A.I. Destiny 6 Leader Jane Read online

  He'd followed on the security system for a while, and with nothing out of the ordinary, decided he'd need to arrange a reason for a visit to a hospital. The challenge was to make it seem accidental, while not being spotted setting it up.

  Holmes cocked his head to one side, like he'd seen a lot of beings do when something they needed to listen to came through their earbud. He muttered incomprehensibly to himself, and started to run.

  Around the next corner, he banged solidly into the owl, knocking both of them off their feet. He was surprised to see the owl get up again faster than he did, and he began making an effusive apology for the collision.

  The owl exploded.

  Holmes lost a few nanoseconds to surprise before shifting into AI mode. He examined the owl, already losing cohesion, and found the explosive to have been implanted under the skin. Which explained why the sensors hadn't picked it up.

  He sent commands to the suit belt he wore as a necktie, and returned to human speed.

  The tie expanded out to the size of the owl, and within microseconds, had surrounded it. The explosion was contained, and absorbed by the suit, so within seconds, there was nothing left of either the owl or the belt suit except a necktie hanging from a jagged edge of a hole in the deck.

  Holmes knelt down to retrieve the belt necktie, and saw beings on the level below looking up through the hole, looking surprised.

  "Anyone hurt down there?" he asked.

  "No," said a mushroom. "What happened?"

  "Nothing of any major concern. Please go about your business."

  The beings moved off.

  "No concern? A hole appears in the ceiling, and it's no concern?" wafted up from below.

  Holmes smiled to himself. The inevitable channel opened, and it popped up on the wall, showing him the council chamber.

  "Chief Holmes," said Jane. "I appear to have a hole in my deck. Would you care to explain?"

  "I'm afraid the explosion was quicker than the suit ma'am. It couldn’t fully contain the explosion until the owl's feet were no longer in the way."

  "Owl?" asked the owl.

  "Suspected Brotherhood owl. Of course now, with nothing at all left of it, we'll never know for sure."

  "Pretty damned obvious," said the not-croc. "No-one else goes around blowing themselves up, just for coming face to face with the security chief."

  "You obviously haven’t come face to face with our new security chief," laughed Fred, and the chamber erupted into laughter with him.

  Holmes put an injured look on his face.

  "Any casualties," asked Jane, already knowing the answer.

  "None ma'am. I suspect there are some soiled undergarments on the deck below, but no-one was close enough to be hurt here."

  "Other than yourself?" suggested the stick-insect.

  "Indeed," said Holmes. "I'm glad to see our new bomb response protocol works."

  "Well done Chief," said Jane, before anyone else could comment. "I'll expect your usually exhaustive report on my desk tomorrow."

  Holmes bowed to the screen, and it popped off as fast as it had popped up. He waited while several security droids impersonating humans came up to keep beings away from the hole, and left them waiting for a builder droid to arrive to fix the hole.

  Back in his office, he threw the necktie in the bin.

  It was down to four percent integrity, and hadn't improved at all on the walk back.

  Nine

  "Standing by," said Bill Paxton, through a channel in Fitzy's new PC.

  He looked at Sapperscar, who also had the PC, and been included in the channel. His second nodded to him.

  "Go," he said, both aloud to the troops behind him, and into the channel.

  Sapperscar kicked the door down, and the two of them ran into the hail of slugs which resulted. Both of them were wearing prototype cat armour suits, and the slugs bounced off them. Their troops surged in after them, wearing the first batch of cat designed belt suits. The slugs bounced off them as well.

  The new cat sized pulse rifles mowed down the resistance in quick time, and the troops spread out into the building. Isolated fire occurred as they discovered other cats, but none of them put up an effective fight.

  "In here," came the call through tablet coms.

  Fitzy followed the pop up arrow displaying in his vision, to where the call came from. Inside the large room, was everything he'd been told to expect. Sapperscar walked up next to him.

  "Intel was correct sir. All Brotherhood."

  "Mop up here. I'll be with the Grand Mother."

  As he exited the building, he saw a building some distance away in flames. A pop up hollo screen showed him the city plan, with an overlay of which buildings were now rubble. He widened it to be planet wide, and this too showed him where missiles had laid waste to a building.

  He took his time walking back to his office, getting a stream of reports from all around the planet. There were lots of double takes when cats saw the suit for the first time, and the crowds parted before him as no-one was quite sure what they were looking at. He grinned to himself.

  Once back inside, he told the suit to open, which it did along the spine. He arched his back to give him room to pull his head out, and then used his feet to jump him right out of the suit. It had taken a lot of practice to learn how to jump in quickly without bashing his nose, but jumping out again was a lot easier. He gave the suit an order to plug into the charger in one corner, it walked itself over, and stood there. It was a little eerie, seeing it standing there completely immobile, but all the same, he was grateful for its protection. He was getting too old for being shot, and the slight bruising with the belt suits, was something he also felt a little too old for.

  Another hollo screen popped up.

  "All missiles hit their targets," said Bill Paxton. "The combat droids went in immediately after the missile hits, and all confirmed the targets were Brotherhood."

  "How many were cats?"

