This Main—Main 54—had a similar mass to Earth. It governed many regions and had countless siege-ships and cyberships under his control.

  “The memory files suggested that Main 54 lusts after the regions of Main 63. According to this file, Main 54 and many of the other AI ships in the local regions know about the bitter machine defeat here. They have passed the data to even greater Mains deeper in the Orion Arm. Possibly, the fact of the void ships terrifies the AIs.”

  The Sacerdotes in question were prisoners in Main 54, part of his ongoing process to understand this region so he could present the solution and add the region to his others. This, at least, had been the conclusion stored in the captured AI brain-core files.

  “How many ships are in the red dwarf star system?” Jon asked.

  Lugo cocked his head and his dark eyes seemed to shine. “That is unknown.”

  “Please. Continue your report.”

  Lugo stiffened. “I am not reporting as your underling.”

  “Ah… no, no,” Jon said, “of course not. I misspoke. You are graciously informing us of what the Kames have learned.”

  “Correct,” Lugo said.

  Whatever else the Kames were, they were touchy about their honor.

  “If you could spare the time, I would like to hear more,” Jon said.

  The Kames through Lugo continued to tell what they knew. The Kames did not believe this was doctored data, but factual, at least as the captured brain-core understood reality. The Kames did not know the number of Sacerdotes or the duration of their captivity. It was quite certain, though, that Main 54 studied the Sacerdotes…however the AIs went about such things.

  As the sharing concluded, Jon asked, “What will happen to Lugo Malagate?”

  The human stiffened, and he moved his mouth several times. “Are you planning to rescue the Sacerdotes?”

  It was Jon’s turn to stiffen. “Is that a serious question?”

  “The Kames are not frivolous,” Lugo intoned.

  “Right,” Jon said. “My bad. The answer is, I don’t know.” He might have imagined it, but Jon could have sworn he heard a shout through the bulkhead, Bast Banbeck, no doubt.

  “If you attempt this rescue, the Kames would like Lugo to go as our rep.”

  “Sure thing,” Jon said.

  “But if you do not go, then we shall destroy him as a flawed rep.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jon said. “What difference does our going or not going make? You said you were going to put him on probation.”

  “A rescue attempt that involves going to Main 54 will surely fail,” the Kames told Jon through Lugo. “That is not why we have informed you of this or had planned to inform you. We desire to fulfill our obligations to humanity and understand your desire in this area. You have not asked for my advice, but here it is: Do not go, Jon Hawkins. Do not send others. This could be a trap. If I know about your desire to rescue Sacerdotes, surely the AIs know this as well. They are cunning machines. Do not take the obviously offered bait.”

  “You said it wasn’t doctored data.”

  “I did, but I still think it is bait.”

  “Okay…” Jon said.

  “Then you will not go?”

  Just then, the hatch opened and a big, towering Sacerdote glared in accusation at Jon.

  Jon looked away, thought a moment, and then regarded Lugo. “We haven’t decided yet.”

  “When will you decide?” asked the Kames through Lugo.

  “Soon,” Jon said, temporizing.

  “How soon is soon?”

  “Uh…in the next three days.”

  Lugo nodded. “Here is my request. Lugo must be at your meetings, so I can understand your process. If you have further questions from us, I will be there to help you.”

  “Sure,” Jon said. “I appreciate it. Thanks.”

  “It is no problem, as you Humans say.”

  Maybe that was true, but Jon also wondered if the Kames had an ulterior motive for wanting to be at the meetings. He was quite sure they did, but he couldn’t figure it out.

  This was a hard decision.

  “Are you going to act normally?” he asked Lugo.

  “I am Kames. I am not frivolous.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Will you be linked to Lugo Malagate the entire time, or will the man be able to choose some of his actions?”

  Lugo stared at him. “You are so obscene, Jon Hawkins. He will go as a human, remembering for the Kames when he reports to us.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” Jon said.

  “Hurry, then, as we do not want to keep this thing alive one moment longer than necessary.”

