Admiral Jane (A.I. Destiny Book 1) Page 18

  "The ground forces will be getting their own orders. Admiral Hikaru will also be detached from your fleet to support them. I am heading further into this galaxy on a diplomatic mission. Your job is to keep our space safe, without endangering your people in the process. The planets are off limits. You cannot go back to Gaia space until we find a solution to this lethal problem. Good luck Admiral. Jane out."

  The vid ended.

  "Well shit a brick!"

  "Admiral?" said Intrepid.

  "Call the senior staff in. We have work to do."

  "Aye sir."

  "Email from Admiral Jane," said Satoshi.

  Hikaru popped up a hollo screen and played the vid.

  "Admiral Hikaru, you are hereby placed on detached service, in command of the three Escort Carriers and their fighters, with the attached list of Corvettes. You are to support the ground forces in an eradication program on the planet in G023. I will leave General Patton to explain the problem we face and your role in it. But I must emphasize that once you cross into G023, you and your forces will not be allowed to return until we have a permanent solution. Humanity is in grave danger, and your role is to support the effort to eradicate the main threat to us at this time."

  "Admiral, the pilots and all crew of any ship entering the atmosphere of a planet must do so in a combat suit, in case of any situation occurring which involves landing or crashing on the surface. Belt suits are not considered sufficient protection from this threat. Anyone on the surface who is not in a combat suit becomes part of the problem. Please make sure your people know the threat, and take it seriously."

  "Good luck Admiral. Jane out."

  Hikaru didn’t hesitate. A stream of Japanese came from his mouth, and his XO and second jumped to his orders.

  "Email from Admiral Jane," said Jane's aide avatar, to General's Patton and Price, who were meeting to discuss logistics. "It's for both of you, with a request for you to watch it together."

  "Let's see it," said Patton.

  Jane waved at the wall.

  "Generals, we have a serious situation. The aliens I've encountered have seeded all the planets on the other side of the G023 jump point with an animal which propagates a purple plant. The plant and its seeds are both addictive and deadly to humans. One touch of either the plant, its seed, or the animal, is all it takes to become addicted, after which only ingesting the plant or refined drug relieves the withdrawal symptoms which are rapid and severe. The addiction is bad enough. But anyone addicted becomes a carrier and can also pass on the addiction by touching another person. The slightest skin contact is all it takes, and those addicted are compelled by the drug to pass it to others. It's like the worst case of drug addiction combined with the most virulent plague. Without the drug, death comes quickly. Even with a supply of the drug or the plant, humans will die from the toxic nature within days. A dead person is still a threat to a live one."

  "There is no cure. As far as we can ascertain, dozens of species are addicted, and none of them have a cure. There is no form of vaccine either. The only safety is ensuring skin contact cannot occur."

  Patton paused the vid.

  "Shit. You know what's coming?"

  "We're being ordered in?"

  "What else?"

  He unpaused the vid again.

  "By order of the Council, at my suggestion, you will take your ground troops to the planet in G023. Your mission is to find a way to completely eradicate both the animal and purple plant, including roots. You will need to ascertain if the drug is passed into the soil or the water supply, and if so, find a way to neutralize any contamination."

  "What do we do in our spare time?" asked Price.

  Patton just shook his head.

  "I cannot emphasize the importance of this too much. It is essential we find a way to eradicate the drug completely, or we will be limited to only the systems between Gaia and G014. I'll be working on a cure or vaccine at my end, while I conduct a diplomatic mission to the nearest sector government. But there being no cure for any species, does not bode well, so it's up to you to find a way to eradicate the problem."

  "Generals, no-one goes down to a planet without wearing a combat suit, and this includes ship crews. The belt suit is not considered adequate protection. Only hard metal will protect the troops. In the event of someone becoming addicted, you will need to isolate them as quickly as possible. If necessary, anyone attempting to pass it on to others should be shot, and their body burned. Treat it like a plague situation, where infection is too easy to happen, and it being a death sentence."

  "You will under no circumstances allow either an animal or so much as a single leaf leave a planet. You will not allow anyone to examine the animal or plant. You will not transmit any scans of the animal, plant, soil, or water; or anything from a planet, back to Gaia. The risk is too great. Anyone doing so will be charged with endangering humanity, and I will press for a death sentence. Should it be attempted, communications with Gaia will be severed."

  "Admiral Hikaru will have a small fleet of support ships, including fighters. His role is to support you in any way you require, including ship to ground assault. None of his ships are permitted to land on the planet. I've informed him you will brief him on the full situation, and discuss with him how he can support you."

  "I've appended a number of files to this email. One of them is the formula for making a substance which used to be called Napalm. It’s a particularly nasty form of fire, which may be useful in eradicating the plant and burning the bodies of the animals. If necessary and it is effective, you may find you need to burn a large part of the planet. If it's not effective, you will need to experiment to find something more effective. Even if it is effective, you need to get the roots as well. Another file contains the specs for a drug detector, in order you can identify any ship contaminated. You will need to adapt these to hand held units in order to identify any soldier whose combat suit is contaminated."

