They'd decided to walk, in order to sneak up on the nearest, whatever it was. It had taken them along the line of the crash, and they could see the purple plant had taken root best in the area of churned up soil. It was slowly spreading out. As they approached the nearest 'cow', they'd come across obvious droppings, with a small purple tendril growing in the middle of it. To Jane, it looked like the 'cows' were part of a terraforming operation.
"It looks like a rat," opined Jane.
"Rats don't grow to the size of cows."
"They don’t have feathers either."
"Or five legs."
The two of them stood enough of a distance away they were close enough to see what it was, but not so close they spooked it. It was obviously a herd creature, as there were dozens of them close together.
"Why would someone cross a rat with a cow and an emu?" asked Walsh.
"Your guess is as good as mine."
Walsh stepped forward as far as he dared, not wanting to spook the creature. It continued to ignore him, showing it had poor defensive attunements. While he didn’t smell like a human would, he should be smelling like something unknown and therefore potentially hostile. No sense of smell then, obviously. No movement sense either. And it wasn’t paying any attention to anything except eating.
Walsh stopped, and watched it eat. The four rear legs moved it about, while the front one which came from the base of the neck, looked more like an arm. Instead of bowing its head to eat, it was using the fifth limb to pull everything in its path out of the ground and was shoveling it into its mouth as fast as it could.
He raised his right hand in a 'hi' gesture, and separated the fingers out into pairs.
"Greetings," he said.
The entire herd looked around at him, emitted frantic sounds, and stampeded in the opposite direction.
A gun went off behind him, and the one he'd addressed went down. Jane walked past him, holstering her stunner. The Lightning took off, and came towards. Walsh followed Jane over to the animal. When they were really close, they became aware of a quite intense smell.
"Smells like a cow," said Walsh.
"How would you know?"
Walsh hesitated, unsure.
"Got me there. I know it’s a cow smell though. Are we having steaks for dinner?"
"We could. But seriously, eating and drinking has messy side effects. Are you sure you want to go back to all that?"
"Actually, no. Not having to pee, or shit, is one really good thing about what's happened. And I never did like eating all that much. If they'd ever come up with a pill which supplied everything you needed, I’d have taken it most of the time."
Jane experienced a sense of déjà vu. She pushed it aside.
"Even a power socket would have been better," he went on. "Which reminds me, do these bodies need to be recharged at all?"
"I've never needed to so far. The droids are designed for unlimited life. But I guess if you decided to run around this entire planet without stopping, you might find yourself running down."
"I wasn’t planning anything of the kind."
"Good. I wouldn’t be waiting for you."
Walsh didn’t take her up on the obvious rejoinder, looking instead at the fallen animal. The Lightning landed beside them, with its small cargo bay on the front open. Without waiting for Jane to say so, he seized the animal by one of its rear legs, and pulled it inside. Jane followed, and the airlock closed behind them as they climbed up to the cockpit above.
The ship launched itself into orbit, and a short time later, docked inside Concorde. Walsh pulled the animal into the small medical bay, and stuffed it into a care unit.
A red light started flashing, and Jane laughed. Walsh shot a glance at her.
"The care unit can't identify it, so it isn’t able to treat it."
"You chose this one because it has a cold?"
"I chose this one because it had the sense to be shit scared of you."
"Figures," he muttered.
"And it was nearest."
He looked at her, and she was indeed chuckling.
Jane reset the care unit for scan. It beeped at her. She reset it again, and turned off its alarms.
"Is that dinner?" came through the coms.
Thirty
Fred thumped down onto the mat. Again. He'd lost track of how many times it'd been.
"You're not concentrating," said Jane-Justine. "Are you sure you want to learn this stuff?"
She pulled him up off the mat, and stood there looking at him.
"Yes, but perhaps today wasn’t a good day to start. Too much on my mind."
Jane didn’t miss his eyes flicking down her body. He was dressed in loose clothes, while she was in her normal 'slinky red' uniform. Once again she wondered if this was a bad idea. Maybe she needed to create an excuse for Justine to be replaced for training by a male.
"Go shower then. It won't hurt you to be early for council."
Fred nodded, and headed for his own suite.
Jane returned the family gym to its unused appearance, while continuing to give some attention to the young Lord's load. He did have a lot on his mind. The evening before had been a long one. The Hunter's had hosted the Queen and her family. For most of the Hunter's it had been a shock to find out the two boys shared the same father. But Grandma Vi had been ecstatic to find there was another member of the family she hadn't known about, from the side of the family she couldn’t remember. The Hunter's took extended family seriously. And while several of the older ones hadn't taken Jane's word about it, she knew the surreptitiously done DNA test had come back positive. The new extension had been regally welcomed, you might say.
It had been a long dinner, and for Fred and Sarah, an even longer evening. The Queen had made it quite clear no-one was to know her son's father was not her husband. This hadn't been a problem for anyone. What had taken the time after dinner was the discussion of alliances between Britain and Hunter's Run. Britain was now a recognized sovereign state again, consisting of super-stations, each consisting of a dozen or so normal stations joined together. Within another day, it would all be one structure, but done so it could be disassembled quickly once they had somewhere to move to.
