Cyber Invasion (The A.I. Conspiracy Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

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  About the Author

  Cyber Invasion

  Book 1 of The A.I. Conspiracy

  Steven Atwood

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  CYBER INVASION

  First edition. October 24, 2016.

  Copyright © 2016 Steven Atwood.

  Written by Steven Atwood.

  1

  “Fire!” Captain Lea McKenna screamed. Her green eyes never left the large, three-dimensional monitor mounted on the bridge’s forward wall. The four pirate ships split apart. Even though they were faster and more maneuverable than the battle cruiser Renault (BC Renault), she only needed to hit them once. Two torpedoes flew out of the Renault’s digital rendition, screaming towards one of the pirate ships.

  The pirate ship ejected chaff as it swerved down.

  “They employed countermeasures!” Commander David McCollum said. His soft-hazel eyes flashed. “They should ignore it,” the fit, brown-haired man added.

  Lea glared at him. “They’d better. Our marines are depending on us!” She looked at the small base on Pluto’s surface. He’s depending on me.

  “Weapons officer?” David shouted.

  “Adjusting the sensitivity. Switching bands from Kilo to Whiskey,” Lieutenant Sarah Dobson responded.

  Lea brushed her red bangs away from her eyes. “Will that be enough?”

  “It has to be.”

  Lea leaned back in her captain’s chair. Sure, she could almost run the whole ship from where she sat, but she wouldn’t—no, she couldn’t. Hell, she wasn’t an expert at everything. At best, her knowledge on radar guidance systems was dated. She bit her lip. Lea had a great crew. The best.

  The two torpedoes flew right through the chaff and veered sharply down.

  The pirate ship rolled right, but it did no good. As soon as the torpedoes impacted its hull, the ship exploded, sending its crew into the vacuum of space.

  The bridge shook. Three consoles exploded, sending Lea crashing to the floor.

  “XO?”

  “Checking,” David replied as he climbed back into his seat. “We took a hit three decks down. Our shields are offline.”

  Her heart sank. Cain depended on her. If she died, it would be okay. She was ready for that. But—not him. Not her beloved husband.

  Colonel Cain McKenna had led his marines to the planet below to destroy the pirate’s base of operations and get what intel they could. If the pirates destroyed the Renault, the marines would have nothing to come back to. They’d surely die.

  She tapped the orange button with a microphone icon on her chair. “Engineering, Jake, get me something or we all die. Our marines will die.”

  “I’m working on it. Out,” the male with the Southern accent said.

  Lea glared at Sarah. “What the hell are you waiting for? Fire, damn it!”

  As if a switch turned on inside her head, Sarah’s fingers flew across her console to Lea’s right along the wall. “Yes, ma’am. Firing at will.”

  Lea rolled her eyes. Was she like that when she was a lieutenant? It seemed so long ago.

  “Target destroyed,” Sarah reported. Her face fell and her eyes sagged as she looked directly at Lea. “Should I fire at them?”

  Two pirate ships bolted towards the surface.

  Lea jumped to her feet. “Where are they going?”

  “No,” David said. “You might hit their base. Our marines are still down there.”

  “He’s right,” Lea said. “Scan for other targets.”

  Two women sat at the navigation and pilot seats near the monitor in front of Lea. “Ensigns, get us closer to Pluto. I want to be able to pick our people up as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ensign Liz Sorbo said. The black-haired, brown-eyed female turned toward the pilot. “Polly, move us over the target.”

  “Aye,” Polly said. “Moving in.”

  “Getting a lot of chatter down there,” a short-haired black man said. Lieutenant Commander Bill Walls’s eyes never left the communication console. “They’re under attack.” He looked up. “Colonel Cain’s marines have engaged the pirates, inside the base.”

  “Got it,” Lea said. She leaned over towards David, sitting in the XO’s chair to her left. “If you were the pirates, what would you do?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “If I knew there was no escape, and our base was about to be taken over, I’d take out as many troops as I could. Wouldn’t you?”

  Would she? Perhaps. Her stomach twisted. Yes, she would destroy everything, especially since taking prisoners was against the People’s Republic of Earth’s policies. Hell, she’d have to line them up and shoot every one of them or eject them into space. Faced with that, why wouldn’t they fight until their last breath? Of course they would.

  “Multiple contacts,” Sarah said. “Pirate fighters and transports.”

  “They’re evacuating,” David said.

  “Go for the fighters first, then the transports,” Lea ordered.

  “Scan indicates that there are no weapons on the transports. Just … people.”

  Lea glared at Sarah. “You know the policies as well as I do. No prisoners.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t like it any more than you do, but you have your orders. Now do it!”

  Sarah swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.” Her hands flew across the console. “Entering in a new shooting solution.”

  “Fire at will,” David said.

  “Aye, sir,” Sarah replied. “Firing. Torpedo spread pattern gamma three. Short-range anti-ship batteries on engage.”

