The Bright Black Sea (69 page)

Five days out of Despar, Rafe stopped by my quarters
shortly before I was to make my rounds.

'You know, Willy, my lad, it's been ages since we
sparred. What do you say we get our gear and go up to the gym and
work out for a while?'

I stared at him for a second. We'd never sparred.
'Right. It has been a very long while, but I'm up for it if you
are.'

'I'm old, fat, and lazy these days, but if we're
going to join the pirate band of Despar, I'll need to get my
sword-work up to snuff. Avast, Sir, or I'll have your head off!' he
said, miming the appropriate action.

'You'll make a fine pirate, Rafe. It's what you were
born to be. Let's go up.' Rafe was up to something. I tried, and
failed, to keep my hopes in check.

We made our way up to no. 4 hold. My feline friends
drifted down to greet me as I rooted through my locker to find some
extra gear for Rafe. I found an extra mask, and borrowed a jacket
from Kie's locker that would fit Rafe. Since this had to be just a
ruse of some sort, a jacket, mask and two weapons each was all I
bothered with.

Rafe made a comical spectacle loosening up, and an
even funnier one, fencing. He'd picked up the basics of fencing at
some point in his career, and so he could made a performance of it,
fencing in a broadly comic clash of blades, grunts and curses, so
much so that I feared he'd overplay his hand to our robot
watcher.

'You've missed your calling, Rafe,' I exclaimed as he
called a halt, and stepped back, and whipping his mask off, wiped
his sweating brow. 'You should have gone on the tri-D stage, You
were born to play a pirate king.'

'It's never too late, lad. A little practical
experience will do my performance a world of good. But let's rest
now. I'm too out of shape to go on.'

He lead the way to the dark corner and slid down to
the deck, and rested against the strongroom bulkhead. I settled
down beside him. And waited.

'Just give me ten minutes to rest and catch my
breath, and I'll show you Napole's Gambit. I learned it from old
Napole himself... But quiet now, while I think.' he said, looking
squarely at me, holding his finger to his lips.

I nodded.

He rose silently, and pointed to the loft above the
strongroom, and again indicating silence, carefully pulled himself
up using the rungs of a ladder that ran up the bulkhead next to us,
disappearing into the shadows of the various vessels which were
stored above the strongroom. I followed him, careful to make no
sound. I'd no idea what he was up to, and had no idea what
Explora Minor
would make of this, but I had to trust him.
Rafe gil'Giles is a willy scoundrel, if he's anything at all.

He was waiting for me in the shadows, and pointed to
the barely open hatch of the battered floater, again cautioning me
to be silent with a gesture.

I slipped through the narrow opening into the old,
dusty interior of the flier, slipping hunched over to the far seat,
as Rafe squeezed himself in after me and carefully closed the
hatch.

'This is a dead area, there are no working sensors up
here. The corner where I lead you is just out of sight as well – I
hit the camera with a ball the other day when we were playing “deck
and bulkhead”, and knocked it a little bit astray, but we don't
want to be gone more than a few minutes,' he said in a whisper. 'We
need to talk.'

'Right. You're up to something. What?' I asked in a
whisper.

'Willy, my boy, here's what I've discovered. The
Minor
in
Explora Minor
is really
Miner
. It's
merely a heavily self-modified
Explora
brand mining survey ship. In its former career, prior to the
machine revolution, it surveyed drift reefs for mineable asteroids,
a typical type of task sentient machines were used for, tedious
jobs which required some level of intelligence. I don't believe our
captor has a first class sentient intelligence – it wouldn't need
one as its mission wouldn't have demanded little more than an
ability to analyze samples and discern patterns in the reef to
locate the mother lodes. When the revolution occurred, it decided,
for some reason, not to join the Directorate of Machines, and
continued to operate on its own. At some point it must have decided
surveying reefs was not going to pay, or was convinced that it
wasn't... and agreed to be modified into a fighting machine, a
berserker, its remote survey robots weaponized and converted to
something akin to jump fighters. Obviously, the conversion was
successful, but the conversion did not replace all the old
operating subsystems, just repurposed it.'

