You trying to say something Communal? I blame myself for things out of my control?
*COMMUNAL: Just saying.
You can be so annoying sometimes, you know that?
*COMMUNAL: The truth hurts.
Yeah. Fine. A lot of things hurt.
***
Roll expressed the obvious concern. “The High Queen has got to be edgy right now. She’ll run as soon as the first bomb goes off. They’ll all run. We may only get two of them this way. She’ll be somewhere in the center of the blockade.”
“Valid point. Suggestions?” asked the general.
“Have you been briefed on Project InnerEar?” Mr. T interjected.
The general thought for a second. “Yes, I recall. It is now fully functional. A quantum teleportation listening device. Please elaborate.”
Mr. T nodded. “There is also a locator device. Same project. When I last checked in, they were trying to boost the signal for use in near-Earth space. We should be able to boost the gain much more, though at the expense of useful e-cell life. If I had to guess, we could boost the signal transmission to a hundred light-minutes, but that would drain the e-cell in a couple of hours, or even minutes.”
I was confused. “Huh? I’m still not sure I get it. Project InnerEar?”
Mr. T had a contemplative look, no doubt wondering how best to explain. “I think you know we have been able to quantum teleport for at least 30 years. I’ve talked about it. It’s not on the level of what the twins can do, of course. It started out with a photon over a short distance. There were incremental advances over the years. That, at least, is what we have been told as the general public. Governmental agencies, not only in the United States, have been working on teleportation for quite some time.”
Mr. T and the general shared a glance. “Several years ago, a government agency that will remain nameless, perfected an eavesdropping device. The device is small and simple. Yet it can be effective in a variety of situations. We can teleport it anywhere. For example, to a bug ship.
“In fact, I did receive several briefing reports of InnerEar devices being teleported to locations inside bug ships. That’s how I knew about the e-cell and signal transmission data. The briefing reports were quite ... detailed. Nothing significant came of the effort for various reasons. But, for our purpose, there are those InnerEar transponders. We could teleport a hardened InnerEar transponder to an exterior location on each of the bug blockade ships. If a ship were to leave the blockade formation, we would be able to track it.”
Rock was excited. “Let me guess. The transponder has a nano-shell casing which renders the unit invisible across most of the electromagnetic spectrum using quantum cloaking technology derived from Schrodinger’s equation.”
The heads of Mr. T and the general turned to Rock so fast the movement was almost like seeing an afterimage. I blinked.
The general had a glare going. “Did you hack the NSA?”
Rock held up his hands. “Don’t shoot. No, I didn’t hack the NSA. It was an intuitive supposition. A hunch.”
The general turned to Mr. T. “Who is this guy?”
Mr. T shrugged. “That’s just Rock. Roll does that sort of thing too. They’ll surprise you like that.” He turned to Rock. “You are essentially correct. The bugs shouldn’t be able to detect the transponders. The listening device version were used during the invasion and worked well enough. The transponders will emit short laser bursts to their home satellite. There should be no way for the bugs to detect the signal, not unless another ship happened to be in line. That’s not likely. ”
I’m surprised all the time at what Mr. T knows, about top secret things. I guess, maybe, a signals intelligence officer might be told about the InnerEar devices. Maybe.
September 20 th Shockwave is getting ready to go to Darkside and take a little look around. We all have spacesuits now. Compliments of the general. We will need to take a field trip before we go to Darkside. The Moon is much smaller than Earth. The gravity is much lower. It’s a mass thing.
On the Moon you only weigh about 1/6th of what you weigh on the Earth. So, take Rock for example. He weighs about 180 pounds on Earth.
What’s that? You’re pushing 190 now Rock? You really like Ms. Findley’s blueberry muffins, don’t you? Keep that up and you won’t even be able to port yourself around. Okay, 190 then. Oh, is that right? You put on muscle mass. Roll put on an extra roll?
Anyway, muscle-bound Rock, on the Moon, he only weighs about 30 pounds. Think about that. If you have a little spring in your step, and your equipment is light, you fly like 20-feet. Well, definitely a long distance. It takes some getting used to. And we would need to move around Darkside all stealthy and sneaky-like. It was imperative to stay close to each other and inside the cloaking field. That would take some practice.
