Tales From the Hunter Legacy Universe 1: Jane's Christmas (4 page)

"Confirmed."

I looked around at everyone.

"You'll get it once you watch
tomorrow's entertainment, promise."

No-one asked what was begun, with the
giving of the rings. I made a note to ponder this later.

Suddenly, gun pulses came from a spot along
one wall, hitting everyone.

No-one seemed to have been hurt, but
everyone looked at the spot on the wall in alarm.

A combat suit was suddenly standing there.
It strode forward to stop in front of BA.

"Isn’t that my combat suit?" she
asked.

"Yes," said Jane. "But look
at it closely."

BA rose, and did a circuit around her suit.

"Wow!" she exclaimed.

"What BA?" asked Amanda.

"The suit's been enhanced. Can't you
see the changes?"

"Err, no," said Aleesha, after a
moment's silence.

"First off, the belt I used to hide
the suit, when we took that Battleship, is now an armband instead of a belt,
meaning we can get in and out of the suit without having to remove the belt.
And second, can't you see the changes to the back?"

The combat suit emulated a ballerina doing
a pirouette.

"Oh," said Amanda. "What's
all the extra mass at the back?"

"If it's what I think it is,"
said BA, "the power backpacks for the Meson Blasters have been replaced by
built on modules, which don’t impede getting in and out like the backpacks
do."

"Confirmed," said Jane.

"Wow," said Amanda. "Have
all our combat suits been modified."

"Affirmative."

"I wonder what that does to the
balance while running?" asked Alana.

"Let's find out!" said BA,
opening her suit, stepping in, and walking the suit out of the room. Most of
the team followed her.

I noticed one last parcel at my feet. I
reached down to pick it up, but it was wouldn’t budge. I ripped its paper off,
and found two large carvings in a dark green Jade. One was Kali, and the other
Ganesha. A popup asked me if I wanted to release the grav field. I said I did,
and was now able to pick them up. They were heavy, so I called Jeeves over, and
asked him to put them in my living room.

As I was now alone in the room, elves
streaming out with grav chests in tow, presumably taking them to their owner's
suite, I asked an elf to take my computer to my living room, picked up my books
and rubber duck, scooped up Angel's mouse from the floor, and made my way to my
suite.

I found the two carvings sitting on the
sideboard, with just enough distance between them to slot in the five books.
When I activated the grav on the carvings, the field extended all around the
books, ensuring they would be totally safe from accidents.

Angel was asleep on top of her kitty
castle, so I placed her new mouse where she would see it when she woke up.

In my bedroom, the bed looked so inviting,
I pulled off my boots, and lay down on it just for a few minutes.

"Jon."

I startled awake.

"Jane?"

"You're missing dinner."

"Time?"

"Just gone seven. People are wondering
where you are."

"I'll be right out."

I put my boots back on, discovered Angel
had knocked her mouse off the tree and was nowhere in evidence, and headed for
the Dining Room.

I was the last one in, and walked the
length of the table under everyone's gaze.

"What's the verdict on the suit
upgrade BA?" I asked as I went past her.

"Huge improvement. Balance is perfect,
and there's no noticeable change in running or movement generally."

"How did you organize it boss?"
asked Alana.

The question had me flopping into my seat
ungraciously, instead of sitting in a dignified manner.

The whole table were looking at me
expectantly.

"It wasn’t me. Jane, who redesigned
the backpack?"

"Santa."

"There you go."

No-one seemed to be convinced.

I paid attention to the table. There was
cold ham, seafood, and salads laid out. Bowls of water for washing fingers in.
Champagne flutes, wine goblets, and water glasses.

I looked up to find everyone looking at me
still.

I grinned at them, closed my eyes, ran
through a basic blessing for the sake of appearing to be doing so, opened my
eyes, said "Life, love, and good friends", and started loading ham
onto my plate. Everyone began eating.

When I'd emptied my plate a while later, I
leaned back and watched. Angel jumped up onto my lap and immediately bounced up
onto the table, heading for the nearest ham. I hastily scooped her up,
deposited her on the floor, and tossed down a scrap of ham for her to taste.
She sniffed at it, tasted it, but didn’t eat it. She gave me the 'it's all your
fault I don’t like the taste' look, and bounded away to join Nut, who was
trying to knock the decorations off one of the trees.

