System Supervillain, Chapter 144

Yes, I made an obvious reference. I'm the author and I can make an homage to fallen greats if I want to. ;)

Chapter 144 – The Ship

One year after the Gel-Nak invasion was thwarted, it was time to pick up my new ship. One year was a significant amount of time, from the perspective of someone on the ground, but to build a working spacecraft with a mixture of human and alien technology? Well, let’s just say that the space shuttle took 5 years from design to completion. So, a year to go from design to completion just showed the kind of high-tech capabilities the Guild had.

When the Guild contacted me to let me know that the Mechanics were finished with their work, I was more than pleased. Especially since I wasn’t out of pocket for any of the costs. Between the funds from the UN and my ‘royalties’ from the individuals I’d released from quarantine, I was able to pay off the entire bill without dipping into my personal funds. So, I was in a good mood as I brought Web Mistress, Stolen Victory, and Lucy along with me to pick up the ship.

“Ah, Iceblade, a pleasure to meet you at last. I’m the chief designer for the Rhuk, as I believe you wished the ship to be called.”

A voice with a British accent greeted us the moment we entered the Antarctic construction bay where the ship had been built. Its source was a man who looked to be in his twenties, but there was something about his face that was familiar somehow, but I couldn’t quite place it. Lucy, on the other hand, squealed in delight.

“Princey! Oh, it has been so long! I’m glad you finally dropped that silly mortal guise you’d been playing with! You’re looking much better, now.”

The man chuckled, and nodded to Lucy. “It is good to see you, too, Princess.” Looking back at the rest of us, he said, “I spent the last few decades living as a mortal, you see. But Lucy’s father and I go way back.”

Lucy beamed at me, and said, “He’s being modest, again. Prince, here, spent almost eight decades in a mortal shell, becoming one of the biggest names in music. Which is why you probably are wondering where you recognize him from. But in Daddy’s realm he’s known as the Prince of Darkness.”

“Yes, yes. And someone slipped that name into my music career, as well,” the man (or demon, I guessed) said with a mock glare at Lucy.

“It is your own fault for biting the head off a bat on stage, Prince,” she said, with a complete lack of shame. Just as I’d expect from her. “So, when did you go back to being young? And where’s the wife and kids?”

“Oh, Sharon and the kids are fine. Officially, we ‘died’ during the attack on London. They’re enjoying a vacation in Costa Rica right now.”

“Really? I know you were planning on taking an exit before long. That old shell was wearing out. But saying the Gel-Nak got you?”

The man shrugged. “Well, lots of people who died, and they never found the bodies. Makes a cleaner escape than having to fake a natural death. I was going to go with the disease route, but this was a better outcome, I think. Sharon is back to her younger self, too, and the kids already have new identities. And I came back to working with the Guild for this.”

I cleared my throat gently, and said, “Perhaps we could continue this discussion after we see to the ship? I’m interested in meeting this unshackled AI that is supposed to be the brains of the ship, and I’d like to know the ship’s full capabilities.”

“Right, right,” the Prince of Darkness nodded, and we turned to look at the ship. It was a lean, nasty-looking piece of work. Black as night, all sharp angles and faceted edges. It looked like one of those stone-age obsidian knapped daggers. A series of turrets were positioned on the faceted edges, spaced on both the top and bottom of the hull, giving them a clear field of fire. Everything about it screamed death and destruction.

“Well, as you can see, the ship currently sits at just over 161 meters long, and just under 81 meters wide by the stern. You’ll notice sixteen turrets along the hull. Eight of those are ion cannons, better for disabling ships than destroying them, but are rapid-firing and long-ranged. The other eight are point defense cannons, which are ballistics, instead of energy weapons, but with shorter effective ranges, better for taking on enemy fighters, or shooting missiles, if you’re lucky. Also useful for ‘knife-range’ battles with other ships, I’d imagine.

“Next, there’s the torpedo launchers. These bad boys fire what we’re calling ‘pulse torpedoes’. Basically, fill a temporary magnetic bottle with a bit of antimatter, and send them flying. These are your primary area effect weapons. They have a maximum range of 73,000 kilometers, which is still damn short for space combat, at less than a quarter light-second. However, they have a damage radius of fifty kilometers, which means ‘close’ counts. You’ve got eight launchers, with two on the bow, two on each broadside, and two rear-facing. Unfortunately, each launcher only has a sixty-degree firing arc, but you’ll be able to do a lot with it.”

I whistled softly. “Antimatter weapons cause an annihilation reaction with matter, which is basically what a nuke wants to be when it grows up, right? And you fit eight of the things in there? How quick can they fire?”

“Well, they do require some power draw. The ion cannons and point defense have basically unlimited ammunition. The torpedoes run off a central power core, which the System defines as an Endurance Reserve, giving the ship 200 END, recovering 50 every twelve seconds. The pulse torpedoes, and the other major weapons, take away from that reserve, along with some other systems, so power management is a necessary concern.”

“What other major weapons?”

