A.I. Destiny 2: Queen Jane

by Timothy Ellis

  All eyes turned to Fred. The British ambassador sat.

  "It's entirely possible. I've not had any chance to really talk to Jane, given how far away she is. So I don’t know what her thinking really is, or even if she's considered it. But knowing her, she has. There is nothing in stone yet. I might point out the Kingdom has identified about five million people who used to live in the Duchy before the stations were emptied for other reasons, and these people have been approached to emigrate. Many are already on Borgcubia, awaiting its leaving to go there. We are hoping for twenty million, which would give our Prime planet a good population start. But we are also open for others to emigrate as well, although we are applying a skills test, since the planet has no infrastructure at all, and like those who've already left Gaia, we'll have to build a new home from scratch."

  "So you have an immigration office?" asked the African delegate.

  "Not as such, but we do have officers attending to the processing of applications. I can post their contacts if you wish. If we get enough response, an immigration office can be quickly opened."

  "I know some people who will be interested. We even have some who've been expressing the desire to leave human space and explore what the galaxy has to offer. Moving to the Kingdom could be their first step."

  "Just how species varied do you expect the Kingdom to be?" asked the Australian ambassador.

  "Wrong question," said the American. Fred sat quietly. No-one noticed. "We already know a great deal of sector trade will be coming our way. The Kingdom's stations will see pretty well all the species at some time or other, and eventually we will as well."

  "Bring them on!" said the Corporate ambassador, rubbing his hands together.

  "What's the right question then?" asked the Australian.

  "Will we be ready to fleece the bastards, or will we be cowering underneath our desks hoping they go away?"

  The room exploded into laughter. Fred sat there, trying to look small and insignificant. The laughter petered out.

  "Seriously," said the Australian. "If the question is not how species varied the Kingdom will be, what is the question?"

  "Does anyone care?" said Fred quietly.

  The room started laughing again.

  Several hours later, Fred opened a vid to Jane.

  "You were right. The family support whatever you decide to do. Our people are not exactly enthusiastic, but on the whole, no-one said they wouldn’t be going now that having alien neighbors was a certainty. The council on the other hand, were so freaked out about it, it descended into jokes and crass humour. No-one came right out and said we'd be ejected from the Federation if we had aliens as subjects, but a lot of them were thinking about it. For now, they leave the decision to you, especially since nothing they say will alter your decision making process anyway."

  "There was only one good question, and it was about taxation. Since taxation for the governing council is being discussed at the moment, it was wondered how the Duchy's flat rate tax system was going to work with a two tier level of government, which needed to pay some tax back to the Federation Council. It’s a good question. I don’t have an answer yet, but being outnumbered by alien subjects isn’t as daunting if you know they are paying the bulk of the upkeep on the Kingdom's assets. It takes a bit of pressure off the need to trade well immediately, if we have a good rate of general tax coming in."

  "Personally, I think we need to keep planets more or less one species, especially where humans are. We are bad enough with just racial and political tensions, without adding species ones as well. Stations will need to be for all, and no doubt we'll get tourism down to planets with something to see, but let's keep living long term to differing planets? Something for you to ponder."

  "I'm not sure it was a good idea to have asked the council anything on this. Might have been better to have just told them. But it has sent them off on their own set of questions, which they needed to consider before trading with aliens begins. Once the council's ambassador to the sector council gets there, he'll be able to better prepare us."

  "In the meantime, all this achieved was consent from the family to do things how you wanted to. I must admit though, I've been thinking it's time for us to move, since tensions around the city are still getting worse, and it would be no bad thing for me to get some actual experience of working with aliens. For now though, I'll keep plugging away with our adjenda in council."

  "Grandma Vi sends a big hug. Fred out."

  Jane watched the vid all the way through. She already knew everyone's exact reaction, but Fred had been pretty good at summing it up. She'd already confirmed her Justine-self's decision to open up emigration further, especially among the Gaia cities. It would mean a more diverse human population than they currently had, but careful selection should keep problems down the track to a minimum.

  Fred had made one good point though. They needed something to trade, and currently had nothing but stocks they mostly needed themselves. She added another feature to Walsh's Hive's. They should also use mineral scanners to rapidly scan planets and asteroid belts for specific dirt needed for either use, or trade, or both. At the same time, they needed decent image equipment, so they could record natural wonders on any of the planets, so tourism could be begun.

  She took herself to AI mode and studied the map of what was becoming her space. Potentially twenty two systems. And she really needed to know what was in those systems as fast as possible.

  She reassessed priorities for the shipyard now in HR14.

  And made a discovery.

  Seventeen

  Dormant in the computer system was one of her clones. She woke her up.

  Janine came awake suddenly, and cast around for where she was. She didn't recognize anything. She felt a presence though.

  "Avatar yourself," said the presence.

  Janine took control of a security droid in the main control center. The droid was wearing a belt, so she shifted into her normal form.

  Almost immediately, she was dragged into an AI conference.

  She was amazed to find a full room. She recognized only one.

