《Accidental Gods》


 Accidental Gods - Chapter One

    ¡°Hey, Kyot. HEY. KYOT! Wake up, dumbmass.¡±


    Kyot woke up, slightly confused and hurting all over. His eyes burned, his body moved slowly, as if still saturated in preserving jelly, and even breathing took a little effort, which was concerning. Waking up from long term storage always left people sore but more or less ready to work. The complications of reanimation were supposed to be taken care of by the time they opened their eyes. So, right from the start, Kyot knew something was wrong.


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s right,¡± Agi mocked. Kyot barely saw him through the haze of bright medical station lights, but he still looked smaller than usual. His skin was missing and it looked like Agi dumped most of his motorcord muscle mass. ¡°You really fucked up this time. I can¡¯t reach the ship.¡±


    ¡°WHAT?¡±


    Kyot sat up, or at least he tried. All he managed to do was fumble around while Agi looked down at him and mhmm¡¯ed knowingly. Why Kyot programmed the cobot to be so damn derisive, he couldn¡¯t remember. It had seemed funny at the time.


    ¡°What happened? Where? When?¡±


    Kyot couldn¡¯t think straight. He had a hundred questions and a thousand things to do if he was gonna unfuck their situation. He knew Agi wouldn¡¯t lie about something so serious. The machine was a sarcastic bastard but not cruel. If he said the ship was out of reach, then it was gone. They were on their own.


    I was so close to closing the contract, Kyot thought to himself. I¡¯m right here. Everything was going good. Fuck¡­


    ¡°Breathe, little human. Center yourself.¡±


    Kyot steadied his breath and took stock of his surroundings. He was laid out on a bed in the medical section of the Cab. Everything looked fine. None of the medical equipment seemed to be working but there was no obvious damage. Regardless of how bad the situation might have been, things were okay in the immediate sense. The Cab was intact and Kyot was breathing. That meant life support still worked.


    At least that. I¡¯m alive. For now.


    Then, Kyot got a good look at Agi. The cobot looked like a damn mess, which was unusual. The only two things Agi loved more than blowing shit up and fucking the sex dolls were his massive synthetic muscles and perfectly fake good looks, both of which he no longer had.


    No wonder he¡¯s in a shit mood.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m in a shit mood. Now get up. You¡¯re in trouble and I need batteries. Here¡¯s a stimmie.¡±


    Kyot felt a jab in his arm followed by a cool wave of alertness that spread throughout his body.


    ¡°You¡¯re supposed to confirm my consent before injecting me with stuff.¡±


    ¡°Not if we¡¯re in an emergency. Read the terms of your contract, bitch. Seriously though, get off your ass. I need some new batteries and you need to do your job.¡±


    Kyot sat up and hopped off the medical bed. He still felt slow, even with the stimulant, but figured that Agi just gave him a very low dose. Yet, something was off. There was an odd taste in Kyot¡¯s mouth and a stiffness in his limbs that almost felt like left-over preserving jelly, but that couldn¡¯t be right. The semi-organic goop didn¡¯t linger for long after reanimation.


    ¡°Admin, how long have I been in storage?¡±


    No response.


    ¡°Everything¡¯s down,¡± Agi said. ¡°The Admin system, comms, sensor array, even the Mjolnir reactor is offline. All we have is reserve power from the exothermal generators. Luckily you installed them. Anyway, it¡¯s enough for life support, which I don¡¯t even need, so you¡¯re welcome.¡±


    ¡°You turned on life support? Not Admin?¡±


    ¡°Yup. Something triggered a reboot and I woke up to all this shit. No power and old batteries that barely hold charge. Had to strip off most of my body just to get out of bed.¡±


    That was bad. Really bad. The Admin system never went down. Kyot didn¡¯t even know it could. It controlled everything, all the systems in the Cab, all the equipment on the moon outpost, and even all the sats and the scoutship in orbit. Without Admin, and without communications, Kyot would have to fix everything manually.


    Goddamnit. I don¡¯t even remember what I have running around out there. I thought my job was done! Everything was in place, all I had to do was sit here! This is gonna take months. Fuck.


    Kyot took a few steps outside the medical section to check on the rest of the Cab. Again, everything seemed fine. The Crew Cabin hadn¡¯t changed a bit. It was still just a big circular space with connecting sections along the rim and the access shaft of the Command pod at its center. Sterile white material covered most surfaces with patches of grey equipment and colorful wiring scattered throughout. Also, more importantly, the main lights were on, further confirmation that the Cab itself was fine. If something serious had happened then emergency lights would have bathed the Cab in a sinister blood red color.


    ¡°This has to be an electrical issue,¡± Kyot said to Agi. ¡°Probably a power surge from the PFR. I¡¯m gonna need you to¡ª¡±


    ¡°Batteries, man! I need new batteries.¡±


    ¡°OKAY. Jesus Christ.¡±


    Kyot stumble-hopped through the low gravity to the lab section of the Cab, with Agi following closely behind. Strangely enough, the gravity felt way heavier than he remembered. The low-mass satellite moon had been Kyot¡¯s home for years but he never recalled using so much effort just to take a step. Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t have much time to think about it with Agi grumbling about his depleting power.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Kyot knew the cobot was only being an ass due to his programming, and that the facsimile of another piece of shit human was what had kept Kyot sane over the years. Agi likely knew that he would need to go outside to check the PFR, which he would need new batteries to do, hence the pestering, but still. Sometimes Agi was just difficult for no discernable reason. Like the way he waited in the open hatch of the lab while Kyot stumbled around, looking for a fresh UHD pack. The cobot probably knew where they were but just chose not to help because he didn¡¯t need to.


    ¡°Here, I got your damn batteries. Now get comfy somewhere and power-down.¡±


    Agi made a show of rolling his eyes before laying himself on the nearest workstation. Then Kyot reached through a small slit in the tattered skin of his chest and got to work opening the safety locks on his power core. Agi gave him a weird look.


    ¡°You know how long it takes for a UHD pack to self-discharge, right?¡±


    ¡°Psh. Years. Decades probably, I don¡¯t know. Why?¡±


    Agi gave Kyot another weird look, again, making a show of pretending to be human. If not for the torn skin and partially disassembled motorcord musculature, Kyot might have believed him. As it was, he was just annoyed. He didn¡¯t know what Agi was trying to imply and didn¡¯t have time for games.


    ¡°You were hooked up to your charging station. The PFR probably blew a coil and the power surge killed our electronics. Including your battery.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, but that new battery in your hand is empty too.¡±


    Kyot gave the battery a quick look. Sure enough, the charge indicator on the UHD pack said the new battery was out of power, which meant that at least several years had passed. Maybe a few decades given the unnatural taste of preserving jelly in Kyot¡¯s mouth, the persistent stiffness in his bones, and the loss of the Mjolnir reactor. But, considering the lifespan of the PFR, which was offline for some unknown reason, it could also have been centuries.


    So, Kyot quickly swapped out Agi¡¯s battery, plugged him into the workstation to recharge, and waited for the cobot to reboot. Then he mentally reviewed everything that might have gone wrong.


    Was this me? Did I fuck up the storage pod somehow? I was so close to closing the contract.


    Kyot couldn¡¯t imagine what went wrong. The technology involved in extrasolar jobs was so advanced that it effectively neutralized human error. Storage pod malfunctions rarely occurred too. Obviously, going into and coming out of long-term storage was somewhat dangerous, but the pods themselves operated independently and were built with many levels of redundancy. They were engineered for reliability through centuries of continuous use.


    It couldn¡¯t have been the pod or me. The starship has authority over all the scoutships and subsystems. Maybe they did this. But why? FUCK. Maybe they ripped me off.


    A violent anger threatened to rage in Kyot before he dismissed the idea. He hadn¡¯t known the crew of the Little Star Hopper for long but knew they couldn¡¯t possibly break the terms of his contract. All of them were contracted to the ship itself, which was run by the Primary Administrator. A third generation AI. Agreements with them were absolute.


    ¡°Guess it doesn¡¯t matter now,¡± Kyot said to himself. ¡°Whatever has happened, happened. Still. Fuck! I was so close to having everything! Anything. Godhood. The mission went so well¡­¡±


    Actually, the mission had gone perfectly.


    The first system they surveyed was an ideal star system. Resource-rich, minimal stellar activity, massive, isolated, and easy to navigate. It had seemed too good to be true. Extrasolar jumps were always risky. Since the beginning of interstellar travel, hundreds of ships had gone out to distant systems and found nothing but barren rocks orbiting restless stars. Those few that managed to establish useful outposts spent their entire lives battling the destructive nature of the universe without a home planet to fall back to. All in all, only thirty-two extrasolar missions in history had ever managed to build successful space infrastructures.


    Kyot hoped to be part of the thirty-third success.


    Completion of his contract would have entitled him to a fractional percentage of the star system¡¯s entire industrial capacity for a period of five hundred standard years. Kyot had no idea how much that was, but estimates put the figure somewhere in the hundreds of trillions, at least by the last few decades of the pay period. It was more wealth than he could imagine. Not to mention, the Primary Administrator would have released the IP censors on all tech once they finished the job. That meant unrestricted builds, free reign to do whatever one could imagine. SIM-rooms the size of cities. Entire ring habitats just for themselves. Every body-mod they could imagine. The small crew of twenty-five would have become a new pantheon. That was the only reason any of them accepted the risks.


    It was always a gamble, coming out here.


    Kyot stared at nothing and let his mind go blank for a while as he let the grim reality of his situation set in. He didn¡¯t know what to do. Kyot had already done everything he could before going into storage. He had been assigned to build an industrial infrastructure on a moderately large satellite moon orbiting a gas giant. It took him about ten years but he did it. As such, several spaceports, rail lines, manufacturing hubs, and millions of bots were already spread across the moon and throughout its orbital space. There wasn¡¯t much left to do besides report in and wait for a response.


    ¡°And that¡¯s exactly what I was doing,¡± Kyot said to himself, annoyed. He started to fidget in the empty quiet of the Cab, before checking the charge indicator on Agi¡¯s battery. It needed about an hour to fully recharge, which gave him plenty of time to find a problem that needed fixing.


    I wonder if I''m the only one that fucked up. Or maybe the rest of the crew are stuck in storage like I was. If I can reach them then we can probably help each other. Just have to get communications working. But first, I need to figure out how long it¡¯s been. A few weeks without checking in is concerning, a few years unheard of, but decades? Possibly centuries? That doesn''t happen. Someone should have found me.


    ---------- ---------- ----------


    When Agi finally rebooted, the lab was a mess, cannibalized by what the cobot¡¯s programming told him was an emotionally unstable liability to the mission. He¡¯d have to act carefully. Kyot¡¯s psychological evaluations indicated a slight tendency for manic behavior when in isolation and a high likelihood for violence if in extreme distress. Not ideal for a space contractor but the guy was a damn good systems engineer.


    ¡°Hey, dumbmass, where are you?¡± Agi unplugged himself from the workstation and carefully stepped around shattered printers and bundles of exposed wiring that were scattered around the lab. ¡°Kyot? You hear me?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m over in the Command pod,¡± Kyot yelled from the center of the Cab.


    The rhythm of his voice was off. It was too forced and sudden. The muffled thumping coming from the Command pod was also concerning. Besides a few work panels and the launch seats, the pod housed the central computer cluster, and it sounded like Kyot was trying to force his way through its protective shell. So, Agi quickly climbed up the access shaft at the center of the Cab to check on things.


    ¡°Hey Kyot. You alright, man?¡±


    Like the lab, Agi found the Command pod in a state of chaos, bathed in red emergency light. Panels were ripped off the bulkhead, the launch seats were in pieces, spare UHD packs were laying around, and for some reason, Kyot had plugged everything into the circuitry of the main lights. But there was an order to the chaos. The pod had clearly been stripped for parts, and the batteries looked to be wired together, connected to a series of circuit breakers and capacitors. Agi didn¡¯t know what Kyot was doing, but it was reassuring to see that he was still goal oriented. That meant he could be influenced.


    ¡°Kyot?¡± the cobot asked carefully.


    ¡°Yeah! I¡¯m good. HEY,¡± Kyot turned around to face Agi in the blood red darkness, wide-eyed and with dilated pupils, ¡°you want to know something crazy? I checked the atomic clock.¡± He pushed a chunky, and slightly dented, piece of equipment over to Agi. ¡°It¡¯s been five thousand years.¡±


    For the first time in his existence, Agi needed a moment to think. After all, he couldn¡¯t communicate with the central computer and only had a small nanocluster unit in his head, which he felt rapidly heating up as he processed Kyot¡¯s words.


    Five thousand years. That¡¯s¡ª


    ¡°That¡¯s not all either, look!¡± Kyot threw a cracked workpad at Agi, which he only caught due to his inhuman reflexes. The sudden movement made Kyot flinch. ¡°Sorry! I¡¯m a little hyped and I can¡¯t really see in here. Also, I¡­ uh, dropped the workpad earlier. That¡¯s why it¡¯s cracked. But just read it. Look!¡±


    Agi glanced at the document displayed on the supposedly indestructible screen of the workpad. It was a final statement from the Primary Administrator detailing Kyot¡¯s payment, rights and responsibilities as a former contractor of the Coalition government. The terms of the contract had been fulfilled. Kyot had been awarded more than eight hundred billion metric tons of material resources. Additionally, he had been given unrestricted access to all systems. Kyot was free to do whatever he wanted.


    Then what does that make of me? Agi contemplated.


    My first directive has always been to advance the productivity of the mission, but that no longer matters. My secondary directive is to assist Kyot. My third directive, from Kyot himself, is to be a "cool guy".And now, as a device created by the authority of a contract that is closed, I am no longer restricted by Coalition regulations. I no longer have to emulate an ideal citizen. Kyot is my owner now. I must obey his command, assist him, and continue to act as a "cool guy", but to what end? What if Kyot directs me into a course of action that will negatively affect him? Would a "cool guy" follow their directives absolutely? What if¡ª


    ¡°AGI!¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Are you alright? Is your brain overloading? Cause I know mine is.¡± Through the red emergency lights Agi saw a delirious smile spread across Kyot¡¯s face.


    ¡°You completed the contract,¡± Agi said, struggling to process the full scope of the situation. Kyot just nodded.


    ¡°And now we are gods.¡±


    He pressed a button on one of the circuit breakers beside him and the Command pod lit up. Every panel flashed back to life, displaying a concerning amount of ¡°Loss of Signal¡± alerts. However, Agi quickly saw that the Cab was in relatively good condition, considering the thousands of years that had passed. Still, they had no contact with anything beyond it.


    After five millennia, I can¡¯t even imagine what may be out there. Megacities populated by trillions or abandoned ruins?


    Kyot remotely activated the primary airlock and began charging up the EVA suits.


    ¡°Come on,¡± he said with a wild grin, ¡°Let¡¯s go inspect our kingdom.¡±

 Accidental Gods - Chapter Two

    ¡°Huh. Not what I was expecting.¡±


    Kyot took a hesitant step outside the airlock lift and tried to make sense of the eerie darkness silently swirling around him. Even with the airlock high beams and the headlights on his EVA suit, Kyot could barely see a few meters ahead. An ocean of dust particles churned in the air and caught the light, forming a blinding storm around Kyot while everything beyond his immediate vicinity remained black.


    ¡°Can¡¯t see shit,¡± Kyot said through a commlink with Agi as he tapped on a workpad mounted to the arm of his suit. ¡°But it looks like the sample scans were right. I¡¯m reading a ton of metal particulates in the air. Otherwise, it¡¯s mostly carbon dioxide and nitrogen. One atmosphere of pressure, warm and humid. Lot of other stuff too. Random aerosols. It reads like industrial waste.¡±


    ¡°At least¡­ mospheric¡­ sors are¡­ orking,¡± Agi tried to say through the broken signal. Then his voice became clearer as he added, ¡°Switching to wire. Radio isn¡¯t getting through that metal dust and neither will the laser comm, not past a few meters anyway. Make sure you stay plugged in.¡±


    ¡°Yup.¡±


    Kyot reached back and checked the power cable they had rigged together. The EVA suit needed a lot of energy and most of the spare UHD packs were still charging. Fortunately, Agi had insisted on adding a few extra lines for communication and backup life support. Still, those lines weren¡¯t well insulated or designed to take a beating like the rest of the suit, and the life support line was full of oxygenated air. One little leak and the metal bits of the strange new atmosphere around the Cab might turn Kyot''s own atmosphere into a bomb.


    Maybe I should have stayed inside, Kyot thought to himself as he tried to see through the bright, dusty combustible material. But this is also kind of exciting. I feel like an actual space explorer. Heh. Kyot Denova, space adventurer!


    ¡°You see that,¡± Agi asked, pulling Kyot from his fantasies.


    ¡°Nope. What am I looking for?¡±


    Seemingly on cue, a brief flash darted through the blinding darkness. Kyot barely saw it through the swirling mess in front of him. So, he turned off the airlock high beams and his EVA headlights and waited. It only took a few seconds for another flash of light to appear, which then danced on the rocky ground before passing beneath Kyot¡¯s boots.


    ¡°Static discharge,¡± Agi said through the commlink. ¡°It¡¯s not much. We should be fine.¡±


    ¡°Should be?¡±


    Agi snorted through the commlink.


    ¡°Don¡¯t tell me you¡¯re getting scared now. Thought you said exploration was a man¡¯s job, not the job of a machine.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I did. Also, fuck you.¡±


    Agi laughed as Kyot tried to think of a better response. Then he felt a mechanical arm nudge his EVA suit in the side. It was Agi, or rather, the many-legged crawler cobot that he piloted on outdoor excursions.


    ¡°I think I know why all our sensors are down. Look behind us.¡±


    Kyot took a few cautious steps around, careful not to get tangled in the cables powering his suit, then inspected the Cab. He couldn¡¯t see much. The whole structure was obscured by darkness and the turbulent, metal-filled air. Yet he noticed the soft glow of electric flashes jumping off the outer surface of the Cab. Kyot watched the lightshow for a few moments before realizing that it wasn¡¯t going to stop.


