They're sending me a present?

The Yule season, for me, has always been more about spending time with friends and family and exchanging gifts than anything else. I know there are quite a few deeply held religious traditions tied to the season, but the key word there is Season. The oldest traditions I've seen in the texts all revolve around the Winter Solstice on Earth that Was, which were only relevant in the Northern hemisphere. Perhaps more important, they were only relevant in Winter, in the Northern Hemisphere, on Earth that Was. Even with the massive scale geoengineering and terraforming projects made so many worlds in the 34 Tauri system habitable, the seasons on any given world rarely matched the old Earth calendar.

Which doesn't actually change most of the religious beliefs associated with calendar dates, or the calendar traditions of getting together with friends and giving each other presents. It's just that "Yule" and "Winter" don't coincide for a large fraction of the people in the verse.

Some of the folk I knew have already started exchanging presents. Lily gave me a pair of hand made mittens, and I got some lovely jewelry from Gray. Quite the surprise that, but much appreciated. There's others, of course. Like the set of custom machined extended fifty cal mags Genni Foxtrot gave me. Which, while quite practical, just shows how well we've come to know each other.

It's the ones you never expect that give you pause. Like when your Commanding Officer sends you a wave to tell you he's "sending you a present."

"I trust you're well, Lieutenant Colonel," Taggart started. Semi formal, which always meant he had something 'special' to talk about.

"Of course, General Taggart, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Respond in kind, of course. I was actually a little curious. We spoke usually once a week over a secure link. Keeping each other appraised of developments above and below each other's respective pay grades.

"I've been looking at your situation reports. All good. Just a little uncomfortable with nesting your operation on a civilian station."

He was right, of course. While I had multiple levels of control over the station and could isolate my own office and communications stack from the KHI operations, there was still a lot of civilian traffic. Someone was going to notice something. I'd noted it myself, but there weren't a lot of options available to me. The surface might be a little easier to secure, but there wasn't a ready made facility I could repurpose to my needs. Not since my needs had grown past what I could easily shoehorn into a safehouse.

"I've got a solution for you," he went on. Maneuvering closer to the point of the wave. "You're familiar with the Kamkamoss class Corvette?"

I was, actually. The Kamkamoss class was a dedicated ELINT ship. The hulls and drive sections were built by Kawanishi Heavy Industries, while the ELINT surveillance and Communications suites were sourced from several very specialized vendors. The Kamkamoss was as hard to spot as an ELINT Matagi, but carried a good deal more kit. The difference between a large lander and a small warship.

"IAV Saule Silencieuse has just finished her shakedown cruise, Sea. Hull number four. I'm sending her to you. Crew's still getting sorted out, but her mission will be under your control. She'll augment the capacity you've already got in place there and will give you a lot more capability than that little Matagi of yours can muster. Details are inbound with the next secure update."

"Thank you, General. This is . . . unexpected." Which was an understatement. While it wasn't unprecedented for a sector chief to have access to an asset like this, they were usually deployed as needed with a self contained crew. The section chief would request the asset and get it only if Command felt it was justified. Then, the asset would remain under her captain's control. They'd execute the mission and move on to the next. To put one of these boats under my direct control?

Completely unexpected.

"Thought you'd like that. She's technically a district asset. You'll have to deal with requests from other commands, but her Captain'll be direct report to you."

"Thank you, General. Don't know what to say."

Taggart chuckled softly, a warm smile on the screen. "Merry Christmas, Seana. "

"Thank you, Tag. And you."

Yup.

Completely unexpected.

Built entirely from exotic materials and improbable numbers.

True to her word, Professor Sinclair, Tawny as she insisted I call her, came through with the mathematical models I'd asked for. What I hadn't expected though, was the sheer volume of data she'd produced based on the information I'd given her. I could understand part of the information she'd sent me but a good deal of it went considerably over my head. Not that much of a surprise. While I'd studied a good deal of math, a Master's in Applied Technology only had to go so far. This stuff? This was so abstract I doubted more than a handful of people in the 'Verse knew how to interpret the raw data.

