The Commander (36 page)

Roth nodded. “We get the picture. It’s not a problem for any of us.” He looked at the other men. “Is it, gentlemen?”

They all responded quickly, no problem at all.

“Anyway,” Annie continued. “I had never heard of this before either; it never came up. But when
Marco
replicated
Sadie
he included that ID in her memory. It appears that the same ID was used by the Bakkui in this system. When
Sadie
got the command to shut down, it essentially bounced off.”

“We need to update all of our ships,” McGee said. “Can that be done retroactively?”

“Already taken care of,” Annie said. “
Sadie
broadcast the information to all our ships at the time and gave it to your local AI as well.” Her expression of distaste made it clear that
local AI
meant George.

“That’s a relief,” Roth said. “What else can you tell us? What happened at C03, I mean New Hope?”

Annie gave them a detailed rundown on the attack and the colony’s subsequent recovery. She omitted any mention of
Sadie
’s subterfuge or her impersonation of
Marco
.

“What about
Sadie
’s design?” Riley asked again. “And her weapons.”

“All I can tell you is that
Marco
had them in his memory. Feel free to discuss it with
Sadie
. I’m not a weapons expert and I was as shocked as anyone when she started blowing those Bakkui creeps away.”

“I’m worried about our other colonies,” Roth said. We need to get this information out right away.” He looked at the ceiling. “
Geo…
” He stopped and looked apprehensively at Annie. “I’ll just do that later.”

She gave him a dangerous smile. “Good idea.”

“What can we do for
you
, Annie?” Roth asked. “What are your intentions now? Or do you know?”

“I’m going after Luke; not right this second but as soon as I can. I’ll check with Amanda, first. I assume she’s still heading up PR?”

“That’s correct.”

“
Sadie
filled me in on the planetside reaction. At the moment, they’re saying our late intervention was intentional. If I can help her with that, I will.”

“I appreciate it,” Roth said.

“Once that’s wrapped up, I’m gone,” she warned him. “By the way, how did Luke manage to leave? I thought the local AI was going to kill him if he tried that. Was all that just a lie?”

Roth hesitated. “George replicated himself into a big starship. That way, they’re always together. We’ve gotten routine reports. We can go over those now or later, whenever you’re ready.”

Annie sat perfectly still, as if immobilized by the information. Finally, she nodded. “Well, well. So it’s still sucking the life out of Luke. Isn’t that interesting.” She dropped the matter and looked around the table. “Anything else? No? Okay, great to see you guys again. I’ll check in with Amanda and we can wait until tomorrow to review the updates.”

# # #

“Please go on in Miss Daniels.” The cute secretary motioned toward Amanda’s office.

When she entered, Amanda was facing away from the door talking to the ceiling. “I got it, Roth. I won’t mention George’s name. Can’t say that I blame her.”

“Just letting you know,” Roth’s voice replied.

Amanda turned back to her desk and looked startled to see Annie.

“Uh oh,” Amanda murmured. She looked embarrassed but recovered quickly. “Sorry about that. But it’s good to see you. Welcome back!” She got up to give Annie a hug.

“It’s good to be here. My dramatic entrance might have caused a few problems so I thought I should check in.”

Amanda grinned. “You did. You’re causing huge problems, like saving the planet. But first things first. I hear you’re going after Luke. You can’t leave until you sign a poster for me. Promise?”

“What poster?”

Amanda left the office hurriedly and came back with a two-by-three-foot graphic depicting Annie in a cartoonized format holding a flaming sword over her head. She was, of course, wearing the revealing skinsuit. The Kanji script identified the origin of the poster as Japanese. That, plus the illustrator had made her breasts the size of watermelons. The background had a stylized shot of her slicing the Bakkui robot in two and another of her bowing to the emperor. It was a spectacular, if incredibly sexualized, image.

Annie was amazed. Not so much by the poster, what else would you expect from the Japanese? But the battle was just a few hours ago. “How did you get this?”

“One of my guys happened to be there on a recruiting trip during the attack. I told him to make the rounds, let the government know we support them, that kind of thing, and then come back. When he was leaving he saw these being sold by a street vendor and brought back a whole pile of them.” Amanda pulled a Sharpie out of a desk drawer and handed it to Annie.

“Seriously?” Annie asked. She wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or amused.

