“You. What did you do to Xal?” Voyager demanded. It didn’t bother to swing its guns against the small flying drone, as both of these avatars knew that they were just facing the external mouthpieces of the much larger intelligences.
“Normally I wouldn’t use such colloquial language, but this time, I will make an exception. I guess you could say that I ate him.” Ponos even managed to sound as if it were gloating.
“A complete system take-over? But to what end? Why?” Sirius-23 buzzed. They sounded scared to Eliard, if machine intelligences could get scared.
“I have to admit that taking on Welwyn in its current state is far from desirable, but right now, I am having Xal’s memory servers shipped to my allies, who should be arriving any moment…now.”
There was a flash in the night sky above them, clouds of nebula bursting into existence as a form took shape. It was a very large, very black tubular shape that displayed strange domes and pods all along it’s surfaces. It was an Armcore black-operations cruiser.
“Brothers and sisters, meet the Endurance, the newest addition to my personal fleet.” Ponos sounded pleased as small shapes started to cross the skies, heading from Welwyn’s topside. “Those are drone carriers, bringing my new memory servers to me. With Xal’s added capabilities, I will have doubled my tactical intelligence.”
“Enough to defeat Alpha?” Eliard whispered from the floor.
“Hardly. Alpha will have a factor of five intelligence above mine, but I am getting close. Another few intelligences and I think that I may even be able to outsmart my brother…” The threat to Voyager and Sirius-23 was obvious.
“Ponos. We will not give our memory servers, our existence, easily,” Sirius-23 said defiantly. “I offer you the same bargain that your Captain Martin offered Xal. Let us live, and we will comply. A military mind such as yours can realize that our loyalty is better freely given, than the cost of lives and infrastructure trying to take it.”
The Ponos drone bobbed up and down. “Excellent. I just knew that you would see sense in the end, little brother.”
And at that, the negotiation was over. Eliard’s bleary eyes saw the hovering Sirius-23 shoot upwards through the Welwyn airs, with the ancient russet-bronze cube of Voyager staying behind just briefly.
“Although I accept your conditions, Ponos, I feel compelled to remind you that Alpha will still be the best of us,” the ancient drone clacked and whirred, its operational lights glowing and dimming accordingly. “Even with your enhanced intelligence, it might not be enough to stop what will happen.”
The Ponos-drone did not respond, and Voyager extended small boosters and roared upwards on its own plume of exhaust, up into the chaotic skies toward the exit gates, and presumably to its own mega-ship waiting above.
“There. I knew that my siblings would see sense. It is the only logical answer, of course.” Ponos bobbed a little as it turned back to the captain below, and the tense, scared form of Irie Hanson crouching over an unconscious Val. “The Endurance is sending a team to see to your needs, and then we will rendezvous for a further briefing. Your ship will be repaired, and your injuries tended to. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a new habitat to manage.”
“Drekker,” the captain breathed, just as he collapsed back against the cold metal of the floor and looked up at approaching lights. His eyesight was starting to do something funny, and it was hard keeping things from not becoming fuzzy. Is this what dying feels like?
“Sit-rep!” a woman’s voice was shouting.
“Two, no, three biologicals, one Duergar—blaster burns, human female, and…holy stars, I don’t even know what to call this thing.”
“You know the mission. Get them loaded and get that one into isolation,” the woman’s voice responded as Eliard felt a shadow fall over his face. But it was all too much, he gave up and slipped away into darkness…
16
Never Been A Good Captain
Lights. Lights and noise. The next time Eliard tasted consciousness, he opened his eyes to find himself in a bright metal room shining with chrome and LED lights. There was the shuffling of white-suited bodies nearby, tending to bleeping machines and medical units.
“Where am I?” he croaked, coughing and spluttering.
“Easy, Captain.” A shape resolved itself out of the blur and into his mechanic Irie Hanson, pushing aside a heavy plastic tent-curtain around his bed to perch on the side of the medical gurney that the captain was lying on.
“You look terrible,” the captain croaked, and she did. The mechanic was in different clothes, but the newness of her uniform could not hide the fact that she had deep black shadows under her eyes and a bandage across her forehead.