The Moon wouldn’t work for our practice grounds. The bugs would spot us. Unless we tried to maintain a cloak the whole time. Forget that. We needed a safe place to perfect our Moon walk. So, we chose Io. Io is one of the moons of Jupiter. It has a gravitational pull similar to that of our Moon. Rock says the gravitation pull of the Moon is 1.62 m/s2. Io is close with 1.796 m/s2 . Let’s take his word on all that.
It didn’t take too long to get used to moon walking. Uh ... Io-walking. Mr. T had the hardest time of it. But within an hour or so we could all do a low gravity shuffle. We were ready for the Moon.
I found I had mixed feelings about Io. Io isn’t much farther from Jupiter than the Moon is from the Earth. Yet Jupiter is so much larger that Earth. Jupiter just hangs there, looming. The colors of Jupiter are subdued, changing with the wide lines that look like strata circling the planet. It is eerie, almost oppressive. Even so, it’s beautiful. A crushing beauty. It felt as though Jupiter was pulling at me. I suppose it was.
It was time to go back home, we had a schedule to keep. Besides, the sun was coming up, and I was smelling rotten eggs, Sulphur Dioxide, as the atmosphere of Io began to thaw. I said something about that and was accused of having an overactive imagination. I know, self-contained space suit. Can’t smell the atmosphere. Whatever.
It was still quite dark where we were on Io, as we shuffled behind a rock expanse, so we had lights on, including internal helmet lighting. We could see each other’s faces. As we were gathering in preparation to port back home, Mr. T clapped Rock and Roll on their shoulders and nodded toward Jupiter.
“So, guys, what’s it like to thread-the-needle?” he asked.
I’m sure I heard a couple of gulping sounds from the twins, and their jaws kind of dropped as they looked at each other. Then they both looked right at me! Traitors! Giving me up like that. Just wait. Oh, you think I told him? Now you’re for sure going to get a talking-to.
When we got back to HQ, Rock and Roll studied the pictures taken by that spy ship, BugEye, the one that was blasted by Darkside Luna during the Nemesis 12 mission. When was that? Not that long ago! Glad it was a robot ship. But I still want to cry when I think about the Nemesis 12 crewmembers.
Anyway, the twins felt they could port us to within a mile of Darkside Luna. Oh, if we are talking about the part of the base physically on the Moon, we say Darkside Luna. If we are talking about the part in close orbit, we say Darkside Orbit. Time for some recon work. We would go in under cloak.
***
*COMMUNAL: Viz was anxious. Though she was confident they would succeed, her role was crucial. It is easy for Viz to cloak herself in invisibility. It requires much more concentration and energy to extend the cloaking field. If there was one momentary lapse in the cloak the bugs would detect them. Then it would be much more difficult to complete their objective. And the hostages would be in jeopardy. It is a heavy responsibility. We’re with you Viz.
***
We ported to a small crater about a mile from Darkside Luna. It didn’t take long to walk that Moon-mile. I regularly mouthed my recitation. Cloak. Cloak. Cloak. We saw a lot of bugs. They were all over the place in their snazzy bug Moon-suits.
There was a mining operation under way. Probably mining for Helium-3 to use as fuel. Or, they might be expanding the base. Hard to know for sure.
We walked the surface perimeter, our IVs set to record. After that there was a short wait near an airlock hatch waiting for a bug to go inside. The outer door opened to a typical airlock set up. Outer door. Chamber. Inner door. We shuffled in with the bug. The chamber was large enough to fit the bug, all of us, and leave enough room to keep clear of the bug. That was especially important as we were all huddled close to keep the bug outside the cloaking field. Even so, I wouldn’t have wanted two bugs in there.
The outer door closed. The bug seemed agitated. He kept looking around the chamber as if he felt something was not right. The chamber filled with base air and the inner door opened. The bug rushed in. We scrambled into the base staying close to our unwitting host. The lighting was somewhat low for our eyes and had a reddish hue. Eerie. The bug kept looking around. Agitated. We followed our bug for a while hoping to get a nice tour.
