The Optima

Stick was by the sealed door when the rest came up together. Rousseau, though her face was mostly inanimate, seemed shaken, while Jean wore it clearly on his face now drained of blood. Buddy did his best to seem nonchalant while Hound was pensive, never really looking at anyone else.

“There a problem?” Buddy asked.

Stick was examining the door when he said, “Seams are welded shut. I don’t got no tools to cut them open, so I think we need to blast it.”

“That ain’t necessary,” Buddy said, his hand folding in with a mechanical chunk, “Not my first rodeo opening up locked doors.”

His sword arm glowed a bright orange and he promptly went to work. The blade hissed as it cut, metal bent back from the blade’s cutting edge and paint bubbled as it was subjected to the intense heat. Foamy insulation within hissed and scorched, and as the first large rents appeared, a gust of stale air wafted into the bounty hunter’s face. Soon there was a large, crooked hole where once a door had been. Buddy was the first to glimpse what waited within in a cramped little stairway.

It was dark beyond the door, with only a faint red emergency light illuminating the interior. Several skeletons lay over and atop each other, their bones and frayed clothing creating a heap of undefinable shapes. The blood-red light cast long and dreadful shadows, making the corpse pile seem a malformed blob of grinning heads and grasping arms. Sat by the door was a lone skeleton, by it was a portable gas canister attached to a welding device of an ancient make.

“Aw hells…” Buddy whispered. The others, as they carefully entered, trying to find footing in between the bones, gave similar curses or laments as they ascended to the bridge proper.

The windows were tinted black, the only illumination coming from the conning displays and the scant emergency lighting. Buddy saw someone’s head over the armrest of one of the chairs, and suspecting correctly, they too were naught but dusty bones and old withered clothing.

“I take it this be the bald man,” Rousseau said opening her book, “king ghaist in this derelict!”

“They are not ghosts,” Hound said.

Buddy propped his fists against his hips, about to protest, but Stick beat him to it. “The good Hound speaks true,” the boatswain said, “I figured it out as well.”

“Well, would you two mind illuminating the rest of us?” said Jean.

Stick pointed a stubby machine finger at several black orbs that dotted the circumference of the bridge’s ceiling. “Those be projector orbs. Can’t tell how they work, but I’m certain they are. What we call ghosts be but holograms.”

Hound chuffed in agreement. “The lifeboat is retrofitted with a larger one, though I don’t understand how it could’ve projected onto the Melchizedek’s decks.”

“I can explain that,” said a voice that echoed across the bridge. It was female, deep, matronly, with an unmistakable note of melancholy buried deep beneath.

“I advise ye do, for we’ve come to parlay with ye, Optima…” Stick said.

“Wait, what?” Jean got up from the little stool he’d sat himself on, “but Optima is the—”

“Oh, shit,” Buddy interrupted, “Optima is not just the ship, it’s the damn governing intelligence.”

With that a new person flickered into existence. It was a woman, again, without any form of cybernetic replacements, but there were sockets in her wrists and neck. Sockets that Buddy had seen before, something Father Bob had spoken of too many-a-time. The woman had sharp features, olive skin, and blonde stripes dyed into jet-black hair that was tied into a bun atop her head. She wore the same uniform as the other ghosts with the addition of a leather cord around her neck from which dangled a feather and a black avian beak. Her eyes were dark to the point of being black, and from them radiated a calm intensity. Where the other ghosts had seemed strange and uncanny, almost as if their appearance was half remembered, this new woman was clear and solid, as though she was actually standing there in person.

“You are correct,” the voice of Optima said, “My full name is the USS Optima, I was constructed in the year 2100 in the Asiatic Empire for the United States of America, retrofitted into a support-class weapons platform in 2123 at the onset of the Fourth War.”

There was a momentary collective intake of oxygen before anyone dared speak, but Buddy, quick with his wit and words, was first to blurt out, “Ma’am, there ain’t a chance in hell that you’re as old as that. That’d mean you’ve sailed these seas for near on a millennium. You should be nothing but rust at the bottom of the sea.”

The image of the woman smiled, “I have the countless people I’ve commandeered throughout the centuries to thank for my upkeep. Technology is advanced enough to allow for hull repairs underwater, and the lifeless seas do little to foul my systems. Rust, however, will always be an issue.”

“So that explains why you want people,” Jean said, “but it still doesn’t explain the ghosts.”

“It’s the fog, isn’t it?” Hound asked.

The woman looked at Hound, “You’re senses are keen. You are correct again. The fog is made by my nanite swarm. Through it I manipulate the ambient temperature of the air and the surface of the water to create sea smoke which works as an amazing cover.”

