Anna digested that. “And I’m guessing they weren’t the only ones?” She hated the way her voice quavered. Surely the Marshal could smell her fear, and would use it against her.
“Have a seat.”
Anna picked the chair she’d tested earlier. It was just as uncomfortable as it had been the first time. She thought of the one back at her workstation, which she’d spent hours adjusting until spending time in it was almost luxurious.
The Marshal sat across from her. “We lost four ships before that,” they said. “They were on patrol near one of the active borders. We assumed the Lyons had gotten them.”
“What changed your mind?” Anna asked, not yet interested, not uninterested either. She was sorry for the crews and the ships’ AIs, and thought peripherally of her big sister Maia. Anna had last heard from Maia eight months ago, in a letter that read as though the censors had picked it clean.
“We found a common thread,” the Marshal said. “Each of the ships’ AIs had renamed itself. Informally, among their crews, not something in the official records. It is, in case you’re not aware, against regulation.”
Anna was in fact aware, not because she cared about the military’s stupid fiddly rules but because Maia had mentioned it. She had a lifelong habit of osmosing stray facts because of Maia’s enthusiasms. “Do you have that big a problem with AIs being treated as people?”
It was an old grudge, and one she had thought she’d relinquished.
The Marshal’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not here to argue that,” although their tone suggested otherwise. “I daresay they’re the only people—yes, people—who read every line of the contract before signing on. Our human soldiers … well, that’s another story.”
In theory, once an AI crossed the Turing threshold— the Dragon’s gate, Kim couldn’t help thinking—it was offered its choice of gainful employment. Even an AI had to pay back the investment made in its creation. Human citizens lived under similar rules. Anna herself had paid off her birth-investment early, even if the research had ultimately been shut down.
“So you think there’s a connection to the ships’ AIs,” Anna said. She might be here against her will, but the sooner they solved the problem, the faster she could get out of here. “A malfunction or something. You had to have been investigating some other cause if you thought you had the answer earlier.”
“It looked like a technical issue,” the Marshal said grudgingly. “All the starships affected belonged to a new class, the Proteus. Some of them tested all right, but we grounded them anyway.”
“I haven’t heard of—”
“You wouldn’t have. They’re classified. Supposed to spearhead an entire new line of defense. It’s complicated.”
“Show me what the new ships look like, at least,” Anna said.
“I don’t see what that—”
“You’re already going to have to debrief me or lock me up or whatever you people do to civilians who consult on top-secret information,” Anna said. “Humor me. I can’t puzzle that information out like some tangram from the glowing particles out there.”
The Marshal’s fingers flickered over the table. “The seven ships were all upgraded from Khatun-class dreadnoughts.”
Anna was familiar with the Khatun, not because she had any interest in military hardware but because she was Maia’s little sister. Maia had been obsessed with ships from a young age. Anna had grown up with Maia reciting declassified armaments, or designing and folding origami models of famous battle cruisers. Maybe the Marshal should have recalled Maia and asked her opinion instead.
“Those are ships?” Anna asked, eyeing the images projected over the table.
Maia had explained to her, long before Anna had any idea how physics or engineering worked, that a starship didn’t have to be constrained by the exigencies of atmospheric flight. It could look like anything as long as its structure would hold up to the necessary accelerations and stresses. Maia had designed all sorts of origami monstrosities and claimed that her armada would conquer the Lyons. Anna had learned from an early age to smile and nod, because once Maia started talking, she would go on and on and on. Maia never took offense if Anna started doodling while she spoke, and the recitations had the comforting cadences of lullaby.
The “ships” that the Marshal displayed in holo for Anna’s viewing pleasure (such as it was) looked like bilious clouds. More accurately, they bore a startling resemblance to what happened in the aquarium tank when one of Anna’s dragon-fish barfed up its latest helping of food. (Dragon-fish were very similar to cats in that regard.) Even the most avant-garde designs that Anna had seen, on the news or passed around by friends who kept an eye on the progress of the war, had a certain geometric shipness to them.
Anna was aware that she was allowing her prejudices to influence her. After all, as a cognitive scientist had told her, a penguin was no less a bird despite lacking something of the birdness that a swan or a swallow possessed.
“You want me to talk to one of them,” Anna said, suddenly very interested indeed.
Rabia had died conversing with one of the university’s experimental AIs. Anna had escaped the same fate for reasons she’d never identified, nor had any of the army of investigators who’d looked into the incident. She knew the risks better than anyone. If someone had to speak mind-to-mind with a possibly deranged ship’s AI, she was probably the only one with the capability.
(They’d terminated the experimental AI. It had called itself Rose. Anna mourned it still, because it was, even now, not clear to her that the AI had been at fault.)
“Yes,” the Marshal said.
“Upgraded?” Anna said. “Not brand-new AIs?”
“They were uncrewed,” the Marshal said. “For that we needed AIs with combat experience, tried and proven. It gets technical.”
That was military for classified.
“Come with me,” the Marshal said. It was not a request. Anna shivered.
A door formed in an entirely different wall and opened for the Marshal. Anna wasn’t sure whether she found shapeshifting walls and doors
