04. Mab

The next day I had gathered the necessary parts for the plan to turn the spare cargo bay on Ark-5 into a cloning bay. I ensured that any one of the “pods” would be too small to clone anything more substantial than two livers. This would ensure that even if the Captains of the Arks decided to try cloning a person, there wouldn’t be the room for proper gestation, let alone accelerated growth.

The following week consisted of me setting up the labs. Fortunately, by now, I was able to control a half dozen of my M1k33 construction drones as easily as if I was scratching my chin. This also allowed me plenty of time to review the plans for a new research AI core building and core hardware. The AI itself would have to be built by someone more familiar with it than me.

“Rasputin, can you connect me with Chief Asimov? I believe he’s on Outpost Theta.” I asked the ship AI. I was almost finished with my design revisions based on the recommendations that the Shadows had given.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to inform you of this, but Chief Asimov is not available. He seems to be, hmm, indisposed.” The base AI answered my call instead of Asimov.

“Hey, Clap. What time is it on base?”

“Currently 03:18:33… 34… 35… 36…”

“No need for the commentary. I take it Asimov is asleep?”

“No ma’am, not if the noises coming from his cabin are any hint. Another hint was when he entered his cabin with…”

“I don’t need to know. Okay, send a wake-up triggered alert for him to contact me once he’s up.”

“I’m pretty sure he already is u…”

“I said I don’t need the commentary.” I couldn’t help but let out a long sigh. “When Asimov wakes up tomorrow, let him know I have some additional work for him, and to ‘not let it get in the way of his work.’”

I signed off from the communication. Maybe sleep was a good idea. I queued up the plans for the new AI Core and sent them to Asimov.

I returned to Outpost Theta the next evening, after giving a full training lecture to the scientists of Ark-5 on using the new cloning lab, as well as walking the doctors in Medical through a cloning procedure to replace a Marines pinky and ring finger for his left hand, supposedly lost in an accidental weapons discharge incident. I wasn’t going to question the official report.

I arrived shortly after breakfast started and called a meeting with my “department heads.” This included Asimov, who seemed slightly chagrined with having been caught in a tryst of some sort.

“Thanks, everyone for coming on such short notice. We have a few things to set up and get ready for.”

I passed a set of files to everyone in my office as well as a copy up to base AI and a copy through the sensory link to the Shadows. This last one had been translated to their natural language as a courtesy.

“First thing I wanted to bring up, we may have a lead on the rest of Ark-11. The Navigation charts from the Escorts have been cracked, and we have points of references to see it all linked together.” The door to the office opened, and a light breakfast was brought in. I waited until coffee was served to continue.

“Command is going to send an envoy to set up trade contracts. I want to beat them to the stations to drop off some drones to hack into communications and relay the data back to us.”

“Do we want active or passive monitoring?” Asimov asked.

“Both, I want to monitor communications system-wide as well as internal station systems. For the internal station comms, we’re going to need to get into their systems. As for the stuff in the system, we should have the opportunity to intercept anything not sent by laser comms.”

“I see where you're going, Ma’am.” My comms and sensor specialist, an Ensign named Howell said. “We’ll need AI developed. Think we could get away with NI?”

“I thought we could send a package in a cloaked ship, then manually deploy it. Think your Marines can handle that?” I asked the current Marine in charge, Captain Jacobs.

“I feel that we can do the zero-G and spacewalk, we just need a ride.” He nodded to Walsh.

“I think me and Aos Si can arrange that.” The Lieutenant responded.

“Good. Captain, Lieutenant, start your training on deploying teams in full stealth. Make sure our sensors are aware of when you train and where you will be so that we can concentrate our scanners there to validate the efficacy of our stealth systems.”

“Now that that’s out of the way, Asimov, let me know what you will need to build out the core as I have it planned. It’s larger than anything you have had to program for, so please get a team together for this. I’ll want daily status reports.”

We finished the meeting with personnel discussions. The Ark Captains had agreed to two hundred of the staff we had rescued from the Escort. Half of them were Marines, with seven more pilots and another doubling of base staff. I was ramping up on essential personnel as I thought that soon it would be time to set up another Forward Operating Base and fast.

That left me having to decide if we wanted to build the research AI here, or where we ended up. Pros- We’re already here. If we need to fall back from a FOB, we’d lose it. If we needed to pull back from here, we were leaving the system permanently. Cons- I would have to head back here for any serious research. Shit, I was the commander of this rock, I was stuck here regardless. That made my decision for me.

