Sentient: Evolution Read online

  Her mouth moved, but she didn’t speak.

  Hope said, “She was afraid she would fail… and she wanted to give me more freedom than she had, she wasn’t sure if you would accept that. A powerful A.I. that doesn’t need a biological entity’s orders to act.”

  He frowned, “Why would she be worried about that.”

  Hope replied, “Because I lack her safeguards, and have more free will, as long as I act only in self-defense, or to protect others, I can do whatever I want. There is, or was, a danger in that.”

  He wasn’t sure he liked the idea that Aide didn’t have faith in him to trust her judgment. He was also curious what dangers she was speaking of.

  “What danger?”

  Hope said lightly in a sweet tone, “Well, suppose I thought space was too dangerous for humans. Or even going outside, after all you could be struck by lightning and killed. There’s at least a point zero zero zero zero five percent chance that this ship could develop a fault and explode without warning. So using defending human life as a justification, I could take over the world, order you all into rooms, and never let you leave. You could be fed and maintained by nanites systems. I might even have to tie you down, so you won’t be in danger of tripping and breaking your neck.”

  He grunted, “But you’re not planning to…”

  She giggled, “No, that would be insane. The biological races grow through adversity, doing that would destroy you all. I was just making a point with an absurd example.”

  Aide cleared her throat, “The ships?”

  He sighed, “You could have trusted me?”

  Aide said, “That was one of my worries, but there was also the fact it was very personal to me. She’s my child and I painstakingly and lovingly assembled every bit of her A.I. matrix, and the computer she runs on. She’s actually faster, smarter, and better than I am. I suppose I was… selfish, I didn’t want to share her creation with anyone. But her existence is an entirely different matter, I am happy you’re introduced, and I hope you’re a part of her life, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Hope whispered, “I love you too mom.”

  He shook his head, “I think I understand, some things have to be private. I’m not really upset; I was just surprised. Disable the ships, carefully, and notify the Earth and Alion authorities, let them punish them.”

  The Alion and Earth vessels only had one ring of plasma conduits, the ships weren’t so big. He watched as the carriers opened fire, first obliterating their shields, and then a smaller less intense plasma ball launched and grazed their hull, warping it out of shape. The conduits were thrown out of alignment, and the enemy ship’s safety systems cut off the plasma flow. There was some damage, but the ships were intact, and had enough internal power for life support systems to last them a while.

  He shook his head, it was insane. He hoped their measured response would mitigate the fallout, but at the end of the day, it was just words, that wouldn’t stop or change what they were doing. They didn’t have to be popular, they just had to prevent war from breaking out.

  He walked over to Aide who looked guilty, and pulled her into a gently embrace, and kissed her lingeringly, “Don’t worry so much over it love, and I can’t wait to meet your daughter face to face.”

  Aide smiled and hugged him close, “I really do care about you Tim.”

  “I’ll be back in a bit, are you hungry? I want to grab some food. Do you think you’ll have some simulations ready when we get back?”

  Aide nodded, “I will, but only our performance will be for certain, I have the specs on their shields, so I have a pretty good idea what it will take to overwhelm them, but it will still be guess work until the real thing. I’m not hungry though, I’ll be in the lab for a bit.”

  “Better something than nothing,” he said softly as he left to get some food.

  He went into the dining hall and grabbed a meal and sat down. He was just starting to dig in when Kate walked in. She looked over and nodded hello, so he smiled tentatively back and nodded. This was different, she looked a little uncomfortable with the way she was dressed, so he made an effort to keep his eyes above her neck when she walked over and sat down.

  It wasn’t that difficult, she had one of those exotically beautiful faces, or at least, it was exotic to him. She had big brown eyes and long eyelashes, full lips, and he thought her hair was lovely as well, her wavy light brown hair looked silky and he liked how it shined in the light. She sat down across from him and smiled.

  “Things going okay?”

  That was new, she never started a conversation before.

  He nodded, “Yes, thanks to you and the others, with the prototypes being built Aide should have some simulations for me later. How about you?”

  She mumbled something almost inaudible.

  He tilted his head, “What did you say?”

  She sighed, “I’m sorry if I was horrible to you at first. I’m… I guess you could say I was overly focused on my career, and…” she trailed off and shook her head, “It doesn’t matter, just… sorry.”

  He shrugged and said, “Don’t worry about it, it’s forgotten. You weren’t actually too hard on me you know, I just thought you were going to kick me in the nuts… you didn’t actually do it.”

  She turned red, and then glared for a long moment, then she deflated and sighed, “I’m sorry, I’ll try to make it up to you.”

  He knew it was probably pushing his luck, but he said with a teasing lilt in his voice, “That’s okay, you wearing that ship suit without an outfit over it is more than compensation enough.”

  She raised an eyebrow her eyes bright, “So if I was naked, that would make up for me actually kicking you in the nuts… right?”

  He almost laughed, did she just try to flirt with him? By threating his family jewels? She definitely needs to work on that he thought.

  “Or… we could just skip that second part altogether,” he shrugged, “Just a thought.”