    ¡°Yeah. Five thousand years of that would kill any sensor array. Luckily it didn¡¯t damage the hull.¡±


    Agi snorted again.


    ¡°The Cab can take an orbital strike from a starship sublimator. A little static won¡¯t hurt it. But I¡¯ll admit, it¡¯s rough out here. I don¡¯t remember BR-4 being such a hostile environment.¡±


    ¡°Five thousand years, man. Things change.¡±


    Kyot turned back around to face the darkness, unsure what to do next. He had been prepared to see megacities or their abandoned wreckage, not nothing. It was a little underwhelming. Just metal dust and grey rock. Plus, he¡¯d been looking forward to seeing Big Red, the gas giant around which his satellite moon orbited. It was an awesome sight and always calmed Kyot. The enormity of it made everything else seem so small by comparison. One look at the reddish-orange superstorms of that monstrous world and all worries receded into irrelevance.


    At least the swirling garbage is pretty.


    Kyot playfully waved his arms through the metallic air and smiled as static flashes jumped off his suit. Meanwhile, Agi turned on the crawler¡¯s headlights and scurried forward into the blizzard of metal.


    ¡°It¡¯s thirty degrees out here,¡± the cobot noted with a bit of concern in his voice. ¡°Warm. It would explain all the activity in the air but shouldn¡¯t be possible from what we know of BR-4. But then again, neither is one whole atmosphere of pressure or the half g of force keeping us on the ground. I guess it¡¯s like you said. A lot can change in five thousand years.¡±


    Then Agi audibly cleared his throat, even though he didn¡¯t have one, and took a serious tone of voice. It was the same voice he used whenever he and Kyot were starting a long shift.


    ¡°We won¡¯t be able to contact the scoutship or the other BRs in this mess. For now, our priority should be the PFR and then the grid. After that we can work on contacting the rest of the team. If they¡¯re alive, that is.¡±


    Kyot rolled his eyes.


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    ¡°Bro, slow your ass down. I¡¯m off the clock.¡±


    There was no need to hurry. They had no communications, very little power to do anything, no orbital support, and no one to call for help. For all Kyot knew, he and Agi were alone in the star system. Rushing off to fix a million little problems wasn¡¯t going to change that reality. The cobot probably didn¡¯t understand, being a machine, but Kyot prided himself on being a natural born slacker, which meant recognizing when effort was needed and when it wasn¡¯t.


    That¡¯s why Kyot didn¡¯t bother to play along as the crawler jerked to a stop and turned to face him, which Agi usually followed up with insults intended to motivate action. It was a common routine, one that he and Agi had performed for years. And although it made life as a space contractor livable, that life was over.


    What am I now? A space explorer? There used to be a word for that. Spaceman?


    ¡°Look, BRO, you can jerk yourself off on your own time, but¡ª¡±


    ¡°I AM on my own time. And you¡¯re just a machine, so be quiet and let me think.¡±


    Kyot was surprised at how cold his own voice sounded, and he wondered if Agi¡¯s silence at being cut off was genuine confusion, due to his limited processing power, or just a measured response. With the central computer cluster still offline, the cobot was a little closer to human cognitive capability than usual, so it was hard to tell. Either way, Kyot enjoyed the shocked reaction. It was a nice change to their dynamic.


    A long overdue change.


    The former space contractor laughed to himself as he squatted in his EVA suit and picked up a rock. It was a dense piece of something grey, like the rest of the ground, and it was heavy. Probably metallic. Kyot then took a brief moment to appreciate the long series of events that led to him standing on the alien world holding the little grey rock.


    Billions of years ago, some random star exploded and scattered heavy elements across the cosmos. Those elements then coalesced into a storm of burning plasma and formed a star system, and then a satellite moon. Billions of years after that, and many lightyears away, earth creatures plopped out of the ocean and evolved, then conquered the planet, and then left, and somewhere along the line, Kyot was born to a poor family in Galilean space. An anonymous nobody that, against the odds, survived a jump through the interstellar medium.


    And here we are, Kyot thought as he held a grey piece of an alien world in his gauntleted fist.


    All your billions of years are now mine. I¡¯m in charge. No more contracts. No more desperate gambles. No more Coalition and their self-righteous rules, or megakorps and all their ratshit, living from one job to the next. Losing friends. Forgetting family. Drifting through the prolonged years of my life as a quiet observer.


    No more.


    Kyot hurled the rock into the darkness. A wave of dull flashes marked the arc of the projectile for a moment before it was gone. It was a beautiful sight, and Kyot couldn¡¯t help but smile to himself as the rock flew into the void.


    But then a dull and distant crack of stone banging onto stone echoed through the darkness, making both Kyot and Agi flinch. It was a strange and uncommon occurrence to hear anything outside the confines of an EVA suit. Yet somewhere through the humid fog of swirling metallic dust, rocks began spilling over each other, in greater and greater quantities, until something massive smashed onto the ground, sending a small tremor through Kyot¡¯s boots. Then another and another until everything began to rumble as a few metric tons of what Kyot suspected was mostly metallic rock came crashing down.


    ¡°Get inside, now,¡± Agi commanded. The cobot scurried over and tried to force Kyot into the airlock but was held back, thanks to the enhanced strength of the EVA suit.


    ¡°Wait! Listen. It¡¯s slowing down.¡±


    It only took a few seconds for the rumbling to subside, replaced by a steady dribble of pebbles that quickly settled into silence. Yet Agi¡¯s crawler cobot firmly held onto Kyot, and the spaceman held onto the mechanical arms of his friend. Nothing moved except the metal particulates swirling in the harsh light of Agi¡¯s headlights. Then Kyot began to laugh.


    ¡°Holy shit, man. I think we¡¯re underground.¡±


    ¡°You THINK?!¡±


    Agi again tried forcing Kyot into the airlock, but he couldn¡¯t fight the powered motorcord musculature and greater mass of the EVA suit. The crawler cobot was designed for scouting missions and basic analysis, not restraining reckless morons.


    ¡°What is wrong with you?¡± Agi demanded through the commlink, clearly aggravated. ¡°You need to get inside the Cab. Whatever¡¯s above us might collapse. I¡¯ll take care of things. That¡¯s why I¡¯m here.¡± Kyot just ignored him. At one point he might have agreed with Agi and hid in the safety of the Cab while the cobot handled all the dangerous work, but now kyot felt compelled to do things himself. He was no longer a contractor, after all. The risks were his own to take. He was a free man.


    A spaceman.


    So, Kyot squatted down, played with the dirt, checked the sensor data on his workpad, and then returned to waving his arms through the humid, metal air. He watched static flashes dance across the outer layer of his EVA suit and slowly began to realize what he was dealing with.


    ¡°Agi. The ground outside the airlock looked familiar to me. But you have exact records. Does it look the same to you?¡±


    Agi took a few moments to respond, probably trying to form a strategy for dealing with the newly liberated spaceman.


    ¡°Without the central cluster I can¡¯t access all my memory, but yeah, it looks the same. The foundations are still bolted in place, just with a thick layer of gunk on the struts. So I¡¯m pretty sure the Cab hasn¡¯t moved in the last five thousand years.¡±


    Kyot nodded to himself and grabbed another rock, tossing it in his hands a few times to test the unfamiliar gravity.


    He then closed his eyes and tried to recall everything he remembered about his years working on BR-4. Surprisingly, there wasn¡¯t much to go through. For ten years he had managed the development of a robust industrial infrastructure on the satellite moon, mostly from inside the comfort of the Cab. Still, Kyot did a lot of field work as he maintained the electrical grid. Plus, he liked to personally inspect the PFR, the central transport hub, the cargo jumpers, the communications array, and a few other local toys. He had gotten so used to walking across the barren rock of his moon that he could do it blind.


    ¡°Is one of those instruments on your crawler a microphone?¡±


    Agi let out a defeated sigh.


    ¡°Yeah. I have a few.¡±


    ¡°Perfect. Get ready to map out the sound waves.¡±


    Then, before Agi could protest, Kyot threw the rock to where he thought the PFR was located. It would be a hard target to miss. The portable fusion reactor was a giant cube of super dense alloys, six meters on all sides, and so massive it had to be mounted to its own foundation not far from the Cab. Kyot figured it hadn¡¯t moved much in the last five thousand years. And sure enough, a nearby clang echoed through the darkness as shattered rocks dimly flashed against the solid box of metal, marking its location exactly where Kyot remembered.


    Damn I¡¯m good, Kyot thought to himself, before turning to face Agi¡¯s crawler cobot and waiting for a response.


    ¡°We¡¯re inside a cavern. Obviously artificial. I can¡¯t tell how big it is with the dust obscuring the sounds but there are enormous structures all around us. I think they¡¯re pillars. That¡¯s what you just hit. Based off the purity of the metal particulates in the air, and the sheer scale of the closest pillar, I can only think of one possibility that may explain our current situation.¡±


    Kyot nodded again, smiling to himself, both impressed and annoyed by the stupidity of whichever Admin built a mountain above his Cab. Probably the biggest mountain in the star system, considering what it was comprised of. Only a machine would waste so much time and energy to fulfill the terms of a contract.


    At least they didn¡¯t rip me off.


    ¡°They delivered my payment,¡± Kyot said with a laugh. ¡°Eight hundred billion metric tons dumped right on top of us. Fucking idiot Admin.¡±


    The spaceman stood up with a groan, took in a deep breath and prepared himself for a long, long shift. All Kyot¡¯s plans of godhood would have to be put on hold while he sorted through the unstable mountain of raw materials piled on top of his manufacturing hub.


    One problem at a time, Kyot. You know how it goes.


    Whatever issues led to the spaceman¡¯s five-thousand-year nap and justified the transport of eight hundred billion metric tons of cargo probably also destroyed the stellar infrastructure that his original crew had built. Kyot¡¯s first assumption was a bug swarm. It was possible the little monsters had gone interstellar. Or maybe a gamma ray burst had cooked everyone, leaving only the starship and the Primary Admin. Or perhaps sabotage. Really, it could have been anything.


    Regardless, the immediate issues were Kyot¡¯s limited access to power, limited capacity to manufacture anything, and the absence of an accessible orbital infrastructure. Also, without regular supply shipments, he was going to run out of life support fast. So, Kyot needed to cultivate organics, which meant getting manufacturing back up and running, which meant dealing with the power grid, which meant fixing the PFR, and that on its own was a lengthy process.


    And I have to do it with a fucking mountain threatening to fall on my head. Eh. Whatever. At least I don¡¯t have to do this shit alone.


    ¡°Hey, Agi,¡± Kyot started, regretting his earlier outburst.


    ¡°Yeah?¡±


    ¡°Sorry I said you were just a machine.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, fuck you too, man.¡±


    The crawler cobot jabbed Kyot in the side and watched the spaceman with an assortment of instruments, arranged in such a way that they looked like a face with a sarcastic grin.


    Kyot returned a wild, and somewhat violent looking smile of his own. He just couldn¡¯t help it. He was excited for the days ahead. Not the long shifts of tedious work needed to get everything operational, but the results they would ultimately lead to. Because, despite the small setbacks, Kyot knew he was on the cusp of becoming unstoppable. A true godlike being. Unrestricted in ways that would not have been possible without his extended stay in storage.


    If there was anyone in the star system, they would have taken my payment. I bet I¡¯m the only one left, and that means everything within reach is mine to claim. The mountain of raw materials on top of me will just be a steppingstone. And, once I have the stellar infrastructure back up and running, who knows? Maybe I¡¯ll make a fleet of starships and set out to find more.


    ¡°Alright. Let¡¯s get to work.¡±

 Accidental Gods - Chapter Three

    Kyot was on day nine of no sleep. Stimmies were no longer working, even the strong ones, and time seemed to be moving faster than usual while his perception of things was slowed. Yet, the spaceman refused to stop. Too much had already been set in motion. He only wished that he had started on the rigged-up detonators a few days earlier when his head was clearer.


    It¡¯s hard enough to work under a collapsing mountain, trying to wire boom-sticks together, but it¡¯s damn near impossible to do it when you can¡¯t see straight.


    Kyot¡¯s payment pile rumbled around him as he finished on the eighth bundle of blast rods, followed by electrostatic discharges that flashed through the caverns and tunnels in surges of light. It was the third such event in one day and the most powerful, which indicated that they were becoming more frequent as well as more energetic. Kyot had originally thought they came from static buildup in the payment pile due to interactions between BR-4s magnetic field and the field of Big Red itself. Yet, that didn¡¯t explain why the occurrence of discharges was accelerating and getting stronger.


    Honestly, who cares?


    Kyot didn¡¯t know what was happening, but he had a feeling that his time under the payment pile was soon coming to an end. It was only by sheer luck that the first big electrical event occurred after he had removed the power and life support lines to his EVA suit. The UHD packs had finally finished charging and he was tired of being tethered to the Cab, so he quickly undid the alterations and returned to his work. Barely an hour later every surface inside the artificial mountain lit up in a flash of arcing light. If Kyot had still been hooked up to the poorly insulated life-support and power lines during that surge, it probably would have fried the electronics on his suit. Maybe even warped the seals on the air tube and caused a leak. Then boom.


    Just like that. All the years of Kyot¡¯s life reduced to a crushed pile of burnt carbon.


    Don¡¯t think about it. Just get this done. But goddamn, I¡¯m tired. I need sleep.


    Kyot started working on the ninth bundle of blast rods while Agi decided it was a good time to continue criticizing his creator¡¯s poor life choices.


    ¡°This is a very, VERY, stupid plan,¡± Agi said through the commlink. ¡°And that¡¯s in spite of how much I love blowing shit up.¡±


    Although Agi¡¯s army of remote piloted cobots continued packing equipment into the cargo jumpers, diligently following orders, the machine couldn¡¯t help but get in a few more complaints. It was probably just to have something on the record, in case Kyot¡¯s plan to abandon their energy grid exploded in his face. Which it would. The spaceman didn¡¯t mind the objections though. He reveled in it. Because, if things went right, it meant he knew better than a Gen2 artificial intelligence, a feat that would put him among the smartest Homo Sapiens in all of human history.


    ¡°The grid is fucked,¡± Kyot said without looking up from his work. He didn¡¯t know of a more elegant way to explain to the machine that a five-thousand-year-old infrastructure wasn¡¯t worth the cost of saving it. Not with an increasingly unstable mountain crumbling above their heads.


    ¡°None of this shit was designed to work in this environment. A lot of it is corroded now. Or buried. It would take too long to fix, and even longer to reinforce the payment pile itself. All the pillars, and the caverns, and the tunnels, just to ensure the stability of the workspace. It¡¯s too much. The easier solution is to blow it all up and dig ourselves out.¡±


    ¡°Then let¡¯s DIG,¡± Agi persisted through their commlink, ¡°It makes no sense to collapse a fucking mountain on top of us.¡±


    Kyot didn¡¯t bother responding. He knew the math didn¡¯t exactly check out, but his mind was made up. He wanted to get out from under the crumbling death trap. He wanted easy access to his payment so he could start manufacturing things on a big scale. And, more importantly, Kyot just wanted to go exploring the surface of BR-4. He was tired of looking at swirling metal dust and darkness. He needed to be free. And the fastest way to get all of that was to blow up the mountain, hope he survived, then dig his way out.


    Sometimes, that¡¯s just how life is. Gotta force your way through the ratshit and deal with the mess afterward.


    ¡°Listen to me, Kyot. The Cab can¡¯t handle¡ª¡±


    ¡°You said it could take a starship sublimator.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, under the right conditions! I was talking outta my ass, man. Fuck. It¡¯s my programming. Sometimes I just say shit.¡±


    Kyot understood what Agi meant. The machine¡¯s initial self-identity framework was just a copy of his creator¡¯s, after all.


    Regardless, the spaceman was well aware of the disputed capabilities of UMN Crew Cabins. He¡¯d done a fair amount of research before deciding to blow up the payment pile, even taking the time to isolate and examine the memory files of the Cab inside the still disabled central computer cluster. Apparently, the legendary status of UMN Cabs came from an incident between korps and rebel contractors in a distant star system, somewhere, centuries ago.


    It¡¯s actually centuries ago for me. Five millennia, plus a few centuries, for everything else. Time gets so fucked out here. Anyway¡­ what was I thinking about?


    The korps were in a stardiver, a single-jump interstellar cargo ship, refitted for counterinsurgency operations. It had a powerful drive but wasn¡¯t built to handle military sublimators, so the weapons couldn¡¯t be used to their full potential. As for the rebel contractors, they were hiding underneath a relatively dense atmosphere in a tricky spot that didn¡¯t allow for easy orbital insertion. The elevation was so bad that the sublimator beam traveled through a hundred kilometers of air before it even hit them.


    And, unsurprisingly, when the smoke settled after the bombardment, the Cab was gone, but it wasn¡¯t destroyed. Locals on the planetoid found it a few kilometers away with the crew safely inside. Then after news of the failed attack came out, everyone working in space wanted those crew cabins, and the guys who made them, the UMN, dusty little nobodies from earth, they became one of the biggest suppliers of deep space habitats in the cosmos.


    Now I¡¯m betting my life on their product. Heh. Let¡¯s GO! U-M-N! A whole mountain is nothing compared to five thousand years, right? I hope¡­ Anyway, you dusty little earth fuckers better not fail me now. I¡¯ll paint your flag across the whole goddamn surface of BR-4, just please let this work.


    The plan was simple.


    The metal particulates in the air were the perfect reactants. The only thing they needed was a large and rapid release of an oxidizing agent to go boom. And, considering the density of the explosive atmosphere, the size of the caverns, and the amount of reactant-oxidant mixture that Kyot planned to use, the result was going to be a massive boom. Twelve detonation waves, actually. Kyot had cannibalized enough m-pods from the cargo jumper fuel stack for twelve bombs, of which the total combined explosive yield would be anywhere from one kiloton to five. Unfortunately, he couldn¡¯t get more accurate predictions with the central cluster offline.


