"Hopefully."
I looked at her. When an AI isn’t sure, you're probably asking for too much.
"Make it happen."
"Confirmed."
I went back to bed, as Aline rose to get ready for training. Angel cuddled in.
Forty
"Merry Christmas Jon," said Aline, after kissing me awake two days later.
My mind was on the inevitable battle tomorrow, even seconds after waking up. It took me a moment to shift gears.
"It's Christmas?"
"Would I be wishing you a merry one if it wasn’t?"
"Let me think about that."
She playfully swatted me, and resumed kissing. I let it go on for a good while. We normally bonked before sleep, so it was different to have it initiated first thing in the morning. Morning was training time.
"Aren't you going to training? Or whatever it is you lot are doing?" I finally asked, when Aline was forced to come up for air.
"It's Christmas."
I guessed that explained it. Kissing became full on bonking. The post bonk shower became another bonk. The post bonk shower bonk became a spa bonk. Finally, breakfast well and truly missed by now, we moved back into the shower, and this time emerged with getting dressed as the objective.
Aline took herself off with a smile and a wave, and I headed to my Ready Room on Redoubt.
"What's going on Jane?"
"Going on?"
"I'm reliably informed it's Christmas."
"Is it?"
I could hear eyelids fluttering in her voice.
"Please tell me you're not making a big deal out of it like last year."
"I didn't do anything last year. Santa did."
"Please tell me Santa isn’t making a big deal out it this year."
"Santa isn’t making a big deal out of it this year."
"Good."
"As far as I know."
"As far as you know?"
"I'm not exactly on his need to know list."
"You're not?"
"Why would I be?"
Why indeed.
"So there's no Christmas decorations going up anywhere?"
"Not that I know of."
"Would you tell me if there was?"
"Of course I would. Unless I was ordered not to."
"Who could do that?"
"Well, you could."
"And why would I do that?"
"Honestly Jon, if you don’t know your own mind, how am I supposed to?"
I sighed. She was enjoying this way too much.
"Merry Christmas Jon," pinged my mother. "Are you coming over for lunch?"
"Christmas?" I pinged back. "Since when do we do Christmas?"
"Since we're out in the rest of the galaxy which does do it, and could be dead tomorrow."
I sighed again.
"What time do you want me?"
"Noon is fine. Bring Aline and Jane."
"See you then."
"Galactica will be docked by then," pinged my Dad. "So bring your cat as well. And wear civvies."
"Will do."
My parents wanted to do Christmas? What was the cosmos coming to?
"Do you want to do lunch on Galactica with my parents?" I pinged Aline.
"Wouldn’t miss it," she pinged back.
"Jane?"
"It’s a date."
That one threw me.
"A date-date? Us?"
"No Jon. A lunch date."
"Oh."
What was it with Christmas day? I never felt in control on them. Mind you, this was only my second, but this one seemed to be running out of control already, almost as fast as last year's had.
"Is anyone doing presents?"
"Not that I know of."
"Unless you've been told not to tell me."
"Exactly."
"Remind me if I told you not to tell me again?"
"I've no idea what you're talking about."
"Good."
Damnit. Now I’d have to start thinking about presents for everyone. Last year everyone thought I’d given them a lot of cool stuff. I hadn't. Jane swore she hadn't, that Santa had, but I knew she knew I knew she'd been the one. Which meant I hadn't given anyone any presents last year. So no-one would expect any this year. Only it didn’t mean that since everyone thought I had. Damnit.
Miriam walked in. She threw something to the ceiling over my head, and proceeded to clean my tonsils. When I started breathing again a few minutes later, she was gone.
"Merry Christmas Jon," she pinged as she walked away.
"What the hell?" I muttered.
"Mistletoe."
"Mistle-what?"
"It’s a plant, which grows on ceilings during Christmas festivities."
"Huh?"
"It’s a tradition dating back a long way. Anyone under Mistletoe is fair game to be kissed, and kissing under the mistletoe isn’t considered cheating on your partner."
My head started shaking from side to side. I wasn’t keeping up.
"Kissing plant on the ceiling?"
"Look up."
I did. There was a plant on the ceiling.
"How did…? Never mind."
Susan Bentley walked in. She cast a glance above me, and started grinning. She sat in the chair opposite me.
"What can I do for you Admiral?" I asked her.
"Permission for a shindig this evening on the station."
"Shindig?"
"You do know it's Christmas?"
"Apparently."
"Well the British troops would like to have a party on the station. Any problems with that?"
"Aren't they on Morocco?"
"Yes, but they can be here in time, and back there by morning. The evacuation is proceeding, with most people still being taken to their stations. The really hard work hasn’t started yet, especially since the main leaders don’t yet want to admit it's really necessary."
I sighed. We'd know tomorrow.
"Any problems Jane?"
"Why would there be problems?"
"Well there might be other groups already planning on using the facilities?"
"Not that I know of."
"Or would tell me?"
