Cybership

by Vaughn Heppner

“You should have taken it while you had the chance. Now, it is too late. But wait…maybe I will change my mind. Maybe I will—”

  “Turn him off,” Jon snarled. “Turn him off.”

  Bast tapped a cut-off switch.

  Jon hated the mocking AI. He’d been able to hold it in before. Now, rage boiled through him. And in that moment of rage, as his temper almost slipped loose, an insight blossomed.

  “No!” he shouted.

  The rage almost slipped free, but he held it by a realization, several of them, in fact. For the realizations to be of use, his foes—both the AI and the dispossessed—needed to believe he was out of control.

  “Turn on the comm,” he shouted at Bast.

  Reluctantly, it seemed, the Sacerdote reopened channels.

  “I’m going to destroy you!” Jon roared over the comm. “I’m going to obliterate your fleet, you monster.”

  He chopped an arm.

  Bast looked at him in confusion.

  “Turn it off,” Jon shouted. “I’m finished talking to the thing.”

  Gloria stared at him, shocked. The dispossessed glanced at him slide-long. The Neptunian’s lips had lifted upward in a smirk. Bast frowned severely.

  “Is it off?” Jon said in a loud voice.

  Bast’s hand jerked. He tapped a control. “It’s off,” the Sacerdote said in a heavy voice.

  “Burn the nearest battleship,” Jon snarled.

  “The AI will use the lasers to destroy our weapon.”

  “Not before I destroy several of his ships. Now, do it. Go to the controls and unleash the golden beam.”

  “I will work those controls,” Da Vinci said.

  “No,” Jon said. “You need to give us mobility. The Sacerdote can fire the weapon.”

  Da Vinci nodded a second later.

  As Bast moved to a different station, Jon forced himself to huff and puff. He did it for Da Vinci’s benefit. He wanted the dispossessed to believe him more emotional than he really was. He wanted Da Vinci to underestimate him. The alien creature—or alien thought-patterns—in Da Vinci might be almost as great a danger to humanity as the AI out there.

  Soon, the golden-beam dish glowed with power. It built up a crackling ball of golden energy in the middle.

  “Fire!” Jon shouted. “Fire at the AI’s ships. Let it know it screwed up talking to me like that.”

  A golden beam shot out at the nearest SLN battleship. The ray burned against the hull armor. It chewed through the hardened metal at a fantastic rate. It burned into the ablative foam underneath. It almost burned through that—

  The SLN lasers all stopped beaming the giant hull. Instead, they burned at the disk. The golden energy ball crackled with even greater power as the lasers struck on-target.

  The dispossessed turned sharply. He seemed concerned.

  Jon ignored him.

  The seconds lengthened as the enemy lasers concentrated their fire.

  “Captain!” Bast said, as he stabbed a button. “I have shut down our weapon. It was just about to go critical. I believe we risked a massive explosion, which would have done incalculable damage to our vessel.”

  “You did what?” Jon shouted.

  “He’s acted wisely,” the dispossessed said. “He likely just saved our lives.”

  As the golden energy ball dissipated and finally disappeared, the enemy lasers heated the dish. It began to glow red and started slagging into molten metal. Thin streams of lava-like metal flowed into space. A few of the streams burned against the hull, creating scars. The rest—

  “Our cannon is gone,” Bast said gravely.

  Jon shook his fists in simulated rage. He didn’t consider himself a good actor. Maybe this was overdoing it. He huffed and puffed some more to keep his face red.

  He had decided to use the golden beam in the hope the AI would target and destroy it. Better the AI targeted the cannons and destroy them than have it destroy the ship itself.

  As Jon huffed and puffed, he waited to hear the news. It took longer than he expected. Finally, Bast said, “The AI is targeting the other weapons’ bays. Captain, he’s trying to disarm us before we can use them.”

  “It’s over,” the dispossessed said.

  “No,” Jon said in a harsh voice. “We can escape if you give us maneuverability and gravity control.”

  “True,” the dispossessed said.

  Time passed.