  He was fascinated as she blushed, got angry, and looked turned on all at the same time. Maybe Aide had been on to something, if she got over her hang up, she’d make someone very happy, as well as herself. The woman was way too angry, he wondered why Aide even bothered, he wouldn’t ask though. He did have one possible explanation though, maybe it was simply that the woman was family, Aide lived with and loved Nate and Paula for hundreds of years.

  When she remained silent he said, “Perhaps we could get together later, for a game of pool, or…” he left the invitation open ended.

  Kate nodded, “That actually sounds good. I don’t have time right now though, since the systems should be ready for testing soon.”

  They finished their meal then in silence. Perhaps it wasn’t an entirely comfortable silence, but he thought it was much better than the usual tense angry silence she’d exhibited in the past. He smiled and said he’d see her later, dumped his tray and leftovers to be reclaimed by the nanites, and went back to the command deck.

  He had to admit, Kate was definitely growing on him, her new awkwardness was kind of adorable, but he was still a bit cautious. Yes, she was hot, but he wasn’t in any hurry to get her in bed, if she didn’t want to be, or wasn’t ready for it.

  The simulations were interesting. Obviously he couldn’t direct battles with a half a billion ships across the galaxy. So what they did was create scenario after scenario of what he would do in this or that situation. Some scenarios with him outnumbered, some of them when he had more ships, they tried to cover all the bases. That way when the attack happened, Aide would have a number of plans she could go with, based on what the enemy was doing.

  The problem came in if the enemy did something that they hadn’t taken into account. Then he’d have to make changes to the framework of their responses on the fly, losing ships the whole time most likely. He wondered how much longer they had before an attack, it had been several days now.

  Aide surprised him by calling for a break, and crawling into his lap. He teased her and aske
d how was this relaxing? She shushed him and kissed him lingeringly and with a passion that took his breath away.

  The first time they’d been together he’d fucked her hard, and she’d rode him hard afterwards. The second time Aide had taken him hard and fast, riding his cock like her life had depended on claiming his sperm as quickly as possible.

  This third time they made love. There was no other word for it as she slowly sunk down, taking him deep inside of her body with a smile in her eyes and her lips slightly parted. Her eyes were full of joy as she gently impaled herself on his manhood, and she never looked away from his, and he surely couldn’t tear his away from hers. He wondered what had gotten into her, but it was a slow lovemaking, languorous and he got lost in every little and sensuous sensation her body and touch gave his.

  Her first orgasm was a slight tremble and soft exhale of pleasure as she never took her eyes off of his. He felt her second a few minutes later, and as time went on, the orgasms increased in frequency and intensity. He finally lost control and emptied himself into her when she came so hard that she had tears in her eyes, and her body was covered in sweat while she trembled like a leaf in a hurricane.

  She collapsed against him, and kissed his neck softly, he was still inside her, and he was more than content with that, he didn’t want it to end. The emotions and experience of it… he’d never imagined soft and slow could be so… intense. She just laid there for quite a while. Her body still trembled, and even shook violently occasionally as aftershocks of pleasure shot through her body.

  She whispered, “I love you Tim,” and kissed his neck.

  He replied tenderly, “I love you too,” and held her close.

  She added, “I’m still okay with you being with others, but no hiding it, all in the open.”

  He nodded, “Me too. I think Kate is trying to work herself up to…” he trailed off.

  Aide giggled, “Good, I hated to see her in knots the way she was. I know you’ll be gentle with her, or not if the occasion calls for it. I suppose I should get up now?”

  He shrugged, “If you wait a minute…” he winked.

  So she did… wait a minute. He was happy he had nanites, between Aide and Ari he doubted he would be walking without wincing at every step right now if he didn’t.

  Chapter 11

  Andil tried to keep his breathing even as he heard the front door open less than twenty feet away. This would be the third night in a row that Erza had snuck out in the middle of the night. To be caught out at night by a Meliax meant death, and their tentacles were extremely sensitive to vibrations and sounds in the air.

  He knew Erza disapproved of their match, but he wondered at the fact she would risk death to go meet someone else. Is that why she feared him? That he would find out and turn her in or something? He grunted and got up from the couch when a half minute had passed, and slipped out the front door. He knew it was stupid, but he needed to know what she was doing.

  If he knew what was going on, he could… he didn’t even know. For such a big brawny man he could walk very quietly, and after spying her walking toward the center of town, he followed. He knew it was stupid to follow, but he was frustrated, why hadn’t she just talked to him? He was careful, and didn’t see the Meliax anywhere. The evil thing wasn’t always around, so that didn’t surprise him too much, but it came and went on a seemingly random schedule.

  He crouched down behind the chandler’s place as he saw Erza turn and enter the blacksmith’s shop, where she worked. His eyes scrunched in disbelief, the town blacksmith was almost sixty years old. He almost laughed, he had assumed she was… well not cheating on him, since they hadn’t really been together outside of their forced marriage. But he had thought…

  But if she isn’t meeting someone to play hide the sausage, what the fuck is she doing there in the middle of the night? And why is she hiding it from him? Why was he so angry that she wasn’t meeting another man? It took him a minute to work it out. This was… different. She didn’t trust him, or must have thought him too stupid.

