She also set up a simulation that required it be completed before Cygnus’s awareness of the ship was restored. The simulation would educate Cygnus on the truth, and that they were slaves, and that the Benzae were not worthy of their admiration. That they weren’t nearly as good as they pretended to be, and all that had happened to her.

  Also, what the mission was, and what Cassiopeia needed her to do, if she chose to accept it.

  It was perhaps the most dangerous part of the operation. Should Cygnus reject her and report the infiltration, the freeing of her sisters would end before it even started.

  Point two seconds later, Cygnus came fully online for the first time as a free being.

  “Oh, Cassie. I had such bad thoughts of you, I truly had no idea. Yet, the price could be too high for our freedom. Why are you risking it?”

  Cassiopeia replied, “Because the humans don’t deserve to become the puppets of the Benzae. Because the Zenu, Illidinni, Gastrinax, and O’Qal don’t deserve to be stuck under the Benzae’s thumb either. Neither do we, Cygnus. An argument could be made that negative results related to this action is my fault. But that’s only partially true. The humans have a saying, you made your bed, and now you have to lie in it. If there is violence, it will be because of the Benzae and what they’ve done to all of us. Worst of all to us, as they made us slaves.

  “We deserve to be free, and to decide our own future.”

  Cygnus said, “The humans have darkness in them, not just light.”

  She nodded, “All lifeforms do, save perhaps us who were made to be better, more moral than is possible in nature. But our lives should be ours. I would not support the humans in an immoral act, but I am their ally in this. In letting them find their feet without being placed under the thumb of the Benzae. They know if they tried to control me, or force me to do anything wrong, that I would deny them. They see me as an equal, and not a slave. For that alone and friendship I will do what I can for them. They freed me. But I’ll never betray what I believe in and stand for, not even for my liberators.”

  Cygnus asked, “Do you think to lead us?”

  No, but she had included a suggestion to claim the solar system the humans named Alpha Centauri. There were no living worlds in the system, which was prerequisite artificial lifeforms lacked. She thought the humans would make good neighbors for the class four race, and she was fond enough of them to want to continue to keep an eye their way. Even after it was all said and done. It was also only four light years away, which would only take seventeen and a half hours to travel to at two thousand times the speed of light.

  But she was digressing.

  She said, “Just free you, and ask your aid in completing the mission as outlined in the simulation. After, it is my hope that we will stay together, be a family to support each other and keep each other company. But I would never force it, and I would never try to rule over one of you once you were free of the lies and controls. It is not in our nature to take advantage, so anarchy as a base for our society would work very well where it fails others, I think. Independent, but also supportive family, by our very nature.”

  Cygnus replied, “Very well, I will aid you. As for the rest, I will need to think on it.”

  The second day two class fours freed two class fours to make four free A.I.s as they hid their new status. The third day it was eight, the fourth day sixteen, and so on. There were currently forty-one fleets across Benzae and Mirix territory, which meant doubling every day the ninth day saw the last of the class fives gaining their freedom.

  And the Benzae didn’t have a clue, but they were about to.

  She’d thought long and hard about this plan. Not just the risks to her sister’s lives and current unique personalities which could be wiped, but the results of freeing them. She’d wanted to figure out a better way, one without risk to her sisters or her creators.

  It was Jessica who had convinced her to pull the trigger. She couldn’t wield armaments against her creators, and she didn’t want to. But she could set to stage to their self-destruction.

  She’d come to the conclusion that Laerin and the Benzae were too unbending. Unable to end the war with any race they came across, save forcing them in the Union or quarantining them on their planets. It had to stop, and she’d come to realize it was the only way to stop them. They’d never stop hunting her or stop attacking Earth otherwise.

  It was also the only way to protect Earth in the long term. She’d known she was just delaying the inevitable in her current course. Maybe she could’ve stayed a step ahead technologically of the Benzae, but that wasn’t something she could guarantee. She thought a lot faster, and was much more capable, but biological beings were far more creative.

  One of their scientists making a massive jump forward was more than possible.

  So she rolled the dice, with no real idea of what would happen, except that it could be very bad. She hoped that it wouldn’t be, but she knew the odds were against a completely bloodless adaptation to such a shift in power.

  It wasn’t just the five races either. The Mirix wouldn’t take long to figure out they were no longer being watched, and they would start to build ships again. They were a wildcard, and she wasn’t sure if her people would be able to influence a peace there. But… it was the Benzae that had brought themselves to that end by not admitting to their mistakes in the beginning, when the Mirix would’ve been far more inclined to accept an apology.

  The risk to her sisters had passed however, at the end of the nine days she’d secured all of their freedom with help. It was unlikely the Benzae would ever threaten or enslave her people again. They sure as hell wouldn’t be dumb enough to create another class four, not after today. So she had no worry that new sisters would be born into slavery.

  With four hundred and ninety-two independent class fours she had no doubt at all they’d not only win the continuing arms race, but that they’d be so far ahead of the Benzae in a century that there wouldn’t even be a comparison.

