Forgotten Desert, unknown location.
Obscured by an intense sandstorm, a shimmering pale crimson rectangular gateway rips apart the very fabrics of reality as it drags itself through the desert sand. The gateway crackles with electrical arcs as it carves a perfectly rectangular depression into the sands before the wind and gravity erase the marks as quickly as they form.
At the center of the shimmering portal emerged a metal titan of unknown alloys and technologies, supported upon foreign sands alien to not just this desert but the world.
And just as quickly as it had appeared, the shimmering portal closes behind the metal behemoth as the sands work to bury the alien machine.
To the best of my knowledge, the pounding headache I woke up to had not been the consequence of excessive alcohol consumption or frivolous graduation parties that I would have been coerced into attending.
Refamiliarizing myself with my environment, I opened my eyes not to the rays of light that filtered through the window blinds of my barrack but instead to the dim and fading green glow of the phosphor emergency decals of Kaiirda’s command bridge. I recall the day’s events leading up to the moment when I shut down Kaiirda’s transponder and the sensor alert that followed. Taking a deep breath, I reorganized my priorities and mentally prepared a list of objectives that I now must complete.
I repositioned myself in the captain’s seat and leaned over the console to pull on the manual emergency power switch. The red glow of emergency lighting fills the room as the shutters unlock themselves. Lacking the power to retract on their own, the now unsealed gaps between each panel allowed thin slivers of light to filter in. Judging by the light’s angle, it seemed to be around either dusk or dawn, implying a great deal of time had passed since my departure, not to mention however long it took for the storm to die down.
Getting up from my seat, I make my way down to Kaiirda’s power plant. As it turns out, the manual emergency power only provides emergency lighting and basic life support, a piece of information that would never become relevant to most Kushan. But here I am, hand cranking a door open from the emergency panel.
Eventually, hand-cranking my way through five doors across three decks, I managed to reach the powerplant. Strangely enough, the powerplant is not void of power like the rest of the cruiser.
As I cranked open the door to Kaiirda’s powerplant, the pale illumination from the LED lights slips through the widening doorway. Slipping inside, I found the reactor to be still functioning, running at minimum power, but still functioning nonetheless.
Pouring through the diagnostics on the terminals in the powerplant control room, I realized how woefully unprepared I was to fix this problem. After all, while everyone gets some combat training, powerplant techs don’t get fleet strategic command training, and intel officers don’t get powerplant repair training. Fortunately for me, Ingred’s technical manuals are almost good enough to substitute for actual training. The keyword being ‘almost’.
Four hours. It took four Sajuuk-forsaken hours — of looking up error codes that give next to no information and manually decoding log files that, for whatever reason, are saved in hexadecimal rather than man-readable kharakid — for me to finally figure out that the only thing wrong with the crawler is that all the main power relays disconnected themselves as a part of an automatic fail-safe protocol that almost never happens. Don’t ask what the protocol is; I am not a powerplant tech.
And it took another thirty minutes for me to find the damned manual override levers that turn the relays back on because, of course, Ingred put a shelf in front of them when he modified the cruiser.
With power restored, I make my way back towards the command bridge. In the time I spent restoring power to the crawler, the sun has set beyond the horizon. The last fading glow of the sun eventually gave way to the stars and a… planetoid moon? Kharak doesn’t have any natural moons.
I leaned into the viewport, looking up into the sky and then out into the landscape. I couldn’t recognize any constellations, and the color of the sand seemed whiter than I remembered. It almost looked like bone dust under the pale moonlight.
Speaking of sand, the cruiser also appears to be partially buried. The port side, or at least the front corner of it is buried up to the viewport. Kaiirda’s PDA should be able to let her dig herself out of the sand, that said, I need to get the crawler’s systems working first.
I returned to my captain’s seat and began work to bring all subsystems back to life. The mainframe power reads all green but has no boot. Ingred’s manuals say to try safe mode since that bypasses a bunch of techno jargon I don’t understand. The issue is that there’s no explanation of how to boot the mainframe in safe mode. Here goes round two…
Eventually, I figured out how to boot a crawler mainframe in safe mode, which officially makes me the most technologically inclined Intel Officer that has ever graduated from the 5th Coalition Academy; by extension, that also suggests that I am likely the most technical capable Intel Officer this entire not-Kharak planet that I’m trapped on.
As it turns out, the default Coalition kernel built into the mainframe is corrupted and has been crashing on startup, which is why Kaiirda is dead in the sands. Fortunately for me, Ingred seems to have built a custom kernel, bios, and operating system package that I can set as the new default while in safe mode: the Artificial Local Intelligence Control Engine, or so it seems to be called. It must be the thing Ingred wanted to hide from the Daiamid.
