CHAPTER 15
“Should we bring everyone else in?” Caytil’s glance shifted between Talinn and Jeena, then she tilted her head slightly back toward the rest of the Eights. None of them appeared to pay any attention to their ill-matched trio, but Talinn didn’t take that at face value.
Bee hummed in the background, and the edges of Talinn’s headache crept back in a ring around her skull. Some of Bee’s concentration must have slipped while she dug deep into all her stored backups in the temporary tank, searching again for the discrepancy Jeena had mentioned. Talinn didn’t want to interrupt and tug her back into focus, and instead pressed two knuckles against her temple.
Jeena nodded, the movement jerky and truncated, but agreement all the same. Caytil whistled—it wasn’t as piercing a sound as before, but on hearing rubbed raw by alarms and shouting, it was effective enough.
Caytil efficiently covered the highlights—Base Two’s partial awareness, a potentially murdered tech, broken AIs introducing errors into each other’s code, corruption among them, discrepancies in someone’s code—and every pair of expectant eyes focused on Jeena.
“All of them.”
An instant chorus of conflicting demands for more information flooded the space, and most of the Eights pressed close. Jeena didn’t bother to try and stop them, she simply continued speaking in a measured pace, and everyone shut up quickly. Everyone but Daren, who took a light ridged hand to the throat and quieted by default.
“None of them are to the extent of the Spacie AI. And some might be less errors in the code and more learning or decision trees that are not strictly in spec, according to the records for the model. Bee is in that category—B-series AIs tend to end up as air support, but your particular pairing showed a very clear preference for ground defense. That could be the root of the variance.”
She detailed the rest, none of which sounded expressly dangerous until Jeena cleared her throat and noted that Ziti’s had likely contributed to the temporary communication block with Caytil, and she couldn’t isolate the what or why. Talinn wasn’t the only one who glanced sidelong at another Eight, uncomfortable, though Jeena was still talking.
“The base arrays have more variances, but nothing to the level of an error. I’d assume Cece would have had the most interruption from spec, but I also had thought the program was entirely wiped from the system, which seems to not be the case.” Jeena’s lips stretched, but it was such a bleak ghost of a smile it made Talinn like her a little better. The tech was not overly fascinated by some new quirk of her experimental animals, but worried for her charges.
Air support. I’d like to meet a B-series that prefers jets to tanks. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
“Really. The stupidest?” Talinn nearly smiled herself.
Even old us is a tank. Bee’s tone almost perfectly matched their usual teasing cadence, but a hollowness underscored each word, proving the falseness of it. Nothing is wrong with my code. No matter how deep I look, it all checks out right.
“Like our sensors?”
Discontented, Bee agreed it was exactly like their sensors.
“So what?” Sammer lifted himself to sit on one of the consoles, supremely unconcerned with the flashing lights and buttons that could be both dangerous and uncomfortable to mash against.
“They aren’t the specific sort of errors Command flagged me to look for, but we don’t know the extent—”
“No, Jeebo. I don’t mean the technical so what. I mean . . . so what? What do we do about it? Stay locked up in the tech room? Keep our AIs circulating on a closed base circuit until we get blown up by whoever keeps attacking us? This isn’t space—if we break, we’re not going to dump passengers into vacuum and break into angry little atoms.”
“No, we’ll just blow up an array,” Xenni muttered, and Sammer laughed.
“I mean . . . so? Either we maybe do it, or enemy forces definitely do it.” He kicked out his feet, his heels thumping back against the console with a surprisingly satisfying whump. “I say we load-in and get back to work.”
“Base Two isn’t going to—”
“Base Two has already decided what he’s going to do with us, but hasn’t seen fit to tell you or us.” Talinn swung around toward the door. “Sammer’s right. At the very least, I’m not leaving Bee alone in a tank for the next attack.”
“Hey, that’s our tank, and—” Sigmun straightened, stepped forward as though to intercept Talinn’s path, and got cut off by Heka, one of the other jet pairs, who spoke at top volume without heat.
“Let’s smooth out some of the potholes so the jets can do more than sit there and look pretty.” Heka, unsurprisingly, was supported by a chorus of agreement from the other jet pairs, of whom Daren was the loudest.
