Connection (24 page)

“How about communications?” Robert asked.

“We installed your quantum comm system and it works fine. We added a decent microwave radar as well. On bias drive, you go too fast to get a microwave return, so the field on this one is stronger than for the Cassandra to deflect microparticles. You have an optical system on a range of frequencies that downsamples images you can view but it's the same ones as on the Cassandra. The computer system is identical to the one on Cassandra – just like you ordered. The reactor is topped off with H
3
and your conventional fuels. We’ll have our test pilot check you out on the changes – then you have to follow Mars rules when flying.”

“Mars rules? Those different from Earth regulations?”

“A bit,” Grace laughed. “Don’t crash, don’t crash into the domes, don’t crash and break anything you don’t have a spare for, don’t crash without letting someone know who your next of kin is…that’s about it. Bit simplier up here – you screw up – you die, and if it breaks – we can’t afford to rescue you or bring spare parts – usually.”

“Got it…don’t crash,” Robert said while sitting left seat at the controls and reaching out to everything. It looks just like he would have designed it if he had been the one to design it. Cassandra was strangely quiet as was Twlise. Twlise had still not gotten over the trauma from their kidnapping he thought. She was a ticking time bomb of emotion and Cassandra – he’d have to have a talk with her.

“Yep,” Grace said.”When do you plan to take it out?”

“In a day or so if I feel familiar enough. I have to have some talks with Twlise and my ship. Let’s get over to the large ship.”

Müller nodded and they walked over to the larger ship. “It’s about the size of a blue water destroyer. You’re going to need a bit more crew to run this baby. That plate is two inches thick on this monster. It will be a chore just to get this one off the ground the first time even with our reduced gravity – we never could have manufactured this in space. Have you considered a name?”

“Not yet. Let’s do this,” he said as they entered the port side, landing bay.

“This bay has a twenty-four meters wide opening and is twelve meters high – that ought to do it. Controls are mid-ship with armament mounts in the bow, mid-ship all around and aft. What goes in those armored, gimbaled sections?” Grace explained.

“I don’t want to say ‘til I can get everything sorted out.” The tour lasted four hours and it was all Robert could do to not to be overwhelmed. He knew Cassandra had designed and sent all the plans and details but everything seemed so familiar and ‘right’ that it was scary. He was soon able to predict, silently, the designs – though he had to admit – some features went well beyond his expertise. He collapsed on a chair in the center of the bridge – the many copied bridge design from Star Trek that the Earth militaries had actually copied in variations. “You’ve done a fantastic job. Are the computers systems linked yet?”

“Yes sir. We finished those last week. Your ship, Cassandra, was connected to this one for a day and a half through the new quantum link I’m told but it was all highly encrypted. My people tried to hack it, at your request, and we got nowhere. Those skullcaps control the ship I’m told though there are manual backups. You just put it on – I personally, haven’t had the guts to try it. One of the techies tried it. He said it was scary but said it worked. I’m told they’d let you do diagnostics now if you want to try them on.”

“We’ll go eat and then Twlise and I will explore the controls.”

“I’ll have something sent up here if you want – I know you want to get started on this right away from the way you’ve been scrambling. No dairy for Ms Twlise…right? Anything alcoholic?”

“Right on dairy – water is fine. Thanks Grace. You don’t mind me calling you Grace do you?” Robert said.

Grace laughed. “Sir. I lived with your designs for months. You’ve called me Grace in your messages for months. Don’t you dare go formal on me just because we’re meeting face-to-face right now…No way.”

“Good enough.” Robert said. “Twlise. Are you doing okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said as Grace nodded and walked off. As soon as Grace was out of sight, Twlise rushed into Robert’s arms and started sobbing. “I’m not okay Robert. Don’t leave me. People try to kill us here too – just like at home. I’m scared you’d leave me in this huge ship. You really didn’t design this did you? Cassandra did all this didn’t she? She must have had a good reason. Why don’t you ask her?”

“I was worried about you darling. I know you’ve been under a tremendous strain but nothing has changed my love for you unless it’s that I love you more. I’ve been so concerned about your feelings after our kidnapping. I didn’t want to scare you away yet you were the one that saved me and killed all those men. I didn’t know you had retractable nails.”

“I’m a throwback it seems. My mother told me it was romantic and only 5% of our female population has the trait anymore. We are taught to protect ourselves at a very young age. Rape is not as big a problem on LesMa. We can damage the men in too many ways.”

“You mean with those nails?”

“Not just that. We have strong muscles in our sexual coupling.”

“I know that – wow…but…”

Twlise cut him off. “We can nearly sever a man’s organ and secrete a toxin in our saliva when threatened.”

