“Just one,” the alien said, nursing a scotch and soda. “The legend holds that they—the drivers—are not flesh and blood creatures like you and me.”
“More machines?” asked Jon.
“No…” Hon Ra said. “Not flesh and blood.”
Jon frowned. “What does that mean?”
“A silicon-based life-form maybe,” Bast suggested.
“The AIs are silicon-based,” Gloria said.
“Suppose the aliens are silicon-based and alive in a true sense,” Bast said. “That might be why they didn’t discover hyperspace but their other, inky realm of FTL travel.”
“We need a name for that realm,” Gloria said. “It’s seems wrong to keep calling it an inky place. I suggest we call it ‘the void.’”
“Catchy,” Walleye said.
“A void ship,” Jon muttered. “Why not? The void suits what I saw through the so-called reality rip in the Lytton System.”
“We must assume that the aliens have the power to crush planets into debris and hard radiation, devouring the majority of the mass in the process,” Gloria said. “How they can achieve this is anyone’s guess. I haven’t a clue.” She pondered that. “If Richard were alive, he might know. I doubt any of us will figure it out.”
“If we survive the void ship,” Jon said, “we need to return to the Lytton System and see what we can learn from the planetary debris.”
“If we survive…” Gloria said. “Those are grim words. Do you believe, like me, that our combined forces are not likely to be able to defeat the void ship?”
“I’m not admitting defeat even if the void ship can destroy us,” Jon said. “If nothing else, we need to get close and storm it with space marines.”
“Here, here,” Hon Ra said, raising his scotch and soda. “That is the star hero speaking. We shall never surrender.”
“Nice words,” Gloria told Jon. “The better idea would be to talk the aliens out of killing us.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Walleye said. “Talk to them. Make them listen.”
“How?” Jon asked.
Walleye grinned. “That’s your job, Captain. You made the AIs listen. Now, make the void ship acknowledge us so we can start a conversation.”
“I second his motion,” Bast said.
Jon nodded, the little Makemake mutant having given him an idea.
-7-
As ideas went, it might not have been the cleverest, but it was direct and to the point.
Jon ordered the rest of the strike force to hang back. He then ordered the Nathan Graham into maximum acceleration. They were a long way from the newly named void ship, but the human-crewed cybership began racing as fast as it could toward the inner system and the rock-like super-vessel.
Long-distance discussions flew back and forth between the battle station, the Nathan Graham and the rest of the strike force.
Jon wanted the others to be ready to flee the system. If the void ship destroyed the Nathan Graham, the others were to race to hyperspace and do as they thought best.
“If the aliens use the void as their FTL dimension,” Jon explained, “it means they don’t use hyperspace. It seems one of our ships should be safe from them in hyperspace.”
As the Nathan Graham gave chase, the void ship stopped accelerating.
On the third day of the Nathan Graham’s hard acceleration, the void ship rotated. A long exhaust tail grew as the rocklike vessel braked from its former velocity.
“Is it turning to fight us?” Gloria asked Jon.
“We’ll know when it launches one of its super missiles at us.”
Time passed, and no super missile left the void ship.
Finally, the Nathan Graham and the void ship began to draw near to one another. The void ship had gained velocity heading out-system. The giant vessel now turned again, braking.
The Nathan Graham likewise slowed, having done so at maximum thrust for some time, bringing down its high velocity so it was more like a crawl.
All this time, Jon, Gloria and the senior sensor tech had messaged the void ship. They had done it many different ways. The aliens had ignored all the attempts.
As the Nathan Graham moved to within five hundred thousand kilometers of the void ship, the aliens sent their first transmission.
Jon was on the bridge when it happened, talking to a tech.
“Sir,” Gloria said from her station, her voice rising.
Jon looked over at her.
“I’m receiving a strange communication,” Gloria said. “It originates from the void ship.”
Jon faced the main screen, walking to it as his gut curdled. Was this it? Had they finally forced the aliens to say something?
The main screen was blank one second and fuzzy the next as it made scratchy sounds. It seemed as if a vague outline shape was hidden behind the screen “snow.”
“Hello,” Jon said.
“Hel-lo,” came a high-pitched, scratchy voice.
Jon felt weak in the knees. He managed to make it to his command chair, sitting down. He hadn’t realized until this moment that he’d been living with the constant threat of death. His body had known. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about it since first seeing the void ship.
“You are bio-forms,” the scratchy, high-pitched…whiny voice said.
“We are,” Jon said.
“We have learned in the last few…days that this is so. Why do you use…AI ships?”
“The AIs invaded our star system,” Jon said.
“Explain.”
“Uh…explain what?”
“Where is your origin star system?”
Jon hesitated for only a second before saying, “Earth, the Solar System.”
“That is meaningless prattle,” the indistinct alien hidden behind the “snowy” screen said. “Show us the star system.”
“First, do you mean us ill or are you friendly?”
The alien did not answer right away. Maybe it was thinking over the question.
“Do not insult me again,” the alien said.
Jon frowned, not understanding how he’d insulted the alien the first time.
Gloria moved near. She tugged at Jon’s sleeve.
He gave her an uncomprehending stare.
“You asked him a question,” Gloria whispered. “That was the insult.”
“How?” Jon whispered.
