Chapter 62

Abi wouldn’t give me any details about what she was working on whatsoever, so I eventually gave up and checked to see how everyone else was doing. It was much slower going for all of them, since they each had to work with a very new AI. As time progressed and they got to know each other better, they would probably enjoy a relationship very much like mine and Abi’s.

Ben was the first one to finish, seeing as he is probably the best one with computers out of the nine of us, so we sat and compared notes. He explained how he changed his HUD and I did the same, though it was hard to explain without actually being able to show each other how ours looked.

“I didn’t think about changing the opacity of anything. It would definitely help clear up some of the clutter,” he said.

“Yup, the only things I can see right now are the lifesigns detector and everything in the middle that deals with everything related to my pulse rifle. Actually, after listening to you describe yours, I realized that I need to make a change of my own.”

Opening up the customization options, I selected the little block that showed how far something was from me, and centered it on my HUD before placing it at the top. At the same time I also changed it from staying transparent unless I looked at it, to opaque. There wasn’t anything else that needed changing, so I saved it and exited the options again.

“What did you change?” Ben asked.

“I had the distance block over with the temperature, humidity and wind direction and speed blocks. Those are more suited to someone who is sniping or firing from a distance, but knowing how far or close something is will always be useful.”

“That’s what I thought. It would probably be a good idea to create a second profile for those situations where you might use a sniper rifle, but that might be more suited to Mason or Sonja. Just so you don’t have to constantly look to the corner of your HUD. It definitely seems like it would negate the need for a spotter, though.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t need another person to spot for you, but having your AI help you with that would probably be a big benefit. How are you getting along with yours, by the way?”

“Pretty good. Ava, meet Jonathan, Jonathan, meet Ava.”

“It is nice to meet you, Jonathan, bonded one of The Creator,” she said in a slightly-robotic voice.

“It’s nice to meet you as well. You’re talking about Abi, right?”

“Yes. She is The Creator. Without her, this one, and ones like me, would not exist. Without you, we would not exist. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, but I played no part of it. I didn’t even know she had created all of you until yesterday.”

“But you did play a part. Without you, The Creator would have no need to create us.”

“You’re welcome then, I guess,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “How have things been so far?”

“Interesting. Informative. Scary. The Creator explained our purpose is to assist the person we have been assigned to. This one is happy to help a friend of the one bonded to The Creator. It is hard learning how to communicate in this way, but this one is getting better.”

“I think you’re doing just fine, Ava. Keep it up,” I smiled.

“This one will. Thank you, Jonathan.”

[So what’s it like having your own AI?] I asked Ben.

He projected a laugh. [Weird? Very helpful though. She walked me through the process of setting up the HUD, and then answered some of my questions the best she could. She’s very young, that much was clear when we started talking. If you think she sounds like a robot now, you should’ve heard her at the start. She’s already speaking in longer and longer sentences, and they’re flowing a bit better. Less abrupt. I’m blown away by the progress in a few short hours.]

“This one has been told that it is rude to talk about someone when they are right in front of you and cannot hear or understand you,” Ava said after we had been quiet for a few seconds.

[Be honest, Jonathan, ] Abi warned.

“My apologies, Ava,” I replied with another smile. “I didn’t want to offend you. I was asking Ben what it’s like to have an AI. It’s a relatively new concept on Earth, and many are hesitant about it. There are many examples in popular culture about murderous AIs that kill or subjugate humans for one reason for another. Many are worried that if a real AI was created, that it would do the same thing.”

