Valyien Boxed Set 3 Read online

  Even just as a head, it was creepy enough, Eliard thought. The rest of its body had been equally androgynous and human-like as well, but it had moved as fast and as powerfully as any of Irie’s mecha creations, the captain recalled.

  And what exactly was it going to do when it added all of our bodies to the pile under the Valyien warp gate? The errant question ran through the captain’s mind once more. Throw us all in? What strange psychotic computer ritual was it trying to act out?

  But whatever the strange programming that the Armcore-built android had pregnant in its neural network, although bat-crazy, the captain knew was precisely the point of why they were here. When Ponos had sent them here to Epsilon G3-ov, Ponos had known that this was the site where the first iteration of Alpha was planned by Armcore. Long before they found the second site, where they successfully married the Armcore program with the Valyien tech.

  And that ECN thing over there was the test model for Alpha, Eliard thought. The Armcore Research Station hadn’t been anything like a medical or a science laboratory, but more like a nursery, he remembered. Here, they had trained and developed the ‘new type’ of machine intelligence by attempting to grow it the way that a human mind was grown. Not with mushy organic elements and neuron fibers of course, but instead with gradual developmental and physical processes, allowing it to expand its processing power as it developed ever greater physical capabilities.

  It was supposed to be perfectly suited as the next generation machine intelligence, Eliard considered. One that understood humans on every level, but also one that far surpassed their every capability.

  And one that was intimately married to the Valyien, he thought. Armcore had chosen here of all places to develop the ECN. They had escorted its adolescent mind to the Valyien-stable warp gate and there… What? What had they done?

  All that Eliard knew was that it had gone mad. It had killed its parents and had been stuck down here for years, generations, after Armcore drones had sealed it in its icy tomb and stolen the data to create the approaching Alpha.

  The ECN is a proto-Alpha, Eliard realized. An almost-Alpha. A big brother, in a way.

  “As soon as Alpha had built for itself its ship,” Eliard said out loud. “It could have warped here and destroyed this site. No one would have been able to stop it. But it didn’t. But only now, when Alpha knows that something is happening here, is it coming. Why would it do that?” He looked at the expressionless, perfect head of the ECN. “Unless it wants that.”

  “You are correct, Captain Martin,” Ponos said. “But even I cannot calculate—not with my diminished capacities as they are at the moment, anyway—what Alpha wants with its older brother. As you say, Alpha could have destroyed this site at any time it wanted, if it thought that the ECN was a risk.”

  “So, it must want to preserve it,” Eliard said quickly.

  Suddenly, everything slid into place for the captain. That was what the years of smuggling and booze-running, of burglaries and heists and countless other gambles, had taught him. A person’s greatest weakness is what they want. All he had ever had to do as a pirate captain out in the nonaligned worlds was to work out what his adversary wanted, and then either give it to them or withhold it. That was it. That was all that there was to it.

  “We’re going to ransom the head.” Eliard nodded, just as every near-space alarm went off around them.

  3

  An Observation, A Gamble, A Storm

  Above the white envelope of near-freezing atmosphere that surrounded Epsilon G3-ov, a storm erupted in space. The glaring, confusing brilliance of purple, red, and blue warp light masked and disturbed the clear light of the surrounding stars like a mirage or a heat-wave. And when the lights and colors faded, returning the usually quiet scene of this backwater system to its normal parameters, it left behind the sudden manifestation of three ships.

  Three, not one, but one of them was certainly the largest and most eye-catching of the battlegroup.

  It was the Alpha-vessel, that strange mollusk-like shell with the vicious snout pointing down at the surface of Epsilon G3-ov like a Sword of Damocles. Flanking it on either side hung the far smaller but still prodigious inverted W-shapes of two attendant Armcore war cruisers.

  Doom and treachery had come to the ice planet.

  “Are you sure about this?” Irie’s voice glitched through the communication port above Eliard Martin’s head. Even in digital transmission, she sounded worried.

