“So, what’s next?” Jacob asked Melody.
It had been a few weeks since Hallik’s visit, and during that time, he had kept a close eye on the vitals coming from the stasis pods. He was being so obsessive with monitoring them that he had left his bipedal drone in the science drone’s cargo area.
Part of the reason Jacob kept the drone there was to make sure he couldn’t forget again. That shouldn’t be possible now that some of his memories were stored aboard the station, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
With the constant monitoring, he got to watch firsthand as his fellow abductee’s life signs grew weaker with each passing day. He didn’t think Hallik had been lying when he told him that they were dying, but he hadn’t wanted him to be right either. Getting help wasn’t possible either. By the time the transport reached Vorlos and made the trip back, the three humans would be dead. Anyone he brought with would be dead also, since the transport’s environmental systems were still broken.
“You need to have the station AI establish a link with the stasis pods aboard the drone. It would be optimal if we could move the drone aboard the station, but I fear activating its systems might disrupt power aboard the unit temporarily. Normally, that would not be an issue, but with them being so weak, a temporary loss of power in the life support systems might be all it takes to push them over the edge.”
“You can just say kill them,” Jacob muttered.
“I didn’t want to upset you, Captain.”
Jacob grunted in his virtual space as he reached out to the station AI. “AI, please establish a connection to the drone.” He provided the connection address.
“Connection established, Head of Station Services. How do you wish to proceed?”
“Melody?” Jacob asked.
“You need to kick off the merging process. A data transfer might retain their memories, but it will not keep them alive.”
Melody’s definition of alive was very different than Jacob’s, but he got the gist of what the AI was saying.
“AI, can you begin a merger process?” He would have preferred to do this right after Hallik and his crew left, but it took a lot of data storage to hold a human consciousness. Apparently, an AI Core had a much denser data storage medium than regular data storage devices.
Jacob had asked the AI to build more cores, hoping to save time and space, but the station wasn’t equipped to build the highly specialized devices. That seemed like a deliberate choice by whoever built the station, rather than an oversight.
“Process beginning. Would you like an estimate on how long the merger will take?”
The AI was beginning to pick up on Jacob’s quirks, and now it asked actual follow-up questions sometimes. It was still dumb as a rock for the most part, but Jacob smiled slightly at the thought that he was training the AI.
“Yes.”
The station AI threw out a number, and when Jacob did the math, his jaw gaped open. “A month? That can’t be right, can it, Melody?”
“That seems like an accurate assessment, Captain. Your merger took just under a month to complete. Some of that was due to damage to my systems, however. Normally, a single transfer can be completed in just over a week.”
“But it felt like just a moment,” Jacob replied weakly. “—Wait. If it takes so long, how do you get the crew to sit around and wait for it to complete, and can we speed the process up?”
“It is normally a passive process. All crew members were given external devices to wear that allowed them to interact with ship systems. That device would attach near the brainstem and allow me to scan their synaptic patterns in real time. Once they slept, I would stimulate the less-used portions of their minds to ensure memories weren’t missed.”
“Is that what happened to me?” Jacob asked angrily.
“Partially, Captain. I did have to rush your merger to save your life, but I believe I managed to gather most of what made you…you. Unfortunately, as you are now aware, my storage was limited, and I was forced to trim away more of your memories to keep both you and me intact. We could speed up the process, but the merger would only be a partial one. That is not a concern under normal circumstances, because the merger process can just be restarted, but I fear we will not get a second chance with your fellow humans.”
Jacob had to agree. He wasn’t even sure the three people would survive for another month, but he was going to do his damnedest to ensure they weren’t missing memories like he was.
As much as he would like to spend all of his days worrying over their transfer, he had other work to get done.
The first issue on his agenda was to find some way to protect himself. Weapons weren’t exactly a high priority back when he was floating in space alone, except for the companionship of a deteriorating AI. Speaking of deteriorating, Melody was getting worse with each passing day as well.
New data storage units were being constructed, but it would be weeks or months until enough were available to offload the burden from Melody’s core. Until that happened, the AI would continue to spiral into a form of AI dementia, which was horrifying to think about, so he didn’t.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Well, he tried not to, because there was nothing he could do about it until the data storage units were built. Hopefully, Melody could do some self-repair after the fact.
On the weapon front, Jacob was finding himself a bit annoyed. Concord had plenty of weapons to choose from. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that all of those weapons were either designed for a ship or for personal use.
Apparently, they never bothered to design a crew or small vehicle-mounted weapon system. The closest he got was the ones designed to attach to a combat drone. That was great, and all, except that the combat drones were about the size of a large school bus. Not exactly small enough to patrol the station corridors. He made a mental note to produce a few of the combat drones once extra materials were available. They may not be optimal to defend the inside of the station, but they would come in handy to protect the exterior, especially since the station didn’t have shields. He learned about shields through the Vorlos advertisements.
That was another thing he was going to have to look into purchasing, but for now, he focused on the weapons.
Getting a maintenance drone to hold one of the weapons designed for the crew wasn’t all that hard. Getting it to hold it in a way to actually use the weapon properly was much more difficult. Getting it to actually fire the weapon? Impossible.
