The AI War Read Online Free PDF Page B

in."
    "What are we going to do about the S'Cotar?" she asked as they reached the lift.
    "Easy," said John, pressing the call tab. "We find him, have an engaging chat and kill him."
    The briefing room— Implacable's smallest—was full: fifty-eight officers. John Harrison and Zahava Tal stood in front of the red-cushioned traq-wood chairs. Conversation stopped as D'Trelna and L'Wrona entered and walked down the center aisle and up to the podium. "Sit, sit," said the commodore, waving them to their chairs. "You'll note," he said as the noise died, "that we've been in Quadrant Blue Nine for some time and are still alive. We're now proceeding to mission coordinates furnished by Pocsym."
    "The Trel Cache," said Zahava.
    "No," said D'Trelna, "not the Trel Cache."
    L'Wrona broke the stunned silence. "We're to rendezvous with the first in a series of remote navigation markers placed by Imperial Survey, just before the Fall. We give it the access code furnished by Pocsym, it gives a new set of jump coordinates."
    "We do know there's more than one navigation marker," said D'Trelna. "Beyond that—nothing."
    "Leading us where?" asked N'Trol, the ship's engineer, N'Trol had been drafted from his well-paid job as chief engineer for a merchant line. His contempt of things military was as deep as his sarcasm.
    D'Trelna shrugged. "We've no control over this process, Mr. N'Trol. Instructions and coordinates were sent by Pocsym in his final moments."
    "We're touring the galaxy on the whim of a mad cyborg?"
    "Is that you, T'Lan?" said L'Wrona.
    Four rows back, Commander T'Lan stood, muscles rippling under his closely tailored uniform.
    Dionysus, thought John, looking at T'Lan. With his perfect body, fine-chiseled face and flawless bronze skin, the young commander might have been a demigod out of Euripides. A prettyboy, certainly, but dangerous?
    "It's too bad, Commander," said L'Wrona icily, "that you weren't with us when we assaulted the S'Cotar citadel on Terra's moon. Surviving that, you'd have appreciated that though Pocsym's instructions might have been mad, he executed them with flawless logic."
    Mad's the word, thought John. Pocsym had been programmed in the Late Imperial age, five thousand years ago—programmed by social scientists who believed that right about now their descendants would be facing hordes of killer machines pouring into this galaxy from an alternate reality. Monitor human progress, they'd ordered Pocsym, and prepare mankind for that ultimate battle.
    Deciding that only man could save man, Pocsym had created a race of biofabs—biological fabrications—dubbed them the S'Cotar, and sent them against the K'Ronarins. They'd almost destroyed the Confederation and claimed the galaxy for themselves. Almost. Only Implacable 's stumbling into the Terran system and her discovery of the biofabs' home base, deep beneath the surface of Terra's moon, had saved humankind—that and a hurried alliance between the K'Ronarins and the Terrans, ending in a desperate commando assault on the S'Cotar citadel.
    That crazy cyborg started the war, reflected John—and finished it, blowing up the biofabs' citadel, most of the biofabs—and itself. The commandos and the few Terrans with them had barely escaped in time.
    Is L'Wrona through with the twit? he wondered.
    L'Wrona wasn't.
    "Just before we left Terra, Commander, we went up against some hideous machines."
    "I've read the report, sir."
    "Then you'll know that though we stopped them in one parallel reality, they may well be coming into a separate part of this universe. Our part. Right now. We have the point in space at which they're supposedly entering. First, we go to the Trel Cache for a weapon to use against them."
    "We only have Pocsym's word for this," said Zahava.
    "A word that we'll soon confirm or refute," said the commodore.
    "We're a sacrifice mission," said N'Trol flatly.
    "No Fleet ship is ever intentionally sacrificed, Mr. N'Trol," said L'Wrona.
    "But all ships are