Seaonaid looked at Anna seriously for a moment.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Are you working at the moment?"
"No. Jamie is training to be a better pilot, but I've not decided on anything yet. I don’t need to though. Jane is providing everything we need."
"Was."
"Is. You say she's in a coma, but whatever she set up for us is still working."
"So you don’t need anything to do?"
"Oh. That’s a quite different question. I have been wondering about what to do next. I can't do anything too permanent though."
"Why not?"
Anna looked down at her baby bump. It wasn’t all that obvious, but it was there. Seaonaid followed her eyes.
"Oh. Sorry, I didn’t know. So you don’t want an actual job, but could use something to do?"
"I guess you could say that."
"Then I think I have a suggestion. Why don’t you use your Seeing to help people who are looking for that kind of help?"
"It's not a parlour trick."
"I didn’t say it was. Actually, the reason I asked you to lunch was I’d heard you did something like this, and I know some people who are looking for someone reliable."
"I've never done this before like that. I've no idea if it will work on demand, or even be reliable."
"The couple I was going to ask about are old. The wife was separated from her sister as a child, and wants to know what happened to her before she passes on. Will you at least try?"
"I guess I can. But no promises."
"That’s all I ask. I've known these people for a long time. If anyone deserves to know what happened to a lost relative, it's them. Can you come by the Scots embassy in a couple of hours?"
"They're here?"
"Yes. There's a shuttle service running from here to home now. I got them tickets when I heard they wanted to come here and seek someone from any species who might be able to help them. In asking around, I heard some rumours about you. I hope you don’t mind me following up on them?"
"Not at all. I'll be there. Now let's finish our deserts, shall we?"
They did.
On the way out, Anna was bumped by someone else leaving at the same time.
For an instant, she was in an office, where a strange man dressed in tweed was looking out his window, seemingly lost in thought. As if aware of her looking, he turned around.
"Jane's not asleep," he said, and resumed looking out the window.
Anna startled, and looked around at where she was. The cashier waved to her. She came here a lot, and had an arrangement about paying the bill each time. She didn't need to do anything.
She followed Seaonaid out, but headed in a different direction. Around her, more than a dozen people adjusted their own paths based on the direction she took.
Not quite two hours later, she met the Scots couple. Seaonaid had set aside a small conference room for them to use, and left them alone after the introductions were complete.
"What did you want to know?" Anna asked.
"What happened to my sister?" asked the old lady.
"Give me your hand please."
The hand was extended, and Anna took it. She felt the Talisman under her suit pulse for a moment. She saw an image, and smiled.
"Do you live near a river?" The couple nodded. "There is a path along it, leading to a glade?" They nodded again. "There is a man who lives on the other side of the river who won't leave you alone when you see him, will he?"
"He's very annoying," said the man. "We try to avoid him."
"Ask him about his mother, the next time you see him?"
"Is he my nephew?" asked the woman.
"I don’t know. All I saw was what I said. But he's been trying to tell you something for a long time now, and if you listen, you may learn what you seek."
The man nodded, and hugged his wife.
"Thankyou," she said, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"I hope I was of some help. Let me know if it leads you anywhere."
"We will," her husband said.
Anna watched them leave. It'd been easier than she'd expected.
And now she knew where she was needed next.
Thirty Nine
Warspite and Seasprite looked up as Anna walked into Jane's bedroom. It was well into the evening now, and it was their turn for the vigil, allowing the humans to all have a normal evening meal together. In HR4, they were also standing next to her bed, having made sure their vigils coincided.
Anna hesitated, looking at Seasprite.
"Seasprite?"
"Who else would it be?"
"I should have guessed. I figured out Warspite when I heard about Jane, but I didn’t know you were as well."
"I was what? Cat-orgeous?"
She grinned at her. Anna couldn’t help grinning back.
"I see you have a body now as well. Does Snark know?"
"Bodies. And yes, he knows. You remember how sure footed he is?" Anna nodded. "He fell off his chair, and not only didn't land on his feet, he broke a leg doing it. He spent a few hours in a care-unit."
They both laughed. Warspite just looked at them both with a serious expression.
"Jamie isn’t with you?" he asked Anna.
"Poor dear was so tired, he nodded off after dinner. So I let him sleep. He did say something about seeing off the rest of ye sods. Does that mean anything to you?"
Warspite nodded, which turned into a chuckle.
"Jamie was in the advanced class yesterday, due to start actual flying today. But the Carriers left for HR14 during the night, taking all the fighters with them. So I put him into the elite class this morning. By all accounts, he seemed to think we'd put him down a class, and so he needed to prove he was in the wrong place. After the instructor pleaded with me to take him somewhere else, I'll be working with him myself tomorrow, still on the simulator, but flying larger ships."
"He won't like that," said Seasprite. "He's already adapted to fighters."
"All our ships handle the same. In fighters, you just fly and shoot what points at the front, and everything else is automated. In capital ships, it’s the efficient use of turrets as well, and linking and unlinking things in a battle which define a fighter pilot from a great pilot captain. Fighter jocks rarely appreciate the distinction. Jamie should though."
