The A.I. Gene (The A.I. Series Book 2)

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Most?”

  “All the way to the safety hatch,” she said. “You banged on it. The Centurion opened it and pulled you out.”

  “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “I should think not,” she said. “It was…it was one of those unbelievable acts people perform at the oddest moment, like a small woman lifting an air-car off her child or a youth who leaps across an impossible chasm to escape his foes. Hysterical strength.”

  “I was hysterical?”

  “You’d lost your right hand. You had horrible belly wounds and had lost far too much blood, to say nothing of the radiation poisoning consuming you.”

  “The octopoid injected me with something.”

  “That’s interesting,” she said in a strange, almost dismissive, voice. “I didn’t know. I don’t think anyone did. You did mumble the gist of your story several times in a state of semi-consciousness.”

  “Fine. What happened to the octopoid?”

  Gloria stared at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Maybe this is too soon,” she said.

  “Tell me. I order it.”

  Gloria sighed. “We haven’t found any evidence of these two octopoids, as you call them.”

  “Robot octopoids.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “What are you suggesting? That I made it all up?”

  “That would be easier to understand,” Gloria said. “But,” she said, holding up a hand to keep him from speaking. “What happened to the engine and gravity control boards? Can we explain the chief tech’s brutal murder? You found Da Vinci hiding in the engine control room. You don’t need the octopoids as a cause for the problem.”

  “You think the little Neptunian—”

  “Please. One thing at a time, Captain. My point is that the sabotage indicates something nefarious occurred. We have sufficient justification for the acts. You claim to have seen…robots—”

  “Are you saying no one found a shred of evidence in the reactor area? No one found a metal leg, for instance?”

  Gloria hesitated before saying, “That is correct.”

  Jon blinked several times. “Something or someone must have cleaned up the reactor area.”

  “That would be one possible explanation, yes.”

  “You think I hallucinated about the robots?”

  “Do you want me to speak the truth?”

  “Yes!” he nearly shouted.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes that I might have hallucinated?”

  “That is correct.”

  Jon sagged against his pillow. He couldn’t believe it. For a moment, he wondered if he was dreaming this.

  “Let me get this straight,” Jon said. “You believe the octopoids did not exist?”

  “Captain, I have questioned Da Vinci. He was very clever. He gave me answers that would have pleased anyone but a Martian mentalist. Because of my strictly logical processes, I detected several false connectives in his words. Da Vinci’s story did not match up in a few tiny areas. He is a gifted liar. I am a superior listener, however.”

  “Wait just a minute. You can’t mean there wasn’t anything in the reactor area. How do you explain my hand?”

  “Your grenade destroyed it.”

  “Why didn’t it destroy the rest of me?”

  “A freak occurrence saved your life.”

  “No,” Jon said, sharply. “I’m not buying this. The octopoids existed. Something cleaned up the reactor area. I’m surprised the alien robots haven’t struck again while I’ve been out.”

  “That is another factor against your story,” she said. “Captain, these words give me no satisfaction other than in adhering to my oath to speak the truth. I wish you no emotional pain.”

  “I imagine you’ve told the sergeants your supposed truths.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  Jon shook his head ruefully.

  “I am not attempting to weaken your authority,” she said.

  “But your report has that potential.”

  She turned away.

  “Tell me more about Da Vinci,” Jon said. “How can you possibly think he engineered the whole episode? Wait a minute. I’m an idiot. The chief. Who pulled his face off like that?”

  Gloria looked up at the ceiling. “We found a power glove in the storage area you shot up. Can you guess what else?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “You shot the power glove with a gyroc round. Why did you attempt to destroy the evidence of a power glove, Captain?”

  “I didn’t,” Jon said weakly. “My shell just happened to hit it.”

  “I cannot accept the probabilities of that in good conscience.”

  “So you’re saying Da Vinci donned a power glove and ripped off the chief’s face? That doesn’t fit the Neptunian’s personality. If there aren’t any octopoids, why would Da Vinci do all this, anyway?”

  “Captain, Da Vinci is a troubled individual. He doesn’t have a classic case of dual personalities. It’s something different. Bast Banbeck eliminated much of the Prince of Ten World’s personality in Da Vinci. But an echo of that personality certainly remains. That echo troubles the corporal, and at times it causes him to take bizarre actions.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” Jon asked. “What happened wasn’t the work of a deranged mind, but of a powerful intellect.”

  “True. Da Vinci has such an intellect, but only when it’s under the disciplined control of the Prince of Ten Worlds. As himself, he lacks the internal guidance for true brilliance—well, other than flashes of brilliance that allowed him to create the wonder weapon before.”

  The wonder weapon had helped them originally conquer the cybership four months ago.

  “Why would I hallucinate about these octopoids?” Jon asked.

  “Do you truly wish to hear my analysis?”

  “Shoot.”

  She brushed her hair back, staring at him oddly.

  “That means, tell me,” Jon said.

  Gloria nodded before glancing at her tablet. “We fought an incredibly stressful battle several months ago. Beating the alien AI has scarred you.”

  “Winning scarred me?” Jon asked, sounding doubtful.

