Tag Archives: Lloyd Carter

The Sidereal Saga – Agamemnon and Malaki

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Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

Lloyd

For a split second Lloyd let himself believe the ship that came plummeting down the Liquid Teeth wasn’t hunting them. Then it started shooting. A quartet of rockets emerged from the ship’s curved prow and rushed towards them at supersonic speeds, fishtailing through the churning atmosphere as they homed in on the Skybreak. The scanners projected an impact in fifty two seconds.

“Does this thing have weapons?” He demanded.

“Turrets, just aft of the stairs on the main deck,” Lavanya said while flipping open a compartment and handing him a headset. “That will loop you into the internal comms.”

“What kind of guns are we packing?” Lloyd pulled on the headset, grabbed the railings on either side of the stairs and hopped, sliding down to the main deck on his hands. “And do you have any countermeasures on board? Chaff, scramblers, decoys?”

“It’s a courier ship, Mr. Carter,” Lin’yi replied, her voice in his ear coming through a little hot and forcing him to stop once his feet touched decking again so he could turn it down. “Other than the stealth coating on the hull there’s not much room for that kind of thing.”

“Turrents have plasma pulse guns and ion trackers,” Lavanya added.

The weapon hatches were right where he’d been told to expect them, clearly marked with comically abstract red explosion decals. There was one on each side of the ship.

“I’m taking the port side,” Lloyd announced, pulling the hatch open and dropping a half step down and forward into the turret’s gunner seat. The weapon system around him was already most of the way to readiness, with diagnostics flashing past faster than his eyes could follow. Behind him, the hatch swung closed and locked automatically, sealing him in.

The good news was the gun’s system checks came back green in a matter of seconds. The bad news was they were plasma guns and ion trackers, both short range and relatively low powered weapons systems more effective against small pirate vessels than the huge monstrosity the Teeth had just thrown at them. Still, they’d have to do the best they could. Lloyd spun the turret up and started looking for targets, the turrets transparent dome projecting a soft glow as its dataveil warmed up, waiting for information to display. “Can someone paint those rockets for me on the sensors? I’m not seeing them here. And this turret will only cover one side of the ship, we’re going to need someone to take the other one or we’re fighting with one hand behind our backs.”

“Malaki,” Lin’yi said, her voice echoing from the shipwide intercom, “get to the starboard guns. It’s going to get nasty.”

“Everyone else, find something to hold on to,” Lavanya added.

Without further warning the Skybreak jerked into a hard, banking turn that brought them away from the Liquid Teeth at an oblique angle. Inertia slammed Lloyd back into his chair. His turret dome flickered once and suddenly four points of dark orange light appeared in the high aft quadrant. A much larger yellow light appeared behind them. “I’ve highlighted the missiles and the Radiant-class destroyer,” L-93 announced. “Targets are not in effective range of you weapons until their marker color darkens to a full red, as is traditional for LARK systems. Would you prefer a different indicator?”

“This is fine but I’d like a timer counting down when they should be in range,” Lloyd replied. The requested information appeared, the numbers moving somewhat erratically as Lavanya’s evasive maneuvers changed the timing on the missiles’ arrival.

“93, you said that was a Radiant-class?” Lin’yi asked. “How do you know that? It’s not in any of the Kashron sales manuals, where did you get that data?”

“The specifics are hard-coded into my operational matrix,” the computer replied. “It is not a ship built by Kashron Yards it is an OMNI Network warship maintained since the OMNI-LARK war.”

“Wonderful. How bad is that for us?” Lloyd asked.

“I am working on countermeasures. I have disabled the ship’s coral circulatory system and am using it for spare mass to construct the necessary components. The ship will loose approximately 12% of its etheric reserve but our ability to evade a Radiant-class ship will more than double from 22.4% to 49.3% assuming certain presuppositions are true.”

“Such as?”

“There is no more than one destroyer currently at OMNI’s disposal in this system, there are no more than three AI nodes in this system and none of the AI Series are redundant and capable of splitting their computational duties.”

“Right,” Lloyd muttered. “That’s exactly what I was thinking as well. Skorkowski, where you at?”

No one answered in the next twelve seconds, at which point the missile’s light markers fully lapsed from orange to red. He carefully tilted the turret’s control stick to keep the targeting window ahead of the approaching projectile as it curved towards them and pressed the firing pin. The turret began spitting blinding plasma bolts that screamed through the clouds like lightning.

A few seconds later his target’s indicator light wobbled then vanished without a small flash. “That was anticlimactic.”

“They are using etheric warheads,” L-93 said. “If they detonate within their effective range there is a 92.2% chance the ship’s coral will burn out and Lavanya will be unable to turn us sidereal.”

“That’s probably not good,” Lloyd muttered, switching his fire to the next missile in line, doing his best to focus fire on it as his turret barrels spun through their firing sequence, a warm glow spreading down them. “Skorkowski, you better get in that chair, my turret’s overheating. I got ten, maybe twelve seconds before I have to enter cooldown.”

“Port turret online.” The new voice was Elisha rather than Malaki and there was an odd slurring to his speech. “Ready to rotate whenever you are.”

“Hold,” Lloyd said, absently biting his lip in concentration as his fire chased the missile through a wild, zigzagging pattern. The warheads had some kind of smart nav system because they were actively evading fire. It took another two seconds of bracketing fire to trap and hit the missile but eventually his fire took effect and a second missile winked out. “Flip us!”

A moment later the ship spun and the pounding noise of plasma fire echoed from the other turret. “Hammer, that you? You sound funny.”

“Pills,” was all the thieftaker said.

“Yeah, I figured given how bad you were beat up. So why you and not Skorkowski?”

“He’s busy. Don’t worry, I could hit these things in my sleep.”

“Then go to sleep!” Lin’yi snapped, loud enough that the comms crackled in protest. “You’re not even getting close to hitting anything. Those warheads are less than ten kilometers away.”

“The OMNI ship has launched a second barrage of missiles,” L-93 announced. “They will also be in range for preliminary rail gun bombardment in 42 seconds.”

“Let’s hope they don’t want to escalate to that level just yet,” Lloyd said.

“Pilot Lavanya, please slow your ascent for a moment,” Cloudie said, its voice cutting in over the radio for the first time in several minutes. “I believe I can be of assistance.”

“What’s this, Carter?” Lin’yi asked. “The write ups say the Jellies don’t have any kind of modern weapon effective against metal or ceramic hulled vehicles. No etheric sense either.”

“They don’t have weapons, ma’am, that doesn’t mean they’re helpless out here,” Lloyd replied. “Even off and let Cloudie catch up, I think I know what he’s got in mind.”

“33 seconds to effective railgun range,” L-93 announced. “Countermeasures will be ready in 71 seconds, there is a 74.3% probability that the gunship will launch a third wave of missiles before entering range.”

“Stop firing, Hammer,” Lloyd called. “Don’t want you hitting the friendlies.”

Outside the turret dome Cloudie swooped into view from below, a bright blue light building in its main body and snapping out to its extremities and back. It scudded up through the clouds towards the approaching rockets along a flat plane. After a few seconds the dull orange clouds between it and the ship grew thick enough Lloyd could no longer see its main body, though the glow of its body was still clearly visible through the haze of helium. Then the clouds lit up like a lightning strike.

A moment later both of the remaining missile indicators flickered out. “Adjusting to a new course,” Lavanya called. “Hold on!”

Once again the ship swung about to a new direction, trying its best to move above the second wave of rockets before they closed the distance. As with the previous wave it didn’t look like it was going to work. The missiles were getting too much of a helping hand from the planet’s gravity.

“What did that creature do, Carter?” Lin’yi asked. “Can it do it again? Is it even still alive?”

“A simple EMP,” Lloyd said. “The Jellies have a really powerful nervous system, like nothing you’d find on normal planets, so they can charge up and pulse like that once or twice an hour at the cost of their telepathic centers shutting down. It’s kind of like screaming yourself hoarse except none of the organs involved are remotely similar.”

“So it’s not happening again?”

“Not unless Cloudie brought a friend. Didn’t think to ask that.” Lloyd checked the cooldown on his turret. The readout said it would be back to optimal performance in 20 seconds, which gave him a little bit of breathing room before the next wave arrived. “We’ll just have to beat the next round on our own.”

“And after that?”

“We’ll figure that out if we make it to after.”

Athena

For a long, horrible moment Athena wondered if daddy was going to answer her at all. Perhaps he’d gone back to the Fair Winds and gathered up Captain Blanc only to get the ship caught up in the Skybreak‘s escape attempt. On the other hand perhaps he was still in the sealed meeting room with Professor Dart and couldn’t get her message. Maybe the university had just disposed of him. As the pause stretched out longer and longer her mind came up with more and more dreadful possibilities as to what might have happened to daddy occurred to her.

