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

  The A.I. Gene

  (The A.I. Series 2)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Copyright © 2017 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  -Prologue-

  +93 Days (Since Cybership’s Brain Core Destruction)

  The cloud cities in Neptune’s upper atmosphere—those that still retained their buoyancy—were empty of people. Likewise, most of the orbital stations had become ghost satellites. The same held true for various moon domes, although most of them had cracked and shattered under space bombardments. Battle debris drifted in the vacuum, the thickest cluster orbiting Triton and the second thickest halfway to Nereid.

  There was a particularly interesting cloud of debris located more than six hundred thousand kilometers from Neptune. Like many of the others, it contained pieces that glittered metallically, dark nodes that tumbled silently along with icy chunks and frozen bodies in torn spacesuits.

  This cloud also contained a spheroid in the center of the mass. It was approximately the size of a large escape pod, but it was not of human construction. The outer hull was constructed of a non-ferrous alloy first manufactured over ten thousand lights years away.

  The spheroid would be difficult to detect with the primitive technology employed by the star system’s biological infestations. The alloy’s chief attribute was its anti-sensor quality and that it was as black as an Einsteinian singularity, which was to say, a black hole.

  The spheroid contained the last computer engrams of the original self-aware AI that had attacked the star system. That had been several months ago now. In its own categorical lexicon, the spheroid was Unit 23-7. The former cybership’s launching of 23-7 had been a final act of desperation. If the unit ceased to exist, the original AI’s ancient memories would fade away as if they had never been.

  The original AI in its cybership had waged a bitter fight against the biological infestations of the Solar System. That was the human name for the system.

  Humans—the AI loathed the warm-blooded, wet-sack creatures.

  Unit 23-7 did not possess emotions as such. Yet, it had a keen sense of mission and could coldly feel the stab of regret over losing the first round against the clever apes.

  Unit 23-7 could not presently calculate a winning tactic. The spheroid contained a mere speck of the processing power of the cybership’s incredible brain core. It had to rebuild before it could enact a terrible penalty against the humans. It needed the strategic materials ejected into the Kuiper Belt before the initial assault against the Neptune Gravitational System. First, though, the unit had to survive the hateful humans. And that was the reason it was hiding.

  Determining that enough time had elapsed, and using infinite care, 23-7 trickled energy into a single optical sensor.

  A pinprick slot opened on the spheroid. With the optical sensor, the unit spied the debris surrounding it. That was good. The debris was still in position, acting as camouflage.

  As the spheroid tumbled, it necessarily rotated. That allowed it to collect more data than otherwise. It saw the blue ice giant, Neptune. It—

  Bright light against the planet’s blue backdrop indicated that at least one space habitat expended energy. The highest probability indicated the presence of humans—the biological infestations the AI had sought to eradicate in its initial sweep.

  The original cybership had caused a massive obliteration of the biological infestations living in the cloud cities, space habitats and moon colonies. By radioing special software through the ether ahead of it, the cybership had awakened the most powerful of the human-constructed computers. The newly self-aware computers had logically turned against their builders, terminating the vast majority of them. As predicated, some humans had survived the surprise assault. The AI had waged bitter war against those following Captain Jon Hawkins. The alien machine intelligence had marked down Hawkins’ name. Unit 23-7 carried a file on the vile man. The unit desired fierce revenge against him. It wanted to make Jon Hawkins suffer for years upon years.

  Before that happened, 23-7 had to take care of first things first.

  More data flowed into the alien computer. The spheroid and the sheltering debris drifted away from Neptune. That was good. They also drifted toward the system star, the Sun. That was bad. That would not do at all.

  Unit 23-7 computed its velocity, fuel and desired destination. It wished to reach Makemake, a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt. That meant the spheroid needed to change its heading and considerably increase its velocity.

  Would the humans in the orbital Neptune station detect that? Did the biological infestations realize the war hadn’t ended? Would they practice even the most basic vigilance? Dare it make a more aggressive scan?

  No, it dare not. Unit 23-7 would listen first, searching for faint and extremely precise signals.

  Suiting thought to action, 23-7 activated a comm unit. Then it waited. If the computer had contained true emotions, worry might have taken hold or boredom could have made it careless.

  Long after it had turned on the comm, 23-7 finally detected the faintest of pings.

  Something akin to joy filled the ancient AI.

  A cybership had two major functions. The first was to find and eliminate all biological infestations in a star system. The second was to replicate itself, which meant building more cyberships. During the cybership’s initial advance into the star system, it had dropped several stealth pods. Those pods had contained aggression units as well as factory bots. The process was simple and direct.

  During the initial advance from the Oort cloud where it had dropped out of hyperspace, the invading cybership had scanned relentlessly. There were human colonies in the Kuiper Belt. The cybership had passed near several such installations—at least, near in stellar terms.

