A third explosion even closer generated worried looks. The fourth one was in the city, and was followed by the wail of sirens.
One of the owls finished speaking through his tablet, and turned to Snark.
"What are you doing cat?" he demanded.
Snark looked surprised, considering he was. But he had no chance to answer, as the next explosion seemed to be a building really close by, and the ground seemed to shudder enough to make those of them standing fall down, and everyone else grab for the table with all three hands. More sirens wailed.
Snark found himself looking down the barrel of a slug gun.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"You tell us cat. It's your ship firing missiles at us."
"What?"
The gun barrel poked him in the nose, and he subtly shifted his position on the chair he was sitting on, holding the table with two hands, while his third hung down his right side. He was wearing his red suit this time, but being poked by a gun barrel, didn’t set it off into protection mode. If the finger on the trigger moved though, his suit would react.
"Let me contact my ship captain, and find out what's happening."
The gun drew back slightly, and the head behind it nodded. Snark tapped keys on his old tablet, which was sitting on the table in front of him. First rule of negotiating anything these days, was not letting on you had human tech on you, and especially not Kingdom tech. So he pretended to contact his ship through tablet coms, with an answer in his earbud.
"What's going on?" he asked Seasprite out loud.
"Do you want the official version, or the cover story?" answered Seasprite through his PC.
"Just tell me what's going on."
Snark made his voice sound both puzzled and angry.
"Cover story is a missile launcher malfunction. It fired off all fifty missiles by accident, and they landed all over the planet in random places."
Snark face-palmed to show the owls what he thought of the answer he'd received.
"You won't believe it, but a missile launcher malfunctioned, and emptied itself. Most of the missiles survived reentry, and landed all over the planet. No guidance you see."
"You're right cat. We don’t believe it."
"Well that’s what happened."
"Actually," said Seasprite, which only he could hear, "no. Jane sent orders to take out all the Brotherhood on this planet. The missiles were very, very, precisely targeted, to avoid collateral damage."
"Don’t move cat," said the owl, its gun still held unwavering in front of his nose. "Someone call the police, so they can arrest this terrorist."
One of the other owls started talking into its tablet.
"Did you get them all?" asked Snark sub-vocally.
"No, there's one left."
"Where?"
"It’s the one pointing the gun at you."
"That figures."
Seasprite laughed. Snark shook his head.
"What's your problem cat?"
"You are. Would you like to show the room your Brotherhood tattoo? Or do I shoot you, and show it for you?"
The room went silent. Eyes shifted between Snark, and the owl holding the gun.
"With what gun?" sneered the owl.
Snark shifted his suit to show the guns he always wore now. All three were cat sized versions of Kingdom hand guns, each for a different purpose. His right hand was dangling again, and now pulled the cat Long Gun from its holster, combat routines went primary in his PC, and without needing to do more than point, he fired it into the chest area of the owl.
The slug gun went off as the owl jerked, and Snark's suit shifted in an instant to protect him. His PC gave him an excellent view of the slug bouncing off his nose, and he flinched. The suit shifted again to clear his face, and the owl hit the floor hard.
Snark holstered the gun, and jumped down off the chair. No-one else had moved. He pulled the owl's clothing back a little, moved a few feathers aside, and there it was. A Brotherhood tattoo. There was the sound of in drawing breath from around the room.
"Is he dead?" asked the owl who'd been talking to the police.
"Very."
"Was that a human gun?" asked a different owl.
"Yes. But I didn’t see the point in stunning him, if that’s what you're asking."
"It was."
"Brotherhood kill themselves if identified. If I’d stunned him, he'd have just committed suicide as soon as he woke up."
"True," said the police officer coming in the door.
"Am I under arrest officer?" asked Snark.
"No, but we will need a statement from you."
"You're not arresting him?" asked the owl, still holding his tablet.
"The government gave Queen Jane permission to remove Brotherhood presence from our planets, just a few minutes ago. Snark's ship was given firing permission immediately, being the only Kingdom ship here at the moment. We've also raided another dozen locations where missiles would have killed innocent owls. The intel was correct in every case. All Brotherhood. Our other planets seem to have had at least one as well."
The owl reluctantly closed the coms channel on his tablet, and put it away.
"When can we expect you for the statement?" the police owl went on, looking at Snark.
"I'll be right along as soon as we finish negotiations here."
"Fine. I'll leave an officer outside to escort you."
Snark nodded. The police owl picked up a foot, and dragged the dead owl out.
"Shall we continue?" Snark asked, as if nothing had happened.
Stunned faces looked back at him, as he jumped back up onto the chair, and made himself comfortable again, his guns vanishing as if they'd never been there.
One by one, the others took their places at the table, and negotiations resumed.
"A little more warning next time," Snark said sub-liminally.
"What? And give you time to mess it up?"
"Ha, ha."
"I've sent Jane the feeds. So you can take your time down there."
"I will."
Seven
Mouse down jumped into his home system. He'd been away for far too long, and was looking forward to spending some quality family time.
