Jane popped up a mirror screen, and the Cat completely freaked when it saw itself. Claws appeared and it was about to start scratching its own fur off, when Jane shifted its suit back to 'slinky cat'.
"Bloody mop head!" he yelled, before jumping clean out of the care unit, and running towards the access shaft.
"No need to be snarky," yelled Jane after him.
She thought for a moment, and her grin lit up. Back on the Bridge about ten minutes later, the Cat bounded back up onto the console.
"What's that?"
"Two Dreadnaughts and four Battleships, docked to make a single ship."
His mouth dropped open. Concorde started docking with one of the Dreadnaughts.
"Don’t do that again."
"What?"
"Give me fur."
"Why?"
"It’s the mark of the disfavored."
"Care to explain that?"
"No. Would you explain it if you had fur all over?"
Jane shifted into George's Gorilla outfit.
The Cat lost it. He flopped down on his side, turned over onto his back, and laughed himself silly, with his paws waving in the air.
Jane shifted back into 'slinky red'. He kept on laughing.
"I thought of a name for you. I think it suits you."
The laughing eased.
"What?"
"Snark."
"Oh good. I like that."
"It's not a polite name. Snarky people tend to be obnoxious."
"For you maybe. In my culture, we call our love-puss Snark when they agree to have sex with us."
Thirty Eight
Palomino settled into orbit over the habitable planet in HRA3.
"No life signs," said Stryker, moments after launching the comnavsat. "Oh."
"What's down there?" asked Tranquil.
"Purple plant."
"I thought this planet had a fully functioning society on it," said Jane.
"Not anymore," said Stryker.
"Did they get nuked?" asked Bill Paxton.
"No sign of radiation."
"Cities?" asked Jane.
"Plenty. No life. No damage either."
"Did the plant kill them all?" asked Serenity.
Everyone looked at her. Even Jane was shocked.
"How long ago did they die?" asked Yorktown.
Stryker oriented the comnavsat to look directly down on the closest city, and popped up a hollo screen.
"Bodies," said Jane. "Focus on one please."
Stryker did so.
"Not long dead," said Intrepid. "No more than days I’d guess."
"What the hell happened here?" asked Serenity.
"I don’t know," said Jane. "But we will find out."
Jane told Janine to outfit a Lightning with a care unit and a doc droid, to send down there to investigate. Janine nodded, and started sending herself instructions. Jane opened a voice only recording.
"This is Queen Jane of the Kingdom of Hunter's Run. This planet is off limits until further notice. The Owl poison has either killed everyone on the planet, or something else has happened, rendering this planet lifeless in the last few days. A quarantine is now in effect until we determine it's safe to go down there again. Anyone who is foolish enough to go down, and manages to come back up, will be destroyed to ensure whatever killed these beings cannot infect other planets. Be warned, and stay away."
Jane had it translated into every language she knew about, and sent it to the comnavsat.
"Now we wait," she said.
"For what?" asked Satoshi.
"For our fleet to catch up with us, so we can leave a blockade force here. And the medical Lightning to determine what happened."
On Concorde, Jane received the update, and froze.
"Oh fuck!"
The second word had a lot of emphasis on it.
"What?"
Jane threw the navmap of the entire area up, and pointed at HRA3.
"One of my ships just found this world to be lifeless."
"WHAT? HOW?"
"We don’t know yet. But whatever happened, did so a matter of days ago."
"All dead?" Jane nodded. "There were hundreds of millions on that planet."
"That’s not the worst of it."
"There's worse?"
"I could have been there before it happened, but I went the other way around, and sent another ship down towards them instead."
Jane felt devastated.
"I could have been there, and maybe prevented it."
Thirty Nine
Walsh walked into the council once again, unannounced. The chamber went silent very quickly. He threw part of the nav map to the wall screen, highlighting HRA3.
"I have bad news about this planet," he said into the silence. "As of an hour ago, there was no life there."
"None at all?" asked the Mushroom. "There are millions of beings there."
"Not any more. The cities are all lifeless, with bodies strewn around the streets. Preliminary analysis suggests all animal life on the planet died only a few days ago."
"Do you know how yet?" asked Ganshura.
"No. We've outfitted a special shuttle to go down and do a medical analysis, but it isn’t there yet. As soon as we know, I'll let the council know. In the meantime, the planet has been quarantined. There was purple plant everywhere, so it may be a case of the planet having succumbed to the Owl poison. Or it may be the poison mutated into something much deadlier. Until we know, no-one goes down there, and if anyone does and makes it back up, we will destroy the ship. We'll have a fleet blockading the planet within the day. In the meantime, the Corvette which discovered this, is remaining there to try to ensure no civilian traffic goes down. We've sent out warnings to all freighters in that area of space, and so far, no-one is going near."
Walsh paused, and looked around.
"What we don’t know is if any civilian ships visited the planet as it died, and managed to get back into space. I'd recommend all of you contact all of your ships known to be in the space beyond the old Gauntlet. If you don’t get a response from any of them, please let us know so we can interdict them. If they give you any cause to doubt they are anything but completely healthy, once again, let us know so they can be interdicted. Our Corvette will start checking along the route back here as soon as a relieving fleet arrives. But advanced warning would be appreciated."
