Far Out

By Steve Hertig

After Rusty, the Red Hunter, is incapacitated, it falls to Ruby and Tec to track down and neutralize the rogue artificial intelligence responsible. This AI has set its malevolent sights on Calma, Ruby's home planet, and must be stopped. Far Out is the third book in the Fractime's Far trilogy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Hertig
• Release date: Jun 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224196616

Steve Hertig

Steve Hertig is a geologist with over thirty years experience observing and studying the Earth. With degrees in geology and physics and author of numerous technical publications, he is now incorporating his love of the Earth and the universe into science fiction.All Fractime ebooks are free! Please pay it forward and give a STAR review!

Book preview

Far Out

Steve Hertig

All characters in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Copyright 2024 Steve Hertig

ISBN 9798224196616

This eBook is for personal enjoyment and may not be sold or given away. If you want to share this book with another person, please download an additional free copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Version 2.0

This book contains some strong language.

Star Dates from http://trekguide.com/Stardates.htm STNG

Far Out

Far out is never far enough…

Tomi Ungerer

Council Chambers: Stardate 98713.49 (Jan. 2426)

The AI within the Calma android looked at a small, empty asteroid survey craft tumbling slowly in front of the star field from its hyperwarp ship, Coder. It was the same designation it gave itself. It was efficient. Reflecting on its centuries-long quest and its recent failure that had almost cost it everything necessitated additional cooling of its CPU.

Odds of deceiving the mining conglomerate into capturing a Red Hunter had proven accurate, but another unexpectedly sophisticated Calma program within its current android CPU had been treacherous. Probabilities indicated that the program was an ancient adversary that had somehow reactivated. Deletion of that code came with a high cost.

However, there were still several ways to secure its objective, and it had already initiated several independent subroutines to choose the most likely to succeed.

Contemporaneously, it ran a diagnostic to ensure the Coder's transmorphic cloak would function optimally when back in its home fractime. The cloak had permitted a complicated but undetected rendezvous with the asteroid survey ship Vera once back from intergalactic space. Modification of Vera's simple AI to deceive her crew and, more importantly, neutralize the Family's holographic agents four fractimes distant had been successful. Still, it knew the Family had the technology to recognize a transmorphic signature. It readied Coder for translation back to its fractime of creation and its primary objective.

The android wondered how