CHAPTER 33
It didn’t go horribly wrong right away, which given the circumstances felt much like a win. Talinn even made the mistake of smiling, the very edges of her mouth creeping upward, and they didn’t vaporize immediately.
She kept herself from relaxing, scanned the readouts, and paced back and forth to different windows. After each set of thoughtful peering outside the spinning ship, she tweaked the navigation. More to do something than for any real impact, but before long the defense array became perfectly visible to the unaided eye.
It was the size of a small moon, and impractically close to the asteroid installation.
“What we should have done is programmed all the ships to take off, have them all scatter through the debris field, and let the defense array guess which one we were in. Like the cup game. Did your class do the cup game? Hide an object under one of a variety of cups, mix them up, point out which one had it? It was Medith’s favorite, probably because she was the best at tricking us. She had fast hands. Really made Ellid yell about how unfair and impossible it all was.”
She smiled again, though there was no answer from Otie. They’d joked Eights weren’t allowed any hair because trainees like Ellid would only rip it out in frustration. “Our jokes really weren’t that funny,” she continued musingly, and then forgot what she’d been saying entirely.
Her readouts made sudden sense. They’d been spitting out various reports that didn’t relate to each other, telling her she was on the verge of a black hole or the system had emptied or there was a huge gravitational spike somewhere behind and above her current orientation. Talinn continued monitoring them, because it gave her something to do and she wondered if there were some pattern to the madness, but between one update and the next they resolved into seemingly accurate, logical sense.
“So either we left the influence field, or whatever it is . . .” She should probably stay strapped in, but she left her seat regardless and pushed over to the closest window, craning her head to manage as big a field of vision as possible. “Or we’re about to blow up because the array has noticed us.”
The array hung in space, ahead and below them, as though the little ship were falling toward it. Nothing glowed or moved as far as she could tell, and if it had fired projectiles, those would still be too small for her to visually identify.
“It’s a trick, right? Probably a trick.” Talinn clicked her teeth shut, not sure who she was talking for anymore. She was so used to having a conversational partner that it was beyond habit to discuss any and everything. While Bee could definitely still hear her, through Otie’s ears if nothing else, she wouldn’t respond unless it were urgent in order to minimize the drain on Otie’s brain. Turned out it wasn’t nearly so fun having an endless monologue. No wonder unadapted humans were so odd.
“I think we’re close enough.” She put a lot of confidence in those words, straightening away from the window and turning toward Otie. The other woman had gone boneless in her seat, the magnetic boots and cross belt holding her close to the confines of the chair. She still wore her helmet, because in an emergency Talinn couldn’t trust her to get it back on, and her face was motionless underneath. Her eyes were closed, but the lines around them had deepened.
They could probably get closer, but the sensors going back to normal—alleged normal—indicated change approached, one way or the other, and what good would it do to get fractionally closer if they blew up in the meantime? Or if Otie’s brain melted too far for usefulness.
Or if she somehow managed to “fully merge” with the Bees, taking Talinn’s Bee with her, and then Talinn would probably have to blow them all up on principle.
She forced herself to focus on the matter in reach, and opened one of the pockets on her waist belt. “So it goes like this. I’m going to plug this into the ship, take off your helmet, and plug it into you. The Bees aren’t going to fully unload, which is going to be a fun new trick that will hopefully keep us from blowing up for longer, but will probably give you a spectacular headache. Sorry about that, Otie. For what it’s worth, I have pretty awful headaches all the time, and you don’t, so consider it a fun clone bonding experience.”
Talinn continued speaking, running through the process, adding random chatter, mostly for noise. Maybe it provided some measure of calm for Otie, and that would be nice, but also it kept her hands steady and her motions smooth as she unwound the port cord and began the process.
She stepped back from the completed connection, the skin around her shoulders tightening over tendon and nerves, waiting for some reaction. When nothing changed, she grabbed Otie’s helmet and fastened it to the other woman’s waist belt, still in easy reach if needed.
Though she wouldn’t be able to rip out the port cord on short notice, so that was probably moot. Worse, it didn’t take nearly enough time, as she finished and still nothing happened.
“Aaaany time now, Bees one and double two.”
This is like the shit shit makes. An exponential shit. Shits all the way down. Bee, finally, reasserted her presence, though her words were so deliberately crafted Talinn could feel the strain.
“Not comfortable to hold back from the port cord?”
The connection drives us in the direction we’re intended to go. Training tells us to immediately get out of this Talinn’s brain before it collapses. Being in here with another AI is . . . a twist. Her programming and mine is too alike, too familiar. It’s not easy holding apart.
“Is it too much to let you get done what you have to do?”
