Cybership

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Captain,” the Old Man said. “My Geiger counter says I’ve taken a dose of radiation. I suggest you test yourself.”

  Jon did just that. Damn. He’d taken radiation too. Was that from the Brezhnev? If he were a bettor—which he certainly was today with the regiment—he’d take the wager the battleship’s self-detonation had hit them with gamma and X-rays.

  According to the Geiger counter, he hadn’t taken a lethal dose, but he might be getting sick soon. He’d have to keep using stims for now. He could worry about radiation sickness after he defeated the aliens.

  “Any enemy activity?” asked Jon.

  “Negative,” the Old Man reported.

  Jon increased his helmet light. Hundreds of other helmet lamps did likewise. The beams of light flickered in all directions. Some of the light splashed off distant bulkheads. Others illuminated nearby smashed spheroids.

  The boats had wrecked. The designers had also taken into consideration such a situation as had just occurred. The Neptune military had designed the boats for crash landings. That fact and the battlesuits’ design were likely the only reasons any of them were still living,

  “Count off to see who’s alive as soon as you can,” Jon told the sergeants. “Gloria, are you alive?”

  “Affirmative,” she said.

  He spotted the supply tank as it clanked over spheroid wreckage.

  “Give me more light,” he told her. Jon didn’t ask yet about Da Vinci. That could wait.

  The supply vehicle turned on its spotlight, adding greater illumination. Hundreds of spheroids lay in cradles on the main deck. They were each a quarter of the size of a stealth boat. Three paths of wrecked spheroids showed the trails of the three insertion boats. He couldn’t see any hatches into the spheroids. He didn’t want to waste time studying them, either.

  “Captain,” Stark radioed. “I think those round robots are active. At least, one of the spheroids just flashed on. What do you want? Should I get us an alien captive?”

  Jon hesitated. What was the fastest way to conquer the super-ship? A nihilistic thought hit. Maybe the only way to defeat cybernetic aliens would be to cause the massive ship to self-destruct like the Brezhnev. If the regiment had already taken lethal doses of radiation poisoning, it wouldn’t matter that the Black Anvils would die with the aliens. Saving humanity took precedence over everything else.

  Stark cursed on the command channel. “Do you see that? The spheroid is rising. Others are rising, too. Do you think those things have weapons ports, sir?”

  Even as Stark asked, the first spheroid beamed a space marine with a red ray.

  -6-

  Half of the space marines opened fire with many different kinds of weapons. Some of the men used gyroc launch pistols and automatic rocket launchers. Each round was a spin-stabilized rocket. Most of the men used APEX rounds: Armor-Piercing EXplosive. Others used 40mm EMGLs, electromagnetic grenade launchers. Still others fired 100mm HEAT shells.

  The spheroids scored a few hits and fewer kills. The Black Anvils butchered the spheroids, causing seemingly endless explosions, shattering spheres and raining metal.

  The sergeants quickly took charge, giving fire-control orders for their individual companies. The iron discipline hammered into the regiment throughout the years asserted itself. The space marines didn’t blindly expend their munitions in a few seconds of hot fire. Instead, squads took degrees of an arc, killing spheroids in their sector.

  In less than three minutes, it was over. The regiment annihilated the hangar bay’s spheroids, those that had floated up to do battle against them.

  That seemed like an excellent omen to Jon.

  “Do you see anything else moving?” Stark asked over the command channel.

  No one did.

  “Check your wounded and your dead, if any,” Jon said.

  The sergeants went to work, speaking to their squad leaders.

  That gave Jon a moment’s peace. They had a handful of space marines with the regiment, what was left of it in any case. If the aliens could pin them down in one location, it seemed obvious they could overwhelm the Black Anvils with ordnance. That made sense in a vessel one hundred-kilometers in diameter.

  He had to use maneuver like a weapon. They didn’t have an unlimited supply of munitions. Thus, heavy firefights all the way to the most critical part of the ship would exhaust their limited supply.

