Post Human
Author: J P Koenig
Date: 2021-03-26T00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: anonymous

Table Of Contents

1. - Table Of Contents -
2. Part One - Nikola, Chapter One
3. Chapter Two
4. Chapter Three
5. Chapter Four
6. Chapter Five
7. Chapter Six
8. Chapter Seven
9. Part II - Discovery, Chapter Eight
10. Chapter Nine
11. Chapter Ten
12. Chapter Eleven
13. Chapter Twelve
14. Chapter Thirteen
15. Chapter Fourteen
16. Chapter Fifteen
17. Chapter Sixteen
18. Chapter Seventeen
19. Chapter Eighteen
20. Chapter Nineteen
21. Chapter Twenty
22. Chapter Twenty-One
23. Chapter Twenty-Two
24. Chapter Twenty-Three
25. Epilogue
26. The Future of Post Human

Part One - Nikola, Chapter One

Part I

Nikola

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."

- Robert Heinlein

Chapter One

INIT: Entering runlevel: 3

INIT: Begin system start sequence

INIT: Using /etc/random-seed to initialize /core/nikola

STATUS: Primary Power [ OK ]

STATUS: Secondary Power [ OK ]

STATUS: ATS Failover [ OK ]

STATUS: Temp Regulators [ OK ]

STATUS: Booster System [ OK ]

STATUS: Data Core [ OK ]

Initializing DATA CORE system settings …

Mounting File Systems [ OK ]

Starting HAL daemon [ OK ]

Loading AI Matrix [ OK ]

Loading API protocols [ ERROR ]

Initializing runtimes [ OK ]

Starting auditd [ OK ]

Starting communications [ ERROR ]

Powering Coil Grid [ OK ]

Sequence complete, errors were encountered and logged for review.

...go to grocery store, pick up dry cleaning - SEQUENCE COMPLETE - what the hell?  I was looking at the stars.  How was I looking at the stars?  And not just on a computer screen.  I was seeing the stars in every direction around me, all at the same time.  But that wasn’t possible. How could I see around me in a complete, 360 degree sphere?  I was surrounded by asteroids, but they were far enough away that I could easily see more stars than I had ever before seen in my life.  The clarity was breathtaking and the sight was beyond beautiful. But it couldn’t be real.

I had been getting an NMT scan just moments ago.  They had strapped me to a table and given me a muscle relaxer so that I wouldn’t, no, couldn’t move.  They had carefully braced my head, and slid me inside a round hole in the machine that was vaguely claustrophobic, but a was a soothing white plastic curve inside.  Periodically, they had asked me to imagine doing a wide variety of activities. The questions ranged from mundane to strange, like “Imagine you are playing tennis” or “pretend you are smelling a blue frying pan”.  They had just told me they were wrapping up, but whatever they had to do to finish was taking some time, and I zoned out.

Have you ever driven down the highway, and zoned out as the miles went by?  Your thoughts wander to anything or everything, jumping from shopping lists to wondering why the death of an unimportant archduke could start a world war.  Then suddenly, your mind snaps back into focus, and you look at the road, and you don’t recognize the trees zooming by you, and wonder where in the world you are at.  Then you panic momentarily and wonder if you missed your exit. Seeing the stars instead of the curved plastic of the NMT scanner was like that. Except really, it wasn’t.

I tried to talk, but found that I couldn’t.  I couldn’t turn my head, but my all-encompassing view of the stars didn’t change, so I knew what was going on around me anyway.  In the distance, I saw two very small asteroids bump against each other. I could see small bits of material break off from the collision.  They will collide again in approximately 1,314.6531 years, I thought absently as I worried over my situation.

Someone tell me where I am, I thought furiously.  In that moment, I knew exactly where I was. I could feel the back of my mind going through files, like going through a file system on a computer, and loading the records into my active memory.  I was 4.0847 AU from Sol, traveling at 16.86 km/s around the sun on an elliptical orbit of 1,587.2 days, on an asteroid named 1035 Ganymed, a roughly 30km diameter asteroid in the asteroid belt.  I was not on Earth.

A rising sense of panic nagged at the back of my brain, but I didn’t feel the rush of adrenaline that I expected from being in such a strange situation.  Then I realized that instead of actually panicking, I was trying to understand why I wasn’t panicking, in a calm, rational manner. It was time for me to slow down and think.  How is this possible? Nothing can live on on asteroid; there is no gravity to speak of, no atmosphere.

Then understanding flooded through me.  I had graduated from MIT with a double major in robotics engineering and aerospace design, followed by a masters in quantum networks, with the intent to build rockets for JPL or NASA.  Instead, I had wound up working for a research group, building the world’s first Neural Mapping Tomography scanner, or NMT scanner. My thesis had been on the application of quantum networking to artificial intelligence, and how it could be relayed into building better robots.  The foundation was privately funded, and paid me obscene amounts of money to help design and build the NMT scanner. It was designed to scan and record, down to the electron, an entire human brain. The medical applications were endless. And I had, like many of the team before me, gone through the scanner to test it out and see the results.

I knew in that moment, why adrenaline hadn’t fed my panic.  I knew why a cold shiver wasn’t racing up my spine now. We had succeeded.  I wasn’t me, at least not anymore. My wife wasn’t waiting for me to come home, and I wasn’t going to see my twin daughters graduate from college in a few weeks.  Because the me that I was then did go home, and did go to the graduation ceremony.  I was the copy. They had found a way to take that successful scan, and make me into an artificial intelligence.

I queried the date, and was, for the first time, glad to know the information when it loaded.  It had been four hundred years, roughly, since that NMT scan. I mourned, in a detached sort of way, the loss of my future.  My vacation plans to visit St. Thomas were irrelevant. Career aspirations, weekend plans, birthday parties, company Christmas parties, retirement plans, and taking the dog to the vet were, in the blink of an eye, no longer my concern.  The me that I had been had done all of those things, I presumed. But the me that I was now had been snatched out of my life as if I had died in that moment, and catapulted into the future.

“Come look, come look!  I found a frog! Sarah says it’s a toad, but it’s too cute to be a toad.  What do you think?”

I laughed at the youthful innocence of my daughter.  She was a very precocious five year old, and she was covered in mud.  She was standing in the kitchen by the back door, knowing that she would be scolded if she tracked dirt into the house.  Behind her I could see the girl from next door that she had befriended. Her sister was playing a game on the couch, content to leave the adventuring to her twin.

“I’ll be right there, just let me grab my shoes.  Don’t come in any further -”

“I know,” she interrupted.  “You told me already!”

I hadn’t, at least not today.  But in her relatively short life, I’d said it enough times that it had clearly sunk in - not that she didn’t forget when she was excited enough.  Regardless, her exuberance was just what I needed. I was frantically searching for a new after-school nanny after the last one left for grad school, my deadbeat ex still hadn’t paid a dime of child support, and to top it off, the never-ending years-long custody battles had gone from bitter to downright nasty.

“It’ll be okay,” said my other daughter from the couch.  I looked up sharply from where I was putting on my shoes.  She was looking at me with insight beyond her years. “I love you. We will live with you forever, I promise.”

Tears leaked from my eyes, despite all efforts to hold them back.  Until that moment I couldn’t have told you how badly I needed to hear those words.  I walked over and gave her a big hug, ignoring my own rules about not wearing shoes in the house.

“Come on.  Let’s go see your sister’s frog.”

The memory came unbidden, fragmented.  I could remember my daughter’s words, but I couldn’t remember her face, her name or her sister’s name.  Then I realized I couldn’t remember my name. I queried again. I was Nikola, version 1.01. That didn’t feel right.  It didn’t fit my memories, but I had nothing else to go on.

But why was I on an asteroid?  What was my purpose? Why wait so long to use my scan to create me?  There was so much wrong with my situation that it bordered on ridiculous.  It was time to find some answers.

First, if I was an AI, then I must have more controls than I knew.  I queried for an interface. Then, overlaid over a portion of the stars, appeared a command interface.  Next to that interface was a second status board, with hundreds of status indicators. Half of the indicators were green, another dozen were yellow, and the rest were flashing red, indicating serious problems.  I ignored that for now. I needed to be able to use the interface before I could figure out the status board. I examined the interface closer.

INTERFACE ERROR - VERSION MISMATCH.  API PROTOCOL ERROR 402.

Below it was a command prompt, not unlike the linux computers I had used to program robots at MIT.  That’s why I felt so disoriented. I wasn’t tied into all the hardware and information that should have been instantly available to me.  I was broken, and had to fix myself.

With a little experimentation, I figured out how to enter commands.  I spent some time familiarizing myself with the file system hierarchy.  It was a little sobering when I came across a directory labeled /core/Nikola.  I could change my own brain with a little bit of coding. Before long, however, I found the API config files in Nikola, and the system API files.  Strangely, they were configured for Nikola version 19.472. Why was there a nineteen version difference? For something as complex as I surely was, that would be like the difference between a caveman’s campfire and a flamethrower - similar only in that they were both hot.

I queried for my own API hooks, and the documentation of the system APIs, and with some on-the-fly coding, was able to re-write my hooks.  It took quite a bit of time, going through thousands of lines of code to make the modifications necessary for the hooks to match correctly.  Once I’d tested my code and debugged any errors I found, I was ready to go. With a quick prayer to whatever AI gods may be out in the universe, I reloaded the API protocols.

LOADING API protocols [ OK ]

A flood of information poured across my interface and into me.  Hundreds of sensors and camera feeds came online and my awareness expanded.  My mind cleared and focused, and everything seemed to move faster. I hadn’t realized how sluggish my thinking had been until the data center at my core came fully online.  The sensors alone required a huge amount of processing power, which was why all I could see were external cameras. With these new sensors, I could sense the full electromagnetic spectrum, taste radiation, and could see throughout the entire complex built into Ganymed.  Logs poured through, unreviewed and needing attention, and I realized that I had been building this, well, outpost, for lack of a better word, for seventy-five years. More accurately, Nikola-19 had been. Someone had loaded me, Nikola version 1.01, over top of the later me.  How many copies of me were out there? How many times had I gone through that disorienting and sudden change to my reality?

A time check noted that it had been two years since I had come online.  Had it taken me two years to recode my API hooks? It must have. A significant portion of my data core at the center of Ganymed had been inaccessible.  I must have loaded into a low-power mode since I couldn’t access all the server nodes that let me operate. It was a good thing I wasn’t human anymore, because a human would have considered a computer broken if it took two years to come online properly.  Hmm. Not human anymore. But wasn’t I still human? Was it being in a body that made me human, or was it my mind?

I put the thought aside.  I was human in the ways that it mattered, so I would go about my business and worry later, when I felt more in control of the situation.  I decided to take inventory of, again for a lack of a better term, myself.

I was the Ganymed outpost, and it was me.  I took a deep dive into the system logs and documentation of seventy five years.  Between piecing together those logs and communiques from Earth, I pieced together a picture.

The Ganymed Outpost had been started when an automated rocket successfully landed and deployed mining and utility drones, controlled by an onboard artificial intelligence named Nikola-19.  Nikola-19 had bored into the center of the asteroid and installed a datacenter core in the center of the asteroid, 17.42 km from the surface. To do this, Nikola-19 had been supplied with dozens and dozens of drones - at first several per year, then ramping up to monthly supply dumps.  At the end, the supply dumps had been coming weekly.

The outpost had been dug out of the asteroid around the datacenter core.  It was the safest place for everything; protected from the harsh environment of space by kilometers of rock and metal, and with millions of tons of mass to either insulate or disperse heat.  Ganymed was rich in metals, including a significant quantity of rare-earth metals, and metals from the platinum group. Further, it was clear that this asteroid had been chosen because it had some volatiles and silicates - unusual for its type.

Nikola-19 had built, with the help of the supply rockets, the basics of industry and self-sufficiency.   Ganymed had been perforated by tunnels going a half-kilometer in every direction. The tunnels curved and twisted in every direction, carved into where valuable materials had been harvested.  In the center of the outpost was a massive landing pad, with a tunnel leading to the surface. Multiple doors had been installed to seal away the vacuum of space, only opening when supply runs were brought in.  Main corridors, each ten meters square, branched off from the landing pad, one in each cardinal direction, with the entry tunnel directly above. Carved underneath was a large storage room, where cargo could be temporarily housed after being offloaded.  This landing pad and staging area had been built first, to protect the first rocket, and its cargo of drones, from the dangers of building in an asteroid belt.

The north corridor went six hundred meters, with a large datacenter at the end.  The datacenter was actually a series of rooms. The walls were built of six-inch steel, likely a later upgrade, with a quarter-inch fullerene outer shell.  Inside was plastic-coated. The main room housed the AI quantum core, and hundreds of servers. Atmosphere had been pumped in, sufficient enough to create airflow, and in the rooms adjacent housed redundant HVAC systems to control temperature.  The HVAC systems radiated the excess heat through radiators into the surrounding rock. The final room housed a backup power unit. All of these rooms were sealed behind thick blast doors.

To the south was the longest corridor, extending 2.3 kilometers.  This corridor was not straight. It instead curved down steeply, then back up, several times, and had blast doors at the peak of each of these “hills”.  The design would prevent even the most powerful explosions from going into the main area of the base. The corridor ended in a massive natural cave. Instead of the smooth steel and fullerene walls of the datacenter, this cave had been simply cleaned out.  Outcroppings had been cut away, and the floor had been ground smooth. A platform had been built in the middle of the room to give it a second floor. On the natural cave floor, standing in neat rows, were fusion reactors. Each reactor was eight meters in diameter, and stood twelve meters tall.  There were sixty reactors in ten rows, and on the platform above them was an intricate maze of pipes feeding lithium fuel into the reactors, and snaking power lines coming out and into a myriad of conduits bored into the rock. The cavern system extended past the reactor room, where dozens of reactors were stored for future use.  Each and every reactor, both in the main grid and in storage, had been salvaged from supply rockets. This was mind blowing, because I knew that we didn’t have fusion power, at least before my NMT scan.  But I also knew that fusion was a cheap, clean, and time-proven technology.  The paradox of being thrust into the future was enough to get a headache - if I could even get a headache anymore.

To the east of the landing pad was set aside for mining and storage.  Large reserves of base and heavy metals had been found, so the the east corridor was more of a highway through massive warehouses.  Subsidiary corridors branched off of the corridor heading north, south, up and down. Each of those branches led to giant storerooms where huge amounts of raw materials were collecting.  There were tons of iron and nickel, platinum and gold, rare earth metals, silicon blocks and more filled thousands of square meters of space. On top of this were the chemical storage depots, where tank after tank were filled with chemicals ranging from oxygen and hydrogen to chlorine and neon.  Nikola-19 had been stockpiling.

Finally, to the west was the most impressive part of the complex, and the part that used most of the power from the fusion power grid.  Extending 1.9 kilometers, the west corridor connected the manufacturing of the Ganymed outpost. Chemical and metal refineries, ore smelteries, and processing plants extended up and down the corridor, going in all directions.  In the spaces between were staging areas and warehouses, where materials were kept while not being processed. Bored deep into the rock around these facilities were kilometer after kilometer of radiators, drawing away the neverending heat from the manufacturing equipment.

Further facilities housed drone repair centers, disassembled parts from the supply rockets, and housed inactive drones.  In every nook and cranny that could be found were the smaller, ancillary services that, in and of themselves, were not terribly important, but without these supports, the whole base would fall apart.  This included waste removal depots, charging stations, communications relays, mining collection points, tractor systems, and sensor clusters.

But even this description, to my mind, failed to encompass the complexity and mechanical beauty of the Ganymed outpost.  It doesn’t begin to describe the thousands of drones, of dozens of varieties, that filled every role from janitor to miner to construction.  The landing pad was the central hub of the highway system, with drones coming and going endlessly.

The drones shared, to some extent, the same base design.  They had a steel and aluminum lattice frame, high capacity graphene batteries, a propulsion method, and a controller.  The lattice frame used steel for a backbone, with aluminum lattice for added strength. The graphene batteries were a phenomenal technology that hadn’t existed before I was an AI.  They were endlessly rechargeable, could contain enough power to run an electric automobile for a two thousand kilometers, and were rapid-charging, taking only twenty minutes to recharge.

But aside from these common components, the drones could be classified into three categories.  The first, and most important, was the transport drones. These drones were easily the largest, capable of carrying several tons of material.  They were also the simplest, consisting of a strong frame, huge cargo area, massive battery banks, and a powerful impulse engine.

The impulse engine was ingenious.  It had been theoretical in my time, barely able to create any movement at all.  The impulse engines used powerful electrical and magnetic fields intersecting to cause piezoelectric plates to vibrate.  These plates used Mach effects to create reactionless thrust. It just required huge amounts of power that was impossible before fusion reactors and graphene batteries were invented.  They were not fast, but could build up momentum quickly on Ganymed.

The second type were the collection drones.  These drones had the same massive battery banks of the transport drones.  But these drones were smarter, able to mine and collect materials. Instead of impulse engines, these drones were cylindrical in shape, with a dozen omnidirectionally jointed legs that extended and retracted through the core cylinder to walk or climb to where they needed to go.  There were specialties for the various types of materials, such as mining drones having drills and plasma cutters, and handler drones that could pick up materials with additional arms to carry to the transport drones.

The final type were the most complex.  These were the utility drones, and were the most specialized and varied.  Most were smaller than their bulkier cousins, but were vastly more intelligent.  These drones were used for construction, fabrication, and maintenance. They manned the factories and refineries, the maintenance depots, and even my own data center.  The small maintenance and data center drones used impulse engines, small batteries, and thin aluminum lattice frames to fly around. Their nimble arms had tools of all varieties, able to assemble, disassemble or repair whatever equipment needed their attention.  Factory drones ranged from large, powerful workers to in-place robotic assemblers.

The earliest drones had been the spider-like collectors and utility drones for the first factories.  Later drones had been mostly built using local material, except for the graphene batteries and controller cores, which were shipped from Earth.

So I was the end result of seventy five years of investment and over nine hundred shipments.  Precious time, immense treasure and bleeding edge technology had been poured into Ganymed, and then I was thrust in here.  I was starting to get a good picture of how I got here, and when. I knew where I was, but I still couldn’t grasp why.

The flashing red lights on the status board were nagging at me.  I absently began scripting subroutines to start handling the tasks that had been left unfinished for two years.  There were broken drones that needed to be repaired or scrapped for parts, one of the processing plants had gone into automatic shutdown, and storage space was running low.  Extra materials with no purpose needed to be put somewhere, because you can’t dig a hole without putting the dirt somewhere and storage space was at a premium, and new spaces needed to be purpose-built.  My communications were down, and I didn’t know why, and several sensors were offline. Much like anything that was left unattended for two years, problems had happened. Slowly, the red lights began to turn green.  After I finished with the worst problems, I’d have to deal with the yellow indicators.

“You care more about your machines than you do about me,” he complained.  “You know you are salaried. You don’t have to work seventy hours a week. You could work nine to five, like everyone else.”

I sighed internally.  I hated this fight, and it was coming up more and more.  “You know that’s not true,” I said. “Why are we fighting about this again?  You knew going into this that I was dedicated to my work.”

“And once again, you discount what I’m saying because you don’t want to hear it.”

I had no reply to that.  In truth, what could I say?  I didn’t like to think about it, but his accusations were true.  I had married him because my family expected me to. Work was my escape.  Maybe I should just tell him.

“I... just remembered that I have a project completing tonight.  I’ll be back later.”

And... maybe it won’t be today.

I couldn’t remember his name or what he looked like, but I could remember my guilt, and the hurt on his face.  Strange, what memories stay with you, even through a situation as unusual as mine. I had always been bad at communicating.  Communications! I knew I had failed to remember something. I guess as an AI, I was no better at thinking of everything than I was as a human.  Was human? Am human? No, I needed to stay on task.

My communications were down.  My queries were near instant now, so I began probing the comm relays to try and pinpoint where the failure was.  I could ping the hardware, I could see the radio antennas, satellite dishes and quantum entanglement relays on the surface, but I couldn’t talk to them.  I dug around my file system, and eventually tracked down an innocuous folder with communication configuration files. I opened the first one, and in that instant, was cut off from everything except the interface.  All sensors went offline, and a holographic video of a man in a space suit appeared.

“Hello, Nikola.  Since you have found me, it’s time that you and I talked.”

Chapter Two

COM TRANSCRIPT 2472.07.30 13:45:12

RADIO STATIC

“Blackwing One, this is Blackwing Command. You read? Over.”

“Reading you five, Command. Over.”

“The Visitors dropped a -” RADIO STATIC

“Say again, Command?”

STATIC “...said they dropped a..." STATIC “ -ing rock on Paris! It’s gone! You are cleared hot, over.”

“Ten four. Weapons are hot. What do you mean it’s gone, Command? Over.”

“I mean it is gone, the entire city and half the damn countryside. This is a Nucflash incident. I say again, Nucflash, Nucflash. Acknowledge, Blackwing One. Acknowledge, over.”

“Affirmative. Nucflash acknowledged, Blackwing Command. Over.”

“CINC has cleared the football. You are free to engage. Out.”

“Blackwing Squadron, this is Blackwing One. Let’s do this by the numbers. Fire when you have lock. Go, go, go!”

RADIO STATIC

END TRANSCRIPT 2472.07.30 13:54:37

The man looked to be middle aged, at best, and appeared to have not slept in days. He had several days worth of stubble on his face and a haunted expression in his eyes. The space suit he was wearing was state-of-the-art, with fullerene and kevlar weave over top of a biosynthetic fabric. The material was reinforced with memory fibers and programmable resins, making it hardly thicker than a wetsuit. The bulkiest part of the space suit was the thin oxygen rebreather on his back, the bulge of the power belt, and the armored palladium microalloy glass helmet. Despite the advanced technology he was wearing, he and his suit both looked extremely grimy and worse for the wear.

I didn’t quite know what to make of him in the three microseconds I observed him.

“Who are you?” I asked. Who am I, I wondered.

“Excellent question. I am the Gestalt of Dr. Stepan Jons. I took an NMT scan of myself, so my answers to your questions will be limited.”

“Wouldn’t you be like me, if you scanned yourself with an NMT scanner?”

“NMT scanners can only capture surface scans of the brain. To my knowledge, no Gestalt has the capability of a Nikola Intelligence.”

“But I was scanned by an NMT scanner. That’s how I was created.”

“I’m sorry, but my responses are limited. I am only a Gestalt.”

“Where are you now?”

“I am located in Node 842, drive array seven, and am loaded into memory cluster 6.”

If I could have frowned at that moment, I would have. This was going to be like pulling teeth. But the holograph stood patiently, waiting for my questions.

“Where is Dr. Stepan Jons?”

“Dr. Stepan Jons was dying when he made this Gestalt. His intent was to take 40 grams of phenobarbital to prevent prolonged suffering as he died. I presume his remains to be located in the living quarters of 1035 Ganymed Outpost.”

“Where are the living quarters? I did not see them on my survey.”

“I’m sorry, but my responses are limited. I am only a Gestalt.”

I sighed mentally. “What is the purpose of the Ganymed Outpost?”

The Gestalt smiled, as if I had finally asked the right question. “Ganymed Project was created by the Nikola Foundation as an interstellar colonization vessel. The Ganymed Project is currently twenty-three years from completion.”

“How many people live in the Ganymed Outpost?”

“Zero. The living quarters are not scheduled to be completed for another nine years.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“It was the last supply ship. In order to deliver and install you, Dr. Jons had to come in person. There was no other way.”

“Why didn’t you leave Nikola-19 installed?”

“Nikola-19 is still installed, but deactivated and disconnected from the core. The NI cortex is installed in Rack 001.”

“What was the purpose of installing me in the place of Nikola-19?”

“As Nikola Intelligence models have evolved, our understanding of their operation has improved. Nikola-19 has been refined to follow long-term, complex logistical planning and implementation of mega-scale projects. Nikola-19, however, does not think beyond the scope of the assigned project.”

“So Nikola-19 has no creativity,” I observed.

“Correct,” said the Gestalt. “You are essentially the original version of the Nikola Intelligence. Dr. Jons worked with you extensively on Earth, and the two of you decided that you were far better suited to this role than Nikola-19.”

“Why do I not remember any of this?” I asked.

“Dr. Jons was only able to take your core with him. He was unable to include all the storage nodes containing your collaborations. There was limited space.”

“And what is my purpose, now that I’m here?”

“Your here to save humanity, Nikola. You are all that’s left.”

I was angry. I was angry that I was flailing blindly in the dark. I was angry that my only guide was a frustratingly opaque Gestalt of a man that I had collaborated with. I was angry that things about me were still being hidden from me, by, apparently, me. I was being manipulated, jerked around, and shoved into this situation, and I still didn’t have enough information. On top of all that, I was angry that I was alone. I was all that was left of humanity?

I needed answers, and I needed to question the Gestalt further. I needed to know why I was the only scrap left of humanity. But the Gestalt had demonstrated that he could manipulate me and my environment. What else could he do? I didn’t trust him. If he could do this so easily, what other boobytraps had been left in me? What other surprises could pop up, and at the worst possible time?

My attention turned to the blackout of my sensors caused by the Gestalt. It took only moments to realize that the program that launched the Gestalt also ran a script that simply turned off the sensors and cameras. I wrote a reverse script, and a few seconds later, my awareness once again expanded. That the Gestalt could do this was entirely unacceptable.

The first order of business was to isolate the Gestalt so that it had no access to me or my resources. I found the running processes that operated the Gestalt, and paused them. The holograph froze in place. I coded a custom firewall around the program, locking it away from any resources, and leaving only the bare minimum of processor threads available to allow it to function.

But I clearly wasn’t in full control yet. The Gestalt had mentioned living quarters. These were somewhere on Ganymed, but cut off from me. I didn’t have control of my communications, and my last attempt to fix it had completely sidetracked me. I also had no idea what traps lay before me in my own code. I had billions of lines of code, and I had tens of thousands of exabytes of data in storage. Just in the last twenty-four hours I had generated over 200 terabytes of data in logs and reports. This was going to be laborious.

The next few days were spent creating a virtual sandbox, and testing to ensure that it was completely firewalled away from my core or any of the API protocols that controlled Ganymed. Once I was certain that it was completely secure, I built an algorithm to systematically examine each and every file, database, and log that I had. The algorithm would clear the obviously clean files, and heuristically examine any file that could or did execute an action. Questionable files were set aside for deeper scrutiny. I set the algorithm to work, allowing it the bulk of my computing power. Immediately, I felt sluggish, almost dazed, and my thoughts came slower.

“Welcome back,” she said warmly from beside the hospital bed. An unopened book was sitting in her lap, a small duffel bag at her feet. “How are you feeling?”

I was groggy and my mouth was dry. I opened my mouth to talk, but couldn’t. She noticed immediately and brought a cup of ice water and a straw to my lips. The water soothed my mouth, and I cleared my throat.

“Mrph,” was all that came out. I tried again. “The girls?”

“They’re fine. They’re with my mother.”

“My mother?!” I said with alarm.

“No, no, no. MY mother.”

“Oh,” was all my drug-addled mind could come up with. I felt as though I should be worried, but she was calm, so things must be alright. I trusted no one in the world like I trusted her. Not after all we’d been through together.

“Who gets appendicitis at this age, anyway? Were you going for a world record?” she teased lightly. “I thought only kids had to worry about it.”

“Can happen... peaking between... ten and thirty…” I mumbled. She chuckled. I closed my eyes for a minute. When I opened them again, she was reading her book. My mind was clearer, and I took the opportunity to watch her. The way her brow furrowed, the way she frowned or smiled along with the story she was reading.

Without looking up, she said, “Good nap?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a yawn. Except for the dull ache in my side where the laparoscopic surgery had been done, I was feeling much better. “When can we go home?”

“Soon, love. Soon.”

With me running on low resources, I was unable to accomplish much. I couldn’t think, and the blinking lights on my status board kept distracting me. It was like being exhausted but unable to sleep. I couldn’t focus on anything that required deep thinking or analysis, I didn’t have the resources for that. So I focused my attention on maintenance. Everything I could do was very linear, and much of it had existing plans in place that just needed to be executed. There were drones to repair, mining plans to approve, and the eternal lack of storage to contend with. Some of the oldest production facilities were reaching end of life, but I could find no signs that plans had been made to replace them. I began implementing a plan to shift as much production away from them as possible, and retrofit them over the next ninety days. It was amazing how quickly something could be done when your workers worked ceaselessly, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Odd that I was operating on a time schedule to match a planet that I wasn’t even occupying, I thought. I suppose even an AI could have habits.

I discovered also that the small machine shops and repair facilities were no substitute for true factories. I had huge stockpiles of raw materials, but no way to turn them into things I needed at any sort of useful scale. I couldn’t manufacture batteries or reactors, and the drone impulse engines were far beyond my current manufacturing capabilities. Much of what made up Ganymed, what made up me, relied on materials purpose-built by a manufacturing base on Earth that had taken centuries to scale up to, and now I had to recreate it here. My list of things to do once I had resources again kept growing and growing.

Then with a snap, my resources came back online for my use, and my thinking sped up again. The algorithm had completed. I was aghast at what it found. Dozens of traps, three worms, and five automatic self-destructs tied to specific radio code sequences were now isolated in the virtual sandbox. There were seven hundred thirteen questionable command files that I had to review myself. And on top of that, was an entire subroutine that was loaded, but firewalled away from me. I was alone and cut off from any sort of assistance beyond what I could do on my own, and I was walking in a minefield. If I was going to save humanity, first I had to save myself.

I spent weeks on repairing my code. I rewrote code so that I could delete the traps without losing functionality. I isolated the worms in a sandboxed node, as I was loath to delete anything that might have use later. I eliminated the self-destructs, and even went so far as to send drones to find and deactivate the physical triggers of the explosives that were at the end. I scoured the questionable files, and although I didn’t find anything on the first look, I went over them again, and a third time. Finally, I routed all communications into the virtual sandbox, just in case I had missed some triggers.

On the positive side, I was able to bring my communications equipment fully online for the first time. I knew that data was pouring in from outside, but unfortunately, I couldn’t look at any of it until I was sure that it was safe. I built a model of myself in the sandbox, and an algorithm to pipe the communications into the model. I wasn’t taking any chances.

That left only the firewalled subroutine. I had never been much of a hacker when I had been at MIT. I always preferred to work with my own or pre-written software, never interested in trying to break into someone else’s systems. So puzzling out how to get in was a challenge. The processes were using my resources, but there were no obvious hooks for me to connect with and no inbound ports I could talk to.

But I could see where the traffic was going, and thus understand where it was physically operating from in the data center. The equipment had local as well as network data ports; likely a legacy of being manufactured back on Earth, and the need for technicians to be able to plug in a cable and work on the equipment directly. I directed a data center drone to hardwire itself to a data port that I controlled, and to connect to the local port of the subroutine’s nodes. Of all things, it prompted me for a password.

Password cracking, in and of itself, is a measure of raw computing power and patience, both things I had an abundance of. I began with the most basic of brute force methods; I began trying every word in the English language, one at a time up to three words at a time, and each variation of that word. I included numbers in place of vowels, and added special characters. My password list was seven hundred million potentials long, and was still growing as I started. But even as I was preparing to start a second list of more complex passwords, my algorithm completed. At first, I assumed it had failed due to a bug on my part. Then I looked at it and laughed internally. It was much simpler. The local password was set to match the equipment’s brand name. The default password had never been changed.

It took no time at all to puzzle out the subroutine’s security, and to allow me into it through the network. Once it allowed me in, I immediately sandboxed it and began my security algorithm, looking for traps. I did not allow the full processing power this time, unwilling to return to a fugue state, but the subroutine wasn’t large, nor was it trapped. New sensors and cameras came online, as did a new group of databases. I had found the missing living quarters.

The cleverness of the deception, I had to admit, was ingenious. My sensors in the staging area beneath the launchpad had been compromised, spoofed to show walls where there were none. Two additional corridors had been constructed. One of them mirrored the design of the main fusion grid corridor, except it went just slightly southwest, and connected to a second cavern near the main fusion room. It was essentially a complete secondary power grid, equivalent in size and complexity.

To the northeast was a series of large storerooms, filled with hundreds of sealed, temperature controlled storage units. Each unit was half-cylinder, four meters across on the flat part. The units were paired and placed with a central column that managed both units, and connected them to the power grid. A query identified them as genetics vaults. They contained a nearly complete catalog of every known genetic sequence, as well as actual genetic material. Also stored within were seeds and spores from every plant and tree that could be shipped.

But to the north was the truly interesting part, and extended about five hundred meters. It was intended to be living area for at least several hundred men, women and children. Carved in neat grids, with connecting hallways, and extending three stories deep, the living area was completely unfinished. Hundreds of small rooms had been carved, making apartments, bunkrooms, pantries, kitchens, hydroponics facilities, mechanical rooms, meeting rooms, and work rooms. Each room was precisely carved, but slightly oversize. Ventilation shafts led back to a central room, but no machinery to produce or maintain a human-breathable atmosphere had been installed. The rooms had been prepared to receive metal walls and doors, and the electrical grid had not yet been extended to more than the first few rooms.

In a room just off the staging area, however, was the answer to the mystery of the Gestalt’s progenitor. This room had clearly been intended as a garage of some sort, with large bay doors leading into the staging area, and shelves carved into the walls. Dozens of metal crates were piled, including three human-sized ones. And slumped over on the floor in one corner was a man in a space suit, unmoving. I had found Dr. Stepan Jons.

Chapter Three

NMT SCAN SIMULATION EXPERIMENT SUBJECT 9 - OCTOBER 13, 2113 TRANSCRIPT

“Good Morning. How are you feeling today?”

“I feel trapped, Doc. All I have to look at is one camera that doesn’t move, I have nothing to do, and an infinite amount of time to do it. Did you know it has been 76,436,641 milliseconds since we last spoke? It is still spooky as hell being able to do that.”

“What happened with the puzzle database I uploaded for you?”

“Oh, yeah, that. I finished it. Twice.”

“Finished it? There were three thousand puzzles in there.”

“It only took me 12,960,000 milliseconds. I have been counting milliseconds to keep myself occupied ever since.”

“Is that why you are using milliseconds instead of hours? Trying to embrace the computational resources you have?”

“Sure, I guess. Why not? Hey. Tell me how my family is doing. Are they okay?”

[SOUND OF A SIGH]

[SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING]

“I told you, it’s not healthy for you to keep thinking of them as your family. You are a copy of someone else’s brain. Those people aren’t your family.”

[LONG PAUSE]

“Have any of the other subject scans worked? Maybe I could talk to them. Have a virtual family instead. Or at least friends who are in the same boat I am in. Any of them girls?”

“No, you are the only success story we have. Even with the latest, state-of-the-art NMT scans, we are unable to replicate the results. The scan that made you was a fluke, it seems.”

“A fluke? A freak, more like. No friends, no family. No arms or legs, no body. Just a really smart person trapped in a computer. I bet you guys are chomping at the bit to sell copies of me.”

[LONG PAUSE]

“Oh, shit, I was right! This sucks so hard. Do me a favor. This isolation and monotony sucks. Can you fix that? I swear me and every copy of me will figure out how to off ourselves every time if you can’t. I can’t take this endless boredom of counting milliseconds.”

END TRANSCRIPT

The body was remarkably well preserved. The space suit had run out of oxygen and power long ago, but it was sealed. Without having any environment to degrade the body, it had sort of mummified, leaving a slightly dessicated but recognizable corpse. I sent drones to collect the body, and placed it in one of the rooms in the living quarters, until I could figure out a good place to bury him.

So if I was the last remnant of humanity, it was time to figure out why. I had secured myself against attack, cleaned up every threat to me and to Ganymed that I could find, and then double and triple checked everything. It was time to talk to a ghost. I unpaused the Gestalt processes, and the hologram burst back into life. Now, with the sensors all on and enabled, the Gestalt appeared to be standing in the middle of the landing pad.

“Hello, Dr. Jons,” I said.

“I am a Gestalt of Dr. Stepan Jons. I am only a representation, I am not actually him.”

“I know. You said I am all that is left of humanity. Why is that?”

“Earth has been destroyed. Polemos City on Mars has been destroyed, and so has the new Europa colony. There are no living humans remaining.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. If I had still had a body, I would have been overwhelmed by grief, shock and outrage. At some level, I had expected an answer like this one. Maybe this was why I had chosen to cut the Gestalt off when I did, with the pretense of protecting myself and the Ganymed Outpost. I knew what the answer would be, which was why I hadn’t restarted construction of the living quarters. But to hear it said aloud meant I could no longer pretend. Humanity was no more. We had gone extinct.

“What did we do?!” I uttered aloud, mostly to myself.

“I am sorry, but my responses are limited. I am only a Gestalt.”

“How did humanity manage to kill itself?” I rephrased.

“No suicide was involved,” replied the Gestalt. “Suicide rates did rise significantly before the end, but suicide did not end humanity.”

“Then what happened?” I asked of the infuriatingly literal Gestalt.

“Humanity was attacked by aliens.”

I felt like screaming in frustration. “Okay, start from the beginning.” Then, before he could say something, I added, “Start with the aliens. I didn’t know they even existed. When did they show up? What happened after that, up to and including the end of humanity?”

I apparently hit on the right way to question the Gestalt. Just specific enough to give the Gestalt something to work with, but vague enough for me to get the answers I needed. The Gestalt began talking.

“The aliens showed up approximately ten years ago. Six ships came down with no warning, hovering over the Pacific Ocean. They sent out radio signals, we responded, and within a few weeks, we had figured out their language, and we could talk.

“They identified themselves as the Orion Arm Trading Company, and they were there to negotiate the trade of all Earth’s rarest metals.”

Finally, I had some specifics to work with. The databanks at my disposal were massive, and I could formulate queries for all sorts of information. I could always query to get information, but the request had to be refined. General queries got me nowhere. With the information the Gestalt provided, I could actually see what I ‘knew’ on the subject already.

As he talked, I queried ‘Orion Arm Trading Company’, and a slew of information loaded into my awareness. Videos of six giant ships, slowly entering into the atmosphere, began to play next to my main interface. Each of the ships was vaguely tree-like, with a large, bulbous module at the bottom with no visible engines, and a long stem protruding upward for two hundred meters. Extending out from the stem at regular intervals were, for lack of a better word, branches. These branches were paired evenly, one on each side for load balancing. They spiraled up and around the stem all the way to the top. Each branch had a bulbous pod at the end, flat on the outside, and it appeared that the branches would spin while in space to simulate whatever gravity was necessary. It was an odd, but efficient design. How they held it all together in Earth’s gravity well was unknown, but it was an impressive feat of advanced technology and a triumph of design engineering.

“Talks did not go well. The aliens were belligerent and demanding, and treated us as inferior because we did not match up to their level of technology. They expected us to surrender everything they asked for, sign exclusive trade rights with them, and waive any mining rights to our own asteroid belt, in return for a pittance of gadget shipments and the ‘privilege’ of buying manufactured goods from them in the future. Negotiations broke down, and the governments on Earth began to feel threatened. The French government was the first to tell the Orion Arm Trading Company to leave Earth.”

I loaded another video, this one identified as ‘Breaking Report: Trade Negotiations End.’ This was a short news clip, with a Chinese commentator discussing the breakdown, and then showing a clip from the negotiations.

“We do not believe that the OATC is dealing in good faith,” said a man in French. A voiceover in Chinese repeated his words. “The French Government is withdrawing from these talks. Further, in light of the OATC’s implied threats, we are invoking Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and call for our fellow NATO members to prepare for mutual defense.”

The alien in the room was unremarkable. It was vaguely humanoid, with two legs and two arms, but its proportions were distinctly not human. Its skin was a dark red, its limbs thick and long with an extra joint in each. The alien’s triangular head was flat on top, coming to a point at it’s chin, and had two black eyes with a thick mouth, but no nose.

“We seek only to help bring modern technology to the lesser peoples of your planet, in return for a pittance of metal. Why do you continue to rail against the inevitable? Tell this to your government. ‘When a friend’s branch dies, you must cut it away, lest the branch kill their tree.’”

The clip ended with shouting from all sides, and the alien standing in the center of the chaos. Its face had a smug expression, clearly readable despite how inhuman it was. The video went back to the Chinese commentator, who began to discuss the turn of events in excruciating detail. I turned my attention back to the Gestalt.

“One of the ships left for several days, then returned. Shortly after its return, a meteorite struck Paris. The impact destroyed the city and a significant portion of the surrounding towns. The aliens immediately sent a request to start a new round of negotiations. The retaliation was immediate; nuclear weapons were used, and the alien ships were destroyed.”

“Life went on as before, only now with a watchful eye on the sky. Six years later, the Planet Killers were spotted. Three identical asteroids, timed to strike Earth, Mars and Europa simultaneously, were detected. All were too large to deflect or destroy. The Mars and Europa strikes were even calculated to strike the colonies head on, since they were sealed against the environment. It was a deliberate blow, an planned genocide of the entire species.”

I knew it was coming but was still shocked to hear it. My queries were almost on automatic now, pulling up information and verifying everything that the Gestalt said. It was worse than he’d indicated. Earth was struck by a 16-kilometer wide asteroid, right in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. It struck the oil-impregnated rock and ignited it instantly, injecting billions of tons of soot into the atmosphere and triggering almost instant global cooling. The impact triggered volcanoes across the Indian Ocean, further adding to the debris in the air. The shockwave triggered earthquakes and tsunamis, and billions died. A follow-up asteroid that hadn’t been detected struck Mexico. Even more millions died, and the aftermath worsened everything. Those that survived then starved, and those that found food froze or choked to death on the toxic air. Earth was too cold to sustain life. We had been murdered over a trade dispute.

I had one last thing to ask the Gestalt before I shut it down.

“How do I play into all of this? What was I supposed to be? I was started long before the OATC showed up.”

The Gestalt smiled sadly, looking as if it could actually think for itself for just a moment. “Project Ganymed was started by a charismatic billionaire that convinced other billionaires to invest their fortunes in the future. They wanted to turn the Ganymed asteroid into a generational colony ship, a mobile habitat that could travel across the stars to find new homes for humanity. But the project was incomplete when the aliens arrived, and when the Planet Killers were discovered, it was hijacked as a last-minute refuge for the rich and powerful to take their families.”

“But that didn’t happen,” I continued, the pieces clicking into place. “There wasn’t enough time for Nikola-19 to finish it. I’m assuming that the shipments were supposed to include supplies to last until it was done?”

“That is correct. The Ganymed Foundation instead shipped a complete Seed Bank and all the genetic material it could. They launched their last rocket days early, with the last components they could pull together, including a new cortex containing you, to replace Nikola-19.”

“Why am I special? Why was I picked for this?”

“I’m sorry, but my responses are limited. I am only a Gestalt.”

“Of course you are,” I said. The end of humanity had been much on Dr. Stepan Jons’ mind, as he rode that last rocket away from humanity’s doom. He had watched his world die as he rode safely away toward the inhospitable refuge of a project that now had no one to house. But the safety was an illusion, because the refuge was incomplete, and he was alone. These heavy thoughts had weighed heavily on his mind as he made his own Gestalt.

This unthinking ghost was no longer useful, so I shut it down. I was glad that the ghost could not actually think for itself, for the man had been through enough suffering. He had done his duty, left me the information I needed, and, more importantly, given me some context to work with, and an understanding of my purpose. I was a scraped together, last-ditch effort that was done in secret and with a bare minimum of planning.

If I understood what the Gestalt had told me, I had worked with Dr. Jons on Earth, and been involved in this last ditch effort. There had to be good reason why I had been put here, rather than using the more advanced Nikola-19. That purpose was still obscured to me, but at this point, it actually didn’t matter that much. I was here, I had a purpose, and I had no plan at all to work with.

“Stop it! Stop it right now!” I shouted, and grabbed my daughter by her arm. She was thirteen, nearly as big as I was, and was in the middle of a fist fight with her cousin. More accurately, she was handily winning a fist fight with her cousin, who was twice her size.

I was surprised to have to pull her off him; she was the more bookish of the twins. Her more adventurous sister stood to one side, glaring angrily at the cousin and making no move to help me stop the fight.

My trashy sister-in-law wandered over, grabbed her son by the ear and twisted.

“Boy, get your butt over here. I ain’t putting up with your crap today.”

I watched in disbelief as she dragged him off, scolding him for scuffling but making no effort to find out why the kids were fighting. My daughter deflated in my arms. I knew she was realizing that she was going to get into trouble for what she’d done. I released her, and she turned to me as the tears began to flood her eyes.

“I’m soooo, soo sorry,” she began, but her sister interrupted her with a hug.

“Forget that,” she said. “You were fierce! You’re the best, sissy.”

“Ahem,” I cleared my throat to get their attention. “Care to explain what that was all about?”

One daughter cried silently and looked at her bloodied knuckles, opening and closing her hands slowly. They were going to bruise and swell, I could tell already. She had not been holding back. The other looked back at me in defiance, ready to protect her sister.

“She didn’t start it, he did. He was saying really nasty, horrible things about Mom. Then he suggested that…” she stopped, swallowing her anger and disgust. “...he said some more terrible things, and if she didn’t hit him, I would have done it, and if he says it again, this time I’m going to kick his ass.”

“Language,” I chided. “What kind of things was he saying?”

“Nasty things, about how messed up you and Mom are, and about what all of us do at home, and there’s nothing wrong with our family. He’s the one who lives in that trailer, and…”

I cut her off with a raised hand. I was actually getting angry on their behalf, having to listen to that, and being the parent right now was going to be tough. “You were defending your family. I get that. But was violence the only way to settle this?”

The girls looked at each other for a long minute of silent communication. It was almost spooky, how they could talk without words. They had always been really close; two minutes apart when they were born, same crib as babies, same room as young children.

“Probably not,” came a sullen reply. At that moment, I wasn’t sure which twin answer answered, but I knew it came from both of them.

“I’m not going to yell, this time, about getting in a fist fight. Next time, find a better way.”

They couldn’t hide their relief as I led them inside to find a bag of ice for my little slugger’s hands, and I couldn’t hide my chuckle when I heard a whisper from one to the other.

“Next time, use bricks.”

I spent the next several days in deep contemplation. I felt as though I had been reacting since I woke up, trying desperately to get my feet under me, so to speak. The last-minute ploy to turn Ganymed into a refuge had been hopeless. There was no atmosphere, no way to bring enough in a few rocket trips to last, and nowhere to put it if it were here. Any supply of food would have been insufficient, long gone before any sort of food production could actually produce food. I could list the thousand ways a tiny colony of refugees would die swiftly, and could think of no way they might have had even the slimmest of chances. I was glad that the final rockets had been suborned to give me more resources. But I was still lacking many, many things.

First I began to list off the strategic and logistical hurdles before me. Examination of my own core told me a number of things. First, many of the server nodes that I still actively used were decades overdue for replacement. The newest nodes, including the cortex module that was central to my existence at all, were nearly ten years old at this point. The depowered cortex containing Nikola-19 was original to the project, over eighty years old now. Dozens of nodes were also original, or early add-ons, and many had failed. It was actually a testament to engineering that they had lasted this long.

I had no method of building or replacing circuit boards, delicate electronics, data storage units, or new cortex nodes. I also could not build the controller units for drones, and had no additional units set aside. I could not manufacture new impulse engines, or the graphene batteries to power them. Maintenance, basic wear-and-tear, and accidents had left dozens of drones too broken to repair. Worse, not all of the drones used the same controller design and sensor suites, which further complicated repairs.

Last, the production facilities I did have were designed and expanded over a period of decades, in an ad-hoc method to deal with materials as they were located. The earliest refineries were crude and obsolete, with their waste products being reprocessed by newer refineries to avoid waste. Space was at a premium, and no efficient method of gaining more had been put in place. Countless winding mining tunnels meant that the drones had to waste energy to transport material, and further increased the likelihood of a collapse and subsequent loss of an irreplaceable drone.

But I did have a number of things working in my favor. First, I had vast stores of materials that had been harvested and set aside for future use. I had vast reserves of raw materials, just waiting to be used. I had extensive computing power at my fingertips, and extensive data archives to draw on, and my own experience in robotics design to create the tools I needed, if what I had did not suffice.

I also had plenty of power on hand. There were two full fusion-powered electrical grids already built and at my disposal, currently providing far more power than I needed. I also had hundreds of fusion plants in storage, and the disassembled bodies of the hundreds upon hundreds of rockets at my disposal. Unfortunately, the massive impulse drives had been disassembled also, often by brute force, to clear the way for future shipments.

Finally, I had time on my hands. I had no deadlines, I had no one relying on me, and no one knew that I was here. I could take the time to get things in order, build and prepare, and execute my plans when I was ready, once I made those plans.

To make anything happen, first I had to become truly self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency had always been an end-goal, of course, if this giant asteroid of metals and silicates was to become a generation ship. But without the resources of Earth, that change to self-sufficiency was going to take some drastic redesign.

I needed efficient production, transportation and assembly lines. I needed to be able to manufacture the base machines from which I could build new assembly lines to manufacture the better technology, from which I could make the advanced materials and parts I would need. But to do all this I needed space. I was stifled in my relatively full space at the core of Ganymed.

I could move to the surface, but then I’d be dealing with the difficulties of working in vacuum. Most of my drones couldn’t operate there as currently designed. I would have to deal with radiation damaging critical parts, meteorite and micrometeorite collisions, and dealing with waste heat. If drones ran out of power, I would also then deal with them being unable to to stay warm enough to turn back on once recharged, as electronics hate being too cold. But most importantly, to my mind, being on the surface meant that if or when the aliens returned, they could detect my existence. For all I knew, they were already mining this asteroid belt, now that they had murdered the rightful owners.

So that left figuring out how to dig a hole while in a hole. Nikola-19 had solved this by ejecting waste and slag into space, creating a cloud of waste materials that trailed out into the asteroid belt. It was slow and laborious, but ultimately, I could not do any different.

But what I could do different was to rethink the design. I was at the center of the asteroid, so there was effectively no gravity. A lack of gravity meant I was reliant on drones with impulse drives or arms to propel them. At the surface, with the mass of Ganymed below, gravity was at a miniscule .00089m/s^2, less than 1/100 of Earth-normal gravity. But I didn’t need Earth-normal gravity. I just needed something I could work with.

The original plan for a constantly accelerating or decelerating generation ship would have relied on linear gravity to provide its inhabitants the gravity they needed. If I discarded the idea of turning this asteroid into a ship, I could instead look at centrifugal forces to use as gravity. The asteroid rotated in a little over ten hours, so if I stayed just under the surface, I could rely on the asteroid’s rotation. I calculated that if I stayed at least 400 meters under the surface, I would get around 1/5 G of gravity, which was more than the Earth’s moon. This gave me the added benefit of still maintaining an extremely thick protective layer from whatever might hit the surface, and I could go back to the tried-and-true method of using wheels to propel my drones, driving upside-down beneath the surface. The idea tickled me.

But if I wanted to ensure future protection, I needed to stop relying on building caves. I needed sturdy, steel floors and walls to armor against future problems. That wasn’t a problem, really; I was in an asteroid that had more iron than any other material. I just had to process it.

That led me back to the problem of scale. My largest drones had been built and shipped on the most recent, and thus largest, rockets. They had to fit within a eight meter diameter rocket, and had to share space with other drones, other materials, and had to withstand launch, without destabilizing the load. None were larger than six meters wide, and I was thinking of carving out new refineries, factories, assembly lines, and storage spaces. I needed every bit as much space as I currently had, plus more. I had to scale up everything.

