Chapter 26: Baited and Set

The display showing my ex-wife now showed Rami working frantically to assist the mobile unit in getting her implants disconnected. He quickly pulled a breathing mask from the emergency gear stowed below her cradle and attempted to fit it to her face. His hands came away covered in blood as she was also bleeding severely from her nose.

“Shit!” I exclaimed out loud, not bothering to subvocalize. Cerebral aneurysm with cranial hemorrhaging sounded very, very bad. “Can you save her Naomi?”

“She will need emergency surgery immediately,” Naomi responded audibly over the room’s audio system.

The AI’s broadcast response caught the other’s attention and they were now all focused on Uxe’s feed. No one spoke with questions which meant that Naomi was likely updating them with details of Uxe’s injury via their implants.

“The best option for treating her injury would be the High Castle automated emergency trauma crèche,” Naomi continued, again to the whole room. “A portal is forming now.”

Shit! Shit! I thought, looking around the control room in shock and back at the view screens showing Phobos and Sarissa. Why did this have to happen now!? Well, probably because you just made Uxe strain her already-overtaxed brain beyond what was safe trying to get this harebrained scheme to work!

On Uxe’s feed, a portal appeared directly beyond her cradle and almost immediately, a transport cylinder slid into existence. The mobile unit was already pulling Uxe’s unconscious shell towards the portal. At least with the microgravity environment on Pallas that task was simplified. Or did the microgravity exacerbate her bleeding?

I suddenly forgot all of my zero-G medical triage training. Shit! I knew my head became congested every time I was in zero-G so that meant her cranial blood pressure was likely elevated due to the lack of blood pooling in her lower extremities. Jesus! I had to pull myself together.

“I want to go with her!” Rami exclaimed, clearly upset as the transport tube sealed around his unconscious-but-spasming partner.

The emergency transport tube was sized for one, normally me! so Rami would have to wait his turn. Also, the High Castle wormhole apparatus might need to recharge its energy reserves before he would be able to follow.

“You might have to wait a bit for the portal energy levels to build again,” I told the clearly-upset Rami.

I’d spoken with a calm reassuring voice that surprised me. Where the hell had that come from? I was certainly not calm nor reassured but I guess my years of experience had taught me how to project bullshit reassurance while under pressure.

“Naomi?” I subvocalized. “Please see that Rami is transported to join Uxe as soon as possible.”

—Of course, John.—

“Also, when was her last backup?” I added, dreading the answer.

—Uxe sleeps in a recording crèche every night, thus maintaining regular daily backups. Her augments make the process trivial.—

Thank God. At least the modifications had that benefit.

—However, her complicated brain hierarchy makes obtaining a complete mind-data record troublesome.—

And with that additional detail, the other shoe dropped.

“What the hell does that mean?” I almost shouted sub-vocally.

—It means that it will be far easier on her to simply keep her shell alive than to try to reconstruct her mental template into a new host. While the vast bulk of her intellect would eventually be restored, the process will involve multiple overlays and would be extremely ... difficult for her to endure.—

“Your auto-doc can save her though?”

—Now that she has made it into the trauma crèche still alive, most likely yes.—

Praxcia interrupted the ongoing drama with another update from the deception ship.

“Preliminary sensor data from The Last Laugh being relayed through the Sarissa linkage indicates that the deception vessel is currently 1,280 kilometers from the Assemblage Ark. Its location in relation to the Ark’s vector of travel is just off the frontal quarter and at a bearing of eighty-one degrees. The Last Laugh’s speed in relation to the Ark is currently 1.43 kilometers per second slower.”

I pushed my worry over Uxe aside for a moment to parse the AI’s report. Basically, L² had arrived near the Ark in an almost ideal spot. Neither directly in front of it where it would face the danger of its bow impact shielding nor near the stern and face the proximity minefield.

Also, the ship’s speed was very close to that of the enemy Ark. The ark was currently faster and L² was quickly falling behind, but the velocity differential was not too great that the ship’s thrusters could not compensate ... or could they?