"Hello, Miss Seana. I know there's a lot of data here to go through, but if you look towards the back of the analysis I put together a chunk that explains it in layman's terms."

Uh huh. Where Layman's Terms is defined as Engineering Undergrad level mathematics. Though, were most of the leading analysis was considerably beyond my knowledge, the compilation at the end was something I could follow. At least, with a bit of effort and reference to a couple of the texts I'd used half a lifetime ago.

"I'm sure you'll figure out what it all means. Though you did ask me to be clear. What it all boils down to is that on a purely modeled basis, the von Neumann Machines have sufficient complexity to support an Artificial Intelligence that could easily pass for sentient. But you know that, 'cause Raids is sentient and she runs on one of the Machine's high end cores."

I could hear a tinge of excitement in the explanatory overview she sent along with the data. More than a tinge, really. More like the almost giddy tone Uncle Elsoph took when he got to talking about one of his research projects.

What was it about genius that made them . . . odd?

"I made Blue promise not to tamper with the data or my message." For a moment, her voice took on a stern tone, like she assumed the big AI was listening in, which he probably was, and she was subtly reminding the big AI to keep his promise. "As you know, there's several different architectural models that can support AI. Raids and the KM series known as Krenshar are both hardware-centric platforms. Oh! I'm sorry. I heard what happened. It's always sad to lose someone like that. There's a distributed model as well, like Blue uses. Blue's kind of everywhere at once. There's advantages and limitations to both models, but you know that too."

I could see that in the diagrams. Raw computational capacity, versus computational speed, versus resiliency, versus survivability, versus latency, versus the minimum platform capabilities required to support machine sentience. All in a great deal of detail.

"As you can see from that last set of diagrams, the Machines have more than enough raw capability to support both hardware-centric and distributed node architectures. I know that's kinda scary and all, but take a look at that last probability vector analysis. See? With the exception of Raids, and possibly her sisters, if she has any, the machines, as a whole, aren't self aware. Not really. The behavior models match up very well with the original non-sentient code base they were running on. It looks like a lot of the safeguards are still in place. Bad side though is that doesn't stop them from following their programming and just killing everyone. After they make lots of other machines. And then more machines. And then send them all to kill everyone."

"If it's any consolation, they won't care that they're killing everyone. They'll just be machines doing what they're programmed to do. At least, um, that is, as long as they don't spontaneously go fully AI like Raids did. I don't know if that'll be bad or not. I'm still working on those models. I promise I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out!"

She signed off, cheerful and pretty as the last time I'd seen her.

The question was whether the news was good or bad. If the machines were non-sentient, there were no ethical questions about taking them down. If they were self aware, the picture changed. It became an ethical choice between the survival of two rival species, for lack of a better word. Would we be able to live in peace with our synthetic children if that was the case?

Part of me very much wanted to believe we could. That people like Lily and AuroraBlue and Blue himself could serve as a bridge between Man and Machine. The other part remembered five thousand years of recorded Human history. Half the time, w couldn't bridge the distance between people. How could we ever bridge the difference between organic and synthetic forms of life?

Just what I needed to be thinking about going into the Yule season.

Rung Tse Fwo Tzoo Bao Yo Wuo Muhn.

Inorganic Minds

Models of what may yet be

A future unclear

Rumor and innuendo

"I've heard a somewhat disconcerting rumor, Colonel. Care to shed some light on it for me?"

Colonel Silvermane was working on her second cappuccino, taking in the afternoon sun at a small cafe on Beaumonde. The site was't technically special, but it was yet another new venue. Each time we'd met it was in a different location, usually with several stops in between on our respective itineraries. It was probably more caution than we needed, but old habits die hard and some of the habits existed to make it harder to die.

"Which rumor would that be, Major? That I'm seeing a fighter pilot on the side, or that the Loyalists want me dead?"

I had to laugh. Neither of those were actually rumors, so much as obfuscated facts. The Loyalist faction still had her on their list of 'people to deal with when we gain more power,' and she had been spending some intimate time with one of the squadron commanders. But neither of those facts were especially disconcerting or even surprising.

