The AI War (15 page)

"The R'Actolians?" asked John.

A'Tir nodded. "They invited him to take command— something about the AIs and the ship's cybernetics. K'Tran pushed the button they indicated, then nothing for a long time, then a scream
..."
She looked at them, the shock still in her eyes. "I've never heard a human scream like that—it went on and on. I tried to go in, but the shield came back when I moved."

"Well, K'Tran's traded ships for the last time," said D'Trelna after a moment. "Let's go home."

"You're both very clever," said R'Gal. His gaze shifted between Q'Nil and K'Raoda. "But"—he raised a finger— "didn't it occur to you that T'Lan might have adjusted his life readings to correspond to mine?"

"Absurd," said K'Raoda. "He didn't know you, he had no contact with you. No, I prefer the more direct explanation."

"All right," said R'Gal mildly. "So I'm an AI—a combat droid like T'Lan. Why haven't I perforated your frail bodies and blasted my way out of this room? Why didn't I go with T'Lan to the mindslaver?"

"Doing one or the other would end your usefulness," said K'Raoda. "Our acceptance of you as human is probably necessary to your mission, R'Gal. Failing to convince us, you can always try to blast your way out." He paused. "Perhaps you are a counterintelligence officer— just not a human one."

"You've taken precautions against my making a dramatic exit?"

K'Raoda nodded. "Except for this room, Sick Bay's been evacuated. The door to this room and all decks and bulkheads surrounding it are blastpaked. Any disturbance will trigger them."

"Even with one of you as hostage?" asked R'Gal.

"With either or both of us as hostage," said K'Raoda.

R'Gal pulled his legs up on the bed and put his arms around them. "Let's assume, K'Raoda, for discussion's sake, that this fantasy of yours is true. What then?"

"Assuming it is," said K'Raoda, "I'd like to know what you AIs want. I'd like to know how deeply you've infiltrated the Republic. I'd like to know what T'Lan wants on that mindslaver. But most of all, R'Gal, I want that stasis algorithm." '

"That's all?"

There was a stony silence.

"Very well, Commander," said R'Gal after a moment. "I'll match your small fantasy with a larger one—a tale of death and treachery spanning two universes and a million years. This will take a while—better pull up a chair. You too, Q'Nil."

"What about the algorithm?" asked the commander, not moving.

"Listen," said R'Gal, "and you'll understand why T'Lan might have that algorithm, and why I wouldn't."

Commander T'Ral stood before an armorglass wall, his survival jacket closed, the hood up, watching
Alpha Prime
through a pair of small field binoculars. Cursing softly, he lowered and reversed them, using a thickly gloved finger to scrape the skin of ice from the lenses.

"Anything?" asked K'Lana, her breath a thick, cottony streamer. She sat behind the gray bulk of the ship's main— and now nonoperative—gunnery control console, an earpiece tying her into the oblong nexus of a tactical commweb. The little machine's surface was aglitter with green status lights.

T'Ral shook his head and raised the binoculars. "You'd think she were some monstrous derelict, except for that damned light." He trained the binoculars back on the hangar deck entrance. It had flashed on a few moments before—a sudden wash of yellow-white coming from what had been a yawning black pit.

T'Ral had been watching ever since, hoping for the welcomed sight of two silver shuttles flashing into space— well, one of them welcomed. "Anything from Commander K'Raoda?" he asked, keeping vigil.

"Still in Sick Bay, with R'Gal," she said.

"How's life systems doing?"

"Still losing ground to the algorithm." She looked down at her blue-lined notepad. "Bridge and surrounding area is now heated into red zone. Fire snuffers have malfunctioned in hydropics, icing the plant life. Decks four, five and six from sections red five forward aren't getting recycled air. And it continues to snow on hangar deck." K'Lana looked at the second officer's back. "Flight Control again requests additional personnel for snow removal."

"Denied," he said. "I'm not pulling crew out of gun harness to sweep snow."

"It's a bit beyond the sweeping stage."

"All right," T'Ral sighed, lowering the glasses and rubbing his eyes. "Send them whatever commandos are now free from courier duty."

"Snow removal," he muttered as K'Lana took another status report.

"Next right," said Egg. It could no longer fly the shuttle—the firefight had left its light tendrils operable but unreliable. Relegated to giving directions, it sat at the navigator's station.

L'Wrona tugged the control stalk to the right, sending the shuttle soaring down the same broad ramp they'd ascended on their way to the bridge.

"Commchannels are still jammed," said D'Trelna, tapping off the commlink. "Everything all right back there?" he called through the open cabin door.

"Fine," said John. He sat beside A'Tir, just behind the duralloy ladder to the gun turret.

The corsair spoke for the first time since they'd left the bridge area. "They'll hit us before we can get off the ship, Harrison," she said. "They know we have to leave the way we came in or be exposed to their main batteries. Do you think Fats knows that?"

"John," called D'Trelna. "Man the turret, please."

A'Tir rose as John left. She moved as far forward as the leg manacles would let her. "D'Trelna," she said, "I can work your forty-fours better than the Terran!"

"Good," said the commodore, watching intently as they left the ramp and shot down a corridor. "Hand-eye coordination is very important in brainwipe rehab. They'll be starting you off with simple, repetitive tasks—eating, wiping, whatnot."

He frowned when she didn't spit something back, then forgot about it as they reached the sally port.

