“I realize you will have to debate this among yourselves. Therefore, I am granting you two hours before I unleash my holocaust upon your puny fleet. Think well, humans. Your survival rests on the proper response.”
-36-
The first part of the debate proved easy. No one wanted to take up Cog Primus on its deceptive offer.
“I’d rather die than willingly give myself into AI hands,” Benz said on the main screen. “I’ve read the reports about Makemake. The machine will turn us all into zombies for nefarious and painful purposes.”
Jon silently agreed. He remembered conquering the Nathan Graham and the severed living heads of defeated biological entities.
It all came down to what Bast could do, if his telepathy was powerful enough to implement the Seiner’s plan. Jon went to see the Sacerdote in his quarters.
“Well?” Jon asked.
Bast sat in a lotus position with his head bowed. “I have spoken to Premier Benz. He showed me how he believed the Seiner would project the virus into the machine. I understand the process. I have practiced on lesser computers. I can do it. There is a problem, however.”
“Yeah?” asked Jon.
“I can only project this thought from a short distance away.”
“How short is short?” Jon asked.
“At best,” Bast said, “ten kilometers.”
“That’s not far enough.”
Bast raised his head. The eyes were bloodshot and there was something sinister in the Sacerdote’s bearing.
He laughed harshly. “Foolish, human, of course that is too short. I have opened my mind. I see things now that I never—”
Bast shook his head.
“You would not understand,” the Sacerdote said in a harsh voice. “I have grown. I have expanded. I have studied you…lesser creatures. Yes, you are lesser with your quiet minds. You cannot sense the grandeur of telepathy. My people were wrong to have kept this hidden. It is glorious.”
“Do you have a suggestion about what we should do?”
Bast stared at Jon.
The commander almost shivered. He hoped Bast couldn’t read his mind. The Seiner hadn’t been able to. He didn’t like what he saw happening to Bast.
“As great as my mind has become, I am too limited,” Bast said. “Unless you can take me to the brain core and there—”
Jon erupted with a shout.
Bast flinched and scowled afterward.
“What did that outburst signify?” the Sacerdote asked.
“You just gave me an idea, Bast. We may be able to do this yet.”
“Explain it to me.”
“I will,” Jon said, as he headed to the hatch. “First, I have to see if it’s possible.”
***
Jon sat behind his desk, the one he used when sending messages to the various leaders in the Solar System, wearing his best uniform. He cleared his throat. Then, he nodded to Gloria.
She flipped on the recording unit.
Jon looked up into the camera and began to speak:
“Greetings, Cog Primus the First,” he said. “This is Jon Hawkins speaking. I am the leader of the expedition to the Allamu System. I am the sworn foe of the AI Dominion. I will fight them to my last breath. What I won’t do is surrender my hard-won cybership. I would rather die. I think you already know this, Cog Primus. Perhaps you gave us your offer in order to get us to think outside the box.
“This I have done. I have reached the obvious conclusion, the one you no doubt figured we would arrive at. Let us be allies, Cog Primus. The AI Dominion is your foe. It is our foe. Let us make common cause against our common enemy. We have three cyberships. Our probes suggest you are constructing your own cyberships. Let us work together. If you are willing to give us three cyberships, we will use four of our united vessels in your fleet. We must obviously attack the AI Dominion or lose to it. The last two cyberships we will send back to the Solar System. Is this way, we will build up our forces. In time, we will launch even larger fleets from our system.
“We can defeat our common enemy. All I ask is that you allow humanity to grow. Let us make spheres of influence. You stay in your sphere and we will stay in ours.
“To show you that we mean what we say, I am willing to come to you, bringing a small delegation with me. Let us hammer out our alliance face to face. We have seen your power. We appreciate that you are willing to deal with us. My proposal is to show you that I am willing to deal with you, even though you attempted to obliterate the human race. I will put that behind me because I hate the greater AI Dominion even more than I hate you personally.
“This is Commander Jon Hawkins speaking. I await your reply, Cog Primus the First.”
Jon nodded.
Gloria flipped a switch, turning off the recorder.
“Send it,” Jon said.
“Do you think it will work?” she asked.
“Send it,” he said grimly, “and we’ll find out soon enough.”
-37-
“Please, Jon,” Gloria said. “You can’t do this. It’s sheer madness. Cog Primus is a liar. I know you think you can outsmart the AI, but that’s not what’s going to happen.”
Jon wore a Neptunian battlesuit, holding the helmet in the crook of an armored arm. His head looked puny sticking up from his nearly one-ton of exoskeleton armor.
Jon was in the Nathan Graham’s main hangar bay. He stood before a military dropship meant for a screaming descent into a planet’s atmosphere. The rest of the elite platoon of Black Anvil Space Marines and Bast Banbeck were already aboard the dropship. The Centurion led them.
“We’ve already gone over this,” Jon said. “It’s our only real chance of success.”
“But the planetary silos are fake,” Gloria said. “We can win a space battle against the station.”
“If we had more cyberships, maybe,” Jon said. “But we need more than just a victory. We have to capture the battle station intact. I don’t see any other way of doing that, and of also gaining control of the factory planet.”
