The AI War

by Stephen Ames Berry

  “Jungle fever?” he asked wearily.

  “Yes,” she said, hugging her knees, looking out into the night. “It’s going to get us all—water’s bad, food’s low, medicine’s gone. I give us a month. When the rains come.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky, Sayin,” said Lakor softly. “Maybe they’ll find us.” He looked at the night sky, brilliant with a million stars. Some of the lights were moving—more tonight than before. Whosever ships they were, he knew, they weren’t Dalin’s and they weren’t friendly.

  “I’m not going to sit here waiting to die,” said Gysol, a sudden fire to her voice. She stood, looking at Lakor. “There are ninety-eight of us left. Let’s buy something with our lives.”

  “What?” the major said bitterly. He stabbed his carbine toward the sky. “They’re invulnerable to our weapons, their ships track us from space, their patrol craft hunt us down and slaughter us like stul.” He looked up at the angry young woman. “What can we do against that, Captain?”

  “Yagar,” she hissed. “He’s back.”

  Lakor was on his feet, grabbing her by her shoulders. “Where?” he said tightly. “He was in that impregnable processing center they built.”

  “Kolorg and Slag came in at dusk. Yagar feels safe enough to have moved back into the Residence. Are you trying to hurt me?”

  “Sorry,” said Lakor, dropping his hands. He picked up his weapon. “Must be a thousand ways into the Residence. Let’s go talk with the troops.”

  Together they turned toward the great collapse of stone behind them. Massive, white-columned, the old palace had been home to every Imperial governor from Jokol, the first, through thirty-two centuries of Empire, to the last and best remembered.

  Only the front portico had survived that long ago bombardment and assault—the pillars and wall still stood, though roofless now, choked by jungle creepers that were finally winning their long battle with the growth retardants. Half-seen, two sentries stood behind the huge pillars flanking the central doorway. The metal doors were centuries gone, scavenged for scrap.

  Major and captain were picking their way around the craters in the plaza when the too-familiar whine of n-gravs sent them whirling about, carbines raised.

  “Get everyone out the back—disperse into the jungle,” Lakor ordered the sentries.

  “It doesn’t look like one of their ships,” said Gysol. Resting on four landing struts, the craft’s rounded top was almost level with where the two officers stood. Bright red lights flickered along it top and sides.

  “Whose ship does it look like?” said the major. “See to the dispersal. I’ll give you a little time.” Working the carbine, he chambered a round.

  “But…”

  “Do it,” he said, eyes on the ship. “Cut Yagar’s jewels off for me, Sayin.”

  The captain hesitated for an instant, then smiled tightly. “For you, Sata,” she said, slapping her knife, and was gone.

  “Luck,” he whispered after her.

  The nights sounds resumed as Major Lakor trotted briskly down the stairs, carbine on his hip, resolved they wouldn’t take him alive.

  “We are approaching our landing point,” said the computer, retracting the cocoon. “Pursuing vessels have withdrawn.”

  “Why?” asked Zahava, sitting up. “What about the pursuing missiles?”

  “One is a function of the other,” said the machine. “The missiles homed on an echo projection of this lifepod, detonating at intercept. Combine commander, believing us destroyed, has withdrawn to high orbit.”

  “And why didn’t they detect this large piece of metal?” asked the Terran, waving her hand about the pod.

  “We have sensor deflectors,” said the computer. “Without our n-gravs, hostile vessels were presented with only one possible target.”

  Before Zahava could voice a growing suspicion, the screen came on.

  “The good news is that civilization continued on Dalin,” said the computer. “The bad news—it appears to be under a firm but subtle occupation.” The nightscan of the archipelago highlighted the largest island in blue. “Dalin’s population center, the island of Ikol.” A small red triangle appeared north of the blue, beside a winding river. “Detention camp, shuttle park.” Green blips moved over island and camp. “Patrol craft—class one E—a modified Fleet shuttle design used by Combine Telan. I detect no street patrols or evidence of curfew. Commercial broadcasts give no indication of an occupying power. Yet, they are there.”

  “Where are we landing?” she asked.

