The Past



Smarts had a certain “order of operations” when it came to the level of confidentiality of his various and sundry interactions. For matters which, if revealed, would not jeopardize the integrity of any institutions to which he was affiliated, he tended to use the most expedient data-feed, droid interface, or method of note-passing available. For official government matters, he operated primarily through authorized government droids and officially secure holocomm systems, maintaining continuous contact through encrypted channels.

For matters of explicitly sensitive nature, Smarts utilized a select group of custom-made droids, often bearing no official mark of origin, and equipped with complex failsafes to ensure that their vital messages were not intercepted. Designed with no remote or hard-port interfaces, these droids answered only to official Cooperative and Coalition authentications, or codes installed during production by Smarts' personal droid crew. They were restricted entirely to audial, visual, tactile, and chemical receptor senses, and any intrusion into their automated systems would activate an immediate erase/destruct sequence, destroying the data virtually and the device which stored it physically.

And when even those measures of security were deemed insufficient, he simply brought his audience into himself.

The Cooperative Council of Defense had seated themselves at the round table set only a few meters from the thrumming primary reactor at the heart of the Lucrehulk Core Ship Smarts.

Councilor Tik, a Shard native of Orax who had found his way onto the Council after the Senate authorized the addition of three seats to adequately balance arising divisions of power, was the first to respond to the Overseer's proposal. “You want us to authorize this fantastic expenditure of resources for a purely military context, but you won't even tell us where it's going? You are effectively asking us to hand over full and uncontested control of what is potentially an infinitely massive amount of military resources, which could take any imaginable form and operate with impunity and total anonymity across the entirety of the galaxy. No one trusts you that much, Overseer, especially not us.”

“Don't we?” The speaker was another member of the three new seats. The Caamasi Councilor Beiwi K'Vek had been added to serve the express purpose of voicing loyal dissent. She was the least likely to disagree with Tik on this matter, and her interjection drew a great deal of attention. “I am the first and most fervent opponent of military expansion, Councilors, but if we are to beat our plowshares into swords, I would much prefer those swords be stored on the edge of civilization, entrusted to a lone guardian who is beyond reproach.”

The bulbous Onyxian councilor representing Amorris, Anthony Hurok, shifted uncomfortably in his undersized chair. “We are the Council of Defense; it is our duty and pledge to ensure the protection of the Cooperative from any military threat. Do you dare to suggest that we cannot be trusted with the location of the very military installations which are under our authority?”

The question, directed at the small holographic figure standing at the center of the table, was met with a cold reply. “I do not doubt your intent, Councilors, only your physiology.”

“Excuse me?” Councilor Hurok bellowed, squirming in his seat again.

“I have not yet met a form of life which can forget a thing upon command. I am not alive; I am not afflicted by that particular security flaw.”

“And what if you are destroyed?” Councilor Tik asked. “Or incapacitated? Or what if you 'forget'?”

“Then the automated elements of the installation will contact the Combined Council after the expiration of a preset interval in which no contact has been made by me.”

“The Combined Council?” Hurok asked, confused.

“Yes, that would be appropriate,” K'Vek spoke up again. “To prevent members of the Defense Council from having motive to harm the Overseer,” She explained.

The droid body of Councilor Tik panned its head slowly, obviously trying to judge how the Council votes would fall. “I must insist, at the least, upon an inspection team, to validate the status of the installation at regular intervals.”

“Agreed,” The hologram answered immediately. “I will ferry the Supreme Commander, the Chief Councilor of Defense, and the Defense Councilor of Dissent to the installation until an equally reliable means of automated, clandestine transport can be devised. I'm sure you will wish them to make their inspections independently of one another.”

“Oh? And why is that?” Hurok asked again.

And again, K'Vek answered. “Because placing three of the Cooperative's most important military figures into the custody of a machine who is operating a clandestine, automated military complex would be . . . unwise.”

“Oh,” The Onyxian muttered, trying to shrink into his chair.

Every other form of intelligence present was undoubtedly thinking the same thing in that moment: how did the one idiot Onyxian strategist in the whole of the Cooperative get elected to office? Hopefully, it was because all of the smart ones were too busy being warriors, not politicians.

“It's settled, then?” Smarts asked. “It shall be done?”