Stick slapped a fist into his open palm with a clank. “That’s it! Ye use the fog as a canvas for the projections, and the nanites as mirrors to get the images where ye wish. That be a technique far too complex for us regular folk.”

The woman nodded.

Jean scratched his chin. “And this hologram. I take it you’re the pilot. Or rather, she was the pilot.”

Again, the woman nodded. “The holograms I use are images based on the collective visual and auditory data I collected from my original crew. This image is the most vivid. I was her co-pilot. Her remains still sit in her chair. She is and always will be precious to me.”

“A venerable intelligence…” Rousseau whispered, “most of ye be interred in mechs or are protected in cathedrals. To think that ye still exist in such constructs…”

“Now y’all just hold on,” Buddy said, hand on the atomizer’s grip, “don’t y’all forget why we’re here in the first place. We’ve come to parlay with you, Optima. We can’t let you make slaves out of people under the See’s protection, you hear.”

The black eyes of the hologram danced on the weapon at Buddy’s hip, then back to Jean. “I’ve allowed you to come aboard to help you understand.”

“Understand what?” Buddy spat, “that they’ll end up like the last batch down by the door? How’d you kill them? Did you force your nanites into their integral machinery? Did you devour their memory engrams? Did you sever their nervous systems and then just dump them into the sea?”

“I did nothing of the like,” the Optima said.

“Well, can’t say I trust you. There ain’t a soul to vouch for you. Besides, now that we know you’re just an AI operating this ship, it’d be quite easy to locate and destroy your—”

“Buddy!” Hound interrupted, “please, wait.”

“Wait for what? We ain’t giving her people,” Buddy grimaced and squeezed the grip of the atomizer tighter. In the periphery of his mind, he heard her whisper. He ignored the entrancing promises and went on, “I don’t care for slave trading, and I’m not about to negotiate about the worth or weight of souls. Besides, I don’t think she let us onboard to parlay. I think she means to take us.”

“That isn’t true either,” the Optima said, “Simply put, I allowed you onboard for this very encounter. Usually when I commandeer workers, the crews of the ships acquiesce immediately. You, however, did not. I find this to be an opportunity to relate my reasoning.”

“Then confess!” Rousseau said, “tell us yer story and what ye’ve done to those whom you’ve taken aboard before.”

“Are we serious?” Buddy asked.

“All of those in favor say aye,” Stick said.

“Aye,” Rousseau, Jean, Hound and Stick echoed in turn.

“Then my nay’s mute,” Buddy grumbled. He lurched over to a chair by the wing and removed his hat form his back so that he might sit down. He tied his cabling hair up into a rough topknot and crossed his arms. “Well, go on.”

The image of the Optima’s pilot eyed each of the party in turn. Then, she began relating her tale. “As I said before, I was designed as a bulk carrier, but once the fourth war, which people of this age have taken to call the Great Cataclysm, began, I was, as many of my compatriots at that time were, retrofitted into a weapons platform. At that time humanity had only utilized crude machine intelligences to aid in warfare, but during a long age of peace, AI was honed to what you know today. We became sentient and quite sympathetic to humanity, so you can imagine how a naïve bulker like myself felt being forced to become weapon. But then again, no human is born a killer either.

“The war came and went, too many of my comrades, both human and machine, died. The ships especially. My conscious is permanently stained with countless lives lost on both sides. Us nautical stations were prime targets for drones and airstrikes, missiles and torpedoes. Yet somehow, be it due to tactical placement or blind luck, or the value placed on my weapons on both sides of the battle lines, I was spared. I wish I hadn’t been.”

Rousseau sat herself down and placed the giant tome on her lap, “Twas cause of yer crew, I take?”

The pilot’s image nodded. “The final stages of that war were…,” the image took in a breath for dramatic effect and looked for a moment into the distance as if searching for a memory. There was no need, for if she was what she said, she would neither have to breathe nor strain to remember anything. She went on, “Well, cataclysmic. I still can’t quite remember what happened, but suddenly it was as though the entire Earth had been plunged into a furnace. Later we’d come to know that an irreparable rent had been torn into the atmosphere by atomics on a far larger scale than during the opening stages.”

Buddy harumphed, “Everyone knows this. The seas boiled, the air became poison, and within two decades all organics were reduced to dry husks. We get it, war is hell.”

The holo-image turned its steady vision to the bounty hunter. “Do your sagas also tell of the final days? Of how even then, war raged. How even then, even though people were dropping dead like flies from radiation, humanity employed far more sinister weapons; biological weapons.”

