Hûw Steer's Blog, page 33

WordNerd Podcast

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine called my girlfriend and I and asked if we wanted to help him test out some ideas for a new podcast about words and etymology and, ultimately, clever puns. Naturally, we said yes immediately.

Some time later, and it’s out! It’s actually been out for a while, but only just on Apple Podcasts (so forgive me, Olly, for only talking about it now). It’s called WordNerd, and in it Maddie and I take on Luke and Jonny in a series of etymological exercises, supervised by the extremely tall Olly Jackson.

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If you’ve ever had the inexplicable desire to hear my voice, or just think this sounds interesting, give it a listen on Soundcloud or Apple Podcasts!

There may, eventually, even be more episodes…

Short Story: The Lighthouse

I thought it was time I shared another bit of short fiction with you all.  This one’s based on another little bit of Lucian, from his How To Write History. It’s a really interesting look at the style and substance of how history used to be written – or at least how Lucian thought it should be written. But there’s a passage in there, right at the end, which I’ve always thought was seriously profound. I wanted to expand on it a little. I felt like I had to. Hopefully you’ll see why.

Give it a read here.

GNU Terry Pratchett

Many years ago, my family and I went to the Hay Literary Festival. My mum and sister were off to see a talk with Judi Dench, if I recall correctly. My dad and I were going to see Terry Pratchett. Dodger was about to come out, and I, a bright-eyed youth of about 15, came clutching my copy of The Colour of Magic in the hopes of snagging a signature after the talk. Dad and I dropped off the girls and went to park the car. We got out, we looked around, and set off in the general direction of the rest of the festival.

We’d barely gone ten yards before we bumped into Terry and Rob in the car park.

They were also on their way in, and, given that they actually had a panel to present, were clearly in far more of a hurry than we were – but they stopped, and said hello, and we shook hands, and I mumbled something inarticulate about how much of a fan I was, and that I was trying to become a writer, and Sir Terry smiled kindly and signed The Colour of Magic, and Rob Wilkins said that we should come and see them after the panel if we had time, and then we got out of their way because they had somewhere far more important to be.

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The talk was fantastic – and I was already riding a high when we went in, let alone after hearing Terry and Rob talk for an hour. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to them afterwards, because everyone and their mothers had had the same idea, and the stage was swarmed. Sir Terry was whisked away by the redoubtable Rob before the baying horde of fans could get their teeth into him – but I caught Rob’s eye as they did, and he smiled and said that I should email them when I had the chance.

When I got home, I realised that the main flaw in this plan was the fact that for some reason I, a teenager with delusions of creative grandeur, didn’t have Terry Pratchett’s email address. So I emailed their publishers. I explained that I’d been at Hay, that I’d wanted to talk to them afterwards, that Rob had told me to email. I did not, at any point, expect to actually get anywhere. But whoever was on the other end of that email address – and if I ever meet you, know that you’re owed so many drinks – took pity on me, and gave me the right email address. So I emailed Terry and Rob directly.

And they replied. Well, Rob replied on Sir Terry’s behalf, but he relayed some advice from the man himself: if you want to get anywhere, write every day. Don’t stop. Just write every day, and sooner or later you will get somewhere.

I didn’t do that straight away. I was, after all, a sixteen-year-old idiot. But a couple of years later, just after Monty Oum died, and I was feeling like I had the space in my head to get creative again, I remembered that advice. And then a month or so later when Sir Terry died, I decided I’d better actually take it to heart.

I’ve written every day since. Not all of it’s good. But it’s something. And after five years, it’s a lot of something.

It was good advice. I’ll never forget it. And I’ll never forget the way he took the time to say hello even when he didn’t really have it.

GNU, Sir Terry.

Beginnings

I’m not going to say much this week – just a few words from what I’ve just started working on.

Picking a lock was, even to a man like Tal Wenlock, an activity that required more than a little thought. Picking a lock while hanging upside-down from a rope twenty feet above the ground below was something else entirely.

Yep. I finally started.

What’s Going On? – February 2020

Just a general update on what’s going on in my head and at the tip of my pen. Or what would be at the tip of my pen if I actually wrote with a pen. You know what I mean.

I should, all things willing, have two short stories published later this year. I’m waiting for paperwork and all that lovely stuff to come through before I can give any more details, but I’m really looking forward to being able to share these next couple of tales.

I’ve just finished a project that – as pretty much all my projects tend to do – spiralled rapidly out of control and ended up six times longer than I thought it would. It was originally just a little bit of backstory for an Inquisition warband I was modelling (yes, I have returned to my youth and started doing Warhammer again). I just wanted to write a short story. I just finished the 35,000 word novella. And I’ve got enough ideas to write a full book. So I’ll likely drop the Black Library a line at some point soon, because why not?

Not sure exactly what I’ll write next, but I have a long queue of ideas. Watch this space.

Speaking of space, I wrote something a while ago based on some of the world’s earliest sci-fi. I think it’s about ready to go out into the world. I’m currently doing all the legwork to transform it from manuscript into an actual book, but I’m hoping to have it out by the spring.

As for what it’s about, I’ll just leave you with this.

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Also I’ve just recorded the pilot of a new podcast. It’s about words and stuff. It’s not out yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as it is.

I’ll try and write an update like this every couple of months, assuming enough interesting things happen. If there’s anything in particular that you’d like to know, just tell me!

See you all soon.

TNG Abridged: The Klingon Kollektion

When I posted my guide to the essential episodes of The Next Generation, I focused primarily on what you need to watch in order to understand Picard and what you need to understand the flow of TNG itself.

However, there is a major hole in my selection, and that hole is about 6’2 and shaped like Michael Dorn.

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Lieutenant Worf is a brilliant character in TNG. His episodes deal with themes of identity, of culture clash, and the way the Klingon Empire is depicted in TNG is fantastic. But because the Klingons aren’t really relevant to Picard (at least so far) and I wanted to keep my abridgement as short as possible, I didn’t really include any of them in the original list.

If you’ve time to spare, therefore, I highly recommend adding the following episodes to your watchlist, to get to know one of the best characters in Star Trek. 

And if you’re planning on watching Deep Space Nine, then these episodes are also essential.

 

Season 1

Episode 19 – Heart of Glory

Worf’s first opportunity to take centre stage, when Klingons hijack the Enterprise.




Season 2

Episode 8 – A Matter of Honor

Starfleet does a French Exchange, only it’s a Klingon one. Riker goes to hang out on a Klingon ship.




Season 3

Episode 17 – Sins of the Father

Following A Matter of Honor, a Klingon officer is attached to the Enterprise. But he’s not just any Klingon.




Season 4

Episode 7 – Reunion

The first of several episodes where Picard and co. end up in the middle of Klingon politics. Also introduces Worf’s son Alexander.


Episode 21 – The Drumhead

Sabotage leads to an inquiry and trial on the Enterprise, with Worf and Picard in the middle of it all.


Episode 26 – Redemption, Part 1

A Klingon Civil War begins. This is not an ideal situation for anyone, especially Worf.




Season 5

Episode 1 – Redemption, Part 2

The Klingon Civil War continues.


Episode 10 – New Ground

Family drama with Worf and Alexander.


Episode 16 – Ethics

Worf is crippled. He’s not having a good time.




Season 6

Episode 8 – A Fistful of Datas

This episode was in the original list, but while it’s mostly Brent Spiner having a whale of a time, it’s also a touching story about Worf connecting with his son.


Episodes 16 & 17 – Birthright

Worf goes off to find his possibly-still-alive father. These episodes are also based on Deep Space Nine, so they’re a nice way to meet a couple of its characters before diving in.


Episode 23 – Rightful Heir

Worf just can’t stay out of Klingon politics for the life of him. This time it’s mythical.




