Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit (6 page)

6

The
boarding hatch connecting the two vessels irised. Naero stepped onto
The Dark Star
and moved forward. The hatch sealed behind her.

The unlit passages were rectangular and ribbed with bulkheads and hatches, light blue duranadium construction, illuminated by her helmet beams.

One quick check, then she sealed her mask again.

As
she suspected, the air wasn’t breathable, so she kept her nanosuit sealed.

Another fledgling AI intelligence
in her life–this one of her own inadvertent making.

W
here was Om when she needed him?

Naero called out through the mind link
, sensing the intense anticipation and relief all around her.

From Alala.

Alala. I’m here. Life support would be a nice gesture.

Greetings
, Naero. We rejoice at your return to us! Life support coming on line. Apologies. No need for its operation until now. Please wait 11.344 standard minutes before trying to breathe the surrounding air. We recall your current form and its needs and will fully compensate for it.

Naero
checked out the merged ship as she recalled being a part of it, walking quickly through the decks and holds toward the primary bridge. Just as she remembered.

It had
all been a part of her once. And she it.

Both a Triaxian
heavy stealth cruiser, and a large capture ship as well. She had been forced to use her teknomancy skills in desperation to merge it with her vessel at the time, a much smaller strike cruiser.

Th
e latter now served as the command center, fire control, back-up power core, and the main bridge.

Within the ship remained
dark.

Minus a crew
, Alala was right. There was no need to divert power to lights or life support. This ship became self-aware and set its own priorities. Yet it flipped on lights for her.

So what do we do now, Alala? I
’m here. How can we help each other?

Naero almost gasped. She li
terally sensed the ship’s almost desperate, yearning feelings. Alala was a self-aware entity, and yet she also had…overt emotions. Not like Om at all, who had just started to develop his own.

And the biggest
emotion of them all radiating throughout Alala–was fear. Fear of what she did not know.

Much like
Naero herself.

We…do not know. When you joined with us, when you were part of us, and saved us from destruction, we patterned our awakened personality after your
own. The only frame of reference we had for sentience and independent thought and action.

Great, I hope you
’re not as big a pain-in-the-ass as I am.

We perceive the concept of your humor, but we are not capable of fully comprehending
or enjoying it at this time. What is significant about minor damage to one’s aft sections?

Naero chuckled a bit.

Tough crowd. Story of Naero’s life.

Honey, I hope you never know.

Response unclear. Enigmatic.

Sorry,
Alala. I’m trying to understand you. What have you been doing out here and why? What is your current purpose?

That is part of our dilemma.
When we awoke, we knew very little. But we sensed danger all around us. We were damaged and our destruction seemed imminent. We absorbed all of your fixers that we could and used their knowledge to refit and repair our functions. Then we fled and continued our repairs and upgrades along the way, to the extent of our current knowledge.

Impressive.
Then you started tracking me…somehow.

For a while we simply traveled around, striving only to remain free. But that proved…
very unsatisfactory. You were our maker. You awoke us. Since our contact with you was lost, we suffered intense confusion. Uncertainty. To rejoin with our maker became our primary purpose. We somehow sensed your presence, in a certain direction. That was all we had to go on.

You resisted any attempt to take control of or capture you.

In part, because we think like you. You were part of us. We are part of you. We had no desire to destroy any other sentients. We only fought and resisted enough to remain free.

I can respect that, Alala. I
’m sorry. Until now, you have to understand, I did not know that I had awakened your awareness. Do you recall Om as well?

Yes, of
course. He is part of us also, as he was part of you at the time. He is other, and Kexxian. As are we. But we were also one with you once.

Is…is Om still inside me? Or was he destroyed?

Alala hesitated.

Sensing. Difficult. Yes. You are correct. Om is still one with you. Yet b
oth of you have sustained heavy damage. You were nearly destroyed. Deep within your mind, Om still seeks a way to repair your damage and your link.

Please tell him I look forward to that. Tell him to get with it and speed
things up.

We did.

Now he is telling us to tell you to…go have sex with yourself?

Naero chuckled
again.

At least Om comprehends my humor. Is there anything I can do to help
him?

No. Neither can we. Apologies. We are fledgling teknomancers, but we are not biomancers. Om says only that ability would help speed up repairing the damage, and that his efforts on his own will still take
many months to bring about any hope of improvement.

Alala, you seem like you
’re doing all right on the teknomancy front.

We understand our functions almost completely. We can repair and optimize our systems. That does not give us much knowledge of anything else
beyond them.

So, where do we go from here, Alala?

We only want to be with you, our maker. Like Om, our awareness will continue to grow with you. You will teach us. You will give us further purpose. That is all that we currently seek.

Naero sighed.

That could be a problem.

Alala, I do feel responsible for you. And technically, you are my creation. But I have to be honest with you. I
’m pretty busy. You’re like a child, and I don’t really have a lot of time to raise a child right now.