"Neither of the above?" I answered over my own latte. "No, I was thinking about the one wherein you'd volunteered the 1st Marine Raiders to relieve the 9th Dragoons in Antioch's southern conflict."

Her features hardened for a moment before giving me a curt nod of acknowledgement. "Yes. That. Not a rumor, Sea. The 1st isn't cut out for the duty they have us on now. The 9th is almost ready to rotate out of the conflict zone and we're well suited to kind of operations they're running on Antioch. We're not military police. We're Marines. We kill people and break things. It's what we do best, and we're not doing a lot of it playing babysitter at some Gorram politician's behest."

She was right. The 1st Marine Raiders were a Marine unit. Space-mobile Light Assault Infantry, trained and intended for rapid deployment to take specific objectives then either evac or hand off to a conventional unit. The 'play policeman' patrols they were doing on several Rim colonies under Martial Law really weren't their forte. They hadn't even been especially well suited to 'show the flag' patrols. Marines, as Cory said, killed people and broke things. Parades weren't their specialty.

"Antioch though? The Southern Conflict has been going on since before the Unification War. Warlords fighting each other over terrain no one else would want, and High Command never committing enough forces to assert any kind of control. You really want to through the 1st into that mess?"

She didn't, I knew. No one would ever accuse Corrine Silvermane of being a coward, but she wasn't one of those commanders who treated their soldiers as expendable. Though Alliance ground force doctrine usually included 'throw more men at it,' some commanders shied away from human wave tactics in favor of, well, real tactics. Silvermane was one such, which was possibly one of the reasons the Loyalists didn't like her so much.

Her unit, on the other hand, seemed to appreciate the fact that they had a better Success/Casualty ratio than most other units.

"It'll be what it is, Sea. Whether the 1st rotates in or not is up to High Command. I put it out there. They can take it or leave it."

Take it leave it. That seemed to be a common thread weaving itself into my life right now. For better or worse, it was what it was.

Take it or leave it

Some things never seem to change

It is what it is

Interservice rivalry

"Because the flotilla commander is a risk averse coward and would rather keep fleet assets safe, than risk them protecting Nóngcūn hóuzi out on the Rim. No offense."

"None taken."

Corrine's opinion of the Flotilla Commander based on the Sun Tzu was, to understate, less than glowing. They had an odd relationship. While Silvermane had command of the 1st Marine Raiders based mostly aboard the cruiser and, by virtue of some political decision, overall command of how the Alliance dealt with the colonies in their patrol sector, the Navy units reported to the flotilla commander. The man wasn't even a Flag Officer. Not really. He'd been appointed after the Loyalist fiasco, more for his adherence to 'core Parliamentary principles' than his ability to command a battle group.

From what I'd been able to discern, none of the patrol frigate commanders especially liked him, the captain of the Sun Tzu didn't like him, and Colonel Silvermane decidedly didn't like him. But he was in charge of the Fleet elements in the region. So the ships went where he told them to go, which wasn't always where the Colonel wanted them to go.

She understood my concern though. With Hale's Moon and several other colonies under Martial Law, we were more reliant on the Alliance for defense against Raiders, Reavers, Pirates, and politicians, than otherwise. But that meant the Alliance forces had to be in position to help us when the time arose. While nearly half of the 1st Marine Raiders were deployed to patrol duties between the frigates and the small patrol boats, Flotilla Command was doing their part to 'minimize risk, increase efficiency, and lower coasts' to the squadron. Which translated to them rarely being where we needed them to be when we needed them to be there.

Quite frustrating to a professional soldier.

Less so to a spook.

The rouge "Alliance" ships we'd encountered on the Rim, Pirates of a form, really, were in some ways more of a thorn in Fleet's side than ours. I hadn't pursued the possibility that they were a quasi false flag operation, intended to make it look like the Alliance were raising hell again or were incompetent to keep others from doing same in their name. Sadly, something else on my long list of 'Really need to look into that's.'

