A.I. Void Ship (The A.I. Series Book 6)

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Walleye,” said the slim professional, whose breath smelled of stimstick smoke. “I want to make this easy for you. We can resort to…harsher methods if you insist.”

  “I certainly don’t want that,” Walleye said, kicking his short legs from the chair because his feet didn’t quite reach the floor.

  “Then you have to admit what you did,” the interrogator said.

  “Fine,” Walleye said. “I wanted to keep this to myself, but I’ve been studying crew morale—”

  “Uh, no,” the interrogator said, holding up a thoroughly clean hand, interrupting the dialogue. “We went through Gloria Hawkins’ personal computer slate. We found the spool you slipped her at the shooting range.”

  “What spool is that?”

  The interrogator sighed. “I know your background. You’re not only tough but you’re smart. What I don’t like is that you think we’re idiots.”

  “Hardly that,” Walleye murmured.

  “The spool was under your shoe, kapeesh? When you put the shoe on the bench so you could tie your laces, you slid the spool onto the bench, leaving it for the mentalist to take.”

  “Oh. That spool. I thought you meant—”

  “This is no joke, Walleye.”

  The little mutant studied the interrogator. “I know,” he finally said.

  “Tell us what you wrote on the spool.”

  “Oh. I get it. She permanently erased the message. Thanks for letting me know. That mentalist is a smart girl.”

  The interrogator’s eyes narrowed, and he slapped the table with both hands. “Come clean or the other guy comes in.”

  “Does the act usually work on others?” Walleye asked.

  The interrogator glared at him a moment longer and then shrugged. “Sometimes,” the man said.

  Walleye made one of his snap decisions. He’d been thinking about it ever since the Intelligence team had grabbed him. The decision included more risk than he liked taking. But the odds were too high to stay silent any longer.

  Walleye smiled. He was getting good pot odds for talking.

  “What’s so funny?” the interrogator asked.

  Walleyed ignored the question and turned to the two-way mirror. “I’d appreciate it if you came in yourself, War Leader. I think you’d like to hear what I have to say. Or said another way, I don’t think you want others to hear this.”

  The interrogator grew tense as he glanced at the two-way mirror and then Walleye. “Do you hope to use your poison ring on the commander?”

  The question surprised Walleye, but he didn’t show it. The Old Man must have been running the show from the beginning. Hmm… They’d outplayed him almost all along the line. Maybe whatever was making everyone strange had been stressing him too.

  Walleye took off the ring and tossed it onto the table where it clattered. “Careful with it. You don’t want to spring the prick and poison yourself.”

  A light flashed in the cell.

  The interrogator picked up the ring as if it was a venomous snake and put it in a clear bag. Then, he got up and walked out the opening hatch.

  Afterward, Supreme Commander Hawkins walked inside, the cell door slamming shut behind him. Jon nodded to Walleye, pulled out the other chair and sat down at the table with him.

  “I appreciate this, sir,” Walleye said.

  Jon just stared at him, a cold thing the man must have learned as a lower level, New London Dome enforcer.

  Walleye nodded. “You know, all this reminds me of something. I couldn’t remember at first. Now I do. This reminds me when Benz and you were racing to the Allamu Battle station. Do you remember those early days when we were making our first hyperspace journeys?”

  Jon kept staring.

  “As the flotilla headed in-system to the battle station, you sent me to Benz’s ship. I had a job to do there. Do you remember that?”

  Jon frowned and finally spoke. “Are you referring to the Seiner Magistrate?”

  Walleye nodded.

  “The Magistrate Yellow Ellowyn?” Jon asked.

  “The witch herself,” Walleye said.

  “What does she have to do with this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe everything.”

  The commander’s frown deepened into a scowl. “Seiners are aboard my ship?”

  “Your wife is worried about you, sir. The other day, you pulled a hard move against the Star Lords. You got some good chiefs killed doing that.”

  “I did what I had to do,” Jon said.

