Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 18 - Cold Deception
- Bert-Oliver Boehmer
- Sep 2
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 9
“Nobody made contact with these AIs since the machine prophet’s destruction. Or at least no one returned alive to report about it.”
“I know, Commander,” said Linuka. “But they probably didn’t bring one of their own along.”
“Shaajis, forgive me, but your former tutor is not a Dark AI. He returned with your father and me from Lika Zhozkem after we freed the slave AIs.”
“Krrut, Slave AI, Dark AI; these are all labels we gave them. In the end, they’re all Isonomih, 99% identical machines. Any difference in behavior depends on whoever abused them last. Besides, Tswa sni sni does not enjoy his current status as ‘freedom’. He feels like a prisoner.”
Cha Dzeeny looked at the storage system: a matte black refurbished memory unit, near invisible inside the Hikshuur’s dim cold storage, except for a single blinking light showing it was operational. Linuka had asked Cha to accompany her here.
Tswa sni sni had requested his consciousness to be kept ‘alive’—his own words—by running the limited compute cycles of the unit at maximum speed. Not designed for this abuse, the system could overheat, so they kept it in the coldest environment on board.
She also avoided venturing into the temporary crypt that held the dead marines by herself. The frozen bodies had disappeared, and Linuka’s comrades seemed to have genuinely appreciated her leading the last rites, but the eerie echoes of the dead still haunted this room.
The short corridor leading to the storage was the only space offering some privacy without the shrill sounds of the reactor making each conversation a shouting match. Tswa sni sni’s request for contacting the Dark AI remnants was audacious, and Linuka didn’t dare present it to the marines without running it by Cha Dzeeny first.
“I understand where he’s coming from,” he said.
Most words Linuka heard out of Cha Dzeeny’s mouth were short orders, reprimands, or encouragements for members of his unit. The tenderness with which he spoke about the tutor AI surprised her. Then she understood. Cha Dzeeny’s consciousness had been a prisoner, too.
“How was it in there? Inside the lab system?”
Cha Dzeeny’s gaze avoided hers. “It’s hard to explain. We still had our bodies. Well, they were avatars, but it felt like we still had them. Everyone looked exactly as they really do. Sometimes you just stood there, in an endless white open. Whenever they needed something from us, they’d create a room, like an office or a lab. It was real, yet it wasn’t. It was so clean, sterile, antiseptic, like a sickbay.”
“You could see the others?”
“Oh yes, the operators, too. Longer briefings were usually held by older scientist types. When they needed us to perform simple tasks, we got young instructors, who walked us through the steps. It was clever. They gave us whoever they thought could get us to function best for the magiich tests.”
“They really made you part of the machine, didn’t they?”
“Shaajis, I’ve always been part of a machine. When I joined the Grand Fleet, I knew I played just a small role in a galactic plan. Replaceable, of minor importance. I was fine with it. I knew what I signed up for. But being in that infernal lab system… Spin after spin went by, just standing there, unable to move, but fully conscious. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I understand why your tutor would rather join the Dark AI remnants than spend one more spin trapped in some memory unit.”
The marines had revealed few details about their ordeal. It was the first time Cha Dzeeny had mentioned any.
He held the storage room door open for Linuka. “Shaajis, you must be getting cold.”
Linuka stepped into the corridor and watched him seal the heavy lock. The lock was designed for the raw natural strength of a Traaz, but he made it look effortless. Either the new armored suit he wore was boosted, or the man had regained his brawn just by wearing it—an outfit for a warrior, shedding the shame-drenched jumpsuit of being a lab experiment.
“So,” probed Linuka, “you’re still on board with the plan then? Despite the risks?”
“Shaajis, I don’t mind risks, but I’d like to see a chance for success. Let’s assume the presence of Tswa sni sni prevents the Dark AI from destroying this freighter. We meet with them, either onboard their ship or they board ours. We deliver the AI, he completes the deal about his body—then what? That deal is done. Why would they let us go? Why should they let us live?”
“We need our own deal,” said Linuka.
Cha Dzeeny raised his brows. “A deal with the Dark AI?”
“Yes. Their ships are powerful, but they stole them straight from the Võmémééř shipyards. They lack all kinds of equipment, maybe even basic parts to keep them running. They are scavengers. We could offer them any tech we’re going to find on the diin nursery planet. That little diin seedling is not just there stuck in a planter. There has to be some infrastructure. Real Võmémééř tech on the ground.”
“We don’t know that, Shaajis. The diin might be elsewhere. We don’t even have the exact triordinates yet. I fear we’re offering for trade something we don’t have. Now, I don’t mind a bluff, but for first contact with the Dark AI remnants…”
Linuka frowned. “It’ll have to be good enough. I’m afraid we need more from the Dark AI than simply not killing us. We’ll need them to get us to the hiding place of the diin.”
“You think they’ll come with us?”
“No, we’ll go with them. Oonzu was almost impossible to convince to enter a darkstring considered deadly, and then await a rendezvous with the Dark AI remnants.”
“Can’t blame him, Shaajis. May I ask what changed his mind?”
“The rest of my funds. He took one last payment to get us there, then he’s out. Between everything I paid him, and the equipment we got on Dziilaa Sok, we’re broke. We might have to scavenge ourselves to keep going.”
“Shaajis, I doubt this will endear us to the remnants as their brethren.”
Linuka nodded. They should not reveal to the AIs how desperate their situation was: a rogue group on an unsanctioned mission. She would not repeat the mistake she made with Oonzu, being transparent to a fault. The silicate had helped them, but it had cost her the entire emergency fund.
“But if you want to trade them information,” said Cha Dzeeny, “we could hint that we know about their precious prophet.”
“That’s a bigger bluff than what I proposed, commander. I think it might be dangerous to bring up the violent end of their leader. Even if we could point them toward 4007’s remains, everyone knows his core body was beyond salvage.”
Cha’s eyes darted around the corridor, then focused back on Linuka. “Forgive me, Shaajis. I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?” asked Linuka.
“I was there with your father when he initiated Protocol One. 4007 had evaded destruction and secretly joined us for the mission to the Dark One’s galaxy. We brought that machine consciousness back, along with the other slave AIs.”
Linuka gasped. “The machine prophet… lives?”
“Well, he more or less exists in some system, like Tswa sni sni does. Except his is truly designed as a prison. I assume it’s kept in some secure Assembly archive.”
Father never told her. Kel Chaada had shared his tumultuous past, not just the heroics, with Linuka. She knew about the dark moments, the murder charges, the suicide bomber deployments. But he never told her about 4007 surviving. He must have thought this secret to be too precious, or too dangerous, to be shared with his own daughter.
“Commander,” said Linuka, “you can’t tell anyone about this. And definitely not the Dark AI!”
Copyright © 2025 Bert Oliver Boehmer. All rights reserved. No part of this serialized novel may be reproduced, reposted, or distributed in any form without the prior written permission of the author. The creation of any derivative works (including translations, adaptations, or other transformations) is likewise prohibited without permission. The use of any portion of this material for training or developing artificial intelligence or other machine learning models is strictly forbidden.
Comments