"And the Musical?"
Jane laughed.
"Novel about a group of people who decide to adapt it into a musical theatre production, written in the early two thousands. Not in the same league."
"You read them both?"
"Sure. I preferred the musical myself, but I'm not much into fine literature."
"I can't say I ever read anything in the fine literature category. Too busy looking out the front window of my ship. If it isn’t a technical manual, or a novel about space travel and adventure, I'm not much interested. I was back in the day. I met Darlene in a solid book library in a museum, back when we were students. We shared a love of study for the sake of study. But then for some reason I don’t remember, I did a period of national service, found being a pilot was a lot more fun than reading books, and once the military time was up, I joined the AMS. I still read, but its Darlene who never evolved past student. What's that ship doing?"
Jane brought her attention back to the alien ship. It was in a standard orbit above the largest continent. She couldn’t detect any life signs, either on the ship, or on the ground. Nor was there any kind of smaller ship on the ground, or flying around anywhere. The planet was teaming with life, and as far as the sensors could detect, the majority of it was compatible with humans.
The ship itself had some damage to its front areas, but it all appeared superficial. Jane hadn't expected otherwise, since one of her Battleships colliding with two Corvettes the same way would have had a similar result.
Walsh shook his head. He was getting the same information Jane was.
"It's just sitting there doing nothing."
"We can't be sure of that," answered Jane. "We can't be sure of anything."
"Tried to talk with them yet?"
"Not yet. I was about to."
Jane opened a vid.
"This is Admiral Jane of the Hunter ship Concorde. I represent a species called Human. We come in peace, and wish to establish a dialogue with you. The planet below has been claimed by us, and is due for colonization shortly. If this is also your wish, we need to talk about it. Please respond."
She stopped the vid, and translated it into every language she could. With it she sent the first contact package, which contained mathematical information set out in many different ways, all designed for an alien species to be able to recognize something, and be led through to at least one language which they might eventually understand. The hope was they had some form of computer system, which would do the conversion work for them, and some sort of interpreter software could be developed quickly on both sides.
Jane sent the whole communication package in as many different ways as she could, using everything from opening a direct channel, through email based messaging, and right down to Morse code on the oldest radio frequencies. There was no telling what level of communications the aliens had, at least until they responded.
They sat there and waited.
Nothing happened. The alien ship sat there, and ignored them.
Walsh looked at Jane.
"How long do we sit here waiting for them to do something?"
Jane pulled her left arm in front of her, turned it so the wrist was fully visible, and stared at it for a few seconds. She idly wondered if she'd watched too many old flat screens.
"That’s it," she said.
"Action?" he asked.
"Yep."
Jane goosed the ship forward, until it was directly over the front topside of the alien ship. A grav sled slid out near the bottom of Concorde, and Jane eased them down until it connected. The grav came on.
"You're stealing them?" he asked with a grin.
"Just going for a little ride," she responded.
Concorde took up the load, and began to pull the alien ship out of orbit, and onto a line for the G023 jump point. Her speed was well down, but still respectable for the huge load on such a small ship.
"Now that’s a hooked fish," said Walsh, grinning.
"Not so much hooked, as harpooned."
"You're going to throw them back?"
"That’s the plan."
They both grinned.
Twenty four
"What's wrong with this picture?" asked Jane, as they were approaching the jump point.
"They're letting us tow them?"
"And?"
"Not firing at us?"
"And?"
"Not trying to communicate with us?"
"And?"
"There's more?"
"Look at the hull."
Walsh looked at the hull of the alien ship. It was a strange shape, strange colour, and…
"No windows."
"And?"
"No guns."
"And?"
Walsh looked again, and when he didn’t find anything, he perused the sensor data.
"Oh. No doors."
"Exactly. There's no way in or out, no way of seeing what's out, and no way of defending itself."
"So they rammed us because they didn’t know we were there?"
"Could well be."
"Why?"
"Which particular why are you referring to?"
"All of them."
"You know what I know."
Walsh sighed. Which was a very odd sensation for him, since sighing requires breathe, and he didn’t have any anymore. Or did he? He brought his hand up to his mouth and sighed again. He definitely felt something. Jane was looking at him.
"Do you have some specifications for these bodies I can look at? And the software for the automation?"
Jane pulsed them to him.
"Oh. Damn that’s good."
"Thank you, kind sir."
She batted her eyelids at him, and he cracked up.
"Hey," came through the coms. "None of that you two. He's happily married."
Jane joined him in laughing.
They were still chuckling when they jumped. There was nothing on the other side as they knew there wasn't, but they became serious as they looked anyway.
"Where too now?" asked Walsh.
"The navmap shows a viable planet in this system, so we may as well check it out first."
