A.I. Void Ship (The A.I. Series Book 6)

by Vaughn Heppner

  This was the Zurich Spaceport, and the personnel still went about their tasks normally. Military police wearing combat vests and carrying assault rifles were everywhere.

  Alice felt a terrible premonition. She was the great leader of Social Dynamism. If the wrong people learned she was trying to flee the Solar System to begin in another place far from the AIs, they might go wild and literally tear her to pieces.

  She had another troubling thought. How could she maintain power aboard the cyberships once they were in hyperspace? She needed more of her people up there. Yet, alerting them to come to the spaceport was too great a risk. Order was breaking down everywhere on Earth. She could hardly imagine what it must be like on Mars, the Saturn moon cities and in the Neptune colonies.

  Those places had received AI missiles and hell-burners years before. They had a better idea of what the AI invaders could and would do.

  “Ma’am,” Director Peterson shouted. “Who are those people?”

  It took Alice a moment. She looked back at the director as he pointed at a large group of people marching from parked and grounded shuttles and toward the heavy lifter.

  “I don’t recognize their insignias,” Alice shouted.

  Peterson shouldered his way to her. “They’re not military and I know they’re not party hacks.”

  “Thomas,” Alice shouted. “Thomas!”

  The lumbering bodyguard hurried to her.

  “Take your men,” Alice told Thomas. “Stop those people from heading to the orbital.”

  Thomas grinned down at her and drew a huge hand-cannon, a .55 caliber gun. Then he whistled sharply. Other hulking bodyguards likewise drew massive guns. As a group, the fifteen giants lumbered toward the other group and then began to run.

  Alice’s eyes glowed with interest. Her bodyguards would murder the interlopers.

  “We should keep going,” Peterson said beside her.

  She glanced at the GSB Director, and she was keenly aware that her guards were over there, not here to stop the sly secret police chief.

  “Yes,” Alice said. She started for the waiting orbital, heading for the elevator that would take them up to the vehicle that would take them into space.

  Halfway to the elevator, she felt Peterson tug at her left sleeve. She glanced at him. He peered at the others.

  Alice did likewise. That was strange. Her guards had halted in front of the other group.

  “What’s going on?” Alice demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Peterson said. “Look. Your men are turning around. I don’t think they even talked to the others.”

  Alice turned around. “Is this your doing?” she asked the director.

  “Mine?” Peterson said. “What do you mean?”

  The bodyguards lumbered back toward them, and now broke into a run. They still had their heavy guns out.

  “Ma’am,” Peterson said. “I don’t like the look on their faces.”

  Alice didn’t either. Her guards seemed demented.

  “Should I order my men to fire at them?” Peterson asked.

  “No,” Alice whispered. “We’ll soon know the meaning of this.”

  She was wrong, quite wrong. Thomas ran at her as he gripped his .55 caliber handgun. The other giants did the same thing. As they neared, Thomas and his companions began firing the shockingly loud hand cannons.

  Premier Alice Wurzburg was among the first to pitch backward onto the tarmac, her chest blown apart by the huge slugs. A second later, GSB Director Peterson lay dead beside her.

  The bodyguards slaughtered the entire group, losing one of their number to a GSB assassin. Those assassins died under a hail of big bullets seconds later. Then, the bodyguards reached the dead. That’s when Thomas and his cohorts looked at each other. Almost disbelieving that it was happening, Thomas raised his huge gun until the hot, smoking barrel touched the side of his head. He pulled the trigger, and Thomas—minus most of his head—pitched onto the tarmac, dead.

  His cohorts likewise toppled to the tarmac. Now, the premier’s entire party was dead.

  ***

  The liftoff proved brutally hard on the Magistrate Yellow Efrel. The heavy lifter roared for the heavens. The space shuttle left the growing chaos of Earth and headed toward the three experimental cyberships presently in orbit.

  Efrel had no doubt that she and her Seiners would reach those ships. Then, they would have to negotiate past the heavy orbital defenses. Once free of the Earth satellite defenses, the cyberships could head away from the approaching AIs and go somewhere else.

