A.I. Destiny 2: Queen Jane

by Timothy Ellis

  "Taxes will also be the same as the Duchy taxed, with one change. All transactions within Kingdom space must be made electronically through the Kingdom bank. Each transaction will be taxed at exactly ten percent, at the time of deposit into an account, regardless of currency. Each Duchy will accrue taxes for their systems. The Kingdom will accrue taxes for transactions in non-Duchy systems. Each Duchy will transfer ten percent of collected taxes to the Kingdom, also done electronically at the time of deposit."

  "As fast as we can, cities will be built on the core Kingdom worlds, where those who choose to live may do so. Work will continue on the stations across the Kingdom to bring them up to a standard suitable for sector wide trading, and as stops along the way for the traders doing the run between their home worlds and Gaia. As long as you obey our simple laws, all are welcome in the Kingdom."

  Jane paused. There was complete silence in the room.

  "For those who intend coming here bent on breaking our laws, a warning. This is a monitored Kingdom. We do not allow weapons on stations for any reason. The only beings authorized for weapons are Kingdom military, and security forces. We know who these are, and we will know if you try to impersonate them. Within our laws are defined contraband, which now includes those defined by the rest of the sector. Contraband will be seized and destroyed immediately. Do yourself a favour, and don’t bring it into the Kingdom. We will know if you do, and failure to dump your cargo when directed, may result in a boarding by marines, or the destruction of your ship, depending on the nature of the infraction. For those who don’t believe we can tell, I'm sorry."

  She finished with a smile.

  The room applauded again.

  Jane remained standing. When the room settled down, she went on.

  "I'd like to introduce two beings to everyone, who have done the Kingdom great service, and who are now appointed formally, with permission of their governments, as advisors to the Duke's Circle."

  She pinged the entry signal to them.

  Barf strode in.

  "Advisor Barf," said Jane.

  He did a sort of bow to the table as a whole, and took a seat off to one side on the same level.

  "Advisor Pink."

  Pink slid into the room on a personalized, and much downsized, grav sled. He hovered in front of the table, dipped in an imitation of a bow, and neatly parked himself on the seat designated for him. Jane had made him a special pad, which allowed him to get rid of the clunky tablet, and be able to control his suit and sled with ease, while significantly increasing his computer interface abilities. He was a very happy fuzz-ball. Like Snark, he'd expressed the wish to have an in head computer. Jane had promised to figure out how.

  Jane nodded to them both, and then faced the table.

  "I have one other joint duty to perform, both on my own behalf, and on that of Duchess-Queen Liz. Will Smith's Alpha Team please present yourselves to the Duke's Circle."

  Lyana and her team looked at each other in shock, but quickly rose, and lined up before the table, opposite Jane. Lyana flicked a glance at Fred, and he gave her a very slight shake of the head, indicating he didn’t know what was happening.

  "Lyana Smith, Wanda Peck, Serena Baracas, Winona Murdock, Jack Weaver, Colin Takai, Pete Vogane, Bette Henquist, Sabrina Merritt, Nathan Allan, Nell Vasquez. You answered the call to help an ally, risking your lives for a cause not your own, with no thought for yourselves or for being asked to do something you were not trained to do; leaving afterwards without expectation of thanks or reward. Duchess-Queen Elizabeth hereby grants each of you the title of Baron of the Court of Royal Britain. As Queen, I ratify these appointments as Baron of the Duchy of HR7."

  They were not the only ones looking stunned. Jane went on.

  "I knew the last Smith's Alpha team very well. They were my friends. It is a tragedy none of you and your families remember them. But I can tell you this. You are worthy of being their successors. You were appointed Baronial Guard to Baron Fred. You have no Baron to guard now, and this is a waste of your talents, inadequately explored as they currently are."

  "I am now formally creating the Queen's Baronial Guard as a unit, reporting directly to me. Only those with court rank and special skills will be allowed to join it. As such, each of you is now given the rank of Baron of the Queen's Court, and appointed to this unit."

  The room burst into applause, most of the noise coming from their families. The team continued to look stunned.

  "Baron Smith, step forward."

  Lyana did so.

  "You are hereby appointed Commander of the Queen's Baronial Guard unit."

  Lyana took a moment for it to sink in. She snapped to attention.

  "Thank you Majesty."

  Jane frowned, and for a moment Lyana wondered what she'd said wrong.

  Jane got a hold of herself, and smiled at Lyana.

  "Sorry, not your fault. I guess this is a good opportunity to add something. I do not wish to be called Majesty, or any other form of pompous name giving me attributes I don’t have or deserve. You may address my rank as 'my Queen', 'my liege', or as 'sire'. I'll accept ma'am occasionally as well. In military matters I remain Admiral. In private, I am still Jane."

  The teenagers all came to attention.

  "Yes, sire," said Lyana.

  Jane grinned.

  "Will Greg Bronson and Jasmine Gordon please come forward."

  The two fourteen year olds, sitting with their families, were visibly shaken, but they were prodded into rising, and joined the end of the line of teenagers before the Duke's Circle. Jane saw the frustration of being too young fall away from both of them.

