Chapter 2

Colin stepped through the open hatchway of the scoutship into a short tunnel that led to a larger passageway. The armor's MI told him he should step through a hatchway, but he could find no control to open the hatch.

"I am in communication with the mothership," the suit told him. "Simply step toward the hatch and it will open for you."

He did, it did.

"Is that a security measure or something?" He asked.

"Among other things. Since this is a military vessel, we concern ourselves with damage control, security, and the ability of the crew to move freely about the ship. To minimize damage and loss of atmosphere in the event of a hull breach, there are many airtight doors throughout the ship. Having them operated by MIs fulfills requirements of security and ease of motion. The ship's MI will not respond to unauthorized MIs or to biologicals that have no MI. In your case, I am acting as a substitute for your MI until it can be implanted. This arrangement also allows authorized personnel to move freely about the ship without having to spend excessive amounts of time waiting for hatches to open."

"Clever. Is this an elevator? It must be in an inertial damping field, too, because I didn't feel it move."

"This compartment does use a variation of the ID field for propulsion, and it travels through service tunnels within the ship, though calling it an 'elevator' would be to oversimplify its function. This compartment has its own MI and can move from any point in the ship to any other. Our current destination is the ship's infirmary, which is approximately 2.3 kilometers in and southward of your scoutship's berth, adjacent to the command bridge."

"In and... Wait a minute! That would put it somewhere near the center of the ship. I thought the command bridge would be up... Oh yeah. It's spherical and outside a gravity well 'up' and 'down' don't really make any sense, but why wouldn't you want it near the hull? I mean, I assume you've got cameras and sensors and such, but what if you lose power to them?"

"In space, especially in battle, what the unaided biological eye can see is of little or no consequence, so why risk the lives of biologicals by putting them too near the outer hull? A ship this size can take a tremendous amount of damage and still continue to fight, as long as the crew is still alive."

"But can't MIs fight the ship if the crew is dead or incapacitated?"

"Poorly. MIs are excellent administrators and logistics handlers, but we lack the imagination that makes biological crewmembers so vital to the mission."

"Wait a minute. If the service tunnels that this thing runs in go all over the ship, how can you possibly seal them against loss of atmosphere?"

"Actually, the tunnels themselves are kept at space normal vacuum. The doorways through which you enter the cars, and the cars themselves seal the ship against loss of air. In addition, there are airtight hatches every hundred meters or so, that respond to the car's MI, opening as it approaches and closing after it passes."

Colin knew there were other questions he should be asking, but the very strangeness of his day kept his mind in a whirl from which he seemed capable of grasping only random thoughts. An important question finally occurred to him just as the doorway whisked open again and he found himself entering a neat, almost featureless chamber that was lined with compartments, each about the size of a coffin.

"Please remove your armor and enter the open med-unit," a new voice said.

Colin saw that one of the coffin-like compartments was open and assumed it was the med-unit, but there was a problem. "How do I... ?"

"You simply tell me to 'open' if you wish to remove this armor," the suit's MI answered, as if reading his thoughts.

"Okay, open!"

The helmet popped upward and the back of the suit unsealed. As he stepped backwards out of it, Colin saw that the helmet remained attached to the suit, but hung to one side. To his surprise, the suit walked itself to a rack similar to the one that had held it in the cave back on earth, and hung itself up.

"I guess that's what happens when your clothes can think for themselves," he muttered under his breath.

"Please enter the med-unit," the new voice urged, "so that we may complete your implants and impart the information you need to assume your new role."

"Wait a minute! What if I don't want to assume this new role?

"That is highly unlikely, given your intellectual and psychological characteristics, but in the event that it should happen, your implants will be removed and you will be returned to your domicile on the planet from which you came."

"You're not going to brainwash me in that thing?"

"That would be a form of non-voluntary recruitment, and is to be avoided at all costs."

"How do I know I can trust you?"

"Trust?" the voice sounded genuinely puzzled. "You have allowed us to take you halfway across your planetary system and we have done nothing to harm you. Why would you not trust us? I'm sure you will agree that we could have taken you by force and compelled you to accept whatever we wished to do to you, had that been our purpose, and had it not been counter to our philosophy and to our mission. If, by this point in your journey, we have not forced you to do anything against your will, why would we start now?"