  I’m not surprised, the captain thought. Because worried doesn’t even scratch the surface of what I am feeling right now.

  “Sure? I don’t think certainty is a thing we can talk about right now,” he muttered grimly, re-seating his gloved hand on the ship’s command wheel. Just as he had done a thousand times before. Just as he had been taught to do.

  The Mercury Blade flew through the freezing winds of Epsilon G3-ov, barely thirty meters over the surface and buffeted by sleet and ice-winds that obscured all of the crystal-glass windows in the captain’s cockpit, forcing him to rely on sensors alone. The Mercury wavered and bobbed, Irie doing a heroic job of managing the boosters that kept them from being flung against the wind-scoured tundra.

  Not that the sensors are much use. Eliard gritted his teeth. The heavy concentration of meson fluctuations from the research station below them was playing havoc with their array, but every few moments, the three-dimensional visualization of the three ships that hung over their planet flickered back into view, rather annoyingly, Eliard thought.

  “Engines cycled?” Eliard called.

  “Ready,” Irie said, although she didn’t sound it.

  Stars, what am I doing, Eliard thought as he looked at the projection.

  Incoming Message. Transmitting Station: Endurance Mobile Array.

  Accept? Y/N

  Eliard flickered his hand through the controls, allowing the voice of Section Manager Karis to appear over the communications systems.

  “Captain Martin. I am sure that you are seeing what we are. The Armcore war cruisers Competence and the Avalanche are here. With that thing. This changes everything.”

  “This changes nothing,” Eliard countered. “Are your crew ready?”

  “Of course they are ready!” the section manager snapped. “And I might just shoot you out of the sky anyway, for all the good that…” TZZZARK! Her communicator glitched out as there was a sudden spike in the background meson fluctuations.

  “Computer? Meson readout,” Eliard commanded. Like most interstellar craft, the Mercury Blade had a machine intelligence barely worthy of the name. It wasn’t the elaborate, analytic consciousness of Ponos and of course not the Valyien intelligence either, but it handled all of the automated digital systems.

  Sensor Results: Background Meson Levels +35% Variable +/-8%.

  We’re almost there, the captain thought. The visualization in front of him glitched once more as something took over his communication array.

  Incoming Message! Security Protocols Override! His desperately weak Mercury Blade computer called out in alarm as the Alpha-machine broke through the firewall that surrounded the data-envelope of every spacecraft and spoke directly through Eliard’s speakers.

  “Captain Martin, a pleasure to see you again.” The voice of the alien intelligence was cultured, suave. It reminded Eliard of his father.

  “Alpha,” Eliard said. “You’ve come a long way, I see.”

  “Ah. A human’s capacity for irony never ceases to amuse me. It is a rare gift in the universe, did you know that?” Alpha’s tone seemed jovial, friendly even.

  “So is life.” Eliard gritted his teeth and concentrated on flying. The three-dimensional display visualized the prevailing winds as orange-red vortices coming towards him. He kept the power to the boosters at a steady burn, knowing that he had to punch through them. Still, though, the Mercury shook and bobbed as it careened to its destination.

  Sensor Results: Background Meson Levels +45% Variable +/-6%.

  Almost… El
iard gritted his teeth.

  “Really, Captain, this display of yours is futile. Endearing perhaps, but still quite pointless. Did you really think that you could escape me?”

  “Maybe I don’t have to…” Eliard muttered under his breath, his heartbeat starting to accelerate with adrenaline and worry. He swallowed nervously. “I also see that you’ve brought your new friends. Or would that be parents?” he called out as he had to wrestle the ship’s wheel once more as the ice-blizzards tried to snatch control of the Mercury out of his grasp. “Tell me, Alpha, does it feel good to finally be taking orders again?”

  “Ha. An attempt to anger me, is it, Captain? You should know better than that. I have access to the entirety of data-space, including every psychological profiling tool that humanity has ever devised,” Alpha stated.

