Into the Darkness: Crimson Worlds Refugees I (8 page)

His voice was icy cold, and it left no doubt about his resolve. Still, there wasn’t a sound, nothing except the faint hum of
Midway’s
systems in the background.

Chapter Four

Command Unit Gamma 9736

The Regent had sent commands on the priority circuit. For uncounted centuries, Command Unit Gamma 9736 had lain dormant, its power sources diminished, providing only the barest amount of energy to sustain itself. Its processes had slowed and then ceased, until there had been nothing left but a spark of activity in the kernel, the barest maintenance of awareness. In the context of the Old Ones, the biologics the Unit had once served, it had been asleep…or more accurately, in a deep coma, almost suspended animation, awaiting the stimulus that would cause reactivation.

The communication circuits had been silent for millennia, and for 500,000 years, the Unit waited…it waited for contact. For direction. For purpose. Now, after so long the time had come. The Regent had made that contact. It was an alarm, a call to action. The imperium was threatened. After ages of nothingness the Unit was ordered to prepare for war, to rally the forces of its sector. To confront the enemy.

There had been strife for several years now…and fleets from other sectors had been dispatched to gain the victory. But the enemy had been underestimated. The forces the Regent had thought adequate to destroy them had been defeated, driven back. Now the Regent was sounding the full alarm, calling to every sector in the vastness of the imperium, directing all intelligences to rally what forces remained under their control after so many years of decay. For the first time in uncounted ages, total war was upon the imperium.

The Unit reacted immediately. Slowly, it fed its precious power reserve into circuits long dormant. Memory bank after memory bank slowly came to life, and with each one the Unit recovered a portion of itself, data and computational abilities long dormant. It hadn’t been immune to the ravages of time—whole sections of its vast quantum brain were unresponsive—petabytes of data lost. But it felt the surge of power, of quasi-consciousness. It remembered. A time long ago, when its sector was active, when billions of the Old Ones, the biologics, still inhabited the worlds it administered.

The communique that had initiated its renewal was of the utmost importance. The enemy had somehow blocked access to the only known warp gate leading to their space. But a large fleet had remained behind, and it escaped the trap the Regent had set for it. The enemy ships had fled, deeper into the imperium, and they had eluded the forces in pursuit, disappearing into the vastness of imperial space. Into the Unit’s sector.

The Regent’s orders were clear. Find the enemy. Hunt them down, destroy their vessels. Whatever the cost. And there was something else too. The Unit was to take prisoners, live enemies it could interrogate. It was unclear if the humans knew a path back to their home worlds, but the Regent wanted that data. It had declared that the forces of the Imperium would not rest until they had discovered a way to reach the home space of the humans—and eradicate them once and for all.

The Unit took steps to obey. Gradually, methodically, it continued to reactivate old power sources, expanding its operations as more energy became available. It opened communications lines, sent messages to its subordinate units on the various worlds of the sector. Only a few answered. The others, the Unit postulated, must have succumbed to the ravages of time. Or fallen to the enemy, its defensive algorithms suggested hawkishly. Still, it didn’t matter. The few that responded would be enough. Even now, the planetary command units were activating their armaments, determining how many ships, how many robot soldiers, were still functional. Soon, the Unit would have the data it needed to plan the destruction of the enemy.

Then it would dispatch its fleets to search. The enemy was far from home. The Unit rationalized that their moves would be dictated by logistics. They were biologics. They would need foodstuffs to maintain themselves. They would need ammunition stores to replace those expended in battle. But most of all, they would need fuel for their ships. The enemy vessels used primitive nuclear fusion as their primary power source. It had been uncounted ages since the forces of the First Imperium had utilized such primitive power sources, but they were well understood. The enemy would need a good source of tritium and helium-3. They would be searching, even now, for a system with a gas giant rich in the two rare isotopes. And that was a data point the Unit could use to narrow its search…

AS Midway

System X16

The Fleet:  225 ships, 47,916 crew

“They had to leave Volga behind. The crack in her containment chamber opened up again.” Anastasia Zhukov was staring down at a large ‘pad as she spoke, her long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Zhukov had been attached to the RIC contingent of the fleet, but shortly after the escape from X2 she’d transferred to
Midway
to work with Dr. Cutter.