“That’s like ... five thousand kilometers per hour difference,” I stated, calculating quickly. “Do the ship’s thrusters have that much delta-V?”

“Not at present,” Praxcia reported. “The Assemblage AI and The Last Laugh’s partial AI are exchanging information about that issue now. The Last Laugh has been instructed to begin acceleration maneuvers in an attempt to match the Ark’s speed. At the completion of this maneuver, The Last Laugh should be able to match the velocity of the Ark but as this will take time, the Ark will be some distance away. The Last Laugh will then have too little remaining thruster propellant to close that distance.”

At least we would not keep falling further behind. I was about to ask how far the gap would be when the velocities were matched when Jonathon spoke.

“The Ark will have to send a tug,” he said, calmly.

I glanced at my pseudo-brother. He looked to be holding himself together better than I through this crisis. Of course, his having never been married to Uxe may have helped. Jonathon must have sensed that my attention was on him because he raised his arm to the imager and tapped the antique compact wrist computer he constantly wore.

I remembered that the wrist comp was where he kept his Acid Rain activation key and I reached up to my genealogy amulet to verify that my key was still in place. He nodded at my action. That’s right! He’d already parsed that with Uxe now out of commission, only he and I remained who were able to activate Acid Rain if and when it became necessary.

“Naomi, how’s Mom?” Alek asked, sounding worried.

“Uxe has been deposited into the trauma crèche and is currently undergoing scans,” the AI replied. “The auto-surgeons are in position and are standing by to begin repairing the damage.”

Alek looked to Hannah. “I’d like to go to her but I also want to stay here!”

“Call your sister,” Hannah replied, reaching over to put her hand on Alek’s arm. “She can use the Earth portal network to poke herself quickly to High Castle. Right, Naomi?”

She’d asked that last question while looking at me expectantly.

“Please make it happen, Naomi,” I added sub-vocally.

“Of course, Hannah. I have notified Kela and transport portal formation is in progress,” Naomi replied audibly.

Hannah looked surprised at the quickness. The instant response meant that Naomi was probably utilizing her private, backup Querencia-based wormhole for the transport.

“The Last Laugh sensors report that multiple small objects are currently launching from the Ark,” Praxcia reported. “They appear to be on an intercept trajectory with the point in space where the deception vessel will eventually come to rest relative to the Ark.

“I’m watching the scan data,” Beatrice said. “So far I see no neutrino signatures from the new objects.”

I looked at the Luna feed showing the recently re-shelled scientist. She was focused on her data screens and I suspected that her recent trauma was making her ignore what was going on with Uxe. Still, I was glad that some of us were remaining focused on the mission.

Beatrice had been included in our group for more practical reasons other than just nostalgia. She was here to offer a human perspective on the close-in data The Last Laugh would hopefully be obtaining from the central area of the enemy Ark if it was brought in close.

She would then use that data to adopt the follow-on warhead attack we would be launching if Acid Rain failed to completely disable the enemy. Her group at the weapons lab on Luna had improved our warheads, but not to the extreme amount we had hoped. We’d need the new data L² might obtain.

Her scan report of no neutrinos meant that the new objects heading to our deception vessel were not likely to include nuclear bombs. Leaky containment fields also emitted some neutrinos so the data hinted that no antimatter weaponry was on its way either. Whatever the enemy was sending to meet L² was probably not a weapon. Let’s hope they were simply the tugs that Jonathon had predicted would be dispatched.

“As scheduled, The Last Laugh is now venting excess gaseous exotic matter,” Praxcia reported.

An image appeared on the feed coming from Sarissa. It was a sternward-looking video stream from a sensor mounted near the nose of The Last Laugh. In the display, a faint expanding cloud of scintillating particles was spreading around the still-red-hot nacelles at the rear of the craft. The flashes were caused by bits of the weird matter flashing away into subspace.