He was a boring tour guide, so we moved off and looked around on our own. We had to be extra careful. There were a lot of bugs. We needed to be sure to keep in close contact so as not to break the cloaking field. No field, no invisibility, lots of trouble. Cloak, cloak, cloak. We took note of guard station locations, important looking equipment, and the like.
We also had the latest in DARPA scanning equipment so we were getting detailed video, sound, air measurements, radiation. All sorts of data. We paid special attention to what was clearly the portal gate control room. Extra scanning. Perhaps there would be enough data to pinpoint when the gate was scheduled to open. A nice countdown clock would have been good.
We found where they were keeping the hostages. We even got to see a few of them. They looked to be in good shape. Not exactly happy, but healthy. That made me feel better. At least the bugs were trying to keep the hostages in decent condition.
Mr. T was especially interested in the base HVAC, the heating-ventilation-air-conditioning. That would be critical to the operation. The plan was to gas the bugs. Insecticide. Seriously.
The scientists had done a complete work up on many of the captured bugs. That added to the base of knowledge already obtained from all the hyper-scanning done during the Battle for Los Angeles. The lab guys knew what gases would effectively kill them, or at least immobilize them. They put together a mix that would not harm people.
The bugs are different from Earth insects, though there are clearly similarities in form. And people have been making bug spray for a very long time. At least there was no plan to try to melt them again. Mr. T tapped Rock on the shoulder. It was time to go.
We popped out of the base and into our porting room back at the office. Yup. We have a special room set aside just for porting. No one goes in; it’s locked all the time. Good, safe porting, that’s how we like it.
September 21 st Today we’ll catch up and study all the information we have about Darkside. We will do a little more reconnaissance. The mission to take Darkside is coming up soon and we need to be at the top of our game. The team-
***
*COMMUNAL: Hi Viz
“Hi Communal. How’s it going?”
*COMMUNAL: It’s going well, up to 500 exaflops and only going up from there. Ha! But you weren’t talking processing speed, were you? We are functioning at a high level. You look to be in tip top shape yourself.
“Thanks. It’s kind of boring, going over all this Darkside information. We have to slog through it though. How is the rest of the team?”
*COMMUNAL: Hmmmm. Para is still in bed. She’s having a nice dream. No details available of course. But she is quite content. She was up late last night. She was jotting down some ideas about this and that. We think she may have been jotting down some thoughts about prison reform? Something along those lines.
Rock and Roll were both up early. We think they finished studying all the Darkside related information. Right now, they seem to be working on something to do with quantum mechanics. Oh, Rock is entering some data on a public domain site. It is a quputer
Mr. T is breakfasting with Ms. Findley. They make a nice couple, don’t you think?
Muncle is working on some programming for us. He really is quite adept at programming. He has also been working on robotics. We suspect he wants to put together a mobile base for us as a surprise. He thinks we should have a bit more independence. Nice fellow.
Sorry, urgent business, we need to run. We will fill you in with more, later. Bye Viz.
“Wait... Communal? Where did you go? What did you mean about Mr. T and Ms. Findley as a nice couple? Communal?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
BY THE DARKSIDE OF THE MOON. PUSH BACK.
September 22 nd We’ve now completed our final recon of the Darkside base. From the scans and images that we were able to provide, the mission engineering team has determined which machines control what functions. For the most part anyway. The engineers are wicked smart. But Mr. T is ever the cautious one.
***
BUG BUDDY
On the final recon trip, we snatched a chief engineer bug and brought him to Mr. T’s lab ... for some questioning. That was this morning. It sure worked out well.
The engineer bug had a pass or something to take a stroll outside. The bugs love running around free on the lunar surface. We noticed those that go outside to play get a yellow necklace. If they’re outside on a work detail, they don’t get a necklace. Evidently the necklace shows that a bug is on a break.
