[The world will long remember your glorious triumph!]

It was the 2^nd time domination victory scene had appeared on the screen. Just like the first game of the day, it was Lloyd’s victory.

“You still suck at CIV 9, Josse. At least I can see some improvements.”

Josse took a couple seconds to respond. Whether it was truly ‘thinking’ or pausing to look like it, Lloyd didn’t know. But the AI had managed to add a tinge of frustration to its reply.

“It’s hard for me to grasp the nuances of bluffing, sir. It was much simpler to beat the computer.”

‘I think he is struggling with me choosing sub-optimal options.’

It was normal for Josse to beat the computer at the game. After all, the AI of the game was pre-programmed to respond to variables of the game and the acts of the opponent. Compared to that, one of the first true AIs, which had orders of more processing power, had much more flexibility. All it had taken for Josse to master the game against the computer was couple hours of millions of simulated games.

“Well, we still have a long while till we reach our destination, nothing better to do but work on it. Also I told you to call me boss, not sir.”

Lloyd had been called many names in his rather short life of 28 years. He had been called ‘bastard’ by his so-called friends at the Military Academy, his father’s right hand man had taken to sarcastically call him ‘young master’, not to mention many other less kind ones he had heard. But the one Lloyd hated most was ‘sir’. Most of the mercenaries under his father’s company had taken to call him that. These hardened men were so good at keeping their faces inline that he had hard time figuring whether they were mocking him or not.

“All right Boss, will do so.”

This was one of the many mysteries of Josse that Lloyd still hadn’t been able to figure out yet. He knew for a fact that he had told the AI to call him so, but Josse had a ‘slip of the tongue’. From skimming through the technical data that came with the AI core, he knew that it was modeled after human brain to an extent, allowing connections between ‘neurons’ of the core to weaken or strengthen just like a human’s. But then again, Josse could re-program everything but its core directives as it saw fit. How could an AI ‘forget’ something, Lloyd still didn’t understand. AI cores were way beyond his knowledge- beyond almost everyone’s knowledge, considering that this AI was one of the first ones that was ever made.

Lloyd could only shake his head and head towards the only bathroom of the ship to wrap-up the day. He took off his pressure suit and the neck gear, leaving them on the rack. Entering the large shower, he pressed the panel on the wall for generous amount of hot water to drizzle on him. Long showers were one of the benefits of being alone on a spaceship. Water was constantly re-cycled and heated by the seemingly endless amount of energy ship’s fission core provided, but there were always someone else that wanted to use the facilities. Now that he was alone, he could enjoy this small luxury as he saw fit.

Sitting in the shower, Lloyd couldn’t help but reminiscence how he had gotten himself in this mess of a life. It had already been 4 months since he last saw a living human, and it would still take another half a year for him to reach his destination- Earth.

Lloyd was born as a son to the leader of the leading mercenary group, or rather, a Private Military Company, as his father liked to call it. He had a normal early life- as normal as it could be surrounded by gloomy adults as a child, and entered the Martian Military Academy at the age of 14 after his mother passed away to an accident. He had done it to distance himself from his father, who had turned more protective and workaholic in his depression. And the fake sympathies he got from people around him hadn’t helped either.

He had regretted his rashness after spending just a single week there, but it was already late. It was easy to enter the military academy, but hard to exit. Instead, he had thrown himself into getting top grades at everything he could to keep his mind in check. Shooting, hand to hand combat and other physically demanding areas were easy for him; after all, unlike other students, his father had done extensive genetic engineering on him with his wide connections and overflowing money. It was not surprising that he managed to outdo his fellow students who had only basic genetic enhancements. Another advantage he had was his implants. Unlike other relatively poor students who had entered the academy to change their fates, he had gotten the latest and the best implants available instead of the standard government sponsored implants for the military personnel.

‘I think it was when they found out my implant that I got that nickname.’

Lloyd couldn’t help but give a short chuckle to himself in the shower. He had rough start at the Academy, but it hadn’t been that bad. He had quite a few fond memories of the 5 years he had spend there. It hadn’t been all roses and sunshine, but he hadn’t suffered either. But the achievement that he was most proud of this slice of his life he had spend there was the fact he hadn’t turned into meat-head unlike most of his friends there.

After he managed to distance himself from his father and his nonsense teachings, he had grown affection for the military arts as well as the sciences. Lloyd’s favorite topic in the Academy had been the Officer training class which taught him the basics of warfare on large scales, including space and land battles, especially the space warfare, but he could hardly wait for his years of education to end at the Academy with gritted teeth. Like many kids of his age, Lloyd had fallen in love with spaceships even before entering the Academy, however unlike most other kids, he had the intelligence and the money to further this passion of his.