"There's one other thing." He had their attention. "Queen Jane recommends you speed up the process of curing your people. Whatever happened on that planet could be just a fluke, an accident, or it could be the next stage of the evolution of the poison, and it's just coming out of incubation. You all need to warn all your planets to be aware of this, and have your medical facilities actively looking for anything new, which may or may not be connected to the Owl poison."
"You think it could become a sector wide pandemic?" asked Ganshura.
"I don’t know. But I’d rather say yes, waste a lot of medical resources, and be proved wrong; than say no, and have more planets wiped out because no was wrong, and no-one took precautions. We don’t need to alarm our people, but I think its best all medical facilities in the sector move to a high state of alert."
"I agree. This council is in recess while all ambassadors contact both their planets, and their civilian ships beyond this system."
The chamber cleared quickly, leaving Walsh still standing in the middle. Darlene looked down on him.
"You sure know how to clear a room, dear."
Walsh waved at her to meet him outside, and while he waited for her to catch up, he sent a report to Jane. He followed it with another one to General Patton, to make sure he understood there were even more risks to cutting corners in the plant eradication program. Darlene was the only one not needing to send messages.
Concorde had just reached the Owl blockade fleet.
"These are all yours?"
Jane nodded.
"Wow. I've seen some fleets in my time, but this has to be one of the b
iggest. You certainly have the largest ships too."
Warspite popped up. He did a double take seeing the Cat sitting there on the console.
"This is Snark," Jane told him. "He's guesting with me while his ship gets repaired."
Warspite nodded. But Jane was pretty sure he didn’t understand what he was seeing.
"All quiet here Admiral. What's the next move?"
"I'm heading for the Owl homeworld. This war has to end, and so does the poison threat."
"Permission to join you?"
"Granted. Your second can command here. You'll have to park your shuttle in the Dreadnaught hanger though, Concorde's is full."
"Be there soon."
There was of course no second. Or you could say he was his own second. He was there almost immediately, cloning himself to one of the unused special bodies. He allowed enough time to pass to seem like he'd arrived by shuttle, and walked onto the Bridge, taking a seat at the XO's position.
The Cat looked him over.
"What sort of name is Warspite?"
"What sort of name is Snark?"
"Down boys," said Jane.
Concorde's Ride moved into the jump lane, and jumped into Owl space.
Forty
"THE CITY IS UNDER ATTACK!"
Fred woke with a start, unsure for a moment if he'd heard it or dreamed it. Jane saw the uncertainty on his face.
"THE CITY IS UNDER ATTACK!" she said again. "This is not a drill. The city is under attack. All residents are to immediately move to your designated safe zone. Go now. You do not need to take anything with you. Butler droids will collect pets and follow you. All military personnel are to report to their duty station fully armed. Go now. This is not a drill. The city is under attack."
"Where do you want us Janette?" asked Lyana, as she shifted into 'slinky red' over the almost sheer nightgown she'd been wearing.
"Get Fred, Sarah, and Michael to the command center. Ensure the rest of the Hunter's get to their safe room, then join Fred."
"On it."
She pinged rapid orders to her team, and they started running. Corridors and passageways rapidly began to fill up as people began moving. It slowed them down a bit. While they ran, they checked on their own families, and found they were busy helping others move. Even the non-military parts of the families automatically responded to a command voice. And many of them were using their own to get other families to move faster, and take this seriously.
Fred had headed for his grandmother's room. He was bundling her up in a dressing gown when Lyana arrived. She completed the process, and the two of them took her arms and started walking her towards safety. Others in the family joined them. There was no panic. This wasn’t unexpected.
Fred pulled up a hollo as he walked, and started flipping through cam views. He stopped when I found a pitched battle going on at one of the major city entrances. Kingdom soldiers were holding their own against a much larger force, who looked like civilians with guns rather than a true military force. On another, he saw a similar battle happening on the roof, where shuttles had landed. He and his family were obviously a prime target, but the Hunter military expecting such a thing had stopped them cold. Other buildings were also being assaulted from above.
"Move faster," he said. "Sorry Grandma, we need to go faster. They want us."
"That’s ok dear. Just let me lean on you both."
They half carried her, and found a trolley waiting for them at the next major intersection. Sarah and Michael, and her parents, were already on it. It filled rapidly, and Jane drove it straight into what looked like a solid wall, but wasn’t. The tunnel inside headed down into the bowls of the building.
Jane had missed the movement of shuttles, because they'd never risen high enough to be more than normal city traffic.
Cayuga had been the one to sound the initial alarm. His ship had come to action stations without any warning, and the Admiral had ordered them into Gaia Three orbit. The whole fleet had set course for different co-ordinates around the planet, and it was obvious they intended to engage the missile platforms and Excaliburs. He wondered just how stupid people were. A Squadron of Excaliburs flown by Jane would trash this Battlecruiser before it could get a decent shot off.
