Intelligent Star fleets

The machines of the 21st century are minutely intuitive at the best of times and humanities intelligence is the driving factor in our survival and innovation.

The jets we use to fight battles will slam into the ground without our guidance and if the senses we have failed to spot danger we can expect to be turned into airborne scrap metal.

The electrical impulses in our axons fire across to hit our neurons in a frenzy of electrical information, your hand moves on the controls and your jet whips into a glorious barrel roll ,dodging firey doom!

Yet, the pilots friend is sluggish from a night of smashing vodka, his electrical impulses are transmitted slowly along his dendrites and the impulse doesn't get from his axons to his neurons in time. The evasive action he should have taken was missing, the tailing rockets slam into his jet, but Boris smashes his eject seat to be catapulted into the air just in time!

Boris is safe, but the jet is screwed! It feels nothing, it is a mere tool of war and it's survival depends solely upon the reactions of the fleshy computer and the information it processes from the static computer on board.

Imagine the chance of survival for Boris if his sober jet was not only aware of itself but was determined to take action to ensure it's own survival, the chance of becoming a veteran doubles!

Boris may be a Centurian general telling his subordinates about a time when a jet fighter was only bound to earth and was merely a tool, the eager pilots burst into laughter and Boris grins.

The fighters are now in space but the pilots have a bond with their fighters, they aren't objects, they are like friends and they help one another to survive. It is similar to the bond that a knight and a horse once shared, yet the jet could not rear up in horror at something disturbing, it would go faster, do millions of calculations a second, and make as many manoeuvres as possible, and fire off a barrage of rockets to ensure the survival of its human counterpart and itself.

The cohort of eager pilots and their experienced commander stand on the edge of the spaceport when an excited group of scientists and engineers rush at them!

They begin to tell the pilots about a new technology they have developed for them, it is an interface that allows the space fighter to predict the actions of the pilots ,before they do it! It uses advanced analytics to determine their skill and likely moves in battle, but it also gives them valuable data so they can improve!

The engineers begin adding modules to the space fighters and each pilot is taken to the operating theatre to have a neural interface implant integrated with their frontal cortex.

The fighters and the pilots now fight as one entity with the benefits of two combatants. The pilots can feel the speed along the wings of the fighter and see everything around the fighter.The sleek space fighter can feel the pilots heartbeat,the adrenaline of the human, and anticipate their motives, they have pooled their resources and transcended the boundaries between humanity and machine!