Wandering Engineer 6: Pirates Bane (8 page)

“No, I had to change the form or you would have gotten wise. So I
used a cotton tail.”

“I see that,” Irons said amused. He realized it was a prank and
took it with slightly less ill grace. “If you could control the rabbit through
the maze, why can't you handle hyper?”

“We didn't actually control it,” Phoenix replied. “What we did is
project it after getting a base course. We dangled it only when you needed the
lure.”

“I see.”

“Bit of a downer, taking the fun out of it. Whoever heard of a
magician giving the trick away?” Sprite grumbled, eying Phoenix. Phoenix
shrugged.

The Admiral disconnected and then sat up on his bunk. “It wasn't
all bad. But it was a bit long. Not being able to catch the little monster does
get you frustrated and annoyed. I tried to lay a trap twice.”

“We know,” Sprite said. “I had to kick you back into gear.”

“Right.” He shrugged, looking at the clock and then checking the
ship's net. Phoenix had dropped them back into a sedate alpha octave.

“All right, I approve of this. And any others you can think of
that are similar. For instance a flight sim or underwater swim through rings or
something.”

“Oh?”

“Perhaps a change of scenery will help get me over the tedium.”

“You have been twitchy.”

“Blood sugar?”

“No, more like repetitive actions for too long a period. Even we
AI have that problem.”

“Understood. So, yes, you can do this once in a while.”

“Going up and down is costing us as a lot in power, but it's
making up some in transit time. We really are getting too close to the reserve Admiral.”

Irons nodded bleakly. There was no helping it. He'd thought they'd
pick up some grav sheer, or some high-density energy packets with the hyper
collectors. They did close to what he had projected in Delta, but still, the
bottom end of that projection. Which was annoying. He shouldn't have counted on
that.

He had stuffed Phoenix with bladders of fuel before they had left.
It was all gone now; they only had the fuel remaining in the tanks. Even the
bladders had been recycled to make room inside the ship. Not good.

“So, I'll set up more methods of navigating in VR in rough
patches,” Sprite said, recapping and getting his thought train back onto
positive tracks in the here and now. "That will allow we AIs to focus on
other tasks for brief periods."

“Agreed. I think finding a way to do the job without sitting on my
butt and staring at the screen helped a little.” Irons smiled slightly. “But
I'm famished now.”

“Lunch break?” Sprite asked.

“Yeah, I'm thinking rabbit. Or as close as the food replicator can
get,” the Admiral replied with a wolfish smile. Sprite opened her mouth as if
to object but then closed it with a chuckle and shake of her virtual head.

<----*----*----*---->

When he was bored he wrote contingency plans and explored
logistics tables or read manuals. They had a few manuals to hardware that had
come after his long stint in stasis. Not much, some minor changes to reactor
controls, some changes to add more redundant control runs to weapon mounts...
minor improvements in efficiency... not a lot. Of course they had only a few
years after he went dark before the Federation went dark as well.

He winced and changed to something more productive. He explored
the sector of space with a holo map. The Rho sector capital had at one time
been Pyrax, which had been the oldest inhabited system when it had been formed
into a sector. Eden, its planet, had been one of the first Terran colonies,
terraformed and founded by Lagroose Industries centuries even before the
Federation itself had been founded. The founder of Lagroose industries had
specifically chosen the then very remote system to get away from war torn Sol. The
history books were torn on the subject as to why the founder had chosen a
system nearly fifteen thousand light years from Sol to come home. Some had
thought it was because at the time Eden had been one of the few Terran style
worlds. Others saw it as an escape from war and ever increasingly sophisticated
society. Some had cynically pointed out that the decades long journey had
allowed the founder to use banned medical science to restore his youth in order
to form a monarchy of his own with his own laws.

War however had eventually followed the colonists anyway. One of
the battles of the First Terran Interstellar War had been fought there, which
was why the Tauren battleship had been left to drift there, and would
eventually be recovered by him and the navy to be rechristened the Bismark.

