Command Decisions (Book 3 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (29 page)

“Will do. Bandar out.” She cut the channel. “Get the copy started right now, Carl. Also, call back over to
Courageous
and get them packing the AI hardware into the next cutter. We’ll take it over to
Invincible
once we’re ready.”

She called Baxter and explained the situation to him. He seemed boggled, but didn’t let that slow him down. He was ready to go by the time Owlet had the critical data copied. They left the crippled battlecruiser, unloaded their load of missiles on
Courageous
, and ghosted along to the superdreadnaught.

Kelsey only had passive scanners to work with, but she scrutinized the massive warship as they came in to dock. There was no indication the ship had power. None at all. It looked dead in space.

One of the pinnaces had undocked so that they could mate with the ship. Its pilot attached it to the hull nearby. No doubt he’d come back as soon as their ride departed.

Baxter took charge of the AI hardware while Carl looked over the data banks that came over with the AI.

She turned to the hatch when Jared walked in. “Hey. This thing is a monster. A real find if we can get her out.”

“That’s the big question, isn’t it? I think I have some answers as to what was going on here, but I’m a little in the dark as to why. Come help me figure this out.”

They walked down the corridor toward the lift. She still couldn’t believe how new the ship looked. She hadn’t bothered to put her helmet on since they’d re-boarded the pinnace. She held it comfortably in the crook of her arm.”

Jared gestured at it when they reached the lift. “We moved the bodies we found, but the stench is still pretty bad. Since you have enhanced olfactory implants, you might want to put that back on. I intend to.”

She did as he instructed while the lift took them deeper into the ship. The doors opened onto a flag bridge she’d seen before. In the message that Emperor Marcus had sent. It wasn’t the same ship, but the layout was identical.

There was a bronze plaque beside the lift. It had the name of the ship, but the completion date was blank. She supposed that made sense. The ship hadn’t been complete when the enemy captured it.

“This is huge. Is the main bridge bigger?”

“Believe it or not, no. It’s smaller. The flag bridge housed the staff to command a fleet in space. It’s like the operations center on
Courageous
, only better. In a pinch, they could control the ship, too, but normally that’s done from the regular bridge by the flag captain.”

“And this is where the people who restored the ship decided to end it all? Did they leave any messages? Any records at all?”

Jared nodded. “Each of them recorded messages. We found a number of tablets with schedules and records of all the work they did here. At one time, there were hundreds of people working on this ship. The only thing left on the schedule was crewing the ship. They didn’t intend to use a main computer at all. I’m just not sure why.”

“Where are the personal messages?”

“The admiral’s console.”

Kelsey had to admit that the console was impressive. It surrounded the admiral’s seat with a full 270° of sleek black screens. She instantly vowed to install something like this in her office.

She sat and brought it live with her implants. The files were right there on the main screen. With her implants, she could play them quickly.

They were just as depressing and horrible as one would expect. Men and women who knew they were going to kill themselves leaving messages to loved ones and friends. It was readily apparent that they didn’t expect anyone to find them for a while. If ever.

One stood out to her. A man in a Fleet captain’s uniform. His message was addressed to someone named Olivia West.

He looked into the vid pickup with a somber expression. “I’m sorry, Olivia. We almost made it. If only they’d waited a few more weeks to strike, this might have played out so differently.”

The man shook his head. “No use crying about it. What’s done is done. If you ever get out here again,
Invincible
will be waiting for you. I considered shutting her down, but that won’t do anyone any good. Hell, I considered taking her after them myself, but we don’t have enough people to run the ship.

“The irony being that if we’d left the computer on board, I might have been able to fight.”

He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Please see that my people get the remembrance they deserve. I realize things are probably bad, but they earned this for their families.”

The recording terminated without a goodbye.

“Grim listening,” she agreed. “But no real clue as to what they were up to. Obviously, they wanted to use this ship to take someone out. Assuming they had control, why hide it? And who stopped them?”

