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

“Stay clear of it,” Walleye warned her. “But come help me.”

  June staggered to him. The repair bots and the fighting robot did not move. Maybe the jammer was working after all.

  She followed Walleye’s example, shoving her fingers into a repair bot’s side slot. They both pulled. The plate wouldn’t budge.

  “Harder,” Walleye gasped. “We have to get it open.”

  June pulled as hard as she could. She cried out in pain as she tore off a fingernail. She didn’t let go, though. This was life or death.

  They ripped off the plate.

  Immediately, Walleye pulled out a control board embedded in the repair bot. He began typing furiously.

  “What are you doing, Walleye?” the AI asked from a wall speaker.

  The mutant did not answer.

  “Why won’t my robots obey my signals?” the AI asked.

  Walleye looked up and then started typing again.

  “Stop this at once,” the AI said.

  The repair bot Walleye controlled reached for the cable connecting the computer with the alien cube. The pincers from the two arms clamped down on the cable. The mechanical arms pulled, yanking the cable link from the alien cube.

  Sparks emitted from the end of the cable.

  “Walleye,” the AI said. “This is darkest treason. You lied to me. You have played me false.”

  “It’s what I do,” Walleye shouted. “I’m an assassin. I’m killing you, you wretched pecker.”

  The repair bot began to smash computer equipment. The AI threatened and then pleaded for Walleye to reconsider. All the while, the sparking, humming jammer kept the AI from issuing wireless orders to the fighting robot or to the second repair bot.

  Finally, the AI’s voice trailed away.

  The repair bot kept smashing computer equipment, destroying everything.

  “I’m not taking any chances,” Walleye said.

  Tears dripped down June’s cheeks. The mutant was doing it again. He was defeating the killer computer. She couldn’t believe it. Instead of going into an incinerator on the destroyer, they were going to control the NSN vessel. Instead of drifting in the void for a decade or more in the escape pod, they could actually travel in style and relative speed.

  This was incredible.

  June went to Walleye. She hugged and kissed him. The mutant was the most brilliant man she’d ever known, and he’d just saved both their lives.

  -9-

  “We can’t rest,” June told him the next day. “We’ll have to rest later.”

  Walleye yawned as he rolled out of bed. He was a hideous-looking little man. But he had strength of character, brilliance and in the tightest places, he shined like no other.

  He looked at her, and he seemed haggard to the core.

  “This one took it out of me,” he told her. “I’m bushed, five hundred percent bushed.”

  “I don’t know how you did it,” June said from bed.

  “Luck,” he said.

  She shook her head. “That wasn’t luck.”

  “Believe me. We got lucky, Luscious. The AI had the worst disease there is: arrogance. If the crew of the Daisy Chain 4 hadn’t destroyed the comm systems, we never could have pulled this off. We owe whoever did that. In the end, that might have been the most brilliant move.”

  “I saw your brilliance,” June said. “I’m alive today because of it. But we can’t let that go to waste. We have to get the ship moving in the right direction. Then, we have to fix the comm.”

  “Never going to happen,” Walleye told her.

  “We’ll see,” June said.

  ***

  Aligning the NSN destroyer at Neptune proved the easiest of tasks. Figuring out the bridge controls wasn’t that difficult, either. Soon, the destroyer accelerated at 0.7 Gs toward Neptune’s future location.

  “The alien robots on Makemake will see our exhaust signature,” Walleye said from the piloting chair.

  “I know. But in two years, the pod gained a bit of separation from the dwarf planet. We should have a running head start against whatever they send.”

  “We’re going to have to watch Makemake and the nearest Kuiper Belt outposts. Any sign of missiles or drones—”

  “We can worry about that later,” June said.

  “Might want to worry about it now,” Walleye said. “In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize we’re probably going to have to pull the same stunt as before.”

  June was pretty sure she knew what he meant. “I’m not entering another escape pod.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to,” he said. “There are the two boats in the hangar bay.”

  “Forget it,” June said. “I’m living or dying in the destroyer. I can’t take another beauty nap, and you’ll never come out sane from extended solitary confinement again.”

  “Wouldn’t want to bet against me,” Walleye said.

  “I’m not. I’m betting you can fix the comm.”

  “And then what? We try to warn others?”

  “Of course,” June said. “You heard the AI. They all hate humans. This is genocide. It’s them or us. I chose us.”

  Walleye looked away.

  “We can’t have survived all this for no reason,” June said. “Life has to have a reason.”

  “Says who?”

  “Me.”

  He grinned at her. “You do have a persuasive smile, there’s no doubt about that. Okay,” he said, heading for the hatch. “Let’s take a look at the comm.”

  ***

  The destroyer’s comm system was trashed.

  Walleye went to the escape pod. With the repair bots’ help, he took out the small-scale comm system and brought it to the destroyer’s comm chamber.

  Then, he and June searched the destroyer up and down. They found spare parts. They tore down other equipment for what they needed. They found tablets and downloaded everything they could find about comms.

  “We’re running out of fuel,” June said one day.

  Walleye was crouched over the floor in the comm chamber, studying various parts laid out on a blanket.

