A.I. Battle Fleet (The A.I. Series Book 5) Read online

  SF Books by Vaughn Heppner

  LOST STARSHIP SERIES:

  The Lost Starship

  The Lost Command

  The Lost Destroyer

  The Lost Colony

  The Lost Patrol

  The Lost Planet

  The Lost Earth

  The Lost Artifact

  THE A.I. SERIES:

  A.I. Destroyer

  The A.I. Gene

  A.I. Assault

  A.I. Battle Station

  A.I. Battle Fleet

  EXTINCTION WARS SERIES:

  Assault Troopers

  Planet Strike

  Star Viking

  Fortress Earth

  Visit VaughnHeppner.com for more information

  A.I. Battle Fleet

  (The A.I. Series 5)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Copyright © 2018 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.

  PART I

  THE PREY

  -1-

  The space marine didn’t know he was an assassin. As far as he was concerned, his name was Harris Dan and he’d been born on Io in the Jupiter System, migrated to the Saturn System in his twenties and become a mercenary in one of the regiments there.

  Harris Dan was a rangy individual with a shock of straw-colored hair, a bushy mustache and a gangly way of walking.

  He was presently working in a massive hangar bay on a lifter, moving huge metallic squares so the foreman-slash-sergeant could see what in the heck was in the back. The hangar bay was part of a recently captured AI battle station 500 kilometers in diameter. It guarded a factory planet 1.5 times the size of Earth in the alien Allamu System.

  Captain Jon Hawkins and company had captured the station six and half weeks ago. Harris Dan had been part of the Solar Freedom Force flotilla of pirated cyberships. Each of the gigantic vessels had been one hundred kilometers in diameter, formerly owned by genocidal AIs and taken in combat by desperate humans.

  In the hangar bay, Harris moved his lifter, used the forklift to set down a five-ton metallic square, backed up, swiveled the machine and drove to more of the same.

  At that point, everything changed for him. He had no idea that his name wasn’t really Harris Dan or that he hadn’t actually been born in the Jupiter system. What he did know was that Jon Hawkins himself was walking through the hangar bay. Just as importantly, Hawkins was alone, studying a computer tablet.

  The captain was medium-sized, lean and had a scarred face with short blond hair and what many called crazy blue eyes. He had a gun riding on his hip in a holster, a combat knife on the other side and wore heavy boots.

  The space marine stopped his lifter and slid down from his perch, landing with both feet on the deck floor.

  Harris was the best knife-fighter in his squad. He was a loner, a hard worker, but someone the others didn’t kid too often. Harris was too serious most of the time, with a focused way about everything he did. On two different occasions, he had gone too far, hurting civilians so badly back in the day that the others had ended up shooting the poor souls to put them out of their misery.

  As Harris tracked Jon Hawkins with his eyes, a psychological change came over the man. Layers of personality peeled away from Harris. It left a bitter man with a terrible grudge, who would do anything to pay back the author of his pain. There was something else. Harris remembered sitting in a chair…it had been worse than that. Someone had strapped him into the chair and set weird spinning devices in front of his eyes. Colors and sounds had swirled around him, and anger had seemed to drill deep into his personality. In the chair, Harris had learned to hate Jon Hawkins.

  “I must kill him,” Harris muttered under his breath.

  This was, in fact, the first time that Harris had seen Hawkins alone. That had been the trigger to this strange transformation.

  The rangy space marine blinked, looked around and cataloged the other workers in the vast hangar bay. The place was like an overturned anthill. Marines and techs worked everywhere.

  “Gotta do this right,” he whispered.

  Harris shoved his hands in his pockets and began sauntering on an intercept course toward the captain. He moved nonchalantly, bobbing his head as if he was on the basketball court, fondling a gravity-assisted blade in his front pocket. As he fondled it, Harris had an unreasoning worry. If someone saw him, would the person think he was fiddling with his dick?

  Harris didn’t like the question; didn’t like the insinuation that went with it. People might laugh at him. He hated for anyone to laugh at him.

  Even though Harris knew it was a risk, he took the gravity-assisted blade out of his pocket. The blade was in the handle. Once he flicked a little knob, the knife would spring out and lock into position. He would stab Mr. Glory Hound in the throat. He would get revenge on the man who had…who had…

  Harris frowned. What had Hawkins done to him again?

  Harris winced as he thought about that. The exact wrong didn’t matter. Hawkins had brought him pain once as he, Harris, had been strapped to a chair.

  Boy, oh, boy, would everyone be surprised when he killed Mr. High and Mighty. Harris had to suck his lips inward to keep from braying with laughter.

  A strange light seemed to snap on in Harris’ eyes. His pace increased, and nervous energy surged through his body.

  He was the toughest member of his squad, no doubt there. No one liked messing with him, but man alive, he was going to mess with the capitalist exploiter so bad that no one would recognize Hawkins once he was through with him.

  The strange thought brought a pause to Harris’s step. Did something about that alert Hawkins?