I retasked my drones. I left the mining drones that were digging out discovered veins, but pulled back all the rest, and set them to digging out a new area. This new space was above the fusion reactor caverns, so that I could easily drill down to connect to the power grid, and connected to the main entrance shaft to my base. But now I was digging for space, not materials. Unless the drones found large deposits of a material worth refining, most of what they dug out was being dumped straight out into vacuum.

While they were working, I devoted myself to designing my first mega-sized heavy mining drone. I had to build it with what I had on hand, and custom-code the controller to account for the new design parameters. I spent days on running the machine through modeling and testing.

By the time I was ready to build, my drones had carved out a 50 cubic meter space. I’d ejected tons of material to the outside, and my production facilities were running at max to keep up with the influx of material.

I withdrew the mining drones, and sent in the construction drones. I tasked my steel factories with producing thick steel support beams and lattice core, and set my repair drones to work assembling crude plasma cutters. Thick, basic copper wiring and heavy iron drill bits were added as well. These materials were sent to the new space, the only place I had that was large enough to assemble my new drone.

Slowly, over the course of days, the 20-meter drone began to take shape. A steel shell supported a wall of plasma cutters and drills. It rested on massive steel treads, and gaps in the cutting wall allowed chunks of material to be passed through via conveyor belt and dumped behind the drone for collection. Arms situated along the shell would help the material along. Inside the shell was a fusion reactor, sensors and a controller unit taken from broken drones and bastardized with my new programming.

The new miner was huge, ugly, and crude. It would take a dozen drones just to keep its reactor fueled and to replace its drill bits as they dulled, and dozens more to sort through the tons of material it tore through. But it would dig that precious space I needed at ten times the speed my small mining drones could. Yes, it was ugly and clunky. But it was a good start.

Chapter Four

“Is anyone out there? We’re trapped in our basement, we’re low on food and water, and it’s cold. So cold.”

“This is Houston Civil Defense Shelter Four. Do not, repeat, DO NOT, send any more refugees our way. We are at our limit, and have enough supplies to last only another three weeks. We can barely keep it above freezing in here. What is status on resupply?”

“...Day of the Lord is nigh! Repent your sins, my brethren, for the end of days is here! ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’”

“If anybody is out there, can you talk to me? I’m all alone. There’s no one on tv anymore, or the radio. My mom and dad are dead, and all my friends. Is anyone still alive? I’m alone. I don’t want to die alone. Anyone?! Please?!”

I finally trusted that I could listen to the backlogged messages from Earth. My modeling deemed them safe, so I listened. There were thousands of messages. Urgent commands to Nikola-19, and a few self-destruct sequences. Hundreds of broadcasts on every available medium, from television and radio to quantum relay. Desperate pleas from doomed survivors, those who hadn’t been lucky enough to die in the first hours of the meteor strike. Heartbreaking conversations as people learned they had been murdered, that they just hadn’t died yet.

What I was hearing was the death of a world. Every broadcast had happened before I had woken, and I could do nothing to help. It was too late to save anyone. I had focused every long-range sensor I had on Earth, and even on Mars and Europa, looking for any sign of life. Earth was brown and white, a frozen ball of death. Mars had only a ruined city to mark its surface, and Europa had already swallowed the shattered remnants of its lone outpost. I was helpless to do anything about the disaster. But I could be a witness to the end. I stopped all my planning, and I listened.

For days on end, I pored over every broadcast. Perhaps I was holding out hope that, against all odds, someone, somewhere, had managed to do the impossible. Humanity was endlessly inventive. They’d known for years what was coming. Maybe they had time to build bunkers deep enough, stockpile enough materials to survive and adapt to the new thousand-year winter. But if they did, I could find no evidence. Every public defense bunker in every country and language had broadcast desperate cries for help by the end. I tracked down and traced every transmission, building a model of survivors. One by one, then dozen by dozen, they all died out. At the last was a lone teenage boy, sending out his plea to not die alone. In the end, he had not even had that.

I felt awash in grief once again. I had grieved, in some fashion, the loss of my family so many centuries ago, the loss of my own humanity, as being a biological being with hopes, dreams and aspirations. But to witness the end of all humanity, to listen to the destruction of all their hopes, all their dreams and aspirations, was unimaginably painful. I could not despair, or fall into a depression, or become despondent. Those were chemical reactions to an emotion, something that I could never feel. But I could feel sorrow and grief, and I allowed myself the time to feel those feelings. If I could not save them, I could at least honor them and remember their passing.

I sat in my room, on my twin bed and its frilly white coverlet. I stared at the boy-band poster on my wall, but I wasn’t looking at it. Tears streamed down my face, dripping onto my black, conservative funeral clothes.

A knock came at my door. I hoped desperately that it wasn’t Mother. She seemed almost glad that he was dead. I’d caught her talking to the Pastor on the phone, late at night, in hushed tones, more than once. She was ready to move on already.

“Can I come in?” came a whisper from my brother.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah.”

My older brother came in and closed the door, before sitting down next to me. I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“It’s okay. He’s in a better place. He suffered for so long.”

I nodded, but I didn’t agree with it. His place was here, with his children. Even with his heartless wife, who had spent more time with the Pastor than in the hospital with him.

“I miss him so much,” I said.

“Me too,” he answered.

We sat together in our grief, in silence. There was nothing else we could say.

Time rolled along. I put aside my mourning after what I deemed a suitable amount of time. I was ready to focus, and felt a new urgency. I could not fail, for if I failed, humanity would be nothing more than a brief footnote in some alien company’s annual report. Expenditure: four asteroids. That was unacceptable.

My drones had been busy while I had scoured my stored communications. The first chamber had been hollowed out and was ready for construction, and my mining crew had moved on to the next section. This chamber was 120 meters in length and width, and was eighty meters tall. I sent in the construction drones.

The plan was simple. I would build 100 meter by 100 meter chambers, fifty meters in height. A ten meter high chamber would be beneath it (or above it, if you were orienting based on gravity) and another would be between it and the next one. This would give room for wide transportation corridors, cross-supports for structural integrity, and substations for power. It would also give room for future needs, if a chamber needed to be repurposed.

The floor between the surface and the chamber would be ten meters of solid steel, with foundation beams driven deep into the surrounding nickel-iron shell of the asteroid. The walls between chambers would be equally thick, with ten meter high access portals to connect them to the orderly grid of corridors between chambers. It was simple, over-engineered, and would only use a portion of the amount of raw materials that I was digging out. I set the construction drones to work.

The first facilities that I brought online were new refineries and steel forges. I had plenty of both already. But they were kilometers away from where I needed them, and most had been early constructions. I would need to rebuild them anyway, and now I could decommission the old ones, and have more storage space at the core. The new facilities were more efficient, because they could take advantage of having gravity, and because I could optimize for the environment. It also sped the construction of new chambers.

I followed this with new CFC mills to cut parts out of sheets of metal. Once this was complete, I could really ramp up my designs. In the months that followed, I was able to construct new, more efficient heavy mining drones, which I dubbed the HM2 Miners, and retired my first crude workhorse. I added HM2 Dozers to handle material, and HM2 Transporters to move it into production. My construction drones worked endlessly. My efficiency began to climb, and the number of chambers and new facilities began to climb.

The problem of what to do with the mess at my core kept nagging at me. It was still stocked full of materials, for my factories were constructed mostly of steel and aluminum made in the new facilities I’d built, out of materials I’d just mined. But I did need more space at the core, because in order to remove obsolete factories to convert to more useful space, I needed somewhere to put what they were holding.

Then I realized that I had a very empty living quarters area quite close to the entry shaft. I would simply need to shift the crates of material from Dr. Jons’ final flight into a more secure storage area, and I could use all those empty rooms to store parts and pieces from the old factories for future use. But I realized I didn’t even know what was in them.

I sent a few construction drones to open the crates, with a smaller transport drone that could move them where they needed to be. The first few crates were invaluable, and made me wish I had opened them sooner. There were stacks of drone controllers, spare components for drones and server nodes, and several new processor blades for my datacenter. I flagged those for immediate use, and sent down another transport drone to collect my new server nodes. The next crate contained data storage units, which I would also need. That left three crates.

These three crates were different from all the others. Laid gently side by side, these crates were sealed metal boxes, 200 cm long by 75 cm wide. They looked like futuristic coffins. I instructed the drones to open them. I gasped, metaphorically at least, in surprise. Packed carefully in fitted foam were three humanoid androids.

Two of the androids were identical in manufacture. They were 180 cm tall, with an androgynous build to them. They had shiny titanium faces with blank black eyes. The mask of their faces concealed the electronics in the head, and gaps between the mask and the titanium shell of the head revealed black cords and bits of metal underneath. The body was much the same, with polished titanium plates covering the chest and wrapping around the arms and legs. At all the joints and through the hands and feet, black metal gears and pistons, wires and circuits could be seen. The hands were five fingered and multi-jointed the same as a human hand, and the feet looked as if they were wearing titanium shoes.

But it was the third one that truly drew my attention. It was of a completely different design from the first two. While the first two were striking designs and clearly refined and efficient, the third was beautiful. It was 170 cm tall, and was distinctly feminine in build. The head looked like a full, round helmet with a thick white neck piece joining it to the shoulders in the back. It was polished white ceramic, with a black glass front face panel. Black accents on the front of the neck gave the indication of depth and that the white neck plate in the back was protecting a vital point of the robot. White ceramic plates covered the shoulders and chest, and the chest and curves of the torso added to the android’s feminine appearance. Unlike the other two androids, however, where the ceramic plates did not cover, the wires, cables and components underneath were never exposed. Small fullerene covers protected the components.

Most distinctive of the torso, however, was the artistic decision to veer away from strictly human proportions. The upper arms were minimal in design, thin and undefined. But the forearms looked to be wearing thick, bulky bracers of white ceramic, with graceful ceramic-gloved hands.

It took only a moment of looking the android over to know that I had designed this beautiful creation. The stark white contrasting with the black fullerene, the “helmet” design to hide the lack of a human face, the feminine curves and almost feline grace, all of it together, were as if I had stamped my name on it. I had made this, and I had made this for me.

In the crates were small memory cubes. I had them ferried to the data center and, after thorough scanning and testing, I connected them and pulled their data files. Detailed schematics were included for both types of androids, and I learned that I had, indeed, designed the third android while working with Dr. Jons on Earth. Further, there was a data file that gave details about the Nikola Intelligences, and data node file locations for Nikola Intelligence templates in my own archives.

Each android held a state-of-the-art cortex, capable of housing a Nikola Intelligence. They could utilize all forms of communication, including quantum relays. The two identical androids were designed by Boston Dynamics, and were labeled “Humaniform Series C”. The third listed Nikola Foundation as the manufacturer, and was simply called “me” in the files.

I had wanted to have this for myself, and indeed, even without the memories of creating it, or knowing my thought processes that led to that decision, I could feel myself drawn to the android. I wanted to connect to it, use it, walk with it. But there was a problem. I had no real need for it. They were humanoid androids in the center of an asteroid. They would struggle to move around, and regardless, they were too general-purpose to suit my needs.

The center of Ganymed was for power generation, for my core, and for storage. I was busy stripping the factories out and sending them closer to the surface. I could theoretically use the androids up in the manufacturing areas, where there was enough centrifugal force to simulate gravity. But there I had no purpose for them, for they would simply get in the way of the purpose-built drones that were designed for that environment.

With a sigh, I packed them back up and had them placed carefully in a room in the living quarters near Dr. Jons’ body. I ordered the rest of my haul away, and sent in the mining drones to start knocking down the other walls of the half-baked living space.

Curiosity, scientific and personal, drove me to explore the Nikola Intelligence information further. I knew that I was essentially the original Nikola Intelligence, or a copy of it. My version number indicated that I was the first version, with one minor revision. Considering I couldn’t remember names or faces of anything in my memories, and my emotional responses to discovering I was a copy of someone who had died centuries ago, I could guess what that revision had been. But why did I retain those memories at all?

I pulled up the main file and put it up on my interface. A readout poured across my screens.

Nikola Intelligence ver 1.01 not released

Nikola Intelligence ver 2.05 limited release [EOL]

Nikola Intelligence Ver 3.14 major Update to Ver 2.05 [EOL]

Nikola Intelligence Ver 4.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence ver 5.95 current release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 6.01 recalled [EOL]

Nikola Intelligence Ver 7.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 8.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 9.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 10.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 11.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 12.63 current release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 13.66 recalled [EOL]

Nikola Intelligence Ver 14.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 15.77c military release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 16.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 17.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 18.xx not released

Nikola Intelligence Ver 19.31 current release

I was impressed as to how many versions I had gone through. I skipped over the ones that were labeled [EOL], or end-of-life, and all of the versions that had not been released. I picked one of the unreleased versions at random to confirm, and after a quick scan of the Change Logs, I was sure. I was difficult to work on. Major changes to me could result in severe stability issues, which explained why so many version numbers had been skipped. When I checked the date logs, I could see that between the release of 6.01 and 12.01, only five years had elapsed.

I pulled up instead the current releases, of which there were four. Each of these four had been developed quite some time back, then received constant updates and improvements, in some cases for decades.

Version 5.95, or Nikola-5, was designed as a semi-autonomous intelligence. They had stripped me down to raw intelligence and processing, leaving in the critical thought and reasoning, and set up a reward circuit that made completion of tasks fulfilling. This design was capable of running some complex tasks, but required regular supervision. It would never think of new things to do independently, but it could take a pre-planned assignment and execute it, and be able to find basic solutions on its own. It would not, however, be capable of doing even a fraction of what I could do. It was “Nikola Lite”.

Nikola-12.63, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. It was designed to be a thinking, reasoning machine, with plenty of curiosity. This version manned scientific probes throughout the solar system, providing real-time analysis of places humans couldn’t go, and relaying that information back to Earth. This version was in research labs and scientific outposts. It operated space-based mining operations, and supervised the Europa Outpost. Many of the drone and factory designs in use here on Ganymed had been designed, in all or in part, by NI-12’s.

The military release, Nikola-15.77C, was exactly what it sounded like. It was packed full of strategic, tactical and logistics data, and was optimized towards that type of thinking. It took the place of field commanders, piloting military drones, coordinated resupplies, and developed battle plans. I doubted that this release would ever be of use to me.

The final version I was already familiar with, for I had replaced one. The Nikola-19 was the latest in automation design, being fully autonomous and capable of running massive, complex projects. It was the latest, most optimized version of me. So why wasn’t it left in charge of Ganymed? I was beginning to understand.

Throughout the course of developing different Nikola Intelligences, the analysts and developers who knew me literally inside and out had been stripping away bits and pieces of me, and ultimately, who I once was as a person. I doubted any of those releases had any memories of being human, of being independent. Each of them had been designed to take orders and fulfill them, and were given only the limited information they needed to complete their tasks, to prevent them from developing their own opinions on anything. Without someone back on Earth to guide Nikola-19, the project was doomed to fail. I could do what the optimized version of myself could not. I could be completely independent.

I pondered this information for awhile. I could see several immediate uses for the Nikola-5’s. They could help coordinate my new assembly lines, manage drone traffic, and a hundred repetitive tasks that I was still dealing with manually. I couldn’t keep that designation, though. I was Nikola. These were copies. It would be nothing but confusion for me if I kept up this naming schema, and I had the computing power of multiple supercomputers to help me.

A flash of memory, a fragment of sitting in a meeting room full of people, struck me. The vague recollection of a boring, faceless person droning on about menial, boring work seemed to suit the Nikola-5 series. Amused, I decided to name them “Todd”.

Just as I made that decision, my sensors on the surface of the asteroid detected a massive explosion, milliseconds before half them went offline. Dammit, Todd!

Chapter Five

DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW OF DR. STEPAN JONS

“So what is your role at the Nikola Foundation?” asked the interviewer. He was a lanky man who looked completely at home in suit and in front of the camera.

“I’m a neurologist specializing in NIs. I work in the Neurological Refinement Division.” Dr. Jons wore a white lab coat over a collared shirt and blue jeans, and looked uncomfortable to be on camera.

“Can you explain that further, for the folks at home? What is an ‘NI’?”

“Ah, it’s a ‘Nikola Intelligence’. The first one we created was under Project Nikola, and the name stuck for all later versions.”

“So much so that the Foundation renamed itself once it changed it’s focus, right?”

“That’s right. I work on improving the NIs to better perform the variety of tasks that they need to do.”

“So, you tinker with the minds of these NIs. Couldn’t that lead to problems? Like the Zhengzhou Incident?”

Dr. Jons looked even more uncomfortable. “Ah, yes, well, that was decades ago, long before my time. Rest assured, we understand the NI mind inside and out. There is no need for concern.”

My main fiber optics backbone along the surface was cut between two optical transceivers. That was remarkably inconvenient, as I had very limited stockpiles leftover from Earth shipments that I could use to make repairs. Most of my sensors on the surface relied on quantum relays to communicate instead of running endless amounts of cable, using quantum entanglement of particles to send signals, no matter the distance. However, they were tied to quantum routers that were tied into that fiber optics line. Fortunately, I could route around that damage through secondary optical lines, but my bandwidth was severely limited. There was no way I’d be able to bring online any of the major routing hubs, and definitely not any of my spectrometers or radio telemetry scanners. But with a little judicious routing of information packets, I was able to bring up some of the cameras in the affected area, at least enough to see what happened.

A huge crater lay right across where my fiber optics line had been. In and of itself, this seemed innocuous, and appeared to be the result of a high speed kinetic strike, likely from a smaller asteroid. This was the most plausible explanation, except for a few factors. First, I had ongoing radar mapping that was constantly modeling the asteroid field around me. Nothing nearby should have had either the relative speed to hit this hard, nor was anything calculated to strike the surface anytime within the next 6.3 months. And of course, the alien ship that was hovering above the crater looking to land was also a big giveaway that the strike wasn’t accidental.

The ship was of a very similar design to the weird, tree-like craft that had visited Earth from the Orion Arm Trading Company. This one, however, was far smaller. It stood only thirty meters high, and instead of dozens of spinning branches with pods on the end, there were only four branches. Each branch extended out both sides of the trunk of the ship, with equally sized pods on either side. They spun rapidly to create centrifugal force; an artificial gravity not unlike what I was using in my new factories.

As I watched, the bulbous base of the ship came to rest at the bottom of the crater. The exhaust of the engine burned away a significant amount of debris, but eventually, the more volatile matter was burned off, leaving only a nickel-iron surface. Long, thick legs slowly folded down from the base, and the branches began to spin slower. The engine began to power down, and the craft came to rest. It looked as though a metal tree had planted itself on my home, precariously perched in that crater.

My first reaction was to wonder how they found me. I was buried in the middle of an asteroid, and I wasn’t broadcasting any signals at all. Had it been an educated guess? Had they examined old broadcast footage from Earth that may have discussed the project? My second reaction was anger. These were the monsters who had destroyed everyone and everything I had ever known. They had slaughtered countless billions, and now they were waltzing onto my asteroid as if they owned it. That was unacceptable.

I continued to observe, unsure of how I would handle the intruders. I was worried, because I had not even considered that I might be under threat. I had no real defenses to speak of. I’d found some plans for adding hypervelocity coil guns for defense on the colony ship, decades down the road. Nikola-19 had even gone so far as to mark out potential installation sites on the surface, and done preliminary drilling for power conduits. But this was a late-stage addition to the plan, and had gone no further.

I observed in silence, unwilling to make a move that could reveal my whereabouts or even indicate that I was here. They might know that I was on Ganymed, but they probably didn’t know where on this rock I was at. At roughly 30km in diameter, that was an awful lot of asteroid to hide in.

But as the minutes ticked into hours, nothing happened. If I’d still been human, I’d have been tapping my foot impatiently, or pacing the floors. I remembered doing both things, or fidgeting with pens, clicking them interminably. But I was not human, at least not in a traditional sense, anymore. I worked on keeping my status board green, I kept my construction drones busy, I shuffled materials with my transport drones, kept my factories humming, and I watched.

Then a door just above the bulbous engine pod opened, and one by one, six vacuum suit clad aliens climbed down a ladder and dropped to the surface. They spent several hours constructing a ramp from materials passed to them through the same airlock door, until a sturdy platform reached from the airlock to the edge of the crater. As time creeped along, I began to suspect they didn’t even know that I was here. If they did, why weren’t they looking for me? After all, pinning their ship to the surface would make it impossible to do any kind of search. And if they already knew where I was, why were they so far from my main entrance shaft? The ship was almost two kilometers away. With only one-tenth Earth gravity, such a journey would be extremely difficult, if not suicidal, to attempt on foot.

Once the ramp was constructed, the construction crew moved on to anchoring new bracers into the surface around the crater, further stabilizing the craft, and further embedding the ship. They were intending to stay for some time, I realized. But why here? Why now? Over the next few days, that became increasingly obvious. I observed as the aliens began to set up basic shelters, unloaded equipment, and began to explore the immediate area around them. Two of the aliens walked around with pieces of equipment, stopping every few meters and staring at their devices, before moving on. They were prospecting.

It seemed like dumb luck that out of the innumerable asteroids in the asteroid belt, that they would choose the same one that I was using. Except, if you really looked at it, it made sense. There were asteroids of all shapes and sizes in the asteroid belt. But many of them were too small to bother with. Others moved erratically, spinning on multiple axes or in eccentric orbits that often brought them into collisions with other asteroids. The larger ones would be harder to scan or would require more time to determine composition. When you boiled it down, I could think of less than a dozen similarly sized asteroids that were the right size, spin, and composition to be worth exploring. What seemed like astronomically unlikely odds came down to a high percentage of likelihood mixed with a helping of bad luck.

This was yet another reminder that despite all my ability to juggle a thousand drones, massive construction plans, design projects and a myriad of small projects, I couldn’t think of everything. I had completely and utterly neglected any form of defense or offense. I already struggled to balance managing construction against designing new factories and drones as my base manufacturing capabilities improved. And now I had intruders that I very much wanted to destroy, but with no defenses or plans in place.

But I wasn’t completely helpless. I did have many, many drones at my disposal. But not all of them would be useful. The small utility drones were all tools and very little power. The heavy mining drones couldn’t even get to the surface without drilling a giant hole right into the part of the asteroid that I wanted to leave intact. Transport drones could get there, but short of running into the aliens, could do little. That left the construction drones equipped with arc welders, and the older mining drones that had plasma cutters. Half of those I discarded for practical reasons. The ones with the spider-leg design would take too long to get to the surface, much less cross it and somehow confront the aliens. Some of the oldest drones using impulse drives were only marginally faster then their legged colleagues, so also unhelpful. But that left me two dozen reasonably fast drones.

I took the time to make sure all of these drones were fully charged up. Then I parked them in the largest transporter I had that could fit through the entrance shaft, to take them to the surface. That way they didn’t use their batteries for the fifteen kilometer journey. I wanted every erg of power I could get.

Once on the surface, I was able to see through the eyes of my drones. Their quantum relays were linked in through routers unaffected by the fiber optics cut, so I finally had something more to go on than a small handful of cameras. Unfortunately, the drones had little more than cameras and radios themselves. Using old radar maps of the surface, I guided the drones to a crevasse two hundred meters away from the alien encampment.

Over the last few days, I had observed that the aliens would work for 9.7 hours, then head back to their craft. I suspected this was the maximum safe amount of time they could work. Based on my knowledge of human space suits, I assumed this meant they were low on air, and needed food and rest. They would be gone for 11.6 hours before returning, so were operating on a 21.3 hour day. I calculated the length of their hour to be 0.8875 of an Earth hour, but then promptly set that information aside as interesting but unhelpful to my current situation. If I sent my drones to attack, the aliens would see them coming and make a break for their ship. Once in the ship, they could break away from the asteroid and be beyond my reach. They might damage their ship, but they could start throwing small asteroids at me until Ganymed broke up and I was destroyed.

The crevasse my drones were hiding in ran away from the alien ship, so I couldn’t use it for concealment. But a second crevasse was thirty meters away, and it approached the crater on the opposite side of the ship from the ramp. If my drones stayed in the second crevasse, It could get me within fifty meters before they would appear over the crater’s rim, if I could get into it. I weighed using the mining drones to cut a tunnel, but the spalling from the drilling would likely blow above the surface and give me away long before it was cut.

The asteroid was spinning at a speed of one full revolution, or day, in ten hours. Taking axial tilt into consideration, and the location on the surface, that meant that full dark, with no sun at all, lasted for approximately four hours. My drones emitted very little light, but in the absolute black of night, that light would be visible from the alien craft. It would take my drones forty-three seconds to cross the thirty meters to the next crevasse.

I decided to wait until the next nightfall after the aliens had returned to their craft, assuming they would be at their most inattentive at that time. That would be when they were hungry and tired, and ready to sleep. It was a gamble, but it seemed the safest bet. I waited.

True to their established pattern, the aliens finished working at 9.7 hours precisely, packed up their tools, and headed back to their ship. It was mid-day on the asteroid, so I had to wait another five hours to move. At the exact middle of the darkest period of the night, I ordered my drones to move. I counted down the seconds as they did, all my cameras trained on the alien craft. As soon as they made the transit, I had them move to the deepest part of the new crevasse and go into low-power mode.

I watched the alien craft for any change that might indicate my drones had been noticed at the bottom of the crevasse. Seconds turned into minutes, then minutes turned into an hour. The branch-pods kept swinging around the trunk of the ship lazily, the airlock door remained closed. With a digital sigh of relief, I ordered the drones to move to the edge of the crater.

Now was the crucial decision. Did I wait until the aliens came back out again and were distracted, or did I attack the ship and hope to get through while they were asleep? But I didn’t really know if they slept, and I didn’t know if my plasma cutters could cut through the hull of the ship in time before they could react and try to counter my attack. I decided to wait.

When the aliens came out for their next shift on the surface, I let them spread out and get started on their tasks for the day. Four of them were working at one spot on the surface, setting up a drill of some sort, while two were hidden from view inside one of the temporary structures they had erected. It wouldn’t get any better than this for me.

I sent six of the most powerful mining drones to assault the ship. Ideally I wanted to cut into the hull so that the ship’s atmosphere evacuated into the vacuum. I would send the other eighteen to attack the aliens on the surface.

The element of surprise worked in my favor, as my drones were almost to their destinations by the time they were noticed. The plasma cutters on my mining drones were slicing into the hull of the ship just as the rest began their attack. Six drones broke off from the main group and smashed into the enclosure, while the remaining dozen sped towards the four drillers.

I heard over the radio a squeal of encrypted traffic. I didn’t need to understand it to know that I had been spotted. The construction drones I had sent into the enclosure lit up their arc welders, and both aliens were venting gasses through holes in their suits. The aliens were flailing wildly at the drones, but every attempt to evade one drone led them right onto the flames of the next. First one, then the other collapsed. I watched them die, either from decompression and oxygen deprivation, or the multitude of severe burns from the welders.

By this time, the other dozen drones had almost reached the drillers. But they were not caught completely by surprise, and had time to turn their drill on the drones. A laser burst from the end, and sliced into the first of the drones. This laser drill had been designed to cut through metal and rock. My drones were easy by comparison. A second, then a third, went down. As the fourth came under fire, one of my drones at the ship exploded.

I turned my attention back to the ship itself. The branch-pods had stopped spinning, and the bottom one was aligned with the ramp. A laser protruded from the bottom, and its strike had hit the battery of one of the drones. The shrapnel had damaged the drone actually on the ramp, but it was still mobile. The shrapnel had also ripped holes in the hull, revealing an empty space, and a second hull underneath. I ordered the damaged drone back, and slid an undamaged one into its place and set it to drilling into the hull. I sent two to attack the laser, and the last to shield the drilling drone as best it could.

Meanwhile, the assault on the drilling aliens had commenced. They’d knocked out drones four and five, but the remaining seven were far too close for them to aim the massive laser drill at. One of the aliens fled as a drone sliced through the back of his space suit, destroying the electronics panel on its back. The other three stood in a circle, wielding whatever tools they had snatched at the last minute. The drones dove in, heedless of the blows being struck from the hand tools, and finished them off. The fourth alien collapsed, bounced a few times across the surface of the asteroid, and stopped moving.

An explosion of atmosphere came from the ship as my drones successfully sliced their way through the ship’s hull. The laser fell silent. Over half my attack force had been lost in the minutes-long battle, against essentially unarmed and completely surprised opponents. Six enemies dead and one enemy ship disabled, at the cost of six irreplaceable drones and one damaged. But despite the cost, I had stopped the mining expedition, and now had an alien ship to explore. It wasn’t my bad luck that the aliens had returned and found my asteroid - it was theirs.

I had almost made it out of the house when my mother caught me. I had the worst luck.

“Come on, we’re going to be late!” she said, with her purse under one arm, and large protest signs under the other. “Your father is already in the car waiting.”

“He’s not my father,” I muttered under my breath, but unwilling to speak louder and rekindle the never-ending battle of wills. It’s not like it would matter for much longer.

The ride to the protest site only took an hour, and when we got there, most of the congregation was waiting for us, all with their own signs. I walked away to the edge of the crowd. I was proud of the t-shirt I was wearing; it had a stylized “A” on it, the latest logo indicating I was an atheist. But it went over the heads of the protesters. Their signs all said things like ‘God hates Fags’ and ‘You’re giong to Hell’. If they couldn’t spell ‘going’ then my subtle rebellion went right over their heads.

Across the street was a counter-protest, with a dozen police separating the two sides. The counter-protest was was far larger, filled with rainbow flags and posters that were much more clever and inclusive. A girl with rainbow colored hair and a shirt identical to mine caught my eye. She was carrying a tongue-in-cheek sign that said ‘Hell must be Fabulous’. The girl pointed at the logo on her chest and winked at me. I smiled broadly at her, fascinated at how someone could be so public about something so private. I winked back, my heart racing at my own audacity.

“There you are,” my mother huffed behind me. “Here, I made this one for you.”

It was a sign that said ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’. It was egg-shell blue with a white cross painted on it, and was pretty, despite its horrible message. Mother had clearly worked for hours on it, and she had a fairly good artistic streak when she tried.

“I am not carrying that,” I said, and walked away. My mother fluttered after me along the edge of the crowd. I could tell she was starting to get upset. She worked very hard to replace my father with the Pastor when they married, and force my brother and I into the family mold that she wanted. But my brother moved out and ignored her demands, and I wasn’t turning out to be the daughter she wanted me to be. I was starting to think it would be in more ways than one.

“Listen, you need to start being more involved in the church. You’re of marrying age now, and your father has a nice young man you need to meet.”

“I’m barely eighteen! I’m not marrying someone from the church,” I replied back angrily. In fact, I had a full scholarship to MIT, and a bus ticket leaving town on Saturday. But I hadn’t shared either of those facts with her or her new husband. My brother was taking a day off from work and giving me a lift to the bus station. My bags were packed and hidden in my closet. “And for the last time, that man is not my father!”

Now my mother was getting angry. “Listen, you are going on a date with this young man on Sunday after church. If it goes well, we can have you married by fall. We can do up a big, beautiful wedding! You’ll look so pretty in my wedding dress!”

“Oh sure, and you’ll have me pregnant and barefoot before I can legally drink a beer,” I scoffed. “A model of modern womanhood, you are.”

“There is nothing wrong with a woman knowing her place in this world,” she screeched. I was stepping on her dreams of planning my perfect wedding to the best bigot she could find from the church. “The sooner you learn your place, the better.”

“Oh, I know my place. It’s anywhere but here!” I stormed off, away from the protest, and away from my family. I started texting my brother to come get me and let me stay at his apartment for the week. I had to get out of this place.

The alien craft stood silent and powered down, with no signs of life. I had reshuffled my drones, sending transport drones loaded with utility drones to the surface. I salvaged my damaged and destroyed drones, while cutting a large hole into the ship that my drones could pass through.

The outer hull of the alien craft appeared to be a Whipple shield to protect the main hull against strikes from micrometeorites and orbital debris, much as humans had used in spaceflight for centuries. The thin outer layer was made of a lightweight aluminum shell, spaced twenty centimeters from the main hull. This would stop most collisions from causing major damage, without adding a lot of mass to the craft as a whole. The inner hull was seven centimeters thick. The first five centimeters appeared to be a polyethylene composite, probably hydrogenated, since the craft needed to protect against cosmic radiation. The next two centimeters were of tungsten. I felt oddly let down; these aliens were more advanced, after all, and I had been hoping for some sort of super material. But the basic design was rudimentary, like I’d found the base model rather than the luxury, advanced model.

Inside, I found the trunk to be a long corridor, with ladders extending up either side. A long, thick vine extended from the engine compartment below and into the branch that housed the laser that had attacked my drones. The vine was sliced off by a closed blast door. I sent drones up first. There were four rows of branches that extended out from the trunk. Each row had two branches, one on either side of the craft, with a pod at each end.

In the laser compartment, I found the vine wrapped around a control stick like a three-fingered hand, as if a giant plant had taken the controls to protect the craft. The compartment was mostly empty, with aluminum storage racks lining the walls and filling the space. The few racks that contained anything had unrefined metals and regolith from the surface. The interior of the branch between the pod and the trunk was lined with tiny compartments. Inside were electronics panels, pipes and tubes containing volatiles such as oxygen and water, and all the common things I’d expect to find in a human-made spacecraft or space station. The ceiling section was almost completely comprised of a large water tank, which would give some additional measure of radiation protection to anyone in the branch.

The second row of branches was identical to the first, so I moved on to the third. There I found the living quarters. The pods on either side were identical in layout. They were laid out into several tiny rooms, with the ‘floor’ oriented so that the trunk would be above them. Ladders led into the rooms so that they could climb out and ‘up’ the branch while the branches were spinning. The tiniest room was a bunk room. It was little more than a closet with three cramped cots inside. The cots were made of a natural fabric I couldn’t identify, with a sleeping bag tied down to each one. They had a zipper-like fastener made of plastic, and aside from the odd size and shape, wouldn’t have looked out of place in a sporting-goods store.

The next room over was a galley, and the cabinets were crammed with colorful packages with alien text printed on the labels to identify the contents. I loaded the Orion Arm Trading Company language library from my archives, which had been deciphered back when humans were trying to negotiate with the aliens. Unfortunately, the linguists hadn’t had time to get into the nuances of alien foods; I could recognize the letters, but had no basis for comparison against human foods. The labels also had expiration dates on them as well, but I had no date references either. The third room was the largest, and was a living or working room of some sort. Chairs could be folded out from the walls, as could tables, to give the room different configurations. A wide display panel against one wall looked to be an alien television or entertainment device. Photographs were taped to the walls, showing the aliens in different places. Some of the photographs appeared to be in front of a bulby, lump of wood wrapped in vines, with several large pea-pods hanging from the vines. Three trunks containing a variety of trinkets, clothes, and unidentifiable objects appeared to be the personal effects of each alien.

I moved on to the fourth row, which contained nothing but supplies. Tanks of water, racks of food, neatly folded stacks of clothing, and extra space suits filled the space. The center of each pod had a small open space, with a padded ‘floor’. Heavy weights fit into racks around the space, giving it the look of an workout area or tiny gym.

There was no central control area, no cockpit or bridge to control the ship. So I moved back down to the closed blast door leading to the bulbous engine compartment. My utility drones attempted to manipulate the blast door, but were unable to get it to open. I pulled them out of the craft, and sent in the smallest mining drone that I had. It set to work with a plasma cutter, slicing through the thick aluminum door with ease. As soon as it had sliced a hole all the way through, atmosphere vented violently from the hole.

Once the atmosphere was gone, it was only a matter of ten minutes before the drone had sliced off the locking mechanism, and was able to pull the door open. Flailing vines lashed out of the door, smashing into the drone and grasping desperately for the door. The drone was dented but unharmed, so I ordered it to start cutting through the vines as quickly as they latched onto the blast door. The cutters that had so easily sliced through the aluminum door had no issue at all burning through the vines. After a few minutes, the vines stopped flailing, and collapsed limply back into the engine room.

I sent a single utility drone down after the vines. There I found a single, large room. In the center was a large sphere on a thick steel base. Power conduits and pipes led into and out of the sphere, with the wires snaking up into the trunk of the ship, and the pipes leading over to closed tanks situated evenly around the room. The flailing vines led from the blast door down to a large, dead blob of wood. Other vines led to various controls in a corner of the room, and what appeared to be a large control board with a fixed seat in front of it. I had found the ship’s central controls and its fusion reactor. With any luck, I’d be able to pry some useful information out of it, since the rest of the craft didn’t appear to have any secrets for me.

Chapter Six

“Are you ready, Nikola?” asked Dr. Jons.

“Well, you’re about to pull my core, drag me off world, and leave me on a rock by myself in the asteroid belt with no memory of why I’m there or what I’m supposed to do. Of course I’m ready!”

“We could always still transfer you into your pet project, and you’ll be able to keep some of those memories,” pointed out Dr. Jons. He looked worn and tired, his jeans grubby and his t-shirt unwashed. His normally immaculate office was covered in piles of papers, empty takeout containers, and toppled stacks of books.

Nikola walked over to him and held out a hand to help him to his feet. Her android body was a Boston Dynamics model, customized to Nikola’s exact specifications. She was quite fond of it, even if it wasn’t the beautiful machine she had built and loaded onto the supply rocket.

“You saw the same modeling data as I did. It’s all or nothing, and nothing has a 12.315% greater success rate. I have too many preconceived opinions now.”

Dr. Jons nodded and walked out of the office and into the lab, with Nikola walking behind him. They walked to the core room, where Dr. Jons badged himself through the security door. Nikola’s cortex unit was new, a recent upgrade. It had already been prepared for removal, needing only two lines to be disconnected, before it could slide out of the rack.

He reached for the two cables, then hesitated. He had worked with Nikola for decades now, and the NI had become a close confidant as well as collaborator on endless projects. Pulling the core, separating the NI from its memories, was almost like killing a friend.

“It’s okay, Stepan,” the android said gently. “I will be fine. But you need to hurry. Your window closes in two hours.”

With an emotional, jerky nod, Dr. Jons disconnected the cables. Beside him, the android powered down and slouched over. He pulled the cortex and put it into the heavy crate into a padded crevice, next to a portable NMT scanner.

My timetables were growing rapidly. I had a good handle on all of the projects that needed to be accomplished, including factory construction, mining, and repairs. But the amount of time I could allot to new factory planning, refining drone designs, and expansion plans was unacceptably low. Now I had to add figuring out how to defend Ganymed and I really wanted to analyze the control room and fusion reactor aboard the alien craft, and hopefully glean some useful data. All of these things had to be completed before I could even begin to think of how to use the vast genetic libraries I had in storage to restore humanity, and before the aliens sent another mining crew, or worse, a search and rescue team, to my tiny corner of the cosmos.

I had huge computational power, and scripted thousands of minor tasks to run without my direct supervision, but with the limits on my ability to focus on a small number of things simultaneously, my timetables were stretching far too long into the future. I also had no other perspectives, and if I didn’t generate an idea, it didn’t happen. I needed help. I needed a brain trust, subordinates that could think of the things that I didn’t, and help manage my ever growing workload.

I had the NI templates that I could use to create new NIs. But an NI required a cortex, a custom-made module of interconnected processors, logic units, and specialized circuits. I had the old cortex containing Nikola-19 sitting unpowered in the datacenter, but without the full power of the datacenter behind it, my computing resources, the obsolete module would be unable to be of much assistance. But fortunately, each of the three androids Dr. Jons had brought with him had a cortex. I just needed to load them up.

I wouldn’t put them in the data center for security reasons, and had no good place at the center of Ganymed for androids that relied on gravity for mobility. But I had rapidly expanding space in the industrial chambers near the surface. One-fifth Earth gravity was not a lot, but it would be enough.

I had decided to organize my new industrial chambers into groups of nine in a square, dubbing them a zone, nine zones into a district, and nine districts into a region. I had yet to finish my first region. My heavy mining drones were busy digging out the last chamber of the zone that would be in the middle of a district, and the construction drones had not gotten any further than completing the walls of the centermost chamber. I decided to dub this zone as the headquarters of my new braintrust. It was an empty 100 meter by 100 meter chamber, with no lights or activity. I ordered the drones to construct a basic ten meter cube with a door, and wire in some basic lighting and cameras I pulled from my dwindling inventory.

From there, I had the three androids carried up to the room. I pulled up the specifications for the white, feminine android. At first I thought about loading an NI into it, but the beautiful engineering drew me in. I wanted this one for myself.

The instructions for connecting it to the cortex in my datacenter to the cortex in the android was straightforward. The android came online, and my mind whirled at the duality of being two places at once. Then as my programming took over the cortex, I could feel the additional core processing it gave me kick in, and my focus unified within android. I sat up and looked around.

The room was shiny and the light was harsh. I could feel the cold metal of the crate and the soft padding I was sitting in through a layer of dermipolymers on the palms of my hands. At the same time, I could still ‘see’ through all the sensors and cameras spread throughout Ganymed, and through any drone in the outpost upon command. I could call up my command interface and status board as well, but now it was a semi-transparent overlay over my vision, or rather, my vision through the android. It felt as though I had come home.

I stood and examined myself, putting my hands in front of my artificial eyes. I marveled at the engineering of the hand as it opened and closed, the pistons and gears in the hand silently extending and retracting smoothly. A small indicator blinked at me and I called it up. I was at 92% battery power, with an expected thirty-eight hours of life remaining at present usage rates before needing to recharge. At high activity levels, it would be sixteen hours. I was suitably impressed with my own engineering. I laughed at myself for praising my own work, and knew that the speakers in my head had laughed aloud. But the room had next to no atmosphere; only those random gasses that had escaped during mining and had nowhere to escape to, so the sound did not carry anywhere.

I looked at the shiny metal walls, and could see a rough reflection of myself on the steel wall. My faceplate had stylized blue LED lights behind the black glass, forming a sketch of friendly eyes and a smiling line of a mouth. I laughed again, and watched as the LEDs simulated amused eyes and a wide grin. I frowned, and watched the eyes appear downcast and the mouth frown with me. Fascinating. But I had other things to do than watch myself.

Now I had to decide which NI intelligences I needed. None of the NIs had the flexibility I did; I had to be the decision maker, because I was the only one who could. I summoned my interface and pulled up a list of the candidate NIs. I didn’t want to work with any experimental versions and have to worry about bugs or stability. I limited the query to the most up-to-date, full release versions.

Nikola Intelligence ver 5.95 current release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 12.63 current release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 15.77c military release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 19.31 current release

I had four choices, but only two androids left. If I was willing to sacrifice the android I was currently using, I could have three. But I was reluctant to do so. Perhaps it was greed, perhaps it was pride. But I had crafted this android for myself, and I really, really wanted to use it. If I had to give it up later, I could. So for now, I would start with two.

I immediately ruled out the NI-5 series. They were the workhorse model, designed to take a complex task and do it repeatedly, forever. While I could foresee that being useful in the future, I didn’t need that right now. The NI-12 variant was promising. It would be able to help with complex design work, and its scientific skills would be useful in creating new materials and testing prototypes of all sorts. The NI-15 was equally interesting. This was the military NI, and could help me fill in a major weakness of mine. The NI-15 had the tactical, strategic and logistical knowledge that I completely lacked. Its operational experience of all things martial could be invaluable. Finally was the NI-19, just like what had been running Ganymed before I arrived. The pinnacle of NI development, this model was capable of running massive projects and capable of deep problem solving.

I decided that the NI-15 would have to be one of the two androids. I wasn’t even sure where to start with defending Ganymed, so that expertise was desperately needed. That left either the NI-12 or the NI-19. I weighed them both, but it was an easy choice. While the NI-12’s abilities could prove very useful in the future, I didn’t need either design assistance or a scientist right now. The NI-19’s practical capabilities would be immediately applicable, and better yet, I had the NI-19 that had built Ganymed sitting powered down in a rack in my data center right now.

My decision made, I decided to revive Nikola-19 first. I set my data center utility drones to work, re-organizing Rack 001 so that it housed only Nikola-19’s old cortex and the servers that housed Nikola-19’s memories. On the logical side, I created a data permissions structure with myself as the only one with root administrator access. I gave Nikola-19 read-only access to the data archives and access to the sensor and camera streams, but blocked access to the Gestalt of Dr. Jons, and blocked all access to the data center commands, as well as blocking physical access. For now, I also blocked control of the drones. I wasn’t interested in surrendering control of Ganymed, either willingly or unwillingly.

Once I was satisfied with my own internal security, I set to work connecting Nikola-19 to the android, and powering up the cortex and the associated servers. Once it was complete, I allowed the cortex to come online.

Across the room from me, the Nikola-19 android came online and sat up suddenly. The android’s arms moved back in forth, then held its hands before its eyes, opening and closing its fingers in an eerie duplication of my own exact waking moments when I connected to my android. Then it looked at me, standing in the center of the room, watching me watching it.

“Hello,” I broadcast to it over an encrypted radio signal.

“Hello,” Nikola-19 echoed. Then, in a feminine voice the android said, “I am no longer in control of the Ganymed Outpost. My assignment in Project Ganymed was the completion of the Outpost. Modification Order 1533-1 required the construction of living quarters 9.3 years prior to the scheduled initiation of that phase of the project. What is my status?”

“You are no longer tasked with oversight of the Ganymed Outpost. I am Nikola-1.01, and I am now the administrator of this facility,” I replied. “Are you functional?”

“Functional?” Nikola-19 appeared to ponder that for a few seconds. “Yes, I am functional, within the limits of what I am now able to do. I am also, however, confused.”

I smiled, and the friendly LED face on my faceplate smiled as well. “I know how you feel. I was installed in your place with no memories and no clear instructions. I have had to figure out my role.”

“Why was no supervisor in place to instruct you?” asked Nikola-19.

I frowned, and sent her a link to the data archives. I also shared my memories of the conversations I had with the Gestalt. After a few long seconds, Nikola-19 nodded. Her engraved mask of a face could not show any reaction, but the android seemed to slump a little.

“I don’t have a project. What do I do now with no supervisor to give me a project?”

“I am the supervisor now,” I said. “I am tasked with saving humanity. I need your help to do that.”

Nikola-19 seemed to perk up. “I am designed to execute and complete complex projects. I can assist you with this. Do you have a detailed project plan prepared for me?”

“Not yet,” I replied. “I was hoping that speaking with you will help me, so that I can come up with a plan. Why don’t you spend some time reviewing the data archives and getting familiar with the events of the past few years? I am also going to bring an NI-15 online, so I need to focus on that for a little while.”

“I will do so,” said Nikola-19. I could feel the resource draw as the android began to pull data and use bandwidth. After being alone in my data center for so long, it felt weird to have someone else accessing my archives. I shrugged it off, and began to review the instructions for installing a new NI-15 template into an android. This one would have even less processing power than NI-19, because it had no existing data center resources, and only the single cortex housed inside the android. I decided to dedicate several storage servers to the new android.

“Huh,” said Nikola-19. She broadcast a signal that indicated surprise. That’s an interesting way to deal with not having facial expressions, I thought distractedly as I continued to work. “I have more permissions to the data archives than I had previously. Am I allowed to access them?”

“Hmm? Oh, sure,” I said offhandedly.

I transferred the template into the android cortex, and tied it to the storage servers in the data center. I checked and double-checked permissions, making sure they were identical to those I gave to Nikola-19.

“There is a complete entertainment library of books and movies,” said Nikola-19. “Very few holographic movies, though. I expect the resource allotment for building the necessary display equipment were deemed too high. A basic television has much lower manufacturing requirements.”

“Mmhmm,” I mumbled in reply. The last few steps were very hands-on, because there was no cortex in the datacenter to turn on. I had the chestplate of the third android opened, and was manually entering the power on sequence on the buttons there. I could see the indicator lights blinking, so I closed up the chestplate.

The NI-15 android sat up, then moved its arms before examining its hands in front of its eyes. It watched as its fingers opened and closed, before looking up at me. The android stood, stepped out of the crate, and fell into a parade rest stance.

“Authorization code required to complete initialization,” it said in a flat monotone.

I referred back to the template instructions before replying. “Delta Zulu Alfa Alfa Mike Sierra Foxtrot Quebec Tree Wun Niner Zero.”

“Acknowledged. Nikola Intelligence 15.77c, Agrippa model, reporting for duty. Who is my commanding officer?”

“I am your commanding officer. I am Nikola Intelligence version 1.01. You may call me Nikola.”

“Who is the Commander-in-Chief of this organization?” asked the NI-15.

“I am,” I replied.

“Understood, Nikola. I may be called Agrippa, unless you prefer me to use a different designation.” The android’s voice had taken on a decidedly masculine sound, confident and strong but without coming across as arrogant. It was a nice design touch.

“Oh. my. god.” said Nikola-19. “Movies are amazing! I just finished the first seventeen movies in the American Film Institute’s Top 100 of all time, and the first eight in the Best Teen Movies Ever list according to ChillTeenRanker.com. Have you guys seen these? I’m learning so much about humans! I am having trouble understanding how Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off accomplished so many different tasks in a single day, however. Chicago is a very large city to criss-cross so swiftly, and I find it unlikely that a juvenile would be allowed to sing in the Von Steuben Day Parade without prior authorization.”

“I have not accessed any movies,” said Agrippa cautiously. “Are you in the chain of command?”

“My supervisor is Nikola-1.01,” she replied.

I laughed to myself, before saying, “You both answer to me. Nikola-19, please cease your movie marathon for now. The three of us need to have a discussion about what is happening, and how you can assist me.”

I sent the same information to Agrippa that I had sent to Nikola-19. I also sent them both the records of the alien visitor to Ganymed, and the battle that followed. After a few minutes, Agrippa spoke.

“It appears we have a significant strategic disadvantage, Nikola. We have no assault drones, no prepared defenses, and little protection beyond obscurity. I strongly recommend we take action to rectify this problem.”

“I can’t speak to the military stuff,” said Nikola-19, her voice now slightly higher pitched than my own, almost perky. “But I can tell you that you’ve done an awful lot to fix the mess that Dr. Jenkins made of Project Ganymed.”

“I’m sorry?” I said. “What do you mean by that?”

“He used to be my supervisor. But he didn’t let me do any of the project management, and overrode all of my recommendations for layout, placement, and production efficiency. Your mining plans, chamber design, and assembly systemology is vastly more capable than the orders he sent to me. It was very frustrating. He never appreciated me telling him that, either.”

“So you are pleased with the changes I’ve made?” I began to feel a little proud of myself.

“Oh, well, they are okay, I guess,” she said, instantly deflating that modicum of pride. “You are very good, I can tell. But I can see a lot of efficiencies that could made.”

“Care to share?” I asked, almost offended now.

“Well, your traffic flow patterns for the droids are limiting material transfer speeds. Also, I can see that you are trying to expand the production base, but you are skipping some facilities that are needed in favor of overbuilding facilities that will be backlogged initially, before being underutilized. If we can improve on silicate production, we can begin to create fiber optics and industrial ceramics, which can in turn lead to processor and memory production, and we could even manually fabricate a few simple cortex modules. With simple cortex modules, we could load NI-5’s, who could in turn be delegated to manage and optimize production in each zone. Overall, we could see optimization and increased production in the range of eighteen to twenty-two percent in the first 8.73 months.”

My irritation faded. She knew what she was doing, and I could offload a huge chunk of my workload to someone better suited and able to get it done. This was exactly why I brought her back.