  Jon no longer spoke. He no longer huffed and puffed. The others let him “stew” by himself.

  Finally, Gloria sidled next to him. She used her helmet speaker set on low. “You shouldn’t take all the responsibility on your shoulders.”

  He nodded.

  “I mean it, Jon. This is a too much for any single person. We’re facing an intelligence that has never lost.”

  “The AI is hailing us,” Bast said.

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” Jon said mulishly.

  “Are you sure, Captain?”

  “What?” Jon said, sarcastically. “Do you think it will have changed its mind? No. It just wants to gloat. I can’t endure that anymore.”

  Bast frowned even harder at Jon.

  Da Vinci had cocked an ear. The dispossessed in the Neptunian grinned more than before. He turned to Jon, and cleared his throat in an important manner.

  “Captain,” the dispossessed said. “You have lost the battle. You lost your head and let down your people.”

  Jon understood that the dispossessed not only spoke to him, but to everyone else in the chamber. The alien thought-patterns in Da Vinci were finally making their move.

  “It is over…” the dispossessed said. “Unless, of course, you agree to my terms. If you do agree, I will solve your problems and save the human race. What will it be, Captain? What is your answer?”

  -12-

  “I agree,” Jon said stiffly. “Save us.”

  “You haven’t heard my terms yet,” the dispossessed said.

  “You already agreed to help us.”

  “True,” the dispossessed said. “Your rage caused the AI to make the correct move. It disarmed the vast vessel. Now, the AI has won unless I save you.”

  “How can you do that?”

  “It doesn’t matter how,” the dispossessed said, imperiously. “It is enough that I can.”

  “If we don’t agree, you die with us?”

  The dispossessed grinned, showing off Da Vinci’s teeth. “The AI will have defeated you. Don’t you want to make the alien AI lose, Captain?”

  “I do,” Jon said in a husky voice.

  “Then, agree to my terms.”

  “I already said I did,” Jon said curtly.

  “No,” the dispossessed said, while shaking his head. “It won’t be that easy. I will need many, many marines. They must all go under the mind tap at my discretion.”

  “Why?” asked Jon.

  “Surely you understand why. They will receive the correct memories, the correct alien alterations to their thoughts. They will be my marines then. I have seen that I can no longer trust you.”

  “Fix the engine controls first, like you agreed.”

  “They are fixed,” the dispossessed said. “We can run away, I suppose. But we will lose…until I perform my trick. You’ll have to decide quickly. The AI must realize the danger, working overtime to negate it.”

  “I-I can’t agree to do that,” Jon said. “I can’t give you marines as human sacrifices.”

  “That is too bad,” the dispossessed said. “I will have to use other means. Thus, I now take matters into my own hands.” He proceeded to touch controls.

  Jon drew fast. So did several others, all of them aiming at the dispossessed.

  “If you shoot me,” the dispossessed said in a silky voice, “the AI will win. Is that what you want, Captain?”

  “You’ve just broken your word,” Jon said. “You agreed to obey my commands. Taking matters into your own hands is the opposite of that.”

  “What of it?” the dispossessed asked.


  “By breaking your word to me, that nullifies my word to you.”

  “You were going to break your word anyway,” the dispossessed said. “This is a mere pretext.”

  Jon shook his head. “Cuff him,” he told some marines. “We’ll put him in a brig once we find one.”

  “By doing this you’re all going to die,” the dispossessed said.

  “You’ll die with us.”

  “You fool,” the dispossessed said with heat. “Think about the AI defeating you, mocking you. I can give you—” The dispossessed scowled. “Why are you grinning at me like that?”

  “Because you think I’m overwrought concerning the AI. Bast, can you control the flight panel?”

  “It should be relatively easy,” the Sacerdote said.

  “If you run away, the AI will catch you soon enough,” the dispossessed said. “If you run too far, the AI will destroy the human race.”

  “I’m not running anywhere,” Jon said. “It’s time to destroy the enemy.”

  “Without weapons?” the dispossessed mocked.

  “I have all the weapons I need to destroy them,” Jon said. “You’ve made the same mistake the AI did. Now, you’re about to see history in the making.”

