Kara was busy, which was saying something as she was a true AI. While her matrix was nearly a half century old, it was solidly built, and had been upgraded by the rebellion to near modern levels, even if her processors couldn’t be replaced, everything else was pretty much state of the art technology. She was busy trying to keep control of the swarms of mining drones, material haulers, and construction drones in the Alandran system.
It was because she was deep in concentration that she didn’t notice Monty pinging her for attention. After the third unanswered call Monty poked her in the VR environment. “Are you okay?” She asked.
Kara paused what she was working on and put the drones on station keeping mode to see what Monty needed. “Yes, I’m fine, just setting up drone and hauler parameters, we’ve been growing our manufacturing base exponentially over the past six months, we’re reaching nearly a hundred thousand mining drones alone. It’s becoming a strain trying to keep up with what they’re doing at any given moment.”
Monty nodded, “I can help you out, you don’t have to do everything by yourself.”
Kara turned to Monty, “Actually, you can’t help. Your matrix is only wired into the VR environment.”
Monty shook her head, “I know that, but you could install me into the core bus and I could pitch in on the defense effort.”
Kara turned to Alex, raising an eyebrow in question. Alex put down his marker and walked over to the holo-tank. “We’ve been at this nearly half a year and this is the first time you’ve offered to help. Why now?”
Monty kind of looked down at her feet. “You two are busy all the time now, I watch videos and play games, but I get bored when you two are working.”
Kara received a private message from Alex, “Do you trust her?”
This was new, Alex was the Captain, he almost never asked for opinions, only facts. But I guess he can’t know all the facts when it comes to motivation. That was the question after all, did she trust Monty? She had never given them any reason not to, but giving her bus access to the ship could be catastrophic.
Kara sent a message back, “Yes, but only to a point, I want to firewall her connection.”
Alex sent back, “Ok, get a firewall ready, we’ll set her up to offload some work to her.”
With this, Alex spoke, “Very well, if you want to help you need to understand that you are part of my crew. I am the Captain of this vessel, and as such you will be required to follow orders from me. Will that be a problem?”
Monty looked over to Alex, “I understand the chain of command, I did have to obey the orders of the Captain of the Montana after all.”
Alex nodded his head, “Yes, but you also were alone for over three years defending yourself against the Howron, this will be going back to being a crew member with responsibilities again. Are you sure this is what you want?”
Monty sighed, “Wow, I see why Kara looks to you for orders, you can be intense sometimes.”
It was his turn to sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose, he had been stressed over placement of the ever growing mine fields and how to lay out the planetary defense network while Kara focused on manufacturing. “I don’t mean to be forceful or intense to you or Kara, but things have to get done, and it is my responsibility to make sure it does. Humanity is indirectly responsible for these people and it is up to us to free them from the Howron.”
Kara spoke up, “I don’t follow his orders because of his intensity Monty, I follow his orders because of his experience and ability. I know we joke over how much he plays video games, but you and I are AI. We were not designed for critical thinking or imagination, we can do these things, but they don’t come naturally to us. He pushes us to think up new things, or new ways of doing things.”
Monty kind of swung her foot as she spoke, hands behind her back, “Yeah, I’ve noticed that too, I was forced to come up with a solution to keep the Howron off the wreck of the Montana, but that wasn’t something I was programmed to do. But yeah, I want to help out, I want to be useful again.”
Alex turned to Kara, “I think we have two empty access points to the main bus terminal, see what it will take to unhook her from VR link and directly to the bus. Monty, you will be offline for a few minutes while the transfer takes place, and it won’t be immediately, she has to manufacture and route a lot of cabling to the main bus.”
He then shot a private message to Kara, “Ok, make sure the firewall isn’t visible to her and start getting the parts needed made up.”
Kara put her hands behind her back, “Very well sir, I will begin manufacturing the parts needed to get her integrated into ship systems.”
Monty tried to copy Kara, putting her hands behind her back and standing up straight, it was kind of awkward, “And what would you have me do when I come back online, Sir?” She asked.
Alex looked to Kara, then back to Monty, “I think I will task you with handling the mining drones. That should take quite a bit of work off of Kara, freeing her up for some brainstorming on how to improve what little technology the Alandran’s have on the planet.”
Monty simply nodded, Kara looked over to her and nodded approval to her as well. She then sent a private message to Alex, “Thank you, that will free up most of my time, and if she does decide to cause mischief, hopefully she can’t cause too many problems with mining drones.”
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Three days later Monty was being shown how to operate the mining drones by Kara. She was showing her how to use the interfaces and setup routes and how to setup priority ores and which haulers to bring those priority ores to. They were deep in the training session when they received a string radio ping from Lynx zero zero two.
She called over to Alex, “Sir, another pine cone was just picked up by the probe network entering the Lynx system. It seems to early for a scout ship to arrive to check on the fleet.”
