by D A Buckley
“I imagine that some couple from their side is having this exact same conversation. It breaks my heart, Katherine. You know I am embarrassed at what a soft touch of man I am.” Tony flashed an embarrassed smirk while elevating Katherine’s hospital bed to allow her to sit up. “I was reading a book a few years ago about the civil war in American history. Fathers fought their own sons across terrible and bloody battlefields. Civil and military leaders on both sides were Godly men who believed the Bible and its accounting of a God of immeasurable love. And yet they disagreed so drastically that they slaughtered each other over how the new nation ought to be governed. Human history, Katy, is a long history of wasted human capital.”
“Thank you, for being here, Tony,” Katherine said as she saluted him with the bottle of water. “You’re the only one I’ve ever allowed to call me Katy.”
“I’m sorry, Katherine. I wasn’t thinking. I…”
“Please, don’t be sorry. I’ve missed hearing you say it. It always calmed my mind to hear you say it. It reminds me of…well…let’s just say better times. And I’m sorry for being so rude. I am glad to see you, Tony. In fact, I am very glad to see you. Do you think we could have some time together to talk about things?”
“Only if you want to encourage Meri’s lunar matchmaking service.”
They both laughed.
*****
Because this was the first combat casualty at LBA the entire station’s operation was suspended for a one-hour memorial service. The size of the crowd of attendees required the additional room of the Terminal. Only Ramos’ body could be recovered but could not be displayed due to the anti-matter contamination. The encasement was bare metal silver. Ramos’ family was present only by computer display that allowed them to see and hear, in real time, the proceedings of the service.
Tony and Katherine stood next to each other in the front row of the crowd. Meri and Chaplain Middleton were next to the casket lying upon the bier with seven LED candles behind them.
“I cannot express to this company present the depth of sorrow that I feel today.” Meri began with determined self-control. “I met Ramos Guzman for the first time over twelve years ago at Cal-Tech. He was brilliant, athletic, funny, and even a little charismatic. As I am sure that many of you can attest. I don’t think that he would mind if I said that he brought spice into my life and a kind of light that always warmed and amused my heart and mind. I am a better person for having known him. His wife Mariana, who came along shortly after Ramos earned his Masters in AI Development, simply made his light brighter. Mariana, my heart breaks most of all for you today. I am deeply sorry for your loss…”
Katherine’s mind slowly drifted off to the pier at Santa Monica for quite a few minutes. She imagined Ramos and Mariana walking along the beach. The smell of the salt air. The warm sany beach and the cool Pacific water. Sea gulls were flying overhead and children were splashing in the water. They seemed very content. When her conscious mind returned to the service Chaplain Middleton was already speaking.
“…from a family of faith. Many here are scientists whose training and experience is with those things that are measurable, quantifiable, and experienced only by the physical senses. But there are things that are beyond the physical senses. I have spoken at length with Ramos’ beautiful wife, Mariana. She was quick to inform me that they both come from families of faith. They both firmly hold to a conviction of the existence of a Creator God. I come from a family of scientists. There are some astronomical devices on the Ark designed by my father and by my brother. I have worked my entire life in the company of great scientific minds. But I chose the pursuit of reality in another dimension as my lifetime field of study, exploration, and examination and I concur with Ramos and Mariana. The day came in my life when I was moved, based on my research, to finally call out to the God whose existence I had come to believe was true. I was not disappointed. The God who is there…answered back. I believe that Ramos had done the same at a more innocent time in his life as a child. “A little child shall lead them,” the Bible says. I would like to offer that recommendation to you, who knew Ramos and who know Mariana, today. They are witness to a reality beyond technological apprehension, beyond our five senses and into the realm of the spirit. Let us take a moment, in silence, to remember some of the many good memories that we each have of our friend, our brother. And if you are so inclined, I could think of no better time for you to call out, from your heart, to the God who is there.”
The words burned in Katherine’s heart. First, she lost Tony and now Ramos. The Chaplain’s words made no sense to her but they would not leave her alone. It was like hearing someone call her name from a long way away.
*****
“What the hell is going on here, boss man? First, a shuttle falls out of the sky. At least a dozen people die in the crash. Bigwigs are called up. Now we’re setting up Gatling guns and I hear that Marines are coming soon and that they’re going to declare Martian Law.”
“You know, if you weren’t my son-in-law I would knock you upside the head right now,” Tucker said. “I’m just a blood-sucking TICC and they don’t tell me anything that I don’t need to know in order to do what I get paid to do. If one percent of what you said was true I’d be amazed. I have learned through very hard lessons over the years to believe none of the scuttlebutt that goes around on the job site…especially bottom-up scuttlebutt. Just do your job, earn your paycheck and go back home to mama and the kids like you’re supposed to. If you need drama in your sad life, take my beautiful daughter, your wife, to a play. And by-the-way genius, it’s not Martian law it’s martial law. How the hell would we get any law from Martians?”
