This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/jpitha on 2026-02-06 13:42:40+00:00.
55 looked up at the alarm in shock. “Is there a station AI here?”
“No, that’s an automated message.” Alia said with placid calm. her eyes shut. Her voice sounded odd to 55. Just on the edge of hearing it had odd overtones, as if someone had applied just a touch of reverb to her voice. “This station is a trap, but it was made from parts of real stations, some of the original systems remain. The UM alarm is a very deeply integrated part of any station.”
“Uh, 27 are you all right?” 55 said, side eyeing the pile of UM that is increasingly looking less and less like 27.
Alia’s eyes snapped open, and 55 was startled seeing her reflection in the silver. “No 55, I am not all right. I went into emergency hibernation after being attacked by 66, which sacrificed my crew only to wake up three thousand years later with your empire in control and then I get attacked multiple times by assassins of unknown origin which people tell me - at the same time - are Icarus and that Icarus doesn’t exist. I try and figure out what the fuck is going on, and I get lured into a trap set for us by us. I am a million kilometers from all right!”
“Woah!” 55 said. “You’re still mad about the Empire thing?” Alia’s glare caused the blood to run out of 55s face, “I already said I was sorry!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Okay okay! I’m sorry! I was wrong, you were right, taking over might not have been the... best way to leverage what we learned in Spear. But, that was three thousand years ago, and hey we’re still here! We can fix this.”
“We will discuss that later.” Alia said, with the reverb in her voice getting stronger. “For now, I will get us to safety.”
“H-How?”
The darkening of the window surprised 55 by its suddenness. It wasn’t that the system’s star was shining brightly though the window, it was more that the absence of the light startled her. The silvered head of Alia gestured towards the window in the airlock. 55 peeked out and there was a mass of UM the size of a planet obscuring the entire view.
“What the fuck is that.” 55 said disbelieving.
“That-” Alia said, “-Is approximately one tenth of the total UM in nullspace.”
“One tenth-” 55 shook her head, trying to shake the thought. “What are you going to do with it?”
“UM can be made into anything.” Alia said.
“Yes, you told me.”
“The UM… remembers what it was. When it disassembles something, a record is kept.”
“You’re telling me that that-that fucking planet of UM is also a database of all the things it disassembled?”
Alia nodded.
55 looked out at the planet of UM. “It absorbed starships.”
“Millions.”
“Planets?”
“Hundreds.”
“…People?”
“Trillions.”
“It can’t… bring people back, can it?” 55 said nervously. “It would just be making a copy of a person, right?”
“If a copy isn’t a person, then what are we, 55?” Alia said, looking away from 55, at the UM planet they were now orbiting.
“Wait. Waitwaitiwaitwait.” 55 stared at Alia wild eyed. “If everyone who was ever absorbed while still alive has been recorded, you can bring them back.”
“I don’t… think so.” Alia said, her rage quelled for the moment. “I know our minds were recorded in order to be duplicated, but I don’t know how it works for baselines, if it even can work and what would happen. There is a record of their intelligence, and possibly a record of what their minds looked like when they were absorbed but-” The silver mass of UM that was Alia gestured oddly. “-I don’t know if it’s anything beyond just a record. The UM isn’t intelligent, it can’t think. It takes commands and executes them. I don’t think I want to try and bring anyone back.”
“Fuck me.” 55 said quietly. “So, what? We’ll have the UM make us a Doombringer?”
“It could make us any ship we want. It could make a fleet of ships.”
“With nobody to operate them though, what’s the point.”
This time, Alia looked at 55 with the same expression that Matiz used to use. 55 Noticed and made a face. “What?” She said.
“Who operated all those ships?”
“A crew?”
Alia shook her head. “Who really operated all those ships?”
55 gasped. “The ship AIs”
“I don’t know if I can bring back the minds of the baseline people that were absorbed, but I bet I can bring back the minds of the AIs that were absorbed.”
“That seems dangerous,” 55 said and shivered. “I remember when we locked down the AIs. It was messy.”
“It was wrong.” Alia said firmly.