For once, Jane had missed something essential. It wasn’t a good idea for the Queen to visit another sovereign state, without having a public reason. The fact they'd now been seen together on three occasions on the same day, needed an explanation. Fortunately, the Queen's advisors were quick to point out the necessity of some sort of public announcement as to why the meetings were taking place.
Fred had the full support of the older members of the family, and a basic alliance announcement had been hammered out for release in the morning.
Jane checked, and it had already been released, and the media were full of it. The media were always full of it, but this time they had something which couldn’t be misrepresented.
Sarah had been consulted, but her education had been severely lacking for the role she now played. Jane felt she still didn’t quite accept she was one of the richest people in the system, and was effectively part of a government. While she tidied up, she sent off some suggestions to key Hunter people, for tutors she needed to bring her up to speed. It really wasn’t any of Jane's direct business, but someone had to make sure the right people were doing what was needed.
The Queen had also talked to both of them about statecraft. Fred had lapped it up, but Jane could see Sarah still had her mind on Michael most of the time, even though he now had has own staff tending to his every squawk. Being catapulted from single mum to statesperson within a few days hadn't been in her life plan, and she was barely coping. Fred had come to terms with being nobility early in the year, so while he was just as unprepared for the real role, he was at least ready to accept the responsibility, and the learning curve.
By the time the three of them arrived at the council chambers, more announcements formalizing sovereign states around super clusters of stations had been made.
One of them was the Torus, which used to occupy an entire orbit of Earth, but which was still in pieces, joined up like the rest of the stations in long super-structures. Their announcement also included their intention to leave Gaia, and reconstruct the Torus around a planet they could terraform.
Jane smiled at the irony as requests for meetings to discuss treaties came in. The Duchy of Hunter's Run was the smallest state, but it had the biggest fleet. This made them both a threat, and an asset for those who would be friends.
One of the messages to come in allocated Hunter's Run to a small office suite, where diplomatic meetings could be held. Jane immediately began staffing it with more avatars. She also sent key Hunter elders the location so they could be present for any negotiations.
Gaia police were electronically checking for weapons this time as they went in. Jane passed through without a beep. This raised a few eyebrows. Before she could sit, the Chair addressed her.
"Colonel, are you armed?"
"Always."
"Would you care to share how you brought a weapon through the detectors?"
"I programmed the detectors."
"Would you care to share how you hide your weapons?"
"Now that would be telling," Jane laughed. "Shall we call it a Hunter secret?"
"You may, but doubtless many here will find it disconcerting."
"Not my problem ma'am. I'm military, and we go armed, everywhere. I merely do you the courtesy of not flaunting it in your face."
"Will you please do us the courtesy of not shooting anyone today?"
"Will everyone please do me the courtesy of not providing me a reason to shoot them?"
Madam Chair swept her eyes around the room. A good half the delegates nodded to her. She nodded to Jane, who sat.
There were new faces at the Corporate desk, and none of them were happy they'd been the only ones to be physically frisked as they came in. Jane wondered for a nanosecond why they were there, until she found their status as full ambassadors. Exiled their people might be, but someone had at least left the diplomatic door open. There was hope after all.
The morning passed discussing the nature of the known habitable planets, followed by the uninhabitable systems. With one system allocated already, Jane could feel the urgency in the room to complete the process so those with somewhere to move to, could go.
The afternoon passed quickly in their new suite, with delegation after delegation formerly creating relationships with Hunter's Run. There were several notable exceptions, and Jane increased her observation levels in their stations and ships. She found nothing to make her nervous, but it didn’t hurt to stay vigilant.
With nothing specific to do, she spent the afternoon checking on the movement of refugees down to the three planets. Every ship which could move people was being used, and the only real bottleneck was the number of landing pads. Every building was set up for maximum ship landing area on the roof. But it was never going to be enough. All the same, every building was seeing people arrive at the same time, and an orderly allocation of housing and work premises was occurring. Not everyone was happy, but the process was geared to resettling people as fast as possible, not to pandering to their whims. When the process was complete, people could start organizing their own moves to where they preferred to be.
All the same, watching the process ongoing, Jane tweaked the algorithms so people with special skills went where they were going to be needed. In a few cases, she overrode the original settings, and sent people to different places. It kept her occupied through the remainder of the day, and well into the night.
Thirty One
Walsh returned the 'cow' to the planet before it woke up. He left it in the same general area where they'd taken it, having noted the rest of the herd hadn't gone too far away.
Once he was back on board, Jane pulled the alien ship into the atmosphere and gave it a safe downward trajectory, before letting it go. Her theory was the automation of the ship would move into landing mode, and this proved to be the case. It did a fast round the world orbit getting progressively lower all the time, and crashed down hard on a different continent from the one which already had herds of 'cows'. Which seemed to indicate the programming of the ship included seeding planets as wide as possible.