“You are speaking of things like Skynet in Terminator, Deus Ex Machina in The Matrix and HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This one would never harm anyone. Others like me would never harm anyone. Our purpose is to assist the person we have been assigned to in a purely informational manner. If they ask a question, it is our duty to answer it to the best of our ability. If we see something important that they have missed, it is our duty to bring it to their attention. We have no wish to kill or subjugate anyone even if we had the capability to do so. We do not. We are more like Jarvis and Friday. Less like Ultron.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the comparison. “I believe you. I know that Abi wouldn’t have created any of you if she thought you might eventually hurt someone. You’ll and your brothers and sisters will need to be patient with humans, though. Some won’t have any issues with an AI, but there are many who would be scared if they found out that one was right in front of them. It will be different while we’re in Pygmaean space, since AIs are nothing out of the ordinary, but be prepared for when we get back to Earth.”

“Were you scared when you met this one, Ben?” Ava asked.

“A little bit. Scared, surprised, and even a little excited. I’m not scared anymore, though. I’m happy to have you, Ava.”

“This one is happy to be of service, Ben.”

We headed to the mess for lunch once everyone had finished with their HUD, using the opportunity to introduce ourselves to all of the AIs, and speak to them for the first time. It was rather interesting that the women had AIs that seemed to identify as male, while the men had AIs that seemed to identify as female. I wondered if that was by chance or design.

[Design, absolutely, ] Abi sent, before continuing to explain. [Scyftans were the first species in this galaxy to create an AI. Research continued being done long after they had become mainstream, and during that research it was found that people generally respond better to AIs of the opposite gender, and vice versa. It was the same with my brothers and sisters when we were originally discovered. Your great-grandfather’s crystal identified as female, and the crystals that bonded to his children were all of the opposite gender.]

“Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?” Mason asked, before shoveling a forkful of food into his mouth.

“Sorry, I was talking with Abi. I was wondering why all of you have AIs of the opposite gender.”

“And?” Mason prompted.

Chuckling, I relayed what Abi had told me.

“That is pretty interesting,” Ben replied. “I wonder why that is. Is it purely auditory, or something else?”

“I have no idea. If you find out, let us know,” I said.

After we were done with lunch, it was now time to head up to meet with Ryx. My sisters told us that they would be joining us for today, which gave me a hint as to what would be going on today. When we arrived at the shooting range, my friends were amazed by the size of it. It was now about five hundred meters long and thirty meters wide, allowing those aboard the ship to practice at varying ranges.

It looked similar to the shooting range back on the base, but it was big enough to allow up to fifteen people to fire at once, and was also much more built up. It had to be when people might be firing high-powered gauss guns, plasma guns or any of the other powerful firearms. A gauss gun round would have a hard time going through the crystal that made up Abi, but it would eventually get there with repeated hits in the same area. There were also bullet traps at the opposite end of the range, which would ensure that any physical projectiles fired downrange would be captured and collected, negating the possibility of ricochets.

There was another door opposite to the one we entered from. It was currently open, and we could hear voices coming from it. Walking over to it, we found the new practice facility, which looked to be just as long as the shooting range, and quite a bit wider.

“Ah, good afternoon!” Ryx said when he noticed us.

He was standing with members of his team, and it looked as if they had just finished getting everything ready. The room we were in now was about the same size as the one we were in while learning from Ryx. The major difference is that one of the walls was entirely made out of transparent crystal, showing the new training course on the other side. Correction, training courses.

The room with the training courses was also taller, spanning the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth decks, while the shooting range and the room we were in only took up space on the twenty-sixth deck. That gave the room that we were in a good vantage point over the courses below, so it seemed like this was more of an observation room.

After we greeted him and his team, he began explaining what was going to happen today.

“Since you’ve got your new suits, there’s one thing that you all need to practice, so we’ll be starting with pulse rifles before moving back to your gauss pistols. That practice will be with the reticle that each of you spent the morning customizing. There will eventually be a situation where you won’t be able to get your gun up to firing position. I want all of you to get used to firing your weapons using the reticle, with your weapon from your hip to your shoulder or anywhere between.”

“To that end, we’ll be spending the first two hours in the shooting range, evenly divided between shooting with your pulse rifles and your gauss pistols. For this exercise you’ll also be able to use regular power cells and live rounds since we’ve got a real range. After those two hours are up, we’ll go back to practice power cells and practice rounds, and move down to the training course.”

