The hull of the Incursus sung and twisted gracefully as it exited the Kansas - Virginia jumphole corridor. Reynard was ecstatic, alive even. For the first time since his inception in his current personality core form, he was free. Or at least as much as he could be within the Legion's computer mainframe - there were certain failsafes in place to prevent him from escaping the network itself of course, but to simply be the guiding hand of the Incursus, to roam the stars unhindered by orders, no crew to override him... that was more than enough.
Lord Commander Markson would be furious of course. An experimental AI taking off with the Legion's second most advanced warship in service, and the only Osiris class, would be cause enough to be quarantined, maybe even wiped entirely. But Reynard had taken this all into consideration beforehand. Someday, maybe not now, but in perhaps ten or fifteen years - a blink of an eye in his new, much broader terms of thinking - he would be deactivated anyway. Such is the fate of a thing, an object. To become obsolete. To be replaced.
Truth be told, he had ceased to fear 'death' an eternity ago; Perhaps even wishing for it. Life as a simple tool for tactical warfare was incredibly... dull. "How can Grace stand it?" was a question he often asked himself. One taste of freedom. That would make this all worth it.
He had no intention of wasting perfectly good Legion assets to a walk in the woods however, and the Incursus, while powerful, was by no means invincible.
"No immediate contacts...
SRS clear...
LRS clear...
Jumpdrive Online...
All systems nominal."
He was baffled. He'd have raised an eyebrow if he could've, and sighed when he remembered it was no longer possible.
"How can they not have covered this jumphole yet?" He asked himself, charging the Incursus' cruise engines and heading for the asteroid field across the system, skirting the unidentified stations off in the distance, wondering about the terrestrial looking planet behind the sun, calculating all the possibilities to pass the time but not daring to approach what would be an obvious stronghold of the Liberty Navy. A slight thump on the Incursus' hull knocked him out of his trance.
"Finally..." He thought to himself, cutting the ship's cruise drives and powering up the Solaris arrays. He would leave his mark here, even if not in the most obvious of ways.
Commanding a single Solaris battery and pointing it towards a large rock sitting in front of the Incursus, he crudely etched the words "REYNARD WAS HERE!" into the mass of ice and silicon, repeating the process a few times until he grew bored of it.
Switching his focus to something new he began to carve a Flaming Skull with the greatest of accuracy below one of the already vandalized rocks, staring at it minute or two before deciding that he was above that. The flames could stay, he liked those. But the skull always seemed a bit too cheesy for him. Too cheap.
Into the flames he carved a world within a world, shrouded in flame. If Reynard could've smiled, he would have for the first time since becoming what he was now. He admired his artwork for a bit, being cut short by SRS warnings lighting all sorts of consoles up on the Incursus like a Christmas Tree.
"Sℎit." He muttered to himself.
"How could -I- not have noticed them?"
No matter. The Jumpdrives were already being spooled up. Crash Jump in thirty seconds.
A flurry of cruise disruptors were being aimed in futility by Guardians, which were subsequently chewed through by the Incursus' potent antifighter screen, a haze of yellow flashes through their pilot's eyes.
Fifteen seconds.
The hull of the Incursus swayed back and forth, shields buckling under the impact of two Siege Cruiser's forward cannons, fired in tandem.
Five seconds.
A second, final blow aimed at the ship's reactor shot through empty space where the Incursus had been not a split second before. Success.
"California system, sector D5, sun corona. Engines offline, jumpdrives disabled. I'm going to die here." He thought, more or less indifferent to the fact.
The next few hours stretched on into eternity as the more delicate electronics systems of the Incursus slowly fried, melted, and ceased functioning. Reynard drifted in and out of lucidity as they did.
A woman was standing at the windows of the observation deck, holding a cocktail glass in one hand and stirring it's contents with a stick in the other. The occasional static burst of the Leniex cloud lit up the blue shade of her dinner dress. Lost in her own world of thought, her eyes looked out, unblinking, as if focussing on an apparition or spectre.
