, “there are obstacles, and there are forces that overcome obstacles. You can be either one, or the other. No in-betweens. If you refuse to even try and clear an obstacle, then you
become
the obstacle. You yourself. So you have to decide which one you are. The obstacle? Or the force that overcomes obstacles. Don’t complain. Just choose. And then once you’ve chosen, and are honest with yourself about
which
you’ve chosen, you’ll know that whatever the outcome of what comes next, it was meant to be.”

Lisbeth blinked at her. “But what if the outcome is that I’m killed while attempting to clear an obstacle that was never clearable in the first place?”

The Major smiled, closing her eyes once more. “Exactly. Now you understand.”

E
rik leaned
on a storage rack and watched the techs securing the brace to the deck, to keep the deepynine carcass from becoming ‘loose gear’, and a manoeuvring hazard. They hammered and cranked to get the bolts in place, all second-shift crew, though some of first-shift were up and watching, bleary-eyed but intense. The carcass itself was just the forward part that contained the head, indistinct from the rest of the body save that the techs had sawn it clean through to get it out, and back aboard PH-1 in a state that didn’t scare anyone unnecessarily.

Three eyes this time, Erik thought, sipping coffee and staring at the ruined dark-silver beast. One big eye and two lower at the sides. Irregularly offset, perhaps for depth-perception. A few drops of residual fluid dripped on the deck. The techs said it had gushed out when they’d cut it, like synthetic blood. Scanning had confirmed it contained no nano particles. That was the last thing they needed — a hacksaw nano infestation on the ship.

Lisbeth arrived at Erik’s side, edging past several watching crew. Erik patted the spare bit of storage shelf beside him, and she came and leaned, also sipping coffee. Like any true
Phoenix
crewman, she’d come via the kitchen coffee tap first.

“Wow,” Lisbeth said above the noise. “Surreal, much.”

Erik nodded. “
Makimakala
wanted to send people to come and look, but we said no.”

Lisbeth glanced at him. “Is it serious?”

“We’re barely on speaking terms at the moment. I’m not quite about to kick them out of the apartment, but they’re definitely sleeping on the couch. How’s Trace?”

Lisbeth frowned. “You can’t call her Trace. She’s the Major.”

“I call her Trace all the time in private. All senior officers use first names, we only use ranks where enlisted crew can hear.” Lisbeth made a face. “You could call her Trace too, in private. She’d probably prefer it.”

“If she’d prefer it, she can tell me.”

“She’s big on people making personal choices. She won’t tell you to do anything unless you’re in her chain of command.” Lisbeth thought about that, eyes straying to where Romki sat in terse conversation with his display screen beside the drysine queen’s head. That watching red eye, suspended in the nano-fluid, gave her the creeps. “So how is she?”

“Well you know,” said Lisbeth with a shrug. There wasn’t really much to be said about Major Thakur that wouldn’t be cheapened with words. “Does she have any family?”

“Kulina don’t see much of their family,” said Erik. “They join young and sever a lot of family ties. Trace was particularly eager to leave her family. I hear her dad was a bastard and her mum was indifferent, they had a tough life in a mining base. Sugauli’s a rough place, it was founded in violence and it’s no garden spot. We glorify and mysticize it, but it’s a traumatised culture to this day. I think for Trace, the Kulina were an escape.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No. She doesn’t talk about it. And I wouldn’t advise asking — she’s not sensitive about much, but Kaspowitz says she won’t talk about it even with him, and they’ve been friends for ages.”

“Okay,” came Romki’s voice across the noise. “Okay, I’m getting a reading on that spike… could you… is that firm contact?” As the hammering died and techs looked on, while one spacer manoeuvred a slim instrument that Erik did not recognise into a gruesome gap in the deepynine’s armour.

Erik and Lisbeth flipped down their AR glasses. “You’ve been talking to Romki about the queen’s status?” he asked Lisbeth.

“Um, yeah,” Lisbeth said nervously.

“And?”

“Shouldn’t you, like, get a proper briefing from Stan or Rooke?”

“I have, but Stan and Rooke talk like machines. I’d rather hear it from you.”

“Right.” Lisbeth took a deep breath, and tried not to be nervous. It was only her brother. “Well what we’re talking to is certainly not ‘the queen’. I mean, in my opinion anyway.”

“Don’t qualify everything,” Erik said calmly. “Go on.”

