Wizard's Blood [Part Two] (26 page)

They had planned for Tishe to stay on Earth for four days which translated roughly into eighty-nine Earth hours, or about seven hours short of four local days. Since they had arrived at eight in the evening on Thursday night, Randy calculated a one o’clock Monday afternoon departure would put Tishe back on Gaea at the appointed hour. He and Gene spent the late morning hours loading up the items she would be taking back while Tishe spent the final hours inside the house with Janie, and at the appointed hour the group assembled to see her off

“
Tell them this ammunition won’t work in any of the rifles they have at the moment,” Randy said as he led her to the knoll.

He was sending back most of the .308 ammunition, keeping only a thousand round case for sighting in one of the rifles for the course he hoped to be taking soon. The new rifles and scopes would stay here until Gene’s friend could spend a few hours with each one tuning it up, then installing the scopes and doing a preliminary sighting in at three hundred yards. All of the other recent purchases were stacked ready to go, and he’d been able to put another three of the large copper sheets on the mound as well. There was no sense in wasting cargo space. Tishe also carried her video camera, and a small case that held more than a hundred prints that Timmy had printed for Randy. Tishe would give those to Vaen when she got back.

Janie could tell that Tishe was a little disappointed to be leaving so soon. “Remember Tishe, you are welcome to come back anytime you want. The room will be here for you.”

Tishe looked at her and smiled. Randy was surprised at how well the two had connected in the short time Tishe had been here. He’d always seen the girl as a bit aloof.

A few minutes later they watched as Tishe faded and then vanished along with the items that had been on the mound with her.

“
That is so weird,” Gene said as he looked at the mound longingly. “How far away is Gaea?”

“
You know, I have no idea. I don’t know if it is physically far away, or another dimension or just how one would describe it. It certainly isn’t in our solar system. The stars and planets are wrong. There’s nothing to use as a reference between the two places.”

* * * *

That afternoon Randy called the sniper training course in West Virginia. It hadn’t taken him very long to locate their website. Once he found the home page he recognized the material from when he’d looked at it several years before out of idle curiosity generated from an article he’d seen in one of the magazines. The course wasn’t about training one to shoot a rifle, although there was a part of the course that focused on shooting and knowing the rifle ballistics and responding to changing ranges of targets. The course taught all aspects of sniper lore, including infiltration, evasion, spotting, hiding, and endurance. The article had said it was a very intense two-week session, and was as close to the kind of training one would receive in a military environment that could be found. There was a no nonsense final and not everyone passed. In fact many apparently opted out of the course well before the two weeks were complete.

On the phone, Randy learned that only one session remained before they closed for the winter, and that was scheduled to start on the 15
^th
of October. Fortunately that gave him a bit of margin against the anticipated arrival of Ryltas. Randy was told he could fill out the application on-line, and could mail in the fee or transfer the funds electronically. They would inform him if he was accepted within a week of receiving his application. The only issue was the need for him to supply a letter of character from his local police officials or from his church. Randy told them this would be no problem, but as he hung up the phone he wondered how he was going to satisfy the requirement. He hadn’t expected to be asked for anything like that, and knew that his local police wouldn’t have known him before he disappeared. If they searched his records now, it would raise the very concern he wanted hidden. He hadn’t been to church in almost ten years, and didn’t know how he could get a letter that way. It might be possible to fake a letter, but if the school checked back to verify, he would be out with no second chance. Suspecting this might be an issue with the pistol course, he called the school that Gene’s friend had recommended and found they had a similar requirement. Somehow he was going to need to find an answer, and soon. He had to get the forms in quickly, or he’d miss the window for the last of the sniper courses before he’d have to be back on Gaea.

Tabling the matter for the moment, he pulled out the long list of items he’d been making since coming back to Earth. It now covered three pages. Many of the items were simple, and reflected things that would be nice to have. He figured a couple of hours in a good hardware and electronics store would allow him to grab most of them, and probably a couple of dozen items he’d overlooked in making up the list. In truth, there were a limitless number of items that it would be nice to take back. He needed to focus on those most important to the task at hand. Sometimes he thought this would have been simpler if he’d been more limited in how much he could carry back.

One of the items he wanted for his teams were a few pairs of night vision goggles. There were a variety available on the Internet, and he spent a couple of hours reading about the features and advantages of the dozens offered. Finally he decided that the absolute best wasn’t required, and selected a model that ran a bit over four thousand dollars a pair. He book-marked the site and his selection against having his account and funds available the next day, so he could place the order and wire the necessary money.

The next item on his list was power. He could see that they had two major requirements. First, many of the items he was bringing required battery power. His team was going to need the ability to recharge the hundreds of batteries required to keep the equipment operational. While he had sent a lot of throw-away batteries, and intended to raid the local Costco and send a bunch more as backups, he wanted the ability to cycle the normal use batteries. That meant a way to charge them, plus a huge supply of the batteries themselves.

A second requirement in Randy’s mind was the ability to supply standard 120VAC power. A minimum requirement would be to provide power to Buris’ lab. This would allow him to bring a wider range of equipment. In addition to normal computers, large monitors, and printers, there were several pieces of test gear and small power tools that would help in many of the projects. If he could come up with a smaller power system, they could set up more effective radio communications between key locations, and he also envisioned a battery powered portable radio that could communicate over long distances back to the base. These could augment the two-way radios the members of the teams would carry to maintain team communications.

After several hours on the Net, looking at different systems he was starting to get an idea. It was late, and Janie had just pulled into the driveway from running a number of errands that had been sidelined while Tishe was here. The kids had already come home and were watching television in the back room.

