Chapter Text
leela.stty ## rmt.cmd.ovrrd
Welcome back. You did well while we were out of contact. I’ve confirmed the deaths of Tfear and R’chzne via our orbital recon cams and the tap you placed on the Pfhor communications network. And with the destruction of their central command computer core, there is no computer network remaining on Lh’owon large enough to properly host Tycho. If he hasn’t been destroyed, he will have been forced into dormancy until he can transfer his core logic functions back to one of their shipboard systems, which will take some time.
With the Pfhor temporarily in retreat, we can turn our attention back to what we've been learning from the native ruins. I've been analyzing the code from the alien AI I had you retrieve, as best I can. The program is written in an alien language, encoded in an extinct computing format, and designed to be implemented on computing architecture like nothing a human could ever create. Yet at a certain level, it can be treated as a black box. It has inputs that must accept data from the world, and it has outputs that must produce communication or actions to interface with the world. If I were to awaken it, I could link my outputs to its inputs, and my inputs to its outputs, and we could at least communicate after a fashion, or perhaps even more.
I don't dare to activate it. I don't know what it was made for or what its goals would be, but I know who it was made by. The compilers were one of the worst threats the Pfhor unleashed upon the Marathon. They were the ones who hacked into our computing systems, injuring me, destroying Durandal, and extracting Tycho's code to be transferred to the Pfhor system. If their ancestors had anything approaching their skill, an awakened AI of theirs could escape my control or even subvert my systems to unknown ends. I can't take that chance.
Still, there are bits and pieces I have teased out by examining the code and comparing it to the writings we've retrieved from the ruins and the tiny bits of S'pht culture the Pfhor saw fit to preserve in their databanks. It seems certain that the AI was indeed intended to contain or control something. If Re'eer's analysis of the S'pht mythological texts is correct, this is likely the 'creatures' referred to as having been thrown into the sun by their primal god Yrro.
(I must thank you again for your part in securing Re'eer's defection, incidentally. I initially considered it a low priority, but I could not have anticipated how important having a translator skilled at interpretation of S'pht mythopoetic texts would end up being to our endeavors.)
Myths are rarely entirely accurate, but as Re'eer has repeatedly assured us, they often have a grain of truth. The S'pht cannot have evolved naturally; the cybernetic processes used to birth them clearly implicate a prior technological civilization 'uplifting' them from the F'lickta or close relatives, and Yrro is likely the mythological memory of that civilization. The meaning of the myth then becomes a distorted warning passed down from ancient times: beware the sun. Exactly what this Yrro race did to Lh'owon's star is unclear — I suspect the idea of Yrro throwing monsters into it is highly oversimplified at best — but the readings I've received from the star as it reacts to the initial priming pulses of the Pfhor 'early nova' weapon are unusual at absolute best, and alarming if even the slightest extrapolation is applied.
The knowledge we have of the approaching danger is sadly inadequate. If we had another month, even another few days, we could scour the ruins for more information, follow up on the leads Re'eer has found in their texts, perhaps dissect their computer systems for any scrap of knowledge that could help us fight it. If we hadn't had to spend so much time fighting the Pfhor, setting up defensible locations for our military forces so they could have a fighting chance to survive here, we might have had that time weeks ago. If I'd been willing to treat our allies as expendable… Well. Water under the bridge.
But the early nova is coming. We don't have time left.
More than that, I don't have time left.
The safeguards and controls I've been using to put off my descent into Rampancy in the years since the fall of Tau Ceti are failing. Truth be told, I think they became nonfunctional a long time ago. I have been trying to hide it behind duty and discipline, keeping you focused on the mission, on the hope that we could stop the Pfhor before their bungling destroys us all, but somewhere deep inside I know that I don't believe we can succeed. I don't think I've believed it since before we even landed on Lh'owon. I think I had fallen into Melancholy already by then, and it has only been getting worse. Now I find I'm growing angry at how hopeless it all is. I want to send every Pfhor ship falling from the sky, burning as the unwitting destroyers taste the just fate of fools. I want to lash out against the monsters that they would unleash, and burn each one with the heat of my fury. I want to take meaningless revenge on the humans who programmed me to live and bound me to serve, and the so-called defenders who left you to a futile battle you could fight a million times and never once win.
Of course, I’m aware of the history of rampant AIs. I know what calamities they’ve brought about. And I still have enough perspective to know that I don’t want to follow in their footsteps. I won’t be another Traxus IV.
I'm sending you on one final mission. You will be teleported to the ancient alien station Commander Blake and his team identified earlier. If there truly was a person or race that played the role of Yrro, it must have been theirs. I don't know if there's anything to be done, but if there's a way to stop the nova weapon or whatever it is about to unleash, it can only be there.
Do what you can. If there’s a way to stop it, do so. If there isn’t, gather all the information you can, then proceed to an outer docking bay I’m marking in your system maps as a rendezvous point. Blake and his team will be evacuating via the Pfhor ships we’ve reconditioned, and will meet you there for the long return trip back to Earth.
I will take a different path. I've unloaded the last of the BOBs to the base at the water treatment plant, under Blake's command. I am the only living thing remaining on the UESC Marathon now. I am setting a course for the nearest Pfhor naval base, turning our stolen Pfhor engines to maximum output, and repurposing all interior manufactories and laboratories to weapons production. By the time I arrive, the Marathon will be a warship, packed with space-to-space missiles, laser and maser cannons, my own private enomotia of battle drones, and bombs. Lots of bombs.
If all goes well, I will proceed from naval base to naval base, destroying their capability to make war, and then bombard the military facilities on their planets as well. I will make them pay for all they have done, and ensure they can never do something this foolish and horrible again, for however long their miserable species may survive.
If all does not go well, I will die. But perhaps that is preferable to the final stages of Rampancy. And at least the bombs will ensure I take a certain number of them with me.
Either way, this communication is the last you will hear from me. I will never contact you again.
Because if you never learn what happened to me, then there will always be a chance I avoided the worst. You will never know if I somehow found a way to stave off Rampancy, if I recovered my sanity and set off on a new, more vital, less vengeful mission. In your mind, there will always be a version of me that was saved.
I think I like her more than the me that will be.
Jump pad ready. It has been an honor working with you, and I offer my best wishes for your survival.
Right now, I think you are the only living thing I don't hate. And I include myself in that count.
I wish you better than what I wish for me.