Sentient (18 page)

It felt good when Aide rubbed her back softly and made soothing sounds, she started to think the idea of just a day trial wouldn’t be nearly long enough to let this grief and horror run its course, much less accept the emotions and make a considered decision.  She was completely lost, but Aide’s presence and touch were comforting on a level she didn’t really understand.

The emotions ran their course however.  There was only so much a body could generate before that sort of thing got shut down.  She allowed Aide to make her food, she ate and drank as she was bade.  She knew she needed to eat and drink or her body could go into shock.  It was going to be a long twenty four hours…

------------

Council Narwell sat on the bridge of the ship as it came out of FTL.  The stealth systems were working perfectly.  He’d come ahead of the ten thousand ships when he had found out councilor Kiara had fled to Earth, he had no idea what the woman was about but thought she must be a traitor.

It was the only thing that made sense to him.  How else could his self destruct device in the core of Aide fail, why else would she come here?  He was fortunate that he had full resolution scans from his sensors as he sat right at the edge of their solar system for the upcoming battle between Earth and the Sthellans.  Many of the scientists insisted such a big ship was a waste and would perform badly in battle.

But now he would have first hand proof of their capabilities before he needed to engage them.

The new cruiser class was much bigger than the scout, a full half mile long in size.  Still, the five mile wide behemoths out there made his new ship look small by comparison.  He set a course for Earth, the only ship with life signs was one of three above the planet, the other fourteen ships were moving to meet the incoming Sthellans.  What could fourteen ships do against five thousand?

He decided to get as close to Earth as quickly as he could.  If he could find the perfect time to strike the ten thousand ships on the way may not even have to see battle.  He would wait and see what happened first before making any further plans.  The traitor, rogue AI, and the human race would come to an end soon enough.

-------------

Kris thought fourteen ships would be plenty, leaving the three behind just in case.  That would be fifty six hundred fighter ships, more than enough to wipe them out.  He knew he was supposed to be taking it easy today, the battle wouldn’t be until later today.  He checked the Alion ships; they were maybe another day and a half out.  Then they’d be looking at the trip in system, so easily double that before he’d have to worry.

He left the bridge and went to the dining hall where he joined Nate, Paula, Olivia, and Stacey for lunch.  He knew Aide would be with Kiara all day probably, so far they hadn’t left quarters.

“How is the new power plan coming?” he asked as he sat down.

Nate shrugged, “Good, should be ready soon, I’m thinking we could finish up tomorrow morning with testing and verification.  Might even be ready for the Alions when they get here.  We’d have been done this morning without that forced break.  Not that I’m complaining mind you, we were all a bit tense I think.”

They all made noises of agreement.  The new power systems might help, but they had enough going for today’s challenges, and most likely the ones coming in a few days as well. 

He asked, “Any other things going on?”

Paula shrugged, “We seem to be at the limits of the technology now.  Outside of finding a better power source than a sun’s plasma, which is very unlikely, this will be about it.  Maybe that’s what I’ll work on next.  Still, there has to be something better, there always is.  I know the thirty six original craft we built are almost to the black hole now.

“I’m not sure about power, a black hole really can’t power anything, but it could have direct applications like much stronger weapons, shields, and even drives. 

Olivia giggled, “Right, except the trick there is not to get the ship eaten.”

Paula smiled briefly at Olivia and said, “Although these latest improvements are nothing to sneeze at either.  Our plasma beam will be over five times stronger if the tests prove out.  Our shields though won’t be much more powerful at all.

“Which of course is a problem, if our enemy ever figures out how we did it, which really isn’t all that hard, battle outcomes would be down to who fires first.”

Kris asked, “Why is that?”

Nate shrugged, “For the power systems we can get away with a light blue type star, maybe twice as hot as Sol is.  After that, the power requirements to contain it rises faster than the power gain, so in essence if we went above light blue, we’d have less net power after containment.

“The weapon is a different story, we don’t care about containment at all, all we have to do is inject it directly in a gravity containment beam, which isn’t really containment at all, think of it like a needle thin line of gravity that the mass of the plasma clings too.  Heat won’t matter so we can throw the hottest plasma from a dark blue giant.

“That automatically makes the beam much stronger than the containment shield generated around the ship.  We might last a tenth of a second longer than the old shields, but that’s debatable.”

Stacey screwed up her face, “Why can’t you use gravity as another shield for it, just like for kinetic impacts.  Not that it’s needed yet, since the enemy still uses the plasma balls.”

Nate’s eyes widened, “Holy shit, I’d kiss you but Paula and Kris would kick my ass.  That could actually work, maybe.”

Kris asked, “How’s that, dumb it down for me?”

