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

  The fireball that had been the new cybership destroyed half of the enemy missile fleet. It caused the majority that survived to become inert masses of fleeing debris. The fireball also annihilated the majority of the great P-Field behind it by simply consuming trillions of prismatic crystals.

  The fury of the deathblow also struck the Nathan Graham. It burned away entire sections of hull plating. Debris struck, sinking into the damaged cybership.

  The bridge shook. Techs warned of radiation poisoning and many stared at each other in shock. Could they survive this?

  The seconds lengthened.

  “We’re alive,” Gloria said four minutes later in a stricken voice.

  “We’re also crippled,” Chief Ghent said. “I can’t see how we’ll ever get back to the Saturn System now.”

  “What do we do?” Gloria asked Jon.

  The captain was no longer staring at the main screen. They had lost the cameras allowing them to see outside. Jon peered at his hands. The fingers gripped the end of the armrests as he sat in his command chair. With an effort of will, he tore his fingers from the chair. He held up his hands before his face, staring at them. Finally, he made two fists. He clenched them tightly and let the fists drop onto his lap. Only then did he release the pressure.

  Swiveling his chair around, Jon regarded his bridge crew. A smile slid onto his face. “We beat it.”

  “At great and possibly damning damage to ourselves,” Gloria said.

  “We beat it,” Jon said more forcefully.

  “What do we do with a crippled cybership?” Ghent asked.

  Jon stood up, and he shouted, “We beat the damn AI! We did it. We won! Start cheering.”

  “How do we—?” Gloria asked.

  Jon interrupted her by pumping his fists into the air and roaring a victory chant.

  The techs stared at each other, silently asking if the captain had gone mad.

  Finally, Jon let his arms swing down.

  “Are you finished?” Gloria asked him.

  “In the immortal words of Captain John Paul Jones, ‘I have not yet begun to fight,’” Jon told them.

  Gloria frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “That it’s time to get to work and fix our ship.”

  “Do you even understand the amount of damage we took?” Gloria asked.

  Jon focused on Ghent. “I want motive power, Chief. I want a laser system ready, if nothing else. Our job isn’t finished yet. We have to root out the AIs on Makemake.”

  “Jon,” Gloria said. “How do we—?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” he said, interrupting her once more.

  -9-

  It took a week to repair enough of the Nathan Graham for the thrusters to work even a little.

  Many of the workers took radiation treatments. They also worked around the clock with help from all of the space marines. It was grueling, daunting and labor-intensive work.

  Most of the P-Field had vanished, burned up in the cybership’s detonation. Many of the missiles inside the Nathan Graham were useless junk, their warheads melted and the propulsion systems a joke.

  The giant vessel neared Makemake. With June helping on the bridge, the Nathan Graham headed for the spaceport region over the dwarf planet.

  Jon was slumped in his chair on the bridge. Enough cameras worked for them to use a secondary screen to see where the ship was traveling.

  “There,” June Zen said. “Do you see?”

  “Do you mean the floating scrap?” asked Ghent.

  “Yes,” June said.

  “Keeping heading there,” Jon said.

  The giant cybership had shed most of its former velocity. It limped toward the dwarf planet and the city far underneath the floating scrap metal.

  “Any sign of hostiles?” asked Jon.

  “Nothing,” Ghent said. “Maybe the surviving robots fled.”

  “I doubt it,” Jon said.

  “I’m still in awe of what the AIs did out here,” Gloria said. “In less than four years, they produced a half-finished cybership. If Walleye hadn’t sent his signal when he did, we’d never have come out this far in time. We might have fought amongst ourselves—the Solar League and us—until several cyberships headed in-system to eradicate all of us.”

  “You’re right,” Jon said.

  Gloria frowned thoughtfully at Jon. “Is that it, Captain?”

  He waited for her to elaborate.

  “The AIs built half a cybership in less than four years. How did they do that?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  It appeared as if a new insight flooded the mentalist’s mind. Her eyes widened for just a moment. Then Gloria studied him more closely.