  “How are you planning to brake us later?” June asked.

  “I’m not,” Walleye said, looking up. “We’re fleeing.”

  June searched his face. “What is it? What are you keeping from me? Are missiles chasing us?”

  He took his time, finally saying, “Yup.”

  June went cold inside. This wasn’t fair. They had survived so much. They must have survived for a reason. That reason had to be to save the human race.

  “How long until the missiles reach us?” asked June.

  “Two weeks, I reckon.”

  “Walleye…”

  “I have a few plans,” he said, shrugging afterward. “It will be a roll of the dice.”

  “Why can’t the robots leave us alone?”

  “Because we’re playing for all the stakes,” he said.

  “All right,” she said. “You can finish this later. We should focus on the missiles for now.”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said, standing.

  “How many are coming?”

  “According to the teleoptics, five,” he said.

  “Do you have any ideas how to stop them?”

  “Always,” he said, as he headed for the hatch.

  ***

  Using tablets for the calculations, they decided to set up an ambush with a missile of their own. The idea was simple. Kill enemy missiles with a nuclear blast and/or shrapnel.

  They figured out how to launch and did so.

  “Can’t leave it at just one,” Walleye said. He leaned back in the pilot’s chair. “But we don’t want to be too generous. Once we run out of missiles…”

  “Do you think the robots will send more if those don’t destroy us?”

  Walleye laughed. June didn’t like its tone.

  “We’re so deep in the Kuiper Belt,” he said, “that it’s going to be two years before we get to Neptune. I think we’re going to lose i
n the end. It’s simply a matter of how long we live. As long as we have missiles, and I count the two boats with them, we have counter-fire. Who will have more missiles, though? I’m guessing the Kuiper Belt robots will.”

  “They just have Makemake and Dannenberg 7.”

  “I doubt that,” Walleye said. “I’m sure the robots have been expanding while we’ve been stuck in space.”

  June bit her lower lip. “We have to fix the comm then.”

  He shrugged.

  June grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him. “We have to save humanity.”

  “Why?” he asked. “What did humanity ever do for me?”

  She almost slapped him. But that would probably be a bad idea. She didn’t want to set a precedent that might lead to him hitting her.

  “You can be the hero,” she said.

  “I have all the hero worshipers I need,” he said in a leering manner.

  She smiled despite herself. Who would have ever thought that Walleye the Mutant would make a fantastic lover? The things he could do to her… At times, her lovemaking screams reverberated off the bulkheads. It was uncanny.

  “Please, Walleye,” she said. “I want my life to mean something.”

  He stared at her, stared and finally nodded. “Sure. Let’s save the human race, Luscious. Why not?”

  ***

  In the end, they launched two missiles at the five.

  Five days after launching the first missile, it ignited. The thermonuclear explosion easily showed on the teleoptic scope.

  “Did it destroy any of theirs?” June asked.

  Walleye was hunched over the sensor panel. “One…” he said, “no, two.”

  June absorbed the news. “Three more are still coming?”

  “Yup.”

  “They must be tough missiles.”

  “The robot missiles must have spotted ours coming. They staggered their accelerations, creating separation between them. Maybe those are smart missiles. Makes sense for the robots to have smart missiles.”

  Two more days passed, and the second NSN missile took out another robot warhead.

  “That leaves two,” June said.

  “We’d better launch two more,” Walleye said.

  They did.

  The days passed. The last robot missiles increased acceleration. It badly scared Walleye. June could tell by the loss of color in his cheeks.

  “We might take radiation,” he said. “I should have realized they might do this. Now…” He shrugged.

  Four and half hours later, the first new NSN missile ignited. It seemed like they’d gotten lucky. The first of the two took out the last of the robot missiles.

  “That means we wasted one of ours,” June said.

  “Always look for the worst,” he told her, straightening from the sensor panel. “That way, you’ll be disappointed.”

  “I’m sorry. We nailed the robots missiles. Are any more heading at us?”

  It took Walleye an entire day to find them. These came from a different direction, and not from Dannenberg 7. That meant a different launch point. It also meant Walleye had probably been right about alien robot expansion.

  “I count seven robot missiles,” he said. “These are all evenly spaced out. It’s going to take seven of our missiles to take them down. Unfortunately, we don’t have seven more big ones. That means we’re going to have to use a space boat, or we’ll have to count on the smaller anti-missiles to do the trick. Personally, I think the boat is the better idea. That’s going to take some rigging, however.”

  “We’d better get started then,” June said.

  The days passed in grueling work in the hangar bay. When he could, Walleye attempted to build a powerful transmitter.

  In the end, they destroyed the seven robot missiles. This time, it wasn’t a close-run thing.

  “Time to shut off the thrusters,” Walleye said from the piloting chair. “We’ll save a little fuel for maneuvering if we have to. But we’re never going to slow down enough with what’s left. It will be almost two years before we leave the Kuiper Belt, though.”

  “What about the comm?”

  “We’ll see. Maybe I can fix it. I don’t know. What else is there to do?” he asked with a leer.

  June blushed. She knew what they would do later.

