Lyssa's Run_A Hard Science Fiction AI Adventure Read online

  LYSSA’S RUN

  THE SENTIENCE WARS: ORIGINS – BOOK 2

  BY JAMES S. AARON

  & M. D. COOPER

  SPECIAL THANKS

  Just in Time (JIT) & Beta Reads

  Lisa L Richman

  Timothy Van Oosterwyk Bruyn

  David Wilson

  Scott Reid

  Scot Mantelli

  Bob Wilson

  Rita M Botts Connor

  Jim Dean

  James Brandon

  Trenton Musel

  Bill Kelsey

  Copyright © 2017 M. D. Cooper

  The Aeon 14 Universe is Copyright © 2010, 2017 M. D. Cooper

  Lyssa’s Dream is Copyright © 2017 James S. Aaron & M. D. Cooper

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Laércio Messias

  Editing by Tee Ayer

  All rights reserved.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  AFTERWORD

  THE BOOKS OF AEON 14

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  FOREWORD

  Lyssa’s Run continues the adventure Andy Sykes found himself in the midst of when he docked at Cruithne. However, what we now know is that his journey really started much further back with the assault on Fortress 8221.

  James and I have given a lot of thought as to what AI are, how they’re created, and how (even now) we model them after human minds.

  What are we in search of with our rush toward the creation of our human-made minds? Is it to create servants? Successors? conquerors?

  If you’ve read the later Aeon 14 books, you’ll find that I envision a future where humans and AIs learn to live together. But it is not an easy road, and both sides breed factions filled with resentment.

  It is, after all, not so strange to imagine that the created is not so different than the creator.

  M. D. Cooper

  Danvers, 2017

  LONG BEFORE TANIS RICHARDS & THE EVENTS OF OUTSYSTEM…

  Before the Sol Space Federation, and the days of Tanis serving in the Terran Space Force, the Sol System was a far wilder place.

  No central government sat overtop the many planets and groups of asteroids and habitats—though the SolGov assembly tried to maintain some order.

  Many of the great megastructures had been built, such as High Terra and Mars 1, but many others had not. Most importantly, there are few sentient AI, and those who do exist are unwelcome, and often illegal.

  In a future without faster-than-light travel, teleportation, artificial gravity, or advanced shielding, a ship in space is just one small collision away from destruction.

  This is the Sol System we find ourselves in at the close of the thirtieth century, and the dawn of the age of AI.

  PROLOGUE

  STELLAR DATE: 08.27.2981 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Benevolent Hand

  REGION: Near Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol

  The command deck of the Benevolent Hand was a mess of complaining alerts and desperate officers staring into displays. In addition to the mayhem, Cal Kraft had a feeling the captain was actively trying to get them all killed.

  Grabbing the pirate ship Sunny Skies should have been easy. Instead, Cal had spent the last two hours watching the crew of the Benevolent Hand stumble over themselves trying to find the freighter among a crowd of thousands of ships swelling the shipping lanes around Cruithne Station, which was little more than InnerSol’s crusted toilet as far as he was concerned.

  “When am I going to have another drone swarm?” Captain Piller demanded from his seat in the middle of the command deck. He was a heavily-built veteran from the Terran Space Force who had turned out to be the sort of officer who looks good on paper but had managed to avoid direct combat during his forty-year career. He was also inordinately proud of his drooping yellow mustache.

  “They’re working on it, sir,” one of the lieutenants called from a console on the other side of the holographic display dominating the room. “We’re out of raw materials for the replicators so they’re stripping furniture out of rooms right now.”

  “How did we manage to run out of material for the replicators?” Piller griped.

  “We never expected to need two thousand attack drones, sir.”

  Piller wiped his flushed face. “That’s got to be wrong.”

  Cal suppressed a smile. He had told Piller not to underestimate the Lowspin Syndicate: the group providing cover to the Sunny Skies. It had been obvious from the beginning that Heartbridge had aligned themselves with the least intelligent of the two gangsters running Cruithne. Riggs Zanda might have talked a good game, but he was nothing compared to Ngoba Starl—the Brutal Dandy as they all called him. It hadn’t taken Cal long to appreciate Starl, a man who disguised a cunning intelligence beneath his fancy suits and pocket squares.

