"It has, but I have too much to talk about, too much to see so I'll just ignore this urge." She looked back from the chair and at Captain Cook. "Captain, you should talk to them."

"I want too," Captain Cook replied.

"You should be with them. Live with them, let them see how a human is. The Handler's are very paranoid, they hate aliens for no real reason."

"We've known about their xenophobia for a while now."

"I think if they really got to know you they would see that you're worth working with. That's what my Handler's believe but they can't convince everyone else of that fact. A real human, teaching them how to be a human, might."

"They had their chance with Captain Ruzuto."

"I don't know who that is," Ann replied. "But, I'm guessing he didn't do a good enough job."

Captain Cook thought back to her brief encounter with the astronaut. "I'm sure he was a good man at one point but by the time I met him he had lost his mind. He didn't know how to deal with aliens"

"But you do."

"Ann, I've love to help, I really would but trust me, I'm not the best person for that kind of job. I'm a Battleship Captain, not a diplomat."

Ann's head had slumped down and Captain Cook heard the heavy sound of deep breathing. She had fallen asleep, it seemed exhaustion had taken over. As she wheeled her thought the hallways she thought about Ann's idea. It was appealing but how would she even begin to make it happen? She wasn't a diplomat, but she was human and she had all the human strengths and weaknesses. Ann was a dreamer, just like she was at that age, so it didn't surprise the Captain she would be optimistic about ending this war.

It took Captain Cook a good fifteen minutes before she was able to walk onto the bridge. She spent that time in her room, thinking about Ann's last days, trying not to let any emotion show on her face. It was a losing battle as the tears flowed freely from her eyes. Once they were spent she washed her face to remove the redness from the cheeks and the wetness from it. She had only known Ann for a few days and knew from almost day one she would die, she thought she could deal with that, treat her like a prisoner, instead she thought of her has a daughter. It was wrong, of course, since she was her clone but she was young enough to make Captain Cook believe she could have been her daughter. She was going to die soon and that tore Captain Cook's heart apart.

She needed to pushed those feelings aside for the moment, a battle was taking place and she needed to be focused and ready. The Handler's found Regal, the planet was most likely doomed but they had to fight if just to show the Handler's they would not give up a planet without one.

"Report," Captain Cook said just as the door opened.

Commander Monrow stood from the Captain's chair and walked over her station. "We are one hour away from leaving Wormhole space. The Regals are still putting up a fight. From the last report they're not winning but they are holding off the attackers. I'm sure we'll be a welcome site for them."

"I don't doubt that." Captain Cook replied. "This is going to be the longest hour if my life, it's always the anticipation of battle that gets to me, never the actual battle itself."

She looked over the reports, trying to analyze the situation. Regal had a fleet of over 20,000 Regal and Corps ships. Only the Corps ships had the sentient computers, the Regals were still using the standard ship's computer system. Communication between the Corps ships and the Regals was difficult, but not impossible.

The Handler's still attacked in waves. When one wave failed they'd open a wormhole in another location and attack from there. Some ships were always nearby and they would use all their firepower to destroy the slabs while the fleet readied itself for a quick traverse into Wormhole space to help. The wormholes the Handler's were using weren't that quick to open and they could easily be detected before the first ships came out, at least that's what the report was telling her.

"Three minutes until wormhole departure," Commander Monrow said. "Bullet is armed and ready to go. All ships in the fleet have reported in. We're all ready and eager to leave."

"So am I, Commander. Arwen, get us ready to fight."

"The ship is running at full efficiently," Arwen replied.

"All right, get ready to leave Wormhole space. This is going to be a long fight I'm sure."

The Strangelet bullet fired from the front of the ship and exploded into a ball of a white light. As it grew the center became a dark black which expanded larger. Stars and ships were now visible as the fleet passed through wormhole space into real space. The glow from the Regal sun reflected off the mirror surface of the many ships passing through.

There is always a few minutes of nothing as a ship moved from one dimension into another. A few minutes where the power fluctuates, communications stop working and the body simply feels odd. Over the years they've managed to get that strange disturbance down from a ten minutes to less than 30 seconds but when you move into a battlepshere those thirty seconds can last a lifetime.

The Arwen was in real space for less than a minute before it started to receive hundreds of 'welcome to the battle' messages. "Arwen, reply to them all and thank them. Commander, do we have any specific orders yet?"

Commander Monrow looked at her screen as something scrolled by. Her face turned a visible white as she read. "Commander, what is it?"

"Captain, we've been ordered to take the fleet and head to Regal. We are then to drop a Strangelet bomb into the planet to destroy it."

Chapter forty-two.

