Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) (9 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Desolator.”

“Yes, Admiral?”

Ekara jumped, apparently having forgotten the ubiquitous presence of the other AI.

“Anything to say about all this?”

“Not at this time, Admiral. If she is to be human, she must learn to deal with you humans on your own terms.”

“I don’t want you to interfere in any way, Desolator, but I won’t forbid you to observe.”

“Thank you, Admiral. I believe I will leave a subroutine recording everything, but I will not actively monitor the situation.”

Absen cocked his head in surprise. “Why not?”

“I believe I am too close to the subject. Would you want parents hanging around at boot camp, watching the drill instructors put their children through hell?”

Both Ekara and Absen laughed. “Point taken.”

Soon the cart dropped the admiral off at his office and proceeded onward with Ekara, back toward
Conquest
and the Engineering spaces. Absen was happy to tell Tobias to shut his door and leave him uninterrupted for an hour. He poured himself a drink and sat down in his best easy chair, staring at the wall, thinking.

Ekara took a seat in front of the desk, holding a tablet.

“I’ve looked at everyone else’s reports of Michelle’s training,” Absen went on. “She’s off the charts in everything but emotional responses, which are normal. Loneliness, topical depression, mood swings. Bull did a fantastic job setting up the parameters. Even limited her contact with Desolator to e-mails once a day. And the way he integrated Marine VR training simulations was absolutely brilliant. Even if she can’t run a warship, she’ll be one hell of a battle drone operator.”

Ekara replied, “It’s not her competence I worry about, Admiral. It’s not that she is a mechanical instead of an organic. It’s not even her emotional stability, if she were any ordinary being. Stick her in StormCrow or a battle drone, hell, even give her a whole weapons battery and I’m all for it. In fact, I think she’d be perfect to run the offensive-defensive laser batteries. Much better than our current algorithms.”

“But?”

“But I can’t see giving her the run of the ship. Power corrupts. What if she feels threatened? No, better question, sir: what if you were her?”

“Specifically?” Absen tried to pin down just what Ekara was trying to say.

“What if you were held captive by a bunch of dwarves, none of whom were individually as smart as you? What if they had your body nailed to the floor with a knife at your throat, while they asked you to use your brain to do their work for them? Even if you were sympathetic, you’d still be looking for a way to get out of that spot. To reduce your vulnerability.”

“She’s no more vulnerable than most humans. One blast from a plasma rifle and any one of us is dead.”

Ekara leaned forward and seemed to grope for a way to express himself. “But we have laws and customs and…and the military culture to keep our individual paranoia in check. We don’t worry too much that someone will come assassinate us in our beds just because everyone has access to weapons, because instinctively we realize we’re part of a brotherhood, a family of arms. She doesn’t have that, training or no training. And…no matter what we want her to believe, she knows deep down that she is not human. Not like we are. She never will be. That’s a recipe for instability, for resentment and eventually for revolt.”

Absen turned to pour two cups of coffee, and then set one in front of Ekara. He used the time and ritual to think about what his chief power engineer just said. Only after a contemplative sip did he respond.

“I think you’re right.”

“You do? Sir?” Ekara turned his tablet upside-down in his lap and set his coffee mug on it.

“Yes.”

“So you’re not going to let her inhabit the ship? Not like the Desolator AI does
Desolator
the ship, I mean?”

“Not yet. Not without being more sure.” Absen’s eyes held Ekara’s, blinking slowly.

“Ah. Well. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Listening to me.”

Absen set down his cup. “I make it a policy of listening to my senior officers, even if I don’t see eye to eye with them. Especially if I don’t, actually. Opposing viewpoints make me justify my own views, or sometimes they alter them. But Quan…it doesn’t mean I won’t change my mind as time goes on.”

“Understood.” Ekara picked his coffee up in one hand and waved his tablet in the other. “You still want my final report?”

“Of course. Shoot it to my desk.”