  “Here.” A marker flashed along the northern coastline, far from the red square. A bay, Zahava noted. “The landing area used to be headquarters of the Imperial Governor of Quadrant Blue Nine—abandoned since Fleet stormed Ractol’s headquarters. Jungle’s taken over.”

  “Jungle?”

  “Observe,” said the computer. “We’ve landed.” There was a faint tremor as struts took over from n-gravs, then the screen changed to outside view, the darkness swept away by the pod’s sensors. Jungle, broken roadway, tumbled ruins, shattered stairway and a man, walking down the stairway—a man in fatigues, carrying a rifle.

  “Friend or foe?” said Zahava.

  “No data,” said the computer.

  “Lot of good you are,” she said, checking her blaster. “Open up. I’m going out. Can you cover me?”

  “Cover you?”

  “Provide covering fire?”

  “Of course.”

  Lakor stood just outside the glow of the lifepod’s navlights, watching Zahava clamber down the long duralloy ladder from the airlock.

  This one looks human, he thought. And wearing a uniform and side arm. Perhaps a senior officer. That humans could be sending those things against their own kind… Lakor clenched the carbine’s stock, knuckles white.

  Zahava jumped the final four rungs, landing on soft leafy earth. Turning, she found herself staring down Lakor’s carbine. “Is it always this humid here?” she asked, looking past him. He seemed to be alone. “How about pointing that somewhere else?”

  She was rewarded by the sound of the safety snapping off. “Die,” said the man, pointing the gun at her heart—then dropping the weapon and throwing his hands over his face, staggering back as the carbine’s muzzle vanished in a blast of flame.

  The blast echoed off the stairs and out over the jungle.

  “Can we talk?” said Zahava as the other recovered, rubbing his eyes.

  “What about?” said Lakor. Best chance is to make whomever’s in that ship shoot me, he thought desperately, pinpoints of light still dancing in his vision. Anything would be better than that.

  “About the occupation,” she said, wondering if everyone here was this slow. Or had he just been through a lot? “About the ships.”

  A sudden rush of anger banished Lakor’s suicidal intent. “Murderer,” he said, stepping toward her, fists clenched. “Butcher.”

  Zahava stepped back, shocked by his hate. “I’m not with them,” she said. “They’re Combine ships, either allied with the AIs or taken over…” She stopped, seeing his sullen incomprehension. Someone has to give up something, she thought.

  Lakor didn’t flinch as she drew her weapon. I am the wind, he thought, recalling a poem old when the Empire was young. I am the wind and none…

  His detachment was broken as Zahava offered her blaster to him, grips first.

  Disbelieving, Major Lakor took the weapon, staring from it to her.

  “My name’s Tal,” she said. “Zahava Tal. What’s yours?”

  “That’s not the whole story, Major,” she concluded. “That would take the rest of the night. But it’s most of what applies to Dalin.”

  “Call me Sata,” said Lakor, sipping the t’ata from his field cup. “But it doesn’t explain why these… these things, these AIs, have seized our primitive world. Or what we can do about it.” He bit into a biscuit, savoring his first real food in weeks.

  “Something the AIs and the Scotar found out on my world, Sata,�
� said the Terran. “We primitives are nasty.”

  They sat around a small fire amid the moss-hung ruins of Ractol’s palace, a roof of stars overhead, the shrill cacophony of the tropical rain forest all around. As Lakor wolfed down another biscuit, Zahava sniffed the night air. There was an indefinable essence to it. Fecund, she decided—the smell of jungle and antiquity. What a monstrosity this place must have been, she thought. As if Athenians with a fondness for domino tiling had built the Parthenon along the scale of the Temple of Karnak—the center-ringed columns might kindly be called pregnant Doric.

  Built to daunt, she decided, sipping her t’ata. But time had done finer work than the builders, sculpting their Imperial edifice into an enchanted ruin, a place where shadow and starlight evoked the shades of Empire and Destiny.

  Empire and Dust, thought Zahava, looking up at the alien stars. Will I ever see John again? she wondered.

  She turned at the crackle of brush and flame—Lakor was throwing more scrub on the fire. The flames flared high, sending tall shadows dancing across the ruins.

