The A.I. Gene (The A.I. Series Book 2) Page 22

  “The idea of that is driving me wild,” Jon said. “I don’t know if I can take it.”

  Jon looked at Gloria with her set features and Bast Banbeck in his obvious pain.

  “You want us to tell you what to do?” asked Gloria.

  “I want your advice,” Jon said.

  “You already know mine,” she said.

  “Can you guarantee the engines and gravity controls will work?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Can you estimate the probabilities that they’ll work?”

  “They will either work one hundred percent or they will fail,” the mentalist said.

  “Gloria—”

  “I’m sorry, Jon. This is why you’re the captain. You get to make the hard decisions. This is the moment you earn your pay. My advice: make the decision and stick with it.”

  “Bast Banbeck,” Jon said.

  The green-skinned giant seemed to concentrate. It brought beads of perspiration onto his face. Instead of stinking like human sweat, the alien gave off an orange-like odor. It was actually pleasant.

  “Everything rests on one tenet,” the Sacerdote said. He spoke slowly, painfully and resolutely. “No one in the galaxy has defeated the cyberships. They conquered everyone they encountered. Perhaps we are seeing the reason for ultimate cybership victory. It would seem the alien vessel seeded your Kuiper Belt. It must have done so as a backup plan. Here is my point, Captain. Nothing else matters except for killing the evil computers and their robots. You humans must make a stand and make it stick. You must risk everything. You must take every chance in order to eliminate an unconquerable foe.”

  “But the space scaffolding outside—”

  “Captain,” Bast said sharply, groaning as he held his side. “I…must go, sir. I am in pain. But listen to this. Dare to risk it all. I have discovered an aphorism in my study of you humans, ‘Balls to the firewall.’”

  Jon stared at the alien philosopher. He hadn’t expected to hear that. “Balls to the firewall?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bast groaned.

  Jon nodded. He could almost hear Raisin, could almost hear Sergeant Stark, he could almost hear Colonel Graham. They had joined forces, urging him to rush to the fight.

  He had rushed onto the cybership three years ago. He’d won then. He’d rebuilt the ship. Now, the terrible enemy had resurfaced, and a new ally had shown himself with a great prize. This computing cube might give them needed data on the growing AI threat in the Kuiper Belt.

  At that moment, Jon envisioned a terrible thing. What if the alien AIs grabbed the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud, circling the inner Solar System with enemy strongholds? If the AIs could awaken the computers in the inner systems…

  Something cold hardened inside Jon’s gut. It had been awhile since they had charged aboard the cybership. He had forgotten that old steel in his spine. He was a dome rat at heart. He had to remember his roots. He had to remember what he’d done. He had to fight for the human race…because he had climbed to the top in this time and place.

  “Thanks,” he said, with a burr in his voice. “I needed to hear that. Mentalist—” He nodded. “Bast, go. You need to rest.”

  Gloria stood. “Let’s go then. I have to find Walleye’s destroyer before we can reach it. With your permission, sir…”

  “Go,” Jon told her.

  Gloria left without another word.

  As Bast struggled to rise, Jon’s belt comm beeped. He ripped the handheld unit off his belt.

  “Yes,” Jon said.

  “Sir,” the Centurion said. “Five hundred techs failed to hear the message in time. They’ve been working in Section B 12.”

  “So?”

  “The ship is scheduled to begin maneuvering in thirty-eight minutes. That will give those techs just enough time to reach the scaffolding—”

  “Intern them,” Jon said decisively. “They’re coming along for the ride.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Centurion said.

  Jon lowered his comm, wondering if he’d heard greater snap to the Centurion’s voice.

  “Go,” the big Sacerdote said. “You should be on the bridge at a time like this.”

  Jon ordered one of the guards from the corridor to assist Bast back to medical.

  -7-

  The giant alien vessel began to move. It was like a prehistoric beast frozen in an icy swamp. As the ancient beast shook itself awake, it destroyed the eco-system that had grown around it.

  In this instance, the Nathan Graham shook off the metal scaffolding so laboriously constructed around it. Not everyone had made it off the scaffolding in time. A few last boats zoomed away. People strapping thruster-packs onto themselves left tiny hydrogen-spray trails. These packs used white particles, dissipating almost immediately. A few of the most unlucky simply jumped off the scaffolding.

  There had been too little warning and too many people to remove. Some cursed bitterly. Others believed it had to be sabotage. They called oaths down upon the Solar League with their dying breaths.

  Farther away, men and women watched in dismay, in outrage, hope and plain fear. The moving giant vessel caused a shockwave through the Saturn System. That shockwave continued beyond the jewel of the Outer Planets, reaching inward at the speed of light.

  Messages sped for GSB receiving stations.

  This was incredible news. No one had suspected the move to come for years. Why now? What had happened?

  Inside the Nathan Graham, people began settling down. It had happened. They were moving again. Some of them were doing this for the first time. Captain Hawkins came online to tell them to relax. This wasn’t a drill, obviously. They had found something in the Kuiper Belt. Soon, the cybership was going to accelerate. Everyone should remain calm, as this had been planned for months now.

  The captain would tell them more later. For the moment, everyone should stay alert for possible octopoid ambush attacks.

