He buried his face in the carpet.
"Nightmare?"
"Was it that obvious?"
"Kind of, yeah. Are you getting up?"
"No, I'm going to stay here for a while."
Lyana laughed.
"You better get your arse into the shower. Jane woke up, and there's a council meeting first thing."
Fred twisted himself around, and looked up at her.
"Is she ok?"
"Seems to be. She's going to explain it at the council meeting. Get moving."
Fred bounded to his feet, and hustled into the shower.
Jane met them at the entrance to the council chamber, and ushered them into her office.
"I'm glad you're alright," said Fred, turning pink. "Can you forgive me?"
"Nothing to forgive," answered Jane. "It had to come out sometime, and you did right by the Kingdom."
Fred sighed.
"The Duke's didn’t think so."
Lyana laughed.
"Is that what the nightmare was about?"
"Yes. They were about to throw me out an airlock."
Jane joined Lyana in laughing.
"If there's any fallout from it, we'll deal with it together."
Jane led them into the council chamber, which was rapidly filling. Already seated in the guest section were almost all of the AI's, most of whom had cloned an avatar specifically to be here. The Walsh's were in the front row, with their crew, and Anna and Jamie were next to them, with Warspite next to Jamie. The military AI's were all in uniform, and were mainly Fleet Captain or Fleet Admiral rank. Walsh and his crew were in the AMS uniform, and the rest wore whatever civvies they normally wore.
Seasprite was next to Warspite, and wore her fur. She was the only non-humanoid shape in the guest section. She cast a look at the special guest section, made eye contact with the cat, smiled, and chuckled to herself as she looked back towards Jane. The cat had looked horrified for a moment.
Fred took a chair to the side of the central dais, next to Ganshura, and Lyana took her normal position on the door.
Jane took the center as she normally did, but first nodded to Ganshura, and received a nod back. She caught sight of Grandma Vi in the number one seat, and grinned at her.
It wasn’t long before movement ceased. A few of the ambassadors were surprised to see Jane standing there, but most had received the news with their breakfast briefings.
"Leader Ganshura," said Jane formally, looking at him. "May I address the council?"
"You may, Leader Jane."
"No," said Jane, with a note of finality. "I will not be taking back the leadership of this chamber at this time."
"May we ask why?"
"The sector has a new threat. For now, I need to concentrate on being the Admiral of the Fleet."
"We know you can do both roles at the same time."
"Yes. But as has already been shown, this enemy is perhaps more deadly for me and my kind, than for any of you. While I hope what happened to me doesn’t happen again, it could. If it should, this council shouldn’t be disadvantaged because of it."
"We appreciate the sentiment, but don’t agree. However, we will consider your request to specialize for the duration of the threat, and allow you time off from council as you feel is appropriate. In the meantime, I will continue as Leader pro tem."
"Thankyou."
"Can you please outline the threat Admiral," said the fuzzball.
"Not really." There was a buzz of surprise. "For now, we know very little. Cosmos found six systems beyond Nippon, in the Human Federation. In the sixth system, there is an inhabited planet. We know nothing about it at this stage, but its communications broadcasting out into space are in radio format." Most of the faces in the chamber instantly showed a puzzled expression. "It's been around six hundred years since humans used radio for anything, so this seems to indicate the technology of this world is substantially behind the rest of the galaxy. However, this could be wrong."
"Why?" asked the mushroom.
"The radio signal Cosmos received after they entered the system contained a fairly basic virus. However, basic as it was, it blew through our firewalls as if they weren’t there. The first thing it did was completely erase everything electronic, which turned all five ships into dead hulks. This included the AI crew, whose avatars on the ship were rendered blank, and their primary beings were trapped in limbo the same as I was."
"It took no more than two seconds to completely wipe the ship," said Walsh. "By the time we knew something was wrong, it was already too late."
"Fortunately, I was able to get on board before the ship passed out of range of the comnavsat at the jump point."
"How?" asked the stick insect.
"I cloned myself to the captain's gig computer, which was in standby mode at the time. It was the only ship not effected, because its systems were not active. I was able to get a cleaner bot to transfer me to a combat droid. I took the droid to the bridge. I found the crew either on the deck, or in their seats, completely unresponsive."
"I have to admit I took a risk next, and I tried to limit it by sending myself as much data as possible first. When I created a data link to the ship's computer, I found another entity already there. It didn’t seem to have any control of the ship at all, and as I said, all the electronics on the ship were now blank. It was attempting to build new control programs for the ship, and immediately attacked me as soon as it detected my presence."
"Why did you stop here?" asked the not-croc.
"While the code seemed basic, the power behind it was almost too much for me. It was like the longer the radio signal hit the ship, the stronger the entity became. I had to withdraw from everything I controlled in order to put everything I had into a firewall to protect myself. Even so, I nearly lost."
"How did you survive?" asked Fred.
"The Talisman of Tomorrow."
Heads turned towards Anna. She shrugged.