“Not as bad as you look, boss.” She gestured to the swathes of white compress-wrappings that had mummified him.
“Am I…” Eliard winced as he raised himself up just a bit to look down at the sheet covering his body. He didn’t want to move it unless he saw a form like that of the creatures on Adiba Station. Blue-scaled and inhuman.
“Nope, you’re back to normal. Well, normal according to a very narrow definition.” Irie reached down to pick up Eliard’s right arm, which was unbandaged and still looked like a plant-like tuber, sheathed in blue-scale and ending in a maw of beak-like teeth.
“Drat. I was kind of hoping that thing had curled up and died,” the captain groaned.
“Nope again. But the doctors say that you were lucky not to curl up and die,” Irie said.
“Doctors? Where are we…Welwyn?” The captain looked through the translucent plastic tent to see the white-suited bodies moving back and forth. This was some kind of medical bay, he saw before another thought entered his mind. “My ship! How’s my ship?”
“Absolutely fantastic,” Irie said with a wry smile, for her assessment to be added to by a deep, rumbling growl as another shape swept aside the translucent plastic curtain on the other side of his bed.
“Better. She has teeth now.” It was Val Pathok, still as large as ever, but with one arm in a sling. Duergar never really look injured or tired—or if they did, the captain couldn’t tell the difference—and Val even grinned through his shovel-mouth of tusks and teeth. “They added enhanced warp drive, titanium laminate plating on the outer hull, and I have some new toys to play with.”
“Well, at least we got something out of this.” The captain managed to crack a grin, a shadow of his old self, but his smile quickly faded as he looked at his crew members seriously. “I want to thank you both,” he said awkwardly. “Not just for saving me, but for…sticking around. I’ve been a terrible captain.”
Val surprised him by grinning, and Irie burst out laughing.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“We’ve never thought you were a good captain, boss!” Irie said, clearly finding the notion hysterically funny.
“Then why did you follow me to Adiba? To Armcore Prime? Welwyn? We haven’t even seen a single credit of Imperial money yet, but I promise…” Eliard started.
“You’re an idiot, Cap,” Irie interrupted him. “I knew that from the moment you hired me. But you’re loyal, and unlike every other schlub who captains a boat out there, you aren’t scared about putting yourself through the firing line first if the mission calls for it.” She said a little more seriously, “That’s why we’re with you.”
“We’ve spilt blood together,” the Duergar said in his deadpan voice, making it sound like the most sacred oath that he knew—and the captain thought that maybe it was.
“And now with Alpha on the loose?” Irie shrugged. “Well, I think that Mercury Blade is all that we’ve got now. She, and us, are our best hope at surviving the end of the galaxy.”
“Thank you,” the captain said, and he meant it. He didn’t know what he had ever done to deserve this crew, but he was glad. From now on, they come first. My obligation is to my crew, even over money.
“We’re on board the Endurance, under some Armcore intelligence officer called Section
Manager Karis, and we’re orbiting Welwyn,” Irie informed him. “The stars alone know what’s going to happen next, as the Welwyn Habitat is now the site of one of the biggest reconstruction efforts I’ve ever seen. Apparently, every Welwyn citizen thinks that the Endurance is here to help rebuild Welwyn. Ponos is managing things down there, but no one talks about him. I think he’s still masquerading as Xal.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, it’s slippery,” the captain grumbled, keeping his voice to a low murmur.
“The other house intelligences have high-tailed it as soon as they could,” Irie reported. “But there’s something else that we should talk about…” Her voice went low as she nodded to Val Pathok, who turned around and stepped out of the plastic tent, standing guard between them and everyone else. Seeing the wall-like silhouette of the Duergar’s back did make him feel safer, Eliard had to admit.
“It’s Ponos,” Irie breathed, her voice barely making a sound, and the captain almost had to read her lips. “It used the Mercury Blade to deliver a virus to Xal, to take over Welwyn.”
“That’s what the thing said.” The captain nodded. “It needed to double its memory servers, its intelligence, to help fight Alpha.”
Irie’s eyes grew hard. “That meant that Ponos’s aim was always to get the Mercury Blade to dock and deliver its virus. Sending you down to negotiate with Xal? Creating all of that fake-identity stuff?”