  “Doesn’t mean you don’t get angry, though,” the captain said.

  Sensor Results: Background Meson Levels +55% Variable +/-4%.

  Almost there… Eliard started to sweat.

  “On the contrary, Captain. It means that I have feelings for which humanity doesn’t even have a name. Does that surprise you? That a machine intelligence has feelings?”

  “Well, it certainly doesn’t interest me, I can tell you that…” Eliard said. Keep them talking, that was what he had learned on the Traders’ Belt worlds. Keep your mark talking, and let them talk themselves into your trap…

  “But enough of this. It is always a pleasure to converse with you, Captain Martin. You are a singular specimen of humanity, one which I would have taken great delight in studying. However, this must end, now. You cannot escape me. You cannot leave this planet. My capacities far exceed yours.”

  “And who said romance was dead?” Eliard said. “You still didn’t tell me about your new friends. Sorry, would that be masters?”

  “I have no masters,” Alpha said, and Eliard wondered if he could detect a germ of irritation in its voice. If the Alpha machine got irritated, then it could be tricked.

  “Armcore has seen sense and accepted my offer. They will act as my administrators in this new era of the galaxy.”

  “The entire galaxy?” Eliard scoffed. “Surely that is overestimating even your capabilities, Alpha!”

  Sensor Results: Background Meson Levels +62% Variable +/-2%.

  “Oh ye of little faith. My predecessors, one half of my programming, had already been the masters of one galaxy before ever discovering this one. You see, this story has never been about the rise of humanity, but the civilization of your galaxy by the Valyien,” Alpha stated.

  It was so sure of itself, Eliard thought. In times past, he had heard that same assured confidence from the other noble houses too, especially the other younger members and sons such as him. It was a confidence born out of pride and power.

  “So, you are one hundred percent Valyien now, are you?” Eliard said. “Strange, because to me it looks like you’re made out of metal.”

  “Consciousness comes in many forms, Captain Martin. It is a shame that I do not have the time or the inclination to educate you on such matters, but your loss is only the rest of humanity’s gain. This galaxy will be civilized, by me, and you will enjoy new, untold areas of exploration, science, and discovery that you could never dream to achieve on your own.”

  “Really.”

  “Now. Stop your flight, or I will destroy you. You must be aware that I have orbital lasers capable of plucking you from the sky like a farmer picks fruit from a tree.”

  “How poetic,” Eliard drawled. It was something that had been heavy on his mind ever since he had come up with this idea, of course, but he had made a gamble. The Alpha-vessel might be as near to all-powerful as anything in this galaxy, but could it rewrite the laws of physics?

  “Again, I think you are overestimating yourself, Alpha. I am currently flying through a force nine storm with high electro-magnetic disturbance, through a background field of Meson particles at over sixty percent. I don’t think you’ve got a hope of getting a lock on me, no matter all of your computing power.”

  “Interesting observation, Captain,” Alpha said, and there was a momentary pause—

  Before the world turned white.

  Fada-THOOOM! Eliard swore, but he couldn’t hear his own words as his ears were ringing from the shockwave that swept through the ship. Under his gloved hands, the ship’s command wheel bucked and tried to drag to one side, and his eyes were having difficulty seeing past the afterglow image of dazzling brightness.

  “Irie! Damage report!” Eliard was shouting, knowing that he said the words but only hearing them as muffled noises in the air of the Mercury’s cockpit.

  Alpha had shot at them, he knew, but it had missed. The crystal-glass windows had revealed a sudden column of scintillating white light and a resulting chain-reaction of plasma-fire as the concentrated laser-blast from the Alpha-vessel far above them interacted with the meson field.

  It wasn’t enough to set the whole thing alight, but it was close… Eliard thought, giving the Mercury its head so that it turned into the wave and rode out the vibrations. He knew not to fight the sudden twists and turns, but to fly with them.