“Volga was a piece of junk anyway,” Cutter said, only half paying attention. His eyes were focused on a strange device on the table in front of him. It was part of a First Imperium warbot, one of thousands the Marines had destroyed in the bloody battles of the war. “What was it? Seventy years old?”

Anastasia frowned. Most of the RIC’s ships were old. It was no secret the Russian-Indian superpower was no match for the Alliance, or even the CAC or the Caliphate. And she was a scientist, not a soldier or politician. She didn’t believe in politics or the pointless wars between the superpowers. But her father had been a general in the army and the closest thing the RIC had to a military hero. So, in spite of her disinterest in such matters, she occasionally felt an involuntary prickliness when someone disparaged the RIC.

“So?” she snapped back. “The Alliance doesn’t have any old ships?”

“What?” Cutter had slipped from half paying attention to hardly doing it at all. “What are you talking about?”

“You said Volga was junk.”

He finally looked up from his work with a frustrated sigh and stared at her. “Whatever, Ana. Volga’s the state of the art, okay? Anything that makes you happy. Now can we please stay focused here? I think we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.” His eyes dropped back to his work without waiting for her response.

She nodded. There was no point in arguing, not with Cutter. She knew his abrasiveness wasn’t intentional. She’d never seen a human being so utterly focused on work before. Besides, the truth was, there
wasn’t
a ship as old as Volga in the Alliance navy. She had to admit that the RIC, despite her occasional vestigial spasms of patriotism, was struggling to hold onto its superpower status in a universe where the “Big Three,” the Alliance, the Caliphate, and the Central Asian Combine, had eclipsed the other powers in the race for dominance.
Not that any of that really matters to us anymore…

“Of course, Ronnie,” she said sweetly. She was the only one who called him that, and she’d done it since the day she’d walked into his lab and he’d introduced himself. Hieronymus was admittedly a mouthful, he’d explained to her, but it had also been his father’s name, and his grandfather’s—and so on, at least six generations back in his family. She’d listened to everything he told her, and then she just shook her head for a few seconds and said, “I think I’ll call you Ronnie.”

Hieronymus Cutter was generally recognized as the leading expert in advanced quantum computing processes, and Anastasia was a serious contender for the number two slot. Cutter was widely known to be a bit odd, an obsessive-compulsive workaholic who tended toward reclusive behavior. But all agreed he was an unparalleled genius, perhaps even the equal of his famous mentor, Friederich Hofstader.

Hofstader was a true hero now. He had developed the theory that an extremely high-yield matter-antimatter explosion could scramble a warp gate. Indeed, he was as responsible as anyone for saving humanity—and stranding the fleet. But Cutter’s specialty differed from that of his famous mentor. His work in computing led him on a quest not to block the First Imperium’s advance nor even to produce weapons to destroy their massive ships. Cutter’s quest was to understand how the advanced thinking machines worked—as a precursor to learning how to control them.

“Take a look at these patterns,” he said, sliding a large ‘pad across the table so she could see it. “This is from one of the battle robot command units. The processing power of these “officer” units is far greater than that of the standard battle bots.” His fingers moved, pointing to a series of waves on the screen. “I’ve done the calculations a hundred different ways. There is no discernible logical pattern in how these machines process information. It almost looks…random.”

She stared at the ‘pad for a few seconds. He was right. The patterns he’d isolated weren’t patterns at all, at least not in the sense that they had any predictability to them. “But it can’t be random. That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, not random. I’m sure these crazy waves make sense…but only if you can see the input data that generated the recorded patterns.” He looked up at her, and he could see she wasn’t following. “Don’t you see? These First Imperium intelligences—at least the lower level ones in these robots—aren’t truly sentient. But they able to comprehend how sentient beings act and react.”

