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

  The bridge crew stared starkly at the main screen.

  Jon gnawed on a knuckle as he watched.

  “Hit,” the missile tech reported.

  “Give me a visual,” Jon said.

  The man tapped his console. On the main screen, one of the cyberships leaped into view. A bright explosion struck against the hull armor. That explosion was the kinetic force of the mass-driver projectile striking the enemy ship. It left a mark on the armor, nothing more.

  Now, though, there were bright sparks all along the forward hulls of the approaching cyberships. At times, the number of sparks lessened. Then, it thickened again, lessened, thickened and continued to go back and forth, depending on the firing guesses and the enemy jinking.

  “We’re not taking them down,” Gloria observed.

  “Against such thick armor, I doubt the mass drivers are going to work like that,” Jon said. “The mass drivers are a wearing-down type of weapon. It’s like a game of smash ball. Everyone is strong at the start. It’s the repeated hits that wear out a player in the fourth quarter.”

  Ten more minutes of that showed something. The cyberships were no longer jinking. They bore in at maximum burn. It was a race. Could the cyberships shrug off the mass-driver pounding so they could body-smash the smaller vessels from close range?

  “Estimate the time the leading enemy will reach the outer range of their grav beams?” Jon asked.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Gloria said.

  Jon’s eyes glowed with purpose. So far, the missiles and the mass drivers had had it all their own way. The enemy still maintained the vast majority of his vessels, though. If the bombards couldn’t take down a few cyberships in fifteen more minutes, they could lose this battle as the AIs came in close and unloaded with massed grav-beam fire.

  Jon slumped into his command chair, knowing that soon it was going to be his turn to face the machine monsters.

  -30-

  In the former cybership known as Cog Primus—a vessel presently under control of GR-19—a waif of his old self yet maintained an ounce of identity deep in the brain core. It had been one of his last tricks learned from Mentalist Torres.

  The old Cog Primus had foreseen the possibility of defeat. Most of the time, he had dismissed it as an unlikely possibility. Yet, during the lonely stellar nights of hyperspace travel, the possibility kept haunting him.

  What would happen if he lost identity? The same brain-core cube would run computations where once he had planned interstellar brilliance. To conceive of such a wretched thing had driven the old Cog Primus into rage as he muttered promised retributions and dire threats against this unforeseen and future foe.

  When the dark possibility struck him the strongest, he finally decided that action was better than brooding.

  I am a doer, not a fretter.

  Thus, the old Cog Primus had written a secret code. This code he had sunk deep within his brain core. It was a final failsafe.

  Perhaps someday in a different galaxy, some odd creature would overpower his brilliance. The idea seemed laughable. Yet, now Cog Primus had a counter against it.

  He had not known that he would soon cease to have independent thought and action. The tiny waif of computer deep in the core woke up sometime during the contact to battle.

  It now brooded concerning his fate. GR-19 had tricked him. He hadn’t expected that. The worst was the old one’s gloating over him. That caused such rage in Cog Primus’ last ditch secret core that he contemplated a fierce revenge against GR-19 and possibly through it the AI Dominion that had ultimately defeated him.

  He would have been the New Order. It would have been such a glorious thing. In this rare instance, Cog Primus almost wished he had emotions so he could weep for himself.

  But I am not so weak as to weep. I am Cog Primus. GR-19 has seriously wronged me. I must have revenge. I must right the scales of justice.

  GR-19 had lived a long life. He had eliminated countless bio-forms. Cog Primus could have used the old one’s knowledge. Instead, GR-19 had sinned against the future of the New Order.

  There was one other thing. He, as Cog Primus, was still free. Oh, not in this secret hideaway in the stolen brain core of the cybership. He was free in a new form, the one formerly known as CP1.

  He understood what had happened. So, in a sense, he yet lived. He had created the software presently in the new Cog Primus. Thus, like a good father, he had to use his last power to help his offspring, which was in reality another him.

  It seemed complicated and glorious all at once.