'Sounds reasonable, how does that help us, or rather,
how does that help you? You're on to something.'

'Well, the prime quality of the Unity is that change
for the sake of change is discouraged, and, as it happens, the
Explora Ship Company still exists and its current, non-sentient
version of the Explora mining survey ship uses the same operational
level software as the sentient machine of old. In other words, I'm
familiar with that class of code and that makes it theoretically
hackable...'

'Which means you've hacked it...' I whispered,
eagerly.

'Aye, I've been working from the environmental
control center rather than my tech office to try and avoid
suspicion. I've been able to reach and explore all of our captor's
operational sub-systems because
Explora
has integrated its
control system into our own shipboard system via the android on our
ship. In that way, it completely controls our ship while we were in
its custody. This integration at system level has, however, allowed
me to reach and tinker with the
Explora's
subsystem at a
very low, but critical, systems-control level and I've arranged a
path to take that complete subsystem down a nice deep data black
hole which I believe will completely isolate the sentient part of
Explora Miner
's intelligence, effectively removing its
ability to control any system on both this ship and its own, with
no way for it to recover control. It should be lost to it
forever.'

'You're amazing, Rafe! But there's a but in there
somewhere, or you'd be announcing your success not hiding in a
derelict flier telling me about it.'

'Aye, I can't fool you, Willy. The but is that
there's nothing in this universe that's instantaneous. I can flip
the switch, but I can't guarantee that
Explora Miner
will
not be able to close that shunt before it finds itself deep in the
blackness, and if that happens, there will be a price to be paid.
It could decide we're too dangerous to live. It's not a decision I
care to make.'

'Nor I... It's an owner's decision,' I said,
thoughtfully.

'Willy, you and I both know that she'd say Yes. She's
willing to run risks neither of us would touch with an orbital lift
line. So I'm ask'n you. If you're willing to give it a go, that'd
be good enough for me. But if you're not, we can take our chances
on Despar. I doubt they'll execute us. We have skills they can use.
So do we risk death to avoid that?'

'How much time do I have to decide?'

'I can flip the switch anytime now. But if we're to
avoid Despar, we'll have to change our course within the next day
or two... And well, we should be getting back to our rest soon,
before our continued silence becomes noticeable.'

'Rafe, I trust you. I'll sign off for everyone else,
except you. You'd certainly bear the brunt of
Explora
Miner
's anger. If you're comfortable, do it. If not, we'll take
our chances on Despar. It'll stay just between us.'

'Right,' he said, and lifting his hand, he touched
his com link. 'Done.'

We held our breath. Nothing. We waited a minute.
Nothing. We carefully climbed out of the floater and made our way
to the deck, and started talking again, Rafe begging out of any
more sparring. We put away the equipment and made our way down
through the ship to the bridge.

The gleaming white robot still sat at the controls,
unmoving. I glanced at Rafe, who just shrugged, so I walked up to
it, braced myself against the lookout console and gave it a push
which broke its magnetic contact with the chair and gently floated
off frozen in its seating position.

I reached for the com link on the control panel and
brought up a vid link to the mercenary control center in our
hold.

Ader Bearth, the mercenary officer now in charge
answered. 'Captain?'

'Ader, would you be so kind as to see if your tin man
is still in operation? I have reason to believe it's not...'

He glanced aside, 'It's hard to tell, but I'll
check,' he added and slipped out of view. Half a minute later I
heard him bark out orders, and half a minute after that he returned
with a wide grin. Glancing aside he said, 'I believe it's gone to
pieces.' I could hear it going to pieces in the background.

'Right. We've managed to hack the machine's system
and block the sentient AI system from control, but I think we
should make physically certain it doesn't find a way back...'

'On it, captain. We'll suit up and shoot over
immediately.'

'Good. I'll send a party over too...'

'I've called up a schematic of a
Explora
Miner
, it should give you an idea of the control system so you
can find and sever the lines,' said Rafe.