“It shall be done,” Councilor K'Vek said, and the remainder of the council nodded their general assent.







The rapping of metal on metal caused Lady Shen Farool to look up from her work. A droid stood squarely in the center of her office, its black finish contrasting sharply with its glowing, white photoreceptors.

The Chief Administrator of TransGalMeg Industries returned her attention to her work. She had grown accustomed to this sort of unscheduled encounter with a certain shadowy droid. “What can I do for you this time, Overseer? Another company you want me to buyout and revive?”

The droid could grasp the sense of humor in the woman's tone, and deemed her question rhetorical.

“I'm going to need ships. I'm going to need a lot of ships.”



Miko Minn gave no indication that he was aware of something moving behind him. He continued his work diligently, sliding a drawer open and gathering a stack of datapads to stow away.

“You won't need that blaster, Regent.”

The Regent of Cestus slowly withdrew his hand from the drawer, empty. “Who am I going to have to fire for letting you in this time?” He turned around to study the droid, a small, spider-like thing colored a dark gray.

“I have the utmost confidence in your abilities, Regent,” The tiny droid said in a dull, emotionless voice. “If you wished to prevent my entry, you would have done so.”

Miko turned back to his work. “Last time Smarts sent one of you, he talked me into creating ThinkTank Dynamics, and . . . well, you know how that ended up.”

In truth, the small droid didn't know anything about ThinkTank Dynamics or the nearly-complete Guardian Program for which ThinkTank had been an integral component. But its priorities did not include information gathering; it was here to deliver a message.

“I'm going to need droids. I'm going to need a lot of droids.”



King Ebareebaveebeedee's health seemed much improved since Smarts' last encounter with him. The old Squib king had seemed on his deathbed when he signed Skor II into the Coalition, but now he appeared happy, healthy, full of life. It was a reassuring sign; even in these dark times, there were those who found cause to believe again.

Ordinarily this sort of exchange would be carried out by one of Smarts' less-known droids, but since Smarts was literally just outside, security wasn't quite so important this time.

King Ebaree grumbled quietly to himself, muttering in his native tongue.

“I understand the magnitude of what we are asking you, King,” Beta began carefully, every syllable precisely weighted. “But we need you to trust us. You will be contributing to the survival of the Coalition and the perpetuation of liberty not only for our own members, but for the galaxy beyond our borders.”

“You're asking me to cook books. I don't like that.”

“It's a security precaution, nothing more,” The droid assured.

The king stroked his beard, considering the whole situation carefully. “I'll need something official, from the Defense Council . . . for authentication, of course.”

The droid tilted its head in a peculiar attempt to convey its very real personality. “Of course.”

“Well, then,” The king slid forward on his throne, getting excited at the prospect of salvage. “What sort of stuff are we talking about?”

“I'm going to need parts. I'm going to need a lot of parts.”



One does not break into the chambers of the Drackmarian Emperor. Not only because it would be unseemly, but because it would be impossible. So instead, Smarts' little infiltrator droid broke into the massive complex surrounding the chambers of Emperor Draconis, and then knocked on the first door it dared not open.

After half an hour of interrogation and cross-checking offered authentication codes, the emperor's personal guards finally conceded the fact that the droid was indeed here on behalf of the Overseer. Less than thirty seconds after the emperor was informed, the droid was standing before him.

“I wish to discuss something of a military nature, Emperor.”

The massive, ancient Drackmarian nodded his head slowly. “Your words will not leave my mouth,” He said, using his people's traditional oath of secrecy.

“You are already aware of the Guardian Program. While I know that many of your advisers and military commanders hold a certain . . . distaste . . . for automated mechanisms of war, I have come to believe that you trust me, though I am truly only a machine.”

“You wish to establish a Guardian-operated base of operations, presumably somewhere deep within unexplored space,” The emperor offered, revealing his presumptions.

“I need covert sources of material,” The droid explained, his refusal to deny the claim a form of admission in its own right.

“Tell me what you need, and you will have it.”

The droid tilted its head a little higher to peer directly into the dragon-like being's eyes. “I'm going to need everything. I'm going to need a lot of everything.”



