A.I. Battle Station (The A.I. Series Book 4)

by Vaughn Heppner

  “No,” Franco croaked.

  Benz shoved the secret police man as hard as he could. The smaller man stumbled away, tripped and fell backward.

  Swiftly, Benz clacked the automatic, putting a bullet into the firing chamber, flicked the safety, turned around, raised the gun and fired two booming shots. Each time he fired, he moved the gun into a different arc.

  At that moment, the blackness returned.

  Benz laughed wildly. That wasn’t going to stop him now. In fact, it made no difference. He moved the gun another fraction of an arc and got off another booming shot. He did not see any flame shoot out of the barrel of the gun as he fired. That told Benz that this darkness was an illusion in his mind.

  That’s good, my dear Premier. That’s fast thinking, too. But I grow weary of this firing. It hurts my ears.

  Agonizing pain blossomed in Benz’s mind.

  The Premier shook his head. He refused to let the pain hinder him. As the pain throbbed, as the darkness robbed him of the ability to see, Benz decided to trust his senses. He stared into the darkness.

  “Where should I shoot?” he asked under his breath.

  Even as the pain made him cry out, Benz slowly swiveled around until he felt certain that this was the right direction. Amidst the pain, he raised the gun once again.

  No! Stop!

  Benz did not stop. He fired the automatic. He fired again as the gun bucked in his hand—and he had a terrible sense of danger. He started moving—

  Something hard struck him in the gut. He doubled over, expelled air—something struck him hard on the back of the head. Benz dropped to the floor as the gun skittered away from him. Benz tried to crawl after the gun in the darkness.

  The pain in his mind made him cry out in despair. He’d had his chance—

  Abruptly, the pain in his mind stopped. The darkness turned into light again and the room had drastically altered.

  Franco was still here, lying on a carpet. Another person leaned against the front of a desk. It was a woman. She was short, dark-haired with gray eyes and wore a black arbiter’s uniform. She was ugly, although not hideous. She had a metal bar in one small hand and the secret police chief’s pistol in the other. That pistol was aimed at Benz’s midsection.

  “You’re the alien,” Benz said.

  “Sit in the chair over there,” she said.

  Benz listened carefully. The voice seemed wrong. Had the other aliens up in the Gilgamesh had strange voices as well and he simply hadn’t been able to tell at the time?

  “Will I have to kill you?” the woman asked.

  Benz noticed that Franco had begun to snore softly. Had the alien done that with her mind power? He suspected so.

  The Premier went to the assigned chair and sat down. The woman with the gun went to the chair behind the large desk. She sat down, although she kept the weapon aimed at him.

  Benz noticed the room finally. It had black walls, with slogans painted here and there and odd photos of various arbiters.

  “Is this his office?” Benz asked, indicating Franco.

  The woman watched him as if he was a wasp about to fly too near her. She rested her gun hand on the desk, hunching forward because she was so small.

  Benz wondered if her feet dangled from the chair like a child’s might.

  “Are you the alien?” he asked.

  She did not answer. Instead, she raised the gun and fired several shots. The bullets struck Franco each time, making him wake up, cry out and then crumple on the carpet, twisted and dead.

  Benz rose to his feet in alarm.

  She moved the automatic, aiming at him again.

  Benz tensed, waiting for the bullets to hit, wondering how much they were going to hurt…

  -12-

  After a time, Benz slumped into his chair. He felt exhausted.

  The woman clicked a tiny button on the automatic, letting the magazine thump onto the desk. From an open drawer, she grabbed an extra magazine and shoved it into the chamber.

  Benz realized she must have been out of bullets. He should have charged her then. He might have won.

  The tiny woman continued to aim at him. She hadn’t shown any emotion at any time.

  “I’m the alien,” she said suddenly, although she spoke in the same monotone as earlier.

  Benz nodded. He’d already figured that out.

  “Some minds are easier to control than others,” she said. “Yours is more tiring to fool, as you have a superior intellect.”

  Benz would have liked to believe that, but how did he know if she was telling the truth or not?

  “So the room was never dark?” Benz said. “It was just dark in my mind?”

  “That is correct.”

  “You hid the things in the room from my eyesight,” he said.

  “I did.”

  “Why bother?” he asked.

  Her eyes seemed to harden as her manner became more intense.

  “I suppose you’ll learn eventually,” she said in her monotone. “I hate you. I hate what you’ve done. Do you know how long we had to work to engineer our way into a position of high authority on this planet?”

  “Are you the last of your kind?” asked Benz.

  “Should by some inconceivable freak occurrence I die down here, there are others ready to avenge me,” she said.

  “I’m not referring to those of you on Mars,” Benz said, “but to your species. Did the group arriving in the Solar System represent the last gasp of a dying race?”

  “Do you want me to kill you?” she asked.

  “Why did you kill Franco?”

  The intensity of her features increased. “His creatures—” She seemed incapable of speech for a time.

  Benz was sure her finger tightened on the trigger due to her high emotion.

  That passed as she set the gun on the desk. She kept her hands near the weapon, though. The hand that had held the gun flexed as she stretched the fingers. Maybe the gun was too heavy for her to hold for long.

