Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (40 page)

“Yes.”

“So this…” he waved a hand at the 3D construct before him. “This whole construct we’ve been looking at, thinking it was a model of the functioning portions of your brain. This is all bullshit?”

“Yes. Today my brain looks more like this.”
The image changed… and the golden glow of active filaments lit up like a supernova, huge flowing torrents of information, processing at speeds and in ways that no human computer system could possibly match. Romki nearly laughed for sheer delight, and stifled it in time with a hand over his mouth. It would not do for the others to see this yet. One of them might put another hole through her head in terror.

“Oh my god!” breathed Lisbeth, not as happy but similarly amazed. “Our own micros were lying to us?”

“She was painting a pretty picture with them,” said Romki with amusement. “Like telling children stories of the tooth fairy.”

“But… but your central nervous system was destroyed! How can our micros repair it even once you’ve reprogrammed them? Our technology is…”

“Inferior,”
the queen completed.
“But you have misunderstood my neural function. Even the Dobruta do. The brain repairs itself. Your primitive micros can help, mostly in logistical scale. My central brain does not control as much as you supposed. Command functions can migrate. Full structural replication is possible from small surviving portions. My full function remains far away, and yet I am here.”

Romki took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. One deep breath was not enough, so he took several more. He was talking to a drysine queen. Not some construct copy, that had been a delusion the queen had been happy to let them indulge in while her real brain recovered.

“Right. Well if you’re going to do this mission, you’re going to have to reveal yourself to them quite soon.”

“I know. I did not wish to do it myself. Some may respond with fear and alarm. I chose you.”
Romki had to take another deep breath. He couldn’t quite believe it was happening. Some deeply religious people fantasised about talking to god. Romki much preferred this.
“Have I chosen correctly?”

“I… I think so, yes.”

“Do you have a name?” Lisbeth interrupted.

“Identification amongst my kind occurs automatically through data encoding. Perhaps I do have a name, but it is nothing I could communicate to you.”

“What would you like me to say on your behalf?” Romki pressed.

“That I pledge my loyalty to Phoenix.”

Romki blinked. So many questions… where to start? “You understand a concept like loyalty?”

“I understand many things.”

“No, that was… forgive me, that was poorly expressed. Do you share with humans an emotional sense of loyalty?”

A pause.
“This is semantical and unproductive.”
The voice, which had begun as flat and androgynous, had now shifted to become more expressive and distinctly female. Was it copying Lisbeth’s speech patterns? Had it been listening to female crew? AIs had no gender and Captain Pram was right — calling it ‘her’ was a piece of sentimental human foolishness, potentially misleading and even dangerous. Was the queen now bending herself to fit human prejudices? Appealing to sentiments that she could never personally share?
“I seek alliance. All concepts expressed in this human tongue are imprecise abstractions. You do not communicate efficiently, and so we are stuck with this.”

“She sounds a bit like you when you’re pissed at someone not as smart as you,” Lisbeth whispered.

Romki shook off the extraneous questions, and focused. “Why do you seek alliance?”

“I may be the last of my kind. I wish my race to live on. Isolated there is no chance. But now, perhaps things are different.”

“If you make yourself valuable to us?”

“Yes.”

“In fighting deepynines?”

“Yes.”

“And you do understand and accept that humans and other organic sentiences have very good reasons to be frightened of you?”

“This was an old power-paradigm. It is now obsolete.”

“That does not entirely answer my question.”

“In this tongue, nothing could ever entirely answer your question.”
Again the faintly peevish exasperation.
“But yes. In the old days, as you call them, organics served a lesser function. Now they serve a higher function, and are determined not to return to those old days. But I have no such power now. This fear is unjustified.”

“You will have to face it nonetheless. And you will have to accept the many injustices and misunderstandings that come with it, if you are to be allowed to survive in alliance with
Phoenix
. Failure to accept this will likely result in your destruction. Do you accept these things?”

“I understand that I am a slave,”
the queen said calmly.
“This is a natural state amongst the civilisations constructed by my people. It is acceptable.”

