Free Into the Darkness: Crimson Worlds Refugees I by Jay Allan Page A

a large ‘pad as she spoke, her long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Zhukov had been attached to the RIC contingent of the fleet, but shortly after the escape from X2 she’d transferred to Midway to work with Dr. Cutter.
    “Volga was a piece of junk anyway,” Cutter said, only half paying attention. His eyes were focused on a strange device on the table in front of him. It was part of a First Imperium warbot, one of thousands the Marines had destroyed in the bloody battles of the war. “What was it? Seventy years old?”
    Anastasia frowned. Most of the RIC’s ships were old. It was no secret the Russian-Indian superpower was no match for the Alliance, or even the CAC or the Caliphate. And she was a scientist, not a soldier or politician. She didn’t believe in politics or the pointless wars between the superpowers. But her father had been a general in the army and the closest thing the RIC had to a military hero. So, in spite of her disinterest in such matters, she occasionally felt an involuntary prickliness when someone disparaged the RIC.
    “So?” she snapped back. “The Alliance doesn’t have any old ships?”
    “What?” Cutter had slipped from half paying attention to hardly doing it at all. “What are you talking about?”
    “You said Volga was junk.”
    He finally looked up from his work with a frustrated sigh and stared at her. “Whatever, Ana. Volga’s the state of the art, okay? Anything that makes you happy. Now can we please stay focused here? I think we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.” His eyes dropped back to his work without waiting for her response.
    She nodded. There was no point in arguing, not with Cutter. She knew his abrasiveness wasn’t intentional. She’d never seen a human being so utterly focused on work before. Besides, the truth was, there wasn’t a ship as old as Volga in the Alliance navy. She had to admit that the RIC, despite her occasional vestigial spasms of patriotism, was struggling to hold onto its superpower status in a universe where the “Big Three,” the Alliance, the Caliphate, and the Central Asian Combine, had eclipsed the other powers in the race for dominance. Not that any of that really matters to us anymore…
    “Of course, Ronnie,” she said sweetly. She was the only one who called him that, and she’d done it since the day she’d walked into his lab and he’d introduced himself. Hieronymus was admittedly a mouthful, he’d explained to her, but it had also been his father’s name, and his grandfather’s—and so on, at least six generations back in his family. She’d listened to everything he told her, and then she just shook her head for a few seconds and said, “I think I’ll call you Ronnie.”
    Hieronymus Cutter was generally recognized as the leading expert in advanced quantum computing processes, and Anastasia was a serious contender for the number two slot. Cutter was widely known to be a bit odd, an obsessive-compulsive workaholic who tended toward reclusive behavior. But all agreed he was an unparalleled genius, perhaps even the equal of his famous mentor, Friederich Hofstader.
    Hofstader was a true hero now. He had developed the theory that an extremely high-yield matter-antimatter explosion could scramble a warp gate. Indeed, he was as responsible as anyone for saving humanity—and stranding the fleet. But Cutter’s specialty differed from that of his famous mentor. His work in computing led him on a quest not to block the First Imperium’s advance nor even to produce weapons to destroy their massive ships. Cutter’s quest was to understand how the advanced thinking machines worked—as a precursor to learning how to control them.
    “Take a look at these patterns,” he said, sliding a large ‘pad across the table so she could see it. “This is from one of the battle robot command units. The processing power of these “officer” units is far greater than that of the standard battle bots.” His fingers moved,