The AI War (10 page)

"That smooth-talking Egg has my vote." said N'Trol.

"Mine, too," said K'Raoda. "One of its little bag of algorithms is keeping us alive, while the other's destroying our computer—and maybe us."

"You've got to warn the commodore," said N'Trol.

K'Raoda turned to K'Lana. "Anything?"

"Not from the shuttles. Broad-band interference pattern from the slaver. However
..."

"Yes?" said K'Raoda hopefully.

"Lifts seven and eighteen are locked in transit. Engineering's dispatched work parties."

"It's starting." said N'Trol. "I better get down there." He turned for the door.

"Use the ladders," K'Raoda called after him.

"In fact, K'Lana," he continued as N'Trol left, "make that an order. All personnel not transporting heavy loads, use central access."

The jowly face of Gunnery Chief B'Tul came onto one of K'Lana's screens. "Bridge. We're getting power feed anomalies to fusion batteries three through eight. Random surges and breaks. Engineering's on it."

"Food processors in mess four are pouring out green slop," said K'Lana as the chief's face disappeared.

"What is green slop?" asked K'Raoda, feeling the bottom fall out of his tight little world. The universe might be a mad, malevolent place, but
Implacable
had never failed them.

"You want to talk to him?" K'Lana tapped her earpiece.

K'Raoda held up a palm. "No. Give him to the engineering duty officer.''

"I'll put him in queue," she said, turning back to her console.

"And keep trying to punch through to D'Trelna," added K'Raoda.

It was a good-sized room, square, windowless, its walls and floors of a black, marblelike substance. The long table in its center seemed more an outcropping of the floor than a separate construct—a fluted-stemmed outcropping that gleamed dully in the soft light, surrounded by seven alabaster-white armchairs.

John slouched in the one at the head of the table, facing the door. Gingerly he rubbed his throbbing right shoulder. Pain shot down his back and arm. Grimacing, he stopped rubbing. "That was cruel," he said to the S'Cotar.

"What, the way I saved your frail life, Harrison?" Guan-Sharick-as-blonde sat at the far end of the table, smirking. The smirk vanished. "T'Lan was watching you fall to your death. That close to the deck"—the transmute held two fingers barely apart—"and its flawlessly logical brain was just logging you out, Harrison—a faulty assumption that bought us perhaps a nanosecond."

John snorted. "A nanosecond, bug?"

Guan-Sharick leaned forward intently, hands folded. "T'Lan is an AI combat droid—an invincible legend out of prehistory." Those startling blue eyes met John's. "It would take a full stream from a Mark Eighty-eight to slow it, a multinuclear salvo to destroy it. It thinks faster and moves faster than anything of this time, and it is dedicated to the eradication of all free life—you, me, the K'Ronarins, this mindslaver, everything. It can decide, aim and fire in a tenth of a second. Its perfect logic is its only weakness."

"I don't believe you," said John.

"Fine," shrugged the S'Cotar, leaning back in the chair. ' 'I'll send you back to the bridge command tier and drop you again. You make it as far as the first time, and I'll teleport your sweet self back here."

John held up a hand. "No. . . . You want to tell me how an AI combat droid infiltrated the Confederation and imitated one of its mogul's sons?"

"Doesn't look too good for us, does it?" said Guan-Sharick with a faint smile.

"Us?"

"Harrison," sighed the transmute, "a S'Cotar's quite mild compared to what you face in T'Lan—and to what you face on this vessel."

"And what is that?" asked the Terran.

"Look behind you."

John turned and saw the wall screen. On
Implacable,
when a screen wasn't in use, it displayed the Fleet coat-of-arms. This screen, though, held something quite different than ship-shield-and-sun: a six-fingered hand clutching the double helix of a DNA molecule.

"Crazy," he said, turning back to the S'Cotar.

"Megalomania, in Freud's schemata," said Guan-Sharick. "Mad, certainly, but also brilliant. The R'Actolians are far better geneticists than the ones who created them, R'Actol and her group."

"You'd think they could have fixed themselves," said the Terran.

"Why?" shrugged the blonde. "They see nothing wrong with themselves. It's the rest of the galaxy they want to correct.''

"And what is this charming room?" asked John, looking about.