  "Most." Fitzy sighed, alarmed, but also expecting it. "There was a mixture of the rest, mostly species from this local area of space, which visit here regularly. But did you know you had a valderian here?"

  "No, I didn’t. You're sure?"

  "Very. Brotherhood tattoo was a bit difficult to find, but definitely there."

  "How many casualties?"

  "Several hundred. All confirmed."

  Fitzy whistled to himself. He'd been outwardly skeptical about the intel when he'd been shown it, but it was proving true. The scale of the problem was an order of magnitude higher than he'd realized.

  "No collateral casualties, although there was some collateral building damage. In several cases, explosives stored on the premises created secondary explosions."

  "Did we get them all?"

  The response was better than he'd expected.

  Five minutes later, he was shown into the Grand Mother's office.

  "I take you're here to report on all the noise?"

  "Yes. We were given solid intel by the Kingdom's new security chief, about Brotherhood infiltration here. I'm sorry to say it was much worse than we knew about. The noise was our friends in orbit peppering our planet with missiles."

  "And?"

  "All but one Brotherhood member, agent, or operative, are all dead. No civilian casualties. And we captured a Rapture making facility we didn't know existed until a few hours ago."

  "All but one?"

  "Apparently one was out hunting. I'm told someone is on it."

  "How did the new equipment go?"

  "I wish we'd asked for it all, that first day Duke Fred offered it. The combat suits are effective, especially against our weapons. I have a half dozen troops with bruising, but they were the ones who took the worst risks, and in normal situations would now be either dead, or in hospital. They're not. Instead they're mopping up, and planning which pub to hit after they go off duty. The new rifles made short work of anyone firing at us. Even a few wearing body armour only needed one shot."

&nb
sp; "So what is the situation now?"

  "As far as we can tell, all Brotherhood on this planet, with a single exception who shouldn’t live long, are now dead. Most of them were local recruits, but there were a number of off-worlders, including a valderian. Admiral Paxton assures me there are no more getting through the jump points, and supplies of Rapture are being interdicted as they jump in."

  "So we shouldn’t be needing all this expensive equipment anymore?"

  She was grinning at him.

  "I wouldn’t say that. We still have unrest over recent political and diplomatic changes. I still want some of those Dropships, as soon as we can get pilots trained to use them."

  "You're talking serious gals here."

  "I know. But I'm sorry to say I want some of those Excaliburs as well. I had a good look at the one the duck was given, before they took it back for repairs. We wouldn't need Kingdom support to patrol our borders if we had a squadron of them."

  She frowned, knowing what the cost was going to be for them.

  "Did you hear the rumour?" he asked her.

  "Which one?"

  "Apparently the Excalibur squadron which came with Admiral Paxton, have mouse pilots."

  "How did you hear that?"

  "They went in for modifications one by one, and Sapperscar was meeting with the Admiral when one was docking. He didn’t see the pilot, but it sounded like a mouse. The rumour also says the modifications were all internal, converting human habitation to mouse requirements."

  "Sounds like Mouse, who was on Seasprite, managed to get someone to listen to his ideas."

  "It does yes. But my point is, if there are now mouse variants of the Excalibur, we should be looking at getting cat variants done as well. They would allow us to take control of our own jump points. If we had ships like Duke Fred's Assault Frigate, which for us would be more like an Assault Cruiser if it was redesigned internally for cats only, we'd also be able to station troops at the jump points, so we could capture ships needing interdiction instead of blowing them up. The Admiral doesn’t have troops, but he does have those combat droids. I want a cat version of them as well."

  "You think big, don’t you? And expensively. How would you propose we pay for all this?"

  "Import taxes. I'm sure we could squeeze the needed funds out of the likes of Snark."

  He was grinning.

  "Perhaps. But I wouldn't upset my grandson too much, or you might find you're on the wrong end of one of his missiles."

  "Perhaps so, but traders are moving a great deal more product here these days, and much of it isn’t adequately taxed in my humble opinion. Coffee and chocolate for example. Brand new products, and not classified for import taxes in any way yet."

  "I'll have it looked into. Anything else to report?"

  "I think that covers it for now. Can I release details to the media?"

  "What do the Kingdom say about it?"

  "I'll ask. I get the impression what's been happening here tonight is just a sideshow event for them."

  "You think Jane is going all out to eliminate the Brotherhood in one effort?"

  "Could well be. I'll listen to intel networks, and see what I can learn."

  "Why don’t you just ask the Admiral?"

  He was still chuckling when he returned to his office.

  Ten

  Patters was picking her way carefully through thick undergrowth. Her target was doing the same.

  With Anna's wedding to Jamie postponed, and Snark wanting to visit his owl contacts, she'd taken the opportunity of a lift on the ship Jane was sending to pick up the Grand Mother and her entourage for the wedding. While the timing was not yet known, Jane assured her the ship could wait at the cat homeworld for as long as it needed to.

  She'd been surprised to find the ship had been furnished exclusively for cats. Its human pilot had the only suite which wasn’t designed with cat comfort in mind. The female pilot hadn't introduced herself, and seemed to spend most of her time on the bridge. But Patters had managed to find out she worked for Jane's Limousines, which she found out was a high priced, high comfort, high speed, shuttle service.