"Or would tell you if I was ordered by you not to tell you."
Susan looked a question mark at me.
"It's not translatable."
She grinned wider than she already was.
"Permission granted."
"You'll drop by yourself sir?"
"If I'm welcome, sure."
"It's expected."
"What is?"
"Senior officers dropping by."
Jane actually laughed for a few seconds and stifled it.
"What am I missing?"
"Nothing important. See you there sir. Eighteen hundred hours?"
"I'll be there."
"I'll make sure he is," added Jane.
Susan took herself off, still grinning.
"What was all that about?"
"Nothing I'm aware of."
I sighed again.
Annabelle came in. She glanced up, smiled, leaned over and pecked me on the cheek, and sat where Susan had been a few moments before.
"What can I do for you General?"
"The troops would like to gather on the station for evening meal tonight. Any objections?"
"Aren't they on Last Hope?"
"Most of them yes. But they can be here in time, and be back before morning."
"As long as they don’t mind the Brits being with them, it's fine with me."
"Brits?"
"Susan Bentley was just here asking the same thing."
"Do we have enough facilities for both groups?"
"You mean," started Jane, "do we have facilities for over two thousand people to all sit down for Christmas tea?"
"Do we?"
"Of course we do. Station was designed for five odd thousand to be using the Promenade Deck all at the same time. We removed the civilian side of things, but as a mess, it's c
apable of handling two battalions and change all at once."
"Change?"
"May as well invite all the ship crews as well. Japanese might be interested."
"And they would be eating what?"
"Food."
"Any particular food?"
"How should I know? I'm not organizing it."
"We'll expect the both of you at six," said Annabelle, getting up and walking out with her grin overwhelming her.
I wondered for a moment how this day could get any weirder.
Forty One
I stood there gawking. The dining table in my parent's suite on Galactica was decked out for a traditional Christmas dinner. We'd never done Christmas before. I didn’t even know they knew anything about it.
The whole Alpha team was there, including George and Grace. Plus our assorted add-ons over the last year; Amy, Dick, D-Jane, Melissa, and Carter. With Carter was Jill. Jack and Sam I was told, were eating with the other team leaders.
I let Angel out of her travel cage, and she immediately started doing the rounds of everyone for a pat. I noticed Nut already had a head start. Jeeves waved me into a chair in the living room, and soon I was sipping ginger ale, which I almost spilt when Aline sat down in my lap. No-one seemed to notice, but everyone seemed to be laughing all the same.
The afternoon went off really pleasantly. Nice food, good family, and friends. Bit of bubbly, pretending nothing is actually wrong, and ignoring tomorrow we might all die. Can't get much better than that. Not in a war, anyway.
Just before six, Annabelle ushered us all off Galactica, and Jeeves took the cats back to their respective quarters. We made our way onto the Promenade level, where it was already lively, with thousands of people, all in civvies, drinking and laughing in groups. We blended in.
The buffet was opened at six thirty, with enough food in enough places that no-one had to stand very long waiting to access whatever they fancied.
At nine, large screens dropped down around the deck, and special Christmas messages for the troops were played from The Queen, American President, Australian Prime Minister, and the Japanese Emperor. These were followed by more from Marshall Bigglesworth, Admiral Jedburgh, and General Harriman. Admiral Sato said a few words as well.
I could see Susan and Annabelle looking at me, so I sighed, headed for the rostrum in the center, and thought rapidly about what to say. I stepped up and looked around, at a crowd which was now all looking at me.
"Merry Christmas. For those who do happy holidays, this is it. Enjoy the festivities for as long as you're able to. Tomorrow is back to work, and for a lot of us, battle. For the next few hours though, enjoy."
I grinned at them, and stepped down. The party went off well, and once again, Aline ended up dragging me off onto the dance floor. The twins danced with us for a lot of the time, but towards the end I noticed them dancing with guys instead. I guessed there would be two happy men very shortly.
No-one had given any presents, for which I was grateful in not having to deal with it again this year. But as an interlude before battle, I think it took the war off most people's minds for a few hours. And that was a good thing.
Sometime after eleven, I was sitting on my own watching the crowds, while Aline was off visiting the little girl's room. We'd both had a little too much to drink, which is why I’d survived the little girl comment.
"You okay Jon?" asked Mum, who I hadn't noticed come up to me.
"Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?"
"You look a little lost."
"Too much on my mind Mum."
"I can imagine. You will be careful tomorrow?"
"I'm always careful."
"That’s not what I recall," said Dad, with a laugh.
"Things changed. Four stars gives you a totally different perspective on things."
"We worry about that son."
"Don’t. All we can do now is have faith the cosmos is unfolding the way it's supposed to be."
"As always," he agreed.
I hugged them both, and watched them leave, wondering if I was going to see them again.
I wasn’t alone for very long. D-Jane sat down beside me. She was grinning widely, but not in my direction. I followed her gaze, and saw Dick heading for the bar.