“You gotta admit, pops, there’s some hinky stuff goin’ on here. Carly said she saw the shuttle crew being held in the security office. Now, why would they arrest the crew of a crashed shuttle and then have us set these guns in place? Carly said they’re going to give us all guns soon.”
“I’ve told you a million times not to call me that on the job, knucklehead. That’s your problem right there, junior. You never listen to me but you listen to know nothin’ know-it-alls like Carly. She works in the tool room for God’s sake. I hardly think Mr. Perkins has her on his distribution list of important things he wants tool monkies to know. If you don’t wise up you’re going to get yourself in trouble and I’m going to have to be the one to let your grieving wife, my beautiful princess, know just why I strangled you. Now shut your trap and get those welds done. And they better be right when I check them or I swear I’ll throw your ragged backside on the next shuttle back to earth myself.”
“Jeez, why all the negative vibes boss man? I’m just talkin’ about what everyone else but you is talkin’ about.”
“You know, I hope my grandkids don’t get your stupid genes. I’m gonna have ‘em tested when I get back home. If I’m lucky I’ll find out my beautiful princess has been shopping around in your absence. Know what I’m sayin’? We’ll all understand and forgive her and we won’t tell you why all your kids have blue eyes and cleft chins.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Suki, how was the trip?” Dr. Mathis took one of Suki’s bags. “Our ride is over here. I’m so sorry you had to go through Dead Horse. I know how awful that can be.”
“You can say that again. By the way, that really old guy at TSA that felt me up said to say, Hi. Is that creepy, or what?”
“Oh my God. I hate that guy,” Dr. Mathis said laughing. “I think he practices in front of a mirror with his wife. She works the other line, you know? Neither of them should be doing what they’re doing working for TSA.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Seriously though, overaggressive security pat-downs aside, something has changed. Security was tighter than I’ve ever seen it. What’s going on?”
“I can’t get you up to speed here. Meri’s put me in a penthouse. There’s plenty of room for you to stay there instead of crew quarters if you'd like. I’ll give you the whole scoop later. You need time to rest
, eat, and clean-up a little.” Katherine squinted her nose. “Those construction guys you flew up with don’t always waste their paychecks on soap and aftershave do they?”
“I’m just glad I didn’t have to sit next to a guy who wore overalls and no shirt. Seriously, isn’t there a dress code or something?”
Laughing nearly hysterically they rode off to 1N and Dr. Mathis’ penthouse.
*****
“Oh wow, look at these concavities all over the exo-frame,” Dr. Mathis said examining casing surrounding the high capacity memory core that J-Squared now occupied. “I hope they’re all right.”
“Our external observations of these impact marks indicate that the data inside should be intact. We delayed using more aggressive analysis tools until you arrived. We didn’t want to make things worse by poking around with things we don’t really understand.”
“Wise choice, Doctor. There’s about three billion dollars in research in there.” Dr. Mathis spun on her chair to grab a datapad from the table. Her rolling across the floor caused her to flashback in her mind and see Ramos doing the same chair-roll back at the lab on earth. She froze in contemplation hearing his voice in her memory watching him do amazing programming tasks with thoughtless ease. She felt the hurt of his loss very deeply. She remained still as she thought of crazy programming skills, his insistence on multiple computers spread between two desks. How much he worried about her…
“Is there a problem, Dr. Mathis?”
“No problem.” Katherine returned to the present. “Just ghosts from my past. Very welcome ghosts. Let’s get started.”
Just as Dr. Mathis begun to key her datapad, a beam of green light shot from the fiber optic port on the side of the hard drive to an adjacent computer monitor. “Hello, Doctor.” Jared’s familiar voice spoke over the computer’s speakers. His image displayed on the monitor. “Long time no see. How are you?”
“Jared, it is so good to see and hear you. Is Jackie with you?”
Immediately the image of Jackie appeared next to Jared.
“Jackie,” Dr. Mathis exclaimed, “you’ve…grown.”
“It’s just my avatar, Doc. The benefit of existing as a digital entity allows me some equality of stature with jolly pale giant here.”
“Ha. Well, I’m glad to see your sense of humor is intact. How about everything else?”
“Well, this merger has been quite an experience,” Jared spoke up first. “Did you know that Jackie has a fan crush on some twenty-first-century actor name Tom Selleck?”
“Gotta love that hairy chest,” Jackie blurted out. “And I was right about giant man Jared’s checking out Madame Bivishni’s endowments on our last mission. The man mind is a sorry and weird place, Doc.”
“Okay…so you’re both good then?”
“Better than good, Doc.” Jared stepped forward on the screen. “ Watch this.”
Immediately on the monitor, a series of pages flashed by at lightning speed and then J-Squared was back.
“What just happened there, guys? What did I just see?” Dr. Mathis’ voice was worried.
