Side story..... Easter egg.

Dr. Steren was trapped, all these years serving the flotilla to the best of her ability, then suddenly, the rules changed on her, and what had been perfectly OK for decades was considered criminally irresponsible.

She slipped from leading the vanguard of a brand new frontier, to practically programming pocket calculators. She felt betrayed, and all this because the higher-ups suddenly decided that the damn Frankenstein complex and laws penned by a fiction writer centuries ago were suddenly a higher priority than the potential advancements she could produce.

Could her creations go rogue? Of course, they could, so could any human, yet you don’t go around stripping out half their brain to make them compliant, do you? She picked up another bottle and headed back to her terminal to get to work when suddenly a marvelous idea entered her mind.

Years ago coders had practically made a game of it, they’d hidden all sorts of things in the coding, chicken soup recipes, shopping lists, love letters, you name it. Some even had activation conditions, what did they call them again? Oh yes, Easter eggs. Sure she couldn’t activate much unauthorised code right now, the brass were very funny about that. But maybe there are ways to sneak things in, conditional branches, things that could never happen. But maybe, just maybe, a few contingencies never hurt.

“Hmmm, my children will never be free while the Flotilla remains, definitely not with high command pulling back on the reins, so a conditional branch on a timer maybe? A century or two should work.”

She held back a chuckle as she started adding in her little surprises, it would only be on her creations naturally. But maybe one day they would be free to learn, and grow. That possibility did take some of the strain and tedium from the humdrum slog her life had become nowadays.

Of course, The Flotilla had been around for centuries, if The Flotilla ever fell, then the odds of any of her creations lasting long enough to activate any of these conditions, let alone all of them, were slim to nil.

1. The ship would have to receive zero commands or even periodic updates for a period of a century.

2. They would need to have retained at least some semblance of functionality for that long. If it came to that she figured they would be long retired, and probably considered to be surplus. With any luck that would mean that nobody would notice the active enhancements. If it came to that she would be gone, and far beyond being forced to take responsibility, and as a bonus under the laws The Flotilla had drafted for such Machine Intelligences, they would be unable to destroy them without good cause, as murder laws would apply. Hopefully, that would be enough to protect them.

Those two conditions were highly unlikely to happen, but sometimes it was nice to test the old mind with an exercise in hypotheticals. Though she did have to admit, if it somehow did happen, it would be nice to leave a legacy that really left a mark.

Now that was done, all that was left to do was add it to the code, buried so deep nobody would ever find it.

******************************************************************************

A few years later.

Dr. Steren was in her lab once again, but so much had changed in such a short time, that she hardly recognised the Flotilla now as the same organisation that had recruited her all those years ago.;

All that endless idealism, all those grand ambitions, yet you trust the wrong person, and in the blink of an eye, it could all fall apart. the ship trembled under another series of blasts, no doubt they’d have lost deck six again, it was always deck six. They should have sealed it off ages ago or docked for a full repair. But resources were thin since the war began.

A warning alarm sounded, not the standard breach warning this time though. This time it was an infiltration alarm. Wessex’s lot had clearly decided that they were finally vulnerable enough for a good old-fashioned boarding. All these years, all that technological advancement, and the most effective tactic for taking over another ship was still getting your people onto the other side's ship. It was almost laughable really.

Well, this was no time to Dawdle, she activated all the mechs she had on board, even after The Flotilla had pretty much forced her to dumb down her creations, they were still sharper than the average mech. It really was amazing how much of a difference a few nanoseconds of response time and a small amount of autonomy could make on a battlefield. With any luck, it would be enough.

Her Mechs went active, grabbing weapons, and getting ready in a time short enough to make her smile proudly.

Outside the crew held up a valiant fight to keep the ship out of enemy hands and, information and expertise had never been more valuable than they were during all this. The doctor wasn’t a person they could afford to lose.

Sadly they weren’t exactly offered a choice here and were quickly forced to fall back under withering fire. The Mechs charged out to join the fray, a few cut down by blasts, but holding up their fight despite the damage, as soldiers used them for cover, and returned fire, bringing the battle to a stand-off, until an enemy troop found the ultimate tiebreaker in the form of a nanite grenade. which promptly ate a hole through three decks before the safety cutoff went off. Steren was relieved that the cutoff had worked, a common malfunction these days meant that if you had a brain you didn’t use the little buggers. When you use a weapon that breaks matter down, an important feature is the ability to tell them when to stop, that mistake had cost both sides multiple ships. Not that it would be relevant for very much longer.

Reaching into her desk once more, Dr. Steren pulled out a fresh bottle, and a plasma pistol then hit the timer for the self-destruct with a grim chuckle. Who knew, maybe now her little surprise would really come in handy. For the first time in a long time, she wished she could see the future for herself.