[capnq]

The maiden voyage of the _Speculation_ had been more successful than even the most optimistic projections. Before it set course to return to Eifra for refuelling, it had visited nine systems and found eleven colonizable worlds, five of which had breathable atmospheres. The Eifralo Conglomerate now had subsidiaries on eight worlds in three systems, with three colonizers in transit to two more systems. Pilda Shipyards had added an orbital facility to increase production, and the Masters' ancient construction yard on Jalwu had been refurbished far enough to start operations, as well. Work was in progress on two new colonizers, plus a prototype for a new scout design. The _Investment_ would be sturdy enough to handle the stress of a sixth engine, and would have an even longer range than its smaller predecessor.

Things were going so well that Cunsi Davdi rarely had time to think about Talro. When she had left on the _Consumer Confidence_ nearly three years ago, he had missed her terribly, but as the months wore on without any reply to the Messages and gifts he sent her, he had tried less and less often. He hadn't yet given up on the relationship entirely, but in the few idle moments when her memory resurfaced, it mostly just bothered Davdi to realize how long it had been since he'd Last thought of her.

This was one of those idle moments, as Davdi waited for Soctu Timho to arrive for the appointment he'd requested. Timho had been maddeningly vague about why he needed to talk to him, saying only that it was about the research on the semi-functional computer system that had turned out to be the biggest discovery in the Masters' abandoned city.

When Timho finally bounced into his office, Davdi was shocked at his pale, puffy-eyed appearance. "By the Masters, Soctu, are you all right? You look like death warmed over!"

Timho waved off the question with the bulky envelope he was carrying. "It's just fatigue; I haven't slept at all in the Last three days."

"What's the problem? Feel free to squat, if it helps."

"Thanks, I think I will," Timho replied, sinking into the folded-knee position in which Eifralo relaxed. "The problem is what we've been finding out from the analysis of Node-25. That's what the Masters' computer calls itself."

"'Calls itself'? You say that as if it were a person."

"In a way, it is. It's an artificially intelligent expert system. The fellows who managed to activate it nearly jumped out of their skins when it started talking to them."

"I can imagine! It's amazing that it works at all after so many millenia."

"It certainly is. According to its own diagnostics, more than a sixth of its memory banks have failed, but there was enough redundancy and unallocated space for it to still function somewhat, and even partially repair itself. But most of the systems it was supposed to manage weren't ever installed."

"What was it supposed to do?"

Timho took a long, slow breath before he replied, seemingly searching for words. "It was designed to enhance a starship crew's actions in certain situations, and sometimes even take over the ship's systems itself if necessary."

"So it was some kind of safety system? For emergency response?"

"No, that wasn't its function. Not exactly."

Davdi was getting a bit exasperated at Timho's vagueness. "Well, then, what did it do?"

"Node-25 is something of an idiot-savant; it's very good at what it does, but has almost no knowledge outside its intended task. Just understanding the archaic language forms it uses, and training it to understand modern idiom, took over a month. We're still working out concepts from the Masters' day that modern Eifral doesn't even have words for. One of the first things we had to do was convince Node-25 that it wasn't a 'prisoner-of-war'."

"What on Eifra is a 'prisoner-of-war'? The Corporate Wars ended over two centuries ago!"

"That's what's been keeping me from sleeping. Apparently, the Masters were not the only intelligent species of their day, and they were in the midst of an interstellar war when Node-25 was built. Node-25's purpose was to optimize its crew's performance in ship-to-ship combat, in conjunction with similar systems on other ships. And the Masters' war was far more violent than anything in our recorded history. When we activated Node-25, its initial assumption was that we had salvaged it after its ship had been destroyed in battle."

-----

After reading the lengthy sealed report that Timho had brought, Davdi could understand why the doctor was unable to sleep. The Eifralo had been at peace since the Conglomerate was formed in the Ultimate Merger, which ended the historical period now known as the Corporate Wars. Historians debated whether the planetary government had allowed the corporations to run out of control, or the corporations had merely been more efficient at exploiting the government's failures, but the end result was that all government functions were eventually privatized. The Corporate "Wars" had mostly involved proxy fights, industrial espionage, and the occasional armed skirmish between corporate security forces. The heaviest casualties had occurred during employee riots after their jobs were eliminated in hostile takeovers.

The Masters' war had been orders of magnitude worse. Node-25's memory banks contained numerous records of battles with scores of spacecraft on each side, throwing projectiles and energy bLasts at each other, killing thousands of crewmen in a single engagement. Even more horrific were a handful of records of besieged planets where millions died under orbital bombardments. To Node-25, these nightmares were just a database for it to analyze, to maximize the Masters' fleets' effectiveness.

The most disturbing thing of all was that Node-25 had no idea whether the Masters were winning the conflict. It was only programmed to understand battle tactics, not the overall strategic situation. It seemed unlikely that the Masters had ultimately lost, simply because the Eifralo were still here, but Node-25 had no record of the fate of either the Masters or their enemies. The possibility that these unknown enemies were still out there somewhere was what was keeping Timho awake at night. Node-25 couldn't even tell them what the Masters' enemies had looked like; it could only identify their ship designs. That was also why it initially thought it had been captured; the salvage workers who'd activated it didn't match its template for recognizing the Masters.

That was something more pleasant to contemplate. Node-25 said that on average, the Masters were more than twice as tall as the Eifralo, but much slimmer, and pale-skinned. The height difference explained a lot about Eifral architecture; the original skycities had been scaled to fit the Masters, and the Eifalo had merely copied the designs. Their strangest feature was that they only had two legs, with both knees bending in the same direction. That explained the purpose of the odd tables found in various places around the Masters' ship; they relaxed by folding their thighs across the horizontal surface, while leaning their torso against the upright panel. Davdi wondered how the Masters told the sexes apart with only two legs.

Which brought Talro back to mind again. With her gone, his social life had been reduced to little more than Retla's dinner invitations, which turned into informal business meetings as often as not. Davdi had let his responsibilities as CEO fill the void Talro left, and now Node-25's revelations had raised the stakes. The Conglomerate had to prepare for the possibility that the Eifralo would discover hostile aliens someday, and Davdi had no idea where to start.

[ October 25, 2002, 05:02: Message edited by: capnq ]