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

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Bast has stopped breathing,” Jon said.

  “Medics!” Gloria shouted. “Over here. Quick.”

  Two medics sprinted to Jon.

  “No, no, check Bast,” he said.

  They went to work immediately on the alien. Maybe half a minute later, Bast took a shuddering breath.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Jon asked.

  “Too soon to say, sir,” a medic told him. “We need to get him to medical.”

  More flitters landed. These disgorged marines with helmets, vests and weapons. They started searching for more octopoids.

  “Better let me see that leg, sir,” a medic said.

  Jon nodded, enduring the painful ministration. Soon, a medic slapped a medikit to him. He felt the prick as it injected him with painkillers.

  He waited. Gloria waited with him. She kept looking around with concern, except she didn’t seem to be searching for anything. It finally dawned on him. She was wound tight inside.

  “Is there something you should tell me?” Jon asked.

  Gloria gave him a startled glance.

  “The marines are hunting octopoids,” Jon said. “But you’re still worried.”

  “I know why the octopoid struck today,” Gloria blurted.

  Jon raised an eyebrow. The painkillers were starting to take effect.

  The medic had told him his leg would be sore for a while, but he’d gotten lucky. The octopoid had fired steel-needle shots at first. Jon’s needle had gone clean through without hitting bone or artery.

  “Would you like me to ask you why the octopoid hit today?” Jon asked Gloria.

  “I think you need to hear and see it for yourself.”

  “Don’t hold me in suspense. Tell me.”

  “Can he walk?” Gloria asked the medic.

  “With help,” the man said.

  “Here,” Gloria told Jon, bending low.

  He could smell her perfume as she grabbed hold of his back.

  “Let me help you into my flyer,” she said.

  “Fine,” Jon said, heaving himself to his feet. “Show me. This sounds interesting.”

  ***

  A little less than twenty minutes later, Jon was in a special comm chamber in a heavily guarded area of the ship. Everyone was on high alert due to the octopoid attack. Gloria had suggested more might strike.

  “This has to do with the robot aliens, doesn’t it?” Jon said.

  “Are you comfortable?” Gloria asked him.

  He gave an abrupt nod, sitting in a chair before a screen. Two techs were at the far wall, making adjustments on a panel.

  “The first signal went to Neptune,” Gloria said.

  Jon had no idea what she meant by that.

  “Our contacts in the Neptune System told us about it and the sender,” Gloria added mysteriously. “They managed another transmission. We haven’t been able to pinpoint them yet, but we’re working on it.”

  “Enough with the subterfuge already,” Jon said. “What are you talking about?”

  Gloria motioned to the techs.

  The screen activated. It showed stars. Then a voice came on. It had a scratchy quality that might have been due to a bad transmission.

  “This is the Daisy Chain 4,” a man said. “If you check the registry, you’ll find this is an NSN Charon-class destroyer. How we came to own it doesn’t matter right now. My name is Walleye in case you’re interested. I’m from Makemake.”

  Gloria motioned to the techs.

  The transmission paused.

  “Makemake is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt,” Gloria said.

  Jon nodded.

  “The dwarf planet wasn’t that close to the cybership’s original path through the Solar System,” Gloria said. “The alien vessel did pass by Dannenberg 7 fairly closely, though.”

  Jon blinked several times. “You’re talking about the alien software transmission, aren’t you? The cybership passed close enough to awaken Dannenberg 7’s computers?”

  Gloria nodded. Then, she motioned to the techs. They restarted the screen.

  “This might be difficult for you to accept,” Walleye said in the scratchy transmission. “But this is a terrifyingly true story.”

  Walleye went on to talk about his escape from Makemake and the self-aware AI controlling the NSN destroyer. He also spoke about defeating the awakened AI.

  “We’re heading for Neptune,” Walleye finished. “We have something in our cargo-hold that might help against the alien robots. I think it’s important. To get it, though, someone is going to have come and get us. The robots have launched missiles at us. We destroyed the first two salvos. This one, though, will take us out in an estimated twelve days. If you want the alien artifact that may win this war, I suggest you come and get us if you can.”

