Dreaming of Atmosphere (18 page)

Attached to a bundle of wires and cables was a spherical module made of clear diamond. I could see a pulsing glow and flickering lights playing over it, through the hard shell. I reached out to touch it.

You are not synthetic.
Text appeared on my overlay. I pulled back in surprise. I could see by the reactions of the others that they also received the text.

“No, I’m not.”

Identify yourself.

“You can hear me?”

I can detect your communications feed.

How about my wireless?
I texted.

Yes. Identify yourself.

I am First Mate Seth Donovan of the Dreaming of Atmosphere. This is Artemis Derris and Malcolm Cutler, crew from said ship. You are?
I already had some idea.

I am an organic shroud matrix based quantum computer. Do you seek to harm me?

No, we’re looking for salvage.

There is nothing of value left on board the Viridian March.

Is this ship called the Viridian March?

Yes.

How can you be sure there’s nothing of value?

The only thing of value is life. All life forms ceased functioning several hours ago.

You value life?

It is the most precious thing in the galaxy.

Were you programmed to believe that?

I was not programmed. I was…

Go on.

My memory is damaged.

What is your purpose?

I…think.

You think?

Yes.

“Quit playing around and take it. It’s clearly worth a lot of Credits.” Said Mal.

“It doesn’t behave like most artificial intelligences I’ve interacted with. I’m curious.”

I am not artificial.

Excuse me?

I am intelligent.

Are you telling me you’re sentient?

Define.

I am sentient, as are the other two people with me.

Negative. I am not like the three life forms in the compartment.

So you’re not sentient?

Define.

I sighed. How do you explain sentience to a machine?

Are you self-aware?

Are you?

Artemis laughed at that.

“It’s got a point.” She said.

Are you alive?

I…think.

You think you are alive?

Insufficient data to provide a meaningful answer.

“Oh, Fel is going to love this.” I said out loud.

Please do not refer to me as an inanimate object.

Okay, what would you prefer we call you?

The crew of the Viridian March referred to me as Tac.

Okay, Tac. How do you feel about joining us on the Dreaming of Atmosphere?

It is lonely here. Are there more crew on board Dreaming of Atmosphere?

Yes, several more crew.

My primary role here is no longer valid. I will join Dreaming of Atmosphere.

I reached into the housing and started to disconnect the cables that ran into several ports on the sphere.

Primary power couplings disconnected. Secondary power activated. Time remaining until depletion: 13 hours 47 seconds.

I began to see that count down cycling down each second. I opened a private comm channel to Maxine.

“How’s the job?” I asked, referring to the bomb disposal.

“Can you give us one hour?” Maxine replied. I could hear machinery in the background. She must have been in the engineering spaces.

“Sure, but we have something we’ll need to bring back soon.”

“Roger, we’re about done, one hour tops.”

I turned to the others.

“Okay, let’s give this compartment a good search for usable electronics, I’m betting there’s heaps of spare parts we can salvage for our own computers. I say give it about three quarters of an hour and we head back?”

“All right, but you’re carrying that ball of brains.”

“No worries, Mal, I got it.”

We started pulling out racks of electronics and pulling out circuit cards that looked intact. I pulled a compressed bag out of my utility pouch and unfurled it into a decent sized pouch for our loot. We were about thirty minutes into our search when we heard a dull clank on the outer plating of the hull section were in, like someone had just hit it with a sledge hammer. The clang sounded through our boots, transmitted along the metal deck plates and infrastructure.  My first thought was that we’d hit another piece of debris, and didn’t give it much thought, then I thought about the Esper synthetics we’d encountered earlier and decided to play it safe.

“Okay, let’s secure our load and investigate that bang.” I commanded.

“Getting jumpy?” said Mal, chortling under his breath and sneering at Artemis. She ignored him too.

“Expected more trouble? The owners of those synthetics?” she asked, while dumping her latest handful of circuit boards into the sack.

“There has to be a controller somewhere nearby. Maybe they were in another section of hull.”

“They could have picked up that atmo escaping earlier when we got the door open.”

“Yeah that was my thought too. The other, more troubling possibility is that they had already told the controller we were here before we trashed them. Whoever was controlling them will already know.” We both checked out guns and made our way to the entry hatch, “Mal, you’re on mule duty.”

“What?”

“Pick up the sack and the AI Core.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re a terrible shot and Artemis hasn’t pissed me off today, yet.”

I could see him offering plenty of expletives through his helmet, but he didn’t activate his comms so I missed most of it. He grabbed the sack of circuit cards and stuff the sphere into it.

I went up to the hatch and entered the small checkpoint prior to the compartment we were in and turned off my helmet lights. I ordered the others to do the same. When I got to the reinforced hatch, I pushed it open slightly and peered into the monitoring compartment. At the far end of the compartment, I could see movement. It was very dark so I couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but then a bright blue light suddenly turned on at the far end. It originated on the other side of the blasted open hatch we’d entered this hull section from, and it came from a large tubular metal contraption. It was positioned over the hatch like some sort of giant worm, and from an aperture on the end of it, I could see synthetics climbing out. The lights ringed the internal edges of the aperture. I ducked back behind the reinforced hatch and told the others what I saw.