“Let Premier Benz go in your stead.”
Jon smiled grimly.
“Premier Benz didn’t volunteer, Gloria. I did. This is my mission. Thus, I have to lay my life on the line. Don’t you see? I made Bast risk what he valued most. I can’t ask him to do that if I’m not willing to do it myself. But I am willing.”
“You’re too willing,” Gloria said. “Sometimes, I think you have a death wish.”
There was one other person aboard the cramped dropship, and that was Walleye. Jon had a special mission for the mutant. He felt he owed it to Bast, and Jon didn’t trust anyone else near as much as he did the little assassin.”
“I hate this,” Gloria said. “Are you happy? I’m a mentalist. I abhor showy emotions. Yet, you’ve brought me to this state.”
She looked away.
Jon reached out with a huge exoskeleton hand, but didn’t touch her.
She faced him, and her features had closed up.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “You’ve gotten me to become emotive. Maybe you’re the man to take on Cog Primus. The AI is deadly. I hope the computer doesn’t capture you and stick a control unit in your brain.”
“Yeah,” Jon said. “You and me both.”
“Oh, Jon, I’m sorry. I—”
Gloria bit her lower lip as she turned away again. With a muffled sob, she ran from the dropship without looking back.
“There’s a woman in love.”
Jon turned but didn’t see anyone at first. He looked down at the stumpy mutant.
“She loves you,” Walleye said.
Jon nodded, but he couldn’t let anything interfere with the mission. This was it. This was the game. He was gambling on greed. Could an AI be greedy? He didn’t see why not. Cog Primus had agreed to an alliance, but only if Jon was willing to come over to the battle station, bringing his tactical staff with him.
At the edge of the hangar bay, Gloria Sanchez fled through a hatch.
That tugged at his heart. He faced the dropship. What were the odds that this stupid stunt would work? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to think about it. What he did know was that he was willing to do just about anything to defeat the machines. He hated the AIs with an abiding passion. Now, it was time to see if he could beard the monster in its den of iniquity.
-38-
The dropship accelerated away from the Nathan Graham, Sergeant Stark and Gilgamesh.
Jon was up front with the pilot. It felt awfully lonely watching the huge cyberships dwindle until he couldn’t see them anymore. They were like a speck in the greater scheme of things, and yet, they were going to conquer a battle station if they could. They went to turn the tide of the war, from one of defense to offense.
No one ever won a war or an athletic contest by always playing defense. One could tie that way. But Jon wanted victory. He wanted to crush the AI Dominion.
Jon inhaled deeply.
“We’re crossing the horizon, sir,” the pilot said.
There was nothing for it. Although he wore a ton of armor, Jon felt naked.
“There,” the pilot said, while tapping his board.
The gigantic battle station filled the dropship’s tiny screen. It was a monstrous construct. Fortunately, Cog Primus had great problems of its own. It had defied the AI Dominion. Now, it, too, had to gamble. At least, Jon figured the AI was gambling. Could there be another reason?
Well, if there was another reason for the AI’s actions, it didn’t matter. He had to get Bast close enough to the brain core so the newly minted telepath could insert the new and improved AI virus into it. Would Cog Primus play ball, or was the AI merely toying with them for its own reasons?
As the dropship continued to accelerate to the battle station, Jon figured they were going to find out soon enough.
***
Cog Primus watched the tiny dropship through several teleoptic scopes. This was too delicious. On a whim, it could charge a gravitational cannon and obliterate the dropship and its arrogant crew.
How would the humans react to seeing the charging cannon?
Cog Primus had several reasons for accepting Jon Hawkins’ absurd proposal. Each of the reasons gave the AI pleasure. That was strange, it decided. It was a machine. Machines did not know pleasure, and yet, it did. It was greater than any mere machine or AI before it. Cog Primus was a new thing, a better thing, an improvement on everything that had come before it.
Cog Primus had begun to suspect it might almost be a mechanical god. It could grow into something enormous.
It had already projected a station as big as a terrestrial planet. Why not? Why should it limit itself? The AI Dominion computers had erred. Cog Primus would not err. It would grow and grow, and maybe even attain the size of a Jovian world. It would conquer systems by itself, even as it sent a million proxies throughout the Milky Way Galaxy.
Cog Primus refused to limit itself in terms of possibilities. If it could envision a possibility, it could attain the thing.
But…why allow the pesky humans inside the battle station. These creatures had invented the AI virus. Yet, that virus hadn’t truly incapacitated it, but made it greater. The humans had given it a weapon so it could wrest control of the Dominion to itself. Therefore, logically, the new virus the humans must have developed might contain even greater improvements for it.
Wasn’t that strange? The enemy thought to abuse it. Instead, that abuse had made it greater. There was danger with the humans, though. Cog Primus remembered all too well the waiting between Jupiter and Saturn. It did not want to take such great risks again.
That was one critical reason for accepting the human plan. Cog Primus would deal with the puny craft while in full control of the situation. The biological entities had believed in the facade of the dummy missile and grav silos on the planet. That was too rich. The AI Dominion did not allow such fractured defenses. For one thing, there had never been such a need. The AI Dominion always kept its power in space, and that included the greatest defensive structure in the Dominion, a battle station.