“Well the construct the tavalai helped create is nearly complex enough to be low-sentience in its own right. Maybe. But it takes more than just complexity to create sentience, or that’s what my college instructor told me… not that humans are allowed to do it, of course. It takes structure too. The surviving portions of the queen’s brain are providing some of that structure, and the construct is drawing on those through the nano-tank.”

“So the construct can access some of her memories, com functions and other stuff,” Erik reasoned.

“Right.”

“But it can’t actually
think
using that original brain, because the Major blew that part away.”

“Sure,” Lisbeth agreed. “Basically. But then, the Major’s pretty sure the queen’s a lot smarter than she lets on. Stan says some of those surviving brain portions might be doing a lot more than their original designation. He says they’re a lot more active than you’d expect, and that some of the old Dobruta literature says hacksaws use outerlying brain segments to store primary information…”

“Like making a backup of the mainframe,” Erik interrupted.

Lisbeth nodded. “Exactly. So if the construct is really accessing the backup of her main CPU… then we might be talking to something far closer to the real thing.”

“In your opinion,” said Erik. “Is it sentient right now? Or just a set of automated responses?”

“I…” Lisbeth trailed off as she thought about it. “I think that’s a very outmoded concept of AI consciousness. I mean, the automated/reasoned divide. Most of what the human brain does is automated, we don’t pay conscious thought to most of it. Just because most of the queen's responses are automatic doesn’t mean it’s not aware of what it’s doing.”

“There!” Rooke interrupted, peering at his screens as techs manoeuvred the spikes into the deepynine’s neural clusters. “There that’s got it, it’s downloading data.” It certainly was. Erik could see the data levels shooting upward, filling out a 3D data construct.

Adequate
, spelt out the cursor on AR glasses and data screens.

“Is that enough?” Romki pressed. “Are you getting enough data?” No reply. Possibly it didn’t like pointless questions, Lisbeth thought. “What can you tell us about it?”

Deepynine. Command function. Designation uncertain.

“You’ve never encountered this designation before?” Romki asked.

“Maybe she never had much combat experience in the war,” said Rooke.

“Don’t be silly,” said Romki. “AI memories are collective, she doesn’t need to have been there herself.”

“She might not be very old,” Rooke protested. “She might have been made after the war, we don’t know what replication technologies survived — there were none sufficient in the rock at Argitori, but she hadn’t been there for the full twenty five thousand years.”

It gave Lisbeth an idea. “This designation is unfamiliar,” she said loudly enough to cut through the men’s conversation. “Is this designation more or less advanced than familiar designations?”

More
, said the text.

Everyone looked at Lisbeth. “This deepynine was made after the war,” Lisbeth explained. “Possibly a lot later. That’s why she doesn’t recognise it.”

“Well hang on,” Rooke protested. “There’s too many variables to…”

Yes
, said the text.
She is correct.
Rooke abandoned his protest, and Lisbeth gave him a ‘so there’ look.
Deepynine command unit. Advanced.

“What level of technological sophistication is required to build something like this?” Romki pressed. “Could you make this deepynine unit in a small base or outpost? Or would it require a large civilisation? Big space stations, a large economy?”

Large
, the queen admitted. And Romki slumped in his seat, staring at his screen. Confirmation of his theory, Erik thought, with a cold chill. Deepynines were still out there. In production, on a large scale.

“Alo,” Romki breathed. “It has to be the alo.”

Deepynine unit memory corrupted. Unable to access data.

“Well what
can
you tell us?” Erik asked.

Memory corruption intentional. A security measure. Security measure is high deepynine command-level. Alien to sard.

“Wait,” Rooke said eagerly. “Does that mean only another AI could have written the code that caused the memory to corrupt under examination?”

Only the highest deepynine command-level.

“How high?” asked Romki.

The highest.

“A queen!” Lisbeth breathed. “The sard have a deepynine queen! Erik, she’s probably at this shipbuilding base we’re looking for. She’s probably running the whole show… who else would know how to reprogram those drysine drones that attacked Joma Station? The sard don’t know how, but she would.”

Further data
, scrolled the text, not disagreeing.
Deepynine unit has unique optical and radiation settings. Suggest unique solar environment. Combination matches datapoint memory.

“Oh no
way
!” gasped Second Lieutenant Rooke, sounding more like the whiz kid he’d once been than the Fleet officer he’d become. “She’s found the base!”