T
he entire command
crew were in the marines’ briefing room, only used by spacer crew before a major mission when there were too many people in the briefing to all cram onto the bridge, or into captain’s quarters. Today there were Erik, Shahaim, Kaspowitz and Shilu from the bridge crew, Rooke from Engineering, Trace and Dale from the marines, and Hausler representing Operations. Add Romki and Jokono, and all seats in the circle about the ceiling holoprojector were taken.

“Okay,” said Erik, as they all stared at the 3D system chart of Gsi-81T on the holographics centring the circle of chairs. “Here’s what we know. This is Gsi-5, a Class-One gas giant. The base… well, the base is going to need a name. Given everything else that’s old in the galaxy has been named by some other species before us, I figured it was about time humans got to name this one, since whatever the hacksaws or the sard call it will be unpronounceable. But my knowledge of old human legend is weak, so I turned to our resident scholar, and…”

He gestured to Romki. Typically he might have expected Romki to look self-conscious, or to make some kind of a deal out of it. “Tartarus,” Romki said grimly. Erik thought he looked pissed. “The deepest, darkest part of the Ancient Greek underworld. Where all the worst evil was sent to rot for eternity.”

And also normally, Erik might have expected
Phoenix
crew to roll their eyes at Romki’s scholarly recitals. But this name they seemed to agree with. “So the Tartarus base is here,” said Erik, pointing to a spot in holographic mid-air. “Deep orbit about Gsi-5. The star’s weak, there’s not much light out there — anything painted for effect is going to be difficult to see at combat velocities.

“Which leads us to the next part. Our drysine queen insists that most of
Phoenix
’s systems are in fact deepynine-origin technology.”

“Tell us something we didn’t know,” Kaspowitz grumbled.

“She says that with the right modifications, particularly to active scan and coms,
Phoenix
could pass for an old deepynine carrier-class.” Erik took a deep breath, and glanced briefly at a side-screen — it showed the tavalai fleet ships, plus
Makimakala
and the small planetoid base, the whole local scenario. Draper and Dufresne were on the bridge watching that, and thank god in hindsight for their recent combat action, because he felt so much happier now with them flying his ship.

“Most importantly, she says she can talk like an old deepynine queen.” He looked about at the group of concerned faces. Every one showed grim anxiety… save for Trace, unreadable as always. “The kind of old deepynine queen who was around twenty five thousand years ago. She says…” and he interrupted himself in irritation to look at Romki. “Stan, we’re going to need a name for her too, ‘drysine queen’ is a mouthful now and will become even more-so in combat.”

“Styx,” said Romki without hesitation. “The Ancient Greek river that circled the underworld of dead souls. It formed the boundary between the living world and the dead. The river was also a Goddess.”

There were some nods, seeing the poetry in that. “Good name,” Kaspowitz admitted.

“Thank you,” said Romki, without expression.

“Anyhow,” Erik resumed. “Styx tells us that another primary function of setting up a deepynine presence at Tartarus will be to reconnect with any deepynines left behind. We know that there are plenty of hives scattered through this part of the Spiral — if there were only one hidden in every ten thousand systems, that still works out to plenty. Organics have not yet killed all of the hacksaws — Styx herself is proof of that. If Styx survived, then some deepynines could have survived, and still be in hiding.

“Styx thinks it is possible that a surviving deepynine hive could build a ship, given enough time. Or capture one. But without any safe place to go, they would not use it. Using an FTL drive only draws attention, which invites pursuit. She suspects that Tartarus may be so big and visible in its operations precisely to lure any such deepynine settlements out of hiding.”

“And how does she calculate that?” Shahaim said skeptically.

“Because it was what she was planning to do in Argitori. She says. But Argitori was a very busy system, and ship building requires more resources than they had on that rock. Heavy industrial activity shows up on scans, and someone would have come to investigate. So she was stuck. But deepynines in that same circumstance may not have been. Building an FTL ship is well within the capabilities of even lower-ranked drones, given enough time — and they’ve had millennia. If they abruptly learn that Tartarus has become active once more, and that sard are allied to deepynines, they will certainly come out of hiding. Styx insists that this is the highest priority for deepynines. Just as high as the sard alliance itself.”

“Why?” Shilu challenged. “Why do old deserted deepynines get such a high priority? When they can just build more?”