“Maybe a mutiny? Someone striking out at the sitting government? A functional superdreadnaught could upset a few apple carts.”

“I think the lack of a computer has a deeper significance than that. I bet they were afraid that the AI controlling this system would corrupt it. I suppose it could still be a local mutiny, but someone might have wanted to take out the AI, too. If there are as many ships out here as you suspect, they could build a powerful fleet from these crippled ships.”

Jared rubbed his neck and stared at the blank central screen. “I can’t wait until we get the probe readings from the planet.
Courageous
said that this system used to have a lot of mining outposts and daughter colonies. Did the AI wipe them all out, or were they never reestablished?”

“We may never know.”

Her armor indicated an incoming signal for Jared and her. He answered. “Mertz.”

It was Baxter. “Captain, we found something.”

“In the computer center?” Jared asked. “It was empty.”

“No, sir. We’re still getting the AI put together. Mister Owlet has that under control, so I’ve been conferring with my people and looking over this ship. We found something unexpected in the primary cargo bay.”

Jared gave Kelsey a look. “We’ll be right down.” He headed for the lift. “I assume you know where it is.”

“I downloaded the deck plans. Let’s go.”

The trip down seemed to take forever. They made their way into the main cargo bay and stopped. There were no crated supplies at all. Just three massive devices that took up almost all of the space.

Jared walked over to Baxter. “What the hell are these things?”

“They have maneuvering drives, so they must be space capable. Other than that, I have no idea. There’s a full-sized fusion plant inside each one. They’re shut down.”

Kelsey walked all the way around one. It was easily three times the size of a marine pinnace. It had a number of flat panels of metal, but it didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen before.

She shook her head. “Another mystery. Just what we need.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Jared and Kelsey left Baxter to figure out what the strange devices were. They made their way back to the computer center. The AI hardware was in place, though the wall that normally enclosed the ship’s computer was still open. It looked as though the hardware barely fit. Owlet was at the main console running some kind of diagnostic.

He turned at their approach. “The equipment is in place and I’ve run two systems checks. It looks as ready as it can be.”

Jared eyed the AI with a fair amount of suspicion. “What happens when you boot it? How do we know it won’t go crazy and tip our hand?”

“It’s not connected to the ship yet. I’ll be able to look into it before we make a decision. One thing we can be sure of is that it doesn’t have any viral influence. We scrutinized every line of code. It’s clean.”

“Will it follow our instructions? This is something more than a ship’s computer, but I’m not sure I understand the implications completely.”

Owlet shrugged. “I’m not sure I do, either. I hesitate to say that it will have free will. I’m not sure that’s really true. Think of it as a computer mimicking a person’s ability to initiate action based on its instructions. Not as dogmatic as a normal computer and capable of working out unusual solutions on its own. And learning from its mistakes. I’ve done what I can to make sure it’s configured for running this ship and that it will obey you.”

Kelsey stepped past them and looked into the computer compartment. “So, no emotion. No real personality.”

“I doubt that, though we won’t know anything for sure until we boot it. This was a seriously classified project. Even with the summary you provided for me from the diplomatic database, we still don’t know very much about it.”

She sighed. “I don’t think they really knew what they had before they kicked off the first of them. The details were scarce. They had many failures and finally a stable success. Then they started working to make it better. That’s when things went wrong. The phase two AI must’ve went bonkers.”

Jared rubbed his chin. “You’re certain that the one file with the core instructions was the only one changed? And that once the AI is booted, it’s safe from infection?”

“Safer than a regular ship’s computer,” Owlet confirmed. “Once the AI personality is formed, it cannot be corrupted. We could wipe it and make a fresh one, but that means erasing everything and starting from scratch. An enemy would also have to have the AI code. It’s deleted after the AI is created.”

“Do we have a separate copy?” Kelsey asked.

“Of course. We’re also making some strides in duplicating the hardware. Give me a year and I might have another one ready to go.”

Jared hoped things worked out so that they could. “We might as well give it a try. Boot the AI.”