  This time, the last Seiners would have to go far, far away. She would likely not last much longer. It was time for her to start thinking about naming her successor.

  She wondered, briefly, what had happened to Red Demeter. Then, Yellow Efrel focused on the present. The humans had proven too weak as tools. But at least the humans had produced escape ships.

  It was good to know that she hadn’t led the last Seiners into extinction. Whatever the price, she had to keep the greatest race living long enough to grow into new greatness.

  -11-

  There was something uncanny or eerie about traveling through the void. Jon couldn’t pinpoint it, but he felt a sense of leaden oppression just the same.

  He questioned his wife about it.

  “You’re right,” she said, as they lay in bed together. “It’s like…I’m not sure how to describe it. I think a poet could do a better job than a logician such as me.”

  Jon slept fitfully that night, his dreams full of ghosts and graveyards, and maybe even demons. He woke in a cold sweat, with a feeling of dread following him that morning and into the early afternoon—ship time.

  On the bridge, via comm, he spoke to Captain Uther Kling on the Void Ship Neptune.

  “We’ve locked up three people so far,” Kling said on the screen. The former Missile Chief looked worried and kept tapping his pointy chin.

  “What happened to them?” Jon asked.

  “They went mad. One of them was trying to pump waste gas into the cycling system.”

  “Increase the power of your reality generator,” Jon said. “I’m beginning to suspect that the…weirdness of the void is seeping into our collective subconscious.”

  After signing off from Kling, Jon gave the same order on the Nathan Graham.

  Shortly thereafter, the eerie feeling departed. That night, Jon didn’t have any bad dreams.

  The next day, Jon happened upon Walleye in the gym. Jon slid weights onto his bar and did military presses, heaving the loaded bar over his head, lowering it to his upper chest and heaving it up again. He did five sets of five reps.

  Upon racking the bar the final time, he spied Walleye using dumbbells to do shoulder shrugs. The little mutant didn’t wear gym garb, instead wearing baggy pants and shirt. His buff coat lay nearby on a workout bench.

  “I didn’t know you lifted,” Jon said, wandering near the little assassin.

  Walleye grunted as he hefted the two dumbbells, putting them back in the long rack.

  “I don’t make a habit of it,” the Makemake hitman said. “Been thinking too much lately, though. Figured some lifting might help stop that.”

  “You don’t like traveling through the void?”

  Walleye gave Jon a stark study. “This is worse than the time when June and I escaped from Makemake in that coffin. I keep feeling the willies…” Walleye looked around before lowering his voice. “The void unnerves me.”

  “I didn’t think anything could.”

  “Until now, I didn’t, either,” Walleye said.

  “I wonder how the…Sisters of Enoy stumbled onto the existence of the void.”

  “Did you ever ask them?”

  “Once,” Jon said.

  “What did the sisters say?”

  “Sister,” Jon said. “She ignored the question.”

  Walleye nodded.

  “You busy?” Jon asked, suddenly.

  “Nope.”

  “Want to grab s
ome coffee and hash out the void?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  Jon didn’t bother changing. Walleye grabbed his buff coat and shrugged it on. Together, they left the gym and went to the nearest cafeteria. Each poured himself a cup of coffee, and they sat at one of the tables.

  “Have you noticed a difference with your dreams?” Jon asked.

  Walleye cocked his head. “I have. Two nights ago—” The mutant shook his head before taking a sip of scalding coffee.

  Jon hesitated and then told Walleye about increasing power to the reality generator.

  “Makes sense,” Walleye said. He snorted a moment later.

  “What?” Jon asked, smiling.

  “Too bad we couldn’t make the AIs have bad dreams, bad enough to make ‘em go crazy so they attacked each other.”

  “How would we do that?”

  “Trick them into the void,” Walleye said. “Don’t give them a reality generator and let the bad dreams begin.”

  As his mouth opened the tiniest bit, Jon stared at the mutant. A second later, Walleye slapped the table.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” the mutant asked.