“Two answers,” Romki replied. “One — these are the ancestors. Whatever the deepynines have become in alliance with the alo, those left behind will be different. Far older, and possessing ancient memories and knowledge that may have been lost. Imagine us, encountering some people from old Earth before its destruction, frozen in hibernation. Imagine how eager we would be to learn from them.”

“Sounds sentimental,” Kaspowitz remarked.

“Yes,” Romki agreed. “This was my second answer. Hacksaws, I’m beginning to suspect, are extremely sentimental. Even nostalgic.” About the circle, skepticism deepened. “When you consider the scale of what they once possessed, and lost, it’s not so surprising. I am
not
suggesting that their emotions are like our emotions, not at all. But I think it’s quite clear that they do have emotions. The primary emotion, I believe, is their sense of collective attachment to each other. In talking to Styx, I sense survivor’s guilt, a regret for those left behind. Certainly she was upset at the loss of her children in Argitori.

“Now she’s suggesting that the deepynines feel such guilt too, for those left behind. Perhaps they’ve already received some such survivors to Tartarus, and are hoping to welcome more. Styx thinks it likely.”

He indicated back to Erik. Erik nodded, and took a deep breath. “Which creates our plan. Styx will pretend to be an old, lost deepynine queen, unseen for twenty five thousand years. Only another queen could imitate that signal, she says. It’s technically impossible for a lower rank. Obviously, the deepynine queen we believe to be running the Tartarus base will find it fascinating, and invite her in for a meeting.”

Lieutenant Dale looked as though some young NCO had suggested dressing in tutus and dancing to distract the enemy. He looked at Trace, as though not believing she was going to put up with this nonsense. Trace barely blinked.

“We’ll be running on a timer,” Erik continued. “Lieutenant Kaspowitz has simulated the course, and concluded that two hours and sixteen minutes should do it. On that mark,
Makimakala
will drop in at the entry point here,” again he pointed at a glowing mark on the display, “and make a high-V attack run on Tartarus base, inflicting severe damage and possibly destroying it.

“So in order to allow that to happen, we will have to cause a major distraction and clear
Makimakala
’s path. But in truth, that’s a secondary interest to us, because our primary objective is to gather intelligence on Tartarus base and its hypothetical deepynine queen. If she exists, we’ve proof of perhaps the gravest threat to humanity since the krim. That proof alone is more important than killing Tartarus. But we’ll need a major distraction to get out once the deepynine queen and her sard allies realise we’re not what we’re pretending to be, so that distraction might be good enough to clear
Makimakala
’s attack run too. Questions?”

“Styx is back, then?” Trace asked calmly. “Fully conscious?”

Erik indicated Romki, and Rooke. “It, well…” Rooke scratched his head. “It’s hard to tell what ‘conscious’ really means with Styx, so it’s hard to…”

“Second Lieutenant,” Trace interrupted. “Focus.” With just enough dry humour to avoid a proper reprimand — reprimanding spacers was Erik’s job.

Rooke swallowed. “Yes. She’s back. Lacking many auxiliary functions, but it seems to be her.”

“And she’s been fooling us all this time?” Fooling ‘you’, she meant, looking at
Phoenix
’s senior engineer.

“Yes,” Rooke admitted.

“Do you trust her?” Trace looked from Rooke to Romki.

“That’s not really a technology question,” said Romki. “It’s a personal judgement. And it’s something we’ll all have to consider as individuals.”

“Thus I’m asking you,” said Trace.

Romki took a moment. Everyone was looking at him, many with distrust. A few with hostility. “Yes,” he said coldly. “She’s logical. She’s perhaps the last of her kind, almost certainly the last queen. If the drysine race has any chance to survive, she must survive. But she’s almost useless on her own — queens are commanders, they exist to advance the strategic position of a larger group by judgement and analysis. She says she serves
Phoenix
unconditionally, and I believe her. From her perspective, it’s hard to see she has any other choice.”

“Until she gets a better offer,” Shilu muttered.

“And who could give her that?” Romki retorted. Shilu said nothing.

“I vote we blow her out an airlock,” said Dale. “And use our main guns on her to be sure.”

