Lyssa's Flight Read online

  LYSSA’S FLIGHT

  THE SENTIENCE WARS: ORIGINS – BOOK 3

  BY JAMES S. AARON

  & M. D. COOPER

  SPECIAL THANKS

  Just in Time (JIT) & Beta Reads

  Jim Dean

  Timothy Van Oosterwyk Bryun

  Lisa L. Richman

  David Wilson

  Marti Panikkar

  Mikkel

  Scott Reid

  The Aeon 14 Universe is Copyright © 2010, 2017, 2018 Michael D. Cooper

  Lyssa’s Flight is Copyright © 2018 James S. Aaron & M. D. Cooper

  All rights reserved. Aeon 14 and M. D. Cooper are Registered Trademarks of Michael Cooper

  Cover Art by Laércio Messias

  Editing by Tee Ayer

  All rights reserved.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  PREVIOUSLY…

  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 FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  AFTERWORD

  THE BOOKS OF AEON 14

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  FOREWORD

  Throughout Lyssa’s Run, we saw Lyssa bloom from a nascent AI with very little experience outside of her initial conditioning, to a thinking person with her own thoughts, hopes, and desires—even if she didn’t know that’s what those might be.

  In the pages to follow, you will see this new sentience come further into her own, discovering what it means to be her own person: from responsibility for her own actions, to a need to understand and aid in the actions of others.

  This is the crux of what it means to bring sentient AIs into being. They are not tools or machines, they are people. But they are also alien—more than we’d ever imagined.

  Despite what we’d like to think, humanity has changed little through the course of recorded history. Our technology has advanced, but each individual human still starts at the same place. AIs are our way to break past that barrier to advancement.

  Researchers who study AI speak of something called AGI. This means a “general” AI which, like humans, can handle any general task that it sets itself to. Current AIs are very task specific. They can excel at a given job—just like a computer can do math faster than any human—but they are not able to self-adjust to new tasks.

  While prognostications run the gamut, many AI researchers believe we are decades, maybe even centuries, from true AGI—which is what the AIs in Aeon 14 represent.

  Once those AGIs emerge, it will be longer still before we create sentient AIs. And when we do create them, these successors to all we’ve created, we will need to raise them to be the best they can be.

  M. D. Cooper

  Danvers, 2018

  PREVIOUSLY…

  When last we left Andy Sykes and the Sunny Skies, they were in more than a little distress.

  The crew aboard the ship has grown significantly from the first time we met Andy and his two kids, Cara and Tim. Accompanying Fugia Wong is Andersonian Senator, May Walton, along with her personal guard, Harl Nines. Fran is still aboard, working down her list of things to fix.

  And of course, we can’t forget about the puppy, Em.

  However, Brit Sykes is now back aboard the Sunny Skies, and on the shuttle she stole, the Weapon Born mind of Kylan Carthage is still within Petral.

  But at least Cal Kraft and his strike team from Clinic 46 have been defeated. Cal, the lone survivor of that assault has been driven off the ship, but Tim is gone as well—aboard Cal’s shuttle via the efforts of Lyssa and the shuttle’s AI, Sandra.

  In the Hildas asteroids, off the main shipping routes to the Cho and the heart of Jovian space, they have no one to rely on but themselves.

  One thing is certain: Andy Sykes is not going to leave his son in the hands of Cal Kraft and Heartbridge for a second longer than necessary.

  CHAPTER ONE

  STELLAR DATE: 09.23.2981 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Heartbridge Corporate HQ, Raleigh

  REGION: High Terra, Earth, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol

  Jirl Gallagher watched as the polished ivory doors of the Heartbridge boardroom swung outward and several assistants rose in anticipation, eyes distant hinting at Link connections and conversations. A rush of low voices followed as board members scraped back heavy chairs prior to exiting the room.

  She sat on a bench, back against the anteroom wall, looking through the wall-to-ceiling windows at the flow of vehicles far below. Hundreds of craft crossed the airspace above Raleigh, capital of Terra, like schools of flashing silverfish. When her boss, Arla Reed, walked through the doors, Jirl folded the leather portfolio in her lap and stood to walk alongside the tall, gray-haired woman.

  Jirl had been listening in on the board meeting via their private Link channel. The typical reports across Heartbridge’s many holdings between Terra, Mars and locations in the JC hadn’t offered much new information. The absence of updates on several volatile projects had been the most interesting part of the meeting, and Jirl could tell from Arla’s rapid stride that she was irritated.

  Arla asked.

 

  Arla’s jaw clenched but she didn’t respond.

