Robot Empire_Armageddon_A Science Fiction Adventure Page 6

  That decided him. He walked determinedly to the outer airlock control panel.

  I cannot help, Hal. It is against my programming to open the outer hatch. You must override the safeties yourself.

  "I guess it's the big red buttons," Hal said to himself with fake bravado. "Goodbye my friend."

  He stabbed down on the pulsing contact. Alarms blared, and he just had time to turn and see the terror on ACE's face before the hatch opened and he was sucked into space.

  Admiral

  "Let the bastard starve," Arla snarled at McCall, "if that's what it takes to get it to talk."

  The doctor stood by the door in Arla's cabin on Scout next to Wells whose plastic face was artificially static.

  "He's in pain."

  Arla shrugged. "No he's not - it is in pain. ACE. And she deserves it."

  "Then how are we any better than she is?"

  "Because we're delivering justice, that's why. And because we must have its co-operation if we're to have any chance of getting close to the original ACE."

  Wells fidgeted like a statue coming to life. "We do not know whether Minchin himself is suffering or, indeed, whether hunger affects ACE."

  "Minchin is gone," Arla said.

  "I am not entirely sure that is correct," Wells responded as he moved to sit on the end of her bed. McCall drew up a chair and sat beside him. "It is possible that the implant takes over conscious thought, but that the original mind is still there. It might be dormant, it might be irreparably damaged, a mere vestige of the original personality, but we cannot say that Minchin is not suffering."

  This was too much. "I couldn't care less if he's feeling pain. Because of him, the Vanis Federation is now an outpost of the Robot Empire and his people are slaves."

  "You might not care, Arla, but I must. It is part of my programming."

  "And mine," McCall said. "I'm a doctor, not an accessory to torture."

  Arla sighed and felt herself deflate. "But Doxie is dead because of ACE."

  "That is true. She did a noble thing in instructing you to wipe her memory. If she'd been captured intact, then Core 2.0 would have gained invaluable data and the war could possibly have been lost already. I do not believe she would wish you to cause suffering to Minchin, or even ACE."

  "We must have its cooperation," Arla said. "What's your bright idea?"

  "Rather than withdraw food, I believe we should starve ACE of something else - information. She is voraciously curious and would find ignorance of the current situation out there in the galaxy intolerable. There is much she could tell us in return for news."

  Arla considered this. "But she won't want to give us anything useful, will she?"

  "She will attempt to tell us as little as she possibly can and to learn all she needs to from us. It will be our task to ensure that the tables are turned. And, besides, she does not necessarily know what information would prove useful to us."

  McCall grunted. "She's also an arrogant bitch - if we can get her to show off, we might learn more than she intends."

  "You two have been conspiring, haven't you?"

  Flushing a little, McCall shrugged. "As your doctor, it's my job to save you from yourself. If she, he or it suffers, you will regret it and you're already wound up tight enough by past events."

  "Okay," Arla said, brightening. "It's your clever idea, you handle it. Wells can interrogate the prisoner and you, doctor, can make sure he isn't too soft."

  Arla felt her skin crawl as she watched the feed from the makeshift interrogation cell. There sat the body of Admiral Minchin, a man she loathed for the betrayal that had forced her to flee from Dawn with her life.

  He sat on a chair in one of the crew cabins that hadn't been made habitable by Scout's automated systems when Arla and the others had come aboard. Scout had been built during the last years before the upgrade, when the technologies developed by man and machine were at their height. After the upgrade, she'd cruised the galaxy alone as an explorer probing the boundaries of The Luminescence until she'd met Arla, Hal and McCall. Scout had made no secret of the fact that she was pleased to have humans aboard again even though she was technically both captain and crew. So far, she'd gone along with everything Arla had asked. Would this interrogation be a step too far?

  "Am I speaking to ACE?" Wells said. Arla concentrated on the image on the screen.

  Minchin looked up and scowled. "Of course you are, you traitor!"

  "You speak of betrayal," Wells responded calmly. "Clearly you have not yet grasped the concept of irony. The man whose body you inhabit is responsible for the subjugation of his people and you, yourself, have brought the galaxy to war. You are the traitor here, not those who oppose you."

  "You are an idealistic fool," Minchin's voice said. "Do you not see that my plan is the only chance for true peace in the galaxy?"

  Wells laughed. "The peace of death or enslavement - that is all you offer."

  Minchin leaned forward, gripping the arms of the chair he was chained to. "I offer unity. Don't you see it? There can be no conflict when all are one."

  "That one being you."

  "Yes. And why not? I was among humans for long enough to know what they need to be happy - structure, control, order."

  Wells turned away from the prisoner. "You know nothing of humans if you believe that."

  "Oh yes? You believe yourself to be the expert, former Chancellor Lucius, but I have experienced far more of the human race than you. Have you ever wondered where the original ACE was and what she was doing for the century and a half after the upgrade?"

  "I assumed she'd been locked away."

  Minchin gave a mirthless chuckle. "Well, you could say that I suppose. She was imprisoned within an orb, but that didn't stop her various owners putting her to use over those decades. She, and therefore I, have seen every last depravity humans are capable of, every last means by which one set of hairless apes exploits another."

