Evolutionary Liberator

"How?" asked Dustin, pausing at the edge of the roof.

"There's a kill switch at every site, that will remotely shut down all three jammers. I was one of the workers who was in charge of upkeep on them."

The guy looked pretty sincere, so Dustin decided to trust him. It would save them some serious time, if he could shut them all down from here.

"Alright, but hurry, we don't have a lot of time!"

The guy dashed for the door, barely pausing when he noticed the door had been ripped off its hinges, and Dustin watched as he scrambled down the stairs, leaped over the still living zombie, and dived at the console that Dustin had already been at. Fumbling with the side panel, he finally managed to get it open, and flipped a red switch that was hidden underneath it.

"You did it! That was fast! Great job!" cried Granny in his ear.

"I'm releasing the swarm now, get out of there!" Olivia said.

"The alien sh.i.p.s are approaching; we need to hurry!" said Kitteral.

Dustin watched the guy as he turned to look at him with a wide grin.

"Get back up here, and I'll make sure you live at least," called Dustin.

Without wasting any time, the guy dashed back towards him. "Do you think you could take me home? I have a family…"

"Of course, you do," sighed Dustin. Grabbing the guy by his arms, he swept back up into the sky, and they were quickly heading towards the center of town.

"This is awesome!" cried the guy as they swooped down towards the house that the guy pointed out as being his.

There weren't that many zombies here, as the man had explained that the outbreak occurred during the day, when everyone was at work and school, but his wife and kids had been home that day. He had been trying to get back to them every since, and hadn't been able to make it. The outbreak had only been going on for about a week.

Dustin didn't like that the powers that be were already willing to firebomb the planet, rather than try and save people, or eradicate the parasites. If his computer could find them, then other computer scanners could to. Some kind of corruption was in play here.

Setting the guy down in his back yard, where a wood fence blocked them from any zombies in the area, Dustin watched him rush inside to find his family.

"Dustin! We're getting signals from the incoming sh.i.p.s that are similar to that AI you destroyed, what do we do?"

How could that be? He was sure he had destroyed that damn AI.

"He can't respond, Olivia, we're going to have to deal with them ourselves," said Granny.

"Dustin, we're going to send the nanobots to slow them down, and buy you some more time. Hurry your a.s.s up, son!" said Kitteral after a few moments of silence.

Dustin glanced up at the sky, watching lights appearing briefly as a fight broke out above his head. Shaking his head in disbelief, he took a couple of steps towards the house, only to have the guy return with a woman and two small children in their arms. The look of relief on their faces warmed his heart for a moment, as he finally got a thanks from someone after all of the trouble, he had been through trying to rescue people. Before he could say anything, the nanobots descended upon them, wrapping their startled faces up into cocoons of sh.i.p.s, and zooming the capsules back up into the air.

Watching the capsules as long as he could see them, Dustin shook his head and jumped into the air. They needed him up above, in space, to fight an enemy that should have been dead.

Changing his form as the atmosphere got too thin, he tried to run possibilities through his head. How could the AI still be functioning? Could there be some random programs still functioning, where the AI had sent them to do specific jobs, without it checking in to keep them working? Did the AI have a second body as a backup?

If the latter were the case, he was going to be royally pissed.

The battle scene became clearer as he drew closer. The nanobots were doing a fantastic job of eating away at the hulls of the incoming sh.i.p.s, causing them all sorts of issues. They were trying to shoot the larger cl.u.s.ters of them, since they were visible in the larger cl.u.s.ters, but it really didn't do any good, because the new shields he had programmed into them, absorbed the blast force, and transferred it to charging their batteries back up.

If he could have grinned, he would have. Settling by the air lock, he let himself in, and quickly made his way back to the bridge. Everyone was busy watching the activity around them, so Dustin quickly settled into his seat and began working too.

The sh.i.p.s that were coming to destroy the surface of the planet would soon be floating coffins, as the atmosphere inside them bled out to space, and the inhabitants died. The Uz'En on the planet would soon be evacuated and on their way to the Uz'En homeworld, so that only left the dying zombies on a perfectly good planet.

"I thought you destroyed the AI," said his father, not looking at him.

"So, did I," responded Dustin, preparing to diving and check on the computer systems of the other sh.i.p.s as they went silent and still.

"We've got everything handled, here," said Granny, knowing what he was planning to do.

Nodding, he shoved his finger into the port that opened before him, and dived.

Following the path of the AI signal the computer had detected, he quickly found himself in the alien computers. What he found both annoyed and intrigued him. The AI program was only a partial program, sent to finish decimating the remaining Uz'En if anything happened to the main AI, but what intrigued him was the fact that this program was sentient, not just a mindless program going about with its programmed functions.