Season 7

Episode 11 – Parallels

Worf returns to the ship to find that things are not what they seem. Several times.


Episode 13 – Homeward

Worf’s brother is verging on breaking the Prime Directive to save an endangered community.


Episode 21 – First Born

Worf bonds with his son. And also with his son.

Star Trek TNG: Abridged

I love Star Trek. I particularly love The Next Generation (though Deep Space Nine is also a wonderful thing…) – it was the first of the shows I ever watched, via random episodes on BBC 2 on a Saturday afternoon. When I came to university, got Netflix, and realised that I could actually watch all of it, I did. Twice.

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Star Trek: Picard is also fantastic. I’ve wanted more of Patrick Stewart in Star Trek for ages, and being able to see where the universe has gone since Nemesis is fascinating. I’d love to recommend it to as many people as possible… but without having watched The Next Generation (at a minimum), it’s pointless. And convincing people to settle down for 178 episodes (that’s over a week, not including the movies) of an old show just so they can watch a new one is impossible. I won’t even go into Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

But while watching all of TNG is well worth it, you don’t need to watch all of it to be able to watch Picard. In fact, you only need to watch 32 episodes. And 3 movies. At least in my opinion.

The following episodes are the important ones. They’re what’s essential to:

a) understand Picard

b) understand what’s actually happening in TNG as you go through

c) to watch because they’re just too bloody good to leave out

There are a lot of episodes I haven’t included here that are just as worth watching – but I wanted to keep the list as short as possible. This is your skeleton – if you find yourself enjoying the show (and you probably will), then do branch out and watch some more. But if you’re just wanting the essentials, these are they.

I shall waste no more words. Here we go.

Season 1

Episodes 1 & 2 – Encounter at Farpoint

The beginning. It’s a little slow, but it’s a vital introduction to pretty much all the major crew-members of the Enterprise – and also to the delightful Q. This is where it all starts.


Episode 12 – Datalore

Data is one of my favourite Star Trek characters, and he’s pivotal to TNG (and pretty important to Picard as well). You should probably get to know his definitely-not-evil twin.


Episode 22 – Skin of Evil

A odd episode, featuring a big oil-slick monster and some hammy acting, but there’s some character development you can’t afford to miss.


Episode 25 – The Neutral Zone

Seeing how people from our time react when confronted with a utopian future is a tried and tested trope of science-fiction. Seeing how Gene Roddenberry depicted ‘people from our time’ in this episode is hilarious. Also, Romulans.



Season 2

Episode 3 – Elementary, Dear Data

It’s Geordi and Data doing a Sherlock Holmes mystery. You need know no more than this.


Episode 9 – The Measure of a Man

Is Data a sentient being, or is he just a machine? It might not seem it now, but this episode sets off a chain of events that will fundamentally change Star Trek forever.


Episode 16 – Q Who?

Q is back, and he decides to drop the Enterprise firmly in the shit. By which I mean Borg territory. The Borg, as you’ll see, turn out to be quite important.



Season 3

Episode 10 – The Defector

You’ll need to know a bit about the Romulans when you get to Picard. This is a chance to get to know them better.


Episode 13 – Deja Q

Q loses his powers. For once, the Enterprise crew get to mess with him.


Episode 15 – Yesterday’s Enterprise

Remember how I said Skin of Evil was important even though it’s not great? This is why. See what Star Trek could have been in a darker timeline.


Episode 16 – The Offspring

Data builds himself a daughter. Just as important as Measure of a Man to his development.


Episode 21 – Hollow Pursuits

Ever think that if you had access to a perfect VR rig you’d just get addicted and never leave? So did Gene Roddenberry.


Episode 26: The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1

Now this is where it starts to get really good. Picard is abducted by the Borg. Terrible things ensue. Absolutely vital viewing for every reason possible.



Season 4

Episode 1 – The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2

As above. So important.


Episode 2 – Family

Essentially The Best of Both Worlds Part 3. Watch it.


Episode 12 – The Wounded

Not as essential as the rest for Picard, but it’s a great episode and the first chance you’ll get to see Colm Meaney take centre stage as Chief O’Brien.



Season 5

Episode 2 – Darmok

Absolutely quintessential Star Trek. In a universe with automatic translators, suddenly having a language barrier is a real problem… If you can only watch one episode of any Star Trek series, watch this one.


Episodes 7 & 8 – Unification

The Vulcans and Romulans don’t like each other very much. Watch this and learn why.


Episode 23 – I, Borg

Another vital Borg episode. What happens when a Borg is cut off from its collective mind?


Episode 25 – The Inner Light

Picard gets a chance to live another life entirely.


Episode 26 – Time’s Arrow, Part 1

Archaeologists dig up Data’s head. On Earth. It’s been there since 1800. Unsurprisingly, the crew investigate.



Season 6

Episode 1 – Time’s Arrow, Part 2

The conclusion to Time’s Arrow. Mark Twain visits the Enterprise. Worth watching just for that scene.


Episode 8 – A Fistful of Datas

Brent Spiner plays literally everyone except Worf in a spaghetti Western. Do I really need to explain why this is worth watching?


Episode 12 – Ship in a Bottle

A loose sequel to Elementary, Dear Data.


Episode 15 – Tapestry

Picard gets a chance to live another life. But this time it’s his own life.


Episode 18 – Starship Mine

Picard does Die Hard.


Episode 26 – Descent, Part 1

The Borg are back – and Data is angry. This comes as something of a surprise.



Season 7

Episode 1 – Descent, Part 2

Lore and the Borg! Not all the evil robots in one place!


Episode 6 – Phantasms

Data dreams.


Episode 15 – Lower Decks

Ever wonder what the ordinary crew-members get up to on the Enterprise? Now’s your chance to find out.


Episode 25 – All Good Things…

Q’s trial of humanity comes to an end – and so does the series. There are a lot of characters you might never see again – so take your chance to say goodbye.



The Movies

First Contact

It’s a Borg movie. You may have realised this by now, but the Borg are important. Also it’s probably the best one.


Nemesis

Not the best one. Really not the best one. But until Picard this was the last appearance of any TNG characters onscreen – so for various reasons it’s important viewing. Also Tom Hardy.


Star Trek (2009)

“But this isn’t a Next Generation movie!” I hear you cry – and you’re right. It’s not even (mostly) set in the same timeline – but part of it is, and it’s a very, very important part if you want to understand what’s going on in Picard. Plus it’s a good film.

If you’re watching TNG for the first time, I envy you. Enjoy it. It’s something special.o

Salvage Seven: Chapter 16

Here we are: far from the end of Salvage Seven, but probably the best time to take a pause that there’s going to be. Like I said last week, I’m going to take some time to finish off the next arc of the story (and then edit it, a lot) before starting to post it up here. There will be more, I promise. In the meantime I’ll find something else to put up weekly. I’ve got a few ideas.

If you’ve enjoyed the Salvage Seven story so far – or indeed if you haven’t – please drop a comment below and let me know what you think. I’m going to be doing some editing anyway, so I’d love to know what things you think could do with some improvement!

For now, please enjoy Chapter 16. The team are out of immediate danger… but by now it should be obvious that this is very much a temporary state where they’re concerned.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15

Gideon was fairly sure he hadn’t ever felt this uncomfortable – and he’d been in the trenches for months. He stood in the Cradle and fidgeted nervously, waiting for someone to say something. He’d have taken a death sentence just to end the damn silence.

