They had 60 seconds to live. In sorrow, she closed her eyes for a second.
I’ve killed us all.
Luke looked at Bonnie across the bridge. It was hopeless. Everyone on the bridge knew it. And everyone on the bridge knew what they had to do. Bonnie gave the order with excruciating formality.
“Commander Powell, initiate self-destruct with a 20-second countdown. Now, please.”
To his credit, Luke never hesitated. He had expected it. They couldn’t take the chance that Dragon fell into enemy hands.
“Self-destruct initiated, 20-second countdown,” he called.
A sound passed across the bridge, a sigh exhaled in unison so loud it seemed like a chorus of sadness. Everybody leaned back in their chairs.
It was all over.
Bonnie came to her senses. Her first thought was that she was dead, because her head hurt so badly, she was cold, and it was eerily silent.
But after a few seconds of looking at the white ceiling over her head, with its long fluorescent bulbs in a rusty fixture and a pockmarked faux ceiling that had seen its better days, she decided heaven wouldn’t be nearly this tacky.
“Hey there,” said a voice she would recognize anywhere. She lifted her head to see Jim sitting in a chair past the end of her bed.
“About time you got here,” she mumbled, her mouth not working quite right.
“You’ve been pretty doped up, so don’t do anything strenuous – like badmouth me,” said Jim.
“Ha. The day I can’t find the strength to badmouth you, I’ll be lying in a pine box!”
“Will we make it to orbit?” she asked.
<Yes, barely> she heard.
One more blast from the pulse cannon flew by, but missed, as the Corresse dodged in a random pattern. Then Bonnie noticed something on the screens.
“What’s that?” she yelled, as she noted a massive formation of aircraft coming in from the north, and another from the west.
“Russians,” said Arteveld, pointing. “And yours too, I think, just coming in from the east.”
Bonnie looked again. Sure enough, a large formation of American C-17 transports was coming in from the east. Surrounding the transports was a mass of F-35, F-22 and F-16 fighters. Even as she watched, the F-22 and F-35 squadrons peeled off from the American formation, dropped external tanks, and punched afterburner, on a vector to intercept the Russian fighters coming in from the north and west. The F-16 squadrons stayed behind to protect the C-17 group.
And below, Bonnie noticed one lone C-37 Air Force executive jet, streaking in low over the bay, trying to get into the airport ahead of the battle.
“Holy shit,” said Bonnie. She had never seen so many planes in the air at one time in her life. There had to be well over two hundred aircraft in view now, and many more dots on the horizon. She saw the nearest Russian fighters punch off drop tanks as well. The hundreds of spinning drop tanks falling from the sky looked like a strange, silvery storm of butterflies in the distance. And then in a paroxysm of sudden violence, missiles started flying from both sides.
The battle was on – and Jim and Rita were in the middle of it!
“Two. You may become an AI as Hermes and Ephor. You will be required to serve for a period of one hundred years as a soldier in our armies. Although we have few wars or battles, they do occur from time to time, and we are amid such a war now. Therefore, it is certain you would go into battle after your training. This choice could lead to a short life.”
“And the third choice, sir?” she asked.
The judge leaned forward over his bench, gazing at Penthe with some sadness.
“Three – you will be rendered unconscious here and now. You will be taken back to Troy and restored into a dying human body. You will live just long enough to see the sky, and know that you are home on Earth, and that you lived your life well. Then you will die and be burned in the pyre as you would have been originally.”
It was an easy choice for an Amazon.
. Frost probed Zoe’s chest and then took a portable x-ray plate from her case, passing it over Zoe’s chest and shoulder. Frost said something. Zoe’s hearing was starting to return, and she could just barely make it out.
“You have two cracked ribs and a medium size piece of shrapnel in your shoulder,” said Frost. “You need to go to sickbay; I can’t fix this here.”
“Patch me up here, Doc. Do the best you can,” said Zoe.
Frost sighed and looked at the Tac Officer. Spencer shrugged. “I would do it, Doc, I know her. You’re not going to change her mind.”
Andrea thought out loud. “I take it that means, there’ll be no survivors.”
Hecate grimaced. “You got it. That’s why they’re boarding us, to make sure.”
Commander Andrea Iona Satra hefted her pulse rifle and gave a big smile. “Good – then I don’t have to worry about accidentally killing any good guys!”
She was a big, black starship and she went anywhere she damn well pleased. And right now, she pleased to land on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. This scared the hell out of a lot of people, which made her day.
She decided she would take the name Pandora with this species, because she was bringing a whole lot of trouble to the backwater primates on this little blue planet. She sat silently for an hour, just enjoying all the craziness she could see and hear going on around her, because she was that quirky kind of spirit that loved stirring up the natives. But finally, she sighed, decided she ought to get down to business, and posted a hologram on her outside skin. The hologram showed the pictures of three persons – images she had hacked from their driver’s license photos. Below the three images, she posted a short communication:
I am Pandora. I am a sentient AI. Humanity is in great danger. If you wish to survive, bring these three.