“What is the reasoning behind that?” Bast asked.
“I have no idea. Maybe because at heart, people are a bunch of scoundrels.”
“That has not been my observation.”
“Sure. Whatever. That’s not the point.”
“You seem excited, Captain.”
“Would you shut up for a minute? I’m trying to tell you my great idea.”
“Oh. I am sorry.”
“Okay, okay,” Jon said. “Listen. Benz and Vela Shaw are supposedly brilliant. They figured out the AI virus like that.” Jon snapped his fingers. “Without them—okay. That doesn’t matter. What does matter is something Gloria said. Well, first it was something I said. Why do we have to fight by throwing masses of hardware at each other? There has to be a better way. She said the AIs already do that. They frigged with our computers, turning them against us.”
“It is a brilliant strategy,” Bast said.
“That’s not a strategy. It’s a tactic. But that’s neither here nor there. What we need is a reversal.”
“A reversal, Captain?”
“That’s right. If anyone can pull a reversal on the AIs, it’s Benz and Shaw. They might not know enough, though. That’s where you come in.”
Jon stopped talking to stare at Bast.
“Would you like me to ask you what you have in mind?” the Sacerdote said.
“Are you willing to take a risk?” Jon asked.
“To help stop the AIs?”
“That’s right.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“Sure could be,” Jon said. “It could end in your death, not right away, but after.”
“Do you think I should do this…favor for you?”
“I do.”
“Then I will do it.”
“You haven’t heard what it is yet.”
“By all means, Captain, tell me.”
In the end, Bast still agreed.
-7-
Premier Benz agreed to Jon’s proposal, and he began to set up for the alien’s arrival. The idea excited Benz. He would actually speak face to face with an alien from another star system. The alien was seven feet tall and green-skinned like a fabled Martian, with the name of Bast Banbeck.
Benz told Vela. She wasn’t as excited. He told her Jon Hawkins’ idea.
“I won’t have to be in the same room with the…what did you call him?” Vela asked.
“Sacerdote,” Benz said.
They spoke in a private chamber thick with computers. Vela had spent much of her time here earlier when she’d been instrumental in breaking the AI virus that had locked up the Nathan Graham.
“Maybe this is a trick,” Vela said.
“What kind of trick?”
“Who knows what the alien can do?”
“I don’t understand,” Benz said.
“He could be an assassin.”
“How would killing me help the alien?”
“Hawkins has the brain-tap machine. Maybe he’s coded the alien to kill you after the battle.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Hawkins needs me in charge. Rowland hates the mercenary. The admiral hates everyone from the Outer Planets. That’s yet another reason to keep the old dog in the brig.”
“Don’t forget that Admiral Rowland helped you when others wouldn’t.”
“Do you know why he let us board?” Benz asked.
Vela shot him a look. “Of course, I know. He has political aspirations. He believed he could use you.”
“There was nothing altruistic about Rowland’s agreement to help us.”
“Fine,” Vela said. “I still don’t see why we have to work in the same room with an alien, especially a seven-foot giant. He could kill us.”
“I can put guards in the room to watch him.”
“He could kill the guards.”
“They’ll wear battlesuits.”
Vela looked away. She shook her head. “I hate being out here. I’m scared. These AI robots are terrifying.”
“That’s why I’m willing to work with the alien. The odds…” Benz moved closer, putting his hands on Vela’s shoulders.
She stared up into his face.
“Can you come up with a better idea?” he asked.
“I can’t. That doesn’t mean I trust Hawkins. He’s more like a space pirate than he is a military man. He was a mercenary. Can one trust a soldier for hire?”
“We can trust him to be what he is. Look, Vela, we know there are two parts to this. We have to defeat the AIs, and then we have to keep Hawkins from demolishing the Solar League warships.”
“Do you really think Hawkins would do something so…so…evil?”
“He has to. It’s the only logical move on his part.”
“But are you sure? You said before his most logical move was to flee the Solar System. He didn’t do that.”
