Connection (31 page)

The tall man tilted his head back and smiled. “I knew you were smart kid but you’re very…perceptive. This, kind of, has a military connection. We’re recruiting for a new service and we’re looking for a few good people.”

“Like the Marines? I doubt I’d be any good with a rifle,” Steven said smirking.

The man laughed. “No. No Doctor Weathers. We sent you that message because we want to hire you to do work on advanced force fields. We just wanted to make sure you were who you said you were.”

“So that’s why you were measuring my pupil dilation, pulse, and capillary blood flow with those sensors,” Steven said indicating the hidden sensors.

The tall man looked up at the hidden wall cameras, “…and we thought we were so secretive,” he laughed. “Robert.”

Steven wondered what was going on and then another man walked in. “Severe!” Steven paused a moment. “You’re Robert Kobe?”

“Yep,” Robert said and held out his hand. “I want you to work with me.”

“Severe!” Steven said again.

“We’re going to do a lot of this work on Mars to start. You’d be paid well and would receive royalties on anything you discover.”

“Stingin’,” Steven said.

“Does that mean you’re interested?” Robert asked. He was baffled by the young man’s responses.

“Interested? It’s cabbin’,” Steven said. “Mars? I used your radiation shield design as a model in my dissertation. I’m sure I could modulate it in a different way and produce a tangible field for kinetic projectiles too. I think shields could be used in many more ways than they are now.”

“Kinetic? So, you’d work with us? You’d be away from Earth a long time and you’d have to train in survival and military techniques. Are you still willing to work with us?”

“No way I’ll go anywhere without my girl. Sorry fellas,” Steven said.

Robert acted distant for a second and said, “Dr. Karen Stockell? The biological engineer?”

“You know Karen?” Steven asked.

“She is due to visit us this afternoon. Want to stay and watch the next interviews. You are welcome.”

“I presume that you set this up for more than me and her. How many others from this area of the country?”

The tall man, Dillingham looked at Robert. Robert nodded. “Five including you. We’re interested in some disparate skills but only for a team that is willing to work with us.”

“Are you also interested in Kenny Nakamura the physicist and Janos Vorgesi the mechanical engineer? Who is your fifth one?”

Robert turned to Dillingham. “How could he know?”

“No idea boss. Steven?”

“I figured you’re trying to build some team of specialists for deep space defense or exploration. I know the usual organizations have some crazy old ideas that don’t work for suds. Some of my friends have been…excluded because their research is extreme.”

“Teresa Xi. Material Science…the fifth one…her research is on molecular composites. She’s due here about now – wait…she just got here. Is she extreme too?”

“Subcutaneous communicator huh?” Steven said figuring out how Robert got the information about Teresa. “You know about Resa? She won’t work with anybody. Doubt she’ll work with you. Doubt Karen will want to leave Earth either, for that matter. Yeah…she’s extreme.”

“Quellie. Send her in and please bring me the sample. Thanks,” Robert said through his communicator. Quellie opened the door for a petite raven hair young woman. The woman looked fifteen but Robert knew she was twenty-seven. She couldn’t have been over 150 centimeters. She looked around the room and gave a little snort of disgust when she saw Steven. “I’m Robert Kobe,” Robert said.

“I know who you are. So?” she said like he smelled bad. “Why am I here? I’m busy and don’t have times for games.”

“No games Doctor Xi,” Robert said as Quellie came back in and handed him a 30-centimeter square of material. He thanked Quellie and unceremoniously handed it over to Dr. Xi.

Xi tapped the material and hefted it before slamming it down edgewise on the steel desk. She looked at the material again and the dent the material had made in the desk. “Let me see the tests,” she said to Robert.

Robert touched his wrist Dex to hers and she scrolled through the tests.

“There is no material like this on Earth. How did you fabricate this?”

“Professor LeEck from LesMa gave me the idea for the material. It is not from Earth but from a unique combination of materials from off Earth.  I suggest you skim through the videos marked ‘Nemesis’.”

She scanned for a moment before answering. “Your proportions are skewed. You mislabeled centimeters and meters on your scale model. I suppose you want me to help you scale this up. Any good fabricator could do that if you had enough raw material,” she said.

“No. No scaling. We call it metacrete. The dimensions are exact as displayed. We brought forty-three personnel from past the Kuiper Belt to here last week in that ship covered in Metacrete. That took about an hour. We have been scaling up production nicely for the last month.”

“…and you want me to help you scale up production. I don’t…” she started to say before Robert cut her off.

“No. We are building a fleet to protect the Earth and police the solar system…” Robert said but Xi cut him off.

“I told you I don’t want to work on scaling up production,” Xi said and crossed her arms and stuck out her lip.

Robert laughed at her. “You are a petulant li’… aren’t you? Sorry to have bothered you.” Robert said and got up and opened the door.

“I now have the video recordings you gave me and I can get the spectrographic analysis of those laser strikes on the hull and the specs you let me see,” she said and started out the door. “I am the foremost authority on molecular composites.”

“You mean arrogant
has-been
don’t you? There is nothing on your Dex and your lab computers have just been wiped,” he said.