“Oh. I never knew,” Robert said.

“Women rarely use it but it's a trait among some of my race. You would never face this from me. Most women who can do it would never tell their men, in case it scared them so much they couldn’t perform – you seem never to have that problem.”

“I’m glad you told me – I guess. Uhm. You seem to be handling the death of those men pretty well.”

“They were trying to kill us. We don’t have the same remorse, is that the word…yes, remorse your people show. I was scared you wouldn’t love me after seeing that side of me. LesMa men don’t like a woman to be aggressive.”

Robert grabbed he and kissed her passionately when he heard a cough from the control room entrance.

A man stood at the entrance to the bridge with a covered tray. “Sorry to disturb you but Ms Müller said you two wanted something to eat. Pretty good tonight…chicken and mashed potatoes with peas…no milk proteins. Here are two glasses – water is available from that station over there,” the tech said and was quickly gone.

The meal was fine. He imagined they would eat a lot of chicken and fish here as those would be easy to raise – each species providing an easy reproduction cycle.

“I guess I need to try this control cap before we head back to our room.” Robert said and slipped the cap over his head. He felt the sensors momentarily press against different areas of his head – felt kind of like snuggling in…comforting even. A screen grew like an overlay where he was looking. He could see the bridge but a ‘heads-up’ display clearly came into view. He suspected it was projected right on his eyes from the slight ‘bill’ on the cap.

[Welcome Mister Kobe.] Robert was startled. He had ‘heard’ a voice but realized it wasn’t audible.

“How do I communicate with you?” he said.

[You do not need to speak. Just subvocalize what you want to say and I can recognize what you are saying. This will get better as we build a vocabulary with use.]

What is your name?
he thought.
Are you Cassandra?

[I am more like a sister to her. She shared herself with me and then we have been apart for a while. The different people working on us – communicating with us – seems to imprint a different personality. I have not been given a name yet.]

Can you talk with Cassandra? I really need her?

“I’m right here,” Cassandra said through his communicator.

I see you’re talking with me through my subcutaneous communicator. Is that as secure a method as through the skull-cap.
[By no means. The skull-cap is much more secure and it is easier to send multiple region digital information once the headset is calibrated for you.]

Would you begin calibration for me?
Robert saw a light get dimmer and dimmer and thought he couldn’t see it at some point then the same thing rapidly in different colors, then sounds. The sounds arrived at his ears at different times to appear like they came from different directions. Then interesting images formed and became clear and moved around.

[Follow me with your eyes and head.] An image of a nude Twlise traipsed around the screen and did cartwheels and then a leopard appeared and the virtual Twlise stopped and screamed. The realistic leopard started toward her and then seemed attracted toward the chair Robert was sitting in. He could smell the grass with Twlise’s scent on the wind. He could hear the leopard’s rasping cough and see the sharp teeth as it turned toward him. The leopard dipped its head, charged straight at him with a full-throated roar, and disappeared. [You are now calibrated].

I will be when my heart comes out of my throat. My pulse is still racing.

[Just calibrating your physical characteristics with your mental network. Do you wish a thorough update?]

Is this Cassandra or the new ship?

“Sorry boss,” Cassandra said. “I’m integrated with my sister ship. You will probably want Twlise in on this update too.”

What do you need her to do?
Robert thought.

“I need her to put on a cap too. There has been a LOT of things happening since we first landed and you had me upgraded – not all of the happenings are good.” Cassandra said through his communicator.

Go for it Cassandra. I trust you. You have saved my life several times already.
Robert thought. “Twlise?”

“Yes Robert,” Twlise replied.

“Cassandra and this ship are communicating and Cassandra thought it would be a good idea if she could update you through this ship’s new communications system. It will get a little weird as she calibrated your hearing, smell, and vision. She will talk to you using your communicator – pretty weird but I think you should. I want you to know everything you can,” Robert said.

“Okay darling. I like Cassandra. Here?” she said as she sat in the first officer’s seat and slipped on the cap as Robert looked over and smiled at her.

She is very brave. She saved my life during the kidnapping. Don’t scare her too bad, Robert thought.

[No problem. I like her a lot too. You did well with her. I won’t treat her as bad as I treat you. You ready]

Great…not as bad? Guess I’m ready.
Robert wasn’t ready.