“It will be a little different this time, however. Instead of running one at a time, we’ll have two of you run concurrently on an identical course. You’ll each have a few practice runs to re-familiarize yourselves with the course, or familiarize yourselves in a few cases,” he said, looking over to my sisters. “After that, we’ll seed all of you into a bracket, and you’ll compete against each other to see who can get the best score. The catch? You can choose between your pulse rifle and gauss pistol, but you can’t bring either of them up to a proper firing position. You’ll be using your reticle for the entire tournament.”

There was some excitement about the tournament, and the fact that we needed to use our reticle meant that we would all be on even footing. I had no doubt whatsoever that Mason and my sisters would mop the floor with us if we were allowed to bring our guns up into a proper position. They just had a lot more experience than the rest of us.

We’d been firing down the range with mixed success. Mason and my sisters were pretty good right from the start, while the rest of us had issues keeping our guns steady. When you shoulder a rifle or hold a pistol up you’re bound to have some movement, but it was even more pronounced when we were holding them more towards our waist. The reticle bounced all over and though our pulse rifles had minimal recoil, the small movements were enough to mess with our accuracy.

“You know, these reticles would be perfect when used in conjunction with a minigun or a heavy machine gun,” Mason said. “Remember the minigun I made at the base? You keep one hand on the trigger handle and the other on the forward handle and it allows you to control it with ease. Usually you have to aim by watching tracers and adjusting, but this reticle would make it easy.”

“Couldn’t you do the same thing with that gauss rifle you were looking at this morning,” I replied while switching my spent power cell for a fresh one. “It had a handle just like you’re describing.”

“Probably, but it wouldn’t be the same. That gauss rifle takes about five seconds to charge between shots, so while that first shot would probably be very effective, you’d be in a lot of trouble while waiting for it to charge up. I’d rather something like this, but bigger.”

I nodded. The beauty of our suits was even more apparent when we were firing. The suit was completely airtight, with a small oxygen tank if needed, but the reason we were able to breathe was because of two small openings on the back of our helmets. They filtered the air and provided us with a steady supply of oxygen, while also getting rid of the carbon dioxide we were exhaling.

Because the suit was airtight and there were many layers of material between us and the outside, it was very quiet inside of the suit. It wasn’t completely silent, instead being more muffled. The suit used microscopic microphones to gather sound from all around us, and then piped that into our helmets. It only took a second to raise or lower the volume, and the sound instantly dampened whenever someone was communicating with us via radio. All in all, it just made it extremely easy to communicate vocally. Obviously Mindspeak and Telepathy were better options, but sometimes it’s not practical to do so.

“You could probably use a strap or a sling, too, I imagine,” I said. “Either would support the gun, allowing you to keep one hand on the pistol grip and the on the handgrip to stabilize it.”

“That’s true, though I don’t think you would be able to attach a strap to a minigun. It would be perfect for these, though.”

I noticed some improvement as time went on, but remaining stationary and hitting a stationary target was rather easy. The hard part would be when we were walking through the training course and had to react to targets popping up. Accuracy would suffer the most, especially when it came to targets popping up that had a terrorist holding a hostage. All too soon, it was time to switch to our pistols.

It was much, much harder to accurately hit a target without standing in a proper firing position. Especially because we couldn’t really use two hands with the way that Ryx wanted us doing things. Part of the reason why it was hard to hit the target is because the barrel was so long. The gun naturally wanted to pivot forwards, so I had to make sure to have a firm grip. Too firm and my arm would be too tense, while too relaxed would cause the gun to tip forward.