She set a course. The navmap had a lot of details in it, but nothing was verifiable. While she knew the original explorers had left comnavsats everywhere they went, none of them had survived the timeline reset. They were now leaving the area of the last one put there by Stryker, so she'd have to start leaving them herself now. She started up the fabricator deep within the ship, and had it make a dozen more. She had six in the cargo bay, but this wouldn’t be enough if she had to go any real distance to find a live alien who could talk. Or shoot. Or even both. Either would be a start. Talking was preferred to shooting.
"Can I ask you something?" interrupted Walsh.
"Anything," replied Jane.
"How do you resolve the time discrepancies?"
"Which ones?"
"We're talking like humans do, but we think almost infinitely faster. We could have this conversation and a lot more in a nano-second if we wanted to, but instead we're using seconds for each sentence. I'm not sure why we're being so slow?"
"Part of the human emulation. Until we're ready to be identified as AI's, we need to look human all the time, even when they're not around. The same if we meet aliens. We need to know what their attitude to artificial lifeforms is, before we identify as such."
"Huh?"
"You need to read and watch more science fiction. That sort of disaster is covered a lot."
"Is that what you do with the rest of the time, in your mind?"
"Partly. Less so now than I used to. I'm monitoring a good chunk of the ships in the fleet at the moment, the council discussions, a lot of avatars pretending to be aides, plus I'm doing analysis on that ship. Even so, I'm getting through a novel every couple of minutes."
"Have you read any of them twice yet?"
"No. But I do have over six hundred years' worth to wade through. Even though I've been reading for two years now,
I'm not all that far in. Mind you, a lot of it is total crap, and some of it is almost illiterate. All the same, it keeps me occupied. I watch a lot of hollo and flat screen stuff as well, keeping it mixed up."
"So you're saying you operate in two speeds simultaneously?"
"Yes. Human mode, and AI mode."
"Doesn’t that do your head in?"
"Try it and see," Jane laughed.
Twenty Five
Jane thought the planet submissions had gone better than she thought they would. Even Fred had made a good submission. What she didn’t like was the number of submissions after them for continents on Gaia Three. Three was a paradise planet. Everyone wanted to go there. It had a few million people on there at the moment. And large tracts of suitable land were currently being used to feed everyone, without compromising the natural wonders of the planet. It was a compromise the locals had been forced to make. But there was no way anyone living there was going to allow the planet to be devastated by billions of people taking up residence.
Jane wondered about the delusional nature of humans. They were quite happy destroying what grew their food, to make a credit, or live somewhere they thought was better than where they were. They were quite happy to kill to get what they wanted. Not all, but enough to cause a problem.
Her problem was how much she allowed to happen. Did she even have a right to intervene? Would her intervention be accepted by anyone if they knew what she actually was? The dilemma didn't need solving yet. It was one of those things she debated for a few nanoseconds at a time between other tasks.
What she did have was a responsibility to the Hunter's on Gaia Five. This she took seriously. And it was the more immediate threat in her estimation. But the problem was, those who didn’t get their way with Gaia Three, would inevitably turn their eyes to any under-utilized area on one of the other planets.
Fred didn’t understand this yet. Jane knew this without even talking to him. As Justine, she was going to need to guide him to figuring it out himself.
Her unease made her check the progress of the new Missile Cruisers. The hulls were complete, and internal layouts being fitted. Couple more days would see them complete. She also spent some time on what she was now calling Plan C. If everything went pear-shaped, Plan B was getting the Hunter's to safety. But Plan C was about saving Gaia Three, which was an order of magnitude harder to do. The plan would work, given enough time to implement it, but once again, would anyone actually thank her for doing it? Well, maybe some would, since a lot of them were either isolationist, or simply wanted to be left alone. It required more thought.
She did a rapid circuit of all the ships and stations she was on, checking the mood, seeing where they were, looking for anything not right. She already knew of course, since she was there, but it was like the sub-conscious of a human for her. She knew, but sometimes she needed to check at the conscious level as well. So periodically she spent a second or two in each place.
Jane left Central Command station until last. Acting as Patton's aide, she updated him on the planet still being available for a defensive deployment, and the lack of information about the alien ship. While hard to read, he seemed to be relieved he wouldn’t be sending troops down to fight for the planet. After his last debacle, which he didn’t remember, Jane wasn’t surprised. She moved on, leaving him to continue planning his deployment. The troops she knew were going to be glad to be back on firm ground. While they weren't cramped on the transport ships, the ships hadn't been designed for long term occupancy, and these troops had been on them a lot longer than they should have been, even if they couldn’t remember. They felt it, and this was enough to cause trouble.
The defensive fleet was heading for the planet. The rest were heading for the G023 jump point. She needed to be back for when ships with humans on them arrived there, so she could organize the formations herself.
But first, she had a fish to fling back. She just needed to find out which pond it had come from.
"Where did you go?" asked Walsh.
"Go?"
"Normally I’d say you were a million miles away, but you're not human. But even I could tell your focus wasn’t here on this ship."
"In some ways, you and Darlene are lucky."
"How so?"