And so it continued, the Overseer drawing supplies of every conceivable type and use from every trusted source. The Cooperative Council of Defense, not wishing to draw undo attention to the operation by redirecting vast stores of the Cooperative's own public military materials, set out on a similar mission, drawing support from other military divisions within the Coalition. Of particular help had been the existing Coalition military installations CN-1344 and CN-1653, which had delivered substantial resources to the Drackmarian capital for secure incorporation into the endeavor.

By the time everything was in place, Guardian would be active and an automated fleet of freighters, transports, and escort craft would make their unmanned trek into the unknown.

But until that unknown was found, all the Overseer could do was sit and wait.

The Past

Space. The limited consciousness of Cooperative Automated Scouting Vessel S1V73 sought some means of quantifying the vast nothing which stretched all around it. The vast nothing which―in some sense―had captured it. For no matter where S1V73 traveled, always it would be in space. Trapped in space . . .

The tiny consciousness was drawn from its musings by an influx of data its subsystems had tagged as of priority relevance. A three-dimensional grid of space began to construct itself within the droid brain as data was processed and input. But as the representation of space-time grew, variances in the gridwork emerged, contradicting “the way things should be.” The limited consciousness scanned the data again, checked and re-checked available input: it was forced to conclude that the model was correct.

Something was distorting space and time. The droid brain had no frame of reference, no means of gauging how “big” this distortion was; it was not designed for comparative analysis. It was designed to identify, record, and transmit anomalies. So its hyperwave transmitter flared to life, discharging a burst of data along a calculated vector to intersect a preset point.

And then the data tables cleared, the navicomputer cycled to the next destination, and the vessel vanished into hyperspace.

S1V73 had no idea how important its discovery was. In fact, only seconds after processing the raw data, it had no recollection of the discovery at all.



Data entered, and data went. The new Coalition HoloNet transceiver absorbed the hyperwave message, converted it for HoloNet transmission, and sent it on its way. There were no decision-making processes required, no higher forms of artificial intelligence. One switch flipped on a galactic communications board; one message sent on its journey around the Rim. The data cache cleared, and the transceiver returned to standby status, awaiting another message from beyond the edge of existence.



The mind of the artificial intelligence chiefly identified as Smarts is a marvelous and―often times―incomprehensible thing. Tendrils of consciousness weave their way through the vast informational labyrinth that is the HoloNet, drawing knowledge and deriving conclusions from the near-limitless sea of data. But the source of this consciousness is clear, as indivisible from its home as a human mind from its human body.

So, invariably, everything that can be called “Smarts” must flow into the Lucrehulk-class Core Ship which bears its name, to be examined by the mind's eye and have its worth weighed. And so it came to pass that one particular strand of data passed under that all-seeing gaze, and in an instant of enlightened computation the findings of Cooperative Automated Scouting Vessel S1V73 were judged . . .

and found worthy.



Time passed, and the true scope of Cooperative Automated Scouting Vessel S1V73's discovery began to reveal itself. Cross-referencing Drackmarian, Cren, Onyxian, and Squib starcharts confirmed the Overseer's expectation: the gravitational lensing effect of the spatial anomalies detected by S1V73 were of sufficient magnitude and configuration to shroud a localized region of space in a total optical and sensory mask.

In short, Smarts had found a place truly invisible to the sum of galactic society. On the rimward edge of the Unknown Regions, beyond the borders of Drackmarian Space, nestled in the midst of the very distortions which made the Unknown so impenetrable, he had found his secret shelter.

And finally, he had found a way inside.

Smarts' connection to Guardian Scout Ship GS7V68-I4 evaporated as the vessel vanished from realspace in a flash of relativistic motion. Ten minutes later, he received a single response to his standing query, relayed around the gravitic anomalies by the string of scout ships still exploring the boundaries of the entry corridor.

Wrapped in transmission history tags and authentication seals, the message read simply: transit complete, target found.

The Past

Here I stand, beyond the edge of existence; where no feet tread, where no eyes see, where no will invades. Here I stand, alone.

Of course, the Overseer of the United Cooperative of Peoples was in orbit over Varn, working to hold his Cooperative together in the face of a galactic Cataclysm. But that did not stop the mind of the machine from reaching out beyond the borders of the Drackmarian Empire and into this secret shelter.