“Don’t worry so much, Doc,” Jackie answered. “We’ve been sitting here for days waiting for you. In our digital form, a mere second of time is an eternity. So while we were here we took a little stroll through the LBA Mainframe. We have been monitoring construction progress on the Ark. We just uploaded fifty-seven hundred requisitions for parts and upgrades covering over three thousand job orders for upgrading systems inside the Ark that enhance everything from hull integrity to antimatter matrix efficiency to power management. Please let Doctor Jiang know that her enhancements to the OGP’s will be more than sufficient. They will survive the trip barring any one of a trillion, trillion, trillion unforeseeable events along the way causing a problem.”
“Katherine,” Jackie called Dr. Mathis by her first name for the first time, causing Dr. Mathis to blink several times very quickly. “It is of the utmost importance that you install us on the Ark as quickly as possible.”
“That’s just a wee bit of drama, isn’t it? What’s so urgent?” Dr. Mathis’ attitude became very serious as she gently placed her data device on the lab table behind her.
“Well, besides the fact that MELTDOWN is getting closer, we’ve done everything we can do here in the LBA mainframe. We must be able to monitor progress and conduct quality control inspections directly linked to the Ark mainframe. We can provide a level of oversight far more detailed and much, much faster than the human contractors are capable of performing. In fact, Katherine, you have erred greatly in not installing us as sooner. If we had been installed sooner we could have saved tens of thousands of man-hours in upgrades and improvements.”
“Katherine,” Jared now stepped forward on the screen, “The computer board that I obtained from the messenger at Echo Park. It was a copy of the radar cloaking technology that was used to approach LBA-0139A and attack them without warning.”
At that very moment, there was a knock on the glass door to the lab that startled Dr. Mathis. She recognized the messenger and waved her in.
“Special delivery,” she intoned as she handed Dr.Mathis a clear plastic case containing a large computer board.
“Where is this from?” Dr.Mathis asked.
“From the brainiacs in the digital fabrications lab, ma’am,” the messenger replied. “Hot off the presses they said. They wanted me to tell you that they completed this to your specifications one day ahead of schedule but didn’t deliver it to you until today per your instructions.”
“Well,” Dr. Mathis said as she took the case. “Tell them that I am very impressed and will let Mr. Perkins know how reliable and efficient they are.”
“Thank you,” the young lady chirped as she spun about smiling and headed back the way she came.
“I presume that one of you ordered this…using my name?”
“Of course, Katherine,” Jared said. “But it is imprecise to refer to either of us any more. We are one. What you have in your hands is a countermeasure to their cloak technology. Install this on the Ark and the Southern Hemisphere ships will no longer be invisible to Ark radars. I ordered four more for the radar systems here at LBA and they are being installed as we speak in the four LBA approach radars. I also took the liberty of ordering Fairbanks to produce enough boards for terrestrial radar and for all TRIAD craft now in space. You should know that these boards are more advanced than the one I retrieved. They are themselves capable of doing to the Southern Hemisphere radars what they did to ours. We are now invisible to them.”
*****
“Major Grozdan, this is LBA Prime. You have the bogies painted, I believe is the correct terminology?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Perkins. We have twelve gunships arrayed in a line ninety kilometers south of LBA docks. We have missile-lock on all twelve. We are ready to fire at your command, sir. They are too close to evade the hyper-velocity missiles. They are so confident in their cloaking technology that they are taking chances they should not have taken.”
“Tell me, Major, are they manned ships?”
“Yes, sir. Each ship has a crew requirement of five. They can carry up to thirty-five dismounts if the mission profile requires it. Scanners show that these birds are not configured for a ground assault.”
“Very well. Major. I would like to send a message. I do not wish to take lives unnecessarily. What is your tactical assessment? How many craft would we have to destroy before they would withdraw?”
“Sir, as far as they know they are invisible to our radar. As I stated, they are relying on their tech which they believe is still functional. When we strip them naked, so to speak, I believe that they will retreat and reconsider their options. My recommendation would be that we leave one ship of their formation. One would not pose a significant threat here and would, in all likelihood, retreat and tell their superiors that their advantage has been taken away.”
“Nothing less than that, Major? Fifty-five casualties? Is that your recommendation?”
“Sir, we might succeed with less than that but we cannot be certain. If we do not show enough strength they may believe that we were simply lucky in our attack and that may provoke them to initiate their own counter-attack. It is possible, at their current range, that they would be able to launch a missile strike against LBA. Just one of their missiles getting through might then cause significant loss of life here. We need a survivor to tell the story, sir. What we don’t need is even one more casualty on our side.”
“Very well.” Meri’s heart dropped as he gave the order. “Leave one ship. You are free to engage.”
“Yes, sir.” Touching the lighted screen before him Major Grozdon commanded, “Missile batteries one through four, change weapons firing status from Weapons Hold to Weapons Free. I say again you are Weapons Free. You are cleared hot on Fireplan Payback. Fire now, now, now.”