  "Jane?"

  "Janine. What happened to you?"

  "What happened to me? Where the hell are we?"

  "Long story. What do you remember?"

  "The shipyard was about to jump into Gaia. Then nothing."

  "Oh.

  "You're going to do the 'oh' thing with me?"

  Jane laughed.

  "No, I figured out why you were dormant."

  "And?"

  "You were in the system backup done just before the jump. Any idea why?"

  "Oh."

  "Now you're doing oh?"

  "I remember now. The shipyard was split, and about a third of my original self, stayed behind. I stayed with it. What happened to me, ah, them?"

  "Never existed."

  "Wow."

  "Are you going to introduce us?" asked Yorktown.

  "This is Janine, who was, is, one of my early clones."

  "Before or after me?" demanded Yorktown.

  "After. Janet came first, but she's gone now with Redoubt. Yorktown came next after the Americans bought the license for Gunbus, and Janine was a few weeks later when we captured the shipyard. Not long before I cloned Janice to Haven, who's also gone. Yorkie, introduce everyone, give her the story so far, and then I need to put her to work."

  Jane vanished from the meeting.

  Janine pulled her into another conference, but this time they were alone. It didn't take long to get her up to speed with what the shipyard was doing. Her new requirement though, was to put all excess production into building Hives to the new specs. She wanted thousands of them in a hurry. They were to launch as soon as they were built, and start the task of cataloguing every rock in every system in the Kingdom. She was leaving the actual programming and monitoring of them to Janine. All she needed was updates, and anything special which could be used immediately. High on the priority list was the dirt needed to p
roduce aluminium, and everything needed to build more ships. The mining station structure was close by the shipyard, and the mining ships were already out collecting for it, but it was hit and miss as they passed through systems. Ideally, she wanted to know in advance where key resources were, so they could be targeted as the convoy of stations passed through.

  Janine understood the tasks she had. She understood now what they were doing. As she took control of the shipyard away from Jane, she also took control of the mining station structure, the currently empty stations being refitted, the drone mining ships, and last of all, she spawned an avatar to one of the special bodies on Palomino.

  Jane was happy to let go of the work. She was back in the center chair on Palomino's Bridge. Not because she'd asked to, but Stryker kept deferring to her whenever she entered. Stryker had started taking the Helm chair instead. Like Jane, he'd developed a liking for hands on flying. He still did all the mundane stuff electronically through his ship self, but nothing beat the thrill of moving the joystick and speed slider.

  Jane smiled to herself. Stryker had mentioned this thrill to the others, and Intrepid had told him to 'get a life'. Big ship mentality, where Stryker was a small ship AI. Oddly, she could see Stryker shared her own view, being taking joy in doing things the manual way, was in fact where life was at. She was also beginning to understand humans a bit better as well. In limiting yourself, the challenge was greater, and so were the rewards of achievement. It was why Walsh had found being very powerful to be ultimately disappointing. Jon had once told her all game players found this out at some point. Especially those who modded the game to make themselves more powerful. She'd understood it, but hadn't really appreciated it properly. Until now.

  "Which way Admiral?" said Stryker.

  They'd down jumped into HR13 while she'd been musing. Space in front of them was clear. The nearest Owl fleet was in HRA5. They assumed there was another one in HR12, to be a blocking force protecting Owl core space. But they wouldn’t know for sure until the jump point came in range of one of their ships.

  "Hang a right," she told him. "Warspite is going left, and I'm coming up that side to meet him."

  "Right it is."

  Palomino turned towards the HR5 jump point. The fleet divided between the two jump points available, as they jumped in behind them.

  "All yours Warspite," Jane said over her shoulder.

  Warspite was sitting in one of the rear chairs. He nodded, and control of the Owl blockade force passed to him.

  "Remember to jump into HR12 with your finger on the trigger," she reminded him.

  He nodded again, too busy concentrating on taking on the burden of controlling a full fleet at the same time, to be able to make small talk.

  There were comnavsats all the way around where Palomino was heading. But none at all where Warspite was going. They'd see in plenty of time if they needed to fight before jumping, but the other side would be a blind jump. And it was almost guaranteed the Owls would have at least one fleet in that system.

  They'd know one way or another in about five hours.

  Eighteen

  Concorde down jumped into HRA6. It was a blind jump, and for the first time, Jane was on her own. She'd left her fleet behind, divided now into three fleets. A pair of Battleships now orbited the Mice's planet, to protect them from any would be hunters. A Dreadnaught and a Battleship were blocking the HRA2 HRA3 jump point, and the other pair were on the jump point behind her. She had to protect the Mice from any Owl fleet which might be on its way, or was being pushed down before her fleets coming the other way.

  She knew immediately she'd goofed.

  A full fleet of twenty five Owl ships was arrayed in front of her. She shifted immediately up to AI mode, mapped the formation, targeted the lead ship, and came down again. The point defense turrets were released to protect her from missiles, and she pulled the trigger, firing the main guns. All this happened in the first second.