  The one hundred-kilometer cybership was in much better repair than when it had first entered the Saturn System. Would those repairs hold, however?

  Jon sat in his chair on the bridge. He watched various parts of the ship through the screens on the bulkheads.

  So far, nothing terrible had happened to the ship. He recognized the deaths of some of the workers on the space scaffolding. He steeled himself to that. He’d given as much warning as he could. This was for the sake of humanity. He hadn’t made the surprise move for personal motives. He wasn’t a Caracalla Kalvin. He was a simple dome rat, loyal to his people and to the cause. In this case, defeating the unliving enemy that preyed upon biological life in all its forms.

  Slowly, the great vessel began to accelerate. Jon could feel the pressure building against him.

  He glanced at the chief at his station.

  “A little glitch is all, sir,” the chief said. The way the man moved his hands over the panels said otherwise.

  Jon waited. There were still too few of them trying to operate the mighty vessel. They were using low-grade computers instead of the newest, most powerful ones. He hadn’t wanted anything on the ship to be high-tech enough that the alien software could upgrade it to attack them.

  “There,” the chief said hopefully. He looked over at Jon.

  The G pressures against the captain dropped off sharply until they felt normal. The thrum around them increased, though. The great matter/antimatter engines purred with power. The gravity controls made the thrum stronger.

  “We have five gravities acceleration,” the chief announced, “and building.”

  The giant vessel picked up velocity. It had such a vast amount of mass to move.

  Jon watched the nearest moon. It hardly seemed to move, although in reality the Nathan Graham was the one doing the moving. In the Neptune System, he’d used the matter/antimatter exhaust like a weapon. He hoped no one was behind them. If everything went according to pattern today, a few small ships would burn to a crisp in the exhaust, unaware of what was about to happen.

  “Six
gravities,” the chief announced.

  The exhaust tail would lengthen and lengthen, throwing off heavier amounts of radiation and heat.

  Should he wait until they left the Saturn System before really pouring it on? Jon didn’t want the spies to guess his destination. Then again, every scope and sensor would be trained on the Nathan Graham today and for as long as the scopes and scanners could see them.

  “Seven gravities and climbing, sir,” the chief said. “I don’t see anything to—”

  The giant ship shuddered.

  The chief’s eyes grew round as Jon stared at him. The chief appeared helpless. The man studied his board, checked a different area—

  The shuddering stopped. The thrum was normal again, or was there a new note to the noise?

  “Ten gravities,” the chief said in a less confident voice than before.

  Jon swallowed. Had he made a huge mistake? Should they have tested these systems slowly? What if the cybership blew up? How would that help him save humanity from the AIs?

  Jon shook his head. He had to stay strong. Either he lived or he died. It was really that simple. The frightened died hundreds of times. The brave only died once. Better to die only once, then.

  Jon laughed.

  The chief and techs looked at him as if he’d gone crazy.

  Jon laughed louder. He sat back as if enjoying the ride.

  Soon, the techs began nodding. Maybe this wasn’t so bad. Maybe this was exciting.

  “Twelve gravities acceleration and everything is holding,” the chief said. He sounded calmer again.

  “We’re going to do this,” Jon said. If they weren’t, they weren’t. But if they were, he wanted his bridge crew in fighting trim, ready to wage war.

  “We’re beginning to rapidly build velocity, sir,” the chief said. “I find this incredible. What a ship, sir. What a ship!”

  “That she is,” Jon said. He wondered briefly that he should call a ship named Nathan Graham a she. That was odd. He shrugged. Odd or not, this was the quest of a lifetime.

  For the first time in a long time, Jon was eager to hunt down alien AIs. He wanted to find these suckers and blow them to hell.

  Would they reach Walleye in time? That might depend on whether Gloria could pinpoint the man’s location. As they increased velocity, he wondered how she went about her research.

  -8-

  Gloria’s process presently remained a secret. She was hidden in her comm chamber, using her mentalist logic to the full.

  As she did so, GSB agents from the Saturn System sent hot reports concerning the giant alien vessel. Those reports raced away at the speed of light for Earth, 9.5 AU away.

  Finally, GSB receiving stations orbiting the home planet received the messages. Each chief operator marked the news as highest priority.

  Twenty minutes after the first report reached the home system, a woman riding a horse pell-mell through a game preserve reined in her steed before an angry J.P. Justinian.

  The lean spymaster rolled off his latest conquest—a startlingly attractive linguist who had joined him for a stroll in the park. She hadn’t originally understood what that entailed. The linguist sat up, forlorn, on a blanket, using her torn dress to hide her charms the best she could.

  Justinian stood nude before the horsewoman, proud of his attributes and eying her speculatively. She looked positively enticing panting on the restless Arabian. The messenger averted her gaze for the most part, and then seemed drawn to look at him. She was blushing furiously as she told him about the Nathan Graham.

  “Dismount,” Justinian told the messenger.

  The woman fairly leaped off the horse.

  He grabbed the reins.

  “Chief Arbiter,” the horsewoman said.

  Justinian turned to regard her. He wondered if she had enjoyed viewing his backside.