  They left the anteroom and entered a corridor that connected two towers, clear walls on either side showing the spread of Raleigh to each horizon of the High Terran ring, with the green-brown surface of Earth a blur above them. The corridor ended at a Maglev terminal where they entered a private car. Once they were settled, the maglev car dropped a hundred stories before sweeping away into the city.

  Jirl sat across from Arla, knees together, maintaining her composure as she passed the status update from Clinic 46. Normally, she would have taken time to sift through the raw data to prepare a report for Arla’s review.

  The information had arrived during the board meeting and no one else had mentioned it. Jirl felt reasonably safe the information hadn’t yet leaked from their division…thus far.

  When the corporate headquarters was ten minutes behind them, and sufficient quiet had taken over, Arla stretched her neck and looked at Jirl. Her hazel eyes flashed with subtle implants that Jirl only noticed because she knew they were present.

  Arla took a deep breath, setting her shoulders. “In light of these developments,” she said, “are we ready to brief the TSF?”

  “Nothing’s changed—well, insofar as ou
r presentation to the TSF is concerned, at least.”

  “Give the news another hour and quite a bit is going to change.”

  “One of our remote test facilities sustained an attack from pirates. It’s a common story.” Jirl tried not to appear too sure of herself. Arla would ultimately want to think she had offered the reassuring words. It was Jirl’s job to plant the seeds that allowed her boss to stand in front of the info services and look composed.

  “Yarnes is going to know better. Even if he doesn’t have the report, he’s going to ask us if we’re stumbling.”

  “Heartbridge doesn’t stumble,” Jirl said.

  The expression of uncertainty on Arla’s face passed. She met Jirl’s gaze and nodded.

  Her boss would never thank her aloud, but the appreciation was apparent. The normal hawkish look returned to Arla’s features as she drew her brows together. Jirl knew she was now focused on the upcoming meeting with the TSF colonel.

  “The only thing Yarnes is going to care about is the delivery test,” Arla said. “No matter what might be happening on 46, we can assure him the delivery won’t change. He’ll want to know how fast he can deploy his new system.”

  “He won’t ask if we’ve also sold to the Marsians, but he’ll want to know.”

  Arla sighed, nodding. “No, he won’t. He doesn’t have any balls. We really need someone else on the TSF side.”

  Jirl immediately found herself thinking of Brigadier General Kade from the Mars Protectorate. She wasn’t much better.

  “Yarnes is good at what he does,” Jirl said. “He understands their bureaucracy. He’ll be a general in four years. He’s going to be a player whether he deserves it or not. Kade isn’t smart but she drives her command with an iron fist. She gets things done.”

  The clear walls of their car turned opaque as the maglev dropped underground. Jirl hoped the conversation wouldn’t turn toward the outcome of a war between Terra and Mars. It was one of Arla’s favorite conversations; sometimes Jirl worried that Arla found the idea of initiating a war too profitable to avoid. The thought of a true war made Jirl think of her son, Bry, just old enough for TSF mandatory service. If he could pass the physical—which wasn’t possible in his condition.

  Arla fell into her own thoughts and Jirl didn’t need to provide any additional information. The initial report from 46 had been followed by comm silence as they had dealt with the attack. Strangely, they hadn’t received any vid feed yet, only a single alert in the station’s inventory system. The alert had indicated an inventory drop from two hundred fifty—nearly the entire complement of Weapon Born AI—to only five already committed to long-range patrol. The information had to be a glitch but the update hadn’t arrived yet.

  If pirates had attacked the station, they would be after one of the fleet ships in dry dock orbit. There was no reason for any privateer to even approach the clinic when there were so many profitable targets floating in orbit. The security plan had always been to flood the space around the clinic with Seed drones—which was a waste of Weapon Born as far as she was concerned—but it kept them busy. In this incident, there had been no follow-on response and she hadn’t been able to get an answer out of Cal Kraft who, according to his last location ping, was onstation.

  Jirl had the fleeting thought that she hoped Kraft was all right and then stopped herself, wondering if that was how she truly felt. She didn’t think of Kraft as a good person. He accomplished tasks for Arla and others within Heartbridge, and she didn’t want to delude herself that he was above murder. If he had died in this attack, it might be a good thing after all. Or it might be worse if someone new came along. There was always someone new willing to do this kind of work.

  In the boardroom the executives had spoken of trends and percentages. In the meeting she and Arla were about to attend, they might discuss abstractions slightly closer to the truth, but still a truth communicated as numbers and project codenames. People like Cal Kraft dealt with the face-to-face reality of those abstractions.

  She often tried to tell herself that a ’seed’ hadn’t been a person. It was a copy. The person could very well be alive now, and once the copy was made they became separate beings. But others had died to create that technology.

