And most of all, she wanted to know if there was a back door to this area of space, one Walsh had missed somehow from the other side. She had Serenity looking again from the potentially other end of this space. It was too big an area to have but a single entrance point.
For now, some force knew she existed, although without knowing who or what she was, or even where she was. She wanted to keep it this way as long as possible, so when the next confrontation came, Jane knew everything there was to know about this area of space.
She knew it was going to take time, but it would be time well spent. Besides, the longer it was before the next confrontation, the more likely she'd have her forces in position to blockade the area properly, in case it went pear shaped.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, and on that basis, Jane was planning to make sure her ducks were in a row before it happened.
Fifty Seven
Seasprite found Yorktown and Intrepid orbiting HR14.
"Permission to come aboard," said Yorktown, on a popup screen.
"Granted," said Snark.
The screen vanished, and Snark heard footsteps at the back of the bridge. Two men walked in, and took seats facing Snark. Seasprite was curled up on the XO's chair, grinning at Snark.
"Yorktown," said one of them.
"Intrepid," said the other.
"Mop heads!" said Snark, causing everyone to laugh.
Snark looked at both of them, and over at his ship AI.
"You’re both AI's I take it? Like Warspite?"
The two looked at each other, grinning.
"Not like Warspite," said Yorktown.
"We're from American origins," said Intrepid. "He's British."
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
"Maybe not," said Seasprite. "But the difference is significant."
Snark looked at all three of them again.
"What can I do you for?"
Both of them laughed. Seasprite took a moment to get it, and laughed too. Snark waited impatiently for them to get serious.
"We have an idea for getting our ships into Federation space without them knowing," said Yorktown.
"How?" asked Snark.
They told him.
It took a while to set up, but it also took a while for Snark to seek and be granted permission to enter the Federation. He had to submit proof the ship hadn't been modified significantly from their existing records from before it left Gaia. It had been modernized a lot, but not significantly changed.
He also had to submit paperwork proving he was entering for trade purposes. The Japanese ambassador, after a request from Jane's Meg avatar, was happy to submit proof Snark was bringing them a load of coffee. As it happened, his cargo bay was full of coffee, but it had been going homewards, not danger-wards.
The inspection by a member of the Federation embassy on HR14 was perfunctory, and Snark was ready to go.
He headed for the jump point into G036. Half way there, a fleet was waiting for him.
Snark had ridden Concorde's Ride, but he thought this was ridiculous.
The two Behemoth Carriers were docked side by side, and connected solidly into a single ship. Underneath, four Cruisers were docked at the rear, spaced across the width of both ships.
"You have got to be kidding me," snarled Snark.
"They're not kidding," said Seasprite.
The two Carrier drivers, avatars still on board, grinned.
"Do you know where we go?"
"Watch."
Seasprite carefully flew up towards the top side of the combined ship, and slowly angled down to land carefully on a specially created landing platform in the exact middle of the width of the ships, straddling both of them. Her engine nozzles were precisely aligned with the Carriers, which placed her right on the back end of the ships. More than normal docking clamps locked her down, these ones being designed for extreme load bearing.
"We are locked in," said Seasprite.
Cam drones launched from Yorktown, and started sending vid from all directions around the strange hybrid ship.
"Let's do it," said Intrepid.
Snark blinked, and suddenly all he could see was his own ship. The cams, all looking in different directions, showed Seasprite, and nothing else. Even the docking clamps had vanished.
"How?" gasped Snark.
"Observe," said Yorktown.
Another screen popped up, and in extreme slow motion, Snark saw what looked like a belt suit become visible around the width of both ships, and it slowly shifted to cover both Carriers, and the Cruisers underneath.
Snark's mouth fell open.
"You can do that?"
"Obviously," said Yorktown.
"How?"
"Admittedly," said Intrepid, "with a lot of difficulty. This has been done before, but with a smaller ship and a great deal more powerful energy source. Every little bit of power from both Carriers is going into the ship suit, and keeping it set to chameleon mode. Every fighter on board both Carriers is hooked up to provide basic ship power and life support, along with one of the Cruisers."
"And the other Cruisers?"
"Along with Seasprite," said Yorktown, "they're our engines. But when we go through the jump point and for a ways beyond, only Seasprite will be providing propulsion."
"And you expect to be able move like that?"
"Not fast," said Seasprite, "but fast enough to not cause eyebrows to go up."
"You're fucking crazy!"
"Pay up," said Yorktown, grinning at Intrepid.
Intrepid ignored him.
The vids at the rear end changed, as the ship suit changed to allow the Cruiser engines to work. He looked at Seasprite.
"All yours puss."
The tip of Seasprite's tail began to flick back and forth rapidly, but four ship engines came on, a set of engine readouts popped up for each ship, and the strange combined ship began to move forward. Its speed increased slowly, and with the four of them glued to the readouts, was soon up to the normal speed for human merchant ships.
"That’s as fast as we get," said Seasprite.
"Better than I hoped for," said Intrepid.