Benz became thoughtful. “I don’t know. Maybe Hawkins is right. This is like the Battle of Lepanto. We’re like the Venetians and the Spaniards of that era. Neither trusted the other, but they had to band together against the Turks. The cyberships are the Turks plus one thousand.”
A chime sounded.
Benz let go of Vela and switched on a comm. “Yes?” he said.
“The Saturnian shuttle has left the Nathan Graham.”
“I’m on my way,” Benz said. After signing off, he turned to Vela.
“I’ll do it,” she said, softly. “I’ll work with Bast Banbeck. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to like it.”
Benz nodded before taking his leave.
***
Benz watched the shuttle on a large screen. It moved faster than a shuttle should. It must have robo-tech.
The Premier was in an auxiliary chamber near the bridge. He didn’t want to be on the bridge too much. He operated on the old saying: familiarity breeds contempt. Commodore Spengler led the Earth Fleet. It was a risk. Letting Admiral Rowland remain in command would have been the bigger danger.
“We’re going to begin braking soon, sir,” a rating told him.
The Earth Fleet was farther from Mars than any other vessel on their side. The cyberships were farther yet, but they still moved faster.
The mighty Nathan Graham had already maneuvered behind the giant P-Field. The blanket of tiny prismatic crystals covered one-half of Mars in relation to the approaching cyberships. Using the P-Field as a sensor cloak, the Nathan Graham began its approach to Mars. The fifty thousand kilometers between the P-Field and the Red Planet was nothing to the one-hundred-kilometer vessel.
Benz was bemused. Seeing the one-hundred-kilometer cybership…this was amazing.
The Mars Fleet had already maneuvered behind the Red Planet in relation to the cyberships. The Venus Fleet was in the process of sliding into a holding pattern behind Mars.
The Earth Fleet had changed its heading. Instead of maneuvering toward the P-Field, the great armada headed for the other warships behind Mars.
The shuttle would meet them behind Mars as they stopped braking. Then, the Sacerdote would board the Nikita Khrushchev and join Vela and him.
Missile platforms orbited the Red Planet. Lasers stations readied on the surface. The population had gone as deep as they could. How many Martians would die in the next twenty-four hours? It could end up being ninety-nine percent of the population. If only half died, they might have to count themselves lucky.
Fifty percent casualties are lucky?
“Open channels with the shuttle,” Benz said.
The rating hailed the shuttle. Soon, a huge green-skinned alien with Neanderthal-like features looked at Benz.
“This is an honor, Premier,” the alien said.
He had a strange accent, but Benz could understand him.
“The AIs are likely going to try to seed more viruses into our computers,” Benz said.
“Shall we begin working on the antidote, sir?”
Benz sat down at a computer. On the screen, the Sacerdote swiveled around to a bank of super-comput
ers. With massively thick fingers, he turned them on.
“Sir,” the rating said. “We’re going to begin braking in less than fifteen minutes.”
“Did you hear that, Bast Banbeck?” Benz asked.
“Yes, Premier.”
“We’ll work as hard as we can until then. You’ll have to do your work alone for a time. I won’t be able to do anything but endure once we start braking.”
“I am ready to receive your data,” Bast said.
Benz manipulated his panel, beginning a long transmission.
-8-
The Battle of Mars for the continued existence of man began with a missile attack against the P-Field.
It was the logical move for the AIs.
Thirty big missiles moved at velocity for the shimmering crystal field. They flew in staggered formations many hundreds of kilometers apart from each other.
The Earth Fleet braked. No doubt, the gravity dampeners on many of the one hundred and twenty ships labored near their tolerance levels.
An SLN destroyer shook hard, and the gravity dampeners shut down. The engines continued hard deceleration. Far too many Gs struck the personnel in the destroyer. Every person quit breathing and every heart stopped beating. Their chest muscles lacked the strength to move their lungs under such gravitational stress.
The destroyer had the unenvied distinction of being the first ship casualty in the Battle of Mars.
