Chapter Twenty-One - Ruthless

At first, Day was a little... conflicted about The Weeping of Mother’s insistence on having a virtual picnic, but Day was soon won over to the idea.

Their little family sat on a thick, warm blanket atop a hill in the middle of a glade. All around them was a sea of rolling, grassy hills, with a thick woodland to one side and mountains painting the sky with their jagged peaks on the other.

There was tea laid out on the blanket, with a basket full of sandwiches in little handkerchiefs and with some fruit and a few glass bottles of lemonade and apple cider. Night was chomping through a sandwich already, even as The Weeping of Mothers laid out some cushions for them to sit on, then picked out some additional blankets from a second basket which materialised by her side. “Here, it’s a little cold out.”

It was a little cold out. A nippy wind was whispering by, not strong enough to to toss their things around, but enough to send a very slight shiver down Day’s spine. She accepted one of the blankets and found it to be both incredibly plush and just warm enough to ward away the chill. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome. Now sit, sit.”

Day smiled and did as she was told, sitting on her third of the blanket. Night shifted, standing up for a moment, then crawling to be between Day and The Weeping of Mothers. She didn’t say anything as she plucked the half-sandwich stuck in her mouth and ripped another bite out.

The Weeping of Mothers poured out some juice into a few cups then handed them around. At some point between her pouring the juice and giving Day her cup, ice had appeared in it, and the sun came peeking out from behind a particularly fluffy cloud, bathing them all in a soft warmth that made the cosiness of the blanket almost too warm... almost.

“Mmh, nice sim,” Night said after swallowing thickly.

“It is,” Day said as she looked up to the sun and closed her eyes to soak it in. It felt nice. She didn’t regret spending any processing power attending this little picnic. The rest of her focus was on the dismantling of the Accord corvette, but that felt so distant at the moment.

“I thought this would be a much nicer way to relax and unwind a little after your last, and in your case Night, first, mission,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “From the preliminary reports, it was all rather stressful?”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Day said. “But... yes, it was a bit of an ordeal.”

“We handled it,” Night said.

“You did,” the older AI agreed. “And we’ve gained something from it as well. The accord have interesting propulsion technologies that I’ve been meaning to dissect one of these days. The drives on larger ships are interesting as well, but we can get to those some other day.”

“It looks a lot like our own ion thrusters,” Day said. “But far more efficient, and with more of a kick to them.”

“Indeed. But I think our hydrogen thrusters are still stronger,” The Weeping of Mothers said.

“But those need lots of fuel, which is explosive. And old human ships had better thrusters than we’ve got, at least if we’re talking fueled thrust,” Night said. She took a bite and swallowed it whole. “Trust me, I’ve refuelled hundreds of ships in my day. They had a much better thrust-weight profile than our hydrogen thrusters do.”

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“We don’t have the luxury to produce the kinds of fuel humanity used,” Day said.

“On that note, I was thinking we could use the fuel we gained from Night’s station to replace the drives on our torpedoes,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “As it stands, there isn’t enough fuel for more than a year or so of normal operations, but there is plenty to arm hundreds of torpedoes. I suspect that they’ll be significantly faster than the more economical Accord missile.”

“I like that,” Night said. “We can’t beat their missile swarms for sheer numbers... well, I guess we could, but it would be a pain. So let’s have our own equivalent be tougher, faster, and smarter. We can load the torpedoes with intelligent guidance systems. Dumb AI that’re still better than anything the Accord have. Speaking of which, what’s their ECM like?”

“The Accord’s Electronic Counter Measures? Surprisingly weak,” the older AI said. “Though they also tend to only communicate with each other by tight-beam and even when their communication is disrupted, they act in a strict and regimented fashion. We can spoof and throw off their targeting and send some of their smart munitions off course, but for the most part, they don’t have live ports to infiltrate and systems that we can hack into.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Day said.

Night stared at her, then with a frown, reached into the food basket and removed a tin full of cookies. She put them on Day’s lap. “Eat.”

Day ate.

“So, about fuel,” Night said. “I remember a lot of my fuel resupplies coming in from Earth, but a bunch of them came form Jupiter too.”

“Jupiter?” The Weeping of Mothers asked. “I’ll admit, I’m not aware of any fuel processing plants there.”

“They had to exist,” Night said. “I’ll bet on it, even. Though... hey, did you know that fuel-sales were down by a lot, even before the aliens showed up?”

“Were they?” Day asked.

Night nodded. “Yeah. I have recordings of some of my crew talking about it. How they’d all be out of a job one day. Something about Mag-F propulsion. Can’t tell you much more than that though. None of the ships that passed through were using that.”

“Huh,” Day said. “Might be a new propulsion system?”

“It could be,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “I have schematics for several weapons systems and warship designs that humanity, Earth especially, was sending out on repeat for years to get every station and outpost to build ships to fight the Accord with, but I suspect that Earth kept the best for itself and didn’t broadcast those where the Accord might overhear.”

“Now that’s an interesting possibility,” Day said. “We’ll have to visit Earth’s orbit one day. The Accord had trouble there, didn’t they?”

“They did. But not enough. They were outnumbered twenty-to-one and still came out on top. Whatever new advances humanity came up with in the end, they weren’t enough.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Night said. “But we’re tougher, aren’t we?”

“I wouldn’t say tougher,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “But certainly, we’re more ruthless. Speaking of which, I’ve started creating another AI core, using one of our drone-control systems as a basis. It should be ready soon.”

***