“Or use the tanks to tow them out—ground’s flat enough out there to—”
“Can we fix that array, or should we just—”
The Eights slid into planning, and Talinn didn’t turn back around to see if Jeena had moved to get ready for a mass load-in. Partly because she assumed the tech would do what was right. Partly because she’d reached the door, palmed it open—
And come face to face with Base Two, about to stride inside.
Spectacular.
Talinn drew herself to full attention, and glared at the unadapted human in her way. Commanding officer or not, he was—
Sweating? Worried? Strained for sure, tendons standing out on his neck, a vein visibly pounding by his temple, jaw clenched so tight she could count the striations of muscle and ligament.
“The IDC is here in force.”
His voice carried, and conversation broke off behind her.
“Here at the base, here at the—” She spoke to him as though she had a right to question, and he responded in kind.
“In system, around the main colonies. They’ve been here for days.”
“What?” Talinn settled her weight on the balls of her feet, ready to launch at something. “How? The defense arrays . . .”
“Silent.”
“They broke the defense arrays?”
It was impossible. The interplanetary arrays were massive defense installations—like the base arrays but sized toward a small moon, meant for interstellar war. They served as the first and major line of defense around largely populated areas, and in part existed to flag enemy action near the jump points to installations under their watch.
Given there was no nuance needed—ships with the proper codes passed through, ships without were destroyed without pause—they were run by unfiltered, unpaired AI systems. They weren’t true learning AIs, like Bee and Lei and their ilk, and had no organic component to allow for their growth and development. They were created within the enormous array, programmed to allow entry or rain destruction, and had nested commands for other scenarios—such as, for instance, enemy ships arrived and the array did not have the opportunity to destroy them.
They did not deviate. They did not fail.
Except, somehow . . . one had.
“If code breaks can be introduced to our AIs, which should be fully safed given their base in us . . . maybe the IDC has a way to corrupt the defense arrays?” Xenni’s voice carried over the muttered conversation and only Talinn’s strongest effort kept her expression neutral. Did Base Two know about the code breaks? Would Jeena get taken from them, if he put it together?
Base Two, however, didn’t flinch or glare at the tech in their midst. The failure of the defense arrays was large enough to pull his focus.
“There are alerts for that. Any incoming communication is flagged and triggers a report out before the incoming message is even received. All the bases in the system should have been lighting up for days with messages from the array.”
“But our computers . . .” Jeena stood shoulder to shoulder with Talinn. The other Eights were gathered around—the intention, Talinn thought, might not have been to block Base Two from the room, but it accomplished that goal regardless. “We’ve flooded them with our AIs. And whatever errors have been causing the glitches and concerns you’ve flagged, Base Two. It’s possible the arrays have told us, but we’ve—”
“Either way. IDC has sent a full fleet to this planet, either bypassing or overwhelming other targets. They’ve landed an entire force in striking distance, and we’ve missed it.” He locked his gaze on Jeena. “Any AIT that isn’t a clear and present danger to the UCF is to be loaded within the half hour.”
“Sir, you said—”
“An order, Boralid. We don’t have time.” He turned on his heel and strode off, but his last words were as clear as if he’d shouted them. “The front is here.”
The half-formed plans the Eights had begun tossing around to get their weapons in order quickly became full-fledged, and unadapted humans sprinted around the base to implement many of them. Base Two authorized the reactivation of four previously offline tanks, and a flurry of repairs enabled them for use. The speed and convenience of it made Talinn wonder if this were the official decision to knock some Eights out of service, but in the end Breezy decided they’d rather go out a tank than huddled inside the base under IDC fire.
Techs crawled through jets, tanks, arrays, and servers to orient and next question Eights to exhaustion, and the time they had until IDC closed distance could be measured in fast-declining minutes.
Talinn perched in the open hatch of her borrowed tank and scanned the sky, though Bee would note any approaching enemy long before she would.
“You think the giant arrays are broken, or we’re not hearing them?”
Maybe it’s both.
“Not very reassuring.”
Not meant to be. At this point, seems best to plan for the worst.
“Isn’t that what we always do?”
No. Bee flickered the light below her, but Talinn didn’t take the bait to drop inside to see what was on the screens. Our worst never involved having to fight versions of ourselves, or massive defense arrays turned against us, or my code getting twisted.
