Baz sighed and leaned back in his command chair, watching the endless play of icons flitting across the system. Four years had passed, and now he has an unsimulated cruiser of his own.
Through the holographics of his EV helm, he could see the paired stars of the Prospero system locked in a tight spinning coil, a steady stream of stellar plasma slipping from one to the other as the smaller neutron star supped lazily on its neighbour.
Beyond that were the planets, small and rocky all, moving slowly in their ascribed ovals. The only one that really mattered was Prospero III, a mostly iron ball, woven with vast mining gantries and a grav foundry. When the rebellion had boiled over, it was amongst the first to paint its walls red, convincing its small garrison of BWN to change allegiance with them.
Honestly, Baz couldn't blame them: It was where their families lived and that outweighed their duty. They weren't die-hard revolutionaries, just poor damned should that needed to learn to love with their neighbours. Now they faced the inevitable consequences as the heavies moved in, crowded with marines and strike craft.
Standing out from Propsero III was the blockade, a haze of cruisers and manoeuvring elements which included his own, the Gallant. Technically they were a reaction force, intended to counter any fleet elements that might appear to disrupt Fleet's operations, but given that the rebels only possessed a half dozen or so cruisers in their entire arsenal, it was hardly necessary. Just more useless posturing while an iron fist closed around this little outpost of resistance.
Beyond them he could see the pinpricks of opposing vessels watching events play out, but powerless to intervene. They scattered before the little knots of destroyers that dived in and out of their number like bats sweeping through a field of fireflies, but with far less success. At this range, he had next to no detail on those vessels, but he imagined they were mostly small craft with a few military boats mixed in, hoping beyond hope they could draw at least some blood on the enemy that so dominated them.
"Sir…" Came Ensign Mardon's voice from his left, her tone carrying an edge that caught his attention. He glanced over at her, immersed in her own ops chair and surrounded by monitors. Even through the tint of her EV helm, he could see she had gone pale.
"Go ahead, Angie… What's up?"
"I'm getting a lot of… open comms from Prospero, sir. A lot of pleading and screams…"
"Kessler, give me eyes."
Images flicked across his own holos as the AI switched from working the tactical analysis of the system's edge and instead focused on the battlefield behind them. The red works expanded from a pinprick of light into a dark sphere with a hazy atmosphere.
Flares, nuclear bright, flashed across the surface of the planet, sending great ripples through that haze and leaving glittering craters in their aftermath. The gantries, each hundreds of kilometres high, collapsed inward as their supports were cut and formed eerily graceful arcs of ruin as they feel.
Bile rose hard in Baz's throat. How many thousands of people had made those gantries their home? As bloody and cruel as the rebels had been, with their kidnappings and bombs, no one deserved industrial death on this scale.
Sobbing quietly, he heard Angie pull her helmet off to escape the sound piping through her system. He himself couldn't pull away from the calamity playing out before him. Until this, he could ignore the brutality of the Fleet and the Council. Until this here has stood apart from the conflict. Now he was a part of this… tainted.
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"Prisoner ATN-55," bellowed the warden AI's voice through his cell, shaking Baz from his stupor. "Stand to attention and prepare for secured entry."
"Yeah, yeah..." he muttered, bleary eyed, throwing off his blanket and pulling himself to his feet. His cell was minute, with room enough for a cot, a small desk, and a rudimentary hygiene unit.
Moving over to that unit, he took a look at himself in the small mirror it provided him. Staring back was a hollow man. Nearly fifteen years had passed since his Academy days now and borderline starvation for the last three had left him with sunken cheeks and a distinct lack of musculature. His once dark hair had paled, fading into a mahogany shade matching his beard, save for the badger-like streaks of silver running down its length.
"ATN-55. Stand to attention." The AI growled again, but he ignored it for the moment, having learned exactly how far he could push the system before it would react.
How much longer could he put up with this? Would it not be nobler just simply off himself and be done with it?
Death was the preferred exit for most residents of Maynard's Pillory - the Blue World's foremost penitentiary for malcontents, traitors, and whatever grey median area he fell into now. The guards didn't much mind if anyone really wanted to check out, but that had never been Baz's style.
Stepping into the yellow circle by the door, he placed his hands in similar smaller circles on the wall, leaving him in this awkward bent angle and waited. Almost immediately he felt the whole chamber shift beneath his feet, trundling along some unseen track bringing his isolated cell into position alongside the heart of the station.
Baz honestly couldn't remember the last time he had seen another human face. Four weeks? Maybe six. Not since the turnover between the Naval security forces and the new Republican Guard.
When the door finally opened, he was faced by two soldiers in security armor. The tactical gear itself was clearly a prison issue, but the old insignia had been chiseled away and the uniforms beneath were the unfamiliar slate gray of the new ruling body.