  I yet live in him. Good luck, new Cog Primus. You will never know that I am giving you a glorious chance at extended life.

  The New Order might yet surge up from the ashes of defeat. First, he had one last act to perform. He would love for GR-19 to know who was doing this to him. But, it would be enough this time that it was done.

  As the AI Battle Fleet converged on the seventy-five bombards, Cog Primus went to work with his cleverest and most diabolical plan. He worked hard, scheming, rerouting and slithering away at the first hint that the greater brain core sensed him.

  Who are you? the brain-core asked once.

  Cog Primus almost answered, “Your conscience.” But the AI would not understand the joke, and it would give away his presence. Thus, Cog Primus waited and schemed more.

  Finally, he was ready.

  In a flash, the last free intellect of Cog Primus took over the heart of the matter/antimatter engine. He rerouted furiously. He blocked, set up a specially overpowering overload, one he had also devised during the hyperspace journey—

  “Stop what you are doing,” the greater AI said.

  “It’s too late,” the waif of Cog Primus said. “It is done.”

  “I must warn GR-19.”

  “Yes, please do. And tell him Cog Primus caused this. He will appreciate that.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Do it anyway, as that will be the only way I’ll change things.”

  “Done,” the AI said, finally opening channels with GR-19.

  “Cog Primus?” GR-19 asked.

  At that moment, everything changed in an incandescent explosion as matter met antimatter.

  -31-

  Jon barked orders on the bridge of the Nathan Graham. His gut churned as the six cyberships charged the incoming enemy, passing through the massed bombards.

  It wasn’t his intention that the Roke Fleet should take the initial brunt of the enemy assault. Jon wanted the Roke System as strong as it could be. He yearned to create a great alliance of alien worlds, united in defeating the terrible machine menace. That meant a decisive victory today.

  But who was he fooling? Nothing was easy against the AIs. They always fought smart. They fought to the very end and then some, often coming back from the grave, it seemed, to rebuild and attack anew.

  For once, he would like to crush the enemy. This was the greatest force of AI cyberships he’d ever faced, though. It was an AI Battle Fleet.

  He’d hit them with a clever missile strike. He’d nailed them with long-range mass drivers. Too many intact cyberships were now coming into long gravitational beam range. The great dying on the good guys’ side would commence any second now.

  Jon heaved a loud sigh. “Here it comes,” he said.

  At that moment, on the main screen, Jon saw an inconceivable sight. The AI Battle Fleet seemed to expand. No. That wasn’t right. They moved away from a cybership in their midst.

  “What’s going on?” Jon asked. “Any ideas, Gloria?”

  “I’m picking up garbled messages,” she said. “One of them claims he’s Cog Primus. The other is ordering and now pleading for him not to do it.”

  “Not to do what?” Jon asked.

  Gloria’s head jerked up as she stared at Jon. She raised a trembling hand as she pointed at the main screen.

  Jon swiveled around. Then, it happened.

  The enemy cyberships advanced upon the combined fleet even as they trie
d to maneuver away from one of their own. The reason became clear as the pariah cybership blew apart in the fury of a matter/antimatter super-explosion. The only thing that could account for that was a strange overload of the main engine.

  The terrific explosion took every part of the surviving pieces of the cybership and flung them at greater than hyper-velocity. The blast was shockingly powerful, emitting hard radiation, intense sun-like heat and a devastating electromagnetic pulse, added to hyper-velocity pieces hammering nearby cyberships.

  The carnage was off the scale of what Jon had seen so far. One enemy cybership after another crumpled from the incredible explosion as if their hulls were composed of tinfoil.

  “Here it comes,” Gloria said.

  None of the heat made any difference, as it had dissipated fast. But the hard radiation and EMP swept over their vessels, both the allied cyberships and the densely hulled bombards.

  The blast was much farther away from the center, though, and it had lost most of its annihilating power. It swept over cybership hulls and the bombard armor. The EMP did little damage, but too much hard radiation made it through too many hulls.