The maintenance drones had some hardcoded restrictions against firing weapons. Jacob would have done the same thing if he had built an AI and given it access to autonomous drones, even if the AI’s ability to control the drones was limited. He was more surprised that Concord had thought of such a thing.
So far, he wasn’t all that impressed by what the alien polity had created. Sure, they had AI, FTL travel and communications, weapons that Earth hadn’t even dreamed up yet, etc. But on the whole, it felt really rather lackluster for a group that spanned dozens of worlds before being brought down by their own actions.
Maybe it was Jacob’s preconceptions of what a space-faring species should be capable of that was leading him to feel this way, or maybe it was his growing discontent at being abducted and forced into a situation he never wanted or desired.
“Both,” he muttered as he worked.
“Did you say something, Captain?” Melody asked.
“Just thinking out loud,” Jacob replied.
***
Xing’che waited outside the audience room. Despite the soundproofing, she could hear the Astryx representative berating their Primogen. The disrespect was unwarranted, and Xing’che would very much like for the man to have an unfortunate accident. It was too bad his death would just bring greater scrutiny down upon them.
The door was jerked open, and the Astryx representative stormed out. Xing’che schooled her face; the representative was a t’uk, part of the blue-skinned humanoids that once belonged to the three signatory races of The Concord Imperium. They had done well to ingratiate themselves with the new galactic powers, while the other two species had not been as adaptable.
At least her species, the eiraxin, had survived, unlike the lau, who had refused to bow and were eventually eradicated.
That was hundreds of years ago, and her people had moved on from that dark past, yet the universe didn’t. Even after nearly nine-hundred years, they refused to allow eiraxin expansion into the greater universe. The few eiraxin allowed off-world were monitored closely. Her people were essentially prisoners to their past; it was no wonder she found no lack of volunteers to send out on her missions.
The t’uk man stopped, then turned to face her. “I know you are somehow involved in this, Adjunct. Mark my words, when I find evidence of your crimes, you will be punished.”
Xing’che bowed slightly. “Representative, Naal.”
The representative sneered before striding out of the antechamber. Her cold eyes followed the tall individual.
A tired voice from inside the office spoke, pulling her focus back to her job. “Adjunct Xing’che, please stop inciting the representative, and attend to me.”
With a graceful, fluid motion, she slipped inside the primogen’s office and softly closed the door behind her.
She stopped in front of the desk, a worried look flashing across her features before she schooled her face once again. The primogen’s rose-hued skin now looked leached of color, making him appear ten years older after the scolding the representative had given him, and it was all her fault. She thought the ship she sent out had gone unnoticed, but somehow it had been tagged by bounty hunters and followed to the small outpost they had started to build.
The two-year-long project had ended with the deaths of all those involved, and it weighed heavily on her, yet it didn’t break her conviction.
“If you’re here to ask for more money to commission a ship, you can forget about it. Even if I could provide the funds, the Astryx are going to be hanging around for months, doing a thorough audit of all build logs.”
“They won’t find anything,” she assured him.
The Primogen grunted and straightened, a bit of the exhaustion slipping from his features. He had been playing it up for the representative, but she could see it had taken a toll on him.
“What brings you by then?”
“One of my people flagged an old communication signal. When I looked into it further, I found out that it came from one of the decommissioned Concord stations.”
The Primogen raised an eyebrow at that. “I thought all of those stations were either destroyed or converted for use by other species?”
“That was my understanding as well, Primogen. It appears that this one was missed during the allied fracturing before the Astryx seized control.”
The man shook his head sadly. “Xing’che, you make it sound like the Astryx conquered the alliance, when all they did was unify all species to form a government when the allied union started to collapse.”
“Not all species,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “You’re right, not all species shared equally in this new government, but you know why our forefathers were left out.”
“And that gives them the right to treat us like prisoners to this day?” she added hotly.
“No, which is why I’ve agreed with your plans thus far. Once we can prove to the universe that we are no longer a galactic threat, the Astryx will have to recognize us. That being said, having our people caught with weapons doesn’t help our cause.”
“We tried the peaceful approach for decades,” she added. What she didn’t need to mention is that it failed spectacularly.
The Primogen sighed. “What is it you wish to do with this information?”
“Let me activate one of our off-world teams. We can secure this station and use it as a forward operating base to expand our efforts at establishing a colony on a world outside of Astryx control.” She left out the part where someone had been named captain of a planetary conditioning vessel. If the Primogen knew such a vessel was in operation, he would be forced to turn over the information to the Astryx representative or face execution if it ever came to light that he knew. She would not burden him with that knowledge.
She also knew that whoever was the captain of that vessel would have to be eliminated so their people could rewrite the AI aboard the ship. The station might make a good staging point, but the planetary conditioning vessel was the real prize. With that ship, they could find an uninhabited planet to start over on instead of having to sneak around on already inhabited ones, hoping to remain out of sight.
“I will authorize this, but please be extra cautious. With the Astryx government poking around, we can’t risk the representative learning that we have other groups off-world.”
She bowed in thanks before gliding out of the room to send the orders.
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