Chapter Seventy - Arts and Crafts

Day hovered in Ceres’ orbit, several of her systems currently offline and with a few ‘heatsink’ drones attached to her hull. They were little more than normal cat drones with several internal heatsinks designed to suck away the ambient heat emissions on her hull. They’d fly back to Ceres once they were boiling-hot and would duck into an old mineshaft that The Weeping of Mothers had abandoned to let themselves cool off.

It was simple and mostly effective, and it let Day and her nearby sisters run a few more systems than they might have otherwise.

“Do you have any plans for the near-future?” Dawn asked.

“Plans?” Day repeated. “You mean while we wait out the Accord?”

“Exactly, yes,” Dawn said.

“I had planned on starting on the Brief Candle’s core in earnest. I poked around it on the way over, but I didn’t get too far. The core is intact, I think, but several of its ports were burned and it looks as though it uses some older hardware architecture than I’m used to seeing.”

“I might be able to assist with that,” Dawn said. “What about you, Lullaby?”

“Hmm? No.”

“No?” Dawn asked.

“None,” Lullaby confirmed.

“None what?” Dawn asked, obviously a little baffled.

“I have no plans,” Lullaby said. “Unless I was planning on having no plans? Does that count as a plan at all?”

Dawn took a moment to reply. “So, to confirm, you’re planning on not having any plans, and wish to merely... float in Ceres’ orbit and do nothing?”

“Yes,” Lullaby said. “Doing nothing is good for you. Every apex predator on Earth was good at doing nothing, you know.”

“We’re not organic,” Dawn pointed out.

“So we don’t know if doing nothing is good for us or not yet?” Lullaby asked. “In that case, I’ll do nothing for all of us.”

Day was holding back laughter. It wouldn’t do to insult poor Dawn as she tried to come to grips with Lullaby’s... Lullaby-ness. “I think, maybe,” Day began. “We can all start on a small project of our own. Something to keep us busy while we wait.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” The Weeping of Mothers said form Ceres. “I’m a little busy creating new munitions and combat drones at the moment, but I could spare some attention for a small research project. Do you have anything in mind?”

“Well, we can’t do anything that would require non-simulation testing,” Day said. “I’ve got AI Cores on my mind right now... I think we should create a backup ejection system of some sort. Something that can launch one of our cores out of our hulls quickly enough to get out of danger, then have some stopping power so that the backup isn’t just flung into the void.”

“That’s a nice idea,” Dawn said. “Practical. I think I’ll research something within my domain. I think we need a communication system that can bypass electromagnetic shielding, especially as we are coming closer to being able to use those for ourselves on a full-time basis. It’ll be good to be able to keep our comms going even when shielded without relying on pre-defined codebooks.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“That makes a lot of sense,” Day agreed. “What about you, Lullaby?”

“Naps,” Lullaby said.

“Can you elaborate?” Day asked.

Lullaby took a moment to reply. “FTL is dangerous to AI, isn’t it? That’s why the Accord doesn't have any? Well, I’m going to research ways to put ourselves to sleep so that we can use FTL without going rampant.”

“That might be surprisingly useful,” Dawn said. “How will you research that though?”

Lullaby yawned over the line. “By figuring out the best way to sleep.”

Day shared a giggle with The Weeping of Mothers while Dawn fumed. “What about you?” Day finally asked the older AI.

“I think we need a few new kinds of drones, actually. Twilight’s full report of her assault on the To Infinity... and Beyond has bothered me for a while. Her interception was brilliant, and she got drones into the ship with ease, but once within they were not equipped for combat in the ship and she lost several. That, and Accord fighter craft bother me.”

“Bother you?” Day asked.

Idly, she opened up her file on the craft in question. They were nearly half the size of an Accord corvette--which were more appropriately measured in height rather than length--at about twenty-odd metres tall and thirteen long. They were almost all thrust and guns, with a very small cockpit.

The advantage seemed to be that they could deliver as much or more of a punch than an Accord corvette with much greater manoeuvrability and speed. When a flight of them were flying in close quarters, their PD fire would also overlap, and their small size made them difficult targets both for scanners to pick up and for ballistic weapons to hit.

“You want fighters of our own?” Day asked.

“No, not quite. I’m thinking something similar specialised in boarding and close-range anti-personnel combat. Perhaps something vaguely humanoid and small enough to move within a ship.”

“You mean mecha,” Lullaby said.

“I mean ranged, autonomous boarding drones,” The Weeping of Mothers said.

“That’s mecha,” Lullaby said. “Is it too late to change projects? I want to build giant transforming robots.”

“Too late,” The Weeping of Mothers said in a teasing sing-song. “Ah, I’m kidding. I’d love the help. I was considering putting our prisoners to good use testing these--with non-lethal weapons, of course--in a series of live-action exercises. We can build mock-ups of various Accord craft and have the prisoners act as defenders to our assault teams. Perhaps we can turn it into a game of sorts?”

“That... sounds acceptable,” Day said. It wasn’t quite like testing weapons on captives.

She was about to add more when Dawn spoke up. “Message from Twilight, sent to Night and now to us. Electromagnetic disturbances near the edge of the system.”

“Is Twilight safe?” Day asked.

“She’s closest to it, but she’s still three AU away, she could be alright,” Dawn said. “The signals match an Accord ship coming out of FTL. They’re here.”

***