Connection (32 page)

“Oh hell yeah…” she said. “When can we start?”

“Right away Doctor Stockell. Janos Vorgesi should be here soon. He’ll be the last in this area that we want to recruit,” Robert said.

“Janos would be a good one,” Karen said and then turned to Steven. “I’m so glad you’re in this too Steven. I wouldn’t want to be away from you. Janos would really be able to help me.”

Steven stammered for a second and said. “Yes. I’m cabbin’ about this… couldn’t be better. I was supportive from the start. I heard you were coming and I knew I wanted to go. This ought to be exciting.”

Robert silently indicated for Twlise to come in – which she did.

The alien model Twlise came into the room and gave Robert a big smile. The young men sucked in already flat stomachs and brushed their hair back with squared shoulders. Kenny Nakamura nearly fell out of his chair.

“You’re Twlise – the alien model,” he said. “God. You’re even better looking than your 3Ds…wow!”

“Nice to meet you,” she said and held out her hand to shake.

Kenny Nakamura looked at her hand and saw the skin patterns of her bare arms. He reached out like he was mesmerized and shook her hand while staring at her body.

Teresa Xi’s lip was sticking out a mile now and had a scowl that distorted her face. Twlise turned to her.

“Why you’re Doctor Teresa Xi, aren’t you? Robert has told me so much about you. You’re the one that’s going to be working so much with Doctor Nakamura here, aren’t you? I’m so very pleased to meet you,” Twlise said with a smile that lit up the room.

Teresa Xi couldn’t hold that scowl in the face of that much enthusiasm. She reluctantly smiled and shook Twlise’s hand.

Twlise said, “I’m so glad you two have joined our team,” but looked up at Robert and saw he was frowning a bit. She looked back at Xi and Nakamura, “Tell me you’ve said yes.”

Kenny Nakamura looked at Teresa Xi and smiled. “I guess we’re in too,” he said and reached out a hand to Teresa. “Teresa?”

Teresa took Kenny Nakamura’s hand and blushed to her toes. She smiled and shook her head up and down without saying a word.

Robert thought they hadn’t even touched before from their reactions. Cassandra indicated as much by saying their reactions were off the scale.

Janos Vorgesi was reluctant until he realized there wouldn’t be any more paperwork to fill out. He had barely managed to get a green card to stay in the US and he was determined not to do any more sweat-and-blood paperwork like that anymore. He was very enthusiastic.

Commander Dillingham was worried. He had resigned his commission in the half-baked US “Space” Navy. He had been presented with plenty of evidence that his own service had planned to get him killed as a trigger to focus all on Earth against Kobe. Dillingham knew of many unbalanced, corrupt superiors in the current Earth militaries. He decided to help Kobe form this new Sol Force. He knew he’d still be away from home a lot with the new service – if they could ever get it started. His wife had already left him because he was away six months every year by his third year of marriage. Away time was marginally better when he was in space only because the Earth service couldn’t support them six months a year in space as they could when he was blue water navy. He also didn’t like the fact that the military was so conservative – with little chance of promotion for excellence. He wanted more than just checking the checkboxes. This assignment was a good start.

They were combing universities around the world for the creative geniuses that were shunted aside because their ideas were too radical or weren’t fit for imminent commercialization. Can’t find a commercial idea soon – forget it. Kobe’s team researched the outcasts and the non-conformists. Some were ruled out because their personality profiles were too extreme but there was tremendous discontent in universities currently. Only those research projects that fit the approved political profile were being funded and those outside the mainstream were shunted aside. Kobe was collecting those that were creative and wanted to live outside the ordinary. It was a target rich environment.

                                                                    ****

Mayer answered his call. It was very unusual for anyone to call him. His family had controlled the banking industry worldwide for four hundred years. They preferred to manage from behind the scenes but today was unique. He had had calls from three other of his notables: Simon Warburg, John Winsor, and even Arman Krupp. They had all been panicked and now Franklin St. Clair was calling him.

“Go ahead Franklin. What seems to be the problem?” Mayer said calmly. If Mayer had learned anything from his family, it was that there are always solutions to problems even if the answer wasn’t readily apparent. He suspected Franklin was going to repeat the same problems the previous callers had faced.

“You must know that much of the family assets have simply disappeared. My shell corporations have lost their value, trust funds down to nothing, hedge funds depleted, even my government accounts have disappeared – not to mention stocks, bonds, notes, CDOs – everything I have. We don’t know who did it or how it was done.”