Here, where the swarm consciousness of a thousand million machines worked out their singular task. Here, where the combined might of the Galactic Coalition Military forged the first true weapon of peace in history. Here, where the fate of a Galaxy might be saved.

The World that was the eventual goal of this great endeavor would not appear to be of any particular use to the average galactic citizen, or even many of its more perceptive inhabitants. But the machine Overseer was gifted with a unique insight: he was free to judge the World solely upon composition.

It was a small planet, relatively close to its yellow-white Sun. Composed almost entirely of metals and silicates, the World's vibrant electromagnetic field indicated it was yet young enough to maintain a molten-metal core. It was host to no natural satellites, and shared the System with only a moderate gas giant and a large asteroid field.

The World's surface was dotted with impact craters, and Smarts had already initiated plans to map the vast asteroid belt and tag any stray objects within local space. The Plan would not be hindered, especially not by forces of nature.

Beyond this System, only three stars were visible, though their true location was doubtlessly distorted by the powerful gravitational forces of the Barrier. Even now, automated scouts were surveying the surrounding stars and probing the Barrier for other possible entry corridors. The latter was a task not soon to be completed, but the Plan was already well underway.

Whatever the probes eventually found, there would be no turning back.

And so the Overseer returned his attention to the World below him, that barren rock devoid of atmosphere, its own gravity scarcely one-sixth of galactic standard. The World's fate was inevitable; so great were the gravitic forces from the Barrier that the whole System would be pulled into one of the nearby black holes within a few million years.

Smarts wasn't too concerned about that, though: this star and its orbits would be useless to him by then.

But on a smaller, less-cosmic timescale, the World was of utmost value.

A quartet of Cornucopia-class Consolidated Resource Vessels orbited the Word's equator in tight formation, a constant stream of resources flowing in and out of them. All around them floated freighters, transports, and factory ships of various sizes and functions. A string of space elevators had already been erected, powerful electromagnetic forces accelerating their cargoes toward the surface at phenomenal speeds.

And on the surface of the World, an army of Ant Labor Droids and Remote Operation Robots swarmed the area, assembling components output from―and transporting raw materials to―Feethan Ottraw Scalable Assembly self-replicating factories.

On the few completed assembly lines of these factories, the first generation of on-world droids were assembled and deployed. But these were not Ant Labor Droids or Remote Operation Robots, these were machines designed expressly for function in this low-gravity environment. They joined with still more Ants and Remobots and marched headlong into the open maw of newly carved mines.

The unprocessed bounty of the World would become the building blocks of the next stage of the World's development. Even as more space elevators were erected and the flow of off-world resources increased, so too would the mines, factories, and processing centers of the surface expand.

More materials, more droids, more factories, more mines, more transports, more and more and more. The machines continued ever onward toward their unseen goals, each individually a mindless nothing, an imperceptible speck.

But together . . . together they formed a Global Machine, and that machine operated according to a Plan.

And that Plan would soon begin to bear fruit.

The Present

Admiral Jonathan Blakeley considered the sight before him very carefully. “Why am I seeing this?”

“The Council of Defense demanded regular inspections by the Supreme Commander of the Cooperative Armed Forces be included as a condition of authorizing this endeavor,” The artificial voice answered from all around.

Jonathan swallowed hard, recalling the distasteful meeting not so long ago. “You are now Supreme Commander, Overseer.”

“That is true, Admiral, but as the condition was imposed to ensure military knowledge of this installation would not perish should I be rendered inoperative, it has been amended to account for that change.”

“So here I am,” He said coldly.

“So here you are,” The machine affirmed.

Blakeley took a step closer to the main viewport, observing the haze of motion that hung between himself and the nearby world. “I don't like it.”

“That is why you need to know about it.”

Blakeley turned around, for the thousandth time wishing he had something definitive to fix his attention on when speaking to Smarts. “What possible good could come of this?”

“I will show you.”

And then the droid did.







Damar Roka was one of the least likely candidates for Cooperative political office. For a time, he had been a member of the Cavrilhu Pirates. For a rather long time, in fact.

He had also been the only one of them to switch sides and assist with the downfall of the pirate band without any promise of protection or demand for compensation. He had personally commanded a captured Cavrilhu vessel during the battle which had essentially ended the organization.

