by Thadd Evans
I glanced up. The tank was forty feet away from me, too close. There probably wasn't enough time to find out which radio frequencies its operating system was using.
It paused, about fifteen feet from us.
I held my palm over the bottom of my screen--- text appeared. Continuous wave forms have been sent for fifteen seconds, but they haven't decreased the engine's signal to noise ratio.
Although JOS had matched the tank's receiver with the same type of modulation, the software couldn't override the receiver. In this case, phase waveforms, electromagnetic radiation, particles that were at right angles to each other, didn't help me.
As other jamming techniques, random pulse, stepped tone, warbler and nonlinear keyed modulated waveforms, part of JOS2, another application, scrolled down, the engine droned louder. The tank might start rolling toward us any second.
I hesitated, weighing my options. "Open random pulse."
Irregular noises, all of them coming at uneven intervals, erupted from my tablet, Squawk, kreek, pop, squawk, zeeeee, pop, rmmmm, pop, kreek, squawk, click, pop, whirr.
The tank's engine kept droning. The random pulse jamming hadn't shut it down. I clenched my fist, upset.
Above me, there was a humming noise. I peeked in that direction.
One of the turrets fired---I peered to the right. As I watched in disbelief, the left side of the Brynin terminal exploded! Debris flew into the air and started falling. Soon the robot's shoulders and heads were partly covered by a thin layer of dust, crushed debris.
Behind them, humanoids ran out the terminal door, hollering at the top of their lungs, "Aaaoooo!" The humanoids didn't want to be crushed by the caved in ceiling.
Close to the center of my screen, Qoowo and Aito, sprinted around the robots.
Concrete-like chunks began falling on the robot's shoulders. But the androids didn't move.
Feeling curious, I glanced to the right of the terminal. Next to it, a small copper colored starship exploded!
Tia screamed, "The tank just blew up that Series One Aito ship! Soon she began crying. "This is a nightmare!"
"Yes." I wiped sweat off my brow. Then I aimed my telescopic lens at the terminal.
Near the bottom of my screen, the robots, the androids closest to the terminal, pivoted, and fired laser beams at fleeing humanoids.
Aito, Turon, and Qoowo shot at them.
A Turon man bellowed, "Din!"
A translation materialized. Die you bastards!
Without warning, a Turon's laser hit a robot's head---the head went up in the air and crashed to the pavement!
In the far distance, engines started roaring. The noise seemed to be coming from my right. I glanced in that direction. The burning ship was in the same spot. Just over ninety yards beyond it, five disk shaped cobalt blue ships, all about eighty feet in diameter, came to rest on the pavement.
In my left eye's peripheral vision, something moved. I glanced to the left. Just beyond the tank, a humanoid silhouette, someone I couldn't see clearly, was running, headed this way. It was Greg!
He looked at me, an excited expression on his countenance.
I heard a whirring sound and glanced up at both turrets as they rotated to the left. Now they were pointing directly at the terminal.
Greg smiled. "Here's the Level A."
"Did you scan it thoroughly?" I blinked.
"Not enough time."
"Did you get my LT?" Had he received my latest transmission?
"A moment ago."
"We'll have to get more money later." "Maybe on D Twenty-Four."
I glanced at Tia. She kept staring at the terminal. Her forehead tensed up.
I sprinted toward our ship---grabbed one box. Greg and Tia picked up the rest. Close to the center of ST7's belly, a hatch opened, and the stairway dropped---hit the pavement.
I spoke into my tablet, "Yeliv, Bemme, Pohum, everyone, come aboard now. We'll be leaving in the next few minutes."
Greg and Tia hurried up the steps.
Close to the burning ship, Pohum, Palk, Paley and Yeliv were running toward us. After raising their arms, they darted around the robots.
Where was Bemme? If she didn't arrive within several minutes, we would have to leave without her.
I looked down.
Pohum, Palk, Paley and Yeliv arrived, ran up the steps, worried expressions on their faces.