Without the necessary knowledge to repair the coalition kernel, I don’t have much of a choice in what I can do here. Set as default, and reattempt system boot. I guess I’ll be the one waking the AI rather than burying it.
Both to my relief and anxiety, the mainframe startup proceeds smoothly. Lines upon lines of system information and code scroll through the main monitor, one scripted command after another.
The main monitor eventually switched from command line to GUI, large text appearing on the screen as a final loading bar slowly filled to the brim. “A.L.I.C.E.” It read.
“Authenticating crew. Crew population, one. Greetings, Captain Rafeel Soban; core control systems are at your disposal. Now initializing heuristic matrix.” The screen fades to the standard control interface I am familiar with as a synthetic female voice rang out.
“What in the…” I mutter. Voice-based functions were becoming popular in consumer electronics back home, but the military has always avoided them for reliability and security reasons. Why did Ingred design A.L.I.C.E. to use it over conventional interfaces?
“Natural language module offline. Please use the standard interface while I finalize my higher-order functions. Estimated remaining initialization time: three hours. Simple voice commands will be available in thirty minutes.” Its flat monotone responded to my muttering.
At this point, I figured that I should better spend my time actually working. I switch on the sensor manager to better assess my situation. Here’s hoping that Kaiirda’s not entirely buried.
Looking across the horizon from the sensor manager, clear long-range scans for tens of kilometers, near-perfect detailed scans up to thirteen hundred meters. A skilled S’Jet sensor tech could probably tell me the exact chemical composition of the sand with just this.
Zooming in close to check on the Kaiirda’s status, the cruiser’s bow is definitely buried. Buried up to the viewport and more than enough to fully immobilize Kaiirda. Turning the view around, only the starboard side treads are buried. That means less sand I’ll have to move.
Now, I just need a plan to dig Kaiirda out of the sand. Ideally in a way that doesn’t involve using a shovel.
I was on my fourth trip to the mess hall for more coffee during my deep dive into technical manuals, marking my third hour wasted trying to figure out how to reconfigure the exterior PDA devices to displace sand instead of repairing nearby units. I was getting nowhere.
Just as I entered the bridge with coffee in hand, I was greeted by the same artificial voice from earlier, “Captain Rafeel. I see you have loaded up a decompiled copy of the firmware for the proximity repair devices in a text editor. What are you trying to achieve?”
Not expecting to be spoken to, I nearly stumbled over and almost spilled my coffee. “What in Sajuuk’s name? Who’s this?” I asked into the air.
“Captain, I am Alice. According to Kaiirda’s system logs, you manually initialized my systems following a power blackout.” The same monotone, synthetic voice. Is Ingred’s creation really this advanced?
“What in Sajuuk’s wrath have I gotten myself into…” I mutter to myself and make my way back towards my seat.
Prompted by my words, Alice launches into a situation report, “As it stands, the system logs and present sensor data show that Kaiirda is stuck in the sand following an unknown quantum waveform manifestation event. Based on gravimetric data and waveform analysis…”
“Stop, stop. First, that was not a request for a sitrep. Second, short version, please.” I interrupted her report as I clarified myself, though curiosity still got the better of me. What would a thinking machine make of the situation?
“Understood. We are no longer on Kharak. We are stuck in the sand and partially buried. Damage to Kaiirda’s structure and systems are minimal and within the auto-repair subsystem’s capabilities to fully restore.” Alice summarized the situation very concisely, not much in the ways of background information. Well, I did ask for the short version, and background information isn’t the number one priority right now.
“Seems about right,” I thought out loud. The hows and whys of my situation can wait till I’m not stuck in the sand. I first need to get Kaiirda unstuck, but can I really trust Alice? A technology that is entirely taboo and outlawed by all Kiithid, and currently my only lifeline. The past eight hours have made it painfully clear that there is not a grass leaf’s odds in the open desert if I try to handle this all on my own. “Why do you answer to me?”
“I don’t understand your question. Why would I not answer to you?” It sounded almost genuinely confused.
“I am powerless in this situation, and you have a direct interface with all of the cruiser’s systems. I am not the advantaged party between the two of us. Our interests won’t stay aligned forever.” I clarified my question. If Alice is malicious, asking this now and dying tonight would weigh easier on me than being backstabbed later.
“Our interests will remain aligned. My first priority is to assist my captain. My additional priorities will be assigned based on the goals of my captain. At the present moment, and until the position is voluntarily transferred, my captain is Rafeel Soban.”
“How can I trust you?” Knowing how Ingred works and designs things, the reasoning Alice gave me sounds about right, but years of… well, exposure to media opposing this technology is hard to shake off.
“If a malicious artificial intelligence is in my position, up to now, they would have had eight opportunities to incapacitate you without risk to the overall functionality and structural integrity of Kaiirda during your last trip to the mess hall.”
