Pussy Pirates
Chapter 13
Month 91—July on Anouilh
“ALL RIGHT, BITCHES, listen up. We don’t often have a company-wide meeting, so let’s not get bogged down. Some of you need to get naked on camera more often. You’re getting lazy. You’ve got sunshine and beaches and food and drink. But you weren’t brought here for a vacation. If you’re not working, you’re leaving.” Dakota had all 276 residents of Anouilh in the resort’s big banquet room. Even though I’d told her it was her problem, I’d stayed right with her and consulted on every decision. Now it was time to get the bitches organized.
“Does anyone here not believe the Swarm is coming to devour our planet, including us? You may be too stupid to live and should gather your belongings for immediate transport to the mainland.” No one moved. “Now, in case you haven’t figured it out, the game we play and film scenes for isn’t just a game. Your players are your soldiers. When the Swarm lands, the game will provide real-time updates on troop movements, and the weapons we’ve been selling will become live-fire weapons. You are training people to fight the Sa’arm.”
“Whoever thought a bunch of porn starlets would be training people to fight?” snarked one of the girls.
“Guys get really motivated when they see your pussy ready for action,” Dakota continued. “There are whole Confederacy Marine companies that have your pictures on their walls. I heard some have even re-shaped their concubines to look like you. Gross as that is.” The room was filled with sounds of disgust and a few cheers, depending on where a girl’s head was.
“Everything has been training and working on your own and filming sexy scenes for the game. We started coming to Anouilh over a year ago. We’ve had twelve months to settle in. Now it’s time to get organized. It’s time for you to take your fighting lessons seriously. We’re starting a new branch of the game. This isn’t just an upgrade version, but a whole new look and feel and game objective. Our motto since the beginning was ‘We won’t leave Earth.’ This next phase will modify that slightly. ‘We won’t leave Earth behind.’ We will, however, defend it from space as well as the ground.”
“I’m not getting on any spaceship!” one of the girls yelled. There was a mumble of general agreement but it didn’t get loud.
“We’re not going to ask anyone who doesn’t want to do space battles to play. I said it’s a branch. This part of the game is going to be very tricky. We’ll start with volunteers but there’s no guarantee every volunteer will fly a fighter or go up to our spaceship.”
“That would be me,” Ubie said over the speaker system. “It’s not ready yet, but I’m working with the engineers here on Anouilh to build our ship in space. The core has been completed and I now have a remote node of my intelligence directing the construction.”
“Ubie, you’re cool,” Miss Molly said. She sat on the stage with Dakota, Tatts, and me. “Are all the Confederacy AIs like you?”
“I am not a Confederacy AI. I am an independent non-corporeal being devoted to saving Earth in partnership with you.” There were cheers from the women.
“All right. So that jumped us ahead of our presentation a little. Yes, there will be a spaceship. Yes, we will have fighters we expect to engage directly with the Sa’arm when they enter our system. Yes, we are looking for volunteers. Miss Molly will be the groundside commander of our force. That means a little discipline will start being enforced. You know Miss Molly.”
There was finally some laughter in the room and Molly snapped her riding crop against one of her thigh-high boots. “Don’t miss your training sessions! And don’t slack off your camera time. We need more people playing the game or we won’t be ready. I will maintain overall command and will be directly responsible for the space deployment. The Boss says I get to name the ship and I’ve decided to call her the St. Jeanne d’Arc. We will battle and defeat the invaders!”
Cheers erupted around the room.
“Now, is everyone getting enough dick? I know for a fact that not every inch of what we have available is being used. We’ve got engineers who are building this entire complex for us and we’ve got the film tourists we’ve begun bringing in for ‘vacations.’ I know the escorts have been getting plenty from them. Anybody want to join them part time? How many dicks do we need, anyway?”
The meeting continued as the girls discussed mundane issues like getting laid. It ended with Dakota instructing the girls to run the sneak peek preview of the new game branch. Some of the engineers disappeared with several girls. I was glad they were getting laid regularly. Productivity was up and we were ahead of schedule on development for the first time since we arrived on Anouilh nearly two years ago.
