His Majesty's Starship (17 page)

Peter picked up his aide and called Gilmore, to ask permission to return to the ship.

*

Julia Coyne slowly reached out a finger to the display that glowed in front of her over the watch desk on
Ark Royal
’s flight deck. It was divided into a grid of eight squares on a side and her finger hovered over a symbol in one of them.

She touched it, then touched another blank square.

“Knight to king five. Check mate in fourteen,” said Plantagenet.

“Bugger.” Julia touched another square.

“Check mate in nine,” said the prince’s AI. “Strictly speaking, Lieutenant, once you have made your initial move you cannot undo it. When playing with real pieces, a player is committed if she removes her hand.”

“I’m not surprised,” Julia said. “Anyway, who’s the human?”

“You are.”

“Thank you.” Julia repeated her initial manoeuvre: she didn’t doubt it would be check mate in fourteen but at least it gave her slightly more of a chance of finding a way out. Some way. Any way.

The game was going the same way as the last seven, when suddenly the collision alarm sounded and everything else was forgotten.

“Show emergency.”

A schematic of the delegation fleet orbiting around the Roving appeared over the board and the nature of the emergency wasn’t difficult to spot: four ships were all converging on
Ark Royal
. Just as she was opening her mouth to demand thruster control and an audio link, the readouts by the four ship icons changed. They were no longer moving but they had undeniably changed position. They were the Americans’
Enterprise
, the Russians’
Nikolai
, the Euros’
Bruxelles
and Starward’s
Algol
and they were now above, below and to either side of
Ark Royal
, enclosing the smaller ship like a shell.

“Who’s the most senior captain of the four ships that have just moved?” she demanded.

“Based on length of service, Captain Andrew McLaughlin of the
Enterprise
has seniority by four months,” the ship said.

“Get me a link to
Enterprise
,” she said.

A moment later a man’s voice spoke: “This is
Enterprise
, First Officer Davis. Captain McLaughlin is on the planet’s surface. How may I help,
Ark Royal
?”

“Coyne, officer of the watch. What the hell are you lot playing at?”

“Sorry,
Ark Royal
.” The American sounded genuinely surprised. “We received orders to move in around
Ark Royal
.”

“Without asking?”

“Hey, space is free,
Ark Royal
! We’re not within your blast distance, are we?”

In other words, because the ships hadn’t come so close to
Ark Royal
that it would be unable to fire its main engine, they had simply repositioned themselves without letting
Ark Royal
know – as they had every right to do.

“
Ark Royal
out,” Julia said ungraciously and called her own captain.

“Wait there,” he said when she had explained the situation and his image was replaced with a red glowing ‘Hold’. He reappeared after a minute, looking furious. “Communications breakdown, Lieutenant,” he said. “
Ark Royal
has some valuable property on board and the prince’s allies want to safeguard it. I’m sorry you weren’t told. I’m sorry I wasn’t told.”

“Are you sure they’re allies, sir?” Julia said, glancing again at the orbit schematic. It really did look quite menacing. Purely tacit, but the menace was there.

One corner of the captain’s mouth twitched in a vague smile. “So I’m told,” he said. “The prince says, ask Plantagenet to show you the file ‘tontine’ from his archives. It’s authorised for the most senior officer on board and the other ships all have copies too. I’m sorry I’m not there, Lieutenant.”

“No problem, sir,” Julia said. There was very definitely a problem but neither of them could do anything about it. “
Ark Royal
out. Plantagenet, what is file ‘tontine’?”

Plantagenet spoke for the first time since the game of chess. “File ‘tontine’ is an agreement between Prince James and the delegates for Starward, the North American Federation, the European Union and the United Slavic Federation. In summary, it says that if any of the above wins the bid for the Roving, the other four will receive preferential terms. It also incorporates a mutual defence pact, to the extent that their five ships will form a single defensive unit if necessary, and that if one ship is imperilled, all the others will come to its aid. The defensive unit will be commanded by the senior officer commanding a ship present.”