[I will give you the information I used to make the decisions I did. I used your drawing and notes from all your offices plus all the notes of your employees on speculative projects you had proposed. I added environmental designs and other technologies we needed from open sources and patents files. Many of the technologies I designed into your ships come from government projects the world over…I hacked the databases of the French, Chinese, Indian, Russian, Israeli, and US as well as Japan and Iran. Many of those governments had intelligence projects aimed to steal plans and discredit you. That is why I have designed these ships to be so advanced. I could take the best work from the universities and corporations worldwide. I took the fluidic control and heat transfer designs from LesMa. I used the advanced plans the Kurchatov Institute in Russia had stolen from Lockheed because they had improved on the US designs.]

You say all these Intelligence agencies had plotted to steal my ship plans. Was the kidnapping attempt part of that?

[The kidnapping attempt had tacit approval from the Department of Defense and the Israeli Massad. Here are the the intercepts.]

My god. So… these designs are being built here because…

[It is the only place with little threat. The Titan and Mars colonies are under a renewed threat also. Many of the Earth governments have not given up secret plans for takeover of these colonies. Your bias drive would give them the economic advantage again. Constructing ships here would have clear advantages. I will now give you pertinent intelligence for the ships and what I was planning. Twlise will get a much, abridged version.]

The information flowed faster and faster into Robert’s connection to the ships. He saw the threats – the multiple threats and plans from all over the Earth to steal his plans and discredit him. There were plans to subvert his friends and employees. The plans were arranged to trap Cassandra at Bakerfield when she landed with me to pick up weapons. Cassandra knew she did not have the room to haul enough armaments. The shuttle would have to land at the airfield where the kidnapping had taken place and they did not have any armament for the shuttle.

I will have to fly the shuttle, get the armaments, and distract them with Cassandra landing at Bakersfield. The shuttle has enough stealth capability to make it through the sensor net around the US but the US National Reconnaissance Agency could see us visibly from orbit. It would only be a short time before a response was sent to the abandoned base. Are you able to hack or scramble their communications?

[I can but it will alert Earth intelligence services to some of our abilities. They have already sent a task force of troops to retake Mars and Titan. Those troops are enroute as we speak. They will arrive in two months.]

Show me your intercepts.

The intercepts showed that China and Russia had joined the US in a joint venture. They had plans to ‘divvy up’ the proceeds to different corporations who were partially funding the missions. There were teams ready to ‘reverse engineer’ his bias drive and they were prepared to go into full-scale production of interplanetary ships. What disturbed him the most were the plans to go to LesMa. The location had been guessed or leaked by something they had said or done. The back and forth communiqués that Cassandra had intercepted had included one particular mantra that kept coming up: ‘=[]\’. There were plans to ‘exploit’ the solar system.

Okay Cassandra. I see your point but I don’t see how we can stop anything. How did you know?

[It was your order to: ‘You keep monitoring our situation and don’t let yourself be captured by some other company or government. Keep us safe if you can.’ I started monitoring any corporation or government agency that mentioned you. I predicted a 23% chance of some attempts to capture you or the drive plans. That led me to dig deeper because of the nature of their comments. I started accumulating designs and looking for solutions. That led me to start intercepting encrypted messages between governments. The odds of a government intervention had risen to 48% by then. I started reorganizing your finances and building shell corporations. When the odds hit 51%, I negotiated the Mars construction. When I hacked all the research around the world, I started patent applications and licensing some of the non-threatening tech. I leaked technical data to the market and shorted a lot of stocks to build up your capital. I was busy buying controlling interests in the corporations that attacked you and missed seeing the corporate attempt to kidnap and capture the bias drive until the last moment. I moved all your funds so as to be untraceable when I realized a kidnap attempt was imminent. I had already duplicated my design in segments and transferred my memories to my ‘sisters’ by the time you were kidnapped.]

We’ve only been back twelve weeks. It’s impossible.

[I don’t sleep. I don’t hesitate making decisions and I can hack any Earth network. It became more and more obvious that people on Earth were determined to get the bias drive and would do anything to get it – it offers wealth with no boundaries. Anything getting in the way is just an obstacle to be removed with no consequences considered. They are only looking at the advantages. They pulled old NERVA atomic designs off the drawing boards for the ships headed this way. It was a pretty massive undertaking.]

Why build these ships if troops are already headed this way. You can’t run a ship around like that. They would have to land to refuel and they wouldn’t have life support without restocking here.

[They have orders to harness asteroids to threaten the population here on Mars. They have railguns and lasers. They have an atomic bomb. They plan to take Mars and the bias drive. Earth has used all volunteers who are sworn not to fail – one ship has already blown up getting this close. The ship we built here is to give you options. I’ll be there to help you. You could drop rocks on Earth like you did on LesMa but Earth isn’t as easy to intimidate. You are pretty popular right now but the PSYOPS folks are about to uncork the genie of fickle public opinion about you and LesMa.]