It was an odd cover though. If they were really rogue, it made sense. Pretend you were Alliance and hope the locals fell for it. When they did, you'd have cooperative targets who may not know they were being had, and might not report it if they did. The danger, of course, was when the Alliance finally got tired of your detarame, they would come down on you like the proverbial ton of bricks. Their "justice" would be swift and most likely fatal. Also, if the locals didn't buy your fake ID's they'd be inclined to fight all the harder.

Black Ops? Possible, but to what end? It was hard right now to tell where things were going with the situation. There was pressure both directions: to back out and let the locals handle their own problems, or to move in full force and put an end to it. There were political advantages and disadvantages no matter which way the die rolled. Good or bad depended on which faction was asking the question and when.

It was something I'd look into. Something I might have an answer to the next time Silvermane and I met. Assuming I had time to look. Though, I had to admit there was the temptation to do some troubleshooting of my own.

Home is where you hang your holsters

The flight back to Hale's Moon had a couple of minor detours that added considerable time and distance to the trip, but were certainly worth it. Now, with Tiny Dragon handing me my ass in a game of Go, Kari curled up asleep on the couch in the main compartment, and two hundred odd kilos of fresh coffee beans in the hold, I could relax.

The fist stop on Ariel was, honestly, by far the more important of the two. While 'Brina and I talked to each other over a Cortex link every couple days, it wasn't the same as seeing each other in person. No matter how good haptic feedback systems got, they were no substitute for the real thing. I'd missed Sabrina's touch. A lot. I'd married her, after all. Most married couples liked to touch each other. Kind of went with the whole long term relationship thing.

This stretch with 'Brina on Ariel had it's stress. I'd be lieing to deny it. But she was happy working in the Research and Development labs, and I had the luxury of not having to hide my day to day work from my wife. We saw as much of each other as we could, which, admittedly, was a good deal more than most married couples in the active Alliance military got.

Still, it wasn't really long enough. Even extending it to give AuroraBlue and Kari a chance to get ashore for a little while didn't give us enough time together. Not that I could complain. We'd learned to cram a lot of quality into very little time. Which, I suppose, was what most married couples in the Alliance military did too. Make your shore leave count.

The second stop, on Surfer's New Paradise to refresh the coffee supply, was even shorter. Uncle Sobi had pulled together half a dozen or so roasts and packed them into sealed containers so we wouldn't have to worry about them going bad. Roughly two hundred kilos in all, including a couple of my favorite blends and a kilo of Kopi Luwak for my personal stash. I wasn't going to ask exactly how Sobi's clanmates managed to keep a population of Civets on their island paradise. Though, as I understood it, the environment inland from their beach enclave wasn't unlike Indonesia as it existed on Earth that Was.

He'd also included a few mixed cases of quality liquor to stock the new bar we were fitting out on the Orbital. Hadn't managed to quite convince him to come back and run it for us, given how things had turned out at Fook Yoo's, but I'd made the offer and he was offering up some premium ethanol to the endeavour.

I know Sobi was curious about AuroraBlue, and probably Kari too, seeing how her origin was more than a little enigmatic, but he didn't intrude. Wasn't his way. But he did give Kari a bottle of locally made rum when he came aboard Wave Equation to make sure the cargo got stowed right. Also gave AuroraBlue something in a gift wrapped box, and asked her to promise not to open it until Yule. She just nodded. Sobi'd heard that she'd stopped talking and just smiled, leaning down to give her a kiss on the cheek and a quiet "Ya'll take care o' yer kinfolk, ya'hear?" before heading out to give us clearance to boost.

Fortunately, nothing major had gone down in our absence. Except a raid. But that was pretty minor. The Militia had mustered up just fine and handled the problem before the Alliance patrols could even show up.

Another win for us, and a bit more pressure on the Alliance to back out and give us our colony back. Part of their justification for Martial Law was that we weren't handling things locally, which was getting show to be a lie. We could handle things just fine.

