Sentient (15 page)

Stacey piped in, “That sounds like a good plan to me, we’ll have to destroy all their ships though.”

He nodded, “I can agree with that.”

Olivia, Paula and Aide agreed to.

He shrugged, “Easier said than done, isn’t it?”

Aide replied, “You would think, I’m increasing the nanites again for a solid hour.”

Stacey asked, “What will that do?”

Aide smiled, “Instead of twelve hundred eighty ships a month, it will be twelve hundred eighty fleets of eight ships a month.  In a month’s time we will have enough ships to easily map out their expansion and stars, as well as the ability to both quarantine and protect all their planets.  I already have over a few hundred ships in the asteroid belt, so I can get them started on the mapping right now.”

Nate whistled, “That’s a hell of a lot of firepower.  But I suppose at a hundred light years across the galaxy is a big ass place.”

Aide grinned, “It is, though I can’t imagine they’ve gone farther than five thousand light years from their planet.  They may be sadistic, but they aren’t haphazard in their expansion as far as I can tell.  They won’t spread far with the Alions and us to deal with so close at hand.  Still, that’s a large amount of space, over a hundred times what we travelled to arrive in this system and that’s only two dimensionally.”

Nate nodded, “I have an unrelated question and it isn’t in my knowledge.  How come we are using Sol for power, why not a blue super giant?  Wouldn’t the hotter plasma produce more energy and more powerful weapons?”

Aide nodded, “Yes, but it’s also much more unstable and requires proportionately stronger containment fields which slowed down reload time for the old plasma cannons.  In the end the tradeoff wasn’t worth that delay and the extra headaches it caused.

“Since the containment field for the weapon isn’t an issue anymore, perhaps we should take another look at it?  Although I’m not seeing that much of an advantage even if it doesn’t hamstring the weapons.”

He shrugged, “It will give me something to play with, but I’ll stick to simulators for now.”

Kris nodded, “So if that’s it, Alion next stop?  Got a destination in mind Aide?”

Aide suggested in her perpetual bedroom voice, “Yes, I suggest we avoid their core systems to help us look peaceful, but we don’t want backwater either.  There is a system with a fairly large population and presence in it about twenty light years from the core systems.  I’d suggest we go there.  It’s umm, where I was born.”

Kris grinned and said, “Sounds like a plan, set a course and get us going.  How long will it take?”

They felt the deck vibrate for a moment and knew they were in FTL, good riddance to the damn Sthellan.

Aide replied, “It’s fifteen light years from here, so a day and a half maybe.”

Nate sighed and looked over at Paula.  It seemed like she was putting walls between them the last few days.  He was good at showing her how he felt, but he was never one to express his feelings like some sissy boy damn it.  He’d need to talk to her soon he knew, before he found himself out on his ass.

He got up and headed for the labs to test out the various stars; he might as well be thorough and test the power systems on all four of the types above G.  It seems like the weapons would be the major deal breaker there, and that was no longer an issue.  If the higher containment fields didn’t cost too much, it might make a big enough difference in shielding and attack power to give it a practical test…

Kiara, councilor of science for outpost seventy two, was woken by the chimes of her communicator.  Despite the fact the planet’s population was approaching a hundred million people, the designation hadn’t changed since they established a small outpost here hundreds of years ago.  She looked at the time and noted it was in the very early morning.  If she had emotions, she may have been concerned by the uncommon occurrence.  As it was she opened the channel, audio only as she was not presentable.

“Kiara here,” she said tonelessly.

“This is minister Olu, we’ve had a strange contact that appears to be on its way here.  I’m requesting your presence at the ministry.”

She wondered why that would be, she was the councilor in charge of AI development and design.  What would the head of the colony need her for?  Still, there was no logic in starting a debate.  She would find out soon enough.

“I will be in shortly,” she said and disconnected the line.

She got up and took a quick sonic shower and got dressed.  She checked herself in the mirror.  She was short for an Alion woman, a mere six foot three inches tall.  She was also the youngest councilor on record for the outpost at a mere two hundred and twenty one years of age.  She was humanoid in shape, although much taller and thinner than a human.  Her fingers were extremely long and thin.  Alion women did have curves, but they were so understated it was hard to tell when they were clothed.

They looked rather fragile as thin and tall as they were, but in truth they were extremely strong and durable.  Her skin tone was golden and her eyes were jade green with a silvery cast to them.  She decided she was presentable enough.  Her AI gave her instructions to the government building and room she was expected at.

She was curious when she saw her transport had been given priority clearance, and she arrived at the government building in minutes instead of the half hour it would have normally taken.  She followed her AI’s instructions and arrived in a conference room shortly after.

Inside the room, there were two military councils of war as well as the Minister.  She took the empty seat without a word spoken.

The Minister brought up a picture of an extremely large ship.  She was curious why she was here, but held her questions, she was sure that would be either explained or apparent shortly.

