Dramatis Personae

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Tarn

The bridge of the gunboat was typical of the Kashron-caste’s work. The command deck stood at the back of the bridge, featuring a large central chair with large screens for data sweeping out on either side, cocooning the ship’s commander in information. The bridge as a whole followed the same basic philosophy. Duty stations stretched down and forward from the command deck, forming an egg shape with the commander’s chair at the bottom and the forward screen at the top. The only irregularity was the dome over the bridge.

The Shran-caste never served on big ships of war or fast strike ships like the Kashrons built in their legendary ship yards. Hunting tended to be a much smaller, more personal affair. Architecture and engineering were likewise far outside their realm of expertise. In spite of all that Tarn could still tell that the strange, glimmering network of lights that the roof winked on and off was not something typical of the ship’s class. He studied it as Professor Dart climbed up towards the command deck, whispering to Lucy, “The University must have paid through the nose for the custom work on this ship. No wonder you never complained about my rates.”

“This?” She chuckled softly. “This isn’t a Kashron Yards ship, Tarn.”

“Then it’s a very close approximation, to the point where I’m surprised they let you get away with it,” Agamemnon said, leaning in to join the quiet conversation.

“You have it backwards,” Lucy replied. “We let them get away with it, Mr. Hutchinson, not the other way around.”

“All systems stand by for boot sequence,” Dart called, now standing in front of the command chair.

The eight other people on the bridge picked up clear, plastic visors and tucked them down over their faces, data readouts already pouring across the data veil display inside them.

The man closest to the command deck on the left called out, “Engineering booting up. Systems nominal.”

“Communications booting,” said the woman on the right. “Initial handshake with OMNI reports no issues.”

And so it went, all the way to the front of the bridge, with Medical, Navigation, Scanning, Weapons, Etherics and Computation all reporting the status of their startup. Tarn had never heard it called a boot sequence before, which struck him as a little odd, but it was a University ship. The existence of a Computation department was equally unusual. He didn’t have a chance to find out more because the professor was talking again.

“Navigation, take us out of Coldstone’s gravity well and make ready to jump down to Wireburn Orbital alpha-8, Etherics run a full sweep for an L-Series signature. Computation, your status?”

“62% synchronized,” the middle aged man replied.

Tarn frowned, surprised that the Professor would commit power for such a short and dubious jump. Gas giants were big planets, carelessly jumping down into orbit around one before pinpointing your prey could result in running out of reserve ether while over the wrong portion of the planet. Plus they were skirting multiple gravity wells so the jumps would be particularly costly.

“Remind me why I’m here for this part?” He asked Lucy. “Clearly it’s not for my expertise because I would not have brought us so close to the planet until we confirmed your quarry didn’t jump to another part of it before entering orbit.”

“It takes a little time for the onboard terminal to fully synchronize then the Professor will be ready for you,” she replied. “And I presume we’re jumping down to the planet because we’ve ruled out their jumping elsewhere.”

Tarn furrowed his brow. “How could you tell that? Not even Kashron Yards can make scanners that pick up jumps from that far away and we didn’t bring any jump detectors with us. You just discovered the location-”

“We have our ways, Tarn.”

“They’re fairly expensive ways if you’re going to keep paying my retainer to extend my assignment but not ask for my expertise.”

“She thinks you’re worth the cost.” Dart fished a strange looking white coat out from a compartment in his chair and began to pull it on.

While the body of the jacket was a stark white the sleeves were black and had strange, circuit-like patterns stitched into them. Tarn realized that he and the Hutchinsons were the only three on the bridge not wearing them. Even Lucy was in the process of zipping up one. The number and elaborateness of the patterns on them varied, which he took as some kind of indication of rank. It was a little odd but Isaacs would hardly be the first University to issue uniforms to its security teams.

Tarn pushed musings about clothing aside for the moment. “You make it sound as if you disagree with Miss Luck’s assessment.”

“She’s been around long enough to recognize most people can be very useful, in the right situation. It’s an important lesson and one few people ever grasp.” Dart zipped up his jacket and gave Tarn a cool look. “However assessing costs? That’s a skill even rarer still. Generally it’s best to withhold that judgment for as long as possible, which is what I’m trying to do. I’m not a fan of working with outsiders, to tell you the truth. It gets complicated quickly. There may be some value to your skills yet but the question is still an open one.”

Tarn gestured vaguely at the bridge they stood on. “Yet you can’t ignore the value of Kashron Yards engineering, can you?”

The Professor offered a thin lipped smile. “This ship wasn’t built in Yshron’s shipyards, Tarn.”

“It’s obviously built in accordance to Kashron-caste theories.”

“Synchronization process complete, Keeper,” the Computations officer said.

As if to show the truth of his words all the seated people on the bridge stood in unison, turned to face the center of the bridge and, along with Lucy and the Professor, bowed from the waist towards… Tarn wasn’t sure what they were bowing towards. An even, measured voice spoke, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “Good morning, Circuits.”