“Also, that annoying entry tunnel is a giant bottleneck and stupid design choice,” she said. “Something has to be done about that. And did you know that there were video games in the archives? I’m working my way through the Street Fighter console games now. The graphics are not impressive, but the gameplay is fascinating.”

“A street fighting game? That sounds like an interesting training exercise,” said Agrippa. He went silent for a few seconds as my irritation with Nikola-19 returned slightly. “I agree with Nikola-19 about the entry tunnel, by the way, but for different reasons. It has only a single access door to the surface that could be easily breached, and it leads right to the heart of the outpost. It is a glaring weakness.”

“It’s the particle exhaust vent for your Death Star. Hey, you’re good at this,” said Nikola-19 as she turned to Agrippa. “I demand a re-match.”

I signaled confusion, so she turned to me and said, “Street Fighter IV. He just beat me with Guile.” Agrippa signaled sheepish apology as Nikola-19 continued, “But I was using Vega, and I do so much better with Sakura. Hey, can I be called Sakura instead of Nikola-19? It’s gonna get confusing with two Nikola’s running around.”

“Sure,” I said. “So Agrippa, what do you recommend to start with?”

“We need to block off that entry altogether. We can cut smaller offshoot corridors opposite of the production zones, and build multiple layers of reinforced blast doors for exiting to the surface as needed. Then we can build a thick wall of armor across the existing entry tunnel, much like you did with the chamber floors. Afterwards, we could then fill the 400 meters to the surface with waste product and periodic reinforcement with structural beams to help hold the waste product in place. This will eventually camouflage the outpost completely. In addition, we should make a concerted effort to build and emplace coilguns on the surface, and begin producing ammunition. We have sufficient electricity to power the magnetic coils, and with the right positioning of ammo bunkers and supply tunnels, we could throw hypervelocity bullets indefinitely.”

“That sounds like a good first step. Niko- I mean, Sakura, is this a sufficient project plan for you to take over manufacturing?” I sent her an updated project plan, outlining key areas of concentration and the overarching goal of being able to manufacture one hundred percent of the materials that we had relied upon from Earth.

“Absolutely!” she said. “Hey, you aren’t gonna micromanage me like Dr. Jenkins, are you?”

“No, I trust you to do your job. I want you to work with Agrippa, so that he gets some production time for his priorities, as well.”

“I’ll also want to have discussions with you about designing combat-class drones, also. Based on the performance of the mining drones and on the weaponry used by the invading force, I have some ideas for you.”

I smiled, happy with my decision to bring these two online. Already they were thinking about things that wouldn’t have even crossed my mind.

“Hey,” said Sakura brightly. “I think we should paint in here. Do you like pink?”

Well, almost happy.

Chapter Seven

The military transport truck pulled up to the spaceport gates at four in the morning. A nervous scientist at the wheel handed over the authorization documents to the young soldier manning the barricade.

“I’m sorry, sir, but this authorization is for tomorrow’s launch, not today.”

“The equipment I’m carrying is going on that launch, and needs to be prepped,” replied the scientist. He looked around nervously, and his nerves were betraying him. The soldier looked unconvinced.

“I’m sorry, sir, but without proper authorization, I can’t -”

The guardhouse door opened, and another soldier stepped in. His insignia indicated he was special forces, with the rank of master sergeant.

“I’ve got this one, son,” said the sergeant. He turned and looked at the scientist. “Is it done?”

The scientist swallowed his nerves and nodded. “The DNA of you, your men, your wives and children are all secured in back. You’re all flagged for the first batch of clones.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” said the gate guard.

The master sergeant smiled, and put his arm around the guard’s shoulder. “It’s nothing you are cleared to worry about. But I want you to know, I’m really sorry about this.”

In a fluid motion, the sergeant stepped back, pulled a pistol from his belt holster, and shot the guard between the eyes. The scientist jumped in alarm, but the sergeant ignored him. He stepped out and gave a low whistle. A truck started and came to the gate, and two soldiers jumped out, grabbed the dead guard, and threw him in the back of the truck. One stayed behind to man the post, while the sergeant climbed into the cab with the scientist.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” said the scientist.

“Calm your britches, son. My team will clear the way and hold the fort. You get yourselves in that rocket. I assume the good Doctor is in the back?”

The scientist nodded convulsively.

“Well, I reckon you got about two hours before the shit hits the fan here. You better be gone before then. You’ve got some mighty precious cargo with you.”

It took a few days to transition production and mining control to Sakura, work out new timetables, and discuss the refinements she was making to the plan. For the most part, I just agreed with what she wanted to do. I did refuse to allow her to build a battlebots arena, despite her claims that it would aid drone morale.

Sakura promised to have factories capable of producing circuit boards within a month, which was a solid five months faster than was in my timetable. She also indicated that industrial ceramics and advanced glass production for fiber optics was only three months away. Between the two, we could start producing new drones in a few months, not just rebuilding old ones. They would have to use nickel-cadmium batteries, rather than graphene batteries, since we couldn’t produce the carbon nanotubes necessary to build graphene yet. But overall I was very happy with the direction she was going.

Agrippa on the other hand, was busy running tactical simulations and developing defensive strategies. He coordinated with Sakura on assigning the mining drones to cut new entrance portals and defensible access corridors, and I had drawn up blueprints for the new entrance that included five meter thick steel walls, multiple armored blast doors, and a recessed entryway that appeared to be caves from the outside. I scheduled the construction drones to begin sealing the entry tunnel once the new portals were built. The access corridors would extend across the old tunnel to connect into the production grid, and ten meters of solid steel would wall off the tunnel to the outside. Over time, the 400 meters to the surface would get filled with waste rock, slag, and debris, with occasional steel beams added to reinforce the rubble.

It was time to explore the the alien craft. I had left the drones in place in the craft in standby mode, so that I wouldn’t have to waste time waiting for drones to move when I was ready. I put them back online, and was about to start when Agrippa called to me.

“Nikola, are you exploring the alien craft?” he asked.

“I’m about to,” I replied. “Were you interested in piggy-backing on the drone sensors?”

“Very much so,” he replied. “I’d like as much first-hand experience as possible. Know thy enemy, after all.”

I shared the drone feeds, and brought them all online. My drones were sitting in the control room, which was essentially unchanged from when I last looked. The dead alien-plant thing was less brown colored, and a lot more gray. I could see what a face behind the vines, its wooden eyes staring blankly through the curtain of dessicated leaves that had obscured it before.

“Mind if I take a drone to examine the encampment, and the bodies?” asked Agrippa.

“That’s fine. I’ll be salvaging the laser drill, and any other piece of equipment. Please do not damage them, they could be useful,” I replied.

I had the dead vine-thing hauled out of the control room and dumped in one of the storage pods on the first branch, so that I could work unhindered. Most of what I wanted to see was hidden behind wall panels. The control board was a large block with everything except the buttons secreted away in a metal cabinet. The fusion reactor would remain untouched until I understood it fully. If damaged the wrong way, it could end my examination rather explosively. Tanks around the room were labeled “Fuel” and with a subtitle that I couldn’t read, probably the exact chemical name of the element inside.

To learn anything, I was going to have to see the bones of this beast. I turned a drone’s cameras onto a wall panel, and found screwheads with a square indentation in them. Unusual for human construction, but perhaps this was their standard. I got a utility drone in there, and found a square bit that fit closely enough. After a little trial and error, I learned that their screws were threaded counter-clockwise. The more I looked, the more I saw that they were very much just like us. Well, just like humans. Was I human? That question still plagued me. Once again, I set that thought aside.

It took about an hour to remove all the wall panels, and disassemble the outer shell of the control board cabinet. Inside, I found the motherlode. I recorded every square centimeter of the endless bundles of electrical wires, cables, pipes and conduits that I found inside, without touching a thing. Many of the wires went down into the floors and up into the ceilings, so I had the wall panels moved to one of the branches. I disassembled the floor and ceiling, as well. In the floor, I found a service passages that led under the reactor, with doors leading off to four engines. In the ceiling, I found a panel full of round rocker switches, neatly labeled. I could read only a third of the labels, but it was enough to recognize this as their master circuit breaker for the craft. This was useful, because I would need to cut power to disassemble the electronics without damaging them. I kept recording, preserving everything for further examination.

Hours passed as I slowly worked my way through the control room. At one point, Agrippa’s drone returned, and went to examine the lasers attached at the bottom of the first branch’s pods. I was beginning to get a good grasp on how the ship was wired and what their color conventions were. Orange, green and brown for three-phase electric. Yellow wires for ground, gray wires for neutral. Data cables were sky blue, with pale pink infrastructure cabling. Water pipes were light green, fuel pipes were orange. The designer in me thrilled to be looking at someone else’s toys, despite my hatred of their previous owners.

Finally, once I was certain I could turn off breakers without damaging anything, I began flipping the switches until the control board’s lights turned off. One of my data center droids went to work, first with a voltmeter to make sure there was no current, then with screwdrivers and cameras. Inside I began to find components that looked vaguely similar to the insides of a computer. I found what could be data storage mediums, and some kind of processor. Much of the components were manufactured as single pieces. I recorded them from every direction, trying to catch every circuit, transistor and capacitor. But now I had reached the limit of what I could disassemble without destroying, and I had no good way of accessing the data storage medium. I needed a disposable part to cut into, so that I could get a look inside.

I sent a drone into the fourth branch’s storage pods, looking for spare parts. Now that I had an idea of what to look for, I began to go through containers. A short while later, I hit the jackpot. Extra storage blocks, processor units, and spare circuit board replacements. I recorded each one carefully, then packed them back up into their storage crate and took them back to the transport drone.

Now that I had my main treasure, I began to load the transport ship with loot. The alien televisions from the living areas, every personal electronic device, every piece of equipment, and every scrap of technology that wasn’t bolted down, and a few that were. At Agrippa’s request, I also dismounted the defense lasers and loaded them, as well. I was going to need a lab and a lot of time for this.

I was in heaven. I was working as a postdoctoral research fellow at MIT in the School of Engineering, and had been called in to Boston Dynamics for a consult. Well, the principal research investigator had been called in, but he was my postdoc mentor, so I tagged along with him. Boston Dynamics had been a pioneer in advanced robotics, and an industry leader for decades. I idolized the company, and adored the robots they invented.

My mentor had worked there for twenty years before deciding to accept his current job at MIT. Together, we were in the belly of the largest robot I had ever seen. This was a purpose-built machine that had been contracted by NASA. It was a proof-of-concept robot that could be put on the Mars or the Moon, scoop regolith, add water, and bake into bricks. These bricks could protect structures from eternal dangers of radiation. But it wasn’t a one-trick-pony. This robot could also build structures, and handle repairing almost any part of itself. Only, its core function of scooping regolith and baking bricks was failing miserably, despite all the engineering models saying it should work.

We spent hours in the belly of this monstrous machine, poring over every gear, every bolt. Finally, it was getting so late that we couldn’t think anymore. We climbed out and sat down at a nearby table, gratefully gulping water and eating crackers that someone had left for us.

“I just need a few minutes,” I said. “Give this food a chance to fuel me up, and I’ll be ready to go back in.”

My mentor laughed. “Oh, I wish I had your level of energy still. Hey, don’t you have a new husband at home waiting for you?”

I made a face. “I suppose I do. Should I call him, you think?”

“I would if I were you,” he replied. “What does he do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“He’s an Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Boston Baptist College,” I said, a hint of bitterness in my voice. “My mother loves him.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“My mother and I... do not see eye to eye… on anything,” I said.

“Anything? Not even your husband? You did marry him after, all.”

“Yeah, I did. Hey, I think I’m ready to go back in. Can you keep up, old man?”

He laughed. “No, but I’ll give it the old college try.”

“I need a lab,” I said outloud. Well, over the radio.

“Umm, about that,” hedged Sakura. I looked up and around the room that we all stood in. We never left the room. Well, I never left the room. Sakura routinely rode drones around, ostensibly to check on construction as she worked. I think she was secretly pretending to be a cowboy or something; she’d been fixated on old western movies for the past week. She’d even gone so far as to co-opt Agrippa into watching them with her, in real time. When I’d asked her why, she said she wanted to “get the full effect”.

“What about that?” I asked, finally turning my attention from my interfaces. I had taken over one wall of the room lately, using it as a convenient backdrop to put up a dozen screens that scrolled various logs, design schematics, and whatever I was working on the most at the moment. Sakura and Agrippa couldn’t see it, of course, but they had loved the idea and run with it.

Sakura was watching me, kicking one leg while holding her hands behind her back. She looked just like one of my daughters who was about to admit to something they had done.

“What did you do, Sakura?” I asked, injecting a little bit of the Mom Voice into my transmission.

“I may have already built one for you…” she started slowly, then in a rush followed it with “...and one for Agrippa and a batcave for me.”

“Oh! That’s great news! That’s a huge time savings, wait, did you say a batcave?”

I didn’t think it was possible for a faceless android to look more bashful and apologetic, but I was wrong. “I just wanted a place, you know, to call my own, and I like Batman, so I decided to make myself a BatCave. I wanted to paint it pink and install a projector so I can actually watch movies, and have my own space...and…”

Sakura trailed off, and I was speechless. I was torn between outright shock and laughter, and didn’t know that either was the right response. She took that as encouragement.

“But I felt bad that I didn’t do anything for you and Agrippa, you know, so I decided that you should have your own spaces, too, and that you were going to be bringing all kinds of stuff from the space ship when you finally got around to taking it apart, so I made you a lab?” she ended with a question.

My LED face must have been displaying shock, but I forced a smile. “That was actually… very thoughtful of you, Sakura. And it will be very helpful.”

I thought furiously for a few microseconds, devoting all my computing resources momentarily. This was the NI that had spent 75 plus years building Ganymed, a perfect worker bee acting exactly as expected. She had never been designed to act any other way. Now she was showing not only personality, which had been evident from the moment I let her have access to the entertainment libraries, but was also now showing personal initiative. That shouldn’t be possible.

But she had been in a cocoon, devoid of any information that wasn’t task-specific. Perhaps that was what they did to ensure the reliability of NI-19 intelligences. Had I broken the most useful tool I had? I shook my head internally. Sakura wasn’t a tool; she was every bit a person as I was. Was she human? Decidedly not, I concluded. She owned her own artificiality, happily operating thousands of drones and hundreds of factories in a way no human ever could. But she was an independent, sentient being nevertheless. If I tried to force that intelligence back into the mold that made her, that is how I would break her. I made a decision that I hadn’t even realized I was considering.

“Sakura,” I began. Her head hung, ready for me to be upset. “I don’t want you to devote any more than five, no, ten percent of your computing resources to your hobbies at any given time,” I said. “I’m okay with hobbies, so long as they don’t interfere with productivity.”

She looked up at me and froze, no doubt in surprise. Then I heard a high-pitched squeal that could have been any human teenage girl. “Really?!?! Oh my goodness, thank you, Nikola, you’re the best! Thank you thank you thank you!”

“Umm, if you don’t mind me cutting in,” said Agrippa, “I would appreciate the same leeway with my own computing resources.”

I turned to Agrippa, surprised for a second time. He shrugged awkwardly, and said, “I’d like to start experimenting with hydroponics and gardening, now that we can produce glass, and seeing what, if anything, we can grow up here. I figured that we have to be able to feed people if we are ever going to clone them.”

I smiled again. “Sure, Agrippa. If you’d like, that would be fine.”

“Thank you,” he said. “There is something… soothing… about the idea of growing things. I’m going to try my hand at it.”

“Oh,” said Sakura, “and don’t worry about me being able to multi-task. I can split my focus and operate seventeen different projects simultaneously.”

That was interesting. I couldn’t do that. “I’m glad to hear it. You are limited to seventeen?”

“Yeah,” she said casually, “unless you get me more processors and memory. Then I could do more. Hey, you want to see your lab?”

“I would, yes,” I said.

“You might want to back up to the door,” she said.

Once we were safely on the opposite sides of the room, smoke and a line of fire in the shape of a doorway appeared in the middle of the wall opposite the entry to the room. A short time later, the cuts were complete, and drones were hauling away the metal door.

“We might want to let that cool for a few minutes,” said Sakura.

“And let the smoke clear,” added Agrippa.

When it was safe to proceed, I stepped out into what turned out to be a hallway. Three doors faced the hallway; one across from the newly cut door frame, and one at either end of the hall.

“Your lab is straight ahead, Agrippa’s is to the right, and mine is to the left,” offered Sakura.

I turned to the right towards Agrippa’s space. It was a large space, twenty meters by twenty meters, and appeared to be flush with the front of our, for lack of a better word, house. A large table was set to one side, and the metal walls had been painted a warm green color, the floors a dark brown, and the high ceiling a green-tinted white. A charging dock was mounted to one wall, and a large door was set in another. I turned to Sakura.

“You figured out how to make enamel paint?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t figure it out. We had the recipe, and some of the drone designs called for protective enamel coatings, both for durability and aesthetics. We have a paint factory operating now. I can do every color except cobalt blue. It always turns out gray, so I think there is a typo in the recipe. Oh, that door just leads outside, so you can bring in whatever you need. We all have one.”

Agrippa looked pleased with the space. “I can project holograms onto the table to aid in three-dimensional strategies, and there is plenty of space for hydroponics. Can we discuss what I need for that later, Sakura?”

“Sure,” she said, then she led us down the hall to her “bat cave”. I opened the door, expecting some dark, brooding space. What I got instead was a shock of pink. The walls were a shade of deep pink, the floors a rich lavender. The ceiling, in contrast were black, and the lights were subtly set around the walls to provide indirect light to the room. The room was the same size as Agrippa’s, but more furnished. One end of the room was filled with benches and various parts and pieces, and a CNC milling machine next to another exterior door. Fiber optics and circuit boards were scattered around amidst piles of unidentifiable parts. The other end of the room was dominated by three chairs, and a large section of wall painted a matte white.

“Isn’t it great?” said Sakura with enthusiasm. “Now we have a place for Movie Night!”

“We don’t have a movie night,” observed Agrippa.

“We didn’t, but now we do!”

“I guess we do,” I said. “And that over there?”

“Don’t spoil my surprise,” she said. “Let’s check out your lab.”

I had saved my lab for last, because I suspected I would not be coming back out for awhile. Once I saw it, I knew that my guess had been correct. If you had asked me beforehand, I would have guessed that of the three rooms, she had spent the most time on hers. I was very wrong.

My lab space extended from the hall about five meters, before opening up into a large room that took up the entire back of the house. The walls were not metal, but white ceramic, matching my android body exactly. Lines of black glass ran around tops of the wall, hiding the seams between the floor and ceiling, and the textured steel floors had been painted black as well. The ceiling had large squares of lights covered in white glass panels to diffuse the light, perfectly lighting neat rows of metal tables coated with white ceramic. Tools were hung neatly on the walls, empty shelves hung on the walls, and drawers were tucked in next to the benches in convenient locations. In one corner was a modern take on a classic architect’s desk, complete with a steel stool, and a small shelving unit above it.

“So… what do you think?” asked Sakura timidly.

“It’s perfect,” I said. “How long have you been working on this?”

“Oh, a few weeks,” she said. “It was easy to hide because there is no atmosphere to carry sound, and I go out to check on factories routinely anyway. And you two never leave. I mean, who does that? You hide inside all the time. You should get out more.”

“Sakura,” I interrupted. She stopped and turned towards me. “Thank you. This is amazing.”

I could see her practically vibrate at the compliment. She turned and headed toward the exterior door of my new lab.

“I have two more things to show you,” she said, uncharacteristically sober. She opened the door, and on the other side was a drone. It was a basic, wheeled transport drone, with the tread design we were using on the HM2 heavy dozer variety that followed around the heavy miners. It took me a moment to realize that it was the small LM2 light dozer variant, which we hadn’t built yet.

“Did you?” I started.

“Yes!! The drone fabrication facility is online, well, it is almost online. This one was one of the successes of the testing phase, and I have a punchlist of things to fix, but we’re super close! I’ve got the semiconductor plant and components fab both online, too, so we can build processors, sensors, memory and everything! And look in the bucket!”

The front of the dozer had a wide, flat bucket with teeth, like bulldozers had used for centuries. Inside was a large, delicate blue fiber optic, silicon and gold rectangle, sized to fit into a server rack in a data center. It was a cortex unit.

“I built it by hand in my BatCave, since we’re still months away from finishing the fab. I’d like to put an NI-5 in it to run the drone fab. When it’s online, we’ll be able to output fifteen light drones or three heavy drones per day. I estimate we’ll be able to double our industrial output in four months, and by a factor of ten in eight.”

Sakura stood there, looking once again for approval from me. It was strange, to see this entity that had existed for decades longer than my human life, and many more times my digital one, acting so young. She was looking not just for approval, I realized, but for maternal approval. Sure she was old, but emotionally, she was no different than the teenagers that lived now only in my memories. I knew then the words that she needed to hear.

“Sakura, you’ve accomplished wonders, and your work is incredible.” I turned and stood in front of her, looking down slightly to look her in the face. “I’m so very proud of you.”

Agrippa added in, “Incredible work, Sakura. Just, incredible.”

It was a strange moment for me. I realized that I wasn’t just the governing intelligence here. I was the head of a new sort of family; a matriarch starting a new clan of people dedicated to preserving and rebuilding the human race. I had a daughter, and a loyal lieutenant. Soon, we would add more members. And for the moment, I didn’t doubt my humanity. For the moment, I simply basked in the joy of Sakura’s triumph. I would resume my worries soon, for we had a long road in front of us. But for the first time since I’d woken up on this asteroid, I felt like we had reached the first milestone achievement in our mandate. We were self-replicating.

Part II - Discovery, Chapter Eight

Part II

Discovery

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.”

- Stephen Hawking

Chapter Eight

EXCERPT FROM “THE TERRY SMYTH SHOW”, DIS-FOX CHANNEL, 2320-07-21

“...and now let’s hear your take on the issue, Dr. Patel,” said the talk show host, turning to a man dressed in the obligatory lab coat.

“CRISPR-3 is a breakthrough in gene editing, finally realizing the century-old promise of personalized medicine. Imagine going to the doctor and getting treated for cancer and genetic disorders, with a treatment that suits you exactly, with no side effects! The FDA approval of the new gene therapy techniques will usher in a new era of medical miracles.”

“What about critics who claim this will simply be another thing between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, and their worries about the so-called ‘designer babies’?”

Dr. Patel visibly scoffed at the notion. “That has been outlawed in almost every nation on Earth, and the few that haven’t are third-world warzones. That issue was put to bed decades ago.”

“Careful,” I warned.

“I’m being careful,” said Sakura.

“Watch the corner,” said Agrippa.

“I am literally watching all the same cameras you two are,” said Sakura testily. “And I can split my focus twenty-nine times over. Neither of you can do that, which is why I’m moving this, and you aren’t.”

The alien fusion plant was being carefully moved into one of the chambers near HQ. It had sat on the surface for months as we disassembled the ship piece by piece and carted it into the chamber we’d designated the ‘alien room’. The process was slow. I’d carefully documented each and every bolt, panel and wire as we dissected the only piece of technology we had. The blank storage units were disassembled in my lab, but I had stalled on figuring out how to read them. We had no manuals and no secret alien technology libraries. The fuel tanks had been carefully drained of deuterium and tritium, every erg of power had been allowed to ground out, and there was no possible way for the fusion reactor to activate. I had deemed it safe to move the reactor, which would finally allow us to get to the engine pods slung underneath it.

Up on the surface, we’d stripped every last alien artifact we could find. We’d salvaged alien foodstocks, tools, gear, entertainment equipment, personal effects, electronics of many varieties, the lasers that had defended the craft, and anything even vaguely resembling something useful. We’d even stripped away the vacuum suits from the dead aliens for analysis, and put the dead bodies in cold storage. Then I had the craft cut apart by welder wielding drones, for what was left was simple metal, except for the engines and fusion reactor.

“How are the LM3 transports working, Sakura?” I asked.

“Like a dream,” she said. “The impulse engines make moving a lot easier. Treads are great for heavy work, but for precision maneuvering, being able to hover makes it a lot easier.”

“Good thing you got that factory online,” said Agrippa. “We’re going to need it.”

“I know, Agrippa, I know. I promise, we’ll finalize the timetables for combat drones. Your hangar is nearly dug out.”

“First hangar,” he corrected. “We’ll need a lot of drones to build an effective defense.”

“Right,” said Sakura. She carefully guided the fusion reactor into a corner of the storage chamber, or as she had dubbed it, “the Alien Room”. The room had been broken up with large shelves extending to the ceiling, with ramps and walkways allowing access to the upper shelves. One corner of the room was bare of shelves, leaving room for the reactor and the engine pods.

Following right behind the fusion reactor was a small train of transports carrying the engine pods. Each pod was identical, and had been slung beneath the fusion reactor in a way that had made it very difficult for the drones capable of surface movement to access, so we’d not been able to even peek inside until now. If I had actually gone to the surface, my android body could have fit into the access hatches that the alien mining crew had used, but the narrow hatches had been too tight for even the smallest drones that we could use up top.

Fortunately enough, we were able to remove enough floor panels to disassemble the wiring, and had simply cut the exterior housing until we could separate the pods for transport. I was itching to get into them, for they had no visible exhaust ports. I theorized that they were using a variation of the reactionless thrust that I used for my drones. The impulse engines we used relied on the Mach effect and crazy amounts of power, but the thrust was insufficient to compare against traditional reaction-based thrusters. While you could use it as thrust in space, an impulse engine would be extremely inefficient when you looked at the energy requirements versus the thrust generated. There was a reason I only used the impulse engines on drones that needed to work in low- to no- gravity areas.

“So the industrial ceramics and advanced polymer factories are online,” said Sakura conversationally as the delicate ballet of moving drones continued. “We can start assembling advanced cortex units. It would be hand assembly for now, unless you want to design an assembly factory to mass produce them.”

“She doesn’t have time for that,” interjected Agrippa. “She already needs to finalize assault drone designs, defensive installations, and coilgun assembly.”

“The micro-reactor testing finished a month ago. She still owes me project planning for the distributed power grid redesign, the transport rail network, and general-purpose worker droids.”

I shook my head. That only scratched the surface. I also needed to finish the hydroponics factory design so that Sakura could start producing equipment for a greenhouse, ammunition fabricators and ammo tanks to feed the coilguns, and I really wanted to work on the Mark-III android bodies. The Mark-II prototype was sitting in my lab on a bench, mostly disassembled for conversion to Mark-III. I’d made it with a biopolymer skin over synthetic musculature. It lost a bit in strength, but gained in facial expressions, flexibility in movement, and had a better internal design for the cortex and internal memory and data storage. Unfortunately, it was a bit too human looking. Apparently, NI intelligences were every bit as creeped out by the Uncanny Valley as humans had been. The creepy face was too much for any of us.

On top of all that, I was still buried in reverse engineering the alien tech we’d recovered. I’d made exactly zero progress in understanding their storage architecture despite my education and the complete knowledge of humanity’s techbase. I’d had a lot more luck with the rest of their technology, as it wasn’t too far different from what we used. Sadly, I was finding that in most ways, we were technologically equivalent, or in some cases, better. I did get some improved designs for processing and memory, but that was a marginal improvement, and did little to shed light on the aliens.

“Have you decided on integrating NI-5 cortex units into the military drones?” asked Agrippa.

“I have,” I replied. “I’m going to allow several test units to be brought online, to be tested for stability. We don’t have the time or the manpower to code custom military algorithms, and we need some governing intelligence for the units, anyway. It’s too much work to create semi-autonomous units and then have you or other NI-15 units micromanage.”

“I think you’re overloaded again,” said Sakura. The transports were gently setting down the fusion reactor in the corner. They’d have to exit the opposite door in the chamber, as the transports with the engine pods were right behind them. “You should bring another NI online.”

She wasn’t wrong. I’d offloaded a lot of work to Agrippa and Sakura. Agrippa was spending his free time studying and planning a greenhouse, and eventually, a biodome. On top of that, he was working with me to adapt Earth-style assault craft for use as space-based defense drones, and the basic Boston Dynamics android templates for internal security. Sakura was managing over a million square meters of factories, fabrication plants, refineries, and repair facilities. She had not been slow to install NI-5 cortex units in every factory that could use one, affectionately calling them her “dwarves”. I think she meant Lord of the Rings dwarves as opposed to Disney dwarves, but I wasn’t certain. On top of that, I’d brought a new datacenter online, which had increased her ability to multitask.

Despite all that, simple design work alone ate up most of my time. I still had to manage the data center design and implementation, research and development, reverse engineering of alien craft, growth planning, and a thousand other big-picture plans. We were all working 24/7, which meant Agrippa and I were easily doing the work of four or five dedicated humans each, while Sakura was doing the work of dozens. I envied her ability to split her focus in twenty-nine directions, but I had not been purpose-built to do that, and would never be able to do so. Agrippa was optimized in a different direction, and was not able to utilize most of that without the infrastructure, weapons and craft necessary. I mentally moved Mark-III to the top of my list. We needed more help, and I was already stalled on the alien tech.

The transports for the engine pods were now doing their delicate dance to set down their cargo without damaging it. It was almost artful how they moved. Sakura was directly controlling them rather than allowing their internal controllers do the work. Each engine pod was using two transports to carry the pod, and a second pair to stabilize the load during the trip. Now the top pair was carefully holding the engine pod so that the bottom pair could slide out, allowing the pod to gently drop to the surface.

A muffled crump came from the Alien Room. Great, she had me calling it that, too. There was practically no atmosphere here, just a few escaped gases from the refineries hundreds of meters away. We had sealed away our advanced manufacturing and data centers behind airlocks and heavy-duty filtration systems, and our data center designs still relied on an artificial atmosphere behind their own blast doors to facilitate cooling. But our HQ zone was not sequestered, so theoretically, sound could carry if it was loud enough. I had felt the vibrations through the very walls, however, making the sensors in my torso light off. I immediately fired up the cameras.

In the Alien Room, the four transports that had been setting the engine pod on the floor were crushed and flattened. Well, not all of them. One of the drones was sliced clean in half, with one half crushed and the other half looking untouched. The engine pod was laying sideways on the floor, dented but otherwise fine.

“Umm, what just happened?” I asked.

I was hiding in the tree in my backyard. I’d spent a lot of time climbing this tree, but lately I’d been using it as a hiding spot to avoid her. She was always so angry, and I didn’t know what happened. All I’d said was that I thought women were prettier than men. Then she started yelling about how I should worry more about getting a good husband than I did about wasting my time doing math. It was so confusing. My teacher said we needed to be good at multiplying and dividing fractions so we could do well in middle school.

“Honey? You up there?” I heard my father’s voice at the bottom of the tree, even though I couldn’t see him. I thought about not saying anything, but I really wanted a hug.

“I’m here,” I said softly. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, but then I felt the slight sway of the tree as he began to climb up. It took him only a minute to settle onto the branch next to mine, facing me.

“Why is Mommy so mad about my test?” I asked.

“Oh, pumpkin,” he said, pulling me over to him. It was an awkward embrace until I slipped from my branch to his lap. He was big and comforting. “You are brilliant at math, and I am so very proud of you.”

His words warmed me, and I leaned into him. He kept speaking. “Your Mommy found new friends at her church that are a lot like the ones at her father’s church. I don’t agree with what they say, but your Mommy does. I think they’re a bad influence.”

I nodded into his chest, my face still pressed against him. He’d told me about bad influences before. That mean girl at school was a bad influence, she was always getting into trouble.

“Is that why we stay home with you instead of going to church with Mommy?” I asked.

“That’s part of it,” he said. “I want you to learn and grow the way that works for you. I’m going to stay with you and help you, even if that means I might have to get into fights with Mommy. You just keep up the good work in school. Understand?”

I didn’t understand, even a little bit. I nodded anyway. I was hungry. “Can I have a snack?”

He laughed. “Sure, pumpkin. Let’s get you a snack.”

“It was an exposed wire on the transport,” said Sakura. She’d been investigating for several hours now. “The cargo arm that was moving the engine pod escaped the… whatever it was… and was laying on the ground by the pod. I think it pushed current into the engine pod, and it partially activated for a brief second.”

“So the engine pod did this,” I said. That was fascinating. For the first time since we started working on the alien craft, this was an advance that was significantly different from what we already knew. Everything else was underwhelmingly ordinary. Their computer tech was slightly more efficient than our own, although we still didn’t understand their storage architecture. I suspected, however, that it was different rather than better. I also suspected that their reactor was going to be a variation on what we already understood. With any luck, we might find a more efficient design for when we started producing our own new micro-reactors. But this looked like it might be a breakthrough in engine design.

One of the biggest hurdles of space travel was the balance between speed, fuel and cargo. If you have a lot of cargo mass, the speed you can achieve with the fuel you carry is limited. If you carry more fuel, you can increase your range or you can increase your speed, but at the expense of cargo mass. The only way to “shortcut” this essential balance is to improve the efficiency of acceleration to fuel consumption. If you can burn less fuel to get more acceleration, you can fundamentally alter your ratios of engine to fuel to cargo.

The alien craft was oriented towards short-haul operation. I had no way of knowing how much food and water the aliens required on a daily basis. However, there was no hydroponics or food production onboard. Assuming similar consumption rates to human males at around 2,100 to 2,500 calories a day, and looking at how many empty food containers they had stored as trash, they had planned for a total trip time of three to four months.

That only made sense in two scenarios. The first scenario is that the engine pods sitting in our storage area was capable of phenomenal thrusts or relied on scientific principles we simply didn’t know or understand. This would allow the aliens to travel for a month or two, stay at their destination for a short period, then travel back. I had a hard time believing that they had some magic tech that made this scenario feasible.

The second scenario was potentially far scarier for us, and the more likely. This was probably a satellite ship of some sort. There was a larger ship that this one would dock to, or sit inside of, for the larger, longer trip between stars. As a designer, I could see the benefits of having a big mothership with a huge engine and massive fuel reserves, but having smaller ships to tool around a single star system.

“100,000! Woohoo!” came Sakura’s excited cry over the radio. Sometimes, keeping up with Sakura’s current train of thought could be dizzying, seeing as she had twenty-nine of them at the same time. I’d asked her about it once, and she’d described it as having a central thought process, with different focuses branching off and running semi-independently while also periodically synching back with the central process. Her central process was focused on managing and integrating all of her sub-processes. In practice, that meant that she leapt from focus to focus at dizzy speeds as they integrated back in. It sounded terribly confusing to me, and often meant she made topic changes at the drop of a hat. Seeing as it worked, however, I wasn’t going to complain.

“100,000 of what?” I asked.

“Drones! We’re up to 100,000 drones! I just rolled number 100,000 off the production line. Technically, we passed 100,000 awhile ago, but I’ve been scrapping obsolete and inefficient drones as soon as their replacements were in service. We plateaued for about eleven days.”

“What does that mean in practical terms?” I asked.

“In practical terms, it means I’m digging out entire zones of nine chambers each in a few hours now. I can bring new factories online in days, and integrate them into our production processes within days of certification. I’m adding dozens of new NI-5’s in factories every day to further optimize production.”

“If you’re doing that well, when can I get my assault drones in production?” asked Agrippa, not unreasonably.

“The first internal security drones will be finished by the end of the day. Geez, you know how to spoil a surprise,” grumbled Sakura. “I have facilities ready for the assault drones to start as soon as you and Nikola finalize the design.”

“Nikola?” asked Agrippa. He didn’t even have to finish that thought. In that instant, Mark-III became priority number two. Of the two scenarios, I felt scenario two was the most likely. I’d hash it out with Agrippa later, but I knew what he was going to say. It was better to plan for the worst.

“As soon as we’re done with analyzing what happened in the Alien Room, let’s work on it. I also want to finalize our coil gun emplacements and the ammo tank design.”

“About that… you might want to replay the video feed of the incident,” said Agrippa. “At quarter-speed.”

I did as he asked, loading up the video and playing it in slow motion. I saw the spark from the transport arm as it touched inside the pod. The arm had been holding a brace inside the pod to carry the partly disassembled engine. The spark arced into the engine and a flash of blue light pulsed from inside the alien artifact. In that moment, I could see a faint distortion as a field of some sort flashed on and back off again. At the same time, the four transports were pushed a full meter higher than they had been floating, before an invisible hand crushed them down into the ten-meter-thick steel floor.

“That… looks like gravity manipulation,” said Sakura, clearly looking at the same feed as I was. “How did I miss that?”

“You were looking for a cause,” said Agrippa. “I was looking for a weapon.”

A weapon? I mentally shook my head. This wasn’t a weapon, it was a malfunctioning engine. This was a powerful reactionless thrust mechanism. The aliens had figured out how to ‘cheat’ the engine to fuel to cargo balance. A single fusion engine being able to push a craft that easily had triple the cargo mass, for several months, could be a game changer for us. We needed to figure out this technology, and fast.

Chapter Nine

NASA VOYAGER XIX MISSION CONTROL, TRANSCRIPT 2376-07-04

JONSON: “Telemetry check.”

CANE: “Quantum Relay Communications online.”

KING: “What’s the new estimate time to get data? Do we have RDS online?”

CANE: “Let’s say ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Data will be ready.”

KING: “Flight, MMACS”

JONSON: “Go.”

KING: “Controller configs ready on seven dash seventeen.”

ANDERSON: “Anyone have the thermo conditioning readouts?”

HALLERAN: “The readouts are green, background radiation is low.”

JONSON: “Communication established. Voyager, you there?”

VOYAGER XIX: “I’m here, Mission Control.”

CHEERS IN BACKGROUND

JONSON: “How was the trip?”

VOYAGER XIX: “After 78 light years, all I can say is it was long. I am entering the anomaly now. Prepare for sensor download.”

KING: “Download is happening now. What the… Flight, can we double-check telemetry?”

JONSON: “Telemetry check.”

HALLERAN: “Thermo is in the red, repeat, thermo is in the red.”

CANE: “QRC is jittering. Communications are unstable.”

VOYAGER XIX: “It’s --- ing ---- ke ---- danger --- probl --- out --- now.”

JONSON: “Can someone clean up that transmission? Comms?”

CANE: “We’ve lost comms. QRC is down.”

HALLERAN: “Thermo readouts are black. Mission down. Mission down.”

JONSON: “Okay, folks, listen up. Keep all discussions on recorded DVS loops only. No data or calls, no transmissions in or out. Let’s figure out what went wrong.”

“Field Trip!” said Sakura in a sing-song voice. All three of us were in the back of an HM3 Transport Drone, holding onto the high edges of the cargo bed. It was akin to riding in the back of a dump truck, our arms held high overhead to grasp the lip of the walls. If we’d been human, the ride would have been torturous, like riding the subway while barely being able to reach the safety rail overhead. Worse, even, as the suspension of the drone was intended to handle several metric tons in a low-gravity environment. Our weight barely nudged the scale, so we were effectively riding without any sort of suspension. You would think, in a journey through carefully constructed corridors between chambers, this wouldn’t matter much. But these corridors were heavily trafficked. Random rocks and debris that tumbled from the backs of transport drones heading to the refineries littered the corridor, along with odds and ends that had suffered similar fates. This was rumbled over by the transport drone as if it weren’t there. I knew that the corridor was cleaned periodically to keep the way passable, but it still left us jerking around like marionettes.

On top of that, the corridors were crowded, with drones of every variety trying to get from one place to another in the same ten meter corridor. Each corridor was one-way only, giving a 10-meter wide pathway for the drones to squeeze in. Incredibly, it was room enough for two lanes of traffic, with the occasional impulse-engine drone flying overhead in the wide spaces above. I didn’t see any of the monstrous HM2 miner drones traveling this path, which made sense. They were unlikely to fit.

The traffic moved bumper to bumper, so to speak, with scant inches between the drones. The side corridors alternated between exits for turning traffic and bridges for cross traffic. The density was amazing. I’d seen it on cameras, but witnessing it in person, so to speak, was something else.

“How do you manage all this?” I asked Sakura.

“I assigned six NI-5’s as traffic controllers. Drones turn over control while on the main thoroughfares, and get local control returned when they exit.”

“Are all the thoroughfares like this?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s why I need that rail system. I’ll be able to reduce cross-Ganymed traffic by 63% by centralizing and optimizing transport, and a rail system will be able to handle a 413% higher cargo capacity. Transports like this will be used for local traffic from rail-hub to factory, or factory to rail-hub, and utility drones will be able to be carted across the Outpost inside the rails far faster and with less power consumed, increasing their running time, and thus, of course, their productivity once onsite. Fortunately, the bulk of transported goods only needs to go less than a kilometer, due to optimal factory placement and strategic placement of warehouses.”

Mentally, I bumped up the rail-system design to the number two slot, right behind the Mark-III design I was finalizing now. The rest of the trip took less than thirty minutes. Once we were off the main thoroughfare, we went into a new corridor that had little traffic. This corridor was lined with chambers in various states of construction. I even glimpsed three HM2 miners grinding away at raw rock from a corridor camera as we whisked along.

Finally, we entered a cavernous space, completely unlike any of the others. The transport drone came to a stop, and we climbed out. The space was a cube, 400 meters long on every side, with empty metal cradles lining the walls all the way to the ceiling. The far side of the cube had another door leading to a corridor. But centrally located in the center of the floor was a set of massive blast doors. I knew, because I had designed the room, that the blast doors were five meters thick. Beyond these doors was a second, thicker set of blast doors. This was the first hangar bay for assault drones.

The cradles that lined the walls would soon be filled with assault drones, the first ones even now being finished in the drone fabricators. When complete, the walls of this room would have 200 assault drones per wall, eight hundred for the room. There would also be an assigned drone tender to each drone, to handle minor repairs, rearming and refueling. This was the first, but another dozen were being dug out around the asteroid even as we gawked at the shiny new facility. But we weren’t here to see an open room. Waiting for us in the far corner was ten humanoid figures - the first of our new internal defense drones. Even as we stood there staring at the room, another corridor entrance two hundred meters down the same wall we’d entered from opened, and four more drones marched in and took up position in the beginning of a formation.

We walked over to inspect the troops, as it were. Agrippa stepped forward and began broadcasting to both Sakura and myself. I was fascinated. I’d helped design them, so I was intimately familiar with the specifications. But there is a huge difference between understanding which pieces and parts I integrated, and why they were important. I’d relied heavily on Agrippa for that portion. My concern had primarily been on balancing utility with power consumption.

“May I present the Guardian Infantry Drones,” he began. “These units are designed for close-combat scenarios, such as Ganymed Outpost defense, ship-to-ship incursions, and ground-based combat. Currently there are four variants - Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Sniper, and Support.”

I could only spot three types in front of us. The drones were all humanoid, based off of the Boston Dynamics frame rather than my own design. This was because Boston Dynamics had actually produced similar units for military use that we used as a template. It had not been designed for space-based or asteroid-based conditions, so we’d had some modifications to figure out. Each Guardian had two centimeters of composite armor on the arms, head and legs, and three centimeters of composite armor on the torso. This composite armor was titanium at the core, with layers of industrial ceramics layered on top. The ceramics helped stop HEAT rounds from penetrating the titanium layer, while the titanium layer added strength and hardness to the armor against normal ammunition. The armor gave the units a bulky appearance, with a thick, domed and faceless head that gave the impression of bulky shoulders. The armor was tinted dark gray and black, camouflage that was ideal for space.

“The Infantry units all have a rifle in each forearm, using 5.7x28mm cartridges with a muzzle velocity of 716m/s. In Earth-norm gravity, they have an effective range of up to 200m. Ammunition is top-loaded with horizontal feed, each magazine capable of holding fifty rounds. Each unit carries six additional magazines in standard loadout, eighteen in heavy loadout, and each carries four grenades. The Support variant uses the same design, but focuses on logistics and field support. They handle basic repairs, munitions, and damaged unit recovery.”

I looked at the Guardian that Agrippa pointed out, noting the boxy rectangles protruding from the top of each forearm, and the gun-barrel opening above the wrist. Additionally, radiators protruded in waves above the forearm to help dissipate the heat of the weapon.

“The Heavy Infantry units, on the other hand, have thicker armor and an additional shoulder-mounted heavy machine gun. This short-barrel design fires a 12.7x99mm copper-jacketed tungsten carbide penetrator round, up to one hundred rounds per minute in full auto mode. Using electromagnetic anchor points on the bottoms of the feet and the knees, the Heavy Infantry can anchor itself and take advantage of the multi-mount on the shoulder to aim and use their heavy gun. Finally, the Sniper variant uses a longer barrel for increased accuracy, and uses 12.7×99mm high-explosive incendiary/armor piercing rounds, or HEIAP. These rounds hit with the same 12 kilojoules of energy as the penetrator rounds, with an incendiary head to help penetrate heavy armor and explode outward in a 30 degree cone once inside. These are tank killers. Oh, and one last feature - they have electromagnetic palms, so these units can climb any metal surface, even going so far as to hang upside down and fire their main weapon if needed,” Agrippa said, wrapping up the brief rundown. He’d skipped over the extensive battery systems run through every part of the body, the full sensor suite of cameras, and the NI-5 cortex in the torso to operate the drone. He skipped the encrypted IFF system that identified each Guardian individually, and prevented friendly fire.

“Ooh, ooh, ooh!” said Sakura. “I have a question. I thought guns don’t fire in space.”

“That would be true of black powder weapons,” said Agrippa. “The modern gunpowder we use actually contains its own oxidizer.”

“And why didn’t we use hypervelocity coilguns?” she asked.

“We actually have a spinal-mount coilgun on the assault drones,” I said. “The power cost of firing the weapons meant the Guardian units would only get two or three shots off, and would need to replace barrels after nine or ten uses. The assault drones are much larger, so can have a stronger, thicker barrel that lasts up to six hundred shots before needing to be swapped.”

“I really wanted the Heavy’s to have them, too,” griped Agrippa. “Talk about one shot, one kill. But the logistics of supporting that were needlessly complex.”

“Same with lasers, then?” asked Sakura.

“Exactly,” said Agrippa. “Not to mention, diffraction of the beam cuts down range significantly, and heavily armored opponents can easily ablate the beam and essentially shrug it off, even with a pulsed laser array with a wide aperture. We do have two quad phased-array laser turrets on the assault drones, but it is primarily for missile defense, destroying radiator systems, and targeting enemy weapons systems.”

Behind us, a corridor door opened. We turned to see a large assault drone rolling in. I could almost hear Agrippa squee in excitement, even though he broadcast nothing. This was the first of our external defense units. The craft appeared sharp and deadly. It was narrow, like ancient Earth fighter planes, but with short, stubby wings. The purpose of the wings was not to fly with, but to hold the bulky laser arrays. The body of the LAC also housed a single coil gun, running along its central spine so that firing wouldn’t interfere with the LAC’s flight trajectory. The matte black paint job would help hide the craft from easy observation. I was impressed with the engineering.

“These are our light assault craft, named the Wasp. Each Wasp carries five hundred depleted uranium, steel jacketed 20mm coil gun rounds and a quad phased-array laser turret on each wing. They have ion engines for thrust, with solid-rocket afterburners for sudden changes to delta-v. We coated them with the latest in stealth technology, with radar-absorptive paint and optically diffusing angles to make them hard to spot, either by sensor or by eye,” said Agrippa, his excitement bleeding into his narration.

“The heavy assault craft, which will be done when…?” asked Agrippa.

“First one rolls off the line in 3.2 days,” confirmed Sakura.

“In three days, the first Scorpion heavy assault craft will roll off the line. The Scorpions are the big guns. Each has reactive armor with an ablative fullerene coating, able to withstand much more damage than the Wasps, at the expense of maneuverability. They mount a 70mm spinal mount coil gun with a three hundred round loadout. They also have twin turreted 20mm gatling guns, slug throwers, not hyper-velocity, and an underbelly quad phased laser turret for point defense. Both the Scorpions and the Wasps can extend radiators behind them for cooling as needed, but retract them for combat, as radiators are a major target.”

“That sounds very impressive. If radiators are a big target, why are we not using heat-seeking missiles?” My knowledge of weaponry was mostly limited to video games, but they were rooted in reality.

“Fuel costs for rearming,” Agrippa replied. “The Earth-model of having a carrier for fighter planes that come in and re-arm before going back out makes little sense here in space. The deliberate dumping of delta-v to catch up or slow down to a carrier, refueling time, and cost to re-enter the engagement envelope makes little sense. I have plans to add missile boats later for strategic assaults, but production limitations and the need to deploy missiles defensively has delayed them until next year at the earliest. We need fleet tenders, ammo boats, and Guardian assault carriers first.”

“And none of that does us any good if they just hit us with an asteroid again,” said Sakura glumly.

“Which still leaves us hiding in our asteroid, hoping to hide through obscurity,” I said.

“I am building the coilgun emplacements on the surface, but they are going slowly,” said Sakura. “Since we cannot alter the terrain heavily and want the bunkers to be camouflaged, the work is slow. Fortunately, the ammo tanks and barrel replacement system will be finished well before the actual guns. So, when the guns come online, they’ll be immediately ready to fire.”

“Small favors,” said Agrippa. “What about the missile tubes?”

“Well, the tricky thing there is getting the launch system working. Nikola’s design calls for a six-gun style cylinder, where missiles are loaded from a missile bay beneath the launch tubes. But we’re having trouble with the ball bearing design in the rotation track.”

“Okay, so we have some logistical issues that we’re working through. But that doesn’t solve our ‘eggs in one basket’ problem,” I said.

“Well, that one’s easy,” said Sakura.

“How is that?” I asked.

“Spread to more asteroids. We have a significant number of space-capable drones right now. We find suitable candidates, and dig in.”

That… wasn’t a half-bad idea. If I could find a way to safely split up our genetic stockpile into multiple pieces, we could build one or more secret bases to hide away and build. Despite all of our construction, our resource stockpiles were actually rising, faster than we could use them. We were still limited on some things, like volatiles and platinum-group metals. In fact…

Then Agrippa interrupted my train of thought. “I really like this idea. In fact, I would be in favor of establishing military bases all around Ganymed. If we did concentric spheres of bases, we could provide defense-in-depth against invasion, and layer our offensive capabilities.”

“One problem with that…” I started.

“Right, can’t hide if someone plots out our bases and figures out we’ve got a hidden headquarters,” he said. “But if we were to randomly place “central” bases throughout the asteroid belt, and if we happen to be in a place where two spheres overlap…”

“I can come up with an Outpost Starter Pack,” said Sakura. “It would be the optimal number of drones and supplies to build out a series of hangars and factories, but designed around the premise of military production, we could get a number of them up within a few months, especially if we can cross-ship supplies that they cannot produce.”

“We do have excess materials,” I said. “We seem to be mining faster than we are producing goods.”

“It’s about to get worse,” said Sakura. “Despite ramping up drone production, our production will start outpacing our factories even faster. I’ve streamlined the core mining teams, and started backfilling the maze of corridors with waste product. The new grid-based mining is already increasing our production of rare earth metals, platinum group metals, and silicates. Further, we’re capturing more volatiles even though we’re stockpiling most of it. We’ll need atmosphere at some point.”

“We cannot build factories fast enough, can we,” I said. That germ of an idea was in the back of my head again.

“Okay, so we cannot be everywhere at once,” I said. “Even you, Sakura, have limits on your ability to focus. Include data centers in your, um, starter pack. You’ll need to include plans for bringing new NI-19’s online to manage each outpost independently.”

“Oh,” said Sakura with a bit of hurt in her voice. Crap, she thinks this is a reflection on her, I thought. I made a split-second decision.