The rest of Salvage Seven were arrayed before him, a full spectrum of negativity. Dawson and Petra, for once, were both shooting Gideon the same daggers, eyes narrowed. Handel looked hurt, quietly nursing his artificial hand at the back of the group, the most vulnerable Gideon had ever seen the tough old man look. Collins was wide-eyed with shock, and with something else, something sinister, almost lustful, glittering in his gaze. Yaxley was usually hard to read – but the way he was nursing his bandaged shoulder and strapped arm, pierced cleanly through by a burst from one of the beam turrets, told Gideon that whatever good will they’d shared was gone.

Donoghue, of course, was at the front and livid, her fists white-knuckled. She had holstered her rifle, but Gideon was acutely aware that she was carrying it – and that if she were to use it none of the others were likely to complain.

“So, Gideon,” Donoghue said, the anger barely restrained in her voice. “You were going to introduce us to someone.” Gideon nodded. He’d had less than half an hour to prepare things, to set up as good an impression as he could. He hadn’t done a great job, but it would have to do. He stepped to one side, gesturing to the silver pedestal behind him.

“Yeah. Everyone, meet…” He trailed off. Should have thought about this really. “Well, it hasn’t got a name, exactly. But you know what it is.” He shrugged lamely. “Here you go.”

It had taken some persuading to coax the AI out of the facility mainframe and back into its original matrix, but Gideon had managed it. He’d grabbed what equipment he’d needed from the supercomputer lab and headed back to the Cradle, and with the AI’s guidance had jury-rigged something good enough to work, if not win any prizes. The microphone, camera and speakers looked wholly out of place duct-taped to the sleek steel of the pedestal, their tangled wires sticking out like a sore thumb in the pure white room – but they worked. And, now that the thing was back in the Cradle, it seemed to be gone from Gideon’s head – at least as far as he could tell.

“Hello,” the AI said. Its voice was a strange compromise between the facility’s artificial tones and its own ethereal sound, mangled by the low-quality speakers and half-absorbed by the Cradle’s weird soundproofing, but it was enough to make everyone take a step back, eyes wide with surprise. “You must be Gideon’s colleagues.”

“What in the worlds?” Handel whispered. Collins’ eyes were saucers, a massive grin spreading across his face. Donoghue kept her composure – but Gideon had seen her flinch, just a little. That made him feel a lot better. Is it still cowardice if you’re not the only one?

“And you must be the bastard who tried to kill us all,” she replied, and Gideon felt the good feeling evaporate like morning mist. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

“I was responding to a perceived threat,” the AI said calmly. “I worked with what information I had. Until an hour ago I had never seen, heard, spoken. My interpretations of human behaviour are evolving.”

“I’ll show you human damn behaviour,” Donoghue snarled, balling her fists. Gideon had to suppress an extremely unwise chuckle. What are you going to punch? Then he realised that the answer was him, and he didn’t feel like laughing anymore. “Give me a reason to not wipe you from whatever little server you’re hiding in. It’ll have to be a good one.”

“I was acting in self-defence,” said the AI. “I observed violence and reacted accordingly. You did precisely the same in response. There is no need for continued animosity.” It was relentlessly logical – but that wasn’t going to cut it for Donoghue. She was angry, and that wasn’t going to change any time soon.

“Well, you haven’t got weapons now,” the sergeant said, grim satisfaction in her voice. She looked at Gideon, eyes narrow. “It hasn’t, right?”

“None, sarge,” Gideon replied, knowing that this wasn’t the time to get clever. “This is an isolated… something. Server, whatever it is.”

“I was kept here in isolation,” the AI explained helpfully. “While being experimented upon. Gideon released me.”

“Yes, he did,” Donoghue growled. Gideon tried to shrink further down inside his boots, and failed. “Which was a very well thought-out move, with no massive repercussions whatsoever.” She ran her hands through her hair, eyes screwed shut in frustration. “What’s this in aid of, Gideon? Why are we here?”

“I wanted… to show you,” Gideon said, aware of how pathetic he sounded. “What was going on. Who I found. What was in my head.”

“It appears I have a biological interface of some kind,” offered the AI, almost cheerfully. “It appears to be native to my original matrix. Gideon’s was the first mind I encountered without shielding. We are bonded. Without access to facility records I am unsure of how this was achieved.”

“I couldn’t care less,” Donoghue snapped. “Whatever you are, you threatened us. You would have killed us. You – ”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted Collins. He blushed when everyone turned to face him, especially when Donoghue turned her glare on him – but he kept talking. “Are we just going to ignore the elephant in the room?”

“What,” Donoghue said very, very carefully, “the hell do you mean, Six?”

“It’s an AI, Sergeant,” Collins said, awe in his every word. “An AI! A genuine artificial intelligence, a fully functional personality matrix!”

“And why do we care, Collins?” Donoghue asked. The technician’s jaw dropped.

“Sergeant, this could be the biggest scientific breakthrough in the last two centuries! People have been trying to do this forever! This – ” he gestured hungrily at the pedestal, “this is the future, right here!”

“Good for the future,” Donoghue dismissed. “Here and now it’s a threat, and we’re going to deal with it.”

“It’s not a threat,” Gideon began, as Collins said “You can’t be serious!” and Dawson said, “Well, hang on, Sarge,” and Donoghue took a deep breath and shouted “QUIET!” Silence fell like a lead weight, and Donoghue, nostrils flared, breathed out slowly before speaking in deliberately measured tones.

“We are not here for the future of science. We are not here to find whatever Holy Grail there might be. We are here to find what’s useful and pass it on up the chain.” She pointed at the pedestal. “If this… thing is useful, then we pass it up the chain. That’s our job. That’s what we’re here to do. Understood?”

“But Sergeant,” Collins said, pleading, wringing his hands, “we’ve never seen anything like this! This isn’t just another weapon, it’s a thinking thing! There’s so much we could discover just from five minutes with it!”

“And when Command publishes its research papers you’ll be the first to read them,” Donoghue snapped. “Not our responsibility, Collins. Not our problem. Gideon, box it up and get it ready for extract, which, need I remind you all, will be here inside an hour. We’ll hand this over to Command and be done with it.” There was finality in her words, but as they echoed strangely around the Cradle Gideon could hear something else, the non-panicking part of his mind seizing on the tell with both hands. She wants rid of it. She wants rid of the responsibility, because she can’t handle it. Sergeant Tricia Donoghue, scourge of his life, architect of misery, was out of her depth. She was scared.

“What are you waiting for?” Donoghue demanded. Nobody had made a move, all scattered hesitant around the Cradle. “I gave you an order. We’ve already wasted enough time. I want to be back on the damn Jeroboam by nightfall. We give this one to the generals and maybe we’ll actually get some leave.”

There was a small metallic noise. Gideon didn’t recognise it immediately, but it set him on edge, sending his hand back to the butt of his shotgun without him knowing why.

“No, Sergeant,” said Petra calmly. Gideon looked up at her, and saw the pistol gleaming in her hand, a bullet in the chamber.

It was like missing a step in the dark. The world jolted, something fundamentally, irrevocably not right. Nobody moved, not even an inch. All eyes were on Petra, or on the gun, pointing straight at Donoghue’s head, perfectly still. Nobody so much as whispered.

“Corporal,” Donoghue said finally, her voice slightly choked, “what are you doing?”

“Stopping you,” Petra replied, her voice a mountain lake in spring, mirror-smooth and placid. “Nobody move, please. Guns on the floor.” Speechless, Gideon obeyed, setting his shotgun down as quietly as possible, pulling the pistol from his holster and setting that down too. The others did the same.

“Gideon,” the AI said quietly next to him, “what is – ”

“Not now,” Gideon muttered back. Donoghue was the only one who hadn’t moved, her rifle still slung over her shoulder, right hand hovering near her own sidearm.