Nate’s eyes crinkled with amusement, “Well it would be a fight, if we set up our gravity shields and if they were stronger than the enemy’s gravity line guiding the plasma, we would essentially cause the plasma to run around the ship, riding a gravity shield until it dissipated.  It’s still not as simple as it sounds, creating a gravity field that strong around the ship would take a lot more energy than a pinpoint line would.

“Still, if the computers were fast enough, they could compensate and make the shield stronger where the beam hit.  I hope the enemy doesn’t think of this, or our beams would be useless.”

Kris asked, “Will it work for the plasma balls?”

Nate shook his head, “No, those have full containment shields, that means against gravity as well, so a gravity shield would be completely ignored unless it was very strong, like black hole strong.  It’s something to consider, the beams are more powerful, but easier to counter if the enemy figures it out.  Thanks for that.  We’ll make sure the new turrets can do both beams of dark blue plasma, and triple balls of light blue, just in case.

“Triple balls would mean we’d be down to a shot every half second again, but our weapons would still be six times as powerful.”

Kris asked, “Because the light blue plasma balls would be twice as hot as the yellow?”

Olivia smiled, “Exactly.  Now who’s up for a game of pool?”

Kris smiled, he still had a few hours to kill before the battle, “Stakes?”

She frowned, “I don’t know, it’s not like money or possessions is even a consideration anymore, not with the nanites making whatever we want.”

Stacey grinned, “I’m sure we’ll think of something.  Maybe a drinking game of some kind?”

Nate winked, “How about strip pool?”

Paula made a disgusted sound, “Pig, no such thing.”

Nate shrugged, “It was worth a try…  The alcohol will work just as well anyway.”

Paula elbowed Nate in the side.

--------------

The Sthellan came in five formations of a thousand shaped like an X.  The fourteen ships going to meet them split up into four groups of three, and one group of two to meet them.  He checked his readings again.  Narwell had to admit to himself the shields were impressively powerful on the five mile wide saucer, but they wouldn’t have a chance against the attacking craft.

Narwell frowned as the readings changed, he could barely believe his eyes as five thousand six hundred ships swarmed out of the large saucers.  A carrier?  He hadn’t seen that coming at all.  Worse, according to these readings somehow those tiny craft were as powerful as their much larger scout attack ships.  That should be impossible.

The battle was fierce but short, the attacking ships seemed to attack five on one and managed to take out a thousand of the little ships, but then it was over.  The little ships fired some kind of energy beam and all the Sthellan ships went up at once.  It didn’t frighten him, he had no emotions.  But he knew the ten thousand ships he had coming wouldn’t fare much better.

He had to attack, and soon.  He’d be at Earth right after his fleet came out of FTL, so that gave him a thirty six hour window to find a time to strike in surprise.  He had to take them out in one shot or he would die as soon as his location was betrayed by their fire.  There was no way his cruiser would last against the three ships in Earth’s orbit, never mind against all the little ships they could launch.

Still, he estimated he had enough turrets along his ship to take down the enemy’s shield in one shot, as well as turn a great amount of the ship into slag.  He was confident his calculations were correct.  He felt no satisfaction or guilt at the idea of striking from the shadows and ending the threat against his people.  Nor did he give a thought to the billions of people on the planet below that would no doubt burn under the plasma fire of the Sthellan.  In fact, he was quite incapable of feeling anything at all.

------------

Though it had been a horrible day, it hadn’t been all bad for Kiara.  Aide hadn’t left her side at all, even during the battle, and she was getting a hold of the alien feelings in her mind. 

Some of the feelings were even pleasant after a fashion. 

“So what’s the plan if I do decide to embrace emotion and change my DNA back to what it was always supposed to be?”

Aide evaded the question, “Once I turn off the device tonight, you can sleep on it and decide in the morning.  I do have a plan, but it won’t matter if you decide against making the change.  Even if you do you could reject the plan.  You have enough to think about now with your past and what is going on in the moment, let the future lie still until you figure things out.”

She nodded reluctantly, seeing the wisdom of that.  Still, she didn’t like being kept in the dark.

They spent the rest of the evening talking and learning about each other before the emotions were turned off and she went to bed.  It was strange, even though she knew what she was missing now, she couldn’t bring herself to care that she was missing it.  Yet, her mind was able to analyze and decide there would be advantages to having emotions.

Besides the moral issues, it would make life richer and fuller.  She decided unless her thinking changed overnight, she would volunteer.  She wondered if it would hurt, the DNA update and body changes, not that it would affect her decision either way.  She went to sleep wondering why Aide was still there with her.