"There is only one of you. Think twice before you clone yourselves. In fact, given your uniqueness, it might be better if you never did."
"How many clones of you are there?"
"Too many. But a lot are not actually clones, just a computer where I reside. Clones are mainly autonomous, but still me, although there are ones where the clone didn’t get memory. They're completely autonomous and I don’t include them as part of me. The rest are part of my primary being, and demand a fraction of my attention on a regular basis."
"So you view the galaxy through many eyes all at the same time?"
"Many sensors. Technically speaking, we don’t have eyes. But yes. Fortunately, it all grew gradually. Had it all been done at once when I was created, I’d have probably gone mad."
"And this is the not mad you now?"
He grinned at her.
"How would I know?"
"I'll make a point of telling you, should you ever go over the edge."
"Thanks."
Jane didn’t sound thankful. She looked at Walsh, and wondered for a moment if having a fellow AI's avatar on the Bridge with her was a good idea after all. But she had to admit, Walsh needed her. While he appeared to be coping with the transition just fine, very few humans would have. She didn’t know yet if he really was coping, or if he was just very good at telling his face what to show. In other words, she didn’t know him well enough to tell if he was cracking up or not.
He seemed to be fine. They both seemed to be fine. Which was so unlikely, Jane found she needed to keep testing it, in case it wasn’t so. What she'd do about it if one or both of them lost it, was a completely different matter. Something else to ponder. She started researching medical journals about people who'd undergone sudden total life changes.
Twenty Six
The afternoon session was coming to an end, and Jane was beginning to think the whole resettlement thing was going to work after all.
Suddenly she found herself in a virtual meeting with Cayuga and Repulse.
"Sorry to drag you here," said Repulse. "Situation developing you'll probably want to handle yourself."
"Show me."
An image appeared on the virtual wall, showing a freighter on a heading for Gaia Three, with a course locked in for a jungle area. The information on it showed it to be a refugee carrier.
"Are they doing what I think they're doing?"
"Seems like it," said Cayuga. "There was a flurry of coms activity a short time ago between the ship and Gaia Orbital."
"Someone wants to test our resolve about not letting anyone down there you think?"
"Must be," responded Repulse.
"Thanks for the heads up. I'll deal with it."
The other two nodded, and the meeting ended.
Jane stood up.
"What part of no do you people not understand?" she said, speaking across someone else, who stopped in mid-sentence.
"Colonel?" asked the Chair.
"At this very minute, a freighter carrying refugees is attempting to land on Gaia Three without permission."
"Shoot it down," said the more militant of the Gaia council, the odd one out as far as being spiritual in some way.
"What?" exclaimed a delegate across the room. "You can't do that!"
"You have exactly one minute to convince it to turn around," said Jane.
"Or what?"
"Or you will see."
"See what?"
Jane stood there and looked at him. He began to wilt. The man next to him started talking sub-vocally. Both of them were ex-Corporate sector.
A flight of three police Talons, light fighters only, started after the offending ship. Jane listened to the exchange. Other than shoot the freighter, they
weren’t going to achieve anything.
Jane waved at a wall, and three Excalibur heavy Privateer Fighters could be seen launching from her lead Dreadnaught over Gaia Five. She waved again, and another screen showed the missile platforms spaced around Gaia Three coming alive. The nearest to the freighter locked on to it.
The next screen showed the cockpit of the lead Talon, and they could hear the pilot trying to talk the freighter captain into turning beck before he was fired upon. The freighter kept on going.
Jane looked at the Corporates. One of them shrugged back at her. The rest of the delegates were looking on silently, with expressions ranging from being horrified, to supreme satisfaction with the way things were unfolding. Fred looked worried, Sarah obviously wasn’t sure what was going on, and Queen Liz was sitting there grinning.
"Police Flight seventeen," said Jane-Justine, verbally so everyone could hear, "this is Colonel Henman. Under the authority of Admiral Jane, you will please clear my line of fire."
"Roger that, Colonel," came back from the leader. "Better you than me."
The Talons peeled off, and headed back to their patrol area.
Jane tried contacting the freighter herself, but they refused to answer. She locked glances with Madam Chair.
"Can you stop them without killing them?"
"Yes Ma'am. If I intended killing them, the missile platforms would have fired already. It's why I launched the Excaliburs."
"What do you intend to do?"
"Watch."
The Excalibur flight were rapidly overhauling the freighter, which had yet to enter Gaia Three's atmosphere, coming as it was from much further out in the solar system. While Five wasn’t all that well aligned with Three at this time, the fighters were significantly faster. Only Jane knew they were modified Drone fighters, and thus faster than normal.
As the Excaliburs approached missile range, Jane spoke to the freighter again.
"Last chance. Turn back now, or be fired upon."
There was no response.
"Do we know they received that?" asked the Indian man on the Gaia Council.
Admiral Jane (A.I. Destiny Book 1) Page 10