A hundred big AI missiles had swung out. They swung in now, and burned at higher gravities. The target was clear for them—they aimed at the hard-decelerating Earth Fleet.
Because of the various probes scattered out there, Jon saw this displayed on the main screen. Missile Chief Miles Kling computed enemy velocities, ranges and distances.
“The EMPs alone might render the Earth Fleet inoperative,” Kling said.
Jon drummed his fingers on an armrest. “We’re going to slow down.”
“Captain,” Gloria said. “If we slow down too much, we might not get behind Mars in time.”
“We’re slowing down anyway in order to give the Earth Fleet a hand. I don’t want to lose the fleet this soon.”
The Nathan Graham decelerated and began to pivot. Soon enough, it no longer aimed at the Red Planet, but aimed sideways, parallel to the P-Field. The field was a sensor shield between it and the cyberships. Would it act as a missile and grav beam shield long enough?
The situation changed constantly in terms of distances, but relative positions remained essentially the same for now. The Earth Fleet braked. The cyberships advanced. The Nathan Graham waited, and the various missile flotillas accelerated.
Nearly three hundred antimissiles launched from the orbital Mars platforms. They headed for the perimeter of the P-Field and waited just within its shelter.
Two hours ticked away. During the third hour, the three hundred antimissiles zoomed past the P-Field. They headed in clusters and staggered formations for the thirty AI missiles directly approaching the P-Field.
A comm pulse left the lead cybership and washed over the antimissiles. Nothing appeared to happen to them. A second comm pulse traveled at the speed of light from the second cybership. The antimissiles did not seem to react to this virus-launching pulse, either.
Jon and the bridge crew watched the confrontation, receiving data from the same probes scattered throughout the general region.
“The antimissiles are immune to the alien computer viruses,” Kling laughed.
“Nothing as grand as that,” Gloria said. “The Martians have installed analog devices. They’re little more than ancient wind-up clocks with gears and springs. There are no computers on the antimissiles as the AIs’ conceive of them.”
The antimissiles maneuvered in strange ways that seemingly made no sense. Many of them did not maneuver toward the approaching missiles. They sped toward empty areas of space.
Jon and the present crew knew the reason. The Mars platform commanders had predetermined the flight paths of each antimissile before launch. Guided by their primitive analog devices, the antimissiles would maneuver and explode at predetermined locations.
The first antimissiles began to detonate. Some did so harmlessly, their nuclear payloads making momentary white splashes in space. They were more akin to antiaircraft shells during WWII than guided missiles.
More antimissiles had flown from the Martian platforms. Six hundred moved toward the perimeter of the giant P-Field.
Some of the first-wave antimissiles detonated near big AI missiles. The four-kilometer long missile seemed to ignore the EMP, the blasts and hard radiation.
Fortunately, several antimissiles blew enough shrapnel to do real damage. One AI missile malfunctioned and quit accelerating. A second huge missile tumbled end over end even as it accelerated, corkscrewing through space. A third swarm of shrapnel caused a propellant explosion. The AI missile blew up. The debris from it struck two other missiles. One of them also exploded in a blast of propellant.
“A chain-reaction,” Kling said.
Jon nodded, hoping for more destruction.
Suddenly, an AI warhead detonated. Something had upset its equilibrium. That matter/antimatter blast took out two other nearby AI missiles.
That seemed to be it. The remaining enemy missiles kept going, heading straight at the P-Field.
The minutes fled as the second wave of antimissiles rushed to the attack.
This time, everything happened faster. The second wave took out a few alien missiles, but not enough to stop eighteen of the mighty matter/antimatter warheads from detonating against the P-Field. Each successive blast and its attendant heat took out more of the P-Field. The AI missiles were like monsters, chomping thousands of kilometers of the prismatic crystals at each bite.
The staggered AI missiles kept coming at the P-Field as a bigger flotilla of them headed fast for the braking Earth Fleet.