  "Your troops can only go planet-side in combat suits. The combat suits must be decontaminated before the soldier can come out of it. Exactly how you do that is an unknown at this point. For now, figure out how to eradicate at long range. When I can come up with a decontamination procedure, I'll send it to you. If communication is lost with me, you'll need to come up with it yourselves."

  "Good luck. Jane out."

  They sat there for several minutes, in silence.

  "Not my favourite scenario," said Patton.

  "How so?"

  "Plenty for the troops to shoot, but it’s a high threat situation while appearing completely benign. Way too easy for troops to forget and make a mistake."

  "Mistakes will be lethal."

  "They always are. Colonel?"

  "Sir?" responded Jane.

  "Saddle em up!"

  "Yes sir."

  Yorktown, Intrepid, Satoshi, and Warspite, sat around the AI conference table. Jane joined them.

  "Are we clear on what needs to happen?" asked Jane. "If a ship becomes infected, it must be destroyed, regardless of what the humans do, especially if they waver. All communications into G014 must be monitored and anything to do with the plant, drug or animal deleted. If need be, communications are to be severed. And the blockades must hold, even if it means destroying one of our own ships."

  The others nodded.

  "We agree," said Yorktown. "It's distasteful, but necessary."

  "How fast can we get the detectors mounted on all ships?" asked Satoshi.

  "Hours to build them," said Intrepid, "a few more to get them fitted."

  "What about hand held units?"

  "I've set the design process in motion," said Jane, "but one of you will need to complete it. Once you have a design, get some prototypes to the troops for testing as fast as possible. Before troops hit the ground, we need to be able to know if they can be extracted safely. If the ship scanner goes off when it leaves the atmosphere, it's too late."

  "Can we mitigate the threat level early on?" asked Yorkto
wn.

  "How?"

  "Send in combat droids first, with whatever portable devices we come up with. If nothing else, they can test if the belt suit will protect the humans or not. If not, they can be destroyed on the planet."

  "Good thinking. I'll have my avatar suggest it at an appropriate time. Yorktown can make more if need be, and one way shuttle them in. But at some point, troops will need to go down, if only because of the scale of the problem. And G023 is the smallest problem. All the other planets will be worse."

  "Can we land troops on continents with no purple plant?" asked Satoshi.

  "In theory," said Jane. "But soil and water should be tested first. We don’t know what happens when a plant gets into water, which then flows into an ocean. It could affect the entire ecosphere of the planet for all we know. So be very cautious."

  "We will," said Intrepid. "The first ones down will have to take samples without actually touching the ground. You can leave it with us. Satoshi will see it's done."

  The AI's on the other two AMS ships, now already in the quarantine zone, received orders planet landing was off limits, and why. It wasn't something they did much, but it was a precaution telling them not to.

  Forty Six

  "How did they take their orders?" asked Walsh.

  "Pretty well. The ships are moving now. It will be almost 2 days before the blockade fleet is on station in G036. So it's up to us to make sure there's no alien fleet capable of beating them there."

  Walsh rubbed his hands together. Jane looked at them, and frowned.

  "Sorry," he said.

  He didn’t look it. Jane ignored him and started planning her attack.

  "Buckle up," said Jane fifteen minutes later.

  "Do we really need to?"

  "Probably not. But its good practice. If they get lucky, and you end up flung across the room, you won't be concentrating on the job properly."

  "Do as she says Pat. If anyone is going to come to grief, it'll be you."

  She was laughing. Walsh frowned, but buckled up. The same noises came through the coms.

  Jane's small fleet came to a stop just outside the range of the alien's missiles.

  "One last try," said Jane.

  Walsh rolled his eyes.

  Jane opened a channel to the lead ship. The alien fleet was arrayed in fives around the jump point, with three of the fives aimed directly at her.

  "This is Admiral Jane. I give you one last chance to allow us through without firing on us. Should you do so, it will be interpreted as an act of war. Take it from me, you don’t want me as an enemy. But I won't be fired on again. Until now, you have seen but a fraction of my firepower. Decide now if you wish to live or die."

  "Return the prisoner you stole."

  "Not going to happen. He is being returned to his people."

  "Then you are branded an enemy. Defend yourself if you can."

  The channel closed.

  "They just don’t get it, do they," said Walsh.

  "Apparently not. Perhaps a demonstration is in order."

  "I thought we already did that."

  Jane sighed. She took no pleasure in what she was about to do, but she had spent a lot of time exploring all the options, and there were none left which avoided open warfare.

  She began to move her ships ahead, accelerating slowly. As they moved, Concord fell back into the middle of the formation. This wasn’t a problem for her, since Concorde wasn’t going to be doing any firing. On each of the larger ships, turrets positioned themselves so all of them could fire on forward arcs, including the rear ones.