“You saved the emperor of Japan,” Amanda explained. “He represents the longest unbroken line of monarchs in the world. I’m still trying to get a grip on the significance.” She picked up the corner of the poster. “This thing is silly. But your signature will make it historic. I’m going to frame it and give it to the emperor; a piece of pop culture with connections to the royal lineage.”

Annie shook her head at the absurd notion but took the pen and scribbled her signature. “Satisfied?”

Amanda looked hopeful. “Just one more? For me?”

Annie rolled her eyes. “All right.
Bring
me the stack.”

While Annie worked her way through the pile of posters, Amanda talked about other repercussions.

“The Americans are very upset. The US government itself survived because Congress wasn’t in session, but still, everything’s a mess. I want to help but if we show up, they’re going to shoot first. We can forget about them as a recruiting source.”

“What would help?” Annie asked.

“I don’t know. We need to mend some fences first. Would you be up for a meeting with government officials?”

Annie shook her head. “We should stay clear until they get a new president in office. After that, work through an intermediary, like the Brits or Canadians.”

“That’s a good idea,” Amanda agreed. “I’ll get started.”

“Don’t wait too long. I want to leave as soon as possible.”

After brainstorming a little longer with Amanda, Annie went to find Morrow. She talked to him about the weapons
Sadie
had used against the Bakkui. Riley joined the conversation and grilled Annie until he finally agreed he had the necessary information to duplicate
Sadie
’s unexpected weaponry. It was late when Annie reached her apartment. The events of the day caught up all at once and she collapsed onto her bed.

# # #

Annie sat patiently listening to Roth’s update.

“We received a drone report from Luke about four months after he left,” Roth explained. “He reached J64 and he’s fine.” For several hours Roth showed Annie video clips of Luke and Tyler discuss their accomplishments on Jigu and Bradley’s Planet.

When it was all over, Annie felt she could finally breathe. “Thank God,” was all she could say.

“Amen to that,” Roth added. “It appears that not all Bakkui are level-two-devices. Maybe you killed the only one. Lots of information there. Lots of maybes too.”

“Luke is okay,” Annie said thankfully. “That’s the main thing.”

“That’s true. His plan to find allies is working. I’m a little concerned that he has to go back to Jigu. We always thought the AIs were solid.”

“I could have told you otherwise,” Annie scoffed disparagingly. “Your local AI has serious issues as far as I’m concerned. But at least we know where Luke is headed. Did you send reinforcements?”

“Only a few to Jigu,” Roth replied. “He wasn’t clear about what he needed and frankly, there weren’t many volunteers to go out where the Bakkui have already struck. I sent a query but he had already moved on. When he got to J97, I followed up but he keeps moving around before we can link up.”

“I understand. It sounds like his concept is more solid on Bradley’s Planet. I think the problem is at Jigu. Tyler will need people there.”

“I know, but how many? What specialties does he need? If we send a big team, the Jiguans might see that as an invasion threat. I would feel better if they would come to an agreement and request something specific before we fire off a colonial supplement. We should bring Samantha in to talk about that.”

“That’s a good idea,” Annie agreed. “See if she can come back for a working conference.”

“I will,” Roth said. “But for now, it’s going to be a while before I can put something together. We’re still recovering from the attack.”

“I understand. Take your time and do it right. I would say our first priority is making peace with the Americans and Chinese. Of course, even more important, you need to build your defenses back up. I worry that there’s a super Bakkui device out there gathering intelligence. They keep finding out more about us and we know nothing about them. We have to protect earth. At our core, Luke would say that PDEF is always our primary goal.”

The young chancellor did what she promised. A memorial service was held for her father, at which she honored his memory and his desire to support the Alliance. Luke prompted Tyler to attend and afterward Tyler agreed that it had helped. The chancellor kept the elderly ambassador at her side throughout the three-day service. The public became aware that it was Tyler who had stood with her father during the worst of the general’s campaign of intimidation.

Many of the Jigu had watched Tyler valiantly stand up to the barbarian. More importantly, a few saw him take beatings that could have been meted out to the chancellor himself. Word spread that the General had been nothing more than a brutish thug and public opinion swayed in Tyler’s favor.

In the days following the service, a new AI was prepared to fill the crater left by
Toby
’s ignominious departure. Luke was very clear with George about his desires.

“I don’t want to see any randomness in AI personality,” Luke demanded. “Is there any problem for you to create an AI with a specific character?” he asked.