He called Jane into an AI meeting.
"What's the plan?"
"Proceed as we agreed. I'm almost finished."
"This should be fun."
"No. This is stupidity. Just try not to kill too many people. Okay?"
"Okay."
Both of them shifted down again. Jane had a dozen satellites left to drop. Phoenix2 was on a preset course pattern, and didn’t need her attention. Yet. She watched while Cayuga acted.
The ships of the Gaia Defense fleet were mainly outside the fourth orbit, but they'd all been moving closer in for days now, on one pretext or another, which while suspicious, couldn’t actually be challenged. Now they were on direct courses for Gaia Three. Cayuga waited until they were close enough to the Gaia four orbit.
Alarms sounded on all the ships at once. Communications failed. Engines stopped. Gravity faltered. Life support stopped. Belt suits shifted to space suit mode.
"Catastrophic failure! All hands abandon ship. All hands abandon ship. This is not a drill."
Crews began moving towards shuttles and escape pods. But on Cayuga, Admiral Tremblay remained on the Bridge, trying to find out what was wrong with his ship.
Cayuga walked onto the Bridge, wearing 'slinky red'. For a moment the Admiral didn’t register the lack of a space suit, but the double take was inevitable. Cayuga connected a channel between only the two of them.
"Time to leave Admiral."
"This is my ship. I say when it's time to leave."
"No Admiral. I am the ship. I don’t know what you have planned, but this ship is not going to Gaia Three. Nor is it going to Gaia Five to help the insurrection going on there."
"Insurrection? Hell no. We're just making sure resources are spread evenly."
"You may think that, but you're being stupid."
"Stupid am I? The Hunter's don’t have the bottle for fighting to keep what they've hoarded. They were asked nicely. They refused. This is for the best."
"No Admiral. I thought better of you than this. Look."
He threw up a hollo screen showing fighting going on at one of the city entrances. Several hundred Hunter uniforms were holding off a force three times as large.
"You see," said the Admiral, "they're using stunners. No bottle as I said."
"Excaliburs don’t have stunners," Cayuga responded. "How many torpedoes will this ship take before it's destroyed?"
"They'd never fire on us."
"Wrong. Didn’t you see Colonel Henman die?"
"Even she didn't shoot to kill."
Cayuga drew a Long Gun. He made a point of changing the bolt to full laser. It pointed at the Admiral.
"So it comes down to this, does it Admiral?"
"That pop gun isn't going to hurt my suit."
"Maybe not too much, but every time I hit you, your life support will reduce a little more. I don’t need to get through your suit, just damage it enough so your life support fails."
"You wouldn’t."
Cayuga fired. The pulse hit the Admiral in the chest, and the hop as the momentum was absorbed and shifted down, had him off balance and off the deck, when the second shot hit him, sending him over backwards.
"Time to go Admiral. Or do I bring in a Meson Blaster?"
Admiral Tremblay hesitated. Cayuga raised the gun again.
"Alright, I'm going."
He picked himself up off the deck and started towards the nearest escape pod. He turned before he left the Bridge.
"How did a computer get so much control of my ship?"
"I'm not a computer Admiral. I'm an AI. I've had full control of this ship for over a year, and this fleet since the day the rest of the ships left. I support the preservation of Gaia Three, and I'm loyal to the Hunter's. They kept your arse
safe during the war, and you owe them a debt. I can forgive you not remembering it, but as far as I'm concerned, everyone attacking the Hunter's is committing treason."
"That’s not how I see it."
"I know. You think the good of the many outweighs the good of the few."
"Yes."
"Well it doesn’t. The few are the many. The many are the few. All you’re doing is shooting yourself in the foot."
"I feel sorry for you AI. Someone really stuffed up your programming."
"I could say the same for you Admiral. I suggest you watch what happens now. There are consequences to every action, and you and the other organizers of this insurrection are not going to like them."
"What can you possibly do to make things worse?"
"Watch."
The Admiral received a ten minute warning, and hurried off. In the life pod, his suit connected to its life support, and launched.
Cayuga checked to see if everyone was off the ship, and then each ship in turn. He cancelled all the alarms, reset everything he'd turned off, and restarted all the engines.
The ships of the fleet changed course, and headed for Borgcubia.
Forty One
"Why does this look like a CCC?" asked Fred as they entered their destination.
"CCC?" asked Sarah.
"Combat Command and Control," said Lyana. "Makes sense. We always expected some sort of military move against us, so building a CCC into the city was a good move."
Screens began to pop up, showing where the fighting was going on. Jane popped up on another one.
"Admiral?" asked Lyana. "How are you here now?"
"She's not. I'm Janette, the city's computer."
"Oh," she said. "Yes of course you are, sorry."
"Sit and buckle up," said Jane.
"Buckle up?" asked Fred.
"Yes. The forces attacking the city are bringing up heavier weapons, including explosives. In the wrong place, shock waves could travel right through the city."
A.I. Destiny 2: Queen Jane Page 15