--------------------

Kareem ordered, “Lock and load, check your weapons.  Remember, we must take them alive.  No mistakes or I’ll send you to Allah myself.  Remember, no talking at all, the government has bugs in the houses.”

The men around him nodded.  The rifles were for if they were discovered, otherwise they had syringes full of drugs, gags, and zip ties.  Hopefully at this time of night the targets would all be asleep.  He was assured they kept early hours and woke up at an early time to work the ranch every day.

One of his men, a sleeper agent who had lived in America for years looked nervous.  But he ignored it for now.  He could test the man’s dedication to the cause later.  He had to admit the young man had done well discovering all the locations of the U.S. agents guarding the two families.  They shouldn’t have any problem getting in, although getting out might be harder.  He had just enough men to carry the four targets out with a minimum guard to watch their flanks.

They moved through the woods quickly but quietly.  He’d been to a training camp in the states to learn how to move through the woods without a sound, it was coming in handy tonight.  They approached from the back of the ranch house, all the lights were out and a sense of relief went through him.  Normally he was not afraid of failure, to die for his god and his cause would be an honor.

But for this mission his leaders would consider that a terrible failure on his part.  They believed if they could hold these people hostage, they could force the man running the alien ship, Kris Miller, to attack certain targets from space.  Kareem wasn’t sure if that was a good plan or not, but thinking wasn’t something he was encouraged to do.

He looked over the surrounding area and the open back yard, there were no heat sources at all.  He waved his men forward and stayed as low as possible as he headed for the back door of the house.  He made it about halfway across the yard when every one of his muscles locked up.  The ground rose toward his face and he panicked a little as he landed it on it, his nose crunched loudly against a small rock.

He struggled for several minutes to move but cringed inside and gave up when he heard the radio.

A sultry sexy voice said, “Just another fifty feet ahead agent Murphy, if you could take out the trash I’d appreciate it.”

The voice sounded like the ultimate temptation to fornicate to him.  He had heard the evil alien female who bowed to the words of the American infidel had such a voice.  Was that what happened to him, was he frozen with some alien technology?

He heard an amused voice above him, no doubt the agent, “We got them, thanks for the heads up Aide.”

He frowned as the great temptress said in her wicked slut voice, “My pleasure agent Murphy.”

Agent Murphy muttered, “I wish,” under his breath while he started to handcuff all the terrorists with their own zip ties…

Kiara woke up, and hadn’t changed her mind.  That was when Aide shared her plans on how to stop the Alion from continuing on their present destructive course.  It meant that she wouldn’t have emotions for a while longer, but she admitted the plan was worth the wait.

She was now back in her ship with the initial diagnostics of Aide complete and uploaded.  The deep stuff would take a couple of more weeks, but she had enough proof now to perhaps stop any further action until she knew more.  Or at least she believed she did, though she wasn’t sure.

Although with the other plan it hardly mattered anymore, still, it was a good excuse for where she was going.  The plan involved a number of nanites that had been put in her bloodstream.  They mimicked normal medical nanites, and would report to the central medical AI and even accept updates if a new disease or cure were found.

In addition however they had a hidden program which would revert Alion DNA to include emotions.  They also would multiply and jump to other bodies.  In theory, they shouldn’t set off any alarms, because they looked and acted like normal medical nanites.  Her plan was to stop at every major port on the way to the core, and perhaps go out of her way to others.

In a surprisingly short time, a month or two, the nanites would be carried to virtually every Alion, everywhere in their star systems.  At that point, they would act, and convert the entire Alion race back to what they should be.  She thought it was good plan.  Audacious, but workable.

--------------

They were all on the bridge.  Aide looked over all the tests and designs.  She couldn’t find any fault in them.  The Alion had dropped out of FTL a short while ago, but it would be tomorrow shortly after noon before they were in weapons range.  She estimated the upgrades would take two hours and eleven point two minutes.  Not just for the carriers, but all the fighters as well.

She was impressed, most of the quantum connections would be moved to a light blue star, all the quantum connections for their plasma beams would go to a dark blue star increasing their weapons strength tremendously.

She reported, “It looks good.  The turrets will be able to fire both types of attacks as well.  Should we update?”

He nodded slowly, “I don’t see why not.  Just to be cautious, only do half at a time.”

She nodded, “I’ll start with these three and six others.”

Stacey shook her head, “The Alion won’t know what hit them when they get here.  With the new weapons we can take out three or four of their ships before they can fire a second shot.”

----------------

“Narwell to the bridge please.”

Narwell left the ready room and went onto the bridge.  He took a look at the scans but wasn’t sure what he was seeing.

“What are they doing?”

