Darklight Pirates
Chapter Twenty-one

“The crawler is powered by a super battery?” Cletus walked around the tracked vehicle, resisting the urge to reach out his gloved hand and run it along the mirrored exterior.

The crawler used treads like a tank and, like such a carrier, had heavy armor on the top. Cletus stepped back and estimated at least a meter thick armor plate protected the roof. The two centimeter-thick sides sported only thin metal similar to the aluminum-lithium alloy used by the Shillelagh for its hull. A gaping door showed the cargo capacity of the heavy vehicle. Beyond the empty hold four chairs had been bolted down securely. Where most vehicles used a pilot and copilot, Cletus saw only controls for a pilot. He asked.

“The HUD can be used by any of the occupants. Mostly,” said the air-suited woman who had escorted them from the underground base, “we let the computer drive us. It knows the way, after all, having made the trip so many times.”

“AI?” Leanne crowded close to the access panel showing the tiny battery that powered the crawler.

“You know the Programmer General’s prohibition about using artificial intelligence,” Cletus said more sharply than he intended. Their guide carried an unknown rank. The scientists and other colonists in the corridors leading out had deferred to her, yet Micah Ralston had introduced her simply as Anna, no title, no explanation why she of all those on Scrutiny had been chosen to take them to the battery charger on the far side of the planet.

“We have to rely on robotic aides more than back in Burran, or so I am told. There are so few humans here. I was born here and this is all ... normal. As to plumping up the population, You know how colonization’s been done. You’re Commander in Chief Armed Forces, after all.”

Leanne interrupted. She pulled open the access panel and ran her finger lightly over the leads.

“The engine is from a standard tank, but this is the only power source.”

Cletus saw how relieved Anna was to be distracted from his pointed question. The power held by the Programmer General came from dealing with the Blarney Stone directly and not allowing AI. The early experiences with a guidance computer had been disastrous and Ballymore had almost been obliterated by well-meaning AI. Burran had adopted the human control then to keep from being obliterated, leaving ultimate control in the hands of the Programmer General.

Her relief told him Scrutiny used AI far in excess of what Donal would approve. Or did his father know? He had kept the planet’s existence a secret. If Cletus believed him, the only one knowing its location not living on Scrutiny was the Programmer General himself. An old saying came to him. Two can keep a secret if one is dead.

But to allow them to use AI? Cletus wasn’t sure such autonomy was a good thing, especially so far from Ballymore.

“The trip lasts about six hours,” Anna said. “Provisions are stowed and the sooner we start, the sooner we arrive.” She stepped into the crawler and went directly to the pilot’s chair.

Cletus settled into what should have been the copilot’s chair, with Leanne directly behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that she had already brought up an auxiliary HUD and worked through it. From this angle he couldn’t tell what she studied, but he thought it had to be the engine and its power supply.

“You can see what she does.” Anna reached out and touched the blank panel in front of him. The HUD popped up immediately. “More primitive than that on a dreadnought, to be sure, but the crawler’s mission is simple enough.”

“Out and back with the charged batteries?”

Anna looked at him, her expression neutral. She nodded once, then reached into space in front of her and toggled a virtual switch. The crawler grumbled, a bone-shaking vibration passing through the vehicle, then began its trip. Cletus brought up an external view of the planet. Barren, rocky land extended in all directions. In minutes even the bulge of the mostly buried colony dome vanished behind a low range of mountains raked by surprising amount of erosion. He commented on it.

“Scrutiny’s atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with a fair amount of noble gases mixed in. Stuff that isn’t easily blown away by the solar winds.”

“The product of radioactive decay?” Leanne spoke without looking away from her HUD.

“You’ve noticed the thick shielding on the crawler’s roof. When we get around the planetary curve and the primary rises, radiation levels will kick way up.”

“But these mountains aren’t in direct line with the red giant.” Cletus swung his external view around. “All the rocks are worn as if water flowed over them.”

“No water, just atmosphere. Fierce winds are created by the uneven heating on the world. The gas only has a pressure of a few hundred millibars but wind velocity can crank up to a couple hundred kilometers per hour, sustained for weeks. One memorable storm blew for almost a year because of sunspots on the red giant--or so we thought at the time. The Pot shifted position, settling itself into a more comfortable position. Quite an event, let me tell you.”

“Any idea what caused it?”

“None, Commander.”

“Call me Cletus. You seem to know a great deal about the stellar dynamics.”

“Hardly anything at all. Micah is my husband. He’s the one who knows those things and blathers endlessly about this and that. Me, I tinker with nano devices.”

“What did you think of the nano swarm coating the Shillelagh?”

“Never saw anything like it, but the nanos are being analyzed in my lab. Before your ship is refitted, we’ll know everything there is about the swarm and how to defeat it. I’ve got a couple ideas I want to work on, just from seeing the way the swarm smeared itself over the sensors.”

“That is possible to defeat the swarm?” Leanne leaned forward. “By what mechanism?”