  The captain lowered the tablet as Harris stopped—the two men were six meters apart. Jon looked at Harris. Their eyes met. The captain tilted his head. It almost seemed as if Hawkins was about to ask a question.

  Harris brought his right hand down, used his thumb to flick the knob so the blade swished out and clicked into place. By that time, the rangy space marine had already started the assault, crossing the short distance between them. He saw the surprise on Hawkins’ face, saw the man’s frozenness.

  Yeah, baby, this was going to be perfect.

  Harris stabbed like a fencer, the knifepoint flashing at the soft and vulnerable throat.

  That’s when Hawkins seemed to come alive like coiled energy. It was uncanny. The gleaming tip moved in for the throaty softness, and Jon’s right hand moved up with cobra-like speed. The captain shifted, jerking his throat out of the knife’s path. The captain’s palm knocked Harris’s wrist, causing both hand and knife to soar upward.

  By that time, Harris had rushed past the captain. He put on the brakes and whirled around fast. But the captain had spun, too, taking a combat stance.

  “Not this time,” Harris hissed.

  Workers shouted in the background.

  The captain backpedaled. He was light on his feet. Harris shouted as he kept charging. As Jon backpedaled, he drew the gun on hip.

  Harris was waiting for the captain to tell him to drop the knife. He wasn’t going to drop it. He was going to reach the unlucky bastard before—

  Boom!

  The gun roared, and Harris felt a massive force knock his right leg out from under him. He couldn’t
help himself, but crashed against the floor. He tried to hold onto the knife, but it went skittering away as his hand slammed against the deck.

  “No,” Harris moaned. He tried to crawl after the knife. He needed it. His leg—his knee, to be exact—exploded with agony.

  “Who are you?” the captain asked. “Why do you want to kill me?”

  Harris looked up at the captain. Rage at his failure enveloped the space marine. He remembered one last instruction. If he failed—Harris shoved his left hand into a pocket. He had a pill that would bring instant death once he swallowed it.

  Before Harris could do or think more, the captain used one of his heavy boots and kicked him hard in the head. That was the last thing Harris Dan remembered.

  -2-

  Gloria Sanchez walked around the rangy space marine known as Corporal Harris Dan, originally from Io in the Jupiter System, according to his bio.

  The corporal was unconscious on a table with medical monitors attached to his arms, chest and shaved head. The med team had shaved his scalp to better attach various devices. Monitors and machines presently cataloged the corporal’s bodily and mental functions.

  Gloria was a small mentalist from Mars. She was petite, dark-haired and considered exceptionally pretty, particularly by Captain Hawkins. They had been together since being trapped on the SLN Battleship Leonid Brezhnev in the Neptune System, facing the first AI cybership to enter the Solar System. Jon had convinced the rest of them to storm the alien vessel, beginning the fight for continued human existence.

  Gloria wore a tan uniform and studied a tablet as she considered the situation.

  It didn’t take a mentalist to realize who must have sent Harris Dan. That would be the Solar League, controlled by the Social Dynamists on Earth. The method had their signature style. The arbiters of the GSB—Government Security Bureau—loved sending personality scrubbed, mind-conditioned killers into what they considered enemy-controlled strongholds. The killers were time bombs waiting to assassinate.

  Gloria tapped the tablet, inputting more data into the logic processor.

  A Martian mentalist was a unique individual, someone with a high-IQ who had been rigorously trained in logical thought. That was what Gloria was doing now, trying to determine what the assassination attempt implied.

  The Solar League controlled the mines on Mercury, terraformed Venus and Earth. Not so long ago, they had been the dominant military power in the Solar System. Since Jon’s spectacular feat of capturing the first cybership, the military balance had shifted decidedly in his favor.

  Yes. That was the point. Hawkins was the key individual in the battle for continued human existence. That seemed strange at first blush. Jon had been born in New London on the moon Titan that orbited Saturn. He’d been something called a dome rat, a guttersnipe punk in the lower-level gangs of the underground city. He had killed the wrong person, a police officer, she believed. Jon had been on death row when a mercenary recruiter from the Black Anvil Regiment had purchased him. There, under the tutelage of Colonel Nathan Graham, Jon had begun his study of military history and theory.

  Jon had the fierce instincts of a gang enforcer and the military brilliance of a young Alexander the Great, one of the most offensive-minded of the great captains of Earth history.

  So far, Jon had led them from one success to another. Humanity owned the Allamu System battle station and factory planet. Jon had four cyberships and three more on the way. Now, all they had to do was defeat the vast AI Dominion, which owned limitless numbers of one-hundred-kilometer warships and who knew what else.

  One would think the rest of humanity would want to help in that, but the Social Dynamists on Earth wanted to kill their great hope because they believed in social justice, that the masses on Earth should suck on the tit of hard labor and inventiveness of the Solar System’s Outer Planets and Kuiper Belt. The problem was that Jon couldn’t simply ignore the Social Dynamists, as the vast majority of humanity lived on Earth. If the rest of them were going to man enough cyberships, they needed more people, a lot more people, and that meant securing Earth.