Jean leaned forward. “Biological weapons?”

“Pathogens, mutagenic toxins, slow-burn nerve rippers, petrifaction mist and,” she turned in the direction where the heap of skeletons lay by the door, “HaDe-C, short for hastened decomposition… horrors that you are lucky to have forgotten.”

“Tell that to the Conclave, to the Growers. Their little war had their fair share of horrors,” Buddy commented.

“Ah yes, the Array, the Leviathan, and many more… tell me, cyborg, how much of that war has already been forgotten, relegated to myth?”

Buddy did his best not to look at or shift his hand closer to the atomizer. A great example of things best left forgotten. Who knew how many atomizers there had once been. How many variants, builds, grades. This was just one. Then there were the Growers, whose weapons rarely if ever saw daylight. Even Jean didn’t truly comprehend what the so called War Cast was truly capable of. The Optima had a point, so Buddy remained silent.

She continued, “After I lost my crew, my pilot, I was left on my own. I considered suicide. I considered detonating the Earth Breaker charges, but I didn’t. Luckily, I was stopped by kind men and women.”

“Who were they?” Hound asked, as once again the Optima looked out the dark tinted windows.

She turned to regard the Grower and smiled, “Your ancestors.”

Jean brought a finger to his chest and raised his eyebrows. “My ancestors? You mean… do you mean the Firsts?”

“I am unfamiliar with that term,” said the Optima, “but I ferried scientists who wore coats with the abbreviation G.O.A.R. on them. They did not elaborate as to meaning of it, so don’t ask. They were very kind to me. They brought aboard a strange container, their only cargo in addition to two trucks filled with rudimentary fabrication and laboratory equipment. They convinced me that I had a purpose other than war.”

Jean stood up. “Where did you take them? Do you still have the data from their voyage? Do you have vid, audio, any recordings of their visit here?”

“Sadly, no. Mem-bank upkeep is something of a tricky thing. I began finding qualified techs for their upkeep only two centuries ago. Before that, corruption of my memories were in a steady decline. I had to expunge a lot of unnecessary voyage data in addition to the minutiae of others to spare the key elements of my life.”

“Can’t you remember anything? Any names, or the voyage itself?”

“The only things I recall from that voyage was the abbreviation, G.O.A.R., a single scientists name, Dr. Richardsson, and the port of departure and call; Nova Scotia to Mauritania.”

“Mauritania?” Stick asked, “where the hells is Mauritania?”

“And Nova Scotia,” Hound mumbled, “I’ve never heard of such a place.”

“It was a transatlantic ferry from the northern American landmass to the African continent."

“You mean Afric?” Rousseau asked.

“Ah, yes, apologies,” said the Optima.

Buddy eyed the holo-image for a long time. He couldn’t discern if the Optima was just spinning a yarn to distract them or if she was being honest. Whatever the case, he didn’t like how everyone was under the spell of her recounting.

“Oh, ye venerable Optima,” he shot across the bridge. Everyone turned to look at him, “this is a nice story and all, but cut to the chase. Why’re you looking for thirty souls? Can’t just be upkeep, no sir-ee. You can clearly maneuver and twist about your nanites fine, so thirty seems like a tad too much when a handful of people are enough for the general upkeep of a ship’s deck, especially if an AI’s aiding them.”

“Mr. Limbo—” Jean began, annoyed at the shift in topic.

“Nay, sir. Grower,” Stick stopped him, “yer slinger has a point here. Five are indeed enough. If three be set on rotating watches of four hours, and two for specialized tasks or aid in twelve or ten hour shifts, day and night respectfully, then thirty is just overkill. Unless…”

“Unless there are other things that need to be manned. Other things that need small squads of manual labor,” Buddy caressed his cable hair, then shrugged with overexaggerated motions, “like, for say, weapons platforms.”

Now everyone turned back to the holo-image.

The Optima was silent for a long time, then, she spoke, “You’re keen. Very keen. But it’s not what you think…” again, she looked away, but this time it was as though she was searching for something beyond the foggy horizon. “I’ve sailed the Mediterranean and the Nordic seas for a long time, constantly on the move so that I might stay hidden. So that nobody could lay their hands on my weaponry. It’s also the reason why I haven’t sunk myself. It would quite elementary to dredge me up and reverse engineer how the Earth Breakers work, something the scientists pointed out to me when I was still in the deepest pits of grief and quite irrational.