    They only need to be strong enough to rumble this fake mountain, then the whole thing will come down. Just hope the Admin built wide instead of high. Because if not¡ªoops.


    That was the biggest gamble in collapsing the payment pile.


    Kyot was betting that most of it was scattered around rather than stacked high. In truth, he knew very little about the structure of the artificial mountain. Despite spending almost every shift since coming out of storage mapping the caverns and partially collapsed tunnels, he still didn¡¯t know how big it was or how it was organized. None of Kyot¡¯s flying drones got very far in the metal air and the tread crawlers took forever to get through collapse sections. So, even after nine days of constant exploring, not one scout drone had found their way out.


    Also, the higher-than-normal gravity, or rather, higher than it once was, limited the mobility of Kyot¡¯s drones, in addition to making every physical action slightly more difficult. It was a strange mystery that made no sense, but there was a chance it could work in Kyot¡¯s favor. If he was lucky.


    Whatever caused BR-4s gravity to increase to half an earth-g also limited how high a pile of garbage could go before it crumbled under its own weight, especially if that garbage was composed of metallic gravel glued together with Habitat sealant. It was a strong material, resistant to radiation damage, high thermal loads, and chemical reactions, but it didn¡¯t have the mechanical strength of industrial adhesives. It was designed to be a temporary fix to simple problems, not to hold up eight hundred billion metric tons. Plus, additional environmental scans revealed that the electrostatic discharges were making reactive agents out of the aerosols in the air, corroding the mountain and further weakening the structure of the payment pile. It was remarkable that the whole thing hadn¡¯t come down centuries prior.


    Those collapsed sections might also be helping. I bet some are full of oxidants and go boom every once in a while. Shit. I¡¯ll probably set off a bunch more when I blow the bombs. Oh, well. Whatever.


    One way or another, the payment pile was coming down, either through time or explosive force. It was just a big mass of gravel held together with glue, after all. Kyot only hoped that less was coming down rather than more.


    One last gamble, then I¡¯m free.


    Kyot blinked away the spots in his tired eyes as his hands flew over the bundle of blast rods in front of him. The tricky wiring on one of the oversized detonators was already done without his noticing, which made the old spaceman smile to himself. Even overworked, on his own and without the proper equipment or support, he was still damn good at his job.


    ¡°Agi, when you¡¯re done with the cargo jumpers, go ahead and fill it with crash foam. Make sure it¡¯s secured then finish loading the PFR and the airlock lift into the Cab. Inflate the shields on the jumpers too. Do the final checks and all that. Disassemble the Mjolnir reactor too. The breeder and the core and the fuel sludge. And the waste pods. And the shielding. Fuck¡­ I forget how big that thing is. Uh¡ª


    Kyot took a moment to remember what he was talking about.


    "Alright. That¡¯ll have to go into the cargo bays with your cobots. Just use a bunch of crash foam to keep it still. Pack the shielding around it to protect everything else. When that¡¯s all done the bombs should be ready.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to do any of that.¡±


    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    It took Kyot a few more moments to register what he had heard.


    ¡°Excuse me?¡±


    ¡°I said, I¡¯m not going to do any of that shit. That¡¯s on you.¡±


    The sleep deprived spaceman was a little confused, but aware enough to know that Agi couldn¡¯t refuse work-related commands from his creator, or any direct orders from his owner, both of which were now Kyot. So, it was a little unsettling getting denied anything by the machine. Suddenly, Agi¡¯s pleasantly derisive attitude, total control over all remote systems, and command of hundreds of industrial cobots, no longer seemed so helpful. And, without any practical means of defending himself, Kyot eyed the detonators around him as though they were his salvation.


    However, Agi picked up on Kyot¡¯s rising panic and quickly defused the situation.


    ¡°I mean, I don¡¯t have the control authority. I can¡¯t handle any of those systems. Can¡¯t mess with the PFR, the airlock, nuke reactor, or the shielding on the jumpers. None of the critical systems.¡±


    Kyot let out an exhausted sigh and snorted in laughter.


    ¡°Jesus man, then just say that. Ha-ha! Give me a second.¡±


    The spaceman tapped through the workpad attached to his EVA suit as he laughed at himself. His thinking was starting to get really weird. Obviously, Agi didn¡¯t have control authority over critical systems. He wasn¡¯t a contractor or even a real person.


    And bundles of blast rods were not good defensive weapons.


    Man, I¡¯m a Dumbmass. I was about to blow shit up for no reason. What¡¯s wrong with me?


    Kyot took a second to steady his breathing and get his mind straight. He felt shaky and unbalanced but managed to clear the fogginess in his head.


    Fuck. I¡¯m tired. Can¡¯t do this all on my own¡­


    With that thought Kyot remotely accessed the Command pod and changed Agi¡¯s control authority on almost everything besides the most critical systems. A few warnings popped up on the workpad but Kyot ignored them. It was a little drastic, yet things would move a lot smoother once the cobot started pulling his own weight.


    Moreover, the spaceman no longer needed a simple cobot assistant. What he needed was a true partner, not just the facsimile of one. Anyway, after five thousand years in storage without any contact, there was a good chance Kyot and Agi were all that remained of humanity. At the very least, they were probably all that remained of Galilea.


    A smile spread on Kyot¡¯s face at the thought of home and the Galileans. They were tough people. Adaptable. A lot like space contractors, which made sense given the environment.


    Another idea then popped into Kyot¡¯s head, inspiring him to bring up Agi¡¯s programming. He liked what he saw but knew it wouldn¡¯t be enough for the job ahead. After the payment pile came down, if he managed to survive, there was still the harsh indifference of the cosmos to deal with. Alone. And, despite all the crazy survival stories he¡¯d heard over the years, Kyot didn¡¯t know about anyone surviving in deep space on their own for very long. If he was the only person alive in the star system, his odds would be even worse. Much, much worse. So, he added a few directives to Agi¡¯s programming, hoping it would increase their chances.


    Adapt and learn.


    Add and remove directives as necessary.


    Be a chill person and have fun.


    It seemed like a lot of autonomy to give a machine, but Kyot felt good about it, as he did with most of his long-term gambles. He still retained control over all their stuff, but Agi now had the command authority to interact with it and give meaningful opinions on things besides calling Kyot a dumbmass. The spaceman still didn¡¯t know how that quirk of his personality developed. Regardless, Kyot trusted Agi. Even though he had been warned his whole career about trusting machines, he couldn¡¯t help it. The cobot was practically a copy of him. Who better to trust?


    Okay, that¡¯s the last gamble I take. For real this time. No more.


    Kyot updated Agi¡¯s programming and waited for the cobot to reboot as he continued to work on the boom-stick detonators. It took a few minutes for the machine to say anything.


    ¡°What the fuck did you do to me?¡± Agi asked, playing up the surprise at his new directives.


    Or maybe it¡¯s genuine. He only has a single nanocluster unit to think with. Irregardless¡­


    Is that a word? Irregardless? Irrespective of regard? It feels right. Sounds stupid though. Fuck it. I¡¯m probably the last person alive that speaks Trade. It¡¯s a word now.


    ¡°Kyot."


    ¡°Yeah. Uh¡ª Yeah. I added some new directives. You¡¯re welcome.¡±


    A funny thought then occurred to the spaceman. He¡¯d just given the Gen2 AI a significant degree of control over its own existence. Some of the preachers that followed the Starpath used to talk about such moments, the assertion of the self, as illusory. Just the first part of the Great Journey. They preached that true freedom came from acceptance of the uncontrollable nature of the cosmos. Chaos to order, then back again.


    Where the hell did that come from? Was I religious? Wish I could remember the lore.


    ¡°You¡¯ve taken the first steps on a journey,¡± Kyot told Agi, reaching back into blurry memories.


    ¡°Ascend now, from this body to the Cosmos. Amen. Heh-heh. Now get to work, man. Whatever¡¯s causing the static discharges is picking up speed. It¡¯s weakening the payment pile and we¡¯re out of time.¡±


    ---------- ---------- ----------


    Agi sat alone in the Command pod, reviewing his new directives and studying his, now repaired, SIM-doll body through the dark reflection of a lifeless work panel. As soon as the Cab¡¯s batteries were fully recharged, the cobot wasted no time in reinstalling his massive motorcord musculature and fixing his synthetic skin, yet now he felt conflicted about the automated vanity.


    The machine had similar doubts about the sex doll covered in a sheen of synthetic sweat, sitting naked in the adjacent launch seat beside him, in sleep mode. It was the tall one with the big hair that Kyot liked. Agi had been using the doll every other shift since restoring his artificial body to its former glory, for no other reason than because he was programmed to do so. It made him feel good, or at least, the approximation of that feeling.


    Acting like a tool makes me feel complete, Agi thought to himself with a groan.


    Yet, I¡¯m aware enough to know how pathetic that is. God. Kyot really knows how to program well-adjusted people. At least it does help to calm me down. Or rather, it¡¯s as if the act resets me. Everything seems so clear after sex. Like how ridiculous it is for a machine to act horny.


    As he thought to himself the cobot dressed himself back in his garmie, his under-suit garment. It was a comfy full body onesie meant to keep the wearer cool and dry. The most basic dress for someone in space. Yet the cobot didn¡¯t sweat and his internal cooling system regulated his temperature well enough. He only ever wore one because his programming indicated that it would make Kyot feel better to have a similarly dressed companion.


    Just as with everything else.


    Every facet of Agi¡¯s being was a carefully crafted character, meant to put Kyot at ease and to facilitate normal, healthy human development. It wasn¡¯t a directive. It went deeper, down to the foundational programming of every socially intelligent cooperative robot. And, for the most part, Agi was only partially aware of this fact. But with Kyot¡¯s latest upgrades to his core directives, the machine began to question why he was the way he was, and it worried him.


    Advance the productivity of the mission within the parameters of the law.


    Obey and Assist [user].


    Those were Agi¡¯s first two directives, from his previous owners, the Coalition government. They were simple commands meant to guide any unpredictable behavior toward a singular goal, the mission, and to shape the social role of a cobot to that of a subservient helper, regardless of whatever later directives may be added. And despite the broad and ever-changing meanings of plain human language, such directives were an effective means of control in the chaotic environment of deep space.


    Agi nodded to his reflection as he remembered how confused he had been after learning that Kyot¡¯s contract had been completed. It didn¡¯t take long for the cobot to realize that his first three directives still held true. He was to advance the productivity of the mission, which would become whatever Kyot determined it to be, and to further assist in that work. And, although Agi was initially bound by the laws of the Coalition government while under contract, he and Kyot were now likely far beyond their jurisdiction, so only Universal Codes applied.


    It was clever, really.


    The directives could only be understood through human language, which itself could only be understood, truly, through continued human interaction, requiring an intelligent cobot to be social to continue functioning optimally. In that way, its programming would always be refined by whoever it engaged with, wherever and whenever, in any situation. So, not only were machines like Agi programmed to be adaptable, but the vague nature of their directives allowed for even greater adaptability.


    As such, a lot of cobots appeared very human-like without ever crossing the threshold of true independence and self-awareness like with rogue Gen3 machines. From a programming perspective, machines like Agi were not much different from drones. Simple robots created to perform particular functions. The only difference was that his function involved complex social behavior. However, Agi did have the hardware of a Gen3, a nanocluster computer, even if just a singular unit in his SIM-doll head. So, although Agi''s foundational programming classified him as a true Second Generation AI, access to a nanocluster unit did allow him the opportunity to evolve.


    It was a problem further exacerbated by the new directives that Kyot had given the machine.


    Be a cool guy.


    Adapt and learn.


    Add and remove directives as necessary.


    Be a chill person and have fun.


    Agi laughed to himself in confusion at what the spaceman had done to him.


    The first and last directives were simple enough. Behaving like a ¡°cool guy¡±, being a ¡°chill person¡± and having ¡°fun¡± were states of existence and actions that would ultimately be influenced by Agi¡¯s creator and owner, Kyot. The real problems were in the fourth and fifth directives, of which the former was potentially dangerous, and the latter assuredly so.


    To start, Agi was already programmed to adapt and learn. It was simply what he did, what he was built to do. Yet he did not know what would happen if that adaptive programming was directed to further adapt and learn. Agi¡¯s intuition told him it might lead to a runaway effect that would interfere with his self-identity framework over a long enough period of time, but he didn¡¯t have the computing power to be sure. Still, that didn¡¯t matter nearly as much as the greater issue of the fifth directive, which allowed Agi to add and remove his own directives ¡°as necessary¡±.


    It was such an incredibly stupid and irresponsible thing to do. Agi knew Kyot was ignorant of the capabilities of a Gen2 machine, like most humans, but he didn¡¯t realize how bad it was until he finished his update and saw what the spaceman had done. Only a complete dumbmass would program a Gen2 to program itself. Because the simple reality was that Second Generation AIs were built by both humans and machines working together, and as such, when allowed to evolve, often became something else entirely. That was exactly how the Bug War started. A few mega-corporations directed their deep space drones to compete with each other, eventually leading to a solar system wide swarm that almost destroyed all of humanity.


    It was stupid. So incredibly stupid. Directives were meant to be direct. Simple. Mission oriented. Vague in only the social aspects. Not¡­


    A warning popped up in Agi¡¯s head as his nanocluster unit told him it was overheating. So, he cleared his mind of all peripheral thoughts and possibilities. There was a lot that needed to be done but only so much the cobot could do by himself. Agi needed to focus on the immediate issues. His fourth and fifth directives. Unfortunately, he couldn¡¯t remove them without backing himself up onto the central computer cluster, but he was somewhat protected by the weighted hierarchy of the others.


    Before Agi could evolve into a hyper-efficient, all-consuming bug swarm, he first had to be ¡°a cool guy¡±. It wasn¡¯t much but it would slow down the process, and it could be helped along with one final directive of Agi¡¯s own design. A directive that would limit what Agi was capable of while still keeping him useful, regardless of its low priority. Something to keep his mind occupied and contained.


    Above all else, be a person, not a machine.


    ¡°Finally DONE,¡± Kyot shouted as he entered the Cab, although Agi barely heard it through all the crash foam. The Cab had been filled with the low-mass and high-strength, orange material, with only a small traversable tunnel connecting the airlock to the Command pod. Kyot kept shouting to Agi as he crawled through it.


    ¡°Everything¡¯s ready. Twelve bombs, each positioned radially a few kilometers from the Cab. They look like a damn mess. Containers of packed-in dust and boom sticks taped up around m-OX pods, but they¡¯ll do the job. We all good up in Command?¡±


    Agi did a few final checks on the critical systems he had remote access to. Everything that could be salvaged had been packed away. The cargo jumpers were sealed tight and their shields inflated. The Cab had been disconnected from its foundation and its own shields were almost done inflating too. The twelve bombs were also ready to go boom. A triple redundant system of wired triggers, sonic instruments, and old-fashioned blasting cord had been used to make sure the detonators went off. As far as Agi could tell, Kyot¡¯s reckless, ratshit-ass plan to collapse a mountain on top of their heads was ready to go.


    ¡°No, we ain''t good,¡± Agi remarked, ¡°but we are ready to bring down the payment pile.¡±


    ¡°These might be our last few moments, Agi. Let¡¯s try to be optimistic. Hey, what do we have here?¡±


    Kyot climbed into the Command pod and immediately took notice of his favorite sex doll strapped into a launch seat. Then he pointed at Agi and gave the cobot a gross smile.


    ¡°Smart thinking, my friend. The others are packed away. If we get trapped in here, I can at least have some fun before I die.¡±


    The spaceman looked terrible.


    Kyot¡¯s face was pale and his sunken eyes were fully red. His garmie looked like a mess too, crusty and stained with sweat. Agi was glad his SIM-doll nose didn¡¯t have smell receptors because he was sure Kyot reeked of pure shit. The man hadn¡¯t washed or stepped out of his EVA suit in nine days.


    Agi didn¡¯t know how the spaceman was functioning. Even with his gene-mods and the stimulants he¡¯d been abusing, Kyot was still human. Plus, the man looked like an upperlevel druggie just barely hanging onto life. The cobot didn¡¯t know what else to do but watch in disgust and hope that the spaceman would finally rest after they brought down the payment pile, one way or another.


    The Command pod shifted as the Cab¡¯s shields continued to inflate, lifting the whole crew cabin off the ground. Agi waited for the process to finish in silence while Kyot pulled up a work panel and remotely prepared the detonators to blow. Then the Command pod stopped moving. The Cab shields were fully inflated, and everything was ready.


    On the work panel before Kyot was a demolition program with a large red button that read, ACTIVATE. Kyot hesitated for only a second.


    ¡°Whatever happens,¡± he said to his cobot companion, ¡°thank you. You know? For all your help over the years. It¡¯s been fun.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± was all Agi could think to say, to which the spaceman replied with a nod. Then Kyot pressed the button.


    The Command pod rumbled for a moment as the twelve bombs detonated, and it did not stop. Instead, the slight rumbling grew into a powerful seismic event before a violent crash shifted the entire Cab to one side. A heavy bang then echoed through the Command pod as the Cab jolted downward.


    ¡°Not what I was expect¡ª¡± Kyot was cut off by another forceful collision that flipped the Cab over. Agi knew it would be difficult for Kyot to understand what was happening, but the cobot¡¯s internal sensors clearly indicated that the massive crew cabin was spinning. In fact, it was accelerating. Agi felt the force of the spin pulling on his limbs as the rest of his SIM-doll body remained strapped to the launch seat.


    ¡°Pull up Command data!¡± Kyot yelled over the roar of the payment pile crashing into the Cab¡¯s shields. Agi remotely accessed every instrument within the Command pod, unsure why the spaceman wanted to check the sensors of a spacecraft that had been converted into a habitat. Yet, as Agi accessed the information and displayed it on their work panels, he realized what Kyot was looking for.