The holoprojectors had been left in place, and the parabolic speakers that could cause speech to emanate from any point in space. Michelle had taken a hologram body nearly indistinguishable from an organic’s, at least to the senses of sight and sound. Technology was still a long way from creating some kind of sci-fi “force field” that could simulate touch. Smell and taste were not even on the table.

“Cadet Michelle Conquest, front and center.” Absen and the rest of the EarthFleet members wore dress uniform, the civilians their best suits. All around them, packed in tight formation, stood as many of the humans, military and construction crew alike who could fit into the room. Others watched on monitors around the two ships.

The avatar marched with parade-ground perfection, squaring her corners, her boots seeming to click on the hard deck, a nice touch. She stopped directly in front of Absen and popped an impeccable salute. “Cadet Michelle Conquest reports as ordered, sir.”

“Attention to orders!” Bull ben Tauros’ voice rang out in stentorian tones. The entire room snapped to, and he narrated the framed sheet of foolscap appointing her as a warrant officer in EarthFleet. “…given under my hand this day, 21 August, 2125. Signed, Henrich J. Absen, Admiral, EarthFleet, Commanding,” he finished.

Admiral Absen cleared his throat. “Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I, state your name…”

“I, Michelle D. Conquest…”

“Do solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of EarthFleet and its nations…”

Michelle repeated the entire Oath of Office – flawlessly, of course – and Absen could have sworn he saw her eyes tear up. He wished he could fully credit what he was seeing was no illusion, no manipulation of a very clever machine.

“Congratulations, Warrant Officer First Conquest. Shoulderboards.”

Bull ben Tauros and Doctor Egolu moved to each side of her to attach the epaulets that showed the insignia of her new rank. The VR-holo interface put the shoulderboards into the hands of the two, creating the near-perfect illusion that they really did attach something of substance to a real person standing there.

Absen had to suppress the impulse to shake WO1 Conquest’s hand and settled for a salute instead. She grinned, and he couldn’t help responding in kind. About-face, and she marched back to her position.

She’s so damn likable. But anything made of nothing but 4D holo-pixels and programming might be a simulation.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you have just witnessed an historic first. While a number of Sekoi and Ryss have been sworn into EarthFleet proper, and all forces in this system are under EarthFleet command, until now no AI has actually joined. Of course, there weren’t a lot around
to
join…” Absen paused for a few obligatory chuckles. “But we’ve remedied that. Please give a round of applause to our very first inorganic human officer.”

He led them in that applause, putting on his best flag-officer smile and hoping to hell he wasn’t lying about her humanity.

Lieutenant Fletcher replied from the brand-new Engineering station, “Available power is at ninety-nine percent, sir. Fusion reactor 27 is down for maintenance.”

“Maintenance?” Absen looked sharply at the lieutenant. “It’s just built.”

“I’m showing a faulty injector, sir. Do you want me to put you through to Commander Ekara? He’s there, at 27.”

Absen rubbed his jaw. “No. Just give me an update before you go off watch.” If Ekara was on the job, he had no need to micromanage.

“Weapons?”

Commander Ford swung his chair casually around. “Five by five, Skipper. ’Course, we haven’t fired the new ones yet, so all I know is that the diagnostics look good.”

Absen nodded. “Sensors?”

“Good as far as they go, Skipper,” Scoggins said from her station. “Lots of them are still blocked by
Desolator
, though. Here’s a third-party view.”

On the main viewscreen a shot of the ship appeared, apparently taken from one of
Conquest
’s sensor drones. It showed her nose still jammed into
Desolator
. Absen pushed tasteless jokes out of his mind and told himself he was glad Michelle was not part of his bridge crew – not yet, anyway.

For now she was with the Marines, learning to run their new telefactored battle drones. Those were built to be operated by one person each, but the reports said Michelle could easily handle ten, and was adding more capability all the time.

“Damage control ready?”

“All parties in place, sir,” COB Timmons said from behind him.

“Helm, run your checklist and say when ready.”

