A.I. Destiny 2: Queen Jane Read online

  "You may."

  "I heard what sounded like a great many voices through the broken window. May I ask what was happening outside?"

  "You heard a million people rejoicing the destruction of one of our persecutors. Long have we waited for this joyous event."

  "I'm happy to have obliged."

  "How is it we can understand one another?"

  "Were you once on the sector council?"

  "We were."

  "Then your language was on file there, and has been incorporated into the translator I use."

  "We have not been on the council in centuries."

  "You can be again very soon."

  "You mentioned ridding ourselves of the Owls for good?"

  "I did. I have already destroyed their fleets in this area. I will destroy the space port if you wish it."

  "You can do that?"

  "Easily."

  "Our prayers are answered," said one of the others.

  "How so?"

  "We have long prayed to our gods to send us a more advanced species to rid us of our persecutors."

  Jane grinned, remembering the old adage to be careful what you wished for, because you might get it, and wished you'd been more specific afterwards.

  "What is your price?"

  "Price?"

  "You offer us our freedom back. You offer a cure for their poison. It must come with a price."

  "The cure is free. All species in this sector are making it, and a resolution was passed in council ensuring all who want it will be given it free. I can give the formula to you now if you wish, and you can make it yourselves. If you are unable to do so, I'll organize its delivery, although this will take some time."

  "We are in your debt. May I ask your rank in council?"

  "Sixteen."

  "We may not be able to repay the debt. Our exchange will make us poor in comparison. Will you ask service of us?"

  "Service?"

  "We are without Gals, but we do have skills. Will you demand them of us for freeing us from our oppressors?"

  Jane blinked her eyes a few times, and shook her head from side to side.

  "Your planet will be within the Kingdom's space, but this system and everything in it remains yours. I'm not offering to remove your oppressors just to enslave you another way. If you wish to trade with us, we'll be delighted to have you as a trading partner. If you wish isolation, we will direct traffic away from your planet. There will be a great deal of traffic coming through here once the war is over and the poison removed for good. If you have trade goods, a large chunk of the sector is going to be looking at them, and hopefully wanting them."

  "Even more reason why we will be in your debt. Alas, I cannot see how we will police such numbers of trading vessels should they indeed come here. We will need your help even more I fear."

  Jane thought she saw where this was going. Never rescue anyone, unless you're prepared to look after them forever after. Still, there was perhaps an opportunity here.

  "There are ways and means of providing protections for your planet, and there are plenty of ways of paying back services received."

  "Such as?"

  "You could join the Kingdom as a Duchy. You would have the same status as several other existing Duchies, which are human, but this is not a criteria; and this would afford you the Kingdom's protection, help to police your space, help to establish trading facilities, and help with any other aspect of your needs, which it is possible for us to help with. In return, you would pay the normal taxes of the Kingdom to the crown, follow its laws, but in other respects still govern yourself. I'm not sure what happens with your council seat, but we can ask the question well before you make any decisions. I will of course provide you with a full disclosure of taxes and laws as soon as possible after you expressed formal interest. In the meantime, you are our neighbor, and we desire happy neighbors. The Owls are going back to their space anyway, so if you want them gone, you are in accord with what we want as well."

  "You have given me a lot to think about."

  "Just a moment," interrupted Jane, before he could say anything more.

  Sensors were showing six shuttles lifting off from the space port. They were identical to the one just destroyed.

  Concorde's Ride was now in synchronous orbit of the city. Six hanger bays opened, and six Excaliburs launched, angling down to intercept.

  Someone rushed into the conference room, and whispered to the Leader.

  "We need to get to a safer place," he said. "The Owls are coming."

  "No need," said Jane. "I have fighters on the way down. Do you have the ability to watch what happens out in the area between the space port and the city?"

  The leader gave a command, and a wall screen came on, showing the oncoming shuttles.

  Jane opened a channel to the lead shuttle.

  "Owl commander, this is Admiral Jane, of the Kingdom of Hunter's Run. You will return to your base immediately, or be destroyed."

  There was no answer. She closed the channel.

  "Any second now."

  Six shuttles turned into six sets of falling debris.

  The room erupted. It was nothing to what was going on in the rest of the city.

  Seven

  Fred thumped down on the mat. This time however, the thump was a great deal louder than normal.

  "What the fuck was that?" he demanded.

  His sparring partner shrugged, and obviously didn’t care. Fred rose, bowed to her, and walked off the mat. He brought up a hollo screen, and started scanning channels for news. He found what he was looking for almost immediately.

  A bomb had exploded on the outskirts of Hunter's Run City.

  He opened a channel to Justine, who was on Gaia Three Orbital.

  "I saw," she said.

  "Things are getting worse, aren’t they?"

  "Yes. The bomb was only a diversion. There is rioting going on in five places around the city. The media haven’t yet figured out the bomb wasn’t the real event."

  "Why now?"