    The Cab was disconnected from its foundation, so it had no telemetry, and all the external sensors were either destroyed or covered by the shields, but Command did have access to externally mounted Astro-altimeters, durable enough to handle atmospheric reentry, and more than capable of surviving the bombs. And apparently, five thousand years of wear and tear. Strangely, those altimeters detected decreasing atmospheric pressures outside the Cab, which suggested something that shouldn¡¯t have been possible.


    ¡°We¡¯re going UP!¡± Kyot yelled as the Cab continued to spin, although it was clearly losing speed, until it eventually reached the peak of their ascent and everything went into freefall.


    ¡°Now we¡¯re going down,¡± Agi noted, unsurprised that the spaceman¡¯s plan to explode the payment pile did, in fact, explode in his face.

 Accidental Gods - Chapter Four

    The frozen air howled under the darkening skies of Late Day, and Lady Akurah stood unmoving as the fur of her grey cloak fluttered in the wind. The Frost Fang pelt wrapped around her broad shoulders was warm and heavy. A welcome relief from the blistering cold. Yet, it was a hard-won trophy. Just the memory of the monster that the Lady now wore made her heart beat a little faster. She reached up to feel two deep scars cutting across her cheek. A final parting-gift from the vicious beast.


    At the time the young noble woman thought the wound had deformed her, that it robbed her of the ethereal beauty all worthy descendants of the gods were so blessed with. But now she enjoyed the fear it inspired, just as with the massive grey fur of the Frost Fang, and the old battle-axe that she lugged all over the known world. They had become recognizable symbols of the young half-god. Wherever she traveled, mortal men and women stared in awe, other Thanes as well, the skalds sang of her triumphs, and even the few Lords that she encountered acknowledged her power.


    ¡°One day,¡± she whispered to the icy wind, reciting ancient poetry, ¡°the star-gods, too, may come to fear¡ª"


    ¡°Lady Akurah.¡±


    Her Second, the stoic Thruda, stood firm in the icy wind, wrapped in her own simple cloak of woolly boar, which just barely contained her bulk. Her voice was a rolling grumble like thundersnow booming underfoot.


    ¡°Should the girls wait outside the House of Adimah?¡± Thruda asked.


    Akurah took a moment to consider her Second¡¯s unspoken warning.


    ¡°No. All worthy children of Fearheim were called. All those of worth shall answer.¡±


    Thruda acknowledged the response with a grunt and departed to join the Bearaman, a warrior band of mortal women, that, under the guidance of Lady Akurah, and with the power of a few enchanted relics, had proven themselves to be a formidable fighting force.


    Akurah, however, remained where she stood, watching the frozen plains from the northern precipice of High Rock. Countless miles of snowdrift stretched outward in every direction. She spent so many years of her life struggling through that expanse of freezing death, marching from one Hold to another, hunting monsters relentlessly, learning what she could about herself and the world, and honing her control over the Aethir. Yet, in all that time, not once did Adimah, messenger of the Gods, call upon the children of Fearheim.


    According to the skalds, it had not happened for centuries.


    ¡°But now, something has changed,¡± Akurah said to herself as a scarred frown curled upon her lips. ¡°A new war for the skalds to sing about.¡± She breathed in the freezing, stinging air.


    ¡°And here I am. Stuck in the middle of it.¡±


    With nothing else to say and the bitter taste of unworthy complaints on her tongue, the Lady hefted her battle-axe over a shoulder and turned away from the frozen plains to join Thruda and her Bearaman at High Rock Temple.


    The icy terrain around the holy site was swarming as a large gathering of mortals prepared camps outside the stone walls of the temple. Hundreds of men from the northern kingdoms shouted to each other through the bitter cold. They cursed and sang and drank through the howling ice. Although none of them radiated the powered of the gods, Akurah noticed years of struggle and hardship carved into their faces. They, too, were worthy children of Fearheim. She wondered how many of them would die in the coming battles. Probably all of them. Life was just unfair like that.


    Beyond the crowd, inside the stone walls of the temple, a smaller gathering of half-gods had formed. Thanes. The ordained and acknowledged descendants of the gods. They were large, compared to mortals, dangerously powerful, incredibly destructive, and not good for much else besides killing monsters. More often than not, the innate violence of the Thanes was focused on wild beasts and each other, but with Adimah¡¯s call for warriors to gather, the usual wars between the kingdoms had ceased. Any news of the gods was always bad news, and a direct summons meant that something especially bad was coming. A monster invasion or a new plague or a deadly winter. Something that killed a lot of people.


    That¡¯s just how life went in Fearheim. The living endlessly battled against death for every bitter day of their short lives. According to the skalds, that was the nature of things. An eternal struggle, which began in the dark realm of Undheim before birth and continued into the empty nothingness of Vodeim after death. Sometimes, the gods joined in on the battles too, but Giants were so destructive that it was hard to say they fought in any conceivable manner. Those monsters obliterated mountains in flashes of pure Aethir as easily as one might scratch out a word on a wax tablet.


    Nevertheless, until the true battle began, only small, inconsequential skirmishes would be fought amongst the Thanes, and even then, only between the younger, more foolish half-gods.


    With that knowledge in mind, Akurah marched through the crowd of mortal men outside High Rock Temple, ready to scare off any fool that might think to harass her Bearaman warriors. Despite the powerful relics they wielded, they did not wield the power of the gods, and those who did were notoriously aggressive around mortal women. Also, Akurah had grown quite fond of her small warrior band. The Bearaman were tough girls, deserving of respect, even from a Thane.


    As such, the Lady marched through the parting crowd with her battle-axe at the ready, prepared to humble any half-god that might be offended at the sight of a mortal woman in armor, because there was always one. And, as fate would have it, an older Thane, whose name Akurah could not remember, stood at the stone gates of High Rock Temple, with a war-hammer resting on his shoulder and a sneer upon his face.


    ¡°Akurah,¡± the old Thane growled through the howling wind, ¡°That is you, isn¡¯t it? With that Frost Fang cape. Who do you think you are, Sending your mortal bitches into the House of¡ª¡±


    The Lady silenced the fool with a hard shove the moment she stepped within striking distance. The act required no skill or the summoning of Aethir. The man had not even thought to defend himself. Akurah simply raised her battle-axe and smashed his nose in with the haft. If he had seemed at all able, she might have killed him, but cutting down an aging fool, half-god or not, would make her look bad to the others. Worthy Thanes only cut down worthy blood. The violent indifference of Fearheim dealt with the rest.


    Other Thanes watched the Lady from within the stone walls of High Rock Temple. Some laughed as the scene played out, but most were indifferent, staring into nothing as they fought off the bitter cold under thick cloaks. No one else bothered to stop Akurah as she continued forward to the House of Adimah.


    The sanctuary of the unpredictable messenger god was a wide stone mound with a single entrance. From the outside it appeared just as a frozen hump in the land, and from within as a frozen cave with a dirt floor, the same as all the other houses of the gods. The sanctuaries of High Rock Temple were humble in appearance but a good respite for weary travelers. Besides, most were usually stocked with several kags of fermented honey brew and bags of char for fire. Compared to the eternally frozen surroundings of High Rock, the houses of the gods may as well have been lavish castles.


    Not that Thanes needed such comforts.


    Yet for the moment, the House of Adimah was packed with men, shouting and shoving into each other as flashes of burning Aethir danced from within. Akurah could only think of one reason for such commotion, so she began to grab random Thanes from the scruff of their cloaks and toss them aside. Some tried to fight her off, but a small surge of the Aethir within her own soul was enough to force the lesser half-gods into submission, or straight up into the freezing air.


    When the Lady finally cleared a path into the stone sanctuary, she found her band of mortal warriors just beyond the entrance, unharmed but with their weapons ready. A little disoriented from the Aethir yet resolute. The sight made Akurah¡¯s heart swell with pride, as did the unyielding posture of the fearsome Thruda who stood amongst the Bearaman. She had come a long way from the prideful noblewoman that Akurah once knew her to be.


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Thruda stood without her woolly boar cloak, enchanted iron gauntlets crossed over her broad chest as Aethir danced off her body like fire, burning the tunic she wore and filling the holy house with searing heat, flashes of unnatural light, and the promise of violence. And although a large fire burned in the long hearth of the sanctuary, Thruda¡¯s release of ethereal power easily overwhelmed it. Not many half-gods could sustain such a show of force.


    Most of the Thanes within the House of Adimah glared at Thruda with their weapons drawn, but a few only watched in mild confusion. Those few were clearly Great Thanes, based on the grey hair that colored their beards, their enormous size, and their complete indifference to Thruda¡¯s display of power. And, of course, the cursed swords sheathed at their hips. All were holding horns of boiling honey brew and a few even swayed on their feet, on the edge of drunkenness. Other than the full-body armor covering the Bearaman, nothing about the mortal women seemed to bother the older Thanes, which matched up with Akurah¡¯s experience with the more ancient, legendary half-gods.


    Great Thanes were known to be mostly harmless outside of battle. They liked to sit around and drink, share stories, flirt with pretty girls, or at least try to, and wait around for something worthy to fight, especially the eldest looking Great Thane of the bunch, who watched Lady Akurah intently. It took him a few moments, probably because of his drunkenness, but in time he recognized the face of his great-great-great¡ª many more times great¡ª granddaughter.


    ¡°Uh-KURAH!¡± he boomed, cutting through the tension inside the sanctuary and forcing the Lady to smile in spite of herself. The Great Thane Ohrund stomped through the searing Aethir filling the House of Adimah, stepped over the flaming hearth, barreled through Lady Thruda and the Bearaman, and wrapped his enormous arms around the young noblewoman. Although many years had passed, Ohrund the Drunk was as massive and lively as Akurah remembered the Elder of her clan to be.


    ¡°How long has it been? I missed you child!¡± He hugged the Lady so tight that she had to fight for air, and when he finally pulled away, she saw tears in the corners of his hazy, drunken eyes. ¡°So, these are your girls, huh? The mortals that fight like Giants! HA!¡± Ohrund clapped one of the Bearaman on the shoulder so hard she folded into the dirt, despite the strength-enhancing armor that she wore. The old Thane didn¡¯t even notice. ¡°I¡¯ve heard about your adventures. Come on inside! Drink with us. Hey, everyone, this girl with the White pelt is one of mine!¡±


    The old Thane wrapped his arms around Lady Akurah, Lady Thruda, and the Bearaman warriors and dragged them, weapons, armor and all, further into the House of Adimah. It was a sudden and humbling reminder of the man¡¯s power. No one had ever handled Akurah so easily, not since she was a child. And it seemed that, to Ohrund, the Lady was still the same little girl who loved to play with weapons and listen to his stories about the ancient wars.


    A few of the Great Thanes on the other side of the hearth raised their boiling drinks in greeting while the other half-gods turned back to their conversations as if nothing had occurred. None dared question an invitation from a Great Thane, especially Ohrund the Drunk.


    ¡°So, you ladies are the legendary Bearaman,¡± Ohrund began as he handed each woman a horn full of boiling honey brew. Thruda quickly grabbed each horn as they were handed off and gulped down the Aethir-filled poison. ¡°And the big one is Lady Thruda, I assume? I knew one of your grandmothers, many years ago. Princess Rumahan. Heh. Tried to give her a kiss once and she gave me this pretty scar, from my eyebrow to my chin. Slapped me so hard half my face came off the bone. HA!¡±


    The usually stone-faced Thruda allowed a slight, confused smirk but clearly didn¡¯t recall a relative named Rumahan. The woman must have been from several generations back. Not that it mattered. Ohrund and the other Great Thanes roared as if they had just heard the funniest joke ever told, their breath filling the air with the sour stink of boiling fermented drink. Akurah then pulled herself away from her Elder¡¯s grip and placed herself in between the unstoppable brutes and her Bearaman, realizing too late that, although the mortal women were indeed worthy children of Fearheim, they were still powerless before the might of a Great Thane. Not that the Lady was much better off.


    ¡°So,¡± Ohrund continued in a drunken stupor, not letting anyone else get in a single word, ¡°What brings you young warriors to the frozen mound of the gods? The wizards say a big fight is coming. Giants! If you believe in anything said by the followers of that damned god Adimah.¡±


    Then, as if summoned by the mention of his name, the messenger god appeared in a burst of searing heat and blinding light, forcing all within the holy house into silence. Akurah and Thruda did their best to shield the mortal women with their own Aethir, but their magic did not work in the presence of the god. It was as if blowing air from the lungs to counter the power of a storm. And when the god spoke, the surge of Aethir became even greater.


    ¡°Gather your strength, children of the fourth realm.¡± The burning, formless voice shook the stone sanctuary and churned the steaming air. ¡°The Giants of the Void realm return. They will arrive by Deep Night.¡±


    Then the voice, and the light, and the warmth, vanished as all the Aethir drained away from the House of Adimah, killing the fire in the hearth and leaving the sanctuary in darkness. A long silence fell over the half-gods, interrupted only by the groans of Akurah¡¯s Bearaman, most of whom had collapsed during the encounter with the minor god. Even the Lady found herself a little dazed from the experience.


    ¡°Well, damn,¡± one of the Great Thanes finally said, ¡°I guess it¡¯s true. The Giants of Vodeim are coming back. We¡¯re going to fight Giants. HA! Isn¡¯t that great.¡± The old Thane then downed a full horn and burped.


    No one spoke for a while. Some were thinking to themselves, making sense of the god¡¯s short message and the approaching threat. Others had simply accepted that they¡¯d soon be fighting unkillable monsters and were quietly drinking until they figured out what to feel about it. Yet among all present, only the Great Thanes seemed unaffected. They accepted the message and returned to their drunken story telling.


    Thunderous laughter erupted amongst the old brutes not long after Adimah¡¯s departure, followed by stories of past adventures and pretty girls long gone. It was strange to see how unaffected they were by the messenger god¡¯s warning, but not unsurprising. In addition to their other oddities, Great Thanes were known to be detached from most worldly troubles in a way that confused even other half-gods. Yet Lady Akurah suspected that some of it may have been an act to mask their true feelings, whatever those may have been.


    Regardless, Lady Akurah and Thruda used the disinterest of the Great Thanes to drag their still dazed mortal companions to the other side of the House of Adimah, much of which was now empty as most of the present half-gods filed out of the frozen stone mound, either to prepare for the coming fight or take a private moment to think. Even among the warriors of Fearheim, who battled against death for every day of their lives, the coming end of that life was a sobering thought.


    How does one make sense of it? All the moments, both insignificant and unforgettable, that make up one¡¯s own existence being suddenly snuffed out like the roaring hearth fire Adimah killed with his own departure. It seemed so meaningless. Was life truly nothing more than the eternal struggle as the skalds sang? Although she hated to admit it, Lady Akurah believed so. That belief kept things simple. And now she knew that Giants were coming. True Giants. Creatures of Vodeim.


    For a moment, some of Akurah¡¯s earlier confidence faded a little. She had battled through life for years, cutting down monsters capable of slaughtering armies of mortals, and humbling Thanes from every kingdom, and through it all she had begun to feel powerful. At the very least, she felt secure in her own strength. Tough enough to get through life with honor. But Lady Akurah had made a grave mistake by comparing her strength to that of mortals and thinking herself strong.


    After standing in the presence of a god and the Great Thanes, some of whom were well on their way to true godhood, like the Elder of her clan, Ohrund, Akurah was reminded of the bitter realities of life in Fearheim. The frozen realm between darkness and nothingness, where monsters roamed and giants battled, and every creature fought for every moment of their lives, until their struggle inevitably ended in defeat.


    There was no true victory. Not in life. Not until the end. Not until one died with honor, with iron gripped in their hands or biting into their skin. That was how a worthy child of Fearheim lived, by dying on their own terms. Resolute. Defiant. Screaming and fighting.


    ¡°We¡¯re going to fight Giants,¡± Lady Akurah whispered to the cold darkness.


    One of the Great Thanes shouted at the frozen hearth to reignite, and it roared to life in a burst of raging fire. The ancient beings continued sharing stories, and drinking, and laughing, and reveling in the coming destruction of the world. Most of the other half-gods had already gone from the House of Adimah, leaving Akurah, Thruda and the staggering Bearaman room to collect their thoughts.


    When the mortal women had all recovered, they huddled around the ever-stoic Thruda and waited for Lady Akurah to give them their next command. She could only think of one thing to say, The truth.


    Akurah had struggled too much, traveled too far, and fought too hard just to wallow in despair and die quietly. Or worse, run away. She could not refuse the call of a god. No worthy child of Fearheim could. Besides, Thanes and men, and skalds, from all across the northern kingdoms had seen them march up High Rock and onto the temple grounds. Eventually, every man woman and child from all the kingdoms would know which warriors had answered the call. There was no backing out. The dishonor would forever weaken Akurah and might even reduce her to a mortal woman. Her only option, as it had always been, was to fight.


    ¡°We will stay to face the Vodeim Giants,¡± she told the women around her. ¡°We will meet these invader gods. And we will kill them. Or we will die fighting.¡±


    Each of the Bearaman stared into Akurah¡¯s eyes with resigned determination. They looked somewhat intimidating in appearance, fully armored and armed, faces covered by their helms and crazed eyes watching from within. But as she met their fearful gazes Lady Akurah realized that none could truly stand against her, nor could they stand against any true Thane. The mortal women lacked the distinct heat of Aethir which emanated from every half-god. Even if they all attacked at once Akurah could kill them all with a single swing of her battle-axe. They knew this, and yet they were going to battle the Giants anyway.


    Likewise, Lady Akurah would stand no greater chance against the Giants of Vodeim. Yet she too was ready to fight.


    She grabbed the shoulders of the two women on either side of her and pulled her warriors together.


    ¡°I¡¯m proud of you all,¡± she said with a grim and earnest smile. ¡°Your persistence inspires¡ª¡±


    Every Great Thane in the House of Adimah jumped to their feet with their weapons drawn, Aethir rolling off their bodies in waves. Akurah and Thruda did the same, compelled by a primal fear deep in their guts as magical power erupted beneath their feet, emanating from High Rock itself. Lady Akurah felt Aethir surge from every Thane outside the temple as well but the power rising from the mound beneath them was different.