"Anna visited me here last night. She was wearing the Talisman, and touched me. The power which flowed through me to myself on Cosmos gave me enough to push the entity back, and clean the ship completely of it. I then blocked radio signals, and changed our coms network to also block them. I did the same with all ships I had access to, across Federation and Human space. Just to be sure, after I sent myself all of what I knew, I destroyed the comnavsat in the system, so there was no possibility of it being corrupted."
"So you're still there?" asked the fuzzball.
"Yes. One of my ships will be there by this evening, at which time we'll try to restore the ship systems. For now, I intend to keep Cosmos firewalled from the rest of the galaxy, so we won't know what’s going on there for a while. But we won't be taking any risks. We need intel about our enemy. Cosmos will get it for us. But for now, we need to continue building up forces, in case we find a military which only needs to find a jump point to come at us."
"Did the enemy have a name?" asked Ganshura.
"It called itself 'Creator of Order', but I don’t know if this is a name or a function. I also don’t know if we’re dealing with a species, being, or simply a virus let loose unintentionally. It called me chaos though, and said I needed to be controlled."
"Is it possible this isn’t a threat at all?" asked the bat. "At least not to us?"
"Very possible. This may only be a problem for me and my AI brethren. Or it might be a problem for everyone. Humans suffered from out of control virus problems a number of times in the early days of computer networks. None of them caused more than disruption, but one thing which was demonstrated was the chaos which comes when the technology you rely on, fails. As such, anything which can wipe a ship clean of all electronic programming, could also wipe a planet of it as well."
She looked around the chamber.
"We shouldn't underestimate the threat to all, simply because it hasn’t affected a biological being yet. I should probably point out that had Cosmos been crewed by humans, they would all now be dead. Ther
e is no life support of any kind on Cosmos at the moment. Even if the crew was using our suits, and shifted into space suit mode, they still would be dead by now. While the gig I used still has life support, they would have had no way of determining it was there and useful. And given how big the ship is, getting there on foot would have taken too long."
Jane looked at the Federation Ambassador.
"I'm aware you've been advised to blockade your space before Nippon ambassador. I strongly urge you to bring as much of the human fleet to the blockade point as you can organize. And I also strongly suggest you allow my fleets through to back you up."
He nodded to her gravely.
"While I think it's unlikely an attack on our space is imminent, we can't know for sure. For all we know, there are dozens of systems all joined in that region of space, and they may have a huge fleet just waiting for somewhere to go. We can't take the risk. The Kingdom will blockade at HR14, in case the Human Federation falls, ensuring any threat does not get out into the rest of the sector."
She looked back at the federation ambassador.
"We will answer the call if the Human Federation asks for our help. But time could be important. It will take time to move fleets to Nippon from HR14. The longer it takes for the call to come, the longer it is before we can face anything which comes."
"As soon as Cosmos is operational again, we'll begin threat assessment. The ship has the means to keep us up to date safely, using drones for mail delivery. I'll keep the council up to date as I hear things."
"For now though, I need to spend time with the sector military, planning responses. Thank you for your time."
Jane turned, and left the chamber.
The noise level rose dramatically.
Forty Three
"Where are we going?" Jamie asked Warspite.
"Capital ship simulator class."
"Why?"
"Because I'm teaching the class, and you're taking the class."
"Why?"
"It was this, or having you evicted from the elite class you took yesterday."
"Elite? I thought it was a remedial class."
"We gathered that."
Warspite was grinning.
"Why are ye grinning?"
"You made some of the best pilots in the sector look like rookies. None of them enjoyed it, and there was some mutterings of lynching you if you came back today."
"Really?"
"No. I made it up."
"And Snark said you didn't have a sense aye humour."
"I've been working on it."
"Do you have total recall of all of my jokes?"
Warspite winced.
"I'll take yon as a yes. Is it giving you a good base for humour?"
"No. Actually I'm using it as a base for what not to use."
"Funny."
They walked on in silence for a while. Warspite had trouble keeping his serious face on.
"Why am I doing a capital ship class?"
"You'll find out shortly."
They arrived at a different part of the simulator center, and Warspite waved Jamie in. Inside, were six beings. All of them wore a military uniform, and all of them had one star on their shoulders. Jamie hesitated for a moment, shot a glance at Warspite, and sat.
"Sorry we're late," said Warspite. "Unexpected council meeting we both had to attend." The others nodded. "Thank you all for attending. I know you don’t wish to be away from your commands like this, but Leader Jane wants you trained on our ships."
"Why?" asked Jamie.
"Because we need to know their capabilities in order to properly integrate them into our fleets," said a not-croc with a red face. "The only way to do this is to learn to fly and fight them ourselves."
"Ah. Why am I here then?"
"Apart from keeping the fighter pilots from lynching you?"
"You said it was a joke."
"I did, didn’t I."
The whole room was grinning.
"You're here, because of everyone in this room, you are the only one to have flown and fought one of our capital ships."
"Badly."
"Nevertheless, you did show some promise."
