The attachments neatly summarized the planets and systems offered. She sat and thought for a while.
She opened a vid.
"Queen Jane, I accept your offer for Royal Britain to become part of the Kingdom of Hunter's Run. I also accept your offer of the HR7 system. I will be instructing Admiral Bentley to join our convoy to yours. I look forward to working with you for the benefit of all our people. See you in Hunter Prime as soon as we can get there. Liz out."
The response arrived a few minutes later.
"Welcome to the Kingdom Majesty. The Hunter family will be behind you as you travel. When Borgcubia passes through HR7, you can transfer to the station, or to Repulse if you prefer, and continue on to Prime with them. By the time you arrive, I'll have a faster ship available to take you home after the Kingdom is formally established. See you soon. Jane out."
Decision made, Liz considered what assets to take with them. In the end, she made the same decision Jane had made in Gaia.
Liz rose from her desk, nodded to her Brigadier, who seemed to be standing there doing guard duty, and went out to start making announcements.
Jane sat at her desk on Concorde, searching her memory for any other prediction she'd made which hadn't yet come to pass. She'd been right about the Gaia insurrection, and now about the British coup. Sometimes she really hated it when she was right.
A vid came in for her and she waved it to the wall. General Price looked down at her, from the Bridge of a ship.
"Admiral, sorry, Queen Jane."
Jane smiled. He was military, so Admiral had been correct.
"I'm here in the HR14 system, in orbit of the planet. I have about four thousand troops with me. I've had locals asking me what my intensions are."
He paused for a moment.
"General Patton decided to stay with the Federation and complete the task of eradicating the purple plant. It seems he still has a strong tie to America, where I find I have no real tie to what was anymore. I'm more interested now in the future, and the Kingdom is going to be a major part of it. I'd like to be as well. Patton gave each unit the opportunity to make their own choice, and loaned us the transports to come here. Most units decided to stay together, so the ones I brought are mainly cohesive teams. They are also the ones eager to see what challenges the galaxy can throw at them. The transport captains want to return as soon as possible though."
"If you want us somewhere else, we'll need transport. Otherwise, I can start setting up a base here for the time being. If we're to stay here, I'd like one of your food production stations to stay as the rest go past. We brought rations to last a few weeks, but I gather from talking to the locals, the food situation down there won't suit us, and they don’t have much to share anyway."
"So, orders please. Price out."
Jane thought about it. Eventually she'd want marines on all the stations, and marines at all the entrances into her space for boarding operations. But she had no marines, just troops. They would need to be re-trained.
She sent word down the coms network, for one of the food production stations to be reoriented towards military food requirements, and their support needs. Once it arrived in HR14, it could take up an orbit near the Orbital station.
She also sent word to Walsh, asking for general traders to return to trading with HR14, in order the current population could be supplied with what the planet couldn’t provide them. She had a response from him saying he'd mention it during the next session.
It was something she'd overlooked. She'd shut down the space port there, and it hadn't occurred to her those living there needed more than the planet produced. It was sloppy thinking, and if she was really going to embrace this whole Queen thing, she was going to need to widen her thinking to include every single planet and station in her space, and the needs of each.
Or she could delegate the task to her fellow AI's. That thought made her smile.
She opened a vid to Price.
"General, welcome to the Kingdom of Hunter's Run. Please take possession of the planet. Your first priority is to secure the space port, and return it to an operational status. There should be civilians in the nearby town who used to work there. Use them where you can. Second priority is to ensure the eradication of the purple plant is completed. Third is to build yourself a base there. I'd suggest you put it well away from the locals, perhaps even on a different continent, but make sure your troops have regular contact with the locals, who are a cross section of species in this part of the galaxy."
"Your troops need to be trained to be space marines, and dealing fairly with all species will be a priority, so start them on this now. The towns and other settlements will need policing, which will be another of their roles in the future, especially if we are asked to provide peacekeeping troops. If anything, they will need to become highly trained troops for almost any kind of deployment, so you may need to rebuild units with this in mind. I leave it to you to organize."
"As the only General in the Kingdom, you will also have the court rank of Duke, and for now will be the Duke of HR14, at least until we name it formally. I'm sending you Kingdom laws and tax requirements, which will be your task to implement immediately. The Orbital Station computer has what you need to convert people over to account based transactions. It has a personality like our capital ships do, so work with it, and it can save you a lot of the drudge work of administering a planet."
Jane smiled, knowing administration and logistics was his thing. It was a roundabout way of telling him he was now a planet leader, as well as a General.
"When the Kingdom shipyards from Gaia come past, you will get appropriate ships for a number of roles, including Dropships, Assault Frigates, and several Assault Cruisers. You will also get your own Concorde class Corvette, and Lightning. Please select the best twelve teams you have for immediate space marine deployment, and when ships arrive for them, send two teams to the Owl system blockade, two to the G036 jump point, two for the HRA1 jump point in HR9, two each for Hunter Prime's jump in points, and the last two to the jump in point in HR1. They will billet on the station at the jump points when it arrives, and share a ship, so one team is always on call for interdiction work. Then you need to train teams to replace them, or augment them."