When he was a free man once again- now old enough to enter higher education, and after a small heated discussion with his father, he had managed to enter the Mechanical Engineering University of Mars with a major of Spaceship Design. His 6 years at the University had felt much shorter to him now that he was pursuing his passion, and the lack of the harsh discipline he had gotten used to at the Academy had helped. Lloyd had learned much there, and gotten himself a few good friends, some more intimate than the others. While he was no Casanova, he had made himself a small name at the underground scene of the University City.

These years had been the highlights of Lloyd’s life, but the day when he had to receive his diploma eventually came and passed, forcing him to return to his father’s company like they had agreed even before he joined the University. But he had not regretted this one bit- after all, where else could he get to play with spaceships as a junior engineer with no practical experience except at there?

‘It was indeed worth it.’

Thinking this, a small smile appeared in his lips. This PMC wasn’t hailed to be greatest one of the modern age for no reason. Flaunting the 3 cruisers, handful of frigates and dozens of corvettes he had, his father had always managed to get the most well paying contracts that there was. And all of these ships were open for Lloyd to tinker with, as long as he was supervised by the chief engineer of the company.

His early years as a mercenary had been busy- there always was a job in this golden age of space exploration. Resupplying distant research stations and mining colonies, dealing with unlucky ships hit by micro-meteors, recovering or deploying artificial satellites, prospecting asteroids for possible minerals and many other things fell under the purview of mercenaries. It was simply more cost effective for companies to hire mercenaries for every irregular activity that happened in space than hire other companies. After all, mercenaries rarely had to deal with expensive insurance costs and they were used to risking their lives. Of course, protecting assets of companies or hunting pirates also happened, but they were much rarer events than what layman thought.

Remembering so far, Lloyd couldn’t but give a sigh. Such times were in the past, in the world of yesterday. It was different reality now.

Finishing his leisurely shower, he dragged his wet body out of the shower to dry himself and suit up. Afterwards, he approached the mirror of the bathroom to fix his auburn hair. His thought couldn’t help but return to past once again. His mom used to have beautifully bright scarlet hair, but since his father’s gene was dominant in this case, he was going to have jet black hair when he was born. They had decided to change it when Lloyd was in his mother womb to be somewhere in between the color of their hair. His short hair acted as one of the few mementos of his mother.

Finishing up, he went towards his bedroom, now gloomier than before. Lloyd had lost his mother too early, and now he didn’t know if he was ever going to see his father again. His father was a legendary figure due to strength he had managed to gather in his company, but he was just a man, and his company was small fish compared to might of the nations.

Civil war of Earth, also known as WW3, had ended 25 years ago, and the newly coined Earth Central Government wanted rest of humanity unified under it, as it had been before the start of the civil war. Three giants that had dominated rest of the Solar system after the decline of Earth, the Venus Colonies, Republic of Mars and the Ceres Research Conglomerate had declined the request to join the newly made Sol Federation that centered on ECG. This Federation had chosen to distribute votes according to population count, which would have allowed ECG to dominate every other Power that joined- even after centuries since mankind grew out of its birth planet, Earth still had ten times more humans in it compared to rest of the Solar system combined. This barely concealed insult, the Federation had riled up the nationalistic instincts throughout the system, and the politicians of ECG had managed to rile up their populace when rest of the Powers declined their request to unify the humanity. Human race had been on the brink of war for over a decade as ECG re-built its might as fast as it could. Finally, when they were confident enough to start a war, only thing they lacked was a casus belli- something to rile up their population to demand blood. 

It didn’t take long before ECG found what it was looking for. Previously scientific and philosophical discussions on the topic of AIs was turned political by the bureaucrats of the ECG when an anonymous source leaked large amount of data that Ceres Research Conglomerate had finally found the golden grail they had been searching for decades, creating the first true AI that could think, learn and evolve like a human. This event got over-blown in no time, leading to previously civil talks between ECG and other Powers growing more and more hostile. First Solar War was looking more likely by the day, and it was then when Lloyd’s father summoned him for a secret mission.

‘Right… It hasn’t been even half a year, yet it feels like it all happened a life time ago.’

The mission forced on him by his father was simple; to rush towards Ceres, grab a package and deliver it to Earth. The problem was that he had to travel through the asteroid field with minimal acceleration until he was close to ECG space, rather than just racing towards there. Leader of the company had drilled how critical the secrecy of the mission was into him- how he had to keep absolute radio silence not to blow this one man journey until he had finished his mission.

At the time, Lloyd had been angry towards his father since he had thought that it was all a ploy by the leader to distance him from the action. Lloyd didn’t like the idea of war, but he was a mercenary none the less, it was an insult for his father to do this. Wars were the most profitable times for the mercenaries, but also the most dangerous. A big mercenary fleet was barely a match for some random patrol fleet operated by the titans of the space. Lloyd had thought that it was his father’s way of protecting him from the chaos that was coming, and come it did.