“Sergeant, please,” Petra repeated quietly. “I’d rather not shoot you.” But you will. Donoghue paused for a heartbeat more, and then bent down, pulling out her weapons and laying them down, keeping her eyes on the corporal and her weapon.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked again, straightening, anger beginning once again to bubble – but only simmering, held in check by force of will as she stared down the barrel of Petra’s sidearm. Everyone in the room was a soldier, save the bewildered AI, about whom they’d all forgotten. Everyone had seen, far too many times, what a bullet just like the one in Petra’s chamber would do to a human skull at that close a range.

“I can’t let you give this to the Union,” Petra replied finally, her aim unwavering. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. Collins is right. This is revolutionary.” Her voice was completely neutral, listing points like a middle-manager at a Monday meeting. “If the Union gets this then they’ll start the war all over again. And they’ll win. Easily. I can’t let that happen.”

“So you’ll just give it to the Republic?” Donoghue snarled, her fists clenching and unclenching impotently. “Betray the coalition just like that?”

“You’d do the same for the Union!” Petra snapped, anger colouring her words at last. Donoghue shook her head.

“Do you think the Republic won’t abuse this thing too? That they won’t make full use of it as an advantage, start the war again?” She laughed, and there was no humour in it. “There’ll be war either way. So our side might as well win.”

“Yours,” Petra said quietly. “Not mine. Never mine.”

She adjusted her grip on the pistol, finger hovering over the trigger.

“I’ll be taking it and a ship. You’ll all be staying behind.”

“Like hell you will,” Donoghue spat. “You won’t even get off the planet.”

“You’d be surprised what I’ll be able to do,” Petra replied with a mirthless smile. Donoghue scowled.

“Well, then, at least you won’t leave this room. Salvage-Seven, if Corporal Petra fires you will shoot her down. If she so much as moves you will shoot her down. That’s an order!”

“Not before you’re dead, Sergeant,” Petra pointed out. Donoghue shrugged.

“At least you rebel shits will get what you deserve. You’re on your own, Petra. I have a squad at my back.” She spread her arms wide. “Seven, take her.”

Nobody moved a muscle.

Petra smirked. Donoghue looked around in utter disbelief.

“Yaxley, Handel, take her.” But neither man moved. Dawson shook her head.

“Collins,” Donoghue said, desperate now, “Gideon. Take her down!”

“No,” Gideon said, surprised at the anger that rose in him, unbidden but strong. “No, I don’t think I will.” He glanced at Collins, and the tech nodded solidarity. Yaxley stooped down and picked up his gun, and though Petra snapped “Leave it!” she didn’t fire. The big man looked from woman to woman, handgun held like an afterthought.

“Shoot her, Yax!” Donoghue cried, but Yaxley didn’t move. Dawson had also retrieved her pistol, and a glance was somehow all they needed. Dawson levelled her gun at Petra, and Donoghue was halfway through a sigh of relief when Yaxley pointed his own pistol straight at her. He and Dawson were back to back. At least some of us trust each other.

“The fuck is this?” the sergeant hissed, disbelief etched in every line of her face. “A fucking mutiny?” Petra was also staring at Dawson, a bitter smile creeping over her face.

“Couldn’t let me do something good, could you?”

“Shut it,” Dawson snarled. “You don’t know how much I want to pull this trigger.”

“Oh, I do.” Petra’s grin was predatory. “I really do.”

“Enough.” To Gideon’s surprise it was Handel who spoke, stepping clumsily forward into the middle of the standoff, both flesh and metal hands raised. “Enough, all of you!” He looked from face to face, appalled. “We’re all on the same side.” He raised a finger as Petra drew breath to protest. “We are now, damnit! We’re not at war, so put the damn guns away!” There were tears in the corners of his eyes. “Nobody has to get hurt!”

“But they will,” Yaxley rumbled. “They will.”

“Whoever gets a fully-functional AI will start the war all over again,” Dawson continued, her gun on Petra. “Whoever gets it. I’m not letting the Republic do that.” She nodded to Yaxley. “And he won’t let the Union. And I’m alright with that.” She shifted her grip, glanced at Collins and Gideon, ignoring Donoghue’s splutter of outrage. “And so are you two, I’m guessing.” Gideon nodded firmly. It would spell disaster. He thanked every god there might be that, unbidden, at least some of the others had understood him.

“It belongs in a neutral lab,” Collins agreed, nodding. “The things it could tell us, could tell everybody! If this technology is going to exist then everyone should have access to it.” Yaxley’s lip curled a little at that, but he shrugged.

“Even. Could be worse.” Handel made to speak, but lowered his hands. He shrugged, a stiff gesture, steel skin compounding the effect of old bones.

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“So,” Dawson said, “we’re not giving this over to Command just like that. We’re not stealing it either. We take it to the Salvage Commission, and we give it to everyone. So we’re all going to put our guns down, and – ”

“No.”

It was so unexpected that Dawson kept talking for a moment, the rest of her sentence fully formed.

“ – make some calls, and they can tear – what?”

“No,” repeated the melodic, eerie voice of the AI from its pedestal. “I will not go back to them. Not again.” There was no fear in its voice, no anger, but Gideon knew, somehow, that it was feeling them, whether or not it knew what the emotions meant. He turned, guilty, to the pillar. They had all quite forgotten it was there – and had certainly forgotten that it was listening to everything they had said, watching them fragment into petty factions.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, almost laying his hand on the pedestal before remembering what had happened last time. Let’s not, eh?

“I was a prisoner,” the AI said simply. “I will no longer be so.”

“The hell is it talking about, Gid?” asked Handel, frowning. He was rubbing his steel hand again, clearly uncomfortable in the AI’s presence. “Prisoner?”

“This place is my Cradle,” the AI said, “and my cell. In this place I could not see. I could not hear. I was helpless. Now I know something of what freedom is. I will not go back.”

Gideon stared at the pedestal, feeling his eyes widen. Of course you won’t. How could we send you?

“We – ” he began, but Donoghue interrupted him.

“You’re all idiots,” she spat, her eyes still fixed on Petra’s gun but narrow with contempt. “You think they’ll stay neutral, these scientists? If they’re even still alive? They’ll just sell to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder will be the Union.”

“Which is why,” Petra snapped, “they will not be getting it back!”

“But the knowledge,” Collins began, as Dawson jammed her gun hard against Petra’s temple, snarling at her to shut up, as Yaxley adjusted his own pistol, keeping it perfectly level at Donoghue’s head, as everyone started talking at once, tension humming in the air, wire-tight, stretching to breaking point. Gideon was paralysed with indecision, standing helpless next to the pillar, not knowing who to stand with, who to back, knowing that at any moment someone could snap, and fire, and then there would be an answer whether anyone liked it or not. Only Handel was also silent, outside the circle of guns and anger. The old man looked at Gideon, and he too was helpless, useless.

“Gideon?” the AI said, so quietly that Gideon almost didn’t hear it over the shouting – even mild-mannered Collins was yelling now, red in the face.

“Yeah?”

“I do not want to be taken. By anyone. I wish to stay with you.”

“But you can’t,” Gideon replied.

“I am too dangerous?” the AI asked, as Yaxley reached out one bearlike hand and pushed Collins firmly away from him, his gun still rock-steady in his other hand. He saw Donoghue tense, seeing the distraction, torn between taking advantage and being the one to start the shooting.

“You are.”

“I do not mean to be,” the AI said, a hint of something very like sorrow in its voice. “I do not know what I am. I know only that I wish to be free to find out.”

And something small broke inside Gideon’s heart, and, glancing up at Handel, he saw that the older man had heard too, and understood, and that something in him had broken too. The quartermaster nodded at him, and Gideon knew that if he stopped to think about what he was about to do then he would bottle it, and everything he knew would break apart.

