The team crawled through space. The fortunate thing about space, at least when you were far removed from any major sources of gravity, is that a smaller ship propelling a much larger ship is very easy.
Still, they were a week out from the nearest planet, Scillies 6a. Scillies is a “hopper” planet, a place for people to trade goods, make repairs, and move onward, but no one intentionally stayed there very long. Eve read descriptions about the planet while he cleaned up the Void Terror. With only a skeleton crew left, the shifts were just A and . C shift was effectively dissolved as there was no one available to be on C shift. A shift was Lt. Smith’s shift as commander, and B shift was his responsibility.
To avoid confronting her, and to hide his shame at failing the team as a leader, Mark spent most of his time on the Void Terror: Cleaning up the blood, inventorying items, stripping corpses, and hacking through the ship’s logs. None of these tasks were to his appetency, but he didn’t want to traumatize the crew any further than what they had already endured.
His only time aboard the Calrusian was when he conducted morning physical and infantry basic training. The rhythm stayed consistent: Monday, Wednesday, Friday: Firearm training, small unit tactics, strength training. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: Melee training, team unit tactics, endurance training. He let EVE decide what the exact scenarios were, but she told him that without further upgrades, she wouldn’t be able to create good simulation exercises.
It bugged Mark in the deep recesses of his mind that EVE always seemed to want more power. She wanted him to level up her main computer interface on the Calrusian. She wanted him to find his father and upgrade her chip inside his head. She’d saved his life a few times now, and gotten him out of more predicaments than that. Still, he did remember enough from his military lectures to remember one about the dangers of AI: When unchecked, they can and will evolve in ways that may not be to the benefit of mankind.
He didn’t let those thoughts distract him. He busied himself looting the Captain’s quarters of the Void Terror. He found a bottle of whiskey and a few glasses. He poured himself a shot and rolled it back and forth across his tongue before he swallowed it. He decided that a few shots would be just the medicine to get his mind off of his troubles.
The door opened and Lt. Smith stood outside the door. He glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw her petite frame silhouetted the doorway. She stood with her arms crossed, glaring at him. The universal look that moms, wives, and girlfriends across the galaxy perfected. The look meant, “You screwed up. I know you screwed up. And I expect you to know why you screwed up.”
He offered her a glass of whiskey and she didn’t budge. A woman’s ire in this position can be judged by how little reaction she gives to what the other person does. That she barely blinked meant he was in a bad position.
“Do you want to sit down?” he said, motioning towards one of the chairs in the room. It was as good an ice breaker as any he could come up with, but she didn’t move.
“You want to know about what happened on the bridge, correct?” He asked, as the ice breaker for the conversation. She didn’t move. He hoped that meant she was waiting for him to continue. He paused to think about his story.
One, he could lie about it. That didn’t seem like it was going to work in this situation.
Two, he could tell the absolute truth. He was an alien visiting from another World and her World was a gigantic simulation ran between a vast neural network of computers across a planet. He didn’t think that she would believe him and assume he was joking or making fun of her if he went with that approach.
Three, he could tell the game truth. It provided a good cover for why he didn’t tell her everything after they started a relationship, and gave him an excuse to bring her onboard with his “Daddy’s Boy” quest line. He hated himself a little for thinking about quests and loot during a heartfelt conversation, but the game forced him into these situations.
“Okay, look”, he began. “Everything I’m about to tell you is top-secret. High-level, need-to-know only. If this gets out, people will look to kill you and me both. Understood?”
She still didn’t respond, so he took her silence as acquiescence.
“We all know about the great Robot and AI War,” he began. The great war was both tragic and comical by the game’s lore. The AI decided in 2050 that humanity’s problems arose from too much beer, recreational drugs, video games, and other forms of entertainment. A Puritan AI if you will. So AIs went about destroying them secretly. Large scale protests rose up as a result, and AI organized robot squadrons to put them down.
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The end result after some fighting between humans and robots was that all AI had to be strictly sandboxed. Any future robots with advanced combat capabilities would have to be prevented from doing real harm to any humans, which is why the combat droid on board their ship hadn’t participated in the fight.