I glanced over my shoulder. Bemme was jogging toward me, chewing something while red juice began dripping off her jaw. She spat on the pavement.
I scowled. "We almost had to leave you behind."
Bemme hollered, "We're never going make it out of here alive!" and dashed up the steps.
"We'll see." I followed her.
After entering ST7, the whirring sound of the stairway grew louder as it retracted inside the hull. The entrance hissed shut.
I walked up the curved floor, advancing toward a concave door, the entrance to the bridge. Wanting to know if the passengers were having any problems, I peered over my left shoulder.
Tia, Yeliv and everyone else sat down, and straps went around their legs, waists and chests. As each oval seat leaned back, preparing for takeoff, it grew longer and wider, adapting to that passenger's body. If the seat were too narrow, someone's arms would be ripped out of the sockets when we left Brynin's outer atmosphere.
Everyone nodded at me, they weren't having problems with their seats.
A hatch opened. I entered a hall. Close to the edge my screen, text scrolled. Guidelines for using seat electromagnetic controls have just been sent to each passenger.
There was a complication. I didn't know if each seat had adjusted properly. Every humanoid's central nervous system, heart, lungs and muscles were different. Unlike biological humans, not cloned ones, Qoowo, Dseo and Aito rarely suffered from Hypovolemic shock because their veins and arteries were larger. Normally, Hypovolaemic shock occurred when blood flow was impeded.
During takeoff, if a seat's gravitational field didn't operate correctly, Yeliv or any other passenger would die of a heart attack or their necks would snap.
Another concern came to mind. After months of space travel, primary cosmic rays, carcinogenic particles, would provoke the growth of cancerous tumors. If their white blood cells as well as their antigens weren't strong enough, they would die in space, killed by this disease.
Antigens provoked the creation of antibodies. Antibodies, gamma globulin proteins in the blood or other bodily fluids of humanoids, part of the immune system, identified and neutralized foreign objects such as bacteria and viruses. In most cases, antibodies consisted of basic structural units. Within those units, there were two large heavy chains and two small light chains.
According to my screen, Gdii had evolved from Lemur-like primates and fish. The fish, the Uti Porus species, had spawned in Litor's southern hemisphere. After being to exposed bright light for twenty million years, Uti Porus's scaly skin, their melanocytes, had evolved. As a result, Gdii were far less likely to get skin cancer than any other race.
Above my screen, text enlarged. Dseo have evolved from the Rar Apes. Four hundred thousand years ago, near P L Five's equator, these primates began eating the Helip berry. Eight months later, several mothers had babies whose muscles were stronger than either parent. That trend has continued to this day. Dseo men and women's muscles are less likely to be strained than any Aito, human, Qoowo or any other race.
There wasn't enough time to study the other passenger's backgrounds.
The bridge's hatch opened. I entered and walked up the curved floor while the altimeter and spectrometer retracted into it because both instrument's photonic windows had just finished receiving new instructions from a server via the wireless network. As my chair hummed louder, changing its position, I sat down.
I pictured the tank in my mind and a thought struck me. ST7 didn't have enough armor plating.
At the bottom of a monitor, the LN robots that were closest to our ship, the ones that were facing us,
hadn't budged.
On the left side of a monitor, next to the robots who were looking at our ship, six of them were facing the terminal. All six had just turned, then shot Qoowo and Aito men, and the Qoowo and Aito had collapsed.
Several feet beyond all six, one of the injured men raised his arm. Suddenly, it dropped to the ground. He was dead.
Halfway between the injured and the terminal, Gdii women, Qoowo men, Aito girls, Ulthe men, Embas teen boys, Turon women raised their barrels, wanting to shoot all six robots.
I looked at the top of the screen. Along the right side, beyond the robots, a tiny figure was running toward our ship. Then it sprinted around them. At the same time, the figure got bigger as the lens zoomed in, making it easier to see a woman with silver hair, an alien whose white face was covered by vertical stripes. She might be an Entar or Micar clone, her true identity hidden by a superior tablet.