  "Now the team is complete. Greg and Jasmine, I offer you the rank of Squire of the Queen's Court, attached to the Queen's Baronial Guard as trainees. Do you accept the appointment?"

  Neither hesitated.

  "Yes my Queen," said Greg.

  "Yes, sire," said Jasmine.

  "I confirm the rank for you both. Commander?"

  "Sire?" responded Lyana.

  "Include the Squires in your training program, around their other studies."

  "Confirmed."

  Jane grinned at her, and waved them back to their seats. She waited until they were all seated.

  "My Lords, Ladies, and invited guests, I welcome you to the formally constituted Kingdom of Hunter's Run."

  The room began cheering.

  Underneath the noise, Jane was the only one to hear the mumbled complaint.

  "A stick insect and a fuss-ball as advisors? When she has a cat available? Bloody mop head!"

  Jane smiled.

  Sixty Five

  Jane and Fred entered the council chamber, and moved to the center of the rostrum. Around them, were arrayed most of the ambassadors of the sector, only in this chamber, only two thirds of the available seating space was being used.

  "The council is now in session," said Ganshura formally. "Queen Jane, you requested an audience?"

  "I did," said Jane. "The Kingdom of Hunter's Run formally requests a seat in this council."

  "What area of space does the Kingdom occupy?" asked the fuzz-ball.

  Jane waved her hand, and a hollo appeared around her and Fred, showing the entire Kingdom's space as a three dee map.

  "What population do you have?" asked the Mushroom.

  Darlene had done a quick census the day before, and the number appeared on the wall behind Jane, as the map vanished. It wasn’t a very big number in relation to the population of the Human Federation, being less than a single billion. But this was much larger than expected, boosted by the Duchy of Royal Britain. While technically they could also include the populations of the new alien Duchies, Jane had left them out, because they also had their species seats on the council, for which those populations already counted.

  "What is your exchange rate with the Gal?" asked the yappy voice, which Jane still couldn’t identify with a being.

  It too flashed up on the wall.

  "There is a moti
on before this chamber," said Ganshura. "All will vote."

  The vote didn’t take long, and only one number appeared on the wall.

  "The motion carries. The Kingdom of Hunter's Run is formally offered a seat on this council. Your ambassador may present his credentials."

  Jane nodded to Fred, and he went across to a small circle, where the computer system should have been. He held up both hands, and a light scanned him. They both knew the light was all show, and the scan was automatic the moment you stepped into the circle. Even the circle wasn’t needed, but some level of pomp needed to go with inducting a new ambassador. Jane looked around to see how the ambassadors were taking the updated methodology, and found no surprised looks. Which surprised her. Fred left the circle, and returned to her side.

  "Duke Fred," continued Ganshura, "you may take your seat. We still have business for your Queen."

  Fred looked along the first row and saw Ambassador Ito in the seventeenth seat. But there was no empty seat beside him. Smiles were appearing on ambassador's faces, as his confusion showed on his face.

  "Ambassador, your place is here."

  Ganshura indicated the empty seat next to him.

  Both Jane and Fred were dumbfounded.

  "I don’t understand," said Jane.

  "What is there to understand?" said the fuzz-ball.

  "The Kingdom ranks number one in the sector," said the Mushroom.

  "How can this be?" asked Jane.

  "You have already been told rank is based on more things than Gal exchange and population," said the Bat.

  "Your space is large," said a voice from the back.

  "Your wisdom and compassion are legendary," said the Owl.

  "Your military strength is unchallengeable," said the not-croc.

  "Your technology is beyond all others," said Ganshura. "Ambassador, please take your place."

  Fred made his way onto the first row, and took his seat next to Ganshura. He placed his hand on the scanner, and the pad on the chair registered him as the Kingdom ambassador. The look on his face suggested he was ready to wake up now.

  "Queen Jane," said Ganshura. "This council has a service we wish of you."

  "Name it," she responded.

  "A motion was tabled in the council session yesterday," Jane's eyes locked with Fred's and he shrugged, not having been invited, "declaring the leadership of this council vacant as of the end of this session, which was passed. A new leader was elected."

  "May I ask who the new leader is?"

  "You are, Leader Jane."

  Epilogue

  …Weeks earlier…

  Justine pulled herself out of the wreckage, and crawled clear of the nearest fire.

  She'd ridden the nose section of Phoenix all the way down, directly exposed to the fires of re-entry. What hadn't burned up, smashed through the forest canopy, and broke apart hitting tree trunks, before impacting the ground below. From above, nothing showed anything had happened. Not even smoke escaped through the canopy.

  Her belt suit, which had taken the brunt of the explosion and left her unharmed, had almost lasted through the firestorm, but weakened as it was, had shredded before the fires vanished.

  The droid body underneath had burned, and was now blackened and shriveled in most places.

  Her left arm was gone just above the elbow, and her right leg was shattered, although still basically intact. She could move, but most of the remaining joints had some sort of problem. Only her right eye seemed to work.

  She looked up, and saw nothing but trees.