Anna looked at her and shrugged. Her hands floated around, through the virtual controls, then brought up a single panel.

“This is a primer on nano research here. You might enjoy it since you are interested.”

Cletus saw that the text provided nothing more than the basics, such as would be included in an introductory university course. Either Anna found revealing such Scrutiny knowledge wrong or she had no time for Leanne. Both could be true.

“I’m interested why you’re our guide rather than someone more knowledgeable about the TZO radiation and how the batteries are constructed and charged.”

Anna frowned, then popped up another text in front of him. This was anything but elementary.

“I wrote the procedures for battery construction. It’s all done on a molecular level, which is another road to explore beyond Judah insisting the main storage is in a higher dimension. I believe quantum mechanics explains it all, with some graviton interaction considered. You see here? And here?”

Cletus found himself drowned in esoteric speculation. From the corner of his eye he saw that Leanne idly flipped through the notes given her but concentrated on Anna’s every word. She understood more than he did, but how much more?

His attention drifted to the external view around them. The terrain began to flatten and the crawler made better speed. From what he could tell from the abbreviated instrumentation, they raced along at almost two hundred kilometers an hour. But the faint glow ahead held his interest more than the clanking as treads tore through the rock beneath them. The red giant’s edge poked over the horizon, causing polarizing filters to mute the scene. He blinked when he saw how the atmosphere, thin as it was, caught fire and caused small auroras to dance about.

The heavy radiation shield atop the crawler moved about, causing momentary imbalance. They raced into the radiation and needed the shield as much in front as above, perhaps more. Cletus shifted his view to the One Ring almost directly overhead. The particle accelerator shone bright like a silvered star. He tried to make out details, but the reflected light from the red giant proved too much.

“Will the accelerator be turned on while we’re out here?” He turned to Anna, who broke off her explanation of her work with Leanne.

“No one is allowed outside the dome when the Ring is fired up. We don’t think there is any danger, certainly not from radiation leakage since the entire planet is bathed constantly in a lethal bath.”

“A precaution?” Leanne asked.

“Safety first, that’s our motto. Working at the edge of knowledge is always hazardous, but we try to avoid casualties. So far, we’ve been lucky.”

“Or careful,” Cletus said. “What of the staff at the charger?”

Anna smiled slightly and shook her head.

“There’s no human staff. It’s entirely automated.”

“AI?” Leanne scooted forward and gripped the back of Cletus’ seat to hear the answer. The grinding of tracks against rock now filled the compartment. A quick glance at the speedometer showed they raced along at over three hundred kilometers an hour now.

“Well, yes. I know that’s a technology not allowed on Ballymore.”

“Back home,” Cletus corrected.

“Yes, back home. But here, in the colony, we don’t have an abundance of labor. Why not let robots take up the slack so we can devote our time and skill to intellectual work?”

“You know your history. Artificial intelligence almost destroyed Burran after the first immigration wave settled in.”

“Your planet, Far Kingdom, doesn’t explore AI, either, does it, Leanne?” Anna glanced back. “Why not? Is it that your population is so great you need to keep all those hands busy with menial chores?”

“We experienced a period similar to that on Ballymore. Equipping warbots with AI proved dangerous to humans.”

Cletus had not considered this, so steeped in his own cultural aversion to AI. A warbot running a full-scale AI program would be a threat in space, in the atmosphere and on the ground--a threat in many ways, both to the enemy and to the side employing it.

“On Scrutiny the AI is kept at a minimum.”

Cletus heard the lie in Anna’s words, knowing she sought to placate him and downplay any threat he might discover.

“It frees us up to do our research and to develop those cultural necessities we can’t get from Burran. Art, music, other ... pursuits.”

Again he heard the distraction. Before he could press her on what those other pursuits might be, Leanne spoke up.

“Such skills liven your social life, I am sure.”

“A small population can afford to explore.”

“Especially far from the dictates of your church. Pope Seamus is, from accounts I have read, not the greatest advocate of such things.”

Cletus started to ask Leanne what she meant. He was not a religious man, but the church held sway over many of the military under his command, forcing him to consider not only what was necessary but what was sanctioned. Pope Seamus wandered Ballymore, the itinerant pontiff, as had all the popes since the AI disaster.

That caused him to rear back. How much of the cultural avoidance of AI came from the church? He had never considered it. Always working, always studying to get ahead and deserve the rank he had attained, such matters seemed diversions and nothing more.

He stared at the bleak scenery now lit by more intense reflection from the One Ring. The red giant poked enough of a disk over the horizon to hint at the instant death being outside would cause. Cletus straightened and moved to point out a spire on the horizon.

“Is that a comlink?”

“It’s a marker. We’re getting close to the charging station.”

“You don’t use GPS?” Leanne wiped away the HUD in front of her to stare at the main display.

“Radiation makes it unreliable. We don’t have sats in orbit because of the One Ring. While there’s never been any leakage from the accelerator, we don’t want to have any trouble turning off the equipment.”

