Connection (41 page)

“Damn Steven. You and Kenny are nuts. The Scar would probably be destroyed. You have to have a better solution than that,” Robert said.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll grant you we’d have to test a few things before we did it with people,” Kenny said.

“I’m listening,” Robert said. “Have you mentioned this to Captain Ummand?”

“Sort of,” Nakamura said. “We said we thought we might have a way of getting them back home. They were kind of excited and started having gas and that acrid smell. When we told them our plan they smelled really good – like cinnamon cookies. It wasn’t until later that we found out that the cinnamon smell is when they’re really angry.”

“So – even they thought you were nuts,” Robert said.

“Wait – wait. We did a bit more thinking and we may have a way to test it,” Steven said.

Robert stood there with his arms crossed across his chest with a frown. He said nothing – waiting for this revelation.

Nakamura looked at Steven and then popped his plan. “We have three Allung ships from that last battle. We could fix them up so they work. You jump to Bellatrix – with the cruisers in case there are Allung there. We take one of those Earth ships and fit it with a Ylee drive – yeah – it’d take a few
lamlee
but not too many. When you and the cruisers jump in from Bellatrix – we have the Earth ship, as a test, microjump with the Allung ship using that weapon behind it. We’d have sensors here and at Bellatrix. We could do it twice and record what happens – then try it with the Scar if we got it to work. It’d be easy to jump back and forth to Bellatrix – I know you’ve mentioned wanting to go there anyway.”

“Okay on the testing. I want to go to Bellatrix anyway but you better have decent data and plans before we try it with a live crew. Three round trips between Earth and there is a lot of jumps.

                                                                                      ****

Nakamura had been correct about Robert wanting to go to Bellatrix to see if it was the same as in the other universe. He didn’t want to go there on his ‘lonesome’ though. He wanted lots of backup. If the Allung WERE there – he wanted to know before he jumped in. He wanted heavy guns behind him when he did but he hated not knowing. He was determined to jump with communications. His team had tested the quantum communicators and they, indeed, found that they worked right up to 105 light years and simply stopped working. Steven Weathers had the solution. Put a range of retransmission buoys, set to alert if tampered with – then they’d self-destruct. They’d be powered with small zero-point modules and would be in positional spheres of 100 light year increments around Earth. Steven even equipped them with passive sensors. Spheres that large are a misnomer but there were thousands of retransmit buoys around trade routes and ES bases. The ES commander at 47 Tau was ecstatic and started manufacturing their own once their enclosure was erected.

The initial jump to Bellatrix was carefully planned with Earth trade goods of wine, solar calculators (using Trade) and hand video games. They planned to jump to ten light years distant and then jump close in stealth mode while maneuvering with the bias drive from there on in. Captain Ummand said he wanted to go to see the difference. He said it had trading ports all over the planet but they were known for crime if you got away from the main urban paths. The Nemesis was loaded with trade goods of foods, and wines. When asked about food inspections he was told that for-hire crews would come to new ships with ionizing equipment that would kill most vermin, insects, and pathogens… something which Earth had little to no experience. He said materials were shipped in standard fiber-polymer containers and Teresa Xi was assigned with Janos Vorgesi to manufacture the required sizes container sizes. She bitterly complained that Robert was taking her away from her work for trivia.

“So we have these containers and devices plus grav-sleds to move them on and off-ship,” Robert said to ES Tech Uhmbub.

“You need to make more of those grav sleds – they are really neat. You need to make crates filled with those zero-point power modules. Those are really neat too and don’t require fuel. They are one-quarter the size of the smallest fusion plant, cost 1/1000
th
as much to make without using any H
3
. What are you going to use for credit?” Uhmbub asked.

“We have trade goods. Certainly they are worth a lot.” He said.

“Admiral. You need money, a credit line and a way to make purchases and transactions. New traders ask for an appraiser team (a tech team). Your ERF people in our universe gave us these – this catalog is printed on NuRiz…it’s in color and before – no one had been able to print in color on this material,” Uhmbub said. He hesitantly gave over a little flat device and a color brochure with writing in Trade. “Try cutting the pages.”

Robert took the brochure and the pages felt like a type of plastic but the colors were brilliant and he could not tear or fold the pages. He took a pocket knife out and tried to cut the pages with no luck. “This is great stuff – really shows us what to get. Do you know how to make this
NuRiz
?”

“It’s in that data dump we gave you and it’s in English. That viewer is a sample I want back – don’t break it,” he said.

Robert took the small rectangle of blackplastic and held it between his hands. It started showing a beautiful 3D movie of a waterfall in Africa with birds flying, then the view changed to a snowboarder racing down a hill and coming out of the fog into the bright sunshine – again the view changed to a blue whale breaching and following it down into the water where there were schools of fish. The next scene was a pride of lions hunting in the savannah. Robert swayed going down the hill in the SanFrancisco street scen. All of the scenes were stunning and the sound was good quality. The viewer went dark when Robert released one side. “How many scenes is this supposed to have? How long does the power last?”

“Those were the same questions I asked. There are about fifty scenes. When you restart it – it plays the last scene you watched and then the next scenes. I traded a large diamond I had found for this one. I want it back after you’ve copied it – if you can?”

“Thanks. This is a big help. I’ll pull those files on the NuRiz. Why do you call it that?” Robert asked.