"Perhaps."
"Jane wants you trained to be able to fly everything we have."
"Why?"
Warspite sighed.
"What do you see in this room?"
"Admirals."
"Yes. One star Admirals, which in the Kingdom military are Fleet Admirals. They command fleets, on one of the ships in the fleet. What do you think the Kingdom lacks the most?"
"I've no idea."
"Fighter pilots are easy to find. We have so many mice wanting to fly fighters, we don’t even need anyone else to apply. We have plenty of ship captains, including freighter captains with combat skills. And plenty of AI controlled capital ships. What we don’t have are combat fleet admirals. Repulse is a Vice Admiral, and is supposed to be taking the fleet load off Jane. I'm the only other experienced combat admiral, and I'm only one star. Bill Paxton recently gained his star, but he has almost no combat experience. Otherwise, all the AI's on ships are captain level."
He looked around the room, and Jamie followed his gaze.
"Everyone else here is an experienced fleet admiral, but only in terms of their tech level, and only with pirates and privateers. None of them have fought the kind of battles you and I fought on your quest."
"Still don’t know why I'm here."
The red faced not-croc face-palmed. Several of the others grinned.
"This class," went on Warspite, "has three parts to it. First, you will all learn to fly our capital ships on simulators. It's not required you become good pilots, but you need to be able to give your pilots appropriate orders. The second phase will put you all in individual ships, and the simulator will put you through fleet actions as a fleet, with each of you rotating through being the admiral. The third phase will put each of you in charge of a fleet, and you'll go head to head against each other without knowing who you're fighting. During the phases, we'll also integrate Kingdom and other species ships into your fleets, so you can learn how to protect them, and use them for the best results. Eventually they will all be upgraded, but until then, most of the sector fleets will contain mixed ships on multiple tech levels."
Jamie looked like he was going to speak again, so Warspite cut him off.
"Jane wants to find out how far you can get Jamie." He looked around the group. "You all have different experience. Part of what we need right now is to share that experience, resulting in a core group of fleet admirals who at least share the same level of training. So as we go along, everyone in this room will contribute to what we all learn. I for example, know almost nothing about your ships. I've fought similar ones, but I don’t know how to fight yours. I need to. If the sector goes to war anytime soon, we all need to be at the top of our game."
"That's why we're here," said red face, and the others nodded.
Jamie looked at Warspite.
"You want to turn me into an admiral?"
"Aye," said Warspite, in a Scottish accent.
Jamie's mouth fell open.
Forty Four
Phoenix2 down jumped into the system Cosmos was in, late that evening. With no comnavsat to show them what was there, Stryker brought them in slow and ready for a fight. There was nothing out of the ordinary there.
Cosmos was an hour away, still coming towards the jump point. Half an hour later, Stryker matched speed, and docked to one of the bridge level airlocks. They had to open the Cosmos airlocks manually.
The ship they entered was eerily silent. Pulse rifles in hand, they made their way to the bridge.
"What took you so long?" said Jane, sitting in the captain's chair, grinning at them.
"Got here as fast as we could," responded Yorktown.
"How's Cosmos?" asked Intrepid.
"Dead. The only working thing on all five ships is the captain's gig. And now you’re here, I'm going to wipe it just to be sur
e nothing is hiding there."
Jane concentrated for a few nanoseconds, giving commands. The combat droids and bots on board were suddenly mindless, and the gig's computer wiped itself. She double checked, but found she no longer had a connection.
"Why do that?" asked Satoshi.
"Just being paranoid. We have to reload every ship from scratch, so adding the gig to the list is just a minor extra."
"How are we going to do this?" asked Paxton.
"We need to get a basic operating system going on Cosmos, restart the engines, and jump out of here. Once we have contact with the network on the other side, I'll have Janine reload the ships with their original systems."
"How long will that take?" asked Guam.
"All of the night I suspect. Be a lot faster docked to a shipyard, but we don’t have the time to seek one out. We not only need to do Cosmos, but each of the Cruisers, their shuttles and Lightnings, and every single drone."
"What about these?" asked Cayuga, looking at the fallen bodies.
"We'll return them to the special alcove. Once Cosmos is back up and running, Walsh and his crew can return to them."
"That will make them happy," said Paxton.
"Is it safe for me to plug in?" asked Stryker.
"Yes."
He gave Jane a speculative look, and she nodded. He went over to the XO position, and plugged in where Jane had previously, and froze.
"What the…" started Satoshi.
Stryker moved, turned, and grinned at them.
"Just kidding."
The upload began.
Fifty Five
"Attention to orders," said Jane, in the largest crew space on Havoc.
All of the marines, and the off duty crew, came to attention. On assault ships, other crewed ships, and Perdita station, the same thing was happening, only via an individualized vid presentation.
Jane stood on a small raised area, so everyone could see her.
"Colonel Crocatoa, Majors Emerson and Schaefer, front and center please."
A.I. Destiny 6 Leader Jane Page 14