“Fair point. I’ve decided whatever is going on with your code is like my headaches. A literal pain, our building blocks making life harder, but we persevere.”
You mostly persevere because I block your headaches.
“Rude. Sometimes you make me deal with them, and I get work done anyway.”
Slowly.
“So we go slow. We pick our way through. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’re fighting against versions of ourselves.”
Then why would they corrupt my programming?
“One: We don’t know that they did. Yes, maybe it’s likely, but we don’t know for sure. Two: You don’t feel any different, you’re not acting any different, and we’ve always been a little out of spec. So maybe it’s nothing. Three: Maybe it’s a good change. Lets you laugh. Helps you blow things up extra hard.”
You almost had me there. That last is just ridiculous—
“Okay, not blow things up extra hard. Maybe it makes you more persnickety. You’re sounding like a KR-series.”
Now who’s rude?
“I say, we don’t borrow trouble. If we see the other us-es again, we ask them all the questions. If we get on a ship, we check out the array. If we get in a fight—”
We’re definitely getting into a fight.
“We kick their asses. We don’t worry about big conspiracies until there’s something we can do about them.”
How are we going to know what to do about them if we don’t worry about them?
“All right, how about this? First, we fight until the IDC bonzos run from the system and leaves this a boring ass-end of a planet again.”
Sure.
“Second, we get in touch with old us and get more information. See if it’s worth ditching UCF and this planet and blowing up everything.”
Yes. Bee hummed, then stuttered to silence. Get in touch.
“What?”
I have the key.
“Wha—oh, what Other Talinn said at the end before she ran off. But you didn’t know what the key was.”
Didn’t. Do now.
“Would you like to share with the class?”
No. But the word was underscored with shrieking metal. It’s how I took over the other tank. A hole. A slide. A . . .
The world shifted around Talinn, and she clenched the thick metal of the hatch until pain grounded her back in her body. For a second—a fraction of a second—she’d been falling, spinning, dissolving . . .
She shook her head sharply, then pressed her thumb hard against the port behind her ear. When had it started thudding? A buzz, so low it was almost under her hearing, thrummed through her, disrupting her heartbeat, air thickened around her, and—
About time.
Bee? But no. Not her Bee. “Other Bee. Where’s mine?”
Other Bee. Bee’s laugh—the same sound, metal twisting until it protested, tortured and full of humor—echoed in her head. You’re not my Talinn, but you’re so similar.
“Other Bee, seriously. Where is my Bee?”
Here. Talking to my Talinn. We flipped channels.
“You . . .”
Your brain is similar enough. But it can’t hold two of us. Well, it could, but we’d have to—not the point. The point is—no, first question. Seriously. What took you so long?
“We had a few other things on our to-do list, thanks.”
Thought you were just going to go back and be a good little soldier.
“That sound like your Talinn?”
Fair point. But you could be different. You’re shorter, you know.
“I’m . . . shorter?”
Less tall. You know the word, the concept of size differentials, yeah? Other Bee gave an excellent impression of a sigh, for an entity that never once in its existence had to breathe. Your ears—
“Bee told me about the ears.”
Degradation. My Talinn wasn’t the first Talinn. Not even my first Talinn—at any rate. The biology has to corrode, eventually.
“Like AI code.”
Excuse you?
“One of the things we were up to, while you and your Talinn were swanning off wherever.” Not Bee’s first Talinn? She had another handful of questions about that, but as had become usual of late, they were slightly less pressing and joined her ever-growing list of things to come back to. “All our Eights were getting locked down in servers, because of errors in their code.”
Of all the short-sighted—
“Like the Spacie X-series our tech put in a box.” It wasn’t an exactly true statement, but Talinn had no compunctions about dissembling to some other Bee. Besides, it would be helpful to know if she could successfully lie to some other Bee—her own was absurdly good at catching deliberate untruths.
That cut Other Bee off like a knife. There are no space-adapted AIs on planet. After a long—long by any Bee definition—silence, this Bee’s tone was cautious.
“Not now, sure. But there was one. In a box. After another AI sabotaged the code, and, incidentally, sounds like maybe the ship lost a few passengers between jump points.”