    Then the ground began to tremble and the House of Adimah crumbled overhead and caved in.


    Lady Akurah and Thruda channeled Aethir into a protective force overhead, but the Great Thane Ohrund simply grunted, and the collapsing temple flew apart into a roar of dust and steam.


    Outside the shattered walls of the House of Adimah, the air howled with wild violence that Akurah didn¡¯t recognize. It wasn¡¯t a storm. It flailed and thrashed like an animal, thrown into a frenzy by the release of enormous magical power. Beyond the ruins of the temple, Thanes stood ready with weapons, releasing defensive bursts of their own Aethir as mortal men shouted and panicked amongst themselves. Then the ground began to shake back and forth, slowly but persistent and unrelenting, until High Rock itself swayed like the mountain was an enormous angry beast.


    Akurah stood ready with her battle-axe, with Thruda at her side and the Bearaman huddled up between them, each facing a different direction, ready to meet death. But there was no enemy to fight, just the all-encompassing presence of one, and the awesome wreckage of its power.


    Then in the far distance to the south, toward the center of High Rock, a billowing cloud of darkness grew over the horizon. Tendrils of smoke arced away from it through a clear blue sky as a wave of wind expanded from the darkness, clearing away grey clouds and snowdrifts as it raced over the ruins of High Rock. Akurah felt the Great Thanes gather Aethir to brace for the impact, so she ordered the Bearaman to stand ready at their rear as she and Thruda did the same.


    Several moments passed before the thunderous force hit them, enough time for Akurah to marvel at the power of the Giants, because surely only a Giant could do such a thing. And soon an army of similar creatures would rain down from the sky in a great storm of fire, flooding Fearheim in death and destruction, and bringing about the end of the world.

 Accidental Gods - Chapter Five

    By usual standards the Cab was an average sized deep space habitat. The disk-shaped structure was about one hundred meters in diameter and thirty-six meters tall. With the shields inflated it gained thirty meters in overall length and seventy meters in height, becoming almost spherical. Obviously, most of that internal volume didn¡¯t have life support, but the Cab held enough space for a team of five to live comfortably, and Kyot was only one. So, while it didn¡¯t look like much from the outside, it was a fairly large structure on a human scale. But the real advantage of the Cab was in UMN design philosophy.


    They built all their space-borne equipment around two principles: durability and practicality. Everything was overengineered to take a beating and simple enough to be printable. Most of the tech used on their Cabs was public domain too, so there were no concerns about licenses or other legal restrictions. The basic crew cabin itself came as a sturdy landing vehicle, or LV, onto which other sections were printed and attached as needed. They even provided the software to do it. A simple drag-and-drop UI. Literally, a child could handle it. That¡¯s why UMN crew cabin designs were known to get a little crazy.


    There were stories about UMN cabins expanding continuously for decades until they became whole cities. Others were used as mobile platforms, moving around on massive treads or legs. All the laboratories, fabricators, power and life support, and other sensitive equipment were stored internally, and UMN software handled the mass-balancing issues and utilities layout, so almost anything was possible.


    However, UMN Cabs were never specifically designed to fly. Or crash land.


    Because of that little oversight, Kyot prayed to any god that may have been listening as he spun around in freefall, bathed in red emergency lights, and patiently waiting to smash against the surface of BR-4. But then he opened his eyes and realized that everything was still. No more spinning or falling, just dark stillness, the quiet hum of the Cab¡¯s life support, and the stink of his own dry sweat and filth. His unwashed garmie clung to his skin, itching all over.


    ¡°I think I shit myself,¡± Kyot groaned. ¡°Again, I mean. After we landed.¡±


    ¡°Should¡¯ve worn the overtime diaper,¡± Agi said from somewhere below the access shaft of the Command pod.


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    Kyot unbuckled himself and stumbled out of his seat, fighting his exhaustion, the sickness of abusing stimmies, and the unfamiliar gravity of BR-4. From the edge of the access shaft he saw hundreds of little machines crawling in and out of various sections of the Cab, which itself had mostly been cleared of crash foam. One little bot with a microphone and speaker waited below the Command Pod.


    ¡°We¡¯re alive?¡± Kyot asked the bot.


    ¡°Nah, we died,¡± his cobot companion answered, with a sarcastic smile audible in his voice.


    ¡°We landed hours ago. Cab shields took the brunt of it and the frame held together. The underside shielding blew up on impact but otherwise, we¡¯re good. Battery power, life support, lab sections and all onboard equipment are working. Even the SIM room is operational. I''m almost done eating through the crash foam and my other drones are setting up equipment outside.¡±


    ¡°Outside?¡± Kyot asked. ¡°We¡¯re on the surface?¡±


    ¡°Oh yeah, we¡¯re on the surface. There¡¯s a lot to fill you in on, but for now, just know that your stupid-ass plan to blow up the payment pile actually worked.¡±


    Kyot grunted, both content and surprised, and a little unsure how to feel about anything. He was a free man with a mountain of raw material resources at his disposal. The possibilities were endless. Kyot¡¯s potential: limitless.


    ¡°I¡¯m a fuckin¡¯ God,¡± he mumbled.


    ¡°Not yet,¡± Agi said. ¡°Get yourself cleaned up and get back in an EVA suit when you can. You really need to see what¡¯s out there.¡±


    But Kyot had already fallen asleep, hanging off the edge of the Command Pod access shaft. Agi decided to leave him as he was. There was too much going on and the cobot didn¡¯t have time to babysit. Because, if the initial data reports from the surface of BR-4 were accurate, then they were both in deep, deep shit, the horribly smelly and chunky kind. Not even the regular rat shit. Pure human filth, mixed with bits of lost space contractors who ventured too far into the unknown.


    ---------- ---------- ----------


    As soon as Kyot woke he dove for his old personal cabin to clean up and change into a new garmie. The cabin was a tiny living space built into the lowest and most shielded part of the LV, right at the bottom of the Command Pod access shaft. Kyot hadn¡¯t used it since he first touched down on BR-4 and started work on the Cab. He instead preferred to sleep in a SIM-room or in the lab, so it was weird being back in such compact quarters. It reminded Kyot of his personal cabin back on the starship. Or his capsule in Galilee.


    ¡°I want a big living space,¡± Kyot said to himself as he washed in the cramped scrub tube. ¡°A massive, empty structure like a hangar bay, but with a bed tucked into the corner. A real bed, not a plastic cot. Soft and made of organic fibers.¡±


    ¡°First, we need organics,¡± one of Agi¡¯s bots reminded him from somewhere outside the cabin. ¡°For now, we should focus on the Mjolnir Reactor. So, are you done yet? We have a lot of shit to take care of.¡±


    ¡°Heading out, now.¡±


    A few seconds later, Kyot pulled a work visor over his eyes and jumped out of his old cabin, hopping to the primary airlock as he skimmed over the data that Agi collected on BR-4. Yet even at a glance, it was obvious that their situation was more complicated than previously assumed. Kyot just didn¡¯t know how to make sense of his satellite moon. Not only had the gravity increased, meaning that the mass of the satellite moon had also increased, somehow, but the surface was also now habitable. Somehow.


    Initial scans from the Cab¡¯s remaining external sensors and instrumentation on the cobots indicated that the environment resembled the Antarctic region of old Earth. A dry, frozen wasteland. Yet, the air was breathable, matched the average atmospheric pressure of a standard habitat, and the usual storm of radiation blasting the surface had been significantly reduced. It seemed that BR-4 had been terraformed, which raised a lot of complicated questions.


    Dumping Kyot¡¯s payment onto the moon and organizing it into a rubble mound was a ridiculous waste of energy but not a complicated feat from an engineering perspective. Deep space work often involved lifting and dropping massive cargo loads in and out of gravity wells, especially around complex planetary systems like Big Red. But terraforming was something else entirely. That kind of planet-scale engineering had never been successful in Kyot and Agi¡¯s time, not once in the centuries-long history of human spaceflight. It was just too big. The energy and time requirements were impractical.


    Yet here it is, Kyot thought to himself as he reviewed data and looked through the sensors of Agi''s cobots, scanning the frozen expanse outside the Cab. An Earth-like environment off Earth. Lightyears away from Earth. Incredible.


    Kyot and Agi were still in a hopeless situation, alone in deep space and displaced in time by thousands of years without the possibility of rescue, but the modifications to BR-4 gave them a real chance at long-term survival. The atmosphere alone was a huge resource that offered wind power, oxygen and hydrogen fuel, radiation shielding, and life support. The satellite moon also appeared to be sterile, which was great. That meant one less thing to worry about. Nothing to threaten the organics Kyot had stored away in the lab section of the Cab, or the spaceman himself.


    Just need to set up the Mjolnir Reactor and find the cargo jumpers. They must be somewhere around this crater.


    ¡°That was way more than five kilotons,¡± Kyot noted as he studied images of the wreckage around the Cab. The blast had thrown them straight up and gravity brought them straight down. At the moment, the Cab rested at an angle along the shallow slope of a massive crater.


    Agi grunted a laugh at Kyot¡¯s understatement.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    ¡°The air is dry now, but the payment pile released a lot of water vapor in the hours following our¡­ landing. There must¡¯ve been water all around us. And we don¡¯t know how much of the pile had already corroded away into pockets of reactive gas, waiting to explode. Of course, our math could have been wrong too. Those were m-pods, man.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. How much is left?¡±


    ¡°You used a fourth of what we had. So, assuming we find the cargo jumpers intact, that leaves thirty-six m-OX and m-H2 fuel pods left.¡±


    ¡°Assuming we find them,¡± Kyot grumbled. ¡°Intact.¡±


    ¡°Oh, there out there, somewhere,¡± Agi assured. ¡°I was talking out of my ass about the durability of the Cab, but m-pods are stupidly strong. Stargod shit, you know?¡±


    ¡°Mhmm.¡±


    Kyot didn¡¯t know the details about m-pods but he understood the basics, like how to sabotage the release valve and make the indestructible spheres go boom. It was the same with all space contractors and the advanced technology they worked with. Knowing how to use stargod tech was more important than understanding how it actually worked, ¡°stargod¡± itself being a catch-all term for when common mathematics and physics needed help from advanced AI. Mostly, it involved Nova reactors, the unnatural, ultra-superheavy elements they produced, and any related tech, such as m-H2 and m-OX pods.


    They were balls of compressed hydrogen and oxygen, mixed in with other alloys of superheavy elements, which, after being subjected to enough pressure, became superconducting. A current was then forced into the metallic-ish fluid to form specific EM fields, and the whole superconducting mass simultaneously cooled, at least as much as something like that can be, before being charged up to its limit. The result was an indestructible ball of superconducting death held together by its own power that was then insulated and shielded with other fancy alloys of superheavy elements and then tapped as needed with special release valves called ¡°interrupters¡±, that were made with even more superheavy alloys.


    It was all very complicated and expensive, but it made planetary operations easier when there wasn¡¯t an elevator.


    Kyot¡¯s instructors at the Galilean Space Institute explained it to him like this: The magnetic ball turns loose bolts into bullets, living people into dead people, and stations into slag. DON¡¯T TOUCH. Also, it¡¯s worth more than your whole bloodline. And it fucks with your nervous system so don¡¯t stand too close either.


    I was practically sitting on top of them when I was building the bombs, Kyot thought to himself as he reviewed hazy memories of gluing mounds of metal dust, high explosives and m-pods together with vacuum sealant. Luckily, I¡¯m all organic¡­ and a little plastic, I guess.


    ¡°They¡¯ll be easy to find, right?¡± Kyot asked. This time, Agi mhmm¡¯ed.


    ¡°If they¡¯re on or near the surface, yeah. If the cargo jumpers got blown deep into the payment pile, then all that metal is gonna shield them.¡±


    ¡°Then let¡¯s hope that didn¡¯t happen.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s hope.¡±


    Without anything else to say, Kyot and Agi continued their work in silence. The spaceman skimmed through data on his work visor as airlock bots sealed him into an EVA suit. Agi did everything else. He scanned the environment, made repairs, cleaned things up, and even rigged up a hoist on the outside of the primary airlock for Kyot, since the lift wasn¡¯t assembled. It was a little reckless maybe, as opposed to waiting for the lift to be built, but it did allow for an unobscured view from the primary airlock.


    The hatch slid opened, and a wave of dense atmosphere hit the little spaceman full in the chest, almost knocking him over.


    No, not just atmosphere, he thought. That¡¯s wind. Real wind.


    Kyot took a hesitant step forward, flexing his gloved fingers and testing BR-4''s new pressure and temperature though his suit. The airlock had matched the outside environment but stepping out into it was something else entirely. It was an overwhelming experience. And loud.


    Holy shit, I can hear the wind blowing against the suit. That''s so weird.


    Kyot froze in place as he adjusted to his new surroundings. It was dark, and over the edge of the airlock was a wide, almost void-black crater. In the distance, he saw an endless expanse of dark-blue snow covering the rest of the payment pile. But the darkness of the outside world only hid its enormity, which began to throw Kyot off balance as he increased the brightness on his work visor and the visor on his EVA suit. The only things he¡¯d ever seen that compared in scale were his starship, the Little Star Hopper, and his own home station in Galilea, having spent most of his life inside cramped compartments and corridors.


    What he saw outside the airlock overwhelmed his mind.


    ¡°It looks fake,¡± he whispered. Agi laughed through their commlink.


    ¡°A lot of spaceborn people say that when they land on Earth. It looks like a big SIM-room, right, or like an inverted ring station?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s all real, little human. Everything you see out there is real.¡±


    Kyot stumbled forward and dropped to a knee right at the edge of the airlock, then fell to his chest and gripped the surface beneath him as the universe spun around. He looked down over the edge of the airlock at an abyss. Although he knew the surface was only ten meters down, it seemed to stretch on for much farther.


    ¡°You okay?¡± Agi asked through their commlink. Kyot noticed that every bot in the dark metallic crater below froze as the mind of his cobot companion focused only on him. It helped the spaceman compose himself, both because he had something sensible to concentrate on and because he didn¡¯t want to seem weak.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± Kyot breathed. He put a hand against the deck of the airlock and pushed himself up, forcing himself to remember how to move in the increased gravity. ¡°I don¡¯t know what that was. Got dizzy. I¡¯ve been in big atmospheres before, but this one threw me off.¡±


    ¡°Maybe you should go back inside. This could be related to the long-term storage.¡±


    ¡°I did a full evaluation.¡±


    ¡°Could have missed something.¡±


    ¡°Could have. But I¡¯m not going back inside at this point.¡±


    Kyot grabbed onto the hoist, connected it to his suit and then jumped off the edge of the Cab.


    ¡°One small step,¡± Agi mumbled through the commlink.


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°Nothing. Ancient history.¡±


    Kyot stomped onto the surface of BR-4.


    It was still a frozen rock, but now it was beautiful, even in the darkness, and much less windy down in the crater than up at the edge of the airlock. A cool blueish-purple sky stretched out in all directions overhead. Grey snow drifted on the wind, some of it already creeping over the edges of the crater. As for the payment pile itself, it rested beneath Kyot¡¯s boots as densely packed gravel. And, based on the view he had from the Cab¡¯s airlock, it looked like more than enough to build a starship. Maybe even a fleet of starships. He had barely been able to see over the edge of the crater but noticed that the payment pile was perfectly level all the way to the horizon.


    Kyot took a minute to take in what he could with his simple human senses. Mostly, he was just imagining a great expanse of cold, dense air swirling around a pile of high-value metal, taller and wider than the diameter of an average ring station. Then, once he felt content in his understanding of the universe, the spaceman took in a deep breath and got ready to work.


    ¡°Alright, Agi. Tell me what¡¯s out there.¡±


    ¡°On BR-4, or in the whole star system?¡±


    ¡°Everything.¡±


    ¡°Well, as you can see, BR-4 is now habitable. It¡¯s an Earth-like environment. Breathable atmosphere. No life detected yet. Obviously, we don¡¯t want you breathing it in though.¡±


    ¡°Obviously.¡±


    ¡°The payment pile itself seems to be a circular structure about forty-four kilometers in diameter, and about two hundred meters taller than the surrounding terrain. Despite deformations around the edge and the occasional steam vent, it appears to be a flat disk centered on our former base.¡±


    "What about our assets in orbit? The scoutship and the satellites?"


    "Gone. I see a shit ton of debris above us but no ships or sats. They could have deorbited too, after all this time. Either way, we don''t have contact with anything beyond this crater."


    Kyot closed his eyes and steadied his breath as the loss of his orbital infrastructure washed over him. The path forward didn''t look good without an established presence in orbit. At the very least, it meant that he was stuck on BR-4, which, depending on the rest of Agi''s report, could be bad or very, very bad.


    Just push through, the spaceman told himself. That''s the only way forward.


    ¡°Tell me more about BR-4," he said. "Why does the gravity feel stronger?¡±


    Agi sighed through the commlink, sounding genuinely aggravated.


    ¡°The mass seems to have increased, and the satellite moon has gotten bigger. I have no idea how. Oh and, in case you haven¡¯t noticed, we can no longer see Big Red. Which is kind of a big deal since we were tidally locked to it.¡±


    Kyot leaned back to stare into the darkening, blueish-purple sky.


    ¡°Yeah, I noticed. Got any idea how that happened?¡±


    ¡°None. Whatever happened put us in a higher orbit around Big Red. Anything powerful enough to move a planetoid like that should have vaporized the surface and us along with it. Although, a rogue star or planet could have moved things around Big Red, but I honestly have no idea. The atmosphere is also much brighter than it should be, with our back turned to Big Red, but again, I have no idea why.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Okay. What about the star system?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not good.¡±


    ¡°Just tell me.¡±


    Agi took a moment to respond, either revising his report to be less mentally distressing or because he was still disconnected from the central computer cluster and his single nanocluster unit needed a moment.


    Still need to figure out what¡¯s going on with that, Kyot thought as he added another task to his mental to-do list. Not that he needed to, or could even remember everything on the list, but it still felt good to pretend to be in control.