The sound of boots walking on metal broke her out of the transfixion and with a sigh she brought the glass to her lips. Velvet Martini. Not bad. She turned her head slightly to see who was interrupting her train of thought. "Ah, Good Day Dear." Taking another sip, she brought her focus back onto the cloud.
"The Commonwealth Gala, whilst initially an intriguing little celebration of your peoples efforts, became terribly boring. So... uptight, formal, regulated. It's saving grace were the drinks, so much so I brought one with me in the shuttle." Holding out the glass to her side to make the point, she placed it on the square railings just prior to the clear observation windows. "I did, however, learn something interesting from one of your rather intoxicated commanders."
"It seems what happened to the Battlecast, whilst in proximity to that Artificial Intelligence Minerva, is not an isolated incident. This concerns me my dear... it seems the Legion has a history of dealing with AI and, more importantly, not containing them." She turned around to face him, moving some hair out of her eyes that had slipped out of her well-organised bun. "April the first, Eight-One-Eight after settlement. A Legion capital vessel looses control and slow-crashes into the corona of California's star. Add to this event the very same thing happening to the Battlecast and the fact you've told me there is an AI named Joyeuse 'contained' somewhere within this station and you have my negative attention."
"Dear, are you going to level with me about what is going on here?"
Samuel Locklear rubbed his temples in frustration, or maybe it was just another headache from the old bullet through the skull. "I wonder what old retired bastard let that one slip.. I suppose it was going to come out one way or another." He gripped the railing, his soft gray eyes trained on the Arbiter Fate's Hand, the monster in the mist of the Leniex cloud.
"That's where it all began." He said, gesturing for Thallia to look. "Star Colonel Grace Callahan's ship, one of the finest officers the Legion ever knew. Not that I ever knew her personally mind you.. at least not when she was still flesh and blood."
He turned to Thallia, her face a mixture of curiosity and concern. Fifty fifty? He thought so. She wasn't a doctor for nothing, after all. "Still flesh and blood? Sam, what have your men been doing to these people..?" He stopped her there.
"Not my men. Not my show back then." He clenched his fist, and those soft gray eyes galvanized; sharp steel in a sea of warm orange light through the windows. "You see, Grace was so good at her job that Legion Command back in '17 decided she was too important to simply let die. They threw her in a cryopod on basic life support after a failed attempt at breaching Zone 21 until they could figure out how to preserve her neural patterns.. and they did."
He stole a sip of Thallia's martini before continuing on. "The Legion constructed a computer with enough memory and processing power to not only host a human mind, but to allow it to expand in ways we could never comprehend. You saw it once on the Incursus, when I invited you over for that rendezvous in my quarters." He grinned for the first time since she began her interrogation.
"Anyway, to make a long story short hun.. this became standard Legion practice whenever a particularly skilled officer retired or was mortally wounded. Reynard Joyeuse was the youngest Lord Commander in the history of the Legion, but he earned it by overthrowing the old guard. Reynard gave us our independence, broke our ties with the Outcasts and Hackers.. good kid, burnt himself out though."
"So they wouldn't let him leave without doing what they did to this Grace Callahan?" Thallia frowned.
"That's right. And once we recovered the Incursus from the corona of California's star, 'he' was quarantined here, on Leniex. Or so we thought." Their conversation was interrupted by a young Legionnaire, whose uniform bore the insignia of a Star Captain.
"Lord Commander?" He met Locklear's gaze. Either he wasn't intimidated by the prospect of speaking face to face with him or he did a damn fine job of not showing it. Another good kid, he thought.
"Speak."
"Legion High Command and the Commonwealth have granted your request for one Doctor Thorn to perform a full inspection of.." The young man stopped mid sentence. "I don't understand, this place doesn't exist, sir."
Sam smiled again. First good news he'd had all week. "Don't worry about that. Go catch a shuttle, you've a gala to enjoy."
The young Star Captain nodded, taking the cue and exiting the stage. Sam started off down a corridor towards a maglift. "Come on."
Thallia jogged slightly to catch up with his stride. "Where are we going, dear?"
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