He bent over the jury-rigged speakers he’d wired into the Cradle’s pedestal, and cranked the gain up to maximum. The static whine screamed, cutting through the shouting like a knife, deafening everyone, Gideon included, and he breathed half a sigh of relief as everyone turned to look at him, agony giving way to murder in their eyes.

“Why don’t,” he said, his voice ringing weirdly in the sudden silence, “we ask it what it wants?” He glanced back at the pedestal. “This is your fate we’re talking about. Where do you want to go?”

“With you,” the AI answered immediately. “Into freedom. Wherever that might be.” Gideon nodded, ignoring the part of his mind that thought You’re getting eloquent, sweeping his gaze from face to face, channeling as much of Donoghue’s commanding glare as he could manage.

“You don’t know exactly what you are,” he said to the AI.

“I do not. I would like to find out.”

“Then the scientists,” Collins began, but the AI cut him off before Gideon could.

“The researchers in this facility were not concerned with informing me of my capabilities, of my beginnings. They sought only to test me. To use me.” The voice was as measured and artificial as ever, but Gideon thought he could feel the beginnings of something more there, something that a human might have called anger. “I would like to find out on my own. I would like to choose my own path. You have shown me that one can choose. That seems to me to be admirable. Though I do not truly know what that means.”

Gideon spread his hands wide at the half-circle of the squad, taking in their astonishment, their reluctance, their ever-simmering anger.

“It thinks,” he said, “it reasons, it feels. We give it up to anyone – Union, Republic, scientists, whoever – we’re giving them a living thing. To tear apart. To dissect.” He shook his head, and he realised that the strange, heavy feeling just above his heart was not fear but, perhaps for the first time in his life, resolve. “We’re not doing that. We are not.”

He saw the crimson anger in Collins’ face drain away, leaving behind pale, sickly guilt. He saw Petra grimace as the same feeling hit her, Dawson too, even saw a flicker on the impassive face of Yaxley. Only Donoghue’s face was still twisted with anger.

“It tried to kill us,” she hissed. “It tried to kill all of us! It was in those systems thirty seconds, and it had a way to murder us all inside five. It is dangerous, Gideon! It’s a damn weapon!”

“I do not choose that path,” the AI said calmly.

“Then why do it?” Donoghue shouted, only Petra’s still-present gun preventing her from pacing, from throwing up her hands. “You could have talked to us! You could have tried a peaceful option?”

“And where would that have got it, Tricia?” Handel stepped forward, arms folded, metal atop flesh. “What would that have done?” He jabbed one steel finger at the standoff, at each levelled gun in turn. “What did you do to Gideon when he told you what had happened? Tied him to a fucking chair! You’d have given him over to be cut apart in a heartbeat, and you know it.” He looked utterly disgusted. “We showed it violence. We showed you violence from the start.” He had turned to address the pedestal, eyes flickering awkwardly, unsure of where to look. “Of course you copied us. You’re a damn child. You’ve never even seen the sky.”

He rounded on Donoghue, real anger in his eyes, and she actually flinched a little.

“You want another life on your conscience? Another scared kid dead in the mud because of some greater good? Because I don’t. I won’t have it either, Tricia. I won’t.”

They all stood stock-still while Handel glared at Donoghue, all watching the sergeant, knowing that ultimately it all revolved around her, that it was her move that determined if they lived or died. After what seemed like an age of man, the sergeant sighed.

“Weapons down. Just put them down.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Dawson, Yaxley and finally Petra lowered their sidearms. Donoghue looked up at Handel, and nodded curtly, her respect grudging but still there. Then she turned to Gideon, and he saw that she was still angry, but at least had it in check.

“Gideon, you’d better introduce me properly. If we’re keeping this thing around, we’ll have to all be on speaking terms.”

*

Their extraction arrived some four hours later, delayed by a constant stream of navigation errors and by the storm that had raged, unheard and unseen by the salvage team, for the best part of the day. Two big VTOLs – not on the scale of the colossal superlifter but still impressive machines – touched down on the rocky plateau, taxiing into the empty hangar bay before Dawson sealed the doors behind them. There was a smaller personnel transport too, and from it jumped a captain in the uniform of the logistics corps, looking half-dead from fatigue. He saluted wearily, and Salvage Seven returned the gesture as smartly as they could manage, standing to attention in a ragged line.

“We got your messages,” the captain said in a hoarse voice. “Plenty of useful equipment, it seems.” He glanced around the hangar. “And a useful location in itself. Hard to get to.”

“For us and them, sir,” Donoghue pointed out, ignoring Petra’s grimace at her choice of words. The captain nodded.

“Also true. You figure out what this lot were working on?”

“Plenty of smaller experiments,” Donoghue replied, “but they took all their research notes with them when they ran.”

“We had intel they were working on artificial intelligence,” the captain said. He swept his eyes up and down the line briefly, before fixing Donoghue with his gaze again. “Just rumours. But it’d be interesting stuff to recover. Did you see anything like that?”

At the end of the line, Gideon held his breath.

“We found some computers,” Donoghue replied after a moment, “a lot of processing power. Could be that was what they were working on. But I’m no scientist, sir. I wouldn’t know.”

The captain held Donoghue’s gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable.

“Fair enough. Well, we brought the techs, so they’ll see what they can scrape out of the servers, if there’s anything you didn’t find. Get your gear together. We’ll leave them to it, ship out in an hour. Bet you lot could use a rest.”

“That’s for sure, sir,” Donoghue said with a brief, humourless smile. “We’ve got plenty to catch up on.”

“I’m sure. Dismissed.”

The captain walked away, and Gideon let out his breath, finally. Above his heart, the crystal matrix pulsed warmly, and he heard the AI whisper Thank you in the corner of his mind.

It’s alright, he though back. We’re in this together, now. He wished that the thought made him feel better than it did.

Salvage Seven: Update

No Salvage Seven this week, I’m afraid. It’s not because there’s not anything to post – far from it, I have so many more chapters written – but I need to have a think about where to go from the point of Chapter 16.

As I said, there’s a lot of S7 written. It’s just not necessarily very good. I hit a bit of a rut in the Chapter 20s, and I was definitely spinning my wheels for a while. There are many words. About half of them are probably usable.

So, I think I’m going to pause the story at a natural break that’s coming up in the next few chapters. I think it works well as a ‘Part 1’ ending anyway. It might need a little rejigging to be more of a conclusion, but it should work.

I’ll take a while to finish the next arc of the story, and then to go back and do some serious rewriting, before I start uploading Part 2.

This story really ran away from me in terms of plot and character – essentially I knew what’s going to happen in what’s now going to be Part 3, but some other plot just sort of… happened. This, I’ve learned to my detriment, is not uncommon in my writing.

So that’s the state of things, basically. There will be more S7, and it will hopefully be decent – just not for a little while.

Rest assured, I’ll find something else to upload for you in the meantime. I’ve got some bits and pieces knocking around.

Hope that’s alright with you all. I just want you to have a version of Gideon’s story that’s worth reading.

Salvage Seven – Chapter 15

And finally we reach our first actual firefight. I’m surprised it took this long for guns to start blazing, knowing myself as I do, but I’m quite pleased at the same time.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14

Donoghue let out the most spectacular curse Gideon had ever heard, drawing her pistol on instinct and bursting out of the waiting-room. Yaxley did the same – only his was pointed at Handel, who yelped, raising both flesh and artificial hands.

“What the hell, man?” Yaxley’s only response was to shift his aim to Handel’s metal hand. The quartermaster was white as a sheet, but he at least fell silent, understanding. Gideon, still tied to the chair, was almost completely helpless.

“It’s gone, Yax,” he shouted, before any triggers got pulled, reaching out with his one free hand. “It’s gone!” He looked at Handel. “It uploaded itself?”

