Chaotic Futures, page 33
The other conference members stared aghast and with open beaks at Dakargk, and all of them heard the laughter of Janus and Dimitri.
“Those ships are fully armed,” the director whispered urgently to Dakargk.
Dakargk held his hand out, urging the other individuals to wait.
The director’s device signaled, and he checked it. Then he held it up for Rebtar to view, who read the control room’s message aloud, “We’ve four inbound peacekeepers whose armament doors are open.”
Grageth stared at Dakargk, daring him to misspeak again.
“We understand the threat, Janus,” Rebtar said carefully. “But you aren’t allowing us options. Can’t we negotiate?”
“Why what?” Rebtar returned.
“Then you’d destroy the transport?” Dakargk queried.
“Let me translate for you, Janus,” Grageth offered. “She is saying that either we satisfy her request, or she’ll take steps to force us. It could begin with taking control of your transport, the peacekeepers, or the platform. Then again, it could be all of the above.”
Rebtar rose and motioned for everyone to follow him. In the corridor, he whispered to the director, “I need a place with no surveillance.”
For the station director, it was easier requested than fulfilled. After giving it some thought, he beckoned to the group. Then he led the conference individuals down one level. Farther along the corridor, he located a storeroom and used the panel to open the door.
Inside, the director closed the door behind Grageth. “There’s no vid or audio pickup in here,” he said to Rebtar.
“What are our options?” Rebtar asked immediately.
“Call her bluff,” Dakargk retorted.
“She doesn’t bluff,” Grageth responded.
“How do you know?” Dakargk challenged.
“Janus isn’t biological. She’s a digital sentient who requests exactly what she wants,” Grageth replied.
“If we give her what she wants, then all we’re doing is expanding her forces,” Rebtar pointed out.
“I’m not advocating for one proposal or another,” Grageth replied. “I’m trying to get you to understand how Janus thinks.”
“If I may?” the director requested, raising a hand.
“Please,” Rebtar responded.
“I believe Executor Grageth’s interpretation is correct,” the director said. “The AIs aboard the transport are an asset. She won’t want to harm them until she’s sought every avenue to get them implanted into the peacekeepers. Dimitri and she have all the leverage they need. Sooner or later, we’ll either have to acquiesce to her demands, or ...”
As the director’s voice trailed off, Grageth finished his thought, adding, “Or be prepared to die to resist the pair of them.”
“If the AIs are so precious to Janus and Dimitri, why don’t we board the transport and sail away?” Dakargk argued.
“If she can’t have them, then you can’t have them,” Grageth said, and the director nodded in agreement.
“Director, could we make alterations to the AIs we implant that give us an edge?” Rebtar asked.
“How extreme?” the director inquired.
“You do whatever it takes to prevent Janus from acquiring six armed peacekeepers,” Rebtar replied.
“We might try to give the AIs directives to immediately attack Janus and Dimitri,” the director offered.
“You can’t give Janus time,” Grageth warned.
“We could prep the AIs while they’re aboard the transport. Then we could install them simultaneously,” the director proposed. “We keep the ships offline, while we complete the setups. Then we activate them together, and the engineers abandon the ships while they get underway.”
“I don’t see it working,” Grageth said, throwing cold water on the concept.
“Why not?” Rebtar queried.
“We’ve no idea how much time it will take Janus or Dimitri to subsume the AIs and change their priorities,” Grageth replied. “They could run ahead of the six ships, while they continue their work.”
“Why don’t we keep the AIs offline?” the director proposed. “Janus and Dimitri won’t be able to interfere with them.”
“That won’t work,” Dakargk declared. “Even if the six were successful, we’d have six peacekeepers out there with no way of recalling them.”
“We could program them to return, depending on circumstances,” the director replied.
The more the group worked on their plan, the more they saw its potential success. When they were ready, they returned to the conference room.
“Janus, we agree to your request, but we have stipulations,” Rebtar announced.
“We want your promise that neither the facilities nor our ships nor any individual will be harmed,” Rebtar said.
“Understood,” Rebtar replied. “Also, you must promise not to use these ships against any Imperium Empire world or ship.”
“We’ll update the AIs with ship operations and transfer them. The director has said that the process will take about four cycles,” Rebtar said.
Those in the conference waited for Janus to say something else. When they didn’t hear anything, they regarded one another with quizzical looks.
Dimitri commented to Janus.
Janus replied.
The director collected his engineers. “You’ve only the jobs I give you,” he said to them. Then he divided them into two teams.
One group of engineers worked on the preparations to transfer the AIs and embed them in the peacekeepers. The other engineers focused on the AIs’ programming.
The basic steps for the latter group were easy. Janus’s preparations and training had ensured the station that her ship-control programming could be repeated.
While the AIs were being prepped, the director huddled with the executors and his two best coding engineers. They worked through the maze of steps that the AIs must choose and perform, depending on what Janus, Dimitri, and her other ships did.
In a private moment, one engineer said to the other, “This job should have an annual to code, test, and edit.”
“Tell Janus that,” the other engineer replied. “She’s the one in charge.”
“You know our effort is doomed to fail,” the first engineer said.
“You know that, and I know that,” the second engineer said. “If you’re feeling that strongly about it, I suggest you inform Presiding Executor Rebtar about your doubts.”
The first engineer stared at his friend. Then he shook his head, aghast at the turn of events.
When the executors were satisfied that they had covered every eventuality they could imagine in the time they had, they signaled the director that he should coordinate the implementations.