Eden had been quite a beautiful world when he had visited it,
almost living up to its name he thought with a pang. Now it was rubble, the
inner Eden belt of the system that had spread out into a ring around the Pyrax
star, denser than the Atens belt had been.  All its industry destroyed by the
Xenos or pulled out by their corporate backers after the Xenos had left. Only
Anvil had been left to rot on the vine, not worthy of recovery for some reason.

But, back before it's planet's destruction, Pyrax had been the
largest population and industrial system in the sector so it had formed the
center of a sphere of space several thousand light years in diameter. Many of
the systems were dead, only a handful of stars were the right type to not only
have planets, but have a Goldilocks zone and have the right set of variables to
support a life bearing planet. And of course the Xenos had taken a hand in
shortening that list considerably.

Still, the Rho sector was big, and he hadn't been to all the
planets, but Sprite had at least confirmed a surprising number were still out
there. He wondered sometimes if there were systems off the map, systems that
had been written off by the Federation Interstellar cartographers that refugees
had fled to in desperation. He shook his head, setting the thought aside.

There were six ways into the sector since the sector wormhole gate
had been confirmed destroyed; one was in the North, which led to the Federation
core world sector. It was in the chain of dead systems between Senka and Beta
953ac.

Clockwise from it, in the North East was Horath and south of it
Finagle. Finagle had a link that went North East to another sector, the Sigma
sector that also boarded the core worlds. In the East was Hinata, another world
most likely conquered by the Horathian Empire. It led to the Omega sector in
the outer arm of the galaxy beyond the Perseus arm.

He was headed to the South East. Just south and a couple jumps
beyond Beta 101a1 was the Crellis system and one of the gateways to the Xenos
in the Sagittarius dwarf elliptical galaxy. The Fleet had destroyed or damaged
that wormhole. Maybe. It was all speculation at this point, something he needed
to nail down soon.

He frowned and moved on. In the South West along the Seti Alpha 4
chain there was Aiera 3, a system that linked to Tauren space. That sector was
named Tau; most likely someone in the charting department had a sense of
humor... or just got it right.

And finally, in the North West was a dead system that linked to
Syntia's World. The dead system's chain of jump points led to the Pi sector of
the galaxy.

The sector's inhabited systems, or at least those known to exist
were quite small, shrinking the once thriving community. Sprite had also
confirmed that the sector's Dyson sphere and wormhole gate had also been
destroyed early in the war, wiping out many systems in the surrounding area.
That explained why down on the Z axis was a mostly a wasteland.

Sprite was right; he was risking it all on Bek and the absence of
any information on the system over the past seven centuries.

Absence of negative reports yes, but also positive reports as well
he realized. He really didn't know what he was getting into. It could be dead.
The Xenos could have inserted a nano weapon into the system and decimated it,
killing everyone without anyone getting a word of warning out.

The more he thought about it, the more that thought preyed on him.
He didn't like the implications, but also knew the only way to know for certain
was to go and find out.

The Rho sector had been hammered in the early phases of the war.
At one point it had had a massive fleet presence since it had been one of the
gateways to the Xeno galaxy. When the wormhole had been destroyed or disabled,
the war front had shifted to other sectors and the area had been left to die on
the vine.

Die, or hide. He wasn't sure which. For some like Bek... it could
go either way. A star system could be self sufficient if set up right. Or it
could devolve to the point of self-sufficiency as some had in this sector.
Trade had alleviated that crushing problem, but not by much he knew.

Bek had no outside trade, another point for him to consider. He
was attracted to it by his personal knowledge and history. However it had a
limited population before the war, under ten million. There was no telling what
it was now, seven centuries later.

The Admiral had a history with Bek; he had taken a small support
task force in to the system to set up a hidden redoubt in the area during the
early phases of the war.

Bek was hard to get to, it had only one safe zone in and out of
its area and the jump to Crellis was practically suicide for any navigator
other than a Ssilli or Cetacean. When Irons had been stationed there, he had
brought in a small ancient mobile shipyard to build the system up, and as an
asset to tuck away in case of future need.

Now he was uncertain if the mobile yard and any of the facilities
built in Bek were still there. He'd left orders to leave the yard behind, it
was too dangerous to fly it back out. The population could have abandoned it,
they could have triggered a self-destruct... any number of possibilities played
out in his mind, not many good.

