A.I. Destiny 6 Leader Jane Read online

Its door was shut. The bot climbed the wall to the manual door control, and after a number of tries, managed to press the right button, and the door opened. She drove the bot around the door frame, and inside.

  Against one wall was a platoon of combat droids. None of them were active, and in fact, Jane thought they were brand new, and never activated. She drove the bot to the closest one, moved back to the deck, and made it climb the droid's body. At the head, she attempted to take control of the droid, but failed. There was no way of getting a signal to the droid.

  Jane looked up the schematics for the cleaner bot. And found what she wanted. In case of a bot going rogue, all bots had the same filament arrangement droids had in at least one finger, allowing a direct connection to be made between any hardware. Usually she used it to plug a droid into a ship computer, but today, she instructed the bot to connect its filament inside the head of the droid.

  She cloned herself to the droid, but with it remaining a sub-entity of her.

  She sent the bot back to the gig, and walked the droid over to a storage bin. She took out a suit belt, put it on, calibrated it to her needs, and shifted it into herself.

  Next, she walked over to the gun racks, took down a meson streamer and a pulse rifle, and dropped them over onto her back, where holsters formed to hold them. She took down a long gun and a gatling stunner, and holstered those on her thighs. Followed by recharges for both handguns.

  Tooled up to her satisfaction, she left the armoury, locking the door behind her using a finger filament.

  She had no idea what had happened here, but she wasn’t ruling out the ship having been boarded by a hostile force. She knew very well plenty of species desperately wanted one of her ships, and while unlikely, it could have happened here.

  She started running towards the nearest travel shaft. While there appeared to be no power at all, the stairwells would allow her to make her way up the ship.

  Her first goal was the bridge, to determine what had happened to Walsh and his crew. She cast around in AI mode looking for them, but there was nothing at all. She seemed to be completely alone.

  As she ran, she pondered the email she'd been forced to delete. While she couldn’t be sure, the file might have been some form of computer virus. She'd acted on instinct deleting it so fast, and so she had no real information about it.

  Radio. The word echoed through her mind for a bit, and she addressed the ramifications. Radio belonged to ancient tech. Even this galaxy didn’t use radio. Cosmos did have the coms capacity to detect it, but it wasn’t something they would look for. So why had they?

  Television. She'd seen the feeds of square screen images, obviously coming from a planet. Television and radio were of the same vintage. So they found a society far less evolved than normal for this galaxy.

  And what?

  Darlene.

  Jane groaned. Darlene would have looked. She'd have been immediately fascinated with a culture in the first stages of technology, and gone looking for everything she could find.

  And they'd found what?

  She didn’t know.

  Twenty Three

  Jane was sitting in an auditorium with a number of other AI's, watching a flat screen from the early two thousands. With the Brotherhood threat removed, she'd decided to take some time out, and now their city on HR4 was almost complete, she'd fallen back on what she'd used to do with Jon. Watch old stuff.

  The feed came through from her Meg avatar, and she immediately lost interest in the movie. She sent a pause command to the screen.

  "Anyone seen Walsh and his crew lately?" she asked in the silence.

  All of the AI's had their primary here, given no being knew they were here, or here even existed, and it was consequently safe. Jane's loss of her Justine avatar had taught them all a valuable lesson. Like humans, any given avatar could be extinguished at any moment for a whole range of unexpected reasons. Unlike humans, as long as they had a version of themselves somewhere else, they could continue existing.

  As the number of AI's had grown, or been discovered, groups had begun to form. The Japanese came from a completely different AI prime, as did the ones from corporate origins. They had formed their own communities, separate from the others. They all interacted, but for intents and purposes, the AI community had separate towns, each with its own culture.

  Walsh and Darlene were unique, in having once been human. They and their clones had formed their own group, and while concentrating on exploring, tended to keep to themselves.

  "I had a message a few hours ago from Walsh," said Stryker, who of Janes line of AI's, was the closest to Walsh and Darlene, having been the AI who'd saved them from death. "They'd down jumped into a new system. Nothing untoward. Why?"

  "My Meg self lost contact with them. They'd found a habited planet, and suddenly went silent."

  "Destroyed?" asked Intrepid.

  "No, or at least what I have suggests not. But Cosmos is dark."

  Jane looked at them for a moment.

  "Walsh isn’t answering," said Stryker. "Neither is Darlene or the others."

  "Where are they?" asked Yorktown.

  "Their quarters I think."

  "Let's go," said Jane.

  The four of them ran out. Repulse looked at Warspite and Cayuga, and the three of them followed.

  Jane had to force the lock on the Walsh's suite door. Inside, in the bedroom, they found the two of them, seemingly frozen in the middle of sex.

  "What the hell is this?" asked Stryker.

  "You don’t know what sex looks like?" laughed Yorktown.

  "No, wise-arse. What the hell are they locked solid and unmoving for?"

  Jane had an awful thought. She went over close to them, and extended a filament from a finger next to Walsh's head. She hesitated. The filament retracted.

  "Everyone out," she commanded.

  She pushed them all out, closed the door to the suite, and relocked it. The three warrior AI's came running up.