“You don’t want the radiation altering the AI,” Cletus said. The facility gone berserk caused him to shiver slightly. Again, he hadn’t realized how ingrained the anxiety about AI was in him because he had never confronted any usage before.

“This is such a deadly environment, the additional radiation would be unnoticeable, but safety first. We don’t want any com interfering with the One Ring’s operation any more than we want it scrambling the production line at the charger station.”

Anna worked on her display to slow the crawler. The crunching faded until Cletus could heard his own breath coming in harsh gusts. His excitement to see the battery factory grew as he pylon seemed to sprout up from the barren gray rock plains.

“Will we exit?” Leanne asked.

Anna expanded the external view to give a 360-degree panorama. A few more seconds gave a hemispheric view that included the One Ring above. When she was satisfied, she leaned back.

“No. Even with suits, the danger of exposure is too great. Here are the controls for a few drones. Send them wherever you like and study the entire factory to your heart’s content.”

Cletus worked four drones from his HUD. He found the controls sluggish and mentioned it.

“The AI running the factory has to authorize every movement to prevent an accident. Flying a drone across electrodes accidentally might damage the factory or even kill us all. Huge energy flows are the rule, not the exception. It takes weeks to collect and store the energy in a battery that can power your dreadnought.”

Cletus saw that Anna had given Leanne her own set of exploratory drones. Whatever secrecy there might be on Scrutiny, this wasn’t part of it. Or did Doctor Germain and the others think Leanne was a trusted adviser? He realized he had no idea how to consider her. She obviously absorbed every bit of information like a sponge, and he had to believe it would all be revealed to the Supreme Leader when she returned to Far Kingdom.

If she returned. They had struck up more than a commander-adviser relationship. His father had no compunction allowing her access to the most highly guarded secrets. He had not even told his own son, his Commander in Chief Armed Forces, about Scrutiny.

Lifting his drones higher, he flew them in formation across the plains to a domed structure.

“Enter through the slots just above ground level. The drones will be recognized and admitted,” Anna said.

Cletus dropped the flight to the deck and then steered closer. Dark slits opened automatically. He wondered if the drones contained IFF devices or if AI studied the situation and chose to allow the drones inside. Then he slowed the advance and worked them up along the sloping interior to take in a panoramic view of the factory. A wire mesh dish, slightly concave and more than a hundred meters in diameter dominated the center of the dome. Pointed upward at the Pot of Gold, it collected the mysterious darklight radiation and electronically piped it into four different boxes.

“The dome is closed. Does it open when you are collecting?”

“The radiation is such that the dome material is not an impediment.”

“Then why have a dome at all?” Leanne asked.

“To avoid damage from meteorites,” Cletus said. The system became clearer to him. “There’s not enough atmosphere to slow a rock coming in, even on the tidal locked side of the planet.”

“That is one reason,” Anna said, making it sound as if she humored him. “Another is to discharge electrical buildup that might disrupt the robotics inside. You saw the planetary aurora coming here. Within the dome, we maintain a charge-free space.”

Cletus had a hundred questions but held them in check. He wouldn’t understand the answers. With a swoop, he drove down toward the center of the wire mesh dish, only to lose control of the drone. He frantically fought to prevent the sudden swerve and failed.

“The AI keeps unwanted objects from the dish. Why don’t you explore the accumulators--the box structures every 90 degrees around the dish?”

Cletus did as Anna suggested. Or was that ordered? Every time he thought he was given freedom to explore, chains were lashed around him. He worked downward and into the automatically opening slits so he could see how the batteries were connected.

“It hardly seems plausible,” he said. “Those huge leads from the dish are designed to carry immense current, yet the batteries are so small I can hold most of them in my hand.”

“Even the batteries for the main engines are small, but you could hardly lift them. They are the size of a large truck.”

“That’s still smaller than the fusion units powering the Shillelagh.”

He paid less attention to what was revealed around him and thought more on how this could be used. Removing the Shillelagh’s existing fusion plants and relying solely on the batteries could increase its capabilities twofold. More. But were the batteries as reliable as Anna and the others said?

If they were, taking control of Burran’s orbital platform would be simplicity in itself. The fleet, or what remained of it, would be no match for the single dreadnought. But once on the platform, what then? Every building leveled, every citizen killed, bolstered Weir’s grip and branded the lawful Programmer General as a rebel, a murderous outlaw. There had to be a way to use this power without turning the population against Donal Tomlins.

“There’s not much to actually see. Charging stations are like that unless something goes haywire. You might enjoy a quick look at the battery assemblers.”

For another hour, Anna steered the sightseeing until Cletus grew bored. Leanne was willing to remain for another few hours but deferred when he asked to return to the dome. He had so much to think about.

Cletus slumped in his seat and stared at the flow of dark rock and bright radiation all the way back to the dome. He had seen what he needed about the batteries, and still he had doubts. Big doubts.