  “You don’t mean giving them bad dreams,” Jon said.

  “No. But using the null-splitter and making a reality rip large enough to scoop a cybership into the void. The robot ship slips in, we close the reality rip and the discontinuity process eats the AI ship. Bam! That would be the end of the AI armada.”

  “If you could get the entire armada into the void,” Jon said.

  “Why can’t we?”

  Jon stared at his hands as his heart raced with hope. “It can’t be that easy. Otherwise, the Sisters of Enoy would have done it a long time ago.”

  Walleye considered that. “Yes,” he finally said. “You’re probably right. But maybe we’re seeing something obvious that the Enoy missed for whatever reason.”

  “It’s worth asking Zeta,” Jon said.

  “It may be more than that,” Walleye said. “It may be worth trying.”

  Jon jumped to his feet. “A plan,” he said. “We have a freaking plan. I have to talk to Zeta.” He headed for the door, stopped and whirled around. “Come on, Walleye. You’re coming with me.”

  -12-

  Jon’s fingertips tingled because of his excitement. He hadn’t realized until this moment how depressed he’d been, thinking about the Solar System’s demise. The AIs would obliterate everything. Now…now he had an idea. Until this moment, the thought of dying fighting had propelled him. But if he could actually defeat the terrible enemy…

  “Hel-lo, Jon Hawkins,” Zeta said from the main screen speaker. The screen itself was blank. “You wished to discuss matters?”

  Jon glanced at Walleye, winked at Gloria and then told the Sister of Enoy his idea.

  Once he finished speaking, Jon waited. Time passed, but there was no reply.

  “Are you thinking about it?” Jon asked.

  “Thinking about what?” Zeta asked.

  “Us creating a giant reality rip,” Jon said in a rush, “one big enough to engulf an AI world-ship. After the world-ship enters the void, we close the reality rip behind it.”

  “How would you possibly create a…a reality rip large enough to do that?”

  “Did you even listen to what I said earlier?” Jon asked.

  “I…listened,” Zeta said slowly.

  Jon sensed that something was off, but he forged ahead, explaining it again. “We would combine the forces from our null-splitters. Once they synchronized—”

  “Let me stop you right there,” Zeta said, her manner firming. “You would not combine the forces of your null-splitters. The power from them would negate each other unless they were perfectly aligned.”

  “How hard can that be?” asked Jon.

  “It is…it is beyond Enoy science,” Zeta said.

  “Have you even tried it?”

  There was a long pause before Zeta said, “I have grown weary of your excessive queries. I am the master here, not you.”

  “No one is denying that,” Jon said. “But this is a plan, a way to beat the AIs.”

  “Wishing is not a plan.”

  Gloria had moved near and whispered, “Somehow—I don’t know how—the two of you are talking past each other.”

  Jon nodded. He’d been sensing that, too.

  “Just ask her straight,” Walleye suggested.

  “Zeta,” Jon said, “how exactly do we go about aligning the null-splitters?”

  The pause was longer this time, and Zeta’s voice sounded strange as she said, “It is beyond your capability.”

  Jon glanced at Gloria and Walleye. The mutant shrugged.

  “Have the Sisters of Enoy ever attempted to align null-splitters before?” Jon asked.

  “Your questions are becoming repugnant,” Zeta said. “I understand that you lack…breeding, lack any kind of culture—” She stopped talking and started again several seconds later. “Such an alignment would have to be almost atomic-level perfect. Clearly, that is beyond human science.”

  “Is there an Enoy taboo against trying such a thing?” Gloria blurted.

  “Who said that?” Zeta demanded.

  “One of my aides,” Jon said. “But it’s a reasonable question.”

  “Do not ever liken us to humans, Jon Hawkins. That is a mind-numbing insult.”

  “I don’t know how we did liken you to humans,” Jon said, stung. “But it’s not an insult to us.”

  “To a Sister of Enoy it most certainly is.”

  “Don’t push her,” Gloria whispered, tugging at the back of his shirt. “Let it go.”