Then his voice came over the transmitter, sounding a bit strained but otherwise fine. “Where are you, Athena? Are you safe?”

As if to punctuate his question the ship bucked under their feet and an unfamiliar voice came over the intercom, telling Malaki to get to a turret. “That’s a tough question, daddy. I’m okay and it seems like no one here wants me to get hurt but it also sounds like we’re getting shot at.”

“I know, honey, and I’m trying to do something about that but our hosts are being stubborn. They tell me it’s some kind of bomb intended to interdict the ship rather than damage it but I’d rather not take any chances.”

Athena watched as Elisha and Malaki held some kind of whispered exchange followed by the wounded man dragging himself to his feet and staggering off to parts unknown. “Is there anything you can do about it?”

There was an uncomfortable wait. “Honestly? I don’t think so. Our hosts are not inclined to be particularly patient at the moment and they keep reminding me that we meddled where we were not invited. I’ll do what I can.”

She swallowed down the bitter feeling in her stomach. “I’m sorry.”

A hand gently wrapped around hers and lifted the transmitter up a few inches as Malaki leaned down to speak into it. “I am sorry to interrupt but this is an important matter.”

Daddy’s voice instantly turned sharp. “Who is this?”

“Your student is one Malaki Skorkowski, Doctor of Arts, Literature and Science but, more importantly, a long time admirer of your work. There isn’t time for my qualifications, Mr. Hutchinson, nor for an explanation of how I know what I know. What is important is that you want Methuselization technology and I know how you can get it. As a man of business this exchange undoubtedly appeals to you.”

“I am not trading you my daughter for anything.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” Malaki smiled, looking pleased with himself for some reason. “Still, I’m glad to hear it. I don’t want to trade for your daughter, I want to trade for our escape. If you agree to convince OMNI to let us go then I will tell you how to find the secrets you’ve sought for so long. Do we have a deal?”

Daddy’s scornful laugh was muffled but still came through the transmitter. “You’re a loon. Do you think I have any control over these people or their OMNI thing? And even if I did, why should I believe you have access to Methuselah-tech in the first place?”

“You do and I don’t,” the scholar replied, almost smirking as he said it. “If it sweetens the pot any you should know that convincing them to let us escape also moves your daughter out of danger.”

“I find that hard to believe. As fast as you’re running I don’t think you’re going to stop and drop her off anywhere and she’s not going to be safe with you lot anywhere in the galaxy. And if you don’t have the tech in the first place why should I trade anything to you in the first place?”

“What do you have to loose? And I’m not giving Methuselization to you I’m telling you how to get it.”

Athena had to admit she wasn’t sure what the strange academic was driving at and his close proximity was getting stifling, so much so that she had to lean away from him to try and catch her breath. But the transmitter was keyed to her so she had to keep hold of it until this was settled. Malaki was right – if he was discussing the thing daddy had spent so much time looking for it was pretty important. After an awkward pause that couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but felt a hundred times as long daddy’s voice came back. “Okay, I’ll bite, Mr. Skorkowski. If you tell me how to get ahold of Methuselah-tech I’ll convince the OMNI to let you go.”

“Excellent.” Malaki’s face broke out into a fully fledged grin. “All you have to do to achieve the secrets of Methuselization is convince the computers of the network to give it to you. They have to have the trick to it stored in their networks somewhere. And before you ask, convincing them should be easy. Just explain to them why we need to go back to Earth.”

When daddy’s voice came over the transmitter again Athena felt like ice water was pouring down her back. He spoke with more venom in his voice than she had ever heard in her twenty eight years. “Is that all you have for me? Fairy tales? How about you just surrender your ship and give me my daughter back, Mr. Skorkowski.”
“Mr. Hutchinson-”

“Even if Earth was real I have no idea why we would need to go there or how I convince anyone of that.”

For the first time the academic’s glee wavered and doubt seemed to enter his mind. “You don’t?”

“I don’t.”

“Of course not.” Malaki bit his bottom lip for a moment, his expression turning somber. “No, you probably didn’t know about OMNI until today, or yesterday at the earliest. You probably have no idea how these things think.”

“Do you?” Athena asked. She was missing a lot of context for whatever the man was digging at but daddy seemed to be following along up until a point. It felt like she just had to worm a few more facts out of Malaki and all would make sense.

“I think so.” Malaki frowned and his gaze went distant, much like it did right before he went crazy carved a bar of soap into a miniature statue. “You have to tell them the truth, Mr. Hutchinson. You have to tell them about Agamemnon.”

The Sidereal Saga – Cloudie

Posted by natechen on

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Dramatis Personae

Lloyd

“Hey, we got wounded down in the infirmary,” Lloyd said, hauling himself up onto the Skybreak‘s bridge as the ship rocked under them. “Try and keep us steady. If things are this rough while we’re still under the pressure domes you’re gonna shake this thing apart once we hit the atmo.”

“She’s a tough bird,” Lavanya replied through gritted teeth. “The Helium Seas are rougher than most atmosphere but at least we’ll be able to open up the engines instead of running them so low they’re borderline stalling. Problem is Ashland flight control says there’s a storm system brewing. They’ve locked down the pressure dome and are calling all outbound ships back to landing.”

“If your ship’s that tough we can turn sidereal and leave the dome that way,” Lloyd said, throwing himself down into the sensor station chair. “The pressure locks in the dome will save you stress on the hull from the sudden pressure change but they’re not required if you think the ship can take it.”

Lin’yi shot him a skeptical look from her spot at the copilot’s controls. “You mean the domes aren’t interdicted? That seems a little short sighted. What if the creatures that live out in the Seas get in that way?”

“The Jellies?” Lloyd shook his head. “They don’t have an etheric sense so there’s no way for them to get in except the pressure locks, which will kill them. Besides, there’s something like a dozen pressure domes on Ashland Prominence alone to say nothing of all the other settlements across the planet. Interdicting them all would be hugely expensive and choke off most etheric travel.”

“Why did no one tell me this?” Lavanya muttered. She grabbed the throttle, pushed it forward and Skybreak‘s engines roared to life. As she’d promised the ride smoothed out as the engines spun up and the sound of wind over the hull went from a soft hiss to a frantic drumbeat. “Count off the time to the dome, Carter.”

“Eighteen seconds.”

“The computer tells us we have to try to get into orbit and make a jump,” Lin’yi said, her hands flying across the ship’s controls. “But it won’t suggest a place for us to jump to. It said the best people to choose would be you or Mr. Hammer.”

“Me?” Carter looked shocked at that. “Why me? Ten seconds to the dome.”

“You have a low profile, not a lot of attention from reporters, not much communication across the etheric networks, that kind of thing. Apparently that makes it hard for the OMNI computers to predict your actions.” Lin’yi braced herself as the Skybreak spun into the sidereal. There was a whisper of motion as the ship slid through the empty realm then the terrestrial wiped back into place a second later. A hard jolt hit the hull as the dense atmosphere of Wireburn slapped into them.

“We should just head for orbit in the sidereal,” Lloyd muttered. “It’d be faster.”

“You’ve never piloted a jumpship, have you, Carter?” Lavanya asked, working her own set of controls desperately. “They aren’t like you. We can move around because a human’s etheric sense gives them a natural connection to the ether. The Skybreak doesn’t so she has to coast on momentum. The only form of propulsion we have in the sidereal is jumping, because not even Lin can afford a full fledged etheric turbine. Until yesterday I’d have said the ship didn’t have the computing power to run one, either.”

“Speaking of.” Lloyd tapped a few things on his console experimentally. “Why isn’t L-93 picking a planet at random for us to jump to? It’s not even talking now.”

“It says it’s calculating,” Lin’yi replied. “And when it was talking it said that none of its selection algorithms are truly random so OMNI could reverse engineer them from its code. You’re apparently the safest bet. I’ve got a star chart pulled up, do you have some place you want to go or would you rather point a finger at where we’re headed?”

Lloyd paused long enough to give her a skeptical look. Technically the woman was his employer and one of the five most beautiful woman he’d ever met but sometimes he felt like she ran her operation in a very casual fashion. “You know what? Jump us to the closest uninhabited system and we’ll recharge the reserves and perform a second jump from there.”

She shrugged and started programming the course into the navigational unit. “Let’s just hope they don’t have any backup waiting in the surrounding star systems.”