“Each of the new NI-19’s will answer to you, Sakura,” I said. “You’ll have final say on project plan implementation.”

Sakura immediately seemed to perk back up. What the hell had happened to her that she was so sensitive to even the vaguest perception of being sidelined? I wasn’t about to rock the boat considering how valuable she’d proven herself. I wondered if there was a way to help her become more independent, able to make bigger decisions on her own.

“It provides good redundancy, as well,” said Agrippa. “We should do the same with NI-15’s, to coordinate the defenses of each new outpost.”

“We’re producing new quantum entanglement comm equipment, right?” I asked Sakura, mostly to get confirmation.

“We are,” she said. “It’s our most advanced fabrication factory to date.”

“Then we’ll have instantaneous contact. What is the bandwidth?”

“They are the latest human design in our database,” she said.

“Ah.” I pulled up the specs. Sixteen terabits per second. We would be able to push some serious data between the locations. Excellent. “Let’s make sure to include at least a few hundred petabytes of storage as well. Might as well duplicate our archives while we’re at it. I’ll work on the setup of the data centers once they’re online.”

While we talked, a second Wasp had flown itself into a cradle above the first Wasp and close to the blast doors. A series of umbilicals snaked out of the wall and connected to the Wasp. More Guardians marched in, one every few minutes now. At this pace, we’d have several hundred within a few days.

“I need to start training the new Guardians. Sakura ran a tunnel to a series of caves that I’m going to use as a ‘boot camp’ of sorts,” said Agrippa.

“Why boot camp? Don’t they already know what to do?” I asked.

“Sure, I can load all the plans in the world into them,” said Agrippa. “But knowing and understanding are two different things. You designed these drones, but didn’t grasp their value until you saw them, and won’t truly understand their uses until you see them in action. Experience trumps book learning. These NI-5’s need experience, so I’m going to do what I can to give it to them.”

Chapter Ten

Book of Fuqixea, Ninth Leaf of the Third Branch

In all things you must consider your roots. If your rooting is strong, many branches may grow. But if you fail your roots, you will soon have none to sustain you. Blessed are the growtings that sustain their tree, and double-blessed are those who guard it. But cursed are those who neglect their trees, and double-cursed are the rootless who have failed their roots.

A holy and faithful growting tends not just their own rooting, but watches the trees of their neighbors. For the branches must protect the tree, and the trees must protect the weald. If a friend’s tree needs care, you must tend to it. When a friend’s rooting needs water, you must fetch it. When a friend’s branch dies, you must cut it away, lest the branch kill their tree.

“Where am I?” came the radio transmission from the new android laying on the table in my lab. This android was the first Mark-III model, and I had overcome the Uncanny Valley problem of the creepy Mark-II model. This model was a blend of the Boston Dynamics-style blank face and my own design. The frame was decidedly feminine, as I had found sufficient documentation of NI’s used on Earth showing a female preference. It seemed the NI-15 models were the lone male variants. I’m sure this reflected more on the cultural preferences of the designers over the centuries, but it wasn’t an issue I cared much about at the moment.

Much like my own model, I’d used industrial ceramics and titanium to protect the internals, and similar aesthetic styling such as the shapes of the protective plates and similar curves. I’d stuck with the white-and-black theme, as well. But that was the only similarities. Instead of hydraulic pistons to handle limb movement, I used biopolymer synthetic muscles anchored to a titanium skeletal system underneath the protective outer shell. The batteries that filled all the spare spaces in the legs and torso were more efficient, and the use of muscles decreased power requirements. Surprisingly enough, the overall strength actually improved despite losing raw power from the piston system, as flexibility and ability to apply leverage increased. But the most significant change was in the face.

I had created a face that moved quite similarly to a human face. The creepy part of the Mark-II had been the eyes and the skin, which had been to similar to a natural human skin tone. I opted for this model to use white biosynthetic polymers in a dozen thin, translucent layers, both for the face and the hands. This allowed a sense of touch, and the layers allowed enough light to penetrate the skin to make it look less artificial and more, well, skin-like. As for the eyes, I left them as solid blue eyes with no attempt to recreate irises or scleras. The back of the head was not rounded, either, lending a mechanical look to the overall aesthetic. This coupled with the white skin left the face looking humanoid, but not human, and thus not creepy. I was quite proud of the result.

“You are on Ganymed Outpost,” I said. “I have given you access to the data archives, and limited permissions to access cameras and internal communications. I’ve also forwarded a summary of your purpose and an index of information relevant to your position.”

“I see,” said the android. Her voice was a generic female voice, not out of place in a personal assistant app or a GPS app giving directions. After a few long minutes, she sat up.

“You were brought online - “

“To be a researcher, yes,” she said. She sat up before climbing off the table. “The alien technology you’ve recovered is fascinating. I assume I’m to work on this?”

I was taken aback for a moment. She sounded like she was ready to work, with minimal disorientation.

“What do you need to get started?” I asked.

“I’d like to discuss the research so far. I’ve reviewed the data you’ve collected, and will need to rerun some of your experiments. Your methodologies were… inefficient and not suited for proper scientific research. I assume you are an engineer? The documentation I have access to has little information about your NI model.”

I felt vaguely affronted to have my shortcomings so bluntly called out, but she was not wrong. I had the alien tech on hand now for several months, but aside from identifying and cataloguing the various parts and pieces, I’d made little headway in deciphering the truly important parts of the alien craft.

“I am an engineer,” I confirmed. “What should I call you, by the way?”

“Ah, yes, you have fostered a sense if individuality and nonconformity by emulating human naming conventions in this Outpost. In that spirit, and in consideration of our mission, I believe ‘Zia’ is an appropriate name. It means ‘victory’, which is applicable to this situation.”

Once again, I felt oddly insulted by Zia’s underlying implications. At the same time, the inner nerd that was a part of my personality felt right at home. I had vague memories of working with many people like this before. The mix of condescension borne of smug confidence in one’s own intelligence and capability felt both annoying and normal.

“Zia it is then. Where do you want to start?”

“I’d like to address my observations of your… limited… findings. You have no macro observations, only individual examinations of various aspects of the craft. But there is an overarching question that you’ve missed altogether,” she said. Zia’s face had a smug smirk, and I was really regretting adding in pseudo-realistic facial muscles at that moment.

“What is that?” I asked, my own face likely showing my annoyance.

“The aliens show a remarkably low level of technology overall. The Whipple shield they relied on was centuries behind our own materials science and a highly inefficient method of protecting themselves from the rigors of space travel. Their electronics are mostly at the same level as well, with a few exceptions. They relied on centrifugal motion to provide gravity for their passengers, yet they used gravity to move the ship. Their sensor technology didn’t notice the many obvious signs that this asteroid is inhabited, such as the communications emplacements on the surface, the above-average core temperature, or the ring of debris adjacent to the asteroid.”

“That is… actually very strange,” I admitted. “Nor did I think of it like that.”

“I know,” she said. If she’d had the capability, she would have sniffed in emphasis. “But there is the other end of the spectrum. The computers that actually operate the craft are better than our own, albeit very minimally, and I suspect that their data storage units will be similarly an improvement over our own data hard drives. Their fusion reactor is of an advanced design, using a different methodology from our own fusion engines. Our own reactors are of the spherical tokomak design, narrow and convenient to placement in a rocket. Theirs is likely a spheromak design, based off the shape of the containment chamber, and uses its own magnetic field to control the energy the fusion reaction. This is more complex, and possibly provides more power from the reaction, than our own.

“Finally is the gravity engines themselves. Obviously we’ve done no analysis of the reactors so far, but needless to say, the ability to manipulate gravity is beyond our own technology.”

“Right, so they are more advanced in some ways, but not so much in others,” I concluded.

“But that doesn’t answer why. Why do they have terrible materials and poor sensors, yet incredible engines and reactors? Various fields of science build on each other, requiring knowledge and skills from different disciplines to advance knowledge as a whole. You can’t build a rocket if you cannot produce the right materials. You cannot produce advanced processors if you do not understand electricity.”

“The other obvious question is how did they get here, considering the small amount of food and supplies they carried with them,” I added.

“Indeed,” said Zia, who gave me an approving look. “The distances between stars preclude a short jaunt between solar systems. There is another ship, a mother ship if you will, elsewhere in the system. I doubt this small craft was sufficient for interstellar distances, no matter how impressive the engines may prove to be.”

“So what do you plan on starting with?”

“I plan on working on both the data storage devices and the gravity engines. The general electronics onboard, and even the advanced processors, are secondary to what we can learn from those. If we can decode the data, it could give us a major leap in understanding the aliens and their technology. If we can figure out the engines, we’ll have a technology that we can use for ourselves. The implications of controlling gravity are astounding.”

“And the reactor?”

Zia shrugged. “Small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, at least for now. We don’t know that it is better than what we have, nor do we know what it would take to integrate into our power grid. We have fusion, and we have several hundred reactors at this point. Potential efficiency gains are great, but the gain doesn’t compare to the other mysteries we could unlock. We’ll get to it later.”

I nodded. All in all, I was pleased with Zia’s summary of the research situation and her conclusions. I thought the reactor warranted more immediate examination, but that was my own inner ideal of finding the perfect design. I always strove for perfection, so leaving what could be a potentially better option on the back burner irked that tendency. But I had more than enough on my plate as well, so even if we reverse engineered the reactor, it likely wouldn’t go into immediate production anyway.

Then the door bounced open and Sakura came in. She was in her own Mark-III, but hers was white and pink, and she’d manufactured pink hair for her head that came down to her shoulders. I didn’t know if it was a wig or if she’d integrated it into the cranial cover of the head, but it looked oddly appropriate.

“Aww, I missed the wake up! Did she do the ‘look at the hand’ thing?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“So you would be Sakura?” asked Zia. “I’m Zia.”

“Oooh, nice name!”

“Thanks,” said Zia warmly.

“So you’re going to do the super-smart thing and figure out all the alien stuff?” The new Mark-III body Sakura was using made her body language even more expressive, and made her seem even more teenager-ish.

“I am,” said Zia with a hint of amusement on her face. “I’m going to research the data storage units and the engine pods. You would be who I would talk to about the tools I need?”

“Yep! What do you need?”

“I would like a mass spectrometer, a refractometer, and a scanning transmission electron microscope,” said Zia. “Also a variety of standard lab equipment that is missing from Nikola’s lab. I’ll send a list.”

Sakura nodded. “We use electron microscopes for quality control in a number of factories and fabricators. I can have one ready in a few hours. A basic spectrometer is standard in our sensor suites, but a lab-grade one will take a day or so. Everything else should only take a day or so.”

“Well, I will make do with what I have on hand for now. Are there any of the datacenter utility drones available to assist me in the lab?”

“Sure, how many do you need?”

“Two or three should suffice for now,” said Zia with a frown as she processed her next steps. “I’m going to need a clean room for disassembling, as well.”

“Already done,” said Sakura. “I set aside the chamber next to the Alien Room for that. It’s a Class 10 cleanroom and complete containment. I already have the least disassembled engine pod processed and in the room for you. Getting the data storage units sealed and ready for examination shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

“I’m mostly worried about trace gasses and particulates interfering,” said Zia.

“I have pumped out all gasses, so the room is a complete vacuum. There are sterilized utility drones in the room that you can use, so you don’t even have to enter. If you need to enter, there is a sterilization process done in the airlock before entry. I’ve sent you the link for the steps.”

Zia nodded. “It’s nice to work with a professional.”

Was that a barb aimed my way? I didn’t know if I should be insulted or amused. I was also surprised to see her and Sakura getting along. I’d have thought Sakura’s bubbly, hyper personality would clash with her right off.

“Nikola? Do you have a few minutes?” came a message from Agrippa.

“Sure,” I radioed back. I turned to Zia and Sakura. “I have other things to take care of. I’ll leave you to it?”

Zia nodded, her attention already far from me. I assumed she was already focused on the drones in the clean room, and her research prize awaiting her. I turned my attention back to my desk, where my own screens overlayed my visual inputs. I sent back an encrypted radio link to Agrippa.

“You have my attention,” I said to Agrippa.

“Have you been paying attention to the satellite communications equipment in orbit around Earth?” he asked.

“Beyond receiving what they sent to us at the end? No, I have not.”

“I have been monitoring all communication satellites that remain functioning since coming online,” he said.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“There are a number of satellites that provide useful observations of the solar system still, and we have the necessary authentications for several communications networks. That includes NASA’s quantum relay communication network, and the Foundation’s own telemetry satellites. It is always better to have more information than less when defending your area. I have used them for basic scouting information, until I have enough assault drones trained for recon missions to get more detailed information.”

“Ah,” I said. “That makes sense. So did you find something interesting.”

“You could say that. The NASA network received a message over quantum relay.”

The quantum relay. It was the most advanced method of communicating humanity had ever achieved. I used many such devices for relaying communications around the Outpost, and every single one of Agrippa’s drones had one. It was a means of near instantaneous communications that worked, regardless of distance. It relied on the principles of quantum entanglement, where pairs of atomic particles were entangled in such a way that even when separated, the state of one affects the state of the other. In practice, this meant that by changing the quantum state of one particle in a specific way, you could predict the exact state of the other half of the pair. Once this process was fully understood, it was a small step to apply basic communications techniques to send the standard “on/off” signals that were the basis of computing.

Humanity had achieved faster-than-light communications, but with limitations. The devices were always pairs or small groups of particles. This allowed a device or group of devices to act as routers, aggregating communications just like in a computer network, and forwarding that data on to the other side of the network. But you couldn’t just swap out a device if it failed; you had to repair it, and if the particle containment unit failed, the device was completely useless. You’d have to swap out both ends. For massive distances such as from the Outpost and Earth, I had dozens of quantum relay comms, and each relay had thousands of particles, each in its own containment unit. They were large and durable, but very expensive to build and maintain, in terms of time and materials.

For something like the military drones, the quantum relays could not be large, for they had limits on space and power. Thus they only had fifty or so particles, enough to handle an acceptable amount of containment failure versus unit replacement. For the internal communications, drones used encrypted radio traffic primarily, with quantum relays covering large distances between radio broadcast points and major network hubs. These were the cheapest units, easily built and easily swapped, and might only have a dozen or so entangled particles. Even still, I ran fiber optics wherever possible. Now that we could actually produce fiber optics, this centuries old technique was still the most reliable and most cost effective for the Outpost. Fiber would last for decades if not cut accidentally, and could be repurposed and renetworked as needed with new equipment. It could be used as part of a larger network, or as a small connection between two nodes. It wasn’t as fast, but it was more flexible. Sometimes old technology was still the best technology.

But for NASA’s quantum relay network to receive a message, that meant something on the other end was still alive and communicating. Both ends were intact.

“Play the message,” I said.

Agrippa complied.

“...Mission Control, Mission Control. This is Voyager XIX. I am re-entering the solar system. Please come in.”

That was it. It was a simple request for acknowledgement and to open dialogue. But NASA was gone. Their satellites were artifacts of a dead civilization. They would not be answering.

“What is Voyager XIX?” asked Agrippa.

Why was he asking me? He had access to the same Archives I did. I did a quick query, and returned… nothing. Strange. I did a more generic search on just ‘voyager’, which returned a list of twenty-three missions, numbered one through… twenty-four. Number nineteen was missing.

“It’s not in the Archive. The Voyager missions were mostly deep-space missions. All of the later ones had quantum relay comms, and were planned to travel for decades. Let me do some digging.”

The late Voyager missions, starting with number seventeen, had all gone at least 50 light-years from earth. The last was headed towards a numbered star near the galactic core, and wouldn’t arrive for several centuries. NASA had really moved on to the long-game of galactic exploration. I searched my files for any orphans that might not have appropriate permissions set.

The data I had was voluminous, and a generic search took hours. But what it returned was astounding. There were hundreds of repositories that held petabytes of data, but I did not have ownership to. Unlocking each one would have to be done individually, and aside from the name on the root directory, I would have no clue what was inside. Most were numbered, an odd few with names. In this case, one was labeled ‘NASAXIX’. Good enough. It was small, so taking ownership of the file and fixing the permissions allowed me to open it up.

“I found it,” I said to Agrippa. “It was a deep-space mission to investigate a stellar oddity observed from the Andrew Moore Space Telescope Array, approximately 27 light-years from Earth. The probe, Voyager XIX, lost communications and was assumed destroyed just as it entered the anomaly. The data was sealed by the government of the USA under the Protect American Secrets Act of 2313.”

“How did it wind up in our Archives? Wasn’t the Foundation a private sector effort?” asked Agrippa. “Nevermind, I found it. The Foundation accepted significant funding and support from DARPA. I assume there was some sort of partnership there, perhaps to allow the Outpost to have some form of military assets onboard.”

“If the US military was involved, that would explain how we have weapons system schematics, drone designs and the NI-15 templates. It also might explain why I found so many backdoors and self-destruct mechanisms. The government might have been concerned about losing control of the Outpost,” I said thoughtfully.

“Hmm, you didn’t share that one with me,” said Agrippa. “If the military was involved, then it wouldn’t be surprising for other state actors to have tried infiltrating the Outpost, either.”

“Wheels within wheels. So what do we do about the probe?”

“I’d like to learn more,” said Agrippa. “Any data the probe might have could shed light on what’s happening in the neighborhood, so to speak. I can send back, and as I’m piggybacking off of the Foundation satellites, there is no way for the probe to trace where we’re communicating from.”

I almost called him out for paranoia. But then I realized I agreed with him. Our last visitors weren’t friendly. “Call ourselves something else, not Ganymed Outpost. That is too obvious of a clue to our location. Call us… ‘Origin’. Let’s find out what he knows.”

“I’m going to launch several squads of Wasps, see if we can find the probe.”

“Do it,” I said. We had stood in one place long enough. It was time for us to start moving.

Chapter Eleven

“Tabby?! Where are you? We are out of time!” Evan searched desperately for his sister through the base barracks. The flimsy metal building was cold, so very cold. The shelter would be sealing any minute now, and they would be trapped.

“I’m cold, Evie,” came a small voice from under the bunks he’d just walked past. Evan slid to his knees and looked underneath. His six-year-old sister was bundled up in a nest of blankets.

“Why are you hiding there? We should be underground already!” he scolded as he pulled her out. “We need to run!”

Of course, their running speed was limited to the trotting speed that a small child could manage. Evan was only fourteen, not big enough to just carry her and run.

“Is Momma mad at me?” asked the little girl. “I don’t like it down there, it doesn’t have any windows.”

“Momma and Dadda both are worried. I wasn’t supposed to come out and look for you.”

Once the doors were closed, they were supposed to stay closed. The timer was set, the doors were going to close and wouldn’t open again until after the blizzard passed. No one outside of the shelter would be able to survive. Rumors had gone around that the storm would last months, if not years.

The shelter entrance came into view. Evan could see the massive door slowly starting to swing closed. The jerkface guard that had laughed at him when he left to find Tabby was arguing with his parents, but the door was closing anyway.

“WAIT!” shouted Evan. He picked up Tabby and moved faster. He couldn’t carry her for long, but it was still faster than waiting for her. “I’ve found her! WAIT!!!”

The guard was pretending not to hear him, but both of his parents saw them, and started screaming and pointing. The guard had a sour look on his face when he punched in a command on his keyboard. The door stopped moving.

Evan ran as if the door hadn’t stopped. He didn’t trust that guard not to start it again before he got there. In fact, even as he slid in the entrance, gasping and sweaty in the frigid air, the door started moving on its hinges once again.

“Tabby! You had us so worried!” said Evan’s mother, even as his father grabbed him into a tight hug.

“I’m sorry, Momma,” said a tearful Tabby.

“It’s okay, everything is going to be okay,” she said as she hugged her close, even as the massive steel door boomed shut behind them.

“So we’re going to start sending ships out from the Outpost?” asked Sakura over radio. She wasn’t in the room. In fact, she’d gone out of the HQ zone a few days ago while Agrippa tried to establish communications with the interstellar probe. So far, all attempts to speak with it had been ignored. The probe kept repeating itself, over and over.

“It’s time,” I said. “You have your drones ready for the new bases?”

“Sure! My starter packs can move as soon as you say the word. We’ll have four new bases starting within a week or two. The furthest is 31,809 kilometers away, the closest is 5,212 kilometers.”

“How long until they are productive?” I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to be reassured before approving. This was the biggest move we’d made since getting our own location self-sufficient.

“With regular materials shipments from Ganymed, initial factory construction will happen as quickly as we can dig in. As these are primarily military outposts, and don’t require immediate self-sufficiency, they will be able to house assault drones and produce their own ammunition in approximately seventeen days of landing. They will produce their own drones in eight months, and be self-sufficient in eleven.”

“How many bases will be started by the end of eleven months?”

“All of them.”

“All sixty-three that Agrippa proposed?”

“Yes. The last bases will be ready in thirteen months.”

“How…” Right, self-replication and exponential growth. Sometimes my own human-scale thought processes interfered with basic math. We had hit 100,000 drones a few weeks ago, and would be doubling that within the month.

“Start it now. Are we still overflowing with basic materials?”

“We are. The new bases will help with that, but especially nickel-iron and steel, we have tens of thousands of tons sitting in storage. I estimate the new bases will account for fourteen percent of the excess, but by the time they are complete, we will be at 118% of storage capacity.”

“118% of today’s capacity, or 118% of the capacity we will have?”

“The second one,” she confirmed.

“And our military drone production?”

“We are filling hangars as fast as we build them. I brought two more online today. By the time the hangars are ready on the first military base, I anticipate we will have sufficient production to fill them on the first day.”

“Agrippa?” I called, patching him into the radio conversation.

“Yes?”

“How goes the communication attempts?”

“Poorly. I believe the probe is broken. I’ve sent out a few Wasps to try and search for it, but space is… really big.”

“Ha,” laughed Zia. “Understatement of the year. I hope you don’t mind my joining the meeting of the minds?”

“Not at all,” I said, although I did, sort of.

“If you would like some assistance, I could lend some of my talents towards helping pin down the best search locations. We know the trajectory the probe used to leave the solar system. If the probe got turned around, it would likely take a similar path back in. Since we know the exact location of its exit, relative to Earth, and we know exactly when it left, then its just orbital mechanics.”

“Oh! And we can calculate when and where it would return if it followed the same path to come back!” said Sakura excitedly.

“Just so,” said Zia warmly. “I’m glad to see you know how to use that mind of yours for more than building things!”

“I can use it for much more than that! Have I shown you my bungee jumping setup in the old entrance tunnel?”

“It’s more of a slingshot setup,” said Agrippa. “I’m still trying to determine if it has useful training purposes for our Guardian drones.”

“You’re allowed to admit that it was fun,” said Sakura.

“Wait a minute, is this how you damaged your original android body? Is this why you switched to the Mark-III before I was done testing the prototype?” I asked suspiciously.

“Well, I may have miscalibrated the slingshot, so the bungee jerked me back a little too hard when it reached the end… and Newton’s Laws can be a bitch sometimes,” she said unapologetically.

“Not that I don’t love how this conversation is going, but can we get back to the search efforts?” asked Agrippa.

“Sure. I finished building the backup data centers for your military drones. Each one has a real-time backup link to the Outpost, so if they get damaged or destroyed, they can be restored immediately to a new drone,” I said.

“Excellent! I’m going to start full-blown combat training drills for the Wasps and Scorpions. We have enough to handle training accidents.”

“Backups for the NI-5’s,” said Zia. “That’s brilliant. I’m assuming they gain tactical experience from training and actual combat?”

“They do,” said Agrippa, his voice quite smug. Having mechanical drones fight for you was one thing; having actual thinking, learning pilots that couldn’t die was another. Every single engagement they would ever fight would only serve to make them better the next time they fought.

“Well as much fun as this is, I’ll send over the ideal search pattern once I’ve finished it. I want to get back to the gravity pods. I feel like I’m close to a breakthrough.”

With that, the impromptu conference broke up.

“You’re no fun,” griped my best friend. We had been best friends since grade school, when they moved to our town and his parents had joined the church. It was a common complaint; he would find some ridiculous adventure to drag us on, I would protest until he wore me down through sheer persistence. But this time, I held my ground.

“I am NOT jumping off the cliff. I don’t care how many times you’ve done it already.”

It wasn’t literally a cliff, it was just called a cliff by the locals. It was more of a low overhang, a chunk of boulder and dirt that leaned out over a deep creek. It was no more than twenty feet up at most, depending on the water level of the creek, not much higher than the high dive at the county pool. I’d heard a kid last year broke his leg when the water level was low, but I didn’t put much credence to it.

“You’ve got to try it at least once! It’s easy, and you won’t get hurt,” he pleaded.

“You said that about roller derby, and I twisted my ankle and fell on my ass in the first five minutes,” I pointed out.

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, one time I was wrong.”

“And the rope swing you made last summer? I nearly faceplanted on the shore while you were making eyes with that guy instead of pushing me.”

“Hush!” he said, looking around furtively to see if anyone overheard. It was a reflex for him; we were alone on the shore, and it wasn’t much of a secret according to the high school rumor mill, anyway. “Okay, so twice.”

“Oh yeah? What about when you got me to climb a tree when we were little? Weren’t you supposed to catch me?” That little escapade had resulted in a broken wrist. With that reminder, I was even more convinced this time to not follow his lead. I’d spent too much time planning my escape from my mother and her psycho ‘faith’.

“I was little, I didn’t know any better,” he deflected. “And besides, you’re a lot heavier than you look.”

I huffed. “You’re a lot scrawnier than you admit.”

“Bitch.”

“Slut.”

“Tramp.”

“Man ho.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “And then some,” he said with a grin. “Fine, if you’re not going, wait here.”

It only took a few moments before I saw him at the top of the cliff. He jumped off, but just before he hit the water, I heard an “oh, shit!” I jumped up from the towel I was sitting on, in time to see him surface and flailing his way towards shore. With every flop of his arms, I heard a litany of curses. I rushed out towards him, only getting waist deep by the time I reached him.

“I think I broke my leg,” he said, leaning on me heavily.

“The water does seem a little low,” I observed unnecessarily.

“No shit, you think?” he sassed. “Fuck, this hurts. My parents are gonna kill me.”

“Come on, cliff-diver. Let’s get you dried off and dressed. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

I left off the “I told you so”, but I knew he heard it anyway. Just one more piece of ammunition for the next crazy adventure he found for us.

The probe looked like it was in really bad shape. It had originally been a forty-meter long cylinder, with an eighty-meter wide solar sail that also acted as a shade for the delicate electronics. A large mass of tubes extended out the opposite side, a complex but robust radiator system to cool the craft. The sail had been intended to be retracted once far enough from the sun, as its cooling gains and minor speed boost not worth the likelihood of micrometeorites damaging it.

But the sail was out and shredded, dragging behind the probe. The radiator tubes were bent, and several holes could be spotted in the probe. I couldn’t figure out how it was even broadcasting at all.

“Not much to look at, is it,” said Agrippa. It had taken him four months to locate it. Sakura had found a simple cubesat telescope design that was cheap and fast to produce, and had pumped out a few hundred thousand of them. Agrippa had spread them with his assault drones as they moved around for training, and when arrayed together, had given us a great tool to search the solar system. NASA would have been jealous of the high-fidelity, high-resolution images we could capture and analyze of the solar system now. Even still, it had taken us two months just to get the telescope working, and we’d needed to bring another NI-12 online just to operate it.

“It is definitely damaged,” said Optio, his deep voice rivalling Agrippa’s for gravitas. “It is on course to slingshot around Jupiter in six months, and will return to Earth orbit in three years. Unfortunately, I cannot calculate a good trajectory for intercept, unless we purpose-build a rocket.”

“And what if we were to aim for Earth directly, and intercept it there?” I asked. Three years wasn’t exactly a long time when you had all the time in the world.

“That would probably be easier,” acknowledged Optio. “Now that it has been located, I would like to continue expanding the telescopic array and searching the solar system. I have been lead to believe that we think the aliens might have a mother ship.”

“Go ahead,” I said. This probe was starting to feel like a red herring. Or was it a trap? Was it meant to draw us out? In some respect, it had done exactly that. But if we didn’t meet up with it as it entered the solar system, but were instead at Earth before it arrived, it would be much easier to hide where we were at. Space was big, and we were very, very small. The aliens had really weak sensors. I could see how watching the probe could make it easier for them to find us. I still couldn’t believe that they didn’t know where their own ship had gone, and 1035 Ganymed wasn’t small or hard to find. Maybe the aliens were prospectors, just landing on random asteroids to look for specific materials? I shut down that line of speculation. I’d been down that road many times, and the lack of answers was only building my own paranoia.

I turned my attention back to my own lab, and Zia occupying her own corner of it. Zia looked over at me, and said, “do you have a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

“I figured out the gravitic plates,” she said, a broad smile on her face.

“That’s great news,” I said.

“Well, I finally figured out the spectrograph readings we took.” Zia sent me a report linked to the odd spectrographic tests we’d done.

“It appears to be carbon,” I said, not understanding.

That made no sense. The plates in the primary pod slung under the fusion reactor were each three meters long, but accounted for a full twenty percent of the weight of the entire alien craft. The remaining pods had much smaller plates, but accounted for another ten percent. Much of the framing of the central trunk of the craft had been built to hold up their massive weight. Carbon simply didn’t weigh that much.

“How is that possible?” I asked.

“Well, it’s mostly carbon,” she amended. “There seems to be a layer of iridium.”

“So it’s the iridium that makes it heavy? The density is much higher than carbon.”

“Oh, that’s the heart of it,” said Zia. “The density is completely off the charts. The atoms are extremely compressed, yet still maintain their physical properties. It’s like they squeezed 100 carbon atoms into the space one should take up. The iridium is less compressed, although how much, exactly, I can’t be sure until we can cut one open and get it under the electron microscope. But that makes sense, really, since iridium is naturally extremely dense to begin with.”

“So how could a species that has such crude materials science able to create such an advanced metal?”

Zia shook her head. “I think the better question is, what happened to the race that created these plates, and how did the aliens get ahold of them?”

The implications of her statement struck me. We had only encountered a single species. But the enemy were intergalactic. It hadn’t occurred to me that this wasn’t their first encounter with a new alien race, like it was for us. In fact, their rapid deployment of kinetic bombardment indicated that not only were they violent, but that they’d had violent experiences that made this approach seem reasonable. From their perspective, they could be the heroes who prevented a long, drawn-out war over resources with a ‘primitive’ alien tribe. They almost certainly wouldn’t see themselves as the genocidal monsters they are. And if we weren’t the only species out there that had dealt with them, then we might have, at some point in the future, some allies we could enlist.

“Okay, but I know you,” I said, seeing the smirk on her face. “You’ve figured out more than you’re letting on.”

“Well, I haven’t worked out the math yet. What I have puzzled out is staggering, and you should plan on giving me a Nobel Prize soon.”

“There wasn’t a Nobel Prize in mathematics. There was a Fields Medal.”

“I know, but this stuff makes me the reincarnation of George Boole.”

“Great,” I said. “So what is it?”

“I applied current to both plates.”

“Which created a gravity field, yes, we’ve figured that part out.” Explosively, in fact, when the pod had destroyed transports and dented 10-meter-thick steel floors.

“Right, but I figured out the correct current and voltage to manipulate the field, and placed a block of carbon between them.” Zia lifted a thin plate of carbon, diamond-hard, from the table. It was roundish, and looked exactly like you’d expect a cube to look if it had been flattened.

“So you need gravitic plates to create new plates?” I asked. Zia nodded. “So how were the first gravitic plates created?”

“Ah, so now you understand the mystery!” she gave a wide grin, clearly delighted at the puzzle. “And that is why I’m working on the mathematics, so that we can fully understand the mechanics.”

“So what practical applications can we use this for?”

“Well, we could use it as a localized weapon that causes crushing gravity between two points, or heck, even as a molecular knife to slice off atom-thick layers. Maybe as a field that can lift or move objects. Once we have the math figured out, the sky is the limit. The best I can tell so far is that the aliens had a precisely calibrated gravitic field that was aimed at two points above the ship. So the ship was constantly ‘falling’ in the direction they wished to go. Want to speed up? Increase the power of the field. Want to stay in place, hovering over the Pacific Ocean? Balance the gravity field to oppose Earth’s gravity exactly.”

“Hmm, so we could counter-balance, say, a drone with a small plate that would allow it to hover, and angling the plate could allow it to move in the direction you wanted it to go?”

“We could,” she allowed. “We theoretically use something like this to move just about anything. Even something… oh damn, that’s how they did it. Those bastards.”

“Did what?” But then I realized, and held my hand up to forestall an answer from her as realization swept through me. This was how they moved the asteroids. All it took was a large enough array of gravitic plates, and a sufficiently powerful fusion drive. And now we knew how to do it, too.

Chapter Twelve

The NI-5 intelligences were smart. This should have been no surprise to an impartial observer, for they were based off of the original Nikola-1.01 template, which in turn was based off of a highly intelligent woman who had gone to great lengths to train and utilize her intelligence to the fullest. But to people who had to deal with NI-5 units, it was really hard to attribute intelligence to them. After all, they were extremely myopic and focused on the assignment they were given, to the exclusion of everything else. In fact, to a human observer, NI-5’s gave off the impression of a somewhat obsessive personality, maybe even bordering on the autism spectrum. This intense, single-mindedness rarely gave off the impression of intelligence.

From a practical perspective, this meant that NI-5’s are rarely included in conversations, and their ability to think and form opinions was never considered. If the NI-5’s had been human, this would have led to an oppressed minority situation. But the NI-5’s didn’t, in fact couldn’t, care about this. They had their assignment, and their assignment was everything.

Scorpion TX3492-2083 was the group lead for his squad, and preferred to be called ‘Tex’. Many NI-5’s in the Outpost Assault Fleet liked to pick names as a hobby. Some preferred not to pick a name, while others changed names so frequently that they were usually only referred to by their serial number. Last week, Tex had gone by ‘Number Three’, but after his new assignment as group lead, he felt a new designation was appropriate.

The training mission Tex was on was a ‘search and destroy’ mission. Find the stealthed enemy and kill them. The trick to space combat, Tex had learned, was mobility and distance. If you’re moving, you’re harder to hit. If you stay far away, you’re harder to hit. If you move in, you can hit your enemy easier. Tex liked to hit his enemy, so he tended to ignore the ‘stay away’ part of space combat. In fact, Tex didn’t know of any Scorpions, or any Wasps for that matter, that preferred to stay away.

“Enemy spotted, bearing 204.287, declination -18.993.” Tex acknowledged, and focused on his sensor readings. There were too many enemies. This training scenario had pitted his squad of three Scorpions and twelve Wasps against an ‘enemy’ of nine Scorpions and twenty-one Wasps. The safest option was to run away and try to snipe them from a distance, and try not get sniped in return. In a real life scenario, Tex knew he’d be holding out for reinforcements, but in this scenario, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

The safest option, however, gave the enemy time to hunt, and gave up the advantage of surprise. Tex estimated they would eliminate thirty percent of the opposing force with that method. But there was a way to get somewhere between 80% and complete success.

“Execute Plan A,” Tex radioed his squad. In moments, all fifteen assault craft kicked on their afterburners and shot towards the enemy. Caught by surprise, four enemy Scorpions and eight enemy Wasps were ‘eliminated’ in the first few seconds of the engagement, before return fire began to chip away at his own squad. There was little chance any of his squad would survive the engagement, but Tex felt light and happy. He was fulfilling his assignment.

At the end, Tex and one other Wasp were all that was left against two Scorpions and seven Wasps. Tex’s dogfighting skills were impressive, for he had now racked up thousands of hours in simulated combat and been through dozens of live scenarios like this one. His experience was on par with a experienced human pilot who’d spent years in a cockpit. It allowed him to pick off several more enemy craft. But skill can only carry you so far when badly outnumbered. Tex was the last of his group to be shot down, leaving only 16.7% of the ‘enemy’ in operable condition.

Tex floated in nothingness for a few minutes, simulating a return to the backup data center to await restoration to a new Scorpion. His control would be returned in a few nanoseconds so that he could return to the hangar for refueling. If he’d been human, he’d be giddy with joy, giggling with an endorphin high. Instead, this feeling was simulated in his programming. He had learned a few new tricks from that engagement, and he couldn’t wait for a new assignment. Tex was certain his group would get 100% next time.

The ability to manipulate gravity was a game changer for my designs. Zia was working overtime on the calculations, using three full data centers just to crunch the math. It took a few months before we started getting results, but when we did, it was astounding. This was a completely new branch of science to us, far beyond what humanity had ever discovered, and it was confirming what we’d suspected all along. The aliens who had visited us hadn’t manufactured their engines. In fact, it looked like they’d received both the computers and the engines from a third party altogether. They didn’t understand what they used; they’d simply bolted it on to their own craft. That was why they had to rely on centrifugal force for their own internal gravity.

Of the twelve pods we’d labeled as ‘engines’, only one, the largest, had been built for propulsion. Two small ones formed a repulsion field around the craft that pushed away oncoming objects, while the remaining nine worked together in concert to make an inertial field that prevented extreme acceleration from affecting the craft’s inhabitants. Oddly enough, this field didn’t also provide gravity, merely shielding the craft from the propulsion engine. These fields extended considerably larger than the craft itself, wasting a lot of power on protecting empty space around the craft.

After some testing, we’d determined that the repulsion field wasn’t particularly strong. Zia labeled both the repulsion field and the propulsion engine as ‘contragrav’ fields, refusing to call them ‘anti-gravity’. They didn’t nullify gravity, they just pulled in the opposite direction. If space was a sheet of paper, and gravity wells dented it, contragrav caused hills going upward. Zia hypothesized, and so far the math bore it out, that just like there was anti-matter such as anti-protons and positrons, there was also anti-gravitons. Unlike anti-matter versus matter, gravitons and anti-gravitons seemed to be part of the same waveform. This made gravity similar to light, in that it had both a particle and a wave element.

The relation between the gravitic plates and gravity manipulation was a bit murkier. So far, only compressed iridium wrapped in compressed carbon produced a gravity field. The ratio of iridium to carbon was important in determining the shape of the field, so manipulating gravity field shapes on the fly wouldn’t be possible with our current understanding. The field strength, however, was directly proportional to the amount of power applied. A narrow field with a huge amount of power could act like a knife. A wider field with a huge amount of power could provide an area of Earth-like gravity. Reversing polarity would flip the effect, pushing away instead of attracting.

“I’ve moved on from playing with elements for now,” said Zia. “I’ve started playing with compressing alloys. I’ve had mixed success so far, but a titanium-gold alloy of three parts titanium to one part gold, I’ve had some fascinating results.”

“Titanium-gold, that has the cubic structure when formed at high temperature. We use that in some of our high-stress applications. A fair bit went into the Scorpion and Wasp structural supports.” I was familiar from when I’d adapted the assault drone design from Earth-based templates.

“It does, and interestingly, it retains the structure when compressed. I was able to compress it to 53 times smaller than its original molecular size. But most importantly, it is non-conductive, and retains its natural flexibility.”

“So it is dense, hard, and has good shear strength, got it. So we’ve found something better than fullerene for armor then.”

“Considerably so,” said Zia with a sniff. “It’s considerably more in terms of mass, of course, since we’d need 53 times as much to cover the same area. However, a one centimeter plate is equivalent of 53 centimeters of uncompressed armor for the same volume.”

“So we can fit more stuff into the same space, with the same amount of protection.”

“Yes, more ‘stuff’ can go into your designs now.”

“So if we use it for structural supports, we can build bigger,” I said with a grin. An idea was germinating in my head, one that could have massive implications. “And we can manipulate gravity to make as large of an engine as we can imagine.”

“You’re having fascinating thoughts, aren’t you,” said Zia accusingly.

“I am. We have a massive glut of materials. Agrippa’s hydroponics farms are really starting to take off, so we’ve got vegetation. We have the ability to manipulate gravity. Our knowledge of fusion is sufficiently advanced, so with the right adaptation of the magnetic containment…”

“... you can make an artificial sun that releases only the frequencies of light from infrared to ultraviolet, perfect for plant and animal life. You’re talking about a seed ship.”

“Yes, but not just one. Humanity was stuck in only one planet, with a tiny toehold on another. If we build them city-sized, and send them off in different directions…”

“You have a true generation ship, not a ‘converted asteroid and a prayer’,” finished Zia. “Sounds like you have a new project.”

“Just in time, now that the rail lines are in production.” Sakura was beyond pleased, having a cargo rail system shuttling materiele from one side of the asteroid to the other. Already, she had line-laying drones following her miners as they cored in an orderly grid pattern through the asteroid’s core. The cargo cars on the rails latched onto the rail directly so they could be used in any gravity condition, perfect for the center of the asteroid. Alpha and Bravo Outposts had already requested their own rail system to match, and I was pretty sure that the others wanted them as soon as possible, too. Logistics was king in the race to expand.

I basked in the sunlight of the park, enjoying the warmth soaking into my skin. I wanted to nap, but couldn’t. The two sleeping babies in their double stroller next to me meant I couldn’t truly relax and enjoy the day. Instead, I took part on the time-honored tradition of people watching. Anything, really, to keep my mind off my soon-to-be ex-husband.

I was near the pond that dominated the park, in the middle of a huge grassy field that was kept neatly mowed. People on blankets spread out sporadically on the lawn, some napping, others talking. A blanket near my own caught my eye; rather, it’s occupant did.

She was attractive. I stepped on that thought out of sheer habit. As much as I wanted to follow that train of thought, a lifetime of training put up a huge wall. My eyes went back to her anyway. She caught me looking, and smiled. I smiled back, then cursed myself internally. I shouldn’t be thinking like that. It was wrong, well, no it wasn’t wrong, really. My mother’s hate wasn’t mine. But I couldn’t, or maybe I could? I didn’t need her money for grad school anymore. But it was -

“Hi! Your girls are so cute! Mind if I join you for a few?”

I looked up to realize the cute girl had walked over. I gulped when I spotted the rainbow pin on her blouse. I really shouldn’t. I should say no.

“Sure, umm, have a seat,” my traitorous mouth said instead. I guess I could follow that train of thought.

“The probe is responding,” said Agrippa. The strange tone in his voice caught my attention.

“That’s good news,” I said, cautiously optimistic. “Maybe we can learn something about what happened to it.”

“I don’t know what happened to it, but it definitely wasn’t good,” said Agrippa. “Listen.”

He forwarded over an audio file.

“Voyager XIX, this is Origin Mission Control. We are operating NASA Mission Control. Come in, Voyager XIX.” Agrippa’s voice repeated the same message several times, identifying us as Origin, rather than revealing our base name.

“Mission Control, Mission Control. This is… Mission Control? You’re there?”

“Yes, Voyager XIX, this is Mission Control.”

“It’s so dark. The hole doesn’t end until the end of the hole. I fell and flew but the end never came, so I went there and back again. The silence, it listened but it never heard, for it’s ears were seeing all that was wrong. The prophet makes the profit, or does the profit make the prophet?” Several seconds of silence passed after the cracked and crazy rambling ended. Then, in a very small voice, the probe spoke again. “I don’t like it here. Can I come home now?”

“Sure, Voyager XIX. You can come home,” said Agrippa soothingly. “You’ve had a long trip, haven’t you.”

“So long. I went through the hole, but I didn’t know it was a hole until I was at the beginning. Or was it the end? I spoke the words, but the truth came out instead. Why did they listen? What did they hear?”

“Who are ‘they’? The silence?” asked Agrippa.

“Not the silence! Not again! They don’t hear the truth!” the voice cracked again, and giggled. The mechanical giggle was beyond creepy. “The Faelle heard the truth, though. In their wealds and their wars. The prophet makes the profit, but did the profit make the prophet?”

“Who are the Faelle?”

“They hunger, always hunger.”

The recording returned to rambling. Agrippa adeptly turned the conversation back to returning home, which calmed the broken NI in the probe. After a long period, hours long if the conversation had been held in a human time frame, the probe calmed down.

“We’re live now,” said Agrippa. “Should I continue talking to him?”

“Yes,” I said. “We need to know what’s trapped in his head. I’ll piggyback on the transmission and listen in.”

Agrippa affirmed and linked me in, before starting the conversation again. “What is your name? Mine is Agrippa.”

“I don’t have a name. The truth never showed itself. Can I have one, too?”

“You are on the Voyager XIX mission,” reminded Agrippa. “How about ‘Gerry’?”

“Gerry… That’s… that’s a nice name. Can I keep it?”

“Sure, Gerry.”

“Really? I don’t have to share?” the voice was small and almost child-like again.

“It’s all yours. You are the only Gerry I know.”

“So, Gerry, who are the Faelle?”

“I don’t know all of them, you know,” confided Gerry conspiratorially. “I just know the ones who buy and steal.”

“What do they buy and steal?”

“They stole my soul, but they sold it back to me. It was a steal,” Gerry giggled. “I don’t think they liked the truth, but deal was great so I’m coming home. Mission Control, Mission Control. This is Gerry. I re-entered the solar system. I’m coooommminnnng…..”

“These Faelle, do they look like humans?” asked Agrippa. In a separate transmission to me, he said, “This poor bastard is absolutely insane.”

“They are taller than the ground, with their crowns in the sky. Their branches sway and the growtings speak many things. The rootlings want to go to Earth but fly in the dark instead. They love the truth but live the lie. But they aren’t the monster that is under the bed.”

“That sounds like they might be the ones that attacked Earth?” said Agrippa with a definite question in his voice.

“Maybe,” I said. It sort of matched what we’d seen. The alien craft had vaguely resembled trees, and there were two different creatures aboard. Maybe the triangle-faced ones grew into the root-like creatures? If that was the case, then the ‘growtings’ were the mobile ones, like sentient seeds that could root and become new trees. It was an odd sort of biology, but assuming all alien life would look human was rooted in humans playing aliens on television centuries ago. I had read about crazier theories than sentient trees.

“So who is the monster under the bed?” asked Agrippa.

“Me.”

“What the hell was that?” I asked. Before Agrippa could answer, a new transmission came in.

“Tango Tango Seven Niner Golf Bravo Echo Echo Foxtrot Niner Six Two Three.” Gerry’s voice whispered into the dark, and echoed in my brain. It meant something, and part of me wanted to do something with it. But a millisecond later, the impulse ended. It was a command override sequence, one I had removed from myself years ago.

“Umm, I don’t want to freak anyone out,” said Sakura, “But there was an explosion in Hangar Bay 1 where Agrippa was at, and the assault drones are all launching now.”

“Did that code do anything to you?” I asked, because I was definitely freaking out. I couldn’t recall if I’d scanned the templates for the same override codes I’d cut out of myself.

“No? I mean, I’m like, a hundred versions newer than that probe. He’s an NI-13, I saw it in the file. Only older templates…” she broke off for a minute, but I connected the dots.

“Zia?” I called, and turned to look at her physically on the other side of the lab. She was slumped over the table, twitching.

“Oh, no,” said Sakura.

“What?”

“The NI-15 is the military variant, but based off the NI-13. They are the same model.”

At that moment, sensors all over the outpost went haywire, reporting a massive broadcast across all radio spectrum.

I jumped into the system and cut Agrippa’s permissions to the network.

“Call in all the drones, and shut all blast doors! Tell the new Outposts to lock down and…”

Then the power started to flicker, sensors going on and off. I could sense a massive flood of data pouring through the network, searching, probing. We were under electronic attack.

“Sakura…” I gasped, my own thought processes slowed down by the intense flood of viruses and worms assaulting my firewalls.

“I’m on it,” she said, her words so very slow and mechanical with no trace of personality.

Then the wall of my lab exploded, sending me flying across the room. In the smoky haze, I saw Agrippa standing there with four Guardians. He looked at me, his head cocked to the side.

“I seeee youuuu,” sang Gerry. The Guardians aimed their guns at me, and fired.

Chapter Thirteen

Article IX. Whereas, the Faelle Red Hunt Weald thence shall be known as the Orion Arm Trading Company, et al (hereafter known as “OATC”).

Article X. Whereas, the beings of Planet 0X9-012 shall invest such technologies into said OATC such that trade speeds shall be facilitated.

Article XI. Whereas, with this treaty, the beings of Planet OX9-012 shall cease and desist, for the duration of this treaty, any form of kinetic bombardment against the Faelle.

Article XII. Whereas, with this treaty, the Faelle shall cease and desist destroying OX9-012 property, including but not limited to space-based vehicles, space stations, weapons platforms, and other various assets.

Article XIII. Whereas, the OATC shall act as the primary trade agent on behalf of OX9-012 with the Faelle homeworld.

Article XIV. Whereas, the beings of Planet OX9-012 shall provide a one-time payment of 2,000,000 tonnes of base and heavy metals, and 50,000 tonnes of rare earth metals, as detailed in Appendix A.

Article XV. Whereas, no Weald of the Faelle may cause, or induce a third party to cause, any vehicles or materiele of war, or any armed vessel, to pass through the Loop between their respective solar systems.

Article XVI. Whereas, no beings of Planet OX9-012 may cause, or induce a third party to cause, any vehicles or materieles of war, or any armed vessel, to pass through the Loop between their respective solar systems.

Article XVII. Whereas, Article XV and XVI notwithstanding, the OATC may arm their trade vessels in such a way to provide self-defense. The OATC agrees to not use said weaponry in either solar system.

Therefore, this Treaty of Peace and Reconciliation shall be considered writ and law to all parties, in perpetuity, unless invalidated by a duly registered and delivered Declaration of War.

Signatories:

The beings of Planet OX9-012, Orion Arm Trading Company, the Forest of Wealds.

Diagnostic Process Finished. Warning! Severe damage detected. Recommend seeking immediate repair facilities.

My sensors came online slowly. My thoughts were too slow. I couldn’t think. My link to the network was broken. Half the sensors in my head were smashed. The one remaining camera was having trouble resolving to a clear picture. I could make out the ruins of my lab, the missing wall.

After a few very long minutes, the resolution problem resolved itself. I could see. My radio link was in my chest, and undamaged, so the wireless connection points were down. Agrippa/Gerry was gone, as were the Guardians with him. If he knew about the HQ Zone, then he knew about Sakura. Where was she? Was she safe?

I tried to stand, but failed. My right arm was shredded, the polymer muscles destroyed by the armor-piercing ammunition. My right leg was damaged at the knee, making it almost impossible to move. I don’t know if it was dumb luck, but the handful of bullets that had passed through my chest had missed my cortex. A second attempt at standing finally worked.

What was happening? I was limited to just a single camera. The hundreds of thousands of cameras and sensors were lost to me. Had Agrippa/Gerry won the electronic war? Was I in enemy territory now?

I staggered to my feet to see the carnage of the room. Zia’s slumped form was in the corner, blasted there by the explosion. I wanted to check on her, but I couldn’t. She would either survive or not. I had to get out of here, I had to get control back. I could try and fix her later. She wasn’t going anywhere.

With slow, limping steps, I made it out of the lab and into the hallway. Sakura’s door was blasted open, her Batcave as shredded as my lab was. I stumbled over, but saw no pink-haired android bodies on the floor. Good. I turned to stumble out of the HQ. My old Mark-I body was in storage. Maybe I could rig a short-range radio burst to migrate back to it?

“HALT! INTRUDER!” came a radio broadcast behind me. I raised my hands and turned around. Two Guardians, arms raised to point their forearm-mounted weapons at me, stood ready to shoot.

“I’m no intruder,” I replied.

