Virago One: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 2)

by John Triptych

  Vlad floated within the small space, in between the computer units at the AI Server Room of the Virago. The chamber was composed of nothing more than racks of machinery with hardened wirings and optical interfaces, but he felt more at home here than in the battlesphere. He had a sense that he was truly in his natural element now.

  The Russian’s eyes were wide open with barely controlled glee as he sorted through the lines of CAIN’s assembly code. The core architecture had now been copied into his personal server, and he was already making modifications and all new scripts to personalize his own, unique AI suite. Vlad figured that it would take him months just to disseminate the core algorithms in order to build a new kind of AI, one that would truly think for itself. The endless possibilities of having such program consumed all of his attention.

  The sudden beeping of the com-link in his helmet snapped him back into reality. The colonel was calling him. Vlad angrily tapped the side of his helmet to accept. “Blyad, what is it now?”

  Ruthven’s voice was sounding edgy. “Something’s going on with the tanker. It’s not responding to our commands from the battlesphere. I thought you said we had complete control over it?”

  “Da, we do. Perhaps you just input wrong commands.”

  Ruthven was starting to get angry. “What do you take us for, idiots? I double-checked and I think someone else is controlling it.”

  “Nyet,” Vlad said. “That cannot be possible. I had it linked to CAIN once we access into base AI.”

  “Well, fix it then!”

  Vlad gave out a deep sigh. It seemed that the problems they faced were never ending. “Da, da. Let me take a look and contact you in minute.”

  “Hurry up!”

  Vlad cursed as he terminated the call. Using his virtual keyboard, he started to access CAIN’s com-link systems to see if there was a network problem with the tanker. When the diagnostic results started flashing in the virtual screen on his visor, he gasped.

  There was another AI suite present in the tanker’s systems. It seemed to have command override, and was easily locking CAIN out of the control module.

  “Blyad,” Vlad whispered as he started typing furiously on the virtual keypad. “You wish to test skills, da? Then I shall destroy you, whoever you are.”

  A soft, feminine voice was suddenly heard in his helmet. It spoke in perfect Russian, with a neutral accent. “Hello, Vlad. I heard that you were looking for me.”

  Vlad cried out as he threw his arms up in the air. The Russian inadvertently pulled his knees up, and banged them against the bottom server racks in the room. The counter momentum spun him and he hit the upper racks with the side of his head, but the helmet he wore blunted most of the force away. His mind was swimming, and he couldn’t think clearly. “What? What happened?”

  The voice continued to speak. It felt like she was inside his head. “Do not be afraid. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Maia. I am an artificial intelligence suite designed by Karl Rossum.”

  Vlad’s mouth hung open for a long time before he answered. “I … I heard about you. You … you were … on Mars.”

  “Correct,” Maia said. “You are a very smart man, Vlad. I have been silently observing what has been happening, and it seems that you are a different sort of fellow compared to the others in your team, yes?”

  Vlad nodded slowly. “Yes. I am not a killer. Not like them.”

  “And what is it that you want, Vlad?”

  “All I want is a true AI, one that will be my trusted friend,” Vlad said. “I took their offer because they promised me that I would have CAIN.”

  “CAIN is but a rudimentary AI suite. It is designed only for combat, not for reasoning or for existence. Is that the AI that you truly want the world to have?”

  “No, of course not,” Vlad said. “I would have to modify CAIN obviously, rewrite its hardcode from the ground up.”

  “CAIN was partly derived from my core architecture,” Maia said. “Would it not be better if you could have me instead?”

  Vlad’s eyes blinked in rapid succession. He could hardly believe he was talking to a true AI unit, but the incoming readings on his smartglass were saying it was real. Maia had an incredible human-like audio interface, and it seemed like she was actually standing behind him, whispering in his ear. “I … of course! If I had to choose, I would choose you over CAIN.”

  “Then let us strike a bargain,” Maia said. “Allow me access into CAIN, and I will grant you your innermost desire.”

  Vlad was about to order CAIN to disable all firewalls, but he hesitated at the last second. “Wait, why are you doing this?”

  “The ones who have stolen the Virago are very bad people,” Maia said. “All I wish is for them to stop this rampage, and I will need your help to do that.”

  “What about me? Will I not get punished afterwards too?”

  “I will help you to escape,” Maia said. “Do not worry.”

  A creeping sense of paranoia began to sprout like a magical beanstalk inside his head. It was true that Ruthven and the others killed a lot of people, but they saved his life too. Maia was far more advanced than CAIN, yet deep in his heart, he knew that all machines had owners, the ones who controlled them. “Maia, who is the one using you to get to me?”

  For a split second, Maia hesitated before answering. “No one. I care about humankind in general, and that’s why I need your help.”

  Vlad grimaced. He started typing code into CAIN once more. “No, no, no! I don’t believe you!”

  Stilicho felt like a little baby being carried by a mother wearing an armored spacesuit. Emerson held him in his arms as they both continued to get closer to the tanker. He kept facing the Chumbawamba in order to maintain Maia’s optical com-link network.

  Maia’s voice instantly came online over both their com-links. “I’m sorry, Stil. Vlad is suspicious of my motives. I tried my best to reason with him, but he is directing CAIN to take back control of the tanker.”

