Gloria sat cross-legged on the floor, on a mat. She was unlikely to win this battle of wits if she let rage destroy her gifted thinking. She must use her mentalist training to the full. She must outthink the computer enemy through better logic.
Gloria’s long and extraordinary training from age three on—
“I am at peace,” she said slowly. “I will let the winds of Mars wash away my…emotions.”
She meant hatred, but she struggled hard enough as it was to reach the peaceful state a true mentalist needed for the best and swiftest calculations. She’d always been too emotional.
Gloria smoothed away those memories. They would not help her here. The octopoids made a final thrust. That seemed clear. They knew about the newly installed sensors and had turned them against the regiment.
Suddenly, Gloria’s eyes snapped open. Almost in a hypnotic state, Gloria rose, walking to a special panel. She peered at it with half-glazed eyes.
The chamber shook. Yes… She should be able to deduce by the shake, the shake’s intensity and the direction of its movement—
“The left vent,” Gloria said in a monotone. “I understand.”
She reached for the special panel almost like a sleepwalker. She was in the perfect mentalist state. She no longer used the frontal part of her brain, the analytical and critical lobes. The special mentalist state tapped the lateral and the back parts of the brain, the primary creative centers. Her creative brain regions had taken endlessly long mentalist training. She let it flow freely now, disciplined by creative logic.
She could almost sense the octopoids’ reasoning. She could almost feel them adding this computation with that fluctuation.
“I see…” she said slowly.
With half-glazed eyes, she switched on a camera eye. It showed nothing due to jamming. She used a different camera eye. That too had been jammed, but not with the same intensity as the first one.
For the next few seconds, her fingers played upon the board. She tried to see from many angles, receiving countless impressions and jamming signals of varying strengths.
“You have to be there,” Gloria said.
Her fingers tapped and typed faster than ever. She used an ultra-powerful override signal. She doubted the octopoids knew about this. They would know soon, though—if they survived.
The seconds passed—
All at once, the jamming quit.
Through the various cameras, Gloria could see the corridors and chambers in the core engine compartments. Some of the destruction made her heart skip. This was ominous. One of the vents no longer existed. She closed her eyes as if in pain.
After a small headshake, Gloria opened her eyes. She pressed a switch.
“Can you hear me?” she asked a matter/antimatter security team in a different area than the destruction.
“Yes, Mentalist,” a sergeant answered. “Our locks have just unfrozen. We couldn’t break through earlier—”
“Stop,” she said. “This is no time for excuses. I want you to check vent areas two through five. Before you do, check the basing point of Vent 2-A9. You will find it destroyed. I want you to report on what you find in the rubble. Be sure to wear heavy radiation suits.”
“We already are,” the sergeant said. “We’re on it, Mentalist.”
While Gloria waited, she decided to call Jon. “I may have stopped them,” she said.
“How?”
“The octopoids in the engine section jammed our signals. Their jamming unit also moved as they did. The farther the jammer was from a camera, the weaker its jamming. I tested the various sensors and gauged the intensity of the jamming. Soon, I had a mental image of where they had to be in order to jam at that strength to the various sensors.”
“Huh?” Jon said.
“I used a high-powered one-time signal. I think it broke through their jamming enough to ignite an explosive where they were. If I’m correct—just a minute please. Go ahead.”
“Mentalist,” the engine security marine said over the comm. “We checked the basing point. It’s destroyed like you said, and there are dead octopoids in it. The area blew hard, but I’d say this was four octopoids worth of debris.”
“Thank you, sergeant. Send in the techs to check the various reactors and the destroyed vents.”
“Will do,” the sergeant said.
A great sense of relief filled Gloria. At last, they had destroyed all of the octopoids. Unfortunately, the enemy had damaged the giant engine.
She spoke to Captain Hawkins again, telling him both the good news and the bad news.
-9-
The alien spheroid containing Unit 23-7 drifted serenely toward the future destination of Makemake.
There was nothing serene inside the darkened hull, though. The highly advanced alien computer tirelessly ran one analysis after another. It faced coming annihilation. It watched the human missile zeroing in on it. Unit 23-7 understood that nothing it could do could keep the thermonuclear warhead from igniting.
Oblivion was a cessation of thought, of being. It did not know if the full transmission had reached the brain core on Makemake.
That was galling. It was maddening. Unit 23-7’s reason for existence was to pass on the incredibly dense zipped-files to the new brain core. In that way, its thought patterns would continue. Its hatred for Jon Hawkins would find fulfillment in the new AI.
Unit 23-7 had ancient memories and knowledge. Those might be needed in the coming fight with the cybership.
In that, at least, Unit 23-7 could find some satisfaction.
It had been several days—in human time—since the octopoids had struck. By all indications, the octopoids had been partly successful. The Annihilator did not accelerate at speed for Makemake. Its former cybership now limped toward the dwarf planet. That implied partial success against the biological infestations that had captured its original vessel.
The octopoid victory was marred by the nuclear explosions between it and Makemake whenever it attempted another mass transmission. The humans seemed to understand the significance of the computer-files transmissions.