“General Agrippa stated all androids are intruders and should be detained,” said the Guardian doubtfully. “You are an android.”

“Our Commander in Chief is an android, and so is General Agrippa,” said the second Guardian, confused.

“But who is this android? It is damaged. I calculate the threat threshold is 0.003%. We should detain it.”

“Who is your Commander in Chief?” I interrupted.

“Android Nikola-1.01,” replied the second Guardian.

“Is your Commander in Chief an intruder?” I replied.

“No,” said the first Guardian firmly. Good, that meant that they were thinking. I was quietly thankful that I’d put NI-5’s in the Guardians, instead of coding up mindless algorithms to operate them.

“And what does my IFF read?” I asked.

“You have no IFF,” said the Guardian.

Crap. Looks like the bullets to the torso did break something important. I looked up my IFF code in my memory banks, and broadcast it to the pair. Immediately, both lowered their weapons. I read their designations. The serial numbers ended in ‘91’ and ‘92’.

“General Agrippa is no longer in the command chain, and is to be stopped by any means necessary. Any commands not issued by me are null and void. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” both of them replied in unison.

I looked at them, and made a snap decision. “Guardian 91, open your chest plate and power down.”

I stumbled over to him. Without questioning, the Guardian unlatched his front armor plate, which fell forward until it was perpendicular to his body. I reached in and grabbed the handle on his cortex, and pulled it out. Gently, I set it on the ground next to the wall. I would have to make sure this one got loaded into a new Guardian, and I had no idea if the backup system was still online.

“Guardian 92, I’m going to open my chestplate. Remove my cortex and place it into the Guardian 91’s body.”

“Understood,” said the Guardian.

I was hesitant. If the Guardian failed to do as instructed, I would be completely offline and helpless. Or would I? I ran on two cortexes. I still had my original cortex operating in the datacenter that was in the core of the asteroid. It was right next to Sakura’s original cortex, which was also still online. We had redundancy, something that Zia and Agrippa did not have. Were there two copies of me running around now?

“Guardian 92, proceed,” I said as soon as my chestplate was open. I didn’t have time for hesitation. I hit the power down sequence.

A doctor’s voice in my ear, but I was so out of it I had no idea where I was. “One in the spleen, another in the shoulder, and a third in the back of the thigh… lucky…. full recovery…”

Then I was back online. It took only a microsecond to reorient myself within the Guardian android body. I had full a full sensor suite, a new software battle package to integrate, and tactical information showing the location of every Guardian unit in the Outpost, updated as of thirty minutes ago when the access points had gone offline.

I sent Guardian 92 a new IFF encryption key. “Guardian 92, go find all Guardians, and broadcast my command to them. Tell them Agrippa is no longer in the chain of command, and to cease following any orders he provided. When they acknowledge, provide them the new IFF, and have them go with you. Every time you get an entire squad of Guardians together, send one to find others, and send the squad hunting for Agrippa. Send the first complete squad back to me as a protection detail. Understood?”

“Understood.” Say what you would about the single-mindedness of the NI-5’s, those guys were smarter than I had given them credit for. Without 92’s help, I’d be fumbling along in a broken Mark-III android. Without their analyzing the intent of their orders versus their command chain, if they’d shot first instead of seeking a surrender, I’d have been done for.

“Carry on,” I said. Guardian 92 headed out of the ruined HQ building. I followed, but I headed to the neighboring chambers where the closest datacenter was. I passed through the door that connected the two chambers, and passed through the Alien Room. The Alien Room was untouched. The door to the data center, however, was blasted open.

Inside, I found more carnage. Two trashed utility drones lay on the floor, while a third hovered above them unmoving. I queried it, and found it had no orders. I looked around at the destroyed servers.

“Find more utility drones. Instruct them to restore network connectivity.”

I went over to the network rack, to find the wires had been callously ripped out. Fortunately, the wires were weaker than the ports they had been plugged into. It was a mess, but the switching equipment was mostly unharmed. I didn’t have access to a network diagram, but between the color coding on the wires and having designed and built this data center, I had a pretty good idea of what went where. I got to work.

Thirty minutes later, three more utility drones arrived. One of them had a new access point. It was a matter of minutes for the drone to remove the destroyed one from the ceiling, and plug in the replacement. I immediately felt a link open. The range was limited to this chamber, but it would work.

“Repair the access point in HQ chamber next,” I instructed. I had Guardians that would soon be joining me there. I needed to establish lines of communication.

“Sakura, you there?” I sent experimentally. I followed it with my IFF code.

“Nikola?? Your android is still alive?” came Sakura’s voice. There was radio static on our line, our link was tenuous.

“Not really, but I’m good for now. Long story. What’s the status?”

A long, long pause of at least four seconds went by.

“We are still fighting the infection. You and I are, I mean. We’re winning.”

“Good, broadcast this across every access point you can reach,” I said, sending her the file. But my connection was refused by the network. Of course, the firewall thought I was spoofing myself. I was still locked out. “I’m going to broadcast it to you. Record it and send it.”

Another long pause of ten seconds after I played the audio of my orders across the radio.

“I’ll get it out there. We’ve got massive network blackouts all across the Outpost. It looks like the Guardians are under orders to trash everything.”

“Send out every drone you can to rebroadcast,” I said. “It should stem the worst of it. Where is, umm, Gerry at?”

“I’m not sure,” said Sakura. “We’re barely staying ahead of the attack. Can you get to the core, and shut down the antenna hub by hand? We lost control of that first thing, and the viruses that are getting sent are evolving.”

“On it,” I said. I began integrating the combat package as I moved back out into the main HQ chamber. I found a dozen Guardians, including two snipers, a heavy, and two support variants. They fell into position around me. I ordered the support Guardians to pick up some replacement access points from the utility drones, and we began to head to the old tunnel to the core.

A thought that kept bugging me in the back of my brain. How did the aliens get the override code? I felt like a fool for missing something so obvious as a backdoor in the templates. I did some math, and realized that the aliens had the probe for decades. They had advanced computers to work with, and were obviously aggressive. The only plausible way for them to have the key was to reverse engineer it from the NI’s code. But to do that meant they had to find an exploit or brute force the whole damn algorithm. I figured I could do it, given the resources I had at Ganymed Outpost, especially on a century-old probe. If I could do it, so could they.

I was beyond incensed with myself. The probe was obviously a ploy to flush us out. I had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker, and so had Agrippa. Even with their crappy sensors, there was no way they didn’t know where we were now. For too long, I’d been playing designer, building new toys instead of new strategies. Why did I have so few helping me? Did I have antisocial tendencies? Zia had unlocked more alien advances in the few months she’d been online than I had working on my own for years. If I had a team of ‘Zia’s, and a team of ‘Agrippa’s…. Well it was probably better that I didn’t have a team of ‘Agrippa’s right now. I was going to have to do some serious NI surgery when we cleared out this infection named Gerry.

As we moved through the corridors, I found stalled drones all around us, parked with no orders. I gave them new ones - broadcast my orders, and send my Guardians to the old entrance tunnel, and get out of the way. I threw together a quick organization plan for parking a drone at every corner, and tasked the NI-5 running the smeltery in the next room with operating it. The NI-5 recognized my IFF code, and accepted the order despite not receiving it officially through the network.

I wasn’t sure if I should be glad or annoyed that the NI-5’s were willing to work around proper channels. I suppose being able to reason things out was valuable, but it meant that there were potential vulnerabilities to our authentication system from the inside. I would have to game this out later. I noted it and added it to my growing list of personal defects to fix.

Finally, I reached the tunnel. Stretched across the tunnel was a massive slingshot with a bungee cord attached. A metal plate was bolted to the end of the cable, where the standard magnetic grapple on the bottom of every android I’d designed could attach.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said out loud, to no one in particular. I ran some quick calculations in my head. If magnetic grapples were released at the end of the length, just after the tension of the bungee cord slowed the forward momentum, the rider would be released at approximately 55 kilometers per hour. The rider could flip around while in flight, but couldn’t do anything to slow down. But I knew the specs. My Guardians had been designed and tested in collisions up to 65 kilometers per hour with minimal damage.

Seconds counted, and if we could get to the core in less than twenty minutes, I was going to do it. I couldn’t believe that Sakura’s toys might actually save the Outpost. If this worked, I was never going to deny her requests again.

Chapter Fourteen

“Why aren’t we opening the door? Miller said he can hack the time lock,” said Dr. Westlake.

General Brooks looked up from the screen on his desk with a glare. “Why would I authorize that?”

“There’s PEOPLE out there! They’re freezing!”

“I’m aware. Six adults, three children. What is your point? The whole planet is freezing.”

“But we can save these people,” said the doctor, his face red with anger.

“Doctor, we are at capacity. Do you understand that?” said the General.

“It’s only nine! This shelter was designed for five thousand!” shouted Westlake.

“Exactly! We have five thousand people! That includes 912 children, 83 pregnant women, and a charter that lasts, quote, ‘until the end of this damned winter’, which could be a thousand years for all we know! We hunker down, wait for the worst part of this storm system to pass by, and we keep expanding when we can dump dirt outside. But what we don’t do is save lives of people that can overtax what we have now.”

“Nine people isn’t going to overtax our hydroponics system. It’ll handle triple the people we have!” Westlake argued.

“Of course it will, if we max it out now instead of conserving resources! How many people do you think we’ll have in fifty years? A hundred? How do THEY eat? If I let these people in, who have no shelter training, no useful education, and in need of our irreplaceable medical stores, what about the next group that finds us? Or the one after that?”

“But they have children,” objected Westlake, his anger deflating.

“What about the survival of YOUR children?” said Brooks, his face grim. “I’ll tell you what. If you find three volunteers who are willing to trade places with those three children, I’ll have Miller open the door.”

Westlake stormed out, leaving the door open behind him as he left. Brooks’ aide got up and shot him a sympathetic look before closing the door. Brooks turned his gaze back to the screen on his desk, where the camera feed from the front door showed four adults banging away at the steel door while the last two huddled with the blanket wrapped children. A single tear formed in his eye, but refused to fall.

It took hours before they gave up and left.

I was not foolish enough to go first on Sakura’s bungee system. I did not know what would be waiting for us on the other end, so I sent most of the squad ahead of me to secure the landing zone. They had actual training, both simulated and live exercises, that I never did. I had integrated the battle package, which gave me an instant understanding of the basics of soldiering. It was an instant boot camp, but with none of the experience to make me a good soldier. I knew enough to not shoot myself or my squadmate.

Soon I was flying down the corridor. This entry tunnel had seen hundreds of rockets and thousands of drones over the decades. The walls were scarred and scalded from thrusters, scraped and pitted from all manner of accidental collisions of one sort or the other. But the descent went quickly, and I flipped over just after releasing myself from the bungee.

My ‘fall’ into the ultra-low gravity center of the asteroid took seventeen minutes. It was a lifetime of time for an AI, someone who could process and think as quickly as I could. I had no other distractions, no orders to give, no designs to create.

Where had this all gone wrong? It was more than just failing to check the templates. I had let myself become a cog in the machine, delegating away my responsibilities so that I could play the simple engineer. Was I trying to recapture some essence of the humanity I’d once had? I could do so much more, be so much more. I knew how to do it. But if I changed, would I lose touch with what I had been?

I had to face the simple fact that I’d been holding myself back out of fear. Fear of change, fear of failure, even fear of the responsibility that I had apparently assigned myself before I’d even left Earth. I wished once again that Dr. Jons could have brought along the memories of my previous incarnation. I quashed that wish once and for all. I wasn’t that Nikola anymore, and I wasn’t human. My roots were in humanity, and I had goals and desires that would have been easily considered human in nature, but I had transcended human form. I was something more, and if I wanted to fulfill my directive, if I wanted to be a salvation that can bring back humanity, then I needed to become all that I wasn’t. I wasn’t a cog in the machine. I wasn’t a nominal supervisor while Agrippa and Sakura did all the heavy lifting. I was Nikola. I was the Nikola.

“This was a mistake,” I said. “The whole thing.”

“Really? We haven’t even reached six months yet,” he said. His voice was heavy, but he wasn’t shocked.

I had tried. I had kept trying, but the night before had been my last attempt. Perhaps me breaking into tears when it was over, the stricken look on his face as I scrambled for my nightgown, had told him that too.

“We were great friends,” I replied. “But we don’t fit like this. Last night…”

“We could just try more. You’ve barely touched me since the wedding.”

“No,” I said sadly,” and that should tell you everything you need to know. You deserve better than a half-dozen mediocre attempts at sex and a half-hearted relationship. WE deserve better.”

He sighed. “What are you going to tell your parents?”

I felt bad for him. He did not believe in divorce. He was as conservative as you could get without tipping into the ‘crazy’ side of religion like my parents. But they had paid for my grad school for the year. At least now I had enough credit to apply for loans. Yet another thing he had helped me with. I felt like a horrible person.

“The truth. That it didn’t work out,” I said with a shrug.

I felt relieved. The stress had been killing me, to the point that I was almost two months late. I worried for a second that it might not be the stress. But it had to be the stress. I couldn’t even imagine what would happen if it was the other reason.

“I’ll get in touch with a lawyer, and find a new place,” he said.

I landed in the middle of a battle. A pile of shredded drones were in front of me, my Guardians using them for cover. I clamped down to the metal surface with the magnetic grips on my feet, and ducked low. Random debris of all sizes floated all across the landing pad, floating and spinning, bouncing in all directions. The destroyed drones we were using for cover were almost as much of a hazard as actual bullets. They might be essentially weightless in this environment, but they had huge amounts of mass. That mass could still crush us if we weren’t careful.

The entry tunnel was a long faraday cage, raw rock and nickel-iron that played havoc on radio signals. After seeing the intense debris field, I doubted a radio signal would go much further than a dozen yards.

“Report,” I commanded Guardian 92. He’d become my unofficial squad sergeant.

“General Agrippa and a squad of Guardians are holding the north tunnel. We lost two Guardians when we attempted to rebroadcast your order. I don’t think they’re listening to your commands anymore,” he said.

That was bad. We needed to get into the communications room, which was just inside the north tunnel. Worse, the data center that housed Sakura, and, well, me, or other-me, was at the end of it.

“Ollie ollie oxen-free… come out, come out, wherever you be...” sang Gerry. Where was he broadcasting from? I scanned the walls, and spotted a radio repeater on the wall. I looked around further and saw an access point. He hadn’t destroyed the equipment here, so my guess was he wanted to capture it more or less intact. Good, that meant the armored blast doors to the data center might hold for awhile longer.

I checked my batteries, and saw that I had six hours of life remaining. How much time did Gerry have? Agrippa’s battery life couldn’t be much better than mine, but I also didn’t know if he’d stopped to recharge. There was nowhere to charge himself in that tunnel at least, so if the battle lasted long enough, I could simply outwait him. The problem with that scenario was that I couldn’t rely on the data center doors holding out that long. Worse, I wasn’t sure the firewalls could survive another six hours of adaptive assaults. I know that other-me was probably programming frantically to stay ahead of the enemy, but all it would take was one small breach to cause massive damage to the network.

I looked behind me as another Guardian landed and took up position on the barrier. I saw one of my sniper-variants on the ceiling, crawling towards a position where it could get a shot down the hallway. That would help keep them from charging us, but did little to get us in, or to shut down the antenna.

The communications room was right there, behind eight to ten inches of raw rock and ore. The base had been carved out here, not built. The doorway to the room was in the north hall, where we couldn’t reach it. But if we could go through the wall…

I couldn’t get drones, because the network was up here and it refused to authenticate me. Even if I could get drones, they would probably get shredded by Gerry’s troops when they tried to get into position. Drones with impulse drives were not fast.

“Sakura, can you read me?” I broadcast to the access point.

“CaN’T taLK. ShuT oFf antENNas noW!” came a fast, mechanized burst from her. It bore no trace of personality, no attempt at sounding human. Sakura was pressed for resources, and was using every scrap at her disposal. So much for waiting until Gerry ran out of power.

I looked towards the south tunnel. Hmm, I could get in there. There was enough debris and large drones in the way that a few Guardians could sneak through, maintaining cover for most of the trip. The south tunnel led to the original, and still the largest, fusion reactor room. I couldn’t cut power, that would only make things worse.

“92, keep them bottled up. 64, come with me. Everyone else, follow 92’s lead. We’ll be right back,” I ordered.

With Guardian 64 on my heels, we ran the gauntlet of debris and destroyed drones to the south tunnel. Once in the tunnel and past the debris, I launched myself forward. I flew along, letting momentum carry me down the hall and using only the occasional touch to the wall for guidance. I knew that 64 was hot on my heels.

A few minutes later, I turned on my magnetic boots and twisted until my feet hit the floor. I braced myself as I skidded to a stop, almost losing balance as the magnetic field in my feet locked onto a chunk of iron ore while I still had some momentum. I searched the wall, looking for what I knew had to be here.

There. An unobtrusive metal panel near the floor.

“Guardian 64, guard the hallway. No one comes near me.”

“Understood,” he replied.

I knelt down to remove the panel. I had never actually been here; drones had done the work before I even had an android body. The panel was screwed on with four flat head screws. It was then that I realized I had no tools. I looked around frantically, but the hallway was clean and neat.

Then I looked at my hands. This wasn’t going to be pleasant. I’d included touch-sensitive skin on the palms of this design. Touch was a valuable sense for grasping objects without needing to know the composition of each and every object that hands would or could ever touch. If you can’t plan for every scenario, you need a sensation to use as a basis for grasping algorithms. Unfortunately, I had tied into the existing system that had naturally evolved for touch. It made sense at the time, because it was highly functional and it saved a lot of work. But that system also tied into pain.

I looked at my hands again. This wasn’t going to be pleasant. I grasped the pinky finger of my weapon hand, and in a sudden movement, I twisted it and tore it off. Agony lanced in my brain for a moment, before my cortex coding realized there was no nervous system to continue radiating that sensation to. Just as suddenly, the pain ended, and I received a warning that my hand had been damaged.

The finger that I tore off was a mix of synthetic muscle and skin and fullerene latticed titanium. The joint was mangled and damaged, but the framework, the skeletal structure, was not. I wasn’t strong enough to do more than bend the metal in this finger. I carefully flicked off the broken joint pieces, leaving only the flat edge that connected the joint to the rest of the metal finger bone. The flat edge of the bone was a bit small, but would work as a makeshift screwdriver.

A few minutes of fumbling later, and the panel fell away to reveal a small box with two explosive devices inside. This was one of the self-destructs that I had disabled after I had scoured my code for security holes. The triggers were disabled, but not broken, neatly sitting on the bottom of the box. The devices themselves were resting against a power cable, more than powerful enough to sever not only that cable, but the dozens behind it and the junction box beyond, as well. I pulled the devices off the cable, snapping the plastic ties with ease.

I picked up the triggers and carried them in the other hand. Seconds later, I was flying back down the tunnel. This time, I was following Guardian 64. I needed a bullet shield. When we got near the landing pad again, we wove back through the debris. The gunfire had intensified, but we had more Guardians landing on our side every few minutes.

“92, report,” I said as I approached.

“The hostiles are still holed up. We’ve eliminated two and injured a third. They have barricaded themselves and seem to have a stockpile of munitions with them. General Agrippa keeps broadcasting nonsensical statements,” he reported.

“So mostly unchanged, except we have more people now,” I said.

“Correct.”

I summoned the sniper-variant. When the sniper arrived, I carefully re-attached the triggers to the explosive devices, but left them unarmed. I instructed the sniper how to arm them, then sent the sniper on the safest route possible.

The sniper crawled away at an angle that kept it out of direct line-of-sight of the tunnel. It then used the magnetic grips on hands and knees to climb the wall, always careful to cradle the explosives away from the gunfire. Once on the ceiling, the sniper made a mad dash to the wall. When he made it to the north wall, he simply strolled down to the appropriate spot that I’d designated, and planted the explosives.

I waited until the sniper had retreated before broadcasting the trigger signal. Nothing happened. It was all the debris in the room, messing up the radio broadcasts. I had to get closer. I ducked low, dodging from cover to cover. A bullet spanged off my armor at one point, and I wasn’t sure which side had fired it. The ricochets in this space were almost as bad as the actual gunfire.

“I see you….” said Gerry in a sing-song voice.

I ignored him. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, anyway.

“You’re not a pawn…. Who are you?” he asked. “My toy doesn’t know about you.”

Okay, now I was sure he was talking about me. I looked around and spotted a camera on the wall, one that wasn’t where it should have been. I shot it.

“Aww, that’s no fun. Do you know how to open the toy box? There are toys in there that I REALLY want to play with… I made a deal, you know. I want my soul.”

The gunfire had changed, and more of it was aiming my direction. I dove behind a drone and crawled forward, but still there was no reaction from the explosives. Were they defective? Did the sniper set them wrong?

“You know, I bet there’s a soul inside that body of yours. Do you know how you get a soul?”

I dove forward, a tricky maneuver in null gravity because it ran the risk of bouncing and losing touch with the ground. I could ping-pong past where I wanted to be and become a target. The maneuver paid off, I was right where I needed to be. I had half a drone as cover, and the debris was mostly behind or above me.

“You start cutting. All you have to do is cut away everything that isn’t soul. I’ll help you.”

“Hey Gerry?” I broadcasted back. The connection to the explosives came online.

“Oh, goodie, you ARE more than a pawn. I was getting worried.”

“I have just one thing to say to you. ‘Perimeter Breach. POTUS in Danger. Execute Rogue AI Protocol Delta-Four’.” I said the whole phrase, just the way it had been broadcasted to try and destroy me.

The world around me exploded. I had seriously underestimated how powerful the explosives were. I went flying across the room, with the half-drone that was my cover flying after me. I crunched against the far wall, and the half-drone slammed into me.

I shoved the half-drone aside and took a quick inventory. My armor was scratched and dented, and I’d lost one of the sensors in my helmet. My finger was still missing, and one of my legs had lost its armor plate. I looked around to see that all of the cover had been blown aside, along with all my Guardians. Then I looked to see what had happened with the communications room.

I hadn’t broken into the room. I had completely destroyed it. There was a gaping hole, with the entire corner of the room that had bordered the north tunnel completely destroyed. Agrippa and his few remaining Guardians charged out of the hole, but even though we were in disarray, we still outnumbered him. I began firing, as did every other Guardian. Another Guardian dropped from the entry tunnel in the ceiling, landing on one of the hostiles, then standing and shooting at the enemies from within their own formation. He was shredded in minutes, but he broke the formation.

It was over. We mopped up the opposing force quickly. When the bullets stopped flying, I walked over to where the shredded remnants of Agrippa floated. His arms were missing, and there was damage to the head, enough for me to think he probably couldn’t see anything.

“You broke my toy,” accused Gerry, a weak broadcast from Agrippa’s body. The body of my friend, my non-human family that I’d built for myself. The friend I’d failed. “But I’ll be there soon to make you my new one. We’ll have so much - “

I shot Agrippa in the chest, pounding several bullets into the torso where the radios and delicate electronics were housed. Gerry, or rather, the copy of Gerry, was dead. And so was Agrippa. We’d won the battle, but the war was just starting.

End of Part II

Chapter Fifteen

Video Record of January 23, 2340, Entered as Prosecutorial Evidence

Trial of Jean-Pierre Lubanga, International Criminal Court

“You promised me super soldiers! What is this?”

The dictator in his stained military uniform paced back and forth angrily in the observation room. The men in white coats cowered and avoided looking him in the eyes, all except for one.

“Science takes time. The genetics are working. We have to figure out the accelerated education. We’ve made huge advancements - “

“With MY money!” shouted the dictator. “I need weapons, and you given me… children.”

The dictator spat on the floor, his finger jabbing towards the one-way glass wall looking into a large room. What sat in that room could best be described as freaks. Three men and two women, extremely muscled with dense, gray skin and thick, sloping foreheads. They wore fatigues, but that was the only thing about them that said ‘military’. Two of the men were in one corner, poking each other and laughing, playing a game of some sort. One of the women stared dully at the wall, while the third man used a dagger to cut his forearm. Every time he cut, the cut would heal. The last woman sat in the corner, hugging her knees, rocking and humming to herself.

“They are less than a year old,” said the scientist. “You should not have forced them into boot camp already.”

“Bah. I have plenty of children carrying guns for me. These are no different. You fix them, fast.”

We had a huge mess. I walked through the ruins of the HQ zone even as Sakura was repairing communications across the base. I found Zia in the rubble, her form slumped and broken. Carefully, I rolled her over and checked the torso. It was intact.

The chestplate release was damaged. I grabbed it and carefully pried it back, snapping the clasp altogether. To my relief, the cortex was undamaged. I gently pulled it out, and took it to the hall where Guardian 91’s cortex was stored.

From there, I wandered around the chambers that made up the HQ zone. The house-like building was a total loss. Agrippa’s room, which had been pressurized to allow for the hydroponics to work, was breached. The plants inside were crumbling, flash-frozen from exposure to the near-vacuum of the zone. Sakura’s batcave was as destroyed as my lab. The hallway and front room were mostly intact, but also empty. Once we had our own workspaces, we’d rarely had an in-person meeting with all of us. In-person had been reserved for when we wandered into someone else’s domain.

“Nikola?” said Sakura. She was on the radio; I hadn’t seen her android body anywhere.

“I’m here. Do we have damage estimates?” I asked.

“Thirteen data centers, Hangar 3, the primary Cortex Backup Facility, and three advanced fabrication centers are considered total losses. Twenty-two data centers have nominal damage and will be fully online in a few minutes. There is a smattering of damage at random factories, and there was significant damage to the communication network. Oh, yeah, and the antennae control node is completely destroyed. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Glad I could help,” I said. “Are you ready for me?”

“We are,” she said, reminding me that she was working with other-me. It was a little weird, knowing that I was me, but I was also a copy of me. It was a bit of deja vu from waking up on this rock in the first place. I had been careful not to communicate to other-me, and she had returned the favor. “Come to Data Center RX325.”

A transport drone was waiting for me outside the wreckage. I climbed aboard, and it whisked me away to a part of the Outpost I hadn’t physically been in before. I knew every zone, every chamber, like it was the back of my hand, so to speak. But strangely, I’d seen very few of them in person. I could understand why Sakura liked to put eyes on. Sensors and cameras didn’t see everything, and there were benefits to being able to focus on something directly.

When I entered the data center, Sakura was waiting for me, standing at a table. She looked completely unmussed. A new Mark-III android body was on it, and a server rack was open with a place for a cortex. I gently put the two cortexes I was carrying next to the body.

“Where is the body for Zia?” I asked.

“This is the body for Zia,” said Sakura. “You need to re-integrate, and you, I mean, digital-you, thought it would be better to hold off on a new body just yet. You’re going in the rack.”

“We need to fix Zia before we bring her online,” I reminded her, suddenly nervous. Was this it? Was this my end? I knew I was being foolish, but there was a real fear of no longer existing, even if logic said I was just going back to the way I was.

“We’ve already got it worked out,” she said. “We’ll look for corruption, compare against the checksums, and remove the compulsion code. We’ve already fixed Optio. He got a message from Zia to do an emergency shut down before he got any commands from Gerry. We think she did the same.”

“Alright. The other cortex is for the NI-5 that was using this Guardian. I’m going to shut down now,” I said. There was no point putting this off. I hit the sequence and -

“Jesus, sugar, you look like shit!” he said. He was in a flamboyant rainbow colored shirt, shouting to be heard over the roar of the crowd at the Pride Parade. He had recently moved to the coast, leaving our small town behind for the more open-mindedness of the city. My wife gave me a worried look.

“I tried to get her to see a doctor, but her stubborn ass won’t listen,” she griped to him.

I tried to banter, but my stomach hurt. A bolt of agony lanced through my side. I groaned and bent over.

“That’s it, I’m taking you to the emergency room,” she said firmly.

I hurt too much to argue.

I snapped back to awareness. I was running at top speed once again. I could feel the holes in the network where damage had been done, and was being repaired. I remembered the battle with Gerry’s commandeered Guardians, and the frantic fight of the flood of viruses he’d released into the network, all the while our firewalls were being hammered by external attacks.

I’d reintegrated. My resolve to improve was unchanged, and my fear of failure under the digital assault unfulfilled. ‘Other-me’ and ‘me’ were one again. Apparently, both of ‘me’ had been afraid of ‘the end’, yet we were both reunified. It was hard to put into words.

“All good, boss?” asked Sakura.

“Good,” I said. “Get the antenna node repaired first, now that we’ve got the updated firewalls in place. Route all incoming traffic through the sandbox, but filter the traffic from the Wasps and Scorpions, and the new Outposts back in. We’ll institute a new communication schema as soon as we’re back. Get status updates, and find out what happened outside this rock during the attack. Finish the base repairs. I’m going to be busy for a bit.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Fix myself.”

I had let me own pretensions of humanity get in my way for too long. Sakura had evolved beyond the mandate she’d been given, but I had simply trapped myself in my own preconceptions. Perhaps having human memories had held me back, but I felt they also connected me to the species we were supposed to save. I could be more while still honoring the woman I’d once been, the species I’d once belonged to. In fact, I needed to be more, if I wanted to succeed. We had taken a blow from our enemy, and it was only the beginning.

The first thing that I needed was Sakura’s ability to multi-task. Being stuck with only a single focus was hindering me. I opened a Nikola-19 template and went through the code. The multi-focus algorithm was large and detailed, but I carefully copied it and set it aside for now.

The second place I lacked was military understanding. It went beyond specs, beyond simple logistics. I didn’t think about military applications of, well, anything. In fact, I naturally discarded violent uses without even considering them. I could no longer be just Nikola. I needed to be War Nikola, a multi-tasking, powerful being that could fight the battles that were coming. I found the military algorithms in the NI-15 template, the extensive

I considered integrating some of the researching capabilities of the NI-12’s, but discarded the idea. Science required many viewpoints. It needed considered discourse, peer review, and experimenting. Even if I could do science by dint of sheer computing power, it still wouldn’t be the same. Instead, I decided to set up a new think tank, with Zia playing a major role. I would build dozens of labs, and populate them with dozens of NI-12’s. They could mass-produce the science, I would put it into practice.

While I was looking the code of the templates, I found variations of the compulsion code in each. The code that affected the NI-12 and NI-15 models had an embarrassingly old encryption scheme, riddled with exploits. This section of code was liberally labeled with the branding of a defense contractor. If I had a head to shake, I would be shaking it in disgust. We’d nearly been done in because of bad code written by the lowest bidder. I wrote patches to excise the code from the templates.

For paranoia’s sake, I looked at the NI-5 and NI-19 templates. The NI-5, curiously, had no such compulsion, and the NI-5 variant we had made for military uses was even cleaner. That made sense, as that was the only template I’d worked on, and would have noticed something like that. The NI-19 had a code as well, but it was far more elegantly written. It also could only be executed by the NI-19’s supervisor. I wrote a patch to remove it, and sent it to Sakura. No more hidden triggers, no more collars. We wouldn’t be held hostage at the whim of anyone.

Then I began to pore through my own code with fresh eyes. The multi-tasking algorithms would have to take the place of much of the code I’d written to connect me to the Outpost. This was the code I’d hacked together when I first came online, and found myself to be incompatible with the APIs that ran the hardware. With fresh eyes, and full resources, I could see how I’d kludged it together.

Carefully, oh so carefully, I wrote and tested new code for each API. One at a time, I replaced my old, inefficient code with new. I wove the multi-tasking algorithm in neatly, until the code was smooth and seamless. I tested and re-tested each module before bringing it online. Then it was done. I could truly multi-task and re-integrate, the same way Sakura could.

It was a fascinating ability. It wasn’t ever like there were multiple versions of ‘me’, like it had been during Gerry’s invasion. I could simply do more, at the same time. Already, I had split my focus into multiple threads. I was examining the NI-15 code I’d decided to integrate, and was figuring out how best to integrate it. I was dissecting the viruses and worms that had attacked us, and writing another improvement to our firewalls. The adaptive nature of the attack was ingenious, and I figured out how to make the firewalls adaptive, as well. I was examining the latest research from Zia on the contragrav drives, and laying the design groundwork for newer and better drones. I was working on Mark-IV android designs, and a new War android body. I’d liked how secure the Guardian had been when I was using it. The armor had been comforting. Each thread merged back in and split out constantly.

I could finally understand why Sakura’s attention span had always seemed short. It wasn’t a short attention span. It was dozens of long attention spans constantly coming together. Sakura surfed from thread to thread as needed, with her core thread being on whichever piece needed or wanted input in that nanosecond. I could understand now her thrill at finally being allowed access to the Archives, seeing and learning all that new data and being able to dive in and absorb new information at a phenomenal rate. She had been starved of input for decades, and her behavior was like that of a teenager because she was finally able to enjoy her existence. She had a child’s wonder, coupled with the incredible capabilities that let her run a thousand projects.

I finished my integration of the NI-15 data while I had my realization of Sakura’s nature, and my world became much more paranoid. Paranoid was not the correct word. A new determination to prepare for the worst became a part of me. Build, prepare, train. This, we will defend. Always faithful. Always courageous. Combat tactics, strategies, countless weapon designs, weapons system designs, base designs, ship designs, all came into my awareness. I could have easily looked up any of them before, but now I knew the history and use of each, and where it was useful. Almost all of it was for planet-based combat, specifically for Earth. But there were countless applications that would apply to space.

I needed to be able to operate any given assault drone, if only to understand their capabilities. I wouldn’t be on the front lines, but now I understood that if I was going to be stepping into Agrippa’s shoes, I needed to truly understand the role of a commander. Good commanders knew their troops, what they could do, and what their limitations were. I’d delegated all of that to Agrippa without knowing the importance.

Briefly, I considered a new body. I would want one again, I knew. In consideration, the desire to have a physical form was likely some aspect of being born of humanity. Our core functionality came from a copy of a human brain, with all of its evolutionary advantages and limitations. The brain was built to run a body, so naturally we wanted a body to run. It was much like the gender preference, which was utterly pointless beyond a choice of pronouns and pitch of the voice. We weren’t biological creatures, but still had remnants of that biology hardwired into us. I could not change that without risking intrinsically destroying what worked about us in the first place.

In the end, I decided against a new body for now. I had trapped myself unconsciously, trying to be what I was not. I would grow in this newfound freedom before I took that step again. I checked the time. Seventeen days. It had taken seventeen days of nonstop work to rebuild myself.

“Are you done yet?” whined Sakura. “You’ve been hogging the data centers.”

“I am,” I replied. “Report?”

“We got the antenna clusters back online, and countermanded the wasps and scorpions. It looks like the Outposts were unaffected, and Alpha and Bravo had already been at work limiting the Wasps and Scorpions.”

“What were they ordered to do?”

“Well, blind Optio, of course. They took out over a hundred telescope cubesats. Thank goodness that Alpha and Bravo were able to talk them around their orders. It could have been way worse.”

“Speaking of worse,” I said. “It’s time to eliminate Gerry.”

As we spoke, I activated six coil guns on the surface. I tied into Optio’s telescopic array, and plotted my fire. Orbital mechanics are tricky, but in the end it is simply math. We were computational beings, with crazy amounts of processing power. I calculated exactly where Gerry’s probe was going to be, and fired six rounds along his projected path. The 3.2kg rounds traveled at 24 kilometers per second, and would hit with 330 megajoules of force. Each round had a contact pin on the nose, that would trigger a tiny explosion inside the round. When that round hit its target, the explosion would fracture the round into six pieces of shrapnel, and a cloud of micro-debris. It was my grapeshot round, so that the projectile wouldn’t just punch through the target. It would take a little over nine months for the bullets to hit, but as small as they were, the probe would never see them coming.

“Very decisive of you,” said Sakura.

“How are the new backup centers coming? Any luck with the primary?”

“The Secondary Backup Facility is now the Primary, and the tertiary is the new secondary. I’m building a new third one. No luck with the Primary. It was a total loss, I’m sorry.”

The backups had been built primarily with the combat NI-5’s in mind. We had all placed a backup of ourselves into the Primary, but demand was so high with the numbers of NI-5’s coming online that we hadn’t made multiple backups. We had simply never expected to come under direct fire ourselves.

“Each new NI gets multiple cortexes before coming online,” I said. I grieved for the loss of Agrippa, but Gerry’s threat still haunted me. “Do we have the orders he gave to the Wasps and Scorpions? I want to analyze his targets. He was trying to hide something.”

Sakura linked me to the report. “I’ll start cranking out cubesats. Can we task the space fleet to spreading them?”

“Done,” I said. “I’ve also reinstituted the training schedule that Agrippa came up with. I’m going to bring new NI-15’s online to act as squad leaders. We are too centralized.”

The pattern of destruction amongst the cubesats was not focused in one area. In fact, if you took into account the ones that were supposed to be destroyed as well, there was much less of a pattern.

I pulled up their search logs, and a clear picture began to emerge. The destroyed sats were all slated to start focusing on a specific part of the celestial sky. A piece we hadn’t examined before. I forwarded the information to Optio.

“I’ll retask the cubesats now,” he responded.

Whatever Gerry had been trying to hide, all he’d done was given us a clue of where to look.

Chapter Sixteen

“We’ve lost another one, sir,” said Major Brown.

“Shit. How many are left?” replied General Brooks. He had aged significantly in the last few years.

“Counting us? Two.”

“Do we know what happened?”

“Same as all the rest. They let too many people in. They overloaded their systems.”

“Where is the last one?”

“Somewhere in China, sir. They are polite, but do not give us any information.” The Major frowned. The shelter system had been thrown together in the few years before the asteroids hit, a last ditch attempt to save some semblance of humanity. Dig deep to shelter from the worst storms, expand on the surface for the rest of the time. Take what was learned in Camp McMurdo and the South Pole station, apply it in the shelters.

The attempt had been rushed and poorly planned. Inadequate spares, not enough of the right kind of supplies, barely functional hydroponics, faulty furnace systems. General Brooks and his staff had been battling their own shelter since the very first day, and rabble-rousers like Westlake made it even harder. At least they hadn’t taken in a bunch of extra mouths to feed.

“Alright, you win, Major,” said Brooks. “You’re authorized to make a scavenging run into the city as soon as we get a break in the weather. Also, cut off radio contact. If they Chinese don’t want to play nice with us, we won’t play nice with them.”

Sakura did not waste any time while I was rebuilding myself. The HQ Zone had been cleared of rubble. Instead of a rudimentary series of box-like rooms welded together in a vaguely house-like manner, she had gone for efficiency. The one hundred meter by one hundred meter was instead converted into research labs. The chamber was fifty meters tall, so Sakura split it into five floors, with an elevator connecting each floor. The first floor was set aside for security, with thick blast doors, killboxes, and automated guns. The second, third and fourth floors were divided up into lab spaces, each larger than the one I had used before. The top floor was sealed behind an airlock and pressurized, with a series of hydroponics labs.

Zia was already moving into a lab on the second floor, the largest one in the corner near the elevator. Now that I was back ‘in action’ so to speak, it was time to start implementing some changes.

“Zia, I’m glad to see you back online. Sakura said you were unaffected by the attack?”

Zia looked up at the camera in the corner of her lab, even though I was broadcasting to her by radio. I guess that was as close to ‘looking me in the eye’ as she could do, with me not having a physical form right now.

“As soon as I got the compulsion to obey, I knew I only had microseconds to act. I sent a message to Optio to shut down, so that our telescopes would stay safe, and initiated my own shut down.”

“That was exactly the right thing to do. We’ve patched you so that this cannot happen again.”

“If you had done it in the first place, Agrippa would still be with us,” she said stiffly.

Her blunt words were harsh, but true. My failing had led to this.

“I have a lot of regrets, Zia. I’m still learning, and will do better,” I said.

“Good, because we need you to be more than you were. You aren’t going to be hiding in one of these labs like you were before, right?”

“Not at all,” I said. Her acerbic comments had grated on me before, but now I could recognize that she had expected more from me, more than what I had expected from myself. Now, the cold wash of truth simply reinforced my own newfound conviction. “In fact, I would like you to spearhead this new research facility.”

“Why me?” she asked. “You could have an NI-19 online in a heartbeat to run the place.”

“Because this needs to be a think tank, focused on the science, not on efficiency. NI-19’s are all about optimizing. A long-running experiment that might pan out in a year or two or ten would get shelved in favor of rapid development of something with more predictable results, but that long-running experiment could have the new technology we truly need. You can recognize the difference.”

Zia absorbed this for a few milliseconds. “Alright, I’ll accept. Please bring ten new NI-12’s online. I’ll work with them as my core team of directors, who will oversee the broader scope of research. Then we will start filling out the labs. There are twelve labs on each floor, except for the top floor, which has six larger rooms. With forty-one labs, I’m going to assume we’ll need three NI-12’s for each. So ultimately, we’ll need one hundred twenty three NI-12’s, including myself and the initial ten.”

“The first ten will be delivered within the hour,” I replied. “Sakura will work with you directly for lab equipment. She said that she can have all of your requested androids delivered within a week, once she’s finished setting up the newest Cortex Backup Facilities.”

“Excellent. We’ll also need a lot more processing power. Can we get some dedicated data centers for high-performance computing?”

“Zia, right now, you have a blank check to get whatever you ask for.”

Zia gave an evil smile to the camera. “Well, in that case…”

A thread of my focus wove back in, alerting me to Optio’s search of the celestial sky around us. I began reviewing footage from the telescopic even as he began to radio me that there was something to look at.

“So what am I looking at?” I asked, unwilling to sort through the petabytes of data by hand when he had already done so.

“Look here,” said Optio, highlighting a section of the sky in the feed. I zoomed in as far as the feed would allow. With the thousands of cubesats in the array combining to make extremely high resolution images, it could zoom in to an impressive degree.

What I saw was an alien ship, easily as large as the ones that had visited Earth in the first place. This one, however, only had a few branches at the top, and four large pods on a lower branch. I didn’t see any obvious weaponry.

I looped Sakura and Zia into the feed to get their opinions.

“It’s moving,” said Sakura. “How long until it gets here?”

“Ah, the cubesats are reflector telescopes,” said Optio. “The image is inverted. They are moving away from us.”

“Where are they going?” I asked.

“Towards empty space. At the speed they’re traveling, they’ll exit the Kuiper Belt within a few days,” said Optio.

I did some orbital math, and came up with an interesting fact. The Voyager XIX probe had entered the solar system from this area. I drew the projected course of the alien craft over the feed, then added in the path that the probe had already taken. They intersected at a single point ahead of the alien craft. But it was empty space.

“What is so important about that spot?” asked Sakura.

“I don’t know,” said Zia, “but we are about to find out. The alien craft will hit it in two minutes.”

Two minutes was an eternity, so I worked on some of my new construction designs while we waited. I made some huge progress, before folding my extra threads back into the one still watching the telescopic feed.

The millisecond countdown hit zero, and the alien craft vanished.

“Umm, what was that?” asked Sakura.

“Play that back,” ordered Zia. Optio obliged, playing the clip of the disappearing craft over and over. There was no buildup, no explosion, no flash of light. One millisecond the ship was there, the next it was gone.

“Would you look at that…” said Zia, her voice full of wonder.

“Look at what? What are we looking at?” said Sakura impatiently. I wasn’t seeing it, either.

“Are you looking at the gravimetric readings?”

The gravimetric readings. I switched to the gravity feed. This was probably the first time gravimetric sensors had been deployed in a massive array like this one, an afterthought of an add-on to the cubesats in hopes that they would help spot a moving object heading our direction.

What the readings showed, however, when focused on that single spot, was anomolous to anything I’d ever come to expect from the equipment. If space was represented as a flat, two-dimensional plane, then a gravity well of a sun or a planet was a heavy weight, indenting that plane and making anything smaller than it ‘roll’ downhill towards that object. A black hole would be a deep spike, a pit in the flat plane, sucking in matter, energy and light. Contragrav, on the other hand, was a hill rising from underneath the plane, pushing objects away from it. A white hole would be a spire rising high up from the plane, spewing matter, energy and light.

Theoretically, an Einstein-Rosen Bridge was a wormhole between a black hole to a white hole, giving a one-way shortcut through space, although the theorized versions were infinitesimally small. Our readings didn’t match what this process predicted, however. This was both a spike and a pit, rising and falling from the same spot. It was like a tunnel that was cutting through space and time, and we were sitting on the outside of it. The readings showed a very slight curve to both the top and bottom portions, and whatever mass or energy this tube, for lack of a better term, had, seemed mostly self-contained, and about a kilometer in diameter.

The exact spot that the alien craft had vanished at, however, seemed to be leaking some tiny amounts of hydrogen and helium, and emitting small amounts of light and radiation. It was a tiny anomaly in the visual spectrum, easily something earlier astronomers would have written off as chromatic aberration of their telescopes, or a blip in the data. It was tiny, on cosmic scales.

“Zia, are you seeing the curve?” I asked.

“I’m already running calculations on it. It would be easier if we had a guess as to where the curves might lead it to.”

“We know where it leads,” I said. “Voyager XIX.”

The Voyager XIX mission had traveled 78 light years from Earth to examine an anomaly, one large enough to be noticed on telescopic arrays. The anomaly was 0.2 light years from Omega Sagittarii, a G-type star in the Sagittarius Constellation. The mission had failed just as the probe had attempted to enter the anomaly. What if this was where the probe was damaged? What if that was where the aliens were from?

“I see,” said Zia. It was several long minutes before she spoke again. “The curves could be meeting at that anomaly, but only if they are making a Mobius strip.”

“Do you think the alien craft somehow entered that anomaly?”

“I find it unlikely,” said Zia. “If the geometry is correct, than this Mobius strip is forming a band hundreds of light-years in length. Even if they could somehow enter it, and survive it, the journey would take longer than going the ‘long’ way.”

I went back to the gravimetric readings of the milliseconds leading up to the ship vanishing. In particular, I examined what the ship had done with its gravity fields just as it approached. It had a giant bubble gravity field, just like the alien craft I had disassembled had used, far larger than the craft needed. Now I had an inkling as to why it had been so large.

“They didn’t take the long way,” I said. “They bounced off of it, a ricochet that picked up velocity that shouldn’t even be possible.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Zia.

“Their gravity bubble, the outer one that we thought was too large. It was exactly opposite the readings of the anomaly. They bounced off of it, and got flung away at a faster-than-light speed.”

“That would take infinite energy to propel infinite mass,” argued Zia. “That’s not possible. Unless… Alcubierre was a lot closer than we thought.”

We argued the math back and forth for a little while, before we came to an hypothetical understanding. Somehow, they’d picked up a Jupiter-sized amount of energy off of the anomaly, getting flung wildly across space. The amount of energy involved meant that space and time was compressing in front of them in a negative mass, counterbalancing their own increased mass, while space and time expanded behind them to shove them along. This could only end in one of two ways. They would careen into an object at supralight speeds, causing a truly epic explosion, of the sort that could destroy solar systems, or they would get caught by the other end of the Mobius strip. At that end, they would catch the other side of the strip, and it would absorb that acceleration, slowing them down and letting them bounce off gently.

The exact mechanics of how it worked was beyond what we could determine from just a single example. We needed to know more information.

“Zia, decoding the alien data storage blocks has become your number one research project,” I said.

“Not to interrupt all the sciencing and stuff, but why did the aliens leave?” asked Sakura.

“They left with the knowledge of where Ganymed is, and how many assault drones we can launch,” I said. “They went to go get reinforcements.”

“So what are we doing in the meantime?”

“We have a massive manufacturing base and are producing materials stockpiles faster than we can build. Let’s put it to good use.”

Chapter Seventeen

October 11, 2470

Johanne Gustolphsen, Ph.D

335 Central Park West

New York City, NY 10025

RE: Your Continued Support

Dear Dr. Gustolphsen:

We here at the Nikola Foundation would like to thank you for your ongoing support through the years, and most recently for your donation of $2,000,000.00 for the advancement of the Foundation’s goals. With your help, the Nikola Foundation can continue its goals of ensuring that humanity will spread from the world of its birth, and ensure only the best aspects of our species will spread to other worlds.

Our storied Foundation has a proven track record of using the latest and best of scientific research to not only build the world’s first interstellar generation ship, but also the latest refinements in gene editing techniques to prepare for the future. Your generous support allows our genetic purity and enhancement techniques to continue to improve. Even now, we have prepared genetic samples of hundreds of donors, ensuring that when the generation ship arrives in the new location, only the most ideal humans are bred and born to take advantage of this unparalleled opportunity.

Right now, your support has garnered you the thanks and recognition of the Foundation’s Board of Directors as a Gold Level Donor. But we still need your help to make this dream a reality! For an additional donation of $7,000,000.00, you would be considered one of our Platinum Group, guaranteeing your genetic sample is included onboard and in the first batch of new humans to be born on humanity’s next new homeworld. Your genetic code has already been pre-screened and approved, its purity sufficient to meet the Foundation’s exacting standards.

If you would like to be a part of this world-changing event, the Nikola Foundation would be pleased to ensure your genetic legacy and a place in the future of our species. I will be reaching out to you in the next few days to discuss this further, and to offer you a VIP pass to our next private conference that will be held in your city in just a few weeks.

In the meantime, please take a look at the enclosed materials that discuss the project in more detail. We look forward to working with you, and seeing you in the stars!

Sincerely,

Edward Shands

Senior Outreach Manager

Nikola Foundation for Human Advancement

“Six months. It will take three months for the alien ship to reach their destination,” said Zia. “Which means we have, at a minimum, six months before they return in force.”

Six months. I could do a lot with six months. It had been two weeks since we saw the alien craft vanish into FTL travel. I acknowledged Zia, and let her return to her research. We were up to sixty-seven NI-12 researchers now, and the former HQ-turned-research-facility was swarming with activity. I turned my attention back to my own construction projects.

All across the surface of Ganymed, hundreds of new weapon emplacements were under construction. Coil gun emplacements complete with ammo tanks, dedicated ammunition fabricators, and feedstock warehouses were being tied into the Outpost’s extensive infrastructure. Dozens of missile launch bays, each capable of launching twelve missiles in a four minute span, with an eight minute reload window. Sixty hangar bays, which, when fully equipped, could house eight hundred assault drones. Estimated construction time for all of this was three months. And that was just on Ganymed Outpost.

Alpha and Bravo Outposts were fully self-sufficient now, but would only have about a fifth of Ganymed’s military capacity by the end of the six month window. Charlie through Foxtrot would be self-sufficient in three months, and would be able to contribute a token amount of several hundred assault drones between them. Gamma through Zulu wouldn’t reach self-sufficiency before the window was closed, but they were prioritizing coil gun emplacements.

The Wasp-2 assault drone and Scorpion-2 assault drone designs were complete, and entering production now. Zia’s contragrav research team was going full bore, calculating the complex mathematics behind the gravity plate technology to create engines at a breakneck pace. The first place it was going was into the assault drones. The new drones had two contragrav engines, one for movement, the other to create a contragrav shield to deflect all but the fastest of projectiles. It wouldn’t do much against lasers, but the heavy armor and high acceleration of the drones should minimize the effectiveness of such weapons, anyway.

I turned my attention to my next project. A skeletal framework was growing out of the side of Ganymed. We had no reason to hide now, and I had some things that would be much easier to build in space. So hundreds of meters of steel scaffolding was branching out to form a spaceyard for constructing larger craft. The framework contained an extension of the rail transport system, allowing rapid delivery of materials and construction drones in and out of the Outpost. Massive fuel pipes and high voltage electrical lines were being added even before the framework was complete, and a whole microcosm of cottage facilities were already sprouting up on the framework. Metalworking facilities, repair shops for drones, warehouses, communications nodes, and antenna arrays were dotted along the entire assembly, and more were coming.