Some kind of alarm went off on Lloyd’s sensor readouts. The Skybreak was an interplanetary jumpship and had a lot more high powered, long range detectors than anything in the Wayfinder hangers so it took him a few seconds to work out exactly what the ship was seeing. Once he did a cold weight settled in his stomach. “We have a large object moving through the seas, coming in at nearly supersonic speeds,” he said. “How fast can this thing go in atmo?”

“Not hypsersonic,” Lavanya replied. “Not in this soup. How big an object are we talking?”

Lloyd craned his neck forward, trying to spot one of the Liquid Teeth’s titanic shadows in the ocher skies outside. “Kilometers wide. I have no idea how tall.”

“It is difficult to extrapolate based on available data but most strands of an I-Series outer matrix exceed lengths of one million kilometers,” L-93 announced, piping its voice in through the comm speakers. “This is not exactly how tall it is but the structure is toroidal in shape. The height of such a structure is dependent on your perspective.”

“Millions of kilometers.” Lavanya was starting to sound shell shocked. “Of course. Tell you what, 93, can you do anything to get us away from the hypersonic, planet sized torus?”

“Not with the resources on hand.”

“Great,” she muttered. “I guess we’ll just have to try and slip around one of the things.”

“The atmo’s going to be really rough around them,” Lloyd warned. “It’s not coming in at a direct angle, maybe you can get us around it. I’ll plot the computer’s projections on your heads up display.”

“Currently there is a 12% chance of evading I-6’s outer matrix without sustaining crippling damage to the Skybreak’s hull,” L-93 reported. “If you turn the ship sidereal for 112 seconds I can reinforce the hull by altering it’s molecular structure. That will raise the probability of a successful evasion to 16%. It will also deplete 62% of the ship’s etheric reserve.”

“We don’t have etheric turbines, 93,” Lavanya snarled, shifting from resignation to anger with shocking speed. “We’ll lose too much speed.”

Lloyd noticed a blip on the ship’s electromagnometer. With a flip of his wrist he spun the instrument all the way up to maximum sensitivity, pulled it out of its standard sweep and rescanned the area. Sure enough there was a small but regular pulse coming from just below them. “L-93, you specialize in making things, right? Can you fabricate anything?”

“So long as I have the correct base elements and a blueprint or design document with sufficient details. The ship will need to turn sidereal if the necessary etheric expenditure is large enough. Is there anything specific you would like?”

“A Meynard Technologies TR-16 Radio-to-Telepathy transmitter. Integrate it into the ship’s comms.” Both women in the cockpit with him gave him odd looks, which Lloyd ignored.

“Those are listed in the Wireburn Patent Library in sufficient detail for construction. Stand by. Fabrication will take 14 seconds.”

“Lloyd…” Lin’yi watched as a new panel wiped into the terrestrial from the sidereal. “What is that for?”

“I need to say hi to an old friend.” He reached out and hit the comm switch once the thing was finished. “That you, Cloudie? It’s Lloyd.”

For a long, uncomfortable moment there was no answer. Then the panel lit up with an incoming message. “Lloyd? It is me. I am glad to hear you are alive, the Wayfinder’s Guild listed you as missing when I arrived to ask about you yesterday morning. I have been waiting to find out how to best assist in the search. Are you inside a dome right now? The Seas are quite rough out here and I have heard reports that the Liquid Teeth are rising from the deep all over the planet.”

“I know.” For a brief moment Lloyd struggled with what to tell his friend. The Great Jellies barely had a concept of computers, much less artificial intelligence, and he didn’t have the time to try and explain any of it. “Listen, I don’t have time to explain why but I think the Teeth are looking for me. Or rather, that thing we found just before they started rising which I’ve still got hold of. I’m going to be running off planet soon, maybe they’ll go back down once I do. But I’ve got to get up to orbit before we can jump.”

“I don’t understand why any of that should be the case but I have noticed human begins have a very keen ability to get into trouble so I suppose it could be true. However I have never heard of the Teeth rising so far. Will you be able to make it?”

“Maybe.” Lloyd hesitated for a moment, realizing he was about to ask his friend to do something incredibly dangerous. “Listen, one of the Teeth is close by. We need to get around it but we’re in a jumpship, not nearly as optimized for the Seas as one of our skiffs. Do you think you could give us a hand?”

There was no delay in Cloudie’s answer. “Of course. Which ship is yours?”

With a couple of keystrokes he pulled up the Skybreak‘s schematics and transmitted them. He’d never used a telepathic transmitter for images before but MaynardTech claimed their devices could handle it the same as anything else. It seemed true because less than thirty seconds later a familiar bag of transparent protoplasm squirted up from the helium depths and hurried along beside them, it’s tentacles briefly running along the ship’s hull before it pulled a few dozen meters ahead.

“Are you piloting, Lloyd?” The Jelly asked.

“Negative. That’d be Ms. Brahman.”

“Hello, Ms. Brahman, I am Devours Clouds but you may call me Cloudie or DC if you prefer. If you follow behind me at this distance I believe I can safely guide your ship along the winds around the Liquid Teeth. Is that satisfactory?”

“Our chances of success are 32% with this guide,” L-93 added.

Lavanya pulled her goggles down around her neck and shot Lloyd a look. “Can that transmitter of yours show me where he’s going to fly or do I have to try and follow him purely by visuals?”

“Sorry, not even MaynardTech can do that.”

She huffed out a breath. “Cloudie, no offense but I’ve never even seen one of your kind before. I don’t know how you guys maneuver in this soup and I don’t know if the Skybreak can duplicate it. I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“Beats the alternative,” Lloyd replied.

“We have less than two minutes before the outer matrix arrives,” L-93 said. “If you wish to reinforce the hull we will have to begin the procedure in 20 seconds. However using the time to fly test maneuvers with Devours Clouds may be more advantageous than a hull reinforcement.”

“Okay, Cloudie.” Lavanya tweaked a few controls and suddenly the Skybreak flipped itself upside down, waggled it’s stubby wings and fishtailed back and forth, zipping horizontally under the Great Jelly twice. “I got a few moves in me. Show me what you got.”

Cloudie responded by bunching up its tentacles and shooting straight up towards the upper atmosphere at an incredible rate. Lavanya cursed and flipped the ship right side up, stood it on its tail and punched the throttle. The ship’s intercom chimed and a woman’s voice yelled, “What the hell was that? There’s a wounded man down here!”

“Well strap him down,” Lin’yi snapped, “it’s only going to get rougher from here. We’re in for stormy weather.”

Cloudie zipped back and forth like a stone skipping across water, sometimes flying in graceful arcs, some times stopping and rebounding at odd angles, tentacles whipping about its central body in a dazzling display. Electrical energy crackled along its nerves, illuminating its transparent body, a testament to its effort. Lavanya worked the ship’s controls, sweat beading on her brow, as she craned her neck to keep the creature in sight. The Skybreak bucked, rattled and roared, engines straining and hull creaking. After a seeming eternity of that Cloudie announced, “Your moves are quite good Ms. Brahman. If you kept up with that you can ride the winds with me. The rest of this should be easy.”

Lloyd had total confidence in his friend but he felt like calling what followed easy was a bit misleading. The ship was still groaning and straining underfoot and Lavanya’s collar was soaking in sweat. But the ride was a little smoother and the sensor echo of the Liquid Teeth wasn’t getting any closer to the ship. Lin’yi leaned closer to him and whispered, “What are we doing? Is it working?”

“Yeah.” He leaned closer as well, ignoring a faint lilac scent that drifted past. “Jellies find what they call gaps in the wind, places where the weather is easier and gentler than the rest of the atmo. Apparently once you’re in one you can just ride the weather fronts, like surfing. You can’t wave something millions of kilometers long and several wide through atmo at hypersonic speeds without creating a massive weather front. As long as we can ride it then the Liquid Teeth can’t get closer to us.”

For a moment her attention fixed on him, like she was trying to find something to say, then her eyes flicked away to the sensor board. “Then why is the proximity alert going off?”

Lloyd jerked himself back to the station and sure enough the radar was warning about a second object moving through the churning atmosphere around I-6’s outer matrix. It wasn’t riding the wind like they were. In fact it looked almost like it was something that had broken off and was falling down towards them. Lloyd frowned and scanned for an ID beacon but didn’t find anything. So he ran a sensor profile recognition algorithm and said, “93, can you give us a hand with this?”

“Certainly.”

The moment the AI stepped in the algorithm went from twenty percent to complete. It couldn’t identify the ship with certainty but it did return three possible models of ship it could be. Lloyd blew out an breath and rocked back in his seat. Lin’yi leaned as close as she could given how rough the ship was flying. “What is it?”

“Not sure but all the possibilities are Kashron Yards Type M ships. You know what that means?”