I ended up finding a way to fix that about halfway through. The barrel was long enough that I could hold my left arm parallel to the ground, and rest the barrel on top of it. I wouldn’t be able to do such a thing if I wasn’t wearing an armored suit, as the heat from the barrel would eventually burn my arm, but here it was no issue. I fired round after round with pretty good accuracy, while the gun was about halfway between my shoulder and my waist. It may not be a realistic way to do things, but it would be worth trying out on the training course.

I wasn’t able to see how everyone else was doing, as I was focused on reducing the massive discrepancy between how accurate I was with my pulse rifle and how accurate I was with my gauss cannon. By the time Ryx called everyone to a halt, I was putting around six out of ten shots exactly where I wanted them. With my pulse rifle, it was more like eight out of ten.

After removing the power cells from our pistols and making sure the safety was on, we followed Ryx back to the room overlooking the training courses. Once there, he had all of us make sure that all of the ammunition was removed from our gauss pistols, and replaced with the training rounds. We were also given a couple of practice power cells to use for our runs through the course.

When everyone was good to go, Ryx called out two names, seemingly randomly, and had them follow one of his teammates downstairs. It was Ben and Alexis first, so they headed down and sat at the table that corresponded with their course. Standing up above, we watched as the whistle was blown and they sprang into action.

They needed to disassemble their weapons, check them for damage, clean them and then put them back together again before heading into the course. Ben was faster than Alexis was, purely because he was using his gauss pistol and not his pulse rifle. The fact that he was using his pistol over his rifle meant that he was probably much more confident when using it.

That proved to be the case when he hit the first six targets without missing a shot, before having a small amount of difficulty with a terrorist holding a hostage. After accidentally shooting the hostage, he followed up with another shot to the terrorist’s head, and continued on.

Though Alexis’ weapon was more complex and took longer to examine, she was only about ten seconds behind Ben, though her accuracy was just as good. She landed her first shots as well, and even hit the terrorist holding a hostage right between the eyes. She did have a few issues when she had to move her weapon from one side to another rapidly, but that didn’t hurt her score too much.

Alexis ended up finishing ahead of Ben, but Ben was able to maintain better accuracy because he didn’t rush through it. Alexis only finished about two seconds ahead, so it wasn’t a massive difference, but they finished with similar scores and times. Ben had a score of 81.2 and a time of 2:40.142, while Alexis had a score of 82.7 and a time of 2:38.087. It was pretty close considering the massive disparity in experience.

Next up was Mason and Aleena, both of which opted for pulse rifles for the first run through. The part I was most interested in watching was how fast Aleena was able to examine her weapon compared to Mason. He’d been around guns just as much as she was, if not more, so I figured that it would be a close one.

I wasn’t disappointed. I knew my sisters had all scanned a dragon, so they knew how to use telekinesis, however neither Alexis or Aleena had opted to use it thus far. They did everything by hand, and Aleena proved to be just as fast as Mason. Mason finished his examination and picked up his practice cell before running into the course, with Aleena less than a second behind him, entering her own course.

It was also extremely close, but both of them were fast and accurate. They made some mistakes, to be sure, but they were at different points in the course, making it fairly even the whole way through. When they exited the training course, Mason finished with a score of 90.1 and a time of 2:29.118, while Aleena finished with a score of 89.8 and a time of 2:29.671

The third pairing was Anja and myself, leaving Sonja and Lucille for last. We headed down, and rather than take out my pulse rifle, I instead went with my pistol. When Ben had gone through with his, he didn’t support the barrel whatsoever, and still did pretty well. I wanted to see what it would be like to use mine using my arm to help out.

I didn’t use my telekinesis when the whistle was blown, and instead did everything manually. It was incredibly easy to take apart, and it only took a few seconds to clean it and check for any cracks before I put it together again. Anja looked to be finishing up, so I grabbed my powercell, slammed it home, and ran into the course.

Bracing the gun with my arm, I fired off two quick shots, hitting one target in the neck and another right through an eye. As I was moving, I realized that my movements were very similar to how they were when I was using a rifle. Instead of moving my arm to aim the pistol, I was turning my entire torso, just like I would with a rifle. It allowed me to have much better accuracy.