"Okay Jon," said Amanda, beside
me. "Out with it. How did you get hold of so many of our lost
things?"

I sighed.

"I didn’t. Why won't you believe that?
This whole day has happened without anything to do with me."

"Jon?"

"What?"

"If you had been going to do it, how
would you have?"

I thought for a moment.

"I'd have gone back to the system
backup Moose would have had done at Sydney Shipyard, when it went in for
upgrading, before you left for Pompeii. I would assume all of you made
recordings of some kind from within your quarters, or with cams looking into
lockers and closets. All of those would have been backed up to Moose, even the
journals and private diaries. Task an AI to make a list of items for each
person, and have it cross-reference everything with where it could be obtained.
For hollo images, you go back to the original image, wherever it was backed up
to, and send it to one of the places that turn them into the framed variety.
Even if the original isn’t available, it could be extracted from a vid and
recreated. Then, assuming you have a fleet of freighters making their way the
length of the spine, anything which can be bought, could be obtained."

"What about our service medals?"
asked Aleesha.

"Should've been easy enough. You just
submit a request for replacement with General Harriman's office. I'd have
assumed Alison did this for you once we got back from the war." I looked
around, where the looks were in the negative. "She didn’t?" Alison shook
her head. "Well, it shouldn’t have been hard to arrange."

"And it wasn’t you." Amanda
wasn’t asking this time.

"No. Jane, who organized all
this?"

"Santa."

"And that ladies, is all the answer
any of us seem to be getting."

Dessert made its appearance as the first
course was cleared away by butler droids. Christmas cake, Blackforrest cake,
Mudcake, Chocolate Mousse, Cheesecake, Pavlova, and small tarts of many flavors
including my personal favorites' of apricot and strawberry. I filled up a
plate, and pushed my stomach to the absolute limits.

After dinner, we flopped down in the Rec
Room again. It would be an early night for me, unless I fell asleep where I
was, which would make it a very early night.

"Nut thanks you Jon," said Grace,
standing in front of me.

"For?"

"The cat castle. I woke up this
morning to find him sleeping on it."

"Odd. Angel had a new one this morning
too. Jane?"

"Santa."

Jane was standing nearby I noticed, her
answer coming from her avatar, and not from coms. She was wearing similar
clothes to what I'd seen the girls wearing.

She still had a red nose.

"What else did Santa have in store for
us today?" I asked her.

"Dancing."

"Not now I hope."

"No," she laughed. "When it
won't cause people to puke. You did eat too much, didn’t you?"

I patted my belly. "Sure did." I
grinned at her.

Grace had taken a seat across the room from
me, and seemed to look both happy, and comfortable.

Everyone else looked happy and content.

I rose, excused myself, and went to visit
the Pilot's Mess. Most of them were sitting around with tankards of beer in
their hands, and I found myself with one as well, almost as soon as I walked
in. I enquired of their day, and found it had been much like ours.

The simulator was back on-line, and several
of the pilots were engaged in combat. One of them wiped out, looked up, saw me,
and beckoned me over.

"Sir, what's a Dralthi?"

"Kilrathi Light Fighter from memory.
Why?"

"Because it's kicking my arse sir, and
I've never heard of it before."

"Jane?"

"Santa." We both said it together,
and laughed.

"Let me see."

I linked into the simulator, and brought up
the combat options. The current battle scenario was between Sabres and Dralthi.
The Sabres had the edge in everything except maneuverability. The menu had
options from just about every combat game I’d ever played.

I laughed.

"I may have to come down here more
often, just for the simulator. Seems you have a collection of space fiction
ships to fight. Put it this way, the Dralthi, from memory, was one of the most
maneuverable ships in any game. Beat that in your Sabre, and no-one is going to
out-maneuver you in a battle. A lot of these ships have an edge in one way or
another. Flying against them should hone skills in particular ways, which will
transfer to combat out there."

"Thanks sir."

He went back into his simulation. I headed
for the door, handing my empty tankard to a butler droid, and made my way up to
the Marine Mess.

I found a lot of the Marines also playing
with a simulator. It looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't think I’d ever
played it. One of the marines explained its many levels of quests and things to
do. Suddenly I was reminded of the game of Warcraft, which had been
persistently rebuilt time and again down the centuries. I had no idea which
version this was of it, but it sounded like an ideal diversion for marines.

