The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [6]
AI Hardmem Decryption Status – 5th pass, 61 text files recovered
File 61 – Daily masterlog of Command AI
Log Period – 00:00:01 to 14:28:29, 3 November 2127
Commentary – Dr Sigurd Halvorsen
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13:52:21 Incursion at access point alpha 3 logged
13:53:07 McAllister, Moseyev and Strogalev identified as primary vectors and tracked
13:53:19 Incursion at access point alpha 1 logged
13:54:23 Olssen, Kokorin and McBain identified as secondary sectors and tracked
13:54:29 Counter-intrusion Protocol K4 executed
13:55:04 Bio-units F18, F22 and F23 prepositioned
13:56:35 Bio-units M8, M10, M11, F7 and M19 engage secondary vectors
13:59:41 Termination of M8 logged
14:01:17 Elimination of vector Kokorin logged
14:02:21 Termination of F7 logged
14:02:39 M10, M11 and M19 instructed to withdraw
14:02:51 F18, F22 and F23 engage primary vectors
14:03:43 F18, F22 and F23 instructed to withdraw
14:04:15 Secondary vectors advance and enter prepared area
14:04:27 Primary vectors advance and enter prepared area
14:04:29 Counter-intrusion device activated
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Commentary I – The foregoing is taken from the Hyperion’s masterlog, from the day of the crew’s final attempt to regain control of the ship, ten days after the emergency landing. In order to highlight the salient incidents of Captain Olssen’s attack and the AI’s ambush, 70-odd lines of system entries were excluded (see appendix A). For a more revealing account of events we turn to Vasili Surov’s journal, the unexpurgated version which was released into the public purview a few years ago. It includes several observations on the planning of the colonyship programme, some highly critical of senior government figures at the time of the Swarm War. For the purposes of this study, we shall focus on entries made by Surov directly before and after the assault. – S.H.
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2 November 2127, 8.27 p.m.
This morning we buried the remains of our friend and colleague Andrei Sergeyevich Vychkov. He was one of the nearly two dozen crew and colonists which that damned machine trapped and operated on, turning them into agony-wracked slaves. Despite the inhumane violations inflicted upon him by the Command AI, despite the pain he must have felt, he sacrificed himself to give us the information we need to finally put to rest that damned machine. It has been barely two days since he carried out that abortive attack with the charges. When we recovered his body, we saw how he had been executed by one of those armed flyers, and found the crude map that he had inked into his own chest, showing the Hyperion’s Achilles heel.
We buried him on a gentle, grassy slope overlooking the sea. The sky was grey and a cold breeze blew but the rain stayed away (it is raining now – I can hear the hiss from beyond the cave mouth). Captain Olssen spoke from his Bible, Lorna, one of the Scottish women, sang something beautiful, and a few of Andrei’s close friends wept for him. I wept for him.
Afterwards, back here in the cave, Olssen singled out me and Keri McAllister for a private talk. He had decided to move against the machine tomorrow, using the information gleaned from Vychkov’s map. It seems that Olssen and McAllister will carry out a diversionary attack through the forward bays while my group infiltrates via an emergency venting hatch sited near the stern. And trust that Andrei was right.
3 November 2127, 11.35 a.m.
It is almost time. All eight of us – two teams of three plus me and Andy Ferguson – are attired for war, wearing scavenged scraps of body armour and carrying a variety of weapons. Olssen and McAllister’s people have the three handguns, the beam rifle and one of the gauss pistols while we have the other gauss pistol, the one with the 80% charge. Of course, we all have the usual selection of medieval deterrents, clubs, knives, hatchets and spikes, as well as water bombs to use against unprotected power