“Rashe, come look,” Directed Suicide said. The AI sounded excited. “The munition package is about to hit in realspace.”
Rashe walked over to the console, and laid her hands on the interface, allowing her visual input to be slaved over to the AI. Instantly, her vision was filled with a tactical display overlaid with real space input adjusted for the lightspeed differential.
“Where is the enemy ship?” Rashe asked.
“Right there, in orbit of the second moon.”
Her vision adjusted on a view of the moon, a simulated feed built from the mass of sensors that peppered the outside of Directed Suicide’s hull and from the near system probes, all stitched together into a video output that to her animal brain, appeared to be completely real. She saw the gas giant looming in the background, its mass of rings tilted on a obscure angle with a small glittering white orb floating next to it like a forgotten toy. The virtual viewpoint of the moon zoomed in moments, traveling a light hour in a matter of a heartbeat, and the enemy ship was clearly visible. The nose of the Ferint Battle Cruiser was evacuating gas, probably a wound from the previous engagement with the nearby science station it had recently obliterated.
A thousand and twelve human beings, two station-level AIs, and thirty one drone-level AIs had perished. All said and done, the Ferint had taken 1,045 lives on a whim. The station was not a strategic win for the Ferint, but alas, the Ferint often did not make sense. The distress signal shell had reached Directed Suicide three light days after the incident had occurred, and the immediate outrage that Directed Suicide had felt elicited a very severe response. Directed Suicide had loaded twelve munitions into its tubes, launched them into the grid, and then set course to follow its package traveling through hyperspace towards the Ferint ship.
“This is my favorite part.” Directed Suicide laughed. It was a maniacal sort of laughter that Rashe assumed the AI had picked up from watching terror movies from the early twenty first century.
The first munition popped into real space at near-c, and the Cruiser immediately threw its shields up, the evacuating gas plume flowered against the near side of the field, blossoming outwards along the inside as if the ship was trying to create its own weak atmosphere. The first munition exploded three thousand meters from shield perimeter near the planet side face of the enemy ship, intentionally not causing any damage or direct impact.
“By now, those stupid Ferint and their idiotic non-sentient computer are trying to backtrace the munition trail. They are about to calculate that the path was sent from our previous location. Then they will calculate that the next one…” At that moment, the visual feed featured another hyperspace wake form on realspace, and the next munition exploded at the opposite end of the Ferint ship, again doing no damage. “Then they will panic, knowing that the two munitions were laid at exact opposite ends of their ship, with an explosion shell that is perfectly synced with an embedded message. Which they will attempt to decrypt right about now.”
“What does the message say?” Rashe said admiringly. Directed Suicide was crazy smart for a maritime battle AI, and really enjoyed its job. The precision employed to direct a series of explosions, projected light days into the future, represented an amazing level of forecasting ability that far surpassed anything Rashe could do as a human being.
“Goodbye Assholes.”
The video feed showed the Ferint cruiser fired its attitudinal fusion drives at its midship, attempting to push it upwards and towards the gas giant behind it in hopes of escaping its inevitable fate.
“They are maneuvering upwards?” Rashe said with scorn written all over her features.
“I planned on it. The third one is about to hit exactly above. The fourth will hit exactly below. Then they will finish their decryption, read my message, shit their collective pants, and then they will be turned into incandescent gas.” Directed Suicide commented. If an AI could have a sly grin, the AI would be showing it accordingly.
The third torpedo popped into realspace, exploded exactly at the apex of the ship, the fourth followed suit at the belly, and the enemy ship’s engines fluttered into full thrust far too late to save it. The next series of munition packages entered realspace at sub-c velocities at the shield, and those two completely fried the enemy field generators. The remaining four behind entered real space meters from the Ferint hull, forming a neat line along the cruiser’s flank. Since each one was traveling at about .95 c, while carrying its own mass out from hyperspace, while carrying antimatter packages as their explosive cargo, each formed a cone of explosive power usually only seen in the plasma layers of yellow sequence stars. The resulting wake of energies would destroy the moon behind the Ferint Battle Cruiser as well, and the gas giant would have a new ring form in the next couple thousand years. Rashe’s visual feed attempted to show her what it was going to look like if her visual spectrum was that of the ship, but something was lost in translation when one cannot understand the energies involved. Still, it took Rashe’s breath away seeing the destructive power that Directed Suicide had unleashed in it’s rage.
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Rashe whispered.
“Duly noted.”