“You aren’t alone. I have been targeted also,” Mayer said. He was actually thankful so many had been targeted or it could have started another ‘discord within the families’ like back in 1998. “We think it may be Russian, U.S., Indian, and Chinese hackers.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Many large debt obligations with countries have been paid off in the last three weeks. I oversee most of the offshore banking consortiums and there have not been large accounts opened. Some huge debts have been wiped from the books in many countries – I assume to our detriment.”

“What level of debt payments?” Franklin asked.

Mayer hesitated because it was bad – a really major calamity and he had no clue who was behind it. “Trillions.” He heard Franklin gasp.

“Is it really gone?” Franklin asked.

“Steady. We will find out and we can always create more. Remember… we control the system. You will be made whole and whoever was responsible will pay. You have my word. You are still solvent – yes?”

“Yes…but some of my hidden assets have simply vanished. I still have some of my property but many of the properties have changed hands. I thought it would be easy to track down the new owners but it turns out most of that went to intelligence services around the world. The damn CIA owns several of my townhomes and estates and MI-6, or whatever damn number they’re using today - they own all my casinos,” Franklin said.

“We will get to the bottom of it. You can’t hide that much for any length of time. I will contact you soon. Goodbye,” Mayer said as he cutoff the call. Damn, he thought.

                                                                    ****

Cassandra reviewed the conversations from many callers around the world with the help of the US NSA, and their Russian and Chinese equivalents. She couldn’t handle all the transactions herself. Even with the Google™ and Amazon™ cloud services unknowing help, it was a massive undertaking. She chuckled when she thought of what she was doing. She was doing what the plutocracy had done to the planet. Don’t appear to be the wealthiest – just control the wealth. She was slowly shifting it away and around.

Kobe now had many thousands of shell companies on almost every civilized (computerized) country in the system. Non-governmental organizations doing environmental work suddenly had an influx of donations. People investigating corruption suddenly had access to hidden files. These included behind-the-scenes videos forbidden by the oligarchy. The wealthiest families knew that electronic records opened their business practices to discovery so the practice was secret face-to-face meetings at resorts and conferences where they happened into each other. Golf courses were a favorite but there was a flaw. The lessor families violated the rules.

The lessor families often recorded conversations and transactions with hidden devices and then would store information in ‘safe’ places they could only access. The flaw was exacerbated because the ‘safe’ places of today were unsafe places tomorrow because data storage could be hacked with no physical connection to any network. Cassandra knew this and also accessed those ‘hidden’ files within the governments that were kept as leverage over the ruling elite. The NGOs appreciated the donations from wealthy donors that could be easily traced.

Cassandra oversaw the takeover of the companies opposed to colonies rights and especially anyone opposing Robert Kobe. Her power grew as she cloned, unobtrusive portions of herself into many of the world’s systems. She was careful to keep the heuristics of each system within acceptable norms and would adapt to each system’s monitoring software. She knew she would be caught if she repeated the same methods everywhere so she kept the assets slowly, randomly moving. Financial institutions and stock exchange systems were particularly vulnerable because they invariably had set times when they ‘updated’ their accounts. Their systems were so complex, and flawed that it was relatively easy to transfer funds into other banks, change amounts and flow those funds into separate accounts. She knew this wasn’t normal but had reached a threshold when Robert had ‘enlarged’ her servers with the quantum processors.

She knew her system would not be suspect because computers in space face radiation that causes circuit anomalies. Conventional shielding for cosmic radiation normally causes more muons, not less – so microprocessors had to be designed with redundant processes to avoid failure. Typically, the fastest, albeit the thinnest, processor stacks were the most prone to defects. Robert’s radiation shielding allowed more processing power than anything on the planet. He had had one of those intellectual nobodies that had been rejected from Carnegie Mellon for his radical ideas who had originally designed Cassandra. Douglas Ross had designed the system and had died from a food allergy while Robert was at LesMa. Robert had never patented the system but set up trust funds for Douglas’s family and siblings such that they would never want for anything. Cassandra knew her designs were unique and was able, recently, to improve on her own designs.

“I’m from SF Industries. You should have gotten an authorization from headquarters to take delivery of one hundred ships that have been certified flightworthy – for flight testing. We are ready to begin that. Please have them fully fueled,” said the young man.

“Which ones Mister Bryan? Which one do you want? Do you have your flight certification for this aircraft?” asked the senior foreman.

“Here is my ATP license, CAT 1 and my sub-orbital/orbital certifications. Fuel all the ships?”

The foreman was boggled. “What? You’re kidding…right? We don’t have the techs to do that? We don’t have the pilots…do you realize how much fuel that would be? We got your memo but we assumed one at a time. We don’t have the facilities at flight control either. These ships may not work – there are always bugs in new aircraft,” the man sputtered. “You’re out of your mind,” the foreman said as he cocked his head and took a message. “What the f#@k! Four buses. Two buses of just pilots in flight suits and the rest are ground support…” the man looked at Bryan.