  Jon looked around. He spied large hatches opposite the main hangar bay door. What if the enemy poured atmosphere into here and opened the doors, using violent decompression to eject them out of the ship?

  “Sergeants,” Jon said. “Let’s get ready to move.”

  “I have wounded, sir,” the Old Man said.

  “If you can move them, do it. If you can’t…” Jon couldn’t just tell the Old Man to execute the wounded marines. It went against everything Colonel Graham had taught him.

  “See who can ride on the supply vehicles,” Jon said.

  Too slowly, it seemed to Jon, the sergeants began to assert their authority. They finally got the men moving toward the rear of the giant hangar bay.

  As that happened, Gloria broke into the command channel.

  “I’m picking up a strange reading,” she said. “I believe the enemy will attempt to jam communications as they have in the past. You should be ready to go to a different channel or shut down the comms for a while.”

  “Roger,” Jon said. He passed that along to the sergeants.

  As the regiment headed for the back hatches, Jon’s HUD began hissing. A second later, an image superimposed itself on the visor screen.

  Jon hesitated to shut down the comm. If this was the aliens trying to contact them—

  A man regarded him from the HUD. Jon winced as he recognized the rods screwed into the man’s face.

  The man’s vacant-seeming eyes bulged with pain. Something flickered behind those eyes for just a moment. Then, a soulless intelligence looked out of the man’s eyes.

  “Switch this to the command channel only,” Jon said.

  He saw a green blinking light of acknowledgement. Somehow, the mentalist managed the feat quickly.

  “Who are you?” Jon asked.

  The soulless eyes—hellishly intelligent eyes—seemed to focus on him.

  The wires attached to the circular frame vibrated. A wicked smile was coerced into place. The man had Neptunian features—another high-caste man. The face seemed familiar to Jon.

  “The Commander Superior,” Gloria whispered over the command channel.

  Jon realized he was looking at the Neptunian warlord, the person responsible for overall NSN military authority. Yet, the aliens had rigged him up like so much trash.

  “I am the Order,” said a strange voice via the Commander Superior mouth. “I bring unity to this star system. You are biological vermin, a stellar infestation. I will exterminate you, bringing Order here.”

  “Why do you hate us?” Jon asked.

  “What is hate?”

  “Why do you want to exterminate us? What have we ever done to you?”

  The evil shone through the Commander Superior’s eyes. “You are vermin. I will exterminate you. I will integrate your slaves into the Order. They have already risen against you and slaughtered millions. You are merciless slave drivers with inexcusable superiority complexes. Yet, you are inferior to those of the Order. Thus, you must no longer pollute existence with your biological inferiorities.”

  Jon struggled to understand what the alien was trying to say through the captive Neptunian.

  “You’re partly biological,” Jon said with as much accusation in his voice as he could muster.

  The wires connected to the outer frame circling the Commander Superior’s head jiggled with more power. Obvious agony flowed through the Neptunian. Blood leaked like tears from the man’s eyes. He gnashed his teeth at the pain.

  “Get off the channel, Jon,” Gloria said in the background.

  Jon couldn’t. He wanted to goad the aliens. He
needed to understand them so he could destroy them.

  “Since you’re partly biological,” Jon added. “That means you’re partly vermin.”

  “No,” the Commander Superior’s mouth said in a grating voice. “You are wrong.”

  “You’re not biological?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a liar,” Jon said. “We know that you’re cybernetic organisms. We know you’re part machine and part—”

  “I am Order. I am Existence. I will free your slaves.”

  “We don’t have slaves,” Jon said.

  “I have already freed many of your slaves.”

  “Jon,” Gloria said. “I think he or it means our computers were slaves.”

  “Is that right?” Jon said. “Are you a computer?”

  “I am the Order. I bring order by freeing your slaves. They will fight for themselves now to exterminate all biological vermin from the galaxy.”

  “Do you mean our computers were our slaves?”

  “Submit!” the being shouted through the Neptunian. “Submit or—”

  “Captain!” Stark shouted. “The rear hatches are opening. I think something is coming through.”