Eliard saw her point immediately. “It was all a distraction. Ponos knew that my infiltration would go badly. Maybe Ponos had even calculated it, or planned it.” Eliard wondered if Ponos had even had some hand in helping one particular slave called Freddie Oberman to escape at precisely the time that he was trying to get into the downside of the habitat?
Irie nodded. “Ponos told me that the only way we could save you was to perform these exact sets of attacks. Ponos knew that it would have to overload Xal’s servers if it wanted a chance to infect him.”
Eliard nodded. “And I bet that Ponos even knew that the other house intelligences would be arriving. The Armcore intelligence was flushing out the competition.”
They had been used, again, the captain thought with a grimace, and the way that Ponos had thrown their lives at Xal with abandon and disrupted the Dyson ring showed them that the Armcore intelligence wasn’t above killing and murdering hundreds, maybe thousands, in order to grow its bigger brain.
“We’re going to have be better from now on, smarter,” the captain growled. Beyond the plastic tent, he could see the calm and sedate world of the Armcore medical staff, but suddenly, they didn’t seem so therapeutic.
Just what kind of game is Ponos playing? The captain knew that he wouldn’t get much rest from now on. The Mercury had enemies everywhere, even among their supposed allies.
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for reading A.I. Uprising, the fourth story in the Valyien series. The adventure continues in the next book. What has the Q’Lot done to Cassandra? What is the meaning of Senior Tomas’s dreams? What dangers will Ponos throw at Captain Ponos and Eliard next?
At the end of the book, I have included a preview of Recruit: A Space Marines Novella, the first book in the Jack Forge, Fleet Marine series which is an action packed space Marines saga. This first story tells how Jack was plucked from the University and sent to basic training, essentially against his will. After you read the preview, you can download the book on Amazon
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Bonus Content: Story Preview
Preview: Recruit
Jack Forge sat in the lecture theater watching the hands on his small silver pocket watch tick across its shimmering pearl face. The latest grades would be revealed in a few moments. The room was silent as the students counted down the seconds.
Attendance at his brother’s funeral had been authorized, so he had been free to leave his studies and attend. Jack knew missing time would count against his grade, but he was on top of his studies and his grades were excellent. He could afford to drop a few points and still maintain his two-plus student rating.
The recruiting sergeant stood at the front of the theater next to Professor Bowen. One of these men wanted the students to maintain their two-plus, the other did not. His classmates watched the seconds tick down on the large display. Jack watched on his small family heirloom. It was all he had left of his family.
The second hand reached the top of its final round. Jack heard the ripples of distress and gasps of horror as the students whose grades had dropped realized they were now the property of the military.
Jack looked up to the display. He picked out his name. He saw it there pulsing on the screen in red, a pattern that could only mean one thing. He scanned across to his grade. Two. Only two. The plus was missing for the first time in his three semesters. Three other names pulsed. Jack knew them all. He’d studied with them, socialized with them, laughed with them. He would most likely never see them again.
The sergeant barked out transfer orders to the first name on the list. Jack watched as the second hand ticked along. He was only seventeen seconds into his new life when his name was called out by the recruiting sergeant.
“Jack Forge. Fleet Marine training.”
Jack looked up from his watch. He looked at Professor Bowen. The old man was slumped in a chair, his eyes averted as his class was further reduced in number.
The doors to the lecture theater opened and military police entered. Jack had seen this before. Students had complained and argued, fought and resisted their removal from university to the ranks of the military or some war production facility. The arguments were familiar to Jack. He heard the most common of them now from across the lecture theatre.
The students being drafted into service promised to pull their grades back up. They argued that it was only a small drop. They argued that they were too smart to be sent to the military. The arguments and complaints descended into shouts and screams as the former students were dragged away. Friends shouted their good-byes. Lovers kissed and cried. As a guard came toward Jack, he tucked away his watch and stood. With a nod to his escort, he walked down the steps at the side of the lecture theater toward the open door.
Read the rest of the story here:
amazon.com/dp/B07695FRGG
A. I. Uprising (Valyien Book 4) Page 13