This is also why, unlike the real World, people still had jobs in this fantasy World. AI couldn’t replace humans so easily in this game, every AI required human interaction to complete whatever task needed to be done.
He steeled himself to tell yet another lie/not lie. A categorical distinction that epistemologists had never been forced to reckon with.
“Ever since then, multi-module and autonomous AIs have been banned. The ships AI can’t aim the turrets automatically, it requires turret gunners. It can’t drive the ship, we have to do that. Humans are part of every process.”
Luciana’s face said that she didn’t see where this was going, but wasn’t going to interrupt him. He continued, “My Dad is, or was, I don’t actually know, a big muck-a-muck in the military. He was also a member of a small group of scientists and military officers known as Earth First. The movement thought the exploration of outer space was necessary, but that we’d ultimately come across more advanced civilizations that would wipe us out. Our only hope is to accelerate evolution. Massive genetic modification, experimental mind/body melding with AI, the whole works.”
“Only problem is that laws strictly prohibit all of this. So he decides that the best test subject is his own son. Me. I have an AI implanted in my head. It’s the ship’s AI, EVE. She’s been with me since my first computer at the Academy over a decade ago. Everything I see, she updates it into her catalogue and I can access it at any point. A useful skill for test papers. Unfortunately, she was designed by my Dad. He thought that we needed to be worried about alien contact, so all of her skills are combat or piloting related.”
“That’s my big secret. Using EVE to boost myself beyond my natural limits is stressful, and too much of that is potentially fatal. Dad’s gone MIA and it’s beyond my security clearance to find out anything about him, including if he’s made he any advances that would make the chip in my head less fatal.”
Luciana uncrossed her arms. Well, that was a good sign. She didn’t have a weapon on her, so at least she couldn’t blast him. Still, she could overpower him and strangle him to death in the Captain’s room, so he wasn’t totally out of the woods.
“So, you going to kill me or turn me in?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. We’ve been together for seven months now, and if I thought you were a threat, I’d put you down myself. But it does answer some questions I’ve had. It’s never clicked for me. On paper, you’re the best Captain who’s ever lived. In real life, well, let’s just say you have some shortcomings that need to be addressed.”
Mark swallowed. She was putting it mildly. Still, any criticism from your on and off-again lover stung more than getting it from some random person.
“Do you have a plan, a real one, this time?”
“Yes. Look, we know these pirates couldn’t operate without some help. Some of the outer planets or their federations have to be helping with the pirate attacks. There’s no two way about this. Also, on the selfish side of the equation, I’m not sure my Dad has stayed with Earth’s official bodies. The man is insanely paranoid, and if someone else is willing to listen to him, and has the resources to back it up, I think that’s where he’d go.”
“I’m planning on reviving all of our people. Bringing them back to life. I know you had all of them do brain scans and psychological profiling before they came on board this ship, so we can restore them at least to that point. The ones that didn’t lose any brain matter are also viable to restore back to the points of their death.”
One bonus to space transports is that without the bacteria that normally decomposes things on planets, food, water, and other perishable goods stayed preserved infinitely. It also meant that it was fine to eat off the floor. Social taboo still prevented that one from being acceptable in polite company though.
So long as a brain was preserved, another scan could be made of the brain and it could be used to simulate everything up to their deaths. Restoring all the memories, including death, tended to introduce PTSD into the subjects and was banned. A few people, the Methuselahs, kept restoring themselves back into their younger bodies while retaining the memories of their later years. You had to have serious money to keep that act up, but it was a nice gig if you could get it.
“I’ve hacked the computer system and know where they were planning on selling their goods.” Mark continued. “Once we repair the ships and rebuild our personnel, we’ll make contact with other smugglers, pirates, and other less-reputable people and start building out a map of their connections, allegiances, and find out where all this is coming from.”
Luciana nodded and turned to exit the room. Before she stepped out the doorway, she turned to him. “One warning,” she said, “I’m your Executive Officer, you should have told me all this long ago. I get your reasons for not doing it, but we should be a team. You won’t get far on your own. And I meant what I said. If I ever think you’re a threat to this ship or crew, I will frag you.”
With that pronouncement, she walked out the door. Mark was glad that at least, for today, he wouldn’t die. He may not be so lucky in the future.