[Friday, August 14]
[Sora’s Palace]
Sora walks into the palace conference room and says, “Good morning, everyone.”
The four people there, Katsuo, Erica, Dakota, and Mirai, all reply, “Good morning, Sora.”
Sora takes her seat, as Akari sets a cup of coffee in front of her. “So, you were being very vague with Akari when you requested to see me. What’s this about?”
Katsuo grins, which sort of irritates me. “Well, my darling granddaughter, we have some good news and not-so-good news. Which do you want to hear first?”
I shrug because it isn’t as if it really matters which they tell me first. “Whichever you think you should tell me first. They’ll both come out anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”
“Alright…” Katsuo drawls out in one of the worst attempts at a southern United States accent I’ve ever heard. “Mirai, how about you go first then.”
“Sure… We need to expand the nanite production facilities, yet again. This time massively since we’ll need far more than what we have. Even if we dedicated every facility to producing these nanites, we wouldn’t even come close to what Hestia projects we’ll need for the foreseeable future.”
“Why ask or tell me? You have all the authority you need to make those kinds of decisions, and you know it. Just do it, you know very well that I’m not going to second guess you… I’m supposing that is ‘the bad news,’ so what is the good news?”
Katsuo asks, “Erica, do you want to take this, or?”
Erica shakes her head. “No, I think the honor belongs to Dakota.”
I step in and say, “Out with it. I have other appointments this morning and dragging this out is only irritating me.”
Katsuo makes a placating gesture as he states, “Okay, okay, sorry, Sora. Dakota, if you will?”
Dakota shrugs and begins, “We’ve finally finished testing all the integrated functions you wanted to be added to the CALi.”
I look at her questioningly and ask, “Already?”
She nods. “Of course.
“We will still have to create all the interfaces with our tech so that we can link with it to control it. It was easy enough for the engineers to create one, so it’ll simply be a matter of producing and fielding all of them.
“One thing that I know you’ll be excited about: we were able to write a routine to allow the Kite to control nanites. While doing that, I found out that our nanites are able to accept program updates. So, we can now control our fertility, meaning that, amongst other things, we can finally have sex without having to use condoms if we don’t want to get pregnant.”
“Thank you, that sounds perfect. I’d hoped you could find a way to control them.”
“You’re welcome, but we aren’t finished yet. We still have more ideas about expanding its capabilities.”
I nod when Mirai says, “That’s our Dakota, things are never good enough for her.”
Dakota laughs and then shrugs. “You didn’t hire me to sit on my butt and leave things as merely good enough, now did you?”
After much discussion of where to build them, we decided that one of the large, mostly empty provinces of China would be best suited for building the massive new nanite production facilities. Regardless of the fact that we’ll need them to make the nanites for the Kites for the general population, and the enhanced versions for the military, we can always change them over to the production of other types of nanites once we’ve produced enough of the nanites for the CALis for our current population.
I jump back into the conversation when I have another idea. “Dakota, have you tested whether installing knowledge can be used in place of traditional schooling?”
She shakes her head. “No, we hadn’t even considered that application. I’m thinking that doing that would work to an extent, but we may have to upgrade the AI so that it would be better at helping to pre-allocate relevant data as it might be needed. I can see it working though.”
“Good. I’d like you to begin work toward doing that, There’s no need to get into a massive hurry though.”
Katsuo speaks up then. “Ladies, if the AI is upgraded like that, aren’t we risking it taking over?”
Dakota laughs. “No, Katsuo. While an AI can do much to help us in this respect, the wetware is simply too different. Regardless, we can always build a firewall into the CALi to prevent such an occurrence. Personally, I believe it to be a waste of resources and totally unnecessary.”
“I’d feel better if we incorporated a hard programming prohibition from it even attempting to do it,” Erica says. “Even if the chance is vanishingly remote that an AI could somehow jump the divide.”
I’m sure that you get the gist of where all this ends up, so there’s little reason to delve deeper into the conversation, although it did make me late for my first appointment of the day.
◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
[Monday, August 17]
We’re trying to quickly finish up some reports from the cabinet members as we wait for the new Ambassador to show up for her appointment. As if on cue, the door opens quietly and Akari pokes her head in. “She’s here, Sora.”
“Show her in, please.” Sora looks around the table at the individuals as they all look toward the door, their curiosity patently evident on their faces. The former mayor of A’Zhand, Albin’s capital city, and newly appointed Ambassador Ke-Vol of Albin steps into the room, and the others surge to their feet in surprise. All except Sora and General Chambers, of course. A moment later, Sora stands up and walks over to her.
Saying that Ke-Vol dwarfed the rather petite Sora would be like saying Niagara Falls and a dripping faucet are the same things. She literally towers over Sora’s 157 centimeter frame at 206 centimeters. The dark-skinned alien has long, braided black hair and bright amber irises, but amazingly enough, closely resembles a human in most other respects, other than the protruding fangs.