Six teams of engineers and techs were tasked with the transfers and embedding of the AIs. They ensured that the comm systems were disconnected from the bridges. Then they installed the AIs and ran diagnostics. As they finished, reports were sent to the platform director.
After receiving the teams’ readiness, the director ordered everyone to their shuttles, except for the most junior engineer on each team.
“Why me?” a young engineer complained to his team leader.
“Youth,” the engineer replied. “You’re going to be the fastest individual to get your feathers down to the bay. Don’t waste time with the elevators. Use the emergency drop.”
Then the team leader ensured that his message was relayed to the other junior engineers.
The director began the countdown.
At zero, six young engineers activated the AIs’ command control over the ships. Then they raced down bridge corridors for the emergency evacuation chutes.
Faster than the team leaders could believe, the youthful engineers burst through the shuttle hatches and locked them down.
Then the shuttles exited the peacekeepers, as the massive battleships came online.
27: Challenge Accepted
In ticks of time, Janus formulated a battle plan and shared it with Dimitri.
Dimitri turned his peacekeeper and ran for the dark, and his adversaries gave chase.
Janus coordinated with her two AIs, and they took similar actions, running ahead of the four station AIs but not entering the dark. She confirmed that there were no entry points into her chasers’ bridge systems. That was an advantage. The station AIs were cut off from one another and the platform. Furthermore, the programmers would have had a limited amount of time to invest in devising options for the AIs.
However, Janus was aware of one difficulty. The ten ships were evenly matched in armament. It fell to Dimitri and her to outwit the restrictions the adversarial AIs struggled under.
Dimitri entered the dark and exited as quickly as he could. Then he reversed course and transited again. He had a specific destination. Janus had shared her intended course and her acceleration rate.
When Dimitri exited the dark, he was close behind Janus’s pursuers.
One pursuer made a wide loop to engage Dimitri, but Dimitri continued to accelerate, which allowed him to close on the other three chasers.
When Janus registered Dimitri’s exit, she initiated the next step in her plan, which sent her ships on different courses. As she suspected, her pursuers changed course to chase her ship. She reasoned that they must contain detailed hull images, which enabled them to target Dimitri and her ship.
Janus’s two AIs followed their directives. They made wide curves, which sent them returning against her three pursuers.
Suddenly, the three new station AIs registered that they were about to be caught in a pincer movement. They broke off their pursuit of Janus, and each peacekeeper turned to face their oncoming foes.
Dimitri took control of his group’s two AIs. He directed their preparations and ordered half a barrage launched from each ship. The missiles were timed to arrive at one of the adversaries at the same time.
Where the station AIs suffered was that they responded to immediate advantages or threats, while Janus and Dimitri played a more complicated game.
Immediately after Dimitri and his two AI-controlled ships launched, they curved away from the fray and sought the dark. A rendezvous point had been provided, and they would meet there.
Two of three pursuers of Janus discovered that none of the missiles launched were headed their way.
However, the third pursuer was caught between three barrages, which Dimitri had intended. Despite a desperate attempt to escape, while firing defensive weapons, the incoming missiles remained active and tracked the evading ship. Nearly a hundred missiles found the peacekeeper. Their explosions caused the detonation of missiles and probes aboard the ship.
The AI had a tick of time to register that its control of the peacekeeper was to be terminated. It was merely an algorithm calculating the loss of connections.
Knowing that Dimitri and their AIs had made a safe escape, Janus accelerated and made a transit. She would have to exit the dark, reverse course, and transit again to meet at the rendezvous point, which was on the other side of the orbital platform station.
In the meantime, the five remaining station AIs used passive telemetry to locate one another. When they did rendezvous, they used light sources in their bows to message one another. Their directives indicated they were to continue the pursuit until the peacekeepers inhabited by Janus and Dimitri were destroyed.
The AIs acknowledged they represented a danger to Janus and Dimitri. Therefore, it was decided that the pair would seek them out. With that conclusion foremost in their programs, they returned to the orbital station, taking up posts around the platform.
“That’s not how I saw this going,” Dakargk commented sourly when the three executors and the director saw the five peacekeepers return. They’d congregated in the control center to monitor the action.
“You must admit that what we created is working,” the director enthused. “Janus and Dimitri are sentient. Their strategic moves will be much more complex than our AIs. Yet, in the first engagement, we’ve lost only one ship, and our AIs will have learned from this encounter.”
“You should be paying close attention to these ships, Dakargk,” Grageth directed.
Dakargk was inclined to deliver a scathing retort, but he caught Rebtar staring intently at a monitor. “What do you see, Rebtar?” he queried.
“After the peacekeepers returned, they took up positions around us,” Rebtar replied.
“Possibly to protect us,” Dakargk offered. When he received frowns from the other three Krackus, he waved the subtle condemnation away.
“As I was saying,” the director continued. “These five are sharing the fight’s details. In their analysis, one of their six was lost. They’re dissecting the action and planning new responses for the next engagement.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Dakargk demanded.
“Because that’s what the programmers told them to do,” Grageth returned. He was tempted to point out that Dakargk’s failure to participate fully during the programming of the AIs had resulted in him failing to understand the battle’s aftermath. But the reaction of Rebtar and the director seemed to be making the point to Dakargk for him.
When Janus exited her final transit, she found Dimitri and the AIs waiting for her.
Dimitri sent.
Janus replied.
Janus sent.
Dimitri responded.
