Uplift (27 page)

                                             ****

Richard Patterson met Captain Pates again.

“Mister Patterson,” Captain Pates said. “Your training module presents a good case for you. I’m afraid your explanation sounds a bit whacked without the additional information.”

“What sold you?”

“The math sir…well, and the visuals showing the alien languages in context. When do we take off?”

Richard looked at Carole, and raised his eyebrows.

“We left about five minutes ago,” she said, and turned to Richard. “Corvette is piloting.”

“Corvette?” queried Captain Pates. “I didn’t feel any acceleration.”

“Alien computer, and no inertia,” Richard said.

“Holy crap…what are we going to do about the command trailer situation?” asked the SF Captain.

Carole thought for a minute, and asked. “I have a copy of the agreement you wanted. We could print that out – sign it, and then send it to…the President?”

“He’s on his way to Europe right now, but we could send all those files as a top secret coded message for him to receive. We can tap into anything he has – any electronic communication.”

“Okay then,” said Captain Pates. “Send him that, and then the voice recordings of the Admiral, and colonel planning to double cross the agreement.”

“Make sure you include ordering my company on board. I don’t know why the colonel ordered us to do that…” Pates said, and grinned big – knowing all the while what was really happening.

“Sounds like a plan,” Richard said.

Corvette. Corey. Would you coordinate sending all those messages to the President’s plane as a top-secret message?

Done…
Corvette said.
It took longer for you humans to explain it than it did to do it. Longest portion of the time is dealing with the slow retrieval speed for the President’s electronics. I will record their responses
.

            
Air Force One over Greenland

“Harold,” said President Leech to his chief of staff. “Have you reviewed this communication about the Richard Patterson situation?”

“Yes sir. Pretty poor way to handle a guy that has been supportive of the US, and your office… You realize that he is multi-billionaire, and has practically given the US superiority over every other military on the planet.”

“That’s just it Harold…the planet. Is this guy off his rocker?”

“Sir. He doesn’t say crazy stuff on camera, is always supportive of the US, and the US military – always. He may be a little bent, but he has come up with his billions himself. He didn’t inherit anything, and always gives us family rates while sticking it to everybody else. Chinese, and Indian dollars are paying for American manufacturing. It’s a pretty nice change of pace. So we’re going to let your two yahoos at Wallups Island ruin a good thing?”

“What about the agreement the Patterson people sent us? Can we live with that?”

“Live with it Mister President? They are embedding our people in every facility they have. They are allowing us to review every invention that they develop. They are taking a company of our troops on their first spacecraft. I don’t know what else they could do to appease us – except give Admiral Simpkins hot oil backrubs.”

“What do you think I ought to do?”

“I’d get Raymond Detweiler on the horn, and have him relieve Simpkins, and that incompetent Colonel. Then I’d have all those troops everywhere stand down, and return to base – except this Captain Pates fellow. Have you looked up his file? CIT Physics, and a ton of languages… Make him the one that reports from the Wallups Island Spaceport, and okay his company with the new spacecraft if it exists. Make all the intelligence go to the Chairman, and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and summarized in reports here. We need the good press. You’ll have to talk with Simpkins personally.”

Command Trailer — Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Facility

Colonel Masters was the first to come to. He made sure Admiral Simpkins, and the techs were okay. The emergency communications line was flashing so he grabbed that first. It was Admiral Raymond Detweiler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for Admiral Simpkins.

“Sir. We’ve been attacked by that female, Carole what’s her name. Yes sir. I won’t interrupt. Here’s Admiral Simpkins.”

Admiral Simpkins was a bit groggy, but he took the receiver. “Admiral Simpkins here. Yes sir, but
you don’t realize we were just attacked by that Koth woman. You do know what is going on…sir…you have an agreement with these people…but sir…we were attacked in an unprovoked manner. It is not bullshit.  Sorry sir. I’m relieved of command? What?
Colonel Masters too? Sir. You can’t demand that of me. I’m career Navy. Yes…I want to keep my pension. This order comes from where? The President? Yes sir. I’ll put him on,” Simpkins said, and handed the receiver back to Colonel Masters.

“Colonel Masters here sir. Yes sir. I understand sir. Sir…we were rendered unconscious by…yes sir. I sent Captain Pates where? No sir. I didn’t do that? That was the best thing I did? I will sir. I will have Major Alberton take over. Yes sir. I won’t fight it sir, but these people are crazy…no sir. I understand the Defense Secrets Act…yes sir.”

Colonel Masters shut off the connection, and then looked at the Admiral. He reached forward, and contacted SF Major Alberton of Headquarters Command of 2nd Battalion. “Yes Major. Pack up everything, and have everyone moving back to Bragg as soon as possible. We’ve been ordered to pull back, and you are in charge. No problem – just getting you some command time.”

         
On Board WALLUP – Deep Space Near Neptune

“All your people have taken the module. Any not take to it?” Richard asked.

“No Mister Patterson. My guys are pretty sharp. We all accepted the nanites too. Alpha, and Charlie Companies had as much as a 5% rejection rate,” responded Captain Pates.

“Any guess why? …call me Richard.”

“Think it’s because I tend to attract the intellectuals. Even Rodriquez is sharp – though he tries to put on a dumb vibe. He has a BS in engineering…crappy school, but a BS nonetheless.”