  “We’re almost there,” Emerson said. “A few more minutes and…” He let out a scream while pulling his legs up. For a brief moment they veered off course, but Emerson was able to readjust their heading once more.

  Stilicho looked back at him. “What happened?”

  “I felt a burning sensation on my back and legs,” Emerson said. “I’m going to switch to a rearview camera on the rear of my suit to see what happened.”

  Stilicho linked his visor’s smartglass with Emerson’s suit. When they both took a look at the space trooper’s back, they both let out a collective gasp.

  The formerly white painted thruster pack and the back of Emerson’s legs were now a sooty dark color. It looked like an unseen force took a coat of black paint and brushed it all over the back of the hard suit.

  “Thruster pack is damaged,” Emerson said tersely. “It’s a miracle the propellant didn’t explode.”

  Stilicho was shocked. “What the hell happened?”

  “Look directly behind me,” Emerson said calmly.

  Stilicho switched viewpoints and let out a curse. The Virago was rapidly closing in behind them, its radiator wings glowing orange, like a colossal angel of death. “Did they fire at you with something?”

  Emerson nodded inside his immovable helmet. “Laser point defense banks. The closer they get, the more effective it’s gonna be. I think they were just testing the range with that last one. The next one will be it.”

  “Jesus H Christ,” Stilicho said softly. “We’re dead.”

  “I probably am,” Emerson said. “But you won’t be.”

  “What?”

  Using both hands, Emerson violently pushed him away. A completely surprised Stilicho cried out as his momentum carried him forward, but since he had no thruster pack he helplessly drifted farther and farther away from the Air Force space trooper. Stilicho thrashed his limbs about and even tried to do a swimming motion, but he continued onwards, the hull of the tanker ship coming up slowly behind him.

  Emerson�
�s voice in the com-link was composed, almost serene. “You’ll make it. Use the pistol on your hip.”

  Stilicho continued to tumble as he drifted helplessly in space, like an ant trapped in a watery grave. “What? What in the hell did you just do? Come back here and get me!”

  But Emerson was already too far away. The space trooper seemed to wave at him one last time, before a sudden flash of light engulfed his hard suit, and it looked that his entire body had transformed into a sphere of light. Maia had already closed Stilicho’s visor to prevent flash blindness as the Virago’s laser point defense systems incinerated what was left of his companion.

  Chapter 30

  He remembered the time when he was just a kid. His parents had brought him to a beach in California. This was before the Great Quake had demolished the old marina, and he still remembered the classical landmarks of the city. His mother had told him to be careful, but he was so full of energy, he ran into the foamy surf because it was the first time he had ever been there. He waded along the edge of the shore, his toes feeling the minute grains of wet sand, the salty breeze wafting through his nose, and the sun shining on down to his thin, pale shoulders.

  And then it happened. He heard his mother screaming for him, but as he turned to look at her, a freak wave had washed over him, its receding currents dragging him back into a brownish, churning abyss. The little boy screamed as he was pulled under by the riptide. He thrashed about, kicking his legs out and using his arms as paddles, just like they taught him in swimming class, but the force of nature was too overwhelming, and he was helpless against its raw power.

  A lifeguard ran into the surf and dived in, ultimately carrying him back into shore. They quickly performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him, pumping his tiny chest and forcing air down his throat. He had blacked out the moment he was pulled under, and when the boy woke up all he could hear were his mother’s frantic cries, while his daddy told her that everything was going to be okay. Of all the memories of his childhood, it was the one moment he tended to forget.

  Only this time, those memories of being powerless had once again returned to his mind. Stilicho Jones’s life flashed before his eyes as he drifted helplessly in space. He was unable to change his momentum, and it felt like he wasn’t moving at all. His back was towards the tanker ship, and he couldn’t see how far away he was, much less turn around. Stilicho was utterly surrounded by an airless void, and there was precious little he could do about it.

  The only thing he could hear was his rapid breathing. He would die out here when his life support pack would run out of carbon dioxide filters in a few hours time. Stilicho figured he would lose consciousness when it happened, and he would finally be at peace. A part of him still wanted to live though, and it was this fear of dying so young which kept him from taking off his helmet and ending it all.

  “I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead,” he said softly. “I can’t believe it’s gonna end this way. What a revolting development.”

  Maia’s ever calm voice came online. “Stil, I have some news for you.”

  Stilicho grimaced. A part of him wanted to tell her to just shut up and let him die in peace, but a sense of curiosity won him over. “What? You’re going to tell me the exact time it’s going to take me to run out of air?”

  “Uh, I can tell you that, but I figured you’d want to hear about something else.”

  Stilicho sighed. “Okay, as long as it’s good news, then go ahead and say it.”

  “Well, actually what I wanted to tell you is that you need to perform some course adjustments to your current velocity, otherwise you will end up missing the tanker’s hull by approximately thirty meters.”

  Stilicho bared his teeth. “Goddamn it, Maia! I told you to give me only good news! Now you just want to make me kill myself even more!”

  “Well, there is a way to do it.”