"No way, J'Quel," said L'Wrona, bringing the craft to a halt before the sally port. The door was still the ruin they'd left it—and the disintegrator pods were on, throwing a shaft of blazing white light into the corridor. The shuttle's windscreen and turret darkened in response.

"There's the mouth of hell, H'Nar," said D'Trelna, pointing at the entrance.

"Where's hangar deck from here?" said the commodore, turning to Egg.

"Three decks down," said the battered machine. "But it has interior weapons batteries. Our nearest and best course would bring us to the end opposite the launch opening. We would be subjected to heavy fusion fire the length of the deck."

"We'll have to run it," said D'Trelna. "Unless someone has a better idea?"

No one did. "How do we get there?" asked L'Wrona.

"Retrace our course to—"

A warning klaxon sounded at the pilot's station. "Had to happen," muttered D'Trelna as L'Wrona flicked off the alarm and brought up the tacscan.

"Trouble," called John, arming the guns and swinging the turret about.

Three small, stub-winged interceptors were closing on them from the rear, moving wingtip to wingtip down the corridor.

L'Wrona took a quick look at them in the rear tacscan, then put the shuttle into full forward. They shot away from the sally portal, blue fusion bolts sizzling after them.

John slouched in the turret as L'Wrona took the shuttle high. Conduits and ventilator shafts flashed by, inches from the armorglass.

The shuttle dived as blaster fire angled up at them, burning parallel troughs in the ceiling.

John caught a fighter in sights. Thumb jamming down the fire stud, he sent a double stream of fusion bolts tearing into the center fighter's cockpit. The component-manned craft spun to the deck, exploding in a billowing pillar of blue flame.

As the shuttle passed the next intersection, five more interceptors joined the chase.

"Captain," said Egg, "next right."

The shuttle whipped around the corner, down a narrow side corridor, L'Wrona cutting their speed at the sight of the armored doors blocking the far end—doors that were buckled, their seam fused by congealed rivulets of battlesteel. Heat-peeled letters above the door, written large in High K'Ronarin, proclaimed: Battery 43.

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

"Well?" demanded D'Trelna of Egg.

"Blow the doors," said the machine.

"Why?" said L'Wrona.

"No time," said the commodore, watching the rear-scan. "Do it, H'Nar."

Bringing up the targeting scan, L'Wrona skillfully adjusted the angle of the shuttle, bringing the doorway into the center of the red-ringed cross hairs.

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

The doors blew in—hot, sharp fragments sucked through the cavernous ruins of Battery 43, out the smashed turret and into space.

The shuttle, the fighters, everything in that part of
Alpha Prime
that wasn't secured, followed the door fragments—a jumbled, tumbling mass of machines and debris, pulled through the yawning ruins of the turret by air pouring into infinite vacuum.

After a moment, emergency bulkheads halfway down the access corridor trundled shut, sealing the mindslaver from space.

"Look!" cried K'Lana, rising. T'Ral turned right 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 K'Ronarin 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 ships approaching," said T'Ral quickly, hands sweaty on the rippled duraplast of the binoculars. "All batteries to lend covering fire. So advise corsair vessel."

"All batteries," said K'Lana into the commnet. "All batteries. Engage hostiles pursuing Fleet shuttle. Independent fire—commence, commence!"

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

Backdropped by the red-and-blue flares of the fighters' end, the shuttle swept down past T'Ral, heading for the hangar deck.

"Ours," sighed the commander, relieved. "Or she'd have made for the corsair.

"All batteries maintain high alert. Advise Commander K'Raoda that one shuttle has landed."

As the shuttle spun toward space, John hung from the firing harness, catching glimpses of the ruined gun battery: blasted control panels, twisted cables dangling from charred and buckled bulkheads—and the gun itself, a great 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 44's, fighting five black, darting needles of certain death.

Blaster bolts were everywhere. The shuttle lost a tail fin tip just as the counterfire came, flashing past the craft on all sides as the cruisers took out the fighters.

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

When he opened his eyes again it was snowing.

D'Trelna 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 hangar deck. H'Nar."

" 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 looked at the outside temperature gauge and did a quick conversion: Fahrenheit was about twenty below. He suppressed a shiver.

"Thank you, Egg," said D'Trelna, rising. "Everyone into survival gear, including the prisoner. We'll plow our way to flight control."

* * * *

"Describe this egg machine," said R'Gal urgently. K'Raoda did so.

"Destroy it the instant it comes on board," said R'Gal. "If it gets to a complink, we're all dead."

"None of the complinks are working," said Q'Nil as K'Raoda's handset chirped.

"They'll work for that thing," said R'Gal as the commander acknowledged a message.

"One shuttle has landed," said K'Raoda, clipping the handset back onto his belt. "We assume it's ours. Hangar deck is accessible only through light conduits."

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

"Why?" asked K'Raoda.

"As a demonstration of good faith," said R'Gal. "You've nothing to lose. And I'm the only one who can get down there fast enough to stop that thing.

"Make up your mind. Commander," he said as K'Raoda hesitated. "Trust me or lose this ship."

K'Raoda drew his side arm, extending it butt-first to R'Gal. "You'll need this."

"No I won't."

"Get those blastpaks off the doors."

"There aren't any," said K'Raoda.

"Q'Nil picked up on the life vitals just as you were coming around."

"Bluff?" said R'Gal, smiling faintly.

"Bluff," nodded K'Raoda.

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

K'Raoda started to leave. A strong, thin hand to his shoulder stopped him. He turned back to Q'Nil as the medtech spoke.