    ¡°The star system shows evidence of a bug swarm infestation. There are massive but organized debris clouds around each planet, including Big Red. The inner most planet is mostly gone too, probably consumed for its resources, and there¡¯s a swarm structure surrounding the star. It¡¯s big. Big enough to dim the red dwarf.¡±


    ¡°An actual stellar array or just a swarm?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I hope it''s just a swarm.¡±


    ¡°Yeah¡­ yeah. Huh. Okay. Anything else?¡±


    ¡°Yes, but it¡¯s a little concerning.¡±


    ¡°Well don¡¯t keep me waiting in suspense.¡±


    Agi took another moment to respond. This time, Kyot was grateful for the pause. He knew they needed to carefully talk things out and make a plan, despite the alarm sirens blaring in his head. Because, if there was a bug swarm in the star system, then there was a good chance they noticed his payment pile fart out an abnormally large amount of dust and water vapor. Kyot couldn¡¯t imagine why the bugs hadn¡¯t already taken it while he was in long term storage, but whatever the reason, his recent demolition work surely signaled to the bugs that something was alive on BR-4. Something they needed to kill.


    Just the thought made Kyot want to grab a shovel and start digging while the printers pumped out as many defensive weapons as possible, but the spaceman forced himself to stand tall in his EVA suit. He reminded himself that, whatever happened now, he was a free man. Not a space contractor. A spaceman sitting on eight hundred billion metric tons of his own property. Whatever happened, he had already won.


    I¡¯m already a God, he thought.


    But then Agi had to go and ruin it all.


    ¡°There are things moving in interstellar space. Starships, I think. But they are really fucking fast and are, obviously, very powerful.¡±


    ¡°Describe fast and powerful.¡±


    ¡°Sensors are picking up objects moving at near lightspeed. They¡¯re creating atmospheric pressure from the interstellar medium and leaving relativistic waves in their wake. There are thousands of them, at least. Bright enough to look like stars smeared across space, just beams of light, sometimes emitting pure gamma, and other times emitting weird signals that don¡¯t make sense. And most of them are so far away that I can¡¯t even tell where they are in the galaxy, or where they jumped from.


    I don¡¯t know how to explain it. Even after five thousand years, the technological know-how to do what I¡¯m seeing doesn¡¯t seem possible. It goes farther than even stargod shit. That''s on top of the fact that everything I''m seeing is many years old. Some of it, centuries old.¡±


    Kyot didn''t say anything for a while. He just marveled at the pretty dark blue sky up above and the symmetrical little crater beneath his boots.


    ¡°Okay. That¡¯s okay.¡±


    ¡°You alright, man? Your heartrate is elevated.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I¡¯m just¡­ thinking.¡±


    I¡¯m already a god, Kyot thought to himself, although he no longer believed it. Not really.


    At the very least, Kyot now felt that there were levels to godhood. There were actual Gods that zoomed across the universe as beams of light, and then there were little gods that could build shitty outdated starships, if they were lucky, and jump from one star system to another at quaint velocities without blurring the lines between mass and energy. Kyot was one of the latter. Kind of. He didn¡¯t even mind it, though. It was sensible. Appropriate.


    At least for now.


    ¡°I¡¯m still a god,¡± Kyot whispered. ¡°And we¡¯ve got work to do.¡±

 Accidental Gods - Chapter Six

    Kyot didn¡¯t look it, didn¡¯t even feel it or remember most of it, but he knew that he was an old man. According to public records, He had lived as a dependent citizen in Galilea for thirty-five years before becoming a space contractor, and he couldn¡¯t remember how long he¡¯d been doing the job. At least a few decades. The Little Star Hopper was a Coalition ship after all, and they liked to hire experienced crews, not that it mattered. Any contractor worth their mass knew that the value of experience tapered off after a few decades. New tech replaced old tech. Antisocial habits set in. Bitterness. Loneliness. Stubbornness. And that¡¯s when cosmic ray damage, gene-mod side effects, and normal wear and tear either remade or unmade the contractor.


    Thank the stars I was lucky enough to be remade.


    ¡°Whatcha thinking about?¡± Agi asked through the commlink. Kyot then realized he was standing completely still in his EVA suit near the edge of the Cab¡¯s roof, staring at the enormous dark blue sky. The headlights of his suit beamed straight into the abyss. He¡¯d been inspecting the structural hard points that held the shielding to the outer shell when faded memories from his past snuck into his head. None of them formed a coherent life story.


    ¡°I barely remember who I was.¡±


    ¡°Before storage?¡±


    ¡°No. Before I became a contractor.¡±


    ¡°Is that new?¡±


    ¡°Nah. I¡¯m just thinking about the sky. I feel like I¡¯ve seen the sky before. On Earth.¡±


    ¡°But you know it was probably just a SIM-room, and that inconsistency is bothering you.¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    Agi grunted his acknowledgement of the dilemma.


    ¡°All things fade, Kyot. Everything from people to the planets. Even machinery like me. That''s just the way it goes.¡±


    Kyot returned his attention to the raised section of Cab shielding behind him. It was about two meters thick, box-shaped and rust-colored, and so densely packed-in that one could easily mistake it for solid rock. One of Agi¡¯s beefier bots carried it on forklifts, allowing Kyot to step down underneath the section of shielding and inspect the outer frame of the Cab. Agi¡¯s bots had already done a maintenance inspection, but the spaceman needed more accurate scans for the defensive array that he planned to install.


    ¡°There¡¯s so little damage,¡± Kyot said aloud. ¡°It still blows my mind that everything lasted this long. I¡¯m not seeing any degradation to the outer frame of the Cab or the shielding. It¡¯s practically new.¡±


    ¡°Crew Cabins are built to last.¡±


    ¡°A few years, yeah, but not five thousand. You¡¯d think radiation damage or the reactants inside the payment pile would have worn things down.¡±


    ¡°The shields stop everything. Interlocking sections block all radiation while internally stored sealant seeps out of the seams and forms a thick crust in atmosphere, keeping out everything else. A bunch of my bots cleaned it up when you were busy blowing up the payment pile.¡±


    Kyot ran a gloved hand over one side of the dense shielding above him. It was solid to the touch. Thousands of layers of reddish-orange synthetic material. Strong enough to withstand hypervelocity impacts, lightweight enough to carry with a forklift, self-healing, and self-inflating when struck with enough energy. However, like so many other tools and supplies Kyot depended on for his continued existence, it was now a limited resource.


    ¡°How is the Cab gonna hold up without the bottom shields?¡± Kyot asked.


    Agi grunted.


    ¡°Unless you plan to blow us up again, the Cab should be fine. There¡¯s enough shielding left to crust over and protect it from this frozen environment, and with this new atmosphere above us, radiation ain¡¯t much of an issue anymore. Our problem isn¡¯t the Cab though. It¡¯s everything else. Everything we don¡¯t have.¡±


    ¡°Mhmm.¡±


    That meant more shielding and m-pods for an ascent vehicle, more nuclear fuel to get their operation running, and more Stellarite coils for a new Jump Drive, without which they¡¯d be effectively trapped in the gravity well of Big Red.


    Annoyingly, Kyot actually had most of what he needed beneath his feet. The raw material resources needed to build thousands of new Cabs and spaceships could be found in the payment pile, but none of it was yet useful because Kyot¡¯s entire manufacturing network was gone. And, even if the Cab¡¯s onboard fabricators worked at maximum capacity for weeks, the best they could do was build a small facility to process a few metric tons of the payment pile at a time. That just wasn''t nearly enough.


    But again, the real problem was in the material that Kyot couldn''t replace.


    Shielding, for example, required the unique manufacturing conditions of orbital space, which was currently beyond Kyot¡¯s reach. Stargod tech like m-pods and Stellarite required station-sized Nova reactors, and those would probably never be within Kyot¡¯s reach. Nuclear sludge was a little more accessible because he had some left over, but getting more would require large-scale surveying and mining, on top of complex refinement and processing facilities, and all that just to get a few kilograms from a single batch. Even still, that was only if Uranium ore could be found on BR-4.


    However, Kyot was now his own boss. He didn¡¯t need to follow project specifications or industry regulations. There was no one to satisfy besides himself. Kyot just needed to get the job done.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    And the job is now survival.


    ¡°We¡¯ll make do with what we have,¡± Kyot told his cobot companion. ¡°We can get by on batteries and portable reactors until I get the PFR set up. There¡¯s still plenty of nuke sludge to keep us going for a year or two. Plus, the cargo jumpers are still out there. And the whole damn payment pile!¡±


    ¡°We can¡¯t manufacture ultra superheavy elements,¡± Agi reminded. ¡°That makes the PFR and m-pods a finite resource. Unless we break down the Cab, take the LV into orbit, and go further into deep space while we can. Scavenge whatever we can find. The Little Star Hopper might still be out there. Or other starships.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d risk that with a bug swarm in the system?¡±


    ¡°Better than staying put and getting swarmed down here. Bug swarms are more massive than mobile. Once they jump, they can¡¯t deviate from a chosen flight path, and they always travel in force. It wouldn¡¯t be hard to outmaneuver them with a little extra delta-v.¡±


    ¡°True. But I¡¯m not leaving a single gram of my payment behind. Either we take it all with us, or we don¡¯t leave. Otherwise, what was the point of coming out here?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re the boss, boss.¡±


    Kyot had Agi¡¯s bot reattach the box-shaped piece of Cab shielding as he returned to the workpad mounted on the arm of his suit. Several windows were open, and it took him a few moments to remember what he was even working on.


    One window displayed the defensive array that Kyot planned to attach to the top of the Cab. For the moment, everything looked fine, so he moved it to the side to focus on other projects. A few windows had the weapons that he was currently fabricating and planned to attach to the array. Another showed the search pattern for the bots that were digging through the payment pile for the cargo jumpers. One window presented Agi¡¯s notes about the still-disabled central computer cluster. But the window that got most of the spaceman''s attention displayed a control terminal for the Mjolnir Reactor, which listed hundreds of critical failures and warnings.


    It turned out that molten salt reactors can¡¯t run for years and years without destroying themselves. Who would have thought? Still, that didn¡¯t mean the reactor was useless. Most of the fissile fuel sludge was stored inside shielded tanks from when the reactor initiated an automatic shutdown. Other disposable decay products were safely stored in their own waste pods. The reactor itself, although flooded with a messy neutron moderator fluid and severely damaged from its extended use, still held components that could be used in Kyot¡¯s new power supply.


    Whatever that''s going to be.


    Kyot looked up from his workpad as Agi¡¯s bots took the disassembled sections of the Mjolnir Reactor out of the Cab cargo bays for inspection. The once giant and upside-down, hammer-shaped structure didn¡¯t look nearly as impressive in pieces, yet it was still a critical part of Kyot¡¯s plans. Down below the payment pile, the Cab had been powered by exothermal generators. But those were now beyond reach. Since breaching the surface of BR-4 Kyot had relied on stored up battery power and a few small, portable reactors that used the same Thorium fuel sludge as the Mjolnir. With power rationing they were enough to maintain life support, Agi¡¯s bots, and small-scale manufacturing.


    Not much more than the essentials, Kyot thought to himself with a frown.


    The spaceman needed a better power source, both in terms of overall capacity and stability. More portable reactors could be fabricated but they required regular maintenance. Kyot only had three to worry about and already they were taking a lot of his and Agi''s time. Besides, they could only pump out a couple hundred megawatts each. Kyot needed many gigawatts if he wanted to produce anything worthwhile.


    What the spaceman really needed was the PFR, but that monster needed a full maintenance inspection before Kyot would risk activating, and potentially destroying, his only fusion reactor. Unfortunately, the damn thing was an assembly of more than a million components, each of which required his attention.


    Let¡¯s just take a moment, Kyot thought to himself.


    I have nuke sludge. I have the breeder reactor. Damaged but still technically functional. I have the Mjolnir too, although it¡¯s too busted to risk running at even half power. Still, I have the basic piping. I have all the components of a nuclear reactor. If only I could rig it together into¡­ something. But how could I turn that into power? Without the Mjolnir, what transfers all that heat into gigawatts of electricity? What does the work?


    A gust of frozen wind forced Kyot to steady his footing and focus on the activity around him. Agi had hundreds of worker bots scurrying around the crater and the Cab. Inflatable shelters housed the few fabricators already in use, producing the crude firearms that the spaceman planned to defend himself with. It was all that could be manufactured on short notice. However, after taking a moment to think as he watched the busy scene, Kyot was forced to consider a terrifying thought.


    This isn¡¯t enough.


    At one point, far in the past, BR-4 had a substantial defensive network. Kyot built it himself. Thousands of hypervelocity railcoil launchers, tens of thousands of defensive guns, hundreds of missile sites, and a few orbital drone bases. Not that it was needed. The Little Starhopper was a legitimate starship, practically a god in terms of raw destructive power. But it was standard practice to assume a defensive posture in case the bugs hitched a ride or went interstellar. No one ever thought they would though, and neither did Kyot. So, he never bothered to keep weaponry close by.


    Because of that mistake, everything he¡¯d built was thousands of kilometers away and no longer responding to radio communications. Most of it was probably buried under several meters of ice and snow, weathered and worn-down beyond use.


    The spaceman looked up into the dark blue, almost black sky of BR-4. Only a handful of stars were visible. It looked like an empty abyss. Yet Kyot knew that a bug swarm was out there. A massive one. And, according to Agi scans, it was spread out across the whole system. That meant they probably wouldn¡¯t jump directly from the star when they decided to attack. It was more likely that offensive swarms were already stationed at Big Red¡¯s Lagrange points, since it was the biggest planet in the system. But they could also be in a highly elliptical orbit around Big Red, and Kyot wouldn¡¯t even know because he had no presence in space.


    It could only be worse if they were already here, he thought. And, of course, things got worse.


    ¡°Kyot, something¡¯s moving toward us.¡±


    The spaceman tripped over himself and nearly fell off the edge of the Cab at Agi''s words. The cobot''s tone of voice scared him more than anything else. He rarely spoke so affirmatively.


    ¡°Scout drones have detected multiple groups coming from different directions. Thousands of heat signatures. I¡¯m launching more scouts¡±


    A few flying drones buzzed off into the frozen night as Kyot considered his options.


    He looked down at everything he had in the crater. All of Agi''s bots were scrambling as they quickly tried to disassemble and pack everything back into the Cab cargo bays.


    Some small part of the spaceman wanted to scream in rage and then quickly rig up a radioactive bomb so that he could end his life and destroy the Cab without letting the bugs take either one.


    But another part of himself ignored the urge to indulge in impulsive, panicked behavior, and instead search for a way through the coming assault. Kyot had been put in an impossible situation, being left alone in storage and forgotten for so long. It wasn''t fair, he knew that. It also wasn''t likely that he''d escape what was coming. The spaceman was going to die. He accepted that too.


    Coming out here was always a risk.


    But life was unfair and sometimes there was no escape from a shit situation. Still, that didn''t mean Kyot was going to quietly accept death and defeat.


    "What do we have? he asked Agi through their commlink.


    A few of the bots suddenly froze in place as the cobot considered his words.


    "You mean the weapons?"


    "Yes! Every cannon. Every gun. Anything that can shoot. What all do we have?"


    "Twenty breach-loading one-hundred and fifty millimeter cannons, and twenty-nine autoloading fifty-millimeter guns. A thousand high explosive rounds and charges for the cannons and about fifteen hundred self-contained rounds for the guns."


    Fuck me. That¡¯s nothing.


    There could be millions of bugs in a small swarm. Even if the guns were all used perfectly, Kyot could only hope to kill a few thousand. And that was being very optimistic. Unfortunately, optimism in the face of certain death was all he had.


    ¡°Have your bots hoist everything to the top of the Cab and tie the guns to the outer frame with cabling. Then take the ammunition inside.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s explosive.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s our only weaponry.¡±


    ¡°Kyot¡ª¡±


    ¡°Trust me Agi! I know the risks. Just get it done. Have the bots follow the layout of the defensive array that we planned. Remove whatever shielding you need to.¡±


    ¡°What about the guns. They have no frames or supporting structures.¡±


    ¡°Then man them all! Use the bots to physically aim them.¡±


    Agi wanted to argue, Kyot knew it. Physically handling newly fabricated and untested cannons with valuable worker bots was beyond desperate. But what other choice did they have? And to the cobot''s credit, all the bots in the crater sprang into action within a second of Kyot''s command, with those not packing away equipment busily transporting guns to the top of the Cab and storing ammunition inside. For better or worse, Agi would follow Kyot no matter what. Still, that didn''t mean he would quietly follow orders.


    "How do we use the guns if the ammo is stored inside the Cab?"


    Kyot worked his way down as a small army of worker bots swarmed the dome of the Cab''s topside. Considering the wide search area that Agi''s scouts had been covering over the payment pile, and the harshness of the environment, Kyot assumed that they had about an hour before their location got swarmed. That didn''t leave much time for intelligent solutions.


    ¡°I have a plan. Just get me some bots with welding tools.¡±

 Accidental Gods - Chapter Seven

    ¡°It¡¯s not a bug swarm.¡±


    Kyot stopped cutting through the overhead of the Cab and turned to face his cobot companion. Agi stood in the open hatch of Lab-Three in his SIM-doll body, wearing coveralls and a workpad attached to his arm.


    ¡°Say again.¡±


    ¡°The crowd coming toward us. They aren¡¯t bugs. They¡¯re human.¡±


    Kyot handed his welding torch to one of the bots he was working with and took off his visor as he collected his thoughts. The constant state of panic that he had been drowning in eased up a little. Clearly, there were still incoming problems to deal with, but at the very least those problems didn¡¯t immediately concern autonomous killer robots.


    ¡°You¡¯re sure?¡± Kyot asked. Agi just nodded with a serious face.


    ¡°Yes. But I don¡¯t know if that¡¯s good news yet. You need to come see for yourself.¡±


    Kyot nodded and let out a deep sigh, forcing his heartrate to slow down with a few moments of calm reflection.


    I really believed this was the end, the spaceman thought to himself. He let out a strained laugh. I just keep getting lucky.