He still couldn’t get over his good fortune. Rescued from slavery by cats, of all things, leading to meeting someone with power, who not only recognized his abilities, but rewarded him for them. Hence this ship. He'd redesigned the pilot's chair for beings of cat size and smaller, all the way down to his diminutive size. Instead of having the designs taken from him, he'd been granted a healthy royalty on each installation of the chair, and been paid up front for enough of them to buy his own ship.
He found humans large and loud, but as humans went, Leader Jane was a quiet one for her size. He'd seen the duck rewarded for her services with a repaired Excalibur long range fighter, and one of the first of his modified chair designs had been upsized for the duck, at the same time Seasprite's captain's chair was updated the same way for a cat. He knew Seasprite inside and out now, sort of, but also knew he didn’t need that size of ship for himself.
The Excalibur fighter on the other hand, was a perfect size for him. He'd sweet talked Jane into allowing him to buy one, and he and Patchet had redesigned the interior. The cockpit was only half the height now. The upper level was a new luxury lounge. The living area was now three levels, with the top level being guest quarters, the middle level his own living suite linking directly into the cockpit, and the lower level his new workshop. The full height airlock had been replaced with three smaller ones.
In other respects though, the fighter remained its same lethal self. He would need to be careful about ordinance usage, since there were no replacements out here. Yet. He'd also have to buy them from Patchet or the Kingdom, and he was unsure how long his windfall from seat sales would last. He needed to find another source of income. Which was another reason for coming home.
One reason he'd bought a fighter was so he could prot
ect his planet from hunters. The Kingdom had a ship in-system for this task at the moment, while diplomacy crawled along towards them joining the Kingdom formally, but eventually his people would need to be able to protect themselves. They needed to see what the Kingdom could offer, and there was no better way than a direct demonstration.
Or so he hoped. The Kingdom Cruiser hadn't taken long to demonstrate any future hunters needed a lot bigger fire power to even get to their hunting grounds, and the word had spread quickly. The ship was now spending most of its time interdicting contraband, although one ship for the whole system wasn’t enough to do a full job. It was a role a squadron of Excaliburs could do better. They were expensive ships though, and he'd need to convince his people to spend the gals. There was of course the added incentive of a commission on sales, if he could push them through.
Ding.
Mouse brought up the scan data on the small freighter ahead of him. Rapture. The new drug the Brotherhood were pushing. A cargo hold full of it.
A channel opened, and the face of a Hunter ship captain popped up.
"Mouseketeer, I see you've found a drug ship inbound. I know you turned down a bounty hunter license for sector ten, but Leader Jane requests you take on a bounty for her now. I find myself on the wrong side of the system for this one, and here you are in position."
"I'm not a bounty hunter," replied Mouse, "and never intend being one, but I will welcome demonstrating this ship's capabilities to my government. I was going to challenge the ship over their drug cargo anyway, but what does Leader Jane wish?"
"Intel says this ship is Brotherhood, and not only has drugs on board, but a Brotherhood crew. Please terminate the ship."
"I'll need authorization for that. Assuming I get it, I accept the bounty."
"Good. I hope we can meet up when I'm next in orbit."
"I look forward to it."
The channel closed, the bounty warrant pulsed in, he took a few moments to study it, and opened another channel to the Orbital station over his homeworld.
"Mouse Orbital, how may I direct your call?"
"Senior military please."
"Ship name and pilot, please."
Mouse told the operator Mouseketeer and his real name, rather than the nickname the Seasprite crew had given him.
"Hold please."
A few moments later, a mouse in stripy green replaced the operator.
"Yes?"
"I need authorization to destroy a ship please."
"Which one, and why?"
Mouse sent the data for the ship ahead of him.
"Rapture?"
"The new Brotherhood drug. I was going to demand they drop their cargo, but I was sent a bounty warrant by Leader Jane of sector ten, to destroy the ship, since the crew are all Brotherhood according to intelligence she has."
"You sound like you know that human."
"We've met, yes. I bought this ship from her."
"I'm not familiar with it."
"Excalibur long range heavy fighter. Are you familiar with the specs for a not-croc Cruiser?"
"Yes. Why?"
"This fighter could take out one of their Cruisers without taking a hit from it."
"That’s a big claim."
"It's not a claim. It's human tech."
"So a freighter is not going to be a problem for you?"
"It won't know what hit it. All I need is the authorization to destroy it."
"How do you know the ship has Rapture on board?"
"Human tech. They already had a scanner capable of detecting the purple plant and all of its drug derivatives, so once they had a sample of Rapture, they quickly added the ability to detect it. Leader Jane added the tech to my ship, so I could demonstrate it for Mouse military."
"Do you have a valid police license for this sector?"
"No. I was meaning to apply when I arrived home."
A file pulsed in.
"You do now. You are approved to destroy that ship, and any other ship carrying contraband of any kind you can detect, should they refuse to dump their cargo when you demand it. Demand first, shoot later. Make sure you get the order correct."