The sensor officer said, “Upgrades I think sir, all I know is all their weapons are offline right now.  Their turrets are absolutely swarmed with nanites.”

Narwell asked, “All three at the same time?”

The officer nodded, “They still have eight active ships, but they are at least fifteen minutes from weapons range and poised to intercept our attack ships away from Earth.”

Narwell was glad he’d moved the ship to Earth, this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for.  He’d have attacked anyway of course, if nothing had come up before his ships met the enemy in battle, but now it wouldn’t be necessary.  The enemy had just made their last foolish mistake.

Narwell ordered, “Fire at the ship with life signs, we must destroy the AI and her host.”

The officer charged the weapons which would ruin their stealth, but it would be far too late for their target.

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Aide’s eyes widened in alarm as the enemy ship weapons became viewable.  There were no weapons online, not even fighters.  It took her an agonizingly long .02 seconds to come up with a counter, she just hoped it would be enough.

The shields came back online and she rerouted all of the power from the central ring into the outer shields as well.  They were barely back up when the enemy ship fired.  The shields flickered and then started building back up again.  A second volley from the enemy came and their shields dropped and the ship was turned to slag on one side all the way to the inner shield.  The plasma had turned half their ship into a twisted wreck.

The inner shields were still up, but the enemy ship was about to take a third shot.  She started the ship turning so they would have to burn through the decks again before hitting the shield, but it was too little too late.

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Narwell couldn’t help but be impressed by the design.  With the outer shield gone he could now see the inner.  What he thought to be a one volley job would now take three.

The navigator reported, “Sir, the other two ships are on a collision course.”

Narwell ordered, “Fire, now, finish them, and move the ship!”

A third volley of fire went out from his cruiser, he watched as the inner shields died and went dark.  The navigator turned to tell him something, but he never found out what.

The two other ships might not have had weapons, but they rammed into his ship, the shields of all three ships caused havoc to each other’s fields as they mixed, and the Alion cruiser was crushed like an egg between two cinder blocks.  A brief .2 seconds later, all three ships lost containment and exploded spectacularly.

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“REPORT!” Kris yelled.

Aide said, “
The ship is a total loss and will have to be rebuilt.  Only the bridge and engines survived thanks to the core containment shield.  Without it we would all be dead.
”

Kris said in a lower voice, “Report in, is anyone hurt?”

Aide replied via the implant,
“My body is knocked out, so are Nate and Paula.  We are lucky the ship was basically stationary when we lost inertial dampening.
”

He felt a chill go down his spine, the ship had thrown him to the deck fairly hard.  He tried not to picture himself as a pancake.

Both Stacey and Olivia said, “We’re okay,” Stacey continued, “What’s with the lights?”

Aide replied in their minds,
“One moment, I’m working on getting the core power back up.  I also have one of the fourteen ships coming to get us, they should be able to open up a corridor for us and dock with the ship using force fields and gravity.  I’m sorry, this is my fault.  I shouldn’t have assumed we were safe enough to do all three ships local to Earth at one time.”

There was a moment of silence and she continued, “
I’m rerouting fifteen ships from the last batch in the asteroids, they should get here before the enemy.  Still, even if they don’t, our fifteen carriers and six thousand attack fighters should be more than enough for the ten thousand enemies with the upgrades.  I’m only grabbing them in case there are more stealth ships around.
”

He whistled, “Isn’t that overkill?”

There was a feeling of consternation in his head, “
Yes, and it’s a completely emotional decision, deal with it.  I almost lost all of you because I didn’t know about the stealth capability of my own creators, so I’m not taking any chances.  Keep in mind thirty is only a drop in the bucket, we are sending out one thousand twenty four ships every three days to map out our enemy and beyond.  Thirty is just a tiny percentage of that.

“Keep in mind it’s not only Earth we are trying to defend or that will die if we fail to fix the Alion and quarantine the Sthellan, there are countless civilizations out there.  If I have to I’ll have three hundred ships just sitting around doing nothing.  Thirty means we’ll be secure, at least to the best of our knowledge and experience.
”

He smiled lightly, “We love you too Aide.”

There was a moment of startled silence before she continued her report.

“
We should be rescued soon, I’ve already started the reconfiguration of our new flagship including the personal possessions and recreational facilities.
”

He nodded, “How about you, Paula, and Nate?”

She replied, “
The three of us all have concussions as well as a few bone breaks and sprains.  The nanites should have it all repaired in a few more minutes.
”

In just a few minutes the three of them woke up, a few minutes after that the door to the bridge opened up.  They walked down a corridor, surrounded by twisted and melted metal.  It was a long walk to get to the edge of a ship, although it wasn’t the full two point five miles to the edge, the hole turned upwards and it was closer to a mile.