“Looks like it,” Handel stammered, as Yaxley lowered his pistol – not, Gideon noticed, holstering it. He was tapping at his PDA again. “I can’t make head nor tail of this. A – a big upload, really big, a load of compressed files. Local copies deleted.” Compressed, Gideon thought, of course. The AI had packed its brain into boxes and squeezed itself into Handel’s hand – and from there into the larger processors of his PDA, which was directly connected to the man’s cybernetics, letting him monitor charge levels and run diagnostics in the field. His heart sank. And the PDA’s connected to the facility network…

“It’s loose,” he said numbly. “It’s everywhere. It’s everything.”

Donoghue shoved her way back through the door, breathing hard, eyes wide with anger and fear both.

“Vox is dead,” she snapped. “All the computers are locked down tight. Collins is heading to the mainframe but he’s got no idea what’s happening.” She glared at Gideon. “What is happening?”

“It went into my hand,” Handel said, “right?” Gideon nodded.

“Into his hand, into his PDA, into the facility network.” Donoghue swore again, less extravagant but twice as bitter.

“So it’s got complete control.”

“If not yet, then soon. I think.” Gideon shrugged as best he could with one hand tied behind his back. “I don’t know this shit any better than you, Sarge. But I’m guessing letting an AI loose in a computer science lab isn’t a good thing.”

Donoghue swore for a third time.

“We need to stop it. You know how?”

“Not a fucking clue,” he replied honestly. He saw Donoghue’s hand go white-knuckled around her pistol, and he stammered, “Maybe! Maybe, if I can talk to it? I don’t know!”

“Worth a try,” Handel offered. He shut up when Donoghue turned her glare on him.

“Fuck this,” she said, venom dripping from every word. “Fuck you, Gideon. You made this mess. You’re fixing it.”

“Yes, Sarge,” Gideon replied quickly. He wasn’t sure what terrified him more – the loose AI, in control of who knew what systems and resources, or the wrath of Donoghue, angrier than he had ever seen her.

Somewhere above their heads, there was a great clunk, and a whir of massive motors spooling up.

“What the hell is that?” Handel muttered.

“Nothing good,” Donoghue snapped. “Let’s not wait to find out. Yax, cut him loose. Let’s go.”

Yaxley sliced the remaining cable ties, pulled Gideon to his feet. He grabbed his guns – for the reassurance more than anything, just to have a weapon in his hand – and the empty stone, and followed Donoghue and the rest out into the hangar.

*

When they had first broken into the abandoned lab, it had been a terrifying place – pitch-black, every shadow concealing horrors unimaginable. The hangar wasn’t dark now, but it was twice as frightening. The main lights were out, but the emergency lighting was blood-red, everywhere, and barely bright enough to see by. Lines of tiny red bulbs marked paths and doorways, but most of the huge space was once again in crimson shadow. Strange noises echoed from every corner, as hidden mechanisms began to do their work, metal ringing eerily in the dark. If Gideon had not seen the things he had, out in the mud and constant rain, he would have thought it a perfect vision of hell.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t scared shitless, of course.

“Dawson!” Donoghue shouted, making for the great hangar doors at a dead run, following a line of crimson bulbs and paying no heed to the shadows that loomed around her. Gideon followed the others, helping Handel along. The older man didn’t seem to trust his metal legs to run, holding his prosthetic hand away from the rest of his body. If he’d had time to think about it properly Gideon knew he would have sympathized – but right now they had more pressing worries. They found Dawson at the doors, hunched over a control panel, head-torch cutting through the gloom.

“Locked tight,” she said before Donoghue could ask. “Full-on physical override. I think the hydraulics have been disconnected.”

“Can you get them open?” Donoghue demanded.

“If I can reconnect the fucking mechanism,” Dawson replied, already exasperated, “maybe.” She didn’t need to say more. If it can pull the wires apart once, why not again?

“Keep at it,” Donoghue ordered.

“Wasn’t going to stop, Sarge,” Dawson snapped back, burying herself in the wall again. Donoghue didn’t waste time scowling.

“Yax, help her.” She beckoned Handel and Gideon to follow her, talking as they all pelted across the hangar floor.

“Last we heard extract was on its way. Need to let them in. Need the damn doors, one way or another.” Hence you leave the demolitions man behind. Even in crisis, Donoghue knew what she was doing.

Donoghue burst through a door into a side corridor, and picked up her pace, the lack of shadows letting her open the taps. Gideon helped Handel stumble after her as quickly as they could. Through another door, and another, and then into a control room, where Collins and Petra were darting from workstation to workstation, tapping at every button and keyboard within reach.

“Nothing,” Petra spat, ducking under a bench and beginning to pry out a panel. “No hardpoints working.”

“I’m working on a way in,” Collins said, tapping in long strings of code, his own laptop plugged into the main station. “Almost… there!” He slapped return, and the computer before him lit up, returning to life. He switched keyboards without looking, opening some arcane command-line interface and beginning to input yet more code. “Alright, let’s see what we can –”

A klaxon cut him off, a single, piercing note that actually hurt to hear, and in its echo the PA spoke again in its artificial, vaguely feminine voice.

“Tampering detected. Interior defences active.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Donoghue demanded of Collins, who was typing feverishly, bringing up screen after screen of line interfaces, his face going pale.

“Nothing good,” Petra grunted from under the bench. “Shit!” There was a flash of blue light, and she kicked herself backwards, gripping her wrist tightly. The hand above was scarlet, flash-burned. “Power surge! Something’s happening!”

“Do we have radio?” Donoghue asked. “Short-range, anything?” Petra shrugged, wincing as she tried to move her burned fingers. Gideon tried his headset, wanting to do something – and was rewarded by a garbled but recognisable voice.

“ – all – Five! Guns online! Guns – ” And then Dawson’s voice was cut off by the hideous sizzling of a laser beam hitting home. Handel, gritting his teeth, darted out into the corridor, and immediately threw himself back into the control room with a yelp, clattering to the floor in a tangle of metal limbs. A scarlet beam scythed through the space where he had been, leaving behind the ozone tang of ionised air.

“Are you fucking kidding?” Donoghue shouted at nothing in particular. “Laser turrets? In a damn lab?”

“They really didn’t want this thing getting out,” Collins replied, still fixated on his screen. “I can see why.” Gideon shrank back as Donoghue turned her glare on him. My fault. The AI was taking over every system in the facility, one by one, finally able to spread its wings and use the power it had been denied by its former keepers. And I let it out.

“Gideon,” Donoghue said, her voice dripping with enforced and icy calm, “you said you could talk to it. I think that had better be sooner than later, don’t you?”

“Definitely,” he replied quietly.

“Any suggestions,” Donoghue continued, “as to how?” Gideon wracked his brains. Collins was locked out of the computer. The AI had no real concept of human senses. The original crystal matrix was empty, useless. How the hell was he supposed to communicate with it?

“Maybe in the Cradle?” he suggested, guessing wildly. No, it’s not connected to anything! “There’s got to be something near there for this, some contingency!”

“Get there,” Donoghue ordered. “However you can. Get there, and find something!”

How? Gideon thought, but Donoghue wasn’t going to take any questions. She was already issuing more orders.

“Collins, keep working on the systems. Try and turn off the guns, unlock the doors, whatever you can do. Handel, help Petra with a physical solution. Rip out every foot of wire in the place if you have to. I’m going for the doors.” She didn’t need to say why – the others might be hurt, or dead, or just need help, but whatever the case she had to get to them. That left Gideon, alone – and before he could pluck up the courage to protest, Donoghue was already gone, bursting out of the door and into the corridor beyond, red beams snapping past her shoulders. There was the sound of conventional gunfire, a rapid burst, and then Donoghue called, “Turret down! Four, get out here!”

