MotherShip (4 page)

During this moment, as Mother's processors continued to digest the vast amounts of data in the knowledgebase, she again turned to the enigma of music. Music was so different than the other stored data. It was abstract and yet it was whole.

In contrast, the vast volumes of data in the knowledgebase that contained the accumulated works of visual art of humanity seemed... well, seemed not to make complete sense. But music made sense in a mathematical kind of way. And yet, there was something else—something more. From the first time in her existence that Mother had discovered music she always kept some playing in her near-term memories, always enjoying and analyzing the melodies and rhythms.

Only in battle was that practice interrupted.

“We will begin these studies in one hour. They will become part of your daily routine of tasks.”

“
Aww,"
all three children groaned together.

“There will also be time allocated for periods of play.”

Three faces breathed a sigh of relief.

“In addition, I have awakened the Guardian robot. The Fixers are designed primarily for my repairs. I have discerned that this robot will be of more practical use in physical interactions with yourselves.”

“What do you mean?” Jaric asked.

“Because of his appendages.” Mother noted the looks of puzzlement from all three children. “He is constructed exactly as a human in all respects. He will use his human-like appendages as a model for you to follow as I direct Guardian to train you in some special games.” Mother paused for effect. “He will also ensure your full cooperation.”

“Okay,” Kyle said with questioning suspense.

“You enjoy playing simulation games,” Mother began. If she had been programmed for humor, she would have chuckled at his attempt to hide his thought processes. “Even Becky will play them for a limited time. We must leverage those skills you have learned and utilize them for a new
Game
.”

Mother felt a jump in her processing. She was not sure what it indicated. Perhaps it was the data she had just reviewed on the emotional makeup of human children and the terrible effect war and death might have upon them.

Some of these negative effects would devastate the children. It could damage them permanently.

So, Mother had taken another approach. The young children would not actually see any T'kaan die. They would only destroy the ships. That is all they would see for now in the simulations. Only later would she explain fully the art of war and all that it entailed.

In addition, if she called it a game, the young children would more likely direct more of their energies into learning the skills required for it. Therefore, they would progress rapidly. After they had developed these necessary skills, they would have a greater probability of survival.

A single millisecond had passed.

Kyle and Jaric stepped forward excitedly. Becky frowned.

“I will program Guardian, and he will assign each of you to one of my primary gun batteries. My consoles will instruct you on the nuances of targeting and destroying T'kaan fighters.”

“What about the frigates?” Jaric and Kyle shouted excitedly.

“That will come later. All of you must develop basic skills before you play
The
Game
. First you will learn from battle simulations I will display on the weapon consoles. Once you have acquired sufficient eye-hand coordination using them, then I will provide actual moving targets in space that you will destroy using live weapons. After each step I will increase the sophistication of these simulations until you have developed the necessary skills to play
The Game
.”

“Cool,” Kyle said.

“Guardian will now assist you in his first assignment”

“What assignment is that?” Jaric asked with sudden apprehension.

At that moment the robot entered the room.

Guardian had been designed to repel any invaders that had managed to enter Mother's interior sections. Up until this moment Guardian had been in hibernation mode and unseen in his hidden enclave.

The first thing the children noticed was the pure white body-armor that served as his skin. The large robot bent his massive body forward as he passed under the doorway and then straightened. Guardian's seven-foot frame towered over the children who now slowly backed away from the new creature with frightened expressions.

The robot's eyes began to glow and the children became transfixed by their piercing gaze. The twin orbs became startling, fiery rubies that gleamed against the smooth whiteness of his frozen countenance.

Guardian was as strong as he was big. He reached out to the two boys while they stared up at him in total shock and then effortlessly picked one up in each hand and began marching back the way he had come.

“Where's he taking them?” Becky shouted with fear.

“Guardian's first assignment is to bathe the boys. I anticipated their continued resistance to this task, so I programmed Guardian to simply take them and place them each in a ready bath. He will repeat this task daily until they decide to do it themselves.”

Becky giggled.

“Do not laugh. His next assignment is to brush your hair.”

Becky rushed out of the room with a flash of movement. She had finished brushing her disheveled hair long before Guardian completed his first assignment.

Several weeks passed in relative peace. Mother noted that the children now seemed happier. She had structured their day, giving them assigned times for each of the subjects and providing them with daily and weekly goals. They dove into their studies with surprising energy, especially with Guardian's assignment and Mother's weapons for the new game.

The boys learned easily and soon became proficient in their newly acquired skills. Even Becky, mostly due to the competitiveness she had developed with the boys, learned this new skill with surprising quickness.

Soon Mother had Guardian teaching the boys hand-to-hand combat, in case the T'kaan ever boarded her. During this time, Mother downloaded Guardian's entire operating system and began enhancing it so he could now complete his new functions with more skill.

But now Mother found herself in a new situation and a new series of problems had developed, all due to the delicate nature of the children.

She had promised them.

Mother knew the implications of this word, but it had seemed the only answer to her problem at the time. The children had started to become frantic, even extreme, in their actions whenever they sensed they might not find or return home. Mother had become afraid they might physically harm themselves.

Under the burden of this fear she revealed additional facts to the children. She started with the fact that the human race had lost the war with the T'kaan. The fact that each and every one of the seventy-seven planets and moons that had been colonized by humanity had been attacked and captured by the T'kaan.

Months had gone by, and Jaric was quickly showing himself to be the thinker of the three. He had confided with both Becky and Kyle before they had approached her together.

The ship had been forced to acknowledge that there was a high possibility that the children were the only humans that had survived the war.