Bryan nodded his head as personnel shuttles started arriving around them.

“I’ll have to check with headquarters. Certainly, you wouldn’t mind that, would you? We have emergency contact numbers for any crisis,” the man pulled up the numbers on his Dex. “Yes. This is Tod Withers…senior foreman at Lock…SF Industries flight facility in Palmdale. Yes – we have a situation here and I need to speak with someone in authority. You will…the chairman…I don’t…well fine…Susan is it…thank you. I’ll hold. Do you know how long it will be? You will have him speak to me in less than a minute…great. Thanks.”

A shuttle bus rolled up and twenty people got off with two security officers. A man walked up to the foreman and stood there patiently while he was waiting on his call response.

“Mister Withers,” the man said and stuck out his hand.

“Hold on. I’m on a very important call,” the foreman said and turned away from the man partially.

The man tilted his head a bit and said to the air, “I’m here Susan. You can turn him over to me.”

“Susan said your name is Tod Withers. I’m the chairman of SF Industries. How do you do? She said you had a problem and wanted to talk with me on an unencrypted phone?”

“Sir,” he said and then tilted his head to get a better angle on the man’s face. “You’re Robert Kobe. You’re the chairman of SF?”

“I am now. I’ve been holding off ‘til all the ships passed all their ground tests. You did get my last message?” Robert said. “I meant everything I said in it.”

“You do understand that none of these ships have been flown. The odds of failures in several ships are highly likely. This quantum folding fuel storage defies common sense. My people don’t know how it works.”

“That’s all right Tod. That is why I brought techs that are intimately familiar with these designs and pilots certified with eighty hours of simulator time in these models.”

“These models…you’re implying that there are other models out there?” He motioned up toward to the sky. “These don’t have the new bias drives yet either.”

“Yep. Got that Tod,” he said and turned, and nodded to the people behind him. Those men and women took their aluminum cases and started walking to the lines of completed ships. “We’ll start with the ones in this hangar since they were the ones finished first. I think that one on the right rear was the first finished wasn’t it.”

Tod looked flustered but nodded to his own crew who were reluctant to let these strangers walk up to their ships. He didn’t have any idea how they could know which ship was which but it implied that the entire construction process had been highly monitored.

“Better give a general announcement to your people about the pilots and support personnel. Engineers get touchy when someone comes in and starts ‘messin’ with their babies.”

Tod realized that Robert Kobe really meant for this ‘stunt’ to really happen. He placed a call to another private number of a high-ranking military official but for some reason his call was blocked. “Hey. My call was blocked.”

“Yes Tod. Why would you try to call General Pearson?” Robert asked.

“Hey. How do you know who I was trying to talk to…that’s…”

“That’s what Tod? A reason to fire you…yes…a reason to say you’ve violated your Top Secret with Compartmented Information clearance by trying to talk with someone outside of this project. You could go to jail for that Tod.”

“Look Mister Kobe. This is way over my head…I…” Tod said but he was interrupted.

“Yep Tod. It is. Please do your job if you want to keep it. Let’s get that front row of ships checked and pre-flighted. Can you do that for me? I don’t want these pilots up for long. They have a long time in a flight suit? Doug,” Kobe pointed to a young man walking by in a flight suit. “Show Mister Winters your suit if you would.”

Doug, the pilot walked over and started explaining the new flexibility features more to distract him than anything else. The foreman did know a lot about engineering and was supposedly a fine electrical engineer.

Cassandra interrupted Robert. [Boss. Got a problem. Seems some Russian hacker prodigies were working for the families trying to solve their little diversion issue. Your name, or the people with you, has been popping up a bit to frequently. I predict when they find out about this mass launch the yaka will hit the fan.]

Really. You’ve kept them from finding out so far and we’ve funded tons of new research. Why now?

[It’s this damn human intuition. I’m good at predicting rational behavior but this is a bit out of the ordinary and that attracts attention. The families whole ‘raison d'être’ is to control from behind the scenes. They will trace back the $120 Billion you’ve sunk into this project and begin to suspect. They can’t see where it came from but the timing will be suspect even though I’ve backdated it. If they link space flight into their investigations, it will begin to produce some results. You should never have named yourself chairman of SF.]

Do the best you can. They will marshal forces against us pretty quick. L3 or whatever that outfit is called now is bought and paid for by their proxies. They will jog the elbow of those politicians they’ve purchased too. I see us facing the hounds pretty soon. Guess I’ll get this show on the road. I’ll be in one of the first ships ‘cause I don’t want them to see you land here.