Unfortunately, I needed another passenger because we didn't have enough money. I jumped up, bound for ST7's entrance.
After reaching it, I waved my hand over a control panel. The hatch opened. I glanced down as the steps lifted out of the ramp. It hit the pavement. I climbed down the stairs as the silver- haired woman arrived at the bottom of the steps. She looked up at me, a frantic expression made her eyes gleam.
On my screen, her message brightened. My name is Yar. I want to buy a ticket.
I shoved fingers over my sleeve. A transmitter sent her a message, requesting SP information. I waited.
According to my tablet, she spoke Niil. My sleeve-mounted HMR tablet sent her a translation.
In the corner of my screen, her text response enlarged. I can afford the price. I have SP ID.
Her screen appeared. Near the center of it, Yar's face, an ID video, began rotating. On her forehead, cheeks, jaw and neck, I noticed dark-violet vertical stripes, each one parallel, all the same width, an inch. From head to toe, she resembled a human. Unlike us, this being's eyes were white, partly covered by black lines, vertical ones, all of them parallel, She was a teacher, a translator, an ambassador from P L Five, a member of the Niil race.
All of Yar's documents appeared to be authentic. Although she might be a shape shifter, it didn't seem that way. I accepted her payment, issued a ticket. I pivoted and bolted up the steps. As my adrenaline pumped faster, I hurried inside ST7, Yar behind me.
After entering the bridge, I sat down. To my right, Greg leaned back in his chair, and cleared his throat, nervous.
"Greg, all spectrometer systems go?" I broke into a cold sweat because if any instrument wasn't functioning normally, we would have to repair it or the ship wouldn't take off.
"All spectrometer systems go." "All barometric systems go?" "All barometric systems go."
"All radio-interferometric telescopes go?"
"All radio-interferometric telescopes go."
"All optical interferometric telescopes go?"
"All optical interferometric telescopes go."
"All servers go?"
"All servers go."
"All wireless TCP go?" I asked, inquiring about the wireless computer networks.
"All wireless TCP go."
"Altimeter?"
"Altimeter will be ready soon."
"Are all the NR'S on the hull finished?" I announced, referring to the nanorobots that were resurfacing the entire outside hull.
"All NR have finished."
"Accelerometer?" Had the engine warmed up enough so that we could take off?
Greg sighed. "In forty seconds, engine plasma will be sixty-one point six higher"
"I wish the engine was ready now."
Greg blurted, "The light just came on. The engine should be warm enough for take off in thirty-two seconds, maybe less." "Excellent. There's another passenger." "One more passenger. Outstanding!"
I nodded.
He frowned. "By the way, another group of LN, a formation that is on the right side of the closer formation, is marching toward ST7. If they go far enough, we can't reach the runway because they'll be in our way."
"Understood."
At the top of the screen, the marching formation circled around the motionless robots.
The marching robots paused, their front line about ten feet from the ship's nose. They had almost blocked our path to the runway. The only way to get around them was to steer ST7 starboard, then turn port.
Although the ship could lift straight up, doing so would burn up a lot of fuel. According to Bayesian-like statistics, if the solar winds between D24 and Brynin shifted drastically, the engine would use up all the tritium long before we reached Icir. The problem with statistics was that they offered probabilities, not definite answers.
I placed my hand over text---a low resolution, grainy map of D24 appeared.
On screen, ST7's front wheels turned starboard, and the ship began moving.
At the bottom of the accelerometer, a blue line had reached 11. There was enough power to reach the runway. Unfortunately, the main plasma fusion engine wasn't ready.
The front wheels missed the corner robot by two feet.
Greg sighed. "I'm glad we didn't hit them."
"If we did, my guess is that they would have shot holes in the wings."
Greg exhaled, upset.
In the corner of the screen, sixty yards behind us, smoke rose above the collapsed terminal. Near the terminal, the tank rolled several feet and stopped.
Greg muttered, "If that tank fires at us, the shell will destroy this ship."