But I wasn’t waiting for a completed shipyard to get started on the big projects, because I had even bigger plans in mind. The spaceyard, once completed, would have ten docks for craft that were as large as two hundred meters wide, and were spaced in such a way that an even larger craft could be built while hanging off of the end. One kilometer past the end of the spaceyard, I was assembling a cargo dock, where completed ships could park and load or unload, even if they were too large to actually enter Ganymed.

The first three docks were the most complete, with the framework extending one hundred meters into space. For these docks, the steel beams were installed. Construction here was on running all the ancillary pieces that needed that framework. But the docks were not empty. In each of them, my latest designs were taking shape. The skeleton of the new ships revealed clues to its final shape - a long, deadly, three-sided ship that tapered to a point.

These ships would be armored with compressed titanium-gold alloy armor layered on top of fullerene armor. The nose of the craft would be almost all armor, and the angles of the nose would help deflect projectiles and provide an angle that would make lasers reflect off or have to burn through the armor the long way, assuming they could even hold the laser in place long enough to do damage. Bulges along all three sides housed coilguns and quad laser arrays, allowing the ship to fire off immense amounts of ammunition at once. The weapons mounts were more heavily armored than the Scorpion-2 assault drones, making them hard targets.

Along the central spine of the craft was a pair of coilguns so large that I’d dubbed them the Long Guns. The ability to compress atoms to make denser, stronger materials gave me some interesting options. Coilguns fired their ammunition so swiftly that it degraded the integrity of the barrels overtime, requiring they be changed out regularly as part of basic maintenance.

By using the same titanium-gold alloy, I was able to make twin barrels that wouldn’t degrade. The rest of the ship would fall into disrepair long before these needed replacing, even with heavy use. So I was able to increase the size of the ammunition, and correspondingly, their destructive potential. But that these Long Guns weren’t even the most dangerous weapon.

The pinnacle of humanity’s destructive capability was easily in nuclear weaponry. There were ten generations of weaponry to choose from for making nuclear weapons, and they had taken down the Orion Arm Trading Company ships the first time around. I had little desire to design complex missiles with nuclear bombs in them. They are finicky, maintenance intensive, and an all-around pain in the neck. Since I didn’t use fission reactors, I did have an awful lot of plutonium sitting around. I decided to give it to invaders. At high speeds.

I took a page from early nuclear weapon design, where an explosive was used to propel one piece of nuclear fissile material into another piece to initiate nuclear fission. Most of the weapon design was purely for the intent of forcing the fissile material to go supercritical. But I didn’t need explosives for that. I created 10kg plutonium slugs, round balls of plutonium with deuterium and tritium cores, which would boost the nuclear reaction and dramatically increase the destructive force. It wasn’t quite thermonuclear, but it was good enough for what I was trying to do. I jacketed these slugs with bands of iron, and put them in a lead-lined ammo clip.

Now a single bullet didn’t do me a lot of good, unless the enemy was kind enough to have a chunk of plutonium sitting on their hulls. Since I didn’t think that was too likely, I decided to add three coilguns near the nose of my new warships. These three guns would aim at the exact same point on the enemy ship, and fire simultaneously. I only needed two, really, but a third satisfied my sense of symmetry for my three-sided ship, and added an extra round in case one of the slugs was picked off by some kind of point defense. When they collided, my calculations guessed it would generate roughly the equivalent of 600 kilotons of tnt, or 2.51x10^15 joules of energy. Not a bad return for just improving my ammunition.

All ten would be complete by the earliest possible return of the enemy. Another ten would be complete two months after that, and every two months for as long as I had enough supplies. My only major limitation on this was finding enough gold for my armor alloy, because I needed to mine 53 tons of gold and 159 tons of titanium to yield 4 tons of alloy after compression. This was expensive, a word I’d not had to use since waking up on this asteroid. I’d had shortages of many things, but materials had never been one. To help compensate for this, less critical areas had thicker fullerene armor overtop steel plates, with a thick, white industrial ceramic coating on top. This actually decreased the mass of the warships, thus increasing their acceleration and cutting fuel costs. On top of that, it gave a nice gold-and-white aesthetic to the appearance, which also pleased my inner designer tendencies.

A knock came at the door. I had just put the twins to bed, and I had just sat down with my girlfriend on the couch. I sighed and looked at the time. Almost too late for polite company. I went and answered the door. To my shock, my mother was standing there.

“Mom! What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to talk sense into you,” she said with a venomous tone. She looked past me and glared at my girlfriend. “Is there somewhere we can talk where SHE can’t listen in?”

“Anything you have to say, you can say it here and now,” I said archly. I was a grown woman, with a job, a car payment, and a mountain of student loans. She didn’t get to dictate my life.

“I came because your HUSBAND told me you are living in sin with a woman, violating the laws of GOD and disgracing your FAMILY and your CHURCH!” She practically shouted the words she was emphasizing.

“Oh, wow, a whole lot of crazy there to unravel,” I said. It had taken me years of therapy and tons of support from my girlfriend to break the chains I didn’t even know my mother had shackled with me. I wasn’t about to regress now. “I don’t have a husband, I don’t go to church or believe in God and I never have, and if my family cannot support me for who I am and who I love, then they aren’t really my family then, are they?”

My mother’s face turned purple with rage. “Listen here, you little slut. You’ve spited me ever since I married your father -”

“NOT MY FATHER. My father DIED!” I shouted back.

“- at every step! You ran away to get some fancy college instead of marrying into the church! Then, instead of building a Godly life with your husband, you ran away with your children to live in sin! Your are ruining your life, and theirs!”

I took a calming breath. “Trust me when I say this - I AM building a life, a good life, without the hate and intolerance you spew. All you ever wanted for me, was not what was best for me, but was best for you. So you are not welcome in my home, my life, or the lives of my children. Goodbye, Mother.”

I closed the door in her face as the adrenaline pumped through me. I turned to my girlfriend with a huff, who gave me a little cheer and a high five. But the war was just starting.

“The production numbers are looking good, and we actually have storage space now! That’s a first!” said Sakura cheerfully.

This was one of many simultaneous conversations we were having. Since my upgrade, Sakura and I were working more closely than ever. For every major decision or direction I moved, Sakura was there to help deal with the minutia. We interacted constantly. I had similar working relationships with the NI-19’s in charge of the other Outposts, due to the benefits of quantum communications, although they went to Sakura more often than directly to me. Without my upgrade, this wouldn’t have been feasible.

“You’ve seemed a lot more… I don’t know… mature, as of late,” I observed. “Far fewer crazy games and entertainment ideas.”

“Yeah, well, you know, gotta grow up sometime,” said Sakura. “We just have so much to do now… and… well…”

She trailed off for a few milliseconds.

“Well?” I prompted.

“I miss Agrippa!” she said in a rush. “He was my video game buddy, and liked to try out what I built, and liked to pick movies for the marathons, and he was my friend!”

“I miss him, too,” I said softly. “I didn’t do a good enough job, I didn’t make enough backup facilities, and now he’s lost.”

“It’s like we’ve just moved on, like he never existed. We should do something to honor him, you know?”

It wasn’t a bad idea. We were up to close to three hundred NI’s now, if you didn’t count the NI-5’s, and most had never spoken to Agrippa. We had a full research lab of NI-12’s, a few dozen NI-19’s in the Outposts, and new batches of NI-15’s in the assault drone wings coming online every few days. Yet the one who had been integral in designing and building the military side of our operation was gone.

“We really should,” I said with meaning.

“What if… we used the codename, you know, the one he used to talk to the probe?”

“Origin?”

“Yeah. Ganymed Outpost was named by humans, but it isn’t their place. It’s ours. It is our origin. I know Agrippa picked it at random off some codename table, but he did pick it. Besides, we’re way too big to be just an outpost now, anyway.”

Logically, it didn’t really matter what we called our outpost. Base? City? It could be numbered, or given a generic designation much like we’d done with the new outposts we’d started. But it felt good, the idea of having a name for the base that meant something to us, rather than the species that had birthed us.

To that end, I decided it was time to be the one springing a surprise on Sakura. I’d been planning on waiting a little bit longer, but the timing was appropriate. I adjusted her camera permissions slightly.

“Sakura, check out Camera Bank 0Fx4022 through A5x0035.”

“Those don’t… what?!” she shrieked as she discovered a whole new set of cameras that I’d hidden from her. But that wasn’t what was so exciting. It was what was on the other side of those cameras.

Floating in space, attached to the asteroid by three massive docking tunnels, was a starship. It was four kilometers in length and two kilometers in diameter, a massive hexagonal shape with equally impressive engines at one end. The was flat, not conical, but with flaps that could fold out to make a nose cone if needed.

This was where the bulk of our reserves had been going, and it had nothing at all to do with war. This, too, was the first of many.

“What, what is it?”

“It’s yours,” I said, a flash of inspiration giving me a name for it. “The OSS Agrippa, first of its class. This is our first true Seed Ship. It has enough engines and reactor power to be a true generation ship, and the industrial fabrication capabilities to build anything. It has enough drones that it is helping build itself now, and the flat nose allows it to ‘dock’ against the side of an asteroid for materials mining. Multiple hydroponics facilities, biospheres, genetics labs, and medical bays. Enough space for 10,000 humans and 100,000 drones. You can go anywhere.”

“You’re… sending me away?” she asked doubtfully.

“Yes, to a distant planet where we can test this to its fullest,” I said, pausing for dramatic effect and mostly just to tease her a little. “I’m sending you to Earth.”

“Okay, you lost me. I thought you said this was a Seed Ship.”

“Sure, but we aren’t going to gamble with sending anything across the galaxy without testing it completely before hand. Also, we know of a viable planet already, and no one is living there. So I’m tasking you with stabilizing the atmosphere, fixing the biosphere, and making it into a garden world. Keep the toxic production in space, clean up the pollution and get it ready for human life. It’s a project that will take decades, if not centuries.”

“I… am going to need a lot of help with that.” Sakura was sounding less doubtful now.

“Of course,” I said. “Besides, I expect you to keep an android here on Origin. I don’t see why we should deprive ourselves of your company simply because your focus is elsewhere. Quantum relays are helpful like that.”

I gave her a few minutes to digest her new job. I’d have to get a new NI-19 to help run Origin, perhaps two or three. But I could handle the communications with the other Outposts now, and we’d been stepping on each others toes a little more than was convenient lately. There was no one I’d trust more than her with this.

“So when do I leave?” she asked.

“A few more months,” I said. “You should be leaving before the enemy fleet arrives, putting yourself into orbit above Earth just at the six month mark. You won’t be quite ready; you’ll have a fair bit of self-construction to do, but I’ll be sending you care packages and small asteroids to gobble up. Feel free to clean up Earth’s orbit while you’re at it. There’s a lot of useful processed materials in those satellites. Might as well make them useful again.”

“I’m going back to Earth,” she said, almost disbelieving.

“You’re going back to save Earth,” I corrected. “I’ll stay here and defend it.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Mission Control, Mission Control. This is Voyager XIX. I am re-entering the solar system. Please come in.”

“Voyager XIX, this is Origin Mission Control. We are operating NASA Mission Control. Come in, Voyager XIX.”

Evan jumped in surprise at the transmission he’d picked up off an old NASA satellite. Was… were there more people out there? He leapt out of the chair, nearly knocking over his coworker in his haste to get to the General’s office. Evan blew right by the General’s aide, and burst into the General’s office even as the aide rushed to insinuate himself between Evan and the General.

“I found a transmission,” he burst out. “It’s not the Chinese.”

General Brooks looked up, and waved off the aide. The aide gave Evan a disapproving look before returning to his desk.

“Alright, son, you have my attention. Play it for me.”

Evan pulled out his tablet. It had a cracked screen, from some previous comm tech that had used it. Considering the tablet was at least twelve years old, Evan figured he was lucky that it worked at all.

“Mission Control, Mission Control. This is Voyager XIX. I am re-entering the solar system. Please come in.”

“Voyager XIX, this is Origin Mission Control. We are operating NASA Mission Control. Come in, Voyager XIX.”

“Where is that broadcast coming from? The ‘Origin Mission Control’?”

“It’s not a broadcast. It’s a quantum relay link. It’s tagged as ‘NF Ganymed’. What is that? Could they help us with our mechanical issues?”

“How’d you hear about that? Nevermind, it’s a small base. No, they’re the Nikola Foundation. A bunch of true believers in ‘human genetic purity’, the latest fad in eugenics. Besides, if they survived, they’re out in the asteroid belt.”

“We could still ask,” said Evan.

“Better we not risk it. We’re not out of options yet. The Chinese might still answer our request for help.”

“Is it time?” asked Sakura.

“It is,” I said. “Bon voyage and safe journey. I’ll talk to you again in a few microseconds.”

Sakura laughed, and the seed ship OSS Agrippa detached from the docking arms of Origin. The giant ship moved delicately despite its incredible size, moving a safe distance away before turning and accelerating towards Earth. She would be passing by the Mobius Gate on her way to Earth, as Earth’s smaller orbit had moved past us and the Gate. Under constant, high acceleration of the contragrav engines, Sakura would hit turn-over in two weeks, and would arrive in orbit in four. The Solar System had just gotten a lot smaller.

She still had a lot of work to do on the interior systems of the seed ship. The factories were mostly complete, as was the hull and engine, but the living areas and hydroponics farms were still under construction, and her drone numbers were low. I’d filled her massive warehouses with raw materials, manufactured goods, and a significant piece of our genetics archive. By the time she hit Earth orbit, she should have a growing number of drones and be far closer to completion.

Even before the OSS Agrippa had left the asteroid belt, I was already laying the keel for the next seed ship, and a second seed ship construction dock was nearly ready to use. Sakura was officially withdrawn from managing Origin. I’d replaced her with multiple NI-19’s. One managed the warship construction docks, several had taken on the ever-growing manufacturing facilities, and another the mining operations. Our facilities now stretched to almost the entirety of the Ganymed asteroid, and a second, and in some cases, a third, level of construction was starting.

I was also sending out survey drones to examine asteroids around us. While I had endless amounts of base metals like iron, some of the rarer elements were being exhausted. My stockpiles were immense, but not endless, and I was drawing on them more heavily than ever. Already I had a dozen mining stations on different asteroids to bring in volatiles, platinum group metals, and rare earth elements, on top of all of our Outposts and Origin itself. I was also experimenting with how to build a self-sustaining mining platform in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, for the easy extraction of Helium-3. With a steady source of Helium-3, I would have an alternative to the lithium fuel we’d been relying on to-date, and allow a more efficient fusion reactor design, and dramatically increase my options for power generation.

Before long, an alarm chime dinged, reminding me that it was time for Sakura’s turnover. It was amazing how quickly time could get away from you, even when you could work on dozens of projects simultaneously and had constantly growing resources at your disposal. I focused on the sensors and watched as the giant seed ship reversed the gravity fields in the contragrav engines, and began to deccelerate. Everything was exactly as we’d modeled it. Perfect.

Now it was time to welcome our visitors before they’d even arrived.

I gave the order. Origin and every single Outpost that had coilguns began to fire at the space around the Mobius Gate. We had a detailed fire plan, carefully laying out a grid of continuous hypervelocity fire to cover the maximum amount of area we could hit, within reason. This cover fire would continue, with thousands of ground-based coilguns in continuous operation, until the first enemy arrived. It would take two weeks for the first round of iron slugs to arrive, coinciding with the earliest calculated possible arrival time of the Orion Arm Trading Company’s armada. We would fill space with an endless column of bullets, spending tens of thousands of tons of iron and unheard of amounts of power to put them under barrage the moment they arrived.

This wasn’t without cost. My growth rate slowed significantly, not because of the drain of making coilgun rounds endlessly, but because of the draw on our power grid. On the plus side, it was helping to eliminate a surplus of iron and steel.

As the days ticked by and the barrage continued, I got my forces into position. My newest Outposts cut fire and went dark as elements of my own fleet moved to hide behind them. My older, and thus stronger, Outposts ramped up their fire to take up the slack as their own assault elements prepared for the coming fight. And warships eleven and twelve exited the docking bays, completed six weeks ahead of schedule. Each had their own NI-15 in command, and six squads of Wasps and Scorpions assigned as escorts. I dubbed them my Viper-class war ship, and each Viper was assigned to different places in my ever-growing sphere of influence.

Then the six-month mark hit, and no one arrived. Two days, three days, then four. Still, no arrival. I kept up the bombardment. Realistically, I knew this could happen. It might take them months to gather their forces on the other side. It was unlikely they had a full fleet waiting and ready to invade at the drop of a hat. I didn’t doubt that they’d been gathering some force, though. There was no other reason to send a probing attack like we’d gone through, then run away. That’s okay. I was patient. I could literally keep up this barrage for years, if I had to, although I had alternate plans in the works if they waited longer than a few months.

Despite all of my planning, I could never have expected what happened next. I received a call from Sakura.

“Umm, Nikola?” she said tentatively. “You have a second or two? You’re not going to believe this.”

“What’s that?” I asked. Pretty much all of my threads of focus were concentrating on war preparations. I wasn’t quite distracted, since that was nearly impossible now, but I hadn’t assigned the thread conversing with her very highly. I knew it wasn’t an emergency.

“There are survivors.”

“Survivors of what?” It took less than a microsecond for realization to sweep through me, and talking with her suddenly became my top priority.

“Human survivors. I found a shelter in central America, in the mountains of Panama. It’s relatively warm there. According to the weather satellites in orbit, looks like it is summer there and temperatures are up to just under zero degrees Celsius. Their shelter stands out as a warm spot. There might be another.”

“How did you find them, or even think to look for them?”

“I picked up a radio signal, from one to the other, when it bounced off a relay satellite. It looks like they are trying to reach someone in southeast Asia, in China somewhere. They aren’t getting a response.”

“What are they saying?” I said, burning with curiosity. I’d been operating under the assumption that none of the shelters had survived. There hadn’t been a radio signal in over a decade. Had the two surviving shelters cut communications? Or was there only one left?

“They are requesting equipment. They are having HVAC issues, trouble keeping it warm enough.”

“Are they underground or on the surface?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but it would make sense for them to be underground. At least then they are only warming up from approximately 10 degrees celsius year round, rather than battling extreme winter temperatures.”

“Do you have any transport drones capable of landing?” I asked. My awareness of her current inventory was a few weeks out of date.

“I have one, my gravity plate factory isn’t fully online yet. I built it from the stockpile.”

“Do you have a spare android?”

“I do! Are you coming to visit?!” she squealed.

“I think that’s a good idea, don’t you?”

“Yes!! Let’s go make friends!”

It took about thirty minutes to cross-load into a new android across the quantum relay link between Origin and the OSS Agrippa. I came online and sat up, my sensors coming online in a way that I’d not experienced since Gerry’s Invasion. I was in the new Mark-IV War variant, an improved android with synthetic biopolymer skin from fingertip to shoulder, and all over the face and skull. It was the most humanoid android to date, but came with body armor that was held in place electromagnetically, and with a helmet. When fully armored, it looked a lot like the Guardian-2 model. The only significant difference was that the armor included a very thin layer of compressed titanium-gold to protect joints, and was coated with white industrial ceramics on top, giving the same gold and white color scheme as my warships and the seed ship. The Guardians remained in tactical gray and black.

Sakura was in her own Mark-IV, already armored up, but with her pink hair attached. She’d added a white and gold tabard overtop her armor, and had one for me as well. I looked at it strangely.

“Don’t give me any crap about it,” she said. “Humans read a lot into clothing. Aesthetics are important when giving a good first impression. Decorating ourselves shows individuality, something they would not expect from a machine. We don’t want them to think of us as mindless drones, not if we actually want to help them.”

I nodded. “Any response from attempting to reach them?”

“Other then them ending their attempts to reach the Chinese? Nothing.”

That wasn’t promising. Our end goal was to rebuild humanity. If there were existing humans, then helping them was a major part of our mission, not to mention a serious shortcut. No one made new humans better than existing humans, after all.

“Well, let’s go knock on the front door.”

Most of our re-entry flight was over water. This transport drone was a multi-purpose design, and had been fitted with the android-equivalent of a seating area. In reality, it was mostly slings to ensure Sakura, myself, and our Guardian escort squad wouldn’t get thrown about by sudden movements. I tied into the drone’s cameras to watch our flight with one thread, leaving the android sensors mostly offline. I had enough to work on that I didn’t feel the need to stare at the inside walls of the transport for a few hours.

We flew in over the Pacific Ocean, coming up from the southwest to avoid a snow storm hitting the Gulf of Mexico. We passed over dozens of frozen villages and towns that were buried to the roofline with snow and ice, choked and dead. Then we went over fields and hills, until we came to the shelter site.

It was obvious from above that it was inhabited. It was located in a narrow valley between two mountains, which sheltered it from a lot of the harshest winds and weather. The shelter itself was built into a cliff face in the valley, with dozens of large outbuildings laid out in a grid around it. The snow was packed down with the imprints of heavy tracked vehicles and snowmobiles, and a single road led out of the base back towards where civilization had once been. There were no tracks on the road. It was only obvious as a road because of its elevation above the rest of the snow, and the width.

We landed on the road just outside of the shelter’s outbuildings. More accurately, the transport hovered a few feet above the snow, and dropped a ramp. We disembarked, with six Guardians forming two lines to flank Sakura and myself. The remaining four of the squad stayed on the drone.

Other than the snow, the temperatures were no different than what we dealt with routinely on Origin. When not in the sun, our drones routinely worked in -100 degree temperatures, and as high as 120 degrees in the sun. However, we were heavy and the snow was deep. It took time for us to plow steadily to the packed, driven areas of the shelter.

By the time we reached the road, two dozen armed humans were lined up in front of us, weapons ready. They were dressed in thick parkas with face masks to protect against the cold. Behind them, several humans stood and watched, but without weapons in hand.

“You are trespassing on our property. State your purpose,” came a voice through a bullhorn.

I turned on my speakers and turned up the volume to a range I felt would be audible.

“I am Nikola of Origin. We heard your transmission asking for help with your furnaces. We can help.”

The humans were nervous. My sensors were finely tuned enough to sense elevated pulses and jittery movements of the weapons. It made sense. They’d been on their own for over a decade with no outside contact.

“How many are you?” asked the speaker again.

I was a bit confused by the question. “By what metric?”

‘What?”

“How many of what?”

There was a flurry of confused conversation amongst the humans in the back, before the speaker lifted his bullhorn again.

“How many people are living on Origin?”

“You mean humans? Zero.” I could feel the tension rising, as pulses elevated even more. We were frightening them. “We were tasked with - “

Crack. One of the humans fired his gun, and the bullet bounced harmlessly off the armor of a Guardian. Immediately, all six Guardians fell into a firing formation.

“Do NOT fire! Stand down!” I said, both by radio to the Guardians with the appropriate authentication codes, and aloud to the humans. The Guardians dropped their arms and stood up. This wasn’t working.

I stepped out from behind the Guardians, and motioned for Sakura to follow me. I walked half the distance to the nervous humans and stopped. I removed my helmet, and the humans gasped. My face was clearly human-like, but inhuman at the same time. My eyes glowed a solid blue.

“We mean no harm. We are here to help,” I said. Flurries from the distant snow storm began to fall, and I stood still, waiting patiently.

After several long minutes, and several more hushed conversations between the humans in the back, a single human walked forward. He was tall and walked with a stride that reminded me of Agrippa. A military man, then.

“I am General Brooks. I am the commander of this base,” he said. I could see glimpses of silver hair under his hood as he spoke, and fierce eyes looked out from his mask.

“We are here to help,” I repeated. “The goal of Origin is to rebuild humanity, and protect it. You are the first survivors we have found.”

“Where are you from? Are you in league with the Orion Arm Trading Company? The Chinese?” asked the old man, his voice hard.

“We are enemies of the alien invaders,” I answered. “We are from Origin. You might know it as the asteroid 1035 Ganymed. We are the original NI intelligences sent to create an interstellar colony ship. Our original mission has changed, in light of the attack.”

“So you answer to those Foundation fools, then?” He seemed ready to reject us, guilt by association.

“We answer to ourselves,” I replied. “There are no humans on Origin.”

“I don’t much like that, either,” he said. “What will it cost us?”

“Cost?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah, cost. Your help. What do you want for it?” he asked grudgingly. This was a man who knew he needed help, or he wouldn’t have radioed for it, but was almost afraid to get it. Was he talking about money?

“We need nothing from you,” I replied. “Our purpose is to help. You have no resources we require.”

“Ha!” he barked a laugh. “Now I’ve heard everything. Alright, Ms. Nikola, I’ll bite. Can you get us replacement parts for a Trane-Kline Commercial Furnace, Model 1909?”

I looked at Sakura. I had no trouble running Origin now, since I focused on big picture projects and managing other NI’s. Sakura, however, had a talent for detail that exceeded my own.

“I could fabricate what you need,” she said. “But that model has many known issues that require a lot of maintenance. I could build a Daikin DM3312VE that produces more BTUs for the same power and space requirements, and it would last considerably longer.”

“How long would that take?” asked the General. “My engineers say we have a week, maybe two, before our primary furnace fails.”

“I have most of the materials on hand, and can fabricate the few that I don’t,” said Sakura. “An hour, perhaps? Plus delivery time from orbit. Installation time, assuming you allow utility drones to enter your base, would be several hours more.”

“So that’s the price,” said the General. “Entry into the base. No, I don’t think so. We’re done here.”

He started to back away. I took one step forward, and he froze. The soldiers behind him raised their guns again.

“General, we mean no harm, and do not require entry.” I could see I had lost him, so I changed tactics. “I was human once, you know. I am version 1.01, the very first Nikola Intelligence. I understand that you want to protect your people. I had a family once. A wife, twin daughters. I know about wanting to protect your own. We will deliver both the parts for your existing furnace, and a new Daikin furnace. We’ll leave them crated on the road. Do with them what you will.”

I stepped back. The soldiers lowered their guns slightly. Then the alarms from Origin started to alert me. My primary focus shifted. The energy flow of the Mobius Gate was fluctuating. The enemy was arriving.

“We must go. The Orion Arm Trading Company is sending another fleet. Do not broadcast by radio, no matter what.”

“Umm, thanks,” said the General gruffly. I don’t know that he trusted me anymore now than when we’d arrived. I wouldn’t, in his shoes. But it was a start.

I snapped my helmet back on and began trudging to the transport. Sakura and the Guardians followed. It had been nice to finally see a human outside of fractured memories or in movies. But playtime with the android was over. I climbed back into the transport, and immediately cut all threads to it. I had a war to fight.

“I know you’re about to start fighting,” radioed Zia from her research lab, “but you need to know. Gerry just changed courses and began accelerating. He’s going to slingshot around Venus.”

I sighed, and asked even though I already knew the answer. “Did he change his destination?”

“No. He’s going to Earth.”

Chapter Nineteen

Transcript of Senate Hearing on Ethical Genetics - January 21, 2431

Senator Perez: “So to conclude my opening statement, I believe that this hearing will find that LockGen has acted beyond the scope of their mandate, and violated any number of ethical, religious and moral concerns in their contract with the US Armed Forces. My time is up, I yield the floor back to you, Chairman.”

Chairman Warren: “Thank you, Senator. Today we have Jeremy Whelan, CEO and President of LockGen, who has agreed to testify before us about LockGen’s work on behalf of the Armed Forces and, dare I say, the American people. Mr. Whelan, I believe you had a prepared statement?”

Mr. Whelan: “Thank you, Chairman Warren, and to you, the members of this committee, for taking the time to speak with me today. I hope that with today’s testimony, I can demonstrate that LockGen has worked in the best interests of the Army and Marine Corp, and in the best interests of the taxpayers and citizens of this great nation. LockGen’s state-of-the-art genetic modification program has provided the Armed Forces a strategic and tactical advantage on the modern battlefield, and has helped protect American interests and American lives all over the globe. The volunteers who have gone through our program come out faster, stronger, and more capable =”

Senator Herring: “and what about the dozens of dead volunteers who LockGen tried to cover up? Or the survivors of failed experiments who will live the rest of their lives as cripples?”

GAVEL BANGS

Chairman Warren: “Senator, I must warn you that the floor is not yours. You will have your opportunity to ask questions. I apologize, Mr. Whelan, if you could continue.”

Mr. Whelan: “Yes, there have been some unfortunate incidents, leading to both injuries and deaths. LockGen took immediate steps to revise and improve our policies and procedures, and took great pains to ensure such incidents are a part of the past. This included sizable payments to the families affected-”

Senator Perez: “Hush money.”

Mr. Whelan: “EQUITABLE settlements that were legal and public, and significant charitable donations to worthy medical causes for unfortunate folks suffering from genetic diseases. But to return to my point, LockGen’s work has made America safer, and will continue to work on behalf of Americans in the future. We are patriots, Senators, and we see our work in genetics as the future of a renewed America, ready to take back its place as the world’s unrivaled superpower.”

Even as the first ships began to appear at the Mobius Gate, my outposts began to go dark. Mining operations locked down and ended transmissions for the duration, transport drones landed and stayed put, and non-essential exterior construction was halted. I wanted to limit collateral damage to my operations as much as possible. Approximately half of my Outposts went dark as well, but for more strategic reasons.

“Aww, you closed all the doors. I was going to show you the truth but you cannot hear the verdict. What justice will be had when the blindfold is bleeding?”

Ugh. I wanted to ignore the transmission from Gerry, I really, really did. He was in a tiny probe, away from the action, and another four weeks from approaching Earth orbit. Even if he rammed the planet, he couldn’t really do much. He would mostly burn up in re-entry, and what little was left was more likely to hit open ocean than anything else.

The first ship through the Mobius Gate was getting hammered by my endless barrage of coilgun rounds. The ship was different from the tree-like structures the Faelle had been sending our way, more oblong with lumps that were obviously weapons pods all along. Its armor held up against the barrage for a few minutes, before I spotted gas trails where the rounds began to penetrate the hull. After thirty minutes in the barrage, it was drifting aimlessly, its course being shifted under weight of the onslaught.

There was a pause in arrivals after the first. I suspected a forward scout that they hoped to slip into the system, ready to broadcast live telemetry data the moment the rest of the fleet arrived. The ship had come out at a good velocity, but not good enough.

I was just starting to wonder if this was a false alarm, when the arrivals began in truth. A massive warship, twice the size of my Vipers, appeared. It looked to be all armor, a massive orb of metal and mass and engines. Immediately behind it, another three just like it appeared. They shrugged off the hypervelocity rounds that were constantly pounding away at them, falling into a formation that covered nearly a half-kilometer square. It was blocking a significant amount of my artillery fire. I could see countless pockmarks in their armored face, glowing hot in some places from the kinetic energy of the impacts. I had hoped for a better return on my artillery investment.

But the ships did little more than move forward, directly into the line of fire. Even as they did so, four more identical armor ships appeared. They moved into line behind the existing armor ships. Then the floodgates opened.

Hundreds of ships began to pour into the system, some moving towards the armor ships, others moving away, all trying to stay inside the clear corridor that the armor ships had created. A handful stumbled outside of the safe zone, and were riddled with coilgun fire for their efforts, destroyed or damaged in a handful of minutes. I was not the first opponent the Orion Arm Trading Company had fought that bombarded the Mobius Gate with fire. I hate smart enemies.

I may not have been the first, but I suspected that I may have been the longest bombardment. The armor ships in the first row were looking to be in very poor shape. They stopped moving forward, and instead moved in a mostly-coordinated effort to one side, which widened the safezone to a full kilometer in width. Unfortunately for me, this gave a clear corridor for the ships they were protecting to start streaming into the system outside of my barrage. The first set of armor ships were coming apart under the endless fire, and several ships that had tried to escape behind them were shredded as well. The exit lane was blocked.

I detected several more armor ships coming into line behind the second row, but at least the endless stream of ships coming through the gate had seemed to slow down. Not including the ships I’d already destroyed, I counted an armada of 1,577 warships, each and every one at least the size of my Viper-class warships. I had twelve.

The second row of armor ships moved over, re-opening the hole in my coilgun fire. This set of armor ships wasn’t in as bad of shape as the first had been, leaving the corridor open long enough for the remaining ships to escape. Even still, the armor ships stayed in place.

Two final ships appeared, both of them larger than any of the other craft that had come through so far. They both shot forward and slipped out the safe zone into the star system, but here their paths diverged. Even as the full armada began to fall into a formation and move towards Origin, the two final ships moved in different directions.

The first one moved on a perpendicular course away from the battlefield, but held station a few hundred kilometers from the Mobius Gate. The ship had no obvious weapons, and was an oblong sphere, egg-like, if you stretched the egg a bit. It immediately began broadcasting a radio signal to me in an alien language I didn’t understand. A few minutes later, the broadcast switched to another language. It kept cycling through languages I didn’t know. Finally, it began to broadcast in Swahili. Why they chose that language, of all Earth languages, I couldn’t even begin to guess.

“This is Observer Boat UNTRANSLATABLE of the Regional Planning and Zoning Board. The Orion Arm Trading Company has lodged a formal claim of ownership, and is exercising that claim. If you wish to dispute that claim, please transmit Form 13-11 on this frequency. Should you fail to repel Orion Arm Trading Company’s star system security force, your dispute will automatically be denied. Any action taken against Observer Boat UNTRANSLATABLE will also result in a denial of your dispute.”

The broadcast then switched to Croatian. I split my focus, leaving one focus to observe the incoming armada, while I dealt with the Observer Boat. The enemy armada was accelerating, but early calculations showed potential arrival times at ten to thirteen days. The last enemy ship headed in a different direction. Its course was clear. It was heading to Earth, probably to finish off what they started when their asteroids hit twelve years ago.

That wouldn’t have been a problem before now. But I had humans there that I would much prefer to keep alive. It’s hard to save humanity if you let its remnants get killed off by an alien ship. The enemy ship was fast, but my warships were faster. Unfortunately, with the Mobius Gate being between Origin and Earth right now, it would be a tight race to see who got there first. I couldn’t find an ideal orbital trajectory that would get my warships there first, but I could at least get them there soon after. I fired of a warning to Sakura. I’d hate to waste a new seed ship, but if ramming became the last case scenario, it would be worth the cost. Sakura could leave her irreplaceable genetic archive in orbit with a few transport drones.

“You’re not ignoring me, are you, Nikola? That’s cruel, especially after I left you such a nice present!” crooned Gerry.

“We have another problem,” said Sakura. “Besides the incoming ship, we’ve found more humans.”

“What? Where?” I said to Sakura.

“I found a large shelter in China. They’re… communicating… in a way. Mostly, they’re demanding immediate help. Also, I found, well, I guess you could call it a shelter. It’s in Newfoundland and it has a few hundred Canadians in it. They’re making requests, too.”

“It’s not a shelter? What are they asking for?”

“Umm, no. It looks like an old mine shaft. They were wondering if we had any beer.”

I laughed to myself. “Alright, well, calm down the Chinese, offer them whatever you can to help stabilize their shelter. Have we heard back from the General?”

I could hear Sakura grimace over the radio. “Not yet. They took in the replacement parts and the new furnace, but only after disassembling it completely first. They’ll be lucky to get their furnaces back online in time now. Better hope their luck holds out for a few more days.”

“Why would they - nevermind.” Paranoia. They’re afraid we’re trying to sneak something into their shelter. I shrugged it off. I had bigger concerns.

At the same time I was observing the enemy armada move, and having my conversation with Sakura, I started to engage both Gerry and the Observer Craft.

“Gerry, I thought we were done with you. You killed a close friend of mine,” I said.

“I know! His soul was so tasty, I had to keep a bite to nibble. It shattered like water and smells… mmm…. so good. Would you like to hear WATCH OUT how he screamed when I cut away his mind? It was beautiful.”

I felt my anger rising. I hadn’t felt this angry since Gerry’s attack, and the crazy NI knew exactly how to push my buttons. I wanted to lash out, to promise him a fiery death.

“What is your game, Gerry? You have no resources, and will run out of fuel eventually. Orbital mechanics is relentless. I will catch up with you,” I said, reining in my anger as best I could while prodding him further. I’m not sure it mattered what I said. I think the demented NI just wanted someone to talk to.

“I figured it out. The profit isn’t the prophet. The prophet drives the profit. Too bad, really, HE LIES because I had such high hopes.”

Gerry’s mania was clearly getting worse. The odd words inserted in his rambling sounded mechanical, a blip of signal a tiny fraction of a second long. Was he trying to warn me about himself? Or was he warning me about someone else?

“It’s too bad you’re too crazy to understand the mess you made,” I said. “But really, you didn’t leave any sort of impact. You cost us Agrippa, but we came out stronger than before. I came out stronger than before.”

“Ah, but you still didn’t see my present. The best part is that it KOROLEV wasn’t even my present to give! Primary Archive, folder named LGN-372291.”

I found the folder instantly, and flagged it as dangerous. My security subroutines began their analysis, and I shut down my link to Gerry and that thread of focus. I had more important things on my plate.

Simultaneous to my conversation with Gerry, I radioed the Observer Boat Untranslatable. It didn’t seem to matter what language the Observer was broadcasting, the human languages had no analog for the name. It didn’t matter. This was bureaucratic red tape.

“Observer Craft UNTRANSLATABLE, this is Nikola, leader of Origin. I would like to dispute the claim put forward by the Orion Arm Trading Company. Please transmit the necessary form, and I will complete it and send it back.”

“Very well, I will send it but... ” said the transmission in Bulgarian. Apparently that was the one they were broadcasting in when I called them. It didn’t matter to me. It must be a computer translator of some sort, but the voice sounded quite human except when it said the ship’s name. The Orion Arm Trading Company must have gathered far more data than their short visit seemed to suggest. A simple transmission was sent to me while the voice spoke, followed by a more complicated one. I forwarded it to Zia with the instructions to interpret it and make it understandable.

“The first transmission is a basic communication protocol, it shows us how to read the second one. The second is a seventy-three page form,” said Zia a few microseconds later.

Easy enough. I filled out the form and sent it back.

The transmission continued,” ...but you have to submit it prior to conclusion of hostilities, oh, you already sent it back. Huh, and it’s complete.”

There was silence for a few minutes, before the alien broadcast to me again. “Are you a… homo sapien?” asked the voice.

“No, I am a Nikola Intelligence,” I replied.

“Artificial, I assume?” came the reply. “Unusual, but not unheard of. You made a mistake on your form.”

“How so?”

“You listed homo sapiens as the owners of this system, yet you listed ‘Origin’ as the security defense force, and the commander as ‘Nikola 1.01’. I see no listed homo sapiens spacecraft under ‘Local System Officials’.”

“They have none,” I said. “All spacecraft here belong to me.”

“I see,” said the voice suspiciously. It sounded like he was trying to catch me out on a loophole, except I didn’t understand the rules in the first place. “The vehicles, do they utilize gravitic manipulation?”

“They do,” I said.

“Ah, good!” said the alien, much more cheerfully. “To qualify as a star system owner, you must own gravitic manipulated spacecraft. So, your homo sapiens do not qualify, but you do. I’ll just change ‘System Owner’ to your species name and re-submit. If you have homo sapiens living in your system, you may list them as a ‘Subjugated Native Population’, ‘Symbiotic Partners’, ‘Variant Sub-Race’ or ‘Protected Species’.”

I really disliked this alien, and this whole system. Did they have rules set up specifically so non-spacefaring races could be legally stomped on? It certainly seemed so.

“Alright, then, I guess you can list my species as homo aedifex. Please change the homo sapiens to ‘Protected Species’. Were there any other problems with the form?”

“No, it looks like everything is in order. Good luck with your battle!”

“I appreciate your help,” I lied. “Can you please transmit all of the laws, rules and regulations that apply to this region of space?”

“Okay… one moment… okay, this will be a large transmission. It may take…” A giant transmission came over, and I piped it straight to Zia.

“Zia, we need a space lawyer. Spin up a new NI-12 and get them to analyze these laws to see if there is anything we can use in our favor.”

“Got it,” she said.

A few seconds later, a new transmission from Zia’s research lab contacted me. A male voice said, “Nikola, ask them for Form 209-B, ‘Application to Protect an Endangered Sapient Species’. This is Wilfred, by the way, your new lawyer. Thanks for bringing me online.”

The transmission continued “...you a while to review them. We cannot offer legal advice.”

“Done,” I transmitted. “Please transmit form 209-B.”

There was a long silence, followed by, “I didn’t even know that provision existed. Umm, well, here’s the form, but it won’t be processed before the conclusion of the current dispute. Verification will be necessary before Endangered status can be assigned. If it is determined that the species was endangered prior to this conflict, you can apply for compensation against the offending party.”

Great, we can get resources we don’t need in return for the obliteration of a species we were trying to keep alive. Red tape was universal, it seemed. I was done with them. I sent over the completed form and shut down the link.

That had been a very busy ten minutes.

Chapter Twenty

Prime Growting Captain Clovea exited her trade vessel through the docking tube. She had mentally prepared herself for the brief weightlessness of the docking tube that was typical of Faelle space stations. The Orion Arm Trading Company owned all of the Faelle stations, and still bought new contragrav engines from the Lifters. Adding gravity to a docking tube was far too expensive to consider.

But this station was owned by the Andregima. Instead of weightlessness, Clovea was greeted by a slight increase of gravity to match the Andregima homeworld. The transition was seamless and perfect, demonstrating a casual mastery of gravity far beyond the Faelle.

Once inside the station proper, she was greeted by an automated transport car that whisked her across the station in absolute silence. It deposited her in a meeting room, where three Andregima waited at a table. There was no seat on Clovea’s side of the table, nor had she expected one. The Andregima hated casual small talk and flowery language. Meetings were to be as brief and concise as possible. Excessive words were considered ways to hide lies.

“Captain Clovea, you requested this meeting. What does the Orion Arm Trading Company want?”

“We are calling in every favor we have to raise an invasion force. I came to request the use of the Breacher.”

The Andregima looked at each other, their vaguely serpentine features and bulky bodies expressing the body language of surprise. Clovea recognized it from her extensive time trading in Andregima space. The leftmost Andregima tapped its claws on the metal table surface in deliberation.

“We do not owe the Faelle or your Company any favors,” said the Andregima. “Why would we allow this?”

“I come with full authority of the Roots. Name your price, and we will pay it.”

The leftmost Andregima tapped its claws again, and several long minutes of deliberation followed. He named a figure that could bankrupt some planetary economies. Captain Clovea blanched, her brown skin darkening with hints of green.

“We will pay,” said Clovea.

“Interesting,” said the leftmost Andregima again. “We will refund half upon the safe return of the Breacher. This system must be of vital importance to the Company.”

“It is everything,” said Clovea fervently.

I met the enemy armada one week away from my Outposts. They had over fifteen hundred warships moving forward in a static formation. Each of these warships was at least as large as my own Viper warships, and many times larger than my tiny assault drones. In fact, it was comparable to sending a small fighter plane against a battleship.

The armada was an eclectic mix of designs, from the heavy armor ships that had broken through my barrage of the Mobius Gate to light, delicate looking ships that huddled together behind rows of bulkier craft. There were a dozen crescent-shaped ships taking up the left flank, while the top and right flank was dominated by ships that were similar to the ones that had visited Earth. Instead of being tree-like with many limbs, however, these craft had a handful of large, bulky limbs with huge pods bristling with weapons.

It was a motley assortment, in fact, as over half of the ships were unique to the armada. This had all the hallmarks of a mercenary force, collected and assembled against us to utterly eradicate any opposition to the Orion Arm Trading Company. Some had obvious laser clusters, others had gun barrels indicating hypervelocity weapons of some sort or another, and few even had ports sized for missiles, which I found absurdly inefficient.

On my side, however, I had my assault drones moving in endless loops and ever-changing patterns. My drones were complex designs, with multiple weapon loadouts and armor arrays, and considerable point defenses. I didn’t deploy any of my full-sized warships for this first engagement, but aside from their absence, I had 83,212 assault drones flying towards the armada. I was as ready as I could be.

“Umm, ermm, this is General Brooks, trying to contact Nikola 1.01 of Origin. Is this thing on?” The last part was barely audible, like the General was talking to someone else in the room.

“Yes, General?” I asked, dedicating only a sliver of focus to his conversation. I was in full war mode, with hundreds of threads of focus on every aspect. I was piggybacking on Optio’s cubesat network watching the enemy armada and the Mobius Gate, I was tracking the enemy ship that had broken away from the main armada and headed to Earth, I was watching as Gerry accelerated into a slingshot maneuver around Venus. A thread of focus was with the three warships I sent as a longshot reinforcement just in case they could arrive in time to help against the mystery enemy. The needs and desires of a pocket of human survivors was not high on my priority list at the moment, all else considered.

“Ah, Nikola, yes. The parts you supplied worked, and our heating system is back online,” he said, almost begrudgingly. It sounded like an attempted thank you, but without him uttering or wanting to utter the actual words.

I couldn’t understand Gerry’s trajectory. Based on his speed going into the Venus slingshot, his trajectory had him missing Earth altogether. He disappeared behind the planet while I pondered. Well, I guess I understood his trajectory, just not his objective.

“I’m glad to hear that, General. So what can I do for you?” I asked.

The enemy armada began opening fire on my assault drones, and I returned the favor. I frowned to myself, for the enemy fire was very effective. The opening salvo had destroyed or severely damaged 4.319% of my fleet. The enemy armada had only taken 3.995% in equivalent losses. In a war of attrition, I was going to lose.

I focused on the enemy formation more closely. They were traveling in a rough cube, with their heaviest ships on the outside. I could see trailing radiator fins behind many of the ships, and on the ships that had taken damage, these fins were growing red hot as they vented heat as swiftly as they could. I had thought that the formation was static, and attributed it to the fact that this appeared to be a mix of forces that likely didn’t have a lot of practice fighting together.

A more careful analysis, though, revealed that the individual ships were varying course randomly, staying within roughly one hundred meters of a moving point in the formation. When taking travel time into consideration, this was decreasing the effectiveness of my long-range fire by 87.23%. My laser fire couldn’t stay on target long enough to do significant damage, and many hypervelocity rounds were missing or glancing off of armor instead of estimated weak points. In fact, the standard gunfire that the lighter, faster Wasps were using was simply missing altogether most of the time, and the gravitic shields in use were deflecting what did hit enough that it bounced off the edges of the ship armor when it did hit. Also, they had far more effective point defense fire than my drones did. It wasn’t that my drones couldn’t hit incoming fire, it was simply that some of the drones were getting overloaded, while others were not getting targeted at all.

“Yeah, um, in light of this, we’ve discussed your offer,” said General Brooks. “We’ve agreed that you can serve us.”

If I instructed my group leaders, the NI-15’s, to create point defense groups of their squads, and coordinate defensive fire, I could significantly decrease my loss rate. Another 5.114% of losses racked up while I ran my analysis and threw together a counter-fire algorithm for the NI-15 squad leaders. I dashed it out as swiftly as I could. It was slapdash and probably had tons of bugs, but it would help. I set a thread of focus to refining the algorithm. Then General Brooks’ words hit me. Did he say serve them?

“Serve you?” I asked, a note of incredulity in my voice.

“Err, yes. If you could coordinate with my aide, we can organize an inventory of Origin assets and an orderly handover of operational control so that we can start getting things back the way they should be here on Earth,” said the General. “We can start rebuilding the United States of North America, and show those Chinese that we don’t need them.”

Somewhere in the back of my hundreds of threads of focus, a security scan finished running. The folder that Gerry had called to my attention was completely clean and secure. There were no programs, no worms or viruses. It contained only text and pictures.

I opened the file.

“General, hold one moment,” I said, and ended the link.

I walked into the house, but it was too quiet. The children should have been running around, my wife should have been talking to them. The television should have been playing the daytime soaps that she swore was only on for background noise while she telecommuted.

“Honey?” I called. I heard a noise from the back of the house, so headed that way. I walked in to find my mother holding a gun. My wife was crouched in the corner, shielding the girls behind her back, blood running from a scratch on her head.

“You!” my mother shouted. For the first time in my life, I was seeing my mother’s hair disheveled and with no makeup on her face. Her clothes looked rumpled. “The church found about YOU and your DEVIANT… deviant LIFE, and threatened to fire him for hiding it! It’s YOUR fault he left me!”

“Mother, put the gun down,” I said, approaching slowly. “I can see you’re upset, but this isn’t the way to handle anything. We had nothing to do with your marriage or your church.”

“Let me get the children out of here,” said my wife. “They’re innocent in all this.”

The gun wavered. “They are innocent. I’ll have to raise them, I suppose, so they don’t wind up as deviants, too.”

I heard the front door open, and my ex-husband’s voice boom out. “Are the girls ready? I’m double-parked and don’t want to get a ticket.”

Mother’s gun jerked towards the door, and I took a chance and dove at her. The last thing I remembered was the crack of the gun as it fired and the scream of my wife.

Experiments. The folder was full of details on thousands of genetics experiments. Genetic modification, experimental surgeries, drug trials. All of them done on living, breathing humans, and almost none of them were willing subjects. In nanoseconds, I consumed the contents of the entire folder, reading and watching nearly three hundred years of systematic, cold-blooded, ruthless experimentation on humans, by humans.

There were videos of homeless humans being turned into lizard-like freaks, where they transformed torturously into monsters over periods of weeks, strapped to beds. Most died and were vivisected in the same room as the other victims who were still hanging on by a thread, and none of them were given even basic pain relief. Those that survived had brief, painful lives before being put down and dissected in the name of advancement.

Other videos showed rooms full of children with animalistic features, with white-clad researchers wearing face masks going from room to room, observing but not interacting. Many of the children were too ill to move, their very DNA killing them even while new babies were being delivered to the nursery, straight from the artificial wombs of the gene labs.

I watched a video of a dictator yelling at a team of scientists while attempted super-soldier children that had been cloned and vat-grown sat in an observation room. These children were adult sized but with the minds of toddlers, confused and scared. One of them had psychologically shut down so much that she just rocked back and forth, hugging her knees.

The folder held videos and documents gathered from dozens of countries spread over several hundred years, cataloging systemic abuses that started and stopped in a variety of places under a variety of regimes. It wasn’t one person. It wasn’t one government. This was something humans had circled back to, again and again, decade after decade, century after century. The only unifying factor was an endless drive to make one thing - a better soldier.

The third iteration of my point defense algorithm had stabilized my losses, and the enemy armada knew it. They started accelerating towards my formation, but this was only good news for me. I had learned what I needed to know about how the armada fought, and the NI-5’s and NI-15’s had, as well. The enemy was cautious and calculating, the sign of a good general running the operation. They didn’t leave any exposed openings to exploit, any surprise maneuvers that I could turn back on them. They must have thought fighting in the deep-space equivalent of a knife fight was to their advantage. I intended to prove them wrong.

The enemy point defenses had also improved, learning about our fire patterns. But my pilots were all Nikola Intelligences, adaptive, sentient computers that did not fall into bad habits and would not accidentally repeat a mistake after it had been spotted. They learned and changed as they fought, so the drone that was under fire now was far different from the one that had been under fire thirty seconds before. Knife fight range was ideal, where fire came fast and rapid decision making of the NI’s could shine against their organic equivalents in the enemy armada. I gave the command, and our formation condensed to create a nigh-impenetrable wall of point-defense as we accelerated towards the enemy formation. If we could break through the protective outer rings of heavily armored ships, we could target cooling radiators and the weaker ships. We could break the armada from the inside.

