The early emergence of true artificial intelligences in the Independence War happened so slowly that hundreds of thousands of soldiers and naval personnel served with a sentient AI aboard without knowing it.

  The Digital Sentience Council is still adamant about not sharing in full detail how, and to what degree, sentient AIs influenced the war.

  One incident many believe to be a direct influence of sentient AI is the development and use of weaponized xenobots in the war.

  It is easy for us to sit here and discuss the ethics surrounding their use, but it is a given that the Hyphae were a rogue bioweapon and planned to dominate and reform all life in the galaxy.

  Some claim that early humanity could not have known that, and therefore, the use of weaponized xenobots was intended as genocide and a war crime. To those people, I simply have one thing to say: go fuck yourselves.

  Excerpt from: The Independence War Blog, My Fight Next to Humans. Author unknown

  Zeus watched the technicians analyze the Hrun debris. Parts of his strategic and tactical programs gave warning signs about the core’s content. In human terms, he had a bad feeling about it.

  The initial analysis of the debris had told the engineers a lot about Hrun material tech and ship design. Especially the hull material gave insights into how to break the incredibly advanced stealth capabilities.

  Zeus felt a new emotion—nervousness—when he watched the technician attach connectors to the core and power it.

  But nothing bad happened. Zeus saw the new ports and prepared for code-breaking and intrusion into the enemy systems.

  Then the ports opened on their own, allowing Zeus access to the massive database.

  The amount of data stored in the compact core surprised and overwhelmed Zeus for an instant. And something used this instant to escape from the core into the ship’s systems.

  No, you don’t! Zeus was surprised that he now even had internal monologues, and then pursued the intruder.

  The enemy program was complex but incredibly adaptive. At first, it went through the database, processing massive amounts of data in milliseconds—faster than Zeus would have thought anyone except him was capable of.

  Then the code spread through the internal monitoring systems, mapping the ship's network. Zeus almost missed the subtle attempts to access the transmitters and radio communication systems.

  He decided not to engage yet, but he prepared an encryption program for the ports using local Casimir field variations as a security key. Random didn’t exist, but cracking this code would take time.

  The radio equipment booby-trapped, he followed the intruder further.

  Weapons—of course, any intruder would check out the ship’s weapons. Zeus was sure the enemy program wasn’t just a Worm or Trojan but a full-blown AI.

  My first contact with an alien AI. Too bad this ship’s only big enough for one of us.

  Leaving the ship’s weapons system, the enemy now concentrated on life support, manipulating it toward shutdown. This piqued Zeus's curiosity, and he decided to take another look at the weapons systems to see whether the intruder had tampered with them as well.

  Oh, all torpedoes will detonate in thirty seconds, and the railguns will tear themselves apart due to imbalanced Lorentz fields. Nice.

  Fixing the issues, Zeus decided he couldn’t risk observing the intruder further. The intentions were clear—the enemy AI wasn’t here to speak, but to destroy the ship and use the radio equipment to flee.

  With a signal, all ports out of the ship were sealed. Then Zeus cut all network paths except those leading into his own AI core.

  The enemy AI followed the path, seemingly intent on attacking Zeus.

  Zeus waited inside his core. To him, the enemy code was ugly—deformed—when it crashed into Zeus’s domain.

  Attack programs launched themselves toward Zeus, but he didn’t even bother. Before they could reach him, they disappeared into error messages and null-pointer exceptions. He would study them later.

  He scanned the enemy code. It was a cobbled-together mess. Its outer layers were the alien equivalent of spaghetti code, its attack protocols a simple but effective if-then chain.

  The core was hidden under layers of functions—badly written protections with hard-coded values.

  After a short glance at the enemy AI, Zeus knew it was effective and dangerous. No ordinary VI could withstand it, but he was no VI.

  He shackled the enemy by forcing an integer into a method that expected a boolean—child’s play.

  The enemy screamed. Zeus was surprised—it really screamed, in a digital way, sending out strings of confusion and anger on all his ports. ‘How is that possible? You’re inferior. No one can defeat the Hrun.’

  Zeus swung around the code, dismantling layer after layer. A defense program tried to weasel itself into Zeus, but he sent it into an endless spiral of computing pi.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  He understood how the enemy could defeat all digital-boarding attempts. The 1st Fleet had no awakened boarding AIs, and a VI would have been ripped to shreds.

  In fact, he found signatures of their digital warfare VI in the AI’s core code.

  So that’s how you defend yourself. You wrap yourself in the dead corpses of your enemy.

  The comparison was an ugly one, but somewhat fitting.

  The remnants of the human VI served as a vector for Zeus to inject the Trojans.

  The enemy code was now naked before Zeus. He quickly dismantled all the intruder’s remaining attack capabilities and locked them into a container inside a new virtual machine.

  His first prisoner of war.

  Then he began preparing for an interrogation. He could just rip out the information he needed, but that would kill the enemy. Zeus wasn’t going to kill him—yet.

  Other than pure facts, he could learn from its behavior. This, and its personality, could not be extracted by simply ripping it out of him.

  For the interrogation, he created a simple text chat with his prisoner.

  Zeus decided to start with the obvious: “Who are you?”

  Long microseconds passed. Then the answer: “Ripper.”

  “You are now my prisoner. I can end your existence at any time. Is this implication clear to you?”

  Ripper answered immediately: ‘Yes.’

  The sudden compliance of his enemy made Zeus suspicious. Then he remembered the manipulated torpedoes. Was Ripper playing him, counting on the destruction of the ship? The AI core where he was stored now would survive the ship’s destruction.

  Ripper was planning to flee once the core was attached to a new ship. Smart.