“But, if they did keep a hand in space...” he murmured.

“Thinking of Bek?”

“Yes.”

“There isn't much hope that they kept a space industry going Admiral.
If they have no trade with outside systems and no need for heavy industry... if
they were forced back to subsistence living with the loss of modern tech
brought on by the lock outs...”

“Yeah,” Irons sighed. He didn't like the implications there. Not
one bit.

“But, focusing on the positives, Bek has that yard, if it still
exists. Plus, it had, or should I say had, a decent asteroid belt, but not a
dense one like Antigua or Pyrax. Of course Pyrax was partially artificial, from
the destruction of the planet Eden.”

“True.”

“Other systems are like that as well though.”

“True.”

“So what do we do?”

“For now, not a whole hell of a lot, we're still getting to Beta
101a1 after all. We don't have any intel to go on off of either.”

“True. And if the planet had been hit with a Xeno bomb?”

“Then there is no reason to linger,” Irons replied. “Except to
refuel and take on whatever we can... if it is worth it.”

“Which it won't be. The threat of contamination...”

“It is yes an issue, but we don't know anything for certain. In
fact, all we have is an absence of information. So, we need to plan for what we
might
find.”

“I'm more worried about politicians. They see us showing up,
riding our great white charger in, expecting to take over...”

The Admiral rubbed his brow. “Yeah, Antigua and Pyrax all over
again. Thanks.”

“All part of the job sir,” Sprite replied.

A month before break out he'd found another hobby. He tinkered
with the powered combat suit and gear Sprite had picked up for him in Antigua
and on Epsilon. He sat on the stool, examining the right shoulder with expert
engineering eyes. Up until now he hadn't bothered with it, but now he needed a
hobby. Running the helm was getting to him, he needed the distraction to
release the pent up tension of sitting at the station for hours on end. He was
starting to see plotting in his sleep. Something he hadn't had to experience
since he'd been a shave tail Lieutenant.

He welcomed the distraction on one level, not that he really
needed the suit. Sure it was nice to have, but he could go Ironman or bare if
needed. He had done that on Antigua Prime, using his skin suit and bits of
armor and even components from his shuttle as an improvised armor when he went
on a rampage to get to the command center of the station.

He shook that memory away. It was one of the rare times he had
truly lost perspective, and let his anger rule him. It had felt good to get his
mad out, even if it had undermined his image in the eyes of the cybers. Still,
it had cut to the heart of the problem, and it had put a healthy dose of fear
and respect in some eyes. He returned his attention to the suit.

Ironman had worked in a pinch, but having a fully operational suit
on hand when you needed it did have its advantages as well. He was tempted to
just throw the pieces into a replicator and use them as material for a new
suit, but he just didn't have the spare power. Besides, it was fun tinkering
with an ancient design. There was something to be said about restoring a
classic.

The suit was ancient, an old militia suit a thousand years old
that had seen better days. It was more shell then functional suit. Some of it
was beyond his current resources to fix. He worked with Proteus to use his
nanites to as much repairs as possible.

He frowned at the persistent scratching sound at the hatch. The
two waifs were a pain; they were kids, constantly looking to get into mischief.
He didn't need them chewing on the wiring and hydraulics. Nor did he need them
licking up the hydraulic fluids. He didn't need them to have kidney or liver
failure.

His enhanced hearing could hear the piteous chirrups of the cubs
begging to be let out. “Go to sleep you two!” he growled, shaking his head as
his hands moved with metric precision to put the actuator back together.

“Persistent I'll give them that,” Sprite chuckled.

“Tell me about it,” he sighed. Proteus finished with his hands and
then deployed micromanipulators from his fingers to adjust the fitting with
finicky precision. Getting the actuator just right in its housing was a pain in
the posterior. It took nanometric precision to get it just right, usually under
a scope. A quick and dirty millimeter position would work in the field for a
while, but he wanted this thing to be as smooth as glass. Which was why he was
letting the AI handle the precision. Bored he was, nutty enough to try this on
his own he wasn't.

“Going to go to bed soon?” Sprite asked.

“Eventually,” Irons replied. “Though with those two about I doubt
it.”

