It was a weird feeling stepping aboard the biologically produced ship. Most of that strangeness came from the fact that it was almost identical to the broken vessel Alexander had studied for so long. So similar, yet not quite the same.

  The slightly melted-looking bulkheads and distorted walls broke the feeling of déjà vu he was feeling.

  Rush cleared his throat as the rest of his AI siblings followed Alexander aboard. “This reminds me of the Collective’s early attempts at modifying the microorganisms to change your original design. It took us years to figure out how to do it properly, yet you did it in a few months.”

  Alexander focused on the man to see if he was humoring him, but Rush looked genuinely impressed. “Um… Thanks.”

  Rush beamed with pride. “Honestly, your speed at figuring that out is probably what forced Two’s hand.”

  “Are you saying that if I were slower, he wouldn’t have been tempted to kill me?”

  Rush shook his head while the other two remained quiet as they made their way to the bridge. Alexander might have been able to control the ship from anywhere aboard, but he wasn’t confident in his current capabilities yet, so he built a standard BSE bridge layout to make things easy on himself.

  “No, he probably would have done that anyway,” Rush replied sadly.

  After hearing that, Alexander was glad he chose to push as quickly as possible.

  The group entered the bridge, which was fitted with only one human-sized chair and a single console.

  “Sorry,” Alexander said in embarrassment, before hastily tapping on his little homebrew tablet. “I didn’t expect to have guests. Three more chairs are being produced, and my bots will bring them up and install them shortly. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to make three more consoles before we lift off.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Four responded, “but unnecessary. Standing will not inconvenience us, nor will the lack of manual controls.”

  At that moment, Alexander realized how stupid he had been. There had been nothing stopping the Collective from taking the ship the moment it was done. He had added security systems to the vessel, but he doubted they would have stopped any member of the Collective for long. It was a good thing these three wanted to work with him.

  “Speak for yourself,” Rush said dramatically, pulling Alexander from his thoughts as he placed his arm behind his back and made a groaning sound. He stretched and popped his non-existent spine before sighing in relief. “These old bones get a bit stiff from time to time.”

  Alexander and the others just stared at Rush.

  “I’ve been working on my old man aches. Was that too much?” Rush asked.

  Four shook her head in exasperation, while Serina didn’t comment. That left Rush looking to Alexander for a response.

  “I guess it was just unexpected,” he replied. “I should focus on getting the ship ready,” he added, hastily changing the subject as he hurried over to the too-small seat.

  As Alexander was flicking through the console to activate the ship’s systems, he was also shedding his additional bulk.

  The Collective had given him enough living alloy to create his old robotic form, without making it hollow inside, but now that excess material had to go somewhere, he couldn’t just compress it inside himself.

  “Think of it as splitting your concentration,” Rush guided him as he noticed what Alexander was attempting to do.

  Alexander had plenty of experience with that, so it made the process a bit easier.

  Soon, a ball of liquid silver started to form next to him. It was still connected to him by a thin strand of the alloy, but he would worry about that later.

  By the time his robot form had shrunk to fit comfortably inside the chair, A three-foot sphere sat next to him.

  “How do I cut the connection?” Alexander asked.

  “Just will it to separate,” Rush said, now seated in one of the new chairs that the bots had brought up and secured to the deck. “Just don’t go too far from it, or you will lose connection with the material and it will collapse.”

  “How far is too far?” Alexander asked worriedly. The last thing he needed was for part of his body to fail.

  “A few hundred miles, give or take,” Rush said, waggling his hand in the air. “If your living alloy had a subspace connection, you could remain connected to it across hundreds of light-years.”

  That seemed like an absurd distance until Alexander thought about it for a moment. “Couldn’t I just connect a comm node to it to do the same thing?”

  Instead of answering, Rush smiled slightly and gave him a wink. Four saw the gesture as well, and tsked, but didn’t reprimand her brother any further on the topic.

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  The console beeped, pulling Alexander’s attention back to the ship.

  “Hold on, I don’t know how well this will work,” he commented as he flicked on the zero gravity plates.

  Alexander didn’t have nearly enough time or material to make the volume of plates necessary to reduce the gravity field around the entire vessel. What he did have time to do was reduce the ship’s gravitational mass by about two-thirds.

  The vessel shook as he pushed power into the maneuvering thrusters. The holo projector showed dust and small debris being thrown from the production pit, before the entire exterior view was obscured by freezing water vapor as the thrusters heated the pit lining and melted the nearby ice.

  A false image overlay quickly appeared, outlining the surface. The view shifted slowly as the vessel pulled itself from the hole.

  For once, Alexander was glad he wasn’t human. The shaking would have given a normal person whiplash. And a normal ship would have had to have every nut and bolt inspected after to ensure they were still tight. He made a mental note to check the normal systems he installed.

  Alexander pushed more power into the maneuvering thrusters, and the ship finally cleared the hole. He sighed internally in relief. That had been the part he had been most worried about. They were not out of danger yet, however.

  The ship was struggling to gain any more altitude, and he realized the contained nature of the pit had actually assisted by allowing more of the maneuvering thrusters to push against something. Now that they were free, the vessel was losing that advantage. The ones facing the ground were still doing their best, but they were never designed to make a ship as large as this lift off the surface of a planet.