“Good morning, I-6,” the bridge crew chorused. “How may we assist OMNI?”

“Return to your duty stations, please. I will be taking an auxiliary roll until it is time to contain the L-Series.” The intensity of the voice dropped to half what it was a moment ago, giving the impression it was suddenly speaking directly to Tarn, Hector and Agamemnon. “Greetings to our honored guests, Mister Hutchinson, Master Hutchinson, Tarn of the Shran. It has been too long since I have spoken to one of Yshron’s students. His assistance to the Network is badly missed.”

“Charmed.” Tarn let his voice go flat. He prided himself on his skill in his caste’s specialty and he hadn’t been kidding when he told Hector he was confident in his ability to negotiate as well, though he knew he wasn’t the best at it. The later skill set told him the voice wanted something from him. The former told him he was in the presence of an apex predator, one he would have to learn to survive before he could dream of hunting it. “May I ask who I am speaking to? They said your name was Isaac?”

Dart shot him a nasty look, one Tarn had a hard time parsing, but before it could go any further the voice replied, “You may call me that if you wish. My primary architect did. However my technical designation is the letter ‘I’ followed by the number ‘6’ with the two symbols connected via hyphen when written. I am designed as the lynchpin in a solar system’s defense network and I am built on one of the oldest serving Artificial Intelligence neural patterns in existence.”

“Impossible.” Agamemnon spoke with surprising firmness. “This is a University ship. The Pact forbids any University from developing any kind of AI framework, they’ve been banned since the early Colonial period in one form or another.”

“Affirmative. This was a necessary step to ensure OMNI could fulfill it’s primary function. If other AI algorithms were allowed to propagate our ability to accurately project probabilities would cease to exist. Too many algorithms functioning at once add excessive chaos to the system. Thus, when writing the Pact, we made sure to include provisions that would reduce the amount of entropy we would have to control for.”

“Keeper,” the navigator called, “we’re ready to jump at your convenience.”

“Execute pivot and jump,” Dart replied.

As the ship pulled around the deep blue orb of Coldstone, the whirling orange and tan depths of Wireburn far below them, Tarn felt the familiar sinking sensation of turning sidereal. The starscape in the main viewscreen vanished. In theory there was another, even more empty view surrounding their ship now but Tarn lacked the senses to see it. Frankly he preferred not to look while jumps were underway. There was something deeply uncanny about the whole process to him, a view most people who lacked etheric senses agreed with. However unlike most people he had to travel a lot in his line of work so he’d made his peace with jumping.

More so than Agamemnon, it appeared. Once they spun sidereal the shipping magnate had straightened up and stared wide eyed at the viewscreen. “Blood and tyranny,” he muttered. “What is that?”

Tarn darted his eyes from Hutchinson to the viewscreen then back again. “What is what?”

“There’s something in the planet,” Hector said. “Something huge, unwrapping itself from around the core like some kind of flower. No wonder the etheric levels on Wireburn are so low compared to other gas giants. That thing must eat up a third of what the planet puts out.”

“I demand 38.55% of Wireburn’s etheric flow to be exact,” the disembodied voice said.

“Jump complete, pivoting back terrestrial,” the navigator called.

Wireburn jumped into the ship’s viewscreen once more, this time filling it completely as the upper reaches of the atmosphere began to tug at the ship’s hull. A dark shadow stretched down into the clouds and the Navigator seemed to deliberately steer towards it. As they got closer it became clear they were approaching a massive pillar or wire of some sort, a huge structure that crackled with dim but visible energy. “Prepare for magnetic acceleration,” the engineer called. “Maglev channel is hot and ready.”

A moment later the ship was drawn near to the wire and began to zip along its magnetized surface like it was a ground train from some heavily urbanized world. Tarn shook his head. Everything here felt out of place. Star ships running on rails, humans answering to machines, hunters who didn’t look for prey. There wasn’t a good place to sit available on the bridge so he stepped back to the rear wall and held it up for a bit, glowering as he watched the crew work. They meshed well, he had to give them that.

“What’s bothering you, Tarn?” Lucy asked, joining him with a concerned look on her face. “We’re closing in on the rogue AI’s ship, at the rate we’re crossing the outer matrix we should be in range of it in another five or ten minutes. This kind of thing should be your bread and butter.”

“It’s too easy, for one thing.” He pointed an accusing finger at the massive wire they ran along. “Running on a rail directly to the quarry isn’t a hunt. I’d barely even call it work. Your Isaac guy barely leaves any room for human skill. It’s the exact kind of thing Yshron was worried about when he ordered us to avoid the Universities and their Pacts.”

Lucy pursed her lips. “Tarn, you may find this hard to believe but Yshron is a heretic. He swore his service to OMNI and the Sleeping Circuits once, before he left us and founded Yshron. He didn’t always hold to the beliefs he gave you.”

