“What else? What more could they do?” Sobran had unpleasant visions of trying to conduct an operation with an evacuation capacity of zero.
“I’m not sure, sir. Just a moment …” She listened again, then gazed up at him. “They’re broadcasting, sir. Slightly different language, but similar in content. Apparently they’re praying.”
The admiral straightened in his chair. Deep in thought, he turned back toward his pickup, his eyes returning to the vid. Hiroshigi was barely visible as he bobbed in and out of view. Apparently he was yelling at someone below the pickup’s effective range. After a few moments of this disorganized activity the vid simply went blank. No formal tendering of dissolution, no friendly farewells, no diplomatic goodbyes; nothing. It was very un-Kei.
“Sir,” said his chief battle engineer, “Scanning reports that shuttles are beginning to leave the Keiretsu fleet as well.”
Sobran nodded his acknowledgment of the information. “I’ve heard about this. Now let’s look at it.” He touched a control in the arm of his chair.
The vid was replaced by a holomag that showed both battle fleets drifting in space between the Homeworld and its moon. Dozens, hundreds, of tiny orange lights were fleeing from the two groupings of brighter green and blue lights that represented the two fleets, like fleas abandoning a pair of sleeping dogs. The orange pinpoints were converging on the large red blip that marked the location of the artifact. A number had begun to orbit it.
Sobran sighed resignedly. “Keep trying to stop the dispersal. Do anything you can. Oh, and see to it that the toilets are fixed. If we have an emergency and can’t leave, at least we can be comfortable in the can.”
XV
“GO away!”
“I beg your pardon?” As the one seated nearest the drifting, flaring Autothor, Shimoda beat a hasty retreat across the green sands. His companions stopped what they’d been doing and looked up anxiously.
“Oh, I wasn’t talking to you.” The intense turquoise glow faded slightly. “I was talking to them. See?” The Autothor generated a large holo just above where the water met the artificial beach.
Numerous tiny vessels, some so small they couldn’t possibly carry a dozen persons, were gathering in the vicinity of the Drex warship like a cluster of fireflies around a decomposing log.
“What’s going on?” Iranaputra worried aloud. “Is it another attack?”
“Unlikely, old … old chap.” Heath smiled reflectively. “They’re interfleet transports and lifeboats, you see.” His tone indicated that his recent confession still weighed heavily on his soul.
“There is no evidence of hostile intent,” the Autothor informed him. “To the contrary. I have taken adequate precautions nonetheless.” A pause, then, “As a matter of fact, I am now suffused with confidence. One might almost say I feel invincible. Able to devastate entire worlds. Very up.”
“That’s nice.” Gelmann was deliberately noncommittal.
“My sensor instrumentation detects no sign of organic intelligence aboard any of these vessels,” the blue ellipse continued.
“Oxymoron,” Ksarusix sniffed. It continued to work on the sand castle it had been building, an elegant edifice of circuits and shifters, sculpted components and thermoplastic armature, accurately rendered in a turgid blend of sand and water.
As usual, the Autothor ignored it. “Many of these small vessels are broadcasting nonsense as they approach. According to my monitoring of internal transmissions, the entire exercise has deeply agitated the organics aboard the larger vessels.”
“I bet,” Hawkins observed gleefully.
“I don’t really care for this.” The blue ellipse flickered slightly as it commenced a slow vertical rotation. “The chanting unnerves me.”
Iranaputra didn’t know about the others, but he personally found the notion that the gargantuan Drex warship could be “unnerved” highly disturbing.
“Then tell them to go away,” said Gelmann. ‘Tell them to return to their respective ships.”
“They are persistent in their patent obsession, but I will try.”
While the seniors watched via the holo, the Autothor communicated with the milling lifeboats. Individually at first, then in small groups, they began to retrace their paths, returning to their home vessels, where they automatically reberthed themselves, repressurized locks, and reestablished stipulated connections. If anything, this equivalently inexplicable action left the officers and engineers on board the ships of the two fleets less agitated but more confused than ever.
On board the Federal flagship the toilets and associational recycling systems had also resumed conventional operation. Nonetheless, they, as with any and all previously obstreperous AI-controlled equipment, continued to be approached with trepidation by their respective crews.
A faint aroma of burnt ginger filled the Federal flagship’s command center, odoriferously symptomatic of surprises to come. Admiral Sobran wrinkled his nose as he pondered his options. The artificial-intelligence cortexes which controlled primary ship functions had been constructed with repetitive redundancies built in, but what if they, too, should suddenly and inexplicably devolve into an irrational demonstration of cybernetic genuflection? The only absolute solution (absolution? he found himself wondering) lay in flight, which was not an option open to him. He could only hope that the flagship’s AI would stay sane.
He consoled himself with the knowledge that Hiroshigi must be undergoing similar torments.
If the initial analyses of its destructive potential were even partly accurate, he knew he could not possibly risk forcing his way aboard the artifact. That essentially meant setting aside the immense capabilities of the grand Federal fleet and dealing instead with the five elderly geeks the obviously disturbed alien had allowed aboard.
It was a situation for which neither the Academy, previous practical experience, nor a lifetime in the military had prepared him.
“The two groups of larger vessels retain their spatial position.” The Autothor had ceased rotating. “Would you like me to utterly and completely annihilate them?”
Shimoda and Iranaputra exchanged a glance. “Ah, that will not be necessary,” Iranaputra said carefully. “They are not making any pugnacious moves, are they?”
“No. It’s only that more of my memory and operational capacity has just come on-line and I’d like to try it out. I need the exercise.”
“Restrain yourself,” Shimoda advised.
“Just a couple of ships?”
“We’d rather you didn’t,” the sumo enthusiast urged.
“A teensy exhalation of judiciously applied synthesized suncore plasma?”
“No!” Mina Gelmann wagged an admonitory finger in the direction of the bobbing blue ellipse. “You be polite, now.”
“Oh very well.” The Autothor spun crossly. “They’re trying to contact you directly.”
Iranaputra sighed. “I suppose we ought to talk to them.”