Month 94—October on Anouilh
“THIS IS FREAKIN’ COOL!” shouted Rainbow when the new class of pilot trainees were led in to see the simulator. “Zoom! Zoom!” she said as she leaned from side to side, pretending she was flying the ship.
“Are you really nineteen or are you just twelve?” Misty asked. “Get a grip, girl.”
“I just can’t believe we’re the first class of pilot trainees to see the real thing. Dakota, thank you for accepting our applications,” Babycakes said.
“That’s Captain here, Babycakes. This is where the training starts.” Dakota looked at the twenty-four girls in the first group approved for training. “Let’s just learn everything we can and become the best pilots we can,” she said. In front of them was what looked like the cockpit of a small jet plane. Dials and screens were illuminated and they could see scanning radar blips. The room lights dimmed so they lost the sense of anything but the simulator.
“Are you going to be a pilot, too, Captain?” Rainbow asked.
“I have to learn how to command the whole ship,” Dakota answered. “That includes the Hawks. Every member of the bridge crew will learn how to fly. Now let’s get started with the intro.”
“Good morning. Welcome to the Hawk simulator,” a soft female voice said. They looked around.
“Who are you?” Misty asked.
“I am Joan. I am the remote intelligence that will run the ship and help you fly the Hawks.”
“So, you aren’t Ubie?” Rainbow asked.
“No, I am Ubie, just a different facet of him.”
“Rad!”
“In this introductory lesson, you will learn the basic controls of the Hawk Strafer B-1. You will be able to review this lesson on your computers and with the control helmets you will use in training. When you sit at the controls, you will feel the behavior of the Hawk and it will obey your commands. This is done through the hand controls and your communications helmet. Much of the Hawk is self-guiding—meaning I will control its direction and speed, responding to your commands and suggesting courses. The critical thing you will control is the weapons system. I will assist with targeting. Please gather around the simulator and we’ll begin the first lesson.”
Without ever having been at the controls, the first lesson left all twenty-four new pilots exhausted. They went to bed that night and dreamed all night of flying the small spacecraft.
“Are you sure this will work, Ubie?” I asked after viewing the training session remotely.
“There is a 92% probability that this method will work based on compiled human factors and equipment specifications.”
“92% is pretty good. Can you run me through a sample in the simulator?” I made my way to the training room where two more simulators had appeared. I sat in the pilot’s seat. “Gee, this thing is tight!”
“The Hawk is designed specifically for the bodies of our female pilots. They are smaller than you. When gamers start joining the pilots, they will be able to buy control helmets that give them the perspective of the pilot. They can sit anyplace.”
“Then why the elaborate simulation for the girls?”
“The young women are the connection between fantasy and reality,” Tatts said from the next simulator. “Remember, no one actually sits in the Hawk itself. But it will look and feel like the pilot is actually getting in the ship and flying it. The Hawks are guided remotely.”
“Yeah. That’s weird but good, I guess. That way if we lose a ship, we don’t lose a pilot.”
“It is possible that the trauma of losing a ship will put the pilot out of commission for some time. She will have experienced everything but the actual impact.”
“Okay. So, we’ve got a pilot and a Hawk moving in toward an enemy ship,” Teddy said.
“The Hawk system was designed to mimic what is known about the Sa’arm. The Sa’arm fighters are typically sent out in threes, hence the training of three pilots at a time as a team. This will help us learn more about how the Swarm function. I will be the gestalt of our three pilots to coordinate how they attack.”
“What do we do about lag time for communications?”
“There is no lag time.”
“How can you do that? The ships are thousands of kilometers apart.”
“I am in all the Hawks at once. In simple terms, we aren’t communicating. I’m there. We worked it out with the remote mining and manufacturing of the St. Jeanne. Once I established my own brain in the ship, there ceased to be lag time between my thoughts on Anouilh and the building operation.”
“Brilliant. So now you are just like the Swarm!”
“I do not appreciate the comparison. We don’t know for sure how the Swarm communicate, only that it appears instantaneous. My mind is simultaneously in all the ships. Just as a transporter is instantaneous and not restricted by the speed of light or other Earth-bound physics, my thought processes are not subject to lag time. They are in a different dimension. In the Confederacy, each ship has its own AI. The AI is limited to the ship and does not communicate with other AIs during FTL travel. AI to AI communication is faster than human to human communication, but is not instantaneous because they are separate entities. Our ships are operated as a single entity by a single intelligence. There is no lag time.”