  “Before that, Benz tried to mutiny, and you shot him in the face. That was a hard kill.”

  “You would rather Benz had murdered me?”

  “Not a chance,” Walleye said. “Your wife noticed that you’ve been…off from your usual sunny self. She wondered where she could go to get some independent confirmation.”

  “You?” Jon asked.

  “Me,” Walleye agreed.

  Jon blinked several times. “And?” he asked softly.

  “What do you think, sir? Have you been acting differently? Had Frank Benz been acting like he usually did?”

  Jon frowned again. “No,” he whispered.

  “That’s what I figured too. Now, what would cause important people to change all at once?”

  “Telepathy?”

  “Something of that nature, at least. Your wife made a better choice than she knew in coming to me. The Seiners can’t touch my mind. At least, we know the Magistrate Yellow Ellowyn couldn’t touch it. My mutation might have something to do with that.”

  Jon shook his head. “This is all wild guesswork on your part.”

  “I don’t think so. Benz mutinied. You shot him in the face. You played hardball with the Star Lords of Roke. They played hard against you. Something is going on. The number of fights among crewmembers has grown. Yet, no one has reported that. Don’t you find that strange?”

  Jon stared at Walleye. Finally, he said quietly, “I’ll tell you what I’m feeling. I want to order the Old Man to bring his killers and watch them kill you. I don’t feel another mind moving mine, but…”

  “But you’re pissed off,” Walleye said. “Look, sir, I don’t know enough about the Seiners to say this has to be them. What I do know is that the general feeling here has a similar feeling to the time we took on the Magistrate Yellow Ellowyn. If you think about it, that makes perfect sense.”

  “How so?”

  “We know there must be more Seiners hiding out among humans. Yet, they haven’t made any more overt moves against us. What do we know about the Seiners? They like to grab the leadership so they can run things from the shadows, using the leaders as puppets.”

  Jon’s nostrils flared as he exhaled. “I hate the Seiners. I hate their mind manipulation. Why would they try to take over or sabotage us now?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Jon tilted his head. Then, he exhaled again, this time louder than before. “Walleye, I’m setting you a task. Find the Seiners. Your mission, however, is just between you and me.”

  Walleye glanced at the two-way mirror. “What about the Old Man?”

  “Between you, me and the Old Man,” Jon amended.

  “You believe me about all this, sir?”

  “Yes,” Jon said. “Your theory explains the stresses I’ve been…” The Supreme Commander stopped talking as he stared at the little mutant.

  “I think I understand, sir,” Walleye said. “I’ll get to work.”

  “Walleye…thanks for what you’re doing. Without you—if this is Seiners—they might have continued working in the shadows without us knowing about it.”

  “You should thank your wife, sir. She’s the one who guessed something was off. I should have figured it out on my own, but then I’m not a mentalist.”

  Jon nodded, saying, “Find the Seiners, if they’re here. We have to root them out before something worse happens to us.”

  “I’m on it, sir,” Walleye said.

  -10-

  Red Demeter the Seiner Infiltrator
, aka Lieutenant Maia Ross, soon noted the increased surveillance.

  New checkpoints popped up around the ship. Marines and Intelligence people worked overtime. Finally, with something approaching horror, Demeter realized the Intelligence people were searching living quarters one room at a time.

  Despite the High Magistrate’s injunctions, Demeter decided to risk light telepathic mindreading. Soon, she found out that she was right. The teams frisked crew rooms, but left them in such perfect condition that few noticed the rifling.

  Demeter discovered one other thing with her light mind-probes. There was a mutant known as Walleye. He’d done something years ago that had saved the expedition from Seiners.

  Her human-seeming eyes glowed with interest. She may have found a key link in this Walleye to discovering what had happened to the Magistrate Yellow Ellowyn of Mars Colony.

  Demeter decided to risk studying the mutant. She did this from afar. After several days, she just happened to be in a cafeteria where Walleye and his stunning girlfriend ate lunch together.