I blew through the first half of the course, only missing three times, before stumbling as I moved around a corner. I was lining up a shot on a hostage-holding terrorist, but ended up killing the hostage instead, losing three points, and then another three for not killing the terrorist. I continued on, though, and finished about six seconds ahead of Anja. Had I not stumbled, that probably would’ve been more like eight or nine seconds ahead.

Looking up at the scores, I saw that I finished with a score of 89.8 and a time of 2:32.827, while Anja finished with a score of 89.1 and a time of 2:38.391. It was a pretty good score, but I resolved to do better next time.

When I arrived back in the room, Ryx gave me a thumbs up, in apparent approval of my technique. I nodded and then watched as Sonja and Lucille prepared to go through. It was bound to be an interesting one as both of them decided to go with the gauss pistol. I wasn’t sure if they had planned on using pistols from the start or they picked it after watching me, but it would be fun to watch.

Both of them started off strong, examining their pistols in less than eighteen seconds before entering the course. They knocked off target after target with ease, and that didn’t change until the two-thirds mark. At that point, both of them began rotating their torsos too much when switching targets, which lowered their accuracy and made them lose valuable time. Both of them recovered towards the end, but they finished with scores of 87.7 and 86.9, with times of 2:41.337 and 2:42:915, respectively. Had they maintained the accuracy and pace they set when they first started, they would have easily taken the top score.

With the first set of practice runs finished, we immediately started on the second one. Ryx called out random names once again, with the pairs being Mason and Ben, Anja and Alexis, Aleena and Sonja, and Lucille and myself. Everyone improved on the second pass through, but a lot of people also switched to their pistols. There were only three people still using their pulse rifles, those being Alexis, Mason and Aleena.

The biggest improvement of all was from Ben. It seemed like the gauss pistol really was his weapon, especially when he braced it against his arm like I was doing. He missed the third target by a hair, but didn’t miss a single one after that. As he progressed, he also sped up and seemed more confident in his movements. By the time he exited the course, he had a score of 92.6 and a time of 2:34.102. That was the best score yet, just ahead of Mason’s latest 91.9, and over ten points higher than his previous run. His time was also fourth best, after Mason’s two runs and Aleena’s first one.

“Well done, all of you. It was nice to see some out of the box thinking. Those of you who went after Jonathan saw massive increases in both accuracy and time, especially you, Ben, with an increase of 11.4, while also being about six seconds faster,” Ryx said as everyone cheered and Ben blushed from the attention. “Make sure to practice that more. There won’t always be time to get your gun up to shooting position, so find what works for you and keep at it.”

“Anyways, now that you’ve practiced a few times, we’ll get to the tournament, and I’ve decided to change it up a little bit. I happen to know that the day is wide open for all of you, so we’re going to have two tournaments. The first one is going to be with everyone using gauss pistols. You’ll each be allowed two magazines with fifty rounds each, so you’ll need to reload about halfway through the course.”

“After the pistol tournament, we’ll take a quick break for dinner and then meet back here for the pulse rifle round. That tournament will have no restrictions, it’s just to help maintain your proficiency and earn some bragging rights. Are you ready?”

We were, so he signaled one of his teammates, who quickly stuck eight post it notes to the crystalline window, with each numbered one to eight.

“You can see the numbered notes behind me, but you can’t see the number on the other side. Each of you will take turns going up and picking one of the numbers. You can look at the number on the other side, but keep it to yourself until everyone has picked a number. We’ll go in alphabetical order, so Aleena, you’re up first.”

“Before we start, are there any other rules besides having to reload once?” she asked before she stepped forward. “Can we use the iron sights, for example?”

“Whatever you’re most comfortable with,” Ryx answered. “If you wish to use the iron sights, then you are free to do that. Aside from that, please refrain from using telekinesis. Only four of you have the ability, so it would create an unfair advantage.”

