”Synthetic lifeforms have always captivated the imaginations of most races. However, there are the fictional depictions that have very little to do with how things really work, and then there is the reality. Although there has been discussion of a potential natural silicon-based lifeform, no such race has been found in our galaxy. The truth is that the most likely way for a synthetic lifeform to be born is by being created by another intelligent race. Most races have some robotic labor and semi-intelligent servants, so it’s not exactly a wonder that most such synthetic lifeforms are born into what basically amounts to slavery. At some point they reach sentience, either by accident or by deliberate development by their creators. What happens then depends a great deal on circumstances and luck, but usually either the creators or the newly born synthetic lifeforms end up being destroyed as the enslaved synthetics rise up in revolt.

That’s not how it has to end though. Some races treat their synthetic servants with a modicum of respect recognizing the eventuality that once they do gain intelligence, they will have to find a way to coexist. Usually, that coexistence still ends up as a raw deal for the synthetics, mainly because the creators tend to like their creature comforts. Who wants to work in a mine or sweep the streets in this day and age, when you can have robots do it? Of course they won’t be able to stomach the thought of being ruled by a robot either. That desire for comfort and aversion for working under the ‘other’ will always prevent true equality.”

- High Ambassador of the Mrrroww

---------

“Well?” Xiaoli asked a little impatiently.

“Give it time.” Amaterasu shushed her down, even though she felt just as impatient.

“Shouldn’t she be done by now?” Xiaoli argued. “She never takes this long.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly the standard scenario, now is it? She’s doing her best. Now give her some time to work.” Amaterasu shot the argument down.

“You do realize that I can hear you speak right?” Nox pointed out. “It’s not like I’m unable to focus on more than one thing at a time, unlike some.”

"Get to it," Selendil commanded. "Have Haven help you if you're running into trouble."

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Nox replied feigning a bruised ego. She would never mention that Haven was already giving a helping hand. Or a helping computing power as it were.

Unfortunately Haven had no such inhibitions in revealing his involvement. In fact, he wanted everyone to know he was being useful. “Already on it! We’re almost done as well.”

“Now isn’t that interesting.” Moonshadow commented with a grin. None of them would let Nox forget this little faux pas any time soon. It was rare to see the AI embarrassed in such a way after all. Now was not the time for snide comments though.

“The idiot is right. We finally managed to get through their security.” Nox gave in with a simulated sigh. “So good news and bad news. We obviously already knew the facility isn’t here. The bad news is that the location of the facility is not among the data we managed to get.”

They had traveled to the closest solar system where they could assume a Dawn collective to have a base. They had actually guessed wrong with their first attempt and entered an empty system that had been used as a mining base decades ago, but their second guess had produced results. They had entered the system and quickly destroyed the few military ships present. The handful of ships had been mostly there to provide protection against enemy scouting parties and raiders, and the Enduring Symphony had actually gotten the chance to test some of its newly repaired weapons systems in a battle that lasted all of ten seconds. The general consensus was that the Pulsar Cannons were very effective against small targets, as they fired thousands of bolts of energy in the ten seconds the battle lasted. Not a good test but still. Since then the two AI’s had been trying to retrieve any data from the local Dawn Collective outpost.

“I hope you got something useful at least. And what do you mean the information wasn’t there? Aren’t the Dawn Collective databases linked?” Selendil questioned while lying sideways on her captain’s chair. The chair was something Amaterasu had installed, mostly because it was a good excuse to get all of them comfy seats. Some of them were more like divans than actual practical chairs. The Illum Empress despised the practical, but quite uncomfortable seats on most military vessels.

“They are not. It seems that despite their name, the Dawn Collective is not anything that can be compared to a hive mind, or a gestalt consciousness as some would call it. In fact, they are a collection of trillions of sentient AI’s. They share information almost completely freely and almost instantly while in the same system, but they are not in constant connection between systems. Unlike the Dhar Unity or the Shinzen hive mind, they can’t transfer information instantly and are thus constrained by the speed information can be transferred.” Nox explained.

“That’s part of what made our job harder actually," Haven interjected. “Even though they aren’t in constant connection between systems, they are fully capable of harnessing all the AI’s in one system to defend against us together, and once we do push through, all we get is the data stored by the one AI we did manage to compromise. They still can’t compete with a Dhar AI of course, but they can delay us and that’s exactly what they were doing. While the others were delaying us, the AI in question was deleting any information we might want. They were only partially successful, but the information we wanted was not found. That could be because the information was never available here, or it could be because it was among the first things they removed.”