  "Holy hell," said Walsh, as he finally figured out just how much firepower the Dreadnaughts and Battleships could project. "Let me guess, your friend again?"

  "Yes. They needed a way to maximize firepower without being broadside on to the enemy, which made them vulnerable. So each turret has a mounting which can change height, so all turrets will bear in most directions except through the ship."

  The first missiles launched at them.

  "So be it," said Jane quietly.

  She shifted into AI mode, joined up with her clones on each ship, and they all fired simultaneously. She was down again before the pulses left the barrels.

  Five seconds flight time, and the combined battleship pulses vaporized all twenty five ships.

  Jane brought the fleet to a halt, and a comnavsat deployed from Concorde. It propelled itself higher up the plane of the system, where Jane hoped it would go unnoticed, while still being able to both monitor the jump point, and communicate through it.

  "Do we wait for the ones behind us to catch up, or do we go get them?"

  "Toss random numbers?"

  Jane shook her head, as another memory came to the fore. She'd once told Jon the generation of random numbers was far too important to be left to chance. He'd appreciated the joke at the time, but she hadn't been joking. Not really. Nothing was really random, especially from computers. You turned them on, and they generated exactly the same string of random numbers every time. It was only when you sampled the random numbers randomly, were you able to achieve a real random number. But the timing of the sampling was also not really random. Humans couldn’t tell the difference though.

  She brought the ships to a halt, and flipped them over, beginning to accelerate back to her normal cruising speed.

  "Going too fast now are we?" asked Walsh.

  "No point in hiding our speed now."

  "Why not?"

  "We need to get to the sector capital as fast as we can. Doing so will allow the enemy fleets in front of us to calculate how long it takes us. It's most unlikely we'll be able to prevent them getting the information off, since they're supposed to have fleets on both sides of each jump point. We can try, but someone is going to get it off at some point."

  In minutes, the fleet behind them came into Battleship gun range, and Jane fired on them. The entire fleet was vaporized in less time than it took to turn her fleet around for the jump point again.

  "That wasn’t even fun," said Walsh.

  "War isn’t supposed to be."

  "Of course not, but I figured with us being so far ahead of them tech wise, winning would be more satisfying."

  "Compassionate people are never satisfied with winning wars. The deaths involved always weigh on them too much."

  "Not having fought one I can remember, I'll take your word for that."

  "Good."

  Back at the jump point, Jane stopped the fleet. Concorde docked inside the hanger of one of the Dreadnaughts. The six big ships proceeded to dock with each other. Walsh sat there with a look of amazement on his face, as the big ships came together in a complex way to form one big ship. A lot of firepower was lost as turrets retracted to allow the ships to join properly, and thus were no longer able to fire, but he calculated they still had more than enough Battleship guns available to blast a twenty five ship fleet into dust with a single salvo.

  "Is this wise?" he asked. "What if we encounter a bigger fleet?"

  "We'll have to fire several times."

  Walsh's expression reminded Jane of the twins saying 'Duh!' She shook her head, and began wondering if she might be better off editing memories so they didn’t keep flooding her at the wrong times. But then, doing that would make her less human, and more computer. Humans dealt with their memories. She needed to as well. Maybe she needed a therapist? The thought almost raised a grin, but she suppressed it. None available where they were going. Although she could get one of her avatars to attend for her.

  "Is there a point to making ourselves into one ship?"

  "Speed."

  "Oh."

  Walsh did the math. He checked on the configurations for power across the ships, finding Concorde was now providing the power for reduced shielding, while the big ships power was going solely into the engines. The top speed of Concorde was significantly higher than the bigger ships, but without needing to spend power on anything but speed, the single ship could almost make the sa
me speed.

  "Are you taking a gamble with our shielding levels?"

  "No. They haven't been able to hit us with anything yet which Concorde couldn’t handle. We've the shielding of a Super-Cruiser, which for now is perfectly adequate."

  "What's the plan?"

  "We jump through, take out the fleet there, deploy a comnavsat, and move straight on."

  "Let's do it."

  They did it. They were still at a slow speed when they jumped, and the aliens hit them with everything they had a good two seconds after appearing, which showed a well drilled fleet, even if they were expected sometime. Jane took a few nanoseconds to command each turret, which took a second or two to lock on, and the area around the jump point became dusty.

  Jane brought them up to their full speed, and set off for the next jump point.

  Forty Seven

  Fred thumped down onto the mat. Again. He lay there wondering how many times it had been now. He'd lost track.

  "Enough for today," said Justine-Jane. "You need to get to Council."

  "You mean we need to get to council, don’t you?"

  "No, you. My job there is done for now. Until Admiral Jane has something to say through me, I no longer need to attend."

  "Huh? That makes no sense."