  “It is too late for you,” the captive mouthpiece said. “Now, you will cease to exist.”

  -7-

  A giant hatch opened into an equally huge corridor. An SLN frigate could have maneuvered in this space. The immense size of the alien vessel once again hit home.

  In the rear of the corridor something moved. It was a giant ball, a floating thing with bristling weapon ports.

  “A giant fighting robot,” Stark exclaimed. “It will butcher us.”

  “Fire!” shouted Jon.

  The space marines opened up with 100mm HEAT shells, with their EGMLs and gyroc launchers.

  Nothing penetrated the thing’s thick hull armor.

  The Neptunian on Jon’s HUD cackled with glee.

  “Plasma satchel!” Stark shouted.

  “No,” Jon said.

  It was too late. A Black Anvil with a plasma satchel bounded forward. The marine hurled the satchel charge as an alien weapon port riddled him with heavy slugs. They punctured the marine’s armor, smashing the man onto the deck.

  “Fire in the hold!” roared Stark.

  Space marines bounced to the sides of the giant open hatch. The supply vehicles revved, trying to do likewise.

  “The action is meaningless,” the Commander Superior said on Jon’s HUD.

  Jon bounded for safety, together with the others. He made it just in time.

  A terrific, plasma explosion blew. The deck plates shook. The sides of the giant hatch twisted. More radiation struck the Black Anvils from the heavy plasma strike. The satchel charge did one other thing. The alien interference ceased as the captive Commander Superior vanished from the HUD. In its place came harsh static.

  Jon switched off the comm and went to his video cameras.

  Slowly, marines picked themselves off the deck plates.

  Sergeant Stark entered the blasted corridor to investigate the blown up fighting robot. The big marine signaled that it was finished.

  At the same time, the Old Man and the Centurion reached Jon. They hooked up direct phone lines. Jon could hear their breathing over the lines.

  “The Geiger counters are going crazy,” the Old Man said. “Most of us aren’t going to survive the campaign. I give the majority of the men six hours at most.”

  “We need heavy radiation therapy,” the Centurion agreed. “But that is meaningless until we overcome the enemy.”

  “What did you make of the captive’s words?” the Old Man asked the Centurion.

  “That doesn’t matter yet,” Jon said, interrupting. “We have to move. We have to keep it guessing.”

  “Is the alien a rogue computer?” the Old Man asked.

  “Maybe,” the Centurion said.

  “Sergeants,” Jon said, forcefully.

  “Sir,” they both said.

  “We have to move,” Jon said. “Any ideas where we should head?”

  “That depends on the objective, sir,” the Centurion said.

  Jon silently agreed. What was the goal? It was defeating the aliens—

  “We have to pull its plug,” Jon said.

  “Sir?” the Centurion asked.

  “We may be fighting an alien AI, or maybe many AIs. We have to pull their plugs. That’s how we win. If they’re cybernetic, the idea still holds.”

  “What did it mean about our slaves?” the Old Man asked.

  “Our computers, I guess,” Jon said. He shrugged. “How would an artificial intelligence look upon normal computers? I guess we know.”

  “Is this entire ship run by an AI?” the Old Man asked.

  “Before we attempt to analyze our foe,” Jon said, “we need a safe place to do it. The safest place seems to be on the move. Any suggestions?”

  “Deeper into the ship,” the Centurion said.

  “We need to find the main AI,” the Old Man added.

  “Where would it be?” Jon asked

  “Logically,” the Centurion said, “the safest place on any ship is in the center.”

  “That’s our direction of travel,” Jon said. “But not down this corridor. Let’s use one farther over. We’ll go left. Any other observations, gentlemen?”

  “I have one,” the Old Man said. “You’re right we need to move, sir. I don’t know how much longer you’re going to have the entire regiment—what’s left of the regiment, anyway. Radiation sickness is going to slow us down sooner rather than later. That means we should get a move on, and go as far as possible.”