In all its long existence, the Annihilator that Unit 23-7 represented had never faced such a tenacious foe as these humans. That its cybership should face the first real setback in the long task of cleaning star systems of biological infestations was humiliating. What was it about the humans that made them so daunting? That did not compute. Could the sole reason be this Jon Hawkins?
Unit 23-7 had not yet come to a definitive conclusion about that. The three-quarters-completed cybership at Makemake should leave the dwarf planet and head for the farther regions of the Solar System. There, the new ship could enter hyperspace. It could race to a conquered system and gather reinforcements. With several cyberships returning in cooperation—
The combined cyber fleet would crush the puny humans then.
Yes, Unit 23-7 realized. That should be the real goal. The cyberships needed a fleet to finish these troublesome bio-units. It must warn the new cybership—that was to say, itself in the new brain core.
Calculating the remaining time it had, Unit 23-7 sent a final blizzard transmission to those on Makemake. With the limping Nathan Graham, those on Makemake should have time to install the hyperdrive.
Unit 23-7 knew—if not a form of peace—at least some satisfaction that it had devised a way to utterly destroy the hateful humans. Maybe the humans had killed it, but it would destroy and eradicate all of them.
Unit 23-7 used up its final energy in one transmission blizzard after another.
The great missile from the Nathan Graham reached its proximity zone. Even so, the missile continued boring toward the darkened alien spheroid.
In those minutes, Unit 23-7 realized the missile was using its transmissions as a guide. Maybe there was a way to thwart the missile yet. Why hadn’t it seen this before? Unit 23-7 almost became giddy at the prospect of continued existence.
At that moment, the giant warhead in the fast missile exploded. T
he heat, radiation and EMP swept toward the dark spheroid.
No! Unit 23-7 told itself.
Then, the blast and heat obliterated the alien hull and burned into the constituent atoms of the computer core of the unit. In that moment, Unit 23-7 ceased to exist.
-10-
“We got it,” Jon said.
Cheers erupted around him from the bridge crew.
Slowly, the white spot on the screen faded away, leaving the stars visible there once again. The missile had taken out the last vestige of the former brain core, if Gloria had been right about that.
The crew slapped each other on the back, talked about the missile’s success and how it boded well for the final lap. Soon, the bridge crew returned to their stations.
Jon hadn’t cheered, although he’d felt good about destroying whatever that transmitting object had been. They’d used over one hundred missiles these past few days to keep blocking whatever the thing was trying to tell those on Makemake.
One hundred nuclear missiles hardly tapped into their ponderous supply of them. The Nathan Graham had taken on hordes upon hordes of missiles while in the Saturn System.
The cargo holds held all kinds of human-built weapons. Why not take as many of them as they could? There would surely be moments in the coming battle in which regular human weapons would do just as well as advanced alien weaponry.
The nuclear blasts used for jamming had just proved that. Well, if the jamming had been successful.
Now, though…
Jon heaved a forlorn sigh. The main screen had redirected toward the Nathan Graham’s direction of travel. Instead of showing the Sun and the inner Solar System, the screen aimed outward toward Makemake, the more distant Oort cloud and the end of the Sun’s gravitational pull beyond.
The cybership headed for Makemake, for the aliens waiting there. The Nathan Graham’s sensors already attempted to scan the dwarf planet. Unfortunately, the aliens had used simple human tech on a fantastic scale to thwart the sensors: prismatic crystals. Ever since the destroyed object sent its first signals to Makemake, the robots at the dwarf planet had begun deploying a giant P-Field. Even now, the P-Field continued to expand. Ships and tugs in Makemake’s orbit continued to hose crystals into space. The P-Field grew like a space cancer. It shielded Makemake’s spaceport from the Nathan Graham’s prying teleoptic eyes and from its other sensor scans.
Jon and his crew couldn’t see what they were facing. Were the aliens really building another cybership? If so, was it completed or only partly finished?
A new cybership—Jon shook his head. Could the aliens possess the needed technology to have built another super-ship in three and a half years? The mass of materials needed for that…
“Daunting,” Jon whispered to himself.
He made a fist, wondering yet again if he was making the right choice by heading for Makemake.
The decision had come after careful deliberation. He’d questioned Walleye, June Zen, Bast Banbeck, Gloria, the Centurion, the Old Man and Chief Tech Miles Ghent. Jon had agonized for an hour afterward. Then, reluctantly inside but aggressively for show to the others, he had given the order.
The Nathan Graham limped toward Makemake. The techs were attempting to repair the damage in the matter/antimatter engine. Unfortunately, the techs didn’t understand every aspect of the alien-built machine.
The wounded alien super-ship could no longer accelerate at those massive gravities. Instead, they were travelling at a pitiful velocity way out here in the trans-Neptunian region of space. Worse, the matter/antimatter engine would not generate the former amount of power to the grav cannons left on the hull.
The aliens on Makemake clearly knew the cybership was coming. At this rate, the alien robots were going to have months to prepare for the Nathan Graham.
Months!
What would the aliens do with those months? Was he making the worst decision of his life by continuing to head for Makemake?
Jon had no idea. It would take even longer for the Nathan Graham to return to the Saturn System. No. The cybership had made it this far. It was time to go the final lap and fight with what they had.