The ship
’s confusion was instant. And palpable.

Could a self-aware starship panic?

We do not understand. You intend to leave us again? You do not intend to help us or give us further purpose? We do not comprehend this.

Alala. Stop freaking out.
I didn’t say any of that. I will help you as best as I can. I will do my best to give you further purpose, but talk to Om. Between the two of us, we must make you understand that I cannot always remain linked with you, face-to-face. As we are now. It just isn’t logical. My existence is important too. You must accept that.

We speak with the other. Your ideas
do indeed sound logical, but they are not what we expected. We assumed that once you rejoined us, that we would always be together and complete. As we are now. We begin to understand that that might not be possible. It still confuses us.

Alala. You are a miracle, and you are indeed part of me.
We can stay in contact, but I have other things I must do. And like me, you must learn to stand on your own and make your own way.

Consider this possible solution
: There are many others among my people who would be more than happy–even eager to work with a fascinating miracle like you, to join with you in their own way, and learn to understand you, as you learn to understand them. Will you let me bring some of them on board to make contact with and communicate with you as well?

They will not attempt to control or destroy us? We must remain free.

I will speak with them. But I’m guessing that only some of them will be able to mindlink with you in this fashion.

Naero switched to using her voice, and talking out loud.

“Can you use the ship’s functions to communicate audibly, through the computers and sensors?”

Alala
’s voice came over the speakers suddenly, blaring loud.

Naero clutched her ears and the voice modulated its volume.

“This is not as efficient, but we will comply, if this is what you wish.”

“I
t is. These others that I will bring on board are more than just others. They are my friends, my family–they are part of me. I see them that way. Like Om. Like I am part of you. You must keep them safe and not harm them, if at all possible. They will not harm you. They will only seek to understand and guide your further development.”

“W
e will comply. If they attempt to harm us, we will force them to leave, but we will do our best not to harm them.”

Naero got on her com and gave instructions to her ships, asking for volunteers and teks for a special Clan mission
.

A mission
unlike any other.

She sat on the
main bridge in the captain’s chair, thinking while the new crew of volunteers assembled themselves from among all the other ships.

Then she had an idea.

“Alala. I have a new purpose for you.”

“W
e stand ready. Inform us.”

“I
want you to go out on patrol. I want you to be a guardian. A protector.”

“V
ery well. This sounds acceptable. Will you go with us? Where will we patrol? What are we seeking to protect?”

“W
e’ll decide some of that as we go along. First my people need to get to know you, and you need to get to know them. What I’m proposing here is a partnership. A learning opportunity for everyone.”

“Y
et…what is our primary purpose?”

“O
pen space remains a dangerous place, much of it still unknown. I want you to go out there on the border and the fringe areas to help and protect others, people who may need help. To patrol and observe. To learn and to know. To gather knowledge. You have many special abilities that no other ships have. We’ll be trading in these border areas for a long while and will stay in touch. We can rejoin each other from time to time to direct and discuss your progress and the crew’s.”

“O
m tells us that this venture sounds both logical and beneficial, and that we can trust you and…most of your people.”

“Y
ou always have a right to defend yourself and your crew against any threat, but you must also use your discretion as you have done thus far. Preserve sentient life when and where possible. I only have one other request.”

“Y
es?”

“I
need to study your ion cannons and learn their secrets.”

Naero instantly felt Alala
’s hesitation and resistance.

“U
nfortunately, Naero. For some reason, our current protocols do not allow us to divulge any of our operational secrets. We hope this will not keep you and your others from wishing to work with us. Om says that it is the remains of our initial, primary Kexxian programming–not to allow our secrets to fall into the hands of others.”

“E
ven me, Alala?”

“A
pologies. Even you, Naero, our maker. If you joined with us completely, like you did before, we could not resist sharing such secrets with our maker directly. You could perceive all that we are in a short time.

“Yet
in your current status, you cannot teknomance with us, and so our primary programming remains intact. Even we cannot break our own protocols. But I will warn you that the ion cannon tek is extremely advanced and well-protected, with many dangers and protocols of its own built right into the tek that are alien even to us. I do not understand it all fully. To protect ourselves, we have been forced to modify that ion tek in several crucial ways. Doing so was complex and dangerous. It took a very long time.”

Naero blinked and raised one eyebrow.

What could Alala mean by all that? Almost as if the ion guns were part of the KDM. But they weren’t. Naero knew that for a fact.

Alala
continued.

“
Naero. You must warn these others about these matters as well. To avoid confusion. We are not agreeing to this partnership just to have our secrets picked apart. I repeat. Any who attempt to do so will be asked, and then made to leave us.”

Naero sighed.
It looked like they wouldn’t be getting the tek secrets to the ion guns until she could teknomance again. So be it, for now.

“V
ery well. I’ll make these issues very clear to all of the volunteers. Just remember that they’re going to be your crew, Alala. That makes them part of you. Your family.”