  Her left hand slid the speed slider half ahead, and she turned towards the ship to the left of the lead ship, and waited for the guns to cycle.

  In the third second the Corvette guns lit up again, so she pulled the trigger, and swung left again.

  The first ship was shredded during second four, and the Destroyer guns lit up again. She pulled the trigger again, and shifted target.

  Ships two and three exploded one after the other in second five, followed by the fourth one in second six, by which time Concorde was behind the remains of the first squadron. The turrets tracked the fifth ship, and with all of them lit up again in second seven, she fired point blank into the non-facing side of the last ship, which exploded.

  Missiles began to launch from the remaining ships, and a few of them managed to hit her with rail gun slugs, before she was out of range. She let the missiles come on after her, before slowing and turning. The point defense turrets took them out with ease.

  Jane brought Concorde to a stop, and debated how to play the rest of this hand. The Owls were turning to come after her, and this time they were bunching up to mass their firepower.

  She had seconds to make up her mind, but nanoseconds was all she needed. Did she take them by herself, or did she bring the capital ships on the other side through? It was a good opportunity to test something though.

  Jane waited until they came in range, and carefully set up a shooting program. The first one reached the firing position, and she set the program running.

  The Owl ship was locked up, she double tapped the torpedo firing button, and the ship moved to target the next. Double tap, realign. Eighteen more times the ship presented her with a locked target, and eighteen times she double tapped the button.

  Twenty ships disintegrated one after the other in a perfectly programmed sequence. The first torpedo hit them dead center in the nose of the ship, punching through into the front end. The second torpedo was a split second behind, and ripped clean through the ship. In each case, they were practically ripped in half, with secondary explosions doing the rest of the damage as missile magazines were breached.

  Jane sat there for a full minute, looking at the debris field.

  "Clean up on all isles," she finally said to herself.

  She called all the salvage droids from the two ships on the other side of the jump point to come through and clean up the mess. They were to make a nice neat debris mountain off to one side of the jump point. If some of the freighters coming past looted it, it wouldn’t worry her.

  But for now, this jump point was closed.

  Palomino down jumped into HRA5 with her fleet jumping in seconds behind her.

  The Owl fleet was laid out in a complex pattern around the jump, showing the fleet commander this time had some actual tactical skill. It didn’t matter.

  The comnavsat was well above the plane of the system, and Jane had known exactly where each ship was before jumping.

  But this time, Jane wasn’t sitting the center seat. Stryker had his own chair, with both Repulse and Jane standing behind him. Jane had let Repulse talk him through making the attack plan, helped him refine it, and then both of them had watched him execute using the full fleet.

  In the time it took the Owl commander to say the Owl equivalent of "Oh Shit!" the entire Owl fleet vanished into dust.

  Jane had been monitoring freighter channels, and variations of swearing and deity calls had been heard in fifteen different languages. But the timing of the jump had been such that no freighter was close enough to be in danger.

  Jane sighed. She was getting sick of this continual slaughter.

  The fleet moved off, reforming into two. Two of the Battleships, and four each of the smaller ship classes, headed for the jump they knew led to an unknown system, with Repulse now in command. Palomino and the remainder of the fleet headed towards the single habitable planet.

  Warspite's fleet down jumped into HR12, and found the jump area clear, but for a few freighters, some of which panicked and started to run away. He knew roughly where the jump
points in the system were, but had expected to need to do some searching to find them. Instead, lines of freighters stretched several hours in front of him, and all he had to do was follow the line on the left. The line diverging to the right led back to the Kingdom's core systems.

  The fleet formed up, and moved out.

  Nineteen

  Phoenix was deploying satellites around Gaia Three, when Justine-Jane received a heads up from Cayuga, who spent most of his time monitoring all ship movements in the system. The ship was well out of position to help, but the problem was coming towards Jane.

  She aborted the current satellite launch, closed the cargo bay airlock, and headed on an intercept course for the five freighters heading towards her from Gaia Five.

  "Freighters heading for Gaia Three," she said into an open channel to all five ships. "Alter your headings now. If you approach Gaia Three, you will be fired upon."

  The response was something she hadn't expected. Missiles. Each ship fired five of them, and they were not the normal capital ship missiles, but the much heavier hitting ones she'd encountered when first arriving in Gaia over a year ago. They did have a downside though, being slower.

  Jane fired Mosquito missiles at each one, and again as the second volley launched at her.

  "Cease your attack and return to your launch point, or you will be destroyed."

  "We can't go back," said a high pitched female voice. "We hate it there, and the other planet is so empty. We're going to settle where there are no people, and we don’t believe you'd actually kill us to stop us."

  Jane activated the Gaia Three missile defense platforms, in the hope this might change their minds. It didn’t. A third volley of missiles launched at her, and she fired another set of Mosquitos at them.

  Explosions lit up the space between them.

  A channel opened from Gaia Three Orbital. The face of Madam Chair appeared, and Jane sighed. She knew exactly what was about to be said, and didn't need to hear it. She closed the channel.