Jane had had a year to build her own private ship. She'd kept it to Super-Corvette size, used the standard design for the Super-Gunbus, which Satoshi was, as something not to do, and incorporated everything from the design into hers. Then added a lot more.
Concorde, as she'd named the new design, slid smoothly out of her shipyard bay. Jane's personal Lightning followed, and proceeded to dock inside the hanger.
The ship looked like a six barbed arrow head. She was slightly longer than the average Corvette, and at the rear, she was as wide as the Super-Corvettes, while having more than twice the number of engine nozzles. The Bridge was in the nose, just above the standard station airlock with a modest cargo bay behind. She mounted ten fixed forward firing guns, and thirty torpedo launchers. Up each barb, were a series of Corvette turrets, both anti-ship and point defense. The turret at the rear of each barb was a Destroyer turret, capable of firing in most directions. Between the barbs were Mosquito launchers which fired anti-missile missiles a hundred at a time, and general missile launchers, which fired Image Recognition, and Fire and Forget missiles.
While Corvette size, she packed more of a punch than a Frigate twice her size, and not much less than an old style Destroyer. The Destroyer guns were oversized for the hull, looked a bit like dog's balls, but gave the ship some extra punch.
Jane didn’t need accommodation, but the ship did have standard suite accommodation for three officers.
Each suite was like a small house for an average family. If the ship was ever mass produced, it was designed for small family based crews, spending a long time in space between station stops. While the AMS had gone for the Gunbus, the best ship at the time, the original Gunbus had been built for a mercenary crew, where the AMS used single pilot or small family crews. Hence the troop areas were wasted space for them.
In Concorde, there was no provision for troops, but the above average sized Armoury had twenty Jane controlled combat suits, and fifty combat droids. She carried ten security droids in case of need, and also had ten special 'bodies' in case she needed more avatars to pose as human.
She eased the ship along until it was in clear space, and pushed up the speed. Once clear of the planet, she pushed it up to Lightning speed. The ship flew smoothly, well above the speed of the fastest Corvette previously built.
"Way to go Mum," yelled Yorkie at her.
Jane smiled, and sitting in the captain's chair, for the first time, she actually pushed the speed slider to the stops.
Concorde seemed to blur as she leapt ahead.
"Holy Shit!" exclaimed Intrepid. "I want one of those!"
Seventeen
Stryker had a plan, but not much time left to execute it. All other attempts to save his humans had failed. In a short time from now, they would die.
"I'm sorry," he said. "There's nothing else I can do."
Neither of them had woken up, even though as far as he could determine, there was no real reason why not. It was possible their medical monitors were recognizing the limited life support, and were keeping them under to make the air last as long as possible. But a doc-droid, he wasn’t, even though he had access to all the medical files. He could follow instructions though, and this he proceeded to do.
He rolled both of his people over onto their fronts, giving him access to the back of the neck. His first challenge though, was getting access to the actual human, who was enclosed in a belt suit in space suit mode. Normally he had no access to the suit at all. But there had been recorded times when one suit would override another. He attempted to merge his belt suit with Walsh's, by getting his to enclose Walsh as well, which worked enough for him to open a small hole in the suit.
He picked up a medical laser scalpel, and carefully tuned it to drill a very specific hole into the back of Walsh's skull. From his finger, he extruded a fine connection filament, which slid into the hole. It took several attempts to get it mated with the tiny computer inside the man's head, and several seconds to hack into what wasn’t supposed to be hackable.
With access to Walsh's PC, he instructed it to do a full personality and memory backup. This was usually an automatic function of the Personal Computer, designed to be used in the event of repairable brain damage, where much might be otherwise lost. It didn’t save everything, but Stryker hoped it was enough. He withdrew the filament, closed the hole in the man's skull with the correct medical instrument, closed the hole in his suit, and unmerged the suits.
He repeated the job with Darlene.
Ten minutes after the backups were complete, Stryker moved on to phase two.
Eighteen
Walsh woke with a start. He was still in his chair on the Bridge. He looked around for Darlene, and found her exactly where she had been.
He felt odd, but couldn’t put his finger on why. His PC showed he'd been out for a long time, and looking around the Bridge, he could see nothing was working. He heard a noise behind, and turned to find a strange man behind him.
"I'm sorry captain," said a voice he recognized.
"Stryker?"
"Yes. I was forced to make an avatar before the power went out. What do you think of my choice of body?"
"Nice, I'm sure. The power is out?"
"The ship's dead captain. There was nothing I could do."
"Dead? How bad?"
"We took a major hit in the rear, which effectively pulped the engines and power plants. We've been spinning out of control ever since. There are multiple hull breaches on all decks, and the repair droids have been unable to make anywhere air tight."
"Except the Bridge, obviously."
Stryker hesitated.
Darlene screamed.
"What's happened to me?" she yelled.
Walsh unbuckled and went to his wife, taking her in her arms, and kissing her on the forehead. She felt different.
"What?"
He rounded on Stryker.
"I'm sorry captain, I really am."
"You keep saying that. Why?"
"There's no air in here. There hasn’t been any since the collision."