Praxcia continued. “In addition, the simulated hailing radio calls to the supposed predecessor warp ship are being sent. Of course, there has been no reply.”

More confusion for the enemy AI to parse! There would be no radio replies as there was no predecessor warp ship. Our deception was layered. We would be claiming that the L² was the second warp ship to be dispatched to the Assemblage.

“How long until The Last Laugh matches the Ark’s speed and the unknown object’s rendezvous with it?” I asked.

“Three hours, twenty-six minutes,” Praxcia reported. “The Last Laugh has now transmitted that it contains the stored awareness of the Picket entity. The Assemblage AI has replied that The Last Laugh is to package the awareness for immediate upload once its units arrive.”

Things seemed to be proceeding as planned. No, they were proceeded better than planned. I looked around and confirmed that there was nothing more my human ‘team’ could do here.

“Okay!” I said in a commanding voice that again startled me. Everyone looked at me.

“Good job everyone! It looks like we have some time until the next big events. Let’s turn this command room back over to the normal crew so they can begin prepping Phobos to launch the follow-on warhead attack.”

We would not need to be here to oversee the installation of the shunting wormhole to feed the warheads from the arsenal. The AIs had provided a cover story for The Last Laugh that would explain the close-in data we would be receiving. All the technicians would know is that we needed to act swiftly in order to exploit the data.

The view of the atomic dynamo was now showing activity, as shielded refueling mobile units began crawling over the still-white-hot engines. The data displays were reporting that we’d used about three-quarters of the available fissionables in sending the bulky The Last Laugh through. The dynamo would need rapid refueling to enable Phobos to send a decent spread of warheads.

“Beatrice? Good luck with the follow-on attack! We’ll let you coordinate those details,” I said, waving to her video feed.

“Thanks, John. I just hope there is still a control network in place here in the solar system to launch the attack after you activate Vesta!”

“Me too,” I responded simply, not wanting to get into it again with the scientist. Forbin and now Acid Rain scared the hell out of her and she remained very vocal in her opposition to that aspect of the plan. Rightly so, I had to admit.

“Jonathon? Take care on Vesta. I’ll be in touch.”

He just waved and logged off.

I dismissed Adele and her camera-bot next. She’d been told that there would be no recording of the next steps of the operation. She’d been upset but was mollified somewhat by the knowledge that both Naomi and Ohmu would have records. Those would eventually be provided to her ... if she continued to play nice.

“Ohmu? Where are you?” I spoke out loud for the benefit of the others.

—I am approaching the shuttle now, John.—

“Hannah, Alek, That’s our queue. Let’s get going.”

Alek still looked as if he wanted to go to Earth and his mother but finally nodded and let Hannah pull him along. We would be riding a shuttle over to Elon. The trip would take a bit longer than the expected time to rendezvous between The Last Laugh and the enemy tugs.

We would remain in touch though as Naomi now had a micro-hole tasked to both me and Jonathon at all times from now on. I was almost important! All I needed now was for Ohmu to carry the nuclear football and my elevation to supreme leader would be externally evident.

I shook my head and gave the control room one last look. The video displays were still showing the live data feeds from The Last Laugh, which were in turn projecting live images from the enemy Ark. I predicted the arriving technicians would have more than just a few questions. It would probably be wise to stay off the Conscientia forums for a while.

Nine hours later Ohmu and I were alone, back in my apartment on the Elon space station. When our shuttle had docked, Hannah had taken an exhausted, and still-worried, Alek back to her quarters to ‘rest’.

Even though to me it was an hour after midnight, I was too keyed up to sleep. Uxe was currently between surgeries, her shell’s life was no longer at risk, but with many ongoing cerebral repairs still needing completion. This was expected to take days, during which Uxe was to remain in an induced coma. Timetables for her full recovery were still understandably vague.