"You will be required in Hunter Prime when Borgcubia arrives there. Ceremony we can't escape I'm afraid, as the sector will be watching us. When you arrive, we'll discuss anything you feel needs covering."
"Jane out."
Fifty Nine
Jane's worries about the other shoe dropping, now that all her predictions had come true, proved to be just that. Worry. She rationalized it as being thorough in assessing possible negative occurrences, and thus being prepared for them. But she knew a few of her fellow AI's would laugh at her if she mentioned it, so she didn’t.
All roads led to Hunter Prime now. Concorde and Palomino were heading there. Stations were heading there. Borgcubia had collected her Japanese families and was now heading there. There had been a brief stop at the new penal colony in G001, to offload those to be incarcerated there.
But Jane still wondered what could still go wrong.
Much to her surprise, the next two weeks went by smoothly, expected events happening as they should.
Jane had watched the British ambassador withdraw Royal Britain from the Federation, and a third of the British delegation left with him. Their Lightning, being the only fast ship available to the delegation, was a bit packed, but it would catch the stations up faster than any other ship. It also left the remainder of the delegation with only much slower ships. After they were gone, it was left to the junior diplomat to explain to the council that not only had the entire British fleet gone with the Royals, but so had all their food and fabricator stations. And making the financial situation of the Federation even worse, every single bank account for the people on the stations which had left, vanished from Federation banks within minutes of the Royalist stations departing.
Suggestions by several d
elegates along the lines of the council needing to open negotiations with the Kingdom and Royal Britain to fill the gap in food supplies, went down like the proverbial lead balloon, and left Meg-Jane laughing. She was waiting for the invitation back to the council, and even now, was occupying her previous quarters on the station, using it as an embassy. Her status as Kingdom ambassador hadn't been accepted by the council yet, but no-one was game to stop her living on the station, and performing the functions of an embassy.
There was a heated debate about their blockade fleet letting the food stations leave Human space, until the American ambassador pointed out their own fleet had been gutted by defections to the Kingdom, and any attempt to enforce the blockade would only result in losing what ships they had left, which would be needed soon for system patrols as alien ships began to arrive. This was actually news to Jane, as she hadn't bothered keeping up with the decisions being made, and Patton's had been the only one she'd heard of formally so far, and even that was second hand.
The American ambassador laid out their military position. They had a fraction of the ships the insurrectionists thought they would have, which included the loss of all the front line fighters, leaving them with nothing bigger than a Cruiser, and with only Light and Medium short range fighters for police work. When the delegates still didn’t understand, he told them if the Kingdom wanted to conquer the Federation, it would have very little trouble doing so, and most of the people in the room would end up in the G001 penal colony. The only thing they had plenty of was troops, but they were not where they'd be needed in a war. The Kingdom would simply bypass them, and they'd have to surrender to get food.
His final advice was to make nice to the Kingdom, so they would all survive. It hadn't gone down well.
Palomino reached Hunter Prime, and all the AI's did a trip down to the planet to map it, and discuss where to set up cities and other fixtures, determine what areas needed preservation, and what work could be done when.
The G036 stations and fleet reached Hunter Prime next. Three stations and their jump point fleets continued on to the other three jump points in the system, as did the stations and fleet for further along the core systems. A number of the mining stations had been left in promising looking places along the way, and now several more moved into the asteroid belts of the Prime system. The rest continued on to spread along the remainder of core space. All the rest of the stations were moved into orbit of the planet. All available builder droids were shuttled planet-side, where they began excavation work alongside the giant suits Jane had in the fleet, which were able to shift shape into bulldozers. They had a lot of work to do, and not much time to do it in.
Midnight Orchid docked at the Sector Council Station, shortly before the Owl Diplomatic ship, which it had given a tow to once they'd caught it up.
Walsh and Darlene spent a few hours briefing the Federation ambassador and Cayuga for their new roles. The ambassador was openly apologetic about the events in Gaia, and determined to work with the Kingdom in the council as much as he had discretion to do. The Walsh's took their seats for the last time in council.
Cayuga entered first. He was bid to present his credentials, which he did, and was duly welcomed and recorded as the new Kingdom ambassador, to take up the seat at the next meeting. He was asked to wait, and moved to the side of the rostrum out of the way.
Ambassador Ito entered, and presented his credentials. There was a stir when it was realized he was speaking a different language, even though they had been warned he would be. Ito had checked his translation module in his PC in advance by having Walsh talk Owl at him, and by watching some of the council session highlights. He was aware it wasn’t known here that humans had computers inside their heads, and so he had the standard council tablet in a holster on his belt, and the earbud in his ear, even though it was turned off. He too was accepted as the Federation ambassador to begin at the next session, and asked to wait.
Meanwhile, his aides began looking for suitable station accommodation immediately. While Jane had offered them Midnight Orchid on a rental basis, the ambassador had been told by the Federation council not to use the ship longer than they had to. There had been communications with station beings on the matter during their approach, and now they fanned out into the station to see just how close to human standards they could find.