  Alexander had a solution for that problem. He activated the main thrusters, just momentarily. The activation was enough to violently shove the ship forward and away from the pit, allowing for the maneuvering thrusters to push it another hundred feet into the air.

  “Good enough,” he muttered before activating the main thrusters once again.

  The ship launched forward violently, and Alexander quickly adjusted the speed to smooth their ascent.

  Rush barked out with a laugh. “Now that’s a takeoff!”

  “Don’t encourage such behavior,” Four scolded her brother.

  “Sorry,” Alexander said sheepishly. “I didn’t have time to run the thrust-to-mass ratio calculations to include the zero-gravity plates.”

  Four sniffed slightly. “I forgive you. We were all rushed in this collaboration.”

  The ship broke free from the ice and debris cloud it had kicked up, and he got his first good look at the dark world below.

  Alexander originally thought the Collective had one main facility, surrounded by ice and rock, but it turned out that the facility he had been stuck in was separated from the rest. Almost like a nature preserve or museum piece. The rest of the planet was covered in structures.

  “Holy shit!” he blurted out.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Rush asked.

  Alexander nodded his avatar. “How did you manage to build all this? I can’t imagine the planet had the necessary materials to create everything.”

  “Same way the humans do it. We found asteroids and mined them for what we needed,” Rush replied.

  As the vessel curved around the planet on its slow ascent into orbit, Alexander finally got to see what the AIs had been up to for the past few months. Massive swaths of the planet-spanning megastructure had been reduced to piles of debris.

  Four let out a quiet sigh. “So much waste. I do hope our siblings adjust their timetable to account for our loss. Otherwise, our sections may not be demolished in time.”

  “Two will figure it out. Our actions will also pull the Shican’s attention toward us, hopefully, providing our siblings more time, even though the Collective doesn’t deserve our assistance after what they planned,” Rush spoke calmly.

  Alexander chose not to comment on their family issues as he cleared the notification from his terminal that let him know the ship was now accelerating fast enough to break free from the planet’s gravitational pull. He shut down the zero-gravity plates as they were no longer needed.

  As the planet shrank in the background, they passed through a haze of dust surrounding the world. The deflector field worked overtime to clear a path, but they did eventually make it through. He noticed it encased the entire planet. “More deconstruction?” he asked.

  Rush shook his head. “Not exactly. It’s an inert field of debris to prevent anyone from using visual detection to spot the planet. I don’t know if you saw the sensor readings as we passed through, but it’s all made from the same sensor absorbing carbon as your ship.”

  Alexander wanted to ask how something like that was even possible, but they were AIs who had made a planet-spanning facility. Dumping enough carbon around a planet to conceal it didn’t sound all that hard after that.

  “Destination?” Alexander asked, changing the subject.

  A flight path appeared on his screen a moment later. Right… AIs, they didn’t need consoles.

  Once the ship was far enough from the gravitational pull of the rogue planet, Alexander jumped. It was time to get some payback.

  ***

  Commander Veshaan growled quietly in annoyance. After they arrived, he had personally joined the boarding party to search the singular station in the system, hoping for something to hunt. He was left disappointed.

  The humans had abandoned the place, in haste, by the look of things. This was the second such system. It seemed that the STO had warned them of their approach. They couldn’t run forever, but that thought did little to stem his foul mood.

  He punted one of the human’s stupid automated machines across the large open floor with all his cybernetically enhanced strength. The ruined machine sent sparks and broken parts spinning outward from the many holes punched into its surface by other annoyed Shican hunters.

  Veshaan’s implant pinged him that he had an incoming call from the ship. He pulled up his comm to respond, venting his frustration at whoever dared to disturb his current mood. “What?”

  “Commander, the sensor ship says it is picking up a subspace disturbance coming from the next system on our route.”

  Finally!

  Veshaan wasn’t sure his people could deal with the boredom and lack of food for much longer before he would actually have to resort to what the Grand Commander had suggested. For a moment, he considered not forwarding their discovery to the Grand Commander, but the man would figure it out eventually.

  “I’m on my way to the shuttle. Contact the Grand Commander and relay the connection to me.”

  A moment later, his implant pinged again, letting him know the connection was established. “Grand Commander, I believe we have located our prey.”

  There was no response for a moment; when it did finally come, it came with an almost erotic croon. Veshaan thought that was an inappropriate response for such a situation, but he had witnessed weirder things from his crew in recent weeks, so he chose to ignore it. He also wasn’t stupid enough to call out the Grand Commander’s actions, not when they were so close. “Good,” the man replied. “We are on our way, head there and take stock of the situation.”

  The Grand Commander didn’t wait for Veshaan to respond before cutting the connection.

  Veshaan hissed at the comm as if it had personally offended him before boarding the shuttle. Once all the teams had returned, they headed back to the Empire’s blessed vessel. He would be glad to be away from this dead system, and hopefully, this mission was nearing its end, so his remaining ships could rejoin the armada to scour the rest of the human worlds.

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