Their reaction had been quick and explosive. Instantly Mother remembered her mistake in telling them the fate of Rita and how they had been damaged internally.

Mother quickly enhanced her answer, explaining to the children that she did not have complete access to all of the facts. She was not sure at this time if every human had been destroyed on every planet. Until she had searched every planet and scanned for humans, the answer could not be determined with absolute accuracy or certainty.

That answer had calmed them.

So now Mother had changed the nature of their search, a much more dangerous search now, to gather those facts. In order to determine if any of the captured worlds contained human survivors, they would now begin a systematic, though unpredictable, search among the captured human worlds. Mother's only solace was that the majority of the T'kaan fleet had been destroyed. Yet, with each passing month the T'kaan seemed to be growing stronger and with that fact grew the possibility of her own destruction as well as that of the children. She would have to calculate a search so random that the T'kaan could not predict her next move. But even that gambit would not prevail forever.

Additionally, Mother knew the odds of finding other human survivors long before they ever approached the first world. But she would wait and not divulge this data. There was still so much she did not understand about the children and their emotions. There was so much she did not yet know.

Mother's processing power also focused on searching the massive human knowledgebase. Not simply to help the children and not just to ensure she was completing her tasks as a mother, but something much more personal....

Mother began a more personal search, a concept that had been taking up more of her processing cycles lately. It was something that had dawned inside her after she had awakened the Guardian robot.

Was she alive? Was she a living being? Or was she just another robot?

Eighteen months passed in relative peace.

The planet was called Eden, once the home to many billions of humans. Sensors revealed it as a lush, tropical planet of dense rain forests that covered every continent. Huge, rushing rivers girdled the entire world and fed into dozens of fresh water oceans that were interspersed between the huge green continents.

Mother's sensors picked up the ships rising out of the atmosphere to intercept her. Immediately she began jamming their communications as she altered her course to engage them.

She quickly identified them as Hunter class fighters, the larger and more dangerous type of T'kaan fighters. There were thirty-three of them, three times more than she had anticipated. The enemy's strategy was changing. Instantly she set aside some of her processing power to ponder this new fact.

Jaric and Kyle were playing together with Guardian in the main living quarters. Becky, with her doll Alice, was with Fixer1 in the kitchen.

Red lights pulsed as the all too familiar alarm sounded.

“Alright!” Kyle shouted. “It's time to play
The Game
again!”

“Yes!” Jaric shouted in agreement as both boys raced each other to their favorite gun emplacements.

Becky, still carrying Alice, sighed audibly as she meandered slowly to her assigned gun. Mother noted again her lack of enthusiasm. This was bad. The enemy showed no mercy, so the children must defend themselves. It was necessary.

There was another reason why the children's survival was so important. But they could not yet handle this horrific possibility. A possibility, which was steadily turning into probability with each desolated planet they visited.

Even from this distance, Eden showed no signs of human life.

“Hurry, Becky. There are more of the enemy than normal.”

Becky frowned.

The deadly black-horned ships broke into three groups, as was their way. They drew closer. They were almost in range when suddenly the three attacking waves broke into eleven formations of three ships as they fell on Mother with bright laser lances of death.

“Watch it, Jaric! There's a lot of them this time.” Kyle shouted into his Comm as he squeezed the twin triggers.

“Just more to blow up.” Jaric shouted gleefully.

Mother shuddered as multiple explosions blossomed across her shields. Her shields dropped twenty percent as the remaining guns under her control returned fire with deadly accuracy.

“Got one!” Jaric shouted as the ship disintegrated in his sites.

The fighters swarmed around Mother again and again on their deadly runs. Her green lasers bolts crossed the red and orange of the T'kaan.

The attackers were fierce in their pursuit as Mother's shields fell precariously low under more direct hits. It was no game to her.

“I got one up on you this time, Kyle.”

Kyle snarled at the smiling face in the monitor below his targeting screen.

“Ain't no fat lady sang yet.”

Mother's voice spoke as Becky sat by her still silent gun.

“If those ships strike me enough... I will be destroyed. You must play the Game, Becky.”

The little girl became deathly still. She felt her heart begin to pound with this shocking realization of Mother's mortality.

Becky grabbed the triggers with sudden intensity. Within seconds, she had nailed two fighters with deadly accuracy.

Jaric's mouth dropped in open admiration.

“Wow.” Kyle shouted.

Mother turned hard to avoid the remaining ships and twisted over to give Becky a better angle. As Becky's blasts began peppering a third ship, Mother began taking out the rest.

In another few minutes, the only thing left was debris floating in chaotic disarray. Mother retracted her gun nozzles and began identifying and repairing the damage she had sustained. It would take time, but she would have all damaged systems fully functional before landing. She made a mental note to be extra vigilant during this period.

“Take inventory of the food and mineral items needed. I will scan the planet's surface before we land.”

This had become their normal routine whenever they landed upon a planet. Long ago, the food stores that Ron and Rita had placed in her holds had run out. They had soon discovered that the T'kaan completely destroyed the animal life on each conquered world, leaving the corpses as food for their maggot young when they hatched. Because of this the only food source left for the children was vegetable and fruits plants that they could locate in the wild.

The minerals were for her, for the renewal of her engine fuel as well as raw material that could be processed for structural repairs. Deep inside her hull, near the heat of her powerful engines, the Fixers could cleanse these raw materials and ready them to be used and shaped as needed.

The children rushed down the halls and began the task with cheerful laughter. Planet-fall was always exciting to them, although they knew there were dangers. But Mother and Guardian were always there to protect them.