Okuda closed his eyes, immersing himself in his total VR space. “Aye, sir. Releasing electronic and optical connections. Releasing mechanical connections. Releasing limpets. Docking bay shows full decompression, no organics present. Securing all doors and hatches. Diagnostics running, fifteen seconds.”

Absen stabbed a button on the arm of the Chair, oversized to accommodate the pressure suit and gloves he and everyone else wore. “Absen speaking. Now hear this: all hands prepare for launch. I say again, all hands prepare for launch. Stay sharp, people. She’s a great ship, but she’s got a lot of new hardware, so don’t take anything for granted. Triple-test everything, report any anomalies, do your jobs well and we’ll by-God be taking Meme scalps before long. Absen out.”

“Ready, sir,” Okuda said.

“Helm, kick her free.”

“Cold thrusters firing. Separation. Ten meters. Twenty.” On the main screen a gap appeared between
Conquest
and
Desolator
, made tiny by distance.

Scoggins said, “Switching to nose cameras.”

Abruptly the viewscreen showed a wall of layered armor slowly receding. As it backed up they got a sense of scale, judging by the maintenance drones, bots and telefactors scurrying around in the vacuum. Once those had cleared away all of the cables, conduits, hoses and tubes that had connected the two enormous ships, they ran like a rush of ants into the passageway at the deepest point, and then shut the hatch.

“One hundred meters. Two hundred. Three hundred. Four hundred.” The call accelerated as
Conquest
gained speed. “Five hundred meters. Clearing
Desolator
’s armor.”

Absen stared, lost in the delicate dance of armored leviathans. The two had been mated for three months, and he had just started to get used to the strange, artificial, integrated society that had briefly flourished. He found he already missed Chirom, and Desolator’s steady presence, and hoped the Ryss AI’s child would grow up to be as dependable.

“One thousand meters.” Now Absen could see hundreds of free-floating bots firing intermittent thrusters, grabbing onto slabs and wedges more than a hundred meters on a side. They maneuvered the incredibly heavy plates with slow precision, setting the first of them into place like a three-dimensional puzzle piece. Within a few hours it appeared
Desolator
would fill the gap in his armor and the docking port would be gone, made seamlessly to vanish.

“Cold thrusters off. Now we drift for a few minutes, getting some distance,” Okuda said.

Absen sat back with a sigh and held out his left hand toward COB Timmons without looking. A moment later a mug appeared in his fist and he sipped, making a face. “A complete refit, but you couldn’t get a new coffee machine?”

“I finally got this one adjusted just the way I like it,” the chief said with a smile. “If it ain’t broke…”

“You’re lucky coffee turned out to grow all right on some of the mountainsides on Afrana.”

“I hear it’s catching on with the Hippos, sir.”

“Sekoi, COB. We have some along and we don’t want to insult them.”

Timmons sniffed. “It’s not a racial slur, sir. Just a description.”

“Did you know both the Ryss and Sekoi call us ‘apes’ or ‘monkeys’ behind our backs?”

The chief’s face hardened. “That’s…”

“Insulting? What, comparing people to lower animals?”

“Okay, I get it. It’s just a habit.”

Absen nodded. “I know, and when they were our enemies, everyone had it. Now we need to break it. Spread the word.”

“Aye aye, sir. Though even a COB can’t rid the lower decks of some things.”

Absen sipped his coffee, agreeing by not contradicting.

“Ready for fusion thrusters, Skipper.” Okuda opened one eye and swiveled his chair beneath his medusa, looking a question at Absen.

“Get us on our way, Helm,” Absen replied. “Tell me when we’re a thousand klicks out.”

In response, the bridge rumbled with a faint sound like rushing water and the viewpoint began to slide away from
Desolator
, now at a range of ten kilometers or more. The great teardrop swung its nose and pointed it toward the brightest light in the sky, the Gliese 370 star.

The noise level increased from a brook to a waterfall as the powerful main fusion engines lit. Off to the right, a rock bigger than
Conquest
seemed to fall behind as the ship charged forward, gravplate system compensating for the G forces so the people inside felt almost nothing.