Hunter Legacy 5 Hail the Hero (26 page)

I sent Alison in to see if he needed
medical attention. It wasn’t clear from the vid if he was burned or not. She
pinged me back he was fine. The water had been hot, but not scalding.

The three of us spent the rest of the
afternoon talking mini-sector stuff, although there wasn’t much brought up
which hadn’t already been by the Brits. Still, it was a very useful discussion.

Just before six, the Generals headed down
to dinner, and I took my chair on the Bridge. Custer would already have jumped
out, because although the distances were about the same, and we’d been heading
away from each other, they’d had a head start.

The London system was a bit strange. The
Verse and Washington jump points were opposite each other across the system.
But if you stood at the Verse jump point and looked towards the Washington one,
there were another three jump points to your right, and none to your left. The
closest one to us now, was the one to Cambridge, with Norfolk on the other side
of that system. The middle jump point led to Leeds, and the other one to
Oxford. Bentley’s fleet had headed out through Oxford on their wild goose chase
the other day.

266 squadron were already on the other side,
in Verse. There were several ships coming towards, but all angled away from us,
obviously warned to stay clear.

By ten past, the trickle of ships coming
through had stopped.

Jane brought me up to date, with the only
thing new being Zippy completing her two runs for cargo, and now being
downstairs in her apartment sleeping.

I’m not sure Jane’s little episode earlier
had been a good thing for her. If anything she now sounded more eccentric than
before, and I hadn’t thought that was possible.

Lacey sent us the okay to jump, and we
found a short line of ships waiting on the other side, well out of the way. 266
went to top speed, while Jane brought us back up to cruising speed. The latter
was about eighty five percent of top speed, so we were still breaking speed
expectations for such a large ship.

I looked up the Verse system, since I had no
first-hand knowledge of it. What I found amazed me.

Verse is a huge system, one of the largest
ever found. None of the now handful of planets and over a dozen moons which are
habitable, were so to begin with. The system was terraformed in stages. The interesting
thing was, there wasn’t very much terraforming needed to make them viable.

The system has two suns. The first one was
much bigger and hotter than Earth’s, so the so called goldilocks zone was much
further out than for normal Earth type suns, and much wider. Well beyond that
zone, was a much smaller sun orbiting the first one, as if what might have been
a gas giant had achieved ignition in its own right. It had its own goldilocks
zone.

The dynamics of the system were intense,
and sometime in the past, there must have been major collisions, as what were
in effect two solar systems, interacted with each other. But the forces
operating in the system had either destroyed or moved anything likely to hit
something else, resulting in the primary goldilocks zone having more than a
usual number of planets, and the secondary zone not directly interacting with
the primary, although it rotated around the primary sun, which wasn’t itself
affected by the second one. So by the time people found the system, it had two
stable sets of planets and moons. But the dynamics of the system changed all
the time.

The planets and moons vary from one extreme
to another as far as climates go, and it’s a busy system. However, it’s also a
very insular system, in so far as not a lot of local traffic ever leaves. The
main traffic heading out the two jump points on either side, are those heading
up and down the spine on long hauls. A lot of in-system trade is handled by
small freighters, who move what’s needed from those settlements and cities with
too much, to those with too little. The Firefly class small freighter, of which
I had one in my trading fleet, was born here, and is a popular choice for a
system where space stations hadn’t been established as normal, and landing on
dirt was essential.

The position of the second sun dictated the
best way to cross the system. It was going to take us twelve hours.

I headed down to dinner.

As there weren’t many of us now, everyone
was sitting up one end of the table, leaving me with the head. I took my seat.
A streak of white shot in the door behind me, did a circuit of the room, and
ended up in my lap. A white head poked up over the edge of the table, and the
rest of her boosted up onto it. She sat beside me looking very pleased with
herself.

Pyne’s sneer became a frown. His experience
of the afternoon hadn’t done anything to change his attitude. However, when
Jeeves appeared to take our dinner orders, he jumped and looked like he would
prefer to be somewhere else. We all made a point of ignoring him, but several
smiles showed an effort being made to not laugh out loud.

Angel proceeded to wash herself, and gave
those down the table an excellent view of cat butt. The frown deepened.

Conversation was general, without ranks
intruding. This brought on yet another deepening of the frown.

When Jeeves and Jason brought us food,
Angel’s dinner bowl was put down in front of her as well. One would expect
Angel to have been the messier eater there, but not so. Amanda recounted a
particularly funny story, and Alison knocked her drink over while laughing too
hard. The frown threatened to break the face wearing it.

I pondered the Commander, and came to the
conclusion he was the sort of military martinet who expects order and rigid
adherence to orders, especially his. He was completely out of his element here,
and with zero authority, could do nothing about it.