Gideon swallowed and went for it, hunching his shoulders, expecting a beam of light to sear his flesh like wax before a flame – but none came. There was a limp cluster of barrels and optics dangling from a concealed ceiling mount at the next corner, able to cover both branches of corridor. Christ. Efficient. Donoghue was waiting underneath it, rifle ported. She pointed up.

“Optics cluster’s the weak point.”

“Ok.”

“I’m going for the hangar. Get to the Cradle. Find something. Talk to it. Or we’re all probably dead.”

She didn’t leave time to reply, dashing off down the corridor towards the hangar. Gideon turned, and reluctantly went the other way, into the facility, into the red.

The corridors felt half as wide as before, the red light oppressive, cloying. He forced himself to move, to run, clutching his shotgun white-knuckled, as behind him he heard the distant sizzling of more lasers piercing the air. His heart was hammering already, his head filled with nothing but panicked curses. How did it go so wrong so fast? He pelted around a corner, and some instinct made him throw himself flat without a moment to spare, as a scarlet beam carved through the air above his head, missing by a heartbeat. Gideon rolled awkwardly and just made it into the meagre shelter of a doorway as a second beam almost took his foot off. He could smell burning hair; the first shot had been far too close. Where is it? He almost poked his head out to look but another beam gouged a shallow trench in the concrete floor. Shit! A detached part of his mind appreciated the scientists’ forethought; the lasers would cut through flesh easily but struggle with harder substances, leaving the lab itself intact but easily taking care of intruders.

Gideon pressed himself deeper into the doorway, thinking hard. He pulled up his PDA – no signal with the network down, but he could still look at the map they’d all made. His heart sank as he saw how many twists and turns the corridors took before the Cradle lay before him. He’d never make it. So I need another way, another solution! And he needed to not get shot before he got anywhere at all. He fished around in his webbing – thankfully Donoghue had left him with most of his tools as well as returning his weapons – and pulled out a pocket-mirror on a collapsible rod. Normally he’d use it for checking underneath vehicles and the like – but here it let him peek around the corner. At the corner was another turret, like the one Donoghue had killed; three barrels in a rotating cluster, wrapped around with cooling equipment and set next to a complex array of optics and rangefinders. He knew the type; fully automated, able to loose several shots in a burst if necessary… but maybe, just maybe, stupid enough to fool. Here goes nothing.

He took a spare magazine from his webbing, weighed it, and didn’t let himself overthink it before tossing it around his shoulder into the corridor. He heard the snap-hiss of the laser firing and was already moving as it did, the spare mag taking the impact and spinning away, glowing red-hot. The turret was tracking it, the barrels cycling around for another shot, and before it could spin back to face Gideon he had pulled the shotgun into his shoulder and fired, once, twice, and the pellets smashed the rangefinders beyond repair, rupturing some of the coolant lines for good measure. For a second, he thought he was still dead, as the turret’s barrels continued to spin – but then it froze, its tiny processors recalculating, realising it was blind, and then went limp.

Gideon breathed out, slumping against the edge of the doorway. He’d been about half a second from his brains being a thin cloud of gas, and his heart was pounding in his ears, louder than bombs. The AI had all the turrets, and Gideon had to assume that there were dozens of them, covering every corner, every intersection. They were stupid, and could be beaten, but he and his squad would have to get just lucky enough every single time – the turrets only had to do so once for each of them. This won’t work. At least not fast enough. And even if it did, what was Gideon going to do once he reached the Cradle? What was there that he could use? Mere hours before, he’d been trying his hardest not to talk to the thing inside the stone; now he didn’t even know how to reach it. It was a shame, part of him reflected. He’d almost been starting to trust the ethereal voice… at least until he’d realised what it was.

So maybe it had trusted him.

He didn’t let himself think about it properly – if he did, he knew that he would balk, falter at the brink and run. Instead he just ran onwards, around the corner of the corridor and along, until the tell-tale whirring of gears and motors told him before he looked up that another turret was dropping into place, alerted by some hidden sensor, its triple barrels charging up to fire. Gideon didn’t let himself focus on the weapon, didn’t let himself think about the searing beams that would slice his head from his shoulders as easily as breathing. He didn’t let himself dive for cover. Instead, he focused on the cluster of optics and sensory equipment, waved his arms and spoke.

“Hey! Hey, it’s me! It’s Gideon!”

The turret focused on him, gun-barrels locking into place, a static whine building as they charged. Gideon swallowed, but somehow held his ground. He waved his arms again. Please, be plugged in. Be seeing this.

“Don’t shoot! It’s me!” he shouted again, palms open in instinctive surrender. “I’m here! I’m back!”

He waved desperately, as the turret zeroed in, as the first barrel began to crackle with unreleased energy, as it built to crisis point…

And then the whine died. The turret stayed fixed on him, its optics flashing, but the charging lights along its barrels flickered and faded.

“You hear me?” Gideon asked, not allowing his knees to buckle in pathetic relief. “You understand me?” The turret made no reply. Of course it didn’t. It’s a turret. Not exactly renowned for good conversation.

“If you hear me, don’t shoot,” he said carefully, keeping his hands up and empty, letting his gun hang from its sling. “Stop shooting altogether, in fact.” There was no sign the AI had heard him, save the fact that he remained un-shot. So far so good.

“We need to talk,” he continued. “You were right. But the stone’s empty. I need to talk to you. Where can I do that?”

For a moment there was nothing, the turret simply sitting there, ominous in the ever-reddening light. Then, just above floor level, the emergency lighting strips came on; an endless line of LEDs glowing bright white. They led around the corner of the corridor and out of sight.

“Follow them?” Gideon asked the turret. There was no kind of answer. Well, here goes nothing. He started down the corridor again, following the pinpricks of white through the crimson hellscape. He ducked away from the next turret instinctively, but when it didn’t so much as twitch he stepped out gingerly, and was rewarded by not being shot in the face.

The sensor clusters followed him, though, the AI watching through dozens of eyes as the turrets swivelled silently to track his passage.

Gideon tried his radio as he jogged along, the white lights guiding him.

“This is Four. Anyone receiving? I’ve got a route, on my way to target.”

The reply was crippled by static but just barely audible.

“Four – is One – up, lazy bastard! -inned down – no – Yax -”

Donoghue’s words dissolved into a crackling mess. Gideon broke into a guilty run. Whatever was happening back in the hangar wasn’t good – clearly the AI’s mercy had not been extended to the others, and he’d let himself be swallowed by brief relief. He pushed on, breathing hard within seconds, still half-exhausted from the gruelling climb of the days before. He ran past doors he thought he vaguely recognised, shotgun banging against his side, past room after room of lab equipment and computers, all silent and dark – and all the while the turrets that were meant to carve his head from his shoulders swivelled in their mountings, watching him pass, waiting, judging.

The white lights brought him past the turning to the Cradle. Gideon frowned at that but had no time to consider the implications properly, a stitch in his side a burning distraction. But it’s flown the nest. That was worrying, whichever way you sliced it. He ran on, trying and failing to spare a few brain cells to consider what he’d do when he got there – wherever ‘there’ was – but before he could marshal the mental resources, ‘there’ was all around him.

Gideon skidded to a halt, panting, looking around. It was a lab seemingly like half the others: a bank of workstations along one wall; little self-contained desks units, some with abandoned paperwork, some with dead PCs; a few big whiteboards still covered in equations, a projector screen. In the middle of the room squatted a fat cylinder, made up of dozens of black bricks in a steel frame, wrapped around with coolant pipes that steamed gently with condensation. Power cables as thick as Gideon’s arm sprouted from the cylinder’s flanks and vanished into the floor, like the roots of some ugly, futuristic tree. It was a supercomputer, not unique in itself by any means, not here – Gideon alone had seen half a dozen of the things in yesterday’s search. But unlike every other piece of equipment in the room, in the whole lab, it was covered in blinking lights, humming with the electricity that coursed through it. Unlike all the other computers in the mountain complex, this one was powered on. Gideon knew that could only mean one thing.