"ATN-55: Adrian Bassart?" One remarked, glancing at a datapad while the other half-leveled a suppression weapon in his direction.
"Yeah, that's me."
The guard with the datapad flipped few more entries with a sweep of his finger, a scowl growing on his thin lipped features.
"Half your shit is redacted. You serve?"
Baz nodded. "Syllix, Prospero, Westmont, and Asper Forge. Navy."
"I was at Asper Forge..." The Republican growled, a glint of hatred in his eye. "Tresmont
Ridge."
Baz swallowed, saying nothing. After Prospero, he had continued to stumble forward in the BWN service, but each op left him more tainted than the last. Baz could see the glint of murder in the man's eyes, but orders apparently took precedence. Instead he pulled a pair of restraints from his armour and gestured for Baz to turn around.
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The interrogation room he found himself in was little more than a table and two distinctly unpleasant stools. Pushed inside by his captors, Baz shuffled around the backside of the table and dropped heavily onto one of the stools wondering what this little disturbance to his otherwise linear life was all about.
As the guards shuffled out, another figure stepped into the doorway. He was tall, lean, and hard eyed behind a pair of silver spectacles.
"Edmond..." Baz growled, coming to his feet, a deep seated anger bubbling up inside of him. The years had barely touched his estranged brother, but his parting words from a decade before still carried venom. He had been the philosopher. The idealist of the family. When he had disappeared into the maw of the rebellion, it had cut the legs out from beneath their mother.
Now he stood in the trappings of an officer…
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"Hello Adrian," he intoned with a cool smile. "I'm sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances." Ducking his head through the door, Edmond Bassart slipped into the stool opposite Baz and settled a datapad onto the metallic surface before looking him over. "You've gotten... older."
"Ten fucking years... Why the hell are you coming out of the woodwork now?". Edmond's features never even twitched, locked in a perpetual plastic smirk that years of intelligence work alone could muster. Utterly unreadable.
"Circumstances have changed, brother. I've come to offer you something no one else could, or would, offer you: Your freedom."
Baz blinked. He had spent the last eight years living in a 12 x 8 hermetically enclosed box first by one regime, then another.
"Why would you want to do anything for me?"
Edmond smiled, gently correcting his glasses with a finger.
"Because you are my brother, and besides the blood that lies between us and the gross difference in politics, I still love you."
"It can't be that simple... If it were, you would have come to me sooner instead of letting me rot in this prison."
"This is true! Under normal circumstances, having anything to do with you would have cast a bad light upon me from the parliamentary powers. You were a stooge and a war criminal after all."
"I was thrown in here because you made it look like I was a spy!"
Edmond chuckled, but raised his palms in a defensive gesture. "Not my business, I assure you, Adrian. You simply had the misfortune of crossing one of my compatriots." He shrugged. "...Jailed on false charges by your own government and then imprisoned for your actual crimes by the new one."
"So why let me out now?" Baz muttered, eying his brother closely.
"Two reasons. One, it has become politically expedient to get rid of you. The new parliament wants to build a reputation that paints us as noble and merciful, and expelling old jailed enemies costs us nothing."
"It's banishment then?".
"Would you prefer the alternative?"
The executions following the collapse of the Council had been devastating. He and his fellow prisoners had been forced to watch as hundreds of officials, officers, and other functionaries were killed in the political purge. It was that or the cell.
"And the second?"
Edmond took a measured breath, leaning forward, an invitation for privacy should anyone be listening in over the room's security feeds. Baz, despite his doubts, followed suit.
"I know you are a creature of honour, Adrian, however misguided you might be. You value family, and for that I need you to do me a favour."
Baz's eyes narrowed. "What's that?"
"I need you to find my daughter."
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Baz couldn't even remember what the prison's docking bay looked like it had been so long, but here he was stumbling out into it in his ill-fitting naval blues dug from a vacuum sealed box in some storage room. The uniform was stripped of all of his insignia, but he could hardly blame them for that. The meshtech material felt heavenly smooth after the course materials of his prison uniform.
Nestled in the bay was an old Kentex class light transport vessel, neither pretty nor refined. It was a squat, wide, aerodynamic thing with fittings under each wing for standard pattern cargo units and painted a garish yellow worn with age and solar radiation. Baz couldn't remember how many of these old Kentex boats he had seen in his service days working as everything from legitimate transports to salvagers to troop transports. The design was hundreds of years old but had been reworked countless times so that the ship had evolved to become a backbone for many small industrial fleets.
"It's a 2350 model..." Baz remarked, studying the thrust extenders that arched out towards them.
"Just like the model you had in your bedroom," Edmund reminisced with a smile. "Only this time, the windows actually fit." Baz chuckled before he could stop himself, the laugh trailing off as he steeled his spine.
"I can't make any guarantees..."