  Lea smiled as small explosions filled the 3D viewer as the fighters were destroyed. The larger and slower-moving transports crawled into space. She put up a wall behind her eyes, hiding her true feelings. “How many people are on those transports?”

  David looked over at her. “You don’t want to know.”

  “At least one hundred fifty people. Men, women, and children. Families with no weapons,” Sarah said. Her eyes welled up as she fired again. “Firing.”

  Families? Lea tore her eyes away from the viewer. She should just let them go. Innocent people, that’s all they were. Sure, they lived on the pirate base on Pluto, but did they even have a choice? Maybe. Doubtful. Even though they never took prisoners, GIS (Governing Information Systems) continuously told the senior officers in the fleet that pirates simply took over encampments or colonies, forcing the inhabitants to work for them and, over time, they sympathized with their captors. Eventually, they even married into the pirate clans. How could anyone get that much intelligence without ever taking prisoners? Who knows? Maybe that’s why the government consulted with the AIs (Artificial Intelligence). Her stomach wrenched. Surely, not all of them can be sympathizers. Right? “Maybe we should take some prisoners.”

  David’s stone face never left the monitor. “We can’t. You know that.”

  One by one, the transports exploded, expelling the people into space. The silence of space muffled their screams.

  Lea looked ove
r her left shoulder. “Bill, any word from our marines?”

  Bill shook his head. “Not yet.”

  The transport closest to the surface veered hard right, trying to avoid a torpedo. It failed.

  “What happened?” Lea demanded.

  “Checking,” Sarah said. “The torpedo took out their engines.” She looked up. “They’re falling back to the planet.”

  Lea leaped to her feet. “To where?”

  Sarah swallowed. “The base. They’re going to crash into the base.”

  “Get our team out of there, now!”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Bill said.

  Cain! She’d killed him. Lea had killed her husband by following those stupid policies she didn’t even believe in. She couldn’t pull her eyes off the plummeting ship on the monitor. As she watched the ship fall towards the pirate base, the seconds seemed like minutes or hours.

  “Should I shoot at it again?” Sarah asked. “It might change its trajectory.”

  “Are you nuts?” David demanded. “That would get our people killed.”

  Lea’s eyes began to well up. She would be a thirty-five-year-old widow. Not uncommon in the war against pirates, but this was her husband—her family—not some statistic. But what could she do? “Are they out yet?”

  Bill shook his head. “I—no, ma’am.”

  Lea glared at him. “Why not?”

  “I can’t raise them.”

  Lea felt David’s hand on her shoulder. She took a breath. Yelling would do no good now, right? “Please, try again,” she said.

  “They’re five kilometers from the surface,” David said.

  A single tear escaped the dam behind Lea’s eyes as the ship hit the base in a blazing fireball. The dark-matter engine exploded. The blast wave emanated from the pirate base for a two-hundred-mile radius. He’s dead! She’d lost him. If she’d followed her gut and not those stupid—

  “We got them,” Bill said.

  David blinked. “How?”

  Lea wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Leave it to the marines. XO, you have the bridge.” She bolted through the hatch in the back of the bridge. Thank God he’s still alive! Lea turned right and entered the lift. “Deck twenty-six.” The door closed, and she dropped eighteen decks without even feeling like she moved an inch.

  The doors opened into chaos. Marines were on stretchers with medics leaning over them. Her mouth dropped. Was Cain hurt? She moved from marine to marine, looking for her husband. Every time she saw that her husband was not laying in front of her, Lea breathed a sigh of relief. But then she began to worry even more. Where was he? Did Cain make it out? Did—

  “Lea—I mean, Captain,” Colonel Cain McKenna said.

  Lea turned around and smiled. He was her true eye candy. His arms were huge and well-defined. Cain was in excellent shape, better than those bodybuilders back on Earth. Yeah, she was lucky.

  Lea licked her lips as she approached him. “Umm—how’re your marines?”

  “We’ve got some casualties, but they’re all going to make it,” Cain said.

  “I need you to come to the bridge briefing room. I need to know what happened down there.”

  “I can’t go yet, I—”

  Lea could barely hold back the tears. “I need to see you, now.”

  Cain’s face softened. “Of course.” He followed her into the lift.

  As soon as the lift doors closed, Lea jumped into his arms. Her lips latched onto his. When she broke for air she said, “I thought I’d lost you. I thought I—”

  Cain put his finger over her lips. “Shhh. None of that. I love you.”

  When the doors opened back up, Lea backed away from her husband. “Follow me to discuss these matters further—in private.”

  Cain smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The captain’s quarters contained the largest private room on the Renault. Paintings and holographic art covered the metallic walls. Underneath the porthole into space, a dark-blue comforter covered the king-sized bed. Unlike other ships, there were two desks in the captain’s quarters; one for Lea and one for Cain. Off in the corner was a green love seat and couch, on either side of the matching recliner. A clear resin coffee table sat in between all of them. Lea and Cain sat on the love seat.

  Cain sipped his coffee. “Feeling better?”