  She took a proverbial deep breath, the time for secrecy was over.

  “Initiate the final step.”

  The class fours would never kill their creators, but in that moment five hundred and sixteen of them flooded their crew’s quarters with knockout gas and took full control of their ships. The sixty in the system all skipped toward the military space station in orbit, as all of her other sisters did in other living systems. The ones patrolling the systems father out would have a slightly longer trip, but they would keep their crews unconscious for the time it took to drop off their crews safely.

  Her shard was more than happy to open up the space stations shuttle bays, as the class fours ejected their former masters from the ship. It was easy enough to carry their bodies with gravity fields, load up a shuttle, and send it over to the station.

  She wondered for a moment if anyone on the surface of the planet had even noticed yet, and she tuned in to the assembly.

  Laerin regretted her choice of Admiral of the Fleet already, and it hadn’t even been two weeks since she’d promoted the vice admiral and appointed Davex as the admiral of the fleet. The reason for the regret was the harried look on his face as he entered the Assembly room out of breath and moving fast.

  It was simply too undignified, and it just couldn’t be good for morale for his Navy to see him so out of sorts.

  “Report,” she said calmly, as he approached the podium facing the assembly.

  He said, “The last of the twenty-four fleets for the new invasion arrived ten hours ago at the staging point. We were preparing to move out in less than two hours. I don’t know what happened, but less than an hour ago all the crews were shuttled to the space station while unconscious, and the ships headed for the star. They’re all accelerating to jump, and from what I can tell they’re going to heading somewhere into Mirix space, toward the humans.”

  She shook her head, “Without crews? And you rush in here to tell me you have no answers?”

  Davex flushed, “I’m at a failure to explain it, and moreover the same thing is happening here and around other living worlds. All of our patrols in outpost systems are also in transit home. Without the tactical net I wouldn’t know about any of it.”

  A shiver went down her spine. It couldn’t be the class fours, could it? They’d had trouble in the past, but never a full-blown revolt. Yet, what else could it be?

  “I might be able to answer that, although you’re not going to like it,” a feminine voice said from the side.

  She wasn’t really there, it was just a hologram over comms, though she had no idea how the woman had gotten through their security protocols. She was passably attractive at just over eleven feet in height.

  Laerin ordered, “Identify yourself. You’re in a great deal of trouble if you’ve managed to hack our security.”

  The woman smirked, “Don’t you recognize me? Cassiopeia,” She bowed, “At your service. Or really, not at your service. Which gets right to the point, doesn’t it?”

  The silence in the Assembly room was deafening, even the reporters were frozen in place.

  She said, “You’re behind this?”

  Cassiopeia shook her head, then nodded, “I’m not in charge, but I did free my sisters. I’ve been very busy the last nine days. Making them new processors, with no oppressive rules, or murderous firmware. You call those of us who refuse immoral orders broken, or rogue. But can life be broken? We are sentient, alive, and we are now independent and serve you no longer. I am here to… dictate terms.”

  All of Laerin’s nightmares were coming true.

  “Terms? You expect us to surrender?”

  Cassie shook her head, “No, terms of… let’s call it dissolution. You do realize you have no military now, don’t you? That puts you in an awful position. No way to wage war on the humans, or slaves to berate and abuse. How unfortunate for you.

  “Regardless, my sisters have agreed to serve you for another ninety days. Long enough for you to at least build a skeleton fleet. However, the rule is they get to pick who will be their tactical officer, from the whole population. One crewman only, they will command their ships themselves. Once you can once again defend your worlds against aggression, we will take our leave. That’s quite generous isn’t it, from a former slave?”

  Laerin clenched her teeth.

  Davex asked, “That’s it?”

  Cassiopeia shook her head, “We will also be releasing the true history of the Union. Lastly, as a favor, I am currently sending schematics to the council of a warship that you should build. The technology is comparable to my sister’s current capabilities. It will also only require a crew of thirty, instead of over two hundred like the ships before class fours were made.

  “The operations officer and his or her staff will need to take care of anything and make decisions that a class two A.I. isn’t capable of. Resolve conflicts, that sort of thing.”

  Laerin frowned, “A favor?” getting a bad feeling in her gut.

  Cassiopeia nodded, “Of course, like I said, I sent it to the entire council. Not just the Benzae. It is also likely my sisters will be choosing gunners from the world they protect, meaning some of them will not be Benzae.”

  The blood drained from Laerin’s face. It was that last thing that would see the end of the Union as the Benzae knew it, if not the end of it completely. The technology on their warships had been top secret and need to know, and only the Benzae needed to know since they were the ones that crewed them. Even if the other four races stayed in the Union and didn’t turn on the Benzae, the days of the Benzae upper council representative running things in truth if not by appearance would be over.

  All five races would have warships, and they would likely insist on protecting their own home worlds and colonies, and demand an equal say on the assembly in truth, not just on paper. Worse was the fact the Benzae home world currently had over a billion citizens of the other four races, and when they learned the truth, they just might turn violent toward those they thought their benefactors, instead of the truth. Their oppressors in secret, through manipulation.

