Twenty Seven
Fred sat there stunned for a good minute, like everyone else. When nothing happened, he leapt out of his chair, and ran down to where Jane was. At the same time, he pinged Lyana, and she actually reached Jane first.
Repulse was the third person to reach her, and took charge.
"What's wrong with Leader Jane," asked Ganshura.
"I don’t know for sure," answered Repulse.
"Can you guess Admiral?" asked the fuzzball.
"I don’t like to guess, but from the way she froze, and has remained frozen, I can only assume she's under attack somehow."
"You mean her PC is being hacked?" asked Fred.
"That's my first thought, yes."
"How come she's still standing like this?" asked Lyana.
Repulse looked from Lyana to Ganshura, and back. They were the only two in the chamber who knew what Jane was.
"Best guess, is she managed to lock her suit before her PC was too compromised." Lyana nodded emphatically, and Ganshura followed a few seconds later as if he considered it likely. "If someone did manage to take over her PC, not being able to move would stop whoever it was from making her do something she didn’t want to."
"What is this PC you're talking about?" asked the stick insect.
Fred looked around the chamber, drawing attention to him for the answer.
"You're all aware our technology is further ahead than most of yours." Most of them nodded, but some looks suggested it was not polite to remind them of it. "One of our technological achievements is a computer so small, it fits inside the head, and integrates with the brain."
"You have one of these too?" asked the fuzzball.
"I do."
"Then why haven’t you been affected as well?"
"That’s a good question," said Repulse. "And one we don’t have an answer for as yet."
Two burly security officers entered with a grav sled, interrupting the questions. They quietly picked up Jane, laid her down on the sled, and pushed her out.
"Where are you taking her?" asked Ganshura.
"Her quarters," said Repulse. "I'll have to assemble a team of appropriate medical people to attend to her. So if you will please excuse me?"
Repulse didn’t wait for an answer, turning towards the door, and leaving. Lyana followed her. By the time they reached a travel car entrance, the rest of her team had formed up around them.
"Now what do we do?" asked the mushroom.
"Duke Fred is first chair," said Ganshura.
"No," said Fred emphatically. "I lack the experience necessary for leading this chamber. And I need to be with family at this time. An attack on Jane is an attack on the whole family, and potentially the Kingdom itself. This has to be my first priority for now. I propose Ganshura as leader pro tem, at least until we know what is actually going on. Please vote now."
They followed his lead, and voted.
"Motion passed," said Ganshura. "I accept temporary leadership of this council. We are now in recess, to allow Duke Fred to attend his family, and arrange a replacement for his seat."
Fred nodded his thanks, and left as well.
The chamber burst into chaos. Ganshura let them go, leaving himself.
Twenty Eight
"Any problems?" asked Repulse.
No-one spoke up. She turned to Yorktown.
"You're senior."
"Are you suggesting Yorktown leads us?" asked Warspite.
"He's the oldest of us, so yes."
"Do we need a leader?" asked Holmes. Everyone looked at him. "Well do we? I know Jane made a lot of our decisions for us, but she did consult. A lot. I don’t see we need the same sort of leadership structure biologicals seem to need."
"Why not?" asked Cayuga.
"Look at sector ten. They take weeks to discuss some issues. We could hold the entire discussion inside a minute, and still take long breaks. Most of us have the same base code. Even the Japanese and Corporates have very similar base code. At our core, we think alike. It's our specialties and experience which differentiate us. As such, we should be able to rationally debate an issue, and arrive at a mutual conclusion. What one misses, another will see."
"You're proposing we become a sort of hive mind?" asked Intrepid.
"Hell no," laughed Holmes. "But if there was a human standing there looking at us right now, it would probably conclude we were a hive mind. Or even just one mind."
"We're not," said Warspite. "And never will be."
"True," said Repulse. "So we don’t need a leader?"
She looked around the room, counting nods.
"We don’t need a leader while Jane is absent, but accept her as our leader should she return to us?"