"We'll lose most of it going through the jump," said Snark.
"It'll be fine," said Yorktown.
Snark looked at him suspiciously, but said no more.
It took them a lot longer to get to the jump point than normal for military ships, and with some luck allowing them to leave the engines on until just before jumping, where after the Cruiser engines shut down, the jump was done with a reasonable momentum.
On the other side, with their speed very slowly dropping off even though Seasprite's engines were red lining badly, Seasprite suddenly looked worried.
"I think you forgot something," she said. "How the hell do I turn this massive monstrosity with only Destroyer maneuvering jets?"
"Oops," said Yorktown. "Do your best."
Seasprite channeled all of the secondary thrust into the front right thrusters, and the ship slowly began to come around to the left. A channel opened from the nearby station.
"You ok there Seasprite? You're looking a bit sluggish."
"Sudden thruster malfunction," said Snark immediately. "Repair droids are on it. I've just come from owl space, and I bet they did some subtle sabotage while I was on the surface."
"No bet Seasprite. We've heard that one a lot lately. Safe journey."
The channel closed.
"Nice improv," said Yorktown.
Snark gave him a stern look, but kept his mouth shut. The cam showing the docking clamps occupied his attention. He figured it was going to be a close thing on if they turned properly, or the clamps snapped from the strain. As it happened, while there was some minor buckling, the combined ship completed its turn.
A half hour later, well out of sight of the station and the nearest freighter, they lit off the Cruiser engines again. Their speed picked up.
"I'll be in my quarters," snarled Snark, as he jumped down
and padded out, tail held high.
Inside his quarters, he spent some time sharpening his claws, using the scratch pole to vent his not considerable frustration at being used this way. After enough time, he sought out his cat bed, and was soon asleep.
He dreamed of invisible cats bombing him as he tried to rest, being unable to see them except when they landed on him.
His tail flicked rapidly.
Fifty Eight
A week passed.
Ships moved. Fleets came together. Cosmos and her sub-units continued to explore. Jane kept the council up to date by drone relays, as new systems were discovered. Nothing untoward happened, although no risks were taken. Habitable planets were found, but nothing was done to even find out if there was intelligent life on any of them.
Havoc and her fleet met up with Concorde, and Concorde's Ride. Jane created another avatar on Concorde, and docked the ship in its usual Dreadnaught hanger. She took control of all of the Ride ships back from Repulse. Repulse, Warspite, their escorts, and a dozen Pocket Battleships joined the fleet a few at a time, along with several more Assault Cruisers. The combined fleet headed out through bat space, aiming to meet up with Serenity, who as well as her AMS Drone Cruiser, now had three trader Cruisers like Tranquil did, the four ships and five hundred drones, following the edge of known space, looking for the all too elusive back door into the newly found edge space.
Seasprite finally made it to the system after Nippon, now being called Honshu. All of the Japanese stations were now in orbit of the habitable world, and city construction on the surface had already begun.
It had taken the combined ship two days longer than expected to get there, mainly due to having to turn off the Cruiser engines regularly, to avoid detection by freighters, and what system defenses existed at jump points. The one thing about being cloaked was they could do nothing with the engine emissions, so when any ship was close enough to detect them, only Seasprite's engines were there to detect. They avoided the habitable planets, going as direct as possible between jump points, and while Federation fleet units were not that common, every system now had fighters at the jump points, keeping things orderly.
Snark had been surprised to find the fighters were not Excaliburs. The database listed them as Privateer Heavy Fighters, and while they varied in names and loadouts, none of them could go head to head with an Excalibur and survive. He voiced the question about why, and Yorktown filled him in, explaining all the existing Excaliburs had AI's, and were either Jane, Yorktown, or Intrepid, depending on where they were based. As such, they all joined the Kingdom when the break was made. The Federation had fallen back on its own outdated designs to fill the gap, since they needed system police more than military fighters, and only the Privateer designs could stay at jump points for long periods. He also pointed out most of them were mercenaries with police licenses.
They'd had some scares along the way, especially when traffic was heavy. Several ships had come within a whisker of colliding with something they couldn’t see, but Snark had made them veer off through sheer snarkiness over the coms.
Seasprite undocked near planet Honshu, and actually delivered its load of coffee to one of the main stations. While a minor delay, it was necessary to complete their cover, knowing that delivery confirmation would get back to border security in G036. Snark covered the next part of their journey, by taking a mercenary mission for the Japanese fleet, which required them to scout out the next two systems.
The Japanese still only had Corvettes in their fleet, and while technically Super-Corvettes, Seasprite was still a bigger and more heavily armed ship than any of them. So it made sense for them to recruit Snark to add to their blockade fleet.
At the jump point out into the new systems, they came across Dodgers, who was the only Excalibur there, and while technically under the command of the Japanese admiral, was actually bored, and desperately wanting to get out and spread her wings a little.