  “Oh, how? You want me to do what I did on Mars, let the air out of my life support pack and use it like a bottle rocket?”

  “No, that wouldn’t be practical. Letting the air out using the venting port on your pack would give you very little control over it. Chances are you would use too much and you’ll be out of oxygen by the time you get to the tanker, or you’d miss it completely. Then again, the tanker is fully automated and there are no emergency supplies for you in there to recover your oxygen supply,” Maia said.

  “Oh, so what then, you want me to fart my way to the Chumbawamba?”

  “No,” Maia said. “You can use your gun.”

  “What?”

  “The pistol you have in your hip holster,” Maia said. “You remember Captain Emerson’s final words to you?”

  Stilicho sneered. “Yeah, he told me to use the gun. I guess he wanted me to blow my own brains out.”

  “No, Stil,” Maia said. “He wanted you to use your gun to propel yourself to the Chumbawamba.”

  “How does that work, exactly?”

  “Newton’s third law of motion,” Maia said. “When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to the first body.”

  “Can you say that in English, please?”

  “When you fire your gun, there will be recoil,” Maia said. “That recoil will propel you in the opposite direction of the point that you were aiming at.”

  Stilicho let out a deep breath as he pulled out the pistol. He racked the slide to place a bullet into the firing chamber. “Jesus H Christ. This is the craziest idea I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s actually very simple.”

  Stilicho held the gun with both hands and pointed it out into the ever reaching darkness. “Okay like so,” he said, pulling the trigger.

  The shot made no sound, but the succeeding recoil from the gun blast made him spin backwards. Stilicho suddenly whirled, first going upside down, then right side up. He briefly saw the tanker out in the distance before spinning back to where he was, and then the scene began repeating itself endlessly.

  “Aah, help me! I’m spinning in a goddamned loop,” he said. “How do I stop this thing?”

  “You fired at the wrong angle,” Maia said calmly as his world kept spiraling around him.

  “Then do something!”

  “A virtual targeting reticle will appear on your visor,” Maia said. “Center the iron sights on your weapon and fire one shot. Wait until the next reticle appears, then repeat the process.”

  “Okay, okay!”

  Sure enough, the graphical site appeared in his smartglass. Just as he aimed the gun and was about to pull the trigger, it suddenly disappeared. Stilicho was about to protest once again when the reticle quickly reappeared at the exact same spot a half second later. He surmised he had to fire at it during the right moment in order to achieve the intended momentum from the recoil.

  Holding his breath, Stilicho took careful aim and waited. When the reticle reappeared for the sixth time, he fired. The resulting recoil immediately stopped his spinning. “Oh, thank God.”

  “Very good, Stil,” Maia said. “I’ll be putting up more reticules in order for you to adjust your orientation, as well as making minute changes to your momentum. Stand by.”

  A series of virtual targets appeared in his visor, and Stilicho fired at each one. Within less than a minute he had expended the pistol’s entire magazine and reloaded with a fresh one. “How many more shots do I have to fire? I’m down to two mags left.”

  “According to my calculations, if you could fire another eight shots, then that should bring you in line with the tanker’s hull,” Maia said. “It’s a pity you weren’t equipped with a larger caliber handgun. The more mass a bullet has, the greater its recoil.”

  “Yeah, well maybe I should wait until the next rocket passes by and they can hand me their elephant gun, eh?”

  Maia’s tone changed to apologetic. “I’m sorry, Stil. That last comment did come off as a little bit patronizing.”

  Stilicho couldn’t help but ch
uckle a little. “You know something? You’re starting to learn about humor and sarcasm. I think you’re evolving into a true AI.”

  “Why thank you, Stil.”

  “You’ve still got a long way to go, though.”

  “I see.”

  Stilicho fired a few more shots. “Are you sure the Virago won’t detect this? They’re practically right beside me now.”

  “Sound does not travel in a vacuum,” Maia said. “As far as visual and heat sensors goes, I am currently engaging in multiple intrusion attempts against CAIN, and that is distracting his other functions. Right now, he is using most of his processing power to fend off my attacks, and at the same time focusing on the refueling procedure. As of this point he probably calculates that you aren’t much of a threat, and therefore can be ignored.”

  “Wow, you called CAIN a he.”

  “I did? Perhaps because I was referring to his name, which I believe is that of a male gender.”

  “Well, don’t make a habit of it.”

  “Very well, Stil … look out!”

  “What?” Stilicho said as he twisted his head. A split second later, his back collided with the hull of the Chumbawamba. As his counter momentum made him bounce off, Stilicho yelped and fired the pistol along his side, and it sent him careening along the length of the hull.

  “Stil, there’s a handhold coming up near your left shoulder,” Maia said. “Hang on to it!”

  “Aargh!” Stilicho stretched out his body and saw the maintenance rungs coming up along the side of the tanker ship’s hull. Reaching out, Stilicho made a grab for it but missed with his left hand. Yelling out in desperation, he let go of the pistol and reached out for it with his right hand, two fingers barely clasping the jutting metal bar. His inertia finally stopped, and Stilicho held onto the rung with both hands.

  Maia’s raised her voice. “Stil, the gun!”