  “Captain, I think you’ve planned to use their construction techniques for some time. If the AIs could built a cybership from scratch…”

  “Bingo,” Jon said, sitting up. “What could the AIs’ building tech do for our crippled ship?”

  Gloria paled a moment later. “You’re sending marines down onto Makemake. You have to dig out the robots, if they’re down there, in order to steal their construction tech. It’s clearly not in the floating debris in orbit over the spaceport. The mass of debris isn’t enough to have been a space dock of any appreciable size.”

  “You’re reading my mind,” Jon said.

  Gloria looked at him with new appreciation.

  “I’ll be damned,” Ghent said. “That’s a good idea, Captain. But what if that annihilating blast destroyed everything, including the space building tech?”

  “It can’t all be gone,” Jon said. “Building a vast ship like the AIs did…we have to get our hands on that tech. We have to do that not only for ourselves, but also for humanity’s future.”

  Gloria began to nod. “That’s logical. More cyberships are bound to come in time. If they have such fantastic construction tech, humanity needs it to help us match them.”

  “Before we can do any of that,” Jon said. “We have to make sure the aliens aren’t practicing something tricky upstairs over the dwarf planet’s spaceport.”

  ***

  The Nathan Graham crept toward the area over the spaceport. June Zen was on the bridge. She was wearing marine pants and a silver jacket. She liked Jon Hawkins, but she thought there might be trouble with him some day. He kept glancing at her when he should have been occupied with screening the debris up here.

  They’d already used the big laser twice. The first time, the crew destroyed a massive hidden warhead.

  Gloria the Mentalist believed the robots had put the warhead up as a space mine. June had silently agreed.

  The second time, the laser destroyed a ship. The chief had detected energy readings on the drifting vessel. As the laser burned against the armored hull, the ship had launched missiles at the cybership.

  The laser burned those and then retargeted the ship, soon destroying it.

  “Does the spaceport have heavy guns?” Jon asked June.

  “It did in the past,” she said.

  “Can you show us where?” the captain asked. He indicated a screen.

  June stepped toward the screen. She was aware of the athletic captain leaving his chair to stand beside her. He stood too close. If Walleye came onto the bridge just now, he would be angry. Jon Hawkins might be a military hero, but that wouldn’t matter to the mutant assassin.

  Walleye kept to himself more since reaching the Nathan Graham. She believed he was jealous. All these marines and techs and so few women…it was no wonder many of the men watched her all the time. Walleye had never acted jealous or said anything, but June believed he was anyway.

  “Miss Zen,” the captain said.

  She followed his finger and studied the spaceport on the planetary surface.

  “Zoom in,” Jon said.

  The Nathan Graham was in orbit above the port. She hardly recognized the place down there. There were more metal structures showing than ever before. In the past, there had been the ca
tapult launch system for ores and the blast pits for launching orbitals and heavy shuttles. Those structures had been the only metal showing. Now, there was a spider web of metal buildings.

  “The robots have transformed the place,” June said. “I don’t recognize a thing.”

  “Would Walleye?” Jon asked.

  “I doubt it. Neither of us went into space much.”

  “You said you worked for the orbital port authorities,” Gloria said.

  “I did for a little while. Normally, I was a computer analyst.”

  Jon nodded. “I’ll have to talk to Walleye.” He turned to her. “We’re going down to Makemake, Miss Zen. I don’t expect you to join us, but I’m hoping Walleye will.”

  “What?” June asked, as her chest constricted. “No! Walleye can’t go. He’s not a space marine.”

  “He knows the territory better than anyone else.”

  “Maybe…” she said. “But not if the robots have changed everything.”

  “I know you’re worried for him,” Jon said. “I know you’ve been through a lot. We all have. We’ve all taken risks. It’s Walleye’s turn again.”

  June searched the captain’s face. He was youthful. He was handsome. But he was so hard-eyed and merciless. She suppressed a shudder. What would make a man so ruthless?