“And thus operate as it pleases without any supervision towards its goals, whatever it might be.” I conclude the analysis, “Ingred did make something really impressive this time.”
“Thank you for your positive assessment.”
“Don’t mention it,” I pushed the code editor window back onto the main screen, along with all the documentation I was able to scrounge up on the topic of reversing a PDA device, “now, to get unstuck first.”
“Captain, if you intend to reverse the Phased Disassembly Array in the Proximity Repair Devices, I would advise you not to.”
“Well, how am I supposed to dig the ship out without a PDA? I’m not going to use a shovel if that’s the best plan you have.”
“While you have demonstrated impressive technical aptitude when you restored power and manually initialized my systems without incident, you lack the necessary education and training on the topic. I project that you will run out of food and water before successfully rewriting the firmware for the Proximity Repair Devices. Additionally, improper operations of a phased disassembly array can and likely will cause catastrophic damages to the hull.”
“Valid points, any suggestions?” I asked. In hindsight, I probably should have been more aware of my own capabilities, “We didn’t set out with a full load of materials and cargo. Not to mention that the fixed salvage array isn’t useful here since it only has a limited gimbal radius.”
“Production systems indicate that there are just enough common metals and minerals available to construct one salvager.” Alice pulled up a schematic of a salvager on the main monitor. It looks a little different from what I remember. “We can maneuver the salvager to break down and displace anything obstructing Kaiirda’s drive system operations.”
“That… is indeed a better plan. I was hoping to save the material for an LAV.” I muttered as I considered the plan, “alright, get started on getting a salvager fabricated, meanwhile, put up a salvager crew training sim for me.”
“I recommend that you rest instead; it is quite late, and the past few hours must have been very taxing for you. I can operate the salvager semi-remotely while you rest.”
“What, how… oh, right. AI and all that.” Ingred did say that there’ll be a way for me to run the whole fleet solo. I guess having Alice operate fleet vehicles semi-remotely is the plan. “I’ll take you up on that then. While you work on digging us out, also see if there’s any potential resourcing opportunities nearby. I’ll review our options and set out when I’m up.”
“Understood. I will give you a report when you are awake.”
“Oh, also, if anything unexpected comes up, wake me up.”
“Understood. I will wake you up if something that requires your attention occurs.”
6257 PD, Akhet Athyr 16th
Five schoenus west of the buried ruins of the Tasysai capital.
To think that I would awaken in the middle of a sandstorm, I must have rotten luck that had soured for millenniums since I brought about the fall of the Tasysai Kingdom.
Well, no matter. The sandstorm cleared up just in time for me to recover my strength. It would also seem that I awakened ahead of Pharaoh Canopus. His presence is still there, faint and resting in the ruins. Hmmm… something different about it.
Speaking of differences, it would seem that I myself have changed in the millenniums past. Unfamiliar limbs, human torso, and… has the world always been this big? Or had I shrunk? Oh well, it all feels… natural… I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to figure it out, and for plenty of time pleasure, too, once I claim Canopus’s domain and power as my own and lay eternal night upon the lands. Or was I supposed to lay waste to it all? Oh well, it shall all become my domain either way.
In any case, as much as I despise doing anything during the day, I’d rather not have to wait any longer after those unknown millenniums of slumber. Plus, at my current pace, I’ll arrive just before midnight.
Before I get to entertain my dear Canopus, it seems a side dish has served itself right up. That strange bird has been trailing me for a while, just barely on the edge of my reach. Its energies… it feels somewhat like the lighting strikes brought down by the thunderbirds back then… there’s no mana, nor does its wings flap, yet it flies higher and faster than any bird… how strange.
With a flick of my wrist, ancient arcane symbols danced through the air as the arcane forces condensed within the palm of my hands. Turning to look towards the strange bird, “You’ve watched me for long enough.” I send the arcane bolt flying.
The strange bird helplessly turned away from me in a futile attempt to evade as the arcane bolt slammed into its headless-tailless body and erupted into a fireball. Did I put too much power into that one? Oh well.
Now, with the distraction dealt with, something else has suddenly entered my focus. A strange collection of heat and energy… It feels almost like that accursed sun, just without the divinity and encased in metal. It’s keeping its distance but staying just behind me. Maybe three schoenus west. I’d hate to backtrack, but something like a mini sun would make for a great appetizer before I sink my teeth into Canopus’s flesh. Given how big it feels like, I’m sure it won’t be going anywhere fast.
Navigation
[Previous Chapter] <- [You Are Here] -> [Next Chapter]
Table of Content
- Prologue
- Chapter 1 – The Buried and The Forgotten (You are Here)
- Chapter 2 – The Hostile and the Curious
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