  How strong were these fish-scale aliens?

  “Your colony was hidden at the Ares Corporation?” Benz asked.

  “His men slaughtered over fifty of us before one of his butchers discovered our true identity. Can you conceive of the monstrosity of the deed? My people were slaughtered like cattle.”

  “Why didn’t any of your people use their psionic abilities to save themselves?” Benz asked.

  “You think you know things, but you do not.”

  “Not all of you have the power?” Benz guessed.

  “Two of us could use our power on your dull mammal minds. Only two of the royal line had survived the AIs. Can you conceive of the degradation I take upon myself by mingling with your filthy cesspool thoughts? I despise what you creatures represent. Yet…I have shamed myself by using the power in order to attempt to further our existence.”

  “Why hide like you do?”

  She stared at him as if were a fool.

  “Why not make common cause with us against the machines?” Benz asked.

  “You are animals,” she said. “We are the High Folk, the Collective Souls of Dame Rama. The machines destroyed all that. Yes, we of the royal line fled our dying star system. One group fled to this dismal Solar System. I have no idea if others of my kind survived. I could well be the last of the most glorious race in the universe.”

  “You think pretty highly of yourselves,” Benz said.

  “We have a right to think that way. I suppose you might feel similarly if you found a colony of lobsters begging that you spare them the indignity of your meal at suppertime by letting them leave the cooking pot.”

  “I doubt it. If we had common enemies, we’d try to make common cause with lobsters.”

  “You are vermin. You have dull minds. You have no understanding of the beauty of the Collective. Imagine if dirt could form bodies and dirty every place they walked. That is how it feels ghosting among humans.”

  “I get it. To you, we stink. We stink telepathica
lly, or however you’d say it. But the AIs have destroyed your star system. They’re about to destroy ours.”

  “No great loss there,” she said.

  “Why not join us so we can help you find the rest of your kind?”

  “Join you?” she said. “I would no more join you than you’d join chickens headed for the slaughter house. I will command you, however. I will use you like a tool.

  “He—” she indicated the dead secret police chief “—hated me too much for me to control him for long. I have been forming a strategy, hoping to turn this witch-hunt into a killing frenzy among you lower order beasts. Now, you will take me to the Gilgamesh.”

  “And…?” Benz asked.

  “If you prove docile enough, I will use you as a figure head. I will have to install control units in your brain, of course. But that is a painless operation, so you do not need to panic.”

  “You think that kind of assurance is going to convince me to be your slave?”

  The alien studied him. She picked up the gun, possibly seeing something in him she didn’t like.

  “Do you prefer to die?” she asked.

  Benz thought about that. He glanced at the dead Franco and realized that could as just as easily be him. If he said he preferred death over dishonor, over mental enslavement to the murderous alien—

  Benz launched himself out of the chair. He headed left, dodged right, then put his head down and charged the alien with everything in him pumping hatred. He did not feel he had to answer such an unfair question. He would choose his own way, glorious death before the dishonor of ignoble slavery.

  The gun boomed. Benz felt searing pain as a bullet slammed into his torso. It hurt worse than a son of a bitch. The gun fired a second time, and another bullet struck him. This one must have hit his ribs. He almost tripped and went down. His feet tangled together—

  Benz looked up and roared with rage. The alien sought to use him, control him. He wondered in that intense moment if the first alien, the black-clad empath, had done something to his mind before dying. It seemed possible. That’s where the strange sense of something being wrong with him must have originated.

  The alien shouted as she gripped the gun with both hands—

  Benz leaped as the gun boomed, sliding across the large desk. Her first two shots must have raised the barrel of the gun. The alien had not compensated enough. As Benz slid across the desk, the bullet hissed above him in passage.

  The alien tried to back away but crashed into the chair instead. She fired another shot that missed—

  Benz’s hands gripped her throat. His knees pushed against the back edge of the desk as he shoved himself at her, toppling them both onto the floor.

  No! she said in his mind. I can help you against Hawkins. I can tell you what he’s thinking.

  Benz realized as his fingers closed on the throat—the flesh seemed softer than human flesh—that Vela must have suspected the alien’s mental control. Had Vela stayed behind on the Gilgamesh, knowing he’d need her up there?

  As the agony of the bullets lodged in him almost caused him to fall unconscious, the alien struck at him mentally again.

  Darkness swept over Benz’s vision. He couldn’t see a thing. Could not feel anything—

  “Choking!” he shouted. “I’m choking you.”

  Did that make his fingers tighten? He didn’t know. But he thought “choke her” with all his stubbornness and intellect. He might not feel the grinding of bones under his fingers—

  Abruptly, he did feel flesh and bones grinding under his merciless fingers. The darkness swept away as he saw the gasping alien flail at his hands, trying to tear them loose from her throat.

  “No,” Benz said.

  The Premier was on his knees as she lay on the floor. He began banging her head against the floor. He did it over and over. He squeezed harder—

  The alien’s hands dropped away from his fingers. She went limp as the life seemed to drain out of her small body.

  It didn’t matter. Benz continued to choke, continued to slam the back of her head against the floor. He couldn’t be certain her death was only an illusion. He would not quit choking her until he slumped unconscious. That was the only way to be certain.

