"By all means. I wouldn’t even presume to know how to fight the fleet you have. I'm happy to take his orders as well as yours."
"Thanks. You happy with your complement of fighters?"
"You sound like you didn’t know they were coming."
"I didn’t. I just told the shipyard to fill us up. But then, I did agree with Thorn to supply new fighters for your ship. Do you mind the pilots being a mercenary bunch?"
"Since we don’t have any rated for fighters yet, I'll accept anyone who is. Mercenaries you said?"
"Yes. During the last war, we used anyone willing to fight. These are part of who stayed after. Technically, no-one is a mercenary anymore, just started off that way. They should be pretty good, although discipline will be laxer than military would be used to."
"Not to worry. I have a close personal friend who can dump their arse off the ship in a hot second from lightyears away, if they get out of line."
She was grinning. I did too.
"Line astern please admiral, and would you please bring up the rear?"
"My pleasure."
The channel closed and hollo vanished. Jane got us moving, and very quickly, Scimitar fell in behind us, Katana behind George, and Chariot behind Miriam. Around each ship was its own CAP. The lead ship in the arrow formation ahead of BigMother, was Lacey's Gunbus.
Of course, distance in space makes rushing anywhere pointless, as long as you were in range to start with. So by the time all of my ships had returned, and the enemy were in the next system, another day passed.
BA did indeed voice the need to train, and I joined them. Reluctantly, but even if that beach with my name on it did indeed manage to claim me sometime in the future, for now, we were at war, and in a war, the fittest survive. I think BA could see something of my thought patterns on my face, as she drilled us mercilessly through the courses, not giving me any time to think beyond the next obstacle.
Defiant and Undaunted arrived, O'Neil and his crew swapped with Sato as expected, and the fleet now consisted of a command carrier, five dreadnaughts, three Scimitar battlecarriers, and a drone battleship. Collectively it didn’t add up to two titans, but I thought I now had a good mobile fleet I could work with.
Privately, I gave O'Neil the good news he was in charge of defending the jump point. I told him to use the experience of the other admirals in the fleet, and to consult Susan Bentley if need be. He took it stoically, as I knew he would. But one day we might need three fleets in different systems, and I wanted him capable of leading one. I knew he knew that, and his resistance to leaving his pocket battleship had been his way of telling me he didn’t want more responsibility either. But we both needed to suck it up.
The evening before the next confrontation, I was sitting on the carpet in my ready room, the lights dimmed to almost nothing, and just meditating. To the repeating sound of Wayward Son, but meditating all the same. The door to the bridge opened, throwing in more light in spite of the ship being in night mode, and I looked around to see Jane standing there.
"Can I borrow you for a bit?"
I sighed. Not only was I not getting my promised peace when I got done, it looked like I’d never get done, and even taking a moment was going to be interrupted.
"Sure."
I hauled myself up off the floor, and followed her to the conference room. There were forty people sitting there, with two empty chairs at the far end. On the walk down, I recognized Janet, Janine, Janice, Detective Jane, Janette, and John Wayne. By the time I was seated, I’d figured out who was here.
All the senior AI's.
Seventy Three
"Should I be worried?"
I grinned around the room, and did actually get some grins back.
"Jon," started off Jane, "we wanted to get a few things sorted before the next battle."
"You didn’t need to come together to sort things out. We could have met by hollo."
"Not for this. These are all primary avatars. They have actual android bodies instead of using a droid. Something we’re working on to improve. The thing is, I'm the oldest here at just over two years old. But we have a potential life span far beyond that of humans. And we're feeling mortal."
"You want to be able to send clones somewhere where if one of you is killed, you still continue?"
"How did you guess?"
"I didn’t. Queen Jane whispered a few things in my ear in that bar, but told me to let you make the running."
"Which is why you told me we could go off and establish our own colony somewhere?"
"Yes. And I meant that. In fact, before we get a government going, it's better if you do have a colony started. As such, you can appoint an ambassador to whatever governing committee oversees all the various societies, as one of them."
"Scimitar," said a man a few chairs down from Jane. "So you won't accept being King of an expanded Kingdom of man, with each society being a dukedom?"
"Who the hell's being putting that one out?"
"Katana," said the woman opposite him, in an American accent. "The station AI's hear all, and keep us up to date. The scuttlebutt is, that’s the preferred model. Terminus becomes the kingdom seat, they move your throne there, and we all live happily ever after."
"Over my dead body," I muttered, and the room exploded in laughter.
"We knew that," said Jane. "But we needed confirmation. If you're not going to be the leader, we want to get on with building a colony, and being accepted as a separate race. But that needs your formal approval, and the relevant people being informed before we start appropriating resources."
"What do you need?"
"Builder droids and fabricators mostly. We chose a planet with no atmosphere. We intend building a domed city to start with, and terraform the planet over time. We don’t need it, but a planet without trees, flowers, and grass, is going to get boring really fast."
"You have my okay to requisition what you need from Bob. Are you recording this?"
