Founding of the Federation 3: The First AI War (58 page)

“Athena has been working with Trevor on it. You should be seeing results by the time you get back to your office.”

“Understood. We'll need additional habitats,” the chimp said.

“Send me a list. The habitats I've anticipated. We're working that out now,” he replied as their handshake broke.

“Okay,” the chimp said as he left. He took one glance over his shoulder to Jack who was already sitting down and working on his next project. He snorted softly and then left.

“What am I getting myself into?” the chimp asked, tugging on his bow tie. “And should I be doing it at all?” he murmured under his breath.

<>V<>

Isaac stared at the battered world below. “We've got to save her.”

“Save her, sir?”

“America,” the general replied.

“America is gone, sir,” General Caesar said to him. The human general turned to eye him coldly. “It's gone.”

“America still lives,” he said tapping his chest after a long moment.

“You want my price? My price for being here? For the others?” Charlie said, looking at the globe below. “A long time ago we who moved to space moved away from nations. We grew up. It is time you did the same. No more nations. No more country borders. No more immigration. It is one government for all. Anyone who helps to fight to save the human race …”

“And Neos,” Elliot added.

“And A.I.,” Gia interjected.

“All sapient life should be respected.”

“They are …”

“Okay, but I'm saying one military. Now you do your thing, we do ours, and someone else does their thing. None of that crap. A unified front. One military. One government. I don't give a damn what the man or woman next to me looks like, only if their gun is loaded and if they can use it,” Elliot said.

General Murtough nodded slowly.

“All for one, one for all, is that it?” Commander Mizu asked.

“That's it, mate; we work together or we die together. Brothers and sisters in arms,” General Schlock stated. He looked to General Martell who nodded but didn't commit either way.

“From the ashes of this unspeakable act, a new people shall arise,” a lieutenant murmured softly.

“Poetic. I was thinking, he who fights by my side is my brother,” General Murtough said softly. “Hamlet, the speech, yes I know it,” he said when he saw the expressions around the room. “I do believe in it.”

“We can't go back to the way things were. That time is gone. We go forward. We fight together. We die together. We live together. We will rebuild together,” Charlie said. The others nodded, picking up on his enthusiasm.

“I see now why Jack said you are a good leader if you can project like that,” Isaac murmured. General Martell nodded as well.

“We will squabble. Siblings tend to do that, even when they grow up. But that is okay.”

General Murtough took the tone of the room and then nodded slightly. “Okay. It's not my call, but … okay. We will …,” he glanced at the other flag officers and then shrugged. “We'll do what we can. No promises,” he said.

“Agreed mate,” General Schlock said, clasping his arm in a handshake. When they shook they pulled each other off the wall. Both men laughed.

<>V<>

Lynn Raye nodded to Sheila Vinichi and then to Amir Nutel. “So, we're really going to do this?” Sheila asked, preempting the Pavilion CEO.

Lynn grimaced and then nodded. “Yes. I've already signed off on it. The thing that bothers me is that we let Lagroose run ahead of us as usual. He now has the inside tract. We'll be adapting to him, to his methods, his framework.”

“We won't be in it from the ground up. I understand that. But we won't have the initial cost he has had to bear,” Amir stated.

“True.”

“Have you heard rumors of the military forming a unified front? And wanting a unified government?” Sheila asked.

“I doubt it will fly. The military side, yes,” Lynn stated. “It's what Lagroose wants. The government …,” she shrugged.

“We could get behind that. If we played it right,” Amir frowned thoughtfully. The other two CEOs looked at him in surprise. He shrugged their expressions off. “Think about it. If we allow the old governments to reform, it might be business as usual when this is all over or not. Who among them will agree to
pay
for this?” He saw their faces sour. “Ah? See? Now, if we form a new government …,” he smiled, rubbing his hands together, “then we have a hand in its creation. We will know how it works intimately, and how we can twist it to our desires.”

“True,” Sheila said slowly. They all knew the truce wouldn't last forever, only as long as the threat of the A.I. hung over their collective heads. “He has a point,” she said to Lynn.

Lynn looked surprised. She forced herself to look thoughtful. Government was anathema to the mega corporations, but someone had to lead. And getting their hooks into them …. Slowly she nodded.

“I'll talk to my people. We'll have to lay the groundwork carefully.”

“Unless Lagroose dives right in and does it for us,” Sheila said in disgust.

“We'll have to see that he doesn't. Or if he does, that we are right there with him. The best option is to have our own framework agreed on, then we can use it as our template and have a unified front,” Amir suggested.

“I'll talk to legal. I'm not making any promises, but I'll keep an open mind,” Lynn stated.

“That's all I ask,” Amir said with a small smile as he spread his hands apart in supplication.

<>V<>

“Sometimes … sometimes I see it as poetic justice. Mankind getting what it deserved,” Wendy said softly when she put down the latest report.

“No one deserved this,” Jack answered.

“Oh?” She waved her hands to the globe. “WMDs have continued to exist for
how
long?” She shook her head. “And now it's come back to bite them in the ass.”

“WMDs continued to exist because paranoia and trust are not easy things. Not easy to get rid of in one case and hard to build in the other with the first lingering. The threat of terrorism and, let's face it, some old differences die hard.”

“But …”

“You know about the sponsors of terrorism. You've seen Roman's briefs. Those who sponsored terrorism knew that if they set off a WMD there could and probably would be a massive strike in retaliation.”

“MAD. Mutual Assured Destruction,” Wendy said. “Explain New York then,” she insisted, crossing her arms.