  “No, of course not,” she said, looking at him. “The stress of the fight impressed your subconscious. It stamped itself upon you. You realize that more of these cyberships might conceivably show up in the Solar System in the near future. You are intent upon defeating them. Yet, your subconscious knows it will be a terrible conflict. One that humanity might well lose. That has created the need for alien robotic enemies, ones you can destroy. Their defeat helps settle your growing…worries.”

  Jon sank back against the pillow and laughed. He shook his head and laughed harder. Finally, he wiped tears from his eyes.

  “I fail to see the humor in this,” she said.

  “Mentalist, your training has driven you to excess. This psychobabble is too much. I know what I saw.”

  “You were dying, Captain. The hard radiation and your coming demise—the dying mind can play strange tricks. I have no doubt you truly believe you saw the octopoids, as you put it.”

  “Hold it,” Jon said. “What did Da Vinci say about the octopoids?”

  “Why…nothing,” she said.

  “He’s the one who told me about them.”

  “He denies that.”

  Jon’s eyes narrowed, while suspicion bubbled in him. He reached up and wiped his face. He grinned at Gloria and sighed. Then a terrible thought surfaced. Maybe Gloria had gone under the brain-tap machine. Maybe she had alien thought-patterns. How else could she fail to understand…?

  “I see,” Gloria said, who had been watching him. “You now suspect me of subterfuge.”

  He looked at her, surprised.

  “I am a master at reading kinesics. What you call body language,” she said. “You exhibit obvious signs. I suggest that means you have become highly paranoid concerning me.”
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  He snorted. “I grew up highly paranoid. That helped me stay alive.”

  “You mean in the lower New London tunnels?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She examined her tablet, tapping it—

  “Gloria!”

  She regarded him.

  “The octopoid—the second one—injected me with a serum. It told me that would help combat the radiation poisoning. You said no one had heard about that. A quick med scan should show traces of the alien serum or not.”

  She nodded.

  “Get the med tech.”

  “I can make the scan,” she said.

  Jon stared her in the eyes. “You stay right where you are. Call the med tech. Give the instructions so I can hear them—”

  “I will do no such thing.”

  He’d slipped his new hand under the covers. Stretching the index finger, poking it up against the blanket, he aimed it at her.

  “I have a stitch-gun,” he said flatly. “If you don’t do exactly as I say, I’ll fire.”

  Gloria studied his eyes, possibly seeing his determination and paranoia against her. She finally tapped her tablet and asked the med tech to step into the room for a moment.

  -10-

  The thin tech looked up in shock. He’d pushed a med-scanner next to the captain, and finished the sensor readings.

  “The captain’s right,” the tech said. “There’s more than a trace here that I can’t explain.”

  “Could the element have aided him against radiation poisoning?” Gloria asked.

  The tech typed on the med-scanner. He studied the results and finally looked up again just as shocked as before.

  “This is incredible,” the tech said. He faced the captain. “This is revolutionary, sir. Whatever you took, you need to tell us. This is a breakthrough in radiation treatment.”

  Gloria took several steps back until her knees knocked against the edge of a chair. She sat down hard. She’d grown pale. She looked up at Jon, with her mouth open.

  “You can go,” Jon told the tech.

  “But the drug, sir…”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Jon said. “Just to be safe, do you have the trace element’s specifics?”

  The med tech slapped the med-scanner. “It’s in here, sir.”

  “Start studying that. See if you can duplicate it.”

  The tech snapped his fingers, pointing at the captain. Then, he wheeled the med-scanner to the side, popped out a memory disk and hurried away.

  “There’s only one reasonable conclusion,” Gloria said softly. “You told me the truth. Either that or you made an incredible medical breakthrough in your spare time. Alien octopoid robots make more sense.”

  “Thank you, I guess.”

  “But…” Her features stiffened. “Da Vinci might be even more cunning than I gave him credit for. He made those tiny slips in his story to misdirect me, knowing that I’d spot them.”

  “Is the Neptunian in the brig?”

  Gloria nodded. “Captain, the ship could be in terrible danger.”

  Jon had been thinking. “Despite the alien serum, I took an incredible amount of hard radiation. What was my condition when the Centurion found me?”

  “You were unconscious.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “No…” Gloria said. “The Centurion heard knocking. He donned a radiation suit and investigated, finding you lying on the other side. I clearly remember him commenting on your incredible stamina.”

  “The alien serum—”

  “Likely doesn’t explain your superhuman feat of walking to the hatch,” Gloria said, finishing his sentence. “Let me rephrase that. There is an easier explanation.”

  “The last octopoid dragged me to the hatch,” Jon said.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But that doesn’t make any sense either. The serum in your blood suggests you’ve told the truth about the robotic octopoids. The last one, the one taking the grenade blast, must have cleaned the area. The likeliest hiding location was in one of the reactor cores. The evidence of their existence must be long gone, burned and thrown away in the ship’s ejected ballast.”

  “That all fits except for one thing,” Jon said.