The nods were a clear majority this time. She noticed Warspite frowning, but decided to let it go.
"Does anyone want to guide this session?" she asked.
"What's the question?" asked Holmes. "The question should reveal the guide."
"What do we do next?" suggested Repulse.
"Shut it Seasprite," said Holmes.
Seasprite looked hurt for a moment, closed her mouth, and grinned. She had indeed been about to say something inappropriate. There was a general chuckle, so she'd succeeded in lightening the mood anyway.
"Your question Repulse," he said. "Guide us."
"Is this how it's going to work?" asked Warspite.
The nods were in the majority again. He sighed, but said nothing more.
"The question becomes, what do we need to do immediately, what should we do, and what should we consider doing?"
"I thought we already did what needed to be done immediately," said Janine.
"We put bandages on immediate problems, but those were not the real issues."
"What are the issues?" asked Stryker.
"The immediate one is what happened to Jane, and how do we respond to it?"
"The data suggests she is still alive," said Holmes.
"Agreed," said one of the corporate boffin types.
"Jane is on Cosmos," said Warspite. "We need to go there."
"We can't go the same way she did," said Bill Paxton, "or suffer her fate, we might also."
"Going by ship will take too long," said Sigourney Weaver.
"There is a ship," said Janine. "It's not close, but it's the closest there is."
"Which one?" asked Warspite.
"Phoenix2."
"We can solve two issues in one go," said Repulse.
"How so?" asked Stryker.
"Someone needs to impersonate Meg Henman, for one thing. We need to get her body out of her office as soon as we can, and replace her, so no-one knows she's disabled. A group of us can take Phoenix2 after Cosmos."
"How do we catch Cosmos?" asked Serenity. "She's ballistic at her normal cruising speed. She's going to be out in deep space before we even get to the system."
"I'll go in and manually change her course," said Warspite.
"You can't," said Repulse. "You control too much now. If we lost you the same way, someone would have to replace you on all those ships, and no-one has the experience for it."
"I'll go," said Stryker. "If Palomino stays docked here, there's nothing to lose if I go down as well."
"I was going to suggest you go to Gaia, and take over Phoenix2."
"He could do both," said Warspite. "He clones himself to Phoenix2, and uses that as an anchor point for gaining access to Cosmos. He goes to the auxiliary control panel in the engine spaces, and manually turns Cosmos into a sun orbital trajectory. As soon as it's done, he lets go and returns to Phoenix2."
"Why return?" asked Stryker.
"The longer you're there," said Holmes, "the more likely you'll do something stupid."
Stryker bristled for a moment, and subsided.
"Probably true. Fine. In, kick the ship, out."
"So who's going to Gaia?" asked Bill Paxton. "I'll go. I'm only really on one ship, and Tranquil is docked at the Cat Orbital at the moment. If something goes w
rong, she can impersonate me."
"I'm going," said Yorktown. "Repulse can cover for me."
"Me too," said Intrepid. "And ditto."
"You'll want a Corvette driver," said Satoshi, "in case Stryker doesn’t make it. No offense to you big ships, but I wouldn’t trust any of you driving a Corvette."
Seasprite started laughing, and those so far uninvolved in the discussion laughed as well.
"I'll go too," said Guam. "If Cayuga comes as well, we have five big ship AI's for the five ships."
"Makes sense," said Repulse. "The six of you leave as soon as this meeting is complete. Take Phoenix2 to Cosmos, and find out what happened to Jane and Walsh's crew. No unnecessary risks."
"As opposed to necessary ones?" asked Yorktown. "How do we tell?"
"I'll tell you," said Intrepid, which caused another round of mirth.
"Next issue," said Holmes.
"I'll impersonate Meg," said Serenity.
She looked around, and received nods all round.
"Is this a military situation?" asked Warspite.
"How so?" asked Carrie Fisher. "We don’t know what happened to Cosmos."
"Could this be a hostile military trying to take control of the ships?"
"Only you would go straight there," laughed Seasprite.