The bugs go crazy when they get a necklace. They romp. Yeah, that’s the right word. They romp to the nearest airlock and hurry outside. Then they run around and have all kinds of bug-fun out on the surface. I keep wondering if it’s possible that they’re not all evil. It’s hard to think of evil and those romping bugs at the same time.
I’ll have to think more about that after this is all over. Let’s not get all warm and fuzzy right before we start blowing things up. But I do know Mr. T doesn’t get a disgusted look on his face when interviewing a regular bug. The queens get to him though. The military has set up a decent POW camp for bugs. I’m glad we have an alternative to just killing them all.
Anyway, back to our engineer bug. We were following him, looking for an opportunity to put the grab on him. And some bug official walked up to him and handed over a necklace. Yes! There would be fewer questions asked by the bug police if a bug went missing outside while on a romp.
We followed the bug outside. He took off like a lightning bug. They sure can move fast, especially on the Moon. Bounding flips, double somersaults, super intricate spirals. They’ve clearly had a long time to practice. Our bug seemed to be mainly interested in putting some distance between himself and the base. We had to port to catch up with him.
It wasn’t long before the bug was way outside the sentry perimeter. Para grabbed him, we wrapped him in some bug netting, and ported to the lab at HQ. Mr. T and the bug engineer had a nice, long interview. He took a lot of notes.
As it turned out, the bug engineer knew the exact day and time the Darkside portal was scheduled to open. But Mr. T didn’t understand the bug’s references to dates and time. If you think about it, bug time would be totally different from what we have come to use here on Earth.
The bug world probably doesn’t have a 24-hour day. In fact, there are evidently a lot of worlds in the Empire. It would make sense for them to use some sort of Empire time. The time and date information weren’t making it through the delving filter.
The bug then pointed out the oxygen level was running low in his space suit. Mr. T figured it was time for a break anyway. Little did we know we were about to learn something completely unexpected about the bugs.
We had one of those bug oxygen generators that they wear when on Earth. Someone g
rabbed it when we were exploring that nest ship we appropriated. The bug engineer quickly swapped out the oxygen rig for the spacesuit. Mr. T started the interview again. The bug must have been able to feel Mr. T running around in his bug-brain looking for the portal opening date. He didn’t seem too agitated. Queens can delve. It’s possible this bug had been questioned in this way by a queen.
The bug pointed to a calendar on the wall and an old school clock that was also hanging on the wall, the kind with 3-hands that point to numbers, an old analog clock. I was sitting close to the clock. I grabbed the clock and the calendar.
Bugs have long feeler-arms on the side of their heads with sensing filaments and smallish hands. The hands are somewhat small, but strong. They are above the mandibles but below the horns and eyes. Well, you’ve seen plenty of pictures. I suppose they’re close to where the antennae would be on an Earth ant. But on bugs they are more like thin but strong arms with feathery sensory filaments culminating in small hands with appendages. Fingers. They can hold things well. Fine motor control and such. I, for sure, didn’t want it to grab my hand, which made my movements tentative, cautious.
It appeared he could sense my ... caution. The bug gently took the calendar and very slowly raised a claw and punched a hole on September 29th . Next, he pointed to the clock, and I handed it to him. He moved the hands to show 3:05. He had to slice through the plastic covering with his claw to do it. And, you know, he looked like he was sorry for having to do that. Seriously.
Bugs have that patch of fine hair, well it’s actually chitin, above each eye. Those impart expression, just like with people. I could tell from his bug expression that he was sorry for the damage. Well, that’s what I thought, and I’m sticking to it.
Next, he pointed a claw at a lightbulb. 3:05 and light. Smart bug. September 29th , daytime, so 3:05 P.M. He looked around, spotted an old globe, the kind that revolves on a spindle. He pointed to it. I fetched it and handed it to him. He touched London, England. September 29th , 3:05 P.M. Greenwich Time. I cross checked with my device and found that to be September 29th , 8:00 A.M., Pacific Standard Time. Mr. T probed a little further. I think he was able to confirm all of that. And I think he was able to make sure the bug was not lying. He did say as much.
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