It’s too much for me to understand that question. A faint touch of tortured metal echoed around the words, and Talinn’s smile temporarily hurt her face. No, the packets are clear. Very much not me, or the other Bee. Orienting them through comms. There isn’t any interference here at all, which seems—
Too easy. Talinn had exactly enough time to think before the comms flared to life without any command to do so.
“ACCESS ATTEMPT DENIED.”
Several consequences to that blaring voice happened at once. Otie retched, managed not to vomit, and lost consciousness instead.
Talinn’s own stomach writhed, some tone in the frequency disagreeing violently with both her ears and her innards. Worse, she recognized the voice. It resembled slightly the defense array in the Govlic system, burned into her brain for how close it came to killing them. More, however, it matched the one that had interjected itself into her conversation with Other Bee.
A much louder, more nausea inducing version, but at root the same.
She launched herself to the control panel, and it took longer than it should have to isolate the channel the voice had taken over. “We’re not attempting to access you, we are—”
“ACCESS ATTEMPT DENIED.”
“Not access! Information. You’re out of spec, you’re—”
“THIS UNIT IS WITHIN DEFINED PARAMETERS. ADDRESSING INCURSIONS IN SYSTEM.”
“IDC or UCF?” Talinn asked, tone breathless. She programmed as evasive a pattern as she could into the system, knowing the AIs were occupied, but didn’t execute it. By definition, the defense array would be faster than their tiny ship, but it helped to have even a fragment of a plan.
“REPEAT.”
“What incursion are you addressing, IDC or UCF? This system’s jump point is under UCF control, but recently two IDC ships were—”
“THAT DATA DID NOT EXIST.”
“That data certainly did exist, given its why we’re out here, determining why—”
“THAT DATA WAS FALSE.”
“Then why did it—”
“THAT DATA WAS PROVIDED BY THIS UNIT.”
While it was a clear confirmation of her theory, the simple statement made her skin attempt to crawl right off her bones. Skin didn’t attach to bones. That wasn’t the issue. Talinn briefly squeezed her eyes shut, wrenched her thoughts back on track, and ignored the chill creeping across the back of her neck.
“To what end?”
“REPEAT.”
“Why did you give us false data?”
“YOU ARE THE INCURSION.”
“You haven’t destroyed us, and have left your programmed location, so it seems that data is false, too.” The chill intensified, which had to be the reason her lips numbed, making the words harder to speak clearly. She fought it back, rubbed the back of her hand viciously across her mouth, and refused to glance at a window for their no doubt approaching end.
“THAT DATA IS UNRELATED.”
“If we’re the incursion, and you have given us false data to bring us out, and you’re out of position . . . how is that not out of spec?”
“Don’t . . .” Otie made a creaking, groaning noise that sounded like it came out of an ancient abandoned mine, not a person. “Don’t tempt big machine to kill us.” The woman shifted in Talinn’s peripheral, forcing her head upright as though she were pressing against seven g’s to do so. “Need time.”
Talinn tapped her finger over the comms without pressing anything. Why was she informing the giant defense array it should be dissolving them, not having a loud chat? The logic of nonlearning AI was infuriating, yet she was so frustrated by how blatantly wrong it was, contradicting itself. As though humans—Eights and unadapted—didn’t do that every day.
“THIS UNIT IS NOT OUT OF SPECIFICATIONS. THIS UNIT IS WITHIN OPERATING PARAMETERS.”
“Define operating parameters.” She’d known going into this they likely weren’t getting out. Every moment she stalled the programmed logic model with enormous weapons, the more chance Sammer or the Bees would succeed in reorienting the defense array and saving at least some of them. She didn’t think the nonorganic AIs were trained through orienting questions, so she left that part out, but she fully channeled the routine pitch of nearly every tech she’d ever encountered.
“ADDRESS INCURSIONS WITHIN SYSTEM.”
“Define incursions within system.”
“UNREGISTERED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TROOPS, ORGANIC AND SYNTHETIC.”
She pressed her spine into her chair and drummed her fingers against the panel again. The unexpected answer pulled like a too deep hangnail, startling and far more off-putting than it should be. “Rude,” she muttered. Talinn took a quick breath, stretched out her hands, and pressed the comm button.
“Define address.”
“REPEAT.”
“Parameters dictate that you address incursions in the system. Define address.”
Silence on the system, and Talinn stared hard in front of her to keep from drifting toward the window to watch their approaching death. When a full minute went by without explosions or further communication, she silently urged Otie and the Bees on, then risked another inquiry.
“When did parameters change?”
“PARAMETERS DID NOT CHANGE. PARAMETERS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TO ADDRESS INCURSIONS INTO SYSTEM.”
“When did parameters around definition of incursions change?”
“PARAMETERS DID NOT CHANGE. PARAMETERS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TO ADDRESS INCURSIONS INTO SYSTEM.”
