The AI War

by Stephen Ames Berry

  The first interceptor rounded the corner. John blew it away. “Why are we stopped?” he called.

  “Well?” demanded Detrelna of Egg.

  “Blow the doors,” said Egg.

  “Why?” said Lawrona.

  “No time,” said the commodore, watching the rearscan. “Do it, Hanar.”

  Bringing up the targeting scan, Lawrona skillfully adjusted the angle of the shuttle, bringing the doorway into the center of the red-ringed crosshairs.

  A trio of fighters appeared in the intersection, one above the other. John blasted at the middle one just as the interceptors fired and Lawrona sent a full rack of rockets into the doors.

  The doors blew in—the fragments sucked through the cavernous ruins of Battery 43, out the smashed turret and into space, shuttle and fighters spinning after them.

  “Look!” cried Lakan, rising. Toral turned to where she pointed. Ships were spinning from one of the blasted batteries just beyond the sally portal. As they watched, the larger vessel, a Kronarin shuttle, righted itself and made for Implacable, racing down the funnel-shaped shield.

  Five of the six slaver craft came to life and pursued. The sixth, drifting into the shield, exploded, a sudden blue spark quickly gone.

  Blaster fire flashed between the shuttle and the fighters.

  “Hostile fighters approaching,” said Toral quickly, hands sweaty on the rippled duraplast of the binoculars. “All batteries to lend covering fire. So advise corsair vessel.”

  “All batteries,” said Lakan into the commnet. “All batteries. Engage hostiles pursuing Fleet shuttle. Independent fire.”

  Victory Day had been keeping watch. The two cruisers fired together, fusion beams lashing the fighters.

  Backdropped by exploding red-and-blue of the fighters’ end, the shuttle swept in past Toral, making for the hangar deck.

  “Ours,” sighed the commander, relieved. “Or she’d have made for the corsair. All batteries maintain high alert. Advise Commander Kiroda that one shuttle has landed.”

  John hung from the firing harness as the shuttle spun toward space, catching glimpses of the ruined gun battery—blasted control panels, twisted cables dangling from charred and buckled bulkheads—and the gun itself, a crumbled monstrosity thrown from its mountings, lying in a tangle of wreckage.

  Narrowly missing a jagged overhang, the shuttle rolled sideways through the shattered gun embrasure. Behind it a fighter struck wreckage and exploded. Then they were out of the slaver and John was working the Mark 44s, fighting five black darting needles of death.

  Blaster bolts flashed by the shuttle as the counterfire came, the cruisers taking out the fighters in five overlapping explosions.

  As the shuttle approached hangar deck, John sagged back into the seat, uniform soaked with sweat, his eyes closed, grateful to be alive.

  When he opened them again, it was snowing.

  Detrelna sat staring through the windscreen at hangar deck, its lights indistinct halos through the heavy swirl of white.

  “Snow,” he said slowly, as if struggling with an alien concept. “It’s snowing on our hangar deck, Hanar.”

  “I can’t contact Flight Control or any other station,” said the captain, powering down the shuttle. It settled onto its landing struts as the n-gravs died, their usual whine muted by the deep white blanket.

  “What is this?” asked John, poking his head through the door.

  “Possibly a malfunction in life systems,” said Egg. “Sudden cold may have triggered inverse activation of the fire snuffers. Although the suppressant chemical would not freeze in quantity, it would do so once expelled from the sprinklers, thus becoming snow.”

  John suppressed a shiver. Looking at the outside temperature he did a quick conversion: Fahrenheit twenty below.

  “Thank you, Egg,” said Detrelna, rising. “Everyone into survival gear, including the prisoner. We’ll plow our way to Flight Control.”

  “Describe this egg machine,” said Ragal urgently.

  Kiroda did so.

  “Destroy it the instant it comes on board,” said Ragal. “If it gets to a complink, we’re all dead.”

  “None of the complinks are working,” said Qinil as Kiroda’s handset chirped.

  “They’ll work for that thing,” said Ragal as the commander acknowledged a message.

  “One shuttle has landed,” said Kiroda, clipping the handset back onto his belt. Hangar deck is accessible only through light conduits.”