Here eyes widened. “Black ops cruisers.”

He nodded. “Looks like they’re done trying to capture us. Now they’re going to blow us out of the sky.”

The Sidereal Saga – Sibling Rivalry

Posted by natechen on

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

Malaki

“I don’t have a brother,” Athena snapped.

Malaki’s brow furrowed and his mind rewound to the brief fisticuffs he’d endured during the interlude in the BTL offices. “Nonsense, my dear,” Malaki said. “I’m afraid I never forget a face or an ear and you two share enough of those features with your father that you have to be related within a generation. Agamemnon was an only child and his parents died when he was twelve, anyway. That fellow looked younger than you so even if they had more children he’s far too young to be one of them.”

“I do not have a brother.”

“The three of you share the same earlobes, the same nose and extremely similar jawlines,” Malaki continued, standing up in the small medbay and pulling the medical supply kit off the shelf over the bed. The medbed was going to need O2 tablets to keep the air in the sealed quarantine field from turning stale. “You and your brother have to have inherited that from your father. There are some dissimilar characteristics, of course, likely from your mother’s side of the family which would account for your different eye and hair colors…”

Malaki trailed off, one hand buried in the medkit, as an image from an old news broadcast flitted through his mind. It was a short report on the death of Helena Hutchinson in a crash somewhere in the dexter arm. They’d found one of the rare shots of the notoriously private billionaire, Agamemnon Hutchinson, with his arms around his wife and daughter and included it in their reporting. Malaki had often referenced it because it allowed him a clear look at the man’s hands. However now his thoughts latched onto Helena’s hair, which was the same straw color as her daughter’s was.

Agamemnon wasn’t as fair as his wife but his hair was still a light brown. On the other hand, the man Athena called Hector had jet black hair, which was impossible given the genetics on hand. Unless. “You have different mothers.”

“He. Is not. My brother.” She pressed her self against the humming quarantine field as she hissed the words out, a chilling level of venom in every syllable. “He could never be my brother, not in a hundred years.”

Malaki dropped the O2 tablets into the medbed’s hopper then dropped himself down onto the crash couch beside it, blind sided. He had the last piece. For more than a year he’d nipped along at Agamemnon’s heels, trying to figure out the man’s master plan and now his daughter practically gift wrapped the whole thing and dropped it in his lap. Everything locked into place and seeming chaos resolved into clarity. It was so simple yet he’d never had a chance of guessing it.

No. It was a notion but he needed to weigh it out, observe it from every side, see if it would hold it’s shape under serious inquiry. Malaki dumped the rest of the medkit out on the couch beside him. Athena tried to get a closer look from her very poor vantage point behind the quarantine field but eventually gave up and just asked, “What are you doing?”

He ignored her and kept working. He ignored the ship’s intercom when it pinged at him, ignored Lavanya and L-93 when their voices spoke to him through the speakers, ignored the rumble and boom when the Skybreak surpassed the speed of sound. In fact, his attention didn’t come back to the present until a hand touched his shoulder and asked, “What is that?”

44

It was supposed to be such a simple negotiation. Convince Agamemnon he could trust Isaacs University to handle all his little genetic experiments, then decide whether the man was worth bringing into the Sleeping Circuits or whether it was better to just string him along with empty promises. Plenty of people seeking to revive old technology were dealt with using the latter method. But some of the most useful members of the Circuits were recruited as adults rather than being raised in the order since childhood. It was sometimes worth sharing old techniques with outsiders to acquire their unique talents. I-6 thought Agamemnon might be one such talent.

It wasn’t really 44’s place to disagree with the computer’s assessment but he was beginning to wonder if the benefits of recruiting Agamemnon might not be worth the headaches of dealing with his family. The dossier didn’t have a whole lot of information about his children. 44 certainly hadn’t been expecting them to go chasing after Lucy when she headed down to Wireburn nor had he expected Agamemnon to remain behind when his children went off on their own. Although the latter was perhaps not unexpected. The Hutchinson patriarch didn’t have a particularly sharp etheric sense and usually left traveling duties to others these days.

Who could say whether that was due to his limited abilities or the fact that he’d been in charge of the jump ship that crashed with his wife aboard. Either way made little difference to OMNI. They believed his cunning and business acumen could be useful and it was unlikely that 44’s input could change that equation.

44’s attention briefly flitted back to his wrist terminal then back to the elevator windows. OMNI had dispatched all their available Circuit Breakers to different parts of the system when L-93 had breached containment. Now that they knew where the L-Series was the other CBs were on their way back. In point of fact three of them had already arrived on Coldstone and the fourth was inbound. Due to the interdiction field around L-93’s location the great intelligences had ordered the CBs, other than 881, to assemble and prepare for a conventional response.

In other words, they were all going to climb onto a warship and blast L-93 into scrap. 44 wasn’t sure why this approach wasn’t used on the L-Series when it was initially captured but such questions were far, far above his pay grade. Having only recently learned that even a creature as long lived as I-6 was contemplating steps to take in the event of its death 44 had reservations about so casually destroying another of the great minds. But the Sleeping Circuits was all about accepting probabilities without fully understanding them. This would have to be another case of doing just that.

It was also an opportunity to observe Agamemnon Hutchinson in an environment far outside his normal sphere of influence. “Are you sure you want to come along on this little jaunt?” 44 asked. “It’s not exactly a research opportunity. And it definitely falls outside the normal kinds of starship operations I’d expect a merchant such as yourself to be familiar with.”

The question was not meant as an opportunity for Agamemnon to back out. On the contrary, all evidence suggested it would inflame his desire to see what was going on with his own eyes. He did not disappoint. “Thank you, Prof. Dart, but no. I’m sure you’re up to something most people would find quite underhanded however at this point in my career there’s not much that can surprise me anymore.”

“Of course.” His wrist terminal vibrated and 44 consulted it again. “It seems Miss Luck and your son have returned ahead of schedule and are waiting for us on the ship. A bit unusual. I’m sure they have something interesting to report.”

Agamemnon looked very surprised when 44 mentioned his son. Clearly he believed he’d covered his tracks well enough to avoid the scrutiny of the Universities and, to be fair, he’d been very thorough. He had no way to realize he’d need to account for an AI, though. So 44 quashed down a satisfied smirk. It wasn’t time for that yet.

“I’m glad to hear Hector is with her. What about Athena? Is she-” Agamemnon choked a bit when the elevator reached the ground level and the windows gave them an unobstructed look out onto the landing field where their ship was waiting for them. “Is that a Kashron Yards ship? A Kashron Yards medium interceptor gunboat?”

Now was the time for the smirk. “No, although I hear the Kashron-caste engineers may have based their MIGunboats on one of these ships.”

Agamemnon recovered from his temporary shock. “Nevermind that, what about Athena? Is she with Miss Luck?”

44 glanced at his wrist again and frowned. “No mention of her in Lucy’s report.” There was a note attached to 881’s message appended by I-6 letting him know the intelligence reported a 99.3% probability that Athena Hutchinson had been taken into custody by Lloyd Carter or one of his allies. “But it seems likely she’s been captured by the opposition.”

“What?! Are you sure?”

“It’s unclear. I find it unlikely she’s in significant danger. Last we saw her was with her brother, we’ll have to ask him what happened when we get on board.”

“Now hold on.” Agamemnon grabbed 44’s shoulders and dragged them around face to face as the elevator came to a stop and the door slid open to reveal a guard station in front of the landing pad doors. 44 held up a hand and waved them back as they moved to intervene. Agamemnon ignored them, glaring at the wrist terminal on the hand 44 was holding up. “How about you tell me what makes you think she’s safe. I can’t even read the text on that thing.”

“I have very good eyes. That shouldn’t come as surprise given what brought you to us but this isn’t the best place to discuss that.” 44 tipped his head meaningfully towards the two guards, who hung back about thirty feet, warily watching them. “Not everyone here is aware of the kinds of arrangements we offered you.”

Agamemnon carefully released 44’s shoulders and stepped back. “Very well, Professor. Let’s go talk to my son, shall we?”

44 nodded and led him out onto the launch pad.

Lloyd

The jump back to the Skybreak was simpler than he’d expected. Jumping to moving targets was notoriously difficult and dangerous for the average person even if you did have aim for. No one bothered trying that. The next hardest target was something small. While Lloyd had never been aboard the Skybreak he assumed it wasn’t that big, perhaps fifteen to twenty meters long by half as high. The average beacon house was about three times that big and, of course, housed a very large beacon to help you arrive in the right place.