When Lloyd had reached Ceres to pick up the package, there was only single topic on the lips of the populace. Earth’s oldest colony, lightly defended Luna, boasting a population of 80 million had fallen to ECG, signaling the start of the First Solar War of the humanity. By the time he had left the dwarf planet, other Powers had already started to mobilize their fleets.

His thoughts about seriousness of this mission had changed the moment he had gotten the package from a group men behind one the many bars in the shopping district. For one, his knowledge and implants had told him that the 2 bodyguards behind the leading lanky men were not normal. Their motions were too refined, way above what normal soldiers should have. And their bodies had gone under an extensive surgery. His implant had notified him of the fact the bones in their spine, rib cage and arms were in fact not bones but metal implants. What other modifications they had, Lloyd didn’t know.

‘Yeah, Black Ops have always been crazy bastards’

Second reason for him taking his mission more seriously had been the name provided by the lanky man- who Lloyd thought to be a researcher, as the recipient of the package. Timothy Angler, the Grand Speaker of  Parliament of ECG. Also known as Uncle Tim to Lloyd in his youth.

The knowledge of the existence of this package could make the war soon to begin either stop before it started, or make it much, much worse. What was inside was another matter,but just the fact that higher-ups of the Ceres Research Conglomerate was in contact with one of the leaders of ECG could rile up the whole system. Had CRC betrayed their faction and switched to Earth’s side? Lloyd didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

But what Lloyd was burning to know was the contents of the chest sized package he was delivering. What kind of item could be so valuable to take such a risk? Unable contain his curiosity, he had opened the package after distancing himself from Ceres and going undercover in the asteroid field. There were only 2 things inside besides layers upon layers of insulation: bunch of papers, and a computer size of his head.

The journey toward Earth was going to take almost a year, so he had plenty of time to read the papers. Most of what was written flew above his head, but just the title of the first page was enough for him to identify what the computer was. It was the first, or one of the first AI cores to leave the labs of CRC, the thing that the war was blamed on.

Not long after learning a rudimentary understanding of the AI core from the papers, Lloyd had decided to set it up. The core was compartmentalized into different areas such as the memory module, abstraction module, self-regulatory module and a few more, so as long as he deleted everything but the central compartment where the irreplaceable code laid, none would be the wiser.

 Thus, Josse was born.

“Boss, do you want the daily ship-wide report?”

Lloyd found himself on his bed, naked, when Josse woke him up from his memories. Going through the same motions day after day had engraved them to his body, but he had forgotten to do daily checks. But Josse, who was connected to the ship’s computer could do it for him.

Lloyd hadn’t connected the AI core to the ship’s computer at first, as it would have been a too large of a risk. Giving it a network access would have been a horrible idea. Instead, he had the AI core talk to him with text after he had hooked up a display and a keyboard to it.

Josse had been like a baby at first, but the mind of AI evolved with abundance of data, so Lloyd fed him all of the books and movies he had to see what happened. And he was not disappointed. The AI had evolved to something sentient in matter of minutes. He didn’t know what Josse had picked up from where, but its writing style and later its voice had a tinge of youth to it.

Normally, Lloyd would have been worried about this AI trying to deceive him in some way, but the papers that came with the core made it clear that one thing AI couldn’t do was lie or deceive. It couldn’t hurt the any humans without clear permission from its superiors either. And in this case, his superior was Lloyd and no-one else. Unless the researchers that developed it added something he missed to the code, of course. Knowing the government types, it was highly likely.

After couple months of playing games, having long discussions and analyzing its code, Lloyd had allowed Josse access to the ship’s computer to ease his workload some more.

“Right… I am listening Josse.”

Of course, Lloyd hadn’t given Josse free reign over the ship. The AI couldn’t delete or overwrite any of the code that governed the ship. Couldn’t vent the atmosphere, poison the air or water, couldn’t dump the cargo, ram the ship into a space rock, overload the engine or sabotage the ship in any other way. If anything like that happened, the small code he had written would freeze the AI instantly.

“All right, here it comes:

Internal systems are nominal;

All exterior add-ons are nominal;

All weapons are nominal;

Point defense ammunition at 81%;

Engine coolant is nominal;

Fission core is at 84% and operating at 100% efficiency;

Grav-Plating is nominal;

Main thrusters at 92%;

Positioning thrusters at 78%, down by 1% since yesterday;

MRE reserves at 94%;

O2 reserves at 99%;

H2O reserves at 86%;

Hydroponics are nominal.”

Nothing had changed since yesterday, or the day before that. Only things that ever changed in this journey were the percentage of the positioning thrusters' reserves that was being stress tested in this asteroid field, and the ammunition count of the point defenses’ that had to push or blow away anything too small and fast to dodge. But they would do until Lloyd completed the mission.