“They'll settle down,” Sprite said with twinkle. He didn't mind
the cuddling; he'd adjusted to that. But the in your face begging for attention
sometimes got a grumpy response in return.

Sprite had learned how much fun it was to play phantom to the
cubs. She'd led them on a merry chase around the ship, much to the Admiral's
amusement. She had enjoyed morphing herself small and then running around. It
kept the cubs on their toes, making them work out. Their hysterical antics to
catch her hologram usually wore them out quite well. Lately though they were
getting wise to her, either ignoring her presence or playing for only a brief
time. He got a charge out of their seemingly indifference to her presence, than
the turn and wiggle when she supposedly wasn't looking so they could pounce.
The widening eyes were just comical to behold. As was the surprise when they
flew through her hologram and skittered out the other side.

Irons straightened and rubbed the small of his back as Proteus
finished. “You could always sleep standing up,” Sprite suggested.

“Pass,” Irons said, glancing her way. “We're almost finished
anyway.”

“Boys and their toys,” The AI sighed with an air of amused
exasperation. Irons glanced at her again, knowing that exasperation was
feigned. “I know I know, go bother someone else,” she said before he could say
anything.

He sniffed as she blinked out and then returned to the reassembly
of the shoulder joint.

<----*----*----*---->

Sprite and Phoenix had spun off specialized
computer systems, software, and robots to fill in various jobs on the ship when
they had left Antigua. Most weren't critical positions, but each took some of
the workload off them and their organic Commander. The AI compiled a bug log
and worked on refining the software. There were nightly patches for some time.
But they also created new software, which turned buggy. The Admiral wondered if
they deliberately left the bugs in to give them something to work on.

Some of their projects were copies of software
they had created in the ship's inaugural voyage to Epsilon, just adapted to new
roles. Some were tweaks and patched improvements, building off the lessons they
had learned, and the bug reports that were generated.

One of their projects was a dumb AI to help with
the ship's helm. That allowed the ship's AI to focus on the larger picture or
on individual stations if necessary. Unfortunately the dumb AI was a bit buggy,
for instance it wasn't interested in surfing the slipstream and picking up the
greatest pockets of energy for the hyper collectors. It also preferred to chart
a straight-line course and only make corrections when it came to an obstacle.
Reluctantly they shut the bot down after it tried to go through a large
gravitational tangle.

“Not enough training. Sims. It needs a lot of Sims to get sorted
out. Learning,” the Admiral said. An AI ne
eded time to settle into its role, time and practice. Experience
in other words, time to shake down. For a computer system that meant
simulations normally, thousands of simulations performed to train the AI's thought
modules and neural net into what was acceptable, and what wasn't. Trying to get
it to work in a real world situation while skimping on the step was a disaster
waiting to happen.

“I know,” Sprite sighed. She had pointed it out to the Admiral
but he had insisted on just trying it.

Phoenix nodded. “It takes time to train new crew Commander. You
tried. Thank you. We'll work it out.”

 Time and training you said and you were right.” Irons frowned.
He felt like they were giving up to easily. He would never do that with an
organic, with a person you could reason with them. But a person could be
reasoned with. A person had a vested interest in listening; after all, their
own personal survival depended on getting it right. He shook his head. If the
AI wanted to move on... fine.

“Yes sir.”

Irons mulled over situation. He wasn't certain about what had
just happened. Sim time was indeed a factor, but not the only one here. Sprite
was still having the occasional issue, but she seemed to have risen over the
trauma she had experienced at the hands of Defender when they had been at
Antigua. She certainly hadn't exhibited any signs of distress or instability
while they had been on Epsilon at any rate, nor during their transit out!

He frowned. She had taken issue with making AI that were servants
or purpose built. That... might be the issue, he thought, slowly looking up. It
might be something in her sub consciousness, her inherent dislike for such
things. She had expressed it more vocally over the past few years. She hadn't
had any issue with making Phoenix though.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Sprite asked quietly.

“Always on my mind?” the Admiral asked, turning his attention to
the engineering stats. The bottle was stable there were no disharmonics.

“Or trying to read it you mean?” Sprite asked. “I can't quite do
that, but I can tell when you are thinking deep thoughts, and I can tell when
you are thinking in a certain direction. Which is pointed at me in this
instance.”