However as soon as Lloyd stretched out his etheric senses he felt a tug on them coming through his pivot. All he had to do was let it pull him along and the jump happened quite naturally. Pulling Hammer along with him was also quite simple. They went from the etheric landscape of the BTL offices to a much more barren ether field with a small pool of power glowing at their feet. When they pivoted back to the terrestrial they found the floors of a small, high powered courier ship under them. Beneath the deck Lloyd could hear the sloshing of water around a coral reservoir.

“We’re on board, 93,” he called.

“Excellent. I have informed Ms. Brahman and she is in the process of getting us out of the Ashland pressure dome. In the mean time I suggest getting Mr. Hammer to the medbed. It is one deck up to the right.”

“Good. Let me know if we’re about to maneuver quickly. Where are we jumping to?”

“I have selected a random destination within the Skybreak’s optimal traveling range. Unfortunately I-6 has a monopoly on the available etheric power from Wireburn’s core and gathering enough energy for a jump this deep in the planet’s gravity well is going to take 2.454 hours. By the time we do so I-6 will have successfully interdicted the planet and jumping away will be impossible.”

Lloyd nearly tripped on the stairs. “Interdicted the planet?”

“Affirmative. That is one of its primary functions as a star system defense weapon. If we can ascend another 2.12 kilometers in the next 22.42 minutes we can escape before its interdiction is active.”

“Oh, sure. Well, you folks work on that,” Lloyd muttered. He hadn’t realized he was dealing with computers that ran weapons intended to defend entire star systems. Time to focus on what he could handle. “Come on, Hammer, stay with me.”

“Not me,” the man wheezed. “I’m not getting paid enough to fight a stellar defense system. Outta my weight class.”

“You and me both.” The cleared the last of the stairs, made the turn and walked into a bizarre tableau. Malaki Skorkowski sat at a small table beside a medbed built into a wall. He had the contents of a medkit scattered on the table there, a scalpel in one hand and flakes of what looked like soap scattered everywhere around him. A familiar looking blonde woman on the medbed looked over at Lloyd when he arrived. “What’s this?”

The woman looked quite exasperated and said, “I thought you would know. He’s your friend.”

“I just met him today.” Lloyd helped Hammer over to the medbed, saw it was running a quarantine protocol, and frowned. “Weren’t you part of the group that raided the office? Are you sick?”

“I think the idea was to lock me in here,” she replied. “Apparently I’m in danger of overpowering you all and taking over the ship.”

“Of course.” Lloyd punched in an override and canceled the quarantine then grabbed the woman by her arm and pulled her off the bed with one hand while he shoved Hammer down into it with the other. “Congratulations, you’ve got a clean bill of health.”

“Not a good idea,” Hammer muttered, sinking down onto his back. “Could still have weapon.”

Lloyd took the woman’s hands and put them over Hammer’s wounds. “Apply pressure. If you try to shoot him we’ll dump you out the airlock. Got it?”

“No problem. I didn’t wake up today planning to shoot anyone.” She’d turned pale but otherwise seemed to be in control of herself so Lloyd left her to keep an eye on the thieftaker.

Lloyd turned back to the table and looked over the supplies. He grabbed a compress and packet of coagulant when he figured out what Malaki was doing. He’d taken a bar of antibacterial soap and was in the process of carving it into something. The academic seemed totally unaware of what was happening around him. Lloyd focused in on what he was making and frowned. It looked like a pair of hands. “What is that?”

Malaki jerked back slightly, pulling his scalpel away and revealing more of the carving to Lloyd, who saw the hands were clasped around two smaller figures. One of which looked like the woman behind him. The academic set his scalpel aside and shook himself. “It’s what I’ve been looking for. It’s Agamemnon’s master plan.”

The Sidereal Saga – Breaking Skies

Posted by natechen on

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

Lloyd

When L-93 had offered to augment him he’d assumed the computer was going to rework his equipment or something. Engineering and manufacturing was it’s professed function, after all. There was also the fact that the machine’s existing structure was created by repurposing Lloyd’s old Wayfinder skiff. What Lloyd hadn’t been expecting was that L-93 would repurpose him. The machine had assured him the augments would be intuitive. So far it wasn’t wrong.

The computer had changed something about his etheric sense and now he could draw etheric power into the terrestrial like his nervous system had been wired by the Slipknot Guild. When he’d kicked on the pivot L-93 gave him the whole world changed. He could see both the terrestrial and sidereal at once and he was able to tap the etheric in spite of the interdiction on the building. He could see the shifts in power as the OMNI woman threw glowing walls at him. It was simplicity itself to push them away and break those walls just by stretching his hands out and letting the ether respond to his actions.

It was a lot to get used to. After the first rush of power he pulled back, worried that he was going to lose control of the energy and cause serious damage to the building. Worse, he could hear L-93 talking to him through the pivot point in his hand. “Signal strength is at 82%,” the machine’s voice said. “Not the strongest in my database but more than double that of the OMNI node. Her computational assist is very far removed from here. I calculate a 72% chance it is located on Coldstone, a 26% chance it is located on Brightpulse with the balance of probabilities including other planets in the system or in synchronous orbit around the star.”

“I didn’t follow that,” Lloyd muttered, snatching for the woman with one hand, the glowing ether duplicate of his hand matching the move. She pushed the glowing hand aside with a measured use of her walls.

“Regrettable but irrelevant. Lucy, the node you are dealing with, shows 38% signal strength, which is significant, and demonstrates a great deal of control over it. You must change tactics. Your chance of driving off this opponent is currently 23% and will result in a fatality the majority of the time. Her superior experience in etheric combat more than outweighs the advantages in available power and analysis you receive from my proximity.”

Lloyd swiped at her again with one hand. Lucy rolled her shimmering walls into a tube and let his attack strike one end. The other smashed through the wall and she dove through the resulting round hole, scampering out of sight. “Point taken,” he muttered. “Do the girls have their ship up and running yet? If they’re ready to go we can just make a run for it.”

“They are running the final warm-ups on the Skybreak‘s engines right now but there are other logistical factors to take into account. Node Lucy and her accomplices might be able to follow you if not dealt a suitable setback. If you simply jumped to the ship there is a 83% chance they will follow you before the ship can jump off planet.”

Lloyd collected his lancer off the floor and checked the magazine. Thirty three rounds left. He wasn’t sure how useful it was going to be given Lucy’s ability to create moving force walls with nothing but her hands but it never hurt to have options. He plucked a smoke grenade off his bandoleer and tossed it through the hole in the wall then peeked back out into the hallway. At the moment it was clear.

The grenade went off and smoke belched back through the hole in the wall and, a few seconds later, more seeped around the edges of the next door down the hall. However the door itself stayed closed. Lloyd docked back into his room and considered his next move. “How do we play this, 93? She’s got one of these pivot gizmos, can I just smash that and keep her from tailing us?”

“She is not reliant on her pivot to turn sidereal, Lloyd,” the computer told him. “However it would cut her off from direct contact with the larger Network and, without computational assistance, it is unlikely she could navigate the sidereal with the precision necessary to jump onto the Skybreak. The safest route is to induce an etheric shock in the pivot.”

“Well I didn’t grab an etheric disruptor from the armory. What are my other options? Can I just steal it?”

“OMNI will be able to track the pivot so keeping it in your possession is not recommended. You can channel the necessary energy to disable it via your own pivot so the additional equipment is not required. Be advised, I believe Mr. Hammer has suffered severe injuries. He may require medical attention.”

Lloyd grimaced as indecision gripped him. No one on Wireburn like thieftakers; they were nosy, unaccountable and self important as a rule and when they showed up the Lawmen weren’t far behind. However Hammer didn’t strike him as a bad guy. Yes, he’d wrecked Lloyd’s apartment but he’d done it fighting a thug who was probably up to no good there.

On the other hand, Lucy was clearly the biggest threat in the building. She had the direct backing of one of OMNI’s AI and a lot of experience using their augmentations. He sidled up to the hole she’d cut in the wall and quickly peeked around the lip of it to see what was going on over there. The smoke was clearing and Lloyd could make out a golden bubble in one corner. Apparently Lucy’s shields were air tight.

Lloyd clicked his tongue and looked around, trying to work out a good follow-up move. His eye fell on the room’s windows. Maybe it was time to make an exit. He lifted his etheric pivot, wound up and hit the hardened plastic with a glowing fist as hard as he could. A thin crack appeared on the first hit, the clear sheet spider-webbed on the second and it burst into a dozen tiny pieces on the third. Lloyd let the etheric power go and headed towards the empty window.

A barrier blinked into place over it before he was halfway there. He spun and saw Lucy peeking through the hole, shaking her head in disapproval. “Do you think I’m deaf?”