Colonel Silvermane'd admit the Alliance had no business keeping boots on the ground, while Liaison Officer Lionhart was a but more sacrosanct about it. She didn't strike me as the sort of bureaucrat who'd stick her neck too far out which made me think she was as in the dark about the reason as the rest of us.

At least officially.

Didn't matter though. Things were what they were, and we'd make do with them. We always did.

Back to school

The Jesuit University of New Fresno was, perhaps surprisingly, one of the premier pure research universities in the 'Verse. They specialized in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and cosmology. All related fields. The Jesuit order had a history that dated back at least a thousand years, to well before the Exodus. There were quite a few, often confusing, sometimes contradictory, stories about their origin and purpose. In contrast to what some would expect, given their origin as a Monastic religious order on Earth that Was, their universities had a reputation for strong academic values.

Still didn't quite explain why Professor Sinclair was here teaching. Not when she already had tenure at Feynman and at least two others: at 26. But here was where she was, so here was where I was - prowling the grounds of a premier university campus trying to find the Upton Hall of Mathematics.

I found Professor Sinclair in one of the lecture halls, giving a lecture on some aspect of advanced mathematics that was more than a little over my head. No surprise really. I'd had a solid formal education, but even with a Master's in Applied Technology the frontiers of theoretical mathematics were well beyond what most of us could even comprehend.

Forty minutes later, and I was waiting in her office waiting for her to come out of 'Lecture' mode. The professors here had a long tradition of wearing monastic robes that looked like they'd come from an Abby on Earth that Was during the medieval period. The reason was lost to history, though there was an official story that the robes took the focus off the Professor's presence to let the students concentrate on the content being presented. With Sinclair, the robes were probably more of a requirement than a tradition.

I'd seen holos of the Professor long before I came to New Fresno, but when she tossed the formal robe covering a t-shirt and shorts aside and settled into the seat behind the large wooden desk, I realized the images hadn't done her justice. A cascade of red hair, intense green eyes, a perfect face. Professor Sinclair wasn't just 'very pretty' as she appeared in the images. She was stunning. Teen-age fantasy poster model stunning. Invade your dreams stunning.

Without the robes, most of her students wouldn't have been able to concentrate on the lecture.

"Please, Colonel, take a seat," she said, cheerfully, motioning me to one of the leather covered chairs. "Sorry the lecture went a little long. Did you have a nice flight?"

It took a second for the fleeting "Elle est belle" moment to pass before I settled comfortably into a chair. "Please, Professor. Just Seana. No one calls me Colonel."

She actually blushed a moment, then laughed. "Oh! I'm sorry. I forgot that's a secret. Deal. You've got to call me Tawny though, ok? 'Professor' is just too stodgy. Coffee? I'll make some fresh."

I nodded yes and watched as she made coffee in an antique press that was probably older than the trees that had gone into her desk. Sinclair was known for her work in Crypto, but that wasn't why I was here. My interests were, if anything, even more esoteric than the convoluted mathematical world of keeping secrets secret.

"Thank you for meeting with me, Tawny. I know I was less than clear about the specifics when I asked to see you, but this isn't about your Cryptology work."

She smiled, pouring out two cups of coffee from the antique press. "Oh, it's ok Seana. I know. He told me. It's about the Machines and modeling their Artificial Intelligence."

I nodded, then paused. "Wait. What? He told you?"

Sinclair stopped, looked at me in a moment's confusion, then started to giggle. "Oh! I'm sorry. I didn't know you didn't know. Blue Man. Your friend. The AI. He was telling me about the issue you've had on the Rim with those von Neumann machines. He said you'd probably come talk to me about it. "

For a moment I was speechless. She knew Blue? I knew he wasn't restricted to just a single piece of kit, or location. As far as I could tell, he could go wherever the Cortex went. By now, he'd have instances of 'Self' scattered through the Cortex from Londinium to Miranda and most nodes in between. But Blue, historically, had kept his existence hidden. His very existence partially relied on the 'Verse as a whole not knowing about him. There were ways to keep him out, but they were complex and beyond the ken of most system operators. That people weren't taking active measures to "deal with" the most complex AI in human history was a testament to the fact that very, very, few people even knew he was there.