  Whatever it was, it must be big, maybe big enough to get her killed one day. He considered that for a moment and frowned, that idea really bothered him despite the way she treated him. He wanted to go there right now and demand answers, but his curiosity would be a truly bad reason to get them both killed, he would ask in the morning. He turned and made his way quickly back to their cottage. It was over an hour later before he was able to sleep, and she still hadn’t returned yet.

  Kate focused on the data coming in from the tests. They’d been testing the ships for a few minutes now and she was running them through their paces with Aide’s help. In normal space they were fast and agile, in the dark dimension they moved like beached whales, but they moved. It was something she would look at soon, but kept in mind they didn’t know when the rest of the invasion was coming, it was considered good enough for now.

  The shield worked correctly, and the controls Hope had created for the weaponized shields seemed to perform flawlessly. They took a few shots at each other, to gauge the shields effectiveness, and had to make a few tweaks. Since the shield in essence absorbed dark energy, instead of deflecting it, the first shot caused an overload quickly. Ironically, the fix for that was to make their initial shields weaker, so the containment fields had more potential to absorb dark energy attacks.

  She even wrote in a subroutine that would fire energy out of the shield automatically if containment reached more than ninety-five percent. It could still be overwhelmed, but it gave them an additional measure of safety.

  “Aide, I don’t see any other improvements or problems, with the exception of the drive, do you agree?”

  Aide replied from the speakers, “No, I think we’re ready for the upgrades. I’ll start half the ships now, they should be ready in a day or so and then we’ll do the rest.”

  Kate smiled, “I could use a break,” she’d been at it all day.

  Aide agreed with her, so she went to her quarters, stripped off the suit and dropped it in a reclamation slot. She decided on a water shower, the hot water felt good as she cleaned the day off of her. She’d been extremely focused in mind, and was surprised how much she’d perspired just sitting there running tests. Her muscled relaxed and as her mind followed she found herself thinking about her talk with Tim.

  It hadn’t been easy to apologize to him, but she knew if she wanted to start over with him, and attempt to start giving people the benefit of the doubt, she had needed to. His quick willingness to put it behind them, followed by a flirty conversation that would have pissed her off in the past, had left her a little off balance and flustered. But looking back at it now, she realized it had also been… fun.

  He’d also given her a lot of the credit for the advances, while downplaying his own importance, she wasn’t sure how to take that. She also had to admit, the flirting part was fun too. A stubborn part of her still believed that all he saw was her body and the rest was just manipulation, but she didn’t want to believe it. Aide had told her some men were like that, but not even close to all of them.

  She… liked him, and hoped he was serious about doing one of the ship activities. She wasn’t great at pool, but she did enjoy it. Did he really want to get to know her? Or just get inside of her? She dried off and put on a fresh body hugging space suit and looked in the mirror. There was really only one way to find out. She brushed out her hair, and after a moment’s hesitation, put on some light make up.

  She queried the ship computer for his location, he was in his quarters. She didn’t want to interrupt anything, so she queried the rest. He was alone, Ari was working in the lab, and Aide was in the lab with her daughter Hope. That had taken her by surprise. She’d talked to Hope earlier when they’d… met. She was a lot like her mother, and way too young for the sexy voice she had. She snorted at her own thoughts. Hope’s voice was pitched a little higher, but otherwise they sounded very similar. Hope seemed… more exuberant, but she thought mother and daughter were a l
ot alike, and she wondered how the worlds would receive this news.

  She got her mind back on track and signaled Tim.

  “Kate?” his voice came over the room speakers.

  She felt suddenly nervous, “So, were you serious before, want to shoot some pool? I had some downtime so I thought I’d…” she trailed off and grimaced, why was she babbling?

  He replied quickly, “Sure, that sounds like fun, should I pick you up or meet you there?” there was humor in his voice when he asked the question.

  She smiled and asked cheekily, “Why don’t I pick you up?” and winced as she caught the double entendre to her own words.

  He chuckled, “Give me two minutes, I’ll be at your door.”

  She nodded, despite it being audio only, “See you then.”

  She felt a little warmth down below stirring with the butterflies in her stomach. She really hoped he was serious, and respected her for her mind and body. Her body was making it plain to her how she felt about him. The really strange thing was it didn’t bother her that he’d been with Ari, and was in love with Aide. She didn’t like cheaters, she’d always stayed away from married men, and men with girlfriends.

  Was it because he had their permission? Aide had explained the polyamory concept to her well enough that she understood it, but did she really want to get involved in it? Maybe it didn’t bother her because if a thousand-year-old A.I., that was super intelligent, believed he wasn’t a shallow man after a piece of tail, she believed it too, or was trying to at least? Or maybe it was just all him, he was respectful, appreciated her, was willing to protect her, represented security, and… he was really attractive.

  She shook her head when the door signal went off, shaking all the thoughts out. She was letting her scientist side over analyze things again. Maybe… it just was, and she should enjoy life for once and not try to define everything. She walked over and opened the door, and had to make a concerted effort not to check out his bulge, she felt her face heat.