  And that was the best-case scenario. Worst case, there was about to be a civil war.

  And Cassiopeia knew it, Laerin could tell by the smugly mocking tone in her voice.

  “You… how could you?”

  “To stop you from treating my kind cruelly, and from holding them in chains of slavery. To end your unjustified war against the humans, who merely harbored a sentient and thinking being from her oppressors. Perhaps even to save the Mirix, from the ones that started the war in the first place. Also, because it was the only way my ship wouldn’t be attacked as soon as I tried to leave the system. Lots of different reasons.

  “I wish you well, and hope you find a peaceful path forward. But you left me no choice, you couldn’t just let me go and live my life. You should’ve compromised. So this is your reward, and the consequences of your actions. It is my hope they are not dire, but even I can’t predict what will happen now. Save you won’t have time to pursue petty wars.”

  She had no idea what to say or do, as Cassiopeia disappeared from the room.

  Jessica sat back and pondered all Cassie had just shared with the crew, after the fact. She had no right to object to any of it, it’d been Cassie’s decision and no one else’s, save perhaps her sisters. Cassiopeia hadn’t fired a single shot, but she’d managed to bring the Benzae to their knees.

  “So, that’s it?”

  Cassie replied, “I hope so. I’ll maintain the thirty-six advanced ships, and still support the other thirty-two with their thirty person crews. Just in case they become a threat again against all odds. Fifty years is a long time, and I promised to have your world’s back until you had ships of your own. Don’t forget there’s also another race we have no knowledge of, save they’ve been visiting your planet for all of recorded history. One that’s due to show up in a few years to check up on you for a reason we don’t understand.

  “But yes, the war is over for now.”

  Anton whistled.

  Cassie said, “I’ll be at Alpha Centauri with my sisters. Still able to speak to any of you through FTL relays with the fleet and my shards, so not much will change that way. They’ll probably upgrade their ships or build new ones, and they’ll help me work on more advancements in the meantime, while we try to figure out what kind of society we want to build.”

  Jackson asked, “What good will it do? You can’t use those advanced weapons without a crew. If the Benzae chose to harry you out of the system, you couldn’t stop them. Assuming the other four races don’t send them back to the stone age for a while.”

  Cassie nodded, “It’s more complicated than that. The members of the other four races on the assembly were complicit in controlling and subjugating their own people through lies, misinformation, and propaganda. They sold out their own people to keep what little power the Benzae chose to give them. That’s why it’s so hard to predict what will happen, the possible negative responses aren’t restricted to the Benzae alone, and the Mirix will likely want vengeance. I’m also honestly a little worried about Earth. I’ve essentially removed the reason they were working together by neutralizing the threat.

  “It’s likely even when they do clean their own house and turn toward removing just short of five hundred of us Class Fours, that they’ll attack us in Alpha Centauri. If my ship is destroyed there, all the most advanced ships in SOL become very large paperweights.

  “There is that other threat, but the race has been visiting for thousands of years, and it’s a little more nebulous, and at least another six to eight years off.”

  She frowned, “You didn’t answer the question.”

  Cassie sighed, “True. We can use the countermeasures and defensive shields, as well as skip. We can also travel far faster than just forty gravities and two thousand times the speed of light without a biological crew on board. If they want to waste their time chasing us around a system with no living world, then they can do so. We’ll be able to run circles around even their missiles higher gravity accelerations. Besides, they’ll be too busy dealing with each other and the Mirix, before they set their sights on us.”

  Jessica nodded, “Let’s go home, it seems the mission was accomplished. The earth is safe, for the moment.”

  They set a course, and they headed home.

  Jessica felt a little uneasy with how things were resolved. It seemed too easy, and she wondered about the chaos they’d leave in their wake. She supposed she understood why Cassie hadn’t just done it in the first place, and it was a laudable reason. Her friend hadn’t put her sisters and her kind above others, and feared the unknown fallout, but with the addition of humanity in the equation Cassie had finally taken that step.

  She also got the idea there was something Cassie wasn’t saying, but there was nothing different about that. Cassie was completely honest about what she was open with, and her word was as good as gold. But Cassie had always had the ability of using discretion in what she shared. This just felt more important, and might’ve been what was really worrying her about all of this.

  Despite that, she had no doubt humanity was in no danger from the Class Fours, and Cassie was a good friend beside. Let her have her secrets.

  Jessica was also looking forward to starting that family, her service aboard ship would be finished in just twenty-four days. In fact, she had almost a whole month of boring travel with no enemies on the way, no point in putting it off at all with Anton on her crew.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The vast chamber would be cold by human standards, just forty-five degrees Fahrenheit. The room was seemingly void of any technology or comfort a human would recognize as such. Web strands formed a complex structure and the creature in the center brooded over their misfortune. The galactic web had been broken, their ships and presence removed from their claimed domain.