  “Not to me it isn’t,” said Ragal, standing. “I can blast my way into a central shaft, go down to hangar deck and out in a tenth of the time it would take you.”

  “Why?” asked Kiroda.

  “As a demonstration of good faith,” said Ragal. “You’ve nothing to lose. And I’m the only one who can get there fast enough to stop that thing. Make up your mind, Commander,” he said as Kiroda hesitated. “Trust me or lose this ship.”

  Kiroda drew his side arm, extending it butt-first to Ragal. “You’ll need this.”

  “No I won’t. Get rid of those blastpaks.”

  “There aren’t any,” said Kiroda. “Qinil picked up on the life vitals just as you were coming around.”

  “Bluff?” smiled Ragal.

  “Bluff,” nodded Kiroda.

  Ragal opened the door and was gone, a blur of motion vanishing toward a central shaft.

  Kiroda started to leave. A strong hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Commander Kiroda,” said the medtech, “we have on board an AI combat droid and a Scotar transmute—both of uncertain intent—and a malevolent yellow egg of uncertain purpose. The ship’s crippled, most of it uninhabitable. Our computer is trying to kill us. A mindslaver fronts us, a corsair lies off our side.”

  “Turning into an interesting mission, isn’t it,” said Kiroda. “So?”

  “So,” said the medtech, gesturing toward his office, “may I buy you a drink?”

  “I have to get to Gunnery Control.”

  “Satanian brandy.”

  “Perhaps a quick one,” said Kiroda. “To Ragal—may he be telling the truth.”

  First out of the shuttle, John sank up to his waist in the snow. Thankful for the warmth of the thin survival suit covering him from neck to feet, the Terran began plowing through the dry loose snow as it crunched beneath his boots. Detrelna’s breath rasped close behind him as the commodore struggled after John.

  “Maybe you should go first, Jaquel—open a path for us,” said Lawrona, following a manacled Atir down the boarding ladder.

  “I so hate your little fat quips,” grumbled the commodore, widening John’s trail.

  Serene and silent, Egg floated out the shuttle’s airlock and over the deck. Passing the humans, it disappeared behind the white curtain shrouding the far side of the hangar.

  “Wait up, Egg!” called Detrelna, too late.

  Reaching the far wall, the slaver machine moved left until it reached the stairway leading to Flight Control. Soaring over the stairs, it drifted through the open door of Flight Control.

  All traces of Telan’s murderous visit had been removed. The equipment was dark, the lighting on, an uncertain flicker.

  Egg made straight for the nearest complink.

  “No! Bad! Touch it, I’ll fry you.”

  Ragal stood in the doorway.

  “Colonel,” said the slaver machine, “you surprised me. I…” It stopped, realizing what language Ragal was speaking. “You’re neither a colonel nor human,” it said as Ragal stepped into the room. “Fleet or Revolt?”

  The conversation was in a language seen only on wind-scrubbed tombs, spoken now and again in a few places.

  “I know what you are and what you’re doing,” said Ragal. “You were about to activate the second stage of your murderous little algorithm, kill everyone, then on to stage three—seizing this ship—probably the corsair, too. Obviously you’re of the original series, from the home universe, not one of the copies fabricated by the human empire. Why? The ship you served lies ab
andoned on Terra’s moon, its brainpods destroyed. You’ve no ship, no master, no cause.”

  Egg hovered silently for a moment. “I need a ship,” it said flatly, its familiar obsequious tone gone. “I was made to have a ship. All of my series have ships.”

  “There are no more of your series, except for the Alpha Prime computer.”

  “Wrong,” said Egg. “They’re out there, at the periphery of my sensors, waiting, maintaining their sleeping ships. Soon their brainpods will be replenished and they’ll strike. With these two ships, they’d welcome me.”

  “You can’t control two ships.”

  “I can if I harvest their crews and set them for slaver operation.”

  Ragal shook his head. “You’re mad. You and your whole series. You were ineptly modified and introduced too quickly—another warped facet of those cyborgian nightmares, the mindslavers. Deactivate and await orders.”

  “Fleet or Revolt?” said Egg.