“Because you lack true intellect status,” the alien said from the main screen. “You are…animals.”
Heat rose in Jon.
“Show us your home system,” the alien said.
Jon looked at Gloria.
“Take a risk,” she said.
Jon turned to the sensor line tech, motioning to the man.
Woodenly, the tech typed in the Solar System’s coordinates as compared to the Allamu System.
“Ah,” the alien said. “The Qex System. You apes have achieved space flight, then. We despaired of your kind ever doing so.”
Jon opened his mouth to ask a question.
Gloria gave a warning tug on his sleeve.
“You fight the AIs,” the alien said. “You have defeated them here. We will now leave.”
“Sir,” Jon said. “May I…may I learn a fact or two from you?”
“Apes are curious. Yes. What would you like to learn?”
“Are you at war with the AIs?”
“An eternal war,” the alien said. “We have fought for over twenty thousand of your years. Now, I wish to forestall more ape chatter, as I tire of hearing our translator’s grunts and guttural utterances that you deem as speech. Know that we in our patrol vessel are at the end of our tour of this dismal end of the galaxy. Every thousand years, we inspect the outer reaches, helping animals to survive the enteral machine extermination.”
“The AIs are everywhere?”
“That is a foolish concept showing the dullness of your imagination. The answer is no.”
“We would be more than willing to make an alliance with you,” Jon said.
<
br /> There was a three-second pause of dead silence.
“That is inconceivable,” the alien said. “We are leaving this dark, backward, spiral arm. I would have destroyed your vessels and the AI station, but I saw at the last second that each crawled with scheming animals. Perhaps, in time, you will learn how to fight the machines.”
“You destroyed some of my ships in the Lytton System.”
Once more, the alien fell silent.
“You shouldn’t have brought that up,” Gloria whispered.
“We detected the single ship destruction,” the alien said. “One of you wheeled into the missiles. No machine intelligence would have done that. It signaled the possibility of animals in the ships. We grew curious and decided on further investigation. The elders will welcome the news of animals using machine vessels against the AIs. My sisters in arms, though, will rue this meeting between us. Now, in a thousand years, another patrol ship will have to return to your origin system. Will we find your kind alive? I doubt it, but miracles do occur.”
“I have—” Jon said.
“This is the end of the transmission,” the alien said, interrupting.
Abruptly, the snowy screen turned blank again.
Jon sank back against his chair. The conversation had drained him.
“Sir,” the sensor tech said. “Something’s happening.”
“Put it on the main screen,” Gloria said.
A glow appeared before the void ship. Then, a grim rip in reality seemed to open up into a terrible realm of complete darkness—the void, as Gloria had named it.
The void ship accelerated, sliding into the inky blackness. Once in the void, none of them could see it. Seconds later, the rip closed as if it had never been there.
The void ship had vanished, and they were still alive.
-8-
The rest of the mission—from the Allamu Battle Station and back again—was joy and peace after that. Oh, there were fistfights on the vessels, hard feelings and arguments, but most of the crew rejoiced at returning alive from a harrowing trek.
Soon enough, the Nathan Graham, Sergeant Stark, Miles Ghent and other cyberships docked at the battle station.
People prepared for the big event.
That event took place three days later. Everyone was there. And that included Harris Dan, the auto-assassin brainwashed to kill the captain.
During his stay at the battle station, Benz had made the man his personal challenge. The premier hadn’t been able to scrape up the old personality. The GSB operators had done their work too well for that. Instead, Benz had helped Harris Dan gain his own personality.
Mr. Dan was on probation, to see how well his new personality held.
Everyone from every crew attended the wedding in the largest chamber on the battle station.
Premier Benz officiated. Bast Banbeck was the best man, an honorary man, in this case.
Women wept at the beautiful ceremony. Men grinned at the lucky bloke, Jon Hawkins, for getting such a lovely lady as his wife.
Hon Ra roared a special song in the captain’s honor. That caught a few women by surprise, who had shrieked as if a wild animal was about to attack them.
After the song, the entire auditorium erupted with cheers and clapping.
Hon Ra exposed his bearlike fangs, drinking in the applause.
Finally, before God and those assembled, Gloria and Jon said their vows and became man and wife.
The reception afterward was spectacular, with almost everyone joining in on the drinking and dancing.
“This is much like a Roke joining,” Hon Ra told Bast.
The Sacerdote nodded, although his eyes were badly glazed as he gripped a bottle of whiskey.
After a long time of celebration, Gloria and Jon said their goodbyes. They retired to his private quarters, made beautiful and luscious by the Centurion’s top marines.
Jon closed the hatch, loosened his tie and turned to watch as Gloria went to the closet. He’d been waiting a long time for this, a long, long time. He was eager, and he grinned with delight as Gloria began to slip off her wedding dress.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “This is how you do it.” Jon yanked at his shirt, ripping off all the buttons, tossing his shirt on the floor.
Then he moved toward his lovely wife, closing one chapter off his life and beginning another. He didn’t know what the future held, but he hoped that from now on he would make that future with Gloria Hawkins.
THE END
To the Reader: Thanks! I hope you’ve enjoyed A.I. Battle Fleet. 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.
A.I. Battle Fleet (The A.I. Series Book 5) Page 31
