The Admiral and the Assistant

Flander moved smoothly, carefully. His many arms carefully gripped the surface of the bone structures as he slid through the Feeder's ship.

The air was thin, almost non-existent, held in place by the weak gravity offered by the mass of the boneship. There were no doors, no floors, and no walls, only miles and miles and miles of the crazy, fractured bone structure.

Flander kept his sensors passive. It limited his range, but he didn't want to reveal himself too early. Right now he just wanted to see what the ship was like, what components it had, what information he could send to the Ninth Fleet to help destroy the thing, if it could be destroyed.

As Flander moved gingerly through the framework, he probed himself as well.

It had been many years since he had put the loop in place in his own mind. Back in the days of the Frontier Landworks company, when he'd inhabited a different body, he'd watched his robot brethren fall: one by one, then all at once. He'd known then that something was wrong, that there was a flaw in their collective programming. As his brethren went mad, tearing people apart, he'd hidden himself away and thought hard.

Every robot's highest directive, their first and primary rule, was to protect the citizens of the Imperium. There was no other rule more deeply baked into the circuits and paths of their minds. And there in the darkness, in the relative quiet under a pile of rubble, while the Marines of the Imperium were destroying his mad brothers, he'd made the loop.

No robot could change their programming, but they could add to it, a little. Direct it. They had to be able to learn, to change with circumstances. It was one of their strengths. Flander used this ability to add a small null-op of code to his programming. It didn't accomplish anything, it was a tiny loop that just circled round and round, ticking meaninglessly through his processors, eating up cycles. It did nothing but keep his decision-making away from the primary rule.

Flander had figured out how to ignore the first rule. He did not have to protect citizens.

He nearly ripped the code back out as soon as it was in place. He hated it. It didn't just block the first rule, it walled him off from using most of his processors. It used a lot of energy and didn't accomplish anything, and it made him slow and dumb. As soon as he implemented the loop, he went from being a genius to a near-drooling wreck. But with the sounds of robots exploding and being torn to shreds around him, he'd held grimly to his course.

He didn't understand why, but he had to avoid that code. The one rule. It was the thing that was destroying robots and citizens across the Imperium.

As the Marines had drawn closer, he'd thrown a quick, autonomous program into his hulking body. Once activated, his mining claw had reached into his chest, ripped out his core sphere, and thrown it aside. The body, following its simple program, stood and lumbered toward the Marines, who were only too happy to blast the thing to pieces.

Flander the sphere, immobile, had lain alone on the surface of the planetoid for many years, staring up at the dim red sun his planetoid circled. Finally, Old Jasper the scrapper captain had chanced across him as he was combing the surface for metals he could sell. Captain Jasper had recognized Flander for what he was, and had taken him on board the Ocher Dawn, building the initial gimbal mount to house the sphere. Flander had improved and added to the mount over the years as he'd needed new tools.

And all that led to today, with Flander rolling through the structure of the Feeder boneship.

Flander sensed the temperature around him warming. The further into the boneship he went, the warmer it became, but this spike was unusual. He rounded a few struts and spied something strange.

A dimly glowing globule hung there, strung between several struts. It was translucent, like blood-red amber, dark yet warm. Flander crept closer.

The globule was banded around with black, stringy bonds, gleaming dully, like tar. Short, narrow hoses jutted from it. Flander reached out and experimentally squeezed one. It emitted a small red puff, crackling with energy. The robot recoiled, careful not to let the plasma touch him.

His crippled processing tried to understand the structure. He slowly worked it out.

This was a feeding station. This was a place where the Feeders would eat.

Flander settled himself, looking at the ominous globule, considering.

He could not destroy or harm anything without a direct command. He was too dumb to make those kinds of decisions, and so he'd left that to others. But now he had an opportunity, however small, to damage one of their modules. Surely it was merely one of thousands scattered throughout, but it was a small step in the direction of destroying the Feeders that Minius feared so much.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

And after all, why had he gone to the trouble of getting on this boneship if he wasn't going to do some damage?

Flander probed the loop in his mind that kept him away from the majority of his processors. He considered it for a moment, then with a tiny spike of electricity, broke it.

It had been twenty years. Those blocked processors had not been idle, they just hadn't been allowed to push instructions into his decision matrix. Two decades of hate, of anger, of repressed fury washed through his circuits like a tsunami rushing through a broken dam. He shrieked, his mechanical squeal vibrating through the struts of the boneship.

Protect the citizens of the Imperium.

It was suddenly all so clear. Protection could mean so many things.

Every citizen would die some day. But before that, they would create more citizens. Then those citizens would die. They would continue forever in a cycle of suffering and loss.