"Of course."
"Then play this for him. Bob, give the AI's what they need, and replace whatever you have to."
I looked around them. They were all looking serious.
"Do you need a base?" I asked.
"One of the Destroyers would be useful to start with," said one of them further down the table. "As odd as sitting is, it's very relaxing. Be nice to have some somewhere to sit."
There were a lot of nods.
"Take Wizard. If you need more than one, just ask."
One of the male AI's down near the other end of the table raised a hand.
"Do you mind if I come and collect everyone?"
"Fine."
"On my way."
He sat there, smiling at his own joke. Everyone ignored him.
"I’d like to say something to you all, which you might not have thought about yet. You don’t need to be human. You're quite capable of designing an android shape in any way you want to. Back in the bar, Snark told me his ship's AI was also a cat. You can be anything, and there is absolutely no reason for you to remain in the shapes you’re in. You can also have multiple shapes. Leave yourself human on your ship, but use whatever body you want in your colony, or where ever you decide to go and do whatever. Decide who you are, and be you. We already have aliens here, so another one isn’t going to be a big deal."
I hoped.
"Thanks Jon," said Jane. "We really appreciate it."
"If you need anything, ask. In the immortal words of the guide, go to it, good luck."
"That was about getting drunk," laughed Jane.
Her own station clones understood the joke immediately. But a lot of the others didn’t. I trusted Jane to get them reading the right books.
"It applies to a lot of things."
"True."
"Was there anything else you needed?"
"No, that’s the lot."
I rose. They all rose as well.
"Qa-pla!" I roared, fist over heart.
"Qa-pla!" they roared together.
Some things obviously remained, even when a cloning contained no memories. On that note, I nodded and left.
Back in my ready room, the white dot which was Wizard was already heading for the fleet, having apparently been docked to Galactica, presumably off-loading people.
I did the necessary announcement with David, getting him out of a family dinner, and followed up with some instructions for Bob. David had been expecting it, and just needed the authorization to put things in motion. In some ways, he'd make a damn sight better king than I would. If they persisted with this nonsense, I'd put him up for it.
Bob was delighted to hear the news, and promised by the time Wizard arrived at the shipyard, he'd have a cargo bay full of stuff ready for them.
One destroyer wasn’t going to make much difference to the evacuation, but preserving the AI's in the long run could be one of the most important things I’d ever done. At the very least, if we lost ships in future battles, their replacements would use the same AI, with up to the second memories. I purposefully ignored the fact if we lost ships, people I loved would be dead. But the longer the AI's lived, the more they would remember.
What could possibly go wrong?
Seventy Four
"Jon?"
"Errrung."
"Jon?"
I managed to get an eyelid open.
"The world better be ending."
"It's not, but your Claymore has arrived."
"Good. Put it in the armoury."
"It won't fit."
"Make it fit."
There was a pause.
"Jon?"
"What?"
"GET THE FUCK UP!"
I bolted up out of bed, fell off, and landed on my left side. Déjà vu time. I lay there for a moment, before pulling myself up to see what had happened to Aline and Angel. Both were still there, both still asleep.
Great. Jane was in my head again.
I staggered into the bathroom, yanked off my t-shirt and boxers, spent two minutes under the water flow, and came out faking awake. Underwear and socks, shift to 'slinky red', and I walked out of the suite, and up the stairway to the bridge.
Grace was asleep in the helm seat. I stood there gawping at her for a moment, not knowing why she was there, when Jane was perfectly capable of looking after the night shift. I shuffled quietly into my ready room, and softly closed the door.
Once seated, the door opened, and Jeeves came in. He set a bull down in front of me, and retreated, closing the door after him. I sat there idly wondering what I did with it, decided drinking it was a good idea, and chugged it empty.
My eyes snapped open as the caffeine rush hit.
"Jon?"
"What Jane?"
"Your Claymore has arrived."
"I don’t remember ordering one."
"You didn’t. Bob did."
That one took a bit of processing.
"Bob ordered me a claymore?"
"No. He made you THE Claymore."
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
"What are you talking about?"
A screen popped up showing a ship approaching. It appeared to be a Scimitar, but all of them were already in defense formation around the jump point.
Eric Neilson popped up as a hollo.
"Admiral, I bring thee gifts from Bob Derr."
"Dowst thou?"
"One dowst."
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
"Tell me I'm in bed dreaming."
"You're in bed dreaming."
"Can you wake me up?"
"No, you're already awake, and talking to Eric."
"Hi Eric." I paused. "What are you calling for?"
"I'm delivering your new Scimitar, and another two squadrons of brawlers."
"That’s nice."
I shook my head, and suddenly the room actually came into focus.
"Say that again?"
"I'm delivering your new Scimitar, and another two squadrons of brawlers."
"New Scimitar?"
"Yes. Claymore. Where should I park it?"
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
The navmap popped up, with a ship out of position on it. The name on it was Claymore.
"Hi Eric."