Xi stopped and checked her Dex. “You can’t have accessed my computers. Everything is encrypted so even the NSA couldn’t access it.” She was desperately trying to access her computers in her lab but somehow they were blocked. Her Dex didn’t work right now.

“I dare say Doctor Xi that your expertise in computers is not as formidable as your renown as a material scientist,” Robert said. He was tired of her tyrannical attitude. He realized that Steven may have pegged her after all but he wanted her expertise to advance the metacrete development. “Do you lash out at people so they can’t see how small and scared you are? I shouldn’t have responded like I did but you are very good at pushing people’s buttons. I’m still interested in having you work with us.”

Xi teared up. “Did you really wipe my lab computers? It’s my life’s work. What did you want from me?” She was badly shaken and knew she should have access.

Robert bit off a harsh reply, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “We’d like you to help us develop similar materials to metacrete. We’ve discovered a whole new class of materials and we want you to help us develop them. You would have almost carte blanche in funding and you’d receive academic credit and a portion of royalties for anything you create. The laboratory would be on Mars for a few years but you’d only be a few hours from Earth with our transport.”

“You have some specific project you want me to help with don’t you? …not scaling up production?”

Robert laughed. “Not scaling up per se…we want you to figure out a way to make a material like metacrete that is flexible. We need personal armor for the flight suits we are developing. Kevlar and Twaron fibers have been around since 1970s. I’d like to see if we could make something like a metacrete fiber and still have it flexible. Interested?”

“I would have whatever equipment I need? Will I have computer support?” she asked.

“Yes but we work as a team. There are many types of experts and they are all important.”

“What about my lab computers?” she said.

“…they are being restored doctor. We have the most sophisticated computer support in the solar system,” Robert said when Cassandra indicated she had restored Xi’s lab data. Quellie stuck her head in the door.

“Doctor Nakamura is here sir,” Quellie said.

[Doctor Xi inhaled when she heard the name of Nakamura. Her pulse has increased and blood flow indicates she is aroused] Nemesis said over Robert’s communicator.

“Let’s move to the conference room down the hall. Will you join us Doctor Xi? You are most welcome.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

[She will agree. Her feeling must be very strong from Nakamura. Pupil dilation and increased blood flow to her genitals indicate an amorous inclination for him. “Please doctor. I’d like your help in persuading Doctor Nakamura to join us. You being here will help.”

“I’ll stay,” she said meekly.

They all moved into the conference room. Kenny Nakamura was about 190 centimeters tall in sharp contrast to Teresa Xi’s 150 centimeters. Kenny had that lost-in-thought look with tousled hair. His clothes were a mishmash of styles and colors too. Where Teresa was finely finished – Kenny looked like a street person? Everyone chose chairs and the seating was interesting – Robert took the chair opposite the door, with Dillingham to his right. Teresa Xi sat down next to Kenny Nakamura. He smiled at her as he sat down and she lit up – she was actually pretty when she didn’t have on that permanent scowl. Nakamura sat up straight and nodded as everyone was introduced. Steven sat to Robert’s left.

“Hey Kenny. Karen Stockell is coming too,” Steven said, unable to control his enthusiasm. “Severe!”

Kenny Nakamura focused on Robert Kobe and his look became like a spotlight. “Your bias drive didn’t work until you turned on the radiation shield did it?” he said straight out.

Robert nodded.

“I knew it. It must be the combination of that drive and radiation field that changes the standing waves.”

“Standing waves?” Robert asked.

“So you didn’t know? That’s okay. I never would have thought of that combination. Steven…you working on developing the radiation shield for him? You could do a lot with that stuff, couldn’t you? Resa? You working on the hull material? Is this something you made?” Kenny said looking at the sample square on the desk.

“Resa hasn’t said she’d work for him yet,” Steven said. “Neither have I.”

“Resa?” Kenny asked.

“Are you going to do it?” Kenny asked and turned from Resa to Steven. “You?”

“Karen’s supposed to be here in a few minutes,” Steven said. “…but I doubt she’d want to live on Mars with the low gravity…even though Mister Kobe said we’d only have to travel a couple of hours each way with his ships.”

“I’ll do it if Resa does it…with or without you Steven. This will be big,” Kenny said.

“I guess I’d do it if Karen does…but she won’t. I’d like to but I won’t go without her,” Steven responded quickly.

Resa looked like she was about to say something but then clouded over and stuck out her lip.

Karen Stockell was ushered in. She was a thin, almost emaciated brunette with hair cut short and apparently no makeup. “You’re Robert Kobe,” and she held out her hand for Robert to shake. “You’re the one recruiting…” she said and finally looked around the room. “Hi Kenny – Resa,” she said and lit up. “Hi Steven…I’m glad you’re here too. What’s this all about?”

Robert looked her in the eye and said, “I want you to develop our environmental systems at our base on Mars and in our ships. Later we’d have bases in other solar systems. We’d be a couple hours away from Earth whenever you needed to travel back. We’d do that ‘til we can develop better gravity augmentation. You get academic credit and percentages of anything you develop.”