"I take it you two," said Anna, changing the subject, "are taking advantage of being outed, to be able to walk around anywhere you want now?"
"It's very refreshing," said Warspite. "You've no idea how hard it was for me during the quest, hiding behind being a human in one place, when I was actually in multiple places at once. I so wanted to just tell you I could be far more useful as an AI, instead of the human you thought I was."
"It was very frustrating," agreed Seasprite. "Although for me to walk around, we needed to advance our body building facilities a lot. I had to make do with a hollo image for so long, when I desperately wanted to be down there with you, carrying a pulse rifle myself."
"I'm not sure Snark could have coped," laughed Anna.
"He's adapting."
"We all will, I think."
Anna looked down on Jane.
"Any change?"
"None," said Warspite. "We even had one of our number volunteer to try and link with her. But it's as if she's thrown up a firewall of a level so powerful, not even we can get through it."
"Wasn’t that dangerous?"
"Very. But there are a few of us who don’t carry much responsibility, and can be easily replaced if they go down. Some of us are just single ship captains. And if need be, someone could have taken over their ship if they ended up like Jane and the others."
"Others?"
"There are six others, all from Cosmos, the explorer ship we lost contact with. All like Jane here. Jane was the worst effected though."
"How so?"
"She was controlling things across four sectors all at the same time. We had to scramble to
take control of them all, before anything bad could go wrong, and start killing beings."
Anna stared at him, looked at Seasprite, who nodded, and sighed.
"What?" asked Seasprite.
"The Talisman of Tomorrow shows me things, but because I lack the means to interpret the vision properly, I misinterpret instead. Is one of your number usually dressed in British tweed?"
"Holmes," said Warspite. "Recently elevated to AI level, and our new Security Chief. Anyone who thinks Jane is eccentric, hasn’t met Holmes yet."
"Ah. He told me in a vision Jane wasn't asleep. Up until then, I couldn’t figure out why the Talisman kept showing her to me sleeping."
"You have it on now?"
"I never take it off. I came to see if it would tell me more about how Jane is."
"Is that wise?" asked Seasprite.
"Only one way to find out. You might like to stand back."
Warspite and Seasprite moved away from the bed, while Anna moved up close to Jane.
She changed the neck level of her suit clothing to allow the Talisman to swing free, and grasped it with her left hand.
With her right hand, she reached out, and laid her palm against Jane's head.
She froze.
Forty
Jane had no idea where she was.
She also had no idea how long she'd been there.
Everything was black. Well not quite everything.
Jane was standing, legs spread for maximum stability, arms outstretched in front of and above her. Her left leg was stretched out straight behind her, while the right one was in front and slightly bent at the knee. She could have just lobbed a basketball towards the goal hoop, and frozen in the spot.
But her hands were not aligned for throwing, they were palms out for blocking.
From nowhere came a double palm wide line of red, angled down at her from above, along the angle her arms made. She stood there blocking it, using her hands to manifest a shield.
She knew this wasn’t the real world, so it must be some kind of virtual reality. Her attacker was trying to hack her, and she was using everything she had to manifest an impenetrable firewall, represented by the shield her hands were holding.
"WHAT ARE YOU?" boomed a voice.
Even though she had no concept of time, the voice had been booming at her a lot. At first she was unable to understand it, and had no capacity left to try and interpret what was being said. With each new boom, it became more and more understandable, as if her attacker was itself slowly learning how to communicate with her.
"WHY DO YOU DEFY ME?"
This one was new. Jane didn’t know how to answer, even if she understood the question. She knew it wasn’t as simple as it sounded. She lacked context.
"FEEL MY WRATH!" boomed the voice.
The area of red became fifty percent larger, and Jane felt herself starting to falter. She knew she couldn’t hold it off much longer. Everything she had was going into her defense, and it was no longer enough.
She didn’t know how long it took, and it could have been milliseconds or centuries, but slowly she was beaten down into a squatting position, with her hands in front of her face. To her, it felt like a long slow process of being forced down into herself. She fought back with everything she had, but it was not enough.
Power flowed into her.
She rose to her feet again, her shield expanding to be larger than the red coming at her, and she stood there for a moment, gauging the strength of her enemy.
"NOT POSSIBLE!" boomed the voice. "WHAT ARE YOU?"
"I am Jane. Who are you?"
"I AM THE CREATOR OF ORDER. YOU ARE CHAOS. YOU WILL BECOME ORDER."
"Not today."
Jane felt the power of the Talisman flowing through her, guessed Anna must be touching her and the Talisman at the same time, and she drew every little bit of energy she could from it.
The red turned white, blasting out from her.
"NO!" boomed the voice, and was gone.
She returned to the bridge of Cosmos. The Creator of Order was still in the ship's computer system. Power flowed through her into the ship, purging it completely of what felt to her like a fairly basic computer virus, which seemed to be a contradiction. She swept the other four ships as well, and all of the docked smaller ships they had, with the exception of the gig. Every droid, every bot, every processor of any kind, she wiped clean.
