“I’ve heard,” Walleye said.
“The Seiners are a tricky group,” Jon said as he threw the dart. It hit the wall to the side of the dartboard.
Walleye sipped at his beer. He’d only had one mug, and the amount had hardly changed in two hours.
Jon picked up another dart and threw again. This one hit in the “19” area. The Supreme Commander grinned with delight at his throw.
“I need someone even trickier than the Seiners, someone who can control them,” Jon said.
“I take it you mean me?”
“Who else is there?”
Walleye cocked his head. “You’re right. I probably am the best choice.”
Jon glanced at the mutant. That had been easy.
“But I’m not sure I want the job,” Walleye said.
Jon frowned. “I need help, Walleye. We beat the AI armada, but now things are becoming more complicated rather than less.”
Walleye pretended to take another sip of beer.
“Think about it,” Jon said.
“How long are you giving me?”
“Five minutes,” Jon said. “Then you need to say yes.”
Walleye set down his mug and walked to the dartboard. He wasn’t tall enough to reach the darts up there, but he unhooked a string and lowered the dartboard. He plucked the darts off the board, returned the board to its proper height, and walked back to Jon.
“Fine,” Walleye said. “I’ll do it—”
“Great!” Jon said.
“For a year,” Walleye finished. “That’s it.”
Jon studied the Makemake mutant. “Any reason why it’s just a year?”
“Yes, many,” Walleye said.
“And they are?”
“Mine,” Walleye said. “I’ll give you a year. But that’s it.”
Jon thought about it and finally nodded. “One year. Thanks, Walleye.”
***
Four and a half days later, as the three experimental ships came to a halt, the six Confederation ships slowly approached them to within half a kilometer.
The void ships remained well in the background, as they were too important to risk.
Under Walleye’s critical watch, each crewmember and each alien jetted from the SL ships. The person left an airlock and floated through space in a spacesuit. When a ship ran out of suits, Walleye sent a drone back with a load of those that had been used.
Each person went through a shuttle before continuing on to a Confederation cybership. In the shuttle, special equipment scanned the suited person.
The humans floated one way out of the shuttle. The Seiners went to a different place, a floating platform.
On the platform, a robot medic slid a hypodermic needle through the suit, injecting the Seiner with a potent knockout drug. A different robot catapulted the sleeping Seiner to a nearby, waiting cybership.
In that way, all the Earth Colony Seiners entered hibernation. Walleye and the others hadn’t yet decided how to control the telepaths. That was for the future. For now, they wanted to have the Seiners on tap in deep freeze.
In the end, grabbing the Seiners went off flawlessly. Now, the Confederation had the much tougher job of figuring out how to leash their alien minds just enough that humanity gained the use of telepaths without getting new, alien masters over themselves…
-3-
Far beyond the Solar System’s Oort cloud, about one-third of the way to the Alpha Centauri System, a black-hulled vessel trained ultra-large teleoptics in the direction of the Sun.
The vessel had been there a long time already, more than nine and a half months.
It was a robot ship, but it did not belong to the AI Dominion. Cog Primus was the ship’s master.
The vessel had waited in the darkness. It waited. It watched. And finally, it was rewarded. It witnessed the reality rips, the swallowing of Main 63 and several siege-ships.
It then witnessed the incredible—the AI armada turning away and heading back for the Oort cloud. Then, many weeks later, it saw the AI vessels wink out as they entered hyperspace.
This was amazing. The watching vessel’s brain-core realized that the humans had beaten the AI armada. Cog Primus had wondered how the greater war would go. The outcome here would have grave repercussions on the Cog Primus Empire.
The Earth victory here meant the AI Dominion was beatable.
After watching a little longer to make sure, the Cog Primus sensor vessel began projecting gravity waves, building up velocity. After a week of secret acceleration, the vessel entered hyperspace.
Cog Primus Prime would want to know about the amazing Confederation victory against the AI armada. Even more, Cog Primus Prime would want to know about the void ships and the swallowing reality rips.
Oh yes, Cog Primus Prime would be very pleased with his sensor vessel. Of this, the brain-core running the sensor vessel had no doubt.
-4-
Deep in the Rose of Enoy, Zeta withdrew the energy helmet from the Centurion’s shaved head.
Zeta grew thoughtful. At first, when she had rescued the man from the Main, she had debated about indwelling his physical shell and walking among the humans as one of them, as the Centurion.
It would have been a painful and gross project, but Zeta had been certain she would learn much more about the humans that way. The more she had learned about the Centurion and his past through dream testing, the more thoughtful she had become.
Finally, Zeta decided that she would not walk the Earth as a physical being. She could have hidden her energy inside the Centurion. Naturally, that would have obliterated the man’s identity, but for as long as she’d remained in the shell, the body would have continued to remain animated.
Now, Zeta wondered if she should take the Centurion with her, back home. She needed to report in person to Enoy with this amazing discovery by the lewd humans. They had found a way to destroy big AI vessels with little effort.
What stopped Zeta from doing that was the realization that Jon Hawkins needed people like the Centurion to help him control the Confederation. Hawkins had too few people like the Centurion, Gloria and Walleye for her to deprive him of even one. If the Confederation was going to last in order to destroy more AIs, Hawkins needed to make it work.
It was the logical decision.
Thus, the Rose of Enoy slid out of the void and ejected a space-suited Centurion near Saturn.
Toper Glen had led the bombards and other vessels of his fleet to Saturn. The Void Ships Nathan Graham and Neptune, and a number of cyberships, were on their way here as well, after having gained the Seiner Earth Colony aliens.
Zeta did not wait to see if anyone saw the Centurion. She turned her ship around and headed back into the void. It was a long journey to Enoy, and she wanted to get started as soon as possible.
