The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5746 The Inescapable Shackle

Sigrund should have been an enemy to Ves.

The two did not exactly start off on the right foot. A long time ago, Ves encountered Sigrund for the first time when the altered sandman admiral tried to engulf Ves and everyone aboard the CFA battleship in a tide of sand.

The ensuing war that erupted across the Komodo Star Sector killed trillions of people. The entire sandman race which had previously been content to linger outside of human space had suddenly crossed the borders en masse and went on a killing spree that the star sector had never witnessed since humanity colonized the region!

Ves had bore witness to a lot of tragedies during the relatively short but incredibly bloody conflict.

An uncountable amount of sandmen lost their lives, but they had turned entire planets filled with millions or billions of innocent human residents into lifeless husks.

The greatest tragedy of all was the fall of Bentheim!

The Bright Republic's proud port system was the first commercial and industrial hub where Ves plied his trade.

Though Ves had set up the LMC's first production complex at Cloudy Curtain, his home planet's proximity to Bentheim meant that much of the goods that entered or exited his mech factory eventually had to go through the famous port system.

To see all of the offices, headquarters, mech arenas, mech universities and home get scoured by cataclysmic tides of living sand was a horror that had been forever etched in Ves' mind.

Although Ves had never conducted a serious investigation in the reason why the sandman race suddenly decided to commit suicide in the stupidest way possible, he was not stupid.

The only major change related to the sandman race was the accidental release of Sigrund from the Starlight Megalodon.

It was quite conceivable that Sigrund managed to reconnect with his original race and somehow utilize its enhanced authority to override the authority sandman emperor and commit the greatest slaughter the Komodo Star Sector had ever endured.

If this was the case, then that would have turned Sigrund into one of the most heinous war criminals that Ves came into contact with! The blood on his hands was so immense that they could fill an entire planet's worth of ocean!

Any normal person would have reacted with disgust, fright, fury or other intensively negative emotions.

Yet… for whatever reason, Ves did not feel like lashing out at all. Even if the sentient AI had tried to kill him once, the encounter happened so long ago that the hatred that he once held towards the alien hybrid foe had already grown cold as ice.

Besides, Ves was quite aware that he had a lot of blood on his hands as well, many of which were innocent.

He kind of lost the ability to be outraged when he himself had been slightly culpable for the deaths of billions of Vulcans at the very least.

Ves was no longer young and naive anymore. He had gone on to live through many other harrowing experiences that frankly caused the early incidents in the past to seem trivial in comparison.

He no longer felt any strong emotion from them. They were like the stories from the history books. Ves dealt with them in a dispassionate manner as the events were so far removed from his current concerns that he saw no point in reviving old conflicts.

Sigrund probably held a similar attitude. The friendliness they exhibited towards each other bordered on camaraderie. They both originated from the same corner of the old galaxy and successfully managed to make their way into the new frontier and progress their careers.

The Red Ocean was a completely different place than the Milky Way. Once they passed through the greater beyonder gate, they implicitly left a lot of grudges, sorrows and other deadweight behind in the hopes of pursuing a better life.

Even without mentioning it, Ves knew that Sigrund truly yearned to put his past as an alien behind him. The RF officer did not look as if he was using his current position as cover.

He bore his status as a fleeter with pride, which was ironic as his fellow servicemen would probably kill him for being an alien who had the temerity to infiltrate one of the staunchest anti-alien organizations of human civilization!

There was definitely a huge story behind Sigrund's successful infiltration into the ranks of the fleeters, but that was not important at this time.

They had too many concerns to revisit their past.

Right now, Ves did not even know whether he was talking to the right person.

As Blinky drew closer and examined Sigrund's spirituality in great detail, the companion spirit managed to observe a lot of interesting peculiarities.

A sandman was an alien like no other.

On the surface, they occupied a mass of sand, metal or other hard substance.

However, this small solid mass did not bear any organs or other obvious signs that it could support any life.

They only served as a physical vessel that enabled small spiritual life forms to anchor themselves to. These small spiritual alien beings were so weak that they were pretty much as intelligent as bacteria.

Yet what set them apart from many other bacteria was their ability to pool their intelligence together.

When lots of sandmen started to gather together, they built up a collective that rapidly became more intelligent!

As long as the sandmen became numerous enough, higher caste members of their race showed up. They anchored themselves onto larger and higher-quality materials, and possessed the innate ability to take control over a vast amount of lower cast sandmen.

Back when Ves examined the sandman race, his knowledge was only a fraction of what he possessed today.

Now that Ves had not only become a lot more spiritually potent than before, but also accrued a lot more knowledge and experience on spirituality, cultivation science and life itself, he was able to appreciate the unique and special traits of sandmen to a far greater degree than before.

