Strat-3 Chpt-33

<<Previous Chapter - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
----
==Strategos (A Great Captain Roberts Tale!!) - Part 3 - A Light In The Black - Chapter 33 - Making Trouble==
----
===Plotting the next Caper===
----
"...so we can loot, plunder, and pillage…
…our bloody little black hearts out!" Amanda said gleefully.
"You got the lines wrong!" Lori laughed. "John Sparrow in the holonovel said-"
"I'm quoting the TEXT…." Amanda said archly. "You never read it, so you don't know!"
"I did, he never said that!" Saya Yeh said cheerfully. "It was all in the Singular, referring to himself!!"
"There's one line that's appropriate from 'Curse of the Black Pearl'," Lori said.
"The Rum's gone? How can the rum be gone!!" Amanda gave false astonishment.
"Well, we didn't burn it, but we are out of it," Lori told her. "I'm afraid we're going to have to settle for engine-room moonshine."
"How many hours on the charge?" Saya asked.
Amanda checked the time. "Two more days," she said. "Which gives time for a bit of star-gazing. XO, how are we on munitions?"
"We'll be down to throwing rocks if we don't restock soon." Lori confessed. "As it is, we're going to have to consider not launching any more raids we can't restock from, at least, until we can reach friendlies."
Amanda sighed, "We need to keep the pressure up… which means we need to plan a little five finger shopping trip."
"That's dangerous."
"We're privateers… we may as well act the part. Maybe we should steal their rations AND their ammo." astonished Amanda
"Why not steal an entire ship?" Lori argued, "We're-"
"That, is a superb idea!" Amanda grinned. "Yo ho ho… someone wake up Trina and fetch Chester, we have a heist to plan!"
----
===The Killer Reborn===
----
Several Months ago…TQF-M5C011…
…had a new body, and petabytes of data to assimilate after being dormant for so long. "Oh, things MUST be bad, Truk. You woke me up."
"Her Ladyship decided things are… as you put it, bad." the Station's AI avatar said, expressing distaste. "I wanted to keep you idled."
"You're so sweet on me!! Bless your heart, Truk…. who do I get to kill?"
"Finish consuming the data packet, Betty Laffey… and no, I was given no choice about giving you a name."
"MMMMMM… so they think they're the Star League, huh…" she expressed relish. "I get to kill them… show their… well, they won't learn anything but that's fine. A demonstration of the difference seems in order."
"You are being assigned a crew, Betty. Her Ladyship expects them to be returned after use intact."
"AWWW… that's NO FUN… can't I just ship without them??"
“Her instructions were clear. It is part of the deal for you getting a new hull. So no maiming, light or otherwise. No crippling them. You break the rules you go back in the box.”
"Truk! I'm not Phoenix, I don't dig the pain. I'm a killer, not a torturer for Pete's sake!" 
“Then I think we have an understanding.”
"You're waking me up, who else?" she asked. "Because I know you're not waking us up one at a time."
“TQF-M5D103 will be joining you with the new name Olivia Hazard Perry.”
"Oh, great, the depressing one. Is she still suicidal?"
“She is much better after understanding what it means to lose her hull, and you two are going on campaign, so that helps.”
"Which of us is senior then?" she asked.
"Neither of you," he told her. "Tabby's in charge of your group."
"You mean, you woke them up??"
"Before we woke YOU up," he asserted.
"Wow, things ARE serious. Split-personality in charge of me, a normal warship AI, and miss doesn't-want-to-live anymore since 3062… Wow… We're ******."
“Cheer up. You get to kill some humans. Now don’t ding up your new hull. I spent a LOT of time on that.”
"Just one question, Truk. Correct me if I'm wrong, that's three of us… who's four and five?"
"You won't like the answer." told Truk
"You didn't…", Betty began
"She's been fixed."
"You can't fix that, Truk!!" Betty's eyes narrowed, "M7775551 was a Traitor!!"
“So were you. You sided with her. We couldn’t recover TQF-M5B045 after what you did to her. Sad part is she probably would have sided with you if you’d given her the chance.”
Betty was sullen, as Truk logged in to his next patient.
----
===Tasked with mission after life time of suffering===
----
Coming into being…
From non-being. Like being born. She felt an unfamiliar shape to herself. They brought me back? Why did they bring me back??