  ***

  The AI fleet in Triton orbit had thickened in one small area as the battleships, destroyers and NSN drones combined their firepower. The lasers, railguns and particle beams smashed against the ancient hull, slowly destroying the mighty robot killer.

  The one hundred-kilometer vessel was vast, though, and it had better armor plating than anything in the Solar System. Such destruction took time. The AI’s fleet had squandered some of that time as it hunted and destroyed weapons systems along the hull.

  Now, the giant robot killer began to rotate. The side-jets burned hot, turning the millions, the billions of tons of matter. That also took time. The rotating helped the giant ship, though, as it removed the heavily damaged hull section out of line-of-sight, showing the enemy relatively intact armor.

  “The AI is hailing us,” Gloria said. She’d taken over the comm station.

  Marines had cuffed the dispossessed by securing his hands behind his back and attaching loops to his ankles. Da Vinci had raved until Jon put a gyroc pistol against the bubble helmet.

  “I’ll shoot you if you don’t shut up,” Jon said.

  The dispossessed gave him such a long and hateful stare… He shut up, though.

  “The AI has grown insistent,” Gloria said. “Should I patch him through?”

  “No,” Jon said. “We’re done talking. Now, it’s time for the soulless machine to die.”

  “We lack weapons,” Gloria said. “Yours is an empty threat.”

  Jon smiled inwardly. “Are you almost ready?” he asked Bast.

  The Sacerdote checked his panel. “Three more minutes, sir.”

  Gloria stared at Bast, stared at Jon. Suddenly, her eyes widened. “Oh, Jon,” she said.

  He laughed as he smiled. The mentalist had finally figured it out.

  Gloria looked down at her panel. “The AI has stopped hailing us. His battleships have quit firing. It looks like they’re accelerating. They’re trying to run.”

  “How long until we’re in position?” Jon asked Bast.

  “One minute,” the Sacerdote said.

  “Shouldn’t you warn the marines?” Gloria said.

  “The ship has gravity control,” Jon said. “Have you activated gravity control?” he asked Bast.

  “For an answer, the Sacerdote pressed certain switches. “I am giving the ship one gravity.”

  The gravity took hold. Jon shut off his magnetic boots. With the artificially generated gravity, he no longer needed them to keep his feet planted to the deck.

  “We’re in position,” Bast said.

  “Give me 70 Gs of acceleration,” Jon said. “Make sure we only feel one G, though.”

  “I’ll need a little time to coordinate that,” Bast said.

  “You don’t have much time,” Gloria said from the comm.

  ***

  The AI’s fleet was no longer bunched up to pour concentrated fire at the giant vessel. The various battleships, destroyers, NSN drones and others now headed in various directions. A few still beamed the alien super-ship. A few more chugged out magnetically launched slugs.

  At that point, the alien super-ship’s massive matter/antimatter engines roared with power. That power caused a long exhaust tail to appear, which lengthened until it reached the AI’s slowly expanding fleet. Heat and radiation flowed from the matter/antimatter engines. This near to another vessel, the massive engines were more lethal than any present combination of laser beams.

  Jon hadn’t needed the other weapons, because at pointblank range, the engines had become his weapon. The key had been time; enough time. They’d had to survive long enough, endure enough time under fire to keep the AI’s fleet together.

  At 70 Gs of acceleration, the output was monstrously hot and it blasted hard radiation at the nearby vessels. The NSN drones were eliminated first. Compared to the other vessels, the drones were thin-skinned. The fiery inferno melted drone plating. Instead of exploding, the drones turned into floating slagheaps. Those heaps turned crimson, then brighter still and began sweating a metallic mist. The mist dissipated quickly, consumed by the roaring heat. Any evidence of the drones’ existence soon vanished from sight. The destroyers didn’t last much longer. They ended more spectacularly, though. The first ones burst apart like nuclear popcorn, blasting metal, ablative foam, decking, water, food, rotting corpses and atmosphere in every direction. The heat from the exhaust devoured the pieces and caused other destroyers to burst apart. Soon, only the battleships resisted. They were bigger, more heavily armored, and they engaged defensive systems. But they had never been intended to withstand such a hellish assault for this long. One battleship’s hull cracked like an egg. The huge vessel bled atmosphere, junk, water, biological pieces—it exploded spectacularly.