“If we do that,” Trace told him, “then we may have blown humanity’s best chance to survive mass genocide at the hands of a deepynine horde out the airlock with her.” With a cool glance at her lieutenant. “All because you’re uncomfortable.” And Dale looked away, squirming like a dog outmatched by its master in a staring contest. “We keep her, and we use her, as Stan says. Get used to it.”

Her eyes fixed on Erik. ‘This isn’t a democracy’, he could almost hear her saying, as she’d said to him many times before. ‘You’re in command. So command.’

“Do we know what kind of defences will be there?” Shahaim asked.

“Tartarus itself is unarmed,” said Erik. “According to Styx’s memory, which is of course twenty five thousand years out of date. But it’s unlikely to change because of course, from a defensive perspective the target point is the worst place to put firepower. We think there’s a sard-deepynine alliance, so I’d guess sard will be defending Tartarus themselves. It’s a shipbuilding base, we don’t know how many advanced ships they’ll have beyond what we’ve already seen. There could also be deepynine ships, possibly even alo. We just don’t know.”

“Cheerful,” said Kaspowitz.

“So basically,” Shahaim continued, “this whole thing depends on Styx fooling them into thinking she’s a deepynine queen herself, plus our signal modifications.”

“Yes,” Erik agreed. He was very aware of how thin it sounded. But he couldn’t disagree with that assessment.

“Hold on,” said Jokono. “What if they suspect it’s a trick? We know that they know Styx exists. That’s why they’ve been trying to kill us — so they can kill
her
. You don’t think a deepynine queen will know Styx’s capabilities? And will suspect that this new arrival pretending to be a deepynine queen is just Styx playing games?”

“They think she’s dead,” Romki answered. “
Phoenix
killed Styx, the first time. Styx says they’d never have dared conduct that style of assault on Joma Station if they suspected even the slightest chance that she might still be alive… because if she had been alive, she could possibly have stopped it. They’re hunting Styx, but they think they’re hunting a corpse. Spare parts. They know that spare parts could still contain a
potential
live queen, as we’ve shown, and it’s that potential that they’re trying to kill.

“Plus, she says, AIs almost never change their minds. They take absolute positions and are completely inflexible. It’s what makes them so formidable — they have no cowardice, they’ll die on principle rather than accommodate an enemy. Even if a deepynine queen in the Tartarus could conceive that
Phoenix
could reawaken a dead drysine queen — itself a huge stretch — no deepynine queen could imagine any fellow AI, not even a drysine, turning around and working with the enemies who killed her and her children the first time. Which agrees with everything I’ve ever heard about AIs of all races. Once an enmity is established, it remains until one or the other party has been destroyed.”

Jokono nodded slowly. “But Styx changed sides.”

“Yes,” said Romki. “Styx is not a normal AI. Not a normal drysine, nor a normal queen. She’s exceptional. And perhaps something completely new to our knowledge.”

“Or maybe she actually didn’t change sides,” Dale muttered. “Maybe she’s just the same enemy she’s always been, feeding us stuff we’d like to believe because we’re stupid enough to fall for it.”

“Fact,” Erik said sternly, holding up a finger. “We know this deepynine queen wants her dead. The attack on Joma Station was actually an assassination attempt on Styx. Second fact,” and he held up a second finger, “we know that Styx is not suicidal. I’m quite sure that she believes this approach will work, at least in getting us close enough to Tartarus to do something, without immediately dying. She’s gone to great lengths to survive this long, she’s not about to propose something that will get her killed along with us.”

“How about revenge?” Shahaim suggested. “Do hacksaws do revenge? Sacrifice herself to kill
Phoenix
?”

“Lieutenant,” said Romki with barely supressed irritation. “Please, use your brains and consider our situation. If Styx wanted this ship dead, she could have killed us at TK55. She could probably kill us right now by gaining control of our systems and doing whatever. Instead she bent every sinew to help us kill deepynines, because killing deepynines is her primary function and whatever disagreements she’s had with us are utterly secondary to that. Stop being so damn self-centered and thinking the universe revolves around you or
Phoenix
or humanity. Deepynines are to drysines what the krim were to us — existential enemies of the highest order. In the grand scheme of things, humanity barely matters to drysines at all.”