For his repentant acts, the original inhabitants of Amorris had issued a full pardon on his behalf, and promptly elected him to one of their seats on the original Combined Council. He had survived two government restructurings and the “invasion” of his adoptive homeworld by a hoard of Onyxian refugees to become the Chief Councilor of the Cooperative Council of Defense.

Now he was being shown the most secretive and vast construct within the entire Coalition. “What do you call it?”

“I don't,” The Overseer answered.

Damar had to remember to breathe. He had voted for this, but seeing it happen, watching it become real . . . it was terrifying and beautiful all at the same time. “This is truly your domain.” He spent a long moment marveling at the machine network before him before he noticed, “There are no stars.”

“There are three other stellar masses detectable from this System,” The Overseer corrected.

He turned away from the viewport and headed straight for the large holoprojector at the center of the one-time bridge. “I'm going to need to see your defense plan; we have to ensure that this location is never compromised.”

A map showing the gravitational effects being applied to the region materialized immediately. “As you can see, the full extent of the Barrier has yet to be mapped. It will undoubtedly take several years, even with the addition of probes from the factories on the surface, to adequately scout the entire region.” The map shifted, zooming in on a particular region of space. “The only identified entry corridor is the one currently being used by all inbound and outbound traffic, which has been limited to myself and a select few Drackmar-bound vessels since the arrival of the construction fleet.”

“Then we're near Drackmarian Space?” Damar interrupted. For a moment, he thought the Overseer may have made an oversight, revealing the relative location of this system. But the machine consciousness was not apt to misstate vital information. Surely he had some reason to tell Damar this bit of secret information.

“The Drackmarian Inner Sanctum is the most trusted of nearby Coalition members; the Emperor and I have devised a plan to ensure no vessels with direct information of this installation ever venture coreward of Inner Sanctum space. Shall I continue?”

“Of course,” Damar nodded, returning his attention to the hologram.

“The exact boundaries of the entry corridor are still being explored, but key chokepoints have been identified and interdiction grids will be established to retard the approach of any unauthorized vessels. As other points of entry are determined and mapped, those vectors of access will be interdicted, mined, and monitored to ensure no intruders breach the Barrier without first paying a heavy price.

“Local, planetary defenses will be established once production has increased to levels sufficient to support such an endeavor. The entire system will be blanketed in a sensor network to void all sensor shadows and ensure no intruder goes unnoticed. This system will become a fortified military super-complex, complete with resource extraction, refinement, and processing facilities coupled with manufacturing and wartime construction capabilities. A vertically integrated, totally autonomous, absolutely secret, and heavily fortified center of production.

“And once you witness its effectiveness, I assure you it will become the first of many.”

The Chief Councilor of Defense wasn't sure how he felt about the Overseer's “assurance,” but he couldn't deny the truly epic scale of what this lone machine had set into motion here, within this nameless void.







“Councilor?”

Councilor Beiwi K'Vek had turned and headed back down the corridor upon seeing the vast viewport set into the opposite side of the newly opened room.

“Councilor, where are you going?” The voice followed her.

“You're going to show me what you're really doing here, Smarts,” She said the name as if she had just revealed a secret identity.

“I don't understand, Councilor.”

“Oh, you understand. You're going to show me what this is all really about.”

“This is about the preservation of liberty by the protection offered from military strength,” The droid voice answered calmly.

“You're going to show me what you brought me here to show me, Overseer, just as you showed the Admiral and the Chief Councilor what you brought them here to see, respectively. And you're not going to waste any more of my time.” She stepped into a turbolift, setting it for the docking bay where her droid-piloted shuttle still sat.

“You can't get there from here,” Smarts answered, and the turbolift stopped, then reversed its direction and returned the Counclor to what had once been the command deck. “No living thing can. If you will return to the observation room, I will show you what you are here to see.”

The Camaasi woman walked back down the long hallway, though her posture was somewhat less rigid and she found herself glancing about furtively, her intense focus broken.

“And I do not waste time, especially not here,” The droid added.

