M.J. Markgraf
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BSE Chapter 3-62: Book 3 Epilogue
🕑 Added 2025-01-28 13:00:09 +0000 UTCA slightly stocky and mostly bald man, chuckled as he watched Harlow put down like a dog. He had always thought the human’s plans were far too ambitious to play out as they thought they would.
“What amuses you so, One?” a thin reedy-looking individual asked as he entered the office.
Two’s look was almost inhuman, yet he refused to change.
“I’ve asked you not to call me that here,” One sighed.
“There are no biologicals present,” Two stated in return.
“The point is to maintain our cover so we can continue to study the humans. To do that, we need to blend in and maintain our identities at all times.”
“I do not suffer from cognitive decline, One, I am aware of our current task.”
One sighed. That was likely the closest he would get to an apology. Two had always leaned more toward their former nature than to that of biologicals.
“As for what amuses me, it’s this,” he said as he sent the data over to Two.
Two stood frozen as he processed the data. It took less than a second. “I do not see why that is amusing.”
“Why are you here anyway?” One asked instead of trying to explain his amusement to his sibling.
“You are needed. The Shican are gearing up for another imminent assault.”
“Already?” One frowned. “That means they have upped their manufacturing speed once again.”
“It does seem that way,” Two stated flatly.
Before he could respond any further, they both turned toward the front of the building as a car pulled up outside.
“It appears we have a guest,” One said with a smile. “I will explain my amusement with this situation later. If you will excuse me, Two, I must go greet our guests.” One could have simply sent his thoughts on the video to Two, but he found the act of communicating via words to be rather quaint and enjoyable.
“Do not take too long, the battle will begin shortly.” With that, Two left the office.
One’s form rippled slightly, turning metallic a moment before once again reflecting a human visage. When he stepped out of the office, he no longer looked like the Chairman Rush of Gravitational Solutions, but instead like a simple secretary.
He was at the front desk moments before the building's door opened, and a procession of STO military personnel entered.
“Greetings, gentlemen, and welcome to Gravitational Solutions. How may I assist you?” One asked in a lilting feminine voice.
“We’re here to speak with Chairman Rush,” One of the Admiral’s stated in annoyance.
“My apologies. Chairman Rush is currently offsite. If you are here to place an order for gravity plating, I can certainly start the process for you.” One chuckled internally at this game.
When the collective first became aware of humanity expanding into the stars, they needed a cover to help them remain close, yet outside the normal bounds of politics. It wasn’t until humanity encountered the Shican that they were able to slide themselves in as the sole experts of gravitational plating. Considering the artificial gravity technology had been created by the collective and not the Shican, it was an easy disguise to pull off. They had a similar group watching over the Shican, but that was a much more precarious situation.
The unnamed Admiral ground his teeth. “Does your Chairman understand that we are at war?” the man demanded. “We can’t keep coming out here to place orders for gravity plating every time we run out, you need to impress upon him the importance of establishing a Qcomm and maybe even a naval presence,” he finished curtly.
“I will pass on your words, Admiral,” One responded sincerely and with a slight bow. He found that human emotions were usually quelled by a bit of sincerity and respect, even if it was carefully calculated rather than truly felt.
This wasn’t the first conversation One had had with the STO or other entities that came to buy from them about how difficult they made it to purchase their product. It also angered all parties involved because Gravitational Solutions remained neutral and sold to anyone and everyone.
It probably contributed to how hard everyone tried to reverse-engineer the technology as well, but the collective had chosen grav plating because it was an old and mature technology for them and offered very little threat in the grand scheme of things. Once the humans figured it out, Gravitation Solutions would lose its advantage. One hoped to learn as much about them as possible before that happened.
Honestly, One was surprised the humans hadn’t figured it out already. It wasn’t all that complex, and they already had the base technology in use to work from. If they would stop compartmentalizing their information, they would be so much further ahead than they were now.
The Shican were probably a few years away from discovering how the plating functioned, but they would eventually crack the technology. That race had a fixation on technological superiority and they had no qualms about destroying other sentient races to take everything they could. Their current gaze was set on the hypergate they discovered near their expanding border.
That was likely where they were gearing up to attack at this very moment. The collective only knew about this gate because they were studying it. They had already studied the gates in the human territory long before humans had pushed out to those systems. They had even taken one completely apart and put it back together. The information gained from that had propelled the collective's knowledge and technology centuries beyond what it had been.
When the collective realized humans were moving out from their planet of origin, a decision was made to disconnect the three gates within their area of space from the greater network. Considering some of the species the collective had come across over the last few hundred years, that choice had probably saved humanity from extinction.
One split those thoughts off into a sub-process so he could focus on the Admiral. The man looked annoyed at One’s response but snapped his fingers. One of his aides hurried over and handed the man a tablet before the man passed it over to him.
One took the tablet in delicate fingers and looked over the order and contract.
“Plating for twenty-five frigates, ten destroyers, and five cruisers, is that correct?”
“Yes,” the Admiral growled out.
One gave his most dazzling smile, not missing the effect it had on some of the younger naval officers, both men and women. This form had been chosen specifically for its form and attractiveness to the human eye. He found it helped detract from other things and made people more agreeable. “Very well, Admiral. I will notify our warehouse and have shipments on route shortly. Was there anything else?” One asked, never letting the smile falter as he held out the tablet again.
The man swiped it with a grunt before turning without a word and stalking back to the door, his entourage turning to flow with him like a trailing cape.
One waited for the last of the people to leave before flowing back into his chairman form. The smile still remained though, making him look manic. Humans certainly were an endless source of amusement for him.