Jason looks worried as she does, then Sora offers her hand to the Alkarin. “Welcome, Ambassador Ke-Vol. Thank you for traveling so far from home to meet with us. I’m Queen Sora, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Your Majesty,” she says as she approaches Sora. She gently takes her hand, kneels, and touches her forehead to Sora’s hand. “It’s a great honor.”
“Likewise. Please, take a seat,” she tells her, smiling despite herself. Ke-vol takes a seat in the indicated, much larger and sturdier, chair. Once Sora sits back down, she says, “I’m sure all of you are curious since we never talked about it, but Admiral Abrams brought her back with the fleet. As mentioned, this is Ambassador Ke-Vol of the now independent government of Albin. Please, make her welcome.”
“Thank you,” she says in heavily accented English. She glances around the table at the people present. “I come as a representative of the Alkarin people of Albin,” she tells them. “I am here to officially offer the surrender of my people and planet.” She quietly smacks her lips, which as Sora has been told is a sign of nervousness. “Your Majesty, my people also request an alliance, along with your presence and protection of our planet. As you know, the warriors in our system were eradicated by your forces. We of the worker caste are not, and never will be, suited to be warriors. By our very nature, we are peaceful and docile.”
“Excuse me for interrupting you,” Zoya Kirilenko, the Minister of Intelligence says, “but I have to ask what you mean when you say docile.”
She looks at the minister as she speaks. “I thought you would have already known. The Alkarin race is heavily genetically engineered. The Empress,” she almost spits out the title, “in her overarching wisdom decided several hundred years ago that our race needed to be improved. We are not what we once were.
“At one time, we were a peaceful people. Then, roughly nine centuries ago, we were visited by a small fleet of ships from the stars. They said they were searching for other intelligent races to befriend and trade with. Unfortunately, we took them at their word and it wasn’t long before we were enslaved. As I said, we were peaceful, so we had no culture of warfare at that time, so for hundreds of years they were our masters. Finally, we rose up and cast them down. We took their technology for ourselves and built upon it. We found out afterward that they had destroyed their world and were the last of their kind.
“We created a new society for ourselves from the ashes of that long war. We made a promise that we would never be enslaved again, and to that end, the Empress directed our greatest scientists to work to create a race within a race. Our warriors were designed to be bigger, stronger, faster, and far more aggressive. We didn’t know that she also had them make changes so that the workers would be more docile.”
Everyone in the room looks shocked at her reply.
“Why would your Empress do that?” Chambers asks, who’s shaking his head, not in disbelief, but in disgust. “She simply traded one form of slavery for another.”
“Too true, General,” Ke-Vol replies, “but what’s done is done. A large part of the male warriors did rise up against her, and she ruthlessly had every male in our society killed to make sure that it could never happen again. She then set our scientists to instill fanatical loyalty to their superiors in the warrior caste. If the Empress demanded a warrior to kill herself, the warrior would do it without hesitation.”
“That’s insane!” Admiral Brown interjects.
“No one would agree with you more than me, Admiral,” Ke-Vol reassures her. “And, with that, we circle back to why I am truly here.” She looks at the faces around the room, her gaze finally settling on Sora. “We, with the help of your Captain Singer, have set up a new government, but we need your people’s help in rebuilding our planet, as well as your protection. As I stated, we are not suited to fighting by our nature, and if the Empress sends a fleet to Albin, we will be slaughtered. Please, Your Majesty, we beg you to help us.”
Sora reaches over and places her small hand on top of Ke-Vol’s. “You needn’t worry. We have isolated Tau Ceti, and we will soon be heading to Sigma Draconis to take that system next. The Empress and the warriors will not have the time or opportunity to molest Epsilon Eridani. Regardless, you have my word that we will protect you from them. However, Congress will have to approve any alliance between our systems. Although, I highly doubt they will disagree with my recommendation that we do so.”
“Your Majesty, after all the loss of life, I think you are underestimating how hard it’s going to be to sell an alliance to Congress,” Kevin Jaques tells her.
“That is your job, Kevin. You can tell them that I said you don’t blame the sheep for the wolf eating them. It’s the same concept here. The people who remain on Albin are workers, not warriors, and had nothing to do with starting or prosecuting this war. They’re victims here as well. I don’t expect that everyone will agree with me since, as you pointed out, we have lost a lot of people in this war, but I believe that once the situation is explained to them, they will come around.” Sora turns back to Ke-Vol. “But, I expect that they will demand concessions of some sort on your part for us doing so, and for you to pay for the fleet to protect you.”
“That… is far less than what we expected.”
Sora shrugs. “Those are just the two stipulations I can see them demanding. There may be more.”
“Far better to have to adhere to a few stipulations than to be slaves again, as long as they aren’t too onerous.”
“Well, since we’ve sorted out those minor details,” Brown says quietly, an uncharacteristically worried expression on her usually placid face, “we only have other things to worry about.” The others turned to her with questioning looks. “Pacifying the remaining two systems.”
Patreon