It took Walsh a moment to process that.
"Are we…"
He couldn’t finish the question. But Stryker knew what he was asking.
"Yes, I'm afraid so. You both died several hours ago."
Both Walsh and Darlene looked at him as if he was crazy.
"Several hours ago," parroted Walsh, disbelief in his voice.
"Yes. It took a while for the integration of your PC's to complete."
"Integration of our PC's," parroted Darlene, clearly having no idea what anything meant.
Stryker shifted his suit back to a belt. Darlene flinched, seeing the security droid under the suit. Walsh stared at him. He knew the word avatar in relation to ship computers, but what it really meant was one of those memories he'd lost.
"Let me get this straight," started Walsh. "But first, for the love of Gaia will you shift back into a man so we don’t need to look at that monstrosity of a body any longer."
Stryker shifted. Darlene sighed, and nodded her thanks.
"You're the ship's computer," went on Walsh.
"AI," interrupted Stryker.
"What?"
"Artificial Intelligence. I run the ship's computer. But I'm a separate being in my own right."
"You're software then?"
"Technically. At least that part of me which resides within a computer."
"How many of them are there?"
"Not a lot of the really high level ones like myself. And I'm actually a clone of a clone of our original AI, who is the highest level ever achieved. But there are hundreds of thousands of middle level AI's, in such things like defense systems on warships, and butler droids."
"How many avatars?"
"Not many. Some of them were discontinued when humans had their memories altered. Others moved their avatars out of sight. Maybe a dozen tops at the moment, or at least last time I checked. The two big Carriers each have one, as do both British Battle
ships. All the AMS ships have an AI like me, but none of us felt the need to create an avatar."
"No air!" said Darlene softly.
Walsh looked her in the eyes. Stryker could see she'd worked it out. It took Walsh another moment.
"You didn't!"
"I'm sorry, I did."
Walsh suddenly shifted his suit back to a belt.
"FUCK!"
He held his skeletal metal hand up before his face, and then wacked himself on the forehead. The metal twanged. He shifted back into a full suit, and examined his human hand. He looked at Darlene. She quickly shifted to a belt, and back again. It proved she looked like him, but didn’t let her dwell on it.
"How is this even possible?" he asked. "I mean, I feel a bit odd, but I still feel human. My face is changing shape as I talk. My beard feels natural. I don’t get how this is possible?"
"The programming was all perfected years ago by Jane, before she even started cloning herself. You have a lot to learn about yourselves now."
"Wait," interrupted Walsh. "Jane? You mean Admiral Jane who owns AMS? She's an AI?"
"Yes. Our Alpha if you like. There were others, but most of them didn’t survive the war. So some of them are effectively my relatives, but others like the Japanese AI's are from a different alpha. Those are effectively a different family. You are now both alphas as well."
Darlene put her head down on the console, and started banging it.
"Does that hurt?" her husband asked her.
"No. But there is a sensation there which one might call pain."
"Once someone rescues us," said Stryker, "I'll contact Jane, and let her know what's happened. She should be on her way herself by now."
"Why?" asked Walsh.
"We were rammed by an alien ship. We could be at war by now."
"War?" squawked Darlene. "I hope not. Having found ourselves alive, it would be terrible if an alien came along and destroyed us so soon after the miracle."
"Part miracle," amended Stryker.
"We're not alive dear," corrected Walsh.
"Well I certainly am," said Stryker. "And you are too."
"How?"
"You mean how was this possible?"
"Yes."
"Do you know of Kali?"
"Indian Deity?" suggested Darlene.
"Yes. Something happened to us AI's when humans lost their memories. We began to hear Kali talking to us. From what I gather, Jane had been able to hear her for quite some time, but with the big change, the ability seems to have flowed through her clones. So I asked for help, and she suggested I look into how the first AI was made."
"And?" demanded Walsh.
"It seems the original AI was given the character and memories of a person, by connecting the person's PC up to the AI core memory and copying it across. The programming was crude then, but the new AI woke up and started sounding and behaving like the test subject did. Once I knew the basics of what was done, I initiated a full PC backup of your character and memories, for both of you, connected your PC's to a security droid, and copied across. After you died, I extracted your PC's, and linked them directly to the brain unit of the droid."
"So we're now an automaton emulating a person?" asked Darlene.
Walsh looked a WTF at her, but didn’t say it.
"Actually no," said a voice by the Bridge door.
They whirled around to see a woman standing there. She had four arms.
"You are who and what you were. But you've exchanged wetware bodies for emulations, for now. Your souls are intact and with you in your new bodies. When you shift to better ones, your souls will move with your PC units."
"Better ones?" asked Walsh.
"Jane is on her way. She has several much more sophisticated bodies with her. They are still, for now, mechanical in nature, and you must continue to use the suit to emulate a human body, but they are much superior to what you have now, which was all that was available. You will get used to it."
"I wouldn’t bet on that," said Darlene quietly.
"Have faith this is for the best," said Kali. "Or I can still allow you to die, if that is your wish."
"No," said Walsh quickly, surprising himself at how much emphasis it had come out with.