The station beings, used to seeing humans in Hunter uniform, were startled to see humans now dressed in all kinds of outfits. They were also surprised when humans started sampling the local foods, since none they'd seen so far had shown any interest before. The human reactions began keeping the food vendors amused, even to the point where cleaning up projectile vomit was considered well worth it for watching it happen.
The new Owl ambassador entered the council and moved to the center of the rostrum. The chamber went total silent, as it presented its credentials, and looked around a mostly hostile chamber.
"I request permission to address this chamber," it asked.
"Granted," said Ganshura.
"The Owl families wish to apologize to the sector for our actions of the last two centuries. With the help of Queen Jane, we have come to understand our species suffers from a series of interrelated medical afflictions which have over time, changed our demeanor, and life span. This does not excuse our actions, and especially our blatant disregard for all the claims of addiction to our main product. It has been pointed out to us how much damage we have done. We understand those who have committed crimes against the sector in our species name, have paid for their crimes, mostly by Queen Jane herself. They are dead. Those of us who are not must now live with the aftermath of unsanctioned actions, or what many would view as crimes."
"While many will not accept this, the Owl families have never sanctioned war, acts of violence, or deliberate attempts to addict any beings. Such is the nature of how we suffer, such stories coming back to them were deemed fiction and preposterous, and this was fostered by those guilty of the acts into order to avoid sanctions and punishment. Queen Jane has introduced us to the concept of Karma, and for those who believe in it, you should be happy to know the cosmos has been paying us back for our galactic actions."
"I can say this from personal experience, as I myself expect to be replaced as ambassador in the near future. My own health was assessed by the Humans on the way here, and found tenuous at best. I will be paying for my declaration of war on the Kingdom, first by losing my position in the families, and in the not too distant future, with my life. The humans say they can stop any further damage to my internal organs occurring, but my death was already scheduled, and can at this point only be slightly delayed. I will not be going home again, and in the time I have left, I will work hard to undo the damage which has been done to the sector."
"The Owl families will listen to all claims from those who believe they have a grievance with us, and we will attempt to achieve some sort of settlement. Queen Jane has agreed to allow the Kingdom ambassador to arbitrate if we cannot resolve matters between ourselves, and as part of our peace settlement, we have agreed to be bound to any arbitration made. We trust our new neighbor to be fair."
The Owl paused, and looked to the top corner of the chamber.
"As penance, we accept the last chair in this chamber, and thus the lowest rank, until such time as the chamber as a whole deems us worthy of our normal position."
The chamber went crazy.
Walsh and Darlene paid one last visit to Ganshura, at his embassy, and shortly after pointed their Lightning towards Hunter Prime. Pink and Barf were left behind to get the new embassy staff up to speed. Both had asked to leave with them, but having them both on the Lightning would have given their AI status away very quickly. Walsh promised them places on the next fast ship heading to Hunter Prime.
The Gaia Kingdom stations, with the Royal Britain ones, and their fleets, passed through the first blockade without incident. Yorktown and a sizable portion of both blockade fleets, fell into formation around the stations. Ad
miral Renaud was still in his Admiral's chair on Yorktown.
A day later, Intrepid, all the Pocket Battleships, and a solid block of the remaining ships, formed up around the stations and escorts as well, and the whole lot jumped into HR14. Admiral Rainer was still on Intrepid's Bridge. Between the two American carriers, they had all their fighters, and two thirds of the pilots. Most of the American ships had lost more than a third of their crews.
The only surprise for Jane was Admiral Dingle remaining behind with some of the crew of Warspite. He'd moved to the largest Cruiser left of the blockade force, and assumed command of the remaining fleet. Jane understood him. He'd been overlooked for promotion ever since receiving his star, and had done a competent job as a Battleship Admiral. But he'd obviously considered himself worthy of higher rank. Jane knew him well enough to never give him one, and he somehow knew this. But as only one of three remaining Admirals in the Federation fleet, they had no alternative but to promote him. Jane sent him a message wishing him luck with his new command. He didn’t respond.
A small but powerful fleet was left at the jump point in case the Federation council asked the remainder of their military to do something stupid. A Repulse clone remained behind to command the jump point.
The stations and fleet deviated to the HR14 planet. There, part of the shipyard was detached and left in orbit, along with the prepared food and fabricator station for the military forces on the planet below. Two Assault Cruisers with both Cobra and Python class Dropships aboard, and five Assault Frigates all with three Python's in their hangers, launched from the shipyard and proceeded to land near the partly made military compound. Another dozen Python and Cobra Dropships followed them, along with a half dozen Lightnings. From another bay, a new Concorde class Corvette slid out, and it too headed down to the planet.
The Earth medical Station was placed in the same orbit as the Orbital station and food station, but all far enough apart to be safe. Almost immediately, the first Owl ship was docked by one of the new docking tugs. It was followed by several more, and surprisingly, by a stick insect ship.
A.I. Destiny 2: Queen Jane Page 24