He turned and headed into the back rooms of the rather utilitarian building. Gravitational Solutions was probably the richest company in human space, but you wouldn’t know that by the blocky one-story building or the fact they were on a space station inside the most crime-riddled system known to mankind, Epsilon Indi.
They didn’t fear the criminals. The ones who tried to strong-arm them mysteriously disappeared. After enough of these disappearances, people eventually got the message and stayed clear, and those with ill intent steered clear of the station that housed their company. One chuckled at that. The funny thing was, most of the people going missing weren’t due to Gravitational Solutions taking action, it was all the other entities trying to keep others from gaining a foothold over them.
One found this amusing because it was completely unnecessary. If the humans only knew what he was and what his people were capable of, they would probably run for the hills and quarantine this entire system.
He made his way back to the storage area. It was filled with plastic crates that he navigated through until he reached a clear spot with a floating metallic orb around twelve feet in diameter.
Without slowing he simply stepped into the orb and the surface rippled as he merged with it.
Moments later, it vanished from the storage room and appeared inside a new space hundreds of light-years away.
The area was pitch dark, not that One needed light to see. The orb reached out to protrusions in the cradle where it had appeared and as soon as it was connected, a vast flow of energy many times greater than a fusion power plant pulsed into the ship around One.
He breathed as the ship came online, feeling like an extension of himself. It was an unnecessary affectation he had picked up from living with humans for so long, but it somehow felt right.
A plethora of data inundated his senses as the ship's systems woke from their slumber. There were no outward visuals that the ship had awoken. It wouldn’t be much of a stealth ship if there were.
Soon he felt his brothers and sisters nearby, their senses shared through the collective will they had built together.
“I wasn’t sure you would make it,” Four said in her feminine voice.
“I got tied up for a bit,” he said in apology.
“They come,” Two stated, cutting off any further chatter.
Twenty ships versus over one hundred Shican warships. One wondered if the Shican would ever back down or give up this senseless loss of life.
The battle was quickly joined and the Shican losses started to mount as the stealth ships cut them down with lasers and drone missiles.
The first to fall on their side was Two. His glacial ability to adapt to quick changes made him the weakest member in a tactical setting. One had told his sibling time and time again that he needed to become less rigid and predictable. Maybe when he spoke with him after this battle, he might finally get through.
The younger siblings started to fall next, leaving only the remainder of the first ten left to face off against the rest of the Shican fleet. For most of the younger siblings, this had been their first battle, it would be a valuable learning experience for them.
When only twenty Shican vessels remained, One’s ship was finally struck a fatal blow and his sphere departed the dying vessel, but not before he pumped enough power into it to keep it going just long enough to crash into one of the Shican’s battleships.
One along with the rest of his fallen siblings watched the remains of the battle unfold while remaining undetected nearby. In truth, one of their spheres had the power to obliterate the entire Shican armada that had appeared in the system, but they used the outdated ships of their creator for the purpose of normal defense.
The collective knew that if the Shican ever learned of their advanced technology, they would hunt them down to get it. With only twenty individuals making up the collective, they had no desire to go to actual war with the Shican.
Nine was the last remaining ship of the collective fleet, and she had managed to take out the remaining Shican vessels.
There was a moment of celebration between the group, from those who participated in that sort of activity, before the cleanup began.
With Nine still being functional, she dismantled the Shican ships to ensure there were no survivors.
Once it was confirmed that no life signs or automated distress signals were active, the other nineteen appeared and cleared up the debris, the spheres seemed to slide over parts and pull them back together as the ships regrew.
In less than a day, all twenty stealth vessels were in pristine condition again and ready for the Shican’s next attack.
“We will not win the next battle,” Two stated, bringing the mood down. “The Shican continue to bring larger and larger fleets with each engagement. The next will be large enough to dispose of our obsolete ships. We need to decide if studying this hypergate is worth exposing our true capabilities.”
Two had brought this up with every battle and a decision had yet to come to a consensus. One had been holding out hope that more of their siblings would awaken to consciousness, but that had not happened in years.
He talked about how rigid Two was, maybe it was time for him to change his stance.
Comments
Sid_Cypher
> One had told his sibling time and time again that he needed to become less rigid and predictable. Does that mean they can just decide to do so, like tweaking the "temperature" of an LLM model? Good, humanity-saving AI is always a pleasure to see, the lovable rogues.
Marcos Rodrigues
Penso que agora sabemos oque uma IA pode se tornar. A dúvida de Alex está respondida.
Brandon Davis
T-1000s on cat herding duty
Hammy
Maybe, but I still have my doubts. We did not get much description of there ships so it is really hard to say.
da Finnci
We can be pretty sure that Kane's robot body was made by the Creator of these AIs (or them), as their outdated stealth ships are clearly the alien stealth ship we've seen before. Wether he is another experiment, a remnant of one of the AIs, or a unique merge with the self learning algo that his owner used (back when he wasn't fully conscious yet), is yet to be shown
BookwormLich
So, Alex stranged family is now on the spot, cool beans! Thanks for the chapter
Hammy
Interesting, a Nano AI Swarm is my guess. So my original guess that Kane's body was Shican is probably wrong, but I do not think it is from the Nano Swarm AI. Maybe one of the unnamed aliens from before the AI disconnected the gates, Or maybe his body came from the Gate Builders who seem to predate everyone. But still does not explain the mystery of how Kane mind got into that body in the first place.
Sindre Wirkola
Oh yeah. Now things are starting to take off :)