  "The three planets are full. The transfer of people has gone much smoother than anyone expected, and Borgcubia is now almost empty. But fifteen billion people don’t fit very well in cities built to house ten. We did what we could to make them bigger, but population pressure is now intense."

  "Are we safe here?"

  "For now, yes. Most of the combat and security droids which used to be scattered across stations and ships in the system, are in your city now. That’s a good two and a half thousand droid soldiers. They are deployed to respond to any incursion."

  "What about the riots?"

  "Irrelevant. Until they attempt to enter the city proper, they can riot as much as they want outside."

  "Isn’t that a bit harsh?"

  "Probably. But my focus is on our people now."

  "Is it time to leave?"

  "Soon. You better start preparing everyone."

  "Fine. What will you be doing?"

  "Preparing the Gaia council."

  "To leave?"

  "Something like that."

  Justine-Jane smiled at him, and closed the channel. A short walk later, and she was in a small conference room. The Gaia Twelve, the original leaders of the system before day zero, filed in and sat.

  "You wanted to see us Colonel?" asked Madam Chair.

  "It's begun."

  The woman suddenly looked every bit of her age. She sighed.

  "I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this."

  "We all did. But it was inevitable."

  "Are you sure it can't be avoided?" asked someone down the table.

  "If we didn’t have a quarantine zone, maybe. We could have half off loaded Borgcubia, and taken the rest and seeded them along all the planets in the zone. But the cleanup won't be fast enough, and once we started unloading to the empty cities, no-one was going to want to stay on the stations any longer than they had to."

  "Why won't they take no for an answer?"

  The questions we
re coming from every direction now.

  "They see Gaia Three as an answer to all questions. If we'd been able to keep this system to five billion, it would have worked. Ten billion was always pushing it. Fifteen is just inevitable."

  "How long do we have?"

  "I've told Baron Fred to prepare his people to move very soon. I'm already assembling all the stations he will take with him into one structure for fast jumping. As soon as it's empty, Borgcubia will be the last to join up. You should start preparations as well."

  "What are our options?"

  "I can offer you two. Kill a lot of people, or not kill a lot of people."

  "Why a lot of people?"

  "There are too many empty freighters here now, and not enough tangible work for them. Those who intend on moving against Gaia Three are already recruiting."

  "Can't you stop them?"

  "In a police state, sure, no problems. Last I checked, we didn’t have a police state. No-one has done anything wrong. Yet."

  "Can you stop them?"

  "I can. But as I said, you have to choose which option you prefer."

  "How do we avoid killing anyone?" asked Madam Chair.

  Jane wasn’t surprised. These were mostly spiritual people, and killing wasn’t in their nature.

  She told them.

  Eight

  "Vid for you," said an aide to Admiral Rainer.

  She waved it to the wall.

  "Admiral Rainer," said Jane. "The Owls declared war on the Kingdom of Hunter's Run, but not on humans generally. As such, I need my own ships for an offensive war against them. The Kingdom has been granted additional systems if we can remove the Owls from them, and push them back to their original space. I can't do this with the ships I already have, since I need to blockade down here to keep the rest of the Kingdom safe."

  "We also need to get the ambassador and his staff to the council system as soon as we can, and I need stations in my new territory in order to begin preparations for both Hunter people moving there, and the trading which will begin as soon as this war is over. We can do all three at the same time."

  "I'm sending you a list of ships I need, and the stations I'm moving. You will allow all of them through the jump, including Midnight Orchid, the ambassadorial liner, and my AMS Corvettes. These are the only ships with people on board allowed through, and trust me when I say, none of them will be seeing a planet up close any time soon. There are people on some of the stations, but they won't be seeing a planet up close either. I take full responsibility for them, since it isn't feasible to leave them behind."

  "In addition, there are a series of drone poison cure tankers coming through. Our first objective will be the planet in A001, and as soon as the planet has been evacuated, we'll begin spraying operations. Once clean, the planet becomes a part of the Kingdom with the designation of HR14. I'll be leaving a station in orbit. Any ship in the system will be warned not to approach your jump point, so if any do, you will carry out your standing orders and create space dust if they jump through. Other than letting the designated ships through, your orders remain as they were. Hold the blockade until I can solve the problem permanently, and the troops behind you can clean the rest of the planets in the quarantine zone."

  "There's a good probability you will start to see ships try to run the blockade now. Once I kick them off the planet, some of the Owls are going to think the best action for them is to find our home system, and get us all addicted. They have no clue you're there, so won't be expecting what they find. I'll warn them not to, but they won't listen."

  "Hold the line, Admiral. Jane out."

  "About bloody time," muttered Rainer.

  She started giving orders.

  On Palomino, Jane was also giving orders. Ships of all sizes, started forming up into organized ranks ready to jump. Station clusters moved to line up behind each other ready to follow the ships.

  "Is there any reason we need to fly?" asked Satoshi.

  "No, but what else would we do?"

  "We could use Outback Station as a base."

  "We could. But why?"