  -14-

  “Could I speak to you alone, sir?” the Centurion asked Jon upon his leaving Lugo Malagate’s cell.

  “Of course.”

  “I need to speak to you, too,” Bast said.

  Jon eyed the big lug. “Give me some room, Bast.”

  “No,” the Sacerdote said. “I know your ways. You like to fob someone off and then let the matter slide into oblivion. I will not let that happen. This is my race. I must rescue the Sacerdotes. I must rebuild the Sacerdote Nation so we can war against the machines.”

  Jon didn’t want this debate now, but he couldn’t just fob off Bast as the Sacerdote said he liked to do. “This is bigger than you, Bast. This is a strategic decision. We can’t chase an illusion—”

  “No,” Bast said, as there was pleading in his red-rimmed eyes.

  It was then that Jon noticed that Bast was leaner than he used to be. All the drinking, the days of wandering, of worry—

  What would it be like being the last human alive? If he knew some humans were held captive, wouldn’t he try to move heaven and earth in order to try to save them? Did he owe that to Bast?

  “I helped save the human race,” Bast said. “I helped create the anti-AI virus. Without me—”

  “I get it,” Jon said, decisively. “Humanity owes you. I owe you. I can see that, and that will…” Jon didn’t know how to finish. He almost said, “That will color my decision.” But shouldn’t it make his decision?

  “What do you want, Centurion?” Jon asked.

  The Centurion grabbed one of Jon’s arms and propelled him away from Bast and away from the cell hatch.

  Jon allowed it. The Centurion had been an AI prisoner for longer than any human and still managed to win free.

  “Sir,” the Centurion said, once Bast was out of sight, “you can’t go.”

  “What? I would have thought you’d say the opposite.”

  The Centurion shook his head. “This is a war to the finish, sir. We can’t allow sentimentality to govern our actions. We have to cold-bloodedly do the right thing each time.”

  “What is the right thing here?”

  “Not allowing the AIs to lure you one hundred and sixty-two light-years away,” the Centurion said. “This stinks, sir. It smells of an elaborate trap. The AIs are ruthless. They’re cunning. I should know that better than anyone. If Zeta hadn’t saved me…”

  “Zeta is gone,” Jon said. “Back to Enoy, I suppose.”

  “That’s my point. We have void ships—”

  “Wait a minute,” Jon said, interrupting. “This is a conference meeting decision. I want other input. The last I heard, we have a new stealth capability. We have a new virus that doesn’t knock out the AI brain-core, but makes it susceptible to suggestion.”

  “What does that suggest to you, sir?”

  Jon glanced sidelong at the soldier beside him. The Centurion seemed far too intense. Ever since his capture… Had Main 63 put latent commands into the man’s mind? How could they trust the Centurion anymore? And yet, the Centurion was a hero to billions. He’d survived where no one else had. Maybe the Centurion had a point. How long had the Sacerdotes been prisoners to the AIs? Likely, years, many years. They would be robots by now, or mental zombies. Should he risk anyone to try to save these Sacerdotes?

  Maybe he had made an oath to Bast Banbeck… Jon sighed. He’d made an oath. Was he a man of his word or not? If he wasn’t, why should be pretend to be? But if he was a man of his word, a man of honor, could he send others to their deaths on this whim of a mission?

  “Conference time,” Jon told the Centurion. “I can’t decide while marching down a corridor.”

  -15-

  Jon held a conference meeting on the Nathan Graham. Lugo Malagate attended, and he seemed bewildered and ill-suited in his black leather jacket and the bandage around his forehead. There was Gloria, of course, Jon, the Old Man, the Centurion, Bast Banbeck, Walleye back from a terrible mission and several specialists to give technical advice or answers.

  This was Jon’s kitchen cabinet. No one had voted them into office. But no one had voted Jon into office either. He and they had resisted the AIs from the beginning, and they had made the resistance stick. Through their continued efforts, the resistance had grown into the Confederation, and the Confederation had grown into four, possibly five separate species in this area of the Orion Arm fighting the death machines. Bast was a species of one, and he had been instrumental several times in the nascent Confederation winning a fight to live another day.