  He was an ugly little toad of a man, if one could even call him a man. But his girlfriend. All the men tracked her with their eyes. They lusted for the woman.

  Animals, Demeter thought.

  From where Walleye sat, he looked around from time to time. He had strange eyes. It was impossible to tell what he looked at precisely.

  Demeter made a soft mind—

  The Seiner stiffened as she ate apple pie alone at a far table. Then she noticed Walleye looking her way.

  Demeter almost panicked. She could not read his mind or sense his emotions. He was a blank to her. She wondered in that moment if he was a telepath and had just discovered her.

  You must act normally.

  Forcing herself to move slowly, Demeter did not look at Walleye’s table again. She finished the apple pie and sipped scalding coffee. Finally, deciding that enough time had passed, Demeter rose as if she was sleepwalking. She did this on purpose, slowly walking out of the cafeteria.

  She could have entered a different mind and used that person’s eyes to watch the mutant. But that might have given her away. She left the cafeteria, finding it difficult to breathe.

  It was hard being the only Seiner in a sea of animals, of beasts. But that was why an infiltrator was a special type of Seiner.

  No one appeared to be following her. Demeter only looked back once. She wondered again about the checkpoints, the ID searches and the increased surveillance everywhere. The animals must have divined that a Seiner was among them.

  At her station in Engineering where she watched several techs monitoring a wall of controls, Demeter began to think this through. She found it difficult because the back of her hands itched abominably.

  What must it have been like to live on the Seiner homeworld? Was the High Magistrate correct in that they could not ally themselves with the beasts against the dread machines?

  An engineering superior surprised Demeter while she was daydreaming. The human chided her for her lack of watchfulness. The indicators showed that the coil temperature had risen three points.

  “I am sorry, sir,” Lieutenant Maia said in a contrite voice.

  The superior appeared mollified, nodding curtly and moving along.

  Demeter glared at his back. The arrogant beast had questioned her diligence. How dare he speak to one of the people that way in front of her subordinates?

  In that moment, Demeter realized that the High Magistrate of the Earth Colony was right. The Seiners could never work together with the animals. They must rule the insufferable creatures or burn them out of existence.

  None of that mattered to her at this moment, however. The animals—the humans—she needed to disguise her disgust of them. The easiest way was not to think about their awfulness all the time.

  In any case, regarding the larger picture, the humans knew that a Seiner was among them. She must put them off their guard. Yes. She would lower the Provoker settings from four back to two. In a month, she would return to the Provoker and set it at three. She must work patiently and no longer rush things.

  With that decided, Demeter paid more attention to the techs under her Engineering command.

  ***

  Seven hours later, Demeter crawled out of the deep access tube. She’d reset the Provoker back to two instead of four. TP waves would still irritate their minds, but not quite so obviously as before.

  She dared to make a quick telepathic sweep. Relief filled her. No one was hiding out here to capture her.

  Demeter closed the access hatch, stood and began heading for her quarters. As she walked, she began scratching the top of her left hand. Before she caught herself and quit, she almost rubbed off the skin-suit covering her hand. That was too close. She had to control the increasing itchiness better.

  Demeter moaned as she looked at the top of her left hand. She would have to spread healing loam over the badly reddened pseudo-skin, lessening her already dwindling supply.

  She would irritate the animal minds more slowly than she would have liked. She would take smaller instead of bigger steps. The problem was that the mission was beginning to drive her wild. If she didn’t get out of this skin-suit soon… Demeter didn’t know what would happen.

  With more difficulty than usual, she began a Seiner litany, trying to calm herself.

  Her infiltration prep work would succeed. The Seiners would win. It might mean sacrificing the entire animal race for the Seiners to make a clean break with the AI Dominion. That meant she must complete her mission, if the Seiners were going to survive the awful machine menace.