"The Council Chamber of R'Actol." Swiveling the chair, the S'Cotar rose, pacing. "Here the Seven met to plot the extermination of mankind.'' Guan-Sharick touched the table. "From-here they planned strategy against the Empire. And when they were beaten, their thousands of dreadnoughts destroyed, sitting right where you are now, Harrison, Z'Tui, their leader, proposed they seek the immortality of their own devices." The S'Cotar stopped pacing, turning to John. "Motion carried."

"At least they were defeated." John sat up, his shoulder now almost forgotten.

The S'Cotar shook its head. "To defeat the R'Actolian biofabs, the Empire had to build mindslavers. That, more than any other event, started the Empire slipping down the long, bloody road into the Long Night—the night the K'Ronarins are only now awakening from. And though the R'Actolians may have been defeated, they won't have really lost until the Seven are dead."

"And T'Lan is here to kill them?" asked John.

"T'Lan's here to appropriate the slaver and intercept that commwand. It would prefer to keep the Seven alive— it's difficult to run the vessel without them—not impossible, but difficult. As long as the R'Actolians are powerless, T'Lan isn't concerned with them. They're compelled not only to do as he says but to cooperate in every way. Though if a chance to regain command occurs, they'll seize it."

Guan-Sharick walked the length of the room, stopping at the chair to John's right. Hands gripping the chairback, the S'Cotar leaned forward intently. "You and I must keep the Seven alive."

John frowned. "Until the commwand's secured?"

"That certainly," nodded the S'Cotar. "But if the R'Actolians die, Harrison, we may all die. We need this dreadnought—and its secrets. It's the only ship in this universe that can stand against an AI battleglobe."

Four hundred and nine light-years away, Lifepod 38 prepared to make planetfall.

K'Ronar had no God. Ten thousand years of high technology had left the concept a desiccated anthropological husk.

Hell, though, thought D'Trelna, gripping his chairarms, hell is alive, well and dead ahead.

The commodore sat to Egg's right, with L'Wrona buckled into the navigator's station, just behind him. An endless expanse of battlesteel, weapons turrets and instrument pods filled the armorglass windscreen:
Alpha Prime.

Must have raped ten worlds to get all that metal, thought D'Trelna. He looked up to his right. The corsair shuttle was holding station next to them, its forward fuselage just visible.

"Why are none of the smaller batteries firing, Egg?" asked L'Wrona. He pointed in front, to the small circle of the mindslaver's hull now inside the subdued blue shimmer of the shield's apex. "Weapons scan shows several hundred small fusion cannon down there. We're not shielded—they should have wiped us the moment we came within range."

"There are no weapons batteries, Captain," said the slaver machine. It sat in the pilot's chair, safety harness buckled across it, light tendrils tying it into the shuttle controls.

L'Wrona tapped a telltale. "Tacscan clearly shows
..."

"Scan-chimera," said Egg. "An instrument-sensitive hologram. Only the sally portal lies inside our shield point.''

"But
..."
protested L'Wrona.

"Mark to penetration: twenty," said Egg, silencing the captain. "Captain K'Tran, please assume position directly behind us."

"Acknowledged," came the corsair's voice over the commnet.

"Mark fifteen," said Egg. The hull rushed up to meet them, looking very real and hard.

"Battlesteel is not a very forgiving surface, Egg," said D'Trelna, teeth gritted. Serial numbers were now visible on the hull instruments.

A continuous shrill warbling sounded—the shuttle's crash warning. Instinctively, D'Trelna grabbed the copilot's control stick and pulled. Nothing. Locked.

"What if the disintegrator cubes are already on?" shouted L'Wrona above the alarm.

"Then we are ended," said Egg as they knifed into the slaver's hull—and through it, shooting down a wide, brightly lit tunnel.

Egg fired the shuttle's turret cannon, sending a double stream of red fusion bolts ahead of them. A brief tongue of orange-blue flame shot out, marking the portal's far end.

Large hexagonal cubes along walls and ceiling provided the tunnel's light. D'Trelna blanched as they began to oscillate, glowing brighter with each cycle. "Egg . . ."he called.

"Disintegration sequence has begun," confirmed the machine.

There was a loud
snap!
from behind. Something big, foiled of its prey, thought D'Trelna, punching up rear scan. A fierce white light glowed where they'd just been—a burning shaft that filled the tunnel's width, gaining on them with each
snap!
of ravening energy.

"Pathetically obsolete," sneered Egg. "It can only activate by sections."

"More speed!" called K'Tran urgently.