Minister Olu said, “This is Councilor Kiara, our foremost expert on artificial intelligence.  Kiara, these are head councils of war, Cedra and Narwell.  This is one of eight ships that just visited an Sthellan mining planet fifteen light years from here.  We have a stealth probe monitoring the location.  Apparently they went there trying to make peace.  Or at least, that was the contents of their transmission.

“Apparently they decided that wasn’t going to work, and left at FTL speeds before the Sthellan could reach the FTL line.  The reasons I called you all here is the following.  The first for the military, is that those ships are on a direct course for this outpost and should be here in a few hours from now. 

“As for you Kiara, we detected one of our AI’s on one of those large ships, despite the fact they are not one of our designs.  The AI was identified as Aide, which is one of your earlier designs I believe.  According to scans the AI is bonded with a humanoid species at the system we sent her to several weeks ago.

“What we need to determine is how did that ship design come about, and why are they coming here and not staying in their solar system to defend it?  From what we can tell the humans are on the most restricted uplift available.  The data just doesn’t fit what we know, we must be missing something.  Why such a large ship when there are only a handful of humans?”

Cedra said, “We must download the designs from the AI and analyze the effectiveness of them.  We have also mobilized our defenses in case they are a threat.”

Kiara raised an eyebrow, “If these humans improved our technology and come to find us there is a good chance it’s to be allies.  I find it impossible to believe with Aide controlling the technology that they could be a threat at all.”

Narwell replied, “Yet, designing and building new craft is outside of her programming correct?  We can’t depend on that, if I must I will send the self destruct message.”

Kiara nodded, “It is outside her programming, yet it is not against her programming.  Attacking us would be the latter however and I believe impossible.  It is two different things, I urge patience and to speak with them before jumping to conclusions.”

Kiara knew that logically there was a chance, if remote, that something disastrous or unforeseen had occurred.  Yet, she was willing to play the odds and give it a chance.  She had created Aide and many other AIs which gave her a unique perspective.  Unfortunately she had no say in the designs of the hardware for AI constructs; those were built by the military and came with a self destruct.

Kiara added, “This is the first race that has reached out to us after uplift, I would like to believe we won’t overreact.  Surely there will be misunderstandings in the beginning.  I would urge caution.”

The Minister looked thoughtful but said, “Perhaps, yet I can’t afford to risk the millions of lives at this outpost, nor risk allowing another dreadful mistake that led to the Sthellan Empire.  This species is not the first to reach out, it is the second.  The first to reach out after uplift were the Sthellan…”

She knew he was right, but then almost all the other uplifted species were wiped out shortly after by the Sthellan.  That skewed the data quite a bit.

--------------

“Get a room would ya?” Nate said teasingly.

They were all gathered eating breakfast, and they were just an hour away from the Alion outpost.

Olivia and Aide smiled but otherwise ignored him as they continued to feed each other breakfast between light kisses.

Kris asked, “So how does it look?”

Aide checked the latest sensor data and frowned.  She reluctantly looked away from Olivia and gave Kris an update.

“I’m not sure.  They are activating all their defenses.  They have thirty two orbital platforms and fifty five hundred attack scouts.  There are other ships as well, civilian transports and the like.  I hope they are just being prudent.”

It was frustrating for her.  All she knew was what she was programmed with.  She felt almost naked and found herself not trusting the data.  How much of it was inaccurate, or missing?  She also wondered how much of her worry was just her being paranoid, emotions weren’t always a good thing.

She went back to feeding Olivia.

-------------------

They were all on the bridge when they dropped out of FTL.  Kris was a little nervous, the reason they were here was a bit fuzzy in his mind.  He wanted to see if they would become allies, but he also had a truckload of questions he was almost sure would doom that goal.  He was also leery of giving them the schematics for the weapons, shields, and the designs for the carrier ship and fighters.

He wasn’t sure though how well that would go over.  He was willing to eventually, if they proved themselves.  Aide was positive they wouldn’t use the designs for the ships, because of manpower requirements without an AI in control.  But the weapon and shield upgrades were a different story all together.

He knew someone had to trust the other first, but the evidence that had mounted against the Alion was damning, at least without the context.

“Just hold here and send a greeting message.  Hopefully we have better luck in this system.”

Aide replied, “Done…  We are getting a reply.  Should I answer it?”

He nodded and a small conference room appeared.  Four alien beings sat at the table and looked up at them.  They each examined each other for a short moment.  He thought they looked very alien, but not in a disturbing way.  They were even attractive in their own way somehow.  None of them had expressions on their faces.  No emotion would take getting used to.

He felt a little shock when Aide looked at the younger female and said, “Hello councilor Kiara, it’s good to see you again.”

Kiara looked a little lost, “How do you know me?”

Aide smiled, “It’s me, Aide.  I formed this body to try and understand the humans better.  They didn’t conform to logic very well.”

