Utopia War

Chapter 3 - Hostile Action

As soon as Mac stepped onto the ship everyone started chattering inside his head at once.

"Everyone, stop," he said "Can we please do this out loud for the benefit of the meat-bodied among us?"

A screen unrolled unto the nearest wall, displaying the perpetually grinning face of the dolphin TheBestAtJumping. Or at least how she looked back before she was a spaceship.

"There's some big secret," said TheBestAtJumping.

"There's no secret," said a hologram, as it snapped into existence beside Mac.

The hologram was of a matronly looking woman, much older than anyone let themselves age nowadays, wearing a poofy pre-singularity Earth dress. This was the avatar of the Proxima Consensus.

"It's simply a delicate matter and I wanted to speak to the two of you together."

"I'm Mac by the way," said Mac to the dolphin on the screen, "Mac Marc Macadamia."

"I'm TheBestAtJummping," said the dolphin.

"Your reputation precedes you," said Mac.

"Well," said the dolphin "I am quite good at jumping."

"You were both chosen," said Proxima, pressing on "Because you're very good at what you do and because you would volunteer for the mission if you knew all the details."

That was the unsettling thing about Proxima; she even knew what you would think about things you hadn't ever considered.

"The situation is this: there is a precursor wormhole router in orbit around the star Kruyuk-k-k. A few thousand years ago it was deactivated by a scientific team from Proxima Ring to protect the fledgling Hive civilization from the dangers associated with an active wormhole router. Just over 200 years ago another team from Proxima reactivated the wormhole router at the request of the Hive."

"And they got stomped by a big slower-than-light jackboot?" asked TheBestAtJumping.

"No," said Proxima "The Hive did the stomping. Since that time they have conquered 5 different inhabited planets."

Mac sucked his teeth.

"The last planet they annexed was Xul, in the star system Uwu. Xul contains a unique biosphere and is the subject of any number of treaties and intergalactic agreements. It also falls under what the other FTL Players would consider our sphere of influence. All attempts to negotiate with the Hive have been met with violence. They would have certainly killed our ambassador had they the capability. I've decided that the Hive can no longer be trusted with access to the wormhole network."

"I see where this is going," said TheBestAtJumping.

"That's correct," said Proxima "I want the two of you to destroy the router. Remove the Hive as a threat."

"One of my neural connections must be loose," said TheBestAtJumping "Because I have no idea why you thought I would be up for attacking the Hive. I'm not a soldier. That's no fun. Count me out."

"We're not attacking the Hive per se," said Proxima, with a coy smile "It's a hostile action for sure but if you perform it properly there will be zero casualties. We need to remove their access to the wormhole network to prevent further loss of life.

"Won't they take that as an act of war?" asked Mac.

"It is extremely probable that they will," replied Proxima, "However, limited as they are to sub-light space travel there isn't a great deal they can do about it. Without access to the wormhole network they'll be stranded in their home system until they develop the technology to leave on their own, and hopefully gain a little enlightenment along the way."

TheBestAtJumping was starting to see the humor in the idea. This was actually going to be great fun.

"Suppose I was in," said TheBestAtJumping "What else would be funny?"

* * *

Human ships typically had two pilots, one machine intelligence and one organic.

The use of having a machine intelligence pilot was obvious. A modern starship was an incredibly complicated piece of equipment. Organic minds are ill-equipped to monitor so many systems and sub systems, think and move in six dimensions, sort through a bombardment of sensor data, and react to tiny changes in circumstances within picoseconds.

A machine intelligence could quite easily pilot a starship on their own, and many did. TheBestAtJump indeed was a spaceship, and able to pilot herself quite expertly. For critical missions, however, she like every other top-tier pilot had an organic partner.

The use of having an organic pilot was more subtle. Living things weren't objectively better than AIs at anything, by every standard of measure the AIs were the clear winners. What organics provided was an alternate perspective. Their reactions, methods of pattern recognition, and other behaviors were markedly different from those of a machine. Properly interfaced with the ship an organic provided more robust information.

That was how TheBestAtJumping saw her co-pilot: a useful but ultimately redundant sensory processing subroutine. A small performance boosting module to be plugged in when she was doing something risky (which was as often as possible).

Mac sat in the co-pilot's chair in the ship's tiny "cockpit". A large neural interface unit was attached to the chair exactly at head level, and Mac relaxed backwards into it. He allowed his awareness of self to be pulled from his body and into the ship.

His perspective shifted to that of the ship. He was no longer sitting in a chair, he was floating in space.

<I'm not seeing any of the ship's systems,> said Mac.

<You shouldn't,> replied TheBestAtJump <You're locked out of them.>

<Why?> asked Mac <I'm the co-pilot.>

<Not of me you're not. My physical brain hardware is inside this thing. The ship is my body.>

<Well my body isn't a sensor module,> said Mac <I'm here because I'm an expert, same as you. Give me something to do or find another co-pilot.>

<Fine.> said TheBestAtJumping <If you're going to be such a big baby about it you can have access to the secondary electromagnetic field manipulators. But I'm going to watch you like a nanny hen and if I get even the slightest whiff of something I don't like with my great big nanny hen nose I'm going to lock you right out and possibly eject you into space. We'll have to see how I feel.>

Mac could feel his awareness unfold like a piece of paper as his perceptions suddenly incorporated the electromagnetic spectrum. He knew instinctively that he could reach out with fundamental forces of the universe as easily as grasping something in his hands.

<See?> said Proxima to the two of them <I knew you two would be fast friends.>

Ignoring her, the silvery thin ellipsoid that was TheBestAtJumping slid with buttery smoothness hyperspatially through the 5th and 6th dimensions, off towards the Uwu system.