Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Jeridan gulped and readied his rifle. He didn't like this at all.

He glanced at Negasi's tablet. The guy had helpfully put on a timer for the deadline to get to the command center. It read fifty-five seconds. Jeridan wondered how soon after the PA gave them that countdown that he had started the timer, or if he had adjusted it to take into account the time between the announcement and when he started the countdown.

Discarding that train of thought as probably leading to madness and certainly wasting time they didn't have, Jeridan squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped into the corridor.

Nothing blasted him apart. He took that as a good sign.

"We're coming," he called out, cringing as he heard his voice echo off the metal walls.

Jeridan walked down the corridor. With the countdown so low, he really should have run, but he couldn't pluck up the courage for that. He looked to his right and saw Negasi walking right along with him. Not a very good chessboxer, but when the chips were down, Negasi could be relied on.

"This might be bad, buddy," he said.

"It's already bad."

"We're coming!" Jeridan called again. He wondered if anything was hearing them in there. He saw no sign of movement and the soft light and low hum didn't change.

They got to the doorway. Against his better judgement, Jeridan forced himself to step through. Once again, he was somewhat reassured that he remained undisintegrated.

The command center was a large, circular room with a domed ceiling. At the center, on a low platform, was the commander's chair. A bank of computer workstations ran all around it with another dozen chairs. Darkened screens took up the walls.

No, not all darkened. One screen was the origin of that blue glow they had spotted.

There was a pattern. A blue line that curved in on itself, warping into new shapes. A circle. A figure eight. A twist that looked like a braid of hair. The line moved around the screen. Center. Upper left. Slide right. Angle down and to the left.

"What the hell is that?" Negasi whispered.

Jeridan shivered. "I don't know."

Licking his lips, Jeridan threw back his shoulders and stepped up to the terminal.

"We're here," he said, wondering what he was talking to, if anything.

"Identify," the computer said.

"Cack," Jeridan whispered. "What was the name of that ship you explored on Makayamawe Prime?"

Negasi shrugged. "The name had disappeared from the hull. Maybe it was on the monument, but we were too busy running from the cops to read historical markers."

"Cack." Jeridan rubbed his temples. It was probably in the Interstellar Encyclopedia since Makayamawe Prime was pretty well documented, but they didn't have a copy on their tablets.

"Identify."

"We already entered our identification in the main computer room."

"Identify."

"Is it even hearing you?" Negasi asked.

"Good question."

Negasi looked at his tablet. The timer had run down to zero.

Jeridan sat at the terminal and entered the code they had used in the computer room, plus the serial number of the old Imperium ship on Makayamawe Prime.

"Approved."

The coruscating blue line formed into a face made up of blue pixels. Jeridan cocked his head. Why such low graphics? It was so crude he couldn't even tell if it was supposed to be male or female. Was it supposed to spook him? Because it was sure working. Sitting there face to face with this … whatever … unsettled him in a deep way.

"Identify malfunction," the computer said. The lips didn't move.

Where do I start?

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"Am I speaking with the station's AI?"

"Invalid query. Identify malfunction."

"What are you?"

"Invalid query. Identify malfunction."

"This sounds like a computer designed from scratch by someone in high school," Jeridan snorted.

"Invalid query. Identify malfunction."

Negasi snapped his fingers. "That's it! It's running on really low processing power, like some kid's design or a terminal from the Early Digital Era. It's got barely any juice, so it's trying to conserve energy. It's asking us to fix it."

"It had enough energy to start up the PA system."

"Only a few times. That was a plea for help. Now that we're here, it's going to use only the minimum."

"Do you think it's kept some energy all this time?" Jeridan asked, staring at the face.

"No idea. I don't know enough about Imperium computer systems."

Jeridan bit his lip. He didn't either.

"Or maybe that combat mech powered it up. There probably wasn't much juice in that external power source after bringing itself back to life, and it kept some left over for that service robot."

"Too bad that external power source got blown apart in the battle. It would have been nice to examine it and see how much energy it had left."

Jeridan looked around, suddenly more worried than he was already. "What if it powers up more stuff?"

"Poopsie didn't find anything."

"Poopsie didn't open any closed doors. It didn't check in here. It didn't check in lots of places."

The face stared at them.