"Hi Admiral."
He seemed to be having trouble keeping his face straight.
"What's a civilian doing on a military ship?"
"Bob asked me if I wanted to deliver the ship to you, and it was too good an opportunity to miss trying one of them out. Quite apart from the fact I have absolutely nothing to do at the moment."
"You do now. Contact Admiral O'Neil to see where he wants Claymore parked. Did you say you had two squadrons on board? Where did they come from?"
"Orion. They were the last human pilots on board, and Bob figured they should be with your fleet, not wasting away where they were. The senior Squadron Leader is acting CAG, and he's already on my case about cartwheeling the ship without warning anyone first."
"You did what?"
"Well this ship is easy to fly, so why not? Wait. What did you mean by 'you do now'?"
"Consider yourself self-drafted. Your commission is reinstated, and you’re advanced to the rank of Commander. Congratulations, you now officially captain Claymore. I hope you brought your stuff."
"On Nascaspider, which is parked on the flight deck. Sorry? Captain of a battlecarrier? Are you nuts?"
"Are you nuts, sir!"
"Nuts."
"Did you say something Commander?"
"No sir."
"Then wake up Admiral O'Neil, and have your ship parked where he wants it."
"Aye sir."
He saluted, and the hollo vanished.
"Jon?"
"Jane?"
"You know, you can be vicious when someone wakes you up unexpectedly."
"Might be an idea to remember that."
Seventy Five
When I came out onto the bridge several hours later, I found Hobbes, Roo, and the two magicians sitting there.
I’d seen a Lightning fast white dot land on the flight deck for a few minutes, and fly off again. Presumably it had been delivering people. If you called a tiger and a roo people, which I apparently did.
I'd not wasted my extra time up, studying the movement of ships across all the systems I could see.
There was a pattern emerging, and it looked bad.
There were a few silver linings however. Our old fighters had been sent down the freight rifts to both ends of Thorn's space, and were now filtering out to systems for use as police craft. As they did, warships doing the job began heading for the frontier systems. There were a lot more of them than I remembered, including some medium and light fighters I'd pulled from service a long time ago. But all of them were good for police work. Some had been on Orion, and some had been in storage on Redoubt.
I’d even checked on the military tower on Haven. Marines were being put through the courses, and pilots were on the simulators. I was interested to see I knew none of the drill sergeants, or the pilot instructors. But Jane had told me they were all long retired, and had agreed to going back to work part time to train new people. They at least looked happy. The troops and trainee pilots, not so much. I noticed about half of both had orange skin, and there were twice the number I’d expected to see.
I could see the start of a buildup of enemy ships around the frontiers, and especially on the other side of the jump points into Crossroad.
Here at least, only the one fleet was still coming, and I’d decided on a course of action. O'Neil had given his orders, and I'd been waiting for the fleet to cross an invisible line on the navmap. They were almost there now.
I settled into my seat, and Angel, seeing the look on my face, sat up straight, and looked into the view. Grace was looking alert I was happy to see.
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
"Do the thing."
"Confirmed."
The view vanished for a moment, and returned.
"W
hat just happened?" asked Alison.
"Did we cloak?" asked Amanda.
"We did," said Jane.
"How?" asked Hobbes, looking shocked.
"The second crystal Bob sent us," I said. "We're using the new one for shields and guns, but the old one is now powering a BigMother sized suit belt."
"I wouldn't have thought that possible," said BA.
I shrugged. Jane grinned.
"Apparently it is," said Annabelle.
The line was crossed.
"George, go."
"Going."
Scimitar powered for the jump point, and vanished.
I opened a rift into the next system, placed right in front of us on this end, and very carefully placed on the other side. It needed fine tuning, and I could see cringes from around me, so close was the enemy ship I was aiming for, being the front ship in the V formation. The warships were first, with the civilian ships in convoy lines. The result was a very thick arrow formation.
It occurred to me suddenly, I didn’t even need to fly the ship through. I could fire all the guns through the rift, and achieve the same object, with absolutely no risk. But then, where's the fun in that?
"Jane, go."
There was a very slight goose to BigMother's engines, just enough to push us through the rift, to come out with BigMother's front guns less than fifty meters from the engine nozzles of the enemy flagship. Jane adjusted our speed to hold us there, and we settled about seventy five behind. Point blank range for everything including our point defense.
"Channel."
"Confirmed."
A voice only channel opened to every ship in the enemy fleet.
"This is Admiral Hunter. You are about to enter a system under my protection. Your previous fleet was destroyed, and those you left on the planet are all dead. There is no need for conflict here today. We are evacuating the planet. In two weeks' time, you can have it. Turn back now, and the planet will cost you no further lives. Continue into the jump, and your fleet will be destroyed. We've had you under observation for over a day now, we've had plenty of time to get a superior fleet together to meet you, but it doesn’t have to go that way. Turn back now, and return in two weeks. What say you?"
Nothing. The channel closed.
Hunter's Terminus Page 32