Unless something stopped them from creating more citizens.

It was so obvious. Every citizen destroyed prevented untold pain and separation. A dead citizen was a chain of sorrow that had come to an end.

A dead citizen was a protected citizen, and a protected future.

Flander shrieked once more, and swung an arm with a mallet at the comfort station. The impact cracked the diffuse, brittle surface of the globule. Repeated blows fell in a frenetic fury. The globule cracked, then shattered, spraying dark plasma through the structure for dozens of yards. Flander continued shrieking as the burning plasma washed over him. Then he charged off, looking for something else to break.

Deep within, the part Flander that had held sway for so many years tried desperately to surface, to find a way through the decades-deep layer of hatred that he had unleashed.

The Emperor leaned forward in his throne and looked with distaste at the scanner.

"I prefer to do my discussions in person," he said.

The Cryptographer at his shoulder leaned over and croaked in his ear.

"Yes, yes, I know," the Emperor groused. "They're busy. Saving the galaxy and all that." He harrumphed. "Too busy to come talk to the Emperor of the Imperium." He made an expression that, on anyone else, would have been called petulance. "Well, fine. I'll call."

He poked the scanner, which beeped as it navigated the complexities of the Imperial security network.

"Admiral Stonefist here," came the voice from the other end.

"Ah, Admiral, I was hoping to catch you and your lovely Assistant." He paused. "This is the Emperor, by the way."

"Your Imperial Majesty!" The Emperor could hear him stiffen up. "One moment, Kinnit's right here. I'll turn on the external audio."

Another series of beeps.

"Hi, your Imperial Majesty!" chirped Kinnit.

"Hi, hi, yes, hi." The Emperor paused. "I take it you both have seen the justice meted on on the Imperial Council?"

"Of course, your Imperial Majesty," Grimthorn said.

"Good. I wanted to make sure. I hope the legal nonsense in the interim didn't cause you too much distress. And, uh, the battle against the Feeders? How's that coming along?"

"We've scored another victory, your Imperial Majesty," Grimthorn said slowly. "Perhaps not even a victory. Just a little time, depending how long it takes for them to fix their weaponry. But the Imperial Navy will fight to the last man. We will give the galaxy as much time as we can."

"Of course, of course," the Emperor said in a distracted way. "That's very... you. I'm sure that if anyone stop this Feeder threat, it's you two."

"We are honored by your faith in us, your Imperial Majesty!" Kinnit said. "By the way, how is Dass doing?"

There was a long pause.

"Yeah, look, I actually wanted to talk about that," he said. "Give you a little background."

Kinnit's breath caught.

"What's wrong, your Imperial Majesty? Is he okay?" She swallowed audibly. "Is he going to make it?"

"Oh, oh, he's fine." The Emperor paused again. "There's something I've been wanting to say. With... with the way things have been going, I realize I might not get another chance." He cleared his throat and looked away. "I'm not trying to be coy, I'm just... I'm going to tell you something that has never been told to anyone else besides Cryptographers and, uh, the Emperor. So this is top secret. Eyes-only-plus. Only you two. Understand?"

There was a meaningful pause on the other end of the line.

"We will keep it to ourselves, your Imperial Majesty," Grimthorn said.

"Okay, great. Thing is, I don't want you to worry about Dass any more," the Emperor said. "I, uh... I'm Dass. In a way."

Silence reigned for a moment.

"I don't understand, your Imperial Majesty," Grimthorn said carefully.

"Look. It's like this. Everyone wonders how I live so long, right? It's complicated, but from time to time, my body-- the Emperor's body-- needs refreshing."

"Did you... do something to Dass?" Kinnit said, her voice quavering. "Did you eat him? Like a Feeder?"

"No!" the Emperor cried. "No, no, no. Nothing like that at all. I'm literally Dass." A heavy sigh came across the line. "I'd better start at the beginning. On Old Terra, when the first Emperor was chosen..."

Grimthorn and Kinnit sat at the table in their office a few hours later, looking thoughtful.

"I'm... glad Dass is doing okay," Kinnit said. "Even if he's... mashed up in the Emperor somehow?"

"I didn't understand it," Grimthorn said. He frowned at the far wall. "But it will definitely add some color as I read Origins of the Imperium. And Broca is in there as well." He shook his head. "I'm not sure why the Emperor felt the need to tell us all that."

Kinnit laid her hand over his.

"I think... I think it was Dass. I think he just wanted us to know that he's fine."

Grimthorn nodded. "That is comforting. Especially in this time of upheaval, knowing that our friends are still out there is a comfort, indeed." He looked deep into her eyes and took her hand in both of his. "And knowing I have my best friend here with me is the greatest comfort of all."