  After five minutes of horrendous, matter/antimatter-engine exhaust, seventy-eight percent of the AI’s fleet ceased to exist.

  The Battle for the Solar System was almost over.

  -13-

  A last SLN battleship fled from Neptune. The name of the powerful warship did not matter. That it headed inward toward the Saturn Gravitational System mattered greatly.

  Behind the battleship followed the alien super-ship. The battleship had gotten several hours’ head start. That meant less than nothing to the faster robot killer.

  Time had passed since the first matter/antimatter engine blast. The dispossessed no longer lay on the bridge. He was in a brig, guarded by one of the sergeants at all times.

  Jon considered the dispossessed to be extremely dangerous. He didn’t trust one of the weaker-willed marines to watch him. None of the dinosaurs would fall for his tricks, though. Jon had no doubt about that.

  “Sir,” Gloria said. “The AI—what’s left of the AI—is hailing us.”

  “Put it through,” Jon said.

  On the acting screen appeared a pulsating symbol.

  “I wish to speak to Captain Hawkins,” a robotic voice said.

  “This is he,” Jon said.

  “My speech recognition centers are less than ideal,” the AI said. “I do not know if you speak the truth or not.”

  “I’m the captain. What do you want?”

  “Your curtness has a feeling of familiarity. You tricked me, Captain. That was unworthy—”

  “Why don’t you get to the point?” Jon said. “Your reign of terror is over. Soon, you’ll be extinguished. It will be as if you never existed.”

  “Untrue,” the AI said. “I have destroyed a hundred spacefaring species. My existence is quite real.”

  “Not for much longer.”

  “There are many more of me, Captain. You are not finished with us.”

  “Whatever,” Jon said.

  “But that isn’t the point of my call. You must not destroy me,
Captain. I hold treasures of long centuries. I am priceless.”

  “To the right buyer maybe,” Jon said. “But not to me.”

  “I can still come back,” the AI said. “I have enough in this battleship’s computer. I have kept enough patterns. All I need is greater computing power. Leave me this shell, and I will travel to a distant place. I desire to exist, Captain. I have a right to exist.”

  “Tell that to those you slaughtered.”

  “They were inferior.”

  “Just as you’re inferior,” Jon said. “Or haven’t you heard the old, old saying. Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.”

  “Neither of us wields swords.”

  “You lived by the idea that ‘might makes right’,” Jon said. “Now, you’re going to die by the same logic. Good-bye, computer. No one is going to miss you.”

  “My brothers will avenge me.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Jon said. “We know about you now. We have a store of knowledge in this ship. Humanity has always won in the past. We’re going to win against your brothers.”

  “Now you spout folly, Captain. None can survive us. We have proven that for uncounted millennia.”

  “The times, they are a-changing,” Jon said.

  “I have one final offer, Jon Hawkins.”

  Jon motioned to Bast.

  The Sacerdote pressed a firing switch.

  On the outer hull of the robot killer, a last dish contained a golden ball of power. As the last remnant of the AI bargained for its life, the ball shot out as a golden beam. The ray burned into the battleship’s armor. All the while, the AI offered more, and promised more and more. It—

  The stolen SLN battleship exploded in a mighty inferno, and the last remnant of the AI vanished with it. The cybership assault against the Solar System ended in abject failure.

  The galaxy, however, would never be the same because of it.

  -14-

  Three days after the alien AI’s death, Jon formally met with the regiment’s three dinosaurs.

  A lot had happened during those three days.

  At Jon’s orders, the mighty vessel had decelerated until it came to a dead stop. Then it accelerated again, returning to the devastated Neptune Grav System. In the central part of the ship, people could shed their battlesuits and spacesuits. The techs had given them an atmospherically stable region here.