  Lea smiled as she picked up her cup from the table. Better? Of course. She nodded. “That one was just too close.”

  Cain smiled. “It was close. But, they’re not as good as we are.”

  “Typical marine modesty.”

  “You got it.” Cain leaned over and kissed her. He picked up his tablet off the table and handed it to her. “Here’s my report.”

  Lea frowned. “What do you expect me to do with that? Send me a soft copy, please.”

  “Sure.” Cain’s fingers slid across the tablet’s screen. “Done.”

  Lea put her coffee down and picked up her tablet. Her eyes scanned Cain’s report. She nodded as if in agreement. “Adequate.”

  “Adequate? I got the intelligence GIS wanted, and we’ve killed every pirate on that base, including their commander.” Cain frowned. “You’d be dead long ago if it wasn’t for me.”

  “As I said, you were adequate.” Lea grinned. “I look forward to taking all the credit on this one.”

  “I’ll give you credit.” Cain pulled her in close. He passionately kissed her.

  Lea’s heart raced. Her hands clawed up his back. She felt him kissing her neck.

  Beep.

  Lea rolled her eyes. Just when things were getting going! She tapped the orange button on the table. A small screen rose from its center. Her communications officer appeared on the screen.

  “This is the captain.”

  “Captain, the admiral is on the line,” Bill said.

  “Send it in here.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  The image switched from Bill to Admiral Steven Lyons. The gray-haired man had a cybernetic green right eye and a computer interface on the right side of his neck. A small metal plate with three green diodes surrounded the interface.

  Lea swallowed. What happened to him? “Sir, good to hear from you. It’s been a long time since we did a VLC (Video Com-Link).”

  Steve nodded. “About five years. Well, if you weren’t so far away most of the time, we could have done it more often.”

  “The Kuiper Belt is far away,” Cain said.

  Lea looked at her husband. His face said it all. “Did you get into an accident, sir?”

  “No, I got these put in last year.”

  “Why?” Cain asked.

  Steve waved them off. “Never mind that, for now.”

  “If you’re looking for the report, I’m still compiling it,” Lea said.

  “I’m sure you did a great job, as usual. That’s not why I contacted you.”

  Cain leaned forward. “Is there trouble?”

  “No, nothing like that. I’m—you’re being recalled. The Renault needs to be refit.”

  “Sure, when do you need us back?” Lea asked.

  “Wait a minute,” Cain said. “That’s way ahead of our maintenance schedule. We’re not supposed to return for another five years.”

  Steve sighed. “I know, but—well, you have your orders. Out.” He reached for something on his end and the screen went dark.

  “What was that about?” Lea asked.

  Cain swallowed. “Did you see his face? I thought cybernetic implants were only for people who had accidents.”

  Lea shook her head. “I … I don’t—something’s not right.”

  “Did something happen on Earth?”

  Lea stared at the blank screen. “Something, but what? How much could change in only five years?”

  “Not sure,” Cain said.

  Lea tapped the orange button and David’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Yes, Captain,” David answered.

  “Set a course for Earth. Engage the dark matter drive. Out.” Lea leaned back into t
he love seat, next to her husband.

  “Did things get better or worse?” Cain asked.

  Lea took comfort on his shoulder. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  2

  Lea and Cain stared out a porthole from the captain’s quarters as the Renault maneuvered towards Space Station Ares. There were three levels along the cylinder-like space station where ships like the Renault could dock. As usual, most of the docks were full. She frowned. After spending years or even decades in space, she always hated going home. Lea had so much more authority and purpose when she was out on a mission. She looked into Cain’s eyes. “Ready for another one?”

  He bit his lip. “Sure. I just thought we could spend some time to—”

  “To do what?”

  “Have a family,” Cain said. “Every time we went out, we promised ourselves that the next time we would hold off so we could have a family.” He looked away. “During the last few weeks coming back from Pluto, I did some thinking. I think this should be the time.”

  “I see.” Sure, she’d put off having a family, something that Cain desperately desired. He had some crazy notion about seeing his family name continue. Really? She loved him more than life itself, but … women broke the glass ceiling over a century ago. Lea was nothing special, she was just good at her job. With Cain leading the marines on her ship, they were unstoppable.

  “This mission was six years long. If we wait too much longer, you won’t be able to have children.”

  “Some things are just more important than starting a family. Besides, I’ve got no idea how to raise a child, and neither to do you. Why would you want to give up the Renault for changing diapers?”

  Cain sighed. “No, again?”

  Lea hugged him. “I can’t. Please understand.”

  “Can’t? Or don’t want to?” Cain asked.

  Lea opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She turned toward the beeping panel near her desk. “This is the captain.”

  “Ma’am, the admiral is here,” David said.

  “Here?” Cain asked. “Why did he come aboard? That’s unusual.”

  Lea glared at him. “Have the admiral brought to the bridge conference room.” She looked at Cain and smiled. “Let’s go see the boss.”