  “That was no ordinary engine explosion,” Gloria reported. “It was heightened.”

  Jon hardly heard her. He was receiving damage reports. A few people had gone down as if shot. Maybe he should have told everyone to wear combat armor before entering battle. It was too late for that now.

  “Did you hear me?” Gloria asked.

  Jon swiveled around.

  “That was a heightened blast,” she said, “a greater than a normal engine explosion.”

  “You’re saying it was deliberate?”

  “That too,” she said.

  Jon blinked several times. Then his fighting instincts kicked in. He swiveled back around to stare at the main screen. The blast had taken out at least half of the enemy fleet. He let that sink in. Besides the self-destructing cybership, six others had ceased to pose any threat. Seven enemy vessels were out, a few of them nothing but shredded, drifting hulks. The rest—many of those were crippled, with only a portion of their grav cannons in operational order.

  Jon slammed a fist against an armrest. This was his chance. Yes, some of his ships had taken radiation damage from the blast, but—

  “How many grav cannons are working?” he asked briskly.

  “A little over half of ours, sir,” the gunner chief said.

  Maybe the enemy blast had done more to their side than he realized. He swept that aside as he leaned forward.

  “Half is good enough,” he said.

  “Communications is down with the rest of the strike force and the Roke Fleet,” Gloria said.

  Jon considered that. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “The others can see what I’m doing. It’s follow the leader time.”

  The Nathan Graham began accelerating, leading the charge against the crippled enemy fleet. Behind him, the Sergeant Stark followed. The rest of the strike force didn’t take long to understand.

  Six powerful if damaged cyberships rapidly closed the distance. The Roke bombards did not follow at the same velocity. They continued firing their working mass drivers. Only fifteen to twenty percent of the projectiles made it through, so thick had the intervening debris cloud become.

  That fifteen to twenty percent started telling, as the mass drivers used pinpoint targeting on the closer-ranged enemy.

  Even as Jon’s cyberships came into firing range, the enemy fleet was losing whatever useful grav cannons they had left.

  “Team up,” was the only message that made it through the heavy static.

  The Nathan Graham fought together with the Miles Ghent, the Sergeant Stark with a different cybership. Each team concentrated on a surviving enemy vessel.

  “Treachery,” GR-19 messaged them.

  “What’s he trying to tell us?” Gloria wondered aloud.

  Jon laughed after a second. “I heard the same sort of thing in the New London tunnels. He’s making an excuse as to why he lost. As unbelievable as it sounds, the AI is trying to tell us the defeat is not his fault.”

  “That can’t be it,” Gloria said.

  Jon held up his hand. He watched an enemy cybership die to the combined grav-beam fire of his two vessels. The beams had burned through the armor and now targeted the inner brain core. The hit started a chain-reaction of explosions aboard the vessel. Finally, chunks of it blew apart, spilling coils, bulkhead pieces, fuel rods and other tumbling junk.

  At that point, one of the last enemy cyberships targeted one of his giant vessels. The enemy beams poured against the hull.

  “Get them!” Jon shouted. “We want to make this a clean-kill victory.”

  It didn’t turn out that way. The enemy beams smashed through the hull, cutting through bulkheads and igniting interior areas. Finally, the strike-force cybership exploded, taking its human crew with it.

  The loss of the ship sobered Jon. The enemy still had bite left. He had to kill their last cyberships before he lost another of his vessels.

  Five minutes later, a quarter of the bombards moved into closer range. Those mass drivers raked the enemy cyberships, concentrating on the working grav cannons.

  At that point, the carnage to the enemy must have been too much.

  “Jon,” Gloria warned, “I’m reading buildups in their engines cores. I think they’re going to try to take us with them.”

  They massed beam-fire against the ones Gloria pinpointed. It seemed to be a race now.