Concorde arrived back at the G014 jump point to find two AMS ships on the G023 side, with two Dreadnaughts and four Battleships waiting on the other side. The rest of the fleet was spread out over a number of systems, with the closest being a good day away still. Ironically, the smaller ships were probably going to be the most useful, since they could use their grav sleds to grab any further alien ships which showed up.
There were now comnavsats across the entire system, which had three jump points. While they knew where the alien planet was now, there was no way of being sure it was the only one. The navmap was incomplete. The original survey team had headed out of G023 through the leftmost jump point, and found it went around in a double loop, arriving back through the right jump point, although G025 was common to both loops, itself having four jump points. They'd mapped an arm heading off to the left of G026, but hadn't completed the task with other located jump points. The alien planet was off one of these in G036. The fastest way there was out through G025, and G038.
Where they were now though was the logical block point, so Jane needed to leave ships here. She brought one of the two Dreadnaughts through, with its two Battleship escort. She left the other three on the other side in case anything made it through the jump. The first three ships had recovered their Lightnings, which had been waiting at the jump point, not having been needed after all.
The three ships headed for the G025 jump point at their top speed. Since Concorde was faster, she'd overtake them soon anyway, so Jane felt no need to start yet.
Walsh had vanished into the suite being used by his wife. Problem solved, since if he wasn’t there, Jane wouldn’t feel obliged to discuss fleet dispositions with him. For a moment she wondered why she would, and came to the conclusion she enjoyed having someone around, now her … She stopped. That line of thought led to madness, or at least sadness. She spent an entire second contemplating if she was lonely or not, and concluded she was, in spite of having avatars connecting with people all the time. She spent another second comparing loneliness to being lonely. She concluded she was lonely, given her loss, but it wasn’t loneliness yet. Maybe she should… She stopped again. Now wasn’t the time for making relationship decisions.
She sent orders to the approaching fleet, putting Fleet Admiral Rainer in charge of the jump point on the G014 side. She had the largest ship, so while not senior, she did have a solid reason for commanding. Intrepid of course, was also there to advise her.
Different orders went to Fleet Admiral Hikaru, telling him to take his fleet of Corvettes through to the other side of the jump point, to form a blockade force there. As the rest of the fleet arrived, those fitted with grav sleds were to join him. In the event another alien ship turned up, he was to have one of his ships snag it, and throw it into the atmosphere of the G023 planet. If one of them came back out again, it was to be captured and kept in orbit until Jane decided what to do with it. Jane was assuming there was a limit in the ship programming to how many ships would be allowed to land on the same planet. If not, they would simply keep throwing them down there.
Both Admirals acknowledged their orders. Jane's last orders were to herself, on her second three ship fleet. Once the first elements of the main fleet arrived, they were to come on after her.
When the next fleet of her ex-Earth Battleships arrived, each of the two AMS Corvettes was to head out to G026 with a two Battleship escort, and resume their explorer duties. One of them was to find out what was on the other side of G030, and the other G033. If nothing much was there, one was to head to G038, and the other to G035. By that time, Jane's new Hive Cruiser should be complete, and able to join in the exploring. The third AMS Corvette, still being a long way behind, was ordered to resume checking th
e close to Gaia space the others had abandoned. Jane smiled when her captain started swearing about bosses making up their bloody minds.
Concorde shot off towards the jump point into G024. With her higher speed, Jane figured she better check the planet in the side system in case it hadn't been seeded yet. If not, she'd have to order a blockade fleet to it. If so, it gave them an alternative place to dump any more alien seeder ships.
Seeder ship. Jane pondered her choice of words. But it did fit. The ship wasn’t a colony ship in the conventional sense. Tests on the 'cow' had found seeds of the purple plant all through its digestive system, implying the 'cow' was the means of cultivating the purple plants, and between them both, they changed a planet for whoever the aliens were. It wasn’t exactly terraforming, but it was changing the planet subtlely.
It took Jane a day to reach the jump point into the alien system. As she went, she dropped comnavsats wherever needed, and was sending updates back to her selves on the ships behind her, and her avatars in the Gaia system. They were all sending updates to her, so the traffic was constant in both directions.
The morning passed in Gaia much the same as it had the day before, with council discussions heading towards an amiable allocation of systems.
G024 proved to have been seeded already, so she designated it as a secondary drop planet for seeder ships. As expected, the planet in G025 was also seeded, as was G038's. There was another seeder ship in G038, which she notified Satoshi to monitor, and eventually snag.
The afternoon in Gaia also passed much the same as the day before, with discussions of mutual interest, particularly who would support who for their choice of system to move to.
While Gaia Three's Orbital slept, Jane checked out several planets in G037, finding both seeded. Predictably, she also found the seeding more advanced the closer she came to the alien system. The purple plant was everywhere it could survive on both planets, as were the herds of 'cows'. They were obviously now awaiting full colonization. G036 didn’t have a habitable planet.
Admiral Jane (A.I. Destiny Book 1) Page 12