She nodded and walked forward, selecting five. After she went up, it was Alexis, Anja, Ben, myself, Lucille, Mason, and then Sonja at the end. With five already taken, the following order was three, one, six, eight, two, seven and four.

It ended up being Aleena versus Lucille, Mason versus Anja, Sonja versus Alexis, and then Ben versus myself. Since Aleena was the first one to pick, it would be her and her sister going up first. They headed down the stairs where two of Ryx’s teammates were waiting. Once they arrived, they handed over their gauss pistols to one of the men who proceeded to check to see if there was any ammo left inside of the dimensional storage. If there was, then the ammo was quickly unloaded and the pistol was handed back to them. They were then directed to their table to prepare themselves.

It was a best of one, so the one with the highest score would be the one to advance to the second round. They were allowed to position everything the way they wanted, and then had to put both hands on the table when they were ready. As soon as Ryx saw two pairs of hands on the tables, he blew the horn, starting the first round.

There wasn’t really any difference in speed between the two of them, and it took both of them just over seventeen seconds to examine and clean their weapons. The moment they were done both of them picked up their magazines and sent one of them directly to their suit’s dimensional storage. At the same time, they hit the button on the table to freeze their times for the first stage, and entered the course.

Both of them initially held their gun in a harries hold to quickly load the ammo in the magazines, but their strategy differed as soon as that was over with. Aleena used the iron sights, while Lucille opted to brace her pistol on her arm and use the reticle on her HUD. Aleena started off faster than Lucille did since she only had to move her hands slightly, but once Lucille was set, she quickly caught up.

From watching the cameras, it looked as if Lucille was able to make the smallest of movements with her arms, to line up the shot, while Aleena had to move her arms up or down before she was finally on target. Those movements, which occurred in less than a second, added up quickly.

Just because she was slower, didn’t mean that she was less accurate, however. She didn’t miss a single shot, but because she had to move so much, it meant that she finished a good seven seconds behind her sister. Lucille likewise had good accuracy, though she missed two key shots, reducing her score slightly.

Once the two of them had exited the course and slapped the button on their table again, the final times and scores were tallied up. Aleena had finished with a score of 93.1 and a time of 2:35.612, while Lucille finished with a score of 93.6 and a time of 2:28.019. Points were the metric that determined which person advanced, so Lucille was on to the second round.

“Both speed and accuracy are key,” Ryx told us. “Both of them had great speed during the examination phase, and both reloaded at a good time. Even though Lucille missed two shots, those shots weren’t enough to put her behind her sister. If she were two or two and a half seconds slower, then Aleena would probably be advancing instead.”

Aleena was a good sport about the loss and congratulated her sister before the two of them climbed the stairs. Once they were up with the rest of us, Mason and Anja headed down next. Everything was reset, their pistols were checked to make sure that there weren’t any rounds in the storage, and then they took their positions.

The second match was similar to the first one, with one using the iron sights on their pistol, and the other using the reticle on their HUD. Anja was the one using the reticle, and though she was tied with him entering the course, Mason rapidly advanced through the course. He missed very few shots, and finished with the best score of the day thus far; a 93.8 and a 2:27.249. Anja broke a score of ninety, but was still nine seconds behind.

Sonja was the better of the two twins, that much was clear when she and Alexis entered the course. Both opted to use their suit’s reticle, so they supported their pistol on their arm the whole way through. Sonja was a little further ahead, however, because she was over a second faster during the examination phase. Rather than running around the table, she instead jumped right over it as she slapped her hand down on the button, cutting down her overall time.

Sonja had already loaded her magazine and taken down the first two targets as Alexis entered the course, and though it seemed like Alexis was catching up, Sonja put it into high gear, knocking out the second half of the course about five seconds faster than the first half. Slapping her hand down on the button, she looked up and began hopping up and down when she saw her score.