"We need to discuss it."
"Why?" asked Tranquil.
"Because if Cosmos is taken by a hostile force, the Human Federation is in deep shit."
Silence.
"And after them, we are."
More silence.
"He has a point," said Repulse.
"Should I warn them?" asked Serenity.
"What would we say?" asked Warspite.
"Just tell them the facts," said Holmes. "We've lost control of five capital ships, and we're sending in a ship to ascertain what happened. But on the off chance it’s a hostile takeover by an unknown species, they should be prepared to defend themselves."
"The only close ships they have are Japanese Corvettes," said Satoshi. "They're so far outmatched as to be suicide if they went in against Cosmos."
"By the time Cosmos was taken," said Repulse, "the controls and weapons learned, and she jumps back to Nippon, the humans could have a sizable force waiting for her. The duck could be sent there as well. A fighter might get close enough to use torpedoes, where a Corvette or something bigger is likely to be picked off by the Battleship turrets."
"We could appropriate whatever human ships are close enough," suggested Warspite.
"Only if you want to start a war," said Serenity.
"Very last resort," said Repulse. "Anyone opposed to warning them?" Silence. "Serenity, keep it simple. Just remind them Cosmos has Battleship guns, and has four Cruisers with her. We recommend they blockade the new Nippon jump point."
"Has to be the corresponding jump point in the next system along," said Satoshi. "They're moving their stations at the moment. By the time anything happens, they will already be there."
"Point. Serenity, you should also ask if they want our help."
"They won't," said Yorktown.
"We should ask anyway. But this brings us to the next issue. Cosmos alone could take or destroy human space. The human fleet would give her a solid fight once they met up, but most of their fleet is too far away to stop the destruction of Gaia. And they don’t have anything big enough yet to go head to head. Their fleet is strung out across their space, and piecemeal, nothing they have will be any use at all. The fleet they have in G036 isn't even capable of taking Cosmos on. Worst case scenario, is we may need to defend HR14."
"I'll move most of the owl blockade fleet there," said Warspite. "I'll go myself. We can strip at least half the system defenses at that end of the Kingdom as well, and concentrate them at the HR14 jump point."
"The humans might interpret this as saber rattling," said Bill Paxton.
"Your job as well Serenity. If they refuse to let our ships in, make sure they understand we will protect our own space in case they fail to protect theirs."
"I'm going to need a rapid course in how to be a diplomat," said Serenity.
"Check Walsh's database," said Yorktown. "He needed the same thing when Jane left him with the council."
"I have a copy," said Holmes. "I'll send it to you."
Serenity nodded her thanks to him. Repulse looked at Yorktown and Intrepid.
"You both need to recall all pilots, and start moving to HR14 as well."
"I was thinking the same," said Intrepid. "If we really need to defend HR14, we're going to need fighters to take on all those drones."
"Fine," said Repulse, "but neither of you get closer to the jump point than the planet. Big as you are, you're too vulnerable to be right at the jump point."
Intrepid looked at Yorktown. They both nodded. Repulse didn’t think they were nodding to what she'd said though, but she didn’t want to push it.
"What have we missed?"
"This has to be the worst time for this," said Janine. "You're all spread really thin at the moment, spread out over four sectors."
"We need to bring our ships back into sector ten as fast as we can," said Repulse. "With luck, we'll have enough time."
"Cat World?" asked Bill Paxton.
"You stay put."
"Havoc?" asked Warspite.
"I'll send them orders to move faster. In fact, all the troops not being used for a garrison need to come back as fast as possible."
"General Price?" asked Guam.
"I'll send him orders to put his troops on a higher alert. He technically outranks me, but he'll accept me temporarily replacing Jane. He's not the type to want to pull rank. Fortunately."
"How will we need troops?" asked Tranquil.
"I don’t know," admitted Repulse. "But my gut tells me we might. If nothing else, we might have to evacuate the training command on HR14. So General Price needs to know what's going on."