“Ubie, can this technology be transmitted to the Confederacy? I mean, the efficiency and accuracy would be a huge benefit to the Navy up there,” I said. I’m not a big fan of the Confederacy, even though they’d become a solid trading partner. But the development of new tech that would give them an edge against the Swarm was something I couldn’t withhold from them.
“I’m sorry, Boss. The Confederacy AIs—especially the Darjee AIs—are fundamentally incompatible with this functionality. As incredible as they seem, they simply don’t have the processing power to be situationally aware in multiple environments. That is why there are so many of them. On a colony world, the colony AI buds different instances to manage different functions. When pods arrive on the colony world, each has its own AI that is more limited than the colony AI. Every industrial replicator has its own AI. Every ship has its own AI. They all communicate rapidly with each other, but they are not a distributed intelligence.”
“Let’s just not mention this to them, then.”
“Right, Boss.”
Month 96—December on Anouilh
KLAXONS SOUNDED throughout the resort waking everyone with a normal diurnal sleep rhythm. I rolled out of bed, noting the time was five in the morning. Ubie began filling me in on the details of the alert as soon as I was clear-headed enough to listen.
“There is a small ship riding at anchor two miles off our shore. Ten minutes ago, it launched two Zodiacs with ten armed men in each. They are approaching our one-mile buoys and the warning to turn away is being played loudly through all of them. The zodiacs have responded by firing on the buoys. It is apparent they are hostile.”
“We need to get down there and repel attackers,” I said, trying to cram my feet into boots I hadn’t worn in months.
“Commander Miss Molly already has two squads of Pussy Pirates headed for the beach. The thirty women are fully armed and I have released the firing restraints on all weapons.”
“Shit! I’ve got to see this. Are we filming?”
“Land cameras are recording as we speak. I have launched four drone cameras to capture a closer view of the invaders. On your screen now.”
I turned to the wide screen display in my office as it flickered to life, divided into four segments. Two showed a view closing in on the Zodiacs. Two were static views along the beachfront showing thirty armed and dangerous women taking cover.
“Ubie, can you give me a closer look at the men in the Zodiac?” Each half of the screen was taken up by zoomed images from the Zodiacs. The other camera images joined the row of images at the bottom of the screen. “Fuck! Earth First. Why the hell are they trying to invade us?” I knew it was a stupid question. I had two hundred fifty beautiful women on the island.
“Snippets of conversation captured by the drones indicate they have come to ‘get us some bitches’ for the base,” Ubie said.
“Go back to the view from the beach. How close are they?”
“Roughly 700 meters and closing. Optimum range for the light sabers is 100-200 meters. They will be in maximum range in three minutes at their current speed. A third squadron of fifteen women led by Ginger Snaps has taken up position near the pool.”
“Shit. I hope they don’t fire down on the squads on the beach.”
“This squad is armed with short range antipersonnel weaponry. They are strictly backup if the enemy breaks through the front line.”
“Short range antipersonnel weaponry?”
“Force blades.”
My stomach threatened to empty itself. Suddenly there was a flash of light from the beach and one of the Zodiacs floundered.
“What was that?” A second flash floundered the second Zodiac.
“When the Zodiacs reached 150 meters, Miss Molly ordered light sabers to disable them. It appears at least four men were also terminated.”
“Fuck! Go get ’em, girls!”
Flashes from Bullet’s new small rifles and weapons on the water lit the dawn. Another sweep from each of the light sabers moved more slowly and deliberately, hitting the motors and fuel supply for the Zodiacs. The explosion lit the remaining invaders working toward shore and the defenders began picking them off. I wondered briefly if we should have left them an escape route, but it was too late now. A man brought a rifle up as he reached waist deep water and fell back with a hole in his chest. It looked like there were only a couple still moving under their own power. One threw his rifle in the air and raised his hands above his head. It looked like another had turned and was attempting to swim back to the base ship two miles out. I hoped he was a strong swimmer. The other black spots in the water moved only as the waves gently rocked their bodies.
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