  “Shouldn’t you put on some clothes, sir?” the horsewoman asked. “The Premier will be there.”

  “Ah,” Justinian said. He went to his cast-off garments, donning them quickly. He did not look at his conquest. He’d had what he’d come for. The linguist no longer mattered to him.

  Soon, he mounted up and galloped away, leaving the two women to themselves.

  “Someday,” the linguist said with quiet certitude. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Don’t say such a thing.”

  “It’s true.”

  “But why?” asked the horsewoman.

  The linguist did not reply. Instead, she internalized her resolve.

  ***

  As Justinian rode the galloping horse, he took a comm unit from an inner jacket pocket. He powered it up, slid a jack into his right ear and opened channels.

  “Report,” he said.

  As the Arabian thundered through the outer Rio de Janeiro Park, the Chief Arbiter absorbed the news. He was surprised that Hawkins was leaving the Saturn System. According to his spies among the techs, it was supposed to be a year, at least, before the cybership was ready.

  Despite the importance of this, his mind kept wandering back to the linguist. She’d been different from his other conquests. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He had enjoyed her quiet struggle, the panting while trying to fight him off. He loved those moments the best.

  Maybe he should ride her again. He found the horse’s rhythmic motion was bringing him back to arousal.

  Justinian shook his head. He couldn’t bother with the beauty now. This was possibly depressing news about the Nathan Graham. What would the hateful Major Benz make of the maneuver?

  Justinian was still trying to fathom the major’s secret confidence. How did Benz maintain his arrogance in the face of certain doom? Clearly, the major was amazingly brilliant. Justinian understood that. Yes, he realized Benz thought of himself as invincible as long as he supplied them with his specialist knowledge. But if he was so smart, Benz must know that his calmness created vast unease in the Premier. The GSB and the Party held the leashes that kept the military in check. If Benz was that incredibly gifted, he had to die sooner rather than later. A brilliant general was the most dangerous person of all, a Red Napoleon as the saying went.

  Justinian grinned wolfishly. Life was good, almost too good. That’s why the cybership troubled him so. How long could he remain head of the GSB? Maybe his brilliance had begun to make the Premier fear him. Maybe it was time to think about replacing her. Call it job security.

  “No, no,” he whispered. “I must concentrate on the cybership. Why is Hawkins doing this?”

  ***

  After many security checks and pat downs as he made his way deeper into the underground security bunker, Justinian knocked at the final barrier.

  A dour-faced guard opened the steel door, admitting him into the conference room.

  Without a word of greeting to anyone, the Chief Arbiter hurried to his seat at the table. The Premier cast him a single glance. Then, she continued listening to the woman giving the report.

  Sitting quietly, Justinian heard another reiteration of what he’d already learned on the comm.

  The briefing colonel soon sat down. Everyone turned to the Premier.

  She seemed to need time to focus her thoughts. As she did, Justinian studied those around the table.

  Benz was here, the Marshal of Earth, a new Space Marshal and several of the highest ranked Politburo members. That was interesting.

  Justinian gave a minute nod to his second in command. That man hardly acknowledged him. Instantly, J.P. Justinian knew he was in danger.

  Why should his second in command be here and fail to show the proper respect? Justinian listened as the Premier spoke about the Nathan Graham. Her tone implied her displeasure. The Premier spoke in the way she did when getting ready to denounce someone.

  With a start, Justinian realized the Premier meant to denounce him. Maybe this was sooner than she had planned, but the clues were obvious.

  The Chief Arbiter of the GSB realized the Premier had outmaneuvered him by reacting to a crisis h
e hadn’t foreseen. She’d always been a slippery operator that way.

  Justinian, the brute of the GSB, sat back in his chair as if trying to get more comfortable as he listened to the Premier’s outrage. The horse messenger hadn’t known about the plot to unseat him. Whoever had sent her by horse must have realized the Premier’s displeasure with Justinian, giving him less time to adjust to the horrible situation.

  Refusing to let panic or fear control him—I must concentrate. I must outmaneuver the Premier if I can.

  How could he do that all alone? She’d trapped him in one of her strongholds.

  Justinian retreated into coldness. If he couldn’t win, he could still fight.

  He first studied the Premier with a half-lidded gaze. Then, he studied the guards standing at attention against the walls. They belonged to the Premier’s elite unit. He did not have a traitor in their company. They were the only people bearing arms in the chamber.

  As the Premier continued with her outrage, beginning to wonder aloud if someone in high authority had betrayed her, Justinian finally felt the gaze of Major Benz sitting across from him.

  With the minutest of adjustments, Justinian noticed the major fixedly studying him. With a start, it occurred to the Chief Arbiter that Benz attempted to signal him.

  What did that mean?

  Benz slid his chair back and disappeared as if to retie a loose shoelace. It was quite odd. Benz straightened almost immediately, turned to the Premier and slapped the conference table with an open palm.

  The sound startled everyone. The Premier quit talking. The elite guards along the walls focused on Benz.

  “What is the meaning of this?” the Premier asked Benz.

  Justinian didn’t hear the exact wording of the major’s reply. He was too startled at a new realization. As Benz slapped the table, something compact struck Justinian’s left shoe.