News from Assemblage space was still positive as The Last Laugh had not yet been destroyed. Jonathon’s ‘tugs’ had proven to be ... just tugs, and had rendezvoused with our deception vessel as expected. Despite the AI on board L² cooperating fully thus far with the Assemblage AI, the tugs had approached very cautiously. There were three, but two held back while one approached and did a slow, thorough exterior scan with optical, laser, and electromagnetic sensors.

I was disturbed to notice that the assemblage space-borne mobile units looked eerily similar to our own space-borne mobile units. I’d mentioned this fact to Ohmu who reminded me that the majority of our mobile unit technology was derived from units the Master AI had once produced. Those in turn were created using templates provided by the Assemblage, so of course, much of our technology looked similar.

After L² had been externally scanned and poked for over two hours, the tug moved in and attached itself near the main instrument unit portion of The Last Laugh. Our access hatch opened immediately when it signaled and the enemy unit physically connected with our ship’s onboard data network. It did so without issue because we’d built it with Assemblage-standard interfaces.

While the enemy began probing The Last Laugh’s accessible data net, like a spider hidden in a corner, Praxcia was monitoring all this via the secret Sarissa wormhole link. The AI quickly analyzed the enemy’s progress and concluded that the enemy intelligence sent with the mobile unit was only a lower-level partial presence.

L²’s physical firewall and the encrypted data archives stored behind it remained safely intact. The enemy lesser AI never even investigated why it did not have full access to the ship’s records, simply mapping all accessible data and then downloading a copy of what it could.

It briefly attempted to penetrate the first firewall before quickly giving up. While all this was going on, L²’s AI continued cooperating fully, explaining what it knew of the vessel and where to not probe or dismantle, less risking the ship being damaged or destroyed. Thankfully, the simple enemy AI took ours at its word.

This trust might have been because The Last Laugh’s AI had already transmitted our full ‘explanation’ about the existence of the physical firewall and the encrypted data to the Ark. The enemy’s main control AI had either accepted our story or was waiting until it could bring more intelligence to bear to interrogate L²’s AI and smash our firewall.

Our explanation was both simplistic and ingenious. We were capitalizing on the caution the enemy must be feeling after suffering the recent stern missile attacks and then the latter strange head-on impactor attack.

Thus, our explanation was that, because Earth was worried about enemy Hemru forces shadowing the Ark, we would protect our precious technology secrets by sending two ships instead of one. Each ship would have encrypted data banks which needed keys carried on the other ship.

Our AI also claimed that The Last Laugh was the second ship of the two warp-ship expedition. And, that the first warp-ship should have arrived months ago as it had departed Earth far in advance of The Last Laugh.

Coincidently, that timeframe would have placed the mystical first ship near the Ark around the same time as our previous real attacks. The enemy AI would have to wonder if its attackers, likely the Hemru, had discovered the first Earth ship after it had arrived, and destroyed or captured it.

Ironically, it had been Adele who had come up with the idea. Something from her studies of old Earth screenplays or visual espionage productions. She could not remember which one nor could I recall anything. Maybe it was divine inspiration?

But, with the fear of some imaginary unknown enemy as our justification, The Last Laugh had been constructed with strong firewalls and stronger encryption as a defense. Our AI had then explained that if the other ship with the required decryption key had been destroyed, the Assemblage would have to wait for a follow-on expedition to be sent from the Earth.

How long would they have to wait? The Last Laugh’s AI had been instructed to reply at least a decade. Long enough for the Assemblage to send an interstellar laser message to Earth explaining that only one ship of the pair had arrived. The message would take eight years crawling to Earth at light speed. After that, and when resources permitted, Earth would dispatch a new pair of warp-ships.

This was a strong stretch to the original ruse, but it was logical, and the AIs loved logical explanations. We were hoping that it was not too logical though, and that the Assemblage AI would be too impatient to wait another decade to open the gift-wrapped present sitting on its doorstep.

Back to the ongoing encounter, as the data download neared completion, the attached tug began retransmitting the information back to the distant Ark via message laser. The interface was two ways and we were again able to listen in on the return laser pulses from the Assemblage via L²’s external sensors and the hidden Sarissa micro-hole relay.