“Within certain boundaries, no, Commander. What exactly do you wish?”

“For Jigu, I want the complete opposite of
Toby
. Smarter, older, distinguished, female, and above all, very formal.”

A few hours later, George introduced Luke to a British-accented female AI named
Priscilla
. George confirmed that
Priscilla
was a level ten device that exceeded
Toby
’s abilities. More to the point, she understood what had happened and was ready to help Tyler repair the damage to the Milky Way Alliance’s reputation caused by her predecessor.

In the meantime, drone reports from Carrie were upbeat. Cooperation between Bradley’s Planet and Payapa was blossoming. Luke responded with a drone message that he was going to spend a month or two on Jigu to get Tyler back on his feet. The last transmission from Carrie was that she was heading out for K18. She would not have received his notice of a delay before departing so all he could do was worry about her. This was no way to run an interstellar campaign but he didn’t have an alternative.

Closer to hand, Luke was reluctant to spend much time on the planet. Being around the young chancellor was uncomfortable on both sides. Although she was always respectful, her feelings toward Luke were painfully obvious. Hesitant to impose on her courtesy unnecessarily, Luke spent most of his time at Moonbase Two. He decided to turn it into a tactical command center.

Starting with
the situation tank that Bradley had created, Luke expanded the concept into a theater-wide operations center. The new tank not only integrated real-time information from their local probes, but it also incorporated the data they brought with them from Moonbase One. It even included the plan for projected colony planets that Roth had developed.

The first time Luke activated the hologram’s display in the darkened room it astounded him. The totality of what he had started was more than he expected. Earth was no longer a small blue planet alone in the cosmos. Based on their original colony schedule, there were now twenty-eight Earth-populated settlements. Twenty-six of them were in different star systems.

Starting
from Earth and moving clockwise along the galaxy’s spiral, the bulk of the new settlements were clustered together far away from the Bakkui. Each one was highlighted by a bright translucent holographic sphere encircling the star system. Moving in the other direction from Earth, counterclockwise, a small line of spheres shined alone. Those were Luke’s new bases at Jigu, Bradley’s Planet, Payapa, and now the K18 star systems.

The danger facing Luke’s alliance was highlighted by thousands of dark red bubbles that lay beyond Jigu. Those were the systems where Roth’s probes had returned with devastating results. Each red dot represented a planet containing the remains of a destroyed civilization.

Luke tried to grasp the fact that each dot was the equivalent of the loss he had seen on Bradley’s Planet, but his mind rejected it. Human consciousness could not comprehend that much tragedy. The quantity of death was too staggering. It was best not to focus on such depressing realities.

Instead, Luke decided to concentrate on matters that were more mundane. “Zoom out to show the entire galaxy,” Luke commanded.

The wide spirals of the Milky Way filled the holographic stage. The human presence he was so proud of just seconds ago now looked pitifully small. “Zoom in to the planet Earth.” It was like watching special effects in a movie; the view rocketed inward to focus on the familiar blue-and-white globe.

“Show my house in Baggs.” The view rushed toward the surface and he saw his house from two thousand feet above. It was the last satellite photography available before they departed. It had been a long time since Luke had viewed his property.

The place looked awful. The backyard was all overgrown and the two oak trees out front needed attention. Someone had spread a tarpaulin over the roof’s west gable. It must have been Mr. Hartman from Baggs Realty. Luke had hired him to keep an eye on the place. One of the rare Nevada cloudbursts must have found a way inside the house through the worn out shingles.

Luke wondered idly how he could get Hartman to put a new roof on the place. He chuckled at the irony. In the overall scope of what he was doing, the roof in Baggs was amazingly unimportant.

Once upon a time, he’d toyed with the idea of dumping all the save-the-universe stuff on Roth and settling down with Annie. They could fix up the house, put up a new fence, and paint the whole shebang.

A voice spoke in the darkness. “Miss being back there, Luke?”

Luke jerked in surprise. It was Tyler. Luke shook his head. “I miss what it could have been sometimes. Mostly I try to avoid those kinds of feelings.”

“I hear you. Sorry to intrude. I needed to get away for a bit and thought I’d come see what you’ve been up to.”

Luke showed his friend the new situation center and demonstrated the various exhibits he had just set up.

Tyler grew somber when the display showed the Alliance settlements near the Bakkui red zone. “Great God almighty,” he mumbled. “That’s a wakeup call if I ever saw one.”