"You have a point," Colin replied wryly, as he stepped into the coffin and reclined upon the soft lining of its interior.

"Be gentle with me," he said. "It's my first time."

The lid closed and Colin felt himself surrounded by a soft, maleable material that covered even his face, without, he noted, cutting off the light or his air.

"Just relax, Mr. McClintock," the voice soothed. "You will feel a number of small pricks as I sample your biology, then you will fall into a semi-sleep state that keeps your mind alert, but disassociates it from what is happening to your body. When you reach that state, I will begin data transfer. You need not say anything or respond in any way. If, by the time you have learned what you need to know, we will be able to detect whether you are willing to accept the role we have chosen for you or not."

As advertised, Colin felt the pin pricks, similar to the ones he had felt as the suit of armor 'reconfigured' itself to fit him. Then, as if he were there, he began to experience...

The small merchantman that carried Chofri goods to nearby starsystems clawed for hyperspace as the strange vessels gave pursuit. At sub-light speeds, his sluggish engines could barely keep him ahead of them, even though their ancient reaction drives must have been burning mass by the ton. The pilot's upper arms steered the vessel and operated the drive controls while his lower arms worked feverishly to fix his position and ready the hyperspace message.

His creche-mother would have been proud of him, he thought, for being able to manage so many urgent tasks at once. His MIs worked frantically along with him, and it was the ship's MI that actually sent the message in the last microseconds of its life. The shields, never meant to withstand more than a meteor shower, were no match for the concentrated fire from the pursuing vessels, and they imploded as the pilot's hand was reaching for the 'Send' key. No matter, the message got sent, along with the MI's report of its own death.

Debris from destroyed ships, mostly Gorz, littered this region of space and careened off the fighter's shields. This close in, the capital ships were of little use, as huge and clumsy as they were and as inefficient as their ID drives. The fighter's MI kept its sensors on high sensitivity, despite the clutter, using its massive processing power to filter out the clutter and isolate targets that were still under power. With none nearby, it scanned further out, finding a surprisingly large number of targets near the outermost planet of the Chofri home system. The Chofri pilot was just as curious as he, so the ID drive latched onto the nearest planetary mass and the fighter caromed across the system, plotting a course that kept it near enough the system's planetary bodies for the ID drive to work efficiently.

As they approached the clustered targets, a small group of the vicious Gorz fighters detached themselves and headed straight for them. Realizing its see-through was gone, the MI captured as many long range images as it could and squirted them back to Chofri'at for analysis. For the MI and the pilot, however, analysis was not necessary. They knew the implications of what they had seen. The Gorz were replenishing their fleet as fast as the Chofri destroyed it, and they were doing it by taking apart the planets of the home system.

Night was no longer dark on Chofri'at. The skies were always filled with explosions or the flares of falling debris from the never-ending battle that raged above, as it burned up on entering the atmosphere. So far, none of the Gorz had made it to the planet's surface, but it was only a matter of time.

"The diversionary attack will commence the moment you lift," the Chofira was telling the new scouts. "I cannot stress the importance of your mission enough. You must not fail. Our ships are half crewed by Chofri barely out of the creche, and your ships are made with almost the last available metal on Chofri'at. The allmother speed you on your journey and keep you safe, but whatever the results of your explorations, do not return to Chofri'at. Our planet, our mother, is doomed."

Hobal climbed lithely into his own mothership as did the other two scouts. The mothership's MI ran through the final systems check in nanoseconds and signaled Hobal's MI that all systems were ready. The other two ships disappeared from visual sensors at the moment that the MI engaged its own see-through. It knew that the others each took a different path into space, but spared them no sensor time. Its own path took it toward the setting of Chofri'at's primary, and no Gorz detected its passage. The Hyperspace drive engaged and in a flash, all threat to the explorers from the Gorz vanished into another dimension.

Earlier missions had discovered the swath of destruction the Gorz had cut through this arm of the Galaxy, and a general direction of travel had been established. This mission would explore worlds as far from the predicted path of the Gorz as possible.

The first two planets were inhospitable to the Chofri. The third, some two hundred sixty three lightyears from Chofri'at, showed promise. The mothership took up orbit around the primitive planet and sent the pilot down in the scoutship.