  "Are these two unmoving as well?" asked Repulse.

  "Yes," said Jane. "Lock their quarters down. No-one touches them."

  "Why?" asked Warspite.

  "Get them locked down, and gather everyone else in the auditorium."

  They all looked at her.

  "I think we have a serious problem."

  Twenty Four

  Jane reached Cosmos' bridge.

  She'd seen no indication of anyone being on board the whole way up, but nothing worked. It was as if the whole ship had been turned off. There'd been no life support running, since none was needed, and she didn’t need it herself, but it was the other normal things being missing, such as light, gravity, and internal coms, which was almost freaking her out. Her droid body didn’t need gravity, as the suit provided magnetic boots, and they didn’t slow her running down.

  The bridge was silent, and as dark as the rest of the ship.

  There was one of their special droid bodies in four of the chairs, including the captains, and two more on the deck.

  Each one had a belt suit on, but it like everything else, wasn’t working.

  She walked over to Walsh, or who she assumed was Walsh, being in the captain's chair. The body was slumped over, the mouth open, as if a yell had been the last thing it did. She looked at the two on the deck, and they looked as if they'd been screaming.

  If they'd been human, she'd have said they'd died unexpectedly, and in pain. But they weren’t human.

  The belt suits condition was an oddity. But the only reason they would be inactive is if the controlling AI mind, was no longer controlling them.

  Which meant…

  They were dead.

  An echo came back along her link, showing her an image of Walsh and Darlene, solid and unmoving.

  Dead there as well? But their primaries still had their suit bodies. It didn’t make any sense.

  There seemed to be only one course of action, but the risk was considerable. She had to try and see if Walsh was there at all.


  She took a solid two minutes thinking of all the risks, and what needed to be done to minimize them. She double checked her connection to her gig self, and the ship's direct connection to the comnavsat at the jump point. After another check, she sent off as much information as she had, and instructions, to all the AI's as a group.

  A filament extended from the finger of the droid, and she inserted it into Walsh's head. The connection formed, and she found nothing. The droid body appeared to have been wiped clean. It didn’t even have a basic operating system in the base computer.

  She withdrew the filament. A second email went after the first. There was only really one more thing to try. She walked over to the place on the main console where she'd occupied so many times on so many ships, and she plugged the droid into the console.

  What she found, shocked her to her core.

  Jane froze.

  Twenty Five

  Meg was still sitting at her embassy desk. She received the information Walsh was gone and the body was blank, and started to open the email.

  She froze.

  Still on her way to Gaia, Dodgers was amazed to find her auto-pilot failed to make a turn to line up for the next jump point. When she tried to turn off the auto-pilot, she found she couldn’t. She tried talking to the ship, and it refused to answer.

  An hour later, having taken that long to work out how to do it, she hit the factory reset on the ship computer. When it came back up, she found it had no personality, no voice, and no control, but she did have manual control back.

  She turned the ship around, and headed back to the jump point, now an hour distant.

  In HR14, the entire jump point fleet came to a stop. Whole platoons of combat droids on the planet, stopped, causing human troops in training to crash into them, or have to leap out of the way to avoid them.

  Across Kingdom space, ships stopped, droids stopped, and even several station computers stopped.

  In the council chamber in Hunter Prime, Jane had the floor, still talking about the aftermath of taking out the Brotherhood for good. In mid-sentence, she suddenly stopped. The council members waited for her to start again, assuming she was receiving a communication, as she so often did, but this time, she continued to be frozen in place.

  Ganshura looked at Fred, and saw surprise turning into concern. He also saw ignorance, and wondered why Fred didn’t know. As the previous leader, Ganshura knew what needed to be done, but for the life of him, he had no clue how to explain this. Or how to keep control of the chamber if he did. Instead, he waited with everyone else.

  The AI's on HR4 knew something was wrong a few nanoseconds after Jane stopped. They were so surprised, none of them did anything for a full minute, waiting for her to start up again.

  The ripple continued outward.

  Patchet suddenly couldn’t get any response from his ship computer. It took him several minutes to determine most of his security forces were stopped and unresponsive as well.

  The bridge crew of Havoc didn’t see their captain stop. But it was only seconds before the coms officer looked over to his captain. Captain Havoc was frozen in place, eyes open, but obviously not seeing. For a few minutes, the bridge crew tried to revive him, but not only couldn’t, they found they couldn’t even shift any limbs.

  Crocatoa was sent for, and he was astounded to find what he'd been told, was indeed true. He hauled the captain out of his seat, even more surprised to find the body remained rock hard in its seated posture, and took it down to the medical bay. There, he found not only the captain had stopped, but so to had the ship's computer, including the medical bay. The doc droid pronounced the captain dead, but couldn’t say why.

  The big not-croc issued an instruction to the ship's builder droids, but there were two problems there as well. Ship coms wasn’t working, and when someone checked after being contacted by marine coms it was found there were no working droids on the ship either. He clomped back to the bridge, telling his engineer section he wanted his seat reinstalled on the bridge asap.

  He had no answers for the bridge crew when he returned, but being senior officer on board, he took command of the ship.