  "I was just thinking it's going to be very cramped for all of us in this ship, given it only has three suites."

  "We don’t need suites."

  "True enough, but it's still going to be cramped."

  "Cramped?"

  "With the others."

  "What others?"

  "Hasn’t anyone told you?"

  "Told me what?"

  Jane gave him the look. The one which meant cough up or face the consequences. It gave her a momentary pang as she remembered the last time it'd been used.

  "We're all coming."

  "All?"

  "All of us. All thirty six Japanese AI's, and all the American ones as well. We told them about what's planned, and they all want an active part in it. We know our ships stay here, but we all feel it's time we created avatars and stepped out into the galaxy properly."

  Jane wasn’t surprised, but she pretended to be.

  "Hence the station? You all want your own space?"

  "Why not?"

  "Why not indeed."

  "So?"

  "Stryker?"

  "You rang?"

  "Park us on Outback station, and tell the others to meet us there."

  "They're waiting for us."

  "Of course they are. Well get us there then."

  Stryker headed for the Bridge with a grin on his face. Satoshi looked satisfied.

  Jane let them enjoy the moment, knowing it would be short lived. Once the others were together, and they were in the next system, the station would be too slow for what she had in mind next.

  Assuming it worked on those weird alien fly's planet first. And if it didn’t, there was always plan B.

  Jane thought about where she was going to put stations. She thought about why they should go there. She thought about who would live on them. She counted numbers of people in the Duchy, the numbers on stations from the Apricot system, the numbers already on Outback station, and she came up short. When she subtracted the number of people who'd prefer to be planet-side, most of the stations would be practically deserted.

  It took her a few nanoseconds to realize why. Hunter's Haven at the end, had accommodated over ten million people. Redoubt had housed less, but it had still approached another million, and they'd all been moved off before the war started, in order it be reused as a Behemoth class warship. Haven had been emptied in the last weeks, to remain behind as a base. Neither of them had ever existed though, now.

  All those people had moved to other stations.

  And then forgotten where they came from.

  Jane hunted around computer systems, and eventually found the original records of both stations in the Hunter's Run City archive. The time stamp told her the backup had been made in the last hours before the jump point closed.

  Now she had what she wanted. She shifted into a female business suit, with a small gold circlet in her hair. She opened a vid.

  "Greetings. I'm Queen Jane, from the Kingdom of Hunter's Run. According to the records of Hunter's Run City on Gaia Five, you once lived and worked on one of two of our former stations. You may have forgotten, but the records are clear. The Kingdom of Hunter's run has been given a length of space beyond that claimed for humanity, containing five viable planets, one of which is better than Gaia Five. There will be a dozen stations along the length of our space, offering opportunities to those who wish to forge a future. The Kingdom will be the space highway along which The Human Federation will trade with the galaxy, and the galaxy will trade with The Human Federation. For those who wish to take advantage of this, we can provide business premises and accommodations wherever you wish within the Kingdom."

  "If you prefer to simply move to a planet without population pressures, we can arrange this as well, although it will be a while before cities are built. There are no resettlement costs, beyond getting you and your family to Borgcubia station, which is in the process of being r
efurbished as the last of the refugees are moved out. If you need help getting there, please ask. The station will be leaving Gaia in the next few weeks, so please consider my offer for you to emigrate to the Kingdom quickly, and respond to the contact shown on your email. Further information is available upon request. And if you have already left Gaia, and now wish to move further into the galaxy, we can collect you on the way from wherever you are now."

  "We will accept applications from others who wish to emigrate, should you know any who might be interested, but these will be processed on the basis of needed skills. These are also listed on the email, along with a separate contact."

  "The Kingdom has its own simplified system of laws, has a simple tax system, and a live life to the fullest attitude. We know you and your family will make valuable citizens, since you all used to be one. The choice is yours. Unique opportunities await you which won't last long, because first in get the best choices. The next year is going to be an exciting time to be human, and be Kingdom. Will you join us in this adventure?"

  Jane smiled for the cam, ended the vid, and shifted back to 'slink red'. She wondered if she'd sugar coated it too much, but dismissed the thought. She assembled the laws the Duchy had used back in its day, the method of tax collection, and skill sets she wished to see on planets and stations.

  The emails went out to slightly more than five million people. With luck, Borgcubia would arrive with more than twenty million, representing all aspects of a society needed to make it function. She set avatars to be contacts, and another one to monitor the acceptances.

  Once the stations were in place, and people had set up businesses on them, she'd open up the remaining space to other species.

  Nine

  "PARTY'S OVER MOTHERFUCKERS!"

  Jane had always wanted to say that.

  She said it again in Owl, just to make sure she was understood. The Owls did have the last word, so it translated faithfully. But if anything, and if Darlene was to be believed, the word was even more of an obscenity in Owl, than in human.

  Jane was back on the Bridge of Concorde, and tapped into the public address system of the Space Port. It wasn’t all she had access to.