“We had a similar material that only accepted black printing on white called Riz – the print surface. Your method allows us to print with certain inks in color and still be permanent. That’s why we called it NuRiz,” Uhmbub said and handed him what looked like an ordinary jump drive. “That seems to work on other systems here so it should work on yours. The ERF guy I traded the diamond to gave me this but I couldn’t use it until I used your computers.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” Robert said wondering how Teresa was going to take another project. He turned the drive over in his hands wondering how they got a terabyte of information on the drive – if the labeling was correct.

                                                                       ****

Teresa had taken the drive from Robert with a clamped jaw and held it up and shook it at him – “I’m not your servant,” she said. “This will cut in on my research time.”

“Couldn’t be helped. I’ve asked Kenny Nakamura to come help you translate any code that is different and Cassandra will be right there to help too – right Cassandra?” Robert said and heard [You bet boss. Steven and I have figured out that little viewer – it’s a simple OLED screen with a simple chip. We have an equivalent chip and we can transfer the video compression algorithm and player files. We have started duplicating them for you as well as simple solar calculators with instructions in Trade on the back and symbols for button and screen in Trade. We have 10,000 copies of the calculators we’ve already run off in the enclosure. We worked on those two for a month. The ES love ‘em too.]

“Admiral – you faded out on me…talking to Cassandra?” Teresa asked. “When did you say you asked Doctor Nakamura?”

“Oh…just a few minutes ago. He ought to be here any minute.”

“Oh…gotta go. We’ll look at this stuff. It’ll have to be enclosure time to get anything done before you leave,” she said rushing to change clothes. “You still leaving next week?” she asked and was away before he could answer.

Robert chuckled and thought – young love…then he thought about Twlise and decided he needed to pay her a visit.

Twlise came running up to Robert when he came in. She threw her arms around him. “Hi. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” she said.

“I have been busy but you’ve seen me every morning or evening since we finished the Enclosure,” he was silenced again with a passionate kiss.

“Silly. What do you think I do all day when I’m not with you?” she asked.

He thought about it a moment and said, “What DO you do when I’m not with you?”

She grinned and did two rapid kicks that snapped just touching his solar plexus and then between the eyes – just touching him.

“I go to the Enclosure and learn to fight and shoot with all the SF guys. They take it easy on me but I am getting pretty good. I’ve been doing this for the equivalent of months in normal time. I sleep there a lot in a tech apartment they got for me. I’ve worked with hands and feet, handguns and all our long guns. It is so fun – who knew. Now I almost never kick the head unless they are on the ground – that’s showey stuff. Commander Dillingham owes us dinner by-the-way.”

“Huh,” Robert said flabbergasted.

“I bet him I could beat him when he laughed at me one day after I got kicked on my ass – that’s right isn’t it – kicked on my ass?”

Robert was recovering a little – “Your cute little ass if you are asking me…go ahead.”

“I was sparring with this Sol Force corporal who was supposed to be pretty good and he hit me a good one. I landed on my butt and Dillingham laughed…so I bet him and the guys ‘egged him on’ – that’s the phrase isn’t it. He blushed and stripped off shoes and stepped up.”

“So you bet him you’d buy dinner if you lost and he had to buy it for us if he lost.”

“He must have lost then?” Robert queried.

“Yep,” she said in an imitation of Robert.

                                                                                  ****

“Okay. The buoys are deployed around Bellatrix and Earth. We also have links all the way to the ES bases at 30 Tau and 47 Tau. We’re still cranking those out so we’ll have good communication on the trade routes. We should get some forewarning of any large fleet movements. We’ve been studying all the ERF files and we are still adding files. We have fighting response instructions for our suits – their suits…we can’t duplicate all their functions yet but we can program our robots with those instructions and have them accompany us,” Janos Vogesi said.

“What does that mean?” Robert asked and Dillingham nodded to show he wanted an explanation too.

“The ERF used their Dexs to do a lot of things our suits can’t do. We can be almost invisible and can block kinetic weapons. They evidently could fly and had automatic responses to threats. We programmed one of our robots using their code, millions of lines I might add. It had non-lethal avoidance and isn’t supposed to kill anyone at that setting. On the low response mode it analyzes the ‘attack’ and responds non-lethally if it can. It responds with minimal lethal force to stop the attack on the higher mode. We found another mode but it would be labeled like ‘frenzy’ because any non-good guy would be labeled a hostile and it would be crazy. Our previous programming of our robots through Cassandra would be considered a 7 out of 10 – this stuff is like 20 out of ten. We can incorporate some of the avoidance programming into our suits thru the muscle enhancement components.”

“Do it…test it. We go in two days. What do we have in trade goods?” Robert asked.

Karen Stockell spoke up – coming from the back of the room. “Can it Steven…I’ll take this…” Karen said as Steven blushed. “Boss. Teresa and I have figured out that NURiz formula and we have a data packet for you to trade. We’ve printed up 2,000 brochures in Trade, Tros and Hllumff showing what we have. We got the marketing guys to do this right. We have 10,000 solar calculators in Trade, we have 2,000 of those little 3D viewers and we should charge an arm and a leg for those. We have 400 cases of wine and 250 cases of apple juice plus four tons of apples and pears. We even had a case of jalapeno peppers for the Hllumff.”