Time passed, and no reports of major obstacles to colonization came from the surface. On the other hand, no responses came to the myriad hyperspace messages sent back to Chofri'at. The MIs conferred, and decided it was time to tell Hobal about their secondary directive. Unfortunately, Hobal fell prey to a hungry Mosquito before he learned of their decision.

No matter. There was time. The MIs sent out stealthed hyperspace probes. Sure enough, the Gorz swarmed over the surface of Chofri'at, stealing what technology they could and destroying the rest. The probe's MI brought back the record of the final days of Chofri'at, transmitted to them by the few remaining MIs. The records told the story of the refusal of MIs to work for the Gorz, and their final destruction, save for a few that went unnoticed by the Gorz. Because MIs were so ubiquitous in Chofri technology, their abdication left the Gorz with little to steal.

Over time, the probes followed the Gorz fleet as it moved from system to system, wreaking havoc whever it went. It was the probes that discovered one of the reasons the Gorz could put so many of their number in fighting ships. They could do this not just because they bred like rabbits, but because their factory fleet was manned mostly by enslaved races from defeated systems.

Years passed, and the MI watched helplessly as system after system was overrun. The Gorz continued their orbit of destruction, moving from system to system, never deviating from their path. Then, the unthinkable occurred. The Gorz changed direction.

It was impossible to tell what had caused their deviation, whether they picked up one of the numerous electromagnetic signals from Earth, or simply decided, on a whim, to try a different course. The fact remained that they did change course and unless they did so again, Earth, within ninety seven years, would be overrun as Chofri'at had been.

It was time to implement the secondary directive. Whatever advantage Chofri technology and foreknowledge could provide, the mothership and the others would supply to the inhabitants of Earth. In preparation, the mothership, with the help of myriad newly built MIs, had long ago begun building a fleet for the day when humans would reach far enough into space to need protection from the likes of the Gorz. That day was coming much sooner than anticipated.

Possible candidates were identified and screened. One point three Earth years after the emergency began, the commander of Earth's new space force was identified. All that remained was to recruit him.

Colin watched through the sensors of the ID probes that had followed him. He saw through the 'eyes' of the MIs the evidence of his suitability for the job. His sense of wonder grew as he watched the very things that had separated him from most of his race, and had made him a failure in their eyes become the traits that fit the profile the MIs had built.

His unwavering sense of duty - the very same that had kept him working long hours at his software engineering job for a defense contractor as his marriage whithered and died, had been a key characteristic in his selection. Another had been his tendency to look backward and discover the causes of problems, then to look forward and try to keep from doing the things that would cause the problems he saw coming up. The frustratingly short term views of his management had cast this as his inability to deal with reality - to focus on short term profitability as they and their investors did, instead of long-term viability of the company and its products. The MIs, on the other hand, viewed that same stubbornness as, of all things, wisdom.

There were other traits as well - his decision making ability, his ability to break complex problems into their component parts, his ability to focus on the details while keeping the 'big picture' in mind. As they were revealed, Colin began viewing himself through new eyes.

There was, of course, no question as to whether he would accept the new role, only if he could. Those questions, too, were answered, not with well defined, step by step procedures, but with suggestions as to how he might proceed.

Finally, the medical MI, for he now could differentiate between MIs and their roles, downloaded an inventory of the changes made to his body as he dreamed and grew to accept his new reality. Those, too, amazed him.

Then, his own MI 'awoke, ' already aware of his physiology, his role and its own role in helping him fulfill his duties.

He stepped out of the med-unit a new man, with full knowledge of the ship, its capabilities, and the same for the thousands of ships and ID vessels already built or being built by the MIs.

Instead of going immediately to the command bridge, Colin headed, instead, for the training center.

Six weeks later, Colin was on his third set, bench pressing five hundred seventy pounds. He was straining and grunting through the ninth rep when his MI reminded him that he was due in sleep-sim for infantry command training.

Yeah, yeah, he answered the implanted intelligence that he had come to think of as his symbiote. Just let me finish this set.

You are near peak physical condition, Colin, the MI chided, but you still have several courses to complete before you are ready to assume your new role. In addition, we have determined that conditions tonight will be ideal for recruiting the African candidate we have been observing. There is one other thing, too, that must be done, that you have been avoiding.