“It failed, didn't it? Barely, but it did. And,” Jack smiled slightly. “We had a hand in stopping that one.”

She blinked in surprise and astonishment. His smile widened then he shrugged. “In stopping it, of course, honey. The media made a big deal out of Corporal Aspin. We had to … massage some of the data to get them to leave out Wizard's contributions.”

“Aspin I know. He got the CMH. Wizard …,” Wendy wrinkled her nose.

“Wizard was one of our smart dogs. A Neo. He was Aspin's partner.” His daughter's eyes widened in surprise and then her face sobered in understanding. “Yes, he died. But the bomb was stopped by good people.”

Jack looked with old eyes to the holographic image of his old homeworld. “Don't blame them for not destroying the WMDs, Wendy. Pity them if you must. Pity the survivors more. The children in this mess, they had no choice. None at all,” he said, closing his eyes in pain.

He felt his daughter's hand touch his briefly. She squeezed his fingers.

Chapter 22

Two weeks later Jack arrived at L-5. He brought a small fleet along with him including a tanker of much needed water, three fully loaded freighters, a liner that had been converted into a hospital ship, and a second liner loaded with the first group of troops.

But their most precious cargo was a massive complex of computers powered by their own dedicated fusion reactor and the A.I. Athena.

Jack's arrival coincided with a meeting of surviving leaders in the area on Island 3. General Murtough reluctantly hopped a ferry to attend, leaving his staff behind.

Anyone in Earth space who had been in the military had volunteered to help despite their age or medical condition. General Murtough's staff had been handling the influx of people and trying to find a home for them outside of Olympus to train and integrate on. One of the topics to be discussed was that home and training ground. That and who was in charge, which considering there were four other flag officers in attendance, Isaac determined he
had
to attend despite his misgivings about leaving Olympus.

One of the first things Jack did was to nervously oversee Athena's placement. Their future, possibly their very survival, depended on the A.I.

Athena's core had been set up in L-12A and B's computer systems. The additional hardware her consciousness had been transported in was used to augment the two colonies’ slightly outdated systems. She didn't have the processing power that she had in Mars orbit, but she would soon enough. Jack had promised to get more processors and memory for her eventually.

She also sported a new avatar. She had kept her goddess looks but had changed the shape of her human face slightly. Jack felt a brief sense of pain when he saw her face and recognized it. He was intimately familiar with it; she'd chosen Aurelia's. She saw his reaction and opened her mouth. “I can change it if you prefer,” she said softly.

“No. It … honors her I suppose. Though she never had a hand in your development, it does. Thank you,” he said roughly.

“Thank you, sir, for understanding.”

“I just hope the kids can handle it,” Jack said. She nodded. “Is the second wave on track?”

“Checking,” Athena polled the log and then glanced at him. “The log hasn't been updated.”

“Damn it.”

“I'll poll them. It will take a moment to get the laser to Olympus and then a return signal. At least they finally evacuated everyone from the station.”

“Yes, there is that,” Jack said. The ferries had pulled the last of the civilians off just before his arrival.

“Now that I am here, the freighters can load up and head to Olympus, correct?” Athena asked.

“Yes. Like yesterday if possible,” Jack grunted.

“Understood. They are now loading. They should be moving out within twenty-four hours,” she said.

“Tell them to get the lead out. It's not soon enough for me,” Jack growled.

“Yes, sir.”

“What the hell's taking them so long?”

“They are cross-loading supplies to make efficient use of space. Also, although the colonies said they would donate material, they hadn't gotten it ready yet.”

Jack rolled his eyes. So much for prior planning. “Lovely.”

“The good news is, once they get to orbit we can kick-start the jamming and probe the ground as we had planned on Mars. That should start the intel gathering process while hampering Skynet's ability to get beyond Earth.”

“Agreed. Get on that ASAP. We need to start making material drops as well. Just as soon as we identify pockets of people.”

“Understood,” Athena replied.

Jack heaved a sigh as he got up. “Now I have to catch a ferry over to Island 3. Lucky me,” he said as he left.

“Safe trip,” Athena murmured, just loud enough for him to hear as he left.

<>V<>

Jack liked Island 3, but it was a far cry from the colonies his company had created for themselves. The quorum's elected chairman was Doctor Sing, which should make things lively since there were already political jockeying afoot. A few people had likened the meetings to those the allied leaders had gone through during the early and latter stages of WW2. Jack just hoped things went halfway smoothly.

Expecting everything to go smoothly and quickly was far too much for to ask for at this point he thought acidly.

“Welcome. Welcome one and all to what I hope will be a productive meeting of the minds,” the doctor said from his podium, smiling politely to them. Jack knew a bit about the Asian from his thumbnail brief. He'd been briefed about all of the colony leaders though, so getting them sorted out was a pain in the ass. Fortunately he had his implant, so Sing's thumbnail hovered over his head like a cloud.

Sing had a doctorate in engineering and medicine. He'd worked for several corporations, none of them Lagroose, before he'd sold his small but hefty business and retired to Axial-2. But he had grown bored on the golf course, so he'd tried his hand at politics and found he liked it.

That was one strike against him in Jack's book.

“I'd like to open up these proceedings by pointing out the obvious. It is like the elephant in the room no one wants to acknowledge. So, let's get it out there and hopefully get it behind us.” Sing surveyed the room. “We are but a few of what should be many. We do not have a quorum of world leaders. It is unknown if any survived and if there is any sort of existing chain of command on the ground. There is no way to communicate with them without exposing ourselves to the virus.” He waited as the rustle and soft murmur of voices picked up and then died out slowly.