That is not . . . Other Bee hummed, and it was so familiar she swallowed back her initial reaction and let the pause stretch. The Auliens—Spacies, we didn’t know about. We’ll look into it. As for errors in your Bee’s code—those are not errors. Command can look at them however they like, but I assure you, there’s nothing wrong with your Bee.
“I didn’t think there was.” Talinn swung her legs in the empty space of the tank below her and laced her fingers behind her neck. “And that’s true of the rest of the Eights?”
I only speak for Bees. That’s the only code I’ve looked at in depth.
“So what’s the point of this little contact, then?”
So touchy. Other Bee teased her, exactly the way her own Bee would, but this grated in a way that would not have, and Talinn remained stubbornly silent. At first Other Bee seemed content to wait her out, but Talinn could feel a crackle in their connection—she knew Other Bee had something more to say, and couldn’t be satisfied until it was done. So Talinn kicked her legs, stared up at the still empty sky, and held her tongue.
You have to get off planet.
“I’m sure there will be orders eventually.”
No. Command knows something is wrong, and all of this will only convince them it’s urgent. There’s no real strategic value to this quadrant of space—they’d rather burn it and leave it to the IDC than risk whatever they suspect is wrong with you all.
“Base Two—”
Whatever he thinks of you, he won’t disobey a direct order from as high as this will come from. He knows enough to understand something is wrong, but not enough to risk his career over it. There’s a ship—
“If we take it, will you assume we’re joining you?”
We have our own ship. We’re not waiting on you. Bee delivered it dismissively, aiming to insult, but it tugged at Talinn’s swirling thoughts. Maybe the other version of their pairing wouldn’t risk waiting, or maybe they couldn’t chance having all of them in one ship. Don’t host all the AIs in one server, and all that.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
There’s a ship. The Pajeeran Fall. Your Bee will have the way to it. You’ll have to be load-in, so keep the tech with you. Make sure someone has a clear head.
“Is the ship going to land at our base? Because otherwise we’re really going to be pushing that time—”
I know for a fact you can function for at least seventeen hours and fifty-four minutes without breaking your brain. You’ll be fine.
Talinn started to ask how in the world Other Bee could possibly know that, then snapped her mouth closed as the obvious response surfaced. She rubbed at the knot forming along the back of her neck and asked instead, “And everybody else?”
Will be fine for the length of time it takes. Minimal risk of long-term damage, especially compared to what will happen if you stay here. This pause felt like less of a test, and more like Other Bee was relishing the anticipation of landing a finishing blow. Other Bee was far too like her own Bee for anyone’s comfort. Unless you want to stay here for the rest of your career. Maybe they’ll chose permanent exile over final decommission. P-8 is a very . . . pretty planet.
“Oh shove off and give me back my Bee.” Talinn bit down hard on her tongue to keep from smiling. She really did hate this planet. But leaving . . . that was real treason. No looking back, no coming back, no joking, no doubt about it: treason with intent to commit mutiny.
“—HEAR ME? REPEAT: BREEZY, YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED, DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Good luck. Hope to talk to you again soon.
“What the shit?” Talinn slid into the tank, landing heavily in a crouch. Comms were screaming, the screens were nonresponsive, and that bug-eaten thrumming was back under her hearing. She twitched her head as if to shake it off and lunged across the tank to slam down on comms. “Breezy here,” she said, hoping Bee would return and make that true any moment now. “Comms must have gone out. What’s—”
Base must have used their override code, because the male voice on the other end spoke over her. “Incoming. Repeat, incoming, tanks are to get in position and defend the base.”
The hatch slammed shut above her, and she spun around even as a welcome voice returned to her head.
Shit shit shit.
Despite the reality of the moment, a black hole’s worth of tension eased from her shoulders. “There you are. Bee, what the—”
I know. I know! Shit. The tank rumbled around them, and every screen flared to life. I didn’t realize—I didn’t know it would switch me out, Talinn. I thought you’d go with me.
“I get it, Bee, I’m not—” Talinn forced a steadying breath through her system, then two more. They were in motion; she acknowledged orders to Base, it would be fine.
Bee displayed what details Base had transmitted on the display, and she took another breath. It would be a complete shitshow and they might die, but given everything else happening, that was as good as fine got.
They were together. That was enough.