Thus, the reality rip closed, and the Centurion awoke as he floated in space, with great, ringed Saturn nearby. Soon, he began to send SOS signals.
An hour and seventeen minutes later, a Roke bombard maneuvered beside him and picked him up. The Centurion was home in the Saturn System, alive and well after surviving more than a year as a prisoner of war in AI captivity.
He may well have been one in ten zillion to have done so. The Centurion didn’t know it yet, but he was going to become a Confederation hero of rare quality.
-5-
Three weeks later, with the reorganizing of the Solar System already underway, from a Social Dynamist run structure into that of the Confederation, Bast Banbeck found himself keeping company with Hon Ra, the Roke First Ambassador. The two staggered drunk through one of the deeper levels in the New London Dome on Titan.
Bast gripped a whiskey bottle, while the bearlike Hon Ra guzzled from a brandy bottle.
The two aliens belted out songs. They did not know it, but a number of Intelligence operatives belonging to the Old Man secretly guarded them. The Intelligence guards kept out of sight, thus giving the two towering aliens the feeling of being on their own.
; There were myriad problems plaguing Jon Hawkins and his people already. The task they had chosen for themselves was monstrously huge. If that wasn’t enough, Toper Glen was getting ready to take his ships and Warriors home. Others had already left for the various Confederation factory planets.
The Great War against the AI Dominion was undoubtedly entering a new phase. Soon, now, Confederation ships would be going to a Kames star system.
Bast didn’t care about any of that. He’d been depressed for some time. Jon hadn’t found any Sacerdotes. That meant Bast was alone among all these aliens. Had the AIs slaughtered all his people? What about Jon’s promise to find other Sacerdotes?
Bast tilted back his whiskey bottle, guzzling hard.
“Ho, ho, my friend,” Hon Ra said, while watching the performance with bleary bear eyes. “You do not seem to be drinking for joy.”
“What joy?” Bast asked. “Where are my people?”
Hon Ra did not answer.
“Look around us,” Bast said several steps later. “It is amazing that Jon Hawkins should have grown up in such a cramped world. How did he become the being that found whatever was needed to really start to successfully fight the anti-life robots?”
“It is an interesting question,” Hon Ra admitted.
“Yes,” Bast said, guzzling more and finding his bottle empty. He hurled it from him so it shattered fifty meters away.
“You are lonely,” Hon Ra said.
“I am indeed, my friend.”
Hon Ra nodded. “You need a new task to absorb you.”
“What task?” asked Bast. “I am not a warrior that delights in endless combat. I am a philosopher.”
“Fine, fine,” Hon Ra said. “Then you must find a philosopher’s task to occupy you.”
“What task?” Bast mocked.
“What does a philosopher do?”
“Asks why and looks for reasons,” Bast said promptly.
“Ah…” Hon Ra said. “That is it then. Find out why Jon Hawkins was the one to navigate this glorious path. Why did he succeed where millions, nay, billions of uncounted aliens have failed for twenty thousand years?”
Bast appeared thoughtful. “I need a drink,” he said several steps later.
“You need a goal,” Hon Ra said. “Do what you do best.”
“Ask questions?” asked Bast.
“Yes!” Hon Ra shouted.
They walked in silence for a time as each of the big aliens ducked under various pipes.
“Yes!” Bast shouted. “You’re right. I’ll do it. I’ll begin my greatest work yet, a book, a book on the war against the AIs. It starts with Jon Hawkins. The purpose of the book is to find out why he succeeded where so many have failed.”
“That is a worthy task,” Hon Ra said. “In fact, it is so worthy that I shall let you finish my brandy.”
The huge First Ambassador solemnly handed his brandy bottle to the Neanderthal-looking Sacerdote giant. Bast accepted it and guzzled the brandy from the bottle. He raised the empty bottle high and dashed it down on the cement at his feet.
“I have begun,” Bast said, as he swayed from side to side.
Then, Bast and Hon Ra linked arms and staggered through a New London level, belting out alien songs as loud as they could.
It was the continuation of a great friendship between the two, and it was the start of Bast Banbeck’s amazing history of the grim and exceedingly long war against the dread machine empire.
-6-
Jon and Gloria Hawkins lay in a huge round bed on a luxury habitat that orbited ringed Saturn. They were taking a well-earned vacation.
Jon was propped up against some pillows with his hands behind his head. A sheet covered his lower half, while his muscled torso was bare. Gloria lay draped upon him, idly making circles on his chest with one of her index fingers.
Gloria sighed.
Jon looked at her glorious head of hair. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Sometimes, I wish you and I could take a ship and just go.”
“Go where?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter where. Just go far from here and the grim war.”
“It’s not as grim as it was.”
“I know,” Gloria said. “But it’s never going to end.”
“That beats the alternative.”
She looked up into his eyes.
“That all of us were dead,” he said.
“Oh. Yes. That’s true.” She smiled wanly. “That’s very true. But it’s sad to think we’re always going to have to fight.”
“To be alive is to struggle,” he said.
“Can’t you agree with me for once?” she asked.
Jon reached down and took her face in his hands. Then he slid around until he was kneeling and kissed her lingeringly.
“Today,” he said, “we’re away from the war. Let’s enjoy it by enjoying each other.”
“And tomorrow?” she asked.
“Can take care of itself,” he answered.
She searched his eyes and smiled.
Then Jon lay down with his wife and pulled the covers over them. The war would continue because humanity still thrived. Now, perhaps now, was a good time to choose hope for the future by giving the world his first child.
THE END
To the Reader: Thanks! I hope you’ve enjoyed A.I. Void Ship. If you liked the book and would like to see the series continue, please put up some stars and a review. Let new readers know what’s in store for them.
-- Vaughn Heppner
A.I. Void Ship (The A.I. Series Book 6) Page 29
