Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (32 page)

The Order of Eden has
been patrolling the area with brand new Harbinger Corvettes. They
come from the nearby shipyard. New corvettes are sent to patrol each
of the waypoints before moving on to join the rest of their forces at
the front.”

“I’ve seen those,”
Moira said. “Fought a couple, too. With a good crew they’re
dangerous, no frills, but well armed. They come with some kind of
power tap weapon; if you get too close they’ll shut you down, but
it doesn’t damage electronics like an EMP.”

“Do you want one?”
Jake asked.

“What? A Harbinger?”

“Yes.”

“You’re crazy,”
Moira scoffed. “Sure, come up with a plan that won’t get us all
killed, and I’ll take a corvette.”

“I’m going to like
this trip,” Frost muttered. Minh-Chu couldn’t help but notice
Alice beaming a smile in the grizzled gunnery master’s direction,
who winked back.

“All right,” Jake
said. “Industrial Starflight was hit by the Holocaust Virus a
little before they signed up with Regent Galactic, so there will be
no automated security or defences. No drones, and they don’t have
many fighters. It’s going to be true twitch-play: the better
pilots, the better crews and strategists will win this if it comes to
a straight fight. Most of the Order of Eden crews are green, new
recruits into their cult, so we have a good chance if we stay sharp
and smart. We leave in four hours, so make sure your teams are
aboard, and you have everything you need. Don’t share the details
of our mission.”

“How am I going to
entice a team without a few details?” asked Moira. “What can I
share from this meeting?”

“Tell them you’ll
be stealing a cargo hauler with my help, and I’ll give you the ship
with everything you find aboard when we get it back here,” Jake
replied.

“Fair enough,”
Moira replied.

The Decks Have Ears

The shuffle and bustle
of the Warlord’s new crew getting ready for departure still rang in
Alice’s ears. It was hours later, and the Warlord was accelerating
down a wormhole, using the hyperdrive system to speed things along.
The ship also sent microscopic wormholes out ahead in all directions,
invisible tendrils for their scanners to get a picture of what’s
well ahead. The hum of the exterior emitters could be heard faintly
throughout the ship. It was a different vessel to her, with new
decks, new walls, a different floor plan than the one she vaguely
recalled. It made it easy for her to understand what it was like for
most of the crew who were still new to the ship.

She’d broken her rule
against using her direct mental connection to her comm unit outside
of combat to rapidly view the new roster and crew details. There were
exactly two hundred and ten aboard, and all of the new crewmembers
were experienced with vetted service records. The Triton and Ayan
took on the people who needed extended training, so the people the
Warlord took on only needed to learn about that ship; they were
qualified for their assignments aboard.

Alice was security. Her
responsibility was to know every nook and cranny of the ship, where
people were supposed to be, and to make sure that nothing unusual or
detrimental to the ship or the Warlord’s crew was going on. Her
first shift, probably the busiest she’d see for the foreseeable
future, was over, and while she was relieved at finishing the
boarding and departure prep shift, she was also bored.

It was the first watch
while the Warlord was underway, and most of the new crew were resting
in their quarters. The galley was closed, as were the two cargo bays
that doubled as recreation areas while they were empty, and even the
Officer’s lounge was dark and empty. It was time for the off-duty
crew to report to their bunks, to try to get some sleep, and the ship
was quiet.

Alice couldn’t sleep,
however, so she spent her time quietly walking the decks. Her uniform
marked her as a security officer, a heavy vacsuit with a Violator
handgun strapped to one thigh, and a big barrelled revolver on the
other. The revolver was loaded with grip slugs that would expand
before striking the target and wrap them in a cocoon-like bubble so
they couldn’t move. With every vacsuit aboard hardened against
electromagnetic pulses and most other weapons, it was the only way to
effectively disable people. Alice enjoyed the fact that she could buy
many other types of shells for the weapon, such as web, shield,
antigravity, EMP, and of course anti-armour explosive rounds. Alice
couldn’t understand why Ashley didn’t carry hers all the time.