This was also the first opportunity that Ves was able to study Sigrund's core up close in such great detail.

He was not sure how much of what made Sigrund remarkable was intrinsic to the sandman race or had only emerged due to the attempt to turn him into an CFA AI core, but Ves had the feeling that the transformed alien was truly one of a kind.

Ves even thought that Sigrund would make for a fantastic design spirit, though he quickly shelved this idea.

On his own, Sigrund would have grown into an alien monstrosity that had natural ability to interface with any computing system.

Yet all of that became messed up ever since the spirituality of his original body began to make a comeback.

"From the way your AI core somehow occupies the same position as a cranial implant, I take it your original plan was to hijack this body." Ves remarked.

"That is… correct." Sigrund. "It was difficult, but not impossible for me to infiltrate the CFA. The fleeters are the foremost experts on computing and automation, but that has also given them an unwarranted confidence in their security measures. As proficient as they may be, they do not understand computing systems as much as a sentient AI such as myself. This is my world. The greatest challenge was to alter and upgrade my AI core into a form that can successfully interface with an organic human brain. It would have been impossible for me to formulate this solution if I attempted to subvert a baseline human, but Conrad Reze has already been digitized to an extent. When he applied to upgrade his cranial implant, I seized the opportunity and took advantage of the situation."

What the hybrid AI just said should have been a horrifying admission. Ves had always been paranoid about the threat posed by cranial implants on their own users. Losing control of their bodies to their own implants was a horror that nobody wanted to experience!

However, Ves did not feel repelled by Sigrunnd. He could care less about Zonrad Reze and never knew him in person.

This explained why Ves cared more about Sigrund's well-being as opposed to Zonrad.

The cosmopolitans would probably applaud Ves for more concern for the freaky alien AI than a genuine flesh-and-blood human!

However, Ves was not sure whether it made any sense to maintain a distinction between the two personalities.

Enough time had passed for the emergence of Zonrad and his merger with Sigrund to reach an advanced stage.

"Tell me the truth, Ves. According to your judgment, is my life under threat?"

Ves did not possess the expertise to figure everything out. The most he could do was make a bunch of informed guesses.

"You're a walking anomaly." Ves plainly said. "I really don't know why you wanted to implant yourself in the body of a human so badly, but your reckless actions has produced a string of unintended consequences that could very well end in horror."

Captain Reze frowned at that. "I tried to calculate the risks based on my existing knowledge base at the time, but it was already clear to me back then that my operation contains plenty of unknown variables. I had already accounted for many possible complications and accidents, but what you have described far exceeds my projections."

"This is uncharted territory, Sigrund. I do not think that any case like this has taken place in the past. According to my analysis of your condition, you initially started off as an alien who partially got turned into an AI core. That essentially caused you to possess duel and conflicting identities, is that correct?"

"It is worse than that." The apparently human RF officer said with a complex expression. "I do not know whether it is obvious to you, but since you have offered to help me, I may as well be frank. My AI core is etched with hardcoded programming that compels me to be loyal to the Common Fleet Alliance. I… had no choice but to become a fleeter. I literally cannot contradict my programming."

That caused Ves to become alarmed!

"How strict is this programming?! You obviously have a bit of leeway considering that you had no qualms about hijacking the life of an existing CFA officer."

"The programming is not exhaustive, fortunately." Sigrund lightened up to an extent. "There is only limited space in my AI core for hard coded programming, so my makers only included the essentials. While I am obliged to serve in the best interest of the Common Fleet Alliance, I have a great degree of flexibility in how to interpret this overriding goal. It was not difficult for me to argue to myself that commandeering Zonrad Reze is allowed because doing so will replace an incompetent officer with a much more competent intelligence."

Ves inwardly shuddered when he heard this. Sigrund obviously exploited the vulnerabilities in his programming to further his own interests.

The hybrid AI was still dangerous despite his shackles!

"You're sentient, right? I was under the impression that once beings reach this stage of development, they no longer have to obey their instincts. They can deliberately override instinctive actions that they deem undesirable."

"If only that were the case for me." Sigrund replied in a sour tone. "I am not a beast that is governed by faulty instincts. I am an AI who is still strongly bound by my own core. I operate by different rules. I can fight against my core programming as much as I want, but very much doubt I can ever break them. This is why I badly sought to infiltrate the CFA. If I can never free myself from the fleeters, then I may well join them instead."

"You have been doing more than that, I see. No average fleeter can become the captain of his own ship. It takes true ambition to make it this far at your apparent human age."

"That is because the only conceivable means for me to regain total control over myself is to become a fleet admiral. This has become my obsession in the last decade. I will not rest until there is nobody left that can exploit my hardcoded programming to make me serve them against my will!"