When Jeeves took his empty plate away from him
without warning, he practically fell out of his chair. He settled himself,
mumbling under his breath.

“Something to say Commander?” I
asked him.

“No sir.”

“My mistake. I could have sworn I saw
your lips moving.”

“Nothing important sir.”

“I take it you’ve never had any
experience of butler droids before?”

“No sir.”

“I guess you’d prefer human
servants?”

“Ah, yes sir.”

“Feel free to volunteer Commander,
no-one else is going to.”

He went red. I swear I saw Jeeves wink at
me.

We managed to finish dessert without any
further problems. Angel jumped down into my lap, and then to the floor, where
she shot out the door. We all moved into the Rec Room, where Aline had me throw
the next lot of ‘Who’ episodes to the entertainment system. The first episode
was full of explanations for those who hadn’t seen ‘Who’ before. Pyne made it
through ten minutes before heading for his suite, mumbling to himself again as
he went. I guess to his orderly mind, we were all mad. The thought had me
chuckling for several minutes.

After the second episode, I told everyone
the next jump was at six fifteen in the morning, and everyone should feel free
to sleep through it. I said goodnight, and headed back to my suite. The hobble
was almost a limp now, and I’d accepted I needed to exercise to get proper
movement back.

My bruises were aching much more so than
they had been all day, but considering I’d not needed a pain shot at all, I was
doing very well. Angel was asleep in her cat bed, so I left her alone, and went
into the bathroom. I stripped off and dropped into the spa, intending to soak
for a half hour or so, and get an early night.

About five minutes later, Aline walked in,
silently stripped off, and dropped in beside me. Several minutes later, Alison
did the same. And predictably, a few minutes later, so did the twins.

No-one said anything. We soaked in silence.

The silence became uncomfortable.

Eventually Amanda cleared her throat,
breaking it.

“Um,” she said, pausing,
“Jon, what’s been going on between you and the Queen?”

“Going on?” I asked innocently.

“You don’t do the raw prawn very well
Jon,” said Alison. “Fess up!”

“We know something was going on,”
said Aleesha.

“And it’s your business because?”

“We care about you Jon,” said the
twins together.

“I get that, but what’s the
worry?”

“A Queen can have anyone she likes. We
don’t want you used like a play toy, and thrown away.”

I laughed.

“It wasn’t like that.”

“How was it then?” asked Aline.

“Alison knows.”

“Me?” said Alison. “Why
would I know?”

“Because the situations were
identical.”

“Oh.”

I could see the wheels turning in four
heads. ‘Thank you for saving my life sex’ was something they understood.

“What about Miriam?” asked
Amanda.

“We parted on good terms, knowing it
could be a long time before we see each other again. We both recognized any
attempt at a long distance relationship wasn’t going to work. She has her dream
job, in her dream ship, and isn’t going to leave it for anything. I have
responsibilities now a long way away. It was fun, but that’s it for now. In the
meantime, when a Queen says jump, one says ‘Yes ma’am’!”

They giggled.

“It’s sweet you all care,” I went
on, “but it’s not as if anything is happening with any of you at the
moment. Your code doesn’t seem to allow it.”

“Only true for Alison now Jon,”
said Aleesha.

“Oh? What changed?”

“The new rank structure,” said
Amanda. “Alison is the only one under your direct command now. In
separating out infantry from fleet and pilots, and establishing a command group
outside them, you no longer are our direct boss.”

“I told you that last time we had this
conversation.”

“It was different then.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“It was Jon,” said Aleesha.
“Then it was you, Annabelle, and us. Direct command line. Now, Annabelle
is the head of the Infantry arm of your organization, while you’re head of the
command staff arm.”

I shook my head. It was too subtle for me
to see. But if it was going to make them happier, I was all for the
distinction.

“Fine,” I said. “Where does
that leave us then?”

“Horny,” said Aline.

We all laughed.

I woke up with Aline draped over me. After
the others left, she’d proved that good things come in small packages. She was
the shortest of the merc team, owing to her Oriental forbears. I didn’t feel
like I’d had much sleep. Jane whispered the time in my ear, I extracted myself
without waking Aline up, and headed for the Bridge.

We were fifteen minutes to jump. I made
myself comfortable. There was no real reason for being here, but I felt the
need in case something happened.

“Man overboard,” said Jane, in a
matter of fact voice.

“What?” I responded
incredulously.

A pop-up screen showed a white mass roughly
the size of a man, outside the ship, and falling behind rapidly.

“Stop,” I said.

“Confirmed.”

“What or who was that?”

