“You have a problem with AI’s Commander?”
“Yes sir. They’re not human. They can’t be trusted to look after the interests of people first. And if the ship loses its computer for whatever reason, you suddenly have a ship with crew who can’t handle things manually.”
“So you follow the conventional military doctrine of no automation is the best automation.” It wasn’t a question.
“Of course sir. I don’t understand why you don’t.”
“Because Commander,” I emphasized his rank, “the Midgard war taught us that people don’t have the reflexes or brain power to protect us adequately.”
“I don’t believe that sir. People should always have total control.”
I looked at him.
The lights flickered for a second.
“Perhaps the Commander would like to go to his suite, and call up the battle feeds from the war. It’s obvious you haven’t seen them.”
“Ah, no sir. I mean, yes sir. I mean, no sir I’ve not seen them, and yes sir, I’ll go view them now. Sir.”
He rose, looked to his boss for dismissal, received a nod, and left.
I started chuckling the moment he was out of the room, and the Generals joined in.
“In his defense,” began Price.
A long blood curdling shriek echoed into the room, abruptly cut off, which had all three of us on our feet in seconds.
Price started for the door.
“Wait a second General,” I said.
He stopped and turned back towards me, real concern on his face.
“Jane,” I said, “what did you do?”
A pop-up on the wall showed a cam view of the inside of the access shaft, near the bottom. Pyne was hanging in space a meter off the deck, upside down, whimpering.
I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. Harriman was right behind me, and Price joined in when he found he couldn’t help himself. We all sat again.
“Are you going to put him down Jane?”
“Not yet,” came through the coms.
Pyne suddenly shot upwards, feet first. He shrieked again, as his legs came to a stop at the top of the shaft, a hand’s width from the top. Then he dropped again, arms and legs waving madly, mouth making incoherent sounds, before stopping abruptly half way down. He vomited the contents of his stomach in one projectile like mass, which sped away below him. But before it hit the deck, it seemed to congeal into a solid mass, and swept around the shaft before heading back upwards straight at Pyne’s face. He desperately tried to protect himself with his hands, but at the last second it veered off, and started to circle around him. The whimpering grew louder.
“Put him down Jane, gently please.”
“Yes, my Master,” she replied in a voice several octaves lower than normal.
Pyne dropped again, with another blood curdling shriek, stopping head down just above the deck. His body rolled so he was lying horizontal, face up. He wafted the remaining distance like a feather, and settled on the deck more gently than he ever did on his bed.
The vomit mass streaked down, and hit him square in the face.
We all lost it.
Jeeves walked up to the hapless Commander, and looked down at him.
“Oh dear, dear, dear,” he said.
He picked up one of Pyne’s feet, and started to drag him along the corridor. Pyne struggled, but was unable to do anything except make his position worse. The screen followed them along, shifting from cam to cam, and into his suite. Jeeves took him straight into the bathroom and deposited him in the shower. The water started full on, right into his face. Pyne screamed again and desperately pushed himself out of the water flow.
“Oh dear,” Jeeves said again. “Someone left the water set to hot. Let me fix it for you.”
The water flow lessened. Pyne tentatively tested the water, found it acceptable and stuck his head under the flow.
Jeeves left him there. The screen shut off.
“And that gentlemen,” I said, “is why you never insult an AI who controls the ship.”
“Confirmed,” came through the room coms.
We all lost it again.
Forty Two
I sent Alison in to see if he needed medical attention. It wasn’t clear from the vid if he was burned or not. She pinged me back he was fine. The water had been hot, but not scalding.
The three of us spent the rest of the afternoon talking mini-sector stuff, although there wasn’t much brought up which hadn’t already been by the Brits. Still, it was a very useful discussion.
Just before six, the Generals headed down to dinner, and I took my chair on the Bridge. Custer would already have jumped out, because although the distances were about the same, and we’d been heading away from each other, they’d had a head start.
The London system was a bit strange. The Verse and Washington jump points were opposite each other across the system. But if you stood at the Verse jump point and looked towards the Washington one, there were another three jump points to your right, and none to your left. The closest one to us now, was the one to Cambridge, with Norfolk on the other side of that system. The middle jump point led to Leeds, and the other one to Oxford. Bentley’s fleet had headed out through Oxford on their wild goose chase the other day.
266 squadron were already on the other side, in Verse. There were several ships coming towards, but all angled away from us, obviously warned to stay clear.
By ten past, the trickle of ships coming through had stopped.
Jane brought me up to date, with the only thing new being Zippy completing her two runs for cargo, and now being downstairs in her apartment sleeping.
I’m not sure Jane’s little episode earlier had been a good thing for her. If anything she now sounded more eccentric than before, and I hadn’t thought that was possible.
Lacey sent us the okay to jump, and we found a short line of ships waiting on the other side, well out of the way. 266 went to top speed, while Jane brought us back up to cruising speed. The latter was about eighty five percent of top speed, so we were still breaking speed expectations for such a large ship.