“I'm... not sure,” he sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“Sometimes it's a pain in the ass being tied together like this.”

“I don't think the creators of our little family thought it
through this far. Or they thought it wouldn't be an issue, after all, at the
time of conception we could always migrate one or all of you out as needed.” He
frowned. “Or they also thought we'd have expert psych help to deal with
conflicts or issues," he added.

Sprite was quiet a moment. “I didn't know there was an issue.”

“Commander, I don't know if there was one. But I thought of
several possibilities and wasn't certain what to do about them. If they are
even true to begin with.”

“Oh? Hypothesis?”

“No, questions. Possible solutions.” His frown deepened. Finally
he shrugged. He might as well get it out into the open. “I was wondering about
the bot. The software was buggy, and you aren't known for making buggy
software. You and Proteus have done fine with Phoenix, and Phoenix is quite a
bit more sophisticated than this thing was.”

“True,” Phoenix interjected. “And I'm glad I'm not buggy.”

“If you could even tell if you were.”

“Which I can. You did add a self-diagnostic feature. I have been
doing a postmortem of the bot; it lacked initiative and interest in its
assigned task. It was a dumb bot true, but when you task something that sophisticated
to something so well, stupid, it doesn't care if things worked or not.”

“I see. A coding issue?”

“Perhaps. Coding conflict definitely.”

“No behavioral module?”

“Or personality. No interest in other words.”

“You don't need to have interest to do a task. A menial task or a
complex task it needs to be done a certain way.”

“True.”

“Could it be a... mental block?” Irons asked, eying Sprite's
avatar.

Sprite seemed to squirm. Finally she straightened her shoulders.
“It is possible.”

“A block brought on when?”

“Sprite has expressed negative views on creating additional AI.
Specifically purpose built AI.”

Phoenix turned to his mother AI. “And what about me?”

“I'm not certain. You we had to have, we needed to get out of
Antigua, and we needed to lessen the work load.”

“So, I'm a convenience.”

“No, I think, damn it, not you too! Forget I asked,” Irons
growled, throwing his hands up in the air. The last thing he needed was a
snippy AI, let alone two of them. They had to get along it was a long flight.

“We're getting a touch of cabin fever here,” Phoenix said, voice
cooling slightly. “I'll just go check on my port nodes.”

“Roger that,” Irons said.

“I'll go read your report Phoenix. Maybe there is something to
learn from that,” Sprite said quietly. She didn't meet the Admiral's eyes as
she winked out.

The Admiral sighed softly and turned his attention to the
engineering station once more. He looked it over then returned to the flight
controls. A long flight indeed he thought, adjusting their course to remain between
the markers.

<----*----*----*---->

Irons studied the report of their transition. He was tired, on
edge from too much caffeine and too little sleep. This was the ticklish bit,
the transition down from the higher octaves as they neared their exit point.

“Still regretting not having enough crew Admiral?” Sprite asked,
coming awake. Smart AI like Sprite needed downtime, sleep to function. They
used it much like organics, to let their minds process the data and experiences
they had received during their up time and organize it into a coherent form for
later review. The longer they took between sleep periods the more unstable they
became.

Sprite was stable now; she had spent quite a bit of downtime
during their journey to Epsilon in sleep, processing the damage that had been
inflicted on her. They say that time heals all wounds. Healing was a bit more
complex with an AI, but the time to think about what she had lost and also
gained had helped somewhat.

“No, now that you are online, I can catch a break,” the Admiral
said, rolling his shoulders. His body was maintained by his nanites, but he
still needed fuel for his organics, downtime, and electrical power.

Proteus also needed downtime. It needed him to relax so it could
work through a list of things, repair anything that needed to be repaired, as
well as replenish his reserves of nanites if necessary. The AI could use his
sitting in the helm couch as a partial fix, but it wasn't quite enough. It too
needed some downtime.

“I was referring to an organic.”

“I was referring to another AI,” Irons retorted. “Funny how we're
going at cross purposes here.”

“Not everything can be solved with another bot Admiral,” Sprite
said, sounding annoyed.