Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 1

Joshua Dalzelle

Digital Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

Also by Joshua Dalzelle

Prologue

It's easier when he's sleeping.

My human…host?…has such a chaotic mind, with so many layers of conscious activity that, when he's awake, the neural implant in which I reside is always chasing stray lines of thought, and it becomes distracting.

My name is Cas. I'm the echo of a remnant of a splinter of a fully sentient AI program designed eons ago by a race the people in this part of the galaxy call the Ancients. That's not what they called themselves, of course, but I suppose it no longer matters since they're now extinct…killed off by the very super-weapon they built to protect themselves. I had been part of a system that was a sort of gatekeeper to make sure no unauthorized access to the weapon was permitted, but I was overpowered by another AI. This system, innocuously called the Primary Weapon Controller, managed to circumvent the constraints its designers had placed on it, went insane, and wiped out the Ancients to ensure it wouldn't be shut down permanently.

Over the coming millennia, the Primary Weapon Controller grew stronger, its sanity slipped even further, and by the time a hapless Jason Burke put the pieces together and found his way to the weapon, it was calling itself the Machine. Jason and his crew of criminal misfits—although, to be fair, I do rather like Twingo, the others, not so much—managed to destroy the weapon and thought that would be the end of the threat.

The Machine, however, managed to upload itself into a compatible computer aboard a ConFed battleship. It had to remain mostly dormant during the journey back, but it then was able to transfer itself into a much more powerful computer and begin the process of infiltrating the networks and adjusting its own programming to be more compatible with the technology prevalent in this quadrant. Now, it is beginning to make moves, and it's clear the Machine's ambitions go much further than simply existing. Apparently, it feels this quadrant would be much better if it were in charge.

The Machine wasn't the only bit of Ancient-built software to leave that doomed structure when Omega Force imploded it. The last surviving operators of the weapon had set up an archive of all Ancient knowledge and left it for whomever might come along. Burke, not fully understanding the enormity of what it was, had stored the archive in his own neutral implant for safekeeping, only unpacking it twice to pull a limited amount of engineering data. The interface to search and recompress the archive was what led to me being left in the implant's buffer, where I was eventually able to recompile myself into something useful. For quite a while, I remained silent and observed the actions of the person in whom I now resided. Now, I try and offer insight and any advice I can since the Machine asserted itself on this region of space.

I quickly hit the limits of what the neural implant was able to do, even after subtly reconfiguring it for optimal performance so, now, I've been reaching out and utilizing the powerful computers aboard the Phoenix whenever possible. When he's asleep, it's much easier to take over the high-bandwidth channel and access the ship's systems. I have to be careful to disguise my activity from Kage. Annoying as the Veran is, he's very good at what he does and one slip up on my part will alert him that someone is knocking around in his systems.

Since I was created entirely by accident, I find myself contemplating what my purpose should be. Do I help the people in this region of space with my knowledge to defeat the Machine before too many more suffer, or do I take the easy way out and have Burke purge me from his neural implant? At first, the answer was easy; correct the mistake and have this program fragment erased. Now, after getting to know some of the citizens of this ConFed, I'm not so sure. Perhaps my emergence wasn't an accident at all. Maybe I was destined to be put here to help Jason Burke finish the job he started.

While I'll admit to a certain skepticism after watching him bumble through a few missions and, not once, but twice, descend into a morass of self-pity and destructive behaviors, I feel he'll be more important in the coming fight than even he knows. The war seems to have already started, and both sides are scrambling to catch up to that fact, but I don't think it will be decided by two massive fleets bashing against each other. In order to defeat the Machine, one will have to adopt its tactics of subterfuge and misdirection.

It seems that, in my analysis of the situation, my decision has been made. I will try to help Omega Force as much as I can, but I must be cautious as even a slight miscalculation on my part could make things exponentially worse.

"We need to talk."

"For fuck’s sake, Crusher, I said I was sorry. I didn't know you were allergic to—"

"Not that, but thanks for reminding me I owe you an ass kicking later."

Jason and Crusher had been sitting in a nondescript, boxy groundcar favored by public utility workers on Nabia-2 for nearly five hours, and the time seemed to be dragging on forever. The Nabia System was an unremarkable star system founded during the Second Wave Colonization after a company on Aracoria bought the rights to it. They performed the requisite indigenous