  After a moment, Jon nodded. “Why would such a null-splitter alignment—?”

  “The topic is closed,” Zeta said, interrupting. “It is, frankly, obscene that you should continue to broach the subject. Each ship is a singular instrument of destiny. Each null-splitter creates a rip independently. That is the nature of the null-splitter. I have not given you Enoy tech for you to indulge in crude talk and in the uncultured violation of our technology in linking such, such energies.”

  “But—” Jon stopped talking as someone tugged on a sleeve. He looked back, figuring it was Gloria again, but saw that it was Walleye this time.

  “May I, Commander?” asked Walleye.

  Jon shrugged and stepped back from the comm. Walleye stepped up to it.

  “Sister Zeta,” Walleye said.

  “Stop right here,” Zeta said from the speaker. “You will not address me as a sister. You are a material being and you are a male. Each negates your right to the use of the word ‘sister’ in addressing me.”

  “Thank you for correcting me,” Walleye said smoothly. “I am ashamed that I may have insulted you. Do I have your permission to kill myself?”

  “What?” Zeta asked. “Why would you do this?”

  “In order to atone for my terrible insult,” Walleye said.

  “No…” Zeta said shortly. “That is not necessary. But you have shown me that you realize the seriousness of what you said.”

  “You are very gracious,” Walleye said.

  “That is true. I have been gracious, and I endured…obscene talk from Jon Hawkins.”

  “We plan to beat him for his offense,” Walleye said.

  “Beat him?” asked Zeta.

  “To use clubs and thump him hard, making him pay for talking to you in such an explicit manner,” Walleye said.

  “You are right, Walleye. It was explicit and offensive. Imagine, a physical being speaking about the mating and merging of null-splitter energy. I find myself soiled even continuing to think about it.”

  “It angers me that Jon Hawkins offended you.”

  “Walleye, you have been an interesting test subject. I find our present conversation enlightening. You are forgiven your offenses. Tell Jon Hawkins I await his apologies for the manner of his gross talk.”

  “The sub-commander has already dragged Hawkins away,” Walleye said. �
�Once Jon Hawkins receives his beating, I will make sure that he asks for your forgiveness.”

  “Was there anything else?” Zeta asked.

  “No,” Walleye said. “That is all.”

  A second later, the connection ended.

  “What was that all about?” Jon demanded. “What do you mean by telling her you’d beat me?”

  “Walleye just learned something important,” Gloria said, as she eyed the mutant.

  “I made a guess,” Walleye told Gloria.

  “Well,” Jon said. “Don’t hold us in suspense. What did you guess?”

  “The nature of the Enoy technology and how the Sisterhood broke through into the void,” Walleye said.

  “Go on,” Gloria said, her eyes bright.

  “I don’t know if anyone else has noticed,” Walleye said, “but every time a null-splitter creates a reality rip, we see glowing energy eating away at the fabric of space and time.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Jon said. “What does that mean?”

  “That the glowing energy is in some manner connected to the Sisters of Enoy,” Walleye said. “You’ve told us they’re energy beings. How did they first create the null-splitter that opened a reality rip into the void? I suggest it had something to do with Enoy procreation, with making Enoy babies. Why was Zeta so reluctant to speak about it? Well, aren’t we as humans often reluctant to speak openly about a man doing it to a woman? The blunter we talk about it, the less such talk is allowed in polite society. In some way, that’s how Zeta took your questions about aligning null-splitters.”

  “That I was talking…nasty to her?” Jon asked, bemused.

  “Right,” Walleye said. “But it was more than nasty. It offended her.”

  “So you think we could align the null-splitters?” Jon asked.

  Walleye nodded. “I’m betting the Sisters of Enoy haven’t really tried, or not tried very hard because it’s considered a dirty topic. You guessed it, Mentalist. We were asking them about an Enoy taboo. Just because they’re different doesn’t mean they don’t have their own taboos. This must be one of them, and it’s the key to defeating the AIs. It took a bunch of dirty humans to figure this one out.”