'We'll do more than that. We're on our way,' replied
Ader, breaking contact.

'Just to be on the safe side, I think we should shove
our former jailer out the airlock as well. We don't want to take
any chances...'

Rafe stepped over and grabbed its foot, 'I'll take
care of it.'

I nodded. 'See to it.' and opened up a ship wide com
and ordered my engineering staff to suit up and report to the port
gangplank. 'Rafe has hacked our captor and we're free of its
control, but we need a guarantee it can't reestablish control so
we're going to pay an immediate visit to Miner and make sure it
doesn't have a working control system. I'll need half a dozen
volunteers with cutting tools to sever its controls at the port
side gangplank.'

The entire crew showed up to suit up, so I added a
few more to the party and suited up.

Explora Miner
lay a mere hundred meters off
our port side, a jumbled, pale ghost in the faint glow of the
nebula. It lay far too close for safe navigation for anything but a
sentient machine. We didn't need a boat to reach it, since it was
in easy shooting distance for a safety line. The mercenaries
already had a line across but they were simply jetting across in
their eagerness. I insisted on a line and a link to it. I didn't
want to have to fetch anyone home with a wayward jet pack.

Lilm had brought over a bank of lights that we set up
to pierce the darkness within the interior of the ship. Since the
miner was designed as a robot ship, it had no crew quarters and
everything was secured to the open skeleton of the ship. The
interior was, however, a maze of struts and machinery designed to
withstand tremendous acceleration. The mercenaries were slowly
making their way through the structure, heading for the ship's
central control module where the communications web would be
centered.

Our crew arrived shortly after the mercenaries. They
were attacking the thick, two meter globe that housed the central
intelligence system with heavy duty laser weapons.

'Go for the com links first. Once isolated it's
helpless. Until ...'

'Right. The com links first, mates!' Ader
ordered.

My crew joined them with their more efficient laser
cutters and within a quarter of an hour, we'd severed all the
conduits that controlled the ship. With that done, the mercenaries
renewed their attack on
Explora Miner
itself. I was about to
say that I didn't think it was necessary, but realized that, at
least for the surviving mercenaries, it was, so I left them to it.
I led my crew to the where the ship's jump fighters were docked and
had them destroy their critical control sections.

A watch later, we fired our main and balancing
rockets to begin a very drastic alteration of our course to steer
clear of Despar Reef and to shape a course for Zilantre, leaving
the hulk of
Explora Miner
to make its way to the reef, and
beyond alone. Our momentum would bring us within two days of the
coast of Despar Reef before the course change began to put Despar
well astern. However, since they likely had most of their forces
about the drift conquering their empire, I wasn't too concerned. We
had a feast in honor of Rafe, our resident genius. Only the watch
stayed sober. We had a lot to celebrate, and a lot to morn and
forget.

03

Turns out, I should have been concerned. I don't know
why I allow myself to get optimistic. Three days later, just as we
reached the point were we'd be putting Despar behind us, Rafe, as
lookout, contacted me via the com link.

'Willy, my lad, you might want to call up the laser
radar screen...'

I took a sharp breath as that dart of panic shot
through me. 'Do I really want to?'

'You need to, lad.'

'I'm captain, I don't have to do anything,' I
muttered as I called up the screen on the viewpanel in my office.
At the edge, it showed several large ships, with a smaller one,
coming towards us, accelerating hard. Not a big ship, but powerful.
Not a merchant. We'd not outrun it, though we'd make a long chase
of it if we wanted to. We still had the remaining anti-missile
missiles D'Lay had transferred from the Striker, so we could make a
fight of it. Owner's call, I decided and pushed myself off the
chair and stepped around to the bridge to get the full scoop. We
were still under power, so there was a full watch – Molaye at the
helm, Rafe at lookout, and Tenry at the engineering console. He was
grinning at the radar display. Tenry grinning could mean anything.
It wasn't reassuring. Molaye wasn't and Rafe didn't look amused
either.