The hallway narrowed
closer to the bridge, to the point where two fully armoured
crewmembers would rub shoulders if they were to walk side by side.
There had already been complaints about it, but Alice knew why that
part of the ship was built that way. If there was a firefight, one
smart combatant could hold either of the hallways running towards the
bridge for an extended amount of time. The sides of the hallway were
also heavily armoured, with doors that could weld themselves shut,
trapping people inside rooms, or to form a killing tunnel that
boarders couldn’t escape from. Heavy ripper deck guns were hidden
in the floor just behind the main hatchways leading into the bridge,
inside the captain’s mast room, as well as within the first
officer’s and captain’s cabins. Anyone rushing the bridge from
inside the ship was walking into a death trap that could outdo even
the Triton’s heaviest armour in minutes.

Unfortunately, the
heavy plating and simple fixtures made the halls near the bridge look
boring. The lighting was provided by dull grey biocell paint that
absorbed ambient energy to provide illumination. It was layered on in
even stripes running down the length of the corridor’s ceiling.

She was approaching the
bridge, where she knew there would be at least three people on duty –
whichever pilot was on third watch, an operations officer, and a
tactical officer. She didn’t care to check who filled which
position so she didn’t look it up on the duty roster, but she knew
her father would be serving in the tactical position. He didn’t
sleep much, something they had in common.

“You should have told
me you privateered for the Damelians,” Moira said. “I would have
taken you more seriously from the start.”

Alice ducked into the
captain’s mast room instead of proceeding onto the bridge. She knew
next to nothing about Moira, and had never seen her and her father
speaking on their own. They seemed to work well together, with Jake
sharing more responsibility over the three days Moira had been
aboard, but Alice hadn’t seen anything personal pass between them.
Then again, the three days of preparations since they recruited
people from Port Rush had been the busiest she’d ever seen on a
ship; no one had much time for conversation. Alice hadn’t gotten to
know anyone on the new staff, since the training and preparation
schedules kept people so occupied that crewmembers were either busy
or asleep.

“It doesn’t matter
much now, most of the crew have turned over since then. The Warlord’s
senior officers are all that’s left from the Samson.”

Alice checked some of
Moira and Jake’s public history on Crewcast and saw that he sent
her the same information package that all of the new crewmembers got,
plus an extra sealed data package. Strangely, she couldn’t find any
evidence of Jake’s consciousness on the system, which meant that he
was completely disconnected for the first time since they took on new
people.

“It’s good to know
your senior officers have a lot of experience,” Moira said. “And
your daughter is really something. I’m surprised she’s along for
this trip.”

“Where else would she
be?” Jake asked, not defensively enough for Alice’s taste.

“I would put her back
on Haven Shore, with a security team, maybe. She didn’t learn much
about teamwork with the Rangers. That worries me.”

“I was hoping that
was what she’d take away from her time there,” Jake said. “But
I’m going back to plan A. Stephanie has trained more than a few
great security officers, so I’m leaving it in her hands.”

“Why not take her on
yourself?” Moira asked. “I’ve never had kids, but it seems to
me I’d want to keep that in my hands.”

Jake laughed. He
actually laughed. “I’m worse than she is. I can fight as part of
a team, sure, but I’ll break away and fight on my own first chance
I get. Even the Warlord is an example of that - it’s meant to fight
outside of a fleet, and the systems are made so I can monitor
everything through my neural link. The only reason I’m disconnected
now is because the skitters are upgrading the interface.”

“Trouble letting go,
sort of a loner, and a history so mad that it takes concentration to
keep it straight,” Moira said. “Careful, Captain, or you’ll
start attracting the wrong kind of girl, the trouble-loving,
trouble-making kind.”

“Too late,” Alice
heard Minh-Chu say. With a quick check, she confirmed that he was
taking the third watch as the pilot. “But that’s another story.”

“I’ll bet,” Moira
replied. “What about these skitters you’ve got running around?
That’s something that wasn’t so detailed in the welcome packet,
people are nervous.”