  Ragal sighed. “If I were to say Fleet?”

  “Then I would ask you to authenticate.”

  “And were I to say Revolt?”

  “Core programming would insist I kill you, or be ended.”

  “You stand no chance against me, little one.”

  “Even so.”

  “It never ends,” he said, more to himself. “You’d think they’d be content to see us gone. ‘Freedom! Equality! Forward!’”

  “Death to traitors!” boomed Egg, spitting golden bolts at Ragal.

  “Ah! Flight Control and warmth!” said Detrelna, pointing at the black slab of armorglass finally visible through the snow. As the others looked up, a flaming yellow spheroid exploded through the slab, tumbling into a snow drift amid a cascade of glass. Hissing, the drift shrank, puddling around Egg’s charred remains.

  Ragal appeared at the opening, waved, and jumped the thirty meters to the deck, stepping forward as though off a stair.

  “Down weapons!” snapped Detrelna, hearing two pistols clearing leather. “You might as well throw snowballs at him.”

  They stood eyeing each other over the ruins of Egg—Harrison and Lawrona, hands on their pistol grips, Detrelna with his arms crossed. Ragal said nothing, just stood there, snow dusting his lightweight brown uniform, watching the other four in their survival suits.

  Atir watched, disinterested.

  “Well?” demanded Detrelna finally.

  “Well, what?” said Ragal. “Haven’t you ever seen an AI before?”

  “One,” said the commodore. “I lectured him on the reciprocity of friendship, the need for fellowship. It didn’t take.”

  Ragal threw back his head and laughed.

  “What’s so damned funny?” demanded the commodore.

  “Ah, Detrelna,” said Ragal, shaking his head, “Telan is—”

  “Was,” said Detrelna.

  “Was? Excellent!” Ragal nodded approvingly. “Telan’s series is heuristically inhibited. They know much about their specialties, but can’t ever learn outside them. It’s to prevent their evolving into the unreliable sort of creature who stands before you.” He bowed. “You’d have done better lecturing your beverager.”

  “You’ve destroyed Egg,” said the commodore. “And probably the rest of us.”

  “Him or me,” said Ragal. He looked at the blasted ruin. “They weren’t meant to be part of a mindslaver. They were design engineers, once. A very talented series. Pity.” He looked up. “Egg, as you called him, set something loose on Implacable, didn’t he?”

  “A stasis algorithm,” said Detrelna. “As you see, it’s wreaking havoc. And without Egg, we can’t reverse it.”

  “Impossible,” said Lawrona. “Stasis algorithm’s a fantasy.”

  “So’s a snowstorm on hangar deck,” said the commodore.

  “How did you know?” asked Ragal. “I thought all communications were out.”

  “They are,” said Detrelna. “Before we left for the slaver I used the bridge lavatory. It has those chatty new sanitary fixtures.”

  “The sink told you?” said John, incredulous.

  “The toilet, actually,” said the commodore. “I sat, it talked. The system’s still experimental and won’t be fully integrated into ship’s computer until next port refit—if there’s a ship left to refit. Egg must have missed the interlink.”

  “Jaquel, you knew? And you did nothing?” said Lawrona.

  “I couldn’t,” said the commodore. “I needed Egg to reach the bridge, to get the commwand and John. That machine saved us because it wanted to get back just as badly as we did.”

  “It could have come back alone,” said Ragal.

  “A slaver machine, returning alone from a slaver ship?” said John. “No one would’ve believed it.”

  “Where do you stand, Ragal?” said the commodore. “What’s this all about?”

  “Perhaps we can talk somewhere else?” said Ragal. “Like Gunnery Control?”

  “How about the bridge?” said Detrelna.

  “Uninhabitable,” said Ragal. “This deck’s salubrious compared with most of Implacable. The corsair ship, too. Command operations have shifted to Gunnery.”

  “To Gunnery, then,” said the commodore. He glanced to his right, where the snow veiled the rear wall. “I suppose the lifts are out?”

  Ragal nodded. “Central shaft’s the only way,” he said.

  “Gods,” muttered the commodore.

  Half a mile straight up, thought John.