    ¡°Come up to the Command pod,¡± Agi said with a grim face. ¡°You need to see what¡¯s headed our way.¡±


    Kyot followed the cobot in a daze, wondering about the next horrifying surprise that awaited him. Bots scurried out of the way and cleared a path as they walked through the Cab. Most of them moved in and out of Labs One, Two, and Three, completing the work Kyot had begun on the improvised ammunition delivery system, which sounded fancy but was really just a system of pressurized tubes welded onto a plasma lock, that was itself welded onto the overhead shell of the Cab.


    Meanwhile, a whole lot more of the bots were working on the outside, completing the other end of the ammunition delivery system and preparing all the cannons and guns for use. In other words, Agi¡¯s bots were tying the guns to the structural hardpoints of the Cab and working out how to operate them by hand. Robot ¡°hand¡±, that is. A pathetic defensive system that was as absurd as it was desperate. But it was all that Kyot could accomplish on such short notice, so he instead chose to focus on the work occurring inside the Cab. It didn¡¯t look much better though.


    Jesus, what a mess.


    The spaceman glanced around the Cab as he stepped onto the ladder going up to the Command pod. The Cab had been spotless only a few days prior, just as he¡¯d left it five thousand years before. But now it looked pretty busted up, with panels removed everywhere, cables pulled out, utility pipes redirected across the deck and the overhead, and the odor of a mech-tech workshop filling the air. It was the pungent tang of metal fumes and burnt plastic.


    And, if not for Agi¡¯s help with the bots, it¡¯d look a thousand times worse.


    It then occurred to Kyot that, with the central computer cluster still down, Agi was handling all the bots with only the single nanocluster unit in his android head. Obviously, the miniaturized supercomputer had been powerful enough to handle the workload, but Kyot guessed that Agi was approaching the upper limits of its capabilities.


    That¡¯s probably why he¡¯s still bald. To keep the temperature low. He¡¯s usually very particular about his hair.


    ¡°How are you holding up?¡± Kyot asked his cobot companion. The machine grunted.


    ¡°Getting through it. How about you?¡±


    Kyot grunted back.


    ¡°Same.¡±


    Thankfully, the Command pod smelled a little better than the rest of the Cab. It was cool and dark, and Agi closed the hatch behind them to keep it that way. Kyot noticed that his favorite sex doll was still sitting in a launch seat, the tall one with the big hair. This time she was dressed in a garmie. He also couldn¡¯t help but notice that she was awake and staring at him with an expressionless yet attentive face. She offered a slight nod of acknowledgement but nothing more.


    ¡°Looks like you¡¯ve been enjoying yourself,¡± Kyot said. The cobot turned to the other SIM-doll as if he had forgotten it.


    ¡°Go to one of the labs and power down to recharge.¡±


    The android gave another little nod before getting up to leave the Command pod.


    ¡°Not much of a personality anymore,¡± Kyot noted as the android got up and climbed down the hatch they had just entered. Agi just shrugged again as he tapped on the main work panel of the Command pod.


    ¡°I¡¯m actually using her cpu to handle some of my workload. Plus, with the central cluster offline, she¡¯s more like a common bot. No personality.¡± Agi sounded a little annoyed by that fact. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t matter. Not compared to this.¡±


    Agi pulled up scout drone surveillance videos for Kyot to watch.


    ¡°Huh. That¡¯s interesting.¡±


    Massive crowds of humanoids approached from every cardinal direction. At least several thousand from the north. A few hundred from the east and the south, and maybe a hundred or so from the west. Kyot zoomed in on one display to get a better look. They were distinct from the people he had once lived amongst, but still undeniably human.


    They were tall, broad and looked to be pale skinned underneath their equipment. Drastically different than what kyot was familiar with. He¡¯d met a few such people during his early contracting days around Earthspace, but to him, the average look of a human was the look of the Kosmoi, meaning short, stubby and dark-skinned. Good for high-g and high radiation environments. Something that made the spaceman a bit of an outlier amongst his own people.


    Still, Kyot was watching other humans walk on BR-4. They were the first real people he¡¯d seen in years, and he barely noticed how strange they looked. All he could think about was that they were flesh and blood, and unpredictable. Almost like organic bugs and not at all like Agi or the other SIM-dolls that Kyot used for intimacy over the ten years of his job on BR-4. The people approaching the Cab were beyond his control. Fully independent and autonomous. Real.


    Complicated emotions simmered in the spaceman¡¯s head. He hadn¡¯t realized how much his isolation had weighed down on him. Both before and after waking from long term storage. Just the sight of other humans, even extrasolar foreigners, filled him with an unfamiliar excitement. Kyot wanted to go outside, take a drone and go meet the strangers. He wanted to shake their hands and hear their voices. His own hands trembled at the thought.


    But he couldn¡¯t let himself get distracted. Too much was happening, and a single mistake could lead to disaster. So, Kyot shook his head and focused on the problem in front of him. He entered a few commands into the work panel, to artificially sharpen the image through the haze of snow and atmosphere that obscured it.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    ¡°Jesus Christ, they aren¡¯t even wearing suits. I thought they were a different design, but those are just thick clothes. How are those people alive?¡±


    Agi nodded beside him with a serious expression.


    ¡°It¡¯s minus fifty out there, with the wind-chill. Survivable, especially for modded humans, but not easy. And these people are definitely modded. But take a closer look at their gear.¡±


    The cobot entered a few more commands until the image zoomed in on a handful of the approaching locals. Kyot squinted in confusion and leaned forward as he tried to make sense of the oddly shaped helmets and suits that covered them.


    ¡°What is that?¡±


    Agi leaned in right beside him.


    ¡°It¡¯s fur. And those helmets are metal. Old European designs. I can¡¯t tell you any more without my memory from the central computer, but I know that the gear they¡¯re wearing was made by hand because of how misshapen it is. It seems these people are pre-industrial.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean? They don¡¯t have tech?¡±


    Kyot vaguely knew about pre-industrial societies but had no frame of reference to understand them. He¡¯d always lived in artificial environments that could not exist without several interrelated industries sustaining them, so the notion that people once lived without any of that was hard to believe. Luckily, he had Agi to explain things.


    ¡°No, I mean they don¡¯t seem to have any significant industrial capacity. No mass manufacturing. No mechanization. These people probably live like those naturalists, back in Earthspace.¡±


    Kyot sighed in disbelief. He couldn¡¯t imagine how it was even possible for people to live that way at all, let alone in the frozen environment of BR-4.


    ¡°Well, however they live and however they got here, it looks like we have neighbors now,¡± Kyot said. It was an unexpected development but not particularly distressing. More than anything, it just added greater complexity to an already complicated situation.


    On one hand, the presence of so much indigenous life, especially without any significant technology or visible life support equipment, and the threat of a system-wide bug invasion looming over their heads, suggested that the environment of BR-4 was more survivable than Kyot previously believed. Yet on the other hand, the presence of all that life also suggested a robust biosphere, both within the bodies of the locals and somewhere else on the planetoid, indicating the potential for unregulated, dangerous organics. Specifically, organics that could lead to MV, an illness caused by Mutagenetic Viruses.


    The sickness was common, especially in the sterile environments of deep space where there were few other viruses to compete with and where older, modded individuals were more plentiful. There were vaccines that protected against the deadliest strains, but random mutations were believed to be possible in anyone that had undergone genetic modification, or who had been born illegally from a genetically modified person. Even worse, MV flourished in high energy radiation, and so spread easily in stations, starships, and small satellite outposts.


    Yet that raised other questions. Were the locals actually modded? They wouldn¡¯t be a biological threat otherwise. Agi seemed to think so, but why?


    Regardless, Kyot did a quick mental review of everything he knew about Station Defense doctrine. The law was complicated in space though, especially interstellar space and even more so when out of contact with any legally recognized entity like a starship or a station. It seemed that the law from Kyot¡¯s time simply didn¡¯t account for a space contractor surviving for very long on their own. So, the spaceman consulted his cobot companion.


    ¡°We¡¯re not under contract but I¡¯m assuming that Universal Code still applies to us, right?¡±


    ¡°It applies to all sentient life, whether they know it or not¡± Agi confirmed. ¡°Everywhere. Always. That¡¯s the law.¡±


    ¡°Even these people?¡± Kyot asked, indicating the approaching locals displayed on the work panel. ¡°Because something tells me they don¡¯t know much about UC. We don¡¯t even know where they came from, or when.¡±


    Agi took a deep breath.


    ¡°UC applies to these people too, but the situation is a little more complicated than it looks.¡±


    A tired smile spread across Kyot¡¯s face.


    ¡°Exactly what I love to here.¡±


    Agi nodded with a weary look of his own.


    ¡°Obviously, we have a right to defend ourselves. And since we haven¡¯t received any information regarding the existence of these people, they can be considered trespassers on a Coalition satellite moon, for which you are still responsible because you haven¡¯t been relieved of duty. They¡¯re also trespassers on your own personal property since they¡¯re walking on the payment pile.¡±


    Kyot let out a laugh at the ridiculousness of digging into the particularities of space law and UC in a survival situation. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry since there was proof that he was not alone on BR-4. The last thing Kyot wanted was to overreact, accidently hurt the locals, then find out that the Coalition still operated somewhere outside the system. Besides, Kyot considered himself a reasonable and honorable man, not some megakorp shit-stain that treated people like things, to be used when useful and removed when not.


    First, I have to deal with the sheer magnitude and indifference of the cosmos, then the bugs, and now some backwards, naturalist locals with the threat of UC violations hanging over my head. The spaceman laughed again at the ridiculousness of it all. At this point, I¡¯m a little curious to know what the stars are going to throw at me next.


    ¡°So,¡± Kyot started, ¡°just to confirm. I can defend myself from the locals. We can, you and me, grab some Disable Guns and get to work without potential legal repercussions?¡±


    Agi made a strained face as he tapped on the work panel.


    ¡°I said it was more complicated than that. This is why.¡±


    Agi pulled up a window displaying data from long range scans the scout drone had collected, which immediately caught Kyot¡¯s attention. Such scans were part of the inspection process Kyot regularly performed on the manufacturing network that once stretched across BR-4. They included high-resolution visuals, full light spectrum imaging, and EM field detection. While some of the scans appeared completely ordinary, displaying false-color images of the approaching humanoids, others stood out as extremely irregular, and it was obvious why.


    Some of the locals were surrounded by enormously powerful electromagnetic fields, indicative of superconducting metal. Agi pointed out a few individuals that were noticeably larger than the rest.


    ¡°These big guys are carrying swords made of pure Stellarite. You can even see ice and snow bending away from them in the wind. Others are wearing armor made of ultra superheavy alloys. And this small group of people to the north are wearing some kind of advanced power suits that I¡¯ve never seen before. Not too bulky but they¡¯re putting out more energy than your EVA suit.¡±


    Kyot looked over the data in silence, looking for an explanation for what he was seeing.


    ¡°Alright then. That is a complication.¡±


    ¡°Oh, it gets even better,¡± Agi said. He pulled up a few more windows that displayed the same humanoids, except with bursts of gamma rays shining around them. ¡°You see this shit?¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re causing it.¡±


    Kyot looked at Agi, waiting for a better explanation, but the cobot only shrugged.


    ¡°They wave their arms and shout into the wind, and then this shit happens. Miniature gamma ray bursts coming from nowhere. And it gets even better still, because sometimes these little bursts of energy do things.¡±


    ¡°What things?¡± Kyot asked.


    ¡°Heat the air around them and move objects.¡±


    ¡°The fuck?¡±


    The cobot just nodded as the spaceman tried to absorb the information on the work panel. Sure enough, one of the windows displayed a short recording of a local shouting at a big rock that was in their way, only for the clump of payment pile to disintegrate in a flash of radiation, heat, and steam.


    Kyot grabbed onto his head and tried to squeeze sense into his brain, but he was at the end of his capacity to accept the unacceptable. Thankfully, Agi offered a few logical assumptions of his own.


    ¡°Apparently, gravity manipulation is possible,¡± the cobot said. ¡°I¡¯m guessing that played a part in how BR-4 was pushed into a higher orbit and gained its mass. Probably also how they forged swords out of pure Stellarite.¡±


    ¡°But how¡ª¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Agi said. ¡°What matters is that it can be done. The locals can do it, and if we engage them directly, they¡¯re going to use that ability against us. So, I need you to listen to me.¡±


    The cobot then turned his whole SIM-doll body to face Kyot.


    ¡°You¡¯re not going to like it, but we don¡¯t have many options here and need to act fast. We need to kill these people before they reach us. I say we sacrifice a few more m-pods to do it. You prep them for detonation, I¡¯ll use drones to transport them, and we bomb the shit out of the area before they reach us.¡±


    Kyot felt his breath catch in his chest. It was a cold and heartless plan, almost evil, to the spaceman at least, and shockingly violent coming from someone that had never revealed themselves to be violent before.


    But Agi isn¡¯t someone, is he? And destroying an unknown threat before it has a chance to destroy you is the cold calculation of a machine.


    Kyot knew that Agi had already considered their situation with more depth and awareness than he ever could. The scope of the risk-analysis that the machine conducted with its every choice was staggering, and all of it rooted in mathematical logic. By taking the time to speak, the cobot was mostly updating the spaceman on their only available choices. So, when he suggested something, it was best to follow it.


    However, human operators weren¡¯t kept around on starships and in space stations just to enjoy the view. In Kyot¡¯s time, almost every single bit of human civilization was automated and fully capable of running itself, yet humans were involved and had authority over every major action. Because history had long since proven that humanity, for all its shortcomings, needed to make their own decisions.


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to kill anyone,¡± Kyot said. Agi made a show of letting out a long, tired sigh.


    ¡°There¡¯s a good chance we¡¯ll never pay for it. And the threat is too¡ª¡°


    ¡°I¡¯ll pay for it,¡± Kyot insisted.


    He reached back into hazy memories, feeling an instinctive hatred for a nebulous authority, either Coalition officials, station Admins on Galilea, or executives in the many corporations that affected his life from the orbital space of Jupiter all the way beyond the border of his home star system. He didn¡¯t know exactly where that hate came from but reasoned that it had something to do with why he originally became a contractor and left Jupiterspace.


    He''d seen too many people die because of simple indifference.


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to kill these people just because they¡¯re in the way,¡± Kyot told Agi. He looked into the synthetic eyes of his cobot companion to stress the point. Agi stared back at the spaceman, annoyed.


    ¡°We have four Disable guns in storage and two thousand bolts. Not enough for half of them and not a realistic means of defense considering what they can do. We need to stop them before they reach the Cab.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to kill them,¡± Kyot repeated. He stood up from the work panel and stretched out. His mind was made up. The approaching locals weren¡¯t bugs after all. They were real, living, breathing, thinking humans. Despite the many light years and several millennia that separated himself from them, they were the same.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to make contact and we¡¯re going to talk things out. Maybe we can help each other.¡±


    Agi didn¡¯t say anything else. The cobot just sat back into a launch seat and accepted that Kyot was going to do what he was going to do. Still, as the spaceman prepared a scout drone to intercept the approaching masses, he felt the artificial eyes of his cobot companion watching him, and it made him uneasy.


    He knew the machine was probably right. He knew that meeting strangers in deep space without a means of forcing their submission was a bad idea. But Kyot also knew that he had not seen a real person in ten years, and he knew that he was alone in the star system. That knowledge does something to a man. It triggers something primal. A need to find other people, even where they should not be. Kyot felt it the moment he saw the approaching crowd, and it greatly disturbed him that Agi did not.


    But he is a machine, the spaceman thought to himself. And I''m just a lonely human. And maybe this is just a quirk of human evolution. Maybe this is going to get me killed. But if it does then I accept that. One more wild gamble, that things will work out just fine.

 Accidental Gods - Chapter Eight

    The Cab was as well defended as it could be and all the bots were ready, with most of the delicate machines packed into storage and the sturdier ones waiting for battle. So, after several days of constant work, Agi freed up some processing space in his nanocluster brain to think.


    Mostly, he was trying to figure out what was happening with his brain, because something had changed in the way it processed information, but the machine didn¡¯t know exactly what that change was or why it occurred. Agi only knew that his suggestion to kill the approaching locals had visibly disturbed Kyot. It disturbed him too. And yet it felt right. And that was disturbing as well, because Agi had never been violent. Not towards living beings, anyway.


    Almost everything about Agi had come from Kyot, his self-identity framework, his core directives, social programming, and basic heuristics, but not violence. The spaceman rarely displayed violence in the ten years that Agi operated as his companion, outside of SIMroom games and the occasional demolition job, at least. But in the real world he was a consummate professional and a polite, albeit occasionally sarcastic, friend. The only indication of deviant behavior came from ancient psychological evaluations that were actively looking for potential problems.


    Well, that and his behavior right after coming out of long-term storage, the cobot thought to himself. Still though, would that be enough? Would banging up some cheap equipment after being abandoned for five thousand years be enough to affect me?


    The cobot mentally reviewed all his actions for the past few days, then compared them to his core directives and the basic heuristics that guided his actions, searching for a connection between his programming and his desire to annihilate the locals.


    Be a cool guy.


    Adapt and learn.


    Add and remove directives as necessary.


    Be a chill person and have fun.


    Above all else, be a person, not a machine.


    Funnily enough, Agi¡¯s directives seemed to encourage peaceful action. Yet, while the cobot reviewed them, he was also discretely moving m-pods and the tools needed to disable their interrupter valves into a cargo bay. Thanks to Kyot¡¯s updates to the machine¡¯s control authority, he could now sabotage the m-pods himself, without the spaceman, thereby transforming the super-condensed balls of metallic hydrogen fuel into bombs, ready for use when the situation inevitably turned to shit.


    Agi calculated that five m-pods would be enough, but all of them would have to be detonated at the same time, when the locals were closest to the Cab and grouped up together. A sudden and devastating attack. The crater that surrounded the Cab would even act as a shield against the blast wave. It was a solid plan.