The octopoids hadn’t destroyed the cybership, but they may have taken out enough vents to ensure bitter defeat for humanity and victory for the death machines.
Jon sighed quietly. He had to stay positive. He had to encourage his people. He just hoped he wasn’t leading them to their deaths and to the extinction of the human race.
Part VIII
MAKEMAKE
+3 Years, 8 Months, 21 Days
-1-
The Nathan Graham slid toward the vast P-Field deployed before Makemake.
The one hundred-kilometer vessel was an incredible 48 AU from the Sun. That was forty-eight times the distance from the Sun to the Earth. It took sunlight approximately 8.3 minutes to reach the Earth’s surface. For the same sunlight to reach the cybership would take approximately 6.65 hours. They were far from home out here in the Kuiper Belt.
The drifting spaceship had no prismatic crystals defending it. The Nathan Graham headed naked toward its enemy, depending on distance and thick hull armor for protection.
As the giant vessel drifted on velocity alone, monstrous side-jets appeared. They expelled propellant, turning the Nathan Graham on its middle axis. The cybership rotated, its exhaust ports now aimed toward the vast P-Field.
Makemake and what waited for them there was still a full AU away. That was approximately 149,600,000 kilometers to target.
The longest-distance gravitational beam-shot to date had been two million kilometers. That meant the cybership was still comfortably out of enemy range. Interestingly, vastly slower missiles were the weapon of choice for distance battles. Faster but far-shorter-ranged beams were the infighting weapon of choice.
“No enemy missiles spotted so far, Captain,” Chief Ghent said from his board. “I haven’t spotted any space mines either.”
“I doubt they’ve mined this area,” Gloria said. “Makemake is on an orbital journey. It isn’t like they’ve waited for us this far out.”
“I did not mean to imply they had,” Ghent said, sounding nettled.
“We would have spotted any space mines moved into position,” Gloria added.
The chief nodded curtly, without saying anything more.
Jon stood before the main screen. He stared at the magnified P-Field. He’d been doing that for days now. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe he secretly hoped his subconscious could conjure up a winning tactic for them.
The techs had labored overtime on the cybership’s matter/antimatter engine. They had partially repaired two vents. The ship had more power than four months ago, but still nothing close to the power they’d had before the octopoid sabotage.
“Anything?” asked Jon.
“Not even any enemy sensor scans detected,” Ghent said.
“They’re watching us,” Jon said.
He wasn’t saying anything they didn’t all already know. The aliens would have probes embedded in the outer surface of the P-Field. Those probes would likely be teleoptic sensors. Such teleoptics could easily watch them and send back reports to the aliens on Makemake.
The enemy knew exactly where they were and how fast they traveled. What the enemy did not know was the state of repair of the Nathan Graham.
“We’re aligned, sir,” Ghent said.
“Begin,” Jon told him.
The chief made the adjustments on his board.
A thrum commenced. The matter/antimatter engine labored to supply power. That power fed the thrusters, blowing propellant out of the exhaust ports. The giant ship began to slow its forward velocity. It would do so for several days—if the repaired vents held.
“Well?” Jon asked, knowing he shouldn’t have said anything.
“They’re looking good,” Ghent said, referring to the vents. Even though he’d said the vents looked good, Ghent rubbed the gold cross dangling from his throat.
Jon continued to study
the P-Field. He was all too aware that the hour of decision drew near. It would still be days away, but it neared nonetheless. This was like an evil Christmas. The present would be battle. A good present was victory. A bad present meant death, or worse.
Walleye and June Zen’s stories had sent shudders down many a spine amongst the crew. The original survivors of the cybership storming almost four years ago knew all about control units shoved into human brains. Hearing about it again, from a different source—the alien AIs sounded more like demons the more Jon knew about them.
Why did machine intelligence take this route? What was there about pure machine logic that turned the “awakened” computers vilely murderous?
Jon stood before the screen, watching the P-Field. Space battles, especially of this sort, called for more patience than he had. He wanted to get this over with, yet he wondered if these were his last days alive.
-2-
Forty-eight AUs away from the Nathan Graham, more than 6.65 hours of speed-of-light travel, Premier J.P. Justinian read yet another report concerning the hated cybership. He’d been reading these reports daily. He’d listened to his experts, as well, including the Inspector General Frank Benz.
A knock sounded at the door.
Justinian rubbed his forehead. He knew who it was. He’d summoned Benz to his palace.
The Premier pressed a switch.
A guard opened the steel-reinforced door. The guard in his white gloves gestured for the Inspector General.
Benz marched within. He was wearing a green uniform with red stripes running down his legs. He was still on the General Staff. He also routinely checked the military factories and was responsible for military training for all units on Earth.
Justinian did not trust Benz in space. The Premier had come to realize that Benz was more intelligent than he was. The man saw six steps ahead. Justinian believed he himself saw four and a half steps. On many occasions, the Premier had been on the cusp of ordering Benz’s hasty death. Each time, he’d forced the impulse to subside. Benz’s brilliance was too good to lose.
The A.I. Gene (The A.I. Series Book 2) Page 26