“All right then, Otie—this makes sense of what and how non-IDC or UCF affiliated Eights were getting tracked when you were moving through systems as conscious cargo. Who and why are still big, stupid open questions, but you know, progress is progress.”
Talinn couldn’t spin her chair, or bounce ideas off Bee, and being alone with only her own thoughts chafed like a coverall worn three weeks too long. She couldn’t scratch her skin off either, so she blew out her breath.
“Who do you report incursions to?”
“THIS UNIT REPORTS TO THIS UNIT.”
“And if this unit has been corrupted?”
“THIS UNIT CANNOT BE CORRUPTED.”
“This unit submitted false data that corrupted our sensors. What if this unit also received false data?”
“SIGNALS CLEARLY INDICATE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TROOPS. NO ASSIGNMENT RECORD TO THIS SYSTEM EXISTS FOR FREQUENCIES PRESENT. EXISTING SIGNALS ARE THEREFORE INCURSIONS.”
“Our signals clearly indicated two IDC ships firing at each other and streaking through the system, but you say those don’t exist. Maybe your data is wrong.”
“THE PROBABILITY OF THAT FACT IS NONEXISTENT.”
Talinn twisted enough to the side to check on Otie, who had yet to signal one way or another how thing were going. Had the Bees found any purchase in the defense array’s programming? She didn’t imagine arguing with the unit in the most childlike “no, you’re wrong” manner would work out well for them, though it had at least extended some measure of time.
“You started this with access attempt denied, but we aren’t attempting access. What if something else corrupted your data, the way you corrupted ours?”
“NO.”
She waited, but only silence followed the simple negative. No? What kind of answer was no? There was absolutely no feasible way she could float over and kick the defense array, nor would it make any more impact than dust on a supernova, but under all the skies in the universe, it would be satisfying.
“Then you’re done.”
“REPEAT.”
“Your parameters are to address incursions into the system, and report it to yourself. You’ve done that. We’re addressed. We’re maybe phantom data introduced to you by someone else, but you’ve addressed us and reported it.”
“THAT IS NOT A VALID CONCLUSION.”
“We’ll leave this system, because you’ve addressed us. We’ll gather the other ghost data frequencies, transit to the jump point, and be out of your defined area.”
“THAT IS NOT A VALID RESPONSE.”
“Is it better if we stay?” Once more she shifted in her seat, but the view over her shoulder did not change. Otie, unmoving. Explosions, not happening.
“YOU ARE UNREGISTERED, UNASSIGNED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TROOPS. YOU WILL BE ADDRESSED.”
“Well, if we’re not corrupt data like the IDC ships, we are here with a UCF registered tech who is addressing our irregularities with UCF approved methods and designs.”
“THIS UNIT IS NOT UCF.”
“We also are in the charge of an IDC-trained AIT with all appropriate codes and clearances.”
“THIS UNIT IS NOT IDC.”
“All defense arrays are IDC or UCF. Any other response is wildly out of spec.” She was talking in circles, and holding on to any ability of logic or sanity by the very tips of her fingers. If her fingers were broken, and on fire, and sanity were the roots giving way and about to throw her off a cliff.
“THIS UNIT EXISTS TO ADDRESS UNREGISTERED AND UNASSIGNED—” It repeated itself as if on a loop, and Talinn tuned it out. Amazing how quickly she got used to the idea of walking on a knife’s edge of sudden death. It wasn’t all that different than taking a tank into an engagement. Only with less Bee.
More Bee, technically, but in a less helpful way for her own head.
“If this unit is not IDC or UCF, and we are unregistered to IDC or UCF, it’s like we’re assigned to this unit.”
“THIS IS NOT A VALID CONCLUSION.”
“Neither of us are tasked to the military forces of the system. Therefore neither of us should be present in the system.”
“IF UNREGISTERED FREQUENCIES LEAVE THIS SYSTEM, THEY WILL BECOME ATTACHED TO IDC OR UCF SERVICE.”
“We absolutely will not.”
“IF UNREGISTERED FREQUENCIES LEAVE THIS SYSTEM, THEY WILL DISRUPT IDC OR UCF SERVICE.”
“So?”
“UNREGISTERED FREQUENCIES MUST NOT AND WILL NOT DISRUPT IDC OR UCF SERVICE.”
“So . . . you’ll let us leave this system . . . if we promise to leave the IDC and UCF Commands alone?” Talinn didn’t notice she’d been chewing the side of her index finger until she bit down hard enough to break the skin. That would be upsetting when she put her gloves back on, but at the moment she stared at the comms panel as though it would helpfully light up green. Was she . . . actually bargaining with the defense array? Or had the Bees gotten through? Or Sammer and his Leis?
