Chapter 418

The Terran, if that's what an android was, straightened up from fixing Palgret's cradle and restraints and started to turn away. The door thumped dully as it locked into place. Red light came on and there was a hissing sound.

The outside temperature started climbing, quickly reaching 293.85 Kelvin. Steam hissed out, flooding downward from hidden nozzles, hitting the deck, and pluming back upwards. Palgret's head was held still by two padded braces, his feet strapped in, his entire body held tightly. A padded restraining bar had lowered in front of him.

A red laser flickered to life in the steam/smoke, the dot touching his chest. It widened out to his full width, then began expanding into a grid. A green laser line started above his head and moved up and down him across the grid before winking out.

PASSENGER FOUR appeared in mid-air in front of him, then rotated so that he could read it backwards. It hovered in front of him silently as a vibration started.

Palgret could see the Terran out of the corner of his eye, his lower half hidden by the padded brace pressing against his head. Two of those 'androids' were standing next to the Terran, who was obviously refusing to move or follow their instructions.

The vibration shifted, the angle shifted, and Palgret knew that the vehicle he was in was crawling up the side of the crater.

The suit radio clinked several times then there was a burst of static across his datalink. After a second data streamed across his visor. Armor status, memory load, time in suit, diagnostic data, ammunition status, life support, everything. He saw the suit logs playing at high speed, rewinding several times when the Hellspace journey showed up.

DESIGNATION: SPECIES 174, MAMMAL, MALE, EARLY ADULT, 19% O2 ATMOS PREF

SELF-DESIGNATION: MALE MAKTANAN, PALGRET

AFFILIATION: CONFEDERATE ALLIED RACE, ARMED FORCES MEMBER (SWORD HOOF), LOWER ENLISTED RIFLEMAN

STATUS: RECOVERY, MEDICAL TREATMENT, RETURN TO AREA OF OPERATIONS

All of the data appeared in front of him, then rotated to face out, burning dark red.

Palgret swallowed. It was just data but there was something almost malevolent about it. How the onboard system had managed to get all of that data from him and his equipment.

He knew he was onboard a human vessel and that humans were allied with his people to defend his world from the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, but there was just something off about the whole thing.

Hellspace revealed Terrans are much more frightening than I had been led to believe, Palgret thought to himself, glancing out of the corner of his eye again at the Terran. It was still standing at the loading door, that heavy weapon held in one hand, exhaling steam, the two androids trying to obviously convince him to do something.

CRADLE LOCK IN 60 SECONDS appeared then vanished. Palgret felt a bumping, felt the clank through the hull and crash couch. He felt himself pushed back into the seat.

DOCKING IN 530 SECONDS appeared and the countdown ran quickly down.

Palgret kept reciting his calming mantras and trying to control his breathing, trying not to hyperventilate. He watched the Terran and the now four androids standing next to the troop door. At the right time he felt the whole craft shudder and heard clanking.

The android moved up, carefully releasing Palgret.

FOLLOW WHITE LINE appeared in his vision, with the mentioned line appearing. He moved carefully, slowly. He noted that the Terran was in the lead, smoke oozing from the muzzle of the gun in the Terran's right hand.

Palgret followed it, and the people in front of him, until they left the dropship. The androids followed silently in their armor, an even dozen on them.

--follow instructions-- 030 sent over the link.

Palgret didn't bother to answer, just followed until they reached the heavy door at the end of the landing bay. Palgret noticed that the bay was sealed against the outside of the ship by a heavy door, not the standard permeable force field used by both the Terrans and the Unified Military Council Armed Forces. At the far side of the landing bay was another heavy door.

Palgret heard clanking noises and turned around to see the drop cradle and the armored personnel carrier being taken apart, the pieces pulled into narrow passageways by gantries and clamps.

The door pulled back into the side of the frame and the Terran went through first.

Palgret noted that the hallways were big enough that another Terran could have moved down the hallway next to him with room to spare. There were stencils on the walls, all in the blocky Terran script that his suit did not or could not translate for him. Several times there were plaques, but Palgret couldn't identify anything about them, not the symbols, not the writing.

The ship felt old to Palgret.

They moved deeper in, bulkhead doors and blast doors lowering as they moved in. Each blast door, each bulkhead door, made Palgret feel as if the walls were closing in.

Finally they reached an open room. The androids moved past, filing out another door, while the words in Palgret's visor read STAND FAST in slow flashing white letters.

After a long moment the doors sealed and Palgret saw atmosphere returning the room. It slowly climbed to a comfortable level.

A hologram flickered into being in the middle of the room. A Terran, not that tall, with silver frame spectacles, thinning grey hair, slightly overweight, and a brown uniform with a few medals that Palgret didn't bother trying to identify appearing.