Xenius AI, who normally was tasked with deciphering all things Hemru, was brought in to analyze the returning signals coming from the Ark. Our AI quickly concluded that the signals being sent from the Assemblage Ark were generated by a standard AI, although one of very high capacity, at least equal to one of Sol system’s major AIs.

Also, as expected, the enemy AI’s communication patterns were very similar to that once employed by the Master AI back when it controlled the solar system. This matched our expectations of the enemy control hierarchy as the Master AI operating templates would have been duplicated and copies sent ahead to all worlds to be colonized.

That the Ark was currently controlled by a ‘master’ AI presence and not by some organic thinking being, or group of beings, kept alive over the millennia of its travels was also very logical. Of course, it was possible that there were still other controlling intelligences back on the Ark. We would just have to find out when L² was brought in close.

Over the next hour, under the guidance of the L²’s AI, the enemy mobile units began a deeper examination of our fake warp ship. Fortunately, they avoided the sensitive areas that ‘our’ AI had warned them about, but all other sections of the deception vessel were fair game. Hatches were opened or removed completely and the standard-technology innards was taken apart and analyzed.

Some of this analysis was irreversible as The Last Laugh’s entire thruster system was slowly dismantled and dispatched back to the Assemblage Ark on one of the tugs, leaving our vessel dependent upon the enemy’s units to move or even reorient itself.

L²’s onboard power supplies were studied and even interrupted, causing ‘our’ AI to reboot multiple times. Through it all, our hardware firewall and data encryption still stood firm. Our micro-hole link to Sarissa also remained stable through the power disruptions as it was powered from this side of the wormhole. So far, the deception plan seemed to be working and our ruse believed.

Once the enemy had probed what it could, it began to copy the open archive containing Picket. It also deployed a large transmitter antenna array and began to retransmit the data back to the Ark. The enemy AI would soon be having a long discussion with its agent and when that was complete, we would know if our Simulated Reality Project was able to create a convincing fabricated version of reality.

Finally, after Picket was finished being uploaded, the remaining enemy mobile units attached themselves to the hull of The Last Laugh and began thrusting it back towards the distant enemy Ark. They kept the velocity low and Praxcia calculated that it would be well over a day before L² was close enough for any physical docking attempt.

There was a collective exhalation from myself and the others still focused on the encounter as it looked like we could all relax for a while. Naomi had provided a data link to my smart iris that continually monitored Jonathon’s status. I assumed Jonathon had access to a similar data link which monitoring mine. It didn’t look like we would need to activate Acid Rain for at least a few days but we still needed to be ready.

Naomi also indicated that my message center had begun to be flooded by messages of all types and flavors, from general queries to outrageous tirades. A very small selection of the messages was let through her filters and I made a note to try and reply, depending on my how I felt about each sender.

Data on the deception vessel mission was being slowly disseminated to the general public and interest was growing. So far, we’d painted the mission as simply a deep-intelligence gathering venture using guile. We kept the focus on using L² to do reconnaissance ahead of the pending antimatter warhead attack on the hopefully more-vulnerable central stalk portion of the Ark.

As mandated, there was no mention to the public of either the stinger ability of the Sarissa wormhole link or of the Acid Rain offensive digital attack vector. Still, my opponents seized on what details of The Last Laugh’s deployment had been released and used them to hammer me for my general reckless actions and ineptitude.

‘Hammer away’ I thought. Better to exhaust yourselves now as you have no idea what might be coming next. It was almost humorous to think about how trivial the current levels of outrage were as compared to what they will be when it became known that I’d basically built my own secret version of Forbin. I refused to think about what the outrage would be if that logical attack element were used and went badly.

Things began to ramp up two days later. The enemy tug units had been slowly decelerating The Last Laugh as it approached the enemy Ark. Neo-Truffles was back online and still keeping the Sarissa parasite micro-hole com link active and stable, precisely positioned near the center of L²’s forward E-matter tank despite the braking maneuvers.