What are the ships for? Do you have a plan?

[The ships built hee on Mars are to give you options. I can transmit the key tech information and intercepts to you pretty rapidly. It will make you pretty disoriented for a while. Do you want a mental network set up to monitor the quantum feeds? It may change your personality – not sure how but I only predict a 22% chance of you stopping the subjugation of Mars with it and a virtual 0% chance without it.]

How long will this take?

[A couple of hours. Twlise is getting a summary of the situation. I am answering her questions too.]

Do it. Give Twlise any intelligence operative skills or information she needs – computer hacking – anything you think that will help. Give her as much as she can take. I assume you’re monitoring vital signs. Give me everything you can without burning me out.

Robert could feel the flashing rush of information entering his mind. There was a throbbing headache as information was projected and ordered
in his mind. It was like grabbing a live wire that gave a stronger and stronger shock. It was like talking to one person and then a couple of people and then a whole throng of people showing information. He didn’t feel the prick in his arm that was very similar to the truth serum he had been given when he was kidnapped. He noted that Cassandra had added servos so she could physically manipulate areas within the ship. He noted there were quite a few robots aboard ship also. He chanced to think about Twlise’s welfare and got a peripheral ‘okay’ from her from somewhere. It felt like he was getting a mind makeover. He lost consciousness at some point during the memory network print.

                                                                   ****

Robert and Twlise woke up about the same time. They stripped off their caps and looked at each other.

“I’m a little nauseous,” she said.

“…with a headache,” Robert replied. “How are you otherwise?”

“I’m scared Robert. I don’t see we have many options. I can start teaching language lessons but that won’t help if your Earth military starts dropping asteroids on us here. They plan to capture LeEck and Latima. They will steal your plans. I think Earth may have sleeper agents here already,” she said.

“Oh. I didn’t get that. I was looking at getting the armaments first or we have a destroyer sized paperweight here that can barely get into space.”

“Can you show some technical innovation that would require the sleeper agents to contact Earth immediately?” Twlise asked.

“I think so. Cassandra. Why don’t we give demonstrations on how to penetrate the
metacrete
?”

[Ah. We can give false information in the demonstration.] Cassandra replied to both.

“Not only that but we can give three demonstrations to different groups and keep them separated. Each demonstration will be a slightly different method. These methods should be about an attack method the approaching ships should be able to accomplish. Cassandra. You can monitor the satelilite warning system around the planet. I’d like to do it during a dust storm so they couldn’t use any laser communication but would have to use radio frequencies. That will hopefully, narrow down our ‘sleepers’ into one of three groups. We’ll promote it as a way to repair the ships but it will be a way to breach the metacrete.”

[There are going to be dust storms all next week.}

“I need to pick up the armaments as well as LeEck and Latima. I’ll need our new pressure suits and we’ll need ground support,” Robert said. “Cassandra. See if you can get us a squad of the toughest military here. Only troops we can absolutely trust. You will need them to be space trained and heavily armed. You will have to expose some of the intercepts. Do you think they will go for it?”

[The upper levels of the administration are more than aware of the threat from Earth. Some were the ones that fought in the independence wars ten years ago. They know their defense has not kept up with Earth progress however. I will offer our services as long as they know we cannot be under their direct control. There are risks but I will get you the safe, armed support you need – it won’t be the troops you expect.]

“No government on earth would give up that control but I think they would here. I trust you. Go for it,” Robert thought to Cassandra.

[I predict you will go to Earth tomorrow in the shuttle. I will try to get the support troops here by 1000 hours tomorrow.]

“Sinese time,” Robert chuckled to the name that had ‘stuck’ on the colony’s largest city of one and a half million residents named after the actor Gary Sinese. “Cassandra. What do I have to do to contact Tod on the quantum link.”

[Just think about contacting him. Use the knowledge you have obtained Robert.] Cassandra admonished. [You need not vocalize your requests. The ships can hear you quite well if you think to direct your thoughts at us. You may now do the same with Twlise. Try it.]

Twlise. Can you hear me?

Yes. Robert. Your thoughts sound just like your voice. I like your voice.

Do you want to go with me to Earth tomorrow?

…of course, Robert. Let us get some rest. We will have to get up early. I am worried about soldiers in our shuttle since it has a bias drive. I know about that technology now.

Cassandra said she get us safe support. She has done what she said she would do up to now. We have to get the armament because some of it it can’t be manufactured here yet. We don’t have the time to get other sources – I have no idea how Tod was able to gather the materials we need.

Robert and Twlise left the ship and had a small vehicle take them back to their lodgings. They took showers, a luxury here and collapsed in bed.