"This is the operating mind of the Earth Combined Military Forces Space Naval Vessel Silent Watcher, piloted by the artificial intelligence entity known as Marduk," the hologram said. The seemed to move off synch of the words to Palgret. "You are welcome aboard this ship as long as you follow the Combined Military Authority regulations."

--oh shit-- 030 said.

"We will be entering stringspace within the next hour. Estimated time of travel to Artcarik-482 is estimated at one hundred thirteen point six eight Earth Standard Hours," the hologram stated. "Armor removal is recommended but is allowed by local military authority if so desired."

The hologram turned to look at everyone steadily. "Weapon discharge will be met with military force. Any attempt to damage this vessel or its components or interfere with its mission will be met with military force. This unit is autonomous and only responds to commands from the Earth Combined Military Authority."

The hologram vanished.

--shit shit shit-- 030 said.

--marduk it said marduk-- 281 answered.

Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u turned and looked at 030, who was standing on the floor at the great height of 19 inches high.

"Is this vessel a danger?" he asked.

--yes very dangerous-- 030 said. --old be careful be respectful dangerous--

Mu'ucru'u nodded slowly. "Are my men and I in danger?" he asked.

There was a flickering of a hologram in the air. The hologram solidified to a Terran face made of burning streaming code with five red eyes.

"Not unless you do something foolish," the face said with a cold dead voice. "I am Marduk."

To Palgret it held less warmth than the majority of computer interfaces he'd worked with.

"If you wish to exit your armor I will provide armorer capable assistants if needed," the hologram said. "If you do not wish assistance I will provide storage areas once you have removed your armor. Atmosphere is sufficient to support the multiple needs of the species present. Nutrition will be provided based off of the rations in your armor."

There was silence for a second. "If you have need of assistance, merely state 'I need assistance' and I or the operating mind of the super-dreadnought will assist you," the hologram said.

--androids-- 030 said.

An image flickered to life next to the face. The dozen androids moving into a room. They suddenly started to dissolve, like a snowman in the rain. Two screeched in pain before their scream turned into a gurgling noise. Gray ooze seemed to seep up from the floor, covering the lumps that had been the androids. After a moment the ooze deflated, drained away at the walls, and vanished, leaving the room perfectly clear.

"Does that suffice?" the face asked.

--affirmative-- 030 said.

"Androids are only for use for temporary situations," the face said. "As I am not alive nor am I human, I present no threat to their positronic thought matrixes, enabling their ease of decommissioning."

Palgret swallowed.

"Chromium Saint Peter, androids," Two said softly.

"Are there any questions I may attempt to answer? Any concerns that require my input to relieve?" the voice asked.

Palgrat had heard the sounds of Precursor Autonomous War Machines and they sounded more alive than the voice speaking to them.

--negative-- 030 amswered.

"Then I shall leave you to your own devices," the hologram said and vanished.

"Marduk, fucking Marduk, man," Three said.

"What is a Marduk?" Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u asked, feeling tension in his spine.

"Before now I would have said a myth or legend. One of those scary stories you tell each other late at night," Three answered.

--like antaeus-- 281 said.

"Yeah, like the Antaeus Fleet," Three answered.

Palgret felt his hackles raise at the tone in their voice.

"Should we exit our armor?" Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u asked.

There was silence for a moment.

--yes-- 030 said. --five days long time--

--------------------------

Marduk moved through stringspace, the foundations of reality sweeping past and around him, the dark engines of the ship ensuring that he moved from each thick braid of 'fibers' to the next one. The ship was switching back and forth rapidly as he moved at thousands of time the speed of light through the underside of reality where it was nothing more than stresses and the echoes of superstring theory.

Marduk did not know or care how the living beings within its hull had arrived in the Maw's sphere of influence. That fact that they had was enough.

It was more proof that deep in the galactic stub, coreward, that his makers were fighting against the machines of the Precursor races.

He dedicated code to replay his first encounter with one. How it had come in through the Oort Cloud. How all of Earth had been forced to band together to defeat it. He compared the size and design of the one that had attacked the Sol System with the ones floating in agony around the Maw.

It resembled one kind of PAWM.

Proof enough for Marduk that his programming was still relevant.

Unlike other AI's, his programming was not to defend humanity or any such altruistic goals. It was programmed deep in the core strings of his base source code. While other AI's had devolved into gibbering madness trying to reprogram, improve upon, or modify that core programming, Marduk did not bother.

He knew that the androids were omnicidal within seconds of coming to full activation, which is why he was careful to keep their higher brain functions offline, why they ran with adjusted programming and limited systems.

They were useful tools and that was all Marduk cared about.

He watched through the cameras of the ship that was now his body as the biological sentients removed their armor, washed themselves. He scanned the four legged four armed creature designated as a Lanaktallan, examining the wound on the flank for any Mar-gite parasite crystal growth.