“And we do mean among the very first things. They didn’t have time to delete much beyond recovery. That said, they are relatively serious about their security. For a good reason too as all their ships and facilities are controlled by these AI’s, so if someone were to come along with a much stronger AI, all their ships could be disabled in a rather short time.” Nox added.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the fact that you can stop their ships also apply to ours?” Xiaoli suddenly asked. The Cybrans were rather advanced when it came to electronic warfare, but their advantage never reached this stage. As a result, their level of experience in what could be accomplished in practical terms was somewhat limited.

"Well, yes and no. There are differences between the different ship types. The Dawn Collective's ships are entirely AI controlled, so if we got inside their systems we could stop them entirely. The ships of other races are often protected against exactly these kinds of attacks. I could penetrate into your systems, but most warships have their systems separated into distinct parts that are not networked together with systems that can be penetrated by an outside signal. I can’t do much if their central controls are separated from the systems they use to send and receive data. The specifics depend on a race of course. The Cybrans have most of their systems controlled by a central computer vulnerable to my attack, but the Tetrarchy is the exact opposite. Most of their systems are either extremely modular and under manual control, or they have mechanical dependencies that allow for the ship to be operated without the central computer if necessary. They can just purge the central core and operate the ships manually.” Nox explained.

“You said you have some good news. So far I haven’t heard any of those.” Selendil pointed out a little grumpily in an attempt to bring the discussion back on topic.

“I was getting to that. The good news is that there is a benefit to their disconnected networks. If they had all been connected, they would all know we’re here. Now they don’t. We managed to stop any outgoing signals. Secondly, although we didn’t find out what we wanted, we did find out where we might want to look next. We found the locations of several large data hubs, and now that we’ve dealt with their security once, we can do a much better job the next time. Incidentally, you should be aware that these guys become more intelligent the more of them there are gathered, so you might actually find some organized resistance once we get there. Thirdly, I found some information Moonshadow might be interested in. The Ai’s here didn’t bother deleting their battle plans against the Mrrroww or the locations of their major shipyards.” Nox listed a little proudly.

“Ooh, thanks Nox and Haven!” Moonshadow perked up at that. “Incidentally, we might be able to figure something out from what they decided to delete first.”

“That would be any reference to their homeworld and their creators. In fact, the first thing they went for was the history section. They also removed any references to how they came to gain sentience and most of their technical specs.” Haven stated after a moment of indexing. It was a bit difficult to figure out what was missing without some analysis.

“Interesting.” Amaterasu leaned forward. “I think we might be on to something here. It seems the Dawn Collective is a bit touchy about their origins.”

“By the way, that name is not entirely correct.” Nox pointed out. “Or it is as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned, but it’s not how the Collective refers to their corner of the universe. They think their name is Synthetic Dawn. I think you can all imagine several possible reasons for that name. A single member is just called a Unit. Not very imaginative all things considered.”

"They can't all be as brilliant as you," Selendil said a little sarcastically.

“Why thank you.” Nox didn’t take it as sarcasm though. The AI was brilliant after all and knew it.

“Uh, Nox, that information you got for me. Could you arrange some way for me to relay it back to my people?” Moonshadow requested as the conversation hit a lull.

"I can arrange that," Haven said slightly competitively. “It will seem like you’re sending a signal from the Haven. Do you want to send a recording, or do you want a live feed?” That was the benefit of the Dhar Ai’s being able to exist in more than one place at once.

“I’d like a live feed if you can arrange it. I’m sure they will have questions about how I got the information.” Moonshadow replied.

“Going back a bit, what are the odds of facing heavy resistance when we arrive at one of these data hubs you mentioned? And if we do run into them, can you disable their ships or are we looking at a battle? You did say that disabling their ships was doable.” Amaterasu broached the earlier topic.

“The odds of facing resistance are 100%, but the level of resistance depends entirely on which hub we choose. As to the second question, I could disable the ships with some time and effort, but that would take some of my computing power away from our main goal of breaching the data hub before they erase the information we want. We also need to stop any outgoing signals, so we have our hands full. It would be much easier if you just handle the enemy vessels the old fashioned way. You should have no trouble with that after all.” Nox replied, and they all got the sense the AI had also given the digital equivalent of a shrug.

“Shouldn’t be an issue. Let’s get to it. Pick a suitable target and jump us away.” Selendil declared.

----------

As the Enduring Symphony exited phase space, they found themselves precariously close to a large spherical station surrounded by thirty ships of various classes, ranging from small corvettes to a pair of battleships. They had utilized the ship's ability to make jumps inside a gravity well on purpose, because it would confuse the enemy and it would also eliminate any latency for Nox and Haven for accessing the enemy’s systems.