I looked up the Verse system, since I had no first-hand knowledge of it. What I found amazed me.
Verse is a huge system, one of the largest ever found. None of the now handful of planets and over a dozen moons which are habitable, were so to begin with. The system was terraformed in stages. The interesting thing was, there wasn’t very much terraforming needed to make them viable.
The system has two suns. The first one was much bigger and hotter than Earth’s, so the so called goldilocks zone was much further out than for normal Earth type suns, and much wider. Well beyond that zone, was a much smaller sun orbiting the first one, as if what might have been a gas giant had achieved ignition in its own right. It had its own goldilocks zone.
The dynamics of the system were intense, and sometime in the past, there must have been major collisions, as what were in effect two solar systems, interacted with each other. But the forces operating in the system had either destroyed or moved anything likely to hit something else, resulting in the primary goldilocks zone having more than a usual number of planets, and the secondary zone not directly interacting with the primary, although it rotated around the primary sun, which wasn’t itself affected by the second one. So by the time people found the system, it had two stable sets of planets and moons. But the dynamics of the system changed all the time.
The planets and moons vary from one extreme to another as far as climates go, and it’s a busy system. However, it’s also a very insular system, in so far as not a lot of local traffic ever leaves. The main traffic heading out the two jump points on either side, are those heading up and down the spine on long hauls. A lot of in-system trade is handled by small freighters, who move what’s needed from those settlements and cities with too much, to those with too little. The Firefly class small freighter, of which I had one in my trading fleet, was born here, and is a popular choice for a system wh
ere space stations hadn’t been established as normal, and landing on dirt was essential.
The position of the second sun dictated the best way to cross the system. It was going to take us twelve hours.
I headed down to dinner.
As there weren’t many of us now, everyone was sitting up one end of the table, leaving me with the head. I took my seat. A streak of white shot in the door behind me, did a circuit of the room, and ended up in my lap. A white head poked up over the edge of the table, and the rest of her boosted up onto it. She sat beside me looking very pleased with herself.
Pyne’s sneer became a frown. His experience of the afternoon hadn’t done anything to change his attitude. However, when Jeeves appeared to take our dinner orders, he jumped and looked like he would prefer to be somewhere else. We all made a point of ignoring him, but several smiles showed an effort being made to not laugh out loud.
Angel proceeded to wash herself, and gave those down the table an excellent view of cat butt. The frown deepened.
Conversation was general, without ranks intruding. This brought on yet another deepening of the frown.
When Jeeves and Jason brought us food, Angel’s dinner bowl was put down in front of her as well. One would expect Angel to have been the messier eater there, but not so. Amanda recounted a particularly funny story, and Alison knocked her drink over while laughing too hard. The frown threatened to break the face wearing it.
I pondered the Commander, and came to the conclusion he was the sort of military martinet who expects order and rigid adherence to orders, especially his. He was completely out of his element here, and with zero authority, could do nothing about it.
When Jeeves took his empty plate away from him without warning, he practically fell out of his chair. He settled himself, mumbling under his breath.
“Something to say Commander?” I asked him.
“No sir.”
“My mistake. I could have sworn I saw your lips moving.”
“Nothing important sir.”
“I take it you’ve never had any experience of butler droids before?”
“No sir.”
“I guess you’d prefer human servants?”
“Ah, yes sir.”
“Feel free to volunteer Commander, no-one else is going to.”
He went red. I swear I saw Jeeves wink at me.
We managed to finish dessert without any further problems. Angel jumped down into my lap, and then to the floor, where she shot out the door. We all moved into the Rec Room, where Aline had me throw the next lot of ‘Who’ episodes to the entertainment system. The first episode was full of explanations for those who hadn’t seen ‘Who’ before. Pyne made it through ten minutes before heading for his suite, mumbling to himself again as he went. I guess to his orderly mind, we were all mad. The thought had me chuckling for several minutes.
After the second episode, I told everyone the next jump was at six fifteen in the morning, and everyone should feel free to sleep through it. I said goodnight, and headed back to my suite. The hobble was almost a limp now, and I’d accepted I needed to exercise to get proper movement back.
My bruises were aching much more so than they had been all day, but considering I’d not needed a pain shot at all, I was doing very well. Angel was asleep in her cat bed, so I left her alone, and went into the bathroom. I stripped off and dropped into the spa, intending to soak for a half hour or so, and get an early night.
About five minutes later, Aline walked in, silently stripped off, and dropped in beside me. Several minutes later, Alison did the same. And predictably, a few minutes later, so did the twins.
No-one said anything. We soaked in silence.
The silence became uncomfortable.
Eventually Amanda cleared her throat, breaking it.
“Um,” she said, pausing, “Jon, what’s been going on between you and the Queen?”
“Going on?” I asked innocently.