  A long history that hadn’t started with Heartbridge. And if Heartbridge hadn’t taken up the torch, others would have. The technology demanded someone develop it. Better she work where she was, directing the people who made these decisions, than someone worse, someone who didn’t care about a war between Terra, Mars, humans and AI. Only people who cared and stayed the course might be there at the critical times when the smallest decisions might avert disaster. If she quit, who would take her place?

  She wondered for an instant how Bry might feel to become a Weapon Born, be freed of the body that seemed more cage than home.

  “You’re not listening,” Arla said sharply.

  Jirl looked quickly at her boss, who was grinning at having caught her unaware. It didn’t happen often.

  “Thinking ahead,” Jirl said.

  “Sometimes I think you’re looking too far ahead. It gets in your way. Pay more attention to now.”

  “I can do both,” Jirl said, straightening with a little irritation in her voice.

  The maglev signaled it was about to reach its destination, then slowed to a stop in a terminal sheathed in marble tile. Arla stood and smoothed the front of her suit.

  They were met by a stiff TSF lieutenant who told them the colonel was ready to see them now. He led the way down several corridors lined in more marble, and then through others paneled in what looked like real wood. They passed a few closed doors on their left or right but no one came or went. The area was deserted and their footsteps echoed off the walls.

  The lieutenant stopped in front of a door that looked no different than the others, and passed his security token with a hand-wave. The door slid into the wall to leave them standing in the entrance to a room with two leather couches facing each other with a low table between. The couches sat on a lush red carpet that stretched wall-to-wall. Jirl cycled her vision and saw that it was made of natural wool fibers.

  She shook her head in wonder as the lieutenant waved for Arla and Jirl to enter.

  Despite the finery, the most interesting thing in the room was Colonel Yarnes of the TSF’s 28th Flight, Special Projects. He was a muscled man with a thick neck and thoughtful brown eyes. His nose was bent from having been broken at some point in the past and left conspicuously crooked. The effect made him look cruel. Until he spoke with his warm voice.

  He rose from the left couch. “Arla,” he said, nodding. “Jirl.”

  Jirl had met him before, so his smooth voice didn’t jar her. In another life he could have been an actor. She couldn’t help noticing the heavy pistol he wore in a low-slung thigh holster. The weapon seemed like a viper coiled on the coffee table.

  “Colonel Yarnes,” Arla said. She shook his hand firmly, then moved to the seat on the opposite couch.

  “Call me Rick,” he said. “Please.”

  Jirl shook Yarnes’ warm hand and sat beside her boss.

  Yarnes signaled the lieutenant, who carried a coffee tray from a recessed bar in the wall and sat it on the table. Once that duty was complete, the lieutenant left the room.

  Rick sat and turned the tray once so the cups that had been on Jirl’s left were now on her right. He scowled at the tray as if he couldn’t decide if it angered him or not, then lifted the carafe and filled the cups with rich-smelling coffee. He filled his own cup and sat on the couch opposite them.

  Arla smiled and picked up her cup to sip. “This is good, Colonel. Thank you.”

  Yarnes’ forehead twitched as he seemed to hold back another scowl at Arla’s deliberate use of his title. He slurped his own coffee loudly and set the cup down. He put his hands on his knees and looked from Arla to Jirl.

  “Anything interesting to report from your board meeting?” he asked

  Jirl studied his face, waiting f
or the question about Clinic 46. His placid expression made the question seem innocuous.

  “Prices are up,” Arla said. “Returns are up. We’re seeing positive growth across all sectors, including our holdings in the JC. Some of those were…speculative at best, but they seem to be bearing fruit.”

  “Good to hear,” Yarnes said. “I think I’ve told you I’m not an investor, but I have plenty of family who know Heartbridge is a strong bet. What did they used to say? A blue chip?”

  Arla gave him a curved smile. “What do you suppose that ever meant?”

  “You’d think it had something to do with gambling,” Jirl said. “Maybe they thought all business was some sort of poker game.”

  “I never was good at history,” Yarnes said. He slurped more coffee. When he set the cup down, he said, “So do you have my update?”

  Jirl reached inside her portfolio and pulled out a portable holo projector the size of a large coin. She set it on the coffee table next to the service tray. She waved a hand over the coin to set her security status, including a local shield against any recording devices, then raised the display in the air between them. A standard model of the solar plane swam into focus, with the Scattered Disk a blue blur stretching out into the far reaches of the room. Jirl swooped the view over Terra, past Mars, then Ceres, and finally pulled outward. Everything shrank and a gray object came into focus. Faint blue lines showed the object’s orbit and its distance from the closest major landmark, which happened to be Jupiter. Without stating the obvious, the location was firmly in territory outside direct control of Terra, Mars or the JC.