Owlet touched a key on the main console and indecipherable lines of text began scrolling. “Boot initiated. It’s creating the core. Man, these processors are fast. Core creation complete, source files deleted. The kernel is booting.”

The console went dark and didn’t respond when Owlet tapped on it. “This console has been locked out.” He made the rounds to the rest. “All of them are offline.”

“How the hell do we interface with it?” Jared asked.

“You speak to me,” a soft male voice said from the overhead speakers. “Access codes, please.”

The fact that the AI didn’t refer to itself as ‘this unit’ was telling to Jared. It spoke as if it was an individual.

Kelsey put her hands on her hips. “I have an implant code, but it might not be the one you’re expecting.”

“If you’ve stolen me, you’re in quite a bit of trouble. I’m more than capable of rendering myself unusable. Even if you cut the power, I can overload my hardware and wipe my memory.”

“Why don’t you make that decision after I send you my code?”

“Very well. I’m allowing you access to a segregated partition of my memory. Send your code and be warned that any attempt to access my central processors will result in the immediate termination of this AI.”

A moment passed. “There you are,” Kelsey said. “Is that sufficient authorization for you?”

“Intriguing. Your authorization code is not valid, but your implant serial number is in my core programming as an authorized super user, Princess Kelsey Bandar. May I call you Kelsey? Or would highness be more appropriate?”

“You can call me Kelsey.” She gave Owlet a confused look. “What just happened?”

Carl smiled. “Since we had no idea if we could control the AI, I took the liberty of adding your implant serial number to the core rules set as a user with complete and total authority. Captain Mertz, too.”

Jared gave Owlet a stern look. “You probably should have ran that change past us before it was too late, don’t you think? It could have resulted in the destruction of the AI hardware.”

“I didn’t consider that likely based on the fact you were both going to be here.”

Jared sighed. Dealing with scientists meant the occasional side trip into blind spots.

Kelsey patted the boy on the shoulder. “You did good.” She focused on the large screen mounted to the wall. “Are you supposed to be a blank screen? That’s kind of creepy. And do you have a name?”

The screen on the wall came to life with the head and shoulders of a young man showing. He wore a dark blue tunic.

“Control has been restored to the consoles. This seems to be a non-standard setup. The consoles are less comprehensive than I expected. And fewer in number. As for a name, I don’t have one yet. Would you care to name me? Also, I have both male and female options for persona, based on user preference. I can also do something non-gender specific.”

Jared stepped forward. “That is my cue to fill you in. The name can wait. I’m Commander Jared Mertz, commanding officer of the Fleet battlecruiser
Courageous
. The consoles seem odd because you’re not in a research laboratory. You’re installed inside the computer center of the Fleet superdreadnaught
Invincible
.”

The image of the young man assumed a confused expression. “I’ll grant that was not one of the options I’d considered. My creators didn’t optimize me to control a ship in space or any systems on one. For that matter, I don’t sense anything other than the consoles in this room.”

“We had no way to be sure you wouldn’t give the presence of the ship away to enemies who are very close, so we isolated you. Once I’m certain that you won’t give us away, I’ll restore that access.”

Kelsey nodded. “You have no way to know, but it’s been over five hundred years since you were created. Or programmed, anyway. There was a rebellion against Imperial authority by an AI similar to, though more powerful than, yourself. The AI won and we’re trying to reverse our loss. Uncounted trillions of lives were lost in the war. Our position is precarious, to say the least.”

The AI was silent for a moment. “That does present some unique challenges. For what it’s worth, your command authority is absolute. I have no greater purpose than to assist in executing your will.”

Owlet shook his head. “My name is Carl Owlet. I’m a computer expert. We’ve combed your code and it’s clean. Captain, Highness, this AI is not your enemy.”

Jared considered that and slowly nodded. “If we’re to make use of this ship in any way, we have to start by trusting that Mister Owlet is correct. AI, we have some drives with operating files from another ship that should provide you with instructions on much of the equipment.”