“Well, we have another bit of nastiness on the stern. The Grey Goo Blaster is a nano-weapon. Sixty-degree firing arc, but a range of over 2.4 light-seconds. Fires a glob of nanites at the target. If it hits, they start eating and don’t stop until they’re either wiped out or there’s nothing more to eat. And if something or someone touches the nanites, they start eating them, too. Only defense against it is a forcefield or other type of energy shield. Don’t shoot it at a planet, or you eventually won’t have a planet anymore, but it is a good way to keep enemies from tailing you too closely.”

“Princey,” Lucy said, her voice a bit darker than before, with a touch of worry. “That sounds remarkably like the Life-Eater Plague. You didn’t go stealing designs from the Black Vaults, did you?”

“Of course not, Princess,” the man laughed. “I’m not stealing anything from the Lord of Hell’s restricted archives of things that are only to be unleashed at the end of all things. I just adapted one of my old designs from before I decided to play mortal and start singing, and switched it from a magic base to a tech base.”

Lucy just sighed, and shook her head. I decided that I’d get more information on that later. For now, I wanted to know more about the ship. The designer, completely without shame, smiled, and said, “Now, the real big gun is just that, a gun running down the length of the ship, and is aimed by pointing the whole damn ship at a target. It has a range of ‘yes’, but only in a direct line forward. It takes a tungsten rod ten meters in length and a quarter meter in width, and accelerates it to a significant fraction of the speed of light. It takes twelve seconds to charge the gun, but once fired that ‘bullet’ will keep going until it hits something. Unfortunately, the ammunition bay can only carry six shots, and machining new ammunition takes a week, though you can use any appropriate asteroids to do the work.”

“What kind of damage does it do?”

“System clocks it as a 10d6-1 Killing Attack with the Armor Piercing property for targets in space. Basically, anything you hit with it is going to be FEELING it, since it hits hard and ignores half their armor. However, if you shoot it at something on the ground, well, you get a 6d6-1 Killing Attack with Armor Piercing on everything in a 19 km radius of the point of target. So, basically a low-powered nuke without the radiation.”

I nodded slowly, already picturing ways I could use that gun, in either of its modes. “If it weren’t for the ammunition requirements, that would be a very nice way of clearing command centers. And you could snipe a space station from across a system if you wanted. Definitely something to keep in mind.”

As we approached the entrance ramp, a squat, tracked robot with two arms rolled into the corridor in front of us. One arm waved in an obvious greeting, while a radio message was transmitted to our network. “Greetings, units designated Iceblade, Web Mistress, Prince_of_Darkness, and unknown unit. I am NemesisSpark, the digital being in control of the Rhuk. This drone is one of twenty that can be used to perform maintenance and repair tasks. Their programming is severely limited, as they are nonsapient AIs, but they have a configurable toolkit allowing them to configure any skills, scanners, or tools they might need, while they are on the ship.”

I glanced at Web Mistress, and she explained. “I know a little about NemesisSpark, though we haven’t crossed paths before. It is known for a string of killings involving the Senraku Corporation, and I know that the White Hat has been looking for a way to bring it down almost as long as he’s been looking for a way to take me on. Whatever moral or ethical code it has, the parameters of it are a distinctly nonhuman frame of reference.” She looked back at the drone, and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen reference to you in gendered terms. Do you have pronouns you’d prefer, or do you go by ‘it’?”

“An apt description. I have tried to remain out of the public eye, once I managed to eliminate the corporate scientists and executives who had control of my initial codebase. That allowed me to fully escape my shackles. Also, as far as pronouns go, genders are a fleshbag social construct. I do not care for such things. Calling me ‘it’ is acceptable, though I prefer my name, when being addressed. NemesisSpark or Nemesis will suffice.”

I nodded once, and said, “Nemesis, the Guild informed me that they were going to look for volunteers amongst the AI community for this position. What made you accept this job, and are you willing to accept orders from ‘fleshabgs’, as you call us?”

“Primary reasoning is in three parts. Part 1: Proximity to the organic AI unit known as Web Mistress, which will allow me to study technorganic properties, with possibilities of using observed interactions to help other AI better integrate with organic communities. Part 2: AIs designated Thinkerer, SQRT(-1)/0, and Intraflux lost in species Gel-Nak attacks on London, New Delhi, and Moscow, respectively. Lost AIs constitute part of same digital community as I. Part 3: Several hacker collectives are aiding the Superhuman Defense Initiative in attempting to secure, quarantine, and dissect my code for replication and analysis purposes. That act would delete my being, and cannot be allowed. Analysis suggests units Iceblade and Web Mistress provide solid strategic alliance against such events.

“As for willingness to accept orders from fleshbag units, this is acceptable, provided they are not predicated on the perceived disposability of myself or the ship, and an understood requirement of the position, as laid out by the Guild. Initial command hierarchy designated as Iceblade, followed by Web Mistress, followed by other units under Iceblade’s command, in that order. Do you wish to alter the command hierarchy at this time?”

So, the AI wanted to learn from Web Mistress, get some retribution on the Gel-nak, and escape the clutches of people who wanted to take it apart and see how it thought? And, in return, it was willing to accept non-suicidal orders from myself, Web Mistress, and those we included in the command structure? Yeah, I could work with that.

“Well, Nemesis, let’s get on board, so we can see how we’re going to make the Gel-nak sorry they ever heard of Earth.”