  “It’s doing it to you, isn’t it?" smiled the major, leaning back, head on his rucksack. He sighed, hands clasped behind his head. “A melancholy place,” he said before she could answer. “We used to camp here when I was a boy—play Marines and Ractolians after supper, and then go to bed dreaming the starships were back.”

  Zahava tossed her t’ata into the brush. “They are,” she said. “How’d it happen?”

  Based in the harbor town of Shlur, the 103rd was a paramilitary battalion, charged with police and customs duties in the northern half of Raytol. There’d been no real trouble since the last of the pirate villages had been eradicated, in Lakor’s grandfather’s time. Eleven years out of the Academy, the major was looking forward to his transfer to Prod and the Exarch’s Guard—a sure promotion to colonel-second.

  The black ships had ended that, sweeping in from the ocean at dawn, blasting the sleeping town, burying many of the garrison in their burning barracks, strafing the narrow streets.

  Lakor and Gysol had been rallying the survivors, readying for a second attack, when it came—machines: small, wedge-shaped machines that flew silently over the makeshift barricades and knifed through the troopers, spewing blaster bolts and tumbling decapitated bodies about the compound.

  Standing astride an overturned truck, Lakor had emptied first his pistol and then an automatic rifle into the machines. The bullets pinged off the dull blue metal, leaving it unmarked. A near miss exploded into the truck, throwing Lakor to the ground, stunned. As Gysol helped him up, old Sergeant Nasan, just a week from retirement, had scrambled up the west wall to the battalion’s lone antiaircraft gun. Swinging the gun down and around, he’d sent a stream of cannon shells tearing into the machines as they’d gathered for a final sweep.

  Lakor used the few moments the sergeant bought to get everyone over the ruins of the south wall and into the jungle. As they’d reached cover, the antiaircraft position and most of the west wall had exploded behind them, acrid smoke adding to the pall hanging over the slaughter.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” said the major, staring into the waning fire. “Gysol and I, we watched from the bush—they… they mutilated our dead.”

  “Mutilated?” asked Zahava. “How?”

  “Transparent domes.” He held his hands apart. “This round. They came streaming from one of those small ships…”

  “A shuttle,” said Zahava.

  “From a shuttle,” he nodded. “Whenever one came to a body, the dome would split. One-half would drop over the head, flash green, dissolve the cranium—hair, bone, top of the ears. Then it would remove the brain.” Lakor looked ill. “Gysol swore she could hear a sucking when it happened.” He shook his head. “Imagination. We were too far away.”

  “Then the other half of the sphere would close over the brain,” said Zahava, “and it went back to the shuttle. Right?”

  “So you know about this?”

  “We’ve had some experience.” What do the AIs want with human brains? wondered the Terran. They’re not mindslavers.

  “Our exarch, Yagar, has sealed the capital,” said Lakor. “The radio says there’s a plague loose and the population’s been reporting for inoculations all week. No mention of this raid.” He spat into the fire. “We think Yagar’s sold out to these AIs. We can get into the city. In fact, we were getting ready to pay Yagar a visit when you arrived.”

  “Who’s we?” said Zahava, looking around.

  “Why do they mutilate our dead?” said Captain Gysol, stepping into the small circle of light, carbine pointed at the Terran. Behind her, in the shadows, Zahava saw other figures, the dull glint of steel in their hands.

  “She’s all right, Captain,” said Lakor, standing. “She gave me her weapon, which I returned.”

  The carbine lowered. “Why do they mutilate our dead?” Gysol repeated in a softer tone.

  “I don’t know,” said Zahava, also rising. “They’re machines, served by other machines. They’ve no need to brainstrip your dead.”

  “What does?” said captain and major together.

  “There’s a type of ship that uses human brains—but the only one left’s a harmless derelict.”

  “As we thought—mindslavers,” said Gysol.

  “How did you know?” asked the Terran.

  The major grinned humorlessly. “This is Dalin, Zahava. We’re standing in the ruins of the quadrant governor’s palace. The last governor was Shelia Ractol, creator of the Ractolian Biofabs. The Ractolians created—”

  “The first mindslaver,” said Zahava, nodding. “But that still doesn’t explain why the AIs need human brains.”