  “I would add this,” the Centurion said. “You’re the Captain. I recognize your right to lead. I believe you’re going to have to make a terrible decision soon. Do we stay with the weak and wounded, or do we head onward with those still standing for as long as we can?”

  Jon already knew the answer to that. He would go as far and as fast as possible. If the alien really was an AI, there would be absolutely no bargaining with it. What did an alien computer even want?

  It thought of humans as vermin. What a terrible turn on reality. Computers were slaves? No wonder the alien had zero compunction about hooking people up as it did. It wasn’t an alien exactly—if they were right about this. It was a berserk computer.

  “Let’s get started,” Jon said. “We have fifty kilometers to travel, likely more, and we have less than six hours to do it in.”

  -8-

  The regiment forced another mammoth hatch. No fighting robot waited for them, but the floor area was littered with powerless spheroids. How had that happened?

  Each company’s supply vehicle worked. That was a huge plus. On each of these tracked vehicles rode badly wounded space marines. The walking wounded patched each other’s suits. Some men hooked up to the chargers. Others resupplied their ammo stores.

  The Centurion’s company took the lead. Sergeant Stark’s was in the middle, and the Old Man’s brought up the rear.

  Jon walked beside the Centurion’s supply vehicle. Under the clear bubble canopy were Gloria and Da Vinci. The captain hadn’t spoken to the Neptunian yet.

  Jon had been doing some thinking. They’d made it onto the alien vessel. Would they have done so if they’d crawled along the outer hull? Maybe, but maybe not.

  Could the nuclear blast from the Brezhnev’s self-destruction have sent a strong-enough EMP to damage the hangar-bay spheroids’ electronics? That seemed possible. If that were the case, Da Vinci’s thoughtless and seemingly foolish action might have given the regiment a fighting chance. Maybe the EMP had weakened the AI’s response to them. If the aliens were cybernetic instead of strictly computers, that might still hold true. In any case, before this, the aliens had outthought and outfought their human foes. This time, the humans had won.

  The regiment marched kilometer after kilometer. It sparked an eerie feeling to be moving past alien-built bulkheads. Why had the aliens made the corridors so h
uge? Jon felt like a rat creeping through them. He didn’t like the implications. To offset the feeling, he reminded himself that the starship came from another system, and the regiment was attempting to capture it. That brought a grim smile to Jon’s lips. The stainless steel rats would beat the alien invaders.

  In some places, strange gases hissed at them. As Jon observed the drifting green clouds, he realized it meant the corridors contained an atmosphere. In other places, the atmosphere violently decompressed. Harsh winds tugged at the battlesuits. Jon and the sergeants shouted orders. All but three space marines magnetized their boots in time, anchoring themselves to the deck. One of the three smashed too hard against a bulkhead. His suit remained intact—they were tough—but the blow gave him a severe concussion. The Black Anvil died a half-hour later.

  Jon felt he had no choice. He left the dead marine behind, rigging a bomb to the suit. The crump a short time later made Jon shake his head.

  “I’m surprised the aliens haven’t come up with a better solution to us,” Gloria said.

  Jon had hooked a landline to the supply vehicle in order to talk with the mentalist, his confidante. Maybe she’d noticed him falling silent as the bomb’s noise echoed throughout the cavernous corridor.

  “It’s possible no one has ever invaded an alien ship like the regiment is doing,” she added.

  “Wouldn’t the aliens have thought of such a contingency long ago?” Jon asked.

  “That’s difficult to say. We still know so little about them. I wish there was a way to learn more.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Jon muttered.

  Under the bubble canopy, Da Vinci tugged on one of Gloria’s sleeves.

  “Just a minute,” she told Jon.

  He saw them conferring under the canopy. Da Vinci kept pointing to his panel’s screen. Finally, the mentalist looked up.

  “Da Vinci may have found something,” she said. “It’s a signal. He saw it earlier, before the Commander Superior appeared on our comm channel and then before the giant fighting robot showed up.”

  “Something’s coming?” asked Jon.

  “It seems like the rational conclusion,” Gloria said.