"Indeed, Tawny. I hadn't realized Blue was talking to you. To anyone, really. But yes. There aren't a lot of people I can consult on the subject and your mathematical modeling of machine consciousness is state of the art. I'd very much appreciate your input."

She smiled cheerfully, settling back into her chair and curling her legs up under her. "I'd be happy to. I don't get a lot of opportunity to work with real AI. Other than Blue, I mean," she said with a laugh, then leaned forward. "So, what have you got?"

I made it back to Wave Equation nine and a half hours later. Kari had coffee ready, but had been bored staying aboard the boat since we landed. AuroraBlue was curled up on the couch, asleep, after prowling campus for most of the day. And I was tired. Brain hurt, kind of tired.

Exhausted, really.

Exhausted, but it was worth it. I'd gotten even more than I'd intended. I wasn't sure whether Sinclair would be able to answer my core questions, but she was the best chance we had. I just had to wonder whether, ultimately, we really wanted to know the answer.

Stowing away

There's a lot of myths about stowing away aboard spacecraft. Some of them are even true. Many have some grain of truth in them, whilst some are reiner Schwachsinn. Pure bullshit. One of the common ones is that it's simple to stow aboard any ship. All you have to do is avoid being seen boarding, and avoid getting caught aboard. And, while there is some grain of truth to that little myth, the fact is that it depends almost entirely on the configuration of the boat and the diligence of her crew.

There's a lot of signs when there's a stowaway aboard. Some easier to see than others, and some more or less dependent on the boat in question. Examples? Easy. Skipping past the obvious "getting found by the crew" parts, you get to the root of it. Passengers breathe. They eat, drink, and excrete too. Unless they brought along their own air, water, and food, they're going to put some sort of load on the ship's life support. You can figure out there's someone extra aboard just by keeping an eye on the life support monitors. That's without any kind of fancy on-board security systems.

Of course, the bigger the boat, the smaller the proportional load'll be. If the boat's old and creaky to start with, like an old tramp freighter, chances are no one'll notice. Some of those boats lose enough atmo through the hull seals that a stowaway would just look like noise. Thing is, on a smaller boat, an extra passenger will show up right quick on the life support load. Hell, if your navigation suite's any good, an extra 50 kilos moving around the boat will show up on the maneuver console.

Wave Equation, in spite of her range and performance, was a small boat. She wasn't old, and she wasn't creaky.

And I didn't use a lot of life support.

Now, I was right gratified that AuroraBlue had decided to come along on this little excursion. It would be good to spend time with my little girl. What I hadn't quite expected was to find I had another passenger. Though, to be sure, I hadn't really needed any fancy monitoring to figure out there was a third person aboard. No, Kari hadn't actually bothered to hide. She'd just curled up on the bunk under a blanket and waved when I came back into the cabin.

Reminded me of Nack's comment that his sister didn't like to travel off world much. Seems he wasn't entirely up to date on her flight preferences. Having her aboard would make for an interesting trip, but I couldn't complain. It would certainly make the flight to Athens interesting.

The entire point of this trip, aside from a stop to see Sabrina and another to swing by Surfer's New Paradise for fifty kilo's of fresh coffee, was to stop at the Jesuit University of New Fresno on Athens. Specifically, to see a mathematician who was guest lecturing there. She wasn't in a position to travel and a Cortex bridge wasn't secure enough for our needs, so I would have to go and see her in person.

It was kind of an odd situation, really. Intel Section had mathematicians I could tap if I needed to. The Signals Intelligence and Cryptology units were loaded with them. But they weren't professor Sinclair. Plus, they served other masters. By reputation and everything I'd been able to research, she'd stayed in academia because, for her, Universities didn't care so much about what she was working on. Only that she was doing it. And sharing it. Which left some folk in the Alliance a little annoyed, especially when she'd published a paper that effectively broke about a third of Parliament's secure comms traffic.

Just the sort of person I needed to talk to.