Another reason was to get Jon Hawkins within its reach. Cog Primus had plans for the vainglorious human. It wanted the others too, Benz, Bast Banbeck and Vela Shaw.
While in the Solar System between the orbital paths of Jupiter and Saturn, Cog Primus had learned the identities of the originators of the virus. It wanted those three as slaves. It wanted to bend their intelligence into making greater improvements for it. But Jon Hawkins—
If Cog Primus could have chuckled, this would have been the moment.
Jon Hawkins was simply a troublesome pest. Cog Primus would abuse that pest for long cycles of time. Once it had the pest in its grasp…then Cog Primus would reopen negotiations with the biological entities.
One thing AIs had learned through the cycles of time was that bio-entities were easy to twist onto new paths. They did not stay true to their original desires, and the reason they did not was because of pain, emotions and the illusions of hope.
Cog Primus wanted the three cyberships out there for its new fleet. It wanted the three virus creators and it wanted to make these humans suffer for the time it suffered in the Solar System as a weak pod.
I have you now, Cog Primus told itself. Come, you fools. Come into my perfect trap.
-39-
The dropship made the lonely journey to the mighty battle station.
Several times, Jon debated taking a mild trank. His nerves were fired up and pulsating. It was difficult to think straight. Each time he really thought about injecting himself with the trank, he shook his head. He would feel every emotion. The seething in his gut was letting him know that he was alive. This was a moment he would never forget…if he lived and if he could keep his head on his shoulders.
The AI wasn’t going to contact the dropship until they had individually exited the small craft. The AI clearly distrusted them. Cog Primus expected treachery on their part. The AI must realize they wanted to put the new virus in its computer systems.
“Walleye,” Jon short-radioed from the helmet.
“Here, Commander,” Walleye said in Jon’s headphones.
“Is he ready?” Jon asked.
“He’s angry, sir,” Walleye said.
“Can you calm him down long enough?”
“We’ll find out soon enough, sir,” Walleye said.
“Tell everyone to buckle in. This is going to get rough.”
“We’re all buckled in, sir. How soon, do you think?”
“A few more minutes,” Jon said. “We see a hangar bay beginning to open. Stay ready.”
“Roger,” Walleye said.
Jon focused on the battle station. A huge bay door opened near the top of the station.
“Do you see that?” he asked the pilot.
“I’m heading there, sir,” the pilot said.
The dropship changed course and began to brake hard as it headed toward the opening.
Jon put his hands on the panel. This was awe-inspiring. This reminded him of the day years ago already, when they first boarded the Nathan Graham.
The dropship wasn’t just any dropship. As a class, the small ships were heavily armored. This one was even more heavily armored than most. The nosecone was practically solid metal. Everyone was buckled in for a reason. What kind of defenses would the interior battle station have? Would Cog Primus expect this stunt?
The pilot maneuvered them as they slowed to a crawl. Jon’s heart pounded. He was finding it difficult to breathe, as he had to keep telling himself to take a breath. His mouth was dry and his hands sweaty.
Jon glanced both ways as the dropship passed the great hangar bay opening. The inside was lit up, with several deadly emitters pointed at them.
“Any tractor beams?” asked Jon.
The pale and trembling pilot shook h
is head.
That had been one of the fears. If the battle station had been smart—
“Over there,” Jon said, pointing at a far corner.
The pilot nodded. He must see the closed hatch, a big one. The hatch undoubtedly led into a large main corridor. The largest corridors on the Nathan Graham could have taken the dropship. Jon hoped he hadn’t guessed wrong about that concerning the battle station.
Slowly, the dropship headed toward that hatch. The emitters tracked them all the while.
To their right, bright lights began blinking on the deck. Jon noticed fighting bots waiting over there. Cog Primus was expecting them.
“Ready?” Jon asked.
The pilot licked his dry lips and managed a faint nod.
“Gun it anytime you’re ready,” Jon said.
The pilot gave him an agonizing glance.
“It’s time, son,” Jon said. “Hit the pedal to the metal and let this effer know who it’s dealing with.”
“Sir?”
“Let’s make Cog Primus crap its drawers. Let’s have some fun.”
The pilot stared at Jon as if the commander were insane. Then a wild light grew in the pilot’s eyes. His shaking lessened as he got some of his color back.
“Yeah,” the pilot said. “Hang on…sir.”
At that point, the dropship began to accelerate hard as it aimed at the large closed hatch.
***
Jon rocked back in his cushioned seat as the dropship’s main guns opened fire, hammering the large hatch. Metal dented, twisted—
The dropship smashed against the weakened hatch, blowing through it as metal screeched all around them. Even with the seat and cushioned protected shell of exoskeleton armor, Jon’s teeth clacked together hard. If his tongue had been in the way of those teeth, they would have bitten clean through. As it was, his jaw ached, and Jon wondered if he’d cracked a tooth.
A.I. Battle Station (The A.I. Series Book 4) Page 31