“You don’t do the raw prawn very well Jon,” said Alison. “Fess up!”
“We know something was going on,” said Aleesha.
“And it’s your business because?”
“We care about you Jon,” said the twins together.
“I get that, but what’s the worry?”
“A Queen can have anyone she likes. We don’t want you used like a play toy, and thrown away.”
I laughed.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“How was it then?” asked Aline.
“Alison knows.”
“Me?” said Alison. “Why would I know?”
“Because the situations were identical.”
“Oh.”
I could see the wheels turning in four heads. ‘Thank you for saving my life sex’ was something they understood.
“What about Miriam?” asked Amanda.
“We parted on good terms, knowing it could be a long time before we see each other again. We both recognized any attempt at a long distance relationship wasn’t going to work. She has her dream job, in her dream ship, and isn’t going to leave it for anything. I have responsibilities now a long way away. It was fun, but that’s it for now. In the meantime, when a Queen says jump, one says ‘Yes ma’am’!”
They giggled.
“It’s sweet you all care,” I went on, “but it’s not as if anything is happening with any of you at the moment. Your code doesn’t seem to allow it.”
“Only true for Alison now Jon,” said Aleesha.
“Oh? What changed?”
“The new rank structure,” said Amanda. “Alison is the only one under your direct command now. In separating out infantry from fleet and pilots, and establishing a command group outside them, you no longer are our direct boss.”
“I told you that last time we had this conversation.”
“It was different then.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“It was Jon,” said Aleesha. “Then it was you, Annabelle, and us. Direct command line. Now, Annabelle is the head of the Infantry arm of your organization, while you’re head of the command staff arm.”
I shook my head. It was too subtle for me to see. But if it was going to make them happier, I was all for the distinction.
“Fine,” I said. “Where does that leave us then?”
“Horny,” said Aline.
We all laughed.
Forty Three
I woke up with Aline draped over me. After the others left, she’d proved that good things come in small packages. She was the shortest of the merc team, owing to her Oriental forbears. I didn’t feel like I’d had much sleep. Jane whispered the time in my ear, I extracted myself without waking Aline up, and headed for the Bridge.
We were fifteen minutes to jump. I made myself comfortable. There was no real reason for being here, but I felt the need in case something happened.
“Man overboard,” said Jane, in a matter of fact voice.
“What?” I responded incredulously.
A pop-up screen showed a white mass roughly the size of a man, outside the ship, and falling behind rapidly.
“Stop,” I said.
“Confirmed.”
“What or who was that?”
Another screen popped up. It showed the inside of a suite. A man was sleeping. Three butler droids entered, put a belt around the man without waking him up, proceeded to strip the bed with the man still in the sheets, bundled the sheets up, and then carried it all out. Cams followed them to the nearest maintenance airlock, where the bundle was pushed in, and the airlock cycled.
Laughter exploded out of me, at the same time I was shocked at what had happened.
“Pyne?”
“Confirmed.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
“And spoil their fun?”
Droids having fun was a new concept for me, and I boggled for a moment considering it.
“Did you intend leaving him out there?”
“Of course not. An SR droid is launching now.”
“I assume that belt was programmed to protect him, since he won’t have had it installed properly?”
“Confirmed. It actually went space suit mode before the airlock was opened. But he’s going to be a bit breathless before the SR droid can get to him.”
“Intentionally I assume.”
“Confirmed.”
Another pop-up was showing the SR droid’s view as it matched velocity with the white mass, and captured it. A suit tube punched through the sheet, and connected to an SR droid air point. The droid turned to follow us back.
By the time it caught us up, the ship was stopped and waiting for it. I told Jane to send her avatar to escort him to see me.
As soon as he was aboard, we continued on to the jump point, and jumped through. Once again, there was a line of ships on the other side, and 266 squadron were heading away from us at full speed.
We were now in the Sanctuary system. It’s a fairly standard system with five jump points. On the right side of the system as we headed, was a jump point which led to Miami, three jumps away. Had we not had to go to London first, I’d have come that way, and rejoined the spine here.
Time to the next jump point was eight hours.
I waited.
Pyne staggered onto the Bridge with Jane behind him, looking like he was being forced to come here. He was still wearing a belt. I waved him over.
“What the hell are you playing at?” he snapped at me, obviously very angry.
“What the hell are you playing at SIR!” I snapped back at him. “I may be inactive, but I’m still your superior officer. You will come to attention Commander.”
I could see his reluctance, but he braced as ordered.
“Jane, remove the belt please.”
“Confirmed.”
She sent it a command, it detached itself, and fell away into her waiting hand. She moved away from Pyne.
I let him stand there for several minutes.
“So Commander, what have you learned?”
“Your ship is trying to kill me!”
“Rubbish. If it was, you’d be dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Obviously. Exactly what don’t you understand?”
Hunter Legacy 5 Hail the Hero Page 24