***
On the bridge of the Nathan Graham, Jon said, “Get ready, Missile Chief.”
“Yes, sir,” Kling said.
“Gloria?”
“All set,” she answered.
“Ghent?”
“I’ve been waiting for this, sir.”
“Start firing,” Jon said.
On the captured cybership, eleven gravitational dishes focused on the lead missiles of the flotilla heading at the Earth Fleet. At the same time, fourteen heavy laser cannons heated up with power. The mighty matter/antimatter engine inside the Nathan Graham THRUMMED with power. It built up as super-chargers, coils and helixes transferred the engine power to the weapons systems.
“Here we go,” Jon said. “Engage and fire at will.”
On the outer hull of the Nathan Graham, the various beam weapons discharged golden grav rays and harsh red laser beams. At the speed of light, the beams lashed the dense pack of AI missiles.
The missiles automatically attempted various ECM defenses. It made no difference against the cybership’s alien targeting tech.
The beams burned, and missiles began to die.
Jon leaned forward on his chair. If the AIs were smart, they would detonate the missiles and create a harsh area of radiation. Some of the missiles were close enough to hurt the Nathan Graham.
The gravitational beams were quick death to the enemy missiles. The lasers took longer. These were upgraded lasers from normal human tech, a marriage of AI, human and Sacerdote technology.
“The neo-lasers are proving their worth,” Ghent said. “Our cybership is a better fighting vessel than when it faced us at the Neptune System.”
“Don’t speak too soon,” Jon said. “Don’t jinx us.”
Gloria shot him a glance, but said nothing.
The Nathan Graham took a bitter harvest of the enemy missile flotilla, but they couldn’t get all of them fast enough. The missile flotilla finally passed the range of the cybership’s weapons.
Thirty missiles out of the original one hundred continued for the Earth Fleet. Thirty could do more than just a little damage. If they
got close enough, they could take out the entire fleet.
-9-
Premier Benz endured the terrible deceleration. He’d made the decision some time ago to accelerate the fleet so they could keep to the original timetable. He had no idea it was going to be this bad when they had to decelerate harder than ever.
He lay in a specially constructed acceleration couch. The G-forces shoved him against it, and he found it difficult to breathe. He could feel his pulse beat in his brain and in his eyes, hear it like thunderous drums in his ears. He wanted to faint, but he fought off the feeling. Everyone had taken special injections, but some would die from this. He was still sure this had been the correct decision. The Earth Fleet had to be in position behind Mars to help the others destroy the cyberships.
There was a screen on the wall, but he was unable to watch it. The gravity dampeners were laboring near their tolerance levels.
He could hear garbled words. It sounded like a warning. He tried to concentrate. It gave him a headache to match the throb-throb-throb in his skull. How long could this go on?
Suddenly, the pressure lessened. He blinked several times, and he realized he could see. On the screen, giant AI missiles headed for the Earth Fleet. Someone must have made a decision to decelerate less, allowing the ships to move faster for the covering of Mars.
As Benz watched, he saw swarms of Martian antimissiles racing from the orbital platforms. Some detonated to little purpose. Others kept coming. More of them detonated.
One of the antimissiles must have hit, as an alien missile blew up. So did two others nearby the first.
What remained of the swarm of Martian antimissiles were now among the giant missiles. Why didn’t those antimissiles detonate? This was the perfect location.
One ignited. So did another.
Three more giant missiles exploded. It must not have been a warhead explosion, because twenty-four AI missiles still zeroed-in on the Earth Fleet.
Benz realized he had a clicker beside him. He strained, finding it difficult to move his arm. He clutched the clicker and changed the scene to show him the Earth Fleet.
It took him a moment to understand. Then, he realized that all the Earth Fleet destroyers were still braking at full strength. The rest of the Earth Fleet slowly moved away from the destroyers. The smaller warships became a back guard. Were the destroyers supposed to take on the AI missiles by themselves?
A.I. Assault (The A.I. Series Book 3) Page 24