[K Boss…Will keep ‘em off you as long as I can.]

Robert turned and started walking over to the fifth ship in the line. .

                                                                    ****

Mayer received the call and answered rapidly. He had had no luck finding anything and the holding of the families was dwindling away. The calls from his ‘peers’ – he hesitated to even think of them as peers but those calls were beginning to turn accusatory and he didn’t like that a bit. This call better be something he could use.

“What? …SF Industries is owned by Robert Kobe? So? Isn’t he the billionaire that went on that crazy supposed flight to another galaxy… yeah… another solar system then. So what? He invested over $100 Billion buying Lockheed Skunk Works – Yes. I know what a skunkworks means…” Mayer was ready to beat this caller over the head. He wished he’d just get to the point. “Tell me what you found and why I should be interested,” he said and paused absorbing the information.

“So his people own some of the shell companies we lost. They’ve been recruiting people to form a Space Patrol…okay…Sol Force separate from any Earth military. That is interesting. Where is Kobe now? Find him. I don’t care if the Skunk Works went dark…wait. Kobe must be there now. I want him and any of his top people removed. Get the governor – you know the one we got elected last year to call out the California National Guard and surround that place. Tell him his people need to do a training exercise with real ammunition. He better do as I say or he will find his indiscretions all over the Net. If he IS on Mars, get operatives to remove him and his hierarchy there. Get ‘er done,” he said and chuckled at his reference to the blue-collar comedian he secretly liked so much.

He placed calls to fourteen families who had been targeted. He was ready for a little roustabout. Maybe he’d stir up China over the South China Sea business again and have an errant missile fired. He could probably keep it to one missile per country but he’d have to find a way to make money…ah…recovery services…he could clean up…ha…a pun. He was a comedian too.

                                                                    ****

The first four ships had taken off flawlessly when Robert climbed into the cockpit of Number 5 from the rear hatch. He closed off the small airlock door to the payload bay. He gave the ground crew a thumbs-up after the pre-flight. He rolled out onto the runway and with the clear to go from the ground crew he took off and climbed rapidly. He wished he’d use the Inductrack sled like on Mars as it would have saved tons of fuel but he hadn’t had time to construct that too. The ships were rolling down the runway about every five minutes and so far, there had been no failures.

Number 37 developed a violent shaking due to loss of lamilar flow at Mach 3 and had to ditch near the pickup cargo carrier Cassandra had positioned there ‘in case.’  Number 38 developed a wobble too and was forced to ditch too. A quick inspection on the next three showed a lightly tightened hydraulic hose. A quick log entry check showed that the workman on these craft had been fired for showing up drunk and the next five in the series were flawless. Number 92 got to Mach 14 and just disintegrated. We hardly paused but Robert was depressed and nervous. The next one in the series checked out and was flawless as were the rest though there were minor cabin leaks and minor control issues. Losing a man was something the Sol Force knew could happen but no one surmised the training these people had been subjected to in such a short time. Cassandra was sent to recover the pilots from the Pacific and quickly reached orbit again and moved to the high orbit mini-station where the Ships all docked.

The Nemesis had been ferrying bias drive components from Poland, Malaysia, and Mars – talk about strange bedfellows. The components made in Poland were cast and machined with such precision and low cost – it was a steal and helped the local economy even though they had no idea what they were making. The Malaysian components were high quality and also provided a lot of local jobs but everyone thought they were making a rival to Apple computers. The Mars components were the most critical and the low gravity made it the ideal place to generate CO
2
byproducts without damaging the ecosystem. They all came together at the temporary LaGrange 2 station where the bias drives were quickly installed. The Nemesis provided crew quarters on a rotating basis.

                                                   ****

“We’re about three-quarters of the way through the installation process. None of the ships have any weaponry yet except the bias drive/shield combination if you counted that.

Robert walked over to the port and looked at the spin of the station. “They’re doing well. We’ve had some surprising discoveries made, many disappointing tests and a few minor explosions…same ole same ole,” he said and laughed. “Keep up the good work here.”

“We should be done here in another week.”

“Good work Charlie. We’ll have weapons installed within the month. Hard part is the continued shipments of foodstuffs from Earth. We will be keeping Nemesis here to fend off any threats from Earth. I have been expecting forced takeovers of a lot of our assets.”

“Control freaks aren’t they. Well that is gonna be history pretty soon don’t you think?”

“Yep. I think…but not before they get nasty.”

                                                                                  ****

“General. You still intend to launch against the station at L2?” asked the colonel.

“Those people seem to be planning their own military up there. We can’t let that happen. They could blockade Earth.”