"Thank you. And I will. Hang on while I patch you into battle feeds, so you can watch the show, as a demonstration of what this ship can do."
The mouse nodded, looked to one side giving instructions, and several others joined him. Mouse used his new PC to cross link the feeds from his HUD to the open channel.
He opened a new channel, leaving the existing one open.
"This is police fighter Mouseketeer to Brotherhood ship. You will immediately stop your engines, bring your ship to a stop, and dump your cargo. You will be towed to the orbital station, where your crew will be arrested, and the ship impounded. You have ten seconds to comply before I open fire."
It only took five seconds for the ship to respond, with a missile. It was followed two seconds later by a second one.
Mouse sighed. He selected image recognition missiles from his forward missile launcher, targeted the first missile, and fired. He repeated this for the second one, and the third. At the same time, he juked the ship violently away from the course it had been on, and brought it around for a strafing run down the ship's length.
All three missiles met their much larger counterparts, and three explosions happened well away from his shields.
Mouse selected 'all' from the gun groups menu, and powered in behind the ship. When the in range indicator flashed, he pulled the gun trigger, and eight pulses shot out in front of him, converging to a point ahead. The rear end of the ship vanished in a cloud of debris, and Mouse pulled the ship up and over the mess, debris hitting his shields and vaporizing. The ship stopped in short order, Mouse flashing past it before he could get another shot off.
The HUD was showing the entire engine section as one big red area.
"Surrender now," he said, "or be destroyed."
Another missile fired, and he was forced to waste another IR to take it out. Next job on his to do list was now a fighter scale of Mosquito missile launcher. He couldn’t afford to waste IR's like this. Although he could have just let them hit his shields and demonstrated how resilient it was. But the object here was no hits. Still, he needed to see if he could do something the humans couldn’t, knowing it existed in a larger form. He knew Jane would happily accept such a design, and the royalties would be worth the effort. His mind focused back on the task in paw.
He brought Mouseketeer around so he would be firing down the length of the stopped ship, carefully aimed, and pulled the gun trigger again. The front end vanished like the rear had, and after two more trigger pulls, nothing was left except debris.
The scanner was still showing drugs among the debris, so he continued firing until the area was clear of anything which made the HUD go ding.
Mouse opened the front airlock, and his salvage droid flew out. He set it to looking for biological matter, and when it had found all the remains, he tasked the droid with identification. While most of the bodies were too far gone to id, two of them still had recognizable Brotherhood tattoos. The remains were taken into his small cargo hold, and the salvage droid began cleaning up the remaining mess.
Mouse turned back to the station screen.
"Nice work," said the senior officer in the group now visible. "As soon as you dock at the station, I want to see you in my office. There will be a bounty payment for you, and we need to discuss your ship, and how we can get more of them."
"I'll be there in a couple of hours."
"That fast?"
"That fast. Human tech."
"I'll be waiting. Station out."
The channel closed, and another one opened.
"Nicely done," said the human captain. "I've notified Leader Jane of a successful kill. I assume you did quite well in the simulator training for the Excalibur?"
"Well enough. I don’t intend making a permanent living like this."
"Your payment is already in your account. Nice doing busi
ness with you."
The figure waved an arm in what he assumed was a form of salute, and the channel closed.
This might work after all, Mouse thought. He grinned to himself, unbuckled, and went off to find some food and a drink. The salvage droid was going to be busy for a half hour or so, and it was an hour and half to the station after.
He checked his account. The payment had been from Jane personally, and much higher than he expected.
A good day's work for a mouse on a mission.
Eight
Holmes stalked the passageways of Hunter Prime's civilian station. The diplomatic section was huge now, catering for many thousands of alien beings, as well as several hundred supporting human staff.
He was following a specific being, but being very careful to not be detected as following him. He was walking a constantly altering plan, which saw him meet with beings for legitimate reasons, but kept him within a defined range of his target.
It was an intellectual exercise he found stimulating. How to accidently make contact with a being, having trailed it for several hours, and without it having any idea it had been trailed.
Of course, he could have just sat in his office and used the internal sensors. But where was the fun in that? Besides, he was on-shift, and he'd established the habit of being pro-active, and on view while he was. Off-shift, he moved about even more, but most beings didn’t see him doing it.
His target was an owl. The one responsible for the bomb scare which had led to his elevation to AI, and appointment of Kingdom Security Chief. There were not a lot of owls around these days, outside of the diplomatic team. It was no surprise to find one of them was both a spy, and Brotherhood.
And this one was really good. His diplomatic cover was unbreakable, as was his complete history. It had taken an instruction from Jane personally to get him to concentrate on this one owl, and he still had no real idea why. But being suspected as Brotherhood was enough to justify him taking his time.
Where a lot of Brotherhood at the border points were picked out simply by taking over the ship's computer system for long enough to surveil each being, noting tattoos when clothing was removed, this one had not been so easy. Even after removing clothes, a tattoo had never been seen.
A.I. Destiny 6 Leader Jane Page 3