D'Trelna switched rear scan angle. The corsair shuttle was almost touching their own, with A'Tir and K'Tran clearly visible through their armorglass.

"No," said the slaver machine. "We must turn immediately after exiting. We cannot make the turn at speed— we'd crash into the bulkhead."

"You're not making it without us, D'Trelna," said the corsair. Watching the comm screen, D'Trelna saw K'Tran reach up and touch the weapons panel.

"Thought you were going to watch our rear, K'Tran," said the commodore. Thick fingers sent their blaster turret swinging 180 degrees. Through the remote gunnery interface, D'Trelna could see that flawlessly destructive shaft of white almost touching K'Tran's tail. The commodore tapped Arm where it showed red on his screen.

"Belay, both of you!" snapped L'Wrona. "We're through."

The shuttles shot through the blasted ruins of a great slab of battlesteel, then banked right, accelerating down a broad gray corridor. From behind them came a final
snap!
Light flared into the corridor behind them, then winked off.

D'Trelna leaned back in his chair, sighing. "Hell is alive and well, H'Nar," he said.

"Sorry?" blinked the captain, turning.

"Nothing," said D'Trelna, waving a hand. He glanced at the rear scan. "Ease off, K'Tran," he said. "You're almost up our tubes."

"My pleasure," said the corsair, putting three shuttle lengths between the two craft.

"And disarm those Mark forty-fours," added the commodore. The corsair's cannon pointed straight at the Fleet shuttle.

D'Trelna was too far away to see K'Tran grin. "Right," said the corsair.

"Where's your counterattack, Egg?" asked L'Wrona, staring down the seemingly endless stretch of corridor. Intersections and equipment banks flashed by.

"Before we reach the bridge, Captain," said Egg. It sent them spiraling up a ramp that would have accommodated ten or more shuttles flying abreast. "It will be swift and deadly."

K'Raoda stood, unfastening his survival jacket and tossing it over the back of the captain's chair. Others on the bridge were doing the same. "First we freeze," he muttered, "now we bake." He sat and punched into the commnet. "N'Trol. Life systems' status?"

K'Raoda waited impatiently, watching as the comm screen slipped from the ship-shield-and-sun into a distortion-flecked horizontal roll, then back to the Fleet emblem. Disgusted, he snapped off the commkey and stood again, sniffing the hot, dry air. "This is absurd," he said. He turned to T'Ral. "I'm going down to engineering."

The second officer shook his head. "I don't think so, T'Lei. Look." He pointed toward the doors. The two commandos on guard had the cover off the entrance control panel and were pushing the red override again and again. The thick armored doors didn't move.

The crash and clang of falling metal sent everyone spinning around toward the deserted navigation console. The console's gray inspection panel lay on the floor. Multicolored light pulsed along the optics cables bunched beneath the instruments, a jungle of crystalline wire that parted beneath two hairy hands. The hands emerged, followed by gold-ringed brown sleeves and a familiar head. "Don't shoot," said N'Trol, looking up into a dozen Ml lAs. "The way things are, you might trigger the jump drive. . . . You idiots going to help me out of here, or just stand there fondling your blasters?"

"Get him out of there," ordered K'Raoda. T'Ral and a commando grabbed the engineer, pulling him free.

Brushing himself off, N'Trol came over to the captain's station, the bridge crew following. Most of their instruments were now useless, all the screens blank.

"You climbed the light conduits from engineering," guessed K'Raoda.

N'Trol nodded. "Central core's locked tight. Eight decks up, then a third the length of the ship." He slumped into the empty XO's chair and dialed for t'ata. A cold cup of brackish-looking liquid appeared. Warily, N'Trol sipped, shuddered and crammed the cup into a disposer.

"At best," continued the engineer, "you walk stooped over, or pick your way up ladder rungs, wondering if they're going to give—some of them are half out of their sockets. There's a warm, dry breeze blowing, and the only illumination comes from the light pulses." He seemed strangely subdued, much of his old arrogance gone for now.

If only D'Trelna could see this, thought K'Raoda—he'd send N'Trol through there every watch. "I doubt anyone's been down there since the Fall," said K'Raoda. "Imperial boots last walked those conduits. Fleet just pulled this ship out of stasis, did some minor modifications and sent her off to fight the S'Cotar."

"Anything,from the commodore?" asked N'Trol, looking at the circle of faces. Several shook their heads.