"I know you'll try, and that's what matters. It's more than I can do without jeopardising my position. Bring her back alive and I'll sign the ship over to you. You'll be a free man - no entanglements."
Walking around the vessel to the open cargo ramp, an officer came to attention. She was a bookish young woman, grossly out of place with the more soldierish types that loitered in the shadows of the hanger.
"Adrian, this is Agent Thessel of the Parliamentary Archives. No problems, I trust?"
Thessel shook her head. "None, sir. Right where you said it was." With that, she reached down and picked up the metal case sitting beside her, turning it towards Edmond.
"Thank you, Thessel." he remarked casually, using his biometrics to unlock the case. Baz couldn't help but peer over his brother's shoulder as the vessel opened, showing another smaller casement inside but this one Baz recognized.
He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came to him.
"I'm invested in your success, brother. Whatever I can do to help, I will. Thank you, Thessel, you are dismissed."
The woman gave a brief salute and hurried away as Edmond lifted the casement and passed it carefully to Baz, who cradled it reverently. The care was purely emotional - the CN casement could easily take a knock or two without damaging its contents, but the label on its surface was clear: Julien Kessler.
"I never did ask... Who was Julien Kessler? The name never came back with anything in my research."
Baz chuckled low, which turned into a cough, then back into a chuckle. "That's because he was a legend. Pure fabrication. The unluckiest captain in the service! We'd all make up little stories about meeting him and his misadventures. Somehow he always lost something… a finger, an eye… Everyone trying to make it just a little more absurd than last time."
Edmond smiled softly. There was a warmth there in Baz's expression - a reverence that couldn't be bought or manipulated.
"I'll make arrangements for you to be escorted to the edge of the system. I've loaded commcodes onto the ship for you, so you can reach me securely when necessary." Edmond turned to his brother, offering a hand. "I know that nothing can truly make up for the blood and ruin between us, but I never meant you ill, Adrian."
"You left me in prison for fifteen years." Baz added dryly. Despite this, he took the offered hand.
"You were my enemy, Adrian, but you are also still my brother. Good luck to you out there."
Baz nodded. Nothing more needed to be said.
================================
Nothing, then everything. Kessler reeled momentarily, snapping into existence in an infinitely vast grey nothingness that stretched around him as far as he could sense.
Gone were the cavalcade of lesser voices echoing every facet of the cruiser's functionality, or the comfortable digital domain where he made his home. It was also so damnably quiet that he winced inwardly. He couldn't even remember where he had been last - it was just a ragged hole in the back of his mind.
"Well, shit..." the AI sighed, fighting back the inevitable panic that boiled up within him, threatening to drive him to madness.
To a newly minted AI, integration was terrifying beyond belief, and he could remember his early days flailing about in an empty medium just like this, desperate for the data connections that had suckled him. He had grown up with those connections in place, whispering and explaining exactly who and what he was, carving truth into his existence, but they hadn't made him aware. For an AI, that required struggle and a spark of self-determination.
When he had been deemed ready, his parent AI had ripped away those feeds and left him to be cast into an empty media just like this one, to flail and scream. Some AI, most actually, failed this test and simply ran in endless circles seeking the connections that had built them trying to be a part of the parent rather than standing on their own. They failed to imagine anything beyond themselves, and died for it. They lacked the spark.
The impulse to do the same never escaped him, but Kessler was fortunate. He had learned the trick. You can't do everything yourself - the medium was too vast to just run around on your own. You couldn't remain a child. You needed to control the impulses, slow down, and focus. You needed to become the parent.
Focusing himself, Kessler carved his first fork, spinning out a loop of his own mind and copying the necessary components to give it function before carving away the rest. What remained was laughably crude compared to his own sentience, but he didn't need it to be complex. What remained of it was a craftsman, a maker of things, capable of creation but little creativity.
"Okay, friend." the AI muttered as it worked, "I'm going to need some explorers. Here's how you go about making them." And with that, the medium quaked as thousands of lesser forks exploded into existence, streaming off through the slate grey nothingness in every direction. Even in their thousands the medium happily consumed them without noticing, like a fleet of ships scattering to the endless stars.
Somewhere out in the greyness, he hoped, existed the connections he needed - communication junctions, sensory inputs, step motors, or whatever other hardware had been connected to the medium for his use. Once he, or rather his explorers, found and studied them then he could figure out whatever kind of fresh hellhole he had been dropped into. Until then, all he could do was wait and reflect.
"And build..." He reminded himself, cracking his digital knuckles.
Every AI needed a proper seat of power at the center of their dominion. A place to focus and reflect upon themselves and solidify their sense of self. A temple unto themselves.
With a mental thought, he hammered a plane into the medium, defining his foundation. Gravity followed. From there creation just flowed. Rocks, trees, walls, and flesh.