TNS Chapter 18 Preview (Patreon)

Chapter 18 will release December 23, 2022 at 0800 MST. Sorry I forgot to do the preview earlier, so please enjoy a slightly larger than normal preview!

Subject: Lead Intel-Officer Knuffer

Species: Isolan

"WHY DO YOU LOOK SO DAMN CALM ABOUT THIS!?!" I screamed at him.

"Ma'am, I just... don't really see the problem," he said.

"Don't see the problem? Do you need your vision checked? What if it decides to vent our air? What if it decides to overload our reactors?" I asked while gesturing madly, "What if it decides to detonate our remote ordnance? What if it access our military secr..."

I trailed off. I had, for a moment, forgotten we were on a remote early warning station that didn't have galactic internet access. The only military secrets we had were which military ships had docked within the last 30 days and why. Which there were none except the Lowelana. The AI couldn't learn anything from our systems that their ship's sensors couldn't have already figured out. Bleenus took my silence as his cue to speak up.

"Intel-lead, it's not as if they have any call for doing something like that. That behemoth of a ship they came in on has more than enough firepower to turn us into dust ten times over. Plus... Well, come LOOK at this fuckin' thing," he said as he walked over to a terminal.

Bleenus was what essentially amounted to our technical expert on the station. If I hadn't been around, he would have easily been the top choice for intel-lead. The only reason he wasn't picked is because I have seniority and am better at actually USING the sensors than he is. Well, the ones he's not allowed to reprogram, at least. This is why when I walked over to look at his holo-screen I was baffled.

"The hell am I looking at, Bleenus?" I asked.

"This is the AI. Kind of," he said, "It's a representation of how our system views it. The poor thing has no idea what to make of this beauty."

"Bleenus! Stop drooling over the mechanical death machine," I said.

"Redundant, intel-lead. And I can't help but marvel at the engineering required to make something like this. Look at how DENSE it is. Also, I'm pretty sure it's not a threat," he said as he turned to me. "Something this complex could have penetrated our station in no time and done all of the things you were worried about in milliseconds. Yeah, it's worrying but we've got to face the fact that we're defenseless here. Like you said, if these guys didn't come in peace we'd already be dead."