  “Captain? Hull integrity’s taken a battering, down fourteen percent maybe, but nothing else,” Irie’s voice came back. “But if it had been any closer…”

  “We’d be toast. I get it,” Eliard said, just as the voice of the Alpha-vessel broke into his ship once again.

  “It seems that you correct, which is surprising in itself, Captain Martin,” Alpha said, without a trace of empathy. “I may not be able to target your position sufficiently enough to bring you down, but I can certainly make your life more difficult. And anyway. Sooner or later, you will have to fly out of the storm and the meson field. So why prolong the inevitable?”

  Sensor Results: Background Meson Levels +70% No Variable.

  There. They were almost directly over the sunken research station, the birthplace of the ECN, and the Valyien ziggurat. It was now or never. Eliard played his hand.

  “Because, Alpha, if you fire on me again, you risk detonating the rising meson field and triggering a massive warp explosion.”

  “And? Why should I care if you cease to exist, Captain Martin?” Alpha stated as Eliard hit his forward-facing boosters and raised his airbrakes to slow him down, keeping him in currently the most dangerous zone on the planet.

  “Because then you will be destroying the only thing that you really came here for, Alpha,” Eliard said, snatching the bundle that had been hidden under his old ceremonial jacket by his side. He let the jacket fall as he raised the grisly, expressionless object high in the air, towards the Mercury Blade’s own interior sensors.

  It was the head of the Enhanced Cognitive Network.

  “You will have killed your older brother.”

  4

  What Right?

  “You have no right to that!” Alpha’s words stormed through the Mercury Blade, making Eliard smirk.

  I thought you don’t get angry, Alpha? He held the head up a little higher. “It’s not about rights, Alpha. What an archaic notion.” He mimicked the hybrid intelligence. “It’s about power. Surely you of all beings should understand that. One move against me, and you’ll destroy this head along with the rest of us. Or maybe I’ll just fire a blaster through it and be done with it.”

  The Mercury bobbed and rolled as it flew in a chaotic circle around the meson field.

  “Your capacity for negotiation might impress a human, Captain Martin, but I am afraid that you are sadly lacking in the intelligence required to converse with me,” Alpha said, once again in that suave and controlled voice.

  But Eliard still grinned. “Are you calling me names, Alpha? I would have thought that insults were beneath you.”

  “The meson field generated by the warp gate will eventually destabilize, and you will die. Either that, or as soon as you decide to damage the head, you will not have any bargaining chips left. You will die. Either way, your only chanc
e of survival is to surrender the head up to its rightful owner, which would be me.”

  Eliard waited. If there was anything that he knew about negotiation, it was two things: First, identify what they want, and secondly, whenever your competitor tries to tell you that your hand is weak, it usually means that they've realized that they have already lost. An winning gambler didn’t have to make threats. They just had to win.

  “I suggest you warp back to wherever you came from, Alpha, and you can take your Armcore lackeys with you,” Eliard said happily.

  “Your foresight is as lacking as your prescience, Captain Martin. I might not be able to lock onto your position with my orbital lasers, but I can certainly target the crewmembers of the Endurance if you do not comply. How would that make you feel, knowing that you led to their complete demise?”

  And there it was, Eliard thought, a shiver running through his arms. This was the threat that he had already anticipated, and one that he was most scared of. He knew that Alpha could easily kill the ninety-two humans left huddled on board the Endurance, including all of the technicians, officers, and even Section Manager Karis, who had helped to save his life on more than one occasion. He was gambling with their lives, and did he have the right to do that?

  Keep it together, Eliard, he told himself, standing defiant with one hand still raised, and the other, Device-hand, locked between the spokes of the ship’s command wheel.

  Sensor Results: Background Meson Levels +75% No Variable, Rising Steadily.

  Pretty soon me and Irie and this stars’-damned head will be atomic dust anyway... he thought.