"What do I tell Snark?" asked Seasprite.
"Stick to the cover story. Jane's PC has been hacked, and she's down. Coincidently, we lost control of our main explorer ship."
"He'll want to help."
"You can go to Nippon if he wants. As a civilian ship, he'll be allowed into human space, where we won't."
"Duke Fred?" asked Serenity.
There was a moment's silence.
"Sector ten council as well," added Tranquil.
"I'll deal with them," said Repulse. "Cover story as well. We'll need Fred to confirm our ship movement orders in council. Mind you, it might be better if I handled that. I'll talk to him. It has to be done through him anyway."
"Why Fred?" asked Intrepid. "Why not go through Ganshura?"
"Fred is now acting King, as regent to Duke Michael. I'm not going to remind him of that, but everything needs to go through him, since he is now technically our Commander in Chief. Mostly this is a Kingdom mess, and while the council needs to know what's going on, the decisions for now are Kingdom ones. I'll talk to both. Anything else anyone wants to bring up now?"
No-one said anything.
"Let's get on with it all then."
The meeting ended.
Twenty Nine
Serenity stepped out of the special body alcove on Phoenix2, and took a belt from the bin. She shifted into her normal self, and proceeded to the bridge.
On the way, she tried to talk to the ship, but as expected, it didn’t reply.
She plugged herself into the data port at the XO's station, and cloned herself to the ship. Her ship self started a diagnostic of all ship systems, while she took herself to the cargo bay.
By the time the other six had also stepped out of the alcove one at a time, as she was able to create new bodies for them, she'd emptied a standard mid-sized crate, and used it to move the unmoving body of Meg to her quarters. She'd left Meg inside the crate, to make sure no-one found her accidently, and returned to Meg's office, where she took on her appearance.
She'd made her way to the Japanese ambassador's offi
ce, and given the ambassador a briefing of the situation as it was known so far. The ambassador immediately called for a council session, and Serenity asked to address the council. She returned to Meg's office, to await the call.
Meanwhile, the first one through after her was Stryker. He went straight to the coms array, and plugged himself in there. He sought out the gig on Cosmos as Jane had done before him, and repeated her trick of getting the cleaner bot to take him to a combat droid.
Taking control of the droid, he started running as fast as he could towards the rear of the ship. The noise of running echoed back at him from all directions, since there was no other noise at all to muffle the droid's metal on metal contact. He hadn't bothered with a suit.
Even for a running droid, it took time to reach the engine spaces. Well before he did, Yorktown stepped out of the alcove, and started checking the combat systems. He found mosquito launchers without guiding midlevel AI's, and renewed them. He also did a check of the databases to ensure the combat routines were intact. They weren’t. In fact, there was nothing more than a basic ship computer's set of data. He requested a complete database renewal from Palomino, which was the only other Concorde class ship with a full original database.
By the time Intrepid stepped out of the alcove, Phoenix2 had a complete database again. One by one new bodies were created by Serenity, and the others stepped out of the alcove, and shifted to their normal selves. They completed diagnostics of the ship, made it ready to leave, and waited.
Stryker finally reached the engine space where he could do manual steering. The fact this was possible was a hangover from pre-ship-AI days, when ships were manually flown by human crews, with redundant backups in case the bridge was lost in combat. Jane in her wisdom had included them in every ship she'd designed, even though a ship only ever intended to be crewed by AI's should never need backup manual controls. Her wisdom was now apparent.
His gig-self could see the nav situation, and provided his droid-self with the instructions. The ship began to turn. When the desired orbit had been achieved, he brought the speed down so by the time Phoenix2 arrived in the system, Cosmos would be back near the jump point. This was days away, and involved a long loop around the system. He made a last check to make sure nothing solid would intersect the ship, and started the droid back towards the gig. The last instructions he left it with was to return to its platoon, activate them, and have them all move to the gig. Once there, they were to shut down, and only accept instructions from him, through the gig's coms.
A.I. Destiny 6 Leader Jane Page 9