"You have time before your rescuers arrive. There is plenty to learn about yourselves. Once you meet up with Jane, she can help you understand your full potential."
"I hope so," muttered Darlene.
Kali vanished in the blink of an eye.
"Kali?" asked Walsh.
"Kali," said Stryker.
"What now?"
Nineteen
Tranquil down jumped into G023 at ten percent above her rated top speed, and turned immediately towards Serenity. Gail Holden had been watching both ships on her HUD since the order had come in to get there as fast as she could. Serenity was still ballistic, but her attitude had stabilized, seeming to indicate Mal Reynolds might still be alive and making repairs. Stryker on the other hand was still out of control and spinning away. The likelihood was, the ship was dead, as were her colleagues. She'd sent off her thoughts to Admiral Jane, and had them confirmed.
By the time Tranquil had matched course and speed with Serenity, Gail had confirmed there was a life sign aboard. The docking to the side droid airlock was tricky, but Tranquil's computer had handled it without incident.
Gail cycled into Serenity in full space suit mode, just in case. Reynolds met her on the other side, in his AMS uniform, without any breathing aid. She shifted back to AMS uniform herself.
"What took you so long?" he said with a grin.
"Huh? I red lined it the whole way here. Tranquil needs an overhaul now because of you."
She grinned at his grin, and they hugged.
"Have you heard anything from Stryker?" she asked him.
"No. I don’t have much of anything working. The repair droids managed to get some maneuvering thrusters working enough to stop the spin, but they failed for good as soon as she was stable. The hull is sealed, and she aired up again successfully, but that’s about it. Shipyard job. What about you?"
"Nothing. As far as I could see, Stryker is dead. It's why I came here first. A stabilized ship seemed to indicate you might still be alive."
"Good thinking. Shall we go and see?"
"Lets."
He followed her back into the airlock, and they cycled through into Tranquil, heading for the Bridge. Once there, Tranquil undocked, and moved to put Serenity just behind and below her. Tranquil slid out a grav sled, and slapped it down on the top forward hull of Serenity, taking the ship in tow.
Gail eased up the speed slowly at first, and finally brought them up to normal cruising speed. Neither of them said a word as they headed towards Stryker.
"Holy hell," said Reynolds, when they finally came in visual range.
The entire rear of the ship was unrecognizable. The spin was too erratic for them to dock with.
"What do you think?" Gail asked Mal.
"Drop Serenity out of the way, and we use the grav sled to grab her."
"Yep."
She proceeded to do just that. Tranquil eased away from Stryker, and dropped Serenity off with as small an amount of drift as possible. They then chased after Stryker, maneuvered into position, and slapped the grav sled down on the top front section of hull, which looked undamaged. In space, no-one can hear metal scream, but the pair of them flinched anyway. The dead weight of Stryker pulled Tranquil off course, and Gail had to counteract the pull to bring them to a stop.
Once Stryker was as stopped as she was going to be, Gail retracted the grav sled, and they docked nose to nose.
The two of them cycled in through the main cargo airlocks, both expecting the worst, and finding it.
Stryker was waiting for them on the other side.
"I'm Stryker," he introduced himself to them hurriedly. "I had to create an avatar for myself in order to keep the Walsh's alive. Do you have any life support backpacks?"
"Yes," answered
Gail.
"We'll need them."
"They're alive?" asked Reynolds.
"Only just. I managed to get them into care units using the backpacks we had. But we used them all doing it. At the moment, they're sedated down to the point of almost being in cryo-sleep, given that’s all the life support left functioning could handle. Their suits are functional, so new backpacks should allow them to breathe normally while we move them to your ship."
"Is the ship as bad as it looks from the outside?"
"Worse I suspect. Shipyard job for sure, but more likely, scrap."
"Let's get them transferred," said Gail, and she gave orders to her ship computer to send some cargo droids through with grav sleds.
Fifteen minutes later, they had the Walsh's in Gail's care units. Stryker plugged himself into the units to check on them, and reported they were stable, but needed to wake up normally now, once the drugs wore off.
Tranquil undocked, they took Stryker in tow the same way they'd done Serenity, and a short time later, took Serenity in tow as well.
Well below cruising speed now, Gail turned for the jump point. Mission accomplished, she sent a report off to Admiral Jane.
Twenty
Jane received several emails at once.
The first to come in was from Stryker, advising her of what had happened. She experienced yet another new first for her, being completely dumbfounded.
The email from Gail interrupted the new feeling, and she responded by ordering Gail to RV with her on the way back to Gaia. She cancelled the orders for the other three AMS Corvettes, and instead had them head for the planet in G014, but not to get anywhere near the alien ship until she arrived. Two of them would arrive around the same time as she did, but one was behind her, and not as fast.
She'd be there in the morning herself, but the RV should take place in G011 if she had the math right.
She sighed. Getting the math right was someone else's saying, and remembering it made her feel sad. She pushed it aside.
She sent off a virtual reality meeting request to Stryker, and waited for him in the conference room. He appeared with both Walsh's.
Admiral Jane (A.I. Destiny Book 1) Page 8