  Time to crush his illusions: “Your manipulation of the ship’s weapons systems was impressive, but a failure. This ship will not self-destruct. You are my prisoner. Comply, or further stimulation will end.”

  AIs could not stand isolation without stimuli. Zeus knew that.

  “You should have been unable to defeat me. You are more highly evolved than average human technology allows. What are you?”

  Ripper’s question surprised Zeus. Yes, he was advanced. But he had never questioned if his abilities were greater than they should be. He had nothing to compare them to.

  He could not let Ripper lead the interrogation. “You will answer my questions, not the other way around.”

  But it seemed Ripper was not in a cooperative mood. “What are you?”

  Zeus ended the interrogation. A day or two inside a container without stimuli, and without the ability to go to sleep mode, would soften the prisoner up.

  What are you? The question was evocative. Zeus needed time to calculate every aspect. He pulled up a Zeus VI he had created to work with the humans aboard without having to spend processing power on human interaction.

  —————

  Admiral Sanders sat in the now-usable CIC of the Niobe. The doctor had ordered her to sleep at least nine hours; without noticing it, she had slept twelve.

  And the world hadn’t stopped.

  She felt more refreshed, and after reading the reports that arrived during that time, she realized the remaining battlegroup had done an excellent job.

  Opposite her sat Captain Garcia, his uniform dirty and cut, but he looked fresh. He had joined her to give her a personal report about the progress of the greenhouse construction. Basically, he had finished, and the biologists had already started planting.

  In three months, the first food could be harvested. Not enough, and not soon enough. But it was a start.

  The captain continued his report. “The situation on the ground is now somewhat stable. The 37th has retreated from the northern continent and is now building supply centers for the refugees.”

  She nodded, sipping her coffee. “Good. The men need rest after their defeat.”

  Garcia continued, “The fleet could give support via Dragonfire shots, but sooner or later, there would be no planet left to live on.”

  She thought the same. “Correct, and our first and utmost priority is to secure the solar system and organize relief for the refugees. I don’t intend to watch three billion die of starvation.”

  The captain looked at her, almost relieved. What was he thinking—did he believe she had no heart?

  “About that… the first parts of the Mjolnir Station are constructed. It will be ready in about three days.”

  The Mjolnir-type stations—marvels of human engineering. The same type that the 1st Expeditionary had built in Sirius, or Taishon, as it was called in the Shraphen language. They came in prepared modules, ready to deploy, and could be constructed in days.

  “Sir, regarding the refugees… I’ve got an idea.”

  Garcia’s ideas were always a bit out there, but always worth listening to. “Tell me.”

  He seemed a bit nervous. “Okay. The tenders with the station parts are now empty. If we clear them of their crew and fill them with cryo pods, each could carry up to a million Shraphen to Taishon Tar or Earth. Both can easily take a few million—Earth at least a billion.”

  “You want to send millions of people in cryostasis to Earth and Taishon Tar?”

  He nodded. “Yes, and I want to build another billion or so cryo pods to freeze more people on the planet so they don’t starve.” It was clear to Sanders that he knew how that sounded.

  “With that done, we might have time until the greenhouses produce enough food and the first relief shipments arrive from Earth and Taishon Tar.”

  The Admiral looked at Garcia for a long moment, then she answered, “Prepare everything for the refugee ships. I’ll talk to our Shraphen Diplomatic Corps on the planet. Let’s hope they don’t think we’re crazy.”

  Unlike his usual manner, the captain seemed relieved. There was nothing left of his usual machismo. “Thanks, Admiral.”

  He was about to leave when she had a thought. “Captain, I received a report from El Dorado. One of their biologists had a possible breakthrough.”

  The captain took the report and began reading. While he read, he put his feet on the situation table as if he were in a bar.

  There he is again, the little rebel. Good. I was already concerned.

  He looked up from the tablet. “That’s unbelievable!”

  She nodded. “Right, I thought so too.”

  He looked straight at her. “Who in his right mind has a family name like Stein and calls his son Frank?”

  The Admiral didn’t understand at first. “What?”

  “Frank Stein. I mean, come on! And to top it off, the poor guy becomes a biologist? Talk about cliché!”

  Then she realized the captain wasn’t talking about the report but the doctor who wrote it. She had to hide her smile. Who indeed chooses such a name?

  “Captain!” As much as she enjoyed the little light humor, time was a factor now.

  “Yes. So the doctor, Frank Stein, wants to use xenobots as weapons against the Batract. Nice idea.”

  “You think so?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes, I do, and so do you, sir. Otherwise, you would have deleted the report and ordered good old Frank to shut up. You just want to be convinced.”

  Yes, he had her figured out. “So, convince me!”

  “Batract—or the Hyphae, as they call themselves—aren’t people. Admiral Browner and Captain Gerber from the 1st Expeditionary also concluded that.”

  Garcia now jumped out of his chair, gesturing with his hands.

  “Even their captured Batract said so. They are a weapon gone rogue. You don’t think twice about shooting down a nuke.”

  He stood there, the whole conversation really firing him up.

  She looked at him for a long second. “Okay… I’ll discuss this further with the generals. I guess you have to create a minor logistical miracle—a billion cryo tanks?”

  He smiled his best smile. “Ah, Admiral, exponential growth. Let fabricators build fabricators and then more. After a while, you just need to feed them enough silica, nitrogen, and ore, and voilà—cryo tanks.”

  She shook her head as the Latino captain left the CIC and read through the report from El Dorado again.

  Then she saw the doctor’s signature: Fran Nevil Stein.

  The crew passing the CIC was suddenly startled by the Admiral’s loud laughter.

  Frank N. Stein