  “Bring him back to me,” she whispered.

  The captain appeared surprised by the request. A moment later, he nodded. “I hope to bring us all back, Miss Zen.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m just June.”

  “Oh, certainly. If I’ve offended you…”

  “No, no,” she said. This time she did shudder. “Why did the aliens ever come to our Solar System? All they do is kill. They’re horrible.”

  “I know what you mean,” Jon said

  -10-

  Three days later, the NSN destroyer drifted out of a hangar bay. The destroyer was in less than stellar condition, but it was in better condition than any other spacecraft in their possession.

  Jon was in the piloting chamber. The missile chief, Uther Kling, piloted. Kling was originally from Camelot Dome on Triton in the Neptune System. He had a blond buzz of hair cut in a triangle on his head, with an equally sharp chin like a red-tailed fox. Walleye was the only other person in the cabin with them. The rest of the passengers were space marines wearing battlesuits. Jon would don his once they landed.

  The destroyer was not technically an atmospheric vessel. Still, in a pinch on a dwarf planet as small as Makemake, it could do it.

  “We’re heading down,” Jon radioed.

  “Roger that,” Ghent said from the Nathan Graham.

  The cybership was above them with the main laser ready to burn into anything hostile trying to hurt the destroyer.

  “Just out of curiosity,” Walleye said. “What friendly ship can come and get us if we’re damaged?”

  Jon took his time answering, finally saying, “None right now.”

  Walleye didn’t respond, but he seemed to sit a little more stiffly.

  Jon liked the assassin. The man claimed to be a mutant, and he was small, but he was also efficient. More than that, there was a quiet deadliness about Walleye that Jon admired.

  After a time, the mutant said, “We’re taking a pretty big risk going down, then, in the only serviceable spaceship.”

  Jon shrugged. That was one way of looking at it. The other was giving the robots too much time to dig in. He didn’t know there were robots down there, but figured there must be.

  “Hang on,” Kling said. “This could get rough.”

  The destroyer began a slow, circling descent. The NSN vessel began to shake almost immediately, though.

  “Switching to Vent C,” Kling said.

  That smoothed things out for thirty seconds. After that, the shaking intensified.

  Walleye glanced at Jon. His glance seemed to ask the obvious. Why aren’t you heading back up? We’re never going to make it all the way down in this bucket.

  Jon wanted to get this over with. He wanted to finish the robots so he could repair the cybership and get back to the Saturn System. How long would the Solar League wait until it sent a task force to reconquer the Saturn System?

  “Missile launch,” Kling said through clenched teeth. He looked at Jon, seeming to expect a quick order to abort the landing.

  Jon watched a sensor board. The enemy missile was climbing fast. He finally reached for the comm to open channels with the Nathan Graham.

  A powerful laser beam flashed past the destroyer. The laser struck the missile, heating it—a plume of an explosion showed the destroyed missile.

  Jon glanced at the sensor board again, searching for a clue as to whether the warhead had detonated. No radiation or heat climbed up to hurt them.

  “There’s nothing to the landing,” Jon said. “It should go easily after this.”

  The other two did not reply to his forced joviality.

  The ship’s shaking hadn’t quit, although it wasn’t as bad as before. The destroyer continued its long spiral descent.

  Three minutes later, Kling said, “Two launches this time, Captain.”

  The Nathan Graham’s laser beamed quicker this time. The targeting was perfect once again. The first missile blossomed into a fireball.

  The sensors said it was a clean—

  The second warhead ignited even though the laser hadn’t touched it yet.

  Kling reacted as if he’d been waiting for this to happen. The destroyer no longer descended, but roared straight, building up velocity until all three men pressed against their crash seats.

  According to the sensors, the warhead was nuclear, but it had blown too low to the surface. Some radiation struck the destroyer, mostly blocked by the armored underbelly. Finally, Kling slowed down to one G of acceleration. He turned to Jon as if expectant for new orders.