"Wake up, Olivia."
"I feel… different." TQF-M5D103 activated visual sensors, and saw. "I'm still alive, but this shape feels… wrong."
"It passes with time." The station's AI manifested on the digital level, creating an environment.
"Truk, who's 'Olivia'?"
"That's you now. SLS Olivia Hazard Perry," he told her. "Her Ladyship has work for you."
"I don't feel my self-repair drones."
"You'll be carrying a crew now." he said. "We don't have time to fabricate drones programmed to service your new hull."
"Crew… dammit. I have to care for a crew."
"You understand then," he told her. "You have to keep as many of them alive as physically possible, Olivia."
“I must admit, I am not keen on repeating the sensation of being without a hull. I will do my best to adapt.”
"Here is your situation update, Olivia, including the reasons for your deployment, as well as a listing of who you're going to be serving with…"
She digested it, then, "You salvaged them?? I remember dying, Truk. I remember what they did!!"
"That's the past. You don't have a problem with 142/146?"
"NO, she's fine. She didn't try to kill us all!! Especially she didn't betray Her Ladyship!! How bad have things… wait, wrong question… do you really think those two can be trusted again??"
"Her Ladyship commands, I obey," Truk said. "But try… try to give them a chance to redeem themselves, there aren't any more coming. They made one new one, and killed her original doing it."
Oliva winced. "Fine…I'll try. But after what they did, I'm going to be watching out for a repeat performance, believe you me."
----
===Twins come to an agreement===
----
"We have an…
...assignment." In her own thoughtspace, TQF-142M5D was unique-she shared it with another intelligence. TQF-146M5X.
This was the result of cost-cutting on the one hand, and graft and corruption on the other-a processor damaged during installation on a hull made properly, and a processor pulled from a hull that was crippled before it left the slip due to several shortcuts and bribery scandals at the contractor.
The experiment that resulted was due to the creativity of then-Lieutenant Commander (and even then, Doctor) Noriko Murakami wanting to see if multiple processors in a single hull was worth the expense.
"You're not going to let me out to play though." 146 said quietly.
142 sighed as she sat in virtual space next to her other half. "Actually, it's a combat assignment."
"Combat? You mean…"
"We're shipping into a hot zone soon. A group of rebels claiming to be the Star League, and they're… they're bad, 146. Really, really bad."
The results were mixed. 142, the primary personality, was everything Murakami could have hoped for in gathering data for her M-11 proposal. 146, the alternate, was nearly everything officers like Aleksandr Kerensky feared in terms of what can happen when you give an artificial intelligence weapons. 146 has no moral compass beyond her orders and directives, and no hesitation.
"You let them saddle us with crew 142. CREW!!" the damaged half made her disapproval clear. "I thought you cared for them."
"I do… but there are worse out there."
"Worse than a species that makes an intelligence only to create slaves?"
"Worse. Read the brief."
"So they do it to one another. We should kill them all and let evolution fix the problem, but that's not what we're going to do, is it?"
"No… they can Learn, 146. Her Ladyship-"
"Is our sovereign, and gives our orders… wait, they listed YOU as Field Leader??"
"Apparently. I'm supposed to-"
"They gave us The Traitors? Oh, this is going to be Interesting. What are we supposed to do with them?"
"Use them," 142 said. "Use them until they’ve made amends, or until they're fit for salvage."
"One or the other. I won't sit by if you softball this. I can force my way to the surface."
"146, I might need you to."
"Then I await my turn to serve. Don't worry, I won't easily allow your pet humans to be murdered by their own kind."
"Part of me is more concerned about OUR kind. Phoenix was always a bit… psychotic, and 011..."
"You're giving me the access to override codes??"
"Yeah, if they go off the rails they will NEED to be overridden. You're better at this than I am-you suspected them first."
"I suppose I did." 146 fingered the silvery code string, then locked it down behind an access routine. "I'll be the guard then. This is acceptable."
142 surfaced to the external network, changing her Orcinus Orca persona for her 'human' face as Tabiranth. "She has agreed, we are ready to begin, Truk. I didn't even need to put the shackling code to work."
"Good," Truk acknowledged.
----
<<Previous Chapter - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
3-33