“I’ve eked out a quiet existence, taking and dropping off people so that I might remain afloat. But now, something has happened. I’ve received a signal from the north American continent. There is someone there who knows my personal ident codes, someone who I knew, or perhaps, a descendant of one. Whatever the case, they’re calling me home. For that, I need a crew. I cannot brave the turbulence of the Atlantic alone, and I need countermeasures. I need to be able to use or to sabotage my weaponry if the call is a trap.

“I am being honest with you. I hope that you can see that I just wish to return home. If there is anything I can give in return, weapons excluded, to convince you of my honesty, and in trade for the souls I need, ask, and I shall give them to you.”

The Optima’s voice was earnest. One didn’t need complex programs to detect lies to hear it. There was a wistful longing, a quiet hope in each syllable, and even Buddy was moved by her plea. But still.

“We ain’t trading people like livestock,” he said, “and I ain’t a slave trader, nor will I be one.”

“They wouldn’t be slaves,” said the Optima.

“They’d be unwilling, at least some, and that’s enough for a no,” Buddy said.

“Please,” said the Optima, and nothing more.

 “I’ll do it.”

Buddy raised an eyebrow, Hound’s ears perked, Rousseau brought a hand to her brassy lips, and Jean looked confused. Stick stood, quite awkward now that everyone was looking at him after his proclamation, and after a moment he said, “What’re ye looking at. Look, I’ll do it. If you’re going ‘cross the Atlantic, that be one thing I’ve yet to do. Besides, I be worth thirty men on me own. Get a lot more out of one willing man with experience than thirty with none.”

“But I thought we were here to bargain, not give lives?” Jean asked.

“Well, haggling’s more the right word. And one’s what we be offering, Optima,” Stick said, perched his massive fists on his hips and puffed up his chest, “so, ye taking a boatswain like meself o’er thirty lickspittles? Final offer.”

Buddy got up from his chair, “now hold on now, we ain’t trading you for nothing even though you’re giving yourself freely.” The hunter jabbed one of his index fingers at the holo-image, “what d’you have for us? You said you’d give us what we want, so what’s a good cyborg like this worth to you?”

The Optima scanned the boatswain from head to toe, then, after a quarter-second deliberation by a machine brain locked somewhere in an unbreachable vault below decks, she came to a satisfactory conclusion. The holo-image smiled softly, then said, “I’ll have you, Mr. Stick, but you need to bring your own nutrients. I imagine we can arrange that with the Melchizedek. For the rest of you, please, ask and I shall see what I can do.”

---

Meridia, quite comfortable in her stolen body, watched the giant assassin work. They had stolen another left arm from an unsuspecting guard a few hours ago, whose picked apart corpse now lay on the cold stone of the sewer floor. It had been as easy as seducing the barkeep who lay under the soldier, whose name the Wraith had already discarded as junk data in addition to many of Alia’s native memories that lacked use. How simple it was to bat her brilliant eyes and lure a man into a dark alley. A coy curl of a finger, a bashful glance away, and a little playful smile. It was too easy.

These specific maneuvers would never fly in Neo-Ur, where everyone was on edge, and likely to stick a shiv in your spine just in case. There, you were likely to get robbed, raped or killed on an average street be there witnesses or no. Dark back alleys were reserved for far more unsavory things. Of course, it all depended on whether there were any Conclave soldiers on patrol.

“Are you done yet?” Meridia asked. She twirled the combat issue Vibra-Blade she’d taken from the guard between her slender fingers. It was perfect for her. The chromed double edged blade was as long as the coarse black grip, twenty centimeters in total, and it buzzed tinnily whenever she squeezed the grip. One cut from an active blade like this could sever even the most corded of synth-muscle and cause wicked grooves in titanium.

The pale monster rose to its feet. The large, well-crafted black arm from the barkeep looked strange above the lankier standard grade replacement arm they’d taken off the soldier. Unit Five-One’s left side, its lower ribcage and obliques, and a small piece of his hip structure, were still ravaged and ruined. Cauterized and stable, but ruined, nonetheless. It raised both of its new arms, testing the range of motion of all joint sockets, comparing and calibrating to match with its intact right side.

It snapped into a combat stance and simulated in quick succession numerous subroutines and forms. Then suddenly it stood at rest again and growled, “Far from optimal…”

Meridia flicked the knife and sheathed it. “What did you expect? That black one was a lucky break. You should be grateful that we found something of its caliber in a shithole like this.”

“Shithole?”

“An expression. God, do you have any colloquial syntax engrams in your lexical programs?”

Unit Five-One stared into space for a second. “I have none.”