  Concorde's Ride went ballistic, missed a jump point, and headed out into space.

  Concorde was no better off. It was heading into a system, on a slingshot around the sun course. But without any control, the course adjustment would never be made. Given time, she too would be ballistic out into space.

  Snark was still down talking to the owls. Seasprite received the emails from Jane, and opened a channel.

  "You need to get back up here," she said.

  "Why?"

  "Something major just happened."

  "What?"

  "I don’t know yet, but if you thought the Brotherhood were a major problem, I think they were just relegated to a minor annoyance, compared to what just happened."

  "But you can't tell me what?"

  "Get back up here. By the time you're on board, I should know enough."

  Snark sighed.

  "On my way."

  He cut short the latest discussion on trade possibilities, and bid his partners goodbye. Fifteen minutes later, he was back in space.

  Seasprite didn't even consult with him. As soon as his shuttle was docked in the hanger, Seasprite broke orbit, and they were heading at their top speed towards Hunter space.

  Twenty Six

  On HR4, the AI's went to an AI mode conference.

  Only a minute had elapsed from Jane going dark.

  "What happened?" asked Intrepid.

  "I don't know," said Repulse, "but it's the wrong question to start with."

  "What's the right question?" asked Yorktown.

  "What do we need to do immediately?"

  "Why is that the right question?" asked Cayuga.

  "Because it's Jane."

  "And?" asked Guam.

  "Duh!" said Janine.

  "Don’t duh us," said Yorktown. "Just tell us."

  "How many stations and ships did Jane control directly?" asked Repulse.

  There was silence for a few nanoseconds.

  "A lot," said Warspite.

  "Oh," said Intrepid.

  "Not following," said Tranquil.

  "As far as I can tell," said Janine, "Jane did something extremely risky. Whatever it was has done two things."

  "Only two?" asked Serenity. "Why is that a problem then?"

  "Because it's Jane," emphasized Repulse.

  "Jane is still here," went on Janine, "but she's like Walsh and his crew. She's also like this in the council chamber, and in her embassy office in Gaia. Also on Havoc's bridge."

  "How do you know?" asked Warspite. "There's no way you could have checked so fast."

  "I just know. I've always known when Jane does something major. I knew it when Jane created Havoc for example. Maybe when she created me, she didn’t completely sever her connection or something. It doesn’t matter though. We can confirm this quickly once we're out of AI mode."

  "You said two," interrupted Guam. "That's four."

  "No," said Repulse, "it's one."

  "Jane still exists," said Janine. "That's point one. Point two is where she no longer exists, namely everywhere else. It seems like only her primary, and the three main secondary's survived whatever happened to her. Although survive might not be the right word."

  "Ships and stations," said Warspite quietly.

  Janine looked around the chamber, and shook her head. Only Repulse fully understood. Warspite had an inkling.

  "Jane was the ship and station computers all across the Kingdom, and beyond. Computers which among other things, control life support for stations and ships which have humans and all manner of other air breathing beings on board."

  "Oh," said Tranquil.

  There was silence again.

  "So what do we need to do?" asked Yorktown.

  "I have control of Hunter Prime's stations," said Holmes. "Jane gave them to me when I took over security. But I can't handle anyth
ing else. Security alone is taking most of my capacity."

  "I can take the rest of the stations," said Janine. "Hopefully there won't be any serious issues in the few minutes it’ll take to cover the distance to some of them."

  "Can you do Patchet as well?" asked Repulse. "That ship is more like a station."

  "No problem."

  "I can take over the defense ships within Kingdom space," said Warspite. "If you want me to," he added, looking at Repulse."

  "Yes please," said Repulse. "I'll grab Concorde and Concorde's Ride."

  "What about Havoc?" asked Satoshi.

  "The ship is manually controlled by a full crew," said Repulse. "It's not an immediate problem."

  "The duck's Excalibur?" asked Janine.

  "The duck's problem," said Repulse. "I gather the duck was doing all the flying anyway. Jane was just along for the ride."

  "What do I tell Snark?" asked Seasprite.

  "Nothing yet. Get him back up from the planet. We'll cover what to do next shortly."

  "Why do I get the feeling you've taken charge?" asked Stryker quietly.

  All eyes went from him, to Repulse.

  "Someone has to," she said. "We can deal with that shortly as well. For now, we need to take control of assets, before something really bad happens."

  "Agreed," said Yorktown and Intrepid together.

  "Five minute recess," said Repulse, "and then back here."

  "Why five minutes?" asked Serenity. "That’s a seriously long time."

  "It's going to take most of that for us to clone ourselves to the further station and ships, and get a confirmation back all is well. If something goes pear shaped in that time, we need to address whatever it is before coming back here."

  "What do the rest of us do?" asked Intrepid.

  "Review what Jane sent us, and think about what we do next."

  "And who we have to tell what," added Warspite.

  "Tell?" asked Guam. "Tell who, what?"

  "You have five minutes to answer your own questions," said Repulse.

  AI mode ended. Those with tasks to do, did them. The rest attended to their normal routines, and devoted their spare capacity to thinking.