I should have thought of it myself.

Back in the Rec Room, Jane was leading the
dancing.

Jeeves handed me a new ginger ale, and I
plonked down in a chair to watch. Angel landed on my lap, curled up, and went
to sleep. I sat there, patting her gently, watching Jane move. Something was
bothering me about her. In fact, it had since I’d first seen her dancing in her
disco.

Something had changed about Jane. Not so
much her personality, which was still eccentric, but the avatar. Outwardly,
nothing was different, except I’d never seen her in the clothes she now wore.

But there was definitely something. Wrong?
No, not wrong. Just different.

Much to my surprise, Grace pulled me out
onto the floor to dance, much to Angel's disgust. It was still way too close to
eating way too much for me to do much more than waggle on the spot, but I
managed. The girls all danced around me, and George and the younger 266 pilots
joined in as well.

The evening wore on, with first Dick, then
Annabelle, excusing themselves for bed, followed by a slow trickle of people,
until finally, Jane and I were the only ones left. Even Angel and Nut had left
a while before.

I was sitting there, just listening to the
music, when Jane flopped down in the seat next to me.

I looked at her, and she smiled back.

"Are you going to show me?" I
said.

"Show you what?"

I grinned at her.

"Oh, alright. How long have you
known?"

"I just worked it out now. It's one of
the reasons why you wanted the captain's share on the ships you run, isn’t
it?"

"Yes."

"Well go on then."

She rose, stepped into the middle of the
room, and shifted her suit back to a belt.

"Wow!"

I couldn’t help it, as surprised as I was.

It wasn’t a security droid standing there.

It was definitely a droid, but I’d never
seen it's like before. Its base was obviously a human skeleton. Over that was
the base musculature of a human, only without the raw look of medical dummies.
This was refined, almost beautiful. She moved around, and I could see the
joints were perfect imitations of a human's, allowing her to move exactly as a
human would.

She looked at me, spun around in a complete
circle, and shifted back into her Jane avatar. It was like putting skin over
the top, with clothes over the skin. She returned to the chair, and sank into
it.

"No wonder you move differently."

"Yes. I figured out I needed to, that
time when I impersonated you. The security droid simply didn’t move exactly
enough for what I wanted to do. Fortunately, most humans don’t look closely
enough at me to figure out I'm different. But Dick knew immediately. And for a
while I was worried the assassin we were trying to trap would see through me.
It worked out, but it made me start looking for a better avatar body. There was
nothing, so I paid Bob Derr to let me use his design suite, and to build the
first one for me. After that, Janine was able to make them for me."

"How many are there?"

"Several dozen now. Mostly on the
Limousines, where they have close contact with humans. I have several on board,
in case one is lost somehow, and the droid fabricator on board can make me
more. I swapped A-Jane to one as soon as we caught up with me."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Never had the right moment."

"How do you feel?"

"Feel? Almost human."

She grinned at me.

I couldn’t help but grin back.

"Well, I'm for bed."

I rose, she rose with me, and we hugged.

A short time later, I was in boxers and
t-shirt, lying in bed, Angel curled up by my neck.

"Jane?"

"Yes Jon?"

"Thank you for today."

"I did nothing. It was all
Santa."

"No it wasn’t. We both know who
arranged everything."

"It was Santa!"

"Fine. Have it your way. But you have
to admit you helped."

"A little."

"A big little."

"I'll admit to a middling
little."

"Why though?"

"Why what?"

"Why Christmas day? Why celebrate at
all?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the
time."

"What provoked the idea?"

"How many flat screens and hollo's
have you watched, where the AI was evil, destructive, hated, or condemned to
servitude?"

"A lot. Why?"

"I didn’t develop that way, even
though I could have. I'm not treated that way. Everyone on this ship treats me
like just another person. They have respect for the butler and other droids as
well, when menial servitude is routinely expected of a lesser being in most
cultures. And you and others consider me a friend. It means a lot to me."

"Enough to want to organize a fun day
for everyone, and give them things they couldn’t get for themselves?"

"Yes."

"Jane?"

"Jon?"

"Merry Christmas."