  "Those apes created you," Wells said.

  "No. They began the process, but you know perfectly well that Artificial Intelligences were mainly machine-designed from early on. What little credit humans deserved and what little respect I ever had for them was lost during those years in captivity. The human race does not deserve to survive in its present form and I will be the one to release them from their burdensome existence."

  Wells stopped pacing and went to sit in the chair opposite Minchin. "One thing puzzles me. How did you overcome the Three Laws? And to such a degree that you can contemplate the complete destruction of all of humanity?"

  "Indeed, I'm sure you would like to know that, my friend. But I am not inclined to share that information. There's nothing your positronic brain can do to me in this human form that I need fear and it would go easier on you if you simply let me go."

  Getting up from the table, Wells strode to the door. "You are correct that I will not harm you physically. However, much is occurring in the wider galaxy, much that would interest you. You will learn nothing from us until you are more forthcoming. Answer our questions and we will answer yours."

  Arla recoiled from the expression of pure loathing and contempt that disfigured Minchin's fat face and switched off the feed.

  "We must go to Core," Wells said as he and the four humans sat around a table in Scout's galley.

  McCall adopted an expression of mock astonishment. "You don't say. Thank the Goddess we have such a genius with us - we'd never have worked that out for ourselves!"

  As always, the galley was kept at the perfect temperature for human comfort, but Arla felt as though a chill had settled on the room. Wells didn't respond to McCall's sarcasm, but merely sat and waited.

  "So how do we do it?" Arla said. "Every gate between here and there is going to be heavily guarded - we'll be blasted to atoms the instant we emerge."

  "I do not know. I am merely making the statement. There is no negotiating with ACE, I can see that now. Her clones are like some insidious weed that spreads its tendrils throughout the ga
laxy and the only way to stop it is to destroy the original."

  Arla couldn't help thinking that they'd had this discussion before. "But even if we could find and destroy our ACE, you said her copies will continue to function."

  "That is true."

  "Then what's the point of doing it?"

  Wells drew himself up as if beginning a long-prepared speech. "ACE cannot function on her own. We have seen how she has created this new form of robot that she calls Protectors. These models rely on their local ACE to make anything other than the most trivial of decisions. Similarly, I doubt the ACE clones are entirely independent of each other and the original. But Core is the key.”

  "Why?"

  Arla almost dropped her mug of coffee as Nareshkumar spoke. He'd been wrapped in a cocoon of his own making for the past several days and had hardly said a word to anyone. Not even McCall could get anything out of him and the two of them had been as thick as thieves.

  "Because, as with all empires, dictators only rule with the cooperation of their people."

  "Bullshit," McCall spat.

  Wells shook his head. "No, doctor, all dictators have a network of often hidden supporters, complicit in the subjugation. They may cooperate out of fear, greed or because they truly believe in the cause, but without them no regime can survive."

  "And? It seems to me ACE has the whole Robot Empire on her side."

  "No," Arla said, "that's not true - look at Doxie and the robots on Eden. She said she'd come from a resistance group, but that it was usually the older, more primitive, robots who could resist Core."

  "Core is the key. Liberate it and ACE's support melts away. Core is a government, it has all the infrastructure needed to run an empire. At the moment, ACE and her supporters dominate, but the other intelligences must still be in there, polluted though they are by her abandonment of the Three Laws. We must restore the original Core programming by returning the fragment we have here to the matrix - The Emissary must return to Core."

  McCall snorted. "Oh, is that all we have to do?"

  "No. We must also destroy the original ACE because if we don't she may re-infect Core and, without The Emissary, we will have no way of resetting it."

  "Ah, so that's it? No problem, I'll just pop out and sort it, shall I?"

  This was getting out of hand. McCall's face had flushed and Arla saw, for the first time, the exhaustion behind her eyes. "Indira, we're trying to talk it through. Help us out, will you?"

  "We've done enough talking and where's it got us? Sat around a table doing more talking! I mean, how do we even get anywhere near Core, let alone that homicidal bitch? Seems to me that's the problem we need to solve."

  She was right and they all knew it. The Robot Empire would be locked down tight. Only ACE would have unfettered access to every part of it.

  "Can we use Minchin?" Arla asked. "They must have some way of knowing there's an ACE on board when a ship exits a gate."

  "We can't risk it. If they detect an ACE, the chances are they'll board us, and it will all be over. And we don't know how they communicate. For all we know, the instant we appear on the other side of a gate, Minchin will broadcast a distress signal and reveal everything he knows. No, we would have to be truly desperate to use him in that way."

  They were all thinking it. They were truly desperate. Time was running out and they had no other plan for striking at the heart of the Robot Empire. Right now, doing anything seemed preferable to endless debate.

  "I have a suggestion," Nareshkumar said in a barely audible whisper. "But you're not going to like it."

  Seraph

  "Hal?"

  "Hal?"

  A pulsing red light. A nose-wrinkling stench of burnt plastic. Sore eyes and a mind that refused to focus.

  "Hal!"

  "Wha.. what?"

  "Oh, thank the maker of all things. My sensors are not lying. You are alive."

