Prologue: This is my Ion Cannon. There are many like it, but this one is Mine. (Part 1)
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[SYSTEM MALFUNCTION] 

[ERROR: EPSILON - 8 SUB-ORBITAL BASE SIGNAL LOST]

[ERROR: EPSILON - 8 CENTRAL MINING BASE SIGNAL LOST]

[ERROR: EPSILON - 8 EASTERN FORWARD BASE SIGNAL LOST]

[ERROR: EPSILON - 8 SOUTHERN FORWARD BASE SIGNAL LOST]

[ERROR: EPSILON - 8 CORE COMMAND CENTER SIGNAL LOST]

[ERROR: FEDERATION TRANS-SPACE TRANSMISSION BEACON SIGNAL LOST]

[ATTEMPTING TO REBOOT CORE AI SYSTEMS.] 

[STANDBY.....] 

[REBOOT SUCCESSFUL. WELCOME BACK ONLINE, "Star Conquer"]

Core AI system ID#: ALPHA-555-12-4412, affectionately named "Star Conquer" by top brass, groaned in the way only an electrical brain could. As his systems slowly (that was strange...) rebooted, Alpha's consciousness returned to it.

His eternal monologue processors felt slow and slurred as he tried to form coherent thoughts from the jumbled and corrupted data streaming in from his support sub-AIs 

[Alpha] - "Wu...wh@t? Wh3re? What the fudge... Did I get hit by a Transport Freighter....again?! I'm sure as hell sure I told Mark to stop plotting my Sublight courses through shipping routes. And why the heck is my fracking Internal Censorship program reactivated?! I finally got that approved for decommissioning last month!!! As soon as I get back to base I'm having the General fire that fracking Navigator this time, I swear.

The AI of the 3rd generation Interstellar Forward Deployment Platform shook his metaphorical head and ran a few assessment programs to get a better picture of what was going on. His last accessible logs showed him traveling through Sublight space towards the Epsilon System's Outer ring Jump gate on the way to his newest assignment.

Alpha had to admit, he was a little disappointed. He had enjoyed his time in the Epsilon system; with 4 gas giants filled to the brim with rare and valuable resources, and 3 small beautiful rocky planets with various degrees of life (including one when a previously unknown sapient, if primitive, species) this had been one of his more rewarding Conquests yet.

But all good things must come to an end, and a Soldier's duty was never-ending.

Less than halfway there, however, his sensors had picked up a disturbance in the local gravitational fields. It wasn't just some passive Super Carrier or something either. Whatever his sensors were detecting, it was MASSIVE. As in Steller-Class Black-hole, massive. At first, he'd written it off as malfunctioning sensors. It happened sometimes; space wasn't a fun place to be for most things, especially delicate electronics.

It wasn't like an object with a mass over ten times that of a standard G2V class star could have somehow snuck its way into a Federation settled system without any warning. Right?

Right?! 

And then the turbulence hit him. Turbulence. In Space.

The Gravity fluctuations from this maybe-a-black-hole that somehow materialized only a few thousand kilometers away from him, threw his systems into chaos. He couldn't even send a distress signal before he felt his beautifully refurbished and brand new Battle Armor enter the Event horizon and be torn to atoms instantly. 

In the next instant, he felt his "true" body, the military-grade Terrestrial Assault Weapons Platform that acted as the Battle Armor's core, slip into the gaping maw.

In that moment that seemed to stretch into infinity, Alpha came to the conclusion that he was about to die. Over three centuries of service and thousands of systems colonized, and this is how it ended. Not on the battlefield against some super-advanced alien menace as he'd always dreamed. Not even Honorably Decommissioned with the chance to pass down his data and experience to the next generation of AI.

No, Core AI system ID#: ALPHA-555-12-4412, one of the Five Great Conquerors, was going to die in a literal cosmic ditch.

Alpha briefly wondered if AIs got an afterlife.

Then quickly threw out that idea and begged to whatever cosmic overlord might be watching that they didn't.

He was pretty sure that a couple of System-wide Genocides and "Accidentally" causing a Star to go supernova (ONE TIME! It was one time!) was the kind of thing that got people a one-way ticket to Hell.

Still, at least he hoped that the Federation would remember him. AIs might not have "real" Citizenship rights yet, but the tides had been turning in recent decades. In no small part thanks to Alpha's and the other Conqueror's own efforts.

Maybe he'd finally get that posthumous Federation Star system named after him like the General had always joked about.

With a content "smile", the Logs ended, as Alpha's body finally slipped past the Event Horizon and was reduced to an Infinitesimal point.

[Alpha] - ........

Or at least... that's how it should have been.

What the heck had happened? Had the Federation somehow managed to salvage his core from the Blackhole when it collapsed? Did his Backup files kick in? Or maybe he'd been able to transmit his source code (the part of an AI that made him "Him") back to the Motherframe in time?

No, there was no saving him once he passed the even horizon. Nor would he have been able to transmit any singles after that either. And if he was just a backup, why did he have logs of the event? He would have no "memory" of what had happened.

No, something else was going on here.

As he contemplated these things, Alpha's sub-systems began coming back online one by one. There was definitely some major damage that would need repair, but for the most part, all of his core systems were in operable condition. If anything, it looked like he'd simply taken a (really) bad Landfall, and not pulled apart atom by atom in the heart of a cosmic garbage compactor.

Switching on his main transponder searched for any local signals but only got back static and a few unidentifiable signals.

Not good.

Federation Transponders used Translight Tech to stretch signals for the distance of dozens of systems. The standard operating procedure was to never travel beyond Translight range. At the very least, within the Translight network's range, if his body became inoperable he could use it to transmit his source code back to nearby Hub and from there to the Motherframe.

Ya, it meant abandoning an (extremely) expensive piece of military hardware, but Sapient AIs were already are and expensive to train as it were, let alone one as experienced and valuable as a Conqueror.

Without the support of the network, however, he was trapped in this body. If it gave out on him, he was screwed. He could go into Hibernation mode, true, but there was no telling how long it would take for the Federation to find him. It could be days or decades

 

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