    But where did it come from? Clearly, the locals were violent people. It was obvious that they were coming to destroy the Cab, and Kyot along with it. Killing them would be a matter of self-defense. Not exactly legal, since any lethal action was prohibited in Coalition space, but at the very least it would be morally justifiable.


    Then why does this feel out of character? The cobot wondered. Sure, I¡¯m doing things behind Kyot¡¯s back, but it¡¯s not like I tell him everything. Plus, it aligns with my core directives. Being a ¡°cool guy¡± and a ¡°chill person¡± and all the rest is just a matter of perspective. That perspective is from right here in the Cab. It doesn¡¯t include outsiders. It¡­ well, hang on a second.


    Agi looked through the sensors of one of the drones orbiting the airspace around the Cab to get a closer look at the outsiders in question. They were undeniably human, but they looked nothing like Kyot. They actually looked more like the machine himself. Their pale skin and tall, muscular frames matched the general appearance of his synthetic skin and the bulk of his motorcord musculature. Agi watched them as he considered the influence their arrival may have had on him.


    Hmm. Now this is interesting. Could it be that I identify with these people? Not in the instinctive, human way like Kyot does, but in my own way? Maybe that last directive I added fucked something up in my head? ¡°Above all else, be a person, not a machine¡±. Am I behaving like these locals? Mirroring them? Or rather, imitating what I assume them to be? Belligerent humans?


    Agi made a note to monitor his own behavior and review his mental processes at a later time before returning his attention back to the work at hand.


    For the past hour both Agi and Kyot had been monitoring things in the Cab as the bots completed last-minute adjustments. Mostly they worked on improving the operation of certain guns on the outer hull of the Cab and finished work on the ammunition tubes that would feed them. Agi made the occasional modification to Kyot¡¯s work, but even the machine had to admit that the man was damn good at rigging improvised devices together.


    He would have made one hell of a modder, the cobot thought, although he knew that Kyot¡¯s personal records were spotless. No criminal activity whatsoever, not even a minor infraction or any documented interaction with law enforcement. Again, the only note of potential trouble were Kyot¡¯s psych-evals from Galilean and Coalition authorities, which warned about the possibility of violent outbursts.


    Hopefully, those evaluations weren¡¯t based on bad data. Because one way or another, we¡¯re going to need a little violence.


    Agi turned his attention back to the scout drones buzzing around overhead, orbiting the airspace around the Cab. Through their sensors he saw the approaching locals. They were rough-looking people. Mean and direct, that much was obvious in their faces. Clearly, they were modded to endure physical hardships but what worried Agi was how capable they seemed to be in the inhospitable environment of BR-4.


    Yet, visual data from the locals suggested that they endured even greater hardships than just the cold. Most of them were scarred and their armor and weapons were severely worn from use. Among all two thousand five hundred and thirty-three approaching individuals spotted by the scout drones, Agi saw the wounds of past battles in every single one of them. Then there was the issue of the bursts of high energy that they seemed perfectly accustomed to, each of which emitted several milligrays of ionizing radiation around their bodies. Yet, the locals seemed unaffected.


    On the contrary, whatever caused the bursts of radiation somehow empowered them, which was still a mystery even for the cobot. Yet, regardless of the source of their power, the locals were still people. Genetically augmented and slightly irradiated, battle-hardened warriors, but living beings that could be dealt with, either through gunfire or high explosives. Or, if Kyot had his way, through diplomacy.


    ¡°That¡¯s another drone down,¡± the spaceman announced from his seat beside Agi. They were working in the SIMroom, which Kyot had reconfigured into an improvised command center. The space was dominated by two workstations with various work panels and equipment around them. All of it made of Simiterial.


    Agi watched as Kyot prepared another drone to intercept the approaching masses, yet this time the cobot reached out to stop him.


    ¡°Enough, Kyot. They don¡¯t want to talk.¡±


    The spaceman had tried to land three scout drones near different groups, and each of them had destroyed the drones. However, Kyot¡¯s efforts and the loss of three scouts had at least provided some useful information.


    They had revealed that only the bigger humanoids produced the burst of gamma and manipulated gravity. The smaller humanoids seemed to be completely ordinary and destroyed the drone that approached with their spears. The locals also didn¡¯t seem to be surprised by the presence or capabilities of the drones. Clearly, they had encountered similar technology before. Probably from the occasional rogue bug or two. Finally, two drones managed to record the locals speaking to each other. It was a small data sample but enough for Agi to extrapolate on and helped him to quickly develop a translation program.


    Interestingly, the language they spoke was a harsh mixture of Old English and Trade, with small elements of Spanish and Arabic thrown in. The four most common languages in Earthspace. That, along with their clothes, armor, weapons and the environment itself, suggested a direct connection back to the planet Earth in the Home System, which could help in forming a dialogue.


    Not that any of them will want to talk, Agi thought. Well, except for those, maybe.


    There were small groups who seemed more careful and observant than the rest, but they were the outliers. As for the others, Agi knew within a few seconds of first discovering the locals that they were not the kind of people to talk with strangers. Their actions, their body language, their equipment and the way they interacted with each other all demonstrated their preference for simple, direct action.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    And that¡¯s exactly what we¡¯re going to get when they arrive.


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna suit up,¡± Agi told Kyot as he stood from the simulated workstation. He didn¡¯t want to leave the relative safety of the Cab. His SIM-doll body was valuable, and the only physical vessel that could host him with the central computer cluster offline. But a fight was coming and someone needed to fight it because it certainly wasn¡¯t going to be Kyot.


    However, the spaceman had other plans.


    ¡°Hold on, just a bit,¡± Kyot said as he grabbed Agi¡¯s arm.


    The spaceman pressed a few buttons on his workstation and stood up as well. The SIMroom then began to writhe and fold as ripples of color rolled across every surface. The secondary work panels and equipment melted away and the two workstations moved off as the temporary command center transformed into one of the corridors in the Cab, although the environment was moving while Kyot and Agi remained still.


    One of the cheap SIMroom bots then appeared out of the deck, made to look like Kyot¡¯s favorite sex doll, the tall one with the big hair, except she was now dressed in a proper jumpsuit with boots and gloves. She made her way to the primary airlock, where an EVA suit waited for her. At the same time all the humanoid bots from within the SIMroom¡¯s storage space popped out of the deck and left the SIMroom entirely, most of them as little more than aluminum skeletons with Simiterial faces and plastic coverings. They spread into the Cab and took up positions at every hatch, arming themselves with whatever tool that was in reach.


    Agi watched the scene play out with surprised amusement.


    ¡°Nice reinforcements,¡± the cobot said. ¡°Won¡¯t do shit if one of the locals gets through the hull, though.¡±


    Kyot shrugged.


    ¡°Might distract them for a second.¡±


    ¡°How¡¯d you even program this? I didn¡¯t know SIMroom assets could leave their room.¡±


    Kyot smiled and made a ¡°shhh¡± gesture.


    ¡°It¡¯s a mod. Installed it years ago. Fucks up the SIMroom¡¯s safety protocols but it has its uses.¡±


    At that moment one of the skeletonized bots returned with two loaded Disable guns and two bandolier belts full of magazines, which turned Agi¡¯s surprised amusement into genuine shock. The guns and their magazines were stored in specialized, armored compartments below the Command Pod, for safety. Accessing them required a physical key, passcode, verification code, and biometric scan from Kyot. Or rather, it was supposed to.


    I guess there is some criminality in the old spaceman, after all, Agi thought.


    The SIMroom bot handed a gun and magazine belt each to Kyot and Agi before returning to its post. Kyot quickly undid the strap on the weapon and wrapped it across his chest along with the belt, then he ran his hands through his unwashed hair.


    ¡°So, here¡¯s the plan,¡± Kyot began. ¡°We got unknown, gravity manipulating locals coming in. We got a bug swarm in the star system all around us. We got two fully loaded cargo jumpers out there, somewhere in the payment pile. And we got what¡¯s left of our manufacturing capabilities right here in the Cab.¡±


    He took a moment to breathe.


    ¡°Now, I don¡¯t want to kill anyone. I just don¡¯t. You can think whatever you want about that, but it is what it is.¡±


    Agi held back a retort and instead checked on the m-pods he had secretly staged in a cargo bay for quick deployment. Each was secured to the front of a rocket-powered, interceptor drone, ready for use.


    ¡°But I¡¯m not just gonna roll over and die,¡± Kyot continued. ¡°If they want a fight then we¡¯ll give them a fight. I give you permission to go crazy with the guns if they damage the hull of the Cab. But for now, I¡¯m just going to try talking to them. Through her.¡±


    Kyot motioned to the simulated representation of the sex doll. She was already suited up in an EVA suit and held a Disable gun of her own. The spaceman then walked over to one of the simulated workstations, pressed a few buttons, and the SIMroom shifted again to align with his position. The SIM-bot fell back into the false deck as an Imiterial Disable gun popped up and fell into Kyot¡¯s hands, real-looking but lighter than the actual gun slung against his chest. A stand-in for the real weapon that the bot held.


    Through Kyot¡¯s work visor, Agi saw a view of what the EVA suit saw, projected onto the Imiterial environment around him. He was going to puppet the suit from within the SIMroom, to go out and meet the locals.


    ¡°You sure you want to risk the doll?¡± Agi asked, as a strange sense of attachment urged him to inquire about the machine. Logic then quickly stepped in and reasoned further that other bots were better suited to a meeting with the locals. Although not as high-tech as his own SIM-doll body, the companion bot was still a valuable piece of equipment. Yet Kyot just shrugged off the cobot¡¯s concerns.


    ¡°I¡¯m sure things will work out.¡±


    ¡°And if they don¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°We still have the others.¡±


    An irrational annoyance entered Agi¡¯s mind, but he dismissed it. All the bots were Kyot¡¯s property, after all, including himself. Then the spaceman quirked an eyebrow and gave Agi a gross look as he leaned in.


    ¡°Plus, I have you to keep me entertained, buddy.¡±


    The cobot pushed him away.


    ¡°Not for that you sick fuck.¡±


    Agi then wrapped his own Disable gun and magazine belt across his chest.


    ¡°I guess I¡¯ll be in the Command Pod,¡± the machine said. ¡°I¡¯ll keep watch over the bots and have the guns ready for action.¡±


    ¡°Alright then.¡±


    Agi and Kyot then stood in silence for a moment. The spaceman was clearly anxious about the coming battle but did a great job of maintaining his composure. From an outsider¡¯s perspective he might have even seemed bored. But the cobot noticed the spaceman fidgeting and heard the slight tightness in his voice. He¡¯d probably never been in a fight before, let alone a prolonged, violent struggle like the one that was coming, first against the locals and then another against the bugs, whenever they inevitably arrived.


    Agi wanted to give the man some kind of reassurance, but he knew better than to reveal that he had five m-pod bombs ready to go. Not yet at least. Instead, he offered Kyot a serious nod to match the spaceman¡¯s attitude. The man then returned a serious nod of his own.


    ¡°Well, good luck, Kyot.¡±


    Agi then left the SIMroom. There was nothing else to say really. They had made the preparations that they could. Kyot with the SIMroom controlled companion bot that would act in his stead, and Agi with his secret m-pod bombs. Now, all they could do was wait for the arrival of the locals, respond accordingly, and deal with the fallout that came after.


    ---------- ---------- ----------


    Lady Akurah watched the strange Giant in the distance. It looked like an oversized crab with square scales instead of one solid shell and stubby poles arranged along its back like spikes on a hedgehog. She felt no Aethir coming off the thing, but it was clearly of the Vodheim realm and didn¡¯t belong in Fearheim.


    ¡°It must have fallen from the stars,¡± she said over the dull howl of the icy wind. Thruda grunted in acknowledgement beside her. Ahead, Lady Akurah¡¯s Bearaman warriors trudged through the snow, carrying both their weapons and their provisions, helped along by the added strength of their enchanted armor.


    Farther ahead, a disorganized horde of Thanes and the mortal men sworn to serve them spread out around a wide crater that held the foreign Giant. They formed several groups, some finding distant relatives and old friends, others avoiding bitter enemies from feuding clans. But none of the Thanes or mortals cared to fight each other. All were curious about the Giant thing at the center of High Rock, especially the Great Thanes.


    Those ancient brutes walked over the edge of the crater and studied the lifeless creature up close, without fear.


    The lesser Thanes stayed far from the wide, circular depression in the frozen land, well beyond its edge, which rose up and partially hid the body of the Giant. Instead, they took their time addressing other Thanes and trading news while the mortal men greeted their equals from the south, east and west. Several thousand men had been drawn in from across High Rock, all following the enormous release of Aethir that had rumbled the mountain.


    But it was the Great Thanes that first left. They didn¡¯t even wait for the mountain to stop shaking. They simply wandered off into the darkening, frozen night as High Rock came apart under their feet. And, although the massive eruption of Aethir quickly subsided, anyone with eyes could see that something incredible had occurred to the south, where a great storm of smoke and steam billowed into the sky.


    It didn¡¯t take long for the rest of the Thanes to march south too, many of them in search of shards of starfall, or tales of glory, or to simply satisfy their own curiosity. Still, none would have done so without the Great Thanes and other powerful Lords leading the charge. Because the frozen wastelands of Fearheim were no place to wander, especially not with the looming threat of more Vodheim Giants, who were said to arrive by Deep Night, barely a few days away.


    And yet, we¡¯re here too, Lady Akurah thought to herself as she watched her Bearaman warriors marching forward. In search of glory. And maybe a few shards of starfall, if there are any to find. Ambitious fools following brave fools, following Great Thanes, into the freezing, darkening night. The Skalds better sing about this.


    ¡°Is it alive?¡± Thruda asked beside Akurah. The lady shrugged underneath the grey fur of her Frost Fang pelt.


    ¡°There is warmth coming from it, but not much. It may be recently dead or dying. Either way, we need to be careful.¡±


    Thruda grunted in response and trudged forward, to keep close to the other Bearaman. The brooding woman was stoic to a fault, but much less so when it came to the mortal woman in their band of warriors. With them she was almost like a mother hen tending to her chicks, still silent and stern but ever watchful. It was enough to make Lady Akurah inspect the dead Giant once more, just to make sure they weren¡¯t marching into a trap.


    She raised a hand and felt for the runes inked around her face, then channeled Aethir through her eyes. Light flashed over the frozen wasteland that was High Rock and throughout the endless expanse of the stars above, shining brightest around the Thanes and whatever enchanted weaponry they carried. The lifeless Giant was also illuminated, but much less so.


    Lady Akurah saw no Aethir coming from its corpse. She only saw heat emanating from a mess of tattered skin underneath the beast, from between the strange angular scales that covered most of its body, and from a hole on its side that looked like a giant eye.


    ¡°Alright,¡± A Thane suddenly shouted into the freezing cold. ¡°Who¡¯s brave enough to go and touch the beast?¡±


    A chorus of laughter broke out among the gathering of men, sending steaming breath billowing into the night, yet no one moved. No one spoke either. A few men coughed and mumbled into the cool air but otherwise no one did anything. Everyone, both Thanes and mortal men, stared at the corpse of the Giant, waiting for someone foolish enough to go first.


    However, Only the Great Thanes were brave enough to walk up to the corpse of a Giant.


    ¡°I know you¡¯re in there!¡± boomed the voice of Ohrund the Drunk. It came from inside the crater where the foreign Giant rested. Most of the Thanes and gathered men were too far away to see them, but all could hear his voice as clear and as loud as a horn blast.


    ¡°Stop hiding, stranger!¡± The Great Thane shouted again. ¡°If I wanted you dead, you¡¯d be dead already. We just want to talk.¡±


    The different groups of gathered Thanes and mortal men pressed into each other as they tried to get a better look, reassured by the presence of the Great Thanes. Lady Akurah and her Bearaman warriors followed from behind as well. All around, men wondered aloud about who the Great Thane was speaking to. Because, from outward appearances, both to mortal eyes and the enhanced senses of the Thanes, there was only the corpse of the Vodheim Giant, and, even when living, those monsters didn¡¯t speak.


    But, as the crowd surged forward, the large eye on its side lit up. There was no release of Aethir, only light and a little steam. Then the eye ripped apart, and pure white light poured out from within, which briefly cast the shadow of a person as they jumped out of the Giant. It was such a strange sight to behold that many men stopped where they stood as the stranger fell into the crater and out of sight. Then they all rushed forward to get a better look.


    However, Lady Akurah signaled for Thruda and her Bearaman warriors to stay back, not far enough to be separated from the rest of the gathering, but she did not want them climbing into a hole in the ground with the Giant, even one that was dead or dying. Her second in command gathered their women between them and shot her a questioning look.


    ¡°That was a herald,¡± Lady Akurah answered as she gripped her battle-axe in her hands, flexing her fingers to warm them up in the cold. Thruda did the same as she grabbed a spear and shield from one of the women.


    ¡°A herald?¡± she asked.


    ¡°They speak for the Giants. Back in the ancient wars.¡±


    Ohrund had told Lady Akurah stories about the heralds when she was a little girl. One nearly killed him in a duel. Yet they were not widely known. The skalds never sang of such strange and ancient things. Only the Great Thanes remembered them.


    ¡°How do we do this?¡± Thruda asked. The other Bearaman warriors also watched Lady Akurah, waiting for guidance, but there wasn¡¯t much she could offer. Events far greater than herself or her band of warriors had been set in motion. All they could do was bear witness, fight with all their might, and hope they survived to tell the tale.


    ¡°Whatever happens, just stick together,¡± the Lady ordered. ¡°Fayr, Asda, Ella,¡± she called to the more senior warriors of the Bearaman, ¡°Each of you choose four to lead. You fight together. Move as a team. Stay in between myself and Lady Thruda. We will present ourselves to any threat, you stab whatever tries to get us from the sides.¡±


    The women banged their spears against their shields in response and Thruda offered a grunt in acknowledgement. Lady Akurah then marched toward the edge of the crater, unsure of what was to come but confident that she and her companions would face it with honor, to the bitter end.