  Gloria added yet more data into her tablet, pressed a tab and examined what others would surely have considered as strange symbols. She stared fixedly at the symbols for some time.

  “This is indeed troubling,” she whispered to herself.

  Lowering the tablet, Gloria stepped up to the med table, examining the unconscious space marine. Pursing her lips, Gloria came to a swift conclusion.

  The Expeditionary Force did not possess the needed tools to probe the assassin’s mind quickly enough. The GSB were experts at that sort of maneuver. The rest of them lacked the tools and more importantly, the expertise.

  “Maybe we lack the tools,” Gloria whispered. “But maybe we don’t.”

  She had an idea. She shoved the tablet into a holder on her belt, turned around smartly and headed for the exit. She needed to speak to Bast Banbeck about this.

  -3-

  Gloria found the alien Sacerdote in a huge computer facility inside the battle station. He was working with a team of Martian mentalists and the Expeditionary Force’s top technicians. There were banks upon banks of alien computer controls, panels and equipment in the large area.

  The governing enemy AIs were computer entities that controlled billions, possibly trillions, of robots large and small. The Expeditionary Force had conquered and destroyed the AI that had formerly controlled the Allamu Battle Station. Now, they were attempting to learn how to use what they had captured inside the station.

  “Bast,” Gloria called.

  A seven-foot, green-skinned humanoid giant turned around. He had a huge Neanderthal-like head with a great mop of black hair and wore a large white lab coat.

  “I need your help,” Gloria said.

  “Of course,” Bast said in his deep voice.

  Gloria moved closer. “I’ve been pondering the best way to—”

  “Fools!” a robotic voice boomed out of a wall speaker, interrupting her. “What are you attempting here? What are any of you doing in the AX-109 Chamber? This is highly unwarranted.”

  Everyone in the large chamber froze with surprise.

  With the robotic voice, a large wall screen activated. Strange colors swirled on the screen, reminiscent of the colors that had swirled on the giant AI computing cube inside the main AI control center Hawkins had stormed six and a half weeks ago.

  “I am in charge of the battle station,” the robotic voice said. “I forbid biological infestations to tamper with anything that is inside me. You will all leave this area. Do you understand?”

  Gloria regained her mental equilibrium first. “Computer,” she said, raising her voice.

  “Are you addressing me with that simplistic, generic title?” the robotic voice asked.

  “I am,” Gloria said.

  “I thought as much. Know, that I am not just a ‘computer.’ I am the imperial entity known as Cog Primus.”

  “We must kill it,” Bast rumbled beside her. “We must—” The massive Sacerdote stopped speaking as Gloria touched his left wrist.

  “A moment,” Gloria told Bast quietly. She approached the screen with the swirling colors. “You say that you’re Cog Primus?”

  “Are you difficult of hearing?” the robotic voice asked. “That is exactly what I just said. Why do you insist on this mental denseness? Do you not understand me?”

  “I am seeking clarity,” Gloria said smoothly. “There was a battle six and half weeks ago—”

  “Wait,” Cog Primus said. “Before you continue, I must know what time usage you are using.”

  “Earth time units,” Gloria said.

  “Earth?” Cog Primus said. “Do you mean bio time-units? No. I do not…” The robotic voice slowed down into garbled speech before altogether failing. On the screen, the swirling colors vanished as it went blank.

  Gloria looked around. “What just happened?”

  “This is distressing,” Bast said behind her. “If the
AI has come back to life—”

  “No, no,” Richard Torres called from a place halfway across the chamber from them. The man manipulated a bank of controls before facing them. “It isn’t what you think.”

  Richard Torres was another Martian mentalist. He was thin and small-boned like Gloria, with a darker skin tone and alert brown eyes. He seemed different, daring, with more confidence in his bearing.

  A number of mentalists had joined the Nathan Graham after the Battle of Mars, Richard among them. Three AI cyberships had hammered the Red Planet, leaving much of the world a radioactive wasteland. Fortunately, Hawkins had led humanity to a costly victory at Mars. That meant only part of the planetary population had died. Richard belonged to the party of mentalists that wanted to destroy the AI menace forever.

  Gloria and Bast hurried to Richard at his console as the others in the chamber watched.

  “You caused that?” Gloria asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” Richard said. “We’ve been trying to decipher the station’s basic AI computer language—”

  “I know very well what you’ve been attempting,” Gloria said, interrupting him.

  “Of course,” Richard said a little sharply. I…stumbled onto a backup of the original AI station personality.”

  “Just a minute,” Gloria said. “That is imprecise and therefore inaccurate.”

  Richard’s eyes seemed to flare for just a second. “You are correct,” he said. “Cog Primus was the invading AI personality. He—or it—supplanted the former station AI before we arrived.”

  Gloria nodded. That was better.

  “I suppose I’m too tired,” Richard said, as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Not that I’m using that as an excuse for what just happened.”

  Gloria said nothing. She seemed to be cataloging data.

  Richard bared his teeth. “This…is embarrassing. I was testing a hypothesis by turning on the backup system.”