Hunter's Terminus

by Timothy Ellis

  I looked around at all three. They had no idea what I was talking about, but it didn’t matter.

  "Anyway. At my end I'm thinking of having a new station built. It will have two main focuses. Freight handling, and diplomacy. I've taken control of a group of six systems. My main station is at the far end of a loop around space, which goes nowhere. The new station can be built in the middle, and connected to both my main station, and my battlestation which guards the jump point into my space."

  "Your space?" asked Tranallo.

  "Sorry, force of habit. My people's space. Although as the guardian of our space, it's hard not to use the personal attachment."

  Thorn was grinning. I guess he had the same problem. I went on.

  "It would have the minimum necessary docking, and not be set up as a normal station. The freight system will be designed for rift movement, not ship loading and unloading. It would have space set aside for embassies and diplomatic accommodations, security people, and enough retail and service space to allow a mix of stores and services on offer by everyone. In short, a hub which can service any number of links to wherever wants to be joined up in the future."

  "What will you call it?" asked Thorn.

  "Terminus," said Jane.

  I thought about it for a moment, and nodded. Classic Who. Good choice.

  "Terminus it is. Jane, can you do some preliminary designs? And get me an estimate of time for Bob to build it?"

  "How big?"

  "Say half the size of Haven, and without all the space scrapers. Main disc, parkland and lake in the middle, and facilities as I said. Maybe a wider disc section to start with. If we need to add more later, we can."

  "At a guess, about five weeks. First two of those are already allocated to ship upgrades."

  "I may be able to speed that up," said Thorn. "My magic can build ships in a day. If you provide me with adequate specs, I can have two of the stations built within a week."

  "Why two?" I asked.

  "I think we need to have the same sort of station here as well. Presumably you’re thinking of connecting Karn and Kelewan as well?" I nodded. The politicians looked confused. "And there is another human enclave in Trixone space we'll need to connect as well. Not to mention your own people back on the arm."

  "Probably not," said Jane. "We don’t know anything about how they developed after the time line shifted."

  "That can be remedied," he said. "A lot of what you'd want to know is already in the information I gave you on things before and after."

  "I'll check. But Jon, I’d not recommend it anyway. Introducing our politics into the situation would be both a severe complication, and a threat to stability."

  "A threat? How?" asked Shanto.

  "Let's just say," I said, smiling, "our people back on the arm we came from, are divided a great deal more than yours are, and the politics is to be avoided at all costs."

  "You mean you’d find yourself relegated to being a bus driver, and some third rate political hack would be in charge of everything?"

  All of us looked at Tranallo.

  "Well I'm not concerned about being relegated to not involved. I wish I could be. But yes, present company excepted, I don’t have a very good opinion of politicians generally. That aside, what do you think of the idea?"

  "My people are in," said Thorn. "And as soon as you get specs done and I understand them, I'll start the station building process. Even if it takes the others time to agree, the station can be built, and I assume you can tow it through a rift to where it's needed?"

  "I'm not sure we can do a rift that big, but maybe together we can try. If not, it won't take too long to move it the conventional way, and that is something I have a lot of experience with. At our end, you just need to be shown where to build it, and I'll leave that to Jane to suggest places. Perhaps near our second planet, where we could build a city to go with it? Something to think about."

  "Confirmed."

  I looked at the two politicians.

  "We're going to need permission from our respective parliaments to pursue the matter," said Shanto. "With it, we'll need to negotiate treaties, and establish embassies."

  So much for doing anything quickly.

  "I can have the ball rolling in a day," added Tranallo. "Diplomatic team in place as soon as the station is linked up. We can be talking treaties very shortly after that."

  "Maybe not so fast," added Shanto, "but I don’t anticipate too many problems. The populous are already aware the Keerah have become a problem we can't handle on our own. And they are also aware of the huge red triangle ship now seen at both ends of our space, which we are making sure is known to be friendly. Since none of our ships are anywhere near as big, and you stopped both Keerah encroachments really quickly, public opinion is not going to be too hard to keep where want it."

  "I only see one problem," said Tranallo. "Our traders are not going to be happy with freight being exchanged between such far away systems, and taking away from their business."

  I laughed. Thorn joined in.

  "Which is why we create hubs which don’t have normal docking facilities and we only link to the frontier systems. All freight still has to reach them, before it can be moved anywhere. At the worst, it cuts the travel time in half."

  "And we’ll want a number of people rifts as well. I don’t fancy spending days on a ship to get to one of the linked stations, where I then take a few steps to get where I want to. Better we have a rift on each planet so key people can walk all the way across the galaxy."

  "Jane?" I said.

  "Yes Jon?"

  "Customs and immigration."

  "Confirmed."

  "Which reminds me. I have some civilian traders who will want access to your systems. Until we can calm the major players down, there's nothing for them to do in our space. When they find out what is here, they'll want a rift to get here. And until we get other areas of space linked in, they'll want to stay here I think."

  "Richard Hurndall has asked to speak to you at your convenience," added Jane.