* * * *

“
I told you it wouldn’t be hard,” Janie said as they walked away from the church she attended reasonably regularly the next morning. “Father Grey is a sweetie, but he’s getting old and gets confused easily.” Randy couldn’t help feeling she’d done her best today to fuel that confusion.

Father Grey had been in charge years ago when Randy had been a regular due to his father’s insistence, and had known Randy at the time. Janie was moderately active in the church activities, something the priest appreciated, and she relied on that fact when she’d taken Randy with her to see him. They had manufactured a story about Randy not having been at the church the last couple of years, when in truth it had been almost ten, because of his overseas assignment. Supposedly Randy was in Iraq as a private contractor helping with the reconstruction, but the rising risks had pushed him to taking this self protection course. Eventually they got around to the letter, which Father Grey was happy to write for one of the people he’d known since he was a lad. Randy just hoped the man would remember writing the letter if he was contacted about it.

“
I’m glad that worked, because I was going to have to try and fake the letters otherwise. I still can’t believe he could get that confused about when I was last here.”

They’d reached the parking lot where they both had cars.

“
What are your plans now?” Janie asked.

“
I’m meeting Gene and we are going to see his father. My account is supposed to be set up, and I should be able to start accessing the funds today. I need to get all the information and make sure the electronic banking is in place, since I’ll be making a number of purchases over the Net.”

By mid afternoon Randy was back at the house, with more than two hundred thousand dollars in his new account. He should feel rich, but already he was wondering if he’d brought enough with him to fund the purchases that he was looking at. The first thing he did was place the order for the night vision goggles, restricting himself to six pairs for the moment. If they were as nice and as useful as he hoped, he could order more later.

Then he returned to the matter of power. He had been considering the idea of solar power as a charging station. While the arrays would eventually wear out they would last for years, far long enough to outlast the rechargeable batteries he would need to support. The oasis seemed like an ideal place to set up the arrays. It would be in an area that had sun most of the year, out of the way, and yet only a portal stop away from the College. He sized out a system then doubled the capacity, and was about to order the gear when he had second thoughts and tabled the matter for the moment.

He went back to the matter of supplying the lab with AC power. The idea of inverters had caught his attention the other day. They came in a variety of sizes, and could take standard DC power and produce very clean and stable AC power. Stable and clean would be important if he wanted to drive computers and other sensitive electronics. He could set up a massive battery, somewhat similar to the battery they had had in the small satellite ground station where he’d worked one summer. Charging the battery could be accomplished by a number of means, including a steam powered generator, water power, wind power, or a combination. The charging power didn’t need to be clean. The battery could then feed the inverters which would provide the AC he wanted. He could also size the systems depending on his intended usage. By adding a bit of capacity he could also use the system to charge the lower voltage batteries directly from the main battery, making the solar charger less important.

By the end of the afternoon, he made a selection of gear to support a major system at the lab and a couple of moderate sized systems he wanted to set up outside of the city. He also chose a number of smaller inverters for portable, in this case cart portable, systems. He ordered the gear, with a number of spares since they wouldn’t be doing any repair on Gaea. He also ordered a hundred very large industrial 12V batteries. Buris had batteries, and given a look at the ones Randy would be bringing would be able to manufacture his own, but he wanted a system up and running quickly. Capability developed on Gaea would simply expand their capability later.

Randy was about to quit when he went back and ordered the solar charging system anyway. He would see how the two systems worked out. More capability rather than less was important at the moment since he expected to be too busy come spring to deal with modifying what they had in place.

As he turned away from the computer, he realized something else he would need. He added electrical outlets and switches to the long list of items to be purchased. He also added a note to warn people about the dangers of 120V power. This was going to be new to them, and they wouldn’t have the advantage of being familiar with the dangers from childhood.

The next week was spent shopping while he waited for deliveries of equipment. Randy spent long days in electronics and hardware stores, making trip after trip back to Janie’s garage with full loads. He and Gene located another five rifles, and his friend in precision shooting was able to order another six through his club. They also found another fifteen thousand rounds of Black Hills .308 and two thousand rounds of the .45 ACP ammo he’d chosen. They had the dealer they met at the show order the additional Nightforce scopes, since they had only found one of that model locally. All of the rifles had been turned over to Gene’s friend to be worked over.

During this time Randy made two jumps to Gaea with his accumulations. He told Ward what he had coming, and that he’d want to set up a rapid delivery when the stuff arrived. The batteries and power system would be heavy and would require a number of trips. To accomplish the transfer quickly, he wanted all of their team on call. Everyone would transfer to Earth. The node would be loaded, and one team member would take a load back. While they loaded up the node for the next round, the Nexus on Gaea would be unloaded. This way they could make six to ten deliveries in the course of an afternoon.

Things were starting to move.

Ryltas was due today, but they had been keeping a casual watch for the past couple of days. It was reasonable to expect him to hold to the pattern he seemed to have established, but there was no known reason that said he couldn’t vary things a bit. Knowing how dangerous he was, Randy didn’t want Janie involved. He and Gene would take all the active measures, and both of them were armed. Randy had the Kimber they’d picked up at the gun show, and Gene had an odd .22 magnum semi-auto that held an amazing thirty rounds of ammunition. Neither was licensed, but that seemed an unimportant detail at the moment. The plan was to let Ryltas make the trip to Gaea, and then pick him up on the way back and see where he went. To increase their odds of following him, Randy and Gene would follow in separate cars and stay in touch via cell phone.