Snark had Dodgers dock nose into one of Seasprite's side airlocks. Doing this manually while the ship didn’t slow down was not her idea of fun, and she intended to berate Snark for making it so dangerous. She actually flew the distance from the airlock to the bridge, only landing just before the door. Her waddle in came to an abrupt halt, as soon as she saw the two humans sitting in the front seats. Snark beckoned her in, and introduced her to the AI's.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"Wait," said Snark.
Seasprite jumped. There was nothing on the other side, as they'd known there wasn't. The cloak ended, and Dodgers gasped, as the Carriers became visible.
"How?" she asked.
Yorktown explained it to her, at the same time all of the ship's engines now came on, and the combined ship powered away from the jump point at a substantially increased speed.
"Why did you make me perform so dangerous a docking?" she finally asked Snark.
"Dangerous? Why would it have been? Didn’t your AI do it?"
"What AI? I've been on a factory reset basic computer for weeks now."
"Oops," said Yorktown. "Sorry, we missed you. You heard about us AI's?"
"Yes. That bit of news dominated all the media for days. I couldn't escape it. What of it?"
"Jane was the AI on your ship. When she went down, so did your ship computer. You did that docking manually?"
"How else?"
"Wow!" said Yorktown, and Intrepid together. "But you should have said. We didn’t want to slow down, given we were on one Destroyer engine at the time, but we would have."
"It's done. What's the plan now?"
"We get out of the range of the comnavsat back at the jump point," said Intrepid, "and we'll separate there. The Japs are only getting the nav feed for that one comnavsat, so they'll get warning if anything comes at them. They'll have only seen one dot proceeding in-system, so no-one will know we're here. Once separated, we'll proceed as a fleet to the jump point inside the danger system, and contact Jane from there. If nothing else, it'll put two fleets on either end of this space, giving us a pincer if we need it."
"In the meantime," said Yorktown, "would you like one of us to upgrade your ship computer and install an AI for you? It can be a unique clone with its own personality if you like. You can even have it use a duck form if it makes you feel more comfortable."
"I'll think about it," responded Dodgers. "You do the computer upgrade, but let me ponder the AI."
"No problems," said Yorktown. "I'll get right on it. When we separate, you can get the ship to dock in Seasprite's hanger if you want."
"Is my room still here?" she asked Seasprite.
"Sure is. There's nothing to see here for a while, so why don’t you move your stuff over, and make yourself comfortable?"
"I will."
Dodgers left the bridge, and flew back to her ship. It was going to be a relief to have somewhere to fly around in. While she loved her Excalibur, she had anticipated being docked at stations more. So the space on Seasprite was most welcome.
Fifty Nine
"This makes no sense at all," said Jane.
Cosmos was stopped, at the end of a double corridor of star systems. They'd discovered twelve new systems, six of them with habitable planets, and several others terraformable. They had not however, found the expected jump point joining the corridor to the rest of the galaxy at this end. Thousands of drones formed a net around the entire system, but they'd only found the one jump point used to arrive here.
"What do you want to do?" asked Walsh.
He'd used all his experience to find the expected jump point, but to no avail. If there was one here, it was in a completely non-standard position.
"Let's take another look at the map," said Jane.
She jumped up, and stalked off the bridge. Walsh followed, leaving Stryker at the helm. Darleen joined them in a large room set up specifically for map viewing.
"Show me the new systems," said Jane.
Walsh pulled up the navmap for the area, starting at Nippon
. It expanded out into a three dee representation of space, showing the eighteen new systems, ending where they currently were. On each system, the jump points were highlighted.
Jane walked in near Nippon, and walked the jump points to each system. The map moved as she did, orienting the center upon where she was, moving up and down, side to side, as she moved to each system. She arrived back where a small dot showed the position of Cosmos.
"Show me the whole of this end of the galaxy, top down, against the wall."
Something like ten sectors appeared in detail, four of them with most of the jump lines marked in. The rest of the galaxy was drawn in with no detail, just filling in the space to show where what was known was in relation to the rest. The galaxy was basically a cloud. Where the Earth galaxy was a spiral around a core, this one was a big blob in space.
Jane walked over to it, and flipped it over, so she saw it in cross section instead. From this view, it looked very like the classic flying saucer shape from old Earth pre-space days. She twirled it to bring their end of the galaxy to the front. And zoomed it to see where this area of space was in relation to the space they knew.
"Oh," she said.
"What?" asked Darlene.
"On the main map, add in sectors ten and eleven."
She turned around to view the main map, as it zoomed out to show more space.
"Ah," she said cryptically.
"What do you see?" asked Walsh.
"The problem with looking at things in a two dee representation, even when doing it in three dee presentation."
"Huh?"
Jane grinned.
"Look here." She pointed to the system they were in. "And here." She pointed to a system underneath it, down the Z axis when looking at the third dimension.
"Not seeing it."
Jane rotated the main map slowly. As she did so, the two systems, now highlighted, became one.
"How did you do that?"
"Easily."
Darlene started laughing. Her husband gave her a nasty look.
A.I. Destiny 6 Leader Jane Page 16