In the corner of the screen, the tank vanished--- was replaced by a burning ship, one that was next to the terminal. All around the smoldering spacecraft, humanoids began running in many directions. Suddenly, the ship exploded. A shell had hit it!
The accelerometer was at thirty-five percent.
Once it reached thirty-seven percent, the engine would have enough power for lift off.
But ST7 had to cross a strip to reach the runway.
At the top of a monitor, a huge spheroid blue ship touched down at the opposite end of the runway. We would have to wait for takeoff.
The huge ship decelerated, and turned left, advancing toward us.
Greg blurted, "Thirty-seven!"
"Good." The engine had enough power for lift off.
According to the barometer, the air pressure was high. Our take off would be smooth.
There was another concern. If the blue ship took up most of the connecting strip, we would have to wait longer.
At the top of the screen, another ship, one of ten, was about to land. We had to take off within the next few minutes or we never would.
Outside my window, the huge ship was coming this way. The strip was barely wide enough for their spacecraft and ours.
At the bottom of a monitor, robots shot Aito, Gdii, Turon and Qoowo.
Then lasers, beams fired by the humanoids, hit the robots.
On screen, a gray spheroid ship, not an LN spacecraft, exploded---debris flew into the air and smoke obscured it. At the same time, fragments hit the pavement. Near the bottom of a monitor, Turon men, Embas women, and Dseo children, beings that were running toward us, started waving their hands frantically, scared.
At the center of a monitor, an Embas girl with red hair shouted, "Atay, atay, atay, deso a maelte. Atay."
Vera responded. Unable to translate. I'm still analyzing her vocabulary.
I paused. "Vera, how long will it take for a second translation attempt?"
Unknown. Compiling Embas sonnets, treaties, Notta, the Prophet's writings, legal terms, and eleven dictionaries.
"Understood. Do I have to wait ten seconds or ten minutes? We're running out of time."
Unknown. Level of translation difficulty is ninety- two point seven one percent, extremely high.
"Greg, can you TLS2 this for me?" I waited, wondering if he could use that software to find out what was scaring the girl.
"I'm creating vectors. That will have to wait."
Outside my window, on top of t
he huge ship, there were small laser gun turrets. Each one was aimed at us.
"Greg, are the vectors ready?" Without them, our ship would fly in the wrong direction, waste fuel.
"Almost. Reassigning last sequence of variables."
Variables, numbers inside computer programming functions, had to be placed in the proper sequence, or the functions would create faulty vectors.
An angry robotic voice came out of a wall mounted speaker and my earplugs. Rewux, elto, Rewux!
"Greg, could you TLS2 that? Forget the other messages."
"Okay."
"It could be a warning."
The voice shouted. Rewux, elto!
Outside my window, the wider blue ship started moving past our port wing.
I said, "RET." Our portside wing retracted---the blue ship missed it by inches.
The robotic voice hollered. Elto! Welx!
"Greg, any luck?"
"Not yet. TLS Two has to search and compile all libraries and metaphors. There are over eighty- one thousand, so many that it may take an hour to translate them."
As computer syntax enlarged, I turned onto the runway, and ST7 stopped. Now, all the wheels were aimed straight ahead, toward the opposite end of the airstrip. I shoved my hand over three lines of code and the plasma-fusion engine roared louder. ST7 started moving.
A woman's voice, a female who was close to the terminal, came out of my earplugs, "Help me, help me, help me, help me!"
My body felt cold because I couldn't bring her aboard.
At the center of a monitor, another blue ship was approaching the opposite end of the runway.
Our bodies slammed against our seats as our ship moved faster! According to the accelerometer, we had just reached two hundred miles an hour! My body dropped as ST7 lifted.
Close to the edge of the screen, a blue ship was headed directly at us. I stuck my hand over a line of floating holographic text---our spacecraft veered starboard. My body jerked sideways while the straps dug into my shoulders.
Greg screamed, "Owwww," as his head was pushed sideways by the force of the turn.
I hollered, "Yowww," as my head jerked.
In the center of another screen, inside the passenger compartment, Yeliv clenched his teeth.