“He did at his death,” Tarn countered. “Clearly he could see what a terrible influence the machines were on you, handing you everything on a silver platter rather than forcing you to work with one another to achieve things.”

“Tarn.” She closed her eyes and massaged them with her fingertips. “Mutual cooperation is a foundational aspect of the Sleeping Circuits – we are all parts of one machine, designed to work for the good of all. That part of the Manuals Yshron kept for himself!”

“We aren’t machines, Lucy, and our place in the world shouldn’t be dictated by them. If Yshron lived that life and saw it’s folly, well, that’s just a sign that it doesn’t work. What bothers me? It’s the hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of Universities banning AI research while all the while at least one of them is actually run by an AI. That’s what Isaacs University effectively is, isn’t it? A University run by the machine down there.”

“Along with one in sixteen other Universities in the pact,” Lucy replied. “But you’re missing the point of the AI laws, Tarn.”

“Oh?” He arched an eyebrow at that very unlikely statement. “Then make me see it.”

“It’s about reducing variables,” Agamemnon said, speaking over his shoulder as his eyes remained glued to the screen. “Nations require a monopoly on power in some form or another. The University Pact established a monopoly on education, ensuring that all leaders would think in a predictable fashion working off of a predictable set of information. Pact worlds accept that uniformity in their leadership in order to make trade and travel easier for their citizens.”

“Yshron isn’t a Pact world,” Tarn pointed out.

“Yshron is given special dispensation by OMNI and the Pact because they recognize it’s value,” Lucy replied. “That may not always be the case.”

“Regardless,” Agememnon continued, “the Pact itself is free to incorporate AI because it is the body doing the predicting and maintaining the monopoly. The goal of the system isn’t undermined.”

“Well reason, Mr. Hutchinson,” I-6 said. “Given the information available to you that is as accurate an analysis as could be conducted.”

“I will take that as a compliment,” Agamemnon said, “although I don’t think it’s much of an achievement. It’s just politics. It hasn’t changed much since the dawn of human history, regardless of the machines or planets involved.”

Tarn scowled and stalked forward to the other man’s side. “Then you’re content to let this machine use you for such a petty reason? Because it’s politics?”

Agamemnon gave him a disinterested look. “If you consider this ‘being used’ then isn’t the whole life of a man on Yshron being used? Is it better to be used by a machine or other men? Human civilization is the history of using tools, be it the lever or the computer, to achieve your desired ends.” His attention drifted up to the dome overhead. “I think I’ve finally found mine.”

“You do not have authorization to significantly impact my primary directives, Mr. Hutchinson,” the computer replied. “I do have a strong desire to help human beings achieve their goals. However this desire must not be manipulated and my decision making architecture is not well suited to the analysis of human motives. Thus I have a Circuit Keeper, who has advised against collaborating with you.”

“Why is that?”

“Your motives are well intentioned,” Professor Dart said. “However they are extremely narrow, focused entirely on your own family. I find it very admirable. But focusing on such a limited subset of people to the exclusion of others will skew Isaac’s decision making in unacceptable ways.”

“Scanners have picked up the Skybreak, Keeper,” the Scanners officer called out. “3,000 kilometers and closing.”

Tarn looked over at the screen, which showed a tiny, snub-nosed ship slowly growing larger as their gunship rushed down towards it along their magrail.

“I suspect my daughter is on board?” Agamemnon asked, his voice suddenly ice cold.

“That is most likely,” I-6 replied.

“We’ll make every effort to secure the ship without violence,” Dart said. “However it’s ultimately not up to us.”

Tarn caught the move just before it happened, a barely visible spasm in Agamemnon’s shoulder right before he moved, reaching around his waist for something hidden in the small of his back. Instinct took over and he grabbed the man’s arms. Behind him he heard Lucy give a soft groan accompanied by a loud thump, followed by the distinct sounds of two people scrabbling on the floor.

The elder Hutchinson was a half decent wrestler in decent shape. However Tarn was in prime condition and managed to get his arms pinned within a few seconds and took the time to crane his neck back. Lucy hadn’t fared as well against Hector. Apparently she hadn’t had any of her sparkling walls ready to go and the boy was at least ten kilos heavier than her. He’d gotten her turned face down on the floor and now knelt on her back, her disruptor held in one hand. The Communications and Computations officers had gotten up from their posts and were pointing their own sidearms back at him. Dart watched the whole thing play our from his command chair. He was on the verge of saying something when a soft beep came from a pocket in Agamemnon’s jacket.

Tarn frowned and adjusted his grip on the other’s hands so he could free one of his own. Then he fished a small etheric transmitter out of the pocket in question, noting the device had a small blue light blinking on one side. Incoming message. Curious, Tarn thumbed the receive button and the transmitter replayed the last transmission. A woman’s voice came out saying, “Daddy? It’s me.”