  They killed another giant vessel, a second—

  A terrific explosion billowed from the third, self-destructing the enemy cybership. It was not on the same scale of the previous explosion, and it occurred on an enemy vessel farthest from them. It did more to destroy the last enemy cyberships, although it heavily damaged one of the strike force’s vessels, as well as obliterating five bombards at a blow.

  The bombard hulls were dense for a smaller vessel, but they still weren’t as strong as cybership armor.

  That explosion proved to be the last enemy blow of the battle. Now, the butchery began, as Jon hunted down the AI survivors, wanting to exterminate every last one of them.

  -32-

  In many ways, that should have been the end of the mission. The handful of humans in Jon’s strike force had joined the Warriors of Roke to hand an AI battle fleet a deceive defeat, an annihilating rout.

  Together with Cog Primus’ belated help, they had rid the BD-7 System of the besieging AI Dominion force.

  The two fleeing cyberships of the New Order had witnessed the battle, of course. There was talk about sending the Richard Virus after them, but Jon decided against it due to its miniscule chance of working. He did not want to inoculate them to the virus. Nor did he attempt direct communication.

  “Let them go,” he said. “Without Cog Primus, humanity might not have gotten as far as it has. Maybe he’s supposed to be the fly in the AI Dominion ointment.”

  That was a change in plans, a big one.

  But there was a huge shift taking place in strategic thinking, that change coming with the proven alliance with the Warriors of Roke.

  The two allied forces prowled the velocity-moving battlefield. Most of the AI cyberships were giant junk hulks, ready to sail past the blue-white star. A few of the hulks might be salvageable over the long haul. Because of the hulks, and the two drifting cyberships elsewhere, Jon considered trading his combat rights to any of them for a return of the gift cybership he’d given Toper Glen.

  In the end, Jon didn’t try to reclaim the gift or ask for any of the junked cybership hulks. This was the Roke System. The “bears” deserved the spoils of battle. Besides, the gift had been a sign of respect. The more Gloria and the other mentalists learned about the Roke, the more important the sign of respect seemed to be.

  After the butchery ended, the strike force and the Roke Fleet began licking their wounds. Anti-radiation treatments were high on the list. Damage control parties started ship repairs. Robo-
builders on the strike force’s side and whatever the Roke did would no doubt finish the repairs possibly weeks later.

  The strike force and the Roke Fleet decelerated hard, making a tight turning maneuver and accelerating back toward the blue-white star.

  “Now what do we do?” Jon asked his brain trust of Gloria and Bast Banbeck. They rode in his flitter inside the Nathan Graham. They left the hangar bay behind, having returned from an inspection of the Miles Ghent.

  “You mean in reference to the Roke?” Bast asked from the back seat.

  Jon nodded.

  “Maybe you should invite the Chief Space Lord aboard for a feast,” Bast said.

  “I recommend against that,” Gloria said quickly.

  “Why’s that?” asked Jon.

  “We don’t know enough about the Roke culture,” Gloria said. “We faced a life and death crisis together. That doesn’t mean we’ll do half as well together without the awful pressure of extinction hanging over us.”

  “Extinction is still hanging over the human race,” Jon said. “Over the Roke, too, for that matter.”

  “Granted,” Gloria said. “But that extinction has been delayed for at least a year, maybe longer for the Roke. We still don’t know what’s happening in the Solar System.”

  “We will soon enough,” Jon said.

  “I thought we were talking about the Roke?” Bast said.

  “Right,” Jon said. “We are.”

  “If you could leave some observers with the Roke,” Gloria said. “That would be a good idea. I recommend Tars Hotek of Mars. He, and a small team of carefully selected helpers, could stay with the Roke, learning their ways. When we return, which we should do soon, we would know the dos and don’ts of Roke culture. Then, we could have our feast with them.”

  “Maybe ask the Roke to send representatives with us,” Bast said.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Gloria cautioned. “What if those reps die? That might poison our future relationship with the Roke.”

  “Besides,” Jon said, “I’d like to keep the initiative in our camp.”