  “He has to know that’s impossible,” Jon said.

  Gloria shrugged. She seemed to be deep in her mentalist mode, as if she mentally computed time and distances. “It’s impossible for others, but it may be possible for the Nathan Graham,” she said.

  “We haven’t finished repairs yet,” Jon said.

  “Did you hear the transmission? The alien robots are building something malign in the Kuiper Belt. They seem to have a major setup on Makemake and Dannenberg 7. What else have they captured that we don’t know about?”

  Jon shook his head.

  “We thought we’d killed the aliens by destroying the cybership brain core and its captured spaceships,” Gloria said. “We obviously didn’t kill all the aliens, though. They’re still in the Solar System. Worse, they’ve had more than three years to construct something.”

  “Like what?” Jon asked.

  “Exactly,” Gloria said. “What’s out in the Kuiper Belt?”

  “You’re not suggesting a new cybership?”

  “I’m not,” Gloria said. “But you just did. Why is that?”

  Jon scowled. “That doesn’t make sense. We’ve been here for years repairing our cybership. Look how little we’ve gotten done in that time. And we have an intact ship and a highly productive planetary system. You can’t imagine the AIs have anything remotely comparable to the Saturn System industrial base on Makemake.”

  Gloria shook her head as if Jon was missing the obvious.

  “What?” he said.

  “They’re aliens.”

  “So what?”

  The mentalist sighed. “We have the only alien vessel in the Solar System, and it has made us invincible. Think about that for a moment. We Earthers don’t make one hundred-kilometer starships. The AIs do. That implies the AIs have greater manufacturing capabilities than we do.”

  “No doubt,” Jon said. “In their home star systems. We’re talking about Makemake. They can’t possess half or even a quarter of the industrial base that the Neptune System used to have.”

  “You’re still not seeing the possibilities,” Gloria said. “We’re dealing with an advanced computer enemy. Who knows if it has advanced technology allowing it to create a setup with ten times, maybe a hundred or a thousand times our productivity?”

  “Wouldn’t we have found evidence of that on the cybership?” Jon asked.

  Gloria laughed. “We’ve mapped the cybership. But you and I both know we still don’t understand a fraction of the vessel’s full potential.”

  “You’re overwrought.”

  “No,” Gloria said. “I know I’m not, because the octopoid struck today. What did it attempt to do? Why, to kill you, Jon Hawkins. I suggest it did this in order to buy the robots on Makemake time to eliminate Walleye’s destroyer. The aliens must have intercepted the destroyer’s comm transmissions. The robots will surely want to destroy the alien computing cube before we can get our hands on it.”

  “You think this cube is that important?”

  “The original brain core came within a hair’s breadth of defeating us. It would have continued in-system, changing every computer it could into a human-murdering entity. Don’t you see? If we give the robots enough t
ime, maybe they’ll build stealth ships that can broadcast the computer-awakening program everywhere. The brain core did it to this NSN destroyer. It left robots in the Kuiper Belt. I’d guess as backup.” Gloria shrugged. “Maybe the Makemake robots are building a hyperspace gate to help bring in more cyberships faster.”

  “I’ve never heard of a hyperspace gate,” Jon said.

  “Neither have I. I’m freebasing ideas. The alien AIs are functioning in the Solar System. That’s the point. We have to reach Walleye and save him. We need that computing cube so we can figure out more.”

  “How far away is he again?”

  Gloria shook her head. “We don’t know his exact coordinates yet. We’re trying to locate him and talk to him directly. We should get ready to leave, though.”

  “But…” Jon trailed off. “There’s so much to do still. The Saturnians need time to finish constructing their first warships.”

  “What if we don’t have time?” Gloria asked. “What if we need to act now, but we don’t?”

  Jon nodded slowly. Walleye’s message sounded damn ominous all right. The alien AIs weren’t dead yet. He didn’t want to fight them again so soon. But if they were building up in Makemake and Dannenberg 7…the sooner they could take out the alien AIs, the better.