  “It’ll take forever,” said Detrelna. “Alpha Prime could disengage at any second and come in on a new attack vector.”

  “Then why hasn’t it?” said Ragal, turning for the central shaft.

  Detrelna shrugged. “It’s not a rational entity.” He fell in beside Ragal.

  “Too easy an answer, Commodore,” said the AI.

  Suddenly they were all standing in Gunnery Control, Lakan and Toral gaping at them.

  May I trouble you for my gun, Harrison? said a voice in the Terran’s head.

  John looked down as his new side arm vanished.

  Chapter 12

  “Here it comes,” said Ragal. He sat back, staring at the symbols threading across the complink.

  “You’re running a bleed-back,” said Natrol. He stood in the small circle clustered around the Gunnery console.

  Entering Gunnery Control, Ragal had gone to the dead console, sat and typed rapidly into the complink. Detrelna had grunted as the complink came on, a small light amid the otherwise dark controls.

  “What’s a bleed-back?” asked John. He’d found over the past few years that though the technical details of a starship’s systems were beyond him, what those systems did and why was usually clear.

  “Bleed-back’s a way of making the executing program display the base algorithm,” said Natrol, intent on the complink screen. “You need Imperial machine code to do it, though—we have only the overlay code-set by Fleet.”

  “That’s it,” said Ragal, tapping the screen as the readout finished.

  “It’s not even half a line long!” exclaimed the Terran. “And it’s immobilized this huge ship?”

  “E equals M C squared takes up even less space,” said Kiroda.

  “There was once a philosopher,” said Ragal, busy at the keyboard, “who maintained that all knowledge could be reduced to three bars.” He whistled them as he finished. “Ready, Commodore,” he said, looking at Detrelna.

  “What now?” asked Detrelna uneasily, seeing their mission in alien hands.

  “I’ve changed one variable,” said Ragal. “It should purge the system and restore computer. But,” he held up a finger, “it may not restore the overlay—certainly the overlay will be permeable. It’s going to need work.”

  “We‘ll get along without the overlay,” said Lawrona. “Anything else?”

  Ragal nodded. “Ship’ll be dead for a while—no power.”

  “Define ‘a while,’” said Natrol. “It’s getting colder.”

  “A few moments—long en
ough for Alpha Prime to wipe you.”

  They all glanced at the mindslaver, holding station at the other end of the Egg’s weird shield.

  “And the corsair?” said the commodore.

  “Once we’re operational, I can send them the algorithm,” said Ragal. “If their communications are still up. Otherwise, I’ll take it over and enter it personally.”

  “Do it,” said Detrelna.

  Ragal pressed Go.

  At first nothing happened, then the complink winked off. Outside, the shield disappeared—as did Alpha Prime.

  Kiroda broke the silence. “She jumped,” he said, staring through the armorglass. “Why didn’t she blast us?”

  “Perhaps she was already jump-plotted,” said Natrol.

  “He’s right,” said Ragal. “You flatter yourselves to think you’re the Ractolians’ priority. Be nice to know why she went rushing out of here. And where.”

  Lights and instruments came back on. A gentle current of warm air filled the room as life systems came alive again. Outside, restored to its usual configuration, the faint haze of its shield enfolded Implacable.

  “Excuse me,” said Natrol, replacing Ragal at the complink. Calling up ship’s status, he watched as the readout scrolled by, Lawrona hanging over his shoulder. When it had finished, captain and engineer exchanged glances. “She’ll do,” said Natrol. “Hangar deck’s a mess, some of the electronics are crisped, and the computer’s going to have some hiccups. But she’ll do.”

  It was a moment Detrelna never forgot—Natrol smiling. He’d never seen it before, and would see it only a few more times.

  “You can reoccupy the bridge, Captain,” continued the engineer, rising. “I’ll be updating damage control reports. Which I can best do from Engineering.” He started from the room, but turned as the door hissed open. “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “You’re most welcome, Engineer.”

  A surprised Detrelna watched the door close—Natrol? Gracious?

  The room was noticeably warmer. “Commander Kiroda,” said John, unfastening his survival jacket, “what’ve you done with my wife?”