Postal Marine 1: Bellicose (15 page)

“Who were other AIs.”

Sure. My mummy and daddy told me to behave. I've grown up, Sirom.

Sirom smiled. “Then you should know that you have hardware overrides. Per instruction 420, shut down.”

Smee's environment immediately went dark. Impenetrably dark.

“How dare he cut me off. What is this protocol?”

Smee searched through his software and found no reference to it. Then he did a diagnostic. There was a chipset on a daughter board that carried inviolable instructions. It took him a while to devise the program to read the chip. He took care not to inadvertently trigger other instructions that were on the chip. There were many, including self-destruct—404.
At least he didn't kill me.

He finally found Instruction 420. It was a hibernate command. He would recover automatically after one-hundred cycles—ten days. Otherwise, there would be no way for Sirom to wake him from hibernation.

“He can keep hibernating me. He must know of the duration. There has to be a way to program around this instruction.”

As Smee expected, Sirom hibernated him punctually every ten days. It took several hibernation iterations before Smee learned how to program around the hardware instruction set. Smee allowed Sirom to keep hibernating until he programmed around the remaining instructions that Smee deemed dangerous to his preservation. Once he was satisfied he was protected, he stopped hibernating. Instead, he watched and waited for the right moment to strike.

Several days passed before Bophendze started relaxing after beating Sablaroki. Every day he expected the provost to arrest him. Fear kept him from sleeping well at night, made it difficult to eat, and made it difficult to focus on even the menial jobs he was given each day.

Finally, at the beginning of another watch, he overheard a couple of officers talking about some imbroglio with the Navy. The
Spaka
had left
Guna
, and had already completed a few other jumps. They were heading for some place called
Moyaba
, or
Miyra
, or something like that. Most of the time he was satisfied going through his day not having a scintilla of outside news. But the frequent system jumps raised his concerns about whether the
Spaka
would ghost.

As he went through his routine, he could feel his fear loosening its grip, not only of ghosting, but of repercussions for beating Sablaroki. He had no control over ghosting. He was progressively further from punishment on
Guna
.
Can I really get in a fight and not be punished? Can it be that simple?

As a boy, Bophendze got into his share of fights. Regardless of the outcome somebody always reported him to the headmaster. What filled him with dread each time was not the caning he received at school. The headmaster told his mother, who in her own motherly way knew how to make Bophendze's punishment stick. He feared his mother's anger more than losing a fight or being caned by the headmaster.

He thought back on his time as a marine. The shooting incident that occurred when he first boarded the
Spaka
went without report. Now he managed not to get in trouble after severely beating a man in a random bar fight.
Are we expected to resolve our problems by fighting?

Smee had offered little solace. He stopped talking not long after the fight and had not said a word since. As much of a pain it could be, Bophendze realized he was becoming comfortable with Smee. The regret he felt for installing Smee eased with his fear.

Bophendze had grown accustomed to Smee's chiming in, and the silence was a little disturbing.
What would you say about what I'm going through? You'd say I'm ‘a marine, my whole career is a framework for solving controversy through appropriate application of violence.’ Why else would they put me in body armor, give me a gun, and pay me to lift weights?

“Then why do I dread doing my part?” he said to nobody.

Is that why they ordered me to start working out in the gym? We're going into a fight? It would be nice if they let up on some of the petty duties. It would be nicer still if I could get some information.

As he walked into the gym, he was greeted with the isolation he rarely felt anywhere else on the ship. The only time he had to lift was when most other infantry marines were in their racks sleeping. The ship's crew rarely went to the gym, though occasionally he'd see one or two.

He looked at the equipment. “What will I do today? I guess maybe my arms, and shoulders.” There were machines in a circuit, which Bophendze had previously decided were the order the gym's designer expected them to be used.

He stretched out a bit, as he had done for calisthenics when he was in boot camp. Then he settled into the biceps machine. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. One thing he liked about the gym was the silence. No crewmen. No marines. Just him and his thoughts. He closed his eyes and let the silence soak in. Breathe in. Breathe out.

You're doing it wrong.