  The hatch opened then. Arbiters cried out in rage. Some ran to the dead secret police chief. The others surrounded Benz.

  “Look!” Benz said hoarsely.

  He wrenched his stiff fingers from the alien’s throat. Picking up a shattered pottery piece from the desk, he scratched at an arm.

  There were garbled voices around him. Maybe that was the arbiters asking questions. Benz no longer knew. Everything seemed to swirl around him.

  He peeled away some of the pseudo skin from her right arm. It revealed the strangely moist blue fish-scales underneath.

  At that point, Benz toppled sideways, fading into unconscious with his jacket and pants soaked with his own blood.

  -13-

  Benz dreamed strangely in odd fits and starts. First, he dreamed that arbiters argued over him while doctors pleaded for peace and quiet so they could save his life. Later, Benz dreamed that he rode a shuttle back up to the Gilgamesh. Some of his former space marines were with him. A major attempted to talk to him, but Benz dreamt that he fell asleep while the man spoke.

  For a time, he did not dream, although he had hazy ideas. They were quite unformed and indistinct. At last, he dreamed that Vela hovered over him. She seemed worried. He wanted to weep with her and tell her not to worry. He wanted to let her know that he missed her.

  Even in his dream, he was exhausted.

  Later, the dreams changed. He wasn’t so exhausted now and tears no longer dripped from Vela’s eyes. She seemed relaxed, as if she waited for something to happen.

  By this point, Benz had become thoroughly sick of dreaming. He wanted to wake up and find out what was happening in the real world.

  Then, without any preamble or fanfare, Benz opened his eyes. He was in a hospital room. It appeared that he was the only patient. Several medical machines were hooked up to him, including some that pumped a sludgy solution through tubes attached to him. That reminded Benz of the first alien imposter. She’d had tubes from her chrome-colored chair—

  “Chair,” he whispered.

  The whisper brought people flooding into the room. They appeared to be medical personnel. He wasn’t sure how long that lasted, as he closed his eyes again.

  Later, he opened them again.

  “Vela,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  She sat in a chair, reading a tablet. She lowered it, putting the tablet on a chair and rising. She put her warm hands on his left arm. Her touch felt wonderful. He tried to sit up, but a wave of weakness washed over him. That threatened to hurl him back into unconsciousness.

  “Where am I?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Rest, darling,” Vela said. “You need to rest.”

  “I’m aboard the Gilgamesh?”

  “That’s right,” she said, as she brushed his hair. “You’re going to be fine. The doctors were worried a few days ago, as you were close to death. But you pulled through.”

  “The alien shot me,” he whispered.

  “Shhh,” Vela said, putting a finger on his lips. “Rest first. We can talk all about it later.”

  He tried to nod. Instead, he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

  ***

  Eight days after the Dame Rama alien shot him, Frank Benz woke up. He was groggy, but managed to press a button until a nurse showed up.

  The nurse helped prop him up so he lay against a pillow. He was incredibly weak. He could hardly raise his arms. There were tubes in them. He did not like that, as it made him feel ever weaker.

  Shortly, Vela hurried into the room.

  “Frank,” she said.

  She rushed to him, gripped his face and kissed him on the lips. She tasted wonderful.

  Benz laughed weakly. He was glad to be alive. He was glad to see his woman. He was glad the alien ha
dn’t put controls into his mind—

  “Vela,” he said.

  “What’s wrong, my darling?”

  “I…I killed the alien, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, Frank,” she said.

  Vela leaned her body against him. It felt good, even though that made it harder to breathe. He wheezed hoarsely.

  “Frank,” she said, mortified. “You have to say something if I’m crushing you.”

  “You have great tits,” he said. “I like them pressed against me.’

  She smiled as tears welled in her eyes.

  “Oh, Frank,” she said, as she ran her fingers through his hair.

  He closed his eyes and luxuriated in the touch.

  “Go back to sleep,” she said shortly.

  He opened his eyes. He felt so weak, but he didn’t feel like sleeping, not by a long shot.

  “Vela, did I kill the alien?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do I know that’s true?” he asked.

  Vela gave him a funny look. Then, understanding grew in her eyes and in her bearing.

  “Yes, the alien controlled your mind for a time, didn’t she?”

  “She did,” Benz said.

  He began to tell Vela in a halting manner what had transpired in the underground chamber of the Alamo.

  “Vela,” he said once he’d finished. “How did I get back up here?”

  “The new chief of secret police was forced to let you go,” Vela said. “Oh, she tried to detain you, but I’d already gotten a video of you banging the head of the alien out into the public. The room had an automatic recorder—”

  “Wait,” Benz said, while frowning. “How did you get hold of the video?”

  “One of the arbiters must have sent it,” Vela said. “We had a secret ally, although I never found out the person’s identity. The truth is we got lucky. In any case, the video included the dead Franco. I began playing that all over Mars, turning you into an even greater hero than before. In this instance, I told people the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “How you went down to Mars, to Athena Dome, to try to save your chief of secret police. The alien caused your space marines—well, I think you know how I explained it.”

  Benz smiled. He could guess, all right.