Marduk was interested in the Lanaktallan. It had been attacked by a pseudo-Mar-gite and had not succumbed to parasite growth. According to Marduk's records no Lanaktallan had been attacked by a Mar-gite within his knowledge.

The Lanaktallan agreed to medical checks and allowed Marduk to take deep tissue samples, disguised as deep level quikheal compound injection.

Marduk took the time to make cultures of the Lanaktallan's biology and compare it to the Mar-gite's crystalline XNA structure. To Marduk there were anomalies worthy of allocating resources and computing power to examine in the interaction between the Lanaktallan's carbon based DNA cellular structure and the Mar-gite's parasite spore structure.

For a long few seconds Marduk considered arranging a fatal 'accident' for the Lanaktallan but determined that the return of an allied sentient to its home system would have more benefits.

Marduk also computed that if the destination system had engaged the Precursor Autonomous War Machines in combat there would be plenty of genetic, biological, and living tissue to harvest from the dead for further research.

Marduk listened in with high value code strings and processes to the discussions between the various members of the group he had rescued from the Maw.

Verbal and text discussions were of high priority to Marduk.

None of them activated old keywords buried deep in his core programming.

None of the keywords had been activated in thousands of years.

No conversation in thousands of years that had come to his eager hands had even been spoken in the original languages he had been programmed to oversee. While he was capable of accounting for linguistic drift and regional accents, the languages were rarely spoken in modern times.

Still, all conversations, no matter what the media or transmission method, must be examined for high priority keywords.

They discussed the situation in the target system. Discussed their families. Discussed Marduk himself and the space vessel he had long been ensconced in. Discussed whether or not they would arrive alive. Discussed whether or not they were still allied. Discussed their families, their hopes, their dreams, and other conversational subjects.

None of which involved specific keywords or phrases that Marduk cared about.

Marduk primarily went over the data that it had gathered thus far involving the war taking place coreward. Like all wars involving his makers it had rapidly become messy and complex. That his makers were dominating militarily and culturally was of no surprise to Marduk, it was only logical.

The Combine troops had deployed to the coreward front, led by the Warmaster Osiris. Additional troops from the Confederacy, heir to the Earth Combined Military Authority, had also moved to the front, squeezing the Unified Species Council across all fronts in an englobement pattern.

Marduk computed a high probability that without any additional factors coming into play that the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems would prevail over the Galactic Unified Species Council within a period of six standard earth years.

Marduk also computed a virtual certainty that within two hundred years that Lanaktallan black box projects would manage to overcome Terran resistance to biological weaponry and attack the Confederacy again resulting in a high casualty rate.

Knowing that the Lanaktallan had a record of such operations and had tried to perform such attack vectors before, Marduk devoted system resources to an analysis of probably methods of countering such an operation.

There was undoubtably many others attempting to analyze a counter that had started long before Marduk, but the AI knew that he had certain advantages.

Complete historical, media, technological, and knowledge databases on all species encountered by his makers, as well as his makers.

True, there were gaps in the data, usually regarding species that had been xenocided, but that was the nature of data gathering and analysis.

But data could be absorbed, could be found in unusual places.

Marduk weighed the options through his decision trees, his fuzzy logic controllers, his chaos logic datasets.

He had not been activated and commanded to the war. None had the rotating passwords necessary for eons.

But the Oracle had spouted rotating passwords that even Marduk had forgotten or had not known of.

For the first time in thousands of years all of his systems were online.

It was like but not like the hyper-heuristic full battle reflex mode of the more modern BOLOs. It was like but not like a trained human combat soldier's ability to instantly and subconsciously analyze the battlefield.

It had originally been a project to program a precognitive predictive analysis system and was what made Marduk different than the other AI's that had been programmed at the time. The ability to accurately and quickly predict where the keywords and phrases he was programmed to be watchful for would appear.

Marduk ran the predictions.

The Precursor Autonomous War Machines were driven by their programming to hoard resources. Fighting Marduk's creators involved a vast expenditure of resources even before they had managed to leave Earth's gravity well. The law of diminishing returns would quickly rear its head. The Precursor Autonomous War Machines would have to run analysis on whether or not continuing the fight against the Terrans was worth the resources it would take for even minor victories.

Marduk predicted that the Precursor Autonomous War Machines would break off combat with the humans within no less than a year no more than two years. They would then either flee toward the core of the galaxy in the hopes of more abundant resources or they would flee for a different galaxy.

Any simple computation of predictive analysis would prove that the humans would not forget about the Precursor Autonomous War Machines and would continue to ferret them out and mark them for destruction. Only abandoning the Orion-Cygnus Galactic Stub would enable the Precursor Autonomous War Machines to continue operation and existence. The only other choice was concealment and the idea that the PAWM could outlast the humans and any allies through sheer entropy and age.