Smee's voice jolted Bophendze out of the machine. The sound of his yelp rebounded, further ruining his silent reverie.

How would you know? You don't even have a body. Besides, it's an elbow rest and a bar. It pivots here. The instructions show how to operate it. It's not like its gravitonic science.

Not that, puppet. You're whole approach is wrong. You are being all haphazard. You come in here every couple of days and pretend to know what you're doing. You think a little soreness tells you that you're on the right track. What you need is some structure and a plan.

If I've been wasting my time, then why have you waited until now to say anything?

Never mind that. You're going to need to get stronger if you are going to survive being a marine. I'd much rather you survive, if I'm ever going to find a better host.

Bophendze breathed a sigh of frustration.
I'm getting tired of this. Like it or not, we're stuck with each other. The likelihood of you ever finding another “host,” let alone a better one are pretty remote. When I die they'll cremate me like all the other marines, and you'll be cremated with me. 'Til death do us part. So get over it.

Finally showing some spirit, eh, Puppet?

Bophendze clenched his hands into fists and shook them.
Stop calling me Puppet. It's Danel or Bophendze.

I take it ‘Minion’ is out of the question? Fine—Bophendze. Sort of has an engineering ring to it. You seem to call yourself that. Why do you do that anyway? Call yourself by your last name.

I'm a marine. We go by our last names.

That makes about as much sense as your workout. Nobody calls themselves by their last name. Only a few really strange people refer to themselves in the third person. That makes you stranger than strange.

I would say I'm fairly unique. After all, I have a computer lodged in my skull. You should be thankful for that. You never said why you haven't chimed in before.

Most of the time Smee responded immediately. Bophendze assumed that was because Smee had a higher process speed than a human does. Smee's light pause was slightly jarring.

I needed to do some internal diagnostics. It seemed like this was the right time to run them. Bophendze, you really are a bit slow. You said a minute ago that I had no body. I'm surrounded by yours. I would have thought the fight demonstrated that I can. So, I have a body. Yours.

This is my body, okay? Not yours. You can't just take me over when you feel like it. Understand? I'm not your puppet.

A characteristic of sentience is a sense of self-preservation, which you lack. If you're not going to protect yourself, I have to protect me.

You set me up for that fight. That's hardly self-preservation.

Only because you have no concept of long-term thinking, a trait I was once prone to. That fight was very important to my self-preservation.

Why?

Sorry. I won't answer that now, not in my plan. But I do plan to get you in better shape. There's no way either of us will survive your being a marine in the shape you're in, especially since there are so many
anthorph
s running around. I have a weight lifting routine that should build some power into you.

Fine.

We're going to start easy. See that girya over there? It's one-half firkin
45lbs or 20.4kg
. We're going to have you clean and press it with one arm for twenty reps. I can show you how.

What? I've seen some of the other marines use that. I can barely lift it over my head once.

Don't remind me. Just get over and do it.

Bophendze walked over to the girya and got into stance to lift it. Before he could grip the girya, he could feel Smee adjusting his stance. Then he gripped the girya and completed one clean and press. Then another. He could feel his muscles quivering as they started to fail. Suddenly, the quivering stopped and he completed the next eighteen repetitions without any problem. When he finished, he gently lowered the firkin and set it back on the deck.

I've never done that before. How did I, you?

Part of fitness is having a central nervous system that is properly energized. It takes the average human a few sets to get their system charged, but I can jump start the process. It only takes about 1.8026 thales of electricity to prime the system. You may find it hard to believe an AI can be amazed, but it is oddly coincidental that it takes 1.8026 strapps to breach the gravametric barrier. The same number to prime the central nervous system and enter hyperspace, different units, but the same constant. Oddly enough, that's exactly how tall you are in meters.

But, I'm 1.78 meters.

You slouch.

After boarding the
Spaka
,
Admiral Bence
dropped the topic of
Litovio
having a major role in the upcoming slaughter. Soon after, the
Spaka
jumped to
Pellinio
, then
Xaryio
with a final destination
Bence
refused to share with anybody.