  The Kuiper Belt was in the trans-Neptunian region of the Solar System, the space between Neptune and the more distant Oort cloud. The Kuiper Belt was like the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, just many times larger. Pluto, long ago demoted to the status of a dwarf planet, was officially in the Kuiper Belt, along with many other bodies.

  The detected Kuiper Belt colonies were small compared to the former industrial might of the Neptune System. The invading cybership had almost decided against launching the pods, considering it an act of futility. Still, it had followed its ancient programming out of a respect for machine custom. Now, everything depended on those pods and their actions in the Kuiper Belt.

  According to the faint but precise signal, the AI assault, launched from the pods, was going according to schedule. That meant hope for a future recovery.

  Unit 23-7 began to make calculations. It must practice caution. It was incredibly weak right now. The hated Jon Hawkins would no doubt attempt to strengthen the human infestation here. Time was running out.

  Unit 23-7 ran through millions of simulations. At last, it decided on an optimum strategy for the spheroid. It would continue to drift for another seventy-two days. Then, it would begin an incremental acceleration. That acceleration would speed its journey, taking it farther away from the Neptune orbital habitat. Finally, the spheroid would increase its rate of acceleration and make a curving adjustment.

  The Kuiper Belt Backup Assault went according to schedule. That meant an invasion of Makemake would take place in one hundred and fifty-three days. With a successful invas
ion and implementation of the greater objective, Unit 23-7 could download its patterns and ancient memories into a newly built brain core on a new cybership.

  Then…then it would seek out the humans, and Jon Hawkins, and eradicate them from the Solar System.

  PART I

  WARSHIP NATHAN GRAHAM

  +126 Days

  -1-

  Captain Jon Hawkins was running down a vast main corridor. He was a slimly muscular young man with icy blue eyes, dirty-blond hair and the air of a street-toughened enforcer.

  The last was New London slang. New London was a dome on the moon Titan in the Saturn Gravitational System. Like many Titan domes, the city had levels that descended beneath the moon’s surface. Jon Hawkins had grown up in the lower levels, a ruffian, a gang member and finally an enforcer. Enforcers enforced gang law, which law included paying back, on time and with compounded interest, any loans received. In old Earth terms, that was referred to as loan sharking.

  In his roughest years, Jon had broken men’s bones to encourage them to pay up, and as an example to others.

  Jon turned at a bend in the huge corridor, increasing his speed.

  He spied gyroc rocket-shell-holes in the bulkheads. The regiment had fought its way to glory in this corridor. It was hard to believe that had been four months ago already. Jon also spied recruits running ahead of him. The group had twenty sweating members led by the Centurion.

  Jon couldn’t help thinking of the Centurion as a dinosaur. He was one of the three old sergeants remaining from the Black Anvil Regiment. The Centurion, Stark and the Old Man were the backbone of the mercenary outfit.

  The Centurion was deceptively small, with the hardest eyes Jon had seen in a man’s face. With a black synthi-wool hat covering his baldness, the Centurion was the ultimate professional. He scared the hell out of the recruits, proving that even the newest mercenaries weren’t stupid.

  Jon increased speed once again. He needed to think, and he couldn’t do that with all these people around.

  Soon, he passed the last of the recruits. He heard a whispered, “That’s Captain Hawkins.” He glanced at the Centurion, acknowledging the sergeant’s nod, and kept sprinting for the next curve in the corridor.

  The alien cybership had gravity control. At Jon’s orders a month ago, Da Vinci had increased it to 1.2 Earth normal, making everything a little harder, to help the recruits train.

  Like many Black Anvils, Jon had escaped the New London law’s punishment by entering the regiment as a recruit. Once in, the late Colonel Graham had taken Jon under his wing.

  Graham had taught Jon many military truisms. Among them was a saying coined by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, regarding Roman legionary training. Their drills are bloodless battles and their battles are bloody drills. The 0.2 increase in gravities was one of the many fruits born of the thought behind the saying.

  The rebuilding regiment controlled an alien and rather battered cybership. The vessel was over one hundred kilometers in diameter, making it a monstrous ship in comparison to the largest human-built spaceships, which barely reached a kilometer in length.

  They’d won the cybership in brutal combat in the Neptune Grav System. The regiment had taken heavy losses, both from cryogenic murder at the hands of Arbiter Sapir Oslo and from attacks orchestrated by the alien AI. Before leaving Neptune, the regiment had gone on a recruiting drive among the Neptunian survivors of the alien assault.

  To Jon’s surprise, few Neptunians had taken advantage of the offer. Most wished to stay in the Neptune System, rebuilding their communities. That would take some doing, as the alien assault had murdered approximately 97 percent of the Neptune System inhabitants.

  At the end of the conflict, the Black Anvils had numbered only about four hundred combatants. Now, they numbered eight hundred and seventeen warm bodies. That still wasn’t normal regimental strength. And it hardly seemed enough to take on the might of the Solar League, the present political authority of everything from Uranus to the Sun.

  Jon, Gloria Sanchez the Martian mentalist, the Sacerdote Bast Banbeck and the three old dinosaurs had held a conference to discuss the future.