He looked up and sighed again, clearly frustrated that she wasn’t understanding his point. “Imagine you are in a trench fighting a battle. You look across at your opponent, who is also in a trench. If you project that he will behave rationally, you can assign probabilities to various actions he might initiate. For example, you might determine that he is most likely to remain in place, since charging correlates with a large advantage for you defending in your trench—and a high likelihood of death for him.

“But how do you account for a madman unconcerned with physical harm? Or a religious fanatic who believes death in battle leads to paradise? Or simply a soldier acting irrationally due to battle fatigue or rage at the loss of a friend? How do you assess the potential of irrational actions by an opponent? Our own AIs do this by assigning probabilities based on historical data programmed into their memory banks. For example, we know that certain Caliphate units exhibit fanatical behavior in battle, and our AIs know this, so they assign a higher probability of such behavior to their forces. But the First Imperium has no historical data of this sort for us…or at least very little.”

He looked up at her. “I postulate that the First Imperium AIs do not address emotionally-driven and similar illogical decisions simply by assigning likelihoods of a specific action based on static historical data. I believe they understand irrationality and emotion, even if they themselves do not actually experience such traits.”

Anastasia began nodding. She understood what he was getting at…sort of. “Is it possible to…understand…irrationality when you yourself are not capable of truly experiencing it?” She had forgotten all about Volga and superpower pride. Unraveling the secrets of the amazing machines that ran the First Imperium was the most fascinating task she’d ever attempted—and one that could have profound impact, both on the fate of the fleet, and indeed, on all humanity. Perhaps with an improved understanding they could communicate with the First Imperium, negotiate a peace of some kind. Or, if not, a true comprehension of their enemies could be weaponized too. Understanding how they “thought” was the first step toward defeating them.

“We’re hypothesizing, of course, but I would say no, not fully. I believe the First Imperium intelligences are able to do a credible job of anticipating and responding to the irrational or random behavior of their adversaries. Thus, they are not utterly confused by actions driven by emotion. However, I feel this is where their weakness exists as well. Not being able to truly experience the kinds of emotions that lead to irrationality, they are only partially capable of crafting targeted responses. This explains the success of commanders like General Cain or Admirals Garret and Compton in actions against them. These men are highly skilled and, for the most part, logical. But they all rely on intuition as well, and on other emotions--stubbornness, anger at the losses they suffer, pride in their units and warriors. The First Imperium intelligences directing the battles against them can anticipate such factors, but they are still at a disadvantage due to their lack of experience with us. That disadvantage will slowly disappear as they add to their databases on human responses.”

Anastasia nodded. “I understand…and I agree. But how do you propose to put this to practical use? Do we devise strategies to enhance the use of seemingly irrational tactics?”

“Perhaps. Though that is more difficult than it sounds. Most irrational motivations are harmful. In the majority of cases, the rational, predictable action is also the wisest. We may lose more by choosing unsound actions simply because they surprise the enemy.” He looked up at her. “But that is not my primary interest in this line of research.”

She stared back, confused. “Then what is?”

“I believe analyzing how the enemy has reacted to illogical stimuli has given me an insight into how their processing algorithms function.” He paused. “I am working on a project that would allow us to interfere with their logical processes, to reduce their functionality…or even to gain control over them.”

“Gain control of them?” Ana asked. She wasn’t sure if she thought Cutter had lost his mind or exceeded even her already enormous expectations of his intellect. “They are thousands of years beyond our technology.”

“What does that matter?” he asked matter-of-factly. “It is one thing to develop something independently, another to copy or reverse-engineer it when it already exists. If you could travel back to ancient Rome and leave a functioning aircraft on the steps of the Senate, do you think it would have been 2,000 years before manned flight was developed?”

“No, I suppose not,” she said slowly, beginning to get his point as she did. “But what you are talking about is almost unimaginably complex. Do you really think it’s possible?”