  -5-

  Jon had commissioned a committee to study the best way to leave the Saturn System. The idea was to leave behind a self-sustaining planetary system that could repeal anything the Solar League could send at them.

  A new Saturn System governing body had formed. They had taxed the cloud cities, the orbiting stations and moon domes. With those taxes, they paid workers to construct orbital factories to produce warships.

  The bigger the warship, the longer it took to finish construction. Battleships and motherships often took three to five years to complete. Unfortunately for the governing body, the cybership took precedence over everything. That meant the Saturn System was years behind where they wanted to be in terms of military self-sufficiency.

  The people of Saturn System knew what the Solar League would do if they reconquered here. That helped motivate lots of people. It scared others. When the GSB swept through again, the frightened people wanted a clean, backup-able story of their noninvolvement.

  Jon was in a comm station before a screen. He was speaking to the Saturn System Prime Minister, Caracalla Kalvin.

  “This is outrageous,” PM Kalvin said. He was a tidy man with white hair and a deeply tanned complexion. He wore a gold chain and had ties to New London’s Outfit through marriage. Caracalla Kalvin was half mobster and half high-grade industrialist. He controlled the most gunmen and owned the bulk of the new orbital factories. That meant he controlled most of the building of warships.

  Jon had a brief on PM Kalvin. The white-haired man was unscrupulous and Machiavellian, a ruthless intriguer with blood on his hands and iron determination to come up on top of the new Saturn System. That he would do everything to survive the Solar League was deemed a good thing.

  “I don’t believe what you’re telling me,” Kalvin said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. “You can’t leave without even telling us what this is about.”

  “If I tell you, the Solar League’s Chief Arbiter will know in six hours or less.”

  “I resent that.”

  “No you don’t,” Jon said. “You know this is a war for survival. Well, I have to leave in order for us all to survive.”

  PM Kalvin grew thoughtful. “Are you talking about the aliens?”

  Jon said nothing.

  PM Kalvin looked away, nodding after a moment. “You’re just pulling up stakes and taking off?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s going to create chaos throughout the entire Saturn System.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re still—forget it. I already know the answer. Okay. It is what it is. I’ll adjust.”

  A fierce grin slid onto the Prime Minister’s handsome features. Maybe he thought how he’d run things differently now that he would be totally in charge. A moment later, he appeared gloomy again. Maybe he realized his odds of staying in power utterly depended on Jon and his cybership.

  “How long is your mysterious mission going to take?” Kalvin asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if the Solar League invades while you’re gone?”

  “Stop them.”

  The Prime Minister stared at Jon for a time. “You expect me to back you up next time you show up for more repairs?”

  “If you want to keep yourself free from the Solar League, I do,” Jon said.

  “Maybe the Solar League will make me a deal I can’t reasonably refuse.”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “You’re not going to threaten me?” Kalvin asked.

  Jon shook his head.

  The Prime Minister pinched his lower lip. “You take care, Hawkins. You have balls. I have to admit that. And you’re one of us. This is going to be a royal screw up. But maybe I always knew it would come to this. Maybe that’s why you never interfered with how I did business.”

  “I want to win,” Jon said.

  “Yeah. Me too. Good luck, Captain. Whatever it is you’re doing, I hope you get lucky.”

  “No hard feelings?” Jon asked, knowing it was a mistake as he said it. He couldn’t help it though.

  Caracalla Kalvin grinned at him and cut the connection.

  ***

  The Saturn System Prime Minister had spoken about the coming chaos. Aboard the Nathan Graham, that chaos had already struck. Everything seemed to be going wrong at once.

  Orders crisscrossed each other. Flitters raced through the corridors. Marines hurried to one location and had sergeants roar orders to go back where they had started. Workers raced to hangar bays to get onto the space scaffolding to get off the cybership before it left. Others raced away in shuttles to get off the scaffolding before the mighty vessel demolished it and possibly killed thousands.