“Interesting… Good news. Have them practice all the new languages in turn – maybe by day of the week so they won’t lose the knowledge. Also – let me show you where we are deploying sensors, and get your ideas. Not sure where these guys will come from, or when – but these sensor buoys cover a huge area – it gives us some coverage, and they’re passive ‘til triggered by a dimensional wave front.”

“How do they report back? It would take hours from here wouldn’t it?”

“It would through normal space, but dimensionally we are very close, and have near instantaneous transmission using this system. It only works about one hundred light years according to the theory, but, of course, we haven’t been able to test that.”

“Your drive works, or we wouldn’t be here. Can we contact anyone from here?”

“We can only contact our Wallups Island facility right now, but we will set up transceivers at Fort Meade, and other locations as soon as we can. It does look like the President’s order is taking effect. Troops have been removed from all our facilities, and two ‘observers’ have been assigned. We are coordinating all business through the communications with Wallups Island though. We should be finished deploying all sensors in another day.”

“That seems like a ridiculously small number of sensors for the volume. The solar system is really big. I mean huge,” said Captain Pates who was one of the few people that could even comprehend the size.

“Each sensor covers 500 billion cubic kilometers.”

“Wow…huge…that would do it. What is it you want us to help you with about that saber thing?”

“We need to be able to force entry to board other space ships, and then take control. We will never be able to manufacture enough ships to fight off even the initial attacks if we don’t. How do we do that?”

“Your sabers can cut through other fields…right? You can set our personal fields so we can work in vacuum. Can our fields be adjusted so we can move? Can we get ship layouts for different makes?”

Richard raised mental eyebrows to Corey.

I can give you diagrams that are about 80,000 years out-of-date. The other is…doable…I think…good ideas. I would never have thought of boarding ships in space. Ship designs, and tech ideas are loading to module 23 in engineering. I’ll get Pates to help you plan tactics using the new tactics, and weapons. Hershel has the best grasp of field theory. Richard. Remember that every use of ships away from a gravity field is detectable.

Hershel…damn…can’t help it.

Captain Pates had some good ideas, and they were able to design modifications for the fields with an oxygen generator-CO
₂
scrubber unit. The shields had to be redesigned not to leak air, but still allow some frequencies of visible light through. They were able to make a small zero point module to power everything. The redesign was now the size of a small, flattened lump on the back of the armor that included the power pack, a small ion drive for navigating in space, communications package, and a neat heat exchanger that dumped excess heat into another dimension rather than show on infrared. Any waste was dumped also after moisture was extracted to regulate humidity. I had to admit that Corey had some designs way ahead of Earth’s current technologies.

Testing the prototypes started in the shuttle bay, and progressed to a shuttle bay in vacuum, and finally to outside ‘walks.’ We nearly roasted, drowned, and suffocated our SF guys…a few times. Let’s just say you had to have brass cojones to be a guinea pig. We finally got the suits stabilized in a few days within an Echo field – five months of accelerated time was lightning fast, for what we doing. Pates had his people ‘attack’ some abandoned rocket boosters, and other large objects in orbit.

Pates made some generalized plans to attack different designs of spacecraft, but we knew it would be general plans only. No battle plans ever survive first contact so we brainstormed different approaches – ignorance is bliss. Pates liked the porcupine mines, but wanted to get more, but we had no way to carry more. We had a total of almost two hundred personnel on the ship with a civilian chain of dysfunction. I took the lead as Captain with Mel as first officer. Carole became second officer, and was in charge of all the navigation – she had a gift for knowing where we were at all times – uncanny, even without Corvette’s help. Joey was third officer, and Hershel became Chief engineer.

Pates, was commander of his company – subordinate only to me, in his chain of command. His personnel were still US Special Forces, and it wasn’t guaranteed that they’d follow commands from any of the lowly civilians, but we were learning to respect each other’s talents. My ‘civilian’ security team, and others, would train with them in the shuttle, or cargo bays. We’d show each other, tricks. Showing someone a ‘trick’ is much better than telling them they are doing it wrong. Carole, and I had super fast reactions, but I had sixty years of martial arts training in a young body. I made pairs of young hotshots ‘bite the dust’.

Mel, and Joey were better than ninety five percent of the SF guys, but I must say the SF troops had a couple of prodigies. Rodriquez, and Sergeant Garcia were holy terrors. Even I would not want to fight those two. A spinoff was that we made training modules from the best fighters, and many absorbed the training. Soon, even the worst fighters were people who were holy terrors in personal combat.

                                           ****

Five months is a long time to spend on a little ship, and it seemed smaller as the days grew longer. We worked on developing the sensors, and deploying them around the solar system. You’d think seeing all the planets would be exciting, but the sensors were usually placed in remote areas of the solar system. Corey had calculated the shortest powered routes so our powered signatures would be reduced.

How does this ship detection work? I asked.

We ascertained we became detectable when you had an unbalanced dimensional field that was rapidly moving away from a strong gravity field. The Horde generally would not investigate occasional movements of one ship. The more ships, the more movement, the faster the movement, or movement in an isolated area would draw their interest, or one of their sycophant race scouts.

Sycophant race scouts?

…Other races that would do anything to stay alive…anything.

SENSOR GLITCH

We had turned on our sensor system while in orbit, and it showed overlapping areas of coverage only with shadowed areas near the larger planets. It pretty well covered from just outside the orbit of Mercury to a little shy of 50 AU with a g-zillion scattered Kuiper Belt objects.
Corvette
designed a computer using the Earth components; logged known objects, and looked for changes that were anomalous. The WALLUP’s functions were being redesigned on the fly, and minor items became major issues.