  Gloria nodded. “According to your story, the octopoid wanted to destroy you. Why would it then do the opposite? Why would a half-destroyed octopoid fail to cause an engine self-destruct? Why would it then clean up? It must have cleaned up afterward. First, it dragged you to the hatch and knocked on it to alert anyone outside. But that would mean your declared enemy, the octopoid, saved your life.”

  “That’s what I think,” Jon said.

  “Why would it do all that and not do what it set out to do: destroy the ship?”

  Jon shook his head. He had no idea.

  Gloria shot to her feet. She tapped on her tablet, studied it and then slapped it against her thigh. She began to pace with her head bent in thought.

  “The octopoid must have received new data,” Gloria said slowly. “This new data changed its directives, instructing it to leave the Nathan Graham intact and you alive. I can only conclude the octopoid did these things because…”

  Jon snapped his fingers. “The octopoid, or whatever drove the robot, believes it can deliver the former cybership back to its supposedly rightful owners.”

  “Maybe,” Gloria said.

  “What else could it be?”

  “The answer lies in understanding the reason why it dragged you to safety,” Gloria said. “It could have killed you, correct?”

  “Easily, if it was still—functioning,” Jon said.

  “You were going to say alive?”

  “It wasn’t alive. It was a machine.”

  “That’s another debate,” Gloria said. “In any case, why did the octopoid first inject you with the serum?”

  “I already told you.”

  “Say it again.”

  “It wanted to keep me alive so I could suffer more.”

  “There’s the answer,” Gloria said.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “The…driving mind behind the octopoid wants Captain Jon Hawkins to suffer. I submit that the octopoid realized it had insufficient strength to take control of the ship. It had enough ability to destroy the vessel, but something changed, making it believe the guiding intelligence could capture you later for greater and possibly extended agony.”

  “Do you hear yourself?”

  “I am a mentalist,” Gloria said as if stating a creed. “I follow clues to their logical conclusion. Logic has led me here. It fits the facts as we know them.”

  Jon blinked several times. “You spoke about a guiding intelligence. You don’t mean the last octopoid?”

  “By no means,” she said.

  “Something greater than the octopoid, something—” He stared at her. “The war’s not over.”

  “Precisely,” Gloria said. “We missed something. I don’t know what, but we missed it nonetheless.”

  “We’re going to have to increase ship security,” Jon said.

  “And search the ship more thoroughly for intruders,” Gloria said.

  “This is a vast vessel. The search is going to take a long time. We haven’t even walked through every area.”

  “Time,” she said. “I think this is about time. I think we have to travel faster.”

  “Is the engine fixed?”

  “Not yet,” she answered.

  Jon scowled. They had accelerated at a fraction of the warship’s potential. The first time they’d seen the cybership, it had decelerated at 70 gravities. Such acceleration would have allowed them to reach the Saturn Grav System much faster than ordinary. The old way, it took years to get from Neptune to Saturn. The Nathan Graham was currently able to accelerate more continuously than a human-built spaceship, but it was still at a fraction of what this thing should be able to do, had shown itself capable of under the AI.

  “How long will it take at our present rate until we reach Satur
n?” Jon asked.

  “A little more than a year,” Gloria said.

  “And you say time is what this is about?”

  The mentalist nodded.

  Jon sighed. He had to get better. They had to speed what repairs they could to the giant vessel. And they had to find the alien robot enemy hidden on the super-ship. They had to do all that without letting the octopoids pick them off one at a time.

  Jon lay back, forcing himself to rest so that he could heal faster. No one said saving the Solar System would be easy. He put his hands behind his head, trying to keep from thinking about the kinds of awful tortures the cyber enemy had in store for him if they lost.

  Part II

  DWARF PLANET: MAKEMAKE

  +6 Months, 16 Days

  -1-

  Data Specialist June Zen filled in for her best Mindy Smalls, who was sick with a virus. June’s friend was under quarantine in her quarters, had been for five days already. Her friend was in danger of losing her posting if she didn’t show up to work soon. That’s why June had agreed to fill in for her.

  June was working a morning shift in Makemake’s orbital-control station. It was down on the dwarf planet in the only city. Most of that city was under the methane/nitrogen ice, with deeper corridors carved out of the lower rock layer.

  As she sat at her cubicle, June was worried—not for her friend so much, but for herself.

  The station foreman was a large man with a lecherous eye. That might not have been so bad, but he was high in the ranks of Luxor Evans’s band. Luxor Evans was the muscleman, or “pusher,” of Makemake. In other cultures, that might have made Evans the police chief and army general rolled into one. Evans seemed to be getting ready for a takeover. He ruled a tough clan that snapped-to when he said boo, and he’d made open alliances with several smaller clans ready to pitch in with him.

  June rechecked her board for the eighth time in ten minutes. Every spaceship, boat and hauler was exactly where it should be.

  She studied their relative orbital positions, wondering why their locations made her jumpy. Or was it just knowing Big Bob should be showing up soon with their mojo?

  June sighed. She should have put on more this morning. She’d been in a hurry and had slipped into a silver jumpsuit. There was nothing inherently wrong with the suit. It fit. It was comfortable; and hot or cold it kept her skin temperature perfect.