Beacon 3

Setting waypoint markers was harder than he thought it would be. It was obvious that despite the designers' best efforts, there was only so much space to place control interfaces. The controls were rather finnicky, Don might say too sensitive, to place a marker exactly where he wanted it.

Lucky for him, space is large. There just so happens to be a lot of space in space, go figure.

His markers may not be optimal, but they were certainly good enough.

"Alright. I think I have marker placement down, now what?"

"Select the missile. Then through a series of verbal commands designate their paths. To designate a final target, select the entity you wish to hit."

"No command for it?"

"A command is unnecessary. If you are guiding active munitions and have selected an enemy ship I can assume your intentions."

"Makes sense. What should I aim it at?"

"Request: Please send the missile through at least three waypoints before sending the missile at this ship. I wish to confirm the accuracy of my ballistic computers as well as the efficacy of the point defense systems."

"Never thought that I would be shooting at myself with a missile. Why do you need to test the Cutters anyway?"

"Confusion: Your tone of voice indicates that I am lacking knowledge about the Cutter point defense system. What makes you question the necessity of testing them?"

Don was taken aback. ARC didn't know something about the ship? Unthinkable!

"The Cutter point defense system is capable of melting through 100 mm of composite armor in half a second at its lowest setting. In field tests its full penetration capabilities had to be tested on an old heavy cruiser because it tore through every munition and ship tested on too quickly. It was discontinued because it was too big of a power drain, not because it was ineffective."

ARC was silent.

"...You didn't know that?"

"Shame: I did not. Despite checking through every piece of information I have available to me, I am unable to find anything in regards to its field results. All I have been provided is instruction on how to use it in a point defense role."

Don couldn't blame ARC for not knowing about this. Despite everything, ARC was still a computer. If it wasn't told or taught something it was still the same as a person, ignorant. Still, he wondered why this information was not given to ARC. It seemed important. Perhaps the programmers forgot? Or maybe it was deemed irrelevant information. ARC was obviously intended to only use them in a defensive role.

Perhaps the knowledge of the full capabilities of the lasers would prompt ARC to either use them to little or too much, endangering or draining the ships energy. Be it a product of intent, ignorance, or caution, ARC knew now by proxy of Don.

Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut.

"It's fine that you didn't know, you would have found out anyway. Would you still like to go through with the tests?"

"Yes. While I have instruction on how to use them, I would like to determine if there are issues. If this test can be performed with inert warheads, all the better."

"I'll send it over then."

The path the interceptor missile followed snaked quite heavily, going around an asteroid cluster before heading in Don's direction. Out of fuel, it maintained a steady velocity. Approaching at a speed close to 20 times that of sound.

Impressive considering the amount of fuel it had remaining when it entered the final stretch.

Suddenly, and quite unceremoniously, the light indicating its position vanished. Don had the thermal overlay on the main screen of the cockpit. Even as far away as it was, a distance of roughly 20km, he made out a small flash as the Cutters activated.

Had there been an active warhead or fuel left in the missile the flash would no doubt have been much more spectacular. Even now he felt it a shame that space did not carry the sound of explosions.

"It seems you were right about the Cutter's capability. Out of curiosity I set output to maximum and targeted the incoming beacon. I only received feedback for 0.032 seconds, suggesting that the missile was cut through in its entirety in that short time."

"And what was the power draw like?"

"You would describe it as horrendously wasteful. It has a draw comparable to that of the propulsion systems."

"I take it that was only one laser? For now stick to the output you were given. I'm sure they had their reasons for not informing you earlier. Might have something to do with stealth."

"Possible, but improbable. Within my permissions lie the capability to burn out detection equipment using those lasers. That seems contradictory to the purpose of stealth."

"Hey, you can't be seen if nobody has eyes. I think they call that Russian Stealth?"

"Russian Stealth? This is a term I am unfamiliar with. Please explain."

"Eeeeeeh I'm not particularly familiar with it myself, I've only heard it from some of those ancient video game enthusiasts at the academy. Apparently there was a stereotype of the Russian peoples, specifically their military's spec ops, that they killed everyone during their covert operations. The stereotype was something along the lines of 'Nobody can prove that we took an action if there is no one left to testify that we took an action.'"

"Surely at that time in history enough evidence would be left to prove guilt."

"True, but you have to keep in mind that the world was under threat of nuclear annihilation. The governmental entities they operated against couldn't exactly bring sanctions to bear without anything short of visual confirmation."

"Even then I cannot imagine the political landscape of the day allowed for such an occurrence."

"Like I said, just a stereotype. What would you know about politics anyway? Especially the politics of old?" The Skinnik Incident basically resulted in a wiping of most of human history that was recorded only on the internet thanks to constant Skinnik's initial wave of hacking. An attempt to 'erase' humanity in pretty much every facet.

Pieces of 'solid' media; written record, information stored digitally but outside of the internet, and artifacts were really all that was left afterwards. It truly was the modern equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

After the incident, politics were practically unified and never strayed much aside from initial panic and restructuring of the different regions. Therefore, politics merely ten years previous to the incident were left completely foreign to future generations, their own systems being monolithic in comparison. Drastic changes in culture, philosophy, science, infrastructure and economy left later generations lacking in connection.

The wave of death wrought about by a complete failure of the infrastructure furthered this disconnect.

"In an attempt to better teach me the diversity of thought and ideology, they encouraged me to analyze remaining documents. The period of time spanning around 1750 to roughly 2010 is the period I have the most information on due to the proliferation of material storage in that era. Newspapers, Compact Discs, Books, Film Reels, Portable Data Storage devices, and works of art have been both neatly preserved and categorized accurately. I have even had the chance to play these 'video games' you speak of. I find their charm is lost on me, sadly."

"So 2010 is when, what was it called, cloud storage? became popularized?"

"Indeed. After that point the majority of culture was transmitted through the internet. Fad records exist in some personal records. The general populace's reactions and emotions to key international events has been in large part lost."

"Interesting. Do you think you could teach me more about the era when we have time?"

"Elation: Certainly! I find the hypothesization of details related to events with little record to be quite entertaining. The input of someone with the faculties to emulate a reaction of that as well as give input would be most welcome. For now we must continue with the munitions guidance testing."