  Captain Piller continued to bark orders that quickly became conflicting or redundant, going so far as to slap one of his lieutenants on the back of the head. Among a real crew, such behavior might have been preferable to getting pistol-whipped. For the showboats of the Benevolent Hand—Heartbridge Corporation’s ‘hidden-in-plain-sight’ battlecruiser masked as a hospital ship—Piller’s leadership made them as combat-effective as five cats in a bag.

  In the holotank, the shark-like shape of the Benevolent Hand hung in space above the lumpy mass of Cruithne Station, an asteroid with a mottled ring covered in the crust of thousands of structures, docks and airlocks that supported its illegal activities.

  Cruithne had the relatively unique characteristic of a horseshoe orbit moving it between Earth and Mars at opposite ends of the year. Over the centuries, the five-kilometer chunk of rock had become a favorite of InnerSol pirates, which was interesting since the TSF had a regular presence on the station and conducted routine interdiction operations on their traffic. The mix of military presence, corporate entities and crime syndicates all operating in the same overcrowded warren resulted in a specific breed of roach-like criminal.

  Between the Benevolent
Hand and Cruithne, a hundred thousand kilometers of space was filled with glowing tendrils of what looked like fireflies but represented ships clogging the station’s defined traffic lanes. Somewhere in one of those tendrils was the ship they needed to seize.

  For the last two hours, they had been under constant attack from pirate boarding-teams and stand-off platforms concentrating missile-barrages across their sensor arrays, and most recently the command deck. They had obviously known the Benevolent Hand’s true purpose from the start. While the massive ship was capable of transporting thousands of wounded and providing advanced medical services, that gooey center was surrounded by missile banks, rail guns and point defense cannons, as well as one of the most advanced drone fleets available, with replicators to quickly spit out new attack ships for the swarm.

  This should have been easy.

  Nothing’s easy, Cal told himself.

  The Sunny Skies was a three-hundred-year-old freighter with deuterium drives and a habitat ring. From what Cal knew about its captain, Andy Sykes, the man should have been the type to surrender days ago, more concerned about his two kids than the Heartbridge property he had been hired to smuggle off Cruithne.

  “Sir!” one of the lieutenants yelled. “They’ve got a breach vessel on the hull near the engines. Scans are showing a nuclear device.”

  Cal closed his eyes and breathed, visualizing the actions of a pirate breaching team. There were probably twenty bulkhead airlocks between the command deck and the engines section. Plenty of time to get off the ship.

  There was a locker with four EV suits just outside the command deck airlock. He might need to kill three of the nearby crew to reach the locker first. He didn’t trust that the escape pods wouldn’t serve as target practice for the pirates nearby.

  “Can we get a point defense cannon on it?” Piller demanded.

  “It’s inside the effective range, sir.”

  “Redirect a drone team.”

  “I’ve already done that, sir. I’m showing two minutes for the nearest team to return to station.”

  What kind of nuke would pirates have on hand? Cal wondered. Probably not military grade. More likely some rigged reactor from an ancient wreck, or most likely a piece of mining equipment. That made more sense. Easier to steal and slip through TSF search, maybe even with legit papers.

  He’d grown up on a mining rig working the remnants of Mercury. It was almost comforting to let his mind slip over the various types of explosives one could retrofit from a standard mining rig to serve in a military application. He imagined holding a rock torch right now, hefting its weight, tightening down the harness, watching walls and flesh melt away from its electric blue tip—like painting a new world.

  “Oh, God,” the lieutenant said in a low voice.

  Cal opened his eyes to find the man slumping in his chair, arms slack at his sides.

  “What?” Piller shouted.

  “Looks like the nuke failed,” the lieutenant said. He reached for his console again, tapping commands. “It’s inert. Maybe a failure in the arming system.”

  Piller scoffed. “Pirates. Can’t even set off a bomb.”

  Cal told Piller privately over his Link.

  Pillar said. His voice dripped arrogance.

 

  Piller scoffed.

 

  Piller turned to scowl at Cal from his command seat, looking like a baby in a high chair.

  the captain said.

  Cal said. He gave Piller a slight smile, fixing his gaze on the huffing captain. Without hearing their conversation, the crew was going to think Piller was having a choking on something.