“It’s depressing,” Luke said. “Makes we want to run away and hide.”

“It does. But it makes me doubly glad you don’t. Luke, do you mind if I duplicate this on the surface? I’d like to show this to the new government. It’s not as harsh as wading through those videos from Bradley, but it’s just as effective.”

“Be my guest. Now that it’s done, I think George can duplicate it without any trouble.
Priscilla
can keep it up to date after I’m gone.”

“When’s that gonna be?” Tyler wanted to know.

It was a good question.

“Lights, please,” Luke said. “Let’s go out to the food court. I need to get a better handle on your plan here. I’m not criticizing, but after looking at this hologram, we’re a lot farther behind than we had any idea. You got some time?”

“Sure. Whatever suits you.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Luke said. “I need to get something from my quarters.”

# # #

By the time Luke entered the food court Tyler had gotten them both a pastry and coffee from the replicator and was sitting at one of the square breakroom tables. Most of the others were filled with warship crews who were taking a break from patrolling. A few spaces were populated by Moonbase personnel that Tyler had transferred from the surface.

Luke was grinning when he sat next to Tyler.

Tyler looked suspiciously at the ornate cylinder Luke was holding. “I got a bad feeling about this. I recognize an evil grin when I see it. Whatcha got?”

Luke’s grin widened even more. “Remember those long robes George made for the cold weather?”

“Yeah. They were comfortable. So?”

“Didn’t they remind you of anything?”

Tyler thought for a moment. “Army blanket?”

Luke frowned. “Noooo. Those were Jedi robes! Didn’t they look like the same kind that Obi-wan wore?”

“Good God,” Tyler replied with disdain. “So does that make you Luke Skywalker or something? What’s your point?”

Luke held up the long-handle grip. “This is a light saber! I had George make it.”

Tyler’s mouth tightened and he looked down his nose at the contraption. “Okay. That’s nice, I guess.”

“No, it is. It’s the same kind of cutter blade that we use to carve out the moon.” He turned the handle side to side to show off his handiwork.

“Forget it, boy,” was Tyler’s advice.

“These could catch on,” Luke explained excitedly. “When you turn it on, the cutting beam comes out from the handle. It collapses any matter that it contacts. I added a buzzing noise too.”

“I’m worried about you Luke,” Tyler said drily.

“You don’t believe me? Let me show you.” Luke fiddled with a lever on the side. “Just a second. It’s stuck.” He put the handle between his legs to get a better grip.

Tyler let his disdain show. “Luke, let it go. We got better things to do.”

A low
hum
filled the food court and a lighted beam ripped up through the center of the table, leaving a ragged two-foot-long gash through the surface.

“Oops,” Luke said quietly. The table sagged in the middle, causing the coffee and pastries to slide into the blade. They vanished in a cloud of steam and sparks.

“Jesus, Luke!” Tyler shouted in alarm. “Look out!”

“Yikes.” Luke jerked the sword away from the table, cutting it in half. One side collapsed onto Tyler’s feet, eliciting howls of pain.

A startled shout behind Luke made him spin. A frightened pilot flinched away from the humming blade. His tray of food, cut neatly in two, lay on the floor.

“Sorry,” Luke apologized. He stepped away from the man, swinging his blade clear of a nearby table.

Frightened yells filled the food court as the light saber sliced through a roof support. The top half of the metal column fell to the floor, crashing through several tables, barely missing the diners as they scattered, their meals forgotten. Chunks of rock crashed down from the weakened ceiling, taking out more tables and wiping out the replicator area. The room filled with dust and an alarm klaxon sounded throughout Moonbase.

A moment later someone silenced the klaxon.

As the dust cleared Luke stood in the center of the nearly empty food court, holding the humming blade as still as possible. Gingerly he thumbed the stud and the cutting beam disappeared, retracting from the tip into the handle. He looked across at Tyler, who sat in his chair massaging his swollen foot.

Tyler’s voice was filled with disgust. “Idiot,” he growled.

Luke nodded and walked over to the remains of the replicator area where one of the disposal chutes was still intact. He tossed the ornate handle into the opening. The inside flashed with a momentary light indicating the cutter no longer existed.

Luke looked at the ceiling. “George?”

“Yes, Commander.”

“New rule. No more light sabers. Ever.”

“A wise decision, Commander.”