An Epic Space Opera by Mark Laporta
His android army mostly complete, Shol must still build the all-important Commander AI. But what personality traits must a great commander have? According to the newly returned Harlan Mars, the complex answer boils down to an enigmatic phrase: “ornery subroutines.” Read Infinity Afterglow from the beginning.
Aboard the Odela for the first time, Harlan couldn’t decide if he were more awed by its scale or its sophistication.
“Craters, those Ootray sure knew how build themselves a ship,” he said. “Think you could let our people run an analysis of her?”
“Until we get out of this quelx,” said Shol, “I don’t have time for that. You don’t either. The Quishiks are ready for a, like a, showdown out by … what do you call it? … Earth.”
“Pushin’ all our buttons,” said Harlan. “And don’t think Brad Christiansen won’t take the bait. We gotta be ready for that.”
“I have a plan, sort of,” said Shol. “Really, it’s Ungent’s plan.”
“You … you spoke to him?” asked Harlan.
“Couple times,” said Shol. “And he didn’t, like, explain everything. I’m lucky the ring helped me put the pieces together. And now we have that Kader … Kadervax, we’re almost ready.”
“Wait,” said Harlan. “Ready for what?”
“Dunno, exactly,” said Shol. “Maybe like a big battle. Maybe not. All I know is, we gotta get everybody in the right place first. That’s why you and that … Skryntali … device are important.”
Shol and Harlan looked up as Yaldrint entered the cargo bay.
“Greetings, Captain Mars,” she said. “If I may, I believe we must first determine if the Skryntali frame-shift device has the capacity to carry out the plan that friend Shol appears to have in mind.”
“I would welcome a discussion of the technical parameters, Intelligence Yaldrint,” said the Kadervax AI.
Harlan’s jaw dropped, as the two AIs discussed, in a highly compressed machine language, the outlines of the strategy Shol had gradually deduced from his brief encounters with Ungent.
“OK,” he said, “I didn’t catch half of that. It sounds like you wanna use the Kadervax here to drag the Quishiks back in time. Ask me, that’s kinda crazy.”
“May I ask why, Captain?” asked Yaldrint. “It appears a neutral playing field should optimize our chance for success.”
“First off,” said Harlan, “there’s nothing neutral about dealing with the Quishiks, no matter where you are. Before we knew what was happening, they’d wrap time and space around their scrawny necks and send us flyin’ into a different reality.”
“Not if we, like, keep them busy enough,” said Shol. “Come on, let me show you.”
Still laboring under the delusion that the pkaholul ring responded to physical gestures, Shol waved his hand to engage its transmat function and brought the three of them four levels up to the Odela’s robotics lab. Though the Kadervax was too large to rest comfortably inside the tech center, Shol knew they could consult its AI at any time, either through Yaldrint or his ring.
If the scope and dimensions of the robotics lab and its adjoining storage bays hadn’t made Harlan gasp, its contents surely would have. Everywhere he looked, android warriors, the product of Yfeftriadrur’s templates, stood at attention, awaiting final activation. As the final step of the construction process, Yfeftriadrur’s design templates had also included detailed specifications for a lethal array of particle rifles, proton grenades and lase pistols with which different segments of the android force could be equipped.
Between his expanded consciousness and operational help from Yaldrint, Shol had managed to adapt the industrial-grade replicators within in the Odela’s three automated self-repair bays to produce both the androids themselves and their deadly weapons in sufficient quantity — and in record time. Now, even when inert, Shol’s three-thousand-strong army cut a ferocious figure in the lab’s semi darkness.
“These have to be Ootray design,” said the former captain of the Jericho. “Why are they all switched off? Thought you said we’re in a rush.”
“Can’t, like, start ‘em up until they have a Commander Android,” said Shol. “And I can’t get it to, you know, to function. Thought maybe you could help.”
Harlan rested a hand on Shol’s right shoulder.
“Sorry, Son,” he said. “I know a lot of things, but not one of them is programmin’.”
Shol took a deep breath and explained. His problem had nothing to do with either programming or robotics. What he needed from Harlan was a clear model of a Commander’s mindset. How did he, for example, make snap decisions in the heat of battle? How did he know how to allocate resources and when to switch tactics?
“And how do you … I dunno … guess what the other guy will do next?”
Harlan burst out laughing.
“Sorry, Son,” he said. “When you ask it like that, it sounds kinda funny. I don’t have rules for everything. If I did, I’d be so predictable, I’d get whipped in the first ten blinks of the battle. What I do is look for any weakness of mine and minimize it. Then I look for any weakness of the enemy and jump all over it. I mean, sure, I could give you all the Protectorate military academy formulas and stuff — or Yaldrint could look it up for you. It might even help your robotic friend get a grip on things. But let me tell you something about the Quishiks. They’re way past any pure strategy you can cook up with textbooks. To defeat them, we’re gonna have to do some crazy stuff nobody ever tried before. That’ll be the only thing they can’t anticipate.”
“If I may,” said Yaldrint, “are you suggesting a random attack plan?”
“Not exactly random,” said Harlan. “It’s just gotta seem that way.”
Shol clapped his slightly curved left hand to his somewhat angular forehead.
“Can’t program … random quelx,” he said.
“Don’t have to,” said Harlan. “Just give your android an ornery streak, an attitude that makes it OK with taking risks. Plus, it needs the sense to know when to get unpredictable. I’ll bet those mutants think they can predict everything. You gotta show ‘em they can’t depend on much. Then you can rattle them.”
“Friend Shol, I believe I may be able to help,” said Yaldrint. “You did receive a wide assortment of personality vectors from Yfeftriadrur, did you not?”
“You think one of them is crazy enough,” asked Shol, “like the Captain said?”
“Perhaps,” said Yaldrint, “if we adapt it. I believe my experience with Har Draaf might also help. His mind was always taking, shall we say, a different path. If we patterned some aspects of your commander after that….”
“Dunno,” said Shol. “Can’t see Har Draaf getting violent.”
Harlan grinned.
“You should’ve seen him twenty cycles ago,” he said. “Come on, let’s sketch us out a personality profile — after you hook me up to a comlink. It’s high time I reported to Captain Cavendish.”
Though it pained Harlan to be so formal, he figured he’d better get used to it. The way he saw it, a quark in the belly of a hadron collider faced much better odds than Gillian’s love in the crucible of jealousy.
^^^
This concludes Episode 36: Ornery Subroutines. A new episode of Infinity Afterglow appears every Saturday. Read Episode 37 now.
Read Ungent Draaf’s earlier adventures in Mark Laporta’s novels Probability Shadow and Entropy Refraction, which are available at a bookstore near you, on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. Mark Laporta is also the author of Orbitals: Journeys to Future Worlds, a collection of short science fiction, which is available as an ebook.
His new novel, from which this episode is excerpted, will be published by Chickadee Prince Books. To pre-order, contact Orders@ChickadeePrince.com.
Image by Kalyee Srithnam.