  Good place for a medical emergency, Cal mused. Facilities on the Benevolent Hand could build a new organ in minutes.

  “I’ve got massive course shifts, Captain,” one of the lieutenants called out. Her hands flew over her console before she pointed at the holograph in front of them. All around Cruithne, the shimmering veins designating the shipping lanes were spreading apart. The green triangles indicating their attack drone teams were almost hidden beneath the spreading blanket of lights currently moving away from Cruithne in all directions.

  Cal stared into the holograph, running through everything he knew about Andy Sykes, his wreck of a ship, his kids. Sykes was Earth-born. He could run for High Terra, try to make use of his TSF contacts. That would make grabbing him a bit tougher but also take him closer to Heartbridge’s center of power.

  Did Sykes even know that? Cal had to assume Hari Jickson, the bleeding-heart scientist who had started this mess, had at least explained to Sykes who might be coming after him. As soon as they had put the Benevolent Hand into play, Heartbridge’s role would have been clear. Starl would have made the game clear. Maybe.

  Playing back his memory of Andy Sykes sitting at the table in Ngoba Starl’s annoying dance club, Cal found himself frustrated by how calm an exterior the former TSF pilot had showed. Knowing his story, Cal had expected an anxious wreck. Sykes reminded him of a closed knife, a tool that could be used for any number of tasks, benign under most circumstances but deadly when used correctly. Starl had chosen the perfect pawn. If not for Sykes’ kids, Cal thought this might have been a difficult job. A man like Sykes could disappear for years anywhere in Sol.

  If only Jickson hadn’t put a bomb in his head.

  The doctor probably didn’t explain that, did he, Captain Sykes? Cal thought.

  The weaving interplay of lights in the holograph was almost beautiful. Very unlike the plain graphics of a mining control rig, where the brain didn’t have time to sort out color from data. Plain white on green meant business, Cal thought. These people were all show over substance. If their quarry hadn’t been hobbled, they would have already lost.

  The display was a valuable reminder. He couldn’t let pretty things mask the truth. Sykes couldn’t go to ground. He had a task. He had constraints and limitations. Checking those off one by one led to a few possible outcomes. From Cruithne, Sykes could really only go in one direction: OuterSol.

  Cal commanded.

  Piller snorted.

 

  The captain stared at him from the center of the room. Cal wondered if he was going to defy the order simply because he could. Maybe he should have cultivated a better relationship with Piller, flattered him a little bit more, shared a few confidences. This defiance was irritating. He visualized exploding Piller’s head with a pulse pistol. The thought nearly made him smile and he had to remember the captain was trying to stare him down.

  Piller appeared to work through Cal’s reasoning from his own perspective. he asked.

 

  The captain stiffened.

  Cal said. He nodded toward the holograph.

  Piller flicked his gaze toward the display. Fireflies were disappearing at the edge of the view as they left Cruithne local space.

  “Sir,” a crew member re
ported. “We’ve got another hundred drones ready. We can field on your order.”

  “Recall the swarms,” Piller said. “Get me a quick damage scan and fuel update. I need a course plot for Mars 1.”

  “Mars 1, sir?” the astrogation lieutenant verified.

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Piller snapped.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cal set his mouth in a straight line, irritated by Piller’s transfer of abuse. He’d have to ease off on the captain if the man was only going to turn around and kick his crew.

  When the pirates managed to breach with a second nuke, this time blowing a three-hundred-meter hole in Benevolent Hand’s hull just forward of the main engine, Cal seized the opportunity in the resulting chaos and zero-g to float near Piller.

  He didn’t feel particular spite toward the man, but couldn’t allow a person who abused the weak to continue in command. He hit Piller with a needle gun concealed in his right hand, the projectiles catching the beefy captain just behind his right ear. The needles penetrated immediately and would dissolve, leaving a neurotoxin behind that would both shut Piller’s mouth and stop his heart, appearing on any autopsy as a trauma-induced heart attack. That wouldn’t matter soon, however, since it looked like Benevolent Hand was about to crack open to vacuum.

  Cal made his way to the locker just outside the command deck airlock and grabbed one of the EV suits and a pulse rifle. He didn’t want to have to hurt anyone on his way to the nearest shuttle, but sometimes the job required things he didn’t like to do.