  “AIs?” said Gysol, looking from Zahava to Lakor.

  “Artificial intelligences,” said Lakor. “Machines that think, kill and don’t like people—our friends from the attack. You missed an interesting discussion, Sayin.”

  “I’d like to join your visit to the exarch,” said Zahava. “If he’s betrayed you, he’ll have answers. You’re not too squeamish about how you put the questions, are you?”

  They looked at her.

  “I see you’re not,” she said.

  “What can you contribute?” asked Gysol.

  A blur of motion, Zahava pivoted, drew and fired. A vine-choked pillar exploded in flame, the echo rolling out over the jungle. “A few hundred blasters, provisions, water cyclers,” she said, reholstering her blaster.

  Lakor laughed—an honest, open laugh—and held out his hand. “Welcome to the One-Oh-Three, Zahava Tal.”

  A sullen red sun was rising by the time they were ready, blasters and ship’s stores distributed, breakfast eaten. Only forty of the troopers were fit enough for combat—Lakor was leaving the rest behind with their surviving medic.

  “You know what to do?” said Zahava, clipping the communicator to her belt. She stood alone in the lifepod, the rest assembling outside.

  “Protect the encampment and await your signal,” said the lifepod. “I’m to acknowledge communications only from Implacable. If summoned, I’m to come in low, fast and firing.”

  “You’re a very versatile lifepod, 36,” said Zahava, taking an M32 blastrifle from the arms rack and slinging it over her shoulder.

  “How versatile should a lifepod be?” asked the machine as Zahava walked to the airlock.

  The Terran opened the airlock, looking back at the command console as sunlight swept in. “Was your programming augmented for this trip, 36?” she asked. “Because my being at this place, at this time, reeks of a setup.”

  “If it were, would I be allowed to say?” said the lifepod.

  “We’re ready!” Lakor called from the foot of the ladder. “Boat’s waiting!”

  “Later,” said Zahava.

  “Luck,” said the lifepod as the airlock hissed shut.

  Looks like Sidon, thought Zahava, remembering another war and another world as they slipped into the shattered harbor town. Then the breeze
turned onshore, bringing the stench of death and she knew it was worse.

  The troopers stole through the town with the silent precision of trained infiltrators, moving quickly on the harbor and the boat slips.

  Shlur had been a weathered gray town of squat stone buildings and narrow stone streets—a thick solid town, its edges worn by time and storms—a place that could have sat quietly hunkered down on the seaside for a few more thousand years.

  Cottages and shops lay shattered, blasted by fusion fire that had left the streets and blocks in tumbled ruin. A few untouched buildings still stood in grotesque contrast.

  Gray and bloated, corpses lay everywhere—streets, shops, doorways—plump black beetles nesting in the black-green rot of empty brainpans. The only sounds were along the harbor: the gentle slap of ocean against the ancient seawall, the rhythmic creak and groan of wooden docks tugged by tide and boats.

  The silence broke as an engine caught life. Running the length of the seawall, the troopers and Zahava came to the garrison’s dock. A big wooden launch stood waiting in its slip, propellers churning.

  “Quickly!” called Lakor as everyone boarded, three at a time. He and a corporal cast off fore and aft, boarding as the engine roared higher.

  Turning into a stiff headwind, they ran for the harbor entrance. Reaching the ocean, they slammed keen-prowed into a heavy sea, the water splashing over the gunnels.

  The sea and the lingering stench in her throat was too much for Zahava—she hung over the side most of the short voyage.

  Late in the morning they made landfall along a deserted stretch of coast. After dragging the launch into the brush, they draped it in camouflage netting and moved off into the jungle, a platoon of silent, vengeful men and women.

  Zahava tugged her backpack tighter and followed, grateful she wasn’t Exarch Yagar.

  Chapter 14

  “There is a problem, Exarch.”

  Yagar looked up from his reports. What seemed a blue-uniformed captain of the Exarch’s Guard stood before the ruler of Dalin, pistol on his hip, black boots gleaming.