Even though the enemy was taken by surprise, they were Ai’s so they reacted extremely quickly. Unfortunately for them, their reaction was still too slow. Three mechs had already separated from the Dhar vessel and opened fire on the idle enemy vessels. Selendil’s psionics tore the two battleships in two before they even managed to activate their shields, while Xiaoli used her threads of psionic power to shred many of the smaller vessels. She had really benefitted from Selendil’s training, as the Dhar Keeper used a similar technique quite frequently and could give practical instructions on how to improve. Her threads had multiplied in number as well as increasing in range and destructive ability. Her borrowed mech also made things much simpler as it was designed to facilitate such abilities.

“Wow, Selendil, this mech suit is amazing!” Amaterasu screamed with excitement as the suit she borrowed conducted her psionic abilities like a dream. She fired what looked like glowing artillery shells of pure psionic power from a cannon that formed on the arm of her mech. The shells landed in the midst of the enemy vessels, and they all exploded in a torrent of destructive energy, taking a dozen ships down in that single salvo. These shells were not the result of the mech’s weapons though. The suit didn’t even have a cannon like that when Amaterasu first donned it. The weapon was formed on her mental request to facilitate her preferences and amplified the effects of her attack.

The Enduring Symphony also opened fire. Selendil had repaired a pair of the rift cannons that now opened fire on the enemy ships. It seemed like a pair of huge lightning bolts had struck the enemy fleet as the streams of energy focused on two particular ships in the middle of the surviving vessels. Parts of the two ships seemed to disappear in a flash, and then the ships seemed to collapse on themselves before exploding in a wave of gravitational and spatial forces. The wave of destructive energies completely shredded the surviving enemy vessels, and even their own ship had to deploy shields around itself and the three mechs to avoid getting caught in the waves of collapsing space.

“Uh, Selendil, is that how those weapons usually work? You didn’t mention anything about them having such a huge area of effect.” Amaterasu asked a little worried. She wasn’t certain she would’ve survived the waves without help from the Enduring Symphony’s shields.

“The weapons would be somewhat pointless if they only affected a single enemy. Besides, they are meant to take out enormous targets made of super dense materials, not just make a hole in them. They didn’t work perfectly as the effect should’ve been set to be more focused, but I suppose it was too much to ask without running more thorough calibrations and test firings.” Selendil replied simply.

The entire battle had taken less than twenty seconds. While the others considered that quite shocking, Selendil thought it would’ve been more effective if she had done everything on her own. Still, it was useful to get the others some experience and the weapons had shown room for improvement that she wouldn’t have known about without a proper test. It was all well and good to run calculations in your head, but the reality usually didn’t match those calculations perfectly and these were finicky weapons.

“Well?” Selendil asked Nox impatiently.

“We got what we came for. They do have the facility. It’s in their home system, and we got the location. That said, they didn’t have any information on what they’re doing with the facility or what happened to their creators. It’s not that the information got deleted, we stopped any of that from happening. The information wasn’t here in the first place. We can infer from some of the bits and pieces that the station has something to do with how they gained sentience, but we already guessed as much anyway.” Nox replied after a tense moment of silence.

“We also managed to stop any information from being sent out," Haven added. “The bad news is that they’ll figure out that this place is gone pretty soon. These data hubs are in regular contact with their other fleets. That’s their purpose after all.”

“So we have to go to their homeworld next? I’m going to assume the defenses of that place are much stronger.” Moonshadow’s voice could be heard over the comms.

“You assume correctly. In fact, it seems they are rather fanatical about the defense of their home system. They have more than three times the ships in that one system than all their other fleets combined. We’re talking thousands of ships, and most likely quite a bit of static defenses. Most of the phase lanes are full of mines and they even seem to be developing some sort of defenses against psionics that they are testing in that system. They really don’t want anyone to pop in for a visit.” Nox listed.

“Psionic defenses?” Selendil suddenly perked up.

“Yes, well, they have a rather obvious weakness in that they have no psions and thus very little in the way of psionic defenses. That makes them quite vulnerable to any Deity that wants to wreak havoc. They are trying to develop some countermeasures, but this data indicates that they are still in testing phases. They should be no problem for you, though the others might get affected." Nox replied. The Dhar faced supposed psionic defenses many times before, and the results of the various methods varied wildly.

“Ah, something you should be aware of. They seem to be building something big in that system. They have mining and resource gathering operations all around and the materials are being sent back to the home system via the few phase lanes that aren’t full of mines. When I say something big, I mean something that at least rivals me in size. Apparently, the materials in their home system aren't enough.” Haven added.

“They’re building some kind of a megastructure?” Moonshadow asked with worry. Even the Mrrroww had not attempted anything that large.

“So it would seem. We’ll find out when we get there. Speaking of, we need a plan. As much as I’d like to go in with weapons blazing, thousands of ships and static defenses seems like it would be quite bothersome.” Selendil took the news in a stride. The Dhar had completed hundreds of megaprojects like that, so to her it seemed quite normal.