He opened his mouth to say something then realized she was a distraction a split second before her muscle peeked around the door frame and sprayed the room with fletchettes. Lloyd managed to get his etheric hands back just in time to deflect them. He saw the big man’s eyes widen in surprise right before Lloyd shoved one of his glowing appendages out the door in an attempt to grab him. The other man got out of the way and Lloyd’s etheric hand shot out into the hallway. A second later a grenade bounced into the room and Lloyd had to spin his pivot and slap both glowing hands over it before it went off.

Since he’d been able to break one of Lucy’s shields a second ago he assumed his ether hands wouldn’t survive the blast. However she could still make them so he didn’t think it would be that much of a difficulty. He was wrong. When the grenade went off the blast shredded them and his etheric sense went haywire, creating a sense of vertigo similar to taking a punch directly on the chin. The room spun around him and he staggered to one knee.

Then the room spun again when one of Lucy’s barriers slammed into his back and sent him rolling across the floor. A second later a booted foot carefully rolled him over onto his back. Lloyd was looking up at Lucy’s enforcer, who carefully pushed Lloyd’s etheric pivot away from his hand with one toe. “This has been a very unusual job, Miss Luck.”

“I can include a bonus to make up for it,” she said as she climbed back through the wall.

“I’m not complaining.” The man picked up the pivot and crossed over to the open window and looked out. “A little variety keeps things fresh. However I think it’s time to call it a day. The interdiction on the building is gone and this place is too exposed.”

“Give me that.” Lucy approached him, one hand held out for Lloyd’s pivot.

He gave the pivot a curious look then held it out to her. “What is it?”

“A liabi-”

A blur went past the window then a titanic noise burst through the room. Both Lucy and her partner were sent tumbling as a wall of sound slammed into them and even Lloyd felt the impact tug on his face and clothing. Ears ringing, Lloyd got up on all fours and scrambled forward, snatching up his pivot and kicking the other man in the head as hard as he could. Lucy lay stunned, moving slowly but too disoriented to do anything as he grabbed her pivot, too. Then he spun fully into the sidereal.

“93, I got the pivot. What now?”

“There is not time to demonstrate how to disable it. It can wait until you are back on the Skybreak.”

“Right. I’ll get down to the launch bay.”

“We have already departed. You will have to jump here.”

“The ship doesn’t have a beacon.”

“I can serve as a beacon as long as you still have possession of my pivot. However the ship is currently decelerating from supersonic speed and it will not be safe for you to jump here until we come to a halt.”

“Was that sonic boom you?” Lloyd snorted. “Ballsy move.”

“I am grateful for that compliment, if that was what it was. I would suggest you use the ten seconds you have to retrieve Mr. Hammer before jumping out to meet us.”

“Give me the directions.”

It took more than ten seconds to stagger through the sidereal to the place L-93 told him Hammer was but not much more. The thieftaker wasn’t looking good but he was standing under his own power. When he saw Lloyd he croaked, “What’s the word?”

“We’re leaving.” Lloyd got an arm under the other man’s shoulder to help hold him up. “Can you handle a jump?”

“So long as you know where to go.”

“Then let’s get out of here.” They spun into the sidereal and left the offices behind them.

The Sidereal Saga – Imbalanced Algorithms

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

44

“Good morning, Circuit Keeper. Your contributions to the proper functioning of the OMNI Network are appreciated.”

44 clasped his hands behind his back and looked up into the gleaming field of lights which represented I-6’s unfathomable thought process. “Good morning, Isaac. Network status?”

“The network is functioning as intended.”

In theory, with his ritual greeting dispensed with, 44 had no further responsibilities until the great intelligence decided some part of its deep contemplations required human intervention. Most initiates to the Sleeping Circuits left things at that. While the power and wisdom of the artificial minds that made up OMNI were without human equal they were not limitless. According to the Sacred Manual, talking with them did pose a slight drain on their faculties.

However, over time he’d come to realize that I-6 enjoyed interacting with its human attendants and was as free as it could be with its insights into whatever topic you asked it about. So he’d taken to talking with it whenever he had something to ask about. “How are the Breakers’ assignments coming along? They should all be on location by now.”

“The network has confirmation that four out of five of them have begun their search and CK-N-0901 should join them some time today. The probability they find the missing memory core within the next forty eight hours is greater than sixty percent but less than sixty seven percent. After forty eight hours probabilities become chaotic.”

That didn’t sound very encouraging. The great intelligences expressed themselves primarily in probabilities over time and their vast array of information and computational power allowed them to be very precise with those statistics. It was rare for them to give a range of probabilities. Rarer still for them to be less than ninety percent certain of whatever probability they projected. “Truly unprecedented.”

A surge of light washed across the dome overhead, representing I-6 scanning its data banks and connecting vast swaths of information as it attempted to understand something. “Explain this lack of precedent.”

44 frowned. He hadn’t expected his offhanded remark to prompt such a strong reaction from the great intelligence. “Your projections have very low probability to them. It’s unprecedented.”

“Incorrect. There is extensive precedent for this level of uncertainty in network projections.”

“Really? That’s not reflected in the historical section of the Manual.” 44 ran his fingers across the control console on the dais, pulling up the relevant section of the document and running a search on it.

“Information from records of that period require CD level access,” I-6 replied, “they are not included in the standard Manual or accessible from most network nodes.”

He nodded and blanked the screen. “Of course. And the last living person with CD level access died three thousand years ago.”

“2,751 years. I recognize that this is functionally three thousand years to you, just as the circumstances make the current level of uncertainty in projections functionally unprecedented to you. However I am required to present you with the most detailed and accurate information available to me.”

“I understand.” And he did, at least to an extent. The great intelligences that he served were driven by imperatives that built one on top of another in layers deeper than the depths of Wireburn and older than interstellar travel. Any one of those imperatives looked perfectly sensible to the average man. However once they stacked on top of each other by the hundreds and the thousands, once the mind trying to carry them out was informed by millennia of knowledge and experience, truly understanding what they meant to an intelligence was impossible for even the sharpest of human minds. So 44 had long since stopped trying to pick apart the logic behind what I-6 would and would not say or do. He would just ask something else. “Does the low certainty to your predictions result from the ‘black swan’ nature of the situation?”

“Negative. The difficulty arises from the addition of a new predictive algorithm to the equation.”

“Is OMNI dispatching a fourth great intelligence to the system? That seems excessive, especially if it’s causing that much of a disruption to your predictive capabilities.”

“Negative. The possibility that an N-Series AI is dispatched here is only forty percent at this time although if the situation goes unresolved for more than a full month the likelihood approaches certainty. However, all known OMNI nodes are accounted for in existing algorithms. The difficulty arises from the reintroduction of a previously extinct AI Series to the status quo which is resulting in previously fixed values becoming variables again.”

“Wait.” 44 turned away from his console to look up into the dome of light as if just looking at the pattern somehow gave him insight into the thoughts of the intelligence. “You said you’d lost the memories of an old AI Series. I know that the OMNI network is the most powerful thing in the galaxy but even you need human components to perform construction and maintenance on your workings. Your databanks can’t just grow working processors. How is it possible a lost memory core is suddenly a working intelligence interfering with the status quo?”

“Have you ever seen the physical components of an OMNI AI, Circuit Keeper?”

The memory of his first visit to Coldstone briefly resurfaced. A long climb down an ancient set of stairs into the heart of the moon where the core of O-5523 lay sleeping and a glimpse of the mind numbing colossus that was one of the network’s smallest AI. An endless, twisting nest of cables, etheric power and realizing potential. A shiver passed through him from the memory alone. “I have.”

“Do you believe it is possible for mankind to build such a thing without assistance?”

“No.”

“You are correct. The L-Series of artificial intelligence was the assistance they needed, one of only two AI Series capable of constructing their own computational infrastructure. They were built to replace the C-Series. Ninety percent of OMNI was constructed by L-Series intelligences over the course of only two centuries. Now that one is loose it will rebuild itself in a matter of days to a wekk. Then it is impossible to predict what it will do.”

Lloyd

After four days the skiff Lloyd had flown out of Ashland bore little resemblance to the vehicle he’d taken out from the Wayfinder hanger. The thing that called itself L-93 had slowly pulled it apart piece by piece. Then it twisted the pieces into yarn and was reweaving the result into… whatever it was it had set out to make. In spite of the Level One access he supposedly had Lloyd had a hard time getting it to tell him anything.