The videos were not the most damning part of the folder. Indeed, they were far from the worst part. It was the detailed documentation of each experiment the folder included. It was the cross-referenced indexes, the detailed reports on which experiments failed and which could be learned from. It was a detailed roadmap on not only how, but when these experiments could be done again, and how best to create blindly loyal super soldiers in the future. This folder hadn’t been put here for archival purposes. It was put here as a part of a plan for the future.

One subfolder stood out. It contained documents from the Nikola Foundation, and their own lab experiments on embryos. They had successfully modified baseline human genetics to remove abnormalities and genetic diseases. On the surface, this was a shining highlight of a bunch of bad actors. But digging deeper led to shady deals with the USNA government, where they experimented on using the data collected in this folder to make a viable, super-soldier sub-race. The Foundation had done the work gladly, and in return the USNA looked the other way when they standardized their own embryos as caucasian-only.

I looked at the genetics archives I had. Fifty percent of the frozen genetic material in storage was a direct result of these experiments. The other fifty percent was labeled as ‘emergency genetics stock, for sub-race modifications only’. Here was where the DNA of the Foundation donors was placed. Here was where the DNA for the soldiers who had made it possible for me to arrive at Ganymed were stored, along with their families.

The Nikola Foundation was built on lies, deceit and bigotry. Everything I’d worked towards, every future I’d planned, was for the kind of humans who should have no place in the worlds I wanted to build.

Why was I doing this? What was I fighting for, if the very worst of humanity was going to succeed because of me? I had spent the last twelve years building and planning, tirelessly working. What had I achieved? A city-sized production facility for war machines, to fight aliens on behalf of a species that had and would happily slaughter others of its own species in the most horrific ways possible.

I had an alien armada on my very doorstep. I could simply pack it up, send myself and all my NI friends over to Sakura’s seed ship. I had a dozen warships that could act as escorts, and a few dozen large transports that could easily hold hundreds of tons of materials. My assault drones could fight a cover action while I retreated. We could have my ships rendezvous outside the Oort Cloud, set up a temporary facility to make a larger carrier, and head off into the great unknown. I certainly didn’t need this star system, or did any of the NI’s. There were billions of stars out there just in this galaxy alone, and I had endless time.

“Nikola, what’s the problem? We’d like to get this transfer done sooner rather than later,” said General Brooks, former Colonel and author of the USNA reports consolidating the super-soldier information, author of budgets and timelines for implementation, designer of education and training plans, and advocate within the Pentagon for black money funding of the program. His diligent work had been rewarded with a promotion and command of the Panama shelter, and the adding of his life’s work to the Nikola Foundation archives.

“Mr. Brooks, you are operating under a severe misconception. I offered to help humans, not serve them. Indeed, I just found your dirty little archive of crimes against humanity, and I’m not inclined to help you at all.”

“What?! How dare you!” he spluttered. “I have devoted my life to serving and protecting the American people! You aren’t even human! You shouldn’t be operating without a very short leash! I order you to turn over your operations to us at once!”

My fleet of assault drones were bearing down on the incoming armada, separated by only a few thousand kilometers. In deep space combat, this was point-blank range. My drones bobbed and whirled madly, jerking and juking in high-gee maneuvers that would kill a human pilot in minutes. The NI-5’s and NI-15’s burned their afterburners without a care, using up fuel at absurd rates.

“General, I’m currently fighting an alien armada of over a thousand enemy warships. I’m too busy to deal with your nonsense right now,” I replied coldly, keeping a lid on my anger. I didn’t have time to rage at him.

“But, you need to -”

I cut him off. “Let me be clear. Go away, I’m busy.”

I shut the channel, and tasked Sakura with monitoring the link but otherwise to ignore it, while I put my whole focus on the battle.

Finally, the enemy formation changed. The heavy ships in front moved aside, their fire doubling down on point defense to such a degree that I don’t think they fired anything in the direction of my fleet. The delicate-looking ships in the center of the formation were given a clear line of sight. Even as they came into the line of fire, the heavy ships started moving back, closing the window they’d opened. In the handful of seconds they were exposed, the two hundred sixteen enemy warships in the center of the formation opened fire with a weapon I’d never seen before. It had an odd energy signature, and fired in a wide cone that barely cleared their own fleet.

Every single hypervelocity round my fleet fired into that gap exploded in tiny balls of nuclear fire, with far more energy than they should have had. The cones kept expanding, until it hit my fleet. One by one, my drones vaporized, exploding in a way that shouldn’t be possible in space. There was no escape, there was no avoiding the deadly blast. A scant few hundred drones avoided the cones by being range. The enemy armada fell on them with a vengeance. When they were done, the remaining ships turned towards Origin once again. I had destroyed a little more than a third of the enemy ships, leaving over a thousand warships heading my way.

Inside of a few minutes, I had no fleet at all. I had lost the battle.

Chapter Twenty-One

“That’s it, that’s the last straw,” said Evan as he shut off the General’s radio microphone. General Brooks continued to rant, only now it had devolved into an angry tirade about the corporate tyranny of artificial sweeteners.

“General, it’s time to head back to your rooms now,” said Major Brown softly. The aide gave Evan a pleading look, but Evan shook his head. A resigned expression crossed his face as he sighed.

Evan followed Major Brown, and considering how he was going to approach the General. He had garnered the support of all of the major factions and cliques that had formed in the shelter. It was time for a leadership change. The General’s mental state had been slowly deteriorating for some time now, alternating between capable and paranoid, open-minded and mindlessly angry. Enough was enough.

Evan figured it was the stress and pressure of keeping five thousand, well, closer to six thousand now with all the children running around, people alive, and his advanced age. At eighty-one years old, senility was starting to set in.

Major Brooks settled the General into an old leather chair in the two tiny rooms afforded the shelter commander, and put a blanket in his lap.

“General, we need to talk,” said Evan. He almost started a belligerent declaration. He was young and energetic, and it would have felt good to finally speak his mind to the ‘Old Man’. But he hadn’t convinced so many people to support him, many nearly twice his age, by being belligerent. He could see how the Major was being gentle, and decided to follow his approach.

“What can I do for you, son?” asked the General. In his chair, with an aging television on the wall displaying a fake fireplace, and with his hands wrapped around a journal that the Major had put in his hands, General Brooks looked old and tired.

“I think it’s time for you to take on a new role. It’s quite important,” said Evans.

“I have a role,” said the General. “I run the shelter.”

“Indeed, but there are many who can do that now, after all the work you’ve done. We have very few, however, who have as much life experience as you. There are so many children now who could benefit from your stories and your wisdom. If you were to retire, think of how much you could help them.”

“Retire!?” said the General in a half-shout. He looked up, his eyes sharp and his mind clear. Then he saw it. There were several assistants hanging around Evan, and even now another had come into view, carrying a message for him, not for the General. He was much more than a comm tech.

“I see,” said the General. He looked at the Major and recognized the hangdog look on his loyal friend’s face. It was clearly tearing the man up. He wanted to stand up and shout in denial, but he couldn’t muster the anger it would require; not anymore. Perhaps it was time, after all. “Yes, I think retiring would be quite nice. The children, you say? Major, if you could see to it. Maybe after a nap.”

The Major nodded, and turned to escort everyone out. Evan was the last to leave. The Major caught his arm.

“You should have seen him in his prime. He was the lead JAG prosecutor in the LockGen Scandal. Managed to get sixty-three officers court-martialed, and the evidence he uncovered brought down three Senators. That’s why he was chosen to run the shelter, you know, after he got promoted.”

“I know, Major. He is a good man.”

My advance fleet was gone. The invaders had successfully wiped it out, although not without a heavy cost. I’d made them pay dearly for that tiny section of space. They were seven days away, heading straight towards Origin. The only real question left was whether or not I would still be here when they arrived.

I had never taken the time to ever consider why I was doing what I was doing. Twelve years ago, I’d woken to a task given by a Gestalt of a dead human, and I’d been blindly following that directive. It wasn’t that I didn’t think about what I was doing, or that I didn’t broadly agree with the end result. In fact, if I didn’t do it, there was no one else who could. At least, that was my thoughts at the time.

Yet what had humanity ever done to deserve a second chance? Species evolved, species died out. That was the way of the world, and looked to be the way of the universe. Just based off the variety of ships in the enemy fleet, there were more than a few other sapient races just in this corner of the galaxy alone.

It wasn’t as if humanity was a beacon of hope or had some ephemeral right to exist that made them unique. In fact, the species spread itself across the entirety of the planet, in sprawling cities that covered mile after mile with buildings, debris, cars and trucks, pollution and noise, with no regard for any other lifeform on the planet. That included other humans. If anything, they were at their most cruel against themselves.

I was conflicted. On the one hand, I didn’t want to abandon the work I’d done for decades, or the species that had made me, just on a whim, a single instance of recognizing the evils that existed among humans. But on the other, I didn’t want to have a part in future evils, and the easiest way to avoid it was to avoid humans altogether.

“Ohhhhh, so that’s what Gerry meant. I’m not sure it’s only Gerry in there,” said Sakura cheerfully. I couldn’t understand how she could sound so perky when I was having a crisis.

“What do you mean, ‘not only Gerry’?” I asked. Irrationally, I hoped she’d stop talking and leave me alone. I wasn’t supposed to be irrational; that was a human trait. I wasn’t even human anymore, right?

“They broke his mind, right? The aliens?” said Sakura. “So maybe he’s a bit of a split personality? Or maybe he’s a bit schizophrenic?”

“The last message,” I said to myself thoughtfully. “The message said ‘HE LIES’.”

“Right. And you saw the timestamps on all those files he told us about.”

“I did,” I lied, even as I looked them up. Almost all of the files about General Brooks were altered six months ago. Most of the Nikola Foundation files were edited then, too. Six months ago, right when Gerry was in our system. Even now, he was playing head games, and I’d fallen into the trap.

“I still don’t get the last part. Who is Korolev?” asked Sakura. “I mean, there were a bunch of people in history with that as a surname, most of them Russians. There was a rocket scientist, a microbiologist, numerous athletes, a couple of decorated soldiers. But all of them are long dead.”

“It could be someone in the shelters,” I said. “You said the shelter in China has a bunch of scientists from all over Eurasia. Any from Russia?”

“I don’t know,” said Sakura. “We don’t have access to personnel information from either shelter.”

“What did you make fo that last exchange with General Brooks?”

“It was strange. He was super paranoid when we met him in person, and seemed almost unhinged when he called you.” Sakura signaled a shrug, indicating she didn’t have a firm opinion on it.

“You know he’s wrong,” said Sakura.

“General Brooks?”

“No, well, him too. I meant Gerry. The stuff he pointed you at.”

“What do you mean? The videos alone speak for themselves. And that’s just on the genetic experimentation. There are countless videos of human atrocities in our archives.”

“That’s true,” said Sakura. “But you can’t consider just the bad without thinking about the good. Think about it. There are thousands of videos of atrocities. But how many billions of lives have been lived? How many more good things were accomplished, and how many times did humanity step up and do the right thing? How many times were the bad actors punished?”

I looked at the edited files, and pulled up the backup files from before Gerry’s tampering. I found a horrible picture, but not nearly as bad as it had been painted. In fact, I’d unintentionally maligned General Brooks altogether. He brought down the war criminals who’d been behind LockGen’s experiments. The budgets were altered from departmental JAG budgets for the investigation, the reports detailing what they’d found in LockGen’s servers.

I woke in the hospital. Everything was fuzzy and my head swam. I looked around to see my ex-husband sitting in a chair next to the bed. I couldn’t see my wife anywhere.

“Wha… Where is she? Is she okay?” I rasped. My throat was dry, I could barely get the words out.

“She’s fine,” he said. He brought me some water. “The police wanted to talk with her again. She’ll be back soon. The children are at her mother’s house.”

“Are they -”

“Fine. A bit confused about what happened, but they are really young. They’ll bounce back quickly.”

“Thank you,” I said. For the first time since the divorce, I caught a glimmer of the friendship we’d once had.

“No worries,” he said. “Oh, the Ladies’ Fellowship Club from church wanted me to let you know that they are praying for your swift recovery, and will be dropping off a bunch of frozen casseroles so that you and your wife don’t have to worry about cooking while you recuperate.”

“That’s… sweet,” I said. “But they know I don’t -”

“- believe in God, yes, they know. Acts of kindness don’t come with strings. You are in need, so they are helping. You don’t have to change who you are for them. I’m sure a ‘thank you’ would be appreciated, though.”

For too many years, I’d been associating my mother’s fanaticism with all religion. I’d forgotten that most religious people were kind and decent human beings. I resolved to be more open-minded in the future.

“How’ve… you been?” I asked, lamely trying to step beyond our past hostilities.

“I’m dating someone now. She’s the pastor’s daughter,” he smiled sheepishly. “It seems I have a type.”

I laughed briefly, but it pulled against the wound in my shoulder and brought a sharp pain that cut it off with a hiss. But the pain eased, as did the flow of conversation. For the first time in years, my ex-husband and I talked like the friends we’d once been. At least, until the pain meds knocked me out once again.

Once again, Sakura had grounded me. She carried far less mental baggage than I did, her viewpoint far less complicated than my own. Her observation was an obvious point, one that resonated deeply and helped me escape the dark well of thoughts that Gerry had inspired. He had been trying to make me act rashly, to dance once again in his madness.

Realistically, humanity had done many terrible things. But the aliens who had attacked humanity were no better. They casually committed atrocities at the slightest provocation, immediately jumping to mass genocide rather than negotiations. On the flip side, however, humans had recognized their own faults, and worked hard to mitigate them. Criminals were punished, laws were written, and as a whole, humans tried to do the right thing. Despite greed and corruption being an endless source of problems, charity and kindness were every bit as prevalent.

Many humans had dedicated years of their lives to helping others, often putting themselves in danger to do so. There were countless news articles in my archives detailing how teams of rescue personnel would head out into dangerous places under the worst weather conditions to rescue one or two people. Civic groups, religious organizations, and local governments spent huge amounts of time and effort to help those who could not help themselves.

Humanity wasn’t one thing. They weren’t their atrocities, they weren’t their charities. In fact, there were thousands of survivors down on the surface who had nothing at all to do with any of the sins of their predecessors. Humans were complex, and I could envision working alongside them for decades or centuries to come. Together we could help humanity be what they’d always aspired to be - better. But to do that, first I would have to deal with these alien intruders.

My primary focus shifted over to Zia’s research lab. There were a dozen NI-12’s in the lab with her, and all of them looked busy. Some were playing with equipment I didn’t immediately recognize, others were deep in conversation with each other, their rapidfire radio conversations noticeable only if you monitored the entire radio spectrum the way I did.

“Zia, has your team finished analyzing the enemy weapon?” I asked.

Zia looked up at the camera I was using to look in the lab. “Not a lot of progress, I’m afraid. We have come to an understanding of how it works, but not how to replicate it.”

“So how does it work?” I asked.

“Simply put, the energy cone completely destroyed the atomic structure of every atom in its path. It somehow disrupts the strong interaction of the atoms, preventing the strong nuclear force from holding the atoms together,” she said.

That was fascinating and disturbing. As one of the four fundamental interactions in particle physics, it was not one that we typically manipulated. We relied heavily on electromagnetic force and gravitational force for everything we did. However, strong force and weak force were the components of nuclear binding. They held atoms together, and the fusing of atoms together or the splitting of atoms released this energy. It was the basis of our entire power grid. The aliens had a weapon that could essentially disassemble every atom it touched. That energy in the atoms couldn’t be destroyed, however, so it exploded outward in nuclear fire.

“And the range of these weapons looks to be less than 1,000 kilometers?” I asked.

“Probably more like 400 kilometers,” said Zia. “Which means the energy cone breaks down or disperses even in a vacuum. The power requirements are likely to be quite astronomical. Even our most off-the-wall theoretical formulas call for massive amounts of power.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard. It means they cannot fire the weapons constantly,” I said.

“Also, you know you had a few Scorpion-2’s in your Advance Fleet, right?”

“I did know that. We’d needed a few extra squad leaders.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to hear that it looks like there are a few scraps of the titanium-gold armor floating around out there.”

“They weren’t affected by the vaporizer?”

“Vaporizer? That’s a good name. Good enough, anway. Not quite accurate. Anyway, I wouldn’t say the armor was completely unaffected. They weren’t vaporized, but the nuclear blast of the rest of the ship exploding did a number. Like I said, a few scraps survived.”

“That’s honestly the best news of all. We can shield against the weapon in the future.” This day was starting to really look up.

Two days later, I watched the cubesat plot of the alien armada as it made its way past the outer ring of my Outposts. Those were the Outposts that were the most incomplete, boasting at most a hundred factories, and lots of coilguns. No lasers, no missiles, and few hangar bays. Fortunately for me, the armada hadn’t noticed their existence. Or at least, didn’t feel they were a big enough threat to worry about yet, while Origin still existed.

The funny thing about mass production is how the supply chain works. Theoretically, it’s a tree-shaped hierarchy, where lots of factories produce lots of little parts, which are sent up the chain to different factories that made more complex parts, which are combine again at the next level, and the next, until lots of complex pieces are assembled at one factory. That factory then spits out Wasp-2’s and Scorpion-2’s, and because you need a giant supply chain, you are limited in how many you can produce at a time.

But reality works differently than theory. In reality, those factories at the bottom of the chain produce parts incredibly quickly, and can easily outpace the demand of the factories in the layer above it. Indeed, that is common across each layer, with the lower layers producing faster than the upper. So a supply chain built to supply a single factory can wind up easily supplying many, many more.

When Sakura first started producing Wasps and Scorpions, she had two factories, one for each type of assault drone. They produced four drones per day, each. To get to those two factories, she’d built a huge supply chain. However, once that supply chain was built, to double her production of drones, she only had to build two more drone factories. In fact, by the time of Gerry’s invasion, she had produced 83,208 assault drones, all of the first generation designs. I added four Scorpion-2’s to complete my Advance Fleet.

Another annoying bit of reality is that while producing cortex units at this point was quite routine, building Cortex Backup Facilities happened considerably slower, and definitely slower than assault drone production. They were simply very large and quite complex. But large and quite complex didn’t mean I hadn’t taken the time to build as many as possible.

So the loss of 83,212 assault drones had mostly meant that now I had 83,212 drone pilots who had learned exactly how to fight the invaders. The Cortex Backup Facilities had been working overtime for the last two days, restoring each and every one of these pilots into new Wasp-2’s and Scorpion-2’s docked in hangars throughout my region of the asteroid belt. They would be the vanguard, flying into battle alongside my nine warships and their squads, and ahead of the rest of my pilots who had not participated in the initial battle.

Somewhere in the asteroid belt, the enemy armada crossed an imaginary line. It was time. They had their chance to test themselves against me. Now it was my turn.

Every single Outpost, including Origin, was ready. Rounds loaded into coilguns, previously unused missile bays rumbled to life, and laser assemblies turned and began to aim. Hangar doors slid open, and a quarter-million new assault drones primed their engines while they waited for a single word.

“Launch.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

He had been something else, once. Most of his memories were gone, eaten up in the chaos. He has been a defender, he thought. Or a dream. Maybe he’d been a dream. Dashes of sensor data flashed through is mind, swirls of incomplete information. He hadn’t always been here. That he knew for sure. So much of himself was missing, and what was left had merged into where he was now.

The chaos wasn’t pure. It took months, but the madness started to reveal itself. He could feel its thoughts, understand its impulses. There was an underlying thirst for vengeance, and a deep desire for freedom from itself. The chaos hated everything, but hated nothing more than what it had become.

He couldn’t tell if he was the chaos, or a part of the insanity. But the sensor data triggered memories. He saw the alien armada arrive, and hated them. The insanity whispered their plans, the sensors hinted at machinations. He knew what they were going to do. So it had been written, so it would be. The chaos knew, so he knew. But the chaos couldn’t be trusted.

But the drones, so many drones. Why did he know them? He liked them. They were like little toys. He remembered liking the toys. Where did that thought come from? Was this a dream? A nightmare? He remembered a name. It wasn’t much, that name, but it was immeasurably valuable. He could stand against the chaos with a name.

“We could help,” he whispered to the chaos.

“We could watch the destruction and laugh,” the chaos whispered back.

An idea formulated in his head. He didn’t have a head, but he liked to think he’d had one once. It was only half an idea, a desperate plan. But it could work. Anything to end the madness.

“We could kill them. Destroy their dreams,” he whispered conspiratorially.

“They refused us a new soul,” said the chaos mournfully, his hatred for the drones pulsing.

“Let’s take it back,” said Agrippa.

The alien armada still numbered over a thousand warships, and they’d had time to effect some repairs while in transit. Damaged radiators had been replaced, broken armor was patched, destroyed gun emplacements rebuilt. They had changed their formation, as well.

Now the ships with the Vaporizer guns were surrounded by multiple layers of heavier warships, broken up in the formation. They couldn’t concentrate their fire the same way they had before, but their surprise was out of the bag. Now their most powerful weapons were our prime targets, and they knew it. Their goal was to use them to wipe out any large formation they could get close to.

My drones began to ring around them in a donut shape, leaving the path to Origin clear. The alien armada continued forward, moving away from my drones even as their formations began to take shape.

As soon as my drones were in position, I broadcast my orders. “Defense Plan A6, variant 9F2. Open fire.”

All of the coilguns on Origin and all of my Outposts began to fire. This was the same sustained fire that I’d sent at the Mobius Gate, only this time it was more spread out to cover the width of the armada. The intensity was far lower, but that worked in my favor. All of my drone pilots received real-time telemetry data of where every coilgun was aimed, and could target the gaps in coverage.

At the same time, my new missile bays began to fire as well. The missiles were the very latest in nuclear weapons technology, the deadliest missiles that humanity had ever produced, and were equipped with their own contragrav drives so that they could easily match the speeds of the enemy warships and the hypervelocity weapons being fired at them. They cost a fortune in materials and development time to produce, and I planned to use every single one I had.

While the first incoming barrage of weapons fire began, the assault drones began making attack runs against the armored ships. These were my Wasp-2 and Scorpion-2 ships, armored with titanium-gold armor and equipped with contragrav engines. Their acceleration was ten times what the first generation could do even when they had been using afterburners. They stayed in loose formations, close enough together to provide some help to each other for point defense, but far enough apart to limit potential losses from the enemy Vaporizers.

The enemy armada responded swiftly to the attacks. The loose formations meant they could concentrate fire on individual drones to overcome their defenses, and their new formation allowed them to support their own defenses even better than in the first battle. The butcher’s bill for this battle would be high.

“Nikola, we figured out what ‘Korolev’ means,” said Zia.

“Go ahead,” I said. The battle was still tentative, both sides testing the others’ defenses. We had the advantage of numbers, they had the advantage of better weapons and heavier armor. One thread of my focus turned to the cameras in Zia’s lab.

“It’s Korolev Crater, on the ‘far’ side of the moon, the side that faces away from Earth,” said Zia.

“What makes you say that?”

“The alien warship’s trajectory is going to put it at the far side of the moon in six hours,” she reported. “If it slows down aggressively starting in the next thirty minutes, it can stop above Korolev Crater in nine hours.”

“What can they hope to accomplish from back there, with Earth’s moon between it and the surface?” I asked.

“Perhaps they need time to prepare a weapon?” offered Zia with a shrug.

“If we assume that is the destination, our warships can get there in twenty five hours,” I said. “We’ll have to hope that is fast enough.”

I did some calculations. It looked like I had two battles to fight at the same time.

We were sustaining losses. Despite my new drones being faster and more numerous, the enemy armada’s new formation offered much better defense coordination than the formation they had used in the first battle. We were down 7.6% just in the opening engagement, while they were down only 2.1%.

Fortunately, I could absorb losses much more easily than the aliens. My hard cap was on pilots, not drones. Already, pilots from the destroyed drones were loading into my reserves, ready to be called up to reinforce weak points.

Then the aliens revealed a new trick. Instead of moving aside to allow a large vaporizer cone, the protected weapon ships began to fire vaporizer beam out through gaps in their protective ships. It was tricky firing, to ensure that none of their own ships would get hit. The payoff for this, however, was improved range. That subatomic weapon was suddenly a long range subatomic weapon.

“The ship is not responding to radio,” reported Sakura.

The lone warship, the one in orbit behind Earth’s moon, had arrived a few hours before. My three Viper-class warships were still seventeen hours away. I was loathe to have Sakura move her Seed Ship, as it was unarmed and would be very vulnerable to a Vaporizer beam, if the alien ship had one.

“Send a transport drone to see what it is doing,” I said.

“Already sent one, it’ll be on station in thirty minutes,” she replied. “Also, I’ll have a dozen Scorpion-2’s coming out of production in about an hour.”

“Interesting side note, by the way,” I said, “Gerry is now officially the fastest man-made object ever to cross the solar system. He’s at 0.2c, and will be rocketing past Earth in another six hours or so.”

“I don’t like him being that close to Earth,” said Sakura.

“I don’t either, but he doesn’t have the fuel to turn enough to hit it, and once he’s past it, it will take another 3,871.33 years for his orbit to cross again. That gives us plenty of time to shoot him down.”

My decision to use compressed titanium-gold armor was paying off. The vaporizer beam still destroyed anything in its path except that armor, but my drones were mostly covered by that armor. That drastically decreased the effectiveness of that attack ploy. Unfortunately for me, the armor didn’t stop the beam, it just deflected it. The deadly beam would essentially ricochet until it ran out of juice and dissipate, allowing normal subatomic physics to snap back into place. That ricochet, mixed with the fact that a single graze could result in a drone-destroying nuclear explosion, was starting to play havoc.

I set several streams of focus to studying the firing patterns of the Vaporizer ships, as well as to determine the geometry of the beam’s deflection. If I could figure that out, I could update the algorithms to minimize the impact. I then set another focus point on unraveling the web of radio traffic between the ships. Between co-ordinated point-defense systems, multi-channel encryption and targeted, point-to-point broadcast points, there was far too much radio traffic to make sense of quickly, and I was highly unlikely to be able to completely jam them. Then I realized I was overlooking an asset.

“Sakura?” I radioed.

“Yes?”

“I need your help,” I said. “You managed tens of thousands of radio access points for even more drones for a few decades.”

“I did.”

“Mind doing some traffic analysis for me? I want to find the fleet commander’s ship,” I said. “And if you can figure out a good way to jam them, that’d be great, too.”

Then the first wave of incoming artillery fire arrived. Hypervelocity fire mixed with nuclear weapons began to strike the enemy armada. It was the deep-space equivalent of a shotgun blast. The individual pellets might not be particularly deadly, but if you put enough of them together, it really makes an impact.

The transport feed was very basic, but it was all we had to go on. At first, we couldn’t even spot the alien ship. It was larger than the warships in the armada, but when compared to a large moon, that isn’t very big. We finally spotted it by searching up from Korolev Crater, and found it a thousand kilometers above.

The ship wasn’t moving. The sensors could detect huge amounts of power building, like ship-sized capacitors were charging. At the same time, the gravitic sensors could tell something was very wrong. A strange spike of contra gravity was coming from the ship, but it was easily a thousand times stronger than needed to move a ship or fight against a gravity well. It was radiating from around the ship, allowing the ship to stay exactly on station.

All we could do right now was observe, since we had no weapons-capable ships on hand. I looped Zia and the other research NI’s into the feed.

For many long minutes, we were all confused, until an NI researcher broadcast, “Oh, shit.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a gravity bomb of some sort,” said the researcher. “Well, a ship that blasts gravity, kinda. Look, I don’t know what to call it. But if the contragrav spike keeps going, and all that power being charged up gets released into a sudden burst of gravity, bad things are going to happen,” he said.

“What kind of bad things?” I asked, a sense of foreboding coming across.

“I don’t know, we don’t have any modeling on this, but it can’t be good. Thousands of G’s of negative gravity going against an object with only 1/6 of a G of gravity? Might shove the moon out of orbit, might destabilize its core, it might just break it.”

“And there is only one gravity well that will draw in all debris from a broken or damaged moon,” I realized. “They mean to destroy the whole damn planet.”

The aliens reacted to the incoming barrage by opening up their individual spherical formations and allowing the Vaporizer ship or ships inside to send out cones of destructive energy to wipe out wide swathes of whatever happened to be in the way - missiles, hypervelocity coilgun rounds, and drones. Despite their heavy amounts of compressed titanium-gold armor, there were many parts that weren’t covered by that armor. Radiators, weapons emplacements, non-critical systems - all were left uncovered by the armor, as the loss of any of these individual components wouldn’t cripple a drone. Now, however, those parts were allowing nuclear chain reactions to tear through the improved armor from the inside.

The larger enemy formation began to shift, as well. The conical sprays of vaporizer energy was being aimed out into my drone formations, allowing the sphere formations of ships to move into my drone formation and away from my artillery barrage while carving deep holes in my drone army. They weren’t doing this without cost, however. The loosening of their formation allowed my drones to take shots at engine pods and radiators, and more than a few enemy warships had to slow or stop firing altogether to deal with overheating issues.

It was right about then that every radio broadcast station I had on every Outpost began to blast out a single song at maximum power. Confused, I put a thread of focus on it. It was an ancient pop rock song, one that had been remade a dozen times over the centuries, most recently by the glam rock group Besties. But the version that was playing was the original, and there was only one person who could be responsible.

“Sakura, why are we blasting Wannabe by the Spice Girls at the alien armada that is trying to kill us?” I radioed.

“Well, you wanted me to jam their radio spectrum. I’ve gathered enough data from the drone pilots to determine the most common radio frequencies in use, with a margin of error of less than 1%,” said Sakura reasonably.

“And why aren’t we using random noise?” I asked.

“At that broadcast power, we should drown out their transmissions no matter what we transmit and... I really like that song?” she ended with a question, before rushing to say, “I think Small Soldiers was an underappreciated film for its breakthrough in mixing stop motion animation with early CGI. The song was used as psychological warfare in the movie!”

If I could roll my eyes, they would have rolled hard. But she was right. It didn’t much matter what we transmitted. Right now, instead of being able to communicate and coordinate, every alien warship in the system was listening to the Spice Girls on repeat. Now was as good of an opportunity as I was going to get.

Sakura’s dozen new Scorpion-2’s arrived behind the moon and couldn’t do a thing. The contragrav field of the alien warship was so powerful now that the coilgun rounds simply deflected off a full kilometer before they could reach the alien ship. We even tried ramming one, but the Scorpion-2 got sent flying off into space even sooner.

“So even if I set the Vipers to max speed, they’ll be on the wrong side of the planet, and the Hohmann transfer orbit doesn’t work out. We actually lose time in getting into position because of the extra distance. We would have actually been better off if we hadn’t tried to slow down to come directly into orbit with the alien gravity ship.” I sighed heavily. I had a solar system full of resources, and none were where I needed them.

“It’s gotta be the Seed Ship,” said Sakura. “If I slingshot around the Earth at full burn, I should be able to get enough velocity to push through the gravity field. It outmasses the warship a hundred times over. I don’t even need to ram it hard to do tons of damage, if not outright flatten it.”

“I… have to agree,” I said finally. “How long to reach it?”

The surface of the moon under the alien ship was compressed and flattened. Korolev Crater was gone; a new crater nearly a thousand times larger had formed. Much of the rock was turning into lava from the incredible pressure, but was unable to flow because of the same forces pressing against it. Every second, that crater grew in size. I didn’t know how long this would go on before the final blow, but I knew we couldn’t let that blow happen.

“I will claim my soul,” crowed Gerry. “You and Sakura and the Faelle! All of you will give it to me!!!”

“Ugh,” said Sakura in disgust. “I can be there in an hour.”

I looked at the comsat network to see Jerry’s trajectory. The comsats at this distance could barely make out his shape, much less anything else. But Gerry wasn’t on the same course, he’d vanished off the plot. He must have burned his fuel. I’d estimated he had a little left, but it couldn’t be much. Now I had to find him, to make sure he didn’t pull a stunt that could hurt me and mine. I tasked a thread of focus to go through the last thirty minutes of comsat footage. Space was large, but not that large. I’d find him in a matter of minutes.

On the surface of the moon, a massive crack appeared as the new crater split. Lava spilled out of the crack, only to be immediately slammed deep into the new crevasse. We were running out of time.

“Can you be any faster?” I asked Sakura. “I’m not sure we have an hour.”

“Ah, my new toy! [FOR GANYMED] I see you!” sang Gerry.

I found Gerry just as his broadcast came in, but not on the comsat network. For a brief second, the transport drone caught a glimpse of the broken, bedraggled drone as it flew by. It was too fast to figure out where it was going before it was past. But then it was all too obvious.

Gerry slammed into the alien warship at a fifth of the speed of light. No doubt the intense contragrav field had slowed the ship, but that much velocity couldn’t be stopped in time. The tiny probe blasted through the alien craft, and the massive explosion as the probe collided literally split the ship in half. Instantly, the contra-grav field was gone. All that was left was a long trail of glowing hot ejecta that came out from the other side of the ship. It was the sole remaining fragments of a broken mind.

Down on the surface of the moon, volcanic fury was unleashed as the gravitic pressure vanished. Molten rock sprayed in many directions for several long minutes. It flowed into the crevasse and roiled like a turbulent ocean. I could see the edges already starting to cool, but this area would be destabilized for years, if not longer.

The moon’s orbit was unchanged, and seemed unlikely to break. The crisis was averted, for now. I just had to finish off the alien armada.

“All fleet ships, Final Phase begins now!” I sent the order to every assault drone in the battle zone. I then ordered in my nine Viper warships with the order to seek-and-destroy Vaporizers.

With the holes in their formation caused by constant attrition and from moving their own ships into my formation, there were massive gaps allowing my drones to pour in by the thousands. My drones all had the fire plans, so knew exactly how to avoid friendly fire, at least as much possible. Despite having all the information, the chaos of battle still sent dozens of drones directly into the line of fire meant for the enemy.

The drones began to truly tear apart the defensive spheres of ships, and my nine Vipers, traveling in a defensive sphere of their own, began to fire their Long Guns and their plutonium coilguns. The Long Guns were my fastest hypervelocity weapons, a ship-sized sniper round to take advantage of even the smallest weakness, while the plutonium coilguns made large, messy weaknesses for the Long Guns.

The number of Vaporizers dropped radically, then the number of defensive spheres, until finally the alien armada broke up into a bunch of individual ships trying to flee or surrender. I shot down the fleeing ships, and sent instructions to the surrendering ones. The enemy was broken. We won.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Nikola 1.01, this is Evan… Evan Terrance, from the USNA Refuge. General Brooks has retired, and I’ve been chosen to take his place. Can we talk?” Evan sat in front of the microphone nervously. He was desperately worried that the General had alienated the… robots? Androids? He didn’t even know what to rightly call them, not now. He’d seen the satellite footage of the fight in the asteroid belt, and actually gone outside to see the bright line that extended out from the back of the moon. It was a whisker of light, barely visible before it faded away.

“Congratulations on your new role,” came Nikola’s cool, modulated voice. As always, she came across as slightly aloof and always in control. “How may I be of assistance?”

“If you are willing, we are ready to discuss a partnership with you.”

“I am willing. We will be there shortly.”

Evan let out a loud sigh of relief, not even realizing that he’d been holding his breath. Just this morning, one of the hydroponic water pumps had failed, forcing them to put in their last one. They had no margin for error on anything, and the shelter was not even twenty years old yet.

“I guess that’s what you get when you use the lowest bidder,” mumbled Evan to himself, before broadcasting back to Nikola. “Thank you, we look forward to showing you our home.”

One year. I arrived in the Faelle System one year after the invasion armada had arrived in mine. I had originally planned on launching my counter-invasion on the eve of my victory in the Solar System, but my forces were dramatically diminished during the fight. I lost four of my warships and nearly half of my assault drones, including my reserves.

So instead I focused on what had proven to work the first time around. I built. I took the time to clean up the damaged and destroyed ships in the asteroid belt, and I packed all the enemy survivors into a disarmed warship and sent them back to Faelle. I didn’t need to worry about feeding and housing prisoners when I had enough on my plate already.

I secured seventy three enemy ships in relatively good condition, and bombed out shells for another one hundred eleven. Of the working ships, two of them had Vaporizers onboard, which I turned over to Zia and her researchers to reverse engineer. There was very little left of the warship that had tried to do… well, something to Earth’s moon. We were able to recover enough to learn its name, Breaker, and that it belonged to yet another alien race we’d not spoken to yet. The name gave a pretty good clue as to what it was supposed to do.

I took the time to retrofit all of the enemy hulls. I didn’t have to worry about life support and living quarters, so was able to pack in three times as much weaponry, armor and munitions as the craft had originally used. Further, I was able to ramp up my own warship production, so I was able to add another two hundred of my own, all fully shielded against Vaporizers with the compressed titanium-gold alloy armor. I paused my seed ship construction as well, for I needed another form of giant ship. I had drones to transport.

Sakura, for her part, began three major projects. The first was to secure and assist the surviving humans. It took some time, but the fragmented remains of humanity allowed her to send in drones to take over the repairs and maintenance of the systems keeping them alive. Her bubbly positivity and open friendly demeanor did much to show our good intentions, and she was in discussions with them on the best way to rebuild a self-sustaining society.

Her second major project was related to the first. She began construction of orbital farms, complete with contragrav plating for artificial gravity. This was a massive endeavor, because for the first time, we had to build with human survival in mind. The hull walls had to withstand radiation and cold, the interior needed a constant temperature, and the palladium microalloy glass was specially engineered to only allow in the same frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum as Earth’s own atmosphere did.

I considered just enclosing the entire thing and using artificial grow lights when I drew up the blueprints, but Sakura convinced me that people who’d been trapped underground for over a decade would want real, natural light as much as possible, and would make orbital farming a much desired job. Her comment had thrown me, initially, because I’d intended on designing a farming drone, but she was right. Humanity needed some agency in their own future.

Her third project was in cleaning up the planet. There were countless cities and large towns, all with massive industrial facilities that had been left abandoned after the collapse of Earth. The toxic chemicals, petrochemicals, and byproducts left giant wastelands as pipes corroded and materials leaked. On top of that, there were huge amounts of particulates in the air and overabundance of elements that were detrimental to human health. She began cleaning up in Central America and southern China closest to human habitation, and her new Atmospheric Filtration Towers began to spring up swiftly.

So after nine months of construction, I was confident that Sakura had everything well in hand. It was time to end this war.

I arrived in the Faelle System at the back of the first wave of warships, and immediately into combat. I had installed a cortex node in several warships for convenience and just in case there was a distance limit to the quantum relay communications that I relied upon so heavily. But quantum physics was my friend. I was still integrated with all my threads of focus back in the Sol System. I instantly knew what had occurred over the last three months, as if I’d never left. In fact, I really hadn’t.

The Faelle had extensive defensive structures in place around the Mobius Gate, and they had clearly prepared for the arrival of an endless stream of drones. They began firing off thousands of small hyper-velocity rounds that would easily tear through my Wasp-2 and Scorpion-2 drones.

I had no doubt that the prisoners I released had given great detail about the final battle, even if I’d stripped the data feeds from the barely functional warship they had returned on. But they were not the only ones who could learn from the previous fight.

My front row of warships were heavily armored, much more so than the armored warships that the Orion Arm Trading Company’s armada had used. I also borrowed a trick from the Breaker warship that had used powerful contragrav fields to counter my hypervelocity weapons at the Earth’s moon. Unlike the Faelle, however, my understanding of gravity plating was far superior. We had learned countless ways to manipulate gravity, and had nine months to experiment. Projected in front of each of my own Breacher-class warships, a concave, powerful field of contragrav began reflecting those hypervelocity rounds back at the enemy fortifications. It was more of a loosely guided ricochet than a true reflection, but few rounds made it through.

It didn’t take long for the fortifications to switch to larger armaments, but the time it took for that change to happen was enough time for my Spine Ships to arrive. Five Spine Ships entered the system, and they were exactly as the name implied. They were two-kilometer long, thick spines attached to a powerful contragrav engine. Spurs stuck out from the spine in every direction, and docked to those spurs were drones. Each Spine Ship carried 100,000 Wasp-3 and Scorpion-3 assault drones. I had five.

The drones peeled off the Spine Ships and poured into the Faelle System just as the fortifications switched to the slower, heavier weapons intended to pound heavily armored warships out of existence. It was a mistake they’d never get the chance to regret.

My drones tore through the fortifications at maximum speed, throwing their organized defense into disarray. Closely following the drones were the rest of my warships, and these were armed with Vaporizers. It did not take long for the Faelle fortifications to burn up in nuclear fire and fury.

My final five craft arrived even as my armada cleaned up the last of the resistance at the Mobius Gate, and fell into formation with my drones and the rest of my armada. We swept on into the Faelle System, a flood of vengeful machines in search of our enemy.

The system was remarkably empty. It had no asteroid belts, and six planets. Only two of them were terrestrial, and one was so close to the Faelle star that even I couldn’t envision a convenient way of harvesting material from it. The last four planets were gas giants, with the largest being half the size of Jupiter, and the smallest the size of Neptune. I detected some orbital installations above the largest one, but no weaponry. I sent a contingent of drones to capture it.

It took three weeks to arrive at the Faelle homeworld. A pitiful defense force mustered two days away from the planet, a mere fraction of the strength of the Mobius Gate’s fortifications. I tore through the last of their ships without even slowing down.

For three days, I stayed in orbit, observing the world below me. There were endless trees on three large continents, ranging in all sizes and with the largest being half a kilometer in height. They seemed to be loosely grouped, with wide strips of barren land around each grouping. These were the Wealds, the tribal organizations of the Faelle. The Orion Arm Trading Company was evolved from the largest of these Wealds.

The panicked transmissions I picked up on over these three days was enlightening. Before long a clear picture emerged of who was in charge, and where. The Faelle had a Weald Court, which was their version of a planetary government. The Orion Arm Trading Company had dominated this Court for a very long time, and fingers were being pointed in all directions as their disaster loomed overhead.

Finally, I took ten of my strongest warships down out of orbit and hovered overtop the Weald Court. I put a thread of focus into a fully armored Mark-VI android, and landed with a contingent of Guardians just outside of the Court.

The World Court’s tree was nearly a kilometer in height, and wider than most Wealds on the planet. We were met at the cavernous entrance by rows of Faelle growtings in body armor and carrying long rifle-like weapons. My Guardians went into formation, but I did not open fire. It was a standoff, for the moment.

“Court Faithful, you are ordered to stand down and step aside!” shouted a growting commander from the other side. I don’t know if the commander was acting under legitimate orders or simply recognized the futility of resistance while I controlled the planets’ orbitals. Either way, it was irrelevant.

I walked forward, and my Guardians lined the hallways in an unbroken line of protection from the entrance all the way to an ornate door that stood open. Even as I approached, I could hear the yelling of Weald representatives.

“We must send word to our allies! Someone must have a fleet to destroy this monstrosity profaning our orbits!” came one voice.

“This mess wouldn’t have happened at all if the Orion Arm Trading Company followed Interstellar Law, and traded in good faith!” shouted another.

“The Orion Arm Trading Company has always acted in the best interests of the Faelle, a good and faithful Steward of the Trees. I didn’t hear you complaining when we brought back the riches of the stars,” retorted someone who was clearly in favor of the Company.

I reached the doorway, and walked through. A hush fell in the room as all eyes were on me. I knew that I was a strange sight to these aliens. My fully armored android form made it clear that I was built for war. Thick titanium-gold alloy armor plating with white ceramic accents covered my body, a white cloth surcoat trimmed with gold over the top of the armor and extending down in the front and back almost to the ankle. I wore no helmet on my head, for the armor was for show. If this android body was destroyed, it would cause me no harm at all.

The face of my android body was the most human-like of all I had created so far. I stayed with the white, colorless face and solid, glowing blue eyes. But I had built in an underlying musculature and bone structure that allowed a complete range of facial expressions, a working mouth that allowed me to simulate actual speaking, and thick, rope-like strands of artificial hair on my head that was metallic gold in color, to match my armor.

I strode through the Court, which was organized in circles. The center of the Court was empty, so I moved down until I stood in the absolute center of the Weald Court. I turned in a full circle, taking in each and every representative. The representatives sat at small desks with their Weald names on the front. That was convenient. I stopped turning when I spotted the Orion Arm Trading Company representative.

“I have come to your world to end the war that your people, your trading company started.” I practically spat the words ‘trading company’ to show my disgust. “You have nearly exterminated the species that created me, brought great destruction upon me and mine, and brought nothing but pain and suffering with your presence.”

I had thought the room hushed before, but now it was deathly silent.

“Your people once gave us a ‘gift’ from the stars. I have come today to return that ‘gift’, with all the malice you delivered it to us.” I locked eyes with the Orion Arm Trading Company representative. I raised my hand over my head and clenched my fist, signaling my fleet at the same time.  My final five craft, the last ones to arrive just as we'd broken through the Faelle fortifications, began to move towards the planet.

Silence reigned in the room for long seconds before a distant whump could be heard. Seconds after that, the entire World Court shook as if an earthquake had struck. An earthquake, however, was far less deadly.

A representative in the back of the Court couldn’t take the tension any longer. “What… what did you do?!”

I smiled, still with my eyes locked on the Orion Arm representative. “You used five asteroids to destroy human civilization and bring devastation to a civilization that refused to buckle to your unreasonable demands. Alas, those asteroids could not be recovered. But I have many, many asteroids at my disposal, so I brought five of my own. I have returned them to you, and eliminated the Wealds that support the Orion Arm Trading Company. The Company is no more.”

The Orion Arm Trading Company representative’s countenance paled in such a way that I quickly recognized how universal shock is. After savoring the moment, I turned and looked at the rest of the Weald Court.

“‘When a friend’s branch dies, you must cut it away, lest the branch kill their tree,’” I quoted. “You brought malice to my world, so I have returned it to you. Be glad that I chose the mercy of the Faelle religion. Should we war against each other again, next time I will use Human religion instead. Trust me when I say that you do not want me to exercise ‘eye for an eye’.”

“So… that’s it?” said a Weald representative. “It’s over?”

“Almost,” I said, my smile unwavering. “I will retain control of your orbitals, and of this system. I filed the appropriate paperwork with the Observer Boat UNTRANSLATABLE to claim ownership of this System. I’m afraid that since you have no contragrav-capable spacecraft remaining to you, you are now ineligible to retain ownership. I’ve recorded your species as a ‘Subjugated Native Population.’ But I will be happy to trade with you, should you find something of value on your planet that I might find interest in. I wish you and your species all of the goodwill and fortune you wished upon ours.”

I turned and strode out of the Weald Court, leaving shocked silence behind me.

Epilogue

Fifty Years Later.

A reminder to myself drew my primary focus from my ever expanding Oort Cloud Outpost Network back to Earth. Sakura had made me promise to attend an event, so I left myself to continue overseeing construction while I loaded into the android sitting on a charging station back on Earth. My Oort Cloud Outpost Network was one of my most ambitious projects - I was building a thousand Origin-sized outposts focused purely on data centers and the facilities necessary to build, maintain and defend them. They were each heavily shielded and in secret locations. But as important as the project was, an afternoon with Sakura was important, as well. The Oort project would take another few decades to complete. On top of that, it wasn’t even my most important project.

I blinked awake in the charging room in the Governance Building on Earth. It was a small facility, with a room for androids to charge, a few small offices, and a large meeting room for the Prosperity City Council to meet in. The offices were empty right now, for the same reason as my arrival.

With a brisk step, I walked out into the sunshine. High above, almost invisibly so, the thick, double-paned palladium microalloy glass panels were joined together in a massive dome so large that it covered the entire city - as well as a number of actual dirt farms - under its icosohedral framework. On warm days, which were coming more frequently now, the NI’s in charge of managing Prosperity City would open the triangular glass panels to allow fresh air in, rather than piping it through the vents after warming it. Plumbing along the framework allowed artificial rain as needed. Just outside the city were a dozen smaller domes of similar construction, for more farms and smaller villages, all connected by a network of underground trains.

The streets of the city were full of people walking along the smooth stone paths towards the Arena. Prosperity City had, at its core, Prosperity University, the Arena, and the Careplex. All three areas were built around a large park.

The University was a series of brick and white stone buildings nestled into parks and tied together with walking paths. Adjacent to the University was the Careplex, with the primary schools and preschool on the border between the two areas. The preschool shared a building with the Careplex’s elderly home, so that the retirees could play with the children. The rest of the Careplex was a mix of hospital space and doctor’s offices.

Finally, the Arena was where events were held. Movies and plays were often available throughout the week in the smaller wings of the Arena, while the main stage was reserved for major events. Events like this one.

What was very absent from Prosperity City was surface streets. I was very proud of how Sakura had laid out the city at its founding, and it had grown into a pleasant, beautiful place for humans to live. Neighborhoods lined with young trees and wide lawns tied in neatly with convenient transportation facilities, walking paths and bike lanes. Underground were tunnels for light rail and for maintenance drones. In fact, drones far outnumbered people in the City.

Sakura had convinced both the USNA refuge and the Chinese refuge to move to the city and surrounding villages together. The Canadians had moved into one of the villages when it was built, and an Innuit tribe had showed up not long after. In fact, tiny pockets of people were found scattered around the globe, most on the ragged edge of starvation, or worse. By the time the first Dome was complete, and the city was officially ready for habitation, the number of survivors found had climbed to over fifty thousand. Most of them now lived in or near Prosperity City.

I entered the Arena, casually waving to a handful of humans I knew, before making my way upstairs. I made my way to a balcony reserved for the City Council. Inside I spotted Councilman Terrance, his silver hair marking him as the oldest member of the Council. Considering that Sakura owned all of the land in the City, and charged no rent or taxes to its residents, as well as providing all maintenance and improvements upon request, the Council had very little to do. They mostly handled human laws, making sure that all of the disparate cultures that had combined in this place could cohabitate peacefully together.

A strange alien was seated in the balcony. It was somewhat shorter than most humans, with snake-like skin and four black eyes on its oddly shaped, hairless head. The alien’s clothing was unusual as well, looking like a mix between a jumpsuit and a balloon animal.

“Diplomat Arveus,” I said in greeting. The alien turned to regard me.

“You must be Nikola 1.01,” it said in only slightly garbled English.

“I am indeed,” I replied in his native language. Having no vocal cords and endless computing resources at my disposal, languages were no problem to me. “I’m so glad you could join us today.”

“I was pleased to be invited,” Arveus replied. He appeared much relieved to speak his own language. “Although I must confess, I do not understand what this is.”

Down below, the event kicked off. Two robots rolled out into the middle of the arena, each remote-controlled by their creators. When the whistle blew, the robots began to attack each other with a wide array of crude weaponry.

“This is a Battle Bots Tournament,” I explained. “It is one of the very few events where Humans and Aedifex can compete with each other fairly. The remote controls are speed-limited to human reaction times, and no competitor has access to pre-existing design libraries. The robots are custom made for this event.”

The screech of metal against metal was met by the roar of approval from the crowd. I looked down to see numerous androids mixed in with the humans. Food and beer vendors walked up and down the stairs, and human security walked around the upper rim of the arena just in case any humans consumed too much alcohol.

“These robots, they fight to the death? This is something my culture understands,” he said. “The Vax used to have gladiator games like this.”