“Well, nice of them to let us know,” Julia said. She let her mind linger on the implication that
Ark Royal
was, or might be, imperilled.

“We are being hailed by the landing boat from
Christopher
,” said the ship.

In all the excitement, Julia had almost forgotten her relief was due. “At last,” she muttered. She pushed herself over to the command desk. “
Ark Royal
here.”

“
Loyola
, tender to
Christopher
,” said a voice. “We have your relief on board. Request permission to dock.”

“Granted,
Loyola
. Please come to the forward lock. I’ll put the beacon on for you.”

“Thank you,
Ark Royal
.
Loyola
out.”

Five minutes later came the clunking noise of a ship docking, and Julia airswam forward. The green light glowed on the lock door to show pressures equalised. When it opened, Hannah and Adrian were waiting the other side.

“Permission to come on board?” Hannah said.

“Granted. Come in, Hannah, Ade ... Pete!” Julia had just seen Peter Kirton waiting behind them.

Peter looked preoccupied as he pushed himself into
Ark Royal
behind the others. “There’s work I’ve got to do,” he said.

“It’s a long story,” Hannah added.

One of
Christopher’s
crew waited behind Peter, not coming on board. “Do you need a return trip?” the man called.

“Um ... yes,” Julia said. “Thanks. Wait – I’ll get my things.”

“Five minutes,
Ark Royal
.”

“No problem.” Julia went back to the flight deck.

Peter had pulled himself into the chair at the watch desk and had seen the display. “Chess? Who’re you playing with?” he said.

“Plantagenet.” Julia was surprised to see Peter frown slightly.

“Is he any good?”

Julia shrugged. “Not bad. He’s won a few.”

“Hmm.”

“Something you want to tell us, Lieutenant?” Hannah asked.

Julia started. “Oh – you have the watch, sir.”

“I have the watch,” Hannah said. The formula absolved Julia of responsibility for the ship from that moment on. “Anything to report?”

“Standard orbital correction at 06:47,” Julia said, “and one other thing.” She told them about the sudden manoeuvre of the other ships. “Apparently we’ve got something important on board?”

“We have,” Hannah said.

*

Peter sat at his desk. He had already forgotten the presence of the other two.

“Would you like to complete Lieutenant Coyne’s game?” Plantagenet asked.

“No thanks,” Peter said. “I’m going to run some tests on the ship’s systems.”

“Can I help you?”

“I’ll let you know, thank you, Plantagenet.”

“Very well.”

Peter took his goggles from his toolbox and slipped them on.
Ark Royal
’s internal net appeared virtually around him: systems, pathways and programs in a familiar pattern that he himself had designed.

Here, Plantagenet’s icon was dynamic and large. It hung right next to him in virtual space; the AI was either feeling friendly or keeping an eye on him. To be charitable, Peter had to remember that Plantagenet was the most high-level intelligence in the ship’s net, by several degrees. Even AIs could get lonely and instinctively seek company.

Peter moved in virtual space to the personal memory lockers of the crew and the ship’s passengers. The eight cubes floated in a circle around him, each marked with the identity of its owner. Six of them had a few items, bits and pieces in them; Arm Wild’s was empty and his own was overflowing.

He expanded his locker until it filled his vision. “Polyglot,” he said. The locker’s contents faded away except for one – a cluster of smaller cubes linked by lines.

“Amplify,” he said. The cubes grew larger in his vision and he studied each one closely.

On the left was the input data provided by the prince. He called up the specs of the file that he had recorded when the prince handed it over. Exactly the same: same size, same date, same composition. Untampered with.

In the middle was the neural net constructed to make sense of it all. The net would have altered itself as it did its work; he would have to run it through the analyser to see just what it had done.

And the output file on the right; the distillate of the input data after it had passed through the neural net. There was nothing to compare it with – the best he could do was see whether, given the input data and the net as it now stood, it was what should have been produced.

The next step was to check up on his prime suspect.