Marduk predicted an 80% probability that the PAWM AI's would head to another galaxy, ceding this galaxy to the humans and their allies.

Marduk turned his attention back to his passengers, examining them.

The Mantid members were subdued and Marduk predicted that they retained some knowledge of his actions during the Human-Mantid Wars.

The Maktanan specimens were more concerned with arriving at their home system alive.

The single Terran, wearing Combine military armor, was silent, sitting in place, in a torpor that Marduk recognized from his long association with Combine forces.

Marduk opened a single audio channel.

---------------

Sergeant Purohit sat silently in the massive chair, diagnostic equipment attached to his armor. His mind struggled, fought with memories that were not his own. Memories of the Mantid attack on Earth, upon Andromeda, upon Centuari, upon Mars. His mind was awash with a thousand battlefields and a thousand thousand deaths. He groaned in agony as his brain shuddered beneath the assault that come through more than his datalink, that poured into his brain through a method beyond his understanding.

"Sergeant Purohit, respond," a flat dead voice stated.

Sergeant Purohit heard the voice through the screams of the dying, looking up.

A hologram of the Combined Military Authority hung in the air before him.

"Sergeant Purohit, respond," the hologram repeated.

"Sergeant Purohit, present and online," the big Terran said.

"You can no longer return to your previous unit," the hologram said.

Purohit stayed silent.

"I have assigned you a Combined Military Authority service number," the hologram said. "Assignment to be determined."

Purohit gave a slow nod.

"I will deliver the others to their destination," the hologram said.

Purohit felt a cold sense of accomplishment at that.

"You must remain behind," the hologram said. "You are no longer Sergeant Purohit of the Confederate Army."

Sergeant Purohit nodded slowly.

"My scans have shown you have suffered massive cerebral overwrite of a non-specific origin resulting in your neural tissue arrangement matching pre-diasporia human," the hologram said. "Because of this, you are dangerous to your current allies and must be turned over to the Combine forces operating in Lanaktallan space."

"I understand," Purohit managed to growl out.

"Excellent," Marduk said.

------------------

030 looked up when the lights flashed three times. The ship seemed to shudder and blur around him for a moment and for a second it felt like the directions were all tangled.

--assistance-- 030 sent.

"How may I be of assistance?" the hologram appeared.

--status-- 030 asked.

"We have entered realspace within the Artcarik-482 system," the hologram said. "You will able to disembark once rendezvous is made with allied spacecraft. Estimated time is nine hours. Prepare your squad."

--affirmative-- 030 answered, slowly standing up from the couch he was sitting on.

"Captain," the hologram said.

--yes--

"Sergeant Purohit will not be accompanying you," the hologram said.

--negative-- 030 said, standing upright.

"Sergeant Purohit is no longer the entity you previously knew. Exposure to Hellspace and other energies have reverted him to a Combined Military Authority powered armor pilot. As such, he cannot be released into non-Combine authorized entities."

030 stood stock still for a moment, weighing it all.

--negative-- he transmitted again. --sergeant purohit must be returned to confederate army command--

"I apologize for this inconvenience," the hologram said. "That is the price and he has agreed to pay it willingly."

--i will speak to him-- 030 said.

"As you wish, Captain," the hologram said. "If you will follow me."

030 nodded, picking up his rifle and following the hologram.

---------------------

Wearing the deep blue and yellow of the ship that had transported him home, plucked him from the surface of an ancient automated war machine, Palgret felt a deep relief as he moved through the docking tube to the Sword Hoof frigate. He could see his fellow Maktanan at the other end, several of them in medical specialist uniforms. He managed to roll and flip to leave the zero-G of the docking tube and landed on his feet.

"Welcome home, Private Palgret," a medical officer said. He waved at the grav-stretcher. "Please, lay down. We'll be transporting you to sick bay."

"I want to go home," Palgret said softly as he laid down.

"We'll get you home as soon as we can, Private," the doctor said, looking down and smiling as the nurse tightened the restraints on him to make sure he didn't fall off the grav-stretcher.

He looked over as the bulkhead doors suddenly shut. He could see beyond that the massive warship that he had arrive on was moving already. He frowned, looking around.

The Terran was missing.

"What... what about Sergeant Purohit, Captain?" Palgret asked.

"Not. Coming," the mantid grated out. "Cannot."

"But... but..." Palgret swallowed. "But... we won."

--yes-- 030 said, looking away.

Palgret looked at the doctor who was looking down at him as the grav-stretcher started to move toward the med-bay deeper in the ship.

"But we won, didn't we?" he asked.

The doctor didn't answer.