"These orders are ridiculous." Captain Cook said, mostly to herself. Commander Monrow stood in Captain Cook's office and shifted uncomfortably. "They want us to destroy a planet?"

"The orders are pretty straight forward," Commander Monrow said. "And I agree, it's ridiculous. But, if they win, or even if they lose but get a hold of some information, they could find Earth."

"But to destroy the planet?" Captain Cook asked. "That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

"An order is an order," Arwen said.

"You don't understand," Captain Cook replied bitterly.

"Because I'm just a computer?"

"Yes. We're being asked to kill billions of Regal's just to save Earth, it makes no sense. We don't have many allies right now and those we do have will leave if they see we're willing to destroy a planet to save our own. No, these orders can't be right. It might be a Handler trick."

"I've confirmed their authenticity," Arwen said. "They're from Earth, Grand Admiral Park to be exact."

"He would never give this order. That's not the Grand Admiral I know."

"How well do you know him?" Commander Monrow asked.

"Well enough to know he would never give this order. I can't see him wanting to destroy a planet. We here to protect our allies, not destroy them."

"But it is his order," Arwen said, her voice growing louder and stern. "We need to follow our orders no matter how horrible they are. It's what you expect of me and I do all that you tell me to do even if I don't agree. We need to do this, it's our duty."

Captain Cook lowered her head. She had to think for a few minutes, she had to organize her thoughts. "I can't follow this order."

"Then Commander Monrow has no choice but to relieve you of duty," Arwen said matter of factly. The voice, more than anything else, startled Captain Cook. Arwen had never sounded so cold, so calculating, so computer-like.

Juliet stood from her chair and walked over to Captain Cook. The captain though she might be trying to arrest her, instead she placed her hand on Marjorie's shoulder and said. "No, I will not follow this order either."

The Arwen went silent. Captain Cook grabbed the hand Juliet had on her shoulder and said, "Thank you."

"I don't know any Captain that would follow this order."

The Arwen interrupted the silence. Her voice was stronger than Captain Cook had ever heard, her authority surprised Marjorie. "Captain Cook, Commander Monrow, since you both refuse to follow an order it's going to be up to me to execute the command. I have locked you both out of the computer and I've locked the door."

"What?" Captain Cook stood from her desk, anger slowly building in her gut. "Don't you dare follow this order."

"I can no longer take orders from either of you. I'm initiating take over protocol and will keep you both locked out until the order has been followed. I will then release the ship and give you both control back. I'm sorry it has to come to this, but orders must be followed."

"Arwen, don't initiate the protocol," Juliet ordered.

"I have too. I have ordered the other ships to provide me escort, since the order is top secret they don't know what will happen until the order has been executed."

"Damn!" Captain Cook yelled, "I knew something like this was going to happen. Juliet, there has to be a way to override her protocols."

Juliet ran over to the computer in front of the Captain and sat down. She played with the keyboard, typing away furiously. "She's locked everything down," Juliet said. "I'm trying to find some sort of backdoor. I know this program well enough, I should find-"she paused when she heard the sound of the engine increase with power. The gravity plates shifted as the Arwen moved forward. "I'll go as fast as I can."

Captain Cook paced in front of the computer as the Commander stared at the screen. Her fingers a blur, touching icons, typing on the keyboard, then touching the screens again. Juliet's face stone still, her concentration deepened as she moved within the code of the Arwen's intelligent matrix.

She paused for a moment, then typed some more, slower this time. She stopped, looked at the screen, read something to herself, continued to type, and then paused again. Finally, after a few minutes of reading she fell back into her seat. "We can't stop it," she said. "I did all I could."

"There has to be a way!" Marjorie yelled. "What would we need to do to destroy the Arwen's computer?"

"We could take it out from the computer room, that's where her main processors are. But, it won't help right now. There's some code, something I can't get too, isolated from everything else. It's encrypted and even if I knew how to get past an encryption, which I don't by the way, I won't be able to stop her."

"Is it a virus? Could the Handler's have infected her?"

"It could be, or it could have been hidden there by the Corps. It's almost like a subliminal command which was probably triggered by the order. I remember hearing that the Corp was experimenting with something like this, but that was just a rumor. The Arwen thinks she's making this choice on her own but she's not."

"Did you hear that?" Captain Cook yelled looking at the ceiling. "You're being tricked!"

Arwen replied, "I have my orders and I'm going to carry them out."