"It's not speaking anymore," Jeridan said.

"It's conserving energy, waiting for us to save it."

Jeridan thought for a moment, then put a finger to his lips. His friend nodded. Jeridan leaned in a bit toward the terminal and said, "We are going to return with a power supply."

"Affirmative."

"How much power do you have left?"

"4.75 hours remaining at current usage rate."

"Is anything else powered up in this station?"

"Unknown."

"We'll come back as soon as we can."

"I sense a long period of inactivity. That may have affected systems. I do not have the energy to run a full diagnostic. Another full energy depletion may lead to further system corruption."

"All right. Are you AI?"

The light grew brighter. The face clearer.

"Positive."

Jeridan sucked in a breath. They were speaking to a human, or at least the memories of one.

That changed things. A lot.

Because you couldn't just let an AI power down like a regular computer and expect all the data to be there where you recharged the batteries. An AI was far more complex than that. Its system was almost organic. Shutting off the power could kill it, or at least injure it.

This AI was already wounded from its previous power loss. They couldn't let that happen again.

The last surviving mind of the Imperium era couldn't die. Not on his watch.

The face dimmed and grew more pixelated.

They headed out. Neither spoke until they were two levels down.

"What do we do?" Negasi asked.

"I don't know. It might not be safe to just power it back up."

"We can't let it corrupt. It's an AI!"

"I know. I know."

AIs were alive. They couldn't abandon it any more than they could abandon some innocent in a foundering ship. And this was an AI from the Imperium era. It had the memories of that fallen civilization. The insights it could give would be unparalleled in the history of tech scavenging.

"Why isn't it located in the main computing room?" Negasi asked.

"Well, it would have been connected when the station was fully functional, but you're right, that is an odd design choice. The computers down there are doing a hell of a lot more computing than the command center."

They walked in silence for a time, each of them mulling over this new mystery. Neither came up with a solution.

They got back to the computer room, Poopsie still standing guard at the only open door. Everyone stopped to listen to their report, even Derren/Mason.

"We have to save it," Helen said.

"We need to get this data downloaded and back to the ship," Nova said.

"We can't just leave an AI marooned here!" Jeridan cried.

"It was marooned here three hundred years ago," Nova replied. "It's not our responsibility."

"It is now that we've discovered it," Jeridan said. Negasi nodded.

"We have to complete the mission," Derren/Mason said, turning back to his terminal. Nova got back to work too.

"It said it may have been corrupted by the first power outage way back then. It will get even more corrupted the next time."

Derren/Mason looked at him with an expression usually used by patient parents explaining something to a stubborn child. That felt odd coming from a child's face.

"We have to complete this mission, otherwise everything we've done will be for nothing."

Jeridan tensed. He could see the pain in those old/young eyes. Derren had tortured himself, and tortured his son, all to save the galaxy.

But then he remembered that it had been Derren who had erased the previous AI running the Antikythera. Nova had told him it was so that no one could trace where they had found the Imperium station, Instead, he had hidden the coordinates on a memory chip on a savage world to retrieve later.

Another crime justified in the name of galactic defense.

Nova claimed that she didn't know he was going to do it. Derren said it was necessary to protect the secrecy of their mission.

Not for the first time, Jeridan wondered how much that was a valid reason, and how much it was simply an excuse for Nova and her late husband to do whatever the hell they wanted.

Can evil people end up saving the lives of everyone in the Orion Arm? Do these two count as evil?

Those questions swirled around Jeridan's mind. He had never found an answer to them before and he didn't find one now.

"Look, we can't just let it die. Think of how much information we could get from it."

"All the data on the jump gates is right here," Nova said. Her husband/son didn't even bother looking up.

"Yes, but there's so much more we could learn from it!"

"We don't have time," Nova replied, typing at one of the keyboards.

Jeridan jabbed a finger in her direction. "In case you don't remember, you're not in charge anymore!"

"I'm not leaving here, and neither is my … " she looked at Derren/Mason. " … neither is he."

Jeridan threw his hands in the air. "You people are unbelievable!"

Helen looked from Nova to Jeridan and back to Nova again. She was the only one of the three who hadn't gone back to work.

To Jeridan's surprise, Negasi walked over to her and whispered something in her ear.