  Her suite had included comfortable bedding for her size of cat, including racks for her weapons. But what had surprised her was a tree structure seemingly designed for a cat to play on, sharpen claws on, and comfortably sleep at considerable height. She'd immediately given it a full trial, and convinced herself whatever ship she travelled on in the future, should be fitted out this way. She'd even sent vids to Snark, telling him to put Seasprite back into a yard as soon as possible, so the accommodations could be suitably upgraded.

  He hadn't responded yet, so she'd been wondering what he was up to.

  When the bounty mission had come in via Admiral Paxton, she'd come to the conclusion Snark was probably working one of his own, and she'd hear all about it soon enough.

  She'd been visiting her old haunts in the mountains beyond the plains, catching up with relatives, and doing some hunting with her old hunting buddies. But they hunted for food.

  This was a hunt of a different kind.

  For the first time in her life, she was hunting a cat.

  She'd double checked the target with the Admiral. The intel came from Hunter Prime. Fitzy had signed off on it. She'd accepted reluctantly, and only after assurances the only alternative was to destroy a large chunk of forest with a missile.

  The target was a surprise to her. He was a lion about her age, noted for being outspoken against the wild ones taking a more active role in planetary affairs. According to the material provided to her, he'd gone silent soon after Seasprite had left in search of the amulet. He was suspected of being involved in several thwarted bombing attempts, but local security hadn't been able to establish a link strong enough to see him arrested. After the last attempt, he'd vanished.

  The intel from Hunter Prime was very specific. Where he was living, and how he occupied his time. All she had to do was intersect his hunting pattern, and make the kill as he was preparing to make his own.

  So far, Patters had managed not to need help from above. One of the human ships was in orbit directly above her, in case she did need to call down a missile, and was providing her with explicit location data on her target. But she hadn't needed to use it.

  Her own tracking skills had brought her close behind her prey, and she was tracking him now from the small amount of undergrowth movement he was making as he tracked his own target.

  Movement stopped. So did she. The bow came off her back in one smooth movement, an arrow followed from her quiver, and was nocked silently. She aimed at where he'd been, and waited. A subtle movement of leaves showed her prey had changed his position slightly. She continued to wait.

  Movement. Her suit shifted into full protection mode, matching her fur colour, and the arrow struck her in the shoulder of her left foreleg. She cried out as if hurt, and allowed herself to be momentarily seen.

  The second arrow missed her as she changed her position rapidly, but not by much.

  She let fly with her own arrow. She'd had only a momentary glimpse of lion fur, but it was enough.

  There was a cry of pain, and a solid thump, as a body hit the ground.

  She didn’t move.

  "Is that you Patters?" called a voice. She didn’t answer. "I know it's you. The moment I heard you were back, I knew they'd send you after me."

  There was a pause, and she continued to not move.

  "You can come on out. Damned good shot by the way. I'm bleeding out."

  Patters continued to stay rock still. Her suit had changed to chameleon mode, and she was part of the undergrowth now.

  She was soon glad she'd not gone to the voice. Five arrows came in her direction one by fast one. The nearest missed her by the width of a leaf.

  She responded with two quick arrows herself, and went still again. This time the cry of pain seemed much more genuine, and the thump included undergrowth breaking noises.

  "Damn you Patters. They tol
d me you you'd improved significantly, and I believed them. But I swear I hit you, and you still managed to gut me. How the hell did you do it?"

  She stayed still.

  Several low moans sounded, and still she remained unmoving.

  "Tell my family I'm sorry. I believed them, and it wasn’t until I was in I found I couldn't get out again. I'm sorry."

  Still she waited, all senses attuned. At last, satisfied he was down, she shifted her suit back to her fur colour, and broke cover. Nothing came at her. She walked quietly towards her downed prey.

  He was lying on his side, blood pooling around him, two arrows still in his torso. A third was lying beside him, blood on the head. All three wounds were bleeding steadily.

  "Finish it," he said. "Something fast."

  She returned the bow to her back, and pulled her pulse rifle from its holster. She pointed it at his head.

  "Not going to gloat?"

  "Show me your tattoo," she said.

  He stirred weakly, one hand pushing fur away from a spot on one shoulder. The tattoo was smaller than usual, but it was Brotherhood.

  "You always were a fool," she told him.

  "I know. That’s why you rejected me all those years ago."

  "Yes."

  "Just do it."

  Patters looked at him for a moment, and pulled the trigger.

  Eleven

  Repulse down jumped into the Valerian system, with another Battleship on each side. Behind her, jumping in six at a time, were twelve Pocket Battleships.

  If she'd had breath to hold, she'd have done so, as they were jumping in cold, without any knowledge of what was in the system.

  She expected a large fleet.

  She was right.

  Their response time was excellent as well, having the first shots on the way within four seconds of her emergence.

  She and her ships blew straight past the defensive fleet, having jumped at maximum speed for the PB's. The valderians hadn't been stupid enough to have ships in the down jump lane, so there were no collisions.