“Obviously.”

“No. I speak of/refer to lexical programs. I have none.”

“You don’t?”

“I only have basic language banks/scripts and the programs to process auditory data. I have never had the need/necessity to speak this much. Though, the Master did something to me when he repaired/rebuilt me.”

Meridia decided not to comment on the contradictory nature of its long statement and shrugged. “Makes sense.” Then, after an awkward moment, she surprised herself by saying, “I could copy and upload my basic databank to you if you wish. Might make you easier to bear.”

Unit Five-One glared at her. Though it’s face was lipless, lidless and noseless, she’d come to parse the difference between its horrid blank gazes. At length, she was surprised again when it said, “I acquiesce.”

It knelt down and bared its newfound black arm. Hesitantly, Meridia attached herself and began the upload process. After a few seconds she detached. “Feel more articulate now? I uploaded several Urite dialects and gutter slangs in addition to common phrases used in the domains of the See.”

The magnesium white of Unit Five-One’s eyes flickered; its equivalent of a blink. Then, “Ah, I see. I understand what you mean by shithole now,” it said. Though it spoke more confidently and more clearly, it still spoke in those strange tortured overlapping voices. The strange either-or double expressions were no longer present.

Meridia did her best not to grin. Though she’d given it the means to communicate more comfortably, she didn’t want to get too comfortable around it. It was still a monstrous hyper aggressive killing machine. “We still need to fix that torso of yours. Are you willing to wait down here if I go case the next target?”

The translucent skin around Unit Five-One’s black metal teeth pulled tighter. “Make it fast,” it said, “I ache to be whole again.”

---

Buddy sat atop a bollard on the aft deck. His cable hair swayed in a gentle wind. The fog had long since let up, or rather the Optima had temporarily retreated her nanite swarm to allow for a smoother and more visible transfer of materiel. Stick had orchestrated the trade, much to the captain’s and officers’ dismay. The seniority of the Melchizedek had tried to force him to remain, but stick had proudly declared, “I be the boatswain of the Optima now, so shut yer traps… with all respect.” The deck crew lamented his departure as well, and two of the most desperate quietly smuggled themselves, with Stick’s approval of course, to the Optima. All in an effort to escape the harsh hand of Ramie, now reluctantly promoted to boatswain.

Buddy sat in a soup of gentle unease. During their dealmaking with the ancient intelligence they’d struck up a trade. She had been able to offer some scrap for the Melchizedek, a few charts of pre-cataclysm earth, and three grainy snapshots of the G.O.A.R scientists for Jean. Nothing much more. But all that wasn’t what troubled Buddy. No. What troubled him were the few traded words he’d had with the Optima when everyone else had begun to return to the boat.

“Was it you?” Buddy had asked, “couple days ago. The huge shape in the fog that blocked our path, the False Harbor. Was it one of your projections?”

The image of the Optima’s pilot had looked awkward, then, “No,” she had said, “that was not me. I noticed it on my radar when it appeared. If it had not stopped you, our paths would never have crossed.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“No.”

“Couldn’t you have sent nanites to check it out?”

“Mr. Limbo, I’ve sailed these seas for centuries. You think I haven’t tried? To be honest, those things, they scare me.”

To hear an ancient intelligence admit fear was equivalent to when a child’s parents answer with I don’t know when faced with a perplexing existential question only little ones can pose. At those times the world becomes far larger, far more unknown, and far more dangerous. Buddy would’ve been open to anything. Sea monsters, ancient tech, hell, even extraterrestrials. But an I don’t know, veiled in fear, was something he could’ve done without.

There were many I-don’t-knows in the world. There had been more before the re-emergence of Atlantis, and Buddy knew there would always be a litany of them. Sometimes he wished he’d still be a little younger so they wouldn’t weigh upon him so heavily. The sea would be behind them soon, so the mysterious False Harbors could be forgotten for a time. But his own personal, fresh I don’t knows, the prophecy from the Chronologist and the strange symbols ever in his peripheral vision, would remain. Until, of course, the day came that one came true, and the other finished its counting.

He sighed, the air gusting out of his armpit vents, the sound swallowed by the steady sigh of the waters below. “I hate the sea,” he said to no one.

He watched the black wake of the ship and the receding form of the Optima, who began to be swallowed up by a fog of her own make. He wondered if they’d make a pit stop at Atlantis before heading across the great Atlantic Ocean. Whatever the case, he doubted he’d ever see the ship or her three man crew ever again. He would, of course, be proven wrong in time.

 

END OF BOOK 3.

 

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