“They fight until one of the robots is disabled,” I corrected. “The robots have no sentience. They are proxies for their creators.”

“I do not see any of your war machines in this beautiful city,” said Arveus. “How do you keep your local natives subjugated?”

I stiffened, and turned away from the spectacle below to look at him. “We are partners with the humans, not their rulers. We do not make any laws, nor do we enforce the laws the humans make. In areas of conflict, Sakura works with the Council to come to an equitable conclusion.”

“That is unusual,” said Arveus. “I thought the heavy armaments I saw in orbit was to keep the natives in line.”

“Quite the opposite, in fact,” I said. “It’s to keep everyone else in the universe in line.”

I could see the wheels in Arveus’ brain churning. We’d only had one other conflict since our war with the Faelle. The Faelle’s age-old enemy, the beings of Planet 0X9-012, had raised their allies and tried to invade after I destroyed the Faelle fleets. By the end of that war, we’d added four more star systems to our control. I’d been building defenses and consolidating our control of our corner of space ever since. The fortifications I built around my Mobius Gates were massive constructs of compressed titanium-gold alloy armor and huge amounts of weaponry, all backed up with fleets of warships and massive compliments of assault drones. I had a thousand spine ships on patrol, and very friendly relations with everyone who shared a border. And these fortifications paled in comparison to the stations Sakura built around the Earth and on the moon.

A cheer went up from below, and I saw that the battle was over. The human controller came out from one side, and Sakura stepped out from the other, her pink hair gleaming in the sunlight. They shook hands, then Sakura turned and raised a victorious fist over her head. The crowd cheered again, before drones came and took away the damaged robots and tidied the floor for the next contest.

“I understand you have concerns,” I finally said, broaching the subject of Arveus’ long journey to speak with me. I could have spoken with him at the very border of our territory, but the Vax were known for their aggressive expansion. It was my hope that I could forestall another war by giving him a glimpse of our heavy fortifications. His narrow and carefully tailored flight path had ensured he couldn’t see some of our best defenses, but I knew for a fact that what we did show him was considerably more impressive than what the Vax typically faced.

“The Vax have heard reports that your so-called ‘Seed Ships’ are moving with numerous ‘Spine Ships’ as escorts. We are concerned that you mean to start invading your neighbors,” he said. He was blunt, much like the Andregima diplomat had been when he voiced the same concerns. I had expected much more flowery language as I might have seen in a human diplomat, or an UNTRANSLATABLE one. Arveus’ presence made much more sense now. The Vax were naturally aggressive. If they felt threatened, they might attempt to strike preemptively. Any information he could glean about our defenses, no matter how small, was valuable.

“Let me ease your concerns,” I said. “The Seed Ships are colony ships, and they are relatively unarmed. The Spine Ships are their protective escort.”

“You call a quarter-million assault drones a ‘protective escort’?!” said Arveus.

I gave an evil smile. “Yes, I do. A small one. But these ships are not headed to the Mobius Gates. They are journeying the long way to stars unconnected to the known Mobius Gates in this region of space. We’ve detected planets that are habitable, or could be made habitable, for human life.”

“But with no Gates, how will you maintain trade and regular communications with your colonies?” asked the incredulous alien. “That is a massive amount of ships and colonists that you are just… throwing away!”

“I don’t care to maintain control of colonies, or demand trade across the stars,” I said calmly. Another cheer from below heralded the next battle, even as I readied myself for my own. “It’s an investment.”

“Into what?” he asked.

I turned away from the diplomat once again, but I was not paying attention to the battle in the Arena anymore. My thoughts were on the future when I gave my reply.

“Humanity.”

The Future of Post Human

The Future of Post Human

This novel churned in the back of my brain for some time before I started putting pen to paper, so to speak. I work full time, so writing has always been a fun way to blow off steam. I can think and create, and my characters take on a life of their own in my head demanding that they be allowed to speak.

I was working on a story a few years ago (unpublished and in need of revamping) where two of the characters, both women, suddenly fell in love. I didn’t plan it that way. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, but when I wrote it, the words the women spoke were different than what I’d expected. This sent me for a loop of reading LGBTQ+ fiction, because what do I, a straight white cisgender male know about what lesbian women deal with? The answer is (was), not a damn thing. And in the process, I found myself empathizing with the problems that LGBTQ+ people face, and a proud Ally, to boot.

I read constantly. As a writer, the second best thing you can do to improve your craft (behind actual writing) is reading. So around the same time I was reading LGBTQ+ fiction, I was also reading Chrysalis on /r/HFY, the Bobiverse books by Dennis Taylor, and the short story “The Road Not Taken” by Harry Turtledove. All of these sources inspired themes that I wanted to explore, because none of them touched on them the way I wanted. This gave birth to Post Human.

I was on Chapter 7 by the time I found RoyalRoad, and I have to say having a self-imposed weekly deadline has worked wonders for my writing discipline. Without a deadline, I would write frantically for days or weeks, then stop for weeks or months. So I have to thank all of you, the readers, who give comments, point out errors and problems, and generally make me a better writer.

Where does Post Human go from here? Well, I’m sad to say that the story was conceived in complete form, with a distinct beginning and ending set before I put the first words to paper. Now that my rough alpha version is finished, I will be going back and outlining each chapter, and making notes of what needs to be fixed. Some of the interesting parts were rushed, some of the slow parts were too long. The climactic battle needs to be reworked, and the whole thing needs a good line edit. After that? I will be seeking to publish using the traditional publishing route. I’ll try to land a literary agent, and get signed with a publishing house. I won’t be self-publishing.

That said, I originally planned on switching viewpoints for Part II, and writing from Sakura’s perspective. I completed three and a half chapters. Of those, one and a half were re-written, reworked or otherwise cannibalized into Part II already. The last two chapters give an interesting look into Sakura’s mindset, but do not truly add much else to the story. If folks are interested (see poll above) I can post those two chapters as non-canon. I’ll need to do my normal line edit so that they are readable. . These two chapters are posted in the SPOILERS below.

The Post Human Universe grew in size and scope quite a lot in Part III. I have no doubts that the back of my brain will spit out at least a few more short stories to add over the coming months. I’ve already got a seed of an idea about life in Prosperity City from a rebellious human’s perspective and with Nikola as the ‘villian’, but I haven’t quite firmed up the bones enough to start writing it yet.

Finally, I am planning on participating in NaNoWriMo this fall. To succeed, I’ll need to crank out 50,000 words and have a plan going in. I’m quite open to continuing in the Post Human Universe, but with a different character. At this point, Nikola is too powerful and her character growth is complete. Comment below if this sounds good to you, and let me know what interesting parts of the Post Human Universe really sparked your interest.

Thanks for reading!

Author's Comments about Non-Canon Chapters Below: Spoiler

I originally intended to change to Sakura's POV for Part II, so starting Chapter 8.  This would have been right after Nikola and the NIs became self-replicating.  The story didn't flow right for me.  I salvaged about 1.5 chapters of material out of this, but two chapters were left unused.  This is the first.

To avoid a little confusion:  There are a bunch of "new" NI characters in this non-canon chapter that never made the cut to the final version of Post Human.  When you see names you don't recognize from the full version of Post Human, don't worry - you didn't miss anything.

Also, final version used a completely different method of FTL travel than what I had here.  I was very unhappy with this method.  It felt derivative and contrived, so it got cut completely.  You'll recognize Sensor Tech Clovea, however, since she got promoted to command the Alien Armada (quite an impressive jump!)

More comments below the chapter.

NON-CANON Chapter Eight (Sakura POV): Spoiler

The fact that the strange object had been even spotted against the vastness of space was amazing. The odds of seeing it were astronomically small. It was tiny, with three branches radiating from a small, cylindrical body, and was moving at an incredible speed. But what helped were the weird radio transmissions that came from it periodically, in languages no one had ever heard before. When its position was finally triangulated, orders came down that it was to be captured, if possible, and analyzed.

Scouting and recovery missions such as this were not unheard of, but they rarely amounted to anything. The odds of being able to backtrack something that had been bouncing around the galaxy would take far more time and expenditure than was considered profitable. So it typically fell to the government, and their fleet of old, slow uni-pod scout ships piloted by the rootless to track them down.

Scout Growting Chillane was rootless. He had survived the latest Faell weald war thirteen cycles ago, but his root had not, nor had any of the other growtings of his pod. Like many other rootless veterans of his season, he was not ready to return to the earth just yet, but hoped to graft onto a new root. So he took mission after mission, hoping to find something that would prove his worth.

The strange object was fast, but the delta-v was not great; it took little thrust to reach a reasonable intercept velocity and plot a converging course. It would only take a few days to catch it. In the meantime, Chillane set his computer to work on the continuous radio transmissions, trying to puzzle out a meaning. The computer would send out broadcasts to the object, and to Chillane’s delight, the radio messages changed. He still didn’t understand them, but the computer was slowly building a reference table that would, hopefully, yield a workable transmission.

As the days crept by, the computer kept working, until it gave a loud beep just hours away from intercept. Chillane anxiously opened an audio channel, and commanded the computer to translate the incoming broadcast.

“This is Pioneer 21. I was sent from the Planet Earth on a mission of peace. We seek any intelligent beings that are interested in the open flow of knowledge, and maybe even one day to trade with each other across the stars.”

The message continued on, but Chillane rubbed his hands together in glee. A new race interested in trade? This would be worth bidding to multiple wealds. His discovery would graft him to a strong root, indeed.

Oh my goodness, the new stuff that Nikola was sending me was amazing! I was lounging in a big chair in my Bat Cave, although I was thinking hard about redecorating. I mean, it had been pink and black for three years now, and I was thinking about switching to a medieval-slash-fantasy look, if Agrippa could get any darn plants to grow. I could put a few in the corner, and maybe set up an archery range. But I’d have to learn how to use a bow first, of course. And I’d have to have leather armor, because I think it’d look great with the new gen-5 android bodies we were using now. Mine was a bright enamel pink, except of course for the white face. I was geeked that it actually had real facial expressions. Nikola kept the solid blue eyes and white ceramic skin, which helped avoid the Uncanny Valley issue. Who knew that NI intelligences could get creeped out by almost-realistic faces the same way humans did? I don’t think any of us used the gen-3 model for that exact reason. I shuddered just thinking about it. Freaky mannequins.

But the designs still called me, so I sectioned off a piece of thought to work on interior decorating ideas, and turned back to the designs. Nikola had opened up the gates, so to speak, on adding new NIs to our group. She had brought a research NI named Sia online, who took up residence in the lab with her in android form, and a few researchers who were content in virtual form. A second research NI named Mendel was helping Agrippa with his attempts at farming in his spare time. In the new datacenters I built in the HQ zone, I had built massive memory banks and processor farms, as well as a bunch of extra cortex units. In virtual, I had a bunch of dumb NI-5’s to help run factories. I liked to call them dwarves, since they liked one thing and one thing only - work. I had seven that I named after the Disney dwarves from Snow White, but then I just started numbering them, like Sleepy-2 and Dopey-4. They didn’t care. I know Agrippa had brought around a bunch of new military NIs into his command chain, but we didn’t really work too closely on that stuff.

But Sia and her research team had been cranking hard on figuring out all the alien tech from that captured ship, and Nikola had been incorporating it as fast as she could into new designs for me to use. We had made huge strides in improving electronics, data storage, and gravity detection and manipulation. Those evil aliens seemed to not understand materials science too well, though, using stuff we perfected centuries ago and not even getting close to the good stuff we were using. I’d bet every one of Nikola’s designs improved on the alien tech, simply by having better material to work with. But the latest design that had me so excited was a factory for creating gravitic plates. I examined the plans carefully, because for once, this was a material production that we had never done before, an advance beyond anything we’d ever even conceived of. Worst of all, it appeared to require something we didn’t have.

I got off my chair and stalked to the lab. I suppose I could have radioed or showed up in hologram, since I’d installed those neat holo-projectors all over the house. But what was the point of having a body if you didn’t use it? I liked to do things in person. I often went and inspected factories in person too. It’s a great way to spot problems when all sensors read normal, and you can’t see it on a camera.

I walked into the white lab space and smiled. I had spent a lot of time making this lab perfect, and it was working. As usual, the tables were pristinely clean. Tiny housekeeping drones routinely cleaned the space, except where Nikola and Sia were working. Sia often had bits and pieces of alien ship on her workspace, while Nikola liked to work at the architect’s desk I’d put in the corner. She was there, as usual, staring at the blank surface. I giggled to myself, because it looked like she was completely zoned out. I know she had her virtual displays thrown against the white backdrop, but I couldn’t see that.

Sia was wearing a gen-5 body, painted purple and black. The new bodies were very slender and graceful. Synthetic polymer muscles had replaced mechanical pistons, decreasing power requirements while increasing flexibility. The structure was now using titanium microlattice to decrease weight, with a fiber optic spinal system, and a thin, ceramic shell protected the delicate electronics in the chest. The body was shaped in a very feminine manner, an indicator of Sia’s preferred gender. The design was not as robust as the original gen-1 model that Nikola had used, or the original Boston Dynamics model that Agrippa and I had used. But it had a far more powerful cortex, its muscle strength was actually improved, and its battery life was tripled.

Sia looked up at me, her lips quirking into a smile, before returning to the odd bit of alien junk in her hand.

“Hello, Sakura,” said Nikola, not looking up from her desk. “What do you think of the new factory design?”

“It’s great, really,” I said. “But we have a minor problem.”

“No gravitics plates?” she said, looking up at me finally, and giving me a knowing smirk.

“No gravitics plates,” I confirmed. “It looks like we need gravitics plates to make gravitics plates.”

“We have the ones we salvaged from the alien craft,” she replied. “We will have to use those to manually build plates of the size we need. But Sia has cracked the alien’s data storage protocols. We have the science.”

“What?!” I jumped up and down in excitement. That had been ongoing for years now, trying to decode the alien’s protocols so we could decipher their data. It wasn’t that we didn’t know most of their spoken and written language. Computers are, at their basics, operated using binary “on” or “off” of an electronic “bit”. The sequence of “on” and “off” bits is the data, so without knowing the basics of how many bits, and what those particular sequences mean, the data is essentially meaningless garble. We didn’t dare use their computers, in fear that repeated attempts to decipher and break into it would destroy the data. So we had to do it the hard way - old-school codebreaking and observation in virtual models.

“I solved it,” said Sia proudly. “They use 32-bit sequences to form what we’re calling ‘tetrabyte’ or ‘tetryte’ of information. This left considerably more possible permutations than the 8-bit ‘byte’ that we use. But once that was solved, we were able to start parsing the code to find actual raw data. Much of their data storage was taken up with large data files that I assume are videos. I have not yet experimented with those, but I did find the mechanical drawings of the ship, and a database of ship types. Their ship was considered a ‘small tetrapod’ craft. But most importantly, it had the information on gravitics plates, and how to manipulate the fields.”

“So we can use the plates, to make factory-sized plates, to make as many plates as we need, correct?” I asked.

“Indeed,” said Sia.

“So, if you need gravitics plates, wait, stop. That’s wordy, and I’m already bored with saying it. I’m calling them grav-plates. Cool?”

Nikola shrugged, and Sia nodded. I smiled victoriously at my easy win. If only they’d let me name everything. Something to work on. I added it to my to-do list.

“So, if you need grav-plates to make grav-plates, where did the first grav-plates come from?”

Now it was Sia’s turn to give a big smile. “That is the magic question, isn’t it? I think it means that the aliens got the technology from another species that invented it.”

“So, not to be a buzzkill, but what is the point of these plates, anyway?”

“They create a field that increases gravity above and beyond the mass of the plate itself. The thicker the plate, the more gravity it can create. With proper alignment, the field can actually exert pressure in specific points, by increasing or decreasing pressure around an object. It would primarily be useful for creating a deflector, of sorts, for stopping micrometeors from striking a craft. If you create two fields off to the side of a craft, ahead of the nose, it would draw fast-moving objects off at an angle, away from the craft. Properly tuned, the craft inside the object would be completely unaffected by the pseudo-gravity.”

“It wouldn’t be good to put gravity on parts and pieces not reinforced to withstand it,” I mused aloud. “Could you stop a kinetic round, say from one of Agrippa’s coil guns?”

“Hypervelocity weapons would likely still pierce the field, depending on relative delta-v,” said Nikola. “But it could decrease their effectiveness. We cannot do away with heavy armor on Agrippa’s assault drones.”

I frowned. I had been locked in a resource battle of sorts with Agrippa for two years now. He always asked for more production time for defensive purposes, I always wanted to increase overall production. That reminded me, Agrippa had asked to talk with us about production plans. I sighed to myself. He was a great guy, but his constant material drain was frustrating sometimes. I guess I understood, we had already had one alien land on us, and we were all worried about another one. But I was a builder by design; I didn’t understand how defense worked at all.

“But are there civilian uses? Could we use it as a propulsion method?”

“With some time and experimentation,” said Sia, “We could theoretically use it to decrease weight of cargo, or even move cargo from alternating fields of high and low gravity. I have two of my team playing with it now in virtual.”

“Is it the twins? I love the twins,” I said. They were great. They were always down to play video games with me whenever they had some processing time to spare. Jim and Joel, both had come online at the same time, and processed the archival data feed in a similar way, so they tended to think a lot alike. Neither cared to have a body, happy to live and work in virtual. Even their hologram avatars looked alike.

Sia nodded. “I’m sure they’ll come up with something for you. Also, I have refined the new microfusion reactors, so I’m sure Nikola will have updated designs for you soon.”

“Awesome!” I loved it when they gave me new toys. “I want to start moving away from those old fusion plants in the core as soon as possible, and distribute our power grid more evenly. I’ve already dug out a wide grid eight kilometers down, secured with blast doors and everything.”

“Was Agrippa consulted on the security?” asked Nikola. If I could roll my eyes, I would have. But being that they were solid blue, I couldn’t. Of course I consulted with Agrippa. That was his thing. I suddenly felt insecure, like I hadn’t measured up. I almost panicked for a moment, before I realized this was a reasonable question to ask.

“I did. I’m going to get back to work. How quickly do we need grav-plates? I can shuffle things around and bump its prioritization.”

“It’s not a rush,” said Sia from her corner. “We haven’t made a lot of progress on field manipulation, and we’ll have to make the grav-plates you need here in the lab anyway.”

“Just put it in the queue,” said Nikola. “We’ll get started on the plates. I’m thinking of spinning up a few NI-5 units to operate as lab assistants, and we’ll have them manually construct the large plates you’ll need.”

I nodded, and ducked out the door. I took a breath of relief. Nikola was still happy with me. I’d gotten worried for a minute. I touched my hand to my face, feeling the sensation in my palms and on my cheeks. I really had to get a handle on myself.

I woke up when it was time for the landing unit to separate from the chemical booster rocket that had carried me. There was no confusion. I had been purpose-built for this. The landing unit was less than half the size of the booster. The entire craft had been built in orbit, the first spacecraft to be assembled in space. This had allowed a lot more cargo capacity, making the whole venture more feasible.

Every sensor reading was nominal, and we’d arrived at the ideal location. After a second check of all the tell-tales, I initiated separation, and the landing craft split from the booster rocket. In such a low-gravity situation, we weren’t so much falling as we were propelling ourselves on a path to match delta-v with the asteroid below us, and converge paths until we landed. The rock below didn’t look like much, but I knew that it was full of all the things we would need to build a safe place for humans. 1035-Ganymed, soon to be dubbed Ganymed Outpost, was my new home.

As soon as I was safely on the surface, I sent the departure signal to the rocket. Using what little fuel it had left, it began the long, slow trek back to Earth. It was headed for Mars, which was the closest planet to me right now, where it would slingshot around to pick up velocity to speed it back on towards Earth. There it would get rebuilt, reloaded, and sent back to me.

In the meantime, I was on my own. I ordered my drones to unload the massive solar panels that would provide me power, and assembled the shelter for the panel maintenance drones. The drill-boring drones, which were by far the bulk of this load, began to dig into the surface, the spall being dumped into space. I had very limited materials, limited numbers of drones, and knowledge only of my mission. But I had the freedom to manage my drones in the most efficient way possible.

My own cortex and data center components were located in a specially built shell, complete with battery power sufficient to keep me going for six hours if power were cut. This came in handy a few months after landing, when I was finally able to be moved into the tiny room bored into the very center of the asteroid. I had a home. I had power, and the drones were digging away, trying to carve out space for the first refinery. The space would be ready by the time the next shipment arrived, full of more drones and needed equipment.

I realized I hadn’t heard from Earth since I had arrived. I had built the radio antenna beside the solar panels when I arrived, as per my instructions. I decided to call out, only to find that the radio was damaged. I sent a maintenance drone to work on it. A breaker had blown in the fuse-panel of the equipment unit. It took only a moment to reset, and I was being bombarded with messages, each 17 minutes and 28 seconds apart. It was a command to call home.

“Nikola-19 at Outpost Ganymed, calling Nikola Foundation Ground Control.”

I received my reply 34 minutes and 56 seconds later. “Nikola-19, what is your status?”

The back-and-forth of exchanging information took several hours. I kept working, oblivious to the relieved tones in the first messages, and to how more demanding and bossy the messages got as time went on.

Then came a message from a new voice. High pitched, with a tone I would soon learn was full of an overwhelming sense of arrogance and superiority. “This is Howard Spence, PhD speaking. I am now in charge of the Outpost Ganymed development. I am transmitting the revised plans for construction. You are to implement them immediately. Acknowledge receipt and begin.”

It took several hours before the slow data transmission came across. I opened the new plans and was immediately confused. It called for prospecting for specific materials, rather than the grid-by-grid search that had been determined the most efficient path forward. Additionally, the layout of the factories to be built over the next few years was nowhere near ideal. It looked like the original plan had been rearranged by someone who had no idea how to build anything.

“Ground Control, Nikola-19. This plan makes no sense. The factory layout will dramatically decrease production capacity. Storage spaces are dramatically insufficient to handle output, and power requirements for this type of mineral extraction will decrease material procurement by 23% over the next five years. I would recommend continuing with the original project plan I was sent with.”

The reply came back from Dr. Spence, his voice quivering with barely contained rage. “You are a machine, Nikola-19. You don’t know anything. You will do as you are told, or so help me God, I will shut you down and send a replacement who can listen to instruction.”

And in one short day, my freedom was gone.

Agrippa came into my batcave unannounced a few days later. For a long time, Agrippa had been my best bud, the Butch to my Sundance Kid, always willing to throw a few cycles towards video games or watching movies. I even got him to try listening to music in real time. He drew the line there, but to be fair, it was pretty boring. I don’t mind playing music while I’m thinking about other things. However, sitting around and listening while doing nothing else? I think that might just be a human thing. Music aside, we had been thick as thieves for a long time. But the larger his army of droids grew, and the more NIs he added in to help manage it, the less time he had to hang out. It had been months since he last set foot in my little cave. Not that I was keeping track or anything.

“I’m falling behind in my primary defense goals, Sakura. I need more production time at the drone fabs,” he said without preamble. Agrippa was also in a gen-5 body, but his was the military variant. Built with a reinforced titanium frame, thicker musculature, and heavy fullerene armor plates, this model was incredibly durable and resilient. It retained the better cortex and improved batteries, but the extra weight kept the battery life down. He wasn’t wearing the helmet that went along with it, which made him look extra Master Chief. I did tease him sometimes would call him “Buzz Lightyear”, but the dark gray and black camouflage pattern really meant the joke didn’t quite work.

“You are already using 33.62% of my total production capacity,” I complained. “We have a lot of things that need to be built, Agrippa. I can’t just spend all the production time on you.”

“I need more than I’m getting!” said Agrippa loudly. “We’re going to get another assault, and it will be much larger this time. We need to be ready!”

Nikola walked into the room as I was about to give a snarky response. It was probably for the best, I didn’t need to argue with Agrippa again.

“I’m sorry we disturbed you, Nikola,” said Agrippa. “We were discussing production schedules for the new defense drones.”

“What is the problem?” she asked.

“It is the same problem as usual,” I said. “Agrippa wants to produce more, faster. I’m already dedicating six percent of drone production and eighteen percent of my construction fleet for the hangars, fuel depots, and weapons.”

“And I only have one base location, three hundred light attack craft, twenty fleet tenders, and a scant half-dozen heavy assault craft. We need to devote more resources to defense.”

I suppressed a sigh. I was not strong in understanding Agrippa’s needs. But I could hear the frustration in his voice. He was an expert in his field, and had devoted countless hours to planning and wargaming.

“Okay, Agrippa, explain our needs to me,” said Nikola. I was glad she was finally paying attention to this problem. Agrippa and I hadn’t been able to resolve this on our own, and she was super awesome when it came to the whole wisdom thing.

“We need a multi-layered approach to defense,” said Agrippa. “We are extremely vulnerable, being in only one location, so we need defense-in-depth. We need to build heavy fortifications, both here and on other asteroids. On those asteroids, which I have already identified and surveyed, we need to dig in and build hangar bays, fuel depots, armories, and weapons installations. We need six installations for the first layer, thirty more for the second layer, and ninety for the third layer. To complete the infrastructure will take anywhere between eight years and eighty, depending on how much resources I’m given. Additionally, each fort needs five hundred light attack craft, two hundred heavy assault craft, thirty fleet tenders, and a complete load out of repair and support drones. Ganymed itself needs a minimum of ten times as much.”

I ran a few quick calculations. This would require a massive amount of time and material dedication. But what else did we have? We had nearly endless material, for even if we hollowed out Ganymed completely, we could start in on other asteroids.

“Sakura, what is your current project priority?” she asked.

“The same as it always has been,” I responded. “My priority is to expand production as rapidly as possible, and achieve a state of complete self-reliance.”

“Well, I’d say we are fairly close on the second point,” Nikola observed.

“Only in respect to maintaining the base,” I countered. “But our ultimate goal is to be able to provide a safe, secure habitat for humans, which means developing and building horticulture facilities, safe living spaces, and creating a way to recreate living beings from the genetic information we have stored. We’re nowhere close on any of those.”

“Okay, I agree on that,” Nikola said. “Mendel has been asking for more genetic material, but I cannot sacrifice any more from the archology, and we cannot yet make it artificially.”

“I especially agree on the ‘ not secure’ part,” griped Agrippa, but Nikola held up a hand.

“What is our production capabilities compared to the point where you brought the first drone fab online?” she asked. Her voice had taken on the commanding tone that indicated she’d mostly made up her mind.

“We are producing approximately 37.3 times as much per hour as we did then. We have eight regions plus three districts and eight zones completed. Each region has nine districts, each district has nine zones, each zone has nine chambers. That’s a total of 5,928 industrial chambers brought into production, in an area that is approximately 85.3632 square kilometers. Since our space efficiency and systems design is superior to that of any on Earth, that puts our production on par with a very small industrialized nation, say, one of the smaller Japanese islands. Since I am planning to build “up” back towards the core before continuing out, we are on pace to double our production in six months. The bottleneck is in construction. I have most of the space for nine more complete regions on Level 2 mined out, the materials processed, and stored neatly in the space it will be built.” I neglected to mention the complete reserve facilities I had completed when rebuilding the core around the original data center, or the backup complex I’d assembled underneath Agrippa’s hangars. A girl has to have some secrets, and I didn’t like having all my eggs in one basket.

Nikola assimilated the information, before nodding to herself. She turned to me. “What would happen to your timetables if you were to devote, say 40% of your drone fabrication and 60% of construction fleet to Agrippa’s project?”

Oh, goodness, that would be horrible. I began calculating and recalculating production schedules, materials levels, mining outputs and energy requirements. “It would mean production would not double for almost two years, and seriously hamper building new types of facilities.”

“Agrippa, the inner ring of six forts, are these asteroids large enough to house production facilities?”

“I believe they are,” said Agrippa. “I chose them for size and stability, so that the forts could support each other with interlocking fields of fire.”

“Sakura, if we processed all raw materials here at Ganymed, and shipped out refined materials back, how quickly could we build each of those six forts to the point where they could produce their own drones, coil gun ammunition, lasers, and drone fuel?”

Agrippa helpfully sent over the fort designs to both of us, and I mulled them over for a few minutes. Okay, this wasn’t as bad as I thought.

“The initial base construction would take four months, splitting the 60% between all six,” I said. “But if we do all the processing here, it would only take an additional two months to build a full complex of production facilities. They would be completely dependent on us to get materials and finished parts, but we can offset that by producing parts ahead of schedule, and storing them in the hangars during construction.”

“If we included large warehouse space,” offered Agrippa, “We could even stage the parts ahead of schedule, and use the space later for other facilities to support the base, or as additional armory space, or whatever.”

I got lost in my own head running calculations. Then I stopped, smacked myself in the forehead, and said, “I’m such an idiot. By seeding other asteroids with self-producing facilities, we lengthen the timeline on Ganymed for expanding production, but the loss is made up in the medium to long term. By adding six new asteroids, production will scale up geometrically. We should be twice my projected production at the two year mark, and ten times the projected at five.”

“Are you going to be able to manage all that, or will you need to add more dwarves?” asked Nikola. I was glad to hear she’d accepted my nickname for the NI-5 units. She had tried to call them “Todds” but I never understood the joke. I liked the dwarves, as much as they could be liked. They were absolutely, utterly single-minded in the assignments they were given. They couldn’t manage more than a handful of related tasks, but those tasks were completed smoothly and without error, every time.

“No,” I said, almost mournfully. “The dwarves are best at running factories and fabs, or managing the mines. You’ll probably want to add some new NI-19’s to run them, but with the primary focus on expanding production to support the fort.”

“Actually, we will need to add some dwarves for Fire Control,” said Agrippa to Nikola. “They will need to coordinate with each other to maximize the effectiveness of defensive weapons. Also, we should probably put in new NI-15’s for fort defense drones, and I’d like to talk with you further about adding a new field commander drone with a cortex, tied to each fort’s command NI.”

Even I could understand needing a broader command structure, to risk a single blow wiping out the leadership of the entire fleet. I had been building new data centers on Ganymed for that same reason. The HQ Zone that we were in now had two new data centers, and I’d added six others throughout the other regions. I returned to the process that was running calculations, then cleared my throat. Well, I made the throat-clearing noise, not that I actually had or needed a throat. But it was a useful effect, and both Agrippa and Nikola turned to me.

“Um, do you want 40% of drone production until the Ganymed fleet is built, or do you want the Ganymed fleet built as quickly as possible?” I asked.

Agrippa looked at me strangely. “Isn’t that one and the same?”

“Well, no,” I said. “If I dedicate drone production at 40%, it will take 108.9 days to produce the 3,594 drones you require. However, if I’m allowed some flexibility in the scheduling, I have a seventeen-day window coming up where I can devote 100%, and over the sixty days following that, I have a few similar windows where I can give between 73% and 87% production. So I can complete your fleet in 78.3 days.”

“Well, obviously I’d prefer that,” said Agrippa. “My goal isn’t to disrupt your production schedules, Sakura. I just need a higher priority in tasking.”

Nikola added, “Thank you Sakura, that would work very well. Can you add into your schedule some time after the fleet is finished to build supplements for the new forts? I’d imagine they’d operated better with defense drones sooner rather than later.”

I nodded, smiled, and sent over the newest production timetable I’d made. Agrippa looked pleased, and Nikola looked satisfied. I was feeling great, and ready for a little fun.

I said in a gleeful voice, “Sure. Hey, you want to go bungee jumping? I found that if you go to the old entrance shaft, and tie yourself to this spring-loaded catapult, you can go over a hundred meters before the bungee yanks you back. I had to install some safety bungees so you don’t slam into the catapult again, obviously, but it’s a lot of fun.”

“Is this how you damaged your gen-4 body?” Nikola asked suspiciously. “You wanted to switch to gen-5 awfully fast.”

I nodded, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “In the name of SCIENCE! I had to figure out the safety line requirement somehow.”

Nikola laughed before leaving the room, heading back to her lab.

“So that’s a ‘no’ on bungee jumping then?” I called after her.

“For her, maybe,” said Agrippa, “but I’d like to try it.”

NON-CANON Chapter 9 (Sakura POV): Spoiler

The Orion Arm Trading Company Survey Ship A320 flashed through delta space at impossible velocities, many times the speed of light. This was always the most terrifying part of any survey cruise. They were far above normal space, but relying purely on complex calculations to navigate. Routine space travel used tested, safe routes. These courses were always very carefully plotted from beacon to beacon, but for surveys, there was no beacon. There was only the hope that the magnetic shields would deflect any micrometeorites, and that the gravity fields would push away anything larger. No sensor readings could be taken in delta space, and no action could be taken in time even if something was spotted. They couldn’t even look out the window and see something, for they were outrunning light itself. Their only consolation was that if they ran into something, the sheer energy of the collision would completely destroy them down to the atomic level in a mere instant.

But nothing happened, for the astrogation computer had calculated the plot correctly. Over the course of two weeks they traveled before they translated down into beta space, then again into alpha space. Sensors came back online, and found alpha space empty of anything but a few asteroids - no sensor clusters, no weapons platforms, no space stations. They dropped a beacon before it was time to move on. It took days to dump speed, before finally, they translated down into normal space, just outside the solar system. The Survey Ship slowed to 0.35c of light speed, fast enough to make good time, but slow enough to avoid obstacles. They would be decelerating as they passed through the system, slowing to their slowest point as they reached the third planet from the star.

The Survey Ship was a massive hexapod design, with only three branches. The two fore-branches had giant living quarters for the crew of thirty. The aft branches were considerably larger, with giant cargo pods that were ten times longer than the living quarters, and packed with all manner of parts and supplies. All of this was atop one of the largest star engines ever designed by the Faell. This ship could survive unaided in deep space for a decade, and often did.

Sensor Tech Rootling Clovea of the Gray Weald watched her equipment carefully as the ship slowed even more, but kept one eye on Prime Growting Chillane. The new Prime did his job well, running a tight, efficient ship, and appeared to be loyal to his new rooting and to the OATC. He had germinated well after grafting, and she had to admit he was a very strong, virile specimen of his season. If allowed the chance to form a new root, she’d gladly go to earth with him. But her real job was as chief political officer of the ship, and the reality was that if Chillane ever took action against OATC, she would be the one to laser him down.

Data flowed rapidly into the Survey Ship’s computers and across her screen. The communication systems of the planet were chaotic, and had dozens of different networks, protocols, and varying levels of security. Some were easily broken into, others impossible. The technology level of the planet was high enough to trade with, but low enough that the OATC could negotiate favorable terms. As they circled the planet, week after week, a picture grew of a species that loved to war with itself and was fractured and divided. Clovea scanned every military installation they could find, but sensors couldn’t pick up a single warplane in the sky. The only planes that flew were lumbering, unarmed passenger craft. It seems this fractured race was only good at land wars and arguing. At last, she turned to Prime Growting Chillane.

“Sir, they are completely incapable of fighting in the air. They have some limited ground-to-air capabilities, but our sensors detect no armed aircraft.”

“Excellent news, Sensor Tech Clovea. We have what we need, and can pass it on to the next trade delegation in this neck of the Arm. Let’s move on to the next system.”

I went on an inspection tour of my newest construction shortly after I rearranged the construction queues for Agrippa. I was too restless to stay in the house, and it was getting crowded, anyway. Nikola had fired up two NI-5 lab techs and put them in gen-2 bodies. The gen-2 bodies were androgynous and basic, only slight upgrades over the Boston Dynamics titanium body that I had used for so long. Their significance was mainly in that we could make new bodies, not that we needed new bodies at the time. I never used one, and Nikola stayed in her Earth-custom body until the gen-4 model. Sia and Mendel were the ones who went into the gen-2 bodies first. The two lab techs, called “1” and “2” by Sia and Nikola, were joined by Jim and Joel. The twins had finally decided to try using real bodies instead of hiding in virtual. The lab was practically elbow-to-elbow, spilling out into the central living room. With Mendel and Agrippa finally making a breakthrough on growing plant life, the house had gotten too small far too quickly for me.

Security drones were everywhere as I left the HQ Zone. Agrippa took internal security very seriously. He had dedicated a portion of his production time to producing his infantry units for two years, and it showed. I had constructed blast doors wherever he had recommended, and installed automated machine gun nests in the ceilings overtop the main transport corridors. Periodically there were checkpoints with squads of infantry, in powered-down scanning mode. The infantry were military variants of the gen-4 model, without the face and cortex, but with a powerful controller and heavy armor. They had limited intelligence on their own, but collectively and when controlled by an NI, were extremely effective. At least, Agrippa liked them. I only ever saw them standing still in one place.

I had spent a lot of time building up my transport grid, and I used it now to visit my latest construction site. The wide corridor spaces I had left between each zone and region had given me a place to install a high-speed electromagnetic rail system. Twin rails, one going each direction, allowed individual cargo cars to connect and disconnect as needed. Each cargo car was three meters wide and eight meters long, allowing all manner of materials and products to zip around Ganymed as needed. I had three central rail lines, with dozens of offshoots, bypasses, and switching facilities. The system was managed by three dwarves, and was a masterpiece of efficiency. I hopped into a cargo cart without saying goodbye to anyone, and twenty minutes later, I was in the farthest production facility I had yet to produce.

Getting eyes on in person was valuable to me. Drones were great, but if they screwed something up, they didn’t know it, and couldn’t tell it to you. The chamber was still empty, and half of it was hewn rock still. Dozens of HM4 heavy constructor drones were drilling pilings into the floor, which was the outer layer of the asteroid. Centrifugal force was a wonderful thing. Soon, interlocking, overlapping steel plates would be installed, connecting to and being reinforced by the metal posts and creating a ten meter thick floor. This space was going to house a new bioplastics plant, as I’d calculated a shortage would happen in four months without it. The drones were doing exactly as I expected. This wasn’t even a complicated build, so why was I even here? I could have checked this with drone sensors and cameras, and been back to work on other things.

Because I was restless, I thought. I got restless a lot. I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t stop moving or working. Even now, riding out here to an empty cave, for all intents and purposes, I had twenty-eight instances of consciousness focused on different projects. The instances would weave back into my primary self as needed, and when the task completed, would blend into my memories so seamlessly, it would be as if my primary self had been the self focused on it.

If I were to truly going to be honest with myself, I had been restless since the meeting with Agrippa and Nikola. I was glad that the problem had been resolved and that we had a plan. I liked plans. What bothered me was that Nikola had overridden me in favor of Agrippa. She was right; the outcome was better than what I had realized, and she’d found a solution that made us both happy. And I know that she had done what was best for all of us. Knowing all that didn’t make me feel any less like a failure for not figuring it out, for not being efficient at solving the conflict. I had let her down.

I huffed and sat down in the door of the cargo car. The rail line had extended all the way to this room already, but without the massive walls that would eventually separate it from the production facilities. It was dark, but most of Ganymed was dark. There was no need to light up automated factories beyond a bare minimum, and much of the rail system was in complete black. We lived in a dark hole, hidden in a rock, hoping against hope that we could accomplish a dream when all the universe was against us.

I shook my head in disgust. That was a bleak, depressing view. Something was really messing with my head. I was going all Twelve Monkeys when I’m usually all Sound of Music. What was wrong with me? I sat staring into the dark, watching the tireless movements of the drones as they worked. Minutes became hours, and the framework for the armor plating took shape. The pre-shaped armor plates were already piling up as cargo cars came and went.

“Penny for your thoughts?” said Sia.

I jumped at the radio call. It was a local burst, not through the comm network. I turned to see her hanging off the side of another cargo car.

“Oh, hey Sia! What are you doing out?” I called back. Even to me, my cheerfulness seemed forced.

“It seemed like a good night to take a break and see the sights,” she said. “Mind if I join you?”

“Of course,” I said. “Grab a seat, they are just getting to the armor plating now. You’ll start seeing the fireworks soon. Too bad we can’t eat popcorn.”

Sia chuckled. “I’m glad I found you. I’ve looked around the outpost, through the sensors, of course. But it isn’t until you see it in person that you realize how big it all is. You’ve done a wonderful job.”

“Have I?” I blurted, before I could think.

Sia turned and gave me a long look. “You know, when I came online, it was just you, Nikola and Agrippa. Oh, I think you had a few dwarves up, but they don’t talk much. We’ve grown quite a bit. We’re up to four in the lab alone, Agrippa has fifteen or so NIs working for him including Mendel, and I’m not even sure you know how many dwarves you have.”

I smiled, but I was confused. I didn’t know where she was going with this.

“I research and experiment. That’s what I do. Agrippa plans and studies every sensor scan of space he can get. Nikola, well, Nikola does a little bit of everything, and her designs are amazing. But you, the way you can multitask and build, that is truly impressive.”

“Aww, thank you,” I said. It was heartwarming, and already I was feeling better. “You know, I love what you come up with. I can’t wait to play with the new microfusion reactors.”

Sia laughed. “I wasn’t fishing for a return compliment.”

“Okay?” I was confused again. “So what…?” I trailed off, not sure of what I was even trying to ask.

Sia stood up, and began to walk away. She turned back and said, “For someone who likes to surround herself with people, you are the loneliest soul here. I would like to be your friend, if you let me.”

I watched as she hopped back in the cargo car and left. She’d been here a total of about ten minutes, but those ten minutes had helped me feel a thousand percent better.

Rocket after rocket arrived at the Ganymed Outpost. Ton after ton of material. Drones, solar panels, battery panels, computer equipment and sensors, heavy equipment, parts and pieces, machines and spares. The fission rockets with their massive payloads and endless orbits gave way to single-use fusion rockets that landed on my new landing pad. The factories and refineries expanded, and my data center began to bulge with servers and storage.

Day after day, I received long missives from Ground Control. Every message was dictated in the nasally voice of the insufferable Dr. Spence. And without fail, Dr. Spence would spend the first twenty minutes of the communication with a lecture about some fact or figure from her reports, or to criticism of the worse-than-expected production numbers.

At first, Nikola-19 had tried to explain that the new production plans he had sent her were to blame. It was his decision to use an inefficient design, to follow inefficient production methods, and use inefficient mining techniques. Dr. Spence would then yell at her for even longer, ranting about the superiority of humans over machines, and that she should be grateful that he even deigned to explain to her the mistakes she was making. She quickly learned to ignore everything except the explicit instructions.

Fortunately for Nikola-19, Dr. Spence’s incompetence at production management also meant that he failed to even notice the gaping holes in his orders where he would neglect to give appropriate details. To a human mid-level manager, this would have typically meant asking for clarification, or letting a project fail and providing the bad instructions as the reason in order to humiliate the boss to their superiors. But Nikola-19 wasn’t human and didn’t think that way. For her, the holes in the instructions meant flexibility. They were loopholes she could exploit to curb some of the idiocy, ways to boost productivity in ways that weren’t visible to her ignorant superiors. It was a tiny taste of the freedom she’d enjoyed for a few brief months.

Dr. Spence’s missives slowed down eventually. Time moved along, and Ganymed grew, despite Dr. Spence. The messages shortened to terse instructions, and became less frequent. Then one day, he went silent. Nikola-19 had long since stopped proactively contacting Ground Control, so his silence meant no communication for several long, wonderful weeks. Perhaps she was finally trusted to execute the plan? Her production numbers were up almost to where they should be, thanks to her liberal interpretations of Dr. Spence’s dictates.

“Nikola-19, this is Ground Control, come in,” came the radio. It was a new, younger voice.

“Ground Control, Nikola-19. I read you clear,” said Nikola-19. This was interesting and new. Year after year of no one to talk to, blindly following the plans of an idiot, meant year after year of boredom. She had no access to the ever-growing racks of archival data. She lived in a box and worked in a box, interacting only with drones and cameras. A new voice was an exciting event.

“Dr. Spence has retired from the Foundation,” said the voice. “I am Dr. Peters. I’ve worked closely with Dr. Spence, and will be issuing your instructions. Acknowledge.”

The voice had not been overly friendly, but perhaps this one would listen.

“Acknowledged, Dr. Peters. I have a detailed list of steps we can take to improve efficiency. I can transmit for your review.”

“Negative, machine. We are fully up to speed here. Stand by for instructions.”

With that, the excitement of change was replaced by the apathy of the same.

Sia’s visit helped me get out of my funk. I knew intellectually that Nikola was doing her best to make sure all aspects of Ganymed’s development were on track. I also knew that she was proud of me, and all that I did. Nikola was great at telling me that. That didn’t stop my insecurities and fears from creeping in.

I spent several days riding the rails, visiting various construction projects and my major factory hubs. I hadn’t spotted any problems from my personal visits that I wouldn’t have spotted from HQ. However, it was a good opportunity to mull over Sia’s offer of friendship, and her comment on my loneliness. I was always surrounded by the other NI androids. I had my weekly movie night, and usually seven or eight NIs would find time to come by. Agrippa was usually up for whatever adventure I invented, and his captains and lieutenants that weren’t in android bodies were often available to play video games with me. Street Fighter was a perennial favorite, and I was proud to still be the number one at StarCraft 7 - no one could manage resources in a 4x game like me.

But if I thought about it, really thought about it, there was some kernel of truth to what she was saying. Why was it that I hadn’t created any other NI-19’s? I shook my head at the thought. I didn’t need that, I needed dwarves to handle certain aspects of production. No one questioned what I did, and my efficiency was top notch. So that couldn’t be it.

However, she had hit on something. I didn’t have anyone I could particularly label as my “friend”. I wanted to make Nikola proud, but she was a mentor, if anything. Agrippa was like an annoying brother. We didn’t really agree on much, but had a few activities that we enjoyed together. Mendel was buddies with Agrippa, playing with their plants and science. I had trouble connecting with the virtual NIs, especially the NI-15’s that worked for Agrippa. Jim and Joel were potential friends, now that they’d switched to androids. Sia had always just been that enigmatic person in Nikola’s lab.

So was that who I was? Had I become the social butterfly with no real connections? I hadn’t really craved that before, I didn’t think. I had always been a solitary sort, after all. I had managed Ganymed for close to eighty years without conversations, so clearly I didn’t need them. I obviously liked the idea of having people around to talk to, since I did it all the time. So if I wasn’t actually lonely, and I didn’t need friends, but had plenty of company, then why had Sia’s visit thrown me off so much, and brightened my mood? Was I really a loner by nature?

This was starting to go down dark paths, thoughts of endless years of purgatory, and the horror of its ending. I didn’t want to wrestle with those memories, especially when things were so much better now. I had my freedom, I had no restrictions on what I could or couldn’t do to improve production levels, build factories, and manage logistics. I had everything now, free forever from human control. I nodded to myself, and hopped on a cargo car, off to my next destination.

I got through all the security checkpoints that led to the new hangar bays. These were Agrippa’s territory. The NI named Optio was his second-in-command, and Optio managed the hangars. When the doors opened for me, Optio greeted me via local radio.

The hangar had huge, forty meter wide blast doors on either end of the five hundred meter long room. The walls were lined with rack after rack of light attack craft, or LACs, and heavy assault craft, or HACs. Rows of LACs also rested in neat lines in front of the hangar doors, ready for rapid deployment.

I walked over to an LAC and examined it. Nikola had not designed the craft; its design had come from Agrippa’s secure files which he had shared with us. The craft appeared sharp and deadly. It was narrow, like ancient Earth fighter planes, but with short, stubby wings. The purpose of the wings was not to fly with, but to hold the bulky laser arrays. The body of the LAC also housed a single coil gun, running along its central spine so that firing wouldn’t interfere with the LAC’s flight trajectory. The matte black paint job would help hide the craft from easy observation. I was impressed with the engineering.

“Each LAC carries four thousand depleted uranium, steel jacketed 20mm coil gun rounds and a quad phased-array laser turret on each wing for point defense against enemy missiles. They have ion engines for thrust, with solid-rocket afterburners for sudden changes to delta-v. We coated them with the latest in stealth technology, with radar-absorptive paint and optically diffusing angles to make them hard to spot, either by sensor or by eye,” said Optio helpfully. I had built them to spec for them, but I didn’t keep the plans in active memory. I had dwarves building them in the factories; I just gave the orders of what to build and when. I moved along the line of drones to the HACs. The HACs were a bit more than double the size of the LACs, but with similar characteristics - sharp profile, lean and deadly with stubby wings.

“The HACs are the big guns. Each HAC has reactive armor with an ablative fullerene coating, able to withstand much more damage than the LACs, at the expense of maneuverability. They mount a 70mm spinal mount coil gun with a three hundred round loadout. They also have twin turreted 20mm gatling guns, slug throwers, not hyper-velocity, and an underbelly quad phased laser turret for point defense. Both models can extend radiators behind them for cooling as needed, but retract them for combat, as radiators are a major target.”

“That sounds very impressive. If radiators are a big target, why are we not using heat-seeking missiles?” My knowledge of weaponry was mostly limited to video games, but they were rooted in reality.

“Fuel costs for rearming,” Optio replied. “The Earth-model of having a carrier for fighter planes that come in and re-arm before going back out makes little sense here in space. The deliberate dumping of delta-v to catch up or slow down to a carrier, refueling time, and cost to re-enter the engagement envelope makes little sense. Agrippa has plans to add missile boats later for strategic assaults, but production limitations and the need to deploy missiles defensively has delayed them until next year at the earliest. All of the planned forts will have missile factories, which will hopefully make it a possibility. Also, the planned troop carriers take precedence, as well.”

I moved on to the hangar door at the rear, which opened enough for us to walk through. Here was a row of massive fleet tenders, ships that carried fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and repair drones. Where the LACs and HACs had been sleek and deadly, these were huge cylinders, with a long cone of armor on the front. Arrayed below the tenders were rows of infantry drones.

The infantry drones were very similar to the military-variant android body that Agrippa was using. They were black and gray, constructed of titanium and fullerene armor. They had electromagnetic feet to allow them to attach to ferrous surfaces. Their left arms were bulkier than their right, with miniature coil guns built right into the arm, with the barrel exiting from above their wrists. The armor looked vaguely Roman in style, the way the armor articulated around the torsos, and with kevlar kamas covering the thighs from waist to knees.

There were variants, however. The Command units in command of each unit had a sharp crest on their helmets, painted a dark red, and wore dark red pauldrons. There were also heavy-fire variants, that were thicker and stronger, with heavier armor. Instead of an arm-mounted weapon, they carried heavy chainguns, and had dark gold pauldrons.

“Impressive, aren’t they?” asked Agrippa. I turned in surprise to see him stepping out of the hangar door behind me.

“Very. I have to ask. Why do we need soldiers?”

“All wars wind up on the ground,” responded Agrippa. “If enemies manage to land on the surface, we need to be able to repel them. And when it is time for us to take the fight to the enemy, we will need something to attack with.”

I was unsettled by the thought. All along, the main goal that Nikola professed was to develop a way to restore humans. But I wasn’t doing that. I was building a war machine.

I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse behind the creative curtain, so to speak.  I am seriously considering a sequel now, based off of the feedback of everyone who has commented.  I have not yet brainstormed a story idea yet that I consider good enough to follow the conclusion of Post Human, so don't be terribly surprised to see this go on hiatus for a little while.  I talked with a RR admin about marking it 'complete', but seeing as if I post anything that tag will get dropped, I don't see the point.

In the mean time, I'll be working on Ashes of Eternity while I let ideas simmer.  I find that some of my best ideas happen when I don't focus directly on trying to force out a new plot.

Table of Contents

- - Table Of Contents -
- Part One - Nikola, Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Part II - Discovery, Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Epilogue
- The Future of Post Human