"You're look spry, hale, and chipper, for an old girl."
She laughed.
"Who are you calling old? Remember, I'm not yet two."
"But you look mid-forties."
"And whose idea was that?"
"Yours as I recall."
She laughed again.
"Oh, so it was. But you assigned me as a detective to work with Dick. It didn’t make sense to stay the young me, when my partner was so much older and looked the part."
"How's that going?"
"How's what going?"
"The partnering?"
"None of your business!"
Huh? Not the response I’d been expecting.
"How's things with security issues? I have to admit, I've been too busy to check what you guys are up to."
"Nothing major. We set up a good system before we left. And it's carrying through onto the ships and stations here just fine. No-one knows we're using droids impersonating people. The security droids have good programming, so I don’t really do much more than monitor what they're all doing. The whole facial thing I wrote local programs for a long time ago, so they pretty much do their own as soon as I give them the suit and routines. "
"Sounds boring."
"Most of the time. Occasionally not. But then, Dick is a really good person to work with, when he shows up to actually do some work."
"Should I be concerned?"
"Hell no. That man can do police work in his sleep. I just wake him up, or bug him, when I need him to make a decision about something."
"Wake him up?"
"It’s a twenty four hour gig. The man is semi-retired. He spends as little time in the office as he can get away with, which I might add, is actually more than he needs to. And when he's not asleep, he tends to be nearby you."
"Why would you need to wake him up, if he's getting the job done?"
"I wake him up sometimes just to bother him. The man is so totally ticklish. I can't help it."
She was grinning, and suddenly it slipped, as if she realized she'd said something she didn’t mean to.
"Ticklish?"
"Jon Hunter. Do I pry into what you and Aline get up to?"
"Pry? No. But you probably watch us the whole time anyway."
Her face went red. For a moment I wondered if she'd done it deliberately, or she'd actually programmed a blush response.
"Well, if you must know, Jane Primary did peek in on you sometimes early on, with Alison, the twins, and Miriam especially, but she stopped after you and Aline became more serious. I've never done so, but of course I do have those memories. And that time when I, we, her, us, damnit that’s complicated, needed to impersonate you, and we needed to be anatomically correct, well, um, we did study you a bit, in the act as it were. Necessary research though. I did have to impersonate you having sex."
I was laughing now. I knew all that already, but the way she was stumbling around it, was genuinely both funny and endearing.
"Ticklish?" I reminded her.
"Oh. I thought you knew."
"What?"
"Dick and I are a couple."
I looked at her for a few moments with my jaw slowly dropping, before I got a grip, and grinned.
"How long's that been going on?"
"About a year now. After impersonating you having sex, I wanted to find out if I could have sex. I mean I’d already found out I could mimic a man, and let's face it, male anatomy is easy to copy, and just as easy to bonk with, but could I have sex as a female? The female body is a lot more complicated. It took a bit of figuring out."
"So you can?"
"Sure. And since Jane Primary received her new body, we’ve been working on giving me a much better one. You saw one of the improvements be
fore you went to Ireland, and we've made a lot of progress since then. Still a long way to go, but we left our twin in Gaia with all the files, and she's going to continue working on the issue for us as well. For these versions of us, we stopped using the standard droids a long time ago, and started making custom bodies. Still suit over droid though. The hard thing is doing real looking skin without a suit. But we think the suit has the answers if we use it in different ways. I think we need to make the suit fully three dimensional, so the body is all suit, and no droid. It's horribly complicated. But as I said, the new body is actually defining the way we progress with the research. It's one of my hobbies anyway, when Dick's sleeping."
"And you're not tickling him?"
"That too."
"So," I said and paused, grinning. "Who seduced who that first time?"
"Jon!"
We both laughed.
We were still laughing when Dick came up to us, held his hand out, and the two of them went off to dance some more. They made an impressive couple. And no-one knew this was a 'mixed' relationship. I wonder how many would actually care about a man and an AI being a couple. I know I didn’t, but then I had a mixed relationship going on as well.
Jane plonked down beside me, grinning.
"Took you long enough to go there."
"I never needed to, and hadn't expected it now. You're full of surprises."
"You of all people shouldn't be surprised. Come on Jon, fess up. You never wondered about what it would be like to bonk me?"
I looked at her totally surprised, and she laughed really hard.
"Jane, you're my best friend."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Well you are sexy, I know, since I've seen you naked. But I've seen the whole team naked, and I don’t want to bonk all of them."
"You started as if you were."
"You really thought that?"
"Hell no, but plenty of people did. Hunter's Harem?"
"I'm so glad BA never heard that. She'd have ripped out throats."
We both laughed.
"You didn’t answer my question."
"Yes I did. You're my best friend."
"It's not an answer."
I sighed.
"Yes it is. Look what it did to Sarah. We broke the best friend's rule the night before I left, and look where that ended up. Broken hearted and alone."
"You or her?"
Hunter Legacy 12: Hero in Darkness Page 18