  “If Bast Banbeck is a good representative of the Sacerdotes,” Jon said, “then I say the Sacerdotes through Bast deserve a second chance at existence. They’ve earned it.”

  “I dislike disagreeing with you, Husband,” Gloria said. “But I’m speaking as a mentalist now, one who uses logic instead of emotion to make a decision.”

  “All right. Fire away. I’m listening.”

  “The Confederation has barely hung on these past years,” Gloria said. “We’ve managed to grow, and we’ve even managed to make the AIs fear us. We cannot risk that through harebrained missions.”

  “Does anyone else oppose the mission?” asked Jon.

  The Centurion spoke up, restating his reasons for opposing.

  After he was done talking, Jon said, “Walleye, what do you think?”

  “No opinion,” the little mutant said.

  “Bast?”

  “We must go,” Bast said, hitting the table with a fist. “These are my people. Humanity owes me the right to try to save them.”

  “What do you say to that, Centurion?” asked Jon.

  “I’ll answer that,” Gloria said before the Centurion could reply. “Bast speaks with fierce emotion. We all respect and understand that. But this is about survival, about using our heads to stay alive.”

  “I’m not sure I agree,” the Old Man said, taking an unlit pipe from his mouth. “Jon led us against the first cybership many years ago now. That wasn’t for simple survival. It was for taking the fight to the enemy.”

  “What are you suggesting?” asked Gloria.

  “We have heart,” the Old Man said. “Sometimes, one must follow his heart. I agree with Bast. We must attempt to free his people so the Sacerdotes are here to help our descendants carry the continuing fight against the AI Dominion.”

  Gloria was shaking her head. “Look, I understand what we’re suggesting when we’re talking about a rescue attempt. The only way to survive one hundred and sixty-two light-years into the Dominion is by using the void. Oh, sure, we could use hyperspace, but each time we came out of hyperspace, the death machines could be waiting. Besides, at the end of the journey, we would have to come out at the red dwarf’s Oort cloud. The Main would see us and marshal that star system’s forces. How big a fleet would we need to storm an Earth-sized Main?”

  “Too big,” Jon said. “That’s why this would be a void-ship mission from the get-go. We would use each of our newest techs to do this. Master Teehalt has found a new drug in DE-16 that should stabilize our minds during the void journey. Perhaps only one or two percent of the crew would go mad instead of the twenty or more percent these days.”

  “Master Teehalt,” Gloria said, “Is this DE-16 one hundred percent reliable?”

  Teehalt was a bald man almost as small as Gloria. Like her, he had been born on Mars. The small Martian shifted under her scrutiny.

  “Well?” asked Gloria.

  “DE-16 is still in the experimental stages,” Teehalt said in his soft voice.

  Gloria stared at Jon.

  “But there have been successes,” Jon told Teehalt.

  “That is true,” the scientist said softly.

  “And you’re void-testing it,” Jon said, his voice rising.

  “We hope for good results,” Teehalt whispered.

  “Hope,” Gloria said, “means that it is not a given reality.”

  “That is also true,” Teehalt said.

  “I want the testing accelerated,” Jon said. “We need the DE-16, or if it doesn’t work, we need something else that does.”

  Teehalt made a note on his computer slate.

  Jon pursed his lips, scanning the others. “It’s just a matter of time before we have a means of using the void with a greater…sanity rate I suppose you’d call it. That means we can reach Main 54, surprising him.” Jon indicated a rotund young man with pink cheeks. “Senior Scientist Mathews has already tested the latest anti-AI virus.”

  Gloria went through a similar line of questioning as she’d done with Teehalt, discovering that the new computer virus had a sixty-three percent success rate against test AI brain-cores. That success rate might be much different in the field against an ancient brain-core such as Main 54 was sure to possess.

  Walleye spoke up about his experience in the Lalande 46650 System against a Cog Primus AI.