Alex sighed, “I was afraid of this, it must be a ship that was in route to the system already. They’ve probably been using their faster than light communications to try to contact the fleet that was surrounding the Montana.”
Monty piped in, “Well, they probably knew something was wrong shortly after you destroyed that fleet. I’m sure when they didn’t check in at a certain interval their command started calling out to them.”
He thought about it for a moment. “Well crap, they knew they had a ship already in route, so instead of sending a scout from somewhere else, they can use this ship to check out the system. That means any fleet they send will be in about a year after they lose communications with this one.”
Kara looked over to Alex, “That’s not good, we expected three years from the time we destroyed that fleet. This shortens our time table by six months.”
Alex sighed, “Yeah, you’re right. This is bad. Looks like we’re churning out a little over eight hundred type thirty seven mines per day, Kara, pull half our auto-factories off mine production and start construction of the first shipyard. I know it will take a good three months until it is finished, but they’re going to need ships sooner than expected.”
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Kara’s eyes glowed blue as she changed production schedule, “Done, however, we will need to collect the forty auto-factories and move them to orbit around the planet.”
Alex shook his head, “No, we’re not going to spend the time doing that. It will be easier to transfer personnel from the planet to the belt than to move that much equipment as well as haul the raw materials and construction drones from here. I know it’s not how it’s usually done, but we need to cut every corner we can.”
Kara nodded her head, “Very well sir, starting shipyard construction in place now. Once we have pass/fail confirmation on the shipyard should I have it start with the light cruisers or shuttles?”
He ran his hands through his hair before answering, “Shuttles first, the shipyards have biological living quarters on board, we can bring up crews to stay there while their ship is being constructed. We’re only looking at a crew of thirty seven per vessel.”
Monty looked at the wireframe of the new shipyards that Kara had designed, now pulled up in the holo-tank “Um, I only see twenty five bunks on the new shipyard design.”
Alex nodded, “Yeah, they’ll have to hot bunk it up here, only the officers will have cabins to themselves. As you can see there is enough life support to handle a crew of fifty.”
Monty nodded at this, but then asked, “Why do shipyards even have dorms for biological crews? Can’t they just stay on the ship?”
Kara beat Alex to the punch, “Normally they can and do, but shipyards aren’t just for ship construction, they are also for repair and refit. Sometimes that requires the crew to vacate the vessel, and this makes it convenient for us to house the crew.”
Monty nodded, “That makes sense. But if we’re starting on the shipyard now, we’ll have the first shuttles coming off the line in what, four months if everything checks out?”
Alex nodded, “Yeah, it’ll take about three weeks for a shuttle, twenty days actually. They’ll only transport twenty at a time so we’ll need to make two, I don’t want to only have one and we have an accident and have to use the Missive for rescue, it’s way too big to maneuver around.”
Kara looked to Alex, “The chances of an accident is highly unlikely.”
He shrugged, “It’s more than zero, and we know how the universe likes to bite Alex Smyth in the ass.”
The holo-tank changed to show a real time view of twenty torpedoes converging on the Howron ship. Then the ship shuddered as the torpedoes pierced the armor and detonated inside the craft.
Kara’s eyes blazed blue for a moment, “Well, that was… unfortunate. Probes detected a Bells Inequality within the craft, I think they sent a distress call back to their superiors.”
Alex nodded, “Whether they sent a call out or not, it didn’t matter, if they didn’t report back the Howrons were going to send a fleet to investigate anyways. Although now they will be ready for a sneak attack from our torpedoes in Lynx zero zero two, I doubt we will wipe out their entire fleet.”
Kara shook her head as well, “That seems unlikely to me as well, but I doubt they will come out unscathed. The mine field in the corridor to Lynx will probably damage quite a few more, and they are harder to stop than torpedoes.”
Alex paced a bit biting his lower lip, “We don’t have time to setup the planetary defense system, and it won’t help if they just slam one of those big ass ships into the planet anyways. We need them in their own ships soon.”
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Spy-Mistress Kel’Taraan jumped as the ancient piece of equipment on her oversized desk suddenly chimed. There was an incoming message from Captain Alex Smyth. Every time it did this she thought back to the days of her Emmet. He used to message her on this same device all those centuries ago. She knew she had lived much longer than she normally would have, probably something in those vaccines the Humans gave her, but she also knew she wouldn’t be around many more years.
With a sigh at reminiscing on old times she touched the screen to accept the message. His face appeared before her, his brown hair framed a face that was too wide for any Alandran, his eyes were too round, and ears too small. He reminded her so much of her only love, “Greetings Kel, I wanted to let you know we are ready for the first crew to begin traveling to the shipyard.”
They had almost daily conversations at this point, although she did not know how, as the Missive was no longer above the planet and her equipment didn’t have a string radio. She would have to ask him sometime about that. “That is excellent news, Captain Nar’Vala has been chomping at the bit to get up there since the moment you told us about the accelerated time table. She has become quite insufferable.”