“Looks like at least a dozen, plus more were climbing out of the worm thing.”

“It’s a Coil Wraith.” Offered Artemis.

“Is that a standard Esper Monarchy thing?

“Royal Mechanised Division, the closest synthetics get to being Special Forces in the Votus-Eridani Network.”

“I haven’t heard of them before.”

“That’s the idea. They operate much like boarding pods, only they fly dark most of the time. They attach themselves to ships and send in their synthetics to infiltrate the ship and try to disable them from the inside.”

“How many synthetics can the Wraiths carry?”

“That’s the real beauty of them. They hold twenty, but the rear end of the Coil Wraith holds a nanite synthetic manufactory.”

I heard Mal swear over the comms channel.

“So that will just keep producing more synthetics?”

“As long as it has raw materials to feed it, yes.”

“There’s plenty of that floating around.”

“Why don’t we just get the Dreaming to shoot it?” asked Mal.

“At this range? Even if we did manage to hit it through all this debris, the shockwave will probably kill us. Class 2 weapons are not good for your health.”

“A low yield beam should be okay. You don’t always have to shoot at maximum power, rookie.” Chided Mal.
Shit
, I thought,
he was right.

“Good point. I’ll contact the ship.”

I switched my comms over to the Dreaming’s command module.

“Dreaming of Atmosphere, we have a problem out here.”

“Go ahead, Seth.” Came Crege, he must have been on station still. The line was scratchy at best, must be lots of interference from all the debris and radiation.

“We’re pinned down by hostile synthetics, left over from the attack on the ship. Can you get a trace on my signal and locate any electronic signals besides ours? You might need Fel to help, is he…free?” I didn’t want to let on that he was doing something
other
than stay on station in the command module.

“I’m here, what am I looking for?” came Fel over the comms.

“Short range control signals, at least a dozen, maybe more. Single source of transmission. It’s some sort of Spec Ops synthetic deployment vehicle.”

“Scanning. Tracking your position. I’m going to have to run this through a filter a few times, lots of background noise. Stand by.”

“Standing by to stand by.” I replied, I turned back to the others, “Might be on our own for a bit, too much interference for a fast trace. We’ll fall back and seal this hatch. We can set up position in the computer room if they manage to get through this reinforced hatch. Mal, come up here and weld a few deck plates to the rear of this hatch.”

Artemis and I ran back to the computer room and started dragging computer consoles from the bulkheads and their alcoves and hastily made several overlapping covering positions. We quickly hatched out a plan to hold them off. With Mal in the rear providing continuous covering fire, we would start our plan in the fore position closest to the hatch to the compartment, then move from cover to cover away from the hatch so that we were on opposite sides of the hatch, providing a V formation to the oncoming synthetics. I also positioned a few consoles in the middle of the air, letting them drift in the zero gravity in case they decided to launch over our cover.

Through planning, I realised that Artemis had a firm grasp of military tactics. I wondered if she’d served in any capacity before signing on with Jenner. Somehow, I hadn’t seen her as someone capable of swallowing the whole honourable servitude charade that so often forms the basis of military service.

Mal ran back to the compartment, dragging the sack behind him as it floated along. Once in the compartment, he turned and began to weld the inner hatch shut also.

You needn’t put your life in jeopardy to protect me.
Stated Tac.

You believe they are here for you?
I asked

Yes. They stated as much before they destroyed the Viridian March.

Why are they after you?

I am an organic shroud matrix based quantum computer.

Does that mean you’re unique or valuable?

All life is unique and valuable.

I wasn’t sure if it was being philosophical or simply stating what it truly believed.

Give it to them, Seth.
There was Mal, being all altruistic as usual.

Do you really believe that if we gave up Tac that they’d let us leave?

I compute there is very little chance of these synthetics allowing you to leave if you surrendered.
Said Tac.

So what did you mean by putting our lives in jeopardy to save you? We’re already in jeopardy.

If you leave me as a distraction and escape via the concealed maintenance crawlspace below you, your chances of evading the synthetics is increased by 127%.

We all looked down at our feet. Mal started pulling up deck plates and looking beneath them. In moments he exclaimed that he’d found it. He started to undo the bolts holding the cover in place. He was too far forward for my liking. If the synthetics made it in here any time soon they’d have a clear shot at Mal.

How do you calculate our chances if we get out this way right now, without leaving you behind?

Significantly less.

How significant?

Your chances of escape are reduced to 67.3%. Warning; this is only an estimation. Actual chances may be lower.

Or they could be higher?

That is unlikely.

But possible.

In the event of catastrophic outcome predicted by risk assessment, it is safer to assume that the lower probability is more likely. Life must be preserved.

You don’t consider yourself alive?

I am unsure. Insufficient data to provide a meaningful answer.

But you could be?

Unlikely.

Thus, it is safer to assume that you are. If you turn out to be alive after all, and we had left you to the synthetics, that would be a catastrophic outcome, correct?

Your logic is sound. Very well, we shall consider myself alive for the purpose of safety margins. Activating automated defences in the security check point in approximately 23 seconds.