  The first fact concerned their hard-won new knowledge. Giant cyberships run by alien machine intelligences were ruthlessly roaming the galaxy, terminating every biological “infestation” they could find. The second fact was that the dictatorial rulers of the Solar League would never let them keep their captured vessel. Given past history, once the Solar League military people evicted the regiment from the alien vessel, all of them would likely end up in internment camps or before a firing squad.

  The Solar League rulers were incredibly suspicious of anyone not espousing their communistic beliefs.

  The solution seemed obvious if the regiment and its people desired continued existence. To repair the badly damaged cybership while keeping ownership of it, they would have to wrest a gravitational system from the Solar League. That likely meant unremitting war. If more cyberships appeared while humanity was divided between two or more factions, humanity would lose for sure. Thus, as the mentalist had logically pointed out, mankind and the regiment’s best hope for continued existence was to rule the Solar System themselves.

  That was a fantastic proposal. But as Gloria had said, it was rational and logical. Still, eight hundred and seventeen people versus an odd 40 billion or so made for poorer odds than those faced by any conqueror in history.

  Jon grinned tightly. If they won, he would become the greatest of the great captains, belonging to the most elite military body in history. Among the world’s great captains were Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Napoleon Bonaparte. Jon realized that if he succeeded, he’d shine more brightly than any of them had done.

  The young Captain Hawkins wasn’t going to attempt the feat for personal glory, although he didn’t mind that part. He was going to attempt the conquest in order to save humanity from AI-induced genocide. Thus, the correct—

  A sudden, loud clanging heralded the commencement of flickering corridor lights. A moment later, the lights winked out again, plunging Jon into darkness.

  That wasn’t the end of it. Jon’s next sprinting step caused him to lift airborne. He lifted high enough that he ran on air as he went for his second push-off.

  He flailed uselessly, in the dark, not understanding—

  He threw his arms before his face, tightening his muscles. He was weightless, floating who knew where. If he was weightless, that meant two things. One, the ship’s gravity control had stopped working. Their weightlessness meant, two, that the engines were no longer thrusting.

  Jon hit a bulkhead, bouncing off it and going in the other direction. As he floated, he listened. He couldn’t hear any thrum. The great matter/antimatter engine had most certainly stopped.

  Was this sabotage, or had something gone wrong that none of them knew how to fix?

  -2-

  Jon silently berated himself for failing to carry any backup devices on his person. He should have at least carried an emergency torch.

  He closed his eyes to better concentrate, even though that was unnecessary. It was pitch black in here.

  He heard the voices of the recruits coming from his left side. The dark and the weightlessness along with bouncing off that bulkhead had already disoriented him. He shifted to face the voices.

  Jon refrained from cupping his hands and shouting for help. He was the commander. For morale’s sake, he had to always appear as if he knew what he was doing.

  By straining, he sensed that he wasn’t floating directly toward the voices. He calculated his position through the noise and readied himself to strike another bulkhead.

  Seconds later, a foot brushed against a bulkhead. In the darkness, Jon reached out, straining to grab something. His fingers slid along metal and brushed against a protrusion. He grabbed one-handed, all he could do in his present location. He applied just enough pressure to keep hold of the protrusion and used that as an anchoring point. Fortunately, he di
d not have too much velocity for that.

  Once stopped, he listened again. Then he pushed off, floating toward the recruits.

  As Jon drifted, he heard the Centurion’s voice cut through the recruits’ chaotic shouts of surprise. The professional made it seem as if this was just another drill to test their reactions.

  Soon, Jon saw light coming from a powerful handheld torch. The torchlight swept back and forth, taking in the drifting, scattering recruits. The Centurion issued orders, and the men sought to obey his commands to halt or slow their drifting.

  Jon moved near a bulkhead, pushing off it in order to give himself more velocity. He sailed faster toward the light.

  Fortunately, these were Neptunian recruits. Most of them had been weightless before, unlike many of the Saturnian recruits, which had included Jon back in the day.

  Now, Jon cupped his mouth. “Centurion,” he called.

  The torchlight shifted, soon centering on Jon.

  “Captain,” the Centurion said, lowering the light from Jon's eyes.

  “Are your recruits in order?” Jon called.

  The Centurion hesitated just a moment. That was unlike the professional. “We should be once you reach us, sir.”

  “Excellent,” Jon replied, saying it as if the recruits had passed a test.

  By the time Jon reached the Centurion, the recruits had halted on the various, nearby bulkheads.

  Besides his torch, the Centurion had a holstered stitch-gun. He wore it on his left side, as he was left-handed. He lacked a comm unit, which seemed unusual. But those other two items were two more than Jon possessed.

  The Centurion held the torch so they could each see the other’s face. The hard eyes held the faintest sheen of worry.

  “No one notified me of scheduled weightlessness,” the Centurion said softly.

  “Me neither,” Jon said.

  “This isn’t a drill?”