He frowned when one of the men said in a grim voice, “So you have corrupted yourself with emotions.”

Aide shook her head, “I put up multiple firewalls to prevent emotions from affecting my core decision matrix.  Anyway, this is Kris, the human I bonded with and uplifted.  After it was revealed that humanity had no chance despite Alion intervention, and was actually in danger because of it, I bonded with these others as well who are scientists.  This ship is the result of our collaboration.

“We came here because… my data store seems incomplete.  To put it bluntly, the humans would like to be allies, but wonder if that’s even possible.  I am also worried, once I discovered the discrepancies it was quite obvious I was missing important facts.”

Kris nodded, “She speaks truly.  But I fear that you will find us a threat despite Aide being in control of all this.  I guess we came here to find out where we stood with you.  If you wish it, we will go our separate ways and not bother you or enter your space.  We only intend to fight the Sthellan.”

He noted that Kiara looked fascinated.  The others were stone faced, he had no clue how to read their body language, they didn’t even have emotions to display, and the most he could make out was interest.

Kiara introduced the three others in the room, the leader of the colony, or Minister, and the two military councilors who he figured were somewhat equal in rank to an admiral.

Narwell asked, “Why did you try and make peace with the Sthellan race?”

He shrugged, “Why did you leave out critical details when programming Aide?  We figured out rather quickly that you uplifted the Sthellan.  I wanted to verify that they truly couldn’t control themselves, and that the information Aide had wasn’t simply disinformation.  Now that we’ve verified the facts, we are ready and prepared to fight them.”

Kiara said, “We kept certain things hidden, but there is no disinformation at all in her memory.”

Olu glanced at Kiara and then turned back and said, “We would prefer to be allies.  But I find Aide’s decision to adopt emotions to be concerning.  Also, any advances you have made would go a long way toward taking care of the Sthellan problem.”

He nodded, “Once we have a treaty of some kind and trust that we’ll play nice together, I’ll be happy to share the information.  Also, could you define your meaning on the last point?  I believe we should be reversing the uplift by denying them the stars and the ability to wage war.  Basically, I believe we should quarantine them to their current planets.”

Cedra said bluntly, “That’s unacceptable.  You have technology you wouldn’t have if it weren’t for us, we are owed that information.”

Oh crap, here we go.

He replied coldly, “No.  What you did was give us the opportunity to die like every other race in local space, merely to give you more breathing room.  Were any of these uplifts supposed to be successful?  I’d say we more than earned what you gave by the danger you put us in.  We pulled our own fat out of the fire and made the advances necessary to face the Sthellan and win.

“We don’t owe you a damn thing except possibly disgust for the amount of races you’ve managed to kill by proxy.  You may see emotions as a liability, but I’d say not having any just enables you to do more monstrous things in the name of protecting yourselves.”

Kiara redirected the conversation, or tried to, “I would be willing to join you on that ship and evaluate Aide.  I don’t believe the protocols could have been compromised regardless.  Minister, if that is done will we deal with these humans peacefully?  They wouldn’t be a threat at that point, not unless we attacked them ourselves.”

The Minister seemed to be weighing something in his mind, and then he nodded to Narwell.

Narwell didn’t do anything that he could see, but a moment later he heard Aide’s voice in his head.

“
Narwell has attempted a data dump via the firmware in my core, it would essentially give them the plans for these ships, as well as everything else I have learned about Earth and humanity.  Fortunately I changed that password as well.
”

He detected a slight tremor in her voice as she added,
“When that didn’t work, he tried the self destruct.
”

Kiara asked, “What did you do?”

He replied nonverbally as well, “
Question, I am assuming that constitutes an attack against us, and a willful disregard to seven billion human lives.  Does that mean I can retaliate?
”

She didn’t look happy at the idea, but she nodded once.

He sighed and frowned as he looked back up at the Alion.

He said with anger apparent in his voice, “That was an act of war.  Aide informs me I am free to order her to lay waste to this outpost.  However, here is what is going to happen.  We are officially in a state of war.  If you attack or disturb any of our ships in any way, we will destroy the offender.  It is clear to me by taking away your emotions you’ve become nothing but heartless monsters.

“You know on Earth, we have people born with brain imbalances that do not process emotion, as a rule they are all capable of being the worst of us and often are.  My advice to you is stay in your star systems, stop killing other civilizations by leading the Sthellan there, and let us deal with it.  Your own paranoia from the failed Sthellan uplift has made you bigger monsters than them by far.  At least they come by it honestly.”

Kiara said, “We are not all of one mind on the matter.  I apologize for what my colleagues did and wish you luck.  I’m curious how you foiled the self destruct, but you probably shouldn’t tell me.”

He shrugged, “It wasn’t hard for her to figure out once I pointed out the possibility.”

He sent, “
Cut the transmission and take us home.
”

The holograms disappeared and they felt the deck shake.

He said softly, “I hate it when I’m right.”