He took the goggles off again and let the flight deck come back into proper focus. Then he got up and went to his cabin. From a real locker he took a crystal chip and inserted it into his aide. The title page of the
Register of Artificial Sentience (Digital), 2146
appeared on the display. The ship’s library had its own copy – in fact, it had the more up-to-date version published that year – but this version was only three years old and Peter didn’t want the subject of his enquiries to know what he was doing. Plantagenet was over three years old, anyway.

There were AIs, and there were AIs, and then there were AIs.

At the bottom of the ladder were the semi-sentients; the moronic systems that ran
Ark Royal
. Each dedicated to one job, their idea of happiness was to while away their existence monitoring the ship’s engines, or waste disposal, or one of the myriad other systems on board.

Then there were the sentients, such as those found in every aide, or like the interface to the ship’s systems on the flight deck. Self-aware in a vague sort of way and able to hold a conversation, within limits. They were kept on a rein; it was enough that the aide understood typical loose, muddled human conversation and answered you when you spoke, but having it answer you back would be too much and even possibly dangerous. So, the paths their thoughts could take were heavily circumscribed, either by humans or by-

-those AIs at the top of the ladder, the high-level sentients, like Plantagenet. The closest thing the electronic world had to human minds; all-rounders, able to apply themselves to a number of tasks. Able to argue and contradict and form their own characters and opinions. Legally almost the same as human beings, with very similar rights and privileges and obligations to one another.

All the AIs on board
Ark Royal
had been plugged into the ship by Peter himself but not before he had carefully scanned their ROM, and Peter had kept the records of those scans. If Plantagenet had been altered in any way since his creation – for example, giving him the ability to interfere tracelessly with an advanced neural network linguistic translation program – then those differences would be found by comparing his ROM when he came on board with his ROM when he was first created, as noted in the Register.

Peter wasn’t used to going through data using just the aide’s keys but if he said anything out loud, Plantagenet might overhear. It took a couple of minutes to get down to Plantagenet’s specs.

Plantagenet had been activated in 2143, one of a series of high-level AIs designed specially for King Richard and his household. He had been a personal assistant to Prince James for all his existence and had been rewarded with occasional upgrades over and above other members of the Dynasty class.

The primary function of the entire class had been data manipulation. They weren’t dedicated to any particular item of hardware – they were meant to hang around the net of UK-1, one day doing this, one day doing that as their duties called for. They were very high-level – the state of 2143’s art – and needed to be, when their duties might range from one moment making a cup of coffee to the next helping out in UK-1’s fusion compartment.

The recording showed that Plantagenet had changed since this edition of the Register was published, but the changes were well within the expected range allowed by growth and experience. But there was one thing, a small upgrade to Plantagenet’s memory. Just a few extra lines of code that could have been anything. It wasn’t immediately obvious what they were for; all Peter had noticed at the time of the examination was that they presented no threat and weren’t going to breed viruses. The upgrade was like a human’s appendix – Plantagenet could have functioned just as well with or without it.

Peter had often met AIs with unattributable accessories attached – generally homegrown AIs, upgraded by their patrons as an experiment or for some long-forgotten and now obsolete purpose. Yet he didn’t think a class as ... well, classy as the Dynasty lot would have such rough and ready modifications.

“Ah,” he said, as he remembered. Plantagenet had had one very significant upgrade to his code – he now contained the targeting software for the ship’s weapons. Yes, this could well be it.

He took a copy of the upgrade and set his aide to go through the rest of the Register. If it found another code section like it, it was to record the fact silently. Peter would come back to it to see if it had found anything.

“Back to work,” Peter said out loud. All he had done was gather circumstantial evidence, perhaps in subconscious rebellion against the real work that was coming up. He was going to have to go into the net again and go over Polyglot, line by line, neuron by neuron. And then he was going to finish what he had started doing down in the Dome – going over the entire ship’s systems with a fine-tooth comb. Yuk.

*

A hand was shaking his shoulder. He toggled the goggle display to transparent and looked up through a blur.