This ship was the pride and joy of Lloyd. After spending two years with the chief engineer of the company, learning the gritty details University failed to teach, he had nagged his father long enough to allow him to retrofit one of the corvettes the company had. Thus the corvette that was planned to be decommissioned in less than 20 years later had a new lease on life. Lloyd had completely changed the patrol craft, turning it to a long distance endurance runner. He had changed the main engines, added a smaller secondary engine that used electricity instead of fuel, increased the point defense guns, and replaced the main artillery with their modern counterparts. Pretty much only thing to he had not changed were Grav plating, and Fission core of the ship. But the biggest change had been to internals of the ship that had a new name, “Autumn Voyage”. The ship had been designed to be operated by a crew of 15, but Lloyd had stripped all but one of the bedrooms- not counting the captain’s room which he had taken for himself, secondary toilets and other supporting equipment made for a large crew. Instead, now the ship sported 2 seperate hydroponics rooms, redundant primary systems and an extra large cargo hold. But most importantly, Lloyd had added a state of art micro forge to the corvette. Thanks to this and the enlarged cargo bay containing extra materials, most non critical parts- such as the armour plating, circuits and munitions could be manufactured inside the ship.

Most of the work was done by a company they had contracted; Lloyd was a single man after all, and the other technical staff his father employed was adept at fixing and maintaining ships, not retrofitting them. But the one thing Lloyd did all by himself was the automation of the ship. Many systems of the ship, including the hydroponics, guns and navigation could be done at anywhere in the ship, with the help of the wireless connection his neural implant had with the ship. But now, most of these tasks were handled by Josse- it had mostly been the autopilot before, allowing him to relax even more.

“All right Josse, anything else before I go to sleep?”

“All green Boss, have a good night.”

‘Will do, Josse, will do…’

. . .

Yet, just a few hours after Lloyd had closed his eyes, they opened up again, as he felt a small pain when his head connected with the cushioned head of the bed.

Immediately, the implant in his brain sent signals to another implant in his eyes, showing the new and changed course of the ship. The ship was now heading 2 degrees to right and continuing to bank right a bit more by the second.

 “What’s going on Josse? Care to explain??”

The computer of the ship hadn’t stopped Josse from firing up the positioning thrusters since the new course didn’t have any possible obstacles in the way.

“Boss! I recommend you to suit-up ASAP. There is an unidentified anomaly in the flight path of the ship. I have to fire the emergency boosters! BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!”

‘Shit…Did the AI go insane?’

Lloyd’s hand were reaching towards his pressure suit even before Josse begun speaking. He had just barely locked in the last piece, his neck gear when the ship did a 180, throwing him toward the left wall of the room. Thankfully, the chip inside his neck gear managed to pick up the sudden acceleration and swelled to encase his head in a soft bubble in time.

Just when Lloyd was about give a sigh of relief and try to figure out just what the fuck was going on, he was thrown towards another wall, but he managed to grab the leg of his bed this time. His implant connected to the ship informed him that back of the ship had been turned towards the original flight path, and that this second momentum change was the emergency boosters located there firing all at the same time, together with the main engine.

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! There is nothing there!’

Flight path shown to him in his retina showed nothing in front of the flight path. There was no asteroid or space rock for dozens of kilometers around the ship!

“What the FUCK is going on here?!”

Suffering from the effects of constant deceleration, Lloyd could do nothing but roar in frustration. The AI had been completely sane and normal yesterday, but was trying to kill him after few short hours.

Right at this moment, the screen across the bed came online, showing the same empty space from 3 different vantage points. It was the feed from the cameras embedded at the front of the ship.

“It’s no good Boss, the ship is going too fast! I can’t calculate what the effect of the anomaly will be.

Lloyd wanted to shout that there was fucking nothing in front of the ship, but the words got caught in his throat when he noticed something that ship’s computer hadn’t. The space was wobbling.

‘The fuck?’

He couldn’t see the space itself, but the light coming from the stars and galaxies behind the anomaly was bending and changing in brightness, leading to illusion that space was wobbling.

“Fuck me. Could it be a gas pocket...?”

That was the only thing Lloyd could think that could explain this phenomena. He didn’t have much time think anything else, as the ship slipped into anomalous space.

As soon as the tail of the ship got past the event horizon, Lloyd felt a massive force pushing him towards the leg of bed. Massive G forces forced the blood out of his legs even with the pressure suit, and the blood pooled in his brain, making his thoughts sluggish. Not even 2 seconds later, under the control of Josse, Grav-plating of the ship came online, creating a bigger opposite force that counteracted the first one. While this saved the ship from disintegrating, the sudden change in momentum once again forced Lloyd’s hand to give out, throwing his body towards the opposite wall, making him lose consciousness.