  “You did what?” the Old Man asked. “You used Seiners to acquire—”

  “Just a minute,” Jon said, interrupting his Intelligence Chief. “Walleye used questionable tactics. No,” he said, as the Old Man looked startled. “Walleye broke the law and our trust. There will be repercussions, I promise you. Still, he discovered a useful tactic against Cog Primus converts—”

  “That’s just it,” Gloria said, interrupting. “Walleye’s experience doesn’t relate to this mission. I’ve read the reports about what happened. June Zen unlocked the old AI pattern that Cog Primus Prime had once deleted in order to convert the cybership to his cause. The war between the two AI programs gave Walleye and his marines the time to reach the brain-core and destroy it.”

  “All true,” Walleye said. “My point is that there are methods to stunning or temporarily incapacitating a brain-core so marines can race through its innards.”

  “The Cog Primus converts are unique brain-cores,” Gloria said. “Your experience does not apply. Besides, suppose you stun the Main 54 brain-core. How long will it take marines racing through corridors that reach thousands of kilometers?”

  Silence greeted Gloria’s question.

  “All right,” Jon said, two red spots appearing on his cheeks. “I’ll grant you that some of the techs or drugs are still in the experimental stages. It’s time for us to do something, though. The AI Dominion has sent robot assassins into the Confederation. They’ve killed some and badly wounded others like Stan Morris of the Conway Bank of Saturn. We’ve managed to find and destroy other robot assassins. But we have to do more than that. We’re on the defensive again. To win this war, we most certainly have to go on the offensive. Bast helped us do that before with the original anti-AI virus. What will even more Sacerdotes give the Confederation, I wonder?”

  “Maybe in time…” Gloria said. “But surely attempting a rescue mission now, with untested or even unready techs or drugs is folly.”

  Jon was shaking his head. “It’s never the right time. Something could always be better. If we attempt this rescue mission later, the Sacerdotes could all be dead.”

  “Maybe they are already dead,” Gloria said.

  “Maybe,” Jon snapped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, opening them and scanning the throng.

  “We have to take calculated risks,” Jon said in a quieter voice. “We beat the last AI fleet—a massed fleet—with the new void tactic, but we let a lot of those ships get away. Now, the Dominion is counteracting against us. They’re using robot assassins to disrupt us and kill off our best people. I’m sure they’re also preparing another, bigger massed fleet. Well, we need to give them another shock, and at the same time, add to our strength, if we can. Each race we add to the Confederation gives us a different outlook. Those differences could be the thing we need later to defeat a different kind of AI attack. We have to stick together. The Sacerdotes have already helped us. Now, we have to help them.”

  “That is logical,” Gloria said. “What, then, is your exact proposal?”

  Jon gave her a wintery grin. “One void ship, the Nathan Graham, will head into the void. I plan to lead the expedition.”

  Gloria’s eyes widened. Several others appeared shocked at the plan.

  Jon plowed on. “We will travel one hundred and sixty-two light-years to reach Main 54. Once there, we will scout and then likely send a stealth team into Main 54. Their task is to find and grab Sacerdotes and run back to the Nathan Graham. Then, we voyage home through the void.”

  “You make it sound so simple,” Gloria said.

  “The best plans are,” Jon said, purposefully misconstruing her remark.

  “But if the DE-16 doesn’t work,” Gloria said, “many of the crew will go mad from being in the void that long. It’s possible a voyage of that duration would drive everyone crazy.”

  “It’s a risk,” Jon said. “I’ve admitted as much.

  “Once there,” Gloria added, “the stealth anti-AI virus might backfire. The stealth team would all face capture then. If the Main acted fast enough, he might capture the Nathan Graham. If you went, that would mean the Dominion would have nabbed our great leader.”

  “That’s why we’ll train hard and execute flawlessly,” Jon said.

  “Excuse me,” Lugo Malagate said. “I have a point to make.”

  Jon turned to him. “Are you speaking as the Kames?”

  “I am,” Lugo said. “You cannot go, Jon Hawkins. You are too important to the Confederation. The plan is too risky. We do not back it.”

  “Thank you for your opinion, Kames,” Jon said.