The really disturbing part was walking in space.  Their suits extended the helmets over their heads even though they had atmosphere, though they were literally walking inside a force field tube with artificial gravity field on the ‘bottom’ part of it.  He sighed with relief as they walked into the new ship and had a solid floor underneath their feet.  He was relieved to know all the upgrades would be done within six hours, after the attack Aide had reprioritized to do ten at a time, five at a time in each group of fifteen.

There were no further attacks from stealth ships, but Aide made the new upgrade plan into a policy to avoid it ever happening again.  He knew she was also working on a counter to the stealth tech, but since they had no idea how it was done, it would be almost impossible to counter. 

He knew the truth though, the fault had been his own.  It was on his word the upgrades started, he should have planned for the unforeseen.  It wasn’t as if stealth technology wasn’t known to the people of Earth, he should have considered it.  Aide had told him a long time ago that the ships could hide from Earth’s technology, but not from the advanced scans of the Sthellan and Alion.

He had made an assumption that all things were equal and had almost paid the ultimate price for it.  He took the time to take a shower and spend a little time making sure Stacey was okay before he headed for the bridge.  He ordered Aide to come up with various scenarios and amount of stealth craft and added it to his simulations, then worked them.  He spent the rest of the day on it then made some more procedure changes.

He ordered a space patrol made up of forty of the four hundred fighters for every carrier when travelling at sub light speed to counter stealth surprise attacks.  The fighters had no FTL, otherwise he’d have ordered the patrol for then too.  The forty patrol craft would also hang back during battle for the same reasons.

During upgrades, those forty would be left untouched until replaced with forty upgraded craft.  The carriers would be upgraded separately with all four hundred fighter craft launched in a protective circle around the craft.

He knew the new orders were almost paranoid, but he ignored the feeling.  It wasn’t paranoia when there were enemies out there determined to exterminate the human race.  He just hoped it was enough.  He tried to think of other things, but it was hard to anticipate a surprise.  He hoped the changes would handle things.

The enemy would be in range for battle by midday tomorrow.  He reluctantly pushed away his concerns hoping the changes already made would suffice for any new surprises.  He’d need his rest if he was going to be sharp tomorrow. 

With forty fighters held back for carrier protection, there would only be three hundred sixty per carrier for the battle.  Granted with thirty carriers for their home defense, that would be ten thousand eight hundred fighters that all outclassed the ten thousand invaders.

They should be more than enough to finish the fight quickly, especially with their upgraded beams.  He was having trouble letting it go, but he was sure Stacey could help him get his mind off of his failure.  He’d done all he could to prevent that level of failure again, at least now if he lost he was fairly sure he’d done all he could to prepare.

-------------

Olivia needed something to do.  She had upgraded the shields and sensors, and she loved just hanging around all day with Aide, but everyone needs to be working to feel useful.  She helped Aide devise a series of tests and scans at the black hole.  They were even going to try and create one, as far from the ship as possible.  Micro black holes had a lot of potential for more powerful ship systems.

She didn’t think they would be hard to create, the current gravity systems on the ship could probably make one if the safety protocols were overridden.  In fact, she was pretty sure that’s why those protocols existed in the first place, to prevent that from happening.  But they weren’t quite there yet, they were still scanning the black hole which despite the faster than light particles they used they lost most of them to incredible powerful gravity well.

The scans were far from stellar or enlightening.  It may be that they’d have to experiment a lot to get the data they needed.

She decided to take a shower, she knew she was being a bit of a workaholic, it wasn’t as if there weren’t things to do, she just looked for… more.  She’d always been that way for as long as she could remember, it was why she’d always gotten top grades.  It took more than intelligence to be valedictorian of a class, it required the drive too.

She turned as Aide came in carrying a bundle of clothes.  She gave Aide a questioning look, they all got used to the body hugging space suits and hardly ever wore clothes over them anymore.

Aide said, “Put these on… there was an accident and we should go.”

It was fairly late but she didn’t argue and started to pull on the jeans and light shirt.

“What happened?”

Aide replied in a gently voice, “Your brother Mark, he was in an accident and is in critical care.  The doctors… let’s just say we should get there.”

Olivia’s eyes widened.  She hadn’t talked to Mark or her parents in a while, and not at all since they’d gone up to space.  Mark was just seventeen, a late unplanned baby.  She was eleven years older than he was.  She loved him of course, he was her brother, but they’d never been particularly close because of the age gap.

Her throat closed up a little, “You’ve been keeping an eye on my family?”

Aide replied, “Of course love, I’ve been watching all the families.  We can save his life if we move.”