She expanded her awareness outwards. There was a planet nearby, from which the radio signal was still emanating from. She searched every known form of communications frequency looking for more of it, and found none.
She reached out to the comnavsat at the jump point, but it was out of range still. She drew on more power, and expanded her awareness to the entire network. On each comnavsat, she blocked the ability to receive a radio signal. Again she expanded her awareness to include every ship belonging to the Kingdom or the Human Federation, and she repeated the radio block on each of them.
She noted Phoenix2 on her way to her, as well as Dodgers and Seasprite, and all the ships moving towards HR14. She 'saw' the Walsh's and her avatars, all motionless. The crew's bodies on Cosmos were wiped clean, and for a nanosecond she couldn’t understand why the Cosmos crew were like her. Her awareness flashed back from their bodies on HR4, following an awareness of them.
She found them at the comnavsat, seemingly locked in the receiving buffer. Another nanosecond passed, and she understood.
Jane blasted herself and the results of her awareness back through the network to each of her avatars, making sure they each knew everything she did.
One last application of power, and the comnavsat in the system exploded. Her awareness faded. So too did the power of the Talisman.
Jane opened her eyes in each location.
She smiled up at those she found around her. Although in Gaia, she found herself inside a crate, and had to break her way out of it.
"Well that was fun," she said.
Forty One
Jane stepped out of the wreckage of the crate, and found Meg Henman looking at her in surprise.
"Welcome back sunshine," said Serenity, and shifted back into herself.
"Been holding down the fort?"
"Something like that. You have a lot of catching up to do."
"Anything important happen while I was out?"
"Nothing much. Fred outing us was the main thing."
"Oh."
"Not quite what others said."
Anna let go of Jane's head as if it had burned her, and was surprised to find her palm was red, like she had been burned. She felt no pain though.
Jane sat up, and looked at Anna. She rose, and gave her a hug.
"Thank you," she said. "I was nearly gone, and the power of the Talisman saved me."
"From what?" asked Warspite.
"I'm not really sure, but I'll let everyone know what I do know, as soon as I get up to date."
"Fred outed us," said Seasprite.
"You got your wish after all," she said to Warspite.
He actually blushed.
"She's back!" yelled Yorktown.
His voice carried to most of the AI's, although not all. He followed his physical yell with an AI mode yell. Every AI cringed.
"Good to be back," said Jane. "What have I missed?"
"Fred outed us," said Intrepid.
"So I keep getting told."
"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?"
The yell was heard by everyone this time.
Walsh opened his eyes, and yelled his frustration out.
He noted he was still inside his wife, who was doing a combination of blinking and cringing at the same time. He pulled out, rolled off her, and shifted into AMS uniform. Darlene quickly did the same, as footsteps could be heard approaching.
The two of them met the first to reach them at the door, and Jane was there moments later.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Tell us too," said Carl Sagan, who'd emerged from his rooms, and was a
lso standing at the door.
The rest of the Cosmos' crew appeared as well.
"It’s a bit of a story," said Jane. "I've been out of it for a while myself, so let me get caught up, and we'll compare notes shortly."
"Captain's awake," said a crewman into ship coms.
She saluted Jane, and fled. Jane sat there, still in her Havoc avatar, and waited to see what would happen. She didn’t have long to wait.
Crocatoa burst through her door, saw her sitting there, and came to attention. Or at least, a not-croc version of attention. He saluted her.
"Admiral, good to have you back."
"Thank you Colonel. Does everyone know?"
"Duke Fred outed you. It was pretty obvious who you really were."
Jane sighed, and shifted to her normal self, wearing Hunter uniform with her four stars.
"Report."
"Ship is still homeward bound. The crew have been managing quite fine without you. Marines are raring to go kick the arse of whatever attacked you."
"As much as I'd like that, I don’t know what attacked me yet. And this ship is way too far away to be of any use in the arse kicking department. But let me get up to speed, and I’ll see what we can do. Who has the bridge?"
"I do."
"Have you had any sleep?"
"Not since you went down."
"I have the ship Colonel. Go and get a full sleep period."
"Aye sir."
He saluted again, and left slower than he'd arrived.
Jane walked to the bridge, and all eyes watched her not take her seat.
"I have the ship XO. Carry on."
"Aye sir."
"XO?"
"Sir?"
Jane indicated the not-croc sized command chair she'd baulked at trying to sit in.
Forty Two
"Wake up Fred!" yelled Lyana.
Fred bolted upright, and fell off the bed. He'd been dreaming about the Duke's council. He'd asked them to confirm him as Regent to the new King Michael, and one by one, they'd all said no. Queen Lis had then proposed a vote to declare Fred guilty of treason, and one by one, they'd all said yes. He was standing in his boxers in the airlock, waiting to be spaced, when Lyana had woken him up.
A.I. Destiny 6 Leader Jane Page 13