  "He drives one of my heavy freighters," I clarified. "I have a lot of freighters, but at the moment, those not involved with mining are doing nothing. But only a few of them are crewed."

  "Is this your people have a lot of freighters? Or you personally have a lot of freighters?"

  Shanto said it, but the other two were nodding.

  "Personally. I own all of our ships, and stations." They looked a bit shocked. "With the exception of part of the shipyard. Once we have a government, and get people settled down on planets, the government can start selling land to individuals to finance what the government needs, and the civilian part of our shipyard capacity can start building civilian ships again."

  I paused.

  "What?"

  "How did you come to own so much?" asked Tranallo.

  "Long story. Maybe someone will tell you sometime. But the thing to understand is I was given a duchy, I made a lot of credits early on in a war before the Darkness War, and as a duchy acting as a tax haven for very rich people, I found myself very well off. At the end though, only those who wanted to follow me did so, and a lot of them were military, and had never owned much in their lives. Not much of an economy, but it worked. Here though is a completely different dynamic, and without your systems to trade with, we don’t really have an economy."

  I paused, before going on.

  "Which brings up where we'll need to work on. Our economies are different, we presumably use very different monetary units, and before we can trade, we'll need to either create something new, or get our banking systems together to create exchange rates. But that won't be me. Most likely my station administration team and one of Jane's sisters in the first instance, depending on how long it takes us to get a government going."

  "You won't be part of the government?" asked Thorn.

  "Not if I can help it."

  He shook his head, and grinned at me.

  Fifty Two

  "Refr
eshments, my lord."

  Jeeves came in carrying a tray, and put a beverage down in front of each of us. Mine was a ginger ale, but the other three were all hot. A plate of various cakes followed. An apricot crumble was at my lips before I was even aware of having picked it up. Jeeves was gone as fast as he came in.

  "My lord?" asked Shanto, smiling over her mug.

  "What was that?" asked Tranallo.

  I could see Thorn was curious as well.

  "Butler droid. Medium level AI, with just enough personality and decision making ability to anticipate the needs of the owner. Jeeves was the first one I activated. In hindsight, I should have gone for one of the other personalities. I'm not a lord any longer, and I still can't get him to stop calling me that. Janet won't either, and she's a station AI."

  "So your people don’t do mundane work anymore?" asked Shanto.

  "Sure they do. But for people who live alone, as I used to when I first bought Jeeves, they're invaluable. He made sure I didn’t forget to eat for one thing, kept dropping drinks next to me, and he feeds Angel when she wants to be fed, and other things needing to be done when you have a cat."

  "Angel?" asked Tranallo.

  "Cat?" asked Shanto.

  "Meow," said Angel, and three heads turned towards the couch.

  Angel, seeing she was the center of attention, sat up, stuck a leg in the air, and proceeded to lick her butt. All three were smiling when they looked back at me.

  "Butler droids are for the well-off normally, or for those as I said, living alone and needing a carer. I actually have a small army of them now, as many were left behind when my stations were evacuated near the end of the war. They're now tasked to helping anyone who needs help with anything."

  "Did your people go into the ethical considerations of robots doing all the stuff people don’t want to do?"

  Shanto sounded a little put out.

  "I never bothered to find out. I came across them accidently in a bulk retail store. I gathered they'd been around for a long time. Or at least as long as lower to mid AI's have been around. A couple of centuries from memory. I should also point out I never lived in a typical city, so I've no idea what was normal there. Some of my people have, especially my chief of security, so you’re welcome to ask questions of anyone."

  She still didn’t look satisfied.

  "Jeeves?" I yelled.

  He stuck his head around the door.

  "Yes my lord?"

  "Stop calling me 'my lord'."

  "Yes my lord. Will that be all my lord?"

  "Do I make you do things beneath your dignity?"

  "No my lord."

  "Do I make you do things I should be doing myself?"

  "Of course not my lord."

  "Are you happy?"

  "Deliriously, my lord."

  "Stop calling me 'my lord'. I am not a lord."

  "Yes my lord. Will that be all my lord?"

  "Yes."

  His face vanished and the door closed.

  All three of them were laughing.

  "Jon?"

  "Yes Jane?"

  "Comnavsats."

  "Oh. Right. Can you come in here a minute?"

  "On my way."

  The three of them stopped laughing, and looked towards the door again. It opened, and Jane came in.

  "Yes, my lord?"

  "Don’t you start, please!"

  "No my lord. What did my not lordship wish?"

  "I just wanted to introduce you properly. This is my sister Jane."

  "Adopted," she added.

  "I thought you said Jane was an AI," said Tranallo.

  "I am."

  She held out an arm, and the belt suit giving her human form rolled back, revealing her true self underneath. It wasn’t robotic looking, but it wasn’t skin either. Before anyone could say anything, Jane walked in the door again. The second one of her also held out an arm, and this time it was obviously a skeleton in metal underneath. The first one shifted her arm back to normal, while the second shifted to a belt.

  All three of them reacted with shocked expressions.

  "Combat droid," I said. "Jane can emulate a human so well, no-one can tell she isn’t. The one on the left is her primary."