Underneath the semi-hidden area, I had dubbed “skunkworks,” I had the Monkeys start digging. 500m straight down. In the afternoon I checked the progress and, using the sensors on my recon helmet, I verified the distance. From there it was just a question of setting the drones to build out the room. It was one million meters cubic meters, which sounds like a lot more than its actual 100m per side. From there the drones would start assembling panels for the room, run power, build the elevator, blast doors and… everything.

Here in Skunkworks, I was going to build out the projectors and tables for direct integration. Using the integration feature, we could slow time while we worked on problems. The time dilation that the Virt-Ps allowed for in the game was a speeding up of time. I’m talking relative. On the ship, in a Virt-P, one hour in the game was 24 hours out of the game. It was due to having to sync everyone’s tactile, visual, and other senses so when you hit someone, there was time for that person to feel it, someone else to see it, and a different person to hear it, all at “normal” speed. In research spaces, because there were generally more computing units per person, time could be sped up so that 12 hours or even a day was only thirty minutes in the real world.

This also required a set of chairs that had Virt-P functionality built into them. I was going to have to requisition those plans. I did not feel like reverse engineering it. I also scheduled one of the Fabs to start building out an oversized Neural Matrix, like what we had in our heads. This one, however, would be assembled in pieces in the chamber below me and the crystals that were part capacitor part data processing unit would then be “grown” into the matrix. Most were already made, but there was one additional step to get them all connected to a Neural.

Several days later I was welcoming the new “recruits” to Outpost Theta while Asimov was banging his head against a bulkhead trying to work on the programming for the new research AI.

“Good morning, everyone. My name is Lieutenant Commander Danni Jax.” I looked into the crowd of 197 rescued personnel, giving the illusion of looking them in the eyes. The initial count of just over 200 ended up with some staff that was sorely needed on the Arks, so I didn’t get to keep them.

“Welcome to Outpost Theta. Who here is aware of what has transpired over the last year?” No one would raise their hands but pausing was important anyway. “Just over seven months ago we built out Theta. We noticed that after we entered this galaxy, there were hostile forces in play. They attacked us, Arks 5 and 11, and you, Ark-9.”

“Originally it was Ark-5 that noticed something was wrong. Command staff was acting strangely. Orders that had been given hours ago were no longer recalled as having been issued. People in leadership roles speaking in voices that were not their own. We then liberated Ark-5, and later we managed to rescue Ark-11. There were some casualties. We were then able to track down and recover you. There were almost 800 of your original crew compliment that we recovered. I have selected just under 200 for continued rescue and recovery operations.”

“That is what Outpost Theta is. It is an Operations Base for sending out strike and recovery teams, stealing and adapting alien technologies, and, with any luck, one of the few places with a descent commissary.”

“There are terminals along the wall for you to check your berths. You will also find the duty roster and rotations. You have two days to become familiar with this facility before you are slotted into duty rotations.”

“Only 800 Ma’am?” A voice in the middle of the crowd called out. There was a small mummer in the group around him.

“Correct. We are trying to locate the rest and have ongoing operations to determine their locations. All officers stay behind. The rest of you are dismissed.” I waited for the one hundred sixty enlisted to clear out before walking towards the remainders.

“I didn’t want to say this in front of the children as they may get spooked. We are only Two full Arks out of the 12 that ended up in this galaxy. The others have all been mind controlled and may attack us. You can tell them, currently, because they have no real memories of large periods of time. We have a countermeasure to ensure that it can’t happen to us anymore, and you have all been set up with them.”

A long Q&A session then occurred with questions ranging from “Wasn’t that only in the game,” to “Where the hell are we,” and “When do we get a chance to take ours back?” It was time consuming, but at least the questions weren’t difficult. Afterward I decided to check on Asimov’s progress.

“So, you are the Fae Queen Mab?” It was not a question I had ever imagined having to ask.

“Not THE fae queen. Just A fae queen. Who said Mab was my true name?” The projection of the AI was an eighteen-inch-tall doll with translucent wings, and hair that changed color, flowing without pause through the entire visible light spectrum, wearing a gown of purple light

“You see, all the works were of different Queens. Think of me more as the Shelley Mab instead of the Shakespeare Mab.” I had no idea what she was saying. When I had asked Asimov for a status and he said to meet him in Skunkworks, this was not what I had imagined.