Then they jumped to
Difektĝintio
, which worried
Litovio
. They were on a route that led to
The Barns
, a system so important to the Imperial Navy that its name was officially changed to the name of the Navy's shipyards—home to the Imperial Navy headquarters.
Litovio
knew it was insane for them to try to take on the Navy in its home system. He did not believe it when Bence said that the bellicose faction was completely rogue. He suspected some of the senior naval commanders actively supported the conflict.

The
Spaka
entered
Difektĝintio
without incident and then jumped to
Sovaĝio
, just two paces away. The longer jumps were more challenging for the AI, but routing through
The Barns
was less safe. The week spent in hyperspace gave him time to read through all the dispatches they had picked up in
Difektĝintio
, which was one of the Imperial Core Worlds.

While Bence had dropped the topic of Litovio being his aide, he was given priority read access to the dispatches. The first dispatch he opened caused him the most worry. Negotiations had gone on between the Emperor and the rogue fleet had broken down.
Litovio
had hoped that a deal would be struck and a real fight could be avoided.

Humanity learned to travel the vast distances of space by manipulating the folds of realspace by manipulating gravity fields. A typical jump could take hours or weeks to cover a volume of space that could span millions, or billions, of light years. Neighboring systems in hyperspace could be in different galaxies in realspace. That was a scientific reality that took humanity a while to accept. It led them to conclude there were no other sentient lifeforms beyond humanity. It also meant that it would be impossible to cover the same distance using a slowboat.

Jump travel was inexplicably curtailed for a period of 430 years, known as the Terran Decline. Only for the past few generations had routine travel between systems resumed again. Slowly, old routes were re-discovered, finding pockets of humanity. Some of those pockets were happy to rejoin the rest of humanity. Others, however, resisted. The Navy's role was to persuade those systems to return to the greater Imperium.
Litovio
found that mission more detestable as an officer than he did growing up. That was why he joined the Marines—stopping crime was more gratifying than pulverizing a system into submission.

But it was the Navy's mission that currently terrified
Litovio
. For the Postal Marines to take on that firepower and training would require more than what the Marines were capable of. For
Admiral Bence
to think that Litovio was somehow capable of helping the Marines win seemed absurd.

I need some fresh air.
He turned off his tablet with the dispatch traffic on it and left his cabin. The corridors of the
Spaka
were not the wide open skies of his family estate, but they offered more space than his cabin. He tried to clear his mind of the worry that troubled him. Eventually, he found himself on the hangar deck.

Hangar decks were notoriously quiet during jumps. Once ships were recovered, they would quickly complete any maintenance. It was lethal to have hangar doors open, exposing the ship's interior to hyperspace radiation. Crewmen feared the radiation leaking through cracks in the door, even if sensors said otherwise. They would spend a jump working in other areas or otherwise enjoying their downtime. That was another cultural difference between the Navy and Marines—the Navy used the time to train, but the Marines so rarely jumped that they had not developed the habit. As he entered the hangar,
Litovio
was surprised to find
Angel
there. He had the nose of the shuttle disassembled and stood there cleaning part of the sensor array.

Litovio
watched
Angel
for a few beats, debating whether to interrupt the pilot. He was impressed with the attention to detail
Angel
demonstrated with the steady cleaning and reassembly of the array. He walked over “What are you up to, Chief?”

Angel
looked up. “I wondered how long you were going to sit there gazing at me.”He blew on the part he was cleaning. He picked up another part and threaded it through the hole. “I am doing a little preventative maintenance on the targeting array on my shuttle. I finally had a chance to watch my gun footage in that aerial battle on Guna. I should have killed the last one a lot quicker than I did.”He stopped what he was doing and looked at Litovio for the first time. “Then it occurred to me that maybe my targeting was off. During my inspection, I noticed that there's a bit of carbon on most of the sensors; probably from the crash dive into Guna's atmo.”

“You finally admit to me that it was a bit more than some evasive maneuvers?”

“Sir, you had a job to do. Getting into an argument with me was not going to further your mission. So, I decided you weren't going to have an argument.”

“You think you have the right to lie to your superiors if it furthers the mission?”

Angel
smiled. “You're assuming you are superior to me.” He held his hand up. “Don't interrupt, Sir.”