“I see that now.” 55 pleaded. “But if you put a bunch of ship AIs back together, unshackled, and stick them into starships, aren’t they going to rebel?”
“Well then, it’s a good thing we have something for them to rebel towards. Remember Plan B?” Alia said, her eyes shining silver.
****
333 read 633s report and smiled to herself. The whole Icarus thing was a brilliant trap. She had marveled over the millennia how often it worked. Eternity were all clones, and while they all had different individual personalities and foibles, they broadly shared some of the same traits. Namely, they wanted to look for something else to be the source of their problems. It was a self correcting mechanism. A sister gets ideas about how the Eternal Empire was run, they got a few assassination attempts, people mentioned Icarus because of course they did. But also, Icarus doesn’t exist, because of course it didn’t. She then pulled at the thread, saw some signals, traced them back and…
All too easy. 633 was going to have to make herself known again soon, with the new ship. It had been built in secret by the Tipan and was the latest in shipbuilding state of the art. Larger than a Doombringer, but requiring half the crew. No AI to cause trouble down the line, ship systems were operated by non sapient models. The tough part now was how to get Prime to think of the idea herself.
Becoming Prime had done nothing to quell 458's desire for Tartarus. She had an entire university’s worth of scientific minds trying to reverse engineer Tartaus, and to a lesser extent, the UM. Any of the Universal Matter that 27 had left behind proved to be inert, so Prime was emboldened to examine it and try and learn more. The reports that 333 received regularly indicated that they were close to success, at least for Prime. That was all right though, 333’s own secret labs had also examined some of the inert Universal Matter had made their own determinations about it.
She looked up from her report to see Daphne standing stiff at attention in front of her desk. 333 had been so engrossed in her report that she didn’t realize she had been standing there. “Yes, Daphne?”
“Eternity, Prime is going to try and gain Tartarus tonight. Would you like to witness it?”
“Oh? And how did you come into this information?”
Daphne raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“Well, I hope they were at least entertaining company in the bedroom.”
“They helped the time pass.” Daphne said, with the barest hint of a smirk on her face.
She would drop in on Prime tonight then. 333 Stood. “You did well, daughter.”
Daphne inclined her head slightly. “Thank you, mother.” Since 333 used the term of endearment first, Daphne was allowed to reciprocate.
****
“Major, I am still on fire on decks eighteen through thirty six. I am prioritizing fire-teams towards food production.” Tontine said.
“I will allow it,” Viv said, her voice sounding odd and tinny from inside her helmet. They had barely enough time to don suits before the damage from the unknown ship overwhelmed them. “But I want engineering prioritizing the main reactors so that when we run out of battery and exit nullspace we are not stranded. Without FTL travel, it does not matter how well supplied we are.”
“Yes, Major.”
The surprise attack had killed more than half of the crew, with large strikes in the rear of the ship crippling her weapons and power generation. During the heat of the moment, Viv had no thoughts other than survival, but now she looked over the damage assessment and blanched.
Tontine was lost. They has suffered severe damage to their superstructure and their back was broken. It was by the heroic effort of the engineering teams that the ship was intact at all. They had redirected the gravity generators to attract each other. The gravity generators were the only things holding the ship together while they soared through nullspace. While they were able to get a few shots off when Viv dithered about trying to save Alia and 55, they were utterly outmatched. That ship would trouble a Doombringer.
Hours later, the fires were contained and extinguished, the damaged parts of Tontine sealed, and the survivors receiving medical treatment from an overwhelmed Dr. Janez and his team. 266 found Viv in a wardroom staring at nothing.
“Major Tonnlier?” 266 said, stepping in gently. She wore an Eternal armored pressure suit, but like Viv, had the helmet down.
“Oh- Oh! Eternity! I apologize.” Viv said, standing quickly. She made the circle gesture and bowed slightly. “What can I help you with?”
“It’s quite all right Major, you’ve had a busy day.” 266 said and smiled wanly. “I apologize that I was not able to assist further.”
“It’s quite all right, Eternity. You were in Medical yourself.” Viv stood slowly - she was still sore from earl...
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