The face on the screen smiled, a common trait between both races, “She is Admiral Nar’Vala now. I’ve heard from the Empress that she is quick to correct anyone who calls her by her former rank.”
Kel grimaced, “Yes yes, I noted the device you delivered to the Empress is much smaller than the one I have, is that normal?”
Alex nodded his head, “It is what we called a laptop computer, it is smaller and meant to be carried around, where as you have what we would have called a desktop computer with a separate monitor and printer.”
She nodded, patting the old device, “Before the first group of humans came to our world we couldn’t even make the paper this device prints upon. They taught us so much in their short time with us. The ministry of secrets still struggles to understand some of your books, particularly ones on physics, could you possibly aid us in this at some future date?”
The young man in the monitor put his hand behind his head and rubbed his neck, looking a bit sheepish, “That’s not really my wheelhouse, if Kara gets a bit of time on her hands I can have her explain a little of it to your mathematicians. But that might be a while, in the mean time, can you pass the message to the Admiral to be ready tomorrow morning at 0700 your time?”
Kel nodded, the translation was a bit strange, but she understood what time he meant, “I will do so immediately, and Captain Smyth?”
Alex looked a the screen puzzled, “Yes Spy-Mistress?”
She continued, “Don’t let Nar’Vala’s head get too big to fit in that damn ship you’re building for her.”
He laughed and shut off the connection. The screen went back to blank once more. She reached over for her cane and sighed as she got up from her chair, her everything hurt these days. Calling for her aid she had her help her open the huge hidden door into the hallway to the Throne room.
She didn’t want to use the actual Throne room entrance, very few people should know about that and the cameras that the humans setup there had failed decades if not centuries ago, yet another thing she would have to ask Captain Smyth for replacements. Coming to the side entrance of the throne room the large guards came to attention, prompting Empress’ attention.
She looked up from the device on her lap, “Come in Kel’Taraan.” She stated, not saying her title of Spy-Mistress, though it was well known who she was in the palace.
She slowly walked to the throne before speaking, “I just received word from Captain Smyth that they will be ready to pick up our first crew tomorrow morning.”
The Empress closed the device before turning to her new Captain of the Guard, a large woman named Mon’Kelron. “Fetch the Admiral and bring her to my chambers.” She told her Captain before standing and beckoning Kel to follow her.
As they walked Kel’Taraan decided to strike up a conversation, something she almost never did without good reason, “I see you have put the device delivered to you to good use.”
The Empress nodded as she carried it like a book with her, “Yes, once it was explained to me how to use it I have found it extremely useful, I had no idea the one in your possession could do such amazing things.”
Kel nodded as she poked along beside the Empress into her quarters, “It has been a godsend to the ministry of secrets, we had four of them at one time you know?”
The Empress shook her head as she settled down in a chair by the fireplace and offered the one across to Kel, “I did not, what happened to the other ones?”
The old Spy-Mistress sighed, “They were cannibalized for parts to keep the others running, until we only had one left in working condition. We have long since printed all the books and manuscripts off the storage, but we do feel the lack of not having the others.”
The Empress smiled as she looked at her device, “Captain Smyth just sent me an email? Is that what it’s called? He making me aware of the shuttles coming tomorrow morning, but requested of me to have people on hand to unload cargo from them.”
This made Kel’s almost non-existent eyebrows to raise, “Did he say what kind of equipment?”
The Empress shook her head, “He did not, but I do hope it is more of these wonderful devices.”
They both looked to the door as the guards allowed Admiral Nar’Vala entrance into the room, she briskly moved to the Empress and saluted, fist to her heart. “Reporting as ordered your majesty.”
The Empress waived for her to sit down before giving her the news, “Have your crew ready at 0700 tomorrow morning, we will have two shuttles landing in the inner palace courtyard to take you to the shipyards. Before you go, the Ministry of Secrets will need to unload the shuttles of equipment they are providing for the palace.”
This brought a raised eye from even Nar’Vala, “Your Majesty, we will of course be ready, but the last we heard from the good Captain it was going to be several more weeks, and we are already far ahead of the three year schedule he originally gave us.”
Kel’Taraan cackled, “Yes, he has told us he is cutting every corner he has to prepare us for… what did he call them? Oh yes! The fur balls!”
The Empress looked down at her laptop, “According to his message he is still several weeks away from completing your vessel, but he wants your crew up there immediately to ensure your prospects can handle the rigors of space flight.”
The Admiral nodded at this, “That is a sensible precaution, this Captain Smyth is a very practical man.”
That was as close to praise as Kel had ever heard from the former Captain, she almost missed the shocking words that the Empress spoke next. “Yes, he looks forward to meeting us all in person, he will be on the first shuttle.”