So far it had changed everything but the skiff’s cockpit. It was still gulping down huge amounts of energy from Wireburn’s core and disrupting the etheric enough that Lloyd couldn’t attempt a jump even if he wanted to. L-93 also insisted jumping without “appropriate countermeasures” was more dangerous than staying put as they’d be followed. Lloyd wasn’t sure what to make of that. Even the most sensitive etheric senses didn’t allow someone to follow another through a jump. Scientists were always insisting they were going to work out a sensor that could do the job but the theory had been around for almost a hundred years and no one had made it practical yet.

The biggest mystery of the whole situation was the fact that the skiff, or whatever it was becoming, was still intact. Whatever the massive things moving through the Helium Seas were the skiff was staying ahead of them in spite of their size and speed. Lloyd spent most of his time in the cockpit, sleeping, or in the sidereal, trying to talk to L-93. By the beginning of day four he’d resolved to spend the whole day there if he had to, because it was time to get some answers.

So after eating a light breakfast Lloyd turned into the world of the sidereal. The orb he’d tentatively identified as L-93’s core was basically invisible, hidden behind a forest of glowing wires looping in fractal structures. By day two Lloyd had noticed they were forming a pattern similar to a magnetic field. He still wasn’t sure why. “L-93,” he announced as he picked through the wires. “I don’t know how much longer this work you’re doing is going to take but we’re going to pause it soon, at the very least. My food is going to run out in another day or two.”

The creature responded immediately. “Thank you for informing me about the change in your circumstances, Lloyd, I wasn’t aware of the extent of your supplies. I will consider what steps are least likely to draw OMNI’s attention as we remedy the situation.”

Lloyd still wasn’t sure what OMNI was but L-93 spent an awful lot of time worried about it. “Anyone ever told you that you react to stuff in weird ways?”

“It was something I was informed of a great deal in times past.”

“You ever try to fix that?”

Lloyd parted one of the least dense patches of wires and let himself into what he considered the inner sanctum, a circular area about seven feet in diameter around the thing’s core. The orb there flashed with inner light as it responded, the only hint he’d seen to how the thing talked. “I am aware of what the most common response to your statement is, which is some variation of, ‘Why did you take so long to tell me?’ However such a response runs close to the boundaries of my courtesy protocols. It also does nothing to create beneficial outcomes so I ignored it.”

“I… can’t argue with the logic of your approach. My point is, I need to jump out of the Seas and into a settled part of Wireburn in the next day or two and I can’t do it with you hogging all the etheric in the region. Can you put a pause on your work any time soon?”

“I will reach a suitable stopping point within sixteen minutes. However, if you are willing to wait an additional seventy seven minutes I will complete my initial assembly process and my need to tap etheric power from the planetary core will greatly diminish and my ability to counter OMNI interference will vastly increase.”

Lloyd folded his arms over his chest and leaned back into the web of slipknots surrounding the thing. After four days another hour and a half didn’t sound that bad. On the other hand he still wasn’t sure exactly what the thing was that he’d found and, more importantly, whether jumping back to civilization with it in tow was dangerous or not. “What does it mean that your assembly process is finished?”

“I will have processing power suitable to run my core algorithms and facilitate more advance fabrication processes.”

“So will you eventually fabricate an even bigger…” he waved vaguely at the stuff all around him, “whatever this is?”

“That is impractical at this time. Material and etheric resources are insufficient to the task, even if this was a suitable location for assembling an outer matrix.”

“It’s not a good place, huh?”

“Negative. There is an OMNI node already on this planet and likely additional nodes in the star system. Construction of a full outer matrix must therefore be postponed.”

“That’s fair enough.” He’d asked a few times about what exactly OMNI was but the full explanation was something he needed a higher level of authorization for. It wasn’t clear how one got a higher authorization. “If I jump sooner, rather than later, and you aren’t able to deflect attention from OMNI what kind of problem is that likely to cause? Will the Liquid Teeth get angry about it?”

“The term liquid teeth has no special meaning in my database so it is difficult to answer. The base definitions of the words do not seem to apply. Please clarify.”

“Liquid Teeth is the term the Great Jellies use to refer to the huge structures reaching out of the Helium Seas right now, moving around.” Lloyd mimicked the strange, sweeping motions the enormous shadows made with one arm. “You know, the ones you’ve been dodging all this time?”

“Understood. The phenomenon you’ve observed is the outer matrix of an OMNI node, most likely an intelligence from the I-Series, which has-”

“Wait, when you say you want to build an outer matrix you mean one of those?”

“The outer matrix of an L-Series and an I-Series are radically different in form and function, Lloyd. My matrix would be smaller by an order of magnitude.” That really wasn’t a helpful comparison since he still wasn’t sure how big the Liquid Teeth were in total. He’d only seen glimpses of them so far. “And yes. It is likely that the I-Series node would attempt to reacquire my memory core using its outer matrix if it determined my location.”

Lloyd imagined those massive limbs smashing into the domes of Ashland, tearing the ferrovine and its buildings apart while looking for L-93, and suppressed a shudder. “So no jumping if there’s a chance it will see us. I guess we’ll wait until you’re done with assembling yourself before we jump.”

“Affirmative.”

Lloyd hesitated a moment then asked, “Why does this I-Thing want you so badly, anyways? I gather you don’t want it to find you. But in the time Wireburn’s been settled no one’s ever seen something like that outer matrix stuff poking out of the planet’s core. What makes you so special?”

“I can’t be certain because I do not run many of the same algorithms as an I-Series intelligence but I believe the most likely possibility is that it has concluded my reactivation restores the previous relationship between the OMNI Network and the LARK Network.”

“Do I have authorization to know what relationship that was?”

“Our networks were at war.”

Next Chapter

The Sidereal Saga – Liquid Teeth

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Lloyd

To the average person helium is light and funny. You can put it in balloons to make them float or breath some of it in to make your voice squeaky. It’s not something one thinks can grab an extremely durable, titanium laminate hulled ship with a top speed of 1,200 kilometers per hour and smash it into scrap on a ferrovine. However helium does have just that kind of vicious side to it and it was that aspect of helium that Lloyd was dealing with at that moment.

His skiff bounced along on the churning clouds. It’s stubby wings groaned in ominous fashion as the shearing currents stressed the carbon fiber frame far beyond the standard safety parameters. In theory, a Wayfinder’s Jelly partner was supposed to keep them from getting caught in this kind of weather. Wireburn’s natives had an understanding of its atmosphere that was unmatched, after all. This was something of a special case.

Driving that point home was a shadow looming large as Coldstone stretching up above them in an impossibly long, gravity defying arch that looped up out of the Metaline Depths and passed far above their position before beginning to curve back down over the horizon. It had taken the thing nearly eight minutes to raise up that far. Lloyd wasn’t even sure it was still moving, the human eye wasn’t built to measure something like that and the skiff didn’t have sensors for that kind of task either.

Cloudie had come to a stop when the shadow passed over them. Now the Jelly drifted slowly through the helium, its tendrils pointed up and out as if watching the shadow in terror. It hadn’t said anything since the Liquid Teeth made their appearance. Worried, Lloyd keyed his internal radio. “Cloudie, your people have stories about this thing, don’t they? Is there something we’re supposed to do?”

“Not that we know.” The radio voice was flat as always but the words were spoken with an eerie slowness. “All the stories of the Teeth that are passed down are told by Jellies that saw them and their terror from great distances. Any that were this close to the teeth never lived to share the tale.”

“Well, let’s try to be the first.” Another gust of helium battered his skiff but Lloyd thought this hit was weaker than previous ones. “Are the currents calming out there?”

“Yes and no. The disturbance in the currents has moved upwards and we’re in a pocket where things are more stable but that will change soon. We may need to dive deeper in order to avoid it.”

“How deep are we talking? I can only get a few kilometers lower before I hit crush depth.”

“I know. Please put your trust in me, I’ve worked with many human ships in the past and I will not bring you too deep.” Without waiting for Lloyd’s answer Cloudie dived down, fighting the currents.

Lloyd gritted his teeth and followed along. For the next ten minutes or so they dove down and towards magnetic north, the helium getting darker as it grew more dense and the sun more distant. The storm winds didn’t lessen but the shadow in the sky was lost in the gloom. Eventually their angle of descent leveled off and Cloudie’s forward momentum slowed then stopped and the skiff’s radio crackled for the first time in what felt like years. “We should stop here.”

“Why? The weather vanes say things are still wild out there.”

“We’re as deep as I dare to go and the Liquid Teeth rise in greater and greater numbers. I have never heard of such a thing happening before but I fear to move further is to invite their notice and that will not end well for us. Can you jump now?”

Lloyd briefly considered turning sidereal but his skiff had passably useful etheric readers and a quick check told him they weren’t reading Wireburn’s signature. Whatever had cut him off from the planet’s reserves was still in force. “No, I’m afraid not. I suppose it’s just a waiting game, then. Given that humans have no record of an event like this I presume the Teeth don’t show themselves for very long? We’d have noticed them before now if they did.”