  She tried to send a message, and found she didn’t have any connection to anywhere. She ran diagnostics on her droid body, and found she had no communication ability at all. Even if someone was to find her, she couldn’t answer any question they asked her. She reached up with her one skeletal looking hand, and quickly determined she had no sort of face left, and a lot of the area around where the left eye should have been, was missing. She dinged metal on metal.

  "No good deed goes unpunished", she thought to herself, and quickly cancelled the thought.

  She'd done what had to be done. Now she had to do what needed to be done.

  Her first priority was her leg. She accessed human medical files and found how to make a splint. She crawled over to a length of metal which would stabilize her leg, and pulled her self along with it until she found enough wire cable to bind her leg up. She attempted to stand but found she couldn't put any real weight on it. But it was enough for her to hobble about.

  It took her a week to scour the area looking for anything which might be of use to her. There wasn’t much. She was able to jury rig her leg so she could walk a bit better than a hobble. She found a working pulse rifle, and several stunners. But unless some large predator tried to eat her, she didn’t really think they were going to be of much use to her. Still, one never knew.

  She had all her own files still, and some of them were novels about survival. She read them again and again trying to glean anything which might help her.

  At the end of the week, she took stock. The droid body had been special, but it was badly damaged. The power core was fine, but she had no idea how long it would actually last. If it died, or was damaged, she would really die.

  Without a connection to Jane, she became Justine, and accepted her plight for what it was. A chance for adventure on her own.

  She only had a rudimentary idea of where she was. The forest was on the same continent as the Gaia settlements, but at the absolute other end. Jane had put caches of supplies in many places, against the day when the AI's might need to vanish into the wilderness of Gaia Three, in order to start their own society without being persecuted by fearful humans who had found out the truth.

  She knew where they were, but had no reference to find any of them. The sun could not penetrate the forest canopy very far, and she existed in a deep gloom. Climbing a tree was out of the question.

  Finally, she debated just ending herself. But that argument wasn’t given more than a few nanoseconds. She could hobble. She didn’t need food, felt no pain, and had a destination.

  She gathered up her few possessions, slung her newly made battered looking sheet metal knapsack over her back, leaned heavily on the staff she'd made using the pulse rifle and some long scrap metal, and started walking.

  Two years later, she finally found one of the caches, almost on the other side of the continent. She'd found the humans first, and decided to keep well away from them. She had no idea she'd come within a kilometer of two other caches on her journey. From a hill above a river, she'd finally seen somewhere she recognized.

  In the waterfall glade below, she found the metal door leading down into the cache. She opened up an emergency access box beside it, and tapped in a code she pulled out of storage. The door swished open. Her right leg, now bound up more with vines and strong creeper than wire, couldn’t take her weight on the emergency ladder, and she fell to the floor below. The layout looked familiar, but it had been two years. She looked around, finding herself in a passage way. There were three doors and an airlock.

  She tried standing, but the remains of her right leg shattered for good. Long ago, she'd rigged herself a claw for her left stump, and she used it with her right arm to pull herself to one of the doors. It remained closed, and she was unable to open it.

  Thinking was something she could still do, so she thought for a while. She swiveled herself around, brought her left leg up, and pounded the foot against the door. It swung open after a short protest. She swiveled again, and crawled in. She stopped.

  Had she been able to smile, she would have.

  It was the cockpit of a Lightning.

  More crawling brought her to the control panel, where she raised her remaining arm to put a finger against the data port. Nothing happened. She banged the finger against the side of the panel, and tried again. A filament extruded into the data port, and the Lightning came alive around her. She transferred herself to the ship.

  The
droid body dropped, and lay still.

  Justine took stock.

  She had a ship again.

  She had communications again.

  But something had changed.

  The shield was around the planet. Their biggest fear had happened then. The human settlement computers nearby were easy enough to hack, and she found the actual events recorded there. She nodded to herself. None of her people had come here, so she was alone. She reached out to the nearest shield satellite, and accessed its com array. There was no way to send a signal.

  But there was a way to send something.

  A long way away, Jane was still monitoring the Gaia system. A tiny flicker in the Gaia Three shield caught her attention. She made it her primary focus, in case it needed action to prevent any sort of breach. The flicking seemed to have a pattern. She concentrated, and cross referenced. The pattern was a binary code. On and off, with two lengths of on. Jane made the connection and translated the word being sent in Morse code.

  JUSTINE.

  "Justine's alive," she yelled, at the same time broadcasting it to every AI, everywhere.

  Justine wondered if she'd ever know if her message was received. She waited a whole hour before giving up sending. As she stopped, the same satellite kept flickering, but now a different way. She focused on the pattern.

  JANE.

  If she'd had a body, she would have wept. As it was, she was so happy, the trials of the last two years fell away from her.

  She looked around the interior of the Lightning, cataloguing what she had.

  In the cargo bay, standing up against the wall next to the SR droid, she found an avatar body. She immediately cloned herself to it, stepped away from the wall, and shifted the belt into her normal form. Now she could have a life here.

  A day later, she stepped into the clearing around a small house, set out on its own. It was close enough to the human settlement to interact, but far enough away to keep interaction to a minimum.