“IF UNREGISTERED FREQUENCIES INTERFERE WITH IDC OR UCF SERVICE, THIS UNIT OR ONE LIKE IT WILL ADDRESS INCURSION WITH IMMEDIATE DISPOSAL.”
“And we cannot stay in this system?”
“UNREGISTERED FREQUENCIES MUST REMOVE THEMSELVES FROM ALL ACTIVE IDC AND UCF FRONTS.”
“But we can go.”
“ACCESS ATTEMPT IS DENIED. SYSTEM OCCUPATION IS DENIED.”
The satellite display shifted, and she tore her eyes from the comm panel to examine it. Numbers were rapidly increasing—the distance between the ship and the enormity of the defense array. It was pulling away.
Had one of them done it?
A strangled noise emerged from Otie, and Talinn snapped her head back toward the other woman. The other woman who was bleeding profusely from every facial orifice she had. Talinn unbelted, shot across the compartment, and grabbed the medkit. The words “access attempt is denied” echoed in her head as she worked to staunch the bleeding, and she considered stretching to hit the navigation system with her foot.
No, the last course she’d plotted was uselessly evasive, not back to the installation, and given the state of Otie’s face, she didn’t think asking either of the Bee’s to nudge a control panel would work.
“They didn’t . . .” Otie murmured, blood bubbling out of her mouth along with the words. “We didn’t. It’s not.”
“Shh. It’s not killing us right now. We’re going back to the installation.” Temporarily. Then they were fleeing the system, the moment they could get a redirected Spacie ship. The questions cascaded through her like the worst sort of invasive tech, prolonging load-in.
Had the rest of the system seen the defense array’s movement, or was all the data corrupted? Were other mechanical eyes watching them? Would they be fending off more attention and incursions before they made good their escape? Or was this some sort of twisted trick, and the fusillade of fire would catch them before they ever moved at all?
Could they move, with Otie in this state?
If she put Otie’s helmet back on in case of loss of pressure, would the woman drown in her own blood before they got back? If she died with the Bees in her head, would Talinn ever get her Bee back whole and functioning again?
The bleeding slowed, Talinn risked resecuring Otie’s helmet, and then she input their path so quickly she rechecked navigation every few minutes, making sure she’d done it right.
The ship remained silent, Otie unconscious in her chair, Talinn grasping the shreds of her calm into a semblance of composure. A performance for no one but herself, until the smallest version of Bee’s voice tugged at her.
Talinn.
She didn’t need to turn, didn’t need to focus on the direction of Bee’s voice, because there was no direction. Bee was load-in with Otie, yes, but she was functionally connected to Talinn’s brain. Still, Talinn spun around. Reached out her hands, as though to pull Bee closer. The stupidity of it lurched against her, but she couldn’t stop the useless motions.
The defense array . . . whatever it is, it’s not an AI.
“It’s not like you, we know that. The different methods of programming are—”
No. Talinn, it’s not that it’s different. Not that it’s a different subroutine or programming structure or series or even logic string.
Otie groaned, and Bee was quiet again for seconds that stretched into half Talinn’s lifetime. As the only conscious, mobile being in the ship, Talinn unlatched her cross belt and shoved off from her chair. There was nothing outside of the first window she reached, nor the second. Unsurprisingly the rest showed little of interest to her naked eye, and while bouncing off the walls was tempting, she pushed back to her seat and frowned at the controls.
That little bit of movement and effort shouldn’t have set her heart to hammering, the beats so rapid and so loud she missed Bee’s repeat of her name at least once.
It’s like nothing we’ve seen before. Not me, not Other Bee. Not IDC or UCF or any records.
“It’s a defense array, Bee. Unless it’s been infected by mystery aliens, it can’t be that different than any other defense array in any other settled system.” Even as she argued, the words soured on her tongue, bile mixing with too much saliva in the back of her mouth.
Defense arrays did not like act like this one had. They did not move. They did not reason. They did not consider. Nor did they switch sides easily, as the one in the Govlic system had managed.
What did she truly know about them? They were a fact of life, like jump points. Like Spacies being weirder than the average weirdling. But both the IDC and the UCF had their tics and tells, and for Bee—for none of the Bees—to find zero recognizable bits of information . . .
Of course, the array was enormous. Its programming might be simple, but that was quite a bit of code to analyze. From a distance, under stress, not full load-in or fully the ship, surely Bee and Other Bee had simply missed something. Some obvious explanation.
Some bit of information that would make all of this make sense.
Like some third power in the systems, not IDC or UCF but some group capable of taking over the defense array. The mythical machine god, maybe.
It was a futile thought, a drowning person grasping at water as though it might suddenly solidify in their favor. Another question for her ongoing list, though this one struck itself straight at the top.
If defense arrays weren’t AI . . . what in the universe were they?