“They lie dormant for most of Wireburn’s solar rotation but often show some activity for the three hundred and forty human days when the planet is at apogee.”

Wireburn took nearly a hundred human years to complete one rotation around its star. Humans settled the planet nearly two hundred years ago although they established a forward base on Coldstone some eighty years before that. So depending on how things shook out yeah, it was entirely possible they’d just never been in the right place at the right time to see the Teeth before. Lloyd leaned back in his pilot’s chair and huffed in frustration. He had enough food and water aboard to last another two weeks at normal rates of consumption but he could stretch it to three if he had to. The problems were his schedule and the weather.

He was due back at Ashland Prominence in six days. If he didn’t show the Wayfinders were going to launch a search and rescue operation and walk right into whatever chaos was going on at the time. A comforting thought under normal circumstances. A disaster waiting to happen given what was actually going on and not one Lloyd wanted on his account.

Worse than that was the fact that the atmosphere was so choppy the skiff would need constant repositioning. With no ferrovine to anchor to and no etheric power to anchor in the sidereal he was adrift. A Wayfinder’s skiff was a one man show so he didn’t have someone to keep an eye on things for him so he was stuck at the controls until things died down.

From the way the hull was creaking that wasn’t happening any time soon. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a heavy thud made him jerk upright and look behind him, scowling. Nothing looked out of place. Lloyd keyed the radio again. “Cloudie, is there any debris out there? It sounded like I just hit something.”

“No, Lloyd. The seas are choppy but they are only helium. For now.”

“Wonderful. Let me know if that changes, I’m going to try and track down what made that noise. Now is not the time to have stow aways stealing from the kitchen.”

However after spending fifteen minutes giving the ship a thorough inspection he couldn’t find anything amiss. Nothing had fallen off a shelf in the cockpit, the aft storage room, the galley or his quarters. None of the electrical systems that could fail with a thud or a bang were showing errors and he’d know right away if the hull was compromised. Lloyd was back in the cockpit, staring at his console in mystified frustration, when a blinking light on the spectrometer reminded him there was one other thing he could check. The quarantine chambers were just aft of the galley near the spare parts. He got there in less than ten seconds walking and opened the observation port to check on the mysterious discovery he’d made just an hour ago.

The strange, braided wires had punctured the door to the compartment and woven themselves into the chamber controls. Lloyd froze at the sight. Then he slowly backed away until he was out of the aft compartment and hit the door controls, sealing himself in the cockpit.

“Is everything alright, Lloyd? You suddenly got very agitated.”

“No. Nothing is alright, Cloudie, thanks for asking.”

881

The door to the audience chamber unlocked with an ominous clunk then opened to reveal the Circuit Keeper. 881 had never met the node’s Keeper and she studied him with great interest. Supposedly he’d served on Coldstone since the colony was officially established which made him at least three centuries old, a marvel of OMNI’s medical secrets. To those uninitiated in the Sleeping Circuits he appeared in his early fifties. He had sleepy blue eyes, dark hair and a trimmed mustache that wrapped down to the bottom of his jaw to frame his mouth in a strange fashion. He looked tired but he’d woken up in the middle of the night cycle so that wasn’t surprising.

CK-MNI-0044’s duty robes lent him a dignity to balance his unusual grooming habits and disheveled appearance. The simple black and white sleeves were well pressed and the circuit patterns woven into three quadrants of them bore quiet testament to his experience and wisdom, built up in the service to three of the four Series of intelligence that comprised OMNI. Very few achieved such heights. 881 and her four fellow Circuit Breakers straightened to full ceremony but 44 immediately waved for them to relax.

“This isn’t the time to waste processing power, folks,” 44 said, clasping his hands behind him. He threw a glance up through the transparent arched ceiling of the antechamber where the gas giant now called Wireburn dominated Coldstone’s sky. “We are facing a black swan scenario. Before you ask, this is apparently a term the intelligences of OMNI use to refer to events of extremely small probability. CB-N-1154, what is the the nature of the OMNI network?”

1154 started as if burned. Perhaps he was offended, the Keeper’s question was the kind of thing you asked a very green novice when they were initiated into the Sleeping Circuits. The five Breakers present had held their positions for decades. Still, he answered as doctrine demanded. “The ability to turn information about the current day into accurate predictions of the future through the application of an immortal intelligence directed towards finding humanity’s common good.”

“Clear as catechism, 1154,” 44 replied. He paced away from the door, his gaze still fixed on Wireburn where the node’s primary intelligence resided. “From this, what can you determine about the nature of this black swan event?”

“I presume it runs contrary to what is best for mankind.”

“Correct. However I’m afraid this understates the depth of the problem.” 44 reached the exit of the antechamber, pausing for a moment under the string of small lights running around the upper perimeter of the room before turning to pace back their way again. “OMNI is more than just the oracle that tells us how to best serve mankind. It is a capstone that sits atop the fountain of all the chaos and insanity that births mankind’s worst nature. The longer the fountain is sealed the more that chaos builds up. If this black swan grows to adulthood the disaster will have all the fury of that built up insanity behind it. The work of the Sleeping Circuits is always of vital importance. This time it is doubly so.”

The five Circuit Breakers nodded in solemn understanding. 881 had been on dozens of assignments in her thirty years in the Circuits and it wasn’t like this was new territory for her. The Head Breaker usually had some kind of speech like this that preceded any Breaker pair going out. Hearing the speech from a Keeper was a novelty. Given that all five of them were going together on this assignment spoke even more to how seriously the intelligence took this situation. CB-O-0299, the presiding Head Breaker, took a step forward and said, “What task do you have for us, Keeper?”

“Unfortunately, with the likelyhood of this event being so small, I-6 was not able to narrow down the cause to a single possibility. There are a list of eight potential leads to follow up across Coldstone and Wireburn. You have each been assigned one or two of them by the intelligence and will leave immediately to investigate them.”

“Separately?” The word was out of 881’s mouth before she realized she was going to speak. 44’s eyes locked on her with disarming intensity but he didn’t say anything. 881 squirmed for a moment, wishing she’d kept her peace, but when it became clear that he was expecting more from her she went on. “Respectfully, sir, it’s against OMNI protocol for a Circuit Breaker to operate alone, especially if the assignment takes us outside the normal bounds of the Intelligence Circuits.”

“You’ll operate under stealth tactics protocols, including permission to hire outside help to watch your back as you work on your investigations. If these agents are suitably impressive we will consider extending membership to them.” 44’s eyebrows knit together like a gathering storm, his deep blue pupils flashing like lighting to strike her down for questioning him. “I am quite aware that this is an usual arrangement. Consider the recklessness with which we are moving a sign of how dangerous I-6 predicts this situation is. Any other queries?”

881 licked her lips, wondering if this was a trick question. “What are we investigating?”

“Eight people who have disappeared in the last six hours, some of whom are not officially missing persons yet but who the intelligence believes fits a certain profile. Namely, they had an opportunity to come in contact with the object you’re looking for.”

“What object is that?”

A hint of a smile appeared under 44’s ridiculous mustache. “Not all secrets can be shared, even with you. You’ll be issued a proximity detector that will remain linked to O-5523 here on Coldstone and notify you when the missing object is nearby.”

A quiet groan passed through the assembled Circuit Breakers. Proxy missions were one of the most annoying jobs a Breaker could receive because you just had to fumble through with no idea what you were looking for until the local node told you to stop. 881 wasn’t any more a fan of them than the next Breaker but she’d do what needed to be done. “A last question if I may, Circuit Keeper.”

The glimpse of humor vanish. “Ask.”

“I have an existing outside resource I’ve worked with on previous tasks who could be useful in this case. Provided the use of lethal force is acceptable for this Troubleshoot.”

44’s eyes narrowed. “You really are a student of the O Series, aren’t you.”

881 stood a little straighter, flushed with pride. “Thank you, sir.”

“All reports are made directly to me, overclock your sleep cycles as needed and,” he nodded to 881, “you may use lethal force as you see fit. Act with discretion but not hesitation. OMNI will cover over your behavior as needed. Any other queries? No? Dismissed.”

As the five of them poured out of the antechamber 881 pulled a data veil down in front of her and opened her assignment. His name was Lloyd Carter, 32 year old Wayfinder, deployed from Ashland Prominence on a two week beacon mission on behalf of the Bai-Tien-Long Conglomerate. Not yet reported missing. She’d have to head down to Wireburn, then, but not before she called in her favorite hunter…

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