The heavy blast doors at the end of the corridor opened to show a large hologram already active. It showed a lone structure rising from what must have been the barren surface of the planet beyond the viewport. Against the featureless landscape, it was impossible to gain any sense of scale. The structure, however, took the shape of three thick strands, anchored independently into the surface, which stretched upwards and twisted together, touching at the center before twisting outward again, the diameter of the base matching that of the top, where a circular construct anchored the endpoints of the strands together.

“This is the Spire. And it is not a weapon of war.”

Beiwi K'Vek stumbled closer, studying the features of the Spire as the holoimage zoomed in on its upper levels. As the perspective rotated upward, she saw the layout of the round disk set at the Spire's top, and finally grasped the scale as she saw the semi-spherical indentation at its center. “That's a docking port,” She gasped.

“For a Lucrehulk-class Core Ship,” Smarts clarified.

She looked up, she wasn't sure where to or at what, but it felt like the thing to do. “What is it?”

“Now? It is an array of computers, a nexus of information. Eventually . . . eventually―I pray the Force―it will be alive, and then only it will be able to answer that question.”

“Complexity,” She whispered.

“A machine of incalculable complexity can only function in the presence of forces not calculable. I cannot understand my own nature, the forces at work which make me alive. Soon, this Global Machine will reach a level of complexity far in excess of my own; I hope it will be enough.”

Beiwi smirked. “And what if your . . . offspring . . . is a pacifist?”

The answer came with a tone of amusement. “Then this fortified, top-secret military installation will be making an unimaginably large number of hospital ships and trauma droids.”

She turned back to the hologram, the humor of the moment passing and her smile fading to be replaced by a more somber expression. “What if it doesn't work?”

“Then at least I'll have constructed the most powerful and secret military installation in the entire Coalition,” The Overseer answered coldly.

She looked up, out past the viewport at the two stars burning in the distance. “Maybe one of those stars will hold the answers you need.”

“Stars offer no answers, Bei. All they can do is illuminate our path.”

Flashback


Admiral Jonathan Blakeley was standing in the observation room of Smarts, looking down at the growing machine world he had come to inspect.

He asked: “What possible good could come of this?”

He was answered: “I will show you.”

A warning siren sounded, and Jonathan looked back to the viewport to see it overlaid with a tactical display, a distant speck having been magnified several hundred times. The vessel appeared symmetrical and was approaching Jonathan directly, the lack of engine glow around its edges suggesting the aft of the craft sloped inward at least slightly, the bulging midsection concealing the engine assembly from forward viewers.

As he studied the craft, he noted the regular pattern of grooves running across its surface, reminding him somewhat of reptilian scales, as if each successive section from fore to aft overlapped with the previous.

And then he realized what was out of place: there were no viewports. “What's going on here,” Jonathan asked, turning his head slightly but refusing to take his eyes off of the rapidly approaching craft. “Overseer, what's happening here?”

The craft was growing uncomfortably close. “Smarts?” He stumbled backward, sidestepping to try to look beyond the magnified image to see how large the craft was to the naked eye, but the projected image followed him. “Smarts!”

The image vanished just in time for Jonathan to see the impossible. The approaching ship split into dozens of pieces, flying off in all directions, stretching outward in a perfect circle until they passed Smarts and went out of view.

Jonathan turned to the empty room. “What is the meaning of this!”

The warning siren fell silent and the blue-white holographic representation of the Overseer constituted itself in the center of the room. It pointed at the viewport now at Jonthan's back. “Look.”

He turned around to see . . . “It's back.” The ship, precisely as it had first appeared, now hung motionless less than a kilometer away. “How . . .”

And Jonathan watched as sections of the hull moved away, slowly this time, to reveal a hollow interior, occupied only by a few, featureless spheres. The sections of hull pulled back together, and then the shape of the entire ship shifted, several of its “scales” either vanishing into the ship or sliding along the borders of others until they had migrated to their new positions.

The long, symmetrical ship with a bulge in the center had shifted into a blunt-nosed wedge. A single of its scales broke away and floated slowly through space, apparently absent any propulsion systems.

The viewport magnified the single scale until it filled the entire display. “How many thousands of these would our enemies have to destroy to justify the loss of a single of their flesh-and-blood soldiers, sailors, and commanders?”

Jonathan couldn't believe what he was seeing. He already knew what the Overseer's next question would be:

“Admiral, how well would you sleep after waging a war without loss?”