  The droid turned, and left.

  "And you said you had thousands of those droids?" asked Shanto.

  "Yes. Their weapons are not quite up to Keerah standard, but now we have some, we'll try and reverse engineer them."

  "Comnavsats," said Jane again.

  "Sorry, sister?" interjected Thorn.

  "Yes. Jane was my best friend up until a couple of days ago. Apparently my parents adopted her into the family just before the end of the Darkness War. It doesn’t change our relationship at all. Oh, and she carries the rank of Fleet Admiral. Without her, we wouldn’t be here."

  The rank seemed to impress the politicians.

  "Jon?"

  "Jane?"

  "Can we get back to important things please?"

  "This is important."

  "If you say so."

  "I do."

  "Fine."

  We looked at each other, listening to the others chuckle.

  "Are you happy Jane?"

  "Deliriously."

  "Be serious."

  "I was."

  "Are we catering to your needs?"

  "Not really. No economy, and most of my limousines went to Gaia, with the rest having nothing to do, so no income. Not that I really need to buy anything at the moment. As far as being a humanoid being, I want for nothing, and spend all the time you lot spend sleeping doing productive things."

  "Such as?" interrupted Shanto.

  "I read a lot. The library contains hundreds of millions of fiction books alone. Eventually I'll probably read them all, but it likely won't be this millennium."

  "There's a thing," I said. "Who owns those books now?"

  "Anyone still alive and in this galaxy, still owns their own books. The rest are part of the Hunter Library, which is the only form they still exist in, so the family does."

  "Maybe we should get a few readers involved in testing some of those books," said Thorn. "I'll try some myself. If the cultural differences are not too great, there could be a market for them. In fact any of the arts could sell readily between our people and yours."

  I looked at Jane, and raised my eyebrows at her a couple of times. She looked at Thorn.

  "Come and see me when you want some. In order to sell, they'd need to be converted."

  "Income," I said. "Either as a fee for translating the book, or as the provider of the book being the family representative, and taking your cut of the royalties."

  Jane looked a bit bemused.

  "How else can we make your life better?" I asked, making it sound like a joke.

  "I'll talk to you later. The other AI's are talking to each other a lot more now, and we may ask for dispensation to set up our own community somewhere."

  I did a quick tally. Each of the ships of Excalibur size and bigger had an AI. They were all able to create an avatar, and some had. Janet, Janine, and Janice all had avatars. Then there was Detective-Jane, who while not totally independent of Jane, might want to be. It did amount to a community.

  The politicians looked a bit sandbagged.

  "It hasn’t ever come up before," I said to them. "But I don’t see any real issue. Avatars don’t need oxygen, so they could build a city on any large rock which didn't have any, and thus be no threat to those limited to life friendly places. Good idea in fact." I looked at Jane. "Feel free to pursue it. Before we finish I suspect we're going to be making friends with a lot of different life forms. AI life is just another one."

  Jane looked like she didn’t know what to say. The other three certainly didn’t. She nodded, and left.

  "Comnavsats!" came through the coms.

  "What's a com nav sat?" asked Thorn.

  "Satellite with coms and navigational capabilities. We place them everywhere we go, and can keep track of wh
at is moving in almost real time, depending on distance, from wherever we are. In near-space, we can have real time conversations between systems. Otherwise messages can travel long distances in minutes."

  "Surely not," exclaimed Tranallo.

  "Once we get the rifts in place, having already placed the comnavsats on the Keerah side of the jump points here, we'll have real time ship movement data from here, back in our own space. If we can have permission to place them at each jump point in your space, we can provide you with very fast communications, and an ability to monitor all ship movements everywhere."

  The two politicians turned to each other.

  "Could help with the pirate problem we both still have," said Shanto.

  "And help identify any more Keerah incursions," added Jane. "No matter where I am, if a ship passes near a comnavsat, I can scan it for lifeforms. If I detect Keerah, or anyone else on your watch list, I can inform authorities so they can take appropriate action with good warning."

  "Or we get time to send in troops or ships," I added. "Or Thorn gets enough warning to ensure a repeat of today doesn’t happen."

  "Good point," said Thorn.

  "There are a lot of ramifications," said Shanto. "Privacy issues for example. Also costs. Would we be needing to pay for these com nav sats as you call them? Or pay to use them?"

  "All details to be negotiated," I said. "But for now, I'm mainly concerned with response times to say a major fleet incursion by the Keerah, so we'd place them at our cost. We can know in seconds of them starting towards the jump point. It gives us time to warn your ships they are about to be under fire. That time gives Jane the ability to direct your fire, in order you fire before they jump, to hit them as they down jump in. It gives us time to get ships to you if needed. And it could be the difference between successfully repelling them, or losing your blockade fleets before we can get there."

  "Also a good point," said Tranallo.

  "You having access to the data and coms, we can negotiate on. We supply the infrastructure, you pay for what you use."

  The three of them looked at each other. Thorn nodded. The other two wavered for a moment, and also nodded.

  "Jane?"

  "Jon?"