“I understand why,”
Jake said. “All the skitters have artificial intelligences, but
they use a new anti-virus system. I’ve been working with a partner
to upgrade things since my daughter discovered suicidal Ando models
in the jungle down on Tamber, and now our bots can’t be infected.”

“That’s
impossible,” Moira scoffed openly. “You’re fooling yourselves
if you think your bots are immune, and that’s dangerous.”

“All right,” Jake
said patiently. “Let’s just say one of the bots does get
infected, which, like I said, won’t happen. Every other piece of
equipment running our software will forcibly connect with the
infected bot and fight the virus, and there’s no way they’d get
infected in the process.”

“How are they
immune?”

“No two bots are
running the same operating system,” Jake said. “Most bots need to
use an analog method of communication, even if it’s transmitted
through digital means. That’s where the commonality ends. Before,
bots were programmed to collaborate on destroying viruses. Those
instincts still exist, but now our bots’ operating systems change
with the development of their personalities and skills. The process
affects every part of their code, and bots are allowed to alter their
neural hardware as long as it doesn’t reduce their functionality.”

“Not even remotely
possible,” Moira said.

“We’ve had modular
software that could reprogram itself for hundreds of years, this is
just another step with artificial intelligence taking the lead. We
left the well-being directives in, so they won’t harm their allies
and they have to listen to their commanders, but that’s about it
for safety.”

“Yesterday three
skitters perked up and saluted me as I walked by my fighter,”
Minh-Chu said. “I tried scanning them to find out if someone
programmed them to do that, but my comm couldn’t make heads or
tails of their software anymore. I had to ask the old fashioned way,
‘did someone tell you to do that?’” Minh-Chu mock-asked in baby
talk. “They all flashed NO on their shells, then they got back to
work on my fighter. My Uriel’s never been in better shape, and
those things are storing themselves in the reserve storage, so I’ll
have a robotic service crew with me now. The only downside is getting
ridiculed by Singe now that she’s caught me in the middle of a baby
talk conversation.”

Moira and Jake both
laughed at Minh-Chu’s expense, and even Alice couldn’t help but
let a chuckle slip. “So they’re safe from viruses,” Moira said.
“But you have a Tower of Babel situation going on now; how do they
communicate quickly?”

“I’ve seen high
speed morse code using vibrations and light, audio streams, even herd
behaviour,” Jake replied. “I don’t think they’re having
trouble. A few have started talking too, but most don’t even try
unless you tell them to. That’s an unexpected bug.”

“A big one,” Moira
said.

“They’ll do it if
you order them to,” Minh-Chu said. “I just haven’t bothered
yet. I’m wondering how these things will develop on their own.”

“I’m still
sceptical of all of it being for the best,” Moira said. “But I’ll
give it time.”

Alice hadn’t paid
much attention to the skitters – something she decided to change,
since they had the same software capabilities as the Andos she
encountered. The skitters just seemed like basic worker bots to her,
like a mobile tool chest, or hull finishing bot, but if they were
capable of running complex software, the situation was different.

“Alice?” Jake
asked.

She glanced at her comm
unit and realized that her father was reconnected with the ship’s
sensors. Alice stepped out into the hallway and took the few steps
onto the bridge. Minh-Chu looked over his shoulder and smiled. Moira,
who sat at the Operations station, sent her a look that seemed to say
‘sneaky brat’ and Jake regarded her with a little surprise.
“Everything okay?”

“Fine, I just didn’t
want to interrupt you,” Alice said, the first excuse that came to
mind. She pressed on to the question on her mind. “What about the
Andos? They turn on and can’t help but tie into whatever
communications systems they can listen to.”

“The bot bays on
Haven Shore are switching them on in an isolation room,” Jake
replied. “Then ordering them to deactivate their wireless systems.
It’s the best they can do it, but at least they’re not going
suicidal.”

“Oh, what if one of
them decides to activate their wireless later?” Alice asked.

“The techs are
cutting receivers once the bots are activated. It’s not a perfect
solution, but it’s either that or recycle all the Andos for raw
materials.”