  “Maybe we should land a distance away from the spaceport,” Jon said.

  Kling’s eyes bulged outward. “Sir,” he said in a reprimanding voice.

  Walleye cleared his throat.

  “You don’t want to land, either?” Jon asked Walleye.

  “I’m not a military man,” the mutant said. “I don’t know the procedures for a space-to-ground assault. I have the feeling we’re not even close to approaching standard tactics, though.”

  Jon thought about that. Walleye was right about them using a bold and unconventional approach.

  “We already beat the main AI,” Walleye began.

  “That’s just it,” Jon said. “Maybe there are more alien AIs down there. One thing we’re learning about the enemy is that we have to finish them off. We didn’t finish them off last time. Now, we almost had to fight the original battle all over again.”

  “I don’t dispute that,” Walleye said. “But how does throwing away your only serviceable shuttle help the cause?”

  “Sometimes a swift raid can solve a multitude of problems.”

  “Ever hear of the Charge of the Light Brigade?” Walleye asked.

  “I thought you said you weren’t a military man.”

  “I’m not. I have a Russian background, though. I have an ancestor who fought in the Crimean War.”

  “Never heard of it,” Jon said.

  “The British Light Brigade charged Russian cannons during the war. A man said about it, ‘It’s glorious, but it isn’t war.’”

  “The Light Brigade was composed of horsemen?” Jon asked.

  “Those are big animals—”

  “I know what a horse is,” Jon said.

  Walleye nodded. “The Light Brigade took horrendous loses because they tried a quick charge that must have seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Jon checked the sensors. No more missiles had launched at them. “The robots are protecting something down there,” he said.

  “Blow ‘em out with nukes,” Walleye suggested.

  “I want what they have down there,” Jon said. “Without the alien construction tech—”

&nb
sp; The comm crackled, interrupting him. A moment later, Jon responded.

  “This is Gloria. Jon, we’ve found something big. It’s the moon. According to my instruments, the moon is hollow.”

  “What instruments?” Jon asked.

  “I landed a probe,” Gloria said. “Why is the moon hollow? The best guess is that someone hollowed it out. I doubt the citizens of Makemake did it.”

  “We sure didn’t,” Walleye told Jon.

  “That means the robots likely did it,” Gloria said. “Maybe we should check out the moon before trying a surface assault.”

  “Good idea,” Jon said. He turned to Kling. “Take us back up. The AI missiles and the hollow moon mean we’re not making a glorious space-to-surface assault today.”

  -11-

  After picking up the destroyer, the Nathan Graham left Makemake orbit. The nearly crippled cybership traveled 21,000 kilometers to MK2, the nickname of the single moon.

  The moon was a mere 175 kilometers in diameter. Its surface had the reflectivity of charcoal.

  “What do you see?” Jon asked. He was still in the destroyer’s control cabin with the others.

  “I see destroyed missile silos,” Gloria said. “That must have happened from the cybership’s antimatter explosion.”

  “Do you see any openings leading into the moon?”

  “Not yet,” Gloria said. “We’re going to circle—wait. I see something. Jon! Those look like gigantic hatches or hangar bay doors. Should we go closer to investigate?”

  Jon glanced at Walleye.

  The mutant remained silent.

  “Yeah,” Jon said. “Take a look. We’ll wait here.”

  ***

  The Nathan Graham eased toward MK2. The moon was 175 kilometers in diameter. The cybership was 100 kilometers. The moon was bigger, but the cybership could have acted as a smaller, sister moon.

  “Those doors are huge,” Gloria said from her comm station on the Nathan Graham’s bridge.

  Bast Banbeck stood nearby. “A thought has occurred to me,” the Sacerdote said in his heavy voice. “We have analyzed the debris above the spaceport. It could not have come from a space dock holding the cybership.”

  Gloria glanced sharply at the seven-foot Sacerdote. “Are you suggesting the AIs hollowed out the moon, making it the space dock?”