  -11-

  The weeks passed as Walleye hunted for hidden Seiners and as Lieutenant Maia Ross diligently worked in Engineering. All the while aboard the Nathan Graham, the secret Provoker sent out TP waves at setting two.

  Then, a new ship entered the Beta Hydri System. The new ship dropped out of hyperspace at the opposite end of the star system from where the Confederation fleet had arrived. That meant scanning and finding the new ship took twice as long as something near the Beta Hydri star.

  At last, confirmation came. The new ship was a Confederation scout, arriving on schedule. At its present velocity, the scout would take a little more than three months to reach the enemy battle station. That, however, was not the scout’s purpose. The scout acted as the fleet’s probe, scanning Hydri II and its factory moon. The scout searched for AI cyberships hidden behind the gas giant and moon—hidden, that is, from the approaching Confederation fleet.

  The searching took time. During that time, the enemy battle station sent another message to the fleet. Jon was on the bridge when Gloria decoded the AI missive.

  “I have detected anomalies in your approach,” the station brain-core said. “Combined with the appearance of another alien ship, I have given it a 74 percent probability that you are an alien deception fleet. You must now agree to answer the Kingdom Seven Questions.”

  “Great,” Jon muttered from his chair. “Does anyone know what Kingdom Seven Questions even are?”

  No one answered.

  “Gloria?” asked Jon.

  The diminutive mentalist swiveled her chair to face him and shrugged.

  “Bast?” Jon asked.

  The Sacerdote was on the bridge today.

  “You should know the exact nature of the questions soon enough,” Bast said dryly.

  Jon rubbed his chin. “Any word from the scout?” he asked Gloria.

  “Not yet,” she said. “We’re still waiting for its sensor sweep results.”

  “Let’s give ourselves two hours before we reply to the battle station,” Jon said.

  In that time, the scout ship’s pulse message finally arrived. The scout’s sensor team had not found any sign of AI Dominion vessels. The battle station was alone in the star system just as it appeared to be.

  Jon rubbed his hands in relief. “It’s time,” he said. “Get ready to send the battle station a go-ahead for the Kingdom Seven Questions.”

/>   “Do you want me to embed the anti-AI virus in our message?” Gloria asked.

  Jon pointed his right index finger at her and made a clicking sound with his mouth, before adding, “It’s time we finished this.”

  Several bridge people clapped and cheered. A factory-grabbing mission had almost become routine by this time.

  Jon sat back as tension visibly drained out of him. He’d brought a huge fleet to do a task one cybership-class vessel could have accomplished. If the anti-AI virus worked, he might send one ship all the way to consolidate the factory moon while the rest of the fleet began a long turning maneuver to head elsewhere.

  As Jon contemplated the idea…he frowned. He couldn’t say why.

  What’s wrong with me?

  Several weeks ago, he had really begun to feel wound up. He’d almost had Walleye shot, and he’d started a hard argument with Gloria for what she had done by inducing the Makemake hitman to spy on him. Then, the next morning, he hadn’t felt so bad. In fact, he’d felt a lot better than he had for some time. He’d made up with Gloria. They had a vigorous session in bed, and he’d started to feel more upbeat as the day progressed. The idea of Seiners among them had started to wane. Besides, after several weeks hunting, Walleye still hadn’t found any sign of the secretive aliens.

  Now, here on the bridge at this critical moment…Jon knew something was off and it didn’t have the feel Walleye had suggested several weeks ago. This was something different. Maybe something in the scout’s sensor data didn’t seem right to him.

  Jon sat up, slapping both armrests. “Tell me when you have confirmation of the AI takeover,” he told Gloria.

  “Where are you going?” his wife asked.

  “I’m taking a walk,” Jon lied. He was going directly to a side room down the corridor. He might even summon Bast after a bit. He was going to pore over the scout’s sensor data and see if he could figure out why he had a sudden premonition that something was badly off.

  As Jon exited the bridge, a chill ran down his back and caused him to shiver. He hurried, wanting more than ever to study the data.

  ***