  The chaos had a single source. The regiment had to leave as fast as possible so the ship could begin accelerating for the Kuiper Belt. Twelve days, this Walleye had said. There was no way an ordinary spaceship could reach that far in twelve weeks or even twelve months. It was flat impossible.

  Gloria had estimated the NSN destroyer to be halfway between Makemake and the Neptune System. Neptune was roughly 30 AU from the Sun. Makemake was 49 AU away. Saturn was 9.5 AU from the Sun. None of that took into account a planet’s present position in its orbital path and where that would be in relation to another planet in its orbital path. Luckily, the halfway point between Makemake and the Neptune System was closer to Saturn rather than farther—it could have been on the other side of the Sun, which would have made everything impossible.

  In any case, if the destroyer was in the general area where Gloria assumed it would be, it was approximately 50 AU away from the Nathan Graham, taking into account the different orbital positions of the two ships.

  Fifty AU was farther than the Sun to Neptune. It was a little bit more than the Sun to Makemake. Such a journey usually took four to five years, if it took place at all.

  “Twelve days,” Jon muttered. “We’re supposed to do this in twelve days.” He was on the bridge in the center of the Nathan Graham. He kept pacing from one end of the chamber to the other.

  The techs watched him sidelong. Jon knew he was making the crew nervous. He couldn’t help it. He was nervous. Was he doing the right thing? He was throwing away—

  Jon spun around. “Where’s the mentalist?”

  “She’s in the comm center, sir,” a tech said.

  “Bast Banbeck?” he asked.

  “In the med center,” the same tech said.

  “Can Banbeck move?”

  “Would you like me to check, sir?”

  “Do it,” Jon said.

  The tech made an inquiry over the comm and soon said, “Bast Banbeck is mobile, sir. But the medic says the Sacerdote is feeling light-headed from the
drugs they gave him.”

  Jon rubbed his fingertips together. He couldn’t take the nervousness. He hated the idea of making the wrong choice.

  “Call them both,” Jon said. “Tell them to meet me in my ready room in five minutes.”

  “It might take the Sacerdote a little longer to get there, sir.”

  “Tell them,” Jon shouted. “I have to speak with them.”

  -6-

  Jon paced around the conference table in the ready room. The door swished open and Gloria entered.

  “You needed to see me?” she asked.

  Jon pointed at a chair.

  She sat, looking up at him.

  Jon continued to pace.

  A half minute passed. “Captain,” Gloria said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Soon…” Jon said.

  He paced. She waited. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but Jon scowled and she closed it again.

  Seven minutes later, the door swished open again. The giant Sacerdote hobbled into the ready room, moving gingerly. Bast sat down carefully at the nearest chair. Slowly, he looked up. He seemed withdrawn and tired, with bags under his eyes.

  Jon had stopped pacing. He could taste the fear in his mouth. If he was making the wrong decision—

  “Gloria, Bast, thanks for coming,” he said. “I’m torn inside. I know we have to try this, but I keep thinking about the cost. The only way we’re going to get close to saving this Walleye and his supposed alien cube is to let the Nathan Graham rip. That means we’re going to have to accelerate 70 gravities for a time.”

  Gloria cleared her throat.

  “What?” asked Jon.

  “We’ll have to do it for more than just a time,” she said.

  “Awesome, just awesome,” Jon said. “So that makes this even more dangerous than I’ve been thinking.”

  “No,” Gloria said. “We originally saw the cybership decelerating at 75 gravities. If the vessel did it once—”

  “Gloria,” Jon said, interrupting. “We saw the cybership doing so when it was in prime condition. We shot it up good since then. A lot of the interior equipment has been wrecked. The octopoids seemed to have damaged areas, as well. We don’t know if we’ve properly repaired the matter/antimatter core. Can this ship even generate the power to accelerate at 70 gravities? Do the gravity controls still work well enough to shield us from such massive strain? We’re taking a grim risk destroying the space scaffolding and possibly the Saturn System’s goodwill, and we’re doing all that on a wild hope.