With every change in orientation or motion of The Last Laugh, the Sarissa wormhole’s position had to be quickly adjusted to maintain proper clearances from the E-matter tank walls. So far, we were managing this delicate task without difficulty, but the enemy was helping by being so cautious with our deception ship, using conservative, almost gentle, changes in motion.

That caution was all too evident as the enemy AI brought The Last Laugh to a stop a full eight thousand meters away from the Ark. One of the tugs remained attached to the warp ship to provide station keeping. Soon after, a larger, space-capable mobile unit arrived from the Ark and began another series of scans. This time, the methods were more invasive and L² was subjected to strong magnetic fields and powerful x-rays.

Despite being kept eight klicks away, The Last Laugh’s sensors were close enough to provide amazingly-detailed views of the massive structure. Beatrice was almost giddy as she and Praxcia mapped out vulnerable-looking spots on which to target their pending central Ark warhead attack.

They even came up with a last-minute plan in case The Last Laugh needed to be quickly destroyed to preserve our ruse. We could use the active Sarissa link to quickly and accurately guide a Phobos-deployed wormhole to within kilometers of the alien hull in the last seconds before we set off the L² scuttling charge.

The explosion would then provide cover for the formation of the bigger wormhole allowing us to launch a quick salvo of antimatter warheads from near-point-blank range right into the enemy’s vulnerable inner area. Of course, the one downside to this would be that the Assemblage, assuming it survived, would never again permit another warp-ship from Earth, real or fake, to come anywhere near it, if it suspected the two events were linked.

After the new exterior scans were complete, the big mobile unit latched onto the hull of L² and linked itself into the ship’s data net. This unit was controlled by a much more capable artificial intelligence than the previous and Praxcia reported that the infiltration and decryption efforts were an order of magnitude more powerful.

Still, our hardware firewall and advanced encryption held. We had planted teaser bait, protected by lesser encryption, which the enemy would crack before the main archive, but this even held. This teaser data mostly contained indexes of the further-encrypted data, the file designations hinting at our fake warp drive secrets. Though I imagined the bait was enough to make any biological intelligence salivate in anticipation, I had no idea what it would do for the enemy AI.

Another hour went by without anything new happening. Jonathan on Vesta and I in my Elon apartment waiting on increased alert just in case the enemy quickly pulled The Last Laugh in close in an attempt to link the enemy’s full digital network to our deception ship.

As we had many time before over the past few days, we discussed whether or not to activate Acid Rain with the ‘half-turn’ delay setting. That would have enabled Naomi to finish triggering the device at any time in the next twenty-four hours. As before, we deferred. I just did not feel like it was time yet and things seemed to be proceeding slow enough that there should be adequate time for activation in the future.

To pass the time, we played poker with Ohmu and Rosie. We did it in virtual so the androids would not gain any insights from our shell’s biological tells. It was fun but as expected, the digital units were slowly able to gain an over-powering chip lead. “Their chip lead is because of their chips!” Jonathon had joked after I’d mentioned our dwindling virtual stacks. Ohmu and Rosie added their digital groans to mine.

After we busted out, we remained in virtual chatting about recent events. I made the mistake of asking Jonathon about Sova Diduch as I’d not seen the micro-G fabrication expert with him for some time.

“Well ... um, we’re sorta taking a break,” he finally admitted.

“Sorta?” I quipped.

He looked more embarrassed than depressed about the subject so of course, I pelted him with ribald questions regarding their ‘break’. Despite my prodding, to his credit, he refused to divulge any details, so I backed off. I did glance at Rosie, wondering, but the android motioned behind his back that it was not because of her. Mysteries ... mysteries.

It was now well past his normal bedtime so we scheduled another future meeting and prepared to exit the virtuality. Before we returned to our shells, he motioned for me to remain a moment.