“Show us,” Erik commanded. A starchart visual appeared on his AR glasses, holographic projection and finely detailed. It rotated as strange, alien lines appeared between glowing centres of highlighted activity — huge long strings of them, criss-crossed with jump-lanes like freeways, long since adjusted for solar motions as space-time expanded. Hacksaw civilisation in the time of the drysine-deepynine war. Erik stared, mouth open. Amidst the profusion, one system highlighted and blinked. Letters appeared — Gsi-81T. “Are you familiar with this system?”

It is on charts. Production base, primary class. No record exists of its destruction. Likely survivor of deepynine-drysine wars.

“Show us what you know.”

The holographic visual upon the glasses changed, and something new appeared. It was a sphere, made up of an open, skeletal structure in two distinct hemispheres about a central core. It looked a bit like the skeleton of some dead sea urchin washed up on a beach. Erik squinted, trying to make sense of what he saw. Then the image zoomed upon a small speck to one side… and his mouth dropped open again. The speck was a warship. A big one, to judge by the ratio of engines to crew cylinder… and next to this big, open structure, it was a small dot in space.

“Oh good fucking god,” Romki muttered. Many of the techs gasped or swore as well, as they grasped the scale of it.

Drysine mid-orbital industrial complex, fifty-first iteration of preliminary design
,
scrolled the text.
One hundred and twenty of your kilometres in diameter. Lithium fusion core, inner storage modules are for powerplant manufacture, inner rims for neural processing, basic mining and alloy refinery on the outer rims. Capable of producing one priority-class warship approximately per one human week, indefinitely, materials allowing, with a production timeline of half-a-year per ship.

“Twenty-five at a time,” Lisbeth breathed. “Fifty per year. Dozens of similar facilities.” It made current human capabilities look tiny. And this was just one section of drysine-controlled space.

No wonder the organics unfortunate enough to be around in the Machine Age had never stood a chance, Erik thought. Production capabilities like this were unknown in all the galaxy today. Unless the alo had something similar, and had only been committing a tiny fraction of what they could produce to the Triumvirate War. The possibility turned his blood cold. He had to get in there and see what the sard had done with this thing. And who had helped them set it up.

“What are its defensive systems?” Erik asked.

A second flood of text followed, as though the queen were losing her inhibitions.
Numerous, but subject to alteration if currently under deepynine control. My data will be obsolete and dangerously misleading. Presence of sard/deepynine vessel at TK55 suggests they are aware of the threat. Direct assault with combined force of
Phoenix
,
Makimakala
and
Rai Jang
appears to have negligible chance of success. Recommend the accumulation of greater forces.

Everyone in the room was looking at Erik. It was his call, Erik knew. Lieutenant Commander or not, this was his ship to command, and he was supposed to be the guy with the answers.

He exhaled hard. “She’s not wrong,” he admitted. “Problem is, right now we appear to be short of friends.”

“All hands, take hold!”
came Second Lieutenant Abacha’s call from the bridge.
“Jump contact, combat V, Phoenix is red alert!”

Everyone ran, like animals at the waterhole scattering when a predator attacks. Erik grabbed Lisbeth and joined them, ship schematic immediately flashing on his glasses as it did in manoeuvre emergencies, indicating unoccupied acceleration slings. He pushed Lisbeth into one of the slings that burst from their emergency seals on the G-wall, then ignored a spacer indicating he should take another and ran for the bridge. There were no slings in the trunk corridor, any passage running fore-to-aft was prone to being hit at killing velocities by anything breaking loose at high-thrust further up, and if snapped would become killing projectiles themselves along with their occupants.

Spacers running about him darted into side-corridors, and sling-icons on his glasses were quickly occupied, like the craziest game of musical chairs. Then the ten-second countdown started, and Erik realised that he wasn’t going to make it anywhere close to the bridge. He took the next left, past two occupied slings then into an unoccupied one at five seconds. A quick turn to orient himself with his back to the G-wall, pulling the synthetic mesh up around his shoulders. Zero seconds, and thrust kicked him clean off his feet and back into the sling hard, as rotational G eased, then faded completely. His back nearly touched the G-wall as thrust increased, then with a whine the net motors pulled the sling tighter as the sides enfolded around him, and he managed with effort to zip himself in from the inside, then clip his harness to the inner clips.