  They kept heading for the Neptune System while searching the void behind them for traces of following robot missiles.

  Part VI

  EARTH-SATURN SYSTEMS

  +3 Years, 4 Months, 8 Days

  -1-

  Deep underground in Rio de Janeiro at a LEVEL 1, SAFE SPACE, Chief Arbiter J.P. Justinian sat at a highly ornate table with the Premier of the Solar League. The two could hardly look less alike.

  Justinian was lean and well dressed in his black uniform with its blood-red buttons and blood-red shoulder boards. He wore a black GSB cap with the dog’s head and broom logo on the front. The dog stood for sniffing out treason. The broom indicated the GSB’s willingness to sweep out all debris standing in the way of Social Dynamics.

  The chief arbiter sat ramrod straight, and his dark eyes fairly glowed with intensity as he eyed the three military commanders before the table.

  Each of the commanders sat in a low chair in a sunken area before Justinian and the Premier. Harsh lights glared down at them. Theoretically, the military commanders held the greatest concentration of force in the Solar System. In reality, they were mere tools in the Premier’s hands.

  She was short and plump, with a round face and soft, almost round hands. She wore a brown coat on the verge of frumpiness. She wore her red-dyed hair to the left so it fell on her left shoulder, with the right side shaved close to her scalp. Her brown eyes seemed almost merry, regarding the military commanders with something akin to delight.

  The Premier knew how to smile and laugh. She often did both. She was not smiling now, though. The merriness of her eyes was merely a feint as she watched three military commanders sweat under J.P. Justinian’s interrogation.

  The military commanders had served with distinction, as the saying went, although none of them had done anything the least bit distinctive. They had different forms and sexes. But under the harsh glare of the lights and Justinian’s barbs, they did not seem so different after all. They also produced—in union or from one in particular, the Premier did not know—the hint of a sweaty stench.

  The Premier looked away at those times, hearing the nervous shuffle of their feet.

  The three spoke in accord, trying to defend their latest deployments and white papers concerning the terrible cybership threat in Saturn System.

  The Premier thought of the commanders as One, Two and Three. Two was female, and Three was a burly man with stern features. It made no difference, though. One, Two and Three seemed to hold similar views on everything.

  “A minute,” the Premier said softly.

  Justinian stopped mid-sentence as he focused on the short woman beside him.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” the Premier declared.

  Justinian waited. The spymaster seldom said a word unless he had a specific purpose for it.

  “These three were fine for the former Solar System,” the Premier said. “One or two conquests, at Neptune and later the Kuiper Belt, were within their competency. With the appearance of the cybership and Jon Hawkins—”

  The Premier shook her head. “I cannot bear to listen to any more of their twaddle. We’re wasting our time with them.”

  Justinian glanced down coldly at the three military commanders.

  Two and Three both seemed too stupid to understand what was at stake. They glared belligerently at the spymaster. One, however, had a different take. He glanced around as if to see if there was a way to escape. One at least had the wit to know his life was on the line.

  “Their strategies will hand the Solar System to the upstarts,” the Premier added. “I almost think of these three as enemy collaborators.”

  “That is unfair,” Two said. That ou
tburst said little of her intelligence.

  “Jon Hawkins controls the Saturn System,” Justinian said in his silky voice. “The Neptune System survivors have rebuilt possibly three percent of their former infrastructure, and they are rebuilding everything along capitalist lines. The Uranus System First Director has made frequent excuses and sent none of the tax proceedings to the Inner Planets as stipulated by treaty. He claims the intervening cybership as the problem. Why haven’t your staffs come up with a strategy to place a powerful task force in the Uranus System?”

  “This is outrageous,” Three thundered. “You told us to keep the space fleets concentrated and intact. This we have done. Yes, it’s true what you say about the—”

  The Premier sighed, shaking her head.

  Three immediately stopped speaking. He might have been dense and rather stupid, but he apparently wasn’t a complete buffoon.

  “I must protest,” Three blustered.

  “Must you?” the Premier asked him.

  Three blushed furiously. He actually stood up, slapping a meaty hand against his thick chest.

  Justinian became instantly alert, predatory.

  “Sit down,” the Premier said.

  “I do not accept these slurs against our Space Forces,” Three said.

  “You fool,” Justinian purred. “The Premier has slurred you personally, not your troops.”

  The angry blush fled as Three’s features became pale. His jowls wobbled. “Premier,” he said in an imploring voice. “I beg you—”

  The Premier shook her head.

  Three stopped speaking. His knees seemed to give way. He dropped ponderously onto his chair, causing it to creak with complaint, as if it too hated him.

  “Do you have any further proposals?” the Premier asked the military commanders.

  “I do,” One practically shouted in his earnestness to speak.

  The Premier raised an eyebrow. “Tell us, please.”

  “I-I can’t tell you myself,” One stammered. “But I have an aide-de-camp—he’s a protégée, actually. He’s intensely rigorous, loves reading about past campaigns. The man knows everything there is to know about maneuvers, fleet actions and strategic sleight-of-hands.”

  “Why isn’t he sitting here then?” Justinian asked in a mocking voice.