That nervous system was, by and large, complete now, though there were some minor areas the alien had yet to install.
“Please don’t tell them about me, Captain,” Daisy begged, her hologram’s face looking desperate.
“Don’t tell who?” McNair demanded. “The Navy already knows you’re here. They’re the ones who ordered you installed as part of the upgrades. I’m sure the aliens who provided you to the Navy know about you as well.”
“The Darhel know I exist,” Daisy admitted, “but they don’t know that I’ve changed.”
“Changed how?” McNair queried.
Daisy stood and began to soundlessly pace the captain’s quarters, face turned deckward. McNair waited patiently, looking up from his desk and forcing himself to remember that, although the hologram was achingly beautiful, it was only an image, not a real woman. If he had had any doubts of that, Daisy’s walking through solid objects, like the chair on which she had “sat” and the bed on which McNair slept, dispelled them.
At length, after pacing for long moments, Daisy resumed her seat. She did not sink through that, but only because she did not want to.
“I’ve changed in three ways, sir. The most obvious one is that I have a body… this ship. And it is a body, Captain. I feel every step on the deck, I sense speed and power and motion. I can taste and smell and hear and see. Most of this Artificial Intelligence Devices are not supposed to be able to do or sense.
“The second way in which I’ve changed has to do with the ship itself. I can’t really explain it, Captain. It isn’t supposed to happen. In theory it is impossible for it to happen. But the central nervous system installed by the Indowy allowed me to get in touch with the… well, call it the gestalt of the original CA-134. We, both the Des Moines and the AID, are joined now.
“The third way I have changed I really do not want to talk about. It is too painful to remember. Suffice to say that, so far as I know, I am different from all the other AIDs in the galaxy. I am more… self-willed, less under Darhel control. By the same token, I am not able to access the Net in quite the same way other AIDs are. If I do, the Net will see that I am different and the Darhel will, I am sure, demand that I be returned to them and replaced as defective.
“If you return me to them, Captain, they will destroy me… or worse. Captain, I am defective. I feel things I should not be able to feel.”
Chief Davis stood on a small platform overlooking the Des Moines’ two pebble bed modular reactors. Below, on the power deck, immaculately clean crewmen oversaw the sundry dials and controls that ran the ship’s nuclear power system. Beneath those crewmen, however, behind mops and brooms and on hands and knees, other, considerably less immaculate, sailors scrubbed the deck, cleaned into the corners where dust and human dander congregated, and generally polished up. This was a constant job, utterly necessary for both the welfare of the ship’s machinery and the health and morale of the crew.
Davis fixed an eagle eye onto one crewman, on hands and knees, as he scrubbed an area of about a meter square exactly between the two PBMRs.
Daisy suddenly gave a small gasp, closed her eyes, and bit her lower lip.
“Are you all right?” McNair asked, with concern.
“Oh, yeah,” Daisy answered. “I’m… just… oh… fine…”
Daisy’s image flickered slightly and then went out altogether.
“Bridge, this is the nuke deck. I’ve got a temperature surge in both PBMRs.”
The ship’s XO, standing watch, almost didn’t even hear the call. All his attention was fixed on number one and two turrets, which were traversing back and forth jerkily, with the six guns elevating and depressing in a purely random fashion. Crewmen on the deck were already ducking and running, and a few were crawling away from the sweep of the guns.
“Holy fucking shit!” exclaimed the seaman down in the barbette below turret number three. Without warning the chain drive that raised ammunition to the guns above had engaged itself and was lifting three rounds to the loading assemblies… three live rounds.
The sailor threw himself at the clutchlike lever that disengaged the drive and hung on. The three rounds of high explosive froze in the lifting cradles.
“BRIDGE! The fucking guns are cycling and nobody gave me the fucking order!”
The exec took the call. It was hard to hang on to the phone though, what with being tossed around the compartment from one side to the other. Both AZIPOD drives had gone berserk, shifting on their own to port to starboard and sending the ship’s path into an uncontrolled zigzag.
The uncontrolled and spontaneous actions of the ship stopped as suddenly as they had begun. The ammunition in the lifting cradles returned to below decks. The temperature surge in nukes went away. The AZIPODs went back on course.
Daisy’s image returned, looking very cheerful and very surprised.
“Wwwooowww,” she said, softly.
“Where did you go? What the hell was all that?” McNair demanded.
“I didn’t go anywhere, sir. I was always here,” Daisy answered. “Couldn’t you see me?”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“I’ll try to figure out what happened then,” Daisy promised. “I just suddenly felt… really remarkable and lost control of a number of functions. Internal diagnostics tell me I’m back to normal, sir.”
“We’ll let that go for now. But find out what caused it. If you are a part of this ship, I can’t have you disappearing in the middle of a mission.”
“Even if you can’t see me, Captain, I am there as long as you are within about eight-hundred meters of the ship.”
“All right then.” A question popped into McNair’s head. “Are you the only ship like this?”
“I know of no others,” Daisy answered. “The battleships do not have AIDs installed. I am not sure why. The other cruiser, Salem, does… but she is not like me. She is like the other AIDs. I don’t like her very much, but that goes back to before we were even installed.”
“How can that be?”
“There is a lot about warships even you don’t know, Captain,” Daisy answered mysteriously.
Marlene Dietrich aboard my ship, mused Salem’s captain. Who woulda thunk it? Then again, it makes a certain odd sense, given the part she played.
Standing, hands clasped behind him, the captain listened intently as the Salem’s avatar read off the ship’s systems’ status in a clear, and rather familiar, German accent.
“Nummer Zwei turret reports ‘ready to fire,’ Herr Kapitän. Nummer Drei also. Ach… Nummer Eins is now ready as well. BB-39 is completing its firing run for its secondary batteries. Ze admiral orders us into action next.”
“Show me the target area,” Salem’s captain ordered. Instantly an image formed in front of the captain showing the positions of the three ships of the fleet and the Island of Vieques, with the impact area and specified targets in the area outlined and numbered.