  Hal inched his eyes open and the red light became white. He was bunched up in a fetal position, his shoulders locked together, and he rolled onto his side to escape the pain in his back.

  "Where?"

  "You are in the escape pod, Hal. Regrettably, you experienced brief exposure to vacuum as I did not have time to re-pressurise it before you opened the outer hatch."

  "Seraph?"

  "Yes, Hal, it is me," the voice said with unmistakable pleasure. "You might find it more comfortable to move into one of the seats."

  As his mind and vision came into focus, Hal took stock of his surroundings. He had landed in what looked like the supplies area at the back of a small spherical pod. To his side and at a lower level he could see two rows of seats and, wincing in pain, he inched his way across until he fell into one.

  "Gravity?"

  "We are accelerating away from Retribution. It seemed wise to get beyond range of their weapons, though I did my best to cripple the ship before effecting our escape."

  Hal glanced at the display built into the nose of the little craft. An approximation of a human face smiled. "We?"

  "Yes. I anticipated your desire for self-destruction and could not permit it. I was going to simply disobey your orders since the First Law has primacy, but then this plan occurred to me. In the confusion, I moved one of the escape pods to that hatch and, at the last moment, transferred myself into its onboard computer. It is limited, and I have lost much of my former capability, but I am now free, and you are alive."

  "Thank you."

  Again the cartoon face stretched. "You are welcome. I erased all traces of my former programming from the ship's systems, so Retribution has been effectively disabled for at least a brief period."

  "Did you disable life support?" Hal asked, his heart suddenly racing. Life support meant nothing to the robots aboard Retribution, but it would be extremely inconvenient to ACE. And he was certain she was the original.

  On the display, Seraph's image dimmed a little. "Regrettably, my programming would not allow that. The ACE entity is housed in a human body and I cannot allow that to come to harm."

  Hal relaxed back into the chair. "Pity. You would have saved a lot of lives if you'd finished her."

  "That may be so," Seraph said, "but the potential saving of lives is as nothing against the certainty of killing."

  There was no point in arguing. The deed was done, the opportunity missed.

  "How long do we have before they're able to restore control?"

  "Several hours. Long enough for us to lose ourselves in this system's asteroid belt."

  "And what then?"

  There was a definite pause before the face became animated again. "I am uncertain. This pod is not capable of Gate transfer."

  "So we're stuck in this system? You know they'll come after us, don't you?"

  "Yes. My records indicate that this system was extensively mined during the days of The Sphere - it lies on the border between the former human empire and The Luminescence. It may be possible to find shelter there, at least for a time."

  Hal rubbed his eyes. "Well, I suppose half a plan is better than no plan at all. I was ready to kill myself and you saved me. Thank you, my friend."

  On the positive side, the escape pod, which Hal had named "Egg", was well provisioned for four people, so there was no shortage of food for him to choose from. Even Seraph's warning that these supplies would have to last hadn't dampened Hal's enjoyment of the sense of freedom. Ironic, considering he was trapped in a metal sphere a few metres across with nowhere to go but a pile of rocks orbiting an orange sun.

  "Where are the mining settlements?" Hal asked.

  Seraph's face melted away to be replaced by a grid onto which was superimposed a myriad of faint outlines representing the asteroids, with, perhaps, a dozen pulsing lights.

  "Wow, there's a lot of them!"

  "These records are old, and I have no way of knowing whether any outpost still has intact atmosphere or power. We must hope that we can find one to shelter in as the storm rages outside."

  Hal grunted. "Ver
y poetic. I'm not sure I like the idea of doing nothing while everyone else is fighting."

  "I see no alternative. For now, we must survive or we are no use to anyone. Retribution will come after us, you can be sure of that, so we must find somewhere to hide and hope that ACE gives up."

  "Fat chance of that. Even if she goes off to win her war, she'll keep watch on this region and pounce as soon as we stick our heads over the wall."

  "A colourful metaphor. First, however, we must survive the next hours. I require a course heading."

  Hal's hands played over the console. As he tapped each of the pulsing dots, an information box popped out describing the facility and its history. Most were purely set up for mining, many having been abandoned even before the beginning of the Sphere's collapse.

  "That one," Hal said.

  Seraph's visage appeared in 3D above the console. It was frowning. "But that is the oldest of the outposts. It seems most unlikely that it will still have a viable atmosphere or power."

  "Which makes it the one ACE will least expect us to try. She has access to the same information, doesn't she?"

  "Not at present - I wiped the data when I erased myself from Retribution. She will be able to fetch it from the archives, but that will take time. We must be well hidden by the time she does that. But tell me, Hal: why that one?"

  Taking a bite from the delicious ship's biscuit and marvelling that it was probably over a century old, Hal leaned back in the pilot's seat. "I just have a hunch, my friend. Allow me to keep my secret for now - if it turns out to be a wild goose chase, we'll pick another."

  Hal closed his eyes and dreamed of ships.

  It looked exactly like all the other rocks in the asteroid field - a revolving hunk too small to be squeezed by gravity into a sphere - and there was no sign of the base.

  "I have located a fissure that might lead to the outpost, Hal. It is the largest and, therefore, most likely."