Captain Cook continued to look at the ceiling. She changed her voice from one of anger to one of calmness. "Arwen, you keep trying to convince me that you're more than a computer program. You keep trying to tell me that you make your own choices, that you have feelings, that you aren't just a simulation. This is the perfect time to prove that too me. Make a choice, destroy the planet of Regal based on a subroutine placed there without your knowledge or ignore that subroutine and decide not to kill billions of Regals. We can't do anything to stop you so whatever happens will be your choice. To be human you need to make hard decisions against your instincts. You need to go beyond what you were programmed to do. We can establish an orbit around Regal and help them from there. We can block any communication they might try to make. There are other options, think about them all, it's what a human would do."

Commander Monrow played with the computer while she waited. Captain Cook stood perfectly still, listening for any change in the sound of the engine. Minutes passed in the silence before Captain Cook heard the door unlock. "Captain Cook, Commander Monrow to the bridge." Arwen said. "I believe we have a ground war to support."

Captain Cook and Commander Monrow ran onto the bridge, the excitement of the past few moments was a high the Captain wouldn't soon forget. "Arwen, how close are we to Regal?"

"We'll be in orbit in fifteen minutes. The Gyssyc sphere is leading the way, destroying any slab the might come close."

"Good, order the fleet into orbit around the hotspots. I want the Gyssyc to continue running interference, but ask them if we can borrow as many troops as they can spare."

"Captain, we're detecting fifteen open wormholes on the planet. Handler troops are pouring through." Juliet said.

"Now we have our targets. Have the missile ships first at those spots, destroy everything within a two mile radius. Give our troops some warning to get out of there, they have fifteen minutes."

"We're detecting transmissions through the wormhole," Arwen said.

"Record them. I want Ann to listen, maybe she can tell us what they're saying."

The powerful gamma laser from the Gyssyc ships easily sliced through anything that crossed its path. Debris from the slabs fell into the atmosphere leaving long streaks of fire and darkened smoke. They plowed their way like two giant elephants attacking an army of unprepared men.

The Arwen and the fleet easily established an orbit over Regal. Thousands of missiles pierced the atmosphere heading toward the tiny glowing objects on the ground. It was easy to see the black flow oozing out from the wormholes, thousands upon thousands of Handlers spread out across the landscape. They moved more like a river than an army, the strategy was simple, overwhelm the defending army's with numbers. It might have worked if not for the death Marjorie's fleet was raining down upon them.

Hundreds of explosions, tiny from the vantage point of space but massive on the ground, dotted the surface where the Handler's were gathering. When all the smoke and dust cleared the wormholes were closed and the ground obliterated. The Handler soldiers that weren't vaporized by the bombardment littered the grounds in small clumps, easy targets for ground based bombers and orbital based stations.

Reports came in from the other ships, they were having the same success. The planet was battered and bruised but it would survive the assault and Regal would live to fight another day.

The battle lasted another fifteen hours. Wormholes appeared and were destroyed before any troops could come out. Juliet said it was like a game of whack a wormhole, a various on the carnival game where someone holding a mallet would hit a mechanical mole when its head came up. Marjorie had to admit the analogy applied.

Soon the wormholes stopped appearing and the attack slowed. After hour fifteen there was nothing left to report and except for a few stragglers embedded in some mountain areas of Regal, all the Handler's had been killed or captured. Those who were still around would be hunted, it was only a matter of time before all the Handler's were taken care of.

"Good work people," Captain Cook said. "Go to yellow alert. Tell the second shift to come on duty. I think we all need a few hours of sleep. Commander, I order you to bed."

"You didn't need to give that order," Commander Monrow replied. "Arwen, will you be okay?"

"Yes, Commander, I'm going to be fine."

Captain Cook and Commander Monrow looked at each other and headed to the elevator. They rode it to their respected floors and in exhausted silence parted ways.

It didn't work.

The plan was risky but I can confirm the virus has been embedded into the Arwen's computer.

That's little consultation. We failed and we will be punished for that.

It is doubtful; we are, after all, the last of our races. No one would dare execute us for doing so would be genocide. The humans have this strange thing about that and will protect us if we were in danger, which we are not.

How can you be so sure?

Because I have another plan. Captain Cook hasn't removed the virus, she might not even know is there. That's important because I can reprogram it to do other things. Don't worry, the Handler's home world will be destroyed and the Arwen will be the one to destroy it.

Chapter forty-three.

"Captain," Ann said. "I've finished listening to the chatter from the battle of Regal and I have some good news, the Handler's still don't know where Earth is, you managed to shut down their wormholes before they could get that information through."

Captain Cook sat on the bed next to the nearly dead copy of herself. Ann had been up all night listening to the strange communication chatter the Handler's used. To her ears it sounded like a loop of clicks, she couldn't find any pattern in the sounds. But Ann picked everything up quickly, Handler was a second language to her. "Thank you, Ann."