Another screen popped up. It showed the
inside of a suite. A man was sleeping. Three butler droids entered, put a belt
around the man without waking him up, proceeded to strip the bed with the man
still in the sheets, bundled the sheets up, and then carried it all out. Cams
followed them to the nearest maintenance airlock, where the bundle was pushed
in, and the airlock cycled.

Laughter exploded out of me, at the same
time I was shocked at what had happened.

“Pyne?”

“Confirmed.”

“Why didn’t you stop them?”

“And spoil their fun?”

Droids having fun was a new concept for me,
and I boggled for a moment considering it.

“Did you intend leaving him out
there?”

“Of course not. An SR droid is
launching now.”

“I assume that belt was programmed to
protect him, since he won’t have had it installed properly?”

“Confirmed. It actually went space
suit mode before the airlock was opened. But he’s going to be a bit breathless
before the SR droid can get to him.”

“Intentionally I assume.”

“Confirmed.”

Another pop-up was showing the SR droid’s
view as it matched velocity with the white mass, and captured it. A suit tube
punched through the sheet, and connected to an SR droid air point. The droid
turned to follow us back.

By the time it caught us up, the ship was
stopped and waiting for it. I told Jane to send her avatar to escort him to see
me.

As soon as he was aboard, we continued on
to the jump point, and jumped through. Once again, there was a line of ships on
the other side, and 266 squadron were heading away from us at full speed.

We were now in the Sanctuary system. It’s a
fairly standard system with five jump points. On the right side of the system
as we headed, was a jump point which led to Miami, three jumps away. Had we not
had to go to London first, I’d have come that way, and rejoined the spine here.

Time to the next jump point was eight
hours.

I waited.

Pyne staggered onto the Bridge with Jane
behind him, looking like he was being forced to come here. He was still wearing
a belt. I waved him over.

“What the hell are you playing
at?” he snapped at me, obviously very angry.

“What the hell are you playing at
SIR!” I snapped back at him. “I may be inactive, but I’m still your
superior officer. You will come to attention Commander.”

I could see his reluctance, but he braced
as ordered.

“Jane, remove the belt please.”

“Confirmed.”

She sent it a command, it detached itself,
and fell away into her waiting hand. She moved away from Pyne.

I let him stand there for several minutes.

“So Commander, what have you
learned?”

“Your ship is trying to kill me!”

“Rubbish. If it was, you’d be
dead.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Obviously. Exactly what don’t you
understand?”

“Why is this happening to me?”

“You know nothing about AI’s, do
you?”

“Ah, no sir.”

“And yet you voice opinions
denigrating them.”

“They’re machines. Why should they
care what’s said about them?”

“Commander, you wouldn’t know it if an
AI stood in front of you, would you?”

“Stood? That’s impossible. AI’s are
computers. They don’t stand.”

“Show him,” I said to Jane.

She took him by the throat with her right
hand, moved him so he could see her fully, and her suit shifted to a belt. In
the blink of an eye, a security droid stood there holding him by the throat
with a skeletal, and obviously metal, hand.

His eyes went wide and he fainted. Jane
continued to hold him up, but shifted back into her avatar form. She moved him
to the helm seat and let him flop into it, letting him go and moving away. Jeeves
came in and waved his magic potion under his nose, and he recovered. He looked
around, seeing Jane well away from him.

His eyes sought mine, wide with horror.

“AI 101 Commander. The butler droids
have a medium level AI, and are quite capable of taking offense. Jane here is a
top of the line AI, with the full range of human emotions. Your access shaft
experience yesterday was because you insulted Jane. Your trip out the airlock
just now was because you insulted the butler droids. On a ship controlled by an
AI, insulting it is a very stupid thing to do.”

“Ah, yes sir. But they nearly killed
me.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“Your complaint was, AI’s couldn’t be
trusted to look after the interests of people first. Was it not?”

“Yes sir.”

“And yet, Jane didn’t hurt you in that
shaft at all, when it was completely possible to just let you fall to your
death. Jeeves could have burnt your face badly, but the water was just hot
enough to be unpleasant, not hot enough to burn. And before they threw you out
the airlock, the butlers not only made sure you had a suit on, but it was
functioning fully as a space suit before they opened the airlock to
space.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Commander, if they wanted you dead,
or if they didn’t care about keeping you alive, you would be dead now.”

He didn’t get it. I suspected he never
would. Some people are so lost in their own little world, nothing you say gets
through to them. Pyne was one of them. I’d have to talk to Price about how to
re-educate him.

“Commander, go back to bed. Think
before you open your mouth in future. Better yet, keep it closed.
Dismissed.”

He saluted me, and ran out.

Jane and I both chuckled for a few minutes,
she updated me with Zippy’s activities gathering more cargo for Australian
planets, and I followed him out.

I went back to bed.

Aline was still asleep.