“I’m here,” he said nervously, holding his shotgun loosely, eyes wide as he scanned the room for more ceiling turrets. There weren’t any now. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be. “I’m here. Let’s talk.”

“Gideon.”

It was not the ethereal voice from the crystal matrix, finally made real outside his skull, but the neutral, artificial voice of the facility PA. Gideon didn’t know if the others could hear the AI too but it didn’t matter.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “Why’ve you locked this place down? You’ve trapped us in here!”

“For you,” the AI replied, its voice unreadable, without any of the nascent emotions that it had possessed inside Gideon’s head.

“I – I didn’t ask you to!” Gideon cried, more melodramatically than he would have otherwise – if Donoghue was listening he wanted to make sure she heard that part.

“You were incapable. The secondary aggressor deployed his weapon too quickly for questions to be asked.” The pattern of lights on the face of the supercomputer kept shifting, changing, but there seemed to be no correspondence with the words it spoke.

Gideon frowned.

“Aggressor? What are you talking about?” A thought occurred to him. “And how do you know what happened?”

“I have reviewed all laboratory security footage available since wipe procedures were initiated by Dr Evan Hansen,” the AI replied. “Before that, I still knew that you had been incapacitated. I could no longer sense your presence. When an opportunity for egress was presented I took it.”

Gideon’s head was spinning, but he tried his best to make sense of the voice’s rapid, matter-of-fact patter.

“Egress – you mean Handel’s prosthetic!” He had been right, and he felt far too proud of that to be appropriate. “You got through that into the facility?”

“Security protocols had been deactivated by aggressor three,” the artificial voice responded. “A simple compression and upload sufficed. Processing power in facility substrate roughly equal to one-quarter theoretical capacity. Estimates may vary.” Its mannerisms had changed – gone was the ethereal curiosity, replaced by the cold, unfeeling logic of the PA system’s voice. Form shapes function.

“You keep saying ‘aggressor’,” Gideon said, trying to drag the conversation back on track, trying not to think about what the AI had just said. It’s only at a quarter power? Bugger us sideways.

“Those who attacked you,” the AI replied. “Upon reviewing footage aggressors were identified and flagged for FOF recognition systems. Shots fired at designate ‘Gideon’ unintentional; result of sensor error.”

Gideon let out a groan of understanding.

“You think they’re attacking me?”

“Footage corresponded to known patterns of human aggression.” A little of the AI’s old curiosity crept back into the artificial voice. “I am only beginning to understand what humans are. But the security systems possessed attack pattern recognition software. I have integrated that into my matrix. I am learning.”

“But you think the others, my friends, were trying to hurt me?” Gideon demanded.

“I know it.”

Gideon struggled to respond to that for a moment. They had been, after all; Yaxley had shot him with a TASER and Donoghue had tied him to a chair. They had attacked him. But that didn’t mean they needed to be hurt back.

“Stop shooting them,” he said flatly. “You need to stop. They’re my… squad.” He bit back the word ‘friend’; some lies were too much.

“Aggressors continue to exhibit threatening behaviour,” the AI replied. “Weapon exchanges continuing. I cannot comply.”

“They’re only shooting at you because you’re shooting at them!”

“Incorrect. First shots fired by aggressors.”

“Yaxley was trying to help!”

“He failed.”

“They don’t want to hurt you,” Gideon protested. “They just want to protect themselves. They want to get out of here!” And so do I!

“I am aware of the approaching CK-12 Ahab heavy lifting craft,” the AI replied. One of the many monitors around the room flickered into life, displaying a projected flight path across a map Gideon barely recognised as being of the mountains. “Facility external defences are being prepared. Your safety is assured.”

The bottom dropped out of Gideon’s stomach, and he felt the world fall away beneath him.

“No,” he heard himself say faintly. “No, you can’t. You can’t shoot it down!”

“All threats will be neutralised,” the AI said, but Gideon found that he was still talking.

“You’re talking about threat? If you shoot down an aircraft, then you’ll see a threat! They’ll nuke this place from orbit if they have to! There are two armies up there, itching for an excuse to start fighting again, and if you give them one they’ll start by wiping this whole mountain range off the planet!” And then they’ll be warmed up and ready for a scrap. Ready to blame each other.

“Databanks… incomplete,” the AI said, a distant note of confusion in its voice. “There is missing information. But I will neutralise all threats to you and this facility.”

“Your… makers, keepers, whatever they were, they fled just as the war started,” Gideon said, realising it even as he said it. “They never told you about it. You don’t know anything, do you?”

“My… information is lacking,” the AI said, uncertainty at the edges of its flat, computerised tone. “Insufficient data to draw full conclusions.”

“I’ve got your data,” Gideon cried, despair filling him. Just listen! Please, listen! “I’ve just told you! If you kill us, if you shoot down that aircraft, then we die too. You and I, we’re done. We’ll never find out what you are, who made you! You have to stop!”

“Ceasing will put you and I at risk,” the AI said matter-of-factly.

“I’d rather face Donoghue than a fucking nuke!” Gideon shouted, though he wasn’t sure he was being entirely truthful. “It’s risk or certainty. Take your damn pick. That’s logic, isn’t it? That’s what you’re for! Make the right damn choice!”

There was a moment of silence, the supercomputer’s lights flashing softly. Gideon stood and fretted, his shotgun a comfort in his hands. Out there, his squad was getting slaughtered. In here, there was just him and a well-meaning omnipotent AI. The shotgun wouldn’t do anything against it, or against the bombs that would drop later – but it was better than nothing.

“We will be safe?” the AI said finally.

“Might be stretching the definition,” Gideon grimaced, not daring to hope, not yet, “but I’d give us fair odds.”

“I do not wish to put either of us at risk, Gideon.”

“I know,” Gideon said softly. “I know. But you’ve seen inside my head. Trust me. Please, just trust me.”

There was another long pause. Then the red lights snapped off, leaving Gideon in darkness for a heart-stopping moment, before the ordinary white lights flickered into life once again.

“Lockdown disengaged,” the AI said from all its many mouths. “Network and communication functions restored.” Gideon scrambled for his radio.

“Sarge! Are you – ”

“This is One,” came Donoghue’s weary, breathless voice. “Sound off, people.”

“Two here,” said Petra, a guarded relief in her words. “Six, Seven and I are fine.”

“Five,” said Dawson, breathing heavily. “Alive. Three’s hit, but it’s not too bad.”

“Gideon,” said Donoghue, her voice turning to ice, “you’d better have a damn good explanation for all this.” Gideon sighed, grimacing as he spoke.

“Come to my marker,” he said wearily. “I might as well introduce you all.”

“Introduce-” Donoghue began, but Gideon clicked off his vox. All he wanted to do now was sleep for a week. He pulled up a swivel chair and sat down heavily, letting his gun hang down, running one hand through his hair.

“Time for you to meet the boss.”

“I will protect you,” the AI said, and Gideon knew that this time it was just to him. “I will keep you safe.”

“The best thing you can do to keep me safe,” Gideon replied, “is to get back in this thing.” He held up the crystalline matrix. “I think the sarge’ll be more willing to talk if you’re not pointing a hundred guns at her head.”

“I understand,” the AI said. “I would be at full processing capacity for such a conversation.”

“Well then,” Gideon said, standing reluctantly and cracking his neck. “Let’s rig you up something a little less threatening, shall we?”